A few PUMAs here on the site now. Maybe more lurking.

I have to ask because I don't know -- I really don't know precisely how Democrats think, and I'm not being snarky or insulting; I have vague guesses, but I don't know -- what can we all on the right do better to grab up more of your kind? more...

Posted by: Ace at 02:57 PM | Comments (366)
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A remarkable day in the cause of hatred we can all celebrate.

Posted by: Ace at 10:48 AM | Comments (21)
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More like this. They're getting it. Bit by bit, they're getting it.

They're not just linking community organizing Obama to his onetime employer, radical community organizer ACORN.

Nor are they merely connecting Obama to ACORN's massive voter fraud activities.

They're hanging the subprime crisis around Obama's and ACORN's neck.

This ad gives me hope. It gets to the truth. Even if the polls aren't showing the impact from all of this yet, I say again: this is hollowing out Obama's support among persuadables. Whether we ultimately convince enough of them is anyone's guess, but surely anyone who sees this ad is less likely to vote for Obama.

McCain: More. Every. Single. Day.

more...

Posted by: Ace at 10:33 AM | Comments (106)
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I wrote about this cat some time ago. He was so blazingly corrupt that he couldn't even get Chicago's corrupt Democrats to support him... but Obama endorsed him.

(3) So, Rezko is singing about the Giannoulias family and its longtime “business dealings” in Chicago, which would interest someone like Fitzgerald and the Justice Department, who have had a long ambition to crack Soprano-style business dealings in Chicago (the city known for Al Capone hasn’t changed much, really). The next plate to drop in this will be Fitzgerald then leaning on the Giannoulias family to give up someone bigger than them, who Fitzgerald once discussed in terms of hoping “he has the morals to do the right thing”, to paraphrase. We now believe that person Fitz was talking about is Barack Obama.

(4) The Giannoulias family was involved with Obama as far back as his first state senate campaign in 1996. It has been long rumored here in Chicago that Obama obtained a sweetheart deal on his first town home here in Chicago — which he could not have afforded otherwise — and guess who the financing came from for that house? We’ve been told it was Broadway Bank, the Giannoulias bank. Now, this sets up a scenario where the Giannoulias family helps Obama with his campaign finances and gets him deeper in their pocket with his sweetheart mortgage deal (for the first home he owned that he could not afford) – all in exchange for quid pro quo to be determined later.

(5) One favor political Chicago claims Obama did for the Giannoulias family was in 2006 when, out of the blue, 29 year old Alexi Giannoulias, with no experience, and without ever having voted before, decides to run for State Treasurer of Illinois. Also out of the blue, Barack Obama endorses Alexi Giannoulias for State Treasurer. This was a SHOCK to everyone in Chicago — and Giannoulias would have never become State Treasurer without Obama’s help. In political circles here, it has always been believed that this endorsement was bought years ago with that sweetheart mortgage deal Broadway Bank arranged for Obama to buy his town house.

Ah yes, the Broadwa Bank thing. Obama has never said where that loan came from, has he? He won't say which bank gave him the loan, only that there were "competitive" offers from more than one bank. Why so sketchy about the bank?

Probably because it's this mobbed-up Broadway Bank, run by a Rezko stooge.

Thanks to kimberly.

Posted by: Ace at 10:17 AM | Comments (44)
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Better and better.

Shut Down?: Berlusconi's panicking, and feeding into panic. He just spooked the markets more.

Bush dismisses such talk, rightly.

Posted by: Ace at 09:49 AM | Comments (66)
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After hyping their new poll for hours, telling me I wouldn't believe how the Ayers issue is resonating, I learned the following:

Obama ahead by 7.

Obama ahead with independents 34-32.

A mere 32% of voters say that the Ayers connection makes them less likely to vote for Obama (and of course almost all of these are Republicans who aren't voting for him anyway), and 29% of independents say the same (and they are likely McCain-leaners).

Doesn't change the Don't Panic post -- I didn't think the issue had broken through yet anyway -- but I'm extremely annoyed that Fox hyped this poll for two hours and then spun it as positive for McCain when it fact it's quite negative.

Most of the media believes conservatives are stupid. I would appreciate it if FoxNews, the conservative-leaning network, didn't also make its belief that conservatives are stupid so transparent.

Why McCain May Be Right About His Tactics: McCain's erosion comes primarily due to women defecting from his camp to Obama's. When he was ahead, he was only behind by 4 with women. Now he's down by 16.

Partly this is because Sarah Palin is simply not as big a draw with swing women as she was during Palinmania -- indeed, more voters are now less likely to vote for McCain due to her presence on the ticket. (It had been 40/30 more likely/less likely, now it's reversed, 30/40.)

The point is... most readers here are either guys or women who tend to be, well, kinda exceptional women, in that they're, uh, you know. Logical.

The tactics that seem so obvious to us might in fact be wrong-- who knows, perhaps McCain knows, based on polls and focus groups, that among the group he needs to win back -- white independent women -- the Fannie/Freddie stuff doesn't play. Maybe they don't get it; maybe they don't believe it; maybe the whole subject makes them feel uncomfortable because it's blaming someone and that's not fair so let's just stick to blaming Bush and McCain and the Republicans.

