Jindal's Lack of Style

After the Obama-Fuhrer's speech the other night, the Republicans gave their response. Because I work the late shift I listened to Bobby Jindal's reply speech on the radio rather than saw it. To me it sounded over rehearsed and forced. Not at all like Sarah Palin, for example, who comes across as direct and authentic. During the campaign she gave lots of speeches, and even though we knew that they were prepared, they never sounded stale.

I work in the graphic arts business, which is all about selling your product , and you have to reach your audience or that product will not sell no matter how good you think it may be. The people on our side have, as a rule, been just awful when it comes to the issue of image and selling. Reagan understood the importance of delivering a message, but too many on our side since then have failed to grasp why it is vital.

Just think about one example from the world of commerce; the Apple commercials. Who would you rather be? The dweeby fat guy in the bad suit who is clueless and represents Windoze, or the cool hip guy who represents Apple? The question answers itself. Yes you have to have the right product, but you have to be able to sell it too.

We now live in an era of communication media. Like it or not, we have got to get up to speed when it comes to working in the cultural arena. Conservatives have to get a lot better at messaging to the public or we are going to be on the outside for a very long time.

Over at Hot Air, Allahpundit responds to Rush's statement that he is unimpressed with those who are, in turn, unimpressed with Jindal's response. Lots of conservatives are as unimpressed as I am, it seems, and that is not going to change। We want the Republicans to get their act together. Hey Rush, carrying water for the Republicans, even when they don't get it right, didn't work out too well in the last several election cycles, did it? So I would suggest getting a bit tougher when it comes to putting standards in place. We need to demand the best from ourselves before we can expect to be winners again. Figure it out.

One Half of One Percent

Last week Rush spent some time taking about Michael Bloomberg's statement regarding New York city taxes. It seems that the redistributions system there is so out of whack that about half of all taxes in the city are paid by just 40,000 people. And of course if just a small number of those people were to leave the city for greener pastures the tax base of the city would collapse.

It's an amazing story that shows how unwise the leftist attitude is when it comes to economics. Are they even aware of how unstable and dangerous it is to depend on so small a slice of the population? I guess that tax diversity and creating a sustainable society in which no one has to pay too much, but everyone pays something just isn't part of their thinking.

Here is the transcript:

Rush Limbaugh

Barky's Numbers Crashing Fast

If you get your news from The Elite Media Monoculture then you probably have not noticed what the rest of us have been seeing. The Obama-Fuhrer's numbers are falling rapidly from the heights that he achieved during the campaign. The numbers are still high, as is normally the case, but now that the Anointed One has to actually deliver something other than a pretty speech and a fake Greek stage set, the public will be looking for results rather that rhetoric. This fact has not been recognized at the White House yet.

For the 47% of the public that voted against the Obama-Fuhrer, the fall from deification probably comes as no surprise. Indeed, conservative talk radio hosts from Rush, to Sean to Hugh Hewitt and Tammy Bruce, to name just a few, were predicting it all along. The real surprise is just how fast it has happened. Rush mentioned this week that Barky's ratings are lower at this point that Little Jimmy Peanut's were at this same time.

The big shock is being felt by those who voted for The Lightworker without having bothered to learn much about him and who simply took, at face value, what the media said about him. Those people are now coming to the realization that they are getting a major bait-and-switch that they had not bargained for.

Obama's 'Emergency'

In this editorial from Investors Business Daily, noted economist Thomas Sowell takes a look at the performance of the Obama administration so far and concludes that it is cynical, amateurish and ignorant. In the first few weeks of this administration we have seen them go from failure to failure with hardly a break. Sowell argues that the Democrats are using the current situation, talking down the economy and claiming an immanent catastrophe, in order to pass their agenda as quickly as possible with as little questioning or debate as possible. And it's pretty obvious for all who care to look at the facts that this is what they are doing.

The urgency was real, even if the reason given was phony. Obama's chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, let slip a valuable clue when he said that a crisis should not go to waste, that a crisis is an opportunity to do things that you could not do otherwise.

Think about the utter cynicism of that. During a crisis, a panicked public will let you get away with things you couldn't get away with otherwise.

A corollary of that is that you had better act quickly while the crisis is at hand, without congressional hearings or public debates about what you are doing. Above all, you must act before the economy begins to recover on its own.

The party line is that the market has failed so disastrously that only the government can save us. It is proclaimed in Washington and echoed in the media.

The last thing the administration can risk is delay that could allow the market to begin recovering on its own. That would undermine, if not destroy, a golden opportunity to restructure the U.S. economy in ways that would allow politicians to micromanage other sectors of the economy the way they have micromanaged the housing market into disaster.

Meanwhile we have had a string of individuals with tax problems put forward by the administration and then withdrawn when those problems came to light. Taxes for me but not for thee seems to be the rule for Democrats and it has been amusing to see the blatant hypocrisy of Dems who want us all to pay for bigger, more intrusive government while avoiding the responsibility of supporting those ideas themselves. Regular Americans are asking why the big shots don't have to play by the rules. The Democrats have provided no answers.

We have seen the Porkulous bill pass through the congress, but with no real support from the Republicans. Only three sad and pathetic RINOs voted for it and then only because they needed attention from the media. The bulk of the Republicans in congress have, at least for the moment, come to their senses and realized that sending the country down the road to socialism is not really a good idea for them or the rest of us. And so after a flood of calls, emails, letters and petitions they voted against the Generational Theft Act that is designed to socialize as much of the American economy as possible. The bill has been signed by the Obama-Fuhrer as expected, but no one is under any illusions that it is "bipartisan" nor should they be. From here on out the poor economic consequences of the massive government spending on the part of Democrats will belong to them only, and the Republicans will be able to point to the problems caused by this bill and say that they tried to stop it. And this bill will cause economic problems down the road, just as many economists are predicting.

And indeed, there is little evidence so far to indicate that this will be a successful run for the Democrats. The reverse is more likely to be true. For they are using the current situation to try to push through their plans to turn America into another version of socialist Europe. And in the short run they will probably achieve some of that goal. But most Americans in the last election weren't voting to become Europe. They were voting to fix the economic problems that we are facing. In poll after poll America remains a center-right nation. The problem of course is that the Obama-Fuhrer presented himself as a moderate during the campaign, as is always the case when leftists run for a major office. Obama knew that he would not be able to win by presenting himself as the angry bitter leftist that he really is. Americans don't vote for angry leftist as a rule. But they will give you a chance if you present yourself as a moderate.

