Last night in the Missouri Gubernatorial primary, the Republican candidates won 394,715 votes among them. 

The Democratic candidates won 357,564 between them.

Stayed tuned for media reports on how Republican turnout exceeded Democratic turnout, so that means Missouri has to be in the bag for the GOP in November. 

Of course they won’t.  And their rationale will be that it isn’t a fair comparison because the Democratic side wasn’t contested.  That didn’t stop them, of course, from making similar comparisons earlier this year.

By Mike DeVine, Legal Editor for The Minority Report and The HinzSight Report
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No less than three times in the past several weeks, Barack Obama has asserted that Republicans “will” make racist appeals to scare voters from voting for him.

No one in the MSM had a problem with this slur against millions of American voters. In fact, no one said Obama had, “played the race card,” until he tied McCain’s campaign to the allegation.

Incredibly, George Stephanopoulos, in this past Sunday’s “Who Played the Race Card” segment on his ABC This Week program, explicitly and casually deemed such attacks against generic Republicans as obviously acceptable, as he criticized such attacks against John McCain in the context of the “Obama as Paris Hilton-like celebrity in Berlin” ad.

The conservative George across the table failed to muster the Will to refute the most venal Known Fact template of the Leftist MSM and Democratic Party: That to be a Republican is to be a racist that will, obviously, make racist attacks against Blacks and will make racist appeals to the obviously millions of racist Republican voters to fear voting for any Democrat.

Liberal columnist E.J. Dionne echos liberal George.

The left has also used the “race card” phrase to control discussions of race to their advantage as they equate any Republican utterance on the issue as morally equivalent to actual racism while deeming Democrats as having the “right” to raise the issue any time due to the GOP’s “history” of playing the race card, and either overlooking or exonerating based on “white guilt” actual racism practiced by the Democrats. And by actual practices, I am not only talking about their blatant race based policies and laws they advocate and defend.

So, what is this racist/fear mongering “history” of the GOP?

I guess the myth starts with Goldwater’s opposition to the Civil Rights Act based on private property grounds vs. LBJ’s not so “Great” Society that kicked the Black man out the house and made Uncle Sam Daddy. The myth continues with Reagan’s safety net for only the truly needy sans “Welfare Queens” and the misleading anecdotal sob stories on broadcast news. Miraculously, no one was homeless from 1993-2000.

And of course, there was Willie Horton, about whom liberals projected their revulsion at the visage of a large Black Man with big lips and a bushy afro onto supposed racist Americans that would reject Dukakis because the rapist/murderer he released wasn’t a nice looking white guy?

Meanwhile, Democrats run ads saying electing Republicans will cause more Black churches to burn and that executing the killers of James Byrd in Texas wasn’t strong enough punishment since Governor Bush opposed so-called “hate crimes” legislation that would have devalued the lives of white children, among other white people. (see adults)

The liberal George needs to be fired or sent to sensitivity training. Will needs to assert this even if the conventional wisdom lie is 40 years old.

The template is part of an overarching strategy in the media that uses race as substitute for liberalism, the overall goal being that liberalism never be discredited and seen as the reason Democrats are rejected.

Obama is sinking in the polls because his elitism was brought to light sooner than past Dem nominees thanks to the din of Obama’s 20-year pew-parked butt in a Hate whitey America Church.

Pat Buchanan accurately describes the political reality today :

In a week, Barack, an object of media homage on his trip abroad, has become an object of mockery in much of Middle America. Though his media allies may howl racism, most Americans tend more and more to dismiss this. That card has been played so often it’s dog-eared.

The dirty little secret that MSM isn’t yet hip to is that most all whites and blacks know and have known for years that the race card allegation attacks on the GOP are phony, but that too many have been pc’d into silence for years.

Rush broke the silence years ago. McCain did days ago.

I said in the fall 07 that since Obama wants the nukes, that this pathology will be aired and exposed. It is happening.

Republicans really need to stop using and stop acquiescing in the use of the phrases “race card” and “Playing the race card.” We should insist that allegations of wrongdoing be specifically described and accurately labeled. And we should insist that it is perfectly good and, indeed, necessary that people that are falsely accused of racism speak out and defend themselves and that false witnesses be put to shame in public, much like was properly done against actual white racists in the 50s and 60s.

What a concept.

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Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer columns
Legal Editor for The Minority and HinzSight Reports
“The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.” - The Chief Justice
Race 4 2008
“One man with courage makes a majority.” - Andrew Jackson

Gov. Ritter does not exactly gush when talking about Obama’s experience:

I’ve been governor for 18 months. It’s been a great experience. But it’s just 18 months…Obama has to think about experience…levels of experience…”

Later a caller to the show pointed out that Obama had been a Senator for a 143 days when he decided to run for President, and made the obvious point:

“Governor, you said 18 months’ experience wasn’t enough experience as governor to be the vice president. Would you want to contrast that with the 143 days experience Obama as senator before he decided he had enough experience to be president.”

The best Ritter could do was:

“All I can tell ya is I am a fan of Barack Obama’s. Met him in 2004 during his campaign for Senate…You meet him and discover there’s something very different about him. That’s all I’ll say.”

So there you have it–eighteen months in an executive position is insufficient to qualify one for the office of Vice-President, but a bit less than five months as a Senator is more than enough to decide that one is qualified for the Presidency.

Hat-tip to RedState diarist Stinger808

By Mike DeVine, Legal Editor for The Minority and HinzSight Reports
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By the most basic of criteria, John McCain is running a great campaign. He is defying history by either leading polls or being within the margin of error in July when past Dem losers led by from 7-14 points at this stage.

He is responding daily to attacks with speed reminiscent of the Cue ball Carville, Paul “the Forehead” Begala, and Hillary war room for Bill.

Today, he did something I have been praying for a republican to do, and that even Reagan didn’t do:

He not only pushed back on race card allegations, he leveled the race card charge against the Democrat. And Obama backed down.

McCain has been all over Obama’s gaffes on tire pressure, the surge, etc., and has obliterated Obama’s near dead cat Euro tour bounce.

