“Your Honor, the prosecutors have been overzealous in pursuing a crime that never happened,” wrote disgraced Chicago real estate magnate Antoin “Tony” Rezko to his judge a few months ago. “They are pressuring me to tell them the wrong things that I supposedly know about Gov. Blagojevich and Sen. Barack Obama.”
What’s interesting about this claim is that, according to press accounts, Rezko is now indeed talking to prosecutors.
What Rezko has to say is far more likely to impact Democratic Gov. Rod Blagojevich, whose administration is being investigated.
Not one witness at Rezko’s trial said Obama did anything improper.
And yet … what are prosecutors pressuring Rezko about? And now that Rezko’s reportedly making like a canary, what song is he singing?
UPDATE: An Obama supporter helpfully points out that Rezko’s lawyer Joseph Duffy has walked his client’s letter back, saying that prosecutors never intimated it is investigating anything about Obama.
“I’m not aware of any impropriety related to Rezko and Obama,” Duffy said, per the Chicago Tribune. “At no point has the government ever asked me a single question about Obama, or any wrongdoing involving Rezko and Obama.”
That Obama supporter is whistling past the graveyard - Obama is hip deep in the massive and nauseating corruption which is all there is to Chicago Democratic politics…whether or not the prosecutors will decide to pursue the matter if it relates to Obama remains to be seen (people are fearful of taking on the Democratic party as it is not only corrupt, but quite nasty in the way it takes endless revenge upon anyone who crosses it), but Obama is not clean, not by a long shot. It is, quite simply, impossible for anyone to rise in Chicago Democratic party without willingly engaging in corruption - there is not and cannot be an honest man in Chicago politics because the whole system is built and sustained on political corruption. This is, by the way, nothing peculiar to Democratic party politics per se - any one-party political entity will naturally gravitate towards corruption due to humanity’s fallen nature (something liberalism fails to understand). The only way such things can be changed is via a massive, revolutionary change of heart amongst the electorate, or outsiders calling the corrupt to account and one or more of the corrupt actors detailing the who, where, when, why and how of it all.
Obama may win on November 4th - and if he does, all you liberals will have done is help elevate a deeply flawed leftist to office who, like Clinton, will be mired in corruption scandals from day one to day last of his Administration. Meanwhile, he’ll also push policies which will be bad for America, and bad for the world. Is beating the GOP worth this, liberals?
As a senator, I’ve seen the corrupt ways of Washington in wasteful spending and other abuses of power. As president I’m going to end these abuses — whatever it takes.
I will propose and sign into law reforms to bring tax relief to the middle class and help to businesses so they can create jobs…. I will get the rising cost of food and gas under control…. I will help families keep their home, and help students struggling to pay for college…. I will make health care more accessible and affordable. … I will impose a spending freeze on all but the most vital functions of government.
I will review every agency of the federal government, improve those that need to be improved and eliminate those that aren’t working for the American people…. I will confront the ten trillion-dollar debt that the federal government has run up, and balance the federal budget by the end of my term in office…
…on taxes, we see a difference between what Senator Obama says today, what he said yesterday, and what he has actually done. During the Democratic primary, he promised to double taxes on every American with a dividend or an investment. He promised to raise payroll taxes. He promised higher taxes on electricity. He voted for the Democratic budget resolution that promised to raise taxes on people making just 42,000 dollars a year.
And now all of the sudden Senator Obama claims he will give 95 percent of Americans tax relief. What he hasn’t told you is that he would tax half of the income of small business in America. These are the people who have actually added 350,000 jobs at a time when America lost 700,000 jobs. They are the backbone of our economy, and our best hope to get America back on track. When I’m president, their taxes are going down instead of up, and we’re going to help them create jobs for America.
On spending, Barack Obama will increase government spending by over 860 billion dollars. That’s on top of the trillions in debt that we’ve already burdened our children and grandchildren with. He claimed in our debate that somehow he’ll still end up with a net cut in spending, Only Barack Obama could sell an 860 billion dollar federal spending increase as a net reduction in federal spending.
When I’m president, the spending reductions will be real, and I’ll cut the size of government. I will put the government back on the side of America’s working families, and I will get this country moving again. (emphasis added)
Reform, spending reductions, smaller government…was someone out there wondering where the Reaganism had got to? It might have been hidden a bit by campaign finance reform, but it was residing in the heart and mind of John McCain all this time, and now he proposes to give us another dose of the medicine which cured us before, and will cure us again. And to just make things even better, he has selected a Reaganite Vice Presidential candidate - as Senator McCain might put it, “my friends, in McCain/Palin you might get as much as 16 years of unabashed Reaganism”. What more could a conservative and a Republican want?
I saw a longish ad from Barack Obama on TV this past evening, and in it he was earnestly pontificating on how the current financial crisis is proof that “trickle down” economics doesn’t work - which would be fine, if anyone had ever advocated something called “trickle down” economics. That was, of course, the phrase used to denigrate Reagan’s economic plan which, boiled down, was an assertion that the people will be better stewards of the national wealth than government would be. Obama, of course, realizes none of this - back during Reagan’s term he didn’t pay attention to what was going on and preferred to step into the leftwing world of make believe…and somewhere in there he was instructed that Reagan’s plan was “trickle down” economics. And now he says it doesn’t work - because of the financial crisis…which was actually caused by his own Democrats.
