Muslims for McCain Reject Protesters

In a confrontation caught on video, three people outside a John McCain presidential rally in Woodbridge, Va., this past weekend handed out “Obama for Change” bumper stickers that featured the Communist hammer and sickle and the Islamic crescent on them.

One of the anti-Barack Obama protesters told McCain supporters that Islam teaches its followers to “deceive the infidels in order to progress Islam.”

The man, who chose not to give his name, said Obama “is a socialist with Islamic background.” When pushed to back up his claim, he said, “There’s a lot of background … I can’t do that right now.”

Several moderate McCain supporters, that included both Muslims and Christians, angrily denounced the group distributing the anti-Obama materials. A man who identified himself as a Muslim McCain delegate from the GOP convention even stepped in and said the campaign doesn’t endorse this kind of message. Under pressure, the protesters eventually left the premises.

Barack Obama and his connections with Pakistan

Most Pakistanis seem to like Senator Barack Obama, the Democratic Party candidate for President. However, for most, Senator Obama’s “Pakistan Connections” were limited to (a) his rather strong words about Pakistan, including about sending troops into Pakistan, and (b) his choice of Senator Joeseph Biden, who has a long and deep interest in foreign affairs, including Pakistan. Most Pakistanis are not very fond of the first of these connections. The second connection they like, especially because Senator Biden has been the key architect of a new, very generous and quite sensible support package for Pakistan.

 

It turns out, however, that Barack Obama may have slightly deeper and more personal connections to Pakistan. But, frankly, only very slightly deeper and only very slightly personal.

 

First, there is the story circulating around that Barak Obama’s mother lived in Pakistan for five years. It is quite clear that Ann Dunham, Obama’s mother, did indeed work and live in Pakistan as a consultant to the Asian Development Bank (ADB), working on a project in Gujranwalla (here, here, here). However, I must confess that I have serious doubts if she actually “lived” in Pakistan (i.e., Pakistan was her primary residence) for five years.

 

The “5-year” conjecture is based on a headline in the Daily Waqt that proclaims that “Obama’s Mother Stayed in Pakistan for 5 Years.” My own sense is that this may be a case of a bad translation and/or an erroneous headline.

 

Here is why I think this is so: first, the type of work she is reported to have been doing for the ADB would usually require occasional and repeated visits but not permanent placement; second,  if it did, it is unlikely that she would have stayed in a 5-star hotel the entire time as the report alleges. Here is the Daily Waqt report in question:

 

    The mother of American Presidential hopeful, Barack Obama, Mrs. Ann Dunham lived in Pakistan for five years. During this time, Barack Obama also visited his mother and stayed for a few month. Mrs. Ann Dunham was hired as a consultant by the Asian Development Bank for Pakistan Agricultural Development Bank’s Gujranwalla Agricultural Development Program. This program began in 1987 and ended in 1992.

 

    Mrs. Ann Dunham monitored the funds received for this program from the Asian Development Bank and trained the Mobile Credit Officers of the Agricultural Bank. This program was controlled from the Gujranwalla Regional Office. She stayed for five years in the Hilton International Hotel (now Avari Hotel), Lahore. She travelled daily from Lahore to Gujranwalla. When Barack Obama visited Pakistan, he stayed in the same hotel. After returning from Pakistan, she died from cancer within three years.

 

Second, Barack Obama has himself visited Pakistan. Indeed, Barack Obama may have visited Pakistan for longer than any U.S. President or presidential candidate ever has. As so many college students do, he seemed eager to see the world. He was in Karachi in 1981 as a young student, returning from a visit to his mother in Indonesia. According to a New York Times report:

 

    …Mr. Obama also spoke about having traveled to Pakistan in the early 1980s. Because of that trip, which he did not mention in either of his autobiographical books, “I knew what Sunni and Shia was before I joined the Senate Foreign Relations Committee,” he said… According to his campaign staff, Mr. Obama visited Pakistan in 1981, on the way back from Indonesia, where his mother and half-sister, Maya Soetoro-Ng, were living. He spent “about three weeks” there, Mr. Obama’s press secretary, Bill Burton, said, staying in Karachi with the family of a college friend, Mohammed Hasan Chandoo, but also traveling to Hyderabad, in India.

