Bailout Politics

This from probably THE most respected economist of the last 30 years, now that Milton Friedman has passed on. He doesn't want this bailout, so why should we? Sure some type of Credit market liquidity act must be passed, but not this one! This is like subsidizing a convicted bank robber, just because he got it wrong the 1st time! The paragraph below tells you all you need to know about how utterly corrupted the drive-by's have become. Socialism Redux is NOT the answer friends!...T

"The roots of this problem go back many years, but since the crisis to which all this led happened on George W. Bush’s watch, that is enough for those who think in terms of talking points, without wanting to be confused by the facts.

In reality, President Bush tried unsuccessfully, years ago, to get Congress to create some regulatory agency to oversee Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. N. Gregory Mankiw, his Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, warned in February 2004 that expecting a government bailout if things go wrong “creates an incentive for a company to take on risk and enjoy the associated increase in return.”

Nothing could more painfully demonstrate what is wrong with Congress than the current financial crisis.

Among the Congressional “leaders” invited to the White House to devise a bailout “solution” are the very people who have for years created the risks that have now come home to roost.

Five years ago, Barney Frank vouched for the “soundness” of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and said “I do not see” any “possibility of serious financial losses to the treasury.”

Moreover, he said that the federal government has “probably done too little rather than too much to push them to meet the goals of affordable housing.”

Earlier this year, Senator Christopher Dodd praised Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac for “riding to the rescue” when other financial institutions were cutting back on mortgage loans.

He too said that they “need to do more” to help subprime borrowers get better loans.In other words, Congressman Frank and Senator Dodd wanted the government to push financial institutions to lend to people they would not lend to otherwise, because of the risk of default.

The idea that politicians can assess risks better than people who have spent their whole careers assessing risks should have been so obviously absurd that no one would take it seriously.

But the magic words “affordable housing” and the ugly word “redlining” led to politicians directing where loans and investments should go, with such things as the Community Reinvestment Act and various other coercions and threats.

The roots of this problem go back many years, but since the crisis to which all this led happened on George W. Bush’s watch, that is enough for those who think in terms of talking points, without wanting to be confused by the facts.

In reality, President Bush tried unsuccessfully, years ago, to get Congress to create some regulatory agency to oversee Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

N. Gregory Mankiw, his Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, warned in February 2004 that expecting a government bailout if things go wrong “creates an incentive for a company to take on risk and enjoy the associated increase in return.”

Since risky investments usually pay more than safer investments, the incentive is for a government-supported enterprise to take bigger risks, since they get more profit if the risks pay off and the taxpayers get stuck with the losses if not.

The government does not guarantee Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac, but the widespread assumption has been that the government would step in with a bailout to prevent chaos in financial markets.

Alan Greenspan, then head of the Federal Reserve System, made the same point in testifying before Congress in February 2004. He said: “The Federal Reserve is concerned” that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were using this implicit reliance on a government bailout in a crisis to take more risks, in order to “multiply the profitability of subsidized debt.”

Chairman Greenspan added his voice to those urging Congress to create a “regulator with authority on a par with that of banking regulators” to reduce the riskiness of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, a riskiness ultimately borne by the taxpayers.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac do not deserve to be bailed out, but neither do workers, families and businesses deserve to be put through the economic wringer by a collapse of credit markets, such as occurred during the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Neither do the voters deserve to be deceived on the eve of an election by the notion that this is a failure of free markets that should be replaced by political micro-managing.

If Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were free market institutions they could not have gotten away with their risky financial practices because no one would have bought their securities without the implicit assumption that the politicians would bail them out.

It would be better if no such government-supported enterprises had been created in the first place and mortgages were in fact left to the free market. This bailout creates the expectation of future bailouts.

Phasing out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac would make much more sense than letting politicians play politics with them again, with the risk and expense being again loaded onto the taxpayers.

