Our political landscape

Frank Pulley

Melanie

A consummate synthesis of the state of Western Civilisation at midnight 28th/29th September 2008. It should be placed in a time capsule and fired into orbit, so that whatever intelligence eventually evolves in the universe after our self-induced extinction can be apprised of exactly what happened and why.

Bravissimo! and thank you, Melanie.

jose garcia

well Melanie this is very nice but, why dont you go into politics?

if MCain is 71 and does it why cant you try?.

or do you think the MSM and stablishment would rip you apart for your conservative views on education/israel etc?,
and even the conservatives are deeple divided in so many basic issues.... so there is no point battling a lost war.....?

Frank Pulley

No way, jose?

Catherine

Don't believe the polls. They are owned by the media, who are owned by Obama.

Verity

Gosh, José ... do you always make friends and allies so easily? "well Melanie this is very nice but, why dont you go into politics? If MCain is 71 and does it why cant you try?."

Errrr ....

I sent a link to Melanie re the the deceased serviceman's bracelet Obama wears - the one where, in the debate, he had to look at it to remember the name of the deceased serviceman he was supposed to be remembering ... and his family have told him to take this bracelet off ... what a carpetbagger!

Melanie, I agree with you about the candidates, but John McCain has to get in so Governor Palin - a sound head and a steady hand - can become President in 2012. Hopefully with the absolutely wonderful Governor of Louisiana as her VP. (His gubernatorial term will be up by then; they can only serve for two terms in the United States.)

Hopefully, two terms of Palin and then two of Jindal.

Obama is a very toxic individual and can do great harm to the West. John McCain won't do anything destructive to America or the West.

We have no such happy prospect in Britain. The left has pulled all our ancient infrastructure down around our ears.

And the British bulldog was bullied into ceding all our rights. We don't even have the right of free speech any more, nor the right to defend our ancient borders paid for with the lives of our ancestors. We couldn't even honour the IOU.

Frank P

Catherine

If you are right, and to a large degree I expect you are, about the media being in thrall of Obama, then sadly it would follow that the polls may well be right because the herd are in the thrall of the media.

Sky News and BBC News are both now a part of Obamania. After switching between the two today while surfing for breaking news, I feel as though I have spent a day with Obama's entourage and their breaking wind.

Btw Coffee housers, I'm using a foreshortened name now to post hereupon - in keeping with the rest of you. We may as well all be in camouflage for when the SHTF, which I fear may be sooner than you think.

Frank P

Btw

I'm now off to bed to get under the duvet with the rest of you, for the duration - move over!

Hayward Maberley

Mr Pulley,
There probably are already intelligent beings out in the universe. Probably more intelligent than the current "crown of creation" on this particular planet, in this solar system, in the Orion Arm.
They are obviously keeping well away from us.

Hayward Maberley

Melanie...re Palin " But the crucial point is that these are religious views which have no political dimension-"
So that speech to a congregation saying that the Iraq Fiasco was "a task from God" is not religion with a political dimension?

Spencer de Vere

Viewed from Australia, Cameron doesn't seem that much of an improvement on Brown. He's wringing wet on all the big issues and PC lesser issues. Do you really think he will do anything about Londonistan ? The leftist indoctrination that passes for school education ? Will he question MMGW / No, he won't. He's just another I'm All Right Jack, Let's Not Rock the Boat.

Fabio P.Barbieri

Jose Garcia: the President of the United States of America must, according to the Constitution, be a native born American. Obama, according to his birth certificate, is. I would be very surprised if Melanie was. Besides, this business of "if you are so clever why don't you do it yourself" is, to use an Americanism, a chickensh*t piece of rhetoric. Mr.Smith does not go to Washington out of nowhere: politicians undergo a long cursus honorum before they are known and respected enough to be viable candidates. Do you not think that there are enough alternate candidates? Every presidential election has dozens of lesser parties; the trouble is, you have to be one of the big two to win.

elixelx

Melanie, there are many hooligans who have gotten away with murder during this election cycle...

Many, I say, but they all belong to a single villainous brotherhood--The Mainstream Media!

When the histories of this dastardly period are written, let us not forget, even less forgive, the wickedness of the (dis)Honourable Members of the Fourth Estate (present company excepted!)

(AP reports that Sarah Palin "RECEIVED FLOWERS" and got an "AWESOME FACIAL" while she was Governor of Alaska!)

Lee Jakeman

Usually it's the undercurrents that are more important than the superficialities. In Britain, for instance, English nationalism is the thing to watch. It's coming - and when it comes it will sweep all before it. The only thing that's uncertain is whether it will be a democratic or more extreme variety. Devolution has created an imbalance and injustice that will only be rectified by an English parliament and a resurgent English national identity. This is happening right now - yet everybody's focussed on Brown, Cameron, Clegg and the rest - all Unionists. These Unionists haven't yet realised that their days are numbered. The England that will emerge will be conservative and - after a difficult adjustment - will eventually side with the US rather than Europe. It is also likely to be more pro-Israel. Although it will come much later, a new American nationalism is also on the cards.

David McAdam

Pessimism reeks here.