Now Americans are waking up to the bait-and-switch that they have been sold and many of them are starting to have buyer's remorse, just as conservative observers have predicted. For the Obama-Fuhrer is using the current situation in the economy to claim that we are headed for the end of the world unless we follow his rule without question and do exactly what he wants. And the early incompetence of his administration is not a good sign. Naturally, that makes a lot of people nervous.

And you should be.

The Mileage Tax

Privacy, what privacy?

Obama hasn't been President for long, but all of the big brother statists are coming out of the woodwork like maggots on meth in their mad search for new ways to take your freedom, your free choice, your privacy and, most importantly, your money.

Fox news reports that a number of states are now considering a plan to tax the miles that you drive. This would, of course, require a monitoring device be forced down your throat and into your car to tell the government where you are at all times and how many trips you take and how long they are. They claim that this will be used instead of a gas tax, but is anyone really foolish enough to believe that?

Oregon Exploring Mileage Tax Instead of Gasoline

PORTLAND, Ore. — Oregon is among a growing number of states exploring ways to tax drivers based on the number of miles they drive instead of how much gas they use, even going so far as to install GPS monitoring devices in 300 vehicles. The idea first emerged nearly 10 years ago as Oregon lawmakers worried that fuel-efficient cars such as gas-electric hybrids could pose a threat to road upkeep, which is paid for largely with gasoline taxes.

"I'm glad we're taking a look at it before the potholes get so big that we can't even get out of them," said Leroy Younglove, a Portland driver who participated in a recent pilot program.

Garofalo Spouts Hate Again

Too much poodle guilt

Failed "D" level actress and neuroscience expert Janeane Garofalo is at it again, offering up her opinions in another unfortunate attempt to gain the kind of attention and popularity that she was unable to achieve back in high school. In this article from NewsBusters, Lynn Davidson reports on the petite one's brittle self righteousness in a recent interview with an environmentalist blog, Ecorazzi.

In this interview we are treated to Garofalo's opinion on the manner in which conservatives come into being. She screeches in an hysterical way that one is born defective and the evil politics of free markets and liberty come later. From her point of view, the evil conservative is born, not made. One has to wonder how long it will be until she is calling for camps to help solve "The Conservative Problem."

The reason a person is a conservative republican is because something is wrong with them. Again, that’s science – that’s neuroscience. You cannot be well adjusted, open-minded, pluralistic, enlightened and be a republican. It’s counter-intuitive. And they revel in their anti-intellectualism. They revel in their cruelty.

I don’t know if you heard me talking to Jenny a while ago, but I was saying that first you have to be an a**hole and then comes the conservatism. You gotta be a d*** to cleave onto their ideology...

Ironically, there is a grain of truth in her ranting, although it does not work in her favor. One of my favorite bloggers is a fellow by the name of John Ray, an Australian Psychologist and Psychometrician who has, as his field of expertise, the study of intelligence and the heredity of personality characteristics. It is his opinion that our outlook, intelligence, general philosophy and personality is due in large part to our genetic inheritance. He takes this view because, as he says, that is where the academic literature on the subject points. And he offers several online essays that deal with the subject, in addition to his many blogs on various topics. Of course, John Ray is a conservative, so Miss Condescending may not have bothered to read his work. For the academic papers that John Ray writes about do not paint leftists in a favorable light. And in his own writings, a few of which are linked below, he is quite skeptical of leftist claims of moral superiority.

Here he offers a short essay with footnotes that makes the argument that leftists are mostly likely born that way:

The behaviour genetics work is mainly published in obscure and highly technical academic journals (that even I find a bit challenging to follow in detail) rather than being available online but one early summary by Eaves, Martin, Heath, Schieken, Silberg & Corey that IS available online is particularly fascinating. The authors found that your politics in your youth are mainly the product of the social influences around you (school and college indoctrination, for instance) but as you get older your genetically inherited political tendencies come to the fore.

In this essay he examines the usefulness of the current definitions of liberal vs conservative and looks deeper into the underlying philosophical first principles to see whether, and how much, they may have changed over time.

Whatever Rightists might want, however, wanting to change the existing system is the umbrella under which all "Western" Leftists at all times meet. Even at the long-gone heights of British socialism in pre-Thatcher days, for instance, British Leftists still wanted MORE socialism. That permanent and corrosive dissatisfaction with the world they live in is the main thing that defines people as Leftists. That is the main thing that they have in common. They are extremely fractious and even murderous towards one-another otherwise (e.g. Stalin versus Trotsky). It is in describing his fellow revolutionaries (Kautsky and others) that Lenin himself spoke swingeingly of "the full depth of their stupidity, pedantry, baseness and betrayal of working-class interests" (Lenin, 1952). He could hardly have spoken more contemptuously of the Tsar.

The Rightist, by contrast, generally has no need either for change or its converse. If anything, Rightists favour progress -- both material and social. So most Rightists are conservatives (cautious) not because of their attitude to change per se. On some occasions they may even agree with the particular policy outcomes that the Leftist claims to desire. They resist change, then, mainly when it appears incautious -- and they are cautious (skeptical of the net benefits of particular policies) generally because of their realism about the limitations (selfishness, folly, shortsightedness, aggressiveness etc.) of many of their fellow humans (Ray, 1972, 1974 & 1981). So it is only vis a vis Leftists that the Right can on some occasions and in some eras appear conservative (cautious about proposals for social change).

And in this lengthy essay John Ray looks at the motivations that drive leftists and the leftist philosophy in general.

In absolute numbers, Leftist activists and politicians are very few but their impact is large -- so understanding them is the big challenge. They are mostly motivated by ego needs. The Leftist activist craves attention and praise. He needs to be perceived as wise and righteous -- and he tries to achieve that by pretending to be all heart and condemning the world for its many faults and imperfections. And some Leftist leaders -- intellectuals in particular -- are out-and-out rage-filled haters who want to smash everything in a world that does not fit in with their theories and accord them the prominence and praise that they need and feel is their due.

