It is now time to nail McCain to the wall for being a closet democrat. Let’s get this party started:

Interesting pledge of allegiance battle

Liberals in NASA promoting the global warming hoax get busted

(in my opinion, the first order of business for the next Republican president should be to fire every single registered democrat working for the federal government in any capacity, most importantly for the CIA, FBI, or NASA. Bush made a crucial mistake by not doing this. see the scores of secrets leaked to the New York Times).

It appears that the worldwide backlash to the global warming hoax (new socialism) has begun.

A reader writes:

Did you hear this? It was on NPR the morning after the election. I’ve listened to it a few times, and out of all the commentary I’ve heard and read so far on the election, this is the one piece that keeps coming back to me.

If Weaver is trying to make it sound like the McCain campaign made a mistake when they let him get away, mission accomplished as far as I’m concerned.

I heard another commentator today say something to the extent that McCain made two huge mistakes:

1) Suspending his campaign to tackle the economic crisis.
2) Selecting Palin.

On the second point, this commentator didn’t seem to be any sort of Palin-hater. Rather, he said that one of the strong selling points of the McCain campaign is (was) experience, and that McCain’s attacks on Obama had been most effective when they focused on Barack’s relative lack of experience. The commentator asserts, however, that McCain’s ability to aggressively and compellingly attack Obama on this point was substantially weakened when he selected a running mate that also lacked experience.

The commentator also said McCain took a gamble on suspending his campaign and lost, but that suspending the campaign wasn’t a bad idea outright. Rather, McCain just didn’t capitalize on it in the appropriate way, and he came across looking desperate rather than confident and Presidential.

The BBC apparently has some serious Palin-haters, which surprised me. Have you been over to their web site since the election? They’ve been filling the front page with clips showing Palin calling her detractors “jerks,” and also the clip from Fox news where O’Reilly’s correspondent claims Palin doesn’t know which three countries are in NAFTA, or that Africa is a continent and not a country. Putting my personal thoughts about Palin aside, I must say I found these editorial selections to be rather surprising coming from the BBC, which usually seems fairly staid an conservative.

Anyway, all this is to say that I think the real problem with McCain and his campaign probably was this his strategists (and McCain himself) made many, many disastrous mistakes in working with and handling the media. I bet the campaign will literally become a case study in political science and perhaps PR classes on how not to work with the media.

In contrast, Obama’s handlers just hit the freakin’ media-spin ball out of the park, man. Among other things, they really get web2.0 and its power. There was a short piece from a NYTimes Bits blog about how their YouTube commercials were viewed a bazillion times, and, based on how much money the equivalent would have cost using MSM, they estimate the use of YouTube saved the campaign tens of millions of dollars.

My Reply Part I:

There is some serious infighting on the GOP side, which tends to happen when groups lose an alpha male, or the new alpha male is weak. That was definitely the case with the McCain campaign. There is a theory that Mitt Romney’s little army of Mormons was absorbed into the McCain camp and have been systematically sabotaging the campaign ever since. I mean, it’s beyond ridiculous. You’d never hear about anonymous staffers hating on a Bush-Cheney campaign, much less Barack Obama, or Clinton. The other theory is that it is McCain’s people and he is really being a jerk because everyone came to see Sarah and she raised 100 million for the RNC and he got zero for his campaign.

I actually tend to believe the former theory. Another staffer (Steve Biegun) have come up and put on the record that Palin knows full and well about Africa and follows issues in the Sudan and Egypt and Somalia. That staffer are named, the ankle biters are not. In general, I tend to believe those that go on the record over those that remain anonymous. Christians pay attention to the middle east, and I find it hard to imagine that your Todd Palin works for BP all your life and you don’t know where Nigeria, Libya, and other oil rich African countries are. I know people that are the reddest necks in the world, that barely made it through high school, that worked in Nigeria. I’m willing to bet Todd and Sarah know some people like that too. I think the NAFTA thing is equally ridiculous and hard to swallow, particularly since she is governor of a border state and negotiated a pipeline deal with a Canadian company.

Sarah was calling the ankle biters jerks, not critics.

