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The Current Crisis
The Shoddiest Coverage Ever
WASHINGTON -- So intense have the Republicans' suspicions of their Democratic rivals become in the last weeks of this presidential race that they are now accusing the delightful Democratic vice-presidential candidate, Senator Joe Biden, of withholding the results of his brain scans from his recently released medical records. Their charge is false. The results of those brain scans are spread across several pages of the senator's records for all to see. Admittedly those pages are blank, but what did the Republicans expect, a fully stocked cranial activity? Have they not been listening to the great man's solemnities on the campaign trail?
In an interview with his fellow airhead, CBS's Katie Couric, late in September, the senior senator from Delaware expressed his firm belief that Franklin Delano Roosevelt was president of the United States in 1929 and that in that illusory year FDR had at his command a large and apparently receptive television audience. Ha, ha, ha -- and the mainstream moron media insist that Senator Biden's opponent, Governor Sarah Palin, "stumbled" when she was interviewed by CBS's cutie. Stumble Governor Palin might, but Senator Biden fell head over heels and he has continued to do so.
There have been his repeated bold intimations that while flying over Afghanistan in a helicopter he was forced down by enemy fire. Actually, the threat was from inclement weather. Or savor this: despite being caught years ago plagiarizing a British Labour leader's public recollections of life in the Welsh coal mines, Senator Biden has again rather incautiously recalled being a coal miner himself. His recollection is in error. In his only debate with Governor Palin, he asseverated that the United States "drove Hezbollah out of Lebanon" -- a complete nonsense. Most deliciously, this month he yawped: "The number one job facing the middle class, and it happens to be as Barack says, a three letter word, jobs, j-o-b-s, jobs" Possibly the senator's handlers have told him to avoid four-letter words on the campaign trail. At any rate, for those of us who enjoy a laugh Senator Biden's campaign has been a picnic.
Now he is apparently collaborating with the McCain-Palin campaign in stressing Senator Barack H. Obama's inexperience. "We're gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy," Senator Biden warned, referring to his running mate, Senator Obama, the least experienced presidential nominee of either the twentieth or the twenty-first century. Oh wait, I forgot Wendell Willkie, the “barefoot boy from Wall Street” who ran against FDR, the television pioneer.
That the gaffable Senator Biden has not become the laughingstock of this campaign is astonishing. Equally astonishing it the fact that Senator Obama's inexperience -- though there have been a few beautiful gaffes from him too -- has not become an issue. Instead, the members of the media and their fellow Democrats have made a vexed issue out of the perfectly normal -- albeit abnormally charming—Governor Palin. The claim is that she lacks the experience to be president. So too does the Prophet Obama.
The media's coverage of this election has been the shoddiest I have ever seen. The country has been walloped by a financial crisis almost wholly created by the Democrats' relaxation of mortgage lending to low and moderate income borrowers. It is a matter of record that the Republican nominee attempted to tighten those regulations. The Democrats' intrusion into the markets began in 1977 with their vaunted Community Reinvestment Act, encouraging bank loans to low and moderate income families. In 1995 the law was expanded, leading to an 80% increase in such loans.
Along with this, beginning in 1992 Congress imposed on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to purchase what we now know as subprime mortgages -- that is to say, risky mortgages. In 1996 the Clinton Administration's Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), enthralled as ever to the Democrats' urge for social engineering, ordered Fannie and Freddie to assist home purchases by low income earners seeking homes in higher income neighborhoods -- more subprime mortgages! HUD expanded this project in 2000. Also in 1996 HUD began targeting the number of such mortgages, requiring that 12% of Fannie and Freddie's mortgages assist low income home purchasers in higher income neighborhoods. In 2000 the number was increased to 20%.
The consequence of all the Democrats' meddling with real estate markets and with established regulations was that these subprime mortgages were secreted into bundles of mortgage packages and sold all over the world. Now we see a crisis and magically it is blamed on Senator McCain's party. The answer is to elect Senator Obama and his lovable sidekick to the White House. Yet, as readers of this column read last week, the chair of Senator Obama's finance committee, Penny Pritzker, gutted her own bank with subprime loans and has had to pay $460 million in penalties. Moreover, Wall Street abounds with Obama supporters who prospered on these subprime dealings.
What? What is this? Change the subject to Sarah Palin -- you betcha!
