By Rose Pedenko and Tanya Simon

“When you look long into an abyss, the abyss looks into you.” - Friedrich Nietzsche

Irony never fails to slip through the cracks in our lives at some of the bleakest moments – like the black widow that entrenches itself in damp crevices and awaits its prey, closing in on it in ever-tightening circles.

When the moment is ripe, irony rears its fangs and sinks them into our moral, intellectual and spiritual arteries, and none are conscious of how fast the poison spreads until it’s too late.

The irony we refer to in our parable is that the spider is actually the media and they are about to devour the meal they have been nurturing for two years, and oh what a tangled web they wove!

Neither his blanket inexperience nor his dubious personal associations precluded their spinning of Obama’s vainglorious curriculum vitae. In the end, his “successful campaign strategy” became his principal claim to experience for the office of president of the United States.

The future president will learn soon enough that this black widow is insatiable and feigns loyalty in order to snare its victims – that anything that moves within sight of its nest is fair game, and it waits unwearyingly in the shadows ready to entrap and devour their prize elected fly.

They will begin by spinning his silky campaign promises into their own escape-proof, beautiful trap and leer at him with disdain as he vainly attempts to free himself from their neurotoxic venom. Just ask Sarah Palin, the spider’s most recent appetizer.

Like the spider in Mary Howitt’s poem, they romanced the President-Elect, telling him:

“You’re witty and you’re wise, how handsome are your gauzy wings, how brilliant are your eyes!”

And he fell for it – lock, stock and mandibles.

He was indeed “chosen” by that hairy spider for a specific purpose: not to lead our nation to safety, prosperity and unity, but rather, in spite of their mutual ideologies, to continue to feed the spider’s writing frenzy. And just like the black widow, the media kills whomever they join with after the ritual “mating.”

And so, there, in the center of the black widow’s web, sits President-Elect Obama – bouncing up and down, like a happy little kid on a backyard trampoline, unawares of the multi-legged arachnid sneaking up stealthily from behind.

Obama’s road to the White House was an open highway, paved smooth by the spider’s secretions, making it free of the bumps, potholes, detours, and dead ends that are part and parcel of most campaigns.

Empty champagne bottles litter the landscape and are stacked to the brim in trash cans. The senator’s rooters are slowly recovering from their Kool-Aid hangovers, and are expecting miracles from him.

Now, however, the seemingly endless and enchanted silk surface has been spun into a gigantic fly trap: this super Fly must navigate the reality of a credit meltdown, the war on terror, illegal immigration, oil exploration, Iran and their threat of nuclear armament, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Israel, Palestine, Putin, Chavez, gang infestations, and crime-riddled cities (like Chicago) – or, like so many arrogant flies before him, be eaten alive by the spider.

But what he and the 63 million that voted for him didn’t count on is, for the merciless black widow, a political miracle is yesterday’s news.

There will be no more unicorn rides, Senator. No more cartoon bluebirds flying onto your shoulder.

The party is over. A pall of silence has fallen upon your suitors and supporters, and it’s time for you to soberly face reality, which is with every statement you make and every step you take, the spider will be on your heels, ready to spring upon what is anticipated to be your first of many mistakes.

So keep this little ditty in mind when you take the oath of office:

“…And now dear little children,
who may this story read,
to idle, silly flattering words,
I pray you ne’er give heed:
Unto an evil counselor,
close heart and ear and eye,
and take a lesson from this tale,
of the Spider and the Fly.”

The abyss awaits you, Mr. President-Elect.

by Lance Thompson

This column will focus on the positive aspects of the week, so it will be brief.

The loss of the presidential race is the work of John McCain and his campaign. Though many other factors contributed to Obama’s win, a good candidate and an effective campaign could have prevailed. After a bruising bare-knuckle campaign in the primary, McCain elected to follow the Marquis of Queensbury rules in the brutal street fight of the general election. This was hardly unexpected–McCain was always tougher on Republicans than Democrats.

