Ann Coulter remarks in Human Events on the irony of media’s “Shut-up-and-go-away!” approach to Hillary’s primary popular vote victory.

When Gore won the popular vote in the 2000 election by half a percentage point, but lost the Electoral College — or, for short, “the constitutionally prescribed method for choosing presidents” — anyone who denied the sacred importance of the popular vote was either an idiot or a dangerous partisan.

But now Hillary has won the popular vote in a Democratic primary, while Obambi has won under the rules. In a spectacular turnabout, media commentators are heaping sarcasm on our plucky Hillary for imagining the “popular vote” has any relevance whatsoever. …

After nearly eight years of having to listen to liberals crow that Bush was “selected, not elected,” this is a shocking about-face. Apparently unaware of the new party line that the popular vote amounts to nothing more than warm spit, just last week HBO ran its movie “Recount,” about the 2000 Florida election, the premise of which is that sneaky Republicans stole the presidency from popular vote champion Al Gore. (Despite massive publicity, the movie bombed, with only about 1 million viewers, so now HBO is demanding a “recount.”)

So where is Kevin Spacey from HBO’s “Recount,” to defend Hillary, shouting: “WHO WON THIS PRIMARY?”

Results:

Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by over 300,000 votes. Barack Obama has 130 more pledged delegates.

POPULAR VOTE (all primaries and caucuses)
Hillary Clinton: 17,785,009
Barack Obama: 17,479,990

PLEDGED DELEGATES
Barack Obama: 1766.5
Hillary Clinton: 1639.5

And, on that basis, Hillary is reported “by informed sources” to be planning to drop out of the race and concede on Friday or Saturday.

The mystery is why “pledged delegates” are assumed to be set in stone.

Suppose Patrick Fitzgerald follows up his recent conviction of prominent Obama supporter (and real estate subsidizer) Antoin Rezko with a pre-August indictment of B. Hussein himself?

Suppose the Michelle Obama “Whitey” tape is produced pre-August, and provokes scrutiny revealing intimate ties on the part of the media’s preferred candidate to Louis Farrakhan and his Nation of Islam?

Barack Obama has been a national figure for a very short time, his relatively obscure career in Illinois politics is only now gradually becoming known, and there is a real possibility that the microscopic and intense attention inevitable in a presidential campaign might any day pop open one of his personal closet doors revealing a deal-breaking skeleton.

Short-circuiting the convention process and conducting a media-led instant coronation doubtless gratifies the infantile democrat party base, which can happily worship, and fantasize over the New Age and Socialist Utopia soon to be created by the arrival of their redeemer and god/king, but wasn’t the whole idea of having superdelegates supposed to be preventing these kinds of democrat party swoons? Weren’t superdelegates supposed to be wiser, more politically astute party leaders who would stop the crazies from charging over the cliff and nominating George McGovern II?

So here we are, and they’re apparently ready to line up behind the most leftwing democrat in the Senate, a candidate with no record of meaningful political accomplishment beyond miraculously getting elected to the Senate, who lost the popular vote in the democrat party primaries, and who already seems to have a great deal of disadvantageous personal baggage against a war hero with strong cross-party-lines appeal. Those democrats obviously have a death wish.

Conventional Liberal Republican versus wacky leftwing democrat who opposes national defense, it’s 1972 all over again. Quick, somebody hand B. Hussein a shovel, he’s going to need it to dig himself out from underneath the landslide come November.

Kathy Grimes say Giuliani has it.

The word is that one of the Republican candidates no longer in the race (Rudy) acquired the tape. Republicans will most likely hold the tape until the fall. Because if Hillary had it, she’d let it out now to get rid of Obama.

Things will only get more interesting. Either way, Michelle Obama has using her own mouth, put her husband’s foot in it.

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All postings on this story.

President Obama ordering the oceans not to rise

Jennifer Rubin, at Commentary, thinks Obama needs to get over himself.

Barack Obama: “I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.” There is a bizarre arrogance. Or is it ignorance? Or just youthful overreach? He does know that we have had government paid health care for decades and that real people actually do work in America, sometimes after they have been unemployed for some time( i.e. jobless), right?

At some point will voters say, come on? Maybe yes, maybe no. But they might listen better if they weren’t being yelled at by someone who really hasn’t ever provided health care or jobs, let alone changed the ocean levels.

