Obama Exposed As a Fraud

According to urban legend Barack Obama attended and graduated from Princeton and recieved a JD from Havard law School where legend also has that he edited the Harvard Law Review.  I say trust but verify.   As the assine notion that Obama ever attended college, must less actually graduated, I present, Scott Butterworth, Washington Post:

President Obama began his weekly Internet and radio address on Saturday with these words: “This past Thursday, on a clear Texas afternoon, an Army psychiatrist walked into the Soldier Readiness Processing Center, and began shooting his fellow soldiers.”

Did the president, speaking directly about the man suspected in the killings, prejudice any jury that might be called to hear the case? At the least, he appeared to fall afoul of a lesson that every journalism student — and law student — learns early: The safest way to avoid yourself some trouble is to couch such a flat assertion of guilt (emphasis added)

Given the one’s refusal release his supposed college transcripts, the safest assumption is  that Obama never set foot in college classroom, at least not while sober.

I actually like the headline James Joyner puts up at a bit better:

House Trades Freedom for Health Coverage, Senate’s Move

The House passed a trillion dollar bill that will force Americans to buy health insurance, force even small businesses to provide health coverage, and require insurance companies to cover pre-existing conditions.  (The last, as I have previously argued, makes it something other than “insurance.”)

Just so. James adds further along…

James Joyner

If this became law, the poor would be significantly poorer and small businesses would be even less competitive with the big box stores.  During a very weak economy with an unemployment at ten percent, no less.  Oh, and insurance rates will go up for the rest of us, too, as companies amortize the cost of absorbing people who have costly illnesses — who will by definition be a net drain on the pool from Day 1 — by passing it on to the rest of us.

Just so, James.

He goes on:

Moreover, this plan does nothing to address the fundamental problem with the status quo:  The unsustainable skyrocketing in health care costs.

In fact, the government’s involvement flat out guarantees prices will go up. A look at the healthcare costs vs governmental involvement over the last 50 years shows the more governmental mandates on healthcare, the more the cost of healthcare goes up, in an almost exponential fashion.

Now there are those who will charge that the Republicans haven’t done anything about healthcare costs either. Thing is, the real answer to higher costs, given the well known trends of costs of ANYTHING involving government, would be to get government OUT of the healthcare business outright. We know how that will go over in the power-mad halls fo the Congresscrtters, now, don’t we?

Rick Moran, over at Right Wing Nut House weighs in also:

Rick Moran

A bill nobody has read, that contains nobody knows what, that no one has a clue of what kind of impact it will have on the current health care system, with a cost known only to God, has been passed with no formal hearings, extraordinarily limited debate, and in a totally partisan manner (minus one Republican who doesn’t have a prayer in 2010).

That’s the “reality” I would say to my friends in the reality based community. Can you argue with any of those points above? Only if you spin so hard you are in danger of flying off into orbit.

If we had a rational government, any one of those realities would have derailed health care reform long ago. But rationality has left the building, as has common sense, proportionality, wisdom, and that fine old conservative virtue, prudence.

Just so… in both the exact wording and the implications.  This monster was put forward on pure political power grounds.

As to the other shoe, I wonder if it’s going to drop at all. If it does, it’s as Rick says:

…. history tells us that it will never be repealed, that one sixth of the American economy will be permanently controlled by Washington. There will be successful efforts to play around at the margins, bringing efficiencies and changing some of the more odorous aspects of what is to come. But politicians have never taken away an entitlement in history, and I am extremely skeptical that it can be done in this case.

Once the independent health insurance industry is gone, how to you get it back? How do you reconstitute a private health care system? The answer is you can’t. Once national health care has had its way with the system and we see single payer insurance, and a health care bureaucracy that dictates treatments, costs, eligibility, as well as rationing what care is left, it will be impossible to ditch that system in favor of a market based, private entity. It is much easier for government to destroy private industry than it is for government to actually create a free market for health care. The very act of government creation would, by definition, not allow the market to determine the parameters of its operation.

The only saving grace here is if there is anyone on the planet that’s more inept than Nancy Pelosi, it’s Harry Reid. Thereby the chances of passage in any form is somewhat lower.

Rick wonders, from his (what I think to be) overtly centrist perspective about the future of conservatism in the context of this monster becoming law. I will go a little wider… I wonder about the future of America.