But anger is a very bad frame of mind in which to make decisions and craft policies so the policies advocated by Leftist leaders are usually simplistic and very poorly thought-out. The Leftist leader is so keen to smash the status quo that detailed thought about the alternatives and their consequences is rare. And the basically good people who are the Leftist voters are angry too, for different reasons, so they don't think things through or pay much attention to detail either, and as a result, they will often be lured into voting for some unscrupulous Leftist politician who promises to fix everything -- but who is sufficiently involved in politics to know deep down that the cure will be worse than the disease. But if offering false hope gets the leader/activist into a position of power and glory, too bad! And the poor old conservative who knows how things work and says that there is no easy fix will be ignored -- and called "heartless".

And last, but not least, I have to mention one of my new favorite blogs, BigHollywood, which is created by the same people who brought you Breibart.com. In this post, Morgan Warstler argues for a Celebrity Windfall Profits Tax in honor of the Alternative Ingenue's white liberal guilt.

But for now, it is categorically, undeniably true, that the A, B, C, and D list is 80% comprised of people who feel deep in their soul that they haven’t really earned all they have.

And deep in their soul, that does something to people. When you look in the mirror and feel you haven’t earned what you have, you feel guilty, more than that, you feel like a poodle. You feel like a kept poodle, coiffed and coddled and carried, without any satisfaction of having truly earned your success.

That’s a problem.

It is a problem when you know there are MANY others who have worked day and night to build a string of dry cleaners, there are many others not born as pretty as you who have trucking franchises, and golf supply warehouses… When you know there are millions of people who really sweat it out to get what they have.

Celebrities, like kids born to wealth, almost HAVE to be liberal. TOO. MUCH. POODLE. GUILT.

Democrats Upload Bill That Can't be Keyword Searched

Human Events brings us this article by Connie Hair in which we discover just how much the Democrats are really dedicated to the ideas of "openness" and "transparency." Because it seems that the Democrat staffers spent hours and hours last night working feverishly to upload a document to the internet that cannot be searched by anyone who downloads it.

The documents are in the form of PDF files, a format invented by Adobe to make formatted pages easy to share between people electronically and which, under ordinary circumstances, can be easily searched just like any word processing document. Of course, only the author can make changes since the original document can be made in just about any word processing or document layout program. But PDF files are now commonly used in most businesses because of their ease of use and their accuracy. And they are now a staple of the graphic arts and printing world.

But the Democrats spent a very great amount of time and energy last night to make sure that the documents could not be searched. They did so by changing the ordinary text into pictures of text. That's right: Pictures of Text. Which, or course, cannot be keyword searched.

I find this most revealing. Let me point out, for a moment, that I do this sort of thing for a living because I am a graphic artist. I work for the biggest graphics and printing company in the US and I can tell you from personal knowledge that it takes a lot of work to do this sort of thing, and it does not happen by accident.

You have to create the original document in a word processor or other page layout program. You have to export the individual pages as PDF files. Then you have to go into Photoshop, open up the original PDF files, convert them one by one into pixelated Photoshop files, save them back to your hard drive as a saved Photoshop PDF and then reassemble all of them in the correct order in Acrobat back into a multi-page PDF document.

If this had been a job for a client where I work, I can say with certainty that it would require the full attention of perhaps a dozen people working for a full day to put together a several hundred page document of this sort and to do the format conversions and the re-build. In short, it took a lot of deliberate work to do this.

That's a lot of work to prevent people from being able to search the document using keywords.

Remember, "Transparency, Openness, Hope, Change."

Yeah Right.

Democrats Delay Bill Release to Conceal Details
by Connie Hair
02/13/2009

Democratic staffers released the final version of the stimulus bill at about 11 p.m. last night after delaying the release for hours to put it into a format which people cannot “search” on their home computers.

Instead of publishing the bill as a regular internet document -- which people can search by “key words” and otherwise, the Dems took hours to convert the final bill from the regular searchable format into “pdf” files, which can be read but not searched.

Three of the four .pdf files had no text embedded, just images of the text, which did not permit text searches of the bill. That move to conceal the bill’s provisions had not been remedied this morning at the time of publication of this article. (You can find the entire bill on the House Appropriations [http://appropriations.house.gov] website.)

Obama's Press Conference

Hugh Hewitt comments on the Chosen One's incoherent rambling:

The president's press conference was a huge mistake, not because he made a partisan case for his massive spending plan. Nothing else could be expected.

But when he distorted the GOP opposition as wanting to do nothing he lost the game. The American people are tuned into this debate and know very well that the GOP is committed to a large but balanced stimulus plan that puts tax relief and immediate infrastructure spending to work to immediately surge the economy. They have listened closely to the arguments made on the Senate floor and know that the president's bald mischaracterization of those positions is just false.

Combine that bit of theater with the deeply disturbing answer on Iran --looking for Iran to reach out to us after two weeks of "diplomacy"-- and his incoherent explanatuion of the origins of the financial crisis, and the president left millions cold and worried tonight. He may get his porkapalooza, but the campaign rhetoric tonight is not up to the job, and voters know it.

Many of the younger people who voted for Obama have no memory of the Carter years and, of course, their lefty teachers will not have told them anything negative about that time that might cause them to question the wisdom of the leftist agenda. Only those who are old enough to remember them will be able to see history repeating itself as farce. Obama is a lightweight, not a lightworker.

His explanations on these questions clearly demonstrate that his knowledge of economics and foreign policy are about what you would expect to hear in your average university's teacher's lounge. His belief, for instance, that stimulus equals government spending shows that he does not understand the importance of capital growth as a cause of job creation in the free markets.

The Obama administration is going to be a repeat of the Carter years and by the time his young voters notice it, it will be too late for them. Not only will the economy create fewer jobs for them in the coming years, government fiscal policy will inflate away any savings that they might have accumulated. And the debt put in place by the Obama administration will be paid for by the next generation, not by those of us who are closer to retirement. By the time the Obama administration is over, it will mean that if you are in your twenties, you will have fallen about ten years behind economically than where you would have been otherwise. It will be a painful lesson in the facts of reality.

