Every time I get a small glimmer of hope that John McCain will grow a set I find that he defers to some inner sense that inexplicably turns the knife in the back of the Republican Party base. You know the group, the one that will stay home if McCain continues his ill advised tour of bone headed concessions to court a leftist constituency that will no doubt vote for the Dems come November.

Countless times we think of a John McCain presidency and we are reminded that despite the left’s warnings that he is Bush the 3rd, Republicans think of him quite differently, as liberal light; the maverick Republican the left loves to quote when he turns bad on the right.

So when it was announced that John McCain is slated to meet with pro-illegal immigrant apologists La Raza on July 14th, Republicans once again are reminded that John McCain is no better that the rest of the Republican “moderates” that sold out the party base in 2006 if not much earlier. In fact John McCain is part of that group that led to sweeping Republican defeats in 2006. I blame him just as much as I blame others who lost their way.

The good or bad of it however is that I am not alone. John McCain doesn’t have to worry about me. He has to worry about people like me. The people that won’t be sitting at the water cooler countering the enthralled giggles of messianic Barack Obama supporters. He has to worry about the people that won’t be contributing money to his underfunded campaign. And sadly, the people that won’t be getting behind him to help drive any fleeting momentum into something bigger.

I personally think this campaign is John McCain’s to lose and that is exactly what he is setting out to do. God help us. If that is the reality in 2008 he need only look in the mirror one last time. He can think to himself, “well you tried my friend, but not hard enough. At least you were a maverick one last time”

Hat Tip: Michelle Malkin

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Former Disaster in Chief Jimmy Carter was on Jay Leno May 7th, (Leno must be having a “has-been” week), when he indicated that the delegates from Florida and Michigan must not be seated because those states broke the rules of the DNC. I actually happen to agree with this position but I agree because it was the rule and the states knew what would happen if they broke it. Carter does not particularly care about the rules as much as he cares how this will affect Barry Obama (who Carter has hinted at preferring). Carter does not want to let Hillary get any closer and he does not want the number of delegates needed to win to increase. He also does not want super delegates added because that would increase Hillary’s chances. Carter also warned about super delegates changing the will of the people:

He warned of a disaster if party insiders try to wrest the nomination from the candidate with the largest number of votes and state victories.

An attempt by so-called Democratic superdelegates to override the popular vote “would be an almost unacceptable thing,” Carter told Jay Leno on “The Tonight Show.”

If a candidate has a clear edge in votes, state-by-state wins and delegates claimed at caucuses and primaries, “I can’t imagine that the superdelegates would go against them,” Carter said. “It would be a catastrophe for the party.” WBAL

This is the flaw in their process. First of all, the super delegates are allowed, by their rules, to select who they want. The party has done this before and selected someone who was not the popular candidate (Adlai Stevenson). Secondly, even if they go with the will of the people, the standard should not be the will of the people as a whole or the will of the people of a state but should be defined to the will of the people in a particular Congressional District. This standard would apply to elected super delegates who are in the House. The Senators represent an entire state so they will need to decide how to vote.

For example, in Maryland there are eight Congressional Districts, five of which have Democrats for their representatives. Obama won the state and if we apply Carter’s standard (and the standard of Obama supporters) then he should get all five super delegates. However, Clinton won one of the five (as well as the three headed by Republicans) so Obama should get four and Clinton one. This is how the will of the people is demonstrated. Their wishes are expressed by their Representatives. If we group all people together by state or as a country then the wishes of the people are not truly expressed.

The fact that Democrats want to do this does not surprise me because they do not care about the will of the voter unless they lose to a Republican (then there are voting problems and people were disenfranchised). The establishment is worried about one thing and one thing only and that is losing the black vote if they select Clinton over Obama. They are worried that Obama will not win the general election because he cannot carry the white vote in sufficient numbers. But, they are stuck with him unless they want to risk losing the black vote, a demographic they cannot win without.

If the Democrats cared about the will of the people they would let the people of Florida and Michigan have a say in the process. Instead, the Democrats have disenfranchised all those people who will probably remember this when it is time to vote in the general election. I agree with Rush Limbaugh. All the people in those states should register as Republicans because we will let your votes count.

In any event, the Democrats have painted themselves into a corner and they will end up getting bloodied before they can get out of that corner.

It will be so much fun to watch them beating themselves to death.

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As reported earlier by Noel Sheppard, the drive-by media that previously downplayed Rush Limbaugh’s Operation Chaos has changed it’s tune now that Barack Obama’s campaign is blaming the Limbaugh effect for keeping Hillary Clinton in the race.

