Bill Quick:

A free and healthy democracy cannot function when it has no way to determine reality. We have our corrupt, degenerate, dangerous mass media to thank for this situation. The solution is simple: Destroy them. Don’t read them, buy them, or support them in any way. As somebody else said, “Let them die. I’ll dance on their graves.”

Whatever replaces our current media cannot possibly be any worse, and most likely will be better. More transparent, at least.

Remember, if you ask a question of The One, you implicitly agree that your entire personal and financial history is open to public and government scrutiny.

And the left has the balls to call us fascists.

Via NRO:

There’s just no comparison. Obama’s own running mate warned this week that Obama’s youth and inexperience will invite a crisis — indeed a crisis “generated” precisely to test him. Can you be serious about national security and vote on November 4 to invite that test?

And how will he pass it? Well, how has he fared on the only two significant foreign policy tests he has faced since he’s been in the Senate? The first was the surge. Obama failed spectacularly. He not only opposed it. He tried to denigrate it, stop it, and — finally — deny its success.

The second test was Georgia, to which Obama responded instinctively with evenhanded moral equivalence, urging restraint on both sides. McCain did not have to consult his advisers to instantly identify the aggressor.

Today’s economic crisis, like every other in our history, will in time pass. But the barbarians will still be at the gates. Whom do you want on the parapet? I’m for the guy who can tell the lion from the lamb.

The likelihood is that people won't listen, but I can hope.

Putting politics aside for a moment, I'd like to express my best wishes to Madelyn Dunham, Barack Obama's grandmother, who appears to be gravely ill. It's a rough thing to go through with any grandparent, and I'd imagine that this situation would be especially tough for Sen. Obama, considering that his grandmother played a major role in raising him when he was young. My thoughts are with Mrs. Dunham and the Obama family in this trying time.

I love this woman.



Via Hot Air, where Allah takes some issue with Sarah's take on Barry's proposed great over-mountain invasion of Pakistan, but I'll let it slide because on the whole, it's so politically flavorful.

Sarah "Destroyer" Palin

If this isn't an implicit endorsement of McCain, I don't know what is:

“Mark my words,” the Democratic vice presidential nominee warned at the second of his two Seattle fundraisers Sunday. “It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy. The world is looking. We’re about to elect a brilliant 47-year-old senator president of the United States of America. Remember I said it standing here if you don’t remember anything else I said. Watch, we’re gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy.”

Ed Morrisey notes that on foreign policy, Obama is much like Kennedy, who got his ass handed to him by Khruschev at their first summit meeting:

Kennedy wound up trading strategic intel and missile installations in western Asia in exchange for Soviet withdrawal of the nuclear missiles from Cuba. The entire Kennedy administration turned out to be a foreign-policy disaster that was only overlooked because of the tragic assassination of Kennedy in Dallas in 1963.

I agree with Biden. Obama is exactly like Kennedy in this regard, and our enemies will test us by threatening our interests around the globe if we elect Obama. I’d rather avoid the problem altogether and elect a man who puts enough fear into the minds of our enemies to keep them from testing us at all.

And we're probably going to elect this guy. God help us.

...It's my Lego Airport, Set 6392!

Loved that set.

AND!!! My motorcycle shop that I got in Chicago when we stayed with the Harris'! Set 6373! Dang, I loved legos. Still do.

Treacher:

As if it's somehow relevant that Obama revealed to the whole world that he's a socialist. Who cares that he looked one of his inferiors in the eye and told the peasant he doesn't deserve the money he earns?

Of course the only reason that people want voters to prove their identity at the polls is RACISM.

Sorry about the screwed up appearance of my blog these days. For some reason, my blogrolls aren't loading. It seems that Blogrolling, which had been down for maintenance, is still messed up in some way. I'm trying to figure out how to get things looking right again...

How is it that Bill Ayers can be considered "mainstream"? Only in Chicago:

Turn on the TV news when John McCain is picking up undecided voters by invoking Barack Obama's relationship with unrepentant American terrorist William Ayers and, invariably, some liberal talking head will sniff in disgust and say Ayers is no big deal where Obama comes from.

