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What a difference a candidate makes. TPM hackery on full display.

Funny how when a report cleared Governor Sarah Palin of any wrongdoing on bogus accusations Talking Points Memo and the rest of the nutroots cried foul because one report was done by the Governors office.

Talking Points Memo | Election Eve Info “Dump”

It’s fitting that the McCain-Palin campaign ends with a couple of politically motivated pretend nods to transparency.

First Sarah Palin’s own personnel board released a report earlier this evening clearing her in the Trooper-Gate investigation. Nice timing.

Now Palin has released a letter from her personal physician proclaiming her to be in good health and fit to serve — instead of releasing her medical records, which she’d promised to do days ago.

They see fit to do this on the night before the election?

(As a side note, the McCain camp press release is titled “GOVERNOR SARAH PALIN RELEASES MEDICAL HISTORY SUMMARY.” But it appears all they released was that letter (.pdf). Over at The Page, that morphs into the headline: “PALIN RELEASES MEDICAL RECORDS.” A letter becomes a summary becomes medical records.)

Now today, with their own report, Barack Obama clears himself and his Chief of Staff to be Rahm Emanuel, the same Talking Points Memo and nutroots are shouting from their laptops that all is well on this night before Christmas Eve document dump, prepared by and released by team Obama itself.

Talking Points Memo | Read It Yourself

We have the Obama team’s report on its contacts with Blago posted here.

TPM Election Central | Talking Points Memo | Obama Team Releases Blago Report

The Obama transition team has now released its much-awaited internal report on staff contacts with Rod Blagojevich and his own office, saying that members of the transition team did not behave improperly.

What a joke.

Daily Kos puts on the Media Matters mask. One could make an argument that Obama was “out of the country” but I challange anyone to make an argument that there are “57 states” in the United States.

Daily Kos: Conservative Blogger Needs Geography Lesson

MSNBC anchor Tamron Hall points out to conservative blogger Matt Lewis that Barack Obama would not be on vacation in Hawaii if he needed to be in Chicago to do damage control on the Blago report being released tomorrow.

After conceding that the report was likely to be no big deal, Lewis offers up a tin foil theory explaining Obama’s vacation: “You could make an argument,” Lewis says, “that if he wants it to appear to not be a big deal, that he would be out of the country.”

Now I know it’s fashionable on the right to claim that Obama isn’t American, but someone really needs to tell Lewis that Hawaii is actually part of the United States — it’s not some foreign land. Just ask anyone about Pearl Harbor.

Gee….where was the Daily Kos post calling out Barack Obama…their “chosen one”, when he claimed that America was comprised of 57 states?

nutroots, blogs, obama, daily kos, hawaii, geography, 57 ststes, Matt Lewis

The “Employee Free Choice Act” is one of the biggest scams and lies to be laid on the American worker in a long time, a last ditch effort by corrupt unions to hold  onto and possibly gain power.

The Communist Party USA endorses a cause…enough said.

CPUSA Online - Endorsement of the Employee Free Choice Act

The 28th National Convention of the Communist Party, USA unanimously endorsed the Employee Free Choice Act (H.R. 1696 and S. 842) that would help 57 million U.S. workers gain a union.

I said it before and I will say it again, whenever “progressives”, democrats and modern day liberals use words like “choice” and “free” you better check your pockets and read the fine print.

The Employee Free Choice Act Is Unconstitutional

A top priority of the incoming Democratic Congress and Obama administration is the misnamed Employee Free Choice Act. The EFCA, as is well known, introduces a card-check procedure that allows a union to gain recognition without an election by secret ballot. Thereafter a government arbitration panel can impose, without judicial review, all the terms of an initial two-year collective “agreement” if the parties cannot negotiate an agreement within 130 days.

The Supreme Court (unfortunately, in my view) has held that the peculiar labor-law environment justified these abridgements of ordinary speech rights. But it hardly follows that if the government can curtail speech rights, the EFCA can eliminate them. There is simply no legitimate government interest in promoting unionization that justifies a clandestine organizing campaign which denies all speech rights to the unions’ adversaries.

The mandatory arbitration provisions of the EFCA are also constitutionally suspect. True, the takings clause of the Fifth Amendment today is quite lax when the state just restricts how an owner can use his property. But it imposes a firm duty to compensate someone whose property is occupied pursuant to a government decree. The Supreme Court also has established that any company subject to rate regulation (such as in telecommunications, transportation, insurance, etc.) may raise a judicial challenge to secure a reasonable rate of return on invested capital.

These Fifth Amendment protections apply to labor markets. The NLRA strips employers of basic common law rights, including the right to refuse to deal with the union. It imposes on employers (and unions) a duty to bargain in good faith toward a contract. But this duty does not force agreement. Either side is free to walk away from any deal it does not like. Unions can strike, and firms can lock out workers. Today’s law, accordingly, restricts arbitration to interpreting existing agreements, not to making agreements from whole cloth.

