Jennifer Rubin over at Pajamas Media has an excellent run-down on how things are going – pointing out that in spite of conventional wisdom to the contrary, McCain has managed to make this a race where either side can win. Certainly as 2008 dawned, the conventional wisdom wasn’t just that the Democrats were going to win, but that they were going to win big. This Conventional Wisdom missed a few salient points:

1. America didn’t really turn left in 2006. Sure, the Democrats won Congress but only by combining conservative Democrats in some GOP districts with a general dismay amongst the GOP for the way the Congressional GOP had been behaving. As Pelosi and Reid congratulated themselves, the plain fact of the matter is that America remained a center/right nation just waiting for a compelling reason to back center/right candidates and programs.

2. Americans don’t like to lose wars.

3. Democrats – no matter how hard they tried to parse it – were (and are) in favor of America’s defeat in war.

4. No overtly liberal Democrat has won the White House since 1964 (and shortly after that infamous liberal victory, I was born. Coincidence? I report, you decide) and, as a matter of fact, no Democrat of any type had scored a majority of the Presidential vote since 1976. As a rule, Americans don’t warm up to liberal Democrats in the White House.

5. The top contenders for the Democratic nomination in January of 2008 were all out-and-out liberals.

6. Nancy Pelosi is Speaker of the House, Harry Reid is Senate Majority Leader. I suppose in the legislative history of the world there have been worse leaders…but I’m a fair to middlin’ historian and I’m not aware of any.

7. The MSM was going to cheer lead for whomever the Democrats nominated, and once Obama emerged as the front runner the MSM went absolutely nuts in overtly supporting his candidacy.

8. It could very well be that most Americans would rather their son become a piano player in a whore house rather than an MSMer. To say that Americans have a low opinion of the MSM is to put it in amazingly overly kind terms.

9. The kook left had become predominant in setting the Democratic agenda and, furthermore, convinced that a majority of Americans wanted to implement a kook left agenda.

10. The Republican party wasn’t just going to roll over and play dead.

That last point is the most important – and anyone who has been paying close attention to what people do as opposed to what people say could see in an instant in January of 2008 that things weren’t exactly as Conventional Wisdom was asserting. If the year was really for certain the Year of the Democrat, then why did the GOP field include four first rate GOP candidates while the Democrats only mustered one serious national contender (I know that Obama won it, but you have to think back to pre-Iowa when it was all Hillary all the time…everyone else, including Obama, seemed like a weak also-ran mostly looking for a VP slot – except to me, who figured Obama for the Democratic nomination as early as September of 2007)? If Democrats were surging to certain victory how come they couldn’t pass anything which didn’t pass muster with President Bush? If Democrats had it in the bag then why did Congress’ approval ratings sink even lower than President Bush’s? The GOPers who were paying attention (and this would include those who were willing to plunk down the time and money in seeking the GOP nomination) realized that while the year was strong for the Democrats, there was still plenty of opportunity for a well-managed GOP campaign to take the big prize.

To be sure, there were some blessings for the GOP along the way – most notably in the lengthy Democratic nomination process which damaged the ultimate nominee as well as dividing the Democratic party and drying up many sources of Democratic funding. If we GOPers do win in November, we’ll owe a bit of it to Limbaugh’s “Operation Chaos”. But, by far, it was the way the GOP coalesced fairly swiftly around the one man who could really take it to the Democrats on their own terms – and, of course, the way McCain and Team have run the campaign to this point. There was much fear and carping from conservative punditry over McCain’s campaign until the Palin pick, but all I’ve seen from the start is a well-managed campaign designed to capitalize on McCain’s strengths and highlight the Democrats’ weaknesses. Even if McCain loses, he has provided an object lesson in how to get a candidate off the ground and into the running.

Who will win? I’m hoping for McCain – and while I have prayed for both Obama and McCain, I do add that I pray McCain’s efforts will be crowned with victory. But I don’t know who will win – I thought I’d know within a week of the end of the conventions, but there are just too many variables out there for me to latch on to the scenario for the last 50 days. But I rest content each night knowing that, win or lose, we will still win in the end.

