Fifteen Questions For People Who Think The GOP Should Be More Moderate

Over at Town Hall, John Hawkins has fifteen questions that he poses directly to those who think the GOP should move to the Center. But before we get to those questions, let’s all understand that the GOP tried moving to the Center in the last two elections and got its collective butt whipped both times. So, you have to wonder why, if that has been the proven outcome twice in a row, anyone would want to embrace such a losing strategy.

The questions:

#1) If both the GOP and the Democrats support bigger government, how does the country survive long term given the size of the debt we already have and the deficits we’re running right now? In other words, how can running massive deficits possibly be sustainable over the long haul? #2) If the GOP were to officially become a big government party, wouldn’t there be a real danger of having a large third party spring up that would represent the considerable number (I’d say a majority, at least in the abstract) of Americans who do want smaller government and less spending? #3) If the GOP becomes a big government party, how do you see us differentiating ourselves from the Democratic Party? Do we spend almost as much as they do, but not quite as much? Do we spend even more? Do we favor deficit spending, but just on different things? Isn’t there a real danger that Democrats — since their base tends to generally be OK with excessive spending — could simply outbid us on anything we offered to the American people? #4) Since the majority of the GOP’s core supporters don’t agree with “moderate” positions like big spending or amnesty, feel very strongly about it, and feel those positions harm the party politically, how can the party continue to hew to those positions over the long term without being permanently at odds with the people who should be their strongest supporters? #5) Let’s do the math on amnesty: there are roughly 12-20 million illegal immigrants, most of whom are Hispanics. Hispanics broke 70/30 for the Democrats in 2006 and 69/31 for the Dems in 2008 according to the latest exit poll data. If the split stayed at 70/30 and 12-20 million new illegals were made citizens, that would mean the Democrats would add another 4.8 to 8 million potential new voters as a result of amnesty. The top end of that scale is a larger margin than what Barack Obama won by in 2008. Additionally, even if the GOP improved our numbers with Hispanics — which we certainly need to do — we’ve never come close to getting 50% of the Hispanic vote. With all that in mind, isn’t amnesty political suicide for the GOP? #6) Some people tend to assume that Hispanics vote almost entirely on the illegal immigration issue, but I would assert that there is very little objective evidence for that. George Bush and John McCain are the two biggest proponents of amnesty in the Republican Party and neither of them is particularly popular with Hispanics today. In fact, according to exit polls, against a candidate who was thought to be weak with Hispanics, John McCain only got 31% of the Hispanic vote. So, what objective evidence convinces you that Hispanics vote largely on illegal immigration and that if the GOP supports amnesty, it will get us over the 50% threshold with Hispanics? #7) Given that the mainstream media overwhelmingly supports the Democrats, it’s extremely important for the GOP to have the support of conservative talk radio hosts, magazines, and the RightRoots. Since the new media is overwhelmingly comprised of conservatives, how does a moderate GOP gain their genuine support over the long haul? #8) Follow-up question to #7: If the GOP can’t get the new media back enthusiastically on its side — which is likely to be the case unless there are changes on spending and illegal immigration policies — how does the GOP get the base fired up? In other words, if Rush Limbaugh, Michelle Malkin, Ann Coulter, Laura Ingraham, etc., etc., are telling everyone who’ll listen that the Republicans stink, how does the Republican Party work around that? #9) Setting aside the conservative media, obviously the conservative movement is lacking energy and passion right now. Many people, myself included, would say that this has a lot to do with the position that the GOP has been taking on immigration and spending issues. How does the GOP get conservatives supporting the GOP again, instead of just opposing the Democrats, if the party continues to pursue big government policies and amnesty? #10) If amnesty, big government, and deficit spending are winning issues for the Republican Party, why did we take such a huge beating in 2006 and 2008 despite pursuing those very policies? #11) Over the last two elections, moderate Republicans haven’t quite been wiped out, but percentage wise, they’ve suffered much higher losses than conservative Republicans. If moderate Republicans can’t even win elections in moderate districts now, why would we want to adopt that losing philosophy across our whole party when conservatives are winning at a much, much higher clip across the country? #12) As moderate columnist David Brooks has said, There is not yet an effective Republican Leadership Council to nurture modernizing conservative ideas. There is no moderate Club for Growth, supporting centrist Republicans. The Public Interest, which used to publish an array of public policy ideas, has closed. Reformist Republican donors don’t seem to exist. Any publication or think tank that headed in an explicitly reformist direction would be pummeled by its financial backers. National candidates who begin with reformist records — Giuliani, Romney or McCain — immediately tack right to be acceptable to the power base. So, there are no moderate think tanks, no moderate donors, the new media is overwhelmingly conservative, the Republican base and activists are overwhelmingly conservative — shouldn’t that tell people something about whether the idea of a moderate GOP is workable? #13) Follow-up question to #12: If a moderate Republican Party is workable, how do you make it work without the new media, think tanks, money, or an excited base on your side? #14) John McCain was the most moderate candidate the GOP has run since Richard Nixon. In fact, he’s the standard bearer of the “moderate Republican” wing of the party and yet the media trashed him, he had trouble raising money — and other moderates, including prominent moderate Republicans like Colin Powell and Christopher Buckley, voted for Obama. In the end, McCain received almost 4 million less votes than Bush did in 2006. Doesn’t that suggest that moderate Republican candidates may have trouble raising money, retaining moderates, and generating the enthusiasm from the Republican base that will be needed to win? #15) When the Democratic Party was out of power, the party moved to the left, not to the center. They obstructed the GOP at every opportunity, put hard-core left-wingers in charge of everything, and ran an extremely liberal candidate in 2008. Granted, they also had moderate Democrats that they ran in states and districts that leaned red, but those people are almost completely locked out of power and their agenda is largely ignored. Since that strategy worked so well for the Democrats, doesn’t it make more sense for the GOP to pursue the same strategy instead of continuing the move to the center that has done so much damage to the party over the last two elections?

You can access the complete column on-line here:

Fifteen Questions For People Who Say The GOP Should Become More Moderate
John Hawkins
TownHall.com
November 14, 2008

Washington Post Confesses To Biased Reporting During The 2008 Presidential Campaign

The one thing about making an accusation against anyone is that those who are doing the accusing are under the requirement to prove the accusation. However, a confession requires no such proof at all.

Washington Post ombudsman Deborah Howell has released just such a confession. From her November 9th column:

The Post provided a lot of good campaign coverage, but readers have been consistently critical of the lack of probing issues coverage and what they saw as a tilt toward Democrat Barack Obama. My surveys, which ended on Election Day, show that they are right on both counts. … Bill Hamilton, assistant managing editor for politics, said, “There are a lot of things I wish we’d been able to do in covering this campaign, but we had to make choices about what we felt we were uniquely able to provide our audiences both in Washington and on the Web. I don’t at all discount the importance of issues, but we had a larger purpose, to convey and explain a campaign that our own David Broder described as the most exciting he has ever covered, a narrative that unfolded until the very end. I think our staff rose to the occasion.”

