Republican Consultant Gives Reporters Too Much Credit
Dec 23, 2008 Political
Barack Obama has the media in his hip-hop pocket. They have carried his water for two years and helped to quash any negative story, and there were many, that arose over that time. When the Blagojevich story broke Obama was quick to say neither he nor his staff had anything to do with the situation and the media bought that, until it was revealed that Rahm Emanuel had contact regarding the open Senate seat.
Obama and his camp went into damage control mode and decided to conduct an internal investigation. The investigation was completed last week and they, reportedly at the request of US Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, held the results. They are supposed to be released this week, maybe as soon as today (I bet it will be tomorrow). How convenient the report will be released while Obama is at a plush Hawaiian retreat many miles away. The internal review will show that there were no contacts that were inappropriate (as opposed to NO contacts). The media will accept this as gospel and move on to Christmas parties and other social gatherings. Accepting the results as closing the issue is like allowing a person to conduct his own tax audit. I bet Major League Baseball wished it had been allowed to conduct its own audit into steroid abuse and have it accepted as the final word.
Republican consultant Ron Bonjean, however, believes that the report will set off a flurry of activity from reporters eager to discover the independent truth:
“The contacts are a potential Pandora’s box,” Mr. Bonjean said. “They’ll take reporters in all different directions, like having dozens of little rabbits running around the White House.” WSJ
The only activity will be reporters running around eager to prove what Obama concluded was true. They will not dig into anything that might discredit their chosen one and will do whatever it takes to validate their support. Chris Matthews said it was his job to ensure Obama was successful. His job, as well as most in the media, was to ensure Bush was unsuccessful but with The One, it is different because they all backed him. The media went to bat for Obama and carried his water through every potential scandal.
Jeremiah Wright, William Ayers, and Tony Rezko (and many others) all had associations with Obama that bore further scrutiny but the media were asleep at the wheel. The birth certificate issue is valid but the media refuses to run with it and that includes those who report from the right. The media have failed to exercise due diligence in reporting and vetting Barack Obama and it will likely not exercise journalistic integrity until something happens that cannot be ignored. They did the same with Bill Clinton whose character was in question from the start. Michael Isikoff was prepared to break the Monica Lewinsky story but Newsweek killed it. If Drudge had not published it there would likely not have been the flurry of activity that followed.
Obama will enjoy much of the same treatment until he is involved in something that cannot be ignored so indicating that reporters will be running around like rabbits following the Obama report’s conclusions is being generous with regard to American journalists.
It is very likely that Obama’s people had contact with Blagojevich and that the Senate seat was discussed. If Obama’s report is not complete in all dealings in the matter and it is discovered that other contacts were made then he will be tainted from the start (OK, more tainted). The MSM cannot allow this to happen.
It will be a fun four years watching the media fall all over Obama though I imagine some of his shine is beginning to fade. He has already ticked off the gays and has Barney Frank talking negatively about him.
The media might still love him in the end but they might be the only ones.
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Why Won’t Obama Produce His Birth Certificate?
Dec 3, 2008 Political
The question of Obama’s citizenship will not end, and rightly so. I know the left and the Obama-bots say that he has proven he is eligible to be president but he has not really satisfied the requirement because he has not shown a vault copy of his birth certificate demonstrating he is “natural born.” The statement from the Hawaii official was nuanced (perhaps to avoid charges of lying) record on file. Hawaii allowed foreign births to be registered and the COLB (Obama’s “proof”) was is issued for that.
Here are the facts:
The only thing Americans want is for Obama to prove he is eleigible to hold the office of the presidency. If he produces the proof then all is said and done and we can move on. By not producing a vault copy of his birth certificate (and spending a lot of money to fight releasing it) he is giving the appearance of guilt and demonstrating (once more) contempt for the Constitution.
The left said that George Bush was illigitimate from day one because they could not accept his victory which they believed the court handed him. Obama is illigitimate until there is proof that he is qualified to hold the office.
Our Constitution still matters.
Big Dog Salute to Wild Thing.
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Tags: birth certificate, constitution, cover up, illigitimate, Obama
Democrats On Video Covering Up Financial Problems
Sep 27, 2008 Political
…While Republicans tired to get tighter control and more regulation.
This video is 8:37 in length and it is worth every second it takes to watch. The Republicans are expressing concern over Fannie and Freddie and the Democrats are telling everyone that there is no problem. They keep saying that nothing is wrong and that all is well. All of them say there is no, nor will there be any, problem.
Watch this video and send a link to every person you know. Let them see just who is to blame for this mess. I watched the Democrats last night and this morning discussing how this is the “Bush Bailout” and how they had nothing to do with the problems. This is patently wrong, as this video demonstrates.
So when Nancy Pelosi says this mess belongs to Republicans and the Democrats have nothing to do with it SHE IS LYING.
Additionally, the Democrats are trying to syphon your tax dollars to support ACORN and other liberal organizations.
Do not let them get away with it. VOTE THEM ALL OUT OF OFFICE.
Tags: blame, cover up, Democrats, fannie mae, financial mess, freddie mac, graft
Obama Website Cover Up; Is Google Helping?
