Stupid People Vote, That’s How

A website called How Obama Got Elected asks the question, “how the hell did Obama get elected?”  In an attempt to answer the question of how exactly how a guy who only served a years worth of days of a term of office he won by kicking everybody else in the contest off the ballot, could come out of nowhere with a gazillion dollars in the bank, and win the presidency; a question burning in everybody’s mind who was paying attention, the documentarians (whoever they are) running this site filmed 12 Obama voters and asked them stuff.  What they found is, stupid people who watch the news, vote.  My only question about their findings is, knowing that “man-in-the-street” interviews can be easily manipulated by interviewing a large number of people and culling the answers that illustrate your point from them, such interviews are inherently suspect.  However, the way the site reads, it looks like they might only have talked to the 12 people shown.  If that’s the case, well, then, fuck all the assholes who put the Obaseeuh in office and the media they rode in on:

On Election day twelve Obama voters were interviewed extensively right after they voted to learn how the news media impacted their knowledge of what occurred during the campaign. These voters were chosen for their apparent intelligence/verbal abilities and willingness to express their opinions to a large audience. The rather shocking video below seeks to provide some insight into which information broke through the news media clutter and which did not.

To bolster their credibility, the producers offer this info:

Because obviously interviewing a relative handful of Obama voters, while interesting, is hardly scientific proof of anything, we also commissioned a Zogby telephone poll which asked the very same questions (as well as a few others) with similarly amazing results.

Zogby Poll
512 Obama Voters 11/13/08-11/15/08 MOE +/- 4.4 points

97.1% High School Graduate or higher, 55% College Graduates

Results to 12 simple Multiple Choice Questions

57.4% could NOT correctly say which party controls congress (50/50 shot just by guessing)

81.8% could NOT correctly say Joe Biden quit a previous campaign because of plagiarism (25% chance by guessing)

82.6% could NOT correctly say that Barack Obama won his first election by getting opponents kicked off the ballot (25% chance by guessing)

88.4% could NOT correctly say that Obama said his policies would likely bankrupt the coal industry and make energy rates skyrocket (25% chance by guessing)

56.1% could NOT correctly say Obama started his political career at the home of two former members of the Weather Underground (25% chance by guessing).

And yet…..

Only 13.7% failed to identify Sarah Palin as the person on which their party spent $150,000 in clothes

Only 6.2% failed to identify Palin as the one with a pregnant teenage daughter

And 86.9 % thought that Palin said that she could see Russia from her “house,” even though that was Tina Fey who said that!!

Only 2.4% got at least 11 correct.

Only .5% got all of them correct. (And we “gave” one answer that was technically not Palin, but actually Tina Fey)

h/t: Gateway Pundit

UPDATE: Here’s the videographer, John Ziegler, on Hannity and Colmes:

Church Of The Holy Workout

Seems that every church in Washington D.C. is eagerly anticipating the increased prestige and revenues associated with President-elect Barack Obama’s decision as to where he and his family will worship once he takes office.  Cynical?  Perhaps.  But according to an AP-Yahoo (whose CEO, Jerry Wang is stepping down, btw) News article, since resigning from Trinity United Church of Christ in return for four of Hillary Clinton’s delegates, Obama has not attended any church he wasn’t slamming black fathers in, preferring instead to go to the gym:

Obama has attended church sparingly in the past several months. Since winning the election, he has spent Sunday mornings at the gym. Many Washington-area churches hope that will change after he is inaugurated.

Why anybody would expect that the Obamessiah would deign to go to church when he could spend his Sunday mornings worshiping himself, and Michelle and the kids could sleep in, is beyond me.  Besides, there was no more political advantage to be gained by regular church attendance once the Rules and Bylaws Committee essentially handed him the nomination on May 31, so why go?  And anyway, AP-Yahoo says some presidents don’t go to church at all:

Or he could choose, as many presidents have done, not to attend services at all. President George W. Bush, for instance, has only infrequently attended services in Washington, occasionally going to St. John’s.

Now that he’s been elected, a lot of people, especially black Christians, will be expecting a little something in return for their support:

Churches in the nation’s capital have started extending invitations to President-elect Barack Obama and his family, touting their African-American roots, their ties to presidents past and to Obama himself.

