President-elect Barack Obama finds himself transitioning into the office at a time when the country is faced with a set of challenges both domestically and internationally with problem number one (at least for now) being the anemic state of both the domestic and international economy. Those of us invested in 401(k) equity mutual funds have seen the value of those holdings drop some 42% since the markets high a year ago resulting in a massive loss of wealth (albeit on paper if one has not sold out). Unemployment has now hit 6.5% and is likely to go higher as disappointing 3Q earnings/loss reports for US companies are nearly fully reported. The worldwide deleveraging continues as banks and credit offerers continue to both tighten terms and credit limits all the while hoarding cash infused by the Treasury under the TARP program. Business activity depends on access to credit that is reasonably priced on reasonable terms and both are lacking in this environment. Indeed, credit of any kind is becoming exceedingly difficult to find. The Libor (London Interbank Offering Rate) rate which is the rate at which banks loan to other banks had been running some 400 or so basis points over the US Fed Funds rate which in normal times would be pegged nearly even. That key rate has been blamed for the freeze up in the commercial paper markets on which business depends to fund day-to-day operations and here too the US Treasury has stepped in to provide liquidity but even with the drop in Libor over recent weeks we are not as yet seeing any indication that credit markets are freeing up. Admittedly this may take some time to take effect but current trends are not favorable for the broader economy as companies are under great pressure from their lenders to improve their cash positions which means they must cut their costs and for almost all of them this means shedding the single greatest driver of these costs — employees.

Things are not any rosier on the international economic scene. The IMF estimates that global GDP would fall to 2.2% in 2009, based on purchasing-power parity (PPP) weights, from 5% in 2007 and 3.7% in 2008 marking the greatest global recession since the Great Depression. Falling crude oil prices which so far have been the silver lining in this dark cloud may or may not continue as oil-producing nations from Venezuela, to the Gulf to Russia find their economies under increasing pressure as this source of wealth plummets. With prices currently around $60/barrel OPEC has just announced that another round of cutbacks in production could be in the offing to restore price levels to the $70-$90/barrel range which would have a further deflating effect on already weak economies. Should an international crisis with Iran arise that might curtail production or access to Gulf crude oil the effects on price and on the world economy could be devastating.

On the home front plans are afoot for a economic stimulus package starting at $100 billion on top of the $700 billion being injected into the financial markets by the Treasury and last years $100 billion tax rebates. Here President Obama will be challenged to keep this package in that range as pressures will build from his own caucus to expand that dramatically including a bailout of the US automakers and their UAW “partners”, both key Democratic constituencies while sober economic analysts like the Washington Post’s Steven Pearlstein are of the opinion that the only plan that makes economic sense for the automakers is a pre-packaged bankruptcy process that would tie federal aid to a haircut for the union membership in terms of wages and benefits, a total shellacking for stockholders and the firing of top management. Any such plan will be resisted fiercely in the Congress by Democrats who owe much to organized labor for recent electoral gains.

What form the economic stimulus package takes (and some form of it will pass probably with wide bipartisan support in the end) is where the rub will lie. Putting some of this money into infrastructure projects like roads and bridges probably makes some sense as these projects could ramp up fairly quickly and would provide jobs along with much needed transportation relief in some areas. The problem will lie, however, with certain lawmakers wanting to make sure their states get a share of this even though they probably have little in the way of need for same — think “Bridge to Nowhere” here along with any of the innumerable “Robert C. Byrd” Highways to Nowhere in West Virginia. Promised investments in alternative energies, while needed, would not have much immediate economic impact especially in a period of low global crude oil prices. With respect to President Obama’s longer term economic plans, if he’s smart (and he is) he will not push for a rollback of the Bush tax cuts intitially as raising taxes in the current economic climate on anyone is contra-indicated. But one can rest assured that many in his own party will not take this news as welcome although he will get good GOP support on this as well as support from some members of the Democratic “Blue Dog” caucus who might be persuaded to support this over their objections that any new spending be paid for without adding to the deficit.

What is not in doubt is that President Obama will take office at a time of the greatest global economic peril since the 1930s. It is the duty of all Americans to support him where we can in this hour of our country’s need.

Noble cause corruption is generally used to describe when a peace officer goes beyond what is correct and proper when executing his or her authority.

An example is when a policeman might plant incriminating evidence or give false testimony under oath to aid in the prosecution of a known and dangerous repeat felon “to get them off the street.”

In his mind, he has done nothing wrong – that what he did was for the greater good (e.g., making neighborhoods safer within a failed criminal justice system).  But while making us feel safer he, however, has also violated Constitutional rights.

Going further (and deeper psychologically): Being caught literally red-handed with your mitts in the till but not accepting personal liability for the crime comes under the heading psychopathic narcissist (not to be confused with Obama’s malignant narcissism).  Narcissists in all groups never admit to wrongdoing.

Take the liberal mainstream media: As far as they’re concerned, nothing they print, report or represent is distorted, damaging, or untrue.  In their twisted minds, what they do is for the greater good.  That is classic noble cause corruption.

