Hoist on His Own Petard

Conservatives were on to this from the beginning, and Karl Rove in today's WSJ lays out just what the effect was of the epochal "Campaign Finance Reform" that John McCain so loudly championed, and that a large majority of both the electorate and the Congress lined up behind. Now, by taking the biggest empirical measure, we know the net--and intended, by the way--effect of getting the money out of politics. Really? The Messiah, after first piously pledging to abide by the public financing regime, which was to be the central pillar of the new regime of clean politics, shifted, pivoted, pirouetted--backslid--into accepting the torrent of mainly illicit money raised through Soros-funded back offices and boiler rooms set up for the purpose. Obama's treasury was so lopsidedly huge he simply drown out McCain's efforts to get a word in. Think of Obama with a stadium-sized public address system, with Jumbotrons and massive lighting, speaking to tens of thousands--and McCain standing on his campaign-finance approved soapbox in the town square with his hand cupped around his mouth, speaking to tens.

We now find that the main point wielded by the Obama campaign to legitimize this amazing flood of campaign money--that it was mostly an outpouring of sincere, motivated--and small--individual givers joining the newly clean political process for the first time--was a total myth. Over half of Obama's money came from the biggest of big fish, giving over a thousand dollars, with a significant fraction coming in amounts over two hundred dollars. This fiction of the little giver--one thinks of the widow and her mite--supporting the Promised One with her butter and egg money--is now exploded.

The taint of cheating and outright fraud and criminality attaches to this historic victory through the credit card donations of Daffy Duck et. al. These were made possible by the ministrations of some anonymous backroom operative, instructed to turn off the screening and verification function that websites taking money use to prevent stolen credit cards from being used. Thus, this campaign was funded with an unknown number of fraudulent transactions, using either the routine scam of stealing the card number and using it without the owners knowledge, or by the repeated use of certain accounts under the control of the campaign for "donations" from deep pockets using fake names to create the illusion of many separate givers. And of course they will get away with it--nothing to see here folks, go back to your homes.

I wonder if John McCain knows that one of his career-defining pieces of work wrong-footed his last campaign from the start. This is a perfect example of the conundrum Plato offers in Book 1 of the Republic. How can the just man, who must always hold to the truth and can never avail himself of dishonest practice, ever prevail against the unjust man who can lie, cheat and steal, all while accusing the just man of these very things? That the appearance of justice is what is key, not actually being just, is the lesson the world teaches everyday. It is that on which the Saul Alinski School of Politics and Public Policy grounds its entire franchise.

It's why Jesus' instruction to be wise as serpents but harmless as doves was necessary--he knew it's hard to out-snake a snake. As we are wont to say these days, I don't question McCain's patriotism, only his judgment.

To McCain, Americans Are History Makers

Here is a stirring bit of political video rhetoric. McCain's point is that he is a guy who understands that Americans are history makers because of innovation and enterprise (and that because of our system and culture of liberty), and our world leadership that is founded on those qualities. Obama is the sort to retreat from history and apologize to the world for our having been there in the first place.



I found it on The Patriot Room. McCain should be splurging on things like this in the final days.

Pass it along.

Need Another Reason to Vote for John McCain?

Here is a letter I received today, forwarded by my friend Tom Roughneen, himself an Iraq vet, from a New Jersey man asking people to vote for John McCain.
__________________________________________

On October 1, 2006, I came home to find two United States Marines sitting on my couch. As I entered the house, they rose to greet me and advise me that my 23 year old son had been killed in action. We had just spoken to him the morning before. He was due home in a few weeks but had volunteered to stay behind to train the new troops sent to replace him.

I saw the government vehicle parked facing the wrong way on our street and thought Christopher might be surprising us. Instead, I walked in to be advised of his death. For those who wonder, it was "just like the movies", except it was real. "I regret to inform you that your son was killed in the line of duty this morning." It felt like 1000 knives cutting through me all at once. We exchanged contact information and I was left to deal with the reality of what I had been told. I had to advise Chris' brothers of his death, a moment that I will never forget. The next 11 days were a whirlwind of emotions and events. We went down to "greet" the plane carrying his body, and watched as they reverently removed his coffin from the plane. Several days later, we went to Dover Air Force Base to escort his body home. It is an experience I wish on no one. Yet through it all, patriotic Americans were there with us.

Our family and friends could not have done more for us. People waited for hours on line to pay their respects to our family. The day of the funeral, people lined the streets for the processional from the funeral home to the church. As we left the Funeral Home, I told the boys to look out the window because they would remember this for the rest of their lives. There were police everywhere. As we drove, there were school children lining the streets. The Whippany Fire Department had set up a huge flag and the Whippany Park High School students lined the streets to honor him. The football players were in their jerseys all holding American flags. There were women with their small children standing on the side of the road with their hands over their hearts. There were old men wearing their Veteran’s hats, there were families with their hands over their hearts. Some saluted, some blessed themselves and the rest honored his life.

We drove up past Christopher’s house where members of the Whippany American Legion stood in tribute to Christopher outside his house. As we continued on to the church, there were police officers saluting as they blocked intersections. There were more people standing in silent tribute to Christopher. When we arrived at the church, we passed a long line of Patriot Guard Riders at attention with their flags out. Most of the Patriot Guard are Vietnam Veterans who refuse to allow our military to be treated the way they were when they returned from Vietnam.

After the funeral, the outpouring of support was equally impressive. The ride from the church to the cemetery was unbelievable. There were more people standing along the way in tribute to Christopher. We saw more school children, people from nursing homes, construction workers with their red, white and blue flag hardhats, EMT’s and First Aid Squads standing along the way in tribute. There was one lone woman in Florham Park, standing on the side of the road with a sign that read “Thank you Lance Corporal Chris Cosgrove for your ultimate sacrifice to keep us free”. We will never forget her.