The EFCA takes away the employer’s right to walk. Now the successful union, backed by direct government power — i.e., mandatory arbitration — can force itself on the firm. Yet the proposed law does not let any court block the deal or ensure that the mandated terms offer a reasonable return on its invested capital. (Even modern rent control statutes require that much.)

The government-chosen panel could well impose terms that might cripple the firm competitively.

Employee Free Choice Act - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Former Democratic presidential nominee Senator George McGovern broke with Democratic Party orthodoxy by opposing the EFCA in an August 2008 editorial in the Wall Street Journal:

“ To my friends supporting EFCA I say this: We cannot be a party that strips working Americans of the right to a secret-ballot election. We are the party that has always defended the rights of the working class. To fail to ensure the right to vote free of intimidation and coercion from all sides would be a betrayal of what we have always championed.”

labor, employment, employee free choice act, unions

James Carville is begging for donations to help fund Media Matters, the far left smear machine Hillary Clinton helped to create.

TheHill.com - Carville soliciting help for Media Matters

Democratic strategist James Carville, using Secretary of State nominee Hillary Rodham Clinton’s e-mail list, sent out an e-mail Friday trying to recruit supporters and donations for Media Matters for America, the liberal media watchdog group.

How long before the same Obama ass kissing media and far left nutroots who claim there is NO WAY Obama could have a thing to do with the Blagojevich scandal try and tie Alaska Governor Sarah Palin to racist emails sent by Alaska state employees?

AP NewsBreak: Alaska investigates racist e-mails - Yahoo! News

ANCHORAGE, Alaska – Alaska officials are investigating racist jokes about President-elect Barack Obama that have been circulating on state government e-mail accounts.

The far left religion haters are drawn to any shred of evidence that seems to show religion is BAD for you and bad for society in general even when it’s bogus which 99% of it usually is.

Case in point: John Cole on Slate’s Paul Bloom and the discredited Gregory Paul.

Cole on Phil Zuckerman’s new book using Paul’s bogus “research”

Turns out, societies that have more non-believers murder and rape each other on a much lower level than we here in America:

Ooops…what’s that…, Gregory Paul turns out to be a sham…..! No Way..!

Gregory S. Paul Gets Recycled | Verum Serum

Gregory S. Paul’s study on the correlation between atheism and societal health keeps popping up in new places, despite the fact that it is a pre-fabricated fraud. Someone named Phil Zuckerman has written a chapter for the forthcoming Cambridge Companion to Atheism in which Paul’s study is cited as authoritative.

religion, nutroots, atheism, gregory paul, zuckerman, slate

Paradox - Daily Kos outclasses Firedoglake in their reaction to the news yesterday of Attorney General Michael Mukasey collapsing during a speech he was just starting.

Word is Mukasey suffered from a simple fainting spell.

News from The Associated Press

…Attorney General Michael Mukasey was conscious and alert early Friday - and took a get-well call from President Bush - just hours after he collapsed during a speech to a black-tie dinner.

——-

Mukasey opened his speech on terrorism with a wry remark about expecting the mood at the conservative Federalist Society dinner to be “somber or sober.” He slumped over the podium about 15 minutes later and could be seen swaying and shaking slightly just before he collapsed.

“Oh, no, no!” people in the audience cried out as Mukasey fell. “Oh, my God!”

Props to Adam B from Daily Kos who not only posted of Mukasey’s collapse but called for prayers from the kossacks:

Daily Kos: Attorney General Mukasey Collapses

Attorney General Mukasey Collapses
by Adam B
Thu Nov 20, 2008 at 08:05:39 PM PST

Attorney General Michael Mukasey collapsed around 10 pm EDT this evening. He was the keynote speaker tonight at the Federalist Society’s annual lawyers conference at the Marriott Wardman Park in Washington, D.C.

According to friends in the room, emergency paramedics were there to work on him pretty quickly, but there’s no sense as to how things are going. It may have been a stroke. He has been taken to the hospital.

Justice Alito and former Attorney General Ashcroft were among those in attendance in this room of ~2000, and everyone there was pretty much silent, crying and praying quietly.

Let us keep Mukasey in our prayers as well tonight. More news as we know it.

Not so nice at Firedoglake, seems “egregious” from Firedoglake can’t trust his/her own thoughts and decided to go with a straight clip from the Wall Street Journal news release:

Firedoglake » Mukasey Reported to Collapse

The Wall Street Journal reports Attorney General Mukasey collapsed tonight:

EvilDrPuma November 20th, 2008 at 8:23 pm

My mother told me that if I can’t say anything nice, I should say nothing at all.

