Nobama: An Appeal To Reason

Among my friends who support Barack Obama, there are very few who can actually name or describe in any detail, his admittedly few policy prescriptions. In most cases, I know more about what he has said he would do than they do. For them, a vote for Obama, in addition to being a vote for "change" and "hope," is also a feel-good vote.

Thomas Sowell put it pretty well:

Telling a friend that the love of his life is a phony and dangerous is not likely to get him to change his mind. But it may cost you a friend.

It is much the same story with true believers in Barack Obama. They have made up their minds and not only don’t want to be confused by the facts, they resent being told the facts.

An e-mail from a reader mentioned trying to tell his sister why he was voting against Obama but, when he tried to argue some facts, she cut him short: “You don’t like him and I do!” she said. End of discussion.

When one thinks of all the men who have put their lives on the line in battle to defend and preserve this country, it is especially painful to think that there are people living in the safety and comfort of civilian life who cannot be bothered to find out the facts about candidates before voting to put the fate of this nation, and of generations yet to come, in the hands of someone chosen because they like his words or style.

Whether that feelgoodedness comes from the collective cool transferred to them by the Obama camp (another way Obama is a collectivist) or because they believe the hype and the rhetoric or perhaps even because they think electing Obama will somehow help America get past its history rather than Presidentializing a racial grievance monger--whatever reason they feel good about voting for Obama, my sense is that it's going to turn into a feel-bad outcome.

What little we know about Obama--his foul associations with racist, hate-monger Reverend Jeremiah Wright, commie-terrorist Bill Ayers, slum lord Tony Rezko--does not match his airy rhetoric and campaign promises.

Why should we believe a man who promises to cut taxes when, at every opportunity, he has voted to raise taxes or opposed tax cuts?

Why should be believe that a man has any respect for human life when he voted against protecting those babies who, against the odds, survived the abortion procedure and were born alive?

Why should we believe a man will successfully lead our armed forces and protect America when he has demonstrated that politics--winning an election!--is more important than winning a war?--A man who refuses to acknowledge the success of The Surge and would snatch defeat from the jaws of victory?

Why should we believe that Barack Obama will ever do anything that is unpopular politically for the good of his country, when all he has ever done is voted present?

Why should we believe that Obama will do anything to change the way government is run when, after receiving over $100,000 in campaign donations, he so willingly went along with the Fannie Mae train wreck, opposing any attempts at reform. If you believe Obama will change anything in Washington with respect to earmarks, corruption, kickbacks, etc., you are woefully mistaken.

We have no reason to believe--no rational, logical reason to assume--that Barack Obama will actually do what he has promised or be able to do what millions of people have hoped. Those who vote for Obama, despite the mountain of evidence to the contrary, cast aside all logic and reason and ensconce themselves in a willfully ignorant, padded room of feel-good platitudes.

Unless you are a far left liberal, then you may be pleased with what you will get.


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And, I'm Back (UPDATED)

Though I still don't have internet in my flat, I will be able gain interweb access while at "uni" (Brit-slang for school or class) briefly each day. This will limit me to fewer & shorter posts until the BT bureaucracy deigns to grant us flat-based access.

Since I was last plugged in (I'm w/o BlackBerry access too), the national trackers have moved towards John McCain while the Battle Ground and state-by-state analysis looks solid for Obama. Lets hope previous trends--where trackers were the early indicator, followed by state polling--hold and things move back to the 1-2 point status quo difference.

In case there were any question, I'm part of the righ-wing blogosphere that thinks McCain/Palin should attack Obama on the Ayers/Wright/Fannie-gate front whenever and wherever possible. I thought he should do this before he was behind and believe it even more now. For whatever reason (hope, change, etc.) a majority of Americans have chosen, at the moment, to support Barack Obama, the single most liberal candidate for President since George McGovern, at least.

Most of his liberal programs and associations and worldviews are cloaked in the aforementioned airy rhetoric. Part of the reason we know so little is because the media has not done its job in vetting The One. The other half of the fault lies with McCain who, since the end of the convention, has not done an adequate job educating the public.