For months after his death, I believed he died for nothing. Iraq was spiraling downward and the violence was escalating. It wasn't until John McCain supported the Troop Surge that things began to turn around. On September 1, 2008, Anbar Province was turned over to Iraqi control because of the success of the surge. Twenty-three months after my son was killed, his death was avenged. Iraq was well on their way to being free.

We all still miss Christopher terribly. Our lives have been changed immeasurably. However, Chris was a true Marine. He believed in Honor, Duty, and Country. He died so the children of America could have the same freedoms he grew up with.

I support John McCain because he "Supports our Troops". John McCain supports our children and he supports the United States of America. John McCain will not let the sacrifices of our soldiers be in vain. John McCain will win in Iraq. John McCain will continue to fight the Global War on Terror. Our economy, while important, becomes irrelevant when dealing with issues of terrorism. If we are no longer free, our economy will be of little consequence.

Please vote for John McCain and Sarah Palin on November 4, 2008. Our lives depend on it.

Christopher B. Cosgrove, Jr.
Father of LCpl. Christopher B. Cosgrove III

What You Can Do For Your Country.

At the encouragement of my blogging associate, Harold Kildow, I have just donated to the McCain campaign. And you should too.

After laying out the case for how radical Barack Obama is--from monstrously fierce advocacy not just of abortion rights but of abortion itself to his economically suicidal commitment to the redistribution of wealth and the punishment of prosperity--how could I not put my money where my mouth is? What is your country worth?

Or take a strictly economic point of view. Anything you contribute now is miniscule compared to what you will lose under an Obama presidency--not only directly in taxes, but also indirectly through economic slowdown, perhaps even economic depression. Remember, recessions have economic causes. Depressions have political causes.

Obama has just spent $5 million on a half hour infomercial. Send McCain-Palin $25 or $100 to help the ole' fighter pilot snatch victory from the jaws of defeat with some more ads of his own.

$25 is less than you pay when the credit card company surprises you with a late fee. It's a haircut. It's an oil change. It's not too much to give to help save the country from becoming European. As Daniel Henninger said today, "Once it's done, it's done."

Click here. Donate Now.

Harold adds:

"Recessions have economic causes; depressions have political causes." That is Brilliant my friend. That should have been a part of the campaign. It will certainly remain germaine if we get a unified democrat despotism in our Christmas stockings this year. Rather have a lump of coal.

McCain's Political Eloquence Deficit

These are some polished ads that a group called Let Freedom Ring is releasing as part of a $5 million campaign. Of course, Barack Obama raised $150 million in September alone.

"Part of the Problem"

"Income Tax"

"Middle Class"

"Punished With A Baby"

"Trust"

"Nice Try, Senator"

You can view others at neverfindout.org.

If John McCain had been able to explain these matters with this simple clarity, he would be five points ahead in the polls instead of ten points behind. But McCain's tragic failure seems to be the failure of every senator who has run for president in my lifetime. (JFK ran just before I was born. LBJ doesn't count because he ran against Sen. Barry Goldwater.) They can't talk. Or they talk too much. They've had no need to talk to ordinary people because they have generally had no serious opposition in their re-election campaigns which themselves are infrequent--every six years. Governors, on the other hand, face more serious challenges and more frequently have to defend themselves before the people.

It is painful to watch John McCain in debates. When criticizing his opponent, he begins a point but does not finish it. He assumes we all know what he is talking about and will make the necessary connections on our own. For example, in one debate he poked Obama with a reference to Herbert Hoover. Who is Herbert Hoover? Most people have never heard of him. He did not go on to complete the point by saying that like Hoover in 1930-32, Obama will lead us into a depression.

Gov. Reagan never made that mistake in 1980. These ads do not make that mistake.

How does Senator Obama fit into this thesis? Perhaps his experience in training ordinary people in Chicago to be political radicals as well as his experience as a law school professor were more formative than the few weeks he spent in the U.S. Senate before running for president.

So in 2008, both George W. Bush and John McCain serve as examples of how necessary it is to master the art of rhetoric if you hope to lead people in a free republic.

McCain Has Exhausted His Gambler's Luck

Prof. Horace Jeffery Hodges in Korea reflects on John McCain's propensity to gamble in his Gypsy Scholar blog. First, he cites Charles Krauthammer's own observations on McCain's gambler's luck in his column, "Hail Mary vs Cool Barry."

Krauthammer's Hail Mary Rule: You get only two per game. John McCain, unfortunately, has already thrown three. The first was his bet on the surge, a deep pass to David Petraeus who miraculously ran it all the way into the end zone.

Then, seeking a game-changer after the Democratic convention, McCain threw blind into the end zone to a waiting Sarah Palin. She caught the ball. Her subsequent fumbles have taken the sheen off of that play, but she nonetheless invaluably solidifies his Republican base.

When the financial crisis hit, McCain went razzle-dazzle again, suspending his campaign and declaring that he'd stay away from the first presidential debate until the financial crisis was solved. He tempted fate one time too many.

Hodges tells us about McCain's gambling activities at Foxwoods. The he concludes this way:

"A lot of people don't know when the moment to stop has come, as we've perhaps seen in the excessive risks that a lot of distinguished executives in the financial sector have taken over the past several years. The resulting financial crisis has made them look like inveterate gamblers.

"Whether or not McCain knows when walk away, even to be known as a risk-taker during this time of financial uncertainty might work to his disadvantage on November 4, when people are likely to pull the lever for the candidate who seems less likely to gamble with their future."