So, it was with some distress that I saw several blogs that attacked McCain so harshly for kind words for Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi and his “nothing off the table” remark re taxes in any future negotiations with Democrats in Congress to reform Social Security.

President Reagan was chummy with Tip O’Neil and signed off on a Social Security rescue package that included tax increases.

McCain buttered up a lady that he may have to deal with next year and simply made a generic statement about some future SSA issue that will become obligatory to deal with as a true crisis, if not before.

Republicans, especially fellow conservatives, McCain is our nominee. I have written many columns about the necessity of holding his feet to the fire given the proof that he can be moved. But these statements were not occasions for same, in my opinion.

I am thrilled with McCain’s campaign performance and as we get closer to Election Day we should be increasingly focused on victory and less on purity.

I will lead the We the People coalition beginning January 21, 2009 to make sure our hired hand does our will.

Let’s beat Obama now.

McCain is doing fine in that regard. Obama himself is doing a better job. Pray that Obama doesn’t get laryngitis.

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Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer columns

Legal Editor for The Minority and HinzSight Reports

“The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.” - The Chief Justice

“One man with courage makes a majority.” - Andrew Jackson

Had I smelled teen spirit before I heard Rush Limbaugh, I may never have seen the conservative light.

Rock died for me after Ozzy left Black Sabbath in 1979 and wasn’t resurrected until late 1991, as Grunge, with the release of Nirvana’s Nevermind album, and its signature song, “Smells Like Teen Spirit.”

But I didn’t know the song’s name until a few years later because I first heard The Rush Limbaugh Program in early 1991.

I had tasted the death of my liberal utopian dreams in 1988 with the defeat (more the nomination) of Michael Dukakis while I served as a South Carolina county Democratic Party chair. I got an exponentially more bitter taste of reality with the miscarriage death of my child and subsequent divorce in 1990.

Then I heard Rush! (The talk show host, not the rock band.)

I had always listened to radio, AM and FM, much as I had always been a Democrat. I remember loving Barry Farber late at night in the mid to late 70s, not realizing he was conservative or even knowing what a conservative was. And liked Larry King late nights after that. The Fairness Doctrine ended the Farber education before I was able receive it, while CNN make Larry famous.

Yes, I loved Buckley’s Firing Line and Buchanan on Crossfire. But it was when I discovered Rush that I was on the path to the 2000 epiphany thanks to a weekly, 15 hour private education in the Limbaugh Institute of Advanced Conservative Studies.

At first, I was just thrilled to hear political debate. I disagreed with him on most things at first, but agreed on some significant ones, like feminism run amok, that never got aired on regular TV. I would see the “Rush is Right” bumper stickers and wince, but over time, I disagreed with him on less and less.

I spoke with Rush twice, on air, in the 90s trying to convince him that Bill Clinton was a moderate-conservative based on welfare reform and Nafta. Rush was nice to me, but he buried my arguments by pointing out the influence of Newt’s takeover of Congress. Moreover, I’ll never forget the day that began my loss of respect for Clinton’s character. That was the day that he insinuated that Rush was partially responsible for inspiring Timothy McVeigh in the the Oklahoma City bombing.

I also met Bo Snerdly, (Rush’s career long “program observer” who is “certified black enough to criticize” and Official Barack Obama Criticizer) at an event at the local AM station, but one main significant thing I came to respect about Rush, and the then local Rush clone, Mike Gallagher, before meeting Snerdly was that they were not racist and treated Blacks as equals. It made me start to see how my party was the one that based things on race. I always thought racism allegations against Rush and many republicans by Dems was unfair.

But I think the key contribution Rush made to my conversion was the contrast between his presentations of the news of the day with that of the major TV and radio networks. I would watch events on C-Span and then notice that the “Drive-by media” would leave out or mischaracterize portions of the event that I deemed significant, and I was a liberal (at least on many issues) Democrat then. Then I would notice that Rush left out nothing significant, to either the left or the right, and that he would play verbatim sound bites in context.

He was not only not afraid of the arguments of the left; he relished having the left reveal itself and then tear their arguments apart in the “arena of ideas.”

Life went on from trial law to corporate law, SC to GA, GA to NC. Family members moved away and passed away. Rush Limbaugh remained a constant source of fun and wisdom.

Rush, like me, is a work in progress, but I was very impressed with the way Rush dealt with the loss of his hearing and subsequent addiction to pain killers. He kept his good humor and never whined about the drug problem and he faced the hearing loss with courage.

As a liberal Democrat, I see now that I was the elitist Rush identified and that much of my politics was to make me feel good.

But I always shared Rush’s optimism about America and love of America.

I came to see over time that Rush’s hero was my hero. Reagan fixed the economy with supply side conservative principles, defeated the USSR with peace thru strength and advanced the Judeo-Christian values I believed in.

I came to see that we can not make Heaven on Earth like liberals imagine and that after 5000 years America stands tall as a Shining City on a Hill compared to all the others.

Rush attacks no one. He just sits around minding his own business when liberals attack the principles and institutions that made this country great.

When I moved to Atlanta in 2001 and discovered the internet, I immediately joined Rush 24/7, and over the past 17 of his nearly 20 years on national radio, I have missed few days without the words of Rush in my ears.

The most frequent thought I have upon hearing his words are:

Rush is Right!

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Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer columns
Legal Editor for The Minority and HinzSight Reports
“The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.” - The Chief Justice
Race 4 2008
“One man with courage makes a majority.” - Andrew Jackson

I’m quite literally speechless. Wow.

He makes Bush look like a genius.

By Mike DeVine, Legal Editor for The Minority Report and The HinzSight Report
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Cockstradamus, who predicted the accelerated pull-out, now crows: Victory in Iraq will help McCain and the GOP

Imagine that? Winning a war is a political plus to those that won it!

Victory in Iraq is ours (see July 13 below), and, as predicted by Cockstradamus weeks ago, the victory will be declared before the November election.