It is well known that accepting a bribe is an act of corruption, because the receiver of cash or cash equivalents for favors is demonstrating abuse of power (private, public, civil, judicial) that is vested in him or her. It is a patent breach of trust.

On that basis, it would not be unreasonable to say that noble cause corruption has been a key factor in the melting down of the credit market: creating entities to assist those who normally could not afford to buy a home.

Those entities were represented to us as being established for the greater good.  No one, of course, mentioned the portly profits being raked in on the sidelines by members of both houses of Congress – did you, Chris Dodd, Barack Obama, and Franklin Raines?  Did you?

I admit I’m startled by the injudicious actions and remarks by those we elected (such as Harry Reid’s ill-timed pronouncement on October 2, 2008 that a major U.S. insurance company is on the brink of collapse, sparking a sharp sell-off of insurer stocks).

Statements like his only served to add fuel to the confusion and complexities of this disaster, which is coming dangerously close to landing our financial industry permanently in the I.C.U.

But to be perfectly honest, I’m really not that startled anymore, because I’ve come to accept the fact that nearly everything that comes out of the mouth today of every Washington lawmaker, every politicaster, every MSM reporter, and every liberal in the entertainment industry bears the same consistency and smells as bad, if not worse, as what we buy in 50-lb. bags at our local nurseries and spread on our lawns.

In addition is the ludicrous blame game – its gun barrels smoking up a storm and choking the oxygen in and around Capitol Hill.  The majority of this noxious residue is coming from Speaker Pelosi’s office, who is obsessed with a macabre predilection of laying the fault of everything on Earth and in the heavens solely on President Bush – and on all Republicans, for that matter, whether living or dead.

What Ms. Pelosi could not foresee is this: Bill Clinton has come forth to lay a majority of the blame on fellow Democrats.  (Thank you, Bill, for your honesty.  I’m sure Senator McCain thanks you, too.)

As an aside to Ms. Pelosi: The beginning of the end kicked off before George W. Bush was sworn in as President of the United States.  The conception of today’s meltdown was in 1995 when then-President William Jefferson Clinton signed his name to a bill, which was nurtured and overwhelmingly supported by Congress.

That bill was the instrument that impelled banks to lend money to persons and entities whose credit-worthiness and personal reliability were more risky than that of my Rottweiler, Ziggy.

It didn’t take long before the banks got the shakes about having to hand over their money to less-than-equitable persons.  To ease their anxiety, the banks sold those mortgages to Fannie Mae.

Furthermore, it was President George W. Bush who, in 2004, fought to get a bill passed that would place a muzzle on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.  Despite the president’s best efforts to contain the perceived disaster, the Democrats shot it down raucously stating that there was absolutely no risk involved.

Not even Alan Greenspan’s warnings were taken seriously.  On February 24, 2004, the Federal Reserve chairman testified before the U.S. Senate Banking Committee, in which he predicted, at length and in detail, the present ruinous outcome.  (Go HERE for the full text of his testimony.)

I’m going to stop at this point.  Rather than proceed and write something I might later regret (because I’m mad as hell over this roiling mess), go HERE for a laudatory article dated September 30, 1999,entitled “Fannie Mae Eases Credit to Aid Mortgage Lending,” written by Steven A. Holmes of The New York Times.  It’s reasonably short and easy-to-understand – and also speaks volumes on noble cause corruption in politics and the media that support those types of politics: what was done for the greater good.

In 1802, Thomas Jefferson wrote:

“I believe the banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around the banks will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.”

Need I say more?

Are conservative bloggers delusional, crazy, or…simply spending too much time in the echo chamber?  (note: I consider myself to be a moderate conservative in many regards, but I am striving for realism, not partisanship, in this Presidential season…)

Nobody can deny that Sarah Palin made improvements in her poise, grace, and sentence structure in last night’s debate, that she didn’t come off as the uber-bumbler of the Gibson and Couric debates.  However she did not, by any means, restore her image in my mind, nor did she, if we are to trust the polls at all, win the debate. I don’t particularly like Joe Biden, and I don’t think he defeated Governor Palin utterly, but it was at best a tie, and judging by the numbers, more a Palin loss than anything else.

I think most Americans simply don’t want someone who relies upon phrases such as “gosh darn it” to fill gaps, or who waxes colloquial rather than display any real grasp of the subjects at hand. They want substance, knowledge, and intellect. And despite his gaffes, his mistakes, (or as Rove put it, his lies!) and his obvious gaps in knowledge, at least Biden showed that he truly does understand international and domestic politics.

Palin insisted that she was not an “East Coast” politician.  She reminded us often that she was an outsider, a maverick, as though we are so foolish as to believe that any outsider who comes to the White House will somehow remain one once they’re there.  Like Bush, right?  The outsider, the governor, the cowboy.
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Ron Paul is a man I very much admire, despite the fact that I often disagree with his positions.  He is nevertheless a principled man, with principled opinions.  His views are extreme, but only insofar as they are classically American.  They hearken back to the early days of this country, and to the basics of our Constitution.  He is an advocate of the freest sort of free-market, a critic of the Federal Reserve, and an isolationist, which is primarily where he and I differ.