Harold adds:

So--given the info in "Card Night at Ole Miss" maybe we should, in the event of a tie in the Electoral College, let these two card sharps play off the tie in a round of 5 card stud. Could be an epic moment in political history--not unlike the story, from my home state of Colorado, where the governors of Colorado and Texas, playing a heated game of poker, found the Colorado governor out of chips. He "saw" the Texan's bet with title to Pikes Peak, lost the hand, and there has been animosity amongst Coloradans and Texans ever since, with Texans insisting they won it fair and square ,and Coloradans gritting their teeth over the sight of every tossed Lone Star beer can on the Front Range of the Rockies.

Card Night at Ole Miss

Ethan Campbell writes:

Barack Obama may not look like a seasoned cardsharp, but he reportedly dominates Senate poker games. “Obama’s analytical mind,” James McManus gushed in The New Yorker, “helped him to excel at draw, stud, hold ’em, and also the sillier, more luck-based variants.”

Indeed, on Friday night in Mississippi, both candidates proved themselves capable high-stakes debaters, with full decks of anecdotes and statistics. But in a Presidential race, as in a poker tournament, the prize is never simply rewarded to the player with the best math skills. Undecided voters ask themselves gut-level questions—like which candidate is better suited to sit across the green felt table with sharks like Putin or Ahmadinejad or Abbas. The winning strategy thus belongs to the man who can master the intangibles.

The first key, any Vegas pro will tell you, is to develop the right poker face. It could be the classic neutral stare, or a cavalier smile—or in McCain’s case, an unnerving, reptilian smirk. What matters is that the player’s emotions are unreadable.

During the debate, Obama wore the face of a nickel-ante gambler at the Bellagio. Early on, he looked straight at the TV camera and delivered a promise to middle-class taxpayers: “You will not pay another dime.” But as the game shifted to foreign policy, his answers grew tentative, and his direct looks at the camera stopped. The message to viewers was subtle but clear—Obama wasn’t confident enough to look us in the eye. His baby browns didn’t meet ours again until the very end, back on the safe turf of childhood memories.

Obama’s smile was never one of good humor or playful sarcasm. It was a grin of helpless panic. When McCain scored hits—“It’s hard to reach across the aisle from that far to the left,” “It isn’t just naive, it’s dangerous”—the tally wrote itself on his stretched lips.

McCain’s expressions, on the other hand, were almost freakishly consistent. While Obama spoke, McCain fixed an eerie gaze on moderator Jim Lehrer, never once making eye contact with his opponent or the camera. When Obama attacked, he looked down at his notes. When the attacks got vicious, he gave Lehrer the smirk.

Often while Obama rebuked him, McCain treated the viewer to all three expressions in a row. Eerie gaze, down at his notes, smirk. Even during Obama’s finest moment—a two-minute tongue lashing over Iraq that made the Youtube highlight reel—McCain looked down, then up to smirk, then back down. Rinse and repeat.

The unreadable face does little good, though, unless one uses it to bluff. And McCain constantly pushed the action, with attacks that were difficult to verify.

Obama proposes “$800 billion in new spending on new programs,” McCain said. “I . . . I don’t know where John is getting his figures,” the junior Senator sputtered.

“He has voted to increase taxes on people who make as low as $42,000.” Obama denied the charge (“That’s not true, John”), and McCain denied right back (“You can look it up”).

Even after Obama’s Iraq indictment, the rhetorically wounded veteran shot back with a baffling but brazen claim: “Senator Obama doesn’t understand the difference between a tactic and a strategy.” He continued with a rambling tirade, about soldiers pleading to “let us win” and Obama cutting their funds.

Obama impotently tried to interrupt, but settled for smiling until it hurt. “Jim,” he said finally, “there are a whole bunch of things we have got to answer.”

The pattern developed quickly. McCain placed bets, and Obama called them. When Obama attacked, McCain raised the stakes.

When Obama mentioned embarrassing quotes from McCain’s past—singing “bomb, bomb Iran,” or saying we could “muddle through” Afghanistan—McCain didn’t bother to touch them. Instead, he stayed on the offensive: “You might think that with that kind of concern, Senator Obama would have gone to Afghanistan.”

When Obama accused him of voting “23 times against alternative energy, like solar, and wind, and biodiesel,” McCain absorbed the blow and struck back: “Senator Obama says he’s for nuclear, but he’s against reprocessing and storing. It’s hard to get there from here.” Obama desperately tried to “correct the record,” as Lehrer pressed the candidates to move on.

An aggressive strategy does not always win, but whoever drives the betting controls the game. And the game isn’t over until someone pushes all his chips into the pot.

In his closing statement, McCain accused Obama of clinging to ideology while ignoring practical reality. “We’ve seen this stubbornness before, in this administration,” he said. “We need more flexibility in a president of the United States.”

Paul Newman in The Sting couldn’t have matched the audacity of this final, all-in move. McCain was actually comparing Obama—Barack Obama, opponent of the Iraq war, supporter of nationalized health care and abortion on demand—to George W. Bush.

For once, Obama didn’t respond with a clarification. “You know, my father is from Kenya,” he said limply. McCain had left him nothing more to gamble with. He could only shake his head, grin like the Cheshire cat . . . and fold.

-- Ethan Campbell is assistant professor of writing at The King's College in New York City and is a guest writer today at Principalities and Powers. He is co-author of the recently published Teen Challenge: 50 Years of Miracles.

Illustration from The New Yorker.

For a post of perhaps related interest to card players, see my post, "Dogs Playing Poker: A Friend in Need." Which dog is Obama and which one is McCain?

It's a Democrat Financial Crisis or an Obama White House

Clearly, John McCain's advisers put him under strict orders to guard his tongue during the debate at Ole Miss. He should have put that punk in his place and made headlines doing it. As it is, they sparred to a draw, giving the win to Barack Obama.

