Is John McCain even running for President at this point? Peeking about recent campaign coverage, it would be easy to forget that he is at the top of his party’s ticket, and not his folksy sidekick.

Unfortunately for McCain, his candidacy has failed on two fronts: not only has it furthered a split in the Republican Party between its socially conservative rightwing base and its center, but McCain has also failed to energize the moderates, independents, and ‘mavericks’ he needed to win what everyone predicted to be a close election. This failure is likely to expose a rift in the Republican Party that has been a long time coming.
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Plumber Joe and Barack Obama: The Full Video

This is an excellent video showing the full conversation between “Joe the Plumber” and Barack Obama.  Obama is clearly off script here, because he lets it slip that his tax plan is really to “spread the wealth around” (translation: income redistribution).

Close to 40% of Americans pay no income tax!  So how can someone who pays nothing, get a tax cut?  Answer: They can’t!  It’s really pretty simple.  If you don’t pay taxes, you can’t get a tax cut!

The Wall Street Journal published a fine article this week explaining how Barack Obama plans to give a “tax cut” to 95% of Americans.  It has to do with redefining what a “tax cut” is.  A Barack Obama “tax cut” to someone who doesn’t pay any taxes turns out to be a check from the government.  Call it what you want….welfare, income redistribution, etcetera….but it’s no tax cut.

When you take money from one group and give it to another, it’s called income redistribution and it isn’t American.  Where is the federal government given power to redistribute income?  How do they get to determine how much each person is entitled to?  Why does Barack Obama get to decide what is enough? “$250,000 a year is enough for you, so I’m going to take it from you and give it to someone else.”  I guess the American dream only goes up to $250,000 a year now.

Barack Obama plans to redistribute income and wealth in this country via the tax code and has no business becoming our next president.

Here is an area that John McCain can put his money where his mouth is.  He was one of a number of Republican Senators who called for reform of Government Sponsored Enterprises (GSEs), such as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, back in May of 2006.  Notice that the letter is calling for reform and regulatory oversight of these agencies.

The failure of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is a Democrat scandal. Here is a brief time line of the developments over the years:

1977:  Pres. Jimmy Carter signs the Community Reinvestment Act into Law.  The law pressured financial institutions to extend home loans to those who would otherwise not qualify.   The Premise:  Home ownership would improve poor and crime-ridden communities and neighborhoods in terms of crime, investment, jobs, etc.   Despite this act, statistics show that it did not help.

1992:  Republican representative Jim Leach (IO) warned of the danger that Fannie and Freddie were changing from being agencies of the public at large to money machines for the principals and the stockholding few.

1993:  Clinton extensively rewrote Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac’s rules turning the quasi-private mortgage-funding firms into semi-nationalized monopolies dispensing cash and loans to large Democratic voting blocks and handing favors, jobs and contributions to political allies.  This potent mix led inevitably to corruption and now the collapse of Freddie and Fannie.

1994:  Despite warnings, Clinton unveiled his National Home-Ownership Strategy which broadened the CRA in ways congress never intended.

1995:  Congress, about to change from a Democrat majority to Republican, Clinton orders Robert Rubin’s Treasury Dept to rewrite the rules.  Robt. Rubin’s Treasury reworked rules, forcing banks to satisfy quotas for sub-prime and minority loans to get a satisfactory CRA rating.  The rating was key to expansion or mergers for banks.  Loans began to be made on the basis of race and little else.

1997 - 1999:  Clinton, bypassing Republicans, enlisted Andrew Cuomo, then Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, allowing Freddie and Fannie to get into the sub-prime market in a big way.  Led by Rep. Barney Frank and Sen. Chris Dodd, congress doubled down on the risk by easing capital limits and allowing them to hold just 2.5% of capital to back their investments vs. 10% for banks.  Since they could borrow at lower rates than banks their enterprises boomed.

With incentives in place, banks poured billions in loans into poor communities requiring no money down and no verification of income.   Worse still was the cronyism:  Fannie and Freddie became home to out-of work-politicians, mostly Clinton Democrats.  384 politicians got big campaign donations from Fannie and Freddie.  Over $200 million had been spent on lobbying and political activities.  During the 1990’s Fannie and Freddie enjoyed a subsidy of as much as $182 Billion, most of it going to principals and shareholders, not poor borrowers as claimed.

