While we here at Hard Astarboard certainly don’t make a point of reading the Grey Whore Lady (except occasionally to see what Kommunist Media Central is up to, from time to time), this front pager over there did catch my eye earlier, enough to inspire a second post just because it’s rare to see the truth printed in that rag when it doesn’t propagandize in their favor.

Once teetering on the edge of bankruptcy and irrelevance, the Republican National Committee has raised more than $110 million over the past 15 months and retired more than half its debt, accumulating large cash reserves that could give Mitt Romney a critical boost later this spring as he intensifies his campaign against President Obama.

With the divisive and drawn-out Republican primary season moving toward a close, the committee reported more money in the bank at the start of last month than the Democratic National Committee, which raised about $137 million during the same period but also spent far more.

So much for Democrats bragging that their party has been raising so much more money than the Republicans!

Article here.

From the Washington Times:

A lawmaker from Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood said Thursday that there would be “no referendum at all” on the country’s peace treaty with Israel, hours after the Islamist group’s presidential candidate made his unexpected bid official.

Come again?

Asked whether a Brotherhood-led government would put the 1979 Camp David Accords to a referendum, as many of the group’s leaders have promised, Mr. Dardery said no.

“No referendum at all concerning international obligations,” he said. “All our international agreements are respected by the Freedom and Justice Party, including Camp David.”

These are the same people who said they would not run a candidate to take over Mubarak’s former job as president of Egypt. If I’m not mistaken, that’s exactly what they’re doing now.

Of course, our gullible politicians, along with every Islamist’s friend Barack Hussein Obama, (and the missus) will choose to believe that this parent organization of Hamas is sincere, not simply trying to gain friends in the U.S. Government and support from Washington for its candidacy.

No matter how often Islam’s miscreants prove to us that it’s okay, in their belief system, to lie to infidels, we continue to act as though they are credible people.

Yes, that’s the ONLY way to describe ANYONE who would vote to reelect Saddam Barack, that’s it, Barack Hussein Obama after the comments he made regarding the Supreme Court, in the event that they overturn Commu- ObamaCare.

For example.

Ultimately, I’m confident that the Supreme Court will not take what would be an unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress.

From the Washington Times:

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell blasted President Obama on Thursday, telling him to “back off” from comments earlier this week where he appeared to question the constitutional powers of the Supreme Court and the possibility that it could overturn his health care law.

“The president crossed a dangerous line this week,” the Kentucky Republican said to the Lexington Rotary Club, “and anyone who cares about liberty needs to call him out on it. The independence of the court must be defended.”

On Monday, Mr. Obama suggested it would be “activist” and an “unprecedented, extraordinary step” for the nine “unelected” justices to overturn the law, prompting outcries from leading Republicans and many legal scholars that he was trying to intimidate the court.

Ann Coulter puts things in even clearer perspective, as always.

The reason tea partiers carried signs saying “Read the Constitution!” was that we were hoping people would read the Constitution.

SNIP!

…and the former law professor, Barack Obama, alleging that a “good example” of judicial activism would be the Supreme Court (in his words, “a group of people”) overturning “a duly constituted and passed law.”

I don’t know how a court could overturn a law that hasn’t been “passed.” Otherwise, it wouldn’t be a law, it would be a bill. If it hasn’t even been “constituted,” it wouldn’t be anything at all.

Of course the courts can overturn laws — constituted and passed alike! If anything, the Supreme Court isn’t striking down enough laws.

SNIP!

On Monday, President Obama shocked even his fellow liberals when he claimed that it would be “an unprecedented, extraordinary step” for the Supreme Court to overturn “a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress.” (Which Obamacare wasn’t.)

He added: “I’d just remind conservative commentators that for years what we’ve heard is the biggest problem on the bench was judicial activism or a lack of judicial restraint.”

I guess now we know why Obama won’t release his college and law school transcripts!

It was so embarrassing that Obama attempted a clarification on Tuesday, but only made things worse. He said: “We have not seen a court overturn a law that was passed by Congress on an economic issue, like health care,” since the ’30s.

Except in 1995. And then again in 2000. (Do we know for a fact that this guy went to Columbia and Harvard Law?)

LOL!

This guy is shaping up to be a dictator wannabe.

It seems to me that anyone who would even consider voting to keep O in the White House for another four years is anything BUT patriotic, at least where the United States of America is concerned.

If they were, they would see some value in observing the Constitution, not in using it for a door mat as Mr. Obama certainly has for the last 38 months.

