Vox Popoli

They’re finally able to find humor in the Democrats. Although not, of course, dear B. Hussein. But never mind, the Murtha character is hysterical.

John Edwards may not have been the only Democratic candidate for president having an affair:

Who is Vera Baker?

Some people in Chicago claim she was Obama’s Finance Director for his 2004 Senate campaign. FEC Senate campaign records show she was paid a pretty penny as “Finance Director”. However, people familiar with Obama’s 2004 Senate campaign say Claire Serdiuk was Obama’s Finance Director. Looking through everything we can see online for that 2004 campaign, Claire Serdiuk is consistently listed as the Finance Director – because that’s what she was.

There’s no mention of Vera Baker…but Vera Baker was paid as the “Finance Director” too. And then, suddenly, Vera Baker was relocated to New York.

Right around the time Michelle Obama got incredibly angry about something. We know it was hard to tell, because Michelle’s angry about something on a good day…but this was EXTRA angry. And then, even more suddenly, Vera Baker was relocated to the island of Martinique, where she remains.

Better yet, she’s “working” there on the dime of “someone who is a big, shiny part of the dirty Chicago political machine”. And Obama is suddenly too busy to campaign because his grandmother is dying as a result of injuries she incurred when he threw her under the bus this summer. This could be just another Internet rumor, on the other hand, this actually looks more inherently suspicious than the Edwards rumors that turned out to be true. Maybe if we’re lucky, the mainstream media will stop investigating Joe the Plumber long enough to send someone to Martinique before Miss Baker accidentally overdoses on cocaine.

Blackfive has an interview with a Democrat who’s up on the expose and promises more on Monday. It will be interesting to see if this and the African Press International report about Michelle Obama checks out or not. However, his source believes the media will break the scandal AFTER the election in order to serve their own interests by dragging it out. If Obama loses, then the story ends. If he wins, however, it’s a story that lasts months. Anyhow, it’s just as likely that she’s making herself scarce because she was involved with illegal fundraising as with the candidate.

Either way, consider the thought of President Biden… now that would be a gift that would never stop giving!

UPDATE – I just received an email informing me that ABC News has been privy to this story for some time now, and that Vera Baker is not the only woman that may have been involved with Sen. Obama.

Anyone in the world:

A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit challenging Barack Obama’s qualifications to be president…. Surrick ruled that Berg lacked standing to bring the case, saying any harm from an allegedly ineligible candidate was “too vague and its effects too attenuated to confer standing on any and all voters.”

It is becoming ever more clear that what passes for “the law” in the USA as a complete charade. If an American citizen who is registered to vote doesn’t have standing to call a candidate’s eligibility into question, then who does?

So, perhaps we’ll get to see President Schwarzenegger one day after all!

A career journalist admits the obvious:

[W]hat I object to (and I think most other Americans do as well) is the lack of equivalent hardball coverage of the other side – or worse, actively serving as attack dogs for Senators Obama and Biden. If the current polls are correct, we are about to elect as President of the United States a man who is essentially a cipher, who has left almost no paper trail, seems to have few friends (that at least will talk) and has entire years missing out of his biography. That isn’t Sen. Obama’s fault: his job is to put his best face forward. No, it is the traditional media’s fault, for it alone (unlike the alternative media) has had the resources to cover this story properly, and has systematically refused to do so.

Why, for example to quote McCain’s lawyer, haven’t we seen an interview with Sen. Obama’s grad school drug dealer – when we know all about Mrs. McCain’s addiction? Are Bill Ayers and Tony Rezko that hard to interview? All those phony voter registrations that hard to scrutinize? And why are Senator Biden’s endless gaffes almost always covered up, or rationalized, by the traditional media?

The absolute nadir (though I hate to commit to that, as we still have two weeks before the election) came with Joe the Plumber. Middle America, even when they didn’t agree with Joe, looked on in horror as the press took apart the private life of an average person who had the temerity to ask a tough question of a Presidential candidate. So much for the Standing Up for the Little Man, so much for Speaking Truth to Power, so much for Comforting the Afflicted and Afflicting the Comfortable, and all of those other catchphrases we journalists used to believe we lived by.

I learned a long time ago that when people or institutions begin to behave in a manner that seems to be entirely against their own interests, it’s because we don’t understand what their motives really are. It would seem that by so exposing their biases and betting everything on one candidate over another, the traditional media is trying to commit suicide – especially when, given our currently volatile world and economy, the chances of a successful Obama presidency, indeed any presidency, is probably less than 50:50.

