Heh

Via Lone Star Times, a kid gets a lesson in how not to steal campaign signs.

After Shawn Turschak saw two sets of McCain-Palin signs disappear from his yard within hours of being planted, he took steps to protect the latest pair.

On Monday, he ran wires from his house and hooked the signs into a power source for an electric pet fence. Then he mounted a surveillance camera in a nearby tree and wired it to a digital recorder.

Tuesday afternoon, the camera saw this: A neighbor trotting up with an Obama-Biden sign, grabbing a handful of volts as he touched a McCain-Palin sign, then fleeing at top 9-year-old boy speed.

And the video:

Showing More Respect for Your Right to Know, Obama Kicks Skeptical Reporters Off His Plane

The more we watch Barack Obama deal with criticism, the more Americans should run from this man. We've already seen this campaign sic the Justice Department on groups airing ads it dislikes. Then there were the Obama Action Wires designed to get Obamabots to jam the phone lines of talk shows which have the temerity to interview critics of Teh One. And this isn't even bringing up Democrat thug groups whose purpose is to silence Republican donors or slobbering, anger-filled liberals who dislike peaceful demonstrations.

And this isn't even bringing up the snooping into Joe the Plumber's life because he asked Teh One an inconvenient question.

Now, with four days left before the election, Obama is kicking reporters off the plane. But not just any reporters or reporters from tiny circulation newspapers. Obama kicked off reporters from newspapers which endorsed John McCain. All three of them.

Of course, the Obama campaign isn't admitting that they're being crybabies and dumping reporters because Teh One gots his feelings hurts. No, the reporters were dumped to make room for more sycophants recording The Barack Obama Story.

Are they serious? The reason this ad worked so well was because it skewered the ginormous ego of Barack Obama.



Now that Obama has his transition team in place, couldn't he simply let the press, which has done such a great job so far of chronicling the Obamessiah's rise from birth in a manger to POTUS, finish the job?

Welcome to the world of Dictator President Obama. Any dissent? You will be squashed!

Do Not...

Buy your Halloween candy on Halloween. The stores are crazy!

Socialism vs. Sharing

National Review says that Barack Obama has tried to make a joke out of his socialism.

McCain has “called me a socialist for wanting to roll back the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans so we can finally give tax relief to the middle class,” Obama said. “I don’t know what’s next. By the end of the week he'll be accusing me of being a secret communist because I shared my toys in kindergarten.”

The problem is that Obama doesn't want to share his toys. He wants to share your toys. Against your will. That's called stealing.

And if Obama really wants to share his wealth, he could start with his own family.

The Explanation: They Really Hate Us

Lone Star Times has been running a series on polling by David Benzion which is quite interesting. Benzion has considerable experience at conducting polls, and one of the inescapable conclusions he has come to is that much of the reason Obama is winning is that they (the voters) really, really hate us.

As mentioned previously, in real-life I work as a Senior Research Analyst for a Republican political polling firm whose clients this cycle include a variety of Senate, Congressional, statehouse and ballot-initiative campaigns in Colorado, Michigan, Florida and Texas.

Beyond the numbers (which I’m obviously not at liberty to discuss) in the aforementioned states where we are polling, we also ask what are called “verbatim” or “top-of-mind” questions, where after someone tells us how they are voting in a particular race, we following-up by asking…

“And why do you say you are voting that way? Anything else?”

It’s like a mini-focus group, providing (usually) bite-sized qualitative insights to augment the quantitative data being gathered.

“Verbatims” can be particularly insightful when you read the answers with all their demographic data–so that you know, for instance, that a particular comment is coming from a college-educated married white female under age 40 who describes herself as somewhat conservative but frequently splits her ticket.

In the past several months I’ve literally been exposed to upwards of 20,000 of these things… and let me assure you, we (i.e., Republicans, conservatives, and general “folks who lean Right”) are well and truly hated by those that occupy the vast middle-ground of American public opinion.

You can blame (I do) a destructive and cynical campaign by those on the Left to bitterly demonize the Bush administration in a time of war. You can blame (I do) the ever-more transparent liberal bias of the media. You can blame (I do) the failure of Bush administration senior staffers to effectively and consistently explain to the American people what it is they are doing and why it is important they do it.

Blame, blame, blame, blame, blame all you want… add to the list for all I care.

But don’t fail to grasp this fact–whoever is to blame, we are stuck with the consequences… and reality doesn’t bend simply because it is unfair.

Benzion goes on to say that if you add the phrase, "and they are going to vote for him anyway, they hate us so much!" to the end of any statement, it will explain the depth of loathing the unwashed masses have for conservatives. For example:

Barack Obama has a paper-thin resume, promises to raise taxes in a fashion destined to decimate the economy and bring the phrase "misery index" back into vogue, is dangerously naive about foreign policy and is the farthest left candidate fielded in my lifetime...but they're going to vote for him anyway, they hate us so much.

It's hard to believe it has come to this in our country, that there are so many short-sighted people among the electorate. But it does make it easier to understand the stupidity of so many.

Life Is Good

Sometimes, you have to remind yourself of the important things.

This has been a difficult year for me. Estrangement from my oldest child and the caring for and death of my father have been emotionally exhausting. I dived into this election season, in some ways, as a diversion from real life pain.

But even as the election has become more frustrating and disappointing, real life has become much better. Oldest daughter has started the long journey home, and when she is with us, life is absolutely delightful. And while the looming holidays bring on fits of loneliness, I will not be alone for a minute.

Losing one's parents is never a good or easy thing. The oddest feeling is the lonely orphan feeling one has after the last parent's death when one looks around and realizes that there are no elders left; you are the elder.

It was interesting reading Orrin Judd's admonition to conservatives not to begin acting like the worst of the Left if we lose this election.

It is incumbent on the Right to avoid such a fate. After all, our theology doesn't afford us the "luxury" of imagining that the world must yield to our wants and wishes. When we consider ourselves to be estranged from our lives just because they aren't going exactly as we'd like them to we are, in some sense, denying Creation. And were to snarl and snipe our way through an Obama presidency we would be elevating Caesar above God in ways that ought to shame us.

I've had to be reminded recently that the election is not worth overreacting. Losing sight of the important things is life is a terrible thing.

To Conservatives Not Voting for John McCain

I hadn't chimed in to the growing phenomenon of conservative columnists piously telling us voting schlubs why they can't vote for John McCain and save America from at least two years of life in a Democrat-controlled hell.

The latest is Anne Applebaum, who says:

I would give anything to rewrite history and make McCain president in 2000. But in 2008, I don't think I can vote for him. Barack Obama is indeed the least experienced, least tested candidate in modern presidential history. But at least if he wins, I can be sure that the mobs who cry "terrorist" at the sound of Obama's name will be kept far, far away from the White House.

So, Applebaum is willing to allow the economy to tank even further, unemployment to rise to levels not seen in decades, rampant inflation, an influx of liberal activist judges who will spend decades finding stuff that didn't exist in the Constitution, higher taxes for virtually everyone, large scale government expansion, and a dangerous and disasterous foreign policy that would lead to a nuclear Iran and could lead to more terrorist attacks on Americans just so the not-elites of the Republican Party will not have a voice in our government?

This is not an uncommon refrain from the purists in the conservative punditry. These people complain vociferously because John McCain chose Sarah Palin, whom the base loves, not a stiff, boring suit like Mitt Romney, who most assuredly would not have gotten the independent vote at all.

I understand that John McCain has not run his campaign very well or very effectively. And I understand that not every conservative or independent likes either John McCain or Sarah Palin (or vice versa). But the myopia of the chattering class towards an Obama presidency is stunning. These same people will be tut-tutting the excesses which a Democrat-controlled Congress and White House will indulge in. They will write column after column about how terrible the Democrats are for the country.

But I say these people should not be allowed to lecture the rest of us about how awful things are with Barack Obama as POTUS after endorsing his presidency. It's a pity the rest of us have to live with the consequences of their ideological purity.

The Death of Journalism

Election 2008: Objective Journalism the Loser is by Michael Graham, a talk show host, but it could have been written by nearly anyone who has paid attention to the coverage of this campaign.

Did you see that amazing video obtained by the Los Angeles Times of Sen. Barack Obama toasting a prominent former PLO member at an Arab American Action Network meeting in 2003? The video in which Obama gives Yasser Arafat’s frontman a warm embrace, as Bill Ayers look on?

