The Middle is Always Evil

This morning, while my governor, Rod Blagojevich was being thrown into a paddywagon, “President-Elect” Barack Obama was meeting with Al Gore, since he is a man who knows things that an incoming president needs to know (apparently). After his meeting, Obama had this to say on the Blagojevich situation:

Obviously like the rest of the people of Illinois I am saddened and sobered by the news that came out of the US attorney’s office today, but as this is a ongoing investigation involving the governor I don’t think it would be appropriate for me to comment on the issue at this time.

He also paused to make one thing clear about his contact with Blagojevich on the Senate-replacement:

I had no contact with the governor or his office and so we were not, I was not aware of what was happening.

Unfortunately for Mr. Obama, this video of David Axelrod was discovered immediately afterward:

Awkward.

And even though the Obama team has since released a statement saying that Axelrod “misspoke,” we still have to ask the question: What did Obama know, and when did he know it? Oh, I know, I’m terrible for asking questions about a senator’s relationship with the governor of his state, but don’t forget that Obama served as a top advisor to Blagojevich in his first 2002 run for the state house and endorsed him again in 2006.

Ask yourself this question: If the shoe were on the other foot and John McCain had won the election, and something of this magnitute came out about one of “President-Elect” McCain’s close associates and political ally’s, would the media be so generous to him? Ha!

Dear People of America,

It appears that The Economy™ is in some trouble.

Everyone (all of you) seems to be telling me that if The Economy™ had been more regulated by the government, there wouldn’t be a problem. If you believe that, I have a bridge to nowhere I want to sell you. In short, the problem is not that we have too little government interference, the problem is that we have too much. Please heed this.

Where do you get this idea that politicians, people who not have to do anything of value in order to earn money, have the incredible economic foresight and knowhow to enact the perfect regulations on The Economy™? Most of the men (and Nancy Pelosi) who are brokering The Failout are career politicians, who have no understanding of how the free market works, who have never run a business, or even worked for one for any considerable amount of time. These are the people you are entrusting to fix everything. 

Ladies and gentlemen, I have news for you.

If you honestly believe that our present situation is the result of the unrestrained “greed” of men on wall street (notice how its always men on wall street; of course, there are no greedy women), and that the government needs to step in and save us from them, then you deserve to lose your home and to be poor. 

Any group of people that honestly believes that The Economy™ is suffering because of productive individuals and needs to be saved by unproductive ones, who nominates Barack Obama to be head of state with John McCain as the conservative alternative, deserves to suffer their own contradictions, which means:

America, you deserve to be poor.

But ignore me. Let’s put every CEO and every member of every Board of Directors of every Fortune 500 company in prison tonight, after the debate, with Barack Obama at the head of the mob (John McCain can shoot any that try to escape). After all, they are all greedy, self-interested bastards who contribute nothing to the economy, right? They are only out for themselves, and in today’s economy, we can’t afford anyone who isn’t out to serve the greatest good.

Last night, Sarah Palin gave what was by all accounts an excellent speech.

This is a woman who, in the last week, has been the target of multiple, scurrilous attacks. The left wing press has made her into a pariah, a target upon which it can unload all of its hatred for conservatism. Much has been said, and it has been roundly speculated that McCain’s vetting process was anything but thorough. But between Palin and Barack Obama, can there be any question as to whose record has been more carefully examined by the media– by the American public?

Briefly consider the following facts, and ask yourself how many times you’ve heard about them in the mainstream press:

Obama, a black man, is a former member of a church that endorses Black Liberation Theology, a faith that believes that Christianity teaches us to free the “oppressed” through redistributing the wealth– the oppressed, in this case, being everyone who is black; this is a church that he attended for twenty years.

While visiting his father’s homeland, Kenya, in 2004, Obama met with and campaigned on behalf of fellow Lou tribesman and openly socialist Ralia Odinga, who is now the Prime Minister of Kenya.

