Tommy Frank, RIP

Scott Fybush an NERW relates some sad news, today.

*It was supposed to be a joyous week in upstate NEW YORK – the debut of the airstaff at Ithaca’s new top-40 station, Finger Lakes Radio Group’s WFIZ (95.5 Odessa). In the course of just a few months, PD/morning man Tommy Frank had arrived from Indiana, assembled a crew that included morning co-host Heather B., assistant PD/night guy Justin Wright and the syndicated Ryan Seacrest in afternoons.

On Wednesday, “Z95.5” closed out its inaugural 10,000-song commercial-free stunt with the debut of Frank’s morning show, followed later in the day by Wright’s on-air debut.

And then the joy gave way to tragedy: early Thursday morning, Frank was found dead in his apartment, felled by a heart attack at the age of 42 (or possibly 43, if the dates shown on WFIZ’s website tribute are correct), leaving behind a young son.

(Sigh)

Not exactly the way I’d start a station.

Does anyone recall that the CBS poll, which was right in the middle of them back in 2004, had Kerry by five points?

DavidL wisely quotes Ed Morrissy, Hot Air

Because, remember: it’s selfish to think that you can distribute the wealth you earned more efficiently and intelligently than Obama and his small, elite group of policymakers. Why, look how well the government performed when it decided it knew better how to grant mortgages than the lenders themselves.

I quote this again, because I want you to understand how central this one point is. Thinhk of it, Central planning… GOVERNMENTAL central planning is behind all of what the Democrats propose.

The issue of Socialist Security… McCain says we … you and I, individually… can do better on retirement planning than the government can. Obama, on the other hand, thinks government the only way and is against privatizing Socialist Security. He suggests government can guarantee retirement income. This of course ignores the obvious; that if the economy is in the crapper because of their meddling, the dollars set by in Socialist Security aren’t going to be worth much. Example:

In their objections to privatizing Socialist Security, they point to the recent collapse on Wall Street as their biggest fear for a privatized Social Security. But here’s the thing; The Democrats are the ones who caused that whole collapse in the first place, by means of what Ed so aptly describes. So, is their argument really to be that the reason we shouldn’t take our retirements away form the government, is because they might screw up the non-governmental workings of the economy again while trying to buy votes?

Obama wants government paid for  higher education for everyone. What he won’t say of course is that handout benefits the leftists running our educational systems.  Buying votes again.

Perhaps a look at their view of ‘charity’ will help you understand the problem.

We find this last week, that Obama’s Aunt lives in poverty in a Boston slum.  For most people, charity starts at home. Not with Mr. Obama, who apparently figured the government would tend to such things. I mean, of course leave aside the issue that she’s an illegal alien.And his familyt isn’t the only place he’s fallen short in so far as chaity. David quotes Paterico:

Looking at Obama’s charitable giving in since 2000 based on his tax returns, we find that Obama consistently refused to follow his own advice to “spread the wealth” when he had the opportunity to do so. This is especially true in years when he made nearly $250,000 or more. . . . [F]rom 2000-2004, Obama’s charitable giving was less than 1 percent.

We see Joe Biden, who made millions in the last two years, gave a grand total of $3300 to charity.  Sam Youngman at The Hill reports that Sarah Palin gives more to chairty than Joe Biden. Well, heck, Sam, I could have told you that without looking at the records. In fact, I’ll tell you that even I gave more to charity than Biden did, again without looking. How do I know? A Democrat thinks charity is the work of government.

Last June, I noted an artle at The Daily Mail:

George Orwell once wrote that politics was closely related to social identity. ‘One sometimes gets the impression,’ he wrote in The Road To Wigan Pier, ‘that the mere words socialism and communism draw towards them with magnetic force every fruit-juice drinker, nudist, sandal-wearer, sex-maniac, Quaker, nature-cure quack, pacifist and feminist in England’.

Orwell was making an observation. But today a whole body of academic research shows he was correct: your politics influence the manner in which you live your life. And the news is not so good for those on the political Left.

There is plenty of data that shows that Right-wingers are happier, more generous to charities, less likely to commit suicide – and even hug their children more than those on the Left.

