Laura Hollis
Monday, November 03, 2008
It’s down to the wire. Is there anything left to be said? Any argument that will persuade those still waffling, or change the minds of those still inclined to vote for Obama? I think so. So I’ll offer one last observation of my own. And here it is: Obama supporters point with dewy-eyed admiration to his years as a “community organizer” as proof of his readiness to lead. What they overlook is the fact that a commitment to ideological stealth (read “deception”), a philosophy of class and race envy, a deeply-held resentment of those who have been successful, a disdain for the foundational documents of the nation, a messianic sense of personal superiority, and a willingness to attack those who disagree with you through use of the political machine -- may seem like valiance when done by a struggling underdog. But those same attitudes, inclinations and tactics take on a very different aspect when the person with them is the most powerful human being on the planet.
Now I’m going to let Obama speak for himself in this rest of this article. Despite the monolithic efforts of our Pravda press to bury, suppress, deny and cover up for Barack Obama and his anti-business, anti-life, anti-white, and anti-American sentiments, laudable efforts of the few principled journalists we have left in this country have unearthed speeches and interviews with the Anointed One that make the case against the possibility of his presidency far better than any pundit or columnist could.
So why take our word for it, when you can listen to what Barack Obama himself has said? In these last few hours before you vote, as you contemplate what you are looking for in the leader of the free world, here are just a few of Obama’s Greatest Hits for you to ponder:
The President takes an oath to “preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution."
But Obama says: “The Constitution is a flawed document.”
The President appoints U.S. Supreme Court justices, who serve for life once confirmed by the U.S. Senate.
But Obama’s view of the Supreme Court: “[It] never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth … It didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the founding fathers in the Constitution.”
The reason Justice is represented in American with scales and a blindfold is because judges are supposed to dispense justice without regard to who is before them.
But here’s Obama’s view of “blind” justice: “We need somebody who's got the heart, the empathy, to recognize what it's like to be a young teenage mom, the empathy to understand what it's like to be poor or African-American or gay or disabled or old--and that's the criterion by which I'll be selecting my judges.”
The President’s energy policy should benefit users and providers of energy.
So let’s listen to Obama’s views of energy policy: “[U]nder my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket.” And “If somebody wants to build a coal power plant they can, it's just that it will bankrupt them because they are going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that's being emitted.”
The President should extol the American promises of protection of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Here’s Obama’s view of the value of human life: “That’s above my pay grade.”
The American economic system rewarding individual initiative has created more prosperity for more people than any other system in human history. We now know that higher taxes crush new business and business growth, and reduce jobs.
Obama’s (now infamous) view of taxation? “Spread the wealth.”
And perhaps less well-known, in an interview with ABC News, anchor Charlie Gibson asked, “[I]n each instance, when the rate dropped, revenues from the tax increased; the government took in more money. And in the 1980s, when the tax was increased to 28 percent, the revenues went down. So why raise it at all, especially given the fact that 100 million people in this country own stock and would be affected? “
Here’s what Obama says: “Well, Charlie, what I've said is that I would look at raising the capital gains tax for purposes of fairness.”
And what about Obama’s view of the First Amendment? Threats of criminal libel prosecutions, Justice Department intimidation, and no promise to veto the “Fairness Doctrine” if his compatriots in Congress pass it.
The President’s most significant responsibility is the safety of the American people.
So what is Obama’s view of Iran, a country currently building nuclear reactors? “Iran … [is] tiny … [it doesn’t] pose a serious threat to us. Iran, they spend 1/100th of what we spend on the military. If Iran ever tried to pose a serious threat to us, they wouldn't stand a chance.”
Last, but not least, my personal favorite. A quote not from Barack Obama, but his wife, Michelle, when asked about her husband running for President.
Michelle Obama’s views about her husband running for President? “It’s way too soon. He hasn’t done anything yet.”
I couldn’t have said it better myself. Now if we could just keep it that way.
Monday, November 3, 2008
Democracies Die When Liberty Gives Way to Dependence
Terry Paulson
Sunday, November 02, 2008
McCain has Joe the Plummer. Obama has Peggy Joseph. Interviewed after an Obama campaign event in Sarasota, Florida, Peggy emotionally summarized what it means to her for Barack Obama to be president: "It was the most memorable time of my life. It was a touching moment, because I never thought this day would happen. I won't have to worry about putting gas in my car. I won't have to worry about paying my mortgage. You know, if I, if I help him [Barack], he’s gonna help me!"
If that doesn’t send fears down your spine, ponder the words of the Scottish jurist and historian, Sir Alexander Fraser Tytler. Over 200 years ago, he provided a chilling observation on the fall of the Athenian Republic. America has been a beacon of liberty and hope for our citizens and the world for over 230 years. But Tytler warned of the natural rise and fall of every democracy:
"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy always collapses over a loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been two hundred years. These nations have progressed through this sequence; from bondage to spiritual faith; from spiritual faith to great courage; from courage to liberty; from liberty to abundance; from abundance to selfishness; from selfishness to complacency; from complacency to apathy; from apathy to dependence; from dependency back again into bondage."
Our next president will set America's course for the next decade. We’re running deficits in Washington and most of our major states. The growing costs for Medicare, employee pensions, and social security are out of control, and there's no political consensus or will to deal with these runaway entitlements. We vote to approve bonds that don’t raise taxes now but pass more debt on to future generations.
In America today, it's hard to win elections by talking about cutting government spending—saying "no" to anything or anyone at election time is a sure way of losing votes. As a result, too many Americans are becoming addicted to government saving them from their own failure to live within their means. Democrats play the enabler! Capitalizing on that addiction, Democrats promise more if Americans just give them full control in Washington.
Starting during President Johnson's term, our country tried spending our way to becoming a very compassionate country. Over three decades, our government invested 5.4 trillion dollars in welfare payments in our "War on Poverty." The investment would have been worth it, if it had worked, but it didn't eliminate poverty.
In fact, the results of this type of government-run compassion have been devastating, creating a debilitating dependence on the very programs that were designed to help. Ronald Reagan said it well: "Welfare's purpose should be to eliminate, as far as possible, the need for its own existence."
Compassion should be measured by how many people no longer need government programs instead of by how many are served by them. We need a safety net, not a hammock. As our first Republican President Abraham Lincoln said, "The worst thing you can do for those you love is the thing they could and should do for themselves."
We've gone from protecting the unfortunate to supporting the irresponsible. In fact, many liberal politicians seem to want to keep citizens dependent on government. They hate poverty so much that they reward it!
Unfortunately, whatever you reward you get more of! So if my response to your entry-level job is to raise your minimum wage beyond its market value, you're more likely to stay in that dead-end job. Why go to college or learn a new skill if you can get enough money settling for a job with minimum skills?
Republicans support economic tough love that challenges all citizens to better themselves. A free-market economy rewards achievement and not anything less. Is that mean-spirited? We loved our son enough to teach him early that in a competitive world you don’t get everything you want just because you want it. We showed him our love, but we also let him know that he would experience the consequences for his own choices. If he didn't save his money, he wouldn't have money to spend. If he got in trouble in school, he'd be accountable not excused.
In America, all citizens are guaranteed "the pursuit of happiness," not happiness given to them by a controlling government. Democrats would have you believe that every American is entitled to full healthcare, welfare, and high wages whether they've earned it or not. And, of course, who is supposed to pay for all these entitlements, those greedy, "wealthy" Americans who already pay most of the taxes! Will Rogers said it years ago, "I remember back when a liberal was someone who was generous with his own money."
