Blogs For Victory

While Obama plays the class warfare game, John McCain lays out a plan to help actual Americans deal with the real problems of the day:

We must restore trust to our financial system. On my orders, the Department of the Treasury will guarantee one hundred percent of all savings accounts for a period of six months. This will calm the understandable fears of widespread bank failure, while also restoring rational judgment to the choices of the market.

As president, I will also act to protect investors — especially those relying on their investments for retirement. Current rules mandate that investors must begin to sell off their IRAs and 401Ks when they reach age 70 and one half years old. Those rules should be suspended to spare senior citizens from being forced to sell their stock just as the market is hurting the most…

…It is essential that we avoid an exodus of capital from the market. Senator Obama yesterday offered up a proposal that would have the effect of encouraging early withdrawal of funds from 401(k) accounts, by suspending penalties through 2009. This is an invitation to capital flight, and therefore to continued instability in the market, at a moment when exactly the opposite is needed… I will cut in half the capital gains tax on stocks purchased and held for more than a year…

…It will not be enough for the federal government to correct the excesses of Wall Street without reforming its own reckless practices.

Spending in Washington is out of control and I am going to rein it in. As president, I will veto the pork barrel special interest projects that are wasting your tax dollars, driving up our debt, and weakening our dollar. I have proposed a one year spending freeze with certain exceptions for such things as defense and veteran care. We are going to use that year to turn Washington inside out and get rid of wasteful, inefficient programs that do no one any good.

While we put government back on your side, we must reform our tax system to deliver needed tax relief to working Americans, and to create jobs. I will double the child deduction, from 3,500 dollars to 7,000 dollars. Every person in America who chooses it will receive a 5,000 dollars towards the purchase of health insurance — health plans that will be theirs to keep, even if they change jobs or move to another state. And we will reduce the federal business tax rate from 35 percent — the second-highest in the world — to 25 percent. I am also proposing today that for those who are between jobs, we eliminate all taxes on unemployment benefits. It is unclear to me why the government taxes money it has just sent you, and we should relieve this burden from Americans who’ve been hit the hardest.

Reducing business tax rates has the potential to stop and reverse the rise of unemployment, and could create millions of new jobs. Despite the frequent changes to my opponent’s tax plans in recent months — he seems to revise them with each new poll — his plan to raise taxes on 50% of small business income has survived. And even as he rails against companies that shut down their plants and move overseas, he refuses to cut the tax rate that drives many of these companies away…

…This weekend, a plumber concerned that Senator Obama was going to raise his taxes asked him directly about his plan. The response was telling. Senator Obama explained to him that he was going to raise his taxes to quote “spread the wealth around.” This explains how Senator Obama can promise an income tax cut for millions who aren’t even paying income taxes right now. My friends, my plan isn’t intended to force small businesses to cut jobs to pay higher taxes so we can “spread the wealth around.” My plan is intended to create jobs and increase the wealth of all Americans.

My plan for economic recovery does not require guesswork or blind faith from the American people. You know my record. You don’t have to hope I will do what I promise. When I say I will cut spending, you need only look at my record to know it’s true. When I say I will defend taxpayers, you know it’s true because it’s what I’ve always done. When I say I will work across the aisle, you can see it in the results I’ve delivered.

And when I say I will change Washington, you know I’ll do it, because for me change isn’t a political slogan, it’s what I’ve been doing my whole career.

This is a bold, Reaganesque plan to re-start and economy currently burdened by years of bad financial practices encouraged by corrupt Congressional Democrats – what this financial crisis really boils down to is years of Democrat back scratching between Congress and Fannie/Freddie finally coming home to roost and the Democrats sticking the American people with the bill and then blaming the free market for the problems Democrats created.

We GOPers share the fault here – we didn’t go hard enough after Democrats and their leftwing allies. People like Frank, Dodd, Rangel and the people who run groups like ACORN should have seen the inside of a jail cell years ago rather than being allowed at the pinnacle of American power and wealth. We have found out that extreme nastiness must never deter us in the future from protecting the American people – it would be worth it to lose an election after sending Frank to jail, you see? Let them belabor us on the campaign trail as homophobes or what have you – but lets enforce the laws and go after corruption everywhere and all the time. It wouldn’t disturb any of us, I think, if Abramoff and the directors of ACORN were sharing a cell, now would it?

In John McCain and Sarah Palin we have the two people who, if they win, will owe absolutely nothing to the powers that be in DC and Wall Street. The entirety of the American elite, including a selection of the conservative elite (which persons are soon to be drummed out of the club, if we rank-and-filers have our way about it) has risen as one man to defeat McCain and elevate Obama, because in Obama they see a man who will allow things to go on as they are now…with the people who are on top today being on top tomorrow and no risk of a nasty criminal investigation in to just what has been going on with the financial system over the past 10 years or so.