His commentary on the current rather terrifying Government bailout of big business is an incredibly insightful look into this crisis.

He discusses the illusion of economic prosperity that Americans have been under.

For years they thought the economy was booming, growth was up, job numbers and productivity were increasing. Yet now we find ourselves in what is shaping up to be one of the most severe economic downturns since the Great Depression.

The reason for this, Paul believes, is exactly the same thing as the Government’s propsed solution.  Government intervention in the free market has artificially inflated prices, made money too easy to come by, and forced banks to lend to previously overly risky buyers.

These governmental measures, combined with the Federal Reserve’s loose monetary policy, led to an unsustainable housing boom. The key measure by which the Fed caused this boom was through the manipulation of interest rates, and the open market operations that accompany this lowering.

The subsequent fall in prices after the burst, Paul believes, will make for both winners and losers.  And on this point I couldn’t agree more:

This lowering of prices brings the economy back into balance, equalizing supply and demand. This economic adjustment means, however that there are some winners — in this case, those who can again find affordable housing without the need for creative mortgage products, and some losers — builders and other sectors connected to real estate that suffer setbacks.

The government doesn’t like this, however, and undertakes measures to keep prices artificially inflated. This was why the Great Depression was as long and drawn out in this country as it was.

Indeed, the Government seems to care far more about the interests of the big businesses who were party to this collapse than to the average American.  I, for one, live in an area where housing has shot up and up and up and has effectively made the town uninhabitable for average working people, teachers, professors, and basically anyone not making at least $100,000 a year.  High housing costs have also driven up rent, which is now almost as unaffordable.  Rich second-homers have moved in, driving up costs even more.

I would like to see the housing costs go down.  Then maybe young families could afford to stay here.  As it stands, it’s pretty much impossible.  Young families are constantly moving, making this town a whole lot less fun and diverse.

Paul also believes that this sort of Government rescue will lead to more risky behavior from the financial institutions, and why wouldn’t it?  If you don’t have consequences for your actions, then where is the imperitave to change?  We certainly (obviously) cannot trust our banking industry to look out for us.

Additionally, the government’s actions encourage moral hazard of the worst sort. Now that the precedent has been set, the likelihood of financial institutions to engage in riskier investment schemes is increased, because they now know that an investment position so overextended as to threaten the stability of the financial system will result in a government bailout and purchase of worthless, illiquid assets.

Using trillions of dollars of taxpayer money to purchase illusory short-term security, the government is actually ensuring even greater instability in the financial system in the long term.

But my struggle comes down to this: Can we successfuly weather a change away from Government interference?  Business seems only too happy to ask Government to step out of their way, while at the same time expecting a hand-out, favorable policies, subsidies, and eventually bail-outs.  In other words, Big Business seems to want to have its cake and eat it, too.  They want the Government out of the way (or in a “support” role) until their scams run amock and then they come running to the Government–and to the taxpayers–to give them their corporate welfare check to the tune of, this time, $700 billion dollars.

Is this a free market?  Well, if free means free money for failed business, then yes.  But it doesn’t if we’re speaking of the sort of free market that depends upon survival of the fittest, wherein businesses that follow bad business practices die off; wherein the winners in a housing crisis born of artificially inflated housing costs are those initial losers forced out of the false market, and the losers are the ones who caused the problem in the first place.

Free markets are based on natural order and  balance.  We need to either embrace them, or cast them away.  We need to either get government out of the interference and corporate welfare game or we need to socialize this country.  We can’t have it both ways.  And free markets don’t necessarily mean no government oversight at all.  Our Government can still have its white-collar police force, making sure that businesses aren’t breaking the law, and that the industries we depend upon are on the up and up.

Paul writes:

It is time this process is put to an end. But the government cannot just sit back idly and let the bust occur. It must actively roll back stifling laws and regulations that allowed the boom to form in the first place.

The government must divorce itself of the albatross of Fannie and Freddie, balance and drastically decrease the size of the federal budget, and reduce onerous regulations on banks and credit unions that lead to structural rigidity in the financial sector.

I agree, but I don’t know how it can be done.  I don’t believe that it will be done.  Will our lawmakers find ways to regulate with intelligence, stripping away old, bad regulations and laws and replacing them with basic rules that actually make sense, or will they simply add new regulations and laws on top of the old ones, creating even more of a behemoth than before?

This is a confusing time in American economics.  A part of me has felt that the free market has been a failure, that corrupt businessmen and corrupt politicians make it an impossible dream–a lovely ideal.  That part of me believes that these businessmen should pay the price, not we tax-payers.  I also feel, when I hear McCain speak of less regulation, that the GOP has been false, that their conservatism has been overly focused on social concerns, and not on the fundamentals of fiscal policy.

They claim they want less regulation, that they are advocates of the free market, but then they propose this enormous corporate welfare project, which sheds a great deal of light on their true nature.  As far as I can tell, the Republicans are only free-market advocates so long as business is good.  They won’t take to the task of letting the sick die so that the healthy can live, and so now we have a business climate that is overcrowded, fragile, and unsustainable.

