In the aftermath of this election, conservatives, Republicans, and anyone who supported John McCain was asking themselves one question: “how the heck did this happen?”.  I mean, seriously, if you told me two years ago that we were going to elect a man for president with virtually no executive experience, with an ideology far left of mainstream America, and with a middle name of Hussein, I just never would have believed you.  But, I guess, that’s water under the bridge now.   So, how did this happen and how do we prevent a hoax like this being pulled on us again?

The reason that this election was an elaborate hoax is because the majority of people who voted for Barack Obama simply had no idea what he stood for.  They had no idea about his past accomplishments and no idea about his past associations.  They, in large part, didn’t even know what he voted for or against in the past.  They simply didn’t care because he looks nice, gives a great speech, and apparently touches the emotions of millions because he is a black man.  All I can say is bravo to the Democrats for running a phenomenal campaign….you managed to pull a good one on us this time.  Let’s see if you can manage to fool the electorate again in four years.  They only way that will happen is if we and the rest of America isn’t paying attention.  We obviously weren’t this time.

A poll was conducted by Zogby and paid for by a man named John Ziegler into what Obama voters knew and believed about the candidates running for election.  Also included are some general questions about government.

• 57.4% of Obama voters could not correctly say which party controls congress. (The Democrats have for the past two years, by the way)
• 82.6% of Obama voters could not correctly say that Barack Obama won his first election by getting opponents kicked off the ballot
• 88.4% of Obama voters could not correctly say that Obama said his policies would likely bankrupt the coal industry and make energy rates skyrocket
• 56.1% of Obama voters didn’t know that Obama started his political career at the home of Bill Ayers, an unrepentant terrorist.

Surprising?  Not so much.  But what is surprising is how good they are at associating certain things with Sarah Palin.

• 94% of Obama voters correctly identified Sarah Palin as the candidate with a pregnant teenage daughter.
• 86% of Obama voters identified Palin as the candidate who spent $150,000 on a campaign wardrobe.
• 86.9 % of Obama voters though that Palin said that she could see Russia from her “house,” even though the quote actually came from Saturday Night Live.

What this shows is how effective the news media is…extremely effective when they want to be.  CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS, MSNBC all did plenty of leg work to destroy Sarah Palin and it worked.  What would have been the result if those comments about bankrupting the coal industry were as widespread as Palin’s pregnant daughter?

This video is well worth watching. If you’re still wondering how Obama got elected, this video will clear the air for you.

By Andrew L. Jaffee, netwmd.com

Jamaal Young writing for the New York Press impressed me with his deep introspection into the psyche of the African-American community — looking from the inside out, and inside in. He postulates that Barack Obama’s election has changed the political landscape for the better, for example, ending the domination of Black America’s public “voice” by charlatans, bigots, and shakedown artists like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. Here are some snippets from Young’s article, but you should read the whole thing:

… The presence of Obama on the national stage has led the mainstream media, long distrusted by black America, to fill its programming with a more diverse array of black voices — CNN, PBS and Fox News regularly feature anchors and opinion-makers like Donna Brazile, Juan Williams, Suzanne Malveaux and Tavis Smiley. Spike Lee has been on MSNBC’s Morning Joe so many times I’m starting to think that he and conservative co-host Joe Scarborough might have a hot lil’ interracial bromance going on. … [Continues below...]

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Is the FBI closing in on Obama’s dealings?

I'm desperately trying to write an article about Sarah Palin without uploading an image of her. So here's Ayn Rand, creator of "John Galt," instead.

I forget what he won this Gold for, but my brother was sure proud of it. Point of personal information: I attended the very first Special Olympics.

Damn. I tried but I couldn't resist. This is such a nice picture of Sarah Palin and her daughter Piper.