He can lose this campaign and blame the press all he wants and there will be a lot of truth there. But he will also have to look at himself: Given the opportunity to take the fight to Barack Obama over Bill Ayers and Fannie-gate, John McCain mostly took a pass.

Instead, he filled in with me-too economic populism that neither appealed to independents/moderates (because Obama does a better job of selling it) nor to his conservative base. Seemingly, John McCain has done his best to kill the enthusiasm Sarah Palin brought to his campaign.

I'm not going to write a post-mortem with over 3 weeks left to go, because I think--I know--this thing can still change. If/when Americans wake up and realize that voting for Obama represents a radical change, not only for the prosperous Bush years they claim to hate, but from the entirety of American history, I think they will come home to the safe, moderate choice--John McCain.

UPDATE 5:17pm BDT: Reader Morgan H. sent me this WSJ article about the Obama tax plan and writes, "I found the McGovern reference quite timely." From that article:

For the Obama Democrats, a tax cut is no longer letting you keep more of what you earn. In their lexicon, a tax cut includes tens of billions of dollars in government handouts that are disguised by the phrase "tax credit." Mr. Obama is proposing to create or expand no fewer than seven such credits for individuals:

- A $500 tax credit ($1,000 a couple) to "make work pay" that phases out at income of $75,000 for individuals and $150,000 per couple.

- A $4,000 tax credit for college tuition.

- A 10% mortgage interest tax credit (on top of the existing mortgage interest deduction and other housing subsidies).

- A "savings" tax credit of 50% up to $1,000.

- An expansion of the earned-income tax credit that would allow single workers to receive as much as $555 a year, up from $175 now, and give these workers up to $1,110 if they are paying child support.

- A child care credit of 50% up to $6,000 of expenses a year.

- A "clean car" tax credit of up to $7,000 on the purchase of certain vehicles.

Here's the political catch. All but the clean car credit would be "refundable," which is Washington-speak for the fact that you can receive these checks even if you have no income-tax liability. In other words, they are an income transfer -- a federal check -- from taxpayers to nontaxpayers. Once upon a time we called this "welfare," or in George McGovern's 1972 campaign a "Demogrant." Mr. Obama's genius is to call it a tax cut.

The Tax Foundation estimates that under the Obama plan 63 million Americans, or 44% of all tax filers, would have no income tax liability and most of those would get a check from the IRS each year. The Heritage Foundation's Center for Data Analysis estimates that by 2011, under the Obama plan, an additional 10 million filers would pay zero taxes while cashing checks from the IRS.

The total annual expenditures on refundable "tax credits" would rise over the next 10 years by $647 billion to $1.054 trillion, according to the Tax Policy Center. This means that the tax-credit welfare state would soon cost four times actual cash welfare. By redefining such income payments as "tax credits," the Obama campaign also redefines them away as a tax share of GDP. Presto, the federal tax burden looks much smaller than it really is.

[...]

There's another catch: Because Mr. Obama's tax credits are phased out as incomes rise, they impose a huge "marginal" tax rate increase on low-income workers. The marginal tax rate refers to the rate on the next dollar of income earned. As the nearby chart illustrates, the marginal rate for millions of low- and middle-income workers would spike as they earn more income.

Some families with an income of $40,000 could lose up to 40 cents in vanishing credits for every additional dollar earned from working overtime or taking a new job. As public policy, this is contradictory. The tax credits are sold in the name of "making work pay," but in practice they can be a disincentive to working harder, especially if you're a lower-income couple getting raises of $1,000 or $2,000 a year. One mystery -- among many -- of the McCain campaign is why it has allowed Mr. Obama's 95% illusion to go unanswered.

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John McCain Strikes Back

The conservative blogosphere has been pounding away at Democrats and Barack Obama on Fannie/Freddie since the start of the current crisis. For whatever reason (because he wanted to lose the election?), John McCain had refused to go there. Well, he finally joined the fight--pounding Barack Obama on exactly the types of things that should concern the middle class voter Obama claims to defend.