When Obama accused McCain of being complicit in the present economic mess because 90% of his votes in the Senate have agreed with the administration, McCain should have looked straight at him, and said, "Mr Obama, not only are you are a Senator, you are also part of the Democratic Party's governing majority in Congress. You are in no place to be pointing the finger at me. Let me tell you about that 10%. It's a 10% that you don't have in disagreement with your party! Congress has made a mess of our financial system are you are part of that."

But because McCain seems to want to present himself as a post-partisan unifier, he didn't criticize the Democrats. But the Democratic Congress is even more unpopular than the President, and they are responsible for this mess.

You must watch these two videos.

The first one from Fox News documents how the Bush administration saw this subprime loan trouble coming and tried to prevent through regulation Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac from making all these bad loans to people who really could not afford to be in the housing market. But the Democrats blocked it. Fox provides footage of Barney Frank--yes, Barney Frank the extremely liberal Democrat from Massachusetts who is scolding Bush and Wall Street for this crisis and who is at the center of Congressional efforts to dig us out of the crisis--saying that all this talk of problems at Fannie and Freddie is just a Republican trick to deny mortgages to the poor (i.e. adjustable rates, subprime rates, no money down, interest only payments, no questions asked about income--step right up!). Brit Hume and Bret Baier ask, "What were those warning signs? Who raised them? Who raised them, and who disputed them?"

This next video, "Burning Down the House," is longer--ten minutes--and very fast paced, but people under thirty should have no problem keeping up with it. It shows how the crisis developed, viz. not the failure of free market capitalism, but Democrats forcing private financial institutions to lend money to people who are not credit worthy It then documents John McCain's opposition to all of this and Barack Obama's political and financial involvement with the whole caper and its chief culprits.

[Oct. 1 - The "Burning Down the House" video has been pulled from YouTube for this stated reason: "This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by Warner Music Group."]

So why does McCain not tie this around his opponent's neck? Instead, he lets Obama and the Democrats define the problem as a capitalist problem (markets don't work; they must be directed by wise and benevolent bureaucrats) and a Republican problem (Republicans don't believe in any regulation ever--yes, he said that).

Finally, Barack Obama closed with a story about his father coming to America because he saw it as a land of opportunity. (He has gall mentioning his father who was a communist, and who took the "opportunity" to abandon baby Barack and his mother and head back to Kenya. But that aside.) He claimed that--here comes the down-on-America stuff--people around the world no longer see American that way. Of course, it only Barack and Michelle and their Amerika hating friends (like Jeremiah Wright and William Ayers) who don't see America that way. McCain should have used his final minute to draw attention to the continuing political goodness of this country and to the millions of people still clamoring to come here, yes, even from Muslim countries. Instead he repeated his commitment to help veterans. Obama pricked him on the issue and McCain feasted on the bait.

Despite what you hear about negative campaigning, Americans like a fighter. McCain needs to define his opponent for who he is and do so with a few solid, memorable blows of devastating wit. He has got it. He needs to use it. Otherwise, we will see the triumph of evil regimes abroad and painful lessons about government control at home.

Reading List for Friday's Debate

The first of the three presidential debates for 2008 is on Friday in Mississippi. So in addition to everything Harold and I have written on this blog (see the tags "McCain," "John McCain," and "Barack Obama" or just go to "2008 election" and "2008 primaries"), here is a reading list. Get to it. There'll be a quiz on Monday. (No. Sorry. What was I thinking?)


Investor's Business Daily has a series of essays they entitled, "The Audacity of Socialism." Harold Kildow deals with it below in "Nightmare Scenario."

Barack Obama has styled himself a centrist, but does his record support that claim? In this series, we examine Senator Obama's past, his voting record and the people who've served as his advisers and mentors over the years. We'll show how the facts of Obama's actions and associations reveal a far more left-leaning tilt to his background — and to his politics.

We've seen many comparisons between Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama, but Christopher Hitchens in Slate gives us, "Is Obama Another Dukakis: Why Is Obama So Vapid, Hesitant and Gutless?"

By the end of that grueling campaign season, a lot of us had got the idea that Dukakis actually wanted to lose—or was at the very least scared of winning. Why do I sometimes get the same idea about Obama? To put it a touch more precisely, what I suspect in his case is that he had no idea of winning this time around. He was running in Iowa and New Hampshire to seed the ground for 2012, not 2008, and then the enthusiasm of his supporters (and the weird coincidence of a strong John Edwards showing in Iowa) put him at the front of the pack. Yet, having suddenly got the leadership position, he hadn't the faintest idea what to do with it or what to do about it.

Stanley Kurtz at the Ethics and Public Policy Center is finally able to share with us what he found digging through those papers that Obama's friends worked so hard to prevent him seeing. Read "Obama and Ayers Pushed Radicalism on Schools" in today's Wall Street Journal.

Despite having authored two autobiographies, Barack Obama has never written about his most important executive experience. From 1995 to 1999, he led an education foundation called the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC), and remained on the board until 2001. The group poured more than $100 million into the hands of community organizers and radical education activists.

The CAC was the brainchild of Bill Ayers, a founder of the Weather Underground in the 1960s. Among other feats, Mr. Ayers and his cohorts bombed the Pentagon, and he has never expressed regret for his actions. Barack Obama's first run for the Illinois State Senate was launched at a 1995 gathering at Mr. Ayers's home.

On the McCain side, in "McCain Loses His Head," George Will wonders if John McCain is temperamentally fit for the presidency.

It is arguable that, because of his inexperience, Obama is not ready for the presidency. It is arguable that McCain, because of his boiling moralism and bottomless reservoir of certitudes, is not suited to the presidency. Unreadiness can be corrected, although perhaps at great cost, by experience. Can a dismaying temperament be fixed?

