Throw Reporter From The Plane

Even our current resident Obamapologist Yuri should - if he were honest about these things - be troubled by this story. The Obama campaign has cheerfully ejected certified members of the press from Obama’s personal aircraft - apparently because the reporter’s papers endorsed John McCain rather than the exalted one.

Obama spokesman Bill Burton confirms Drudge’s report that two right-leaning papers, the Washington Times and the New York Post, have lost their seats on the Obama plane, along with the Dallas Morning News.

“We’re trying to reach as many swing voters that we can and unfortunately had to make some tough choices. but we are accommodating these folks in every way possible,” he said.

The Post and the Morning News are both read primarily in states that aren’t in play, but the Washington Times is read in Northern Virginia.

Burton said the Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Sun-Times had returned to the plane, and confirmed that Ebony and Jet magazines have seats on the plane. (The Tribune has had a reporter on the plane for most of the cycle, but recently added a photographer.)

The message to the media is quite clear: Step out of line and your access goes away. Obama is sending a very clear signal of what his response to stories critical of him will be.

Happy there in the tank, media? Ready to be the servants of the Obama administration should that happen? Or willing to pay the price of lost access if you step out of line?

Be very, very careful of what you wish for, folks.

Step Out Of Line….

…And the woman comes and takes you away. Well, there is certainly something happening in Ohio. Ask a certain candidate a question and the full might and power of the government might just come down on your head.

A state agency has revealed that its checks of computer systems for potential information on “Joe the Plumber” were more extensive than it first acknowledged.

Helen Jones-Kelley, director of the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services, disclosed today that computer inquiries on Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher were not restricted to a child-support system.

The agency also checked Wurzelbacher in its computer systems to determine whether he was receiving welfare assistance or owed unemployment compensation taxes, she wrote.

Jones-Kelley made the revelations in a letter to Ohio Senate President Bill M. Harris, R-Ashland, who demanded answers on why state officials checked out Wurzelbacher.

Harris called the multiple records checks “questionable” and said he awaits more answers. “It’s kind of like Big Brother is looking in your pocket,” he said.

The explanation that Jones-Kelly gives - that this is routine for any name that pops up in the press - is either completely absurd or should deeply - very deeply - frighten every citizen of Ohio. For if the government has full time employees who have nothing better to do than check every name in the news against their databases, you should be very afraid of your government.

It is much more likely that maxed-out Obama donor Helen Jones-Kelley abused her office by running an authorized and very probably illegal search against a private citizen who asked a question and caused her chosen candidate to embarrass himself.

Funny (And True)

The real Chris Buckley takes rather a suave beat-down courtesy of Iowahawk: As a Conservative, I Must Say I Do Quite Like the Cut of this Obama Fellow’s Jib

By T. Coddington Van Voorhees VII
Columnist, The National Topsider
Membership Chairman, The Newport Club

When my late father T. Coddington Van Voorhees VI founded the iconoclastic conservative journal National Topsider in 1948, he famously declared that “Now is the time for all good conservative helmsmen to hoist the mizzen, pour the cocktails, and steer this damned schooner hard starboard.” In the 60 years since he first uttered it after one-too-many Cosmopolitans at one of Pamela Harriman’s notorious foreign policy black tie balls, father’s pithy bon mot has served as a rallying cry for conservatives from Greenwich to Chevy Chase. Today, I say it’s time for we conservatives to once again grab the rigging and set sail with the flotilla of the true conservative in this race: Barack Obama.

Trust me, I haven’t taken this tack lightly. No Van Voorhees has supported an avowed socialist since great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandpapa Cragmont Van Voorhees lent Peter Minuet $24 and a sack of wampum to swing a subprime mortgage on Manhattan Island. Old dad himself often recounted how, as a lad, he would command the family chauffeur Carleton to drive the Duesenberg down to the Times Square Trans-Lux so he could hiss Roosevelt. But I’ve taken a good measure of this Obama fellow, and I must say I like the cut of the man’s jib.

Undoubtedly, I enjoyed this bit best:

But there is an even more compelling reason to support Barack Obama: Sarah Palin.

