David Online

The other day when Joe Biden said the election of Barack Obama as president would precipitate a world crisis in his first six months of office, I was somewhat alarmed.

The New York Times reports today that Barack Obama has cleared up that statement.

“I think Joe sometimes engages in rhetorical flourishes,” Obama said as he and the MSM once again “sought to sweep aside another dustup” created by the leading gaffe architect of our time, Senator Joe Biden.

I get it now. When Joe Biden predicts an international crisis in the next six months, or when the he says the U.S. and France kicked Hezbollah out of Lebanon, or that President Roosevelt went on television two years before he was elected president to explain the 1929 stock market crash, or when he said the surge in Iraq would fail and that what should be done is to split Iraq into three separate countries…well, those are all just “rhetorical flourishes.”

When you’re a Democrat and say something stupid and ignorant, you’re rhetorically flourishing. If you’re a Republican and say something stupid and ignorant, you’re simply stupid and ignorant…and probably a bigoted racist to boot.

A friend from my home town just sent me a link to a letter to the editor of the Ada Evening News written by Paul D. Young of Pontotoc County. It is one of the most well-written and succinct articles I’ve see on this year’s  presidential campaign. A hat-tip to Mr. Young.

“Dear Editor,

An OpEd piece appearing in a recent edition of the AEN titled “Ignorance in the inbox” made the point that lies are commonplace on the Internet. Winston Churchill once said that a lie can travel halfway around the world before the truth has time to put its pants on and that was before the Internet was invented. Nevertheless there is considerable truth available on the Internet if you take the time to seek it out. Regarding the upcoming election on Nov. 4, I maintain there will be “Ignorance in the voting booth” despite all the information available. Never before in our history have such enormous sums of money been expended to spin lies and half truths to convince the gullible. And never before has such a large segment of our news media swooned over a presidential candidate, namely Barack Hussein Obama, who I’ll refer to hereafter as BHO. While he’s attractive, charismatic and well educated, BHO’s worldview is light years removed from what a majority of Americans hold fast to. He is considered to be the most liberal Senator ever, i.e. a socialist who advocates bigger government and more say in controlling our lives which can only work to the detriment of individual liberty.

Hardly a day passes without another accusation that the race card is being played by the opposition which usually requires torturing the language to such an extent as to make it incomprehensible. Were it not for the fact that BHO and his allies quitely played the race card from day one I am convinced he would not be in contention for president of the United States today. Were it not for the fact that his skin pigmentation and genetic code are half black (forget the other half is white) I believe he would have been dismissed by the DNC long ago. Do you seriously think a caucasian with his negatives would have lasted this long which begs the question – Who do you think is playing the race card in this election?

Now consider if you will the following crowd with whom BHO has mingled on his way up the political ladder: Unrepentent domestic terrorists from the former Weather Underground, William Ayers and Bernadette Dorn; the America hating, race bating and virulent anti-semitic Chicago church pastor, Jeremiah Wright; the corrupt Chicago politico and convicted felon, Tony Rezko; Mr hate America and black American Muslim leader, Louis Farakan; the ACORN organization which now stands accused of massive voter registration fraud; the Royal Saudi family for their alleged funding of BHO’s Harvard Law School education. You can rest assured that had either Senator McCain or Governor Palin engaged in any of these associations neither would still be in this race today. While its considered politically incorrect to broach the subject, we musn’t disregard BHO’s Muslim connections which could jeopardize our national security in the future if he is elected.

Not one Islamic organization worldwide has repudiated or threatened BHO even though he was born a Muslim but converted to Christianity according to his profession of faith. Islamic or Shariah Law regards this an apostasy deserving of death for the apostate to include immediate family members. Such a law was codified recently in Iran which excuses anyone killing an apostate. The middle east terrorist organizations Hamas and Hezbollah have gone on record stating their support for BHO and their hope that he will be elected. Now it turns out that the Obama-Biden campaign has reportedly padded their coffers with contributions from “mystery” donors that don’t exist in addition to many who contributed via the Internet from an unnamed foreign source with no passport or social security number provided for verification as required by law. Contributions by foreigners to candidates for election in the U.S. are illegal but don’t hold your breath waiting for the FEC to take punitive action. It will take them years to sort it all out while the audit trail grows cold. If anything, this election has shown that Campaign Finance Reform co-authored by John McCain is of little if any value.