You haven’t seen it? Me, neither. The Los Angeles Times refuses to release it.

And so an incriminating video of Obama literally “palling around” with PLO supporters becomes one more nail in the coffin of “objective journalism.”

Would the L.A. Times have released the video of it had shown John McCain palling around with Al Qaeda terrorists? As Sarah Palin would say, you betcha!

The L.A. Times isn't the only news organization to have made a commitment to all the news that helps Obama.

Jay Newton-Small, a longtime AP reporter, points out in a column in the Washington Post that her old employer has begun practicing “accountability journalism,” which is a media euphemism for “picking the good guys and the bad guys.”

“Some of the most eyebrow-raising stories this presidential-election cycle have come from a surprising source: the stodgy old AP,” Newton-Small wrote.

The AP, once the gold standard of unbiased “hard news,” is now just another voice in the Spin Room.

Newton-Small asks:

“When the news organization entrusted with calling elections sets off down the slippery slope of news analysis, it’s hard not to wonder: Is the journalism world losing its North Star, the one source that could be relied upon to provide ‘Just the facts, ma’am’ ?”

In a world where it's more fun to play pundit than reporter, it's understandable why a reporter who thinks Obama would be a great president wants to ensure his victory.

It isn't a very well-kept secret that the way a story is written, where it is placed, what the headline says and what art is put by a story all can (and do) display bias of one sort or another. Like a candidate? Pick photos of him smiling and waving. Hate a candidate? Pick photos of him scowling or with goofy facial expressions.

And then, as Michael Malone, a veteran journalist, notes in the New York Times, there's all those words and how the choice can change the meaning. He used the word "said" as an example. Think about it: said, announced, bellowed, responded, alleged, declared, reported, suggested, accused. They all say "said," just in different ways.

Now, when I was in j-school back in the dinosaur era, my teachers told us to say "said" because it was as close to neutral as a word could get (we were also taught to say "died," which is a habit I still use in daily life). So, when the Associated Press, one of the last remaining news services, decides it is no longer going to use the neutral "said" but use other words to help the candidate they have decided America needs, that's alarming to all us bumpkins out in the wilderness who get our news from sources like AP.

I've heard people complain about the lack of objectivity in journalism for nearly 30 years. Originally, I blew it off as just a few cranks who didn't understand the news business. But that systematic bludgeoning of Republicans and uplifting of Democrats has become harder to ignore, and this election cycle has been just the latest--and worst--example of journalistic bias.

I don't go to blogs expecting straight news. I expect opinion from writers with whom I might or might not agree. But when I read a news story, I expect it to be objective. I don't expect it to withhold information that hurts the candidate the news organization has decided should be president. And I don't expect it to pile on to the candidate the organization has decided shouldn't be president.

Obama and Negative Rights

This will probably knock Mike G for a loop, but Rush Limbaugh was completely wrong today during his harangue on Obama's discussion of negative rights.

There was plenty wrong with Obama's take on redistributive justice, but saying the Constitution is a document of negative rights is not one of them.

There are different ways of looking at the Constitution, but there's nothing radical in the thought that it is mainly concerned with what the government cannot do. If you look at the Bill of Rights, for example, virtually every right named is phrased as what the government cannot do:

1. Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

2. A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

3. No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.

4. The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

5. No person shall be held to answer for any capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

8. Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted

9. The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

Perhaps Obama's argument was more suited to a law school classroom, but it's obvious that Rush didn't understand that describing these constraints on government actions as "negative rights" was not some sort of liberal conspiracy. The Founding Fathers understood that a government of limited powers would only stay that way if the Constitution outlined exactly what the government was allowed to do...and no more.

Dean Barnett Dies

I'm profoundly sad to hear of Dean Barnett's death (read Hugh Hewitt's nice piece for more).

I first heard Dean on Hugh Hewitt's show a year or so ago and I was instantly charmed by his take on events and his good humor at everything around him. Unlike many a conservative talk show host, who tend to be sourpusses, Dean was always hunting for the silver lining, regardless of how dark the cloud might be.

Dean will be greatly missed.

"If You Can Win, You Should Win"

Those are words spoken by Barack Obama back when he was first becoming a politician. They remind me of a friend of mine who is a car salesman. His philosophy is, "If you think you got a good deal, you did."

Notice that neither statement talks about the morality of these positions. Or whether, in an objective sense, the behavior is correct. Instead, both statements are set outside a world where morality has anything to do with behavior.

In my friend's case, the goal is simple: he sells a car for the highest price he can get the buyer to agree to. Perhaps he leaves out information that would cause the buyer to want a lower price or maybe he adds something that causes the car to appear to be a better buy. For my friend, if the buyer thinks he got a good deal, that's good enough, whether it was actually the best deal possible or not.

In Obama's case, it meant ensuring that every competitor was knocked out of the race if there was any way of doing so. He had each Democrat on the ballot disqualified, using the most nitpicky rules to do so. He had signatures bumped because a married woman had used her maiden hame. Or someone printed their information, as opposed to signing. Maybe there was a misspelling.

Were these tactics illegal? Absolutely not. As one Obama supporter said, "The rules are there for a reason."

Now, we fast forward a few years and Barack Obama is in a tight election for president of the United States. But many of his supporters are unhappy that Republicans might also think "the rules are there for a reason." Now there are calls to vote early because it gives more time to other voters on Election Day, since evil, nasty Republicans will be checking to make sure every name is spelled right, every street address is correct.

So, why was it permissible to use the rules to prevent Obama's competitors from challenging him, but mean and (well, we can't call it cheating but it's not nice!) sneaky to use the rules to prevent Obama votes in the general election?

I think this quote from a few years ago by a man now seeking the presidency provides a valuable argument against those complainers who will invariably whinge about checking for voter fraud:

"To my mind, we were just abiding by the rules that had been set up," the senator is quoted as saying in the Tribune. "My conclusion was that if you couldn't run a successful petition drive, then that raised questions in terms of how effective a representative you were going to be."

Obama Theme Song

Read this Mark Levin piece, then watch this video. I think we've found the Obama theme song.

The Affirmative Action Candidate?

One of the unintended consequences of affirmative action is that it casts a shadow of doubt over any minority hired under its auspices. Originally designed to force companies to consider all qualified candidates for positions (as opposed to only white males), AA has come to be looked upon as the worst of political correctness.

The sloppy hiring of a few underqualified candidates has tainted the whole system. Companies which felt pressured to increase the numbers of minorities on their staffs have gone to enormous lengths to count employees as minority hires, even when the person was obviously not a minority.

I actually knew a man that this happened to. His father was British, his mother American. They divorced when he was very young and, eventually, his mother remarried to a man with a Hispanic surname. The stepfather adopted the boy, giving the person of British and American ancestry a Hispanic last name. But to employers, this man (and later, his wife and children) was Hispanic and always used as an affirmative action hire, even though he told the employers he was white.

I've watched more than a couple of people struggle with being the "affirmative action baby" for a company. They want to be hired and promoted based on their outstanding qualifications, not because of their skin color or the "z" on the end of their name. These people understand the ugliness of prejudice and discrimination, but they also recognize the damage that underqualified minorities do to future minority candidates. And so, these workers balance being a "tool of the man" versus getting ahead and proving themselves.

It occurred to me that this election has sort of become the triumph of the worst ideas of affirmative action. Barack Obama is not a man of great accomplishment; he is a man with a shadowy, hidden past who reads well and is pleasant enough to look at.

Like the worst affirmative action hires, he is underqualified for the job he seeks. He has no executive or decision-making experience. His policy ideas are largely outside mainstream thought. His foreign policy accumen is nonexistent. His economic plan is naive, unworkable, and will punish the productive while rewarding inaction. His judicial nominations will be chosen not for their outstanding intelligence or reasoning, but based on immature concepts such as past experience or "empathy." I don't want a judge who has been selected because he/she "knows what it's like to be a teenage mom." I want judges who know and adhere to traditional concepts of Anglo-American jurisprudence and applies the law in intelligent and recognizable ways.