John Podhoretz at Commentary joins in drawing attention to McCain's combustible character, and in that way his unpredictable behavior, in "McCain's Challenge."

Substantively, this has been the worst week of John McCain’s campaign — and I mean since its beginning, in early 2007. With a perfect argument to make on his own behalf — that he saw the problems with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and called them out in 2005 while others were still angling for their largesse, and that therefore he possesses the experience and demonstrated the kind of leadership and insight that are required for the presidency — he instead flailed about. Calling for the firing of Securities and Exchange Commission chairman Chris Cox? Right there, in that act, we got a glimpse of why senators so often make bad presidential candidates. From time immemorial, senators haughtily acts as though the dismissal of executive branch officials is a form of policymaking when it is almost always the opposite — an act of scapegoating.

Harold Kildow wrote when he drew my attention to this short article, "We could be one election away from a slide into fascism...and only a maverick senator standing in the way. Or maybe he'll help usher it in. That's the problem with mavericks--you never know what you're going to get. "

A Tight Battle For Reform Mantle

A New York Times/CBS News poll (consider the source?) indicates that registered voters (not necessarily likely voters) view Barack Obama as far more likely to bring change to Washington than John McCain. Given the tightness of the race, which is reportedly tied again, and the supposed importance of this "change" issue, this seems counter-intuitive.

So McCain's remarks today in Cedar Rapids are important. They seem devastating. Expect to hear more about these connections between Obama, this economic crisis, and those who brought it upon us.

McCain's remarks in Cedar Rapids, Iowa:

I’m happy to be introduced by Governor Palin, but I can’t wait until I introduce her to Washington. Let me offer an advance warning to the big spending, greedy, do nothing, me first, country second crowd in Washington and on Wall Street: change is coming.
We need reform in Washington and on Wall Street. The financial markets are in crisis. Times are tough. Enormous strain is being put on working families and individuals in America. I know that the events unfolding can be difficult to understand for many Americans. The dominos that we have seen fall this week began with the corruption and manipulation of our home loan system. The reason this crisis started was the abuses that took place within our home loan agencies, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and within our home loan system.
Two years ago I warned this Administration and Congress that regulations for our home loan agencies, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, needed to be fixed…
But nothing was done.
Senator Obama talks a tough game on the financial markets but the facts tell a different story. He took more money from Fannie and Freddie than any Senator but the Democratic chairman of the committee that regulates them. He put Fannie Mae’s CEO who helped create this disaster in charge of finding his Vice President. Fannie’s former General Counsel is a senior advisor to his campaign. Whose side do you think he is on? When I pushed legislation to reform Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, Senator Obama was silent. He didn’t lift a hand to avert this crisis. While the leaders of Fannie and Freddie were lining the pockets of his campaign, they were sowing the seeds of the financial crisis we see today and enriching themselves with millions of dollars in payments. That’s not change, that’s what’s broken in Washington.
There was no transparency into the books of Wall Street banks. Banks and brokers took on huge amounts of debt and they hid the riskiest investments. Mismanagement and greed became the operating standard while regulators were asleep at the switch.
The primary regulator of Wall Street, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) kept in place trading rules that let speculators and hedge funds turn our markets into a casino. They allowed naked short selling — which simply means that you can sell stock without ever owning it. They eliminated last year the uptick rule that has protected investors for 70 years. Speculators pounded the shares of even good companies into the ground.
The Chairman of the SEC serves at the appointment of the President and has betrayed the public’s trust. If I were President today, I would fire him.
We cannot wait any longer for more failures in our financial system. Structures like the resolution trust corporation that dealt with the failed savings and loan industry were designed to clean up the system and worked. Today we need a plan that doesn’t wait until the system fails. I am calling for the creation of the mortgage and financial institutions trust – the MFI. The priorities of this trust will be to work with the private sector and regulators to identify institutions that are weak and take remedies to strengthen them before they become insolvent. For troubled institutions this will provide an orderly process through which to identify bad loans and eventually sell them.
This will get the treasury and other financial regulatory authorities in a proactive position instead of reacting in a crisis mode to one situation after the other. The MFI will enhance investor and market confidence, benefit sound financial institutions, assist troubled institutions and protect our financial system, while minimizing taxpayer exposure. Tomorrow I will be talking in greater detail about the crisis facing our markets and what I will do as President to fix this crisis and get our economy moving again.
Senator Obama has never made the kind tough reform we need today. His idea of reform is what his party leaders in Congress order him to do. We tried for bipartisan ethics reform and he walked away from it because his bosses didn’t want real change. I know how to make the change that Senator Obama and this Congress is afraid of. I’ve fought both parties to shake up up Washington and I’m going to do it as President.
Those same Congressional leaders who give Senator Obama his marching orders are now saying that this mess isn’t their fault and they aren’t going to take any action on this crisis until after the election. Senator Obama’s own advisers are saying that crisis will benefit him politically. My friends, that is the kind of me-first, country-second politics that are broken in Washington. My opponent sees an economic crisis as a political opportunity instead of a time to lead. Senator Obama isn’t change, he’s part of the problem with Washington.
When AIG was bailed out, I didn’t like it, but I understood it needed to be done to protect hard working Americans with insurance policies and annuities. Senator Obama didn’t take a position. On the biggest issue of the day, he didn’t know what to think. He may not realize it, but you don’t get to vote present as President of the United States.
While Senator Obama and Congressional leaders don’t know what to think about the current crisis, we know what their plans are for the economy. Today Senator Obama’s running mate said that raising taxes is patriotic. Raising taxes in a tough economy isn’t patriotic. It’s not a badge of honor. It’s just dumb policy. The billions in tax increases that Senator Obama is proposing would kill even more jobs during tough economic times. I’m not going to let that happen.
I have seen tough times before. I know how to shake-up Wall Street and Washington. I will get this economy moving. I will lead us through this crisis by fighting for you, and when I am President we will be stronger than ever before.

