candy

  Maybe Sean(Penn),Danny(Glover),Kevin(Spacey) and Naomi(Campbell) can help this poor despot! The ‘useful idiot’ A-list flocks to Hugo Chavez - Times Onli...     November 24, 2008 Is the Chavez Magic wearing off in Venezuela? Even Hugo Chavez's most diehard supporters have to see what he has been doing to the economy now that oil prices have plunged:

From the New York Times:

President Hugo Chávez’s supporters suffered a stinging defeat in several state and municipal races on Sunday, with the opposition retaining power in oil-rich Zulia, the country’s most populous state, and winning crucial races here in the capital.

The losses were Mr. Chávez’s second setback at the polls in the past year, after the defeat of a proposed constitutional overhaul last December that would have enhanced his powers. The results will put opponents of Mr. Chávez in charge of areas with about a third of Venezuela’s 26 million people.

“These victories came in the economic and political centers of the country,” said Luis Vicente León, director of Datánalisis, a polling firm here. “They represent the most important symbols in terms of cities and population.”

Particularly here in Caracas, the results were rooted in festering discontent over the government’s inability to lower violent crime as homicides and kidnappings have surged over the past decade, making it one of the world’s deadliest cities. In the early hours of Monday, celebratory fireworks went off over parts of the city after the results were announced.

With food price inflation at 50% and the rest of the economy sinking, it's no wonder that many of Chavez's erstwhile supporters are turning against him. The problem is will Hugo allow the opposition any say at all in the government?

The election results will be a test for Venezuela’s beleaguered political institutions, depending how the president reacts. Despite the inroads made by the opposition, followers of Mr. Chávez still control the Supreme Court, the National Assembly, the federal bureaucracy and every state company.

Mr. Chávez recently signaled that he might move to handpick new regional authorities, effectively depleting the power of opponents elected by voters.

"Who can say there is a dictatorship in Venezuela?" Mr. Chávez asked in televised comments in which he congratulated his opponents after the result were delivered by electoral officials around midnight here.

Mr. Chávez’s conciliatory tone stood in contrast to threats he had recently leveled, including a warning that he might send tanks to occupy Carabobo, a state with a large industrial base where the political opposition has been gaining strength. He had also said he would jail a top political rival, whom he called a “swine,” in western Zulia State.

The fact is Chavez still has the guns and can still threaten the opposition and cow the people if he so chooses. But he also knows that then the mask that he has so carefully maintained over these past years would fall off and he would lose support of liberals in the west as well as the social democratic left in Latin America. Having tanks roll through the streets to beat down the political opposition would even cause many (not all) of the American left to abandon him.

As oil prices continue to fall, Chavez will be left without a way to pay off his base of support - the poorest of the poor who look to him for subsidized food and housing. If that were ever to happen, Chavez would then be truly challenged as the opposition would be able to coalesce and defeat him at the polls.

I can remember as a child my dad always took many trips to Guantanamo Bay. He worked there; he had roots there. Heck that's where I first had my first CHICKLET....in my aunty's house. Guantanamo Bay is the perfect place FOR CRIMINALS....SPECIALLY THE TERRORIST OF 9-11 MR. PRESIDENT! So now we are affording them WITH LEGAL SERVICES..................HOW LOVELY................THEY DIDN'T DO IT --- IT WASN'T ME. Well, Mr. President Obama try telling that to the many WHO LOST THEIR DAUGHTERS, SON, HUSBANDS AND WIVES.........................and people like me who lost good friends and coworkers. Where and what will you do with THESE TERRORIST PRESIDENT OBAMA?

I particularly don't  want to see it go as it is a PART OF CUBAN HISTORY and I always associated with the memory of my LOVING FATHER...............MAY GOD KEEP HIM IN HIS LOVING ARMS.  WHAT WOULD YOU SAY DADDY TO THE PRESIDENT TODAY IF YOU WERE ALIVE? I WONDER......................I MISS YOU DAD..............HAPPY BIRTHDAY you will always be in my heart.

 

SO THERE ARE NO SPECIAL TREATMENTS GIVING AT GUANTANAMO BAY; NO TV; NO EXERCISE ROOMS; NO STEAKS...................JUST WHAT A CRIMINAL DESERVES........not the joke that the jails are here in the States. You ever wonder why we have so many criminals HERE.....................HECK..........FREE ROOM AND BOARD WITH EVERYTHING INCLUDED......EXERCISE ROOMS; COLOR TV........3 MEALS A DAY................MR. PRESIDENT WHY DON'T YOU DO SOMETHING ABOUT WHAT' HAPPENING IN AMERICA...............instead of worrying your wittle head with the Guantanamo Bay issue???? it figures...................

