Experience? Bring it on!

Experience? Experience?! I say bring it on: Compare the relative youth and inexperience of the VICE presidential candidate to the even more inexperienced PRESIDENTIAL candidate! Besides, she is not at all inexperienced. In fact, she was my first choice for the last three months. She's a rising superstar in the conservative-libertarian movement. Great pick, Mr. McCain. Enjoy Mark Steyn's thought on her selection. You'll laugh till your sides split..T

The hostess with the moosest

First, Governor Palin is not merely, as Jay describes her, "all-American", but hyper-American. What other country in the developed world produces beauty queens who hunt caribou and serve up a terrific moose stew? As an immigrant, I'm not saying I came to the United States purely to meet chicks like that, but it was certainly high on my list of priorities. And for the gun-totin' Miss Wasilla then to go on to become Governor while having five kids makes it an even more uniquely American story. Next to her resume, a guy who's done nothing but serve in the phony-baloney job of "community organizer" and write multiple autobiographies looks like just another creepily self-absorbed lifelong member of the full-time political class that infests every advanced democracy.

Second, it can't be in Senator Obama's interest for the punditocracy to spends its time arguing about whether the Republicans' vice-presidential pick is "even more" inexperienced than the Democrats' presidential one.

Third, real people don't define "experience" as appearing on unwatched Sunday-morning talk shows every week for 35 years and having been around long enough to have got both the War on Terror and the Cold War wrong. (On the first point, at the Gun Owners of New Hampshire dinner in the 2000 campaign, I remember Orrin Hatch telling me sadly that he was stunned to discover how few Granite State voters knew who he was.) Sarah Palin and Barack Obama are more or less the same age, but Governor Palin has run a state and a town and a commercial fishing operation, whereas (to reprise a famous line on the Rev Jackson) Senator Obama ain't run nothin' but his mouth. She's done the stuff he's merely a poseur about. Post-partisan? She took on her own party's corrupt political culture directly while Obama was sucking up to Wright and Ayers and being just another get-along Chicago machine pol (see his campaign's thuggish attempt to throttle Stanley Kurtz and Milt Rosenberg on WGN the other night).

Fourth, Governor Palin has what the British Labour Party politician Denis Healy likes to call a "hinterland" - a life beyond politics. Whenever Senator Obama attempts anything non-political (such as bowling), he comes over like a visiting dignitary to a foreign country getting shanghaied into some impenetrable local folk ritual. Sarah Palin isn't just on the right side of the issues intellectually. She won't need the usual stage-managed "hunting" trip to reassure gun owners: she's lived the Second Amendment all her life. Likewise, on abortion, we're often told it's easy to be against it in principle but what if you were a woman facing a difficult birth or a handicapped child? Been there, done that.

Fifth, she complicates all the laziest Democrat pieties. Energy? Unlike Biden and Obama, she's been to ANWR and, like most Alaskans, supports drilling there.

Sixth,...I kinda like the whole naughty librarian vibe.
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Osama, Obama - He's The One!

Yeah - and the Russians love us, and if we could just take away all the rich people's money, and Universal health care! Like they have in Cuba! Yeah! Oh I feel all misty!...T

Munich Redux?

In a great article titled "The Guns of August", author Monica Crowley details the stunning incompetence of the western powers to this naked attempt to rebuild the ex Soviet Union. We can only pray that Bush can convince the spineless worms of NATO to face down this despicable bully before we re-enter a new cold war...T

When Nazi Germany seized control of Czechoslovakia in 1938, appeaser extraordinaire Neville Chamberlain referred to it as “a faraway country of which we know little.”

The Nazi invasion was based on the simple and reasonable enough-sounding pretext that ethnic Germans in the Sudetenland wanted to be annexed to the Fatherland. Hitler’s invasion of that small, seemingly insignificant country led, of course, to total war in Europe and a global conflict that cost 100 million lives. All because the Western democracies didn’t see—or didn’t want to see—the unsatiable appetites of an expansionist power led by a coldly calculating mass murderer.

