Things fall apart

Joe Lieberman thinks that now, during a recession, is not the time for a massive overhaul of 1/6th of the economy. He has opened the door for a Democratic retreat on the issue of health care reform.

I think we all realize now that attempting vilify or otherwise dismiss the town hall protesters was a colossal miscalculation. Team Obama found, unlike when they successfully made the Clintons the enemy during the campaign, that making regular American people out to be the enemy and somehow a product of some nefarious zombie influence doesn't work well at all.

At this point many fellow liberals are losing faith in Obama. At the liberal bastion Salon.com, left-leaning pundits are hand wringing and wondering what went wrong and at The New Republic: what could have been done differently.

The Democratic leadership cannot even get their story straight when it comes to whether or not a "public option" is or is not to be included in ObamaCare.

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the center cannot hold.

-William Butler Yeats

Face it, it's time to pull the plug on ObamaCare.

Hillary jumps the shark

I was actually buying into the new quasi bad-ass Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State until this moment when she devolved into a petty partisan attack as a pathetic attempt to distract from the matter at hand. Hillary appears to wise up and give a serious answer after the follow up question, but there's a shark over there and someone just jumped it.

It's a fascinating clip, I love how the moderator jumps in just in time to prevent us from learning what Hillary's actual position is on the full disclosure of all pertinent documents being discussed.

Sarah Palin

It appears as though McCain will pick Sarah Palin, the Governor of Alaska, as his Vice presidential running mate.

Putting aside the transparent identity politics play of this decision for the moment, I give McCain credit for picking someone with at least some executive experience.

If Sarah Palin is the Vice Presidential nominee, at least one of the four politicians on the two major party tickets will at least have had some experience running something. The other three: Obama, Biden, and McCain have never run so much as a corner store let alone something like the US Government, the largest enterprise in the world.

But then again I could just be being petty by imagining that the CEO of the free world essentially, should have at least some experience running something other than a self-serving political campaign.

Enter Sarah Palin, a fresh face with executive experience who represents an obvious attempt by the McCain campaign to win over disaffected Hillary voters. I wish her and McCain luck in their quest to defeat the Obama juggernaut and his getaway driver, the mainstream media.

McCain/Palin '08.

UPDATE: As of 10:40 a.m. eastern it has been confirmed that Sarah Palin is indeed McCain's VP pick.

Nobama

Some of the most passionate supporters of Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primary have banded together in an effort to see to it that Barack Obama does not get elected president. Perusing the website, it's interesting to see that some of the most virulent forces of anti-Obama are actually Democratic voters who feel that their candidate was snubbed in the worst possible way. At present, I'm inclined to agree with their conclusion, Nobama in '08.

...and the world didn't end

Hillary Clinton was on the O'Reilly Factor and the world didn't stop rotating on its axis. Barack Obama and Howard Dean have appeared this week on the Fox News Channel and yet there was no disturbance in the the space time continuum.

All this despite the urgings of the far left. The far lefties at The Daily Kos and Moveon.org have been demanding that all prominent Democrats and Democratic candidates boycott FNC, the most watched cable news network. The far left brain trust behind the Fox News boycott have been ignored by any Democrat that matters at this point.

The far left inner circle would have us believe that somehow left leaning individuals receive unfavorable and/or blatantly unfair treatment on Fox. This interpretation of FNC is pure fiction. There just isn’t a moment someone can point to where a left leaning individual is somehow not allowed to make their point. Fox continues to do well in any kind of objective study of their general coverage.

Any pundit with an argument worth making has full access to be heard on Fox News, period. The “Fox News is an evil and unfair right wing hate machine” narrative is so lame at this point, it's laughable. It's merely a smokescreen used to obfuscate the real reason as to why the far left despise and are afraid of Fox News.

The truth is that the far left is terrified that their candidates or their ideas cannot stand on the merits without the safety net of the liberal MSM and/or the lefty blogosphere constantly propping them up.

This speaks to the intellectual cowardice that runs deep in the far left echo-chambers of Moveon.org, The Daily Kos, and Media Matters.

As was the case with the censorship of Stalinist Russia or even modern day Red China, it's funny how it is always the forces of the political left that are afraid of information and the free exchange of ideas.