Those who are older and who have already seen the Carter years will be more likely to act to protect their wealth by moving it into gold, commodities, energy, real estate and international and emerging markets and away from US equities and long term bonds.

Atlas Shrugged Fiction to Fact

Here is an article that I wanted to get to earlier, but have been too busy with other things to have blogged in a while. But if you did not see this one, it is worth the time to read. Steven Moore looks at how Ayn Rand's work of fiction is slowly coming true in the present. The Obama administration and the leftist Democrats are planning a huge spending spree and special interest giveaway to all of their friends. They are trying to do many of the kind of things that are depicted in Atlas Shrugged that led to disaster in the book. So read Moore's essay and read the book if you want to have an understanding of just how dangerous a big government can be.

We Blew It

P.J. O'Roark has a few things to say about our loss to the Democrats in this essay from The Weekly Standard. He says what many conservatives are saying; that this election was mostly about the way in which conservatives have abandoned fiscal responsibility. It's really not that hard to figure out. When we get our house in order, then we will be able to make a convincing case that we should be back in the driver's seat.

Government is bigger than ever. We have fattened the stalled ox and hatred therewith rather than dined on herbs where love (and the voter) is. Instead of flattening the Department of Education with a wrecking ball we let it stand as a pulpit for Bill Bennett. When--to switch metaphors yet again--such a white elephant is not discarded someone will eventually try to ride in the howdah on its back. One of our supposed own did. No Child Left Behind? What if they deserve to be left behind? What if they deserve a smack on the behind? A nationwide program to test whether kids are what? Stupid? You've got kids. Kids are stupid.

We railed at welfare and counted it a great victory when Bill Clinton confused a few poor people by making the rules more complicated. But the "French-bread lines" for the rich, the "terrapin soup kitchens," continue their charity without stint.

The sludge and dreck of political muck-funds flowing to prosperous businesses and individuals have gotten deeper and more slippery and stink worse than ever with conservatives minding the sewage works of legislation.

Agriculture is a business that has been up to its bib overalls in politics since the first Thanksgiving dinner kickback to the Indians for subsidizing Pilgrim maize production with fish head fertilizer grants. But never, since the Mayflower knocked the rock in Plymouth, has anything as putrid as the Farm, Nutrition and Bioenergy Act of 2008 been spread upon the land. Just the name says it. There are no farms left. Not like the one grampa grew up on.

A "farm" today means 100,000 chickens in a space the size of a Motel 6 shower stall. If we cared anything about "nutrition" we would--to judge by the mountainous, jiggling flab of Americans--stop growing all food immediately. And "bioenergy" is a fraud of John Edwards-marital-fidelity proportions. Taxpayer money composted to produce a fuel made of alcohol that is more expensive than oil, more polluting than oil, and almost as bad as oil with vermouth and an olive. But this bill passed with bipartisan majorities in both houses of Congress and was happily signed into law by President Bush. Now it's going to cost us at least $285 billion. That's about five times the gross domestic product of prewar Iraq. For what we will spend on the Farm, Nutrition and Bioenergy Act of 2008 we could have avoided the war in Iraq and simply bought a controlling interest in Saddam Hussein's country.

There is no Free Lunch

The results of the housing bubble will be with us for a while

This is from a while back, but I think it is well worth reading. In this Wall Street Journal article from Nobel winning economist Vernon L Smith we look at the credit and housing bubble that is now having such a negative impact on the economy. Smith argues that in the long run the government bailout does not really address the fundamental problem and only delays the mechanisms that must take place.

The fundamental problem is that government actions in the past encouraged risky lending by banks and brokers that went to many people who had no business getting loans that they could not be expected to repay. Free market economists like Ludwig von Mises and F.A. Hayek would say that the attempts by government to make changes in the market, such as providing loans to sub-prime borrowers using a quasi-government entity such as Freddy Mac or Fannie May, only results in capital being re-directed from the most efficient uses to those which are not efficient. And in this case that is exactly what we have.

Very large sums of tax dollars have been flushed down a rat hole from which we will be lucky to ever see them again. In a rational free market where the government is not allowed to play god, this would not happen. Lenders would seek out the best borrowers rather than the worst ones.

But that is not how the leftist Democrats operate; they are continually in search of things to "fix" in the belief that they are somehow smarter that the market. The results are invariably disastrous, as we have seen in the housing market and the corresponding credit freeze. Just remember this when you see the now common stories on the news about how the government is going to "fix" the auto industry.

Now it is becoming accepted that we will bail out any industry that is in trouble. But what we should be doing is letting the market work out its own problems without interference. In a garden you sometimes have to weed. The same is true in an economy. Some businesses must be allowed to fail so that new ones that do a better job can take their place. It is not the job of government to pick winners and losers. The more so because they tend not to pick the winners as they do not need help in the first place.

And in the long term this sort of thing means certain economic collapse somewhere down the road. We just don't have the money to spend. We are, in effect, running up a huge credit card bill that will have to be paid at some point. That will mean higher taxes, a lower standard of living and a falling dollar. Sooner or later everything must be paid for. And with Obama's spending on top of Bush's, we will be getting one hell of a credit card bill.

Mirror Mirror

Republicans need to think carefully about what happened and why

Lots of people have been offering their opinions regarding the outcome of the election. And in some places Republicans have reacted emotionally by saying that Americans are stupid for electing Obama. I understand the frustration and hurt feelings that give rise to this view, but I have to disagree. It is important for Republicans to think clearly about the dynamics of this election and what it means to the future of the party and how we can win next time around. Americans are not stupid as a rule. And if Republicans want to regain lost ground, they had better start being honest with themselves about what happened so that they don't repeat their mistakes

The reality is not that Obama won so much as Republicans lost. We lost because the party as a whole has strayed over the last several years from its basic conservative message of small government and fiscal responsibility. It has not governed or acted in a conservative manner. And we did not have a candidate in John McCain who could address the economic issues.

Aside from the issue of national defense, it would be difficult to argue that President Bush is anything other than a liberal republican. Spending by the government and the size of government under the Bush administration in general have increased dramatically. And this happened while Republicans had both the White House and the congress. Did they act like conservatives or did they act like big government liberals? I think we all know the answer to this one and so does the public. Voters, including the base, are sending the Republican party a message. They were unwilling to vote for another liberal republican. We need to listen to that message. America has a leftist party. It needs a genuine conservative party too, but the Republicans strayed over the last several years.