If you are a conservative like me, you guffawed when you heard John McCain announced this declasse rube as a running mate, followed by good-natured applause, thinking it was some sort of whimsical campus prank he was reenacting from his Annapolis years. This was, of course, quickly followed the shock of realizing that he wasn’t joking, and all that Hanoi unpleasantness had finally driven him around the bend.

It’s an inescapable conclusion that this woman has, in 6 short weeks, single-handedly destroyed the Republican party. Certainly George Bush may share some of the blame; but we conservatives must remember how our hopes were buoyed by his impressive bloodlines and Yale degree before we realized his excursion to Texas had caused him to “go native.” But la Palin offers true conservatives no such extenuating graces. I mean, my God, this woman is simply awful; the elided vowels, the beauty pageantry, the guns, the crude non-Episcopal protestantism, the embarrassing porchload of children with horrifying hillbilly names, the white after Labor Day. As fellow conservative commentator Andrew Sullivan quipped to me the other day outside a Martha’s Vineyard antique shop, it’s gratifying to know the Gipper isn’t alive to see what has become of his party.

But it’s not just American conservatives who are appalled. Just last week conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks and I were enjoying an apres-badminton apertif at the family weekend house in Montauk with my good friend Viscount Klaus-Maria Von Wallensheim, the conservative EU Agricultural Pricing Minister with whom I shared an Alpine chalet and manservant during our years as classmates at a Swiss boarding school. “Kloonkie” (my old school appellation for the Viscount) reported the growing dismay of the Continental Right over Palin’s embarrassing enthusiasm for childbirth and Israel.

“Coddsie, old chap, ” he warned, “You know I’ve always been been America’s biggest defender in Monaco. But if you elect this ill-bred charwoman, I will be be forced to move anchor to St. Tropez out of pure shame.”

Really, what we are seeing in the likes of Buckley, Brooks, Noonan, Frum and Parker is the intellectual dead wood of conservatism. They liked the “conservatism” of the A-list cocktail parties of Washington and Manhattan; the “conservatism” of Presidential and Congressional power; not to mention the cheap allure of influence and prestige. They never understood the necessity of limiting governmental power or the desirability of economic freedom for everyone.

McCain often says “We Republicans came into power to change Washington, and instead Washington changed us.” There is some truth to that, but you cannot underestimate the role played by the yahoos I listed above. They were the champions of every move away from principled conservatism. Thus when Democrats proposed disastrous economic policies that ultimately ruined the housing market, so called “free market Republicans” did little but enable them. When a real conservative raised an actual objection they were dismissed with a “Don’t these rubes know how things are done here?” and, sadly, often by people calling themselves conservatives.

In the end, there is a difference between being a pragmatist and being a sell-out, and it behooves us all to recognize that difference. I, for one, will not be fooled again.

Hope! And Change! Part Two

Jeremiah “God Damn America” Wright. Bill “We Didn’t do enough (bombings)” Ayers. Rashid “I was just quoted a lot, not a PLO spokesman” Khalidi.

Not one, but three rather public, rather unseemly associates of Barack Obama.

But if you are one of the Obama apologists, defenders, supporters or a member of the media (oh, sorry, that last was three times redundant, wasn’t it?) even you should be disturbed by the sworn testimony offered in court today. Testimony that appears to tie the Obama campaign to an attempt to scurry around campaign finance laws and provide money to yet another unsavory organization closely tied to Obama.

First off, Barack Obama’s presidential campaign gave an ACORN-affiliated group a “donor list” last year for fundraising efforts.

That, at least, was the testimony today of a former staffer for Project Vote, a voter education and registration group that focuses on “low-income, minority, and other disenfranchised communities requires a comprehensive approach.” The hearing was part of a Pennsylvania Republican Party lawsuit aimed at curbing voter fraud in next week’s election.

The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reports that Anita Moncrief, a former Washington, D.C. staffer for Project Vote, which she described as a sister organization of ACORN, said her supervisor told her the list of campaign contributors came from the Obama campaign. Moncrief said she has a copy of a “development plan” that outlines how Obama contributors who had “maxed out” under federal campaign contribution limits would be targeted to give to Project Vote. It was her job to identify such contributors.

