WhackyNation

Courtesy Investors Business Daily:

Corruption: Yet another Democrat’s sweetheart mortgage deal is exposed — and this time it’s the party’s standard bearer. What could Sen. Barack Obama do for a lender in exchange for more than $100,000? Plenty.

Obama, presumptive Democratic presidential nominee from Illinois and self-styled man of the people, lives in a mansion described by the Washington Post as featuring “six bedrooms, four fireplaces, a four-car garage and 5 1/2 baths, including a double steam shower and a marble powder room . . . a wine cellar, a music room, a library, a solarium, beveled glass doors and a granite-floored kitchen.”

Eyebrows are already raised by the Obamas’ purchase of the palatial abode in 2005 for $300,000 under its asking price of $1.95 million. The day that purchase closed, the since-convicted Chicago fraudster and early Obama fundraiser Tony Rezko bought an adjoining lot from the same seller for the full asking price of $625,000, which Obama admitted to the Chicago Sun-Times he then bought from Rezko for “above the appraised value” — “a mistake,” he said, giving the impression “that he had done me a favor.”

The Boston Globe reported last week that Rezko used federal subsidies Obama supported in the U.S. Senate to rehabilitate more than 1,000 apartments in and near Obama’s old state senate district. Rezko then neglected the homes “to the point where many no longer were habitable.”

Now the Washington Post reveals the Obamas got a sweetheart deal on their “super super jumbo” $1.32 million mortgage from Chicago’s Northern Trust, saving more than $300 a month — about $110,000 over the life of the loan. Add the $71,000 Northern Trust employees have given Obama’s campaign and it makes you wonder about quid pro quos.

Read more.

This guy is such cheap trash.  He sells out so cheaply; hoping never to be caught.  Then he gets a sweetheart interest rate to finance his home.  Democrat activists are so stupid.  Obama is a whore.  Democrats are in a fix.

Do you bring back Hillary?  Or do you suffer the biggest election defeat ever?

Tough to be a Democrat these days.  I feel so sorry.  This story is going to catch up with you.

This coming election just may come down to the gas gap.

As a nation we don’t have enough gas so the price is going up.  Everybody is noticing it.  And the two presidential candidates are differing on the fix.

Senator John McCain says we need more oil, so we need to re-visit our decades-old policies and re-open drilling including off-shore.  Drilling technology has greatly improved in 40 years since the Santa Barbara oil spill, he says.  In fact, no oil spilled in the gulf during Hurricane Katrina.

Senator Barack Obama says no to that.  He’s sticking to the same policy that has prevented any substantial increase in domestic oil production in decades.  Today the senator issued a memo criticizing his opponent:

The question is whether we are going to offer the American people real answers and genuine relief or the same, tired Washington gimmicks and special interest favors that have failed our families and country for too long.

Obama needs to do more than criticize McCain with his own gimmick of false criticism.  After all McCain is reversing his (and Congress’ position) by saying he now favors drilling.  McCain’s call for drilling, despite Obama’s rhethoric, is not “the same” policy and Obama’s criticism rings hollow.  If anybody sounds like the “same politician,” it’s Obama this week.

It’s apparent we have a gap at the gas pump.  This week it’s becoming more apparent that the biggest gap in American politics is between Senator Obama’s ears.

History has a terrible penchant for repeating itself, and the United States is on the brink of another shameful repeat, thanks to the Democrats and the possible election of Barack Obama as President. The beginning of the final chapter of that repeat probably began two years ago with a supposedly “bi-partisan” congressional committee that called itself the “Iraq Study Group.”

The Republicans in the study group bowed down to the Democrats, probably because they are still in full retreat after the 2004 elections. Instead of supporting their President, George W. Bush, they are now part and parcel on that sad repetition. In other words, the war to free the people of Iraq will soon be called “Vietnam Chapter II.”

The Vietnam War, a war the U.S. should have and could have won, was lost here at home, not on the battlefields of the Southeast Asian peninsula. When the peaceniks and anti-war protesters bore down on the weaklings in Congress and the rest of the country, aided and abetted by the Liberal news media, the U.S. military in Vietnam was deprived of the weaponry, the support, and the cash it needed to finish the job.

