First, in an impromptu encounter Obama exposed his Marxist economic worldview by telling “Joe the Plumber” that he believes the hard earned cash of small business owners should be taken from them and turned over to those who have done absolutely nothing to earn it.  Now if that won’t inspire you to put your money at risk and work long, hard hours I don’t know what will.

And now, Obama’s running mate, Joe Biden, warns us in no uncertain terms that the world’s dictators, terrorists and thugs view Obama as an untested rookie.  Said Biden, “Mark my words, it will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy.”  “Watch, we’re going to have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy.”  “And he’s going to need help . . . to stand with him. Because it’s not going to be apparent initially; it’s not going to be apparent that we’re right.”

I have often commented that Obama is completely untested and possesses no body of work from which one could infer he is ready to be President.  Yet it is amazing to observe the childlike trust of Obama supporters placed in a man who has so little to show for his career effort, despite his fancy academic degrees.

A stint as a “community organizer,” an ineffective executive position at Bill Ayers’ Chicago Annenberg Challenge, and a pedestrian record as a state senator in IL is about all there is.  Oh, and two ghost written, self-serving books.  If I was considering him as a candidate for the CEO position of one of our companies I’d look at his resume and say “you’ve got to be kidding me, this guy is forty-seven years old, and he hasn’t done anything!”

And yet, put the power of the media behind him to provide complete air cover, combined with a natural talent for smooth delivery of lofty scripted remarks – and of course endless populist promises of assorted handouts and goodies if you vote for him – and presto, he’s the one for President!!  It’s a shame Americans can be bought so easily.

Joe Biden’s remarks are interesting because they could not have been clearer.  Our enemies will take the opportunity of his election to “test him” because they don’t know who Obama is.  I wish I’d have thought of that fatal flaw in the Obama candidacy.  Oh, wait, I did, two paragraphs ago.

Isn’t this great – nobody “knows Obama” so for the next six months we all need to crawl into the cellar or worry if our kids are going to be safe at school, until that first “generated crisis” hits as the world starts to test this mystery man from the corrupt, Chicago political machine.

Somehow I don’t think our enemies would decide to “generate” a crisis, a dirty bomb in New York or the local mall, or nuke Israel to test John McCain and find out how he reacts.

And to top it all off, here’s Biden’s ominous warning about Obama’s probable response: “it’s not going to be apparent initially, that we’re right.”

How reassuring.

As a matter of pure political strategy, I can’t imagine that foreign policy – and Senator Obama’s obvious lack of experience – are what the Obama campaign wanted to see in the news two weeks before the election.  More importantly, is an international crisis that threatens American safety and security the price the country must pay to appease that portion of the electorate whose primary Presidential voting criteria is which guy will give them the most free stuff?

So today, just like the disappointed and disillusioned  young Chicagoan who chanced to encounter “Shoeless” Joe Jackson in the midst of the 1919 Black Sox scandal, we implore: “Say it ain’t so, Joe!”

But today, like then, the response is, “It’s so kid, it’s so.”

Senator McCain answered, in part:

I think [Congressman] John Lewis.  John Lewis was at the Edmund Pettus Bridge.  Had his skull fractured.  He continues to serve.  He continues to have the most optimistic outlook about America.  He can teach us all a lot about the meanings of courage and commitment to causes greater than ourselves.

The Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma Alabama was the site of a violent, 1965 incident, since named Bloody Sunday, an attack by Selma police on a peaceful, civil rights march.  John Lewis, who was then President of a civil rights group, The Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, was one of the leaders of the protest.

This weekend Congressman Lewis decided to repay John McCain’s reverential expression of respect and admiration by joining the latest Obama-Media coordinated assault, the utterly baseless claim that John McCain’s campaign has become racist and hateful.

Here are excerpts from Congressman Lewis’s remarks, posted on his website:

“As one who was a victim of violence and hate during the height of the Civil Rights Movement, I am deeply disturbed by the negative tone of the McCain-Palin campaign.  What I am seeing today reminds me too much of another destructive period in American history…During another period, in the not too distant past, there was a governor of the state of Alabama named George Wallace who also became a presidential candidate.

George Wallace never threw a bomb.  He never fired a gun, but he created the climate and the conditions that encouraged vicious attacks against innocent Americans who only desired to exercise their constitutional rights.  Because of this atmosphere of hate, four little girls were killed one Sunday morning when a church was bombed in Birmingham, Alabama.

“As public figures with the power to influence and persuade, Sen. McCain and Governor Palin are playing with fire, and if they are not careful, that fire will consume us all…

A later item on the same website, titled “clarification” says…

A careful review of my earlier statement would reveal that I did not compare Sen. John McCain or Gov. Sarah Palin to George Wallace.  It was not my intention or desire to do so.

Congressman Lewis claims he didn’t compare McCain and Palin to George Wallace, a virulent segregationist who was Governor of Alabama and a third party candidate for President in 1968.  But he sure tried to plant in the mind of the reader/listener the impression that John McCain was acting like George Wallace, going so far as to associate the McCain’s “tone” with the murder of four children in a church bombing.

Lewis’s incendiary remarks are outrageous.  We’ve certainly criticized some of John McCain’s statements and ideas.  But no honest person would characterize McCain as anything other than an honorable and decent human being.  These odious intimations, that Barack Obama has not denounced, are truly disgusting.

Apparently, we’re witnessing an effort by the political-media establishment to convince undecided voters that anyone with the temerity to vote against The One, Barack Obama, is a pernicious racist, who would even condone bombing churches and murdering children.

