Patterico's Pontifications

9/19/2009

Obama and the Crybabies

Filed under: Media Bias,Obama — DRJ @ 11:09 pm



[Guest post by DRJ]

Wallace: “These guys, everything is personal. I gotta tell you, they are the biggest bunch of crybabies I have dealt with in my 30 years in Washington.”

— DRJ

Father and Son Arrested in Denver (Updated)

Filed under: Terrorism — DRJ @ 10:49 pm



[Guest post by DRJ]

The Denver Post reports Afghan-born Najibullah Zazi and his father, Mohammed Zazi, were arrested tonight and charged with making false statements to federal authorities. Zazi and his father had been questioned by authorities in recent days.

The arrests came amid conflicting media reports about Zazi’s links to al Qaeda, his participation in insurgency training in Pakistan, and his involvement in suspected New York terrorist plots.

— DRJ

UPDATE: The AP reports a 3rd man has been arrested in New York.

College Football, Week 3

Filed under: Sports — DRJ @ 7:01 pm



[Guest post by DRJ]

I’m too busy watching college football to blog about it so this will have to be an open thread.

Here’s the Yahoo College Scoreboard. As we say in West Texas: Read ’em and Weep, especially all you USC and Tennessee fans. As for everyone else, no gloating. Odds are you’ll get your come-uppance before the season is out.

— DRJ

Human Rights Groups Pressure Obama Administration

Filed under: Obama,War — DRJ @ 5:27 pm



[Guest post by DRJ]

More and more, the human rights honeymoon with the Obama Administration appears to be over:

“Three human rights groups today lashed out at the Obama administration for refusing to confirm or deny the existence of documents related to the treatment of detainees, saying the Obama administration’s “persistent secrecy becomes more inexcusable by the day.”

The three groups are Amnesty International, the Center for Constitutional Rights, and the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice at NYU School of Law. They want the Obama Administration to respond to FOIA requests for documents regarding two Yemeni detainees as well as interrogation techniques used on Abu Zubaydah and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

This is one area where I support the Administration. I hope it doesn’t lose its resolve if the political pressure intensifies, as I suspect it will.

— DRJ

James O’Keefe Interview

Filed under: Politics — DRJ @ 2:26 pm



[Guest post by DRJ]

The snarky New York Times has interviewed “political gadfly” James E. O’Keefe III, one of the principal players in the ACORN videos. According to the Times, O’Keefe met Hannah Giles through Facebook and it was Giles’ idea to target ACORN. O’Keefe was doubtful it would work since “I’m a skinny nerd, the least convincing pimp in the world.”

O’Keefe has a history of political lampoons including this infamous expose in which Planned Parenthood accepted donations to abort black babies:

— DRJ

Breitbart on the Radical Liberal Agenda

Filed under: Politics — DRJ @ 2:21 pm



[Guest post by DRJ]

Here is the Michael Savage interview of Andrew Breitbart that Patterico posted on, the one in which Breitbart promises another revelation that does not involve ACORN. In it, Breitbart explains why this story is important. I’ve transcribed his explanation below the video:

BREITBART: “You know what’s fantastic about this story in the most perverse way is that we now start to understand. I’m so sick of being called a racist. I’m not a racist. The majority of Americans aren’t racists. We are now seeing that the Barney Franks of the world have been preying on these people for forever. People are starting to see that they rigged the system in order to figure out how can you get people who can’t afford homes to get homes. Obviously they were going to go into foreclosure.

That’s exactly what happened, and you see at this [ACORN] office how these people facilitated those loans. “Don’t worry. Don’t report this. You can do this. You can do that. You can break the law.” It doesn’t matter because at the end of the day the people at ACORN at the highest levels, Wade Rathke and Saul Alinksy, were radicals that figured out the best way to revolutionize the system was to go right through the front door and start the revolution by destroying the country from within. They’ve been exposed, Michael.”

— DRJ

Breitbart Promises New Bombshell from “Left Field”

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 1:55 pm



Andrew Breitbart, a driving force behind the recent revelations of ACORN’s utter lawlessness, is promising a “blockbuster” from “left field” next week. Speculation is rampant: what will it be?

Keep reading and it may just become obvious.

Let’s start with Ace, who notes:

Breitbart did seem to have it mind to nail the media from the outset; this September 7th column tipped his hand, but no one I know of picked up on his hints.

He warned the media. They ignored the warning.

Ace is right: in Breitbart’s column, he said:

When the next big scandal hits – and it will, and it most certainly won’t come from traditional journalism – all eyes will be on “Pinch” Sulzberger to see if he does his job.