If John McCain had associates--close associates--in his past who were the conservative equivalent (is there one?) of Bill Ayers, Tony Rezko, & Jeremiah Wright, the MSM would have hounded him right out of the race. With friends like those, he wouldn't have made it past the Republican primary.

But with the MSM defending him at every turn or simply framing the story or avoiding other stories and carrying Obama's water by attacking McCain, they are doing everything they can to make sure he gets into the White House.

In 2004, when 80% of the press voted for John Kerry and he lost, they collectively said, "NEVER AGAIN." And vowed to do all they could to put a Democrat in the White House in 2008. The evidences are everwhere and daily. We chronicle as many has we have time for over at NewsBusters. But we don't get to all of them--and we can only highlight the most blatant anti-McCain abuses.

What about the pro-Obama lapses in coverage? How many times do they look the other way or refuse to run a story about Obama's Fannie-gate record or his association with terrorist Bill Ayers or convicted felon and all-around sleazeball, Tony Rezko, or America-hater Jeremiah Wright.

If you think the media is unbiased or, at worst, moderately biased, ask yourself one question: If the shoe were on the other foot and John McCain had these skeletons in his closet, do you honestly believe he would get the same coverage Barack Obama gets day after day?

If you're a Barack Obama supporter and just stumbled on this blog on the first time, ask yourself this question: How much do you really know about the real Barack Obama?


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Kim Jong-il, Rot In Hell

- Fox News is reporting that Kim Jong-il, "dear leader," suffered a stroke in August. It's not a very Christian thing for me to say, but I hope this is the beginning of a short, painful period before he goes the way of all the earth and leaves his country susceptible to overtures of peace and democracy and sanity (get rid of the nukes!) from the West. Die painfully, die fast, KJ. And take Castro and Chavez with you. Ahmadinejad, too.

- Obama has a "comprehensive" strategy for bringing the war to a close. Not one that "tinkers around the edges." You know, a different one to the one that actually won the war. Apparently 8000 troops coming home is not enough.

Look, all you need to know about the war is that The Surge won it, McCain supported it and Obama did not. If we followed Obama's plan, we would have lost the war in Iraq and lost Iraq to al-Qaeda and Iran. End of story.

- The leftist nutroots are trying to make a Rev. Wright out of Gov. Palin's church in Wasilla. Unfortunately for the nutroots, the only controversial thing made up there was a bad joke about how Kerry voters might not make it to heaven. Of course, fouling up their narrative is the fact that the statement was made 2 years after Governor Palin left the church.

The lesson from the nutroots is clear: Never let the facts mess up your narrative.

Let's play "compare 'n contrast":

Rev. Wright: "Goddamn America!"
Gov. Palin's Pastor 2 Years After She Left the Church: "You know, people who vote for Kerry might not get into heaven. [laughter, because people understand that it's a joke]"

This replays itself in the story they're making up about her banning one of the Harry Potter books. Unfortunately for them, she was supposed to have banned it 2 years before it was even released.

Come on, Angry Left, you can do better.

The good news herre is that the American public is far smarter than the leftists of this country believe. In their mind, all they have to do is create controversey about Gov. Palin's past. They don't understand that it actually has to be a real controversey for it to have any legs. Like you, dear readers, they are able to play "compare 'n contrast" and see that what Governor Palin's pastor said after she left the church is in a different galaxy from the hatred spewed by Obama's close personal adviser--though apparently only spewed when Obama was not in attendance. (Americans also don't believe that bit of fiction).

Let me also point out one more bit of idiocy: James Taranto, one of my fav. columnists wrote about the damaging and distracting power of hate. You are seeing evidence of this in the way the Angry Left is treating Governor Palin.

The controversey they created in the wake of her nomination drove people by the millions to watch her speech and see for themselves. Calling her inexperienced caused people to play "compare 'n contrast" with Barack Obama and Sarah Palin--a #1 vs. #2 comparison Republicans will win every time. And now, by going after her church and her pastor--especially when they have nothing(!)--will only remind people of Obama's history with Wright.

This is stupid, stupid, stupid.