AZ Matt November 20th, 2008 at 8:30 pm

He was probably thinking about the video of Sarah Palin with the turkeys in the background getting their heads cut off. Tough after a nice dinner with conservative lawyers.

Enzymer November 20th, 2008 at 8:33 pm

I’m biting my tongue. Biting my tongue.
Biting my tongue. Biting my tongue.
Biting my tongue.

OK I give up I’m grinning, despite my upbringing
It couldn’t happen to a nastier guy.

Twain November 20th, 2008 at 9:24 pm

You don’t obscure and deny if you are decent and professional.
He knew when he took the job what was expected of him and he could have said no. But he didn’t……

TexBetsy November 20th, 2008 at 9:56 pm

Mukasey is an Orthodox Jew? Oy gevalt! Between him an Lieberman, they’re giving us such a bad name.

And of course the bottomfeeders at Firedoglake have to find a way to pull Karl Rove’s name into it…

cmhmd November 20th, 2008 at 8:36 pm

I guess he missed his dose of whatever concoction it is that Rove mixes up to prevent adverse reactions to massive cognitive dissonance…

The ignorance of Ian Welsh at Firedoglake regarding the hijacking of the The Sirius Star, a Saudi oil tanker, is so astoundingly sad but yet expected I still need to fully digest its thick cluelessness before fully tearing it to pieces but I had to post it nonetheless.

Firedoglake » Blowbacks a B*tch: Somali Piracy Edition

The bottom line is this: solving this ideally requires a carrier, or rather a carrier task force. Normally that would be the US’s job (it has half the naval tonnage in the world and plenty of carrier task forces) but US carriers are busy doing other things.

Geopolitically speaking, a large part of what the rest of the world pays the US for is keeping the sealanes clear. Saudi Arabia hasn’t spent decades investing money in the US for idealistic reasons: it has received security in exchange. If the US can’t deal with this, other countries will (the Brits will probably wind up sending a carrier and escort ships to deal with it, in combination with other countries. Harriers are particularly useful for this sort of operation).

Bloomberg.com: India & Pakistan

The Sirius Star, which belongs to Saudi Arabia’s state-owned shipping line, Vela International Marine Ltd, was seized along with its crew of 25 on Nov. 15, about 420 nautical miles (833 kilometers) off Somalia. That sort of boat costs about $148 million new, and the Sirius Star was carrying more than 2 million barrels of crude valued at about $110 million.

terrorism, nutroots, oil, oil tanker, Sirius Star, firedoglake, pirates, hijacking

Do the nutroots ever not pull a Nazi reference out of their rancid bag of America hating sentiments.

Firedoglake responds to Obama administrations stance on investigating American interrogators:

News from The Associated Press

Barack Obama’s incoming administration is unlikely to bring criminal charges against government officials who authorized or engaged in harsh interrogations of suspected terrorists during the George W. Bush presidency.

ATTACKERMAN » I Stand In Front Of You, I Take The Force Of The Blow

NelsonAlgren November 17th, 2008 at 7:42 pm

Maybe it is not prosecutable in an American court of law, but couldn’t they still be prosecuted at The Hague?

RAMA November 17th, 2008 at 8:42 pm

I seem to recall we prosecuted a whole bunch of folks 60 years ago who were just following orders. Hung some of ‘em too I do believe. Good to see we learned something from all those Nuremberg prosecutions: How to keep our own personnel from facing the same music.

Hot Air » Blog Archive » Obama won’t investigate terror interrogators

Strike another hope of the Left from the incoming Barack Obama administration. Associated Press reports that Obama will not pursue criminal investigations into the interrogations of terrorist detainees once in office.

nutroots, terrorism, obama administration, firedoglake, far left

Because the left is losing it’s mind over the fact that the majority of Americans and California don’t want the tradition of marriage trampled on through Proposition 8, the nutroots begin a race baiting campaign to smear the long standing holiday tradition of displaying a lighted cross as something akin to “cross burning”.

Once again the left shows their thick dishonesty and belief that their flock is as dumb as a box of rocks playing as if they have never seen a lighted cross displayed during the Christmas season.

Firedoglake » Keeping the Holidays Classy

Dear American Family Association, would it kill you to think things through just a little bit?

Let Your “Light” Shine For Christ This Christmas Season!

Looking for an effective way to express your Christian faith this Christmas season to honor our Lord Jesus? Now you can…. with the “Original Christmas Cross” yard decoration.

Yes, an image of a burning cross in the front yard — A White Christmas indeed.

Typical nutroots, can’t win on the issue so just attack Christianity as a faith of the pig ignorant and wrapping it up in a package of race baiting. Yup that’s just what’s needed a bunch baby killing, marriage mocking lunatics critiquing and distorting the displaying of the cross during the holidays and attempting to turn it into a symbol of hatred.

Expect to see more of this comparison.