Did it work?  Minorities made up 49% of the 12.5 million new homeowners but many of those loans have gone bad and the minority home ownership rates are shrinking fast.

1999: New Treasury Secretary, Lawrence Summers, became alarmed at Fannie and Freddie’s excesses.  Congress held hearings the ensuing year but nothing was done because Fannie and Freddie had donated millions to key congressmen and radical groups, ensuring no meaningful changes would take place.  “We manage our political risk with the same intensity that we manage our credit and interest rate risks,” Fannie CEO Franklin Raines, a former Clinton official and current Barack Obama adviser (according to the Washington Post), bragged to investors in 1999.

2000:   Secretary Summers sent Undersecretary Gary Gensler to Congress seeking an end to the “special status”.  Democrats raised a ruckus as did Fannie and Freddie, headed by politically connected CEO’s who knew how to reward and punish.  “We think that the statements evidence a contempt for the nation’s housing and mortgage markets” Freddie spokesperson Sharon McHale said.  It was the last chance during the Clinton era for reform.

2001:   Republicans try repeatedly to bring fiscal sanity to Fannie and Freddie but Democrats blocked any attempt at reform; especially Rep. Barney Frank and Sen.Chris Dodd who now run key banking committees and were huge beneficiaries of campaign contributions from the mortgage giants.

2003:  Bush proposes what the NY Times called “the most significant regulatory overhaul in the housing finance industry since the savings and loan crisis a decade ago”.  Even after discovering a scheme by Fannie and Freddie to overstate earnings by $10.6 billion to boost their bonuses, the Democrats killed reform.

2005:  Then Fed chairman Alan Greenspan warns Congress:  “We are placing the total financial system at substantial risk”.  Sen. McCain, with two others, sponsored a Fannie/Freddie reform bill and said, “If congress does not act, American taxpayers will continue to be exposed to the enormous risk that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac pose to the housing market, the overall financial system and the economy as a whole”.  Sen. Harry Reid accused the GOP of trying to “cripple the ability of Fannie and Freddie to carry out their mission of expanding home ownership”  The bill went nowhere.

2006: Republican Senators, including John McCain, call for Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac reform yet again in the above letter from May 2006.

2007:  By now Fannie and Freddie own or guarantee over HALF of the $12 trillion US mortgage market.  The mortgage giants, whose executive suites were top-heavy with former Democratic officials, had been working with Wall St. to repackage the bad loans and sell them to investors.  As the housing market fell in ‘07, subprime mortgage portfolios suffered major losses.  The crisis was on,  though it was 15 years in the making.

2008:  McCain has repeatedly called for reforming the behemoths, Bush urged reform 17 times.  Still the media have repeated Democrats’ talking points about this being a “Republican” disaster.  A few Republicans are complicit but Fannie and Freddie were created by Democrats, regulated by Democrats, largely run by Democrats and protected by Democrats.

A video from the hearings.

Fannie and Freddie: The real story

Another fairly well done video summarizing the crisis from beginning to end.

The Housing Crisis: Affirmative Action Run Amuck

The fact that the Democrats and their willing accomplices in the media are attempting to hang this stinking albatross around the necks of Republicans is just dishonest.  Could 2008 be the year known as the “death of the objective media?”

Am I the only person that sees a psychological connection between this obviously insane man ordering the Republican nominee for President to “Sit down, I’m not finished”

Angry McCain Supporter in Waukesha, WI

And this empty-eyed young mother beaming as her child sings of things the child cannot possibly understand?

Children Sing for Obama

This is a bit old, as far as news goes, but I thought it was still relevant:

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Glass ceilings notwithstanding, Gov. Sarah Palin is being accepted by America and other progressive nations as the new high-spirited Republican melody maker.  Her in-tune communications, slowly but surely, are drowning out Obama’s bizarre ventriloquism, Joe Biden’s howlers (although I now must thank Sen. Biden for his public criticism of Obama), and the mainstream media’s pops and pings of their low-register gothic operas.

I admit I knew nothing about the lady, so when Sen. John McCain torpedoed the long-awaiting GOP with his announcement that he’d chosen Mrs. Palin as his running mate, I blurted (literally), “Who? But-but… what about Romney? Where’s Pawlenty?”