Unfortunately, that's true. Ayers is a terrorist. But this is Chicago.

Obama and Ayers are neighbors and they worked together on school issues with the same foundation. Obama's political coming-out party was held in Ayers' living room when Obama was running for his first political office.

And the boss of Chicago is Mayor Richard Daley. Mayor Shortshanks has thrown his protective embrace around both men. These are facts.

But the reason Ayers is not a big deal in Chicago has to do with the Chicago Way, and the left fork of that road that has been bought and paid for by the Daley machine, subsidized by taxpayers who foot the bill for public relations contracts from City Hall.

I am shocked - SHOCKED! - to see that Washington is busily casting blame on Wall Street for all of our current financial woes while ignoring the massive evidence of corruption inside the sacred chambers of Congress. Exhibit A - Chris Dodd:

Former Lehman Brothers CEO Dick Fuld was under oath Monday when he was grilled on Capitol Hill about his role in the current financial meltdown. But if Members really want to understand the credit mania, they should also call Chris Dodd.

The Connecticut Senator has been out front denouncing the "companies that form the foundation of our financial markets," for "their insatiable appetite for risk." He has also decried "reckless, careless and sometimes unscrupulous actors in the mortgage lending industry" and he has proclaimed that "American taxpayers deserve to know how we arrived at this moment." To that end, we propose he take the stand -- under oath.

Former Countrywide Financial loan officer Robert Feinberg says Mr. Dodd knowingly saved thousands of dollars on his refinancing of two properties in 2003 as part of a special program the California mortgage company had for the influential. He also says he has internal company documents that prove Mr. Dodd knew he was getting preferential treatment as a friend of Angelo Mozilo, Countrywide's then-CEO.

Read the whole editorial, then contact your senators to see just how interested they are in getting to the bottom of this mess. I'm inclined to believe that in Dodd's case (as well as some others - see Exhibit B: Barney Frank), this isn't a case of "where there's smoke there's fire," it's a case of YOU'RE ON FREAKING FIRE, MAN!

I suppose the body count is the main difference. And obviously there were ideological differences; McVeigh was interesting in revenge on a government that he felt had abandoned its original purpose and ideals; Ayers wanted to simply overthrow that same government and replace it with a completely different system. But both had ideologies that led them into violence, both committed acts of terror in service of their ideologies, and both are responsible for the deaths of innocents.

Only one of them got what he deserved after his crimes; McVeigh was, of course, executed. Ayers is a free man due to a mistake by law enforcement in the investigation of his case. And of course, because Ayers' crimes were conducted in the service of a leftist worldview, he is not only not ostracized, but rather welcomed into the polite intellectual circles of the left as something of a folk hero. He now spreads his vicious ideology as a Professor at the University of Illinois - Chicago.

And, apparently, mentors Democrat presidential candidates. What has happened to our society?

Charles Krauthammer absolutely nails it:

Today, on the threshold of the presidency, Obama concedes the odiousness of these associations, which is why he has severed them. But for the years in which he sat in Wright's pews and shared common purpose on boards with Ayers, Obama considered them a legitimate, indeed unremarkable, part of social discourse.

Do you? Obama is a man of first-class intellect and first-class temperament. But his character remains highly suspect. There is a difference between temperament and character. Equanimity is a virtue. Tolerance of the obscene is not.

The man has lousy judgement. No question about it:

BarackObama.com, the campaign’s official website, offers up a “fact check” that Obama was just eight years old when the Weathermen were active in 1969. The Obama campaign has tried to use the founding date of the Weathermen as a touchstone, claiming that the acts of the group were something that happened “40 years ago” when Obama was a child. Far closer to the truth is the December 6, 1990, sentencing date of Weathermen Susan Rosenberg and Linda Sue Evans, when the last of the Weathermen were sentenced for their role in a string of bombings in the mid-1980s, including bombs that detonated at the National War College, the Washington Navy Yard Computing Center, the Washington Navy Yard Officers’ Club, New York City’s Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, the Israeli Aircraft Industries Building, New York City’s South African Consulate, and the United States Capitol Building.