Lisa Schiffren at the National Review’s group blog The Corner says something interesting and true, a rare enough thing at the Corner these days to warrant comment. In “Canada or Galt’s Gulch” she cites a spoof article in Slate devoted to the fate of Obama supporters in the event he loses (an imaginary exodus to Canada) and says:

Of course conservatives don’t threaten to leave the U.S. as a rule. However, on more or less the same subject, I haven’t heard so much about John Galt since …well, ever.  (And objectivists were thick on the ground in D.C. during the Reagan administration.)

(For the record, they were thick at the pinnacle, too, up to and including President Reagan’s Chairman of the Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan.)

Continuing, she explains:

I suppose, with all the projections of the Obama administration and its confiscatory tax rates on people and businesses, subordination of the productive to the dependent, public schools turned into training camps for radicals and legions of speech/thought police — i.e. — the end of liberty as we knew it — it might be time to start thinking about the mechanics of Galt’s Gulch.

John Galt, for those not familiar, was the mysterious quasi-protagonist of Ayn Rand’s hyper-libertarian/radical individualist tome Atlas Shrugged. Galt’s great task was to inspire the self-motivated, self-actuating, self-reliant, self-proclaimed and self-deluded “producers” of Ayn Rand’s hallucinated political economy to refuse to produce as a protest of the use of the goods of productive impulse being expropriated for the collective benefit. I say “hallucinated” because when I read the book decades ago (I read ‘em all, We The Living is far and away the best, but Atlas was a great read too except for the worthless 50-page polemic embedded near the end).

I had to laugh at Rand’s juvenile understanding of how the railroads in this country were built. As if some visionary entrepreneur was responsible. Yeah. Right. I wonder if anyone ever mentioned to Rand the fact that the land upon which the railroads were built was, um, originally public, much of it literally granted free to the railroads out of the common weal?

But I digress.

As I said, Schiffern’s claim about hearing so much about Galt lately is in fact, true. If you follow the grass roots conservative movement, as I do, by way of friends and acquaintances, am talk radio, periodicals, blogs and comment threads, you do in fact hear more and more talk of a Galtian “strike.” That raises two issues, one of which is serious.

The first goes straight to Schiffren’s suggestion about the “mechanics” of Galtian protest. Surely, she jests? No, it appears she isn’t joking, and I suspect most of the dispirited conservatives whispering about John Galt aren’t joking either. But come the heck on. What does Schiffren think life would be like in Galt’s Gulch? That she’ll whittle her Corner items into planks of hand-hewn lumber and float them down some stream otherwise used to produce Coors beer to a breathlessly awaiting audience of other Galtian protestors?

Is she going to remain in place on whatever coast she lives on but protest by withdrawing from the dollar economy by way of the barter-, gold- or under-the-table economy? What’s she going to do, trade Corner items with Jonah Goldberg, then sell them for gold at some flea market? Or in the parking lot of some Virginia gun show?

The reason why the threats of leaving the country by the Hollywood liberal/left were so easily mockable is that there was a degree of plausibility to the shrieks, unlikely as it may be that they’d have followed through. They are, after all, financially independent and their occupations do not require physical presence in the United States of America (in fact, frequently the opposite). But the threat of withdrawing from the American political economy is simply too ridiculous on its face to effectively mock, especially for right-wing blog posters whose primary occupation is right-wing blogging. What possible transaction is there that acquires, say, FOOD in return for, say, having written “Obama is a socialist” arguments that are not also inextricable from the formal political economy?

But seriously now.

The Republican Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin spent most of the past week excoriating Senator Obama for purported socialism. Although I don’t know if she ever actually used the term “Nanny State,” CNN attributed that sentiment to her without objection, based on this statement in North Dakota on October 25th:

It leads to government moving into the role of taking care of you, and government and politicians and, kind of moving in as the other half of your family to make decisions for you,” she said. “Now they do this in other countries where the people are not free. Government as part of the family, taking care of us, making decisions for us. I don’t know what to think of having in my family Uncle Barney Frank or others to make decisions for me.

