Judge Currie is right on target

U.S. District Judge Cameron McGowan Currie has ruled that the State of South Carolina must hold off its plans to issue special license plates with the words "I Believe" and a cross. Judge Currie is right on target.

When such symbols and words appear on a State-issued license plate, they constitute an establishment of Christianity by the State of South Carolina. If a driver wants to advertise his Christianity, let him buy a bumper sticker and stick it on his car. But the State has no business issuing such plates.

What part of "no establishment of religion" do the South Carolina legislators that approved such a plate not understand?

He's actually doing some things right!

Anyone reading this blog must be aware that my thoughts on Barack Obama prior to this election were extremely negative. So I have to admit that I'm surprising myself with this post, under the title "He's actually doing some things right!" Yes, President-elect Obama is actually doing some things right: I'm talking about his appointments to date.

He's made a number of appointments lately, and some of them (like Pres. Bush's Defense Secretary to continue in office) are positively mind-boggling, given Obama's remarks about Bush's war policies! But one thing they all have in common: Whether I've heard of the person or not, every one is competent for the position which he was picked for. This is quite a contrast with the last two Democratic presidents. Carter picked — to head the anti-drug program — a doctor who was reprimanded by his medical association for improperly prescribing drugs! And in general, Carter tended to appoint people he knew from Georgia, regardless of competence; of course, Carter liked to micro-manage everything, so one might say it didn't matter much who he appointed, because he'd call the shots anyway himself! Clinton was so obsessed with naming a female attorney general — regardless of qualifications — that it took him three tries, and the one who made it, Janet Reno, made a botch of the Elián Gonzalez case. Some of Obama's appointments may be questionable for some reasons, but competency isn't the reason for my doubts on any of them.

The choice of Hillary Clinton

It seems that Hillary Clinton is President-Elect Obama's choice for Secretary of State, and, to my surprise, she wants the job. If I were in her place, I wouldn't:

1. Secretaries of State used to be considered, in the 19^th century, prime prospects for the Presidency. However, there hasn't been a Secretary of State who moved up to the Presidency since James Buchanan (and there hasn't been any Cabinet secretary who moved up to the Presidency since Herbert Hoover).




2. Hillary Clinton seemed to have a promising future in the U. S. Senate. But she needs to develop some seniority there to become an important Senator. Moving into the Cabinet short-circuits this path.




3. Pres.-Elect Obama is an independent-minded man, whose ideas on foreign policy differ from Sen. Clinton's in many ways. However, in the Cabinet, she has to put forward his policies, and not proclaim her own. She will be in Obama's shadow.

I wonder what Obama is thinking in making the offer. But even more, I wonder what Hillary Clinton is thinking in accepting it!

The first actions of President-Elect Obama

Earlier, we said that when President-Elect Barack Obama does something supportable, we will support it, and when he does something bad, we retain the right to criticize him. And it seems he's done some of both in his first days since the election.

On the positive side, he's shown some definite willingness to work with those who opposed him, having meetings with President George W. Bush about the transition and with Senator John McCain to identify points of shared interest, and (the most honorable thing he's done) emphasizing that he did not want the Senate Democrats to strip Sen. Joseph Lieberman of his committee chairmanship. Sen. Lieberman, a Democrat who lost his party's nomination in Connecticut but won as an independent, has been a loyal Democrat on most issues but worked hard against Sen. Obama's candidacy, and it is a good sign that Obama did not bear a grudge.

On the negative side, his appointment of Rahm Emanuel as chief of staff is not a good sign. Emanuel is a vicious Chicago-machine politician, who once sent a campaign opponent a dead fish, and he's also associated strongly with the corrupt Bill Clinton administration.

And it's not certain how to rate Obama's choice of Eric Holder as attorney general. Holder seems to be well-qualified, but he was part of Bill Clinton's last-minute pardoning of Marc Rich and some Puerto Rican nationalists in his role as deputy attorney general. He deserves to be questioned intensely, particularly about Marc Rich. But he may be simply someone who went along with what his boss, the President, wanted. So the jury is still out on this one.

Sarah Palin's future

People are putting forth the idea that if Ted Stevens is re-elected, but expelled from the Senate because of the scandals, Gov. Sarah Palin should be put in that Senate seat. Certainly she is ideologically more religious-right that I would favor, but if she does become a Senator, by the time of the 2012 election she will be better-qualified than Barack Obama was this year, with more experience in the Senate plus some executive experience as Governor. And if she does as good a job in the Senate as she apparently has as Governor, she will be hard to beat for the nomination.


There are a lot of "if"s in that, though. I'm certainly not advocating Sarah Palin as the GOP candidate for the Presidency in 2012. I'd prefer to see someone more moderate, someone in the mold of Rudy Giuliani or John McCain this year. I do think she'd be an attractive candidate, with a lot going for her, particularly if by that time the then-sitting President Barack Obama becomes as unpopular as George W. Bush is at the moment.


In any case, Gov. Palin would bring a lot of new energy to the Senate if she is chosen. And with the low spirits of the party, perhaps we need that.

The result of the election

This will be the last post with a label "2008 election" on this blog. The election is over. and the people have spoken. And in our tradition, we have to accept the result, for the next 4 years. As John McCain said in his gracious concession speech, Barack Obama is our President, beginning in 2½ months.


As I said in my last post, the United States survived Bill Clinton; it will survive Barack Obama. I'm not going into mourning for this country; and I'm not closing this blog. (It is not intended as just a John McCain blog; I started it before I knew who the candidates would be in 2008, and my first choice wasn't even McCain, though I was happy enough to support McCain once he became the obvious front-runner for the nomination.)


I retain the right to criticize President-Elect Obama when I think he is wrong, just as many others have criticized our current President when they have thought he is wrong. I also retain the right to support him whenever I think he is doing the right thing, though I doubt that will happen very often; this is not like a Parliamentary system such as Great Britain's, where "the duty of the opposition is to oppose."


