Please read this

Often the sanest voice of reason coming from Washington politics and commentary belongs to Charles Krauthammer. I simply do not know how to make a better case for why one ought to vote for McCain than he has here.

Get off my plane

Barack Obama's campaign booted reporters from the Washington Times, New York Post, and Dallas Morning News off the airplane The One jets around the country spreading hope in. Meanwhile, various bloggers and unaccredited "reporters" will have more leg room in Change Force One. Common denominator among those three newspapers? All endorsed McCain for President.

This all on the heels of the Obama campaign's "cutting off" of a Florida news station that dared ask Joe Biden tough questions about Barack's preposterous economic policies.

Welcome to your Brave New World. The Fairness Doctrine will be arriving shortly.

But what does Biden think?

Is there really anything else you can say after watching this?

McCain: A Clear and Present Choice

By: R.J. Moeller

“The ability to discern what laws and policies best safeguard the dignity and rights of the citizens depends upon a careful inquiry in which intelligence is tutored by experience and reflection guided by an instinct for the right and the good.”

-Cardinal Avery Dulles

Would anyone say that this quote accurately describes any of the politicians they know? I’ve been at a loss this past week, racking my brain for any current political figure that fully embodies Mr. Dulles’s insightful categorization. However, the more I thought about it, what did eventually come to mind was that it partly describes Barack Obama and partly describes John McCain. Your response to which of the two parts you prefer in a leader will likely predict your vote come next Tuesday.

We like to think that the people representing our district, our state, and our nation are the best and brightest around. Ten minutes of watching the floor of Congress on C-SPAN or a brief scan of the average politician’s dossier clears that misnomer right up.

We on one hand do need to be respectful to and grateful for those who voluntarily choose to represent us. But it must be remembered that since we are the ones who put politicians into office, we are their bosses. They work for us and thus we truly do get the leaders (and subsequent policies they enact) we deserve.

So what do the American voters of 2008 deserve? Will the future leaders of this country, come November 5^th, be up to the challenge Cardinal Dulles has articulated above? As far as the selection of our next Commander-in-Chief goes, here are some points of contemplation.

The junior senator from Illinois, Barack Obama, has intelligence. This fact no one refutes. Intelligence is a valued commodity to be sure, and often reflects a mixture of a God-given capacity to learn and an inner-drive that propels the smart student to become a brilliant one. Obama was a stellar scholar from all accounts and without knowing the man personally, I will concede that his persona of being an extremely smart guy is accurate.

It must be pointed out though that grades alone can be deceiving in the perception of someone’s intellect, and vice versa, as was the case in 2004 when it was revealed that the painfully stoic and allegedly cerebral John Kerry had in fact technically received lower grades at Yale than did George W. Bush. At any rate, grades and scholastic achievements certainly do matter and Obama has the stats to back up the charge of being an intellectually gifted politician.

But is intelligence alone enough? Experience, the thing John McCain appropriately made his campaign primarily about this past summer (right about the same time he began to overtake Obama’s sizable lead in the polls) is intelligence’s “guide,” its superior. Experience, in this context, insinuates a high level of intelligence to begin with. Experience is the map by which one navigates the tumultuous waters of life, especially political life. To rise as high in our political system as John McCain has you simply cannot be dumb. As much fun as it was for intellectual midgets like John Stewart, Michael Moore, and any one of the three Dixie Chicks to mock President Bush these past 8 years, the fact is that no dumb person could ever make it to the White House. They might be unwise, but they could never be dumb.

Of course experience alone isn’t enough. I have more than 20 years of experience being a baseball fan of the stupidest team on the planet, yet return to the television set come each new Opening Day when they take the field at Wrigley. I shouldn’t be trusted with the managing of a Fantasy Baseball team. Or how about the 20 years of experience I have of always getting heartburn after eating post-midnight deep-dish pizza leftovers, yet still doing it every chance I get and complaining of it afterwards? I shouldn’t be trusted with a Tombstone. Evidently the quality of experience one has, and what they subsequently do with it, matters a great deal.

John McCain’s experience includes more than 20 years in the United States Navy and more than 20 years in the United States Congress. You might say it is experience we can believe in. The man was a decorated fighter pilot, prepared other soldiers for combat, and led squadrons of men into battle. The story of his years as a POW is as well documented as it is under-appreciated. Service to one’s country alone doesn’t make you honorable, as John Kerry proved, but it does speak to the heart of a man’s character.

Likewise in the Senate, McCain has personally authored more than 50 bills that eventually became laws. Most of his most well known pieces of legislation were co-authored by Democrats. Obama has 3 bills to his name, none with Republicans. McCain might have voted 90% of the time with a president who has a 30% approval rating, but Obama has a unavoidable record of voting 98% of the time with a Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid-led

Congress that boasts a 10% approval rating. Clearly the experience of McCain, the kind tested in battles both literal and figurative these past 40 years in public service to his nation, trumps whatever book smarts The One might possess. (Sorry Oprah and Kanye West.)

