STRAIGHT OUTTA’ DENVER

A famous American novelist in the mid twentieth century, named Gore Vidal, once said that “It makes no difference who you vote for - the two parties are really one party representing four percent of the people”. It is this idea that has scared many people concerning America’s current two-party system. These skeptics of the two-party system say that it is wrong due to its tug on all politics to one point on the political spectrum that lacks representation of a big part of the country’s political wants and needs. However, is a two-party system inevitable for a nation like America? Since the beginning, from Hamilton’s Federalists to Jefferson’s Democratic Republicans, America has had a two-party system to some extent, and it has brought many years of successful governing to a country based on freedom and liberty. On the other hand, France, which has had a multi-party system since the French Revolution, has undergone over thirteen changes in their governmental leadership and style, damaging the progress and development of their nation. Obviously, in order to successfully rise to power and rule according to the people in a nation where a democratic voting system is in place, a party must win over a majority of the political opinion within a country. A two-party system seems to be the most natural and obvious way that this can work out. Although not all extreme political views of the society are represented, a two-party system is able to easily represent the middle, moderate, and majority of the opinions of the people. On the contrary, a two-party system can effectively, if both parties move too close to each other, become a one party system, where someone, even many, who disagree with the one prevalent political philosophy that embodies the two major parties, will not be represented. So the question is: Is America still a positive and productive two-party system, or is it moving more and more into the realm of becoming essentially a one-party system?

On the surface America is seen as a truly dynamic and productive two-party system, where all have a say, vote, and an opinion. Its government is seen as being truly representative of its people and the popular political opinion. It is seen as an un-manipulated, fully representative system that fits the ideals of freedom and liberty that the country was founded on. However, a deeper look into the political system, as well as some manipulative factions of the country’s political mobility shows a possibility of the opposite being true. Yet a few small changes to the political system and process could rid of these negative contributions to the nation’s political progress. So although the idea of a two-party system is somewhat inevitable, the present two-party system of The United States of America is ultimately a negative contribution to the progress of the nation and should be changed through banning polling, allowing third party candidates the same rights, rules, and privileges as the primary parties, and reducing the size of each district in order to represent the peoples’ opinions more clearly.

The first way to positively change the system is to ban polling and clear up the corruption within the media. The media is the single most effective political motivator within the American political system. It is due to media coverage, opinion, and polls that many candidates are able to achieve the support and votes of the people. But the media is ran by people who have opinions themselves and a majority of the time fit the center of the political spectrum, either Democrat or Republican. So it is rather puzzling that these few, the people who run the television and radio stations, have such great power in swaying the nation towards their own political opinion. Polling is one of the most widely used tools by the media to manipulate elections and political opinion. Yet many do not see the corruption within the very idea of polling, that is that “polls are an addiction that also distort our political feelings and actions even as they trivialize political campaigns, and they allow our political and media suppliers to manipulate us ruthlessly” (Schwartz). The fact that the public political opinion can be highly manipulated by corrupt polling shows how it negatively influences the true representation of the peoples wants. Polls should be banned by the public media due to its proven manipulation and corruption. The deep problem with the media and polling is that “poll bashing is still a frequent phenomenon in the media, polls are ubiquitous, and attempts to mislead deliberately occur” (Erikson 47). Although in itself polling is obviously not a corrupt action, it is now used by the media to sway the public toward its own opinion. Due to this, any ideas or candidates that differ from the center of the political spectrum are shot down by manipulative polling that has nothing to do with a fair representation of the public’s actual opinion. However, even within the two major parties polling has been used to discriminate against candidates who are not popular to the centrist views of the media.

The discrimination used by the popular media towards certain candidates, even within the Democrat and Republican parties, is unfair and proves to be another reason why public media polls should be banned. One strong recent case of this was that of Ron Paul in the Republican primary election. Although “Ron Paul led all other candidates by a more than comfortable margin in the online polls, [he] was hardly even considered a ‘dark horse’ candidate by the offline ‘scientific’ polls” (Bowery). It is bewildering to assume that the online polls could have been that much different than the public media polls. Had the television channels even reported the activity that was going on online, Ron Paul may have been given a more equal chance in the primary. Ron Paul is an old style Republican congressman with Libertarian tendencies which makes the media polls even more suspicious, seeming as though they were not wanting to allow a candidate whose opinions differed from the ‘norm’ to have a chance. The media should not have the power to put any political candidate at a disadvantage due to a disagreement with the popular opinions of the media.

Each American presidential election should strive to represent the country’s citizens’ wants and opinions as closely as possible. Any factors or tools that can exist or be used, by the public media, to incorrectly manipulate the opinions of the country on a certain candidate or issue should be banned, due to how they skew the results of the voting process. Tools such as polling, which the television stations and other forms of public media has wrongly used, should be changed and outlawed, in an attempt to better represent the peoples’ wishes. Although there are others, polling really is the most obviously manipulative tool that is presently being used. It is clear that “polling certainly deserves a critical look. Many surveys are badly conceived, poorly executed, and incorrectly interpreted” (Erikson 24). Polling has created a discriminatory, systematic problem in the voting process of The United States of America that has put many candidates who have attempted to change the system at a disadvantage. Overall, a political system being centered on the political spectrum is obviously not wrong and may be inevitable in certain cases, including America. However, discouraging, as well as unfairly hiding, progressive and un-centered ideas and candidates is un-democratic and eventually will kill the progress of a once positively evolving political system. This would, in actuality, create a one-party, media ruled system that discourages diversity and distorts opposing ideas to its artificial ‘norm’.

As well as polling, many other discriminatory factors within the political process put third parties and ideas at a major unfair shortcoming within the electoral competition. Although, obviously, no third party will have a great opportunity to win a major election any time soon, they should not be dejected from the process or put out of the competition. Third parties do a wonderful job of keeping the Democrat and Republican parties honest and pure. Third parties bring up issues that the two major parties could not bring up for risk of being labeled extreme or out of the ‘norm’. Throughout history, “it was third parties who first introduced ideas like restricting slavery, granting suffrage to women, establishing minimum wages and controlling child labor” (Lichtman). Though third parties have not had many victories in major elections, they have introduced ideas and philosophies that have proved to positively affect the country as a whole. So the limitation on them and discouragement of them is un-democratic and will only hurt the development of the country. One way that the third parties are limited is the difficult process set up for them to get on the ballot. Both major parties are easily passed and let onto ballots due to their past popularity and financial success, whereas, third parties are forced to gain large amounts of signatures and pay dues that put financial strain on their campaigns once on the ballot. It is clear that “the difficulty of getting on the ballot state-by-state is surely a barrier deliberately erected by the major parties to keep third parties out of the field of play” (Lichtman). It is a serious problem that a party has to be financially successful just to be put upon the ballot. If third parties are given easier opportunities to get on election ballots, it will encourage the competition of parties that is so necessary for a strong two-party system. For “in order to enjoy the benefits of a healthy two-party system, we must encourage the growth of new parties. And if we are ever to replace one of the two major parties with a new party (something that even the opposition acknowledges is possible, and something that we, the voters, ought to have a right to do), it will only be done if we life the current ballot-access restrictions on third political parties” (Winger). Third parties are actually a very positive and helpful thing for a two-party system and it only hurts a two-party system to deny or make difficult political accomplishments for third parties, such as easy ballot access.

The financial strain of ballot access for Third parties is a definite blockade for their ability to positively affect the political system and process. The electoral process should allow for equal opportunity for legitimate Third parties who would be able to better the development and progress of the political establishment as a whole. Presently, the scary aspect of the electoral system is that “it seems that in American government, one must buy their ‘equality’. Only the wealthiest parties and individuals have equal access to the electoral system” (Sandusky). America should take no pride in the fact that it has established an electoral procedure where only the wealthy may influence it, unequally putting the poorer intellectuals at a major disadvantage. For what reason should one’s socioeconomic status govern whether or not he or she should be able to run for office? If all other credentials are met, financial strains should not be able to hinder rising politicians in their goal of running for political office. If the large fees are removed from ballot access, the political system would benefit through having a wider span of political ideologies and greater representation of different social classes within the country. It would allow third parties to be able to be more competitive with campaigning due to the money they would save, not having to spend it on ballot access. This competition would, like the American capitalist system itself, enrich the politics of the country and give a wider range of people the ability to become the influential leaders this country needs.

The final way that the electoral process should be changed in order to promote Third Party competition is through allowing Third Party candidates to participate in the Presidential debates. The Presidential debates have recently become more and more about physical appearance and image rather than political intellect and intelligent responses. If a candidate can look good, then what that candidate says means a lot less. A lot of the deterioration of the positives of the Presidential debates is due to the fact that the Democrats and Republicans are the only two parties represented and mostly agree with each other. So the debates have become less about the content and more about whether or not they can make the opponent look bad. In the recent election this was made tremendously clear. It was obvious that “one problem was that in a debate, it is important for the debaters to actually disagree. Yet Senators Barack Obama and John McCain substantively agree on many issues. That is one major reason that the debates should be open, and that major third-party or independent candidates should be included” (Goodman). What’s the purpose of debating if both candidates in the debate are very close to the middle of the political spectrum and have little disagreement? If Third-party candidates were allowed to participate in the debates it would not only be fair to them, in giving them a equal chance in running, but it would also enrich the debate for the other two candidates, giving them actual positions to disagree with. Once a major party candidate is forced to disagree with someone, it is more clear to see what that candidate actually believes. So even if Third-party candidates didn’t necessarily win elections due to benefiting from debate participation, they would enhance the whole process for the Democrat and Republican candidates, achieving a better election process altogether.

The final way in which the American two-party system is failing is that it seems to be harmfully moving our nation is into easily corruptible waters. Two-party systems automatically are set up to be vulnerable to corruption. If the two major parties of a system move closer and closer together, as they are in America, it becomes a simple task for them to dictate corrupt and wrong political ideas that will hurt the country. It is this monopoly of power that is being created in the American political system that all should be afraid of. The two parties are seen as the only capable parties now and that, in itself, can lead to corruption. The debate over which party is better than the other wages on, stronger than ever, when the “truth is that one is no better than the other. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Our system is no longer set up to benefit or protect us” (Wade). The system now is more about profits for political icons and for the wealthy in power more than for protecting life, liberty, and property, the nation’s early ultimate goal. It is for making those who want to be represented fit the two parties in power, rather than allowing other parties, that truly represent different sects of the people, gain potential leadership. The more parties there are that have a chance, the less likely the system is going to be easily degraded.

Corruption can also spread through the stereotyping of parties. In the present American political system people are seemingly forced to support a party, and along with it, all of its stances on all of the issues. People are looked as outsiders of the party if they disagree with even one of the issues, so they, on purpose, conform their views to fit their parties. This causes our political leaders to represent an image of the people rather than just the peoples’ opinions themselves. This is why “Representatives and voters have come to the conclusion that all Democrats and Republicans are the same, more or less, and that they all have the same ideology” (Bechtold). The way the two parties have moved together as one ideology that is supposed to represent the whole country is a negative and has discouraged people from thinking for themselves. It has caused great disagreement over petty issues, while big issues are ignored and left for the greedy politicians to gain power off of. This marriage of ideology of the two parties will only create a bigger, more powerful government that is sure to use its power in guiding the country. However, as history tells, ultimate power is followed by ultimate corruption. This idea is clearly evident in examples such as Stalin’s communist rule in Russia and Hitler’s fascist rule in Germany. America better heed the warning signs of the harms of big and powerful governments, and better change its policies now, in order to make sure it won’t become what it has opposed in the past.