Rooster crowing from from June 22

Accelerated troop level reductions will be announced based on success.  For many moons now, this announcer of dawns has been nagged by an idea that dawned on me after Iraq’s security forces started winning battles on their own against Sunni-backed al Qaeda, Shia militias and even Iranian backed militias. We may be able to declare victory in Iraq very soon and announce accelerated withdrawals of victorious troops whose services are no longer required due to their success. I have always maintained that, while I want to maintain a major presence in Iraq, much like we did in Europe and the Pacific after WWII and Korea, it is vitally important that at some point there be an acknowledgement that we have won the Battle of Iraq and that any withdrawals be due to and seen as a result of our victory over the al Qaeda, radical terrorists, and Iran. In discussions with people that didn’t favor the war but who now want the USA to win, I found myself thinking to myself that my mantra of opposing troop reductions could and should soon yield to the most important mantra: victory.

News report from July 13

The Bush administration is considering the withdrawal of additional combat forces from Iraq beginning in September, according to administration and military officials, raising the prospect of a far more ambitious plan than expected only months ago. Such a withdrawal would be a striking reversal from the nadir of the war in 2006 and 2007… Even as the two candidates argue over the wisdom of the war and keeping American troops there, security in Iraq has improved vastly, as has the confidence of Iraq’s government and military and police, raising the prospect of additional reductions that were barely conceivable a year ago. While officials caution that the relative calm is fragile, violence and attacks on American-led forces have dropped to the lowest levels since early 2004. “As the Iraqi security forces get stronger and get better, then we will be able to continue drawing down our troops in the future,” Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said in Fort Lewis, Washington State, on Tuesday. “And I think that this transition of control and of responsibility, primary responsibility for security is a process that’s already well under way and based on everything that I’m hearing will be able to continue.” General David Petraeus, the American commander in Iraq, has already begun the review of security and troop levels. He and Bush promised in April that such a review would take place. Petraeus is expected to be more cautious than some policy makers in the administration and at the Pentagon might like. The officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were discussing military planning, said he was more likely to recommend a smaller reduction, but still a withdrawal. One senior administration official cautioned that the president, who will have the final say, would be reluctant to endorse deep or rapid reductions if they jeopardized his goal of establishing a stable and democratic government in Baghdad.

When I wrote my June 22 forecast, questions were raised as to who, in the Presidential and congressional campaigns, would be helped. On June 22, I wrote:

the long list of accomplishments that lead inevitably to my pre-Election Day 2008 expectations: 1. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki sent the Iraqi army into Basra. It achieved in a few weeks what the British had failed to do in four years: take the city, drive out the Mahdi Army and seize the ports from Iranian-backed militias. 2. When Mahdi fighters rose up in support of their Basra brethren, the Iraqi army at Maliki’s direction confronted them and prevailed in every town — Najaf, Karbala, Hilla, Kut, Nasiriyah and Diwaniyah — from Basra to Baghdad. 3. Without any American ground forces, the Iraqi army entered and occupied Sadr City, the Mahdi Army stronghold. 4. Maliki flew to Mosul, directing a joint Iraqi-U.S. offensive against the last redoubt of al-Qaeda, which had already been driven out of Anbar, Baghdad and Diyala provinces. 5. The Iraqi parliament enacted a de-Baathification law, a major Democratic benchmark for political reconciliation. 6. Parliament also passed the other reconciliation benchmarks — a pension law, an amnesty law, and a provincial elections and powers law. Oil revenue is being distributed to the provinces through the annual budget. 7. With Maliki having demonstrated that he would fight not just Sunni insurgents (e.g., in Mosul) but Shiite militias (e.g., the Mahdi Army), the Sunni parliamentary bloc began negotiations to join the Shiite-led government. (The final sticking point is a squabble over a sixth cabinet position.)

My June 22 article also cites a Frank Rich column that evidences fears on the left that America will be seen as having won the Iraq War before November, yet many conservative nervous nellies still ponder that victory could hurt John McCain.

Poppycock.

When I say that “we” have won the war, I mean the United States of America, but it is the left and most of the Democratic Party that has called this Bushlied’s War. They opposed funding when they were in the minority during the stay the course years that won the trust of the Iraqis as well as the surge McCain had long called for that tipped the balance.

Obama brags that he opposed the war while in Kindergarten, I mean the Iliinois State Legislature and has opposed troop funding. The words “win” or “success” in Iraq never cross his lips.

Take heart my friends, not only will America benefit from victory, but so will those that worked to acheive it, and that is Joe Lieberman, President Bush, John McCain and most all Republicans sans Chuck Hagel.

Cockstradamus has not yet determined whn Iran will be bombed or McCain’s margin of victory. Stay tuned.

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Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer columns

Legal Editor for The Minority and HinzSight Reports

“The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.” - The Chief Justice

Race 4 2008

“One man with courage makes a majority.” - Andrew Jackson

By Mike DeVine, Legal Editor for The Minority Report and The HinzSight Report
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[See updates at the bottom that include Gramm's clarification. h/t to my Race42008.com colleague, Aron Goldman]

By Mike DeVine, Legal Editor for The Minority Report and The HinzSight Report

I refer to McCain economics advisor and former Sen. Phil Gramm’s “whiny Americans about a mental recession” flap.

The leftist MSM lives for taking conservatives’ words out of context and fitting it into their template of Republicans’ as racist, bigot, heartless warmongers.

What is so sad is that the Hannitys and Gingrich’s on TV and even Hugh Hewitt on the radio don’t see what is being done, and end up accepting the liberal template and gotcha games.

This is serious business folks, and its all well and good for us to chastise Gramm for not ever and at all times being aware of the different rules of the MSM game and so cannot live and breathe as a normal human being like liberal guests on TV and interviewees by newspapers.

We don’t play the gotcha games to mischaracterize liberals. We have integrity that way, but what we don’t do and ought to, is to point out their dishonorable actions in this way, not to mention their immoral policies that do hurt lower income people and create real recessions.