In forestry terms, it is like an old growth forest that has not been thinned in ages.  All the small fires have been quickly put out.  Before human intervention, there was nobody there to douse these small fires, and so the forest remained naturally thin, and the fires naturally small.  But over the years as fire after fire was suppressed, and foolish legislation prevented healthy logging, the once thin forest thickened, and unsustainably, even dangerously so.  Now when fires sweep through it they are ever larger, ever more deadly.

Now a fire can bring the whole forest down.

UPDATE: Thanks to Mr. Dodds for bringing this latest development to our attention.

Hey, remember Ron Paul? Well, I know you have all been eagerly waiting to hear who he would endorse this election cycle, and he has made his decision: it’s Chuck Baldwin of the Constitution Party! Whoopee! ‘Cause everyone knows Christian theocrats make the best libertarians.

Just goes to show, once and for all, the kind of conservative Ron Paul really is.

Heh.  Which just helps throw me for another loop.

“A government big enough to give you everything you want, is big enough to take away everything you have.”

~Barry Goldwater

Watching the Democratic National Convention this year has been an odd experience for me.  I have enjoyed some of the speeches.  Governor Schweitzer of Montana was fun, and his speech was a good preface to Hillary’s call for unity.  Even I can be roused by some of the calls for a better tomorrow, by the pleas for new technologies, greater investment in science and our education.

I just find that on a logical level–on the plain of Reason rather than Emotion–I could not adopt much of the liberal ideology, even if I wanted to.  For instance, last night at the DNC convention, I’m not sure how many times supposedly intelligent people said something to the effect of “Gas prices have gone up, and oil companies are making record profits, so we need to tax gas companies more (to punish them!)”

This use of windfall profit taxes requires a complete abandonment of reason.

First of all, yes gas prices are up.  This is due to a number of things, but primarily to supply and demand.  Also, yes, the oil companies are making record profits.  This, however, is not due to gas prices being up, but to sales being up.  It is costing the gas companies more to get the oil, and this added cost is passed along to the consumer.  Add to this the fact that as China and India develop their economies, they purchase more oil.  So do other developing nations. So, for oil companies, sales are up.  This means they make more money.  So do the nations which sell the oil in the first place, like Saudi Arabia, Venezuela and the UAE.
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Obama Urges Germany To Remain Committed To The Fight In Afghanistan, But Can’t Explain His Own Lack Of Leadership On The Issue

In His Berlin Speech, Obama Urged Germany To Remain Committed To Winning The War In Afghanistan:

Obama: “This is the moment when we must renew our resolve to rout the terrorists who threaten our security in Afghanistan, and the traffickers who sell drugs on your streets. No one welcomes war. I recognize the enormous difficulties in Afghanistan. But my country and yours have a stake in seeing that NATO’s first mission beyond Europe’s borders is a success. For the people of Afghanistan, and for our shared security, the work must be done. … The Afghan people need our troops and your troops; our support and your support to defeat the Taliban and al Qaeda, to develop their economy, and to help them rebuild their nation. We have too much at stake to turn back now.” (Sen. Barack Obama, Remarks At Victory Column, Berlin, Germany, 7/24/08)

But Obama Has Failed To Lead As Chair Of The Subcommittee With Jurisdiction Over NATO Operations In Afghanistan:

Obama Has Served As Chairman Of The Subcommittee On European Affairs From 2007 - 2008. (U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee Website, www.senate.gov, Accessed 7/24/08)

The Subcommittee On European Affairs Has Jurisdiction Over The Countries Of Europe As Well As NATO Activities. “Jurisdiction: The subcommittee deals with all matters concerning U.S. relations with the countries on the continent of Europe … and with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the European Union and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.” (U.S. Senate Committee On Foreign Relations Website, foreign.senate.gov, Accessed 7/24/08)

• As Chairman Of The Subcommittee On European Affairs, Obama Could Have Held Hearings On The Role Of NATO In Afghanistan. “[A]mbassador John Ritch, who served for two decades as the Senate Foreign Rel ations Committee’s senior staffer on European affairs and East-West relations … [P]oints out that as subcommittee chair, Obama could have examined a wide variety of urgent matters, from the role of NATO in Afghanistan and Iraq to European energy policy and European responses to climate change…” (Joe Conason, “Obama’s European Problem,” Salon.com, www.salon.com, 12/29/07)

This Week, Obama Backtracked On His Excuse For Not Holding Hearings On Afghanistan:

On Tuesday, Obama Claimed That He Never Convened A Hearing On NATO Operations In Afghanistan Because Those Issues Are Dealt With At The Full Committee Level. CBS’ Katie Couric: “If you believe, Senator, Afghanistan is, in fact, the central front in the war on terror, why was this your first trip there? And why didn’t you hold a single hearing as chairman of the subcommittee that oversees the fighting force there?” Obama: “Well, the, actually, the subcommittee that I chair is the European subcommittee. And any issues related to Afghanistan were always dealt with in the full committee, precisely because it’s so important. That’s not a matter that you would deal with in a subcommittee setting.” (Int erview With Sen. Barack Obama, “Obama: Surge Doesn’t Meet Long-Term Goals,” CBS News’ “Evening News,” www.cbsnews.com, 7/22/08)