Obama is a known associate of William Ayers, unrepentant domestic terrorist directly responsible for bombings on both the Capitol Building and the Pentagon; it is in that man’s home where Obama held his political coming-out party in 1995, when he first announced his candidacy for State Senator of Illinois.

Many are familiar with Barack Obama as a “community organizer,” but few seem to know what work he did specifically; Obama worked for the Developing Communities Project of the Calumet Community Religious Conference in Chicago, organizations based around the principles of the Communist writer, Saul Alinsky. Alinsky wrote a book called Rules for Radicals, which Obama says he read in college in his autobiography, The Audacity of Hope. Considered by many to be the Bible of bloodless socialist revolution, Rules for Radicals surely had an effect on the just-out-of-college Obama, considering that he went to work for organizations dedicated to the principles that were laid out in it. Alinsky’s son, L. David Alinsky, recently said to the Boston Globe:

“Barack Obama’s training in Chicago by the great community organizers is showing its effectiveness. It is an amazingly powerful format, and the method of my late father always works to get the message out and get the supporters on board. When executed meticulously and thoughtfully, it is a powerful strategy for initiating change and making it really happen. Obama learned his lesson well.

“I am proud to see that my father’s model for organizing is being applied successfully beyond local community organizing to affect the Democratic campaign in 2008. It is a fine tribute to Saul Alinsky as we approach his 100th birthday.”

According to Alinsky, Obama has learned his lesson well. What lesson, and from whom? The answer: how to affect “Change” as taught by an avowed Communist. This is how Obama earned his stripes– organizing.

When Barack Obama, the man who may quite possibly be the next Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the United States of America, is free from the intense scrutiny that has been given to Sarah Palin’s seventeen year-old daughter’s romantic life, something is not right.

Its been awhile since my last post– too long. Since then, a lot has happened.

Sarah Palin is John McCain’s running mate; she’s awesome, and as I’ve mentioned in the past, a true conservative. Now, there is this whole controversy with Bristol Palin, her daughter. Almost immediately after McCain announced Palin as his choice, the left wing blogs went crazy with wild speculation as to whether her youngest son, Trig, was not her’s, but in fact Bristol’s– even going so far as to conjecture that pictures of the Alaskan governor when she was pregnant were faked, and to openly consider the possibility that she had been wearing a “pregnancy suit.”

In order to rebut such ridiculous claims, Palin confirmed that it would be impossible for Bristol to have given birth to Trig, since at the time of Trig’s birth, Bristol herself had been pregnant. Unsurprisingly, this has started yet another controversy.

Teenage pregnancy creates a difficult situation for everyone involved. Over the past few days, this poor girl has been dragged through the mud on national television. Now, as someone who is Bristol Palin’s age, I know many girls who have had pregnancy scares; it must be a frightening thing to experience– I can only imagine. But the liberal media is treating this poor girl like a pariah, shamelessly using her to attack her mother.

“If she can’t run her own daughter, how can we expect her to run the country?!”

Is this offensive to anyone else? The implication here is that at seventeen years old, Bristol Palin is wholly incapable of making decisions for herself. Our parents do their best to teach us, to nurture us, and to give us guidance and instruction– that we might be the very best people we can; but at the end of the day, they cannot decide for us. We make our own decisions– sometimes we make good ones, sometimes not.

It would have been easy for Bristol Palin to quietly get an abortion, saving herself the unforgiving scrutiny of the liberal media that she now faces– but she chose life. Liberals talk about pro-choice, pro-choice, as though, for them, the abortion issue is about the choice– but it seems that when a young woman, faced with a difficult decision, chooses life, they can do nothing but pile on the criticism. If things had gone differently, would we not be hearing from the lib media how brave young Bristol is, to make such a difficult decision so boldly, in defiance of her mother?