But there still remains to be addressed the second pairing of “reflection guided by an instinct for the right and the good” that Dulles cites as a desired qualification for our political leaders.

I have read both of Barack Obama’s memoirs, and let it never be said of him that the man is not reflective. His books are chalk full of reflection on everything from his childhood to his (former) spiritual mentor and (former) friend Pastor Jeremiah Wright to the state of American politics today. His speech on “race relations in America” he gave last March, which became necessary after his 20 year relationship with the suddenly-discovered-to-be-a-raving-lunatic Pastor Wright blew up in his face, was heralded by many in the subjective media for being poignantly self-reflective personally and collectively self-reflective on behalf of the nation.

But for all his reflection through the years, he failed to identify the inherently racist, neo-Marxist nature of his own church’s pastor and theology. He was so busy reflecting in 1995 during the writing of his first book, Dreams of My Fathers, that he failed either to learn or care that Bill Ayers, a man helping to launch Obama’s political career in his parlor that same year, was an unapologetic terrorist. And perhaps it was an over-dose of reflection in 2005 while penning The Audacity of Hope (named after a Wright sermon) that led him to overlook the fact that he was taking campaign money and receiving shockingly cheap land to build a house on from Tony Rezko, a man who has since been convicted and sentenced to prison for bribing politicians in Illinois with things like campaign contributions and cheap land.

Contrast this with a man in John McCain who made his reputation on fighting corruption and over-spending in Washington. McCain’s public record is one of a man driven by an “instinct for the good and the right.” This is what he is known for and the reason he is the GOP candidate for president. He might have 7 houses, but he didn’t need any convicted felons to help in their acquisitions. He might be attacked by Obama’s campaign for bringing the issues of Wright and Ayers up this late in the election, but he didn’t sit in the pews of Trinity United Church for two decades or get his political start in the home of a defiant terrorist. He might be the man the New York Times said in August was nothing more than "Bush 3", but he is also the man the New York Times said in January was the only Republican candidate capable of blazing a new trail away from the Bush legacy.

McCain has been too busy being the only member of Congress capable of bringing the parties together in order to move legislation and judicial nominees forward to sit back and reflect as much as Professor Barack did during his hectic years in the most corrupt political system on the planet (Chicago). But would anyone say because he only has one memoir that McCain doesn’t know himself or what he believes? Think of the conviction and integrity it takes to be in the Senate for that long and never take a single dollar of earmarked money for your state. Think of the quality of character one must possess not only to endure imprisonment and torture in a Vietnamese POW camp for more than 5 years, but to then come back home and admit that you had yielded to the pain of multiple broken bones and ribs and signed an admission of guilt document early on in your captivity.

Barack Obama insults the intelligence of all American voters when he won’t admit he heard Jeremiah Wright say even one semi-racist statement in 20 years, but John McCain, even at his own convention this past September, in front of millions of people, admitted to having been initially broken by his Vietcong captors before summoning the courage to fight on for the sake of his fellow prisoners and country.

The choice couldn’t be clearer. McCain not being perfect (or anywhere near it) does not cancel out his obvious advantage over Barack Obama in all the categories that really matter. Forty years of unparalleled experience and a proven, honed instinct for discerning the good trumps scholarly intelligence and self-congratulatory reflection every time.

Unfortunately for all of us, even for those who end up voting for Obama, it might not this time.

No Bias Here

Michael Malone of ABC News laments the painfully bias way in which the media has covered this year's general election. It's a shame that the free press has chosen to use that freedom to advance a liberal agenda under the cloak of "objectivity."


Here's a snippet from the article:

"The sheer bias in the print and television coverage of this election campaign is not just bewildering, but appalling. And over the last few months I've found myself slowly moving from shaking my head at the obvious one-sided reporting, to actually shouting at the screen of my television and my laptop computer."

The One?

I guess you could call this 2001 interview Obama gave "interesting", but I'd prefer to call it simply one more item on a mile-long list proving this guy isn't fit to be our next President. The guy is a SOCIALIST. The fact that people aren't alarmed by this is probably the most disturbing thing of all.

A nation gets the leaders it deserves, so what does Barack tell us about ourselves? Sad.

Why Chuck is voting McCain

Charles Krauthammer, as only he can, makes the case in Friday's Washington Post for John McCain as our next Commander-in-Chief and explains why he would rather, "Lose an election than lose my bearings."

Medved Sums It Up

If you want to know what an Obama presidency would look like and entail...read this summation by syndicated columnist and radio talk show host Michael Medved.

Here's a taste:

"Yes, the President and Congress tinker endlessly with details of the tax system or the levels of appropriation or regulation so that the growth in government and spending under President Obama could be adjusted after his departure, if not reversed.

