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For those of you who don't keep up with the conservative blogosphere, one of the memes they've been trying to push for the past couple of weeks is this: Barack Obama may give a good prepared speech, but his dirty little secret is that he's actually an empty suit who's totally at sea without a teleprompter. Today, for example, Andy McCarthy, offers up this snippet from an Obama press conference in Jerusalem: Just this past week, we passed out of the U.S. Senate Banking Committee, which is my committee, a bill to call for divestment from Iran, as a way...

If anyone could lay claim totheir state's Republican Party, it's Deborah Burstion-Donbraye of Cleveland. The 53-year-old international business consultant is the former outreach director for the Ohio Republican Party, for starters. She helped deliver the swing state to President Bush in his 2004 re-election bid in which he garnered 16 percent of the black vote. Among her Republican credentials, Mrs. Burstion-Donbraye worked in several high-level positions during the Reagan and Bush administrations of the late 1980s and was the press secretary for George W. Bush's Texas gubernatorial campaign in 1994. In the 1980s, she was an assistant national desk editor...

Hey, at least he got the shot, right? Isn't that all that matters? I mean come on, he's a photo-journalist for goodness sake. He can't inject himself into the story. That would be a breach of journalistic ethics. A real credit to his profession, this guy. Photos, but no video.

As news spread across the world of Iran’s provocative missile tests, so did an image of four missiles heading skyward in unison. Unfortunately, it appeared to contain one too many missiles, a point that had not emerged before the photo appeared on the front pages of The Los Angeles Times, The Financial Times, The Chicago Tribune and several other newspapers as well as on BBC News, MSNBC, Yahoo! News, NYTimes.com and many other major news Web sites.

(CNSNews.com) - Does any doting mother want to think about putting her firstborn baby in harm's way? Liberal backers of Sen. Barack Obama are banking on a "no" answer. The liberal advocacy group MoveOn.org is running a political ad featuring a new mother, bouncing baby boy on her lap, chiding John McCain about wanting to wage a "hundred-year" war in Iraq. "John McCain, when you say you would stay in Iraq for a hundred years, were you counting on Alex? Because if you were, you can't have him," the mother (actress) says with a quaver in her voice. (See video)...

Two Muslim women at Barack Obama's rally in Detroit Monday were barred from sitting behind the podium by campaign volunteers seeking to prevent the women's headscarves from appearing in photographs or on television with the candidate. The campaign has apologized to the women, all Obama supporters who said they felt betrayed by their treatment at the rally. "This is of course not the policy of the campaign. It is offensive and counter to Obama's commitment to bring Americans together and simply not the kind of campaign we run," said Obama spokesman Bill Burton, who added that the volunteers were acting...

Have you seen this delicious little quote from Pennsylvania Democrat Congressman Paul Jankorski? Why it would seem that Mr. Jankorski is admitting that the Democrats lied about what was going on in Iraq during the 2006 mid-term elections? Here's his quote: "I'll tell you my impression. We really in this last election, when I say we ... the Democrats ... that if we won the Congressional elections we could stop the war. Now anybody who was a good student of government would know that wasn't true. "But you know ... the temptation to want to win back the Congress ......

This is a short, supposedly humorous video showing artificial "real Americans" telling why they are voting Republican. I am linking to it just to show you the utter lack of imagination on the left. They actually believe their own propaganda. The reasons they use to vote Republican run the full spectrum from stupid to racist AND stupid.

The messianic Obama mag cover is becoming funny. How many more can you all add?