Catherine's right about the polls.
They had Kerry in the White House right up to the twilight hours of the 2004 election. 'Useful idiots' such as the 'do as we say not as we do' Dan Rather, Michael Moore, Whoopi Goldberg, Jane Fonda, and Clooney et all believed their fictions had helped pave the way. Likewise the distortions and misrepresentations of the liberal media. So too did the nuance obsessed intellectuals who felt they had done their job by childishly mocking the stunted vocabulary range of Mr Bush. And of course their slavish allies in Europe such as the BBC, voter interfering Guardian, and the other usual liberal suspects.
Each of the above sorely underestimated the mindset of the American electorate. They also 'misunderestimated' the political shrewdness of the man who on the night calmly strolled back into the White House paved by an increased majority of some four million. Just a pity that the seeds of economic failure and arrogance followed close behind.
Be this as it may, optimism still has every reason to reign.

paul

If we look outside our own political landscape we should note Austria's recent election results. The anti immigration and anti European Union vote got approx. 30% of the vote. Remember a few years ago the EU even took out sanctions against Austria for daring to vote right wing instead of left wing.
The same forces are working here. The private polls carried out by our own parties have already told them of this and they are getting worried because hopefully a lot of them will soon be on the dole.Note the increased rhetoric against mass immigration and that disasterous policy of multi culturalism. They are now pretending to listen to the people as the proverbial has started to hit the fan.I was always a floating voter in the past but now I will be considering the others and will vote for one of them and not one of the three main parties.
A lot of my friends are doing the same.We have stopped moaning and will vote for the others ie UKIP or BNP. That is the way to shake up our system.
You have a vote so use it.

HY

The truth is a slippery customer but you've got it nailed here!

raymond joseph douglas

What worries me,is some global strongman,promising to sort out all our economic problems here,and political problems in the Middle East!I have a feeling that our biblically illiterate world might just go for it!

Ernest C

"We may as well all be in camouflage for when the SHTF ..."

That should fool 'em.

THX1138

David The polls "They had Kerry in the White House right up to the twilight hours of the 2004 election"

No they Didn't, Bush had a +5 lead from the end of Sept and never lost it.

The race will tighten at the death but it looks like it's all over for McOver.

Read Nate and weep.

http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2008/09/todays-polls-928.html

Dave

Surely, Mel you are part of the problem? With your carping and very fixed ideas. Squashing and distorting concepts down into your own personal belief framework.
We get the politicians we deserve. But don't think you can avoid being fingered for the role journalists like yourself play in creating them.
Perhaps if you were a better journalist we might get better politicians.

Corin

Fabio. How can I put this gently? Jose did not mean that Melanie should stand for President. D'oh! He meant, and wrote, that she should go into politics. We have a political process in the UK as well. Melanie could go into politics in the UK or even Europe should she so wish. However, as a blogger and political/social commentator she is already part of the process. She may well have more influence where she is rather than submitting herself to the tortuous process of becoming an MP or MEP.

Henry

Take 11 minutes to look at this video
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2008/09/burning_down_the_house.html

jose garcia

To Fabio P.Bartery

actually i was talking about the UK elections, obviously she cant run for the US ones........as she is not american.

her article talked about the conservative party too.....

To Verity
Errrr .... i dont get your point, is it about the age remark?, what do you expect me to say?

Frank Pulley.
no way jose? , why not...?

Norm

'What’s needed are political leaders who have the credibility and intellectual and moral integrity to rise above both tribal political partisanship and vulgar populism and tell the truth about what has happened and about the bitter medicine that will be needed to put it right'.

Many people thought that Anthony Blair was that man. As they say he walked the walk and talked the talk. I think even now people can't come to terms with his/NuLabour's betrayal which probably explains why he still gets an easy ride by the media.

I also agree with Lee Jakeman about English Nationalism. It's out the box now and who knows where it will lead but my major concern is the EU. It is so far entrenched into Government it will be difficult to weed it out but it must be done otherwise there is no point in having elections.

jose garcia

I guess the main reason why she wont go into politics ( UK ) is she probably not in the mood to do the greasy pole wheeling/dealing modern politicians have to do these days to win votes and "consensus" in their own parties, i mean i have seen her on tv sometimes and she doesnt appear to be one of the warmest people i have seen in my life.

doesnt politics suck?

Bill M

"What’s needed are political leaders who have the credibility and intellectual and moral integrity to rise above both tribal political partisanship and vulgar populism and tell the truth about what has happened and about the bitter medicine that will be needed to put it right."

Gee, any suggestions? I think we're all at a loss on this one.

"Frank P", how about "Frankie P", or "P Frankie" you know, like "P Diddy", just so we know it's none other than the real deal?

jose garcia

To Henry

the video is fantastic, it is just unbelievable the stuff Obama is into.

Kiwi

Melanie, no need to be, "I have always been uneasy about John McCain." McCain has already shown his mettle by picking Sarah Palin to be his running mate, and by suspending his campaign to deal with the current financial crisis, - the origins of which, were when the Carter Administration first threatened the banks with punishment if they didn't allow themselves to be robbed by sub-prime borrowers, subsequently made worse by the Clinton administration in 1995. In a nutshell, the result of Jimmy Carter's, endorsed by Bill Clinton, "Community Reinvestment Act." Lending money to those that had no hope of paying it back was a non-starter. The Democrats deserve the wrath of the voters this time.

Track

Palin is now dismissed by MP as a sideshow, but in a recent MP article we were told that she was an "overnight sensation" who was "storming the citadel" and creating "insuperable problems" for Obama.

