Blogs For Victory

Human Events is reporting that the Obama campaign has received $50,000 in “bundled” contributions from Code Pink. While it is not surprising that a subversive organization such as Code Pink would give a campaign contribution to a Presidential candidate who has made it a life practice to freely associate with subversives and other ne’erdowells, what is noteworthy is that Code Pink proclaims itself a 501c3 organization:

(click for full size)

Question: Why is a tax-exempt 501c3 organization raising money for a political candidate, while still being able to maintain its tax-exempt status?

From Larry Kudlow:

Sen. John McCain moved decisively to the supply-side Tuesday in a strong speech to the National Small Business Summit in Washington, D.C. For investors, small-business owner-operators, and the vast majority of middle-class Americans who go to work every day and are concerned about Sen. McCain’s tax vision, this speech is good news. Big Mac is the taxpayer-friendly candidate.

The Republican candidate for president embraced low-tax-rate incentives to grow the economy, promising a combination of pro-growth tax reform and simplification along with significant spending restraint. He has called himself a foot soldier in the Reagan revolution. This tax speech clinches it.

When contrasted with Obama’s Carteresque program of high taxes, high spending and a new “era of limits”, it becomes clear that McCain is the man who believes in America, and the ability of Americans to forge ahead in an increasingly competitive world. And in seeing this, we conservatives should really start to smoke the peace pipe in earnest with John McCain – sure, we don’t like CFR and we’re still seething over the judicial issue (additionally, many are upset over McCain’s immigration proposal from 2007 – but I’m not one of them, as I backed it), but outside of these issues, McCain is our man – and certainly a solid choice in contrast to the disaster Obama promises us.

We conservatives have to entirely step out of the realm of theory and into the world of practical politics – we won’t ever get all we want, but we must try to get as much as we can…to quibble over side issues while the central issues are in danger is foolish. Do we want a powerful America? Do we want a prosperous America? Do we want a free America? Do we want an America which protects the family? Then we have to do what we can to obtain these things – and if that means we have to sometimes put a part of our project on the back burner, then that is just how it will have to be. As my grandfather used to say, better to have 10% of something than 100% of nothing – and McCain is actually offering us 90% of what we want! And, actually, more than that.

You see, for too long we’ve tended to cede the popular debate on economics to the liberals – while we prove, again and again, that supply side economics works, we still get crushed in the debate because the left is able to craft a plausible fairy tale about Evil Corporations fighting against Selfless Liberals who fight for the Consumer and the Children. McCain is willing to go toe to toe with the liberals on this issue, but he understands that it doesn’t do us any good to fight for free markets while even appearing to defend corporate bosses who (a) don’t care about free markets and (b) tend to shovel money at any politician – even an ultra leftist – who will give them an unfair advantage in the market. So, fight for low taxes – but also hold CEO’s feet to the fire for their boneheaded decisions (most notably of late, of course, the sub-prime meltdown); we know that a free market will fix whatever ailes the market, but we should also insist that those running the show are held responsible when through greed or incompetance they cause problems which adversely affect everyone; more CEO accountability and the market won’t have to fix as many problems, right?

The more McCain speaks, the more I like what I see – and the more willing I am to go to bat for him. Time for conservatism to completely grow up and cast aside the nattering classes who aren’t satisfied with anything short of perfection – in a contest between a leftist lawyer and a war hero, who do you really think is the better candidate?

Much nonsense has been written about this, while Gay Patriot has come across a man, Doug Feith (former Bush Undersecretary of Defense), who clears up some of the fog in War and Decision: Inside the Pentagon at the Dawn of the War on Terrorism:

He (Feith) observes that his book “tells a story that contradicts key parts of almost all the major books about the Iraq war,” refuting, for example, “the notion that President Bush came into office determined to go to war no matter what.” Discussing how the president’s team made the call to go to war, he quoted from his book:

Our main concern was not that Saddam would then attack the United States out of the blue. We worried rather that, in his effort to dominate the Persian Gulf and the broader Middle East, Saddam would aim to deter outside intervention by developing his conventional and WMD capabilities, along with the prohibited long-range missiles (or, possibly, terrorist alliances) to deliver them.