But conservatives need to face the fact that Barack Obama has promised profound systemic changes that will be irreversible—absolutely permanent alterations of our economy and government where there is no chance at all that Republican office-holders of the future could in any way repair the damage."

Cold War Lessons For A Forgetful Nation

By: R.J. Moeller

A lot of things bewilder me. Junior high kids carrying cell phones. Liberal actors in Hollywood naming their kids after fruit and then with straight faces telling reporters they raise their kids in Europe so they’ll be more refined. Iran is on the United Nations Human Rights Council?

But one of the toughest intellectual pills to swallow continues to be the American people’s insistence upon forgetting our own history. (Even recent history.)

How it is that any American over the age of 35 could have lived through any of the Cold War, seen the collapse of Communist Russia, witnessed the remarkable improvement in the quality of life for those previously living in USSR-controlled states, and could then turn around and vote for any enthusiastically pro-big government politician at any level of power in our own country is beyond me. It truly is mind-boggling. Pulitzer-prize winning columnist Charles Krauthammer would accuse such an American voter of being on a perpetual “vacation from history.”

Collectivist, state-controlled, bureaucratic quagmires of incompetence, the kind Moscow insisted for decades would eventually come to dominate every national capital around the globe, collapsed largely under the sheer weight of their own ineffectiveness. The pro-democratic, pro-capitalistic philosophy of the Western world, led most notably by the United States and Britain, rose to the challenge of staring down yet another brand of totalitarianism in Soviet Russia as they had done in Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan.

The Cold War, a conflict primarily ideological and economic in nature, was for the hearts, minds and control of planet earth. The Communists told us these were the stakes, and the wise among us rightly believed them. In 1980, the year Ronald Reagan was elected our 40th president, the stark reality was a nuclear-armed Russian enemy that seemed to match us in size, scope, influence, and military might. By the end of 1991, the Berlin Wall had been toppled and our long-time, now one-time, Soviet adversary was being read his last rights.

The incredible fact that America actually won the Cold War, and just how unlikely that prospect previously had been to most journalists and professors during the 30 years leading up to the USSR’s defeat, is entirely lost on my generation. But people my age and younger at least have an excuse: we were like eight years old (or not yet born) when it all went down. To all of those over 35 who are voting for Obama in 2008, what is your excuse? How do you explain supporting a ticket that is proudly promising policies, tax rates, and welfare programs that would do Old Lenin’s heart proud?

In light of what history has to teach us about the West’s superiority in the realm of ideas and ideals, why are we so afraid to admit when something works? Has the Left’s jihad of political correctness and multiculturalism numbed our “objective reality” sensors? There is truth out there. There are better ways of doing things than others. Just ask the Kremlin. Free market democracy works, and works well. Bloated, nanny-state bureaucracy isn’t just inefficient, it is a terminal disease to any nation unfortunate (or foolish) enough to contract it.

In his 2006 magnum opus America Alone, distinguished author and columnist Mark Steyn describes what he believes were the two most important events of the last quarter of the 20th century: the collapse of Communism in the eastern bloc and the collapse of confidence in the West. For a few brief, fleeting moments in the early 1990’s the world marveled at the unexpected disintegration of Soviet Russia, and freedom-loving people everywhere rejoiced. But that was about it. People felt positive emotions for a while and then went back to their lives as if the previous four decades of hostility, conflict, ideological competition and proxy wars between the USSR and U.S. had never occurred. Less important still in the minds of most Americans and Western Europeans appeared to be an appreciation and understanding of how and why it was, as President Regan promised would happen during his first press conference, “We won; they lost.”

The key thing to understand here is that the Cold War was first and foremost a conflict of ideas, the largest and most important of its kind in human history. All one needs to do to corroborate this is to take a look back at all the battlefields that don’t house the memories of dead American and Russian soldiers. We can (hopefully) reel off names like Normandy, Gettysburg, and Bunker Hill to remember the physical, bloody spots where braves American soldiers paid the ultimate price for our freedom in formal military wars. The fact that we can’t do the same for the Cold War conflict with Russia speaks to its being predominantly ideological in nature. There are many correlating reasons for this, and certainly there are tragic examples like Vietnam of where real blood was shed in the name of impeding Communism, but all of it eventually brings us back to the fact that the Cold War was a war of ideas.

Three ideas in particular, Rights, Religion, and Reaganomics, were the most divisive between the two sides and offer, I believe, the most insight into why one side won and the other lost. (And to think Russia didn’t even get a “Participation” award!)