 

 

 

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Finally, as mentioned in the excerpt above, Senator Obama had a number of Pakistani friends during his college days, and it was that friendship that brought him to Pakistan. Some details, again, from the same New York Times report:

 

    …In Dreams from My Father, he talks of having a Pakistani roommate when he moved to New York, a man he calls Sadik who “had overstayed his tourist visa and now made a living in New York’s high-turnover, illegal immigrant work force, waiting on tables”… During his years at Occidental College, Mr. Obama also befriended Wahid Hamid, a fellow student who was an immigrant from Pakistan and traveled with Mr. Obama there, the Obama campaign said. Mr. Hamid is now a vice president at Pepsico in New York, and according to public records, has donated the maximum $2,300 to the Obama campaign and is listed as a fund-raiser for it. Mr. Chandoo is now a self-employed financial consultant, living in Armonk, N.Y. He has also donated the maximum, $2,300, to Mr. Obama’s primary campaign and an additional $309 for the general election, campaign finance records show.

 

An Associated Press story on Obama’s college friends has more interesting snippets. Especially his relationship with Sohale Siddiqi, from Karachi, is fascinating – all the more to the Pakistani reader:

 

    The way Sohale Siddiqi remembers it, he and his old roommate were walking his pug Charlie on Broadway when a large, scary bum approached them, stomping on the ground near the dog’s head. This was in the 1980s, a time when New York was a fearful place beset by drugs and crime, when the street smart knew that the best way to handle the city’s derelicts was to avoid them entirely. But Siddiqi was angry and he confronted the man, who approached him menacingly. Until his skinny, elite univerity-educated friend – Barack Obama – intervened. He “stepped right in between. … He planted his face firmly in the face of the guy. ‘Hey, hey, hey.’ And the guy backpedaled and we kept walking,” Siddiqi recalls.

 

    …Obama spent the six years between 1979 and 1985 at Occidental College in Los Angeles and then in New York at Columbia University and in the workplace. His memoir, Dreams from My Father, talks about this time, but not in great detail; Siddiqi, for example, is identified only as “Sadik” _ “a short, well-built Pakistani” who smoked marijuana, snorted cocaine and liked to party. Obama’s campaign wouldn’t identify “Sadik,” but The Associated Press located him in Seattle, where he raises money for a community theater. Together, the recollections of Siddiqi and other friends and acquaintances from Obama’s college years paint a portrait of the candidate as a young man. They remember a good student with a sharp mind and unshakable integrity, a young man who already had a passion for the underprivileged. Some described the young Obama’s personality as confident to the point of arrogance, a criticism that would emerge decades later, during the campaign.

 

    Not everyone who knew Obama in those years is eager to talk. Some explained that they feared inadvertently hurting Obama’s campaign. Among his friends were Siddiqi and two other Pakistanis, all of them from Karachi; several of those interviewed said the Pakistanis were reluctant to talk for fear of stoking rumors that Obama is a Muslim. “Obama in the eyes of some right wingers is basically Muslim until proved innocent,” says Margot Mifflin, a friend from Occidental who is now a journalism professor at New York’s Lehman College. “It’s partly the Muslim factor by association and partly the fear of something being twisted.”

 

    …Of course, he was only 18 when he arrived at the small liberal arts college nicknamed “Oxy.” His freshman roommates were Imad Husain, a Pakistani, who’s now a Boston banker, and Paul Carpenter, now a Los Angeles lawyer… Obama had an international circle of friends _ “a real eclectic sort of group,” says Vinai Thummalapally, who himself came from Hyderabad, India. As a freshman, he quickly became friends with Mohammed Hasan Chandoo and Wahid Hamid, two wealthy Pakistanis.