It’s often said that those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it. Here we go again.

Russia has used the pretext that ethnic Russians living in a part of the independent republic of Georgia want to be folded into Russia. The Georgians, they say, are doing “ethnic cleansing” of the Russians there, requiring Russia to intervene to defend them.

Of course, this requires Russian tanks, fighter jets, and now ground troops to sweep into Georgia proper, killing thousands while they begin to occupy the country.

To many Americans, Georgia is a “faraway land of which we know little.” Nor do we much care: we’ve got Michael Phelps to cheer on and summer barbeques to attend to.

But as history has demonstrated time and time again, it’s the seemingly small crises that blow up into big ones. Really big ones.

This is one of those times.

The Cold War never ended. The Russians are behind every major state-based threat we face: Iran, North Korea (through China), Venezuela, Syria, the list goes on. They are creating new spheres of influence while re-establishing their old, Soviet-era ones. They extort Eastern Europe on its oil supply. They have blown up part of the oil pipeline that runs through Georgia and Turkey (a NATO member). They are authoritarian at home and expansionist abroad.

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin had this invasion planned for weeks, if not months. Before ordering the bombs to fall and the tanks to roll, he didn’t rush to the UN seeking international approval. He didn’t seek sanctions or resolutions. He just marched in with a full-on invasion. (If the United States had done this, holy hell would be breaking loose in the hallowed halls of the UN. We wouldn’t be able to count the official condemnations of “America’s reckless, unauthorized breach of international law.” With the Russians, we get a big yawn and a shrug of powerlessness.)

Georgia is a pro-Western, fragile new democracy. It has had 2000 troops in Iraq, making it the third biggest contributor to coalition forces there after the United States and Great Britain. It is struggling to establish its democratic, free market independence in Russia’s long shadow. The Russians didn’t like all of the progress Georgia had been making, nor did it appreciate Georgia’s application to NATO. So Russia rolled in: “If I can’t have you, nobody will!”

The Russians are hammering the old Soviet empire back together. They had been doing it through economic (primarily energy) extortion. Now they’re doing it the old-fashioned way: through force. The Russians have been doing this for centuries. It’s not new.

It’s incredible that the western democracies seem impotent to stop this invasion of a democracy and reverse it. Short of military action, we could strip Russia of its G-8 membership, levy economic sanctions, and stop its membership to the World Trade Organization. Forget about going to the UN: Russia will veto everything.

The western democracies need to show a backbone. What would Reagan do? What would Thatcher do? For heaven’s sake, what would George H. W. Bush do? (Even he went to war to reverse an invasion of the petrotocracy, Kuwait. Georgia may not be sitting on a ton of oil, but it’s the transit point for a tremendous amount of it.)

This is one of those moments when we will wonder why the good guys were paralyzed while the bad guys marched. It’s one of those moments on which the future of freedom hangs. It’s one of those moments when the bad guys test the good guys. And so far, the good guys are contemplating their navels while the bad guys scorch the ground of liberty.
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The Energy Revolt of 2008?

I've argued so many times now that Barack Osama is the reincarnation of Jimmy Carter that it's old news these days ("Windfall profits" tax? come on!). I can't ignore though, the similarities between today and the late 70's (aside from the music, jeez, if I hear one more Foreigner song I'm gonna heave!).

Now these similarities have just become, well, weird: Perhaps the Gipper himself will make one last siren call from the great beyond. Unilateral surrender to our enemies? Been there, done that. Save gas and rescue our nation by wearing a sweater? Er, I mean pumping up your tires? Been there, done that. America won't elect a quasi-communistic, anti capitalist, America loathing liberal wussy again; no way, no how. Anything is possible now, even a McCain landslide...T

Larry Kudlow makes an interesting suggestion in his article on NRO:

As Sen. John McCain and the GOP leadership nationalize the drill, drill, drill message, the Republican party might conceivably be riding a summer political rally. The question of offshore drilling, along with expanded domestic energy production, has suddenly become the biggest political and economic wedge issue of this election....There is a voter revolt going on, and it reminds me of the anti-tax rebellion that lifted Ronald Reagan into office twenty-eight years ago. Is the conventional wisdom about to be swept away?...