Do I detect a certain cowardice here from MP, nervously backing away from Palin as she appears to embarrass herself in interviews? No doubt she will be back on side if Palin does well in the VP debate. It must be annoying for Palin to have such gutless, fair-weather supporters.

Verity

Jose Garcia - Do you really think that being a politician is the apex of human achiement? The most desirable of all occupations?

Melanie Phillips is a political analyst non pareil and a cool, lucid writer. Why on earth would she want to change careers and do something she has no experience of doing and probably, in any event, goes against her nature. As you note, she doesn't appear to be the "hail fellow, well met!" type.

Why don't YOU go into politics? Why don't you go into managing a DIY store? Why dont you join the Army?

Why don't you mind your own business?

Frank P

Ernest Cam

"That should fool 'em."

I don't wish to fool "'em."
'They' already know! I'm just saving on cartridge ink, in these days of austerity. :-)
I'm sure you really detected the irony Ern! You always do. don't be so disingenuous.

Let those with memories remember. Let others guess.

Bill M

What's in a name - by their deeds shall ye know them, but as you can see I've already reverted to my previous blog persona; I only 'came out' because I felt that Melanie needed support from real people, albeit minnows like yours truly. Maybe a few others should nail their colours to the mast, from any part of the lower or upper decks. I know the arguments should prevail, but whence they come sometimes helps to validate then, or not.

Frank P

jose

I was merely summarising your final assertion, as the comma and question mark should have indicated. I also wondered whether you were making a statement or asking a question or both and hoped that you would clarify. My little quip was more a question than a statement. Ambiguity gets so complicated at times, doesn't it? What a tangled web ...

Verity

Track, I haven't seen Sarah Palin handle an interview with anything other than aplomb. Even in Katie Couric's cack-handed effort at assassination, Governor Palin triumphed with the last word. Being cool and thinking fast in the face of a charging moose, or staying cool when landing a seaplane, alone, on a vast, remote body of choppy water doubtless stood her in good stead in the face of a rabid Marxist interviewer. In the face of a charging Couric, Palin stayed cool while she got a bead on her and shot her neatly through the forehead in the last frame.

I can't wait for the debate!

THX1138

Frank P - "No way, jose?" I LOL. I know you're a grumpy old SOB righty but you do make me laugh.

THX1138

Verity- Looks like you're going to get your wish and get to see more of your beloved Bible Spice, Andrew Sullivan is reporting that CBS has more tape from that "rabid Marxist interviewer" Couric's interview of Palin

"sources say CBS has two more [Palin] responses on tape that will likely prove embarrassing." Why have they not been released? We have next to no press interaction with this person and yet a news organization is withholding interview footage they actually have? WTF?"

I'm sure that's something we can both look forward to!

Ernest C.

Frank P: "don't be so disingenuous"
Yes, too acerbic, too early. Sorry.

Good idea about saving the cartridges. I think we'll all be needing some in the not too distant future.

Fabio P.Barbieri

THX - if you did not exist, you would have to be invented. How can any sane person imagine that if they had any more embarrassing tapes of Sarah Palin, they would not have released them? This is nothing but hollow threat in response to the wave of fury that their obvious manipulation of the material must have caused.

Dave

Verity: Those that can do. That that can't just blog about it.
I'm not sure what that makes those who comment on blog posts.

Nick Kaplan

Thanks Henry. I’ve been trying to pursued people of this for weeks but the failure (probably deliberate) of most in the MSM to mention it makes people very unwilling to listen. This short video will, I’m sure, be an invaluable resource.

jose garcia

"Jose Garcia - Do you really think that being a politician is the apex of human achiement? The most desirable of all occupations?"

yes and no, my point is what is the point about talking everyday about how broken the economy/goverment/media/israel is etc if there isnt ANYONE in power or on their way to represent our views?????? .

we might as well get pissed watch a movie and forget about it because

THERE ISNT ANYONE OUT THERE CHANGING ANYTHING.

and no verity i am not a very good politician , so becoming prime minister is just a bit OTT for me , sorry.

Verity

TXwhatever - I saw the word Verity as I scrolled down over your post. I didn't stop. Don't waste your time. I don't read any of your comments about anything. Category: Boring.

Dave comes up with this piece of trite folk wisdom: "Verity: Those that can do. That that can't just blog about it."

Oh? Is that why John Redwood blogs? Iain Dale? Richard North? And the king - Mark Steyn? To name but a couple off the top of my head ...

Indeed, it seems to be the non-achievers who don't blog. The achievers are all clicking away.

Ronnie

And you, Verity, are a stratospheric achiever.

It seems that you were wrong about the soldier's bracelet that Obama wears. Whatever the rights and wrongs of it, the soldier's mother did indeed give her permission and agreed that he should have mentioned it under the circumstances of the first presidential debate.

I wonder what else you are wrong about as you peddle your vicious gossip and rumour?

THX1138

Fabio- More postings from the REAL world rather than from inside the fantasy wingnut bubble.

