Krauthammer gets it very right:

…November ‘08 was one-shot, one-time, never to be replicated. Nor was November ‘09 a realignment. It was a return to the norm — and definitive confirmation that 2008 was one of the great flukes in American political history.

The irony of 2009 is that the anti-Democratic tide overshot the norm — deeply blue New Jersey, for example, elected a Republican governor for the first time in 12 years — because Democrats so thoroughly misread 2008 and the mandate they assumed it bestowed. Obama saw himself as anointed by a watershed victory to remake American life. Not letting the cup pass from his lips, he declared to Congress only five weeks after his swearing-in his “New Foundation” for America — from remaking the one-sixth of the American economy that is health care to massive government regulation of the economic lifeblood that is energy.

Moreover, the same conventional wisdom that proclaimed the dawning of a new age last November dismissed the inevitable popular reaction to Obama’s hubristic expansion of government, taxation, spending and debt — the tea party demonstrators, the town hall protesters — as a raging rabble of resentful reactionaries, AstroTurf-phony and Fox News-deranged.

Some rump…

The stars aligned perfectly for the Democrats in 2008 – there was not one additional thing which could have been added to give them a better advantage. And yet their vote total, while a solid win, was fairly modest. The sort of result you’d expect from two evenly matched parties who slugged it out with enthusiasm. Actually, the GOP was in terrible shape in 2008 – short on money, lacking enthusiasm, with an unexciting standard-bearer; and yet, had just a couple things gone right, McCain would be President right now.

But Obama and his Democrats choose to treat their victory as a mandate for change – and not just a mandate for any, old change, but for very ardently leftist change. This in spite of the fact that one of the prime reasons they won was because they hid their leftist agenda behind a fog of centrist rhetoric and the MSM played cover for them. They didn’t win on a leftist platform, but immediately proceeded to govern on one. The reaction we’ve seen is completely natural – the people are not leftist; never have been, never will be. We’re Americans.

Added to this and intensifying the effect has been the stunning incompetence of President Obama. I was discussing this with a friend yesterday and our hope is that Obama is a puppet…because if he’s not, then he’s just a plain and simple idiot. If Obama is lucky, hardly anyone saw that presser in the wake of the Ft Hood attack – my wife saw it live and was just disgusted by it; listening to it on the radio later I was stunned at the complete obtuseness of the man. To talk up Indians while America is in shock over mass murder is, well, just the most amazingly dumb thing imaginable. But this isn’t the first time such things have happened. I’m actually a bit worried that Obama simply will not get the hang of being President and that we’ll be stuck with a moving disaster until January of 2013.

Be that as it may, the playing field has tilted back towards the center/right. But it has not tilted back towards the GOP. The Republican party still has a long way to go to earn the trust and respect of the American people – even though the GOP is likely to score some impressive gains next year, it won’t matter much unless the people actually trust the GOP to do the right thing, once back in power. The people are in the process of taking back their government – our job, as Republicans, is to simply assist them in this task and then carry out the long-needed reforms being demanded. We do that, and we’ll route the left for good in this nation.

Makes me ashamed of my country:

…Lefties keep assuring me on Twitter that western meddling will only make it easier for the regime to demonize the protesters, but (a) the demonization’s going to happen anyway, (b) no one’s asking Obama to send in the Marines, just to speak up, and (c) Angela Merkel managed to issue a statement earlier today calling the Basij thuggery “completely unacceptable” without killing the uprising in its crib. And still, from the White House, nothing. To think, some commentators are accusing The One of “cowardly silence.”

You’ll also be pleased to know that, according to no less than the New York Times, Obama didn’t bother holding any meetings or conference calls about this yesterday. Remember: Health care is a “crisis.” This is but a “situation.”

State Department spokesman Ian Kelly told reporters Monday that the United States is concerned about allegations of ballot fraud.

Kelly described the U.S. government as “deeply troubled” by the events in Iran, which is a stronger expression of concern than over the weekend when Vice President Biden cast doubt on the legitimacy of the election.

When pressed by a reporter, Kelly declined to condemn the Iranian security forces for their crackdown on street protesters. And he said the U.S. knows too little about the conduct of the election to say for sure whether there was fraud.

Can’t even muster up a verbal condemnation – I guess Obama is worried that would make the Iranian dictators mad at us and we can’t have any more of that…only Bush would want theocratic mass murderers mad at him, and we saw how that turned out.

A second wave of foreclosures is building:

It is conventional wisdom in the housing blog community (and the OC Register) that a giant wave of foreclosures is coming later this year, but what facts do we have that support this thesis? Today, we take a look at the available data and show this wave in its formative stage.

Foreclosure is a four step process: (1) the borrower quits making payments, (2) the lender issues of Notice of Default, (3) the lender issues a notice of Trustee Sale, and (4) the foreclosure auction occurs on the courthouse steps. Steps 1, 2 and 3 are separated by 90 days each. At any time during this period, either the borrower can get current with their payments, or the borrower and lender can agree to a loan modification. If either contingency occurs, the foreclosure process is aborted.