But even potentially more damaging, Moncrief also said she took a call from an Obama campaign worker inquiring whether it was the same organization Obama had worked with in the 1990’s. She claims she received several warnings to “back off” from testifying by various ACORN workers, and said the incentive to churn out more voter registration cards was cold, hard cash.

Welcome to that change you were hoping for.

Here’s a scenario for you. Say that both you and your spouse work for Chrysler in white collar jobs. Both of you have already earned a years wages totaling $100,000 when you take the latest buyout offer. Under an Obama administration, you would pay out an additional $942 of that money in Federal taxes. That is additional taxes, above and beyond what is normal - and steep - now.

Because now you’re rich, according to Obama.

How’s that hope doing? Any sign of a change?

So What?

Last night I linked to an article in The Politico by John Harris and Jim Vandehei in which they cheerfully admitted that they and the vast majority of the media were in the tank for Barack Obama. Their “defense” of that tankage?

“So What?”

Well, Jules Crittenden, a newspaperman, points to an opinion piece by another newspaperman, Michael Malone. Both see the deadly danger the press is in with its fawning coverage of Obama and active bias against McCain. Danger to both the profession they both have loved and to the nation itself as the media becomes a house organ of a political party. Malone:

The sheer bias in the print and television coverage of this election campaign is not just bewildering, but appalling. And over the last few months I’ve found myself slowly moving from shaking my head at the obvious one-sided reporting, to actually shouting at the screen of my television and my laptop computer.

But worst of all, for the last couple weeks, I’ve begun — for the first time in my adult life — to be embarrassed to admit what I do for a living. A few days ago, when asked by a new acquaintance what I did for a living, I replied that I was “a writer,” because I couldn’t bring myself to admit to a stranger that I’m a journalist.

Crittenden:

As for the bias, the fact that people have it isn’t what bothers me so much. Obviously I have my own. We all do. It’s the fact that they pretend they don’t, when they are nakedly exhibiting it. It isn’t entirely their fault. It is the American news convention, the charade we are all a part of. I don’t mind so much that major newspapers and networks are run and staffed by a bunch of Bush-hating, McCain-disparaging, Palin-bashing, Biden-ignoring Obama-lickspittles. That’s between them and their readers or viewers. I periodically hit them for being full of it, biased, even bordering on treacherous, but this is America and they have the right to be that way. It bothers me more when the Associated Press does it, because it is in violation of everything they are supposed to be, their obligation to their clients and their readers, and because this whole bogus American “objectivity” thing was their idea in the first place.

So what? So how bad is this all going to get if the media is nothing more than a pale imitation of Pravda? Very bad indeed. At a time when we most need a press with integrity, honesty and a willingness to dig out and publish hard truths we have a bunch of party hacks, PR men and propagandists.

God help us.

I’m Dreaming Of A White…. Hallowe’en?

From Britain:

There is nothing like crunching the very first footprint into a blanket of untouched snow.
However this cyclist had to make do with wobbling his way through instead.
And it was earlier than usual as the first snowfall of the season turned the Midlands winter white.

From New York and Pennsylvania:

Expert Senior Meteorologist Brett Anderson says, “This is a big storm by October standards.” More a foot of snow will fall in the Pocono Mountains of northeastern Pennsylvania and the Adirondacks in upstate New York.

The heavy, wet snow is being blown by winds gusting above 50 mph, creating near-blizzard conditions in many areas. Motorists have been caught off-guard by the winter driving conditions in the Northeast. Numerous accidents have been reported on Interstates 80 and 81 as well as local highways and roads in northeastern Pennsylvania and New York state.

From The Wall Street Journal:

Jason Grumet is currently executive director of an outfit called the National Commission on Energy Policy and one of Mr. Obama’s key policy aides. In an interview last week with Bloomberg, Mr. Grumet said that come January the Environmental Protection Agency “would initiate those rulemakings” that classify carbon as a dangerous pollutant under current clean air laws. That move would impose new regulation and taxes across the entire economy, something that is usually the purview of Congress. Mr. Grumet warned that “in the absence of Congressional action” 18 months after Mr. Obama’s inauguration, the EPA would move ahead with its own unilateral carbon crackdown anyway.