Bob Tyrrell is founder and editor in chief of The American Spectator. His books include the New York Times bestseller Boy Clinton: the Political Biography; The Impeachment of William Jefferson Clinton; The Liberal Crack-Up; The Conservative Crack-Up; Public Nuisances; The Future that Doesn't Work: Social Democracy's Failure in Britain; Madame Hillary: The Dark Road to the White House; and The Clinton Crack-Up.
He makes frequent appearance on national television and is a nationally syndicated columnist, whose articles have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Baltimore Sun, Washington Times, National Review, Harper's, Commentary, The (London) Spectator, Le Figaro (Paris), and elsewhere.
Bob is also an adjunct fellow of the Hudson Institute and a contributing editor to the New York Sun.
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Daddio| 10.23.08 @ 6:47AM
And yet, with the media a mere propaganda machine for the Democrats, this will never see the light of day. What is the first thing you do in any good revolution? Take over the media of course! Viva la revolucion!
Melvin| 10.23.08 @ 8:18AM
The Marxist left soon will utter the words of Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto "I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve."
Every day this terrible resolve grows and grows, the politicians don't listen to us know, but they soon will, they soon will.
Grissie| 10.23.08 @ 9:06AM
As a race horse trainer I use the definition everyday of the word "Blinders". A horse won't go where he can't see. The Obama idealogy is exactly the same. Confuse the issue, own the media, enact eloquence, give the worshippers what they want to hear. Human blinders. The most astounding realization is humans are more easily blinded than horses. Amazing. Disheartening.
Heather| 10.23.08 @ 10:45AM
Does anyone have any information concerning a lawsuit which Obama was supposed to answer to in Hawaii this week concerning his citizenship? I read that it was Martin vs Governor of HI. The plaintiff is seeking an order to have Obama disclose citizenship documentation.
bobf| 10.23.08 @ 10:56AM
For more info about the role that the Obama campaign's national finance chair, former Superior Bank/Coast-to-Coast-Financial Corp./Alliance Funding board member Penny Pritzker, played in helping to create the subprime mortgage crisis that led to the collapse of the U.S. financial system (which the CNN press agents for the Obama campaign have been ignoring), readers might be interested in checking out the following blog link:
http://bfeldman68.blogspot.com/2008/10/obama-campaigns-pritzkersuperior-bank.html
Howard| 10.23.08 @ 10:56AM
Please remember the Mainstream Moron Media's job is not over. It will be providing affirmation of all of the Prophets actions from 1/20/09 forward. And in the rare event that they cannot protect him outright, they will blame the problem on the imbecile George Bush. After all the bloody rag of Herbert Hoover was bandied about for thirty years after the end of the Great Depression. I'm sure the Democrats will try for a thirty year run of W's foibles. As Joe Lieberman would say, "what a country".
stevec| 10.23.08 @ 11:07AM
I have been doing research on Obama's Birth Certifcate.
The ones posted are forgeries, please bear with me.
1. The one on his site, does not have the seal, date stamp, or signiture.
2. The one on FactCheck does not have the Official State of Hawaii -
Department of Health Seal.
I have recieved the following from the State of Hawaii.
The state seal is imbedded in the certificate by machine and the back of the
certificate would have the printed signature of the State Registrar. The
lettering is imbedded in the seal.
Aloha,
kd
I have also posted video's on YouTube and the most recent was
showing how to create an Obama Birth Certifcate in under 5 min.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bd9K2Q3EbVQ
Here is another Video explaining the Seal situation on the FactCheck one.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=scjF5oB-JXk
We need to get this information out.
Sincerly;
Anthony| 10.23.08 @ 11:34AM
Superb as always Mr. Tyrrell. Perhaps this fool, Biden, can also tell us exactly when, between April, when he said Obama was too inexperienced to be president, and now, that he discovered Obama has a steel spine? Curious minds would like to know. As for the corrupt & discredited MSM, they taste blood, because they will get their reward when Obama silences talk radio with the "Fairness Doctrine" and web sites like TAS are regulated for content fairness. It will be back to the good old days of leftist media monopoly with no meddling new media to show them up. Gee, remember those ads in the '60s about folks behind the Iron Curtain, huddled around the radio in the dark of night, listening to Radio Free Europe, for the truth. Look's like history is about to repete itself, once again. So now I know what Obama wants that civilian army for.