Conservatives have not been fond of McCain in the past because of his tendency to go far off the reservation and to undermine the conservative base of the party. And we have evidence that a significant portion of conservatives either didn't vote or voted against McCain. Consider this from American University’s Center for the Study of the American Electorate:

“A downturn in the number and percentage of Republican voters going to the polls seemed to be the primary explanation for the lower than predicted turnout,” the report said. Compared to 2004, Republican turnout declined by 1.3 percentage points to 28.7 percent, while Democratic turnout increased by 2.6 points from 28.7 percent in 2004 to 31.3 percent in 2008...

No one would deny that McCain is good on national security issues, but he is still from the liberal wing of the Republican party when all is said and done. And he did just about as well as Bob Dole did. He did not clearly articulate a conservative message especially on economics, a subject where he is particularly weak. He did not bother to explain how much of our current economic slowdown can be tied to liberal spending and social engineering policy. And he did not explain how the problems, such as they are, could be improved through free markets. He voted for the bailout that most Americans opposed. And he kept Sarah Palin under wraps for weeks before letting her out and even then he did not send her to new media outlets where she would have had the greatest effect. Instead he tried to rely on old media, that hates conservatives, with predictable results.

Victor Davis Hanson writes at The Corner:

Down-to-earth, Fargo-talking Palin was a missed opportunity because almost immediately for some reason she was served up to the DC press in gottcha interviews and caricatured as a hockey-mom bimbo by NY-DC grandees of her own party. Eisenhower and Reagan worked because they were able to show the people that they came from, and were one with, them, and convince the people that they did better even when the rich were better off as well. The critical argument that the liberal party is now anti-populist and mostly one of the largely affluent who want government to enact a boutique, utopian social agenda, and the poor who want redistribution and guaranteed government 24/7 attention, was never seriously made.

If we want to win again, we will need real conservative leadership in place. Americans will not vote for Democrat lite when the real thing is available. The Republican party needs to understand that you don't win elections by abandoning conservative principles for years and then ask for the support of the base. And they had better start to work on communicating the conservative message loud and clear to younger and upcoming voters too, because we are at a serious disadvantage already in this regard. We need to show voters, including minority voters, that it is in their best interest to vote for lower taxes and more limited government rather than dependency on the nanny state. Freedom and capitalism always bring a higher standard of living and greater progress if they are allowed to work. But we have to constantly educate the public and remember that we are working against the entrenched leftist establishment when it comes to ideas and culture. If Americans can hear a consistent message and see that we mean it, then we will have a chance to get back, but not before.

I am going to be writing more on this subject at length and I will look at a number of different topics that bear on how we got to this point, what we need to do and why. We need to look at both long term strategery as well as more short term goals and tactics.

I am also going to start writing more often with younger people in mind as I said above. Those people in my own age group often have a better understanding of the ideas of liberty simply because when we were younger the schools had not yet become leftist indoctrination centers and we therefore had the benefit of hearing conservative ideas in the classroom. And we have also had more time to read and internalize the great books and writers who have provided to us the legacy of ideas that are the foundation of our movement. Going forward I will make it a point to regularly spend time with the basic ideas and the philosophical framework that many younger people have not been given by the government monopoly school system. And of course as conservatives it is always good to look to our philosophical foundations for inspiration and guidance.

We will need to rebuild the party of course, but we also have a lot of work in the culture ahead of us too. We need to understand this as a long term project because too many people don't really understand the ideas of liberty. We need to provide an alternative vision for those young people who may not have encountered the ideas of liberty. We can't assume that they just automatically know and understand them. Our ideas need to be put forth over and over again. Many of these people can probably be brought around if we can show them the practical difference between the ideas of liberty and those of left wing statism, but it will take time to undo the damage. Now is the time to start working.

Obama Wants to Loot Your 401K

Don't cry for me Argentina

In this article from Investors Business Daily we take a look at the plans of the Democrats to learn from the looter's state of Argentina on how to steal the hard earned wealth of its people and give it to government to squander.

In the event of an Obama victory, the Democrats are planning to take your 401K money for themselves and spend it. You will be left with a bunch of worthless IOUs'. Just Obama "Spreading the Wealth" that you worked so hard to earn.

Obama Says He Will Bankrupt the Coal Industry

You're better off as a poor peasant says the Baron Vladimir Obama

This is just a remarkable story and it is breaking today. I expect that we will be hearing quite a lot about this the next two days as it reveals in stark terms what life under the Anointed One's Holy Rule will be like for those lacking fortunes and political clout at the top. The words "nasty, poor, brutish and short" come to mind.

This clip comes from an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle in which Obama The Most High and Magnificent describes the effect of caps on carbon emissions and how that will kill the coal industry and cause everyone's energy costs to "skyrocket." Yes, Virginians, he really did say that. And you folks in those other coal producing states like Ohio and Pennsylvania should remember that if you vote for this tyrant, you will be signing your own death warrant.

Let me sort of describe my overall policy.

What I’ve said is that we would put a cap and trade system in place that is as aggressive, if not more aggressive, than anybody else’s out there.

I was the first to call for a 100% auction on the cap and trade system, which means that every unit of carbon or greenhouse gases emitted would be charged to the polluter. That will create a market in which whatever technologies are out there that are being presented, whatever power plants that are being built, that they would have to meet the rigors of that market and the ratcheted down caps that are being placed, imposed every year.

So if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can; it’s just that it will bankrupt them because they’re going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that’s being emitted.

That will also generate billions of dollars that we can invest in solar, wind, biodiesel and other alternative energy approaches.

The only thing I’ve said with respect to coal, I haven’t been some coal booster. What I have said is that for us to take coal off the table as a ideological matter as opposed to saying if technology allows us to use coal in a clean way, we should pursue it.

So if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can.

It’s just that it will bankrupt them.

Here, The West Virginia Record reports that coal industry officials are shocked at Obama's desire to destroy their industry. Personally, I am not surprised in the least. Obama is a communist; he hates capitalism, business and wealth, unless the wealth is his own of course.

