Certainly the guilt vote provided an edge to an individual 1) without much of a track record and 2) who has demonstrated little sound judgement, past 20 years. But as black scholar Shelby Steele noted, "Obama will always be a bargainer, a person who relieves the anxieties of white people about race."
The economy provided the clinch. The greatest irony is that the very mess that tipped the scales in Obama’s favor was birthed by the Democratic party leadership’s successful efforts to block meaningful reform of Fannie & Freddie, reform that would have prevented the twin’s excesses and thus the crisis. Obama and others went along because the twins were a cash cow to them. We have detailed this process in several past sketches.
Only one Dem has so far apologized. Arthur Davis, D-Ala. now admits Democrats were in error: "Like a lot of my Democratic colleagues, I was too slow to appreciate the recklessness of Fannie and Freddie. I defended their efforts to encourage affordable home ownership when in retrospect I should have heeded the concerns raised by their regulator in 2004. Frankly, I wish my Democratic colleagues would admit when it comes to Fannie and Freddie: We were wrong."
From the IBD 5/06: After years of Democrats blocking legislation, Sens. Hagel, Sununu, Dole and McCain wrote a letter to Majority Leader Bill Frist demanding that GSE regulatory reform be "enacted this year" to avoid "the enormous risk that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac pose to the housing market, the overall financial system and the economy as a whole." Nice try guys.
We don’t expect the masses to come up with this stuff on their own (and pure partisans don’t care) but we did expect McCain and others to explain it to them - bullet points endlessly repeated throughout the campaign would have done the job. Who it was exactly that was responsible for the Heart of Darkness, who it was that put their 401K’s in the sewer. The campaign had a silver bullet and refused to use it.
Robert Craven
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
Saturday, November 1, 2008
The Willfully Blind
Even Obama’s most ardent admirers admit that he has accomplished little in his life by the way of setting a conventional track record for president. Tough to argue with that one. So what else could there be? What other characteristics are there to qualify an individual for president given that individual is without a track record? Well, judgement, character, courage and ability-of-decisive-action to name four. Do these apply in Obama’s case? Apparently his supporters think so. They must trust Obama to have the courage to act, to make sound decisions, to have a claim on character.
Let’s take a look. Rev Wright and Michael Pfleger are not just people with left-wing opinions but reckless demagogues preaching hatred of the lowest sort. Obama gave $ to both of them. How does this lend support to the man, give evidence of judgement? Or earlier, while in school, "I chose my friends carefully," he writes, "Marxist professors and structural feminists and punk rock performance poets (what?)". This gives evidence of his far-left disposition but what else? Bill Ayers is not just "an education professor" who has some left-wing views. He is a confessed and unrepentant terrorist who more recently has put his message of resentment into the schools-- an effort using money from a foundation that Obama headed. Where is the common sense in this one?
When Obama had a chance to end the war in Iraq, he voted backwards. As our friend Rex Murphy of Canada’s GlobeandMail.com puts it, "Obama offered unqualified, insistent opposition to the Petraeus surge, which turned the war around to the point that some of its most relentless critics now maintain ‘it cannot be lost.’ In other words, on the one definitive issue, post-invasion, on his country’s most important foreign involvement, the one decision the inarticulate and sublimely unhip Texan in the White House made alone, and got right; Obama was perfectly, publicly wrong."
When Obama had a chance to reform Fannie & Freddie, to endorse regulations which would have prevented the current crisis (and saved out lefty friends’ 401K’s) he voted to block that legislation. How is this a reflection of judgement? He knew better but lacked the courage to cross party lines. During his Illinois political career, when on those many occasions the questions got complex and required a choice, he dodged them and voted merely "present". How does that reflect ability of decisive action, a key requirement of any commander-in-chief? To govern is to choose, to make tough choices. What have we missed? When he got along to get along with the Chicago machine? When he voted to deny the surviving "fetuses" of botched abortions medical treatment? This reflects courage or character?
Instead, as he has done all his life, a president Obama (perish the thought) will take the path of least resistance. Let us apply that to foreign affairs. Here the thought of an Obama adm is frightening. An Obama presidency, combined with Pelosi’s House and Reid’s Senate would leave America with the most left-wing government of any major Western democracy. An Obama administration will pitch America toward EU domestic policy and UN foreign policy. Thomas Sowell is right: It would be a "point of no return," the most explicit repudiation of the animating principles of America ever. For a vigilant republic of limited government and self-reliant citizens, it would be a Declaration of Dependence. Take the easy option, hold hands and sing Kumbayya.
So what else is there? Really folks, isn’t this guy just an empty suit, aside from ego and mouth?
Obama’s sudden rise to leading contender has required him to project an entirely different image and persona from that of his past. The ease with which he has accomplished this chameleon-like change and entranced the left, some independents and most blacks is a tribute to the man’s talent. Yet is it not also a warning about his credibility? And how has he done this? As we have highlighted repeatedly, his run at the presidency is based more on the manipulation of white guilt than on substance. He gets a pass. He flatters whites; as the black scholar Shelby Steele explains, "he grants them racial innocence, and hopes to ascend on the back of their gratitude."
There can be no other explanation.
Finally, as Noonan mused the other day about an Obama victory - "Like the dog who chases the car and finally catches it: Now what?"
Robert Craven
Let’s take a look. Rev Wright and Michael Pfleger are not just people with left-wing opinions but reckless demagogues preaching hatred of the lowest sort. Obama gave $ to both of them. How does this lend support to the man, give evidence of judgement? Or earlier, while in school, "I chose my friends carefully," he writes, "Marxist professors and structural feminists and punk rock performance poets (what?)". This gives evidence of his far-left disposition but what else? Bill Ayers is not just "an education professor" who has some left-wing views. He is a confessed and unrepentant terrorist who more recently has put his message of resentment into the schools-- an effort using money from a foundation that Obama headed. Where is the common sense in this one?
When Obama had a chance to end the war in Iraq, he voted backwards. As our friend Rex Murphy of Canada’s GlobeandMail.com puts it, "Obama offered unqualified, insistent opposition to the Petraeus surge, which turned the war around to the point that some of its most relentless critics now maintain ‘it cannot be lost.’ In other words, on the one definitive issue, post-invasion, on his country’s most important foreign involvement, the one decision the inarticulate and sublimely unhip Texan in the White House made alone, and got right; Obama was perfectly, publicly wrong."
When Obama had a chance to reform Fannie & Freddie, to endorse regulations which would have prevented the current crisis (and saved out lefty friends’ 401K’s) he voted to block that legislation. How is this a reflection of judgement? He knew better but lacked the courage to cross party lines. During his Illinois political career, when on those many occasions the questions got complex and required a choice, he dodged them and voted merely "present". How does that reflect ability of decisive action, a key requirement of any commander-in-chief? To govern is to choose, to make tough choices. What have we missed? When he got along to get along with the Chicago machine? When he voted to deny the surviving "fetuses" of botched abortions medical treatment? This reflects courage or character?
Instead, as he has done all his life, a president Obama (perish the thought) will take the path of least resistance. Let us apply that to foreign affairs. Here the thought of an Obama adm is frightening. An Obama presidency, combined with Pelosi’s House and Reid’s Senate would leave America with the most left-wing government of any major Western democracy. An Obama administration will pitch America toward EU domestic policy and UN foreign policy. Thomas Sowell is right: It would be a "point of no return," the most explicit repudiation of the animating principles of America ever. For a vigilant republic of limited government and self-reliant citizens, it would be a Declaration of Dependence. Take the easy option, hold hands and sing Kumbayya.
So what else is there? Really folks, isn’t this guy just an empty suit, aside from ego and mouth?
Obama’s sudden rise to leading contender has required him to project an entirely different image and persona from that of his past. The ease with which he has accomplished this chameleon-like change and entranced the left, some independents and most blacks is a tribute to the man’s talent. Yet is it not also a warning about his credibility? And how has he done this? As we have highlighted repeatedly, his run at the presidency is based more on the manipulation of white guilt than on substance. He gets a pass. He flatters whites; as the black scholar Shelby Steele explains, "he grants them racial innocence, and hopes to ascend on the back of their gratitude."
There can be no other explanation.
Finally, as Noonan mused the other day about an Obama victory - "Like the dog who chases the car and finally catches it: Now what?"
Robert Craven
Saturday, October 25, 2008
Making Stalin Proud
"In selecting men for office, let principle be your guide. Regard not the particular sect or denomination of the candidate—look to his character." — Noah Webster
Naturally partisans will vote for a chimp. But for a good part of the electorate (independents, moderates) we are amazed that they apparently do not see the fraud in what Obama is saying. The Hoover Institute economist Thomas Sowell is right when he says that, "Obama knows what con men have long known, that their job is not to convince skeptics but to enable the gullible to continue to believe what they want to believe." Obama has so far accomplished that brilliantly.
We have highlighted in earlier sketches the obvious disparity between what Obama pretends to be and what he has been. For example we all know about Obama’s patron saint in Chicago - Bill Ayers, the guy who forty years ago was in favor of blowing up public buildings until he figured out it was easier to get inside and undermine them from within. For anyone who can read, it’s all there. But we have also highlighted just why Obama’s sordid background does not stick - white liberal guilt. Obama, the empty suit, gets a pass. If Obama wins, all of Marin County will be unburdened of its sins.
We have been told by a friend from the left (now deceased) that Obama, "..is the better candidate with better solutions to today’s issues." OK Fair enough. What issues? Let’s take matters of the world first, as few would argue that these are most senior on the list. "People of the world," declared Senator Obama at his self-worship service in Germany, "look at Berlin, where a wall came down, a continent came together, and history proved that there is no challenge too great for a world that stands as one." Mark Steyn heard that bit and responded, "No, sorry. History proved no such thing. In the Cold War the world did not stand as one. One half of Europe was a prison, and in the other half far too many people — the Barack Obamas of the day — were happy to go along with that division in perpetuity." The wall came down not because "the world stood as one" but because a few courageous people stood against the conventional wisdom of the day. Had Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan been like Helmut Schmidt and Francois Mitterand and Pierre Trudeau and Jimmy Carter, the Soviet empire would have survived and the wall would still be standing. Senator Obama’s feeble passivity will get you a big round of applause precisely because it’s the easy option: Do nothing but hold hands and sing Kumbyya.
Sorry Obama fans, you are being taken for a ride. You would make Stalin proud. To govern is to be able to make choices, hard ones. When has Barack Obama chosen to take a stand? When he went along with the Chicago machine? When he sat for 20 years in the pews of an ugly neo-segregationist race-baiting grievance-monger? When he voted to deny the surviving "fetuses" of botched abortions medical treatment? When in his short time in national politics he racked up the most liberal – ie, the most doctrinaire, the most orthodox, the most reflex — voting record in the Senate? Or when, on those many occasions the questions got complex and required a choice, he dodged it and voted merely "present"?
Too much.
Robert Craven
Naturally partisans will vote for a chimp. But for a good part of the electorate (independents, moderates) we are amazed that they apparently do not see the fraud in what Obama is saying. The Hoover Institute economist Thomas Sowell is right when he says that, "Obama knows what con men have long known, that their job is not to convince skeptics but to enable the gullible to continue to believe what they want to believe." Obama has so far accomplished that brilliantly.
We have highlighted in earlier sketches the obvious disparity between what Obama pretends to be and what he has been. For example we all know about Obama’s patron saint in Chicago - Bill Ayers, the guy who forty years ago was in favor of blowing up public buildings until he figured out it was easier to get inside and undermine them from within. For anyone who can read, it’s all there. But we have also highlighted just why Obama’s sordid background does not stick - white liberal guilt. Obama, the empty suit, gets a pass. If Obama wins, all of Marin County will be unburdened of its sins.
We have been told by a friend from the left (now deceased) that Obama, "..is the better candidate with better solutions to today’s issues." OK Fair enough. What issues? Let’s take matters of the world first, as few would argue that these are most senior on the list. "People of the world," declared Senator Obama at his self-worship service in Germany, "look at Berlin, where a wall came down, a continent came together, and history proved that there is no challenge too great for a world that stands as one." Mark Steyn heard that bit and responded, "No, sorry. History proved no such thing. In the Cold War the world did not stand as one. One half of Europe was a prison, and in the other half far too many people — the Barack Obamas of the day — were happy to go along with that division in perpetuity." The wall came down not because "the world stood as one" but because a few courageous people stood against the conventional wisdom of the day. Had Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan been like Helmut Schmidt and Francois Mitterand and Pierre Trudeau and Jimmy Carter, the Soviet empire would have survived and the wall would still be standing. Senator Obama’s feeble passivity will get you a big round of applause precisely because it’s the easy option: Do nothing but hold hands and sing Kumbyya.
Sorry Obama fans, you are being taken for a ride. You would make Stalin proud. To govern is to be able to make choices, hard ones. When has Barack Obama chosen to take a stand? When he went along with the Chicago machine? When he sat for 20 years in the pews of an ugly neo-segregationist race-baiting grievance-monger? When he voted to deny the surviving "fetuses" of botched abortions medical treatment? When in his short time in national politics he racked up the most liberal – ie, the most doctrinaire, the most orthodox, the most reflex — voting record in the Senate? Or when, on those many occasions the questions got complex and required a choice, he dodged it and voted merely "present"?
Too much.
Robert Craven
Friday, October 24, 2008
That Was Easy
If Obama wins he will be the least prepared, least qualified person to ever occupy the White House. Observers wonder just how this individual has engineered such a remarkable escape from his past.