Jun 8, 2008 Political
There is currently a lot of buzz throughout the blogosphere regarding Barack Obama’s website. Obama had a couple of items on his site that were disturbing to say the least. Pam at Atlas Shrugs has a list of the items with screen shots. The screen shots were necessary because as soon as the information started making the rounds it started disappearing from Obama’s site. The Obama folks have worked to have every trace of the offensive items disappear and there is word, though I have yet to see proof, that the lefty loons at Google are helping to get rid of the offensive stuff.
Obama’s site had items up with statements about Jews that one might expect from an anti Semite such as Mahmoud Amadinejad or about any other Muslim. It was typical stuff about Jews owning the media, Jews owning Congress, how politicians better do what the Jews say or else and all that kind of stuff. There was a page with support from Muslim terrorist supporters like Jemaah Islamiyah who is happy to support Obama because he will talk to Amadinejad, a man who has been misunderstood. There is also the obligatory tribute and support from the Black Panthers, the Jews were behind 9/11 and all kinds of other vile stuff.
Obama’s folks have been really busy today trying to get this stuff down and trying to make sure that no trace of it exists. I am no web guru but I have read in several places that a number of things are taking place to ensure that no archive, no cache, no record of any kind exists. The campaign wants to be able to deny any of it but folks like Pam Geller, Charles Johnson and Fausta have screen shots of the site.
I wonder if the MSM will be reporting on this mess. I wonder if anyone will ask Obama about the attempts at covering this up. I wonder if anyone will ask how it got posted in the first place and why some of the material has been up since at least March of this year.
Don’t hold your breath. It will be up to people like those mentioned above.
I can’t wait to hear Obama tell us that his webmaster is “not the webmaster I knew.”
Tags: anti semite, atlas shrugs, cover up, deceit, fausta, jew hater, little green footballs, Obama
Don’t Take Flight 93 to Mecca 1-9-2008
Jan 9, 2008 Flight 93
Blogburst blockbuster: Professor who white-washed the Crescent of Embrace was Paul Murdoch’s classmate at UCLA
An excerpt from the Park Service investigation into the Flight 93 memorial identifies one of their consultants as a scholar from MIT who “wishes to remain anonymous.” Another document identifies this person as a religious scholar or a professor of Islamic architecture. MIT does not have a religion department, and they only have one professor of Islamic architecture: Professor Nassar Rabbat, who has confirmed that he is the Park Service consultant.
A check of Rabbat’s background shows that he was a classmate of Paul Murdoch, both getting masters degrees in architecture from UCLA in 1984 and both doing their masters work on Middle Easter subjects. Murdoch wrote a “masters project” titled: “A museum for Haifa, Israel.” Rabbat did a masters thesis titled: “House-form, climactic response and lifestyle: a study of the 17-19th century courthouse houses in Cairo and Damascus.”
This connection between Murdoch and Rabbat raises the possibility that Murdoch himself orchestrated the Park Service investigation into warnings about his own design. Rabbat denies knowing Murdoch, but given the blatant dishonesty of what he told the Park Service, that denial cannot be trusted.
Rabbat lied about something that every practicing Muslim knows
Rabbat’s first “major talking point” (from the Memorial Project’s White Paper, towards the bottom) is a blatantly dishonest excuse for why the Park Service should not be concerned about the almost exact Mecca orientation of the Crescent of Embrace. A crescent that Muslims face into to face Mecca is called a mihrab and is the central feature around which every mosque is built. Rabbat assures the Park Service that because the Mecca orientation of the Crescent of Embrace is inexact, it can’t be seen as a mihrab:
Mihrab orientation is either correct or not. It cannot be off by some degrees.
Absolutely false, and Rabbat certainly knows it. This goes to the most basic principle of mosque design: that all mosques are expressions of Muhammad’s prototype.
Muhammad’s original mosque in Medina was not oriented precisely on Mecca. It was built to face Jerusalem. Later in his career Muhammad changed the direction that Muslims were to face for prayer (their qibla direction). Instead of facing north from Medina to Jerusalem they were to face south, towards Mecca (Koran 2.142-145). To effect this change, Muhammad just started using the southerly wall of his mosque as his “qibla wall” instead of the northerly wall, even though this wall had not been built to face Mecca.
In the abstract, Muhammad held the qibla direction from Medina to be “south.” But Mecca is not quite due south from Medina either. Thus both in practice and in the abstract, Muhammad was not particular about an exact orientation on Mecca, and in Islam, what is good enough for Muhammad has to be good enough for everyone. He is the model.
This leeway to face only roughly towards Mecca for prayer is not some obscure bit of doctrine. Every practicing Muslim knows that qibla orientation does not have to be exact because they all have to avail themselves of this allowance pretty much every day as they seek walls that are oriented not too far off of Mecca which they can face into for their frequent prayers.
Rabbat just flat out lied about something that every practicing Muslim knows, and this is an expert in Mosque design. He knows better than anyone the historic leeway afforded in Mecca orientation.