California passed SB1137 to force lenders to try harder to reach borrowers in default and work out a loan modification plan. Also, the GSEs and many large banks were on voluntary or mandated foreclosure moratoria. This caused a dramatic decline in Notices of Default (step 2). Unfortunately, as I noted Moritorium on Defaults Announced, stopping lenders from issuing notices does nothing to prevent borrowers from actually defaulting (step 1). Borrowers everywhere stopped making payments, and lenders merely stopped issuing notices about it.

The hope of foreclosure moratoria is that additional time will allow lenders to work out the bad loans and avoid the foreclosure process. Unfortunately, it did not work. First, very few borrowers even try to work out the loan with the lenders, and many who try fail to reach an agreement. Second, most who have agreed to a loan modification end up defaulting again; the redefault rate is running at about 50%. And third, financially it is in a borrower’s best interest to give up the house in foreclosure, so the only thing keeping them in the loan and in the home is their sense of morality concerning the payment and their attachment to their properties.

It will come – in Las Vegas, for instance, you can pick up houses which were $400,000 four years ago for $125,000 today. Anyone in a 400k mortgage feels a strong pull to work out a purchase of an equivalent home for a fraction of the price and then just bag it on the more expensive house. Lenders should realize this and thus work out ways to convince people to stay in their homes – they should, in the end, figure out ways and means to set the current mortgage amount in line with current market values with inputs for what the lender paid at the start and what the borrower has paid since the inception of the loan.

In effect, what we need is a bankruptcy re-organization of America’s housing market – its a big, old poop sandwich and everyone has to take a bite. But the banks are cowardly and short-sighted, the government is bent on saving the banks from their folly and the people are going to make rational economic decisions. Ergo, another wave of foreclosures is coming no matter how many moratoriums they have or fiscal hocus-pocus is produced to make it as if economics doesn’t matter – there’s just no economic sense in paying more for housing than you have to.

This second wave of foreclosures will eat into the (mostly mythical) profits banks have been showing of late, which will cause credit to freeze up, with will cause markets to collapse, which will cause a full blown economic depression…and all The One’s spending won’t put Humpty Dumpty back together again. All that money we’ve blown through might as well have been torched in a bonfire – spending doesn’t create wealth; making, mining and growing things does…and if you invest in such things, you’ll make money. Real money – not the bogus wealth of fiat money sifted through a usurious financial system which produces nothing but Chinese slave-goods and fat bonuses for corporate executives who did nothing at all. Liberal financial sharks have done well out of this, just as they have out of every economic debacle since the world started to go off hard money…but Soros having more money won’t make an unemployed truck driver feel very good.

Dumb and dumber, that’s all we’ve been – and we’re going to pay the price. Eventually we’ll work our way out of it, but there’s going to be a price to be paid.

Charlotte Allen takes the atheists to task:

I can’t stand atheists — but it’s not because they don’t believe in God. It’s because they’re crashing bores…

…My problem with atheists is their tiresome — and way old — insistence that they are being oppressed and their fixation with the fine points of Christianity. What — did their Sunday school teachers flog their behinds with a Bible when they were kids?…

…Maybe atheists wouldn’t be so unpopular if they stopped beating the drum until the hide splits on their second-favorite topic: How stupid people are who believe in God. This is a favorite Dawkins theme. In a recent interview with Trina Hoaks, the atheist blogger for the Examiner.com website, Dawkins described religious believers as follows: “They feel uneducated, which they are; often rather stupid, which they are; inferior, which they are; and paranoid about pointy-headed intellectuals from the East Coast looking down on them, which, with some justification, they do.” Thanks, Richard!

Dennett likes to call atheists “the Brights,” in contrast to everybody else, who obviously aren’t so bright. In a 2006 essay describing his brush with death after a heart operation, Dennett wrote these thoughts about his religious friends who told him they were praying for his recovery: “Thanks, I appreciate it, but did you also sacrifice a goat?” With friends like Daniel Dennett, you don’t need enemies.

They are crashing bores – arrogant, too. But in the end, I don’t believe in atheists – meaning, I don’t believe there is, has been or ever will be any person who will be entirely convinced there is no God. Atheism is an attitude – a self-centered, elitist conceit about one’s supposed intellectual superiority coupled with a desire to have this alleged superiority acknowledged by others.

This is the only way to explain the phenomena of atheists who sue in court to, say, have a prayer said at high school graduation banned. If you were really convinced that God didn’t exist then you simply wouldn’t care that some words were said to what you consider to be a non-existent entity. A truly intellectual person would understand that others do believe it and have this need and so common courtesy means you’d not stand in their way…and you wouldn’t be spreading absurd theories about how Christians are just waiting for their chance to start burning heretics at the stake, unless the ACLU stops them from having a Nativity scene at town hall.

If, on the other hand, what you’re really about is insisting how smart you are then what you’re really trying to do is hide any reference to the one entity who is and always will be so vastly smarter than you that you are reduced to absolute insignificance in and of yourself. For some people the problem is that they are created – can’t stand the thought that they didn’t just will themselves into existence and thus became the smartest person in the room. So, they cook up absurd theories of universes creating themselves and look down upon those poor fools on their knees in prayer.