We have been told there are good reasons to vote for Barack Obama. Some supporters have done a better job of making the case for Obama than others. But for most Obamaniacs, the reason to vote for their candidate is because of his skin color. Like the teachers who are pushing the "history making" aspect of the Obama campaign, these people seem less concerned about what it takes to be a president than they are about feeling good. It's obvious that, to these voters, whatever Obama does in office will not be damaging for us as a nation; they simply don't consider it important that a Democratic Congress and Democratic president would create the perfect storm for terrible domestic and foreign policy choices.

No, better to feel good and pat oneself on the back for "breaking the color barrier." After all, life has been hard. We are at war. There is a deficit. The country's financial system is shaky and we are starting to read of large scale layoffs. Big companies are failing and bigger ones are being propped up. Insecurity is on the rise. Why not feel good about something?

It's as if the election of a black man is the drug of choice, the opiate of the masses, these days. My hope is that America will not suffer too greatly if this willful blindness selects the most underqualified president ever for the highest affirmative action position we've ever seen.

Great Ad

Ed Morrissey at Hot Air has a couple of great ads on his site, plus links to more. Here's my favorite:

Wisdom from Children

At Common Sense Political Thought, Dana has a nice post of links, including one to this site (thanks, Dana!). But the best link has to be to this post at nk's site.

Nk's six-year-old daughter's class had a mock election and she voted for Sarah Palin because there haven't been any girl presidents (smart kid!). But more to the point:

I want to have a paper-route. (She pronounced it “root”). And Obama is going to steal all my money and give it to other people.

There's a smart kid! And probably a nicer answer than the one my youngest daughter gives (she's eight).

At the dinner table one night, she looked at me and asked, "Is it true that Obama kills babies?"

I almost spit out my peas. My husband raised an eyebrow at me and I had to explain myself.

A few weeks back, my 10-year-old son asked me why we weren't voting for the "brown man." I'm sure, just like nk's daughter, my son had been told what a "historic" occasion it was that we could vote for a "brown man," leaving off, of course, that it was also historic because we could elect a woman as vice president. I stopped and thought about how to explain why I thought Barack Obama would be bad for our country. Tax policies are probably a little over the head of a boy who still dreams of flying. And I didn't think he'd be impressed with my judicial philosophy. So, I told him that Barack Obama thought it was ok for women to kill their babies and we didn't think that was a good idea.

Yes, yes. I know that's an overly simplistic way of discussing the abortion debate with a child who doesn't fully understand the birds and the bees yet. But it was the most direct (and accurate) way of describing Obama's abortion position. And I used far fewer words than Obama has to.

So, at the dinner table, my husband turned to our youngest child and said, "Obama doesn't want to kill them himself. He just thinks it's ok if their mothers want to."

Both children looked aghast. "Why would he do that?" she asked.

I pondered that question for a minute and then replied, "I don't understand why he would, honey." And that's the truth.

Don't Ask Questions They Don't Want To Answer...

Or the Obama campaign will pull the plug on your interview invites.

WFTV-Channel 9's Barbara West conducted a satellite interview with Sen. Joe Biden on Thursday. A friend says it's some of the best entertainment he's seen recently. What do you think?

West wondered about Sen. Barack Obama's comment, to Joe the Plumber, about spreading the wealth. She quoted Karl Marx and asked how Obama isn't being a Marxist with the "spreading the wealth" comment.

"Are you joking?" said Biden, who is Obama's running mate. "No," West said.

West later asked Biden about his comments that Obama could be tested early on as president. She wondered if the Delaware senator was saying America's days as the world's leading power were over.

"I don't know who's writing your questions," Biden shot back.

Biden so disliked West's line of questioning that the Obama campaign canceled a WFTV interview with Jill Biden, the candidate's wife.

"This cancellation is non-negotiable, and further opportunities for your station to interview with this campaign are unlikely, at best for the duration of the remaining days until the election," wrote Laura K. McGinnis, Central Florida communications director for the Obama campaign.

McGinnis said the Biden cancellation was "a result of her husband's experience yesterday during the satellite interview with Barbara West"...

WFTV news director Bob Jordan said, "When you get a shot to ask these candidates, you want to make the most of it. They usually give you five minutes."

Jordan said political campaigns in general pick and choose the stations they like. And stations often pose softball questions during the satellite interviews.

"Mr. Biden didn't like the questions," Jordan said. "We choose not to ask softball questions."

Imagine what the campaign would have looked like if more journalists chose "not to ask softball questions"!

Happy Birthday, Mom

Today would have been Mom's 71st birthday. So, for her birthday, something very Welsh:



And a song from her daughter:



Miss you, Mom.

What Sarah Palin Should Wear

Reclusive Leftist has a post up on Clothesgate, but a picture is worth 1,000 words, right? So, here's what Palin should be wearing:

This Should Be the McCain Campaign Song

I stole this from Flopping Aces, who said it's the best campaign song of the year. I must concur.

The Fairy Tale Election

After reading this delusional revisionist history, I decided to respond with a more accurate account of the story. Here was my comment:

Gosh, that really IS a fairy tale.

See, once upon a time, there was a peanut farmer named Jimmy Carter, who barely won election against his rival (who lost because he pardoned the former king). No one knew much of anything about Jimmah, but they voted for him because he was NOT Ford.

Alas, they soon began regretting the error. Jimmah saw gas lines not as a bad thing, but as an opportunity to turn off the hot water in federal facility and wear silly sweaters. While his subjects worried about rampant inflation, soaring interest rates, and rising unemployment, Jimmah told them that they were in a "malaise" and that they just needed to be tough.

But tough Jimmah wasn't. He encouraged evil wizards in a friendly country to revolt against their king, who fled and eventually ended up in Jimmah's kingdom. Jimmah continued to smile his big toothy grin at the evil wizards who promptly kidnapped 52 of King Jimmah's subjects. Poor Jimmah. This was a crisis he couldn't solve by lecturing the populace or putting on a cardigan. He dithered and frowned but just couldn't figure out how to get those wizards to free his subjects.

As the new election grew close, King Jimmah knew the whole hostage thing was dragging down his popularity (well, that and the whole stagflation thing). So, he decided to finally send some knights to rescue the hostages. But alas! King Jimmah had spent his subjects' money trying to turn lead into gold (or solar panels into oil), and now his knights had no armor and their swords were rusty. When the news came back that the knights' flying carpets had come unravelled and all the knights had been killed and their bodies dragged back to the evil wizards' palace to humiliate Jimmah and his subjects, King Jimmah's subjects had finally had enough of the hapless king. They threw the bum out and hailed his successor as a great king--a title that king wore even after death.

The new king, King Ronald, changed Jimmah's policies. He recognized that oil did, in fact, run the productivity of America, and telling the subjects to shut up and wear sweaters was a dumb idea. He cut the taxes on all the subjects and made ALL of them very happy. He increased economic growth by dismantling silly, stupid Jimmah rules that had been designed to harm the merchants and label the successful subjects as greedy.

Now, many moons later, we have a new Jimmah promising, yet again, that the subjects need to put on sweaters, shut their yaps, and just be grateful that the pretender is telling them he won't raise their taxes (which, of course he will, since his own wizards haven't been able to turn lead to gold yet). Just as with King Jimmah, many of the subjects don't care how little they know about the prince, or whether his schemes will work. They are mad at the current king and forget that King Jimmah wasn't interested in their prosperity; he was interested in their sacrifice. The new prince was the same way, and even though his own, hand-picked vice prince, in a moment of clarity, warned the people that electing the pretender would lead to more problems and that they would not agree with the pretender's decisions, there were still subjects willing to make up fairy tales to explain their delusions.

I kinda like it.

And Another Reason to Vote for John McCain

Election could have seismic effect on courts.

One More Reason to Vote for McCain

Barney Frank says we should cut defense spending by 25% while the country is at war.

Am I the only person who remembers what Democrats controling government looked like?

Joe Biden Endorses John McCain

I'd been waiting for John McCain to make an ad regarding Joe Biden's prediction that "Barack Obama would be tested." Here's what the McCain campaign came up with:



This ad is ok, but it misses the part where Biden said, "And he's gonna need help. And the kind of help he's gonna need is, he's gonna need you - not financially to help him - we're gonna need you to use your influence, your influence within the community, to stand with him. Because it's not gonna be apparent initially, it's not gonna be apparent that we're right."

The truly frightening part of Biden's statement isn't that our enemies will test us--that happens after every new president is inaugurated. What was terrible was that Biden was having to warn the mind-numbed robots that they would have to be very vocal in their support of whatever Obama does because most people aren't going to approve.