From the nasty commie liberal elite at The Washington Post

"And the worst may be yet to come for Palin; sources say CBS has two more "
responses on tape that will likely prove embarrassing.

http://tinyurl.com/4e33b6

The Only "wave of fury" I detect in the REAL world is that McOver could have been so reckless in his choice of Veep

As Carl Bernstein so eloquently puts it

"No presidential nominee of either party in the last century has seemed so willing to endanger the country's security as McCain in his reckless choice of a running mate"

In the REAL World Obama is +8 in the Gallup Daily Tracker and McOver is F**cked.

Fabio P.Barbieri

THX: and I say that their malevolence towards Palin was so evident in the so-called interview that no sane person (that excludes you) can possibly doubt that if they used everything that could be used against her. If they had anything else, they would long since have published it. As a matter of fact, all the snippets that have emerged thus far do nothing but do her honour, not that you would accept it - if she were to save your life, you would still spit in her face. As for that wretched CArl Bernstein quotation, it is sprouting white whiskers. How long ago has he said it? How many times do we have to be subjected to its repetition? Don't you realize that you have whipped it to death and beyond? It is still stupid, but otherwise so stale that it has lost any power to shock; and the fact that you cling to it as though it were Holy Writ says something about the inflexibility and inability to learn of your mind.

THX1138

Fabio - In the REAL world even team Palin are admitting to more to come from CBS.

"The Palin aide, after first noting how "infuriating" it was for CBS to purportedly leak word about the gaffe, revealed that it came in response to a question about Supreme Court decisions.

After noting Roe vs. Wade, Palin was apparently unable to discuss any major court cases.

There was no verbal fumbling with this particular question as there was with some others, the aide said, but rather silence.

From TNR

"If they had anything else, they would long since have published it"

Maybe CBS are waiting to air it just before Thursday's debate for maximum effect.

Hayward Maberley

Now here is a conspiracy theory to outshine all of those proposed by Verity or should that be Acrimony, Mr Pulley, Mr Blues et al concerning the so called Marxist Obama.
It is from an article in The Australian of 30 September 2008 by Phillip Adams entitled “George The Manchurian Candidate”.
In it Adams alludes to Richard Condon's novel concerning Raymond Shaw, scion of a family prominent in US political life, being brainwashed by the Chinese and Russians. Just in case anyone wants to take this too seriously, I should point out that Adams has had much to do with the development of the Australian FIlm Industry and is also regarded as someone on the left.
But it makes as much sense as any other conspiracy theory, particularly when looking at current outcomes?
Adams writing swings between, in Classic terms,The Georgics of Virgil and the Satires of Juvenal. Those and the odd comic piece such as this. One inacurracy that I will point out to him is that the KGB no longer exists, in name that is. It is now the FSB
An extract below with the www address. Enjoy!

....”Now everyone knows the truth: how George W. Bush has been the KGB's President, operated by mother Barbara, a covert commie for 50 years. Now her sleeper-agent son, working from the Oval Office, has brought down the US and the entire capitalist world. Here's how it went down.
Whereas Raymond Shaw was captured on patrol during the Korean War and brainwashed for months, George W. was captured while on one of his legendary drunken binges. It took only a few hours for KGB agents to brainwash him, as there was so little brain to wash.
Released into his mother's care, George announced he was giving up the booze in favour of faith. When he proclaimed "I'm born again", it was the truth. George was born again, but not into fundamentalist Christianity. He was born again in the fundamentalist faith of Marxism-Leninism.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24420839-5013491,00.html

Hayward Maberley

Kiwi,
This from across the Tasman. You say "In a nutshell, the result of Jimmy Carter's, endorsed by Bill Clinton, "Community Reinvestment Act." Lending money to those that had no hope of paying it back was a non-starter. "
Neither Jimmy or Bill encouraged banks to..
Aggresively sell loans and undercut each other
Take on "CEO's" with ridiculous bail out packages and equally ridiculous short term bonus payments
Lend people more money than the house they were buying was worth
Not follow any of the fundamental principles of lending that they were taught in university (probably because a dodgy CEO told them not to, in this unregulated mess)
Continued to lend money to developers of housing projects when the banks were already noticing end buyers defaulting on mortgages.
This all happened under the current Administration.
But wait there is more.
The SEC decision to allow 5 firms to legally violate existing net capital rules that, in the past 30 years, had limited broker dealers debt-to-net capital ratio to 12-to-1. Instead, the 2004 exemption -given only to these 5 firms -allowed them to lever up 30 and even 40 to 1.
Who were the five that received this special exemption? Goldman, Merrill, Lehman, Bear Stearns and Morgan Stanley. And what is the result? Three of the five broker-dealers have gone to the wall!
The Securities and Exchange Commission can blame itself for the current crisis. That is the allegation being made by a former SEC official, Lee Pickard, who says that rule change in 2004 led to the failure of Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, and Merrill Lynch.
"The SEC allowed five firms — the three that have collapsed plus Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley — to more than double the leverage they were allowed to keep on their balance sheets and remove discounts that had been applied to the assets they had been required to keep to protect them from defaults."
Making matters worse, according to Mr. Pickard, who helped write the original rule in 1975 as director of the SEC's trading and markets division, is a move by the SEC this month to further erode the restraints on surviving broker-dealers by withdrawing requirements that they maintain a certain level of rating from the ratings agencies.
"They constructed a mechanism that simply didn't work," Mr. Pickard said. "The proof is in the pudding — three of the five broker-dealers have blown up."