Too bad for Keith Olberman and MSNBC because they apparently missed the memo; instead choosing to do a segment refuting the effect altogether. Last night Olbermann openly mocked Rush Limbaugh alongside his sidekick Chris Matthews who was honking in the background with giddy joy at the prospect of Limbaugh’s failure.

Huh? For a guy that doesn’t generally make much sense Keith Olbermann showed us that his ability to make even less sense is still well within reach. It also demonstrates that the moon-Batman and Robin team over at MSNBC let their bias override intelligent thought once again. (I’m beginning to see a trend.)

Contrast the MSNBC approach with that of the much maligned Fox News that simply reported the Obama campaign’s assertion. (all emphasis mine)

Barack Obama’s campaign issued an e-mail on Tuesday night that appeared to relegate Hillary Clinton’s lead in Indiana to efforts by Rush Limbaugh to wreak havoc in the Democratic presidential primary contest.

In an e-mail entitled “The Limbaugh Effect in Indiana = 7 percent,” Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton wrote: “According to the latest exit polling data, 17 percent of voters in the Indiana primary today said they would vote for John McCain in a Clinton/McCain match-up. Forty-one percent of that number is constituted by people who voted Clinton in the primary but also indicated they will vote for McCain in the general election. That comes out to just under 7 percent of the primary electorate the number that may be attributed to a Limbaugh Effect.”

This e-mail appears to have been the signal that allowed other drive-bys in the MSM to reverse direction and openly admit what they have been fearing all along. And that fear has now become a global phenomenon. We’ll have to wait and see how long it takes MSNBC to catch up.

Note: The video clip was originally found boasted by the smart guys over at Crooks and Liars in a post titled: Exit Polls Confirm: “Operation Chaos” Abject Failure

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At a time when Democrats spread lies from pulpit to pulpit preaching about the mismanagement of the economy via George Bush they quietly find $25 Million dollars in earmarks and pork to help fund political ally and pro-immigration lobbyists La Raza.

It’s clear that Democrats who have been at the helm for the last two years are only interested in picking the pockets of struggling families for the express goal of buying votes and power. Democrats are pissing on the backs of hard working American taxpayers who live on an increasingly weaker dollar against the back drop of raising prices all in the name of funneling the money to scam artists, trial lawyers and pro-illegal immigrant forces. (h/t Michelle Malkin).

Worse, House Republican leader John Boehner is one of the lone Republicans making an issue out of this national travesty.

Washington, May 6 - Democrats are prepared to bring to the House floor legislation purportedly written to assist Americans impacted by the recent housing slump. But in recent days, it has become increasingly clear who this legislation is really out to serve: scam artists, speculators, and trial lawyers.

That’s right: the bill forces taxpayers to pay for a massive $300 billion bailout at the expense of innocent victims who truly need assistance and hard-working families who continue to pay their mortgage on time. And it includes language slipped-in by House Democrats at the last minute to fund a giant $35 million slush fund for trial lawyers seeking to capitalize on the housing downturn.

But the goodies for the friends of the Democratic Majority don’t stop there. House Democrats quietly tucked another giveaway into the long, complicated bill in order to benefit their political allies with virtually no prior public scrutiny or debate. Take a look at this political giveaway – “Assistance for the Raza Development Fund” – straight from the text of the bill:

(c) ASSISTANCE FOR RAZA DEVELOPMENT FUND.— (1) USE.—The Secretary of Housing and Urban Development may make a grant to the Raza Development Fund for the purpose of providing technical and financial assistance to local non-profit organizations to undertake community development and affordable housing projects and programs serving low- and moderate-income households, particularly through organizations located in neighborhoods with substantial populations of income-disadvantaged households of Hispanic origin. Assistance provided by the Secretary under this subsection may be used by the Raza Development Fund… (2) AUTHORIZATION OF APPROPRIATIONS.— There is authorized to be appropriated for grants under this subsection— (A) $5,000,000 for fiscal year 2008; and (B) $10,000,000 for each of fiscal years 2009 and 2010.

In short, House Democrats are expecting American taxpayers to shell out $25 million to the Raza Development Fund – an arm of the National Council of La Raza and Democratic political ally that has made its name by promoting pro-illegal immigration policies and opposing real border security.

American families are struggling with rising costs for everything from gasoline to food to mortgages. Times like these require Congress to work in a bipartisan way on behalf of the American people. But instead, this Democratic Majority has produced a bill that rewards scam artists, speculators, trial lawyers, and political allies like La Raza…all at the expense of taxpayers and homeowners who really need help. Sadly, it’s yet more example of what American taxpayers have come to expect from a broken Washington under the leadership of House Democrats.

If this doesn’t make you angry then you deserve another couple couple years of Nancy Pelosi and her merry band of thieves.