As Bill Hamilton’s comments show, this was not an accident. It was a deliberate decision made by the editorial staff of the Post itself. The “larger purpose” he alludes to is getting Barack Obama elected.

More:

The op-ed page ran far more laudatory opinion pieces on Obama, 32, than on Sen. John McCain, 13. There were far more negative pieces about McCain, 58, than there were about Obama, 32, and Obama got the editorial board’s endorsement. The Post has several conservative columnists, but not all were gung-ho about McCain. Stories and photos about Obama in the news pages outnumbered those devoted to McCain. Reporters, photographers and editors found the candidacy of Obama, the first African American major-party nominee, more newsworthy and historic.

So, the Post was more interested in making “history” than they were in presenting a fair, objective and unbiased report of the news. That doesn’t surprise me, but I think many people were done a huge disservice by it.

This little tidbit is very telling:

But Obama deserved tougher scrutiny than he got, especially of his undergraduate years, his start in Chicago and his relationship with Antoin “Tony” Rezko, who was convicted this year of influence-peddling in Chicago. The Post did nothing on Obama’s acknowledged drug use as a teenager.

Note that last sentence. It is not an accusation coming from a right-of-center blogger. It is a confession coming from a left-of-center publication.

And this:

One gaping hole in coverage involved Joe Biden, Obama’s running mate. When Gov. Sarah Palin was nominated for vice president, reporters were booking the next flight to Alaska. Some readers thought The Post went over Palin with a fine-tooth comb and neglected Biden. They are right; it was a serious omission.

Those of us who engage in politcal research and analysis would do very well to remember this in 2010 and 2012 as well as keeping it in the backs of our minds over the next four years as the Post reports on President Obama’s policies and actions. If they did such a deliberate hatchet job during the campaign, what are they going to deliberately mislead us on during an Obama Administration?

Be sure to send this post and the following link to all your friends. We need to get this information out and spread it as far as possible.

You can access the complete column on-line here:

An Obama Tilt In Campaign Coverage
Deborah Howell
The Washington Post
November 9, 2008

The Cowardly Character Assassination Of Sarah Palin

So, those idiots in the McCain camp who started those rumors about Sarah Palin have made their mark. All they have done is awakened a sleeping giant. Michelle Malkin explains why over at Town Hall:

Let’s assume for a moment that the McCain rumormongers are telling the truth about Palin (and I don’t believe they are). Who would it damn more: Palin, or McCain and his vetters, who greenlighted her for the vice presidential nomination? Don’t need a fancy Ivy League degree to figure that one out. In introducing her to America, McCain praised her independence and backbone: She “stands up for what’s right, and she doesn’t let anyone tell her to sit down.” The inside snipers are now roasting her for that very attribute — redefined as “going rogue” — because she had the nerve to try to schedule media interviews on her own. The nerve of her! Palin’s response to the campaign fragging? At a late Wednesday night airport press conference in Anchorage, immediately upon landing home after the election defeat, she smiled cheerfully. The Alaska governor shrugged off the “foolish things” said by the McCain saboteurs, and simply said, “It’s politics. … It’s rough and tumble and you’ve got to have a thick skin just like I’ve got.”

She certainly has thicker skin than the cowards who hid behind the cloak of anonimity and started sniping at her. And the attacks against Sarah Palin have come from the most usual places:

Hollywood savaged Palin. Journalists mocked her. Liberal blogs slimed her. Opponents cursed her, Photoshopped her, hacked her e-mail, hanged her in effigy, called her bigot, Bible-thumper and bimbo, and attacked her husband and children. But nothing Palin endured during the election season compares to the treatment she’s receiving from these backstabbing blabbermouths who worked on the same campaign she poured herself into over the last three months. Sarah Palin worked her heart out. She energized tens of thousands to come out when they would have otherwise stayed home. She touched countless families. I didn’t agree with everything she said on the campaign trail. But she vigorously defended the Second Amendment and the sanctity of life more eloquently in practice than any of the educated conservative aristocracy. And she did it all with a tirelessness and an infectious optimism that defied the shameless, bottomless attempts by elites in both parties to bring her and her family down.

The attacks were relentless and incredibly sexist and chauvanistic. Libs will never accept that a strong, independent woman can achieve success without the agenda driven help of a leftist organization. Thus, they launched the largest, sexist smear campaign in history. And the idiot insiders of the McCain camp have jumped on the bandwagon.

But let’s look at what McCain himself wrote:

“The most important thing I have learned, from my parents, from teachers, from my faith, from many good people I have been blessed to know, and from the lives of people whose stories we have included in this book,” John McCain wrote in “Character Is Destiny,” “is to want what they had, integrity, and to feel the sting of my conscience when I have risked it for some selfish reason.” John McCain not only failed to make that message stick with the electorate, he apparently couldn’t persuade his own staff to heed his advice and practice what he preached.

And unless the GOP comes out and condemns this leftist-style character assasination of a great American like Sarah Palin, they will not get one thin dime from me in any kind of contribution. Further, those engaged in such a dishonorable action should be purged from the GOP forever. I ask that all true Conservatives adopt the same stance and send a loud and clear message to the RNC.

You can access the complete article on-line here:

The Cowardly Character Assassination Of Sarah Palin
Michelle Malkin
TownHall.com
November 7, 2008

2008 Presidential Candidate Talking Point Comparison

Pass this along to everyone you know, whether Democrat or Republican.  This is a comprehensive comparison of the positions that both John McCain and Barack Obama have on the issues.  This is not about rhetoric or campaign slogans, it is about the reality of the choice we face next Tuesday.
 

 

ISSUE		JOHN McCAIN	BARACK OBAMA
Favors new drilling offshore US		Yes	No
Will appoint judges who interpret the law not make it		Yes	No
Served in the US Armed Forces		Yes	No
Amount of time served in the US Senate		22 YEARS	173 DAYS
Will institute a socialized national health care plan		No	Yes
Supports abortion throughout the pregnancy		No	Yes
Would pull troops out ofIraq Immediately		No	Yes
Supports gun ownership rights		Yes	No
Supports homosexual marriage		No	Yes
Proposed programs will mean a huge tax increase		No	Yes
Voted against making English the official language		No	Yes
Voted to give Social Security benefits to illegals		No	Yes
CAPITAL GAINS TAX
MCCAIN	0% on home sales up to $500,000 per home (couples). McCain does not propose any change in existing home sales income tax.
OBAMA	28% on profit from ALL home sales.  (How does this affect you? If you sell your home and make a profit, you will pay 28% of your gain on taxes. If you are heading toward retirement and would like to down-size your home or move into a retirement community, 28% of the money you make from your home will go to taxes. This proposal will adversely affect the elderly who are counting on the income from their homes as part of their retirement income.)
DIVIDEND TAX
MCCAIN	15% (no change)
OBAMA	39.6% - (How will this affect you? If you have any money invested in stock market, IRA, mutual funds, college funds, life insurance, retirement accounts, or anything that pays or reinvests dividends, you will now be paying nearly 40% of the money earned on taxes if Obama becomes president. The experts predict that ‘Higher tax rates on dividends and capital gains would crash the stock market, yet do absolutely nothing to cut the deficit.’)
INCOME TAX
MCCAIN (no changes)	Single making 30K – tax $4,500 Single making 50K – tax $12,500 Single making 75K – tax $18,750 Married making 60K- tax $9,000 Married making 75K – tax $18,750 Married making 125K – tax $31,250
OBAMA (reversion to pre-Bush tax cuts)	Single making 30K – tax $8,400 Single making 50K – tax $14,000 Single making 75K – tax $23,250 Married making 60K – tax $16,800 Married making 75K – tax $21,000 Married making 125K – tax $38,750 Under Obama, your taxes could almost double!
INHERITANCE TAX
MCCAIN	- 0% (No change, Bush repealed this tax)
OBAMA	Restore the inheritance tax Many families have lost businesses, farms, ranches, and homes that have been in their families for generations because they could not afford the inheritance tax. Those willing their assets to loved ones will only lose them to these taxes.
NEW TAXES PROPOSED BY OBAMA
New government taxes proposed on homes that are more than 2400 square feet.  New gasoline taxes (as if gas weren’t high enough already) New taxes on natural resources consumption (heating gas, water, electricity)  New taxes on retirement accounts, and last but not least….New taxes to pay for socialized medicine so we can receive the same level of medical care as other third-world countries!!!