 

    In 1981, Obama transferred from Occidental to Columbia. In between, he traveled to Pakistan – a trip that enhanced his foreign policy qualifications, he maintained in a private speech at a San Francisco fundraiser last month. Obama spent “about three weeks” in Pakistan, traveling with Hamid and staying in Karachi with Chandoo’s family, said Bill Burton, Obama’s press secretary. “He was clearly shocked by the economic disparity he saw in Pakistan. He couldn’t get over the sight of rural peasants bowing to the wealthy landowners they worked for as they passed,” says Margot Mifflin, who makes a brief appearance in Obama’s memoir.

 

    When Obama arrived in New York, he already knew Siddiqi – a friend of Chandoo’s and Hamid’s from Karachi who had visited Los Angeles. Looking back, Siddiqi acknowledges that he and Obama were an odd couple. Siddiqi would mock Obama’s idealism – he just wanted to make a lot of money and buy things, while Obama wanted to help the poor. “At that age, I thought he was a saint and a square, and he took himself too seriously,” Siddiqi said. “I would ask him why he was so serious. He was genuinely concerned with the plight of the poor. He’d give me lectures, which I found very boring. He must have found me very irritating.”

 

    Siddiqi offered the most expansive account of Obama as a young man. “We were both very lost. We were both alienated, although he might not put it that way. He arrived disheveled and without a place to stay,” said Siddiqi, who at the time worked as a waiter and as a salesman at a boutique… In about 1982, Siddiqi and Obama got an apartment at a sixth-floor walkup on East 94th Street. Siddiqi managed to get the apartment thanks to subterfuge. “We didn’t have a chance in hell of getting this apartment unless we fabricated the lease application,” Siddiqi said. Siddiqi fudged his credentials, saying he had a high-paying job at a catering company, but Obama “wanted no part of it. He put down the truth.”

 

    The apartment was “a slum of a place” in a drug-ridden neighborhood filled with gunshots, he said. “It wasn’t a comfortable existence. We were slumming it.” What little furniture they had was found on the street, and guests would have to hold their dinner plates in their laps. While Obama has acknowledged using marijuana and cocaine during high school in Hawaii, he writes in the memoir that he stopped using soon after his arrival in New York. His roommate had no such scruples. But Siddiqi says that during their time together here, Obama always refused his offers of drugs.

 

    …Siddiqi said his female friends thought Obama was “a hunk.” “We were always competing,” he said. “You know how it is. You go to a bar and you try hitting on the girls. He had a lot more success. I wouldn’t out-compete him in picking up girls, that’s for sure.” Obama was a tolerant roommate. Siddiqi’s mother, who had never been around a black man, came to visit and she was rude; Obama was nothing but polite. Siddiqi himself could be intemperate – he called Obama an Uncle Tom, but “he was really patient. I’m surprised he suffered me.” Finally, their relationship started to fray. “I was partying all the time. I was disrupting his studies,” Siddiqi said. Obama moved out.

 

    … Neither Hamid nor Chandoo would be interviewed for this story; Hamid is now a top executive at Pepsico in New York, and Chandoo is a self-employed financial consultant in the New York area. Both have each contributed the maximum $2,300 to Obama’s campaign, and records indicate each has joined an Asian-American council that supports his run for president. Both also are listed on Obama’s campaign Web site as being among his top fundraisers, each bringing in between $100,000 and $200,000 in contributions from their networks of friends. Both also attended Obama’s wedding in 1992, according to published reports and other friends.

 

    Thummalapally has stayed in contact with Obama, too, visiting him in New York, attending his wedding in 1992 and joining him in Springfield, Illinois., for the Feb. 10, 2007, announcement of Obama’s run for the White House. President of a CD and DVD manufacturing company in Colorado Springs, Colorado, Thummalapally also is listed as a top fundraiser on the campaign Web site.

 

    Siddiqi has not kept in touch. His has been a difficult road; years after his time with Obama, Siddiqi says, he became addicted to cocaine and lost his business. But when he needed help during his recovery, Obama – the roommate he drove away with his partying, the man he always suspected of looking down at him – gave him a job reference. So yes, he’s an Obama man, too. Witness the message on his answering machine: “My name is Hal Siddiqi, and I approve of this message. Vote for peace, vote for hope, vote for change, and vote for Obama.”