Gerald Ford summed it up well, "A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take from you everything you have." Socialism is not new. It's failed wherever it has been tried. It won’t help you achieve your dreams; it will only punish and stifle your success! Obama believes you can't live the American Dream without taking your neighbor's money to give you another entitlement. That's not the American Dream; that's a nightmare.
Sunday, November 02, 2008
McCain has Joe the Plummer. Obama has Peggy Joseph. Interviewed after an Obama campaign event in Sarasota, Florida, Peggy emotionally summarized what it means to her for Barack Obama to be president: "It was the most memorable time of my life. It was a touching moment, because I never thought this day would happen. I won't have to worry about putting gas in my car. I won't have to worry about paying my mortgage. You know, if I, if I help him [Barack], he’s gonna help me!"
If that doesn’t send fears down your spine, ponder the words of the Scottish jurist and historian, Sir Alexander Fraser Tytler. Over 200 years ago, he provided a chilling observation on the fall of the Athenian Republic. America has been a beacon of liberty and hope for our citizens and the world for over 230 years. But Tytler warned of the natural rise and fall of every democracy:
"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy always collapses over a loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been two hundred years. These nations have progressed through this sequence; from bondage to spiritual faith; from spiritual faith to great courage; from courage to liberty; from liberty to abundance; from abundance to selfishness; from selfishness to complacency; from complacency to apathy; from apathy to dependence; from dependency back again into bondage."
Our next president will set America's course for the next decade. We’re running deficits in Washington and most of our major states. The growing costs for Medicare, employee pensions, and social security are out of control, and there's no political consensus or will to deal with these runaway entitlements. We vote to approve bonds that don’t raise taxes now but pass more debt on to future generations.
In America today, it's hard to win elections by talking about cutting government spending—saying "no" to anything or anyone at election time is a sure way of losing votes. As a result, too many Americans are becoming addicted to government saving them from their own failure to live within their means. Democrats play the enabler! Capitalizing on that addiction, Democrats promise more if Americans just give them full control in Washington.
Starting during President Johnson's term, our country tried spending our way to becoming a very compassionate country. Over three decades, our government invested 5.4 trillion dollars in welfare payments in our "War on Poverty." The investment would have been worth it, if it had worked, but it didn't eliminate poverty.
In fact, the results of this type of government-run compassion have been devastating, creating a debilitating dependence on the very programs that were designed to help. Ronald Reagan said it well: "Welfare's purpose should be to eliminate, as far as possible, the need for its own existence."
Compassion should be measured by how many people no longer need government programs instead of by how many are served by them. We need a safety net, not a hammock. As our first Republican President Abraham Lincoln said, "The worst thing you can do for those you love is the thing they could and should do for themselves."
We've gone from protecting the unfortunate to supporting the irresponsible. In fact, many liberal politicians seem to want to keep citizens dependent on government. They hate poverty so much that they reward it!
Unfortunately, whatever you reward you get more of! So if my response to your entry-level job is to raise your minimum wage beyond its market value, you're more likely to stay in that dead-end job. Why go to college or learn a new skill if you can get enough money settling for a job with minimum skills?
Republicans support economic tough love that challenges all citizens to better themselves. A free-market economy rewards achievement and not anything less. Is that mean-spirited? We loved our son enough to teach him early that in a competitive world you don’t get everything you want just because you want it. We showed him our love, but we also let him know that he would experience the consequences for his own choices. If he didn't save his money, he wouldn't have money to spend. If he got in trouble in school, he'd be accountable not excused.
In America, all citizens are guaranteed "the pursuit of happiness," not happiness given to them by a controlling government. Democrats would have you believe that every American is entitled to full healthcare, welfare, and high wages whether they've earned it or not. And, of course, who is supposed to pay for all these entitlements, those greedy, "wealthy" Americans who already pay most of the taxes! Will Rogers said it years ago, "I remember back when a liberal was someone who was generous with his own money."
Gerald Ford summed it up well, "A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take from you everything you have." Socialism is not new. It's failed wherever it has been tried. It won’t help you achieve your dreams; it will only punish and stifle your success! Obama believes you can't live the American Dream without taking your neighbor's money to give you another entitlement. That's not the American Dream; that's a nightmare.
Obamanomics
Ken Blackwell
Monday, November 03, 2008
Editor’s Note: This article was co-authored by Ken Klukowski, a policy consultant and legal analyst in Washington, DC.
Last week’s revelation - in Barack Obama’s own words - that he believes the U.S. Supreme Court should redistribute income to bring about “economic justice” in this country is the final piece of the puzzle that reveals what he believes about the role of government in our lives. Taken with his other statements about wealth, taxes and spending, it reveals a radical-left view of government like this country has never seen.
In 2001, on WBEZ radio in Chicago, then-state senator Obama gave a radio interview. Calling it “redistributive change,” Mr. Obama advocated the courts redistributing income as a civil rights issue. He acknowledged the Founders designed limits on judicial power that they considered “essential,” and then went on to say he could develop a legal justification for the courts to abandon those limits and redistribute wealth.
In that same interview, Mr. Obama said he was not optimistic about the Court redistributing income, not because the Court shouldn’t, just because the process of income redistribution would be difficult for the Supreme Court to manage. However, he continued, it could be done more effectively through legislation or administrative action.
In other words, Mr. Obama doesn’t at all object to federal courts redistributing income, because “economic justice” should be part of advancing civil rights.
These statements are the last piece of a puzzle people have been trying to decipher for two years: What does Mr. Obama really believe? These statements, combined with his other statements over the past few months, finally give voters a coherent picture of Mr. Obama’s views.
Earlier this year, Charlie Gibson asked Mr. Obama if he would still raise capital gains tax if it would not bring in additional revenue and instead adversely affect millions of Americans. Mr. Obama responded he would still do it out of “fairness.” Even if the tax would hurt the economy, losing millions of jobs and squeezing working families, Mr. Obama will do it because in his mind it’s “fair.”
That statement is consistent with Mr. Obama explaining to Joe the Plumber, “When you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody.” It’s in those moments when he’s not giving canned speeches from a teleprompter, examined in advance for alarming statements, that Mr. Obama reveals what he truly thinks. By his own words, he will use government and higher taxes to “spread the wealth around.” This means he’ll take it from those he decides have too much, and give it to others he decides should have more.
Add to that Mr. Obama’s running mate, Joe Biden. When asked about higher taxes, Mr. Biden said it was patriotic to pay higher taxes without complaint. Later asked if Mr. Obama’s statements made him a Marxist, Mr. Biden ridiculed the question and the reporter asking it.
Then Mr. Obama and Mr. Biden ridiculed Joe the Plumber by name at his campaign rallies, starting the very next day. Evidently that is how Mr. Obama will deal with people who disagree with him. He went to Joe the Plumber’s neighborhood, walked down his street and in front of his house. As a voter, Joe decided to ask Mr. Obama a question. Now Mr. Obama’s unscripted answer has caused him trouble, and so Joe the Plumber has been attacked by Mr. Obama and his minions for daring to question Mr. Obama in public.
A government that can take your money and redistribute income will not tolerate any criticism from the people or the press. They should simply stand quiet as an all-wise government decides how much money they should have.