For the sake of our families and the economy we depend upon but, also, for the sake of our free institutions, we must elected McCain/Palin. Allow Obama’s corrupt minions four years of unfettered power in DC and the United States government will become a sick joke, and America a much weaker nation in the world, despised as a banana Republic which can be bought on the open market by the highest bidder. We have it in our power to prevent this – to rise, ourselves, as one man and tell the elites that while they have been able to fool a good number of our fellow Americans, they didn’t fool a majority of us.

Robert George takes on the issue of some ostensibly pro-life Catholics and Evangelicals supporting Obama based on an alleged pro-life element to Barack Obama and notes, among other things, that Obama is so extreme in his pro-abortion position that he refused to back a bill providing for research into non-embryonic stem cell research:

For several years, Americans have been debating the use for biomedical research of embryos produced by in vitro fertilization (originally for reproductive purposes) but now left in a frozen condition in cryopreservation units. President Bush has restricted the use of federal funds for stem-cell research of the type that makes use of these embryos and destroys them in the process. I support the President’s restriction, but some legislators with excellent pro-life records, including John McCain, argue that the use of federal money should be permitted where the embryos are going to be discarded or die anyway as the result of the parents’ decision. Senator Obama, too, wants to lift the restriction.

But Obama would not stop there. He has co-sponsored a bill-strongly opposed by McCain-that would authorize the large-scale industrial production of human embryos for use in biomedical research in which they would be killed. In fact, the bill Obama co-sponsored would effectively require the killing of human beings in the embryonic stage that were produced by cloning. It would make it a federal crime for a woman to save an embryo by agreeing to have the tiny developing human being implanted in her womb so that he or she could be brought to term. This ”clone and kill” bill would, if enacted, bring something to America that has heretofore existed only in China-the equivalent of legally mandated abortion. In an audacious act of deceit, Obama and his co-sponsors misleadingly call this an anti-cloning bill. But it is nothing of the kind. What it bans is not cloning, but allowing the embryonic children produced by cloning to survive.

Can it get still worse? Yes.

Decent people of every persuasion hold out the increasingly realistic hope of resolving the moral issue surrounding embryonic stem-cell research by developing methods to produce the exact equivalent of embryonic stem cells without using (or producing) embryos. But when a bill was introduced in the United States Senate to put a modest amount of federal money into research to develop these methods, Barack Obama was one of the few senators who opposed it. From any rational vantage point, this is unconscionable. Why would someone not wish to find a method of producing the pluripotent cells scientists want that all Americans could enthusiastically endorse? Why create and kill human embryos when there are alternatives that do not require the taking of nascent human lives? It is as if Obama is opposed to stem-cell research unless it involves killing human embryos.

Why would Barack Obama, father of two delightful girls, be like this? Either he’s a monster in disguise, or he’s just ignorant. I go with ignorant – and, oddly, I go with this because, once again, I feel a rather strong affinity with Barack Obama. We are, after all, of the same generation – neither Boomer nor Gen X (though, technically, we were both born during the Baby Boom – but so close to the tail end of it that we failed to develope a Boomer view of the world). We are, in a lot of ways, alike – I’d really like to correspond with him in private, because I think both of us would find the exchange invaluable. But there is a difference between us – and the difference is in practical knowledge of how actual people live.

You see, we were both sheltered in our early lives – Vietnam ended when we were little, the threat of nuclear war just wasn’t as ever-present as it seems to have been in the 50’s and 60’s, there was no draft looming at the end of our high school days, you could have sex without worrying about dying, marijuana was harmless fun, cocaine a more powerful stroke of harmless fun, smoking was still ok, as was drinking (including drinking and driving in those pre-MADD days). Sex, drugs and rock ‘n roll was the order of the day. Life was a breeze. And then Obama went to college and I joined the Navy, and there our paths of life started to differ.

As I got to deal with real people in their native setting (as it were), Obama got to deal with theoretical people while he sat in an ivory tower. He came out of his formative years and started to organize people – I came out of mine and started agitating for them to be left un-organized by outsiders and looking after their own affairs. And here is the crucial part – if you set out to organize people you have to view them as lesser beings than yourself; if you set out to battle on their behalf, you have to see them as your equals.