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

A quick history of how this financial crisis hit - and who is responsible. Don't let the Drive-By MSM'ers get away with covering this one up. Even NBC can't Trotsky-up this one...T

Clinton caught with Smoking Gun in Hand

Look at the date in this article – and then, look who pressured Fannie Mae into their bad loaning habits…..hmmmmmmmm...T (Thanks Splugy for this!...)

September 30, 1999

Fannie Mae Eases Credit To Aid Mortgage Lending

By STEVEN A. HOLMES

In a move that could help increase home ownership rates among minorities and low-income consumers, the Fannie Mae Corporation is easing the credit requirements on loans that it will purchase from banks and other lenders.

The action, which will begin as a pilot program involving 24 banks in 15 markets -- including the New York metropolitan region -- will encourage those banks to extend home mortgages to individuals whose credit is generally not good enough to qualify for conventional loans. Fannie Mae officials say they hope to make it a nationwide program by next spring.

Fannie Mae, the nation's biggest underwriter of home mortgages, has been under increasing pressure from the Clinton Administration to expand mortgage loans among low and moderate income people and felt pressure from stock holders to maintain its phenomenal growth in profits.

In addition, banks, thrift institutions and mortgage companies have been pressing Fannie Mae to help them make more loans to so-called subprime borrowers. These borrowers whose incomes, credit ratings and savings are not good enough to qualify for conventional loans, can only get loans from finance companies that charge much higher interest rates -- anywhere from three to four percentage points higher than conventional loans.

''Fannie Mae has expanded home ownership for millions of families in the 1990's by reducing down payment requirements,'' said Franklin D. Raines, Fannie Mae's chairman and chief executive officer. ''Yet there remain too many borrowers whose credit is just a notch below what our underwriting has required who have been relegated to paying significantly higher mortgage rates in the so-called subprime market.''

Demographic information on these borrowers is sketchy. But at least one study indicates that 18 percent of the loans in the subprime market went to black borrowers, compared to 5 per cent of loans in the conventional loan market.

In moving, even tentatively, into this new area of lending, Fannie Mae is taking on significantly more risk, which may not pose any difficulties during flush economic times. But the government-subsidized corporation may run into trouble in an economic downturn, prompting a government rescue similar to that of the savings and loan industry in the 1980's.

''From the perspective of many people, including me, this is another thrift industry growing up around us,'' said Peter Wallison a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. ''If they fail, the government will have to step up and bail them out the way it stepped up and bailed out the thrift industry.''

Under Fannie Mae's pilot program, consumers who qualify can secure a mortgage with an interest rate one percentage point above that of a conventional, 30-year fixed rate mortgage of less than $240,000 -- a rate that currently averages about 7.76 per cent. If the borrower makes his or her monthly payments on time for two years, the one percentage point premium is dropped.

Fannie Mae, the nation's biggest underwriter of home mortgages, does not lend money directly to consumers. Instead, it purchases loans that banks make on what is called the secondary market. By expanding the type of loans that it will buy, Fannie Mae is hoping to spur banks to make more loans to people with less-than-stellar credit ratings.

Fannie Mae officials stress that the new mortgages will be extended to all potential borrowers who can qualify for a mortgage. But they add that the move is intended in part to increase the number of minority and low income home owners who tend to have worse credit ratings than non-Hispanic whites.

Home ownership has, in fact, exploded among minorities during the economic boom of the 1990's. The number of mortgages extended to Hispanic applicants jumped by 87.2 per cent from 1993 to 1998, according to Harvard University's Joint Center for Housing Studies. During that same period the number of African Americans who got mortgages to buy a home increased by 71.9 per cent and the number of Asian Americans by 46.3 per cent.

In contrast, the number of non-Hispanic whites who received loans for homes increased by 31.2 per cent.

Despite these gains, home ownership rates for minorities continue to lag behind non-Hispanic whites, in part because blacks and Hispanics in particular tend to have on average worse credit ratings.

In July, the Department of Housing and Urban Development proposed that by the year 2001, 50 percent of Fannie Mae's and Freddie Mac's portfolio be made up of loans to low and moderate-income borrowers. Last year, 44 percent of the loans Fannie Mae purchased were from these groups.

