Estrich and Sajak on Celebrities
Nov 28, 2007 Political
Pat Sajak and Susan Estrich have each written items about celebrity endorsements and they have both taken slightly different paths with regard to their views. Sajak, a conservative, stated that people do not need celebrities telling them who they should vote for . He discussed Oprah and her endorsement of Obama and the Streisand counter endorsement of Clinton. Sajak basically said that celebrities are the least qualified people to tell us how to vote:
If any group of citizens is uniquely unqualified to tell someone else how to vote, it’s those of us who live in the sheltered, privileged arena of celebrityhood. It’s one thing to buy an ab machine because Chuck Norris recommends it (he’s in good shape, isn’t he?) or a grill because George Foreman’s name is on it (he’s a great guy, so it must be a great grill!), but the idea of choosing the Leader of the Free World based on the advice of someone who lives in the cloistered world of stardom seems a bit loony to me.
~snip~
I suppose anything that gets people engaged in the political process is a good thing, but the idea that a gold record, a top-ten TV show or an Oscar translates into some sort of political wisdom doesn’t make much sense to me. Trust me, one’s view of the world isn’t any clearer from the back seat of a limo. Pat Sajak [Human Events]
Now, some idiot at the Huffington Post addressed Sajak’s piece by saying that Sajak wrote all this but he has endorsed Fred Thompson by donating $2300 to him. I understand that it is difficult for the people at Huffington to keep things straight between bong hits but I think Sajak was talking about public endorsements. His donation to a political campaign was not him going around the country campaigning for a candidate. He donated money. If this constitutes and endorsement then Babs Streisand has endorsed both Clinton and Obama because she gave them BOTH money (as have many Hollywood libs). Sajak’s point, one that was missed by the HuffPo bong passers, was that public endorsements do little good in swaying the vote. Interestingly, the HuffPo idiot in question did not take Estrich to task for her piece.
Estrich, a liberal, wrote that Oprah is great at recommending soap and books but when it comes to candidates her support will not make much difference for Obama. Estrich said that endorsements from celebrities were not what swayed voters because people are not sheep (where has she been):
No one doubts that Oprah is remarkable. But presidents are not soap. Trusting a beloved celebrity to recommend what you wash with is different than trusting them to tell you who should run the country. In my experience, what celebrities bring is crowds and attention. They don’t bring votes. In fact, almost no one does. Susan Estrich [creators.com]
I believe that Estrich is correct in her assessment but she made that assessment with a bias toward Hillary. She did not mention Streisand or indicate that Babs would not bring in votes for the Hildabeast. She only mentioned Obama because Estrich supports Hillary and wants her to win. It is even more interesting that while the Huffington Post was mocking Pat Sajak they ignored the piece by Estrich, who said something very similar to Sajak. If they wanted to ridicule someone for saying that celebrity endorsements did not matter by pointing out an endorsement it seems to me they would have been better off using Estrich than Sajak because while Sajak donated money as a private citizen, Estrich wrote a book about why Hillary should be president. The entire purpose of the book is to persuade people on why Hillary Clinton should be elected president in 2008.
One other thing that Estrich failed to mention while she was saying that celebrity endorsements do not matter (at least for Obama) is that Bill Clinton is a celebrity and he has endorsed Hillary. They trot him out all over the place because he has star status among Democrats and they use his celebrity to pack the folks in. I seemed to have missed the part in Susan’s piece where she said that Bill was good at selling sex but that people would not trust him on who to vote for. I guess she was afraid of what people might think if she used the phrase “good at packing them in” with regard to him.
Sajak wrote a piece indicating that celebrity endorsements are not some wonderful thing because celebrities have no better view of the world than anyone else (I would argue that they have a worse view because they do not know how we actually live). Estrich wrote her piece indicating that celebrity endorsements for Obama were no good and ignored those for her chosen candidate, Queen Hillary. The HuffPo showed its bias by taking Sajak to task for the piece by pointing out his personal donation to a candidate and ignored Estrich altogether even though she has done more than just give money to a candidate. She wrote a book to convince people to vote for the Hildabeast.
To be clear, I would not listen to any of them. I have seen how they lie their very public lives and I would not trust their judgment with regard to anything. How can they tell me how to do things when they keep screwing up how they do things for themselves?
