"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
Saturday, October 25, 2008
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
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