I just saw Air America Radio talk show host Mike Papantonio tell Neil Cavuto on FOX that he was a journalist and went to ‘journalism school’ for four years. They were discussing the TV reporter that asked Joe Biden some questions that no one else has asked either him or his running mate to date. Predictably, Papantonio wants her to lose her job. That’s the way the Left handles tough issues when it concerns one of their own.
At any rate, according to Papantonio’s Bio on his BIG LAW website, he doesn’t mention a journalism degree let alone attending journalism school.
That’s another thing the Left is comfortable with, telling stories in order to support a point. Much like the entire picture of just who Barack Obama is and what he is all about. Like Papantonio, he is not what he says he is or who he appears to be.
Seems like Deja Vu of 2000 on election night down at the Court House, when hundreds of us were chanting ‘count every vote, every vote counts.’ That’s when Democrats sent their lawyers here to deny our military absentee ballots from being counted. Now, Fairfax County, in Virginia is rejecting 98 percent of the absentee ballots they have received, on a technicality that is of no fault of the voter. The ‘voter’ being the ones whose vote should count more than anyone’s, the ones who are actually fighting for that right.
Fairfax County Registrar Rokey Suleman is disqualifying an overwhelming majority of the military federal write-in absentee ballots received in his county on the basis that no address had been given for those witnessing the voter signatures on the ballots.
When asked how many ballots had been rejected, Herrity responded, “Out of the 260 military federal write-in ballots received to date, only five included an address for the witness. The other 255 have been set aside for rejection.”
Block 6: Provide any information that may assist the local election official in accepting this ballot or application.
Block 7: Sign and date in the presence of a witness. The witness must sign and date the form.
Then, STEP 2 of the instructions say to put the ballot into the security envelope. STEP 3, Submission Options describe where to mail the envelope.
Only in STEP 4 is there a mention about requiring the address of the witness, which says it was supposed to be put in block 6, which is actually part of STEP 1.
STEP 4: Follow-up
* Check the “Important Dates” section at the top of this page for deadlines.
* Registered Virginia voters can use the FWAB simultaneously as an absentee ballot request and ballot for Federal offices as long as it is received 5 days before the election. The FWAB Declaration/Affirmation must contain the residence address where the voter is registered in Virginia, the voter’s current military or overseas address, and the voter’s and witness’ signature and date. The witness must provide his or her printed name and address in Block 6.
* If you receive your state absentee ballot after submitting your Federal Write-In Absentee Ballot, fill it out and return it. The state absentee ballot will be counted instead of the back-up ballot if it’s received in time.
If you use just a little common sense here, chances are good that the witness is not a resident of Fairfax County, or of the State of Virginia. Their current address is in the war zone. Are county officials going to call or write them to verify that the address they gave is correct? Would it not be logical to assume that they are not looking for witness’s war zone addresses?
I wonder if those instructions were written by the genius in Palm Beach County that made the butterfly ballot in 2000? Nevertheless, the instructions were misleading at the very least. Especially considering the ‘voters’ are in a war zone conducting the war and their ballots were not created by ACORN. Those ballots, all of them, should be counted.
Ann Coulter, one of my favorite pundits that liberals love to hate, elucidates what is meant by the media circling the wagons around the most liberal Senator in Congress, Sen. Barack Obama.
In the past week, TV anchors have taken to claiming that Obama “refuted” John McCain’s statement that Obama launched his political career at the home of former Weather Underground leader Ayers.
No, Obama “denied” it; he didn’t “refute” it. If “denying” something is the same as “refuting” it, then maybe the establishment media can quit harping on Palin’s qualifications to be president, since she too “refuted” that by denying it.
The anarchist and Marxist descriptors of William Ayers are his own. It is what he says he is. Put simply, he’s another America hater on Obama’s short list of long-term associations.
Well, I went to my first City Council meeting to provide my input on the above subject. The meeting room was packed, but thinned out after the first two agenda items finished, which concerned downtown development and appointing some people to terms on some community redevelopment board. While listening to that go on, and on, I came to realize that these meetings sometimes go late into the night. The term cruel and unusual punishment came to mind for having to sit there and listen to it, let alone report on it.
I did have a brush with greatness though, well, aside from speaking to the entire (except for Donovan) city council. I sat in the front row next to Mark O’Brien and not far from Sam Hall.
As I pointed out in my previous post on this subject entitled Pensacola Call To Action, I was not aware of any groundswell of public opinion to change the remaining portion of Alcaniz St. to MLK Drive. On that, I can report that the driving force behind it is an organization headed by Leroy Boyd called Movement for Change.
Being unfamiliar with the proceedings, I let several others offer their public input before I offered my two cents.
Mr. Boyd was the first to speak. I was interested to hear why Mr. Boyd wanted to revisit this issue and replace Alcaniz Street entirely, since this matter had already been decided eight years ago in a way that both honors Dr. King and preserves the historical aspect (Alcaniz is a city in Spain) of Alcaniz Street.
