Does Obama = Tolerance? The Experiment

Tolerance fails T-shirt test

As the media keeps gushing on about how America has finally adopted tolerance as the great virtue, and that we're all united now, let's consider the Brave Catherine Vogt Experiment.

Catherine Vogt, 14, is an Illinois 8th grader, the daughter of a liberal mom and a conservative dad. She wanted to conduct an experiment in political tolerance and diversity of opinion at her school in the liberal suburb of Oak Park.

She noticed that fellow students at Gwendolyn Brooks Middle School overwhelmingly supported Barack Obama for president. His campaign kept preaching "inclusion," and she decided to see how included she could be.

So just before the election, Catherine consulted with her history teacher, then bravely wore a unique T-shirt to school and recorded the comments of teachers and students in her journal. The T-shirt bore the simple yet quite subversive words drawn with a red marker:

"McCain Girl."

"I was just really curious how they'd react to something that different, because a lot of people at my school wore Obama shirts and they are big Obama supporters," Catherine told us. "I just really wanted to see what their reaction would be."

Immediately, Catherine learned she was stupid for wearing a shirt with Republican John McCain's name. Not merely stupid. Very stupid.

"People were upset. But they started saying things, calling me very stupid, telling me my shirt was stupid and I shouldn't be wearing it," Catherine said.

Then it got worse.

"One person told me to go die. It was a lot of dying. A lot of comments about how I should be killed," Catherine said, of the tolerance in Oak Park.

But students weren't the only ones surprised that she wore a shirt supporting McCain. [...]

Death threats? That's a bit over the top. But hey, it's eighth graders we're talking about, so I wouldn't take it too literally. But still, not exactly a lot of tolerance.

Of course, she wore the Obama t-shirt the next day, and the reactions to that... well, read the whole thing. In the end she wrote a report about it for her history class, and the irony of intolerance by the "tolerant" Obama supporters made for an interesting classroom discussion.

Even after the experiment, Catherine never did say who she preferred. Maybe she'll grow up to be a "swing" voter. ;-)
     

Will the Main Stream Media be responsible for a November Surprise tomorrow?

Victor Davis Hanson has an article today called The End of Journalism, where he states that "Sometime in 2008, journalism as we knew it died, and advocacy media took its place." The media has been biased for quite some time, but his year, they haven't even bothered to make the pretense of being unbiased. They have decided for us.

In blogging for this election, I've spent a lot of my time blogging about Obama, and the things about him the MSM failed to report on. The sad part of that is, I would have much rather spent my time talking about the advantages of a McCain/Palin ticket, instead of trying to make up for the deficiencies, lies and distortions of the MSM.

I see the photos of huge numbers of people at McCain/Palin rallies, at JohnMcCain.com. I look for the rallies on the MSM, and they aren't there. But the lies and distortions are.

Most people get their news from the MSM, not blogs. If McCain/Palin manages to win, it will be because it's what the majority of American people really want, despite the efforts of so many in the media to manipulate the outcome.

If Obama looses, and riots ensue as some are predicting, it will be the MSM who is responsible, for building up false expectations.

Republicans have not been the ones committing voter registration fraud, accepting illegal campaign contributions and bullying critics into silence. The MSM has not only failed to report substantially on these and other things, but have focused their resources on publishing skewed polls and erroneous stories presented as facts. All in support of their Chosen One.

No matter who wins this, the MSM will have a great deal to answer for. We should all be holding them accountable. Real journalism, that scrutinizes and reports on ALL the candidates, needs to live again.


