Monthly Archives: September 2008

Tit-for-Tat #2

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INTERESTING. Take a look at former Fannie May CEO (and current Obama advisor) Franklin Raines’ political donation habits.

INTERESTING #2. Take a look at the Top 20 recipients of campaign contributions from Fannie May… [also see source link]. These are TOTAL contributions SINCE 1989.

Look who tops this list: Christopher Dodd, Barack Obama, John Kerry, Jack Reed and Harry Reid, Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi… ALL THE USUAL SUSPECTS. For the record, I’m not happy about alot of Republicans on this list either (and, quite honestly, I don’t know who most of them are… which is odd)… but it’s pretty clear that there is a party advantage when it comes to dirty money.

And that’s not all folks… Dr. Hennessy points out that:

Dodd has been in Congress since Moses was a baby. What did Obama do in 2.5 years to earn nearly as much cash from Frannie and Freddie as Dodd earned in 25?

Can anyone say “follow the money”??? Oh… and I just found out (ya, at 1:30am) that Pelosi is riding out on the white horse calling for “investigations”… how much do you wanna bet she will testify? I am foreseeing this is going to turn into a sham, political trial… and won’t help fix ANYTHING.

The Truth About Russia in Georgia

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I finally got around to reading one of the most most illuminating reports of the Russian-Georgian conflict… and I hope you will take the time to read the piece in its entirety. There should be no doubts about Russia’s complicity in starting this war… and the need to aid the Georgians… a people very much like most of us from the cureltys done to them by (essentially) Russian mercinaries.

While you are at it, why not consider donating to Michael… who would not be risking his life but for your support.

Virtually everyone is wrong. Georgia didn’t start it on August 7, nor on any other date. The South Ossetian militia started it on August 6 when its fighters fired on Georgian peacekeepers and Georgian villages with weapons banned by the agreement hammered out between the two sides in 1994. At the same time, the Russian military sent its invasion force bearing down on Georgia from the north side of the Caucasus Mountains on the Russian side of the border through the Roki tunnel and into Georgia. This happened before Saakashvili sent additional troops to South Ossetia and allegedly started the war…

“The next provocation: On April 16 Putin signs a presidential decree recognizing the documents of Abkhazians and South Ossetians in Russia and vice versa. This effectively integrates these two territories into Russia’s legal space. The Georgians were furious. So you have all these provocations mounting and mounting and mounting. Meanwhile, as of July, various air corps start moving from the rest of Russia to get closer to the Caucasus. These are obscure details, but they are available…

On the 6th of August the shelling intensifies from Ossetian positions. And for the first time since the war finished in 1992, they are using 120mm guns.”

“Can I stop you for a second?” I said. I was still under the impression that the war began on August 7 and that Georgian President Saakashvili started it when he sent troops into South Ossetia’s capital Tskhinvali. What was all this about the Ossetian violence on August 6 and before?

He raised his hand as if to say stop.

“That was the formal start of the war,” he said….

“On the evening of the 7th, the Ossetians launch an all-out barrage focused on Georgian villages, not on Georgian positions. Remember, these Georgian villages inside South Ossetia – the Georgians have mostly evacuated those villages, and three of them are completely pulverized. That evening, the 7th, the president gets information that a large Russian column is on the move. Later that evening, somebody sees those vehicles emerging from the Roki tunnel [into Georgia from Russia]. Then a little bit later, somebody else sees them. That’s three confirmations. It was time to act….

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MSNBC Drops Olbermann, Matthews as News Anchors

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Olberman

Well, it’s ABOUT TIME. Let’s all hold hands and move beyond “Unbiased Journalism”.

MSNBC is removing Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews as the anchors of live political events, bowing to growing criticism that they are too opinionated to be seen as neutral in the heat of the presidential campaign…

The move, confirmed by spokesmen for both networks, follows increasingly loud complaints about Olbermann’s anchor role at the Democratic and Republican conventions. Olbermann, who regularly assails President Bush and GOP nominee John McCain on his “Countdown” program, was effusive in praising the acceptance speech of Democratic nominee Barack Obama….

Matthews, who has criticized politicians in both parties, drew less criticism for his convention role but became a divisive figure during the primaries when he described how he was inspired by Obama’s speeches and made disparaging remarks about Hillary Clinton, for which he later apologized….

But NBC News journalists, who often appear on the cable channel, did see a problem, arguing behind the scenes that MSNBC’s move to the left — which includes a new show, debuting tonight, for Air America radio host Rachel Maddow — was tarnishing their reputation for fairness. Tom Brokaw, the interim host of “Meet the Press,” said that at times Olbermann and Matthews went too far.

You know, I’m not as opposed to Matthews and Olberman giving their opinions on their shows… (I rather enjoy Matthews–Olberman, not so much) but they have GOT to stop PRETENDING to be Objective. It needs to be presented as a LIBERAL show–that may or may not make attempts at fairness.

what DID happen in Iraq?

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Victor Davis Hanson pretty much sums things up:

Rather than blaming Donald Rumsfeld or George Tenet, the principled position of the “my three-week perfect war was loused-up by your five-year occupation” critic would have been an honest admission that they underestimated the potential of Iraqi insurgency, and that even its defeat was simply not worth the commensurate American costs….

Instead, what we have now are dozens of loud, pick-and-choose opportunists who were for the war, then soured on it, then came back some during the purple-finger elections, then got angrier during the February 2006 insurgency, then damned the surge, then grew quiet during the Petraeus success — always, in retrospect, citing a particular past phase of their ongoing metamorphoses when it now seems to best amen the current status in Iraq.

Sadly, most have no ethical bearings, and wrongly judged our presence in Iraq in terms of wishing to identify with a winner and to distance themselves from a perceived loser. The irony, of course, is that in the months to come many abroad will begin to respect our support for Iraqi democracy only for the self-interested reasons that it proved successful rather than principled.