by Alex Gimarc                                Monday, October 6 , 2008

Howdy all, a few Interesting Items for your information. Enjoy -

In this issue:

1. Bailout
2. Polling
3. Debate
4. Editing
5. Ohio
6. Stevens
7. Begich

1. Bailout. Congress passed a $857 billion financial bailout bill late last week. The senate managed to lard up the legislation out of the House with green giveaways, pork, free bicycles, and a wide array of other goodies. As far as I can tell, the general public still thoroughly opposes the legislation. Interestingly enough, the stock market dropped over 400 points when the Senate passed it Monday and over 300 points when the House passed it Friday. As of this writing this morning, it is down over 400 this morning already. It does not appear that Wall Street likes it a lot either. And now that we have managed to underwrite 5 million underperforming home mortgages the rest of the country is coming to congress, hat in hand for their own personal bailout. California, wants $7 billion. The auto makers are demanding tens of billions. The lesson here is that when we st art bailing out businesses, there will be no end to it, for the bailout becomes a simple vehicle to create dependent people and industries – none of which is good for either the economy or the body politic. There will be some serious political payback for this mess. We will see how bad things get before that payback st arts.

2. Polling. As of the end of the week, national polls were showing a 2-4% lead for Obama. This is down from 5-7% at the beginning of the week. Toward weeks’ end, the drive-by media had st arted pushing the notion that it was all over; Obama was going to win in a landslide; and that all the conservatives need not bother to turn out to vote – a clear attempt at voter suppression. The question is why did Obama open up the lead over the last couple of weeks? The obvious response is the financial problems, Fannie and Freddie meltdown, and congress turning the entire mess into yet another porkfest. The general public did not want the bailout; McCain supported it; and Obama sat by and did nothing, choosing yet again to vote ‘present’. There are those that believe the opening of the polls was also driven by a week long drive-by media push to paint all anti-Obama people as racists, which was an unofficial campaign theme two weeks ago. Yet there are other observers out there that think things are not quite as they seem. For new readers of this column, I have a knee-jerk Pollyanna reflex, and try to find the good in everything, believing the light at the end of the tunnel is not another oncoming train. One of my favorite bloggers is AJ Strata of the Strata Sphere. He is a moderate in the MD / northern VA area who does pretty decent analysis of technical subjects. Strata believes that the polls are not reflecting the true mood out in the country, and suggests that minds are made up and a large number of people on the right are refusing to be polled before the election. He uses as evidence that Obama campaign rallies seem to be working hard to turn out moderate sized crowds while Palin is not working hard at all to turn out huge crowds. He also points to September, where the Republicans finished their best fundraising month in history. If it is all going to Hell, and Obama is a shoe-in, the Republicans would not be raising that kind of money. Almost a month ago, Limbaugh cautioned us all against believing the polls. He said that they would show a small McCain lead after the convention. They did. He said that lead would disappear and Obama would move out to a healthy lead until the final week of the campaign, which it is doing. He said that the polls would st art showing real numbers right before the election, as this was the time where the pollsters would need to defend their credibility and do actual polling rather than attempting to use poll numbers falling out of creatively selected samples to push the election one way or the other. It looks like he was correct, as this is precisely what we are seeing today.

3. Debate. Governor Sarah Palin acquitted herself well in the VP debate Thursday night. Joe Biden (D, DE) showed up with what appeared to be a botoxed forehead and was his wonkish best, attempting to bury Palin in details. Biden managed only a couple gaffes, but wandered into nearly 15 out and out lies including (but not limited to) the notion that the US had chased Hezbollah out of Lebanon. He also denied that Obama promised to meet with Ahmadinejad unconditionally after being elected, even though Obama made that promise at a democrat presidential debate last year with Biden sharing the stage with him. Several observers thought that Biden was barely concealing his absolute rage at Palin directly taking him on, laughing at him, winking and smiling at the crowd during the debate. Finally, there was a lot of interest in the debate, as the Nielson numbers showed that nearly 70 million people tuned in. That number is significant as it is more people than voted for either President Bush or John Kerry (D, MA) in 2004 and is half again as many people watched the first McCain – Obama debate.

4. Editing. It appears that Sarah Palin’s interviews with both Katie Couric and Charlie Gibson were heavily edited to make her into an idiot. The ABC interview was available afterward in its entirety via transcript. Only p artial transcripts were available out of the Couric first interview. The obvious hatchet job done by CBS and Couric during the first interview was the reason that McCain and Palin both insisted on going in front of her the second time – which went much better. Palin did learn her lesson from these interviews, taking control of the debate Thursday night by notifying Gwen Iffil that she was not going to be giving answers in the way the moderator wanted, rather doing them in the way she wanted to give them. Expect Palin to spend a lot of time on the talk shows over the course of the next four weeks.

