A 527 group ad that does what the MSM has failed to do: Question Barack Obama‘s relationship with admitted home-grown terrorist William Ayres. The Obama campaign isn’t taking this one lying down and are threatening the stations that air the ad with Justice Department scrutiny:

Barack Obama is striking back fiercely and swiftly to stamp out an ad that links him to a 1960s radical, eager to demonstrate a far more aggressive response to attacks than John Kerry did when faced with the 2004 “Swift Boat” campaign.

Obama not only aired a response ad to the spot linking him to William Ayers, but he sought to block stations the commercial by warning station managers and asking the Justice Department to intervene. The campaign also planned to compel advertisers to pressure stations that continue to air the anti-Obama commercial.

It’s the type of going-for-the-jugular approach to politics many Democrats complain that Kerry lacked and that Republicans exploit.

Obama’s target is an ad by the conservative American Issues Project, a nonprofit group that questions Obama’s ties to Ayers, a founder of the Weather Underground organization that took credit for a series of bombings, including nonfatal explosions at the Pentagon and U.S. Capitol four decades ago.

Michelle Malkin puts the Obama response in a free-speech perspective:

The Obama campaign is giving a glimpse of the future for conservative free speech. They’re trying to sic the Justice Department on TV stations, many of them Sinclair Broadcasting stations, that are airing the independent ad on Obama and Bill Ayers.

Feel the chill in the air?

• Fairness Doctrine? Check!
• Shut down media outlets that differ from your point of view? Check!
• Stifle any speech that disagrees with the Democratic-Progressive party line? Check!

Unrepentant William “Bill’ Ayres desecrating US flag:
“We didn’t do enough . . .”

[Update]

The Obama folk are now asking the Justice Dept. to have the ad’s sponsors arrested. The American Issues Project responded:

“Having failed in its attempts to get our legal, factual and fully-supported ad off the air, Barack Obama’s campaign now wants to put our donors in prison for exercising their right to free speech,” said Ed Martin, the group’s president. “These over-the-top bullying tactics are reminiscent of the kind of censorship one would see in a Stalinist dictatorship, with the only difference being that those guys generally had to wait until they were in power to throw people who disagreed with them into jail.”

The group said its ad would continue to air through the end of the Democratic National Convention. Simmons has spent almost $3 million to air the ad, which can be seen on the group’s site.

Or, at the top of this post! Heh.

Technorati Tags: Barack Obama, William Ayers

With all that’s goin’ on, bloggin’ is light lately — especially since I’ve found that the RSS and Atom feeds for ‘Okie’ don’t work — I’m creating a whole new theme (it looks pretty much the same) and will be upgrading to the latest/greatest WordPress as soon as that’s finished. Feeds aplenty after that. So until then, or whatever, let’s take a quick tour through a few sites that I like to read.

First, The Anchoress makes the case that if discontented Conservatives don’t vote in November, or vote for Hillary or Obama, what they are really doing is voting for at least four years of a Hillary Clinton style government. There’s a fright aplenty for ya!

See Dubya at JYB find subversive scribbling over at the New York Times — & likes it!

Dafydd at Big Lizards believes that the MSM are dropping all pretense of being “objective” in their news reporting after noting that the AP’s coverage of the Supreme Court’s decision to not hear the ACLU’s appeal of the Six Circuit’s throwing out the case against the Federal government over the Terrorist Surveillance Program’s wiretaps. They that three thimes!

And finally, be sure and check out Zombietime’s pics and coverage of the 2/12 protests over the Marine Corp recruitment office in Berkeley, CA.

These photos were taken in Berkeley on February 12, 2008 at Civic Center Park and in front of the City Hall building, at the protest and counter-protest over the decision by the Berkeley City Council to support Code Pink’s attempt to expel the Marine Corps recruiting office from Berkeley.
{…}
Of all the sights and sounds at the protest, none were more shocking (even to me) than the insulting and menacing attitudes the students displayed to any adult whom they suspected of not being sufficiently left-wing. Girls as young as 14 would surround pro-America adults and would launch into spontaneous verbal assaults, exhibiting the most disrespectful behavior imaginable. Here, a little girl in a kaffiyeh lashed out at a bewildered senior lady, calling her a “bitch” and “murderer” for supporting the Marines.

