Nov 03 2008
I think these videos are so great that I just want to keep them up front and center, so I may promote them occasionally. Here they are again!
This is the campaign to defeat Obama, in a nutshell.
I watched them all. Obama supporters may complain about interpretations, but these videos do not have a factual error I can see. They’re quite concise, delivered engagingly, and make their point very clearly.
The McCain campaign should take a lesson from these people.
Oct 31 2008
Not exactly a scintillating read, but a sober summary of the candidates’ positions and differences on taxation. The first few graphs: (much more, with supporting charts and text, at the link)
Either Republican Senator John McCain or Democratic Senator Barack Obama will have to make very important decisions on tax policy when he takes office in January 2009. First, the U.S. economy will be recovering from the financial crisis and is already predicted to grow less than its usual rate of 3.3 percent over the last 50 years.[1] Second, President George W. Bush’s tax cuts will expire in 2011, and the President must decide how to extend or make permanent some of the tax cut provisions.
Senator McCain will make the Bush tax cuts permanent, with the exception of the estate tax. McCain credited the Bush tax cuts with helping the economy recover after the 2001 recession.
Senator Obama, on the other hand, will extend the Bush tax cuts only for those taxpayers who earn less than $250,000 a year—he has deemed the rest of the people “rich.” Senator Obama will also enact new tax increases on these rich individuals as well as a series of targeted tax credits for lower-income individuals. Senator Obama believes that the current tax system is not progressive enough and that higher taxes on the rich should be used to give money to low-income individuals or those who do not work at all, such as retired people, reduce the deficit, and reduce the size of Social Security’s shortfall.
In other words, Obama isn’t planning merely to return to the higher taxes under Clinton for “the rich”, he plans to tax them even MORE than Clinton’s Democrat congress voted in 1993, when Clinton “discovered” that he couldn’t keep his campaign pledge to lower taxes for the middle class after all. One can’t help but wonder if Obama will discover that “the rich” are those making more than $50K-$70K per year, when his staff really crunches the numbers.
Those windmills are going to be expensive.
Oct 23 2008
The main stream media continues to pursue its “Obama the victim” narrative, portrying him as the victim of hate in some unusual way, and consulting only left-leaning organizations and think-tanks to confirm its thesis. Of course, if they actually did due diligence and interviewed both sides equally, and compared actual research from both sides, they would discover that there is… no story! Can’t have that, and the election isn’t quite in the bag for Obama yet, and so:
An ugly line has been crossed in this presidential campaign, one in which some people don’t mind calling Barack Obama a dangerous Muslim, a terrorist and worse.
And this is somehow worse than the term Bushitler? Let’s just add up the Hitler references to Bush, and compare numbers. But, of course, that would require real research and reporting, and we can’t expect that, can we? Just count the lawyers and reporters parachuted into Alaska to defame Palin, and compare the numbers to those who have really investigated Obama’s past and alliances, and you’ll get the idea.
“To me, this all feels much worse than we’ve seen in some time,” said Kathryn Kolbert , the president of People for the American Way , which monitors political speech.
Well, yes, because this time it’s YOUR guy on the receiving end of the very kind of hatred that People for the American Way and its allies have stirred up against Bush and Republicans. Except that it isn’t, for the simple reason that no mainstream Republican organization, conservative outlet, commentator or website has used the kind of language being reported here. Rather, it’s a very small fringe of over-the-top extremists, and the Left would love to paint the entire Right as that extreme… but it just won’t wash.
Experts agree on the reasons: Obama, the Democratic nominee, is different from any other major presidential candidate in history in many ways, and people often don’t accept such change gracefully.
Come on, just say it. Obama is black, and we all know those wascally weepublicans are wacists. Oh, and by the way: which “experts”? This is journalism school mumbo-jumbo for “this is what I think, and if I phrase it this way I can pretend it’s straight news”.
Continue reading “Get out of the kitchen”
Oct 13 2008
Dick Morris thinks there is still time for the public to become aware of the terrible alliances (not mere associations) Obama has had in the past, and still has, if the market settles down and stabilizes just a bit.
A man whose spiritual adviser is Wright, whose financial backer is Tony Rezko, and whose first major employer was William Ayers might not be a good choice for president. But for these associations to loom large enough in our consciousness to impact our vote, the market has to settle down so we can hear the campaign over its din.
Oct 12 2008
As reported at SNOPES, a normally reliable fact-checking website, an email has been making the rounds linking Obama to Jim Johnson, Franklin Raines and Tim Howard. Johnson and Raines are former Fannie Mae CEOs whose tenures were marked by fraudulent accounting practices and the reporting of false profits to pump up earnings reports and get executive bonuses. Howard was CFO (Chief Financial Officer) during Raines tenure, and was right in the middle of the false accounting and false profits scandals.
Snopes declares that the email is FALSE. That’s odd, because significant parts of the email are TRUE, but it does have a few incorrect assertions. Snopes’ practice in such situations is usually to say something is partly true and partly false, and to be very clear on the distinctions regarding which is which. One can only wonder why that practice was not followed in this report, which was simply declared FALSE at the top, and only a careful reader would discover that much of it was TRUE.
The email first gives the history of the involvement with Fannie Mae of former CEO Jim Johnson, former CEO Franklin Raines, and former CFO Tim Howard. Even Snopes does not deny the accuracy of this summary.