Me at Pajamas Media this monring:

I’ve become more than a little bit tired of the disingenuous argument that conservatives can’t win elections. Had the Republicans actually gotten behind the conservative — in this case, Hoffman — he would have won, as Rush says, going away. There’s no question in my mind about that. The fact of the matter is that they tried to define themselves as Democrat-lite with Scozzafava, and that nonsense never works, particularly in a district like NY-23.

I live about three hours from NY-23. One point that you have to understand about that district is that the people there are as a rule conservative and independent-minded folks.

Residents in the district recognized that who the Republican Party presented to them as being one of their own — Scozzafava — was nothing of the sort. The conservative Doug Hoffman filled that role better.

Hoffman managed to pull within the margin of error while running against the full weight of both parties. So don’t tell me conservatives can’t be elected with the proper support.

Go and read, and comment.

George W. bush depicted as Adolf Hitler

I gotta give Mary Katherine Ham credit.   Making sport of a clueless idiot is demeaning work, but somebody has to do it.    Bobby Gibbs continues to make Baghdad Bob look  credible.

Can You Imagine if, 5 Years ago, People Had Protested With Hitler Pictures?

Hat tip photo and home to a lot more:  Zomblog.

For her part, Mary Katherine, Weekly Standard, applies the clue bat to Gibby’s inert head:

Before Gibbs took leave of his senses and all sense of history today, the White House had a more petulant response to the gathering, at which actor Jon Voight spoke. Yesterday, Gibbs very kindly stopped himself from making a “Deliverance” joke about the attendees. Considerate.

I would argue that the White House Press Secretary implying a joke about how protesters are rednecks prone to anal rape would fall into the category of “stunning” and “personally disagreeable,” but I digress.

Who knew the Obama White House disapproved of sodomy.

Addendum:   (bumped)

Moe Lane has done Mary Katherine one better.  Moe produced a video:

Hat tips: Ed Driscoll, Pajamas Media;  Glenn Reynolds, Instapundit.

Here we go again:

Associated Press – November 6, 2009 2:24 PM ET

NEW ORLEANS (AP) – State investigators are searching the New Orleans offices of the activist group ACORN in connection with embezzlement and tax fraud allegations.

Assistant Attorney General David Caldwell said a warrant was obtained to seize computers, hard drives and other documents after ACORN attorneys said two unidentified former employees took computers and other items when they left the organization.

I tend to presume that the Associated Press managed to put this rather under investigated report together just so they can say they’re actually covered the thing.  The trouble is they laugh so much out as to be laughable.  Andy Breitbart’s Big Government seems a bit more complete:

State Investigators removing evidence from ACRON office in NOLA. Photo from Big Government Contributor Kevin Kane

Attorney General Buddy Caldwell has served a search warrant at the ACORN office at 2609 Canal Street, according to Tammi Arender Herring, a spokeswoman with the office.

Investigators in khaki pants and polo shirts loaded several dozen computers and other electronic items into an SUV. They are also carrying records out of the building on handcarts.

The large office building sits at the corner of Dorgenois and Canal. ACORN staffers were given no notice that a search would be conducted today, Herring said.

I suppose that to most reasonable people, that doesn’t sound like an investigation of somebody stealing computers out of the place, that sounds like an investigation of what’s on the remaining computers, with the claim of theft from ACRON being a catalyst to allow the state attorneys to act as they did…. with a warrant.  Moreover, as the AP link reports the original allegations that they are supposedly investigating now are over a year old.  There’s something far deeper going on here than the state investigator is willing to admit to.  Thing is, iyou’d never get that impression from the Associated Press report.

You know,  it was only a matter of time, I suppose, before the leftards lept up  maliciously and deceitfully attacking someone who brought up bad news about The Chosen One against someone they apparently have decided to make a target of… Jerome Corsi.  It’s called “attack the messenger”. This time, of course it’s Corsi’s report on a document that clearly connects the Fort Hood shooter to the Obama White House. I just didn’t expect it wouldn’t take a bit more time…. Crooks and Liars being as notoriously slow in the uptake as  we know they are.

But here it is, less than 24 hours after the  report shows up, they leap up and do what any propaganda agency is supposed to do… defend the Dear Leader.

There’s only one small problem. It’s not Corsi that dug the thing up, though he certainly ran a report on it.