You can see some video of high school and Berkeley college students disrespecting older protesters — disrespecting is an understatement!

The children were giddy with power. It strongly reminded me of what happened during the Cultural Revolution in 1960s China, when high school students harassed and humiliated their teachers and other local authority figures — all with the approval of the Commmunist Party officials, who were consciously trying to overthrow the old social order. And considering that these kids at the Berkeley rally were coached and trained by World Can’t Wait, which is a Maoist revolutionary group, I suppose their behavior shouldn’t have surprised me. Most of the kids there, contrary to what you might imagine, were middle class, the children of professors and intellectuals, and after the protest undoubtedly went home to their comfortable houses with Mom and Dad, who most likely nodded with pride at tales of the day’s radical exploits.

It was dicey to be a member of the San Francisco State College Republicans — thank goodness for the Berkeley Police who show a great deal of restraint!

That should keep you busy for at least a bit . . .

The Toyota Prius is fast becoming the VW van, or ’60s Volvo wagon of the 21st Century. What I mean is that it’s the protest vehicle of choice for the “greenies” and “warmies” among us, and if my little outing this AM means anything — there’s a real load o’ them out there!

Consider this. I took the SoCal wife to the doc today and as we were leaving the parking structure I decided to play a little game — count the Priuses, (the prii?) Anyway, by the time we left the parking the count stood at four. I was guessing double figures before the trip was over. By the time I had dropped her off at her office and returned to the studio, a total trip of 16-18 blocks, I had counted sixteen (16!) of the weirdly proportioned little cars-from-Mars. Come to think of it, if you count the one we saw from the first version (really-really ugly!!!), it’s 17. These are on-the-street owned/leased vehicles, not a row of them on a dealer’s lot.

Nice to know that my neighbors are being so considerate and covering my ample carbon-footprint with their slavish environmentalism. It’ll make me feel better when I finally score a 6.2L GTO on Ebay! Let’s face it, 90% of these guys will never own/lease their Prius long enough for the mileage benefits to cover the extra cost of the vehicle’s hybrid components, let alone the wailing and pissing if they ever have to buy a replacement battery pack!

Of course the downside is all the Hillary/Obama stickers that are gonna appear like zits on a crack addict come this time next year. Guess I’ll have to take out an extra insurance rider for extreme vandalism and put that GOP sticker on my ride this time. If you think I’m kidding about the insurance, I’m not. Liberals out here in SoCal are very open minded, as long as you agree with them about — everything!

Shoot . . . wait, don’t — I’m a marked man.

Technorati Tags: Toyota Prius

Mega-performance is about to hit the Cadillac brand — and I’m talkin’ MEGA as in all caps! But first . . .

Jump with me into the wayback machine alllllllll the way back to 1970 or so. Although we didn’t know it at the time, it was the end of an era — the Muscle Car Era. You could go down to you local big-three dealer and pick from a plethora of mega-motored beasts of machines like a Chevy SS 454 Malibu or El Camino, a Pontiac GTO Judge with Ram-Air IV, or an Olds 442 HO or a Buick Stage-1 GS, all with mid-400 cubic inch displacements, not to mention the Dodge/Plymouth Chargers, Challengers, Road Runners and Cudas with 440 Six Packs or even the awesome 426 Hemis. Even little old American Motors had its biggest motors stuffed in the Rambler American model called the SCrambler and a mid-sized one called the Rebel Machine. Ford had its Boss 429 Mustangs and Cobra Jet Torinos. Good times could be had by all!

What was supposed to come next made these pale in comparison. In a long-ago-forgotten 1970 car mag, or maybe Popular Science or Popular Mechanics(I Googled around a bit this AM but couldn’t find anything) I remember reading about the next generation of mega-motors that GM had planned for its upcoming generation of mid-sizers, (now come to think of it I believe it was a Hot Rod issue), all with aluminum blocks, humongous displacements and dual-overhead cams! It looked like GM was gonna slaughter ‘em all in the horse-power war, and then — it happened. The muscle cars died out almost without a whimper.

