Exceptionalism: What We're Fighting For

Here's an excerpt from John McCain's essay at today's Wall Street Journal, "What We're Fighting For":

While most Americans are rightly concerned with the economic crisis, a world of pressing national security challenges also awaits the next president.

The gains our troops have made in the past 18 months in Iraq could be lost if we pull our troops out prematurely and regardless of the conditions on the ground. We have also dealt devastating blows to al Qaeda, especially in Iraq, but terrorists have found sanctuary on the Pakistan frontier among those trying to topple governments in both Kabul and Islamabad.

Afghanistan is reaching a crisis point, just as Iraq did in 2006. As an early supporter of the surge strategy in Iraq, I know that turning around this situation will require more than just increased troop levels. We also need a new, comprehensive strategy, one that integrates civil and military efforts and engages with various Afghan tribes.

Other major threats loom on the horizon: the Iranian and North Korean nuclear programs; aggressive Russian behavior toward its neighbors; Venezuelan adventurism; genocide in Darfur; and global warming. And those are only the dangers that we know of. Just as few expected the Russians to invade Georgia, we remain unaware of precisely where our next crisis will erupt, or when. The only certainty is that, as Joe Biden guaranteed, the tests facing the next president will be more severe if he is seen as weak in national security leadership.

I have devoted my life to safeguarding America. Former Secretary of State George Shultz compares diplomacy to tending a garden -- if you want to see relationships flourish, you have to tend them. I have done that, by traveling the world and establishing ties with everyone from dissidents to heads of state. There is great need for American leadership in the world, and I understand that only by exercising that leadership with grace and wisdom can we be successful in safeguarding our interests.

When I am president, I will not offer up unconditional summit meetings with dangerous dictators, nor will I foreclose diplomatic tools that serve our interests. I will respect our trade agreements with our allies, not unilaterally renounce them. I will close the Guantanamo Bay prison and ban torture. I will expand our armed forces and transform our civil and military agencies to win the struggle against violent Islamic extremism.

I believe that America is an exceptional country, one that demands exceptional leadership. After the difficulties of the last eight years, Americans are hungry for change and they deserve it. My career has been dedicated to the security and prosperity of America and that of every nation that seeks to live in freedom. It's time to get our country, and our world, back on track.

As I've said many times, John McCain is unbeatable with respect to tradition, values, and protecting national interests.

After the dust settles from this election, this week, and especially in the years ahead, history will record - should Barack Obama win the presidency - the slipping away of an epic moment in our nation's journey of moral preservation and world exceptionalism.

The stakes are that high.

Chump Change for Obama: Tax Hikes on $31,850?

Perhaps more than any time this year, Barack Obama has been revealed of late as recklessly progressive on economic policy, market regulation, and tax policy.

Just one day after revelations that an Obama administration would "bankrupt" coal companies resistant to cap-and-trade mandates, the Democratic nominee, in an interview with MTV News, quipped that tax-increases on those making more than $250,000 (his threshold for the "wealthy") would be just "chump-change":

Sway [Interviewer]: Just out of curiosity, for those that are being taxed that are making more than $250,000 a year, how much difference would it be from how they are being taxed today?

Obama: Well, right now, they are getting taxed at 36 percent. Under Bill Clinton in the 1990s, they were being taxed at 39.6 percent. You are talking about a 3.6 percent difference, and for the average person who is making half a million, a million dollars, now people like you Sway, that's chump change, that's nothing. But it could make a big difference for that young person who is trying to figure out whether they can go to college or not, if we could give them more of a break or more scholarships or grants to go to college [bold added].

Depending on the total proportion of income subject to a new tax-rate restored to higher 1990s' levels, "Sway" could be paying thousands of dollars more in federal income taxes annually. To call that "chump change" is insulting to Americans who work hard for every dollar they make, citizens who see billions of dollars annually splurged frivolously on "earmarks" in far-flung budget appropriations that do nothing to improve daily lives for millions of people.

But that's not all: As Jim Geraghty reported in June, Obama voted for the Fiscal Year 2009 budget that included a restored tax rate of 28 percent (up from 25 percent) on incomes as low as $31,850.

That is, in voting to repeal by 3 percentage points the Bush administration's 2001 tax-cut, Barack Obama would reach down to an individual earning just $31,850 a year.

See also the RNC's "Obama Tax Backgrounder" for further details.

Barack Obama has claimed he'll cut taxes for "no less than 95% of 'working families'." But his actual voting record reveals an old-school tax-and-spend Democrat who will impose tax-hikes down to the average "Working Joe" struggling to get by and hoping to get ahead.

It doesn't take a lot of digging to see how truly cavalier Obama is toward other people's money.

As I noted this morning, Democratic Party activists hope to capture an Obama administration for a massive range of far left-wing interest group initiatives. Considering how friendly Obama is to radical demands to expand spending entitlements and redistribute wealth, they're not going have to lobby too hard.

Activist Groups Prepare for Left-Wing Democratic Takeover

Far left-wing activists in the Democratic Party plan to shift a Barack Obama administration far to the left of the spectrum on everything from civil rights to energy to taxes, and beyond.

As the Wall Street Journal reports, in "Liberals, Sensing Victory, Try to Pull Obama to Left," nothing is off the table:

A phalanx of liberal think tanks and interest groups - anticipating a Democratic victory on Tuesday - are mobilizing to push Sen. Barack Obama to the left of his campaign positions....

A number of the economic and social prescriptions being pushed on Obama advisers would require greater spending that almost certainly depend on raising taxes -- threatening Sen. Obama's campaign promise to cut taxes.