I laughed when I read this, because it brought to mind an angry email I once received from a newspaper reporter who had, to be fair, written a perfectly reasonable article about my father. He objected to my blatant contempt for his profession, unfortunately, he cited academic credentials as a defense. Needless to say, that didn’t quite cut it in my book.

For the most part, journalists aren’t actually stupid, but they’re functionally stupid. Theirs is a necessarily superficial perspective – which is not their fault, it’s built into the job description – but also an arrogant, self-deceptive one. It’s the only group of people I’ve ever met who seriously appear to believe that an impressive Address Book is a substitute for actual knowledge and experience. This perspective is the analog predecessor to the modern Wikipedia myth, which is the idea that if you know where to find the information, it’s the same thing as actually possessing the pertinent knowledge.

For a blatant example of this blatant superficialism and bias in action, look no further than the NYT’s endorsement of Obama. In a cursory scan of it, I counted no less than 21 errors in it, and that’s not counting opinions that cannot be logically supported by the facts.

Few regulars here still do, but if you are one of the few who still subscribe to a daily newspaper, watch the evening news networks, or read mainstream magazines like Time and People, you should be ashamed of yourself. Because it’s people like you who give these outmoded organizations the power to influence the less intelligent and the maleducated.

This, of course, is why I have always made it very clear to all and sundry that despite my three national syndications, I am not and have never been a journalist.

The political class isn’t even bothering to pretend anymore:

After a spirited, emotional and at times raucous debate, the New York City Council voted, 29 to 22, on Thursday afternoon to extend term limits, allowing Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg to seek re-election next year and undoing the result of two voter referendums that had imposed a limit of two four-year terms.

Even in the EUSSR, they make the people vote until they get it right. In the USA, on the other hand, they simply change the laws at will and run roughshod over the will of the people. And notice how “crisis” is used to justify this legal legerdemain: “Supporters of the bill said the dire economic situation confronting the city — and the possibility of multibillion-dollar budget shortfalls — demanded continuity of leadership.”

A regular who wishes to remain nameless would like to buy a copy of Summa Elvetica for those who would like a copy but feel they cannot afford one for whatever reason. He’s willing to buy 10 of them, so if you’d like to receive a free book, please let me know and email me the address to which you’d like it sent from Amazon. No strings, no nonsense.

We’ll do this as part of the Summa surge, which I’ll announce once the OC tells me when and how we should do it.

UPDATE – We have our ten takers now. I’ll be emailing them tomorrow to let them know.

Courtesy of the OC and his Friday Challenge series:

The First Annual Bane Memorial Halloween StoryFrightening Fiction Contest

That’s right. Bane is gone — for real this time, sadly, but that’s another story — but love him, hate him, or fear him, you must admit, the guy knew how to tell a creepy tale. Ergo, in honor of the passing of our late mutual friend/foe/sparring partner/bête noire, that’s this week’s challenge: write a genuinely scary story.

I shall, of course, be penning a tale in the old Weeper’s honor.

It turns out that the girl who was “attacked” for her McCain bumper sticker made it up. I have to admit, I bought into it until I saw the first picture after I posted yesterday; there’s no way a knife would have left such shallow scratches.

Police sources tell KDKA that a campaign worker has now confessed to making up a story that a mugger attacked her and cut the letter “B” in her face after seeing her McCain bumper sticker.

What a bizarre thing to do. Usually women who make these things up are college students or college professors. I’m glad the nation can breathe a big sigh of relief in the certainty that Obama’s supporters won’t be inclined to act up if he should lose next month.

I’ve mostly stayed out of this bear since I knew the up days would be vicious – although I had no idea they’d be 11 percent vicious like earlier this month! But it’s fun to keep your toes in for practice, if nothing else, and those 09 NDX 1200 puts are looking pretty happy right now.

Wall Street headed for another precipitous drop Friday as fears of a punishing global recession stirred panic among investors and sent world financial markets into a tailspin. The Dow Jones industrial average futures fell 550 points, triggering a halt in selling of stock future contracts.

Did you ever stop to wonder why, if it’s supposed to be a free market, they only freeze the markets when they go down? Anyhow, there should be a serious bear rally starting next week, so if you’re still in, next month would probably be the time to get out once there’s a 50 percent retracement of whatever turns out to mark the short-term bottom.

And if you ever wondered why this happened, the explanation is pretty simple: “Nearly a century ago, two audacious mechanisms were put into place to drain wealth and power from the American people and to funnel that wealth and power to an elite. Today’s crisis has arisen because essentially all of our wealth and power has by now been taken from us, and the illusion of normalcy can no longer be maintained.”