Ever notice how Obama constantly claims that no one under a certain income level will see their taxes increase?  (Sometimes Barack says $250,000 per year, sometimes $200,000 per year.  Biden says $150,000 per year and Bill Richardson recently said $120,000 per year.)  What they have not been telling you is that under an Obama administration, the Bush Tax Cuts will be allowed to expire and everyone will see their taxes go up, many people will see their tax bills double.

You can verify the above at the following websites:

CNN Money News

CNN Election News

Fox News Election Coverage

AARP Tax Analysis

Washington Post Obama Fact Checker

Washington Post McCain Fact Checker

Democrats Getting More Violent, Shoot Up House In Florida

It happened back in 2004 and it is happening again, but you will never hear about it from the MSM unless the party affiliations were reversed.

A homeowner in Florida was targeted because he is a McCain supporter. From the local News Channel 6 in Seminole County:

The home of a Central Florida Republican headquarters manager was shot up and damaged over his support of Sen. John McCain, the man told police. Rog Coverely said several pellets pierced his Longwood home. Coverely showed several spiderwebbed-holes in the front windows of his home. … “All I can tell you is this, I have a very good relationship with my neighbors,” Coverely said. “I mow my lawn. The only thing that has changed is I have two McCain signs in my front yard.” Coverely said he has taken about 300 calls concerning stolen or vandalized McCain signs in the area. “It says this campaign is getting vicious,” Coverely said. Coverely said it appears Democrats are becoming more aggressive in the county. “I wouldn’t say slipping but I would say the Democrats have become far more aggressive in Seminole County because it is such a heavy Republican area,” Coverely said.

I thought the Democrats proclaimed themselves the partry of “peace” and “non-violence.”

You can access the complete story on-line here:

Republican HQ Manager’s Home Shot Up Over McCain Signs
Local6.com
October 22, 2008

The Dumbing Down Of America: John Stossel Highlights Why Indoctrination In Our Schools Is So Devestating

One thing that we bloggers do which, by and large, the MSM does not, is we reference previous news stories and blog entries to give a greater understanding of how certain issues affect us or to show that those issues have a greater effect than is generally acknowledged. That is why John Stossel’s column about the ignorance and lack of knowledge demonstrated by certain young voters reminded me of something I posted several weeks ago.

The National Education Association held a conference during which they hammered out their agenda for what they thought should be taught to children in public schools. It was quite a long list, but what is important to note are the things that were not included. Things like mathematics, history, science, reading and writing. No, instead, they proposed that children of all ages be indoctrinated in other topics like same-sex relationships, politics of global warming (not the science, the politcs as prescribed by Al Gore), political activism, gender politics, affirmative action quotas and the NEA also proposes that only state-licensed teacher do the indoctrinating so that parents are cut out of the loop as much as possible.

The National Education Association (NEA) Spells Out Its Policies
84rules
August 6, 2008

Well, John Stossel’s column, which really exposes the lack of knowledge demonstrated by kids coming out of our public schools today, shows exactly what effect the efforts of the NEA and other leftist teacher’s groups are having. He talked with some of those potential voters and got some very troubling responses to his questions. From ABC News:

Some people were knowledgeable. “There are two senators from each state, making a total of 100,” one young voter said. Another knew that “the Bill of Rights is the first 10 amendments to the Constitution.” But many of the young voters didn’t seem very informed. Some didn’t know how many states are in the U.S. or how many senators there are. Few could explain Roe v. Wade, the landmark Supreme Court ruling upholding abortion rights. “Roe v. Wade is segregation maybe?” one new voter guessed. Another asked: “Was Roe v. Wade where we declared bankruptcy?” And still another wondered, “That was about a black person and a white person?”

How important those history lessons and civics classes seem now.

And it wasn’t just the kids at rock concerts:

Maybe it’s not fair to pick on kids at a rock concert. So “20/20″ moved on to our nation’s capital and spoke to prospective voters on the Washington Mall. Certainly people there will know more, won’t they? People were shown some pictures of prominent Americans, like John McCain and Barack Obama. Everyone recognized Obama and McCain. And maybe half the people knew who Sarah Palin was. But Joe Biden? Most didn’t recognize the Democratic vice presidential nominee. Few recognized Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, yet almost everyone recognized television’s Judge Judy. “Maybe 75 percent of people can name the vice president. … The public’s knowledge of politics is shockingly low,” economist Bryan Caplan said. In his book “The Myth of the Rational Voter,” Caplan argues that people who know little about our government ought to stay home on Election Day. But aren’t Americans always told it’s their civic duty to vote?

There has been a major push for the last 30 years to dumb-down America and that push has come from leftists groups like the NEA. The effect is starting to show. Students’ heads are being filled with alot of knowledge that is utterly useless to them, but useful to those who would like to control them.

We need to be taking a closer look at what our teachers are teaching our children and begin holding them accountable for failing to educate. Of course, this means that the NEA will come to their defense and demand even more indoctrination, but we have to stand firm against them too. Our children are too precious a resource to waste on the political agendas of the NEA and teacher’s unions.

The end result will be voters who think there are 57 states and elected officials who pal around with domestic terrorists.

You can access the complete article on-line here:

Maybe It’s Your Civic Duty Not To Vote
John Stossel
ABC News
October 9, 2008

Barack Obama Would Grant Citizenship To 12 Million Illegals

How would a Democrat president who has raised taxes, opened our borders, been soft on terrorism and is now presiding over an economy heading into depression, maintain power in the next election? Simple, he and his rubberstamp Democrat-controlled Congress, will grant amnesty and then citizenship to a voting bloc of 12 million illegal aliens.