J David| 10.23.08 @ 11:57AM
Part of the trouble is, Mr Tyrell, that the dirty deeds of RINOs was covered very well by the *Alternative Media* and their angry constituents are rightly holding them accountable. Moral equivalence socialists applaud the wickedness of the representatives they voted for...
Peter R McGrath| 10.23.08 @ 11:58AM
I suspect that the media's love affair with Obama has obscured the hollowness of his support nationwide. McCain does have a shot at Obama in formerly blue states, such as Pennsylvania, because the majority of Americans have declined the invitation to to drink Obama's Kool-Aid. It is sinking in that he's knee deep in the corruption spawned by the Fed's intervention in the mortgage markets. They anticipate an Obama adminstration will mean a bigger and more intrusive government making hash out of much more than the real estate market. Moreover, most Americans are sick to death of anyone challenging liberal orthodoxy being called "racist." They rigthly fear that this stampede of political "correctness" will only be accelerated with an Obama in the White House. Couple these concerns with a few reminders about Obama's preacher for 20 years - who clearly hates "White" America - and Obama starts looking more like a megalomaniac than a messiah.
mike| 10.23.08 @ 11:59AM
McCain proved he has lost his ability to make sound judgment calls by his choice of Sarah Palin as his running mate. She doesn't even know what the duties of the VP are! Well at least she can see Russia from her house. Maybe during the next 4 yrs she can look at it for a good long time and gain some more foreign policy expertise. Given that McCain is appearing more and more confused and disoriented at his rallies, maybe it's a good thing that Sarah is dragging him down. I shudder to think of McCain trying to make commander in chief decisions when he hasn't had enough sleep.
But the real reason he won't win is because too many people who make less than $250,000 a year have now realized that if they vote for John McCain it's just like a chicken voting for Colonel Sanders.
We have seen the 4 candidates in action and the overwhelming majority can plainly see that Obama/Biden is far superior to McCain/ Palin. Talk about "blinders"!? Too many people who voted for the simpleton George Bush are ready to jump right on the McCain/ Palin wagon. We tried confused and incompetent for eight years now. It hasn’t worked too well for America. Lets not give it 4 more years of McSame. The rest of America and the world just shakes it's head in amazement at what the republican party has sadly become.
Paul Hoffmann| 10.23.08 @ 2:32PM
I'm surprised how many issues have not been covered. One is a candidate's commander-in-chief qualifications. I don't know if three of the prime-time players have any military knowledge. I can picture John McCain saluting someone in uniform, but Barack?, Joe?, Sarah--maybe?
PT| 10.23.08 @ 2:32PM
Mike - You are so right that the Republican Party has lost its way. From the very first, W tried to be nice, tried to be non-partisan and ultimately tried to be more liberal than the liberals. He let the media run the war, fretting about the treatment of prisoners and all that rot while trying to buy his way to sainthood in Africa and Wall Street. He actually acted surprised when the Dems took his candy, called him a thief and stabbed him in the back. They understood that this is a culture war and if you are nice to them they view that as weakness.
Then comes the "centrist" McCain and his media buddies with the Strait Talk Express propelling him to the nomination only to find to his dismay that now that they've put him there, they found another man. How many times have you heard from the idiots in the McCain camp that they can't understand why the media suddenly turned against them?
So now we have two liberals and a choice consistent with having to have your house burned to the ground or just to the back bedroom. And your standard idiot will point to George W and McCain as examples of conservatives.
Marc Jeric| 10.23.08 @ 2:37PM
No, Mr. Tyrrell, they are not morons - they know what they are doing, our Main Stream Media and their darlings in the so-called Democrat Party. Since the 1960's I have renamed The New York Times as "The New York Pravda", The Washington Post as "The Washington Izvyestiya", The Los Angeles Times as "The Washington Borba", and The Chicago Tribune as "The Chicago Rude Pravo" - since their news and commentaries were consistently in line with the policies of those related Communist Parties. And I should know - I escaped a Communist regime back in 1957, after 12 years of their Marxist-Leninist indoctrination. These unofficial organs of our own self-proclaimed "liberals" (that is the name for former Socialists, Anarchists, Communists, and other strains of revolutionaries) are now united in saddling us with the present nightmare of that deadly quintet Pelosi-Reid-Frank-Dodds-Abu Hussein singing in unison for "social justice". Who now remembers that book "The New Class" by Milovan Djilas of former Yogoslavia?Marc Jeric, Las Vegas
OCPatriot| 10.23.08 @ 3:25PM
There's a new joint ad put out by Nieman-Marcus, Barney's and Saks:
YOU, TOO, CAN HAVE THE "SOCCER MOM" LOOK
FOR ONLY $175,00!