I AM NOT POSTING THE WEBSITE.....BECAUSE IT CAME TO MY PERSONAL EMAIL.......BUT THIS IS WHAT .........THE DNC.........HAVE TO SAY:..........NOW I AM TRULY APALLED......AND AGAIN ALL THOSE IGNORANT PEOPLE THAT VOTED DEMOCRAPPY WAY................YOU FF PAY FOR THIS MAN......I SURE AS HELL AINT!!!!

 

Our friends at the Democratic National Committee laid it all on the line to bring change this year.

We've been reviewing the books, and the DNC went into considerable debt to secure victory for Barack and Joe. It took unprecedented resources to staff up all 50 states, train field organizers, and build the technology to reach as many swing voters as possible.

It worked.

But it also left the DNC in debt. So before we do anything else, we need to help pay for this winning strategy.

 

THEY ARE ASKING FOR 30.00 DOLLARS...........MAYBE THAT'S WHERE THE BAIL MONEY FOR FREDDIE AND MAC AND JACK THE RAT WILL COME FROM..............BBBBBB...........THEY DONE HIT THE BANKRUPTCY BUTTON WITH ME...........CAUSE I AINT GOT NOTHING FOR THOSE LOUSY DEMOCRAPS........SEE HOW THEY ARE................THEY GOT INTO THE WHITEHOUSE AND STILL SUCKING EVERY PENNY OUT OF A POOR VOTER................GOOD LUCK TO THOSE FOOLS THAT THINK THEIR VOTES WILL COUNT..................OH WAIT IT WILL.............THEY WILL HAVE CHANGE......................FOR FIFTY CENTS

  PAPER: Plans for National Holiday Honoring Obama...  Isn’t this the soft bigotry of low expectations?-mcb  Spokesman: 'Obama Ready to RULE on Day 1'...   “I didn’t need Obama to tell me that I could do anything”   Obama Appointing Beltway Has-Beens   Morning and mourning afterthoughts are filling up the "Newest" category @ Some Ecards      

 

A Financial Analysis of Barack Obama's Historic Purchase of the Presidency

 

The only enduring tragic thing about an Obama win is that we won't get to see Erica Jong and Jane Fonda pour gasoline over each other and strike a match.

   Peter Hitchens  08th November 2008   "They also know the US is just as segregated as it was before Martin Luther King – in schools, streets, neighbourhoods, holidays, even in its TV-watching habits and its choice of fast-food joints. The difference is that it is now done by unspoken agreement rather than by law."   (WOW!-mcb)   The night we waved goodbye to America... our last best hope on Earth

Anyone would think we had just elected a hip, skinny and youthful replacement for God, with a plan to modernise Heaven and Hell – or that at the very least John Lennon had come back from the dead.

The swooning frenzy over the choice of Barack Obama as President of the United States must be one of the most absurd waves of self-deception and swirling fantasy ever to sweep through an advanced civilisation. At least Mandela-worship – its nearest equivalent – is focused on a man who actually did something.

I really don’t see how the Obama devotees can ever in future mock the Moonies, the Scientologists or people who claim to have been abducted in flying saucers. This is a cult like the one which grew up around Princess Diana, bereft of reason and hostile to facts.

 

It already has all the signs of such a thing. The newspapers which recorded Obama’s victory have become valuable relics. You may buy Obama picture books and Obama calendars and if there isn’t yet a children’s picture version of his story, there soon will be.

Proper books, recording his sordid associates, his cowardly voting record, his astonishingly militant commitment to unrestricted abortion and his blundering trip to Africa, are little-read and hard to find.

If you can believe that this undistinguished and conventionally Left-wing machine politician is a sort of secular saviour, then you can believe anything. He plainly doesn’t believe it himself. His cliche-stuffed, PC clunker of an acceptance speech suffered badly from nerves.  It was what you would expect from someone who knew he’d promised too much and that from now on the easy bit was over.

He needn’t worry too much. From now on, the rough boys and girls of America’s Democratic Party apparatus, many recycled from Bill Clinton’s stained and crumpled entourage, will crowd round him, to collect the rich spoils of his victory and also tell him what to do, which is what he is used to.

     Just look at his sermon by the shores of Lake Michigan. He really did talk about a ‘new dawn’, and a ‘timeless creed’ (which was ‘yes, we can’). He proclaimed that ‘change has come’. He revealed that, despite having edited the Harvard Law Review, he doesn’t know what ‘enormity’ means. He reached depths of oratorical drivel never even plumbed by our own Mr Blair, burbling about putting our hands on the arc of history (or was it the ark of history?) and bending it once more toward the hope of a better day (Don’t try this at home).