This inability or disinclination to engage in honest debate, manifested in one way by an irrational conception of Fox News, is fundamentally why I can never be one of them.

Olbermann Jumps the Shark

This guy is a complete and utter pseudo intellectual tool.

He's from the school of "the more quasi-big words I use, the smarter I sound".

Ugh.. he's so laughable. "Events insist" indeed. Events insist that you are a moron, Mr Olbermann for castigating so thoroughly Geraldine Ferraro for making benign comments when compared to the recently revealed teachings from the spiritual adviser of the candidate that you are so painfully obviously promoting while you masquerade as a journalist.

This is what passes for great thinking on the left.

meanwhile, I have been silenced on this matter when attempting to discuss it on this pro-Obama blog, that for some reason I'm being denied access to

neither

who's ready?

I love it when Hillary Clinton attacks Obama with ads that highlight the fact that Democrats are ill equipped to protect us from our enemies. I guess the Obama people probably imagine that their candidate is being "swift boated" in this ad.

The below video is a funny spoof that lampoons Hillary but of course doesn't make the point that Obama is at all prepared to deal with any international crisis any more than she is. This whole argument should serve as a warning to voters that both Democratic candidates are unfit to be president.

the turban flap and the final word on flip flopping

Hillary Clinton, when asked about it, didn't exactly deny the charge that her campaign chose to circulate the above picture that first appeared on the Drudge report. Obama campaign manager David Plouffe called the move “...the most shameful offensive fear-mongering we’ve seen from either party in this election."

It remains to be seen what effect the disbursement of this photo will have on American voters who most likely are not appreciative of the finer points of Taliban-esque fashion.

However, my concern here is the endless use of the term "fear mongering" by those on the left side of the aisle. It is overused and almost exclusively employed by those on the left. Further, the term starts to become a caricature of itself (for lack of a better depiction) when you stop and consider that by running around proclaiming "fear mongering" in everything that the people making the charge are themselves fear mongering. The net result is to attempt to make people afraid of fear mongering. Democrats are, at this point, fearful of fear mongering.

And like a few other bumper sticker tag-lines that Democrats use, it has been used so often and applied to so many situations that it is watered down to the point where it has almost no meaning. The term "swift-boated" , which apparently now applies to any negative campaign attack no matter how substantive is another term that I would ask be retired for similar reasons. Also, the expansion of the definition of what many on the left believe constitutes a "flip-flop" has watered the term down to the point where it apparently applies to every politician who has ever changed their position on any issue, for any reason, over any period of time. When a term is applied so generically like this it loses any distinctive meaning. For example, back in 2004 John Kerry flip-flopped when he said that he voted for the 80 million "...before he voted against it." This was an example trying to have it both ways within the span of one statement. This was back when "flip-flop" meant changing your position within a very short amount of time for political reasons. Apparently now the term flip-flop applies to any policy position change that occurs for any reason during any amount of time. Since this would apply to almost every politician under the sun, the term has now lost meaning and like the terms "fear mongering" and "swift-boated", it should be retired due to bastardization, co-option, and overuse.

Just words. Just not Obama's

The Clinton campaign has accused Obama of plagarizing Deval Patrick when he used nearly identical language in a speech the other night that Patrick used on Boston Common in 2006. The similarities of Deval Patrick and Barack Obama have been chronicled before here. The two men are friends and it doesn't surprise me that they share speeches and, unlike the Clinton campaign, I don't see this as a "where's the beef" gotcha moment. If both parties have no objections, then there is really no problem with two allied politicians sharing the same rhetoric. Deval Patrick responded to this incident by saying,

"Sen. Obama and I are longtime friends and allies. We often share ideas about politics, policy and language. The argument in question, on the value of words in the public square, is one about which he and I have spoken frequently before. Given the recent attacks from Sen. Clinton, I applaud him [for] responding in just the way he did."

I can't imagine that anyone would at this point be terribly surprised to learn that Obama is using the same playbook that Deval used to wax poetic his way to office. In the end, this is nothing more than manufactured controversy concocted by a flailingly desperate Clinton Campaign.

the movie

McStain

John McCain did not win amongst Republican voters tonight in a race that was supposedly a "closed" primary. I guess it was wishful thinking to assume that everything would be on the up-and-up in the land of 'hanging chads'. Exit polling data showed that Romney won by a few percentage points amongst actual Republicans, but McCain ended up defeating Romney once all of the non-conservative and independent votes were counted. Apparently independents showed up at polling places and declared themselves Republicans on the spot and promptly voted for McCain. Call me crazy, but I was under the impression that these events were 'the Republican primaries' not merely primary events in which Republicans happened to be running.