From The New Editor:

Some things never change.

Democrats still demagogue when it comes to the issue of Social Security — even when it comes from the party’s presidential ‘change’ candidate from Chicago, Sen. Barack Obama.

The Chicago Tribune’s John McCormick reports that the Chicago Democrat is practicing the same scare tactics the Dems have engaged in for at least 30 years.

The Tribune’s McCormick quotes Sen. Obama, who was giving a speech before a Florida audience Saturday:

“… if my opponent had his way, the millions of Floridians who rely on it would’ve had their Social Security tied up in the stock market this week. How do you think that would have made folks feel?”

Of course, people who advocate the ‘privatization’ of Social Security, do not propose that retirees have their money in the stock market. By the time people retire, they would have their retirement money in income-producing investments like bonds, annuities, and short-term cash securities.

Someone might want to explain that to the Ivy League-educated Chicago Democrat.

McCormick continues:

During a campaign stop on a university campus here, Obama said millions would have watched as the “market tumbled” and their “nest egg disappeared” before their eyes.

“Millions of families would’ve been scrambling to figure out how to give their mothers and their fathers, their grandmothers and grandfathers, the secure retirement that every American deserves,” he said.

We can be sure that scores of reporters in the mainstream media will point out this blatant misrepresentation of the truth by the Chicago Democrat.

Given that the stock market is more than 40% higher than it was 10 years ago, you’d think that all but the most obtuse among us would recognise the value of switching over from our antique Social Security to some sort of privatised retirement system. People who pay attention to facts tend to move towards favorability on privatisation…those who live in a fantasy world retain their faith in the system as is. Sadly, it turns out that we can translate “most obtuse” to mean “Democratic nominee for President”.

There are so many good reasons to privatise – increased wealth creation; more secure retirment; legacy for heirs; independence from corporate and government America; reduced government power over our lives. Placed in the scales against this is the Democratic desire to control our lives, and to this point this Democratic desire has outweighed reality. Obama is now using the long standing Democratic scare tactic – as if people should feel confident that government management of our money is a good idea, seeing as the quasi-governmental Fannie and Freddie – carefully following government demands – have caused a financial meltdown which will hit the taxpayers for about $700 billion. Get the money away from government, keep it in the hands of the people, and we not only will be wealthier and more independent, but government will lack the funds to set up corrupt systems which will cost us, in the end, so much money.

Hopefully when we get McCain and Palin running the show we’ll be able to cut through the smog of government, corporate and liberal BS which has burdened our nation for so long.

Just an excellent statement:

There are certainly plenty of places to point fingers, and it may be hard to pinpoint the original event that set it all in motion. But let me give you an educated guess. The financial crisis we’re living through today started with the corruption and manipulation of our home mortgage system. At the center of the problem were the lobbyists, politicians, and bureaucrats who succeeded in persuading Congress and the administration to ignore the festering problems at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

These quasi-public corporations lead our housing system down a path where quick profit was placed before sound finance. They institutionalized a system that rewarded forcing mortgages on people who couldn’t afford them, while turning around and selling those bad mortgages to the banks that are now going bankrupt. Using money and influence, they prevented reforms that would have curbed their power and limited their ability to damage our economy. And now, as ever, the American taxpayers are left to pay the price for Washington’s failure.

Two years ago, I called for reform of this corruption at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Congress did nothing. The Administration did nothing. Senator Obama did nothing, and actually profited from this system of abuse and scandal. While Fannie and Freddie were working to keep Congress away from their house of cards, Senator Obama was taking their money. He got more, in fact, than any other member of Congress, except for the Democratic chairmen of the committee that oversees them. And while Fannie Mae was betraying the public trust, somehow its former CEO had managed to gain my opponent’s trust to the point that Senator Obama actually put him in charge of his vice presidential search.

This CEO, Mr. Johnson, walked off with tens of millions of dollars in salary and bonuses for services rendered to Fannie Mae, even after authorities discovered accounting improprieties that padded his compensation. Another CEO for Fannie Mae, Mr. Raines, has been advising Senator Obama on housing policy. This even after Fannie Mae was found to have committed quote “extensive financial fraud” under his leadership. Like Mr. Johnson, Mr. Raines walked away with tens of millions of dollars.