The good news aspect of this is that "moderate" Republicans can not claim the ascendancy over conservatives. If McCain had prevailed, we’d be saddled with the argument that only a Republican who believes in the sorcery of global warming, the folly of open borders, and only reluctantly in the value of tax cuts can win the Big One. The Democrats put their money on the most liberal senator in America, and won. This is not necessarily because people prefer the liberal view to the conservative. More probably, they prefer a true believer to a fence sitter. McCain’s me-too populism in reaction to the financial meltdown and his refusal to pin the blame on Democrat policies was inexcusable. Conservatives don’t have to question our principles–they were never part of the campaign.

We thought they might be when McCain, in the single savvy move he made after the primaries, chose Sarah Palin as his running mate. The campaign muzzled her, booked her on ambush talk shows, and never used her effectively. But the good news is that Sarah Palin now has experience on a national campaign, connected with conservatives in a way no candidate has since Ronald Reagan, and didn’t even have to spend her own money. The new generation of conservative leaders has a face, and it’s one that wears well.

The GOP maintains enough Senate seats to filibuster the most egregious parts of the socialist agenda of the Democrats. It’s a thin margin, and it will take skill to wield it effectively, but Republicans in the Senate can still influence and shape legislation. At this writing, Norm Coleman has a slim lead over the un-courtly jester Al Franken, but that race is headed for a recount.

In the House, our losses were significant, but California is sending a conservative stalwart to Washington in the form of Tom McClintock. McClintock is a principled, courageous, mentally agile true conservative, an instructive example for conservative Congressmen to follow.

While we hope that Barack Obama will enjoy the same "holiday from history," in Charles Krauthammer’s words, that favored the Clinton administration, such an outcome is unlikely. President Obama is sure to be tested, as Joe Biden so solemnly warned. Already, on election night, Russian President Medvedev announced the emplacement of offensive missiles near the Polish border. The enemies of freedom multiply, hydra-like, with each passing week. The campaign statements of the president elect make it clear that the new administration will have a vastly different approach to world affairs than the current one. That’s the last positive aspect of the election.

It’s likely to make the foreign policy of George W. Bush look positively masterful.

by Lance Thompson

Here we are, a few days before the election, and Barack Obama finds himself in a very tight race with his most potentially devastating opponent–himself.

In the long campaign that is coming to an end, Obama has knocked off Democrat rivals like the once-sure-thing Hillary Clinton and his own running mate, Joe Biden. Then, when the GOP chose its standard-bearer, Obama ran rings around the incompetent campaign of John McCain.

But now, as time runs out, Obama hopes to cross the finish line before the greatest threat to his victory catches up with him. The threat comes from the real Obama, the Obama that the mainstream media has shielded from public view, the Obama that Americans are only now getting to know.

This is the Obama who attended the racist, America-hating sermons of Reverend Jeremiah Wright for twenty years, then claimed that he was unaware of the nature of those sermons. This is the Obama who won his first political races by bringing lawsuits against his opponents to have them pre-empted from the race. This is the Obama who started his political career in the home of terrorist William Ayers, served with Ayers on the boards of community organizations, and maintained a relationship with Ayers over the years. This is the Obama who was the attorney for ACORN, whose campaign gave $800,000 to ACORN, who was a community organizer for ACORN. ACORN is under investigation in fourteen states for voter registration fraud, and was also instrumental in coercing lending institutions to make shaky loans that contributed to the financial meltdown.

This is the Obama who believes the Constitution of the United States is fundamentally flawed and demonstrates a "blind spot" that must be corrected. This is the Obama who wants to take money from those who earn it and give it to those who don’t. This is the Obama whose campaign received the second-highest amount of contributions from disgraced Fannie Mae directors, and blames the financial failure not on the duplicity of those directors, but on Wall Street greed.

The candidate Obama has successfully denied the existence of the real Obama, with the indispensable collaboration of the media and the inexplicable reluctance of John McCain to engage on those issues. But glimpses of the real Obama continue to leak out. Tapes of Reverend Wright caused Obama to abandon successive positions–first standing by Wright, then expressing surprise at the content of his sermons, then cutting off all contact. He has gone from characterizing as a "professor of English" the man whose Weather Underground terrorist group bombed the United States capitol and the Pentagon

More recently, Obama erred by telling Joe the Plumber that his goal as president would be to "spread the wealth." This week, statements by Obama from 2001 indicate that he blames the Supreme Court for not endorsing income distribution. Tape of the same vintage show Obama characterizing the Constitution as flawed, and containing a blind spot. Obama’s socialist principles are increasingly evident and undeniable.