The first idea that separated “us” from “them” was the question of rights. Namely, where do citizen’s rights come from? The United States declared in 1776 that it was self-evident our Creator endowed all men with their rights, and the power to govern over other men was a temporary loan from the people. The Soviets believed their rights came from the “collectively” run entity loosely termed the “State.” The State was run entirely by intellectual and military elites who proved just how “for the worker” they were by living like kings and ruling like tyrants. Citizen’s rights came from the State and power resided solely in the hands of the State. In return for your unquestioning loyalty and value as a worker (in whichever job the State decided you were suited for), you were given “free stuff” like health care, public transportation, bread, and land. This was assuming, of course, there were enough things like doctors who were willing to work for the same pay no matter how good (or bad) they were at their jobs.

The discussion of rights ties directly into another important ideological distinction between communism and American free market democracy: religion. Karl Marx based his entire philosophy of government and economy on the fact that there was no God, and since religion was the “opiate” of the masses, it was a threat to progress and the State’s ability to plan and control society. Our Founders obviously disagreed. Some have dismissed the significance of the “God gap” that existed between the Cold War adversaries, but I cannot imagine how this didn’t factor in. Forget the theological implications of a country that says there is no higher power, and think of it purely on a “freedom of ideas” level. More than 90% of Americans claim to believe in a God of some sort. Imagine living in a state where not only was that number reversed, but it was made illegal to discuss the matter in private, let alone public.

The third important idea we differed on was Reaganomics. (This is also commonly known as capitalism.) Capitalism is essentially a recognition and admission of the unfathomable complexity found within any type of economic system. Millions of people working, selling, buying, trading, and investing cannot be coerced into effective interactions that benefit society. It just isn’t possible. It is a pipe dream that assumes Man is a creature that will put aside any and all selfish ambitions (including concern for his or her own family above other people’s families) to work hard for the “common good” so long as he has a roof over his head, food on his plate, and time for leisurely pursuits. Problems arise, as they did in the USSR, when people begin to realize that not only do those material things fail to satisfy the human soul, but that they eventually aren’t even available in economies where the motivation to excel and produce has been replaced with an indifference-producing, umbilical cord-like dependency on the State.

As Steyn describes it: “The State gradually annexed all the responsibilities of adulthood – health care, child care, care of the elderly – to the point where it effectively severed its citizens from humanity’s primal instincts, not least the survival instinct. In the American context today, the federal ‘deficit’ isn’t the problem; it’s the government programs that cause the deficit. These programs would be wrong even if Bill Gates wrote a check to cover them each month. They corrode the citizen’s sense of self-reliance to a potentially fatal degree.”

Ronald Reagan often said, “Communism only works in heaven where they don’t need it, and hell where they already have it.” Capitalism is not only compatible with our nation’s concept of liberty and freedom; it is the logical, economic manifestation of it. And even if all the theoretical mumbo-jumbo supporting capitalism is too subtle for your liking, the proof, as they say, is in the pudding. We outspent, out innovated, and outlasted the Russian Bear. Our economy doubled while theirs bottomed out. Their economy was cumbersome and unproductive; ours was agile robust. We ate bread (and Big Macs) to fill our stomachs; they drank cheap vodka to numb the pain.

We told the Soviets for decades that giant federal bureaucracies simply do not work, and they told us that capitalist pigs would eventually be strangled and left for dead by their cherished “Invisible Hand.”

Just think of how wrong they were about us, and just how right we were about them. They had the empty shelves at the grocery store. They were the merciless imperialists whose very existence was predicated on the annexation of poorer, resource-rich, 3rd world countries. They were the ones whose people had lost hope and faith in their national ideology. We won; they lost.

But we find ourselves today in what can only be described as a “mental recession.” Our parents and grandparents witnessed the triumph of American ideas and ideals over those of both the National Socialists Party in Germany and the Community Party in Russia, yet we’re so unconvinced of (or oblivious to) these facts of history that we elect (and re-elect) politicians who vote and govern as if we should be embarrassed we were right.

In this life, we defeat any chance of true and sustained progress and happiness when we make the “better” the enemy of the “best.” Because we aren’t perfect as a nation and society is no excuse for proposing policies or supporting candidates that tell us to hedge our bets on ideologies that we’ve already proven ourselves don’t work.

It’s not one election, or one president, or even one session of Congress that will stem the riptide of collectivism currently threatening to drag us out to sea. It is “we the people” standing together, unwilling to flinch in the face of candidates and movements that promise us the same deceptively alluring trade off of freedom for mirage-like comfort the Soviets were supremely confident would succeed. Communism is the logical conclusion of Socialism, which is the logical conclusion of Liberalism.

You do the math.

Can we just acknowledge that Democrats were wrong?

If you are voting for Obama, so be it. Nothing I can say will likely change your mind if you think Barack is better. But please know this: he, the entire Democratic Party (not named Joe Lieberman), and the mainstream media were WRONG ABOUT IRAQ!!! We are so close to victory and stories like this reveal that even in previously violent cities like Fallujah there is peace and stability.