The Campaign for America's Future, a progressive Washington group founded by a former adviser to the Rev. Jesse Jackson's presidential bids, is organizing a conference for this month on creating a government-funded investment fund for public works projects. The Center for American Progress recently released a two-year, $100 billion plan for producing renewable energy, and its president, former Clinton administration Chief of Staff John Podesta, has been tapped to lead the Obama transition team.

Last month in Washington, an organization recently formed by Martin Luther King III, son of the slain civil-rights leader, attracted more than 100 leading activists on poverty and other social issues to a daylong conference. Mr. King demanded that the next president appoint a cabinet member dedicated to eradicating poverty. In a keynote address, Columbia University economist Jeffrey Sachs called for substantially higher tax collections to fund government investments in energy production, public works and eradicating poverty and other ills.

Sen. Obama's energy and economic policies include many of the same goals, but the senator says he will pay for his proposals with savings from cutting bureaucratic waste and ending the Iraq war.

The Center for American Progress likewise backs higher taxes based on a "pro-growth" structure steering funds to schools, health care, job training and technology innovations. Mr. Podesta's organization is one of several interest groups working with Mr. King's Realizing the Dream Inc. to push the federal government to cut the poverty rate in half over the next 10 years. The Census Bureau estimates that 12.5% of the population, or 37.3 million people, earned poverty-level incomes last year.

In addition to Messrs. King's and Podesta's organizations, other partners in the umbrella group, called Halfinten.org, include the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights and the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or Acorn, which has endorsed Sen. Obama and conducted a voter-registration drive that has drawn criticism from the McCain campaign, as well as federal and local investigations, for fraudulent names submitted in some states....

Some groups already have emerged as Obama advisers, such as the Potomac Coalition, a collection of African-American former Clinton appointees and Senate aides, that advises the campaign on the economy. The members, many of whom now work on Wall Street, urged Sen. Obama to back the addition of homeowner assistance and a contracting provision for minorities and women in the $700 billion rescue of the financial sector.

This report confirms something I've said all along: That an Obama administration will be captured by radical groups seeking to hijack the state in furtherance of an extremist agenda:

...an Obama administration will push an extreme-liberal policy agenda of tax hikes, spending windfalls, economic stimulus, spread-the-wealth redistributionism, universal health care, infrastructure investment, fairness doctrine, global warming legislation, restrictions on gun rights, abortion on demand, embryonic stem cells, foreign importation of prescription drugs, union card-check voting, trade protectionism, precipitous Iraq withdrawal, ban on domestic wiretapping, opposition to mandatory prison sentences for sex offenders, sex-education for kindergartners, race-based affirmative action, expanded welfare entitlements, radical education pedagogy, and enemy appeasement diplomacy with no preconditions (and more).

As we can see, this agenda is by no means far-fetched.

In an essay last week, progressive agitator David Sirota pledged to battle centrist elements in the Democratic Party and to "sweep out" Clintonites and moderates from the party establishment and get a "whole new crew in there."

That crew will be filled with the very radicals conservatives have warned about all year. Democratic activists are simply confirming what has been the main ideological battle lines of election 2008.

The McCain Map

Via 538 and 411, here's the Electoral College map for a McCain victory tomorrow:

What to watch?

Pennsylvania and Virginia, in particulary, two large, coal-producing states that have seen some change in voter sentiment, now likely to be further stimulated by Barack Obama's pledge that he'll bankrupt coal producers who don't toe-the-line on cap-and-trade mandates.

RealClearPolitics currently has Pennsylvania leaning Democrat and a Virginia toss-up.

Yet, polls show a tightening race in the Keystone State, so don't count out a last-minute GOP miracle!

The Only Survivor of the National Peoples Gang...

Legend has it that David Bowie wrote "Panic in Detroit" - one of the great hard-driving masterpieces of Bowie's 1973's Aladdin Sane - in homage to Iggy Pop's tales of urban revolutionaries during the late-'60s riots in Detroit. The studio recording is miles-away better than live cuts, so please enjoy this YouTube montage featuring an iconographic history of the song's origins and impact:

Police departments across the country are readying for urban unrest on Tuesday, which may be triggered by the dramatic circumstances surrounding this year's election (a close Obama defeat with electoral irregularities is my worst case scenario for violence).

I've been listening to the song quite a bit during my morning drive-time (thinking of all the crazed Obamaniacs in a panic across the land), so now's as good a time as ever to post it:

Ah oooh...
He looked a lot like che guevara, drove a diesel van
Kept his gun in quiet seclusion, such a humble man
The only survivor of the national peoples gang
Panic in detroit, I asked for an autograph
He wanted to stay home, I wish someone would phone
Panic in detroit (oh oh oh aahh, oh oh oh aahh)...

I'll have more tomorrow, dear readers.

Palin Hits Obama on Coal Production

Via Gateway Pundit, here's Sarah Palin (in a Fox News segment) hammering Barack Obama for his "bankrupt" coal policy:

Washington Wire has a report:

Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin unleashed a new volley against Barack Obama on a four-city tour of Ohio on Sunday by touting newly released audio comments made by the Democratic presidential candidate promising to restrict the construction of new coal-fired power plants in the U.S.

The issue is particularly sensitive in coal-rich Ohio, West Virginia, and Colorado. Obama made the comments to the San Francisco Chronicle in January, which were posted on YouTube over the weekend.

