Tag: Blithe Spirit

Librarians, stay on alert!

The AP is on the story of apparent U. of Ill.-Chicago coverup of documents showing Obama and terrorist Bill Ayers working together to save Chicago schools:

University won’t open Obama-related records now

By PETE YOST, Associated Press Writer Tue Aug 19, 6:48 PM ET

WASHINGTON – The University of Illinois on Tuesday refused to release records relating to Barack Obama’s service to a nonprofit group linked to former 1960s radical activist William Ayers.

The university’s Chicago campus said the donor of the records that document the work of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge has not yet turned over ownership rights to the material.

The U. didn’t know that, now it does, so records are closed.

The owner [donor of the docs] notified the university about the absence of a signed ownership agreement last week.

“The donor’s only concerns regarding the collection are due to personnel information that could include names, confidential salary information and even Social Security numbers,” said the university spokesman.

They are being vetted?

Nothing in Chi newspapers yet (8:50 am 8/20).  They’re working on it.  Give them time.

The Annenberg Challenge was $50 million.  Ayers got himself put in charge of it.  Mayordaley II, that old radical, loves A. for it. 

Question: Who gave the $50 mill?  Answer: the Annenbergs — The Honorable Leonore Annenberg, President and Chairman [of their foundation]; Wallis Annenberg, Vice President, Lauren Bon, Gregory Annenberg Weingarten, Charles Annenberg Weingarten.

Who put Ayers in charge?  These five signed off on it, presumably with guidance from staff:

Headquarters Office
Gail C. Levin, Executive Director
Joanne Cemini-Visintin, Assistant to the Executive Director
Linda Dunn, Operations and Accounting Administrator
Rachel Goldbaum, Grants Administrator
. . . . etc.

I’d start with Gail C. Levin, but for the heck of it, I’d go also to Walter Annenberg and his father Moses (Moe) Annenberg, to get the flavor of things, with special attention to the murderous Chicago newspaper circulation wars of the 1920s and Moe’s affiliation with mobsters and illegal gambling and his and Walter’s prosecution in 1939 in “one of the biggest tax-evasion cases in U.S. history” and Moe’s subsequent imprisonment after taking a guilty plea for fraud. 

Hey, this family has more going for it than the Joe Kennedy’s!  And now they give money to reform schools!  [”To reform” here as infinitive, not “reform” as adjective, though that might be something they should consider.] 

Is this a great country, or what?

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Big O. is for “fairness,” no matter what it costs us?

A capital gains tax reduces potential rewards of investment, I gather from p. 217 of Jude Wanniski’s 1978 book The Way the World Works.  Why wouldn’t it?  If it reduces rewards enough, the investment is not made.  New business is not started.  Jobs are not created.

Obama doesn’t see it that way.  Hearing the news that tax revenue increased during a certain time of reduced taxation, he was surprised but held his ground, opposing reduction for the sake of “fairness.”  He would rather all made less, for the sake of fewer earning more.

“[T]he idea of fairness is at the heart of his whole economic argument. And he goes back to it in almost every public appearance,” says William McGurn.

He talks about it as a general theme: “It is time for folks like me who make more than $250,000 to pay our fair share.”

He invokes it as a solution for Social Security: “[W]e will save Social Security for future generations by asking the wealthiest Americans to pay their fair share.”

He points to how it guides his energy policy: “The first part of my plan is to tax the windfall profits of oil companies and use some of that money to help you pay the rising price of gas.”

And he stuck to it on capital gains, even after ABC’s Charlie Gibson noted that the record shows increased taxes on capital gains — which would affect 100 million Americans — would likely lead to a decrease in government revenues: “Well, Charlie, what I’ve said is that I would look at raising the capital gains tax for purposes of fairness.”

In 1969, to continue with Wanniski, in Nixon’s first year, revenues were expected to rise $1.1 billion in 1970.  Instead, Nixon reneged on a tax cut, removed an investment tax credit, and spent on job training — and 1969’s $7.1 billion revenues dropped to an average of $4 billion in the following four years.

