Big Old Roundup

Items of note from the last couple weeks:

• 5 Myths About an Election of Mythic Proportions: 1. The Republican Party suffered a death blow; 2. A wave of black voters and young people was the key to Obama's victory; 3. Now that they control the White House and Congress, Democrats will usher in a new progressive era; 4. A Republican candidate could have won the presidency this year; 5. McCain made a huge mistake in picking Sarah Palin


• Ex-Lobbyists Have Key Obama Roles. The political hypocrisy continues. Is this the change people were hoping for?


• So far the Big Three bailout has been a no-go, which is a good thing. Some thoughts from Cato. And good arguments against bailing out the Big Three automakers: Here, and here (in the later, David Brooks (temporarily!) remembers he's a conservative).


• Kathleen Parker still hasn't remembered that she's a conservative.
 

• Russel Roberts, brilliant as always, argues the "credit crunch" is due to a lack of certainty, not a lack of liquidity. (Related - last Sunday on 60 minutes, Obama indicated he wanted to take an FDR-like "try things until it works" approach to the economy; that doesn't seem like it's going to help with the uncertainty - and it probably won't help generally.)


• The Washington Post discusses liberal bias. Howard Kurtz appropriately asks aren't media people supposed to resist this kind of hyperventilating?. Deborah Howell, WaPo Ombudsman, admits that "some of the conservatives' complaints about a liberal tilt are valid" and lists a slew of examples. I still don't think she fully gets it though - her article is titled "Remedying the Bias Perception," it should be titled "Remedying the Bias Problem." We're percieving it because it's real, Ms. Howell.


• The best use yet for TARP's 700 billion.


• Clintonite Rahm Emanuel. Clintonite (and lobbyist) Greg Craig. Clintonite John Podesta. Actual-Clinton Hillary Clinton. This "politics of the future" looks a lot like the politics of the past - say 1992 or so. As of 11/14, Politico points out "Thirty-one of the 47 people so far named to transition or staff posts have ties to the Clinton administration." (Smarmily: "Thanks!")


• With the Clinton pick - Some hope I can believe in for actually finishing the job in Iraq. Jonah Goldberg notes: "Obama's signature issue in the primaries was his "good judgment" to oppose the Iraq war. ... [Clinton] may have experience, he'd charge, but she lacked the wisdom to oppose the war. ... So now Barack Obama is going to appoint Hillary Clinton to be the chief architect of his foreign policy. Moreover, he picked Joe Biden to be his running mate and 'partner' in the White House explicitly because of his foreign policy experience and judgment. But wait: Joe Biden, too, supported the war".


• The Left remains extremely hard to parody. Their outrage de jour yesterday was once again Sarah Palin, this time because she had the audacity to do an interview at turkey farm, where turkey-farm-activities actually occur. I guess they never knew where animal-based food comes from? More from John Hinderaker at Powerline.


• The H. in Barack H. Obama continues, for me, to stand for hypocrite:
  "We need to focus on fixing and improving our public schools; not throwing our hands up and walking away from them.”


• For all the talk of The Right being broken, it might also be worth looking at what's happening on The Left.


• Obama the Question Mark Man

Election Postmortem

Well, at long last, the 2008 election has come and gone. It seemed like it was the campaign that would never end, and it is a bit of a relief to have it now behind us.

Obviously, as a conservative, I'm disappointed with the result of the presidential race. Which ever way it had turned out, it was clear conservatives would need to start the fight not long after the election. The difference was that we'd need to challenge McCain about 30% of the time and Obama about 70% of the time.

We can now, of course, return to our more natural state of criticizing (rather than supporting) Senator McCain.

Most right-leaning blogs have had the common courtesy of congratulating President-Elect Obama. I'm refraining to do so. I will firmly honor him as my President, as he was legitimately elected and I fully honor the office which he will hold. But I withhold my congratulations because I believe he fundamentally ran a less-than-honorable campaign that deserves rebuke, not praise. Congratulations are simply not in order when you unleash your supporters to do a character assassination in an attempt to silence a critic. This is America, we should be above thug-like campaigns.

I do wish our President-Elect the best. I hope is really is able to bring the country together and heal our political divides. I also hope he's granted the wisdom required to navigate our country's significant foreign policy challenges, and I wish him success in keeping our country safe and restoring our economy.

Realistically though, I doubt he'll have success with most of the above because I believe he'll pursue a far-left agenda that will alienate conservatives and fail to meet America's challenges. But I would be glad to be wrong. Perhaps he will govern as a moderate and/or perhaps my ideology is incorrect. I would rather be wrong and see my country prosper than vice-versa.

Finally, to the degree you hear pundits announcing the death of the GOP and conservatism, or speaking about a "mandate" to President-Elect Obama, don't bother listening to them.

Obama received only 2% more of the vote than President Bush in 2004. Bush mistakenly read his results as a "mandate" and tried to spend his "political capital" fixing social security, which promptly failed because 51-53% of the vote does not give you a strong "mandate."

Furthermore, according to exit polls 34% of Americans self identify as "conservative", the same percent as in 2004, and a full 12 points higher than those that self-identify as a "liberal."