And now we know he wants to appoint Supreme Court justices, with lifetime appointments, who will do the same.
This is Obamanomics. While previous American presidents based their tax policies on what would bring in the most to government coffers and help the economy, Mr. Obama says he will base tax policy on what he decides is “fair.” According to Mr. Obama, he will decide what taxes are “fair” and what distribution of wealth and income achieve “economic justice” through “redistributive change.”
That’s just a fancy phrase for “spread the wealth around,” which is exactly what Mr. Obama will do unless he’s stopped at the ballot box on Election Day.
Monday, November 03, 2008
Editor’s Note: This article was co-authored by Ken Klukowski, a policy consultant and legal analyst in Washington, DC.
Last week’s revelation - in Barack Obama’s own words - that he believes the U.S. Supreme Court should redistribute income to bring about “economic justice” in this country is the final piece of the puzzle that reveals what he believes about the role of government in our lives. Taken with his other statements about wealth, taxes and spending, it reveals a radical-left view of government like this country has never seen.
In 2001, on WBEZ radio in Chicago, then-state senator Obama gave a radio interview. Calling it “redistributive change,” Mr. Obama advocated the courts redistributing income as a civil rights issue. He acknowledged the Founders designed limits on judicial power that they considered “essential,” and then went on to say he could develop a legal justification for the courts to abandon those limits and redistribute wealth.
In that same interview, Mr. Obama said he was not optimistic about the Court redistributing income, not because the Court shouldn’t, just because the process of income redistribution would be difficult for the Supreme Court to manage. However, he continued, it could be done more effectively through legislation or administrative action.
In other words, Mr. Obama doesn’t at all object to federal courts redistributing income, because “economic justice” should be part of advancing civil rights.
These statements are the last piece of a puzzle people have been trying to decipher for two years: What does Mr. Obama really believe? These statements, combined with his other statements over the past few months, finally give voters a coherent picture of Mr. Obama’s views.
Earlier this year, Charlie Gibson asked Mr. Obama if he would still raise capital gains tax if it would not bring in additional revenue and instead adversely affect millions of Americans. Mr. Obama responded he would still do it out of “fairness.” Even if the tax would hurt the economy, losing millions of jobs and squeezing working families, Mr. Obama will do it because in his mind it’s “fair.”
That statement is consistent with Mr. Obama explaining to Joe the Plumber, “When you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody.” It’s in those moments when he’s not giving canned speeches from a teleprompter, examined in advance for alarming statements, that Mr. Obama reveals what he truly thinks. By his own words, he will use government and higher taxes to “spread the wealth around.” This means he’ll take it from those he decides have too much, and give it to others he decides should have more.
Add to that Mr. Obama’s running mate, Joe Biden. When asked about higher taxes, Mr. Biden said it was patriotic to pay higher taxes without complaint. Later asked if Mr. Obama’s statements made him a Marxist, Mr. Biden ridiculed the question and the reporter asking it.
Then Mr. Obama and Mr. Biden ridiculed Joe the Plumber by name at his campaign rallies, starting the very next day. Evidently that is how Mr. Obama will deal with people who disagree with him. He went to Joe the Plumber’s neighborhood, walked down his street and in front of his house. As a voter, Joe decided to ask Mr. Obama a question. Now Mr. Obama’s unscripted answer has caused him trouble, and so Joe the Plumber has been attacked by Mr. Obama and his minions for daring to question Mr. Obama in public.
A government that can take your money and redistribute income will not tolerate any criticism from the people or the press. They should simply stand quiet as an all-wise government decides how much money they should have.
And now we know he wants to appoint Supreme Court justices, with lifetime appointments, who will do the same.
This is Obamanomics. While previous American presidents based their tax policies on what would bring in the most to government coffers and help the economy, Mr. Obama says he will base tax policy on what he decides is “fair.” According to Mr. Obama, he will decide what taxes are “fair” and what distribution of wealth and income achieve “economic justice” through “redistributive change.”
That’s just a fancy phrase for “spread the wealth around,” which is exactly what Mr. Obama will do unless he’s stopped at the ballot box on Election Day.
America's Last Will and Testament
Burt Prelutsky
Monday, November 03, 2008
On the eve of the presidential election, I have a few last thoughts I’d like to share. First off, I keep hearing people say they don’t know Barack Obama. Oddly enough, I don’t think I’ve ever known a presidential candidate nearly so well. I may not have seen his birth certificate or his medical records, but I’ve certainly heard his words, his wife’s words and his pastor’s words, and I feel they’ve told me all I need to know about this demagogue.
I know that he believes in the Marxist principle of sharing the wealth, and I know that doesn’t refer to his own wealth, but to everybody else’s. I know that he shares Mrs. Obama’s lack of pride in America, and that, in his gut, he believes America is a racist nation.
I know he shares Rev. Wright’s hatred of white people. Because he depends on their votes, he keeps that belief under wraps, but it certainly comes through loud and clear in his books.
I know that the people he surrounds himself with, people like Wright, Father Pfleger, Louis Farrakhan, Tony Rezko and Bill Ayres, are vile. And the ones whom he is forced by circumstance to be allied with, people like Ted Kennedy, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and John Murtha, are not much better.
Because even his disciples realized that Sen. Obama can barely identify such places as Iraq, Syria, Israel and Afghanistan, on the map, he selected an old political hack like Joe Biden as his running mate. Joe Biden was supposed to supply the foreign affairs expertise Obama lacked. It reminds me of the days when I was working in TV and was trying to get comedies on the air. The problem was that the networks only wanted to produce pilots written by people who had experience producing sit coms. So, even though I had written for the likes of MASH, Bob Newhart, Family Ties, Mary Tyler Moore and Rhoda, they preferred being in business with people who had written and produced lousy sit coms. So it is with Joe Biden. The man has plenty of experience, but the problem is that he has always been wrong. Just one major example was his vote against Desert Storm. He would have gladly stood by while Saddam Hussein took over the oil fields of Kuwait. He never has bothered to explain his reasoning, but when it only takes about 200,000 votes to be a senator from Delaware, I guess all it takes to be elected are hair plugs and painted teeth.
It occurs to me that politicians continue, as a matter of P.R., to refer themselves as public servants. They are the only servants in the history of mankind to not only make more money than their masters, but are the ones who insist on giving all the orders.
Because we saw this election as the most important in our lifetime, my wife and I cast our absentee ballots several weeks ago. We wanted to be certain that our votes would count even if we died in the meantime. It’s nothing new. Heck, dead Democrats have been casting votes for years and, thanks to ACORN and complicit state governments, they still are. ACORN even registers cartoon characters. In one case, Barney Frank, there’s even an example of a cartoon character who managed to get elected to Congress.
When I suggest that this is the single most important election in my lifetime, it’s not because I hold John McCain in such high regard, but because I consider Barack Obama to be a menace to our freedom and our way of life. If McCain were to be elected, I assume I would be forced to repeat a mantra similar to the one I have relied on many times during the past eight years: “Better Bush than Gore, better Bush than Kerry.”