Related Links:

Voter registration fraud and the Democrat Activists who work and lie to perpetuate it

23,000 attend McCain/Palin rally in Virginia

MSM does their best to Kill the Messenger

Palin and the Negligent Malevolence of the MSM

Obama Thugs go after NRO Journalist

Barack Obama; the larger, complete picture

When you can't debate, restrict your opponent
     

The roots of the financial crisis

The short answer, from Neal Boortz:
DEMOCRATS NOT TO BLAME? NONSENSE

About Nancy Pelosi. She says the Democrats share absolutely none of the blame for the current financial goings-on. She's wrong. In fact, she's lying because she knows here statement to be untrue. I'm going to unload on this when I get back, but here's your primer:

1. Almost all of the financial problems we see today are based on bad mortgage lending. That would be lending money to people to buy homes who didn't qualify for a loan.

2. The Democrats, under Clinton, strengthened a government-created monster called the "Community Reinvestment Act." This law was then used by "activists" and "community organizers" (like Obama?) to coerce lending institutions to make these bad loans ... millions of them.

3. Now we see what happens when political "wisdom" supplants good loan underwriting. When private financial institutions are virtually forced to make loans to people with a bad credit and job history .. this is what you get. Enjoy it.

The Democrats have offered us a candidate who is very anti-private sector. Obama believes that America is great because of government and those who, like him, deride the profit motive. If Americans are stupid enough to believe his socialist drivel and put him in office .. .then we will get just what we so richly deserve. This week is just a preview.

The Democrat's chickens have come home to roost. The Republicans aren't completely blameless, as they also played their part, insofar as they supported it, enabled it to proceed. Not to mention the reckless spending of the past two Bush terms.

It's worth noting that John McCain warned about this years ago. And just as he was right in pushing for the Surge in troops years earlier, he was also right about this. He is not part of this problem, but he is part of the solution.


UPDATE:Neal Boortz used to be a real estate attorney as well as a radio host, and was closing loans for some of the very institutions that are in trouble today. With that insight Neal goes into more detail about how this crisis came about in his article at Real Clear Politics:

The Rest of the Meltdown Story

[...] OK .. so we all know that a lot of really bad real estate loans were made. The political class would sure love for us to believe that the blame here rests squarely on "greedy" (try to define that word) mortgage brokers and lenders. The truth is that most of the blame rests on political meddling in the credit decisions of these mortgage lenders.

Twenty years ago the buzz-word in the media was "redlining." Newspapers across the country were filled with hard-hitting investigative reports about evil and racist mortgage lenders refusing to make real estate loans to various minorities and to applicants who lived in lower-income neighborhoods. There I was closing these loans in the afternoons, and in the mornings offering a counter-argument on the radio to these absurd "redlining" claims. Frankly, the claims that evil mortgage lenders were systematically denying loans to blacks and other minorities were a lot sexier on the radio than my claims that when credit histories, job stability, loan-to-value ratios and income levels were considered there was no evident racial discrimination.

Political correctness won the day. Washington made it clear to banks and other lending institutions that if they did not do something .. and fast .. to bring more minorities and low-income Americans into the world of home ownership there would be a heavy price to pay. Congress set up processes (Research the Community Redevelopment Act) whereby community activist groups and organizers could effectively stop a bank's efforts to grow if that bank didn't make loans to unqualified borrowers. Enter, stage left, the "subprime" mortgage. These lenders knew that a very high percentage of these loans would turn to garbage - but it was a price that had to be paid if the bank was to expand and grow. We should note that among the community groups browbeating banks into making these bad loans was an outfit called ACORN. There is one certain presidential candidate that did a lot of community organizing for ACORN. I won't mention his name so as to avoid politicizing this column.

These garbage loans to unqualified borrowers were then bundled up and sold. The expectation was that the loans would be eventually paid off when rising home values led some borrowers to access their equity through re-financing and others to sell and move on up the ladder. Oops.

Right now this crisis is being sold to the American public by the left as evidence the failure of the free market and capitalism. Not so. What we're seeing is the inevitable result of political interference in free market economics. Acme bank didn't want to loan money to Joe Homebuyer because Joe had a spotty job history, owed too much money on his credit cards, and wasn't all that good at making payments on time. The politicians told Acme Bank to figure out a way to make that loan, because, after all, Joe is a bona-fide minority-American, or forget about opening that new branch office on the Southside. The loan was made under politicial pressure; the loan, with millions like it, failed - and now we are left to enjoy today's headlines.

