American Values: 2008 Archives

The Wall Street Journal reported on a new poll on what voters think of Republicans. Steve Moore for the WSJ reports with our italicized comments interspersed:

The first comprehensive poll on why voters voted the way they did in November has just been released by the communications firm Target Point Consulting. I received a full briefing from the pollster Alex Lundry on what these 1,000 voters think of Republicans. The short answer is: not much.

The GOP is "in great disfavor with the electorate right now. Republicans are blamed for fiscal mismanagement, overspending, and the bad economy," says Mr. Lundry.

Fiscal mismanagement when in office. Absolutely. Overspending. Absolutely. The bad economy. The burden of the party with executive power, the prior "good" economic times forgotten -- and the media never even acknowledged those good times when they were happening. As for the worldwide financial crisis we are experiencing, this was triggered by Democrats and Democratic policies on housing that Republicans unsuccessfully tried to change, but the media didn't report it that way and the fast-talking Democrats were quicker and better at pointing the finger than the Republicans -- a key Republican failing.

"Democrats are seen as a center-right party, while Republicans are seen as dominated by the right." That's a big problem because even though 84% of voters say they are center or right on the ideological spectrum, the 48% in the middle, i.e., independents, are tilting heavily toward Democrats.

This view is so hilariously wrong but nonetheless extremely disturbing. That voters think Democrats are "center-right" seems impossible, considering they nominated the most far-left senator in the party who advocates a "spread the wealth around" policy is astounding and fast-talking liberals like Barney Frank are praising expanded welfare. It shows the skill of Democratic PR aided by the left wing mainstream media. For example, the myth that man is responsible for climate change, a concept embraced by the Democratic Party, and will require actions that will thrust millions into poverty, is deemed reasonable and mainstream by the media. The Republican position that growth of the world economy is paramount and man's impact on climate is either minimal or altogether unproven is deemed by the media as extreme far-right thinking. That such false impressions have developed is proof of Republican ineptness in the age of instant media.

The fairly narrow victory by Barack Obama in the popular vote disguises an "enthusiasm gap" among Democratic and Republican voters. Some 65% of Obama voters "strongly supported" him, whereas only 33% of John McCain voters "strongly supported" the Arizona Republican. This helps explain the river of money for Mr. Obama and the massive grassroots advantage for the Democrats.

This isn't such a big problem for the long run. Voters "wanted" the first black president to show they weren't racist and Obama fanned that feeling skillfully if despicably by unfounded but effective charges of racism against Clinton and McCain. Also, McCain wasn't much of a conservative and left too many in the base sitting on their hands.

Issue by issue, when the issues are clearly understood, the Republican positions are held by a substantial majority. Telling the story well with credible spokesmen is what's needed. The handicap of the left-wing media -- and what Sam Huntington called the "de-nationalized elites" in academia and elsewhere -- is a fact that has to be addressed in all communication plans. For example, when Democrats and the elites belittle traditional American ethics and morality, patriotism and military service, and Republicans allow them to get away with it, they are missing huge opportunities. Republicans have not been forceful enough in standing up for positions that a majority of Americans agree with, fearing the backlash from the leftwing media. For example, the left wing attacks aggressively on the extreme position on gay marriage, crying "bigotry" and "denial of civil rights," and conservative spokesmen cringe instead of issuing forceful rejoinders, even though the majority of people vote for the traditional concept of marriage. But if conservaties allow the one-sided debate to continue as it is, conservative positions will be eroded, to the vast injury of American society. "Anything goes" is not an American value.

But the biggest problem revealed by the poll for Republicans is that "voters no longer believe that the party cares about the middle class in a meaningful or credible way," Mr. Lundry explains. "Democrats cleverly frame every issue as for the middle class."

Most everybody thinks they belong to the middle class. Democrats though are aiming to solidify their voting support among Americans who will be delighted with handouts from the government. The more they can make people dependent on government, the larger their support base. This is the age-old struggle between Marxist equality of outcome vs. equality of opportunity that this nation was built on. Rob Peter to pay Paul. The nation is very close to having more Pauls than Peters, since so many now pay no income tax. Consequently, they have no regard for Peter, who is the middle class person footing the government bills. This is a huge problem and Obama with his pledge to "spread the wealth" will make it worse. He would transform our society into a European-style one, which is already staggering under its unsustainable socialist burdens.

What issues have Republicans hurt themselves most on? Three that jump out are immigration, where Republicans are seen as too strident; the War in Iraq, where voters are eager for closure; and bailouts, where voters have become angry and resentful at throwing money at failing giant corporations. Furthermore, as economic anxieties have escalated, independent voters are now more favorably inclined toward protectionist trade policies. Free marketeers need to make a better case for the positive benefits of international trade or more restrictions are certainly on the way.

The statements here are questionable. Overwhelmingly, Americans disapproved of all the proposed immigration plans, including McCain's and the President's. No sensible conservative proposal entered the debate; conservatives only operated at the margins or, with Tom Tancredo, at the extreme. The borders must be made secure, first and foremost. Any path to citizenship must include English and thorough Americanization and assimilation, so that the kinds of separatism and hostility shown by La Raza and the pro-Mexico rallies in Los Angeles would be disqualifying for citizenship and permanent residency. Legal immigration should be based on what America needs by way of skills rather than on family relations.

As for the economic problems and the bailouts, again it is Republican failure to characterize the situation accurately that allowed the Democrats and the media to blame the Republicans, especially the Bush Administration. Democrats instantly blamed Bush and Wall Street, when it was Democrats like Barney Frank, Chris Dodd and, yes, Barack Obama, who brought on the subprime loan failure fiasco that triggered the world financial panic. To this day how many average voters knew of Bush and Senate Republican efforts to reverse Clinton subprime loan policies and rein in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac that were blocked by Democrats led by Frank and Dodd and supported by Senator Obama? As for pinning Wall Street on the Republicans, that's a joke: Obama raised several times more money from Wall Street than McCain did. Republicans are for small business and entrepreneurship, not "Wall Street greed," greed that feeds Democratic coffers very generously. President Bush has often been faulted for not responding forcefully to criticism, fair and unfair, and in that respect he did serve the country and conservatism well. Unfortunately, Congress at this time doesn't have impressive Republican spokesmen to make the case, either.

Democrats and the leftwing media did a disservice to the country by politicizing the Iraq war. However, it will fade as any kind of positive issue for the Democrats and should emerge as a success that Republicans can take credit for - a tyrant and his threat to his neighbors and America removed, a democratic country functioning in the Middle East assisting in the war against violent Islam and, soon, substantially more oil in the world supply. A more aggressive response by the White House to the avalanche of Democratic criticism would have helped.

The good news is that voters are very fearful that Democrats will go too far with their liberal agenda. When voters are asked what they "like least about the Democrats," the most common answers volunteered were: "taxes going up," "big government," "liberal," "raise spending," and even "socialism." These broad economic and fiscal principles appear to present the GOP with its biggest opening.

Again, these Democratic positions will not become the albatrosses they should be unless Republicans are forceful and aggressive. They must find their voices and their spokesmen. Also, the damage that the global warning myth and the economically disastrous Democratic plans to counter it will do to the average citizen must be aggressivley exposed and discredited. This is a major issue to get on the side of the middle class against the environmental elites who own the Democratic Party.

The poll also reveals that Republicans can win back voters by opposing Democrats on several specific policies coming down the pike in 2009: card-check labor union elections, bailouts for banks and auto makers, welfare expansions and affirmative action.

Denying workers the vote in union elections is outrageous. Bailing out the auto unions, which is what will happen, is outrageous. Explaining why getting a hand up instead of a handout is better for the individual, the family and America is a challenge but must be done. As for affirmative action, the voters have just elected the first affirmative action president, so, who knows how big an issue that will be.

The key for the months ahead is for Republicans to posture themselves, advises Mr. Lundry, "not as obstructionists, but as a check on the Obama agenda."

Too many are being lulled by Obama's excellent appointment for defense and economics into thinking he will go mainstream. He will show his extremist side very soon: His pro-abortion agenda is breathtaking in its scope. He intends to expand abortion far beyond Roe v. Wade. Even some of his backers are arguing that infanticide is just an extension of abortion. His "spread the wealth" plan has the potential to expand the handout class into a majority for the Democratic Party. There are many, including minorities, particularly Hispanics, who may rebel against his cultural policies who can be captured for the conservative cause. Obama says he wants to transform America and what he is proposing, based on his Marxist socialist background and associations and his support for abortion without limits, is an ugly America.

Professor Sam Huntington of Harvard has died at 81 on Martha's Vineyard.

He was a brilliant observer of developing trends and was the first to identify the 21st Century's great challenge: the spread of Islam. He coined the phrase "the bloody borders of Islam." Wherever he looked, where Muslim lands butted up against other lands, there was violence and conflict. Now, with the enormous flood of Muslim immigrants into Europe, the bloody borders are around Muslim self-ghettoized enclaves. His original essay on "The Clash of Civilizations?" appeared in the magazine Foreign Affairs in 1993 and was expanded to book-length in 1996. HIs basic point was that conflicts of the future would be principally along cultural and religious lines, with Islam looming as the principal cause of such conflict.

In 2004 Huntington addressed an urgent developing problem for Americans in "Who Are We?" The historical strength of American, he maintained, was indeed the flow of immigrants from all over the world who adopted the American Creed -- belief in liberty, democracy and individual rights --- but a critical component too many overlooked was their immersion into American culture: becoming a citizen, a loyal American and absorbing the Anglo-Protestant culture of the Founders. According to John Fonte, "This culture includes the English language; British traditions of law, rights, and limited government; the values of dissenting Protestantism (especially its moralism and anti-hierarchical spirit, which made it different from European Protestantism); the work ethic, economic opportunity, individualism, and Christianity."

What concerned Huntington, and why he wrote the book, was "since the 1960s, powerful forces among American elites have launched a sustained effort — one that is, “quite possibly, without precedent in human history” — to “deconstruct” American national identity." These forces emphasized the origins and cultures of the immigrants, not their assimilation of American values, and also embraced the transnational -- being citizens of the world -- and denigrated loyalty to and affection for the American nation, in short, patriotism, the belief that America is an exceptional nation. (This "deconstructionist elitest" attitude is remarkably shown by President-Elect Obama -- no flag lapel pin, no saluting the flag or covering his heart during the playing of the national anthem and his "citizen of the world" speech in Berlin, to say nothing about his taking in stride Rev. Jeremiah Wright's cries of "God Damn America.")

The deconstruction efforts of what Huntington terms the "denationalized elites" to turn America into something ordinary crops up in such things as ethnic, racial and group preferences, multiculturalism, bilingualism and opposition to English as the common language. These strike at a core principle of the American Creed: the concept of equal rights for individuals regardless of race. Huntington found disturbing trends of non-assimilation among Muslim and Mexican immigrants that showed that the efforts of mulitculturalist transnational elites to deconstruct American identity were having an effect.

Any renewed effort to regularize the immigration situation, particularly with regard to the 10-12 million illegals already in this country, must include an emphasis on Americanization. Polls show an overwhelming majority of Americans want new immigrants to become patriotic Americans just like them. Deconstructionist elites like Alan Wolfe of Boston College, who fervently support transnational world citizenry and multiculturalism rather than Americanism, should be beaten back. Although a lifelong Democrat, Huntington was loathed by the elite multiculturalists who inhabit academica today for his views on Islam and what it is to be an American.

Huntington's perceptiveness on Islam and American identity provides a lesson for today.

Multiculturism, as promoted by Professor Wolfe and his fellow transnationals is weakening the American fabric and allowing alien cultures, such as Islam, to grow in America, when all Muslim immigrants, like all immigrans before them, should aspire to be Americans first. Islamic supremacism, the goal being world rule, can be advanced by violence or separatism and gradual infiltration. Multiculturalism allows Islam to advance. During the major immigration periods of the past, Americanization programs for immigrants were common. Whatever academics like Alan Wolfe might say, such programs should be a part of any immigration or amnesty law. The nation needs immigrants who are proud to be Americans.

May Sam Huntington, patriot, rest in peace.

The phrase "family values" has a hollow ring when talking about black families. The incredible rise in fatherless black children has been accompanied by more crime, poorer education accomplishment and lagging incomes.

Obama had no experience of his father, so he invented one in his book "Dreams from my Father." If he does nothing else as president but convince black America of the benefits and desirability of a home with both a father and a mother, he will be a success.

An Enduring Crisis for the Black Family

By Kay Hymowitz
Saturday, December 6, 2008; A15

In the nearly half-century in which we have gone from George Wallace to Barack Obama, America has another, less hopeful story to tell about racial progress, one that may be even harder to reverse.

In 1965, a young assistant secretary of labor named Daniel Patrick Moynihan stumbled upon data that showed a rise in the number of black single mothers. As Moynihan wrote in a now-famous report for the Johnson administration, especially troubling was that the growth in illegitimacy, as it was universally called then, coincided with a decline in black male unemployment. Strangely, black men were joining the labor force more, but they were marrying -- and fathering -- less.