Once the conservative world had caught its breath, we scrambled like ants with road rage to bring ourselves up to speed and be informed about her as much as possible.  What we learned was surprisingly uplifting, and encouraging.  But encouraging and uplifting would not be enough for wary and weary Republicans.  Our faith – our votes for John McCain – quite suddenly depended enormously on Mrs. Palin’s presentation of herself at the Republican convention, her message and delivery.

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Good lord, McCain, it would appear, is suspending his campaign, and canceling the Friday debate:

It has become clear that no consensus has developed to support the Administration’s proposal.  I do not believe that the plan on the table will pass as it currently stands, and we are running out of time.

Tomorrow morning, I will suspend my campaign and return to Washington after speaking at the Clinton Global Initiative.  I have spoken to Senator Obama and informed him of my decision and have asked him to join me.

I am calling on the President to convene a meeting with the leadership from both houses of Congress, including Senator Obama and myself.  It is time for both parties to come together to solve this problem.

We must meet as Americans, not as Democrats or Republicans, and we must meet until this crisis is resolved.  I am directing my campaign to work with the Obama campaign and the commission on presidential debates to delay Friday night’s debate until we have taken action to address this crisis.

I think this is either utterly absurd, or a sign that the McCain camp is doing badly.  I’d like to see this as an actual call for bi-partisanship, but I just don’t think so.

Writes Michael Crowley:

A few insta-reactions:

–Having thrown a Hail Mary with the Sarah Palin pick and feeling he scored a touchdown (although that’s certainly debatable), he may have concluded that risk-taking works for him. He’s always known the fundamentals of the race were against him and would require some out-of-the-box thinking.

–He was losing control of the campaign narrative. The Palin surge/convention bounce is nearly kaput. Obama seems to be tied or ahead in Virginia and Florida is back in play. Today’s WashPost poll showed McCain nine points down and distrusted on the economy. The media’s interest this week is in Rick Davis’s lobbying and Sarah Palin’s comical photo-ops. Things could hardly get much worse.

–Steve Schmidt’s philosophy seems to be that it’s always better to be on the offensive, and this certainly counts as that. As Ben Smith puts it, Obama’s choice–come to DC on McCain’s terms or dismiss this as a stunt?–”is not an easy or obvious one.”

Andrew Sullivan asks if the campaign is collapsing.

MSNBC reports that:

According to the source, McCain wants to create a “political free zone” until a deal is reached on legislation for a $700 billion bailout of the financial industry.

What to think, what to think.  It feels gimmicky, though I understand the real concern here of financial collapse…And now what will Obama do?  This puts him in a tricky position.  I was looking forward to the debate, I must admit, and while I know that we have to fix this financial crisis, not debating it seems like a mistake, or a dodge from McCain.

In my continued effort to be as non-partisan as possible, I would like to highlight what I see as one of the major flaws in McCain’s policies toward health care.

Basically McCain advocates taxing employer contributions to health insurance, which would, in effect, make it a whole lot less likely for employers to even offer health care in the first place.  Seeing as how we are most of us covered by employer health care, I find this idea just utterly wrong-headed.  There would have to be a major shift in insurance costs and policies for us to be able to buy it ourselves on the rather crappy allowance McCain suggests of $2500 per individual and $5000 per family.  I know it’s more expensive than that.

I’m insured through my company, so this scares me immensely.  Losing my insurance and having to find private insurance is simply not economically viable for me and my family.

The Washington Post states that:

Because McCain would create a new tax break and not completely get rid of the existing tax breaks, his plan would cost $1.3 trillion over 10 years, according to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center. The center predicts it would only cover about 5 million new people with insurance at its peak.

By contrast, the center predicts Obama’s plan would cost $1.6 trillion over 10 years but eventually get insurance to an additional 34 million people.

So there’s one more bad idea from the McCain camp.  If I had a dollar for every bad idea from both campaigns then I could afford my own health care.

Read my condemnation of the Gawker slime machine at Newsvine. They should never have published Sarah Palin’s hacked emails.  This goes too far.

I have to say, as of late I’ve been cooling to McCain, and even more so to Palin.  It has nothing to do with the smear-machine that so unabashedly has smashed Palin into a pulp.  My cooling to her is that the libertarian Alaskan I thought she was, turns out to be more of the social conservative that I am so avidly sure is sabatoging the conservative movement.  I’m not really thrilled about a President who even marginally supports creationism.  I’m certainly not thrilled about the prospect of over-turning Roe v Wade and letting abortion back into the dangerous black market.