"Romney won [The GOP vote] 33-31 according to CNN exits. Even in Florida, independents were McCain's margin of victory. Kind of incredible." -Rich Lowry

According to the exit polls in tonight's "Republican" Primary, only 8 in 10 voters were actually registered Republicans. Somehow Independents and Democrats managed to account for 20 percent of the Florida Republican primary vote again corrupting the process and making it look more and more like the general election choice will between a Democrat and Democrat pretending to be a Republican. The New York Times will be pleased.

I wonder if now McStain will at least stop inventing facts about his opponents. I guess we'll see what lies he comes up with about either Hillary or Obama. It will be poetic justice to have the McStain dishonor campaign go up against the Clinton character assassination attack machine. After all, they essentially have the same campaign strategy, characterized by avoiding mentioning their own shaky records and instead simply making up lies about and personally attacking the character of their opponents. And on a side note, they also both have their own special type of creepy laugh. The forced, inappropriate cackle of Hillary will go up against the angry and over-confident snicker of old man McStain. These two candidates, Hillary and McCain, do truly deserve each other.

It's still hard to comprehend that all of the sleazy tactics of McStain ultimately paid off tonight. After all the lies, all the distortions, all the personal attacks, all the robo-calls and the push polling, all the tag teaming and piling on with help from henchman Huckabee and this is how the results turn out? It's hard to be optimistic about our country tonight, the dumbing down of America is in full effect.

And as if the tag team duo of McStain and Hackleberry wasn't enough, it now appears that Giuliani will bow out and endorse McStain. If you didn't have a reason to question the conservative credentials of Giuliani before, you do now.

I haven't quite given up hope yet that there might be some conservative representation moving forward into November but tonight it's hard to see the silver lining. If there are any conservatives left in America, I urge you to please vote for Mitt Romney because any Republican who votes for McCain is either not any kind conservative, a shockingly uninformed conservative, or a RINO.

Desperation

John McCain makes me sick. He has now taken to inventing facts about Mitt Romney.

In the last 24 hours, he has accused Mitt Romney of having "wanted to set a date for withdrawal [from Iraq] that would have meant disaster."

This statement is untrue, as in false, incorrect, fictitious.

That is the beginning and end of the debate on this issue. John McCain is making statements about Romney, as Obama said of Bill Clinton's South Carolina attacks, "...that are unsupported by the facts".

This is yet more evidence that John McCain is a Democrat. Or at least, he certainly represents the worst of Democratic tactics as made evident by this latest reprehensible and blatantly desperate attack strategy. He is going well beyond distorting an opponent's record into straight up inventing facts about it.

McCain is also demonstrating that he is a very stupid man. Did he not see what just happened to Hillary in South Carolina? Barack Obama just wiped the floor with Hillary for many reasons, chiefly among them a backlash against the over the top and fictitious attacks made by Bill Clinton against Obama.

McCain admits that he knows next to nothing about how the economy works, so I can see why he would want to change the subject. But by trying to mislead voters about an opponent's record he again reveals why he is severely lacking of the character one would want in a commander in chief. John McCain is supposedly honorable? There is no honor in lying about the record of your opponent simply because he is surpassing you in the polls.

John McCain represents the worst kind of old school, egotistical, and cheesy politician. Even if he wasn't a RINO, I would never vote for a man of his ilk. This latest behavior is without honor. He deserves to lose in Florida and be driven from the race. And then he should go sit in the corner with a dunce cap on.

redound against them

old media, old guard

The New York Times, standard bearer of the old school left-wing dinosaur media, has endorsed Hillary Clinton and John McCain. To anyone who finds themselves agreeing with the New York Times editorial pages more often than not, these are your candidates.

Those of us who do not agree with the New York Times editorial pages on a regular basis should take notice of these endorsements and vote accordingly.