Well, well. For years, Democrats — including Senator Obama — have been howling about the “politicization” of the EPA, which has nominally been part of the Bush Administration. The complaint has been that the White House blocked EPA bureaucrats from making the so-called “endangerment finding” on carbon. Now it turns out that a President Obama would himself wield such a finding as a political bludgeon. He plans to issue an ultimatum to Congress: Either impose new taxes and limits on carbon that he finds amenable, or the EPA carbon police will be let loose to ravage the countryside.

The EPA hasn’t made a secret of how it would like to centrally plan the U.S. economy under the 1970 Clean Air Act. In a blueprint released in July, the agency didn’t exactly say it’d collectivize the farms — but pretty close, down to the “grass clippings.” The EPA would monitor and regulate the carbon emissions of “lawn and garden equipment” as well as everything with an engine, like cars, planes and boats. Eco-bureaucrats envision thousands of other emissions limits on all types of energy. Coal-fired power and other fossil fuels would be ruled out of existence, while all other prices would rise as the huge economic costs of the new regime were passed down the energy chain to consumers.

These costs would far exceed the burden of a straight carbon tax or cap-and-trade system enacted by Congress, because the Clean Air Act was never written to apply to carbon and other greenhouse gases. It’s like trying to do brain surgery with a butter knife.

A personal acquaintance of mine has a sister who is an EPA bureaucrat. Said sister has, according to my acquaintance, made it a personal mission to block any “carbon-producing” companies from getting permits to operate any new facilities. Because carbon causes global warming.

Ski London.

Hope! And Change!

As in, “Gee, we hope nobody notices that we are changing the numbers.” But the ever-vigilant McQ at Q and O not only noticed, he has video. That “only those earning $250,000 will see a tax increase is already being lowered. By both Obama - to $200,000 - and by his gaffe-prone running mate, Joe Biden - to $150,000. As McQ points out, Biden is a walking, talking goof machine. But he also points out one other little truth:

The possibility that Biden got the numbers wrong in an interview is certainly one that can’t be dismissed. But the number Obama put out there should never have survived editing if he didn’t want that said. That is Obama’s “closing argument” ad.

So that change you were hoping for, folks? The change is in who is going to have their wealth confiscated and redistributed by an Obama administration.

A side note for folks to consider: even under Obama’s new target of those earning $200,000 getting their wealth taken away to be given away, one group of folks will all get a hefty pay raise funded by those confiscations:

The Congress of the United States.

That’s right, a vote for Obama is a vote to give many members of Congress a pay raise.

Still the change you were hoping for?

(I’m surprised that right leaning blogs have not pointed this out before.)

Warm And Happy In The Tank

John Harris and Jim Vandehei cheerfully admit that they, their site, The Politico, and the overwhelming majority of the media is cheerfully in the tank for Barack Obama. And the are completely unapologetic about it, even though their own Obama worship makes even them cringe at times.

The Project for Excellence in Journalism’s researchers found that John McCain, over the six weeks since the Republican convention, got four times as many negative stories as positive ones. The study found six out of 10 McCain stories were negative.

What’s more, Obama had more than twice as many positive stories (36 percent) as McCain — and just half the percentage of negative (29 percent).

You call that balanced?

OK, let’s just get this over with: Yes, in the closing weeks of this election, John McCain and Sarah Palin are getting hosed in the press, and at Politico.

And, yes, based on a combined 35 years in the news business we’d take an educated guess — nothing so scientific as a Pew study — that Obama will win the votes of probably 80 percent or more of journalists covering the 2008 election. Most political journalists we know are centrists — instinctually skeptical of ideological zealotry — but with at least a mild liberal tilt to their thinking, particularly on social issues.

So what?

(Do go read the whole thing, don’t let me filter the news for you.)