In the end, if policies aren’t put into place to stop the media from using fallible polls to manipulate the system and control the political opinion of the populous, then the country is going to be harmed through an established unanimous political camp that rules all and represents far too little. If policies aren’t put into place that give third parties a greater chance to be represented and to be competitive possibilities for leadership, the political system will be debilitated to the point where both parties could become essentially one ideology that un-democratically rules over the nation. Finally, if policies aren’t put into place that stop the potential corruption of this country’s two-party system, then each and every citizen’s democratic voice and opinion could be ignored altogether. However, it is not just the establishment of a two-party system that brings about this negativity, for that establishment may be inevitable, it is the way in which the American two-party system is moving that appears detrimental to the ideas of liberty and equality in this country. Just because third parties have a great chance and voice in a political system does not mean that it has to be anything more than a two-party system. If third parties are given that chance they will enrich the system and craft the major parties into parties that would better represent and lead according the people. It is this great outcome, of two truly different parties that accurately represent the populous, that once flourished in America and must be attempted to be put into place again by this country. For democracy may only exist if those that vote are those that govern the policies of the country and republics may only exist if those that are put into leadership positions actually represent the people. So is America’s Two-Party system headed in the wrong direction? Is it becoming more and more un-democratic? Is it becoming essentially a ‘one-party’ system? America must proceed with caution and a great critique of itself if it wants to thrive as it so successfully has in the past.

Works Cited

Bechtold, Joe. “The Flaw of the Two Party System .” 23 Feb 2008
emid=83>.

Bowery, James. “Ron Paul Demolishes Other Republicans In Online Polls.” Majority Rights 05
May 2007 .

Erikson, Robert. American Public Opinion. 6th. New York: Longman, 2003.

Goodman, Amy. “Open Presidential Debates to Third Parties.” Seattle Pi 10 Oct 2008
.

Lichtman, Allan. “3rd Parties: What They’re For and What They Do.” The Jim Lehrer Newshour
22 Oct 1996 .
Sandusky, Trent. “Why the Two-Party System is Un-American.” 12 Nov 20 .
Schwartz, Michael. “Polling: The Opiate of the Electorate .” Common Dreams 06 Oct 2004
.

Wade, Anthony. “Corruption-Lite and The Two Party System That Has Choked the Democracy
out of this Country. ” Oped News 23 Oct 2005
.

Winger , Richard. “The Importance of Ballot Access.” Massachusetts School of Law Spring
1994 .

3 comments.

Congratulations to Barack Obama!

Posted on November 4th, 2008 by Darth B'strad.
Categories: Political, War, Democrats, Christianity.

Man you really have to admit that the stars really have aligned for Obama. But then again John McCain did run a terrible campaign from the get go and that really didn’t help all that much. Although I do have to admit that I am really starting to feel really apathetic about the whole country. Right now, I’m really getting sick of politics and I really looking froward to getting away from that subject and moving to other things. I was already on that path a month ago but now I really don’t care about politics anymore. We’re going to see some massive changes in everything that the country is right now and I’m still not convinced that any of it will be good at all. Well, the sun will shine another day and while I am very pessimistic right now I can still say that I think we can still find a way through everything. Even if my country fails me (and I think it’s really going to start to now) I can still say that I put my trust in something higher. So for all of you Christan republicans like I am, I just have this to share with you. In Lamentations, Jeremiah (or so we think) went over an account of what happened to Israel when it fell to the Babylon and in the middle of it all he still had this to say:

Lamentations 3:20-40
I will never forget this awful time,
as I grieve over my loss.
Yet I still dare to hope
when I remember this:

The faithful love of the Lord never ends!
His mercies never cease.
Great is his faithfulness;
his mercies begin afresh each morning.
I say to myself, “The Lord is my inheritance;
therefore, I will hope in him!”

The Lord is good to those who depend on him,
to those who search for him.
So it is good to wait quietly
for salvation from the Lord.
And it is good for people to submit at an early age
to the yoke of his discipline:

Let them sit alone in silence
beneath the Lord’s demands.
Let them lie face down in the dust,
for there may be hope at last.
Let them turn the other cheek to those who strike them
and accept the insults of their enemies.

For no one is abandoned
by the Lord forever.
Though he brings grief, he also shows compassion
because of the greatness of his unfailing love.
For he does not enjoy hurting people
or causing them sorrow.

If people crush underfoot
all the prisoners of the land,
if they deprive others of their rights
in defiance of the Most High,
if they twist justice in the courts—
doesn’t the Lord see all these things?

Who can command things to happen
without the Lord’s permission?
Does not the Most High
send both calamity and good?
Then why should we, mere humans, complain
when we are punished for our sins?

Instead, let us test and examine our ways.
Let us turn back to the Lord.

So even if all of my worst worries do come true I can still say that I serve a faithful God and that in the end He will set things right. So really what is the use of worrying? I need to learn this lesson just as much as any of you out there! I let myself get burdened all to easily. But as always I need to come back to letting it all go to God. He has His plans set and I want to be apart of it! While people are celebrating thinking that all these wars are going to end, I am filled with sorrow thinking that many more wars and even worse ones than we have seen before are underway. I think that Obama’s presidency will encourage much more bloodshed and horrific acts. But even so, it is well with my soul! I still serve a great God who will set things right. I will be overjoyed to be wrong here and I will pray that Obama’s presidency will be a great one.

My God grant wisdom and courage to Obama so that he can face the challenges that are to come. May God grant wisdom to all in our government so that they will make the right decisions. May God use us to bless people around the world. But most of all may God show us His will and help us to follow it, no matter what the cost.

0 comments.

Obama

Posted on November 4th, 2008 by Upsidedown lightbulb.
Categories: Political, Democrats.

Everyone enlisted in the military can say goodbye to their jobs… Thank You America!
Everyone in America can say goodbye to capitalism and hello to socialism… Thank You America!

3 comments.

Election time is coming soon!

Posted on October 27th, 2008 by Darth B'strad.
Categories: Political, Ethics, Philosophy, Republicans, Democrats, Christianity, Economics.

We’re getting close to the big election day on November 4th! Right now I just have to come down to one simple truth about this election that going to be what determines how people vote. It’s all really quite simple! The choice is all about whether or not you would like to see our country look more like western Europe. If you like how western Europe is run and see that system to be better for our country then you should vote for Obama. However if you don’t like how thous countries are run and would like our country to look more like how it was traditional intended to be run then you should vote for McCain. I fall into the latter category so I’ll be voting for McCain. Why would I mention western Europe? It’s simply because they value equality over everything else and they’ll use any means to obtain it. Dennis Prager has a great article describing this:

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.

And that pretty well sums up this whole election in a nutshell! There are two completely opposing value systems here that can not be equally obtained. In order to obtain equality of outcome then you will have to give up liberty and vice versa. So the left wishes to archive equality of outcome for everyone so that we can have this utopia where theirs no fighting. The right doesn’t think a utopia is possible in this world and instead reaches for equal liberty for everyone so that they can reach to achieve their dreams. These are two completely different world views and we can not achieve both of them. Obama is looking to create this utopia by the sheer force of redistributing wealth equally to everyone. This from Boston.com:

Conservative bloggers and websites have been flogging it, and now John McCain’s campaign has put its imprimatur on it: a newly disclosed radio interview in which Democratic rival Barack Obama talks about the redistribution of wealth.

The interview, first reported by the Drudge Report, was with a Chicago radio station while he was an Illinois state senator on Sept. 6, 2001.

Obama is talking about the victories of the civil rights movement, and says, “You know if you look at the victories and the failures of the Civil Rights movement and its litigation strategy in the Court, I think where it succeeded was to invest formal rights in previously dispossessed peoples so that I would now have the right to vote, I would now be able to sit at the lunch counter and order as long as I could pay for it I would be okay. But the Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth and sort of more basic issues of political and economic justice in this society…. And one of the I think the tragedies of the Civil Rights movement was because the Civil Rights movement became so court focused I think that there was a tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing and activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalitions of power through which you bring about redistributive change and in some ways we still suffer from that.”

Obama is a socialist. That’s not a dirty word and I’m not calling him any names here but it’s clear that he wants to take all of the excess of the rich and give it to the poor. Obama is a good man, and I would like to go out and have a beer with that guy but I would not want him in leadership over my country. This line of thinking is going to push everyone down into the pits. We may all have equality in outcome but it will be equality in the depths of despair. But just consider this: if I were to go up to a rich man hold him up at gunpoint and take all of his money and then go give it to the poor grama on the street who has nothing to eat, would that still be stealing? Of course that’s stealing! So what really is the difference between that and what Obama is going to do? The only difference is when Obama “redistributes,” it will be legal. If I were to take that money from the rich man on the street so that I could give it to the poor, then I would go to jail. However when Obama takes the money from the rich by his taxes and gives it to the poor by his programs then the rich person will have to go to jail if he doesn’t pay up. So what do you think the rich person is going to do when Obama gets elected? He’s going to get his money out of the country so that he doesn’t have to pay up! So how exactly is poor grama going to get the help she needs if the rich fat cat takes all his money and leaves? Can Obama just magically make that money appear so that he can give it to the poor? No! All that money is going to start leaving the country and start being invested in other countries that will allow for the liberty for people to succeed. Now you may want to see that happen so in that case you should vote for Obama. However we’re still not going to be able to help garama on the street! McCain on the other hand had this to say:

“That is what change means for Barack the Redistributor: It means taking your money and giving it to someone else. He believes in redistributing wealth, not in policies that grow our economy and create jobs. He is more interested in controlling wealth than in creating it, in redistributing money instead of spreading opportunity. I am going to create wealth for all Americans, by creating opportunity for all Americans.”

And that’s the problem! The left sees wealth as a pie that you can just cut up and spread it around and then everyone will be happy. Unfortunately that’s not true at all! Wealth is not fixed but is much more dynamic and it changes. It can grow and diminish given time. Just like your dog has to be fed and walked in order to grow health and strong, so too is true of an economy. An economy must be feed with ideas and exercised with competition in order to grow. As an economy grows, it produces wealth. Then you have the nice little pie that you can cut up and spread around! But everything in the economy is working together to make that pie and if you keep taking it away then theirs no point to making it! If they get no piece of the pie that they have worked so hard for then why keep on working? So while you may be upset at the greedy fat cats that take such big slices of the pie, you still remember that they are also necessary to making more pies. So you can’t help grama to get her slice without thous fat cats making more pies because theirs not enough to go around. When you get rid of the top level then you have no one to employ the lower level. So then how are the pies suppose to be made? So when you take the pie away from the fat cats and give it to people that don’t work then you get more people who don’t work and less people who strive to make money. Thus the wealth diminishes and you don’t have any of it to spread around. Our system is one that thrives on the excess of the market and without that no one will strive to make what we need. The point of it all is to work hard and to make a living but under Obama’s plans that will be far more difficult to do.

