"Game Changer", this year's ubiquitous word of evidence of the extreme laziness and lack of curiosity of most in the media, is the latest incarnation of this theory. Everytime I hear it is like the sound of fingernails scratching a blackboard.

This theory, while also subscribed to by a large percentage of conservative pundits who worship at the feet of their poll obsessed Beltway idols, is actually an election outcome explanation advanced by the Left for more than 30 years, in the Drive-by Media and the national Democratic Party, to serve three inter-related purposes:

a) Prevent modern day liberalism from being discredited due to its proven failed policies;

b) Prevent modern day liberalism from being blamed for Democrat election defeats; and

c) Establish TV events as the causes of election outcomes so as to enhance the importance of television election coverage and increase viewership.

Conservatives that appear regularly on TV naturally fall into the trap as it enhances the perceived importance of their own work. But even those that don't earn a living via television fall into the trap out of brainwashed ignorance and laziness. At root, such a theory and view is an insult to average Americans, treating them as fickle in making this very important decision.

I say the theory is poppycock.

First of all the theory and the obsessive use of the term "game changer" (as in "gravitas" in 2000) this season, perfectly fits Rush Limbaugh's description of the increasingly non-mainstream, and increasingly impotent, media, as like those engaged in a drive-by shooting.

Its easy to report an event. Much harder to report on complicated human beings and trends that would require actual work to discern the trend, especially when the "trend" is against one's modern day liberal substitute for religion.

The theory is also inextricably tied to polling that invariable shows republicans trailing before the conventions; getting a bounce after their convention; then "falling behind" until 24-72 hours before Election Day, when, miraculously, the media usually gets the winner right, at the last moment (7 out of the last 10 the winner has been the GOP and always is when the Dems nominate a leftist).

All bumps in their polls are always tied to events...that occur on TV, i.e. usually debates or campaign gaffes.

Polling is an art, not a science, and the artists are mostly liberals. Its mostly a scam, obviously, when one looks at their samples of dems and repubs.

I think the scam began in the late 1960s with a non-election "report" from a man I don't hate, i.e. Walter Cronkite. The man who was deemed the most trusted man in America and that signed off every evening news broadcast with the declaration, "and that's the way it is," told us that the Communist North Vietnamese had defeated the armed forces of the United States.

That was not the way it was. And in slandering the US military he also drove a president from office and gave voice to those that would ensure defeat and subsequent genocide at the hands of 1975 congressional democrats.

I look back now and see that we, as a nation, have been betrayed on many levels by the media, as long ago as the 1950s after they inherited a monopoly thanks to the spectrum limiting technology of analog TV to three liberal networks, but I digress.

Reagan did not beat Carter in a landslide because he cocked his head and said "There he goes again." He didn't win a landslide against Mondale because he wouldn't "hold his relative youth and inexperience against him." Dukakis didn't lose 40 states because he looked funny helmeted in a tank.

In all of the above cases, modern day liberalism's vessel lost because it is anathema to the values and principles of 60%+ Americans and because liberal policies are proven failures, domestically and as weak on defense.

What enemy of the United States would fear any of the above, John "international test" Kerry, or Barack "no preconditions for a summit with Iran's President" Obama"?

Not one.

People may finally decide late in the game, for whom to vote, and, of course, there are events everyday that a lazy liberal "post hoc ergo propter hoc" illogical media may try and pass off as logical fact.

But people accumulate knowledge over time. Events occur that are filed away as they try and get a feel for the candidate and especially, to determine how that person's policies will affect their family, in their safety from attack and in their pocketbooks. They also see if they share their values and have the character to be worthy of the job. Everyone weighs these factors in differing ways.

What comes across as the height of arrogance, both from liberal and conservative "journalists" is that while they scoff at the idea that they would make their own decision on some isolated campaign event, they are knee-jerk is insisting that most voters do, or at least that a significant portion do, always having a poll close by to "prove" it.

More poppycock.

Americans know that they vote on Election Day. Most, unlike me and other politics obsessed people that includes the media, understanding that, don't pay much attention to politics until close to that day, knowing from elections past that they can discern the best candidate in time.

I think a lot of conservatives are simply acting human in their acceptance of poll obsession and this false theory. Laziness is not the complete explanation. Heck, everyone does it.

But no, I think the main reason is the fear of the unknown, coupled with the desire to be the first to know, even if it means a reckless announcement of gloom and doom with the added wicked joy of being the first to announce the bad news. Get over it children. It wears off.

People get insecure as so many around them "know" the outcome. Forget that many have "known" based on polls in April, July and yesterday and have switched whom they "knew" would win multiple times.