The change in policy also comes at the same time that HUD is investigating allegations of racial discrimination in the automated underwriting systems used by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to determine the credit-worthiness of credit applicants.

The Old Economic Rule Doesn't Work Anymore

Interesting. This is why McCain and Sarah have such an excellent chance to win this year - economic anxiety does NOT encourage voters to elect a radical leftist who promises massive tax increases...IF they can just state their case! Sarah is making the case, but McCain needs to drive it home. If he does so, we win, in my humble opinion...T

The bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers, the sale of Merrill Lynch to Bank of America, the 500-point plunge of the Dow, the government takeover of AIG -- all these have got the presidential candidates talking about the economy. But both Barack Obama and John McCain have been vague about their solutions. And for good reason.

Our economic problems are concentrated in the finance sector, and that's the part of the economy the average voter knows least about.

Moreover, the political blame is widely dispersed. George W. Bush and Bill Clinton and Democrats and Republicans in Congress have all pushed policies to increase home ownership. The problem is that many marginal home-buyers were unable to pay their mortgages when house prices fell. Another problem: Under a longstanding regulatory regime, the firms that rated packages of securitized mortgages were paid by the sellers rather than the buyers. Some of those mortgage securities turned out to be worth less than buyers thought.

And strong arguments were made that the biggest dealers of securitized mortgages, the government-sponsored enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, were overleveraged. The Bush administration and some Republicans in Congress tried to place limits on the GSEs' investments, but this was successfully resisted by most Democrats and some Republicans. Strong lobbying prevailed over strong arguments, and Fan and Fred are now in federal conservatorship.

It's hard to make a 30-second spot about all this. It's easy to call for more regulation, but this is a tricky business, and there's a risk of stifling innovation, which has on balance vastly enriched us over the past 25 years. In any case, voters are not very good at analyzing regulatory changes.

So the economic argument may focus on something voters do understand -- taxes. Here, Barack Obama can argue that he represents change. He wants higher taxes on high earners and promises "tax cuts" to 95 percent of taxpayers. Actually, they're refundable tax credits, which means cash payments to the 40 percent or so of households that don't pay income tax.

But those refundable tax credits are phased out as incomes rise, so his proposal amounts to, as my American Enterprise Institute colleagues Alex Brill and Alan Viard have written, "marginal rate hikes in disguise" on those with incomes as low as $27,000.

The best argument against higher rates on high earners has come from Sarah Palin in her acceptance speech, in a line obviously not written by her speechwriter.
"My sister Heather and her husband have just built a service station that's now opened for business -- like millions of others who run small businesses. How are they going to be any better off if taxes go up?" Note that she doesn't say that Heather and her husband will be paying higher taxes themselves. She's arguing that higher taxes will hurt the economy and will hurt the little gal and guy.

That argument may be gaining some traction. The recent Quinnipiac poll in New Jersey, which showed Barack Obama leading John McCain by only 3 percentage points in a high-income state carried easily by John Kerry and Al Gore, found that 54 percent of likely voters believe their taxes will go up if Obama is elected. When asked whether they believe Obama when he says that he'll cut taxes for 95 percent of working families, or McCain when he says Obama will raise taxes on most families, 44 percent say they believe McCain, and 40 percent say they believe Obama.

Interestingly, post-convention polls show McCain running at least as well as Bush in 2004 in Michigan and Ohio, where recent state tax increases have signally failed to bolster ailing economies. Gallup shows Democrats with only a 3 percentage-point edge in the generic House vote; it used to be double digits. And the Rasmussen poll shows Democrats ahead only 5 percentage points in party identification.

The old rule that economic distress moves voters toward Democrats doesn't seem to be operating.
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OH, THE HYPOCRISY!

Wow - they really are professional hookers. Just stunning hypocrisy. It remains to be see if McCain has the Cahones to call them on it. This election is his to win - or lose...T

Democratic War Room - The Palin Effect

Hidden footage from the bunker...T

What if Obama Loses?

