In a radio interview revealed today, he said that one of the quote -- "tragedies" of the civil rights movement is that it didn't bring about a redistribution of wealth in our society. He said, and I quote, "One of the tragedies of the Civil Rights movement was because the Civil Rights movement became so court-focused I think that there was a tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing and activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalitions of power through which you bring about redistributive change."

That is what change means for Barack the Redistributor: It means taking your money and giving it to someone else. He believes in redistributing wealth, not in policies that grow our economy and create jobs. He is more interested in controlling wealth than in creating it, in redistributing money instead of spreading opportunity. I am going to create wealth for all Americans, by creating opportunity for all Americans.

He's speaking now. He just said it.

White People Can't Vote: So suggests a Philadelphia Inquirer column.

As a lifelong Caucasian, I am beginning to think the time has finally come to take the right to vote away from white people, at least until we come to our senses. Seriously, I just don't think we can be trusted to exercise it responsibly anymore.

Terrorist and Obama Mentor William Ayers Jokes About Redistribution of Wealth: Ha, ha, ha.

Posted by: Ace at 09:59 AM | Comments (90)
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Nothing new or unexpected here, but now we've got a nice graph. The Project for Excellence in Journalism (sic) has the statistics:

For Obama during this period, just over a third of the stories were clearly positive in tone (36%), while a similar number (35%) were neutral or mixed. A smaller number (29%) were negative.

For McCain, by comparison, nearly six in ten of the stories studied were decidedly negative in nature (57%), while fewer than two in ten (14%) were positive.

McCain did succeed in erasing one advantage Obama enjoyed earlier in the campaign—the level of media exposure each candidate received. Since the end of August, the two rivals have been in a virtual dead heat in the amount of attention paid, and when vice presidential candidates are added to the mix the Republican ticket has the edge. This is a striking contrast to the pre-convention period, when Obama enjoyed nearly 50% more coverage.

It isn't any consolation that McCain managed to get as much coverage as Obama when twice as much of that coverage was negative. To be fair, covering Obama has probably gotten more difficult since he's gone without talking to the press for so long.

I got this via the Anchoress who says, "slap my ass and call me Sally." Oh, yeah. You fit right in here, Sally.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 09:53 AM | Comments (12)
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Remember all the hub-bub when Ari Fleisher said "We need to watch what we say" (in response to a jackass Congressman talking about turbans)?

Yeah.

I don't imagine the MSM will be quite as bothered by this.

Posted by: Ace at 09:51 AM | Comments (21)
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Dude, Where's My Head?:

A suspected US missile strike has killed 20 people, including a top Taleban commander, in north-west Pakistan, witnesses and officials say.

Mohammad Omar was among the dead when the missile, reportedly fired by a pilotless US drone, hit a compound owned by him in South Waziristan.

Omar fought with the Taleban in Afghanistan in the late 1990s.

...

The latest strike on Sunday night was launched at a compound owned by Mohammad Omar in Mandatta village in the troubled region of South Waziristan.

Mohammad Omar was a close associate of the dead Taleban commander Nek Mohammed, who was killed in a suspected US strike in the area four years ago.

Witnesses said that the missile strike completely destroyed Mohammed Omar's house, and partially damaged two neighbouring houses.

...

Local officials confirmed that 20 bodies had been dug up from the debris of the compound.

...

The US has made no comment.

The attack comes three days after a missile attack in Dande Darpakhel area of North Waziristan area killed seven students of a religious school.

Over a month ago, US troops conducted a ground operation in the Musa Nikah area of South Waziristan area in which more than 15 people were killed.

In recent weeks the United States has launched many missile strikes against suspected militant targets in the Afghan border region.

...

Figures compiled by the BBC Urdu service show that some 80 people have been killed in a number of suspected US missile strikes in South and North Waziristan region over the past month.

The United States rarely confirms or denies such attacks.

Note we don't talk about these sovereignty-violating airstrikes.

Tough guy Reparations Lightworker Barack Obama is pretty chatty about the Great Overmountain Invasion of Pakistan though, isn't he?

Via Infidels are cool.

Correction/Clarification: Mohammad Omar, not Mullah Omar.

More: at Long War Journal.

Posted by: Ace at 09:17 AM | Comments (51)
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Yup:

A caller, "Karen," asked if it's "too late for that kind of reparative work economically?” And she asked if that work should be done through the courts or through legislation.

"Maybe IÂ’m showing my bias here as a legislator as well as a law professor," Obama said. "I'm not optimistic about bringing about major redistributive change through the courts. The institution just isnÂ’t structured that way."

"Reparative work." Seems like the caller understood what Obama was saying, and Obama agreed.

It's only now that they are furiously spinning that they meant something else.

While Obama isn't "optimistic" about getting this "reparative work" done through the courts, he hasn't entirely given up on them:

You can craft theoretical justification for it legally, and any three of us sitting here could come up with a rationale for bringing about economic change through the courts.

Obama's Redistributionist Obsession: Racially-tinged economic justice.

This is astounding stuff from a man who is one election away from the presidency. In politer tones, he is saying things that would make his mentors — Jeremiah Wright, Michael Pfleger, and William Ayers, not necessarily in that order — proud as peacocks. Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez are probably beaming too.

....

I suggest henceforth that every time readers hear the word “change” from Team Obama, they insert the work “redistributive” in front of it.

Curiously, one of Obama's ideas for "change" -- taxing 401k's -- tracks rather neatly with radical redistributionist Phather Phleger's call for white people giving up their 401ks in the interest of racial justice.

Thanks to CJ for that.