Related (Another Link from John Boehner):

In the two years since then-Minority Leader Pelosi promised the American people a “commonsense plan” to lower gas prices, not only has she refused to reveal it, but prices have actually risen at an incredible pace – from $2.33 on January 4, 2007, the day Rep. Pelosi took the Speaker’s gavel, to $3.61 today. And among those hit the hardest by this $1.28 Pelosi Premium are working families, small business owners and employees, and local communities from coast to coast, which have been forced to cut critical services such as school bus transportation and law enforcement. - Why Do Speaker Pelosi & House Democrats Want to Make Gasoline More Expensive?

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I always knew that Mike Huckabee was something other than what he was pretending to be and this confirms it. On the same week that Ron Paul did what everyone expected him to do and predicted a Barack Obama win it appears that Mike Huckabee has comes to Obama’s defense over the Rev. Jeremiah Wright issue.

WASHINGTON — After cutting ties with his controversial former pastor, Sen. Barack Obama received a word of sympathy from an unusual source: a Republican.

Former presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee says that Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr. wants to derail Obama’s bid for the White House for a simple tactical reason: Wright does not want Obama to prove that America has made that much racial progress.

“His campaign is not being derailed by his race,” Huckabee told reporters following a fundraiser in Montana. “It’s being derailed by a person who doesn’t want him to prove that we have made great advances in this country.”

Huckabee, himself a Baptist minister, added that “Jeremiah Wright needs for Obama to lose so he can justify his anger, his hostile bitterness against the United States of America.”

But wait. Doesn’t Rush Limbaugh essentially say the same thing?

Why yes he does. However Rush Limbaugh doesn’t give Barack Obama an excuse for the race baiting games that have been played by Obama’s pastor for at least 20 years. Let the Democrats make this defense. After all, it is Democrats that are dividing Americans on race; they should be the ones to explain it.

The following is the context on Reverend Wright and Barack Obama that Mike Huckabee left out, at least in the quotes included in the Chicago Tribune article.

The Jeremiah Wright issue has everything to do with the judgment, or lack thereof, of Barack Obama as he sat in Wright’s cesspool of anti-American, anti-White preaching for some 20 years.

It has to do with the judgment of all the people that Obama surrounded himself with who had to have heard Wright and hopefully said “Hey Barry, you know, perhaps it might not be a good idea to attend a church that is led by a pastor that chums up with anti-Semites, god damns Amerikka and says the white guy is at the root of the problem.”

So even if Barack Obama plays the stupid card and pretends that he didn’t know this side of Reverend Wright I would hope that SOMEONE IN OBAMA’S INNER CIRCLE DID and advised otherwise.

That is the message that Republicans should be talking about while campaigning for John McCain. Explaining to Americans that Rev. Wright is in the business of race baiting goes over about as well as explaining DCMA laws and BMG - ASCAP licensing rules for music.

But no; that’s not what happened. This great man of achievement as Huckabee put it didn’t seem to surround himself with any such people that questioned the words of Jeremiah Wright. Nor did this great man of progress, the man that transcends race, creed and gender have the gumption to even do that himself.

Predictably Mike Huckabee is proving not to be the Republican party asset that his supporters made him out to be. Jeremiah Wright and his association to Barack Obama has nothing to do with religion so there is no reason for Huckabee to be out flapping his lips about the issue. Where’s our James Carville on this one?

See Also: Flopping Aces, Pirates Cove, Michele Malkin

Don’t Miss - HuffPo Idiot asks McCain if he called his wife a C*nt.

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The New York Times periodically pops up with articles in which its perplexed employees report that the incarceration rate in the US is up but, for reasons they cannot fathom, crime is down. Life is so difficult if you’re absolutely certain that “A” and “B” can’t possibly be related or, even worse, that “A” can’t possibly have a causal relationship to “B.” Incomprehensible causality is again on display at the NYT, this time with regard to Israel:

Suicide bombings in Israel have dropped off so significantly that the nation’s security officials now dare to speak openly of success. But the very steps they are taking to thwart bombers appear to collide head-on with the government’s agenda of achieving peace with the Palestinians.

The separation barrier along the West Bank has drawn international criticism. Israeli security officials say it has proved helpful.

It is a classic military-political dilemma. The progress in stopping suicide bombers, the vast majority of whom cross into Israel from the West Bank, has brought enough quiet for Israel to resume peace talks with the Palestinian leadership there.

But the current calm is fragile, and to maintain it Israeli security officials say they must continue their nightly arrests and sometimes deadly raids in the heart of the West Bank — tactics at odds with a peace effort that envisions a separate Palestinian state, an eventual Israeli withdrawal from much of the West Bank and, in the meantime, a gradual transfer of authority to the Palestinian police.