In some future clash— over Kuwait or some other Iraqi target— Saddam might draw inspiration from 9/11, providing terrorists with anthrax, smallpox, or nerve gas to attack us.

What impressed me about Feith was his civility, his command of the issues and his good humor. I consider myself fortunate that I had the chance to talk with him, albeit briefly, about his experiences in the Administration and in dealing with a hostile press, interested in him not so much to learn his contribution to policy-making, but instead to ridicule him as a caricature of a gung-ho pro-war conservative.

Doug Feith was far from the caricature of the out-of-touch Republican official. Instead her offered a lucid explanation of the decision to go to war that makes one wonder why the Administration didn’t put him at the forefront of their efforts to explain its policies to the American people. The president would have been better served had it relied more on Feith’s counsel in setting policy in Iraq and his verbal gifts in communicating that policy to the American people.

That, by the way, was not my primary concern – from my point of view, the whole purpose of liberating Iraq was to change the socio-political dynamic of the Arab/Moslem world and reorientate it in a pluralistic, democratic direction. The liberation was a means to an end – namely, that the people of the Arab/Moslem world be given a fair chance at deciding their own future, with a prayer on our part that they will choose to live and build rather than kill and destroy (and this prayer is being answered in the affirmative, daily, in Iraq and Afghanistan). But there was also the fact that Saddam was a growing threat, a terrorist sponsor and someone who had demonstrated his willingness to be quite horrific if he saw any personal advantage in so doing. For the President – outside of any larger strategic ideas – it came down to this in the post 9/11 world: do we work on the assumption that we can contain Saddam even to the point of preventing another 9/11, or do we get rid of him as the safer alternative?

The choice to go on the offensive is always fraught with risk, and it takes rare courage for a commander to order one – one thinks of the complete failures in wars past (McClellan in the Civil War being a prime example) who failed the test…who simply lacked the courage to step out into the unknown and attack the enemy. The bunker mentality in command is always appealing – you can feel safe and sure and your risks are limited or, at least, it seems so…but any commander who just waits for the enemy to strike is setting himself up for complete defeat, because the attack will come in a time and place least expected. President Bush seems to have immediately understood on 9/11 that unless we struck at the enemy, we were doomed to ultimate defeat – there was no grand conspiracy, just an understanding that the result of a defensive war is defeat, and that in war there really is no substitute for victory.

It seems certain that the internal debate was strong prior to the decision to liberate Iraq – and those who counseled caution, even to the point of de-facto cowardice, were able to martial strong arguments on their side; but to say that those who prevailed and ordered the liberation were wicked while those who opposed it were saintly is to over simplify a highly complex issue. While there is an absolute Truth ruling the universe, imperfect human beings can only, at best, come close to such truth – we can never be sure, on our own hook, that we’re 100% right, and to indict a decision in hindsight based upon information the decision makers didn’t have at the moment of decision is both unfair and worthless.

President Bush, in the end, ordered the liberation of Iraq with the strong support of the American people and the Congress of the United States – those who now try to say they were hoodwinked into agreement are the worst sort of blackguards; people who stuck their finger in the wind in 2002 and then, again, in 2004 and just went where the wind was blowing, and who now try to convince us that they are the honorable ones standing up for principle. In the event, the liberation was a complete success, and after a long period of difficult battle, the right strategy (and, note it, a highly aggressive strategy) is prevailing in the post-liberation phase of the Iraq campaign. President Bush has been proved right in the particular desire (to eliminate the Saddamite threat) and in the general sense (that liberating Iraq would be conducive towards building a free and anti-terror Arab/Moslem world). I imagine that, once Bush is out of office, the scoundrels who now condemn will once again see where the wind is blowing and will tell us they were with us all along – but, no matter; such people are beneath contempt and unworthy of notice. What matters is that we have a President who is able to make a decision – and who has been assisted by men and women who strongly argued their conflicting cases. Our hope is that on January 20th, 2009 we will still have such a President, and such an Administration.