It astounds me that Democrats continue to paint Republicans as plutocrats when kazillionaires like Kennedy, Boxer, Feinstein, Schumer, Kerry, Clinton and even a guy named Rockefeller, sit in the Senate, and people like George Soros, Barbra Streisand, George Clooney, Warren Buffet, Bill Gates and Oprah Winfrey, fill their coffers. I used to wonder why Soros, a bottom-feeder who made his fortune in the sleazy business of currency trading, would align himself with the far left wing of the Democratic party. Then, one day, it occurred to me that I used to describe John Howard Lawson, a hack screenwriter who once ran the Communist party in Hollywood, as a man who was born to run a gulag. I now believe that Soros sees himself as a major honcho in a new Soviet United States, a man in charge of the men who would run the gulags.
I just read that former Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger said that Sarah Palin is not only unqualified to become president on short notice, but that even after some time in office would make, at best, a barely adequate commander in chief. What a shame he wasn’t half as prescient when he was secretary of state. I wonder what evaluation he would give to President George H.W. Bush, the man under whom he served, the man who, by the way, was the only president since 1980 not to be re-elected to a second term.
Finally, it occurs to me that former Weatherman terrorist Bill Ayers didn’t really stop planting bombs in the 1960s, after all. As a matter of fact, the biggest bomb he set off was the O-bomb in the mid-90s, when he hosted the kick-off to Barack Obama’s political campaign.
Monday, November 03, 2008
On the eve of the presidential election, I have a few last thoughts I’d like to share. First off, I keep hearing people say they don’t know Barack Obama. Oddly enough, I don’t think I’ve ever known a presidential candidate nearly so well. I may not have seen his birth certificate or his medical records, but I’ve certainly heard his words, his wife’s words and his pastor’s words, and I feel they’ve told me all I need to know about this demagogue.
I know that he believes in the Marxist principle of sharing the wealth, and I know that doesn’t refer to his own wealth, but to everybody else’s. I know that he shares Mrs. Obama’s lack of pride in America, and that, in his gut, he believes America is a racist nation.
I know he shares Rev. Wright’s hatred of white people. Because he depends on their votes, he keeps that belief under wraps, but it certainly comes through loud and clear in his books.
I know that the people he surrounds himself with, people like Wright, Father Pfleger, Louis Farrakhan, Tony Rezko and Bill Ayres, are vile. And the ones whom he is forced by circumstance to be allied with, people like Ted Kennedy, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and John Murtha, are not much better.
Because even his disciples realized that Sen. Obama can barely identify such places as Iraq, Syria, Israel and Afghanistan, on the map, he selected an old political hack like Joe Biden as his running mate. Joe Biden was supposed to supply the foreign affairs expertise Obama lacked. It reminds me of the days when I was working in TV and was trying to get comedies on the air. The problem was that the networks only wanted to produce pilots written by people who had experience producing sit coms. So, even though I had written for the likes of MASH, Bob Newhart, Family Ties, Mary Tyler Moore and Rhoda, they preferred being in business with people who had written and produced lousy sit coms. So it is with Joe Biden. The man has plenty of experience, but the problem is that he has always been wrong. Just one major example was his vote against Desert Storm. He would have gladly stood by while Saddam Hussein took over the oil fields of Kuwait. He never has bothered to explain his reasoning, but when it only takes about 200,000 votes to be a senator from Delaware, I guess all it takes to be elected are hair plugs and painted teeth.
It occurs to me that politicians continue, as a matter of P.R., to refer themselves as public servants. They are the only servants in the history of mankind to not only make more money than their masters, but are the ones who insist on giving all the orders.
Because we saw this election as the most important in our lifetime, my wife and I cast our absentee ballots several weeks ago. We wanted to be certain that our votes would count even if we died in the meantime. It’s nothing new. Heck, dead Democrats have been casting votes for years and, thanks to ACORN and complicit state governments, they still are. ACORN even registers cartoon characters. In one case, Barney Frank, there’s even an example of a cartoon character who managed to get elected to Congress.
When I suggest that this is the single most important election in my lifetime, it’s not because I hold John McCain in such high regard, but because I consider Barack Obama to be a menace to our freedom and our way of life. If McCain were to be elected, I assume I would be forced to repeat a mantra similar to the one I have relied on many times during the past eight years: “Better Bush than Gore, better Bush than Kerry.”
It astounds me that Democrats continue to paint Republicans as plutocrats when kazillionaires like Kennedy, Boxer, Feinstein, Schumer, Kerry, Clinton and even a guy named Rockefeller, sit in the Senate, and people like George Soros, Barbra Streisand, George Clooney, Warren Buffet, Bill Gates and Oprah Winfrey, fill their coffers. I used to wonder why Soros, a bottom-feeder who made his fortune in the sleazy business of currency trading, would align himself with the far left wing of the Democratic party. Then, one day, it occurred to me that I used to describe John Howard Lawson, a hack screenwriter who once ran the Communist party in Hollywood, as a man who was born to run a gulag. I now believe that Soros sees himself as a major honcho in a new Soviet United States, a man in charge of the men who would run the gulags.
I just read that former Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger said that Sarah Palin is not only unqualified to become president on short notice, but that even after some time in office would make, at best, a barely adequate commander in chief. What a shame he wasn’t half as prescient when he was secretary of state. I wonder what evaluation he would give to President George H.W. Bush, the man under whom he served, the man who, by the way, was the only president since 1980 not to be re-elected to a second term.
Finally, it occurs to me that former Weatherman terrorist Bill Ayers didn’t really stop planting bombs in the 1960s, after all. As a matter of fact, the biggest bomb he set off was the O-bomb in the mid-90s, when he hosted the kick-off to Barack Obama’s political campaign.
Sunday, November 2, 2008
The End of Journalism
Sometime in 2008, journalism as we knew it died, and advocacy media took its place.
By Victor Davis Hanson
Friday, October 31, 2008
There have always been media biases and prejudices. Everyone knew that Walter Cronkite, from his gilded throne at CBS news, helped to alter the course of the Vietnam War, when, in the post-Tet depression, he prematurely declared the war unwinnible. Dan Rather’s career imploded when he knowingly promulgated a forged document that impugned the service record of George W. Bush. We’ve known for a long time — from various polling, and records of political donations of journalists themselves, as well as surveys of public perceptions — that the vast majority of journalists identify themselves as Democratic, and liberal in particular.
Yet we have never quite seen anything like the current media infatuation with Barack Obama, and its collective desire not to raise key issues of concern to the American people. Here were four areas of national interest that were largely ignored.
CAMPAIGN FINANCING
For years an axiom of the liberal establishment was the need for public campaign financing — and the corrosive role of private money in poisoning the election process. The most prominent Republican who crossed party lines to ensure the passage of national public campaign financing was John McCain — a maverick stance that cost him dearly among conservatives who resented bitterly federal interference in political expression.
In contrast, Barack Obama, remember, promised that he would accept both public funding and the limitations that went along with it, and would “aggressively pursue an agreement with the Republican nominee to preserve a publicly financed general election.” Then in June 2008, Obama abruptly reneged, bowing out entirely from government financing, the first presidential nominee in the general election to do that since the system was created in 1976.
Obama has now raised over $600 million, by far the largest campaign chest in American political history. In many states he enjoys a four-to-one advantage in campaign funding — most telling in his scheduled eleventh-hour, 30-minute specials that will not be answered by the publicly financed and poorer McCain campaign.
The story that the media chose to ignore was not merely the Obama about-face on public financing, or even the enormous amounts of money that he has raised — some of it under dubious circumstances involving foreign donors, prepaid credit cards, and false names. Instead, they were absolutely quiet about a historic end to liberal support for public financing.