While he is well spoken and telegenic, Obama is a man who knows nothing - my concern about him becoming President is now only partially about the hard left policies he’ll pursue because he’s told to do so…my larger worry is that in his faltering, ignorant hands the whole world could go to heck in a handbasket. He’s a man who would actually believe the IMF when it says that all the world’s economies should coordinate their efforts during a crisis; he’s a man who would actually believe that the UN could take the lead in a global crisis; he’s a man who would actually believe that people will respect the United States if we would just conform ourselves to their expectations…he’s a man, in short, who will be played for a sucker on the world stage by every tinpot dictator and corrupt, Euro-trash politician on the make. American policy will become a plaything of the academic left while the real actions of the world are taken by nations who, even if they are wrong, believe in actual actions and actual consequences.
We can prevent all of this by the simple expedient of electing John McCain President of the United States. He will do things which will infuriate, at times, both the right and the left - but he’ll be honest, courageous and realistic. His actions will be governed by actualities, not by half-baked theories from colleges still stuck intellectually in 1968. In the end, I expect it will be so - that my fellow Americans will turn towards the proven fighter for America, rather than the empty suit with a grand, set-piece speaking style. The left will never forgive America for this - but, then again, they’ve always hated America and always will - but I do pray that honest liberals will do the right thing on November 4th - put aside their hatred of President Bush and vote for the better man with the better plan.
At the same time the Bush administration was negotiating a still elusive agreement to keep the U.S. military in Iraq, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama tried to convince Iraqi leaders in private conversations that the president shouldn’t be allowed to enact the deal without congressional approval.
Mr. Obama’s conversations with the Iraqi leaders, confirmed to The Washington Times by his campaign aides, began just two weeks after he clinched the Democratic presidential nomination in June and stirred controversy over the appropriateness of a White House candidate’s contacts with foreign governments while the sitting president is conducting a war.
Some of the specifics of the conversations remain the subject of dispute. Iraqi leaders purported to The Times that Mr. Obama urged Baghdad to delay an agreement with Mr. Bush until next year when a new president will be in office - a charge the Democratic campaign denies.
Mr. Obama spoke June 16 to Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari when he was in Washington, according to both the Iraqi Embassy in Washington and the Obama campaign. Both said the conversation was at Mr. Zebari’s request and took place on the phone because Mr. Obama was traveling.
However, the two sides differ over what Mr. Obama said.
“In the conversation, the senator urged Iraq to delay the [memorandum of understanding] between Iraq and the United States until the new administration was in place,” said Samir Sumaidaie, Iraq’s ambassador to the United States.
He said Mr. Zebari replied that any such agreement would not bind a new administration. “The new administration will have a free hand to opt out,” he said the foreign minister told Mr. Obama.
Mr. Sumaidaie did not participate in the call, he said, but stood next to Mr. Zebari during the conversation and was briefed by him immediately afterward.
The call was not recorded by either side, and Mr. Zebari did not respond to repeated telephone and e-mail messages requesting direct comment.
Whether this was an attempt to some how derail American victory in Iraq or just the arrogance of an out-of-touch man with a messiah complex is not a judgment I can render - but I can state that any such action by Obama was amazingly irresponsible and, indeed, would harm any ability he had to shape policy for Iraq, supposing he wins the election. Rather than having a breathing space where Iraqis would wonder what comes next and try to make things as smooth as possible for Obama, the Iraqis will now have an incentive to dump the American connection as soon as possible as they must know they are dealing with a man who is clueless in world affairs and cannot be relied upon.
Obama is the man who thinks that US troops are air-raiding villages and killing civilians. Why does he believe this? Because it is what he’s been told and he lacks sufficient knowledge and experience to tell the difference between the truth and enemy propaganda. The fact that a man this out to lunch retains such a clearly high opinion of himself is also very disturbing - raised to the White House, what we’ll have is a marriage of despotism and incompetence. America will get to see what its like to be governed by a man who knows nothing but thinks he knows all.
The United States - carried forward by the people of the United States - will survive Obama, should he win…but he’ll be a terrible tragedy for the United States, and a major danger for the world…a world which only has any peace or freedom at all because the United States secures it by its might. Liberty is a frail flower protected by the sword and shield of the United States - Obama thinks its a thing threatened by the United States, and conversations with thugs and meetings with the UN will win the day. That this benighted knave has managed to advance so far is testimony to the the ability of millions to swallow whatever lies are spoon fed to them by an elite class determined to rule at all costs - that he still hasn’t been able to close the deal is testimony to the fact that courage and common-sense are still strong in the United States…who wins next month will tell us if the wise or the gullible are able to triumph at the polls.
One thing which I noted in last night’s debate was John McCain speaking to the actual concerns of those affected in their personal lives by the financial crisis - those who have seen their home values collapse while keeping up their home payments. As a for-instance, there is me. My house has lost at least $175,000 in value, and perhaps more - in a real sense, by house is actually worthless because with so many foreclosures on the market, there will be no prospective buyer’s for my house as there are plenty of nicer houses to be had for even less than the supposed market value of my home. Essentially, every month I make a mortgage payment, I’m wasting my money - I am not building equity, and I long ago lost the $40,000 I put down on the house. In terms of logic, the best thing for me to do with this house would be to bag it - go buy a house at knock-down prices and once I close on that home, allow this one to fall into foreclosure.
I’d rather not do that.