Another thing to ignore the pundits ranting about is how this election had "record turn out." In fact, it did. But by a negligible amount. According to CNN right now, with 99% of precincts reporting, (and ignoring the about 1% of votes that went to 3rd parties in both 2004 and 2008), there have been about 122 million votes in 2008. In 2004 there were 121 million votes. I welcome one million new voters, but that's an increase of about 1% which doesn't even keep up with the rate of population growth.


A few final thoughts:

1. The polls - both exit and regular type - were pretty much dead on. This is a huge improvement from 2004.

2. The PUMA (pro-Hillary, anti-Obama) people made a lot of noise, but pretty clearly, didn't make much of an impact in the overall vote.

3. If I hear anyone moan about "why can't we just elect a 'moderate'" during the next four years, I may lose it. America - you had your chance and you made your choice. John McCain has a long history of being a moderate who works across party lines and only won the Republican nomination because of his support from independents. I suspect he will probably be the most centrist presidential candidate most will see in their lifetime. And, America, you decided against him.

4. The "Bradly Effect" is officially dead. We can all be glad about this. There are still pockets of racism in America to be confronted, but they are clearly growing more and more irrelevant.

5. I was quite glad to see the homosexual marriage bans all passed, and the losses in the House and Senate weren't quite as bad as I imagined they'd be.

6. A question: why don't we consider it racist to celebrate the fact Obama is our first black president? Wouldn't it be the actual fulfillment of King's dream to, in fact, ignore his skin color and instead judge solely on the "content of his character"? If McCain had won, we would be condemning anyone who was going around saying "Oh, thank God we elected a white man" and yet millions are saying the exact same, with only the race changed.

7. Finally, if you are a McCain supporting Evangelical in despair, allow me to encourage you. While we are here on Earth, being stewards and ambassadors, elections are important. But - I'm reminded of Michele McGinty's words to Thompson and Huckabee supporters at the end of their primary runs. Our hope comes not from an election, a president, or anything having to do with politics. Our hope is in Christ. Our God is much bigger than any of this, and He remains on the throne! In 1,000 years, we'll be in Heaven and probably laughing at how much we cared about the outcome of an election, if it's even worth our while to think about it at all. For those that believe, the most important "change" has already come!

Election Night Bingo

I'll be playing "election night bingo" based on phrases and topics I expect the media to harp on all night. Should you want to join in, head here to print off some Bingo cards.

Final-Moments-Prior Roundup

• Hope for McCain from Rasmussen; Also: the rose-colored view.


• Palin healthy Also: 100% cleared of all ethics charges. (As Glenn Reynolds notes, conveniently late).


• Sorry, But Obama Scares Me too.


• Obama on ... Obama ... are we really going to elect this guy? (Or, perhaps better asked - which version of Obama are the American people going to elect?)
  


• Voting fraud continues.


• Obama's grandmother passes. He has my condolences for this tragedy in his personal life. I appricate Ed Morrissey's admonition to his commenters that they "get classy and stay that way."

Closing Thoughts on the Presidential Election

Tomorrow, Americans will head to the polls and cast their votes for one of two viable candidates: John McCain or Barack Obama.

John McCain is not my ideal candidate, but represents an agenda I think all moderate and conservative voters should be much more interested in.

Barack Obama - by measure of his associations, his voting record, or his proposed policies - would be the most liberal president we've ever had. Some of you may read that and think I'm exaggerating or using hyperbole. I am not. Barack Obama is an excellent politician who has done a tremendous job during the campaign convincing Americans he is moderate and reasonable. But he is not.


On social policy, the issue most important to me is abortion, because literally at stake is life and death. I believe any rational person should be able to discern the scientific case that life begins at conception.

Even if you aren't pro-life, most moderate voters want abortion to at least have some restrictions, like parental notification. But Obama has pledged that "the first thing I would do as President is sign the Freedom of Choice Act." The FOCA would remove all restrictions on abortion, from parental notification to re-legalizing so called "partial birth abortion" which is much more accurately described as infanticide.

Obama's ultra-liberal dedication to abortion even includes his vote against a bill in the Illinois Senate that would have required doctors to provide medical care for babies that survived botched abortions.


On foreign policy, we are now winning in Iraq thanks to the The Surge, a strategy McCain advocated at great risk to his political career. Had we followed Obama's plan we would have begun a withdrawal of troops prior to even attempting The Surge and Iraq would be in shambles, with Al-Qaeda strengthened. Senator Obama has next to no foreign policy, military, or executive experience. Making him president while engaged in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan seems downright dangerous.


On economic policy - the area that seems to be ruling the day, we have Obama proposing a redistributionist tax policy that would literally cut checks to "working families" while ramping up hundreds of billions of dollars of new spending to be paid for exclusively by the top 5% of income earners (or, if you go with this cut off of "$250,000" - the top 1.5% of income earners.) The top 5% of income earners, today, already pay 60% of the personal income tax burden (while making only 20% of the country's income - a disparity of 3:1). Does that seem fair to you?

By contrast, John McCain wants to lower taxes across the board and reduce government spending - starting with reforming earmarks.