Our troops and their commanders deserve all of the credit, the Left deserves none. The War in Iraq was the biggest issue of the past 5 years, and although the economic crisis has deservedly taken attention away from other matters, there is no getting around the fact that the Surge worked. This means members of Congress like Barack Obama and Joe Biden who voted against it were wrong about the single most important foreign policy issue since 2003. Even if your vote isn't swayed, know that you are electing people who would rather lose a war (when it gets tough, as all do) than lose an election.

A Cast of Unseemly Characters

Pop quiz: How many shady connections does it take to convince the American people that a relatively unknown presidential candidate might not have the best judgment?

Answer: It doesn't matter to a citizenry that hates the outgoing president more than they care about the future Commander-in-Chiefs qualifications or competency.

Nuts-and-bolts of their Tax Plans

Forget all the rhetoric, and check out the detailed research The Heritage Foundation has done on both McCain and Obama's tax proposals. Despite what each candidate might say in the heat of debate or unscripted interaction with plumbers in Ohio, this is the nuts-and-bolts of the articulated tax policy plans they'd implement.

Another good way to lose this election...

Dear Senator McCain,

Hey, its conservatism writing again to say you are running the most ridiculous campaign (not associated with Bob Dole) in a hundred years. Stop asking people like her what to do about the mortgage crisis. Stop it this instant.

Sincerely,

The People Who Support You Despite Your Apparent Desire To Lose

What do Barack Obama and the Mullash in Iran have in common?

Give up? They all think capitalism is dead (and was a bad idea to begin with). The Iranian theocratic leaders are giving us lectures on how to run a society and economy while they execute gay people and meet political dissent with a noose around the perpetrator's neck.

Good news = no news

I wonder why stories like this aren't more prominent these days? Success in Iraq is bad news from Democrats, so let's, for their sake, pretend like there isn't any.

Need another reason to vote for McCain?

How about two? Their names: Justin Timberlake and Jessica Biel.

"Pointing out that our next president could have a huge say in who sits on the U.S. Supreme Court for generations to come, and therefore play a role in the future legality of abortions, Jessica Biel added: 'Nobody should be able to say what you can do with your body.'"

The Great Divide

Dennis Prager's latest column is on the very real, and very misunderstood differences between Right and Left in America today. With how heated this presidential campaign is getting, it is more important than ever to reflect on our differences and acknowledge them in order to move forward towards a happier and healthier United States.

Mere Capitalism

Here is one of the most important articles you will read this, or any, week and it comes from the Opinion Page of today's Wall Street Journal. It is an assessment of what has gone wrong in our current economic crisis, and a call for free market-based change to the global economy. PLEASE read this.

But It Might Work For Us: Part II

by: R.J. Moeller

(if you've yet to read "Part I", click here first)

There are plenty of reasons to be upset with the government in 2008. The men and women who run that government have in many ways let us down. Some have lied to us. Some have exploited their power for personal gains that benefit only themselves. Some pursue purely partisan gains that benefit small segments of society that happen to either have enough money or sympathy to gain access to the bureaucratic meal-ticket table. Then there are some elected officials who are simply foolish, and it's a perpetual mystery who exactly put them in to office. (People actually get out of bed to vote for Nancy Pelosi...scary, huh?)

But our duties as average, patriotic citizens of this great country is to remain vigilant of those we lend power to, engaged in a political process that affects almost every part of our lives, and informed well enough to make the best possible decisions come every other November.

People are rightly fed up with corruption, greed and cronyism in Washington, right? Corruption, greed and cronyism, apart from being the types of incurable flaws written on the hearts of all human beings, are fostered and facilitated best in environments that house sources of power. So to prove just how much we hate the unbalanced pervasiveness of such flaws in our federal government Americans are currently endorsing the liberal presidential candidate promising a massive annexation of power and control, headlined by upwards of $1 trillion in new federal spending each year.

Think Saint Barack is above the "politics as usual" in the Beltway? Are you really sick of corruption and cronyism and believe Senator Obama to be the change we've been waiting for? His own top economic adviser, Franklin Raines, left the Clinton administration in 1999 to take over as the CEO of Fannie Mae where in five years he personally made more than $90 million and was forced out due to pressure from federal investigations into his decision to push for Freddie Mae to start buying up more and more bad debt. (You might remember such fatally-flawed decisions like the one to bundle bad mortgages with good ones from the current economic firestorm ignited by the collapse of Mr. Raines's lending institution.)

At least that whole thing didn’t come back to hurt any of those “little guys” Obama and Biden love to shoot the bull-market breeze with at their local Home Depot, right? Ugh.