For all practical purposes, public financing of the presidential general election is now dead. No Republican will ever agree to it again. No Democrat can ever again dare to defend a system destroyed by Obama. All future worries about the dangers of big money and big politics will fall on deaf ears.
Surely, there will come a time when the Democratic Party, whether for ethical or practical reasons, will sorely regret dismantling the very safeguards that for over three decades it had insisted were critical for the survival of the republic.
Imagine the reaction of the New York Times or the Washington Post had John McCain renounced his promise to participate in public campaign financing, proceeded instead to amass $600 million and outraise the publicly financed Barack Obama four-to-one, and begun airing special 30-minute unanswered infomercials during the last week of the campaign.
THE VP CANDIDATES
We know now almost all the details of Sarah Palin’s pregnancies, whether the trooper who tasered her nephew went to stun or half stun, the cost of her clothes, and her personal expenses — indeed, almost everything except how a mother of so many children gets elected councilwoman, mayor, and governor, routs an entrenched old-boy cadre, while maintaining near record levels of public support.
Yet the American public knows almost nothing of what it should about the extraordinary career of Joe Biden, the 36-year veteran of the Senate. In unprecedented fashion, Biden has simply avoided the press for most of the last two months, confident that the media instead would deconstruct almost every word of “good looking” Sarah Palin’s numerous interviews with mostly hostile interrogators.
By accepted standards of behavior, Biden has sadly proven wanting. He has committed almost every classical sin of character — plagiarism, false biography, racial insensitivity, and serial fabrication. And because of media silence, we don’t know whether he was kidding when he said America would not need to burn coal, or that Hezbollah was out of Lebanon, or that FDR addressed the nation on television as president in 1929 (surely a record for historical fictions in a single thought), or that the public would turn sour on Obama once he was challenged by our enemies abroad. In response, the media reported that the very public Sarah Palin was avoiding the press while the very private Joe Biden shunned interviews and was chained to the teleprompter.
For two months now, the media reaction to Biden’s inanity has been simply “that’s just ol’ Joe, now let’s turn to Palin,” who, in the space of two months, has been reduced from a popular successful governor to a backwoods creationist, who will ban books and champion white secessionist causes. The respective coverage of the two candidates is ironic in a variety of ways, but in one especially — almost every charge against Palin (that she is under wraps, untruthful, and inept) was applicable only to Biden.
So we are about to elect a vice president about whom we know only that he has been around a long time, but little else — and nothing at all why exactly Joe Biden says the most astounding and often lunatic things.
Imagine the reaction of Newsweek or Time had moose-hunting mom Sarah Palin claimed FDR went on television to address the nation as President in 1929, or warned America that our enemies abroad would test John McCain and that his response would result in a radical loss of his popularity at home.
THE PAST AS PRESENT
In 2004, few Americans knew Barack Obama. In 2008, they may elect him. Surely his past was of more interest than his present serial denials of it. Whatever the media’s feelings about the current Barack Obama, there should have been some story that the Obama of 2008 is radically different from the Obama who was largely consistent and predictable for the prior 30 years.
Each Obama metamorphosis in itself might be attributed to the normal evolution to the middle, as a candidate shifts from the primary to the general election. But in the case of Obama, we witnessed not a shift, but a complete transformation to an entirely new persona — in almost every imaginable sense of the word. Name an issue — FISA, NAFTA, guns, abortion, capital punishment, coal, nuclear power, drilling, Iran, Jerusalem, the surge — and Obama’s position today is not that of just a year ago.
Until 2005, Obama was in communication with Bill Ayers by e-mail and phone, despite Ayers reprehensible braggadocio in 2001 that he remained an unrepentant terrorist. Rev. Wright was an invaluable spiritual advisor — until spring of 2008. Father Pfleger was praised as an intimate friend in 2004 — and vanished off the radar in 2008. The media might have asked not just why these rather dubious figures were once so close to, and then so distant from, Obama; but why were there so many people like Rashid Khalidi and Tony Rezko in Obama’s past in the first place?
Behind the Olympian calm of Obama, there was always a rather disturbing record of extra-electoral politics completely ignored by the media. If one were disturbed by the present shenanigans of ACORN or the bizarre national call for Americans simply to skip work on election day to help elect Obama (who would pay for that?), one would only have to remember that in 1996 Obama took the extraordinary step of suing to eliminate all his primary rivals by challenging their petition signatures of mostly African-American voters.
In 2004, there was an even more remarkable chain of events in which the sealed divorce records of both his principle primary rival Blair Hull and general election foe, Jack Ryan, were mysteriously leaked, effectively ensuring Obama a Senate seat without serious opposition. These were not artifacts of a typical political career, but extraordinary events in themselves that might well have shed light on present campaign tactics — and yet largely remain unknown to the American people.
Imagine the reaction of CNN or NBC had John McCain’s pastor and spiritual advisor of 20 years been revealed as a white supremacist who damned a multiracial United States, or had he been a close acquaintance until 2005 of an unrepentant terrorist bomber of abortion clinics, or had McCain himself sued to eliminate congressional opponents by challenging the validity of African-American voters who signed petitions, or had both his primary and general election senatorial rivals imploded once their sealed divorce records were mysteriously leaked.
SOCIALISM?
The eleventh-hour McCain allegations of Obama’s advocacy for a share-the-wealth socialism were generally ignored by the media, or if covered, written off as neo-McCarthyism. But there were two legitimate, but again neglected, issues.
The first was the nature of the Obama tax plan. The problem was not merely upping the income tax rates on those who made $250,000 (or was it $200,000, or was it $150,000, or both, or none?), but its aggregate effect in combination with lifting the FICA ceilings on high incomes on top of existing Medicare contributions and often high state income taxes.
In other words, Americans who live in high-tax, expensive states like a New York or California could in theory face collective confiscatory tax rates of 65 percent or so on much of their income. And, depending on the nature of Obama’s proposed tax exemptions, on the other end of the spectrum we might well see almost half the nation’s wage earners pay no federal income tax at all.
Questions arise, but were again not explored: How wise is it to exempt one out of every two income earners from any worry over how the nation gathers its federal income tax revenue? And when credits are added to the plan, are we now essentially not cutting or raising taxes, but simply diverting wealth from those who pay into the system to those who do not?
A practical effect of socialism is often defined as curbing productive incentives by ensuring the poorer need not endanger their exemptions and credits by seeking greater income; and discouraging the wealthy from seeking greater income, given that nearly two-thirds of additional wealth would be lost to taxes. Surely that discussion might have been of interest to the American people.
Second, the real story was not John McCain’s characterization of such plans, but both inadvertent, and serial descriptions of them, past and present, by Barack Obama himself. “Spreading the wealth around” gains currency when collated to past interviews in which Obama talked at length about, and in regret at, judicial impracticalities in accomplishing his own desire to redistribute income. “Tragedy” is frequent in the Obama vocabulary, but largely confined to two contexts: the tragic history of the United States (e.g., deemed analogous to that of Nazi Germany during World War II), and the tragic unwillingness or inability to use judicial means to correct economic inequality in non-democratic fashion.
In this regard, remember Obama’s revealing comment that he was interested only in “fairness” in increasing capital-gains taxes, despite the bothersome fact that past moderate reductions in rates had, in fact, brought in greater revenue to government. Again, fossilized ideology trumps empiricism.