Analysis by economists indicates that Obama's policies will actually slow the economy, while McCain's will help it grow. This is probably best demonstrated by the following chart which I'm stealing from here:



From the study from which that chart is generated:

When fully phased in, and all economic adjustments are made, the McCain tax plan would increase the private sector portion of GDP relative to the baseline by about 2.7 percent, and the Obama tax plan would reduce private sector GDP by about 3.5 percent, a significant 6.2 percent difference in output and income between the two plans. (See Chart 1.) The difference in private sector capital accumulation would be 15.8 percent or $4.1 trillion in favor of McCain. Hourly wages before-tax would be up 2.2 percent under McCain, down 2.6 percent under Obama, a 4.8 percent difference. Hours worked would be 0.5 percent higher under McCain, and 1 percent lower under Obama.

I do not want to see this recession continue for four years, do you?

Sarah Palin is Not Stupid

The thing I've found most grating during the course of this campaign is the meme that Sarah Palin is stupid, which the likes of Saturday Night Live have been more than happy to make a mainstream notion.

The editing hactchet job and unanswerable questions of the Gibson interview didn't help, of course. And Palin's poor performance in the Couric interviews really didn't help her case.

But what's embarrassing for our country is how many voters haven't looked past two bad interviews and a handful of insulting SNL skits to reach their conclusions about if Palin has what it takes.

Palin's biggest accomplishment so far in office has been her work on the Natural Gas Pipeline. She freely admits there is much more to do to complete it, but the work she has finished so far is impressive. Alaska has been working for 30 years to implement such a pipeline, and she's finally been able to bring people together to make it happen. IBD has a great write up about the pipeline here, which actually pre-dates her being added to the ticket.

The pipeline will actually go through Canada to reach the continental United States. I don't know why the campaign doesn't raise this point to demonstrate the actual foreign policy experience she has had as a governor.

Without a doubt, her experience on the pipeline project demonstrates her clear capability to serve as a vice president.

What shows she would be a great vice president is her dedication to integrity. Between her many years a mayor her time as governor, she served on the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission. She grew tired of the corruption she saw there - much of which was within her own Republican party - and ultimately resigned from the position in protest.

As governor she continued showing integrity by running on a platform of reform (which is not uncommon) and actually carrying through with reforms (which is uncommon). Under her leadership, she took the oil companies to task and worked with the legislature to pass a sweeping ethics reform bill.

Despite this, the left continues to smear her as unintelligent and "dangerously unprepared." This reminds me of the obnoxious slams against Bush's intelligence for the past 8 years.

Christopher Hitchens probably addressed the Bush Derangement Syndrom best when he confronted Bill Maher with:

I've seen you make about five George-Bush-IQ jokes per night. There's no one I know who can't do it. You know what I think? - this is now the joke that stupid people laugh at. It's the joke that any dumb person can laugh at because they think that they ... can prove they're smarter than the president (like the people that make booing and mooing noises in your audience ... none of whom are smarter than the president).

Let's move past calling people names. Bush isn't stupid. Neither is Sarah Palin. I can respect that each hold views that the left disagree with - but let's have a substantive debate on those issues. Deriding people as "stupid" should be left to those still in 3rd grade who haven't grown up yet.

The Worst of All Tax Policies

For decades, voters have had to balance proposed increases in government spending against the necessary increases in taxes they would require. Government growth has been tempered by voters asking "yeah, that sounds nice, but how much will it cost me, the taxpayer?"

There are some who are suggesting Obama's plan to only raise taxes on the top 5% of earners is nothing but a typical empty campaign promise. But let's suppose Obama is telling the truth. That if elected he and the Congress will change the tax laws so that:

No family making less than $250,000 will see their taxes increase [and] the typical middle class family will receive well over $1,000 in tax relief under the Obama plan.

Such a change would turn the temperance of voters asking themselves "how much will government program X cost me, the taxpayer?" completely on it's head because only 1.5% percent of households (which I'll equate with Obama's use of "family") make more then $250,000.

Apparently, no longer would 98.5% of the population need to worry about increased taxes for the increased spending Obama is pushing for.

This shifting the tax burden for new spending to the top 1.5% reeks of "tyranny of the majority" and ominously brings to mind the Alexis de Tocqueville quote: "The American democratic experiment will succeed until the people realize they can vote themselves money from the public treasury. Then it will collapse."


And all this does call into question exactly how Obama will pay for the $430 billion a year of spending increases he proposes.

In 2006, 43% of the government's $2.4 trillion tax revenues came from individual income taxes. (With 15% from corporate income taxes and the remaining 42% from "other taxes").

Let's assume these percentages remain under a hypothetical Obama administration. That would mean Obama needs to raise individual income taxes by $185 billion - all of which would only be paid by the top 1.5% of income earners.

Now I'll be charitable in my analysis here. In addition to the $250,000 figure, Obama has also thrown around the figure of the "top 5%." So, let's actually be more generous and say this $185 billion will all be paid by the top 5% of income earners, not just the top 1.5%.

For 2006, the top 5% paid more than 60% of all personal income taxes - in dollars (rather than a percent), that's somewhere a bit higher than $625 billion. Adding this $185 billion would pump up the total personal income tax revenues by about 15%, from $1.04 trillion to $1.23 trillion. Adding this $185 billion strictly to the burden of the top 5% of income earners would mean that instead of paying 60% of income taxes, they would pay approximately 66%. That means the top 5% (which would include households making $150,000 and up) would be responsible for two-thirds of personal income tax revenue.