Also, hundreds of billions were lost in reduced output — and thus in jobs and overall prosperity.  This was “tax reform” in 1969.

In 1971, Nixon jettisoned his other promise, to balance the budget, and instead purposely unbalanced it for the sake of full employment in 1972 — which didn’t happen.  This gave him (us) a planned deficit to match 1970’s unplanned one. (218) 

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Librarians of the world, be alert!

This National Review writer can’t get to Obama-related archives at U. of Ill. at Chicago, he says.  I wrote a letter:

Dear [UIC] Pres. [B. Joseph] White:
 
I am quite exercised over your apparent denying public access to public records in the Stanley Kurtz case, as explained here and here.
 
I can only hope there’s some mistake, which you will correct as soon as possible.  I hadn’t seen my friend the late Bob Adelsperger in years before he died two years ago.  We used to meet at gatherings of the Society of Midland Authors, when he was on the board and I was president.  I can’t imagine Bob the UIC librarian doing what Kurtz reports your people doing. 
 
Thanks much for your prompt response to this potentially devastating problem.
 
Sincerely,
Bad cess to hiders of public info.  Let us hope the writer gets at his material.
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Next day, Tuesday, 1 pm: Just heard R. Limbaugh reporting this UIC cover-up, citing others, as John Kerry’s refusal to reveal military records, until long after the election, and then did he or didn’t he?  It’s the Dem way, he says.
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Yet later: Beltway Clips has links to a half dozen more treatments of this fiasco.  See also Instapundit.
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Decline of the west (suburban edition)

Here’s exhibit 125th — or is it 1,125th? — why I have subscribed to the Wall Street Journal.  It’s what I got on page one of my home-delivered Chi Trib, which landed right next to my Journal:

Russians, Georgians engage in war of spin

The Tribune’s Alex Rodriguez finds cagey denials and unverified claims aimed at gaining global support

By Alex Rodriguez | Tribune correspondent
12:07 AM CDT, August 18, 2008

TBILISI, Georgia — A Russian newspaper recently published what was portrayed as the seamy truth behind the conflict in Georgia: Vice President Dick Cheney helped engineer the war as a way to keep Barack Obama from getting elected.

The tortuous logic behind the claim may be hard to grasp, but the intent isn’t.

Russia acts like Germany in 1938, and we have time for relaxed irony?  And with a touch of pox on both their houses, at that?

The claim, made by Sergei Markov, a political analyst closely tied with the Kremlin and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, was meant to shift blame away from Moscow and lay it on an obvious target on the other side of the Atlantic. In an age when Russia tries to show itself as a democracy free from the shackles of the Soviet mind-set, it had all the markings of Kremlin propaganda.

This is Tribune thumb-sucking at its best — while the newspaper burns.  From their man in Russia, for God’s sake, here reporting from Tbilisi.

Now see what I found in the Journal:

First of all, it’s by one guy in Poti, another in Gori, each on the ground, as we say.  The lede is crisp and business-like:

Russia, under intense diplomatic pressure, announced it will begin pulling troops out of neighboring Georgia — but it leaves behind a battered Western ally.

Since a separatist dispute flared into open war Aug. 8, Moscow has occupied chunks of Georgia’s territory, strangled its economy, cut transport links and damaged key investment projects.

There’s diplomatic reporting, from Georgian economy minister, the Russian president, Sec. of State Rice, White House spokesman, the German chancellor, the Georgian First Deputy Minister of Economic Development, etc.

Then from Poti, a town on the Black Sea:

Though hundreds of miles from the fighting in Georgia’s separatist province of South Ossetia and clearly not a military asset, Poti’s huge commercial port was targeted 10 days ago in a Russian bombing raid that killed 10 people and wounded 40. The town itself has seen daily incursions by Russian troops who have looted stores, trashed offices and systematically destroyed military infrastructure, according to Georgian officials. Some looting has been captured on local television.

From Alan Middleton, the English head of Poti Sea Port Corp.:

“The Russians deliberately targeted commercial operations to inflict economic damage on Georgia. Dropping bombs on Poti port, killing people — I don’t see how you can connect that with South Ossetia.”