My cooling to McCain is more of a personal issue.  I loved the 2000 McCain.  He was far better than Al Gore or George Bush, or, for that matter, the 2008 McCain.  He was honest, outspoken.  He called out the hypocricy of the religious right.  After the election he maintained his integrity.  He was fiscally sound, in that he believed we couldn’t cut taxes and go to war.  He understood the need for sacrfice, for “country first” and causes greater then ourselves.

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Craig Ferguson says it quite well, actually, on the Late Late Show (and not just because everything is funnier with a Scottish accent, though it is…)

His cracks about Biden are the best…”that other guy” heh.

Actually, McCain’s camp did vet Palin very thoroughly. The notion they didn’t is a myth.

~by Shawn Gordon

It’s been interesting to hear and read the Left talk about Palin. They’ve painted an inaccurate picture of her, and ironically used the same ‘dirty smear’ tactics that the Left often condemns the Right of allegedly using.

Let’s look at a few:

PALIN OPPOSES USE OF BIRTH CONTROL PILLS AND CONDOMS, EVEN AMONG MARRIED COUPLES & SARAH PALIN OPPOSES SEX EDUCATION, ONLY ENDORSES ABSTINENCE

FALSE ON BOTH COUNTS

I’ve not found a single piece of evidence to support the claims, but it does sound rather condemning. At no point has Palin voted to teach only Abstinence nor has she made remarks on record (or off that I can find) about how she opposes birth control..

According to TIME / CNN, Palin:

…is Christian and pro-life, but also a supporter of birth control: she’s a member of Feminists For Life (FFL), an anti-abortion, pro-contraception organization.

I will say that for such a big negative deal being made about how Palin had allegedly wanted to only teach kids to abstain from sex, Biden voted YES to put 75 MILLION dollars in just that!. That’s a lot of money in teaching abstinence where compared to Palin not voting to put ANY money into it as far as I can tell. This sort of turns the argument on its head.

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So McCain surprised the lot of us when he picked Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate Friday, and his decision and Palin’s background have been the talk of the town since. I am still trying to wrap my head around what this means for McCain and my support for his campaign. Coming from the left, I will give you a rundown of what I like about her, and what I don’t, and weigh whether I can still give my support to the McCain ticket.
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Alaskan Governor, Sarah Palin, has been confirmed as McCain VP

I have to say, I feel a bit smug at the moment.  I published my endorsement of Palin a couple weeks ago, and published Jack Kelly’s arguments for Palin’s nomination as well.  I feel, you know, like the underdog.  Nobody saw this coming–not even me!  But I said it was the right choice, and I guess McCain agreed….

I guess having a woman on the ticket, and one as charismatic and likeable as Palin, who also has executive experience and huge popularity ratings, just wasn’t that bad of an idea afterall.

Now the Republican ticket is “historical” as well.  Now the GOP might break that high, high glass ceiling.  How’s them apples?

OFFICIAL MCCAIN PRESS RELEASE

ARLINGTON, VA – U.S. Senator John McCain today announced that he has selected Alaska Governor Sarah Palin to be his running mate and to serve as his vice president.

Governor Palin is a tough executive who has demonstrated during her time in office that she is ready to be president. She has brought Republicans and Democrats together within her Administration and has a record of delivering on the change and reform that we need in Washington.

Governor Palin has challenged the influence of the big oil companies while fighting for the development of new energy resources. She leads a state that matters to every one of us – Alaska has significant energy resources and she has been a leader in the fight to make America energy independent.

In Alaska, Governor Palin challenged a corrupt system and passed a landmark ethics reform bill. She has actually used her veto and cut budgetary spending. She put a stop to the “bridge to nowhere” that would have cost taxpayers $400 million dollars.

As the head of Alaska’s National Guard and as the mother of a soldier herself, Governor Palin understands what it takes to lead our nation and she understands the importance of supporting our troops.

Governor Palin has the record of reform and bipartisanship that others can only speak of. Her experience in shaking up the status quo is exactly what is needed in Washington today.

Could it be?