John McCain joins a group of people I have felt should have been President but didn't make it. Some, like Bob Dole, at least made it as far as their party's nomination, as McCain did this year. Others, including Arlen Spector, Bob Dole's wife Elizabeth, George Romney, Jeane Kirkpatrick, and my own political hero, Nelson A. Rockefeller, never even got the nomination. Any of these might have made an excellent President, if the American people had chosen him or her for the job. (You note that all the men and women I have mentioned were Republicans, though Kirkpatrick started her career in the Democratic Party. This is no coincidence. I've rarely seen a Democrat I could support. Jimmy Carter, one of the few Democrats who wasn't too far to the political left for me, was too politically naïve for the job, and made a most incompetent President.)


It should be obvious to all who have read this blog that I believe that the people chose wrong. It seems that the economic meltdown came at just the wrong time; McCain had been starting to move upward in the polls and if there had not been such an economic collapse, I might be today cheering the public's choice of John McCain as our President-Elect. But the 2008 election is over. I hope I will still be alive in 2012 when, I'm sure, the people will choose a new President better qualified and more worthy.

Three days from now, Election Day

... and the polls show Obama far ahead. I hope they're wrong, and it's 1948 all over again; we'll see on Wednesday. But I have to assume they're going to be right, and the American public will misguidedly vote to put in the man I feel is the worst candidate a major party has offered since George McGovern in 1972.



This country will survive. It survived the Presidency of Bill Clinton, and it will survive the Presidency of Barack Obama. (Obama will be worse, but this country has amazing strength in the face of disaster.)



One of two things will happen. Either Obama will be able to push through the radical socialist changes he wants, or he won't. If he does, the American public will see how bad his ideas are, and a new Newt Gingrich will arise in 2010, as the first one did in 1994, on a "Contract with America" type of platform, and Obama will find himself with a hostile Congress in the second half of his term. If he doesn't, the American public will see him as just another smooth-talking politician offering to change the world but unable to do so, and he will not be able to win a second term. So either in 2010 or 2012, the pendulum will swing the other way.



I just hope I'll be alive to see it!

Colin Powell and Barack Obama

Yesterday, General Colin Powell endorsed Senator Barack Obama for the Presidency. While this endorsement made me no more inclined to support Obama than beforehand, it has caused me to rethink my opinion of Gen. Powell.

I had, up to this point, thought of Gen. Powell as a fine patriotic American, who put his country first. In fact, as someone like Sen. John McCain. His endorsing someone as bad for America as Sen. Obama can only mean that Gen. Powell puts his race, not his country, first. I cannot see any other reason why Gen. Powell would back a man whose opposition to everything Gen. Powell has fought for is so patent.

On top of all, some of his reasons for rejecting McCain in favor of Obama are ludicrous — Gov. Sarah Palin may be low in qualification, but nothing that can be said about her doesn't apply to Sen. Obama just as well, and she is only running for the vice-presidency, not the presidency, so Obama's inexperience is more serious.

Up until yesterday, I might have considered a future Colin Powell candidacy for the Presidency as worthy of support; as of yesterday's endorsement, I could not consider supporting Gen. Powell for anything in the future. Anyone who can endorse Barack Obama in this way has forfeited the right to the support of anyone who is truly in favor of America's best interests.

Last night's debate

Some observations on last night's debate:

1. Obama could not get away from attacking George W. Bush. If he had been forced to avoid the phrase "failed policies of the past eight years," he would have been totally tongue-tied.


2. McCain didn't hit that point enough. Once he said ,"If you wanted to run against George Bush, you should have run 4 years ago." Major point, but he should have emphasized this more.


3. Obama needs to be pushed on his associations with Ayers, and with other questionable characters, more. Obama denies that this is an issue, but it bears on the major issue: "Can we trust Barack Obama with the Presidency of the United States?"

The UCC, and why Jeremiah Wright matters

It may seem strange to open a post entitled "The UCC, and why Jeremiah Wright matters" with a reference to Yom Kippur, but the connection is as follows: On Yom Kippur (which began the night before last and extended through most of yesterday) the congregation whose service I attended held that service at a church of the United Church of Christ, Jeremiah Wright's denomination. (They have for many years used churches as venues for their High Holiday services, because they get large attendances on those days and need places much larger than their usual service locations. For the past 20 years they've met for High Holidays at a Presbyterian church a few blocks from the White House, but that church is under renovation, so they used this UCC church this time.)

While waiting for the service to begin, I spent some time looking at the church's hymnals, which were found in the pews. The UCC hymnal turns out to contain much more than what I expected in a hymnal; it had a lot of material on the forms with which the ICC services are to be conducted and it turns out that (not surprisingly, since it was formed by the combination of a number of originally separate Protestant denominations) it tolerates a lot of diversity of doctrine. Even on the doctrine of transsubstantiation, which is generally, among Christians, a major doctrinal difference, it seems that UCC pastors are given the freedom to determine whether they will allude to it in serving the bread and wine.

And this is why I think that Jeremiah Wright matters. It is true, and nobody can deny this, that Barack Obama was essentially a secular person until Rev. Wright converted him. And it is, therefore, likely that Sen. Obama's religious views were formed by Rev. Wright. Each UCC minister clearly has the power to make his congregation over in the image of his own religious ideas, and Sen. Obama was converted by Rev. Wright, attended Rev. Wright's church for over 20 years, and remained a communicant of Rev. Wright's church until it became politically embarrassing.

So Barack Obama has to be charged with Rev. Wright's religious ideas. Wright does matter.

Last night's debate

Not surprisingly, Barack Obama still seems to be running against George W. Bush, rather than John McCain — Bush is unpopular at this point, so Obama is trying to tar McCain with whatever objections people have to Bush. But McCain is his own man, and not a Bush clone; whatever Bush's faults may be, McCain cannot be treated as if he necessarily shares them. Yes, McCain is of Bush's party, but parties include many individuals. Should Obama be considered a Carter/Clinton clone, and everything they did wrong attributed to him?

One could argue that neither Carter nor Clinton was president while Obama was in the Senate, but of course, I'm sure that as a Democrat, Obama voted for both. But actually, if anything, McCain might be well advised to run against Richard M. Daley and the Strogers (father and son). After all, Obama did their bidding in the Illinois legislature.

