Blogs For Victory

The thing I use for a brain is tired, and I’m heading to bed – amuse yourselves, dear readers. But have a bit of poetry to start it off:

A Hymn: O God of Earth and Altar

O God of earth and altar,

Bow down and hear our cry, Our earthly rulers falter,

Our people drift and die; The walls of gold entomb us,

The swords of scorn divide, Take not thy thunder from us,

But take away our pride.

From all that terror teaches,

From lies of tongue and pen, From all the easy speeches

That comfort cruel men, From sale and profanation

Of honour and the sword, From sleep and from damnation,

Deliver us, good Lord.

Tie in a living tether

The prince and priest and thrall, Bind all our lives together,

Smite us and save us all; In ire and exultation

Aflame with faith, and free, Lift up a living nation,

A single sword to thee.

– G.K. Chesterton

As oil prices continue to collapse:

Almost half the members of the Opec oil cartel are considering an emergency meeting in Vienna next month as oil prices dropped to their lowest level in nearly a year.

Almost half the members of cartel have in the past few days called on the group to act to halt the slide before their next official meeting scheduled to take place in Algeria in late December…

…Their calls came as oil consuming nations moved to bolster their economies in a co-ordinated interest rate cut.

Oil prices on Wednesday resumed their slide towards $85 a barrel, a level last reached in December last year.

Nymex November West Texas Intermediate fell $3.06 to $87 a barrel, while ICE November Brent slid $2.96 to $81.

Too late, OPEC – just like the greedy fools in DC and Wall Street, you went too far imagining that the free ride would last forever…as if the laws of economics had been repealed. Just as no one should ever have allowed those sub-prime loans to be written (and we’re looking at you, Obama, Biden, Dodd and Frank!) so, too, should no one in the oil producing States have allowed oil to ever get above $60 a barrel. Those in charge of the sub-prime mess could have shut off the money spigot before it got out of control – those in charge of the oil mess could have gone flat out on production and exploration as oil started its insane and entirely unjustified rise to more than $140 a barrel.

So, the bad news is that we Americans are stuck footing the bills for the Democrats’ sub-prime idiocy – but the good news is that our oil prices are going to drop like a rock. I really expect gasoline to drop below $2 a gallon before this slide is done.

One other thing about this – Obama, if he wins, says he will impose a windfall profits tax on American oil companies – as if they were responsible for the run up in oil prices…but the thing is, by the time Obama gets a chance to do this, oil company profits will be way down and such a tax will turn what will then be modestly profitable companies into unprofitable companies…and will cause actual shortages in the United States, resulting in a run-up in the price of gasoline. Nothing in the world is more dumb than a doctrinaire liberal…

Just released today.

The race for President of the United States remains far too close to call between Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain as both candidates head toward the finish line, a recent Reuters/C-SPAN/Zogby daily tracking telephone polls shows.

The survey, including a three-day sample of 1,220 likely voters collected over the previous three days – approximately 400 per day from Oct. 5-7, 2008 – shows that Obama holds a slight advantage amounting to 1.9 percentage points over McCain. This represents a bit of a recovery by McCain, who had been sliding in some polls before his running mate, Sarah Palin, put in a strong performance in her one and only debate performance last Thursday.

The Boston Globe’s Jeff Jacoby reacts to the debate:

JOHN MCCAIN’S opening words last night were: “Senator Obama, it’s good to be with you at a town hall meeting!” Indeed it was. We now know why Barack Obama declined McCain’s invitation earlier this year to appear together in a series of 10 town hall meetings around the country. This is the format in which McCain excels, and he excelled last night. He was substantive, sympathetic, strong – sure of himself, his facts, and his convictions. On issue after issue, McCain sounded clear and mature. In a word, presidential.

Though most of the debate dealt with domestic issues, it was a foreign-policy question that sent me flying to my files. Moderator Tom Brokaw asked the candidates what their “doctrine” would be “in situations where there’s a humanitarian crisis, but it does not affect our national security,” such as “the Congo, where 4.5 million people have died since 1998,” or Rwanda or Somalia.