But maybe it's hard to make that argument in 30 seconds.

When Gaming Gets Serious

Anyone who has played massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs) will tell you that a lot can happen in a virtual world. You can kill monsters (mobs). You can be a craftsman, making weapons, armor, even food. You can make a lot of virtual money. You can buy virtual stuff like houses, food, clothing, color to dye your clothes, pets and more. And you can get married. Yes, married.

And if you can get married, you can get divorced. But like in real life, virtual divorce can get ugly.

A 43-year-old Japanese woman whose sudden divorce in a virtual game world made her so angry that she killed her online husband's digital persona has been arrested on suspicion of hacking, police said Thursday.

The woman, who is jailed on suspicion of illegally accessing a computer and manipulating electronic data, used his identification and password to log onto popular interactive game "Maple Story" to carry out the virtual murder in mid-May, a police official in northern Sapporo said on condition of anonymity, citing department policy.

"I was suddenly divorced, without a word of warning. That made me so angry," the official quoted her as telling investigators and admitting the allegations.

The woman had not plotted any revenge in the real world, the official said.

Well, thank God for that!

Violence Against McCain Supporters?

Ok, it's getting ridiculous. It's just a political campaign, people. After the election, we all have to accept the new president, regardless of whether we voted for that candidate.

We have stories of campaign signs being defaced and destroyed, which is nothing particularly new. In some parts of the country, it's just part of election time to go rip up your opponent's signs.

But add to that cars being vandalized and it gets less funny.

Now it's getting serious. with campaign supporters being assaulted and carved up because they support John McCain.

This is frightening and shameful. We, as a country, are better than this behavior. There's no excuse for it. We can't blame Barack Obama. We can't blame John McCain. We can't blame Sarah Palin or Joe Biden.

I shouldn't have to say this, but supporting your candidate does not include the right to assault your opponents.

UPDATE: Michelle Malkin and others are skeptical that the woman was marked by her assailant.

If I’m wrong, I’ll apologize. If I’m right, will this woman?

Frankly, I'd be relieved if it were a hoax. There has been enough violence and assault in this campaign season to justify fear about it.

UPDATE x2: Police say the carving is a hoax. I had linked to the story before I saw the picture. Once I saw it I started having that "Hmm" feeling, but given other random acts of violence, I let it slide. Now I can say that not only is it sick to do this to yourself, but it damages every other person who has, in fact, been assaulted for being a McCain supporter. Shame, shame, shame.

No More 401(k)?

Ed Morrissey at Hot Air has a post up discussing how House Democrats want to kill your 401(k).

A plan by Teresa Ghilarducci, professor of economic-policy analysis at the New School for Social Research in New York, contains elements that are being considered. She testified last week before Miller’s Education and Labor Committee on her proposal...

Under Ghilarducci’s plan, all workers would receive a $600 annual inflation-adjusted subsidy from the U.S. government but would be required to invest 5 percent of their pay into a guaranteed retirement account administered by the Social Security Administration. The money in turn would be invested in special government bonds that would pay 3 percent a year, adjusted for inflation.

The current system of providing tax breaks on 401(k) contributions and earnings would be eliminated.

Says Ed:

That means your employer can no longer write off their contributions to your 401(k), and your capital gains would be taxable year-on-year. In other words, it becomes just another investment or savings account, with no tax benefit at all, and no employer contribution. Instead, Uncle Sam would give you your “matching” funds — up to a whopping $600 per year! Whoopee!
As Michelle Obama says, you could buy a pair of earrings every year … except, of course, you can’t. It’s in The Lockbox, defined by politicians as Locked Away from You but Accessible to Us. It goes there along with 5% of your gross earnings, apparently to play with the 7% of your gross earnings that already goes to Social Security. And what do they do with the money? They give you government bonds as your only investment option.

Why would Democrats want to gut the best retirement savings vehicle Americans have? Two reasons: (a) more government control for them and (b) more money for them to spend on things we don't need.

Remember the "Social Security lockbox"? The one that doesn't exist because we use the money to hide the size of the deficit? Now imagine that there are two lockboxes...both available for government pilfering and both without you being able to control your money. For 600 bucks.

Wow, Democrats controlling government is such a great idea!

Just A Guy in His Neighborhood

Shocker!!! Coverage of John McCain Much More Negative Than That of Barack Obama

The latest Duh! story:

Media coverage of John McCain has been heavily unfavorable since the political conventions, more than three times as negative as the portrayal of Barack Obama, a new study says.

Fifty-seven percent of the print and broadcast stories about the Republican nominee were decidedly negative, the Project for Excellence in Journalism says in a report out today, while 14 percent were positive. The McCain campaign has repeatedly complained that the mainstream media are biased toward the senator from Illinois.

Obama's coverage was more balanced during the six-week period from Sept. 8 through last Thursday, with 36 percent of the stories clearly positive, 35 percent neutral or mixed and 29 percent negative.

Gee, it's not like it was hard to notice the negative coverage of John McCain. Or that the negative coverage of McCain came, oddly, at a time that McCain had pulled ahead of Obama in many national polls. One important number missing from this analysis is the number of stories about each candidate. My bet would be that McCain received far more stories--and far more negative stories--about his campaign than Obama has since the conventions.

The Wall Street meltdown appears to have been a turning point for both candidates. Thirty-four percent of the stories about Obama's reaction to the crisis were positive, while 18 percent were negative. McCain's coverage, though, went into a free fall after he initially declared that "the fundamentals of our economy are strong." By the following week, more than half the stories about McCain were negative and only 11 percent positive, just as Obama's coverage was turning positive by a margin of more than 5 to 1.

But don't worry. It's not that there's a bias or anything.

While some will seize on these findings as evidence that the media are pro-Obama, the study says they actually contain "a strong suggestion that winning in politics begets winning coverage, thanks in part to the relentless tendency of the press to frame its coverage of national elections as running narratives about the relative position of the candidates in the polls.

Yeah, I'm sure there isn't a "MSM perceiving Obama as a winner, so they give him more positive coverage" suggestion. Nah, that couldn't be it.

Nice Ad

If the race is tightening, as some polls indicate, we can thank Joe the Plumber for exposing Barack "Spread the Wealth" Obama's economic plan.

If You Vote for Obama,This Is What You Are Voting For

Reclusive Leftist has a great post up showing what people are voting for when they vote for Barack Obama.

Her post points out something I noted a long time ago: the misogyny in this election is a bipartisan affair. We're usually lectured that only Republicans are sexist, largely because they are pro-life and pro-business. But no, there's no party affiliation for this stuff.

Reclusive Leftist also has a nice post on the fact that feminism isn't only a leftwing idea.

And word to the youngsters: you don’t grow a feminist revolution by telling those middle-of-the-roaders and conservatives that they don’t get to join because they aren’t pure enough. Aren’t as hip as you are, aren’t sufficiently on board with the whole program. Especially not when you yourself are patriarchy-complicit in a thousand ways — as are we all.

Feminism is supposed to be about equality for women. That's a pretty broad definition, but it includes the idea that different people will have different approaches to achieving that end. I don't have to always agree with leftwingers on specific issues--and I will never agree with them about things like abortion--but that doesn't mean conservative women don't want to create a world where women are treated as equals to men...including as politicians.

The Latest Code Word for "Black": Socialist

Why is it that every criticism of Barack Obama becomes a "code word" for "black"?

So let's look at the list of "code words" for "black":

1. Barack Hussein Obama

2. Uppity

3. Skinny

4. Community organizer

5. Arrogant

6. Elitist

That's all I could think of off the top of my head.

This started with a Kansas City Star columnist's claim that "socialist" is an old code word for "black." Really?

J. Edgar Hoover, director of the FBI from 1924 to 1972, used the term liberally to describe African Americans who spent their lives fighting for equality.

Those freedom fighters included the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., who led the Civil Rights Movement; W.E.B. Du Bois, who in 1909 helped found the NAACP which is still the nation's oldest and largest civil rights organization; Paul Robeson, a famous singer, actor and political activist who in the 1930s became involved in national and international movements for better labor relations, peace and racial justice; and A. Philip Randolph, who founded and was the longtime head of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters and a leading advocate for civil rights for African Americans.