Sound preposterous? Before you start saying that, consider the following:

A Barack Obama administration would be a “nation killer” if Democrats attain a “supermajority” in the Senate, a leading conservative figure on immigration warned Tuesday. Obama also has said he wants to make the 12 million illegal aliens in the U.S. citizens as soon as he can — an amnesty program that would make them legally entitled to full government benefits, including Social Security and health care. William Gheen, president of the Raleigh, N.C.-based Americans for Legal Immigration PAC (ALIPAC), says Obama’s plan would make it politically impossible to secure America’s borders. He describes Obama and a new Democratic Congress as a “worst-case scenario” for border and immigration security. “I would paint that scenario as a nation killer,” Gheen, a former campaign consultant and an outspoken advocate for stronger border control policies, tells Newsmax. “I would expect amnesty to pass within a year. That means in the next presidential election, you will have a new voting bloc of 15 million illegal aliens who turn into voters.

And the reason we can be so confident in that statement is:

As a state senator in Illinois, for example, Obama co-sponsored that state’s version of the DREAM Act, which allowed youngsters in the country illegally to receive in-state tuition. He later supported similar legislation in the U.S. Senate. … Obama, who tends to dismiss discussion of his pro-immigration positions as politically motivated “distractions,” has demonstrated no such reticence to expand entitlements for illegals. Specifically: Obama’s plan for universal health care would include coverage for illegal immigrants, according to political strategist and Newsmax columnist Dick Morris. Morris has warned that covering illegals “adds dramatically” to the cost of universal health care. In March, Obama voted to table a Senate amendment that would support the withdrawal of federal assistance “to sanctuary cities that ignore the immigration laws of the United States and create safe havens for illegal aliens and potential terrorists.” McCain did not cast a vote. Obama supported the McCain-Kennedy immigration reform legislation that was defeated in 2006. Since then, McCain has taken the position that securing the borders must precede immigration reform. Obama continues to support a process to “bring people out of the shadows” and eventually obtain legal status (at which point they would be eligible for the federally mandated benefits available to anyone, such as Social Security). Obama also calls for enhanced border security. The Democratic candidate for president supports, in principle, providing state-funded welfare benefits to legal immigrants. While a state senator, Obama supported allocating state funds to provide Medicaid coverage to some legal immigrants, according to OnTheIssues.org. Obama has supported increasing the number of work visas issued each year, such as the H1-B visa, especially for applicants with specialized skills. According to OnTheIssues.org, Obama co-sponsored, along with New York Sen. Hillary Clinton, a bill that would provide federal funding to help states provide health care and education to non-U.S. citizens. Obama strongly supports encouraging American children to become bilingual and, at one point in the campaign, appeared to suggest it should be mandatory. In June, he voted against a Senate provision that would declare English the national language of the United States. McCain voted for it.

If these illegals are granted amnesty and then citizenship, it would turn the United States into the economic hell-hole that is today’s Mexico.

You can access the complete article on-line here:

Obama Wants 12 Million Illegals To Get Citizenship
David A Patten
NewsMax.com
October 22, 2008

John David Powell: Don’t Underestimate Race And Trust In Choosing A President

I just got a hold of this article. It is a gem that contains nuggets of wisdom that will go a long way to helping people see clearly what is happening in the politcal arena right now and what will happen in the years to come.

John David Powell takes a look at a couple of the issues we have been facing in this election and how the Obama campaign responded to them compared to how other campaigns responded in the past.

Let’s start with playing the race card:

[T]oday, less than two weeks from Election Day, it’s easy to understand why some non-black voters don’t want others to know they do not support Obama. Who can blame them when any criticism or questioning of the candidate of change results in immediate old-school accusations of racism?

I’ve even had some comments left on certain posts of this blog accusing me of racism despite the fact that the issue of race was never brought up in those postings. Just the fact that I am opposed to a socialist candidate was enough justification for commenters to bring out the race card and a braod-brushed, unsubstantiated charge. As Dustin Hoffman said in Hook: “Bad form.”

And we always seem to come back to domestic terrorist William Ayers:

And that brings us to the second factor, the issue of trust. Obama never really condemns the past and current political views of fellow Chicagoan Bill Ayers, pointing out, instead, that Ayers’ terrorist activities occurred when Obama was 8 years old, and, therefore, have no connection to Obama today. If that’s true, then Obama’s position negates the argument of some black people who push for reparations because their ancestors were slaves. That’s because slavery occurred before those living today were born, and, therefore, has no connection to anyone today.

That is a dead-on-target shot that the Obama campaign cannot dodge. If Barack Obama cannot be held accountable for being a friend and business partner to a man who committed terrorist acts when Obama was 8 years old, then neither can white people in general be held accountable for something that occurred long before any of them were even born. To hold such a double standard seems to be standard for the Democrats though. They hold a low standard for themselves and high standard for everyone else.

But what is Obama hiding by not being completely forthcoming with his past? And what is he afraid will happen if his past is brought up and scrutinized by the MSM? He certainly can’t be afraid of losing the election. Powell looks at this too:

But Citizen Obama does not fully trust the American people to know his full and true relationship with Ayers, because he does not trust the American people to look at his life and accept him as our president. The American people knew George W. Bush grew up around such neo-con luminaries as Don Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney, but we elected him twice to the presidency. The American people knew Bush was an average college student, and at one time was what some would call a drunkard who even lost his driver’s license for drunk driving, but we elected him twice to the presidency. The American people knew Bush was an unsuccessful businessman and person not glib or quick on his feet, but we elected him twice to the presidency. The American people only know about Obama what Obama wants us to know. And mistrust in the judgment of the American people may tip enough votes to McCain, a candidate the American people know well.

Yes, we knew more about George Bush in 2000 than we know about Barack Obama in 2008. We also know more about John McCain than we know about Barack Obama because John McCain is not afraid of people looking into his past.

That’s trust.

You can access the complete column on-line here:

Don’t Underestimate Race And Trust In Choosing A President
John David Powell
MensNewsDaily.com
October 21, 2008

Hypocrisy Of The Leftist Media And The Obama Campaign

So, now that Joe Wurzelbacher has forced Barack Obama into admitting that he is a socialist, what does the media do? They attack Joe. But that is not the crux of this post.

Charles Krauthammer has penned a column that pretty much pegs Old Media and the Dems in general for their hypocritical stances on stories relating to the campaign.

From his column at Town Hall:

Let me get this straight. A couple of agitated yahoos in a rally of thousands yell something offensive and incendiary, and John McCain and Sarah Palin are not just guilty by association — with total strangers, mind you — but worse: guilty according to The New York Times of “race-baiting and xenophobia.” But should you bring up Barack Obama’s real associations — 20 years with Jeremiah Wright, working on two foundations and distributing money with William Ayers, citing the raving Michael Pfleger as one who helps him keep his moral compass (Chicago Sun-Times, April 2004) and the long-standing relationship with the left-wing vote-fraud specialist ACORN — you have crossed the line into illegitimate guilt by association.

And it isn’t just what the libs are reading into these situations. Sometimes, they make things up knowing that other libs are going to be gullible enough to believe it.