From JET Magazine, July 26, 2004

Rainbow/PUSH Coalition Holds 33rd Annual Conference In Chicago

CAPTION: Picture 11, Rev. Willie T. Barrow, chairman emerita, Rainbow/PUSH Coalition, enjoys the Women’s Luncheon with Michelle Obama, wife of U.S. Senate candidate Barack Obama of Illinois and executive director of community affairs, University of Chicago Hospital, Shoshana Johnson, the nation’s first Black female POW and former Iraqi captive, and Mrs. Jamell Meeks, wife of the Rev. James Meeks, vice president, Rainbow/PUSH, and Rev. Dr. Barbara King, Mother Khadijah Farrakhan, wife of Nation of Islam leader Minister Louis Farrakhan, and Judge Arnette Hubbard.

HillBuzz suggests the devastating tape containing Michelle Obama’s “Whitey” speech wasn’t terribly hard to lay hands on. Trinity Church was selling it on DVD up until this last March!

Here’s what’s known so far:

The Michelle Obama Rant Tape was filmed between June 26th – July 1st 2004 in Chicago, IL at the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition Conference at Trinity United Church: specifically the Women’s Event.

Michelle Obama appeared as a panelist alongside Mrs. Khadijah Farrakhan and Mrs. James Meeks.

Bill Clinton spoke during the Conference, as did Bill Cosby and other speakers, but not at the panel Michelle attended.

Michelle Obama spoke at the Women’s Event, but referenced Bill Clinton in her rant — his presence at the conference was the impetus for her raving, it seems.

For about 30 minutes, Michelle Obama launched into a rant about the evils of America, and how America is to blame for the problems of Africa. Michelle personally blamed President Clinton for the deaths of millions of Africans and said America is responsible for the genocide of the Tutsis and other ethnic groups. She then launched into an attack on “whitey”, and talked about solutions to black on black crime in the realm of diverting those actions onto white America. Her rant was fueled by the crowd: they reacted strongly to what she said, so she got more passionate and enraged, and that’s when she completely loses it and says things that have made the mouths drop of everyone who’s seen this.

The “tape” is a DVD that Trinity United sold on its website, and possibly offered free for download up until March 2008 when Trinity’s site was scrubbed and the DVDs were no longer offered for sale.

This outburst happened just one month before the 2004 Democratic Convention, when Barack Obama delivered the keynote address.

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All postings on this story.

Fouad Ajami, in the Wall Street Journal, answers liberal recriminations over the war’s origin occasioned by the McClellan book by pointing to results.

Of all that has been written about the play of things in Iraq, nothing that I have seen approximates the truth of what our ambassador to Baghdad, Ryan Crocker, recently said of this war: “In the end, how we leave and what we leave behind will be more important than how we came.”

It is odd, then, that critics have launched a new attack on the origins of the war at precisely the time a new order in Iraq is taking hold. But American liberal opinion is obsessive today. Scott McClellan can’t be accused of strategic thinking, but he has been anointed a peer of Zbigniew Brzezinski and Brent Scowcroft. A witness and a presumed insider – a “Texas loyalist” – has “flipped.”

Mr. McClellan wades into the deep question of whether this war was a war of “necessity” or a war of “choice.” …

Nowadays, we hear many who have never had a kind word to say about the Iraq War pronounce on the retreat of the jihadists. It is as though the Islamists had gone back to their texts and returned with second thoughts about their violent utopia. It is as though the financiers and the “charities” that aided the terror had reconsidered their loyalties and opted out of that sly, cynical trade. Nothing could be further from the truth. If Islamism is on the ropes, if the regimes in the saddle in key Arab states now show greater resolve in taking on the forces of radicalism, no small credit ought to be given to this American project in Iraq.

We should give the “theorists” of terror their due and read them with some discernment. To a man, they have told us that they have been bloodied in Iraq, that they have been surprised by the stoicism of the Americans, by the staying power of the Bush administration.

There is no way of convincing a certain segment of opinion that there are indeed wars of “necessity.” A case can always be made that an aggressor ought to be given what he seeks, that the costs of war are prohibitively high when measured against the murky ways of peace and of daily life.

“Wars are not self-starting,” the noted philosopher Michael Walzer wrote in his seminal book, “Just and Unjust Wars.” “They may ‘break out,’ like an accidental fire, under conditions difficult to analyze and where the attribution of responsibility seems impossible. But usually they are more like arson than accident: war has human agents as well as human victims.”