We along with others have detailed the likes of Wright, Pfleger, Ayers, Rezko, ACORN, Chicago politics, all the rest. These are not just individuals or organizations who/which happened to be in the same place at the same time as Obama. These are people/groups he sought out, with whom he chose to ally himself for years and where on occasion serious money changed hands. These are allies chosen deliberately for a reason which most will admit says something about the person. Yet few are bothered.
His motto is about "change." But Obama was not on the side of "change" when reformers were trying to clean up the corrupt, machine politics in Chicago. Instead he came out in favor of the Daley machine and against reform candidates. Not a problem; instead of issuing explicit denials about his shady past, he gives speeches that sound so moderate, so nuanced and lofty that even rational people go for them. He preaches unity. But everything about Obama’s history shows he was a polarizer, not a unifier. That is what "community organizers" do, they polarize - create a sense of grievance, envy and resentment. And that is what he did when spending the money of the Woods Fund, bankrolling programs to spread the politics of grievance and resentment into the schools. And that is what he did when he gave $20,000 to Jeremiah Wright, or, were Wright’s sermons too subtle for Obama to pick up the message?
As a US senator he opposed the Republican effort to reform Fannie & Freddie. It was the aggressive buying of junk mortgages by the twins, the poor choices of these two GSE’s that are largely to blame for our current crisis. The twins were catalysts that drew in the sharks; crooked officials cooked the books to get giant bonuses and they got away with it by lavishing money on Democratic legislators. Obama was the second largest recipient of campaign contributions from Fannie. And Obama’s campaign sought the advice of the disgraced former CEO of Fannie, Frank Raines. The twins and Raines were at the center of our Heart of Darkness - the "mess in Washington" that Obama is going to try to clean up under the banner of "change". Too much. (Not happy with your 401K and want to vent? Start with Dodd, Frank and Obama.)
Nothing sticks to this charismatic charlatan. He’s not held accountable by a fawning electorate. Why? Simple. White liberal guilt trumps all of it. If Obama were a white guy he wouldn’t have a snow ball’s chance in hell of taking the White House.
That was easy.
Robert Craven
We along with others have detailed the likes of Wright, Pfleger, Ayers, Rezko, ACORN, Chicago politics, all the rest. These are not just individuals or organizations who/which happened to be in the same place at the same time as Obama. These are people/groups he sought out, with whom he chose to ally himself for years and where on occasion serious money changed hands. These are allies chosen deliberately for a reason which most will admit says something about the person. Yet few are bothered.
His motto is about "change." But Obama was not on the side of "change" when reformers were trying to clean up the corrupt, machine politics in Chicago. Instead he came out in favor of the Daley machine and against reform candidates. Not a problem; instead of issuing explicit denials about his shady past, he gives speeches that sound so moderate, so nuanced and lofty that even rational people go for them. He preaches unity. But everything about Obama’s history shows he was a polarizer, not a unifier. That is what "community organizers" do, they polarize - create a sense of grievance, envy and resentment. And that is what he did when spending the money of the Woods Fund, bankrolling programs to spread the politics of grievance and resentment into the schools. And that is what he did when he gave $20,000 to Jeremiah Wright, or, were Wright’s sermons too subtle for Obama to pick up the message?
As a US senator he opposed the Republican effort to reform Fannie & Freddie. It was the aggressive buying of junk mortgages by the twins, the poor choices of these two GSE’s that are largely to blame for our current crisis. The twins were catalysts that drew in the sharks; crooked officials cooked the books to get giant bonuses and they got away with it by lavishing money on Democratic legislators. Obama was the second largest recipient of campaign contributions from Fannie. And Obama’s campaign sought the advice of the disgraced former CEO of Fannie, Frank Raines. The twins and Raines were at the center of our Heart of Darkness - the "mess in Washington" that Obama is going to try to clean up under the banner of "change". Too much. (Not happy with your 401K and want to vent? Start with Dodd, Frank and Obama.)
Nothing sticks to this charismatic charlatan. He’s not held accountable by a fawning electorate. Why? Simple. White liberal guilt trumps all of it. If Obama were a white guy he wouldn’t have a snow ball’s chance in hell of taking the White House.
That was easy.
Robert Craven
Thursday, October 9, 2008
No Decency?
We have maintained that the core issue or trigger to the current crisis was the past decade’s enabling of the Fn/Fr twins by the Democrats. We have connected the dots for our readers to this Heart of Darkness. It’s all fairly obvious. Usually both are to blame, at least in shades; this time one party and one party only is responsible for the near-immediate 20 - 30% decline in the net worth of most Americans.
And we wondered - have the Democrats no decency? How can any literate Democrat not cringe? Even an acknowledgment would work as a start.
Sure enough, from Artur Davis, a member of the Congressional Black Caucus, "Like a lot of my Democratic colleagues I was too slow to appreciate the recklessness of Fannie and Freddie. I defended their efforts to encourage affordable home ownership, when in retrospect I should have heeded the concerns raised by their regulator in 2004. Frankly, I wish my Democratic colleagues would admit when it comes to Fannie and Freddie, we were wrong."
Thank you Mr Davis.
Robert Craven
And we wondered - have the Democrats no decency? How can any literate Democrat not cringe? Even an acknowledgment would work as a start.
Sure enough, from Artur Davis, a member of the Congressional Black Caucus, "Like a lot of my Democratic colleagues I was too slow to appreciate the recklessness of Fannie and Freddie. I defended their efforts to encourage affordable home ownership, when in retrospect I should have heeded the concerns raised by their regulator in 2004. Frankly, I wish my Democratic colleagues would admit when it comes to Fannie and Freddie, we were wrong."
Thank you Mr Davis.
Robert Craven
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
ACORN, Obama and This Mess
Background: The 1977 Community Reinvestment Act called on banks to increase lending in poor and minority neighborhoods. At the outset it’s requirements were vague. Then in 1990 along came a group of community organizers called ACORN. ACORN eventually figured out how to lever the CRA against potential lenders. But they needed to change Fan & Fred policy too. From the Chi Trib, "Housing activists pushed hard to improve housing for the poor by extracting greater financial support from Fannie and Freddie." That is, ACORN’s early effort (‘90 & ‘91) to pressure banks was still being hamstrung by the twins’ then relatively conservative standards - the twins would not take lenders out of anything but pretty solid paper, not mortgages backed by welfare payments or the neighborhood’s best jump shot.
In one of the first book-length scholarly studies of ACORN called Organizing Urban America, Rutgers political scientist Heidi Swarts describes this group, so dear to Obama, as "oppositional outlaws." Swarts, a supporter of ACORN, states that its members think of themselves as "militants unafraid to confront the powers that be." "This is reinforced by contentious action," she continues. "ACORN protestors break into private offices, show up at a banker’s home to intimidate his family, pour protestors into bank lobbies, all in an effort to force a lowering of credit standards for poor and minority customers."
ACORN’s progress was linked to its Democratic allies. ACORN did poorly under the Bush adm but with the advent of the Clinton administration ACORN’s efforts began to bear fruit. Standards at the twins were lowered. In 1992 ACORN kicked up its pressure tactics. Banks caved; ironically they became ACORN’s best allies to get Fan&Fred to loosen even further so they (lenders) could be taken out of junk loans they made under pressure. As Stanley Kurtz, sr fellow at the Ethics & Public Policy Institute explains, "..by 1993 the grand alliance of ACORN, national Democrats and local bankers, looking for someone to lessen the risks put on them by ACORN’s leveraging of the CRA, united to pressure Fannie & Freddie to loosen credit standards...."
At first the twins resisted. Then with the street’s help they figured out that there was a hell of a lot of $ in it for them and gladly cooperated. They became speculators. In June 1995 Clinton announced the new program for raising home ownership in American to an all time high, a plan that looked to commit $1 trl to low income and minorities, or about ½ of the twins’ portfolio at that time. Then it was really off to the races for ACORN. For the next 12 years, at both local and national levels ACORN served as the catalyst, levering 1) mandates created by the CRA and 2) their pull with Democratic politicians to force the twins into an expanding pattern of high risk loans. (In 1995, Obama, as director of Chicago’s Woods Fund, successfully pushed for a major expansion of $ assistance for ACORN in that region.) Thus, ACORN is at the base of the whole mess, that is, Obama and his co-workers at ACORN used the CRA and Democratic sympathizers to entangle the twins and thus the entire financial system in a disastrous disregard for any basic financial standards.
Republicans tried to rein in Fannie and Freddie, knowing that the answer was more regulation, not less (see our last sketch under US Economy). This is not the private sector. Fannie and Freddie are government creations that pay their executives millions of dollars but were shielded with our tax money from suffering the downside risk of the market. They engaged in risky hedge-fund style financing. Deregulation is about keeping the government from hobbling the private sector and hamstringing its ingenuity and productivity; deregulation does not apply to the twins.
Republican attempts at reform in 1999 failed. In 2003, when Alan Greenspan testified about how Fannie and Freddie’s loose practices could endanger our financial system but it was Democrat Barney Frank who said these institutions were fundamentally sound, and should be more aggressive in getting loans to low-income people. At the House Financial Services Comm hearing of Sep/25/03, Rep Frank said, "I do not think I want the same kind of focus on safety and soundness that we have in OCC (Comptroller) and OTS (Thrift Supervision). I want to roll the dice a little bit more in this situation towards subsidized housing..." Too much.
As we highlighted earlier, in 2005 a Republican reform (S-190) passed the Senate Banking Committee on a party-line vote, only to be blocked by Democrats from passing in the full Senate. And in 2006 when John McCain spoke on the Senate floor of the need to reform Fannie and Freddie immediately, Democrats (including Obama) would not respond. Naturally. The twins have been a cash cow for the left.
The Democrats are squarely to blame. Some may deny that but if so they are not engaged in an exercise of intellectual honesty. Democrats have resisted all attempts at reforming Fannie and Freddie; they pushed those organizations to become more and more reckless in their policies. The investments carrying those tainted mortgages went from bad to worse. Now we’re in a crisis and on the verge of a meltdown. This is inexcusable. If this is explained to voters Obama will loose. This is McCain’s silver bullet. If he does not use it he does not deserve to win.
Robert Craven
In one of the first book-length scholarly studies of ACORN called Organizing Urban America, Rutgers political scientist Heidi Swarts describes this group, so dear to Obama, as "oppositional outlaws." Swarts, a supporter of ACORN, states that its members think of themselves as "militants unafraid to confront the powers that be." "This is reinforced by contentious action," she continues. "ACORN protestors break into private offices, show up at a banker’s home to intimidate his family, pour protestors into bank lobbies, all in an effort to force a lowering of credit standards for poor and minority customers."
ACORN’s progress was linked to its Democratic allies. ACORN did poorly under the Bush adm but with the advent of the Clinton administration ACORN’s efforts began to bear fruit. Standards at the twins were lowered. In 1992 ACORN kicked up its pressure tactics. Banks caved; ironically they became ACORN’s best allies to get Fan&Fred to loosen even further so they (lenders) could be taken out of junk loans they made under pressure. As Stanley Kurtz, sr fellow at the Ethics & Public Policy Institute explains, "..by 1993 the grand alliance of ACORN, national Democrats and local bankers, looking for someone to lessen the risks put on them by ACORN’s leveraging of the CRA, united to pressure Fannie & Freddie to loosen credit standards...."
At first the twins resisted. Then with the street’s help they figured out that there was a hell of a lot of $ in it for them and gladly cooperated. They became speculators. In June 1995 Clinton announced the new program for raising home ownership in American to an all time high, a plan that looked to commit $1 trl to low income and minorities, or about ½ of the twins’ portfolio at that time. Then it was really off to the races for ACORN. For the next 12 years, at both local and national levels ACORN served as the catalyst, levering 1) mandates created by the CRA and 2) their pull with Democratic politicians to force the twins into an expanding pattern of high risk loans. (In 1995, Obama, as director of Chicago’s Woods Fund, successfully pushed for a major expansion of $ assistance for ACORN in that region.) Thus, ACORN is at the base of the whole mess, that is, Obama and his co-workers at ACORN used the CRA and Democratic sympathizers to entangle the twins and thus the entire financial system in a disastrous disregard for any basic financial standards.
Republicans tried to rein in Fannie and Freddie, knowing that the answer was more regulation, not less (see our last sketch under US Economy). This is not the private sector. Fannie and Freddie are government creations that pay their executives millions of dollars but were shielded with our tax money from suffering the downside risk of the market. They engaged in risky hedge-fund style financing. Deregulation is about keeping the government from hobbling the private sector and hamstringing its ingenuity and productivity; deregulation does not apply to the twins.
Republican attempts at reform in 1999 failed. In 2003, when Alan Greenspan testified about how Fannie and Freddie’s loose practices could endanger our financial system but it was Democrat Barney Frank who said these institutions were fundamentally sound, and should be more aggressive in getting loans to low-income people. At the House Financial Services Comm hearing of Sep/25/03, Rep Frank said, "I do not think I want the same kind of focus on safety and soundness that we have in OCC (Comptroller) and OTS (Thrift Supervision). I want to roll the dice a little bit more in this situation towards subsidized housing..." Too much.
As we highlighted earlier, in 2005 a Republican reform (S-190) passed the Senate Banking Committee on a party-line vote, only to be blocked by Democrats from passing in the full Senate. And in 2006 when John McCain spoke on the Senate floor of the need to reform Fannie and Freddie immediately, Democrats (including Obama) would not respond. Naturally. The twins have been a cash cow for the left.