But In February, Obama Said He Had Not Convened A Hearing On Afghanistan Because He Became The Subcommittee Chair At The Beginning Of His Campaign. NBC’s Tim Russert: “Senator Obama, I want you to respond to not holding oversight for your subcommittee. But also, do you reserve a right as American president to go back into Iraq, once you have withdrawn, with sizable troops in order to quell any kind of insurrection or civil war?” Obama: “Well, first of all, I became chairman of this committee at the beginning of this campaign, at the beginning of 2007. So it is true that we haven’t had oversight hearings on Afghanistan.” (MSNBC Democrat Presidential Candidate Debate, Cleve land, OH, 2/26/08)

By Julian Krasta

The intellectual communities all over the world are waiting in an agony of suspense as to whether John McCain or Barack Obama will be elected the next President of the United States. The suspense is rooted in the hope for granite security and the prospect for lasting peace, which could altogether vanish if, in January 2009, the wrong man raises his hand and takes the oath.

Senator McCain is uncomplicated with respect to the leadership and defense of our country. His fearless patriotism was formed and hardened by an irrefutable fact: The American People’s collective resolve coupled with the actions of our awesome military, in their harshest terms, are proof to our enemies – of the past, present and, yes, future – that we play in a bigger and badder league than they could ever dream.

By stark contrast, Obama requires a daily diet of total compliance and idolization. His word salads are a gross national product of cants and fantasies, and is devoted to injecting chaos into the jellied minds of the crowds of people (here and in countries such as Syria) that play into his fantasies. He has successfully accomplished this because his is a cocktail personality, meaning: He senses other people’s vulnerabilities, he reads their personalities, and performs accordingly. It is the classic sign of a sociopath.

Liberals argue that Senator McCain might be too old, too hotheaded, and too off the mark (and some frustrated Republicans and core conservatives chime in with the fear that he is too liberal-minded). In some respects they are all correct – in some respects. There are even those who poke fun at his banal tone. Again, some of their levity is not entirely unjustified. My view of the Senator, which is shared by many, many other conservative advocates, is quite the opposite. To quote an old saying: “Still water runs deep.”

Moreover, John McCain has served our country faithfully as a Navy fighter pilot (a stone-cold truth not even (Ret.) Gen. Wesley Clark can deny or devalue (notwithstanding Clark’s cheap shots to discredit McCain’s leadership qualifications)). He endured horrible physical pain during his imprisonment in Viet Nam. Primarily, he is lock, stock and barrel more transparent than the Democrats’ candidate claims to be because, good, bad or indifferent, Senator McCain has no hidden agendas. Neither does he feign being anything other that what we see.

Barack has an impressive record of political ineptitude: He and his party strive to expand policies such as welfare (to ensure dependence on the government dole by those below the poverty line in order to fortify their votes). Obama opposes privatizing Social Security, which is supported by Senator McCain – a proposition that would be advantageous to taxpayers in that we would be able to invest and manage our benefits.

Obama opposes school vouchers (one means to the end of our children being short-changed in their education). He used the words “ugly and racist” to depict opponents of the 2007 comprehensive illegal immigration bill, yet it is commonplace (and widely accepted by his supporters and conveniently overlooked by the media) when he repeatedly brings into the fray the fact he is black. This comes from the chosen one of the party that went up against the 13^th, 14^th and 15^th Amendments to the Constitution (respectively: abolishing slavery, granting citizenship rights to newly-freed slaves, guaranteeing the right to vote for blacks – Thank you, Larry Elder).

Senator McCain has always been a proponent of nuclear power, and he is calling for no less than 45 nuclear power plants to be built by the year 2030. Barack has said that this might be worth investigating – until he decides to cast his vote in opposition.

Obama possesses a superego and is fully one-dimentional. He has (with the wholesale aid of the liberal mainstream media) caused his supporters, as well as al Qaida and the militant Palestinian group Hamas, to believe that there’s a wizard behind his curtain when, in fact, there is only a brick wall.

Islamist jihadists are determined to dominate this planet, by whatever force necessary, and become our supreme rulers. From the standpoint of their blood-lust adventurism, the very future of the freedoms of the human race has become the issue.

John McCain understands this. Without equivocation, but in peremptory tones, he has said plainly that he is as equally determined to use whatever force is necessary to prevent terrorists from gaining the upper hand and, as President, would not imprudently withdraw our troops from the hot zones.

Obama, on the other hand, is hedonistic with his [politically motivated] litany of “I will end the war” and begin bringing our troops home if he becomes president. This move comes under the heading “Miscalculation and Maladroitness.” It would be as foolish as an impatient homeowner ordering the tent removed from his house before the poisoning process can fully and effectively destroy a vermin infestation “…because the tent is an eyesore.”

