The Greg Knapp Experience

I don’t have a problem with her taking Obama’s blanket. I have a problem with her acting like there is no such thing as stealing now that we have a black president. Huh? Is that really what she meant? That sounds pretty racist to me. It’s a good thing Donna Brazil is black and has a D after her name or the media would be hounding her for that statement. The most offensive part of this for me is when Donna Brazil says we have an American president. She seems to be implying that this is a new thing. Hey, Donna, all 44 presidents have been American, whether you liked them or not.

“Artist Jim Lennox, his wife Hillary Ross, and 13 other artists really, really like Barack Obama. They painted a 100-foot poster in a field near Shickshinny, Pa.”

Note the Obama logo pin on the suit coat instead of an American flag pin. This is the kind of stuff they used to do for Lenin and Stalin. This scares me.

People who look to a politician to save them don’t understand what America is about. Government is NOT supposed to be the answer to your problems. Government is simply a necessary evil that we need to keep as limited as possible. If it is allowed to grow it will take your work, your money, your property and your freedom.

Decades removed from his radical opposition to the Vietnam War, UIC professor William Ayers lies low amid the political furor

By James Janega

Chicago Tribune reporter

October 15, 2008

As his name was tossed back and forth Tuesday in the fury of the presidential campaign, 1960s radical William Ayers spent the day as he often does, working quietly as a professor and trying to ignore the political tempest.

Officials at the University of Illinois at Chicago say Ayers is on a previously scheduled sabbatical, but he was on campus Tuesday, sitting on a lunch-hour doctoral dissertation panel.

"So what if I have something in common with Bin Laden"

The man who was a Weather Underground member and decades later had dealings with Barack Obama is being increasingly cited by John McCain’s supporters, who accuse Obama of “palling around with terrorists.” Obama’s campaign counters that McCain is using “smears” involving Ayers to distract voters from the economic crisis.

When the Tribune caught up with Ayers on Tuesday, he had no interest in joining the unpleasant conversation.

“What could I possibly add?” he asked from the door to his office. “Life happens.”

Earlier in the campaign, Obama’s controversial former pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr., only heightened attention on his past remarks by publicly defending them. In contrast, Ayers has avoided public statements, and indeed declined to comment further to the Tribune.

McCain told a St. Louis radio station Tuesday that he is likely to bring up Ayers at Wednesday night’s debate. The Obama campaign seemed ready for that, unveiling a radio ad declaring: “When Ayers committed crimes in the ’60s, Obama was 8 years old. Obama condemned those despicable acts. Ayers has had no role in Obama’s campaign, and will have no role in his administration.”

Ayers was an anti-war activist in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and joined the Weathermen, which later became the Weather Underground. The group set off bombs at government buildings.

When Obama began his first state Senate bid in the mid-’90s, he visited Ayers’ home for a meeting. Ayers and Obama also worked together on school reform issues. The Republican National Committee issued a statement Tuesday that Obama had “made an independent judgment to befriend an unrepentant terrorist.”

The blistering criticism of Ayers comes as a shock to colleagues in UIC’s education building, where he is seen as “a really nice guy,” said Phillip Kisunzu, a post-doctoral research assistant in the curriculum and instruction department who works across the hall from Ayers. Kisunzu said he recently asked Ayers about the furor.

“I brought it up because I hear his name on the news,” Kisunzu said. “I heard it again today.”

Ayers’ office door is decorated with pictures of Mumia Abu-Jamal, Che Guevara and Malcolm X. It is also home to pictures of children, bills of rights for students and parents, and a rainbow-hued greeting card advising “How to Be Really Alive.” A place of prominence is give to a New Yorker cartoon of a man interviewing for a job. The interviewer says, “I’m trying to find a way to balance your strengths against your felonies.”

Ayers rarely mentions presidential politics, said UIC colleague Bill Schubert, who defended Ayers in a letter to the Chronicle of Higher Education over the weekend and sat with him on the dissertation committee Tuesday. Graduate student Isabel Nunez successfully defended her dissertation.

(more…)

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Even as the U.S. confronts two long wars, neither Sen. John McCain nor Sen. Barack Obama believes the country should take the politically perilous step of reviving the military draft.

But the two presidential candidates disagree on a key foundation of any future draft: Mr. Obama supports a requirement for both men and women to register with the Selective Service, while Mr. McCain doesn’t think women should have to register.

Also, Mr. Obama would consider officially opening combat positions to women. Mr. McCain would not.

(more…)

I love Michael Ramirez of IBD. He nails it again on the company Obama keeps and how he has to keep distancing himself from his old friends.

It’s about time.

