November 2008 Archives

STICK A FORK IN JOHN MCCAIN.

No one can be surprised that a messiah figure promising change beat a senator flailing at earmarks. No one cared about John McCain's earmarks, my friend. No one was inspired by his insistence that Barack Obama was an "honorable" man or assured by his dismissal of "some old terrorist," named William Ayres. They were inspired instead when the "warrior princess" began to fight the real battles the tired, old soldier was unwilling to engage. While Sarah Palin called out the "old terrorist," McCain smiled and shrugged. While Palin fought to make drilling for oil the legitimate issue it was, McCain insisted he knew more about ANWR than Alaska's governor and clung to his PC opposition. And, in an attempt to further demonstrate his magnanimous reach across the aisle, he vowed to include the genius Al Gore on any Global Warming initiative his administration might advance. Inspiring. While people were given an opportunity to vote on how they actually felt about men marrying men and women marrying women in three states, McCain was reluctant to mention the issue. Loathe to defend the sanctity of marriage between a man and woman? Unwilling to expose his opponent's radical opposition against giving the people a vote? Remarkably, both Florida and California went for Obama and against homosexual marriage. Did those voters know where Barack stood on this issue? Did they understand his stated intention to overturn the Defense of Marriage Act in order to usher in homosexual marriage state by state? Who would have told them except Obama's opponent, John McCain? But marriage was not worth fighting for. The important issue was earmarks, my friend ... earmarks. While a huge percent of Americans--Democrats, Republicans and Independents alike--continue to oppose amnesty and benefits for illegal aliens, John McCain refused to make it a campaign issue. Do the citizens of the United States know Obama supports driver's licenses for illegals? Medical benefits? Open borders? Do they know that of the so-called 44 million uninsured, millions are illegal immigrants? No, because McCain refused to mention it. He was more concerned about demonstrating his compassion to illegals than defending his country against their overwhelming demands. When an attendee at a Wisconsin McCain/Palin rally stood up to declare, "I'm mad! Fight for us!" McCain delivered his trademark Beavis and Butthead laugh, offended at the challenge, not even comprehending the gravity of the moment. The nation at crisis, he thought the race was about him. "Fight with me!" McCain famously urged at the Republican Convention, but we quickly discovered he perceived the fight to be for his shot at the presidency, not the preservation of the union. If he had really understood the dangers, how could he have remained cavalier and unserious about so many important issues? A loss for McCain meant a return to the rich privileges of the Senate, a beautiful, millionaire wife and plenty more opportunities to fight earmarks and reach across the aisle. While the nation reels from his weakness, we were the ones who lost, not he. As McCain met with the president-elect this week, speculation grows on a cooperative, bipartisan effort to bring citizenship and benefits for illegal immigrants. And since all campaign promises are off and the great compromiser still boasts of supporting leftist Supreme Court Justices David Souter and Ruth Bader Ginsburg we can likely look forward to seeing him champion more bad nominees, more illegal immigration, more foolish global warming initiatives and more attention-getting gimmicks to demonstrate his maverick madness. I voted for him out of self-preservation, but I would not have been proud of my candidate if this misguided lion lacking courage had made it to the White House. Still, I fear he will do more damage outside the White House than inside, and that, my friend, is a bi-partisan reach we could live without.

BUSH IS SOUNDING MORE LIKE HOOVER EVERY DAY.  Hoover did everything he could to interrupt the healthy self-coordination of trade and commerce -- and then posed as the poster boy of the "free market."  All in one swoop Hoover helped to destroy the market -- and the reputation of idea of the free market.  Bush has been doing the same.

Hoover's anti-coordination, anti-market policies are well known.  If you "don't know much about history" or you are still caught up in the bogus myth of Hoover propagated by grossly dishonest Democrat journalists and historians 40 years ago, you might start with this eye opener.

FOX NEWS IS SPREADING VICIOUS LIES about Sarah Palin, being dished out by leading figures in the John McCain campaign, and spread in the interest of protecting the reputation of incompetent Presidential candidate John McCain and his manifestly failed campaign staff.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and the absurd claim that Palin doesn't know that Africa is a continent and not a country is the most absurdly bogus lie I've heard yet in the ongoing attempt to smear Palin as a drooling, brain dead, hillbilly idiot.

Will the McCain people please just go away, and stop doing their damndest to damage the Republican party and the conservative movement?