Imagine the reaction of NPR and PBS had John McCain advocated something like abolishing all capital gains taxes, or repealing incomes taxes in favor of a national retail sales tax.
The media has succeeded in shielding Barack Obama from journalistic scrutiny. It thereby irrevocably destroyed its own reputation and forfeited the trust that generations of others had so carefully acquired. And it will never again be trusted to offer candid and nonpartisan coverage of presidential candidates.
Worse still, the suicide of both print and electronic journalism has ensured that, should Barack Obama be elected president, the public will only then learn what they should have known far earlier about their commander-in-chief — but in circumstances and from sources they may well regret.
By Victor Davis Hanson
Friday, October 31, 2008
There have always been media biases and prejudices. Everyone knew that Walter Cronkite, from his gilded throne at CBS news, helped to alter the course of the Vietnam War, when, in the post-Tet depression, he prematurely declared the war unwinnible. Dan Rather’s career imploded when he knowingly promulgated a forged document that impugned the service record of George W. Bush. We’ve known for a long time — from various polling, and records of political donations of journalists themselves, as well as surveys of public perceptions — that the vast majority of journalists identify themselves as Democratic, and liberal in particular.
Yet we have never quite seen anything like the current media infatuation with Barack Obama, and its collective desire not to raise key issues of concern to the American people. Here were four areas of national interest that were largely ignored.
CAMPAIGN FINANCING
For years an axiom of the liberal establishment was the need for public campaign financing — and the corrosive role of private money in poisoning the election process. The most prominent Republican who crossed party lines to ensure the passage of national public campaign financing was John McCain — a maverick stance that cost him dearly among conservatives who resented bitterly federal interference in political expression.
In contrast, Barack Obama, remember, promised that he would accept both public funding and the limitations that went along with it, and would “aggressively pursue an agreement with the Republican nominee to preserve a publicly financed general election.” Then in June 2008, Obama abruptly reneged, bowing out entirely from government financing, the first presidential nominee in the general election to do that since the system was created in 1976.
Obama has now raised over $600 million, by far the largest campaign chest in American political history. In many states he enjoys a four-to-one advantage in campaign funding — most telling in his scheduled eleventh-hour, 30-minute specials that will not be answered by the publicly financed and poorer McCain campaign.
The story that the media chose to ignore was not merely the Obama about-face on public financing, or even the enormous amounts of money that he has raised — some of it under dubious circumstances involving foreign donors, prepaid credit cards, and false names. Instead, they were absolutely quiet about a historic end to liberal support for public financing.
For all practical purposes, public financing of the presidential general election is now dead. No Republican will ever agree to it again. No Democrat can ever again dare to defend a system destroyed by Obama. All future worries about the dangers of big money and big politics will fall on deaf ears.
Surely, there will come a time when the Democratic Party, whether for ethical or practical reasons, will sorely regret dismantling the very safeguards that for over three decades it had insisted were critical for the survival of the republic.
Imagine the reaction of the New York Times or the Washington Post had John McCain renounced his promise to participate in public campaign financing, proceeded instead to amass $600 million and outraise the publicly financed Barack Obama four-to-one, and begun airing special 30-minute unanswered infomercials during the last week of the campaign.
THE VP CANDIDATES
We know now almost all the details of Sarah Palin’s pregnancies, whether the trooper who tasered her nephew went to stun or half stun, the cost of her clothes, and her personal expenses — indeed, almost everything except how a mother of so many children gets elected councilwoman, mayor, and governor, routs an entrenched old-boy cadre, while maintaining near record levels of public support.
Yet the American public knows almost nothing of what it should about the extraordinary career of Joe Biden, the 36-year veteran of the Senate. In unprecedented fashion, Biden has simply avoided the press for most of the last two months, confident that the media instead would deconstruct almost every word of “good looking” Sarah Palin’s numerous interviews with mostly hostile interrogators.
By accepted standards of behavior, Biden has sadly proven wanting. He has committed almost every classical sin of character — plagiarism, false biography, racial insensitivity, and serial fabrication. And because of media silence, we don’t know whether he was kidding when he said America would not need to burn coal, or that Hezbollah was out of Lebanon, or that FDR addressed the nation on television as president in 1929 (surely a record for historical fictions in a single thought), or that the public would turn sour on Obama once he was challenged by our enemies abroad. In response, the media reported that the very public Sarah Palin was avoiding the press while the very private Joe Biden shunned interviews and was chained to the teleprompter.
For two months now, the media reaction to Biden’s inanity has been simply “that’s just ol’ Joe, now let’s turn to Palin,” who, in the space of two months, has been reduced from a popular successful governor to a backwoods creationist, who will ban books and champion white secessionist causes. The respective coverage of the two candidates is ironic in a variety of ways, but in one especially — almost every charge against Palin (that she is under wraps, untruthful, and inept) was applicable only to Biden.
So we are about to elect a vice president about whom we know only that he has been around a long time, but little else — and nothing at all why exactly Joe Biden says the most astounding and often lunatic things.
Imagine the reaction of Newsweek or Time had moose-hunting mom Sarah Palin claimed FDR went on television to address the nation as President in 1929, or warned America that our enemies abroad would test John McCain and that his response would result in a radical loss of his popularity at home.
THE PAST AS PRESENT
In 2004, few Americans knew Barack Obama. In 2008, they may elect him. Surely his past was of more interest than his present serial denials of it. Whatever the media’s feelings about the current Barack Obama, there should have been some story that the Obama of 2008 is radically different from the Obama who was largely consistent and predictable for the prior 30 years.
Each Obama metamorphosis in itself might be attributed to the normal evolution to the middle, as a candidate shifts from the primary to the general election. But in the case of Obama, we witnessed not a shift, but a complete transformation to an entirely new persona — in almost every imaginable sense of the word. Name an issue — FISA, NAFTA, guns, abortion, capital punishment, coal, nuclear power, drilling, Iran, Jerusalem, the surge — and Obama’s position today is not that of just a year ago.
Until 2005, Obama was in communication with Bill Ayers by e-mail and phone, despite Ayers reprehensible braggadocio in 2001 that he remained an unrepentant terrorist. Rev. Wright was an invaluable spiritual advisor — until spring of 2008. Father Pfleger was praised as an intimate friend in 2004 — and vanished off the radar in 2008. The media might have asked not just why these rather dubious figures were once so close to, and then so distant from, Obama; but why were there so many people like Rashid Khalidi and Tony Rezko in Obama’s past in the first place?
Behind the Olympian calm of Obama, there was always a rather disturbing record of extra-electoral politics completely ignored by the media. If one were disturbed by the present shenanigans of ACORN or the bizarre national call for Americans simply to skip work on election day to help elect Obama (who would pay for that?), one would only have to remember that in 1996 Obama took the extraordinary step of suing to eliminate all his primary rivals by challenging their petition signatures of mostly African-American voters.
In 2004, there was an even more remarkable chain of events in which the sealed divorce records of both his principle primary rival Blair Hull and general election foe, Jack Ryan, were mysteriously leaked, effectively ensuring Obama a Senate seat without serious opposition. These were not artifacts of a typical political career, but extraordinary events in themselves that might well have shed light on present campaign tactics — and yet largely remain unknown to the American people.