In such cases, answered Obama, “we have moral issues at stake.” Of course the United States must act to stop genocide, he said. “When genocide is happening, when ethnic cleansing is happening . . . and we stand idly by, that diminishes us.”

But that wasn’t how Obama sounded last year, when he was competing for the Democratic nomination and was unbending in his demand for an American retreat from Iraq. Back then, he dismissed fears that a US withdrawal would unleash a massive Iraqi bloodbath. “Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama said Thursday the United States cannot use its military to solve humanitarian problems and that preventing a potential genocide in Iraq isn’t a good enough reason to keep US forces there,” the AP reported on July 20, 2007 (my italics).

What kind of candidate is it whose moral response to genocide – genocide – can reverse itself 180 degrees in a matter of months? Is that the kind of candidate who ought to be the leader of the free world?

It’s hardly the kind of person who ought to be in the U.S. Senate. But, Barack Obama gets a pass on his failings all the time.

One thing which I noted in last night’s debate was John McCain speaking to the actual concerns of those affected in their personal lives by the financial crisis – those who have seen their home values collapse while keeping up their home payments. As a for-instance, there is me. My house has lost at least $175,000 in value, and perhaps more – in a real sense, by house is actually worthless because with so many foreclosures on the market, there will be no prospective buyer’s for my house as there are plenty of nicer houses to be had for even less than the supposed market value of my home. Essentially, every month I make a mortgage payment, I’m wasting my money – I am not building equity, and I long ago lost the $40,000 I put down on the house. In terms of logic, the best thing for me to do with this house would be to bag it – go buy a house at knock-down prices and once I close on that home, allow this one to fall into foreclosure.

I’d rather not do that.

But what to do? I contacted my lender and suggested a re-working of my loan payments – not any forgiveness of debt, but just an easement on the amount I had to pay each month so that I could hang on here while building up savings until the market comes back and I can either sell the house (and pay off the bank) or refinance it (and pay off the bank). No harm, no foul – the bank has one less foreclosure on their hands, I have my house without the shame of a defaulted loan, I’m building up savings and in 5 to 10 years I sell/refinance and clear things up with the bank which will not have lost a penny on me. The answer to this suggested course of action? Not just no, but heck no. The bank wasn’t interested…and so there I sat (and sit) tossing money down the black hole of a collapsed Las Vegas housing market, watching my tax dollars go to bail out Frank and Dodd’s buddies who created this whole mess and all the while wondering if anyone was ever going to take an interest in Americans in this fix. Finally, last night, someone did – and it was John McCain. And I wasn’t the only person who noticed:

ABC News’ Rick Klein: “[M]cCain is roaming the stage, playing to his strength. And comes out with a policy proposal to help people stay in their homes — a strong lead answer, to have a meaty response to that. McCain looks confident early.” (Rick Klein, “Live Debate Blog,” ABC News’ “Live Debate Blog,” blogs.abcnews.com, 10/7/08)

Details? Don’t have them – but we really won’t fix the mess until we figure out what to do with all those houses in New Jersey, California, New Mexico, Nevada and elsewhere around the nation which have lost more than 20% of their value. Until this is resolved, a huge chunk of the American public is entirely removed from the housing market unless they ditch their current homes, thus shoving even more foreclosures on the market to drive down prices even further and make home mortgage paper even more worthless than it is now. Whatever the plan is, it has to have a component of helping those Americans who are upside down but who have not defaulted – not even so much as one late payment. Those who can afford their homes, but who’s homes have suffered a massive loss of value, thus becoming a dead weight on the housing market and on the banks who are holding paper on houses worth half of the loan amount.