Obama said that under his proposal to cap greenhouse gases, energy suppliers would get incentives to develop technologies to reduce pollution and to use cleaner sources of power. “So if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can,” Obama said. “It’s just that it will bankrupt them because they’re going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that’s being emitted.”

Palin told supporters to listen to the audiotape. “You’re going to hear Sen. Obama talk about bankrupting the coal industry,” she said. The Alaska governor also pointed to comments that Democratic vice-presidential candidate Joe Biden made to an environmental activist, promising no more coal-fired power plants in America. Biden was videotaped, likely without his knowledge.

“In an Obama-Biden administration, there would be no use for coal at all, from Wyoming to Colorado, to West Virginia and Ohio,” Palin said.

The Obama campaign scrambled after Biden made his comments in September, clarifying that Obama remained committed to exploring the as-yet-undeveloped clean-coal technology in order to produce cleaner-burning coal-fired power plants.

Political Punch has the text of Obama's we'll "bankrupt them" comments to the San Francisco Chronicle.

Obama's remarks are, of course, long and policy-wonkish, and in this day-and-age the Illinois Senator certainly knows better than to say something that inflammatory, especially for a Democrat.

Obama Lies to the Middle Class

Here's the video from NeverFindOut.org: "Senator Obama, Why Are You Lying to the Middle Class"?

Also, there's yet another tape floating around today, from earlier this year, where Barack Obama states he'll bankrupt companies that don't buy into his cap-and-trade energy policy (audio here):

Let me sort of describe my overall policy.

What I've said is that we would put a cap and trade system in place that is as aggressive, if not more aggressive, than anybody else's out there.

I was the first to call for a 100% auction on the cap and trade system, which means that every unit of carbon or greenhouse gases emitted would be charged to the polluter. That will create a market in which whatever technologies are out there that are being presented, whatever power plants that are being built, that they would have to meet the rigors of that market and the ratcheted down caps that are being placed, imposed every year.

So if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can; it's just that it will bankrupt them because they're going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that's being emitted.

That will also generate billions of dollars that we can invest in solar, wind, biodiesel and other alternative energy approaches.

The only thing I've said with respect to coal, I haven't been some coal booster. What I have said is that for us to take coal off the table as a ideological matter as opposed to saying if technology allows us to use coal in a clean way, we should pursue it.

So if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can.

It's just that it will bankrupt them."

Obama's comprehensive energy plan is laid out at the campaign's website, "Barack Obama and Joe Biden: New Energy for America."

The proposal calls for an "economy-wide" cap-and-trade program, although no statistics are provided on the number of companies that will be bankrupted, or the number of Americans who will lose their jobs.

As Rick Moran asks:

Has there ever been a presidential candidate who looked forward to the prospect of destroying someone’s life’s work and costing thousands of people their jobs?

More analysis at Memeorandum.

The Political Psychology of Barack Obama

Stanley Renshon, a political psychologist at the CUNY Graduate Center, offers an outstanding examination of Barack Obama's political psychology at the new Political Science Quarterly.

Renshon's article is a penetrating, rigorous peace of research, and he's fair in analyzing both Obama and John McCain, laying out the implications of both candidates' psychological profiles for the American presidency during the next fours years. Naturally, I'm interested in Barack Obama, not only because I think he's far outside the mainstream of society, but also because he's such a favorite to win on Tuesday.

The introduction to Renshon's discussion of Obama is startling in its demonstration of the Democratic nominee's unbridled ambition:

To call Barack Obama's political rise meteoric may be the true definition of understatement. Born in 1961 into a racially mixed family, he spent his early life in Indonesia and Hawaii and graduated from Columbia University in 1983. He worked in New York for four years, first for a business consulting firm and then for a public interest research group. He then moved to Chicago to work as a community organizer for three years before entering Harvard Law School in 1988. He was selected as an editor of the Harvard Law Review in his first year, and as its president in his second year at the age of 28. He graduated in 1991 and then returned to Chicago where, in 1993, he joined the firm of Davis, Miner, Barnhill & Galland at the age of 32. In 1994, at the age of 33 his book, Dreams of My Father, was published. In 1996, he won election to the Illinois State Senate and served there from 1996 to 2004, ran for a seat in the House of Representatives in 2002 and lost, then ran successfully for a U.S. Senate seat in 2004. He announced his candidacy for the presidency in February 2007 at the age of 41. The Senator has been on a very fast track indeed.

A little further down in the text, Renshon cites Craig Robinson, Michelle Obama's brother, who in an interview in 1989 relayed that Barack Obama stated early-on, and surprisingly, that he wanted to run for the presidency.

Readers should know that I read Renshon's, High Hopes: The Clinton Presidency and the Politics of Ambition, during Bill Clinton's impeachment, and I was really struck then by the single most powerful variable in Clinton's self-destruction: blinding ambition. We cannot know what will happen in an Obama administration, but Renshon's discussion of Obama's drive reminds me not only of Bill Clinton's, but of Richard Nixon's as well.

Renshon provides additional background information on Obama's upbringing and training, etc., but I found his discussion of Obama's temperament rather troubling:

Calm, tempered, cool, deliberative, detached, laid-back, and serious are all terms that have been used to describe Obama by people who have known him at various periods in his life....

Obama's calm external demeanor leads to the question of what he does with the normal passions that animate people. I raise this point not to suggest that buried underneath that calm exterior is a seething cauldron of intense emotions, but to simply ask the question as it has been stated. One hint of an answer is that Obama's seemingly detached equanimity does not mean that he is incapable of tough, even harsh attacks on others. Of Hillary Clinton he said that she “says and does whatever it takes to win the next election.”