Obama wants to run on issues like the economy and health care. But in fact the most important issue is this:

Should Barack Obama be trusted with the Presidency of the United States?

And this is an issue for which one needs to look at Obama's associations: Jeremiah Wright, Tony Rezko, Richard M. Daley, John and Todd Stroger, William Ayres, and Frank Marshall Davis. One has to look at the people Obama has shafted, like Alice Palmer. And these count more than what Obama says about the economy or health care or anything else. They bear on the issue of Obama's fitness for the Presidency.

The Biden/Palin debate

Well, to my way of thinking, Palin did very well. Everyone expected her to be a dim bulb; she showed that even though she might have been underprepared in some of the interviews between her nomination and last night, when she gets a chance to prepare herself she can hold her own. I still would have preferred someone with more experience, but I think that Sarah Palin would be a competent Vice-President.

She made two points I wanted to see made: The Obama/Biden team seems to be forever running against George W. Bush, though he's not on the ballot, rather than against McCain and her; and Biden needs to be reminded that he had said in January that Obama was not qualified — though she let him fail to respond there (more's the pity).

Certainly, I came away from the debate with one conclusion: I was right to back the McCain team, even with Palin in the #2 spot, no matter how much I might have preferred a different VP candidate.

The financial "bailout"

Senator John McCain thought it important enough to suspend his campaign and suggest postponing the debate. Senator Barack Obama obviously didn't, so the debate went on, since McCain couldn't just let it go to Obama by default. (If I'd have been in McCain's shoes, I think I'd have sent Gov. Sarah Palin to Mississippi to debate Obama!) But both have apparently signed off on the resulting solution with reservations.


It's clear that the responsibility for following up on this process will extend long beyond Jan. 20, 2009. So the incoming President (and since we do not know who that will be, both Obama and McCain) needed to be involved in these discussions. What could possibly have been on Obama's mind when he first said he wasn't needed, then only came to Washington because President Bush gave him a personal phone call?

Is Barack Obama prepared to take on the responsibilities of the Presidency?

Last night's debate

Barack Obama is supposed to be a great orator — and perhaps he is, when reciting a prepared speech. But last night he began just about every remark with a heming and hawing that shows he cannot think on his feet.

And he seems to forget that his opponent is John McCain, not George Bush — at least he used Bush's name at least as much as he did McCain's. Perhaps he might like to be charged with every mistake of a past Democratic President?

McCain made one great point: The President to be inaugurated in January doesn't have anything to do with how we got where we are (In Iraq, which was the topic being discussed at the time, or in any other matter). He has to determine what we do from this point on, and he cannot rewind the clock and do a "do-over" from 2000.

Obama seems to think that Iraq was a distraction from fighting al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan. He fails to see the interconnection; perhaps because what he considers important in Iraq is that he was bankrolled by Saddam Hussein's banker, Nadhmi Auchi. We don't want Middle Eastern Arab money controlling our President.

Swiftboating?

Some of the Obama supporters seem worried by the likelihood of being "swiftboated" as John Kerry was 4 years ago. But what does that mean? The Swift Boat Veterans for Truth pointed out things about Kerry that were true, and reflected badly on Kerry. They should have been pointed out. What this meant, though, was that the people were turned away from the issues that Kerry wanted to stress to others, like Kerry's character and honesty, which reflected badly on him.

Obama, similarly, wants to pick and choose the issues that the American people will use as a basis for their votes. He is afraid that they will vote based on his character and trustworthiness, rather than on his issues.

So "swift-boating" isn't such a bad thing, really.

The women supporting Gov. Palin

I see a number of liberal Democrats taking offense at many women's switching to the McCain-Palin ticket after having supported Sen. Hillary Clinton's failed Presidential run. They object that Gov. Palin isn't someone who favors the things that Sen. Clinton did — which is true.


Actually, I have to agree that people should support a candidate based on their political positions and their qualifications, and not just their gender (or race). But I never saw those liberals disavowing the support of those women when it was going to Sen. Clinton. Now, all of a sudden, when this lock-step "support her because she's a woman" attitude turns them away from the Democratic Party and toward a (gasp!) conservative Republican, Sarah Palin, it's something reprehensible to them. And none of them seems to be complaining about the stratospheric levels of African-American support for Barack Obama!


Frankly, if I were campaign manager for McCain-Palin, I'd take all the votes I could get. And not worry about whether they are voting for Palin without studying her ideology. I bet a lot of them supported Hillary Clinton without looking at her ideology.

The Obama-Biden ticket

In 1988, the Democrats nominated Michael Dukakis for President and Lloyd Bentsen for Vice-President. Some people thought Bentsen was a better candidate for the Presidency than Dukakis. Even one member of the Electoral College — the only people who had the ability to do so — voted that way.



This year, it looks as if the Democrats repeated this trick (nominating a ticket with a better-qualified Presidential candidate in the #2 slot). Certainly, at least one Democrat I know thinks so; she was preparing to vote for Biden in the Presidential primary, and would have done so except for a glitch in the notices, so she was given the wrong location for her polling place. (Since Biden had already dropped out, even though he was still on the ballot in this state, she didn't try very hard to find out where her polling place really was.)



But when I asked her whether Biden's presence on the ticket might get her to vote Obama-Biden, she pointed out that it would still be Obama in charge if that ticket won, and she just can't trust him. Right now she's still expecting to vote for McCain-Palin. But it seems likely that had the Democratic ticket been Biden-Obama rather than the other way around, she would have voted that way.

On Sarah Palin

Well, I said I wasn't happy with Sarah Palin as John McCain's choice for a running mate. But it looks like an act of political genius!


McCain's poll numbers are skyrocketing, and Palin seems to be the reason. Conservatives find her someone they can enthuse over, and those women who were supporting Hillary Clinton just because they wanted to see a woman in an important position seem to be flocking to the McCain-Palin ticket. Last figure I saw was that 29% of the people who had supported Hillary Clinton will vote for McCain-Palin; quite a big number considering the political spread between the two!


I still think it undercuts the experience issue. But people see in Sarah Palin what they had been seeing in Barack Obama: a fresh face, someone who might bring about some changes in the Washington establishment. And with Sarah Palin, these characteristics are real— she actually has a record of bringing change in Alaska!