Video here and here.

It looks like it was all out war by the McCain "moderates" against Sarah Palin in the final weeks of the campaign.

Allahpundit:  "they might as well have tossed in a story about her having to guess who's buried in Grant's tomb."

UPDATE:  Malkin weighs in.  And Robert S. McCain's has more on Palin and the gross incompetence of the McCain people.

HERE'S WHAT THE POPULATION WEIGHTED county-by-county vote actually looked like. Yes, that's Orange County bulging out in Southern California.


And here is what a population weighted state-by-state map looks like:


Source.

AMERICAN IS WELL ON THE WAY TO BECOMING A BANANA REPUBLIC.  Read the argument.  Some words of advice:

My point is that sooner or later the U.S. government is going to have to get serious about stripping the assets of those of us who have tried to live within our means. Sooner or later, the profligate are going to take from the prudent, the grasshopper is going to confiscate the property of the ants. If you've got wealth, you need to find a haven for it. You don't want to keep it in a banana republic for too long.

OBAMA IS APPOINTING one of the most vicious and rabidly partisan politicians in the history of the country as his chief of staff.  Welcome to the "post-partisan" reality of the Obama Presidency.

So far those of us who have thought the worst of Obama are two for two with his first major decisions as leader -- selecting the most far left man in the Senate besides himself as his VP, and the most viciously partisan leftist operator in the country as his chief of staff. 

All of those "conservatives" who voted for Obama "hoping for the best" are being proven fools with every Obama decision.  I'm guessing this will continue to be the case.

HOW BAD WAS IT for McCain?  He almost lost Orange County, California, the ground zero of the Reagan Revolution -- and he lost Riverside, San Diego and San Bernardino counties, ground zero of the massive anti-tax, anti-immigration Schwarzenegger earthquake of 2003.

And lets be clear.  If McCain had done the right thing on the Wall Street bailout and the mortgage meltdown, he would have won these counties.  McCain's crackup and sellout during the bailout cost him the election (more here), not just in non-LA Southern California, but around the country.  The one true thing McCain said last night is that he himself is responsible for the loss of the election.  The vote last night, more than anything, was a vote against John McCain.  A majority of Republicans in the primaries never supported this man as their candidate for President, and as I pointed out at the time, McCain beat out his rivals only because of the vote of non-Republicans in a number of key Republican primaries.

Once again we had a weak candidate who was beyond the age any man should run for the Presidency.  John McCain did a selfish disservice to America and to the principles we hold by putting his ambition to "be somebody" ahead of the leadership requirements of the Presidency.  I know that's harsh, but it's what I believe.

UPDATE:  McCain did worse than George Bush among moderates and liberals.

OPDATE II:  Robert S. McCain on John McCain's mortal self-wounding, Oct. 2, 2008:

Last week's idiotic gesture -- "Suspend the campaign! Cancel the debate! Pass the bailout!" -- blew up in his face and destroyed all rational hope that he can win on Nov. 4. So now he's looking around for scapegoats, and any reporter (or columnist) who gets within range will do.

Pathetic. Three weeks ago, McCain led by 3 points in the Real Clear Politics average (and one poll showed him +1 in Michigan). A week later, when the polls started to slip, he freaked out and tried to blame the mortgage meltdown on SEC Chairman Chris Cox. When that didn't work, and with his poll numbers slipping even further, he decided to take ownership of the unpopular $700 billion bailout.

A WORD to the wise.  And yes, after Barack Obama, I do believe John McCain will be enemy number one to liberty and conservatism over the next four years.  Sure I hope I'm wrong.  Only, with these sorts of things, as much as I'd wish things to be otherwise, I keep being dead on right.  It's a cruel fate to actually understand what is going on in the world.

ANYONE WANT to argue with me that George Bush was a disaster as President?  And McCain was a disaster as the GOP candidate?

UPDATE:  No argument from Derb.  And no argument on McCain from Ace.  Read 'em both.

And what really tells the story is that McCain is barely pulling 54% of the vote in Arizona, among the people who know him best.  And McCain lost even his home state among voters under 30.

UPDATE II:  No arguments here, either.  A must read.  And don't miss this either.

I KNOW this is a great moment for every American and especially for every black American (if we look at this election as a symbol, and not as a particular political outcome).  But listening to Obama's speech tonight I've got to say, what a gas bag.  There's no "there" there when he talks about where he is taking America and what we have to do.  It's worse that mere air.  It's a hollowness that actually sucks substance out of the air. 