Robert Pinkerton| 10.23.08 @ 3:40PM
Mr. Jeric (post #14), try on "Klevlandskaya Pravda for the Cleveland Plain Dealer.
j. pinter| 10.23.08 @ 7:57PM
Both parties are to blame. No one person or party calls all the shots. This mess is shared. I'm sick of all the fingerpointing when reps in both parties were in the know. This debacle was made by government and not by a single party or a person.
Beeblebrox| 10.23.08 @ 11:37PM
OCPatriot:
Your comment makes no sense. Care to try again?
Andy| 10.24.08 @ 1:00AM
The only reason Biden takes a train home every day is because he would otherwise get lost. The 1st 4 years of Bush Presidency began with a Democrat recesion declared in March , 2001, less than 2 months after Bush took office. Six months later there was 9/11. Bush did not cause either of these. He cut taxes, the economy improved, unemployment dropped to 4.5%. Most of our problems have been caused by Liberal Left Democrats, Many of them are Socialists who cried when the Berlin wall came down. Some, like FDR, never met a Communist they didn't like.
Sue| 10.24.08 @ 8:13PM
I can only say: Franklin Raines, $90 million bonus due to the rape of Fannie Mae; Jamie Gorelick, her ugly hands all over the "WALL" between the FBI/CIA, etc. and now Fannie Mae/ Jimmy Johnston, Freddie Mac - millions; Carter - Community Reinvestment Act; Barney Frank; Chris Dodd; Nancy Pelosi; Harry Reid, they are all going to be in your wallet big time. Get a clue, people, before it's too late. What's in your wallet? It never was Bush and he kept your family safe and killed the bad guys.
Ross| 10.28.08 @ 1:38AM
I thought you might like to know just how bad the English-language newspaper - the only one, at present - in Jakarta really is.
Yesterday's issue 27/10/08 contained a typical example of its left-lib bias, an article entitled 'Race Issues in the the race to be US president.' It was written by somebody callled Sin-ming Shaw, who was said to be a former Visiting Fellow in History at Oxford and Princetom Universities.
It describes how Bill Reilly 'talked down to Obama in so condescending a manner that some viewers were reminded of the images in an old Hollywood movie putting a young black upstart in his place.' Shaw also scolds Sean Hannity for asking 'repeatedly' if Fareed Zakaria thought 'America to be the greatest nation on earth.'
These are offered as proof that the campaign is race-based, and Shaw also rants wildly that 'four more years of republican rule will further degrade and bankrupt the country.'
She graciously concedes that 'in any civilised society ignorance is not illegal and being moralistic is anybody's inherent privilege.' From there. she leaps on to say 'what is alarming is how private religious beliefs and morals have increasingly shaped the secular agenda of America.' She thus misconstrues the Founding Fathers. whose readiness to separate church and state was surely aimed at not having an establshed Church of England-type denomination, in order to rave against how 'today's Republican Party represents a large segment of the population that believes that abortions and same-sex marriage are immoral, that God sent America to Iraq and that bailing out Wall Street is 'socialism.' "
Shaw winds up with a jab at Sarah Palin's obviously accurate staement that Obama 'is not a man who sees America like you and I see America.' Shaw in cowardly fashion hides behind un-named 'many observers' who thought Palin was carrying 'a racist undertone.'
This kind of garbage is typical Jakarta Post fodder, and hardly the most rabid.
A few days ago, 21st October, we had some twerp called Charles Lawson, Professor of Literature would you believe, at American University in Washington, whose gems of literary merit included the following;
'the John McCain/Sarah Palin campaign has brought out the worst in the remaining right-wing xenophobes, agitating them even further by employing racial slurs and outright lies that even Joseph Goebbels wouldn't have used.
The angry corwds at McCain rallies have become so dangerous that few doubt a lynching would take place were the situation possible...'
Clearly this guy is heading for the funny-farm, but the JP's editors are so far left it just keeps coming. No conservative articles appear to balance this pink diarrhoea.
How be some of you email your objections to Indonesia's ultra-lib pains in the neck?