I am not making this up. No wonder that awful old hack Jesse Jackson sobbed as he watched. How he must wish he, too, could get away with this sort of stuff.

And it was interesting how the President-elect failed to lift his admiring audience by repeated – but rather hesitant – invocations of the brainless slogan he was forced by his minders to adopt against his will – ‘Yes, we can’. They were supposed to thunder ‘Yes, we can!’ back at him, but they just wouldn’t join in.  No wonder. Yes we can what exactly? Go home and keep a close eye on the tax rate, is my advice. He’d have been better off bursting into ‘I’d like to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony’ which contains roughly the same message and might have attracted some valuable commercial sponsorship.

Perhaps, being a Chicago crowd, they knew some of the things that 52.5 per cent of America prefers not to know. They know Obama is the obedient servant of one of the most squalid and unshakeable political machines in America. They know that one of his alarmingly close associates, a state-subsidised slum landlord called Tony Rezko, has been convicted on fraud and corruption charges.

They also know the US is just as segregated as it was before Martin Luther King – in schools, streets, neighbourhoods, holidays, even in its TV-watching habits and its choice of fast-food joint. The difference is that it is now done by unspoken agreement rather than by law.

If Mr Obama’s election had threatened any of that, his feel-good white supporters would have scuttled off and voted for John McCain, or practically anyone. But it doesn’t. Mr Obama, thanks mainly to the now-departed grandmother he alternately praised as a saint and denounced as a racial bigot, has the huge advantages of an expensive private education. He did not have to grow up in the badlands of useless schools, shattered families and gangs which are the lot of so many young black men of his generation.

If the nonsensical claims made for this election were true, then every positive discrimination programme aimed at helping black people into jobs they otherwise wouldn’t get should be abandoned forthwith. Nothing of the kind will happen. On the contrary, there will probably be more of them.

And if those who voted for Obama were all proving their anti-racist nobility, that presumably means that those many millions who didn’t vote for him were proving themselves to be hopeless bigots. This is obviously untrue.

 

I was in Washington DC the night of the election. America’s beautiful capital has a sad secret. It is perhaps the most racially divided city in the world, with 15th Street – which runs due north from the White House – the unofficial frontier between black and white. But, like so much of America, it also now has a new division, and one which is in many ways much more important. I had attended an election-night party in a smart and liberal white area, but was staying the night less than a mile away on the edge of a suburb where Spanish is spoken as much as English, plus a smattering of tongues from such places as Ethiopia, Somalia and Afghanistan.

As I walked, I crossed another of Washington’s secret frontiers. There had been a few white people blowing car horns and shouting, as the result became clear. But among the Mexicans, Salvadorans and the other Third World nationalities, there was something like ecstasy.

 

They grasped the real significance of this moment. They knew it meant that America had finally switched sides in a global cultural war. Forget the Cold War, or even the Iraq War. The United States, having for the most part a deeply conservative people, had until now just about stood out against many of the mistakes which have ruined so much of the rest of the world.

Suspicious of welfare addiction, feeble justice and high taxes, totally committed to preserving its own national sovereignty, unabashedly Christian in a world part secular and part Muslim, suspicious of the Great Global Warming panic, it was unique.

These strengths had been fading for some time, mainly due to poorly controlled mass immigration and to the march of political correctness. They had also been weakened by the failure of America’s conservative party – the Republicans – to fight on the cultural and moral fronts.

They preferred to posture on the world stage. Scared of confronting Left-wing teachers and sexual revolutionaries at home, they could order soldiers to be brave on their behalf in far-off deserts. And now the US, like Britain before it, has begun the long slow descent into the Third World. How sad. Where now is our last best hope on Earth?

just something to share

 

'Compassionate' Conservatism Was a Mistake - WSJ.com

  November 08, 2008

ADVICE TO THE REPUBLICANS: Do what Rahm Emanuel would do in your position! "Put as many long-range torpedoes into the water aimed at Senator Obama's ship of state before Republicans lose control of the Executive Branch as possible." Some examples:

 

*Appoint U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois Patrick Fitzpatrick as a special prosecutor so he can pursue his investigation of Tony Rezko and his corrupt dealings with Illinois's governor and other creatures and spoilsmen of the Daley Machine. This will make it politically difficult for a President Obama to pardon Mr. Rezko and impossible for him to terminate Mr. Fitzpatrick as a federal officer come January 21 as a way of de-railing this investigation.