No question that Obama is running scared: How often do we see a presidential candidate deigning to train his rhetorical guns on a vice-presidential candidate? But he has been doing so lately!


It looks as if John McCain made a pretty good decision after all. And making good decisions is really what we elect a President to do.


McCain-Palin in 2008!

Is there really such a thing as "too honorable"?

The September 8 issue of Time magazine has a cover picture of John McCain, with a cover story that seems to imply that he has too much of a sense of honor to be a good President. Seeing this made my eyes blanch in disbelief. Can anyone be too honorable for the Presidency?



It's true that Jimmy Carter had a sense of propriety that went well beyond the usual — the "lust in the heart" quote, for example. But Carter's flaws were not excessive honor; they flowed from naïveté about the way the world works. And I think that McCain's sense of honor poses a refreshing contrast to his opponent's rather dishonorable past. A person who would stab his political mentor in the back, as he did Alice Palmer; a person who would favor a corrupt machine politician, like John Stroger, even against a personal friend (Forrest Claypool); a person who would steer government favors to a corrupt slumlord (Tony Rezko), even while representing a poor constituency in the Illinois State Senate; this is Barack Obama.

I for one say that John McCain's sense of honor is an unalloyed positive.

The McCain-Palin ticket

One thing I'm not going to be accused of is inconsistency. And it would be hard to hide the fact that (as noted in my post of August 1) I've never thought that Sarah Palin would be a good choice for Vice-President. So I'm not going to defend it. I think that Sen. McCain made a mistake. But hardly one that would make me re-think my endorsement of his candidacy.


The choice undercuts the experience theme; Sarah Palin makes Barack Obama seem experienced by comparison. And it was clear that Obama and his Democratic allies would pounce on that; that was hardly a surprise. And obviously they will use this to question McCain's judgment; I've already admitted in my previous post that Obama made a good choice in picking Joe Biden for his running-mate. But one somewhat unfortunate pick is hardly enough to question John McCain's judgment. Look at all the bad judgment calls that Obama has made! (Let me mention William Ayers, Jeremiah Wright, and John Stroger, just as examples!)

It would appear that the choice of Sarah Palin was made for two reasons: first, to win over disaffected supporters of Hillary Clinton (and McCain's ad talking about the Democratic Party's snubbing of Hillary Clinton might have clued me off to this announcement, if I'd read it correctly! But there were really more highly-qualified women, like Carly Fiorina), and second, to reassure conservatives that he was not going to ignore their thoughts. And given those two factors, it was understandable. But that is not the same as saying it was a good choice.

Despite it all, my vote will still be cast for the McCain-Palin ticket in November. But not as happily as if the names on the ballot were McCain-Romney or McCain-Fiorina.

Credit where credit is due!

It seems that Barack Obama actually did something right. So let’s give him proper credit for the decision.


Of all the possible vice-presidential choices, Joe Biden is certainly the best he could have chosen. Oh, Biden is certainly too liberal for me, but there aren’t any moderates highly enough placed in the Democratic Party for one to be the nominee. At least Biden has a lot of experience, and actually has made some statements on foreign policy that make sense.


Though I’ve been taken to task on this comparison, it actually reminds me of the decision in 2000 by George W. Bush to pick Dick Cheney. In both cases, we see a relatively inexperienced candidate (though Bush certainly had more experience than Obama has now) picking a highly qualified and very experienced VP candidate, and also a VP candidate that is certainly not a moderate, but one in his party’s mainstream.


No chance that I’ll come out for Obama — after all, Biden’s really too liberal for my taste anyway — but for Obama, this is a good sign.

McCain's houses

So, the Obama campaign is trying to make some political hay out of the fact that John McCain, who married into a lot of money, could not remember how many houses he and his wife own. It's funny that Barack Obama had no trouble supporting John Kerry, who married into even more money, for the Presidency in 2004.

Yes, McCain is rich. But should that disqualify him for the Presidency? I think not. Whatever you think of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, (and I am not a fan of his, but most Democrats, I believe, are!) he was also an heir to a lot of money, and I believe that Nelson Rockefeller, whose very last name suggests money, would have made an excellent President.

The real issues in this campaign should be three: Obama's great lack of experience, his radical agenda (which include his political mentors, such as Jeremiah Wright and William Ayers), and his dishonorable character, as evidenced by his treatment of Alice Palmer and his strong backing for the Daley machine in Chicago. There are no other issues that come even close to these in importance.

What "change" means to Barack Obama

We know that the big theme of Barack Obama's campaign is "change." But what really does "change" mean to Obama?

We might get some clues from his first job in Chicago, before he sought political office, working as a "political organizer." He was hired from New York by Gerald Kellman, a political disciple of Saul Alinsky, who was among other things the author of a book entitled Rules for Radicals. Alinsky was an extreme radical, who regularly used the word "change" himself, with the specific meaning of "socialist redistribution of wealth." And of course, Kellman, as Alinsky's disciple, taught Alinsky's ideas to his worker, Barack Obama. (In fact, as can easily be found from such sources as Freddoso's book and this website, Kellman clearly saw Obama as a tool to help reach African-Americans, as his own organization at the time was mostly white and ethnically Jewish. But clearly, Obama was too bright to stay merely a tool.)

Can we doubt that Obama's "change" means anything else? He talks about repealing tax cuts, and instituting more taxes, and it is clear that redistribution of wealth is an idea that resonates with him too. Can we conclude that "change" in an Obama administration could mean anything else?

Jerome Corsi's book on Obama

Recently I recommended David Freddoso's book on Barack Obama. About the same time, Jerome Corsi's book, "The Obama Nation," a pun on "abomination," came out. This book is also worth reading. The two are very different, though.

Freddoso concentrates on recent events, the past 12 years, starting with Alice Palmer. Corsi's covers Obama's whole life. You should read both, though. It is really interesting to see, in Corsi's book, just how Obama can't even tell the truth about his own life story.

This is a man who wants us to trust him with the Presidency of the United States?

Taking a break from election-related posts...