We say we want change in the political gridlock and partisan dog-and-pony shows that typify our nation's capital, but even in the face of John McCain’s 26 years of fighting to change his own party, and universally recognized and admired ability to reach across party lines, we’re certain the right man for the job is some largely unknown party-conformist who votes to the Left of Ted Kennedy. We say we want the troops home and that we don’t want to have to go back to Iraq in the future, so we’re rejecting the man (McCain) whose plans in 2003 for a counter-insurgency strategy, and for at least 30,000 more troops, were nearly four years ahead of their time and are daily being proven to have been spot-on. If McCain’s advice had been followed initially, more troops would probably be back already having been able to enjoy the encouraging winds of victory propelling them home to proud loved ones. We say we’re scared about Sarah Palin’s qualifications to be vice president, so we’re voting for the other party’s ticket with an even less qualified presidential candidate.

The truth is, we don’t really know what we want, because we don’t really know or remember what has failed to work (or succeeded) in the past.

On one hand we don’t want to be told tough truths like that many of us are accomplices to the economic meltdown by either taking loans we couldn’t afford or by being too ignorant to realize we were being taken advantage of. We, by our voting and polling habits, and because of our culturally thin skin and shallow grasp of even the most rudimentary facets of how something like capitalism is supposed to work, have effectively told politicians to never bring anything but warm and fuzzy news about everything from wars we once supported to economic markets that experience the same up-and-down cycles we know to be consistent with the totality of life’s experiences.

Then on the other hand, we’re too busy with important things like Facebook, MySpace, and the new killer Top 40 ring-tones we hope will, once heard obnoxiously loud in the office, help to further define us as a person in the eyes of our co-workers, to find out what really is happening in our economy and government. It would be far too difficult to spin multiple intellectual plates at once and recognize that our economy crashed because of a volatile mixture of over-regulation in areas such as who had to be given loans, under-regulation for those who were insuring the risky loans, exploitation of government-created loopholes by private companies, a system artificially propped up on low interest rates that was banking on a continuous rise in housing market prices, and everything compounded by a weakened U.S. dollar and the 2^nd highest corporate tax rates in the world.

We put our head in the sand when the finger is pointed even vaguely in our direction, and pour cement in that same hole our head is in when someone offers any theory for the economic disaster other than “It must be conservatives’ fault because they like those mysterious free markets.” (Note: “Free markets” are also loosely defined as “the best possible chance for prosperity, conducted in the confines of voluntarily agreed upon economic interactions among free people.”)

We’re completely unable or unwilling to separate the ideas that work from the fallible politicians who attempt to implement them. Even more predictable, when it become abundantly clear that any politicians with a “D” in front of their names are neck-deep in aiding and abetting some of the root causes of the problems we face, we allow the media to bait-and-switch us with the same reheated Left-over story lines (“Capitalism failed”, “Republicans hate children”, “Bush is a ninny and must have accidentally pulled the ‘crappy economy’ lever on the same machine that Dick Cheney built to control the weather patterns near New Orleans”, etc., etc.) that should have been thrown out with yesterday’s Keith Olbermann monologues.

If something like capitalism works, as we know that it clearly does, then patent support for it, and constant articulation of it, ought to be a prerequisite for any politician we would even consider voting for. This shouldn’t be a “Republican” issue; it should be a non-negotiable “keeping America as strong and prosperous as possible” issue.

But it doesn’t bother us to hear Democrats like Obama and Biden say that it is “patriotic” to pay more taxes in a time when implementation of such a short-sighted policy would mean sustained recession. It doesn’t bother us for liberals to imprudently state that “health insurance in America isn’t a privilege, but a right” when implementation of universal health care (especially in light of the federal government’s inability to fix even Social Security) would further devastate our economy and ensure that Socialism would be our only option left. (This forced march towards Socialism, coincidentally, was Karl Marx’s prediction for America’s eventual fate more than 150 years ago.) It hasn’t bothered us to hear Obama say that the federal government will “take from some to give to others” because we never bothered to read basic texts like the Federalist Papers or Wealth of Nations that explain what the country we live in is all about, let alone documents like the Communist Manifesto to find out more on what the Left is all about.

Americans are historically leery of any who seek power over them, and with good reason. The reason someone like John McCain has stood out, and honestly, even reached this impressive level of consideration and attention, is precisely because of his commitment to traditional American ideals of governmental accountability, de-centralized powers, fiscal responsibility, strong national defense, and independent thinking at the cost of being unpopular.

A vote for McCain in 2008, more than anything else, is both a responsible appraisal of the tumultuous world stage we find ourselves acting in the lead role on, and the chance to preemptively reject the same inherently flawed Leftist dogmas American voters seem to “forget” don’t work every few decades or so.