So ... why aren't you reading the whole story in the mainstream media? Come on, are you kidding me? [...]

I wish he was kidding.


Related Links:

Mac on Obama and Fannie and Freddie

Guess which monkeys had their grubby little fists in the cookie jar

The economic mess: Mac is right - we need more oversight
     

Is the troop surge in Iraq REALLY working?

If you listen only the the MSM, you would think not. The recent suicide bombing in the green zone, killing three Iraqi Members of parliament, and severely wounding a fourth, is very disheartening news. Yet if you want to understand what's really happening, you have to look at the whole, larger picture. One set back is not the whole story. Charles Krauthammer reminds us there is more:

Surge Results are Visible

By the day, the debate at home about Iraq becomes increasingly disconnected from the realities of the actual war on the ground. The Democrats in Congress are so consumed with negotiating among their factions the most clever linguistic device to legislatively ensure the failure of the administration's current military strategy -- while not appearing to do so -- that they speak almost not at all about the first visible results of that strategy.

And preliminary results are visible. The landscape is shifting in the two fronts of the current troop surge: Anbar province and Baghdad. [...]

Krauthammmer then goes into some detail about the real changes in those areas, with new cooperation from the Sunnis, who were previously resistant. Stability is increasing, and the surge hasn't even entered full swing yet:

[...] How at this point -- with only about half of the additional surge troops yet deployed -- can Democrats be trying to force the U.S. to give up? The Democrats say they are carrying out their electoral mandate from the November election. But winning a single-vote Senate majority as a result of razor-thin victories in Montana and Virginia is hardly a landslide.

Second, if the electorate was sending an unconflicted message about withdrawal, how did the most uncompromising supporter of the war, Sen. Joe Lieberman, win handily in one of the most liberal states in the country?

And third, where was the mandate for withdrawal? Almost no Democratic candidates campaigned on that. They campaigned for changing the course the administration was on last November.

Which the president has done. He changed the civilian leadership at the Department of Defense, replaced the head of Central Command and, most critically, replaced the Iraq commander with Petraeus -- unanimously approved by the Democratic Senate -- to implement a new counterinsurgency strategy. [...]

(bold emphasis mine) The Democrats are always saying Give Peace a Chance. But the mere absence of war is not peace. Sometimes the only way way to achieve a real and lasting peace is through the exercise of strength against tyranny. How about giving General Petraeus a chance to do just that, like the Democrats agreed to?


How about giving this woman, and many just like her, a chance? A chance to live in peace and prosperity, instead of abandoning them to a certain bloodbath?


Related Link:

Give Surge a Chance: Our moral obligation
This is the text Senator John McCain's speech at the Virginia Military Institute, as prepared for delivery. An excerpt:

[...] I know the pain war causes. I understand the frustration caused by our mistakes in this war. I sympathize with the fatigue of the American people. And I regret sincerely the additional sacrifices imposed on the brave Americans who defend us. But I also know the toll a lost war takes on an army and a country. We, who are willing to support this new strategy, and give General Petraeus the time and support he needs, have chosen a hard road. But it is the right road. It is necessary and just. Democrats, who deny our soldiers the means to prevent an American defeat, have chosen another road. It may appear to be the easier course of action, but it is a much more reckless one, and it does them no credit even if it gives them an advantage in the next election. This is an historic choice, with ramifications for Americans not even born yet. Let’s put aside for a moment the small politics of the day. The judgment of history should be the approval we seek, not the temporary favor of the latest public opinion poll. [...]

(bold emphasis mine) McCain doesn't downplay the pain of this war, yet he also understands the long term consequences of losing it.

Hat tip to Born again Redneck Yogi for the link.