Phil Gramm is a conservative icon of the Reagan Revolution. He was a boll weevil democrat that resigned his seat and re-won it as Republican. No Jeffords he. He was an architect of supply-side economics that produced the recovery in the 1980’s that we still technically live in. He is an economics professor by trade and so knows that the technical definition of a recession is two consecutive quarters of negative growth, which has not occurred since 2001.

Gramm is also a very avuncular, upbeat fellow that likes to turn a phrase to translate arcane econ and was being interviewed by friends at The Washington Times, when he said:

In an interview with the Washington Times, Phil Gramm, a former Texas senator who is now vice chairman of UBS, the giant Swiss bank, said he expects Mr. McCain to inherit a sluggish economy if he wins the presidency, weighed down above all by the conviction of many Americans that economic conditions are the worst in two or three decades and that America is in decline.
“You’ve heard of mental depression; this is a mental recession,” he said, noting that growth has held up at about 1 percent despite all the publicity over losing jobs to India, China, illegal immigration, housing and credit problems and record oil prices. “We may have a recession; we haven’t had one yet.”

“We have sort of become a nation of whiners,” he said. “You just hear this constant whining, complaining about a loss of competitiveness, America in decline” despite a major export boom that is the primary reason that growth continues in the economy, he said.

“We’ve never been more dominant; we’ve never had more natural advantages than we have today,” he said. “We have benefited greatly” from the globalization of the economy in the last 30 years.

Mr. Gramm said the constant drubbing of the media on the economy’s problems is one reason people have lost confidence.

Gramm made two errors (maybe three). His most egregious mistake was to conflate We the People with the American press, when he referred to a “nation of whiners.” Lots of people do this, and it is one of my pet peeves (and Rush Limbaugh’s). That the press decides to run a story doesn’t make it so and that they run a poll, doesn’t make it so.

Reality is. The press produces a product they call news. We too often confuse the two, and Phil’s mistake was easily used by the MSM to make it seem like he is callous towards low and middle income families and small and large businesses that are crying out for relief from high gasoline and food prices.

Gramm was speaking of the whiny press that wants people to think that America is in a decline that only an Obamessiah can save us from.

Secondly, he forgot the logic behind Reagan’s great lines: “A recession is when your neighbor loses his job and a depression is when you lose yours” and, “Are you better off than you were four years ago”?

I give him a pass on the latter, with his “mental recession” given that he was having an economics discussion and it was a good line – as applied to the press.

So, I give McCain a pass for going ballistic. He can’t risk alienating the inattentive to politics and economics sufferers at the pumps and the produce aisles.

What is so sad is that Newt Gingrich and Sean Hannity failed to understand that Gramm was NOT referring to Americans complaining about gas and food prices and the lib Dems that have caused same by limiting oil drilling, oil refining and nuclear plant construction as whining. He was not chastising Americans that are suffering from same as imagining a mental recession.

No, Gramm was chastising the press for their false recession stories of the past SIX years!! He was speaking of the whining media and liberals that claim America is and has been in decline for the past 6 years, despite the economic numbers to the contrary that are the envy of the world, lest the GOP and Dubya get any credit.

There is no excuse for this. Sean seemed to get it and tried to challenge Newt, but Hannity lacked the intellect to frame the issue. Newt alternates between kissing lib butt and not. But for Hugh Hewitt not to get it, is unacceptable.

I didn’t know rooster’s could hear and see so much better than TV and Radio stars. Maybe my 18 years as a Lib-Dem co-conspirator frontman for the kooks helps. Now I’m in the stupid party.

[UPDATES: One is my response to Flagstaff re elites and two, re info provided by Aron Goldman at R408 that affirms my interpretation re elitist "leaders" that take their cues from fellow elites in the MSM]

First, gamecock:

I have noticed that elites and regular folks make this mistake in differing ways, i.e. they speak of “the American People” when they are really referring to what they hear on TV from media elites:

Elites like Gramm do it subconsciously as they exaggerate the power of the media elites (key word elites). Reagan never made this mistake and always made the distinction. But yes, regular folks don’t whine about competitiveness.

We “whine’ about high gas and food prices and what policies cause them. Gramm was not speaking of that.

Regular folks too often assume the MSM is reflecting popular opinion. Rush fights this everyday.

Second, Gramm’s clarification:

“When I said we’ve become a nation of whiners, I’m talking about our leaders. I’m not talking about our people. We’ve got every kind of excuse in the world about oil prices — we’ve got speculators, the oil companies to blame — but too many people don’t have a program to get on with a job of producing.”

“If you listen to our leaders, we can’t compete against Mexico, for God’s sake. If they don’t think we can compete against Mexico who can we compete against?”

I think the above updates fit my original interpretation given that the media are elites, as are leaders as per Gramm, all of whom echo the defeatist whining of the MSM/Dem Party lib template.

One thing is certain. Gramm was not referring to Americans that are suffering from high gas and food prices and complaining about the policies of the leaders in Washington that caused them. Those suffering from mental depression that have seen mental recessions are the press and the Kerry and the Democrats, including number one liberal Obama, all of whom declared the American economy in 2004 as the “worst since the Great Depression.” Those “leaders” are who Gramm was referring to.

[A portion of this post originally appeared in my Silly (MSM) Love Songs blog.]

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Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer columns

The Minority Report and The HinzSight Report
Race 4 2008

“One man with courage makes a majority.” - Andrew Jackson

Mark Halperin is reporting that the McCain Campain and the RNC ended the month of June with a combined $95 million CoH, which is being touted as double the amount of the Obama Campaign and the DNC.

Team McCain also reported that the campaign raised more than the $22 million they totaled in May.

Where’s Obama’s figures? I eagerly await their release.

Read Halperin’s full report here.

H/T- Iowa

Jesse Jackson, at this very moment, can not be reached for further comment, as he is aboard a one-way flight to Lower Zambuda.

Per CNN:

You can officially scratch off Sen. Jim Webb’s name from the list of Barack Obama’s potential running mates.

The freshmen senator from Virginia and onetime Republican said unequivocally Monday he does not want to be the Illinois senator’s No. 2.

