Blogs For Victory

There are many crucial differences between Senator McCain and Obama – from the war (Obama for defeat, McCain for victory) to energy (McCain for energy, Obama for taxes) to health care (Obama for empowering government, McCain for empowering people) to the issue of life – and McCain’s courageous adherence to the Culture of Life stands in stark contrast to Obama’s cowardly “can I have it both ways, please” march through the morass of the Culture of Death:

After a meeting with Catholic leaders in Philadelphia last week, Sen. John McCain’s pro-life credentials are being questioned some pro-lifers who wonder if he would veto the Freedom of Choice Act, which if passed, would invalidate many of the laws that regulate abortion. Leaders who were present at the meeting informed CNA that they believe McCain would undoubtedly veto the bill.

The Freedom of Choice Act (FOCA) was most recently introduced on introduced April 19, 2007 — one day after the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the Partial Birth Abortion Act of 2003.

According to the American Center for Law and Justice the impact of FOCA being passed, would be to “create an absolute right to abortion that would override any federal, state or local law that simply ‘interfered with’ that right, no matter how compelling the justification for the law.”

The Republican National Coalition for Life also was of the same opinion, saying, “The heart of the (FOCA) bill is a ban that would nullify all of the major types of pro-life laws that the Supreme Court has said are permissible under Roe v. Wade, including the ban on partial-birth abortions and bans on government funding of abortions.”

Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA), who introduced the bill, saw the legislation differently, describing it as being about “the absolute right to choose” prior to fetal “viability.” However, the Republican Coalition for Life pointed out that FOCA goes even further. “The no-restriction policy would also apply after “viability” to any abortion sought on the grounds of “health.”

During his meeting with Catholic leaders last Friday, Sen. McCain reminded Philadelphia Catholics of his pro-life voting record and emphasized that he would “maintain that commitment” if elected president.

Deal Hudson, one of the leaders present at the meeting, informed CNA that when it came to McCain vetoing FOCA, “Nobody asked him that question. My view is that, of course, he would veto it.”

Fr. Frank Pavone of Priests for Life agreed with Hudson, saying, “I have no doubt that he would veto it.”

“Moreover, it’s so extreme, I really don’t think it would ever reach his desk, even if the Democrats increased their numbers in Congress,” Fr. Pavone said.

Barack Obama has made his position on FOCA clear by promising at a July 17, 2007 speech to the Planned Parenthood Action Fund that signing it into law would be his first act as president.

It is amazing how some things work out – it is good to keep in mind that when a 13th Amendment was first proposed, it was part of a compromise effort which would have enshrined slavery permanently in the United States constitution…the people who back FOCA are hoping that a President Obama will enshrine abortion in American law, rather than have it tenously exist at the sufferance of a transient Supreme Court majority…but what may very well happen is that the extremism exhibited by FOCA will provide one of many rallying points to defeat Obama, elect McCain and start the process of unravelling Roe, and eventually ending legal abortion in the United States. Just as the gay marriage advocates shot themselves in the foot by pushing too hard and too fast so, too, is the Culture of Death pushing too hard and too fast, and they might have stepped over the line.

It is true that abortion, as an individual issue, will play only a small role in 2008 – but the culmulative effect of Obama’s kowtowing to each and every extremist liberal position is how we can – and must – defeat him in November. We won’t beat him by demonstrating he’s inexperienced. We won’t beat him by demonstrating that he’s a leftist extremist. We won’t beat him by demonstrating he’s ignorant of the basics of foreign and military realities. Any one of those things would be given a pass – but if we can demosntrat that he’s an inexperienced leftwing extremist who doesn’t know jack about the world, then we can beat him.

On the other hand, McCain is demonstrating again and again that outside of CFR and his now-defunct immigration reform, he’s entirely in tune with the basic thrust of Reaganite consevatism and, also, has the foresight and courage to complete the War on Terror effort set afoot by President Bush and now reaping such tremendous results. We have a clear choice in November, and we conservatives must rally ’round the man, John McCain, who will do the things we really care about.

Well, truth be told, he lied – but we’re into the New Politcs of Hope and Change, so we’ll gentle it down. From NRO’s The Corner:

Barack Obama released his first general election ad on Friday, which seems aimed above all to answer some early concerns about his biography and experience. It’s a well made ad, but it also offers an example of the kind of brazen padding of the resume that Obama will inevitably need to engage in, and which will carry serious risks for him.

About 46 seconds into the ad, we are told that Obama “passed laws” that “extended healthcare for wounded troops who’d been neglected,” and in the usual manner of these political commercials we are given a little citation at the bottom. The citation reads “Public Law 110-181 1/28/08”. That law is the only federal legislation cited in the ad — the other two items mentioned were from the Illinois legislature and referred to other issues raised in the ad.