Posted by: Ace at 08:57 AM | Comments (63)
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Starting at (surprise, surprise) Ben Smith's Blog, which quotes Obama law adviser Cass Sunstein:

A top legal advisor to Barack Obama, Harvard law professor Cass Sunstein, said today that Obama's 2001 remarks on "redistributive change" -- pushed hard on the right today -- are being misinterpreted, and that he was actually articulating "conservative" legal principles, and that the then-law professor's "law-speak" was being misinterpreted.

...

"What the critics are missing is that the term 'redistribution' didn’t mean in the Constitutional context equalized wealth or anything like that. It meant some positive rights, most prominently the right to education, and also the right to a lawyer," Sunstein said. "What he’s saying – this is the irony of it – he’s basically taking the side of the conservatives then and now against the liberals."

Sunstein is correct as to the practice of the Court now. The Court refused to equalize wealth and that hasn't been overturned yet. But Obama very clearly thinks that was a bad decision of the court because he goes on to praise the state supreme courts for taking up the issue (from the full transcript, which I cleaned up):

One other area where the civil rights area has changed... is at the state level you now have state supreme courts and state laws that in some ways have adopted the ethos of the Warren Court. A classic example would be something like public education, where after Brown v. Board, a major issue ends up being redistribution -- how do we get more money into the schools, and how do we actually create equal schools and equal educational opportunity? Well, the court in a case called San Antonio v. Rodriguez in the early '70s basically slaps those kinds of claims down, and says, 'You know what, we as a court have no power to examine issues of redistribution and wealth inequalities. With respect to schools, that's not a race issue, thats a wealth issue and something and we can't get into.'

Now what is interesting, though, is suddenly a whole bunch of folks start bringing these claims in state court under state constitutions that call for equal educational opportunity. And you see state courts with mixed results being more responsive to it. You know the reason I think that is relevant. It's not to say that I am not worried about the lack of protections coming from the Supreme Court, but it is to say, though, that you have got a cultural transformation that changes how states operate and how states think about the protection of individual rights in ways that didn't exist prior to the Warren Court and that I think is an important legacy to keep in mind.

Also a reminder: this story is not about simple redistribution from the haves to the have-nots, which is the norm from Democrats and therefore unsurprising. Obama's redistribution is in the context of the civil rights movement. In other words, from everyone else to blacks, based on nothing so much except skin color.

Many people will need to be gently reminded: this is not about helping the poor. Many, many, Democrats and independents (and Republicans) aren't bothered by a little redistribution to alleviate poverty. I think for many it is considered a public good, something that, of course, governments should provide. So when this is couched in those terms, people will think "no big deal, we already do this."

That's the way Professor Bernstein went at Volokh:

It's true that most Americans, when asked by pollsters, think that it's emphatically not the government's job to redistribute wealth. But are people so stupid as to not recognize that when politicians talk about a "right to health care," or "equalizing educational opportunities," or "making the rich pay a fair share of taxes," or "ensuring that all Americans have the means to go to college," and so forth and so on, that they are advocating the redistribution of wealth? Is it okay for a politician to talk about the redistribution of wealth only so long as you don't actually use phrases such as "redistribution" or "spreading the wealth," in which case he suddenly becomes "socialist"? If so, then American political discourse, which I never thought to be especially elevated, is in even a worse state than I thought.

Obama's desires for redistribution are not merely about health care or equalizing educational opportunities or making the rich pay a fair share of taxes or ensuring that all Americans have the means to go to college, as Bernstein implies. I'm sure Obama is interested in that kind of redistribution. But his comments reveal that he's also interested in redistributing wealth based on skin color.

No matter how resigned to redistribution for purposes of alleviating poverty, or educational disparities, very few are ready to embrace redistribution based on race. Go out and remind them!

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 08:51 AM | Comments (57)
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Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 07:51 AM | Comments (49)
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Good enough reason for me. The Russians can complain all they want.

A U.S. strike on a network of foreign fighters in Syria killed its main target — an Al Qaeda coordinator who was wanted for sending foreign fighters, weapons and cash into Iraq, a U.S. official told FOX News.

Killed in Sunday's attack by Special Operations Forces was Abu Ghadiyain, Al Qaeda's senior coordinator operating in Syria who was closely associated with the leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq.

Special Ops. When there's an asshole who absolutely, positively must be delivered overnight. To the dirt.

tip by incognito in the McCain thread.

Posted by: Dave in Texas at 07:43 AM | Comments (67)
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In Cleveland with his economic advisers including Meg Whitman, Mitt Romney, Michael Steele and some small business folks. Sadly, no Joe the Plumber.

McCain sounds good going on about pro-growth v. pro-government solutions.

Some bad news, it sounds like he's getting a cold a loosing his voice. It's not unusual at the end of campaign, it just sucks when you need a big finish...someone get him some tea with honey, stat!

UPDATE: Um, he didn't mention the tape directly. Good talk on economics and the differences between the two candidates but nothing directly about 'spreading the wealth around' or the new tape.

UPDATE II: Carl Cameron says that McCain will be talking about the tape later today.

UPDATE IIA: Palin is giving a speech in VA. The crowd had a cool chant that even Palin hadn't heard..."Use Your Brain...Vote McCain", also there was a "I am Joe" chant.

Repbulicans are finally narrowing the vital Chant Gap!

Tito the Builder is in attendance and the crowd is fired up. more...

Posted by: DrewM at 06:01 AM | Comments (154)
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You know who's spreading the nasty about Sarah Palin? Former Mitt Romney aides.

You know who that benefits? Not Mitt Romney.

Allegedly, allegedly. I believe it, though!

So, that makes one Mitt Romney endorser, Doug Kmeic, becoming the leader of Pro-Lifers For Obama (And, Incidentally, the Right to Choose), and the rest of his posse trying to turn this election into a referendum on Sarah Palin.

Who's feeling good about the next four years?

Posted by: Open Blog at 04:32 AM | Comments (7)
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