It seems that if the editorial department of your newspaper decides to endorse McCain, Obama wants to pack up his toys and go home. Shortly after the Washington Times, Dallas Morning News, and New York Post each endorsed John McCain, they were kicked off of Obama’s campaign plane.
Does that seem fair to you? What do you think the reaction would be if John McCain had kicked the New York Times & Washington Post off his plane? Don’t you think the MSM would be all over that, decrying John McCain for being intolerant? That’s precisely what they were doing when Sarah Palin decided to give her first interview to ABC over the other networks, that in so doing she was being intolerant and unprofessional. Did anyone else say the same thing about Joe Biden refusing to speak to the local networks who had asked him tough questions, and then tried to have their ad revenue depleted? Of course not! Cause fair is fair, so long as you’re playing by Obama’s rules.

This is what the Washington Times had to say about it:

The Obama campaign informed the newspaper Thursday evening of its decision, which came two days after The Times editorial page endorsed Senator John McCain over Mr. Obama. The Times editorial page runs completely independent of the news department.

“This feels like the journalistic equivalent of redistributing the wealth, we spent hundreds of thousands of dollars covering Senator Obama’s campaign, traveling on his plane, and taking our turn in the reporter’s pool, only to have our seat given away to someone else in the last days of the campaign,” said Washington Times Executive Editor John Solomon.

“I hope the candidate that promises to unite America isn’t using a litmus test to determine who gets to cover his campaign.”

This just keeps getting more and more ridiculous. It seriously disturbs me that the Obama campaign is attempting to punish entire newspapers for their editorial department’s dissenting opinions. It’s a very dangerous precedent, as this will only lead to further yellow journalism. These papers have been completely denied access, which is astounding to me. This leaves them with two options – report some of the facts in a favorable light or completely lose their ability to report any news whatsoever. Again, is this fair? Is this the kind of “change” we need in our nation’s media? I hardly think so. We need less yellow journalism for goodness sake!
But, of course, this sort of behavior always ticks me off. Throughout this entire election process, all four freaking years of it since our last election ended, I’ve been thinking to myself, What the hell happened to our ability to maturely agree to disagree like adults?! If we can’t do that, if we can’t agree to disagree, we’re completely doomed. All discussion will end, the constructive exchange of ideas will cease, and we’ll be stuck in stagnant pools of thought, unable to move forward in any positive manner. I can’t tell you how truly frustrated I am with attitudes like these. Our own fear of being offended has trumped our desire to learn! If we don’t grow up and realize that in any exchange of ideas there will inevitably be disagreement and offense, we will never learn anything new, we will never be exposed to points of view previously unimagined, we will never grow as a society! Suck it up, people, and realize that we’re never all going to be able to agree about everything! Until we can grasp that concept like mature adults, truly meaningful change will be impossible in this country.

A lot of people have been buzzing lately about Colin Powell endorsing Barack Obama. I know I’m a couple days late on commenting on this, but I’ve been trying to wrap my head around the whole thing. I mean, it just didn’t make any sense. Have you seen the video where he explains why he chose to endorse Obama? Watch it, you have to see it:

Did you notice how most of his reasons for choosing Obama over McCain are based on misunderstandings? For instance, since when did McCain ever suggest that Obama was a Muslim? Or that Obama isn’t an American, or somehow linking McCain to that Congressman from Wisconsin, it’s ridiculous. In fact, McCain has gone out of his way every single time these issues came up to refute such statements! Eesh, Colin, at least get your facts straight.
Mr. Ayers, yes, McCain did bring that up, and in my opinion, it’s not “negative” to bring up the truth. It’s negative when you bring up personal speculative attacks. The truth shouldn’t ever be considered a “negative attack”, that’s just ludicrous.

