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<DIV>Before I click on my Juno dial-up to check what has been going on in the
discussion group for the past 24 hours...</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Now that it is NOT 11:00 pm, and I do NOT have to be up at 5:30 am to drive
a ten hour bus route...</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>I am going to do a more thorough factual dissection of Miss Melanie's
hysterical moment...</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>She begins with broad sweeping reference to <FONT color=#ffff00>"the
madness that's been on display since 9/11 itself, when swathes of the UK
population decided that 'America had it coming to it'<BR>because it supported
Israel, and that George W Bush was the most dangerous<BR>man on the
planet." </FONT>Leaving aside that the main reason I do not consider
George W. Bush the most dangerous man on the planet is because he lacks
competence to match his ambition, there are indeed people, on both sides of the
Atlantic, who answer to the above description. Barack Obama is not one of them,
and never has been.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Most of these people are my age or older, not Obama's age or younger. They
have spent much of their lives criticizing the government of the United States
for real and imagined abuses of power. They have not gotten it through their
heads that if Osama bin-Laden ever achieved the world-wide emirate to which he
aspires, they would be first in line to have their heads chopped off. (Al Qaeda
is NOT a plucky little guerilla outfit trying to save indigenous peoples from
capitalist exploitation. And Osama does NOT like liberals at all.) Fortunately,
these people are few, marginal, and without significant influence. Their main
function, aside from contemplating each other's political navels, is to serve as
a foil for articles like this one.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>So Phillips is already indulging in deception which rivals that of Joseph
Goebbels (repeat a lie often enough, and people will believe it), to present
this as an analysis of the significance of Obama's probable impending election.
It is rather as if I exclaimed that men cheating on their wives undermines the
integrity of marriage, and is unfair to their children (both true statements)
then followed up with "So how could you possibly be friends with greenBubble?" I
have NO reason to believe that greenBubble has ever been unfaithful to his wife.
In fact, it is statistically unlikely, because that is indeed very rare among
Orthodox Jews. Very rare. But this unlikely to libelous insinuation has about
the same relationship to my concern for family values, as Obama's election has
to the foolishness which Phillips waves to begin her petty tirade.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Then Miss Melanie goes on to condemn <FONT color=#ffff00>"that media class
which, in<BR>refusing to tell the public what it needs to know about Barack
Obama, may<BR>now finally install in the White House the man who personifies
the<BR>repudiation of the American power and western values..." </FONT>as
demonstrated by <FONT color=#ffff00>"the lack<BR>of equivalent hardball coverage
of the other side -- or worse, actively<BR>serving as attack dogs for the
presidential ticket of Sens. Barack Obama,<BR>D-Ill., and Joe Biden,
D-Del."</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>All the specific instances Phillips refers to have in fact been intensively
covered. I've read about them in TIME magazine, and when I check the NY TIMES
web site, there they are again. Articles about the allegations, articles about
what the pundits say about the allegations, articles about how the allegations
are affecting voters' choices... </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Voters don't really care, and that is what infuriates anyone who
desperately wants voters to NOT elect Obama. He was quite upfront about his grad
school drug use, he could hardly deny it, having mentioned it in two best
selling books. What little there is to say about Obama's ties to Rezko have been
dredged up over and over. Everyone knows all about Jeremiah Wright. It hasn't
had the impact that the Swift Vote Beterans think they had on John Kerry. (I
don't believe they had much impact at all -- Kerry was so lame he would have
lost anyway, but he played right into that kind of innuendo.)</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Then there is <FONT color=#ffff00>"Joe the Plumber. Middle America,
even<BR>when they didn't agree with Joe, looked on in horror as the press took
apart<BR>the private life of an average person who had the temerity to ask a
tough<BR>question of a presidential candidate. So much for the standing up for
the<BR>little man."</FONT> Making Joe larger than life was the miniscule
right-wing bridge club's last hope for an icon that would make a laughing-stock
of Obama, and it flopped. I've read plenty of media coverage. They played up his
question, Obama's answer, everything McCain made out of it. The press took apart
his private life? I don't think so. I haven't read anything about his divorce,
his hypothetical love affairs, what church he belongs to, what his pastor
preaches on Sunday, what sports he enjoys, what he drinks, whether he uses drugs
for recreational purposes... none of that. I have read analysis of the company
he wants to buy, its revenues and expenses, which strongly suggest that he will
get a net tax CUT under Obama's plan, not an increase. It is all about the
difference between gross revenues and net profit. The current owner of the
company (Joe's boss) doesn't take home $268,000, the company takes in that much