About Those Polls

In the last year or so I have become a big fan of The Tammy Bruce show. I bought one of her books a few years back, and then heard her sub for Laura Ingraham. I liked her style and humor, but the big plus to her show is, in my opinion, the fact that she is a former member of the left and therefore has a very good understanding of their thinking, tactics and motivation. I always get good insights from listening to her show and I don't miss it if I can avoid it.

On her Saturday show, (yesterday), she brought up this topic of polls and why they are probably wrong. We all know about media bias and over sampling of Democrats. Those are good enough reasons to be skeptical of polls to begin with. And we also know that looking back we can see that the polls tend to over predict for Democrats on a regular basis while also under predicting for Republicans. Again, a good reason to think that the polls this cycle are probably wrong. But she brought up another reason we should be distrustful of the polls that has had little discussion from the Obama Media.

Consider:

We know that a regular citizen, "Joe the Plumber," simply asked a question of "The Anointed One" that was inconvenient and all hell broke loose. He was immediately attacked by the Media as well as the Obama campaign. Reporters looked into every nook and cranny they could find to dig up dirt on the guy. And Democrats in the Government started using their official position to hack into his records illegally to find out if there was any way to get back at him.

We know that one of the McCain buses was shot at with a .22 cal. weapon. Fortunately no one was hurt, but that was clearly not the intent.

We know that regular people who have put up posters and signs on their houses and lawn have had their homes vandalized and the signs ripped up and destroyed. Cars get keyed if you have a bumper sticker. Hillbuzz has a post about one of their people being attacked by Obama supporters right across the street from a police station for simply asking a question. (The question was, "can you name one Obama accomplishment?")

Sarah Palin's email was hacked and her personal information was put up on the Net by a rabid Obama supporter including family photos. Obama supporters have been photographed wearing t-shirts with a term that even rappers don't use in polite company.

A few brave McCain supporters marched through a New York neighborhood and were treated to all manner of abuse and profanity from the "tolerant" liberals there. (I put this video up on my own blog; you have to see it to believe it.)

And of course if you question His Holiness, there is the predictable smear that you are a racist.

These are the tactics of Fascism pure and simple.

Given all of this, do we really think that if a strange person calls you up and asks you if you are going to vote for Obama, are you going to want to answer honestly if you are a McCain supporter? Will you think twice before giving such information to someone about whom you know nothing? Or will you be cautious and either give the expected answer or simply say you are not interested? What, exactly, is your motivation for putting yourself at risk by telling the truth if the person on the other end is a rabid Obama supporter who can hurt you? They already know your phone number. What if they have other information about you? Will they use it against you? How do you know they won't?

The bottom line is that we can see from this campaign that the Obama supporters are dangerous and often violent and willing to use whatever methods that they can to achieve their goal. So why would a regular person want to answer a pollster if they don't have to?

The Fairness Doctrine Equals Censorship

They don't want you to hear inconvenient truths.

Senator Jeff Bingaman made the mistake of openly stating what any rational person knows already about Obama and the Democrats should they win. They will impose censorship on the nation in the form of The Fairness Doctrine. In an interview with KOB Albuquerque Sen. Bingaman admitted that he wanted to put the Fairness Doctrine into effect in order to change the content of radio stations to more closely suit his personal views. Never mind that little pesky 1st Amendment. The important thing is to silence any dissenting voices that might object to the socialization of America and the end to freedom and liberty. Brian Maloney has the video.

On the other hand, Hugh Hewitt has said many times on his show that he thinks the chances of the Fairness Doctrine being brought back are just about zero. Keep in mind that in addition to being a radio guy, he is also a con law professor and worked in the Justice Dept. along side John Roberts. He thinks that in this day and age of super-abundant media choices, the claim that TFD is required for "fairness" would be laughed out of court. There is also a technical consideration that he mentioned, to the effect that reinstating TFD could be shown to be aimed specifically at a single industry, which is not allowed in law. (I am not a lawyer so I do not know the term for this, but since this is his field I am inclined to take his word for it) I hope for all of our sakes that he is right about this. Losing our freedom of speech would be a major blow and another step down the road to slavery that the Democrats have in store for us.

Then again, we can celebrate the fact that the operation of karma apparently continues unabated. The New York Times is free to write whatever they see fit to print. But for every action there is a reaction. Consider the following report on the declining status of the flagship of The Elite Media Monoculture:

The New York Times Co. reported a steep drop in third-quarter profits on Thursday, the latest gloomy earnings report in an industry battered by online competition and falling print advertising revenue. [And let's not mention it's complete and utter loss of any credibility].

The New York Times Co. said net profit fell by 51.4 percent in the third quarter to 6.5 million dollars, or five cents per share, from 13.4 million dollars, or nine cents per share, in the same period a year ago... Shortly after the release of its results, Standard & Poors said it was lowering the Times credit rating to "BB-," or junk status, while Moody's Investors Service said it was placing it on review for possible downgrade.

Obama's Redistributionist Scheme

Here we have a FoxNews video that features Obama talking with a plumber who is clearly a "bitter clinger" because he objects to The Anointed One's plane to tax him and give the money away to everyone else who doesn't want to work for it.

Plumber to Obama: “Your new tax plan is going to tax me more. Isn’t it?”

Obama: “It’s not that I want to punish your success, I just want to make sure that everybody that is behind you, that they have a chance for success too. I think that when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody.”

This is, of course, the very heart of Marxism. There was a time when the Democrats were against this sort of thinking, although they wanted to "help" the little people. At that point the Dems thought they could do so without remaking the country. But that is no longer the case. Now they are full fledged leftists who will destroy the America that we still fight to maintain. They have been this way for some time, but now the mask is really off since they think they can finally get away with it. And they just might too if enough Americans let them. And like all Marxists, they deny the reality that when this scheme is tried it is always a failure and leads to the collapse of the country in question.

Always.

The fundamental problem for conservatives is how to get a significant number of non-political people to notice that the left is trying to manipulate them into supporting their own enslavement. There is no doubt that the Democrats want to take this country into socialism, but many people don't pay close attention to politics and are thus unaware. The challenge is to get the message out because most of those people would not agree with that agenda if they understood it.