This smacks of arrogance and audacity. His myopic presumptions equate to reckless endangerment: gambling with our lives here at home as well as the country we call home to satisfy his aspirations – that is (using another analogy), no less irresponsible as when a parent or guardian leaves a baby or a pet locked in a hot car to go shopping.

Moreover, Obama’s ambition has blinded him to the fact that withdrawing our troops, reducing military spending, and suspending or cancelling defense programs would not only weaken the security of our homeland it would sharply increase domestic unemployment in all related sectors of private, public, and government businesses.

Furthermore, if we lose the strength in numbers of trained military personnel now – or a year or two from now – and our country is attacked again, three to four months would need to pass before capable replacement ground, sea, and air combat troops could be expected to reach required potency and supplant those who had been killed and injured. In that time, we could go beyond the crisis level and face unmitigated disaster because of a lack of trained manpower.

Our enemies could exploit this perceived weakness. They might attack, possibly with lethal chemical weapons, and destroy (but not be limited to) municipal and military communications centers and installations, commercial and military airfield complexes, fire, police and energy stations, water and food supplies, roads and railways, all personnel therein, and every civilian within specific radii of those areas.

John McCain is aware of the foregoing, because he is a long-horn, scarred, intemperate and veteran bull. Faith should be invested in him, in that he would exercise every power vested in him as President to go the distance and cut out the fanatic canker that threatens humanity and prevent such attacks.

Obama is a neophyte. His daydreaming has left him deficient of legislative and leadership experience. With neither to his credit, he wouldn’t be able to stop an asthma attack.

It would therefore come as no surprise to the GOP, conservatives or rational Democrats if, as president, he one day swings open the White House doors, flashes a smile at the beast looming above him (whose entrée into our land he helped engineer), and says:

“What a nice horsey – of course I’ll sign for it.”

Can Obama win the reddest of Red States, Utah? In this land of conservative Mormon voters, it seems quite unlikely. Still, it looks like the candidate is sending volunteers to woo these unlikely voters…

This on top of the fact that even some Democrats feel that they’re too conservative for Mr. Obama. (more…)

The floodgates of the media and blogosphere are about to erupt with a torrent of articles examining exactly why Sen. Hillary Clinton lost the Democratic Party’s nomination to Sen. Barack Obama when a year ago her coronation appeared to be the more likely outcome. All sorts of angles will be covered and there can be little doubt that a variety of things contributed to her narrow defeat. (more…)

By Julian Krasta

Now that the Democrats have, at long last, selected their nominee, “We” need to remind ourselves of long-standing facts concerning those persons we elected to public office. More importantly, the presidential candidates need to hear from us.

The United States is hovering closer to the thin edge of the wedge, because too large a percentage of the men and women we voted to represent our best interests – and those who will yet finagle to win our votes – are preoccupied in grudge matches for supremacy within their club quarters.

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Reverend Jeremiah Wright forced Barack Obama into this position. Becoming a father figure to Obama (in the absence of Obama’s own father), Jeremiah Wright decided to do a despicable thing. Putting a young man that considered him a father figure into a difficult position by making comments detrimental to him, that young man gave his father figure the benefit of the doubt. After being cut that slack from Obama, Jeremiah Wright then proceeded to take that slack and attempt to hang Barack Obama with it for his own selfish reasons.

Jeremiah Wright is a proud man, apparently too proud to realize that everyone in his church does not have to agree with everything that he preaches from the pulpit. Indeed, sources that know Wright have made the point that Barack Obama’s speech which did not personally distance Obama from Wright, saying he could not divorce himself from Wright anymore than he could from his own grandmother, started the spat. Wright took this separation of Obama from his radical ideas as a personal insult and seems to have planned three straight speaking engagements in which that he could do the most damage to Barack Obama while doing the most for himself. As he was savaging Barack Obama, saying that Obama did not believe what he claimed to in his speeches and essentially calling Obama a liar. Real friends, real mentors and real pastors do not do such things to the members of their flock. They don’t attempt to embarrass them in public.

While Wright betrayed no emotion as he excoriated Obama on the national stage, Obama showed both sadness and anger that their relationship had to be this way. Sadly, I believe that Pastor Jeremiah Wright’s only prerogative is to transfer the good luck he had to have as one of his congregates the first legitimate black presidential candidate into a national audience for his pet sermons, his worst accusations about the government and the white race along with a healthy dose of the root of all evil: the love of money. Pastor Wright has mentioned more than a few times that he will have a book coming out later this year that will reveal his theological/racial ramblings in greater depth than his speeches have. One does have to credit Wright with something: at least he is upfront about his naked ambition by pushing his book in the middle of his speeches.