As a result, the Tet Offensive, which should have been an American victory, turned into a retreat, and, for the first time in our history, the United States retreated and lost a war its air, ground, and sea forces should have won. Instead of holding his ground — as President Bush has been trying to do today — President Lyndon Johnson turned a victory into defeat and resigned. Now, once again, in Vietnam Chapter II, the peaceniks and anti-war protesters, who have given aid and comfort to our enemy in Iraq, are once again beating the drums for a full retreat from that Middle Eastern nation and repeating history by once again snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, so to speak.

If the Democratic Liberals and their peacenik cohorts had not deserted the President in a war they had fully supported five years ago, the insurgents in Iraq would have been subdued some time ago and the war would have ended. But, the Muslim extremists in Iraq, Iran, Syria, and other Arab countries saw that they had “friends” in the U.S. and they stepped up their rebellious effort. Those countries sent thousands of Muslim insurgents into Iraq to undermine the nation’s new, democratic government.

In addition, the Iraq Study Group, with the Democrats smiling in the background because they won another hollow political victory, has paved the way for another retreat. And a retreat in Iraq will undoubtedly mean that the new democratic government there will soon disintegrate and give way to another Saddam Hussein or a theocracy controlled by a mullah.

The worst probability will be the emergence of a Middle East controlled by the forces of its budding nuclear power, Iran, whose Hitlerian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has borrowed enough expertise and nuclear materials from other countries to build atomic bombs.

Although the Iranians are pretending they want to befriend Iraq, history tells us the longtime enmity between the Iranians and the Iraqis will undoubtedly mean that Tehran will go all out to conquer the Iraqis once the U.S. military is out of the picture. Then, having finally conquered Iraq, other nations in the Middle East will have to join the Iranian sphere of influence — or else. Then what? Then what I have been forecasting all along will happen: Nuclear-capable Israel will have to hurl its nuclear weaponry at Iran to save itself from extinction as a Middle Eastern nation.

President Bush came out swinging today and urged Congress to relax the bans on offshore, Rocky Mountain and ANWR oil drilling:

In the short run, the American economy will continue to rely largely on oil. And that means we need to increase supply, especially here at home. So my administration has repeatedly called on Congress to expand domestic oil production. Unfortunately, Democrats on Capitol Hill have rejected virtually every proposal — and now Americans are paying the price at the pump for this obstruction. Congress must face a hard reality: Unless Members are willing to accept gas prices at today’s painful levels — or even higher — our nation must produce more oil. And we must start now..

Of course, the Democrats, including presidential hopeful Senator Barack Obama, immediately rejected the proposal.  Said Obama:

This is not something that’s going to give consumers short-term relief and it is not a long-term solution to our problems with fossil fuels generally and oil in particular.

But Bush did not say there are any quick fixes to increasing the domestic oil supply.

According to the Associated Press:

Bush said offshore drilling could yield up to 18 billion barrels of oil over time, although it would take years for production to start. Bush also said offshore drilling would take pressure off prices over time.

Meantime Republican presidential hopeful John McCain, who yesterday called for more drilling, today called for the construction of 45 new nuclear plants:

Every year, these reactors alone spare the atmosphere from the equivalent of nearly all auto emissions in America. Yet for all these benefits, we have not broken ground on a single nuclear plant in over thirty years.

What’s Obama going to say to that?  So far his rhetoric on energy and oil has been anything but slick.

Republicans have finally found a national issue that can strick it to the Democrats.  High-price gasoline is making the great middle class wake up to energy and environmental politics.

I am waiting for the next bumper sticker:

Don’t blame me for high gas prices.  I voted Republican.

… the Democrat ticket this year might have been Lieberman-Clinton which might have been formidible.

Instead, the Democrats appear to be nominating the most radical leftist standard bearer in party history, Senator Barack Obama, and setting themselves up for a smashing defeat after average Americans learn what the Illinois Senator really stands for: socialism and American defeat.

Eight years ago Senator Joe Lieberman was a Godlike star for the Democats, the first Jew nominated to a presidential ticket.  Now he’s Judas, but they can’t throw him out of the party, despite the fact he supports Republican John McCain and puts down Obama’s foreign policy especially on Iraq.

But, Lieberman still is the critic the Dem’s don’t want to lose.

The Dems have to tolerate Lieberman because he singly controls the political sway in the senate.  Although re-elected in 2006 as an independent because Move-on.org loser candidate Ned Lamont had won the Conneticut Democrat primary, Lieberman today still caucuses with the D’s in the Senate.  That gives the D’s a 51-49 control.  If Lieberman caucused with the Republicans, the count would be 50-50 and Vice President Dick Cheney would cast the deciding vote in favor of the Republicans.