The key here is that on our side we need leadership that is straightforward and unapologetic about naming names and calling a spade a spade. That doesn't mean one has to be overly hostile and negative, but our leaders need to stop playing patty-cake with the liberals, because the Dems and the left-media are not going to give us any style points anyway.

We need to be aggressive and pro-active at all times about naming the leftist agenda for what it is; an attempt to destroy this country and replace it with something else.

Nothing less will do.

The Wonderful Tolerance of New Yorkers

The left doesn't hate anyone as long as you are exactly like them

Here is a video of a recent march of McCain/Palin supporters through the Upper East Side of New York. The McCain supporters were not particularly numerous or vocal based on this video, but we can't say the same for the New Yorkers who gathered to express themselves in response. And just how did they respond? With tolerance and respect for others with different views? Did they just ignore the Republicans in their midst? Did they try to engage in a "dialog?"

See for yourself and then ask yourself which party really is the bastion of bigotry and intolerance for those who are different than themselves.

Masters of the Universe

Richard Berry writes at The American Thinker that the financial mess we are seeing can be traced right back to the arrogance and incompetence of the Baby Boomer generation. And indeed, the people at the heart of most of our problems today are boomers who have, in one way or another, been systematically attacking the foundations on which this country rests for the last 40 years or so. In any area you can name, whether it be the popular culture, the economy, law, the arts or education, the lefty boomers have been consistent in their attempts to tear down centuries old institutions and replace them with their own gargantuan egos. The results have been predictably disastrous.

Given that the boomer left has always been hostile to the free market and capitalism it comes as no surprise that they have been working feverishly for years to undermine and destroy it. What is also clearly self-evident in this situation is that those boomers who went to work on Wall Street and for Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, as well as those who went into the government, are also afflicted by a huge ignorance of how a free economy actually works and how fragile a society is when the foundations that hold it up are eroded.

They think that ever higher taxes on the productive and red tape to stop people from productive activity are good things. They think that destroying the rule of law and eliminating the objective standards of society will somehow improve it. They do not grasp that society is a delicate machine and that smashing the gears has a negative effect on how it runs. And they don't care if it harms you and your family. From their point of view, you are consuming too much anyway, and thus keeping the rest of the planet poor and oppressed. That the poverty and oppression is the result of the lack of a free market and limited government is a thought that does not occur to them because everything that they have ever been taught says otherwise.

Sadly, most schools don't teach real free market economics any longer because the teachers are hostile to it. Instead, if you are a student you will get some sort of warmed-over marxism boilerplate that blames capitalism and America for all of the world's problems. So those who go into business are left without an intellectual understanding of the system that they work in. Ask yourself if you would want to hire a mechanic to work on you car who was hostile to engines and who had never really taken a course that explained how they work.

But that is where we are, because the boomer elites have taken over our institutions and they have destroyed them. We will have a very big job fixing them, after the boomers have retired or been ejected from their positions of arrogant privilege.

My cohort, the sainted Boomer generation, now rules this country and its institutions. The elite of this generation, graduates of the finest schools, cosmopolitan in taste and sensibility, and left-liberal in political and cultural allegiance -- have always been counted the smartest people in the room (just ask them).

Now these new Masters of the Universe have made a shambles of the US and world financial system. This is, to be sure, not the construction put upon things by the main stream media, but it is plainly the case. The current market turmoil is a product of every bad trait the Boomer Elite has long exhibited in other social and political contexts: unbridled greed and hubris, exorbitant self-regard, breathtaking recklessness, insatiable appetite for immediate gratification, and a rollicking sense of entitlement.

We are seeing in the Wall Street implosion the inevitable result of the Boomer Elite outlook and the behavior it spawned. Storied investment banks were being run on 40 to 1 leverage. Fancy new securities were designed and widely disseminated whose terms are opaque even to highly knowledgeable and experienced hands. Mortgage securitization techniques were developed which, our betters assured us, would magically spread risk and thus stabilize the financial system. However, simultaneously with these brilliant innovations, lenders were being forced -- by Boomer Elite congressmen with an aching love of the poor and oppressed unique to themselves -- to loan to uncreditworthy borrowers at subprime rates and without adequate documentation. These loans, packaged into securities together with standard, performing loans, rendered unknowable the value of the securities, leading to mandatory write downs and drastic capital impairment or outright insolvency for many very large firms. Given the high degree of integration of the international financial system, critical destabilization was the real result of this confluence of Master of the Universe genius and Boomer Elite turpitude.

The unwillingness of the rest of us to underwrite the moral excesses of the Boomer Elite perfectly enrages them. So, today, the rest of us are being screamed at. In fact, the barrel of a gun is being pressed to our temple. It is demanded that we play our accustomed role of sheep to the slaughter. We are told we must funnel the better part of a trillion dollars to the fantastically imprudent, self-dealing Wall Streeters that gave us the mess, and that we must also chip in the odd tens of billions more on pet lefty projects with which the Boomer Elite, with characteristic cynicism, lard up the package.

Our efforts to be responsible citizens in this crisis are ridiculed and shouted down: exclude from the bail-out the pork and the payoffs to interest groups? How dare we! Include measures that might actually spur badly needed growth in the tough times now surely coming, like cuts in capital gains and corporate taxes? Leave the room!

This crisis is, at bottom, about self government in two senses and the Boomer Elite is against both. On the macro level, they don't want the American people to govern themselves under the terms of the Constitution of 1789, preferring to rule over us by anti-democratic means wherever possible, and to the full extent possible. On the micro level, being Rousseau's children, they abjure governing their own appetites, and bid everyone act likewise. The Boomer Elite ideal is a sort of Directorate in the political system and economy, moral anarchy in personal conduct, and a quasi-totalitarian PC regime in societal relations. It is bad character as a manifesto, and tsarism as a mode of governance.

Rezko Sings

Let's make a deal

I don't always agree with Rick Moran at RightWingNutHouse as he is often a bit pessimistic for my taste. But he has pulled together some interesting threads that when looked at create a very suggestive tapestry. There are a number of links to this story and I would suggest reading them all.