John Lewis deserves the respect of a grateful nation for his courageous leadership in the Sixties campaign to dismantle the legally sanctioned segregation that was a cancer on America.  But his participation in this coordinated smear of Senator McCain and Governor Palin is shameful.

A typical example comes from New York Times columnist Frank Rich who just spit out a column asserting

“a violent escalation in rhetoric, especially (though not exclusively) by Sarah Palin.”

Rich cites several examples, only one of which might border on excessive, Ms. Palin’s line about “palling around with terrorists.”

Included in Rich’s list of examples of “violent escalation in rhetoric” is this from Sarah Palin’s stump speech:

Obama “launched his political career in the living room of a domestic terrorist.”

.

Since Barack Obama does not deny that his first campaign event was in the home of William Ayers and his wife Bernardine Dohrn, why shouldn’t Gov. Palin mention it?

Ms. Dohrn was convicted and served a prison sentence for terrorist acts.  Charges against Ayers were dropped because evidence against him had been gathered illegally by the FBI.  But Ayers openly admits to his terrorist acts and has said in recent interviews that he does not regret them, and that he should have done more.

Another of Rich’s examples of “violent escalation in rhetoric” is the next line in Gov. Palin’s stump speech, when she says

Obama  “is not a man who sees America the way you and I see America.”

.

Is this really a “violent escalation” compared to the continuous stream of invective from Obama and the Democrats charging McCain and Bush are “out of touch” with working people, that they care only about Billionaire CEOs, that they are “destroying the middle class,” that they want 100 years of bloody combat in Iraq, that they are robbing you of your health care?  What about the hundreds of leftist websites and YouTube videos claiming President Bush is directly responsible for the 9-11 attacks?  Come on Frank!  Get Real!

Rich charges that “Wielding a wildly out-of-context Obama quote, Palin slurs him as an enemy of American troops.”

Well, here’s a 15 second video of Barack Obama’s remark, that Gov. Palin quoted:

Obama regrets it, but he did say that, and it may be an indicator of his real attitude toward the American Military, that because they may not have enough resources to do execute the mission the way he thinks they should, they turn into rogue thugs who “air raid villages and kill civilians” without remorse.

Let us not forget that Obama’s great advantage in this campaign has been the nearly total lack of any publicly available information, other than two books he wrote about himself, that would give voters a sense of his character or his core beliefs. In the prologue to his second book Senator Obama wrote:

…I am new enough on the national political scene that I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views.

He has used his blank screen status to maximum advantage throughout this campaign by making sure his past remains mostly a mystery.  The few publicly available character indicators voters can review are his associations with unsavory men such as convicted political fixer Tony Rezko, former terrorist William Ayers, and the Anti-American racist, Reverend Wright.

Frank Rich went on to allege “the uninhibited slinging of racial epithets,” at McCain-Palin events.  If you click on the link Rich provides to back up this allegation, you find it to be based on another opinion column by Dana Milbank, who claims that one person in the audience at one campaign event said to an African-American TV technician “sit down, boy.”  If this really happened, it’s obviously repulsive and inexcusable.  But nobody with an ounce of common sense would believe that John McCain or Sarah Palin condoned such language, or that they directly control each of the tens of thousands of people who decide to show up at a campaign event.

Are we expected to believe that nobody in any Obama audience ever said anything offensive?  Perhaps the media believes we have forgotten that Barack Obama sat in the pew for 20 years, absorbing Reverend Wright’s racist messages and wild accusations against America, including:

• The US Government introduced AIDS into the black population
• America is a terrorist nation and 9-11-01 America’s chickens came home to roost

YouTube has hundreds of videos of Reverend Wright’s incendiary sermons

…I am new enough on the national political scene that I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views.

Senator Obama went on to exploit this blank screen concept for maximum political gain. He built a cult of personality around himself, with huge audience events where he delivered soaring but largely meaningless rhetoric about “change.”

Obama presented himself as the ultimate statesman whose messianic presence would “bring America together for change,” without encountering dissent or partisan acrimony. People whose visions of change were vague, purely emotional, impossible to implement, Unconstitutional, or different from the vision of the person next to them, all stood together cheering.  Obama encouraged supporters to project their own visions of desirable change onto his blank screen by telling the cheering throngs that the campaign was about them, not him, and by talking about “change from the bottom up.”

.

William Ayers

Barack Obama’s latest rebuttal to the argument that his association with far left radical and former terrorist William Ayers is problematic was to taunt John McCain for not mentioning it during Tuesday’s debate. In an exclusive interview with ABC’s Charlie Gibson he said,

“I am surprised that, you know, we’ve been seeing some pretty over-the-top attacks coming out of the McCain campaign over the last several days, that he wasn’t willing to say it to my face. But I guess we’ve got one last debate. So presumably, if he ends up feeling that he needs to, he will raise it during the debate.”

This appears to be another, in a continuous series of diversionary responses to questions regarding William Ayers.

This photo of Mr. Ayers is from a 2001 Chicago Magazine profile of the Sixties radical and leader of the domestic terrorist group, Weather Underground. This wasn’t a candid, unplanned shot of an unintended accident. Mr. Ayers posed for this photo. He wanted readers to see him standing on the wadded up American flag.

Ayers and his convicted terrorist wife, Bernardine Dohrn, are folk heroes to the far left. Association with Ayers is an indication of Obama’s political comfort zone, contradicting his claim to be a unifier who is above radical politics.