Oh, General Powell also doesn’t seem to be aware of the specific points of Obama’s tax plan that McCain and Palin are attacking as being socialist in nature. Either that, or he doesn’t know what socialism means. The part of the tax plan being attacked has nothing to do with taxes for infrastructure, but has everything to do with sending a tax credit to Americans who don’t pay taxes at all, funded entirely by those who do pay taxes. That’s what Obama means by his 95% of Americans will receive an “income tax cut”. The problem is, 40% of Americans don’t pay income taxes at all. That 40% is still included in the 95% that Obama mentions, because the “tax cut” is really a “tax credit” – a check from the federal government, paid for by those who do pay taxes. Obama himself has said this is a “redistribution of wealth”, and General Powell, that has nothing to do with infrastructure and everything to do with a socialist notion.

The most important issue, however, is his discussion about the Iraq war. He states clearly and unequivocally that he has no regrets about his involvement in making the case for war. Because of that, I do not understand why Barack Obama, the Democratic party, and his supporters, would even dare to accept Powell’s endorsement. Why? Because it’s contrary to the far left’s belief that the Iraq war is an “illegal war” based on “lies” about WMDs.

Before we continue, it’s important that you set aside the fact for a minute that this war was never, ever about established WMDs. Set aside the fact that in making the case for war, the WMD issue was explicitly described as Saddam’s programs to develop WMDs, not WMDs already made and ready to launch. Set aside the fact that those programs were found in Iraq, along with essential tools and components to develop weapons of mass destruction. Set aside the fact that we now know that the major “lie” the Democrats complain about – Bush mentioning Hussein attempting to obtain uranium from Nigeria – wasn’t actually a lie, but we were told it was by a Democrat who was in charge of an investigation to determine the truth about the uranium issue. Never mind that he proclaimed Bush lied about the uranium, even though he wasn’t finished with that investigation, and a year later admitted that he knowingly misled Americans with his statement just to make Bush look bad and undermine the war. That indeed, his investigation determined that Hussein was attempting to obtain uranium, but that he wasn’t as far along in that process as Hussein himself thought he was, because his underlings were lying to him to save their own necks. On this issue, our intelligence only failed as much as Hussein’s own trust in his underlings failed him.
So set all of that aside, set the facts aside, and think for a moment like a hard-core liberal. Think that the whole case for war was nothing but a big fat lie, that we were going to Iraq for oil, that there were no WMDs, and that Bush knowingly and maliciously lied about it to the American people and to Congress.

If you believe that, why would you want the man who was responsible for distributing those lies to back up your chosen candidate? Colin Powell was the one who made the case for war to the United Nations, he was the one who advised Bush throughout the whole process that led us to war; he was the one who helped make the case not only to the American people, but to Congress as well. He was part and parcel of the whole big lie that Democrats are so angry about. Why should they accept his endorsement?

It just doesn’t make any sense. The Democrats claim that they were “duped” into supporting the war, but you can’t say that about Colin Powell. Not only was he the one who made the case for war, but he was the one directly responsible for duping those Democrats! By accepting his endorsement, how does that not undermine the Democrats’ claims that the whole war was nothing but a lie? How is Powell not just as guilty as Bush? I just honestly don’t get it. How can Democrats have, at the same time, their “they lied, soldiers died” claim, yet accept the Powell endorsement saying, “the Colin Powell endorsement proves Obama has the experience and judgment to lead”? It seems like the two are mutually exclusive. How can they possibly make for pleasant bedfellows if they believe that Colin Powell was the one who duped them into an illegal war?

Or is this yet another case of politically convenient doublethink?