The Democrats are squarely to blame. Some may deny that but if so they are not engaged in an exercise of intellectual honesty. Democrats have resisted all attempts at reforming Fannie and Freddie; they pushed those organizations to become more and more reckless in their policies. The investments carrying those tainted mortgages went from bad to worse. Now we’re in a crisis and on the verge of a meltdown. This is inexcusable. If this is explained to voters Obama will loose. This is McCain’s silver bullet. If he does not use it he does not deserve to win.
Robert Craven
Friday, October 3, 2008
THANK YOU ANDREW JOHNSON
OK, sure, Johnson was on the sauce the rainy morning of Mar/4/1865 and ya, he rambled through his oath, for 20 minutes speaking incoherently, trying at one point to address each secretary by name - Mr. Stanton, Mr. Seward - down the ranks, until he reached Mr. Wells, whose name he could not remember. No problem; he turned to an aide and asked loudly, "What’s the name of the Secty of the Navy?" Gideon Wells them whispered to Stanton that "Johnson’s either drunk or crazy." Well, certainly drunk but not crazy: In 1867 Johnson hurried through the purchase of Alaska. If he hadn’t, Sarah Palin would be Canadian.
From the moment Palin shook Biden’s hand and the microphone picked up, "Hey, can I call you Joe?" - the night belonged to her. She was clear and accurate on foreign policy, crystal clear on the war; her scolding Biden and Obama for waving the white flag was spot on. On education, on the economy, she was running on all cylinders. As we predicted, she did not allow Biden to pull her into territory familiar to him - Washington, insider stuff (that which would gag the Founders). Instead she played the outside game.
She personally connected with the viewer, was comfortable and looked directly at the audience.
Knowing that Palin would hand Biden his equipment we began to feel for the guy, even wanting her to ease off a tad, understanding that he is not fair game. We recalled the interview by Couric on "CBS Ev News". Biden said that when the stock market crashed FDR went on TV and told his audience all about it. Of course, this was the wrong president; oh, and then that little bit about TV. Whoa now. Sure enough, Biden was consistent in the debate, saying for example that it is "wrong, wrong, wrong" that Obama said he would sit down with the Iranian president but then going right on to defend Obama’s willingness to do it. Hmmm?
One pal from the left reminded us the other day of the smear of Palin by Kathleen Parker, Parker a reasonably well known conservative commentator who claimed Palin would be challenged to string two sentences together. Really? "Some women are just catty that way," noted another female pundit. "The more accomplished and popular and beautiful the woman in question is, the more they hate her." Seems to fit. So much for Parker; so much for Biden.
Robert Craven
From the moment Palin shook Biden’s hand and the microphone picked up, "Hey, can I call you Joe?" - the night belonged to her. She was clear and accurate on foreign policy, crystal clear on the war; her scolding Biden and Obama for waving the white flag was spot on. On education, on the economy, she was running on all cylinders. As we predicted, she did not allow Biden to pull her into territory familiar to him - Washington, insider stuff (that which would gag the Founders). Instead she played the outside game.
She personally connected with the viewer, was comfortable and looked directly at the audience.
Knowing that Palin would hand Biden his equipment we began to feel for the guy, even wanting her to ease off a tad, understanding that he is not fair game. We recalled the interview by Couric on "CBS Ev News". Biden said that when the stock market crashed FDR went on TV and told his audience all about it. Of course, this was the wrong president; oh, and then that little bit about TV. Whoa now. Sure enough, Biden was consistent in the debate, saying for example that it is "wrong, wrong, wrong" that Obama said he would sit down with the Iranian president but then going right on to defend Obama’s willingness to do it. Hmmm?
One pal from the left reminded us the other day of the smear of Palin by Kathleen Parker, Parker a reasonably well known conservative commentator who claimed Palin would be challenged to string two sentences together. Really? "Some women are just catty that way," noted another female pundit. "The more accomplished and popular and beautiful the woman in question is, the more they hate her." Seems to fit. So much for Parker; so much for Biden.
Robert Craven
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
PALIN
One liberal commentator, licking his chops the other day, remarked that, "To steal an adage of former Secty of State James Baker, putting Sarah Palin into a debate with Joe Biden is like throwing Howdy Doody into a knife fight." "I have to admit," noted Palin last week, when considering her Oct/2 opponent, "he is a great debater and looks pretty doggone confident, like he’s sure he’s gonna win. But then again, this is the same Senator Biden who said the other day that the Univ of Delaware would trounce the Ohio State Buckeyes. Wrong!"
Hah! How refreshing. One recalls the night of her convention speech: with sass and wit, sarcasm and sincerity, courage and strength, she showed us a new model of female politician, not strident and shrill like so many are when on the attack, but funny and irreverent, showing the joy of combat that was a pleasure to watch.
Palin isn’t a lawyer; she didn’t go to Yale; she isn’t rich. She does reflect however - intelligence, scrappiness, integrity, and a deep-seated faith. She started as a PTA mom, ran her own fishing fleet (ran a business!) and worked her way to the governorship of Alaska (experience as an executive!). She has succeeded in each of her objectives. And in a time when people are sick of the corruption and waste of Washington, Palin’s reputation is for slashing wasteful spending and taking on corruption - even that within her own party.
She managed her state’s department responsible for oil and gas exploration, negotiating a deal involving big corporate players, the US, Canada’s national government, Canadian provincial governments and, native tribes; the result was a multi-billion $ deal to launch a long-delayed natural gas pipeline to the lower 48, increasing the amount of domestic energy available to all of us, an accomplishment that makes the charge of having "no international experience" especially absurd.
During a period that Russia seeks to re-ignite the cold war she has encouraged and monitored the best of our defenses, seeing that the F-22 Raptor squadron be stationed at Elmendorf Air Force Base near Anchorage. While Obama has zero foreign policy experience, Palin runs a state that is home to missile, anti-missile and air defense bases; she commands the Alaska National Guard; she has a son heading to Iraq.
Sarah Palin is the emblem of what feminism was supposed to be all about: an unafraid, independent, audacious woman who soared on her own merits without the aid of a patriarchal jumpstart, high-brow matrimonial tutelage and capital, and old-boy liaisons and networking. This scares the living daylights out of the left in general, the media, and the feminists in particular. As Doug Giles pondered the other day, "Hey, I thought you feminists dug accomplished women. Why the hatred ladies? Do you like only the girls who are nasty, man-hating, anti-American, pro-abortion lesbians who loath this nation and that for which it stands?" All right Doug!
So Palin knew from the get go the left would come after her. Hell, these troglodytes devour their own kind, chewing up one of their perpetual darlings - Hillary - when she stood in the way of a group hug. An Air American host called her a "big f...... whore," one MSNBC host accused her of "pimping out her daughter," another called her a "she-devil" and a fourth suggested that she be taken into a backroom and beaten senseless to convince her to drop out of the race. A CBS news anchor asked Clinton if she recalled being called "Miss Frigidaire" in school. Too much.
Americans are told every day that to be conservative, or Christian, or old-fashioned is bad form. In this respect Palin can become an inspirational figure. The left senses this which is why they want to discredit her quickly. And so the Obama campaign first jumped on Palin as "inexperienced" until they noted she had actually managed something, actually looked to the bottom line, actually demonstrated executive responsibility, something entirely missing in their candidate.
Next they tried to create a "Troopergate," then had a hard time explaining why it would be wrong to want a four-time married and divorced law enforcement officer kept on the job when he had tassered his 11 yr old stepson, illegally shot a moose, drank beer in his partrol car and told others his father-in-law would "eat a fxxxing lead bullet" if he helped his daughter with the divorce. Corruption is not a handy topic for the likes of BHO, Chicago pol and pal of Syrian national/convicted felon Antonin Rezko.
Next was the "bridge to nowhere" romp. Sen Tom Coburn, chief foe of this deal said, "Governor Palin deserves credit for killing the project, which became the symbol of pork barrel spending. The bridge didn’t get built because Sarah Palin had the guts to say it wasn’t going to get built." So again for the media (and our lefty pals in Marin) that deal went nowhere.
From San Joaquin Valley Democrat and neighbor Vic Hansen, "There is something ignoble about the elite, affluent, and well-connected observers in smug fashion savaging Palin, when — especially in the case of the sneering power-women — we should all at least grant that Palin is intrinsically bright, energetic, savvy, and independent to have come this far at all, given the slanted and insider rules of the game she’s in. When we consider, in contrast, the latticed background of careers of successful contemporary female role-model politicians, such as a Diane Feinstein, Nancy Pelosi, ...or Hillary Clinton (the list is depressingly endless, in which marriage or lineage provides either the necessary capital, contacts, or insider influence — or sometimes all three) — then surely, whatever one’s politics, there should be some concession that what outsider Palin has accomplished....is nothing short of remarkable."
In tomorrow’s debate Biden will look to portray Palin as an adolescent in foreign and domestic policy. As for what Biden’s in for tomorrow, there’s nothing worse than having a woman hand you your own testicles in a fight.
Robert Craven
Hah! How refreshing. One recalls the night of her convention speech: with sass and wit, sarcasm and sincerity, courage and strength, she showed us a new model of female politician, not strident and shrill like so many are when on the attack, but funny and irreverent, showing the joy of combat that was a pleasure to watch.
Palin isn’t a lawyer; she didn’t go to Yale; she isn’t rich. She does reflect however - intelligence, scrappiness, integrity, and a deep-seated faith. She started as a PTA mom, ran her own fishing fleet (ran a business!) and worked her way to the governorship of Alaska (experience as an executive!). She has succeeded in each of her objectives. And in a time when people are sick of the corruption and waste of Washington, Palin’s reputation is for slashing wasteful spending and taking on corruption - even that within her own party.
She managed her state’s department responsible for oil and gas exploration, negotiating a deal involving big corporate players, the US, Canada’s national government, Canadian provincial governments and, native tribes; the result was a multi-billion $ deal to launch a long-delayed natural gas pipeline to the lower 48, increasing the amount of domestic energy available to all of us, an accomplishment that makes the charge of having "no international experience" especially absurd.
During a period that Russia seeks to re-ignite the cold war she has encouraged and monitored the best of our defenses, seeing that the F-22 Raptor squadron be stationed at Elmendorf Air Force Base near Anchorage. While Obama has zero foreign policy experience, Palin runs a state that is home to missile, anti-missile and air defense bases; she commands the Alaska National Guard; she has a son heading to Iraq.
Sarah Palin is the emblem of what feminism was supposed to be all about: an unafraid, independent, audacious woman who soared on her own merits without the aid of a patriarchal jumpstart, high-brow matrimonial tutelage and capital, and old-boy liaisons and networking. This scares the living daylights out of the left in general, the media, and the feminists in particular. As Doug Giles pondered the other day, "Hey, I thought you feminists dug accomplished women. Why the hatred ladies? Do you like only the girls who are nasty, man-hating, anti-American, pro-abortion lesbians who loath this nation and that for which it stands?" All right Doug!
So Palin knew from the get go the left would come after her. Hell, these troglodytes devour their own kind, chewing up one of their perpetual darlings - Hillary - when she stood in the way of a group hug. An Air American host called her a "big f...... whore," one MSNBC host accused her of "pimping out her daughter," another called her a "she-devil" and a fourth suggested that she be taken into a backroom and beaten senseless to convince her to drop out of the race. A CBS news anchor asked Clinton if she recalled being called "Miss Frigidaire" in school. Too much.
Americans are told every day that to be conservative, or Christian, or old-fashioned is bad form. In this respect Palin can become an inspirational figure. The left senses this which is why they want to discredit her quickly. And so the Obama campaign first jumped on Palin as "inexperienced" until they noted she had actually managed something, actually looked to the bottom line, actually demonstrated executive responsibility, something entirely missing in their candidate.
Next they tried to create a "Troopergate," then had a hard time explaining why it would be wrong to want a four-time married and divorced law enforcement officer kept on the job when he had tassered his 11 yr old stepson, illegally shot a moose, drank beer in his partrol car and told others his father-in-law would "eat a fxxxing lead bullet" if he helped his daughter with the divorce. Corruption is not a handy topic for the likes of BHO, Chicago pol and pal of Syrian national/convicted felon Antonin Rezko.
Next was the "bridge to nowhere" romp. Sen Tom Coburn, chief foe of this deal said, "Governor Palin deserves credit for killing the project, which became the symbol of pork barrel spending. The bridge didn’t get built because Sarah Palin had the guts to say it wasn’t going to get built." So again for the media (and our lefty pals in Marin) that deal went nowhere.
From San Joaquin Valley Democrat and neighbor Vic Hansen, "There is something ignoble about the elite, affluent, and well-connected observers in smug fashion savaging Palin, when — especially in the case of the sneering power-women — we should all at least grant that Palin is intrinsically bright, energetic, savvy, and independent to have come this far at all, given the slanted and insider rules of the game she’s in. When we consider, in contrast, the latticed background of careers of successful contemporary female role-model politicians, such as a Diane Feinstein, Nancy Pelosi, ...or Hillary Clinton (the list is depressingly endless, in which marriage or lineage provides either the necessary capital, contacts, or insider influence — or sometimes all three) — then surely, whatever one’s politics, there should be some concession that what outsider Palin has accomplished....is nothing short of remarkable."
In tomorrow’s debate Biden will look to portray Palin as an adolescent in foreign and domestic policy. As for what Biden’s in for tomorrow, there’s nothing worse than having a woman hand you your own testicles in a fight.