The day this photo was taken Ayers and Obama served together on the board of the Woods Fund, of Chicago. The Woods fund claims to be trying to reduce poverty, but not by helping the poor. Here’s an excerpt from the Woods Fund website:

The Woods Fund is particularly interested in supporting those organizations and initiatives that focus on enabling work and reducing poverty within Chicago’s less advantaged communities. Grants are given exclusively to organizations with agendas to benefit metropolitan Chicago and are concentrated in three program areas: Community Organizing Public Policy, [and the] Intersection of Community Organizing and Public Policy.

In other words, The Woods fund gives money not to the poor or to charities or to churches, but to political activists who then hound government to use its power to extract more resources from taxpayers.

This approach to “helping” the poor is consistent with the Leftist view that malevolent political forces who prevent government from intervening enough into the lives of The People cause poverty.

.

Obama was only eight years old

In the past 48 hours the Obama campaign has been in a frenzy of repetition of another of it’s diversionary chants, that Obama was only eight years old when Ayers and his wife went on their bombing spree.  Since nobody has accused Obama of throwing the bombs himself, this fact is irrelevant.  What is relevant is that, as an adult, Barack Obama chose to participate with William Ayers in radical leftist political action in Chicago.

Recently, Liberty Works and a blog from the political Left, Global Labor and Politics, and Dr. Stanley Kurtz, Social Anthropoligist and investigative researcher with the prestigious Ethics and Public Policy Center have  disclosed information on one of Mr. Ayers more recent projects, The Chicago Annenberg Challenge, a privately funded foundation whose purported mission was to improve Chicago schools. Mr. Ayers appointed Barack Obama Chairman of the Board of Annenberg Challenge, a position he held from 1995 to 1999.

.

This Obama experience is relevant to the Presidential campaign because:

1. It is further evidence that Obama and his campaign attempted to deceive us with claims that Ayers is not an Obama associate and was nothing more than a guy who happened to live in the neighborhood. Records of Annenberg Challenge meetings and activities show Obama and Ayers interacting regularly for several years.
2. The Annenberg Challenge was a failure. It spent hundreds of millions of dollars and achieved no academic improvement in Chicago schoos, reflecting negatively on Barack Obama’s self proclaimed talent for making wonderful things happen, just by “bringing people together.”
3. The funding mechanism for the Annenberg Challenge was convoluted, with vague standards that permitted funds to be distributed not only to schools but to radical political groups, called “External Partners” that were favored by William Ayers.
4. Mr. Ayers’ publicly stated goal is to attempt to achieve through indoctrination of school children the same radical transformation of the culture he was trying to achieve by bombing the pentagon, the capital and several police stations.  Barack Obama must have shared those goals as he was distributing Annenberg grants to local groups engaged in radical politics.
   
5. The Annenberg Challenge experience has been omitted from fawning, national media biographies of Senator Obama.
   

Here is an excerpt from one of several reports that are available at the University of Illinois at Chicago website about the Annenberg Challenge:

Its primary strategy was to create networks of schools with common interests and needs and to link them to individuals and organizations that would serve as External Partners. This strategy followed a logic that schools would find more direction and support for improvement if they worked together and with an External Partner than if they worked alone.

The organizations that became “External Partners” served as funding agents of Annenberg grants. Each External Partner had three or more schools in its “network.” Annenberg gave cash grants to the External Partners who were then supposed to distribute funds to the schools.

Here’s another excerpt from one of the Annenberg reports:

It is difficult without detailed analysis of network budgets to determine how much money was used by External Partners to cover their own costs, to purchase goods and services for schools, or to give directly to schools. Initial budget requirements set by the Challenge limited partners to spend only 10 percent of any total grant to cover their own expenses. Later, however, the challenged recognized that some partners required more money to be effective and it altered this requirement to permit larger percentages of grants to be used by partners to cover their own expenses.

One of the external partners, a group called “South Shore African Village Collaborative” received a grant to teach students about celebrating “Juneteenth,” slang for June 19, a holiday commemorating the abolition of slavery in Texas. In the words of the grant application, “Negroes celebrate Juneteenth instead of 4th of July,” as their national independence day.

From another of the reports at the University of Illinois at Chicago is this excerpt describing the final results of this the Annenberg Challenge program, led by Barack Obama:

Achievement trends in Annenberg schools did not differ from those in demographically similiar non-Annenberg schools. there were no statistically significant differences in reading or math at any grade level in any year between 1995 and 2001. Although Annenberg schools appeared to outperform non-Annenberg schools in some years at particular grade levels, the reverse appeared to occur in other years. None of those differences were statistically significant.

Obama’s association with William Ayers is important because it sheds much needed light on the Senator’s true political philosophy and indicates what sort of policies he would pursue as President.  Obama tries his best to maintain that blank screen, but little by little, the truth begins to appear.

Thus began the opportunity of a lifetime for local reporter Tom Brokaw to appear daily on TV screens across the nation. Early media speculation about celebrities, drugs and sex turned out to be tame stuff compared to reality, the seventeen month, made-for-TV investigation and outrageously bizarre trial of Charles Manson and his freaky, female cult followers.

The Manson trial propelled Brokaw from reporter at the local NBC affiliate to national reporter at the network, and eventually to the NBC Evening News anchor desk.

Today, after four decades of reading teleprompters, Tom Brokaw is the Eastern political-media establishment’s semi-retired News Personality Emeritus, who is called forth whenever the appearnace of sage wisdom and gravitas seems appropriate.

Last night Mr. Brokaw demonstrated the power of a professional media personality to dumb down what we were promised would be a lively “town hall style” debate, with questions from “real people.”  John McCain, we were told, is most effective in the town all format, exchanging ideas directly with regular Americans.  This debate would be his moment to shine.