You see, liberals in this country pretend to be advocates of women and minorities, but when these groups do not live up to the neat little caricatures that liberals draw, they get angry. If anyone doubts me on this, I offer you Clarence Thomas as the stalwart example. And now their doing it to Sarah Palin– oh she’s pro-life! There are no pro-life women in this country! Only misogynistic men are capable of a pro-life stance. Oh! She uses guns! She hunts! She fishes! A woman with a gun? Oh! Not in my vision of America!

Do you see the ultimate sexism that is feminism?

This kind of behavior by the media– the clear bias, has been going on for decades. This is a media that went easy on Kennedy; this is the media that has given Bill Clinton multiple passes; a media that was far too easy on the Soviet Union; this is a media that, as far as I’m concerned, has aided our enemy, by pressuring our military to go easy on them– both on the streets of Baghdad and Fallujah and in Guantanamo Bay.

BUT, when a family member of the Republican vice presidential candidate is going through a crisis– no one gets a pass!

This post is best begun with a YouTube clip (be patient its a bit slow to load). Watch:

I have to point out the stark difference between Barack Obama’s bumbling, backtracking and general verbosity and John McCain’s conciseness of response– this difference is due in large part to the fact that while John McCain has principles (even though I disagree with many of them), Barack Obama has none– at least no consistent ones. But this is to be expected. John McCain has led a life of public service, and Obama hasn’t even finished his first term in the Senate.

If you watched the clip, you’d know that the Junior Senator said that answering the question of when a baby gets human rights is “above his pay grade.” In other words, he doesn’t know. He doesn’t know? A one-year old is a baby– does he have human rights? Of all the things that he could’ve said, this was the dumbest.

Strange words coming from the most liberal, pro-human rights candidate in history. Do you think the folks who presented him with the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award feel a bit… awkward?

But Obama has had plenty to say on the issue of Human Rights; here are some highlights.

At the Council on Foreign Relations in 2004:

In every region of the globe, our foreign policy should promote traditional American ideals: democracy and human rights

Yes, but how, under your leadership, can the US promote Human Rights when you don’t even know at what point people get them? Lets move on. At the ‘Citizen of the World’ speech in Berlin:

Will we stand for the human rights of the dissident in Burma, the blogger in Iran, or the voter in Zimbabwe?

I don’t know Barry, how can we, under your leadership, if the question of whether they deserve them at all is ‘above your pay grade’?

But Obama did not think that it was above his pay grade in 2001 as a state senator, when he voted against the infanticidal Born Alive Infants Bill, which would require that a child that has been born and has survived an abortion to receive the same care as a child that was born prematurely; Obama would rather the baby be left to die. Ironically, Obama made substantially less money then than he does now: maybe his standards went up?

Perhaps Senator Obama does not realize that as president of the United States, he’ll be making decisions that effect the lives of millions of people, including the unborn. If that question is above his pay grade, then –in all seriousness– maybe he should apply for another job. If I had been Rick Warren, I would have stopped him before he continued into his bloated elaboration, and I would have asked him, “Senator, if its above your pay grade to answer that question, do you believe your daughters have human rights?”

My father has done quite well for himself in his life, the majority of which he has spent working. He started his own plumbing company, which is now one of the most successful on the northshore of Chicago; he did all of this himself. I have a lot of admiration for him.

Today, I had a rare conversation with my father. We often talk about politics, since he is the more conservative of my parents, and therefore has more in common with me; but our talk is usually filled with levity– it never takes on a serious tone. Today was different.

I asked my father how much money he makes a year. I thought I had a pretty good idea, but I wanted to be sure. The number that he gave me seemed very low– much lower than I thought, considering my family’s lifestyle. I asked my him if he was sure about the figure he gave me, and he started to talk to me about tax deductions; thats when I realized why the number seemed so low to me– he wasn’t talking about how much money he made each year, he was talking about how much he made after taxes. I asked him how much he really made each year.

“Why does that matter?” He asked.