Perhaps they ARE patriotic, but just to some communist country or other, certainly not to America!

That’s right, one such bird donates her ill gotten gains to the campaign of the other.

A major donor to President Barack Obama has been accused of defrauding a businessman and impersonating a bank official, creating new headaches for Obama’s re-election campaign as it deals with the questionable history of another top supporter.

The New York donor, Abake Assongba, and her husband contributed more than $50,000 to Obama’s re-election effort this year, federal records show. But Assongba is also fending off a civil court case in Florida, where she’s accused of thieving more than $650,000 to help build a multimillion-dollar home in the state — a charge her husband denies.

Obama is the only presidential contender this year who released his list of “bundlers,” the financiers who raise campaign money by soliciting high-dollar contributions from friends and associates. But that disclosure has not come without snags; his campaign returned $200,000 last month to Carlos and Alberto Cardona, the brothers of a Mexican fugitive wanted on federal drug charges.

I’d like to say I’m completely amazed, shocked, even, but I’m not. Not even a little, because it seems that where President Obama’s concerned, such connections are par for the course.

As we made rather plain here awhile back, Hard Astarboard’s candidate for this year’s presidential election was, before he was “Axelrodded” out of the running, Herman Cain.

As much as it pains me to say this, we are once again placed between the proverbial rock and a hard place in which we’re faced with having to support another professional politician in order to stave off a win by a worse professional politician.

Unfortunately, the American political system is fresh out of genuine statesmen, since every time one comes along he’s pushed aside so that the political operators can run the country by partisan political proxy without anything like true patriotism, adherence to the will of the founding fathers or respect for the letter of the Constitution to stand in their way, and as a result we’re confronted by a “lesser of two evils” choice instead of a “best man (or woman) for the job” choice.

What that leaves us with is this: Worst case (by far) scenario: Obama gets reelected.

Only solution: Elect someone else, that someone else being a conservative, a Republican or both (there is a difference, as we’ve learned in recent years).

As we also know by this time, Dems vote for Dems, Republicans vote for Republicans and therefore the people needed to actually swing an election one way or the other are thosein the middle who actually vote by candidate rather than party.

If the GOP doesn’t show itself as uniting behind one candidate, the party sends a not-so-message to those swing voters; We can’t agree on our candidate. The closer the primary votes are per candidate, the more undecided we will appear, and the swing voters, who will naturally see the Democrats united behind their incumbent, might well vote Democrat — OBAMA.

It appears that Mitt Romney is going to get the nomination, so rather than further splinter our perceived support, we would do better to show some solid support for Mitt.

In the current Politico, there’s an article on Ann Romney (the candidate’s wife of 40 years) and her role in his campaign.

Ann Romney’s unexpected rock star status has the political arena buzzing about how her husband’s campaign will leverage her popularity in an election in which Michelle Obama — one of the most admired first ladies in history — will have an outsized and substantive portfolio.

Indeed, this 62-year-old grandmother’s contribution to Mitt Romney’s campaign could amount to the most relevant role a wife has ever played in a presidential effort — softening the edges of a flawed and awkward candidate who struggles to connect with voters.

As Romney closes in on his party’s nomination, Obama campaign officials and strategists view Ann Romney as a wild card in the fall campaign — a skilled and articulate advocate whose full power has yet to be unleashed. If she’s armed with a passionate vision for a Romney White House, the opposition believes she could emerge as a compelling surrogate for her husband around the country.

She has, in fact, recently begun targeting women - a demographic Republicans desperately need - talking about the economy and jobs. “I wish Ann, my wife were here,” Mitt Romney told a crowd in Wisconsin Sunday, flagging her efforts. “She’s going across the country and talking with women. We have work to do, to make sure we take our message to the women of America.”

In short,

“She rounds him out,” said Thomas Rath, longtime Republican activist from New Hampshire and Romney adviser. “You live with a guy for 40 years, and you’re qualified to speak to what kind of man he is. And that’s a message that appeals to men as well as women.”

Anyway, read the entire article.

So we have a conservative candidate who would make a better president than Obama, a former governor, which means he’s actually been the CEO of a state rather than merely a member of a large voting body, a state in which he had to preside over a mostly Democrat political machine and still prevailed in his conservative ways, and we have a very strong woman who would make a great first lady.

Given what we have to work with, what more can we ask for?