Eighty “Real People” who claimed they were “undecided but very interested voters” were picked by the Gallup polling organization.  Each offered a question he or she wished to ask the candidates.  Also, the Internet flood gates were thrown open to several million suggested questions.

But the catch was that News Personality Emeritus Brokaw was appointed sole decision maker, to determine which of the eighty audience questions, and millions of Internet questions would be presented to the candidates.  Not surprisingly with so many choices, he managed to cull out the very questions he, himself would have asked, had there been no input at all from the Real People.  Then, the Real People in the audience whose questions had been picked were forced to stand in front of the camera and act like mechanical replicas of themselves, stating their questions as briefly as possible, forbidden to interact with the candidates.

Finally, as if his power over the process wasn’t complete enough, Brokaw inserted several additional questions of his own, between the selected, Real People questions.

So, what was billed as John McCain’s shining moment, in spontaneous give-and-take with voters, turned out to give the advantage to Barack Obama, whose skills are best suited for the tediously predictable,  personality driven TV format.

Brokaw was helped by John McCain’s apparent lack of preparation.  Senator McCain introduced what might have been a headline-making plan to deal more effectively with the financial crisis than The Big Bailout passed last week.  He might have lured Obama into arguing against what could be a much more popular alternative.  But his presentation was so halting and sketchy nobody could be sure what, exactly, he was proposing, so Obama didn’t bother to risk a response.

Whoever McCain trusted to negotiate the rules for this sham town hall should resign in shame.  Tom Brokaw might well have succeeded last night in his transparent attempt to make sure Barack Obama wins the Presidency.

The objective definition of “won” would have to be attracting the most undecided voters and/or moving the most voters from the opponent’s column to one’s own column.  Perhaps in a few days the media polls, which, based on decades of experience, are not all that reliable, will tell us which candidate “won,” last night.

Most of the post-debate commentary dwells on the impossible to measure emotional impact on viewers and voters.  We don’t pretend to have any insight. But we did notice a pattern that may help viewers see past Obama’s facade to the ridiculously inexperienced pretender behind the curtain.   Here are some excerpts:

LEHRER:

Senator McCain, are there fundamental differences between your approach and Senator Obama’s approach to what you would do as president to lead this country out of the financial crisis?

MCCAIN:

Well, the first thing we have to do is get spending under control in Washington. It’s completely out of control…And the worst symptom on this disease is what my friend, Tom Coburn, calls earmarking as a gateway drug, because it’s a gateway. It’s a gateway to out-of-control spending and corruption…

Now, Senator Obama…a million dollars [in earmarks] for every day that he’s been in the United States Senate…That’s one of the fundamental differences that Senator Obama and I have.

OBAMA:

Well, Senator McCain is absolutely right that the earmarks process has been abused, which is why I suspended any requests for my home state, whether it was for senior centers or what have you, until we cleaned it up.

Yeah, Right. Invoke “senior centers.”  Here’s the problem: At least half the federal budget is spent on functions that are not authorized by the Constitution, which would include local senior centers.  Here is just one example of an Obama Earmark:

$1,648,850 for the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago.  This is a private business, with no connection to any Constitutionally authorized federal government function.  (Ticket prices: Adults $17.50, children $13.95.)

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

MCCAIN:

The next president of the United States is not going to have to address the issue as to whether we went into Iraq or not. The next president of the United States is going to have to decide how we leave, when we leave, and what we leave behind. That’s the decision of the next president of the United States.

Senator Obama said the surge could not work, said it would increase sectarian violence, said it was doomed to failure. Recently on a television program, he said it exceed our wildest expectations.

But yet, after conceding that, he still says that he would oppose the surge if he had to decide that again today.

OBAMA:

Senator McCain is absolutely right that the violence has been reduced as a consequence of the extraordinary sacrifice of our troops and our military families. They have done a brilliant job, and General Petraeus has done a brilliant job.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

MCCAIN:

My reading of the threat from Iran is that if Iran acquires nuclear weapons, it is an existential threat to the State of Israel and to other countries in the region because the other countries in the region will feel compelling requirement to acquire nuclear weapons as well…

OBAMA:

...Senator McCain is absolutely right, we cannot tolerate a nuclear Iran. It would be a game changer. Not only would it threaten Israel, a country that is our stalwart ally, but it would also create an environment in which you could set off an arms race in this Middle East.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

MCCAIN: …

…Now, on this issue of aiding Pakistan, if you’re going to aim a gun at somebody…you’d better be prepared to pull the trigger.

I’m not prepared at this time to cut off aid to Pakistan. So I’m not prepared to threaten [Pakistan], as Senator Obama apparently wants to do, as he has said that he would announce military strikes into Pakistan.

We’ve got to get the support of the people of Pakistan. He said that he would launch military strikes into Pakistan.

Now, you don’t do that. You don’t say that out loud. If you have to do things, you have to do things, and you work with the Pakistani government.

OBAMA:

“…And, John, I — you’re absolutely right that presidents have to be prudent in what they say. But, you know, coming from you, who, you know, in the past has threatened extinction for North Korea and, you know, sung songs about bombing Iran, I don’t know, you know, how credible that is. I think this is the right strategy.

Now, Senator McCain is also right that it’s difficult. This is not an easy situation. You’ve got cross-border attacks against U.S. troops.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

McCain:

“… I had a town hall meeting in Wolfeboro, New Hampshire, and a woman stood up and she said, “Senator McCain, I want you to do me the honor of wearing a bracelet with my son’s name on it.”

He was 22 years old and he was killed in combat outside of Baghdad, Matthew Stanley, before Christmas last year. This was last August, a year ago. And I said, “I will — I will wear his bracelet with honor.”