But what to do? I contacted my lender and suggested a re-working of my loan payments - not any forgiveness of debt, but just an easement on the amount I had to pay each month so that I could hang on here while building up savings until the market comes back and I can either sell the house (and pay off the bank) or refinance it (and pay off the bank). No harm, no foul - the bank has one less foreclosure on their hands, I have my house without the shame of a defaulted loan, I’m building up savings and in 5 to 10 years I sell/refinance and clear things up with the bank which will not have lost a penny on me. The answer to this suggested course of action? Not just no, but heck no. The bank wasn’t interested…and so there I sat (and sit) tossing money down the black hole of a collapsed Las Vegas housing market, watching my tax dollars go to bail out Frank and Dodd’s buddies who created this whole mess and all the while wondering if anyone was ever going to take an interest in Americans in this fix. Finally, last night, someone did - and it was John McCain. And I wasn’t the only person who noticed:
ABC News’ Rick Klein: “[M]cCain is roaming the stage, playing to his strength. And comes out with a policy proposal to help people stay in their homes — a strong lead answer, to have a meaty response to that. McCain looks confident early.” (Rick Klein, “Live Debate Blog,” ABC News’ “Live Debate Blog,” blogs.abcnews.com, 10/7/08)
Details? Don’t have them - but we really won’t fix the mess until we figure out what to do with all those houses in New Jersey, California, New Mexico, Nevada and elsewhere around the nation which have lost more than 20% of their value. Until this is resolved, a huge chunk of the American public is entirely removed from the housing market unless they ditch their current homes, thus shoving even more foreclosures on the market to drive down prices even further and make home mortgage paper even more worthless than it is now. Whatever the plan is, it has to have a component of helping those Americans who are upside down but who have not defaulted - not even so much as one late payment. Those who can afford their homes, but who’s homes have suffered a massive loss of value, thus becoming a dead weight on the housing market and on the banks who are holding paper on houses worth half of the loan amount.
All of Obama’s finger pointing at Bush; all of Obama’s ignoring of his Party’s part in this debacle, all of his welfarist notions on how to move forward are so much worthless nonsense - they don’t address the problem which needs to be fixed in order to get things moving again. A lot of wealth has been lost, and some way has to be found to make the debt load of the people match the real value of the nation’s real estate - McCain has an idea, and is clearly thinking of regular folks; the hard working people who didn’t buy houses on speculation but who have none the less been caught in the Democrat-inspired collapse of the mortgage industry. In this alone - the perception to see where the real problem lies - we can see McCain’s manifest superiority over Obama as a prospective Chief Executive.
The Director of the Human Rights Foundation, Armando Valladares, said that electing Barack Obama as the next U.S. President, would go against “the values, principles and ideals that have shaped this great nation…”
…Valladares spent 22 years in a Cuban prison before moving to the United States, where he currently resides. According to him, Obama is governed by the Marxist belief that “the end justifies the means.”
The Latino leader said that if Obama wins the election, “more than ever, our society will be in great danger. One of his objectives is the dissolution of the family and its values. Obama supports marriage between same-sex partners. He wants to bring it to the Constitution. Obama is in favor of the adoption of children by gay couples. Rather than favoring prayer in schools, he advocates the distribution of condoms.”
The greatest concern of Valladares is Obama’s relationship with terrorists. “William ‘Bill’ Ayers was one of the founders of the leftist organization ‘The Weatherman.’ It was this group that put the bomb at the headquarters of the police department in New York back in 1970. Additionally, the bombings at the Capitol in Washington in 1971 and at the Pentagon in 1972 are among their other terrorist acts.”
“Obama and Ayers served together in the extreme leftist organization, Woods Fund Board, from 1999 to 2002. Ayers introduced his terrorist friends to Obama and organized parties at his house to raise money for Obama’s campaign to the Senate in Illinois. They appeared together many times in public lectures, panels. Ayers was a donor to the Obama campaign in 2001.”
According to Valladares, if Obama is elected, Ayers would have a place in his administration.
Right now, Ayers has become too toxic for him to find a spot in an Obama Administration - but the ideology of Ayers would certainly find a home in Obama’s White House. Watching Obama fumble around with mindless talking points during the “townhall” debate, I get the distinct impression that Obama wouldn’t be the leader of his Administration - he is the definition of the empty suit and his ideological mentors can pour into him whatever they please. One of the more curious things right now is that for 8 years the left has been complaining that President Bush is a mindless tool of shadowy special interests who get him to do their bidding while he’s clueless about what is really going on - and now these same leftists are determined to have a mindless tool of shadowy special interest who will be able to get him to do their bidding. Up has become down and we’ve stepped through the looking glass.
These leftists like Ayers certainly believe they are doing the right thing - that the world is never going to be the way its supposed to be until their ideology rules supreme and everyone is forced into the Marxist dispensation. How they manage to deny the truth of their own eyes is inexplicable, but not at all rare - Marx, himself, had no clue about the working class he claimed to advance…no more than did Lenin, Stalin, Mao or Castro and no more than the various leftists in the United States who have risen from the fever swamps of post-Christian philosophy to needlessly trouble the world. Ayers probably has a high opinion of himself, as does Obama - that neither of them have ever done anything to actually help a downtrodden person is neither here nor there…no leftist ever has, and none ever will. Actual people are terribly inconvenient for leftists - they prefer to deal with humanity than with humans.