From Powerline:

But, regardless of what happens in November, the sustained pouting of Clinton’s supporters deserves comment. Contrast their attitude towards Obama with the attitude of conservatives towards McCain. Unlike Clinton’s core supporters, many conservatives actually have important substantive disagreements with their party’s nominee (campaign finance reform, the Gang of 14, interrogation of terrorists, etc). And many conservatives reiterated these disagreements after McCain became the presumptive nominee. Within a few weeks, though, the venting subsided. Most conservatives decided to support McCain. Those who couldn’t moved on (in some cases to Robert Barr); they did not continue to whine or otherwise seek attention.

To be sure, Clinton came very close to being nominated, and her supporters believe that she lost out due to quirks in the rules. This was not the case on the Republican side, although McCain did benefit from open primaries and (above all) the absence of a rival the right, collectively, could love. But Clinton lost fair and square, and it’s been almost three months since she was forced to admit defeat. Yet the pouting persists.

The partisan in me is delighted. As a political/cultural phenomenon, though, it’s somewhat disconcerting to witness such childish behavior on this large a scale.

This echoed my sentiments so exactly–how is it that Conservatives, so many of whom are so anti-McCain, have managed to back him solidly, while these Clinon Liberals have dug their heels in against Obama?  I can’t figure this one out…

“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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A rare moment of peace in an increasingly bitter campaign.

I have to admit, I’m growing weary of this Presidential campaign.  I’m tired of hearing Obama’s middle name uttered like a condemnation; I’m tired of hearing McCain’s name altered to describe various mental states.  I don’t want to hear about the former POW’s lack of courage, or his party days.  Nor do I want to know about Obama’s association with various fringe political figures, pseudo-terrorists, or hear implications of his supposed lack of patriotism.

I just don’t want to walk into 2009 befuddled by smears of our incoming President, haunted by rumors and allegations, forced to run to one side of a bitter fence or another.  I don’t want to be part of one slice of a divided America.

Now, don’t get me wrong–America is and always will be divided based on huge, irreconcilable political differences.  The issues at stake range from the amount of government we want intervening on our behalf to reproductive rights to the nature of our foreign policy.

An Independent’s Perspective

I find myself in the uncomfortable position of not agreeing with either candidate very much.  On social issues I tend to be very liberal, very worried of the encroachment of the State on our personal liberties–especially when the State becomes too heavily influenced by the religious right.  On the other hand, I find the foreign policy stance of the Left utterly confusing.  To leave Iraq now, I believe, would be a disaster, and a human tragedy.

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I say good for John McCain to criticize what can only be described as political opportunism by Sen. Obama. At the Saddleback forum, Obama said his decision to oppose the War in Iraq was his most difficult–even though he wasn’t even in the Senate at the time, and by the time he was running for the Senate, he was able to gain a great deal of popularity opposing what was already an unpopular war.

“With less than three months to go before the election, a lot of people are still trying to square Sen. Obama’s varying positions on the surge in Iraq. First, he opposed the surge and confidently predicted that it would fail. Then he tried to prevent funding for the troops who carried out the surge,” McCain said.

“Not content to merely predict failure in Iraq, my opponent tried to legislate failure.”

McCain was speaking to veterans, and was appearing confident after his stellar performance at Saddleback with Rev. Rick Warren.

I’m endorsing Sarah Palin for McCain’s VP choice.  90% approval rating in her home state of Alaska makes her the most popular Governor in the United States.  She’s young, but not too young, and smart.  And pretty solidly conservative.

E.D.

The Daily Kos is publishing more not-newsworthy crap about military donors to the candidates campaigns.

If you add up all the pro-withdrawal candidates, you see the disparity getting huger:

Obama + Clinton + Paul + DNC: $751,870 from 1,825 contributors
The rest of the Republicans: $616,808 from 1,166 contributors

A few things about this that are silly:

First, that’s a total of 2991 contributions.  Not a very good sample.  Second, if you do the numbers, GOP donors are generally donating more per contribution than Democratic donors are, by about $118 per contribution.

Also funny:

Note that this only includes donations over $200. Smaller donations don’t need to be itemized by the campaigns. And given that enlisted personnel make less than $2,000 per month before taxes, we can assume that they’re not sending the bigger dollar contributions. As such, for Obama to score such a huge advantage among officers, which have always skewed more Republican is pretty startling.

So what Kos is assuming is that officers are more conservative than enlisted men.  Why he assumes this is beyond me.  Oh, and enlisted men can make a great deal more than $2000 a month as they move up the ranks….