 

But the most interesting account, even more interesting than the yarn about Hal Siddiqi comes from Barack Obama himself, in his book Dreams from My Father. Here are some excerpts from Chapter 6:

 

    I SPENT MY FIRST NIGHT in Manhattan curled up in an alleyway. It wasn’t intentional; while still in L.A., I had heard that a friend of a friend would be vacating her apartment in Spanish Harlem, near Columbia, and that given New York’s real estate market I’d better grab it while I could. An agreement was reached; I wired ahead with the date of my August arrival; and after dragging my luggage through the airport, the subways, Times Square, and across 109th from Broadway to Amsterdam, I finally stood at the door, a few minutes past ten P.M.

 

    I pressed the buzzer repeatedly, but no one answered. The street was empty, the buildings on either side boarded up, a bulk of rectangular shadows. Eventually, a young Puerto Rican woman emerged from the building, throwing a nervous look my way before heading down the street. I rushed to catch the door before it slammed shut, and, pulling my luggage behind me, proceeded upstairs to knock, and then bang, on the apartment door. Again, no answer, just a sound down the hall of a deadbolt thrown into place.

 

    New York. Just like I pictured it. I checked my wallet-not enough money for a motel. I knew one person in New York, a guy named Sadik whom I’d met in L.A., but he’d told me that he worked all night at a bar somewhere. With nothing to do but wait, I carried my luggage back downstairs and sat on the stoop. After a while, I reached into my back pocket, pulling out the letter I’d been carrying since leaving L.A. …

 

    It was well past midnight by the time I crawled through a fence that led to an alleyway. I found a dry spot, propped my luggage beneath me, and fell asleep, the sound of drums softly shaping my dreams. In the morning, I woke up to find a white hen pecking at the garbage near my feet. Across the street, a homeless man was washing himself at an open hydrant and didn’t object when I joined him. There was still no one home at the apartment, but Sadik answered his phone when I called him and told me to catch a cab to his place on the Upper East Side.

 

    He greeted me on the street, a short, well-built Pakistani who had come to New York from London two years earlier and found his caustic wit and unabashed desire to make money perfectly pitched to the city’s mood. He had overstayed his tourist visa and now made a living in New York’s high-turnover, illegal immigrant workforce, waiting on tables. As we entered the apartment I saw a woman in her underwear sitting at the kitchen table, a mirror and a razor blade pushed off to one side.

 

    “Sophie,” Sadik started to say, “this is Barry –”

 

    “Barack,” I corrected, dropping my bags on the floor. The woman waved vaguely, then told Sadik that she’d be gone by the time he got back. I followed Sadik back downstairs and into a Greek coffee shop across the street. I apologized again about having called so early.

 

    “Don’t worry about it,” Sadik said. “She seemed much prettier last night.” He studied the menu, then set it aside. “So tell me, Bar-sorry. Barack. Tell me, Barack. What brings you to our fair city?”

 

    I tried to explain. I had spent the summer brooding over a misspent youth, I said-the state of the world and the state of my soul. “I want to make amends,” I said. “Make myself of some use.”

 

    Sadik broke open the yolk of an egg with his fork. “Well, amigo…you can talk all you want about saving the world, but this city tends to eat away at such noble sentiments. Look out there.” He gestured to the crowd along First Avenue. “Everybody looking out for number one. Survival of the fittest. Tooth and claw. Elbow the other guy out of the way. That, my friend, is New York. But…” He shrugged and mopped up some egg with his toast. “Who knows? Maybe you’ll be the exception. In which case I will doff my hat to you.”