“Last week I communicated to Senator Obama and his presidential campaign my firm intention to remain in the United States Senate, where I believe I am best equipped to serve the people of Virginia and this country,” Webb said in an issued statement. “Under no circumstances will I be a candidate for Vice President.”

Given the liberal left domination of the MSM, leftist democrats Mondale, Dukakis and Kerry led by much larger margins over Presidents Reagan, Bush 41 and Bush 43 in past June-Sept leap years than Obama currently leads McCain in most of the between election polls this year.

But, the un-Dukakis-like “lead” has provoked desperate Obama via surrogates Clark and Webb (and others months earlier), Clinton-like projection writ large attacks against McCain’s heroic military deeds via MSM attempted “swift-boat” covers.

The Clinton war room tactic of attacking one’s opponent’s greatest strength that mirror’s their greatest weakness is axiomatic. But the problems here are legion:

1-Obama had no Sistah Soulja moment in the primaries;

2-Kerry didn’t respond because the Swiftboat vets’ attacks were factually true;

3-McCain turned down freedom and stayed in the commie pow torture Hanoi Hilton for many years;

4-Let #3 sink in;

5-Unlike Kerry, McCain didn’t come back to America and toss medals over a fence or equate US armed forces with Khan’s Genghis; and

6-McCain’s recently read lips favor tax cuts.

Vietnam vet, junior Old Dominion Senator James Webb recently broke protocal as Obama’s limp-wristed security resume wafts:

WEBB: John McCain’s been a longtime friend. If that is one area that I would ask him to calm down on, it’s that. Don’t be standing up and uttering your political views and implying that all the people in the military support them, because they don’t, any more than when the Democrats had political issues during the Vietnam War. Let’s get politics out of the military, take care of the military people, and have our political arguments in other areas.

RUSH: Get politics out of the military? John McCain needs to calm down? This from a rookie Senator Jim Webb. Needs to calm down, don’t be standing up and offering your political views and implying that all people in the military support them. This is again more smoke and mirrors. None of this McCain is done. But Webb gets up and says it, the Drive-Bys report what he says, and that becomes the official record of what McCain says, i.e., what Webb says that McCain is doing. Who infused politics into this? Who infused the military into politics? It was Clark who claims, by the way — grab audio sound bite number four. Here’s Wesley Clark last night on MSNBC, asked for his response to being criticized for his remarks.

CLARK: I wasn’t representing the Obama campaign in anything I said yesterday about John McCain. I want to assure you, I would never, never diss someone’s service. When people choose to serve in uniform, I honor it. I came home from Vietnam on a stretcher. I was shot, I took a burst of AK, I got four rounds, so I think I know a little bit about what it’s like to honor men and women who serve in uniform. And I do, and I would never dismiss somebody.

RUSH: Twilight Zone time. This is after he did diss somebody. This is after he did diss somebody specifically on the basis of their military service. Claire McCaskill on MSNBC Live today, the infobabe asked her, “General Clark is not backing down from those comments that were critical of Senator McCain. What’s the campaign’s response to hearing that he’s not stepping away from those comments?”

MCCASKILL: Senator Obama has been very clear. It is inappropriate in any campaign ever to devalue anyone’s service to our country. That’s what they did to John Kerry four years ago. He will not be a part of it. This campaign will not be a part of it. I think he respects the service of General Wesley Clark. I think Senator Obama understands that General Clark is speaking from his own perspective. But for this campaign, for the Obama campaign, it is never about devaluing someone’s service to our country. Patriotism is about serving your country and your community, and that’s what Senator Obama wants this discussion to be about.

RUSH: What does this remind you of? Here we have two Obama supporters, Claire McCaskill from Missouri, a senator, and Jim Webb, both recasting reality. Obama, (paraphrasing) “Our campaign never said anything, why, we would never do this. We’re not going to put up with this. We would never, ever do it.” Webb said, “McCain’s gotta calm down.” I wish McCain would act in a way just one day that somebody could legitimately say “calm down” and have it mean something. The Official Obama Criticizer nailed this in his critique in the first hour of this program. Barack Obama and his campaign, he is the first black Clinton. He will not be the first black president because that’s Clinton’s. But he is the first black Clinton. That is exactly what’s happening here. Living in an alternative reality, and knowing full well that the Drive-Bys are going to cover for you and make reality whatever it is you say in response to things. So Clark gets a total pass. Obama gets a total pass. Obama gets treated as though he has rebuked what Clark has said, when he hasn’t, and then Webb goes out and says that McCain’s the one that needs to calm down. Meanwhile, the only official response from some elected Republican has been Bob Dole’s.

An astute conservative democrat in Alabama advised gamecock that Obama spoke to Bill Clinton this week, just as flip-flop moves to the center multiplied and just before Webb came to Wes, Clinton-fired former NATO chief that was about to bomb Russians, Clark’s defense for off the high-dive denigrations of McCain’s heroic service in Vietnam.

And why did Obama feel the need to declare his patriotic love for America in a post-WrighthateAmericaSermon-like context?

Why?

Because Obama’s stance in the polls at this juncture is worse than any Dem since…

Worse than any Dem.

June 1988 Plus Seventeen Dukakis, won ten states, went on to teach at Harvard.

Jim Webb will be the underside of the Obama ticket. Why else would he be embarrassing himself in public this way?

McCain will carry Virginia.

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer columns
www.race42008.com
Legal Editor for The HinzSight/Minority Reports @ www.theminorityreportblog.com
“The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.” - The Chief Justice and “One man with courage makes a majority.” - Andrew Jackson

CNN Poll: Bitter Democrats Continue to Cling to Their Clinton (Watch Video)

If Hillary Clinton were still running for president, who would you rather see the Democratic party
choose as its nominee?

• Barack Obama 54% (59%)
• Hillary Clinton 43% (35%)

 

(Among Hillary Clinton supporters) Now that Barack Obama is the presumptive Democratic nominee, who is your choice for president?