Without even realizing it, the GOP drilling offensive has become a new contract with America. And it appears to be working. The public is putting aside global warming and choosing instead new-energy production, a stronger economy, and more job creation. Voters want growth, not austerity. They want Ronald Reagan, not Thomas Malthus. And by resisting this grassroots call, the Democratic party is digging itself into one of the biggest political dry holes in history.

I've had the contrarian instinct for a while that global warming had peaked (both substantively and politically) as an issue. Al Gore's Nobel Prize felt like a pretty good contrarian indicator. And now the drilling issue is beginning to feel a little like tax cuts thirty years ago--key to, and emblematic of, a pro-growth, populist/capitalist/anti-declinist agenda. Obama's tire gauge is reminiscent of Jimmy Carter's sweater. And leave aside the tax revolt analogy; it's worth remembering that energy itself was an issue in 1980. Reagan took what seemed at first a politically dicey drill/deregulate position, and ended up clobbering Carter and being vindicated by the policy of deregulation.

Wishful thinking? Or the lessons of history?
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Drive-By Swoon Continues - Oh Obama!

Extraordinary compilation of the Drive-by MSM's obsession with destroying republicans at all costs and the dismal toll these dolts have taken in the court of public opinion as a result. It's going to be a long three months before we can consign Iraq Insane Osama to the ash bin of history! Thanks to LGF for the link...T
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Obama's Very Bad Week

Then there's this from Hugh Hewitt - very convincing...T

"The blast-off didn't materialize, and the Dalibama found his numbers falling in Ohio, Pennsylvania an Florida. Even worse, the late night comics were having a field day with his 'inflate your tires, end the energy crisis' pronouncement."
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President Obama Continues Hectic Victory Tour

This is from The Washington Post of all places! The imperious Dalai Bama is marching straight down his victory parade - and wearing no clothes at all. Be sure and read the whole article, linked below..T

Barack Obama has long been his party's presumptive nominee. Now he's becoming its presumptuous nominee...Win the election? Didn't he do that already?
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Ruminations on Obama, Pelosi, and Hating America - the Democrats True Passion

And now it's VDH's turn, after Krauthammer (what a team!), to pull the panties around the ankles of Pelosi, the Dalibama, and the "America is the root of all evil!" Democrats...too good to just read - save it! Print it!...T

Where Art Thou, Hillary?

I think buyer’s remorse will soon set in among Democrats. Off the teleprompter, some very strange things come from Obama: reparations for Native Americans and African-Americans; inflating our tires properly and “tune-ups” (do we still have points, distributors, and 10,000 mile plugs?) will all obviate the need for more drilling; “they” (recall Michelle’s “they” and how they raised the bar serial speeches) will mention the fact that Obama looks different, or at least unlike the “presidents” (sic) on one-dollar bills; he will be meeting with Sarkozy and Merkle for the next 10 years… You get the message

“Hoping and changing” day in and day out?

If his handlers are not careful, Obama will “58-state” his way to a 10-point deficit before the convention. They must get him back on the teleprompter, avoid the town halls, and ‘hope and change’ his way back to rock star status (I know that it is wearing thin, but his ex tempore quips are far more damaging.)

Speaker Pelosi should simply swear off private jet trips.

Stopping exploration off the shelf and our coasts is a losing political proposition (as Obama knows when he just flipped on the issue), not only because of the economic factor—even a mere million barrels pumped save us over $100,000,000 a day in revenue kept here at home. But there’s the moral argument as well: there is something very wrong in opposing drilling on environmental grounds while hoping others less careful continue at it–while those who oppose drilling don’t seem any less inclined to use oil (cf. the Pelosi request for a mega-jet for frequent transcontinental trips).