Wouldn’t that be fun?

Personally, I would love to see McCain offer Lieberman the V-P slot.  The condition would be that Lieberman would have to flip the senate.

I think Lieberman would bring strength to the Republican ticket.  He would solidify the Jewish vote as Obama has been warmly receptive to unconditional talks with Iran which threatens to wipe Israel off the map.  Lieberman would also bring some Northeast states into play and woo independents across the country.

The real question to be answered is: would Lieberman bring strength in areas such as Western Pennsyvlvania and Eastern Ohio, the areas which will probably decide the next election.  The people in those areas are still stinging from Obama’s “bitter” remarks.  I can’t anser the battleground question, because I haven’t seen polling data on Lieberman from this area.  Has anyone else?

Huh?

The Democrat Messiah is refusing to release a copy of his birth certificate and the State of Hawaii won’t make the document public?

That’s the buzz on the blogs.

Damn curious.  Makes you wonder “Why not?”  Maybe Barry has lied about his given names?  Or could it be more salacious?

Advice to Hillary: stay in the wings.

Read the party’s full comments.

I am amused by the self-righteous right wing the past two days who proclaim on Sound Politics that they will never vote for Senator John McCain now that he is saying global warming must be dealt with.

First of all, I totally agree with the right wingers that the arguments that man is somehow putting the planet in peril are ridiculous.  But my difference with the self righteous right wing is that I think I understand the art of politics just a bit better.  You remember the old maxim that you don’t want to know how sausage or laws are made.

You social conservatives get played all the time because you don’t understand how laws are made.  Politicians will give lip service, but unless a bill is brought out of committee to the full house or senate there is no vote, no law, no change.  That’s the real game.  Not speechifying.  Speechifying is meant to appease the politically stupid.

Reagan was a master.  Trent Lott another.  Bill Frist and Harry Reid are losers by comparison.  You can talk all you want, but unless a measure is brought to a vote, it’s just talk.  Reagan’s priortities were to stop the Russian Bear and to reverse FDR socialism.  He gave lip service to social conservative agenda items, but few of those items really made it into law under him.  Am I right?  Those items were pawns on his chess board.

Same thing can be said about Trent Lott as Senate Majority Leader.   He speechified about all the crazy social conservative stuff, but he kept any of that proposed legislation bottled up in committee.  It never got to a vote!  Yet, the social conservatives thought they were being satisfied.  Dumb as a box of chocolates.

Stop listening to the words and start looking at the actions.

Now we have John McCain sounding like some whore pimping for Al Gore.  But look at his proposals.  He supports nuclear power and recycling, but hates subsidies for things like ethanol.  I wish he had the courage to propose drilling for more oil, but he realizes stupid Seattle soccer moms and their impotent husbands won’t buy that now.

It’s politics, folks.  Just like sausage making.  If you look at the process, it can make you sick.  You have to get elected first if you’re going to have any power.  Sometimes you have to say things that really aren’t that important to you.  Few people get that, including most reporters.

I attended Senator John McCain’s environmental panel held today at Cedar River Watershed Educational facility.

I heard a lot of common sense.  Sure, I heard McCain say he believes in man-made global warming because so many scientists say so.  And he also said we need to reduce our carbon pollution.

But then, the surprise to me, is that he didn’t say or advocate any solution that I wouldn’t support.  He promoted nuclear energy.  I’m okay with that.  He wants better batteries for cars.  I’m okay with that.  He wants an education program to encourage recycling.  I’m okay for that.  He said nuclear is more economical than clean-coal technology.  Makes sense.

Then he said he was wary of government subsidies, bringing up how he voted against the ethanol subsidy.  The subsidy ended up “distorting the market,” he said.  I’m okay with that.

Everything he said had a weight of economic evaluation, something you don’t get very much from Democrat candidates.  For instance, McCain pointed out that more attention should be focused on methane because that gas “is 25 times more polluting than carbon.”

Panelist Steve Litzgow, Mercer Island City Counilman and Republican candidate for the House in the 41st District, pointed out that greenhouse gas solutions are similar to what the internet was 15 years ago.  “One-third of the ideas work, another third don’t, and the last third will work in ten years.”  He added, “It’s a matter of priorities” because there is only so much money.  Again, a reasoned economic evaluation of attacking the problem.

