novatownhall blog

I did not see the debate tonight between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, but it sounds like ABC did a pretty bang up job in the fair and balanced department:

Barack is defensive (understandably so when everyone is attacking him relentlessy for for he entire time) and Hillary is on topic and relentless in her attacks. But for the mendacity of the questioners and their questions.

Honestly, these people need to be removed from the Public’s airwaves and given ordinary jobs doing something useful like following the horses at Mackinac Island in the summer with a wheelbarrow and a shovel. It is painfully obvious that they have no skill at being “Journalists.”

More here:

So George Stephanopoulos is out there chatting with Newsmax columnists and Sean Hannity…

The Same George Stephanopoulos who is the Political Director of ABC, whose Good Morning America was the first National Network Program to break the Reverend Wright Story. And the Very Same ABC that’s owned by the Disney Corporation, whose other network, ESPN is in the news for Canceling not one but TWO Obama Exclusive Interviews at the executive level (edited with clarification by jethropaleorobber)

Let ABC Know what you think about this Garbage! We Expect Objectivity, not force fed conspiracy guilt by association Gotcha Controversies (and Hannity wet dreams)

Did the ABC News crew go easier on the Republicans at the January 5, 2008 debate in New Hampshire? Did Fox News go easier at the January 10 debate in South Carolina?

No, they did not – they just asked normal questions designed to force the candidates to address the sticky questions, and take a stand on current issues, often in light of the candidates’ previous statements. That’s what they do. I think the Democrat supporters, especially Obama supporters, are showing pretty thin skin at this point in the campaign, because it has not been a good few weeks for their candidates.

UPDATE: Maybe Steph was cribbing from Sean Hannity!

UPDATE II: Brrrrrr! Chilly appraisals of ABC.

UPDATE III: Shameful!

UPDATE IV: GREATEST DEBATE QUESTIONS EVER.

UPDATE V: Man, I have now seen a number of video clips of the debate on CNN and must say: This was another huge night for John McCain. He has not even had to comment or respond – he could be on a three-week golf vacation in Scotland for all anyone knows – and his stock has gone up big time. Neither of the Democrats seem remotely, plausibly “presidential.” I have problems with John McCain, but there is no denying this campaign is his to lose. The landscape could not have been made more favorable to him and all he needs to do is present a stable persona to contrast with the skittishness of these two Democrats, because neither of them gives the impression of being on solid ground.

This seems significant:

Skeptics have long questioned the value of diverting food crops for fuel, and the grocery and live- stock industries vehemently opposed an energy bill last fall, arguing it was driving up costs.

A fifth of the nation’s corn crop is now used to brew ethanol for motor fuel, and as farmers have planted more corn, they have cut acreage of other crops, particularly soybeans. That, in turn, has contributed to a global shortfall of cooking oil.

Spreading global dissatisfaction in recent months has intensified the food-versus-fuel debate. Last Friday, a European environment advisory panel urged the European Union to suspend its goal of having 10 percent of transportation fuel made from biofuels by 2020. Europe’s well-meaning rush to biofuels, the scientists concluded, had created a variety of harmful ripple effects, including deforestation in Southeast Asia and higher prices for grain.

Even if biofuels are not the primary reason for the increase in food costs, some experts say it is one area where a reversal of government policy could help take pressure off food prices.

Some studies have shown the amount of energy required to create ethanol (i.e., to grow and transport the crops) exceeds the amount of energy ethanol provides. In any case, this seems like as good a time as any to pull the plug on this feel-good experiment.

Yes, it’s old news, but it’s important enough to recall this quote periodically to ensure everyone goes into the voting booth with eyes wide open:

But the truth is, is that, our challenge is to get people persuaded that we can make progress when there’s not evidence of that in their daily lives. You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. So it’s not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

The border fence, one of the proposals for deterring illegal immigration, is a plan that by itself will do no good. Why? The same reason that intelligent people know that just locking the doors at night is no guarantee that their house will not experience a break-in. The locks only prevent honest people from entering. Dishonest people will break-in to homes, or break-in through the fence.

What the fence buys is a little time. Just like locks and alarms buy time for those in a home. In a home, when someone breaks in, you gather the family into the most secure location you can, arm yourself so that the intruder will be stopped if he continues, and call the police. Anything less, and you risk being the one that “when seconds count, the police are only minutes away.” The country needs to treat this the same way. People that cut through a fence to enter the country should be viewed as potentially being drug runners, smugglers, terrorists, or any other kind of evil people. They are attacking the borders of our country, and should be repelled with all available force. The fence — along with technology to warn of the attack — should be used to give enough time to deploy force. We have a national guard, we ought to use it.

…or at 86.  The WaPo article says 83, the photo caption says 86.

 In any event, he was a great actor, and a fine representative of the NRA.

For we children of the 60s, history is such a heart-rending thing:

It is 76 years since Cheeta the chimp was plucked from the African jungle to become a Hollywood star in the Tarzan movies. Yet incredibly, he is still going strong…

On Johnny Weissmuller: “Dear old Johnny was more typecast than I was. I remember we were both up for the role of Terry in On the Waterfront and the casting director told Johnny he was wasting his time. I got a callback but it came to nothing. He went off to start a swimming-pool company. Swimming was never my thing.”

Isn’t it amazing, though, all the chimp has seen?

[Editor's note: This is a guest post by Nancy Matthis of ADMC]

The role of Hispanic immigrants in precipitating the mortgage meltdown is obvious. Media outlets have been skirting the subject, presenting individual cases as victims deserving of sympathy.

One such article appeared in the Washington Post, describing the shattered hopes of an Hispanic woman:

‘My House. My Dream. It Was All an Illusion.’

Latina’s Loss in Va. Epitomizes Mortgage Crisis

By Brigid Schulte
Saturday, March 22, 2008

Despite her poor credit, Honduran immigrant Glenda Ortiz easily got a subprime loan for this Alexandria home, bought in 2005 for $430,000. It was foreclosed on last year….

She looked at only one house and paid too much for it: $430,000 for a run-down, one-story duplex in Alexandria, triple what the house had sold for the year before, and $5,000 more than the asking price, according to real estate records.

She agreed to a high-interest loan that would cost her more than $3,000 a month, more than 70 percent of the $4,200 that she and her husband brought home monthly.

She signed papers in English that she didn’t understand….

The four-page article details how she was duped by other Hispanics, craftier than she was, who used their credit to secure a mortgage for which she was liable.
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