There were other puzzling facts. In 1950, at the height of the Jim Crow era and despite the shattering legacy of slavery, the great majority of black children -- an estimated 85 percent -- were born to their two married parents. Just 15 years later, there seemed to be no obvious reason that that would change. With the passage of the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act, legal barriers to equality were falling. The black middle class had grown substantially, and the first five years of the 1960s had produced 7 million new jobs. Yet 24 percent of black mothers were then bypassing marriage. Moynihan wrote later that he, like everyone else in the policy business, had assumed that "economic conditions determine social conditions." Now it seemed, "what everyone knew was evidently not so."

President Lyndon Johnson was deeply shaken by Moynihan's findings. Neither man was driven by sentimentality or religious conviction, but both believed that fatherlessness undermined the "basic socializing unit." Intent on sounding a public alarm, Johnson declared during a commencement address at Howard University: "When the family collapses, it is the children that are usually damaged. When it happens on a massive scale, the community itself is crippled."

Unfortunately, those warnings were as prescient as they were reviled. Civil rights leaders, worried about reviving racist myths about black promiscuity, objected to what they viewed as blaming the victim. Feminists were inclined to look on the "strong black women" raising their children without men as a symbol of female autonomy. By the fall of 1965, when a White House conference on the black family was scheduled, the Moynihan report and the subject had disappeared.

But the silent treatment was the wrong medicine. Since 1965, through economic recessions and booms, the black family has unraveled in ways that have little parallel in human cultures. By 1980, black fatherlessness had doubled; 56 percent of black births were to single mothers. In inner-city neighborhoods, the number was closer to 66 percent. By the 1990s, even as the overall fertility of American women, including African Americans, was falling, the majority of black women who did bear children were unmarried. Today, 70 percent of black children are born to single mothers. In some neighborhoods, two-parent families have vanished. In parts of Newark and Philadelphia, for example, it is common to find children who are not only growing up without their fathers but don't know anyone who is living with his or her biological father.

And what has this meant for racial progress? Fifty years after Jim Crow, black U.S. households have the lowest median income of any racial or ethnic group. Close to a third of black children are poor, and their chances of moving out of poverty are considerably lower than those of their white peers. The fractured black family is not the sole explanation for these gaps, but it is central. While half of all black children born to single mothers are poor, that is the case for only 12 percent of those born to married parents. At least three simulation studies "marrying off" single mothers to either the fathers of their children or to potential husbands of similar demographic characteristics concluded that child poverty would be dramatically lower had marriage rates remained what they were in 1970.

Black married couples make a median household income of $62,000, which is more than 80 percent of what white households earn and represents a gain of 13 percentage points since the 1960s. Yet overall, black household median income is only 62 percent that of white households, a mere six-point increase over the same period.

Merely walking down the aisle can't explain these differences. Rather, the institution of marriage appears to promote ideals of stability, order and fidelity that benefit children and adults alike. Those who pin their hopes for black progress on education tend to forget this. Numerous studies, when controlled for income and race, show that, on average, children growing up with single mothers are less likely to graduate from high school and go to college. And Moynihan's discovery of a negligible relationship between "economic conditions and social conditions" suggests that even increases in black male employment are not a certain cure.

Through the power of his own example, Obama presents a chance to revive what Lyndon Johnson called "the next and the more profound stage of the battle for civil rights." Obama's memoir, "Dreams From My Father," conveys the economic, emotional and existential toll of growing up fatherless, and he has spoken movingly of his determination to ensure for his own children a different life. Yet tackling this issue won't be easy. When Obama gave a Father's Day speech lamenting "fathers . . . missing from too many lives and too many homes," Jesse Jackson was so incensed that he said he wanted to castrate Obama. Still, painful as the subject is, the alternative is far worse: racial inequality as far as the eye can see.

Kay Hymowitz, a contributing editor of City Journal, is author of "Marriage and Caste in America."

Saxby Chambliss won the run-off in Georgia to preserve a vital seat for U.S. Senate Republicans, holding Democrats short of a filibuster-proof 60 votes. He achieved a smashing victory, capturing 57% of the vote.

This morning Senator Chambliss was interviewed on Fox's morning program. He thanked all those Republican heavyweights who had come into the state to campaign for him -- Giuliani, Romney, McCain, Huckabee among others. Sarah Palin came at his invitation the day before of and the day of the election. Chamblis said this:

“You want to peak on the last day, and we had John McCain, Mike Huckabee, Governor [Mitt] Romney and Rudy Giuliani. But Sarah Palin came in on the last day and man, she was dynamite. We packed the houses everywhere we went.”

Kilmeade asked, “You saw all the heavyweights in the Republican Party show up . . . tell me about Sarah Palin. Will her popularity last?”

“I cannot see it diminishing," the senator answered. “I can’t overstate the impact she had down here. All these folks did a great job, they all allowed us to add momentum, but when she walks in a room, folks just explode. She’s a dynamic lady, a great administrator, and I think she’s got a great future in the Republican Party.”

Once again, Professor Sowell speaks clearly about the growing fascism of the left. This time he shows how the fascists operate in academia. (Hounding Lawrence Summers out of the presidency of Harvard for the unforgivable sins of supporting the return of ROTC to campus and wondering out loud if genetics had anything to do with the poor performance of females in science is another example of academic fascism at work.)

Freedom and the Left
Thomas Sowell
Tuesday, December 02, 2008
Most people on the left are not opposed to freedom. They are just in favor of all sorts of things that are incompatible with freedom.

Freedom ultimately means the right of other people to do things that you do not approve of. Nazis were free to be Nazis under Hitler. It is only when you are able to do things that other people don't approve that you are free.

One of the most innocent-sounding examples of the left's many impositions of its vision on others is the widespread requirement by schools and by college admissions committees that students do "community service."

There are high schools across the country from which you cannot graduate, and colleges where your application for admission will not be accepted, unless you have engaged in activities arbitrarily defined as "community service."

The arrogance of commandeering young people's time, instead of leaving them and their parents free to decide for themselves how to use that time, is exceeded only by the arrogance of imposing your own notions as to what is or is not a service to the community.

Working in a homeless shelter is widely regarded as "community service"-- as if aiding and abetting vagrancy is necessarily a service, rather than a disservice, to the community.

Is a community better off with more people not working, hanging out on the streets, aggressively panhandling people on the sidewalks, urinating in the street, leaving narcotics needles in the parks where children play?

This is just one of the ways in which handing out various kinds of benefits to people who have not worked for them breaks the connection between productivity and reward, as far as they are concerned.

But that connection remains as unbreakable as ever for society as a whole. You can make anything an "entitlement" for individuals and groups but nothing is an entitlement for society as a whole, not even food or shelter, both of which have to be produced by somebody's work or they will not exist.

What "entitlements" for some people mean is forcing other people to work for their benefit. As a bumper sticker put it: "Work harder. Millions of people on welfare are depending on you."

The most fundamental problem, however, is not which particular activities students are required to engage in under the title of "community service."

The most fundamental question is: What in the world qualifies teachers and members of college admissions committees to define what is good for society as a whole, or even for the students on whom they impose their arbitrary notions?

What expertise do they have that justifies overriding other people's freedom? What do their arbitrary impositions show, except that fools rush in where angels fear to tread?
What lessons do students get from this, except submission to arbitrary power?

Supposedly students are to get a sense of compassion or noblesse oblige from serving others. But this all depends on who defines compassion. In practice, it means forcing students to undergo a propaganda experience to make them receptive to the left's vision of the world.

I am sure those who favor "community service" requirements would understand the principle behind the objections to this if high school military exercises were required.

Indeed, many of those who promote compulsory "community service" activities are bitterly opposed to even voluntary military training in high schools or colleges, though many other people regard military training as more of a contribution to society than feeding people who refuse to work.

The president-elect says he wants to "jolt" the economy. Metaphor aside, will it do any good?

Professor Thomas Sowell sees the frenzy whipped up by the media as a wonderful opportunity for politicians to spend money on their favorite groups which they will take away from those who have earned it. Could that be?

What we are talking about is a golden political opportunity for politicians to use the current financial crisis to fundamentally change an economy that has been successful for more than two centuries, so that politicians can henceforth micro-manage all sorts of businesses and play Robin Hood, taking from those who are not likely to vote for them and transferring part of their earnings to those who will vote for them . . . .

No doubt we could all use a few billion dollars every now and then. But the question of who actually gets it will be strictly in the hands of Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. It is one of the few parts of the legacy of the Bush administration that the Democrats are not likely to criticize.

Professor Sowell's timely warning is of what looks like a good imitation of totalitarian socialism. But who can stop them?

Read "Jolting" the Economy

Victor Davis Hanson is on a roll. He had a few things he wanted to get off his chest and he did. Good food for thought.

Ten Random, Politically Incorrect Thoughts

By Victor Davis Hanson
November 24, 2008

1. Four years of high-school Latin would dramatically arrest the decline in American education. In particular, such instruction would do more for minority youths than all the 'role model' diversity sermons on Harriet Tubman, Malcolm X, Montezuma, and Caesar Chavez put together. Nothing so enriches the vocabulary, so instructs about English grammar and syntax, so creates a discipline of the mind, an elegance of expression, and serves as a gateway to the thinking and values of Western civilization as mastery of a page of Virgil or Livy (except perhaps Sophocles's Antigone in Greek or Thucydides' dialogue at Melos). After some 20 years of teaching mostly minority youth Greek, Latin, and ancient history and literature in translation (1984-2004), I came to the unfortunate conclusion that ethnic studies, women studies--indeed, anything "studies"-- were perhaps the fruits of some evil plot dreamed up by illiberal white separatists to ensure that poor minority students in the public schools and universities were offered only a third-rate education.

2. Hollywood is going the way of Detroit. The actors are programmed and pretty rather than interesting looking and unique. They, of course, are overpaid (they do to films what Lehman Brothers' execs did to stocks), mediocre, and politicized. The producers and directors are rarely talented, mostly unoriginal--and likewise politicized. A pack-mentality rules. Do one movie on a comic superhero--and suddenly we get ten, all worse than the first. One noble lion cartoon movie earns us eagle, penguin and most of Noah's Arc sequels. Now see poorer remakes of movies that were never good to begin with. I doubt we will ever see again a Western like Shane, the Searchers, High Noon, or the Wild Bunch. If one wishes to see a fine film, they are now usually foreign, such as Das Boot or Breaker Morant. Watching any recent war movie (e.g., Iraq as the Rape of Nanking) is as if someone put uniforms on student protestors and told them to consult their professors for the impromptu script.

The Pilgrims had their firm beliefs in how they wanted to live and worship. With great courage and faith they sailed to an unknown land to establish a new life, relying on themselves and their ingenuity. With some help from new friends, their self-reliance created abundance and they celebrated their success with their friends in thanksgiving.

That self-reliant spirit is still alive, though it is in danger as the hand-out line in Washington lengthens. Michelle Malkin tells about a courageous woman and her courageous family who aren't "victims" looking for the government to help them. They do for themselves and feel blessed they live in a nation in which they have the opportunity to re-invent their lives following tragedy.

Ronald Reagan famously said one of the most dangerous statements ever uttered is "I'm from the government and I'm here to help you."

The government of late -- and seemingly even more so in the immediate future -- is dictating more and more things for you to do and the bureaucrats will make sure they create as much make-work for themselves in the process as possible.

For how to make your old TV work when you MUST switch to digital this February, a helpful video has been provided by government, ah, workers.

On this Thanksgiving Day In the midst of a financial crisis and watching on television the horrors of Islamic supremacism playing out in Mumbai, there is still much to be thankful for.

Simple acts of kindness, such as the one featured on our website, are characteristic of Americans, where more charity springs from the acts of individuals and private organizations than from the government. That’s the way it should be. Government has essential functions, such as national security. What citizens can do for themselves and others the government shouldn’t do. The more reliant people become on government rather than themselves, history shows bad things happen. The Great Society of Lyndon Johnson, well-intentioned though it was, resulted in the breakdown of black family culture and individual responsibility.

Deepak Chopra, the Indian-born guru, has the answer to the Islamic threat, speaking to Larry King Thanksgiving Eve:

You know, there's 1.8 billion Muslims in the world. That's 25 percent of the population of the world. It's the fastest-growing religion in the world. We cannot, if we do not appease and actually recruit the help of this Muslim world, we're going to have a problem on our hands.

Appeasement always works, of course. Chopra overstates the size of the Muslim population somewhat (1.3 billion is the best guess). More important to understand is that Islam is principally a political ideology bent on world domination and those who have signed on to that cause are growing in number each year due to the spread of Koranic education financed worldwide by Saudi Arabia. Muslims as never before are learning exactly what the Koran says and Mohammad commanded – unrelenting war against non-Muslims till Islam rules the world. Islam needs a reformation, but there is no institution or device to make this happen, since Islam officially has no clerics, no hierarchy. Also, since the Koran is held by Muslim scholars to be the immutable word of God, there is no good way to “interpret” the Koran differently from the way it has been interpreted over the last 1400 years. Rather than adapting Islam to modern times, Islam is returning to the literal reading of the Koran and Mohammad’s words.