 

    Sadik tipped his coffee cup toward me in mock salute, his eyes searching for any immediate signs of change. And in the coming months he would continue to observe me as I traveled, like a large lab rat, through the byways of Manhattan. He would suppress a grin when the seat I had offered to a middle-aged woman on the subway was snatched up by a burly young man. At Bloomingdale’s, he would lead me past human mannequins who spritzed perfume into the air and watch my reaction as I checked over the eye-popping price tags on winter coats. He would offer me lodging again when I gave up the apartment on 109th for lack of heat, and accompany me to Housing Court when it turned out that the sublessors of my second apartment had failed to pay the rent and run off with my deposit.

 

    “Tooth and claw, Barack. Stop worrying about the rest of these bums out here and figure out how you’re going to make some money out of this fancy degree you’ll be getting.”

 

    When Sadik lost his own lease, we moved in together. And after a few months of closer scrutiny, he began to realize that the city had indeed had an effect on me, although not the one he’d expected. I stopped getting high. I ran three miles a day and fasted on Sundays. For the first time in years, I applied myself to my studies and started keeping a journal of daily reflections and very bad poetry. Whenever Sadik tried to talk me into hitting a bar, I’d beg off with some tepid excuse, too much work or not enough cash. One day, before leaving the apartment in search of better company, he turned to me and offered his most scathing indictment.

 

    “You’re becoming a bore.”

 

    I knew he was right, although I wasn’t sure myself what exactly had happened. In a way, I was confirming Sadik’s estimation of the city’s allure, I suppose; its consequent power to corrupt. With the Wall Street boom, Manhattan was humming, new developments cropping up everywhere; men and women barely out of their twenties already enjoying ridiculous wealth, the fashion merchants fast on their heels. The beauty, the filth, the noise, and the excess, all of it dazzled my senses; there seemed no constraints on originality of lifestyles or the manufacture of desire-a more expensive restaurant, a finer suit of clothes, a more exclusive nightspot, a more beautiful woman, a more potent high. Uncertain of my ability to steer a course of moderation, fearful of falling into old habits, I took on the temperament if not the convictions of a street corner preacher, prepared to see temptation everywhere, ready to overrun a fragile will.

 

In case you have not already guessed, the mysterious “Sadik” is our freind “Sohale [Hal] Siddiqi” from above.

 

So, what does all of this mean? Probably nothing. At best, next to nothing.

 

Some Pakistanis might want to get all excited about these connections. But, frankly, they will be as misguided in doing so as would be Obama-bashers who would like to concoct deep conspiracies and imagine dark implications of these amusing, but eventually inconsequential and incidental, connections of a young student.

The Obama-Biden comprehensive New Energy for America plan

The Obama-Biden comprehensive New Energy for America plan will:

• Provide short-term relief to American families facing pain at the pump
• Help create five million new jobs by strategically investing $150 billion over the next ten years to catalyze private efforts to build a clean energy future.
• Within 10 years save more oil than we currently import from the Middle East and Venezuela combined.
• Put 1 million Plug-In Hybrid cars — cars that can get up to 150 miles per gallon — on the road by 2015, cars that we will work to make sure are built here in America.
• Ensure 10 percent of our electricity comes from renewable sources by 2012, and 25 percent by 2025.
• Implement an economy-wide cap-and-trade program to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 80 percent by 2050.

 

ENERGY PLAN OVERVIEW:

Provide Short-term Relief to American Families

• Enact a Windfall Profits Tax to Provide a $1,000 Emergency Energy Rebate to American Families.

  Obama and Biden will enact a windfall profits tax on excessive oil company profits to give American families an immediate $1,000 emergency energy rebate to help families pay rising bills. This relief would be a down payment on the Obama-Biden long-term plan to provide middle-class families with at least $1,000 per year in permanent tax relief.

• Crack Down on Excessive Energy Speculation.

  Barack Obama and Joe Biden will close energy industry market loopholes and increase transparency to prevent traders from unfairly lining their pockets, while driving up oil prices at the expense of the American people.

• Swap Oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to Cut Prices.

  With oil prices doubling in the past year, Barack Obama and Joe Biden believe we have an economic emergency that requires a limited, responsible swap of light oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) for heavy crude oil to help bring down prices at the pump.