Public Law 110-181 was the 2008 defense authorization bill. It passed the Senate by 91 to 3 in January, with six Senators not voting. Among those six absentees was Barack Obama. So he cites a bill he didn’t even vote for. Did he contribute to it in some way that might be reasonably referred to as extending healthcare for wounded troops who’d been neglected? It certainly doesn’t seem that way, as even Obama supporters at the Daily Kos discovered when they tried to answer some of the bloggers who pointed to Obama’s citation of the bill.

Obama was a “community organizer” (and I’ve got $20 for the first person who can tell me just what that accomplished), a mediocre State Senator, elected to the US Senate in a walkover because a dirty trick forced out the strongest GOPer, an undistinguished member of that body and now the presumptive Democratic nominee for President of the United States of America, the most powerful office in the world. Essentially, he’s got nothing to justify his attempt, so he’s fallen to making stuff up about himself.

The Obama icon is being eaten away by the acid of truth – the only question is will the acid do its work before, or after, election day? One way or another, the fact that Obama is a presumptuous fraud will come out – but lets hope it doesn’t come out in the form of disasterous policies in the Executive branch.

We’ve been getting a large dose of this, and I think it important that all of us try to understand the defect such poor creatures are suffering under – they are very nasty, but our duty is to help them if we can, and the one way we can’t help is by arguing with them. So far gone in dishonesty and varied vileness, arguments won’t reach them – only example. Pity is our best approach – and here is a quote from C. S. Lewis’ The Great Divorce to put it into perspective:

We met several Ghosts that had come so near to heaven only in order to tell the Celestials about Hell. Indeed this is one of the commonest types. Others, who had perhaps been (like myself) teachers of some kind actually wanted to give lectures about it: they brought fat notebooks full of statistics, and maps, and (one of them) a magic lantern. Some wanted to tell anecdotes of the notorious sinners of all ages whom they had met below. But the most part seemed to think that the mere fact of having contrived for themselves so much misery gave them a kind of superiority. “You have led a sheltered life!” they bawled. “You don’t know the seamy side. We’ll tell you. We’ll give you some of the hard facts’ – as if to tinge Heaven with infernal images and colours had been the only purpose for which they came. All alike, so far as I could judge from my own exploration of the lower world, were wholly unreliable, and all equally incurious about the country in which they had arrived. They repelled every attempt to teach them, and when they found that nobody listened to them they went back, one by one…

This curious wish to describe Hell turned out, however, to be only the mildest form of a desire very common among the Ghosts – the desire to extend Hell, to bring it bodily, if they could, into Heaven. There were tub-thumping Ghosts who in thin, bat-like voices urged the blessed to shake off their fetters, to escape from their imprisoment in happiness, to tear down the mountains with their hands, to seize Heaven “for their own”: Hell offered her cooperation…

Empty, fearful and without hope, some people feel a desire to bring their misery to others – that if by some mechanism they could make everyone as miserable as they are, then life would seem better in a relative sense. By being patient and loving towards these poor wretches, we’ll give them their opportunity for a change of heart – we can’t make them do it, and by our own power we can’t ensure it happens…but just paying them out in kind won’t help them, and will hurt us. So, keep this all in mind when you see the really nasty comment…pass it by, or respond with gentleness; the nasty comment, itself, will disappear in the by and by…but, meanwhile, we can do a good deed.

…someone who won’t allow his best friend to tell him not to have a one night stand, but who will allow a government bureaucrat to run his health care…

Discuss.

Hardcore Obamaniacs may have loved it, but everyone else recognized it for what it was, the symbol of an arrogant, egotistical man who sense of entitlement rivals that of Hillary Clinton.

After days of media mockery, Barack Obama has decided to stop using a presidential-looking seal that his campaign designed and affixed to his podium on Friday.

Journalists said the seal, which features an eagle clutching arrows and an olive branch, smacks of arrogance. John McCain’s camp had a field day, calling the seal “laughable, ridiculous, preposterous and revealing – all at the same time.”

The seal was conspicuously missing from Obama’s lectern when he spoke to a group of women in Albuquerque on Monday. Not surprising, given how much grief Obama took from a normally laudatory press corps after unveiling the seal at an appearance in Chicago on Friday.

“What a bizarre and dumb idea,” railed NBC political director Chuck Todd. “It really feeds the arrogance narrative.”

The oversized blue seal was emblazoned with the Latin phrase “Vero Possumus,” which roughly translates into “yes, we can.” It also featured a plug for the candidate’s website.

“The Audacity of Hype,” cracked ABC’s Jake Tapper. “No word on whether they played a remix of ‘Hail to the Chief’ as Obama walked in.”

Andrew Malcolm of the Los Angeles Times observed that Obama “has decided not to wait for any of the formalities like a presidential election, an inauguration or even a nomination, which he still hasn’t actually officially won yet.”