“Whatever the question, whatever the issues, there’s always a back story with Senator Obama . . . Our current economic crisis is a good case in point. The crisis started in our housing market in the form of subprime loans that were pushed on people who could not afford them.

“Bad mortgages were being backed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and it was only a matter of time before a contagion of unsustainable debt began to spread,” McCain said during an event in Albuquerque, NM.

“This corruption was encouraged by Democrats in Congress, and abetted by Senator Obama.”

McCain said he raised the alarm and called for tighter borrowing rules on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac two years ago, which could have helped stem the crisis.

By comparison, he said, Obama was “silent” while congressional Democrats fought efforts to rein in the mortgage giants.

“As recently as September of last year, [Obama] said that subprime loans had been, quote, ‘a good idea.’ Well, Senator Obama, that ‘good idea’ has now plunged this country into the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression,” McCain said.

McCain needs to hit this hard at the debate tonight. This is more important to the American people than Obama’s connections to a domestic terrorist or a racist, anti-American preacher. All of those things are important, but the economy dominates everything right now. In addition to those attacks, McCain must give a bold agenda tonight. By bold, I don’t mean spending a lot of money. I mean big changes that can get people excited. Things like totally reforming the tax code, giving a payroll tax cut to the middle class, suspending capital gains taxes for two years to bring new capital into America. Be bold, John.

Biden is caught in another one. This time from the Washington Post.

During last week’s debate with his counterpart on the Republican ticket, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, Biden twice gave himself credit for shifting U.S. policy on Bosnia. The senator from Delaware declared that he “was the catalyst to change the circumstance in Bosnia led by President Clinton.” At another point he noted: “My recommendations on Bosnia — I admit I was the first one to recommend it. They saved tens of thousands of lives.”

But, despite the bravado, Biden was not a key player in the legislation that ultimately forced Bill Clinton to lift an arms embargo imposed by the United Nations on Bosnian Muslims fighting the Serbs, according to congressional officials involved in the issue and a review of Biden’s speeches and voting record.

When you add in all the other lies and misstatements of facts by Biden during the debate, it makes you wonder if Obama is going to make the switch to Hillary soon. If Palin had made these mistakes, the mainstream media would be going nuts!

Usually the CNN truth squad leans so far to the left there isn’t much truth there. I saw CNN say the audio of Obama saying our troops in Afghanistan are “just airaiding villages and killing civilians,” is somehow untrue because Obama said it a year ago and has since praised the truth. Wow. But this time, they’re almost fair and balanced.

Hey, Jesus only WALKED on water.

If you are like me you’re not a big fan of McCain, here is one reason to vote for him: Judges.

“A President Obama or a President McCain will likely be handed an opportunity to affect the makeup of the Supreme Court that is unprecedented in our history,” said Wendy Long, chief counsel for the Judicial Confirmation Network, which was active in generating public support for the confirmations of Roberts and Alito.

Obama, supported by a strongly Democratic Senate, could be presented with three openings during his first term, said Walter Dellinger, a prolific Supreme Court practitioner who was acting solicitor general in the Clinton administration.

He said it likely that Justices John Paul Stevens, 88, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, 75, and David H. Souter, 69, would step down in the next four years if Obama were elected.

McCain says he will appoint more judges like Roberts, Alito, and Scalia. Obama most assuredly would not. It’s not just Supreme Court justices. The next president will appoint hundreds of US federal judges. Can you afford to sit this election out?

Gwen Ifill doesn’t understand what all the fuss is about.

PBS journalist Gwen Ifill, moderator of the upcoming vice presidential debate, dismissed conservative questions about her impartiality because she is writing a book that includes material on Barack Obama.

The host of PBS’”Washington Week” and senior correspondent on “The NewsHour” said she did not tell the Commission on Presidential Debates about the book. The commission had no immediate comment when contacted by The Associated Press. A spokeswoman for John McCain’s campaign did not immediately return phone and e-mail messages.

Ifill questions why people assume that her book will be favorable toward Obama.

“Do you think they made the same assumptions about Lou Cannon (who is white) when he wrote his book about Reagan?” said Ifill, who is black. Asked if there were racial motives at play, she said, “I don’t know what it is. I find it curious.”

Please. Stop the race card nonsense. The title and the description of the book tell the whole story. It’s called “The Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama.”  The description at Amazon reads, Ifill “surveys the American political landscape, shedding new light on the impact of Barack Obama’s stunning presidential campaign and introducing the emerging young African American politicians forging a bold new path to political power.” The book is scheduled to be released on Inauguration Day. The title alone is enough to question her neutrality. Gee, which outcome of the election would make her book sell more copies? She should recuse herself from the debate.