Palin Can Shoot, But McCain Can Sing!

Are you down because the Dow is down? Did you work at Lehman Brothers? John McCain brings you a brighter today: McCain sings Streisand.

"I've been in politics for over 20 years. And for over 20 years, I've had Barbara Streisand trying to do my job. So I decided to try my hand at her job."

Watch this video of Sen. John McCain singing "Memories" and other musical classics back in 2002 on Saturday Night Live. Read the story.

Let's see Barack Obama top that! Actually, can you imagine doing anything like this? He takes himself far too seriously for this sort of light-heartedness. When you set yourself up as the Messiah (or allow others to do so), it really limits what you can do with propriety.

For more videos--both grave and gay (in the old sense, need I add)--scroll down a couple of posts, or click here.

Campaign Videos and Humor

When I was a kid, like in the Clinton years when I was in my thirties, campaign ads ran on television. Where else would they run? And only the candidates, the parties, and well funded organizations like the NRA and AFL-CIO could afford to make them.

Today, anyone can make a campaign ad and run it on YouTube or some other Internet website. Those who see it have viewed it voluntarily. As the good ones get passed around, the size of the viewership is in some way a measure of the message. Also, the ad is not limited to 30 seconds, so you can develop an argument and say more.

Here are two exceptional videos running on YouTube. (I still have not figured out how to make a video screen image appear in my blog post like everyone else can do.)

"Dear Mr. Obama" runs 1:56, has had over 5 million viewers (that's a lot) and features a young veteran respectfully defending our military commitment to Iraq. It features a moving and unexpected twist at the end.

"Dear Mr. Obama II: Economics 101" is an imaginative, economically well-informed, and eloquent explanation of why Sen. Obama's policy proposals would bankrupt the country, or at least would revive the use of the "misery index" that we used under Jimmy Carter's disastrous presidency. That one is 4:20 and has had over 45,000 viewers.


Finally...well, this is not an ad, but a Saturday Night Live sketch that is purportedly "A Non-partisan Message from Sarah Palin and Hillary Clinton." Tina Fey has you wondering for a second if it is really Palin up there. Amy Poehler does Hillary. Palin: "Tonight we are crossing party lines to address the now very ugly role that sexism is playing in the campaign." Clinton: "...an issue which I am frankly surprised to hear people suddenly care about!" They portray Palin as a beautiful ditz, but otherwise sincere and free of partisan animosity. They portray Hillary as an embittered, power hungry shrew. If that isn't a formula for great late night comedy, WHAT IS?

Finally, as if McCain-Palin weren't doing well enough on their own, the Obama-Biden camp seems to be doing everything they can to boost their opponents toward victory in November. In this ad, called "Still," the Obama campaign tries to depict John McCain as "out of touch" with ordinary Americans because he can't email. This recalls George Bush's surprise when he discovered supermarket checkout scanners during the 1992 campaign and how the Clinton campaign used it for the same purpose. But Jonah Goldberg tells us that McCain cannot use a keyboard without great pain on account of the disfigurement he suffered at the hands of his North Vietnamese prison wardens. Perhaps next they'll go after his patriotism for not being able to salute, and paint him as un-American for not being able to throw a baseball.

Why Is Obama Campaigning Against Himself?

So having reviewed much of what the Obama campaign is doing wrong, it is fair to ask what McCain is doing right.

Michael Barone says that the old fighter pilot has been "Getting Inside Obama's Loop."

Senator McCain was trained as a fighter pilot. In his selection of Governor Palin, and in his convention and campaigning since, he has shown that he learned an important lesson from his fighter pilot days: He has gotten inside Senator Obama's OODA loop.

That term was the invention of a great fighter pilot and military strategist, John Boyd. It's an acronym for Observe, Orient, Decide, Act.

"The key to victory is operating at a faster tempo than the enemy," Boyd's biographer, Robert Coram, writes. "The key thing to understand about Boyd's version is not the mechanical cycle itself, but rather the need to execute the cycle in such a fashion as to get inside the mind and decision cycle of the adversary."

For a fighter pilot, that means honing in above and behind the adversary so you can shoot him out of the sky. For a political candidate, it means acting in such a way that the opponent's responses again and again reinforce the points you are trying to make and undermine his own position.

Read how McCain has applied this strategy. It starts with his selection of Sarah Palin as running mate. The Obama people and their friends in the media go into a tailspin from there.

As Barone admits, Charlie Martin at American Thinker ("McCain and the OODA Loop") got the story first and provides more detailed analysis.

McCain Cutting the Republican Gordian Knot

Groucho Marx once said that he would never join a club that would have him as a member. John McCain is in a similar situation. He is running against the Repoublicans while serving as their chief standard bearer in this election. Watch McCain and Palin run against their own party in this TV ad, "Original Mavericks." Not a bad idea.

Up until last week, many Republicans have been tempted to stay home in November, and send their corrupted party out into the cold for sobering up until 2012. But wouldn’t it be nice to stay in power, especially given that the Democrats want to declare defeat overseas and fundamentally restructure the American economy at home?

In his acceptance speech on Thursday, however, John McCain offered a way to cut the Gordian knot. Electing the maverick Senator allows disaffected Republicans to deal a chastening blow to the Republican bums in office while retaining control of the White House at the same time.

That may be the ideal situation.

Change You Can Indeed Trust

I have never heard a political speech like the one John McCain delivered tonight. It was powerful. McCain said essentially "If you want change like I want change (and I have always worked for change), you can trust me. I have not changed and so you can trust me to bring the change you want in Washington."