Meanwhile, we’re just sorry for them; and we’ll keep praying for them. Its so hard to see some of our fellows so cut off from reason and love – so unwilling to first admit to the superior and then realize you can endlessly draw upon this superior for whatever it is you need. Its like watching a man die of thirst in the desert for simple unwillingness to walk to the lake – he wants the lake to come to him and prove to him it exists, then he’ll deign to admit to the existence of the lake.

Ouch.

Today marks the one-month anniversary of President Obama’s inauguration. In his brief time in office, the president has overseen three massive new spending initiatives — the $787 billion stimulus bill, the trillion-dollar financial stability initiative and, most recently, the $275 billion mortgage assistance program.

That’s a lot of activity, and a ton of money, but so far the reaction to the new administration’s programs has been decidedly negative. Investors, among others, have panned the plans; the stock market is off nearly 10% from the day before the inauguration, or more than 800 points on the Dow Jones Industrial Average.

Hard to say that the day after The One was inaugurated? Not at all. We’ve got it all, they’ve got nothing but image.

I did end up having to see a good deal of yesterday’s activities…the management decided to put it up on the office monitors. I plan on filing an OSHA complaint, as I got a sick headache what with all the oozing Obamania. It was a bit surreal to watch – there was Obama; handsome, happy, young and in charge…and all the while it just seemed as if I were watching my dearly beloved mother enter into a slow motion train wreck. Its going to be a long four years, in a lot of ways.

Our liberals will dispute this, but the plain fact of the matter is that Obama’s economic policies are going to increase the debt, increase inflation (though this might be a year or two in the future), increase unemployment, increase interest rates, lower productivity and lower real wages. We don’t guess this will happen. We don’t think this will happen. We know this will happen. How do we know? Because every time the Obama plan has been tried, it has resulted in this…and as Obama appears set to really, really go whole hog into tax and spend liberalism, we can just expect things to be worse than they were in the past. We might all start longing for the relatively prosperous days of Jimmy Carter.

For those of us with faith, this will all be ok – we know that any trials sent our way are blessings from God so that we may better become good and faithful servants. But for those on the other side…well, they’re going to get a rude awakening and they will be both disorientated and angered. So, we’re going to have to carry the ball – helping as best we can to curb the worst excesses of the Obama policies, bucking up the flagging spirits of liberals who will start talking “malaise” and “era of limits”, as they were under Carter, and generally keeping the country up on the rails until we can get Obama and his Democrats booted out of power.

The one thing I do caution us against is Obama Derangement Syndrome (ODS); it is tempting to hammer back exactly as they hammered our guy, but that is ungenerous as well as counter-productive. Remember, for quite a while now Obama will be suffused with an unearthly glow. As his policies cause the country to crater, the MSM and the Obamaniacs will desperately try to spin any good news as the be all and end all of great leadership. When things really fly apart and we’re sitting with a hugely expanded debt, high unemployment and inflation eroding our money day by day, the real fanatics will still insist, in spite of all evidence, that Obama is The One and will pull us out of it. No sense provoking them unnecessarily – a gentle rebuke will do, if anything is needed at all. Our task is to be prepared with alternative policies to map a way out of the liberal morass, ready to go when needed during the 2010 and 2012 campaigns. Hating liberals won’t help us craft these alternate policies, nor help us discover and groom the leaders we’ll need to both win the elections and carry through the policies.

America made a mistake – we elected a well meaning but clueless tax and spend liberal. So be it. The American people made their choice and now we’re all going to have to sit tight and ride it out as best we can. No matter how bad it gets, we’re still Americans and thus capable of enduring anything and emerging triumphant at the end of it. America will correct its mistake, in the by and by – our job is to be prepared for when the American people realize their mistake.

So, have at it with gusto – take no guff from liberals who are going to insist that the debate is over and that no longer is dissent the highest form of patriotism. Don’t worry about the accusations of racism which will be hurled against you – they were going to do that anyway, and you might as well score some points while they’re doing it. Don’t be stampeded by the dark hints of social breakdown if The One were to lose in 2012. And, most of all, don’t take them too seriously – and when they really screw the pooch, don’t laugh at them. Well, ok…go ahead and laugh, but try to hide it when they’re standing right next to you.

The One has advised us that we’re to have trillion dollar deficits for at least some years. Only one thing wrong with that – we don’t have that much money, and as the rest of the world slides into recession, there will be no one to loan us that much money Additionally, there are practical difficulties of getting Obama’s plan passed:

The forecast Wednesday of a jaw-dropping $1.2 trillion one-year federal budget deficit will make it harder for President-elect Barack Obama to win broad support for a massive stimulus package that would add even more to the red ink.

With his party controlling both the House of Representatives and the Senate, Obama’s still likely to get the OK for spending and tax cuts that cost $1 trillion or more over two years and are designed to jump-start the economy and create or save 3 million jobs.

However, while many economists, business groups and politicians agree on the need for something dramatic, Obama now concedes that he’ll have to wait until February to get a bill to sign. He’ll probably find conservative “blue dog” Democrats as well as Republicans balking at the idea of borrowing another $1 trillion on top of this new annual deficit.

They could deny Obama the kind of broad, bipartisan approval that he hopes will signal not only that he’s changed the political culture of a divided Washington but also that he’s put forward a plan that’s widely popular. Such approval is crucial as he moves to rebuild trust in the government and the economy.