Barack Obama's appeal to his legions of enthusiasts rests in no small in their hearts. And where the heart is concerned, myths, images, and archetypes work their wonders on the nonrational faculties of the mind. The biggest Phony-Op of the election season so far was that giant riverfront photo in Portland, Oregon with "the masses" yelling their lungs out, as if for a messianic King. Or at least we may make that sort of association. Archetypal Phony-Ops make for powerful unconscious media manipulation, and there will be a lot of them coming up. So this is a head's up if...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Newsweek magazine, the new cover. The cover is of Obama, and they put another halo on his head! The original picture did not have a halo, but the wife of editor Jon Meacham walked in, saw it, didn't like it. So Newsweek changed the cover photo of Obama with a halo and a bright light behind him because the editor's wife didn't like the original. (playing of Obama Messiah spoof) END TRANSCRIPT

magine that John McCain named a young running mate to campaign with him, and this national rookie suggested America had 58 states, repeatedly used the wrong names for the cities he was visiting, and honored a Memorial Day crowd by acknowledging the "fallen heroes" who were present, somehow alive and standing in the audience. How long would it take for the national media to see another Dan Quayle caricature? Let's raise the stakes. What if it was the GOP presidential candidate making these thoroughly ridiculous comments? This scenario is very real, except it isn't McCain. It's the other fellow. ABC...

If NewsBusters were ever to use in its promotional material a photo this unflattering of Hillary Clinton, we'd be accused of the worst kind of sexism, of unfairly attacking a candidate based on her looks rather than her views. Check out the image of Hillary that MSNBC used in its promo of tonight's Hardball with Chris Matthews that aired at 5:59 AM EDT today just before Morning Joe came on the air. Hillary in full wattle, lit like something in a horror flick about to emerge from a closet wielding an ax. If there's a less-becoming snap of Hillary in...

In an attempt to explain how race will impact Democrat presidential candidate Barack Obama's run for the White House, Newsweek has created a "Racial Resentment Index" exclusively for white people without measuring such biases of non-whites.

Urban legends help Obama while hurting McCain and therefore our country We recently showed [http://www.israpundit.com/2008/?p=1118] how the National Jewish Democratic Council cut out part of a statement by John McCain to suggest that he, like Obama, is open to unconditional discussions with terrorists and rogue governments. Half-truths, out of context statements, and blatant falsehoods are the National Jewish Democratic Council’s stock in trade, and we have exposed NJDC for this on many occasions. NJDC is therefore a Republican asset that will do Barack Obama far more harm than good in November. We must caution those who are on our side...

AL DURA UPDATE: "Israel Radio's Paris correspondent Gil Michaeli has just reported that the French Court of Appeals has overturned the libel judgment against Phillipe Karsenty and has determined that Karsenty did not libel France 2 correspondent Charles Enderlin when he reported that the 'death' of 12-year old Mohamed Al-Dura at Netzarim in the Gaza Strip in September 2000 may have been staged, and that it was unlikely that the death was caused by IDF soldiers." Perhaps the Israeli military should start filing foreign libel suits against media outfits that collaborate in fake reporting. There's likely enough to keep quite...

From CNN to the New York Times, the media hyped Barack Obama's Portland, Oregon rally on Sunday, some comparing him to a rock star. Unmentioned in national reporting was the fact that Obama was preceded by a rare, 45-minute free concert by actual rock stars The Decemberists. The Portland-based band has drawn rave reviews from Rolling Stone magazine, which gave their 2005 album Picaresque four and a half stars (out of five), and another four and a half stars for 2007's The Crane Wife. How many of the people showed up to hear Obama, and how many to hear the...

Yesterday, Barack Obama began crying again. Someone should remind him... there's no crying in politics. He has whined that we can't use his middle name, he has whined when we bring up his close relations with aging hippy terrorists, that we ask aloud about his "spiritual mentor, the racist Rev. Jeremiah Wright, and now he is crying that we are highlighting the anti-American statements made by his wife as she campaigns for him all across the country. So, on Monday he whined "lay off my wife,". Well, fast on the heels of Obama telling us we can't use the anti-American...

It goes without saying that climate realists around the world believe Nobel Laureate Al Gore used false information throughout his schlockumentary "An Inconvenient Truth" in order to generate global warming hysteria. On Friday, it was revealed by ABC News that one of the famous shots of supposed Antarctic ice shelves in the film was actually a computer-generated image from the 2004 science fiction blockbuster "The Day After Tomorrow."