And this was August, a year ago. And then she said, “But, Senator McCain, I want you to do everything — promise me one thing, that you’ll do everything in your power to make sure that my son’s death was not in vain.”  That means the mission succeeds…

OBAMA:

...I’ve got a bracelet, too, from Sergeant – uh – from the mother of Sergeant Ryan David Jopeck, and she asked me, can you please make sure another mother is not going through what I’m going through.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

MCCAIN:

…There’s a pipeline that runs from the Caspian through Georgia through Turkey. And, of course, we know that the Russians control other sources of energy into Europe, which they have used from time to time.

It’s not accidental that the presidents of Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Poland, and Ukraine flew to Georgia, flew to Tbilisi, where I have spent significant amount of time with a great young president, Misha Saakashvili.

…I think the Russians ought to understand that we will support — we, the United States — will support the inclusion of Georgia and Ukraine in the natural process, inclusion into NATO.

We also ought to make it very clear that the Russians are in violation of their cease-fire agreement. They have stationed additional troops in Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

By the way, I went there once, and we went inside and drove in, and there was a huge poster. And this is — this is Georgian territory. And there was a huge poster of Vladimir Putin, and it said, “Vladimir Putin, our president.”

It was very clear, the Russian intentions towards Georgia. They were just waiting to seize the opportunity…

And watch Ukraine. This whole thing has got a lot to do with Ukraine, Crimea, the base of the Russian fleet in Sevastopol. And the breakdown of the political process in Ukraine between Tymoshenko and Yushchenko is a very serious problem.

LEHRER:

Senator Obama, Do you see any — do you have a major difference with what he just said?

OBAMA:

No, actually, I think Senator McCain and I agree for the most part on these issues.

Behind the facade Senator Obama has little understanding of the geo-political issues involved in the Russian invasion of Georgia, and no knowledge of Ukraine, Crimea, Saakashvili, Sevastopol, Tymoshenko or Yushchenko.  He didn’t dare respond, because to say anything would have revealed his ignorance and naievte

.

Politicians Behaving Badly and Voters Who Love Them

.

Perhaps it’s just an increasingly jaded view that accompanies advancing age.  Maybe it’s wisdom and maturity.

In either event, with the conventions over, and a long campaign season to reflect upon, I find myself annoyed and intellectually offended by the torrent of fabulist promises from the Presidential candidates.“Change,” they promise.  Ah, yes, glorious change.

But have you heard any candidate offer something that sounds like real change, something really different, especially when it comes to the “big issue,” the economy?  I haven’t.  Back during the primaries I watched with amusement a debate between Senators Clinton and Obama as each shamelessly attempted to trump the other with increasingly implausible promises of government largesse:  “Oh, yeah!?  I’ll see your promise of a giant chocolate bar, and raise you two toffee bars and a cup of tapioca pudding.  Take that!!”

It made you want to avert your eyes.  Campaigning in Pennsylvania, Senator Clinton promised to “get America back to work.”  Not to be outdone, Barack Obama routinely denounced the “middle class squeeze” and promised “change” from the “failed Bush policies.”

Today?  They will all “fix” Wall Street.  If only you will vote for me, they say, a shining and wonderful future will surely follow.  Sigh.

If distilled to its essence, the central message of almost all the candidates in debates, speeches and campaign website policy manifestos comes down to: “you poor, grievously wronged little dears, times are tough, and if only you will vote for me I will create a government program or payout scheme to fix each and every one of your ills and concerns.  And be assured, if I have to, I’ll fleece that no good rich neighbor of yours to do it.”

This is tired, old standard issue populism.  We’ve heard it all before, yet actually fulfilling those promises seems to have eluded all the politicians who made them in the past.  Sen. Obama has at times attempted to finesse this crass “vote your own interest” appeal by wrapping his message in the positive veneer of “hope.”  But I see no reason or evidence that standard issue Robin Hood politics cloaked as “hope” have any better prospect of working now than they ever have.

It occurs to me, however, that the focus of my annoyance is misplaced.  After all, a politician’s endless promises to hand out goodies in exchange for votes is nothing more than the employment of proven and focus group tested campaigning techniques for the purpose of achieving the politician’s explicitly stated goal – winning an election.  The politicians haven’t really done anything wrong.  Mind you, they have shown no propensity to lead rather than simply pander.  But they have done nothing wrong.  Let’s be honest.  Politicians don’t control the voters’ minds or pull the voting lever.  Voters do.  And wouldn’t political science professionals tell us that this class warfare, populist approach has a rich heritage that dates back to at least Williams Jennings Brian?

So the real question is to understand what voters are thinking, and why a significant, and perhaps increasing, portion of the electorate is susceptible to this populist message election after election?  Are a large number of American voters in an almost perpetual state of anxiety, anger, self pity or simple sense of entitlement, and in search of a politician to be the “savior” to deliver them the goodies they believe they deserve?  As you might surmise, implicit in this question is the observation that the track record on politician’s promises of government based solutions is (shall we be charitable) at best “mixed.”  In the next installment we will take a brief look at the results of government’s handiwork, and compare it to private enterprise.

Former Senator  Phil Gramm, a genuine expert with a doctorate in Economics was an economics adviser to the McCain Campaign until July when he stepped down after causing too much media blow-back when he observed, quite reasonably…

“We have sort of become a nation of whiners. You just hear this constant whining, complaining about a loss of competitiveness, America in decline…You’ve heard of mental depression; this is a mental recession.”

Obama Campaign’s spent several days hammering the allegation that McCain proved himself “out of touch” by taking advice from the insensitive Phil Gramm.