In any case, it’s non-news.  It’s just Kos being an idiot.

It’s pretty much the case now that any international crisis involving the potential deployment of U.S. military power will be denounced as a “neocon plot” by many in the left-wing press and blogosphere.

Think Progress continues the genre with their sensational post this morning upon news of a possible cessation of hostilities in the Causcasus: “Ceasefire in Georgia Dashes Neocon Predictions of Russian Expansion in The Region.”

Taking it even further is Robert Scheer, who argues that neoconservatives are manufacturing a foreign policy crisis: “Georgia War a Neocon Election Ploy?“:

Is it possible that this time the October surprise was tried in August, and that the garbage issue of brave little Georgia struggling for its survival from the grasp of the Russian bear was stoked to influence the U.S. presidential election?

Before you dismiss that possibility, consider the role of one Randy Scheunemann, for four years a paid lobbyist for the Georgian government who ended his official lobbying connection only in March, months after he became Republican presidential candidate John McCain’s senior foreign policy adviser.

Previously, Scheunemann was best known as one of the neoconservatives who engineered the war in Iraq when he was a director of the Project for a New American Century. It was Scheunemann who, after working on the McCain 2000 presidential campaign, headed the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, which championed the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

There are telltale signs that he played a similar role in the recent Georgia flare-up. How else to explain the folly of his close friend and former employer, Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, in ordering an invasion of the breakaway region of South Ossetia, an invasion that clearly was expected to produce a Russian counterreaction? It is inconceivable that Saakashvili would have triggered this dangerous escalation without some assurance from influential Americans he trusted, like Scheunemann, that the United States would have his back. Scheunemann long guided McCain in these matters, even before he was officially running foreign policy for McCain’s presidential campaign.

In 2005, while registered as a paid lobbyist for Georgia, Scheunemann worked with McCain to draft a congressional resolution pushing for Georgia’s membership in NATO. A year later, while still on the Georgian payroll, Scheunemann accompanied McCain on a trip to that country, where they met with Saakashvili and supported his bellicose views toward Russia’s Vladimir Putin.

Scheunemann is at the center of the neoconservative cabal that has come to dominate the Republican candidate’s foreign policy stance in a replay of the run-up to the war against Iraq. These folks are always looking for a foreign enemy on which to base a new Cold War, and with the collapse of Saddam Hussein’s regime it was Putin’s Russia that came increasingly to fit the bill.

Yes, it sounds diabolical, but that may be the most accurate way to assess the designs of the McCain campaign in matters of war and peace. There is every indication that the candidate’s demonization of Russian leader Putin is an even grander plan than the previous use of Saddam to fuel American militarism with the fearsome enemy that it desperately needs.

Diabolical? God, that’s taking things to the extreme.

I noted previously that even Democratic foreign policy eminences, like former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, have seen naked Russian brutality and hegemony in Russia’s war with Georgia.

So there’s no doubt that anti-neocon fervor has been quickly stoked by war the Russo-Georgia war.

In this case, the push to discredit neocons has an interesting electoral component, not just in Scheunemann’s ties to Georgia, but also in the situation that McCain has long warned of Russian bellicosity, and his foresight is another strong reminder of his unrivaled foreign policy experience this year.

As Ben Smith noted yesterday:

While virtually every other world leader called for calm in Georgia last Thursday morning, John McCain did something he’s done many times during his career in public life: He condemned Russia….

McCain’s confrontational stance on the Caucasus crisis stems from a long, personal skepticism of Russian intentions, one that dates back to the Cold War and that eased only briefly in the early 1990s.

Indeed, McCain, who publicly confronted Putin in Munich last year, may be the most visible — and now potentially influential — American antagonist of Russia. What remains to be seen is whether the endgame to the Georgia crisis makes McCain seem prophetic or headstrong and whether his muscular rhetoric plays a role in defining for voters the kind of commander in chief he would be.

What is not in doubt is McCain’s view of Russia. His belief that Moscow harbors dangerous aspirations goes back a long way, as does his fervent view that the only way to quiet the Russian bear is through tough talk and threat of real consequences — and certainly not through accommodation.

This kind of strategic clarity is anathema to the Democratic left. For example, check out Josh Marshall, who is sounding tocsin in his post on McCain, “Dangerous and Unstable.”