I'm not the first person to note that W.E.B. DuBois and Paul Robeson were, in fact, socialists. And as Jules Crittenden points out, Martin Luther King, Jr. was warned not to be seen with socialists, but MLK did agree with various socialist ideas.

And besides all of this, what about all those white socialists? Was Eugene Debs black? Who knew?

Labeling everything racist in an attempt to prop up Barack Obama is going to backfire big time at some point. I'm not sure it will be before the election, but you can only hijack so much of the English language for your political ambitions before people balk.

Scandal of the Week: Sarah Palin's Clothes

ZOMG!!1!! The RNC spent $150k on clothes for the Palins!!!111!!!

Yes, it really is a shocker that the powers that be decided Sarah Palin shouldn't look like Hillary Clinton on the campaign trail. So they bought new, fancy duds for the Palins...all of them.

This scandal has the moonbats up in arms again. How could they spend so much on clothes?! Don't they know that that money would be better spent by the government on some new giveaway for the "poor"?

Some try to argue that Michelle Obama buys off the rack.

the dress that she wore on The View was $148

Really? What about Michelle's clothes for the Democratic National Convention? Did she get 'em from Wal-Mart? Um, nooo.

My search engine was unable to find a price tag for Sen. Obama's Hartmarx suits and Michelle's Maria Pinto dresses for their DNC convention appearances. Suits similar to the ones made for BHO go for $1,500 off the rack, but these were custom-made threads, not off the rack fare. Custom-tailored suits can easily ring up at $5,000 each or more. The Burberry suits that make up the bulk of Obama's wardrobe start at about $900 per.

You can't find the price tag for Maria Pinto clothing, but here is her site. And none of it looks cheap.

Hey, $150k is a lot to spend on clothes, I'll admit that. But if the RNC had allowed the Palins to wear what was in their closet, there would have been no end to the howls about what bumpkins the Palins were. And buying fancy duds for six people costs money, not to mention the fact that for Palin, the expectations are even worse.

Here's the sexist part of the story. If Palin wore the same clothes to five speaking engagements a day, would there have been a story about how the McCain campaign couldn't dress her properly? I'm sure there would be. Someone, somewhere would have said that she'd worn the same thing before and it would have been a splashy post on HuffPo or Pandagon.

Sexist point number 2: This is almost worse than the original story.

McCain: Governor Palin, will you be my running mate?

Palin: I’d love to, but I haven’t a thing to wear.

This is one of those damned-if-you-do-damned-if-you-don't situations. You can argue about the price of dressing Palin, but it's stupid to act as though Barack Obama buys his suits from JCPenney's or that Michelle shops regularly at Thrift Town.

UPDATE: As much as it may pain her to agree with me on a subject (I don't mind agreeing with her when our opinions match), Echidne has a nice post which goes into the sexism involved with this story.

But here's the difference: We don't expect male politicians to wear a different suit every time they are photographed. We pretty much do expect female politicians to do just that, and the suits must be different enough from each other to photograph as "different." That means not just quite a few suits but also matching shoes, tops, bags and so on. All that adds up to a lot more than, say, five dark suits for a guy with the shirts and ties to match. You can probably get away with just a few pairs of shoes, too.

This rule is not a rigid one. I think it would be possible for a woman politician to campaign in just a handful of dark suits, just like the men do. But she'd be taken to task on all those fashion pages for her poor fashion sense. Someone would write an article about her boring suits. Someone else would ask if she's denying her essential femininity in the way she dresses or if she really would like to be a guy.

The hair and the face. That's where the real cost differences open up, because a male hairstyle on a woman is certainly interpreted as "political," and the female hairstyles cost a lot more in upkeep. Make-up can cost almost as much as you wish to sink into your face.

I wonder if anyone has done a study of the clothing costs of politicians. You know, the kind of "basic package" needed to start campaigning. My guess is that the cost of such a basic package is higher for women than for men.

That's a pretty good analysis of the situation.

Out Clintoning the Clintons

Bill and Hillary Clinton were famous for selling everything, including access to the president, for a price. A night in the Lincoln bedroom netted $5.4 million for the Democratic National Committee back in 1995 and 1996. Then there were the White House coffees for $50,000 to $100,000.

But now, we have the spectacle of Barack Obama making history by asking media outlets to pay for access to his Election Night party.

The best-funded political campaign in American history says news organizations will have to pay — in some cases almost $2,000 each — if they want to cover Barack Obama’s election-night celebration in Chicago.

A memo sent to news organizations on Tuesday by the Obama campaign says credentials will cost $715 to $1,815, depending on whether electrical and phone lines are needed and whether an indoor or outdoor seat is requested for the event, which is expected to be held outside the evening of Nov. 4 in Grant Park.

The only free admissions are for a “general media” area. But, the memo says, “Please note that the general media area is outdoors, unassigned and may have obstructed views . . . standing room only.”

The area also does not include access to top Obama campaign officials, whose statements likely are to be in hot demand on Election Night. They apparently will be available only in the “press file” tent, to which an additional admission fee of $935 per person is being imposed.

If Obama wins, will he start charging media outlets for spots at press conferences? Maybe an extra fee for asking questions?

Joe Biden Endorses John McCain

Well, Biden didn't exactly endorse McCain, but his statement yesterday doesn't inspire confidence in Obama as leader.

It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy. The world is looking.... Watch, we’re gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy....

I can give you at least four or five scenarios from where it might originate… And he’s gonna need help. And the kind of help he’s gonna need is, he’s gonna need you - not financially to help him - we’re gonna need you to use your influence, your influence within the community, to stand with him. Because it’s not gonna be apparent initially, it’s not gonna be apparent that we’re right.

I'm not the first to point out that John F. Kennedy had a disasterous "no preconditions" meeting with Soviet leader Nikita Kruschev five months after Kennedy's inauguration. That meeting led directly to the building of the Berlin Wall and the Cuban Missile Crisis. If Kennedy had not been assassinated, he most likely would have been an unpopular one-term president rather than the hero Dems consider him today. It sounds like Biden is warning that the same will happen in an Obama presidency.

The difference, of course, is that we seriously can't afford an Obama-type mistake in dealing with our enemies, particularly not a mistake we're not even going to agree with at the time.

Is this an endorsement of Obama's uber skilz? Sounds to me like even Biden is arguing that McCain would be a better president.

They're Already Trying to Move the Goalposts

With the presidential election two weeks away, and a Barack Obama victory looking more likely, liberals are now in the process of trying to change the rules of engagement.

Gone are the arguments in favor of criticizing, calling for impeachment, and even, occasionally, the assassination of the sitting U.S. president. These days, the argument is, "You can't say that! You didn't like it when we did it!" or something similarly childish.

Well, I've begun formulating the rules of the game for an Obama administration, and they look quite similar to the rules liberals have used for eight years during President Bush's presidency:

1. All name-calling, including calling Obama Hitler are permissible.

2. Conservatives should call for Obama's impeachment on Inauguration Day.

3. New websites dedicated to Obama's impeachment should be set up at the same time.

4. MSM should immediately begin digging into the private lives of every person ever connected to Obama, since it might make great film but won't affect the election.

5. Any tragedy, crisis, economic downturn, foreign policy problem, deficit, or loss of life will be Obama's personal fault. Endless YouTube videos of Obama's non-Superman behavior should be run endlessly.

6. Every discussion of Obama's policies should contain at least two ad hominem attacks, 3 lies, a call for impeachment, and mention of the "stolen" election.

These rules will probably expand over the weeks following the election, but the usual useful idiots will try to argue that it is "hypocritical" to treat their candidate the way they have treated the sitting POTUS for eight years. Don't believe it.

The Difference Between Right and Left

Dennis Prager explains some fundamental differences between the Right and the Left in this country, and why those differences are irreconcilible (and also why voters are struggling to choose a new president).

“The left subscribes to the French Revolution, whose guiding principles were ‘Liberty, Equality, Fraternity.’ The right subscribes to the American formula, ‘Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.’ The French/European notion of equality is not mentioned. The right rejects the French Revolution and does not hold Western Europe as a model. The left does. That alone makes right and left irreconcilable. The left envisions an egalitarian society. The right does not. The left values equality above other values because it yearns for an America in which all people have similar amounts of material possessions... The right values equality in opportunity and strongly believes that all people are created equal, but the right values liberty, a man-woman based family and other values above equality.”