Krinkle Bearcat

Verity - you're not seriously telling us that spending your entire time commenting on this blog page constitutes high achievement? I appreciate that, in your neck of the woods, day release is an achievement of some sort, but come on...

What else do you do with yourself? There must be something.

Verity

Ronnie - Although I don't usually bother to reply to you because you are untethered to actual events and you always seem to be one step behind the news, I will respond about this identity bracelet.

Had you read the latest, you would know that: Yes, the mother is/was a supporter of Obama and gave him her son's identity bracelet to wear. No, she did not object to it being mentioned during the debate.

End of Mrs. Nice-Guy. She was appalled that he couldn't remember her deceased son's name and had to strain to see it. She has begun to connect the dots between Obama and Marxism/ACORN and now realises that he is a force for destruction. To clear up all confusion about whether "the mother" objected or didn't object, she has made a formal statement that she no longer wishes Obama to wear her deceased son's identity bracelet.

I hope this clears up your blind loyalty to the Marxist one-worlder you support with such bizarre devotion to a cult figure and such a lack of loyalty to the edifice of Western civilisation.

Big Vinny

Verity,

On Sunday, Ryan Jopek’s mother said that she was not at all unhappy with the way Obama mentioned her son’s name in the debate.

The sequence of events is clear. She gave the bracelet to Obama, and then said that he should not mention it in the campaign. But given that McCain had mentioned his bracelet, Obama could hardly not mention the one he was wearing.

http://www.startribune.com/29863889.html?elr=KArksDyycyUtyycyUiD3aPc:_Yyc:aUU

THX1138

Fabio- "it has lost any power to shock" of the Bernstein quote so therefore you must have originally shocking but has become less shocking over time and repetition.

In the REAL world David Frum a George W Bush insider, former speech writer and a pretty big wheel inside the un-wingnut arm of the GOP has just said this in the NY Times of bible spice

"I think [Palin] has pretty thoroughly — and probably irretrievably — proven that she is not up to the job of being president of the United States. If she doesn’t perform well, then people see it. And this is a moment of real high anxiety, a little bit like 9/11, when people look to Washington for comfort and leadership and want to know that people in charge know what they are doing"

Or Is he a "abortionist snob" too

Looks like the REAL world is closing in fast on Palin and reality will bite hard on Thursday night.

Verity

Big Vinny - yes. And now she has said she does not want Obama to wear her deceased son's identity bracelet. Whether she still supports his weird candidacy, we don't know. But she issued a statement saying she didn't want him to wear the bracelet any more. The deceased serviceman's father and the rest of the family are agin' it.

Frankly, she sounds like a nut case. I wonder if she's related to Cindy Sheehan in some way.

field

The very least we expect of our polticians is that they can dole out the BS in seamless fashion (or even unseamless, in the case of John Prescott).

The problem with Palin was she ground to a halt and had not a word to say. That is fatal for a politician.

Combine that with the fact that McCain looks like he's due his appointment with the mortician and you can see why the people are backing Obama rather than the Republican ticket.

MP's right to have a go about Obama's lack of transparency about his past and his various evasions.

His election will be a very dangerous event for the world as every tinpot and not so tinpot dictator decides to try his luck.

But Americans have a right to expect their parties to put up people who aren't clearly on the last lap of life, in the home straight, and who don't grind to a helpless halt in the middle of interviews.

Palin's got one more chance to get it right and wow as she did at the start.

Fabio P.Barbieri

THX - some real world for you. Of course it will not change your mind (to change a mind, one has to have one to begin with), but it might prove to third parties that you are more than ready to buy those bridges we mentioned. http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/31417_Video-_Sarah_Palin_on_Social_Issues
Full of shameful and disgraceful ideas, eh? Like that science should be taught in science class, eh? And with yet more evidence of CBS' manipulation of the tapes? But who cares, so long as we live in "the real world" where Barack Obama is inevitably going to be President. Like John Kerry was going to be, remember?

Roland

Such sweet bliss it is to see Melanie squirm!

'She (Sarah Palin) didn't do very well against Katie Couric' according to Mel. Well that line had me rushing to check out the Couric/Palin interview on youtube. Mel - 'didn't do very well' is understating it more than just a little.

I thought you saw Palin as the saviour of the West a couple of weeks back? Now you've apparantly done a flip-flop and the poor woman from Alaska is nothing but 'a sideshow'. Could you by any chance tell us which it is to be in future?

Verity

Field - How old are you? Do you understand the editing process on television? Do you understand that anyone can be made to look as though they said - or didn't say - or did anything? You understand that the MSM, apart from Fox, is owned by socialists who want to level the world down?

Roland - you seem similarly naive and young. Do you read the American media at all? Do you know of any? Do you read American political blogs (hint, they are 100% better informed and 100% better equipped to make judgements than you) regarding the interview, where every single one of them spotted the edits? All except some naive little Brits like yourselves - although why the British would be surprised at the malignity of a broadcasting outfit is a puzzle.

See, Americans dismissed Katie Kouric because they know the score with CBS. You don't. They know Katie Couric. You don't.

Watching the Brits fall for that chopped about interview with Couric occasions cold chills of embarrassment for my naive countrymen.

The laughs during the VP debate are going to come from the bloviating, self-admiring Joe Biden.