Remember McCain’s Berlin/celebrity ad that showed a shot of Paris Hilton? An appalling attempt to exploit white hostility at the idea of black men “becoming sexually involved with white women,” fulminated New York Times columnist Bob Herbert. He took to TV to denounce McCain’s exhumation of that most vile prejudice, pointing out McCain’s gratuitous insertion in the ad of “two phallic symbols,” the Washington Monument and the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Except that Herbert was entirely delusional. There was no Washington Monument. There was no Leaning Tower. Just photographs seen in every newspaper in the world of Barack Obama’s Berlin rally in the setting he himself had chosen, Berlin’s Victory Column.

These charges of racism and other bogus claims are getting tiresome. One wonders where Old Media was when Obama supporters sported tee-shirts that referred to Hillary Clinton in derogatory terms. And where are the media charges of sexism whenever Obama supporters sport tee-shirts that read “Sarah Palin is a c*nt?”

Nowhere to be found. Old Media is so deep in the tank for Obama that you wonder why they haven’t drowned yet.

But, the libs are attacking Democrats too.

On Tuesday night, Rachel Maddow of MSNBC and Jonathan Alter of Newsweek fell over themselves agreeing that the “political salience” of the Republican attack on ACORN is, yes, its unstated appeal to racial prejudice. This about an organization that is being accused of voter registration fraud in about a dozen states. In Nevada, the investigating secretary of state is a Democrat. Is he playing the race card too?

In essence, here is what has happened:

Obama has a relationship with domestic terrorist William Ayers: Ols Media ignores it.
Obama has a relationship with racist, America-hating Reverend Wright: Old Media ignores it.
Obama has a relationship with scandal-ridden ACORN: Old Media ignores it.

McCain points out Obama’s relationship with domestic terrorist William Ayers: Old Media accuses McCain of being racist.
Talk Radio and New Media bring to light Reverend Wright’s anti-American speeches: Old Media accuses Talk Radio and New Media of being racist.
Republicans point out the relationship between Obama and ACORN: Old Media accuses the Republicans of being racist.

Notice the theme here? The only ones who are bringing up race are the libs and the Dems.

I don’t know about the rest of you, but I am getting really tired of these false accusations being thrown around.

The parting shot shows exactly how Obama has been playing the race card:

Just weeks ago, in Springfield, Mo., and elsewhere, he warned darkly that George Bush and John McCain were going to try to frighten you by saying that, among other scary things, Obama has “a funny name” and “doesn’t look like all those other presidents on those dollar bills.” McCain has never said that, nor anything like that. When asked at the time to produce one instance of McCain deploying race, the Obama campaign could not. Yet here was Obama firing a pre-emptive charge of racism against a man who had not indulged in it. An extraordinary rhetorical feat, and a dishonorable one. What makes this all the more dismaying is that it comes from Barack Obama, who has consistently presented himself as a healer, a man of a new generation above and beyond race, the man who would turn the page on the guilt-tripping grievance politics of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton.

That’s right. When confronted with the truth, the Obama campaign couldn’t show any evidence of racism at all.

You can access the complete column on-line here:

Obama’s Betrayed Message
Charles Krauthammer
TownHall.com
October 17, 2008

Memo To Chris Buckley: Don’t Let The Door Hit Ya …

… where the good Lord split ya!

I know. I should probably be thinking about the story of the Prodigal Son or something like that, but Chris Buckley didn’t just squander his inheritance, he tossed it under the bus forever. He will never again be trusted as a Conservative (or Libertarian) simply because he thrust, not a dagger, but a machete in the backs of his former fellow Conservatives.

And he didn’t do it lightly. He was on Hannity a few weeks ago and during the interview he mentioned to Hannity that he might end up voting for Barack Obama. His reasons? He didn’t like McCain. He didn’t know who John McCain was.

He even said as much in a Daily Beast column he wrote to endorse Barack Obama and that excoriates John McCain.

A once-first class temperament has become irascible and snarly; his positions change, and lack coherence; he makes unrealistic promises, such as balancing the federal budget “by the end of my first term.” Who, really, believes that? Then there was the self-dramatizing and feckless suspension of his campaign over the financial crisis. His ninth-inning attack ads are mean-spirited and pointless. And finally, not to belabor it, there was the Palin nomination. What on earth can he have been thinking?

Well, Chris, McCain might have been thinking about something you wrote earlier this year for the New York Times:

And yet the sum of Mr. McCain seems (to me, anyway) far greater than the parts. How many elections offer such an inspired biography as his? And who among “us” … would not sleep soundly knowing that the war hero was on the job calculating how to dispatch more Islamic fanatics to their rendezvous with 72 virgins, without an interlude of waterboarding, while in his spare time vetoing Senator Cochran’s latest earmark.

Sounds to me like Chris has changed, and not for the better. In the fit of a temper tantrum he has decided to embrace a socialist who has admitted that he will work to redistribute wealth a la Karl Marx, has worked with unrepentent domestic terrorists, attended a racist, America-hating church for 20 years, and worked his way up through the corrupt Chicago political machine.

Given all of that, here is what Chris has to say about Barack Obama:

As for Senator Obama: He has exhibited throughout a “first-class temperament,” pace Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.’s famous comment about FDR. As for his intellect, well, he’s a Harvard man, though that’s sure as heck no guarantee of anything, these days. Vietnam was brought to you by Harvard and (one or two) Yale men. As for our current adventure in Mesopotamia, consider this lustrous alumni roster. Bush 43: Yale. Rumsfeld: Princeton. Paul Bremer: Yale and Harvard. What do they all have in common? Andover! The best and the brightest. I’ve read Obama’s books, and they are first-rate. He is that rara avis, the politician who writes his own books. Imagine. He is also a lefty. I am not. I am a small-government conservative who clings tenaciously and old-fashionedly to the idea that one ought to have balanced budgets.

Balanced budgets? Has Chris ever read any of Obama’s economic plans? The social programs are going to send our deficit through the roof!

And as for Chris’ contention that he himself is a “small government Conservative,” I am sure you can see how transparent that claim is given that he in endorsing a large-government socialist!

More:

If he raises taxes and throws up tariff walls and opens the coffers of the DNC to bribe-money from the special interest groups against whom he has (somewhat disingenuously) railed during the campaign trail, then he will almost certainly reap a whirlwind that will make Katrina look like a balmy summer zephyr.

And somehow Chris has naïvely missed the fact this is exactly what Obama and the Democrat-controlled Congress intend to do!

Chris actually has the audacity to paraphrase Ronald Reagan by writing: “I haven’t left the Republican Party. It left me.” He even went so far as to say that Reagan was a “real Conservative.”

Real Conservatives don’t endorse tax-hiking, large government socialists, Chris. In fact, the man you are endorsing for president represents everything that Ronald Reagan stood against! What twisted logic did you follow in order to invoke the words of Ronald Reagan so far out of context? What blinders do you have on that prevent you from seeing the fact that you just abandoned all of your Conservative principles in one single column?

Chris, I can only say “Good-bye” to you and hope that we never have to deal with your naïveté again. I also hope you find a nice new home among all those left-over hippies from the 60′s and that they don’t make you pay too much for whatever it is that you have been smoking.