Look, she has enough gaffes as it is by which you can judge her. I’m just saying don’t take this post-election stuff too seriously, b/c it is probably someone trying to make Mitt look smarter by knocking her down.

I supported Mitt in the primary but now think he is pretty much a bitter jerk and I won’t support him in the future, regardless as to whether these guys were his aides. He pretty much sandbagged it for McCain. I agree with you regarding web 2.0, but Howard Dean had all that fundraising too and look where it got him. Dean pretty much took a shiv to the Clintons with the Florida and Michigan thing, which like it or not would have swung this whole thing back to the dynasty. And like it or not, the honest thing to do would have been to let Florida count and let Obama be put on the Michigan ballot in the first place. So, all the web 2.0 stuff is fine and dandy but you need a good candidate and specifically Obama needed some love from party to make it happen.

Reply Part II:

The postmortems are all fine and dandy but seriously, given the gift wrapping Bush, Paulson, and Bernanke gave to the democrats with this horrible, horrible bailout, I can’t come up with a hypothetical situation in which McCain wins.

Sure, McCain could have voted ‘present’ on the bailout like Barack Obama did, but I can’t imagine that would win him any converts. I would have preferred that he vote against the bailout and cite it as another difference between him and George W Bush, just like the surge, election reform, torture, greenhouse gases reform, but that would have required McCain wanting to win the election rather than save face for his fellow Senators and keep the dudes in the back (i.e. the bankers) happy. Even if he does come out against the bailout, the press would pin the stocks dropping squarely on McCain. Instead, we are coerced into spending more money in a year on the bailout than the entire gulf war, and the stocks drop like a rock anyway. So, nope, I can’t talk myself into a McCain win.

Republicans will never out-Democrat Democrats, so when Republicans act like Democrats you might as well vote for the Democrats. Make sense?

The reason why the bailout didn’t pass the House the first time is that a majority of constituents like me went nuts and kept the phones ringing. From what I hear, reps that voted no were strong-armed by GOP party leadership into changing their position. My rep, John Culberson voted no both times because he has a pair.

On Palin, I can’t see any VP pick that brought more to the table. That is not a plaudit for Palin. Bobby Jindal wanted nothing to do with it and he just got elected (Jan 08) anyway. Mitt Romney, Tim Pawlenty, nah. Mike Huckabee? Maybe you win Iowa, maybe Virginia, I doubt it. I think most anyone excited about Huckabee (lower class whites, evangelical Christians) were voting for Palin, too. The media wanted McCain to pick Lieberman, but that’s just because the media wanted Barack Obama to have a 50 state landslide. Jerks.

As for Weaver, when McCain ditched him his candidacy was considered toast and everyone was writing up how great Guiliani was. Many claim that ditching Weaver was the one thing that turned around McCain’s candidacy in 2007. So, he seems like a nice guy, but take it with a grain of salt.

The Democrats and President-elect Barack Obama have the conch shell now.  Barack Obama ran an incredible, disciplined campaign, outclassed a more moderate juggernaut,  but ethically challenged Clinton dynasty.  I think Barack Obama is a good person with a redistributionist philosophy that is wrong for America.  But he was disarming enough to persuade an overwhelming majority to trust him anyway.  That is no small feat, given some of his natural handicaps, and he deserves credit for that.  I didn’t vote for Obama, but I respect him as an adversary, and wish that more politicians on our side had his intelligence and genuine charm.  John McCain’s loss once again showed that you need to provide not only fear of the other candidate, but need a compelling reason to vote for  your candidate and party.  McCain openly stated his ignorance of economic issues, and though Barack Obama voted “present” when the bailout was passed, McCain couldn’t distance himself enough from George W Bush.

Will President Obama overreach with nationalization of industry as President Bush did with the Iraqi war?  Most likely.  George W Bush demonized Islamic terrorism, Barack Obama demonizes Exxon Mobile.  Like Bush, Obama will be a man of his word.  Just as Bush promised a tax cut and stuck to it, Obama promises to bankrupt any energy company that builds a new power plant.   I expect that he will also keep those important promises to spread the wealth.