The publisher of the AEN commented in a recent editorial that he was having difficulty saying the words “President Obama” but was beginning to practice to ease the transition when and if it becomes necessary. While those words may be difficult for some imagine for a moment referring to the Secretary of State or Defense as Obama fundraiser Jodie Evans. Evans is one of the co-founders of the marxist organization, Code Pink, which traveled to Iraq and gave over $600,000 to the families of terrorists who killed Americans. These pinkos have made it their practice to rail against and obstruct Marine Corps recruiting offices around the country and publicly disturb graveside burial services for veterans killed in the war on terrorism. Needless to say this treasonous abuse of the First Amendment should be treated accordingly but again don’t hold your breath waiting for that to happen.

Much more could be said with respect to the paramount social and economic issues facing us in this election. The distractions generated by the recent meltdown on Wall Street and the $700B bailout plan for the financial markets is having the effect of subverting an exposition of the truth pertaining to BHO. Nevertheless, considerable effort has been put forth to ensure the public will not be ”Ignorant in the voting booth” with respect to the McCain-Palin candidacy. An army of investigative reporters and lawyers have combed the records and history of these two candidates, particularly for Palin, while nothing of the sort has been done with respect to BHO. On the contrary, the objective has been to ignore or cover up anything hinting of negativeness toward BHO. SNL treated BHO with kid gloves while Sarah Palin was mocked in a skit designed to denigrate her. Gov Palin was subjected to a 5 day grueling interview with CBS’s Katie Couric that subsequently allowed for creative editing confirming that the Dan Rather legacy of liberal bias at CBS news lives on.

Paranoid reflex answers to pollsters born out of fear of being labeled politically incorrect or bigoted have allegedly caused some people to falsely respond to telephone polls. Bear in mind that polls had Al Gore ahead by 11 points going into election day 2000 with the claim that the election was over before it began. Wannabe President John Kerry has likewise informed us that election 2008 is over with BHO the projected winner. In any case I believe there will be considerable ignorance in the voting booth, regarding Barack Hussein Obama come Tuesday, November 4, 2008. It remains to be seen if that ignorance will translate into his becoming the 44th president of the United States and what that will mean for us and our posterity.”

Paul D. Young

Pontotoc County

Like Diogenes wandering around ancient Greece carrying a lantern in search of an honest man, registered Democrat and newspaper columnist Orson Scott Card is searching for an honest reporter.

In an open letter to his local daily paper and every other daily newspaper in America, Card says journalists must do what it takes to get the truth and then you lay it before the public because the public has a right to know the truth.

“This housing crisis didn’t come out of nowhere.  It was not a vague emanation of the evil Bush administration.

It was a direct result of the political decision, back in the late 1990s, to loosen the rules of lending so that home loans would be more accessible to poor people.  Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were authorized to approve risky loans.

What is a risky loan?  It’s a loan that the recipient is likely not to be able to repay.

You’re just the public relations machine of the Democratic Party, and it’s time you were all fired and real journalists brought in, so that we can actually have a news paper in our city.

The goal of this rule change was to help the poor — which especially would help members of minority groups.  But how does it help these people to give them a loan that they can’t repay?  They get into a house, yes, but when they can’t make the payments, they lose the house — along with their credit rating.

They end up worse off than before.

This was completely foreseeable and in fact many people did foresee it.  One political party, in Congress and in the executive branch, tried repeatedly to tighten up the rules.  The other party blocked every such attempt and tried to loosen them.

Furthermore, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae were making political contributions to the very members of Congress who were allowing them to make irresponsible loans.  (Though why quasi-federal agencies were allowed to do so baffles me.  It’s as if the Pentagon were allowed to contribute to the political campaigns of Congressmen who support increasing their budget.)