I don't know. I still think I/we are right about this -- McCain should have been pounding this from the get-go -- but they do, after all, have the data, and lots of smart people analyzing it. So who knows.

But I don't get it -- it seems to me that the Ayers stuff is more "unfair" than the Fannie stuff. I don't think either are unfair, of course, but if I was going to pick an issue, gun to my head, as "more unfair," it would be Ayers.

So if there's something about women that makes them turn off from the blame on Fannie, I don't see how the Ayers stuff would be more effective.

One thing's for sure -- we need Palin to be an outright asset again. How we get there from here, I don't know.

Posted by: Ace at 09:29 AM | Comments (81)
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Some people have complained the site is crashing and/or using way too many system resources.

One problem is posting embedded videos on the main page-- something I forgot this week as I went video-happy and posted them sometimes two to a post on the main page. I just buried most of them.

This is my fault, so I'm not blaming anyone else. However, it's a good idea to keep videos under the fold when you post.

Also, as a general matter -- my fault again -- long posts are much better if just a couple of paragraphs are posted above the fold, the rest beyond it. Makes for an easier-to-scan page with more headlines and less long patches of text.

I always violate this rule so no one say "I'm sorry." It's just something we need to keep in mind, me more than anyone else.

Posted by: Ace at 09:23 AM | Comments (18)
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As a member of the Panic Brigade, I'm guilty as hell of panicking. I'm a diagnosed panic-disorder case prone to depression with anger-management issues and low frustration tolerance.

So this is written to myself as to anyone else.

There's a lot of anger and frustration as it seems that a candidate who would be disqualified from holding office for a variety of reasons is winning, and we can't seem to make traction.

But bear in mind -- McCain swung ten points when he picked Palin as Veep. Obama swung 10-12 points when the economic catastrophe -- in which he had a starring role -- broke through to dominate the public's mood.

It looks bad now. It also looked bad before the convention. One never knows when the next breakthrough event will occur. But when they do occur, they can swing 10 or 15 points in a matter of days.

The electorate's preferences are volatile. more...

Posted by: Ace at 08:43 AM | Comments (135)
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He takes a documentary on Ayers -- in which the terrorist Ayers lovingly explains his IED building skills -- and adds in some editorial juxtapositions.

Read him.

Here's the vid, which I'm stealing myself because it's important and because he gave me permission to do so.

Rehabilitated?

Hot Air's post on Ayers' supposed "rehabilitation" is also a must read.

Look, Dohrn and Ayers never hid the fact that they wanted to blow up more stuff. They proudly said this every time a microphone was pointed at them. Are we to believe that in their private conversations with Obama, they were feeding him some kind of opposite story?

Have either of the terrorists ever suggested they were repentant or rehabilitated at all?

No, of course not.

As the below video demonstrates for the hundredth time. more...

Posted by: Ace at 07:38 AM | Comments (53)
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On the one hand you don't want to demagogue the issue.

On the other hand, the issue inherently underscores a major tension between the parties, and the races, since 1998: The Democrats' overarching drive to do certifiably insane things, like letting murderers out on weekend furloughs from prison, in response to constant agitation from minority pressure groups. And all the quite predictable consequences that flow from such policies. No one would ever suggest letting murderers out of jail for weekend rape-fests if almost all prisoners were white. There would be no reason to suggest such a lunacy. It is only when race is a factor do we begin seeing such insane policies not only proposed seriously, but enacted.

And no one would have thought it was a good idea to eviscerate all prudence from the mortgage process had we only been talking about poor whites. The answer would have been, "Um, duh, they can't afford these loans, that's why they're not getting them; what are you, insane?"

And again, once race is injected as a factor insanity becomes government policy.

Yes, the Democratic initiative did help minority homebuyers (and lots of white credit-poor homebuyers too, who wound up being the main beneficiaries of the push, simply because there are more poor whites than poor blacks in the country).

But at what cost? (Incidentally, Ed's post is Must Read All the Way Through.)

Our politics is constantly being distorted by this issue. And note that, as usual, many politicians were willing to go along quietly with a risky scheme with perfectly foreseeable consequences for fear of being called "racist" if they objected.

Well, here we are now.

We really did lots of good putting credit-poor homebuyers into homes they couldn't afford, didn't we?

And the kicker: Because this issue necessarily raises racial issues, McCain and the Republicans have been afraid to call the Democrats out on it, permitting Barack Obama -- who actually sued CitiGroup to ease its lending requirements in order to get credit-poor minorities mortgages -- to actually profit from the disaster he himself made.

There is some tiny hope that this information is getting out there a bit. Since McCain finally began fighting back on this issue -- rather half-heartedly and incoherently -- Obama has backed off of the polling highs he'd seen earlier. McCain is still behind, but it's no longer a blowout.

But McCain cannot expect talk radio and bloggers to carry this message. If he actually wishes to win the election -- something that has seemed in doubt of late -- he's going to have carry this message himself, forcefully, and note every day that Obama actually sued CitiGroup to compel them to make these awful loans.

Posted by: Ace at 07:08 AM | Comments (52)
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