Toward Republicans, he has been even harsher. In a 1995 interview speaking of the success of Christian conservatives in building communities he said, “It's always easier to organize around intolerance, narrow-mindedness, and false nostalgia.” Eight years later, in speaking of Republicans more generally, he said, “What I'm certain about is that people are disenchanted with a highly ideological Republican Party that believes tax cuts are the answer to every problem, and lack of regulation and oversight is always going to generate economic growth, and unilateral intervention around the world is the best approach to foreign policy”....

Another question that arises with regard to Obama's stylistic equanimity is its impact on his decision making and judgment. Obama has repeatedly touted the high quality of his judgment and rests that case on what he sees as his prescient opposition to the war; “on the most important foreign policy issue of a generation, I got it right and others did not.” It is somewhat unclear, however, just how strategically accurate the basis of his opposition was. He argued that Saddam Hussein posed no imminent threat to the United States or its neighbors, but what about a gathering threat? His opposition was premised on the view that Saddam could be contained; others made strong arguments that containment was failing. That argument rests on plausible analysis that either side could marshal, not on the superior judgment of Obama's side of the debate.

Obama also framed his criticism of the war with direct personal attacks on members of the administration and their motives. “I am opposed to the attempt by political hacks like Karl Rove to distract us from a rise in the uninsured, a rise in the poverty rate, a drop in the median income—to distract us from corporate scandals and a stock market that has just gone through the worst month since the Great Depression.” So is the basis of his good judgment prescient geo-strategic analysis or a progressive's animus toward a conservative agenda?

This passage reveals (1) that much of Obama's explicit message of pragmatism and post-partisanship is mostly a shrewdly calculated political choreography geared to winning the office of the presidency (which doesn't lend much credibility to the "change" mantra we've heard all year). But (2) the latter part of the quote is particularly informative, in that it squares with the record of Obama's positions on the Iraq war: As Peter Wehner has detailed to devastating effect, Obama supported sending more troops when the war was going badly - and while the Bush administration's policy was in disarray - but then opposed the surge of troops in 2007, precisely when the administration had changed course strategically, and when security in Iraq had improved to the point that the American goal of leaving behind a stable and victorious nation came into focus.

Thus, while Barack Obama's cool temperament may indeed serve him well as a political asset, his deliberate style and calm detachment serve to mask a much larger decision-making liability that could put national security at risk.

Renshon continues next with a discussion of Obama's substantive political positions and objective ideological orientation. Obama is something of an ideological chameleon (he's an accomplished flip-flopper on the issues), and while his bedrock positions are found to the far left of the political spectrum, his willingness to compromise his positions for rank political interest elicits the conundrum of not so much "where's the beef?" but what the heck does he stand for?, to borrow from Renshon's formulation.

Probably the most problematic issue for Barack Obama is the Olympus-level expectations he's set and the unlikeliness that he'll be able to meet them.

Renshon explains:

Among the most important and obvious skills that sustain Obama's success and ambition is his ability to deliver speeches that his adherents view as soaring and inspiring. His speech on race relations, for example, was hailed, even exalted. “One for the history books,” “brilliant,” and “unequivocal and healing” are some of the accolades heaped upon it. This praise reflects the extraordinary rhetorical skill and power that Obama can bring to bear.

There can be no doubt about the power of Obama's oratory to inspire his followers. His rhetorical skills have been noted and praised by persons from both sides of the political aisle, although there are some dissents. Some have pointed out that his charisma has the trappings of a “cult of personality.” Others, both on the left and the right, have pointed to the gap between “inspiration and substance.”94 Some have wondered whether eloquence is “overrated”....

Obama has the unique ability to offer doctrinaire liberal positions in a way that avoids the stridency of many recent Democratic candidates....

If elected, Obama will be among the youngest presidents ever to serve in that office. His resume will also be among the thinnest of those who have served. This being the case it is not easy to reconcile the record that does exist, as the most liberal Senator in that chamber in 2007, with the primary rhetorical emphasis of his campaign, which is pragmatic but transformational change. Even those last two terms seem contradictory, but it is in the gap between Obama's messianic rhetoric and his moderate, pragmatic political persona that some real presidential leadership contradictions come plainly into view.

Obama has made wide use of soaring rhetoric often of apocryphal and biblical dimensions. Building to the rhetorical climax in the speech in which he claimed victory in his quest for the Democratic Party's nomination, he said,

I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal...

Close your eyes and you can easily imagine Obama as a new world prophet forecasting a spiritual and political awakening. Indeed that is how many of his adherents view him and herein is an enormous problem for him, should he gain the presidency [bold emphasis added].

This is an extremely fascinating passage, because the implications of this discussion not only confirm many of the most common criticisms of "The One" from the blogosphere, but because Obama's expectations are so lofty that the actual job of governing will be tremendously complicated by the impossible rhetoric.

If the Democrats regain and expand their congressional majority - particularly with a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate - there will be little in the way of structural impediments to prevent the passage of landmark legislation firmly in the tradition of Great Society liberalism and beyond. Such a development will pacify the Democratic Party's radical base, but it will alienate GOP partisans who will be both marginalized and disabused of Obama's high-minded calls to bipartisanship.

In other words, for personal and political reasons, a sweeping Democratic victory will essentially nullify Obama's two-year campaign of post-partisan transformation. By seeking to transcend national divisions, an Obama presidency would risk alienating core constituencies who feel desperately aggrieved and damaged by eight years of Republican rule. But by repudiating his own claims to be a healer and uniter, Obama will radicalize the other side by confirming the expectations conservatives have had all along for a Democratic candidate baptized in the left's revolution of rights and redistribution of the post-1960s era.