We conservatives will find it endlessly amusing that the liberal Democrat plan to allow people who can’t afford a home to get loans is what triggered the de-facto national bankruptcy which will, in turn, defeat the liberals’ plans to remake America now that they’ve regained full power. Bankruptcy? Yeah – I understand that the total liability of the federal government – including unfunded mandates like Social Security (which you liberals prevented us from fixing and which will now add to our amusement as you stare in slack-jawed disbelief at the result of your own purblind idiocy) – exceeds the total wealth of the American people. Part of this imbalance is caused by the collapse in home values, but the inflated home values were probably just masking reality for a while. Essentially – and make no mistake about it, President Bush and plenty of Republicans share blame on this, including yours, truly who didn’t fight hard enough against spending – we’ve spent ourselves into oblivion. And Obama wants to spend an extra trillion or so per year to fix America!

It is now time for retrenchment and reform – we need to drastically cut spending and completely overhaul the way we do government business. Curiously enough, if Obama would put himself at the head of such a reform movement, he’d probably be able to carry it off – and secure for himself not only re-election in 2012, but a high place in American history, alongside the likes of Lincoln and Reagan. The problem is that Obama has just created the post of “chief performance officer“, as if adding one more bureaucrat to the mix will suddenly get our government working efficiently for the good of the American people. I mean, I do admire the spirit there, Barry, but I’m sorry that I’m suppressing convulsions of laughter…its like someone is writing a comedy script to satirize the Obama Administration…but this is for real. We need bold, new initiatives – we’re getting window dressing. What’s next? Bureau of Hope within the Department of Change?

We can’t tax more money, we can’t borrow more money – we can print money, and I’ll bet that Obama will try a bit of that, thus bringing us into a replay of the 1970’s “stagflation” (for you youngsters, this is the “impossible” situation where you have both a stagnant economy and high inflation). If only the blinders would come off – and I pray they do. After all, FDR ran as a tax-cutting, budget balancer and wound up the big spender…perhaps Obama’s run as a big spender will wind up as a tax-cutting, budget balancing Administration?

We can hope – and that would, indeed, be a change.

Bernard Chapin sets the marker:

What is most perturbing about the election carnage is that, while their victory assures that the political left can forget about the minority party entirely, they continue to be obsessed with their opposition. That few conservatives will have much of a say over what transpires during the next four years is irrelevant. The eyes of Democrats remain affixed to the starboard side of the political spectrum. Obama expects conservatives to get religion, specifically his Change.gov religion, and guarantee that their own beliefs do not venture into the samizdat-place of ideas. We must reserve spots at The One’s pride parade, learn to stop worrying, and love the left. If it takes a lobotomy for us to get with the program then so be it. No doubt Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid will assist us with public funding should we require such an operation.

On his night of yore, the president-elect reminded his serfs that it was time to move beyond judging him critically: “Let us resist the temptation to fall back on the same partisanship and pettiness and immaturity that has poisoned our politics for so long.”

His partisan statement was devoid of ambiguity. When one is pole-vaulted to the top of a status hierarchy and then defines all correction as being petty and immature, then the only conceivable alternative is for us to express fealty to the leader — who, in this case, conveniently happens to be Barack Obama. I wonder if he felt the same way in 2000 and 2004 when George W. Bush sat in the position he now occupies. Ah, but to ask the question is to answer it. Sorry to disappoint the now undisputed pal of William Ayers, but his promotion will neither change water into wine nor make conservatives embrace socialism.

Several associates of mine, aware of my red-state predilections, approached me after the black day that was November 4 and demanded my allegiance — I’m serious — proclaiming, “He’s your president so you should stand behind him.” I thanked them but rebuffed their suggestion. As mentioned above, none of these individuals ever saw fit to do the same for our 40th, 41st, and 43rd presidents, so by what precedent should they expect special treatment for their Barackstar? None of which I am aware.

And neither am I. As we are about to enter the Era of The Great Hopenchange, let me lay out what will guide me over the next four years:

1. Obama will be President of the United States. In such capacity he will have my ardent prayers that he will open his heart and mind to God and seek to do His will in the world. I will pray for his health and well being. Should I ever encounter him in person, I will show him all of the awed respect due to the man who holds the Office of the President of the United States of America.

2. Obama will be Commander in Chief of the United States armed forces. In such capacity, should he determine that American service members must engage in battle with a foreign enemy, he will have my unstinting support in leading our troops to absolute victory. Any criticism I level at him in regards to military actions will be couched in terms only designed to secure victory faster and/or at lower cost.

3. Any attempt by Obama to advance the liberal agenda in social or economic policy will be opposed by me with all my strength. I will offer him no respite and will seek by whatever legal means I can obtain to thwart him at every turn.

4. Any failure by Obama to carry out the laws of the United States of America will be condemned by me – most especially, Obama will be held to an absolute standard as regards matters of political corruption on his own part, on the part of his staff and on the part of his party. That Obama and his Democrats have run against an alleged GOP corruption indicates to me that they are bound and determined to see off any corruption on their side of the aisle – and thus even the appearance of impropriety on the part of Obama and his party will be attacked relentlessly. To put it bluntly, if we don’t see Obama swiftly calling for, say, William “Cold Cash” Jefferson to resign, I will take it as proof of corruption on the part of Obama and his Democrats – turn about is fair play, and the Democrats advised us in the Abramoff affair that guilt by association is licit in American political discourse.