Robert Craven
Thursday, September 25, 2008
REALITY
We heard from a few "admirers"regarding our last post. How dare we highlight Obama’s complicity in halting reform of the Fan/Fred twins when we know good and well that some of McCain’s advisers were or even remain on contract to these GSE’s?
Could it be that Democrats expectorate by instinct even the most well founded, rock solid evidence that may just run contrary to their view? We have trouble accepting this, even from our dear libtard friends; naive perhaps we are (love the syntax?) in welcoming, even relishing as we do the give and take of respectful debate, the willingness to say, "Oh, well, that may be. Let me look at that one. Perhaps you have something there..." and a re-consideration of our earlier position is a strength, not an admission of total defeat. Something like that. An awareness of scale and gravity. We expect that in others. Yet is seems that if for example Pelosi were to shoot her neighbor’s pet dog squarely between the eyes for peeing on her lawn, the Democrats response would be a "So?". "What about Palin? She’s killed a moose."
It is true that Rick Davis, McCain’s campaign manager, received a good deal of money ($2MM over 5 years) from Freddie. In fact, McCain has other advisers who have lobbied for the twins. Are these advisers running for president? How does Davis’ situation even come close to the Democratic CANDIDATE’S acceptance while a senator of $125,000 in campaign funds from the Fan/Fred twins? Trouble with that? Think it does? OK, let’s for the sake or argument, concede even that.
Far more important - how can the left deal with the fact that it was the Senate Democrats that single-handedly quashed legislation in 2005 co-sponsored by McCain (S-190), that would have prevented this entire mess in the first place, or that earlier, Clinton's Federal Reserve demanded that banks treat welfare payments and unemployment benefits as valid income sources to qualify for a mortgage, or that Clinton’s HUD secty Cuomo demanded that this junk make up 50% of the twin’s portfolio by 2001? Huh? Come on. I mean, what is there to argue here for goodness sake (except perhaps to save face)? Our Marin Cty friends whine about their 401K being in the outhouse. Look to your own party. With Democrats, political correctness trumps sound business practices every time.
The sad truth is that to camouflage their now #1 vulnerability, the left has created a smoke screen in Davis.
Robert Craven
Could it be that Democrats expectorate by instinct even the most well founded, rock solid evidence that may just run contrary to their view? We have trouble accepting this, even from our dear libtard friends; naive perhaps we are (love the syntax?) in welcoming, even relishing as we do the give and take of respectful debate, the willingness to say, "Oh, well, that may be. Let me look at that one. Perhaps you have something there..." and a re-consideration of our earlier position is a strength, not an admission of total defeat. Something like that. An awareness of scale and gravity. We expect that in others. Yet is seems that if for example Pelosi were to shoot her neighbor’s pet dog squarely between the eyes for peeing on her lawn, the Democrats response would be a "So?". "What about Palin? She’s killed a moose."
It is true that Rick Davis, McCain’s campaign manager, received a good deal of money ($2MM over 5 years) from Freddie. In fact, McCain has other advisers who have lobbied for the twins. Are these advisers running for president? How does Davis’ situation even come close to the Democratic CANDIDATE’S acceptance while a senator of $125,000 in campaign funds from the Fan/Fred twins? Trouble with that? Think it does? OK, let’s for the sake or argument, concede even that.
Far more important - how can the left deal with the fact that it was the Senate Democrats that single-handedly quashed legislation in 2005 co-sponsored by McCain (S-190), that would have prevented this entire mess in the first place, or that earlier, Clinton's Federal Reserve demanded that banks treat welfare payments and unemployment benefits as valid income sources to qualify for a mortgage, or that Clinton’s HUD secty Cuomo demanded that this junk make up 50% of the twin’s portfolio by 2001? Huh? Come on. I mean, what is there to argue here for goodness sake (except perhaps to save face)? Our Marin Cty friends whine about their 401K being in the outhouse. Look to your own party. With Democrats, political correctness trumps sound business practices every time.
The sad truth is that to camouflage their now #1 vulnerability, the left has created a smoke screen in Davis.
Robert Craven
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Key to the White House
If McCain cannot accomplish the simple task of explaining to the public just how his effort along with that of some of his colleagues through proposed legislation in 2005 would have prevented the present crisis, then he certainly does not deserve to be president. There is no shading here, no nuance, no argument even - just black and white. Stop the stupid complaints about greed; stop the persecution of Cox. Make it simple.
Our readers know that the financial crisis was birthed in Washington by 1) politicians who wanted to increase home ownership and 2) Greenspan’s enabling behavior. From Charles Calomiris, professor of economics and finance at Columbia, "How did we get here? Let's review: In order to curry congressional support after their accounting scandals in 2003 and 2004, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac committed to increased financing of ‘affordable housing.’ They became the largest buyers of subprime and Alt-A mortgages between 2004 and 2007, with total GSE exposure eventually exceeding $1 trillion. In doing so, they stimulated the growth of the subpar mortgage market and substantially magnified the costs of its collapse."
One of the several reasons so many of these risky loans were originated is that Barack Obama’s celebrated community organizers made their careers out of forcing banks to do so. ACORN, for which Obama worked, is one of many left-wing organizations - shake down artists really - that spent decades pressuring banks and bank regulators to do more to make mortgages available to people without much in the way of income, assets, or credit. The result was the Community Reinvestment Act. The CRA empowered the FDIC and other banking regulators to punish those banks which do not lend to the poor and minorities at the level that Obama’s fellow community organizers would like. Banks were required to keep extensive records of their minority lending practices. Those that didn't pass muster could be denied the right to expand their branches, merge with other banks, or boost lending in new markets.
Lenders cannot blame the CRA entirely; they made a lot of bad bets on rising home prices. But the CRA did influence lending standards across the banking industry, even in those institutions that are not strictly liable to its jurisdiction. The subprime debacle is in no small part the result of lending decisions in which political extortion trumped businesses’ normal bottom-line concerns.
As explained in an earlier post, Fannie & Freddie, forsaking FDR’s intent, strayed into speculation themselves (and implicitly putting on taxpayers the risks of their business while the rewards were enjoyed, and to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars, by largely Democratic political opportunists, who then gave generously to Democrats, the top recipients of their largesse being: Chris Dodd, Hillary Rodham Clinton, John Kerry, and Barack Obama) Both became a profit center in their own right because of incentive deals to Raines and others and as part of that accumulated sub-par mortgages on speculation. Their increased risk taking was not a problem they told Congress because Wall St took them out of the stuff by inventing ways to package/combine the junk paper with prime debt, then peddle the whole lot to institutional investors by representing it as safe. Watch out.
In 2005 the Bush administration pushed for reforms. Those efforts were rebuffed by Congress with Barney Frank and Chris Dodd in the lead. Fannie and Freddie had not spent millions on campaign contributions to these clowns and their pals for nothing!. Still, for the first time a serious Fannie and Freddie reform bill actually passed a Senate committee. It would have required these two GSE’s to eliminate their investments in risky assets. If that bill would have become law today’s world would be different. McCain co-sponsored this legislation (S-190) to thwart what he called ‘the enormous risk that Fannie and Freddie pose to the housing market, the overall financial system and the economy as a whole." All the Republicans on the Committee supported the bill; all the Democrats voted against it. Obama, like all other Democrats, remained silent. Peter Wallison of the AEI wrote at the time, "The Democrats who oppose portfolio limitations could not possibly do so if their constituents understood what they were doing.''
The roadblock built by Senate Democrats is unforgivable. There has been a lot of talk about who is to blame for this crisis, especially from our good friends from the left. They need only to look within.
Robert Craven
Our readers know that the financial crisis was birthed in Washington by 1) politicians who wanted to increase home ownership and 2) Greenspan’s enabling behavior. From Charles Calomiris, professor of economics and finance at Columbia, "How did we get here? Let's review: In order to curry congressional support after their accounting scandals in 2003 and 2004, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac committed to increased financing of ‘affordable housing.’ They became the largest buyers of subprime and Alt-A mortgages between 2004 and 2007, with total GSE exposure eventually exceeding $1 trillion. In doing so, they stimulated the growth of the subpar mortgage market and substantially magnified the costs of its collapse."
One of the several reasons so many of these risky loans were originated is that Barack Obama’s celebrated community organizers made their careers out of forcing banks to do so. ACORN, for which Obama worked, is one of many left-wing organizations - shake down artists really - that spent decades pressuring banks and bank regulators to do more to make mortgages available to people without much in the way of income, assets, or credit. The result was the Community Reinvestment Act. The CRA empowered the FDIC and other banking regulators to punish those banks which do not lend to the poor and minorities at the level that Obama’s fellow community organizers would like. Banks were required to keep extensive records of their minority lending practices. Those that didn't pass muster could be denied the right to expand their branches, merge with other banks, or boost lending in new markets.
Lenders cannot blame the CRA entirely; they made a lot of bad bets on rising home prices. But the CRA did influence lending standards across the banking industry, even in those institutions that are not strictly liable to its jurisdiction. The subprime debacle is in no small part the result of lending decisions in which political extortion trumped businesses’ normal bottom-line concerns.
As explained in an earlier post, Fannie & Freddie, forsaking FDR’s intent, strayed into speculation themselves (and implicitly putting on taxpayers the risks of their business while the rewards were enjoyed, and to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars, by largely Democratic political opportunists, who then gave generously to Democrats, the top recipients of their largesse being: Chris Dodd, Hillary Rodham Clinton, John Kerry, and Barack Obama) Both became a profit center in their own right because of incentive deals to Raines and others and as part of that accumulated sub-par mortgages on speculation. Their increased risk taking was not a problem they told Congress because Wall St took them out of the stuff by inventing ways to package/combine the junk paper with prime debt, then peddle the whole lot to institutional investors by representing it as safe. Watch out.
In 2005 the Bush administration pushed for reforms. Those efforts were rebuffed by Congress with Barney Frank and Chris Dodd in the lead. Fannie and Freddie had not spent millions on campaign contributions to these clowns and their pals for nothing!. Still, for the first time a serious Fannie and Freddie reform bill actually passed a Senate committee. It would have required these two GSE’s to eliminate their investments in risky assets. If that bill would have become law today’s world would be different. McCain co-sponsored this legislation (S-190) to thwart what he called ‘the enormous risk that Fannie and Freddie pose to the housing market, the overall financial system and the economy as a whole." All the Republicans on the Committee supported the bill; all the Democrats voted against it. Obama, like all other Democrats, remained silent. Peter Wallison of the AEI wrote at the time, "The Democrats who oppose portfolio limitations could not possibly do so if their constituents understood what they were doing.''
The roadblock built by Senate Democrats is unforgivable. There has been a lot of talk about who is to blame for this crisis, especially from our good friends from the left. They need only to look within.
Robert Craven
Saturday, September 20, 2008
The Bush Legacy
For seven years George Bush has kept this nation free from terrorist attack. For this legacy every single one of us owe him a debt of gratitude. For those seven years as commander-in-chief he demonstrated a focus, a resolve, a constitutional emotional balance, a self-possession that was not disturbed by the most trying of circumstances.
The President’s strength and his dedication to his country were distilled in a 20 minute speech of Jan/10/07 that announced a new initiative designed to win in Iraq. The speech was not greeted with applause. Few within the administration supported what now has become known as "the surge". The Joint Chiefs of Staff were not in favor, nor was Gen Casey, the American commander in Iraq, nor was Centcom commander John Abizaid, nor was Condy Rice, nor was the foreign policy establishment led by the Iraqi Study Group. Yet that day the President wasn’t looking for affirmation. He was not, Clinton–like, directed by the polls. He was focused solely on victory; he decided to spurn public opinion and political pressure and fly by his own lights. He was right. That decision can be regarded as the single greatest of that whole series of decisions that successfully confronted an enemy whose creed is nothing more than an atavistic inheritance of the dark ages. As Charles Krauthammer reminds us, "The surge...effected the most dramatic change in the fortunes of an American war since the summer of 1864."
We are reminded too by Ann Coulter of the western classic "High Noon". The sheriff is about to leave office just when a gang of toughs ride into town. He could leave but he waits to face the killers. All his friends and all the townspeople who supported him during his years of keeping them safe, slowly abandon him. In the end, he walks alone to meet the killers, because someone had to.
In an interview George Bush noted with some pride that he has bequeathed to his successor the kinds of powers and institutions the next president will need to protect Americans. Yet despite this heritage he leaves as an unpopular president. Krauthammer confirms that, "In this respect Bush is much like Truman who developed the sinews of war for a new era (Dept of Def, CIA, NSA), expanded the powers of the presidency, established a new doctrine for active intervention abroad, and ultimately engaged in a war (Korea) that also proved to be highly unpopular." So unpopular that Truman left office disparaged, persecuted by both sides of the aisle as if he were some sort of nefarious character. History has revised that verdict. There is no doubt that Bush will be the subject of a similar reconsideration.
Robert Craven
The President’s strength and his dedication to his country were distilled in a 20 minute speech of Jan/10/07 that announced a new initiative designed to win in Iraq. The speech was not greeted with applause. Few within the administration supported what now has become known as "the surge". The Joint Chiefs of Staff were not in favor, nor was Gen Casey, the American commander in Iraq, nor was Centcom commander John Abizaid, nor was Condy Rice, nor was the foreign policy establishment led by the Iraqi Study Group. Yet that day the President wasn’t looking for affirmation. He was not, Clinton–like, directed by the polls. He was focused solely on victory; he decided to spurn public opinion and political pressure and fly by his own lights. He was right. That decision can be regarded as the single greatest of that whole series of decisions that successfully confronted an enemy whose creed is nothing more than an atavistic inheritance of the dark ages. As Charles Krauthammer reminds us, "The surge...effected the most dramatic change in the fortunes of an American war since the summer of 1864."