All politicians say, "I will work for you." But coming from John McCain, you know that it is more than just words. His account of his POW experience served as a testimony comparable to how Christians tell the story of their conversion to Christ. He said that his country "saved" him from his youthful arrogance. His brutal captors in Vietnam broke him of his high self-regard and self-centeredness. He explained that much of the partisan rancor in Washington traces back to elected officials putting self before service. That rings true.

Given the military history of honorable service in his family, his own experience in the Vietnam prison, and even the lessons he learned coming out of the Keating Five scandal, it is entirely beyond doubt that John McCain will put service to country before preference for self. What John McCain thinks best serves the public good may not in fact be good, as indeed he has demonstrated--the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform law and the "Gang of Fourteen" compromise on judicial appointments to name just two. But the remedy for that is in the wisdom of many counselors across the three branches of our government.

Barack Obama crows defensively that we cannot question his patriotism. I don't see why not. If Obama is running on a "change" platform (by now you would think it was his middle name), and if faithful commitment to what is required for genuine reform requires a strong, selfless, patriotic zeal, he has invited us to scrutinze his patriotism. John McCain's is beyond question. In John McCain, if you took away patriotism, there would be nothing left.

Politicians lie. They generate buzz and fabricate public personas that are designed to mask who they really are so that they can get away with using public authority for private advantage. For this reason, wise citizens should assume a politician is guilty of this duplicity until he proves himself otherwise. John McCain has more than proven himself.

Barack Obama on the other hand, a newcomer to the public eye, is shrouded in questions. He has talked endlessly about post-partisanship and yet he has no record of bi-partisan cooperation. He speaks incessantly about change and yet he has no record of having defeated entrenched political interests or of having persuaded them to mend their ways. As for his patriotic zeal, or public spiritedness, the vapor on which his claim to be a reformer stands together with his wife's anti-American statements, his rabidly America hating pastor of 20 years, and his own persistant refusal during the primaries to wear a flag pin invite legitimate scepticism. It would be naive and irresponsible not to scrutinize his character in this matter.

If you have enough natural charm, it is easy to look like the answer we've all been waiting for when you're on stage surrounded by a huge cheering crowd and flanked by Oprah Winfrey and your adoring wife. But when Barack Obama and John McCain stand side by side on the stage for three debates, I cannot imagine how the man whose only accomplishments are his two autobiographies and whose claim to merit our confidence is a fiction will survive the comparison.

Candidates of Life and Death

In light of Barack Obama's voting record, John McCain's selection of Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate puts the abortion issue squarely in the public eye in a way that could not be more flattering to the respect for innocent, unborn life, and could not be more unflattering to the support for legalized and freely available abortion.

God is the author of life. Knowing him in Christ is fullness of life. Where his presence is, there is life. Where he withdraws, there is death. Hell is the second death.

When people deny God, they deny life. The Soviet Communists killed tens of millions of their own citizens. The Communist Chinese force mothers to abort their unborn children. In America, our cultural and political authorities have been explicitly turning away from God and embracing atheism for the last 40 years. As a consequence of this, we have tolerated and even encouraged 40 million abortions since 1973. It is the equivalent of a self-inflicted nuclear strike.

Whereas Sarah Palin, an Evangelical Christian, has five children and refused to abort that last one when she learned he had Downs Syndrome (it's a disgrace that we think of that as heroic because it implies the acceptability of killing difficult children), Barack Obama as Illinois state senator voted against a bill to protect babies who are born alive despite an abortion procedure. An almost identical bill passed the U.S. Senate at the same time by a vote of 98-0.

This juxtaposition of candidates is an interesting providence.

Obama Outgunned at Saddleback Showdown

What Harold Kildow calls Rick Warren's "Saddleback Showdown" was in effect the kickoff to the 2008 campaign ("The Law Professor vs. the Fighter Pilot"). Kildow reflects on how galling this must be to the journalistic establishment since none of them were involved.


Rich Lowry has a nice account if you missed it.

"McCain sounded like a potential president, Obama more like a potential therapist, seeing all sides and offering them the balm of his thoughtfulness and verbal acuity. He looked very young and slender. It was almost as if Democrats had gone from merely appealing to graduate students to nominating one."

Michael Gerson is also very good. "Mr. Obama is one of those rare political figures who seems to grow smaller the closer we approach him."

In general, it has been a back week or so for Barack Obama. That is to say, as in the Wizard of Oz, the curtain has been pulled back and we have seen a very small, ineffectual man behind the media generated illusion.

Read Dick Morris and Eileen McGann's insightful column on Obama's apparently woeful inadequacy in dealing with tough opponents and judging politically complex situations ("Obama's Backbone Deficit").

"Last week raised important questions about whether Barack Obama is strong enough to be president. On the domestic political front, he showed incredible weakness in dealing with the Clintons, while on foreign and defense questions, he betrayed a lack of strength and resolve in standing up to Russia's invasion of Georgia. This two-dimensional portrait of weakness underscores fears that Obama might, indeed, be a latter-day Jimmy Carter."
"We know so little about Obama. His experience is so thin that it's hard to tell what kind of a president he'd be. While he nominally has been in the Senate for four years, he really only served the first two and consumed the rest of his tenure running for president and disregarding his Senate duties. So we have no choice but to scrutinize his current transactions and statements for some clue as to who he is and what he'd do. In that context, his reaction to the first real-time foreign-policy crisis he faced as a nominee leaves his strength in doubt. So does his palsied response to the Clintons' attempt to make Denver a Clinton convention."
Bambi indeed. Read the whole thing.
Michael Barone in "Echoes of Berlin Olympics" shines in his analysis of th Georgian invasion, Obama's shortcomings, the larger geo-political issues, and the challenges these now present for America.
"Senator McCain has taken a strong stand from the start. His statement, "We are all Georgians," echoes John F. Kennedy's "Ich bin ein Berliner." Senator Obama, after a weak opening statement, has also condemned the Russian actions. But his own speech before the Prussian Victory Column in Berlin showed an incomplete appreciation of history. He hailed the Berlin airlift as an example of American generosity, which it was. But he didn't note that it was an example of American military strength: The "candy bombers" were members of the U.S. Air Force. And when he celebrated the fall of the Berlin Wall, he said it was supported by "the world as one." But a lot of people — communists — built the Berlin Wall, supported the Berlin Wall, and shot men who attempted to climb over the Berlin Wall to freedom."