Fair enough. In the narrow sense of command and power, this war in Iraq is Mr. Bush’s war. But it is an evasion of responsibility to leave this war at his doorstep. This was a war fought with congressional authorization, with the warrant of popular acceptance, and the sanction of United Nations resolutions which called for Iraq’s disarmament. It is the political good fortune (in the world of Democratic Party activists) that Sen. Barack Obama was spared the burden of a vote in the United States Senate to authorize the war. By his telling, he would have us believe that he would have cast a vote against it. But there is no sure way of knowing whether he would have stood up to the wind. …

It is not easy to tell people of threats and dangers they have been spared. The war put on notice regimes and conspirators who had harbored dark thoughts about America and who, in the course of the 1990s, were led to believe that terrible deeds against America would go unpunished. A different lesson was taught in Iraq. Nowadays, the burden of the war, in blood and treasure, is easy to see, while the gains, subtle and real, are harder to demonstrate. Last month, American casualties in Iraq were at their lowest since 2003. The Sunnis also have broken with al Qaeda, and the Shiite-led government has taken the war to the Mahdi Army: Is it any wonder that the critics have returned to the origins of the war?

Five months from now, the American public will vote on this war, in the most dramatic and definitive of ways.

But I guess they were mistaken.

Apparently, delegates informing reporters of their intentions months from now permanently commits them, and the mainstream media can then immediately count the votes and proclaim the winner. The nominating process is conducted by the media.

NYT:

A last-minute rush of Democratic superdelegates, as well as the results from the final primaries, in Montana and South Dakota (Obama won Montana, Clinton won South Dakota -DZ), pushed Mr. Obama over the threshold of winning the 2,118 delegates needed to be nominated at the party’s convention in August.

According to the media, it’s all over, Obama has won decisively, despite his losing 8 of the last 15 primaries, and despite his being defeated by Clinton in the popular vote: 13,243,919 to 13,104,492.

But Hillary is not conceding, and Andrew Sullivan sums up the indignation of all the Obama-infatuated moonbats everywhere.

The speech tonight was a remarkable one for a candidate who has lost the nomination, though not remarkable for a Clinton. It was an assertion that she had won the nomination and a refusal to concede anything to her opponent. Classless, graceless, shameless, relentless. Pure Clinton.

Maybe it’s not over yet, Andrew.

In Winchendon, Massachusetts, a veteran who fired salutes on Memorial Day gave ten-year-old Bradley Geslak two empty discharged brass cartridge cases. (Little boys love these. I know, because, when I was that age, I treasured any empty cartridge cases I found.)

A teacher at Toy Town Elementary School saw the 4th-grader fondling one of his souvenirs at lunch the next day, confiscated the kid’s prized possession, and arranged for him to be suspended for five days.

Despite parent’s requests the school is refusing to give the kid back his souvenir, and has threatened to assign the child to a probation officer.

Worcester Telegram via Nancy Mathis.

The government that can’t pick up the garbage believes it should run your life.

Janet Daley asks rhetorically, faced with the astonishing proliferation of pettyfogging, counterproductive, and absurd new measures by the Labour Government. No, she concludes, what we are observing are only the death spasms of a failed system of belief.

What we are living through is nothing other than the death throes of 20th-century ideology: the idea that the state is the only repository of civic virtue and moral authority.

The notion that Big Government (whether in the central or the local form) could solve all social problems, and through its interventions achieve absolute justice and harmony, is collapsing. And in its last moments, in its disbelief and agony at its own failure, it is lashing out in every direction: if the earlier measures haven’t dealt with crime/public disorder/anti-social behaviour/under-performing hospitals/insufficient recycling, we must add yet more layers of official interference.

If government fails to achieve its objectives, it must be because it isn’t doing enough, isn’t being sufficiently pro-active – so let’s pass another law, bring in a further layer of intrusion, take away another dimension of personal responsibility from community life.

But somehow, everything that government does makes things worse: leads to more perverse consequences and unforeseen complications. And the panic increases and the desperation grows and we get yet more laws and rules and targets and misapplied regulations.

Because they have taken so much power over our lives, we feel free to blame the governing classes for everything that goes wrong. And they feel they must address our every difficulty because everything is their fault. (Indeed, their interventions so frequently exacerbate our problems that we are actually quite right to blame them much of the time.)

When there is a real crisis – not just dog poo or over-loaded wheelie bins – the solution always follows the same formula: take more power away from the people.

For example, the price of home-heating is now a serious problem, so what does the Government suggest? A return to zero VAT for heating fuel, which would lower the price instantly and significantly for everyone? Nope. What they propose is a hugely intrusive programme (at present illegal under data protection laws) in which private financial information about the poor would be handed to power companies, in the hope that the disadvantaged might be given more leeway in paying their bills.