Greed is a terrible thing that can utterly ruin things in peoples lives and we’ve seen it a lot lately. I am not a supporter of big business because they are A moral and would most likely sell their mothers if they could. But greed is something that can not be eliminated completely from human nature. So instead of setting up a system that required perfect elimination of greed our forefathers set up a system that can use it to the benefit of others. Allowing us to work hard and reach for our dreams gives us the opportunity to make a better life for everyone. Now the greed fuels the drive to make a better country. However this system requires people who police them selfs so that we people will work within the system to make the money they need. When you start to need government to police everyone to do the right things in this system then it gets in the way so that no one can be productive enough to make what they need. Government makes life more difficult and not more free. It all a matter of what you put your faith in. Everyone must put their faith in something because we are all made flawed. We all need a hope that our life counts for something for otherwise there would be no point to living! So you can put your hope in flawed humans who may help you out with government handouts or you can put your hope in something higher. Do you really think that just voting in a certain man can make all of the problems of the world just go away? No! Not a single man on this planet can just correct the flaws of this world. However you can work hard with other to just make it a little better. With all of the sweeping promises that Obama makes and all of the things that he promises, how is he going to pay for any of it? He likes to talk a lot about change but what does that really mean? What is he really going to do if Israel starts bombing Iran or vise versa? What really is his goal? What will he do? He sure does give great speeches but he never goes into details on what he means by them. We really don’t know what Obama is going to do except raise taxes and spend a lot. Is that really going to help? If you raise taxes on the “rich” will they continue to employ people? Who’s going to employ that person when no one has the money to do so? The real question is: can we afford Obama?

However we can try something completely unoriginal. Something that has always worked. We can have government get out of our way so that we can work hard for our selfs. And as we do that then we can take that little excess of the pie that we get and then look to make an investment in something else. We should be the ones to help poor grama on the street. Government is an entity that has no care or love in it. It just hands out what people vote on and takes what people vote on. Do the people in the welfare office really care one bit about the grama on the side of the street that their stamping that check out to or are just thinking about getting through the day and getting their check to get by that month? Is a check in the mail really compassion or is helping grama off the street the real compassion. Why should government be in control of something that is so good and joyful for the rest of us to do? Why should we look to government to solve things when we our selfs find much better solutions to problems than they do? The more that government takes of our excesses means that it’s just that much less that we our selfs can use to help others. When things are bad, then it’s much better to have the helping hand of a fellow human being rather than the helping hand of some government office. I have never look to government to solve my problems but rather to let me help others to solve theirs. Obama is going to try to take that away from me, but that’s still not going to stop me. I’m still going to try to help others even if he ends up crashing this economy so that it makes is impossible to make a buck. Maybe I’ll start picking up farming and then share of that excess if he makes it impossible to do so with money. So it still comes down to who you put your faith in. I can still think of helping others in the real sense even though everything for me is going to shambles. It’s because I put no faith in this world at all but rather in a God who can redeem it.

Update: I just stumbled on this psalm that is applicable to what I have said:

Psalm 146:3-5
Don’t put your confidence in powerful people;
there is no help for you there.
When they breathe their last, they return to the earth,
and all their plans die with them.
But joyful are those who have the God of Israel as their helper,
whose hope is in the Lord their God.

And this is good too:

Psalm 147:10-11
He takes no pleasure in the strength of a horse
or in human might.
No, the Lord’s delight is in those who fear him,
those who put their hope in his unfailing love.

2 comments.

Let’s just get a good laugh at it all!

Posted on October 17th, 2008 by Darth B'strad.
Categories: Political, Media, Republicans, Democrats.

Something I think we really need about this presidential campaign! Here we have to whole thing now being decided by this one guy “Joe the plummer!” CNN has this:

Last weekend, while Barack Obama was canvassing for support in the small town of Holland, Ohio, the Democratic nominee ran into a tall, bald man, since dubbed Joe the plumber. He asked Obama if he believed in the American Dream — he said he was about to buy a company that makes more than $250,000 a year and was concerned that the Democratic nominee would tax him more because of it.

Obama explained his tax plan in depth, saying it’s better to lower taxes for Americans who make less money, so that they could afford to buy from his business. John McCain attacked Obama for this exchange, saying the Illinois senator is trying to “spread the wealth around.”

“We’re going to take Joe’s money, give it to Senator Obama, and let him spread the wealth around. I want Joe the plumber to spread the wealth around,” McCain said. He added, “Why would you want to increase anybody’s taxes right now? Why would you want to do that to anyone, anyone in America, when we have such a tough time?”

Joe the plumber was mentioned 11 times at the beginning of the debate, nine times by McCain and twice by Obama.

I didn’t hear the debate but man! they’re just fighting for the support of this one guy! This is really weird stuff! But it’s great that Obama and McCain could come together and and share a nice night laughing it up at the Al Smith dinner:

Senator John McCain, the Republican nominee for president, announced that he had dismissed his entire team of senior advisers. “All of their positions will now be held by a man named Joe the Plumber,’’ he cracked.

Great McCain! How you going to win Now!!!!!!!!

His rival, Senator Barack Obama, then made a confession about his past associations. “John McCain is onto something,’’ he said. “There was a point in my life when I started palling around with a pretty ugly crowd, I’ve got to be honest. These guys were serious deadbeats, they were lowlifes, they were unrepentant no-good punks. That’s right: I’ve been a member of the United States Senate.’’

That is a great line, much better of an explanation than any other he’s given.

With a pair of rivals taking time away from the fray to swap jokes, it could only be the Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner in New York City, the white-tie charity roast that has long served as a light-hearted rest stop on the road to the White House. It brought Mr. McCain and Mr. Obama together Thursday night to dine together and trade some light-hearted jokes — some self-deprecating, some not so much — just one night after their third and final debate was so rough that many commentators could finally dust off all those boxing metaphors that they had been saving up this year.

I mean, come on now! It’s just politics! Just because I think Obama’s going to destroy the country doesn’t mean that we can’t just sit back and have a laugh!

They poked fun at themselves — and each other — in consecutive monologues that had their audience of New York royalty at the Waldorf-Astoria in stitches.

Mr. McCain answered critics who said that the plumber he made famous as a hardworking everyman in Wednesday night’s debate would not earn enough money to face any tax increase under Mr. Obama’s fiscal plan.

“What they don’t know — what they don’t know — is that Joe the Plumber recently signed a very lucrative contract with a wealthy couple to handle all the work on all seven of their houses,’’ Mr. McCain said, in an allusion to a flap he caused last summer when he was unable to remember how many homes he and his wife own.

Hey! I thought I had that contract!

And Mr. McCain scanned the crowd and said: “Even in this room full of proud Manhattan Democrats, I can’t shake that feeling that some people here are pulling for me,’’ quickly adding, “I’m delighted to see you here tonight, Hillary,’’ as he nodded to Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, who lost to Mr. Obama in the primary.

OOOHHhhh! Expose the backstabber!

Mr. McCain gleefully toyed with the notion that former President Bill Clinton has been a less-than-enthusiastic campaigner for Mr. Obama. “He’s also been hammering away at me with epithets like ‘American hero’ and ‘great man,’ ” he said. “My friends, this is nothing but a brazen attempt to suppress turnout among anti-Clinton conservatives.’’

That dang hero!

And he referred to the awkward moment in the second debate when he disdainfully referred to Mr. Obama as “that one.” “He doesn’t mind at all,’’ Mr. McCain said. “In fact, he even has a pet name for me: George Bush.’’

What I thought they were one and the same? Wasn’t Bush running for a third term?

Mr. Obama, for his part, told the audience that his first name was actually Swahili for “that one.’’ And he had a startling revelation: “My middle name is actually Steve,” he said. “Barack Steve Obama.”

Man we were really getting somewhere with that Osama, Obama, Hussen thing!

“There is no other crowd in America that I’d rather be palling around with right now,’’ he said right off the bat, alluding to Gov. Sarah Palin’s attack that he had been “palling around with terrorists.”

Maybe it’s just me but I just didn’t find that too funny.

And he paid tribute to former governor Alfred E. Smith, the first Roman-Catholic to win the presidential nomination of a major party. “It is often said that I share the politics of Alfred E Smith and the ears of Alfred E. Neuman.’’

Big ear boy!

Mr. Obama, noting his age, said he did not have the pleasure of knowing Al Smith, but added: “From everything Senator McCain has told me, he was a great man.”

Then, he gave a shout out to Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg. “The mayor recently announced some news that he would be rewriting the rules and have a third term, which prompted Bill Clinton to say: You can do that?”

NO!!!! No more Bill!!!!!!!!!!!

He poked fun at his reputation for arrogance, asking, “Can somebody tell me what happened to the Greek columns that I requested?’’

I thought you put that in your temple in heaven, your majesty.

And, looking toward his rival, he said, “I think it is a tribute to American democracy that with two weeks left and a hard fought election, the two of us could come together, and sit down at the same dinner table without preconditions.’’

And the other will stomp you!

For all the tweaks, the two men did take time to praise one another in a tableau that would have seemed extraordinary 24 hours earlier, when Mr. McCain seemed to be throwing everything he had at Mr. Obama, sometimes angrily, painting him as a tax raiser who had had the poor judgment to hang around with a former terrorist.

Mr. McCain called Mr. Obama “an impressive fellow in many ways.’’

“Political opponents can have a little trouble seeing the best in each other,’’ he said. “I have seen this man at his best. I admire his great skill, energy and determination. It’s not for nothing that he has inspired so many folks in his own party and beyond. Senator Obama talks about making history and he’s made quite a bit of it already.’’

That’s for sure!

“There was a time when the mere invitation of an African-American citizen to dine at the White House was taken as an outrage and an insult in many quarters,’’ he said. “Today, it’s a world away from the cruel and frightful bigotry of that time. And good riddance.’’

“I can’t wish my opponent luck, but I do wish him well,’’ he said.

And Mr. Obama returned the compliment. “There are very few of us who have served this country with the same dedication and honor and distinction as Senator McCain, and I’m glad to be sharing a stage with him tonight.’’

The event, which is affiliated with the Archdiocese of New York, raised $4 million for underprivileged children.

So I guess something good could actually happen when thous two are in the same room! I’ll get up more posts on this election sometime soon but I think it’s good to just chill out a bit. Just realize that the world is not over if the wrong person gets into office.

And by wrong person I of course mean Obama!

0 comments.

The Bailout Passed

Posted on October 4th, 2008 by Darth B'strad.
Categories: Political, Ethics, Party System, Republicans, Democrats, Economics.

I have never thought that I would see the day that I would cheering the democrats for spending money! This year has been absurd! However we have just saved our selfs a depression. Now we’re still going to go into a rescission that may last some time but now things are going to stabilize so that we can look to repairing the damage that was done to our economy. So I have to congratulate the 172 Democrats and 91 Republicans who put aside partisanship so that we could do something right for the country. This from the Wall Street Journal:

President George W. Bush signed into law an unprecedented $700 billion plan to rescue the U.S. financial system, one of the largest-ever government interventions in the nation’s economy — and almost certainly not the last.

Maybe, I’m hoping that’s the last. I don’t think we can afford too much more of this. Although Arnold wants us to bailout California too.