revenue, out of which rent or mortgage, truck payments and maintenance,
supplies, parts, tools, utilities, etc. are deducted (and tax deductible on a
Schedule C -- I know because at a much smaller level I also fill out a Schedule
C). I have also read brief mention of the Plumber's Union claiming that Joe is
not licensed by the State of Ohio, which does require plumbers to have a
license.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>As to the "criminal fundraising" -- there is nothing in the way of decent
footnotes or evidence. "The gentleman who started the ball rolling" is not even
named. IF a campaign as smooth and sophisticated as Obama's intended to collect
campaign donations beyond the legal limit from a wealthy donor, can anyone tell
me any reason it would carefully suspend standard security, monitoring and
compliance procedures to accept donations <EM><STRONG>under the cover names
Phillips cites? </STRONG></EM>Wouldn't anyone with half a brain prefer these
illegal donations to be in the names of John Smith, Curtis Jones, Albert
Hutchinson and Jerry Lee Briggs?</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>The whole accusation sounds like a set-up or a con job to me.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Rashid Kalidi, whatever else he may be, is not a candidate for a post in
the Obama cabinet. I have friends from high school who were members of Young
Americans for Freedom. I would hate to run for office and find myself accused in
a liberal-leaning district of sharing every tenet of their beliefs. I'm not sure
why Phillips bothers. If voters have by and large been able to distinguish
between a candidate and his ex-pastor, a candidate and someone who sat on the
same board, a candidate and someone who once held a living room fundraiser for
him, why wouldn't voters be unable to distinguish between what Obama's policies
will be and what someone he has had valued conversations with might advocate in
circles that are certainly not connected to the United States government?</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Incidentally, I could see some distinct parallels between Zionist settlers
on the west bank and Osama bin Laden, just as I see parallels between the loud
minority of Christians who want their particular view of "Christian politics" to
become the dominant power in the United States and Osama bin Laden. I have read
articles reporting from Israel, in which <EM><STRONG>west bank settlers who were
active in religious parties in Israel told the reporter</STRONG></EM> that they
have more in common with Islamic fundamentalists than they do with secular or
reformed Jews! Please, let's leave some room for discussion, without concluding
that every word you listen to with some degree of respect becomes a hallmark of
what you would do if elected to high office!!!</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>ACORN: The main reason that either government authorities or the media have
information about fraud in ACORN's voter-registration efforts is that ACORN
meticulously checks the paperwork before turning it in, caught and reported most
fraud itself, and dealt promptly with any other questionable registrations
brought to its attention after they were turned in. There literally is NO story
there. ACORN, like many voter registration campaigns, hired people, who were
generally down and out and needed the money (because the rest of us are working
at the jobs we already have), and made the common mistake of paying them by the
registrant. The inducement to make up names is obvious. These street workers are
largely NOT committed by principle or inspiration, they just want to make some
money. Most do it honestly, and may even appreciate what they are doing. Some
are not honest, and they are fired as that becomes clear.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#ffff00>"Over the past seven years, the media has created the
Big Lie that America is<BR>the biggest rogue state in the world, with Israel its
proxy." </FONT>Nonsense. Only in Melanie Phillips's overactive imagination. Show
me a collection of articles in any daily print of broadcast media, any widely
subscribed and commercially viable weekly magazine, which makes any such case.
It is simply not true. You have to dredge up obscure monthlies published by tiny
little ideological organs infatuated with a sense of their own importance to
find such warped perspectives.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#ffff00>"Now it is ensuring that a man who will act on that
very premise to crush America and<BR>destroy Israel will be placed in the White
House to do so." </FONT>Yeah, right. Colin Powell and Christopher Buckley are
dupes of a messianic cult??? Keep in mind that a sometime associate of Ayers and
Dohrn in SDS, although NOT a member of Weather Underground, Tom Hayden,
currently a state senator from California, told a reporter "we're trying to
encourage people to vote for Obama, but it doesn't help that he wants to step up
the war in Afghanistan and go after Osama bin Laden." That is the real picture.
</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>The only menace going on is the very realistic fears of Melanie Phillips,
Ann Coulter, and all their cohorts that their own little reign of error is about
to end, because voters indeed are not buying the ludicrous smear campaigns they
have been running for the past twenty years or so. Incidentallly, they have
become well known and widely read precisely because those big bad media outlets
they love to kick have given them so much coverage and lucrative publishing
contracts.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Siarlys</DIV></BODY></HTML>
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