It was at that moment, looking into my father’s tired eyes, that I realized that when the government takes money from him, it takes so much more than just monetary wealth– it takes a piece of my father’s pride; it robs him of the joy that comes from the achievement of a value. It takes a piece of my father’s spirit.

Just to come to the understanding that my father doesn’t look at how much money he earns each year in terms of how much wealth he was able to create, but rather– of what tax bracket he belongs in, to really understand the full implication of that fact– it truly saddens me.

And to come home and to talk to these people on the internet who are my age, who think they know everything, who talk about how much they are inspired by Barack Obama’s plan for “social justice,” who talk about how they find socialism “interesting,” who speak voluminously about their love for humanity…

I just think about looking into my father’s eyes in that moment.

Last night, the two remaining contenders for the presidency took the stage together for the first time in the election cycle. The event, as you probably know, was held at Saddleback Chruch in Lake Forest, California. All in all, this event showed us two things:

• Any casual observer learned (and probably already knows) that Barack Obama cannot preform well off-the-cuff, and that John McCain can; this means the debates between these two are going to be interesting, and that this election may be a lot closer than many of us previously thought.
• We also learned that both candidates despise their own happiness– or at least consider it something to feel guilty for, to try to hide from the public.

Case in point: when asked what his greatest moral failure was, Senator Obama mumbled something about drug use, but then went on to say that it was a “fundamental selfishness”

I am proud to say that what Barack Obama lists as his greatest moral failure is the thing that I would consider to be the greatest moral achievement a person could aspire to: selfishness.

When Pastor Rick Warren asked McCain why he wanted to be president, he said that he wanted to,

“inspire a generation of Americans to serve a cause greater than their self interest.”

For all their disagreements (and agreements) on foreign and domestic policy, these two candidates sure do come down together on the issue of whether or not Americans have the right to live for their own sake: the answer, firmly, emphatically, is: no.

John McCain is not the first politician that has called for a generation to bow to a cause greater than themselves; watch the clip. Barack Obama is not the first politician to call for a country that– like in the clip above– “knows no class distinction;” This is not a Change I can believe in– in fact, its not a change at all. Its been done before.

You see, ladies and gentlemen, the actors change, but the course of history stays the same.

John McCain wants you to serve your country; Barack Obama wants you to serve, not just your country, but an amorphous “others.” But what these men forget– or rather, what they do not forget– but instead, what you forget is that where there is a servant, there is a master, ladies and gentlemen.

And don’t comment saying that its inappropriate for me to compare modern day political figures to Adolf Hitler, because it isn’t; watch the video.

Besides, that’s just what I do: I compare people to Hitler.

I was doing a bit of intellectual slumming earlier tonight, watching Countdown with Keith Olbermann; Rachel Maddow was guest hosting. Initially, I was just going to shut the garbage off, but she previewed a segment on Jerome Corsi’s new book The Obama Nation that would appear later in the program, and since I am currently reading it, I decided to stick around for a bit.

I should have left the room.

I sat uncomfortably through the bizarre first half of the program, which, amid numerous calls for a united Democratic Party, mostly consisted of impugning John McCain for his wealth—very strange.

Finally, the segment I had been waiting for started, featuring Eric Burns, who was presented as a non-partisan “media critic.” I was skeptical. The segment started with Maddow saying flatly the book is full of lies that have all been debunked. “OK,” I said to myself, “if that’s true, Burns should have some solid information for me, and I can throw my copy in the trash.”

What did Burns actually have to say to discredit the book? Here he is:

“Let me… You didn’t ask me this, but I just have to mention this to you… You know, one of the other things that gives a book cachè—a non fiction book—is foot notes; you look at the back of the book and you see all these footnotes, dozens of pages of them, and you say, ‘this guy did a lot of research.’ Well, before the show tonight, and I didn’t have time to do more… but, of the first eleven footnotes in the book, nine of them, in nine of them, Corsi quotes Corsi—in other words, he quotes previous writings of his own. It’s a dubious practice to say the least.”