When McCain/Palin win in November, we'll all have to give the Angry Left a tip of the hat for their big assist. Thanks, leftist nutroots.


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Obama & The Press

Hunting around the interweb, we found this graph which well describes the mutual adoration relationship between the Junior Senator from Illinois (Mr. Guitar Hero* himself) and the MSM.

Courtesy of Ms. Noemie Emery:

when Obama appeared — cool, suave, urbane, and much hipper than they were — they had found their revenge and their voice. They were thrilled when he said that wearing a flag pin was a meaningless gesture and proposed a new kind of patriotism that did not include cheering. They nodded in approval when, listing laudable ways of serving one’s country, he included the Peace Corps, teaching, and community service, but left out the armed forces. When the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, his pastor for 20 years, was criticized for delivering tirades against whites and American culture, they defended Obama, not least because many of them agreed with the preacher; some blamed the critics of Wright’s racism for being racists themselves. And when Obama told a well-heeled crowd at a billionaire’s home in San Francisco that small-town Pennsylvanians “cling” to religion and guns from misplaced desperation, they were not at all bothered, as that was what they had believed all the time.

*Over-the-top performance, no real skill.


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Jesse Jackson Feels Threatened

Image link

Regarding Rev. Jackson's threat to cut off Obama's you-know-whats, well, we definitely side with Senator Obama. Obviously the good reverend means this metaphorically, but still, does he think the secret service will even let him get close to Sen. Obama?

Per the New York Post, Jackson doesn't like the fact that Obama encourages young black men to be good fathers and recently "told students to stick with school and forget about careers as rap stars or pro basketball players."

Yeah, that's really bad advice, Senator Obama. What were you thinking?

Don't gets us wrong. We've listened to speeches and read others in which Obama does come across as incredibly condescending, but this wasn't one of them.

What "black leader" Jesse Jackson doesn't like about Obama is that a successful Obama, whose rhetoric about self-reliance more closely mimics Bill Cosby's than Jackson's and Sharpton's, threatens his status. To our mind, this might be the only positive resulting from an Obama win in November--a purge of the Jesse Jackson/Al Sharpton hate mongering among the black community.

Or, if his Rev. Wright/Father Pfleger connections are any indication, it could get worse. Who knows?

Either way:

Barack Obama > Jesse Jackson

and

Democratically Elected President > Self Appointed Racist Hate Monger

*UPDATE 11 July 12:18am: After thinking for awhile about Rev. Jackson's whispered threat, we realized that this had deeper meaning than originally thought. Roots--a book we've read and documentary we've viewed (twice)--has a particularly shocking scene where the main character Kunta Kinte, having run away and been caught for a second time, is given the choice of cutting off part of his foot, leaving him unable to even walk normally, or castration. He chooses the former. The author, Alex Haley wasn't just making up this little bit of drama. Castration, or the threat thereof, was a frequent practice of the slaving type to keep the slaves in check.

The Reverend Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton preach a particularly vile doctrine of hate and modern racism designed not to uplift and aid, but to keep under their thumb the very people they claim to help. Whatever else we (or anyone) may think about Obama's politics (we don't like them, at all), the mere fact that a black man in America is the leading candidate for the highest office in the land is a repudiation of everything for which Jackson stands.

But here again, Obama's past raises its ugly head.

Where do Reverend Wright and Father Pfleger fit in? Like everyone else, we would like to believe that Senator Obama is above and beyond the racist politics of Jackson & co. But his history leads us to conclude otherwise. Instead of bring change and hope to America and especially African Americans, the fear we have is that he will simply ensconce in the Presidency the attitudes embodied by Wright & Pfleger.

These are the tremendous risks you run when you elect someone who aspires to be more than just the next President of the United States.


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Wright Fallout

Yesterday we wrote, "The Obama campaign might want to do a little investigative work to see if Rev. Wright is on the Clinton campaign payroll." Hmmm.