If the New York Times were to endorse Mitt Romney, for example, it could be a crippling blow to his campaign. But somehow, since McCain is already the media darling, the fact that the far left bastion of the New York Times has endorsed him will most likely go unnoticed and underreported.

Strategery

John Kass of the Chicago Tribune is urging conservatives to cease the 'whompin' of John McCain.

"While they're whomping, they might want to answer this question: Don't they want to win the White House?

Or would they feel better if Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama were commander in chief, dealing with the Islamofascists, filling a vacancy on the Supreme Court and turning the Justice Department over to a big city political machine?"

As a Romney supporter, I have to admit that I have used this kind of an argument to attempt to convince people not to vote for Mike Huckabee. My rationale is simple; if Huckabee wins the nomination, he will certainly lose the general election almost solely because he does not believe in Darwin's theory of evolution. I simply don't believe that Americans, in this day and age, would elect such a blatant enemy of science and scientific advancement.

But the argument that I had better embrace McCain or face the prospect of a Barack Obama presidency, for example, is not convincing. I know that it's a conservative apostasy to say this, but I think I would prefer Obama to McCain at this point, so to try to scare me with an Obama presidency rings hollow.

Hillary Clinton is attacking Obama on the campaign trail today because in a radio interview Obama conceded that, "I think it's fair to say that the Republicans were the party of ideas for a pretty long chunk of time there over the last 10 to 15 years in the sense that they were challenging conventional wisdom."

Obama is of course, correct. Whether Republicans can still claim to be the party of ideas is perhaps debatable, but this statement by Obama shows remarkable frankness and an accurate grasp of reality.

Hillary responded in a nasty tone, "That's not the way I remember the last ten to fifteen years."

Here we have an example of the stark contrast of old style partisanship -not willing to concede anything- versus forward looking open-mindedness and a willingness to bring in new ideas, regardless of the source. This is a mature attitude for Obama to adopt and I have to say that I am impressed.

In another study of contrast, McCain seems anything but mature at times. In his ABC New Hampshire debate performance he looked at times childish, petty, and thin-skinned. Couple this with the fact that his 'maverick' attitude seems at times to adopt the contrarian view simply for the sake of being contrarian and we have a picture of a man who, like Hillary, represents the old style of ego-politics. McCain seems obsessed with showing that he is own man at the expense of his own willingness to listen to good ideas. In this regard Obama seems to have much more of a sensible and reasonable approach. As right leaning individuals, we don’t ask that liberals become conservatives overnight, but a willingness to at least listen to conservative ideas and not dismiss them out of hand like Hillary Clinton would is refreshing. Maybe there is something to the ‘new politics’ that Obama seems to be peddling. One thing is sure, Hillary Clinton represents the old guard, characterized by bitter partisanship, the politics of polarization, and the politics of personal destruction. There is not a more divisive figure in American politics than Hillary Clinton.

I would welcome a debate on ideas between Mitt Romney and Barack Obama and I hope that they both win their respective nominations. Both men strike me as honorable and earnest in their desire to improve the country. Of course, because Republicans are more interested in substance than they are flowery rhetoric, we have the benefit of knowing a lot more about what Romney would do as president when compared to the tabula rasa of Barrack Obama. And While Romney has had to go into much greater detail about issues of policy than any Democrat has ever been asked to, we can at least have the 'audacity to hope' that Obama would be a president who would listen to well reasoned ideas regardless of the source.

I really don’t care if Hillary is considered more beatable than Obama in a general election and similarly, I don’t care if McCain is considered more viable than Romney in a general election. It’s time to dump the old guard, time to bring about more solutions instead of more Hillary Clinton 90’s style partisanship and/or the ego trip of John McCain.

the Silver (lining)

While real conservatives may be disappointed with a second place finish by Governor Romney in Tuesday's NH primary election, I would hasten to point out several items.