Don't you understand - yet! - that the left, especially lefty American women, hate Palin because she didn't have her Down's Syndrome baby aborted. Palin's true to her principles, even when it is going to mean additional inconvenience and stress in her life. She doesn't believe in abortion for convenience. You cannot admire someone who sticks with her principles regardless of the cost?

How sad and ignorant you both are.

Fabio Barbieri - There is no point in talking to little TNwhatever as he is a wannabee American. He has been over a couple of times and the last time he was incensed beyond all reason because Immigration questioned him for over an hour. The nerve! How dare they protect their own borders!

Roland

Verity! You are a fabulous humourist; your posts satirise to perfection the crankier extreme-right.Keep up the good work!

Verity

Roland, aka (there're two or three possibilities here), as I'm on the extreme right, I would naturally hold extreme right views. One of those views is that the extreme left is dangerous to the health of liberty and the advancement of civilisation, and a stake must be driven through its heart.

field

Verity -

If you think that was an editing issue then you aren't very well named.

Politicians just don't seize up like that - or if they do that shows they are not Class A politicians, who could keep talking as the ship went down.

You have allowed your opinions to get the better of you and you have lost all objectivity in this matter.

If you are going to hold up Palin as a "High Moral Exemplar" perhaps you can explain what she was up to trying to get her brother in law the sack.

Anyway, it's quite one thing for a well off woman to keep a Down's syndrome baby,knowing that others will do the raising (and they will, you know that very well) - quite another if you are single or poor.

Palin is not out yet but one more screw-up like that in the Couric interview and she's toast.

By the way I'm fully acquainted with Couric - we get the US evening news on BBC and Sky.

She appears to me as vapid, face-lifted and bogusly concerned. She doesn't strike me as a raving socialist,though I wouldn't be surprised if she was a Democrat.

Frank Pulley

Well try this on for size, Roland. You'll just leeerve this satire:

Jeff G from Protein Wisdom:

>“ACORN’s Senator”
Nothing we haven’t heard before, really, but at least people are starting to gather it all into one place and attach it to a thesis of sorts. From Investor’s Business Daily:
Barack Obama wasn’t just the second-largest recipient of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac political contributions. He was also the senator from ACORN, the activist leader for risky “affirmative action” loans.
Despite efforts to blame the rescue bill’s failure on the GOP, it should be remembered that 95 Democrats — some 40% of the Democratic Caucus — withheld support. Obama himself also deserves blame — not only for the bill’s failure, but also for the crisis it was designed to solve.
As the New York Times reports, “Aides to Mr. Obama said he had not directly reached out to try to sway any House Democrats who opposed the measure.” Is the reason the fact that the slush fund for ACORN in the original bill, siphoning off 20% of any future profits for such activist groups, was trimmed from the tree?
Obama, who once represented ACORN in a lawsuit against the state of Illinois, was hired by the group to train its community organizers and staff in the methods and tactics of the late Saul Alinsky. ACORN would stage in-your-face protests in bank lobbies, drive-through lanes and even at bank managers’ homes to get them to issue risky loans in the inner city or face charges of racism.
In the early 1990s, reports Stanley Kurtz, senior fellow at the Ethics and Policy Center, Obama was personally recruited by Chicago’s ACORN to run training sessions in “direct action.” That’s the euphemism for the techniques used under the cover of the federal Community Reinvestment Act to intimidate financial institutions into giving what have been called “Ninja” loans — no income, no job, no assets — to people who couldn’t afford them.
CRA was designed to increase minority homeownership. Whenever a bank wanted to grow or expand, ACORN would file complaints that it was not sufficiently sensitive to the needs of minorities in providing home loans. Agitators would then be unleashed.
Chicago’s ACORN used Alinsky’s tactics against institutions such as Bell Federal Savings and Loan and Avondale Federal Savings. In September 1992, the Chicago Tribune described the group’s agenda as “affirmative action lending.”
Obama also helped ACORN get funding. When he served on the board of the Woods Fund for Chicago with Weather Underground terrorist William Ayers, the Woods Fund frequently gave ACORN grants to fund its activist agenda.
[...]
The CRA empowered regulators to punish banks that failed to “meet the credit needs” of “low-income, minority and distressed neighborhoods.” It gave groups such as ACORN a license and a means to intimidate banks, claiming they were “redlining” poor and minority neighborhoods. ACORN employed its tactics in 1991 by taking over the House Banking Committee room for two days to protest efforts to scale back the CRA.
As a former White House staff economist writes in the American Thinker, Obama represented ACORN in a 1994 suit against redlining. ACORN was also a driving force behind a 1995 regulatory revision pushed through by the Clinton administration that greatly expanded the CRA and helped spawn the current financial crisis.
Obama was the attorney representing ACORN in this effort. Last November, he told the group, “I’ve been fighting alongside ACORN on issues you care about my entire career.” Indeed he has. Obama was and is fully aware of what ACORN was doing with the money and expertise he provided. The voters should be aware on Nov. 4 of the roles of both in creating the current crisis.
As Michelle Obama reminds us, Barack Obama is a community organizer first and a politician second. And you don’t just shed decades worth of lessons in political radicalism — be it from communist party poets, the gospel of Black Liberation Theology, Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals, or Ayers’ finessing of Democratic machine politics in the service of radicalism and graft — simply because your advisers tell you to pretend you’ll govern “from the center.”
Which is why the recent Obama charge to campaign volunteers and supporters to get out there and “get in people’s faces” was delivered without a trace of irony or fear: Obama has been mau-mauing the flak catchers for years, and he never feels more comfortable than when he’s allowed to return to form. Only now, he’s taken his pimp operation national, and anyone who isn’t down with the “progressive agenda” — the audacity of Hope! — is fair game for intimidation and other forms of bullying.
Can you smell the change yet, people?
Why yes. YES YOU CAN!
Posted by Jeff G. @ 2:09 pm<