• Barack Obama 54% (60%)
• John McCain 10% (17%)
• Would Not Vote 32% (22%)

Survey of 431 registered Democrats was conducted June 26-29. The margin of error is +/- 4.5 percentage points (with a MoE of +/-7.5% on the question for Clinton supporters). Results from the poll conducted June 4-5 are in parentheses.

This is not very pleasing news if you are a Republican, but I still think it was pretty clever. There is a small New Hampshire town by the name of Unity, and the Obama campaign has decided to set up a joint appearance there with Senator Clinton on Friday according to the Union Leader.

Both Obama and Clinton received 107 votes in the town in the primary on January 8. It’s kind of gimmicky on Obama’s part, but you have to give them credit for coming up with the idea.

For the record, there is also an appropiately-named town called Freedom in Carroll county in New Hampshire. Fitting for its name, the town has not voted for the Democrat nominee for President since 1916, when it opted for Woodrow Wilson over Charles Hughes. The town of Freedom was carried by the Republican nominee in the last 22 elections.

That includes Alf Landon, Barry Goldwater, and Bob Dole. Carroll county as a whole has the distinction of never having voted for a Democrat nominee for President. It was the only county in New England to opt for Barry Goldwater and one of only two (Belknap, NH being the other) to opt for Bob Dole. There are still some Republican pockets in New Hampshire left! One conservative said recently that our motto is no longer Live Free or Die but just Die. And yes, more than one liberal has written an editorial calling for us to remove Live Free or Die as a slogan because it is too confrontational.

The other day I posted a University of Wisconsin General Election poll showing that Obama was up 13 points (50-37) over McCain here in the Badger State. As I mentioned, the poll was conducted by Prof. Charles Franklin, who also writes for Pollster.com. Well, Prof. Franklin has released a detailed analysis of the poll’s Party ID results. The results: Very bad news for the Republican Party.

A number of people have commented on the party identification balance in the survey: 38% Dem, 24% Rep, 29% Independent (37% Independent when “no preference/other” are allocated to independent. When this group is asked how they “lean”, very few insist on some other party, so this allocation makes sense.) See Alan Reifman’s blog on weighting and party id for a good example and discussion of broader issues of weighting to party id.

I want to point out two things here and put our data in the context of other polls in Wisconsin.

The chart above shows party identification trends since 2000 using data from three sources that have done frequent polling in the state. What we see is a relatively stable Dem/Rep parity from 2000-2004, with Dem ID falling a bit around 2004 while Reps moved up slightly.

Starting in 2005, however, there is an initially slow but then sharper shift in partisanship. Republican ID declines from about 30% to about 24% today, while Dem ID rises from about 30% to nearly 40%. After an initial surge of independents, that group has recently fallen off a bit. (You have to squint a bit to see WPRI and Badger after 2005, but they are close to the trend lines during this period, so the changes are not just a matter of house effects or phone vs ivr methods. WPRI, for example, has Rep ID moving from 33% in 2004 to 28%, 26% and 25% in 2005-2007. Their Dem ID rises from 30%-33%-34% then falls to 29% over the same period. The final 29% is a large discrepancy from the trend, of course.)

We did not weight our survey to party identification, and these trends help explain why we have reservations about doing that. While relatively stable, party id does move over time, and by a fair bit, as you can see here. But that said, our unweighted results turn out to be quite close to the estimated trends in partisan categories in any case.

The second point is to compare these trends with those in exit poll measures of party id. In 2000, the VNS Exit poll put Wisconsin pid at 37% Dem, 32% Rep and 31% Ind. This shifted in 2004 to 35% Dem, 27% Ind and 38% Rep. But in 2006 the exit polls found that the balance was 38% Dem, 34% Rep and 27% Ind. Those values all show a smaller share of independents at the polls on election day compared to the polling trend, but that is to be expected given differences in turnout between partisans and independents. The size of the party ID groups grows as a result, but the balance between them is in line with what we see in the trends in the polls, though certainly not an exact match. The polls, after all, are of either adults or likely voters, while the exits are by definition a measure of who actually showed up on election day.

For 2006, the Dem exit percent and the Dem trend estimate are a close match. Republicans gain in the exits, by about 6 points over the 2006 trend estimate. If that holds for 2008, we might expect an electorate more like 38% Dem and 30% Rep. Of course both parties will have very active “ground games” and GOTV efforts to try to change those numbers.

While I’m certainly happy that our party id balance is so close to the trend in all the other polling, the more important point is that party id in Wisconsin has shifted quite a bit over the past four years. The coming campaign may alter that, possibly bringing disappointed former Republicans back home, for example. Likewise a Republican advantage in turnout could bring the exit polls back to closer balance. But as the data show, today the GOP is at the worst disadvantage the state has seen in over eight years.

By Mike DeVine, Legal Editor for The Minority Report and The HinzSight Report
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Today’s infamous 5-4 decision by the U.S. Supreme Court granting terrorists the right to an O.J. trial in U.S. civilian courts cries out for the present Chief Executive to so paraphrase Old Hickory’s similar defiance of John Marshall 176 years ago with respect to removal of the Cherokee from Georgia.

“John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it.”

The nation survived President Andrew Jackson’s defense of his constitutional executive powers against the first Judicial Oligarch. Should President Bush succumb to Justice Kennedy’s attempted coup to assume the role of Commander in Chief, it will be much harder for our nation to survive, much less thrive, as it has since 1832.

The ruling granting illegal enemy combatants held at the U.S. military base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba stands millenia of war law, America military history from George Washington forward, the Geneva Convention, and, common sense on their heads.

The people being held at Gitmo are illegal enemy combatants as opposed to legal POWs. The court waxes ad nauseum about the irrelevance of the fact that the base is not on America soil. I agree. We held hundreds of thousands of legal Japanese and German POWs in the Lower Forty-Eight during WWII, and none were allowed access to U.S. courts.

The court speaks of the length of the “open-ended” detentions. But no one knew in 1944 that WWII would not last as long as the Thirty Years War or the even longer Peloponnesian Wars in Europe in earlier centuries. Thucydides, the author of the acclaimed history of the latter was himself a prisoner of war for much longer than the first terrorist admitted to Gitmo.