Isn’t there a story here?  Doesn’t journalism require that you who produce our daily paper tell the truth about who brought us to a position where the only way to keep confidence in our economy was a $700 billion bailout?  Aren’t you supposed to follow the money and see which politicians were benefiting personally from the deregulation of mortgage lending?

I have no doubt that if these facts had pointed to the Republican Party or to John McCain as the guilty parties, you would be treating it as a vast scandal.  “Housing-gate,” no doubt.  Or “Fannie-gate.”

Instead, it was Senator Christopher Dodd and Congressman Barney Frank, both Democrats, who denied that there were any problems, who refused Bush administration requests to set up a regulatory agency to watch over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and who were still pushing for these agencies to go even further in promoting sub-prime mortgage loans almost up to the minute they failed.

If you do not tell the truth about the Democrats — including Barack Obama — and do so with the same energy you would use if the miscreants were Republicans — then you are not journalists by any standard.

These are facts.  This financial crisis was completely preventable.  The party that blocked any attempt to prevent it was … the Democratic Party.  The party that tried to prevent it was … the Republican Party.

Yet when Nancy Pelosi accused the Bush administration and Republican deregulation of causing the crisis, you in the press did not hold her to account for her lie.  Instead, you criticized Republicans who took offense at this lie and refused to vote for the bailout!

This was a Congress-caused crisis, beginning during the Clinton administration, with Democrats leading the way into the crisis and blocking every effort to get out of it in a timely fashion.

Now let’s follow the money … right to the presidential candidate who is the number-two recipient of campaign contributions from Fannie Mae.

And after Freddie Raines, the CEO of Fannie Mae who made $90 million while running it into the ground, was fired for his incompetence, one presidential candidate’s campaign actually consulted him for advice on housing.

If that presidential candidate had been John McCain, you would have called it a major scandal and we would be getting stories in your paper every day about how incompetent and corrupt he was.

But instead, that candidate was Barack Obama, and so you have buried this story, and when the McCain campaign dared to call Raines an “adviser” to the Obama campaign — because that campaign had sought his advice — you actually let Obama’s people get away with accusing McCain of lying, merely because Raines wasn’t listed as an official adviser to the Obama campaign.

There are precedents.  Even though President Bush and his administration never said that Iraq sponsored or was linked to 9/11, you could not stand the fact that Americans had that misapprehension — so you pounded us with the fact that there was no such link.  (Along the way, you created the false impression that Bush had lied to them and said that there was a connection.)

If you had any principles, then surely right now, when the American people are set to blame President Bush and John McCain for a crisis they tried to prevent, and are actually shifting to approve of Barack Obama because of a crisis he helped cause, you would be laboring at least as hard to correct that false impression.

Your job, as journalists, is to tell the truth.  That’s what you claim you do, when you accept people’s money to buy or subscribe to your paper.

But right now, you are consenting to or actively promoting a big fat lie — that the housing crisis should somehow be blamed on Bush, McCain, and the Republicans.  You have trained the American people to blame everything bad — even bad weather — on Bush, and they are responding as you have taught them to.

If you had any personal honor, each reporter and editor would be insisting on telling the truth — even if it hurts the election chances of your favorite candidate.

Because that’s what honorable people do.  Honest people tell the truth even when they don’t like the probable consequences.  That’s what honesty means .  That’s how trust is earned.

If you want to redeem your honor, you will swallow hard and make a list of all the stories you would print if it were McCain who had been getting money from Fannie Mae, McCain whose campaign had consulted with its discredited former CEO, McCain who had voted against tightening its lending practices.

Then you will print them, even though every one of those true stories will point the finger of blame at the reckless Democratic Party, which put our nation’s prosperity at risk so they could feel good about helping the poor, and lay a fair share of the blame at Obama’s door.

You will also tell the truth about John McCain: that he tried, as a Senator, to do what it took to prevent this crisis.  You will tell the truth about President Bush: that his administration tried more than once to get Congress to regulate lending in a responsible way.

So I ask you now: Do you have any standards at all?  Do you even know what honesty means?

Is getting people to vote for Barack Obama so important that you will throw away everything that journalism is supposed to stand for?”