5. Ohio. Massive voter fraud in Ohio is now underway thanks to a creative use of a voter registration law and requirement for voters to be registered 30 days before an election. The creative interpretation was done by the Ohio Secretary of State, Jennifer Bruner (D) and has opened the door for ACORN and similar leftist groups to scour the homeless shelters for new voters who they are c arting from polling place to polling place to vote again and again and again. The only thing the homeless need to do is to show up with a piece of paper that has an address – any address. They register on the spot and cast their absentee ballot. There is no cross analysis done to ensure they haven’t voted before. This little event has been going on daily with tens of thousands of votes cast so far. It will continue until Election Day. Several things come to mind regarding this story. First, democrats don’t have this election in the bag yet, for if they did, they wouldn’t have to be doing this sort of thing. Second, they need to be very, very careful for if they destroy the integrity of the election system via systemic voter fraud and official collusion with that voter fraud, they st art setting the stage for people so st art settling elections with firearms rather than ballots. They may even trigger the second coming of the Vigilance Committees. Finally, expect this voter fraud to be supported with the army of democrat lawyers – especially in states where it is close.

6. Stevens. Quite a festive couple of days at the trial of Ted Stevens (R, AK) last week. Monday, federal prosecutors sent home to Alaska a witness who was on the witness list without notifying either the court or the defense. The defense immediately demanded a mistrial, accusing the prosecution of not telling them everything about the witness, who was a former Veco employee in charge of the renovation project of Stevens’ home in Girdwood which is at the he art of this case. It appears that the prosecution was afraid that upon cross examination, the witness would contradict their charges against Stevens and got the guy out of town before anyone knew. Such is the problem of trying a case in Washington DC for a crime that took place in Anchorage. The second mistrial demand came Thursday after the FBI admitted they had withheld information from the defense team. If a sitting US Senator (Republican) is supposed to be a paragon of virtue, above all questions of ethics, and pure as the driven snow, is it not also important for the feds who are investigating and prosecuting his supposed crimes to be held to the same standards of conduct? Hiding witnesses and information uncovered during the course of an investigation is hardly the height of legal ethics. For the record, the judge scolded the prosecution for their malfeasance but did not order either a dismissal or a mistrial.

7. Begich. The local fishwrapper ran a story midweek about high energy prices chasing people from the Bush into Anchorage. The response from democrat candidate for the US Senate mark Begich (D) was to get together with the superintendent of the Anchorage School District and co-sign a letter to the state of Alaska asking (or whining) for more money. Mayor Begich is a superb politician who has aligned himself with all the usual leftist supporters such as the unions, greens and anti-development NIMBYs. If you dig a bit deeper and ask why the energy prices are up in the Bush you quickly come to the conclusion that there has been a concerted effort by Begich’s new friends in congress, and his supporters among the greens and the unions that have put them into office, to prohibit the US from exploring, developing and refining its own oil. When we can’t use what we have in the ground, prices go up, doubling over the course of the last two years when democrats have held majorities in both houses of congress. Additionally, Mayor Begich orchestrated a leftist takeover of the Anchorage Assembly last April, turning an 8-3 conservative majority into a 6-5 liberal one. That new majority is busily attempting to kill the Knik Arm Bridge, a proposed bridge across the Knik Arm of Cook Inlet that will open over 70 square miles of undeveloped land west of Anchorage for home, infrastructure and business expansion. If you have a bunch of people moving out of the Bush into Anchorage, they will need a place to live, work and play. The land off the end of the proposed bridge would be a perfect place. If they are limited to only the available land within the Anchorage Bowl, things are going to get very tight and very expensive for us all. Interestingly enough, Begich’s opponent for US Senate is incumbent Ted Stevens (R, AK). Stevens has been pushing for increased oil and gas exploration, development and refining for decades. He also came up with the seed money for the Knik Arm Bridge. Stevens had the foresight to work for problem solutions before the problem became apparent. Begich, the democrat beholden to the greens and the unions can only whine for more money from the state. Interesting contrast between two candidates, that. We will hope it does not go unnoticed next month.

More later –

"If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen."
- Samuel Adams, speech at the Philadelphia State House, August 1, 1776.