Today, per Drudge, these are the headlines:

Is Jeremiah Wright a colossal disaster for Barack Obama or a press trick?
Press Club president responds: Reynolds pitched Rev. Wright two years ago
Gingrich: Wright May Be Deliberately Trying to Hurt Obama

The implication of the first two is that the Clinton camp had something to do with Wright's appearance before the National Press club--something we joked about yesterday. The last article, by Newt Gingrich, speculates about Wright's motives, something we also wondered at.

Regardless of where you stand (non-issue, important issue), our overriding point from yesterday stands: Rev. Wright's insistence on publicly defending himself thrusts the issue Wright back into the news-cycle and does damage to the Obama campaign. Formally denounced or not, anytime anyone who is vaguely familiar with Rev. Wright hears his name uttered on the news or sees it in the newspaper, they will automatically associate it with Barack Obama.

And really, there's no blaming Republicans generally or the McCain campaign specifically for this one. All of this is a product of the long, drawn out Democratic campaign and the Clinton attack machine.

A couple of weeks ago we listened in on an off-the-record conference call with the the McCain communications people. There was of interesting stuff, but the one we keep thinking about was the rumor out of the Clinton camp: somebody attached to Team Clinton told a friend in Team McCain that they had 2 more bombs to drop on Obama. We don't know if arranging a press conference for Jeremiah Wright was one of the two, but judging from the fallout, bravo, if it were.

Nice to see the old lady hasn't lost her touch.

*UPDATE 30 April 6:19pm MST: James Taranto on one Obama supporter's attempt to use Romney and Mormonism to obfuscate the Wright thing.

Uh, Melissa Harris-Lacewell*? Please do not try again.

*the name of the aforementioned Obama supporter.


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Rev. Wright Won't Go Away

(For the record, Obama agreed that the Wright issue is a legitimate one.)

No doubt about it, Rev. Wright is not on Barack Obama's team.

If he were, or if there were any coordination between the two, he wouldn't have done the Bill Moyers interview and he wouldn't have appeared before the National Press Club.

Seriously, there is no scenario under which these things could have played out well for Barack Obama. Rev. Wright might have been able to repair, somewhat, his own reputation. But forcing himself back into the news does Obama no favors.

It doesn't help Barack's image as a uniter, not a divider, that Wright characterized attacks on his sermons "not an attack on Jeremiah Wright; it is an attack on the black church." We don't believe that Rev. Wright is representative of black churches everywhere. You better believe that Barack Obama doesn't want to turn this into a black vs. white issue.

It doesn't help that he said in his National Press Club appearance that Obama would say whatever he had to say to get elected:

Politicians say what they say and do what they do based on electability, based on sound bites, based on polls, Huffington, whoever's doing the polls. Preachers say what they say because they're pastors. They have a different person to whom they're accountable.

As I said, whether he gets elected or not, I'm still going to have to be answerable to God November 5th and January 21st. That's what I mean. I do what pastors do. He does what politicians do.

Just Another San Francisco Democrat.

It doesn't help that Wright didn't back away one whit from his belief that 9/11 happened because of terrorist sins in America's past.

It doesn't help that Wright didn't back away from his comparison of U.S. Marines to the Roman soldiers who killed Jesus.

One other note: Lots of applause and laughter for Wright's comments from the fawning press corps. Of course, that shouldn't surprise anyone.

If Rev. Wright really wanted Barack Obama to be the next President, he would have kept his mouth shut. Defending his previous statements in these two forums just forces an issue damaging to Barack Obama, back into the news cycle.

Look, the Rev. Wright, Barack Obama link isn't going to affect the votes of die hard, left wing Democrats. It's not going to affect the votes of die hard, left wing Republicans. It will, however, affect so called moderate voters--especially the ones for whom Obama's "post-partisan" politics held appeal.

It's a damaging story arc because it exactly contradicts the PR image Barack Obama and his team have worked so hard to create.

The Obama campaign might want to do a little investigative work to see if Rev. Wright is on the Clinton campaign payroll.


