Category — Presidential Politics

Everyone is worried about the economy, but here’s something to consider.  After the stock market crash of 1929, most economists agree that raising taxes and killing free trade through Smoot-Hawley deepened the depression.

What does Obama want to do when he takes office?  Restrict trade, which they stylishly refer to as “fair trade” and raise taxes.  In fact, Obama couldn’t produce one program he’d be forced to cut given the current economic climate in the last debate.  So, if you want a depression instead of a recession, vote Obama.

The market was down big today with the Dow down over 777 points.  However, people are missing the real point in the financial meltdown.  It’s not about where we’ve been, but where we are going.  There is plenty of blame to go around.  Sprinkle some of it on the greedy Wall Street execs who got involved in this mess to pump up their profits, options, and pay.  Put some of it on Congressmen…paging Barney Frank…who turned the issuance of mortgages into a social engineering experiment.  He and others erased traditional mortgage practices, like requiring a down payment, by having Fannie and Freddie create a market for toxic mortgages.  And then last, but certainly not least, are the buyers who thought house values never fell and that interest rates never went up.  Caveat emptor, my friends.

But all that pales in comparison to where we might be heading.  How much more capital will be wiped out before someone provides us with some leadership on this issue?  Will Barack “I can’t postpone the debate” Obama step forward to save us from a depression?  Remember, Barack said he was monitoring it very closely by phone.  I guess that wasn’t enough to get the 95 Democrats support who voted against the bill.

And don’t even get me started with Pelosi.  She lost the support of 40% of her party.  That’s staggering.  Then she has the temerity to blame the minority party because she couldn’t craft a bill that Democrats could support.  By way of comparison, 133 Republicans went against the bill, but our lying liberal media covers that up the actual closeness by saying “the majority of Democrats” voted for it.  Supposedly, Nancy, you are in-charge for a reason.  You have the levers of Congress and enough votes to pass anything you want.  Enough whining about why the minority party couldn’t bail you out.

Unfortunately, House Republicans don’t get a pass here.  If you have an alternate plan, speak up.  This isn’t the time to be sitting on your hands poking holes in everyone else’s plan.  Those are real jobs, 401Ks, and homes people are losing.  If we get double digit unemployment and Dow 5000, your principled stand against market intervention and concern over protecting the taxpayers will play just about as well Smoot-Hawley Act did in 1929.

Sadly, the two people taking a drubbing in the media also have the least blame.  Bush and McCain knew this was serious.  Both tried to bring the parties together, and were ridiculed.  Democrats blamed a lack of regulation, which was clearly an attempt to deflect their responsibility in fomenting the crisis.  The media and Democrats piled on McCain by saying he was running from the debate when he suggested that something needed to be done.  Now they’re saying he blew up the deal although he was clearly the only candidate who understood the serious nature of what we are facing.  Talk about damned if you do, damned if you don’t.  And of course, through it all, the media steadfastly refuses to examine the role that’s continuing to be played by the Freddie and Fannie CEOs in Obama’s campaign.  You just can’t make this stuff up.

Overall, Paulson’s plan wasn’t bad.  Bill Gross offered to value the toxic mortgage debt for the Treasury free of charge.  There aren’t too many people more qualified to do so.  But lower we head and where we stop nobody knows.

Update:  Here’s Pelosi right before the “bi-partisan” vote on the bill today.  Sounds like she was really trying to reach across the aisle, eh?

So why does Barack Obama continue to oppose the surge in Iraq even though it’s effective?

“These kinds of hypotheticals are very difficult,” he said. “You know, hindsight is 20/20. But I think that what I am absolutely convinced of is that, at that time, we had to change the political debate because the view of the Bush administration at that time was one that I just disagreed with.”

In that inarticulate mess of an answer, what he’s struggling to say sans teleprompter is that he opposed a person and never examined the policy.  The man who’ll unite us thought he’d change the “debate” with an emotional gut reaction instead of logic.  But the thing that really blows me away is that even after the surge is effective, Obama is still opposed.

Bush waited too long to implement the surge, but at least he finally changed course.  It’s pretty sad when you do have the benefit of 20/20 hindsight and still can’t adjust.