We are reminded too by Ann Coulter of the western classic "High Noon". The sheriff is about to leave office just when a gang of toughs ride into town. He could leave but he waits to face the killers. All his friends and all the townspeople who supported him during his years of keeping them safe, slowly abandon him. In the end, he walks alone to meet the killers, because someone had to.
In an interview George Bush noted with some pride that he has bequeathed to his successor the kinds of powers and institutions the next president will need to protect Americans. Yet despite this heritage he leaves as an unpopular president. Krauthammer confirms that, "In this respect Bush is much like Truman who developed the sinews of war for a new era (Dept of Def, CIA, NSA), expanded the powers of the presidency, established a new doctrine for active intervention abroad, and ultimately engaged in a war (Korea) that also proved to be highly unpopular." So unpopular that Truman left office disparaged, persecuted by both sides of the aisle as if he were some sort of nefarious character. History has revised that verdict. There is no doubt that Bush will be the subject of a similar reconsideration.
Robert Craven
Friday, September 19, 2008
Economics and the Campaign
Near term developments in Afghanistan and Iran are the key to the security of this country, eclipsing all else. Recent domestic events however have trumped this concern in the collective mind of Americans. So be it. Thus the change in the landscape of Wall St triggers a change in the landscape of the campaign, sculpted for the duration by the scythes of the sub-prime crisis.
The economy is not easy for anyone. "Ex-spurts" abound, all chattering away but of course - after the fact. Some economists understand the economy but very few can close the pattern successfully, that is, predict. McCain admitted that he had trouble fathoming these events. We applaud his candor.
The DNC welcomed the sub prime crisis just as the RNC will welcome buoyancy (if that may be the result of the current rescue effort). For weeks Obama has tried to keep voters focused on the economy betting this was his best chance to pull away. Until yesterday at least, one saw nothing but smiles on the faces of short sellers, vulture buyers and Democratic strategists.
It is true that Obama easily evokes race, changes his mind weekly, often sounds like he is lost and is the world’s foremost gaffe machine. It is also true that he has past associations with shady characters. None of this matters now. For the balance of the campaign it is the economic "crisis". However, Obama’s strength is not crisis management. His instinct is to equivocate and temporize. He is not the strong, virile male figure of say a Hank Paulson; he is not a commander as is McCain.
Nor does his leftist background spawn confidence. As David Frum of the AEI reminds us, "Obama is a classic big-city welfare-state politician. He has lots of ideas about how to share wealth created by others - but very few about how to ensure that wealth is created in the first place."
Thus although the DNC was gifted by the failure of Wall St’s instruments-of-the-cosmos, Obama lacks the skills, the instinct to capitalize on what could have been a bonanza. And key to this failure is his vulnerability. For example, in attributing the sub-prime situation to "Bush-McCain" policies Obama conveniently omits the fact that the key policy change underlying the whole breakdown is one he endorsed enthusiastically - the use of public loan guarantees to stimulate private home construction. As Frum again illustrates, "As a state legislator, Obama famously championed ‘public-private partnerships’ to renovate slum housing. Thus he advocated the same approach that just stuck the American taxpayer with liability with tens or hundreds of billions of dollars of Fannie/Freddie obligations."
McCain for his part must stop with the "greed" bit (there is nothing in the Constitution, nothing on state or national books which makes greed unconstitutional or illegal). Issues of judicial activism, earmarks, energy, education, health care, even national security, all key yes but now to play the cameo role. Tell ‘em what he knows and as before don’t fret party affiliation - the fat Fannie & Freddie, the Democrat’s encouragement of reckless activity through these two conduits and the payback, principally through the person of Barney Frank; the near incestuous relationship between regulator and regulated (Fed / Street). For the near term endorse Democrat Paul Volker’s RTC idea - massive government intervention, yes, but it worked before; take a crash course in credit flows and explain that to the masses. Make it easy, make is simple; we are not launching a satellite for goodness sake (and by the way, fire Phil Gramm). The landscape may be changing too fast for more specific proposals this week or next. Fine, capitalize on that - first the main structure, later the accent.
And McCain - recall and then highlight to your listeners the maxim, for us a golden rule - complexity remains, still, the very last refuge of the scoundrel.
Robert Craven
The economy is not easy for anyone. "Ex-spurts" abound, all chattering away but of course - after the fact. Some economists understand the economy but very few can close the pattern successfully, that is, predict. McCain admitted that he had trouble fathoming these events. We applaud his candor.
The DNC welcomed the sub prime crisis just as the RNC will welcome buoyancy (if that may be the result of the current rescue effort). For weeks Obama has tried to keep voters focused on the economy betting this was his best chance to pull away. Until yesterday at least, one saw nothing but smiles on the faces of short sellers, vulture buyers and Democratic strategists.
It is true that Obama easily evokes race, changes his mind weekly, often sounds like he is lost and is the world’s foremost gaffe machine. It is also true that he has past associations with shady characters. None of this matters now. For the balance of the campaign it is the economic "crisis". However, Obama’s strength is not crisis management. His instinct is to equivocate and temporize. He is not the strong, virile male figure of say a Hank Paulson; he is not a commander as is McCain.
Nor does his leftist background spawn confidence. As David Frum of the AEI reminds us, "Obama is a classic big-city welfare-state politician. He has lots of ideas about how to share wealth created by others - but very few about how to ensure that wealth is created in the first place."
Thus although the DNC was gifted by the failure of Wall St’s instruments-of-the-cosmos, Obama lacks the skills, the instinct to capitalize on what could have been a bonanza. And key to this failure is his vulnerability. For example, in attributing the sub-prime situation to "Bush-McCain" policies Obama conveniently omits the fact that the key policy change underlying the whole breakdown is one he endorsed enthusiastically - the use of public loan guarantees to stimulate private home construction. As Frum again illustrates, "As a state legislator, Obama famously championed ‘public-private partnerships’ to renovate slum housing. Thus he advocated the same approach that just stuck the American taxpayer with liability with tens or hundreds of billions of dollars of Fannie/Freddie obligations."
McCain for his part must stop with the "greed" bit (there is nothing in the Constitution, nothing on state or national books which makes greed unconstitutional or illegal). Issues of judicial activism, earmarks, energy, education, health care, even national security, all key yes but now to play the cameo role. Tell ‘em what he knows and as before don’t fret party affiliation - the fat Fannie & Freddie, the Democrat’s encouragement of reckless activity through these two conduits and the payback, principally through the person of Barney Frank; the near incestuous relationship between regulator and regulated (Fed / Street). For the near term endorse Democrat Paul Volker’s RTC idea - massive government intervention, yes, but it worked before; take a crash course in credit flows and explain that to the masses. Make it easy, make is simple; we are not launching a satellite for goodness sake (and by the way, fire Phil Gramm). The landscape may be changing too fast for more specific proposals this week or next. Fine, capitalize on that - first the main structure, later the accent.
And McCain - recall and then highlight to your listeners the maxim, for us a golden rule - complexity remains, still, the very last refuge of the scoundrel.
Robert Craven
Sunday, August 3, 2008
It Might Have Worked
Lack of accomplishment as an academic, then as a state senator and finally as a US senator might seem a bit of a hurdle to most of us if we were to contemplate running for president. But not for Obama and not for his handlers. Why? Because of what the campaign perceives to be a trump card - the application of race (or the preferred half for this purpose) to apply leverage. Sure enough, he’s hard at work: "...what they’re going to try to do is make you scared of me. You know, not patriotic enough. He’s got a funny name. You know, he doesn’t look like all those other presidents on those dollar bills, you know." Or, "He’s young and he’s got a funny name. And did I mention he’s black?" Or even in Berlin, where he tried to highlight that he was the first black American to address an audience there (forgetting Rice and Powell before him).
Obama’s strategy is straightforward - delegitimize any line of attack. That is, no charge against Obama can be made innocent of racial bias. That’s why his lack of qualification is not key, is not a major concern to his campaign. Don’t worry about the normal political back-and-forth; it’s illegitimate; the guy is above criticism.
How exactly did Obama plan to turn his blackness to advantage? From Shelby Steele of the Hoover Institute, "The answer is that one ‘bargains.’ Bargaining is a mask that blacks can wear in America, that enables them to put whites at their ease. Bargainers like Obama make the subliminal promise to whites not to shame them with America’s history of racism on the condition that they will not hold the bargainer’s race against him. And whites love the bargain – and feel affection for the bargainer–because it gives them racial innocence in a society where whites live under constant threat of being stigmatized as racist. Unlike Jackson and Sharpton who intimidated and demanded, Obama instead flatters whites, grants them racial innocence and hopes to ascend on the back of their gratitude."
Sure enough, Obama’s policy positions are nothing but DNC boilerplate. He has not espoused one original or galvanizing political idea. He is unable to say what he means by "change" or "hope" or "the future," and failed to say how he would be "a unifier." He has a track record with a near vacuity of content, BUT, none of this matters! Because as Steele illustrates, "Race... lifts his political campaign to the level of allegory, making it the stuff of a far higher drama than budget deficits or education reform (or even national security we might add). His dark skin...frames the political contest as a morality play. Thus, for whites here is the opportunity to document their deliverance from the shame of their forbearers."
Well, nice try Obama but quite likely your game is up. This strategy will fail on most Americans for the simple reason that it has been over played. As our own Vic Hansen observes, "The voter is now starting to hear serially from Obama about race; they were promised a racially transcendent candidate, but now Obama seems obsessed with identity, either accusing others of racism, or using heritage himself for political advantage. This is a tragic blunder."
Robert Craven
Obama’s strategy is straightforward - delegitimize any line of attack. That is, no charge against Obama can be made innocent of racial bias. That’s why his lack of qualification is not key, is not a major concern to his campaign. Don’t worry about the normal political back-and-forth; it’s illegitimate; the guy is above criticism.
How exactly did Obama plan to turn his blackness to advantage? From Shelby Steele of the Hoover Institute, "The answer is that one ‘bargains.’ Bargaining is a mask that blacks can wear in America, that enables them to put whites at their ease. Bargainers like Obama make the subliminal promise to whites not to shame them with America’s history of racism on the condition that they will not hold the bargainer’s race against him. And whites love the bargain – and feel affection for the bargainer–because it gives them racial innocence in a society where whites live under constant threat of being stigmatized as racist. Unlike Jackson and Sharpton who intimidated and demanded, Obama instead flatters whites, grants them racial innocence and hopes to ascend on the back of their gratitude."
Sure enough, Obama’s policy positions are nothing but DNC boilerplate. He has not espoused one original or galvanizing political idea. He is unable to say what he means by "change" or "hope" or "the future," and failed to say how he would be "a unifier." He has a track record with a near vacuity of content, BUT, none of this matters! Because as Steele illustrates, "Race... lifts his political campaign to the level of allegory, making it the stuff of a far higher drama than budget deficits or education reform (or even national security we might add). His dark skin...frames the political contest as a morality play. Thus, for whites here is the opportunity to document their deliverance from the shame of their forbearers."
Well, nice try Obama but quite likely your game is up. This strategy will fail on most Americans for the simple reason that it has been over played. As our own Vic Hansen observes, "The voter is now starting to hear serially from Obama about race; they were promised a racially transcendent candidate, but now Obama seems obsessed with identity, either accusing others of racism, or using heritage himself for political advantage. This is a tragic blunder."
Robert Craven
Monday, July 28, 2008
Thursday in Berlin - The Second Coming
In his victory speech upon winning his party’s nomination Obama pronounced a great turning point in history - "generations from now we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment" - when, among other wonders, "the rise of the oceans will began to slow." As economist Irwin Stelzer noted in his London Telegraph column, "Moses made the waters recede, but he had help. Obama apparently works alone."
Just ask the German youth packaged (with the assist of a rock band) for the Berlin spectacle. Veneration, idiolatry swept the audience, gathering most of the press in its wake. Whoa! It seems only yesterday that Obama was just another Chicago politician whose entire resume was a speech at John Kerry’s convention. As we highlighted in detail in an earlier sketch, he’s a short-term US senator without a single legislative accomplishment, a former Illinois senator who voted "present" nearly 130 times (meaning - not willing to commit), a president of the Harvard Law Review and law professor who never produced one single piece of scholarship, not one memorable article, aside, that is from a biography on his favorite subject - himself.
Germans don’t vote for this office but since Thursday’s sermon, poll results are higher among many of those who will. Have the masses been taken in by this messiah wannabe? No doubt. Obama’s handlers are counting on voter illiteracy as their trump card. Americans are tired of conflict; thus, a warm and fuzzy message fits as it sheds the necessity of hard choices; it is a fit because a whole bunch of Americans are blissfully unaware of the dynamics of foreign affairs, ignorant of US and world history.