…Oh Where, Oh Where Can They Be?

Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments today on Sen. Barack Obama’s Catholic National Advisory Council:

“On May 2, I issued a news release calling on Sen. Obama to dissolve his Catholic National Advisory Council. My principal reason for doing so was his selection of dissident Catholics to advise him: for example, most of the public officials are so pro-abortion that they had a 100 percent NARAL record. On May 8, most members of the Advisory Council faxed me a letter defending themselves; I answered the same day taking them to task for their lame defense. But it now appears that my initial recommendation—to dissolve the group—may have been accepted.

“There is no mention anywhere on the Obama website of the Catholic National Advisory Council. On Friday, we placed three phone calls to his campaign: two to media relations and one to Mark Linton, Obama’s National Catholic Outreach Coordinator. We were told each time that someone would get back to us, but no one did. I then personally e-mailed Linton informing him of the three phone calls, requesting that he respond to my question: ‘I would like to know whether the Catholic National Advisory Council for Sen. Obama is still operative.’ He has not replied.

“It would appear, then, that the group no longer exists. It is not hard to understand why. After being criticized by the Catholic League, Archbishop Joseph Naumann of Kansas City rebuked one of Obama’s Catholic advisors, Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius: she was instructed not to present herself for Holy Communion (she is a rabid defender of abortion). At about the same time, radical Chicago priest Rev. Michael Pfleger bailed on Obama by withdrawing his name from the Advisory Council. Now we find that there is no listing for the group on the Obama website.

“Looks like the Obama campaign’s decision to quietly drop its Advisory Council didn’t work. We found out, and we’ve never been accused of being quiet.”

Of all the varied frauds in political history, none was quite so absurd as Obama’s attempt to make it appear that he had some Catholic support for the fall campaign. Catholics are about 27% of the American electorate, and they went 52%/47% for Bush in 2004 – but that doesn’t tell the whole story, as practising Catholics (ie, those who attend Mass weekly or more often) went 56% for Bush, and gave him about 1.7 million more votes than Kerry just from this demographic: that is more than 50% of Bush’s winning margin, and in Ohio and Florida the surge of Catholic votes for Bush pretty much made the difference between victory and defeat, and thus was instrumental in giving President Bush a second term. Obama would very much like to get back to Gore’s 2000 performance amongst practising Catholics, when a majority of them went for him over Bush. And so – have a Catholic outreach group and make like you give a damn about the concerns of practising Catholics.

The trouble is that there is a dearth of Democratic Catholics who can in any way, shape or form appeal to a majority of practising Catholics. Senator Bob Casey of Pennsylvania might have a shot at it, but Ted Kennedy? Not a chance – and when the Democratic governor of Kansas was called to account, it just made the issue all the more stark; there are Catholics, and then there are Catholics…and if you want the vote of people who take the Catholic faith seriously, then you’re going to have to drop pro-abortion fanaticism as well as a host of other leftwing desires from your program. In the end, the circle couldn’t be squared and while I suspect there will be some minor and rather creaky attempt to have a “Catholics for Obama” officially in existence, we can really just write off this attempt on the part of Obama to expand beyond his extremist, leftwing political base.

Meanwhile, McCain enjoys the support of quite a number of solid Catholics. Wonder who will win the majority of Catholic votes in November?

…but the hypocrisy has already been exposed.

Former Fannie Mae Chairman James Johnson said he has quit Senator Barack Obama’s vice presidential search committee after the Wall Street Journal reported he may have received preferential mortgage terms from Countrywide Financial Corp.

Johnson said that while he has done nothing wrong, he left to avoid being a hindrance to Obama, the presumptive Democratic nominee.

“I would not dream of being a party to distracting attention from that historic effort,” he said in a statement. “I believe Barack Obama’s candidacy for president of the United States is the most exciting and important of my lifetime.”

Johnson’s ties to Countrywide became a campaign issue after Republicans pointed out that Obama had been critical of the mortgage lender in campaign speeches. Johnson’s role as a political insider also contrasted with Obama’s pledge to bring change to Washington.