And please, don’t let the door hit you on the way out.

You can access the complete articles on-line here:

The Manchurian Conservative
Chris Buckley
New York Times
February 19, 2008

Sorry, Dad, I’m Voting For Obama
Chris Buckley
The Daily Beast
October 10, 2008

How Much Will Your 401k Be Worth In The Next Four Years?

While Barack Obama is promising a tax cut to a majority of Americans, the truth is that his economic policies will send us spiraling into a deep recession if not a depression. One of the ways to see this clearly is to look at your 401k or other savings that you may have for retirement.

Americans For Tax Reform (ATR) has a 401k calculator that predicts what your 401k would look like under four different tax schemes. There is the Barack Obama plan, the John McCain plan, the House Dems’ plan and the ATR Fantasy plan. Check it out:

How Does Their Plan Impact Your 401k?

If you know the value of your 401k, enter it in the box and then click “calculate.” You’ll see how much the value will go up or down as a result.

As bad as Barack Obama’s plan is, the plan presented by Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and the Congressional Democrats is actually worse. As your 401k goes down, so do corporate earnings which means less money for investment and less money for job creation. In fact, if the government takes away too much money in taxes, jobs will be lost and the economy goes even further down the tubes.

To find out what the ATR Fantasy plan is go to the following website:

Americans For Tax Reform

Voting Against Obama Does NOT Make One A Racist

One thing that infuriates me more than anything else is when someone falsely accuses me of something. Most recently, I, and several million other Conservatives, have been accused of being racist because we are not going to vote for a black candidate.

Well, here’s a news flash folks. I am not a racist. I am voting against Barack Obama because he is a leftist Socialist and his policies will wreck the American economy. There is absolutely nothing racial in that point of view at all. So, please dispense with the false accusations and save them for the real cases of racism, okay?

The new charges of racism stem from the fact that Barack Obama has a relationship with domestic terrorist William Ayers. Apparently, the Obama camp wants us to take the stance that mentioning this relationship is somehow racist.

Glenn Beck penned a column that captures my feelings on the subject. Writing for CNN, he notes the following about the Obama campaign and Democrats in general:

The defense on Ayers from the Obama camp is that they’re not friends — Ayers was “a guy who lives in my neighborhood,” as Obama said. This strikes me as a strange argument from the same campaign that ran Spanish-language ads attempting to disparage McCain by highlighting his “Republican friends” like Rush Limbaugh. Besides the fact that Rush isn’t a terrorist and had to be completely taken out of context in the attempt to smear him — Limbaugh and McCain are best known for their adversarial relationship. Rush has spent the better part of a decade mocking him, most recently on the specific stance that was the focus of the commercial, immigration reform. If Rush qualifies as McCain’s friend, then William Ayers might as well be Barack Obama’s fiancé. But as The Associated Press claimed, even mentioning the association with Ayers, as Sarah Palin did in a speech earlier in the week, signifies a hidden “racial tinge.” Is anyone else getting tired of this? Any and every time a question of Obama’s history or record is asked, there is always someone to blame it on racism. Remember, William Ayers is a pasty white guy like me. Shouldn’t the fact that Palin is criticizing a white terrorist show that it’s not his color — but his terrorism — that she’s not fond of? Instead, the AP tries to make the case that voters will think Obama is “not like us” since “terrorists are envisioned as dark-skinned radical Muslims.” Right, because nothing dredges up visions of radical Muslims with box-cutters like a guy named Bill. … Charges of racism have even entered the financial meltdown. One recent criticism by conservatives has surrounded the Community Reinvestment Act. This act, passed in 1977 under Jimmy Carter and then strengthened by Bill Clinton, pressured mortgage companies to lend to those with poor credit and lower income. You might think that putting the government’s endorsement of the loosening of lending standards under the microscope in the middle of a global financial crisis would be a no-brainer. Well, not to House Financial Services Committee chair Barney Frank: “The bizarre notion that the Community Reinvestment Act … somehow is the cause of the whole problem, [conservatives] don’t mind that. … They’re aware that the affordable-housing goals of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac [and] the Community Reinvestment Act [aim to help] poor people. And let’s be honest, the fact that some poor people are black doesn’t hurt either from their standpoint.” I guess when you’re on record in July of this year saying “I think this is a case where Fannie and Freddie are fundamentally sound, that they are not in danger of going under,” the only thing you can do is play the race card.

Voting against Obama is not racist. It’s American.

You can access the complete column on-line here:

Commentary: Voting Against Obama Doesn’t Make You A Racist
Glenn Beck
CNN
October 9, 2008

John Murtagh, Survivor Of A Weathermen Attack, Gives First Hand Account, Questions Obama’s Judgement

I honestly don’t know how the newsreaders at NBC, CBS, ABC, and CNN are able to show thier faces in public without feeling any shame at what they are doing in this election. They have done everything they can to bring down Sarah Palin just for the simple fact that she is a woman, yet they still refuse to investigate the true relationship between Barack Obama and the domestic terrorist William Ayers.

Maggie Gallagher of the New York Post has a good write-up which includes a first-hand account of a man who survived an attack by the Weathermen back in 1970. From her story:

When John Murtagh was 9 years old, Bill Ayers’ friends tried to kill him. “I remember my mother’s pulling me from the tangle of sheets and running to the kitchen where my father stood. Through the large windows overlooking the yard, all we could see was the bright glow of flames below. We didn’t leave our burning house for fear of who might be waiting outside,” wrote Murtagh recently in City Journal. It wasn’t personal. John’s dad was a judge presiding over a trial of some Black Panthers. John still remembers the red graffiti on the sidewalk the next morning: “Free the Panther 21; The Viet Cong Have Won; Kill the Pigs.” As best he recalls, Bernardine Dohrn, who’s now Ayers’ wife, first claimed credit for bombing John’s home in 1970.

And Obama’s association with these terrorists are not just associations, they are alliances.

Read on:

In the Chicago establishment, which embraced former terrorists like Ayers and his wife, Obama was encouraged to look beyond the obvious – the lawlessness, the attacks on cops, judges, army outposts – to embrace larger goals. What were these goals? How does Obama come to continue to associate with Ayers – a man who can’t bring himself to say to John Murtagh or to John’s mother or any other kin of the attacked: I’m sorry. I was wrong. It was a terrible thing to do.

Yes, this is the same William Ayers who served with Barack Obama on the Annenberg Challange and who hosted Barack Obama’s first political meeting in Ayers’ living room.

And yet, Obama still clings to the overt lie that Ayers’ was “just some guy” in the neighborhood?

More:

Obama’s campaign is busy fudging. His top political adviser claims Obama just didn’t know Ayers’ history when they first met. … “If that’s true, Obama has to be the dumbest man who ever graduated from Columbia University and Harvard Law School,” snorts Murtagh. “I don’t buy that at all.” Murtagh believes the relationship between the Obamas, Ayers and Dohrn goes back 30 years, to Michelle Obama’s time at Sidley Austin, a law firm that also employed Dohrn. Murtagh doesn’t blame Obama for what Ayers and his friends did. He blames Obama for picking a man like Ayers as a friend and mentor – and then covering up the friendship.