Our Massachusetts Congressman Barney Frank, one of the key architects of the subprime housing bubble and its collapse that brought on the worldwide credit crisis, is wrong again, calling for a 25% cut in defense spending at a time of unprecedented danger. Muslim pirates are threatening the world’s supply of oil, India’s largest city is paralyzed by Islamic terrorism, Iran is developing nuclear weapons, Russia is making threatening noises and China is rapidly building its military might. New rumors swirl about a possible Islamic terrorist attack in New York City over the holidays. Cut defense?

The president-elect is now getting the same briefings as the President on Russia, Iran and Islamic piratical and terrorist attacks and threats, so it can be hoped reality will temper such dangerous Democratic rhetoric.

Here's to many Happy Thanksgivings ahead.

Power Line carries a Thanksgiving message sent by an extraordinary soldier Tom Cotton serving in Afghanistan, reminding us all of the blessing it is to live in such a great country and to honor those who have given so much to make Americal what it is.

Thanksgiving provides a good opportunity to do something to honor those who have sacrificed to keep this country safe and free. Of the many organizations supporting our men and women in the service of our nation, these three are highly recommended:

Soldiers' Angels

Injured Marines

Wounded Warriors

Links to their sites are to the right.

At this time of giving thanks, it is good to dwell on one aspect of American civilization that is quite different from, say, European civilization. In Europe, it is the government which provides for the welfare of people. Since the government does, ordinary citizens do not. Dependency on government grows and inertia spreads to those receiving welfare and those who let the government do the work

In America much of the charity flows from private sector individuals and organizations. And recipients know that other people voluntarily gave money or did work to help them have a better life. Community works.

What evokes this observation is a true story that hit the email box today.

It's always amazing to hear what one person can do.

A University of Notre Dame graduate living in the Lower Cape (and a member of the Notre Dame Club of Cape Cod) learned that the University was urging alumni groups and students to gather clothing to send to Haiti, which had suffered devastating blows from recent hurricanes. She thought she would see what she could do. Over the past several weeks she made calls, sent emails and contacted hundreds of people with her appeal for clothing for Haitians. The effects of her her astonishing commitment and success will soon be felt in Haiti. Her email today (name withheld for privacy purposes):

Other than offering our prayers for the U.S. Air Force pilots' safe trip to and from Haiti, we have completed our part in the “Hands & Hope for Haiti” project. The last few weeks were incredibly hectic with respect to the clothing drive. Consequently, I didn’t have a chance to inform everyone of the generous gift we received from Siracusa Moving & Storage Co. I had planned on driving our clothing donations to Youngstown on 11/22. I estimated our anticipated expenses for the truck rental, gas, and one-night accommodations at approximately $1,100. Just 1½ weeks prior to departure date, we received word from Ted Horan ’81, of Hartford, that his friend Dan Siracusa offered to have his moving company transport our boxes from Hartford to Youngstown free of charge. What a gift! I only had to get our boxes from the Cape to Hartford and, for that, Penske Truck provided us with a truck. We had to pay Penske only the insurance & environmental fees which came to approximately $95. With gas, our transportation costs were about $160. Those individuals who contributed gifts to help cover transportation expenses all asked that I keep their contributions and put them toward some other area of the clothing drive. I received all donors’ approval to purchase underwear for the people of Haiti.

On Nov. 19, I drove over 250 banana boxes of clothing, (including almost $900 worth of new underwear!), to Hartford. The Siracusa Moving & Storage truck met me at Jim Smith’s house and, within 45 minutes, the movers loaded our more than 6,500 lbs. of clothing onto their truck. The clothing arrived safely in Youngstown on Friday morning, Nov. 22., and will be transported to the Dominican Republic on Dec. 5. The Dominican Republic’s 64 Rotary Clubs will transport the clothing to designated locations throughout Haiti.

In closing, I have to tell you I was more amazed every day by the generosity of so many. When I thought I was done folding and sorting, more clothes appeared on my doorstep. The beauty of your compassion and selfless giving quickly extinguished any feeling of being overwhelmed I may have had when my kitchen and family room floors were piled knee-high with clothes. Truly, this project snowballed more than I imagined it ever would. Every day was different and as new ideas unfolded, each one seemed to multiply our efforts exponentially.

On behalf of our brothers and sisters in Haiti, I thank you for your generous outpouring of love and compassion. “When I was naked, you gave me your coat.”

Happy Thanksgiving and, again, a very heart-filled thanks to all of you!

L.........

N.B. Since our club has helped Pope John Paul II High School, I thought you should know how the students have “given back”. The Student Council organized a mini-drive and asked all students to donate clothing for Haiti. They did a super job collecting, sorting and folding clothing for us. The kids were great and actually seemed to have fun doing this. While speaking with Chris Keavy [the principal], he expressed his appreciation for all our club has done for the school. As he said, we’ve got a win-win relationship.

What an example for all of us. One person can make a difference.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Ronald Reagan used the image of the three-legged stool to describe American conservatism: national security conservatives, fiscal conservatives and social conservatives. Lose one and the stool collapse.

Looking at the election picture nationally, McCain/Palin, despite all the financial mess, media bias and inept McCain campaigning (and position on issues such as global warming and illegal immigration), received a majority of the white vote, though 54% of (hopefully, just ignorant) Catholics and 78% of the (delusionally unconcerned about Israel) American Jews voted for Obama. Blacks full of pride voted upwards of 95% for Obama as did a majority of non-white Hispanics. (Statistics for other groupings, such as Asians, will be forthcoming in due course.)

Altogether, 56 million voted for the Republican ticket, which is a big number. Obama's vote was around 63 million, a bit above what President Bush received in the last election (62 million). All things considered, that wasn’t bad. Conservatism is far from dead, though it took a bad body blow due to the economic situation and Congressional excesses and departure from principles over the last four years as well as the weakness of the Republican ticket.

Of the various things written and said after the election, Victor Davis Hanson probably comes closest to correctly analyzing the results. As is usually the case, he writes with brilliant clarity and good sense.

His very important observations about Hispanics being far from a lost cause for conservatism are made from deep experience. Hanson and his forebears for several generations were farmers in California’s Central Valley just south of Fresno, where grapes are grown to produce most of America's raisens. He has witnessed -- and suffered from -- the massive, mostly illegal, immigration of Mexicans into the area to work in the fields.

He has written a compelling indictment of the government’s failure to enforce immigration laws ("Mexifornia"). Hanson does not oppose immigration, but believes, as many conservatives do, that the nation has the right to select its immigrants, not have them descend on us through open borders. Legal Mexican immigrants and their descendants tend to be family oriented, religious and conservative by nature and want to become good Americans. Many of them, like many if not most non-Hispanics, oppose the flood of illegal immigration, which is bringing a great deal of crime with it, and, who knows how many would-be terrorists.

But his analysis is about a lot more than this large and growing bloc of voters. He believes that young minorities as well as whites, when they grow older and have families, naturally become more conservative. Some Republicans in Congress and elsewhere in high place did not distinguish themselveds as men of moral character. They did not live up to conservative principles or standards and that hurt. In addition, the conservative message is one of optimism and equal opportunity and for a strong America and, with some reworking in novel ways, should resonate with today's younger adults.

The key is not to abandon conservative positions, but to explain them in novel ways to the majority who might find them more in tune with human nature — and consequently more humanitarian than their usual caricatures of being too selfish, tough, or insensitive. . . .

Conservatism also applies to bearing and comportment. There was something repugnant about greedy CEO and speculators on Wall Street wildly raking in hundreds of millions under the guise of “free-market conservatism” — as if Ace hardware store owners, truck drivers, and farmers would find them kindred spirits. Conservatism’s social message used to be something like “Don’t do all the things that you are otherwise free to do” or “Just because we don’t make all your appetites illegal, does not mean that some are not immoral.” Conservative populism is not anti-intellectualism at all, but rather a disdain for excess and arm-chair elitism.

In short, explain why conservatism appeals to the innate values of most ordinary Americans and the squabbling about the proper message disappears.

November 21, 2008, 1:00 a.m.

What Went Wrong?
Well, it wasn’t conservatism.
By Victor Davis Hanson

Iraq has dropped off the front pages because it's a success, a success that many thought not possible. American deaths in Iraq last month were half the violent deaths in Chicago. With an agreement in place, Iraq can now assume more responsibility for its future, but knows it needs the U.S. Armed Forces helping until at least 2011.

William McGurn was President Bush's speechwriter until early this year, so he had an intimate view of what went on at the highest White House levels. Without question, he says, it was Stephen Hadley who inside the government singlehandedly made success possible by proposing and advocating for what became known as the "surge." McGurn believes that Hadley has earned the gratitude of the nation and should be awarded the Medal of Freedom. Perhaps, he surmises, President Bush will do that before he leaves office, but how fitting and symbolic it would be if this award were bestowed by the new president. Why does he think that?

McGurn explains.

Wall Street Journal
NOVEMBER 18, 2008

Mr. Obama, Give That Man a Medal

Stephen Hadley offered the option of victory in Iraq.

By WILLIAM MCGURN

Stephen Hadley

I suppose it's possible that George W. Bush would award Stephen J. Hadley the Medal of Freedom. Certainly the president's national security adviser has earned it, for work that made possible the success we are now seeing in Iraq. And it would be within the president's prerogative to see that work acknowledged with this honor before they both leave the White House come Jan. 20.

But how much better it would be all around -- for the country, for the recipient, and even for Barack Obama -- if Mr. Hadley were to receive this honor from the hands of the 44th president of the United States.

As the bailout rolls on, a real difference in philosophy is emerging in the case of the auto industry. Democrats want to use bailout money to "save" the industry. The White House and Congressional Republicans oppose that, saying that reviving credit for all is what the bailout was intended for and money should be limited to that sector.

Democrats, eager for a European-style socialist economy, or worse, want to keep the U.S. auto companies afloat pretty much as they are. Those who know how bloated and unsustainable the costs of the industry are say that bankruptcy is a far better solution, as it has been for other industries and companies, including large ones such as the airlines. In bankruptcy, companies keep operating but work together with their creditors and all other involved parties and the court to fashion a solution for sensible survival. All parties generally have to give up something to make it work, including, in this case, the powerful auto unions that the Democrats are trying to continue as business as usual. It is labor costs that are sinking the U.S. auto companies, as Charles Krauthammer points out. Toyota's worker cost is $48 per hour; GM's.$73.

Also, if bailout money is used outside the credit industry, where do you stop? There is no longer any "bright line," it's who has the muscle, the clout and the connections to get on the gravy train to socialism. Let bankruptcy work and make the auto industry competitive. Asian carmakers are turning out millions of vehicles in America profitably. So can the Big Three.

The elections aren't over yet. And the outlook is grim. The Democrats are close to achieving a filibuster-proof Senate.

For those who fear Obama's extreme socialist and anti-life agenda and honor the U.S. Constitution, it is a dangerous situation. Obama has made it clear he thinks the Constitution is fundamentally flawed and should have guaranteed not equal opportunity but "fair" wealth redistribution. He has said he would appoint radical judges to the Supreme Court who have "empathy" for African-Americans and others he considers disadvantaged to "interpret" the Constitution the way he wants. He clearly prefers giving those he wishes to benefit a handout, not just a hand up. Since the money has to come from somewhere, it will clearly come from the successful and productive in society through much higher and more sharply progressive taxes. Defense and national security are likely to suffer as funds are diverted to social and income redistribution programs. The number one cause of death in the U.S. today is abortion and if Obama's pledge to Planned Parenthood to sign the so-called Freedom of Choice Act is realized, the number of those deaths will explode.

In the House, the solid Democrat majority will be able to ignore the minority Republicans altogether on virtualy all issues. With the filibuster threat the majority in the Senate usually has to listen to and work with the minority and that is why the Senate often tempers extreme legislation originating in the House. That won't be the case if the Republicans can routinely muster 60 votes to block filibusters. Minority Republicans will be virtually defenseless except for their ability to get their message out to the American people. You can be sure the media won't be helping them do that.

How is this happening?

Democrats appear to be attempting to steal a U.S. Senate seat in Minnesota. The incumbent Republican Norm Coleman had about a 1,000 vote lead over the execrable former sick comedian Al Franken when the polls closed on Election Day. Mysteriously, additional ballots turned up after the initial reporting, all favoring Franken. About half of them came from two small towns in the heavily Democratic north. 32 more ballots were "found" in a poll worker's car. Coleman's lead shrank to about 200 votes. The Power Line blog, two of whose writer-lawyers live in Minnesota, are following developments closely. A statewide recount will get underway and is estimated to take a month. The Minnesota Secretary of State who oversees elections is a Democrat who was affiliated with ACORN before his election. Coleman has already filed one lawsuit alleging fraud.

Democrats made a concerted effort to elect Democratic Secretaries of State in states in which close elections were likely (because of the closeness of party registrations and past elections) and have had considerable success. One of those targeted states was Minnesota.

In Georgia, incumbent Republican Saxby Chambliss received 49.9% of the vote in a three-way race and there will be a run-off election. Democrats are sure to pour oceans of money into the race.