Captured combatants are held until the end of the conflict so as to prevent them from returning to the battlefield (see New York, Afghanistan or Iraq). Additionally, they may be charged with war crimes and serve a prison term or be executed. Even in the latter case, such trials have always been held by military tribunals, beginning under General Washington in 1776.

General Washington also not infrequently applied the war law that has always allowed illegal enemy combatants operating among civilian populations to be shot on site or summarily executed.

One of the main purposes of the Geneva Conventions was to discourage operations among civilians by granting rights to legal POWs, specifically denying same to terrorists.

The fact is that when a nation wages war, the Commander in Chief gathers intel on and directs operations against the enemy. He does not ask a court’s permission to target and kill particular combatants.

The Constitution was a compromise weighing rights of personal freedom and security between the police and the citizenry. Its application to enemies of the State is an abomination, and one that President Bush is duty bound to defy in order to uphold his Oath.

Supreme Court justices are not the only ones to take oaths to uphold the Constitution and they are not the final arbiters of same. We the People are.

President Bush, be one man with courage and you will make a majority. Lay down the gauntlet for the Dem Congress to impeach you so Osama bin Laden’s chauffeur can be tried in front of Judge Ito like a former Avis commercial and Buffalo Bills star turned murderer.

I have no doubt they will blink on that, just as they have on owning defeat since the November 2006 election. They won Congress but haven’t had the guts to de-fund the troops. Think they want people that would cut off their heads with machetes to be released by their liberal judges?

I don’t. They refuse to own defeat. You must not surrender to five lawyers.

For complete majority and dissenting opinion texts go here.

Scalia said the nation is “at war with radical Islamists” and that the court’s decision “will make the war harder on us. It will almost certainly cause more Americans to be killed.”

Heed Scalia’s words President Bush and follow Andy Jackson’s lead.

More later on other issues addressed in the Court’s opinions. But the main issue at hand is not the dicta of would be General Kennedy. Rather, it is the resolve of one man, i.e. the guy we elected twice to defend us, which he has done magnificently since 911, no thanks to five lawyers in robes.

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Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer columns
The Minority Report and The HinzSight Report
Race 4 2008
“One man with courage makes a majority.” - Andrew Jackson

*In addition to his corporate work in Atlanta, from 2001-2006, he was the Legal Editor and “conservative voice” of The Champion (Decatur, GA) newspaper, (legal organ for DeKalb County in Metro-Atlanta), where he was the one of first columnists in the nation, soon after September 11, 2001, to comment on the likelihood that captured terrorists in Afghanistan would be deemed to be illegal enemy combatants not entitled to Prisoner of War status under the laws of war.

By Mike DeVine, Legal Editor for The Minority Report and The HinzSight Report
________________________________________________________________________________

The same Democratic Party that is about to nominate a radical Marxist preaching “hope and change” as its presidential nominee, attained its hoped for change in Congress by running candidates advocating conservatism in 2006.

But given the post-Clinton McGovernite take over of the world’s oldest political party, conservative Democrats wield little power especially given the GOP’s paranoid drift to the left.

America remains a center-right country whose majority is nearly as under-represented in Congress as it is in a culture dominated by elitists in academia and the media.

But don’t lose hope my fellow beleaguered Reaganites. We even have some champions in Congress, as evidenced by Sens. McConnell (R-KY) and Sessions (R-AL) smack down of the Lieberman (ID-CN)- Warner (R-VA)-[Dole (R-NC)?] De-CAP-itate the American economy and TRADE away our liberty Bill this week, lest the American people get to watch Democrats vote down common sense majority positions on C-Span II.

Meanwhile, Gamecock’s congressman urges oil drilling off N.C. coast:

Drivers upset with high gas prices could find relief off the N.C. coast, U.S. Rep. Sue Myrick said Thursday.

Using a gas station as a backdrop, the Charlotte Republican renewed calls for oil and gas drilling off the Atlantic Coast. Drilling is now prohibited under a longstanding moratorium.

“I’m as frustrated as the next person when it comes to filling up my car,” she said, overlooking pumps selling regular for $3.99. “One of the things we need to do is use more of our own resources.”

Myrick has introduced the Deep Ocean Energy Resources Act of 2008. It would give states authority to permit drilling within 100 miles of their coast, while allowing the federal government to lease sites beyond 100 miles. The moratorium is in effect until 2012.

A bill similar to Myrick’s passed the then-Republican controlled House largely along party lines in 2006. It did not make it through the Senate. She said she thinks this time will be different.

“People are paying $4 a gallon for gasoline,” she said. “They weren’t in 2006.”

Myrick aides pointed to a Gallup Poll released Wednesday that shows 57 percent of Americans favor drilling in coastal and wilderness areas currently off limits. Myrick said she’s driven in part by the fact that Cuba has leased drilling rights to China and Spain in waters 50 miles off Florida.

“That’s our oil!” Myrick said in a rising voice. “China already has our jobs. Are we going to give them our oil, too?”

The former mayor of the Queen City lays it out nicely, doesn’t she?

Too bad she isn’t in the Senate seat now held by the wife of a former senator from a state with no coastline who gets her “maverick” mug plastered on page A1 as a missionary for Al Gore’s Church of man-made global warming while a clear headed Myrick makes page B6.

Bob, we gave you a standing ovation for your curt e-mail smackdown of Scott turncoat Texan McClellan. Could you please re-tar the heels of this close relative of yours?:

Dole is climate bill’s unlikely ally

Global warming threatens U.S. security, senator says.

The U.S. Senate is scheduled to cast a historic vote today on the first comprehensive global warming bill to make its way out of a committee room.

The sweeping legislation is expected to die.

But among those supporting the measure will be Sen. Elizabeth Dole, the Salisbury Republican whose voting record is among the Senate’s most conservative.

“It’s very important that we move on this because the costs of inaction are just too great,” Dole said Thursday. “The data became more and more voluminous.”