But Obama as commander-in-chief? Holly mackerel. In an earlier sketch we put a spotlight on the perfect contest for this office - a real life, hands on, taking-of-the-helm. This was 2006 when McCain, as a member of the Senates Armed Services Committee recommended the "surge" noting that initially this strategy would increase American casualties and hardships but then would bring violence under control. Obama as a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee presented his solution in the "Iraq War De-Escalation Act of 2007 (S. 433) which forbade the surge and demanded that most troops be out of Iraq by the spring of 2008. As our friend Rex Murphy of Canada’s GlobeandMail.com puts it, "Obama offered unqualified, insistent opposition to the Petraeus surge, which turned the war around to the point that some of its most relentless critics now maintain ‘it cannot be lost.’ In other words, on the one definitive issue, post-invasion, on his country’s most important foreign involvement, the one decision the inarticulate and sublimely unhip Texan in the White House made alone, and got right; Obama was perfectly, publicly wrong." Too much.
Thus, by Obama’s European tour his handlers looked to build an image, create a statesman out of nothing, knowing as most of us do that this man is profoundly out of his league in matters of foreign affairs; knowing too that they have a leftist on their hands who thinks that war can be wished away by blaming the US for its enemies’ hatred. The tool: create an illusion, the wonderland of ONE WORLD - how did the rest of us miss that!? - and Obama will become its paladin. For example, Obama’s reference Thursday to why Berlin did not starve in 1948 ("But in the darkest hours, the people of Berlin kept the flame of hope burning. The people of Berlin refused to give up. And on one fall day, hundreds of thousands of Berliners came here, to the Tiergarten, and heard the city’s major implore the world not to give up on freedom.") As the San Joaquin Valley’s own Vic Hansen made note, "With all due respect, I don’t believe the world did anything to save Berlin. The city was kept alive not by ‘the world’ or even the courage of the hungry Berliners, but by the skill and courage of the US Air Force."
Fortunately for Obama, this is the stuff that slips by the masses, most of whom, if not suffering from a case of chronic amnesia, certainly struggle to lay claim to events preceding the last super bowl.
Again from Thursday’s worship we witnessed Obama’s soaring rhetoric, his historical revisionism that, "The two superpowers that faced each other across the wall of this city came too close too often to destroying all we have built and all that we love." (a pause for a visit to the men’s room - I will throw up presently.. Ok, back after a clearing of the system) As Hansen notes, "I would beg to differ again and suggest that a mass-murdering Soviet tyranny came close to destroying the European continent (after wiping out millions of its own people)...and was checked only by an often lone and caricatured US superpower and its nuclear deterrence."
Ongoing we will continue to expose the messiah for what he is, or isn’t.
Robert Craven
Just ask the German youth packaged (with the assist of a rock band) for the Berlin spectacle. Veneration, idiolatry swept the audience, gathering most of the press in its wake. Whoa! It seems only yesterday that Obama was just another Chicago politician whose entire resume was a speech at John Kerry’s convention. As we highlighted in detail in an earlier sketch, he’s a short-term US senator without a single legislative accomplishment, a former Illinois senator who voted "present" nearly 130 times (meaning - not willing to commit), a president of the Harvard Law Review and law professor who never produced one single piece of scholarship, not one memorable article, aside, that is from a biography on his favorite subject - himself.
Germans don’t vote for this office but since Thursday’s sermon, poll results are higher among many of those who will. Have the masses been taken in by this messiah wannabe? No doubt. Obama’s handlers are counting on voter illiteracy as their trump card. Americans are tired of conflict; thus, a warm and fuzzy message fits as it sheds the necessity of hard choices; it is a fit because a whole bunch of Americans are blissfully unaware of the dynamics of foreign affairs, ignorant of US and world history.
But Obama as commander-in-chief? Holly mackerel. In an earlier sketch we put a spotlight on the perfect contest for this office - a real life, hands on, taking-of-the-helm. This was 2006 when McCain, as a member of the Senates Armed Services Committee recommended the "surge" noting that initially this strategy would increase American casualties and hardships but then would bring violence under control. Obama as a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee presented his solution in the "Iraq War De-Escalation Act of 2007 (S. 433) which forbade the surge and demanded that most troops be out of Iraq by the spring of 2008. As our friend Rex Murphy of Canada’s GlobeandMail.com puts it, "Obama offered unqualified, insistent opposition to the Petraeus surge, which turned the war around to the point that some of its most relentless critics now maintain ‘it cannot be lost.’ In other words, on the one definitive issue, post-invasion, on his country’s most important foreign involvement, the one decision the inarticulate and sublimely unhip Texan in the White House made alone, and got right; Obama was perfectly, publicly wrong." Too much.
Thus, by Obama’s European tour his handlers looked to build an image, create a statesman out of nothing, knowing as most of us do that this man is profoundly out of his league in matters of foreign affairs; knowing too that they have a leftist on their hands who thinks that war can be wished away by blaming the US for its enemies’ hatred. The tool: create an illusion, the wonderland of ONE WORLD - how did the rest of us miss that!? - and Obama will become its paladin. For example, Obama’s reference Thursday to why Berlin did not starve in 1948 ("But in the darkest hours, the people of Berlin kept the flame of hope burning. The people of Berlin refused to give up. And on one fall day, hundreds of thousands of Berliners came here, to the Tiergarten, and heard the city’s major implore the world not to give up on freedom.") As the San Joaquin Valley’s own Vic Hansen made note, "With all due respect, I don’t believe the world did anything to save Berlin. The city was kept alive not by ‘the world’ or even the courage of the hungry Berliners, but by the skill and courage of the US Air Force."
Fortunately for Obama, this is the stuff that slips by the masses, most of whom, if not suffering from a case of chronic amnesia, certainly struggle to lay claim to events preceding the last super bowl.
Again from Thursday’s worship we witnessed Obama’s soaring rhetoric, his historical revisionism that, "The two superpowers that faced each other across the wall of this city came too close too often to destroying all we have built and all that we love." (a pause for a visit to the men’s room - I will throw up presently.. Ok, back after a clearing of the system) As Hansen notes, "I would beg to differ again and suggest that a mass-murdering Soviet tyranny came close to destroying the European continent (after wiping out millions of its own people)...and was checked only by an often lone and caricatured US superpower and its nuclear deterrence."
Ongoing we will continue to expose the messiah for what he is, or isn’t.
Robert Craven
Sunday, June 15, 2008
AMNESIA
John F. Kennedy, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman and Scoop Jackson, once great leaders of a once great party, could feel nothing if not betrayed by the new Democratic party and its selection of Obama as its candidate for president of the United States.
In the post of Apr/21 we highlighted the transformation from the party JFK said in his inaugural would "pay and price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to assure the survival and the success of freedom," to one which Joe Lieberman illustrates, "grew to see America as the aggressor - a morally bankrupt, imperialist power whose militarism and ‘inordinate fear of communism’ represented the real threat to world peace." The Soviets and their allies were our enemies not because they nursed ambitions of global conquest but because we provoked them, we threatened them.
Naturally our partisan friends won’t admit the same; most simply accept and move lemming-like to November yet the undeniable truth is that the old, respectable Democratic party is gone; it no longer exists and to most of the membership lessons of history are lost with it. What does exist is a party and a philosophy which would gag Harry Truman, a philosophy certainly when directed toward foreign affairs represents a clear and present danger to this country. This new Democratic party believes that the more therapeutic and the more conciliatory, the more diplomatic, the more apologetic, the more sensitive, the more likely we will be safe. This party condemns a man who has kept the nation safe for 7 years by keeping the Islamic medievalists pinned down in Iraq while virtually destroying al-Qaida, yet deifies a man who has accomplished absolutely nothing in his entire life except to give speeches about "change". And countries which adopted a DNC-like stance? What happened to them since Sep/2001? Simply ask the Europeans who were hit repeatedly, who were successfully targeted because they stood for nothing, or certainly nothing they were willing to defend.
A great Democratic secretary of state, Dean Acheson, once warned that, "No people in history have ever survived who thought they could protect their freedom by making themselves inoffensive to their enemies." A lesson lost on the present DNC leadership, suffering it seems from a severe case of amnesia.
Robert Craven
In the post of Apr/21 we highlighted the transformation from the party JFK said in his inaugural would "pay and price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to assure the survival and the success of freedom," to one which Joe Lieberman illustrates, "grew to see America as the aggressor - a morally bankrupt, imperialist power whose militarism and ‘inordinate fear of communism’ represented the real threat to world peace." The Soviets and their allies were our enemies not because they nursed ambitions of global conquest but because we provoked them, we threatened them.
Naturally our partisan friends won’t admit the same; most simply accept and move lemming-like to November yet the undeniable truth is that the old, respectable Democratic party is gone; it no longer exists and to most of the membership lessons of history are lost with it. What does exist is a party and a philosophy which would gag Harry Truman, a philosophy certainly when directed toward foreign affairs represents a clear and present danger to this country. This new Democratic party believes that the more therapeutic and the more conciliatory, the more diplomatic, the more apologetic, the more sensitive, the more likely we will be safe. This party condemns a man who has kept the nation safe for 7 years by keeping the Islamic medievalists pinned down in Iraq while virtually destroying al-Qaida, yet deifies a man who has accomplished absolutely nothing in his entire life except to give speeches about "change". And countries which adopted a DNC-like stance? What happened to them since Sep/2001? Simply ask the Europeans who were hit repeatedly, who were successfully targeted because they stood for nothing, or certainly nothing they were willing to defend.
A great Democratic secretary of state, Dean Acheson, once warned that, "No people in history have ever survived who thought they could protect their freedom by making themselves inoffensive to their enemies." A lesson lost on the present DNC leadership, suffering it seems from a severe case of amnesia.
Robert Craven
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
ELECTION UPDATE
ELECTION UPDATE
The Pennsylvania primary exit poll results, the first contest since information regarding Obama’s less-than-flattering past associations has become available, and, the first contest to follow his recent condescending, elitist remarks so consistent with a far-left ideology, perfectly endorse our insight/prediction as highlighted in the post of Apr/21 -- Obama cannot secure the vote of middle class Americans.
Finally, as we noted months ago and as the Clinton camp levered effectively in this recent contest, Obama is profoundly out of his league in matters of national security, the single key consideration is selecting a commander-in-chief.
Democrats will stumble through a primary process that even to them must be an embarrassment, end up selecting Obama as their candidate before August so as not to have the entire spectacle on TV, and then lose in November.
Robert Craven
The Pennsylvania primary exit poll results, the first contest since information regarding Obama’s less-than-flattering past associations has become available, and, the first contest to follow his recent condescending, elitist remarks so consistent with a far-left ideology, perfectly endorse our insight/prediction as highlighted in the post of Apr/21 -- Obama cannot secure the vote of middle class Americans.
Finally, as we noted months ago and as the Clinton camp levered effectively in this recent contest, Obama is profoundly out of his league in matters of national security, the single key consideration is selecting a commander-in-chief.
Democrats will stumble through a primary process that even to them must be an embarrassment, end up selecting Obama as their candidate before August so as not to have the entire spectacle on TV, and then lose in November.
Robert Craven
Monday, April 21, 2008
A PARTY HIJACKED, OR WHY OBAMA WILL LOSE
We have witnessed the death throws of the old, respectable, bread and butter
Democratic party, the party of Truman, FDR, Kennedy and Scoop Jackson. This process began in the late 60's, my view, as a new left arising from the cultural revolution, galvanized by the Vietnam war and the advent of the new left-wing intellectuals’ manifestoes about revolutionary violence, black power and imperialism moved away from Johnson and hijacked the traditional Democratic party mechanism, effectively, as one spokesman put it, "murdering liberalism in its official robes".
This was the beginning of the end. There was a transformation, one from anti-war to anti-American (apologists for Communism, apologists for the Sandinistas, for Castro), from being just critical to almost purely nihilistic in character. Now the party is for the most part lost to Hollywood, to the universities, to the shills for the left in the media, the elitist revisionists and foundations which have an agenda out of touch with the average American, most of whom they never see or wish to see. This of course is what Democratic party elders feared following the McGovern debacle, why they threw grass-roots democracy out the window and instead adopted the so-called Super Delegate system as a way to trump such radically inspired messes in the future (even this system has been hijacked). And this is why a respected life-long Democrat, the Greek scholar Vic Hansen sickened at the sight of Michael Moore perched next to Jimmy Carter at the last Democratic convention, mourning that, "This says it all, the sorry coming together of conspiratorial anti-Americanism and self-righteous appeasement".
And of course this is why Obama’s recent comment in SF about embittered Americans, his refusal to wear the American flag lapel pin, his friendly relationship not just with a Weatherman terrorist but to use his own words, "Marxist professors and structural feminists...," show that his philosophy is no different really from the liberal elitism (and grievance culture) of a Dukakis or a McGovern or Kerry all of whom lost because of a lack of connection with the bread and butter Democrats. Obama’s voting record is perfectly consistent with this far-left ideology. Obama, if the nominee, means failure for the Democrats in November.
Robert Craven
Democratic party, the party of Truman, FDR, Kennedy and Scoop Jackson. This process began in the late 60's, my view, as a new left arising from the cultural revolution, galvanized by the Vietnam war and the advent of the new left-wing intellectuals’ manifestoes about revolutionary violence, black power and imperialism moved away from Johnson and hijacked the traditional Democratic party mechanism, effectively, as one spokesman put it, "murdering liberalism in its official robes".