Did anyone for example, notice John Cook at  the Gawker, who apparently posted the original document before Corsi’s report saw light of day?

What of the report from Raw Story?

Live Leak?

JihadWatch?

The Business Insider?

Beltway Blips?

There’s about 6,390,000 more such sources by the actual count of Google. Notable, however, is the absence of CNN, and MSNBC, and the New York Times.  Gee, I wonder why, huh? Now we understand better why The Obama White House likes those news outlets so much.

Here’s a question for Crooks and Liars: Let’s reverse the roles, here. Let’s say we had someone you could tag as being “right wing” would you run with such a report? I think we both know you would, particularly were there a Republican in the White House.. You also know as well as I the supposed mainstream press would be all over it.

But to your situation, Crooks and Liars, take my advice… you have a LOT of smearing to do… that oughta take you most of the day to come up with something to smear all those links… and all those people with.

So, please spare us the sanctimony, OK? You have other worries.

To the rest of you, yes, the search I link is overly broad. I’ll leave it to others to narrow down.  And yes, I have occasional problems with Corsi as well. But shooting the messenger seems to me, given the size of this story, that the left can’t discredit the story, so they’ll try to discredit a writer they desperately need to target. Thing is, we know why they have such a need.

Welcome, one and all to the most intense nightly read anywhere on the ‘sphere…The BitsBlog Nightly Ramble

• FLIPPANT PRESIDENT? Linda Chavez makes a point I happened to catch Savage making last night while dialing around the band last night.:
  

  We still don’t know what was behind the killings at Fort Hood this afternoon, in which 11 soldiers and the killer died, but President Obama’s rushed press conference was surprising in its flippancy nonetheless. Before he got to the issue on everyone’s mind — namely the deaths of Americans in uniform — the president gave a “shout-out” to government bureaucrats gathered for a previously scheduled conference at the Interior Department, complete with appreciative chuckles.

  

  Linda Chavez

  He treated the event like a pep rally rather than a tragic occasion with a wider audience than those gathered in the room.

  Well, yeah, after seeing the tape I confess wondering if anyone could possibly be more tone deaf than the Chosen One. I have my problems with Chavez, particularly her stands on immigration. But she nails it here, I think. David has vid here. And a decent comparison, too of a real leader reaction to such a situation.  Do you begin to understand what a terminal loser the Democrats have foisted off on this country?

• MAYBE MORE THAN TONE DEAFNESS: Jerome Corsi says today that:
  

  

  Jerome Corsi

  Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the alleged shooter in yesterday’s massacre at Fort Hood, played a homeland security advisory role in President Barack Obama’s transition into the White House, according to a key university policy institute document.

  The Homeland Security Policy Institute at George Washington University published a document May 19, entitled “Thinking Anew – Security Priorities for the Next Administration: Proceedings Report of the HSPI Presidential Transition Task Force, April 2008 – January 2009,” in which Hasan of the Uniformed Services University School of Medicine is listed on page 29 of the document as a Task Force Event Participant.

  This strikes me as both less and more of an issue than Corsi makes it. In this case, less because his role was apparently minimal. More because he was a part of the thing at all seems a security breech of the first order… and one we allowed so as not to ‘profile’.  Politically correct nonsense, again. Given the story above, and how tone deaf he was in that press conference, doesn’t it strike anyone that our government seems awfully accommodating to allow Hasan anywhere near the security arrangements. Amazing, I think to compare what our government is and is not tone deaf about.  By the way, if you’re going to complain about Corsi as a source, perhaps seeing the document for yourself will help?

• IMPERTINENT QUESTION OF THE DAY:  Does anyone suppose that if the attacker at Ft Hood yesterday were known to have associated with Teabaggers…. well, you know…. Just sayin’…
• ARE YOU A CITIZEN? Harry Ried has managed to block a Republican attempt to require the next census forms to ask people whether they are a U.S. citizen. Now, why would he do that, I wonder?
• THE REBELLION IS ON: John Boehner was at the rally I’d posted this pic of yesterday. There’s vid here. You know, maybe the GOP leadership is starting to hear the screams from the rank and file after all. I’ll be writing to this anger this weekend at Pajamas Media. Watch for it.  Now, the reason I linked Lindsay Graham’s comments to the protest should be fairly clear… the contrast between Graham’s comments and Boehner’s couldn’t be more stark if they’d tried.  There’s hope yet, scant though it be that the party can be reclaimed.
• WHEN YOU’VE LOST REICH…. and you’re a died in the wool leftist, yourself, the game is over. Riech says today:
  