John McCain spent most of his career bashing conservatives, cultivating media “friendships”, and celebrating his maverick image.  Therefore, the NY Times rejection of his Op Ed because it’s not “Obamaish” is just laced with bitter irony.  However, I’d be curious to know how many rewrites Obama did on his piece before it was accepted.  Truth be told, and as clearly implied by the Times response that Obama’s piece just “worked” for them, they treat every utterance by Obama like he’s giving the Sermon on the Mount.

When it’s all said and done, I wonder if the wedge McCain drove between himself and the base for media approbation will pay off?  I’m skeptical that he’ll get more independents and liberals than the conservatives he turned off with his “maverick” ways.

Let me see if I have all of this straight.  Barack Obama, who didn’t support the surge in Iraq and won’t recognize the positive results, supports a surge for Afghanistan.  Pray tell, Messiah, what makes the Afghan surge more likely to yield results than the Iraq one you never supported?

And if that didn’t make your head hurt, Obama promises to end the war in Iraq and will celebrate by starting one in Pakistan:

“Al-Qaida has an expanding base in Pakistan that is probably no farther from their old Afghan sanctuary than a train ride from Washington to Philadelphia.

“We cannot tolerate a terrorist sanctuary, and as president I won’t,” he said.

“We must make it clear that if Pakistan cannot or will not act, we will take out high-level terrorist targets like (Osama) bin Laden if we have them in our sights.”

So Barrack Obama is going to “restore” our standing in the international community by violating the sovereignty of a nuclear armed Pakistan.  I guess you have to believe in his messianic powers to make sense of these plans.

If this is the best he can do with a prepared speech and teleprompter, no wonder he won’t face McCain in town hall meetings.  The debates should be very entertaining when this empty suit won’t have his campaign staffers whispering in his ear.

It’s also interesting to note all these policies were developed prior to his trip overseas where he was suppose to gain some gravitas on international issues.  Of course that dog and pony show is akin to visiting Niagara Falls and claiming you’re now qualified to be ambassador to Canada.

The more Barack Obama speaks the clearer it becomes that he’s running for Jimmy Carter’s 2^nd term.  Obama’s latest jab at the American people is something that would sound right at home in almost any Carter speech:

“You know, it’s embarrassing when Europeans come over here, they all speak English, they speak French, they speak German. And then we go over to Europe, and all we can say (is), ‘Merci beaucoup.’ “

He and Michele are certainly establishing a pattern here.  They’re not proud of Americans.  He can surround himself with as many flags and pins as he wants, but the words coming out of his mouth tell the real story.

And then there’s this little tidbit from the same talk:

“But understand this: Instead of worrying about whether immigrants can learn English — they’ll learn English — you need to make sure your child can speak Spanish.

Our schools are doing such a wonderful job teaching basic English that I’m sure Spanish won’t be a problem.  So now our children can barely speak 2 languages instead of just 1.  That certainly sounds like a “progressive” agenda.

And instead of a melting pot, we can divide the country into the Spanish speaking areas, the English speaking areas, the Arabic speaking areas, the Mandarin speaking areas, etc.  After all, why worry about 100s of years of success with the melting pot concept when elitist liberals like Obama want everyone speaking a different language.  I’m sure that’ll work out wonderfully.

The US is in Iraq for the long haul.  Both major presidential candidates know it, but only McCain is honest enough to admit it.  Barack dropped a trial balloon on Thursday hinting at what his advisers have been saying all along—his Iraq policy would be tempered by the situation on the ground in January.  This rare bit of honesty from Obama on Iraq sent the moonbats into orbit, and “Captain Courageous” immediately backed down.  It seems massive tax increases are the only thing Barack discusses honestly.

Supporting Obama is more like a cult than a political movement:

With her decision, she joined a growing band of supporters of Senator Barack Obama, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, who are expressing solidarity with him by informally adopting his middle name.

The result is a group of unlikely-sounding Husseins: Jewish and Catholic, Hispanic and Asian and Italian-American, from Jaime Hussein Alvarez of Washington, D.C., to Kelly Hussein Crowley of Norman, Okla., to Sarah Beth Hussein Frumkin of Chicago.

When Jim Jones’ followers drank the cyanide laced Flavor Aid, they only harmed themselves.  Unfortunately, we all might be drinking the Obama cyanide after the November election.