Senator Obama may be taking their advice and he may be taking their money, but in a McCain-Palin administration, there will be no seat for these people at the policy-making table. They won’t even get past the front gate at the White House.

My friends, this is the problem with Washington. People like Senator Obama have been too busy gaming the system and haven’t ever done a thing to actually challenge the system.

We’ve heard a lot of words from Senator Obama over the course of this campaign. But maybe just this once he could spare us the lectures, and admit to his own poor judgment in contributing to these problems. The crisis on Wall Street started in the Washington culture of lobbying and influence peddling, and he was square in the middle of it.

As Matt and I detailed in Caucus of Corruption, there is this nexus of money and power in DC which confounds the efforts of the honest and hard working to build a better future. There is, indeed, plenty of blame to go around and there are GOPers who played a dishonorable role here, but the fundamental revolves around the way business is done on Washington, DC; and the business culture of DC is almost entirely the creation of the Democrats, who essentially ran the DC show for the better part of 60 years.

While I did (and do) oppose McCain’s campaign finance reform, he was on the right track with it – while Money shouts for the attention of Power, the quiet words of the People are drowned out. I know that Obama and his Democrats are continuing to advance the narrative that they are for the little guy and will kick Money out of the loop, the pragmatic facts of life are that Democrats set up the system where Money has to wait upon government and, in order to preserve and/or advance itself, Money is forced to play the money and power game of DC. Unless there is a fundamental shift in how things are done, the best we can hope for is a band-aid designed to do no more than get the nation past the next election cycle before everything goes to heck in a handbasket.

The problem with Obama – as evidenced by the very large amount of money he swiftly amassed from the very same interests at the center of the financial meltdown – is that he isn’t an agent of change and he can’t ever be as long as he’s a liberal Democrat. Over the years the confluence of money and politics has become very tight…and a lot of the people running banks into the ground are people who have been high up in Democratic politics, and these people are not about to allow Democrat Obama to mess up their lucrative game. In the end, only a McCain/Palin Administration gives us a shot at real change in the way DC does business.

Neither McCain nor Palin are enthralled to any particular pressure group. Both McCain and Palin seem to take delight in kicking in the doors of political consensus and allowing enough light to force the cockroaches to scatter. Imbued with a love of country which knows no bounds, connected with average Americans by grace of suffering, poverty and struggle in their own lives, McCain and Palin will batter down the walls of corruption and bring about real change – not in a century have we had a prospective President so keen to help the average American and so contemptuous of what Theordore Roosevelt termed the “malefactors of great wealth”. We can have real change – but only from someone who is entirely uninterested in whether or not some of his fellow politicians will have to lose office; that thing which is the only bad thing as far as Democrats are concerned.

Glad we followed the advice of John McCain:

Marines with Company C, 1st Battalion, 2nd Marine Regiment, Regimental Combat Team 1, met with school officials in Khalidyah recently to discuss any essential services the school may need. During their meeting, the Marines donated backpacks and school supplies, which teachers handed out to students.

“Our children are our future,” explained Hamda Fauil Metap, the Khalidyah school’s headmaster. “They see everyday, how Iraq is growing and they will be the ones to make the advancements to the community as they grow older.”

Khalidyah’s community joined together during the last few weeks to clean the school’s grounds and make repairs in preparation for the start of the new school year.

Students also took part in their schools’ cleanup, sweeping rooms and organizing desks.

“It is important that the children have a clean and adequate place to learn,” explained Metap.

Metap has been teaching for 25 years and in that time she said she has never seen a brighter future for the children than in recent months.

“Everything [the Marines] and the Iraqi community have done for us, we are extremely grateful,” she said.

That would be the Marines that Democrats – like Jack Murtha – called cold-blooded murderers; the other people who accused our Marines of being that go by the name of “terrorist”….though, given that they fought the Marines, they most usually go by the name of “dead terrorist” these days.