  

  Robert Reich

  Obama’s focus on health care rather than jobs, when the economy is still so fragile and unemployment moving toward double digits, could make it appear that the administration has its priorities confused. While affordable health care is critically important to Americans, making a living is more urgent. Yet the administration’s efforts to date on this more basic concern have been neither particularly visible nor coherent

  Here’s where did this so as not to offend The One, but the fact of the matter is this is as close as anyone on the Democrat side has gotten to the truth since the start of this fiasco a year ago yesterday . This has nothing to do with the needs of the people, but rather it has everything to do with the political needs of  Obama.  That out in the open, you can expect the defections in Congress to start piling up in an even faster rate than they already have been over this Healthcare nonsense.    Does anybody still think that they’re going to manage to get this thing passed by the end of the year, or for that matter, by the end of next year?

• SPEAKING OF HEALTHCARE: Byron York is suggesting that House Democrats are now caught in a choice between dealing with the Democrat establishment and the wrath thereof , (particularly Nancy Pelosi) or voter backlash. Given the vote on Tuesday, this seems rather obvious comment, but the implications of it go far deeper.    It also seems to me that Robert Reich’s comments will give democrat congressman some cover for the emergency bailout procedure.  I will guarantee you that there are a number of them that will take it.
• DATAPOINT: Powerline notes that more Democrats watch Fox than MSNBC and CNN combined. Gee,w hat was I just saying at OTB the other day?
• BITSBLOG BUMPER STICKER OF THE DAY: is available here.

Rssty and the Jawa Report crew are calling the Fort Hood murders a terror attack.

Neither Clarice Feldman, nor Linda Chavez are impressed by the moron in  chief lame remarks pertaining the Fort Hood murde s, from American Thinker:

Our clueless C in C

Twelve soldiers were murdered in cold blood at Fort Hood. Thirty others were wounded. Our Commander in Chief calls a press conference and begins it with a long thanks to the Interior Department and Indians who just concluded a conference and then gives a good natured “shout out” to an attendee , all with a studied nonchalance, before he even mentions the outrage on our military base.

Linda Chavez calls it “Obama’s pet goat moment.”

The video:

Neither is Good Lt, impressed more Jawa:

Obama Can’t Tell Difference Between Congressional Medal of Honor and Congressional Gold Medal

The soldiers and families of our soldiers at Fort Hood are at the forefront of American minds and but a mere after thought for Obama.

A look back at  how a President addressed a national tragedy, video:

“And touched the face of God.”

There are lots of conflicting reports on the number of victims of  Nidal Malik Hasan and his bloody ramage at Ft Hood yesterday.  the most reliable reports that I’ve found suggest that there’s 13 dead as of this morning and some 30 others are hospitalized.

As usual, I didn’t bother trying to keep up with the moment to moment developments on the story, because there were far too many differing reports and frankly my ability to keep up with them was somewhat limited yesterday, in any event. It seemed pointless to be to simply parrot whatever we were being told, however inaccurate it was .  so, I sat back and waited until the dust settled.  That means commenting on this this morning.  This blog, is mostly a commentary, in any event.  Not a news source.

This story brings into sharp relief questions about mixed loyalties and how our government should be handling them, both inside the military and without. It’s my view , at this point that this moron should be tried by the Texas state authorities, and not the military, for one reason and one reason only; the military in this case probably would not execute him.  Texas, on the other hand, would put in in the express lane.

There are cultural aspects to this event, which are central to understanding and preventing it. Billy apparently agrees, noting yesterday:

This is culturally important, ladies & gentlemen.  In some ways, this is much worse than an attack by foreigners.

Billy also points out that there seems an awful lot of double talk going on surrounding this event.  He’s right, of course.   Certainly some of it involves the typical CYA. but frankly, to my eye a goodly amount of it involves the politically correct atmosphere in which our military is forced to work these days.   The man has been known to be a problem for at least six months, and yet the military and it’s politically correct atmosphere imposed by far too much liberalism from the commander in chief decided in its infinite wisdom to transfer the man into a hot zone.  Ironically, in the mechanization as of the system , is being a problem was precisely why he was being deployed in the first place.