I just saw an interesting book, of which so far I've only read a small part, but which I really like and want to recommend. It is called "Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness," by Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein. The book espouses a political philosophy that the authors call "libertarian paternalism," which can be basically defined as giving the maximum amount of freedom, while encouraging desirable behavior through incentives rather than compulsion. It's a pretty good idea to me.

He has some ideas I like very much — though the one I'm about to mention is one I'd hate to praise too extremely, because it's an idea I had myself several years ago. The authors' idea to solve the problem of disagreement over gay marriage is: Let the government get out of the role of defining marriage entirely, but just provide a sort of civil union or domestic partnership arrangement; let marriage be defined by churches and any other organizations that want to grant status as married, and keep the two separate. Thus if a church wants to deny gay couples the right to marry, they could, but some other church might marry them, and the policies of neither would matter under the law, as the legal status of a couple (same sex or different sex) would depend on a legal contract, which might set up whatever conditions the law and the couple might want to be included. It seems very sensible to me.

More about Barack Obama and his "movement for change"

In the book I recommended Monday, there are lots of great reasons to reject Senator Barack Obama and put your support behind Senator John McCain. Yesterday and the day before I featured one: his unscrupulous, machine-politician methods of eliminating his political mentor, Alice Palmer, and bulldozing his way into the Illinois State Senate. Another proof that Obama is just another corrupt Chicago-machine politician is the way he behaved in a recent election, where, after his election to the Senate, when he might have effected some change if he really wanted to, he could have but refused to, and once more stabbed a friend in the back. It was in an election for President of the County Board back home in the Chicago area.

If you can't go and get the book, at least read about it here, and here, and here.

More about some of the machine corruption which Obama has supported can be found here, too.

Read all about it!

Besides the book I recommended earlier this week, you can read about Barack Obama's gaming the rules in 1996 to stab his erstwhile mentor Alice Palmer in the back...

here, and here, and here, and here...

This is the guy who'll bring change to politics? This is simply a Chicago machine politician!

How Barack Obama got his first elective office

Barack Obama this year has shown that he is a master of gaming the rules to his advantage. It turns out he has been this from the beginning of his political career.

Alice Palmer had been an Illinois State Senator for years. Obama was one of her staff members. It seems that in 1996, the local congressman, Mel Reynolds, got into legal trouble over a charge of having sex with a minor. When he left the Congress, Palmer decided to run for the congressional seat, and Obama was her hand-picked successor.

The only trouble was, after Palmer chose to run for the congressional seat, a certain Jesse Jackson, Jr. chose to run for that same seat. With such a famous name running against her, she finished very poorly, actually coming in third after Jackson and another State Senator. So she decided to go back to her old State Senate seat — the only problem was, Obama wanted it now!

In the ensuing primary, each candidate needed to get a certain number of petition signatures to qualify for the ballot. She needed something over 700 signatures, she filed over 1700; but Obama, as machine politicians often do, managed to get around 1000 of Palmer's signatures voided, enough to rule her off. In addition, he got two other competing candidates disqualified the same way, so Obama ran unopposed. Naturally, he won the seat! (It was a solid Democratic district, so the primary was all he needed to win.)

A machine politician par excellence, Barack Obama used all the nasty tricks that the Daley machine is known for. Naturally, since Daley had thought of Alice Palmer as a rival for power, he was not too unhappy at what Obama did.

Is this person worthy of being President? Hardly.

More about Obama's past to come in later posts.

Book recommendation

If you want to learn more about what kind of politician Barack Obama is, get this book and read it:

"The Case against Barack Obama"

by David Freddoso

This has all the information you need to have: how he schemed to get elected to the Illinois Senate by getting his opponents ruled off the ballot, the story about his relationships with Jeremiah Wright and other radical types, etc.

The vice-presidential candidate

Obviously, no choice that John McCain or Barack Obama could make regarding a running mate would be likely to change my support for McCain against Obama. But McCain could make some good choices, or some bad ones, and so here are some points I would like to make.

I had previously said some favorable things about Mitt Romney as a VP nominee. Nothing has changed; Romney would still be one of the better choices. But today I saw a newspaper article saying that McCain is being recommended by some supporters to pick a female VP. Two names were given: Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska and Carly Fiorina.

I find the whole idea of picking someone purely on the basis of race or gender as somewhat repugnant, but I recognize that politics can work that way. In any case, however, if McCain does pick a woman, I would hope that it would be someone who is qualified. And while I feel that Palin is not really qualified, Fiorina would be an interesting choice.

To nominate Sarah Palin would be the equivalent of the Democrats' nomination of Geraldine Ferraro some years ago. Ferraro clearly had insufficient experience, and would never have been nominated if it weren't for her gender. (In fact, I'm certain that Barack Obama would never have been nominated this year if it weren't for his race, for the same reason.) Sarah Palin, and Bobby Jindal (another governor being talked about for VP, who would break precedent because of his ethnicity), will, I am sure, be rising stars of the Republican Party, and if they do good jobs in their States' executive mansions, they may well be tapped for high national office in future years. But neither one has been Governor for even a full term; Jindal not even for a year!

Carly Fiorina, in a sense, has even less experience; she has never held any elective or appointive office. But her experience as CEO of a major high-technology corporation is valuable. She's actually run something that is bigger than some States. And I think this gives her some of the same appeal that a Mitt Romney has. I think she'd be a good choice.

Obama dēlendus est!

In the early history of Rome, there was a famous statesman, Marcus Porcius Cato (known as Cato the Elder), who is reputed to have ended every speech with the phrase "Carthagō dēlenda est" ("Carthage must be destroyed"). I'm beginning to feel tempted to end every post with the phrase, "Obama dēlendus est!" (Note the change, appropriate to the masculine subject, which I had planned to make, but which would I'm sure be approved by N. S. Gill, whose blog has a post, "Delenda est" shouldn't be destroyed, about getting the Latin right in using this phrase.)

People have given me many reasons for their support of Obama, just about all of which make me more inclined to oppose him:

1. His steady pursuit of "change," to the point of its becoming the #1 theme of his campaign. There is a lot about this country that I love and do not want to change. Perhaps some things need to be fixed, but I want most things about the U. S. to stay as they are!