That's right:
5% paying two-thirds.

By contrast, let's look at the bottom 40% of households. Allow me to simply quote a recent Weekly Standard article:

The lowest 40 percent of income earners as a group actually receive net payments from the federal income tax system. (They get 3.8 percent of total federal income tax revenues instead of paying any income taxes.) The middle 20 percent of income earners pay 4.4 percent of federal income taxes. Thus the bottom 60 percent of income earners together, on net, pay less than 1 percent of all federal income taxes. (These workers earn 26 percent of national income.)

The data show that the top 1 percent of income earners now pay 40 percent of all federal income taxes, which is almost double their share of the national income. The top 10 percent pay 71 percent of federal income taxes, though they earn just 39 percent of the nation's pretax income.

At what point do even liberals realize this would be grossly unfair?


When you add in the fact that Obama is going to these lower income families a refundable tax credit (meaning that if the tax credit makes you have a negative tax liability, the government gives you the money for the credit, not just reduces your tax burden to zero), what we are really looking at here is, in fact, redistribution. Or, in Obama's words, sharing the wealth.

As Don Boudreaux clarifies, this isn't pure socialism, but:

This "socialism-lite," however, is as specious as is classic socialism. And its insidious nature makes it even more dangerous. Across Europe, this "mild" form of socialism acts as a parasitic ideology that has slowly drained entrepreneurial energy – and freedoms – from its free-market host.

Could it happen in America? Consider the words of longtime Socialist Party of America presidential candidate Norman Thomas: "The American people will never knowingly adopt socialism, but under the name of liberalism, they will adopt every fragment of the socialist program until one day America will be a socialist nation without ever knowing how it happened." In addition to Medicare, Social Security, and other entitlement programs, the gathering political momentum toward single-payer healthcare – which Obama has proclaimed is his ultimate goal – shows the prescience of Thomas's words.

The fact that each of us depends upon the efforts of millions of others does not mean that some "society" transcending individuals produces our prosperity. Rather, it means that the vast system of voluntary market exchange coordinates remarkably well the efforts of millions of individuals into a productive whole. For Obama to suggest that government interfere in this process more than it already does – to "spread" wealth from Joe to Bill, or vice versa – overlooks not only the voluntary and individual origins of wealth, but the dampening of the incentives for people to contribute energetically to wealth's continued production.

Closing Arguments from National Review

From The Choice:

The press has ruled that discussion of [Obama's] extensive association with radicals is outside the bounds of polite society, although his history surely demonstrates at the very least that he has followed a policy of having no enemies to the left — and indicates that he probably shared more of their views than he now lets on.

The platform on which Obama is running is troubling enough. He advocates higher tax rates than any Democratic presidential candidate of the past 20 years has called for. He favors a health-care plan that would move millions of Americans from the private plans they prefer to a government system — and, in the long run, would reduce the quality and raise the cost of health care. He is more hostile to trade liberalization than any presidential nominee of either party within the last 70 years. He supports taxpayer funding of abortion. He seeks judges who “empathize” with liberal causes rather than feel themselves bound by the text of the Constitution. And with a stronger liberal base in Congress than any Democratic president has had in at least 40 years, he would have a good chance to get much of this domestic agenda accomplished.

His chief foreign-policy commitments have been to meet with America’s enemies — one could be forgiven for wondering whether he even thinks in terms of America’s having enemies — and to abandon Iraq. If he had prevailed on Iraq over the last three years, we would have lost a war that we now appear to be winning.

...

McCain has a solid record of opposing economically damaging tax increases. He has always opposed abortion. He has advanced a creative free-market health-care policy, even if he has not done much to defend it against Obama’s dishonest attacks. He is a scourge of wasteful spending and a resolute free trader. He says that he will look for judges who have demonstrated their fidelity to the Constitution as written. We have our differences with McCain, as do most conservatives, on such issues as immigration and stem cells. On each of these issues, however, Obama is at least as mistaken.

We have no doubt that if McCain is president we will find much to criticize. But we will be confident that we have the right commander-in-chief and that liberals do not have a free hand to remake our country. In this election we support Senator McCain and urge all conservatives to do so as well.

And from Top Ten Reasons to Vote for McCain/Palin, A Last Minute Round Up:

If Barack Obama is elected president and Democrats control large majorities in the House and Senate, the Obama/Pelosi/Reid triumvirate will move the country decisively in the direction of dying Europe — low productivity, high joblessness, low birth rates, high taxes, and limp foreign policies. The triumvirate will do this at a time when a vibrant America is more necessary than ever — with Iran seeking nuclear weapons, Pakistan teetering, al-Qaeda regrouping, China and Russia telegraphing hostility, and Iraq just barely emerging into the sunshine. This election has become about far more than John McCain versus Barack Obama; it has become about whether the United States will remain the champion of freedom — economic and political — or whether we will join the queue of formerly great nations now struggling to pay for all the social welfare “benefits” their aging and lazy populations demand.