There will be some heads ruling on this one, rest assured.  Rest assured also however that they won’t be the correct ones. And of course being politically challenging, it does seem likely that we’ll be prevented from addressing, publicly, the cultural and religious connections here, as causal

Look, I will be among the first to tell you that vast majority of Muslims are peaceful people.  They would no more do what this moron did than you or I would.  At the same time, there’s no denying that the vast majority of attacks against Americans, and American interests, are perpetrated by Muslims. It seems foolish to me that that is the one area of all of this that has not been addressed by are supposedly security minded government.  It’s the same nonsense that has us strip searching 85 year old grandmothers at airports.  This kind of thing is going to continue happening until such time as we get a handle on that aspect of it, and face it directly.

The dim one run on a platform of change.    After only a year in office, Barack Obama has delivered change.  Obama has turned Virginia and New Jersey red.  Fausta Wertz, Pajamas Media, swears she talking  about the election results in New Jersey:

[Chris] hristie indeed has his work cut out for him. In addition to a large number of angry Jerseyans who believe that the state has been run for decades by party bosses, and special interests, New Jersey has chronic problems and is nearing financial ruin. The problems include a huge state workforce, with the government now the largest employer in the state; pension obligations that are not fully funded and indeed were raided in the past; one of the highest levels of education spending in the country, which has not resulted in significant improvement in student performance; infrastructure problems that need to be addressed; huge government spending that needs to be reduced; and, above all, the budget deficit, now in the billions of dollars.

I ain’t so sure.   Fausta’s description of New Jersey, sounds a lot like New York,  and a lot like the Nancy Pelosi,  Harry Reid and Barack Obama vision for America.   Can Obama do for the nation what he did for Virginia and New Jersey?

Weclome one and all to the most intense nightly read anywhere on the ‘sphere…The BitsBlog Nightly Ramble

• SHELVE THE ANGER? HELL, NO!  I got some feedback last night about how Republicans, particularly the conservatives, need to “shelve their anger”, lest they drive away the center.  It’s an argument I’ve fielded for years. What the folks making such arguments forget of course is that the Democrats have been the epicenter of anger for two decades and more, now, and I don’t see them as having pushed away the political center as of November 2008.  I mean where was this argument when the Democrats were so big on blaming Bush for anything and everything, and being quite angry about it in the process? And did anyone notice the number of independent voters who came over to the Republicans day before yesterday, after several months of unrelenting anger from the right?  Has anyone noticed the mailing campaign being waged by MOVEON.ORG against any Democrat not in socialist lockstep with Obama? I submit that what needs to be cured on the right, is not anger, but apathy. I submt further that anyone who cares about any of this cannot help but get angry at what they see today from Washington. It’s time that anger came out. If the Republicans are smart, they’ll be trying to focus that anger, not quashing it. And yes that means some RINOS will get the axe. All good, that move.
• SPEAKING OF ANGER:
  

  10,000 protest against ObamaCare today

  Can someone PLEASE tell Lindsey Graham to STFU? The issue is not that the party will move too far to the right, but that people like him have been preventing ANY rightward movement at all. RINOS like Graham are not the solution to the problems of the Republican party, they’re the PROBLEM. No danger of the party moving too far right, morons like Graham will always be with us, I’m afraid… like any other illness.

• UNION AGENDA THE BIGGEST LOSER ON TUESDAY? Well, A loser certainly, but I think Barone overstates his case. He’s right that Andy Stern took a lot of damage… but frankly only insofar as he’s been a part of the left.
• IT WAS TODAY: You do know it was a year ago today, America committed suicide, right?  Think I’m overstating it?  Trust me, I’m not. Have a look at what we signed on for:
  And remember, gang, we’re only 25% of the way into his term.  He’s just getting warmed up.

• INVESTMENT? Don Surber today looks around him and wonders if we’re not headed to 15% unemployment by next year. The problem he cites directly is one of lack of private investment. What he doesn’t mention is that lack of private investment is a direct result of government shoveling billions upon billions of dollars into their own pet projects, deciding who is and who isn’t too big to fail, with money that should have been generated by cutting taxes and letting the market sort itself out.