My suggestion for a new poster from the McCain-Palin campaign: Obama…Remember, It’s not gonna work

But It Might Work For Us: Part I

by: R.J. Moeller

If you have yet to see an episode of the funniest show ever made by humans, Arrested Development, I would highly suggest you go to where DVD’s are sold or rented and buy or rent it. (And watch it!) One of the most memorable scenes from the short-lived Fox sitcom is found in the first episode of the second season when two of the main characters, Dr. Tobias and Lindsay Fuenke, are discussing potential strategies to reinvigorate their tepid marriage. In the scene, Tobias, a former distinguished family psychiatrist who lost his medical license for giving CPR to an overweight tourist on vacation that was taking a nap, not having a heart attack, explains to his perpetually self-centered wife Lindsay one of the blatantly ridiculous and counter-productive tactics he used to suggest to couples in the very same situation.

Tobias says he would often advise struggling couples to consider an “open marriage” where the spouses remained, “emotionally committed to each other, but were free to pursue extra-marital encounters.” Lindsay naively then asks her husband if his advice ever actually helped the people who tried it. Tobias responds, “No, no…they would always delude themselves into thinking it would work, but it never did.” He then pauses for a second and in a complete and hysterical turnaround offers, “But it might work for us…”

The irony of a marriage therapist honestly recommending a course of action for his own marriage that he personally knew to be disastrous, let alone thinking it might actually work, is just the type of legitimately funny situational comedy that American viewers did not appreciate in Arrested Development. The show ended prematurely after 3 seasons and two Emmy’s for Best Comedy due to low ratings. Those low ratings were mostly attributable to the fact that there was no laugh track, which meant the millions of mindless minions in TV-land who seem to crave gratuitously unfunny television programming (don't see: CBS's How I Met Your Mother and/or Big Bang Theory) weren’t able to rely upon their Pavlovian-like training to tell them when something was humorous, ironic, or witty. But I digress.

The reason for my recounting of this scene is its direct applicability to the current state of American politics and our collective responses to recent specific problems like the economic collapses of lending giants and their subsequent bailouts. The short-term memory loss and well-meaning lack of good sense displayed so comically by Dr. Tobias Fuenke is the same brand of avoidable amnesia far too many otherwise balanced American voters appear to be perpetually suffering from.

How are the proselytizers of collectivism and Socialism still even taken seriously on the national stage? I mean, this certainly is a free country, with dissent welcomed and legally protected, and surely no political party is devoid of baffling failures, but would we really allow our doctors every 20 years or so to break out the bloodletting leeches they once thought cured the common flu just because they might get a diagnosis wrong from time to time? More to the point: how is it that so many Americans don’t even really know what a dangerous parasite Socialism is to whatever host country it burrows into?

Consider what the current polls tell us about who Americans apparently favor to be our next Chief Executive. Barack Obama has amassed the most liberal voting record in Congress and penned two memoirs that corroborate his proclivity for Socialistic writings, associations, and policies. The man has a non-existent portfolio of legislative accomplishments, and a self-professed ability to reach across the political aisle that is harder to produce examples of than OJ’s attempts to find the “real killers.” He’s a seemingly likeable guy who has not a single person from his past that is able to publicly vouch for him in order that we might be granted even a small window into what type of character the would-be Commander-in-Chief and potential future leader of the Free World possesses.

Barack Obama’s economic policy proposals are Marxist in all but name, and what has been made abundantly clear throughout his campaign is that the junior senator from Illinois does not believe in the most important foundational pillar in America’s Parthenon of prosperity, ingenuity, and technological supremacy: capitalism. He has consistently and audaciously theorized that all Republicans (and apparently the 18 million white and Latino Democrats who voted for Hillary in the primaries) are racists when making inflammatory comments such as, “The same people who wouldn’t vote for me because of my race are the same who wouldn’t vote for me because of my brand of politics.” Imagine McCain making a similar point in light of the fact that more than 90% of black Americans are predicted to vote for Obama?

The irresponsibility required for any non-committed Leftist to support Senator Barack Obama is staggering. The time for the gloves to come off has arrived, and I’m now speaking directly to any current Obama supporter who has ever voted Republican or Independent (at any electoral level) in the past.

But first, for those of you who think capitalism was the main or sole culprit in the recent economic collapse, you might want to stop reading. If in your world abortion is purely a debate about who loves choices more, and not about whether or not the “soon-to-be-born” have rights that supersede our convenience (precisely because they are endowed by our Creator and not a Supreme Court), then you’ve come to the wrong place. Likewise, the type of people who still believe that the blundering Bush connived and conned the entire world, Congress (including Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton) and United Nations Security Council into war aren’t going to enjoy themselves either today. In fact, if I’ve accurately described your political views above, the chances that your angry face is currently redder than your politics are pretty good.

If a non-partisan extraterrestrial alien who had been studying American political philosophies and elections since 1950 landed in my backyard tomorrow I can imagine that some of his first questions would be, “This guy Obama can’t be your real front-runner for Commander-in-Chief in a time of economic crisis, can he? Have you people really not learned your lesson yet with big-government liberalism? Ever heard of Jimmy Carter’s stagflation or LBJ’s “Great Society”? Your students must study the inherent flaws of collectivist, planned economies and be able to identify such intellectual rubbish, right?”