The real Obama views this country as flawed, unfair, and cruel. The real Obama wants to remake the nation to fit his image. The real Obama is the only remaining obstacle to the victory of the candidate Obama.

If candidate Obama wins the election, there will be no further need to hide the real Obama. The mainstream media will not challenge or criticize him, as they do reflexively with Republican presidents. Alternative media like FoxNews, talk radio and conservative blogs will be muzzled with the Fairness Doctrine. Democrat-controlled Congress will fill the empty judicial seats on federal courts with liberal judges, who will uphold the changes the real Obama plans to make.

The candidate Obama is hoping that most Americans don’t meet the real Obama until after the election. Every voter who gets to know the real Obama before November 4^th makes Obama nervous. Because if Obama is not an enemy of the United States, he is at least friendly with and sympathetic to this nation’s enemies. His Republican opponent is not. Whatever John McCain’s faults, no one has ever had to wonder about his fidelity to the United States of America.

By Rose Pedenko and Tanya Simon

The MSM and the powers that be in the Democratic Party have proven Sir Isaac Newton’s theory wrong: What goes up does not necessarily come straight down.

The stratospheric rise (or holy ascension, as the liberal knee-benders prefer to think) of Barack Obama is unprecedented in modern and perhaps even ancient history. It has changed the laws of political physics so radically that the once reliable landscape of hero monuments in our nation’s capital is being overgrown by scraggly liberal ivy.

In trying to make sense of non-sense -- or explaining the unexplainable – we have concluded that the country has either lost its collective mind or millions of liberal alien pods were left beside our beds as we slept at night.

We have sought reasonable answers to reasonable questions but have been met with mindless, predetermined phraseology from the largely ignorant, or bombastic and grandiloquent rhetoric from the liberal elites – all of which has been translated and boiled down to two words: “change” (apparently for the sake of change) and “hope” (that the end of George Bush will solve all their problems).

This Obaphenomena defies logic, whether cursory or scientific.

From their well-crafted new age brainwashing, the media have embedded their chosen leader in our collective conscience to a level of omnipotence. That measure has taken hold of voters’ minds like the spiny tentacles of a Stone Age octopus.

But Barack Obama is not The Manchurian Candidate as some in the right media have lightheartedly speculated. No, it’s a million times worse: It’s his followers who are The Manchurian Voters.

There are useful idiots and then there are useful voters. Perhaps they are one and the same. Not even criticism based on facts can bring him or his followers back down to earth. Those useful voters then prey on enervated Republicans drawing the politically fatigued into their ultimate political solution.

At the recent Alfred E. Smith Charity dinner in New York City, we heard Obama joke about not being born in a manger, or really being from Krypton, fathered by Jor-El.  The Chosen One laughs, giggles, grins, chortles, chuckles and snickers with the best of them. Yet, despite his attempt to come across as the guy next door, the humor is peppered with disingenuousness because he really does believe he is awesome.

Barack Obama has never been content with the possibility of changing America, but has now announced “We will win this election and, you and I together, we're going to change the country and change the world."

What exactly is he referring to? The last time we heard that type of phrase was from Adolf Hitler – “Today we rule Germany. Tomorrow, the world.”

For months, the best conservative political writers have taken aim at his campaign, but they have been shooting blanks. All manner of fact-based rhetorical weaponry has been deflected by their newly minted super man. The ordnance of conservatives has consisted of well-researched facts, recorded video clips, television/newspaper interviews and campaign speeches of That One. But the left has erected a fortress around Obama, and armed their super hero with a Teflon-coated thick skin to counter-weight a disarming smile.

As the Church Lady used to say on Saturday Night Live, “Isn’t that special?”

Drawing up from scratch a cartoon hero versus a real living hero (like John McCain) is not difficult when aided by a journalistic shield. But a nation of Useful Voters – that is an accomplishment. The Manchurian Voters have been armed with rhetorical slings and arrows, albeit of crude material, to use on family, friends and co-workers. Their sheer numbers are a force the weakest cannot resist.