Republicans have traded the “compassionate conservative” for the “populist capitalist”:

“John McCain is a populist. He believes in free markets; he believes in limited government and having the free enterprise system produce the jobs and the prosperity that he seeks, but he does think, as did Teddy Roosevelt, that you do need government there with some oversight and some regulation to avoid excess.”

It’s an odd message for a man whose base doesn’t trust him.  If McCain thinks he can win by trying to attract disaffected Clinton voters while driving conservatives away, he’s got another thing coming.  Those people are going to vote for the liberal, not the quasi-liberal.

They say that even the blind squirrel can find a nut. Illustrating that axiom is Al Gore’s endorsement of the only remaining candidate in the Democratic presidential race today. I’m sure that Barack Obama was sitting on the edge of his seat wondering who Al might select. Hint: It was going to be the Democrat.

Al says Barack is “clearly the candidate best able to solve these problems and bring change to America.” What kind of change we aren’t sure. What problems he’s solved before nobody knows. But Al wants you to pull the straight Democratic ticket without thinking about those things. Too bad Al never finished that law degree because Barack might have appointed him to the Supreme Court for that cogent and timely endorsement.

Barack Obama is pulling a page out of the Bill Clinton playbook—dangle a tax cut to get elected:

…Obama outlined his own reform plan that includes a tax cut for 150 million middle-income Americans, a homeowners tax benefit for those stuck in the subprime mortgage crisis, an end to income taxes for seniors making less than $50,000 a year and a tax code reduced in complexity.

Of course, once the election was over, Bill Clinton’s middle class tax cut turned into the largest retroactive tax increase in our history.  A quick look at Obama’s web site tells you the same has to happen here.  For example, along with the tax cut, he promises: 

• A national healthcare plan
• More drugs and coverage for seniors
• Funding for Zero to Five education
• A $4,000 tax credit for college kids
• More teacher pay
• And on and on it goes…. 

But the reality nobody wants to face is that we can’t do everything.  You can run around yelling “Believe in change!” all you want, but as John Adams pointed out “facts are stubborn things.”  Just ask Massachusetts residents about Deval Patrick’s property tax relief if you want to know what happens when a snake oil salesman tries to sell you “change”. 

Quite simply, the stubborn fact is that Obama can’t deliver on all his promises and the tax cut will be jettisoned faster than you can say Trinity Church.

Nobody I know likes Deval Patrick, but his twin brother Barack Obama leads McCain by 13 points in the Bay State. So if a conservative is a liberal who has been mugged, I guess that means a moonbat is a liberal who likes being mugged.

Democrats teeter on the verge of blowing a golden opportunity.  A mediocre economy, housing crisis, unpopular president and war should easily vault them into 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue come November.  But a funny thing happened on the way to the Presidential Inauguration; they got a little too greedy.  Instead of nominating a moderate, or at least someone the media could paint as moderate, they went for the Senate’s least experienced and most liberal Democrat in the form of Barack Obama.

As the inexperience, gaffes, miscues, and string of former associates continue to trickle out despite the media putting all its fingers in the dam, it’s only going to get worse.  Democrats turned what should have been a laugher into an even money race.  John McCain thanks you.

If Barack Obama is going to talk the talk:

The Class of 2008 did not need to “do something crazy like run for president,” Obama said, but the graduates should look beyond “the big house and the nice suits and all the other things that our money culture says you should buy.”

He might want to consider walking the walk:

It looks like Barack can buy plenty of nice suits. Shame he apparently didn’t take his own advice and donate a few of them.

It’s hard to feel sorry for John McCain when he’s the victim of media bias. There’s no small amount of poetic justice in seeing him raked across the coals now after having been lauded by the same biased media when he was advancing liberal causes as a “maverick” Republican.

Here’s an example of his former NY Times “friends” blasting him for getting John Hagee’s endorsement. Now John McCain was never a member of Hagee’s church. His children weren’t baptized by Hagee. Hagee was not McCain’s mentor, friend, or spiritual adviser. Yet the Times blasts McCain while providing all the top cover it can for Barack Obama’s 20 year relationship with Jeremiah Wright.

This is only the start too. The media has the long knives out for McCain while doing everything they can to get Barack Obama elected.