Hard Astarboard, rather than sit this one out folack of the candidate to whm we were most committed, will go with Romney for President this time out and allow the possibility of an Obama reelection….

I am by no means an avid reader of TheOnion, but this morning I happened to be passing by one of those things one finds on NYC streets these days that contain a veritable mall of newspaper boxes, and The Onion was there behind one window.

The following article caught my eye and I read it, getting a good chuckle, despite its profound irreverance.

U.S. Military Desperate To Be Handed Just One Solid War It Can Knock Out Of The Park

ARLINGTON, VA—Reportedly fed up with complicated and protracted operations overseas, top Pentagon officials acknowledged this week they were desperate to be given just one straightforward, no-nonsense military engagement they could really knock out of the park.

“Given all these messy, ambiguous conflicts we’ve been fighting against enemies you can’t even put your finger on, what we could really use right now is a plain old war against a clear-cut bad guy employing conventional tactics and weaponry,” said Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “No roadside bombs or plainclothes militants hiding out among innocent civilians—just a fair fight where two sides shoot at each other and someone wins. That’s it.”

“If Congress or our commander in chief could pull a few strings to make that happen, I swear we could totally nail a war like that, no question,” Dempsey added. “The sort of thing where you go in, blow up a number of actual tanks and jets, declare victory, plant a flag, and then exit—that’s all we’re asking for.”

Citing the country’s long history of winning wars against sovereign nations with actual standing armies, the Pentagon’s top brass repeatedly assured reporters they would “completely wipe the floor” with such an opponent if given the chance, and promised they would make America “very, very proud.”

Additionally, military leaders said that engaging in such a conflict “would be a huge confidence boost for [them] right now.”

“We’d be really grateful if the United States became embroiled in a war requiring us to bomb munitions factories, engage in aerial dogfights, or torpedo battleships,” said Marine Corps commandant Gen. James Amos, noting that when it comes to facing actual armies with actual naval and air weaponry, the U.S. is “great at that stuff.” “I guarantee it would be an absolute slam dunk for us.”

“Come on,” the four-star general added, “we really, really need this.”

LOL….

Here’s the entire “article”.

I feel their pain….

Since we have here a “shoe is on the other foot” moment, let me take the opportunity to stick the “racist” barb into the works, here.

In the previous post we referenced a recent incident in which a black youth was killed by a white guy (actually, part latino), noting how the usual racism professionals, including the president, jumped on the racism bandwagon before the police had even had the chance to investigate the affair.

However, there’s now this:

The parents of two British students murdered in Florida have criticised President Barack Obama for his lack of compassion over their son’s deaths.

His failure to respond to three letters sent to the White House was because there was no “political value” and not worthy of a few minutes of his time.

They spoke out as teenager Shawn Tyson began a life sentence after being found guilty of the murder of James Cooper and James Kouzaris last April.

The 17 year old, who shot the men as they begged for their lives, will die in prison.

His conviction of first degree murder carries an mandatory life sentence without the chance of parole.

Here what we have is a case of two (count ‘em, 2) caucasians murdered by a black man, so where’s the outrage from Sharpton, Jackson, the black community and/or…the president? I mean here we have a murderer sentenced, after a police investigation and a successful prosecution, trial by a jury of his peers, but not so much as an acknowledgement from the Racist-In-Chief to the parents of the victims, who weren’t even from here.

I guess this means it’s quite alright in the eyes of the president for blacks to murder whites, but god forbid if a white man kills a black man in self defense, that’s…RACISM!!!!

What a bunch of racist, hypocritical scum we allow to dominate and even constitute the bulk of our media and even to serve in the White House…

That is essentially what one could use to define the existences of the likes of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, to name two unfine, downstanding examples of parasites whose careers require feeding by any incident they can translate into a racist event for their personal and professional exploitation.

The latest opportunity for these opportunists has been, of course, the Trayvon Martin affair, which has been well covered in article, links and comments by Always on Watch.

Well, even before the police had finished investigating, before anyone had the facts of the matter in hand, the Racism Professionals together with the liberal media and the President of the United States (you know, Barack Hussein) had already drawn and quartered the shooter, effectively ruining his life for all time.

While I have a number of black friends and acquaintances for whom I have nothing but respect, it forever irks me that collectively, blacks can be so politically naive as to believe that the Democrats are “championing their cause” when those rascals over on the left are repeatedly holding them back, blaming nonexistent Republican (white) racism for their every problem (the GOPers are the party that passed the Civil Rights Act while the KKK is exclusively staffed by Democrats, go figure). It is in the Democrats’ best interests to keep blacks both in the dark and as poor as possible, solely because losing the black vote would be a disaster to them.