And so here comes Barack Obama, product of mid- to late-20th century American education, which means that unless he exerted himself independently he has only the haziest notion of how the world works or how it got to be the way it is (and such mites of information he’s been given are usually wrong, or grossly misunderstood)…but he’s going to save us all, because he’s been told by his mentors what needs to be done, and it all seems to fit in a nice, neat ideological package - divorced from reality, but Obama lacks the grounding in real world knowledge to detect the difference between the real and the fantasy. Taught his religion by a racist con artist, joined to a grievance-mongering wife, surrounded by sycophants, told endlessly that he’s just oh, so smart and wonderful…he’s going blind into an office he doesn’t have a clue about and which he won’t be able to make work…and thus all power will slip out of his hands and fall into the hands of those who do know how to make it work…under-secretaries and senior bureaucrats and obscure lawyers will decide how things go, with Obama only being called upon to ratify their designs in public speeches, with an MSM counted on to smooth over any difficult questions which may arise. And all things done to advance the leftist agenda for the remaking of the United States.
Will we have this? I don’t think so. Its late in the game and our team is down by 7 with a long yardage, third down conversion necessary just to try and get some momentum…but I think we’re going to win. If we lose, I shan’t be surprised, nor dismayed - I am at peace…but also serenely confident in the outcome. Why? Because America is not what Obama and his handlers believe it is - we’re not a racist, sexist, homophobic society which needs to be cured by a dose of leftism. We’re not a bunch of whiners who are sucking our collective thumb and waiting for Uncle Sugar to come and take care of us. We are Americans - and we wish to live in an American nation, not a country converted into a poor copy of Euro-trash socialism. Last night’s debate showed quite clearly who is the better man to be President - and while it still could end up that the American people hand power to Obama and his Democrats, I think that those who have so far been on the fence now have the knowledge to make their decision, and my prayer - and conviction - is that they will choose correctly.
Nevada state authorities seized records and computers Tuesday from the Las Vegas office of an organization that tries to get low-income people registered to vote, after fielding complaints of voter fraud.
Bob Walsh, spokesman for the Nevada secretary of state’s office, told FOXNews.com the raid was prompted by ongoing complaints about “erroneous” registration information being submitted by the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, also called ACORN.
The group was submitting the information through a voter sign-up drive known as Project Vote.
“Some of them used nonexistent names, some of them used false addresses and some of them were duplicates of previously filed applications,” Walsh said, describing the complaints, which largely came from the registrar in Clark County, Nev.
Secretary of State Ross Miller said the fraudulent registrations included forms for the starting lineup of the Dallas Cowboys football team.
“Tony Romo is not registered to vote in the state of Nevada, and anybody trying to pose as Terrell Owens won’t be able to cast a ballot on Nov. 4,” Miller said.
Walsh said agents from both the secretary of state’s office and Nevada attorney general’s office conducted the raid at 9:30 a.m. local time, and “took a bunch of stuff.”
In a race expected to be close on Election Day, this is serious stuff.
Not exactly, but he does go a long way towards saying Obama and his campaign aren’t being truthful regarding the relationship between Democratic Presidential candidate Barack Obama and unrepentant domestic terrorist Bill Ayres. Here is the excellent report by CNN:
Obama has pledged to sign this misbegotten, anti-human legislation (out of a desire to bring us together for some hopeful change, of course):
Bishop Robert Finn of Kansas City-St. Joseph in Missouri, writing in his diocesan newspaper, has discussed the proposed Freedom of Choice Act (FOCA), which he said would overturn all existing federal regulations on abortion. Claiming the passage of the act would lead to an increase in abortions, he also questioned whether pro-life supporters of pro-choice politicians have their priorities “backwards.”
Writing in his latest column for The Catholic Key, Bishop Finn said “It is clear that FOCA would immediately make null and void every current restriction on abortion in all jurisdictions.”
Though Bishop Finn did not mention any presidential candidates by name, Democratic presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama has pledged to pass FOCA as his first act as president.
The legislation, which was first proposed in 1989, was reproduced in its current form by Bishop Finn in his October 1 column:
“A government may not (1) deny or interfere with a woman’s right to choose – (A) to bear a child; (B) to terminate a pregnancy prior to viability; or (C) to terminate a pregnancy after viability where termination is necessary to protect the life or health of the woman; or (2) discriminate against the exercise of the rights set forth in paragraph (1) in the regulation or provision of benefits, facilities, services, or information.”
According to Bishop Finn, the bill would overturn many state laws, such as abortion reporting requirements in all 50 states. It would additionally overturn states’ laws concerning parental involvement, restrictions on later-term abortions, conscience protection laws for individual health care providers, bans on partial-birth abortions, conscience protection laws for institutions, requirements for counseling before an abortion, and laws providing ultrasounds to distressed women before an abortion.
We can also expect that a law which prohibits government from denying the alleged “right” to an abortion will be turned around in an Obama Supreme Court to mean that the government must fund abortions - the whole law is designed to make the United States of America the leader in the world-wide Culture of Death…someone may correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think any nation in the world has abortion laws as permissive as the legislation proposed here. This would be the left’s Final Solution to the abortion question.
We daren’t let it happen - not for any reason whatsoever.
Earlier today, the Republican National Committee filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) against the Obama campaign regarding reports it accepted around $200 million in illegal contributions, and their failure to comply with campaign finance laws.