It's the difference between equality of opportunity versus equality of outcomes.

Cha-Ching! More Taxes in the Works

While we've been focusing on personal income taxes and Barack Obama's share spread the wealth strategy, the harm from The One's tax policies goes far beyond personal income. Allowing the EPA to come for your lawn care equipment is just one way that liberals would like to reshape American life and the economy.

Jason Grumet is currently executive director of an outfit called the National Commission on Energy Policy and one of Mr. Obama's key policy aides. In an interview last week with Bloomberg, Mr. Grumet said that come January the Environmental Protection Agency "would initiate those rulemakings" that classify carbon as a dangerous pollutant under current clean air laws. That move would impose new regulation and taxes across the entire economy, something that is usually the purview of Congress. Mr. Grumet warned that "in the absence of Congressional action" 18 months after Mr. Obama's inauguration, the EPA would move ahead with its own unilateral carbon crackdown anyway.
Well, well. For years, Democrats -- including Senator Obama -- have been howling about the "politicization" of the EPA, which has nominally been part of the Bush Administration. The complaint has been that the White House blocked EPA bureaucrats from making the so-called "endangerment finding" on carbon. Now it turns out that a President Obama would himself wield such a finding as a political bludgeon. He plans to issue an ultimatum to Congress: Either impose new taxes and limits on carbon that he finds amenable, or the EPA carbon police will be let loose to ravage the countryside.
The EPA hasn't made a secret of how it would like to centrally plan the U.S. economy under the 1970 Clean Air Act. In a blueprint released in July, the agency didn't exactly say it'd collectivize the farms -- but pretty close, down to the "grass clippings." The EPA would monitor and regulate the carbon emissions of "lawn and garden equipment" as well as everything with an engine, like cars, planes and boats. Eco-bureaucrats envision thousands of other emissions limits on all types of energy. Coal-fired power and other fossil fuels would be ruled out of existence, while all other prices would rise as the huge economic costs of the new regime were passed down the energy chain to consumers.
These costs would far exceed the burden of a straight carbon tax or cap-and-trade system enacted by Congress, because the Clean Air Act was never written to apply to carbon and other greenhouse gases. It's like trying to do brain surgery with a butter knife. Mr. Obama wants to move ahead anyway because he knows that the costs of any carbon program will be high. He knows, too, that Congress -- even with strongly Democratic majorities -- might still balk at supporting tax increases on their constituents, even if it is done in the name of global warming.

There are plenty of Home Owners' Associations which require a certain percentage of one's front area (usually around 70$) be grass, which must be cut regularly. Plans to penalize one for having a lawn are just another way Obama's taxes will bite those he says he'll "help."

Shocker! Those Who Don't Have to Pay Like "Spreading the Wealth"

This Hot Air post set me to giggling, particularly the part that linked to findings from the latest Rasmussen poll:

A majority of those who earn less than $40,000 a year agree with Obama about spreading the wealth around, while most of those who earn more than that disagree...

Sixty-three percent (63%) of voters under 30 agree with Obama’s statement while 33% disagree. A plurality of those over 30 take the opposite view.

I guess if you aren't going to be expected to pay for giveaways, they sound pretty good, don't they?

LOL of the Day

I saw this ad yesterday and started busting out laughing. Isn't this what the rest of us call a "robe"?

Peaceful Obama Supporter Assaults McCain Volunteer

Remember all those made up stories about angry McCain supporters yelling, "Kill him!"? We've been told many times that angry white folk are threatening violence on a nearly daily basis.

But oddly enough, there doesn't seem to be any violence from these pitchfork wavers, for all the attention they've gotten.

No, if you want violence, you have to look at Obama supporters.

While the Democrat-leaning media continues to scare undecided voters with bedtime stories about some mythical angry McCain supporter whom nobody has seen, here is a real district attorney’s complaint documenting an unprovoked assault by an enraged Democrat against a McCain volunteer in midtown Manhattan: “Defendant grabbed the sign [informant] was holding, broke the wood stick that was attached to it, and then struck informant in informant’s face thereby causing informant to sustain redness, swelling, and bruising to informant’s face and further causing informant to sustain substantial pain.”

So, holding a John McCain placard is so offensive that a liberal has to attack the holder? I suppose we need to expect this. After all, if wearing a Palin T-shirt makes a seventh grader racist why not go around beating up McCain supporters? They are obviously asking for it by expressing the wrong views.

Oh, well. At least Joe the Plumber hasn't gotten beaten up. Yet.

If He Won't Do It, We Must

Patterico has a post up saying that conservatives must do what John McCain has been unwilling to do: point out that the economy is the fault of Democrats.

Here are the videos:







Show these to friends, neighbors and anyone you can. As Patterico says,

Put aside your rosy scenarios. We are headed for a bloodbath. At this point, every single undecided voter is going to break for Obama. His coattails will bring in more Democrats to a Congress that has a worse approval rating than Bush. It’s absurd — but it’s going to happen.

If we’re going down, we might as well go down fighting — with the truth. So spread the truth to every undecided voter you can.

I'm not as pessimistic as Patterico. We've known for the entireity of this election cycle that Republicans were unlikely to win the White House this time, but I've never bought into that conventional wisdom. I still think we have a chance. And no amount of pounding from liberals and the media will stop me from voting. But it's important to try to persuade every undecided person you know of exactly who is responsible for the crash of this economy.

Joe the Plumber as Object Lesson

Last week, a guy put Barack Obama on the spot regarding his tax plan.



Obama's "share spread the wealth" statement was probably the first time a lot of folks had heard Obama say so bluntly what he thinks about your hard-earned money: it needs to go to someone else who hasn't made as much because it's all about "fairness," not opportunity.

In the latest example of tolerance, the Left is out to smear Joe the Plumber. We've been told Joe is related to Charles Keating, owes back taxes, he's not a licensed plumber and now will probably lose his job.

All because he asked a question that made The Obamessiah look bad.

Get ready for eight years of Gestapo tactics like this if Obama is elected president.

Question The One? You'll be roasted alive.

Expose him as the socialist he is? We'll dig through your tax records for the last 20 years.

Let's just start calling it "The Obama Treatment." If you have the audacity to ask an inconvenient question, get ready for the enema of a lifetime because, to the Left, the problem wasn't Obama's answer, it was the guy who asked it.

UPDATE: Here is Echidne of the Snakes post on the subject:

The media has decided that Joe the plumber is the crystallizing moment of the third debate. It's all very silly, because Joe voted for McCain in the primaries (so how undecided is he?) and because nobody seems to know if the 250,000 dollars he mentions as his income is revenue or profit (which is what he'd be actually taxed on) and so on.

Still, we are supposed to see Joe as the composite American, the average guy, whose life is exactly like the lives of everybody else! Exactly! Except that Joe is white and can never worry about the health exception to abortion, say. And I'd bet that people who write about how very average he is have rather little in common with Joe.

Where to begin? First of all, one can have voted for someone in the primary but changed one's mind about the candidate since. I've been an advocate for John McCain, but I can see how someone could have become disillusioned with him since the primaries.

Secondly, to my knowledge, Joe the Plumber didn't say he made $250k a year. He said he wanted to buy a plumbing business which had the potential for such income. A business that employs two or more people can, quite easily, make $250,000 each year.

Third, I'm not sure how abortion relates to Joe's question about taxes. The Joe the Plumber as Everyman theory is with regards to his ability to make and keep money. Anyone--including women--can be plumbers or own their own businesses. And Barack Obama's tax plan will cost those owners, regardless of their ability to get abortions.

And Joe, in fact, has quite a bit in common with the average American. He's working. He's trying to do better for himself and his family. He's concerned about the economy and how Obama's plans will affect him. Except for his lack of a womb, he sounds quite a bit like a lot of women I know, too.

UPDATE x2: Dan Riehl discusses the O body count.

The O-body count is growing and the Left and Obama haven't really even achieved any power of the executive kind so far. Everyone who has gotten in the way of Obama's path to power has been horribly run down. It's also obvious that they would happily destroy them if they could.

Obama's Education Secretary

Senator's Lawsuit Against God Tossed Out for Lack of Service

For reasons known only to the plaintiffs, we periodically must suffer fools suing God.

A Douglas County District Court judge has tossed out Nebraska State Sen. Ernie Chambers' lawsuit against God.