Any fool can read a poll an extrapolate it out and think they know. What we really need are people like Andrew Jackson in media and the blogosphere, who said

"One man with courage makes a majority."

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer columns

Race 4 2008

As usual the mainstream media, and that includes Fox News, misses the big story while they act out their roles on "game-changers" and their historically ignorant and discredited "Debate Moment" theory of Presidential election outcomes.

The game changer is not a debate moment. Its that liberals rarely win this game.

But they did manage to miss a major gaffe by Obama and the major message he sent that puts him in the unelectable liberal category.

America saw a man that thinks that plumbers, and, by implication, those small business owners economically equal to and better off than plumbers, should pay higher taxes. That he says 95% of taxpayers will get a tax cut loses its power when middle class people that think themselves akin to plumbers or better off, see that Obama puts them in the 5% that will get a tax hike.

Then, Obama contradicts himself by saying that the plumber is too poor to be subject to a fine for not providing health care. Clearly he was flustered by McCain demanding he state the amount the government would fine small business owners for not buying government prescribed health care for employees.

So, as he often does, when corner like a rat by a cat, Obama lied.

His tax plan and health care plans both consider one rich at the same income level.

Obama will always have trouble getting a low price for plumbing services given his desire to plumb the depths of their profits to spread their hard earned wealth around to others that didn't crawl thru the mud to fix pipes, but the leak in his message that he is a champion of the middle class is now huge flood that can't be plugged at any price.

Originally published By Mike DeVine, as Legal Editor for The Minority and HinzSight Reports

"This new information about Barack Obama's relationships with ACORN and William Ayers raises a lot of questions." - (insert TV political talking head's name here)

Wrong.

The information coming out now, during the "attentive voter season" before Election Day, answers all the questions voters have before they vote every four years.

Does this candidate share the Judeo-Christian values that have defined our Nation and have served us so well for so long? Does he have the character worthy of occupying the most powerful position on Earth? And would enemies of the United States fear that he would aggressively defend us?

To listen to TV talking heads, even those named Hannity and Gingrich, from whose Thursday night discussion I culled the above paraphrase, no questions are ever answered. Rather, what are, in deed, revelations, only reveal to a brain dead media another line of questioning that Obama could theoretically trump with some glib retort, on their television shows. For you see, if questions are ever definitively answered, there would no reason to tune in and listen to them any more!

Moreover, even our conservative pundits, like ourselves if we don't be careful, can be just as guilty of elitist tunnel vision as liberals. Add to that, the all too common, "the world was just invented this election cycle", of so many of the poll-obsessed yutes in the blogosphere, egged on by a media that sells the idea that past election losses by, leading in the polls until the end, Democrats were decided by debate moments or clever ads late in the campaign, and you witness the rampant defeatism of so many conservatives for whom McCain can never attack aggressively enough.

I heard all this from 1980-1988 and 2000-2008. Absent a known leftist and a Perot, we win.

The only slightly credible argument advanced by the defeatists is that Obama is not a "known" leftist. But even on this, a certain kind of elitism blinds the defeatist.

The defeatist knows Obama is a far left appeasing, Marxist that is unfit for the office of President of the United States. He sees it oh so clearly and, due to historical ignorance, allows his emotions to be manipulated by polls. Moreover, and more importantly, he thinks that the average, mostly inattentive for the past four years, mostly non-political potential voter, does not see Obama for what he is, and that he won't see Obama for the extremist he is unless John McCain and Charlie Gibson say exactly what the defeatist thinks ought be said in just the way our defeatist hero wants.

I say, get over yourselves.

One mistake the defeatists make is that they watch the news in a different way than the average voter. We political junkies watch news reports about the Obama revelations to see how the media spins the revelations. The average voter, on the other hand, sees and hears the revelations. They are new to the average voter. And they are about the business, NOW, of getting attentive to make their choice on Election Day. They know that they get to vote on that day. They have lived through other election days and remember that they made the right choice then. They will this time.

The now attentive voters were already jolted into noticing Obama by the God-damned America sermons Obama sat thru for 20 years. Their common sense prevents any glib excuses to drown out the din of his pew-parked butt on that matter, nor on the fact of the new video of Farrakhan dubbing him the Messiah. They understand that it would not be appropriate for any candidate to hang with a less competent Timothy McVeigh that got off on a legal technicality and serve on boards to craft an "education reform" on radicalism short of bombing government buildings in Oklahoma, just because they were wetting diapers in the 90s. Same with Ayers.

The public sees and hears, just like us. Yes, we saw and heard months ago. It’s our life. These "swing" voters have real lives. They had real lives in the past as well, and looked up just in time to see what we knew and elect Reagan twice, Bush 41, and Bush 43 twice.