What is so remarkable about that statement is that she made it less than twenty-four hours after making a substantive policy speech regarding policy proposals relating to “Special Needs Children” aka “Mentally Disabled Children,” aka “Retarded Children.” And what she was calling for in that speech was Socialism. Pure, unadulterated, concentrated Socialism. To anticipate a counterargument, “But Jack, we’re talking about retarded kids here. Even if it is technically Socialism, no one is going to begrudge retarded children a claim on the public purse,” I’d like to wait a bit on that. Quit interrupting and I’ll get to that later.

To continue. Sarah Palin’s “Special needs” speech is Socialistic on three grounds, as a practical public program, as an expression of philosophical premises, and as a deep moral First Principle.

As a practical program, I brainstormed with my family this week about the extent to which my brother, of whom I have written previously, absorbed resources from the public sector during his life, career and now his institutionalization. I have a better idea than what I’m about to report, but the question I asked was simply: Over or under a million dollars? Way over? Starting with special education fifty years ago, then job training, sheltered workshop, subsidized private-sector wages, subsidized housing, group home, Supplemental Social Security . . . the list went on. Consider this, which is probably true for almost all Special Needs folk: There was probably not a weekday of my brother’s life from entering school at age five and for the fifty years afterward that he did not ride the “short bus” somewhere for something. All that diesel and gasoline adds up. On the one hand, the family provided some care that other families just left to the state, but on the other hand we were pretty rigorous about utilizing whatever programs were out there, so let’s say those two tendencies roughly offset. As I said, I won’t be too specific, but seems like over a million dollars is reasonable estimate.

Those resources are simply beyond the means of the vast majority of American families. There is NO WAY that an ordinary family can take the approximate lifetime earnings of the parents and devote them entirely to one special needs child with nothing leftover for the other children, mortgages, food, clothing and the other elements of living. For almost all of us, those expenses have to be literally “socialized” because the individual financial expense is just too great.

“But Jack,” I can hear you again, “That’s what I’m trying to tell you. That level of socialism for that purpose is okay.” I told you to quit interrupting. Let me finish.

Next. In philosophical terms, the notion of Socialism has commonly been reduced to the aphorism “From each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs.” Special education and related programs entail almost a perfect exemplar of that principle because the needs are so great relative to the abilities of the subjects. In many cases, even the term “disability” is too mild. We’re talking “inability.” Special education and affiliated public sector programs require major investment of resources for minor or sometimes negligible returns. The thing is, there’s in truth just about as much education going on in Special Education as there is Olympics going in during the Special Olympics.

Which is not to say that either of those enterprises are not worthwhile. It’s just that we value them not by the ordinary metrics of “Education” or “Olympics,” but by genuinely subjective humane values. I don’t remember for what event my brother won that Gold Medal pictured above (running?) but I doubt his achievement would have registered on a stopwatch. The idea is to create fulfillment and human dignity, not to achieve athletic excellence measured objectively or,I n the case of education, to teach them valuable skills to be net producers in society. Even when my brother was in an employer-tax-credit subsidized private sector job, the objective reality was that a stoned fifteen-year-old would have more efficiently emptied the supermarket parking lot of shopping carts.

“But, Jack–” Okay, okay. Enough with the interruptions already. I’ll respond now.

Socialism in this instance also vindicates and validates a moral First Principle. In Sarah Palin’s case, she has won much praise from her supporters in the Pro-Life movement (even from her harshest critic in public commentary, Andrew Sullivan) for maintaining her moral doctrine that life begins at conception and that abortion is by definition evil–equivalent if not exactly murder–and choosing therefore to bear and raise her son Trig rather than to terminate the pregnancy once doctors told her he was suffering a genetic defect.

Consider. In her speech last Friday, Palin called for “full funding” Of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. According to Sara Mead at the New America Foundation:

IDEA “full funding” is determined by a formula that multiplies the number of children with special needs, by the average per pupil expenditure in the United States, by 40 percent. For fiscal year 2008, fully funding IDEA would cost more than $25 billion dollars–more than double the roughly $11 billion the federal government spent on IDEA Part B grants this year. “Fully funding” IDEA next year would require roughly $15 billion in additional federal education spending ….

