On the Political Front

Did you read Bob Beckel today? Heartening to learn he felt the need to warn his party, “Beware of Michael Steele.” Then Peggy Noonan said, “One senses in a new way the disaster that is Nancy Pelosi.” And Rich Lowry went after the prez with, “On the stimulus, when Obama says, “I won,” he’s out of better arguments.”

Not only was it a good morning on the editorial front but the president had a very calm hissy fit calling it “inexcusable and irresponsible” that the stimulus bill has been delayed despite the overwhelming opinion of the American people that the bill is the most pork-laden disaster in our history. Maybe people really are listening. With those “500 million Americans” out of jobs each month (Hey, I didn’t make that up – Pelosi did!), there are plenty of folks with tons of time to participate in the latest polls. They can see what’s what and they aren’t falling for the rhetoric. Go team!

More:

The Anchoress: Anchoress stimulus plan a hit! – UPDATED

Power Line: President Obama — diminishing himself to serve Speaker Pelosi

The Next Right/Patrick Ruffini: What Can Republicans Do? Win.

The Washington Times/Stephen Dinan: CBO: Obama stimulus harmful over long haul

Nancy Pelosi and Her Merry Band of Thieves

The Democrats in the House must have a Robin Hood complex. Steal from the future and give to the past. Nancy Pelosi and her merry band of thieves did not pass a stimulus package today but instead funded every pet project imaginable going back some 40 years. Just how stupid do they think we the voters really are. If you haven’t read the list of insults, The Wall Street Journal has the particulars. Read it and weep. Then remember it the next time you go to the polls and the next time and the next time and the…

More:

The Anchoress: “Stimulus” bill needs to die…
Amateur Economist: More “Stimulus” Tomfoolery
Commentary Magazine/Jennifer Rubin: Not Very Stimulating
TimesOnLine (UK): Cross-party support fades as Barack Obama rescue passes first test
Politico: Kerry: Ignore Republicans if they’ll vote no anyway

Rahm and the Inauguration

Best image from the Inauguration…

Rahm Emanuel shows his best side.

Obama, Rush, and What Dems Can Expect

From Jennifer Rubin at Commentary.com…

But insulting the Republicans at the White House with a Rush Limbaugh jibe isn’t the way to win adherents. It is noteworthy that the insult  leaked, suggesting the Republicans are getting ready to burst the bipartisan façade. For a fellow who is supposed to respect his opponents Barack Obama sure has a habit of demeaning their legitimate policy concerns. (”What the cynics fail to understand is that the ground has shifted beneath them — that the stale political arguments that have consumed us for so long no longer apply.”)

At this stage of things, Obama likely has amassed all the adherents he ever will. Certainly gaining more in Congress is unlikely. Being dismissive of or insulting to Republicans is more likely to feed ego or thrill the faithful. However, it reflects poorly on the source more than the target and is just part of the strategy to marginalize the opposition. So develop a thick skin, make a flap over it if you must, and move on. There are larger issues at hand.

It is wishful thinking to see this era as anything but partisan. Lofty concepts like post-partisan or bi-partisan will be given lip-service at best. There is very little Republicans can do except hold firm to what makes them different and remind voters at every turn.

Whatever failures accrue to the Democrats must be clear and unequivocally their responsibility. For each one they must be held accountable. Democrats did nothing less during the last administration and should expect nothing less in return.

RNC Chairman Poll

Only one vote per person.

#TCOT = Top Conservatives on Twitter

If you haven’t heard the news, Twitter is fast becoming the best place to get your political news in short form. With a 140 character limit, even Bill O’Reilly would be happy with the pithiness of the posts. Tiger4Truth will continue to be my venue for long-winded posts but Twitter is now my favorite place to write.

If you happen to be right-leaning, check out the list of Twitter folk at Top Conservatives on Twitter. There’s no lack of interesting commentary there. Or visit the T4T page and click the link to the Tweet folk I follow. That group will always be a work in progress, so check back often to see who has been added. It might even be you!

Run Every Race to Win

Republicans had a couple of reasons to be happy this weekend with two more Congressional seats secured by late wins in Louisiana. The party isn’t dead yet despite the doom and gloom on the web and in the media.

The lessons are simple. You can’t win if you don’t compete and never give up. That means run a candidate in every race and run every race to win. The Democrats certainly will.

Poll: Is Newt best choice for RNC Chair?

Some Republican eyes are focusing on Newt Gingrich as the likely leader of the party and with good reason. No one has better qualifications or instincts to lead the party through the necessary reformation that will make it viable for the next election cycle. The time for leadership is now – not in two years when the 2012 election gets under way. Newt’s prodigious intellect and unparalleled ability to cut to the heart of a problem and find a solution may well make him the best choice for RNC Chairman at least through the midterms.

What do you think?

More:

The Next Right/John Henke: The Next RNC Chairman

Rebuild The Party

Newt.org/Emily Longnecker: Newt Gingrich on the Future, the GOP and Sarah Palin

Townhall/Robert D. Novack: Newt in ‘One-Two’?