RNC Chief Counsel Sean Cairncross released the following statement today concerning the complaint:
“We believe Obama for America has knowingly accepted excessive contributions and donations from foreign nationals, and has failed to take the necessary remedial action required by law. We see this as a wide-scale problem and it appears the Obama campaign may be in substantial noncompliance with federal campaign finance laws. Barack Obama broke his word to the American people and refused to accept public financing, and now his campaign appears to be disregarding the rules and laws that govern federal campaigns. Senator Obama routinely mentions the word ‘change’ on the campaign trail, yet it seems the only changes he supports are ones that personally benefit his own political aspirations.”
Two donors to the Obama campaign that gave a total of $7,722 appear to have made their contributions under fake names that look like they were written by a mouse running across a keyboard: Dahsudhu Hdusahfd of Df, Hawaii with the following employer CZXVC/ZXVZXV and Uadhshgu Hduadh listed as living in Dhff, Florida listed their employer as DASADA/SAFASF.
CBS News did not find any records of these last names, towns or employers anywhere else. Newsweek reported two questionable Obama donors over the weekend named “Doodad Pro” and “Good Will”.
Contributions from the two donors Hdusahfd and Hduadh were made on the same day starting on July 16, 2008. Federal Election Commission (FEC) records show the campaign began refunding the donations as early as August 6, 2008.
Despite numerous refunds from the Obama campaign, Hdusahfd still has a record of giving a total of $7500 to Obama which is well over the legal limit for the primary and general election of $4600. Hduadh gave $14,200 but the Obama campaign returned all but $222.00.
First off, Obama has promised a “middle class tax cut” - what this is, exactly, is hard to define, but it seems to revolve around some Democratic focus-group results showing that middle class people are concerned with middle class issues and thus Democrats better come up with something to appeal to middle class people. The only track record we have on this particular Democratic program is Bill Clinton’s 1992 promise to give us a middle class tax cut. Sadly, Bill was unable to provide this as a spending binge commanded all funds possible…including a retroactive tax increase. We can, I believe, expect Obama’s tax cut to become a tax increase, too.
Obama’s people seem to have a hankering for a thing called the “fairness doctrine” - this is predicated upon the theory that liberalism is the default position and any non-liberal assertion in the media must be countered by a liberal response. Conservatives don’t give a two-penny dam what some liberal twit or other is saying on an obscure radio station and thus won’t avail themselves of the fairness doctrine. Liberals, on the other hand, care very much what the highly rated Limbaugh, Hannity, Levin, Ingram, etc say on the radio, and they will launch complaint after complaint regarding conservative comment and will demand equal time to respond. This intense harassment will be coupled with the sort of thuggish attacks on criticism we’ve seen by Team Obama against any of those who dare to question The One’s past, programs or motivations. Boiled down, we can expect a severe crimping of free speech if Obama is elected.
Senator Obama advocated a cut and run from Iraq out of a desire to build up kook left support for his candidacy. We can expect Obama to treat American foreign and military policy as if they were an adjunct to his personal, political fortunes. Only if it seems to be useful to Obama will any particular policy - good or bad - be followed. If it so happens that American need and Obama desire match, then that is fine and dandy - but if they don’t, America will come in a poor second. We can expect Obama’s foreign and military policy to be a compendium of Clinton’s erratic behavior coupled with Carter’s penchant for finding fault with America’s friends and excuses for America’s enemies.
Obama’s people are of that line of thinking which figures that Israel is the problem and if we can just figure out a way to get terrorists to love Israel, we’ll have peace - that the terrorists will never love Israel and will consider all concessions to be a sign of weakness is not a concept Obama or his people are capable of grasping. We can expect Obama to continually pressure Israel to give ground and to never, ever take a strong stand against those who seek the destruction of Israel.
Have Democrats ever had a fiscal year in which they advocated an actual reduction in the number of dollars the federal government spends? No - and thus we can expect that any idea about cutting the size of government is dead as a doornail under Obama.
Have Democrats ever had a year when they looked around and couldn’t think of a single thing to increase government spending on? No - and thus we can expect Democrats to pile on as much spending as they can.
Have Democrats come through with their 2006 promise to run the most open and ethical government in history? No. Oh, you think Obama will? I guess you can make an argument for holding that position, but the odds are that it will be corrupt business as usual for the party which hammered GOPer Foley for writing a dirty e mail or two but can’t find it in itself to eject William “Cold Cash” Jefferson (D-LA) from the House.
Democrats exerted great efforts to prevent a reigning in of Fannie and Freddie before the crunch hit. Will they now actually keep an eye out for trouble and act in a timely manner to prevent it? Perhaps - but Obama and his Democrats give no indication of having learned anything from the financial debacle than to blame Republicans for their own failures…and if it works in 2008 by helping Dems to victory, what makes anyone think they’ll change their ways in 2009? We can expect Obama and his Democrats to grandstand on things like Gitmo - which isn’t an actual problem - while real crisis are allowed to fester until they become unmanageable.
The last time the US military was in better shape at the end of a Democratic Administration than it was at the beginning was FDR/Truman…but it took a World War to convince a Democratic Administration that maybe we needed a first class military. We can expect Obama to let things slide in this area - especially as he looks for money to spend on various liberal programs.