• HAPPY BIRTHDAY: To Fellow BitsBlogger Mel Douglass, today.
• BITSBLOG BUMPERSTICKER OF THE DAY: Seen in a Hummer: EARTH FIRST! We’ll stripmine the other planets later.

Billy Beck yesterday speaking about  Nancy Pelosi:

That idiotic person really is quite reminiscent of the nearly unique state of mental defect exemplified by Soviet apparatchiki. The truth simply is not in the boundless and deep black of her soul and she cannot be approached with recourse to reality.

Billy Beck

I once heard it put that if we could hear insects think, it would most likely sound relentlessly mechanical; something like an old-time mechanical cash-register cycling endlessly, without the occasional diversion of the bell. I cannot hear the noises in her head and wouldn’t want to in any case, but she really is that inhuman.

No, Billy, the results of the thing may be ghastly, indeed,  and evil in the bargain… we agree there… but I suggest the thing is all too human. We’ve seen may times over the kind of denial that Pelosi is engaged in here…

Does Bagdhad Bob ring any bells?

“They are not near Baghdad. Don’t believe them…. They said they entered with… tanks in the middle of the capital. They claim that they – I tell you, I… that this speech is too far from the reality. It is a part of this sickness of their plan. There is no an… – no any existence to the American troops or for the troops in Baghdad at all.”

Spoken of course, while in the background of the shot American taks are passing with seeming impunity.

The similarity can be drawn to any apparatchiki, of any totalitarian government in history. Hitler, Stalin, Castro, etc etc.  And there’s the monstrosity in it, I think. But there is a lot of humanity in it, too. Humans you see, are fallible, even though they’d rather cut their own jewels off than to admit to it. That’s demonstrated pretty clearly in a classic from 1974:

The reason is clear in all cases; they’re trying to hang onto what power they can, even if that power is totally illusory.

By the way, this is why the White House hasn’t made any mention of the losses, either. No plan about it, just a reluctance to admit they got beat.

Barack Obama

Barack Obama vintage 2006, as attributed by Jeff Zeleny, New York Stimes:

“My goal is every candidate I campaign for, I want to win — every single candidate,” said Mr. Obama, who at the time was a freshman senator and had just finished traveling coast-to-coast on behalf of Democrats.

With a smile, he looked directly into the camera and said: “I love elections! It’s so much fun. It’s even more fun when you’re not on the ballot.”

It’s only fun, of course, if you win. And on Tuesday, his candidates did not.

Obama vintage Tuesday,  as attributed by Jimmy Orr, Christian Science Monitor:

[Bobby] Gibbs was asked if the president watched the returns last night. He replied no.

What inner discipline and strength of character the one must have.  Our narcissist president makes six campaign trips to New Jersey and Virginia to support Jeff Corzine and Creighton Deeds and then is indifferent to the effect of his campaigning.

That Obama spent Tuesday evening watching a basketball game mean  that he has decided on a strategy for his war of necessity in Afghanistan, or how to solve the unemployment crisis?

Welcome, one and all to the most intense nightly read anywhere on the sphere… The BitsBlog Nightly Ramble

• EXPANDING ON NY23: Yes, I put up an extended commentary on the NY23 lessons this morning.  Michelle Malkin, today,  expands on this.
  

  Conservatives owe NY-23 candidate Doug Hoffman immeasurable gratitude. He overcame impossible odds (single digits just a month ago) to come within two points of defeating Democrat Bill Owens. Hoffman had zero name recognition. National Republican Party officials dumped nearly $1 million into the race on behalf of radical leftist GOP candidate Dede Scozzafava, who then turned around, endorsed Owens and siphoned off 5 percent of the vote with her name still on the ballot after she dropped out.

  It is, as I have been saying ; the Republicans got burned specifically because they backed a liberal.  Again.

  Hoffman’s candidacy illuminated the stark difference between GOP political opportunists willing to pimp out their endorsements to any old ACORN-embracing, Working Families Party-consorting, Big Labor crony who puts an “R” by her name — and movement conservatives who refuse to “mooooderate” for the politically expedient sake of mooooderation as dictated by out-of-touch Beltway party leaders. The NRCC/RNC’s $1 million debacle will cost much more than that.