All of Obama’s finger pointing at Bush; all of Obama’s ignoring of his Party’s part in this debacle, all of his welfarist notions on how to move forward are so much worthless nonsense – they don’t address the problem which needs to be fixed in order to get things moving again. A lot of wealth has been lost, and some way has to be found to make the debt load of the people match the real value of the nation’s real estate – McCain has an idea, and is clearly thinking of regular folks; the hard working people who didn’t buy houses on speculation but who have none the less been caught in the Democrat-inspired collapse of the mortgage industry. In this alone – the perception to see where the real problem lies – we can see McCain’s manifest superiority over Obama as a prospective Chief Executive.

Yet another timely warning of just how dangerous an Obama Presidency would be:

The Director of the Human Rights Foundation, Armando Valladares, said that electing Barack Obama as the next U.S. President, would go against “the values, principles and ideals that have shaped this great nation…”

…Valladares spent 22 years in a Cuban prison before moving to the United States, where he currently resides. According to him, Obama is governed by the Marxist belief that “the end justifies the means.”

The Latino leader said that if Obama wins the election, “more than ever, our society will be in great danger. One of his objectives is the dissolution of the family and its values. Obama supports marriage between same-sex partners. He wants to bring it to the Constitution. Obama is in favor of the adoption of children by gay couples. Rather than favoring prayer in schools, he advocates the distribution of condoms.”

The greatest concern of Valladares is Obama’s relationship with terrorists. “William ‘Bill’ Ayers was one of the founders of the leftist organization ‘The Weatherman.’ It was this group that put the bomb at the headquarters of the police department in New York back in 1970. Additionally, the bombings at the Capitol in Washington in 1971 and at the Pentagon in 1972 are among their other terrorist acts.”

“Obama and Ayers served together in the extreme leftist organization, Woods Fund Board, from 1999 to 2002. Ayers introduced his terrorist friends to Obama and organized parties at his house to raise money for Obama’s campaign to the Senate in Illinois. They appeared together many times in public lectures, panels. Ayers was a donor to the Obama campaign in 2001.”

According to Valladares, if Obama is elected, Ayers would have a place in his administration.

Right now, Ayers has become too toxic for him to find a spot in an Obama Administration – but the ideology of Ayers would certainly find a home in Obama’s White House. Watching Obama fumble around with mindless talking points during the “townhall” debate, I get the distinct impression that Obama wouldn’t be the leader of his Administration – he is the definition of the empty suit and his ideological mentors can pour into him whatever they please. One of the more curious things right now is that for 8 years the left has been complaining that President Bush is a mindless tool of shadowy special interests who get him to do their bidding while he’s clueless about what is really going on – and now these same leftists are determined to have a mindless tool of shadowy special interest who will be able to get him to do their bidding. Up has become down and we’ve stepped through the looking glass.

These leftists like Ayers certainly believe they are doing the right thing – that the world is never going to be the way its supposed to be until their ideology rules supreme and everyone is forced into the Marxist dispensation. How they manage to deny the truth of their own eyes is inexplicable, but not at all rare – Marx, himself, had no clue about the working class he claimed to advance…no more than did Lenin, Stalin, Mao or Castro and no more than the various leftists in the United States who have risen from the fever swamps of post-Christian philosophy to needlessly trouble the world. Ayers probably has a high opinion of himself, as does Obama – that neither of them have ever done anything to actually help a downtrodden person is neither here nor there…no leftist ever has, and none ever will. Actual people are terribly inconvenient for leftists – they prefer to deal with humanity than with humans.

And so here comes Barack Obama, product of mid- to late-20th century American education, which means that unless he exerted himself independently he has only the haziest notion of how the world works or how it got to be the way it is (and such mites of information he’s been given are usually wrong, or grossly misunderstood)…but he’s going to save us all, because he’s been told by his mentors what needs to be done, and it all seems to fit in a nice, neat ideological package – divorced from reality, but Obama lacks the grounding in real world knowledge to detect the difference between the real and the fantasy. Taught his religion by a racist con artist, joined to a grievance-mongering wife, surrounded by sycophants, told endlessly that he’s just oh, so smart and wonderful…he’s going blind into an office he doesn’t have a clue about and which he won’t be able to make work…and thus all power will slip out of his hands and fall into the hands of those who do know how to make it work…under-secretaries and senior bureaucrats and obscure lawyers will decide how things go, with Obama only being called upon to ratify their designs in public speeches, with an MSM counted on to smooth over any difficult questions which may arise. And all things done to advance the leftist agenda for the remaking of the United States.