There’s a whole lot of left-wing unseriousness on foreign policy this season, but the Georgia crisis has really shown how genuinely silly many of these people are.

~cross-posted at American Power

By Julian Krasta

First on the list of the Seven Deadly Sins is Pride. Barack Obama’s cup runneth over with SDS No. 1, so much so that his credibility – as well as the trustworthiness of the Democratic Party – is beginning to resemble the bottom of a birdcage.

As demonstrated during his excursion to the Middle East and Europe, Obama’s vainglory character has reached full feather: What we saw and heard was not a paradigm of intellectual prowess or the mountain-moving messiah the media are in desperation pitching the world to believe he is – quite the contrary.

In spite of every attempt to present himself as a deep thinker or an “every man,” the senator remains detached and unprincipled when it comes to giving full credit to our military. He is also cold and hostile, particularly when he is caught unawares by a journalist’s impromptu questions. Absent his teleprompter of pre-arranged homilies and dog-eared clichés, his remarks are a runoff of blatant inaccuracies, such as this “Berra-ism” that would make Yogi proud:

“Let me be perfectly clear: Israel is a strong friend of Israel’s” –

All of which are bells not even the power peacocks of the liberal mainstream media are able to un-ring.

Fairness demands I give credit to Obama. The only credit I believe he deserves is for his flair for dramatic showmanship. Not since P.T. Barnum – spot-lit in the center ring, dressed in coattails and top hat – has anyone effectively impressed and entrapped the hearts, minds and chromosomes of so many.

Put more simply: Obama enchants and entertains children of all ages.

Those he electrifies eagerly dive for every pearl that slips from his lips. Unfortunately, their fascination with him is anything but academic (as compared to John McCain’s feet-on-the-ground, fact-demanding supporters and opponents).

One explanation might be that, once Obama’s gullible herds imbibe of his “wondrous waters,” they become similarly stricken – or further stricken – with his now-trademark languor (which might explain why, when I first heard them chanting “We want change!” I had thought they were actually yelling, “We want pain!”).

Was that fair enough?

Obama’s one trick is he has mastered the art of doling out only cryptic hints of the changes he intends to make if he is elected. Aside from holding to a pattern of delivering sprawling and irregular speeches (which I view as a tribute to Dr. Seuss: “I do not like them in a box. I do not like them with a fox. I do not like them in a house…” – You get the picture), he has yet to convey concrete exemplars of how he would achieve those changes.

More importantly, he has not explained – not even a speck – what those changes would unerringly entail, and just how such changes would diametrically affect Americans, though Republicans and conservatives already know what he has in mind:

It’s a given that Obama would raise taxes across the board in order to provoke the mysterious changes only he envisions. His grandiose illusions of himself have blinded him to the fact that stacking more financial stress on the American people and on American industries, especially now, would only serve to fund a radical attack on our nation’s problems:

Job losses could skyrocket. Personal spending would plummet. The housing market (and residential and commercial development) could collapse entirely. And retirement, investment and savings accounts could go under – to name an important few.

Just those tied together could conceivably cause parents (one or both, or the only one) to hold down a second job in order to make ends meet, which, in turn, would rupture family unity.

Is that what Obama’s wife meant when she heatedly lectured:

“Barack Obama will require you to work. He is going to demand that you shed your cynicism … that you come out of your isolation. Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual, uninvolved … uninformed”?

If that be true, then Obama aims to strip Americans of our freedom of choice. And if we were to lose freedom of choice, it would just be a matter of time before these, too, would be lost:

- Freedom of religion,

- Freedom of speech,

- Freedom of the press (in particular, the conservative press),

- Freedom of intellectual inquiry,

- Freedom of artistic expression, and

- Every other freedom that empowers the individual.

An equally serious setback would be this: If elected his conceit could initiate a power binge that would be a kick in the teeth to the Presidency. This is not a hypothetical in view of his track record of zero accomplishments, and his conspicuous immaturity.

His weaknesses are unlimited. His acuity is less than remarkable. His occupation of the White House would mitigate the muscle of the Commander-in-Chief and thereby exacerbate the broadening spectrum of critical issues facing this nation.

Obama wants so badly to be Le Premier Chef. He claims he has the perfect recipes, including the utensils and pots & pans, for everything he only imagines we need. The plain truth is that with every spurious comment he makes (including his brassbound insistence on delivering Swiss cheese answers to legitimate queries about the ingredients in his recipes), he proves he can’t even boil water.