He couldn’t have made a worse case for wanting to change it. He told the city council that people on Alcaniz St. south of Cervantes are racist. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing, but that is the case he presented. He said it was all about race, and that that was the reason that the entire street didn’t get renamed eight years ago. The historical aspect of Alcaniz St. totally escaped him, and, he did not accept the others’ opinions from eight years ago that it was about history and not race.
When it was my turn, I was pretty nervous. I hope I didn’t make too much of a fool of myself while speaking to the Council. I attempted to make my case that the council ought to just leave the street where they left it eight years ago. That way, they won’t be erasing a part of Pensacola’s history from a few centuries ago for the sake of the civil rights movement of the last century. The way it is, everyone, except perhaps Mr. Boyd, can be satisfied by respecting history and Dr. King.
Then I stated that, although I did not know Mr. Boyd, that his making a street name change proposal all about race was not the best way to get anything done. I said something like pushing the race button on this issue is not the way to go. What happened next was kind of cool.
Mr. Boyd took to the floor again to address me and what I had said, as though he was going to carry on a debate with me or something. Mayor Fogg correctly told Mr. Boyd that he had his one chance for public input. When I heard that, since I hadn’t met Mr. Boyd yet, I felt that the time was right. So I got up, walked over to him, and motioned for him to follow me out of the room so we could meet each other, let the council resume their business, and discuss the issue further.
Mr. Boyd followed me into the open space where the elevators are and I introduced myself. A few other people followed too, I suppose to insure our mutual safety. ?? Our meeting was nothing but civil. My question to him was simple. ‘Why are you making the street name issue a racial one?’
Boyd: Because it is. It’s all about race.
ross: How can you say that? I don’t see any signs down there that say ‘whites only.’
Boyd: Because the prices of homes there are too expensive. The whites have priced blacks out of the neighborhood.
ross: Real estate values are not racist. They are what they are. Barack Obama could get a place down there if he wanted to.
Boyd: I probably could too, but Aragon Court was supposed to be affordable and it isn’t. You can’t name 10 black families that live down there.
ross: What’s Aragon Court got to do with renaming Alcaniz Street? So, because it is expensive, that makes it racist? Are people on Pensacola Beach racist also? It’s even more expensive there.
Boyd: Oh, you don’t want to go there. Many blacks have disappeared on the beach.
ross: What? I’ve been here for 26 years and I haven’t heard of anything like that.
Boyd: That was more long ago than that.
ross: So why Alcaniz Street, that has history in it for the city? Whats the matter with W or A street for example?
Boyd: You’re not going to tell me where I can name a street. It is about race, and making all of Alcaniz to be MLK is my goal, and that’s that.
By this point there wasn’t anything else to discuss. He made his point and I made mine. We shook hands and I left. He went back inside. I don’t know what else went on at the council meeting. But at least I found out first-hand who and what is behind the name change. For Leroy Boyd, it is unfinished business, part of a movement. History be dammed.
This video is Leroy Boyd making his case on why the remainder of Alcaniz Street, from Cervantes Street south to Main Street should be replaced with MLK Drive.
And this is my public input to the matter. At the very end of the video you can hear me accept Mr. Boyd’s wish to talk to me by inviting him to follow me outside, which he did. And the dialog from that discussion is what appears above.
Where is the surprise? Colin Powell took his best shot at getting back at Bush, and the Bush administration by endorsing Barack Obama three weeks before the election. It had nothing to do with McCain.
I saw and read what Powell had said about Obama that, in his mind, qualifies him to be a President of the United States in three months. Powell seems to be star struck with ‘change’ and a guy that talks a good game. Those are good qualifications for a used car salesman, but should not be the end-all for Commander in Chief and President of the United States.
Powell, as I recall, was the only member of the Bush administration who would not commit to a party affiliation in the 2004 election season. You might remember, he resigned. In his mind, he left the party when he believed he was used by the first Bush administration when he gave his presentation at the United Nations, making the case for going into Iraq. He just chose 3 weeks before the election to tell the public. He was, and is a good strategist. That is the whole of the story. It remains to be seen if his coming out has changed anyone’s mind on who is most qualified.
Look back ten months ago, during the primaries. All the Democrat candidates thought that Obama was not ready, was too green, not too black, to be President. Somewhere between then and now, Obama is now ready? What happened?
According to Derek Cosson’s blog, Progressive Pensacola . . .
At Monday’s meeting of the Pensacola City Council’s Committee of the Whole, the issue of renaming the remaining portion of Alcaniz Street to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Drive will be raised.
Monday’s meeting is tomorrow, October 20, 2008. The matter of naming a street after Martin Luther King, Jr. was brought up and settled eight years ago in the year 2000. For lack of any groundswell of public opinion to revisit this issue, apparently somebody is bringing it up again.
If you can, attend the Committee of the Whole meeting on Monday and speak to them in person. The meeting starts at 3:15 PM, and will be held in the Hagler/Mason Conference Room on the second floor of Pensacola City Hall.
For our local readers of The Lunch Counter, please take a moment to provide your input to your city commissioner.
Here is a sample of my input. Your mileage may vary . . .