This means a couple of different things. First, after campaigning all year against Congressional earmarks, the sum total of which is about $20 billion, in one fell swoop in one little-remarked-upon speech, and with one Vice-Presidential earmark, Palin put back into the Federal budget at least 75% of the “savings” that might be generated in the unlikely event that all Congressional earmarks were eliminated.

Moreover, while at first glance it seems quite gratifying and uplifting to know that Special Needs children might have an “advocate in the White House,” as Palin suggested in her nomination-acceptance speech, and it seems as if that is especially so because Palin is herself the mother of a Special Needs child, as you think a little deeper you realize that there is an aspect of self-interest to Palin’s proposal. After all, does she not have a child certain to be a nominal beneficiary of the proposed large increase in federal funding?

Yes, a special needs child is more heart-warming than, say, a driver in Boston whose daily commute time is reduced because of Federal Funding of the Big Dig (for about the same $15 billion) but the principle is the same.

But there’s an aspect deeper than that. Whether the presence or absence of Federal Special Education funding had any effect of Palin’s decision not to terminate her pregnancy is so unlikely that I feel confident setting that probability at zero. If you’re anti-abortion as a matter of metaphysical certainty, it’s not like an incremental increase in the flow of federal money to local Special Education programs is going have any effect whatsoever on your decision. However, that Federal funding does have an effect on the consequences of that decision because Special Education is socialized. That is, society bears some portion of the financial cost of that decision. This is not, by the way, intended to argue that society should play even the slightest role in making the decision not to terminate. That is an area of intimate family conduct to which the state should have not the slightest claim. It is, however, to argue this: If Senator Obama is a Socialist, then so is Governor Palin. The difference is, his Socialism is the ordinary and banal sort ostensibly intended to support “poor people.” Her Socialism supports “Those who hold to the doctrine that life begins at conception and that abortion is murder.” Thus, the Special Needs children themselves are not the sole beneficiaries of socialized Special Education funding.

In fact, I would argue that the child is at most a secondary beneficiary, maybe even only the token beneficiary. To see why, I refer you to another little-noted statement by Sarah Palin last Friday. She sat down for an interview with the Chicago Tribune and discussed both her son Trig, afflicted with Down Syndrome, and her nephew Karcher, afflicted with autism. Autism is much more variable in its expression in terms of a person’s ability to function and she does not directly say how functional Karcher is but, reading between the lines, it seems like his case is severe. The reporter’s description of Palin’s emotional response and the concern she attributes to her nephew’s parents is heartbreaking:

Palin’s eyes well up as she talks about her sister’s son, Karcher, who has autism

“My sister and I have talked a lot about this. It makes me cry thinking about it,” Palin said. “She asked with tears in her eyes, she says, ‘What happens when Kurt and I, though, are elderly, then what happens to Karcher?’ “

I know well the concern expressed by Sarah’s sister not from a lifetime of experience, but from a lifetime of witness. I know that it is a burden–an unbearable burden in some families, bearable in others, but it is always a burden. Lifting that burden even a small bit is an incalculable benefit. And Socializing that burden is both humane and essential. But let us not fool ourselves, it is not the Special Needs child to whom that benefit accrues. How do they know what their families are worried about decades from now? The greatest, enduring socialistic benefit of Special Education goes not to the child, but to the family around the child. From Grandparents to the youngest sibling. When I think about Piper Palin fifty years from now ….

I wonder what John Galt would say about that?

Malkin writes:

My syndicated column today takes you on a brief tour of some of the most shameful Obamedia moments of 2008. Topping the list: The Los Angeles Times’ suppression of the Obama/Khalidi/Ayers-Dohrn videotape. The blogosphere has been pounding the story, with Gateway Pundit’s Jim Hoft leading the way. The Times claims it promised a source it wouldn’t show the tape. Can you imagine them abiding by similar conditions if they had a damning McCain/Palin video in hand? Now, reward offers for the missing video are pouring in: see Newt Gingrich; Ace; Dirty Harry; and JWR.