This is a shock to me not at all, except possibly that someone did get charged under hate crime laws for printing it in what’s left of the UK. The writer, Peter Schweizer, continues from there:

In the Sixties, we saw the beginning of a narcissism and self-absorption that gripped the Left and has not let go.

The full-scale embrace of the importance of self-awareness, self-discovery and being ‘true’ to oneself, along with the idea that the State should care for the less fortunate, has created a swathe of Left-wing people who want to outsource their obligations to others.

Outsource it to where? Why, to government of course. The left feels it’s doing it’s part if they’re paying into a system ostensibly designed to maintain the poor at a minimum standard of living and solve all their problems. The fact that the government systems the left think so highly of does not do so, matters not at all. Don’t bother the left with mere facts.

The statistics I base this on come from the General Social Survey, America’s premier social research database, but they are just as relevant to the UK, as I believe political belief systems drive one’s attitudes, regardless of where you happen to live.

Those surveyed were asked: ‘Is it your obligation to care for a seriously injured/ill spouse or parent, or should you give care only if you really want to?’ Of those describing themselves as ‘conservative’, 71 per cent said it was. Only 46 per cent of those on the Left agreed.

To the question: ‘Do you get happiness by putting someone else’s happiness ahead of your own?’, 55 per cent of those who said they were ‘very conservative’ said Yes, compared with 20 per cent of those who were ‘very liberal‘.

It’s been my experience that conservatives like to talk about things outside of themselves while progressives like to discuss themselves: how they are feeling and what their desires are. That might make for a good therapy session but it’s not much fun over a long dinner.

There’s a lot more of course, and I will advise you to go and RTWT.

But a few more points for us to bounce off of:

Studies also indicate that those on the Left are less likely to give to charity or to volunteer their time to charity

Well, why should THEY get involved? After all, there’s government for that kind of thing.

Uber-progressive Barbra Streisand gives lots of money to charity but the largest recipients are not organisations that feed the hungry – the cash goes to advocacy organisations such as The Bill Clinton Foundation.

Similarly, Michael Moore gives to film festivals and elite cultural institutions such as the Lincoln Center – but barely a penny goes to needy people.

The ideas of the left surrounding charity are completely nihilist. Supporting the poor and the needy is government work, to the left. Charity, they view not as supporting non-government engines that actually help the poor, but rather to these, charity is supporting political groups that support their own worldview. As we’ve pointed out often enough previously in these spaces, government isn’t charity, it is force.

Stossel over at Townhall said recently:

But the idea that liberals give more is a myth. Of the top 25 states where people give an above-average percentage of their income, all but one (Maryland) were red — conservative — states in the last presidential election.

“When you look at the data,” says Syracuse University professor Arthur Brooks, “it turns out the conservatives give about 30 percent more. And incidentally, conservative-headed families make slightly less money.”

Researching his book, “Who Really Cares” , Brooks found that the conservative/liberal difference goes beyond money:

“The people who give one thing tend to be the people who give everything in America. You find that people who believe it’s the government’s job to make incomes more equal, are far less likely to give their money away.”

Conservatives are even 18 percent more likely to donate blood.

Pretty much confirms what Schweizer says, doesn’t it? And Brooks, for that matter:

You find that people who believe it’s the government’s job to make incomes more equal, are far less likely to give their money away.

Ann Coulter gives us a whuge example of what we’re talking about:

“George Soros is worth $7 billion! Couldn’t he get by on, say, $1 billion and donate the rest to the tsunami victims? If gun owners have to explain why they ‘need’ a so-called ‘assault rifle,’ shouldn’t Soros have to explain why he ‘needs’ $7 billion? Last year, Soros announced that the central focus of his life would be removing Bush from office. Would that Soros could refocus that energy on alleviating the suffering of tsunami victims”

If Soros’ chairty given came up as far as 10% of his poliical activism, and his current meddling in the oil markets, think it might have made an actual dent in poverty? But where does Soros, other than the above mentyioned places, spend his money? Front magazine points out one such place, and it’s one that at the time was identified closely with John Kerry and his wife.  Front Page said at the time:

“The Foundation replaced the 9/11 Fund with the “Democratic Justice Fund,” which was established with the aid of George Soros’ Open Society Institute. (Currency speculator and pro-drug advocate Soros is, like Teresa Heinz Kerry, a major contributor to Tides, having donated more than $7 million.) The “Democratic Justice Fund” seeks to ease restrictions on Muslim immigration to the United States, particularly from countries designated by the State Department as terrorist nations.