The Treasury Department is expected to move quickly to start buying distressed assets from struggling financial institutions, although any impact might not be felt for some weeks. Many details — such as who will administer the program and how — are still to be worked out.

That lingering uncertainty cast a pall over stock and bond markets. Credit markets remained stressed as lenders continued to worry about getting repaid. The three-month Libor rate, a measure of the rate that banks charge to lend to one another, rose to 4.33% Friday from 4.21% the day before.

Stocks, which had been up more than 300 points before the voting began, ended down 157 points at 10325.38. The decline capped the worst week for the Dow Jones Industrial Average in more than six years, and left the market trading where it was nearly three years ago.

Passage of the bill came amid new evidence from the labor market that the U.S. is tilting further toward recession. Companies shed 159,000 workers in September, the fastest pace in more than five years, the Labor Department reported.

The legislation ranks alongside other broad federal attempts to prop up the economy, such as Roosevelt’s New Deal and the resolution of the Savings and Loan debacle of the late 1980s and early 1990s.

It will likely be followed by other moves. The Federal Reserve could cut interest rates and take further steps to ensure there are enough funds coursing through the financial system. Congress has already beefed up jobless benefits and is expected next year to push for new stimulus efforts, such as spending on infrastructure.

Looking to next year, Democratic lawmakers are planning to revamp financial-system regulations, with hedge funds, private-equity funds and investment banks all likely to come in for tighter scrutiny. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D, Calif.) portrayed the legislation as “only the beginning” of the legislative response to the faltering economy.

What we need now is to start getting responsible and stop spending on bad programs and tighten up on loan applications. We have to get more serious before we find our selfs right back to where we started.

The process picked up speed on Monday after the House rejected an earlier version, sending markets into a tailspin and highlighting deep public opposition to the president’s plan.

President Bush and the leadership of Congress closed ranks and sweetened the bill with tax cuts. The compromise won wide support in the Senate Wednesday and passed the House on the second attempt on Friday by a vote of 263-171. President Bush signed the bill shortly thereafter.

The bill establishes the Troubled Asset Relief Program. The Treasury will have $700 billion to buy up toxic mortgages, securities and related assets that have undermined the nation’s financial architecture.

The bill mandates the government take equity stakes in companies participating in the rescue and would limit compensation for executives, barring “golden parachutes.” It also says the administration must develop a plan to ease the wave of foreclosures through modifying loans acquired by the government.

I don’t like the fact that we have to do this ether, but we do.

Complex Questions

For all of the changes made to the original Treasury plan, lawmakers succeeded little in imposing control over use of the funds. The bill requires Treasury to set up an insurance-based alternative. But the core of what Mr. Paulson requested survived largely unscathed.

Treasury faces a host of complex questions it must answer before it can roll out the program broadly. Among the biggest issues: which assets to buy, how to buy the assets and whom to buy the assets from.

Treasury doesn’t want to buy every mortgage-backed security on the books of every financial institution, according to a person familiar with the matter. Plus, not all mortgage-backed securities are alike and Treasury wants to be careful that it doesn’t overpay for the truly worthless assets.

After hiring asset managers to run the program, it’s likely to start with securities “where there’s enough out there and the market is thick enough so the auction can be done well,” said a person familiar with Treasury’s thinking. One example would be all private, subprime loans made during a certain financial quarter.

The purchases would likely be made through what’s called a reverse auction, in which institutions compete to sell assets. The government would suggest a high price to ensure significant participation, which should then allow Treasury to pick from the lower prices offered until it gets the quantity of securities it wants.

The department plans to hire about two dozen full-time employees to work on the program, including lawyers, accountants and those with financial-market expertise. It’s expected to be several weeks before Treasury begins its first auction, according to people familiar with the matter. The department could move more swiftly to buy assets from specific institutions if there’s a need.

So there’s banks will bid up bad loans for the government to buy. Sounds simple enough.

The bailout bill also allows the Fed to begin paying interest on the reserves that banks leave on deposit with the central bank, something it didn’t do before. Paying interest on reserves makes it easier for the Fed to flood the financial system with additional cash.

This comes on top of other steps the Fed has taken in recent weeks to provide financial institutions with the cash they need to keep operating.

But so far, it hasn’t been successful in unfreezing credit markets. Short-term money markets — where companies raise money to finance their operations — remain distressed. Financial firms went to the Fed for $409.5 billion in emergency overnight loans by midweek, a record.

That will take some time.

Political Risks

That congressional leaders turned around the vote in less than a week underscores the widening unease among lawmakers about the state of the economy. The political impact could be immediate, especially for vulnerable candidates in conservative districts who ended up supporting the bill. On Friday, 26 Republicans and 33 Democrats switched from no to yes.

That made it all possible! Well if this still goes sour then I can still blame it on the Democrats! Just kidding, I’ll still take the flack for supporting this if it does go sour.

Illinois Rep. Rahm Emanuel, the fourth-ranking House Democrat, suggested rank-and-file lawmakers didn’t feel a sense of urgency until after Monday’s 777-point stock-market decline. “Monday was the political system looking over the abyss,” he said.

I’ll say! They were still playing a petty game on Monday and we took a big hit for it!

Throughout Friday morning, a steady stream of lawmakers strode to the floor to announce they were changing their minds. The turn of sentiment came after members went back to their districts and heard voters sharing stories about their shrunken retirement nest eggs and how the credit crisis is squeezing Main Street.

Some cited the Senate’s proposal to temporarily raise federal deposit insurance limits to $250,000 from $100,000. Some pointed to a provision that would press for the overturn of so-called mark-to-market accounting rules, which critics say contributed to the downward spiral of markets. For others, it was a package of tax breaks.

Though “it may be politically damaging,” Rep. Howard Coble (R., NC) said he would support the bill after voting against it Monday. He pointed to the raised deposit-insurance limits and the tax changes.

Rep. Zach Wamp (R., Tenn.) said the accounting rule changes will help business. He opposed the bill Monday but now supports it, arguing broad action is needed to stem the decline in credit markets.

“Monday, I cast a blue-collar vote,” he said. “Today, I’m going to cast a red, white and blue vote for my country.”

Good! Now we’re getting the right Idea.

Serious Surgery’

At least 11 of the 26 new GOP votes in favor of the bill came from the conservative Republican Study Committee, which had voted 4-to-1 against Monday’s legislation.

One vulnerable Republican, Rep. Lee Terry of Nebraska, said improvements to the bill had convinced him to vote in favor, but he lamented that “those greedy pigs on Wall Street don’t deserve help from hard-working Americans.”

I know, I know! I don’t like this fact much ether.

A large part of the new Democratic support came from members of the Congressional Black Caucus, where 13 of 21 representatives who opposed the original bill switched.

Democratic Rep. Barbara Lee said she was glad her opposition had slowed the package long enough for some improvements. The budget crisis in her home state of California demonstrated the need for urgent action.

Despite complaints from fiscally conservative Democrats about the addition of $150 billion in tax breaks, support from the moderate Blue Dog caucus held strong. Of its 47 members, all 25 who voted yes on Monday maintained their approval, and six members provided support for the first time.

Phone calls and emails flooded Capitol Hill. The Club for Growth, a conservative group, opposed the bailout. So did Democrats.com, a liberal group, which denounced the Senate’s decision to add tax cuts. “They didn’t just put lipstick on the pig, they added pearls,” the group said.

That’s great! We want the house to burn down!

The effort was countered by the business community, which jumped into the fray alongside the Bush White House and the Republican and Democratic presidential nominees, John McCain and Barack Obama, in support of the plan.

Applause all around!

Congressional leaders are planning bills next year that would toughen oversight of the financial-services sector.

“We will be back next year to do some serious surgery,” said House Financial Services Chairman Barney Frank (D., Mass.). Mr. Frank wants legislation to rewrite housing finance — including the roles of mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — and overhaul regulation of financial services.

This really has been an absurd year where everything is flipped on it’s head. But we needed this bailout! We will still have some hard times but now I think it’s time to look into fixing the problems that created this problem in the first place. we need to replace the standards to loan making and cut taxes so we can recover. Also cutting out bad spending is good. Another words, just get back to standard conservitive policy and given time the economy will recover.

2 comments.

Palin, Clinton, Ahmadinejad, The Financial Collapse and God

Posted on September 27th, 2008 by Darth B'strad.
Categories: Political, Ethics, Party System, War, Terrorism, Philosophy, Media, Republicans, Democrats, Iran, Israel, Religon, Christianity, Economics.

As the title and the number of categories suggest, this is going to be a lengthy post for me pulling a lot of subjects together. But bare with me here I’ll wrap it all together here to one good point and I’ll even slap on a really nice pretty bow on top of it! However I first have to start with the bad news here (and there never seems to be any end to bad news this year!) Our country is going into a state of chaos. It’s becoming more and more apparent as the days go by and there seems to be no way to reverse the irrational thinking that is going all across the board. We’re getting griped with fear here and it’s starting to create a real panic in our country. As I have been on the charge against for two years (more or less) here on this blog this panic and fear is being created by a Victimhood mentality thats sinking it’s teeth deep within our culture even in our very souls. We’ve grown too accustomed to quick dismissals of people and their ideas and hold too tightly to our doomsday scenarios that it’s starting to become a self-fulfilling prophecy. If we continue on this course then we will deserve the chaos that will follow. We have three primary causes to this downward spiral that we’re entering into: extreme partisanship, foolish finical decision making and lack of trust in God.

Extreme Partisanship
I’m pro partisan! I want people to take their convictions seriously and stand up on them to pronounce them to the best of their ability to as many people as possible. I love debate and intellectualism of any side! But at a certain point too much partisanship turns things sour. That happens when winning the election becomes more important than standing on your convictions. Haaretz has a great piece illustrating this point perfectly:

In the speech which Republican Vice-Presidential candidate Sarah Palin was to have delivered at a Monday rally protesting the UN appearance of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, she was to have said that the Iranian president “dreams of being an agent in a ‘Final Solution’ - the elimination of the Jewish people.”

Her appearance in the rally in Dag Hammarskjold Plaza was cancelled in a flap between protest organizers and Hillary Clinton, who had also been scheduled to speak. Clinton aides were quoted as saying that they had been “blindsided” by the decision to invite Palin, which they called a partisan move. In the ensuing controversy, Clinton withdrew her participation, and Palin’s invitation was rescinded.

How often dose a paper publish a speech that a candidate would have made? Hillary was invited to this rally to stand firm on the principal that women are of equal value to men. Iran is the leading country in violation of that principal because that country has their secret police always out on the patrol and any woman who does not hold to their strict code of dress is wiped. Even more than that, they have every woman who is suspected of any promiscuous activity stoned. Sarah shares Hillary’s principal that we should fight this injustice and deal with the threat posed of Iran. So why did Hillary back out? Because for her, it’s more important to defeat conservatives like Sarah than it is to stand up for women’s rights. Why Would Haaretz publish Sarah’s would be speech at the rally? Because they know that Iran threatens them and while they are a liberal paper in Israel much more in line with Hillary than Sarah, they don’t want to be killed. Sarah made one serious mistake in her speech that she did not give:

Earlier this year, Senator Clinton said that “Iran is seeking nuclear weapons, and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps is in the forefront of that” effort. Senator Clinton argued that part of our response must include stronger sanctions, including the designation of the IRGC as a terrorist organization. John McCain and I could not agree more.