  Michelle goes on to extensively last the long-term costs involved with the Republican Establishment  backing liberals.  Donations are down, anger is higher than it ever has been in the history of the party, and this is only the beginning.  The still-open question is, will the Republican estalishment get the message?   (A nod to Michelle for the caps of the rejected donation forms…  and for fighting the good fight on this.  I note Roger Simon weighs in on all this with pretty much the same angle I went with this morning.  So does Stacy McCain.

  

  Stacy McCain

  If the Republican bosses think they’re going to pick another candidate in NY23 for 2010, they’d better think again. The grassroots conservatives — the Tea Party people, the pro-lifers, the Club for Growth, Fred and Jeri Thompson, Sarah Palin — who backed Doug Hoffman aren’t going to forget his courageous example.

  Ace, too:

  Although we lost, I repeat my previous statement that this was (a) cost-free and therefore helpful move. It’s “teaching the GOP a lesson” in a smart way, in a single election (for a term that will last only one year), that will send a short sharp shock that while we may accept RINOs where we absolutely have to, we damn sure won’t be accepting them where we can win with a conservative candidate.  We’re not just going to support liberals just to win; what is the point of “winning” then?

  This is EXACTLY what I’ve been saying for years.  The confirmation’s nice.  I will add the observation that despite running up against both of the Republican and the Democrat parties, and the massive funding both of them brought to the table, (in the Democrats case, it 95% of which came from outside the state as I indicated this morning ) Doug Hoffmann managed to pull within three points of taking that seat. So don’t be telling me from here on out that 3rd parties are not viable.  Certainly, don’t be telling me that real conservatives with the proper backing can’t win.  Don’t be telling me about how Sarah Palin doesn’t bring any political gravitas to the table.  Last night exposes all those arguments as pure crap.And I repeat, and the question still remains, will the GOP establishment get the message this time?

• OTHER INDICATORS: Homosexual “Marriage” lost bigtime  in Maine, yesterday. This kind of loss is exactly why so many states won’t let such measures come to an actual vote. I have forgotten whether not I actually made any mention of it here on the site, but I made note recently of an article in The Hill about how the GOP chair Michael Steele was defending Olympia Snowe for being such a liberal, saying “well, she works in Maine, after all.”  the vote in Maine last night turning down that referendum strikes me as laying that argument just a little bare. Ask yourself; would Olympia Snowe have voted against homosexual marriage in Maine?  If not , there seems a disconnect between the Senator and the people she supposedly represents in that state.  There also seems a bit of a disconnect between the observations of Michael Steele, and what’s really happening in that state.  Given that, it seems logical to question his conclusions in other states, as well.  My patience with Mr. Steele has come very close indeed to running out altogether.
• OBAMA: OVER… There’s no doubt in my mind that the president making several appearances in both New Jersey and Virginia, and yet being unable to swing the vote to the leftist in each case, is significant.  It’s my read that Obama is now over, in terms of his image being untarnished. In reality, the polls have been telling us that for some time, now.  But certainly the results of Obama’s efforts are making a lot of people sit up and take notice. Even the traditionally liberal press is beginning to wonder aloud if Obama as efforts in those states want part of the reason that the candidates lost so badly.  That alone is a situation that I wouldn’t even have predicted a couple of months ago.  If last night as a prologue to the midterm elections in 2010, Democrats are in for an even worse bloodbath than I’ve been predicting here.  Glenn Reynolds is certainly of the opinion that the Obama magic has faded away, and says so in his NY POST article today:
  

  But these local angles weren’t enough to keep the Obama administration out of the races. President Obama barnstormed Virginia and New Jersey — and pumped money and Joe Biden into NY-23 in support of Democratic candidate Bill Owens. (One suspects Owens would have preferred more money and less Biden.)

  Now, of course, the leftist press such as CNN, for example, are all about spending this is being nothing about Obama.  Bob Beckel was on fox news as early as 10:00 last evening mumbling words to that effect , already.  The fact of the matter is, the biggest thorn in the side of the American people right now is the economy.  The weed that the thorn, is Obama, and everybody in the country sees it.Everybody thinks this isn’t going to play a large and 2010, raise your hand.  No?  Nobody?  Well, I didn’t think so. Here’s the thing; Jon Corzine outspent Christie at a rate of about 5 to 1. That kind of money and plus repeated visits by the Chosen One,  and Corzine still couldn’t get the job done?