   

  Eliminate Our Current Imports from the Middle East and Venezuela within 10 Years

  • Increase Fuel Economy Standards.

    Obama and Biden will increase fuel economy standards 4 percent per year while providing $4 billion for domestic automakers to retool their manufacturing facilities in America to produce these vehicles.

  • Get 1 Million Plug-In Hybrid Cars on the Road by 2015.

    These vehicles can get up to 150 miles per gallon. Barack Obama and Joe Biden believe we should work to ensure these cars are built here in America, instead of factories overseas.

  • Create a New $7,000 Tax Credit for Purchasing Advanced Vehicles.
  • Establish a National Low Carbon Fuel Standard.

    Obama and Biden will establish a National Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS) to reduce the carbon in our fuels 10 percent by 2020. Obama and Biden will also require 60 billion gallons of advanced biofuels to be phased into our fuel supply by 2030.

  • A “Use it or Lose It” Approach to Existing Oil and Gas Leases.

    Obama and Biden will require oil companies to develop the 68 million acres of land (over 40 million of which are offshore) which they have already leased and are not drilling on.

  • Promote the Responsible Domestic Production of Oil and Natural Gas.

    An Obama-Biden administration will establish a process for early identification of any infrastructure obstacles/shortages or possible federal permitting process delays to drilling in the Bakken Shale formation, the Barnett shale formation, and the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska. 

   

   

  Create Millions of New Green Jobs

  • Ensure 10 percent of Our Electricity Comes from Renewable Sources by 2012, and 25 percent by 2025.

     

  • Deploy the Cheapest, Cleanest, Fastest Energy Source — Energy Efficiency.

    Obama and Biden will set an aggressive energy efficiency goal — to reduce electricity demand 15 percent from projected levels by 2020.

  • Weatherize One Million Homes Annually.

    Obama and Biden will make a national commitment to weatherize at least one million low-income homes each year for the next decade, which can reduce energy usage across the economy and help moderate energy prices for all.

  • Develop and Deploy Clean Coal Technology.

    Obama’s Department of Energy will enter into public private partnerships to develop five “first-of-a-kind” commercial scale coal-fired plants with clean carbon capture and sequestration technology.

  • Prioritize the Construction of the Alaska Natural Gas Pipeline.

    As president, Obama will work with stakeholders to facilitate construction of the pipeline. Not only is this pipeline critical to our energy security, it will create thousands of new jobs.

     

    Reduce our Greenhouse Gas Emissions 80 Percent by 2050

    • Implement an economy-wide cap-and-trade program to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 80 percent by 2050.

      The Obama-Biden cap-and-trade policy will require all pollution credits to be auctioned, and proceeds will go to investments in a clean energy future, habitat protections, and rebates and other transition relief for families.

    • Make the U.S. a Leader on Climate Change.

      Obama and Biden will re-engage with the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC) — the main international forum dedicated to addressing the climate problem. They will also create a Global Energy Forum of the world’s largest emitters to focus exclusively on global energy and environmental issues.

       

       

     

   

Going to St. Paul/Minneapolis, MN? Be Warned….

You might get arrested for protesting. Or just being in the opposition party.  Amy Goodman of Democracy Now was.  From Glenn Greenwald:

Beginning last night, St. Paul was the most militarized I have ever seen an American city be, even more so than Manhattan in the week of 9/11 — with troops of federal, state and local law enforcement agents marching around with riot gear, machine guns, and tear gas canisters, shouting military chants and marching in military formations. Humvees and law enforcement officers with rifles were posted on various buildings and balconies. Numerous protesters and observers were tear gassed and injured.

… Perhaps most extraordinarily, Amy Goodman of Democracy Now — the radio and TV broadcaster who has been a working journalist for close to 20 years — was arrested on the street and charged with “conspiracy to riot.” Audio of her arrest, which truly shocked and angered the crowd of observers, is here. I just attended a Press Conference with St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman and Police Chief John M. Harrington and — after they boasted of how “restrained” their police actions were — asked about the journalists and lawyers who had been detained and/or arrested both today and over the weekend. They said they wouldn’t give any information about journalists who had been arrested today, though they said they believed that “one journalist” had been, and that she “was a participant in the riots, not simply a non-participant.”