Revolutionaries Must Be Community Organizers

Zombietime has published excerpts from Osawatomie, a publication of the Weather Underground in 1975:

There are serious antiracist organizers building a revolutionary base in working class communities — in neighborhoods, shops, mills, mines, social institutions. There are those who are working among women, GI’s, vets, prisoners, among youth, students and the unemployed in every part of the country. There are some who have been at it for years and some who have just begun. Thousands more are needed; and each particular piece of work will have to be linked up into a whole. We need to out-organize the sophisticated and well-financed forces of George Meany, Louise Day Hicks, Ronald Reagan, George Wallace and Albert Shanker. Organizers need to crush this reactionary leadership with a revolutionized torrent of people.

There are more photo-captures and transcriptions at the link. I especially like this passage:

DON’T MOURN, ORGANIZE!

Now comes a time of decision for the left. Can we overcome the small points that divide us? Can we come together to confront the enemy? Can we build a revolutionary practice firmly rooted among masses of people? Can we transform our lives in order to play our part in the developing storm?

These are the questions that press in on the left today. These are the questions because of this contradiction: millions of people are suffering from the crisis and conflicts generated by the imperialist system, and yet the left is small, dispersed and divided, not a visible force in the lives of the people. Revolutionary politics do not have a strong voice. The left is not situated to fulfill its historic mission — to focus and lead and make sense of mass discontent — to carry the present situation to its furthest limits.

...the system itself is inhuman, and socialism is a real alternative; the energy crisis is the fault of Rockefeller and the oil companies, not the Arab people; unemployment is caused by capitalism not “illegal aliens” stealing jobs; war in Indochina or the Mideast is part of the problem, not the solution; political and social action can change things.

Zombietime notes that this edition of Osawatomie was written just as Weathermen like William Ayers were making the transition from terrorism to “working from the inside” for revolution.

Meanwhile, there's no word yet on whether Ayers will be getting an assistant secretary post in an Obama Department of Education.

Proposition 8 Preserves Traditional Social Institution

Here's the new ad buy from the Yes on 8 campaign:

See also Maggie Gallagher's essay at today's Los Angeles Times:

Marriage is a union of husband and wife because these kinds of unions are distinctive and necessary to the whole society.

If Californians vote no on Proposition 8, the great historical cross-cultural meaning of marriage will be replaced by the new government dogma on which gay marriage is based: There is no difference between same-sex unions and opposite-sex unions; anyone who thinks otherwise is just a bigot.

Our children will imbibe this new dogma in hundreds of ways, and the old marriage idea -- marriage matters because children need a mother and a father, long for a mother and a father, deserve a mother and a father -- will be publicly discredited as discriminatory.

A victory for Proposition 8 will not deprive same-sex couples of a single practical right or benefit under California state laws. Civil unions will continue to provide legal protections for same-sex families. But the people of California will reclaim from four state Supreme Court justices the right to define marriage as a union of husband and wife, for generations to come.

The Known Unknowns on Racial Voting

I don't normally cite Bob Herbert of the New York Times, but he makes a good point today on the unknown shape of potential racial voting Tuesday, i.e., the possibility of a Bradley Effect:

The most significant factor vying with the economy in this election is also the greatest unknown: the race issue. The election would likely be a runaway if not for Senator Obama’s race. He’s leading, but the question is whether the poll numbers accurately reflect what is going on with the electorate.

That's fair enough, and Herbert notes that polling experts discount the likelihood of anti-Obama racial voting (and recall that some have suggested that race may actually help Obama among guilty whites).

Still, check out Mark Danner's discussion of the issue at the New York Review:

It is no accident that the largest single polling disparity between McCain and Obama voters, apart from race itself, is age. Obama's candidacy is in large part a rebellion of the young, for whom race has much less saliency, and one of the great indeterminacies of the election is how many young people will turn out to vote. Another is whether the increase in those who will vote for Obama in part because of his race—most notably, African-Americans, who are registering in large numbers—will offset or exceed those who will vote against him in part for the same reason. This immensely complex question, which goes far beyond the debate over the so-called "Bradley Effect" (the disparity between what voters tell pollsters and what they actually do in the voting booth), turns at its heart on whether race can be used effectively as a kind of "ignition switch" to make of Obama, for a critical subset of voters in a handful of critical states, a figure too culturally "different" and "foreign" and "elite" to seem in the end a plausible leader.

The potential is certainly there, for one sees persistent signs of it in everyday life. "I could never vote for Obama"—I've heard variations of this line a great many times over the last few weeks, most recently from a waiter who noticed me paging through the newspaper's political coverage. "I could never vote for a Muslim," he went on, smiling apologetically; and what struck me about the ensuing exchange was my inability to convince this man, whom I've known for years, that Obama is Christian—"He only converted when he was twelve," he insisted—or that he hadn't "changed his position, on everything, almost every day." Whether or not such disinformation is planted or actively encouraged, and however much its persistence might owe to race, it is clear that it flows like a subterranean stream through much of the country and the extent and depth of that stream are impossible to quantify.

What is not in doubt is that this substratum of concern or discomfort about race, and complementary worries about Obama as a foreigner or outsider for whom a vote would thus become a perilous gamble, have provided a prime target for Republican political and media operatives. Their delicate task in the weeks ahead will be to blend race with more traditional Republican "hot-button" "culture war" themes—worries about patriotism, elitism, sex education, abortion, gay marriage—and construct out of this mix a series of potent images and symbols intended to peel off from the Democratic coalition so-called "Reagan Democrats," conservative, often "ethnic" urban and suburban working- and middle-class voters.