5. It is my determination that Obama serve only one term – or less, if we can force him out of office sooner. I oppose his policies in the strongest possible terms and I feel it is my duty to my nation to battle him relentlessly as he seeks to impose his agenda. No attempt by Obama and his Democrats to pretend the last 8 years of nastiness didn’t happen will sway me from my goal – the Democrats invented the politics of personal destruction, and now it will be turned on them. Not, let it be known, out of a desire for revenge, but simply because the Democrats have set our politics up this way, and we on the right will not unilaterally disarm just because the MSM is having a continuing orgasm over the election of Obama.

First, a quote from Theodore Roosevelt:

The great fundamental issue now before the Republican party and before our people can be stated briefly. It is, Are the American people fit to govern themselves, to rule themselves, to control themselves? I believe they are. My opponents do not. I believe in the right of the people to rule. I believe the majority of the plain people of the United States will, day in and day out, make fewer mistakes in governing themselves than any smaller class or body of men, no matter what their training, will make in trying to govern them. I believe, again, that the American people are, as a whole, capable of self-control and of learning by their mistakes. Our opponents pay lip-loyalty to this doctrine; but they show their real beliefs by the way in which they champion every device to make the nominal rule of the people a sham. – March 20, 1912

Teddy was speaking not just of Democrats, but of those Republicans who also mistrusted the wisdom of the people. For all of Obama’s talk of the people, as a liberal his heart is not where his words are. By nature, someone who goes into someone else’s community to “organize” them is someone who – even if unwitting – has contempt for the common man. We Republicans must be the real party of the people – it is either restore ourselves to such, or die as a party.

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Palin is being hit hard by various McCain people who are clearly seeking to shift blame from themselves to Palin. Apparently, they didn’t heed McCain’s words of wisdom last night about how all the mistakes are McCain’s mistakes. McCain is a real man and a true gentleman – pity that some of his people clearly aren’t. Hurt feelings are natural after a hard-fought defeat, but forgiveness and love are the antidotes.

I also note that Palin is hated on the left, still. Why this should be is a bit of a curiosity – she remains, it would seem, a living challenge to the basic worldview of the left and they want her permanently out of national politics.

That won’t happen.

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Talking to a friend of mine who voted Obama, I got the opinion from her that now that Bush will be gone, Obama will get rid of the tax increases Bush imposed on her. This is a sweet and well educated lady – who is laboring under an amount of ignorance which is flabbergasting. It is, however, a level of ignorance we will have to overcome.

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While I expect the Obama Administration to be an unmitigated, Carter-like disaster, I am praying that it will be otherwise. After all, while double digit inflation, interest rates and unemployment would sweep us easily back into power, I’d prefer that my fellow Americans not have to endure that.

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If Rahm Emanuel is the Obama Chief of Staff then we already have our first Obama mistake. Don’t get me wrong – Emanuel is a smart man with many good political qualities, but he’s also a world-class jerk. If half the stories about his grating personality are true, then he’s someone most people couldn’t be with for a day without getting angry. The CoS needs to be a smoothie – with guts, but still someone who can make the West Wing machine run smoothly. “Rahmbo” isn’t that man.

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Russia’s growling about SDI is a gambit to see if Obama will abandon the program. Obama said he would, but now if he does it will appear to at least some in the world as weakness. We’ll swiftly find out if Obama has the backbone to be President.

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The terrorists really are happy Obama won – viewing his victory as an indicator that Obama will take a conciliatory line regarding groups like Hamas and Hezbollah (which someone should advise the new VP is still in Lebanon) and nations like Iran. Make no mistake about it, the world views Obama as proof that America is throwing up the sponge in the War on Terrorism. It will be up to Obama to correct this – and a terrible tragedy if he doesn’t.

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The American people have voted, and part of that vote is a vote for a swift end in Iraq – which is not such a big issue anymore as we’ve won there. As Commander in Chief during wartime, President-elect Obama can count on my unflagging support for his overseas military policy. Any criticisms I may launch will only be measured against their ability to help America emerge victorious. All conservatives should keep that in mind – don’t be like the kook left over the past 8 years; its now going to be the mission Obama sends them on (even if the mission is to withdraw) and if we support the troops, we must support the mission.

I hope that Obama keeps his pledges about Afghanistan and that the growing alliances with Georgia, India, Djibouti, Eritrea, etc mid-wifed by President Bush are given proper attention by Obama. While Obama is pledged to breath new life into our trans-Atlantic alliance, my hope is that he’ll realize, for instance, that India is worth a dozen France.