His speeches are very uplifting, and many people find that voting for a young, charming, intelligent, biracial candidate makes them feel good about themselves.  Tomorrow people will find that not much is changed about humans and their behavior.  The planet will not heal starting tomorrow.  Neighborhoods that were high crime today will be the same tomorrow.  People who are struggling to pay the bills will not have a free pass starting January 21st, 2009.  How long will the honeymoon last based on such lofty promises?

Being lifted up is great only if you know you have a safe landing.  Good luck, Barack Obama, you will need it.

‘I’ll keep my freedom, my guns,
and my money, you can keep THE CHANGE’.

Vote for McCain/Palin

A brief article on the history of why the healthcare system got to where it is, and why the McCain plan is actually the only one of the two (between his and Obama’s) that can truly accomplish anything:  by putting more control back in the hands of the consumer instead of simply shifting control from EVIL Insurance companies to the ALL-LOVING Federal Government.

Mr. Jacoby is very explicit in explaining the history of the problem:

During World War II, federal wage controls barred employers from raising their workers’ salaries, but said nothing about fringe benefits. So firms competing for employees at government-restricted wages began offering medical insurance to sweeten employment offers. Even sweeter was that employers could deduct those benefits as business expenses, yet employees didn’t have to report them as taxable income. For a while the IRS resisted that interpretation, but Congress eventually enshrined the tax-exempt status of employer-based medical insurance in law.

Result: a radical shift in the way Americans paid for medical care. With health benefits tax-free if they were employer-supplied, tens of millions of Americans were soon signing up for medical insurance through work. As tax rates rose, so did the incentive to keep expanding health benefits. No longer was medical insurance reserved for major expenditures like surgery or hospitalization. Americans who would never think of using auto insurance to cover tune-ups and oil changes grew accustomed to having their medical insurer pay for yearly physicals, prescriptions, and other routine expenses.

Now, I actually don’t agree with the part of McCain’s proposal that taxes employer-based coverage.  I’m more interested in parity (making sure that individuals get the same tax cut), than I am a punitive approach.  But it at least cuts at the core of the problem: the individual has been left out of the process for far too long.  It’s actually just a little too harsh.

I preferred the plan that President Bush proposed in a State of the Union address a few years ago (seems like so long ago), and that was a tax-credit (and a pretty sizable one, if I recall) for those participating in Consumer-Driven (High-Deductible) Health Plans.  That would have accomplished a lot as far as getting more control of costs back in the hands of the consumer without giving a Democratic contender ammunition to call the Republican contender a tax-hiker.

(Mirrored on gcfin.com.)

Let me start out by congratulating Krugman on winning the Nobel Prize.  His early work on Free Trade and economy of scale apparently won plaudits among his colleagues.  If Krugman would think before he writes and not insist on shilling for the Democratic party, I think his articles would be more thought-provoking and ultimately persuasive.  As it is, he has made quite a career throwing pies at the GOP, to the extent that many of his colleagues find him to be an embarrassment.

It’s not necessarily dangerous that he criticizes Bush or McCain, it just that he gives bad advice, and has little idea of what kind of policy is a way out of the current economic problems.  Consider the main thesis of October 16th column.

But right now, increased government spending is just what the doctor ordered, and concerns about the budget deficit should be put on hold.
***
But he (Barack Obama) will face a chorus of inside-the-Beltway types telling him that he has to be responsible, that the big deficits the government will run next year if it does the right thing are unacceptable.

He should ignore that chorus. The responsible thing, right now, is to give the economy the help it needs. Now is not the time to worry about the deficit.

Let’s distill that down, or crystallize it. Inside-the-Beltway types tell Barack he should be responsible, and he should ignore them. Krugman says the responsible thing to do is spend, baby, spend. Krugman doesn’t list what the government should spend money on, either he doesn’t know or he knows but doesn’t want to share with America, because he knows it will be unpopular. Just like Barack Obama, Krugman offers a diet of hot fudge sundaes, low taxes and high spending. Everyone is a winner, right?

At least Krugman is consistent, at least as of 2006. He criticized a return to Rubinomics when the Democrats gained control of the legislature.

Before the Democrats had the purse strings, Krugman sounded the alarm for fiscal responsibility as a tool to hammer the Bush administration over tax cuts. Krugman was wily because he never attacked deficit spending per se but blamed everything on Bush’s tax cut.