We can expect strenuous efforts on the part of Obama and his Democrats to stop any measures designed to limit voter fraud.
Behind rhetoric about secure borders, etc, we can expect Obama and his Democrats to do nothing about illegal immigration but very much to ensure that their votes are cast and counted in American elections, provided they vote Democrat.
Any chance an Obama Administration will appoint any judge anywhere who is not pre-approved by NARAL/ACLU/NOW? Not a chance - so, we can expect Obama to appoint only ultra-liberal, activist judges from top to bottom as vacancies occur.
All in all, we can expect an Obama Administration to be a complete disaster - there is no area in which Obama has a policy edge on John McCain…its all about advancing liberalism, liberal power, liberal wealth and liberal politicians. America is a fine thing and if its not too much trouble Obama will spare a moment for her, but America will have to get used to the fact - if Obama wins - that she is subordinate to Obama and his Democrat’s personal interests.
* It’s “simply not true” that Barack Obama said he’d meet Iran’s president without preconditions, Biden insisted.
Yet when Obama was asked if he would in a debate during the primaries, he said yes - a position Biden back then termed “naive.”
* Biden said he’s “always supported” clean-coal technology - after stating emphatically only last month, “We’re not supporting clean coal.”
* Biden asserted - repeatedly - that the US spends more money on three weeks’ combat in Iraq than it’s spent in Afghanistan since the war began.
That claim’s only remotely intelligible if he limits Afghan expenditures merely to US rebuilding efforts - and even then, he’s off by a factor of three, according to State Department numbers.
* Also on Afghanistan, Biden insisted - repeatedly - that “our commanding general in Afghanistan said the surge principle in Iraq will not work” there.
That may not be an out-and-out lie, but it took supposed foreign-policy neophyte Sarah Palin to bring any context or nuance to the statement.
What Gen. David McKiernan had said was that tribal realities in Afghanistan are very different than in Iraq - requiring a different form of cooperation.
But he flatly said more troops, and more local engagement, are needed.
Sounds like a surge to us.
* Then there was what might have been the biggest head-scratcher of the night. Said Biden of the Bush administration’s supposed Middle East follies:
“When . . . along with France, we kicked Hezbollah out of Lebanon, I said and Barack said, ‘Move NATO forces in there. Fill the vacuum, because if you don’t, Hezbollah will control it.”
Huh?
Assuming that Biden was referring to when, in 2005, American and French pressure helped the Lebanese people kick Syrian troops out of Lebanon, who ever thought NATO occupation of that deeply divided country was a good idea?
As if America’s NATO allies would have gone in the first place.
But hey, as long as it makes Biden sound presidential.
At some point, Americans have to wonder: Is this a fellow who should be a heartbeat away from the White House?
Biden has long been known as a blowhard, but I never suspected him to be a man so entirely disconnected from the facts. These are not the verbal flubs any of us make in the normal course of events, and which Sarah Palin at times made during the debate and are now being used by Team Obama and the left to defend Biden with the “she lied, too” defense, as if that would make their guy look good, supposing that Palin had actually told a lie. Biden again and again and again just spun out the tallest of tales which require a bit of research just to connect them to one possible fact. This would be funny except for the fact that a month from now Biden could be elected Vice President of the United States of America.
This also highlights the rather consistent dishonesty of the man on the top of the ticket - Obama has, at times, lied about his connections to Rezko, lied about his connections to Ayers, lied about what he knew of Jeremiah Wright, lied about McCain’s record on stem cell research, lied about his record on gun control, lied about his record on the “born alive” law…lies, lies and more lies, each designed to get Obama out of a tight spot where the truth would sink his chances in November. Are we supposed to believe that he and Biden will suddenly discover a love of the unvarnished truth after they win? Or is it more realistic to believe that a successful liar will just keep going with what worked in the past?
The main reason for electing John McCain and Sarah Palin is that in them we will find people who love the truth - who prefer the truth, even if it causes them great difficulty. We need an Executive Branch which will stoutly go to war with business as usual in DC, not an Executive Branch which will just give us more of the same business as usual.
There’s been a lot of interest in what I read lately. Well, I was reading my copy of today’s New York Times and I was really interested to read about Barack’s friends from Chicago. Turns out, one of his earliest supporters is a man who, according to The New York Times was a domestic terrorist and part of a group that, quote, ‘launched a campaign of bombings that would target the Pentagon and the U.S. Capitol.’ These are the same guys who think patriotism is paying higher taxes. This is not a man who sees America as you and I do - as the greatest force for good in the world. This is someone who sees America as imperfect enough to pal around with terrorists who targeted their own country. This, ladies and gentlemen, has nothing to do with the kind of change anyone can believe in - not my kids and not your kids.
Now, that New York Times article is actually a bit of a whitewash - seriously asking us to believe that Obama and Ayers aren’t close. This is akin to taking the word of Lucky Luciano that Al Capone had only a little to do with bootlegging. Be that as it may, it is way past time that McCain/Palin started hitting upon the very things which make Obama entirely unfit to be President. In Obama’s advocacy of wrong policies, in his advocacy of the most fanatic pro-abortion positions, in his associations with various racists and anti-Americans is all we need to know about Obama - and, if known widely enough, will suffice to end his chances of being elected. Obama has spent the last 18 months trying to project an image of a post-partisan healer…when he’s actually a ignorant, vindictive ultra-leftist who wants to impose Euro-socialism upon the United States of America.