The state of New Hampshire, which allows independents to vote in either primary, is one well suited to a centrist like John McCain. Before the results were revealed last night, many pundits believed that there would be a heavy independent break towards Barack Obama resulting in the trouncing of Hillary Clinton. Needless to say, this analysis was woefully incorrect. Perhaps it was a case of the media shaping the results by leading independents to believe that since Obama was going to win resoundingly, independents could now vote for McCain in what may have been perceived by the public to have been the closer race. Whatever the case may be, McCain was able to garner the affections of moderate and even probably some left leaning voters and Romney did well amongst conservatives, as in, those of us you want the borders closed, want lower taxes and less government intrusion into our daily lives. The AP is reporting that, “In New Hampshire, McCain won among moderates and independents — despite his strong right-leaning Senate voting record — while Romney had an edge with hard-core conservatives.” If you also keep in mind the fact that McCain skipped Iowa to do several straight weeks of campaigning in the Granite State, I think it's fair to conclude that McCain had a kind of unnatural advantage. McCain may have been able to win over independents in New Hampshire using largely an emotional appeal, but it will be interesting to see how he does in states in which he cannot rely on voters who might usually vote for Democrats. Many anti-Romney pundits assert that since Romney has his own personal fortune to contribute to his campaign that there is no excuse as to why he did not win in NH. These same pundits never mention the fact that Romney out raised McCain in NH by nearly 2 to 1. So, the anti-Romney pundits can bash Romney for having the ability to contribute to his own campaign and spin it as a somehow a bad thing, but the fact remains that Romney is raising more money than all other Republican candidates. How you can construe either the ability to contribute to your own campaign or the ability to raise more money than your opponents, as a negative is certainly foreign to my way of thinking. How do these various right leaning, in some cases, pundits imagine that a Republican candidate would be better poised to defeat the now back on track Hillary Clinton coronation machine? The idea that raising or having more money for your campaign is a drawback is ludicrous.

Mike Huckabee proved in Iowa that in a presidential race, money isn’t everything. If you have a fairly mindless voting bloc that votes on the basis of identity politics and/or an ‘us vs. them’ message of economic populism, all the money in the world won’t stem a lemming-like tsunami of voters who vote more by mood than they do critical thinking. There are, luckily, objective criteria one can use for determining who is leading in a given presidential race. If you throw out all of the media noise, either the anti-Romney noise or the swooning media support for Huckabee and McCain, you can look at the actual scoreboard of the contest so far. On that scoreboard, otherwise known as the delegate count, Romney is way out in front of all other Republican candidates. The scoreboard is as follows, in terms of total delegates: Romney 30, Huckabee 21, McCain 10, Thompson 6, Ron Paul 2, Giuliani 1.

So, at this early phase of the race, Romney is leading all other candidates if you look at the most objective criterion, the delegate count. On top of that, Romney is raising more money than the other candidates and, as the anti-Romney press loves to point out, he has more money of his own to theoretically contribute to his campaign. The only evidence that I see that Romney is not doing well overall comes from the fact that the media keeps telling me to think so. As someone who is able to look at the facts of the situation rather than the media spin, it is clear to me that Romney is leading all other candidates at this point. Anyone who preaches that Romney is not doing well overall is either a closet liberal who wants the most articulate champion of conservative principles out of the race or they are a very confused conservative who is not familiar with the not-so-conservative records of Mike Huckabee and John McCain. To be fair, Fred Thompson and Giuliani haven’t started to really compete yet but certainly their supporters would not claim that their guy is beating Romney at this point.

I welcome any explanation of the position that Romney is not leading at this point in the race. Hopefully you would agree that, while it was disappointing for Romney voters to see another ‘silver’ in NH, there is still plenty of upside to his campaign's performance thus far overall. By looking at objective criteria such as the delegate count and money raised, Mitt Romney is beating all other Republican candidates at this point in the race.

Stressful times

Zoning Out

As soon as I saw the dour and humorless moderator hosting today’s Democratic Presidential debate I wondered just how quick the Bush bashing would begin. I didn’t have to wait long. The very first sentence delivered by the candidates involved throwing president Bush under the bus. And as I watched softball question after softball question, all met with the same sort of bush bashing answer, I started to zone out.

It wasn’t until later that I paid attention. I was semi stunned out of my stupor by the shrill tone of Hillary Clinton. She was giving a generic enough of an answer but I noticed how she seemed to me to be yelling. “Why are you yelling?”, I said to the TV as I considered just how loud in terms of decibels she must have been speaking. I concluded that she wasn’t necessarily that loud, yet listening to her voice made me very uncomfortable. It was that angry, grating tone that made me leap up to turn down the volume of my TV.