The Next Right/Freedoms_Truth: Newt Gingrich for RNC Chair

AJC/Jim Galloway: Gingrich reaches out to GOP; will they respond?

The Day After

"Election" from xkcd.com, a webcomic

For Those Who Remain Undecided…

Scott Johnson and John Hinderaker offer “A closing argument for John McCain” at Power Line. It’s a good closing but not the strongest closing because it fails to make a pithy statement of the case for Senator McCain. Nevertheless, undecided voters should read it as it will remind them of who the man really is. However, there is more to take into account before punching that hole in your ballot and that is the matter of trust.

Candidates jockey about on their positions to suit the times and the sentiments of the voters. This is expected if not accepted. But overall do we trust a particular candidate to do the right thing, to be honest with us (at least to the degree that any politician can be honest), and to have our best interests at heart. Will he make the same choices we would or will he selfishly pursue his own agenda. Will he revel in his own intellect and power or be a man of integrity and humility. When he looks in the mirror does he see the same man we see. These are important things.

The candidate who passes my “important things” test is John McCain. We do not agree on all of the issues but on enough of them. He was not my first choice as the Republican nominee but to be fair neither was Barack Obama on the Democrat side. Regardless, I trust John McCain to do the right thing more consistently and that is the best anyone can do.

McCain Has Faced Longer Odds

Senator John McCain has faced longer odds as a POW than those he faces today. With the election still three days away many bloggers and of course the “fair and balanced” media have announced that he has already lost. Light a candle for him as well as the GOP, good people. Both are effectively history.

The funny thing about history is that by definition it can only relate to past events. There will be plenty of time for postmortems after Tuesday should McCain not prevail and, regardless of his success or failure, it is time for a GNP (Grand New Party). But that can wait until Wednesday. Until then there is work to be done.

“It ain’t over till it’s over.”

More: The Anchoress – America goes truly post-racial

And more: TIME/Mark Halperin – McCain Camp Memo on the State of the Race

And more: Power Line/John Hinderaker – The Fat Lady Is Still Warming Up

Media Bias Starts At The Top

This is a must read: “Media’s Presidential Bias and Decline,” a column by Michael S. Malone for ABC News. There is a lot of truth to what he writes but it misses how high in the industry the problem goes. In addition to the guilty editors Malone blames, publishers and boards of directors are also responsible for the media’s betrayal of the public trust. Without their awareness and consent if not approval, the media could not have pursued the agenda of promoting Obama’s candidacy.

Obama Wants To Spread Your Wealth Around

More on Obama’s plans to “spread the wealth.”

Obama Accepts Bogus Donos But Not McCain

With full coffers does Obama really need to accept donations from John Galt, Osama Bin Laden, Saddam Hussein and Bill Ayers? A Powerline reader reveals his “suspicious” credit card donations were accepted by the Obama campaign but not at McCain’s site.

Patrick Ruffini conducted his own test and discovered

The Obama campaign has turned its security settings for accepting online contributions down to the bare minimum — possibly to juice the numbers, and turning a blind eye towards the potential for fraud not just against the FEC, but against unsuspecting victims of credit card fraud.

Voter fraud (ACORN) and illegal donations should be a death knell for any campaign. But the ‘O’ faithful including the media are so mesmerized that they are willing to excuse such activities as either “no big deal” or Republican lies. This is surely a tainted election with unethical actions both accepted and excused. It is creating a culture of “the end justifies the means” along with making personal integrity a convenience rather than a creed.

Therein lies the real divide in this country, a difference in morals that transcends race, religion, and gender. The absence of leadership in this vital area means it must start at the bottom and work its way up. That leaves it to voters to demand better from the governing class or suffer the consequences.

More at CommentaryMagazine/Jennifer Rubin: Plenty To Worry About

What ever happened to Al Gore and global warming?

The election has dominated the news for months pushing other issues to the back page. Amongst those getting short shrift is global warning and its media darling, Al Gore. Actually the former VP must be greatly relieved to be out of the spotlight now that his pet cause seems to have lost its direction. Lorne Gunter, at the National Post, writes…

For nearly 30 years, Professor Christy has been in charge of NASA’s eight weather satellites that take more than 300,000 temperature readings daily around the globe. In a paper co-written with Dr. Douglass, he concludes that while manmade emissions may be having a slight impact, “variations in global temperatures since 1978 cannot be attributed to carbon dioxide.”

There’s more…

Don Easterbrook, a geologist at Western Washington University, says, “It’s practically a slam dunk that we are in for about 30 years of global cooling,” as the sun enters a particularly inactive phase. His examination of warming and cooling trends over the past four centuries shows an “almost exact correlation” between climate fluctuations and solar energy received on Earth, while showing almost “no correlation at all with CO2.”