The Bush tax cuts, not the retirement programs, are the main reason why our fiscal future suddenly looks so bleak.

But if our fiscal future looked so bleak in 2003, why is it that fiscal responsibility in 2008 is, well, irresponsible? Duh! Democrats control spending and have a chance at the White House. More social engineering for Krugman to cheer about, and more walking around money for ACORN. Win-win.

Bubbles arise from great economic times, as pointed out by Friedman and many others.  Here’s an excerpt from a post 9/11 interview with Peter Robinson:

Milton Friedman: …let me show you what the dilemma that Alan Greenspan and the Fed were in because this is not the typical circumstance. You’re at the Fed, you’re Mr. Greenspan, what are you looking back at? You’re looking back at the fact that the 1990’s in the United States was an incredible period of rapid expansion, both in the economy and especially in the stock market. What prior example do you think of? The 1920’s…

Peter Robinson: That’s what I think of.

Milton Friedman: …almost identically the same rate of inflation of the twenties, well lack of inflation, low inflation in the twenties but enormous increase in the–in the market, a great bull market. The economy very much in a good shape. And the twenties, like the nineties, were brought about by technological innovation and change. In the twenties, it was the adaptation to the electricity and to the automobile. In the nineties, we all know that it was the computer, the Internet and so on. What other example do you think of? The 1980’s in Japan. Identical pattern. Rapid economic growth as a result of technological improvement and change, a bull market, ‘29 and ‘89, what do you observe afterwards?

Peter Robinson: Bad events.

Milton Friedman: Bad, bad, bad. ‘29, a catastrophe. In–in ‘89 in Japan, stagnation for a ten-year period. All right, now you’re Mr. Greenspan looking back at those episodes, what are you going to say to yourself? You’re going to say, if I have to take a chance, I’d rather take a chance on a little inflation than on producing–re–on–on reproducing those episodes.

Here Friedman is disagreeing with Kudlow, who is probably the best example of a GOP counterpart to Krugman. Like Krugman, Kudlow is a shill for his party who has no problem with deficit spending. Amazingly, Krugman may have more in common with Kudlow than with Rubin.

All these years I’ve heard so many praises for Robert Rubin as Treasury secretary, because he balanced the budget. Never is it mentioned in the press that it was Newt Gingrich and the GOP that devised those budgets. Clinton and a democratic congress raised taxes and cut military spending, and a GOP congress later cut welfare and other spending. Without a budget deficit, American bonds were attractive long term options to foreign and domestic investors. And the bubble began. But let’s not conflate the causes of great economic times with bad reactions to the cause. In this case the bad reactions were keeping interest rates artificially low for far too long, increased deficit spending and a culture of debt, and shady mortgage practices by banks and government sponsored entities Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Krugman, like Bernanke, Kudlow, and Paulson, wants to continue the bad policy, unlike the others he wants to do so to cheerlead social engineering efforts like socialized medicine and unemployment insurance.

The left wing Keynesian Democrats and Monetarian “Republicans” want to do to health care what they have done to the housing market. They want deficits as large as possible, until they can convince enough people to increase taxes, to grow the government. The NYC-DC corridor sings the chorus of a fat, bloated, Rubenesque government policies, when the answer is a leaner, meaner, Rubinesque approach. Despite the fact that Robert Rubin is an advisor to the Obama campaign, the content of the answers by the candidates in the debates suggest that only McCain has the fiscally sound approach.

Schaeffer said “Climate Control” Sounds right.

McCain is on the attack today. Finally. He runs through that wind, geothermal, nuclear, solar list pretty quickly, like he always does.

Obama wants to look at offshore drilling. If he wants to look at it he should come to the Gulf. Touches on automobile protectionism.

(According to Bush and McCain) Obama say, “Any trade agreement is a good trade agreement”. Unbalanced free trade with South Korea.

McCain touts the value of free trade agreements with Columbia. Obama counters that “labor leaders” in Columbia are being killed; dog whistle stuff for the lefties. Obama is angling for Michigan votes with his discussion of automobiles.