What caused their demise is well documented as stated in this article in Wikipedia:

The muscle cars’ performance soon became a liability during this period. The automotive safety lobby, which had been spearheaded by Ralph Nader, decried the irresponsibility of offering such powerful cars for public sale, particularly targeted to young buyers. The high power of the muscle cars also underlined the marginal handling and braking capacity of many contemporary cars, as well as the severe limitations of their tires. In response, the automobile insurance industry began levying punitive surcharges on all high-powered models, soon pushing many muscle cars out of the price range of their intended buyers. Simultaneously, efforts to combat air pollution led to a shift in Detroit’s attention from power to emissions control, a problem that grew more complicated in 1973 when the OPEC oil embargo led to price controls and gasoline rationing.

With all these forces against it, the market for muscle cars rapidly evaporated. Power began to drop in 1971 as engine compression ratios were reduced, high-performance engines like Chrysler’s 426 Hemi were discontinued, and all but a handful of performance models were discontinued or transformed into soft personal luxury cars.

OK Okie, that was then and this is now — what’s up with that Caddy you mentioned at the beginning?

Well, since you asked nice and all . . . the next generation Cadillac CTS is gonna be a beaut, which I’ve written about before: Caddy Hammers a Homer for ‘08. That’s a pic of the standard model CTS. In this month’s Motor Trend they break the news that the ’09 CTS-V, see pic here, will have 600-supercharged horsepower! 600! That’s off the charts more than the Germans’ BMW M5, Audi S models and even a good bit higher than the Merc’s AMG V-8 models. Talk about another horsepower war. The even more radical news is that this Caddy’s 6.2 liter motor is a detuned version of the mill going into the next Z07 Corvette, which will have 700+ hp. That one should be a snake killer!

But, once again the writings are appearing on the walls of reason, good sense, whatever. As we seem to be hitting another performance zenith, made possible by sophisticated computer engine management and the migration of exotic materials like carbon-fiber, magnesium and multi-material composites into our daily drivers, the forces of government and buzz-killers everywhere are lining up to once again force us into bland, pathetic little commuting boxes with nary a fun, smoky burnout in sight. The global warming hysterics are blaming cars for their nightmare scenario of planetary destruction, the safety-advocates have never really gone away and are looking forward to a Clinton White House where they can run amok in their attempts to destroy one of the last U.S. manufacturing entities via oppressive regulation. We’ve been down that road before, too.

So Okie, who really needs a 600-hp Caddy? Uh, no one? Actually, maybe we all do. For an American automotive company to devote the engineering resources necessary to put that mill in a Cadillac that will come with a 10-year, 100,000-mile power train warranty speaks mightily of the turnaround happening at General Motors. Their vehicles’ quality is going up dramatically as shown by the consumer ratings increases, they used to be at the bottom of the barrel, not competing with Audi, Acura and BMW. But, they still have a ways to go to be in the Lexus/Toyota/Honda league. Exercises like the V-series Caddys can help with that. A body structure that can handle those power numbers should be golden with the 300-hp V-6, which is a super-sweet little motor in its own right.

Now, if 35 mpg CAFE can be thwarted, we might get to enjoy these super-toys for a bit longer. However, those corporate-fuel-economy mandates and 600+ horsepower are pretty much mutually exclusive. Gotta sell a boatload of Cobalts or Saturn Green line hybrids to counter one ’09 CTS-V, that’s for sure.

It really does matter who you vote for — on a whole lot o’ levels!

[Cross-posted at Hot Wheels Blog]

Technorati Tags: Cadillac, Muscle Car Era, CTS-V, Z07 Corvette

I rarely link to anything in Time Magazine as Time is about as liberal as anything in the MSM, but as I was looking at my wife’s office copy of the latest issue, the one with the pictures of the slain Virginia Tech victims of the cover, I turned to the last page article and was taken aback at the wisdom on that page. There David Von Drehel writes:

My reporter’s odyssey has taken me from the chill dawn outside the Florida prison in which serial killer Ted Bundy met his end, to the charred façade of a Bronx nightclub where Julio Gonzalez incinerated 87 people, to a muddy Colorado hillside overlooking the Columbine High School library, in which Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold wrought their mayhem. Along the way, I’ve come to believe that we’re looking for why in all the wrong places.