• BYE BYE OBAMACARE:  Yep… I mean it. I’m going to tell you that the kind of result we had last night probably killed off any hope of the government takeover of health care actually becoming law.  Lawmakers were already talking about putting it off until next year, and last night confirmed that situation.  But consider it from their standpoint; They’re worried about getting elected.  Not only do they have the left carping at them because they’re not pushing the thing hard enough, but there is no denying that the government takeover of health care is the single most unpopular measure to come forward in many years.  You can understand why anyone seeking reelection would be reluctant to sign on for such an expenditure.  During a non-election year, they might have gotten away with it.  With the election brewing in November, and with approval ratings for both Obama and Congressional Dems being at all-time lows… and I mean we’ve not seen such ratings since we started taking such polls n the 1950’s… the likelihood of such a vote being run successfully by the Democrats in June is as close to zero as no matter.  They’ve already got a hard enough time in front of them keeping  their campaigns afloat, without the Healthcare boat anchor. Anyone putting for such a measure, is likely ending their political career.  Sure, you’ll get a number of Democrats who are idealist enough to do it anyway, but not enough to get it passed.
• CARLY FIORINA: She’ll be running for Senate. I’ll be interested to see how this develops.
• BITSBLOG BUMPER STICKER OF THE DAY: comes from Give Us Liberty

Doug Hoffman narrowly lost the vote in NY23 last night, but that is almost inconsequential to the larger issues surrounding this election.

• First off, let’s make note of the fact that Owens bought his way into the race with 86% of his cash coming from outside NY23. Or is it 95%? That is not a situation that Democrats  are going to be able to maintain going into the midterms.  Democrats could afford to pour money into NY23 from outside the district, because there wasn’t very many other districts that were in play.  Come  midterms, that all changes.  So the prognosis for the future is bleak at best for Democrats.
• Secondly,  as of this writing (around 3am Eastern) the totals seem to be settling into a pattern of a 3% difference between Owens and Hoffman,, and 6% of the vote going for Scozzafava. Yes, I know Scozzafava wasn’t really running, but her late withdrawal left her name on the ballot, and 6 % of the voters there apparently either making a statement, or voting out of straight line habit or sheer idiocy,  voted for her. Let’s assume half those voters, had they understood the situation, would have voted for Hoffman, being the more conservative candidate.  That alone would create a tie situation between Hoffman and Owens.
• The real victory here belongs to the conservatives who have been trying fruitlessly to send a message to the GOP ‘establishment’ since Reagan left the stage: “Pay attention to us, because conservatives are the heart and soul of the party”.That was, in fact, the message of the 2008 election, when so many conservatives sat on their hands, instead of voting for someone who decidedly does not meet the requirement for the title “Conservative”… John McCain, and that was the message sent yet again up in Northern NY when Republicans there rejected the “liberal lite” positions of Dede Scozzafava in such numbers that the GOP leadership was forced to act. In the case of NY23, the perception of the GOP rank and file was then reinforced as Scozzafava endorsed the Democrat in the race.

I quote once again, the clip that DavidL put up last night:

Rush Limbaugh

Scozzafava has screwed every RINO in the coun — we can say that she’s guilty of widespread bestiality. She has screwed every RINO in the country. Everyone can see just see how phony and dangerous they are. You know, 2010 might be a nightmare for PETA. Two animals may become extinct; RINOs and Blue Dog Democrats. Pelosi’s gonna kill off the Blue Dogs, and the conservatives are gonna finally get rid of RINOs. The American people have had enough.

That is the real victory here.  The stage is now set for the party to move back to the right and to dump the RINOs.  The idea that there will not be enough Democrat thumbs to keep the dike from leaking in 2010, means that come 2010 the dam will burst wide open on the Democrats… IF… and IF I say, and ONLY if… the GOP establishment gets out of the way and follows the dictates of the GOP rank and file.

Hoffman winning in NY23 would have been icing on the cake. As it is, I’ll settle for what we got… the ground moving underneath the GOP establishment at long last. The big question now is how the establishment will respond. The party’s survival depends, I think, on their going with the will of the GOP rank and file. The movement is already marching. It can be a  figurative parade the Establishment leads, or it can be a figurative lynch mob.

Your Move, GOP establishment.