Is Rabbat the source of Patrick White’s foolishness?
Rabbat’s dishonest report to the Park Service may explain an amazing argument made by Patrick White, Vice President of Families of Flight 93. At the July 2007 public meeting of the Memorial Project, White argued in a private conversation that the almost exact Mecca-orientation of the giant crescent cannot be intended as a tribute to Islam because the inexactness of it would be “disrespectful to Islam.”
At the same time as White was privately making excuses for the almost exact Mecca orientation of the crescent, he was telling the newspapers that the Mecca orientation claim was false and preposterous, so he certainly cannot be absolved. But it is possible that he himself was misled about how Muslims would regard an inexactly oriented mihrab.
The Memorial Project received Rabbat’s comments about a year earlier, and Patrick White certainly had access to them. It seems likely that when White said that an inexact orientation on Mecca would be “disrespectful to Islam,” he was following Rabbat’s “can’t be off” lead.
The crescent design also includes an exact Mecca orientation
If Nassar Rabbat actually read the information that Alec Rawls sent to the Memorial Project, he would know that in addition to the physical crescent, the Crescent of Embrace design also includes a thematic crescent, defined by architect Paul Murdoch himself. The upper tip of this thematic crescent is the point where, in Murdoch’s explanation, the flight path breaks the circle. If this thematic or “true” upper crescent tip is used to define the orientation of the crescent, then the crescent points exactly to Mecca.
If Rabbat really thinks that exactness is what matters, he would have been alarmed to see that this thematic crescent is oriented exactly on Mecca. Instead, he ignored it.
The Park Service already knew about the Mecca orientation of the crescent
The Park Service’s other Islamic scholar, Kevin Jaques, did the same thing as Rabbat. He admitted the similarity between the giant Mecca oriented crescent and a traditional Islamic mihrab, then concocted a blatantly dishonest excuse for why the Park Service shouldn’t be concerned about it. Jaques assured the Park Service that there was no reason to worry because no one had ever seen a mihrab this big before:
Thirdly, most mihrabs are small, rarely larger than the figure of a man, although some of the more ornamental ones can be larger, but nothing as large at the crescent found in the site design. It is unlikely that most Muslims would walk into the area of the circle/crescent and see a mihrab because it is well beyond their limit of experience. Again, just because it is similar does not make it the same.
If Jaques and Rabbat were willing to engage in such blatantly dishonest excuse-making, why did they start out by admitting that the giant crescent was geometrically close to a perfect mihrab? Because the Park Service already knew that the giant crescent was oriented almost exactly on Mecca, and that a crescent that Muslims face into to face Mecca is the central feature around which every mosque is built.
Advisory Commission member Tim Baird would admit this explicitly in 2007, but it was obvious much earlier. What the Park Service wanted when it conducted its internal investigation in the spring and summer of 2006 was excuses not to be concerned about these damning facts, and that is what Jaques and Rabbat provided. Similarly for the egregious Daniel Griffith, the “professor of geospatial information,” who told the newspapers that “anything can point to Mecca, because the earth is round.”
The Park Service knew this was all fraudulent. Griffith’s “anything can point to Mecca” and Rabbat’s “it has to be exact” were complete contradictions of each other, but the Park Service gladly embraced both as excuses to pretend that there was nothing to worry about.
If these government functionaries were this desperate for a cover up, it is certainly plausible that they would accept any help they could get from Paul Murdoch. Not that it is hard to find radically dishonest, America-hating academics, but these three frauds are outliers even by worst standards.
More dishonest excuse-making from Rabbat
Rabbat’s next talking point is more of the same dishonest excuse-making:
Besides, in the US, a debate has been going on as to which is the right Mecca orientation: the one going through the North Pole or the one that follows a flat representation of the globe.
The orientation “through the North Pole” (55.2° clockwise from north, to be precise) is the great-circle direction to Mecca. This great circle direction to Mecca is the orientation of the Crescent of Embrace (almost exactly), and it is the direction in which almost all Muslims pray.
A few dissenters pray in the rhumb-line direction to Mecca (the direction of constant compass heading, which spirals down the globe in an east-southeasterly direction from North America). Rabbat pretends that the existence of these few dissenters somehow makes the whole matter of the Mecca oriented crescent a non-issue.
If anything, the debate over qibla direction shows the flexibility of the qibla direction, giving the lie to Rabbat’s earlier assertion that mihrab orientation “can’t be off.”
Rabbat certainly knows that the great-circle direction to Mecca is the dominant qibla direction. (It won out over the rhumb line direction for the very good reason that a person facing in the rhumb-line direction to Mecca is not actually facing Mecca, since the rhumb-line follows a curved path.) But don’t worry about a little thing like the crescent facing in the dominant qibla direction. Rabbat has plenty of lame excuses why you don’t need to care.
Tom Burnett’s call for a Congressional investigation
The Park Service won’t say how they came up with Griffith, Jaques and Rabbat so we have to force them. A lot of People must be forced to answer these and a lot of other hard questions, and the only way to do it is to heed Tom Burnett’s call for a Congressional Investigation.
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