* Appoint a special prosecutor to investigate ACORN's voter registration methods and its dealings with the Obama campaign.

* Appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the Obama campaign's on-line fundraising operation, including its disabling of the credit card security software on its on-line donations system. File a complaint with the Federal Election Commission regarding same.

* Appoint a bipartisan (love that word!) presidential commission to review the candidates' fundraising in this election cycle and to recommend changes in federal election laws.

File ethics complaints against Sen. Chris Dodd and Congressman Barney Frank for their relationship with Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Countrywide Mortgage.

Be it noted that, in his day, this is probably what Newt Gingrich would have done, too. It was then-Congressman Gingrich's persistent filing of ethics complaints against then-House Speaker Jim Wright, D Texas, which eventually brought Speaker Wright down and made possible the Republicans' re-taking of Congress in 1994 on the platform of the Contract with America.

Who needs a honeymoon anyway? Not Rahm Emanuel.

 

This probably is what Emanuel would do if the positions were reversed. But are these suggestions realistic?

PLEASE BE ADVISED.......THAT OBAMA HAS WON.........not based on his knowledge and/or experience but HE WAS MERELY USED AS A SCAPEGOAT by the democrats and SHAME on Obama who sir greedy ness allowed the democraps to do this to him.......WE all knew that if Obama would have a white skin color HE WOULD HAVE NOT HAD A CHANCE.........but be it as it bees.......he took the opportunity of his African Pappa......and put it to work.........what a disgrace. I am sorry BUT IN MY MIND...THE ONLY PERSON....WHO I WILL ALWAYS CONSIDER......."THE FIRST-AFRICAN AMERICAN WHO RAN FOR PRESIDENT WOULD BE AND IS JESSE JACKSON!!!

WE also know that all politicians REALLY only care about their own agenda and not the PEOPLE.....so get over it.....just because Obama is our President doesn't necessary means CHANGE...........AMen...now that's what I am saying.....it will be much worst..but you know what the sad part is......IS THAT THEY WILL CONTINUE TO BLAME BUSH. Personally, I think Bush was a good President. I think the democraps TOOK advantage of the war FOR THEIR SAKE OF WINNING the elections and projecting THINGS THAT WERE NOT TRUE...like I said God be with us, because in my heart I feel disaster coming and this has nothing to do with Obama being black or white.......IS THE FACT HE IS A DEMOCRAP....and being one myself of so many years AND WORKING FIRST HAND with them...I can tell you....THEY ONLY CARE ABOUT THEIR WELL BEING......and for that we will suffer because before OBAMA DOES ANYTHING FOR YOU OR ME.....he will take care of ALL THOSE WHO GAVE HIM THE MILLIONS TO SUCCEED.......and with any luck their may BE SOME CHANGE left for you and me....hugs......be well

WITH THIS SAID.....I AM DONE WITH THE OBAMINATION OF PRESIDENTION OVER THE WHITATION OF WASHINGTON STATE......................GOOD LUCK TO ALL.......MAY GOD BE WITH YOU AND YOUR FAMILIES...............get a grip things will be as they are........and I am lucky if I can find change for fifty cents.

  Oh my word, you would expect something like this from the likes of me perhaps, but a candidate,  could this be photoshopped, I think not.  He does the same thing to Hillary a while back.  Just trying to connect to the common man I guess.  What a shame. or sham       OBAMA CONGRATULATES MCCAIN...

This post has been edited by an administrator

and that's what I am holding onto tonight.................I am going to bed.......my brains hurt from thinking the UNTHINKABLE......................but I have    plan A, B and C....already to go if the Unobamathinkable HAPPENS..................................I am sorry I can't even see myself calling this man President and nor do I feel any respect for him and what he has done in our State.........segragating   and separating hispanics...........blacks and all other countries....................FOOLS.........are those who believeth what he sayeth...........and I can only pray that when I awake IT WILL BE TO A DELIGHTFUL TUNE.......McCAIN/PALIN 2008...............if not..........I may just rolled over..........get fired and    JUMP ON THE FREE GOVERNMENT BLEEP PROGRAMS..............free medical; free education; free housing ; GEE.........THOSE FF DEMOCRAPS just keep getting better at their lies lies and MORE LIES....................promises that never happened. YOU FOOLS WILL SEE just who exactly will redistribute the wealth IT SURE WONT BE THAT PIECE OF MAN BHO....................HE AINT GIVING YA BLEEP...............but he will continue to speaketh the bull until AMERICA IS RAN DOWN TO THE GROUND AND OPEN GROUND FOR MORE ATTACKS..............THANK YOU TO ALL YOU IDIOTS............that voted for Change................WELL...........NOW YOU CAN'T COMPLAIN; YOU CAN'T USE THE RACE CARD AND YOU CERTAINLY CAN'T BLAME ANYONE BUT YOURSELVES................GOOD NIGHT; GOOD LUCK AND GOOD RIDDINGS..............