More Praise from Obama, but…

Ludacris is about as “talented” as Rev. Wright was “brilliant.”

What Does This Mean?

Barack Obama:

“I personally would want to see our tragic history, or the tragic elements of our history, acknowledged. I consistently believe that when it comes to whether it’s Native Americans or African-American issues or reparations, the most important thing for the U.S. government to do is not just offer words, but offer deeds.”

Thoughts:

1. Does he know that WWII in our schools is mostly Rosy the Riveter, the Japanese Internment, and Hiroshima–and not much if at all D-Day, Okinawa, or the Bulge? The Civil War is already taught as essentially Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth, not Grant and Sherman. Our students already know all the things wrong with the US, and few of what is right, past or present. Honest discussion of American sins is important, but if one doesn’t appreciate that they pale in consideration to others’, or that the culture has created a moral and successful society like none other, then what would be the reason to continue to support its centuries-long institutions? So is our history really more “tragic” than say France’s (compare our respective Revolutions); Russia (cf. the Great Terror); China (compare the 70 million that Mao did away with one way or another); Germany (no need to comment); the post-colonial African states?; maybe the history of Mexico?

2. This complaint is consistent with Obama’s call for more “oppression studies” in our schools. And it seems to be the first call for reparations by any mainstream candidate in our history. Is he serious, and wants a cash grant to anyone who can prove that he has Native-American or African-American ancestry? And the Irish? Hispanics? Asians? One-time money gift–or continual stipend as in the manner of Social Security? And to those like Obama who are of African rather than African-American ancestry? And do we bring back the Old Confederacy racial protocols to ascertain to what degree one of mixed heritage gets 1/4, 1/8, 1/16 of an award?

3. Anyone who has been around a university the last 30 years knows that any bright, well educated student who chooses to make his or her identity essential rather than incidental to their persona–Hispanic, African-American, or female–is snapped up for graduate or professional schools in preference to the proverbial white male. Affirmative action has been going strong for three decades. What again, then, does he mean by “not just offer words, but offer deeds?” Obama should know that for all his own talents, it is rare to have someone with his meager law record selected as Harvard Review Editor, or hired at the University of Chicago Law School, or after a mere two years in the Senate, a presidential candidate. The point is not that his race explains his success, but in America alone it either was irrelevant to it, or, more likely, a great force multiplier.

4. Expect the press, as in the case of Obama’s call for an alternate Pentagon to mirror image the military at the same cost (of half a trillion per year), to simply ignore these quite astounding statements.

Others Listen.

One of the reasons that others abroad trash the US is that they have been versed by our elites in the art of blaming America for their own self-induced miseries. Cf. the latest communiqué from Teheran (at the meeting of the so-called non-aligned nations):

“The rich and powerful countries continue to exercise an inordinate influence in determining the nature and direction of international relations, including economic and trade relations, as well as rules governing these relations, many of which are at the expense of developing countries.”

I agree in some sense, and so suggest that the developing countries create their own non-Western antibiotics, chemotherapy, oil-refinery infrastructure, and automobile industries, and in the meantime forego wealthy nation-contaminated jet travel, I-pods, and Viagra. But apparently the Iranian leadership wants both to practice gender apartheid, autocracy, statism, tribalism, religious intolerance, suppression of free expression, AND import chemicals, industry, medicines, machinery, etc. from those who don’t embrace such failed protocols, AND whine that they are still poorer and less powerful. At some point a Churchillian Western should reply back “we created your oil industry, now sell you the expertise to maintain it, buy your product for $120 a barrel that costs you $5 to pump—and hope you can Westernize in this brief window of windfall profits before we get off oil and leave you to your own devices.”

Lay Off the Race Card—it’s a losing proposition.