Never, never, never forget that Obama and his Democrats wanted the United States of America to lose in Iraq – and they wanted us to lose because they felt (and still feel) that America’s defeat is the Democrats’ victory.

What is this? The amounts of money John McCain and Barack Obama, respectively, have received from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac according to Open Secrets. The linked information goes on to note that current members of Congress have received a total of $4.8 million from Fannie and Freddie, 57% of that money going to Democrats. Further more, the top three recipients are all Democrats (Dodd, Obama, Kerry, in that order).

Given that Obama has only been on the national scene a short time, we have to stand amazed that he’s beating out the likes of Reid and Pelosi in the Fannie/Freddie money race.

This is change we can believe in? Or is it change we need? Or is it just more of the same corrupt nonsense we’ve had to deal with from Democrats from time immemorial?

Sensitive, caring, in favor of diversity…all that is best in the world is on the left.

The Washington Post isn’t the only daily D.C. newspaper to rave about Sandra Bernhard’s anti-Palin ranting. Wednesday’s Washington Examiner joined in, with the headline “Comedienne delivers enraged optimism.” Barbara Mackay claimed “in the end, oddly and subtly, Bernhard’s message is positive.”

That’s not the impression you’d get from the blog of Theater J, where Bernhard is appearing. It has video of Bernhard calling Palin “Uncle Women,” a “turncoat b—h” and a “whore.” One complaint on the blog that Bernhard crosses a line of political incorrectness draws a defense from Ari Roth of Theater J that really drops the curtain on how coarse this show is:

In fact, the play wears its politically VERY correct heart on its sleeve with its indictment of America as “A Man’s World, It’s a White Man’s World, It’s a F–ked Up White Man’s Racist World” and can only be suggested to be racist in its content if one is hell-bent on protecting White Folk for Sandra’s blistering indictment.When Sandra warns Sarah Palin not to come into Manhattan lest she get gang-raped by some of Sandra’s big black brothers, she’s being provocative, combative, humorous, and yes, let’s allow, disgusting.

The fact that the show has a few riffs like this does not — to my mind — make it a “disgusting show.” there’s too much beauty, variety, vitality, and intelligence to label the entire show as “disgusting.” I’ll agree with you that we produced this show because we did find it to be edgy — because we wanted to give right wing conservative Jews a good run for their money by being on the receiving end of some blistering indictments from Sandra.Does it go over the edge sometimes? On the gang-rape joke, yes. Sure. Not much else. It goes over the edge and then comes right back to the cutting edge.

Forgive me if gang-rape jokes don’t greet my ears as oddly and subtly positive, as the Examiner suggests, and forgive me if gang-rape jokes aren’t “a rotating sprinkler that a spectator washes in most happily,” like the Washington Post insists.

Only in the world of leftism can jokes about gang rape quantify as “beauty”; only the amazingly hypocritical left could think like that…imagine if someone had “jokingly” suggested that Mrs. Obama be gang raped…can you imagine what the left would say about that?

These people are not insane – they are rational people who walk upright in the normal, day to day world…but they are enslaved to wickedness and hate the truth so much that in order to hide from it they’ll burrow deeper and deeper into the pile of shit which makes up leftist thought.

Uncle Sam buys up the bad debt – gets it out of the system and the banks can start with a clean slate under a new regulatory climate designed to prevent a repeat. Have I got that right, or have I misunderstood?

What do you think of the plan?

UPDATE: Secretary of Treasury Henry Paulson Statement.