McCain hammers the fact that Obama wants to sit down with Hugo Chavez. Ouch again. Compares Obama to Herbert Hoover.

Health care= control costs vs. expand coverage. Obama: We must do both….ugh. Cue the tearjerking story. Recites his lines well. Wants universal health care without saying it.

What McCain should say is, “Obama wants to do for health care what the Democrats did for the housing industry, he wants a health care version of Fannie and Freddie.”

I yawned one long time when Obama described McCain’s health plan.

McCain called Obama, “Senator Government”. One guy in the audience laughed.

Abortion = sorry this is a yawner of an issue. To all you young abortion-crazy ladies out there, we republicans won’t mess with your uteri.

Every time Obama says “fairness”, I throw up a little bit in my mouth. Obama pushes equal pay for equal work for women. The ERA is a 25 year old issue.

McCain hammers Obama on voting “present”, voting present on partial birth abortion.

Education: We spend more money, yet we are so far behind the rest of the world. Obama feels that recruiting more teachers for higher standards and pay. College students take on 50-60K of debt, (they can’t work?) Obama will pay college students if they work for ACORN (not really what he said, but probably). He wants to throw more money at Head Start and College Loans, as if that works.

McCain wants to give parents a choice on where they want to send their kids. “Throwing money at the problem is not the answer”. This would be my answer for about half the questions.

Obama: Tradition of local control of schools. No Child Left Behind, NCLB, unfunded mandates. Blah blah blah.

McCain: Defends NCLB (ugh), but spending money isn’t always the answer. McCain angles for the autistic parent vote….maybe not a great strategy.

Closing Statements:
YAWNZERS

Obama : Invest in the American people again. The subtext being that Americans cannot invest in themselves. Renew a spirit of sacrifice and responsibility. “I will work tirelessly” - this scares me.

McCain thinks that Fannie and Freddie are the problem with our economy.

Obama wants to spread the wealth around.

Obama said he wants a net spending cut, pay as you go. No subsidies to insurance companies. Investments in everything which will pay off down the road.

McCain tries to answer about spending cuts with a Clinton plan. Spending freeze. Government spending is out of control. McCain actually looks like he will cut spending.

Obama thinks some programs are underfunded. How he can answer this way with a straight face. Blames Bush.

McCain says he isn’t Bush, and Obama supported more spending. Confronts Obama directly about standing up to leaders in his own party.

Obama supports charter schools and clean coal? I never knew.

Schaeffer said this campaign is nasty. I have no idea what he is talking about. This is as kid gloves as it gets. Last time things were this docile was 1996…uh-oh.

John Lewis made an out of bounds remarks linking McCain with segregation.

Barack Obama keeps things real slow which I think works for him. He thinks long enough to not say the wrong thing. He has spent a long time not saying the wrong thing, not saying what is really on his mind.

It’s too bad Barack Obama didn’t say, “We need to spread the wealth around so people can have walking around money”.

Neither one of these guys have any charm, they both take themselves VERY seriously.

McCain asks about ACORN, Ayers. Ouch. Finally! Ayers comes up, McCain says “I don’t care about some washed up terrorist”. ACORN pays people to register voters, but they filled out forms (illegally). Obama lies about the moter voter case he handled with ACORN. He lobbied on their behalf for several cases, including a lawsuit against Citigroup lowering lending standards.

A question about running mates. Yawns. Joe Biden = Scranton. Sarah Palin = Reformer…A Bresh of Freath air.

These are a couple of excellent articles (here and here, registration required and recommended) from Clive Crook at the Financial Times.  He points out how obviously the Liberal Elite and the Democratic party hold in low regard the very people they purportedly are so ardently representing.  A couple of excerpts:

Democrats speak up for the less prosperous; they have well-intentioned policies to help them; they are disturbed by inequality, and want to do something about it. Their concern is real and admirable. The trouble is, they lack respect for the objects of their solicitude. Their sympathy comes mixed with disdain, and even contempt.