Once you start viewing people as so many blocks of wood for you to fashion into a new governing paradigm, it is but a step to start viewing them as expendable…and thus there is no problem with even the most pro-abortion position. Obama isn’t evil in this (though he does evil he doesn’t intend), he just hasn’t thought the matter through and is incapable – at the moment – of doing so because he lacks a frame of reference which would bring him to the understanding that morally – which is the only place it matters – he is no better than the just-fertilized embryo. Barack Obama is Barack Obama – the wise, knowledgeable leader who can bring us all to the promised land…and he’ll do it because he loves us…but his love is the condescending, false love of the self-absorbed. We are to be made better, ultimately, because he, Barack Obama, can’t stand it if we don’t reflect well upon him. America is to match Obama’s expectations, not Obama to match his duties as one, small person in a grand story of people past, present and future with none other than God knowing the full truth.

There is a fine line between folly and evil – a fool harms mostly himself, the evil person harms mostly others. Obama, cut off from reality, has been playing quite a fool – and has been played for a sucker by people who have consciously made the decision to be wicked. And, also, much evil has been done in Obama’s name – how much of it with Obama’s full knowledge and consent? That we don’t know – but we’d best not find out while Obama is in the White House.

Nevada Pundit cuts through a lot of the nonsense being said – especially on the left – about what caused our financial meltdown. The free market works – the government-managed market fails. Always and all the time.

I thought that MoveOn couldn’t work with Obama without running afoul of campaign finance laws? Thinking this, I found this e mail rather interessting:

Dear fellow MoveOn member,

My friends tell me I’m addicted to politics. But I live in Oklahoma, one of the reddest of red states, so even though I’m glued to the news, I’ve never felt like I could do very much.

Last week, that changed. I got a MoveOn email inviting me to drive to a swing state and volunteer. My husband and I jumped at the chance, and signed up to drive to Missouri.

I can tell you firsthand: it feels great to be on the front lines. It’s energizing and humbling at the same time. And when you talk to undecided voters, you realize what a difference you’re making.

My husband and I are going back every weekend until the election. Could you join us, by signing up to drive to a swing state to volunteer for Obama this weekend? The Obama campaign particularly needs volunteers in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania this Saturday—so if you can, please click below to sign up!…

…Our 10-year-old son is the love of our life. We’re trying to do everything we can for his future. It’s so important to us to get Obama into office instead of McCain—for his sake.

My husband owns a small painting company here, and rarely takes a day off. But this past Saturday, he dropped off our son at my mother-in-law’s house and drove with me to an Obama office in Missouri. Everyone we met was really nice and kind. We met other MoveOn members and Obama staffers, and then went outside to knock on doors and meet undecided voters.

One older woman we met hadn’t decided whether or not to vote. But it meant a lot to her that we’d come all that way just to talk to her. By the time we left, she seemed like she’d made up her mind to vote for Obama!…

…Thanks for all that you do.

–Tamika Sumner, MoveOn member

Tahlequah, Oklahoma (emphasis added)

Doesn’t this sort of thing constitute an in-kind donation to the Obama campaign? Nothing in the email about helping anyone other than Obama (for the children, of course). Anyone out there expert enough in this area of law to render a judgement?

Excellent short hand on the Obama fundraising scandal (you remember that, right? The scandal before the voter fraud/ACORN scandal broke…Obama is starting to make Bill Clinton seem honest in contrast):

The Obama campaign has failed to release the names of donors responsible for approximately half of his campaign’s $426.9 million: those who have contributed less than $200.

In addition, press reports allege Barack Obama’s presidential campaign has accepted illegal online campaign contributions from this category of donors, which include funds allegedly donated by foreign nationals.

The Obama campaign appears to be selectively complying with campaign finance laws. The Federal Election Commission (FEC) should immediately investigate allegations of foreign campaign contributions made to the Obama campaign possibly corrupting this presidential election.

The McCain campaign, by contrast, has made its entire donor database available online.

In the interest of transparency the Obama campaign should publicly list the source of every single campaign contribution. The American people deserve to know for certain that all campaign finance laws are being followed.

It is near certain that Obama is not following campaign finance laws – if he were, he would have been placing his donor list in the public square from day one. The failure to do so indicates that Obama wanted to violate the laws, and then conspired to violate the laws. Only a full scale criminal investigation in to Obama, the Obama campaign, the DNC, associated leftwing groups such as MoveOn and ACORN and the shadowy rich people who have set this all afoot can tell us for certain what has gone on and who needs to go to jail. We know our leftwing friends simply will not care about this – though I deny any assertion they may make that they don’t know or aren’t sure. Only those being maliciously blind to common sense can be other than horrified by what the Obama campaign and the overall left have been up to. You can sing and dance your way around this one all you want lefties, but your loyalty is being given to a man who really is taking the thuggery and corruption of Chicago Democratic politics on to the national stage.

McCain and Palin, on the other hand, offer the stark opposite of all Obama stands for – Obama stands for the left, McCain stands for core American values; Obama stands for government control, McCain stands for individual liberty; Obama stands for corrupt business as usual, McCain stands for reform. On and on it goes – and the choice will soon by made by the American people; to go with the honest patriot, or go with the dishonest tool of the anti-American left.