Public Lands Commissioner Doug Sutherland pointed out that Washington State should not be penalized by possible new laws by the date set for the baseline measurement for carbon emmissions.  Sutherland said the state has been doing a lot since 1990 to re-plant forests and protect the environment when other states have not.

Another panelist, Sally Jewel, CEO of R.E.I, pointed out that the average kid spends an amazing 46 1/2 hours in front of the TV each week and only 30 minutes in unstructured play.  That comment actually gave me less insight on the environment and more on the popularity of Senator Barack Obama among today’s youth.

Jewel told McCain that reducing automobile time of commuting employees would do a lot to reduce the carbon footprint of her organization.  She said she is seeing a steady growth in internet sales which she believes is healthier for the atmosphere than in-store sales.

All in all, I heard reasoned responses to protecting the environment.  I could live with what I heard today.  And McCain can go around saying that “global warming is real” if that’s what people want to hear.

Governor Dan Evans was also a panelist.  In the audience were many Republican leaders including Senator Slade Gorton and State Republican Party Chairman Luke Esser.  Of course, big environmentalist and former Secretary of State Ralph Munro who heads up the Washington campaign for McCain, was there showing support.  

Republicans are providing the independent voter with reasoned environmental solutions.   The question is will the media talk about it?

1. His wife who wasn’t proud of America until Barack ran for president.
2. His Reverend Jeremiah Wright.
3. His friend, Weather Underground member and bomber Bill Ayers.
4. Most Democrat Senators, Representatives and Governors.
5. Most Democrats.

Do you see a pattern here?  Why is the Democrat Party the party of anger, hate and the surrender flag?  What has happened to it since the days of Adlai Stevenson, Hubert Humphrey and Scoop Jackson?  Can’t today’s Democrats get beyond the sixties?

We’re heading into another McGovernesque landslide this fall as Senators Obama and Clinton reveal their true selves and what the Democrat party stands for.

My hero of all time, Marcus Cicero, said “Words once spoken fly forth irrevocably.”

The power of a word can truly change the world.  And that’s what Senator Barack Obama, his supporters, and the other Democrats will realize in the coming months.

If the Democrats don’t dump Obama for another nominee, then the Democrats will lose big time in November, perhaps way down the ticket.

The word in question?

“Bitter.”

That’s how Obama described the working class who ”cling” to religion and guns and are mad about illegal immigration.  He said they vote that way because they are bitter about Washington.

Whoa!  What a condemnation of a whole class of Americans and their values.

Obama just lost the presidency with that remark because he deeply insulted the swing constituency in the key battle ground states, especially Ohio and Pennsylvania.  The Senator won’t apologize.

If the Democrats don’t start doing damage control, this put-down of the working class could seriously damage the party brand.  What’s been obvious to a lot of conservative commentators is now becoming obvious to the population at large.  The Democrats are the party of anti-war kooks and elitists and are out of touch with most Americans.

Climate Crisis!!!!!! We need international answers!!!! We need a nationalized effort!!!! We need to do more than change light bulbs!!!! We must change the laws!!!!!

Gore’s latest slide show (cut down to 20 minutes) was shot last month and posted on Ted. Notice that references to Kilamanjaro and hurricaines are gone … but now the artic ice cap is going to be gone in five years!

Perhaps the most laughable part of the presentation is an advertisement that will be shown to scare Americans into action. The cartoon setting is a hot, traffic congested city where CO2 emmissions are visualized as falling blue elephants which land on people and cars and crush them.  Subtle, huh?

As I know most of you disagree with Gore’s hype, I think you all sure see the slide show to know what the high priest of climate crisis is up to.

If characters from “The Hills” were to emote about race, I imagine it would sound like B. Hussein Obama’s autobiography, “Dreams From My Father.”

Has anybody read this book? Inasmuch as the book reveals Obama to be a flabbergasting lunatic, I gather the answer is no. Obama is about to be our next president: You might want to take a peek. If only people had read “Mein Kampf” …

Read more …

Here is an old political science question for you. If an innocent man is accused of a crime, should he seek a 12 or 15 person jury? The answer, according to Marquis de Condorcet, is a 15 person jury. Famous for what became known as “jury theorems,” Condorcet argued that, given good information, the relative probability of a group of individuals arriving at a correct decision increases as the size of the group gets larger. If that doesn’t make sense, just think of the “Ask the audience” lifeline in the Who Wants to be a Millionaire game show. The audience almost never gets it wrong because the collective knowledge of the audience is so much greater than any one individual.