In other words, those of us who have been pointing out the obvious are right. The media is in the tank for Obama and quite happy to be there. So, since we no longer have to question their objectivity, perhaps it is time to begin questioning their truthfulness. In other words, how much of what they are reporting as fact is being twisted, manipulated or simply made up in their need to please their tankmates and help their chosen one across the finish line?

So Why Wouldn’t Joe Answer The Question?

TV Reporter Barbara West talking to Larry King about asking Joe Biden tough questions:

King: All right, Barbara, what were you getting to, since generally the redistribution of the wealth is a graduated income tax?

West: Well, Larry, no, I don’t believe that it is just a graduated income tax. I think a lot of people who are talking to me out on the street are saying they are very, very concerned that this idea of redistributing the wealth means taking it out of somebody’s pocket who is a wage earner and putting it in somebody’s pocket who refuses to work. And they’re asking about. That’s what they don’t want. That is what they want to know, what does this really mean? My job as a journalist is to ask those questions and get those answers, and I don’t believe I got answers at all.

King: Was the implication in the question that Barack Obama is a Marxist?

West: I was asking him to tell us about how Barack Obama’s redistribution of wealth was different from that quote by Karl Marx, that’s all I wanted to know.

This underscores a forgotten point here. When asked a question that required Biden to make a meaningful distinction between Obama’s policies and the theories of Karl Marx, Biden couldn’t do it.

On one level, this could be viewed simply as a “gaffe,” but the sheer amount of outrage generated by the Biden and the Obama camp doesn’t support this view. Indeed, this question is a very legitimate follow-up to the “Joe the plumber” episode, and if the Obama camp was on the ball they would have had a canned answer ready.

The meme being trotted out by the Obama camp and the media (i.e. that the “graduated income tax” equals “redistribution of wealth” so we are all little Marxists already) is so obviously inadequate they fell back on their next best solution; rely on the lap dog media to ignore the issue.

Luckily, some reporters aren’t completely in the bag.

Zogby: Obama Lead Down To Four

I’m not normally a “poll hawk” but with one week to go these could actually mean something.

Democrat Barack Obama has a 4-point national lead over Republican John McCain as they head into the final week of the presidential campaign, according to a Reuters/C-SPAN/Zogby poll released on Tuesday.

Obama leads McCain by 49 percent to 45 percent among likely voters in the three-day national tracking poll, a slight dip from his 5-point advantage on Monday. The telephone poll has a margin of error of 2.9 percentage points.

…

McCain, a veteran Arizona senator, has sliced Obama’s 12-point advantage by more than half in the last five days but he has not been able to break through the 45 percent support mark.

Probably more significant is Obama slipping under the 50 percent mark.

The real key will be to see if this signals movement in important state battles. That probably wouldn’t be seen until later in the week.

Stay tuned.

Smokescreen

Notice anything here?

The Obama spokesman, Bill Burton, manages to completely avoid answering the points Megyn Kelly brings up repeatedly. The full transcript of Obama’s 2001 radio appearance:

If you look at the victories and failures of the civil rights movement and its litigation strategy in the court. I think where it succeeded was to invest formal rights in previously dispossessed people, so that now I would have the right to vote. I would now be able to sit at the lunch counter and order as long as I could pay for it I’d be o.k. But, the Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth, and of more basic issues such as political and economic justice in society.
To that extent, as radical as I think people try to characterize the Warren Court, it wasn’t that radical. It didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the founding fathers in the Constitution, at least as its been interpreted and Warren Court interpreted in the same way, that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties. Says what the states can’t do to you. Says what the Federal government can’t do to you, but doesn’t say what the Federal government or State government must do on your behalf, and that hasn’t shifted and one of the, I think, tragedies of the civil rights movement was, um, because the civil rights movement became so court focused I think there was a tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing and activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalition of powers through which you bring about redistributive change. In some ways we still suffer from that. …
I’m not optimistic about bringing about major redistributive change through the courts. You know, the institution just isn’t structured that way.

So if you read this, it is obvious that Obama does not believe the courts are the way to bring about “redistributive change”. The rather obvious flip side of that is that he believes the redistributive change must be performed by the other two branches of government.