Senator Clinton understands the nature of this threat and what we must do to confront it. This is an issue that should unite all Americans. Iran should not be allowed to acquire nuclear weapons. Period. And in a single voice, we must be loud enough for the whole world to hear: Stop Iran!
Only by working together, across national, religious, and political differences, can we alter this regime’s dangerous behavior. Iran has many vulnerabilities, including a regime weakened by sanctions and a population eager to embrace opportunities with the West. We must increase economic pressure to change Iran’s behavior.

Hillary’s real threat is not Iran but rather Sarah. The left hates conservatism not evil. We’re starting to see much more of this as this year rolls on. The accusations being thrown at Sarah are quite astonishing! A speech Hillary did attend, Alcee Hastings had this to say:

“If Sarah Palin isn’t enough of a reason for you to get over whatever your problem is with Barack Obama, then you damn well had better pay attention,” Rep. Alcee Hastings of Florida said at a panel about the shared agenda of Jewish and African-American Democrats Wednesday. Hastings, who is African-American, was explaining what he intended to tell his Jewish constituents about the presidential race. “Anybody toting guns and stripping moose don’t care too much about what they do with Jews and blacks. So, you just think this through,” Hastings added as the room erupted in laughter and applause.

That was brilliant! So you’re telling me that if you tote guns and go hunting for moose that automatically makes you anti-semitic and racist? And the race card keeps getting played all over the place! Dennis Prager has a great piece up where he chronicled many good examples of this:

Andrew Sullivan of (set ital) The Atlantic: (end ital) “White racism means that Obama needs more than a small but clear lead to win.”

Jack Cafferty of CNN: “The polls remain close. Doesn’t make sense … unless it’s race.”

Jacob Weisberg of (set ital) Newsweek and Slate: (end ital) “The reason Obama isn’t ahead right now is … the color of his skin. … If Obama loses, our children will grow up thinking of equal opportunity as a myth.”

Nicholas D. Kristof of (set ital) New York Times: (end ital) “Religious prejudice (against Obama) is becoming a proxy for racial prejudice.”

Gerald W. McEntee, president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, in a speech to union workers: “Are you going to give up your house and your job and your children’s futures because he’s black?”

Similar comments have been made by Kansas’s Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, a Democrat, and by writers in (set ital) Time (end ital) magazine. And according to The Associated Press: “A poll conducted by The Associated Press and Yahoo News, in conjunction with Stanford University, revealed that a fairly significant percentage of Democrats and independents may not vote for Sen. Barack Obama because of his race.” If you read the poll, it does not in fact suggest this conclusion. The pollsters assert that any person with any negative view of black life means that the person is racist and means that he would not vote for Obama. Both conclusions are unwarranted. But “Obama will lose because of racism” is how the poll takers and the media spin it.

Can you give me just one example of one mainstream conservitive that has said that he or she will not vote for Obama because he is black. Usually you’re much more loose with your words when you’re talking to someone who shares your politics but yet Prager has stated that he hasn’t received one e-mail saying “I just can’t vote for him because he’s black!” But it doesn’t matter, that charge will keep on getting thrown at us conservatives and it’s not going to stop no matter who gets elected. Funny to think that these people will charge us with racism if Obama looses but would they charge us with sexism if Sarah looses?

Why do liberals believe that if Obama loses it will be due to white racism?

One reason is the liberal elite’s contempt for white Americans with less education — even if they are Democrats.

A second reason is that it is inconceivable to most liberals that an Obama loss — especially a narrow one — will be due to Obama’s liberal views or inexperience or to admiration for John McCain.

The third reason is that the further left you go, the more insular you get. Americans on the left tend to talk only to one another; study only under left-wing teachers; and read only fellow leftists. That is why it is a shock to so many liberals when a Republican wins a national election — where do all these Republican voters come from? And that in turn explains why liberals ascribe Republican presidential victories to unfair election tactics (“Swift-boating” is the liberals’ reason for the 2004 Republican victory). In any fair election, Americans will see the left’s light.

If Obama loses, it will not be deemed plausible that Americans have again rejected a liberal candidate, indeed the one with the most liberal voting record in the U.S. Senate. Liberals will explain an Obama defeat as another nefarious Republican victory. Combining contempt for many rural and middle-class white Americans with a longstanding belief in the inevitability of a Democratic victory in 2008 (after all, everyone they talk to despises the Republicans and believes Republicans have led the country to ruin), there will be only one reason Obama did not win — white racism.

Conservatives keep on having lies thrown at us but the right is not immune to being so petty. Michel Savage is another talk show host on the fringes who regularly produces disgusting and hateful things towards the left. I haven’t listened to him in over 4 years but I bet he’s still out there and probably is worse than ever. Rush Limbaugh, a man I have listened to and respected since I was 5 or 6, is now becoming much more short tempered. He used to regularly have disagreeing calls first and try to work with them taking up a good portion of his hour trying to reason with them. but lately he’s starting to cut them off and shout them down. It’s gotten to the point that I just can’t listen to him anymore and his arrogance is just starting to drive him over the edge. The pig comment for Obama is another example where he said “if you put lipstick on a pig, it’s still a pig.” Hugh Hewitt came on and (paraphrasing) “You know what he meant there America. He’s calling Sarah a pig!” But come on now Hugh! We know the Obama’s not that stupid! You should have been going after the more truthful approach of saying that he’s out of touch with his audience because they started laughing before he finished the comment. But that’s my only complaint to Hugh he’s still doing an amazing doing the great work of political analysis but he’s still flirts with the line here and there. I’ve been impressed that Hugh as been sticking to his commitment that he’s only going to take first time female callers until they’re done talking to him due to Sarah’s nomination. Some of the women that he’s had calling has been very interesting. It seems that only Prager is really trying to keep things straight but just his voice is not enough. How did it ever get to the point that beating the other side is more important than doing what’s right for the country? It’s no wonder why people keep on tuning out of the politics and going to third parties because we’re getting into a real bitter constant nail bitting race where every single little bit of mud and every statement is analyzed to death. And you wonder why politicians seem so fake lately? It’s because everything they say is under the microscope for any little tiny defect. Both sides do it but I hear is far more often from the left then the right. This extreme partisanship has us disabled with all of the politicians on both sides trying not to let the other get the points for anything good or trying to shove down the bad stuff down the others troughs. That brings me to my next point.

Foolish Finical Decision Making
I’m a conservitive. So when a company makes a bad decisions and finds them selfs in over their heads they should go out of business and let others get into the market who will make good decisions. It’s simple stuff but it is all based around trust. The trust that when you take out a loan you’ll pay it back. This is how it’s worked for centuries and it’s worked the best out of any system that’s ever been introduced. However we’ve had a surge of people taking out loans that have no business getting them. Because congress didn’t like the fact that there were all these people who’ve never owned a home they started putting requirements on lenders to get these people in homes (of coure that was all in the name of compassion). That had the unintended consequence of lenders giveing out risky loans. But of course the housing market was in a boom! Prices were going up and while people were buying a lot of houses for much more than they could afford they just assumed that the price will continue to go up and they could just sell it, repay the loan and make a little money. Builders were seeing all of this money getting poured in, so hey, we need to get some houses built! But they built more houses than wee needed and as the law of supply and demand goes, when you have more supply than demand then the price goes down. So all the people who took out loans with the assumption that the price will just keep going up now can’t afford the loan and can’t sell the house (becuse no one wants it) so they end up foreclosing. Now the builders can’t make a buck because theirs already too many houses and banks don’t want to give loans out because they already loosing all their money to all these people who couldn’t pay. Thus we are looking at a depression. The only possibility to prevent this is for a big institution to go and buy the bad deals, get them off of the market and restore the trust to loan making. The only institution that can do that is the US government. Steven Pearlstein in the Washington post has a good piece on this:

You’re angry. I’m angry. House Republicans are angry. We’re all angry at having to put up huge amounts of cash to rescue a financial system because a lot of very rich people rolled the dice with other people’s money and lost.

Now let me tell you something very simple and very important: You can try to prevent a financial meltdown or you can teach Wall Street a lesson, but you can’t do both at the same time.

So which will it be?

You say you want straight talk — no spin, no bull, no sugar-coating. Okay, here goes.

First, stop fixating on Wall Street executives — there will be time to deal with them later. Even if you clawed back every dime they made over the past decade, it would come to several billions of dollars. That’s a rounding error compared with the size of the financial problem we’re facing here.

Second, we need to act quickly. The financial situation is now downright scary. Don’t look at the stock market — that’s not where the problem is. The problem is in the credit markets, which are quickly freezing. I won’t bore you with technical indicators like Libor and Treasury swap spreads, but if you talk to people who work these markets every day, as I have, they report that the money markets are in worse shape than they were last August, or even during the currency crises of 1998.

Banks and big corporations and even money-market funds are hoarding cash, refusing to lend it out for a day or a week or a month. Even the best companies are having trouble floating bonds at reasonable rates. And the shadow banking system — the market in asset-backed securities that ultimately supplies the capital for most home loans, car loans, college loans — is almost completely shut down.

People are so nervous, and there is so much distrust, that all it would take is one more hit to trigger the modern-day equivalent of a nationwide bank run. Financial institutions would fail, part of your savings would be wiped out, jobs would be lost and a lot of economic activity would grind to a halt. Such a debacle would cost us a lot more than $700 billion.

Third, the latest proposal hammered out between the Treasury and Democratic leaders won’t cost anywhere near $700 billion unless we get a 1930s-like Depression, in which case we’ll have much bigger problems to worry about. Depending on how the program is managed, and how things turn out with the economy and the housing market, the best guess is that the government could wind up either losing or making a couple of hundred billion dollars. The final tab is simply unknowable — it depends on how much the government winds up paying for the securities it buys from banks and other financial institutions, and what price it resells them at after the market and the economy recover.

Fourth, this isn’t primarily a bailout for Wall Street — it’s an attempt to jump-start certain credit markets that have broken to the point that nobody is buying, driving down prices to the point where they are well below any reasonable estimate of their long-term economic value.

The basic idea is to use special auctions to recreate a market for these securities with many competing sellers and one buyer (the Treasury), so that a credible “market” price can be established. If that price turns out to be below what those securities are now valued at on the banks’ balance sheets, then banks will have to take the loss. If the price turns out to be higher, then banks may be able to record gains. The point isn’t to bail out institutions that have made bad bets and suffered credit losses, but to provide a buyer of last resort so the market can begin pricing again.

Are there other ways to structure this market rescue? Sure. You could try to deal with the underlying problem by taking additional measures to prevent foreclosures. Or you could create a mechanism for the government to invest fresh capital in troubled banks, in exchange for stock. In fact, both approaches are possible and envisioned under the administration proposal now under discussion. But neither, by itself, is likely to quickly restore confidence in the financial system and relieve the current crisis.