I wrote this for the NRO corner:

Why is Obama foolishly evoking race time after time? [Victor Davis Hanson]

And it’s still only July…

Obama’s problems with race have nothing to do with his half -African ancestry or his own experience with racism and unfairness, but boil down to his deftly wanting it both ways: reminding the Germans he is a different sort of American from what they’re used to (false, they knew Rice and Powell well enough), while preempting by suggesting others will evoke race, but in a negative context. But his polls, I wager, will begin to slip from all this, because all this sophisticated triangulation is about to blow up in the public mind.

1) The voter is starting to hear serially from Obama about race; they were promised a racially transcendent candidate, but so far Obama seems obsessed with identity, either accusing others of racism, or using heritage himself for political advantage. This is a tragic blunder.

2) He has the same want-it-both-ways with odious racists: Rev. Wright is a former spiritual advisor, and “brilliant” scholar who nevertheless serially slurs America, whites, Italians, Jews, etc. Ludacris is “a great talent” and “talented” to such an extent Obama wants him in his I-pod menu, and has met with him—but also a racist to be shunned. Ditto Pfleger. A pattern is emerging: Obama associates with or tolerates racists when such quasi-intimacy cements street-cred as an authentic minority or someone cool in the anti-Bush mode; but then when they inevitably revert to form, he not merely casts them off, but is “shocked” at their usual expression, and so like speed bumps they litter the roadway as he barrels ahead.

3). The “typical white person”, grandma under the bus riff, Pennsylvania “clingers” rant etc. , ‘no more disown Rev, Wright/ but now leaving Trinity Church’, etc. themselves are immaterial, but in toto provide a thin margin of tolerance when something like Ludacris or Obama’s latest accusation of racism surfaces.

4) Right now Obama does not need to solidify his 90% African-American base or the Moveon.org white liberal adherents; but instead he must remember why he lost all those primaries to Hillary and to what degree his campaign since then has addressed those concerns that lost him those electorates. When a West Virginian hears that Obama is accusing others of racism, or hears him promise that racial reparations will now be a matter of government deeds not words, or a rapper brags he is a favorite of Obama and then slurs Clinton, McCain, Bush in thinly disguised racist terms, it starts to create an image of someone who is not bringing people together, but precisely the opposite.

Why all this? Inexperience and hubris—the same overconfidence that makes him say we need a Pentagon-sized new civilian aid department, to inflate our tires to avoid drilling, and must stop merely talking about reparations and starting doing something about them. His handlers need to return to the teleprompter, since all these incidents have in common the impromptu moment.
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Pelosi: Save the Planet, Let Someone Else Drill

Comrade Pelosi from the People's Republic of San Francisco says "I am here to save the planet!" Perhaps her and the Dalibama should start a new country. Only they can afford to fuel their private jets...would be an interesting looking love child as well, I say!

Krauthammer devastates their foolishness. It is excerpted here..T

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi opposes lifting the moratorium on drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and on the Outer Continental Shelf. She won't even allow it to come to a vote. With $4 gas having massively shifted public opinion in favor of domestic production, she wants to protect her Democratic members from having to cast an anti-drilling election-year vote. Moreover, given the public mood, she might even lose. This cannot be permitted. Why? Because, as she explained to Politico: "I'm trying to save the planet; I'm trying to save the planet."

A lovely sentiment. But has Pelosi actually thought through the moratorium's effects on the planet?
Consider: 25 years ago, nearly 60 percent of U.S. petroleum was produced domestically. Today it's 25 percent. From its peak in 1970, U.S. production has declined a staggering 47 percent. The world consumes 86 million barrels a day, the United States, roughly 20 million. We need the stuff to run our cars and planes and economy. Where does it come from?

Places such as Nigeria, where chronic corruption, environmental neglect and the resulting unrest and instability lead to pipeline explosions, oil spills and illegal siphoning by the poverty-stricken population -- which leads to more spills and explosions...