With hindsight, it’s obvious that Breitbart was foreshadowing the release of the ACORN tapes. He even specifically mentioned ACORN in his column, as one of two stories that showed how the media was covering for Obama.

So, let’s see. He identified ACORN as one of the two big stories, and then he dropped a bomb on ACORN. Now he’s hinting that there’s another bomb coming.

See what I’m getting at here?

If you’re trying to figure out what the next big shoe to drop might be, I suggest that you consider re-reading his column to see what he identified as the second story that demonstrates the media’s complicity with the Democrat party. Namely, the NEA:

Another story not making the evening news is that of artist Patrick Courrielche, who has shown that the National Endowment of the Arts is seeking to use government funds to promote Obama administration initiatives. On Sunday’s “This Week,” George Will pierced the mainstream media veil.

“Recently there was a conference call arranged by the National Endowment for the Arts, with a representative of the White House, for potential grantees or actual grantees of the federal government, getting subsidies – the theme of it was how the arts community could advance the president’s agenda. Now I don’t know how many laws that breaks, but I am sure there are some.”

What are you waiting for, Katie Couric?

If I were a betting man, I’d be betting big that the upcoming bombshell will relate to the NEA. You read it here first.

But I think Breitbart’s overarching target is even bigger than that: the national media as a whole. Just as the media was caught flatfooted by the ACORN scandal, so too will they be rocked back on their heels by the next bombshell.

Kudos to Andrew Breitbart. He’s making it fun to be a conservative again.

Obama Administration Asks Massachusetts Court to Deny Federal Same-Sex Benefits

Filed under: Civil Liberties,Obama,Politics — DRJ @ 12:27 pm



[Guest post by DRJ]

Massachusetts was the first state to legalize same-sex marriages but same-sex couples married in that state cannot access federal protections available to heterosexual married couples. That prompted seven same-sex couples and three survivors of same-sex spouses to sue in Massachusetts federal court, claiming it’s “unconstitutional to bar them from enrolling in federal healthcare programs, receiving certain retirement and survivor benefits and filing joint income tax returns.” In July, Massachusetts also sued the federal government on behalf of all same-sex couples married in its state.

On Friday, the Obama Administration filed a brief saying the initial lawsuit should be dismissed because same-sex couples are barred from receiving federal benefits unless Congress specifically provides otherwise:

“In making this filing, the department is bound by the only precedent that exists, which is that no court has found such a right to federal benefits based upon marital status to be constitutionally required,” said Justice Department spokeswoman Tracy Schmaler.

The filing in the U.S. Court for the District of Massachusetts “points out the administration’s position that Congress should extend federal benefits to spouses in same-sex marriages,” she said.

This may not surprise gay rights advocates but it must be disappointing to them.

— DRJ

ACORN and other Sunday Talk Show Topics (Updated)

Filed under: Obama — DRJ @ 11:48 am



[Guest post by DRJ]

President Obama’s ambitious 5-program sweep of the Sunday morning shows is just hours away, and this AP article will make it more difficult for the media to ignore ACORN. Here’s an excerpt:

“The organization praised for its Hurricane Katrina relief efforts and treated by federal, state and local governments as a valuable public resource has had nearly $1 million embezzled by its founder’s brother. The openly Democratic-leaning group has seen its employees accused of voter registration fraud, and taking it down has become a cause celebre for Republican lawmakers, activists and pundits.

As if volunteers allegedly signing up cartoon character Mickey Mouse to vote didn’t give ACORN enough bad publicity, the public is enthralled with new videos appearing on the Internet and TV news shows showing ACORN employees in Brooklyn, N.Y., advising a couple posing as a prostitute and pimp to lie to get housing aid, and employees in other cities counseling the pair on tax, banking and immigration issues.

Many Democrats used to advertise their ACORN connections. Now, however, the Democratic-led Senate has voted to cut off its grants from the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and the Democrat-dominated House doesn’t want it to get any federal money, period.”

EDIT: This LA Times’ article also details ACORN’s woes.

I suspect there will also be questions about other topics: the letter from 7 former CIA directors urging Obama to stop Eric Holder’s investigation of CIA interrogators, Obama’s discontinuation of the missile defense program (including the Czech and Polish response), and … oh, yeah … health care.

It could be a challenging week for Obama’s health care plan.

— DRJ

UPDATE: Here’s an ACORN-Obama post by Michelle Malkin that the Sunday shows won’t mention.


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