While any number of Christian churches of all denominations are launching an all out public relations assault for the president-elect’s attention, they acknowledge there may be pitfalls associated with his attendence:

“I’m sure he’s going to be careful. He got burned,” Balmer said, referring to the Wright controversy. “He probably will be a little bit cautious with whom he associates.”

Pastors at D.C. congregations said they understand that their own words would be scrutinized more closely if the First Family were sitting in the pews, but universally said they wouldn’t change what they preach.

“I hope that I am deliberate and thoughtful about what I say every Sunday,” Snyder said.

He got burned?  Wright burned Obama?  Who sought who out?  Who brought scorn and ridicule on whose life’s work?  Who disowned who?  Why are Columbia University religious history professors like Randall Balmer re-writing history this way?  Are these eager-beaver preachers sure they want to compete with a guy who can make “lights shine down” and “oceans rise?”  Who will they be asking their congregants to pray to, “Our Father, Who art in Pew 54?”

Obama Camp: No HRC SOS? Blame a Clinton

If Hillary Clinton does not become president-elect Blameless Obama’s Secretary of State, it will be all her own damned fault.  Or, her husband Bill’s.  But certainly not Barry’s; he’s a saint, doncha know?  Oh, and Claire McCaskill’s a peach.  But more on that later, first, let’s dig into this juicy little bitchpost from Politico with the headline, “Bill Vetting Could Cost Hillary Her Cabinet Post.”  This particular “out” for Camp O disguised as a media-driven drumbeat is gaining traction in a self-generated, self-fulfilling kind of way.  Paint the former president as a kinda sorta shadowy double dealer just in case Obie (or, more likely his brain trust) has a better idea, or she says “no.”  In which case the Teflon TelePrompTer Reader would need a plausible excuse to retract his non-offer that he only extended as a courtesy in the first place.  Get it?

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) is President-elect Obama’s first choice for secretary of State but his aides are becoming exasperated by the Clinton camp’s pokey response to demands for extensive information about former President Bill Clinton’s finances, according to numerous Democrats involved in the process.

“Numerous Democrats involved in the process?”  Hmmmm…wonder whose side they could be on, since they seem to be pissed off at the “Clinton Camp?”  Now, this is important to note, because further into the “Cover His Ass As A Favor” Politico hitpiece, we learn exactly who is twying to hut widdle Bawwy’s pwesidenshul chances:

““The ball is very much in her court, but the president’s finances have been a major point of sensitivity from day one,” the well-connected Democratic official explained. “Given that everyone’s mystified by how deliberately public the Clintons have made this once secret process, the assumption is either that the Clintons are trying to use the public buzz to steamroll their way in, create a sense of inevitability that overcomes those concerns, or that it’s just a matter of time before they … satisfy vetting somehow, some way. Otherwise, after all this speculation, there’ll be a permanent dark cloud hanging over his finances.

”How deliberately public the Clintons have made this once secret process?”  They employ the “well-connected Democratic official” sourced by Politico?  What’s their motive?  “A permanent dark cloud hanging over his finances?”  Could creating that possibly be the reason for this whole silly exercise?  Hmmmm.  This stuff would be much easier to figure out if we didn’t live in a universe parallel to the mainstream media’s.  All this alternate reality sure gets confusing sometimes.  Like the Claire McCaskill thing.  It’s her fault She gets the credit for encouraging Axelrod’s Puppet to run for president in the first place.  She’s a pip, all right, that Claire.  So says McClatchy:

It was on Barack Obama’s third trip to Missouri in 2006 to help Claire McCaskill win a Senate race that she urged him to run for president.

“We’re talking about it,” he confided after a rainy Sunday night rally in St. Louis , two days before the 2006 election. “Win on Tuesday and we’ll talk more.”

McCaskill did win, and she and Obama did talk. They became Senate allies and friends. A year later he was a presidential candidate, and she provided a pivotal endorsement. She quickly emerged as one of his most visible and nimble defenders.

