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
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
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
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