Continue reading “Obama and Fannie/Freddie CEOs: some clarity”
Oct 12 2008
Knowing a bit more about Teddy Roosevelt than the whitewash they teach in the public schools, I’ve gotten just a bit tired of hearing McCain constantly refer to him as an icon worthy of emulation. So I was especially glad to read George Will’s take on TR, and whether he’s the model for McCain. Speaking of TR, Will writes:
He was an individualist who considered the individualism of others an impediment to the social unity required for national greatness. Having read Darwin’s “The Origin of Species” at age 14, and having strenuously transformed himself from an asthmatic child into a robust adult, he advocated “warrior republicanism” (Hawley’s phrase). TR saw virtue emerging from struggle, especially violent struggle, between nations and between the “Anglo-Saxon” race and lesser races. Blending “muscular Christianity,” the “social gospel” — which sanctified the state as an instrument of moral reclamation — and Darwinian theory, TR believed that human nature evolved toward improvement through conflict.
Continue reading “Teddy Roosevelt: not a saint, a prophet, or particularly good role model”
Oct 07 2008
Patterico documents how the L.A. Times Cuts Out McCain’s Remarks About Economy, Then Quotes Barack Obama Saying McCain is Scared to Talk About the Economy
Go read it.
If the mainstream media is your main source of information, you’re probably poorly informed.
Sep 20 2008
Which Obama will show up for presidential debates? – Yahoo! News
Which Barack Obama will show up for the first presidential debate?
It could be the tone-deaf debater who condescendingly told Hillary Rodham Clinton during a Democratic debate that she was “likable enough.”
Or perhaps the confident candidate who absorbed a jab from Clinton about using her husband’s former advisers and responded with a devastating one-liner of his own: “Hillary, I’m looking forward to you advising me as well.”
For a man known as a powerful speaker, Obama has rarely wowed people in political debates. He can come across as lifeless, aloof and windy.
But Obama didn’t make any serious mistakes in the many debates during the Democratic primary, or when he was running for the U.S. Senate in Illinois. He sometimes showed flashes of wit and charm. And, with a couple of exceptions, he got better with time.
“A year ago, he was not nearly as polished,” said Timothy O’Donnell, a professor at the University of Mary Washington and chairman of the collegiate National Debate Tournament. “He equivocates less. He’s quicker with examples.”
Continue reading “Obama should have taken the chance to practice”
Sep 17 2008
I like much about John McCain’s positions on various issues, and those that I disagree with categorize very neatly: they are the issues where McCain’s position denies the basic truth that nearly everyone acts in what they perceive as their own best interest, nearly all the time. Essentially, I think McCain fails to appreciate the incentives to do wrong that are created by some of his programs and proposals, even though he means them to do right.
On “campaign finance reform”, new incentives for all kinds of skullduggery were created (and fulfilled) by the George Soroses of the world. And the media who were given even MORE power by the muzzling of free speech were, of course, effusive in their praise of the idea.
For “comprehensive immigration reform”, McCain simply didn’t grasp that its approval would be a green light for many million more illegals to enter the country clandestinely, unless the fence was built FIRST, and enforcement radically ramped up, well before any regularization of existing illegals was even contemplated.
Now McCain is talking about the greed of Wall Street zillionaires who are fleecing America. While that may sometimes be true, the real fleecing has been done by a corrupt partnership of government regulators and business, in “government/private sphere” partnerships like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which were supposed to be supervised by government, but in practice were in collusion with it instead. I don’t mind if McCain bashes crooks, as long as he identifies all their accomplices in the regulatory apparatus.
Sep 15 2008
Essentially, the Left thought it had a “magic candidate” in Obama. He would be beyond normal criticism. He would be both person and symbol. He would speak with such power and transcendence that normal considerations of logic and rhetorical connection would not apply. His mystical relationship with the message of the future of mankind would resonate in each person of good will without having to be explained in detail. We would all just know that he was “the one” to change everything. Indeed, he seemed untouchable: though there were scandals and questionable relationships in his background, it seemed not to matter to the electorate, surely another sign that he was blessed. What other presidential candidate could have gotten away with being friends with terrorists and America haters? Surely it must have been because people could see through these surface things to the soul beyond, and were moved by its purity and grace. (After all, Jesus associated with publicans and sinners, and elevated them by His presence.) His meager background was almost a plus, proving his uniquity and special annointing. He was untouchable.
And then came Sarah. She was, in most ways, the exact opposite of Obama. She spoke simply, and clearly. She seemed to get away with just being herself (unlike Obama, she was the same on home video as on stage before tens of thousands). She did not appear to self-consciously cultivate an image or presence: she simply was. She did not seem to need a script. Shooting from the hip (literally and figuratively) she was on target. People simply responded to her. And despite the best the a scandal mongering media could throw at her, she simply sailed above it all, and let her acolytes defend her. There were pleny of acolytes.
Obama was supposed to be special. He would not have to make sense according to the normal rules of logic and evidence, because to know him created a faith that transcended the merely rational.
Yet, here was Sarah, actually making sense, very simple, unassailable sense, artlessly appealing to the perceptions of the people as the outsider who was the real agent of change, the unknown, waiting in the wings, whose time had come. She, too, was the symbol of longings held by many.
Suddenly, Obama was not the only transcendant figure in the race. He knew how to fight people who merely used logic and facts. He appealed to the higher sense of personhood in his listeners. But what could he do against someone who had as much mystical magnetism as he did, and also made simple, logical sense?
It was a pretty problem. Someone would have to be destroyed for the other to prevail. And Obama was determined that it would not be him. His minions would see to that.
There are plenty of minions, in and out of his campaign.
The contest rages, for now, but it is no longer one of rationality against spirituality, because now both can be found on one side. And the real game changer was not Sarah Palin… it was John McCain, who selected her as his running mate, proving a defter hand than anyone suspected at crafting his image and staying true to his own often stated values at the same time. And McCain is showing something else: he doesn’t care that Sarah Palin polls higher than he does, because all that matters is success in the election so he can do the work that needs doing, with her help.