I’ve lost interest in the cracks, chips, holes and broken places in the lives of men like Cho Seung-Hui, the mass murderer of Virginia Tech. The pain, grievances and self-pity of mass killers are only symptoms of the real explanation. Those who do these things share one common trait. They are raging narcissists.

There you have it — the “reason” “why” a killer like Seung Hui Cho would go on a rampage, killing fellow student and teachers. Indeed, as the Washington Post reports, the authorities were even looking for brain abnormalities to explain the carnage — to come up with some rationale as to why Cho would fire more than 100 bullets into 31 victims. Actually, I think that Von Drehel is on to something.

Psychologists from South Africa to Chicago have begun to recognize that extreme self-centeredness is the forest in these stories, and all the other things– guns, games, lyrics, pornography–are just trees. To list the traits of the narcissist is enough to prove the point: grandiosity, numbness to the needs and pain of others, emotional isolation, resentment and envy.

Be sure and follow the link to see how this theory stacks up to serial killers like Ted Bundy, as well as to mass-killers like Cho.

Freud explained narcissism as a failure to grow up. All infants are narcissists, he pointed out, but as we grow, we ought to learn that other people have lives independent of our own. It’s not their job to please us, applaud for us or even notice us–let alone die because we’re unhappy.

How many people do you run into everyday that feel like life “owes” them something? How many that want you to give them what they need? How many that the school system has told them that “they are special, that they should feel good about themselves”, without ever having to have done anything to warrant those types of feelings?

A generation ago, the social critic Christopher Lasch diagnosed narcissism as the signal disorder of contemporary American culture. The cult of celebrity, the marketing of instant gratification, skepticism toward moral codes and the politics of victimhood were signs of a society regressing toward the infant stage.

Even our governmental leaders are contributing to this, with their constant pandering to the victomhood concept of social justice. “You are a victim of your circumstances, therefore you are not to be held accountable for your actions.” I. E. You couldn’t help yourself. What a crock of bovine excrement!

In Holocaust studies, there is a school of thought that says to explain is to forgive. I won’t go that far. But we must stop explaining killers on their terms. Minus the clear context of narcissism, the biographical details of these men can begin to look like a plausible chain of cause and effect–especially to other narcissists. And they don’t need any more encouragement.

Indeed, there is far too much encouragement for our narcissistic natures, on TV, in the movies, in popular music and especially in the public school system. Never in the history of the United States has there been such a disconnect between personal responsibility and citizenship. Von Drehel nails it for me when he discusses a narcissistic popular singers response to the Columbine killings.

This is the narcissist‘s view of narcissism: everything would be fine if only he received more attention. The real problem can be found in the killer’s mirror.

It’s not the guns, it’s the killer himself. Wise words from the pages of Time Magazine — will wonders ever cease?

Technorati Tags: Time Magazine, David Von Drehel, Virginia Tech, Seung Hui Cho, narcissism, narcissist

Good ol’ hot-lookin’ Leftist-actress Charlize Theron opens up her pie hole on CNN in an interview with Rick Sanchez and out comes the drivel that the dearth of freedoms in Cuba is matched right here right now in the good ol’ U.S. of A. Some things you just gotta hear to get the full effect, and with the help of YouTube you can even see her make an ass of herself.

Geez! It’s the sixties and seventies all over again. Only this time, the act is getting a lot old. Guess ol’ Charlize believes that if she lived in Cuba she could go on Cuban TV and bemoan the fact that she had a lack of freedom there. Well, maybe if she wanted to be the next rape-slave in a Cuban woman’s prison, never to be seen or heard from again.

As to that last part — for her to never to be seen or heard from again — unfortunately we won’t be so lucky. Too bad . . . (db)

Technorati Tags: Charlize Theron, Rick Sanchez, CNN, Cuban Rappers