If Coleman and Chambliss lose, Democrats will have 59 Senate seats (with Alaska's Republican seat still undecided) and will surely be able to get the 60 votes to block Republican filibusters. There are two independents (Lieberman and Sanders) who normally vote with the Democrats and the two liberal Maine Republican senators (Collins and Snowe) all too frequently side with the Democrats.

Even veteran newsmen Tom Brokaw and Charlie Rose admitted on a recent Charlie Rose show that they didn't know much about Obama. Nor did most of those who voted for Obama, many of whom just wanted to elect the first non-white president of the United States, assuming he was just a "normal" Democrat and they liked the idea of "change." Well, the change we may get may not be to their liking.

Update: In Alaska absentee ballots are being counted and the Democrat has moved into the lead. The best guess is he will hold the lead. This brings the Democrat Senate total to 58 with Minnesota very much at risk because of the manipulation that is going on there. Whether Democrats move to an absolute 60 majority or not, they, with the aid of two independents, one of whom (Sanders of Vermont) will always vote with them, have now a filibuster-proof majority to be as radical as the House will be.

Catholic bishops are meeting. The Archbishop of Boston Cardinal Sean O'Malley has spoken out about the Obama election. The Boston Globe reports that "O'Malley is visibly moved by the moment, but also horrified by what he sees as Barack Obama's "deplorable" record on abortion rights." O'Malley said:

"My joy, however, is tempered by the knowledge that this man has a deplorable record when it comes to prolife issues, and is possibly in the pocket of Planned Parenthood, which, in its origins, was a very racist organization to eliminate the blacks, and it's sort of ironic that he's been co-opted by them."

The Globe points out, "As a senator, Obama voted 100 percent of the time with abortion-rights organizations, according to evaluations by abortion rights groups."

Obama's record is worse than that. In 2001-2003 Obama was leading the fight in the Illinois Senate against the Born Alive Act that would require proper medical care for babies who survive a failed abortion, saying keeping the babies alive would put an unfair burden on the decision of the mother. In other words, even though no one disputes that a baby born alive is a baby, Obama still wanted the baby dead so that the "abortion" would be made effective.

And in 2007 he told his enthusiastic backer Planned Parenthood that he wanted his "first thing" (just think of that: his "first thing") as president to be signing legislation (Freedom of Choice Act) allowing abortions without limit, forcing hospitals and doctors to perform abortion despite their religious beliefs or qualms of conscience. Furthermore, the legislation he supports would require all taxpayers to pay for abortions and eliminate funding for pregancy crisis centers which help young pregnant women make informed decisions about alternatives to abortions. This is a Planned Parenthood priority because it will mean many more abortions; as the number one abortion mill in the country Planned Parenthood rakes in hundreds of millions from its abortions and is eager to increase its revenues.

Now, all of the Catholic bishops knew this before the election. A handful of them spoke out forcefully, such as the brilliant Archbishop of Denver Charles Caput, the archbishop of Philadelphia Rigali and the New York archbishop Egan. Most did nothing and few parish priests addressed the issue in sermons.

Boston's O'Malley only issued one mild weak statement in response to an inquiry from the Globe asking for his views about strong statements such as those from Chaput, Rigali and Egan. O'Malley said this:

The American people are not in favor of abortion on demand, partial birth abortion, or allowing babies who have survived an abortion to die

O'Malley, by referencing the Born Alive Act. showed he knew very well Obama's extremist position and why he is considered the most extreme pro-abortion official in the nation. While Obama was fighting that act in Illinois, the same bill passed the U.S. Congress unanimously. O'Malley deplored the tyranny of the Supreme Court, which was nice. But O'Malley also said this:

If we had the opportunity to vote as a nation, there would certainly be limitations imposed on the abortion industry that destroys not just the lives of the babies but also the lives of all involved...We pray for the opportunity to allow the American people to have a voice in such a crucial issue.

Well, Cardinal, your statement was issued on October 30th, less than a week before Catholics would have the opportunity to voice their position on Election Day, but you failed to mention that opportunity.

Pope Benedict and his predecessors have made it crystal clear that abortion is a moral evil on an unarguable level totally different from and above such moral questions as those about war, death penalty, poverty, racial preferences and so on, where Catholics and others may reasonably differ.

One Catholic priest confided he was going to vote for Obama. His listener expressed shock, saying, How can you vote for someone who had announced he will remove all limits on abortion and would force Catholic hospitals and doctors to perform abortions? Wouldn't that be a grave sin? The priest replied, "Oh, well, he'll change." Sure.

How widespread was such self-delusion? Exit polls indicate that 54% of Catholics voted for Obama/Biden. (88% of Evangelicals voted for McCain/Palin.)

So now O'Malley is "horrified." A bit late.

In 1775 the establishment of the U.S. Marines was approved by the Continental Congress. In their honor, God Bless America.

And remember the injured Marines needing help. Semper Fi Fund.

Hard-headed British columnist Melanie Phillips provides good advice to American conservatives in the wake of the Obama victory. She cites the disaster that has been building in Britain over recent decades -- and is still building -- hastened along greatly by the ascendency into high office by Labour's charismatic leader Tony Blair, whose arrival was hailed almost as messianically as Obama's. Similar, or worse, damage looms with Obama:

Obama has talked about remedying what he sees as the flaws in the U.S. Constitution which promotes only “negative liberties,” or freedom from something rather than positive rights to something. Well, through human-rights legislation Britain has exchanged its historic concept of “negative” liberty — everything is permitted unless it is actively prohibited — for the ‘positive’ European idea that only what is codified is to be permitted.

As a result, freedom has shrunk to what ideology permits. Equality legislation has cemented a “victim culture” under which the interests of all groups deemed to be powerless (black people, women, gays ) trump those deemed to be powerful (white people, men, Christians). Since this doctrine holds that the “powerless” can do no wrong while the “powerful” can do no right, injustice is thus institutionalized, and anyone who queries the preferential treatment afforded such groups is vilified as a racist or bigot.

Her warning should be read in full and printed out to post above the desk as a constant reminder.

Read it all:

Preventing National Suicide

By Melanie Phillips

Continue reading "A BRIT WARNS: DON'T LET OBAMA DESTROY AMERICAN VALUES"

Posted by Republican on Thursday, November 6, 2008 at 10:52 AM | Comments (0)
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Our president-elect is still the same person he was the day before the election.

He is still a largely unknown figure, having successfully hidden much of his past thus far. Much of what was learned is disturbing.

One can hope, as we do, he will stand in the great American tradition of pride in country, proud of American exceptionalism, proud of its leadership in the world and what it has done through the centuries to better the lot of people everywhere. We hope he will, however belatedly, come to recognize the threats this nation faces and his responsibility to defend the people of America from all threats, foreign and domestic. We also hope he will at last come to realize the free enterprise system is the best way to create wealth that will benefit all who live in this great country.

So we will hope, but we will watch and we will continue to explore who this man is. We also hope he will grow in office, will learn to appreciate how great this country is, which, unfortunately, he tends to disparage more than praise.

Those who have concern must be alert and on guard and prepared to fight against all efforts to weaken America's strength and to push the U.S. along the path to a Europe of socialism, appeasement, worship of multiculturalism and "political correctness," which means limitations on free and frank speech. The Democratic party has been drifting from "liberalism" to "socialism" and with the election of Obama that process could well accelerate. The dignity and worth of every created human being, however weak and vulnerable, deserves respect under our Constitution, a value socialists and some Democrats question. Those of a Marxist socialist point of view tend to think in terms of multiples of lives, millions of lives, and not so much about each and every life. This view must be guarded against. We do believe that each and every individual has been endowed by the Creator with unalienable rights and must be protected, including from the government.

God Bless America.

God Help America.

Monday's Christian Science Monitor carried this argument for the election of John McCain composed b two of the brilliant lawyers who write for Power Line. We couldn't agree with it more. This is no time to gamble on a smooth-talking, inexperienced narcissist who wants to remake America in his image. We need John McCain to protect and defend the America we love.

A closing argument for John McCain

His mettle has been tested; he's ready to lead.

By John H. Hinderaker and Scott W. Johnson

from the November 3, 2008 edition

Minneapolis - Speaking in Seattle to campaign contributors behind closed doors earlier this month, Democratic vice presidential candidate Joe Biden all but endorsed John McCain for president.

"Mark my words," Senator Biden warned the assembled supporters. "It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy. The world is looking. We're about to elect a brilliant 47-year-old senator president of the United States of America. Remember I said it standing here if you don't remember anything else I said. Watch, we're gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy."

"I can give you at least four or five scenarios from where it might originate," Biden continued, citing the Middle East and Russia as possibilities. "And he's gonna need help. And the kind of help he's gonna need is, he's gonna need you – not financially to help him – we're gonna need you to use your influence, your influence within the community, to stand with him. Because it's not gonna be apparent initially, it's not gonna be apparent that we're right."

Recalling that Senator Obama selected Biden as his running mate because of his purported foreign-policy expertise, one might think that more attention would be paid to the obvious import of Biden's words.

Not surprisingly, Biden made no mention of the world testing the mettle of Senator McCain if he were to take office (although he did later, lamely seeking to dismiss the meaning of his words). And for good reason. McCain's mettle has already been tested – proved under conditions beyond the imagining of most Americans. If it is possible to give something beyond the last full measure of devotion to our country, McCain has.

We think that the country would be best served by calling on McCain for one last mission – as president.

The financial crisis in which we now find ourselves poses an economic challenge to American well-being unlike any we have faced since the Great Depression. Before it materialized, Obama supported substantial tax increases through the expiration of the Bush tax cuts for the highest income-earners (of shifting definition). Now that America faces a recession, Obama still supports counterproductive tax increases – on capital gains, the most productive workers, and successful small businesses – that are guaranteed to throw additional sand into the wheels of the economy.

When Obama explained to Joe the Plumber that he believed in "spread[ing] the wealth around," he meant it. He doesn't seem to have much respect for the income and wealth of those who have earned it. He seems to believe it the job of government to redistribute to those trailing "behind" Joe.

If he wins, Obama will take the oath of office, in which he'll swear to "preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States." Yet the record shows that Obama isn't particularly fond of the Constitution. In a 2001 interview on Chicago public radio, Obama noted that the Warren Court had "never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth and sort of more basic issues of political and economic justice in this society," and "to that extent as radical as I think people tried to characterize the Warren Court, it wasn't that radical." Obama asserted that the Constitution "reflected an enormous blind spot in this culture that carries on until this day."

He also noted that the Court "didn't break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution, at least as it has been interpreted." Obama seemed to think the Constitution deficient, because it provided only a guarantee of negative liberties – what the government can't do to citizens – rather than a positive right to welfare. The Founding Fathers would be shocked by Obama's attitude toward this cornerstone of American principles.

McCain is a more traditional figure. He advocates lower taxes on earned income and shared prosperity through economic growth rather than the redistribution of wealth. He supports the mutual economic advantage to be found in free trade, particularly with friends and allies such as Canada and Colombia, as well as the preservation of the secret ballot in union elections, a strong defense, and victory in war.

In short, Biden suggests that Obama would invite the kind of crises JFK faced when Soviet Premier Nikita Khruschev tested him in the Cuban missile crisis, in Berlin, and in Vietnam. And he should know.

McCain, however, also harks back to JFK – the JFK who represented a generation "tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace, proud of our ancient heritage – and unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of those human rights to which this Nation has always been committed, and to which we are committed today at home and around the world."

John H. Hinderaker and Scott W. Johnson are Minneapolis attorneys and contributors to the blog Power Line.

No one has dug deeper and written more about the real Obama than Stanley Kurtz, the independent researcher at Washington's Ethics and Public Policy Center. On the day before the election he provides his overall conclusion based on what he has learned from his extensive investigation: Barack Obama is a Far Left radical deeply steeped in and following the principles and practices of his intellectual and spiritual guiding light the communist agitator Saul Alinksy, whose goal was to destroy America's capitalist society and replace it with a totalitarian socialist one.

Wealth redistribution, not wealth creation, is at the center of Obama's plan. He will build support for this socialist end by vastly expanding the ACORN-style community organizating movement by linking the massive youth corps that he has said he will create as president. As Kurtz points out, ACORN, funded by Obama and Ayers through foundations, was a prime agent in undermining the credit standards of the nation's banking system as Obama supported “major redistributive change. Via ACORN, that project has already nearly wrecked our economy. What will happen when it’s generalized?"

Obama's words will be soothing and moderate as always (Alinsky preached using vague words such as "hope" and "change" rather than the specifics of the socialist agenda), but a totalitarian socialist society will continue to be his ultimate goal.

Kurtz's brilliant exposés have been ignored by the nation's mainstream media when they could and whitewashed by them when they could not. The tragedy for America is that the vast majority of voters has never seen, heard or been able to discuss Kurtz's Obama disclosures. What Obama and the Obama campaign have chosen to hide from the general public largely remains hidden because of the media's corrupt complicity.

Kurtz deserves our heartfelt thanks. If this far left radical, so far out of and opposed to mainstream American values, is elected president, at least a core few will be armed, alert and ready to do battle to defeat his totalitarian socialist agenda.

Here's Kurtz's conclusion in its entirety. To read all his investigative pieces, click here.

November 3, 2008

What We Know About Obama

The illusion of pragmatism advances far-left goals, in baby steps.

