links for 2008-09-23
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Whatever The New York Times once was, it is today not by any standard a journalistic organization,†Schmidt said. “It is a pro-Obama advocacy organization that every day impugns the McCain campaign, attacks Sen. McCain, attacks Gov. [Sarah] Palin. It excuse Sen. Obama. …
“Everything that is read in The New York Times that attacks this campaign should be evaluated by the American people from that perspective — that it is an organization that has made a decision to cast aside its journalistic integrity and tradition, to advocate for the defeat of one candidate — in this case, John McCain — and to advocate for the election of the other candidate, Barack Obama.â€
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John McCain's White House campaign Monday lashed out at the media and declared the venerable New York Times was "150 percent" behind Democratic hopeful Barack Obama.
McCain senior strategist Steve Schmidt rebuked journalists he said had failed in their duty to submit Obama to intense scrutiny and accused news organizations of hounding McCain's running mate Sarah Palin.
"Whatever the New York Times once was, it is today not by any standard a journalistic organization," said Schmidt on a conference call with reporters.
"It is a pro-Obama advocacy organization that every day attacks the McCain campaign, attacks Senator McCain, attacks Governor Palin, and excuses Senator Obama.
"This is an organization that is completely, totally, 150 percent in the tank for the Democratic candidate, which is their prerogative to be, but let's not be dishonest and call it something other than what it is."
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Rumors abound that there will be a post-primary revolt in the Ventura County Republican Central Committee, with a move afoot to oust five-year party chairwoman Leslie Cornejo as payback for her endorsement of challenger Michael Tenenbaum over 10-term incumbent Elton Gallegly in the 24th Congressional District GOP primary.
Cornejo's tenure has brought an era of stability and professionalism to a party committee that had been previously wrought with ideological strife and power struggles between social conservatives and moderates. Cornejo, from the moderate wing, has managed to move the central committee beyond ideology and allowed it to regain its focus on the nuts-and-bolts of electoral politics: raising money, organizing volunteers and registering voters. Under her direction, the party has hired an executive director and opened multiple offices during campaign seasons.
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And so while McCain's every utterance is factchecked and factchecked again in an attempt to shame him from challenging Obama too aggressively, Obama gets a pass.
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Timm Herdt tries to be impartial but the VC Star is definitely in the Jackson camp.
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Asked about the reports of Mr. Davis’s role, a spokesman for Mr. McCain said that during the time when Mr. Davis ran the Homeownership Alliance, the senator had backed legislation to increase oversight of the mortgage companies’ accounting and executive compensation. The legislation, however, did not seek to change their anomalous structure as private companies with federal support.
The spokesman, Tucker Bounds, also noted that the Homeownership Alliance included nonprofit organizations like Habitat for Humanity and the Urban League. “It’s not controversial to promote homeownership and minority homeownership,†Mr. Bounds said. More than a half-dozen current and former executives, however, said the Homeownership Alliance was set up mainly to defend Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac by promoting their role in the housing market, and the two companies paid almost the entire cost of the group’s operations.
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A huge speculative housing bubble has collapsed. We’re going to have a recession. Unemployment will go up. Credit is going to be tighter. The challenge is to contain the damage to a “normal†recession — and to prevent a devastating series of bank runs, a collapse of the credit markets and a full-bore depression.
Everyone seems to agree on the need for a big and comprehensive plan, and that the markets have to have some confidence that help is on the way.
But is the administration’s proposal the right way to do this? It would enable the Treasury, without Congressionally approved guidelines as to pricing or procedure, to purchase hundreds of billions of dollars of financial assets, and hire private firms to manage and sell them, presumably at their discretion There are no provisions for — or even promises of — disclosure, accountability or transparency. Surely Congress can at least ask some hard questions about such an open-ended commitment.
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The Senate has embraced last year's Defense Science Board conclusion that directed-energy weapons — such as high-, medium- and low-power lasers — hold great potential and should be developed as soon as possible.
In the fiscal 2009 defense authorization bill, which was approved Wednesday, the Senate included additional funds for laser programs and a provision requiring Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates to accelerate work that would make directed-energy weapons operational in the near future.
Low-power lasers known as "dazzlers" are being used in Iraq, mounted on M-4 rifles, "to warn or temporarily incapacitate individuals," according to the Defense Science Board's report. Army, Special Forces and more recently Marine units are using them to warn or deter drivers approaching checkpoints and to "defuse potential escalation of force incidents," according to the report.
Marines were given approval to use a green laser whose beam can temporarily reduce a person's vision
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Rusty at MyPetJawa connects the dots between the Obama campaign, a major PR firm, and a variety of baseless anti-Palin smears being circulated by lefty bloggers. As he notes, "Within an hour of this post going up, YouTube videos implicating Ethan Winner were yanked, sockpuppet accounts deleted, and more importantly, the Wikipedia entry on David Axelrod began to edit out mentions of his well-known astroturfing campaigns."
If he were totally off base, would everything be coming down off the net?
Sure seems like somebody's got something to hide.