Hmmmmm, again.  They weren’t friends and allies until after she won her Senate seat, so…why’d he make three trips to Missouri on her behalf?  And the fact that they were like, what, 99th and 98th ranked in Senate seniority couldn’t have had any bearing on forging a friendship after she got elected, right?  And just how “pivotal” can an endorsement from the actually  97th ranked Senator be, anyway?  And just what the hell was so “impressive” about the guy barely in front of her in line that it made her liver quiver to the point that she felt compelled to encourage him to run for president?  His smooth, caramel skin perhaps, Claire?  Whatever did it for her, it was going around.  Republicans for Obama got the same thrill up their leg about Obie at just about the same time:

Republicans for Obama is a grassroots organization of proud party members who all share one important trait— we are Americans first and Republicans second. (Even if it is a close second.) Founded in late 2006 as part of the nationwide effort to encourage Senator Obama to run for the Presidency, our volunteer-run, grassroots group now includes thousands of members from across the nation.  Together, we represent a cross-section of the millions of Republican and conservative independents who voted for President-Elect Obama in 2008.

Him mus’ got some powerful mojo, cher.

Hypin’ Hope

I read the following paragraph by Artemis March over on No Quarter:

Imagine yourself at the podium talking to a huge crowd, and the words on the teleprompter say things like: “This is the moment that the world is waiting for. . .” or, “I have become a symbol of the possibility of America returning to our best traditions.” How do you pull it off? Maybe you flash to Peter O’Toole as Lawrence of Arabia, running across the top of a train shouting, “Acaba! Acaba!” with stirring music underwriting your every move. Even so, something in you hesitates at throwing your full self into such grandiosity. Something healthy in you that feels it’s just too way over the top. Besides, isn’t it up to other people to say whether you are a transformative figure?

Not only is it hard to understand how anyone could read an Obama speech aloud with a straight face, it defies belief that anyone could bear to listen to the silly twaddle he spews, let alone be taken in by it.  As he steps down from the Senate to twiddle his thumbs until he is inaugurated a couple of months from now, in order to avoid actually doing anything substantive, like, oh, say, his job, Our Messiah-elect “wrote” (yeah, right) a “letter of thanks” to the people of Illinois for allowing him to serve, at least for the brief, intermittent moments he did so between running for yet another office.  Full of the same sort of nebulous obfuscations, half-truths, outright lies, and “what the fuck” verbosity we’ve come to know, reading it in the state’s morning papers must have caused more than a few breakfasts to be lost.  In what, I assume, is a gallant effort to help all Americans keep to their diets, the Washington Post has magnanimously reprinted the “thank you note to the Land of Lincoln” for those who might otherwise have gratefully missed it, for us to be sickened by it, too.  I won’t reprint it all, I wouldn’t do that to a dog, as Stevie Wonder said in “Rocket Love,” but, just for giggles, here’s a snippet:

“It was in Springfield, in the heartland of America, where I saw all that is America converge — farmers and teachers, businessmen and laborers, all of them with a story to tell, all of them seeking a seat at the table, all of them clamoring to be heard. It was there that I learned to disagree without being disagreeable; to seek compromise while holding fast to those principles that can never be compromised, and to always assume the best in people instead of the worst. Later, when I made the decision to run for the United States Senate, the core decency and generosity of the American people is exactly what I saw as I traveled across our great state — from Chicago to Cairo; from Decatur to Quincy.”

I haven’t seen such sappy drivel since Lassie rescued the crippled kid.  Here’s the predictable denouement:

With your help, along with the service and sacrifice of Americans across the nation who are hungry for change and ready to bring it about, I have faith that all will in fact be well. And it is with that faith, and the high hopes I have for the enduring power of the American idea, that I offer the people of my beloved home a very affectionate thanks.

“Your help…” “service and sacrifice…” “hungry for change…” have faith…” “high hopes…” “enduring power…” “beloved home…” and “affectionate thanks” all in one, two-sentence paragraph!  Wow!  It takes traveling tent revival, jackleg,  lay “preachers” 2 or 3 hours to get that many kitschy cliches into one sermon!  Lucky us, after two years of constantly being bombarded with infinite variations of the same theme and a similarly interminable number of reworkings of the same tired, “hope and change” jabberwocky, we get to hear  pontification in lieu of policy, happy crappy like this everyday for at least the next four years.

Oh, joy.

Never happen.