Not His Brother's "Keeper"

In the climax of his speech accepting the Democratic presidential nomination, Barack Obama proclaimed:

If there's a child on the south side of Chicago who can't read, that matters to me, even if it's not my child. If there's a senior citizen somewhere who can't pay for her prescription and has to choose between medicine and the rent, that makes my life poorer, even if it's not my grandmother. If there's an Arab American family being rounded up without benefit of an attorney or due process, that threatens my civil liberties. It's that fundamental belief — I am my brother's keeper, I am my sister's keeper — that makes this country work. It's what allows us to pursue our individual dreams, yet still come together as a single American family. "E pluribus unum." Out of many, one.

And at the Saddleback Debate, Obama opined: "we still don't abide by that basic precept of Matthew: that whatever you do for the least of my brothers, you do for me; that basic principle applies to poverty."


I reject the notion that it's the fundamentally the government's job to be my or anyone else's "keeper." But what I embrace is the idea we, acting as individuals, should have a concern for our common man - especially our families - and engage in private acts to make the world a better place.

Barack Obama seems to reject that later idea - namely, engaging in private acts to care for one's family and common man.


Item 1:

Based on the Obamas' tax returns, from 2000 to 2004, Barack Obama had an average income just shy of the $250,000 he considers "wealthy". During that time he, on average, gave under 1% of his income to tax deducible charity. In 2005 and 2006 his percentage of givings did climb, although so did his massive earnings. (And, if I'm ever pulling down a cool million a year like the Obamas, I certainly hope I'll be giving more than a paltry 4.7% of it to charity.)


Item 2:

In August, the press found Barack Obama's half-brother, George. For all his talk about us being our "brother's keeper," Barack Obama hasn't done anything to help his brother living in Africa on less than a dollar a month.


Item 3:

Originally I didn't think too much of the George Obama situation, and actually dismissed it when a friend of mine brought it up in conversation. The two brothers didn't grow up with each other. They've visited a few times, and George has a mention in one of Barack Obama's memoirs, but they are separated by an ocean and aren't particularly close.

Why I mention it now, is that Obama apparently has a pattern of ignoring the needs of his relatives.

We find out today that Obama's aunt has been living in Boston for at least four years. In state-funded public housing. And as an illegal immigrant.

Why hasn't Barack Obama been helping her? Between his wealth and legal connections, couldn't he have helped her be here legally or at least be in living conditions better than public housing?

Obama is now claiming he wasn't aware his aunt was in the United States. Which, if true, raises additional questions about Obama's family connections. If you lived in the United States - and you were close enough to your aunt to have her attend your swearing in as a Senator in 2004 - don't you think you'd be aware of if your aunt moved from Kenya to the U.S.?


But the bottom line is that Obama himself is not his brother's keeper and does not, himself, "abide by that basic precept of Matthew." Before jacking tax rates up on the wealthy to "spread the wealth around" to the less fortunate, perhaps Obama should take a moment to abide by a second precept from Matthew.

Fred Thompson on McCain

Fred Thompson does an excellent job layout out the case of McCain, which is one part fantastic, and one part utterly frustrating because the McCain campaign hasn't been able to make nearly as good of a case for itself on their own in the last however-many-months.

The full twelve minute (and high def) version of Fred's speech is available here.

Independent Voters: What I don't understand

Dear independent voters,

Please enlighten me: What I simply don't understand is why you are thinking about voting for Barack Obama.

If you were someone on the left, someone who thinks bigger government is better government, someone who thinks "spreading the wealth" is a good idea, someone who thinks Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi are the best thing since sliced bread: OK, I get it, you and Senator Obama share the same ideology. You hold common values and policy positions. Knock yourself out with an Obama vote.

But if you are independent?

OK, let's start with McCain. If you are an independent, why wouldn't McCain be your guy? This is a Senator who's keystone pieces of legislation are named in the form McCain-Democrat. McCain-Feingold, McCain-Kennedy, McCain-Lieberman, etc., etc.

As a conservative I still cringe at about 30% of the things that come out of McCain's mouth because so much of his policy positions are distinctly un-conservative. I've railed against McCain right here on this blog, and if he were to win the presidency, I'm sure I'd so again. I only support McCain because's he's the least anti-conservative candidate who has a reasonable chance of winning.

McCain originally earned the title of "Maverick" as a pejorative because he so often took the offensive against Republican people and positions. He is the very definition of a "moderate" politician.

So, maybe you don't like his choice of Palin. But you should. She, like you, has an independent streak. She took on members of her own party. She formed an administration that consisted of Independents, Republicans, and Democrats. If you want a "Washinton outsider", well, there is exactly one person out of both tickets that meets that requirement - and it's Sarah Palin.

What is more, it was you, the independents, that made McCain the frontrunner for the GOP presidential choice. McCain won the New Hampshire primary but didn't come in first among self described Republicans. He also took the South Carolina primary, but again, didn't come in first among self described Republicans. It was you, the independent voters, that picked McCain for the Republican party.

But now you're putting your support behind Obama?! This confuses me in so many ways.

For starters, don't you realize how liberal he is?

I've always imagined "independent voters" as a bunch that are sick of politicians lying to them, doing whatever shady things they can to win, promising change and reform and bipartisanship and then governing from the ideological extremes.