What does this have to do with the angst on Wall Street?  Well, it seems that in 1999 the hated Phil Gramm co-sponsored legislation that repealed a previous law forbidding mergers of commercial banks and investment banks.

Senate Majority Leader, Democrat Harry Reid took to the Senate Floor this morning and bellowed:

“The same Phil Gramm who, as a senator, was responsible for deregulation in the financial services industries that paved the way for much of this crisis to occur…It was Phil Gramm who pushed legislation through a Republican Senate that allowed firms like Enron to avoid regulation and destroy the life savings of its employees, and it was Phil Gramm’s legislation that now allows Wall Street traders to bid up the price of oil, leaving us to pay the bill.”

Of course Reid and the rest of the Obamiacs are utterly unable to connect the dots to show how this 1999 law might have caused mortgage lenders to mis-evaluate millions of Borrowers’ ability to repay, resulting in the current Wall Street turmoil.  Their simplistic, childish message is:  It’s McCain’s fault because Phil Gramm, his adviser, sponsored the legislation.

Well, it turns out that they’ve made fools of themselves and Obama once again.  Here are the facts:

• The Legislation in question was sponsored in the House of Representatives by former Representative Jim Leach who now works for the Obama campaign as head of “Republicans for Obama.”  Leach even gave a speech at the Democratic National Convention!
• The Legislation passed the Senate in 1999 by a bi-partisan vote of 90 – 8, with a majority of Democrats voting yes.
• The same Harry Reid who was so full of sanctimonious indignation this morning voted yes in 1999.
• John McCain was absent from the Senate that day and thus didn’t vote.
• The legislation was signed into law by President Bill Clinton.

Earlier today Barack Obama said “Bush Policies” were the cause of  losses on Wall Street.  Now, his supporters are selling a claim that McCain is to blame for what has to be called a Clinton Policy!

She didn’t know what he meant and asked for clarification, which he refused to give.  So she ventured a general answer.

Finally, he sneered at her over his half-glasses, and ponderously explained what he meant, playing the long-suffering professor, contemptuously instructing the naive Freshman.

Here are the facts:

• There is no Administration policy or government publication or law or executive order with the official name “Bush Doctrine.”
• In his column in the Washington Post Charles Krauthammer, who was first to use the label and is as authoritative as anyone, lists four Bush Administration policies or initiatives that have been called “The Bush Doctrine” by major media outlets.
• The Bush-haters in Congress and the media have carelessly applied the label in scores of ways.  Law enforcement policies they disliked, tax cuts they disliked, poverty, illness, high priced gasoline, and crowded airports, have all been called “The Bush Doctrine.”

Only by being a mind reader could Sarah Palin have known what Charlie Gibson meant by “The Bush Doctrine.”

In our previous post we discussed The Left’s irrational fear of religious expression, and Charles Gibson’s outrageous attempts to deceive ABC’s TV audience by misquoting remarks made by Sarah Palin to a gathering at her church.

Someone should remind The Left of their roots.

On the evening of June 6, 1944, as American troops began the D-Day landing on the coast of France, The Left’s most revered President, Franklin D. Roosevelt, led America in prayer over nation- wide radio  Here are some excerpts:

My Fellow Americans:

…in this poignant hour, I ask you to join with me in prayer:

Almighty God: Our sons, pride of our nation, this day have set upon a mighty endeavor, a struggle to preserve our Republic, our religion, and our civilization, and to set free a suffering humanity.  Lead them straight and true; give strength to their arms, stoutness to their hearts, steadfastness in their faith.

They will need Thy blessings. Their road will be long and hard. For the enemy is strong. He may hurl back our forces. Success may not come with rushing speed, but we shall return again and again; and we know that by Thy grace, and by the righteousness of our cause, our sons will triumph.

And for us at home — fathers, mothers, children, wives, sisters, and brothers of brave men overseas, whose thoughts and prayers are ever with them — help us, Almighty God, to rededicate ourselves in renewed faith in Thee in this hour of great sacrifice…As we rise to each new day, and again when each day is spent, let words of prayer be on our lips, invoking Thy help to our efforts.

With Thy blessing, we shall prevail over the unholy forces of our enemy. Help us to conquer the apostles of greed and racial arrogances. Lead us to the saving of our country, and with our sister nations into a world unity that will spell a sure peace — a peace invulnerable to the schemings of unworthy men. And a peace that will let all of men live in freedom, reaping the just rewards of their honest toil.

Thy will be done, Almighty God.

Amen

This Presidential prayer was considered entirely appropriate by almost every American, including the Democrats in Congress!

How far we have come since then.  Imagine the outrage from The Left if, on the eve of the military operation against Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, President Bush had appeared on TV to lead the nation in the same prayer, and hoped to do God’s will!

One wonders what FDR would say to those who now lead the movement he started, and who are so hysterically intolerant of any expression of this nation’s Judeo-Christian foundation and traditions.

Below is a video the media herd and the Leftist blogs have used as a source of quotes they hope you will find as objectionable as they do.
.

.
.

In this video Ms. Palin  speaks to people in the church she attended for most of her life, from early childhood.   Her tone is informal and familiar as she skips from thought to unrelated thought, enjoying an emotional reunion with beloved old friends.  Quite obviously she is not giving a serious political or theological address.

In Last night’s combative interview Gibson sneered:

You said recently, in your old church, ‘Our national leaders are sending U.S. soldiers on a task that is from God.’  Are we fighting a holy war?

Ms. Palin responded by noting that this was not an exact quote, but Gibson snorted, emphatically, “exact quote.”