The more important issue than Senator Obama’s choice of words, is the world view underneath them. By using voter’s adverse economic circumstances to rationalize his cultural beliefs, Barack Obama has reintroduced what has been a defining question in American politics for more than generation: Why do so many working-class voters cast their ballots on social and values-based issues like gun ownership, abortion and same-sex marriage rather than on economic policy prescriptions?These voters — known as “the silent majority” in the 1970s, “Reagan Democrats” in the ’80s, and as “values voters” during the last two election cycles — have long been...

A German opera house is to unveil a provocative new production staged in the ruins of New York's World Trade Centre. It features naked pensioners and Mickey Mouse masks, Hitler salutes and Elvis impersonators. The self-consciously outrageous September 11th staging of Verdi's 'A Masked Ball' has been dreamed up by Austrian director Johann Kresnik. He has described the concoction as a populist critique of modern American society, aimed at showing up the disparities between rich and poor, which attracting a large audience. It will be a different, a provocative masked ball on the ruins of the World Trade Centre," he...

Watching the Democrat Presidential candidates swing through the state of Pennsylvania, it's as if the state all of the sudden had an epidemic of "lifelong Republicans", going through a change of heart and switching over to the Democrats. Not to take part in their primaries, but due to ideological reasons. Obama seemed to be the major, perhaps the only, beneficiary of all these former "lifelong Republicans", now Democrat voters. It seems that we are dealt this left wing propaganda every election, every primary year. Hordes of "lifelong Republicans" who tell us that they are now Democrats. In reality, the vast...

Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) got glowing reviews when he addressed the issue of race last month in Philadelphia. But there are aspects of the race issue in this campaign that still make people nervous. Recently I called a number of political strategists of both parties, as well as unaffiliated experts, to ask whether Democrats have been voting along racial lines in this year's primary season. After all, 92 percent of black Democrats in Mississippi voted for Obama, while 91 percent of black Democrats in Wisconsin did the same. And 70 percent of white Democrats in Mississippi voted for Sen. Hillary...

Washington, D.C. – Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, and leaders of veterans groups held a stakeout this morning following President Bush’s speech on Iraq. Below are the Speaker’s opening remarks: “I want to join Leader Reid in welcoming our special guests today, our friends from the veterans’ community, Bobby Muller, whom we've all worked with over the years, whether it's eliminating land mines and speaking out for veterans. “Thank you, Bobby, for your leadership. Jon Soltz, who has been very courageous in his statements of shining the light on troops on what is happening in Iraq. We're...

Hillary Clinton’s campaign says the candidate will stop telling the story of an uninsured pregnant woman who lost the baby and died after being denied medical care, following a hospital raising questions over its accuracy. Clinton has frequently told the emotional story of the woman from rural Ohio since late February. In the speech, Clinton said the woman made minimum wage working at a local pizza restaurant, without insurance, when she became pregnant. Clinton said the woman ran into trouble, went to a hospital in a nearby county but was denied treatment because she couldn’t afford a $100 payment. In...

Child Stabs President Bush to Death and Turns the White House into a Mosque in a Hamas TV Puppet Show Following is an excerpt from a puppet show, which aired on Al-Aqsa TV on March 30, 2008. Bush: Who are you? What brings you to my home? How did they let you in, boy? My guards! My soldiers! Get this boy out of here. Child: Nobody will take me out of here. Bush: Who are you to come here and threaten me?! You are on my own turf, you little child, you! Get out. My dear, bring your father, your...

Islamist Forum Posts Instructions for Conducting 'Media Jihad' In a message posted March 2, 2008 on the Islamist forum Al-Ikhlas (hosted by Piradius.net in Malaysia), a member calling himself "abumuslim22" urged his fellow forum members to engage in "media jihad," and provided advice and safety tips. The following are excerpts from the posting: [1] "… 1. Exercise patience, because each of the following stages takes time… "2. Become a 'media mujahid'… Next to jihad on the battlefield, this is the most dangerous [type of] jihad, because you are new [to it] and inexperienced… "A. Be careful, and do not trust...

