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Politics : Sarah Palin - Is She Hot or Not? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: carranza2 who wrote (221)	9/5/2008 11:48:25 AM
From: longnshort	Respond to of 781

"Why Obama's "Community Organizer" Days Are a Joke by Michelle Malkin Rudy Giuliani had me in stitches during his red-meat keynote address at the GOP convention. I laughed out loud when Giuliani laughed out loud while noting Barack Obama's deep experience as a "community organizer." I laughed again when VP nominee and Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin cracked: "I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a 'community organizer,' except that you have actual responsibilities." Team Obama was not amused. (Neither were the snarky left-wingers on cable TV who are now allergic to sarcasm.) They don't get why we snicker when Obama dons his Community Organizer cape. Apparently, the jibes rendered Obama's advisers sleep less. In a crack-of-dawn e-mail to Obama's followers hours after Giuliani and Palin spoke, campaign manager David Plouffe attempted to gin up faux outrage (and, more importantly, donations) by claiming grave offense on the part of community organizers everywhere. Fumed Plouffe: "Both Rudy Giuliani and Sarah Palin specifically mocked Barack's experience as a community organizer on the South Side of Chicago more than two decades ago, where he worked with people who had lost jobs and been left behind when the local steel plants closed. Let's clarify something for them right now. Community organizing is how ordinary people respond to out-of-touch politicians and their failed policies." Let me clarify something. Nobody is mocking community organizers in church basements and community centers across the country working to improve their neighbors' lives. What deserves ridicule is the notion that Obama's brief stint as a South Side rabble-rouser for tax-subsidized, partisan nonprofits qualifies as executive experience you can believe in. What deserves derision is "community organizing" that relies on a community of homeless people and ex-cons to organize for the purpose of registering dead people to vote, shaking down corporations and using the race card as a bludgeon. Malkin Articulates the questions about Acorn As I've reported previously, Obama's community organizing days involved training grievance-mongers from the far-left ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now). The ACORN mob is infamous for its bully tactics (which they dub "direct actions"); Obama supporters have recounted his role in organizing an ambush on a government planning meeting about a landfill project opposed by Chicago's minority lobbies. With benefactors like Obama in office, ACORN has milked nearly four decades of government subsidies to prop up chapters that promote the welfare state and undermine the free market, as well as some that have been implicated in perpetuating illegal im migration and voter fraud. Since I last detailed ACORN's illicit activities in this column in June (see "The ACORN Obama knows," June 19, 2008), the group continues to garner scrutiny from law enforcement: Last week, Milwaukee's top election official announced plans to seek criminal investigations of 37 ACORN employees accused of offering gifts to sign up voters (including prepaid gas cards and restaurant cards) or falsifying driver's license numbers, Social Security numbers or other information on voter registration cards. Last month, a New Mexico TV station reported on the child rapists, drug offenders and forgery convicts on ACORN's payroll. In July, Pennsylvania investigators asked the public for help in locating a fugitive named Luis R. Torres-Serrano, who is accused "of submitting more than 100 fraudulent voter registration forms he collected on behalf of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now to county election officials." Also in July, a mas sive, nearly $1 million embezzlement scheme by top ACORN officials was exposed. ACORN's political arm endorsed Obama in February and has ramped up efforts to register voters across the country. In the meantime, completely ignored by the mainstream commentariat and clean-election crusaders, the Obama campaign admitted failing to report $800,000 in campaign payments to ACORN. They were disguised as payments to a front group called "Citizen Services, Inc." for "advance work." Jim Terry, an official from the Consumer Rights League, a watchdog group that monitors ACORN, noted: "ACORN has a long and sordid history of employing convoluted Enron-style accounting to illegally use taxpayer funds for their own political gain. Now it looks like ACORN is using the same type of convoluted accounting scheme for Obama's political gain." With a wave of his magic wand, Obama amended his FEC forms to change the "advance work" to "get-out-the-vote" work. Now, don't you dare challenge his commitment to following tax and election laws. And don't you even think of entertaining the possibility that The One exploited a nonprofit supposedly focused on helping low-income people for political gain. He was just "organizing" his "community." Guffaw." ----------- Read more articles like this at HUMAN EVENTS ONLINE! humanevents.com

To: carranza2 who wrote (221)	9/5/2008 12:26:32 PM
From: patron_anejo_por_favor	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 781

Good stuff. Signed her name, too, quite brave. I knew about the sports complex....15 million for a town of 8500? $2000/capita? That's just crazy. Left the town in debt 20 million after inheriting a zero balance? Gee that sounds like another red state governor who ran for an executive office....... The librarian firing is kinda spooky, but look who we're dealing with....