Yet another one, on the financial crisis, as noted by the Washington Post:

TO LISTEN to Sen. Barack Obama, Sen. John McCain is a Johnny-come-lately to the cause of regulating financial markets. “He has consistently opposed the sorts of common-sense regulations that might have lessened the current crisis,” Mr. Obama said in New Mexico yesterday. “When I was warning about the danger ahead on Wall Street months ago because of the lack of oversight, Senator McCain was telling the Wall Street Journal — and I quote — ‘I’m always for less regulation.’ ”

But the full quotation from Mr. McCain’s March interview with the Journal’s editorial board belies Mr. Obama’s one-sided rendition. The Republican candidate went on to say, “But I am aware of the view that there is a need for government oversight. I think we found this in the subprime lending crisis — that there are people that game the system and if not outright broke the law, they certainly engaged in unethical conduct which made this problem worse. So I do believe that there is role for oversight.”…

…when it comes to regulating financial institutions and corporate misconduct, Mr. McCain’s record is more in keeping with his current rhetoric. In the aftermath of the Enron collapse and other accounting scandals, he was a leader, with Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.), in pushing to require that companies treat stock options granted to employees as expenses on their balance sheets. “I have long opposed unnecessary regulation of business activity, mindful that the heavy hand of government can discourage innovation,” he wrote in a July 2002 op-ed in the New York Times. “But in the current climate only a restoration of the system of checks and balances that once protected the American investor — and that has seriously deteriorated over the past 10 years — can restore the confidence that makes financial markets work.”

Mr. McCain was an early voice calling for the resignation of Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Harvey Pitt, charging that he “seems to prefer industry self-policing to necessary lawmaking. Government’s demands for corporate accountability are only credible if government executives are held accountable as well.”

In 2006, he pushed for stronger regulation of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — while Mr. Obama was notably silent. “If Congress does not act, American taxpayers will continue to be exposed to the enormous risk that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac pose to the housing market, the overall financial system, and the economy as a whole,” Mr. McCain warned at the time.

I wouldn’t put it that Obama was “notably silent” as Fannie and Freddie staggered towards collapse – Obama was very likely oblivious to it all. Unaware of the various cross-currents of government corruption, corporate mis- and malfeasance and speculative absurdities, something like the then-looming crisis in the real estate and sub-prime markets just wouldn’t register. It did for some – I was reading about the stresses in this area a couple years ago…and even as I paid a bit of attention to it (helped, it must be noted, by the fact that I work in the financial industry), I was still caught by surprise at the scope of the problem. When you’re being stroked by an adoring press and you head is being turned by people telling you that you can be President when you’ve done nothing of note in your life, you find you don’t have time for pettifogging details like the sub-prime meltdown.

McCain, on the other hand, was actually out there issuing warnings – and warnings which, had they been acted upon, might have prevented or at least curtailed the current financial crunch. McCain would be able to tune into such things – even though, like Obama, he’s wealthy and thus insulated from personal financial risk – because he’s a man with real-world experience and a person with a long list of accomplishments stretching back decades. In other words, McCain wasn’t distracted with himself, and was thus able to focus on the problem. So, too, it would be in the White House – Obama would be legacy hunting from day one, McCain would be searching for ways to put country first from day one.

In our choice this November we have very stark alternatives – a lightweight who believes his own press releases, and a scarred veteran of life and politics who simply wants to do a good turn for the nation which has given him so much. You get to decide, fellow Americans – and I’m betting that we’ll choose wisely.

Ah, its so nice to have liberals around – because they are so respectful of differing opinions and would never seek to impose their views on others:

Metro State College is investigating a professor who asked students to write an essay critical of Republican vice presidential candidate Gov. Sarah Palin. One student said the instructor singled out Republican students in the class and allowed others to ridicule them.

“I was shocked, I was holy cow, this is just an open door for him to discuss politics with us,” said Jana Barber, a student in the class.

Barber shared the first class assignment with CBS4 Wednesday. Instructor Andrew Hallam asked students to write an essay to contradict what he called the ‘fairy tale image of Palin’ presented at the Republican National Convention.

“What the faculty’s responsibility is to provide opportunity for critical thinking and civic engagement so bringing something of relevancy into the classroom was the faculty’s goal,” said Cathy Lucas, spokeswoman for Metro State. “Should he have broadened it and included all the political figures, yes.”

Metro State officials are investigating claims of bias, harassment and bullying.

And liberals wonder why they are held in such contempt…

Nevada Pundit cuts through a lot of the nonsense out there:

This is an issue that the government has had for 50 years, the result of which has caused an incoherent patchwork of regulations that are either confusing, outdated, irrelevant, over restrictive, or any combination of these. The answer to the problem isn’t more regulations, the answer is to find the right regulations that reflect the economy as it is today and regulations that allow the fluidity to adapt to the economy of tomorrow.