I don’t think this puts this issue to rest. As Dan Balz of the Washington Post notes, Obama’s defense of Johnson raises questions…

UPDATE, by Mark Noonan: Team McCain comments, from NRO’s The Corner:

Jim Johnson’s resignation raises serious questions about Barack Obama’s judgment. Selecting the vice presidential nominee is the most important decision a presidential candidate can make and one even Barack Obama has said will ‘signal how I want to operate my presidency.’ By entrusting this process to a man who has now been forced to step down because of questionable loans, the American people have reason to question the judgment of a candidate who has shown he will only make the right call when under pressure from the news media. America can’t afford a president who flip-flops on key questions in the course of 24 hours. That’s not change we can believe in.

Yep.

From Thomas Sowell:

Now that Senator Barack Obama has become the Democrats’ nominee for President of the United States, to the cheers of the media at home and abroad, he has written a letter to the Secretary of Defense, in a tone as if he is already President, addressing one of his subordinates.

The letter ends: “I look forward to your swift response.”

With wars going on in both Iraq and Afghanistan, a Secretary of Defense might have some other things to look after, before making a “swift response” to a political candidate.

Because of the widely publicized statistic that suicide rates among American troops have gone up, Senator Obama says he wants the Secretary of Defense to tell him, swiftly:

“What changes will you make to provide our soldiers in theater with real access to mental health care?”…

…Does Senator Obama know how the rate of suicides or homicides among military veterans compares to the rate of suicides or homicides among their civilian counterparts? Do the facts matter to him, as compared to an opportunity to score political points?

Perhaps even more important, do the media even care whether Senator Obama knows what he is talking about? Or is the symbolism of “the first black President” paramount, even if that means a President with cocky ignorance at a time of national danger?

The media have been crucial to Barack Obama’s whole candidacy. His only achievements of national significance in his entire career have been media achievements and rhetorical achievements.

Perhaps his greatest achievement has been running as a candidate with an image wholly incompatible with what he has actually been doing for decades. This man who is now supposedly going to “unite” us has for years worked hand in glove, and contributed both his own money and the taxpayers’ money, to people who have sought to divide us in the most crude demagogic ways.

Sowell notes that the actual suicide rate amongst veterans is lower than the suicide rate amongst the comparable, civilian demographic group – so, the whole “soldier suicide” issue is something cooked up by the MSM in order to: denigrate our soldiers; denigrate our mission in Iraq; slander George Bush by implication. The MSM doesn’t know the facts. Obama doesn’t know the facts – but while its not that big an issue that the MSM is ignorant, it is highly troubling that Barack Obama, who aspires to the White House, doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

This is the problem when you nominate the “un-named Democrat” made flesh. You might recall from 2004 how in poll after poll, an “un-named” Democrat beat President Bush…of course, once the Democrat was named, President Bush clobbered him. For 2008, the Democrats have figured out how to get what they needed for 2004 – a man know one really knows, who can be presented as the alternate, un-GOP answer to all problems. Obama is an empty suit, and a rather ignorant person into the bargain – emerging from the ideological hothouse of leftwing community activism (an effort, by the way, which does nothing for communties but does do a lot for people on the make and on the take), Obama comes to the table without the foggiest notion of what is going on in America and the world – and the more he speaks, the more clear this becomes.

The race we have is between Obama’s facade and McCain’s truth – if we can tear down Obama’s facade and present McCain’s truth to a majority by November, then we will win, and present Obama the opportunity to be ignorant about why he lost. We can do this, and we must do this – America is too important to be entrusted in such weak hands as Obama’s.

From McCain’s speech to NFIB:

As president, I intend to act quickly and decisively to promote growth and opportunity. I intend to keep the current low income and investment tax rates. And I will pursue tax reform that supports the wage-earners and job creators who make this economy run, and help them to succeed in a global economy. Serious reform is needed to help American companies compete in international markets. I have proposed a reduction in the corporate tax rate from the second highest in the world to one on par with our trading partners; to keep businesses and jobs in this country.