One of which he is a member of, the other of which he is running for.

No wonder his spokesman is blowing smoke.

Via Hot Air.

Do I Smell A Title Defense?

Probably not. Police officer of the year arrested in Iowa

COUNCIL BLUFFS, Iowa - The police officer of the year in Council Bluffs, Iowa has been charged with drunken driving.

Officer Terry Cozad has been on paid administrative leave since his arrest Sunday night by a Mills County sheriff’s deputy. Authorities say he refused to take an alcohol breath test.

Cozad has been with the Council Bluffs police department since 1999. He was named officer of the year earlier this year.

At least this didn’t happen while he was driving home from the award ceremony.

The Truth Is…

And yes, this, is the truth:

Editor’s note: Orson Scott Card is a Democrat and a newspaper columnist, and in this opinion piece he takes on both while lamenting the current state of journalism.

An open letter to the local daily paper — almost every local daily paper in America:

I remember reading All the President’s Men and thinking: That’s journalism. You do what it takes to get the truth and you lay it before the public, because the public has a right to know.

This housing crisis didn’t come out of nowhere. It was not a vague emanation of the evil Bush administration.

It was a direct result of the political decision, back in the late 1990s, to loosen the rules of lending so that home loans would be more accessible to poor people. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were authorized to approve risky loans.

What is a risky loan? It’s a loan that the recipient is likely not to be able to repay.

The goal of this rule change was to help the poor — which especially would help members of minority groups. But how does it help these people to give them a loan that they can’t repay? They get into a house, yes, but when they can’t make the payments, they lose the house — along with their credit rating.

They end up worse off than before.

This was completely foreseeable and in fact many people did foresee it. One political party, in Congress and in the executive branch, tried repeatedly to tighten up the rules. The other party blocked every such attempt and tried to loosen them.

Furthermore, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae were making political contributions to the very members of Congress who were allowing them to make irresponsible loans. (Though why quasi-federal agencies were allowed to do so baffles me. It’s as if the Pentagon were allowed to contribute to the political campaigns of Congressmen who support increasing their budget.)

Isn’t there a story here? Doesn’t journalism require that you who produce our daily paper tell the truth about who brought us to a position where the only way to keep confidence in our economy was a $700 billion bailout? Aren’t you supposed to follow the money and see which politicians were benefiting personally from the deregulation of mortgage lending?

I have no doubt that if these facts had pointed to the Republican Party or to John McCain as the guilty parties, you would be treating it as a vast scandal. “Housing-gate,” no doubt. Or “Fannie-gate.”

Instead, it was Senator Christopher Dodd and Congressman Barney Frank, both Democrats, who denied that there were any problems, who refused Bush administration requests to set up a regulatory agency to watch over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and who were still pushing for these agencies to go even further in promoting sub-prime mortgage loans almost up to the minute they failed.

As Thomas Sowell points out in a TownHall.com essay entitled “Do Facts Matter?” ( http://snipurl.com/457townhall_com] ): “Alan Greenspan warned them four years ago. So did the Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers to the President. So did Bush’s Secretary of the Treasury.”

These are facts. This financial crisis was completely preventable. The party that blocked any attempt to prevent it was … the Democratic Party. The party that tried to prevent it was … the Republican Party.

Yet when Nancy Pelosi accused the Bush administration and Republican deregulation of causing the crisis, you in the press did not hold her to account for her lie. Instead, you criticized Republicans who took offense at this lie and refused to vote for the bailout!

What? It’s not the liar, but the victims of the lie who are to blame?

There is more at the link.

The moral decrepitude of the press is shocking to see. They have descended to depths that are positively Nixonian.

Yet, they are happy about it, because there is no one to hold them accountable.

Instead, we are presented with garbage like Joe Klein’s incessant whining that John McCain is mean to him.