If Obama is questioning the ethics of his opponent and the ethics of the outgoing administration, then Obama should demonstrate his own ethical standards and admit the truth about his alliances with Ayers.

This whole affair makes John McCain’s exoneration by Keating Five investigator Robert S. Bennett look tame by comparison.

You can access the original story on-line here:

Terror Victim’s Questions For Obama
Maggie Gallagher
New York Post
October 8, 2008

Keating Five Investigator Robert S. Bennett On John McCain’s Involvement

Seems to be alot of misinformation being spread around by the Dems concerning John McCain’s involvement with the Keating Five. Well, the best place to look for the truth of the matter would be from the man who actually conducted the investigation and submitted his report to the Senate Committee.

That would be Robert S. Bennett, a Democrat who wrote about his experiences in a book entitled In The Ring: The Trials Of A Washington Lawyer which was published by Random House in 2008. Here is the relevent excerpt from pages 133-134:

“At the completion of my investigation, I filed my report with the committee. I recommended that no further action be taken against Senators McCain and Glenn principally because once they learned that there was a criminal referral, they stopped aggressively doing Keating’s bidding with the regulators.” “After reviewing my report, the committee voted on October 23, 1990, to hold a public adjudicatory fact-finding hearing in the matter as to all five senators. This was perhaps the first time the recommendation of a special counsel not to charge a senator was rejected. This was pure politics as the Democrats on the committee did not want to cut McCain loose so that only Democrats would remain in the proceedings. If Senator McCain was not going to be cut loose, in retaliation the Republicans were going to keep Senator Glenn in the proceedings. McCain was the victim of politics, and poor Glenn was held captive to the decision on McCain. So much for nonpartisanship.” “Although the public airing of the factual details helped confirm why Senators McCain and Glenn should be exonerated of ethics charges, it hurt DeConcini, Cranston, and Riegle.”

So, for those of you clinging onto the lie that Sen. McCain was never exonerated for his involvement, the truth is that Bennett himself, the man who investigated the whole thing, said: “Senators McCain and Glenn should be exonerated of ethics charges.”

Also note that two of those former Senators, Riegle and DeConcini, have now endorsed Obama.

You can access the complete on-line entry here:

Democratic Counsel Robert Bennett On John McCain And Keating Five: ‘Pure Politics’
Standard NewsWire
October 6, 2008

Governor Palin Attacks Obama-Ayers Connection, Obama Campaign Responds With Misleading Smears

For weeks now, the Conservatives and Republicans have been telling John McCain to take the gloves off. Well, Governor Sarah Palin did just that this past weekend and revived the debate over Barack Obama’s association with domestic terrorist William Ayers. The association is real and deserves to be looked into. But the Obama campaign came out with a response that was nothing short of misleading, if not completely irresponsible.

Here is what Rep. Rahm Emanuel, said in response on CNN:

“If we are going to go down this road _ you know, Barack Obama was eight years old, somehow responsible for Bill Ayers,” he said. “At 58, John McCain was associating with Charles Keating.” “If we really want to talk who is associating with who, we will,” Emanuel said. “The American people will lose in that transaction.”

No, we will not lose. We will gain a clear understanding of exactly who Barack Obama is and what his true beliefs are.

William Ayers is an unrepentent terrorist who planted bombs at the Pentagon and local Police Stations back in the 70′s with a domestic terrorist organization called the Weathermen. That is a fact.

Barack Obama worked with Ayers in the Chicago Annenberg Project and even launched a political campaign from Ayer’s living room but still refers to him as “just a guy in my neighborhood.” We need to know more about the relationship between the Democrat Presidential Candidate and his domestic terrorist friends. Obama’s actions as an adult cannot simply be chalked up to the ignorance of an 8-year-old.

As for John McCain’s role in the Keating scandal, he was exonerated of any wrong-doing. Who says so? The New York Times said so back in 1999:

Three other members of the Keating Five were more seriously rebuked by the ethics panel and all of them retired rather than face difficult re-election battles. John Glenn of Ohio, who was exonerated with Mr. McCain, was also re-elected in 1992, but retired in 1998.

Don’t you find it rather interesting that Rahm Emanuel neglected to mention the fact that McCain was exonerated by a Democrat lawyer who was investigating the whole scandal?

Yes, I agree. The omission is not only misleading, it is irresponsible.

You can access these stories on-line here:

Senate Inquiry In Keating Case Tested McCain
Jill Abramson and Alison Mitchell
The New York Times
November 21, 1999

Obama Ad Links McCain To Keating Scandal
Charles Babington
Associated Press
October 5, 2008

Iraq Veteran Produces YouTube Video Endorsement For John McCain

Check out the following video from YouTube:

Iraq Veteran Endorses John McCain

Be sure to send this link to everyone you know.

‘Crony’ Capitalism Is Root Cause Of Fannie And Freddie Troubles: Democrats At The Center Of It All

Terry Jones at the Investor’s Business Daily has a nice, clean, concise and accurate description of what happneed at Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae and why we taxpayers are being cajoled into paying for it.

The truth is that depspite the shrill calls from Barack Obama, Christopher Dodd and Barney Frank that it is “all the Republicans fault,” it has been the Democrats at the center of the maelstrom. It was the Democrats who, at least twelve times, derailed Republican efforts at reforming Freddie and Fannie and as we showed in a previous blog post, Barney Frank was one of those opposed that reform very ferociously.

So, why did the Dems opposed the reform of Freddie and Fannie? Money. That’s it. That’s the whole reason.

Here is the history in a nutshell:

It all started, innocently enough, in 1994 with President Clinton’s rewrite of the Carter-era Community Reinvestment Act. Ostensibly intended to help deserving minority families afford homes — a noble idea — it instead led to a reckless surge in mortgage lending that has pushed our financial system to the brink of chaos. … Fannie and Freddie, the main vehicle for Clinton’s multicultural housing policy, drove the explosion of the subprime housing market by buying up literally hundreds of billions of dollars in substandard loans — funding loans that ordinarily wouldn’t have been made based on such time-honored notions as putting money down, having sufficient income, and maintaining a payment record indicating creditworthiness. With all the old rules out the window, Fannie and Freddie gobbled up the market. Using extraordinary leverage, they eventually controlled 90% of the secondary market mortgages. Their total portfolio of loans topped $5.4 trillion — half of all U.S. mortgage lending. They borrowed $1.5 trillion from U.S. capital markets with — wink, wink — an “implicit” government guarantee of the debts. This created the problem we are having today. As we noted a week ago, subprime lending surged from around $35 billion in 1994 to nearly $1 trillion last year — for total growth of 2,757% as of last year. No real market grows that fast for that long without being fixed.