Democrats regard their policies as self-evidently in the interests of the US working and middle classes. Yet those wide segments of US society keep helping to elect Republican presidents. How is one to account for this? Are those people idiots? Frankly, yes – or so many liberals are driven to conclude. Either that or bigots, clinging to guns, God and white supremacy; or else pathetic dupes, ever at the disposal of Republican strategists. If they only had the brains to vote in their interests, Democrats think, the party would never be out of power. But again and again, the Republicans tell their lies, and those stupid damned voters buy it.

And…

Efforts to smear the governor proceed at a frantic pace. My guess would be that there are now more journalists on assignment in Alaska than bothered to turn up for the Republican convention in St Paul, sifting through dustbins, interrogating Palin family acquaintances (extra credit for those with a grievance) and subjecting Ms Palin’s expenses claims to a fanatical scrutiny which I dare say their own record-keeping, or that of most senators, might not withstand.

Of course, they will find things. They may even find something important. But the sheer swarming zeal for trivial malfeasance and family embarrassments is rapidly raising the bar for impropriety. I think that many voters – and not just committed Republicans – find this whole spectacle disgusting, so on top of everything else Ms Palin is now getting a sympathy vote.

I, like the author, can’t help but laugh at the trap that the Democrats have walked into here.  It’s very simply a microcosm and expose on their attitudes in general.  It’s particularly amazing to me when I have conversations with supporters of Obama (you know who you are) who accuse McCain and Palin (and all their EVIL minions) of deliberately and consistently manipulating and fooling the American people into following them.  As if their beliefs have absolutely no value in and of themselves, it’s simply the Republican machine grabbing power.  You can’t simply disagree with the Liberal viewpoint, you simply must be too dense and stupid to grasp it.  There’s an astounding sense of intellectual snobbery matched by a decided lack of intellectual depth that continually boggles the mind.

The further irony (as Mr. Crook adeptly points out) is that Obama himself would never abide by this nonsense.  If his latest book is any indication, he seeths at the concept of insulting an entire group of people based on their beliefs.  And even though his campaign has eventually made its way into a predictable and depressing class warfare stump speech, I believe as the author does that his initial reaction to Palin was the right one, and it was a sincere one.  Unfortunately, the undeniable support he receives from the media is not matched by a solid control of it, and he couldn’t stop them from descending on Wasila like a pack of wild Banshees trying to find crazy preachers and 2nd grade classmates of Palin who would talk bad about her.

The 2008 convention was the most sloppy, unorganized convention I’ve ever seen.

Joe Lieberman was a disaster.  I guess to make Sarah look good by comparison?

I felt bad for Mitt Romney for trying to throw out a low of red meat.  He looked desperate out there.

Mike Huckabee has killer charm on the pulpit podium.  When Sarah mentioned that “Some politicians use ‘change’ to promote their careers, and some leaders, like John McCain use their careers to promote change.”  He mouthed, “That’s a good line”.  This was almost as cute as when Piper licked Trig’s hair.

Guiliani was the perfect warm-up for Palin.  When he shrugged and laughed at Obama’s community organizing, I think he summed up the first impression of millions of Americans.

Michael Steele is quite a capable “official Barack Obama Criticizer”.

Rudy and more importantly Sarah Palin salvaged an otherwise dreary and unorganized convention.  The media is besides themselves because every attempt to malign Palin’s record only highlights Obama’s thin resume.

Is Lindsay Graham the Clay Aiken of the Republican Party, or what?

Tom Ridge is the warm-up?  Yikes.  My wife kept asking ‘Where is Condoleeza Rice’…I think she has a girl crush on Condi.

Mac delivers his speech rather badly, I think.  It may not be his fault, it seems his lung capacity is low, so he pauses a lot, and everyone foolishly applauses every pause.  The Big Mac’s timing is bad and he’s shaken a lot worse than W was in 2004 by the protestors.  W could give a good speech, but he’s horrible in debates.  With McCain, he’s horrible at these speeches but rather good in debates, at least in the ones I’ve seen against GOP contenders.

The backdrop is a nightmare.

Obama’s style and strategy seems a lot like a W from the left…raise a lot of money, run a tight ship.  He orchestrated an audacious convention but couldn’t overcome the party crashing of the Clintons.  W’s 2004 convention was airtight. In spite of itself, the GOP convention was a winner for them because Obama is so hindered by the Clintons.