Dear red states:

 

If you manage to steal this election too we've decided we're leaving.  We intend to form our own country, and we're taking the other Blue States with us. In case you aren't aware, that includes California, Hawaii, Oregon, Washington, Minnes
ota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois  and all the Northeast. We believe this split will be beneficial to the nation, and especially to the people of the new country of New California.

 

To sum up briefly: You get Texas, Oklahoma and all the slave 
states. We get stem cell research and the best beaches. We get the Statue of Liberty. You get Dollywood. 

 

We get Intel and Microsoft. You get WorldCom.

 

We get  Harvard. You get Ole' Miss.

 

We get 85% of America's venture capital and entrepreneurs. You get Alabama. 

 

We get two-thirds of the tax revenue, you get to make the red states pay their fair share.

 

Since our aggregate divorce rate is 22% lower than the 
Christian Coalition's, we get a bunch of happy families. You get a bunch of single moms.

 

Please be aware that Nuevo California will be pro-choice and anti-war,  and we're going to want all our citizens back from Iraq at once. If you need people to fight, ask your evangelicals. They have kids they're apparently willing to send to their deaths for no purpose, and they don't care if you don't show pictures of their children's caskets coming home. We do wish you success in Iraq , and hope that the WMDs t urn up, but we're not willing to spend our resources in Bush's Quagmire.

 

With the Blue States in hand, we will have firm control of 80% of the country's fresh water, more than 90% of the pineapple and lettuce, 92% of the nation's fresh fruit, 95% of America's quality wines, 90% of all cheese, 90% of the high tech industry, 95% of the corn and soybeans (thanks Iowa!), most of the U.S. low-sulfur coal, all living redwoods, sequoias and condors, all the Ivy and Seven Sister schools plus Stanford, Cal Tech and MIT.

 

With the Red States, on the other hand, you will have to cope with 88% of all obese Americans (and their projected health care costs), 92% of all U.S. mosquitoes, nearly 100% of the tornadoes, 90% of the hurricanes, 99% of all Southern Baptists, virtually 100% of all televangelists, Rush Limbaugh, Bob Jones University, Clemson and the University of Georgia.

 

We get Hollywood and Yosemite, thank you.

 

Additionally, 38% of those in the Red states believe Jonah was actually swallowed by a whale, 62% believe life is sacred unless we're discussing the war, the death penalty or gun laws, 44% say that evolution is only a theory, 53% that Saddam was involved in 9/11 and 61% of you crazy bastards believe you are people with higher morals then we lefties.

 

Finally, we're taking the good pot, too. You can have that dirt weed they grow in Mexico.

 

Peace out,

 

--Blue States

 

 GOOD FRIENDS BRING GOOD HUMOR...but I seriously think my friend HAS IT ALL WRONG...................after the ELECTION..............chances are........WE STILL BE GOOD FRIENDS!!!!

 An old priest who for years had faithfully served the people of the nation's capital, lay dying in the hospital.
He motioned for his nurse to come near.
"Yes, Father?" said the nurse. "I would really like to see Barack Obama and Joe Biden before I die," he whispered.
"I'll see what I can do, Father," replied the nurse, and she respectfully
forwarded the request to the DNC and waited for a response.
Surprisingly, soon the word arrived. Obama and Biden would be delighted to
visit the priest.

As they made their way to the hospital, Obama commented to Biden,
"I don't know why the old priest wants to see us, but the media coverage
will certainly help our image after the mess with my own minister."
Biden couldn't help but agree. When they arrived at the priest's room, the
priest took Biden's hand in his right hand and Obama's hand in his left.
There was silence and a look of serenity on the ancient cleric's face.
Finally Biden spoke, "Father, of all the people you could have chosen, why did you choose us to be with you as you near the end?"
Taking a deep breath, the old priest painfully replied, "I have always
tried to pattern my life after our Lord and Savior."
"Amen," said Obama.
"Amen," said Biden.

The old priest continued, "He died between two lying thieves and I would like to do the same."

Carpe Diem!
________________________________

Well it is evident THAT OBAMA CARES NOT FOR HIS PEOPLE........JUST HIS FREAKING VOTES...................by his face expressions.............AM I THE ONLY ONE THAT SEES THAT LYING LOOK UPON HIS FACE...............................