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We must pick our fights carefully – automatic opposition to whatever the President proposes is a leftwing tactic and unsuited to ladies and gentlemen. From what I’ve seen, many on the left are still bitter and wallowing in hatred – let them; pray they stop, but don’t let their misery infect you. Our job is to carefully select those battles which involve a core, conservative principle and which are winnable. An early read on such battles are “card check” (an anti-democratic, corrupt-union boss proposal which sounds like the scam it is), “freedom of choice act” (a difficult one to fight – how does one fight against freedom and choice, right? – , but it can be done if we counter with the “choice for life act”), “fairness doctrine” (this attack on free speech is coming, and we can score huge with it), energy policy (“drill baby, drill” wasn’t just a campaign slogan – the people want it, and if Obama balks at it and oil prices spike, we can reap a huge benefit).

Be vigilant and ready for the battle – but don’t think that every move by Obama is something sinister.

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The defeat of gay marriage is now a 30-State event – and even California in a Democrat year voted against gay marriage. We are a center-right nation, dear people, and the left forgets that at their peril (and the good news is they have already forgotten it, making our eventual come back that much easier).

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Be of good cheer, fellow GOPers and conservatives – from what I can see, the turnout wasn’t the stupendous vote the punditry said it would be; maybe there’s a lot left to count, but as of this moment I count 120 million votes…in 2004 there were 121 million. After every last vote is counted, we might match 2004’s totals or even slightly exceed it, but the supposedly stupendous turnout didn’t materialize. I was hearing estimates as high as 160 million votes on election day. Given that PUMAs and Obamacans probably cancel each other out, I suspect that a lot of GOPers failed to show up – perhaps not enough to give McCain the victory, but certainly enough stayed home to prevent it from being razor thin. In other words, can we but better motivate our side, we can win – even if we’re outspent 3-1 in 2012 as we were in 2008.

And keep that in mind – Obama did a bit better than Bush after spending 600 million dollars, having a completely in-the-tank MSM, an unpopular GOP incumbent, an unpopular war and a financial meltdown-cum-recession being blamed on his opponent’s side. The One did well, but he also lucked out – and he might not have that much luck on his side next time.

The Anchoress predicts:

If McCain/Palin wins, the press and the Dems will stroke out and Obama will play The Ultimate Chutzpah Card and say that at least 14 states (the big ACORN states) must be challenged because “the rolls were suspect and the integrity of the election was compromised” – by his very own supporters. Then he’ll proceed to tear the nation apart, in an effort to wrest the White House from the GOP. If Obama wins, the Dems and the press will declare that this was the “cleanest” and most “widely observed” election in our nation’s history; they will declare the people have spoken, call it a mandate and tell John McCain that if he dares to challenge things, he’ll be a most dishonorable man willing to tear his nation apart to serve his own ambition.

Yep.

…and happened to find myself in the most heavily Democratic area of the Vegas metro area and I didn’t see a single Obama sign or sticker except for one rather lonely lady trying to sell t-shirts with Obama’s picture on them…there wasn’t exactly a crush of people to buy.

A couple days from the election which will elevate The One to the White House by means of the massive enthusiasm he brings to the electorate…and for all the world to see, there might not have been an election going on at all.

Meanwhile, when the Mrs went to the GOP office to get tickets to the Monday rally for John McCain down in Henderson the place was hopping with activity and enthusiasm.

Things just might not be as they appear. The polls still say “Obama wins” – narrowly or in a landslide, but “Obama wins” is the universal of the polls. Unless, of course, the pollsters got the demographics for the electorate in 2008 wrong. If there’s not a massive upsurge in young voters and new African-American voters and if blue collar and older Democrats surge to McCain, then the events on Tuesday wiil leave the MSM and Democrats stunned.

Geesh!

Admittedly, this may be a Jewish thing, but aren’t you frightened of people tattoo-ing numbers on your forearm to memorialize your service to “The One”?

Kook Left Website

It’s creepy, and it shows no knowledge of or respect for the Holocaust. No wisdom. No memory. No historical perspective.

God save us from these people. They’re crazy.

Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad…

As Victor Davis Hanson notes:

The messianic style—the cosmic tug to “change history”, or stop the seas from rising or the planet from heating, juxtaposed with the creepy faux-Greek columns, Michelle’s “deign to enter” politics snippet, the fainting at rallies, the Victory Column mass address, the vero possumus presidential seal, and the ‘we are the change we’ve been waiting for’ mantra—reflects the omnipresent narcissism: the exalted ends of electing a prophet always justify the often crude and all too mortal means.

The Obama phenomena reminds me of nothing so much as the “cult of personality” nonsense ginned up for various communist and fascist dictators – the wise and charismatic leader and teacher for whom all must be given because only said leader can pull the rabbit of happiness out of the hat of global angst. It should be noted that this sort of thing only started to arise in the West as the influence of Christianity started to wane – and it is the nature outgrowth of the post-Christian mindset. People do want to hope for a better future and if they are denied (or deny themselves) the hope of the world to come, they will demand that their hopes be catered to in this world. Enter the new messiahs who will fix things right up.

Like the secular messiahs of the past, Obama comes to the pinnacle as a person who is very thin on any accomplishment other than an uncanny ability to obtain power and inspire legions of followers who not only lavish The One with endless praise, but turn immediately on anyone who questions the Dear Leaders’s ability or motivation. Its really rather creepy, if you ask me – and in a very real sense, it is un-American. If there was ever an American due the sort of praise Obama gets, it was the Essential American, George Washington – without whom there wouldn’t be a United States at all. But can anyone imagine our ancestors lavishing the Father of our Country with the sort of servile flattery Obama has been given? Can anyone imagine Washington tolerating such anti-republican monstrosities?