I have deep and well earned concerns about who he is, and what mistakes he will make, and where he wants to take the country.  But beyond that I'm already bored to tears this "soaring" rhetoric and these empty words.  He's imitating great men speaking great ideas at momentous times in our history.  But there are no great ideas here, there is simply an attractive man with a skin color similar to that of Americans who -- unlike Obama -- were the descendants of slaves and the victims of profound racial discrimination under Jim Crow.

If there was any idea behind Obama's campaign it was the fact of his race.  Beyond that there wasn't much, and tonight, again, what we got was the magic of the fact of a man of his race winning the Presidency. But mostly, for me, there was just the sucking hollowness. 

I guess I'm too post racial, but I'm already beyond that, and all these other gassy words about where we have to go and what we have to sacrifice are starting to annoy.  What matters is what this guy will do, and I'm not at all optimistic that he'll do things to make this a freer, safer, more prosperous, more law abiding country.

In fact, any betting man has got to bet he'll do a million different things to make this a less free, less safe, less prosperous, and less law abiding country. 

I have children, and that's a sad thing to write.

UPDATE:  A locker room pep talk and call to arms from Michelle Malkin.

UPDATE II:  Here's the text.  You find something besides gas in it.

THIS GUY GETS IT.

And it's time to stop whistling past the grave yard -- we're no longer a center right county.  Not even close.  Karl Rove promised realignment with George Bush, and we've got it, good and hard.

And I also think Mark Steyn is right about this:

I think we are near a point at which America joins the rest of the west as a center-left society - that's to say, a society whose assumptions about the role of government and the size of the state are far closer to Continental social democracies than to the Founding Fathers. In a grim media-cultural environment, the temptation for American conservatism is to be seduced into becoming one of those ever so mildly right-of-left-of-right-of-left-of-center parties they have in Europe. We should have the fight about conservatism's future vigorously and openly ..

UPDATE:  A bit of good news.

OBAMA'S GRANDMOTHER HAS DIED.

You couldn't write fiction which would match the story of this election.

Who was Madelyn Dunham?  Read this and this and this for some indication.

KURTZ: WHAT WE KNOW ABOUT OBAMA -- THE BOTTOM LINE:

Reflecting on all that I've written about Barack Obama over these past six months, four inter-related points stand out: Obama's radicalism, his stealthy incrementalism, his interest in funding and organization-building, and his willingness to use -- or quietly support -- Alinskyite intimidation tactics.

MORE:

Obama's troubling associations are more than isolated friendships or instances of bad judgment. His ties to Jeremiah Wright, Bill Ayers, Bernardine Dohrn, Rashid Khalidi, Michael Pfleger, James Meeks, ACORN, the New Party, and the Gamaliel Foundation all reflect Obama's sympathy with radical-left ideas and causes -- wealth redistribution prominent among them. At both the Woods Fund and the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, for example, Obama and Ayers channeled money into ACORN's coffers. ACORN, a militant group pursuing economic redistribution, succeeded in undermining credit standards throughout the banking system, thereby modeling the New Party's plans to tame capitalism itself. So the association with Ayers is not an outlier issue, but part and parcel of a network of radical ties through which Obama's supported "major redistributive change." Via ACORN, that project has already nearly wrecked our economy. What will happen when it's generalized?

And this is what most concerns me: 

In his now infamous 2001 radio remarks, Obama's preferred strategy for promoting "major redistributive change" was through society-wide organizing from below. As president, Obama would connect his massive [government mandated] youth-'volunteer' program to his favorite community-organizer groups, thereby creating a political force for long-term restructuring of the American economy. This was the program of the New Party, and I believe it is still Obama's long-term goal.

"ROCKET SCIENCE" + MORON BOSS = HUNDREDS OF BILLIONS LOST AT AIG.

The kicker?  The moron boss was retained after retirement as a "consultant" at a rate of $1,000,000 per month.

Make sure to read also this and this.

THE BIGGEST CRASH OF THEM ALL .. the truly massive and ongoing crash in the reputation of the macroeconomists.

Quotable:

As recently as six months ago, the consensus was that it was sufficient for monetary policy to engage in inflation targeting or to follow a Taylor rule. Now, Brad DeLong refers to this view contemptuously as "Greenspanism."