This today from Richard Miniter at Pajama's Media - absolutely dead on accurate...T

...If Obama loses–and it is still a big ‘if’–too many liberals will fail to heed the message that voters have been sending them since 1981. Seventy percent of the country is tired of 1960s liberalism. Indeed many find the hippie vision frightening: A country too ashamed of itself to fight its enemies, too unsure of itself to praise its own history,govern its children or corral its criminals,and too resentful of the rich to allow the economy to make more of them...
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Reaching Critical Mass - The Accelerating Collapse of the Obama Campaign

He's going down, people. I can't agree more with VDH here. It is their arrogance and transparent elitism, combined with their fanatical left wing zealotry that has done in Osama and his socialist, America detesting cabal. Palin has rallied the base, but Osama has none to blame but himself.

Rasmussen, Real Clear Politics, and Michael Barone all now show McCain has surpassed the 270 Electoral votes needed for victory...T

The sudden change in the polls the last 10 days, even though it may be temporary, has prompted a furor in the media that has no parallel in modern election history. Vicious words like "treason", "abasement", "liar", and "lying" are in the air now in an unheralded attack on McCain, often in association with the sex education ad, and the lipstick identification with Palin as a pig. (cf. e.g., Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen today). But as Byron York has shown, that ad alleging that Obama supported detailed information about matters of sex to be disseminated to younger children (for a variety of educational reasons), while tough and unnecessary, was nevertheless not a lie.

And as far as the silly lipstick moment, if one studies the tape carefully as Obama lets go with his similes, it is clear that the hooting audience at least seemed to make the association with Palin, and the further elaboration on a stinky old fish seemed to cement the allusion to McCain.

What otherwise are we to think of this silly controversy?— (a) a candidate is complaining about McCain and Palin; (b) in his exasperation the candidate next uses two metaphors (not 1, not 3) — (c) one to a pig with lipstick (after Palin had famously just used a lipstick/animal metaphor in her speech), and (d) a second one to an old fish — a theme of the Obama campaigning has been to suggest McCain is "losing his bearings", "confused", has "lost track", and "couldn't remember."

But from anger at those two inconsequential ads, and the selection of Palin, Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen, for example, makes a rather large leap to this conclusion:

... the lies of Vietnam and Watergate and Iraq. So many lies. Who believes that in Afghanistan last month only five civilians were killed by the American military, instead of the approximately 90 claimed by the Afghan government? Not me. I first gave up on the military during Vietnam and then again when it covered up the death of Pat Tillman, the Army Ranger and former NFL player who was killed in 2004 by friendly fire.

What does "give up on the military" mean, and what does it have to do with a McCain ad reminding voters of the difference between Obama and himself on the appropriate age to introduce children to sex education learning materials?

What we are seeing is a sort of meltdown in which the selection of Palin is associated with the first real possibility all summer that the messianic Obama may not necessarily ascend; that triggers a certain repulsion toward her in particular, and a general furor at the once likeable McCain (once likeable to present-day Obama's supporters in the past sense that in 2000 he was going to lose, perhaps divide Republicans, and was not George Bush), which, in turn, can conjure up all sorts of no longer latent demons, going back to Vietnam onto to Iraq and the ongoing war in Afghanistan.

The problem (inter alia) with this vicious, loose use of "traitor" and "lie/liar/lying" and blanket condemnations of the US military is that it achieves the opposite of what the authors intend — and repelling most readers to such a degree that they are scared off from anything the writer seems to be advocating.

We've seen that with the Atlantic Monthly pictures and blog rumors about Palin's recent Down Syndrome pregnancy, the unhinged hatred columns of the sort of a Salon's Cintra Wilson or those suggesting riots or global hatred of the U.S. if Obama loses, the Matthews/Olbermann rants, the daily salvos from the NY Times columnists,and the hourly Palin rage from spoiled Hollywood prima donnas.