The piece is studded with links, so for those of you who are interested in broadening your perspective on Obama I suggest you take a look at the original post:

http://proteinwisdom.com/?p=13352

The Gramscian guerrillas infesting this thread have been despatched here, because Melanie is providing a new searchlight, beamed from this side of the pond, on the Long March. There is still time to call a halt to it, on the very threshold of the White House. It's also worth reprising the American Thinker blog which reports that the You Tube sassy little piece eliciting the links of this current financial crisis back through Obama to Jimmy Carter and a host of bit players in between, has been pulled because of objections from the music publishers who owned the music that backed the presentation. Go see! More of what Roland would regard as right wing satire. What others here, including myself, might call essential data being suppressed by the MSM.

Piss poor nomme de guerre Roland. That name here is associated with a puppet Rat, that made a fortune for a leftie TV mogul who later became DG of the BBC, then got shit canned into obscurity with his millions made from wheeling and dealing in the Media. One can only hope some of it shrinks in the current crisis. But I doubt it. Very canny these multi-millionairre Champagne Socialists.

Roland

OK, if it makes you happy - Sarah Palin is a towering intellectuial genius sorely traduced by the Gramscaian guerillas (!) we all know infect US television corporations.

Right.

Roland - my uncle, an RAF fighter pilot killed in the war. Piss-poor? Maybe personal abuse is best steered clear of.

Ronnie

Verity, your great weakness is that you think that your version of western civilisation is the only one. I regard that as childish.

Your vision (sic) of how we should live is, on the basis of you posts here, self-absorbed, suffocatingly narrow, occasionally hysterical, deeply ignorant, utterly subjective and, frankly, uncivilised. I certainly have no feelings of loyalty toward your chicken-shit view of the world.

In the case of the US presidential election, the current 8-year Republican administration has destroyed the financial structure of the country, overseen astronomical levels of national debt, ignored the rest of the world except when it wants to go out and kill lots of people with no clear aim in view and effectively ruined the country's ability to influence world events in a positive way.

I do not believe that any of the very brief summary above is rooted in any way in Marxism. If any other government had acquired this level of 'achievement' their electoral destruction would be assured and inevitable - see Gordon Brown.

Don't you think it a little optimistic of you to expect people to vote for more of the same? Why would you want them too unless you are unhinged?

This takes me back to your being self-absorbed...

You have declined to comment on Melanie's apparent retreat on Governer Palin being the saviour of the world. I do not know any of the candidates and I cannot therefore comment on their suitability for office but the US now has many fundamental problems needing urgent and intelligent attention. This election has possibly become the most important in US history.

I think that Senator McCain's choice of Governor Palin as his running mate will be seen, in retrospect, as an inappropriate and shallow campaign tactic. I have nothing against Governor Palin and admire a number of her personal strengths but I'm afraid she is the wrong person in the wrong place at the wrong time.

It happens.

Now, if you want to continue screaming and calling me names, or see yourself as above responding... so what?

Frank Pulley

Roland

Everyone has an uncle who did something great, I was merely pointing out an amusing connotation (to me anyway). I think perhaps your uncle, if he were able to return to observe the mess that our country and the rest of Western Civilisation, that he died trying to protect, are in, would be less than happy that his sacrifice was worth it. So should you be. Two of my elder brothers came through that show intact; on of them is still here to recount it and you should hear what he says about the vandalism to our history and heritage and the advance of Gramsci's ideology.

As for steering clear of ad hominem posts, cast the moat from your own (left) eye, comrade. There's a culture war on: choose sides and stop bleating.

It's worth reading the cover story in the Magazine today too, I see the editorial staff are gradually catching up with Melanie, the Coffee House and the rest of the blogosphere. Apparently it ain't all the fault of the fat cats and bankers, most of it is down to the lean and hungry (excepting Roland Rat an his cronies) leftist w***ers. Hypocrisy has alway underpinned Utopian socialism and always will.

joe

Hey all us McCain supporters on here. Let's put our money where our mouths are and back him against that fraud Obama. You can currently get great odds on him from a variety of betting sites. The polls that have Obama ahead are clearly liberal media propaganda on behalf of the chosen one. It is only a matter of time until the American public wake up to the fact that the current financial crisis is clearly Obama's fault,

Ronnie

The current crash is all the fault of the undeserving poor Islamo-Fasci-Marxists in Chicago who just wanted to own their own homes (as Thatcher advised them to).

Well slap my thigh! It has absolutely nothing to do with the period of deregulation instituted under both Thatcher and Reagan.

S'cuse me, I have to dry my eyes...

Yip, the simple explanations are the best.