The American people will have the sort of government they prefer - but it is our duty to ensure that our fellow Americans have the most complete set of facts possible when they render their judgement. If, after the people know that Obama’s allies caused the mortgage meltdown, called for US defeat in war, want to impose government control over larger and larger aspects of Americans life, engaged all manner of corrupt activies - if the people know all that and still prefer Obama to McCain, then so be it; we on our side will then rest content with the knowledge that we did our duty…but to hold fire because Obama and his minions will accuse us of racism or of being mean? Nonsense - time to bring a howitzer to Obama’s gun fight.
Sorry I’ve been out of the loop, but its been rather busy ’round the Noonan household and, also, I didn’t get to see the debate live but had to watch it in rebroadcast late last night. So, anyways - Sarah Palin beat the living poop out of Biden last night. I mean, it was as if an adult were engaged in a debate with a six year old. I’ve never seen so many lies from one man in one night - and the real absurdity of it was the childishness of the lies. When Biden whipped out his assertions about the US and France kicking Hezbollah out of Lebanon I was confronted with the fact that Biden is an idiot - he was just making things up as he went along, much as a six year old will do when cornered on the question of who broke the living room lamp. If Obama does manage to win then I will pray daily for his good health, because Biden’s intellectual capacity places in doubt his ability to so much as tie his own shoes. How does that dunce manage to get re-elected? For crying out loud, doesn’t anyone in Delaware realize that he’s an ill-informed gasbag?
So, anyways, the debate went well for Governor Palin and, therefor, for the McCain campaign - and I note that Team McCain already has an ad out taking Biden to task for his whoppers, and by extension hitting Obama with the dual club of Obama’s own past statements and his irresponsibility in picking someone as manifestly unqualified as Biden. Expect more and more along these lines as we head to the home stretch. The GOP base has been wondering when McCain was going to come out swinging against the lies of Team Obama, and we now have that answer - it started last night.
I noted last night that the RNC announced it had raised $66 million in September - a new record far outpacing the RNC’s previous best month from 8 years ago. Now, some of this can be attributed to the fact that GOPers can’t donate to McCain, but the mere fact of this much money flowing into GOP coffers gives lie to the concept that the GOP base is dispirited - which lie is being relentlessly hammered home by the MSM in hopes of turning wish into reality. The key to understanding this race is to understand that almost the entire elite establishment has set itself to the task of electing Obama President - and in service of this goal, all the stops are being pulled out.
Team Obama is lying all the time and every day about McCain and Palin - one radio ad out here in Nevada has it that McCain is opposed to all stem cell research, a complete lie, as can be seen at McCain’s website. Ad after ad, statement after statement is filled with lies about McCain, Palin and the GOP…and far from the MSM investigating such lies, the MSM is applauding them and throwing a few of its own into the mix, for good measure.
The MSM is entirely in the tank for Obama - and not just in the normal sense of being liberal reporters and editors who just naturally report things with a liberal slant. Its gone far beyond that. The MSM is cheerleading for Obama - hiding anything which threatens his candidacy, being an attack dog for Obama against his opponents, downplaying any good news which might redound to GOP credit and thus help McCain…given that Obama wants to bring back the Orwellian “fairness doctrine”, what we’re getting here is a taste of what all media will be like if Obama wins. Goebbels and Stalin wished they had this sort of propaganda machine - not just control of the media, but the enthusiastic support of the media for whatever evil or absurdities the government plans to do.
The bosses are plunking down for Obama; corporate, union and media - knowing they’ve already bought him, Joe Biden and the entire Democratic party, while the election of McCain/Palin would bring to the fore people who have no truck with such and no aversion to calling malefactors of great wealth to account. For Obama and Biden (and Dodd, Frank, Pelosi and Reid) to pose as defenders of Main Street against the depredations of Wall Street is to step through the looking glass and enter the world of pure fantasy. Democrats only talk about hammering the rich - thing is, they are the rich. While Biden claims that Obama won’t tax anyone making under $250,000 a year (itself an absurd assertion - if you believe this, then I’ve got some swampland in Florida to sell you), the fact of the matter is that Obama won’t tax the real rich…not a penny of taxation will be levied against Ted Kennedy, Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Jay Rockefeller, etc, etc, etc who have vast wealth, but don’t have high annual income in the sense of earning a salary or running a small farm, ranch or business.
Confronting all of this power and wealth is John McCain, Sarah Palin and Joe and Jane Average - the people who make this country work, who are viewed as an endless source of swag by the elite, and who are hated for what they are - regular folks. Things will rise to a fever pitch over the next 30 days - the elites will use every means at their disposal to win…all we can do is say our prayers, and then fear God and dread naught.
Remember, things are not as they appear - the MSM is trying very hard to pull the wool over everyone’s eyes and if you expect either Obama or Biden to tell the truth then you just haven’t been paying attention. Do not tremble for the future, for we have already won. And so, have at the battle - and battle with joy in your hearts, love for your country and pity for the misguided who oppose us. Do not fight with the cynicism and hatred Obama urged his minions to display. They will not have the day - we will triumph in the end, because right makes might, and we are right and they are wrong.