But Barack Obama is that kind of politician. And I think you could claim he is the very worst of that kind of politician because of the degree to which he tries to cover up the fact he is that kind of politician.

OK, so maybe that flies in the face of the conventional wisdom and the media's Obama narrative: So, please, hear me out on this.

First all, for all his talk about a "new politics", Obama has happily engaged in "old" dirty trick politics when it's been to his political advantage.

Obama has also routinely falsely make things up out of whole cloth when it's been to his political advantage. Put most starkly - he has no problem lying to you. And, given his history of breaking pledges, Senator Obama's word certainly doesn't seem very trustworthy.

As if making things up and saying false statements weren't bad enough, Obama also has no problem leveling hypocritical attacks against his opponents.

And how do you get, as an independent voter, get past Obama's thug-like attempts to silence his critics?

Finally, there are all the (overplayed) Obama connections. I don't want to get deep into these, but please take a serious moment to consider the following: Would you be comfortable sitting through Rev. Wright's sermons? Would you be comfortable attending a political event hosted by William Ayers? Would you be comfortable having Tony Rezko spending $625,000 to help you complete a deal on a house?

None of those seem to me like situations independent voters would be comfortable with.


Barack Obama can deliver an amazing speech and has run a tremendously well executed campaign to make people believe he is a "post-partisan" moderate fighting to bring hope and change. But he's not. He is simply a typical liberal politician using the worse kinds of political techniques of hypocrisy, spreading falsehoods, and intimidation to try to bring a distinctly non-moderate agenda to Presidency.

I ask again - if you are an independent voter supporting Barack Obama... why?

For the record, Obama is no stranger to "dirty politics"

In his autobiographies, Obama recounts how, in his first election (a paltry dozen years ago), he swayed people over to vote for him on his message of hope and change.

The truth is quite different.

As the New Yorker reports: "Privately, however, [Obama] unleashed his operators. With the help of the Dobrys, he was able to remove not just Palmer's [his primary political opponent] name from the ballot but the name of every other opponent as well." Hardly "hope and change" - all he did was kick everyone off the ballot so he ran unopposed.

And that example of Obama's embrace of "dirty-trick" politics is not an outlier. It was simply one of many examples that were regular occurrences over Obama's political career. As the Wall Street Journal points out:

The act of throwing an incumbent off the ballot in such a fashion does not fit neatly into the narrative of a public-spirited reformer who seeks to make people less cynical about politics.

But Mr. Obama's offenses against the idea of a "new politics" are many, and go well beyond hardball election tactics.

...

The most dramatic examples of Mr. Obama's commitment to old-style politics are his repeated endorsements of Chicago's machine politicians, which came in opposition to what people of all ideological stripes viewed as the common good.

In the 2006 election, reformers from both parties attempted to end the corruption in Chicago's Cook County government. They probably would have succeeded, too, had Mr. Obama taken their side. Liberals and conservatives came together and nearly ousted Cook County Board President John Stroger, the machine boss whom court papers credibly accuse of illegally using the county payroll to maintain his own standing army of political cronies, contributors and campaigners.

And it doesn't end there. In March 2007, Obama endorsed Dorothy Tillman, another clearly corrupt "Machine" politician running against a reform-minded independent candidate, Pat Dowell.

Despite the media narative to the contrary, Barack Obama certainly did not "rise above" the scandals of Chicago politics. He was right there, in the midst of it.

For the record, Obama has repeatily attempted to silence his critics

I know many staunch libertarian voters will conciencously decide to not cast their vote for McCain in November because of McCain-Feingold. It is one of several reasons I've waivered between voting for McCain or no one (and by "no one" I mean "probably Bob Barr").

Anyone concerned about free speech should certainly not vote for Obama though.

Throughout his campaign, Obama has resorted to heavy handed ("thug" seems like an apt description) tactics to silence the speech of those he disagrees with - often invoking government agencies to do this work for him.

To start things off, it's worth taking note that during the primary, apparently, Pro-Hillary Clinton Blogspot/Blogger-based blogs and Facebook accounts regularly were taken offline.

Now maybe that wasn't the result of official Obama-Campaign actions. But the all of the following were:

1. The Obama campaign launched an all out attack on journalist Stanley Kurtz. First they started with a smear campaign, calling Kurtz "slimy," a "smear merchant", and a "character assassin". Then, by way of an "Obama Action Wire" they tried to strong arm WGN radio in Chicago from allowing Kurtz to make an appearance on a talk radio show.

2. In Pennsylvania and Ohio, the Obama campaign threatened radio stations with legal action if they didn't stop playing an NRA ad. The rather chilling text of the legal letter Obama's legal team sent included:

For the sake of both FCC licensing requirements and the public interest, your station should refuse to continue to air this advertisement.

...

Because you need not air this advertisement, your station bears responsibility for its content when you do grant access. See Felix v. Westinghouse Radio Stations, 186 F.2d 1, 6 (3rd Cir.), cert denied, 314 U.S. 909 (1950).

Moreover, you have a duty "to protect the public from false, misleading or deceptive advertising" Licensee Responsibility With Respect to the Broadcast of False, Misleading or Deceptive Advertising, 74 F.C.C.2d 623 (1961).