Jury theorems are important in political science because they provide an empirical rather than a normative defense of democracy. Condorcet’s theorem suggests democratic forms of government are pretty good at “getting it right” because they involve such large a number of decision makers.

A few years ago, a colleague of mine at the University of Oregon hypothesized the existence of a “reverse jury theorem.” He asked, what if people are given bad information? Does Condorcet’s jury theorem conclude that the populace is guaranteed to make the wrong decision?

We never answered that question, but the recent votes in Ohio and Texas provide some evidence that he hypothesized correctly. According to exit polls of Democratic primary voters, 80% Ohioans and 59% of Texans blamed NAFTA for job loses in their manufacturing sector. This means that 80% of Ohio Democrats are simply wrong. Since the passage of NAFTA Ohio has gained 900,000 new jobs and the losses in manufacturing have nothing to do with trade agreements.

The reason Ohio, and everyone else in the world, is losing manufacturing jobs is because productivity is up. Way up. Since 1994, US manufacturing production is up 66%. This means we can make more stuff with less people. Manufacturing jobs are not going to China, they are going away. China has lost more manufacturing jobs than any other nation in the world. Between 1995 and 2002 the US lost 2 million manufacturing jobs. China lost 15 million. I wonder if Chinese workers are blaming NAFTA?

Nothing new is happening here. Two centuries ago 98% of all Americans worked in agriculture. Today it is 2%. We didn’t lose 96% of our farm jobs. With increases in productivity 2% of our people can now do what it used to take 98% of our people. This is a good thing. It frees up labor to do something else: build houses, make clothes, write poetry, make music.

So the question remains. How did Condorcet get it so wrong? With millions of Ohio voters, his theory suggests they would have to get it right, but they got it completely wrong. What happened?

There are three culprits in this tale. Politicians, the media, and me.

Take Senator Obama who got caught with his hand in the cookie jar. He tried to get votes by telling Ohio voters that NAFTA took their jobs, but at the same time he was telling Canadian officials he didn’t really believe that. Of course he didn’t. He is a Harvard graduate who knows trade doesn’t kill jobs. But he lied to people to get votes. Shame on Obama, Clinton, and any other politician who lies about trade to win elections.

But, why did the lie work? Unfortunately, it worked because our citizens are not educated enough about trade and trade policy to call the politicians on their lies. An economically educated public would have been able to expose their demagoguery. The mainstream media, having already drunk the Obama cool-aide, didn’t challenge any of his unsubstantiated assertions. Where was the full court press on our half term senator?

The fact that so many Ohioans got it wrong also means that people like me are complicit in this failure. Unless high school economic teachers, college economics professors, and those who teach political economy do a better job educating our students, they will continue to be victimized by manipulative presidential candidates. It also means that economics, like English and mathematics, should be required courses at all our public universities.

As a strategy I have to applaud the Obama campaign for sending their candidate on vacation to the Caribbean.

It’s a masterful move.

Normally you want your candidate to grab as much free media as possible.  Not this week for Obama.

He’s in hiding … sort of … except for that one telephoto shot of him lying on a beach lounger talking on his cell phone looking sorta sexy in his bathing suit.  Snap!  Photo Op!  Yes, Obama is sexy in his bathing suit!

No soundbites, no interviews after the fallout of the Reverand Jeremiah Wright and his hate-America rhetoric.

Yes, remove Obama from the reach of journalists who might now finally be tempted to ask tough questions like, “You sat there for 20 years in the pew listening to that crap and you just accepted it?” 

No, remove the candidate long enough from the news cycles and those questions will disappear as another headline-du-jour captures the media’s interest.

Brilliant campaign strategy.  It really is.

Even you Obamamaniacs will really enjoy this piece.  Her list is long, long, long.

The current boring, repetitive, and never-ending presidential campaign was bad enough before Senator Barack Obama’s longtime pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, ran off at the mouth with his anti-white racist ranting.  Now it is worse than ever as Obama and his Democratic adversary, Senator Hillary Clinton, continue to play the race card.  Obama’s defense of Rev. Wright may have pleased the Ultraliberal fringe in the Democratic Party and its adherents, but it did nothing to fortify his insistence that he does not share the pastor’s expressions of hatred for whites and his stupefying declaration that, instead of “God bless America,” it should be “God damn America” for its treatment of blacks.

To me, the most disheartening aspect of the entire brouhaha is that it has made racism a key factor in the presidential race.