Nightly Ramble Tuesday… Election Day

Welcome, one and all to the most intense nightly read anywhere on the sphere….The BitsBlog Nightly Ramble

This is the Election Day Edition

• WHAT IS THE GOAL? EVEN HE DOESN’T KNOW: Byron York today says
  

  A lot of observers are having trouble figuring out the philosophical underpinnings of Barack Obama’s foreign policy.

  Clearly, that’s because those observers are not used to American leaders trying to diminish the role of the United States in the world. As York himself points out,

  Among other things, Obama tried to find new jobs for displaced steelworkers, to create after-school programs, and to bring new political power to public housing residents. But he truly succeeded at just two things. One, he pushed the city of Chicago to open up a summer-jobs office on the far South Side, where there had not previously been an office, and two, he helped force the city to clean up asbestos in a 1940s-era housing project in the same neighborhood.

  That was it.

  

  Byron York

  Obama the organizer spent most of his time teaching community members how to put pressure on the city government, or on various wealthy corporations, to give them money. Obama’s organizers could be confrontational, or they could be conciliatory — Obama favored the latter — but the whole idea was to make powerful people feel guilty, or embarrassed, or annoyed enough to give them things.

  Quite so.  The issue now is that Obama himself is on the other side of the fence.  He is the power as I pointed out by quoting Mark Steyn  in yesterday’s Ramble. Obama has spent his entire political existence being a thorn in the side of the powerful.  He will never been a million years be able to meld that affectation of being anti-leader, when he is the leader. If there’s anything it’s amazing to me about this whole thing it’s that so many have a great deal of difficulty figuring it out .   That applies to far more than just foreign policy, of course.

• DISENFRANCHISING THE MILITARY IN NY23: One of the biggest features of the Watertown, New York area is Fort Drum.  Given the relatively low population density of the area, the military and its base outside Watertown is a large consideration when talking about voting in the area.  It had occurred to me yesterday to comment on this, but lacking any direct information as to how military ballots were being handled in NY23, I decided to sit back and wait.  So imagine my surprise last night when I notice Hans A. von Spakovsky over at The Corner holding forth on this very subject:
  

  In New York, the governor set the election with only 35 days notice, which is ten days short of the recommended 45-day minimum. So when did the counties in the 23rd congressional district actually get their ballots printed and mailed out to military voters (such as the thousands of members of the Tenth Mountain Division deployed in Afghanistan)? Thirty days before November 3? Twenty-five days before November 3?

  The question of when Virginia and New York actually mailed out their absentee ballots is something that investigative journalists in both states should be probing, even as we go into what may be a very exciting Election Day. Otherwise, our military voters may be disenfranchised, as courts determined they were in Virginia in the November 2008 elections, and in New York in the March 2009 special congressional election for the 20th district.

  Run that up against the post that I put up this morning regarding ACORN and its plans to protest the election vote tomorrow.  Can you imagine those in the military protesting the election on the grounds that they were disenfranchised?  So why is it acceptable from ACORN? Maybe it’s because we’re used to the idea of the military having something more in a way of integrity, then we do far left activists.

• THE PALIN EFFECT:But may start this piece out by giving you a little bit of the Limbaugh interview on Fox News Sunday the other day:
  
  I think that’s exactly correct.  The CW on Sarah Palin has always been exactly as Limbaugh suggests.  Then again, the purveyors of C.W. have yet to figure out just what it is that’s driving the tea bag movements, as well.  Which one of them predicted NY23, as an example?

  Speaking of that; Do you wanna know why Doug Hoffman is doing so very well in that district just now?  Do you wanna know what turned the tide for him?  It was the endorsement of Sarah Palin. As was demonstrated over the weekend the GOP leadership still does not understand what it is that they have in terms of anger within the party. Certainly Newt Gingrich doesn’t. (You will recall he came up in a post or two over the weekend as regards that NY23 race)   They still don’t understand who the real movers and shakers are, considering themselves to be such.  But in case after case, that proves not to be correct.  In fact, I’m going to tell you this as a cautionary note; watch NY23 very closely indeed tonight.  You will see signs that the Democrats understand far better what the teabag movement is about then the GOP leadership does.  That’s despite the fact the movement frightens the crud out of both of them. Then again, given the positions on the issues of the day by Sozzafava being so Democrat-Like despite the fact that she was running as a “republican”, perhaps the reason they share such fear about real conservatives is because they share other points of view, as well.  Something to think about.

• DEMOCRAT RACISTS: Here’s a little tidbit I bet you didn’t know; according to a note I got this morning in the mail every single one of the active affects investigations that are being run by Democrat- run the ethics committee, every single one of them… is centered on a black lawmaker.  Every .  Single.  One.  Are we going to hear about racism again over this, I wonder?
• JERRY WRIGHT, MARXIST: I’m going to show you something that I consider rather ominous.  First, a quote from Neal Boortz:
  

  Jeremiah Wright is back in the news. This time over a video where he praises Marxism. Sounds about right.

  Yes, so it does. So we go to the site where the vid is, and we get

  Sorry, “Rev Jeremiah Wright (introduced by Robert McChesney) at Monthly Review’s 60th Anniversary” was deleted at 9:45:56 Tue Nov 3, 2009. We have no more information about it on our mainframe or elsewhere.

  That sounds about right, too.