2. His popularity in Europe: Well, I'm sorry. One difference between the U. S. and Europe is the great popularity of socialism there. While in this country, even the Democratic Party, which favors a lot of socialistic ideas, denies anyone's characterization of it as a socialist party, in Europe, openly socialist parties thrive. And Obama's extreme-left ideas (endorsed by the New Party, after all!) would (not surprisingly) appeal to socialistically-inclined Europeans (and to those who, though perhaps not socialists themselves, are not as unalterably opposed to socialism as Americans are).


3. This morning someone actually pointed to Obama's being a lawyer as a favorable thing. As if we do not already have enough lawyers in places of high power. One thing about lawyers is that they can argue in favor of anyone and anything, as long as it supports their client; no consideration to whether it's good for their city, state, or nation. That is not the kind of person I want to see leading the country!


4. And of course, people like his youth and vigor. But this goes with a serious inexperience. Hey, four years ago the man was an obscure Illinois State Senator. And now he wants to be President of the United States? Most presidential candidates spend a bit more time as governors, United States Senators, corporate executives, or military leaders before trying for the highest office in the land. Is three years in the U. S. Senate enough? I think not.

I don't really intend to put it in every post between now and November, though I feel as if I should.


Obama dēlendus est!

Obama is for principle -- except when it hurts his cause!

I hope that the people who have been thinking that Barack Obama is any more principled than the average politician have really studied his record in this campaign. He felt that he could not disavow Jeremiah Wright — until he realized that unless he did so, he'd lose a lot of votes who were turned away by Wright's bigotry. He embraced public financing — until he realized that he was bringing in more cash privately than he could publically. Similarly, he favored denial of immunity to ISPs in those surveillance cases — until he realized that there was political risk in doing so, and abandoned his position when it actually came to a Senate vote. So much for principle!

Supreme Court's bizarre decision

Unfortunately, the United States Supreme Court has fallen victim to the spurious reasoning that the National Rifle Association has spread about the Second Amendment. It invalidated the District of Columbia's gun control regulations. (See this site, though the post is in agreement with this stupid opinion.)

Though the opinion is stupid, it is the law of the land. Just as abortion opponents have to live with Roe v. Wade, we will have to live with District of Columbia v. Heller, the worst U. S. Supreme Court opinion since Plessy v. Ferguson. It means that it is going to be difficult to control gun violence, but of course there will be many further challenges to determine what can legally be done to control guns in this nation.

Real issues and fake issues

It doesn't take fake issues to demolish Barack Obama as a reasonable candidate for the presidency. Real issues will do. For example, why try to claim that Obama is really a Muslim? — clearly he isn't, and in fact Muslims should be OK as candidates, if their principles are consistent with the U. S. Constitution, but what kind of a Christian is he? He was baptized into the Christian church by none other than Jeremiah Wright, who also married him to his wife, baptized their children, and ran a church that Obama attended for two decades. Obviously Obama's idea of what Christianity means cannot be too different from Wright's, despite what he might claim now in 2008!


Similarly, it is perfectly all right for Obama to decline public financing if he feels he can run a better campaign that way. What is not acceptable is to make lots and lots of speeches defending public financing, promise to run a publically-financed campaign, and only when it becomes obvious that you can do better by declining to participate, reversing such an oft-proclaimed position.

Barack Obama's radicalism, his hypocrisy, and his near-total lack of sufficient experience: these are the real issues on which Barack Obama's campaign will falter.

The issue isn't Bush, it's Obama!

The presumptive Democratic candidate for President, Senator Barack Obama, is trying with all his might to make this 2008 Presidential election into a referendum on President George W. Bush. He cannot be allowed to do this. President Bush is not a candidate in this election. Senator Obama is.



There are two major issues in this election, and both have to do with Sen. Obama's desirability for the office of the Presidency. The first has to do with Obama's near-total inexperience. Do we want to have in the highest office of the land a man who, four years ago, was an obscure State Senator in Illinois (whose legislature is not even a full-time one)? And the second has to do with Obama's extreme radicalism. He keeps trying to paint himself as within the mainstream of American politics. But this is a man who got into the State Senate as an activist endorsed by the Marxist organization known as ACORN and funded by a man who was proud of the attempt to destroy the Pentagon! This is also a man who sat for twenty years in a church founded by people such as the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, with his "God Damn America" sermons, who now claims that he never noticed the extreme anti-American tone of the Rev. Wright, and who only now, after 20 years, leaves that church!



We need to heep our eyes on the real issue in this election: It isn't Bush, who is not even running. It is Obama, whose election would be an unmitigated disaster for the United States.

The California gay-marriage decision - more comment.

People are suing to get the courts to stay this decision. If I were a judge, my questions to these people would be "How does it hurt you if these people get married? What injury do you sustain that gives you grounds for legal action?" So far, I've seen nobody explain any way in which anyone is harmed by permitting gay marriage, except that they think a priest would be compelled to officiate at one where it violates his principles, and this is of course nonsense. I've never heard of a clergyman compelled to officiate at any marriage against his principles, and rabbis refuse to officiate at interfaith marriages and Catholics refuse to officiate at marriages involving divorced people already.

An interesting post about Barack Obama

I just saw this post. It's something I have thought about myself, and thought I should mention it here. Even the title, "Is Obama Al Smith or John F. Kennedy?" reflects my ideas. I've often said that Obama breaks the ice for African-Americans, as Al Smith did for Catholics, but remember that Smith lost.

More about Barack Obama's history

Is Barack Obama too radical to be President? I certainly think so. Look at this site (with an explanation on this site), this site, this site, and this site, for a start.

The American public needs to know about this.

Obama, presumptive Democratic nominee

Today we will probably find that the primaries will either give Barack Obama enough delegates to be nominated or come so close that Hillary Clinton will need to give up.


No great surprise. For the last month or more, he's been so far ahead that she had no hope of catching him. But she kept trying. And I can't say I wasn't happy she did, because all the negatives she raised will only help John McCain in November.