Lots more from Poti, including:

[A]bout 700 Russian troops trundled into town in tanks and armored personnel carriers. Tengiz Khukhia, the town’s deputy mayor, approached the Russian commander, who told him they had orders to eliminate all Georgian military facilities in Poti. He also issued a warning. “He said if any of you touch a hair on any of my soldiers’ heads, we’ll flatten the whole town,” says Mr. Khukhia. The commander couldn’t be located for comment.

Lots, lots more, plus another story from the scene, in this case Tkviavi, with this lede:

As armored columns rumble by, the body of Shamil Okroporidze is rotting for the fifth day in his garden, just two steps off the main north-south highway that bisects this village deep in Russian-occupied Georgia.

And there’s neither pathos nor bathos nor sentimental rot, just reporting in time-honored straight fashion, bringing the reader along.  And no “war of spin.”

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O-talk

I give you this to chew on, as example of Tricky O.’s ways:

Does Barack Hussein Obama want to SILENCE RUSH?

His campaign now says he doesn’t support the so-called “Fairness Doctrine” (a measure that liberals are trying to impose to get rid of the only medium that gives equal time to conservative thoughts and opinions; namely, conservative talk radio) — athough he supported it several months ago.

Michael Ortiz, the Obama campaign’s press secretary, told Broadcasting and Cable:

“Senator Obama does not support re-imposing the Fairness Doctrine on broadcasters.”

But what many liberal media outlets are not reporting is THE REST OF ORTIZ’S STATEMENT!

Ortiz continued:

“He considers this debate to be a distraction from the conversation we should be having about opening up the airwaves and modern communications to as many diverse viewpoints as possible. That is why Sen. Obama supports media-ownership caps, network neutrality, public broadcasting, as well as increasing minority ownership of broadcasting and print outlets.”

Forget about those short-sighted liberal plots to silence Rush Limbaugh and all those other pesky conservative talk-radio hosts.  Obama has a bigger vision!

It’s from Human Events, complete with scary coloring.  We report (what we think is worth reporting), you decide.

As for his support for neutrality, etc., that’s clearly a shot at free speech in a free market, in which he’s no worse than Pelosi, right.

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Mud, skin, aged people, toxins — Great Newspaper-ism in Chicago

Front page newspaper-ism in Chicago, yes.  Chi Trib has major story, “The mud hits Chicago.”  Read all about it.

The mud is an anti-Obama ad that the O. campaign has rebutted to its satisfaction.  Trib Wash. bureau is on the job, making sure we know:

Obama’s campaign says the link between Obama’s votes and violent crime is specious, and that Obama has actually done more to effectively combat urban violence than his Republican opponent, John McCain, who it says has consistently resisted federal efforts to place more police officers on the streets and voted against banning vest-piercing, or so-called cop-killer, bullets.

Take that, McCain.

Next to it is big pic of half-naked swimmer, the guy we’ve been reading about all week.  Read this story,  fresh in your home-delivered Trib from the Baltimore Sun, and rehash what you know from watching NBC.  Reading fun, to be sure.  Front page newspaperism, remember.

Down below is a hot story about “seniors” — as in citizens, not high school or college — learning how to surf and, God knows, even blog.  This is like the Obama campaign ad in that it’s an ad for this guy who gets $75 an hour to show seniors how to do it, complete with riveting shot of this guy and man who at age 76 — yes, 76! — is learning.

If this story is on the web site, it’s well hidden; so no link is offered.  But for another about a senior who blogs (!), read this blog, day after day after day.  It’s an ongoing saga of man against the odds, a thrilling tale, yes.

Finally on today’s front-page Trib, we have “Progress against toxins in toys takes small steps,” with this crisp lede:

When a nationwide ban on hormone-disrupting chemicals in soft plastic toys and cosmetics takes effect early next year, it will mark an important turning point in efforts to remove toxic compounds from consumer products.

You see it here in four lines.  In the home-delivered Metro edition, bottom right FRONT PAGE, it’s in nine lines.  Wow. 