(h/t Power Line)

I Knew There Had To Be An Answer

Leave it to Iowahawk to decipher Joe speak: Obama Ready for Armageddon Showdown He Will Provoke

Democratic Vice Presidential candidate Joe Biden promised a group of supporters Sunday that running mate Barack Obama “will absolutely 100% trigger a nuclear Armageddon kinda thing” within the first 20 minutes of his presidency, but added that “Barack Obama is looking forward to this apocalyptic opportunity to test his mettle, because he totally aced his LSATs.”

…

Biden also warned the audience that the first days of the Obama administration would bring some inevitable disappointments.

“I’m not going to lie to you - it doesn’t take a weatherman to know that hey, Mr. Tambourine Man, a hard rain is gonna fall, all along the watchtower,” said the Delaware Senator, strumming on a pantomime guitar. “There will be a point — maybe one week, maybe two weeks after the inauguration — when the opinion polls will look bad. Really horribly bad. Despite our best efforts, a couple of mid-size cities will inevitably be vaporized. People will be complaining. ‘Why are you nationalizing the Safeway?’ ‘When is Omaha going to stop glowing?’ ‘Why do the Chinese soldiers keep asking for my papers?’ When this happens, we will need you to keep supporting us because, trust me, you really won’t want to be observed not supporting us.”

“But I promise you, if one of these inevitable nuclear attacks is, God forbid, successful, Barack Obama and I will conduct tough and open negotiations with our new overlords,” said Biden. “Ol’ Joe Biden learned how to negotiate at his dad’s used car lot in Scranton PA, and if these overlords think they can swing some sort of lowball occupation deal, I’ll just tell them ‘I gotta go get my manager,’ and then… boo-yeah! In comes Barack Obama to upsell them undercoating and extra exercise yard privileges for you and me.”

After rubbing tapioca into his armpits and singing what appeared to be the Numa-Numa song, Biden mounted a Segway and crashed through a side door.

A spokesman for the Obama-Biden campaign later clarified the Senator’s remarks, and urged reporters “not to take Senator Biden’s words out of context.”

When asked what context that was, the spokesman explained that “the Senator has massive brain damage.”

I knew it had to be something like that.

There’s No Place Like Home?

There are just some things you shouldn’t do outside of Oz: Bel-Nor chief resigns amid questions about Munchkin’s money

The police chief in Bel-Nor has resigned amid questions into what he did with money from a Munchkin.

The former is Matthew Lauer, 38, longtime top cop in the north St. Louis County village, who says he’s simply moving on to something else. He stepped down Oct. 10.

The latter is Mickey Carroll, 89, one of a handful of the surviving diminutive denizens of Munchkinland from the 1939 MGM classic “The Wizard of Oz.” His caretaker says the chief took advantage of him.

Carroll has lived in Bel-Nor for nearly seven decades. Carroll’s caretaker, Linda Dodge, said the actor often gave Lauer money at the chief’s request, believing he was supporting the police by buying gear.

Dodge said that earlier this year she looked at Carroll’s financial records — including at least one check made out to Lauer — and questioned where the money was going.

Dodge took her concerns to Village Chairman Kevin Buchek, who referred the case to the Missouri State Highway Patrol. The case remains under investigation, said a patrol spokeswoman.

In June, Carroll sought a restraining order against Lauer, claiming the chief had pocketed a $2,000 donation intended for the village. Carroll claimed Lauer then threatened him, in phone calls and visits to his home, to change his story to make it appear as if the donation had been a gift. Lauer returned the money.

I grew up in Bel-Nor, and Mickey Carroll has always been a treasure in the village. Bel-Nor even had a celebration a number of years ago where a “yellow brick road” (actually a line of yellow paint) led to Mickey’s front door. So, it is sad for me to see that good relationship tarnished.

I’m also sad to see the Bel-Nor police department tarnished. Yes, they could be a terror if you went six miles or more over the speed limit on Natural Bridge Road, but they were mostly approachable and friendly guys. The full sized Hershey bars with almonds they used to hand out every Halloween were legendary. (If you played your cards right, and had a costume that wasn’t too distinctive, it was possible to snag four or five of the things over the course of the night. Sweet!)

Mostly, I’m amazed at the chutzpah of the police chief. Lord knows, I wouldn’t want to cross the Lollipop Guild.