What I'm really wondering is how she can (as she will have to, to prove her loyalty to the Democratic Party) campaign vigorously for him, without being called on some of the things she has said to imply Obama's unsuitability for the office. (I don't mean to say he's suitable for the office; but then I'm not going to have to come back and defend him after making the kind of remarks she did!)


To leave the references to Hillary Clinton behind, did anyone notice that Obama finally had to formally leave the Trinity United Church of Christ (Jeremiah Wright's former pulpit)? But it would seem to me that to discover, after 20 years as a parishioner, that the church was spreading ideas he didn't like, is a sign of naïveté that ill befits someone seeking the Presidency. So this decision was really too little and too late to change anything in my mind.

The kids in Texas

The State of Texas seems to have done something far beyond what they intended to — they have created public sympathy for the polygamist group that calls itself the Fundamentalist Church of Latter-Day Saints.


By taking 400 kids from their parents, and dispersing them to foster homes all over the state, they created a scene of scared kids who (when the court found that the State had acted unlawfully, and had to return them to their parents) showed how glad they were to be with their parents again. Those pictures of a mother hugging her young daughter probably made more people tolerant of the oddness of the FLDS church than ever would have been before Texas acted.


It's probably a victory for religious freedom and the First Amendment. But 400 scared kids were quite a price to pay.

Fidel for Obama!

Looks like Sen. Barack Obama got himself a new backer: Cuba's Fidel Castro! (see this story.)

Of course! They are both of a similar mind — America is evil and needs to be changed.

One more reason to support John McCain for president!

"Failed foreign policy"?

Barack Obama keeps referring to "Bush's failed foreign policy." Well, to me it looks like one that is succeeding, although not yet completely. When George W. Bush became President, Saddam Hussein was slaughtering Kurds and anyone else who disagreed with him in Iraq, and the Taliban was presiding over an Afghan government that would criminalize a kid for flying a kite, or a girl for going to school. Today, Saddam Hussein is in his grave, and the Taliban is fighting a rear-guard action to try to take back portions of Afghanistan, while both Afghanistan and Iraq have governments that are far closer to democratic than the ones they replaced. I would call that success, not failure — at least partial success, anyway.

Meanwhile, Sen. Obama has proposed a foreign policy that truly can be described as failed. One might ask — how could his foreign policy be considered to have failed, when it hasn't been tried? Well, it has been tried — not in the United States in the 2000's, but in Great Britain in 1937! A certain Neville Chamberlain became Prime Minister that year. Like Obama today, he believed you could talk to genocidal dictators in the same way as you might to honorable men who lead democratic governments. He met with Adolf Hitler in Munich, Germany, and gave him what he wanted, control over the nation that was then called Czechoslovakia. And he returned from Munich proclaiming that he had brought "peace in our time." "Our time," apparently, lasted two more years, until Hitler invaded Poland and World War II began, at least for the European nations. (We stayed out of it until we were ourselves attacked by Hitler's Japanese ally.)

But Sen. Obama doesn't seem to know this history. He wants to show that the way to go is the way that Chamberlain tried 70 years ago. It failed then, and it won't work now.

The California Supreme Court's gay marriage decision

We have often, on economic and foreign policy matters, found common cause with the people who call themselves conservatives. But on most social issues, they are on opposite sides of the issue from my own feelings. I am sure this will be equally true with regard to the new California Supreme Court decision.

I have never understood why conservatives, who believe that in the economic sphere the government should be minimally involved, letting the market mechanisms do their thing, suddenly, when the issue is social, take the position that the government should take a stand and ram that position down the throats of the people. If two gay people get married, who does it hurt? It certainly doesn't affect a straight person's ability to marry whomever he or she wants.

Some people have said that there is no equality issue here, that gay people are trying to win special privileges that straight people do not have -- I suppose, because straight and gay people alike have the right to take an opposite-sex spouse. Well, Anatole France is quoted as saying: “The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets or steal bread.” Obviously, just in the same way as rich have no particular reason to "sleep under bridges, beg in the streets or steal bread," gay people have no particular wish to take an opposite-sex spouse.

Some people have claimed that, by requiring the state to recognize gay marriage, the rights of clergymen who do not want to officiate over such marriages are somehow interfered with. Well, to my knowledge, no Catholic priest has ever been forced to officiate at the marriage of a divorced Catholic, and no Jewish rabbi has ever been forced to officiate at an interfaith marriage. If clergymen are now allowed to refuse to marry people whom their own religion forbids to get married, they certainly will continue to be allewed to do so. We are talking about state recognition of marriages, and we live in a country with Church/State separation.

Another point is that, in a referendum, the California citizenry voted to ban gay marriage. I am sure that in any Southern state (and possibly some Northern ones) the citizenry, if provided with a referendum vote on the subject prior to 1954, would have approved of segregation. But we do not allow the majority to take away the minority's rights. That is a fundamental principle of the American democratic system.

So I cheer the California decision.

A letter-to-the-Editor that I fully endorse

The following letter appeared in today's Washington Examiner paper. It was so good that I repost it here as my own thoughts:

Barack Obama will be judged by friends he kept

Re: “Don’t judge Obama by Rev. Wright’s words,” From Readers, May 5

Let’s put this to rest for once and for all: Barack Obama will be judged by the Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s actions. Any reasonable person who sat through 20 years of this mean-spirited, anti-American rhetoric and did not walk out in disgust must have either been in a coma or agreed in part to what was being preached. You are judged by the friends you keep, the views you display and the morals you practice. All of which can be influenced at your religious center of faith. If John McCain or Hillary Clinton had been attending Aryan Nation meetings or KKK rallies, you bet they would be scolded and berated. Unfortunately, folks, it goes both ways. Get over it!

This country has finally broken the barrier keeping women and African-Americans from becoming serious contenders for the presidency. But they should certainly count on the fact that they will be vetted — as would any other candidate — on the way they view the world. I, for one, want to know that before I cast my vote.

Marc Sieracki
Springfield

So NOW He's "outrageous"???