And the part about money for the Dems? Read on:

Fannie and Freddie became huge contributors to Congress, spending millions to influence votes. As we’ve noted here before, the bulk of the money went to Democrats. … Meanwhile, Fannie and Freddie also became a kind of jobs program for out-of-work Democrats. Franklin Raines and Jim Johnson, the CEOs under whom the worst excesses took place in the late 1990s to mid-2000s, were both high-placed Democratic operatives and advisers to presidential candidate Barack Obama. Clinton administration official Jamie Gorelick also got taken care of by the Fannie-Freddie circle. So did top Clinton aide Rahm Emanuel, among others.

And yet, despite the fact that the Dems are in the middle of this whole fiasco, Obama, Dodd and Frank are insistent that it is a Republican problem. Unfortunately, their surrogates in the media are spreading this misleading (or outright false) message.

But, do you remember all those campaign ads by Barack Obama about how their were lobbyists on John McCain’s staff? Well, Obama should change his campaign slogan of “Change we can believe in” to “Hypocrisy for our own cause.” Here is how Obama deals with those lobbyists:

Over the span of his career, Obama ranks No. 2 in campaign donations from Fannie and Freddie, taking over $125,000. Dodd, head of the Senate Banking panel, is tops at $165,000. Clinton, ranked 12th, has collected $75,000. … It emerged that Clinton aide Raines, who took Fannie Mae’s helm as CEO in 1999, took in nearly $100 million by the time he left in 2005. Others, including former Clinton Justice Department official Gorelick, took $75 million from the Fannie-Freddie piggy bank.

Today, Raines is a top advisor for the Obama campaign.

So, the next time somone accuses the Republicans of this Freddie and Fannie mess, ask the accuser what happened to all the money that the Dems made off of Freddie and Fannie and ask when was the last time the Dems tried to reform them.

You can access the complete article on-line here:

‘Crony’ Capitalism Is Root Cause Of Fannie And Freddie Troubles
Terry Jones
Investor’s Business Daily
September 22, 2008

Joe Biden Speaks: What Is He Saying (And Thinking)?

Sen. Joe Biden might want to sit in on a few meetings with the Obama campaign staff before going out and making anymore statements in the name of Barack Obama. Two of his most recent quotes show exactly why.

On the recent attack ad that Barack Obama put out against John McCain, TownHall reports this:

Asked about the negative tone of the campaign, and this ad in particular, during an interview broadcast Monday by the “CBS Evening News,” Obama’s running mate, Sen. Joe Biden, said he disapproved of it. “I thought that was terrible, by the way,” Biden said. Asked why it was done, he said: “I didn’t know we did it and if I had anything to do with it, we’d have never done it.”

Later, Biden backtracked when he discovered the Barack Obama had seen the ad and approved of it.

On “Clean Coal” power plants, The Politco has this to say:

Some great rope line video from Joe Biden’s recent Ohio swing, where he was asked by an anti-pollution campaigner about clean coal — a controversial approach in Democratic circles for which Obama has voiced support, particularly during the Kentucky primary. Biden’s apparent answer: He supports clean coal for China, but not for the United States. “No coal plants here in America,” he said. “Build them, if they’re going to build them, over there. Make them clean.” “We’re not supporting clean coal,” he said of himself and Obama. They do, on paper, support clean coal.

Unless Barack Obama has switched his position and is now against clean coal. This statement shows that the Obama campaign is not really for any kind of real domestic energy production.

You can access both articles on-line here:

Biden Aays Ad Mocking McCain Is ‘Terrible’
TownHall.com
September 23, 2008

Biden: ‘No Coal Plants Here In America’
Ben Smith
The Politico
September 23, 2008

ACORN Voter Fraud Uncovered In Michigan And Former Prison Camp Commander Endorses John McCain

Here’s a surprise. ACORN, the leftist organization that is dedicated to “reform” has been submitting fraudulent voter registration forms to municipal clerks all across Michigan.

Actually, that comes as no surprise since ACORN was known to actively engage in voter fraud in the 2004 elections.

From the Detroit Free Press:

The majority of the problem applications are coming from the group ACORN, Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, which has a large voter registration program among its many social service programs. ACORN’s Michigan branch, based in Detroit, has enrolled 200,000 voters statewide in recent months, mostly with the use of paid, part-time employees. “There appears to be a sizeable number of duplicate and fraudulent applications,” said Kelly Chesney, spokeswoman for the Michigan Secretary of State’s Office. “And it appears to be widespread.” Chesney said her office has had discussions with ACORN officials after local clerks reported the questionable applications to the state. Chesney said some of the applications are duplicates and some appear to be names that have been made up. The Secretary of State’s Office has turned over several of the applications to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

Back in 2004, one ACORN worker submitted voter registration forms with names like Donald Duck, Mickey Mouse and Clark Kent.

You can access the complete article on-line here:

Bad Voter Applications Found
L.L. Brasier
Free Press Staff Writer
September 14, 2008

---

This election just keeps getting more and more curious. The London Telegraph is reporting that Tran Trong Duyet, the commandant of the Hao Lo prison in Hanoi from 1968 to 1973 is endorsing John McCain for President of the United States.

An excerpt:

[Duyet] recalls Mr McCain “as a typical child of a traditional military family. He was conservative and faithful to his country’s policy of the Vietnam war”. “In a talk between men we shared many things about girls and love and so on,” said Mr Duyet, who claims Mr McCain helped teach him English. “I think John McCain is a very smart man.” In his run for the presidency, Mr McCain’s years as a PoW are constantly invoked for the courage he showed under repeated torture, never giving the Vietnamese anything they could use in their propaganda. … What remains of the prison is now a museum, where Mr McCain’s old flight suit is on display. There is also a monument to his capture on the bank of the Hanoi lake where he crash landed. But like many Vietnamese, Mr Duyet is grateful to Mr McCain for the role he played in the 1990s – restoring trading and political relations between the countries. “I would like to say that if John McCain is elected president I hope he will further improve the relationship between Vietnam and the United States,” said Mr Duyet. “And as a friend I want to wish him good health and good luck in the presidential election,” he added. Then he blurted out “My friend!” in English, the language he says Mr McCain helped teach him, which he has almost totally forgotten.

As I said, very curious.

You can access the complete article on-line here:

John McCain Endorsed By His Vietnamese Jailer
Thomas Bell
London Telegraph
September 15, 2008

Harry Reid’s Arrogant Hypocrisy

No campaigning today due to the 9/11 Remembrance.

But I do want to share something with you that Old Media and the leftist blogs and websites probably only half-reported.

According to The Hill:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) on Tuesday questioned Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) for not scheduling time away from his presidential campaign to participate in Senate votes. With 56 days left until Election Day, Reid used an afternoon press conference to note that McCain, the Republican presidential candidate, is not planning to attend the Senate’s debate this week on the Department of Defense policy bill. … Reid did not raise the likely absence of Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.), the Democratic presidential candidate, or Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.), Obama’s running mate, from votes.

Imagine that. Harry Reid forgot to mention that two Senators from his own party are missing votes just like the singleton John McCain.

You can access the complete column (and hypocrisy of Harry Reid) on-line here:

Reid Calls McCain Out For Skipping Votes (But Neglects To Mention Two Absent Democrats: Obama And Biden)
J. Taylor Rushing
The Hill
September 9, 2008