Voters in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Florida, Virginia, and Colorado and a handful of other states will likely hear much about Reverend Wright and his call to "God Damn America!" and about Senator Obama's supposed support for "teaching kindergartners about sex before we teach them to read." These thirty-second pieces of political art, whether produced by the McCain campaign itself, the Republican National Committee, or "independent" groups, will be aimed at a subset of the 12 percent or so of voters who remain undecided, and are intended to lower the numbers of those who say they look positively on Obama and "identify" with his "values and background"—numbers that, as I write, have been declining even as the candidate's national numbers are rising.

That such ads will be denounced as distortions and lies will not necessarily blunt their effectiveness, for they are directed at a narrow audience that tends to distrust or ignore the "mainstream media." They work, when they do work, according to a logic of powerful symbols and images which tend to overwhelm facts, particularly when those facts come from a world of reporters and commentators viewed as inherently biased and "elite." And they are directed at an audience—the so-called "beer-drinking" or "lunch-pail" Democrats—which, having largely favored Hillary Clinton in the primaries, especially in the critical old industrial states of the Midwest that Obama lost, may be more than usually receptive to their appeal.

Whether or not John McCain's campaign will be able to exploit this vulnerability turns on whether, among these several million critical voters, fear of an unfamiliar African-American "elitist" can be made to overwhelm fear of an extension of Republican governance that few can now doubt has proved catastrophic for the country. Obama has hammered away on the latter theme, declaring at every opportunity that "the country cannot afford four more years of the same Bush policies"—and then the financial crisis, striking like a bolt of lightning, illuminated for all to see the ruins of the economic landscape. McCain, who has been struggling to present himself as a populist (and, implicitly, anti-Bush) "maverick" who would lead the country on a very different course, understood the danger the crisis posed for him but fumbled badly in his attempt to exploit it. Even as Republicans unleash a new onslaught designed to increase his opponent's "negatives," McCain must somehow make his "maverick" argument credible, not least by joining it to a positive economic vision for the country; only thus is he likely to persuade enough voters who are disgusted with Republican policies and deeply worried about the economy—but who still fear, or can be made to fear, a President Obama.

There's a lot of doubt on the validity of the Bradley effect, but we'll know better after the results come in on Tuesday. If we see a dramatic difference in actual ballot returns compared to preliminary polling data, prepare for a long night of racial recrimination from the angry left.

Aunt Zeituni's November Surprise!

Barack Obama's Zeituni Onyango double-illegal alien and campaign donor scandal won't be enough to slow down the Democratic nominee's snowball effect.

It's great, though, that the story's getting mainstream play, in any case: Don't you know, with Barack Hussein Obama - our man! - it's a bottomless pit of lies, improprieties, skeletons (aunts)?

I must say admit that I LOVE how the story's just pissing off the left.

And keep in mind, while the lefties are alleging that the Bush administration broke the law to help John McCain, there's not a peep among the radicals about how old Zeituni successfully resisted a deportation order from the federal government, staying in the U.S. illegally on the public's dime in a subsidized apartment-unit recently refurbished with a HUD-HOPE block grant to Zeituni's Boston public-housing complex.

Folks what you're looking at is the future shape of politics-as-usual under a Barack Obama administration.

But wait! Here we see Obama thowing his aunt under the bus, and - don't you know it?!! - he's being slammed for it by the nihilists!

Man, this is going to be an interesting 4 years - and mark my words, it's going to be four-in-and-four-out for the shady socialist fist-bumping bandolier-wearing radicals taking over Pennsylvania Avenue.

Barack Hussein Obama: The Redistributor

I've been posting pretty much all day on "Barack the Redistributor," so I might as well call it a night on a unified note:

Here's some definitional matter:

Redistribution of Wealth

Act of returning world's resources to rightful owners, the People. Must be performed regardless of one's input in order better to erase the false concept of private property. It is constantly under attack by the right-wing ideologues for threatening capitalism's vile celebration of self-interest and individualism. A model of a world-wide wealth redistribution system is being successfully implemented by the United Nations. Equitable society of the future will have no redistribution of wealth because there will be nothing to distribute. The government, the People's only employer, will have a simple distribution system that will reward obedience and punish dissent.

Definition and Image Credit: The Peoples Cube

The Future of this Country

Via The Real World, here's Dr. Slogan's, "Nov 4: Your Country. Your Call":

On November 4th it all really boils down a very simple thing: the Future of our country. And here is why.

When I started this blog about a month ago I wasn’t thrilled about Sen. Obama’s presidency, but it was hardly a grave concern. I didn’t like his track record, I didn’t like his lack of meaningful experience, I thought he had been flip-flopping too much on key issues, I was annoyed by open bias of mass media. Worst case, I thought, it’d be 4 years of a demagogue with strong left views. We can live through that. Countries swing from right to left and back — it’s a cycle. This is how democracies work. You can easily see this on my blog – just four weeks ago I wanted to keep it light and funny, pointing out things like the fact that the “change” VP pick had been a Senator for 35 years. But as I looked more and more into Sen. Obama’s past and his recent actions, I started to realize that we’ve been dealing with something entirely different — something that America has never seen, at least not on such scale.