Climate change is happening but not necessarily global warming. Daily Tech reports on the 2008 growth of Alaskan glaciers and summer temperatures that were about 3 degrees lower than normal. Glaciologist Bruce Molnia remarks

At least years like this, however, might mark the beginning of another Little Ice Age.

Not only have Alaskan glaciers grown, Arctic sea ice has seen a massive increase while recent data indicate “Antarctica is on a long-term cooling trend.” Another fact that corroborates the climate cooling theory is that Brazil just had its coldest September in a century.

All of this points to man-made global warming as junk science and climate change as the natural order of things, something to which humans are merely spectators.

Bad news for big Al. Good news for the rest of the planet.

Boss Daley Claims Obama and Ayers are Friends

Chicago’s Mayor Daley attempted to make nothing of Barack Obama’s relationship with William Ayers back in August according to John Kass at the Chicago Tribune.

Obama says he was 8 years old when the bombs went off. But he was a grown man when he sought Ayers’ political blessing, and when they worked on the same education projects.

“They’re friends. So what?” Mayor Daley said in August.

From Daley, who should know the truth, that’s a flat-out admission that Obama and Ayers are friends. Not were friends back at the beginning of time or just neighbors who nod as they pass each other in their luxury cars but are friends or at least were in August, 2008. That was reported in the Chicago Tribune today. So much for Obama disassociating himself from Ayers.

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Kass has more on Obama’s Chicago connections specifically crony Marilyn Katz, security chief for the radical Students for a Democratic Society during the 1960’s, who is currently raking in the bucks from the city of Chicago.

One friend of Obama and Ayers is former ’60s radical Marilyn Katz, now an Obama fundraiser, strategist and public relations maven…

Now, as Daley prepares to lay off more than 1,000 city workers, he’s given Katz and other public relations firms five-year contracts that could pay them as much as $5 million each for consulting, advertising and promotion.

There is more data in the Trib story but the interconnectedness of the players is remarkable. Mayor Daley’s father and William Ayers’ father were friends. William Ayers and Marilyn Katz were in the SDS together. Obama, Ayers, and Katz are friends. Katz is now an Obama fundraiser and strategist. Katz is on the Daley payroll and Daley is running interference for Obama.

Imagine how government will function under an Obama administration and what kind of scorecard it will take to keep track of all the players.

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Don’t miss the must-read opinion piece at the D.C. Examiner titled “Guilty by Participation: Barack Obama’s radical associations and what they mean.”

The Obama Camp, Election Fraud and Socialism

This report from Grizzly Groundswell shows the Obama campaign voter tampering charges are more significant than previously thought. In addition the efforts appear to be more closely connected to Obama than the “arms-length transaction” he would like us to believe.

There is no place in the American electoral process for the types of voter suppression, intimidation and harassment systematically engaged in by the Obama campaign, its allies and supporters. ~ Lyn Utrecht, Counsel, Hillary Clinton for President

Combine that with the suppression of the First Amendment and outright embrace of socialist principles by the Obama/Pelosi/Reid triumvirate, and we will have a brand new world as of January 20, 2009. Our system of checks and balances never looked so important as it does today.

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Don’t miss the must-read opinion piece at the D.C. Examiner titled “Guilty by Participation: Barack Obama’s radical associations and what they mean.”

Obama and the Chicago New Party (Dem Socialist)

The story is here. Just in case the page on the Chicago Democrat Socialists of America site “disappears,” a screenshot seemed in order…

We were discussing Obama and Democratic Socialism just a couple of days ago.

More at Powerline and Jennifer Rubin at Commentary.

McCain or Obama – Which candidate will deliver?

There have been a lot of promises and proposals made during this election cycle, some good, some questionable, some trivial. With less than a month to go, Senators McCain and Obama have probably made the bulk of their promises and proposals. Voters and pundits can examine them down to the most minute detail and decide which proposals have merit, are based in reality and will lead to a better future whatever that means to any individual. None of that matters though if the candidate making the promise will not also make it a reality.

Don’t waste your vote on a candidate who lacks the wherewithal to make your expectations come to fruition. Think about it. Will your candidate stand and deliver? Look to his history, character and trustworthiness for clues to his actions in the future. Will his campaign promises become a distant memory or a future reality? Will he lead or will he acquiesce to party leaders, special interest groups and Members of Congress? Despite all demands and invitations to do otherwise, will he represent the people who elected him?

If you remain undecided, consider this. Character and toughness are always important but never more so than during harsh times. What counts is who will deliver. That is the candidate who deserves your vote. Rhetoric is inspiring but results will determine our future.

A Winner, a Loser and Two Runners-up

Results of the October 7th presidential debate (insert drumroll)

Winner: Belmont University for providing a terrific venue

Loser: Tom Brokaw for over-scripting a usually spontaneous format

First Runner-up: John McCain for one new idea, the mortgage rate reset proposal

Second Runner-up: Barack Obama for best teflon suit (nothing stuck to him)

More: The Anchoress – Final Thought: Brokaw hurt both men