And another reward offer: $150,000.

I repeat: Bleeding newspapers really shouldn’t be pissing off readers. Same goes for the rest of the flailing old media.

No matter. They will cling bitterly to their drool cups until pried from their cold, dead hands.

Read the whole thing.

By Andrew L. Jaffee, netwmd.com

Barack Obama and his supporters have tried to claim that his associations with people like Jeremiah Wright, Louis Farrakhan, James Meeks, John Lewis, Alcee Hastings, Bill Ayers, Mahdi Bray, and Nihad Awad, and his connections with organizations like Trinity United Church of Christ, ACORN, the Muslim American Society’s (MAS) Freedom Foundation, and the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), were all innocuous. When people question Obama’s character vis-à-vis these relationships, his campaign and followers retort that he is being unfairly accused using guilt by association. In fact, Obama has had long-standing relationships, and/or relationships of convenience, with such people/entities, and his connections to them are far from innocuous.

First, Jeremiah Wright. From ABC News:

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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.

He has some rather interesting connections to Chicago corruption, namely surrounding Demetri Giannoulias, and Tony Rezko.  

I don’t know if they’re ultimately damning connections, but d’ya think an indictment could be in order?

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

Last night’s debate was a rather worthless affair. McCain made some strong points near the end on issues of foreign policy, but his bumbling and rambling during the economic portion was difficult to watch. It doesn’t help that some of McCain’s economic policies are appalling, and I plan to write about McCain’s terrible mortgage plan later today, but for now, let’s talk about the “Obama Doctrine.”

I thought Obama preformed adequately at the debate last night; he sounded able and confident, and even looked presidential walking around the stage. Unfortunately, these recent debates have not forced Obama to deal with the conflict inherent in his foreign policy vision: when and where the U.S. should intervene militarily. McCain never pressed him as to what specifically Obama’s interventionism is going to look like, or why it would produce radically different results than interventions over the last 10 years.

Christopher Hitchens recently wrote a piece on why Obama was right about Pakistan, and he correctly identified that,

“Sen. Barack Obama has, if anything, been the more militant of the two presidential candidates in stressing the danger here and the need to act without too much sentiment about our so-called Islamabad ally. He began using this rhetoric when it was much simpler to counterpose the “good” war in Afghanistan with the “bad” one in Iraq. Never mind that now; he is committed in advance to a serious projection of American power into the heartland of our deadliest enemy. And that, I think, is another reason why so many people are reluctant to employ truthful descriptions for the emerging Afghan-Pakistan confrontation: American liberals can’t quite face the fact that if their man does win in November, and if he has meant a single serious word he’s ever said, it means more war, and more bitter and protracted war at that—not less.”

We may agree that the U.S. needs to enter Pakistan if an opportunity to hit Al-Qaeda presents itself, but entering their territory without their government’s permission may force those unhappy with the newly elected Pakistani government to create unrest and even move to overthrow the regime. Let’s not forget that the U.S. is deeply unpopular in Pakistan, and the fact that a simple military action into Pakistan can spin the political situation in the country out of control is something Obama isn’t adequately addressing. We may end up with a situation in Pakistan (and Afghanistan) far worse than what we have seen in Iraq.

That isn’t to say that Obama’s policy is wrong; I believe that the US will likely do (and should do) what it needs when dealing with terrorist groups undermining the Afghan and Pakistani governments. I would like to ask all Obama supporters, if a war in Pakistan becomes as costly as the one in Iraq, will they still believe it is the “good” war?