What's interesting here is that there is a potential new development, as Moran indicates. Not about Rezko himself, but rather about Obama's ties with south side Broadway Bank. This bank is family owned. Think Soprano family. And guess where this story indicates that Obama got his first loan for his first home? (Not the one that Rezko got him; that came later. Were talking about a whole different deal here) If this pans out, it could be very bad for certain Illinois politicians including Obama.

First up is a story from Yahoo News on the Rezko situation. It seems that his sentencing has been put off indefinitely and that he and his lawyers are having regular meetings with the authorities. That wouldn't happen unless he was providing them with information.

Next up is a short article on the owners of the Broadway Bank, the Giannoulias family.

Then there is this post from HillBuzz that looks at the possible relationship between Obama, Alexi Giannoulias and Broadway Bank with regard to Alexi's run for Illinois State Treasurer. Alexi was endorsed by Obama. Put these all together and we have a very interesting story. I wonder how long it will take dinosaur media to notice?

(It should be noted that the Chicago media have generally been better than the national media at covering this sort of thing as it relates to Obama, but somehow the New York media mavens have yet to do the same sort of digging.)

4) The Giannoulias family was involved with Obama as far back as his first state senate campaign in 1996. It has been long rumored here in Chicago that Obama obtained a sweetheart deal on his first town home here in Chicago — which he could not have afforded otherwise — and guess who the financing came from for that house? We’ve been told it was Broadway Bank, the Giannoulias bank. Now, this sets up a scenario where the Giannoulias family helps Obama with his campaign finances and gets him deeper in their pocket with his sweetheart mortgage deal (for the first home he owned that he could not afford) – all in exchange for quid pro quo to be determined later.

(5) One favor political Chicago claims Obama did for the Giannoulias family was in 2006 when, out of the blue, 29 year old Alexi Giannoulias, with no experience, and without ever having voted before, decides to run for State Treasurer of Illinois. Also out of the blue, Barack Obama endorses Alexi Giannoulias for State Treasurer. This was a SHOCK to everyone in Chicago — and Giannoulias would have never become State Treasurer without Obama’s help. In political circles here, it has always been believed that this endorsement was bought years ago with that sweetheart mortgage deal Broadway Bank arranged for Obama to buy his town house.

(6) So, the Tony Rezko sweetheart deal was not the first magic home loan Obama ever received to buy a house he could not afford.

There’s more to this that looks like it will break soon. We were STUNNED when we read Sneed’s column because we never in a million years believed Fitz would actually be able to take down Obama.

The Undefended City

Bill Whittle, who is one of the best bloggers on the net, is now writing for the National Review. Here is a short item that recently appeared on NR's site that will give you a taste of his work in case you have not come across it yet.

I sit with others in darkened rooms, watching films like Redacted, Stop-Loss, and In the Valley of Elah, and see our brave young soldiers depicted as murderers, rapists, broken psychotics or ignorant dupes –visions foisted upon me by bitter and isolated millionaires such as Brian de Palma and Paul Haggis and all the rest.

I’ve been told this story in some form or another, every day of every week of the past 30 years of my life. It wasn’t always so.

But it is certainly so today. And standing against all this hypnotic power — the power of the mythmakers in Hollywood, the power of the information peddlers in the media, the corrosive power of America-hating professors on every campus in America… against all that we find an old warrior — a paladin if ever there was one — an old, beat-up warhorse standing up in defense of his city one last time. And beside him: a wonder. A common person… just a regular mom who goes to work, does a difficult job with intelligence and energy and grace and every-day competence and then puts it away to go home and have dinner with the family.

Against all of that stand these two.

No wonder they must be destroyed. Because — Sarah Palin especially — presents a mortal threat to these people who have determined over cocktails who the next President should be and who now clearly mean to grind into metal shards the transaxle of their credibility in order to get the result they must have. Truly, they are before our eyes destroying the machine they have built in order to get their victory. What the hell is so threatening to be worth that?

Only this: the living proof that they are not needed. Not needed to govern, not needed to influence and guide, not needed to lecture us on our intellectual and moral failings which are visible only from the heights of Manhattan skyscrapers or the palaces up on Mulholland Drive. Not needed. We can do it — and do it better — without all of them.

When all is said and done, Civilizations do not fall because of the barbarians at the gates. Nor does a great city fall from the death wish of bored and morally bankrupt stewards presumably sworn to its defense. Civilizations fall only because each citizen of the city comes to accept that nothing can be done to rally and rebuild broken walls; that ground lost may never be recovered; and that greatness lived in our grandparents but not our grandchildren. Yes, our betters tell us these things daily. But that doesn’t mean we have to believe it.

How The Democrat's Criminal Actions Got Us Here

Liberals prevented financial reform for years and now shift blame to Republicans

Here we have a few videos from YouTube that highlight the actions that Democrats have taken over the past several years to prevent reform of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae that might have saved us from having to deal with the credit and housing crisis that is now unavoidable. These videos make clear that this was, at the least, criminal negligence on the part of Democrats and at the worst outright theft and fraud. It is no accident that the FBI is now investigating these matters to find the cause of the current financial meltdown. The Democrats who were in charge have much to answer for and I think, in the end, we will see some prosecutions. Hello Franklin Raines who got a multi-million dollar golden parachute for himself before bailing out.

For the truth of the matter is that the Democrats used both Freddie and Fannie as their own personal piggy banks, getting sweetheart deals and massive campaign contributions while spreading a financial cancer through the banking system that now threatens to bring a serious economic downturn. All of this might have been prevented. But again and again the Democrats stood in the way while the house of cards was built higher and higher.

The first video is cut from C-SPAN footage and brings us the testimony of some of the major players in this scandal.

The second video puts together a wide array of information from the Internet that demonstrates how multicultural leftism was the philosophical foundation that allowed Democrats to push the banking system into giving away billions in loans to sub-prime borrowers that had little chance of ever being paid back. Charts and graphs ad to the story by illustrating the explosion of bad credit that has flooded the economic system and now threatens to bring the whole thing to a standstill. It is another tale of criminal irresponsibility that Americans should understand before they do something stupid in November like reward the party that was responsible for this mess in the first place.

Update: The Obama Nazis keep trying to ban this video and pull it down from the web, but the author, named TheMouthPeace, just keeps putting back up again. Good for him. As long as he (she) keeps it available, I'll keep the link up to date so you can watch it.