There is something nauseating in the whole Obama spectacle – Americans should never be followers; supporters, yes, but not followers. Obama has followers – and how you are treated by Obama is entirely determined by how much you conform yourself to his desires. This did, by the way, come out rather early on when Obama took a reporter aside and scolded her for daring to point out that Obama’s ears have a Dumbo-like quality about them. A man not hung up on himself would have laughed such a thing off – a person who thinks very highly of himself goes out of his way to instruct the erring in the proper way to treat Obama.

It will all come crashing down – hopefully on November 4th, but certainly it will come; someone as arrogantly self-centered as Obama is bound for a fall.

But we have something better – John McCain:

..this is a transformational election year, not a base election year, says Carney. Victory depends on “swingers,” those who have yet to decide, those who will ask themselves on Election Day: “Do I trust my future, my family, to the charismatic, dynamic public official who has yet to put a concrete idea on the table? Or do I go with the man I know will be tough enough — even if he’s not really willing — to change completely where the country is going?”

Their conclusions — not the antics that both campaigns engage in for an attentive political punditry poised over their scorecards — will determine the election’s outcome.

And until Election Day, McCain will not change. He is who he is and, under the weight of his personality, his stubborn determination and his dedication to country, he always has found a way to prevail, even in the face of defeat.

“One thing that is in John McCain’s favor is that he is John McCain,” says Pennsylvania Republican strategist Charlie Gerow. “Add on the fact that McCain always polls poorly and Obama’s primary polls have been consistently inflated, and there is a silver lining to the dark cloud that has become the narrative around this race.”

Gerow thinks this a 5- to 6-point race that Obama still has not won, although he says you’d never know that from the media coverage. “I base my opinions on listening to people,” he insists. “The deal has not been closed yet.”

Not closed at all, I’d say – and God willing it never will be. The only thing against McCain is the narrative – and what we’ll find out on November 4th is whether or not the narrative will convince GOPers and Independents to stay home in large enough numbers to give the victory to Obama. That is, from what I can see, the real plan is – just keep putting out poll after poll and story after story saying its all over and hope that this plus negative ads will drive down the GOP/Independent turnout, thus allowing Obama to get a slim majority of votes, which the MSM will then translate into a massive landslide and a mandate for massive, leftwing change. I don’t think it’ll come out like that.

I think that “Joe the Plumber” has uncovered Obama’s Achilles Heel and that it is steadily eating into whatever appeal Obama had to independents, while the nasty way Obama and the MSM have gone after Joe is making the GOP base seethe with anger and thus getting them willing to crawl on their knees over broken glass to vote for John McCain. Time will tell, of course; but I feel really good about our chances.

In his weekly radio address:

…some big problems with my opponent’s claim that he will cut income taxes for 95 percent of Americans. You might ask: How do you cut income taxes for 95 percent of Americans, when more than 40 percent pay no income taxes right now? How do you reduce the number zero?

Well, that’s the key to Barack Obama’s whole plan: Since you can’t reduce taxes on those who pay zero, the government will write them all checks called a tax credit. And the Treasury will cover those checks by taxing other people, including a lot of folks just like Joe.

In other words, Barack Obama’s tax plan would convert the IRS into a giant welfare agency, redistributing massive amounts of wealth at the direction of politicians in Washington. I suppose when you’ve voted against lowering taxes 94 times, as Senator Obama has done, a new definition of the term “tax credit” comes in handy.

At least in Europe, the Socialist leaders who so admire my opponent are upfront about their objectives. They use real numbers and honest language. And we should demand equal candor from Senator Obama. Raising taxes on some in order to give checks to others is not a tax cut it’s just another government giveaway.

What’s more, the Obama tax increase would come at the worst possible time for America, and especially for small businesses like the one Joe dreams of owning. Small businesses provide 16 million jobs in America. And a sudden tax hike will kill those jobs at a time when need to be creating more jobs.

Fortunately, America has an alternative to the phony tax cut my opponent started talking about only months ago. The McCain-Palin tax cut is the real thing. Among our other serious tax reforms, we’re going to reduce every income tax bill in America, and double the child deduction for every family. We will cut the capital gains tax. And we will cut business taxes to help create jobs, and keep American businesses in America.

As Joe the Plumber has now reminded us all, America didn’t become the greatest nation on earth by letting government “spread the wealth around.” In this country, we believe in spreading opportunity, for those who need jobs and those who create them. And that is exactly what I intend to do as President of the United States.

It would be nice if Obama and his Democrats would come right out and say what they’ll do if the do win the trifecta of White House/House/Senate. Of course, if they were to announce clearly just how much taxing, spending and tearing down of traditional morality they plan, they’d not win that trifecta, now would they? So Obama is reduced to a fiscal sleight of hand in order to try and fool a majority into supporting him – and it may work, thanks to an MSM which is fawning in its coverage of The One.

