Obama’s criminal coalition

In addition to the support of his illegal alien aunt, Barack Obama is also counting on the votes of other criminals:

In Colorado, the Colorado Criminal Justice Reform Coalition (CCJRC) has been helping inmates who are eligible to vote. The Aspen Daily News reports:
In Colorado you are barred from voting only from the day you are convicted of a felony offense until you complete your prison time and any parole sentence.
So you can vote if you are in jail on a misdemeanor conviction, free on bail for any crime, if you are a pre-trial jail detainee, or have completed your sentence and parole. Colorado felons are allowed to vote while on probation.

So if you’re awaiting trial or on probation for carjacking, drug dealing, rape or murder, Obama is the Change you’ve been waiting for.

Notes from a Democrat in PA

Thomas Lifson reports that a McCain volunteer found this note left by a Democrat in a hotel business center:

Bad News from the Keystone State . . .
PA is an overwhelmingly white, fundamentally racist state. And I am talking openly, flagrantly racist. Especially in the south west, folks have no problem throwing around the N-word in casual conversation. But unlike the southern states, these white rural folks haven’t been solidly converted to the Republican Party. Maybe it’s the history of unionism, maybe it was the lack of civil rights issues. But until this election, these rural Democrats haven’t had their party allegiance tested by race. These are the “Clinton Democrats”, the Murtha Democrats, the Bob Casey Democrats, etc.
In August, I sat in a diner in the middle of Fayette County and listened to an older white man at the next table talk about how he’d always been a Democrat, he supported Clinton but couldn’t bring himself to vote for a N-word.

Does this mean McCain will win Pennsylvania? I still doubt it. The reason you’re seeing reports like this is because Democrat volunteers are working out in Central Pennsylvania, which is tough sledding for any Democrat. If you’re an Obama volunteer campaigning in Wilkes-Barre or Chambersburg, it must seem like a daunting uphill battle. However, the Central PA vote will be completely swamped by the massive Obama vote from Philly and its affluent suburbs full of rich white liberals. The polls now indicate the state could be close, but an outright McCain win is the longest of long shots.

Ohio snoops on Joe the Plumber

Columbus Dispatch:

Vanessa Niekamp said that when she was asked to run a child-support check on Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher on Oct. 16, she thought it routine. A supervisor told her the man had contacted the state agency about his case.
Niekamp didn’t know she just had checked on “Joe the Plumber,” who was elevated the night before to presidential politics prominence as Republican John McCain’s example in a debate of an average American.
The senior manager would not learn about “Joe” for another week, when she said her boss informed her and directed her to write an e-mail stating her computer check was a legitimate inquiry. . . .
Director Helen Jones-Kelley said her agency checks people who are “thrust into the public spotlight,” amid suggestions they may have come into money, to see if they owe support or are receiving undeserved public assistance.
Niekamp told The Dispatch she is unfamiliar with the practice of checking on the newly famous. “I’ve never done that before, I don’t know of anybody in my office who does that and I don’t remember anyone ever doing that,” she said today.
Democrat Gov. Ted Strickland and Jones-Kelley, both supporters of Democrat Barack Obama, have denied political motives in checking on Wurzelbacher. The Toledo-area resident later endorsed McCain. State officials say any information on “Joe” is confidential and was not released.

They “denied political motives” — and who can doubt? “I did not violate the rights of that man, Joe Wurzelbacher.” Michelle Malkin:

If Joe the Plumber were Jawad the Suspected Terrorist, civil liberties activists would stampede the halls of Congress on his behalf. Liberal columnists would hyperventilate over the outrageous invasions of his privacy by Ohio state and local employees. The ACLU would demand the Big Brother snoopers’ heads. And Democrat leaders would convene immediate hearings and parade him around the Beltway as the new poster boy/victim of unlawful domestic spying.
But because peaceful American citizen Joe Wurzelbacher is an outspoken enemy of socialism, rather than an enemy of America, the defenders of privacy have responded to his plight with an impenetrable cone of silence.

Jawad the Suspected Terrorist, of course, would never endorse a Republican. We know whose side they’re on.

Expert reaction

Second Amendment historian Clayton Cramer (author of Armed America, the definitive refutation of academic fraud Michael Bellesiles), examines the attacks on Sarah Palin and suggests that liberal attacks stem mainly from two causes:

1. She’s a pro-life, evangelical Christian.
2. She’s a woman.
To the left, it is axiomatic that every woman has to be pro-choice and hostile to the patriarchial system of oppression that is Christianity.

Reacting to my criticism of the anti-Palin “experts” among the pre-war Iraq hawks, Cramer says:

I do think Stacy is on to something here: when the people that played a major part in the Iraq strategy suggest that Palin was an incredibly bad choice — consider the source.

My point was not to say that all hawks are disqualified from criticizing Palin. What I objected to was the “expert” assertion that Palin is (a) the basic cause of Republican electoral difficulties and/or (b) somehow symptomatic of a fundamental problem with the conservative movement.

This is scapegoating pure and simple, and its sources are among those who far more deserve to be thus blamed than the governor of Alaska. Her son is fighting the war the “experts” demanded, and the lady’s reward is to be vilely insulted by them? Just to think of this injustice makes my blood boil. If this were 1850, they would be invited to meet me in Bladensburg, the miserable curs!

(Cross-posted at AmSpecBlog.)

UPDATE: Peter Wehner:

Maybe it’s just me, but I’ve detected in some of the conservative critics of Sarah Palin . . . a tendency to call attention to the fact that their position has (supposedly) made them, and their dear friends, vilified figures.

I certainly by God hope they’re vilified! They deserve far worse. I have remarked to friends that there is nothing wrong with these intellectual pansies that a good ol’ Alabama ass-whuppin’ wouldn’t cure. As a matter of fact, I’m going to invite Charlie Martin to CPAC just in case David Brooks dares show his face . . .

This is your brain on Hope

The idea that Barack will put gas in your car and pay your mortgage? When I was 19, I tripped out so badly on psilocybin mushrooms and Bolivian flake cocaine that I required hospitalization, but to see someone reach such a condition of utter delusion without massive amounts of hallucinogens . . . shocking beyond words.

Via the delightful Ericka Andersen, who observes:

Obama’s message IS that you won’t have to worry about that kind of stuff because he’s going to fix it for you. . . . Where is his emphasis on hard work and self-provision, independence and pride? I never hear him talking about any of those things.

Ericka, don’t you realize that “hard work and self-provision” are Rethuglican racist code words? Next thing you know, you’ll be talking about “law and order” (nudge, nudge).