Well, it was not an exact quote.  Gibson lifted 14 words out of the middle of a rambling, 58 word sentence.  With the portions Gibson deleted in strikeout print, Here is what Ms. Palin actually said in her “old church”, beginning at 3:35 in the video:

Pray for our military men and women who are striving to do what is right, also for this country, that our leaders, our national leaders are sending them out on a task that is from God, that’s what we have to make sure that we’re praying for, that there is a plan and that it is God’s plan.

After Gibson blatantly lied that he had quoted her exactly, she apparently decided it was futile to keep insisting that he had not.  Instead she cited the theological basis for the thought she had expressed in the video:

…the reference there is a repeat of Abraham Lincoln’s words when he said — first, he suggested never presume to know what God’s will is, and I would never presume to know God’s will or to speak God’s words.  But what Abraham Lincoln had said, and that’s a repeat in my comments, was let us not pray that God is on our side in a war or any other time, but let us pray that we are on God’s side.

Then Gibson lied a second time by again lifting a few words out of context from a longer thought:

I take your point about Lincoln’s words, but you went on and said, “There is a plan and it is God’s plan.”

This is from the same excerpt quoted above.  Here is the complete thought, with the portion Gibson left out in strikeout print:

…that’s what we have to make sure that we’re praying for, that there is a plan and that it is God’s plan.

Obviously, Gibson believed he could trip her up and deceive his audience by deliberately, deleting major portions of her thoughts, in order to change the apparent meaning.  And he probably did succeed in deceiving a lot of viewers.  By sourcing Ms. Palin’s casual and intimate stream of consciousness,  as if it were a serious statement of political or theological beliefs, Gibson proved he lacked any record of genuinely objectionable comments by Governor Palin.

Ms. Palin expressed the perfectly reasonable, non-controversial hope and prayer that national leaders might want to act in accordance with God’s will.  But Today’s hyper-secular Left, including the national media reacted as if they thought she had a supernatural power to inflict a black-magic curse on the nation.

Sarah Palin can take comfort in the words of Jesus found in Matthew 5: 11 – 12:

God blesses you when people mock you and persecute you and lie about you^[c] and say all sorts of evil things against you because you are my followers. Be happy about it! Be very glad! For a great reward awaits you in heaven. And remember, the ancient prophets were persecuted in the same way.

The media have been working overtime to publish specious allegations and personal attacks against Governor Palin, her daughter, her husband, her Pastor and her local church.

The Chair of the South Carolina Democratic Party Carolyn Fowler, wife of Representative Don Fowler, said today that Governor Palin’s…

…primary qualification seems to be that she hasn’t had an abortion.

Barack Obama appeared on the Letterman show to explain, yet again, what he meant by the lipstick on a pig remark.  He said criticism of his remark was just a sign of a “silly season in politics.”  But he can’t seem to shrug off the silliness and focus on the serious.  He told Letterman:

“Keep in mind, technically, had I meant it this way, [Palin] would be the lipstick. The failed policies of John McCain would be the pig, just following the logic of this illogical situation.”

About the time Senator Obama was taping his appearance on the Letterman show Rep. Steve Cohen (Democrat, Tennessee) was holding forth on the floor of the House of Representatives, claiming that Jesus was a community organizer like Obama, while Pontius Pilate the appointed Roman Satrap who believed Jesus was innocent of any crime but sentenced him to death anyway was, like Sarah Palin, “a governor.”  (Video below.)

Earlier, at a rally in New Hampshire, Vice Presidential Nominee Joe Biden, whose media coverage has completely dried up since Sarah Palin emerged opined that he might not have been the best VP candidate for the party.

Hillary Clinton is as qualified or more qualified than I am to be Vice President of the United States of America…she’s easily qualified to be vice president and quite frankly, may have been a better pick than me.

Perhaps Biden, who’s been in politics longer than almost anyone, has determined the Obama campaign is sinking.  Perhaps he’d rather not spend the next 55 days campaigning for a lost cause.  Perhaps he’d rather go back to the Senate and his daily pilgrimage on the taxpayer subsidized Amtrak.   Let Hillary go down with the Obama ship.

1. The “Bush tax cuts” passed in 2001 and 2003 lowered all the tax bracket rates.  But in order to win enough votes in the Senate Bush had to agree to a catch.

2. The catch, Under the law enacted in 2003, is that those Bush tax bracket rates are temporary.   If Congress does not act to change the law, the temporary rates will expir, and beginning in 2011 all the brackets will go back up to the the previous rates.

This chart shows the current tax rate brackets, and what they go up to in 2011 if Congress does not act to change the law.

John McCain’s tax proposals start with changing the law to make the current “temporary” rate brackets permanent – all of them.

Barack Obama’s proposal is to change the law to make only the lowest four brackets permanent, and allow the top two brackets to increase.

For several years, Democrats who opposed the lower rates have deceptively called Congressional action that would keep them the same in 2011 as they are now “a new round of tax cuts.”  Democrats have claimed that inaction that allowed the rates to go up  would not be a tax increase since there would be no change in the law.

Republicans have said that Congressional action to keep the rates the same in 2011 as they are now simply maintains the status quo, while inaction that allowed the rates to go up would be a tax increase.

Desperate to find fault with McCain’s proposal to make all the current rates permanent, Barack Obama now says keeping the rates the same for all the brackets constitutes a new tax cut, but only for the top two brackets!

This is how Obama justifies his claim that McCain would give new tax cuts to the rich but not to anyone else.