Control of Georgia's oil pipeline may be at the heart of this conflict.

“I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma; but perhaps there is a key. That key is Russian national interest.”

~WInston Churchill

The Russians are tricky. They have suckered the world into thinking that they are a more peaceful, progressive nation than they were during the Soviet era. We have been duped into believing this over the years, despite mounting evidence to the contrary. Now, as Georgia burns, and the world wonders whether a ceasefire will hold or whether Putin’s puppet Medvedev will simply (as the Russians so often do) say one thing and do another…

Neo-Neocon writes:

The fact is that, unless we are willing to back up our rhetoric with military force or the meaningful sanctions to which Europe seems averse, talk is cheap. And if you compare Obama’s statement on the topic with that of McCain, you’ll find that both contain some meaningless cheap talk of the “the Security Council needs to condemn this” variety (at least McCain acknowledges the Russian threat of a veto; Obama does not).

For the rest of the article, read Russia and Georgia, and wars cold and hot: the Kingdom of Earth.

Her prose is really quite excellent, and it was this piece, along with an interview on NPR with Marshall Goldman, author of Petrostate, that made me write yet another piece on the Georgian conflict.

(more…)

Paris Hilton energy plan is actually pretty "hot"

I thought the Paris Hilton response to the John McCain ad was brilliant. Not sure if I should give her too much credit, but the fact that she (and her writers) responded so well is pretty impressive. Wow, I never thought I’d say “Paris Hilton” and “impressive” in the same paragraph.

But it was. Her energy policy is dead on, too. Something McCain has not been able to vocalize. In fact, something the GOP has not been able to vocalize.

Hell, even I didn’t vocalize it as well as Paris, sadly.

I’ll add to it, though. Paris said we need offshore drilling to carry us over until the new technologies (wind, solar) can get up to speed. Bravo, says I!

However, I would add to this that we need to start building new, better, safer, cleaner nuclear plants as well. And the government would be justified in subsidizing the building of cleaner, safer coal plants as well. It’s not like we’re going to up and stop using coal, so we might as well do it safely and as clean as possible.

(Mining, of course, will remain dangerous until better safety methods are adopted or enforced.)

Now hat tip in order to My Vast Right Wing Conspiracy which has this to say about Paris’s ad:

First, she picks at McCain a bit. That’s fair. He picked at her in his ad. She didn’t get nasty or mean. She poked and made fun. Then she makes it all about her in a positive way. She’s running for president now she guesses. Oh, and once she reads about the best place to tan, she has an oil plan. A plan that I will point out may not work, but already has more IQ behind it than Obama’s.

The saddest part of this is she shows more intelligence in this ad than Obama has ever shown. And she delivered it without notes or a teleprompter. Barack can’t do that! Now, I know the funny or die guys had their hand in it. But still, this is funny and quite frankly a nice distraction while the media pulls everything out to make Obama’s “inflate your tires and you’ll never have to fill up again” policy seem intelligent.

That’s exactly right. Obama has not had one single good comeback. He even denounced the New York Times cover, which was drawn to, you know, help him prove that the accusations against him (of being Muslim, of his wife being a terrorist, etc.) were BS. He should have made it his own, like Paris did with this ad, rather than cry about it! Come on, Barack, you’ve got the oratorical skills…now what about a sense of humor?

Over the past five days we’ve been inundated with all sorts of talking points emanating from the usual suspects in the Democratic Party and the leftwing echochamber of the blogosphere that one, the Iraqis, President Bush, and Gen. Petraeus have mirabile dictu suddenly found the wisdom of the Great Man’s pronouncements on Iraq vis-a-vis the “timetable” for the withdrawal of US forces in Iraq freeing them up for General Obama’s coming campaign to eliminate the Taliban and al Qaeda in Afghanistan in the “real focus” of the “Global War on Terror”. What utter nonsense.

Leaving aside the utter fatuousness of their claims as regards the complex problems in Afghanistan that I alluded to in my article of Monday 21 July of which a greater troop presence is hardly the solution in and of itself there’s the small problem of the fact that the only thing the improved security situation in Iraq has to do with Obama’s magical sixteen month timeline is one of mere coincidence. Contrary to the received wisdom of the braying jackasses in the press who likened the president’s acceptance of a