Obama voices confidence on election eve Last Edited: Monday, 03 Nov 2008, 12:48 PM EST Created: Monday, 03 Nov 2008, 8:24 AM EST Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama D-Ill., speaks about race during an address in Philadelphia, Tuesday, March 18, 2008. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon) SideBar
Related Items Stories One on one with McCain & Obama McCain holds final rally in Tampa Links You Decide 2008 or just enabling jstl so that we can just write ${bean.property} and jsp takes care of the new lines. -->







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JACKSONVILLE, Fla. (WOFL FOX 35, Orlando) --Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama says he's "one day away from changing the United States of America."
  
On the eve of the election, the Illinois senator sounded confident but said he expects Tuesday's outcome will be close. He told Florida voters that the election will go to whoever "wants it more" and urged his supporters to work hard in the next 24 hours "like our future depends on it."
  
At the Veterans Memorial Arena in Jacksonville, Obama noted that his Republican rival John McCain had campaigned there a few weeks ago and said the "fundamentals of our economy are strong." When the crowd jeered the idea, Obama told them, "You don't need to boo, you just need to vote."

Obama on being a beneficiary of racial preferencesEthel C. Fenig
Despite promises of transparency and openness, Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama has deliberately been opaque about his past and beliefs, carefully crafting his own story in his autobiographies The Audacity of Hope and Dreams From My Father while sealing his own academic records and often voting a noncommittal "present" as an Illinois state legislator. 

Instead of questioning him and demanding the promised transparency and openness, the media have gone along with Obama, devoting their investigative passions to his opponents' alleged sins, eg, the maternity of Governor Sarah Palin's Down Syndrome child and Senator John McCain's alleged mistress.  Coming up empty, they accepted Obama handouts without question while continuing to entertain the most outrageous speculations about McCain and Palin. 
And Obama's past associates, if they are troublesome like proud terrorist Bill Ayers, minimize their connection to him while the good guys praise him, wanting to get into the action of pride by association and publicly prove that they were way ahead of the rest of America
In five days, Senator Barack Obama '91 could become the first African-American and the second Harvard Law School graduate (after Rutherford B. Hayes, Class of 1845) to be elected  President of the United States.
The Harvard Law Review  finally decided to reprint five days before the election, "Record Retrospective: Obama on affirmative action - Election, 2008" a letter by then Harvard Law Review president Barack Obama  about his personal experience with affirmative action. 
It is one of the only items publicly available from his (law) school days;  even though he was Law Review president he apparently published little or no law research. 
The original
letter was published in Volume 91, Number 7 (November 16, 1990) of the Harvard Law Record
nearly 18 years ago. 
Apparently the letter was prompted by student Jimmy Chen who disagreed with affirmative action and complaints that not enough women were chosen for the august Harvard Law Review. 
I'd also like to add one personal note, in response to the letter from Mr. Jim Chen which was published in the October 26 issue of the RECORD, and which articulated broad objections to the Review's general affirmative action policy. I respect Mr. Chen's personal concern over the possible stigmatizing effects of affirmative action, and do not question the depth or sincerity of his feelings. I must say, however, that as someone who has undoubtedly benefited from affirmative action programs during my academic career, and as someone who may have benefited from the Law Review's affirmative action policy when I was selected to join the Review last year, I have not personally felt stigmatized either within the broader law school community or as a staff member of the Review.
Hmmm, so Obama admitted long ago that he "has undoubtedly benefited from affirmative action programs during my academic career, and as someone who may have benefited from the Law Review's Review's affirmative action policy" but he didn't feel stigmatized even though he undoubtedly looked different than other Law Review presidents.  Very telling. 

 



October 31, 2008, 4:00 a.m.

The End of Journalism
Sometime in 2008, journalism as we knew it died, and advocacy media took its place.

By Victor Davis Hanson

There have always been media biases and prejudices. Everyone knew that Walter Cronkite, from his gilded throne at CBS news, helped to alter the course of the Vietnam War, when, in the post-Tet depression, he prematurely declared the war unwinnible. Dan Rather’s career imploded when he knowingly promulgated a forged document that impugned the service record of George W. Bush. We’ve known for a long time — from various polling, and records of political donations of journalists themselves, as well as surveys of public perceptions — that the vast majority of journalists identify themselves as Democratic, and liberal in particular.

Yet we have never quite seen anything like the current media infatuation with Barack Obama, and its collective desire not to raise key issues of concern to the American people. Here were four areas of national interest that were largely ignored.