As for me, I’m not surprised by Colin Powell’s endorsement, although I am a bit disappointed in him. He could have at least had the common courtesy to notify John McCain of his endorsement, and I would have hoped that he could have at least gotten his facts straight in explaining why he chose to endorse Barack Obama. It leads one to wonder, was he just uninformed or is he playing a political game? Personally, I find it incredibly hard to believe that Colin Powell is ignorant and uninformed about either of the candidates’ campaigns. That only leaves one very disappointing option; a genuine American hero is participating in a political game to further mischaracterize not only John McCain and his campaign, but the entire race for the White House. It saddens me that a man I once had immense respect for is sinking to the level of attempting to confuse voters by jumbling the facts. I know Colin Powell is smart enough and aware enough to solidly explain his true intentions for supporting Barack Obama. Therefore it’s very disappointing that he’s chosen to instead rely on misleading statements and outright falsehoods.
As always, I’m fine with whoever anyone wants to support, so long as that support is based on research and solid fact. When that support is instead based on mendacious ephemera, I have a hard time understanding or respecting it.

So I thought that the video of the militant teenagers praising Obama was the scariest thing I’d seen from this election. Nope, I just found one that’s even worse – an interview with Percy Sutton, lawyer to Malcom X, talking about how he first found out about Barack Obama. You have to see it for yourself.

I’m not one of those people who believes that Obama’s Muslim. But honestly, I have no clue what to believe anymore. Why? Because here we are, presented with a man – Percy Sutton – telling us that he was introduced to Barack Obama by Dr. Khalid Al-Mansour.
Who’s Dr. Khalid Al-Mansour? Just like the video said, not only is he an adviser to one of the wealthiest men on Earth, Prince Alwaleed of Saudi Arabia, but he’s also a racist, hateful, fear-mongering proponent of Muslims and blacks rising up to do violent physical harm to whites and infidels (i.e. us). Hmm.
Oh, and let’s not forget, he was also a mentor to Huey Newton and Bobby Seale, founders of the Black Panthers.

I can’t help but ask myself, why was Dr. Khalid Al-Mansour even aware of Barack Obama to begin with? Why would he be raising money for this young man, who hadn’t even accomplished anything yet? Why would he be asking his friends for favors to benefit this young man? Why? Does Dr. Khalid Al-Mansour do this for every young man or woman who applies to Harvard? I doubt it. So what was it about Barack Obama that drew Dr. Khalid Al-Mansour to him? Doesn’t that kind of make you wonder?
And what exactly did Dr. Khalid Al-Mansour say to Percy Sutton about Obama that convinced Mr. Sutton to write a letter of reference to Harvard on Obama’s behalf? Does Mr. Sutton write similar letters for every African American who applies to Harvard? Somehow I don’t think so. What was it about Obama that convinced Mr. Sutton to write that letter?
Don’t these questions deserve answers before we give Barack Obama the most powerful office on the planet?

And furthermore, why isn’t this all over the news right now? If this were about McCain, wouldn’t you be hearing about this from the mainstream media, and not from a random video on YouTube?

Another interesting tidbit that we can learn from this video is that this is in direct contradiction with several statements Obama has made during the campaign. He’s said extensively that he paid his Harvard tuition exclusively throught student loans. If that’s true, why was al-Mansour raising money for him? And just as importantly, where did that money come from?

There’s so much more to this story, and thankfully, at least one news outlet decided to write an article about this video. Click here to read it. They have lots of interesting information about Dr. Khalid Al-Mansour, as well as some enlightening statements from him about how he wouldn’t further clarify his associations with Obama because, quote, “I was determined I was never going to be in that situation. Bloggers are saying this is the new Rev. Wright ‘in drag!’ and he is a nationalist, racist, and worse than Rev. Wright. So any statement that I made would only further this activity which is not in the interest of Barack.”
Why would anything you have to say further that? Because we should be concerned about what you’d have to say? Because the truth behind your connections to Barack Obama would be concerning and detrimental to his campaign? If we weren’t right in being concerned about this, if you had something to say to assuage these concerns, wouldn’t you come out and say it? Hmm, thanks for that – keeping things purposefully vague just to keep Obama’s campaign going. That sounds real honorable and it makes me feel oh so much better!

For the record, I do think this is worse than Reverend Wright, because it only further compounds the concern that Obama has an ever-lengthening list of radical ties that stretch back much farther than any of us even realize. And yet we’re expected to give him the most powerful office in the world?