It is not just the unwillingness of Obama supporters to address this fact that makes me uneasy about an Obama presidency; His murky stance on the use force to stop genocide is just as feeble. Obama may argue that the United States must intervene to stop crimes against humanity from occurring, yet he is both unwilling to admit that our actions in Iraq were rooted in that very logic, and also fails to recognize that intervention means a long term commitment that may have unintended consequences. Even small peace keeping missions can turn into assignments where our military is forced to do more than bring a physical presence. Both the United Nations Operation in Somalia and the American military intervention there failed to bring peace or stability, for reasons completely within the world’s control. The WSJ writes:

“The U.S. military, with 18 dead, wanted nothing more than to finish what it had started [in Somalia]. Mr. Clinton instead aborted the mission. The U.S. released the criminals it had captured that same day at such great cost, and the U.N., lacking U.S. support, was powerless to keep order. Somalia remains a lawless, impoverished nation. Worse, the terrorists of al Qaeda interpreted the U.S. retreat from Somalia as a sign of American weakness that may have convinced them we could be induced to retreat from the Middle East if they took their attacks to the U.S. homeland.”

This should be a lesson etched into Barack Obama’s mind, and why his Iraq policy has been, and continues to be wrong. Obama, when it suits him, claims that the U.S. cannot use its military to solve humanitarian problems, and argues that even if the removal of our troops in Iraq led to genocide, he would not change his position. Yet, as David Weigel Points out for Reason magazine:

“[Obama] has called for, or retroactively endorsed, interventions in Zimbabwe, Pakistan, and Sudan. He has advocated a humanitarian-based foreign policy for his entire public career. Since coming to the U.S. Senate in 2005, he has built up a brain trust of academics and ex-Clintonites who, like him, challenge the logic of the Iraq war but not the logic of wars like Iraq.”

I am in favor of interventionism, and so while I tend to agree that the U.S. should involve itself in the conflicts pushed for by Obama, it is maddening to see him and other Democrats condemn the mission in Iraq, even when they were once some of the strongest supporters of liberating the nation from Saddam’s control. Obama is basically arguing that he is in favor of interventionism, as long as it doesn’t require much of a commitment from the United States. Or worse, that he is for interventionism as long as it wasn’t started by a Republican administration. Obama wants it both ways; he wants to take the moral high road when it comes to past crimes against humanity and why the U.S. should have involved itself, and yet asserts that our current missions to do such things are wrong and unimportant.

It seems like Obama can’t even keep these diverging tangents in his policy from getting the best of him. He mentioned in the recent town hall debate that,

“If we could’ve stopped Rwanda, surely, if we had the ability, that would be something that we would have to strongly consider and act.”

How can he possible mutter these words, and at the same time concede that he would have pulled out of Iraq knowing that his policy would bring about that very occurrence? Perhaps Obama is only committed to past tragedies that don’t require him to take decisive action.

If this is the future of the United States under the “Obama Doctrine”, then I have serious misgivings about the use of American power and influence under his presidency.

(Cross posted at But, I am a Liberal!)

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.

So let’s talk about this comic.

Essentially the above comic assumes that all liberals, all leftists, etc. must be hand-in-hand on all these things, which is utterly ludicrous.

But it’s just a comic.

When it comes to being green, I say let’s pump more money into the mythical 100mpg vehicles, and let’s build more rail, more mass transit, and new urbanist cities–walkable cities. But let’s still drill where we can. Let’s not start depending too much on places like Nigeria, who care not at all for the environment or worker’s rights, or safety standards. Let’s drill ourselves, with our higher standards.

Then let’s build some more top-notch technology. Let’s put our tax dollars to work getting more students into science programs, hi-tech degrees, all that. I’m not worried about jobs floating overseas, so long as we’re making sure that we have the money invested in our students, so that new, better, hi-end jobs can replace older, out-dated jobs that migrate elsewhere.

I see this as a larger vision, and it will take a visionary leader to achieve any of it (and this is just a morsel of the many things we need to do aside from whine and moan over global warming and so forth). I think Obama has it. He has vision, and that is a critical factor.