Marc Ambinder of the Atlantic magazine was the first to note that Obama would deep-six the seal.

“I’m told that Obama recognizes that it was a silly mistake,” Ambinder said. “Does the press think Obama is arrogant? Yes.”

PREVIOUS: Some photoshop fun with Obama’s seal.

Bill Kristol notes MoveOn’s new attack ad against McCain:

the organization boasts on its Web site, “This isn’t your average political ad — it lays out the truth about McCain’s Iraq policy in a personal and compelling way.” MoveOn also claims, “We just got the results back and polling shows that voters found it to be more persuasive than any other ad we’ve tested before.”

I’m not persuaded. Having slandered a distinguished general officer, MoveOn has now moved on to express contempt for all who might choose to serve their country in uniform.

Their new and improved message is presented in a 30-second TV spot, “Not Alex,” produced in conjunction with the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. It’s airing for a week on local broadcast stations in markets in the swing states of Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin, and on two national cable channels, with a reported buy of over half a million dollars.

The ad is simple. A mother speaks as she holds her baby boy:

“Hi, John McCain. This is Alex. And he’s my first. So far his talents include trying any new food and chasing after our dog. That, and making my heart pound every time I look at him. And so, John McCain, when you say you would stay in Iraq for 100 years, were you counting on Alex? Because if you were, you can’t have him.”

Take that, warmonger!

Heck, I’ll donate money to get that ad out – I can’t think of anything which might better inform the American people of the nauseating, dishonsest, selfish and defeatist views of the left than this ad. In 7 sentences, it demonstrates how entirely mean spirited and out of touch the left is – after that, its just a matter of the fairly easy task of tying Obama to MoveOn and the rest of the left…and let him either denouce his core supporters, or go down to McGovern-like defeat.

At 71:

Comedian George Carlin, a counter-culture hero famed for his routines about drugs and dirty words, died of heart failure at a Los Angeles-area hospital on Sunday, a spokesman said. He was 71.

Carlin, who had a history of heart and drug-dependency problems, died at Saint John’s Health Center in Santa Monica about 6 p.m. PDT (9 p.m. EDT) after being admitted earlier in the afternoon for chest pains, spokesman Jeff Abraham told Reuters.

Known for his edgy, provocative material, Carlin achieved status as an anti-Establishment icon in the 1970s with stand-up bits full of drug references and a routine called “Seven Words You Can Never Say On Television.” A regulatory battle over a radio broadcast of the routine ultimately reached the U.S. Supreme Court.

He made his big name by using dirty words, but he was funnier without them:

Tonight’s forecast: Dark. With continued dark until partly scattered light in the morning. We see that overnight our low was 35. The high was 215 degrees. That was during a fire at the weather bureau.

May God rest his soul.

Amongst the left’s varied anti-Bush narratives, one of them is that President Bush is a rather dense man who stubbornly sticks to a policy even after it has been proved a failure. This was used to great effect in the 2006 campaign when the Democratic narrative about Iraq being unwinnable seemed confirmed by events in Iraq. But, as it turns out, President Bush could change – and take on the policy of his staunchest GOP critic, John McCain – and so the “troop surge” was begun, and it has now proven to be one of the most amazing military and political successes in the annals of American arms. Meanwhile, Barack Obama not only refuses to admit to the changed reality, he seems determined to carry off his 2008 campaign as if the situation of 2006 still exists, as Michael Barone notes:

In January 2007, when George W. Bush ordered the surge strategy, which John McCain had advocated since the summer of 2003, Barack Obama informed us that the surge couldn’t work. The only thing to do was to get out as soon as possible.

That stance proved to be a good move toward winning the presidential nomination — but it was poor prophecy. It is beyond doubt now that the surge has been hugely successful, beyond even the hopes of its strongest advocates, like Frederick and Kimberly Kagan. Violence is down enormously, Anbar and Basra and Sadr City have been pacified, Prime Minister Maliki has led successful attempts to pacify Shiites as well as Sunnis, and the Iraqi parliament has passed almost all of the “benchmark” legislation demanded by the Democratic Congress — all of which Barack Obama seems to have barely noticed or noticed not at all. He has not visited Iraq since January 2006 and did not seek a meeting with Gen. David Petraeus when he was in Washington.

I can remember how opponents of the Vietnam War simply tuned out news of American success when at Richard Nixon’s orders Gen. Creighton Abrams pursued a new strategy. Opponents of the Iraq war, including Obama, seem to have been doing the same.

We’ve seen that here on Blogs for Victory, on a necessarily smaller scale – still our leftist readers insist that its all a failure and we must get out and they still search for any iota of negativity to use as justification for their dissent against victory in Iraq. In the American political family, Barack Obama and his Democrats have become the dissenting juror who has never seen 11 such stubborn men in his life – everyone is catching on to our stupendous victory, except for them. My guess is that Obama and his Democrats just don’t know what to do with victory in Iraq, so they simply pretend it isn’t happening.