By Stanley Kurtz

Reflecting on all that I’ve written about Barack Obama over these past six months, four inter-related points stand out: Obama’s radicalism, his stealthy incrementalism, his interest in funding and organization-building, and his willingness to use — or quietly support — Alinskyite intimidation tactics. Since we stand on the cusp of the election, I’ll lay out the bottom line. For those who want to know more, go back and read the detailed studies on which I base these conclusions.

Obama’s troubling associations are more than isolated friendships or instances of bad judgment. His ties to Jeremiah Wright, Bill Ayers, Bernardine Dohrn, Rashid Khalidi, Michael Pfleger, James Meeks, ACORN, the New Party, and the Gamaliel Foundation all reflect Obama’s sympathy with radical-left ideas and causes — wealth redistribution prominent among them. At both the Woods Fund and the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, for example, Obama and Ayers channeled money into ACORN’s coffers. ACORN, a militant group pursuing economic redistribution, succeeded in undermining credit standards throughout the banking system, thereby modeling the New Party’s plans to tame capitalism itself. So the association with Ayers is not an outlier issue, but part and parcel of a network of radical ties through which Obama’s supported “major redistributive change.” Via ACORN, that project has already nearly wrecked our economy. What will happen when it’s generalized?

Similarly, Obama’s “association” with Wright was far more than a mere pastor-parishioner — or even mentor-protégé — relationship. Obama’s work with the Gamaliel Foundation required him to “organize” left-leaning churches into a larger political force. His real interest in Wright, Pfleger, and Meeks was to turn them into the nucleus of a far broader politicized coalition of radical black churches — as shown, for example, by his work with them on the Illinois racial-profiling bill. Again, we are not dealing with mere “associations,” but with intentional political partnerships.

Although media malfeasance is at the heart of our ignorance about these broader patterns, Obama’s absorption of Alinskyite strategies of stealthy incrementalism have helped to hide the truth. Following well-worn organizer strategies, Obama knows how to wrap ideological radicalism in the soothing rhetoric of “pragmatism” and classic American values. There is a kernel of truth to the pragmatism, however. Radical though his ultimate goals may be, Obama follows classic organizer strategy — pursuing his ends in tiny, incremental, and cumulative baby-steps. The municipal “living wage” campaigns supported by Obama, Wright, and groups like ACORN and the New Party were never designed, in themselves, to bring fundamental economic change. These ordinances actually applied to only a very small number of companies. The broader purpose of these battles was to build coalitions for deeper structural change on the national level, when the moment was right. Obama would likely hew to this incrementalism in power, with the same radical long-term goals in mind.

Obama was a master at channeling funding to his organizer allies. He was the key force turning the Woods Fund toward a major increase in support for community organizers, at a moment when other foundations shied away from funding the militant and confrontational tactics of groups like ACORN. In his now infamous 2001 radio remarks, Obama’s preferred strategy for promoting “major redistributive change” was through society-wide organizing from below. As president, Obama would connect his massive youth-volunteer program to his favorite community-organizer groups, thereby creating a political force for long-term restructuring of the American economy. This was the program of the New Party, and I believe it is still Obama’s long-term goal.

In pursuit of his goals, Obama has shown himself willing to quietly support, and sometimes to openly use, radical Alinskyite tactics. At the Woods Fund, Obama’s allies bragged about the way their “post-ideological” cover had allowed them to fund ACORN’s confrontational tactics, while escaping public criticism. Obama has shamelessly used Alinskyite “direct action” to silence and intimidate political foes during the current campaign (a matter well-known to conservatives, yet little noted by the mainstream press). Victory would only cement the conviction in Obama and his allies that these tactics had “won,” and therefore should be used again.

Has Obama changed? Was he merely using his radical Chicago allies to gain national renown, and thereby an opening for a more moderate political program? I find this view unconvincing. Obama has often claimed that his early community organizing, and his redistributive legislative work, were at the very core of his political identity. We’ve heard his radicalism on the radio in 2001. Does anyone really believe that he’s changed in 2008? Obama’s political radicalism consolidated his shaky personal identity. It formed him as an adult. He cannot abandon that inner stance without losing hold of an already precarious self. Obama chose to live in Hyde Park — chose that radical setting as the site of his adult self-creation. Hyde Park was never the place Obama needed to conquer in order to escape. On the contrary, it was the personally chosen home he now hopes to nationalize by spreading his organizing gospel to America’s youth.

Obama is clever and pragmatic, it’s true. But his pragmatism is deployed on behalf of radical goals. Obama’s heart is, and will remain, with the Far Left. Yet he will surely be cautious about grasping for more, at any given moment, than the political traffic will bear. That should not be mistaken for genuine moderation. It will merely be the beginning stages of a habitually incremental radicalism. In his heart and soul, Barack Obama was and remains a radical-stealthy, organizationally sophisticated, and — when necessary — tactically ruthless. The real Obama — the man beyond the feel-good symbol — is no mystery. He’s there for anyone willing to look. Sad to say, few are.

— Stanley Kurtz is a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.

In efforts to make the U.S. energy independent of overseas hostile and unstable suppliers, coal will play a big part. As is often said, the U.S. is the "Saudi Arabia of coal," since the U.S. has the largest reserves of coal in the world. As drilling offshore proceeds (unless Democrats block that again) and other alternatives become commercially viable, coal is the rock solid base on which energy independence will be built. More coal is used to generate electricity in this country than any other power source and that is not likely to change soon. Developing nuclear power plants will no doubt replace some coal-fired power plants, but they won't be active for a decade or longer. Natural gas is a cleaner fuel for power plants, but availability is constrained by pipeline capacity. And, of course, there are urgent research projects underway on clean coal technology. Why not use what the U.S. has the most of, particularly since there are established companies employing thousands of Americans?

Yet Obama has promised he will drive those companies out of business, putting those workers out a job. Once again, the media has neglected or deliberately refused to do its job in exposing the real Obama and his intentions. Listen to this audio from January of this year:

This is another example of Obama's extremist ideology driving him, in this case without regard of the consequences to energy independence, the cost of electricity, national priorities and the jobs of working Americans. Some 80,000 have jobs in the coal industry, with 25% of them in West Virginia.

And in that same interview, Obama also promised that "[u]nder my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket." So much for the working family trying to make ends meet.

Update: Mike Carey, President of the Ohio Coal Association, issued this statement:

Regardless of the timing or method of the release of these remarks, the message from the Democratic candidate for President could not be clearer: the Obama-Biden ticket spells disaster for America's coal industry and the tens of thousands of Americans who work in it.

These undisputed, audio-taped remarks, which include comments from Senator Obama like 'I haven't been some coal booster' and 'if they want to build [coal plants], they can, but it will bankrupt them' are extraordinarily misguided.

It's evident that this campaign has been pandering in states like Ohio,Virginia, West Virginia,Indiana and Pennsylvania to attempt to generate votes from coal supporters, while keeping his true agenda hidden from the state's voters.

Senator Obama has revealed himself to be nothing more than a short-sighted, inexperienced politician willing to say anything to get a vote. But today, the nation's coal industry and those who support it have a better understanding of his true mission, to 'bankrupt' our industry, put tens of thousands out of work and cause unprecedented increases in electricity prices.

In addition to providing an affordable, reliable source of low-cost electricity, domestic coal holds the key to our nation's long-term energy security - a goal that cannot be overlooked during this time of international instability and economic uncertainty.

Few policy areas are more important to our economic future than energy issues. As voters head to the polls tomorrow, it is essential they remember that access to reliable, affordable, domestic energy supplies is essential to economic growth and stability.

The media is now joining Obama is playing the race card. And here. Simply put, if you don't vote for Obama, you're racist. You have no legitimate reason not to.

1. That you're troubled by the elite media's attempt to force you to vote for Obama to prove you're not a racist, is no reason.

2. That you're troubled by Obama’s constant playing of the race card, first against Hillary Clinton, then against John McCain and now against anyone who raises a question or a criticism, is no reason.

3. That you're troubled by his fixation on black power and dislike of whites as revealed in his own books in which he approvingly refers to "white men's greed" as the cause of the world's problems, is no reason.

4. That you're troubled by his attraction to Marxist socialist principles that began in high school and continued through college where he “hung out” with black power advocates and Marxist socialists and distanced himself from whites, as he describes in his books, is no reason.

5. That you’re troubled that he put his Marxist socialist principles into practice by becoming a community organizer of blacks against the white establishment in Chicago working with communist/socialist ACORN and other community organizers, is no reason.

6. That you're troubled by his attraction to and absorption of the communist Alinsky method of community organizing (studied in Chicago and while at Harvard Law School) in which socialist purposes are carefully hidden by sticking to platitudes like "hope" and "change" to solve every human dissatisfaction, is no reason.

7. That you're troubled by his telling Joe the Plumber he was going to impose higher taxes on him to "spread the wealth," that is, to take money away from people who pay taxes to give to people who don't pay taxes, which is pure socialism, is no reason

8. That you're troubled by his long association (as trainer, lawyer, collaborator and employer) with the communist/socialist community organization ACORN that has been involved in vote registration fraud controversies, including convictions, across the country, including this year, is no reason.

9. That you're troubled that Obama hired ACORN this year to do voter registration, knowing as he did about its record of voter fraud registration accusations, investigations and convictions (investigations of ACORN fraud are under way right now in at least 12 states), paying $320,000 to ACORN and then covering up the payment, is no reason.

10, That you're troubled that every day there are new stories of fraud involving ACORN workers in states across the nation and all the Obama campaign can say is that such reports are "a distraction" from the real issues, is no reason.

11. That you're troubled that he was an early pioneer, working with ACORN, in showing how to intimidate banks and bankers into making uncreditworthy mortgage loans to minorities and low-income people who could not afford them, which pressure tactics spread and ultimately led to the housing bubble, its collapse and the present world financial crisis and loss of hundreds of billions for investors and tens of thousands of jobs, is no reason.

12. That you're troubled that Obama, having worked closely with the communist/socialist organization ACORN throughout his entire career, recently said his views are still pretty much the same as when he helped ACORN force banks to make risky mortgage loans they never should have made and ran a voter registration drive with ACORN, is no reason.

13. That you're troubled that Obama has vowed to the communist//socialist group ACORN and other such organizations will be called in to work with him, if he's elected president, even before inauguration to shape the agenda of his administration,, is no reason.

14. That you're troubled that in just a few months in the U.S. Senate Obama was able to become the second biggest recipient, some $126,000 -- over a 20-year period -- of campaign contributions from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac sources, is no reason.

15. That you’re troubled that when John McCain and others were proposing reforms in 2005 and 2006 to prevent a collapse of the out-of-control practices of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac buying up far too many risky subprime mortgage loans, Obama instead sided with Barney Frank and Christopher Dodd in opposing reform, thus bringing on the present world financial crisis, indeed being quoted saying subprime loans were a good thing, is no reason.

16. That you're troubled by his association with people who hate America such as white hater Jeremiah Wright, unrepentant admitted terrorist bomber and self-described communist William Ayers (who said in 2001 the mention of America "makes him want to puke"), Nation of Islam’s Louis Farrakhan, former PLO spokesman Rashid Khalidi and nutcase Father Michael Pfleger, is no reason.

17. That you're troubled that he was attracted in the first place to black power, white-America hater, anti-Semitic pastor Jeremiah Wright and stayed with him for 20 years, knowing he was a follower of black liberation theology that preaches that any god that is not exclusively on the side of the blacks against whites must be killed, is no reason.

18. That you're troubled that he lied about never in 20 years hearing Jeremiah Wright make any of his anti-America and anti-white speeches, but then admitted he had when his campaign advisors realized the lie could be easily disproved, is no reason.

19. That you're troubled that he brought his young children to Jeremiah Wright's sermons Sunday after Sunday to listen to his bigoted tirades against whites and his hateful harangues against America, is no reason.

20. That you’re troubled that he helped Nation of Islam’s anti-Semitic Louis Farrakhan organize the Million-Man March in Washington and that Farrakhan has called Obama the messiah for black Muslims, is no reason.

21. That you're troubled that, working for years jointly with unrepentant terrorist bomber William Ayers, who describes himself as a communist, Obama funneled $150 million to fund programs to turn Chicago teachers and students into socialist revolutionaries who hate America, is no reason.

22. That you're troubled that, working jointly with America hater William Ayers, Obama directed charitable funds to separatist Afrocentric, America-hating programs designed by allies of Jeremiah Wright, while denouncing “the unrealistic politics of integrationist assimilation,” is no reason.

23. That you're troubled that, working jointly with America hater William Ayers, Obama, "to change America," directed charitable funds to the communist/socialist ACORN that was intimidating banks to make unsafe mortgage loans and engaging in voter registration fraud, as he well knew, is no reason.

24. That you're troubled that Obama continued his collaboration with Ayers after Ayers allowed himself to be photographed for the cover of Chicago magazine in 2001 standing on the American flag and telling an interviewer the thought of America made him "want to puke," is no reason.

25. That you're troubled that, working jointly with admitted terrorist bomber William Ayers, he steered charitable funds to an Arab-related organization that handed money over to a Palestinian terrorist organization, is no reason.