Failure to prevent the airing of "false and misleading advertising" may be "probative of an underlying abdication of licensee responsibility." Cosmopolitan Broad. Corp. v. FCC, 581 F.2d 917, 927 (D.C. Cir. 1978).

Some freedom of speech that allows!


3. The Obama campaign tried to use the Department of Justice to silence the American Issues Project from running an ad about Ayers, and even went after AIP's top donor.

4. Just days ago, Obama again is trying to use the Department of Justice to silence critics. This time it's against politicians who dared to criticize ACORN.

5. In Missouri, the Obama campaign attempted to assemble "The Barack Obama Truth Squad" - a collection of sheriffs and prosecutors who would target anyone the campaign deemed to be spreading false information about Obama. These actions led Missouri goveernor Matt Blunt to release a statement with the following:

[...] and Obama, and the leader of his Missouri campaign Senator Claire McCaskill, have attached the stench of police state tactics to the Obama-Biden campaign.

What Senator Obama and his helpers are doing is scandalous beyond words, the party that claims to be the party of Thomas Jefferson is abusing the justice system and offices of public trust to silence political criticism with threats of prosecution and criminal punishment.

This abuse of the law for intimidation insults the most sacred principles and ideals of Jefferson. I can think of nothing more offensive to Jefferson's thinking than using the power of the state to deprive Americans of their civil rights. The only conceivable purpose of Messrs. McCulloch, Obama and the others is to frighten people away from expressing themselves, to chill free and open debate, to suppress support and donations to conservative organizations targeted by this anti-civil rights, to strangle criticism of Mr. Obama, to suppress ads about his support of higher taxes, and to choke out criticism on television, radio, the Internet, blogs, e-mail and daily conversation about the election.

Barack Obama needs to grow up. Leftist blogs and others in the press constantly say false things about me and my family. Usually, we ignore false and scurrilous accusations because the purveyors have no credibility. When necessary, we refute them. Enlisting Missouri law enforcement to intimidate people and kill free debate is reminiscent of the Sedition Acts - not a free society.

Anyone who cares about free speech and dissent should be seriously concerned about an Obama presidency.

Probably the biggest threat to free speech looming in front of us would be bringing back the Fairness Doctrine. In fairness, Obama has released a statement saying he does not favor "reimposing the Fairness Doctrine on broadcasters." In the same statement though, he calls for more government involvement in media ("Sen. Obama supports media-ownership caps, network neutrality, public broadcasting, as well as increasing minority ownership of broadcasting and print outlets").

It's also really hard for me to imagine a President Obama vetoing a Fairness Doctrine bill from the Congress after he's voted down the line with his Democratic Senate colleauges 97% of the time.

And what's more, how important would the Fairness Doctrine even be if Obama is using the DOJ to go after those he disagrees with as he is today?

For the record, Obama has made numerous hypocritical attacks

This campaign has shown that Obama hypocritically attacks his opponents for things that are equally true of himself.

As a few of many examples:

In the primary, he attacked Hillary Clinton for "taking money from oil companies", but by the same standard by which he leveled his attack, Obama, too, was "taking money from oil companies".

Now in the general election campaign, he has attacked McCain because's McCain's chief strategist own a lobbying firm ... but the same is true of Obama's chief strategist.

He even attacked both McCain and Clinton with this line back in February: "Unlike Senator Clinton or Senator McCain, we haven't taken a dime from Washington lobbyists or special interest PACs," which was just outright false.

One of the most recent attacks has been against McCain running negative ads, but Obama's spent more on negative ads than any other candidate in history.

The extent of Obama's hypocrisy even goes so far that he smears people while trying to "fight the smears" about himself.

For the record, Obama has no problem breaking his pledges

In 2004, Obama publicly said he "ruled out" running for President in 2008 because: "if I were seriously to consider running on a national ticket, I would essentially have to start now, before having served a day in the Senate. Now there may be some people who are comfortable doing that, but I am not one of those people."

Even up to January 2006 he continued to pledge to serve his full 6 year Senate term and not run for President on on the Meet the Press:

Obama: "I will serve out my full six-year term. You know, Tim, if you get asked enough, sooner or later you get weary and you start looking for new ways of saying things. But my thinking has not changed."

Russert: "So you will not run for president or vice president in 2008?"

Obama: "I will not."

Relating to a different pledge, this past month, Obama raised $150 million. That's almost double what McCain is legally restricted from raising for the entire general election campaign.

The reason for this disparity is that Obama broke his pledge to, with McCain, accept public financing for their campaigns. In his own words, Senator Obama put it this way: "I will aggressively pursue an agreement with the Republican nominee to preserve a publicly financed general election."

For the record, Obama regularly invents false claims

Following the Saddleback Civil Forum, the Wall Street Journal pointed out:

It is telling that, when asked at the Saddleback Forum last weekend to name an instance in which he had worked against his own party or his own political interests, he didn't have a good answer. He claimed to have worked with his current opponent, John McCain, on ethics reform. In fact, no such thing happened. The two men had agreed to work together, for all of one day, in February 2006, and then promptly had a well-documented falling-out. They even exchanged angry letters over this incident.

Obama's "imaginative" response about a time he crossed party lines is far from the only time Obama invented totally false claims to bolster his positions.