My own suggestion would be to structure the rescue around a new government-owned corporation that would be capitalized, initially, with $100 billion in taxpayer funds. The company would use auctions or other mechanisms to buy the troubled securities from banks and other regulated institutions, but instead of paying for them in cash, the government would swap them for an equal number of preferred shares in the new company. (Preferred shares are something of a cross between a bond and common stock.) Those preferred shares would pay a government-guaranteed dividend and could be redeemed by the government at any time. But they could also be used by banks to augment the capital they are required to maintain by regulators.

The beauty of this arrangement is that, rather than protecting taxpayers by having the government take an ownership stake in hundreds of privately owned banks, it would be the banks that would own a stake of the government’s rescue vehicle. The government would suffer the first $100 billion in losses from buying and selling the asset-backed securities, but any further losses would be borne by the other shareholders. And should the rescue effort actually wind up making a profit, then the banks would share in that as well.

I mention this idea to make a final point — namely that it is important to give the Treasury secretary and the people he hires a good deal of flexibility in designing and experimenting with the mechanics of this rescue. The reality is that these guys will be operating in uncharted territory, making things up as they go along. That means there are no assurances that any particular approach will work and no assurances that this will be the final solution. It also means that, just as we entrust generals to fight a war, we are going to have to trust the Treasury to find a way out of this crisis.

We are doing this deal to restore the trust involved in giving out loans. But of course as I said in the prevous part congress doesn’t want to do anything because they want to blame the other side with the failure. Democrats are looking to push this off on the republicans despite the fact that they are at fault here. Want proof? Then check this out from the New York times dated September 11, 2003:

The Bush administration today recommended the most significant regulatory overhaul in the housing finance industry since the savings and loan crisis a decade ago.

Under the plan, disclosed at a Congressional hearing today, a new agency would be created within the Treasury Department to assume supervision of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored companies that are the two largest players in the mortgage lending industry.

The new agency would have the authority, which now rests with Congress, to set one of the two capital-reserve requirements for the companies. It would exercise authority over any new lines of business. And it would determine whether the two are adequately managing the risks of their ballooning portfolios.

The plan is an acknowledgment by the administration that oversight of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — which together have issued more than $1.5 trillion in outstanding debt — is broken. A report by outside investigators in July concluded that Freddie Mac manipulated its accounting to mislead investors, and critics have said Fannie Mae does not adequately hedge against rising interest rates.

So the president was trying to stop this sour Fannie and Freddie deal way back in 2003! But would congress let him? NO!

Significant details must still be worked out before Congress can approve a bill. Among the groups denouncing the proposal today were the National Association of Home Builders and Congressional Democrats who fear that tighter regulation of the companies could sharply reduce their commitment to financing low-income and affordable housing.

”These two entities — Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — are not facing any kind of financial crisis,” said Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts, the ranking Democrat on the Financial Services Committee. ”The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing.”

So in the name of compassion the democrats let Fannie and Freddie continue to make bad loan after bad loan thinking that nothing bad could possibly happen. Well now something bad has happened and now their trying to put the blame on Bush as they always do. Compassion is something you must hold dearly to in your personal life but when you let it make policy then you have disaster. Thus we continue to see panic in the markets and stocks continue to fall every day that congress doesn’t act. So now you get depression. Now this brings me to this last point here in my piece, we are now getting griped with fear.

Lack of Trust in God
“Come on now B’Strad! Now you’re really BSing us here!” I know, I know this may seem to be getting ridiculous here but again bare with me here. Think with me here! Are we really afraid of the right things? Have a look at this Psalm:

Psalm 112:1-8
How joyful are those who fear the Lord
and delight in obeying his commands.
Their children will be successful everywhere;
an entire generation of godly people will be blessed.
They themselves will be wealthy,
and their good deeds will last forever.
Light shines in the darkness for the godly.
They are generous, compassionate, and righteous.
Good comes to those who lend money generously
and conduct their business fairly.
Such people will not be overcome by evil.
Those who are righteous will be long remembered.
They do not fear bad news;
they confidently trust the Lord to care for them.
They are confident and fearless
and can face their foes triumphantly.

Dose it really gain you anything to have a state of fear over all of these little things in life? In the end it really doesn’t matter who wins and looses, if the economy booms or fails, or if wars and terrorism starts to take a grip of everything that we hold dear. That’s not to say that their unimportant and that we shouldn’t be engaged in such things. But if we allow it to grip us with fear so that we throw away everything that’s really important to us then what did we gain? What’s really important is how we spend our short time here on this crazy world. Are you going to spend it griped with fear over all the thing that might happen or are we going to say “Well I’ll deal with that when I get their but now I’m going to spend this time with the people I love and try to bring joy to others.” We’re not fearing the right things here! We keep on talking about all of these hard things but how often to we just sit down and just try to find what God wants from us? Have a look at this in Ecclesiastes:

Ecclesiastes 8:6-8
for there is a time and a way for everything, even when a person is in trouble.

Indeed, how can people avoid what they don’t know is going to happen? None of us can hold back our spirit from departing. None of us has the power to prevent the day of our death. There is no escaping that obligation, that dark battle. And in the face of death, wickedness will certainly not rescue the wicked.

Why throw away what we do have over the little things in this life? Even if all the disasters happen, the sun will still shine another day. You can still see all of the beautiful things that God has made on this earth. If the food prices get too expensive then I’ll start getting good at farming and hunting. If my house gets foreclosed then I’ll go build myself a new home. If gas becomes impossible to get then I’ll get a bike. If I die then I rejoice for I get to meet my maker. All of these things try to pull us away from the things that is most important in this life: what you leave behind in the minds of others. Religious or secular, that’s the only thing that you have left here on this planet when you finally do return to the dust that we have all came from. I know that it’s hard because I have to struggle with this all the time. If I didn’t then I wouldn’t be able to talk to you about it here. Several months back I was ready to come up here to this blog and say the nastiest things to the people that I cared about the most. And over what! Gas prices and the fact that congress wouldn’t do a thing about it! What a waste that would have been! And when I finally had my plans straight to tell everyone off then my self hatred started to creep in again. The one who stopped me was God. I prayed for Him to calm me down and He did. He told me while I was stressing at work “it’s alright, my son. I AM still in control.” I had to get a grip over myself to keep me from busting out crying in the middle of work when He said that. But He filled me with peace again and I finally had regained myself. Who I was always meant to be! You can let the things of this world tear you apart or you can fight hard for the ones that you love. There’s plenty of things to tear you apart in this world. The licker that I am enjoying now can kill you, but you can take it as a blessing from God and keep it from controlling you. The Snuff that I am enjoying now is addictive, but you can hold back from it if you trust in God. Everything in this world seeks your destruction if you let it! “For we are not fighting against flesh-and-blood enemies, but against evil rulers and authorities of the unseen world, against mighty powers in this dark world, and against evil spirits in the heavenly places.” (Ephesians 6:12) It’s within our own mind that the battle must be waged! The temptation to see our selfs as a victim to this world is strong and it’s deeply rooted in our culture but you must fight it if you wish to live a happy life. It’s hard! But we were not promised an easy life on this earth and everyone has a battle to fight. This I know this to be true: one can not bare the cross of another’s. So many times that I talk to others and I realize that if I had been given their circumstances I would be dead. However the vice versa is also true. God tailors our struggles for us and gives us a way out. “Enjoy prosperity while you can, but when hard times strike, realize that both come from God. Remember that nothing is certain in this life.” (Ecclesiastes 7:14)

I know that for you atheists out there I have not given you any good reason to trust in God. In fact it is Irrational of me to say that there is a God. I don’t have a single shred of proof for you that there is a God. However I do have a question for you. Has your fight against the existence of God made you a much happier and kinder person? If it has, then by all means keep on fighting! Make your case to the absolute best of your ability and never hold back! However if it has not, then I think you should ask yourself why that is. I’m am by no means the person that you will be accountable to but rather, yourself. If I am wrong and my faith profits me nothing I can at least say at the end of all things that my faith in God had given me a much more joyous life than I could have possibly have imagined. Will that be true of you my fellow and beloved atheists? We are all born and we all die but what does a life gain if it has no love? What does all the wealth of the earth matter if everyone hates you name for all of eternity? If it is too hard for you to love a God that allows for such a crazy and evil world to exist, then at least love thous around you. You can ether take joy or hate to the grave. I chose Joy!

1 comment.

Are Republicans and Democrats above the law?

Posted on September 6th, 2008 by Distinguished Bean.
Categories: Political, Ethics, Party System, Law, Media, Republicans, Democrats.

I don’t like to make a lot of political posts, but this caught my eye and sort of baffled me…

(I really want to hear B-Strad’s opinion/justification of this)

This came straight from Shane Cory, Libertarian Candidate Bob Barr’s Deputy Campaign Manager

Today, I’m sitting here in Atlanta nervously awaiting word from a trial that is taking place today to kick Bob Barr off of the ballot in the state of Pennsylvania.

Although we did everything correct to get on the ballot in Pennsylvania and compete in the election against John McCain and Barack Obama, an operative for John McCain, Victor Stabile, decided that he didn’t “like to see anything taint that process.”

. . .

While losing sleep over of the case filed against us in Pennsylvania, I’ve been on pins-and-needles waiting all week to hear the outcome of our case in West Virginia.

We are asking the West Virginia Secretary of State to count and accept the 23,000 signatures that we turned in several days past the early deadline of August 1st - nearly a month before the Republicans and Democrats would even officially nominate their candidates.

I can’t fully express to you the frustration that I feel right now.

Let me explain.

Last night, I received a response from the Texas Secretary of State’s office to my request for the certification papers submitted by the Texas Republicans and Democrats that would place Barack Obama, John McCain and their running mates on the ballot.

Their certification papers were due to the state on August 26th at 5 pm.

The law is explicit on the matter. The names of the candidates for president and vice president are due by the deadline.

After reviewing the documents, it is clear that both the Republican and Democrat presidential tickets missed the deadlines and, according to Texas state law, should not be on the ballot in Texas.

If you want to see for yourself and download the documents, click here.

Regardless of McCain and Obama’s failure to meet the statutory deadline, the Texas Secretary of State seems poised to certify the ballot with their names on it. They’ve even updated their official candidate listing to include McCain/Palin and Obama/Biden after we first made this public (and John McCain announced Palin as his running mate).

While Republicans and Democrats look to easily slide by in Texas regardless of the law, in both West Virginia and Maine, we are facing an opposite set of circumstances.

I’ve told you about West Virginia but we are also going through this similar battle in the state of Maine.

In Maine, a contractor for the Libertarian Party was in the process of turning in signatures and we’ve been told that the Secretary of State actually sent a letter to town clerks instructing them not to accept the petitions during what historically has been a grace period beyond the early deadline.

It’s no surprise to us that this is happening but it’s still not easy to accept.

It’s been clear that if you are running for office as a Republican or a Democrat, you are somehow above the law.

If you are a Libertarian or independent, you not only have to abide by the letter of the law but you have to be prepared when the law is twisted and turned to be used against you.

When I brought this up last week, I said that we would be taking a stand in Texas.

We’re doing that and now I ask you to stand with us.

Last night, our campaign manager, Russell Verney, submitted a very clear letter to the Texas Secretary of State.

In the letter, Russ stated:

“The Democratic Party, and Mr. Obama and the Republican Party and Mr. McCain blatantly ignored the Texas statutory deadline.