It’s all about phthalates, which

are suspected of causing reproductive and developmental problems, especially in boys. Then there are perfluorinated compounds in food packaging, stain-resistant carpets and non-stick pans that have been linked to cancer and birth defects. A chemical found in hard plastic baby bottles and water containers, bisphenol A, causes breast cancer and lowers sperm counts in animal tests.

Now what kind of reader wants to read all that over his morning coffee and whole wheat toast?  And how many are there of this rare breed?

Sam Zell, do you see now what you’ve got yourself into?

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Annals of language

Part one, sports:

Just heard a Fox Chi sports commentator pay a compliment to White Sox pitchers, saying Sox had “a lights-out filthy rotation,” which the most avid fan of even ten years ago — not to mention 65, when my day began with feverish turn to Trib sports page gathered up from the porch to see how Sox did — would have made neither hide nor hair of.

Lights-out used to mean dumb.  Filthy was no compliment at all.  Rotation might be the spin on a fast ball.

Not now.  A lights-out performance is when you punch someone’s lights out, knock him or them out, make a big splash, succeed admirably.  Filthy is a pitch that is near impossible to hit.  Rotation means your four or five starting pitchers.

Part two, politics:

The mayor of Detroit, Kwame Kilpatrick, shoved a subpoena server, yelling, “Get the f— off my family’s porch,” the subpoena server, Sheriff’s Detective Brian White, testified.

White also said Kilpatrick berated his partner, Investigator JoAnn Kinney, and told her she should be ashamed of herself for being a black woman and working on this case, an apparent reference to the conspiracy, perjury, misconduct in office and obstruction of justice charges against the mayor. He added that the mayor asked her how she could work with a white man and a man named White.

Wait.  Aren’t there black men named White?  And whites named Kilpatrick, for that matter?  But that’s not the point.  I would like to know when the mayor does his sensitivity training so as to expunge such racial references from his vocabulary. 

To sum up, was his performance on this occasion both lights-out and filthy in the old meanings?  And when does he rotate out of office?

Here he is:

Mayor of Detroit

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Spics, slants, and others

Here are Spanish b-ballers preparing for Beijing:

Spics v. slants 2

Here are the tennis players:

Spics v. slants

No offence was intended by the players or the Spanish federation of Funny Guys and Gals Who Play Sports, say the perps.  The first is an ad for a sponsor.  The second is a team web site foto.

These Spanish people are equal-opportunity offenders.  They called black soccer players monkeys in Madrid in 2004, and the coach made cracks about a mixed-race French player (and got fined).  Called him “that black shit” in a pep talk to his team.  (Very appealing guy the s. player, as in this video.)

Am finding it tres amusing myself, something maybe to puncture, if slightly, the international cocoon of correctitude and restoring maybe the “sticks and stones may break my bones” attitude of old.

====================

Reader D:

I should be shunned along with you and the low-life Spanish athletes.Seeing the photos, all I could think of was “The good old days, when we could be stupid and get stupid-back-at-us, and no one cut anyone’s head off because of a cartoon. Skin was thicker in those ancient times when your saying “Stix and stones, etc.” was a kid’s national anthem.
Yes.
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Helpmate to the podium

I share Tom Roeser’s skepticism about Mrs. O. as convention speaker:

[I]t will take formidable image-making cosmetology . . .  She has done almost irreparable harm to herself by allowing her words to make her a symbol of black grievance and anti-whitey figure… when she has been a remarkably coddled black woman at that.

Imagine someone who got to Princeton not through academic excellence but through other means who lamented that she felt alone and discriminated against there. Her [undergraduate] thesis . . . smacks of hot grievance.

Or someone who graduates from . . . Harvard Law school who continues the grievance until when her husband was winning primaries… while she was in her 40s… announced that for the first time she was felt proud to be an American.

Who earned $300,000 from the University of Chicago based on her connection with [superlatively well-connected] Valerie Jarrett and who still has the temerity to tell young black women that [they] should forego . . . big bucks [and instead choose careers of] community service where they would earn far less . . . 

Will she help him with the undecided?  That is the question.

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