CAMPAIGN FINANCING
For years an axiom of the liberal establishment was the need for public campaign financing — and the corrosive role of private money in poisoning the election process. The most prominent Republican who crossed party lines to ensure the passage of national public campaign financing was John McCain — a maverick stance that cost him dearly among conservatives who resented bitterly federal interference in political expression.

In contrast, Barack Obama, remember, promised that he would accept both public funding and the limitations that went along with it, and would “aggressively pursue an agreement with the Republican nominee to preserve a publicly financed general election.” Then in June 2008, Obama abruptly reneged, bowing out entirely from government financing, the first presidential nominee in the general election to do that since the system was created in 1976.

Obama has now raised over $600 million, by far the largest campaign chest in American political history. In many states he enjoys a four-to-one advantage in campaign funding — most telling in his scheduled eleventh-hour, 30-minute specials that will not be answered by the publicly financed and poorer McCain campaign.

The story that the media chose to ignore was not merely the Obama about-face on public financing, or even the enormous amounts of money that he has raised — some of it under dubious circumstances involving foreign donors, prepaid credit cards, and false names. Instead, they were absolutely quiet about a historic end to liberal support for public financing.

For all practical purposes, public financing of the presidential general election is now dead. No Republican will ever agree to it again. No Democrat can ever again dare to defend a system destroyed by Obama. All future worries about the dangers of big money and big politics will fall on deaf ears.

Surely, there will come a time when the Democratic Party, whether for ethical or practical reasons, will sorely regret dismantling the very safeguards that for over three decades it had insisted were critical for the survival of the republic.

Imagine the reaction of the New York Times or the Washington Post had John McCain renounced his promise to participate in public campaign financing, proceeded instead to amass $600 million and outraise the publicly financed Barack Obama four-to-one, and begun airing special 30-minute unanswered infomercials during the last week of the campaign.

THE VP CANDIDATES
We know now almost all the details of Sarah Palin’s pregnancies, whether the trooper who tasered her nephew went to stun or half stun, the cost of her clothes, and her personal expenses — indeed, almost everything except how a mother of so many children gets elected councilwoman, mayor, and governor, routs an entrenched old-boy cadre, while maintaining near record levels of public support.

Yet the American public knows almost nothing of what it should about the extraordinary career of Joe Biden, the 36-year veteran of the Senate. In unprecedented fashion, Biden has simply avoided the press for most of the last two months, confident that the media instead would deconstruct almost every word of “good looking” Sarah Palin’s numerous interviews with mostly hostile interrogators.


By accepted standards of behavior, Biden has sadly proven wanting. He has committed almost every classical sin of character — plagiarism, false biography, racial insensitivity, and serial fabrication. And because of media silence, we don’t know whether he was kidding when he said America would not need to burn coal, or that Hezbollah was out of Lebanon, or that FDR addressed the nation on television as president in 1929 (surely a record for historical fictions in a single thought), or that the public would turn sour on Obama once he was challenged by our enemies abroad. In response, the media reported that the very public Sarah Palin was avoiding the press while the very private Joe Biden shunned interviews and was chained to the teleprompter.

For two months now, the media reaction to Biden’s inanity has been simply “that’s just ol’ Joe, now let’s turn to Palin,” who, in the space of two months, has been reduced from a popular successful governor to a backwoods creationist, who will ban books and champion white secessionist causes. The respective coverage of the two candidates is ironic in a variety of ways, but in one especially — almost every charge against Palin (that she is under wraps, untruthful, and inept) was applicable only to Biden.

So we are about to elect a vice president about whom we know only that he has been around a long time, but little else — and nothing at all why exactly Joe Biden says the most astounding and often lunatic things.

Imagine the reaction of Newsweek or Time had moose-hunting mom Sarah Palin claimed FDR went on television to address the nation as President in 1929, or warned America that our enemies abroad would test John McCain and that his response would result in a radical loss of his popularity at home.

THE PAST AS PRESENT
In 2004, few Americans knew Barack Obama. In 2008, they may elect him. Surely his past was of more interest than his present serial denials of it. Whatever the media’s feelings about the current Barack Obama, there should have been some story that the Obama of 2008 is radically different from the Obama who was largely consistent and predictable for the prior 30 years.

Each Obama metamorphosis in itself might be attributed to the normal evolution to the middle, as a candidate shifts from the primary to the general election. But in the case of Obama, we witnessed not a shift, but a complete transformation to an entirely new persona — in almost every imaginable sense of the word. Name an issue — FISA, NAFTA, guns, abortion, capital punishment, coal, nuclear power, drilling, Iran, Jerusalem, the surge — and Obama’s position today is not that of just a year ago.