Tags: bong hits, celebrity endorsements, cloistered world, Democrats, fred thompson, Hillary Clinton, huffington post, Obama, pat sajak, political wisdom, President, public endorsements, susan estrich
Hillary’s Writers Go On Strike
Nov 28, 2007 Political
The DNC has canceled the the last of its fall debates because of a pending writer’s strike at CBS. The Writers Guild and the network have been without a strike for about two years so the union decided that this would be a good time to disrupt things. Queen Hillary had already indicated that she would not cross the picket line and the DNC, beholden to the unions to supply votes and thugs for events, decided not to show some courage and decide that they should not allow the union to disrupt things.
However, this is a good thing for Hillary Clinton since she has been dropping in the polls and did not need another melt down so close to the primaries. She would melt down because the writers would not be there to write for her and CBS might pick someone who did not have a planted question to ask.
Lost in all this is the effect on poor Katie Couric who was set to moderate this debate. I know she was just looking for an opportunity to bat her eyes at Clinton in admiration and then ask questions that would make Wolf Blitzer look like Stalin.
In the words of Dr. Evil: Boo-frickity-hoo
Source:
The Politico
Tags: dnc, dr evil, Hillary Clinton, katie couric, politico, primaries, queen hillary, stalin, wolf blitzer
Bill Clinton Again Rewriting History
Nov 28, 2007 Political
Bill Clinton asserted that he was opposed to the war in Iraq from the very beginning though his remarks at the time were much more tempered and did not portray a person who was absolutely opposed to the action. He indicated that it would not have been proper for him to have more open statements at the time because he was not the president. He did however, have no problem with expressing that the weapons inspectors should be given more time. Fourteen years of folly was not enough for Clinton.
I believe that Clinton now expresses that he was absolutely opposed because Obama, his wife’s opponent, is the only candidate who can say he was against the war from the beginning and not have to prove it. The others have their pesky votes to show what they actually did. John Edwards says he was wrong to vote that way and Hillary stated she was misled by president Bush. Once again, it is someone else’s fault. If this is the smartest woman in the world and she was misled by President bush, a man many on the left believe to be an idiot, how was she so easily misled?
Clinton was on the campaign trail trying to raise support for his wife who has seen her numbers drop over the past few weeks. He mentioned himself more times than he mentioned her but that might be the point because he is more liked than she is so people get the impression that he is the one they are electing. He also told the audience how Hillary has experience and has not forgotten what it is like to “be like you.” Read this as even though she is rich she has not forgotten what it is like to be one of the little people. Of course, she failed to give a tip at a diner. I am not saying that it was deliberate but wouldn’t one of “us” remember to so that?
Clinton also played this phony concern for the military while lying about tax cuts. He was lamenting the Republican tax cut for the rich and how he, as a rich guy, is not paying money that could go tot he troops. First of all tax cuts were not “for the rich” they were for everyone. They have helped the middle class and poor (those who ACTUALLY pay any taxes) and they have helped produce a strong economy. The rich still pay a higher marginal tax rate than anyone else and they also pay most of the taxes in this country. Of course they will get more money back because they pay a hell of a lot more in. Secondly, the treasury will take donations to the government and I am sure Bill is aware of this. if he is so concerned that he is not paying his fair share then he is certainly free to donate money to the treasury.
Obviously, this is more of the Clinton feel good talk and double speak. A lot of people will believe him when he says he wants to pay more but few will know that he could if he wanted to. They will assume this poor schmuck is just dying to give more money back if only those mean Republicans would take it.
Mr. Clinton, I call on you to either make a donation to the treasury for what you think you should be paying or shut your mouth about the issue. People deserve better than to be misled by a snake oil salesman.
Fact 1: We pay too much in taxes even after tax cuts.
Fact 2: The government takes in huge sums of money. The real problem is uncontrolled spending.
Fact 3: We could take even more in tax cuts if the Congress would stop spending BILLIONS in pork projects.
Source:
Yahoo News
UPDATE: Bill supported it before he was opposed to it. I guess these people think we don’t read…
Others with similar stories:
Outside the Beltway, Perri Nelson’s Website, The Virtuous Republic, Rosemary’s Thoughts, guerrilla radio, Right Truth, Adam’s Blog, The World According to Carl, Leaning Straight Up, The Bullwinkle Blog, The Amboy Times, Conservative Cat, Right Voices, and The Yankee Sailor, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.
Tags: bill clinton, campaign trail, folly, Hillary, John Edwards, phony, president bush, tax cut
Don’t Take Flight 93 to Mecca – Ever!
Nov 28, 2007 Flight 93
Mary Bomar’s fraudulent investigation
In April 2006, Park Service Director Mary Bomar ordered an internal investigation into claims that the planned Flight 93 Memorial is actually a terrorist memorial mosque, built abound a giant Mecca-oriented crescent. Bomar’s investigation was a total fraud, concluding, for instance, that it isn’t possible to calculate the orientation of the crescent because the site-plan has not been geo-referenced. (Page 2, PP2 of September 2006 summary report. Page 1 here.)