Compare the Niger Delta to the Gulf of Mexico, where deep-sea U.S. oil rigs withstood Hurricanes Katrina and Rita without a single undersea well suffering a significant spill.

The United States has the highest technology to ensure the safest drilling...Does Pelosi imagine that with so much of America declared off-limits, the planet is less injured as drilling shifts to Kazakhstan and Venezuela and Equatorial Guinea? That Russia will be more environmentally scrupulous than we in drilling in its Arctic?

Democrats want no oil from the American OCS or ANWR. But of course they do want more oil. From OPEC...They seem blissfully unaware that the argument for their drill-there-not-here policy collapses on its own environmental terms.
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The One

Verily he said, "And ye shall all be saved" ...as he walked on water. And we all thought Bill Clinton was W.C. Fields...give me a break, this guy is an absolute charlatan! AND a quasi-communist to boot. God save us all if he sneaks in, but it looks more and more likely that he will not.

On another front: This add is fantastic! The best political add in a generation. You know, any good add, or joke, only works if it has the ultimate quality of being true! Looks to this eye that, against all my expectations, the McCain campaign is going to be tough as nails after all. Good for him...T

Dawn in America

As I have been saying all along: Yes, we have won the war, no, there is no recession. Gas prices? Simple economics 101 - "what goes up must come down"...

No, we don't need a quasi-communist as president to "change" everything. As the author writes: "Let’s recap: wars being won, enemies being decimated, economy recovering and growing, gas prices coming down, homelessness plummeting. And this is all just this week."...T

The only way Democrats can win is by running America down: the president stinks, the economy stinks, Iraq is still a failure, Afghanistan is weak, there’s no Middle East peace, Americans are morose and depressed, and the deficit is out of control.

Well, that last point is correct. Republicans and Democrats have spent like drunken sailors, and it’s been disgraceful.

But everything else, frankly, ain’ t that bad.

It may not yet be Morning in America, but the Dawn is certainly upon us. Given the daily left-wing media fandango of negativity, you’d never know it. So, here’s an alternative newscast with the good news:

We are winning the war in Iraq. Thanks to the astonishing bravery of our combat troops, we have secured what General David Petraeus calls “durable” progress there. Violence is at its lowest level since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. Iraqi security forces are stronger and more self-reliant every day. The Iraqi government is more stable and self-sustaining every day. And organized terrorists from al Qaeda to the Iranian-backed Shia militias are almost thoroughly crushed. Freelancing terrorists will continue to strike, and there will be some backsliding. But what we have accomplished there is nothing less than stunning. Troop levels can now be reduced, based on breathtaking success, not humiliating defeat. Progress continues in Afghanistan (with more cooperation from the Afghan government than the Pakistani one), and the al Qada strongholds are now in ever-narrower locations.

The U.S. economy GREW by 1.9 percent in the second quarter this year. This is up by a full percentage point from the first quarter. While it’s not bounding robust growth, the economy is moving in the right direction. And in the opposite direction from what many doomsayers were predicting: that we’d have at least two consecutive quarters of economic contraction that would qualify as a recession. The stock market has responded to the growth, and stocks are climbing again. There are still challenges in the financial, credit, and housing sectors, but the positive numbers show how resilient and powerful this economy is.

At the mere talk of drilling here at home, OPEC freaked out a little, the much-maligned speculators began speculating that the price of oil would come down, and voila! The price of oil has dropped significantly over the past two weeks, meaning filling your tank is still crazy expensive, but less so. And the trend is for gas prices to continue to fall.

As the New York Times reported this week, homelessness has fallen a staggering 30% over the past three years. And alas, with a “compassionate conservative” in the White House! Democrats never produced such a drop in homelessness, despite all of their supposed care for the issue.

Let’s recap: wars being won, enemies being decimated, economy recovering and growing, gas prices coming down, homelessness plummeting. And this is all just this week.

The sun is peeking over the horizon.
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