Will we have this? I don’t think so. Its late in the game and our team is down by 7 with a long yardage, third down conversion necessary just to try and get some momentum…but I think we’re going to win. If we lose, I shan’t be surprised, nor dismayed – I am at peace…but also serenely confident in the outcome. Why? Because America is not what Obama and his handlers believe it is – we’re not a racist, sexist, homophobic society which needs to be cured by a dose of leftism. We’re not a bunch of whiners who are sucking our collective thumb and waiting for Uncle Sugar to come and take care of us. We are Americans – and we wish to live in an American nation, not a country converted into a poor copy of Euro-trash socialism. Last night’s debate showed quite clearly who is the better man to be President – and while it still could end up that the American people hand power to Obama and his Democrats, I think that those who have so far been on the fence now have the knowledge to make their decision, and my prayer – and conviction – is that they will choose correctly.

Tonight, I’ll be live-blogging the Second Presidential Debate over at VoteBitter.com.

VoteBitter.com has a nifty shirt for sale from their website:

Click here to get your shirt!

Click here to check out the liveblogging of the presidential debate at 9 PM Eastern.

UPDATE, by Mark Noonan: As an aside, Obama’s old friends at ACORN hired ID thieves to canvass for voters in Nevada. Some people say that all the voter fraud and illegal fundraising is just all coincidental – nothing to see here, just move along…. Continue reading →

Time’s Mark Halperin: “Is it fair to say that [Barack Obama] continued to associate with [Bill Ayers] professionally — and personally on a casual basis — even after he learned?”

Obama Senior Adviser Robert Gibbs: “He continued to serve on a charitable board and an educational grant board with money supplied by Walter Annenberg, a Republican who was an ambassador under Richard Nixon. Yes.”

Halperin: “But with the knowledge of Ayers’ past?”

Gibbs: “Yes.”

While I primarily trust polls like Gallup and Rasmussen, there’s always reason to look at other polls, and asses current and potential trends. So, I think it’s worth noting that a CBS poll says that the race has tightened since the VP Debate, and Zogby’s Daily Tracking Poll, has Obama only up by 3.

Yes, national polls are not important at this point… state polls are. However, one trend I casually observed was that the trends of state polls seems to follow those of national polls, with some period of delay.

So, we’ll just have to see if the tide has already started turning in McCain’s favor. The bailout business is behind us, and the Obama campaign is clearly rattled by the emergence of Bill Ayers a topic of the campaign. Dick Morris is also predicting the race will tighten.

Look your left, look your right. Look up and look down. Everywhere you look, the left is trying to steal this election for Barack Obama.

Nevada state authorities seized records and computers Tuesday from the Las Vegas office of an organization that tries to get low-income people registered to vote, after fielding complaints of voter fraud.

Bob Walsh, spokesman for the Nevada secretary of state’s office, told FOXNews.com the raid was prompted by ongoing complaints about “erroneous” registration information being submitted by the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, also called ACORN.

The group was submitting the information through a voter sign-up drive known as Project Vote.

“Some of them used nonexistent names, some of them used false addresses and some of them were duplicates of previously filed applications,” Walsh said, describing the complaints, which largely came from the registrar in Clark County, Nev.

Secretary of State Ross Miller said the fraudulent registrations included forms for the starting lineup of the Dallas Cowboys football team.

“Tony Romo is not registered to vote in the state of Nevada, and anybody trying to pose as Terrell Owens won’t be able to cast a ballot on Nov. 4,” Miller said.

Walsh said agents from both the secretary of state’s office and Nevada attorney general’s office conducted the raid at 9:30 a.m. local time, and “took a bunch of stuff.”

In a race expected to be close on Election Day, this is serious stuff.