John McCain was right when he stated the fundamentals of the economy are healthy. Unfortunately, the one part of the economy that is not healthy is the banking industry, especially those banks that had assets heavily backed by mortgages. This is the one part of the economy has the ability to heavily influence all the other parts of the economy and so is a threat that could ruin those fundamentals that are sound.

I think that McCain was right that a 9/11 style investigation is needed, not to ferret out the wrongdoers, but to find ways to prevent the underlying causes that create these kind of problems. Only then can the government put into effect effective regulations that don’t overburden the business’s trying to create a strong economy but also don’t allow them to overreach themselves causing these types of collapses. The U.S. economy is the backbone of America’s power and can no longer afford to be governed by a patchwork series of regulations that are created by over zealous politicians. Reform is needed and John McCain is the person to bring about this change.

It occurs to me that nations which go on for any period of time tend to revamp their legal codes – things do tend to get jumbled, much the same way those kitchen drawers you carefully organized last year are a complete mess this year. Its human nature to take on tasks with an ad-hoc attitude – we do what works most conveniently at the moment and only some times relate our current action to the comprehensive life situation we are in. When you’re done washing the potato peeler you can carefully put it back in the drawer you got it from, or just toss it into the nearest drawer…and it works ok if you do that, though at times you might find yourself hunting around for the peeler when you would have found it instantly had you put it away properly…but, even then, you still get your peeler and thus your potatoes peeled…though, of course, there might come that day when for some reason you tossed it in the tool box in the garage and instead of mashed potatoes you’re having baked and you then go buy another peeler and then, naturally, find the other one and now you’ve got two…neither of which is needed all the time ’cause who has potatoes every day? Eventually the Mrs is on your case about what a horrific mess you’ve made out of the kitchen and you spend a weekend reorganizing it to heck and gone, and for a moment you feel like you’ve finally got things under control…until you finish washing the cheese grater and its proper place is all the way across the kitchen as opposed to the cupboard right next to you…

See how it works?

So it is with government regulations – this or that thing happens and thus and such law or regulation is enacted to deal with it but its not like anyone really knows all of the laws and regulations so the one you just did may or may not fit neatly into the rest and this, in turn, makes it necessary to kinda twist things around so that all the regulations and laws at least sorta-work and, meanwhile, those who are really in the know have figured out how to drive a Mack truck through loopholes in the regulations and thus use the banks and government agencies as private piggy banks for all manner of nonsense until one day you wake up to find that 500 points are knocked off the DOW and Mr and Mrs Taxpayer are told they’ll have to pony up billions to rescue banks which once upon a time were worth billions but are now worth about as much as Monopoly money.

Here lies McCain’s very strong advantage over Obama – McCain has been out front on this issue and is known far and wide as a man with little sympathy or patience for the malefactors of great wealth (government and private) who cruise through the American economy, leeching of the productive sectors and who always manage to come out rich no matter how badly they put the ship of State up on the rocks. Obama, meanwhile, is hip deep in the politicians and business people who exploited the screwed up mass of laws and regulations – coupled with Democrat-led “oversight” which amounted to “do whatever you want, as long as we get juicy donations and other swag out of the deal” – which allowed our current financial crisis to occur. McCain can forcefully call for reforms and he’d be well served to call for a complete reworking of our financial system laws and regulations to ensure that they reflect current realities and protect the American people and the American economy from those business people and politicians who view America as a cow to be milked for all its worth.

We Republicans believe in free markets – but we must recognize that markets aren’t entirely free when well-connected people are allowed to game the system. Furthermore, it is required of us that we come up with the comprehensive fix for the problem in order to forestall a liberal attempt to merely inject more government into the system, thus just perpetuating the current confluence of money and power which created the problem to begin with. We do need change we can believe in – and its unbelievable to think that Obama can deliver in the face of the entrenched political and money interests who back his candidacy.