Until 2005, Obama was in communication with Bill Ayers by e-mail and phone, despite Ayers reprehensible braggadocio in 2001 that he remained an unrepentant terrorist. Rev. Wright was an invaluable spiritual advisor — until spring of 2008. Father Pfleger was praised as an intimate friend in 2004 — and vanished off the radar in 2008. The media might have asked not just why these rather dubious figures were once so close to, and then so distant from, Obama; but why were there so many people like Rashid Khalidi and Tony Rezko in Obama’s past in the first place?

Behind the Olympian calm of Obama, there was always a rather disturbing record of extra-electoral politics completely ignored by the media. If one were disturbed by the present shenanigans of ACORN or the bizarre national call for Americans simply to skip work on election day to help elect Obama (who would pay for that?), one would only have to remember that in 1996 Obama took the extraordinary step of suing to eliminate all his primary rivals by challenging their petition signatures of mostly African-American voters.

In 2004, there was an even more remarkable chain of events in which the sealed divorce records of both his principle primary rival Blair Hull and general election foe, Jack Ryan, were mysteriously leaked, effectively ensuring Obama a Senate seat without serious opposition. These were not artifacts of a typical political career, but extraordinary events in themselves that might well have shed light on present campaign tactics — and yet largely remain unknown to the American people.

Imagine the reaction of CNN or NBC had John McCain’s pastor and spiritual advisor of 20 years been revealed as a white supremacist who damned a multiracial United States, or had he been a close acquaintance until 2005 of an unrepentant terrorist bomber of abortion clinics, or had McCain himself sued to eliminate congressional opponents by challenging the validity of African-American voters who signed petitions, or had both his primary and general election senatorial rivals imploded once their sealed divorce records were mysteriously leaked.



SOCIALISM?
The eleventh-hour McCain allegations of Obama’s advocacy for a share-the-wealth socialism were generally ignored by the media, or if covered, written off as neo-McCarthyism. But there were two legitimate, but again neglected, issues.

The first was the nature of the Obama tax plan. The problem was not merely upping the income tax rates on those who made $250,000 (or was it $200,000, or was it $150,000, or both, or none?), but its aggregate effect in combination with lifting the FICA ceilings on high incomes on top of existing Medicare contributions and often high state income taxes.

In other words, Americans who live in high-tax, expensive states like a New York or California could in theory face collective confiscatory tax rates of 65 percent or so on much of their income. And, depending on the nature of Obama’s proposed tax exemptions, on the other end of the spectrum we might well see almost half the nation’s wage earners pay no federal income tax at all.

Questions arise, but were again not explored: How wise is it to exempt one out of every two income earners from any worry over how the nation gathers its federal income tax revenue? And when credits are added to the plan, are we now essentially not cutting or raising taxes, but simply diverting wealth from those who pay into the system to those who do not?

A practical effect of socialism is often defined as curbing productive incentives by ensuring the poorer need not endanger their exemptions and credits by seeking greater income; and discouraging the wealthy from seeking greater income, given that nearly two-thirds of additional wealth would be lost to taxes. Surely that discussion might have been of interest to the American people.

Second, the real story was not John McCain’s characterization of such plans, but both inadvertent, and serial descriptions of them, past and present, by Barack Obama himself. “Spreading the wealth around” gains currency when collated to past interviews in which Obama talked at length about, and in regret at, judicial impracticalities in accomplishing his own desire to redistribute income. “Tragedy” is frequent in the Obama vocabulary, but largely confined to two contexts: the tragic history of the United States (e.g., deemed analogous to that of Nazi Germany during World War II), and the tragic unwillingness or inability to use judicial means to correct economic inequality in non-democratic fashion.

In this regard, remember Obama’s revealing comment that he was interested only in “fairness” in increasing capital-gains taxes, despite the bothersome fact that past moderate reductions in rates had, in fact, brought in greater revenue to government. Again, fossilized ideology trumps empiricism.

Imagine the reaction of NPR and PBS had John McCain advocated something like abolishing all capital gains taxes, or repealing incomes taxes in favor of a national retail sales tax.

The media has succeeded in shielding Barack Obama from journalistic scrutiny. It thereby irrevocably destroyed its own reputation and forfeited the trust that generations of others had so carefully acquired. And it will never again be trusted to offer candid and nonpartisan coverage of presidential candidates.

Worse still, the suicide of both print and electronic journalism has ensured that, should Barack Obama be elected president, the public will only then learn what they should have known far earlier about their commander-in-chief — but in circumstances and from sources they may well regret.