It’s been almost like unclogging a sink — you open it, you take something out, then you take out more, and what starts coming out after that makes you wish you never opened that thing in the first place. Forget “change” VPs with decades of Senate history. How about close relationships with people involved in international terror? Or laser sharp focus on indoctrinating children? Or a laundry list of every modern-day tyrant openly expressing support? Or persistent suppression of free speech? Or going for twenty years (and bringing children) into a church that openly promotes hate of white people, just as openly supports Hamas and condemns our country on regular basis? Or campaigning for a radical with Islamic ties who threw a stable country into a bloody mess? Or close ties with people who led an organizaiton that unapologetically bombed the U.S. Capitol, the Pentagon and a police station and who were on the FBI Ten Most Wanted List? Or vote fraud of monstrous proportions? Or accepting a flow of donations from unidentified foreign sources? All of above — and more – is on Sen. Obama’s resume. It’s not in some classified files, it’s not locked in some FBI closet, it out in the open. I’m not talking about GOP sponsored books, I’m talking about media — the same media that’s been so curiously and unapologetically supporting him. Sen. Obama’s own actions and sentiments (especially those he made before running for President) speak louder than any Republican paid advertisement. A resume like this would’ve been a road block for someone running for a seat on a city council. Here we’re talking about the most powerful post in the world – and people choose to ignore all of this, lulled by the promise of change.

This is what I love about the blogosphere. You find such interesting, and astonishingly lucid, plain old folks (more at the link).

Lulled by the promise of change? That's pretty much a hole in one.

Thanks Dr. Slogan!

Praise Obama! I Won't Have to Work Any More!

This video's making the rounds this afternoon, featuring an outwardly enthusiastic Barack Obama supporter, who exclaims:

I never thought this day would happen. I won’t have to worry on puttin’ gas in my car. I won’t have to worry at payin’ my mortgage.

Meanwhile, via Patterico, a man jumped to his death from a freeway overpass in El Paso today.

Police found a note in the man's car, which said, "Obama take care of my family."

I hope this man rests in peace.

And while we should ask not for whom the bell tolls, this is a particularly tragic crime knowing that this man went to his death - abandoning his familial responsibilities - with the "hope" that Barack Obama would provide care and comfort for those left behind.

Obama's Reconfiguration of the American Dream

Here's Lynn Forester de Rothschild's, "Barack Obama's America":

In his book, The Audacity of Hope, Mr. Obama stated that "eking out a bare Democratic majority isn't good enough." Indeed, if the pollsters are correct and the Democrats win overwhelming majorities in the House and Senate, Senator Obama, if elected, would easily implement both his promises for $307 billion of new federal spending per year and his punitive tax policies. The truth is that with the level of spending in the Obama plan, either taxpayers between $40,000 and $250,000 per year will have to fund the massive costs for the new programs he is promising, or the promises will be abandoned.

Perhaps more sinister is Obama's reconfiguration of the American Dream. My father made an inflation adjusted income of about $50,000 per year. He never took a handout but he worked two jobs. He taught us that if we worked hard and played by the rules there was no limit to what we could become in America. Now, Barack Obama is changing that compact with America. In Barack Obama's America, there is a ceiling to the American Dream. He decides the level at which our money becomes the government's money.

There is a reason why immigrants fly to America to achieve their dream. Now, in the guise of a "middle class tax cut" Barack Obama is threatening that dream. If he succeeds, Barack Obama will bring the kind of radical transformation that this country does not need and never has. And the country will be in for a shock.

See also, "Obama's Class War "So Wrong for America."

Obama’s America: A Letter from 2012

Check out, a "Letter from 2012 in Obama’s America," from Focus on the Family:

October 22, 2012

Dear friends,

I can hardly sing “The Star Spangled Banner” any more. When I hear the words,

O say, does that star spangled banner yet wave

O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

I get tears in my eyes and a lump in my throat. Now in October of 2012, after seeing what has happened in the last four years, I don’t think I can still answer, “Yes,” to that question. We are not “the land of the free and the home of the brave.” Many of our freedoms have been taken away by a liberal Supreme Court and a majority of Democrats in both the House and the Senate, and hardly any brave citizen dares to resist the new government policies any more. The 2008 election was closer than anybody expected, but Barack Obama still won. Many Christians voted for Obama – younger evangelicals actually provided him with the needed margin to defeat John McCain – but they didn’t think he would really follow through on the far left policies that had marked his entire previous career. They were wrong.

There's a long discussion of policy at the letter (via Memeorandum).

Note that the introduction indicates that "there are many evangelical Christians supporting Senator Obama as well as many supporting Senator McCain in this election," and thus I don't think the left's inevitable criticisms of Focus on the Family can be based on some theocratic-fascist argument, but folks will try, no doubt.

Barack Obama and Economic Selfishness

Should Americans share the wealth?

Are people greedy and selfish if they believe that what they've earned is not something goverment should be able to take away and give to others?

Apparently, Barack Obama answers yes to both questions:

Note something else as well: Recall Gallup's new survey showing that 75 percent of Democrats believe that "government should redistribute wealth by heavy taxes on the rich."

That finding is actually a later item in the poll. Gallup also asked, "Do you feel that the distribution of money and wealth in this country is fair, or do you feel money and wealth should be more evenly distributed among a larger percentage of the people?"

Fifty-eight percent of those polled agreed that money and wealth should be more evenly distributed.

There's a couple of points of significance here:

For one thing, the video provides more evidence that Obama's not been honest in stating his economic positions. He's speak of tax fairness (when his proposal is anything but), and turns around and says that those who work hard to earn a living are "selfish" if they refuse to let government confiscate their income for redistribution. Second, the response on the "money and wealth" question (58 percent) isn't necessarily an indication that the country has abandoned the traditional political culture of individual liberty and opportunity in favor of equality of result. The polling sample is going to have at least 35 percent Democratic respondents, who favor income distribution and roughly 25 percent or so independents, about half of which who are likely Democratic-leaners.