This was the beginning of the end. There was a transformation, one from anti-war to anti-American (apologists for Communism, apologists for the Sandinistas, for Castro), from being just critical to almost purely nihilistic in character. Now the party is for the most part lost to Hollywood, to the universities, to the shills for the left in the media, the elitist revisionists and foundations which have an agenda out of touch with the average American, most of whom they never see or wish to see. This of course is what Democratic party elders feared following the McGovern debacle, why they threw grass-roots democracy out the window and instead adopted the so-called Super Delegate system as a way to trump such radically inspired messes in the future (even this system has been hijacked). And this is why a respected life-long Democrat, the Greek scholar Vic Hansen sickened at the sight of Michael Moore perched next to Jimmy Carter at the last Democratic convention, mourning that, "This says it all, the sorry coming together of conspiratorial anti-Americanism and self-righteous appeasement".
And of course this is why Obama’s recent comment in SF about embittered Americans, his refusal to wear the American flag lapel pin, his friendly relationship not just with a Weatherman terrorist but to use his own words, "Marxist professors and structural feminists...," show that his philosophy is no different really from the liberal elitism (and grievance culture) of a Dukakis or a McGovern or Kerry all of whom lost because of a lack of connection with the bread and butter Democrats. Obama’s voting record is perfectly consistent with this far-left ideology. Obama, if the nominee, means failure for the Democrats in November.
Robert Craven
Thursday, March 27, 2008
BETRAYAL
Most of our friends on the left and a few on the right are discouraged. It is not Hillary. Hillary is simply being Hillary. The fact that she recently added to her long list of constructs yet another fiction - that she was under fire when disembarking in Bosnia in 1996 when in fact she sauntered off the plane and stopped on the tarmac to listen to a little girl read her a poem - is old hat for most of her fans; as Carl Berstein noted recently, "She has always had a difficult relationship with the truth." No, it is in fact Obama whose cross-racial and cross-partisan supporters believed that he was a new-era politician, one not defined by the grievances and habits of an earlier generation, a post-racial leader who could bring us all together but who now appears, sub-surface, to be altogether someone else.
Among those who hoped this guy was genuine are intellectually honest black Americans like Shelby Steele who in a recent editorial in the WSJ worried about Obama’s revelation that he sat Sunday after Sunday for 20 years in a church whose pastor spewed venom at everything American. "Facts are stubborn things," John Adams reminds us. Obama, Steele says, "fellow-traveled with a hate-filled, anti-American black nationalism all his adult life, failing to stand and challenge an ideology that would have no place for his own mother. And what portent of presidential judgement is it to have exposed his two daughters for their entire lives to what is, at the very least, a subtext of anti-white vitriol?" "What was Obama thinking?," Steel asks. And the answer: "Of course he wasn’t thinking. He was driven by insecurity, by a need to ‘be black’ despite his biracial background," and a little race hatred was the compromise because from Rev Wright and others like him there is the mindless indulgence in a rhetorical anti-Americanism as a way of bonding and of asserting one’s blackness, an apparent fit for Obama.
We also hear from Thomas Sowell, another black American and an economist at the Hoover Institute whose wisdom and courage have inspired many of us over the years. From Sowell: "Obama didn’t just happen to encounter Wright, who just happened to say some way out things; Wright is in the same mold as the kinds of people Obama began seeking out in college - members of the left, anti-American counter-culture. In college, ‘I chose my friends carefully,’ he said in his first book, Dreams From My Father. These friends included ‘Marxist professors and structural feminists and punk rock performance poets’ — in Obama’s own words — as well as the ‘more politically active black students.’ He later visited a former member of the terrorist Weatherman Underground who endorsed him when he ran for state senator."
Nor has Obama changed in recent years. His voting record in the Senate is the furthest left of any senator, and perfectly consistent with the far-left ideology and the grievance culture, just as his wife’s statement that she was never proud of her country is consistent with that ideology. Never did he try to educate himself on the views of people on the other end of the political spectrum, much less reach out to them. As Sowell notes, "He reached out from the left to the far left. That brings us together?"
To help explain away some of this Obama gave a speech the other day in Philadelphia. He made a statement on racial matters, answering a question that no one was asking. That speech warmed the hearts of the NYT’s staff and Harvard Review but insulted the intelligence of everyone else. If your topic is race, meaning blacks, then let’s discuss subjects ranging from disproportionate illegitimacy and drug usage to higher-that-average criminality to disturbing values espoused in rap music, and unaddressed anti-Semitism. (To most, racism is such a distant memory that racial victimologists like the Rev Wright are now left with concocting wild-eyed conspiracy theories to maintain their power. It is self-serving black "leaders" like Wright and Jackson and other race baiters who act as though the legacy of slavery gives black people like them the right to be permanently ill-mannered, and who through their racial identity politics have blocked advancement more than racism every could.) But key is that Obama dodged the question that everyone is asking - why did he spend 20 years listening to Wright and never say a word? There was no apology, no tough stance on Wright. If you seek to be president, you better damn well repudiate any clown who blames us for 9/11, who claims the US invented AIDS as a way to kill people.
The masquerade is that Obama’s sudden rise to leading Democratic contender has required him to project an entirely different image and persona. The ease with which he has accomplished this chameleon-like change and entranced both whites and blacks is a tribute to the man’s talent, yet a warning about his credibility. His run at the presidency is based more on the manipulation of white guilt than on substance. He flatters whites; as Steele explains, "he grants them racial innocence, and hopes to ascend on the back of their gratitude."
And so now, from some of those who had hope for this man we actually hear accusations of dissembling. And why not? Obama told the Chicago Sun-Times, "I’ll be honest with you. I wasn’t in church when any of those sermons were issued....I had not heard him make what I consider to be objectionable remarks from the pulpit." Yet in the speech itself, Obama declared, "Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church?" Yes." But for Obama to now claim that Wright’s obscene views come as a shock is a fabrication.. To deflect, Obama cowardly compares Wright’s invective to his own grandmother ("a typical white person") who he claims, "..once confessed her fear of black men who passed her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe." My, my. His own grandmother, who cooked his food and tucked him in at night and paid for his private school - has expressed the same feeling about black men as Jesse Jackson. He had no excuses for his grandma though. She never felt discrimination, doesn’t get the same pass as his "old uncle" Rev Wright.
Obama, a phony?
Robert Craven
Among those who hoped this guy was genuine are intellectually honest black Americans like Shelby Steele who in a recent editorial in the WSJ worried about Obama’s revelation that he sat Sunday after Sunday for 20 years in a church whose pastor spewed venom at everything American. "Facts are stubborn things," John Adams reminds us. Obama, Steele says, "fellow-traveled with a hate-filled, anti-American black nationalism all his adult life, failing to stand and challenge an ideology that would have no place for his own mother. And what portent of presidential judgement is it to have exposed his two daughters for their entire lives to what is, at the very least, a subtext of anti-white vitriol?" "What was Obama thinking?," Steel asks. And the answer: "Of course he wasn’t thinking. He was driven by insecurity, by a need to ‘be black’ despite his biracial background," and a little race hatred was the compromise because from Rev Wright and others like him there is the mindless indulgence in a rhetorical anti-Americanism as a way of bonding and of asserting one’s blackness, an apparent fit for Obama.
We also hear from Thomas Sowell, another black American and an economist at the Hoover Institute whose wisdom and courage have inspired many of us over the years. From Sowell: "Obama didn’t just happen to encounter Wright, who just happened to say some way out things; Wright is in the same mold as the kinds of people Obama began seeking out in college - members of the left, anti-American counter-culture. In college, ‘I chose my friends carefully,’ he said in his first book, Dreams From My Father. These friends included ‘Marxist professors and structural feminists and punk rock performance poets’ — in Obama’s own words — as well as the ‘more politically active black students.’ He later visited a former member of the terrorist Weatherman Underground who endorsed him when he ran for state senator."
Nor has Obama changed in recent years. His voting record in the Senate is the furthest left of any senator, and perfectly consistent with the far-left ideology and the grievance culture, just as his wife’s statement that she was never proud of her country is consistent with that ideology. Never did he try to educate himself on the views of people on the other end of the political spectrum, much less reach out to them. As Sowell notes, "He reached out from the left to the far left. That brings us together?"
To help explain away some of this Obama gave a speech the other day in Philadelphia. He made a statement on racial matters, answering a question that no one was asking. That speech warmed the hearts of the NYT’s staff and Harvard Review but insulted the intelligence of everyone else. If your topic is race, meaning blacks, then let’s discuss subjects ranging from disproportionate illegitimacy and drug usage to higher-that-average criminality to disturbing values espoused in rap music, and unaddressed anti-Semitism. (To most, racism is such a distant memory that racial victimologists like the Rev Wright are now left with concocting wild-eyed conspiracy theories to maintain their power. It is self-serving black "leaders" like Wright and Jackson and other race baiters who act as though the legacy of slavery gives black people like them the right to be permanently ill-mannered, and who through their racial identity politics have blocked advancement more than racism every could.) But key is that Obama dodged the question that everyone is asking - why did he spend 20 years listening to Wright and never say a word? There was no apology, no tough stance on Wright. If you seek to be president, you better damn well repudiate any clown who blames us for 9/11, who claims the US invented AIDS as a way to kill people.
The masquerade is that Obama’s sudden rise to leading Democratic contender has required him to project an entirely different image and persona. The ease with which he has accomplished this chameleon-like change and entranced both whites and blacks is a tribute to the man’s talent, yet a warning about his credibility. His run at the presidency is based more on the manipulation of white guilt than on substance. He flatters whites; as Steele explains, "he grants them racial innocence, and hopes to ascend on the back of their gratitude."
And so now, from some of those who had hope for this man we actually hear accusations of dissembling. And why not? Obama told the Chicago Sun-Times, "I’ll be honest with you. I wasn’t in church when any of those sermons were issued....I had not heard him make what I consider to be objectionable remarks from the pulpit." Yet in the speech itself, Obama declared, "Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church?" Yes." But for Obama to now claim that Wright’s obscene views come as a shock is a fabrication.. To deflect, Obama cowardly compares Wright’s invective to his own grandmother ("a typical white person") who he claims, "..once confessed her fear of black men who passed her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe." My, my. His own grandmother, who cooked his food and tucked him in at night and paid for his private school - has expressed the same feeling about black men as Jesse Jackson. He had no excuses for his grandma though. She never felt discrimination, doesn’t get the same pass as his "old uncle" Rev Wright.
Obama, a phony?
Robert Craven
Monday, March 17, 2008
CHARACTER
"The public cannot be too curious concerning the characters of public men." - Samuel Adams
It is a fruitful exercise to try to come to understand the depth of character that may reside within each of the three individuals looking to take the helm of this country. Most by now understand that Hillary Clinton had shed most any claim to honesty, candor, or, to the anchor of principle. We need only recall the NYTs own William Safire as he labeled the woman a "congenital liar" to realize one need go no further. John McCain on the contrary has a reputation, even among his would-be detractors as someone with integrity and true convictions. We need not agree with him on every issue but at least we know he is not willing to say something, or anything just to get elected. He has demonstrated that time and time again. It’s refreshing to be able to rely on a candidate’s word.
We arrive at Barack Obama. He is certainly a skilled orator but in addition he seems a sincere man, an individual who claims that he is truly concerned with the well being of his fellow Americans and - key - is blessed with a vision of a way to effect positive change for every one of them. Is this true? Or, is the left’s David Ignatius of the Washington Post more on the mark when he asserts that Obama’s record is that of, "...a stridently-liberal partisan, not a bipartisan consensus-maker who gets things done.."? Is the man authentic? Is he honest? Or, is he a phony? We’ll take a look.
We highlighted in an earlier post the worrying relationship between Obama and a his chief Chicago fund raiser, one Tony Rezko. Rezko has a long record yet Obama says he did not end his relationship with this fixer until recently, "because there was no evidence of wrongdoing".Obama went to Harvard law school, was elected the Review’s first black president in its 104 year history, completed his degree magna cum laude, yet did not have the wherewithal to realize his friend was a gangster? Whoa! That’s a bit of a stretch.
Less obvious to the masses but more worrying to us was Obama’s posturing while in Ohio, telling workers whose jobs are threatened by NAFTA that he will work to re-write that document to preserve their jobs yet sent his economic adviser Austan Goolsbee that week to Canada’s consulate in Chicago to assure them that "not really", he just saying that, so don’t worry. Obama was cornered, denied the visit, then backed down after a Canadian diplomat’s memo confirmed the mission.
We also highlighted in an earlier post the venomous and paranoid denunciations of America from Obama’s minister for over 20 years. The Obamas were not merely endorsed by, or attended the church of the good Rev Wright, but subsidized his hatred with donations, were married by him, and had their children baptized by this clown. Newsmax correspondent Jim Davis attended a service at the church during which Wright referred to "white arrogance" and "the United States of white America". Obama was at church that day. Davis claims that he sat in his pew nodding in agreement. The WSJ featured an opinion piece by Newmax chief Washington correspondent Ronald Kessler in the Mar/14 edition which disclosed that Wright had delivered a sermon blaming America for starting AIDS, training professional killers, importing drugs, and creating a racist society. Yet Obama has disassociated himself from all of this, saying he never heard any such thing or about any such thing all these years. As Newt Gingrich noted recently, "Does he honestly expect the nation to believe that for 20 years...he didn’t notice the anti-American rhetoric? I mean, does somebody seriously believe that in over 800 potential Sunday visits, it never once came up, no one ever mentioned it to him?" Or from life- long Democrat Vic Hansen, "Sen Obama has proclaimed a new politics of hope and change that were to transcend such venom and character assassination. Thus besides being politically dense, he suffers - unless he preempts and explains in detail his Byzantine relationship with the reverend - the additional charge of hypocrisy in courting such a merchant of hate." Well, it seems pretty obvious that Obama, since his early 20's has sat week after week willingly listening to the ravings of just another cookie-cutter race huckster. Or, are we missing something?