Sorry, Mr. Alien. Our students are busying learning how angry Mother Earth is at their mom’s SUV and how to put a condom on cucumber in grade school. With all the distorting and exaggerating of legitimate mistakes their country has made to complete in Junior High, and whitewashing of the Judeo-Christian value system and its inspirational role in the formation of our Constitutional and legal systems to be done in High School, by college the only room Left in their brains is reserved for relativism and the implied mantra “Republicans are not just wrong, they’re evil.”

Fact: Raising taxes and increasing spending are sure-fire ways to land in a recession, and in a time of economic crisis, textbook strategies to prolong one.

American electorate’s response: But maybe, because he reads a teleprompter better than President Bush and John McCain, Obama’s plan to raise taxes and increase spending will work for us…

Fact: The tax “cut” for 95% of Americans Obama is promising is actually a rebate, which means the government will be taking and then redistributing the income that the top 5% of earners in this country made. This is instead of everyone, following the actual definition of a tax cut, simply keeping the same amount or even more of their own money. That same hated top 5% already pays more than 60% of our total taxes, and includes nearly all of our employers and the corporations that produce things like the life-saving medicines, etc. Unemployment rates are guaranteed to rise. Stocks (and, for all those union members out there, pensions invested in those stocks) will undoubtedly continue to diminish in value. And most importantly, money that might have been spent on developing new technologies and hiring new employees will instead be spent on DVD’s and iPhones by people who typically give no thought to investment or saving and did nothing to earn the money they will come into.

American electorate’s response: But maybe having the government discourage economic growth, innovation, and investment will work for us…

Fact: Russia defiantly invades Georgia this summer and while Obama consults with his dozen or more “Theories of Foreign Policy: 101” experts from Ivy League faculties McCain displays his instant awareness of the entire context surrounding and leading up to the invasion by readily offering an unambiguous condemnation of Russian aggression and explanation for that condemnation. McCain knows the players, he knows the stakes, and the fact that he’s seen and correctly identified enough evil in his own time enables him to avoid wasting any of our’s on self-aggrandizing and hopelessly naive suggestions. Obama meanwhile believes that the only reason there are bad guys in the world is because we haven’t identified and spoken the right “love languages” of hateful and oppressive madmen like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Hugo Chavez.

American electorate’s response: But maybe, in one of the most dangerous times in human history, having a freshmen senator with a consistently inconsistent position on nearly every important foreign policy decision this nation has faced during his first few hundred days in Congress as our Commander-in-Chief will work for us…

Should I go on? (I plan on doing so….Monday, with “But it might work for us” Part II)

My Kind of Pope, Benedict is

I'm no Catholic, but Pope Benedict's view of the recent economic downturn is spot-on and the type of thing Americans need to keep reminding ourselves. This life contains so many uncertainties that without some sort of anchor (i.e. a Higher Power) we are left to float adrift in a tumultuous sea of materialism and doubt. In tough times as these we need to re-evaluate what is most important and re-dedicate ourselves to the "first principles" of God, family...then country.

One more reason to vote for McCain

P-Diddy doesn't like Sarah Palin....need I say more?

Are any liberals out there ever even just a little worried that they share the same ideology and worldview as Hollywood and entertainment morons who generally never went to college and live in worlds where the person who is the best at pretending to be someone else is the most honored each year?

Mark Steyn on Palin's Performance at the VP Debate

Mark Steyn is easily my favorite writer alive today, and has been on hiatus since June working on his forth-coming, soon-to-be-a-bestseller book. Here is the master's take on how Gov. Sarah Palin performed at last Thursday's debate. As always he is honest in his appraisal and insightful in his commentary. (Plus he's funny, something that is often exceedingly and depressingly rare among conservative pundits.)

An excerpt:
To be sure, if you listened to the lyrics – the policy, the facts, the platform – they weren't always what you wanted to hear. Palin's riff on education quickly descended into a rote call for more spending, even though America already spends more per pupil than any advanced nation other than Switzerland and has less to show for it. And more than once you pined for a more devastating putdown. If I'd been in charge of "coaching" Palin, I'd take her out back, and set up the various Obama policy platforms as cardboard elk, lurking in the protective undergrowth of the mainstream media but still eminently hittable to a crack shot.


By contrast, Biden was glib and fluent and in command of the facts – if by "in command of the facts" you mean "talks complete blithering balderdash and hogwash." He flatly declared that Obama never said he would meet Ahmadinejad without preconditions. But, on Debate Night, the official Obama Web site was still boasting that he would meet Ahmadinejad "without preconditions." He said America spends more in a month in Iraq than it's spent in seven years in Afghanistan. Er, America has spent over $700 billion in Afghanistan since 2001. It's spending about $10 billion a month in Iraq. But no matter.