Entertainment industry moguls, A-List ignoramuses and television behemoths, like Oprah Winfrey, all possess the ability and wherewithal to dazzle, mesmerize and transmogrify political fence sitters with make-believe fantastic characters like Barack Obama. As luck would have it, even his name sounds other-worldly. They offer limitless and unedited exposure for his thoughts and opinions in all forms of communication. In light of this gratis coverage, it remains a miracle that John McCain has come this far and a clear testament to his ability, even without the full support of his base.

The liberal objective: to vanquish all remaining opposition to their subversion of America.

Why have average Americans seemingly chosen to ignore Louis Farrakhan’s proclamation that Obama is The Messiah? Why has Obama’s judgment with regard to his dubious and unsavory associations not been called into question by Democrats? Why are his connections to the mortgage meltdown ignored by the MSM? Why is his utter lack of executive experience to assume the office of president dismissed out of hand by liberals?

Because they can. Because they have The Manchurian Voters. If they can use fantasy and fiction to create their invincible leader, we can use histrionics to describe our utter disbelief.

by Lance Thompson

It has long been a Democrat tactic to accuse Republicans of whatever unprincipled, illicit or deplorable act that they themselves are about to perpetrate. This tactic has been repeatedly employed with great success, and is about to pay off with the grand prize of the Presidency.

The Democrats paint themselves as champions of free speech. The broadcast news networks, MSNBC, CNN and the major newspapers and news magazines all support the Democrats. Only FoxNews and talk radio are free of liberal bias, yet even these outlets are unacceptable to Democrats. Thus, Democrats plan to resurrect the Fairness Doctrine, a regulation that requires media outlets to present balanced views. This regulation will not be applied to the already liberal-leaning news outlets, but to talk radio, whose conservative voices the Democrats cannot bear. Democrats ask for votes to protect free speech even as they plan to muffle conservative voices.

The Democrats pose as friends of the working man, touting the Employee Free Choice Act as evidence. But the Free Choice Act is precisely the opposite, removing the requirement of a secret ballot from union elections. Under the Free Choice Act, union representatives can confront employees, not only at work, but in public or at home, and coerce them to sign cards in support of joining a union. The Democrats, who have the overwhelming support of unions and their pension funds, are no friends of employees, but are the bought servants of union bosses.

For years, Democrats have fought to ease or remove identification requirements for voting. Accusing Republicans of trying to disenfranchise minorities, Democrats have passed legislation that allows people to vote without identification, without a permanent address, without pre-registration. With each new statute, the validity of elections is eroded.

The Democrats have steered taxpayer funds to the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN). ACORN is the group that Barack Obama strongly supported, steered funding to, and worked with as an attorney during his community organizing days in Chicago. ACORN’s co-founder, Wade Rathke, was a member of the Students of a Democratic Society, the organization from which the terrorist group Weather Underground sprung. ACORN is currently under investigation in fourteen states for fraudulently registering voters who are already registered under other names, already registered in other states, deceased, or don’t exist at all. The long-term campaign to ease registration requirements make possible the wholesale manufacture of bogus votes. The votes ACORN manufactures are Democrat votes. Thus, as Democrats ask for your vote to fight disenfranchisement of minorities, they are in fact using your votes and money to disenfranchise you.

Both Barack Obama and Joe Biden, along with the usual Democrats in Congress, have blamed the current financial crisis on rampant deregulation during the Bush years. Vote Democrat, they say, and they will restore the regulations that will repair the economy. In fact, it was over-regulation that caused the housing crisis in the first place. The Community Reinvestment Act, passed under Carter and enlarged under Clinton, coerced lenders to make loans to people who could not pay them back. Incidentally, they were helped with this coercion by the people at ACORN. Over-regulation forced banks to make risky loans, yet the Democrat solution is still more regulation.

These Orwellian tactics–seeking to take away our rights under the guise of protecting them–have been part of a long-standing and effective campaign to seize power. Seizing power is also something the Democrats accuse the Republicans of, because that is what the Democrats are about to do. They will defraud the American electorate, secure the White House and Congress, and fill the judicial branch with liberal judges. The direction of the country will be decided for at least a generation.

Ordinarily at this point, I would say that’s why this election is so important. Unfortunately, our side is limited to only one vote per person.