Riehl World View

Ebenezer Biden Releases Tax Docs: A Promise Not Kept

What did you expect?

For Today Obama On Verge Of Electoral Vote Disaster

Hey - don't think things can't still change. But given that for now McCain has passed Obama in the firm electoral vote count at RCP - the real tell in this map is out West, while the serious action is where you might expect in the Rustbelt.

In the West, Oregon and Washington are no longer locks for Obama. Sure, he may win them, but that really suggests he's going to have a very, very hard time in Ohio and Pennsylvania. And even Michigan is a toss up for now.

If Obama doesn't quickly reverse the current trend, he's headed for defeat in an Electoral Vote landslide. At this rate, it won't be long before he's looking at having to run the table to eek out a win.

Still, a word to the wise - be careful my friends on the Right. This thing is far from over.

Look for increasing panic within the Democratic Party over the weekend and on into next week if this doesn't change.

Stop With The Race Card Already

TPM has a round up with two new Obama ads and a new McCain ad. They offer this as an introduction:

Check out the latest McCain ad, especially the line, "How disrespectful." Doesn't it just drip with contempt? The sort of old-fashioned contempt that whites often held blacks in (and obviously still do). Take a look.

We get the talking point guys. Anything and everything other than unconditional positive regard someone says about Obama is obviously a racist attack. You should have known that device wouldn't work going in to the campaign.

But if that's all you got - go for it. It's a sure way for the Left to alienate even more of the vast majority of American voters than you already have. And if the media picks it up - as they seem to be doing with a good deal of TPM stuff lately - you're guy (extra credit, as I didn't say "boy"?) is doomed.

Obama has to win or lose this election as a man and a politician. He can't win it any other way, especially if he wants to hold true to his purported post-racial candidacy meme.

Timely News Item Of The Day

While it's drawn little attention across the blogs, recently Politico cited this new and rather ugly Planned Parenthood attack on John McCain. A second link below goes to the substance behind this attack.

Planned Parenthood Action Fund has a tough new ad responding to McCain's attack on Obama's support for some sex-ed for kindergartners. The ad defends Obama, and suggests McCain is indifferent to the plight of sexually abused children.

"Every eight minutes a child is sexually abused. That's why Barack Obama supported legislation to teach children how to protect themselves. Now John McCain is twisting the facts and attacking Senator Obama," says the female narrator, over images that suggest abused children.

The issue at hand isn't whether or not children as young as five might not benefit from some wise counsel as to what is, or isn't appropriate touching, or how to look out for themselves in the event they are confronted by a stranger. Such counsel has been taking place within families for generations. And I'd have no complaint with a PSA supported by Planned Parenthood encouraging parents to have just such a conversation with their child.

But who is in a better position to counsel a child in such a way? Their parent, or parents, or so many school systems already struggling to teach the most basic of academic skills ... and apparently unable to keep the wolves outside the door in at least some cases?

PHOENIX -- A sex offender who posed as a 12-year-old boy to enroll in Arizona schools has pleaded guilty to seven criminal charges.

Authorities said he shaved and wore pancake makeup to appear younger, convincing teachers, students and administrators that he was a boy named Casey.

Noonan: "Media Will Kill Obama" - Looks Like They've Just Started! Ouch!

An observation on Obama by Peggy Noonan at WSJ today:

If he embarrasses the media, they'll kill him.

Don't look now but I think Jake Tapper at ABC just started twisting the knife. Ouch! Read it all. It gets worse.

Barack 'Isotoner' Obama to Take Off his Third or Fourth Pair of Gloves and Get Tough

But just so you know -- this is by my count the 4th time Obama's campaign has officially or unofficially made such a declaration that Obama will "take off the gloves" and fight back.

That's a lot of pairs of gloves.

The Isotoner campaign, one might say.

Another part of today's claim is that the Democrat is going to aggressively claim the "change" mantle.

As part of this -- the staggeringly fresh assertion that Sen. John McCain has voted with President Bush 90% of the time, a factoid Obama has only made seven thousand times before.

Today will also be, per the Obama campaign, the first day of the home stretch. This will be, to my count, at least the second time the Obama campaign has decreed such a new beginning, perhaps even the third.

How Badly Have Obama, The Dems And The Media Screwed Up?

This badly - via ... Gallup:

If these numbers are sustained through Election Day -- a big if -- Republicans could be expected to regain control of the U.S. House of Representatives.