There had to be a murky racial subtext in there somewhere; every attack on Obama contains one if you’re just willing to look hard enough. I thought TPM would be the ones to find the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow but instead it’s Orlando Patterson, drinking in a critique of a black candidate that features sleeping non-black children and concluding, naturally enough, that it’s quasi-Klan propaganda. I have spent my life studying the pictures and symbols of racism and slavery, and when I saw the Clinton ad’s central image — innocent sleeping children and a mother...

Probably one of the most slanderous, incendiary statements I've read from a history-ignorant liberal in a long time. This from Hendrik Hertzberg of The New Yorker, speculating on John McCain selecting Condoleezza Rice as his vice presidential running mate... To deal first with the obvious: Rice may be “only” the second woman and the second African-American to be Secretary of State, but she is indisputably the highest-ranking black female official ever to have served in any branch of the United States government. "Only" because no Democrat president ever considered appointing one. Her nomination to a constitutional executive office would cost...

Touchy, touchy, Chris! Palpably stung by Ken Blackwell's observation that Republicans had lost their way by running like Reagan but governing like Carter, Chris Matthews -- former speechwriter to the president from Plains -- cracked back by playing the Abramoff card and claiming Republicans are more corrupt than Dems. Blackwell, the very impressive former Secretary of State of Ohio and past candidate for Buckeye state governor, was Matthews' guest on this evening's MSNBC election coverage. Blackwell was discussing what it would take for Republicans to win in 2008. KEN BLACKWELL: My view is this, Chris, that we got off track....

A message posted January 20, 2008 on the Islamist forum Al-Hesbah (hosted by NOC4Hosts Inc. in Florida, USA), by a member calling himself Al-Jawfi, suggests stirring up racial tension between African-Americans and whites in the U.S. by spreading inflammatory materials on the Internet. In the discussion thread, other members proposed posting racist materials against African-Americans (such as insulting jokes and pictures) on sites frequented by African-Americans, in order to arouse anger and bitterness in their community. Another suggestion was to post, on white supremacist sites, materials that present African-Americans as a threat to American society. The following are excerpts from...

Reuters Fauxtography Alert: Spreading Hamas Propaganda With Fake Power Outage Photos Reuters Fauxtography Alert: Spreading Hamas Propaganda With Fake Power Outage Photos By Warner Todd Huston January 26, 2008 - 13:53 ET Photos Posted Below the FoldThe Jerusalem Post caught another fauxtography scam out of the mideast this week. It appears that Hamas legislators have staged fake power outages to illustrate how oppressed they are for the benefit of journalists. The Journalists were treated to a photo op of the Hamas legislators sitting in their halls of power surrounded by burning candles in rooms with curtains drawn. The scene...

The radical Baptist church known for picketing the funerals of American soldiers who lost their lives in Iraq has announced that they intend to protest Heath Ledger’s stateside memorial service because he played a gay character in “Brokeback Mountain.” “You cannot live in defiance of God. He (Ledger) got on that big screen with a big, fat message: God is a liar and it's OK to be gay,” said Shirley Phelps in a statement sent out by the Topeka, Kan.-based Westboro Baptist Church. The only compelling reason to ignore Westboro Baptist’s reprehensible intentions is that highlighting the vast inappropriateness of...

"...the reason she's a U.S. senator, the reason she's a candidate for president, the reason she may be a front-runner is her husband messed around." -MSNBC Hardball Host, Chris Matthews Chris Matthews is in trouble. His typically clumsy and ill-informed news analysis cut left for once. The socialist progressives are now accusing him of being part of the dreaded vast right wing conspiracy, a terrible insult in their world, and the far left is calling him all sorts of nasty names. The retribution they demand ranges from an apology, which he has already given, to firing, to drawing and quartering....

The Taliban has The Associated Press and Reuters on speed dial. Elias Wahdat, a stringer for Reuters and BBC news services in Khost province, said that every time the Taliban launch an attack or American troops call in an air strike, he gets a text message. The Taliban will give its version of what happened, often claiming that American bombs killed civilians. It may take officials with the U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan hours to put together a news release for the press. In the meantime, the Taliban version is already circulating. Lt. Col. David A. Accetta, the 82nd Airborne Division...