Imagine the reaction of CNN or NBC had John McCain’s pastor and spiritual advisor of 20 years been revealed as a white supremacist who damned a multiracial United States, or had he been a close acquaintance until 2005 of an unrepentant terrorist bomber of abortion clinics, or had McCain himself sued to eliminate congressional opponents by challenging the validity of African-American voters who signed petitions, or had both his primary and general election senatorial rivals imploded once their sealed divorce records were mysteriously leaked.
SOCIALISM?
The eleventh-hour McCain allegations of Obama’s advocacy for a share-the-wealth socialism were generally ignored by the media, or if covered, written off as neo-McCarthyism. But there were two legitimate, but again neglected, issues.
The first was the nature of the Obama tax plan. The problem was not merely upping the income tax rates on those who made $250,000 (or was it $200,000, or was it $150,000, or both, or none?), but its aggregate effect in combination with lifting the FICA ceilings on high incomes on top of existing Medicare contributions and often high state income taxes.
In other words, Americans who live in high-tax, expensive states like a New York or California could in theory face collective confiscatory tax rates of 65 percent or so on much of their income. And, depending on the nature of Obama’s proposed tax exemptions, on the other end of the spectrum we might well see almost half the nation’s wage earners pay no federal income tax at all.
Questions arise, but were again not explored: How wise is it to exempt one out of every two income earners from any worry over how the nation gathers its federal income tax revenue? And when credits are added to the plan, are we now essentially not cutting or raising taxes, but simply diverting wealth from those who pay into the system to those who do not?
A practical effect of socialism is often defined as curbing productive incentives by ensuring the poorer need not endanger their exemptions and credits by seeking greater income; and discouraging the wealthy from seeking greater income, given that nearly two-thirds of additional wealth would be lost to taxes. Surely that discussion might have been of interest to the American people.
Second, the real story was not John McCain’s characterization of such plans, but both inadvertent, and serial descriptions of them, past and present, by Barack Obama himself. “Spreading the wealth around” gains currency when collated to past interviews in which Obama talked at length about, and in regret at, judicial impracticalities in accomplishing his own desire to redistribute income. “Tragedy” is frequent in the Obama vocabulary, but largely confined to two contexts: the tragic history of the United States (e.g., deemed analogous to that of Nazi Germany during World War II), and the tragic unwillingness or inability to use judicial means to correct economic inequality in non-democratic fashion.
In this regard, remember Obama’s revealing comment that he was interested only in “fairness” in increasing capital-gains taxes, despite the bothersome fact that past moderate reductions in rates had, in fact, brought in greater revenue to government. Again, fossilized ideology trumps empiricism.
Imagine the reaction of NPR and PBS had John McCain advocated something like abolishing all capital gains taxes, or repealing incomes taxes in favor of a national retail sales tax.
The media has succeeded in shielding Barack Obama from journalistic scrutiny. It thereby irrevocably destroyed its own reputation and forfeited the trust that generations of others had so carefully acquired. And it will never again be trusted to offer candid and nonpartisan coverage of presidential candidates.
Worse still, the suicide of both print and electronic journalism has ensured that, should Barack Obama be elected president, the public will only then learn what they should have known far earlier about their commander-in-chief — but in circumstances and from sources they may well regret.
The Battle For America Is Only Just Beginning
Mike Gallagher
Friday, October 31, 2008
This is it.
On Tuesday, this prolonged, tedious, volatile, bitter, complicated, controversy-filled election season will finally be over.
The finger-pointing and shouting will subside.
One side will be relieved; the other, resentful.
There will be some Monday-morning quarterbacking, but for the most part, Americans will have to accept what happens and move forward.
The mainstream media will either be smug and content, knowing that it did its part in achieving the nearly-impossible with its open advocacy for one of the candidates.
Or, it will be left with egg on its face, realizing that not all of the American people can be manipulated and tricked into believing things that simply aren’t true.
I honestly don’t know what will happen. This week, I cast my ballot during the early voting process. A number of people in line happened to know me from my radio and TV work and seemed to all be McCain/Palin voters. But also in line were a number of young people, some of whom were voting for the very first time.
I can only imagine who they were voting for.
So I just don’t know.
On a personal note, 2008 has been a pretty horrible year for me. I said good-bye to my wife who lost her battle with cancer. My family continues to experience some pretty challenging personal issues. The economy has battered the broadcasting industry.
But through it all, I’ve tried to hold my head high. My radio company has begun calling me, “the happy conservative warrior.” This began way before the McCain/Palin folks starting talking about “happy warriors” (could they be listening?).
And after Tuesday’s election, I’m convinced that win, lose or draw, we need to focus on being warriors with a smile.
I refuse to give up hope that Republicans will pull off a miracle. America is full of success stories featuring victories by the underdog.
And make no mistake about it, the GOP is the underdog this year.
Democrats have taken the economy and a difficult war and painted a bleak, depressing picture of America, a picture that they (falsely) claim they can change.
Sen. Obama’s half hour infomercial was 30 minutes of sadness: families who are barely surviving, people desperate to keep their heads above water.
Obama’s narrative is that this is a broken country that only he can fix.
We know better.
We remember that “shining city on the hill”, a country where opportunity awaits.
We know that we persevere, indeed we thrive during the toughest of times.
We will survive this election.
But if this country’s government is turned over to a bunch of radical, liberal Democrats, we know that the fight will literally begin anew.
People will watch shocking legislation unfold, policies will be implemented that will infuriate anyone with common decency, our country will begin heading in a direction that we won’t even recognize.
And we will begin the fight.
We will start the process of battling for every House and Senate seat.
We will roar in disapproval and pick the next GOP candidate to run for president.
And we will take our country back again.
Again, I’m still holding my head high and expecting a miracle Tuesday.
But in 2008, I’ve learned not to expect too much.
However, the great thing about life is that after 2008, comes a 2009.
After one election comes many more.
Let the fight begin.
Friday, October 31, 2008
This is it.
On Tuesday, this prolonged, tedious, volatile, bitter, complicated, controversy-filled election season will finally be over.
The finger-pointing and shouting will subside.
One side will be relieved; the other, resentful.
There will be some Monday-morning quarterbacking, but for the most part, Americans will have to accept what happens and move forward.
The mainstream media will either be smug and content, knowing that it did its part in achieving the nearly-impossible with its open advocacy for one of the candidates.
Or, it will be left with egg on its face, realizing that not all of the American people can be manipulated and tricked into believing things that simply aren’t true.
I honestly don’t know what will happen. This week, I cast my ballot during the early voting process. A number of people in line happened to know me from my radio and TV work and seemed to all be McCain/Palin voters. But also in line were a number of young people, some of whom were voting for the very first time.
I can only imagine who they were voting for.
So I just don’t know.
On a personal note, 2008 has been a pretty horrible year for me. I said good-bye to my wife who lost her battle with cancer. My family continues to experience some pretty challenging personal issues. The economy has battered the broadcasting industry.
But through it all, I’ve tried to hold my head high. My radio company has begun calling me, “the happy conservative warrior.” This began way before the McCain/Palin folks starting talking about “happy warriors” (could they be listening?).
And after Tuesday’s election, I’m convinced that win, lose or draw, we need to focus on being warriors with a smile.
I refuse to give up hope that Republicans will pull off a miracle. America is full of success stories featuring victories by the underdog.
And make no mistake about it, the GOP is the underdog this year.
Democrats have taken the economy and a difficult war and painted a bleak, depressing picture of America, a picture that they (falsely) claim they can change.