“Therefore, the Libertarian candidate for president, Bob Barr, as represented by his principal campaign committee, Bob Barr 2008, demands that your office keep the names of Barack Obama, Joe Biden, John McCain and Sarah Palin off the Texas general election ballot.

“Failure of the Secretary of State to comply with Texas law will result in serious legal consequences.”

In the event that the Secretary of State’s office in Texas does not comply with its own law, we are prepared to file suit, however this battle will just be the beginning.

On top of the additional and large legal expenses that we are likely to incur, we are going to have to divert campaign resources to deal with the media that is just starting to carry this story . . . but not in a positive manner.

Here’s the New York Times this morning painting Bob Barr as a troublemaker, interfering with the election and even the economy:

What would happen if Mr. Barr prevailed? It is very hard to see how Senator McCain could get 270 electoral votes without getting the 34 from Texas. Could we end up with a messier election than we had in 2000?

Would the Supreme Court again get to pick the man who will pick the court’s members? Would all this thoroughly alarm foreign investors, whose sales could damage stock and bond prices while the fight was on?

No, it won’t happen. At least we can hope it won’t.

It is a matter of principle that we make this stand. It will not be easy and it may not be pleasant but it must be done.

We’ve become a complete two-party system. Now to the point of being un-constitutional and un-lawful… scary.

Are Republicans and Democrats above the law?

1 comment.

A Liberal’s Lament-of Obama!

Posted on September 2nd, 2008 by Darth B'strad.
Categories: Political, Party System, War, Terrorism, Philosophy, Democrats, Iran, Economics.

What! A liberal lamenting Obama! Just say it ain’t so! I am vary sorry for you libs out there but it’s true. Sean Wilentz put up this post at Newsweek on the 23rd last month saying “To win, Obama must convince the country that he is a man of substance, not just style. History suggests this won’t be easy.” And this guy is a professor from Princeton University and he’s slamming on Obama! That’s not good when the people who are suppose to be in you back pocket automatically start getting down on you. Here’s what he put up in Newsweek:

Obama’s most ardent admirers, who include much of the political press and practically all of the liberal intelligentsia, will almost certainly report and analyze the event as a mammoth historical occasion, and quite possibly praise the speech as one of the greatest political orations ever. But will Obama, amid the pulsating theatrics, also attempt the less glamorous and more difficult task of explaining specifically where he wants to move the country, and how he proposes to move it, above and beyond reciting his policy positions? History, as well as recent public-opinion polls, suggests that he badly needs to do so. As a lifelong Democrat who supported Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton during the primaries, I would like to see him succeed in fulfilling his promise.

I don’t think he did a good job of that.

Since the end of World War II, every Democrat who has sought the presidency has attempted to update the legacy of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal. From Harry Truman to Bill Clinton, those elected president have refreshed the liberal tradition by promising to put their own stamp upon it, and then doing so. After 40 years of mostly Republican control of the White House, it should be clear that mistakes and overreaching have hampered liberalism’s evolution. But by renewing the idea that government has an important role to play in expanding the opportunities and well-being of ordinary Americans, the basic Democratic tradition has survived through thick and thin.

Senator Obama’s efforts to reinterpret the Democratic legacy have thus far amounted chiefly to promising a dramatic break with the status quo. His rhetoric of “hope” and “change” has thrilled millions of Democrats and helped secure the party’s nomination. Yet millions of other Democrats still find his appeals wispy and unconvincing, and the persistent coolness within the ranks worries some party veterans. Democratic governors have already urged him to be more explicit about how he intends to adjust the party’s principles to meet today’s challenges.

But he knows that if he does that people won’t vote for him. Sean Wilentz then goes through prevous Democrat victories and the “blunders” of the Bush administration and then he says this:

Against this backdrop, how has the presumptive Democratic nominee, Barack Obama, proposed to revivify Democratic liberalism? There is a quotation that ought to give Democrats, and not just Democrats, pause: “This year will not be a year of politics as usual. It can be a year of inspiration and hope, and it will be a year of concern, of quiet and sober reassessment of our nation’s character and purpose. It has already been a year when voters have confounded the experts. And I guarantee you that it will be the year when we give the government of this country back to the people of this country. There is a new mood in America. We have been shaken by a tragic war abroad and by scandals and broken promises at home. Our people are searching for new voices and new ideas and new leaders.”

Delivered in Obama’s exhortatory cadences, the words are uplifting. The trouble is, though they seem to fit, the passage is from Carter’s acceptance speech at the Democratic convention in 1976.

You don’t want to be compared to Carter! and this is a liberal doing it!

The convergence is revealing. As Republican strategists have begun to notice with delight, Obama’s liberal alternative to the post-Bush GOP to date has much in common with Carter’s post-Watergate liberalism. Rejecting “politics as usual,” attacking “Washington” as the problem, promising to heal the breaches and hurts caused by partisan political polarization, pledging to break the grip that lobbyists and special interests hold over the national government, wearing his Christian faith on his sleeve as a key to his mind, heart and soul—in all of these ways, Obama resembles Jimmy Carter more than he does any other Democratic president in living memory.

In other ways, Obama’s liberal vision appears clouded, uncertain and even contradictory. During his four years in Washington, he has compiled one of the most predictably liberal voting records in the Senate—yet he presents himself as an advocate of bipartisanship and ideological flexibility. He has offered himself as the tribune of sweeping change—yet he also proclaims national unity, as if transformation can come without struggle. He has emerged as the champion of a new, post-racial politics, even though he has only grudgingly separated himself from his pastor of 20 years, who every week preached a gospel of “black liberation theology” that has everything to do with racial politics.

Again, a liberal saying this!

The most obvious change to liberal politics Obama has to offer is the color of his skin. Some of his supporters have, whether wittingly or not, been candid enough to say, as Sen. John Kerry did last March, that Obama’s blackness is the rationale for making him president. But it is difficult to square such claims with Obama’s appeal to a liberalism that transcends race. And when Obama himself subtly and not so subtly draws attention to his color, and charges that the John McCain Republicans will try to scare voters by saying he “doesn’t look like all those presidents on the dollar bills,” he turns voting for him into an intrinsically virtuous act, proof that one has resisted base appeals to racism (which, in fact, the McCain campaign has not made).

You have to give props to the other side when they say something right.

Much of Obama’s appeal to the left stems from what might be called the romance of the community organizer. Although his organizing career on Chicago’s South Side was brief and, by his own admission, unremarkable, it distinguishes him as another first of his kind in presidential politics, a candidate who looks at politics from the bottom up. For the left, community organizing trumps party politics and experience in government. Some even imagine that Obama is a secret radical, and they see his emergence as an unparalleled opportunity for advancing their frustrated agendas about issues ranging from the redistribution of wealth to curtailing U.S. power abroad.

I think P. Muse is going to have a much better “community organizer” carer than Obama, and I still won’t vote for him for president, even though I love him (in a friendship sort of sense, that is). By the why, what exactly does “community organizer” mean anyway?

Obama still has a long way to go to describe the kind of liberalism he stands for, how it meets the enormous challenges of the present—and how it will meet as-yet-unanticipated challenges after the election. Nowhere is this more crucial than in the harsh and volatile realm of foreign policy. Last winter, when his candidacy gained traction, Obama’s foreign-policy credentials consisted almost entirely of a speech he gave before a left-wing rally in Chicago in 2002, denouncing the impending invasion of Iraq as “a dumb war.” That speech, made by a state senator representing a liberal district that included the University of Chicago, and that went unreported in the Chicago Tribune’s lengthy article on the rally, was enough to convince many of his supporters that he is blessed with superior acumen and good instincts about foreign affairs. Later comments, such as his promise, later softened, to meet directly and “without preconditions” with the leaders of Iran and other supporters of terrorism, pleased left-wing Democrats and young antiwar voters as a sign of boldness—even as they left experienced diplomats in wonder at such half-baked formulations.

Then, suddenly this summer, Russia attacked Georgia—and Obama’s immediate reaction was to call for reasonableness and good intentions and urge both sides to show restraint and enter into direct talks. Unfortunately his appeal sounded almost like a caricature of liberal wishful thinking. It was left to his opponent, John McCain—whose own past judgments on foreign policy demand scrutiny—to declare right away the sort of thing that might have come naturally to previous generations of liberal Democrats (let alone to a conservative Republican): that “Russia should immediately and unconditionally cease its military operations and withdraw all forces from sovereign Georgian territory.” Beyond the matter of experience, beyond how thoroughly the two candidates had thought through the situation, the difference highlighted how Obama still lacks a comprehensive vision of international politics.

That’s because he’s a lightweight.

That Obama’s record and statements have created any other impression cannot be ascribed only to his campaign’s political skills and the news media’s favor. Liberal intellectuals have largely abdicated their responsibility to provide unblinking and rigorous analysis instead of paeans to Obama’s image. Hardly any prominent liberal thinkers stepped forward to question Obama’s rationalizations about his relationship with his pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr. Instead, they hailed his ever-changing self-justifications and sometimes tawdry logic—equating his own white grandmother’s discomfort in the presence of a menacing stranger with Wright’s hateful sermons—as worthy of the monumental addresses of Lincoln. Liberal intellectuals actually could have aided their candidate, while also doing their professional duty, by pressing him on his patently evasive accounts about various matters, such as his connections with the convicted wheeler-dealer Tony Rezko, or his more-than-informal ties to the unrepentant terrorist William Ayers, including their years of association overseeing an expensive, high-profile, but fruitless public-school reform effort in Chicago. Instead, the intellectuals have failed Obama as well as their readers by branding such questioning as irrelevant, malicious or heretical.

Ouch!

Can Obama, who lost the large industrial states in the primaries, deal with a troubled economy and become the standard bearer for the working and middle classes—the historic core of the Democratic Party that the last two Democratic candidates lost? Can the inexperienced candidate persuasively outline a new foreign policy that addresses the quagmires left by the Bush administration and faces the challenges of terrorism and a resurgent Russia? Can the less-than-one-term senator become the master of the Congress and enact goals such as universal health care that have eluded Democratic presidents since Truman? On these fundamental questions may hang the fate of Obama’s candidacy. In the absence of a compelling record, set speeches, even with the most stirring words, will not resolve these matters. And until he resolves them, Obama will remain the most unformed candidate in the modern history of presidential politics.

Man that’s really harsh! This is a liberal professor saying this! Not to mention that we are seeing a real resurgence of the conservitive movement by the nomination of Sarah Palin. I mean top conservatives of our day are saying that she is the rebirth of Reagan here. I been hearing women just calling her Sarah! I think Obama’s in for a big surprise come November and I even think that McCain may even step aside after one term and just let Sarah take over. Wait… now I just did it!

0 comments.

Sarah Palin Gets the Veep spot!

Posted on August 30th, 2008 by Darth B'strad.
Categories: Political, Energy, Environment, Party System, Philosophy, Media, Republicans, Democrats, Economics.