Robert Redford and George Soros surely make one of the oddest couples in American pop culture. For most of us, Redford’s all-American good looks evoke images of the dashing outlaw Harry Longabaugh, better known as the Sundance Kid. By contrast, Soros’ gaunt visage, thousand-yard stare, thick Central European accent, levitating gray hair and megalomaniacal pronouncements weirdly echo those of the “Dr. Strangelove” character in Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 Cold War classic. The differences between these two men are only skin deep, however. Both owe allegiance to the far left. And both work quietly, in a sinister partnership, to flood U.S. media...

Keith Olbermann: new Puritan? Perhaps. Unless memory fails it's hard to recall Keith condemning Bill Clinton for his flings on grounds of morality. But when it comes to a Republican presidential candidate, has Keith suddenly gone Cotton Mather on us? Newsweek's Jonathan Alter was Olbermann's guest on this evening's Countdown to discuss the issue of Giuliani's accounting for the expenses of his security detail accompanying him on trips to Long Island, assertedly for purposes of visiting his then girlfriend and wife-to-be Judith Nathan. View video here.

Fake mug shots of President Bush, Vice President Cheney and other White House officials are on display at the main branch of the New York City Public Library, and the exhibit has caused quite a commotion. About six manipulated photographs of members of the Bush administration made to look like mug shots are lining one of the landmark building's hallways, with each current and former official holding a D.C. police date-of-arrest placard bearing the date they made "incriminating" statements about the war in Iraq, The New York Daily News reported. In addition to Bush and Cheney, Secretary of State Condoleezza...

War PornBrian De Palma's Redacted is schlock fantasy. By Fred Kaplan Brian De Palma's Redacted is a movie that gives war criticism a bad name. It's a nasty piece of work—and not in a good way. He means to shock, but his film is merely distasteful. He thinks he's exposing the hidden horrors of war, but it comes off more like The Last House on the Left than Goya or even the jailhouse photos from Abu Ghraib. Some have denounced the film as anti-American or as propaganda for al-Qaida, but that exaggerates its potency. De Palma's grist is too thin...

CNN Pre-Plann(T)ed & Censored Every Question & Questioner at Dem Debate(?)! [NOTE: I've tried to compile what I think is the most informative postings on this.] CNN's Las Vegas Post Debate Analysis-- A Clinton Reunion It's hard to have a bad debate performance when: ** The audience is planted in your favor** The questions are planted in your favor** The questioners are your supporters** The after debate spin room includes 2 former and 1 current staff members The post debate was as Clinton-friendly as the actual debate.The CNN debate may have been pre-planned and censored every step of the way, but...

An Iowa college student pulled back the curtain on Hillary Clinton's stage-managed campaign stops..... Muriel Gallo-Chasanoff said a Clinton staffer produced a binder with about eight questions. "The top one was planned specifically for a college student," she said. "It noted 'college student' in brackets and then the question." Clinton's staffer approached her..... Gallo-Chasanoff said she proposed a question about comparing Clinton's energy plan.... "I don't think that's a good idea," the staffer told her, "because I don't know how familiar she is with their plans." Gallo-Chasanoff says the Clinton camp tried to get her to keep quiet.......a staffer called...

Dennis Prager has, for years, had an expression: "Being on the left means never having to say you're sorry."Well, I think you could also just as easily say, "being on the left means never having to tell the truth."How is it that Al Gore can get away with the demonstrably false claims made in his movie, which is still being used by the left all over the world to terrorize school children? Even people on the left, people who believe in anthropogenic global warming, are saying he plays fast and loose with lots of different "scientific" facts.A British judge, someone...