Judge Marlon Polk says Chambers can't sue God if he can't serve papers on him.

The court had warned Chambers in the past that his lawsuit may be dismissed because he had failed to serve notice on God. Chambers had responded by arguing the Almighty shouldn't need notice because God already knows everything.

Chambers has said he's trying to make a point that anybody can sue anybody. He is a self-proclaimed agnostic who is being pushed out of the Legislature because of term limits.

Chambers filed the lawsuit in September 2007. It sought a permanent injunction to prevent God from committing acts of violence such as tornadoes and earthquakes.

What would be funnier is if there were an earthquake at the courthouse.

"Get Ready for Eight Years of Pure Delicious Crazy"

From Ben Smith's blog:

I just got an astounding e-mail from a Republican consultant I know well. He's a guy who's always thought Obama had a "glass jaw," and was always among those agitating for hitting Obama harder.

Recently, he conducted a focus group in an upper-Midwestern state, showing them the kind of ad he thought would work: A no-holds-barred attack, cut for an independent group, which hasn't aired.

I'm just going to reprint his amazed e-mail about the focus group:

Reagan Dems and Independents. Call them blue-collar plus. Slightly more Target than Walmart.

Yes, the spot worked. Yes, they believed the charges against Obama. Yes, they actually think he's too liberal, consorts with bad people and WON'T BE A GOOD PRESIDENT...but they STILL don't give a f***. They said right out, "He won't do anything better than McCain" but they're STILL voting for Obama.

The two most unreal moments of my professional life of watching focus groups:

54 year-old white male, voted Kerry '04, Bush '00, Dole '96, hunter, NASCAR fan...hard for Obama said: "I'm gonna hate him the minute I vote for him. He's gonna be a bad president. But I won't ever vote for another god-damn Republican. I want the government to take over all of Wall Street and bankers and the car companies and Wal-Mart run this county like we used to when Reagan was President."

The next was a woman, late 50s, Democrat but strongly pro-life. Loved B. and H. Clinton, loved Bush in 2000. "Well, I don't know much about this terrorist group Barack used to be in with that Weather guy but I'm sick of paying for health insurance at work and that's why I'm supporting Barack."

I felt like I was taking crazy pills. I sat on the other side of the glass and realized...this really is the Apocalypse. The Seventh Seal is broken and its time for eight years of pure, delicious crazy....

This tells me two things.

1. None of these people believe Obama will do the things he says he will.

2. They don't think it matters who is in the White House.

I look at people like this and think, "Ok, when the Great Depression comes, you're not getting any of my carrots. Go ask Barack Obama."

I still think John McCain can win, so Mike Ganzweld shouldn't read more into what I said than the joke it was meant to be. But I am of two minds when it comes to a Barack Obama administration. First, I'll be happy to sit back and carp to my heart's content about his destructive policies. I'll enjoy being able to point at Obama supporters and tell them that everything that happens on their watch--including another terrorist attack, which I think will happen during 2009, regardless of who is president--is THEIR fault. No excuses.

Secondly, I am appalled at the destruction an Obama administration could create. It's like the figure of Death who causes everything to curl up and die when he touches it. This is what I see the Democrats doing if they have both houses of Congress and the presidency.

But then I read about people who just don't want to buy insurance anymore voting for Obama and I realize that we really get exactly the government we deserve.

Meaningful Distinctions

Abortion supporters often work very hard to hide their hardline approach to abortion. They recoil when you talk about their demand that any baby be killed if the mother decides she doesn't want to be pregnant. They'll argue that the baby is "only a clump of cells" or that "most of those abortions are done for fetal abnormalities" or some such argument. They won't back down, mind you. But they will try very hard to explain away any opposition to killing children as a sort of necessity.

Then there's the open hardliners. These people don't really care about the reasons for abortion; they think any reason or no reason is good enough to snuff out inconvenient life. That pregnancy is a temporary condition and death is forever (at least in this life) doesn't deter their thinking. Go to any feminist website and you'll see plenty of examples of posters and commenters freely admitting that killing one's offspring is a fundamental right of being a woman.

NARAL and NOW aren't quite as open about their adoration of the culture of death, but they have found their candidate of choice: Barack Obama. Over the last year, I've had more than a couple of skirmishes with pro-abortion types who want to argue why Obama isn't the extremist he appears. They buy into the big lie that Obama would have supported federal legislation mandating that doctors not ignore infants born after failed abortions. They swallow whole the mendacity of Obama's record with the Illinois Born Alive Infant Protection Act. They'll even go so far as to attack anyone who calls Obama on his approach.

But sometimes, Obama's own behavior speaks for itself. How would Obama handle abortion? Take a look.

For starters, he supports legislation that would repeal the Hyde Amendment, which protects pro-life citizens from having to pay for abortions that are not necessary to save the life of the mother and are not the result of rape or incest. The abortion industry laments that this longstanding federal law, according to the pro-abortion group NARAL, ''forces about half the women who would otherwise have abortions to carry unintended pregnancies to term and bear children against their wishes instead.'' In other words, a whole lot of people who are alive today would have been exterminated in utero were it not for the Hyde Amendment. Obama has promised to reverse the situation so that abortions that the industry complains are not happening (because the federal government is not subsidizing them) would happen. That is why people who profit from abortion love Obama even more than they do his running mate.

But this barely scratches the surface of Obama's extremism. He has promised that ''the first thing I'd do as President is sign the Freedom of Choice Act'' (known as FOCA). This proposed legislation would create a federally guaranteed ''fundamental right'' to abortion through all nine months of pregnancy, including, as Cardinal Justin Rigali of Philadelphia has noted in a statement condemning the proposed Act, ''a right to abort a fully developed child in the final weeks for undefined 'health' reasons.'' In essence, FOCA would abolish virtually every existing state and federal limitation on abortion, including parental consent and notification laws for minors, state and federal funding restrictions on abortion, and conscience protections for pro-life citizens working in the health-care industry-protections against being forced to participate in the practice of abortion or else lose their jobs. The pro-abortion National Organization for Women has proclaimed with approval that FOCA would ''sweep away hundreds of anti-abortion laws [and] policies.''

YOu get that? These are people who aren't interested in reducing the number of abortions. That's the big lie. They want to ensure that there's never an abortion desired that doesn't get completed. And those pissant voters? Screw 'em!

But it gets even worse. Senator Obama, despite the urging of pro-life members of his own party, has not endorsed or offered support for the Pregnant Women Support Act, the signature bill of Democrats for Life, meant to reduce abortions by providing assistance for women facing crisis pregnancies. In fact, Obama has opposed key provisions of the Act, including providing coverage of unborn children in the State Children's Health Insurance Program (S-CHIP), and informed consent for women about the effects of abortion and the gestational age of their child. This legislation would not make a single abortion illegal. It simply seeks to make it easier for pregnant women to make the choice not to abort their babies.

Why not help women facing crisis pregnancies if you really don't think abortion is the be all and end all? Because the fact is, Obama is concerned that any abortion would be unobtainable, no matter how late in the pregnancy it is or how ridiculous the excuse is.

And Obama's contempt for life doesn't stop with abortion. As this article points out, Obama supports the mass production of human embryos for stem cell research, even though there are plenty of ways to get stem cells these days without killing embryos. I disagree with ESCR at all as gruesome, barbaric and evil, but the idea of farming humans when we can get the material from other sources stretches even my idea of evil.

This author compares the pro-choice/abortion side to pro-slavery arguments and it is powerful.

The defect in this argument can easily be brought into focus if we shift to the moral question that vexed an earlier generation of Americans: slavery. Many people at the time of the American founding would have preferred a world without slavery but nonetheless opposed abolition. Such people - Thomas Jefferson was one - reasoned that, given the world as it was, with slavery woven into the fabric of society just as it had often been throughout history, the economic consequences of abolition for society as a whole and for owners of plantations and other businesses that relied on slave labor would be dire. Many people who argued in this way were not monsters but honest and sincere, albeit profoundly mistaken. Some (though not Jefferson) showed their personal opposition to slavery by declining to own slaves themselves or freeing slaves whom they had purchased or inherited. They certainly didn't think anyone should be forced to own slaves. Still, they maintained that slavery should remain a legally permitted option and be given constitutional protection.