Hayward Maberley

Mr Pulley, Joe etal.
You cast around desperately for stones to throw concerning the WS SHTF. Be careful in the glasshouse there.
Who more recently encouraged banks/finance & mortgage providers and those further up the food chain of Predator Capitalism who regarded themselves as Masters of The Universe to...
Aggressively sell loans/undercut each other;
Take on "CEO's" with obscene amounts in bail out packages/short term bonus payments;
Lend people more money than the house they were buying was worth;
Managers neglecting the fundamental principles of lending that they were taught in economics/finance at university through greed/hubris/stupidity;
Provide ever more finance to developers when it was evident that buyers were defaulting on mortgages.
All happened under the current Republican Administration.
Then there is the ultimate in financial/fiscal irresponsibility
The SEC decision to allow a certain five firms to legally violate existing net capital rules that, in the past 30 years, had limited broker dealers debt-to-net capital ratio to 12-to-1. Instead, the 2004 exemption, only given to these five firms ,allowed them to leverage up to 30 and even 40 to 1.
Who were the five that received this special exemption?
Bear Stearns, Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley. And the result?
Three of the five broker dealers have gone to the wall!
The SEC should shoulder the blame itself for the current crisis. An allegation being made by Lee Pickard, a former SEC official,, who says that rule change in 2004 led to the failure of Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch.
"The SEC allowed five firms,the three that have collapsed plus Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley , to more than double the leverage they were allowed to keep on their balance sheets, and remove discounts that had been applied to the assets they had been required to keep to protect them from defaults."
Making matters worse, according to Pickard, who helped write the original rule in 1975 as director of the SEC's trading and markets division, is a move by the SEC this month to further erode the restraints on surviving broker dealers by withdrawing requirements that they maintain a certain level of rating from the ratings agencies.
"They constructed a mechanism that simply didn't work," Pickard said. "The proof is in the pudding — three of the five broker dealers have blown up."
Do not come the "fiscally responsible Republican" line because it is far worse than this.
Dubya the current encumbrance in the White House has managed to accomplish yet another unenviable record. That is to beat "The Gipper" in “growing” the deficit and the National Debt. For until now, Reagan in terms 1&2 followed by Bush with 1 term, comfortably held the record for the largest deficits
In 1981, shortly after taking office, Reagan complained of "runaway deficits" that were then approaching $80 billion, or about 2.5 percent of gross domestic product. Within only two years, however, his policies had succeeded in enlarging the deficit to more than $200 billion, or 6 percent of GDP. Under the “fiscally responsible” Republicans, from when Reagan took office, the National Debt standing at $995 billion from the Carter era, by the end of Bush1’s presidency, had exploded to $4 trillion. Clinton managed hold/wind them both back returning the budget to a surplus of some US$280 billion. Now thanks to the Dubya and Friends the deficit will be $482 billion in the 2009 budget moving from black to red ink in the order of US$750 billion. Now they intend to add another US$700 billion!
Not forget the US$3 trillion and climbing cost of the Iraq Fiasco and the Afghan Imbroglio. The first conflict since The War of Independence to be fought on credit, as mentioned in the Stiglitz and Blimes book.
National debt,is the amount of money owed by the United States to creditors who hold U.S. debt instruments. Debt held by the public is all federal debt held by states, corporations, individuals, and foreign governments, but does not include intra governmental debt obligations or debt held for Social Security.
As of September 2008, the total U.S. federal debt was approximately $9.7 trillion, about roughly $5.3 trillion is non government debt . But when unfunded Medicaid, Social Security, Medicare are added, this figure rises to a total of $59.1 trillion. In 2007, the public debt was 36.9 percent of GDP with a total debt of 65.5 percent of GDP. From 1980-1990 under Reagan/Bush Republican Administrations it climbed as a % of GDP from 26% to 42%. Under Clinton it fell to 35% but is now at c.38%. In 2005 it had gone out by a factor of 9 over the debt in 1980.
Fiscally Responsible Republicans? Nah!
Fiscally Risible Republicans is more apt!

Soreofhing

I just can'y wait for tonight's debate Biden vs. Palin

Biden: What are your feelings about Creationism, Senator Palin.
Palin: Well, gosh, doesn't the bible say that God made Heaven & Earth in 7 days? If it's in the bible, it must be true.
Biden: I see, and the dinosaur remains that have been carbon dated to many millions of years ago..
Palin: Dating, schmating. I think those were put there by God as sort of joke.
Biden: Well let's talk about other things which are perhaps more urgent; what about President Putin. How do you see your relationship with him?
Pali: Err....Presidente Putin....well I think he is making a mess of Venezuela what with his socialist ideas to nationalise...
Biden (interrupting):..Venezuela? Surely you mean Russia?
Palin (blushing): Yes, yes, yes! Of course. How silly of me to make that slip of the tongue. Yes Russia. I hear he has just pardoned the late Tzar.
Biden: But more to the point, he has recently authorised the construction of a Star Wars type rocket protection programme....
Palin (interrupting) Yes I just love that programme, didn't you?
Biden: You love the Russian rocket programme?
Palin: No, Star Wars.
Biden: Well, to finish up, Senator, can you please explain why on earth you have an Israeli flag in your office? Surely the Stars & Stripes would be more appropriate for an American? Aren't your loyalties divided here?
Palin: Oh I wouldn't say that. We must all stick together with the Holy Land, after all, the Rapture is soon coming and, and, and....
Biden: Thank you Senator Palin.
Thank you so much.
Thank you so very very much.