Finally, there is the seeming contradiction between his rhapsody of delivery and what appears to some to be a vacuity of content, or if nothing, certainly nothing new that has not been pablum from the left for years. Are we wrong? Is there something there that is authentic, genuine, new and different? Let’s take a look. Recall the so often-repeated line, "We are the ones we’ve been waiting for". What does that mean and where did that come from? Is this a sentence that as Andrew Ferguson of the Weekly Standard put it, "...no one will admit to being confused by, like the tenor-sax solos of John Coltrane, lest your peers think you’re a loser or a moron."? Well, come to find out, the phrase was borrowed from the title of a book of essays by the left-wing-radical-feminist-lesbian novelist Alice Walker - We Are The Ones We’ve Been Waiting For. And then the more we looked at Ferguson’s research the more we found that Obama has been credited with using phrases that have been in circulation for years. "This is a defining moment in history," Obama repeats; that is what Elizabeth Dole said when her husband ran for president in 1996. Obama climbs to the climax of his stump speech. Head bowed, brow furrowed, eyes flashing, he announces that, "We will choose unity over division" (Jesse Jackson, 1992). "We will choose hope over fear" (Bill Clinton and John Kerry, 1994). "And we will choose the future over the past" (Al Gore, 1992). "In so doing we will overcome our moral deficit" (Bush 2000, Gore, 2000) "by bringing people beyond the divisions of race and class" (Clinton, 1992) because the "story of our country" (Perot, 1992) or the "genius of our country" (Bush, 2000) or the "wonder of our country" (Bush, 1988) is, as Obama says in 2008, "ordinary people doing extraordinary things" (Perot, Bush, Bush, Reagan).
Well, we’d like to believe the best about this guy; certainly the Democrats could use a break. At the moment unfortunately things do not look promising.
Robert Craven
It is a fruitful exercise to try to come to understand the depth of character that may reside within each of the three individuals looking to take the helm of this country. Most by now understand that Hillary Clinton had shed most any claim to honesty, candor, or, to the anchor of principle. We need only recall the NYTs own William Safire as he labeled the woman a "congenital liar" to realize one need go no further. John McCain on the contrary has a reputation, even among his would-be detractors as someone with integrity and true convictions. We need not agree with him on every issue but at least we know he is not willing to say something, or anything just to get elected. He has demonstrated that time and time again. It’s refreshing to be able to rely on a candidate’s word.
We arrive at Barack Obama. He is certainly a skilled orator but in addition he seems a sincere man, an individual who claims that he is truly concerned with the well being of his fellow Americans and - key - is blessed with a vision of a way to effect positive change for every one of them. Is this true? Or, is the left’s David Ignatius of the Washington Post more on the mark when he asserts that Obama’s record is that of, "...a stridently-liberal partisan, not a bipartisan consensus-maker who gets things done.."? Is the man authentic? Is he honest? Or, is he a phony? We’ll take a look.
We highlighted in an earlier post the worrying relationship between Obama and a his chief Chicago fund raiser, one Tony Rezko. Rezko has a long record yet Obama says he did not end his relationship with this fixer until recently, "because there was no evidence of wrongdoing".Obama went to Harvard law school, was elected the Review’s first black president in its 104 year history, completed his degree magna cum laude, yet did not have the wherewithal to realize his friend was a gangster? Whoa! That’s a bit of a stretch.
Less obvious to the masses but more worrying to us was Obama’s posturing while in Ohio, telling workers whose jobs are threatened by NAFTA that he will work to re-write that document to preserve their jobs yet sent his economic adviser Austan Goolsbee that week to Canada’s consulate in Chicago to assure them that "not really", he just saying that, so don’t worry. Obama was cornered, denied the visit, then backed down after a Canadian diplomat’s memo confirmed the mission.
We also highlighted in an earlier post the venomous and paranoid denunciations of America from Obama’s minister for over 20 years. The Obamas were not merely endorsed by, or attended the church of the good Rev Wright, but subsidized his hatred with donations, were married by him, and had their children baptized by this clown. Newsmax correspondent Jim Davis attended a service at the church during which Wright referred to "white arrogance" and "the United States of white America". Obama was at church that day. Davis claims that he sat in his pew nodding in agreement. The WSJ featured an opinion piece by Newmax chief Washington correspondent Ronald Kessler in the Mar/14 edition which disclosed that Wright had delivered a sermon blaming America for starting AIDS, training professional killers, importing drugs, and creating a racist society. Yet Obama has disassociated himself from all of this, saying he never heard any such thing or about any such thing all these years. As Newt Gingrich noted recently, "Does he honestly expect the nation to believe that for 20 years...he didn’t notice the anti-American rhetoric? I mean, does somebody seriously believe that in over 800 potential Sunday visits, it never once came up, no one ever mentioned it to him?" Or from life- long Democrat Vic Hansen, "Sen Obama has proclaimed a new politics of hope and change that were to transcend such venom and character assassination. Thus besides being politically dense, he suffers - unless he preempts and explains in detail his Byzantine relationship with the reverend - the additional charge of hypocrisy in courting such a merchant of hate." Well, it seems pretty obvious that Obama, since his early 20's has sat week after week willingly listening to the ravings of just another cookie-cutter race huckster. Or, are we missing something?
Finally, there is the seeming contradiction between his rhapsody of delivery and what appears to some to be a vacuity of content, or if nothing, certainly nothing new that has not been pablum from the left for years. Are we wrong? Is there something there that is authentic, genuine, new and different? Let’s take a look. Recall the so often-repeated line, "We are the ones we’ve been waiting for". What does that mean and where did that come from? Is this a sentence that as Andrew Ferguson of the Weekly Standard put it, "...no one will admit to being confused by, like the tenor-sax solos of John Coltrane, lest your peers think you’re a loser or a moron."? Well, come to find out, the phrase was borrowed from the title of a book of essays by the left-wing-radical-feminist-lesbian novelist Alice Walker - We Are The Ones We’ve Been Waiting For. And then the more we looked at Ferguson’s research the more we found that Obama has been credited with using phrases that have been in circulation for years. "This is a defining moment in history," Obama repeats; that is what Elizabeth Dole said when her husband ran for president in 1996. Obama climbs to the climax of his stump speech. Head bowed, brow furrowed, eyes flashing, he announces that, "We will choose unity over division" (Jesse Jackson, 1992). "We will choose hope over fear" (Bill Clinton and John Kerry, 1994). "And we will choose the future over the past" (Al Gore, 1992). "In so doing we will overcome our moral deficit" (Bush 2000, Gore, 2000) "by bringing people beyond the divisions of race and class" (Clinton, 1992) because the "story of our country" (Perot, 1992) or the "genius of our country" (Bush, 2000) or the "wonder of our country" (Bush, 1988) is, as Obama says in 2008, "ordinary people doing extraordinary things" (Perot, Bush, Bush, Reagan).
Well, we’d like to believe the best about this guy; certainly the Democrats could use a break. At the moment unfortunately things do not look promising.
Robert Craven
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
Responsibility
In previous posts, another blog site, we have for two years concentrated on matters of national security. We are certainly not "insiders" but we are far more in tune with key off shore developments than most. Past two years we have focused naturally on the crucible know as the Middle East. We have been pulled into the presidential election only because of the situational powers given to the commander-in-chief. It has been a stretch. Thus we have birthed this site to better analyze the presidential electoral process, maintaining the Robert Craven Report to monitor developments which directly relate to matters of US security.
At the moment we have three presidential contenders, one of whom has such a set on her that she offered the VP slot to a guy who has more pledged delegates than she (!); we have a convoluted Democrat primary process which, although most of the party unwashed don’t realize it, is anything but grass roots, and finally a Republican candidate who has offended many of his own party for his candor, most recently rebuking a fellow Republican who said that terrorists "would be dancing in the streets" if B.H. Obama is elected.
The key danger to the United States and the balance of the free world is illiteracy in the U S voting booth. This is not Denmark. If it were, a partisan vote or a vote cast just for the hell of it makes little difference to the free world. Here we have the biggest fish in the pond. Thus, American voters carry a further burden - one of responsibility not to just themselves and family, but to Western civilization.
Let’s take these three, one at a time. BH Obama’s message is "change," a word he used 33 times in a February primary victory speech (someone buy this guy a thesaurus). Maybe he’s right. A lot of our liberal friends in Marin County apparently hope a young president Obama would recast the United States as a hip, likable, multi cultural society, marking an end to the stereotype of the U.S. as a stodgy white-guy superpower. We need to find out. Is this a country that needs major change, and if so, is he our man? Well, we received from the Obama campaign eight pages of examples of his reaching across the aisle in the Senate. But these are small-bore items of almost no controversy — more help for war veterans, reducing loose nukes in the former Soviet Union, and the like. Bipartisan support for apple pie is hardly a profile in courage. While a state senator he regularly voted "present" 130 times rather than take a stand. But then again, we may be missing something.
Is the USofA in dire need of a fix? Despite all of its problems, America is not a deeply flawed place, at least we don’t think so. It is the greatest nation in the history of mankind we think. It allows Barack Obama to run for president; it allows his wife to attend Princeton University and Harvard Law School. Yet Obama’s constant emphasis on change carries the disturbing undertone that the country is a disaster requiring radical reform. This isn't a message of optimism -- it's a message of profound pessimism. But then we may be missing something. Apparently Obama wants us to believe that America is in trouble and that it can only be cured with a big lurch to the left. Take from the rich and give to the non-rich. Redistribute income and wealth. It's an age-old recipe for economic disaster. It completely ignores incentives for entrepreneurs, small family-owned businesses, and investors. You can't have capitalism without capital. But Obama would penalize capital, be it capital from corporations or investors. Won’t this only harm, and not advance, opportunities for middle-class workers? Haven’t we all been through this before? Obama wants a greater government role in healthcare, higher taxes, tighter regulation, more social welfare, an increased flow of low-skilled migrants with amnesty for those already here, a cut-and-run from Iraq: these are not measures likely to improve US competitiveness or enhance America’s standing in the world. Or are they?
This country deserves the pride of its citizens. A popular bumper sticker in Marin County reads - "Dissent is Patriotic". Naturally, but only if it is grounded; noise is not patriotic. Sure, some policies need change -- some policies always need change. But the soul of the country is intact. It doesn't need a soul-fixer. It needs a leader.
Robert Craven
At the moment we have three presidential contenders, one of whom has such a set on her that she offered the VP slot to a guy who has more pledged delegates than she (!); we have a convoluted Democrat primary process which, although most of the party unwashed don’t realize it, is anything but grass roots, and finally a Republican candidate who has offended many of his own party for his candor, most recently rebuking a fellow Republican who said that terrorists "would be dancing in the streets" if B.H. Obama is elected.
The key danger to the United States and the balance of the free world is illiteracy in the U S voting booth. This is not Denmark. If it were, a partisan vote or a vote cast just for the hell of it makes little difference to the free world. Here we have the biggest fish in the pond. Thus, American voters carry a further burden - one of responsibility not to just themselves and family, but to Western civilization.
Let’s take these three, one at a time. BH Obama’s message is "change," a word he used 33 times in a February primary victory speech (someone buy this guy a thesaurus). Maybe he’s right. A lot of our liberal friends in Marin County apparently hope a young president Obama would recast the United States as a hip, likable, multi cultural society, marking an end to the stereotype of the U.S. as a stodgy white-guy superpower. We need to find out. Is this a country that needs major change, and if so, is he our man? Well, we received from the Obama campaign eight pages of examples of his reaching across the aisle in the Senate. But these are small-bore items of almost no controversy — more help for war veterans, reducing loose nukes in the former Soviet Union, and the like. Bipartisan support for apple pie is hardly a profile in courage. While a state senator he regularly voted "present" 130 times rather than take a stand. But then again, we may be missing something.
Is the USofA in dire need of a fix? Despite all of its problems, America is not a deeply flawed place, at least we don’t think so. It is the greatest nation in the history of mankind we think. It allows Barack Obama to run for president; it allows his wife to attend Princeton University and Harvard Law School. Yet Obama’s constant emphasis on change carries the disturbing undertone that the country is a disaster requiring radical reform. This isn't a message of optimism -- it's a message of profound pessimism. But then we may be missing something. Apparently Obama wants us to believe that America is in trouble and that it can only be cured with a big lurch to the left. Take from the rich and give to the non-rich. Redistribute income and wealth. It's an age-old recipe for economic disaster. It completely ignores incentives for entrepreneurs, small family-owned businesses, and investors. You can't have capitalism without capital. But Obama would penalize capital, be it capital from corporations or investors. Won’t this only harm, and not advance, opportunities for middle-class workers? Haven’t we all been through this before? Obama wants a greater government role in healthcare, higher taxes, tighter regulation, more social welfare, an increased flow of low-skilled migrants with amnesty for those already here, a cut-and-run from Iraq: these are not measures likely to improve US competitiveness or enhance America’s standing in the world. Or are they?
This country deserves the pride of its citizens. A popular bumper sticker in Marin County reads - "Dissent is Patriotic". Naturally, but only if it is grounded; noise is not patriotic. Sure, some policies need change -- some policies always need change. But the soul of the country is intact. It doesn't need a soul-fixer. It needs a leader.
Robert Craven
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