To: carranza2 who wrote (221)	9/5/2008 9:37:22 PM
From: IRWIN JAMES FRANKEL	3 Recommendations Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 781

The Unexamined Life By Linda Chavez The biggest story to emerge from the Republican National Convention was the media's effort to destroy Gov. Sarah Palin. Members of the Fourth Estate behaved more like a Democratic fifth column this week than they did like honest reporters. Palin's stunningly effective speech Wednesday night showed they will not easily take her down -- but their malicious attacks on Gov. Palin's family prove that they will stop at nothing to achieve their aim. Since when is the private life of a 17-year-old fair game in a political campaign? Apparently only when that 17-year-old's mom is a Republican candidate. Make no mistake -- the press outed Bristol Palin's pregnancy. Reporters descended on Alaska following vile and false accusations on Internet blogs that Gov. Palin faked her own pregnancy and that her daughter was actually baby Trig's mother. These lies weren't only spread by left-wing fanatics but by journalists like Andrew Sullivan, whose blog appears on Atlantic.com, the online version of what was once one of the most respected magazines in the country. As the rumors got uglier, the McCain campaign decided they had no choice but to reveal to the world intimate details about Gov. Palin's daughter. And the media stood by their decision to muckrake by arguing for the public's right to know. If you don't think this reflects media bias, contrast this insatiable prying into Bristol Palin's life with the press's lack of curiosity about the behavior of another 17-year-old -- one whose story would seem to have more relevance to this year's presidential election. In his memoir "Dreams from My Father," Barack Obama describes his troubled teenaged years. "Pot had helped, and booze, maybe a little blow when you could afford it. Not smack though," he recalls, though he admits he came close to trying heroin at the urging of a friend who shot up in front of him. He was deterred by the image "of an air bubble, shiny and round like a pearl, rolling quietly through my vein and stopping my heart," he says. "Junkie. Pothead. That's where I'd been headed: the final, fatal role of the young would-be black man." Obama's drug use went on for at least a few years, though he is noticeably vague in describing exactly when it began, how extensive it was, or when it ended. At least one of his friends was arrested for drug possession; another had a mental breakdown after one too many acid trips. But Obama has been reticent to reveal the extent of his illegal activities -- and the media haven't cared enough to pursue the question. Past drug use by presidential candidates was considered a legitimate subject of inquiry for Bill Clinton (who, famously, "didn't inhale") and George W. Bush. News organizations devoted considerable investigative resources in 2000 to track down unsubstantiated rumors about Bush's alleged cocaine use -- and printed the accusation, even when there was no credible evidence that it was true. Yet those same news organizations treat Obama's admitted -- and apparently heavy -- youthful drug use as if it were off-limits. What a candidate did as a young man -- even if it was illegal -- should not necessarily disqualify him from becoming president. But shouldn't we want to know a bit more than he's volunteered to date before we make a final judgment? Did Obama ever sell drugs to anyone? When was the last time he used cocaine? What other illegal drugs has he used? As an adult, has he been present when others were using illicit drugs? Why is it reporters who were willing to pursue Bristol Palin, who isn't on the ballot, somehow think it is unseemly to ask Sen. Obama tough questions about his drug use? Oh, that was a long time ago, they'll argue. But a 1986 arrest for driving while impaired by Gov. Palin's husband -- not the candidate -- is somehow worthy of extensive front-page coverage? The double standard is shocking -- but perhaps not to Sen. Obama. In his memoir, he gives the most telling explanation of how he has gotten away with avoiding discussions of his drug use. It was the same technique he used on his mother when she confronted him in his senior year of high school: "I had given her a reassuring smile and patted her hand and told her not to worry, I wouldn't do anything stupid. It was usually an effective tactic, another of those tricks I had learned: People were satisfied so long as you were courteous and smiled and made no sudden moves." With two months left to Election Day, it will be a test of the media's integrity to see if they devote as much time delving into Sen. Obama's drug use as they did into Bristol Palin's sex life. realclearpolitics.com