The latest news is that Barack Obama has called Jeremiah Wright's comments "outrageous." Really, it's taken him this long to see the kind of racist demagogue that Wright is? You'd think that 20 years in the Trinity UCC would have given him time to observe Wright! I really can't believe Obama is just now discovering what Wright thinks about the USA, about race relations, and such!

Can Obama really distance himself from Wright?

Now Sen. Obama says that the Jeremiah Wright who is expressing himself in such racist terms "is not the same man I've known for 20 years." Can we really believe such nonsense? There are lots of signs that this is not so. I certainly do not believe him; I put more credence in Wright's words that Obama is saying what he has to now because he is a politician!

Romney for VP?

There is a move afoot to nominate Mitt Romney for VP on the McCain ticket. While I was opposed to Romney for the top spot — his vacillation on the issues worried me — for VP I think that's not a bad idea at all. As this site states, Romney would bring a lot to the ticket. The only thing I wonder about: Would John McCain be willing to take him as VP nominee? It is clear that Romney would take the offer — he's even said so, and his withdrawal speech made it clear that he wants to unite the party. But I've seen word that there is not a very good feeling about Romney in McCain's mind — there were some problems between them even before this campaign.

Obviously, we don't know what — if any — communications there have been about this between McCain's and Romney's associates. But I would like to see McCain/Romney as a ticket in 2008.

One positive thing you can say about Obama

He knows how to play by the rules. He's taken extreme advantage of the Democratic Party's rules in this primary season. When Hillary Clinton wants to see that the people of Michigan and Florida get counted, Obama points to the Democratic Party rules and makes sure everyone understands that they can't be counted under those rules. (See this post.) He wins big in caucus states, where only small numbers come out so that a few voters can influence a lot of delegates. Meanwhile, in the big states with lots of delegates, he relies on the proportionality rules that the Dems have put in place, so even if he loses, he still gets a slew of delegates. Many people (including Bill Clinton) have pointed out that if the Democrats had allowed winner-take-all primaries and (like the Republicans) a number of major states had used them, Hillary would be leading in the delegate count, probably by a lot. This, among other things, is why John McCain got the Republican nomination relatively early, while the Dems are still going at it.

Of course, the actual Electoral College system used in the general election does use winner-take all (at least in 48 of the 50 states). So Obama vs. McCain would be fought under different rules. I wonder whether Obama will be able to re-orient his candidacy to play by the different rules that will apply for the general election.

Obama, the divider.

I just saw a new blog post, which says it better than I could, about Barack Obama. Read it here.

The Supreme Court's death penalty ruling

The Supreme Court has just ruled that the death penalty could continue. And I approve. Sure, in many countries around the world, public opinion has gone against the death penalty, and the US has come in for criticism for maintaining it. But I feel that not having the death penalty for murder actually cheapens human life — namely, the lives of the victims.


If a person who has killed someone gets anything less than the death penalty, the punishment has not suited the crime. Nothing short of the death penalty can pay for taking another's life, and for that reason nothing short of the death penalty is a fair punishment for such a crime.

Appeals to humaneness make no sense here; the murderer was not sparing of the lives of his victims, so why should we be more sparing of the perpetrator's life?

Obama ... unite the country?

I keep seeing supporters of Barack Obama claiming that he can unite the country. This seems to be the most incredible claim I could imagine.

Obama has been rated the most liberal member of the entire Senate in 2007 by National Journal. He outdoes Bernie Sanders, an avowed Socialist, and Senators like Russ Feingold and Tom Harkin. How can such an extremist unite the country?

John McCain has worked with liberal Democrats like Feingold and Ted Kennedy to introduce legislation; in fact, his ability to do this hurt him among very doctrinaire conservative Republicans. But even he could not find common ground with Obama. If this is so, how can anyone expect copperation between Obama and someone not of the extreme left?

What a choice!

If I were faced with making a choice between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, there is no question but that I'd go with Clinton. She is clearly as dishonest as her husband, and both Clinton and Obama are very much more liberal than I am, but while Obama is a radical with the "throw out everything and start over" mentality of a visionary, Clinton is more of a pragmatist, who might be dissuaded from trying to implement radical changes by a need to play practical politics.

But fortunately, I don't have to make this choice. By the time I see either name on a ballot, he or she will have beaten the other, and the competition will be John McCain. And I don't have to think about who will get my vote. It will be McCain.

Barack Obama and hate

It seems that not only has Obama's church, the Trinity United Church of Christ, had an awful lot of anti-white prejudice associated with it; it's also said nice things about the Islamic terrorist group, Hamas. (See here.)

It is impossible to believe that Obama could attend this church for 20+ years and be unaware of what it and its leaders stand for. This is a man who wants to unite America?

It's getting vicious!

James Carville (a supporter of Hillary Clinton) recently compared Bill Richardson to Judas Iscariot for giving his support to Barack Obama although he'd been given Cabinet positions in the Clinton administration. This goes to show how vicious the Democratic nomination fight is getting.

How glad I am to be supporting John McCain at this point. The Democrats are making McCain's election in November more likely by their behavior!

"Please order in English"

A cheesesteak restaurant in Philadelphia put up a sign, "This is America. Please order in English." As a result, he was charged with discrimination. But fortunately, he was recently vindicated. Yes, this is America, and Joey Vento, the owner, was ruled within his rights by the Philadelphia Commission on Human Relations.

Why was he even charged with discrimination, though? Millions of immigrants came to this country and learned the majority language. My father came to this country about 80 years ago as a child, and the local druggist made him learn English by not letting him order an ice cream in his native Yiddish after a while. The druggist understood Yiddish and had taken his orders for a while in that language, but he knew that this 11-year-old kid that eventually became my father would need to learn English to function in America. And my father, by the age of 15, had graduated from the 8th grade, though four years previously he had come to this country devoid of the English language. And by the time I was around, years later, my father spoke English without a significant foreign accent.

Joey Vento was right to do what he did. And thank Heaven that the final decision came the way it did, even if it was years in the making.

Limits of discussion

Today I saw a comment in which the poster described me as "delusional." This goes beyond the bounds of propriety.

It is all right to disagree with me on here, and to give a cogent argument. Insulting me goes beyond the pale, and I will exercise my rights as owner of the blog to delete such posts.