Palin, on the other hand, has religion. I’m not against religion, per say, but the sort that Palin seems at home with is not the vision I want for America–one in which science is defunded, education takes a back seat, and so on and so forth.

I could give a damn about her grandbaby to be. I just don’t like the vision of America that she holds dear. I think we can do so much better.

~cross-posted at LeftHawk

It’s harvest time all across America’s fruited plain and what a glorious harvest it is this year for American liberals.

For well over forty years they have been sowing the seeds of entitlement mentality, racial suspicion, class warfare, government bureaucracy, and moral relativism into American churches, classrooms, town halls, and places of business. Now they are at last bringing home the prize they have worked so hard to achieve: The United Socialist States of America.

Best of all, they have Tom Sawyer’d the Republicans into doing most of the heavy lifting for them.

For instance, they have George W. Bush (the ostensibly Republican President of the United States) asking the Democratic party run Congress to allow the government to buy $700 billion in toxic mortgages. Genius! Not only is this the largest financial bailout of the American economy since FDR’s New Deal but, in conjunction with the $5.2 trillion government takeover of Fannie and Freddie, it amounts to the “the greatest nationalization in the history of humanity.” As we said earlier, eat your heart out Hugo Chavez!

And the people are lovin’ it!

Better still, liberals can have their socialism and eat it too, for they are rather successfully trumpeting this transition as proof positive of the failure of Conservatism.

They’re right of course. This is the failure of Conservatism; not of its principles, however, but in their application, as in - they weren’t!

Observe - at the heart of the America’s present economic meltdown is the mortgage crisis. At the heart of the mortgage crisis are decisions – empowered by liberal dogma of equal access for all regardless of ability to pay – which forced lending institutions to make suicidal loans. The Clinton Administration’s “National Homeownership Strategy” started the ball rolling in 1994. This was followed by a number of well-intentioned/economically-disastrous (read “liberal”) maneuvers which brought The Community re-investment Act of 1977 into full force making matters worse. Bushie’s “ownership society” proposals only furthered the folly. And a wee bit of good old fashioned corruption (oddly majority Democrat) sealed the deal. Alas, the American economy now lay in ruins.

Government mandates forcing businesses to give their product away to those who cannot afford it will go broke. Who knew? Well actually any Kindergartner could tell you that but … damn it was a good ride while it lasted wasn’t it?

Now faced with the staggering tab for feel-good liberalism and the corruption which funds it, the American people are clamoring for the “stability” of Mother Socialism, so long as she dons the snappy blue blazer, striped top hat, and trousers of Uncle Sam.

Bravo America. And welcome to the world federation of socialist republics!

Cheers,

Charlie

“I would use American force now,” Biden said at a hearing before his committee. “I think it’s not only time not to take force off the table. I think it’s time to put force on the table and use it.”

Michael Crowley discusses Joe Biden’s hawkish positions including this one on Darfur as compared to the less aggressive policy of Obama, and wonders how these two will gel…

I like Biden for this very reason. He’s got a good sense of American power and the necessity of keeping America’s military strong. I’m also an advocate of ending genocide wherever it emerges. We can’t very well talk about equal rights and fair taxes and all that while sitting on our hands as people in Darfur are slaughtered.
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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.

Progress, yes... But in which direction?

First of all, I think that maintaining the current line the Obama camp is using on Iraq is simply wrong, and stupid.  The American people aren’t dumb.  We can tell that things have shifted in Iraq.  We’re winning.  This is due to the counter-insurgency strategy implemented during the Surge.  It is working and Obama should acknowledge that, and pledge to continue the strategy of Gen. David Petraeus.

Would he appear to be a flip-flopper?  Maybe, but in many respects, he would also appear to be wise enough to follow the best course.  He could still say, “I was against the war from the beginning, but the current strategy of Gen. David Petraeus is working, and it’s the best and most honorable way to bring our troops home.”

He wouldn’t even need to mention Bush, the Surge, etc.  Just the popular general and the popular strategy that is actually, amazingly, finally working…

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~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 c