The fundamental problem here is that the American left is not animated by love of country – they are animated by a desire for power and a desire for affirmation that they are, indeed, the smartest, wisest and most caring people around. Had the left been animated by love of country they, first off, wouldn’t have gone in for all that conspiracy-theory nonsense mostly saying “Bush lied, people died” – but even if they did at one time feel justified in saying that, anyone who loves America would now admit to our victory and, if once opposed to the effort – especially the troop surge – they would admit they were wrong about it and join in congratulating our military, the President and those (like John McCain) who advoated the surge even when it was unpopular to do so. We can expect precisely nothing like this from the left – because to admit they were wrong would mean they aren’t the smartest people in the room and if there’s one thing they’ll never do, it is to admit that.

As for how this will play out in the 2008 campaign – who knows? Obama will continue to talk of a failed 8 years and how McCain just promises more failure. We will see if this ends up making Obama look like a fool – or, to be more accurate, more of a fool than he already appears. McCain, meanwhile, will be able to continually point to his advocacy of the surge – and its complete success – as proof of his abilitiy to analyse a difficult situation and come up with the correct solution…which is just what we need, all else being equal, in a President.

The general election race-baiting has begun. Obama is charging that Republicans will use his race to “scare voters.”

“They’re going to try to make you afraid of me. He’s young and inexperienced and he’s got a funny name. And did I mention he’s black?”

Perhaps Obama needs to understand that his race is obvious to anyone who sees him or a picture of him. Obama’s comments are not only ridiculous, but they’re insulting. But, I guess to Obama, the Republican Party is just full of “typical white people” like his grandmother. How can Obama make such a claim, which essentially says that he thinks the American people are racist?

I think it’s obvious from his comment that Barack Obama is trying to insulate himself from criticisms by making it appear as if any attack against him is an attack on his race. Obama should be ashamed himself. If there’s anything we learned from the Democratic Primary is that race, gender and class warfare are DNC territory. Another thing we can expect from the Obama campaign, as evidenced by this racist implication he made, is that there will be subtle hints from the Obama campaign that if you don’t vote for Obama then you’re a racist. See, Obama wants this election to be about his race. He’ll wants to guilt voters into voting for him in the same way he claims Republicans wants to scare voters into voting against him. It’ll be a repeat of Deval Patrick‘s gubernatorial campaign in Massachusetts.

Obama is going to attack, attack, attack John McCain from all angles. Yet, should the McCain campaign release an ad that either (a) shows a picture or video of Barack Obama or (b) mentions his name, the Obama campaign will accuse McCain, or whatever organization puts out any such ads, of attacking his race.

Issues will decide this election… Not Obama’s desire to play the race card at every turn. Obama’s desire to raise taxes, have tea and toast with terrorists organizations, socialize healthcare. Issues alone will guide voters to vote for John McCain over Barack Obama in November.

UPDATE: A real example of using race to scare voters.

After years of propaganda even more relentless than that we’ve had in the United States, turns out that most Brits still doubt the enviro-whacko global warming narrative:

Ipsos MORI polled 1,039 adults and found that six out of 10 agreed that ‘many scientific experts still question if humans are contributing to climate change’, and that four out of 10 ‘sometimes think climate change might not be as bad as people say’. In both cases, another 20 per cent were not convinced either way. Despite this, three quarters still professed to be concerned about climate change.

Those most worried were more likely to have a degree, be in social classes A or B, have a higher income, said Phil Downing, Ipsos MORI’s head of environmental research.

‘People are broadly concerned, but not entirely convinced,’ said Downing. ‘Despite many attempts to broaden the environment movement, it doesn’t seem to have become fully embedded as a mainstream concern,’ he said.

The common sense of the average person just doesn’t swallow this sort of nonsense – as Lincoln said, you can fool some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of the time, but you can’t fool all the people all the time. Average temperaturs – as far as we know, and to call our data “incomplete” is to over-state our knowledge – have rise, but over the past 10 years they’ve been stable, which is something absolutely impossible if the anthropogenic global warming theory is correct. And yet there go the environmentalists and various cheerleaders saying it is real and we must act fast. Its gotten so bad that even President Bush and John McCain have signed off on this, though I wonder if part of the motivation for this would be a desire to get past an un-winnable debate (we long ago lost the global warming debates to the enviro-whackos – only time and the actual fact that we don’t all die will prove them wrong) and move forward on to environmental clean up on the perfectly reasonable position that its good to clean up messes and, meanwhile, if we GOPers stay in charge of it we won’t get regressive, impoverishing, anti-human laws and regulations as the left fanatically desires.