TuesdayÂ’s Metro section of The Washington Post covered a controversy at D.C.Â’s George Washington University, where posted appeared on campus blaring "HATE MUSLIMS? SO DO WE!!" Post reporter Susan Kinzie mentioned that the GWU chapter of the conservative Young AmericaÂ’s Foundation denied the posters were theirs, and Kinzie noted that it was probably a prank, since the fine print at the bottom had the words "'Brought to you by Students for Conservativo-Fascism Awareness' -- and a postscript recommending a BBC video on the politics of fear." But while WednesdayÂ’s article in Metro confirmed that it was a prank "produced by...

  Who's Behind the Censorship of Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week?   By Ben JohnsonFrontPageMagazine.com | Wednesday, October 10, 2007 CALL IT THE LEFT’S VERSION OF PREEMPTIVE WAR. The three co-equal branches of the Unholy Alliance – Islamic radicals, far-Left activists, and academics – have returned to their usual level of discourse – intimidation, slander, ad hominem attacks – in an attempt to ban Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week from college campuses before it ever occurs. National “Muslim and Arab rights” organizations are pressuring college administrators to prevent students from holding the peaceful, educational seminars. Conservative students have been accused of “hate speech”...

As CNN's Howard Kurtz accurately pointed out on Sunday's "Reliable Sources," few media outlets seemed at all interested in giving much attention to the great news out of Iraq last week regarding September's sharp decline in casualties. To Kurtz's obvious frustration, his guests - Robin Wright of the Washington Post and Barbara Starr of CNN - both supported the press burying this extremely positive announcement.I kid you not.After introducing the subject, Kurtz asked, "Robin Wright, should that decline in Iraq casualties have gotten more media attention?"This was Wright's amazing answer: Not necessarily. The fact is we're at the beginning of...

A new documentary shows that several of the instigators behind the violent Mohammed cartoon demonstrations never even saw the drawings In a new documentary film, the violent protests in the Middle East over the infamous Mohammed cartoons in 2005 are proven to have been instigated by Islamic leaders who never actually saw the drawings themselves. Danish director Karsten Kjær travelled throughout the Middle East to investigate who and what was responsible for the wave of violence released from the cartoons for his documentary ‘Those Damned Drawings’ (‘De Forbandede Tegninger’). He said the primary theme of the film is freedom of...

Poll: Soldiers Questioning The War Is Rush Limbaugh right to question Soldiers who don't support the war in Iraq? Yes, troops should not ask questions - 23% No, it's O.K. to question the war - 77%

While ABCÂ’s Chris Cuomo played softball with Columbia University president Lee Bollinger on the upcoming speech of Iranian president Ahmadinejad, CNNÂ’s John Roberts directed tough questions to John Coatsworth, dean for ColumbiaÂ’s School of International and Public Affairs. Roberts opened the interview with a question which summarized AhmadinejadÂ’s record. "Here's a leader who's advocated the destruction of Israel, denied the Holocaust, and is accused by our government, the United States government, of supplying both fighters and equipment to insurgents in Iraq, to kill U.S. troops. Why would you ever want him on your campus?" Coatsworth appeared during the 7 am...

'WHEN WE go to war for oil, we say we go to war for oil," the Russian military officer said to the British officer. "When you go to war for oil, you say you go to war to liberate people." Can you guess the name of the movie that contained this line? Was it Brian DePalma's anti-war propaganda film "Redacted?" Phil Donahue's "Body of War?" Nick Broomfield's "Battle for Haditha"? It could have been any of these movies. After all, the "war for oil" mantra is a staple of the anti-American/anti-Iraq war crowd. DePalma's film relates the tale of a...

Dan Rather immortalized the phrase "fake but accurate". Now a Marine-turned-actor tells the media that Nick Broomfield's Battle for Haditha is "not true-true but the basics are there". The actor is Montreal-born Eric Mehalacopoulos who stars in Broomfield's slanderous film about Haditha. Broomfield brings to life Congressman Murtha's account of enraged Marines, extracting vengence for an IED, by indiscriminately slaughtering innocent Iraqis. "Not true-true" is at odds with director Broomfield who bills his latest film (which received its world premiere in Toronto this past week) as "the unflinching true story". But after five hearings regarding the incident in Haditha, Murtha's...