That said, I have here a column by Thomas Sowell in which he defends, using pure reality based logic, the otherwise useless Geraldo Rivera’s famous (infamous in some quarters) remark about Martin wearing a hoodie.

It is not often that I agree with Geraldo Rivera, but recently he said something very practical and potentially life-saving, when he urged black and Hispanic parents not to let their children go around wearing hoodies.

There is no point in dressing like a hoodlum when you are not a hoodlum, even though that has become a fashion for some minority youths, including the teenager who was shot and killed in a confrontation in Florida. I don’t know the whole story of that tragedy, any more than those who are making loud noises in the media do, but that is something that we have trials for.

People have a right to dress any way they want to, but exercising that right is something that requires common sense, and common sense is something that parents should have, even if their children don’t always have it.

Many years ago, when I was a student at Harvard, there was a warning to all the students to avoid a nearby tough Irish neighborhood, where Harvard students had been attacked. It so happened that there was a black neighborhood on the other side of the Irish neighborhood that I had to pass through when I went to get my hair cut.

I never went through that Irish neighborhood dressed in the style of most Harvard students back then. I walked through that Irish neighborhood dressed like a black working man would be dressed — and I never had the slightest trouble the whole three years that I was at Harvard.

While I had a right to walk through that tough neighborhood dressed in a Brooks Brothers suit, if I wanted to — and if I could have afforded one, which I couldn’t — it made no sense for me to court needless dangers.

Makes sense to me…

Later in the column:

Let the specific facts come out in the Florida case. That is why we have courts.

Have we forgotten the Jim Crow era, with courts making decisions based on the race of the defendants, rather than the facts of the case? That is part of the past that we need to leave in the past, not resurrect it under new racial management.

Who is really showing concern for the well-being of minority youngsters, Geraldo Rivera who is trying to save some lives, or Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, and others who are hyping this tragic episode for their own benefit?

Race hustlers who hype paranoia and belligerence are doing no favor to minority youngsters. There is no way to know how many of these youngsters’ confrontations with the police or others in authority have been needlessly aggravated by the steady drumbeat of racial hype they have been bombarded with by race hustlers.

The entire column.

And also weighing in Ann Coulter is, as usual, spot on.

Even after the Duke lacrosse case, Texaco executives allegedly using the N-word in private meetings — which turned out to be “St. Nicholas” — the Tawana Brawley case, not to mention virtual hailstorms of racist graffiti and nooses materializing on college campuses, all of which invariably end up having been put there by the alleged victims, the Non-Fox Media (NFM) didn’t even pause before conjuring a racist plot in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin in Florida last month.

Like Captain Ahab searching for the Great White Whale, the NFM is constantly on the hunt for proof of America as “Mississippi Burning.”

Over St. Patrick’s Day weekend, the month after Martin was killed, gangs in Chicago shot 10 people dead, including a 6-year-old girl, Aliyah Shell, who was sitting with her mother on their front porch.

One imagines MSNBC hosts heaving a sign of relief that little Aliyah was not shot by a white man, and was thus spared the horror of being a victim of racism.

NFM, LOL!

Ann Coulter’s full column.

All this may give you an inkling of why we rely on the criminal justice system to determine guilt in criminal cases and not the fervid imaginations of the race-obsessed media.

You’ve got to wonder how much longer it’s going to be before so many Americans just plain stop being stupid and cease giving any kind of credibility to the Sharptons, Jacksons and the racism fixated elements of the media.

If a Muslim takes an oath of office with his hand on The Bible rather than on a Koran, one supposes that his oath is non-binding, doesn’t one?

That would include the part about protecting and defending the Constitution.

This is an interesting and perhaps revealing video, sort of a montage, titled Obama Admits He’s A Muslim.

It pretty much speaks for itself.

Just when I thought I was done posting for the day, I ran across this one at Yahoo! News.

Here was President Obama having an “aside” with Russia’s President Medvedev, apparently unaware that there was a live mic present.

President Obama: On all these issues, but particularly missile defense, this, this can be solved but it’s important for him to give me space.

President Medvedev: Yeah, I understand. I understand your message about space. Space for you…

President Obama: This is my last election. After my election I have more flexibility.

President Medvedev: I understand. I will transmit this information to Vladimir.

The video is here.