Hillary doesn’t seem to be able talk quietly and/or calmly very well. She seems to slowly build in shrillness to a crescendo which usually has the phrase “Bush administration” in it. Later in the debate, she had a revealing moment in which she cackled loudly when Obama appeared to be uncomfortable having been asked the one and only non-softball question of the entire debate relating to his experience. And on that matter, Obama’s resume may be paper thin, but Hillary’s modest senatorial experience is hardly something to draw too much attention to let alone make it the lynch pin of your campaign.

The Democratic candidates, have you zoned out yet?

Swift Boated?

I always chuckle when I hear the term "swift boated" not only because it reminds me of that hapless effort known as the John Kerry presidential campaign, but because I am reminded that none of claims made by the swift boat veterans for truth were ever successfully refuted to this day. And yet the term has somehow passed into common acceptance, certainly in the mind of Democrats, as another way of describing scurrilous, baseless, and utterly untrue personal attacks made during a presidential campaign.

As you may know, the phrase "Swift boated" refers to a series of ads which ran in the 2004 presidential race. Apparently, a large group of veterans who served with John Kerry in Vietnam had various gripes and a wide array of non-partisan reasons as to why they felt John Kerry wouldn't make a good commander in chief of the armed forces of the USA. Whether or not you believe that the Swift Boat veterans were justified in making their complaints, I would submit that in fact, the public took away exactly only what they needed to and not much more: that John Kerry was a pompous jerk 30 years ago and for mainly that reason, he pissed off many former colleagues. The fact that Kerry responded to the ads by attacking the character of his detractors without actually bothering to factually refute the charges didn't help, but essentially the swift boat ads were merely a symptom rather than the cause of Kerry's doomed presidential aspirations.

Listening to them talk, some Democrats would have you believe that the sole reason as to why John Kerry lost the '04 election was because of the swift boat veterans for truth ads. This interpretation of the impact and nature of 'Swift Boating' is now widely accepted amongst Democrats. And now, perhaps the most recognizable and revered modern Democrat of all time, Bill Clinton, has raised the dreaded specter of the almighty "Swift Boated" effect. On Monday of this week, Clinton compared the recent criticism of his wife in her most recent and most dreadful debate performance to the effective 2004 election political ads. While it's funny to get into just how awful and how flip-floppy Hillary was the other night, what I'm interested in here is that the term 'swift boated' has now morphed into yet another iteration of itself. Bill Clinton now sees swift boating as something that refers to the posing of legitimate questions that the public is dying to know the answer to. The other night in Philadelphia, Tim Russert simply wanted to have some clarification on a few black and white issues that we still to this day do not know the answers to. Namely, is Hillary for or against the issuing of driver's licenses to illegal aliens. And, will Hillary Clinton, who is most certainly in charge of her own records, authorize the release of certain archived correspondence between herself and Bill during the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Needless to say, Hillary's responses to these inquiries were less than illuminating. And the longer Hillary dances, confuses and/or stonewalls on these issues the worse she looks.

One lesson to take away from this episode of the Clinton saga is that for many Democrats and especially for Bill Clinton, reality is simply what you make it. For Clinton and anyone who believes what he is saying on this matter to be with merit, objective truth is merely an abstract notion. If you repeat something enough times in your mind like a mantra, no matter what objective truth dictates, it becomes true. It becomes your reality. So for example, the fact that the swift boat veterans were actually telling the truth is extraneous to the new imagined reality.

Also reinforced for us was the lesson that the Clintons, to their core, really do disdain from being subjected to difficult and/or probing questions. Since the now infamous Fox News Sunday Chris Wallace interview with Bill, we have been exposed to a new extra prickly and super indignant side of Mr. Clinton. No longer is he the fun loving party guy who played saxophone on Jay Leno. Those without concrete memories of the 90's will regard Bill Clinton as an indignant victim, which is how he currently portrays himself and most recently, Hillary. Claims of victimhood have never seemed to be particularly attractive qualities for a presidential candidate, but now we are being asked to simultaneously believe that Hillary Clinton is the victim of sexism/'swift boating' and also that she is a bare knuckles, rugged politician ready to take on anyone. The phrase 'wanting to have it both ways' is an understated characterization of this particularly laughable chapter of the Clinton saga. Watch out Clintons, incoming probing questions, commence obfuscation. Failing that, just claim victim status.