The Law Professor vs. the Fighter Pilot

I met the news of the so-called "Saddleback Showdown", a question and answer session with the two presidential candidates hosted by Rick Warren of Saddleback Church in Lakeforest California last night (Saturday) with a jaundiced eye. But despite Pastor Warren's shaky (from my point of view) theology, and his worrisome (to me) coziness with the Left, his "Civil Forum on the Presidency" was a signal instance of what a truly good-faith attempt to ask straight-up questions from the candidates and let them speak their own words, unhurried and unharried, looks like. It is a modern American political first, and a much needed dose of political hygiene.

I am much amused thinking how the mainstream news outfits looking in must be gnashing their teeth that not only was this extravaganza shown on the hated and boycotted Fox News Channel (remember the righteous posturing on the Left a year ago?), but that an untrained, unqualified, non-member of the elite journo tribe managed to kick off the general election campaign in such a winsome, transparent and clarifying way. Tearing of robes and hair must surely have followed hard on the teeth gnashing as they realized what every other viewer realized: that an actual attempt at "fair and balanced" is not only necessary, but, since it rewards the audience with the assumption of a modicum of intelligence, is more attractive than the embarrassing and ridiculous little game shows they had produced earlier and tried to pass off as "debates".

Warren's position atop his highly successful church/business empire gave him the credibility and the weight to make this a venue attractive to the candidates seeking national office. His relaxed manner, though informed by the "California casual" milieu surrounding him, flows I think more from the confidence that follows from a genuine belief in Redemption--his own and the possibility for everyone else's. It must be galling for the credentialed professionals looking on to have control of the "narrative", as their hip postmodern posturing styles it, loosened from their grip by an evident purveyor of fanciful fictions like a Christian minister. They want their fanciful fictions purveyed!

I expect a good bit of embarrassed silence from the drive-bys regarding this turning point in our political culture. This event was a breath of fresh air, the sunlit uplands compared to the fetid swamp of partisan, hand-on-the-scales fakery the media star hair-do's have been trying to pass off as politically serious discourse for so long. There were no gotcha moments, and no expectations of any; both candidates expected a fair deal, and got it. And Warren displayed none of the pompousness and affected seriousness of the television anchors whose sole aim, aside from unmasking the Republican as the spawn of Satan, is to be sensational themselves.

One reason we have not seen a format anything like this one, where both candidates were separately asked identical questions, straight-up and without trap doors, is the evident disadvantage to the Democrat candidate. No Democrat candidate for the presidency can afford to tell the truth about what the party stands for. Except for the bi-coastal sophisticates, the captured minorities, and the Soros Inc/Huffpo/Daily Kos crowd, Democrats have to fake being moderate or right of center to get elected. They know that the bitter clingers of America do not agree with unrestricted abortion, Euro-style foreign policy and appeasement, anti-capitalist taxation and regulation, or the penchant for socializing huge swaths of the economy. Theirs is a stealth platform, revealed only in moments of exuberance by the likes of Maxine Waters, holding forth from the absolute security of life tenured, gerrymandered offices. And that leads to my second point--the total contrast the honest and transparent format brought to light between Obama and McCain.

Obama's performance was his usual stuttering, punch-pulling, stated advisedly, on the one hand but on the other sort of nuanced sophisticated glibness he is known for. To me it contrasted badly with McCain, who was stiffer and less comfortable to begin with, but who most definitely had the look of a man with the courage of his convictions. McCain's unequivocal answers, offered without hesitation in most instances, ultimately showed a man much more comfortable being on the receiving end of pointed questions because he did not (in this instance anyway) feel the need to not offend fence sitters or those on the other side. Obama's answers, as always, show him looking both ways, calibrating, adjusting, his mind racing ahead in those frequent silences and stutterings, to gauge the sound of what he is about to say so as to preserve his self-presentation as a blank canvas, upon which each hearer can project his own meaning--the essence of postmodern hermeneutics. The utility to a politician in Obama's position of being able to pull this off is apparent; but in an open and fair format like the Saddleback Showdown, the slipperiness of the technique sticks out in broad outline and is seen for what it is. The contrast on the abortion question--when does a baby begin to have human rights? was the starkest. Obama punted, knowing his truthful answer--when the adult female in question says so--would not down well in that venue. In addition, his bloated non-answer to the terrible condition of public education showed the same recognition on his part that the left-leaning union thugs he is in bed with were listening closely to every word. Not one of his left-liberal constituencies could have been happy with what they heard from Obama; their only solace is in knowing that like the Clintons, Obama has a mask for every occasion, and that when speaking publicly, it is always and only a mask.

If Rick Warren's obvious and elegant model for public discussion becomes the default, the Democrats will be the losers. The vacuity of the lofty and fanciful fictions Obama has been peddling does not compare favorably to the solidity of the feet on the ground grittiness offered by McCain. The affectations of the law professor look lightweight and unaffordable when contrasted so directly to the leadership quotient of the fighter pilot.

Who do you want in charge when the barbarians are at the gates?