So somewhere in the corridors of Whitehall, someone could have the power to decide which of us is deserving enough to have the confidential details of our hardship handed over to some anonymous manager at British Gas or Npower for their compassionate consideration. (Why not medical records, too? Surely the chronic sick could be given heating privileges?)

This madness is not all Gordon Brown’s fault. He just happens to be the man presiding over the final moments of a political philosophy that has reached a dead end.

One of John Cole‘s commenters tipped everyone off to this truly disgraceful video of Barack Obama’a college band.

3:58 video

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All postings on the Michelle Obama “Whitey” Tape story.

BooMan (whose server was swamped yesterday, and inaccessible all afternoon) attempted some preemptive damage control concerning the alleged still-unreleased Michelle Obama “Whitey” tape.

From what I understand, it is a tape of Michelle Obama criticizing the Bush administration.

Why’d he cut folks off medicaid?
Why’d he let New Orleans drown?
Why’d he do nothing about Jena?
Why’d he put us in Iraq for no reason?

How Larry Johnson wants you to hear it:

Whitie cut folks off medicaid?
Whitie let New Orleans drown?
Whitie do nothing about Jena?
Whitie put us in Iraq for no reason?

Today Larry Johnson retorts:

The Obama campaign is telling reporters from major news organizations that the videotape of Michelle Obama railing against “whitey” at a panel alongside Nation of Islam maximum leader Louis Farrakhan is nothing but a “scurrilous lie,” according to one of those reporters who called for an answer.

But at the same time the Obama campaign has disseminated either a doctored or concocted transcript of the supposedly nonexistent videotape. Major Obama donors went to the campaign demanding explanations after the posting of my story on No Quarter about the contents of the videotape confirmed to me by several reliable sources, all Republicans with access to knowledge but who do not know each other.

So the campaign created a would-be transcript of the video it says doesn’t exist. In the Obama campaign produced transcript Michelle says “why’d he” instead of “whitey.” Very clever. Then the campaign sent this transcript to key Obamaton bloggers to circulate. And the campaign sent it to the donors to prevent them from having a nervous breakdown.

MyTownTalks adds:

I’ve had several Obama supporters admit to its existence and say what was on it. I also have an email I was sent last night that had some potential verbiage.

MyTownTalks’ email:

Well this is total rumor and I have no idea if this is accurate or not, but I was sent an email with part of the alleged speech of the reported Michelle Obama words where she mentioned Whitey. …

Reported verbiage from Michelle Obama’s tape

“Once again, the white man keeps us down, what’s up with Whitey, Why’d he attack Iraq, Why’d he let Katrina happen, Why’d he leave millions of children behind. This is the legacy the white man gives us”

Hat tip to AJStrata.

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All postings on this story.

Copies of Scott McClellan’s original book proposal from January of 2007 were still floating around in the publishing industry, and the Politico was able to obtain and authenticate a copy. The proposal presents a very different book making very different accusations directed at completely different targets.

Originally, McClellan evidently blamed social conservatives and neocons for the Bush administration’s missteps, and made the liberal media a primary target of criticism.

EXCERPT:

I will look at what is behind the media hostility toward the President and his Administration, and how much of it is rooted in a liberal bias.

The public holds the national media in low esteem. I think there are several reasons why, and I intend to write about them in some detail while discussing ways the media could improve their image. It is more than just the perceived arrogance, cynicism, gotcha-journalism, and lack of accountability. The establishment media does not tend to reflect Main Street America, or spend enough time focusing on the issues that matter most to the general public, and too often sacrifice substance for process. They tend to reflect the liberal elites of New York and Washington that are part of the social circles in which they run, and it shows in their reporting. Yet, they live in a constant state of denial when it comes to acknowledging such an obvious fact.

Fairness is defined by the establishment media within the left-of-center boundaries they set. They defend their reporting as fair because both sides are covered. But, how fair can it be when it is within the context of the liberal slant of the reporting? And, while the reporting of the establishment media may be based on true statements and facts, is it an accurate picture of what is really happening? And, how much influence do the New York Times and Washington Post have in shaping the coverage? And, why does the media do such a poor job of holding itself to account, or acknowledging their own mistakes?

The obvious inference is that Peter Osnos, the leftwing founder of PublicAffairs Books did not just “work very closely” with McClellan on the book, but rather completely altered the author’s original intentions, and personally provided the perspective and conclusions featured in the completed text. McClellan accepted the cash.