O’REILLY: I think you were desperately wrong on the surge, and I think you should admit it to the nation that now we have defeated the terrorists in Iraq, and the Al Qaeda came there after we invaded, as you know. We defeated them…We’ve also inhibited Iran from controlling the southern part of Iraq by the surge, which you did not support. So why won’t you say, “I was right in the beginning. I was wrong about [the surge]“?

OBAMA: If you listen to what I’ve said, and I’ll repeat it right here on this show, I think that there’s no doubt that the violence is down. I believe that that is a testimony to the troops that were sent and General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker. I think that the surge has succeeded in ways that nobody anticipated, by the way, including President Bush and the other supporters. It has gone very well, partly because of the Anbar situation and the Sunni awakening, partly because of the Shiia military. Look…

O’REILLY: But if it were up to you, there wouldn’t have been a surge.

OBAMA: No, no, no.

O’REILLY: You and Joe Biden, no surge.

OBAMA: Hold on a second, Bill. If you look at the debate that was taking place, we had gone through five years of mismanagement of this war that I thought was disastrous. And the president wanted to double down and continue on an open-ended policy that did not create the kinds of pressure on the Iraqis to take responsibility and reconcile.

O’REILLY: But it worked. It worked. Come on.

OBAMA: Bill, what I’ve said is — I’ve already said it succeed beyond our wildest dreams.

O’REILLY: Why can’t you say, “I was right in the beginning, and I was wrong about the surge”?

OBAMA: Because there’s an underlying problem where what have we done. We have reduced the violence.  But the Iraqis still haven’t taken responsibility, and we still don’t have the kind of political reconciliation. We are still spending, Bill, $10 to $12 billion a month.

From there, O’Reilly moved on to other topics.

Actually, there has been substantial political reconciliation. The process of turning the responsibility for security over to the Iraqis started a year ago and continues.  Last week The Administration reported “satisfactory progress” in 15 of 18 political benchmarks established by Congress at the beginning of the Surge, January, 2001, as a way  to measure progress.  The Anti-Bush, Anti-Iraq Democrats, predictably,  claim progress is too slow.  But the same could certainly be said for the US Congress which will adjourn for the year in about a month without passing a budget or addressing a host of urgent issues.

Democracy is a messy, imprecise business.  To support his untenable position Obama sets a higher standard of efficiency and non-partisan action for a brand new democracy emerging from decades of oppressive dictatorship than could ever be met by the US Congress, or any of the European democracies.  This is a transparent political dodge to avoid acknowledging success in Iraq.

A year ago Al Anbar Province was a violent, lawless no man’s land with Al Qaeda  in control of every significant population center.   Last week, the media sneered and looked away as responsibility for security and protection of the population in Al Anbar was turned over to the Iraqis.  Here’s video from The Department of Defense…
.

Anbar Handover

.

As we reported March the Iraqi government launched a major military operation against Shiite Militias, with Prime Minister al-Maliki, himself a Shiite, personally in command. Defeating these militias was a major Sunni demand because Militiamen had kidnapped and/or killed hundreds of Sunnis. After only 24 hours, Obama, the Anti-Iraq Democrats and the media dismissed the campaign against the militias as a disaster and failure. But they were, of course wrong.  Eventually the operation succeeded and now, the militias have been pacified.

Now, Barack Obama says the surge “succeeded beyond our wildest dreams.”  Well, it was certainly beyond HIS dreams. At the beginning of the surge  Obama flatly stated there was no possibility of military success, that the new strategies would only make Iraq worse. A month later he introduced legislation that woud have made the surge illegal.

Twice since the beginning of the surge he has voted to cut off funding for the Iraq operation, even as the troops continued their work.  In the interview above he seems to be crediting “the Anbar situation” for the success of the surge strategies rather than acknowledging that the surge strategies brought success to Anbar.

The US military has triumphed in Iraq.  Iraq will become a permanent American ally in the Middle East.  A young generation of Iraqis will grow up with positive memories of American soldiers and a positive attitude toward the United States.

Along the way Barack Obama did everything he could to stop the troops from accomplishing their mission and still cannot bring himself to acknowledge obvious success.  Why?  Two reasons:

1. He would lose the support and votes of the virulent anti-Bush left, and
2. He is too arrogant to admit a mistake, as the interview above demonstrates.

.

I fell in love with my country when I was a prisoner in someone else’s. I loved it not just for the many comforts of life here. I loved it for its decency, for its faith in the wisdom, justice, and goodness of its people.

I loved it because it was not just a place, but an idea, a cause worth fighting for. I was never the same again; I wasn’t my own man anymore; I was my country’s.

I’m not running for president because I think I’m blessed with such personal greatness that history has anointed me to save our country in its hour of need.

Fight with me! Fight with me!

My country saved me. My country saved me, and I cannot forget it. And I will fight for her for as long as I draw breath, so help me God.

My friends, if you find faults with our country, make it a better one. If you’re disappointed with the mistakes of government, join its ranks and work to correct them. Enlist!

Enlist in our Armed Forces. Become a teacher. Enter the ministry. Run for public office. Feed a hungry child. Teach an — an illiterate adult to read. Comfort the afflicted. Defend the rights of the oppressed.

“Our country will be the better, and you will be the happier, because nothing brings greater happiness in life than to serve a cause greater than yourself.

I’m going to fight for my cause every day as your president. I’m going to fight to make sure every American has every reason to thank God, as I thank him, that I’m an American, a proud citizen of the greatest country on Earth.

And with hard work — with hard work, strong faith, and a little courage, great things are always within our reach.

Stand up!

.

Stand up!

.

Stand up and fight!

.

We’re Americans, and we never give up!

.

We never quit!