26. That you're troubled by Obama’s decision to go inside the Chicago Daley Democratic patronage and payoff political machine (often called by Chicago newspapers the “corrupt” Daley Democratic political machine) and become a go-along, loyal member of the machine, which is now running his campaign, is no reason.

27. That you're troubled that as an Illinois state senator Obama refused to support reformers against the Daley patronage and payoff machine, but supported the Chicago Democratic political machine at all times, is no reason.

28. That you’re troubled that in his first run for public office he was able to force all three Democratic opponents off the primary ballot to run unopposed, which if not unprecedented is so highly unusual as to raise questions about the objectivity of Democratic election officials beholden to the Daley political machine which Obama supports, is no reason.

29. That you're troubled by the fact that he is the most extreme advocate of abortion in public life, having pledged to Planned Parenthood as president he would like his first act as president to be signing a bill removing all restrictions on abortion, including partial birth abortion which 75% of all Americans oppose, is no reason.

30. That you're troubled by the fact that he engineered the defeat of a bill in the Illinois senate to protect babies who survive a failed abortion (and then lied about it), a bill that was identical to one that passed Congress unanimously, is no reason.

31. That you're troubled by his callous statement that, if either of his girls made a mistake, he wouldn't want them "punished with a baby," is no reason.

32. That you're troubled by his wife's statements that only now, for the first time in her adult life, she's proud of her country, is no reason.

33. That you're troubled by his wife's view of America as “just downright mean,” is no reason.

34. That you're troubled by his view of America as having done harm to the world for which he must apologize (in Berlin, to Germans no less), is no reason.

35. That you’re troubled that he so often seems ashamed of America, speaking ill of it, as in Berlin, is no reason.

36. That you're troubled that Obama didn't put hand to heart during the national anthem until his advisors told him to, is no reason.

37. That you're troubled that Obama left injured servicemen and women waiting at a military hospital in Germany when he canceled a scheduled visit to work out at a gym, is no reason.

38. That you're troubled that he is so naive that he can say tear down the walls between Muslims and Jews (as in Israel?) and there will be peace, is no reason.

39. That you're troubled by his statements in support of the Palestinian cause and his support by a former member of the terrorist-listed PLO Rashid Khalidi, who is now the director of the most rabid anti-Israel Middle East Studies department in the U.S, is no reason.

40. That you're troubled by his lukewarm and equivocal statements about Israel (for an undivided Jerusalem one day, opposed the next), is no reason.

41. That you're troubled by his vocal support by leaders of Hamas and the lack of support by a leading Israel statesman and author such as Natan Sharansky, is no reason.

42. That you're troubled that Obama's running mate Biden is reported to have told Israelis they had just better get used to the idea of a Iran with nuclear warheads on missiles that can destroy Israel, is no reason.

43. That you're troubled that Obama declined to appear at an anti-Iran rally sponsored by Jewish organizations and made sure that Sarah Palin was disinvited, is no reason.

44. That you're troubled that all Obama wants to do is talk and talk with the leader of our deadly enemy Iran and do nothing of consequence to stop their development of nuclear weapons, is no reason.

45. That you're troubled by his position well over a year ago to withdraw troops from Iraq on a fixed timetable regardless of conditions and to oppose the surge that was not only dangerous for our troops but would have resulted in al-Qaeda taking over Iraq as its new world headquarters, with riches like oil and gas that Afghanistan cannot even dream of, is no reason.

46. That you're troubled by his opposition to doing what is necessary to make America independent of hostile and unstable overseas energy suppliers by drilling for gas and oil domestically and by supporting nuclear power and clean coal along with all other alternatives, is no reason.

47. That you're troubled that Obama naively wants to cut defense spending in an increasingly dangerous world, and that Obama refuses to acknowledge the existence of the Islamic supremacist war against the non-Muslim world, is no reason.

48. That you're troubled that Obama actively and openly spoke in favor of his Muslim cousin Raila Odinga in his recent campaign for president of Kenya, during which he reportedly pledged to decree Islamic law for all Kenyans and ban Christian missionaries throughout the country, is no reason.

49. That you're troubled by his protectionist statements supporting unilaterally repealing NAFTA and opposing the free trade agreement with our hemishere's closest ally Colombia, and his lying about the facts to justify his opposition, is no reason.

50. That you're troubled that he wants to end secret ballots in union elections so as to increase the power of union intimidation, is no reason.

51. That you're troubled that he is so obsessed with himself, appears to be such a narcissist, that he can tell a campaign gathering that light will come down from above and convince them to vote for The Obama, is no reason.

52. That you're troubled that when you look at his record of accomplishment you only see that he has written two books about himself (partially fictionalized, possibly ghost written), graduated from college and law school, spent four years in socialist community organizing, and years in the Illinois senate (voting present 130 times) toeing the Democratic machine line -- and gave a nice speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, is no reason.

53. That you're troubled that he had for years as a major fundraiser (at least $250,000) Syrian-born political fixer and slumlord Tony Rezko, who has been convicted on 16 counts of political corruption, is no reason.

54. That you're troubled that while Rezko was being investigated on corruption charges and reportedly in debt for more than $10 million, Rezko's wife (said to have no assets of her own and income of only $37,000 as a city worker) somehow made it possible for him to buy his dream house in the upscale Hyde Park section of Chicago by buying an adjacent empty lot for full price ($625,000) while Obama purchased his house and lot for a $300,000 discount ($1.65 million) from the same seller on the same day, is no reason.

54. That you're troubled that Rezko's wife shortly thereafter sold a strip of land from the adjacent empty lot that Obama wanted for one-sixth her purchase price, paid for a fence Obama wanted between the properties, then sold off the lot to one of Rezko’s attorneys for an undisclosed price, is no reason.

55. That you're troubled by his plan to give $50 billion of American taxpayer money to the corrupt United Nations for a new anti-poverty program, is no reason.

56. That you’re troubled by his socialist “tax cut” plan to take more money from those who earn it – including imposing higher taxes on hundreds of thousands of small businesses -- and make welfare payments to the 44% (63 million) of American’s who pay no income tax, is no reason.

57. That you're troubled that Obama is hiding so much of his record, that he has refused to allow access to information or has blocked research about his past, such as his joint socialist programs with William Ayers in Chicago, the official State of Hawaii birth records, his Columbia College and Harvard Law School records and years and his ideological affiliations before joining Jeremiah Wright's church, is no reason.

58. That you’re troubled that his campaign has apparently raised tens of millions of dollars from sources outside the country in deliberately small sums (under $200) to avoid federal reporting requirements and the campaign has no controls to identify such sources, some of which are clearly fraudulent, whereas the McCain campaign can track every dollar, is no reason.

59. That you're troubled by what Michael Barone calls the thug tactics of the Obama campaign to silence all criticism with cries of “lies,” “discrimination,” racism,” including even discussion of Obama's socialist and machine partisan activities in Chicago, and that Barone fears an Obama Administration "thugocracy" stifling First Amendment rights, is no reason.

60. That you’re troubled that Obama’s socialism smacks of totalitarianism, as his campaign’s efforts to shut down free speech shows, is no reason.

61. That you’re troubled that Obama is rated the most far left senator in the U.S. Senate, a radical with a socialist agenda "to change" an America he is not proud of to something we will not like, and who is blind to the defense needs of the United States, is no reason.

62. That you're troubled that Obama is so "flexible" and evasive when it comes to telling the truth and just plain lies, is no reason.

63. That you're troubled that he could coldly dismiss the legitimate fears of the white grandmother who raised him as those of a "typical white person," is no reason.

64. That you're troubled that the Chicago Democratic machine that is running his campaign may be intending to take its patronage and payoff operations onto the national stage, at staggering cost to American taxpayers, is no reason.

65. That you're troubled by his elitist attitude towards simple working people, sniffing at them for clinging to their God and their guns, is no reason.

66. That you're troubled by the many, many times that Obama misstated historical facts to suit his own agenda, including misdescribing his past positions, and that the mainstream media did not challenge Obama’s statements, is no reason.

67. That you're troubled by the hypocrisy and double standard of the elite media that can proudly report that 95% of blacks now say they're voting for Obama, but can express horror that some white Americans might vote for McCain, which they assert can only be for racist reasons, is no reason.

68. That you're troubled that the elite media, which has decided it wants a Democratic black president now, whoever it is, qualified or not,, has deliberately avoided its obligations to the American public by refusing to do any detailed investigation into who Obama really is, his alliances, involvement in sleazy machine politics and his history, so that all that exists is the fictionalized narrative contrived by the Chicago Daley Democratic machine that is running his campaign, which leaves too many questions unanswered and voters still wondering "Who is Barack Obama?", is no reason.

69. That you're still troubled about who Obama really is though you are deeply troubled about what you know already and wonder what else he may be hiding, is no reason.

70. That you're troubled that Obama appears to be cleverly hiding who he is, presenting a false image to the world as postpartisan, moderate and a healer, when he is none of those, as his record shows, is no reason.

71. That you're troubled that Obama, if elected, may have a Democratic House and Senate, to implement his extreme socialist agenda of higher taxes, trade protectionism, stifling free enterprise, stifling free speech, enacting extreme pro-abortion policies such as reviving partial-birth abortion, relaxing our defense vigilance, cutting defense spending and increasing taxpayer funding to subversive organizations such as ACORN, is no reason.

72. That you're troubled that foreigners see things so much more clearly than our media and view the president candidate Obama as having a "nexus comprising black power anti-white racists, Jew-haters, revolutionary Marxists, unrepentant former terrorists and Chicago mobsters," is no reason.

73. That you're troubled that, as Professor Thomas Sowell notes, John McCain and Sarah Palin have not spent "decades working with people who hate America" and Obama has, is no reason.

74. That you're troubled that, as Professor Thomas Sowell also notes, the values of John McCain and Sarah Palin "are the values of this nation, whose loyalty and dedication to this country’s fundamental institutions are beyond question" and this cannot be said about Obama, is no reason.

75. That you're troubled by reports that as much as $63 million in campaign contributions to the Obama campaign in amounts smaller than the $200 required to be reported federally are from foreign sources, may be illegal, are not tracked by the Obama campaign though McCain tracks ALL his contributions, and more than 80% of all Obama contributions are not identified and may not be identifiable, is no reason.

76. That you're troubled that the Obama campaign had deliberately collected tens if not hundres of millions of illegal contributions by disabling all security settings on online credit card systems so as to facilitate fake and foreign contributions and contributions over the limit and have no controls for contributions under $200 though the McCain campaign has all such controls, obviously seeking to steal the election and disenfranchise American voters, is no reason.

77. That you're troubled by the Gestapo tactics against Obama critics like the attacks on Joe the Plumber and throwing reporters off the campaign plane whose organizations endorse McCain, is no reason.

That you're troubled that if you don't vote for McCain/Palin you will be doing a dangerous disservice to your country and generations of Americans is no reason, either.

The following is a copy of an ad placed by the Chatham Republican Town Committee, Walter Bilowz, Chairman, in this coming Thursday's Cape Cod Chronicle:

DOES YOUR RETIREMENT MONEY BELONG TO YOU OR THE GOVERNMENT? PREDATORY POLITICS -- or ROBIN HOOD REDUX

This campaign has brought up two major issues, the redistribution of income and the redistribution of wealth.

Joe the Plumber said to Obama "your new tax plan is going to tax me more, isn't it?"
Obama replied "I think that when you spread the wealth around, it's good for everybody."

With this, Obama declared his intention to redistribute the tax dollars which you paid on the income which you earned. Currently, if the Earned Income Tax Credit (E I TC) exceeds a taxpayer's tax liability, the IRS refunds the difference. That is, the government takes your tax money and gives some of it to someone who qualifies for the EITC. This is a redistribution of the tax money which you paid on the income which you earned. Obama would expand this with his tax plan to further distribute more of your tax money in order to "spread the wealth around". Obama calls this a tax cut for 95% of workers! He does not stress that approximately 40% of these workers pay no taxes and thus would be receiving a cash benefit (an entitlement).

However, Obama's intent to redistribute does not end with redistribution of your income. He is on record as favoring redistribution of your wealth, which includes your retirement funds. On a Chicago program, Odyssey, station WBEZ, in 2001, he stated that redistribution of wealth was a …”basic issue of political and economic justice in the society.” He indicated that redistribution of wealth could be accomplished by legislation.

The US News and World Report published a story on October 23, 2008, when they uncovered consideration of potential legislation to eliminate 401(k) plans (retirement plans) and take control of the retirement plan savings of Americans. This was in the Subcommittee on Income Security and Family Support which is chaired by Representative James McDermott, Democrat of Washington. Under the plan, your retirement money would be transferred into a government account invested in government bonds and paying around 3%. In addition there would be a loss of preferential tax treatment and a mandatory contribution imposed on workers. There is approximately $4.5 trillion invested in 401(k) plans in the US. This would be the largest loss of wealth and seizure of private assets in world history. It would far exceed the amounts recently seized by the government of Argentina in their nationalization of pension funds. The leftist government wanted to use the funds for their agenda.