Rev. Jeremiah Wright represents, to me, what is wrong with this country. He is like the parent that takes their child to Hollywood with $$$ in their eyes and tries to cash in, not concerned with the welfare of the child in the process. Wright became close to a young man without a father, brought him into the Christian faith and then, when the opportunity arose, tried to sacrifice Obama’s career to boost his own with no regard for Obama’s wellbeing. Indeed, once Obama publicly caused any problems with Rev. Wright promoting himself, he declared war on Obama himself. Jeremiah Wright is not a man of God… he is a man of Jeremiah Wright. He is our for himself and himself alone. Wright is a predator, plain and simple, no better than any other man and unfit to return to the pulpit because of his attempted destruction of Obama’s candidacy which surely represents the principles of Christ more than Wright does by pursuing reconciliation among the races and a moving forward of this people as American, not -Americans. For that reason Barack Obama has cut his ties with Wright and that is why it is voters should cease listening to Wright.

~read more from Scott Isaacs on Newsvine.

~by Lisaed

I find myself wondering lately what it must be like to be one of those all powerful “persuadable” voters. I’m charming. I’m conservative. I’m not persuadable. While I may not be an ardent supporter of John McCain I am an ardent supporter of all those wanting to keep Barack Obama out of the White House. In other words, I’m not as passionate about putting a republican in the White House this time round as I am about keeping the likely democratic nominee out.

It’s no surprise that I say to you I was never one of those republicans who were o.k. with the prospect of a President Obama. I was never going to be one of those Obamicans Barack likes to think will flock to him come November. In short, I never liked Barack Obama. I didn’t like him before we heard the “God Damn America” rantings from the Reverend Wright. I didn’t like him before his elitist comments about small town Americans. But what about those persuadable voters? Are they like me at all? Do they find they like Barack Obama less and less the more they learn about this this relatively unknown candidate for President? I hope so because one thing on which we can all agree is it’s those persuadable voters - those who have not yet made up their minds - some of them democrats, some of them republicans, most of them independents who will determine the next leader of the free world.

I’d like to be inside the mind of a persuadable voter. Do they ever cringe like I do when they watch Barack Obama? Going back about eight long weeks ago as I watched what was still the “walk on water” pre-Reverend Wright version of Barack Obama speaking to emotionally charged enormous crowds complete with crying and fainting women he didn’t inspire within me hope. No it was something much different that I felt. I felt angry. I was angry that democratic primary voters were so enamored with this guy whose gift for oratory blinded them to the fact they were all too willing to place a just barely U.S. Senator basically a back bencher from the Illinois State Senate in the White House. The more cool the more calm the more collected Barack Obama was in front of these crowds of thousands the more uncomfortable I became watching this man preach from his pulpit to the masses. The Obama Campaign must have sensed my discomfort cause by Texas they were going for smaller venues where they could limit crowd sizes to just a couple thousand.

Did persuadable voters laugh (not with him but at him) like I did when I heard that score? A 37.….a 37? Real men can bowl and if they can’t they fake it. Even I can shoot better than a 37 and I count as one of my most embarrassing moments an incident in a bowling alley circa 1988. Did persuadable voters think Obama looked silly dancing alongside Ellen Degeneres on her show? So much for stereotypes. The point of all this is Obama is far less comfortable when forced to step down from his pulpit and walk amongst the little people. His body language alone confirms this as it did on his recent appearance on “The View” where he sat fidgeting on the couch like a school child anxious for recess. If Obama can’t sit still next to Joy Behar what will he do when sitting alongside Ahmadinejad in one of those without conditions meetings he wants to have with leaders of rogue nations?

Were persuadable voters shocked and appalled last Friday as I was when I heard those shameful comments Barack Obama made about small town Americans?

“But the truth is, is that, our challenge is to get people persuaded that we can make progress when there’s not evidence of that in their daily lives. You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. So it’s not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”

Were persuadable voters disappointed with the great orator who instead of apologizing tried to explain away his ill conceived remarks by blaming the government for the bitterness he believes small town Americans feel…..the bitterness Obama believes is the impetus behind their faith in God and their support for second amendment rights as well as their disdain for things like illegal immigration. Did those persuadable voters buy his promise that a vote for him would help alleviate that bitterness because this new messiah could solve all their problems with big government?

“”And so they pray and they count on each other and they count on their families. You know this in your own lives, and what we need is a government that is actually paying attention. Government that is fighting for working people day in and day out making sure that we are trying to allow them to live out the American dream.”

I know I’m a proud republican who believes strongly in the politics of personal responsibility, but were persuadable voters swallowing Obama’s kool-aid that it is from the hand of the government and the government alone that Americans can live the American dream? My goodness his remarks smacked of socialism.

Lastly I wonder do persuadable voters believe that Barack Obama shares their values? I’m not so sure because since the Reverend Wright scandal I’ve seen Obama views the world too often through the lens of color - he sees the grievances of black people and the bitterness of lower class white people. And so I’m left to wonder if his untraditional life story allows him to see and even understand the shared values of all Americans. After I heard his Philadelphia speech on race I looked at my husband and said I think I know now what it must have felt like to live in 1964 America. That speech did not inspire within me hope but once again anger because I believed in that speech Obama focused too much on where this country still has work to do and not enough on the very real progress that has indeed been made in race relations in America.