Nothing like Cynthia McKinney - whom you lefties out there supported tooth and nail - to add an element of spice to the campaign:
It wouldn’t be an election cycle without Cynthia McKinney’s lunacy, and fortunately she hasn’t shied away from providing it. Here, we watch as the Green Party’s endorsed presidential candidate accuses National Guard soldiers of committing 5,000 murders of prisoners in the wake of Hurricane Katrina…
…If you think that this is the kind of insanity one normally hears from Alex Jones, well … you’d be right. The conspiracy theorists on the Left and the Right tend to embrace each other at a certain point, just south of rationality. For these people, little points like evidence and common sense provide no obstacles at all to paranoia and fantasy.
For instance, let’s skip past the extremely weak sourcing McKinney uses to make her charges and go right to some obvious points. Wouldn’t the families of these 5,000 prisoners wonder what happened to them? And which prisoners, specifically, have not been accounted for? At least a few names of people who were in Louisiana state custody before Katrina and then not in custody afterwards would provide a starting point for any investigation. And it’s possible to lose a few bodies in the Louisiana swamps, but not even that legendary territory could hide 5,000 of them at once without a few of the locals taking notice.
Normally, we’d dismiss this kind of idiocy, but this is no ordinary idiot. McKinney is a former member of Congress and a candidate for President on a party that wants to claim national legitimacy. This shows the intellectual level of the Greens, but it also puts in play yet another baseless conspiracy theory about Katrina and its aftermath. We’ll be hearing this lie for the next few years, thanks to McKinney.
Is there any difference between this and Maxine Waters’ accusation that the CIA deliberate brought crack in to destroy America’s black community? Between this and Murtha’s accusation that the Marines in Haditha were cold blooded murderers? Between this and Ted Kennedy’s accusation that President Bush cooked up Iraq in Texas? Between this and Obama’s accusation that McCain cheated in the Saddleback debate? The kook left is the kook left - and they are in control of the Democratic party; the fact that a screwball like McKinney has switched from Democrat to Green just shows that there’s not a dime’s worth of difference between any of these paranoid, hate filled and ignorant leftists.
Consider this a long-range, opening shot in an elitist attempt to justify an eventual Obama Administration foreign policy:
Quite apart from their unhappy consequences, all these invocations of Munich begin by rewriting history. Chamberlain was a democratic leader who knew that most of his people understandably did not want to go to war in 1938, only 20 years after another terrible war in which about three-quarters of a million British men had been killed.
Besides which, Chamberlain was far from alone in thinking that he was addressing a real grievance. The one accurate thing about Kagan’s quaint comparison is that the residents of the breakaway Georgian region of South Ossetia no more want to be ruled by Georgia today than the Sudeten Germans wanted to be ruled by the Czechs 70 years ago.
While it’s lamentably true that German resentment at “the slave treaty of Versailles” following World War I helped bring Hitler to power, there is another inconvenient truth: Between the wars, British and American liberals almost universally believed that the post-1918 settlement had been unjust. H.N. Brailsford, the leading leftist English commentator on foreign affairs, had written in 1920 that, of all the Versailles treaty’s redrawing of borders, “the worst offence was the subjection of over three million Germans to Czech rule.” Experience seemed to show that nationalism was the great force of the age and that it needed to be assuaged — or appeased, a word first used, it should be remembered, by those who advocated doing so.
To be sure, Churchill denounced the Munich agreement in a resonant speech: “This is only the first sip, the first bitter foretaste of a bitter cup which will be proffered to us year by year unless by a supreme recovery of moral health and martial vigour, we arise again and take our stand for freedom as in olden time.” But he was speaking as someone untroubled by any sympathy for national self-determination.
In other words, Munich wasn’t a bad deal, in and of itself…the Sudenten Germans were just going for national self-determination, Hitler’s Germany had a legitimate interest in the fate of the Sudentenland, Czechoslovakia had no business ruling the Sudentenland, Germans were justly outraged over the provisions of the Treaty of Versailles…later in the piece, the author also notes that Churchill was opposed to Indian independence, and thus didn’t have a leg to stand on when he argued that Britain must support democratic Czechoslovakia.
In all my time of reading on matters of history and politics, I’ve never seen a better example of pure, unadulterated, ignorant bullsh**.
The principles at stake in the Munich talks weren’t the fate of the Sudenten Germans, the Republic of Czechosolovakia, the validity of the Treaty of Versailles or, even, the worth of democracy and national self-determination - all of these were raised, by Hitler and those who wished to appease him, in order to cover up the fact that the issue was collective security against unprovoked aggression. It was felt, post-WWI, that had Imperial Germany been confronted with the entire anti-German coalition of 1918 in 1914, Germany would have been restrained from launching its war of aggression against France and Russia. The League of Nations was set up to commit all the powers concerned to come to the defense of any power or group of powers threatened by un-provoked attack. Churchill, at the conclusion of the Munich, was not so much aghast at the loss of Czechoslovakia (though, in a purely military sense, the loss of Czech military power and bases was a catastrophe for the Anglo-French alliance), but at the fact that Hitler was assured by the Anglo-French alliance that un-provoked aggression would not be thwarted. When Chamberlain, 9 months later, asserted that Britian would stand by Poland if she were attacked by Germany, Hitler justifiably considered this to be a worthless statement, and thus World War Two was assured.
What is wanted here? A justification for a surrender to Putin’s imperial ambitions and Iran’s desire for nuclear weapons and the export of Jihad designed to eventually destroy Israel. This will also be applied to any Chinese demand upon Taiwan and