If we elect Obama, a Democrat, as president, and a Democratic Congress, what is it that would stop a radical assault on the income that you earn, and on the retirement wealth which you accumulate? It happened in Argentina!

To be sure, in Obama's circle of America-haters, Jeremiah Wright and Willam (Bill) Ayers rank high. Wright's rantings of "God Damn America" still ring in our ears. And how can one forget Ayers' bombings of the Capitol and the Pentagon and his (fortunately) failed plans to explode a nail bomb at a Fort Dix dance?

But are there other Obama America-haters as despicable? Some say yes.

Rashid Khalidi was a spokesman for Yasser Arafat of the Palestinian Liberation Organization at a time when the U.S. had designated it a terrorist organization. PLO members killed the Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics. Khalidi left Lebanon and wound up in Chicago sharing many dinners with Obama and his wife. Obama toasted him as he left Chicago to head up the most anti-Israeli Middle East Studies program in America at Columbia. Obama steered money from a foundation he chaired to an organization headed by Khalidi that in turn sent money off to the terrorist PLO.

It's no wonder that a recent poll in Israel had McCain favored overwhelmingly 46% to 34%. The Middle East expert and Israeli author Caroline Glick has called Obama's rise "frightening."

Check this Power Lilne report out.

Update: Guess what? Andy McCarthy does some digging and finds out that Ayers and Khalidi were best friends. Khalidi and Obama were buddies. And Ayers and Obama together handed out tens of millions of foundation money to radical groups, including $75,000 to Khalidi's rabidly anti-Israel foundation, which in turn funneled money to the PLO. All these fine folks gathered together for a farewell party for Khalidi who was off to head Columbia's anti-Israeli Middle East Studies department. Obama was reported to have offered a toast, as did many others. Imagine what the remarks about Israel were! Actually, one doesn't have to imagine: The Obama-backing Los Angeles Times has a tape of the reception. But the Times refuses to release it. Journalism's highest standards at work. Where's the outrage?

Polls are slanted and hyped by the media hoping to discourage the turnout of those who believe McCain/Pain is the only rational choice for America.

The most reliable poll by past results has Obama up by only 4% and more than 10% undecided. Because of the relentless intimidation by the media shouting racism at anyone who doesn't support Obama, it's a fair inference that some in the Obama column will not vote for him and a large percentage of the "undecideds" will vote for McCain/Palin but just aren't saying so.

This is to say that victory for sanity and America's futre is very possible, indeed, likely.

The recent news that tens of millions of the dollars the Obama campaign is now spending to flood the airwaves are illegal contributions from foreign sources and others with a stake in an Obama election exposes the corruption at the heart of the campaign. The Chicago Democratic machine men running the campaign know how to collect money illegally from unidentiable sources -- foreigners ncluded -- by shutting down credit card ID systems.

His alliances with people who hate America and actively work to undermine it -- Wright, Ayers, ACORN, Pfleger, Khalidi, Klonsky -- cannot be ignored.

Enought people in the end will see through the Obama pretense.

Professor Thomas Sowell sums up the situation well.

Some people who see the fraud in what Obama is saying are amazed that others do not.

The vote for president on November 4th is momentous. A victory for Obama would represent, as one writer put it, the biggest lurch to the left in the history of the country. Or, as Mark Steyn, posited the alternatives: Would it be Independence Day or "Dependence Day"? It also would be a danger to the safety and security of the United States.

Professor Sowell, as a black man, has made it clear that he, like most Americans, would welcome the election of a qualified black man as president of the United States. He has examined Obama's past, his positions and what he has done and is doing and has no doubt in his mind that Obama does not have the record, the character or the integrity to be president.

Representative government exists, in the first place, because we the voters cannot possibly have all the information necessary to make rational decisions on all the things that the government does. We cannot rule through polls or referendums. We must trust someone to represent us, especially as President of the United States.

Once we recognize this basic fact of representative government, then the question of how trustworthy a candidate is becomes a more urgent question than any of the so-called “real issues.”

A candidate who spends two decades promoting polarization and then runs as a healer and uniter, rather than a divider, forfeits all trust by that fact alone.

It's worth reading all of Professor Sowell's analysis of The Great Pretender.

Can Obama Be Trusted?

By Thomas Sowell
Creators Syndicate
October 27, 2008

Although Senator Barack Obama has been allied with a succession of far-Left individuals over the years, that is only half the story. There are, after all, some honest and decent people on the Left. But these have not been the ones that Obama has been allied with — allied, not merely “associated” with.

ACORN is not just an organization on the left. In addition to the voter frauds that ACORN has been involved in over the years, it is an organization with a history of thuggery, including going to bankers’ homes to harass them and their families, in order to force banks to lend to people with low credit ratings.

Nor was Barack Obama’s relationship with ACORN just a matter of once being their attorney long ago. More recently, he has directed hundreds of thousands of dollars their way. Money talks — and what it says is more important than a politician’s rhetoric in an election year.

Jeremiah Wright and Michael Pfleger are not just people with left-wing opinions. They are reckless demagogues preaching hatred of the lowest sort — and both are recipients of money from Obama.

Bill Ayers is not just “an education professor” who has some left-wing views. He is a confessed and unrepentant terrorist, who more recently has put his message of resentment into the schools — an effort using money from a foundation that Obama headed.

Nor has the help all been one way. During the last debate between John McCain and Barack Obama, Senator McCain mentioned that Sen. Obama’s political campaign began in Bill Ayers’s home. Obama immediately denied it and McCain had no real follow-up.

It was not this year’s political campaign that Obama began in Bill Ayers’s home but an earlier campaign for the Illinois state legislature. Barack Obama can match Bill Clinton in slickness at parsing words to evade accusations.

That is one way to get to the White House. But slickness with words is not going to help a president deal with either domestic economic crises or the looming dangers of a nuclear Iran.

People who think that talking points on this or that problem constitute “the real issues” that we should be talking about, instead of Obama’s track record, ignore a very fundamental fact about representative government.

Representative government exists, in the first place, because we the voters cannot possibly have all the information necessary to make rational decisions on all the things that the government does. We cannot rule through polls or referendums. We must trust someone to represent us, especially as President of the United States.

Once we recognize this basic fact of representative government, then the question of how trustworthy a candidate is becomes a more urgent question than any of the so-called “real issues.”

A candidate who spends two decades promoting polarization and then runs as a healer and uniter, rather than a divider, forfeits all trust by that fact alone.

If Ronald Reagan had attempted to run for president of the United States as a liberal, the media would have been all over him. His support for Barry Goldwater would have been in the headlines and in editorial denunciations across the country.

No way would he have been able to get away with using soothing words to suggest that he and Barry Goldwater were like ships that passed in the night.

If Barack Obama had run as what he has always been, rather than as what he has never been, then we could simply cast our votes based on whether or not we agree with what he has always stood for.

Some people take solace from the fact that Senator Obama has verbally shifted position on some issues, like drilling for oil or gun control, since this is supposed to show that he is “pragmatic” rather than ideological.

But political zig-zags show no such moderation as some seem to assume. Lenin zig-zagged and so did Hitler. Zig-zags may show no more than that someone is playing the public for fools.

Some people who see the fraud in what Obama is saying are amazed that others do not. But Obama knows what con men have long known, that their job is not to convince skeptics but to enable the gullible to continue to believe what they want to believe. He does that very well

--Professor Thomas Sowell is the Friedman Senior Fellow on Public Policy at Stanford's Hoover Institution, the author of many books and a recipient of the Natonal Humanities Medal. He has taught at Cornell, Amherst and Brandeis as well as Stanford. He was awarded the Bradley Prize for intellectual achievement in 2003.

Joe Biden was picked by Obama as his vice presidential running mate because he knew foreign affairs. So what's Biden's view of the dangerous world we live in today? He told us.

We knew Obama was all for driver's licenses for illegal aliens, but he wants them to get Social Security, too? And health care that taxpayers will also pay for? No way.

Sarah is inspiring a lot of Americans who are excited that they now have a voice in Sarah Palin.

This first video done by an amatuer volunteer takes off from the revised lyrics of Sarah Smile sung by black conservative Lloyd Marcus (the original is the second video below).

An independent group Our Country Deserves Better is producing video ads and touring the country in support of John McCain and Sarah Palin. Lloyd Marcus sings "Sarah Smile" with his own lyrics at a rally stop somewhere in America.

See their ads (we've posted some and will run them all) and make a contribution, however small, go to their website by clicking here.

To see our collection of videos, please go to right column on this website for the listing of Categories and click on Videos.

Has William (Bill) Ayers changed in the years since he bombed the Capitol, the Pentagon and various police facilities and homes? One who knows says absolutely not.

"His hatred of America is as virulent as when he planted a bomb at the Pentagon. And this hatred informs his educational "reform" efforts."

Over many years Obama worked with Ayers to fund radicalization of the Chicago schools and to teach young blacks to hate white-dominated America. As an "education specialist" Ayers was acting out the same hatred of America he had as a bomber but in a different way. As the estimable Stanley Kurtz has found, based on a study of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge archives, Ayers' accomplice "Barack Obama knowingly and persistently funded an educational project that shared the extremist and anti-American philosophy of Jeremiah Wright." Hatred of America drove Ayers. What drove Obama?

Well, if McCain doesn't have the gumption to let people know who the real Obama is, there are some folks who will. This ad, run by an independent group, has just started airing in some key states. The message is that Obama just doesn't have the values that most Americans do. Jeremiah Wright is the emblem of that. A study released just yesterday found that Obama did more than rub shoulders with and take inspiration from Jeremiah Wright.

As Stanley Kurtz reports, as chairman of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, Obama poured funds into programs that taught young blacks to hate America and to keep themselves separate: "Barack Obama knowingly and persistently funded an educational project that shared the extremist and anti-American philosophy of Jeremiah Wright."

Why does someone who says he loves America (Obama MUST have said he does at some point) fund hate-America programs?

UPDATE: McCain in the debate did get into Obama's America hating pals that seemed to get The One a bit flustered. As he was in his weak response (a lie, by the way) on why he opposed an anti-infanticide bill.

Obama's friends are a cause for concern, concludes the Washington Post's Charles Krauthammer.

What is more important, decades of close alliance with Reverend Wright, a bigoted, anti-American racist, William Ayers, an unrepentant terrorist bomber, America-hater par excellence and a self-described communist and Tony Rezko, convicted of 16 counts of political corruption and Obama fund raiser to the tune of $250,000 or Obama's campaign statements separating himself from these people?

Today, on the threshold of the presidency, Obama concedes the odiousness of these associations, which is why he has severed them. But for the years in which he sat in Wright's pews and shared common purpose on boards with Ayers, Obama considered them a legitimate, indeed unremarkable, part of social discourse.

Do you? Obama is a man of first-class intellect and first-class temperament. But his character remains highly suspect. There is a difference between temperament and character. Equanimity is a virtue. Tolerance of the obscene is not.

Obama & Friends: Judge Not?

By Charles Krauthammer
Friday, October 10, 2008; Washington Post

Convicted felon Tony Rezko. Unrepentant terrorist Bill Ayers. And the race-baiting Rev. Jeremiah Wright. It is hard to think of any presidential candidate before Barack Obama sporting associations with three more execrable characters. Yet let the McCain campaign raise the issue, and the mainstream media begin fulminating about dirty campaigning tinged with racism and McCarthyite guilt by association.

But associations are important. They provide a significant insight into character. They are particularly relevant in relation to a potential president as new, unknown, opaque and self-contained as Obama. With the economy overshadowing everything, it may be too late politically to be raising this issue. But that does not make it, as conventional wisdom holds, in any way illegitimate.

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The mainstream media led by the Obama-supporting New York Times, CBS, MSNBC, NBC and ABC continues to ignore its duty to the American people in exposing the real Obama. There has been no digging into his history and no reporting of what independent researchers are finding.

Power Line blog reports on two major items:

When Barack Obama ran for state senate in Illinois he was listed as a member of the New Party, a political party dedicated to socialist principles. This had never been disclosed in the "official" Obama narrative, which had been carefully compiled by the Democratic Chicago machine (often called the "corrupt Chicago machine" by Chicago newspapers) that is running his campaign.

ACORN is now being investigated for voter registration fraud all across the United States. ACORN has just announced it has registered 1.7 million new voters. The radical socialist organization ACORN has a history with Obama going back to the 1990s when he taught ACORN workers how to register voters and intimidate banks and bankers into making risky mortgage loans to the low-income and minorities. The Obama campaign earlier this year paid more than $800,000 to ACORN for voter registration work. ACORN's political arm has endorsed Obama for president. Obama has said that his political views really haven't changed much from his ACORN days.

Dr. Sowell despairs that Americans are swept up in empty rhetoric and are ignoring decades of actions and behavior that are alien to the average American.

There is a "huge gulf" between the values of Americans and those of Barack Obama.

Obama is presenting a false face to fool the American people. In fact, what is Obama? Sowell, himself a black man who has said that he, too, along with millions of Americans, hopes that one day a qualified black American will be elected president, says this:

The old phrase, “a man of high ideals but no principles,” is one that applies all too painfully to Barack Obama today. His words expressing lofty ideals may appeal to the gullible but his long history of having no principles makes him a danger of the first magnitude in the White House.