One of the most crucial economic issues in this campaign is the ability of American workers to benefit from exports to other nations, and how government policy can help them to do so. And here, too, I welcome the debate with the Democratic nominee.

I want to break down foreign trade barriers, so that America’s small businesses can compete abroad. When new trading partners can sell in our market, and American companies can sell in theirs, the gains are great and lasting. The strength of the American economy offers a better life to every society we trade with, and the good comes back to us in many ways — in better jobs, higher wages, and lower prices. Free trade can also give once troubled and impoverished nations a stake in the world economy, and in their relations with America.

At the same time, we have to help displaced workers at every turn on a tough road, so that they are not just spectators on the opportunities of others. And I have made that commitment with reforms to expand and improve federal aid to American workers in need. We need to help millions of workers who have lost a job that won’t come back find a new one that won’t go away.

Unfortunately, Senator Obama has a habit of talking down the value of our exports and trade agreements. He even proposed a unilateral re-negotiation of NAFTA — our agreement with Canada and Mexico that accounts for 33 percent of American exports. But we have a sharp disagreement here that I look forward to debating. If I am elected president, this country will honor its international agreements, including NAFTA, and we will expect the same of others. And in a time of uncertainty for American workers, we will not undo the gains of years in trade agreements now awaiting final approval.

And as we expand markets for Americans products, we must do more tax reform here at home. I will propose and sign into law a reform to permit the first-year expensing of new equipment and technology. We’re also going to keep the low rate on capital gains, so that businesses like yours can expand and create jobs instead of just sending more of your earnings to the government. And so parents can spend and save more for their own children, I will propose to double the size of the child tax exemption. I will also propose as well a middle-class tax cut — a phase-out of the Alternative Minimum Tax to save more than 25 million middle-class families as much as 2,000 dollars in a single year.

Another of my disagreements with Senator Obama concerns the estate tax, which he proposes to increase to a top rate of 55 percent. The estate tax is one of the most unfair tax laws on the books, and the first step to reform is to keep it predictable and keep it low. After a lifetime building up a business, and paying taxes on every dollar that business earns, that asset should not be subjected to a confiscatory tax.

Nothing better shows Obama’s economic illiteracy than his desire to increase the top rate on estates to a confiscatory 55% – only someone who believes the socialist fairy tale of economics could even consider something as regressive and discouraging as promising to take more than half of what a family earns once the head of the family enterprise dies. John McCain understands the basis of all prosperity – allowing people to keep as much of their own as possible as they will be far better stewards of it than any government bureaucracy, even if staffed with the most enlightened and selfless public servants imaginable; and given that such bureacracies are usually staffed with some of the most thick-headed and indolent people in the workforce, McCain’s beliefs are even more worthy of support.

As for me, I’d go even further – it isn’t enough to support small businesses, we should also be doing more to discourage the maintenance or emergence of very large businesses…those multi-national corporate behemoths who are nearly as deletrious to a free market as the most purblind government regulator. But at least McCain knows what is what – Obama knows only what his socialistic mentors told him, and as he’s never bothered to stroll outside the economic fever swamps of the left, he just doesn’t understand that the property of a small business belongs to the small business owner, not to Uncle Sam.

Additionally, Obama is a complete tool of the corrupt unions – unions who don’t want to compete with the workers of the world, but prefer to be protected by Uncle Sam from having to actually work hard and innovate. I can understand some of the frustrations of dealing with imports from China (and my preferred fix to that is to go from “free trade” to “freedom trade” – to trade more with democracies and, eventually, not at all with un-democratic States, but I digress), but the answer to such practices is not to wall ourselves in, but to work harder and smarter and just plain outcompete the Chinese and other thuggish regimes which use semi-slave labor to keep production costs down. The lesson of the past two centuries is that a tryant can beat some profits out of his slaves, but that his slaves cannot compete in the long run with free men and women. NAFTA has been a massive boon to the American economy, and more such agreements are wanted – McCain understands this, Obama doesn’t.