Would we describe such people, not as pro-slavery, but as ''pro-choice''? Of course we would not. It wouldn't matter to us that they were ''personally opposed'' to slavery, or that they wished that slavery were ''unnecessary,'' or that they wouldn't dream of forcing anyone to own slaves. We would hoot at the faux sophistication of a placard that said ''Against slavery? Don't own one.'' We would observe that the fundamental divide is between people who believe that law and public power should permit slavery, and those who think that owning slaves is an unjust choice that should be prohibited.

These days, we're told that in order to reduce the number of abortions, we have to make it easier to get. This illogic is as stunning as it is mendacious. These extremists don't believe parents should be involved in the decisions of their children. They don't think there is ever a time when the baby's right to life outweighs the mother's convenience (even Roe didn't make that argument). These people don't acknowledge a right of conscience for doctors, nurses, or pharmacists who might not want to be accomplices in these "choices."

Why?

Because any loophole that allows someone not to be involved in abortion is one more loophole that prevents some woman somewhere of getting that abortion she wants. So, these people don't acknowledge that a person could go into women's health medicine with the idea of helping, not hurting, humans. Or that taxpayers could think it was not a good use of their money to fund unnecessary abortions.

That's your President Obama, the side they try very hard to hide or explain away.

Will Anything Help John McCain?

Short answer: Not sure.

With Barack Obama opening up a 14-point lead in some polls, that feel of inevitability is comin' on.

Obama's been a good campaigner, there's no doubt about that. His use of innovative advertising combined with a deluge of mainstream ads is probably responsible for a good part of it.

Another big part of Obama's support, as this video points out, is based on his blackness. That support comes from black voters excited at a viable candidate of their hue, but also from "being part of history" do-gooders who may or may not (and usually may not) know anything about his policies...or care.

The third part of Obama's lead comes from the astonishing lack of media curiosity about Obama's history, philosophy, and acquaintances. If John McCain had been in the same room with any one of these characters, he would have been toast. But Obama? "He's just a guy from my neighborhood." "I never heard those sermons." "He was a mentor when I was a kid." And on and on.

What is killing McCain is the willful ignorance of the populace, weary of an unpopular president and willing to overlook every danger signal Obama presents in an attempt to make things "better" (although "better" is never defined).

This is a politician who wants to raise taxes, not to eliminate the deficit, which would, at the very least, be an acceptable argument, but to spread the wealth (sounds eerily Huey Long-ish, to me). The only thing missing from Obama's tax plan is a cap on personal income, inheritance, and fortunes.

There's Obama's radical record on abortion. His questionable education philosophy (since no one will ask him about it, we must assume that, like Bill Ayers, he believes in teaching young kids "social justice"). His profligate promises for practically every American to receive hush money from the government. There's attempts to cram unions down the throats of decent workers. And there's judges, of which, Obama the Constitutional law expert, has said should be "fair," not using traditional methods of Constitutional interpretation.

Indeed, ironically, it may be the Supreme Court that saves us from the worst Obama excesses. Wouldn't that be a kick in the head?

From Melanie Phillips (linked above):

You have to pinch yourself – a Marxisant radical who all his life has been mentored by, sat at the feet of, worshipped with, befriended, endorsed the philosophy of, funded and been in turn funded, politically promoted and supported by a nexus comprising black power anti-white racists, Jew-haters, revolutionary Marxists, unrepentant former terrorists and Chicago mobsters, is on the verge of becoming President of the United States. And apparently it’s considered impolite to say so.

Future generations will be left scratching their heads, wondering how willfully ignorant the American populace was to elect Barack Obama when all the warning signs were there.

It's Not Cuz He's Black

Can I Set Up a Halloween Display, Too?

Under "It's only racism if it's Republican," stick this Halloween display.

Havens, who lives on Schuyler County Route 15 (Ridge Road) just south of Odessa, this week set up a Halloween display featuring mannequins that look like Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama and Republican rival John McCain.

But the Obama figure looks like he is running, and the McCain likeness is dressed in the hooded robe of the Ku Klux Klan and is carrying a baseball bat.

Havens is quick to point out he is a liberal and a big supporter of Obama, and that the scene is meant to provoke thought about the way he believes Obama has been unfairly treated by the McCain campaign.

"I figured it would be equally offensive to everyone. It's just for shock value," Havens said. "McCain has been rabble-rousing, calling Obama a terrorist and a Muslim. The McCain campaign has gotten so ugly. That's what the message is. I can see how people could take this the wrong way. I'm not advocating anything. It's sarcasm."

Aside from the obvious smear job of portraying John McCain as a member of the most infamous racist organization ever created, there's all the lies Havens obviously believes. John McCain has not called Barack Obama a terrorist or a Muslim.

But if by "ugly" Havens means "truthful," then I suppose all conservatives who cringe at Obama's leftwing policies are guilty.

I wonder what would happen if I set up a Halloween display of John McCain being tortured by the Vietnamese while, across the yard, Obama is sniffing cocaine? I wonder if Obamaniacs would be upset? And why? At least my display would be truthful.

One Thing We Don't Have in Texas

Beautiful fall foliage.

There may be parts of Texas--say, in the Piney Woods--that have more colorful leaves than here in the Metroplex, but,for the most part, Texas isn't known for glorious fall color. It's about the only thing I regret being here.

OTOH, yesterday, it was in the 80s. We had the windows open and could wear shorts and a T-shirt. There are always silver linings. :)

If Facts Aren't On Your Side, Just Redefine Words

Democrats have this ugly habit of redefining words when facts don't help them. That's how Democrats claimed that Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush were "cutting" programs when all that was reduced was the percentage the programs grew. By any stretch of the imagination, reducing the rate of growth isn't a "cut."

Now we have the lyin' Obama campaign claiming it will cut taxes for 95% of Americans. As the Wall Street Journal points out, the only way Obama can do this is if you redefine was a "tax cut" is.

For the Obama Democrats, a tax cut is no longer letting you keep more of what you earn. In their lexicon, a tax cut includes tens of billions of dollars in government handouts that are disguised by the phrase "tax credit." Mr. Obama is proposing to create or expand no fewer than seven such credits for individuals:

- A $500 tax credit ($1,000 a couple) to "make work pay" that phases out at income of $75,000 for individuals and $150,000 per couple.

- A $4,000 tax credit for college tuition.

- A 10% mortgage interest tax credit (on top of the existing mortgage interest deduction and other housing subsidies).

- A "savings" tax credit of 50% up to $1,000.

- An expansion of the earned-income tax credit that would allow single workers to receive as much as $555 a year, up from $175 now, and give these workers up to $1,110 if they are paying child support.

- A child care credit of 50% up to $6,000 of expenses a year.

- A "clean car" tax credit of up to $7,000 on the purchase of certain vehicles.

The dirty little secret is that these promises are tax credits, meaning the government will write you a check even if you paid no taxes. As WSJ says, we used to call this "welfare," but "tax cut" sounds so much better.

The Tax Foundation estimates that under the Obama plan 63 million Americans, or 44% of all tax filers, would have no income tax liability and most of those would get a check from the IRS each year. The Heritage Foundation's Center for Data Analysis estimates that by 2011, under the Obama plan, an additional 10 million filers would pay zero taxes while cashing checks from the IRS.

We had welfare reform in the 1990s which was aimed at getting people off the government dole. Now Obama wants to put more people on the dole. After all, Democrats know that if you hand people money they didn't earn, they're more likely to keep voting for you. Preaching personal responsibility, while the grown-up position, isn't as much fun as being told you get free money.

But who pays for these giveaways? Why, the rest of us, that's who. If you have been successful, we don't want you to keep the fruits of your success. It's not "fair" that you worked harder and smarter and got ahead.

The worst part of this plan is that the disincentives for work are enormous.

Because Mr. Obama's tax credits are phased out as incomes rise, they impose a huge "marginal" tax rate increase on low-income workers. The marginal tax rate refers to the rate on the next dollar of income earned. As the nearby chart illustrates, the marginal rate for millions of low- and middle-income workers would spike as they earn more income.

Some families with an income of $40,000 could lose up to 40 cents in vanishing credits for every additional dollar earned from working overtime or taking a new job. As public policy, this is contradictory. The tax credits are sold in the name of "making work pay," but in practice they can be a disincentive to working harder, especially if you're a lower-income couple getting raises of $1,000 or $2,000 a year.

If this mess gets passed, it will take a generation to fix it.