Obama likes to tell us about the audacity of hope and yet so often when I listen to him I see him pointing to our shortcomings, to our anger, to our bitterness, to our despair. Obama presents himself as the change candidate who inspires hope among the masses but more and more lately I’m feeling that Obama’s politics of hope are nothing but a farce because what Obama is truly preaching is nothing short of the politics of a liberal elitist with socialist tendencies. Did he think we wouldn’t catch on because he is black? We’re an equal opportunity country and I guess the lesson learned is that black people in America can aspire to be snobby liberals too and I wonder now if armed with this new knowledge about Barack Obama if persuadable voters are really so persuadable after all.

You don’t have to do much virtual thumbing of Alternet’s many uber-liberal articles to realize that the site was designed by the far Left, for the far Left, and as a vehicle by which to spread and propagate far Left ideology to the masses.

Or at least to the far Left masses.

Here’s a little gem about how the Pentagon is holding American soldiers as “prisoners of war” by extending their deployments in Iraq.

Oh yes, that’s the definition of POW for sure.

This piece is a little less wacky, but no less insulting or inane:

American policymakers, partly through ideological blindness and preening exaggeration of American power, partly through blindness brought about by political opportunism, made decisions that led to a defeat only their own actions — that only American power itself — could have brought about.

Not to complain about the actual writing, but I have a tough time reading this. It’s just written poorly. Aside from that, it offers up very little in the way of actual reasoning but rather lambastes America and the administration as being ideologically blind and opportunistic–favorite liberal terms phrased slightly different. Yes, it’s true, we are responsible for the terrorism against us. It has nothing to do with the terrorists and murderers. “American power itself” has brought this hellfire down upon us….

Here, the Liberal Ice Queen herself, Arianna Huffington of the dreaded Huffington Post, makes a huge deal out of McCain and his Iran/Al Qaeda link statement. Somebody should let her know that this has already been beaten to death in the media and online. I’m as tired of it as I am of hearing about Obama’s church.

The best part of this article is the end, a footnote actually, in which Ms. Huffington admits:

* This sentence originally read “…at a stop in Jordan last week, McCain made the ludicrous claim that Al Qaeda insurgents were being trained in Syria.” Thanks to the Weekly Standard’s Michael Goldfarb for pointing out my “senior moment,” which led to a copy editing lapse. McCain did mention Syria, but it was his repeated claims about Iran that were ludicrous.

Well, at least she can admit to misspeaking. Of course, since her entire piece was in regards to misspeaking, this is a pretty huge mistake. Kind of kills her point, if you ask me…though for those Alternet groupies, Ms Huffington’s mistake is a “senior moment” while McCain’s is a disaster worthy of weeks of articles, attacks, and commentary. To err is human. Huffington, from her cozy desk, can hardly claim that she is under the same stress or pressure as McCain. And there is still, by the way, no proof that Iran isn’t aiding al Qaeda, even if that aid comes in the form of non-intervention only.

Well, as the idiom goes, the bigger they come, the harder they fall. This is especially true when the pious or vigilante type turns out to be a hypocrite. Elliot Spitzer, the caped crusader of White Collar Crime, has fallen hard, and oh-so low.

Now, Mr. Spitzer, it is true, was not famed for busting prostitution rings. If that had been his calling card, this fiasco would be even juicier and more pathetic. However, the former New York Attorney General, and now ex-Governor did bill himself as the man who would clean up Wall Street, and by extension New York.

Instead, at every turn Elliot Spitzer has met with controversy and scandal. From his early use of police to tarnish rival Joseph Bruno, to the now infamous sex scandal, Spitzer has done little more as Governor than prove that Hubris is a terrible thing indeed, when mixed with Power and Immorality.

Now, Lieutenant Governor David Paterson will assume the Governorship, becoming New York’s first black Governor–and sadly only the third black Governor ever in the United States.

Paterson is generally well-liked. He is described as affable and down to earth–a far cry from the arrogant, self-righteous temperament of Governor Spitzer.

Perhaps it will be a welcome change. Hopefully, however, this disgrace will give the New York Democratic Party the damaging blow it deserves. Notice how little controversy surrounded the term of Mr. Pataki–and Pataki served 11 years as New York’s Governor, whereas Spitzer has served less than two!

I say, farewell and good riddance Mr. Spitzer! You evangelized yourself, and prosecuted Americans and businessmen not to serve justice, but to serve your own purposes. You took the peoples’ vote, their mandate, and turned it back on them with a callousness and pride rarely found in American politics–and this is a strong statement!

You are not the first politician to fall prey to your lust or your greed or your elitist sense of entitlement, but you are one of the most disappointing. I’m glad to see you go, and I think most of America is united for this one brief moment in breathing a collective sigh of relief as you pass on into the dusty halls of memory.

I only hope that Mr. Paterson does a better job at being a citizen. Regardless of the Democrats’ inability to rekindle the New York economy, it would be nice to see them at least uphold the most basic tenets of human decency.

With Elliot Spitzer out of office, this should be a far easier task.

cross-posted at The Daily Elephant