Sen. Obama’s half hour infomercial was 30 minutes of sadness: families who are barely surviving, people desperate to keep their heads above water.
Obama’s narrative is that this is a broken country that only he can fix.
We know better.
We remember that “shining city on the hill”, a country where opportunity awaits.
We know that we persevere, indeed we thrive during the toughest of times.
We will survive this election.
But if this country’s government is turned over to a bunch of radical, liberal Democrats, we know that the fight will literally begin anew.
People will watch shocking legislation unfold, policies will be implemented that will infuriate anyone with common decency, our country will begin heading in a direction that we won’t even recognize.
And we will begin the fight.
We will start the process of battling for every House and Senate seat.
We will roar in disapproval and pick the next GOP candidate to run for president.
And we will take our country back again.
Again, I’m still holding my head high and expecting a miracle Tuesday.
But in 2008, I’ve learned not to expect too much.
However, the great thing about life is that after 2008, comes a 2009.
After one election comes many more.
Let the fight begin.
Ego and Mouth
Thomas Sowell
Friday, October 31, 2008
After the big gamble on subprime mortgages that led to the current financial crisis, is there going to be an even bigger gamble, by putting the fate of a nation in the hands of a man whose only qualifications are ego and mouth?
Barack Obama has the kind of cocksure confidence that can only be achieved by not achieving anything else.
Anyone who has actually had to take responsibility for consequences by running any kind of enterprise-- whether economic or academic, or even just managing a sports team-- is likely at some point to be chastened by either the setbacks brought on by his own mistakes or by seeing his successes followed by negative consequences that he never anticipated.
The kind of self-righteous self-confidence that has become Obama's trademark is usually found in sophomores in Ivy League colleges-- very bright and articulate students, utterly untempered by experience in real world.
The signs of Barack Obama's self-centered immaturity are painfully obvious, though ignored by true believers who have poured their hopes into him, and by the media who just want the symbolism and the ideology that Obama represents.
The triumphal tour of world capitals and photo-op meetings with world leaders by someone who, after all, was still merely a candidate, is just one sign of this self-centered immaturity.
"This is our time!" he proclaimed. And "I will change the world." But ultimately this election is not about him, but about the fate of this nation, at a time of both domestic and international peril, with a major financial crisis still unresolved and a nuclear Iran looming on the horizon.
For someone who has actually accomplished nothing to blithely talk about taking away what has been earned by those who have accomplished something, and give it to whomever he chooses in the name of "spreading the wealth," is the kind of casual arrogance that has led to many economic catastrophes in many countries.
The equally casual ease with which Barack Obama has talked about appointing judges on the basis of their empathies with various segments of the population makes a mockery of the very concept of law.
After this man has wrecked the economy and destroyed constitutional law with his judicial appointments, what can he do for an encore? He can cripple the military and gamble America's future on his ability to sit down with enemy nations and talk them out of causing trouble.
Senator Obama's running mate, Senator Joe Biden, has for years shown the same easy-way-out mindset. Senator Biden has for decades opposed strengthening our military forces. In 1991, Biden urged relying on sanctions to get Saddam Hussein's troops out of Kuwait, instead of military force, despite the demonstrated futility of sanctions as a means of undoing an invasion.
People who think Governor Sarah Palin didn't handle some "gotcha" questions well in a couple of interviews show no interest in how she compares to the Democrats' Vice Presidential candidate, Senator Biden.
Joe Biden is much more of the kind of politician the mainstream media like. Not only is he a liberal's liberal, he answers questions far more glibly than Governor Palin-- grossly inaccurately in many cases, but glibly.
Moreover, this is a long-standing pattern with Biden. When he was running for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination back in 1987, someone in the audience asked him what law school he attended and how well he did.
Flashing his special phony smile, Biden said, "I think I have a much higher IQ than you do." He added, "I went to law school on a full academic scholarship" and "ended up in the top half" of the class.
But Biden did not have a full academic scholarship. Newsweek reported: "He went on a half scholarship based on need. He didn't finish in the 'top half' of his class. He was 76th out of 85."
Add to Obama and Biden House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, and you have all the ingredients for a historic meltdown. Let us not forget that the Roman Empire did decline and fall, blighting the lives of millions for centuries.
Friday, October 31, 2008
After the big gamble on subprime mortgages that led to the current financial crisis, is there going to be an even bigger gamble, by putting the fate of a nation in the hands of a man whose only qualifications are ego and mouth?
Barack Obama has the kind of cocksure confidence that can only be achieved by not achieving anything else.
Anyone who has actually had to take responsibility for consequences by running any kind of enterprise-- whether economic or academic, or even just managing a sports team-- is likely at some point to be chastened by either the setbacks brought on by his own mistakes or by seeing his successes followed by negative consequences that he never anticipated.
The kind of self-righteous self-confidence that has become Obama's trademark is usually found in sophomores in Ivy League colleges-- very bright and articulate students, utterly untempered by experience in real world.
The signs of Barack Obama's self-centered immaturity are painfully obvious, though ignored by true believers who have poured their hopes into him, and by the media who just want the symbolism and the ideology that Obama represents.
The triumphal tour of world capitals and photo-op meetings with world leaders by someone who, after all, was still merely a candidate, is just one sign of this self-centered immaturity.
"This is our time!" he proclaimed. And "I will change the world." But ultimately this election is not about him, but about the fate of this nation, at a time of both domestic and international peril, with a major financial crisis still unresolved and a nuclear Iran looming on the horizon.
For someone who has actually accomplished nothing to blithely talk about taking away what has been earned by those who have accomplished something, and give it to whomever he chooses in the name of "spreading the wealth," is the kind of casual arrogance that has led to many economic catastrophes in many countries.
The equally casual ease with which Barack Obama has talked about appointing judges on the basis of their empathies with various segments of the population makes a mockery of the very concept of law.
After this man has wrecked the economy and destroyed constitutional law with his judicial appointments, what can he do for an encore? He can cripple the military and gamble America's future on his ability to sit down with enemy nations and talk them out of causing trouble.
Senator Obama's running mate, Senator Joe Biden, has for years shown the same easy-way-out mindset. Senator Biden has for decades opposed strengthening our military forces. In 1991, Biden urged relying on sanctions to get Saddam Hussein's troops out of Kuwait, instead of military force, despite the demonstrated futility of sanctions as a means of undoing an invasion.
People who think Governor Sarah Palin didn't handle some "gotcha" questions well in a couple of interviews show no interest in how she compares to the Democrats' Vice Presidential candidate, Senator Biden.
Joe Biden is much more of the kind of politician the mainstream media like. Not only is he a liberal's liberal, he answers questions far more glibly than Governor Palin-- grossly inaccurately in many cases, but glibly.
Moreover, this is a long-standing pattern with Biden. When he was running for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination back in 1987, someone in the audience asked him what law school he attended and how well he did.
Flashing his special phony smile, Biden said, "I think I have a much higher IQ than you do." He added, "I went to law school on a full academic scholarship" and "ended up in the top half" of the class.
But Biden did not have a full academic scholarship. Newsweek reported: "He went on a half scholarship based on need. He didn't finish in the 'top half' of his class. He was 76th out of 85."
Add to Obama and Biden House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, and you have all the ingredients for a historic meltdown. Let us not forget that the Roman Empire did decline and fall, blighting the lives of millions for centuries.
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