Why does he hold that view? Read the article.

October 08, 2008, 3:00 a.m.

High Ideals and No Principles
A huge gulf exists between Barack Obama’s values and those of most other Americans.

By Thomas Sowell

A recent Republican campaign ad sarcastically described as Barack Obama’s “one accomplishment” his supporting a bill to promote sex education in kindergarten.

During an interview of a Republican spokesman, Tom Brokaw of NBC News replayed that ad and asked if that was something serious to be discussed in a presidential election campaign.

It was a variation on an old theme about getting back to “the real issues,” just as Brokaw’s question was a variation on an increasingly widespread tendency among journalists to become a squad of Obama avengers, instead of reporters.

Does it matter if Barack Obama is for sex education in kindergarten? It matters more than most things that are called “the real issues.”

Seemingly unrelated things can give important insights into someone’s outlook and character. For example, after the Cold War was over, it came out that one of the things that caught the attention of Soviet leaders early on was President Ronald Reagan’s breaking of the air traffic controllers’ strike.

Why were the Soviets concerned about a purely domestic American issue like an air traffic controllers’ strike? Why was their attention not confined to “the real issues” between the United States and the Soviet Union?

Because one of the biggest and realest of all issues is the outlook and character of the President of the United States.

It would be hard to imagine any of Ronald Reagan’s predecessors over the previous several decades — whether Republicans or Democrats — who would have broken a nationwide strike instead of caving in to the union’s demands.

This told the Soviet leaders what Reagan was made of, even before he got up and walked out of the room during negotiations with Mikhail Gorbachev. That too let the Soviet leaders know that they were not dealing with Jimmy Carter any more.

There is no more real issue today than “Who is the real Barack Obama behind the image?” What does being in favor of sex education in kindergarten tell us about the outlook and character of this largely unknown man who has suddenly appeared on the national scene to claim the highest office in the land?

It gives us an insight into the huge gulf between Senator Obama’s election-year image and what he has actually been for and against over the preceding decades. It also shows the huge gulf between his values and those of most other Americans.

Many Americans would consider sex education for kindergartners to be absurd but there is more to it than that.

What is called “sex education,” whether for kindergartners or older children, is not education about biology but indoctrination in values that go against the traditional values that children learn in their families and in their communities.

Obviously, the earlier this indoctrination begins, the better its chances of overriding traditional values. The question is not how urgently children in kindergarten need to be taught about sex but how important it is for indoctrinators to get an early start.

The arrogance of third parties, who take it upon themselves to treat other people’s children as a captive audience to brainwash with politically correct notions, while taking no responsibility for the consequences to those children or society, is part of the general vision of the Left that pervades our education system.

Sex education for kindergartners is just one of many issues on which Barack Obama has lined up consistently on the side of arrogant elitists of the Far Left. Senator Obama’s words often sound very reasonable and moderate, as well as lofty and inspiring. But everything that he has actually done over the years places him unmistakably with the extreme left elitists.

Sadly, many of those who are enchanted by his rhetoric are unlikely to check out the facts. But nothing is a more real or more important issue than whether what a candidate says is the direct opposite of what he has actually been doing for years.

The old phrase, “a man of high ideals but no principles,” is one that applies all too painfully to Barack Obama today. His words expressing lofty ideals may appeal to the gullible but his long history of having no principles makes him a danger of the first magnitude in the White House.

— Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution.

Think of this:

}Obama] is the leading exponent of the idea that our lost nation requires rehabilitation in the eyes of the world -- and it is the most telling difference between him and Mr. McCain. When asked, in one of the earliest debates of the primary, his first priority should he become president, his answer was clear. He would go abroad immediately to make amends, and assure allies and others in the world America had alienated, that we were prepared to do all necessary to gain back their respect.

It is impossible to imagine those words coming from Mr. McCain. Mr. Obama has uttered them repeatedly one way or another and no wonder. They are in his bones, this impossible-to-conceal belief that we've lost face among the nations of the world -- presumably our moral superiors. He is here to reform the fallen America and make us worthy again of respect. It is not in him, this thoughtful, civilized academic, to grasp the identification with country that Mr. McCain has in his bones -- his knowledge that we are far from perfect, but not ready, never ready, to take up the vision of us advanced by our enemies. That identification, the understanding of its importance and of the dangers in its absence -- is the magnet that has above all else drawn voters to Mr. McCain.

Sen. Obama is not responsible for the political culture, but he is in good part its product. Which is perhaps how it happened that in his 20 years in the church of Rev. Jeremiah Wright -- passionate proponent of the view of America as the world's leading agent of evil and injustice -- he found nothing strange or alienating....

These sharp differences between the candidates as to who we are as a nation may not seem, now, as potent an issue for voters as the economy, but they should not be underestimated. This clash -- not the ones on abortion or gay marriage -- are the root of the real culture war to play out in November.

Are we proud or ashamed to be Americans? That's the question.

The WSJ article.

We always thought that Charlie Gibson was a bit different from the NBC elite, but, alas, this interview didn't show that. It was a "gotcha" interview supposedly quoting Palin's "exact" quote, as he asserted, but it wasn't. Sad.

Why do the elites of media and academia think so highly of themselves that they can look down sneeringly over their glasses and get away with misquoting to make their point?

In invoking God's blessing Sarah Palin aligned herself with Abraham Lincoln. As for Charlie Gibson, apparently God was looking the other way.

Here's an interesting observation that was posted the day after this year's 9/11. When John McCain at a 9/11 forum at Columbia University spoke of his pride in American exceptionalism and how its men and women have shed blood for freedom in the world, his words were greeted with dead silence from the audience. Well, what does that mean? Blogger Dr. Sanity's blunt appraisal:

The dead silence at Columbia, one of the supposed "gems" of American academia bespeaks of a deadness of the soul that is truly pathetic.

To get the flavor of the situation, read this;

DEAD SILENCE AT COLUMBIA

I watched the [rather ridiculous, I thought] ServiceNation Presidential Forum at Columbia University last night and had the same reaction as a reader at The Corner at one point:

Did you notice how McCain received absolutely NO applause when he talked about how Americans have shed blood around the globe in defense of freedom and should be commended for that? I thought to myself — is there not an audience at this event? The camera panned back and did reveal an audience. What kind of people don't respond to such positive statements about the history of America?

Here is the portion in question:

WOODRUFF: Senator, I want to come back to something you said earlier, I think you used the word exceptional and unique about being an American. On this 9/11, this special day, what — help us understand what you think it means to be an American. And I don’t mean that in the obvious way.

I mean, people who live in Canada, who live in Mexico, around the world feel special about their country, so what is it that’s different about being in America? Are Americans better than people in some of these other countries? We hear the term “exceptionalism” about the United States.

MCCAIN: I do believe in American exceptionalism.

MCCAIN: And I think it was best articulated by our founding fathers. But I also think that my hero, Teddy Roosevelt, expressed it very well, and other leaders throughout our history.

We’re the only nation I know in the world that really is deeply concerned about adhering to the principle that all of us are created equal and endowed by our creators with certain rights. And those we have tried to bring to the world. And we have not so much militarily, but through example, through leadership, through economic assistance.

Look at what we did for Europe after World War II, look at the continuous efforts we make throughout the world. Look at the efforts we’re making to combat HIV/AIDS in Africa. There’s a lot more America can do.

And I love these other countries, and I’m not trying to denigrate them. But I know of no other country in the world with the generosity of spirit and the concern for fellow human beings than the United States of America, and I think that goes back to our very beginnings.

WOODRUFF: Does that make America better than these other…?

MCCAIN: I think it makes us exceptional. I think it makes us exceptional in the kind of citizenry we have and the kind of service and sacrifice that we are capable of.

And I mean that in no disrespect to any other nation, our close and unique relationship with the British. I have — I’m not trying to in any way denigrate any other nation, but it doesn’t in any way diminish my pride in the history of this nation, which has literally shed our blood in all four corners of the earth many times in defense of someone else’s freedom and have tried to further the principles of freedom and democracy everywhere in the world. I think we’re dedicated to that proposition. And, frankly, I think we’ve done a pretty good job.

McCain's passionate statement about American exceptionalism (and Woodruff's sense of disbelief that anyone could possibly think America was better than any other country) evoked absolute dead silence from the Columbia crowd. I think John McCain was somewhat taken aback that there was no response to this.

I think this perfectly exemplifies what it has come down to in this country: a great number of Americans--mostly of the Democrat and brainwashed leftist persuasion--don't think America is anything special. They live in the freest, best off, most productive, most generous country on the globe, and they don't think that's anything special.

Instead of being proud of their own country, they feel shame. Instead of seeing America as a "shining light on the hill" they believe it exemplifies all that is evil in the world. "No, no, no! Not God bless Amerika! God Damn Amerika!" And you wonder why the Reverend Wright saga didn't take down the Obama campaign when far less incendiary comments have thoroughly destroyed previous presidential campaigns?

The dead silence at Columbia, one of the supposed "gems" of American academia bespeaks of a deadness of the soul that is truly pathetic.

Of the many comments, this one rang a bell:

I tuned in at exactly that point of the Q&A and was immediately disgusted by Woodruff's little drama - implying that America is not "better", then trying to trap McCain into saying that it was, thus creating a "gotcha" for all the widdle Progressives to perseverate incessantly about for the rest of their very sad lives. [Do these people remind anyone else of Dana Carvey's SNL Church Lady character?]

But McCain slam-dunked it right back down all their whiney throats, imo, with what I thought was a brilliant exposition of America's exceptional dream at work. He was so on fire that I was "speechless" myself for a few seconds.

The reality of Palin, especially vs Obama, already has these elitist infants nearly corralled within their playpens. It should be both interesting and gratifying to see what the America/self haters do if McCain keeps effectively slamming the reality of America as conceived and at work in the real world into their oso Progressive/Defeatist fantasyland bubble - as the rest of real America watches.

Two reports highlight the astonishing official Democratic attacks on the faith of a Catholic candidate for Congress in Virginia. He is accused of belonging to a Catholic organization which they say favors "rolling back women's rights," which is nonsense.

Fidelis, a national Catholic organization, had this to say:

The ads explicitly attack Fimian for his association with Legatus, a prominent Catholic social organization that does not take any political stands. The group was heralded by the late Pope John Paul II, and is active in providing spiritual assistance to business leaders in dioceses across the country... [T]o attack a faithful Catholic because of his private association with a non political group that is well respected and active in the Church smacks of a level of religious bigotry that has no place in American politics.

A disgusted Catholic blogger said this:

This is how desperate the Democratic Party has become -- it now wages deceitful bigoted smear campaigns on a candidate's Catholic faith.

The attack ads on the candidate's faith are sponsored by the official Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, so this is not some aberrant local foulup. It's horrifying enough that the Democratic party's presidential candidate is the most pro-abortion public official in America, one who seeks to bring back partial-birth abortion -- which is opposed by 75% of all Americans. Now it is affirmatively attacking a candidate for being a good Catholic. That's a sure way to drive Catholics out of the party altogether. People of all faiths who seek to live a good life should be appalled.

It's pretty sad when you have to read a British newspaper (or the Jerusalem Post) to get a fair view of the McCain/Palin ticket. But Gerard Baker, the U.S.correspondent for the Times of London, thankfully continues his objective commentary about the campaign that is now entering its final phase. (Excerpts follow.)

So here's why she matters.

First of all she offers an opportunity for an ailing Republican party to reconnect with ordinary Americans. She's conservative, but her conservatism is not that of the intolerant, uncomprehending white male sort that has so hurt the party in recent years. She is much closer to a model of the lives of ordinary Americans - working mother, plainspoken everywoman juggling home and office - than any Republican leader in memory.

(June 30, 2008, with her youngest, Trig, food shopping.)

The contrast with Mr Obama is especially powerful. The very fact that Mrs Palin didn't go to elite schools but succeeded nonetheless - the very ordinariness with which she so piquantly jabbed Mr Obama on Wednesday - is what will make her so appealing to Americans. And as a pro-life conservative she debunks in one swoop the enduring myth that all women subscribe to the obligatory nostrums of radical feminism.

But there's more to it than that.

The opportunity for McCain-Palin is not reaction, but reform - a reform rooted in a distant conservatism that could be due for a comeback.

Hailing from Arizona and Alaska, the Republican ticket has a chance to rekindle a western conservatism different from the old Yankee paternalist sort or the Bible Belt version. They like their guns out there (some still kill their own food) and they are pro-life and deeply pro-America, of course. But at a time of grave challenges, the themes of economic freedom and opportunity, the resistance to the idea that government holds all the answers, could resonate with voters.

This is an election, as the Democrats have realised all along, about an America on the cusp of change. With the moose-hunting, establishment-taunting Mrs Palin at his side, Mr McCain might represent a bigger change than the one that his opponents are offering.

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Though US Magazine is trashing Sarah Palin in its cover article out tomorrow with a lurid cover caption "Babies, Lies & Scandals," their online readers seem to be rejecting the attempted brainwashing. (The owner of the magazine is a Obama supporter and contributor who has maxed out.)

Poll of US Magazine online readers