Those two groups combined constitute a majority in favor of economic redistribution. So while in some sense, the data show a shift of the "political center" farther to the left, the change is not a dramatic break with the notion of America as a moderate, center-right nation overall.

Economic crisis and worries about economic security are contributing to a greater sense that government should be more interventionist in providing an economic safety-net. Whether these findings mean the country is undergoing a fundamental leftward lurch remains in doubt (despite some arguments to the contrary).

The Choice We Are Facing

Kyle-Anne Shiver offers an essential take on the likely shift to a democratic-socialist state under a Barack Obama administration:

The choice we are facing in this election is simple. We have freedom only when we accept personal responsibility for ourselves and our children. If we want to divest ourselves from the responsibility to provide for ourselves, then we also forfeit our freedom to make our own decisions.

Great leaders have appeared from time to time to warn free people of the innate deceptiveness of the socialists' lures. Ronald Reagan saw the evil as clear as day. Reagan's "ten scariest words in the English language":

"I'm from the government and I'm here to help you."

Winston Churchill expounded further on leftist ideology:

"Let them quit these gospels of envy, hate and malice. Let them eliminate them from their politics and programmes. Let them abandon the utter fallacy, the grotesque, erroneous fatal blunder of believing that by limiting the enterprise of man, by riveting the shackles of a false equality...they will increase the well-being of the world."

John McCain is a leader in the same mold as Reagan and Churchill when it comes to seeing the innate evil within the Marxist lure and its deceptive threat to real peace and any prosperity worth having. But of these three - Reagan, Churchill and McCain - McCain is the only one who has seen firsthand, from the inside, how it is that collective regimes may appear fair and just and unified.

McCain learned the hard way that socialist fairness is a carefully choreographed illusion, that socialist justice is a capricious commodity doled out on a whim by dictators with hard-core boots and clubs.

Unity? Unity is obtained through coercive means and by taking children very early into indoctrination as model, happy future workers for the collective "good."

So, Obama got his ideas by palling around with radical communist revolutionaries of the 60s. Obama chose these radicals as mentors and friends. Obama's own parents were from the same mold as well. Happy socialists all.

John McCain spent a good deal of his adult life with radical socialists too. Five and a half years to be precise. Only McCain got his education on the merits of communism from inside one of their "utopian" cells under force.

Perhaps never before have Americans had such an easy choice for our next President. Here's hoping we've raised more freedom-loving patriots than fools.

See also, An 'Endorsement' No Candidate Wants: Fidel Favors Barack."

Israeli Government Rejected Khalidi as PLO Negotiator

There's a big controversy running currently over the significance of Professor Rashid Khalidi and his relationship to Barack Obama. As I noted Wednesday, Obama supporters will work desperately to distort and downplay his political liabilities (more of that here), but Khalidi's relationship to Obama is of a piece with the Democratic nominee's long and comfortable relationship with America's enemies.

As Martin Kramer reports, Yitzhak Shamir, the prime minister of Israel at the time of the Madrid peace process in the early-1990s, refused to speak to a delegation of PLO representatives that included Rashid Khalidi. Kramer links to the New York Times' piece, "Israelis Deplore Advisory Panel Of Palestinians":

What troubles the Israelis now is a second Palestinian team, a six-person advisory panel that will also be in Madrid and will serve as a conduit between the official delegation and the P.L.O. It is this group that presumably will be calling the shots, and one way or another all its members violate Israel's guidelines for the sort of Palestinians with whom it is prepared to negotiate. In particular, they speak openly for the P.L.O....

As expected, the Palestinian delegation will be led by Haidar Abdel-Shafi, a 72-year-old physician from Gaza City, who said this week that he and his fellow members were prepared, if necessary, to pronounce themselves P.L.O. members.

Other members of the advisory team [include] ... Rashid al-Khalidi, a lecturer at Chicago State University.

The Palestine Liberation Organization was the main resistance group dedicated to the destruction of Israel through armed struggle.

The PLO, under Yassir Arafat's leadership beginning in 1969, launched a campaign of guerilla warfare led by the Fatah's militant fedayeen faction. The PLO launched artillery attacks on Israel and mounted terrorist ground incursions against Israeli citizens from strongholds in the West Bank, Lebanon and Jordan.

The PLO's "Black September" terrorists undertook what would become known as the very first attacks in the age of modern terrorism with the murders of 11 Israelis at the Olympic Village in Munich, Germany, September 1972.

This background is key to the current controversy surrounding Barack Obama.

Rashid Khalidi is a key proponent of the Palestinian jihad against the Jewish states. As Mona Charen wrote this week:

Khalidi is not distancing himself from his past. Consistent with what you’d expect from someone who justified PLO attacks on civilians in Israel and Lebanon from 1976 to 1982, Khalidi routinely refers to Israel as a “racist” and “apartheid” state, and professes to believe in a “one-state” solution to the conflict. Guess which country would have to disappear for that “one” state to come into existence?

Khalidi's controversial background has been conveniently swept under the rug amid all the talk of Barack Obama's radical associations.

But if Barack Obama's claim to be a "friend of Israel" is to have any merit, the American public deserves to know the full extent of his relationship to a pro-Palestinian professor of Middle East studies at Columbia University, the academic home of the largest anti-Israel movement in the United States.