Why? Because they saw that Mondale would raise taxes; abandon the conservative economic policies that were working; and not be feared by the USSR. They saw that Dukakis would do the same and that he didn't share our values with respect to crime, criminals and the appropriateness of the recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance by school children. That Gore lacked character as revealed by his three characters and would abandon Bill Clinton's Reaganite economic policies and that Kerry would turn over US sovereignty to Kofi Annan.

They saw the liberal and rejected the liberal, just in time.

This past week these people, wracked by economic crisis, saw a slick lawyer that claimed he never represented the far left ACORN vote fraud community organizers as a lawyer.

Gamecock asked the question months ago if it were too much to ask Obama to name one client and one member of a community he organized. We already knew that he tried to hide the hopelessly audacious racist pastor/mentor praying in a church basement as he announced his candidacy. We, and even the usually inattentive American, have seen the wife he can't hide preach her un-proud of America cynicisms.

And this week we found out why Obama has never volunteered a satisfied client because his clients are vile. But more than that, this is not a case of a lawyer defending a criminal as part of his duty to the bar in our justice system. No. This is a case of his representation of his ideological brethren.

He was caught in a flat out lie could not possibly have been un-covered because of the "whole truth" compilations of appellate case reporting going back to US Reporter Volume One from 1790!

Obama is listed in federal reports as a lawyer for ACORN. For the non-legal, do you recall seeing those endless rows of identically bound thick volumes in courtrooms and law libraries? Those are books of ALL of the opinions of appellate cases in all courts of the United States and the states. They cannot be refuted.

Obama is caught in a brazen lie. And the beauty of it is that the lie ties him to not only ACORN, but also to Ayers "education" minutes on Annenberg, Obama's book review of Ayers book, and all the lies about their supposedly neighbor waving a neighbor thru a stop sign in the morning relationship. An ad of Obama and the nervous crowd laughter when he said teaching sex ed in grammar school and kindergarten is "the right thing to do" is on the air.

Palin has been attacking Obama for all this and for what it says about Obama in explicit terms. McCain has ads up doing the same, one of which has Bill Clinton blaming the dems in congress for the Fannie Mae caused economic crisis. Palin is all over the Obama votes against saving babies that survive abortions.

And, for all you ostriches, Rush, Levin and others played numerous clips this week of McCain himself calling out dems by name, including Obama for the crisis.

In short, the questions are being answered before our eyes and yet so many politically correct TV talking heads continue with the refrain that Obama needs to answer questions. One wonders if these people asked that question after the confession in To Kill a Mockingbird as the credits rolled after The End!

Obama's actions of the past 20 years are the answers, not any non sequiturs he might belch out during a "debate.'

No amount of psychoanalysis will change what he DID. No words from his mouth will make it all ok for him to hold the nukes for four seconds, much less four years.

Defeatist poll obsessors, lend me your ears!

The American people can connect the dots, and are, in fact doing so now. They can see through the voice-overs by a liberal in the tank media they viscerally distrust.

There is nothing new under the sun. The conversations on conservative websites I frequent are the same as I had with nervous nellies in quadrennial Leap Year Octobers past while a Republican, and the flip-side of too confident libs when I was democrat and knew that the gray-haired old lady in the second row of the Baptist choir was a better predictor of the aftermath of Election Day than the latest hurling from Gallup.

And hey, Newt and Hannity, don't let answers to questions pass you by. And hey, fellow members of the conservative chattering class: Lower your snobbish noses a bit and you will see the knowing looks in the eyes of the non-chatterers, as Obama's 20-year mask is removed just in time for Halloween.

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer columns

Race 4 2008

Originally published by Mike DeVine, the Legal Editor for The Minority and HinzSight Reports

I had been considering doing a post-mortem on the recent two-week debate over the Paulson Panic Prevention Bill that was finally signed into law late last week. Given my exhaustion (and the recently announced retirement of alter ego Cockstradamus until after the election)from reading enough pages to have re-read Tolstoy’s War and Peace and having written five columns in 12 days that resembled Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, it was a great joy to me that an executive with one of the largest Banks in America (who also happens to be a close friend) wrote the following me after I requested he identify three issues he wanted addressed refuting Obama and Democrat positions on the great issues of the day, with facts, that he considered not being effectively addressed by the McCain campaign or the media.

My friend shares much of our (conservative segment of the GOP) frustrations with the campaign and the past eight years and echoes many of my own thoughts, but he brings more of an insider’s perspective on the current state of banking affairs, as well as an outsider’s perspective, not being a blogger or columnist.