In fact, the original Crescent of Embrace site-plan was drawn on a topo map that the Memorial Project provided to all participants in the design competition. A topo map is the epitome of a geo-referenced map. North marked on a topo map is true north, which is the only piece of information needed to calculate the orientation of the crescent. Just connect the tips of the crescent, form the perpendicular bisector, and calculate how many degrees it points from north (53.4).
Also known are the crash-site coordinates, which is all that is needed to calculate the direction to Mecca (55.2° clockwise from north). All of this is trivially easy to verify. Just use the Mecca-direction calculator at Islam.com to get a graphic of the direction to Mecca from the crash site and place it over the crescent site plan:
Somerset PA is ten miles from the crash-site. The “qibla” is the direction to Mecca. Red lines show the orientation of the crescent. The crescent points 1.8° north of Mecca. (Click for larger image.)
A request for oversight
Because it is the director’s office that has been covering up the Mecca-orientation of the crescent, oversight can only come from Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne himself. Several people sent letters to Secretary Kempthorne two weeks ago, showing how the giant Mecca-oriented crescent remains completely intact in the so called redesign. But Mr. Kempthorne also needs to know that he is getting bad information from his subordinates in the Park Service. Thus a request for all readers of this post: if you have a minute, please copy and paste this entire post into an email for Secretary Kempthorne.
We don’t need for the secretary to understand all the terrorist memorializing features in the design, or the numerous proofs of intent that architect Paul Murdoch included so that his accomplishment will be undeniable once it is a fait accompli. It is enough that he be concerned about features that can be readily interpreted as terrorist memorializing, whether they are intended or not. As Congressman Tancredo put it: we need “a new design that will not make the memorial a flashpoint for this kind of controversy and criticism.”
But even getting to the most basic facts about what is in the present design requires getting past Mary Bomar’s fraudulent report, which tries to pretend that there is nothing that can even be interpreted as untoward.
Mary Bomar’s intellectually dishonest “experts”
In addition to claiming that topo maps are not geo referenced, Mary Bomar’s internal investigation cites a small number of academic experts, all of whom spout nothing but the most absurd non sequiturs. One is Dr. Daniel Griffith, professor of “geo-spatial information” at the University of Texas. About Alec Rawls’ analysis of the Mecca orientation of the giant crescent, Dr. Griffith writes:
… Mr. Rawls’s arithmetic calculations appear to be correct … [but] … just because calculations are correct does not make the resulting numbers meaningful.
Dr. Griffith’s point, it seems, is that the mere fact of Mecca orientation does not imply intent. Who said it did? The way Murdoch proves intent is by repeating his Mecca orientations (scroll down to the last section here). But intent is not the only thing that matters. Even without terrorist memorializing intent, it is inappropriate to plant a giant Mecca oriented crescent on the crash site.
The Memorial Project knows this, but it is committed to defending the crescent design, so it keeps using its doubts about intent as an excuse for denying the facts. Dr. Griffith, for instance, is telling every reporter who will listen that there is no such thing as the direction to Mecca. “Anything can point toward Mecca,” he told the Pittsburgh Post Gazette, “because the earth is round.” One billion Muslims face Mecca five times a day to pray, and Griffith pretends there is no such thing as facing Mecca!
Of course he knows better. The first thing that Griffith’s report does is calculate the direction to Mecca:
I computed an azimuth value from the Flight 93 crater site to Mecca of roughly 55.20°.
Bomar expert #2
Dr. Kevin Jaques, specialist in Islamic sharia law from the University of Indiana, acknowledges that the Mecca-oriented crescent is similar to the mihrab around which every mosque is built, but says:
…just because something is ‘similar to’ something else does not make it the ‘same’.
Yes, well, similar–very, very similar–is exactly the problem.
Like Daniel Griffith, Mr. Jaques is trying to make hay of the fact that Mecca orientation does not by itself imply intent. So what? Intentional or not, it is unacceptable for the central feature of the Flight 93 memorial to be a geometric match for the central feature of a mosque. Jaques is pretending that the questions he raises about intent somehow make the facts irrelevant.
Professor Jaques also dismisses the likeness between the Mecca-oriented crescent and a traditional Islamic mihrab by noting that lots of religious structures have prayer-direction indicators, not just mosques:
The biggest hole in [Rawls’] argument is that all of the elements he points to are common architectural features that one would find in a church or synagogue. The mihrab originated in pre-Islamic buildings and can be found in temples, churches, and synagogues around the Mediterranean.