The update is that she’s been released, as well as her producers.  But here’s part of her story:

“I was down on the convention floor interviewing delegates when I heard that two of our producers had been arrested,” said Goodman. “I ran down to Jackson and 7th Street, where the police had moved in.”

Goodman said that when she ran up to find out what was going on, she was also arrested.

“They seriously manhandled me and handcuffed my hands behind my back. The top ID [at the convention] is to get on the floor and the Secret Service ripped that off me. I had my Democracy Now! ID too. I was clearly a reporter.”

Goodman, who was released after being charged with a misdemeanor, said that Salazar had been hurt in the face, while Kouddous had been thrown up against a wall and hurt his elbow.

“Nicole told me that as they moved in on three sides, she asked them ‘How do I get away from this?’ and they jumped on her.”

Both Kouddous and Salazar could be held for up to 36 hours.

“One of the police kept shouting at me ‘Shut up, shut up,” she said. “It was extremely threatening.”

Okay, so let me get this straight.  The GOP can send moles, spies and double agents to Denver to roam freely and the po-po doesn’t even breathe in their direction, but you go to St. Paul to provide a fair and balanced perspective on the political season, by covering the Republican Convention and you get thrown in jail because there are protesters on the scene?  Last I heard, America still was a free country, and you still have freedom of speech, right?

See what I mean by Double Standards?  Just when you begin to hope that the Republican Party can get their collective hypocractic shyt  down to foot-level, they engage in so much additional BS, they raise it back to sea level.  Let’s recap:

1. McCain selects a VP candidate who has more questions about her ability to manage her family, people, places and municipalities than a contestant on Jeopardy!; but if she were Joe “Ride or Die” Biden, the MSM would be on this like a fly on stink.  However, because she’s a woman and possesses no other qualifications for the VP ticket other than she’s McCain’s choice, the rest of us independent, intelligent thinkers are supposed to drink cans of STHU. – CHECK.
2. Anyone, including double agents were freely and warmly welcomed to party in Denver – but if you so much as wear a T-Shirt protesting the policies of this Administration, you are accused of inciting a riot and are thrown in jail by either the local police or thugs impersonating Secret Service Agents. – CHECK.
3. If your city is hosting the Republican National Convention, expect to go into a temporary police state, complete with fascism and everything but a PA system chanting “Heil Hitler!” as loud as they can. – CHECK.
4. The only news organizations with freedom of movement is the propaganda station, Fox Network. – CHECK.
5. If you’re a blogger, unless you write for InstaPundit (aka “InstaCracker”) Free Republic, Michelle Malkin’s blog, Star Parker’s blog, or any other GOP cheerleading blog – you will not get into the convention. – CHECK.

Statement From Sarah and Todd Palin

GOP vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin has announced that her 17-year-old daughter Bristol is five months pregnant and will marry the baby’s father.

The statement comes in response to blog rumors alleging that Gov. Palin faked her own most recent pregnancy to cover for Bristol.

Here’s the statement from Palin and her husband:

We have been blessed with five wonderful children who we love with all our heart and mean everything to us. Our beautiful daughter Bristol came to us with news that as parents we knew would make her grow up faster than we had ever planned. We’re proud of Bristol’s decision to have her baby and even prouder to become grandparents. As Bristol faces the responsibilities of adulthood, she knows she has our unconditional love and support.

Bristol and the young man she will marry are going to realize very quickly the difficulties of raising a child, which is why they will have the love and support of our entire family. We ask the media to respect our daughter and Levi’s privacy as has always been the tradition of children of candidates.

According to Reuters, John McCain knew about Bristol’s pregnancy before he selected Palin as his running-mate. He decided “it did not disqualify the 44-year-old governor in any way.”