Do they have any idea of how they sound or where this leads? Despite an unpopular incumbent, economic upheaval, unpopular wars, and a charismatic Democratic candidate, the media, hand in glove with Obama's messianic sense of self, are doing all they can to lose a once sure election by the sheer repugnance of the way in which their anger is expressed and expressed and expressed . . .

And again, it seems uncontrollable. Didn't anyone learn from the General Betray-Us ads?
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Lipstick on a Buffoon

The more apt usage...T

No Blood for Oil?

No need for Osama...T

Target Palin

VDH at his best - they are scared to death of Sarah, and they are rank hypocrites...but then, we always knew that! The democrats were the party of Slavery, of Jim Crow, of racism...yet today they say we are. Democrats claim they are for equal opportunity for women...but they are still sexist. Racist, Sexist...that's today's democratic party...T

Palinomania

If the post-Speech reaction of the talking heads at CNN, PBS and MSBNC, or the op-ed ravings of Gloria Steinem, Maureen Dowd, Eleanor Clift or Sally Quinn are any indication, the Secret Service better enlist the Alaskan National Guard for help ensuring the Alaskan Governor’s safety.

A beautiful, confident, articulate, independent, accomplished—and conservative—woman apparently has enraged Team Obama, the mainstream media, and the entire American intelligentsia, as if they were collectively hit by a cruise missile aimed from Middle America.

When Palin talks about her present life it sounds as authentic as Biden’s showy populism came off as false. Enraged feminists are apparently the gatekeepers for less well-educated American women, who are supposed to have 0-1.5 children not 5! Their husbands must be professors, lawyers, CEOs, editors—not snowmobile champions, union members, oil workers, and fishermen—or, worse, all in one! And unlike a Pelosi, Quinn, or Clinton, Palin, God forbid, did not rely on a powerful, wealthy husband or father to energize her career. Worse still, she took no women’s studies class, never attended the Ivy League, and shoots moose. The danger is not just that Sarah Palin could win McCain the election, but she could expose the entire flimsy structure of doctrinaire liberalism as the hypocrisy—and chauvinism—it has become.

Dumb and dumber

At about the time that the Republicans were making the case that liberals were hyperpartisan, a little unhinged, and out of touch, hundreds of nutty demonstrators were outside the convention screaming in the usual street theater mode about war crimes et al.—even as Joe Biden announced that when elected, he and Obama may well seek out Bush administration officials to try them for crimes!

Two nations….

- The Geraldine Ferraro Democratic Vice Presidential nominee appointment was an inspired stroke of genius that advanced the cause of feminism; Palin’s was tawdry tokenism.

- Edwards was a social reformer brought down by the tabloids; Palin’s 17-year-old daughter is white trash and fair game.

- Insulting “small town mayors” and “good looking” women is funny; suggesting that “community organizing” is often a farce is a felony.

- Obama’s violation of drug laws with a “little blow” was youthful exuberance; Palin’s husband’s DUI was more proof of a working-class messy family.

- Joe Biden bravely continued as Senator after the tragic death of his wife and daughter left his injured young sons with a single parent; Sarah Palin selfishly shorted her children by running for VP and endangered her infants by flying while pregnant.

- Criticizing Clinton’s engaging in sex in the oval office and lying about it to the American people were once “the politics of personal destruction”; lying that Sarah Palin might not have been the mother of her 5th child is the mere overreach of the blogs caused by the improper vetting of the McCain campaign.

This all reminds me of the 2000 campaign when the media beat the dead-horse of Bush (Yale BA, Harvard MBA) as the lousy, lazy C-student, when, in fact, Al Gore’s undergraduate record at Harvard was full of C’s, F’s at Vanderbilt Divinity School (dropped out), and C’s at Vanderbilt Law School (dropped out). The point is not that quitting professional schools is necessarily a sign of anything, but rather once again that the media is shown to be bending and inventing facts for their higher purposes of liberal utopianism— a continuation of some half a century when we remember the “dumb” Ike floundering before the “brilliant” and “witty” Adlai Stevenson (who flunked out of Harvard Law School, a fact hidden from the public for decades.)