Her eureka moment, she said, came more than a year ago, after poring over the science about climate change and concluding that the Earth definitely is getting warmer.

Two colleagues on the Armed Services Committee – Independent Joe Lieberman of Connecticut and Republican John Warner of Virginia – persuaded her about the effect of climate change on national security.

This convert to the GOP after a 2000 conservative epiphany is sick and tired of voting for Republicans that have “eureka” moments surrounded by liberals in Washington, D.C.

[And you will search the whole article in vain for HOW global warming threatens our national security (not to mention the dearth of evidence that man can control the weather - vanity of vanities).]

The only Eureka moments conservatives need concern themselves with are the four years worth of same Ronald Reagan spent at the Illinois college that taught him the basics of economics that saved America in the 1980s.

Dole is opposed by her fellow Tar Heel republican Senator Richard Burr.

South of here in the more refined Carolina (see Spartanburg and Charleston), Republican conservative stalwart Jim DeMint is with Burr, but we suspect McCain’s Vice-President Lindsey Graham supported the now dead bill as did McCain (too busy campaigning to vote).

Graham was also a senator that spoke to racist La Raza group last year and called opponents of the amnesty bill, racists.

Thank God the Palmetto State’s governor was and is no more intimidated by Graham (nor of the prospect of McCain speaking to “The Race” in July) than Rush Limbaugh and We the People were last summer when we smacked that abominable bill last summer.

SC’s Sanford signs illegal immigration bill

COLUMBIA, S.C. - Gov. Mark Sanford signed legislation Wednesday that threatens to temporarily shut down businesses and fine them up to $1,000 per worker if they employ illegal immigrants.

Sanford, surrounded by about 20 legislators, said the measure reasserts the rule of law in South Carolina - cracking down on the “wink-and-nod” employment of illegal immigrants. He and legislators said they hope the ideas spread and force Congress to act.

“The message is loud and clear: Stop the silent invasion of this state,” said Senate President Pro Tem Glenn McConnell, R-Charleston.

Legislators boasted the measure is the most strict and effective anti-illegal-immigrant bill in the country. Lawmakers made the law increasingly tougher as debate progressed, with constituents becoming more frustrated by the federal government’s inaction on the issue.

“It’s certainly one of the toughest, if not the toughest,” said Larry Frankel, state legislative counsel in the American Civil Liberty Union’s Washington office.

Rep. Thad Viers, R-Myrtle Beach, predicted the law will lower the state’s unemployment rate, at 5.9 percent in April, because immigrants will “self-deport” and make more jobs available.

This comes on the heels of a historic conservative legislative session on abortion law, religious free speech, criminal law and free market health insurance reform in South Carolina.

Hope and change the conservative American majority can believe in lies in following the federalist lessons being espoused south of the Old Dominion and north of the Peach State.

Never mistake democratic primary voters for America. Obama won the Carolinas’ primaries. Some liberal always wins democratic contests down here. (see Bill Clinton re Jesse Jackson).

But come November, the actual election occurs. There has been a lot of wild talk that N.C. or even S.C. could be in play this November. I’m not going to dignify the suggestion re the home of the birthplace of Old Hickory, but as to Polk’s state:

Democrats’ percentage of the presidential vote in North Carolina from 1980-2004 has been: 47, 38, 42, 42, 44, 43, and 44, respectively.

I don’t see a 50, do you? I don’t even see a 48.

Obama’s only hope? He smokes.

McCain will smoke him, and if he would follow Myrick and Sanford’s lead, he’ll snuff him out by a landslide.

[UPDATE RE NO MAJOR DRILLING RELATED OIL SPILLS SINCE 1969]

Drill, Coast Haste

Uncle Sam bans states from drilling in the Atlantic, Pacific and eastern Gulf mainly to protect the environment. Some 85% of the U.S. coastline is off-limits to energy production — including huge reserves off Florida’s coast, which China is exploiting in Cuban waters.

To change that, a lawmaker is offering a novel idea. Rep. Sue Myrick of the House Energy and Commerce panel wants to let coastal states decide whether drilling is environmentally risky. She has introduced a bill that would give coastal states that want offshore drilling the power to opt out of the Interior Department’s offshore restrictions.

And as a powerful incentive, Myrick, R-N.C., proposes cutting them (and adjacent states) in on the federal revenues from leases. Washington now collects as much as $8 billion a year in existing Gulf royalties, a figure that would balloon as coastal regions opened for exploration.

Her Deep Ocean Energy Resources Act would give states the ability to control energy production up to 100 miles off their shores and would extend their territorial waters.

But the bill faces major hurdles. Even if Myrick can get the House panel’s Democrat chair, Rep. John Dingell, to take it up, it would face stiff opposition in the Senate. Florida Sens. Mel Martinez and Bill Nelson have blocked previous attempts to lift the ban on drilling — although Martinez, a Republican, lately has shown signs of softening.

Foes have successfully cloaked their arguments against offshore drilling in eco-apocalypse, claim it will lead to oil spills. Fearing tar-ball-pocked beaches, the tourism industry has joined the greens in lobbying against such bills.

Their fears are unfounded. And politicians concerned about America’s energy security ought to do a better job educating the public with the facts. For example:

• Less than one one-thousandth of a percent (0.001%) of the 7 billion-plus barrels of oil that Washington has allowed to be produced offshore over the past 25 years has been spilled, according to the Interior Department.

• A whopping 63% of petro pollution in North American seas comes not from offshore rigs, but from natural seepage from the sea floor. Source: National Academy of Sciences.

• There hasn’t been a major oil spill from an offshore well since 1969 even though rigs since then have been lashed by Katrina and other major hurricanes.

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Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer columns
The Minority Report and The HinzSight Report
Race 4 2008
“One man with courage makes a majority.” - Andrew Jackson

Howard Dean can breathe a sigh of relief. Now that his ideological twin has won the Democrat nomination, he has been told he will remain chairman of the DNC.

When planning strategy, Dean and Obama can lament how bitter the voters with Confederate flags on their pick-up trucks who Howard Dean targeted four years ago are.