Fortunately for us, we do have a real choice on November 4th – John McCain and Sarah Palin are coming on strong and battling it out toe to toe with Obama and his liberal and leftist allies. With the polls tightening over the past few days, we can see that this race will go right down to the wire and, in the end, I’m very hopeful that McCain will pull off the biggest upset in American political history. Should we win this battle then we’ll be able to proudly state that while being slandered by the MSM and outspent massively by the Democrats, we still managed to secure the support of the American people – and John McCain will have secured a mandate to bring about the real change we need to get America back on track.

Last night I gave some commentary to a local talk radio station in Buffalo, NY regarding the debate tonight between Senator John McCain, and former community organizer Barack Obama. There are certainly a lot questions I’d like to see asked of Barack Obama, but the one I gave on the air is posted here.

In anticipation of the final debate, I’d like to pose question for everyone to answer, “What would you ask Barack Obama at the debate tonight?”

Posted ’cause all of us are feeling this sort of sentiment from the left these days:

Some nice notes about last night’s Larry King Live. But, as ever, the hate mail is so much more dramatic (bowdlerizing asterisks mine):

Subject: u r a f****n JEW hick

Saw you on Larry King calling the director of ACORN a liar! you f****n hick!!, who the HELL are you? don’t be mad because you and the other “NEOCONS” are gonna LOSE this election, stick a sock in it! u bastard!! you might as well face it
A CHANGE IS COMING!! and his name is BARACK OBAMA!!
U BETTER NOT GET IT TWISTED!

I kind of like being called a “Jew hick.” I’d love to hear the horah played on banjos, wahsboards and spoons!

I’ve noted that as the election nears and the left asserts that it is more and more confident of victory, we get nastier and nastier comments from the left – you’d figure that the prospect of overwhelming victory would mellow them out and make them more tolerant of us…but, nothing doing; the hatred grows apace. Do keep in mind, lefties, that if you do win its not like you’re going to be able to set up a Dictatorship of the Proletariat…we do retain powers in this land and we’re not just going to roll over and play dead…so, if you want a honeymoon period, you’d better start behaving. Of course, more important in all this is the necessity of adhering to my Political Rule #1: Look at what people do, not what they say.

The hatred being spewed from the left and Obama’s last-minute attempts to stuff the ballot box and deploy legions of attorneys to battle ground States indicates that not all is well in lefty land – that, just perhaps, there is a growing realization three weeks out from Obama’s coronation that he’s yet to seal the deal and, indeed, there is still plenty of time and chances for McCain to take this thing away from The One. America has been and remains a center-right political entity and even if there is a choice for Obama it will be a reflection of a distaste for the GOP rather than a rejection of individual liberty and a hankering for Euro-trash socialism. Obama and his minions will, of course, view an Obama victory as carte blanche to advance a hard left agenda and that will be their undoing – but the “nuts and bolts” political operatives of the Democratic party know better, and are pulling out all the stops to try and drag Obama’s leftist carcass over the finish line.

I do believe that it will fail, in the end – that on January 20th, much to the dismay of the left, John McCain will be sworn in as President of the United States. Could I be wrong? Of course. Am I predicting it as a certainty? Of course not – only a fool would make such a bald-faced prediction at this point…but I do believe that when push comes to shove, the basic good will and common sense of the American majority will come out on top, and John McCain will win.

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.

Words fail me regarding how creepy this is from influential and “mainstream” liberals like Jeff Zucker.

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 any continued nuclear blackmail by North Korea – and, indeed, any and all demands made upon the West, and the United States, by anyone who ranges himself against same. While Obama’s asinine statement that he’ll meet with tyrants without pre-conditions has caused consternation among the wise, people of the left are delighted with the idea – viewing the West in general, and the United States in particular, as the source of the world’s ills (just as apologists for tyrants in the 1930’s so identified the West in general and the British Empire in particular), the demands of tyrants – as long as they are anti-Western and especially anti-American – are entertained as legitimate voices which must be accommodated in the interests of peace and justice.

We must not un-learn the lesson of Munich – we must assert, always and everywhere, that un-provoked aggression will be met, and defeated, regardless of cost. And, no, what we did in Iraq wasn’t un-provoked aggression and any attempt here to equate liberating Iraq and selling out Czechoslovakia is the attempt of a fool – and a wicked fool, into the bargain. This is, unfortunately, which is being stored up for us and which will be unleashed under an Obama Administration – the elites of the world are desirous of a world in which the United States is weakened, tyrants strengthened and more and more of the decisions of the world are taken out of the hands of the people and placed in the hands of elites, who will travel to various Munichs around the world and slowly but surely sell us all into slavery, just so long as the elites can remain on top, and in extreme wealth and comfort.

They on the left have been slavering after this for ages, and in Obama they see their big chance – an ignorant man who will be easily manipulated into doing whatever the elite wishes to do. To imagine that Obama – who seems to not have an iota of foundation in world affairs and history – will be able to prevent well-informed elites from imposing on him a policy of appeasing tyrants is to hope against all available evidence. For the sake not just of the United States but of the people of the world – and especially those people of the world, our brothers and sisters, who labor under tyranny – we must prevent Obama from coming to power…he make for us a bitter cup of misery and eventual world war, and perhaps ultimate defeat. We can stop this by the mere fact of keeping him out of office – or we can allow it by mere fact of not working hard enough for victory.