An absolutely brilliant political maneuver by John McCain and it’s sure to stir things up! Thursday while Obama was preparing for his speech there were plenty of rumors going around about who McCain’s running mate will be. He had the media all rilled up with Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee and Tim Planity all rumored to be headed to Ohio to accept his nomination and then this morning he pulls out Sarah Palin of Alaska to be his running mate! Now I now that I have had plunty of prevous posts saying that she needs more experience and should stay in Alaska another four years to get it, but now that he has picked her I really am happy and I must say that I am starting to get impressed by John McCain. I starting to really look forward to seeing her take on Joe Biden! I mean come on now! This lady will tear Biden a new one! This is really starting to expose a big flaw in the Obama camp in the fact that he went with the normal Democrat running mate when he should have gone with Hillery (of course then again he would have to have plunty of secret service around him at all times a even need to hire a taste tester too if he did that.) Slow Joe Biden is not going to get Obama anywhere and now it just looks like all of the thunder that he amassed yesterday was just stolen by Sarah Pailn. Hugh Hewitt has six reasons why this pick was a good one up at Townhall.com.

First, over the past month we have gone from hoping Senator McCain would win to thinking he might actually be able to win. With the selection of Governor Palin most of us are convinced he will win. Which means the country will be well led on the war for at least another four crucial years. The reason behind this new confidence leads us to the second factor.

Although I am going to be more humble and not say that McCain/Palin is a sure win but new confidence is exactly right!

Sarah Palin is a real deal conservative, down the line, on all of the issues. This has the immediate effect of energizing the base to battle to keep the White House and to close the gap in or take back the House of Representatives. It is especially important that she is ardently pro-life, and the story of her family is certain to resonate with those values voters who prize faith and family as the center of life.

Amen!

Third, the Palin pick guarantees that the party will remain a conservative party long-term. If Senator McCain had picked a pro-choice Republican or had asked his friend and great American Joe Lieberman to run with him, the party would truly have been split. That didn’t happen, and Matt Cunningham summarizes the response among conservatives party activists:

McCain took a major step forward in exciting the GOP’s conservative base at Rick Warren’s forum. For example, I spoke with a prominent local conservative activist who was so enthused by McCain’s performance who bought a plane ticket for Minneapolis the next.

The Palin choice boosts and accelerates that process. Like me, Palin is 44 years old. She came of age politically during the Age of Ronald Reagan. To a conservative movement that has grown tired and enervated, she has demonstrated you can run, win and successfully govern on conservative principles in the face of the government-accommodating Republicanism that has infected so much of the party.

Most defiantly was necessary for McCain to ensure to his base and the fact that he will have a conservitive voice in his administration will ease the concerns of, well really all the conservatives in the party.

Fourth, the GOP already owned the energy issue and and the energy issue dominates and will continue to dominate the next 60 days. Even if Sarah Palin doesn’t persuade John McCain to come out for exploring ANWR now, a vigorous exploration/conservation strategy has an ideal spokesperson in Palin.

It will be interesting to see how that plays out.

Fifth, she is not a Beltway Republican. The modern GOP is the party of Reagan and Bush –both westerners, and very outside-the-Beltway. Neither ever succumbed to the Beltway’s many poisons.

John McCain is clearly outside of his party’s recent tradition, much more of the Eisenhower, above-partisanship nationalist than the movement conservative, comfortable as a Beltway big, on easy terms with the permanent political elite of the country from both parties and the Beltway-Manhattan media elite.

McCain, of course, understands the war and is the steel for the next crucial few years of resolve that victory in the war requires. A Vice President Palin will be a voice for the conservative movement in the Administration and for the party outside of the Beltway. The long run of Congressional power drained a lot of the energy from the GOP when it came to the battle of ideas, and Palin is a representative of the non-Beltway GOP that wants very much to get back into that fray. Winning the war remains the first priority, and Supreme Court justices after that, but on a host of key issues Governor Palin represents the reagan wing of the party, and that’s a great thing.

That’s looking to cleaning up Washington!

Sixth and finally, she is young enough to be a bridge to the next generation, and with five kids, she has been living in the world of young moms and technology-dependent teens. This advantage will be hard to quantify, but when she is out on the trail talking about her kids and her family’s path, it will be a huge counterpoint to the Obama’s narrative, one that underscores that millions of American families are conservative, traditional, proud of their country and full of optimism about the future if the government’s burdens do not grow to large and the country’s enemies are kept in retreat.

There is a lot of enthusiasm out there, and given these reasons, it will endure until November.

Absolutely right! That certainly helps out a lot. Even James Dodson is getting on this band wagon:

Prager: Plenty, plenty of people care and that’s why I am having you on. I care, many people care and you have a lot of followers. You have earned the right to that respect. So are you prepared to say, “Folks, look, given this pick and all I have learned about what would happen with a Democratic victory we have no choice, but to enthusiastically work for the McCain-Palin ticket?”

Dobson: You know, I have only endorsed one presidential candidate in my life and that was George Bush in the second term after I had watched him for four years. I did not do that in his first term. So I’m very reluctant to do that. You marry a politician you can be a widow pretty quickly.

Prager: That’s right.

Dobson: But I can tell you that if I had to go into the studio, I mean the voting booth today, I would pull that lever.

Prager: Well this is a very big deal.

Dobson: And that’s a long way’s from where I told you a year ago.

Prager: No kidding. No kidding. I am honored that you used this show to make that statement.

Dobson: You know, Dennis, the things that concern me about John McCain are still there. I made those comments not just based on emotions, but based on his record and some of the things that took place—embryonic stem cell research, and other things, the campaign finance, and other things. Those are still there. So, there’s still concerns. But I tell you, when I look at the choices that are ahead and what the implications are for this country, and now especially with this selection, with just an outstanding V.P. candidate as a running mate, I tell you what I am relieved and very excited.

Prager: Well, if you’re very excited given your previous reservations then I have to believe, and certainly based on the handful of calls I’ve been able to take the first hour before my “Happiness Hour,” I took the calls and people were so excited, palpably excited. Jim Dobson, and I got to tell you… if your base is energized then that is the biggest nightmare that the left has.

Dobson: I was just with about 300, maybe 400 people in a large auditorium, and they put Sarah Palin’s speech on the screen and we sat there and watched. I’m telling you it was electric. These were conservatives, you know. They were mostly Christian, but not all of them were. I mean to tell you, it set that crowd on fire. If that’s any indication, I think we are going to see some things.

Prager: We sure are. Well, you made my day. I just want you to know that.

Yep that was sure! Here is the key to her speech:

I was just your average hockey mom in Alaska. We’re busy raising our kids and serving as the team mom and coaching some basketball on the side. I got involved in the PTA and then was elected to the city council. And then elected mayor of my hometown, where my agenda was to stop wasteful spending and cut property taxes and put the people first. I was then appointed ethics commissioner and chairman of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission. And when I found corruption there, I fought it hard and I held the offenders to account. Along with fellow reformers in the great state of Alaska, as governor I stood up to the old politics as usual, to the special interests, to the lobbyists, the big oil companies, and the good old boy network. When oil and gas prices went up so dramatically, and the state revenues followed with that increase, I sent a large share of that revenue directly back to the people of Alaska. And we are now embarking on a $40 billion natural gas pipeline to help lead America to energy independence.

I signed major ethics reforms and I appointed both Democrats and Independents to serve in my administration. And I’ve championed reform to end the abuses of earmark spending by Congress. In fact, I told Congress, thanks but no thanks on that bridge to nowhere. If our state wanted a bridge, I said, we’d build it ourselves.

Well, it’s always, though, safer in politics to avoid risk. To just kind of go along with the status quo. But I didn’t get into government to do the safe and easy things. A ship in harbor is safe, but that’s not why the ship is built. Politics isn’t just a game of competing interests and clashing parties. The people of America expect us to seek public office and to serve for the right reasons. And the right reason is to challenge the status quo and to serve the common good.

Now, no one expects us to agree on everything. Whether in Juno or in Washington. But we are expected to governor with integrity, and good will, and clear convictions, and service (ph) heart. Now, no leader in America has shown these qualities so clearly or present so clear a threat to business as usual in Washington as Senator John F. McCain.

This is a moment when principles and political independents matter a lot more than just the party lines. And this is a man who has always been there to serve his country, not just his party. And this is a moment that requires resolve, and toughness, and strength of hearts in the American president. And my running mate is a man who has shown those qualities in the darkest of places. And in the service of his country.

That’s exactly what we need! Someone to make sure that the conservitive principals have their voice in the white house and now conservative will be very comfortable voting for them. So what did Obama have to say?

What — what is that American promise? It’s a promise that says each of us has the freedom to make of our own lives what we will, but that we also have obligations to treat each other with dignity and respect.

It’s a promise that says the market should reward drive and innovation and generate growth, but that businesses should live up to their responsibilities to create American jobs, to look out for American workers, and play by the rules of the road.

Ours — ours is a promise that says government cannot solve all our problems, but what it should do is that which we cannot do for ourselves: protect us from harm and provide every child a decent education; keep our water clean and our toys safe; invest in new schools, and new roads, and science, and technology.

Our government should work for us, not against us. It should help us, not hurt us. It should ensure opportunity not just for those with the most money and influence, but for every American who’s willing to work.

That’s the promise of America, the idea that we are responsible for ourselves, but that we also rise or fall as one nation, the fundamental belief that I am my brother’s keeper, I am my sister’s keeper.

That’s the promise we need to keep. That’s the change we need right now.

(APPLAUSE)

So — so let me — let me spell out exactly what that change would mean if I am president.

(APPLAUSE)

Change means a tax code that doesn’t reward the lobbyists who wrote it, but the American workers and small businesses who deserve it.

(APPLAUSE)

You know, unlike John McCain, I will stop giving tax breaks to companies that ship jobs overseas, and I will start giving them to companies that create good jobs right here in America.

(APPLAUSE)

I’ll eliminate capital gains taxes for the small businesses and start-ups that will create the high-wage, high-tech jobs of tomorrow.

(APPLAUSE)

I will — listen now — I will cut taxes — cut taxes — for 95 percent of all working families, because, in an economy like this, the last thing we should do is raise taxes on the middle class.

(APPLAUSE)

And for the sake of our economy, our security, and the future of our planet, I will set a clear goal as president: In 10 years, we will finally end our dependence on oil from the Middle East.

(APPLAUSE)

We will do this. Washington — Washington has been talking about our oil addiction for the last 30 years. And, by the way, John McCain has been there for 26 of them.

(LAUGHTER)

And in that time, he has said no to higher fuel-efficiency standards for cars, no to investments in renewable energy, no to renewable fuels. And today, we import triple the amount of oil than we had on the day that Senator McCain took office.

Now is the time to end this addiction and to understand that drilling is a stop-gap measure, not a long-term solution, not even close.

(APPLAUSE)

As president, as president, I will tap our natural gas reserves, invest in clean coal technology, and find ways to safely harness nuclear power. I’ll help our auto companies re-tool, so that the fuel-efficient cars of the future are built right here in America.

(APPLAUSE)

I’ll make it easier for the American people to afford these new cars.

A lot more of big government taking care of you little people. Is that what we really want? Do you really want a government that will take care of you and make sure that you have everything that you need? Or would it be better that we just take care of our selfs and thous around us and we (not the government) will move this country forward. If you want to get taken care of then Obama/Biden is defiantly your vote and if you want to achieve something for yourself then McCain/Palin is your vote.

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