Wow, I thought. If that’s true, Corsi really must be a truly dishonest journalist. I happened to have the book right beside me at the moment, so I checked out what Burns had said. It was true! Of the first eleven footnotes, nine of them are of Corsi’s own writings. Shocked, I checked the actual text to see what they referred to.

Lo and behold, the citations referred to the preface of the book, which is entitled Who I Am and Why I Wrote This Book. The very first clause of the preface is footnoted, and it is one of the footnotes in question. It reads as follows:

“In 2004, I coauthored Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry.”

The corresponding footnote reads:

John E. O’Neill and Jerome r. Corsi, Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry (Washington, D.C.: Regnery, 2004).

A dubious practice indeed. Burns made it seem as though Corsi was being dishonest in citing himself, when he clearly was just being thorough.

Eric Burns is a renowned “media critic” with considerable experience. If Corsi’s book is so full of lies, why does a professional such as he have to distort the facts about the book itself in order to prove his case?

You can’t have your cake and eat it too, it is said. Apparently, no one ever told John McCain this particular pearl.

Ever since clinching the nomination, McCain has been hit by Democrats with allegations that his presidency would be nothing more than “Bush’s third term,” labeling him John McSame, and challenging people to find differences between the policies of the two Republicans. Looking only at the George Bush’s abysmal approval rating, McCain has spent a large portion of his time distancing himself from the President.

But in doing so, McCain is only digging himself into a hole. Infamously, Governor Mark Sanford was unable to show any significant differences between the economic polices of George Bush and John McCain.

Here’s what people are missing with this video: like it or not, George Bush has had some solid economic policies, especially in the areas of tax cuts and free trade. But they haven’t worked, you say. The economy is terrible, you say. You’re wrong. The economy is bad, but its not terrible– we’ve been much worse off. Take the Carter administration for example.

But the economy is declining, and thats because Bush has been far-from-perfect economically. Look, for example, at his federal spending record:

In February, Bush sent a 3.1 trillion dollar budget to congress: hardly conservative. Just yesterday, Bush authorized a bill that will send $48 billion American taxpayers’ dollars to Africa for AIDS relief. Over all, Bush has shown an utter reluctance to veto anything, much less spending, during his administration, which has made for an out of control federal deficit.

George W. Bush is proof that tax cuts alone are not enough– without tandem cuts in spending, they hurt, rather than help the economy. John McCain has stated this problem explicitly, and he says he will be fixing Bush’s error here.

This is the single, most important difference between Bush and McCain: and McCain never mentions it. Why does he think the American public is so dumb? We can understand that just because the two men have similarities, they aren’t the same; we aren’t two-year-olds. He’s gotten so wrapped up in distancing himself from the President that he’s become reluctant to defend what works, and as a result he’s drifting further and further left. Is it so hard to say: “Yes, George Bush supported it, but it is right.”?

John McCain is supposedly Mr. Straight Talk; so why can’t he look into a camera and tell me: “Look, George Bush and I have a lot in common, but in the places where we differ, it makes all the difference.” Now thats some straight talk I can get used to.

Here’s the bottom line: McCain and Bush are similar, very much so, but their similarities are good.  But McCain is obsessed with being a non-conformist, and in his attempt to distance himself from the President, he has ended up downplaying his strengths and playing up his weaknesses. Way to go, maverick.

Drudge is reporting this afternoon that the New York Times editorial staff has rejected an op-ed written by John McCain. An instance of clear media bias, the piece was written in response to Obama’s editorial, “My Plan for Iraq.” In a small attempt to thwart the disgusting incompetence and slanted journalism of the NYT, I have posted McCain’s full editorial, released by the campaign to CNN, below. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

In January 2007, when General David Petraeus took command in Iraq, he called the situation “hard” but not “hopeless.” Today, 18 months later, violence has fallen by up to 80% to the lowest levels in four years, and Sunni and Shiite terrorists are reeling from a string of defeats. The situation now is full of hope, but considerable hard work remains to consolidate our fragile gains.