Tides has also given grant money to the Council for American Islamic Relations. Ostensibly a Muslim civil rights group, CAIR is in fact one of the leading anti-anti-terrorism organizations within the Wahhabi Lobby, with links to Hamas. CAIR regularly opposes and demonizes American efforts to fight terrorism, claiming, for instance, that Homeland Security measures are responsible for an undocumented surge in ‘hate crimes’.”

Says the article:

“CAIR officials have reason to fight Bush’s anti-terrorism measures: all too many CAIR officials are on the record supporting terrorism. CAIR Executive Director Nihad Awad openly stated in 1994, “I am a supporter of the Hamas movement.” Community Affairs Director Bassem K. Khafagi has been arrested for visa and bank fraud. Randall Royer, a Communications Specialist and Civil Rights Coordinator at CAIR, was arrested along with a group of Islamic radicals in Virginia for allegedly planning jihad. CAIR has defended terrorist “charities” shut down by the Bush administration. Every few months some CAIR campus official is arrested for aiding and abetting terrorism.”

Now that we’ve got a handle on how low the left can go in it’s ‘charity‘, let’s examine once again, the principles involved with real chairty: As a Christian, I see the line drawn rather clearly that we are under a scripturally ordained responsibility… we as individuals….not the government. Not even as one church or another. As individuals. Christ himself said:

” Give unto Ceasar that which is Ceasar’s and give unto God, that which is God’s.”

There’s a rather thick line being drawn between charity and government. Confiscation, is not charity, and it is certainly not the act of an individual. Charity is the realm of God, and the individual….not of government….  Charity is people taking personal responsibility to helping their fellow man… not dumping it into the arms of government. The basics apply here…the government taking my money and spending it on someone else… even someone who arguably needs it, does not constitute ‘Charity‘. Then again, the left isn’t about charity, and actually helping people. Peter Schweizer from the mail comments again:

Progressives see economic equality as the highest form of social justice, so they have become obsessed with questions of income inequality.

Can there be any surprise then that those on the Left tend to be more envious and jealous of successful people? That’s what studies indicate.

Now, you have a fair idea what Barack Obama is talking about when he talks about using taxation not for the purpose of funding the government, but for the purpose of ‘fairness’. Now we see why the last few months of Democrat sales pitches amounts to class war rhetoric, as the far left has always done.

Let it be said that BO’s plan plan for the West Virginia and Pennsylvania economies, just plain stinks, video:

Is this what BO means by post partisan politics?

Because, remember: it’s selfish to think that you can distribute the wealth you earned more efficiently and intelligently than Obama and his small, elite group of policymakers. Why, look how well the government performed when it decided it knew better how to grant mortgages than the lenders themselves!

Ed Morrissy, Hot Air

.

Doesn’t it make you wonder why Barack Obama never once spoke up against this man until it was clear the association would cost him an election?

Update:(Bit)

From Atlas Shrugs:

Nadler is asked how Obama could sit in Reverend Jeremiah Wright’s church for 500 Sundays listing to the anti-semitic, anti-American diatribes

“This is not going to be complimentary to Senator Obama ….. he didn’t have the political courage to make a statement and walk out.”

I’m quite sure Nadler will regret saying this, but in the end, if he was honest with himself on ANY level what else could he say? For that hopnesty, he’ll be  ousted by the Democrats. Watch and see.

WASHINGTON (AP) – Barack Obama’s aunt, a Kenyan woman who has been quietly living in public housing in Boston, is in the United States illegally after an immigration judge rejected her request for asylum four years ago, The Associated Press has learned.