Also at Saddleback, he invented fake statistics about abortion.

In a speech about the economy he falsely claimed "American families, since George Bush has been in office, have seen average family incomes go down $2,000."

And the trend continued with him lying about political realities in Columbia so he could slam free trade in the final debate.

He's even been so brash as to put together an ad praising himself for voting for a bill that ... he never voted for.

And then there are things Obama has been less than honest about. For instance, take Obama's claim that "the statements that Rev. Wright made that are the cause of this controversy were not statements I personally heard him preach." In Obama's speech on race though, Obama seems to contradict himself though, having said "Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes."

What is more, Obama's own book - "The Audacity of Hope" - is titled after a Wright sermon that includes "statements that Rev. Wright made that are the cause of this controversy."

Regardless of if you label these invented claims just "misleading" or outright "lies," the clear fact is that Obama has no problem telling you things that are just plain false.

(And, for a even more comprehensive list of Obama falsehoods, might I suggest you check out this site.)

Capital Sell Off

I can't help put think that at least part of the volatility in the markets is due to the fact it looks increasingly likely that Obama will be president. I suspect that if he wins, there will be continued major sell offs of anything taxed under capital gains tax laws between election day and inaugural day. After all, Obama wants to nearly double the capital gains rate (for "fairness"!)

If you're in a selling mood already, and you're given the option of giving the government 15% of your profit now or 28% of your profit in a few months, well, it's not exactly rocket science.

What's wrong with fighting for a plumber?

Especially a plumber who wants to work hard towards one day owning and expanding his own plumbing business?

Geez. Poor Joe the Plumber.

And, Senator Obama: If you're going to ostensibly claim you're running to help the working class, you could at least pretend to not be such a snob.

David Crimmen for Congress!

The congressional district I live in now is pretty much a text-book case of what gerrymandering looks like:



My House rep. is Louise Slaughter, and she's won handily in the last two elections about 75% to 25%.

This cycle, David Crimmen, apparently, is challenging her. What's unfortunate is it took me about 10 minutes using Google to figure out if Slaughter actually had an opponent, and if so, who he was.

Crimmen is someone I can get behind though. He's entire campaign site seems to be a Blogger-hosted blog with a handful of entries. I wish he had a more traditional campaign site (that I could actually use to send his campaign a few bucks). But, his post on the bailout is excellent:

This $700 Billion Dollar bailout is a slap in the face to both fair markets and the taxpayer. What is this number actually based on? “It’s not based on any particular data point,” a Treasury spokeswoman told Forbes.com. “We just wanted to choose a really large number.” This might be funny if it weren't so revolting. Then when Congress couldn't get the bill passed the first time they just loaded it up with billions in so-called "sweeteners". According to Bloomberg.com: "Senators attached a provision repealing a 39-cent excise tax on wooden arrows designed for children to an historic $700 billion financial-markets rescue that passed tonight by a vote of 74-25."

...

Not surprisingly New York Congresswoman Louise Slaughter (D) whom Crimmen is challenging voted for the bill both times. Louise Slaughter may think that bigger government simply throwing money at the problem is the solution, but then again it's leadership like that that got us here. It's up to us to remember that come election day.

David: consider this post me throwing the tiny amount of pull my blog has behind your campaign. I'd love to see you take Slaughter's seat. The history of our district and your lack of much of a campaign don't leave me too optimistic though.

Ayers & Discourse

Following my previous post - something I want to point out. The Bill Ayers thing is a subject that, if done right, I think could qualify as valid political discourse.

If McCain had launched his political career at, and then repeatedly teamed up politically with, an unremorseful abortion bomber, I don't think anyone on the left would dispute it's relevance to the campaign.

Who you associate yourself with politically speaks to your values and judgment. Those are valid issues to put on the table. And the Ayers scenario and the made up McCain scenario are not cases of association fallacy (or, commonly, "guilt by association"). Assuming Obama shares the same views as Bill Ayers would be an association fallacy. Pointing out Obama repeatedly teamed up with someone way out of the mainstream is not.

But, with people yelling "Kill Him!" about Bill Ayers at campaign rallies, the McCain campaign clearly hasn't handled this the right way. You can't blame a campaign for everything someone says, but they clearly fanned the flames that led to the possibility of such out bursts.

Also, since the campaign started hitting on the Ayers connection prior the the previous debate, McCain really should have brought it up, in an intelligent and discourse-respecting way, at the debate. Something like "Senator Obama: you present yourself as someone moderate and 'post partisan.' How then do you reconcile your willingness to freely associate yourself with, for political purposes, a whole laundry list of people way out of the mainstream, like Bill Ayers, Reverend Wright, and Tony Rezko?"

Of course, I'd really encourage McCain to take a different route. He could make the same point about Obama's judgment and willing association with unsavory characters - but without invoking the topic of a domestic terrorist (which is what gets the ignorant right into such a frenzy) - by asking something like: "Senator Obama: The American people know my ticket wants to reform Washington. You claim you want to work for reform as well. But why should the American people believe you since, in 2007 you endorsed Dorothy Tillman for re-election? The people of Chicago's 3rd Ward were able to see Tillman's corruption and vote her out office. Why weren't you able to see that she was corrupt?"