The Poverty of the Legal Culture

Every Democratic Presidential and VP nominee of the last thirty years, with the exception of Al Gore (law school drop out), has been a lawyer—Obama (s) and Biden, Kerry and Edwards, Gore and Lieberman, Clinton (s) and Gore, Dukakis and Bentsen, and Mondale and Ferraro. And while Carter was a failure, he at least brought a different perspective from someone whose professional training was argumentation.

The Republicans, at least, understood that legal training is not a prerequisite for the Presidency (one in law doesn’t build things, grow, defend, or create anything). The Democrats need to branch out, and find a Reagan, Palin, or McCain. Had the Bushes and Cheney been lawyers, I doubt they would have been elected. I am not suggesting that the products of modern law schools are not articulate, clever, used to arguing both sides of an issue, often rhetorically adept, and attentive to detail; but all that is part of the problem: they simply rarely wade out and solve problems rather than postfacto examining and litigating those who do.

All About Race, All the Time

Two truths have emerged: after promising to be the postracial candidate, Obama evokes race constantly; after suggesting McCain will, he hasn’t yet.

Remember this from Obama: “So what they are going to do is make you scared of me. You know he’s not patriotic enough. He’s got a funny name. You know, he doesn’t look like those other presidents (sic) on the dollar bills.”

Or this Obamism: “They’re going to try to make you afraid. They’re going to try to make you afraid of me. He’s young and inexperienced and he’s got a funny name. And did I mention he’s black?”

Or this in Berlin: “I know that I don’t look like the other Americans who’ve previously spoken in this great city.”

Or his slur of his grandmother as a “typical white person” or the Pennsylvania “clingers” nonsense. No need to go into the rest of the Obama racial stable: Rev. Wright’s racist outbursts; Father Pfleger’s creepy rants; Michelle’s more subtle “they” “raised the bar” complaints, or Barack Obama’s own promises to fund more “oppression studies” as a result of the “tragic history” of the United States that requires “reparations” in deed, not just word.

And then, of course, there are the self-appointed spokesmen from the nut-fringe, racists like Ludacris or Diddy who have weighed in with creepy attacks on McCain and Palin. Here I include the ever crazy Howard Dean. Remember this from the Chairman of the Democratic Party: “If you look at folks of color, even women, they’re more successful in the Democratic Party than they are in the white, uh, excuse me, in the (chuckles) Republican Party, because we just give more opportunity to folks who are hard-working people who are immigrants and come from members of minority groups.”

Then there are the op-ed writers weighing in on cue, like Philadelphia Daily News columnist Fatima Ali: “If McCain wins, look for a full-fledged race and class war, fueled by a deflated and depressed country, soaring crime, homelessness — and hopelessness!”

Or this from Harold Meyerson (who earlier accused Hillary and Bill Clinton of playing the race card) in the Washington Post: “In a year when the Democrats have an African American presidential nominee, the Republicans now more than ever are the white folks’ party, the party that delays the advent of our multicultural future, the party of the American past. Republican conventions have long been bastions of de facto Caucasian exclusivity, but coming right after the diversity of Denver, this year’s GOP convention is almost shockingly — un-Americanly — white. Long term, this whiteness is a huge problem.”

Or Bob Herbert’s fantastic claim that a McCain ad showing Obama speaking in front of the Berlin Victory Column was really a racist attack juxtaposing the Washington Monument and the Leaning Tower of Pisa as phallic symbols to scare the public about black male/white women coupling. About all Herbert revealed was that the New York Times columnist can’t distinguish America’s best known obelisk from a European monument to Prussian militarism.

Bottom line: expect more of the race card, especially if Palin gives the Republicans a bounce after the convention—and anyone who objects to it will be preemptively charged—of course—with racism.
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Osama's New Slogan

Thank you, Cartoon Nazi!...T

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
Video Source

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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