Being poor,a nd being (Illegally) in these United States with no job, and in public housing, apparently didn’t stop the woman from donating $260 to the campaign, though. Flopping Aces notes:

According to the Federal Election Commission: “The Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA) prohibits any foreign national from contributing, donating or spending funds in connection with any federal, state, or local election in the United States, either directly or indirectly.”

Jules Crittenden sniffs at the story:

It was not immediately clear how Onyango might have qualified for public housing with a standing deportation order.

That is a very good question. Boston Housing Authority … Mayor Thomas M. Menino … Gov. Deval Patrick … hmmm. I wonder. How do these things happen? Probably just an oversight.

I was starting to wonder about you, Jules.

In any event, perhaps she can tell us where Obama was born, huh?

How much of a problem will this cause? Likely not much. Then again, given how tight this race really is, it’s not going to take all that much, either.

Michelle notes:

Just you watch: After sitting silent as Joe The Plumber’s records were rummaged by Ohio government employees, the fairweather privacy rights crowd will wake up and start making noise over this.

Well, there is that. This, too, from a commenter there:

“So let me get this straight. Millionaire Obama doesn’t use his wealth to help his poor illegal alien Aunt get out of public housing, but if I complain about Obama wanting to raise my taxes to ‘spread the wealth around’ I’m the selfish one?”

Well, of course. It’s as I’ve been saying all along. Liberals consider the realm of charity to be government… and that individuals have no responsibility for it.  Look again at the charitable contributions of Joe Biden. Or, perhaps more correctly, the lack of them.

And, for that matter, look at Obama himself, in that area.

“Is McCain making a move? The three-day average holds steady, but McCain outpolled Obama today, 48% to 47%. He is beginning to cut into Obama’s lead among independents, is now leading among blue collar voters, has strengthened his lead among investors and among men, and is walloping Obama among NASCAR voters. Joe the Plumber may get his license after all. “Obama’s lead among women declined, and it looks like it is occurring because McCain is solidifying the support of conservative women, which is something we saw last time McCain picked up in the polls. If McCain has a good day tomorrow, we will eliminate Obama’s good day three days ago, and we could really see some tightening in this rolling average. But for now, hold on.

This would be consistant with not only what we’ve been saying all along, but with previous races McCain’s been in. There’s Limbaugh, too…

Now, if you were with us yesterday and you remember the blog post at HillBuzz by the Obama campaign worker named Sarah who basically threw the lid off what is actually going on in the Obama campaign. They’re not nearly as far ahead as they have convinced everybody in the media, and a lot of voters.  Everything about their campaign, seminar callers, seminar bloggers, seminar responders on YouTube, seminar everything; it is all image; it is being done to craft this notion that there is no stopping Obama, that it is a fait accompli.  The only problem is Obama is not behaving that way. Obama is now trying to lower expectations. He’s going to states that were in the bag

I noted that the other day…. those are not the actions of someone who knows he’s winning. The bottom line, is he’s not, folks.

Passed on by a friend of mine today…

 

[wp_youtube]TG4fe9GlWS8[/wp_youtube]

I can’t add a thing to that.

Cross-posted from The Conservative Reader.

They way Barack Obama covets other people’s money, he can not be a Christian, video: 

Tigerhawk offers a pity response to BO  and McQ, Q and O, a more analylitical one.   As Patterico demonstrates, BO only thinks of charity as giving away other people’s money,  not his own:

Looking at Obama’s charitable giving in since 2000 based on his tax returns, we find that Obama consistently refused to follow his own advice to “spread the wealth” when he had the opportunity to do so. This is especially true in years when he made nearly $250,000 or more. . . . [F]rom 2000-2004, Obama’s charitable giving was less than 1 percent.

The Sister comments:

Yeah, and not only are you “selfish” if you oppose socialism, you’re not being sufficiently “patriotic”, either

The only thing BO can do now to make peace with me is to take a vow of poverty.   I will not be told  by a millionaire. who wears fifteen hundred dollars suits and lives in mansion, that I am selfish.   Will you?

I am selfish.  You are selfish.   All human beings are selfish.   Show mw a person who claims not to be selfish, and all you either a fool or a liar.