This is logic? Because Christian churches are often oriented to the east, that somehow makes it okay to build the Flight 93 memorial around a half-mile wide Mecca oriented crescent? If this is “the biggest hole in [Rawls’] argument,” then there are no holes in Rawls’ argument.
Project spokesmen know the truth, and are lying about it
Memorial Project spokesmen have followed the lead of these academic frauds, using doubts about intent as a pretext for denying the facts. Asked about Rawls’ Mecca orientation claim, Patrick White, vice president of Families of Flight 93, denied it:
Rawls’ claims are untrue and “preposterous,” according to Patrick White, Families of Flight 93 vice president. “We went through in detail all his original claims and came away with nothing.”
In fact, Patrick White is fully aware of the Mecca orientation of the giant crescent. At the Memorial Project’s public meeting in July he argued that the almost-exact Mecca orientation of the giant crescent cannot be intended as a tribute to Islam because the inexactness of it would be “disrespectful to Islam.”
Joanne Hanley has done the same:
“Alec Rawls bases all of his conclusions on faulty assumptions,” said Joanne Hanley, the superintendent of the Flight 93 National Memorial. “In addition, the facts are twisted and people are misquoted, all to serve his intended purpose.”
But she too has admitted the Mecca-orientation of the giant crescent, telling Mr. Rawls in a 2006 conference call that she wasn’t concerned about the almost-exact Mecca orientation of the crescent because: “It isn’t exact. That’s one we talked about. It has to be exact.” (Crescent of Betrayal, download 3, page 145.)
These are your subordinates Mr. Kempthorne. Please do not let them get away with this fraud. Congressman Tancredo is demanding answers from Director Bomar and many of us are hoping that you will do the same. There is not much time. Construction on Paul Murdoch’s terrorist memorial mosque is about to begin.
Sincerely,
Others:
Cao’s Blog
Tags: Congress, flight 93 memorial, interior secretary dirk kempthorne, internal investigation, Mecca, park service director, perpendicular bisector, President
Schumer Now Likes Arab Emirate Business
Nov 27, 2007 Political
A few years back Dubai wanted to purchase several ports in the United States. Democrats, trying to make people believe they were tough on security, raised a stink about the security implications of such a move. The deal was eventually halted and the Democrats got their way though there was no real reason for their opposition. Interestingly, none of their toadies made comments about hating people with brown skin. It was just accepted that a partner in the war on terror would undermine our security and cause us harm. Chuck Schumer was one of the loudest (and most annoying) voices to express opposition.
My how the times have changed. With the sub-prime housing market collapsing a lot of businesses are going south very quickly. Some have filed for bankruptcy protection and others have seen their assets cut in half. Companies have been forced to suffer the consequences of their poor decisions (it is called SUB prime for a reason) and they did not like it. Citigroup, the largest US bank, was one of the companies suffering because of the sub-prime mess. Not any longer though as they were bailed out by, get this, Abu Dhabi, of the Arab emirate.
Abu Dhabi will purchase 7.5 billion dollars worth of Citigroup and will see a guaranteed return on investment of 11%. With its purchase of 4.9% of the company, Abu Dhabi will become Citigroup’s largest shareholder. And what did the mouth Schumer have to say about all this Arab money?
…the Citi transaction will bolster the bank’s competitiveness and “help preserve New York’s status as the world’s financial center.” Yahoo News
Amazingly, mouth almighty Chuck Schumer, who saw problems with having Dubai owning six ports in the US, seems unconcerned that Abu Dhabi will be the largest shareholder in America’s largest bank. Where is that level of concern for national security?
Now I don’t see a problem with the deal but then again I had no problem with the Dubai port deal. I might be wrong about both but at least I have been consistent.
Schumer, on the other hand, has shown inconsistent positions on similar issues.
Others with similar items:
Perri Nelson’s Website, Blog @ MoreWhat.com, Rosemary’s Thoughts, Right Truth, Adam’s Blog, Leaning Straight Up, The Bullwinkle Blog, The Amboy Times, Chuck Adkins, The Pet Haven, Pursuing Holiness, Allie is Wired, DragonLady’s World, The World According to Carl, Blue Star Chronicles, Pirate’s Cove, The Pink Flamingo, Republican National Convention Blog, CommonSenseAmerica, Dumb Ox Daily News, High Desert Wanderer, and Right Voices, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.
Tags: abu dhabi, arab emirate, bankruptcy protection, brown skin, chuck schumer, citigroup, Democrats, dubai, largest bank, shareholder, us bank