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Kanye West, Barack Obama & Jeremiah Wright

Yesterday we read, as we always do, James Taranto's Best of the Web. It mostly treated the various responses and takes on Barack Obama's race speech. Byron York reported on the scene in Philadelphia. Lisa Miller addressed the response of black religious leaders. Taranto reminded us that Obama (rightly) led the charge against Don Imus. Mickey Kaus pointed out that many voters like to be able to vote for Obama.

The least interesting point, initially, was the one made by John McWhorter, a pundit we've referenced before. Among other things, McWhorter discussed the tone and supposed entertainment value of Wright's rhetoric.

They hear a stirring articulation of rebellion, listenable according to a sense that fealty to one's race entails at least a gestural nod to sticking a finger in whitey's eye now and then. The tone, the music of the statements is more vivid than the content. Sermons like this are Sunday morning's version of gangsta rap.

That comparison struck us as a bit odd. "Sunday morning's version of gangsta rap?"

We've long enjoyed hip hop music and some people, including some readers of this blog, have chided us for it. We enjoy some of the silly lyrics and the fun beats like those found in a song Friend of Lybberty, Morgan Habedank, recently wrote about.

After having read Taranto's column, we were driving down the canyon, and we started listening to a song by hip hop philosopher, he of George-Bush-hates-black-people fame, Kanye West. We were particularly struck by some of the lyrics from his song "Heard 'Em Say." (caution: explicit language in link)

And I heard 'em say, nothin ever promised tomorrow today.
From the Chi, like Tim its the Hard-a-way,
So this is in the name of love, like Robert says
Before you ask me to get a job today, can I at least get a raise on a minimum wage?

OK, mostly words that kind of rhyme with a little political plug thrown in for good measure. But then there's this:

And I know the government administered AIDS,
So I guess we just pray like the minister say,

There's that pesky little conspiracy theory of Reverend Wright's, that the government somehow gave black people AIDS in order to have an African-American genocide. But it doesn't end there. From his song "Crack Music." (again, caution, explicit language in link)

How we stop the black panthers?
Ronald Reagan cooked up an answer
You hear that?
What Gil Scott was hearin
When our heroes and heroines got hooked on heroin.
Crack raised the murder rate in DC and Maryland
We invested in that it's like we got Merril-Lynched
And we been hangin from the same tree ever since

This time, Ronald Reagan concocted crack-cocaine to "lynch" African Americans. Later on in the same song, Kanye asks,

Who gave Saddam anthrax?
George Bush got the answers
Back in the hood it's a different type of chemical

Kanye West's lyrics are of a piece with the so-called Black Liberation Theology preached by Reverend Wright. Kanye isn't alone in propagating this garbage, he's just the most current and prominent. Nor is Reverend Wright the only pastor who teaches this to a very receptive audience (according to the video we've seen).

Regrettably, this theology can be found in many African-American churches (those churches that teach the aforementioned Black Liberation Theology) and the hip hop culture (Kanye and other hip hop artists like him). It is a theology of conspiracy, hate, racism, and other divisive language. It teaches African-Americans to believe that white Americans want nothing more than to keep them down and will do anything--AIDS, crack, etc.--to keep them in de facto slavery.

Barack Obama is supposed to be the post-racial Presidential candidate who helps America move past the ugliest parts of its history--slavery, Jim Crow--and yet for 20 years he associated with, was married by, received counsel from, had baptize his daughters, had as one of his campaign advisors, one of the major purveyors of this theology of hate.

And this is the thing that gets us: not all, or even most, African-American churches teach this crap. There are plenty which teach the Good Word of God. Why couldn't Obama have attended one of those?

None of this should be interpreted to mean that we think Obama believed or believes Wright's racist, hateful rhetoric. We don't. When he repudiated Wright's statement, we took him at his word. Of course, it was a politically expedient move. But his longstanding attendance at that Chicago church seemed to indicate a sort of tacit approval.

For over 20 years, Barack Obama was willing to look the other way in order to maintain the support of a very influential African-American leader, church, and congregation in Chicago.

At the very least, this reveals that Barack Obama is just like every other politician, willing to do whatever it takes to boost his electoral appeal.

(sorry to burst the bubble)


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