Progress has been due primarily to an increase in the number of troops and a change in their strategy. I was an early advocate of the surge at a time when it had few supporters in Washington. Senator Barack Obama was an equally vocal opponent. “I am not persuaded that 20,000 additional troops in Iraq is going to solve the sectarian violence there,” he said on January 10, 2007. “In fact, I think it will do the reverse.”

Now Senator Obama has been forced to acknowledge that “our troops have performed brilliantly in lowering the level of violence.” But he still denies that any political progress has resulted.

Perhaps he is unaware that the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad has recently certified that, as one news article put it, “Iraq has met all but three of 18 original benchmarks set by Congress last year to measure security, political and economic progress.” Even more heartening has been progress that’s not measured by the benchmarks. More than 90,000 Iraqis, many of them Sunnis who once fought against the government, have signed up as Sons of Iraq to fight against the terrorists. Nor do they measure Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki’s new-found willingness to crack down on Shiite extremists in Basra and Sadr City, actions that have done much to dispel suspicions of sectarianism.

The success of the surge has not changed Senator Obama’s determination to pull out all of our combat troops. All that has changed is his rationale. In a New York Times op-ed and a speech this week, he offered his “plan for Iraq” in advance of his first “fact finding” trip to that country in more than three years. It consisted of the same old proposal to pull all of our troops out within 16 months. In 2007 he wanted to withdraw because he thought the war was lost. If we had taken his advice, it would have been. Now he wants to withdraw because he thinks Iraqis no longer need our assistance.

To make this point, he mangles the evidence. He makes it sound as if Prime Minister Maliki has endorsed the Obama timetable, when all he has said is that he would like a plan for the eventual withdrawal of U.S. troops at some unspecified point in the future.

Senator Obama is also misleading on the Iraqi military’s readiness. The Iraqi Army will be equipped and trained by the middle of next year, but this does not, as Senator Obama suggests, mean that they will then be ready to secure their country without a good deal of help. The Iraqi Air Force, for one, still lags behind, and no modern army can operate without air cover. The Iraqis are also still learning how to conduct planning, logistics, command and control, communications, and other complicated functions needed to support frontline troops.

No one favors a permanent U.S. presence, as Senator Obama charges. A partial withdrawal has already occurred with the departure of five “surge” brigades, and more withdrawals can take place as the security situation improves. As we draw down in Iraq, we can beef up our presence on other battlefields, such as Afghanistan, without fear of leaving a failed state behind. I have said that I expect to welcome home most of our troops from Iraq by the end of my first term in office, in 2013.

But I have also said that any draw-downs must be based on a realistic assessment of conditions on the ground, not on an artificial timetable crafted for domestic political reasons. This is the crux of my disagreement with Senator Obama.

Senator Obama has said that he would consult our commanders on the ground and Iraqi leaders, but he did no such thing before releasing his “plan for Iraq.” Perhaps that’s because he doesn’t want to hear what they have to say. During the course of eight visits to Iraq, I have heard many times from our troops what Major General Jeffrey Hammond, commander of coalition forces in Baghdad, recently said: that leaving based on a timetable would be “very dangerous.”

The danger is that extremists supported by Al Qaeda and Iran could stage a comeback, as they have in the past when we’ve had too few troops in Iraq. Senator Obama seems to have learned nothing from recent history. I find it ironic that he is emulating the worst mistake of the Bush administration by waving the “Mission Accomplished” banner prematurely.

I am also dismayed that he never talks about winning the war– only of ending it. But if we don’t win the war, our enemies will. A triumph for the terrorists would be a disaster for us. That is something I will not allow to happen as president. Instead I will continue implementing a proven counterinsurgency strategy not only in Iraq but also in Afghanistan with the goal of creating stable, secure, self-sustaining democratic allies.