BO is campaigning on a promise to give some ninety-five percnet of tax payers a tax cut.  Yet BO calls those who oppose his pie in the sky scheme selfish. Jake Tapper.   If opposition to paying yet higher taxes is selfish, BO is pandering to selfish voters by promising them a tax cut.    If BO were conststent, he would promise everybody a tax increase.   Then we could all be unselfish.

Then BO simply is not very smart.

[i]t’s that when we actually make sure that everybody’s got a shot – when young people can all go to college 

Aside from a windfall profit to colleges (BO supporters?) to what end do we send everybody to college.  If something like twenty-two  percent of all positions require a college education, if you send a hundred percent to college, there will still be only two-percent of positions needing a college education.   For example, the number of chemical engineers Kodak hires is based on the companies need for chemical engineers and not the number of chemical engineering graduates.  

BO’s proposal would simply saddle seventy-eight percent with college debt with little hope of getting a college level position.   The job market has no need for every  applicant to have a college degree, and even the One can not change that.   Rather the One is just too stupid to realize it.

BO seems to realize the spending money fuels the economy:

Everybody starts spending that money, they decide maybe I can afford a new car, maybe I can afford a computer for my child. They can buy the products and services that businesses are selling and everybody is better off. All boats rise

What BO does not grasp is that money that is not taxed aaway by the state can also be spent.  BO seems to think that for in order for a dollar to be spent, it first must be taxed away from the person who earned it.    The more money is spent, the more the economy grows, and lower marginal tax rates encourage people to earn more money.

The problem for BO is he has only studied under Marxists and the Marxists have never understood economics.  Witness the number of success socialist economies, to wit zero.

BlogRush, a free service that provided a means to network out blog postings to other sites with similar topics, has shut down.

John Reese started the service to helps sites like ours get more traffic.  Although we certainly did see a small increase in traffic, our interest in the service here at TCR was in providing easy access for our readers to other resources on the internet that spoke to political topics.

While we certainly have other channels that provide access to the world of political debate, we’re disappointed to see John shut down BlogRush.  He did not make any money at it, and wasn’t focused on that as much as providing a quality service.  Evidently, the reasons for shutting down the service (found here) were related to issues around generating adequate traffic between sites and managing gaming and quality issues.

Sites like TCR run on a shoestring, and services like BlogRush are always an opportunity to improve what we do to provide great content to our readers.  People like John Reese step out and try big ideas which sometimes take off, and other times don’t survive.  As John said in his letter:

I hope the failure of this service doesn’t in any way discourage other entrepreneurs from coming up with crazy ideas at 4AM (like I did with this one) and from “going for it” to just try and see if something will work. Without trying there can be no success. And as we all know, ideas are worthless without action. The Web wouldn’t be what it is today without entrepreneurs trying all sorts of crazy ideas.

Thanks, John for the great service, and I hope the next idea takes you further!

Addendum: Bit

Indeed. I’m still getting hits from various sites that picked up their refeed. It was a great idea.

Well Barack Obama has sure appears to have the early lead among the stupid, video:

Hat tip: Ace.

Welcome dear reader, to the most intense nightly read on the ‘sphere… BitsBlog’s Nightly Ramble.

It’s Halloween. Around here that means a bunch of kids wearing their new costumes, which you’d never notice unless they took their coats off It’s a bit warmer than usual tonight, so maybe this year will be different. . Only a couple days left ’till the election. Lots to discuss. Let’s get to it.

• Here’s the very first line from a news article on CNS:
  

  President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad predicted on Thursday that the imminent collapse of international “bullies” would be a good opportunity to spread Islam and Iran’s Islamic Revolution

  And from The Hill we see Democrats already arguing about who gets the pie that bigger government is going to bring. Among the principle players in that argument? Charlie Rangle, his ethics probe forgotten. There’s a subtext there of a split among Democrats, but leaving that aside for the moment, it seems clear that there’s a lot of lips being licked, and a lot of drooling going on at the prospect of how what’s left of America can be feasted upon once Tuesday happens.  Democrats are reportedly planning on redecorating their offices… at taxpayer expense, of course…