Obviously Palin Knows More Than The AP

The AP can hardly control itself with what I imagine they think is a real zinger on Palin ... oh, she triiiies, does our little Sarah:

Palin tries to defend qualifications in interview

FORT WAINWRIGHT, Alaska - John McCain running mate Sarah Palin sought Thursday to defend her qualifications but struggled with foreign policy, unable to describe President Bush's doctrine of pre-emptive strikes against threatening nations and acknowledging she's never met a foreign head of state.

Let's keep it simple and just go to the wiki. It looks to me as though Palin did precisely the right thing by asking Gibson to be more specific as to what he meant. What would look truly pathetic right about now would be watching the AP tryyyy to defend itself. But as it can't, it won't even bother. How's that Star Ledger non-deal working out for you AP? Ha! Sarah Palin might just be around longer than you at this rate.

The Bush Doctrine is a phrase used to describe various related foreign policy principles of United States president George W. Bush, enunciated in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks. The phrase initially described the policy that the United States had the right to treat countries that harbor or give aid to terrorist groups as terrorists themselves, which was used to justify the invasion of Afghanistan.[1] Later it came to include additional elements, including the controversial policy of preventive war, which held that the United States should depose foreign regimes that represented threat to the security of the United States, even if that threat was not immediate (used to justify the invasion of Iraq), a policy of supporting democracy around the world, especially in the Middle East, as a strategy for combating the spread of terrorism, and a willingness to pursue U.S. military interests in a unilateral way.[2][3][4] Some of these policies were codified in a National Security Council text entitled the National Security Strategy of the United States published on September 20, 2002.[5]

The False Palin Quotes Source

Is here.

If you get emails or see comments about supposed quotes from Sarah Palin about dinosaurs being "Lizards of Satan" and other such nonsense from an MSNBC political forum... they are of course FALSE and made up as a HOAX by an internet blogger.

Here is the proof:
http://unbearablebobness.typepad.com/my_weblog/
(Note: this is a terrible bog & I am only linking it to show you that the author admits the hoax)

Apparently the quotes are now being circulated by email from Obama supporters as "truth."

I have an intelligent (but unsaved) college friend who thought these were true

Also see here - guess he's been on CNN, too.

Sorry buddy, we don't carry no Satan Lizardburger no more!

I swear this should be my last post on my fake Sarah Palin quote post. Here's the latest - I'm getting unique visitor counts in the thousands every day searching me out because of these fake quotes, apparently there is some email that's gone out to "tens of millions" of Obama supporters that list the quotes as real and claim they were released from MSNBC (they weren't, they were pasted into a poli forum there) and now there's even a website by some guys who domain-registered the phrase I used in a fake quote where Sarah describes dinosaurs as "Lizards of Satan."  They nicely credited me as their source.

US At War With Iraqi Gov. In Exile According To WaPo's Kornblut

If you follow the logic of Anne Kornblut's hit on Palin here, America is now at war with some government of Iraq ... in domestic exile, perhaps? Yes, she's apparently that stupid.

So much for all those layers of editors. Geesh! The soldiers are not shipping out to fight the Iraqi government under the control of Saddam or anyone else. They are shipping out to fight the remnants of al Qaeda still in Iraq and any other nefarious individuals terrorizing the people and the current freely-elected government.

But Kornblut knows that. What makes this even worse is that she acknowledges it in the next sentence. These have to go down as two of the most convoluted paragraphs ever to appear on the front page of the Post, ultimately designed to give a wrong impression. I guess she was a source for Howie's The Poor Me Press is Mad nonsense and what we're reading now is a little payback WaPo style. Way to bolster your professional cred Kornblut. You hack.

FORT WAINWRIGHT, Alaska, Sept. 11 -- Gov. Sarah Palin linked the war in Iraq with the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, telling an Iraq-bound brigade of soldiers that included her son that they would "defend the innocent from the enemies who planned and carried out and rejoiced in the death of thousands of Americans."

The idea that the Iraqi government under Saddam Hussein helped al-Qaeda plan the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, a view once promoted by Bush administration officials, has since been rejected even by the president himself. But it is widely agreed that militants allied with al-Qaeda have taken root in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion.

Obama's Exec Experience Continues To Shine

S'okay, if Barack Obama's significant executive experience amounts to his running his own campaign (which isn't even true), then why is he already taking steps to try and fix his mistakes if his judgment is so dang good?

Quick, someone get some AMTRAK passes for these guys, otherwise we might just have to kick Biden under the bus with everyone else!

But they have assigned a couple of veteran minders to travel with him - David Wilhelm, the former Democratic National Committee chairman, and David Wade, former spokesman for Senator John Kerry. Wade said that Biden's occasional stumbles prove to voters that he is human and that they help them relate to the candidate.

h/t Ace