Absent of any public groundswell of opinion to rid the city of a street named Alcaniz, please vote NO to what I understand will be a topic at the council meeting tomorrow, Monday 10/20/2008 to change what remains of Alcaniz St. to MLK Blvd..
This matter was ‘settled’ a few years ago by the city dedicating a few miles of road to the name of MLK Blvd.. Anyone supporting a further change is more ignorant of the city’s history than any elected representative of the city should be.
Thank you in advance for your cooperation.
The city has more pressing problems than wanting to, or needing to, erase part of its history.
Isn’t it amazing how the media is all over ‘Joe the plumber?’ Within 24 hours, we know all about this man’s personal and professional business. And for over two years now, the media is still not motivated to tell us about Barack Obama’s alliances with people that hate America, and his proclivity for supporting directions in education that promote socialism. Then there’s his working for and with ACORN, and so much more.
It is more than an little ironic that Obama and his willing accomplices in the media chose to attack this hard working middle class guy, a union member no less, that hopes to one day buy the plumbing business he currently works for. ‘Joe the plumber’ is of the kind of people that Democrats purport to champion. Working hard to get ahead and having some financial difficulty, as the media is so quick to point out, but trying to overcome the obstacles he faces. What has Obama’s hair standing up about ‘Joe’ is that Joe isn’t looking for the government to bail him out. He is wondering whether the government is going to put more obstacles in his way. This episode really shines the light on how disingenuous the Democrat platform is. Which is more about maintaining a middle-class and ‘poor’ than helping them rise above it.
The Democrat party of today is the class-warfare party, and Barack Obama’s reaction to Joe personifies it. Barack came out and said what his vision for America is. That the government should spread the wealth, which means taking from the haves to give to the have-nots. ‘A government that robs from Peter to pay Paul can always count on the support of Paul,’ George Bernard Shaw.
Convincing people how harmful this Democrat doctrine is to this country remains conservatives’ biggest challenge. The amount and scope of education necessary to accomplish that begins in our elementary schools and goes right up to the college level. It is not a coincidence that people like Obama and William Ayers want to start socialistic indoctrination in elementary school, and earlier.
Oil revenues is Mexico’s largest single foreign revenue source for the Mexican government. The second largest foreign revenue source for Mexico is money mailed or wired back to Mexico from the United States by Mexicans living in the United States. They have a nice clinical name for it. They call it remittances. And by the looks of this video , the major part of it seems to be coming from illegal alien Mexicans living in the United States.
Mexicans living in the U.S. sent home 12 percent less money in August, the largest drop on record since the Bank of Mexico began tracking remittances 12 years ago. Many towns depend on these dollars for survival.
According to the report, ‘remittances’ have dropped from $2.2 billion last year to $1.9 billion this year. It is not clear whether that was for August only or if that was a year-to-date figure ending in August. Whichever, they ‘blame’ increased border security and increased deportations, in addition to a slowing economy in the United States for ‘their’ loss. They are saying there is no work available here anymore. Can you say ‘guest worker’ program?
Looks like Mexico is going to have to learn how to take care of its own people and from within its own borders for a change. The bad guy here is Mexico’s government, not the United States government.
Since there is no compulsion in Washington or in Mexico, for Mexico to reimburse the United States for subsidizing them via remittances, and for letting the illegals here suck on the American teet, the question is whether the current financial crisis is enough for legal taxpayers to stand up and say ‘No Mas.’
Well isn’t this just too rich? Iran has two preconditions of its own before it will engage in any talks with the United States.
Get all our troops out of the Middle East
End our support of Israel.
Well, I’d say that presents quite a challenge to the Democratic presidential candidate, who has already capitulated to Iran by saying that he would meet with Iran without preconditions.
Are we still believing that Obama is ready to lead? Yeah, right after he telegraphs an invasion into Pakistan. Are we feeling any safer now?
War update. More than 100 Taliban killed when their ‘surprise’ attack was put down. Doubly good news is the fact that neither the Afghan or coalition forces suffered any casualties.
And on the other side of the border, signs that Pakistani tribesmen are turning on al-Qaida, a start of what eventually brought the successful route of al-Qaida in Iraq. Its only a start, but its a start.
Debt update. A watched clock never moves – unless it’s the National Debt Clock. In fact, the digital counter has been moving so much that it recently ran out of digits to display the ballooning figure: $10,150,603,734,720, or roughly $10.2 trillion, as of Saturday afternoon.
It will be replaced in 2009 with a new clock, said Jordan Barowitz, a spokesman for the Durst Organization. The new clock will be able to track debt up to a quadrillion dollars, which is a ‘1’ followed by 15 zeros.
Food update. Joey Chestnut, 24 year old eating champion from San Jose, CA and two time winner of Nathan’s Hot Dog eating contest has added another notch to his belt. This time winning a pizza eating contest. He downed 45 slices in 10 minutes Sunday to win the first Famous Famiglia World Pizza Eating Championship in New York’s Times Square.
Breaking down the numbers. At 8 slices/pie, Joey Chestnut ate 5 whole pies and 5 slices, in 10 minutes. Oooomph!
Belly up to the counter. Politics are on the menu and Ross is on the grill.