“The price of staying out” of the West Bank, said one senior Israeli military official who spoke on condition of anonymity because of military restrictions, “might be one that we don’t want to pay.”

The military’s faith in its efforts comes across in its charts showing a steep decline in suicide bombings — from a high of 59 in 2002 to only one in 2007, and one so far this year.

The poor reporter seems so bewildered. Why is it that Israel, having finally stemmed the horrible attacks on her children, is loath to enter into negotiations with Palestinians, negotiations that invariably followed a set pattern: (1) Palestinians killed Israelis; (2) Israelis gave lots of money and/or land and/or freed dozens or hundreds of suicide bombers, while getting nothing in return; and (3) Palestinians, flush with the success of their tactics, killed more Israelis.

I get the feeling that the Times‘ reporter saw nothing wrong with that decades old status quo and thinks it unconscionable that Israeli is changing the terms, so that the Palestinians’ sole negotiating tactic isn’t simply ever more dead Israelis.

[Discuss This Topic with Bookworm]

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If you’re interested in starting your own blog then you should consider a subject that unifies us all: the news. If you’re smart and have a keen eye for the key stories of the day people will want to hear what you have to say. But it’s not as easy as just watching the local news or reading the newspaper in the morning. You’ll need to become an authority if you ever want to be taken seriously.

Here are some tips to follow to find news to blog about:

1. Get obsessed with news. You will have to sift through hundreds of different sources to discover everything that is relevant about your particular niche that you’re blogging about. The more you read, the better informed you will be and you’ll be able to figure out what sources are reliable to draw from. This is important if you want to become a reputable blogger because anyone can blog but in order to be taken seriously you’ll have to be able to offer reliable news information.
2. Understand that feeds will be your best friends. RSS feeds are a tool for publishing information. The data in an RSS feed is in a simple form so that news reading programs can sift through them. They provide an easy way to glean news from hundreds and thousands of sites. The RSS feed lets you look for news from a certain perspective and you can then pull that information into one location.
3. Select a solid feed reader. Most feed readers are free. Your big decision is whether you want a software-based feed reader or a web-based feed reader. Web-based readers are very popular because they let you read feeds wherever there’s an internet connection.
4. Stay up on top stories with aggregators. As you try to cull stories that fit your blog’s motif you’ll want to visit news sites that use a combination of the human element and computer programs to come up with a list of the top stories of the day. One of the most popular example of news aggregators is Google News which allows you to search 4,500 news sources at a time.
5. Subscribe to and share your feeds. You’ll want to start searching newspapers, journals and magazines online and maybe other blogs to see if they have RSS feeds. Try to notice what their feed details are and then put those in your feed reader.

Heather Johnson is a freelance writer as well as a regular contributor for RNCentral.com, a site which covers all things related to RN. Heather welcomes your comments and emails related to job inquiries at her email address, heatherjohnson2323@gmail.com.

If you have an article that you would like published on Webloggin please send an email to editor@webloggin.com. All submissions should be sent via word doc or via a link to the site where the work has been previously published.

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In honor of Holocaust Martyrs and Heroes Remembrance Day, marked in Israel on Thursday, Yad Vashem expanded its Internet presence this week by opening an online database containing nearly two-thirds of the 200,000 photos in its archives.

[snip]

Earlier this week, Yad Vashem launched two YouTube sites. The English version includes sound bites from President Bush and French President Nicholas Sarkozy on their visits to the memorial.

“I would hope that as many people in the world come to this place, it would be a sobering reminder that evil exists and a call that when we find evil we must resist it,” President Bush says.

The YouTube clips also includes short video testimonies of survivors, among them Zanne Farbstein. She and her two sisters were among 1,000 women who were the first Jews to arrive at the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland.

Auschwitz was the Nazis’ largest concentration camp. It is estimated that up to 2.5 million people were murdered or died there.

“I worked sorting clothes and I found Father’s prayer shawl. There were five crematoria. They burned day and night. Transports kept arriving and there was no room in the crematoria, so the children were thrown into pits and burned - little children…Alive!” Farbstein recalled in one video.

“We were all sick, so we would drag each other to work. Until one morning my older sister Edith said: ‘You know what? I can’t go on any more. Enough!’

“I cried. I shouted. Nothing helped. I had torn shoes. She had good shoes. She said to me, ‘Let’s exchange shoes.’

“So we went to work. When we returned, she was no more,” Farbstein said. She and her other sister were in Auschwitz together for three years, waiting for death every day, she said. “That was the worst part: the fear.”

Farbsten says she never would have believed that she could live a normal life - marrying and having children and grandchildren. “Sheer joy!” she says.

You can find the photo archive here.

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