If you look closely, you will find that there is no consensus now. Olivier Blanchard's triumphal history of the last thirty years of economics is exactly wrong.

What will emerge? What the public wants is a theory of control. That is, the demand is for a theory that includes ways for policymakers to control booms and busts. To satisfy that demand, my guess is that the economics profession will put most of its effort into rationalizing or tinkering with the consensus. The leaders of the profession have too much invested in New Keynesianism to be able to back away or acknowledge that it has been refuted.

I would not be surprised to see unorthodox theories of control gain traction. Perhaps, to justify current policy trends, a theory that socialized investment is necessary for stability.

To me. the logical thing for the economics profession to do is admit that we are nowhere near understanding what is happening. However, taking that position will not get you invited to panels.

Modern macroeconomics is a pseudo-science run by a band of "idiot savant" math-game playing "jocks", as out to sea as a Medieval guild of astrologers.   The profession is intellectually utterly compromised by deep and overwhelming ties to the massive purse strings and professional prestige offered by the Federal Reserve and other branches of the Federal government.

If it were a union, the government would rightly jail its members on a RICO prosecution, if it were a corporation, the government would rightly smash it.  But as a pretend "science" the profession possesses special immunity -- most especially immunity from competition in a true and open marketplace of ideas.

OBAMA IS BOTH FOR AND AGAINST GAY MARRIAGE.  Glad he cleared that one up.

THERE WAS NO "LEAK" -- good old "gumshoe" reporting by the London Times led to Barack Obama's aunt living illegally in Boston on the public dole.  Quotable:  "Whatever the Democrat campaign may imply, there is nothing suspicious about the story or its timing. The only mystery, perhaps, is how so many people read Mr Obama's book in the US without wondering what might have happened to the mysterious relative, lost in America."

American reporters don't do this kind of reporting anymore, so the naturally assumed the story must have come from a government leak.

Meanwhile, the Bush administration has launched a Federal probe of the non-leak.

"I HAVEN'T BEEN ABLE TO BE [IN TOUCH WITH MY AUNT]" -- Barack Obama's bizarre claim explaining why he hasn't talked to the aunt who became a central character in his 1995 memoir since being elected to the Senate in 2006.

AS A TEEN, BARACK OBAMA WAS LABELED AN "UNCLE TOM" by other blacks, says his best friend in high school -- part of a long profile on "Obama the chameleon" from the Daily Mail.

Of course, this "Uncle Tom" story wasn't in Obama's "memoir", unless you count the made-up sounding story of "Tim", who was supposed to be a "white acting" black student at Occidental taking an economics class.  Obama seems to have done this a lot in his memoir -- assign his own life experiences and deep emotions to other characters in the "memoir".  Rarely has a man written so much about himself, and left his readers so utterly in the dark about who he truly is.

So who is Barack Obama?  Peter Nicholas of the LA Times says he's spent 18 hours a day for the better part of a year, and he still doesn't know who Barack Obama is.

Of course, I believe Obama's "Rosebud" is there waiting for to be discovered by anyone who cares to know.

Peter Nicholas, I'm guessing, in one who doesn't want to know, and doesn't want his readers to know either.

IF MCCAIN hadn't decided he's OK with losing, he would have run ads like this:

SHOCKER! THE AP LIED ABOUT PALIN AND THE ALASKA GAS PIPELINE. 

OK, it's not a shocker.  The AP makes up false information and reports it as news all the time.

Party before journalism.  The new creed of the Associated Press and "journalists" coast to coast.

I'm canceling my subscription to the Orange County Register after the conclusion of this election.  The paper is dependent on Democrat party press releases from the AP and other wire services for its national news, and I've had enough of that.

OBAMA PLEDGES TO BANKRUPT THE COAL INDUSTRY. 

It's all about Obama's pledge to save the world, you understand.  Save the world, destroy the U.S. economy.  Whatever.

QUOTE OF THE DAY

"Barack Obama has the kind of cocksure confidence that can only be achieved
 by not achieving anything else."

-- Thomas Sowell.

One more:

"For someone who has actually accomplished nothing to blithely talk about taking
away what has been earned by those who have accomplished something, and give
it to whomever he chooses in the name of "spreading the wealth," is the kind of
casual arrogance that has led to many economic catastrophes in many countries."