He shall remain anonymous, but given that this is only the first of a series of columns featuring my friend’s thoughts and desires, and given that my offer to try and address concerns that would “float his boat”, I will refer to him as “Boata”:

IT'S THE ECONOMY, STUPID

The Dem mantra is 'We can't afford another eight years of the failed Bush economic policies', and McCain will not refute it - and neither will Bush Jr!

Here's the truth of the matter:

It started under Carter, and it accelerated under Clinton. The so called noble idea was that home ownership should be expanded from 60% to at least 70%. Through PR pressure and arm twisting on lending institutions by the government, the fear of being labeled as discriminatory by Jesse Jackson or other extortion thugs, and the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA), requirements for mortgage loans relaxed.

The CRA has various methods and penalties to persuade lending institutions to make available a certain percentage of their portfolio for 'affordable housing' (and they still do - Countrywide just received a directive to make loans to applicants with credit scores of 500-580! If nothing is done it will happen again).

Urban communities that no bank would seriously consider lending to were now badges of honor. Credit scoring, financials, current job, etc. - these were no longer paramount. This was doubly encouraged because Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae would buy these loans so the lending institutions didn't really have to worry.

GSE's hold approximately 50% of the nation's mortgage loans. In fact, the GSE's were established under the theory that by buying loans, packaging, and reselling them as investment instruments (CDOs, Auction Rate, etc.), they would be freeing up more cash for lending institutions to make more loans so everyone could own a home! On top of this, ARMs were invented and pushed as an easy way to afford a loan - the catch of course is that they are extremely risky and irresponsible. If you can't afford a fixed rate loan, you shouldn't be contemplating adjustables, but many lenders started pushing them to increase their commissions. Ditto for sub primes.

This is where the 'greed' comes in that Wall Street is accused of. On Bob Brinker's Moneytalk show yesterday, he had a NY Times economist on who posited this as the big reason the lenders and the GSEs hit hard times. He is right about the snowball effect, but how it started he is not (after all, he works for the NY Times). It started for the aforementioned political reasons.

Now it really gets complicated! With tried and true institutions failing or struggling, lending amongst themselves starts to dry up. Companies that depend on short-term lending for the regular business of stock and supply start freezing up because creditors don't have the money or fear default. This credit crunch is the fear that prompted the federal bailout (rescue) last week.

Prior to all this, both Bush and McCain tried to rein in the GSE's and their excesses, but the attempt fell on deaf ears in Congress - yet neither of them will explain this to the public. Former Fannie CEO Franklin Raines and his successor should be investigated for hiding the true dire financial situation there, but they won't be because the Dems hold sway in both houses and the Republicans have no backbone. The Republicans are complicit in the whole situation also because the sub prime lending really ramped up after the turn of the century. They raised no protests or red flags (outside of a few like McCain) for fear of being called racists or 'evil, rich Republicans'.

Lastly, Obama and Pelosi's continued hammering of the eight years of a failed Bush economic policy' is a non sequitur - they're two separate things. I blame the Bush Administration and the House Republicans for acting like drunken Democrats in spending even more, and adopting pork and earmarks as their own, but this is not the reason for the crisis.

However, this gives the Dems the ammunition they need; they would have done better to take the heat up front and do what's right. So the reason we are where we are all boils down to this: Republicans didn't have the gumption to stand up for what they believe when they finally gained the power to make REAL CHANGE!

I trust that Boata, like most of us in the conservative movement, is encouraged by the McCain campaign’s post-bailout bill signing, fact-laden refutations of and attacks against Obama and the democrats that echo much of the above, as well his the McCain ad that began running during the bailout bill debate that features the NYT praising McCain’s Fannie-Freddie 2005-6 reform attempts, and Bill Clinton’s assessment of blame against the democrats in congress (2003-2008), including the Obama-occupied, filibuster threatening Senate.

Gamecock echoes Boata’s call for McCain-Palin to show America that they represent real change for the economy.

[Despite the lack of a complete post-mortem following up on my econ columns (see my archive) opposing the bailout – albeit as a close call given the GOP improvements – especially given post-bailout market disasters here and abroad, I deem it appropriate to heed Boata’s desire for shorter columns and less self-congratulatory pajama geek echo chamber chatter! – I will address the other issues on a blog this week concerning Big Government central planning Bernanke-Paulson’s attempt to force Wachovia to be split in two, rather than let the free market and the legal system sort out the claims of Wells Fargo and Citibank.]

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer columns Legal Editor for The Minority and HinzSight Reports "The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race." - The Chief Justice Race 4 2008 "One man with courage makes a majority." - Andrew Jackson