CNN, of all places, notes that Obama is trying to mislead Americans about his connections to ACORN.

Meanwhile, problems with ACORN’s voter fraud are surfacing in Minnesota.

ABC covers Obama’s changing his “Fight The Smears” website after his ACORN connections were exposed.

Laura Ingraham talks about Obama’s ties to ACORN.

Norh Carolina is reviewing ACORN voter forms…

A bogus voter was caught voting in Ohio…

Obama and ACORN…

Palin: Obama must ‘rein in’ ACORN

Questions surrounding why Obama is fighting a lawsuit to prove he is a natural born citizen rather than producing the necessary documentation he claims to have is starting to pick up steam… here’s the story behind this brewing issue:

The Wall Street Journal rebuts Obama’s claim he’d cut taxes for 95% of taxpayers:

One of Barack Obama’s most potent campaign claims is that he’ll cut taxes for no less than 95% of “working families.” He’s even promising to cut taxes enough that the government’s tax share of GDP will be no more than 18.2% — which is lower than it is today.

It’s a clever pitch, because it lets him pose as a middle-class tax cutter while disguising that he’s also proposing one of the largest tax increases ever on the other 5%. But how does he conjure this miracle, especially since more than a third of all Americans already pay no income taxes at all? There are several sleights of hand, but the most creative is to redefine the meaning of “tax cut.”

There’s a lot of detail, and rather than quote it all, just click here and read the analysis.

Fascinating possible backlash from the judicial activism imposing gay marriage piecemeal upon the United States – from NRO’s The Corner:

Connecticut insiders are buzzing about the possible consequences of Friday’s same-sex marriage decision for Question One on the ballot Nov. 4—a call for a state constitutional convention. (See www.ctconcon.com for more info).

Connecticut, unlike California, has no direct initiative and referendum process. But in a unique feature of the Connecticut process, voters are asked every 20 years whether or not they wish to convene a constitutional convention, which would then have the authority to propose constitutional amendments to voters.

By an accident, or an act of God, the Connecticut court decision imposing same-sex marriagecame down less than three weeks before the once-in-twenty-years chance Connecticut voters have to call for a constitutional convention—this Nov. 4.

Question One asks: “Shall there be a Constitutional Convention to amend or revise the Constitution of the state”?

A broad coalition of groups, including the Federation of Connecticut Taxapyer Organizations, eminent domain groups energized by the Kelo decision, and even some Green Party spokespeople have expressed support for the idea.

In the Sept. 29, Hartford Courant, for example, Mike De Rosa, head of the Green Party in Connecticut, told the newspaper, “We shouldn’t be afraid of democracy.” “A lot of conservative groups are looking at it from their own ideological paradigm,” De Rosa said. “We see it as an opportunity to free the system, to open it up to more choices and more voices. That’s very frightening to people.”…

…On Friday, after the court ruling, , the Catholic Conference in Connecticut joined the list of groups urging Yes on Question One.

“This decision of the Connecticut Supreme Court also raises a very real concern about the infringement on religious liberty and freedom of speech with the judicial imposition of same-sex marriage,” the Connecticut bishops’ declared, “The real battle in this court case was not about rights, since civil unions provide a vast number of legal rights to same-sex couples, but about conferring and enforcing social acceptance of a particular lifestyle; a lifestyle many people of faith and advocates of the natural law refuse to accept.”

For a while there the electoral dice seemed to be rolling for McCain and the GOP, and then they started to roll for Obama – so much so that even some yellow conservatives jumped on the Obama bandwagon…but then the financial crisis started to calm down, ACORN’s voter fraud jumped into the public square, McCain and Palin came out swinging, the 2006 poster-boy for GOP malfeasance has boomeranged on the Democrats and smeared them even worse than Foley did the GOP…add in things like insane rulings by leftist courts in California and Connecticut, and it seems that the electoral dice are starting to love John McCain, again.

The only rational prediction one can make for Campaign ’08 is that it has been, is and likely will remain unpredictable. A couple days ago the DNC was floating stories in the MSM about how Congress would gather after Obama’s triumphant victory and start passing his legislative agenda even before he took the oath…now the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee will spend some days trying to defend their defense of Tim Mahoney…a nice, juicy scandal of sex and misused taxpayer dollars. Now, the GOP won’t benefit from an MSM megaphoning Democratic corruption and difficulties, but methinks the cumulative effect of Obama’s background and inexperience, Congressional ineffectiveness and leftist/Democratic corruption could start to sway some people – make them, just perhaps, opt for the candidates in the race – McCain and Palin – who have a track record of going after corruption even when its on their own side.