If you want liberty – including economic liberty – McCain is your man; if you want a government to wipe your nose and tell you that everything is going to be all right, vote Obama.

Take from it what you want, but I thought this chart, showing gas prices over the years… both nominal gas prices and inflation adjusted prices in 2008 dollars) … and then there’s this graph, showing the spike in gas prices that occurred since the Democrats took control of congress.

So says our sister blog, Blogs For John McCain’s Victory…

Wouldn’t that be fantastic. Since Reid became the Democrat leader in the Senate, his approval ratings in Nevada have plummeted.

But, I think such a pick is highly unlikely. Besides Harry Reid does nothing to help Obama’s image as a far left partisan, I don’t see the Democrats being open to giving a Mormon their nomination for vice president.

Barack Obama is getting flak for tapping Jim Johnson as part of his running mate search team. Johnson, you may have heard, has ties to a subprime lender.

James Johnson, one of three people tapped by Mr. Obama recently to oversee the search for his running mate, took at least five real estate loans totaling more than $7 million from Countrywide Financial Corp. through an informal program for friends of the company’s CEO, Angelo Mozilo, the Wall Street Journal reported Saturday. The Journal said at least two of the mortgages, among a series of loans made available to people Countrywide officials called “friends of Angelo,” were at rates below market averages, though it is difficult to predict a market rate without access to nonpublic information about a borrower’s credit history and other factors that can reduce interest charges on a loan.

Among the loans to Mr. Johnson, according to the Journal, were a $5 million home equity line of credit against a house in Ketchum, Idaho, a 5.25% loan of $1.3 million for a home in Palm Desert, Calif., and a 3.875% loan of $971,650 for a home in Washington, D.C. The interest rates applied for the first five years of the loans.

“That reeks most high,” a public relations specialist and vocal critic of Mr. Mozilo, Bonnie Russell of Del Mar, Calif., said. “Where’s the ‘change to believe in’ if they’re playing the same old game using the same old players?”

On the campaign trail, Mr. Obama has criticized Countrywide’s executives. “These are the people who are responsible for infecting the economy and helping to create a home foreclosure crisis. Two million people may end up losing their homes,” Mr. Obama said in March at a town hall meeting in Lancaster, Pa.

The Chicago Tribune reported that the senator from Illinois “fumed” over a total of $19 million in bonuses set to be paid to Mr. Mozilo and the president of Countrywide, David Sambol. “They get a $19 million bonus while people are at risk of losing their home. What’s wrong with this picture?” Mr. Obama asked.

In a written statement issued in March, the senator called the payments “an outrage” and suggested Mr. Mozilo and others had “tricked” homeowners into unaffordable loans. “These executives crossed the line to boost their bottom line,” Mr. Obama declared.

A spokesman for the Republican National Committee, Danny Diaz, yesterday called the loans to Mr. Johnson “highly questionable” and said they conflicted with Mr. Obama’s public comments. “Barack Obama needs to immediately address this matter; otherwise, his rhetoric will continue to prove to be nothing more than complete hypocrisy,” Mr. Diaz said.

In response, Camp Obama has release talking points, charging that the story is “overblown.”

I’m sure if Barack Obama was caught on video tape accepting a bribe, that would be “overblown,” “irrelevent,” and/or a “distraction.” too.

RNC spokeswoman Liz Mair released the following statement in response to Obama pathetic talking points.

In view of both his own rhetoric and his own personal history with regard to housing deals, Barack Obama should know better than to try to dampen down discussion of Jim Johnson and his dealings with Countrywide with claims of this story being ‘overblown.’ If Obama wanted to demonstrate the kind of forthright leadership Americans expect to see in their would-be Commander in Chief, he would answer voters’ questions rather than attempting to duck or dismiss them.

UPDATE, by Mark Noonan: Just an observation…Hillary “suspended” her campaign, right? Well, I think that she knew about this sort of thing via oppo research. Could it be that she’s just waiting for Obama to implode over the next six weeks and then organise a floor fight (without her fingerprints, of course) at the convention to dump Obama and pick her? Time will tell…