• It’s true….The conventional wisdom is saying Obama has it all wrapped up. However, I keep hearing Republican internal polling is saying something rather different than the CW. Nothing I can link to, of course, since the stuff isn’t supposed to be released at all to the general public. And yes, I’m only getting this stuff second hand… But it’s remarkable just how different the internals are from what the MSM has been force feeding us.  For example in New Jersey and Michigan AND Pennsyvania, McCain is actually LEADING, for the first time. Yes, I said Michigan, and New Jersey. Reports on counts of early voting  down in Florida show McCain leading by around 3 points.  What I fnd most interesting is the undecideds and their movements… they’re going for McCain at a rate of around 4 to 1. All the Democrats I talk to are admitting to is that it’s going to be ‘close’.  Since they weren’t admitting to that before, I suspect we’re in for a fairly good show Tuesday night.  Even Novak is saying the Democrats will fall short of their much looked for 60 vote majority in the Senate.Do you even begin to understand what a shift away from what we’ve been fed this is?  At the least, we’re not going to know what’s what until the day after, and possibly not then. On the other hand, if the Republican internal polling is anything like accurate, (And it always has been in the past election cycles we’ve monitored here)  then we’re about to see some really strange behavior on the part of the Dinosaur Media.   Mass suicide, I wouldn’t rule out, either. McQ notes that
  

  it’ll be an unexpected upset bigger than Dewey v. Truman.

  Well, no, Bruce, because that phrase assumes we were getting the truth of the polling, all along. If McCain does win, I suspect there’s going to be a lot of back and forth about the accuracy of the polls and the discussion on the bais of the MSM will be renewed as well.

• The prevailing attitude, even in Cleveland, this morning is if we elect this socialist, we deserve everything we get.  Amazing given the politics out there. I like the area there, I really do… but I have to tell you their politics, particularly in the downtown areas of Cuyahoga Cty make california seem placidly sane, sometimes.
• In discussing this with a few folks online this morning, one thing pops out, though… and it’s worth considering; Pollsters, even Democrat pollsters,  when gathering their numbers, tend to stick to people who can legally vote.  Given the level of vote fraud we already know about, it seems to me reasonable to suggest that  the final outcome of the voting may be altered by illegal votes.  We’ll see how this pans out.
• Why does anyone care what Francis Fukuyama thinks on ANY topic?
• Remember that thing out in west LA where they had an effegy of Sarah Palin hanging by a rope? Remember what I said about replacing it with an effegy of Obama, and see what happens?   Well…  Case in point. Do you understand the levels of double standard being applied, here?
• The price of oil, as we predicted here, continues to fall. And yes, to answer some feedback, I know I’ve been harping on this.  But keep in mind, I’ve only mentioned this topic about one tenth as many times as I was told I was full of it on the subject.
• Coleman has sued Franken for defamation. A reasonable response, actually. I’d have decked him.
• I see Cindy Sheehan’s HQ was ripped up a bit.  I see the fine hand of Pelosi supporters in this. Fine, though, let them tear each other apart, and hopefully, we’ll see Pelosi get pulled down over it.
• Still on the back burner, is the relationship between Chris Dodd and Countrywide.
• After years of trying to create a reseccsion when one really didn’t exist, the Democrats finally have something they can point to. Yeah, it’s still not a resession, (You’d need another month like that to qualify, in reality) but they’re desperate. What’s fact when they’ve got an election to win?
•  This one actually made it to the ‘Snark of the day” list for today…. speaking of the half-hour Obama-mercial… All Sham, no Wow…. Which really is our take on Obama himself.  I repeat what I said last night, folks;Remember this..  That whole thing last night… those half hours he bought on those networks… wouldn’t have been possible, had he not broken his promise about public financing. Given that, why should anyone trust anything else he says?
• You’re right, Andy. Kurtz deserves huge kudos for his work.
• Explain to me again about how all cultures are equal. And please explain to me how that is different from this.
•  

Like I said, the only people who would be inclined to watch a 30-minute infomercial on Obama would be the Obamanauts, and a 21% rating bears that out. Almost 80% of television viewers took a pass on Obama, even for 30 minutes. Those are not good numbers, especially for prime time.

Ed Morrissey, Hot Air.

Were not the One’s nation, yet.

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