The Audacity of Arrogance

From the mountains to the valleys, from sea to shining sea, from Oprah to Bill Maher, America is going crazy with excitement over Barack Obama. At Obama rallies people scream and throw themselves in the isle crying. Commentator Arianna Huffington has called Obama “the foundation of our country.” Obama’s appeal doesn’t end at the border, over 70% of French are “very excited” about Obama’s election.

This excitement is terrifying, or at least it should be. It reinforces myth propagated by the American media and political elite: an assumption that all progress comes from Washington. The love struck Boston Globe now urges Obama to take "bold steps to fix our economic crisis." The New York Times suggests the choice is "between a big-bang strategy of pressing aggressively on multiple fronts versus a more pragmatic, step-by-step approach .... " In other words, the choice is between one type of government mandate versus another government mandate. In the same editorial, the Times crows endlessly about how FDR ended the Depression and Obama will do the same.

Now Obama tells the nation, "we don't have a moment to lose," and he and the Democrats insist that government must support trade unions while destroying the worker’s right to a secret ballot and even more tax money needs to be handed out like candy to American industries.

This idea that politicians know best how our money should be spent is arrogance of the highest order. Only within Washington’s cloistered halls could this ideology ferment.

Obama promise "We will change the world ... There is nothing we can't do, nothing we can't accomplish if we are unified". Who is this "we" politicians always invoke?

It certainly isn’t me.

The politicians’ "we" isn't really a group of people. It means big government. The politician’s “we” will take your money by force (because they know best) and tell you what to do and how to do and how long you can do it for. That's no way to create prosperity.

Obama is an extraordinarily talented man. But there is one thing even “the one” can't successfully do: ignore the laws of economics. No one can do that. That's why we call them "laws."

The politicians cannot raise wages or create jobs or eliminate poverty by executive order. We can do so by freeing people to save and invest and accumulate capital. The politicians can't make medical care universal and inexpensive by legislative fiat, and we certainly cannot do it with a single-payer health care system. But we can approach that goal by permitting an unrestricted free market in medicine to work.

Stupid Schools: Public Education is Failing our Children

With a perverse wedding of an entrenched union and an innovation-killing monopoly, American public education is a marriage made in hell. This is why our public education system is failing students all across our nation. The two greatest problems facing our educational leviathan are a payment plan which rewards mediocrity while prohibiting meritocracy, and an outdated, one-size-fits-all educational philosophy which fails to prepare American students for the modern world. The best solution to these problems is an end to the government monopoly on public education.

In town meetings, NEA rallies, and school newsletters across our nation, a dire fallacy is being promoted: the great lie that our public school systems are under funded. This simply isn’t true. In 2004 over 536 billion dollars was spent on public education, a figure far more than in countries which routinely trump America on international tests. With an average national wage of $30.91 an hour, public school teachers make a higher hourly salary than chemists, computer programmers, and nurses. The problems lies not in funding, but in a Byzantine union system and the incredibly illogical salary formulas which it has created. Membership in the American Federation of Teachers is mandatory for almost all public school educators. This organization and its hired lobbyists have created a payment system where teachers are paid not based on results, but simply on the amount of time they’ve been teaching. Motivation for excellence is nonexistent when it is not rewarded. In private industry, salaries are based on results and workers who cannot perform are terminated. Results aren’t taken into account in education. a free-market, good teachers would receive a salary increase. If parents had school choice, they would demand the most skilled teacher for their student. Demand for the good teachers would increase their salaries. In the government monopoly though, teachers are paid the same amount whether they are excellent or dreadful. Onerous procedures turn firing an incompetent teacher into a two year legal battle. This leaves most principals unwilling to try to discipline even the most flagrantly maladroit of educators. Mediocrity is rewarded simply because excellence is ignored. A system which disregards merit to pay equally has been proven to fail again and again. This system is called communism.

Monopolies don’t innovate, and the public school system is no different. Most public school’s start in September and end in June. This is a relic of America’s agrarian roots. In the early 1800s, children needed the summer off to harvest the crops. Very few Americans are farmers, and many nations have year-round schooling. American public schools however have remained impervious to change, with the obsolete and outdated schedule dominating. With this resistance to change, it’s no surprise that public education is failing our students.

Picture the printer aisle at Best Buy. The consumer has an almost infinite number of choices. Printers with scanners, printers with clocks, wireless printers, printers with forty-eight hour batteries, and many other kinds of printers are all available. Best Buy doesn’t offer these myriad options because it likes the consumer. Best Buy offers choices because it needs the consumer’s money. The miracle of competition offers a multitude of choices in almost every aspect of life. From shopping at the supermarket to buying a new automobile, choice is all around the American consumer. This is a miracle unknown in the government monopoly of public schooling, where enrollment in schools is based on an arbitrary district line. With the stroke of a pen, bureaucrats can doom a child to a failing school or deign to send him to a better school. If parents are unsatisfied with the school, it’s their problem. If the school is terrible, and fails to provide an education, the government’s attitude is simply arrogant disinterest. With this system, it is no wonder American students finish in the bottom fifty percent in international math surveys.

From Microsoft Windows, to VEB Sachsenring, to the defunct Ma Bell, monopolies have proven time and time again to fail their customers. Public schooling is no different. While it’s true that parents do have an effect on their student’s educational success, many good parents are being forced to send their children to failing schools. When the government monopoly on public education is broken, parents will have as much choice in their schools as they do in their printers. The best way to give them this choice while maintaining education for all is a voucher system. Vouchers will attach the money to the student rather than the school and give parents choice. With vouchers, private schools would no longer be the domain of the wealthy. There could be schools with uniforms, schools with nontraditional hours, technology schools, schools that graduate students at sixteen and alternate high schools that cater to troubled students. With choice will come student success, because a free-choice public school system will force schools to perform, or lose money. Rather than being stuck in a failing school district, parents with school choice can take their business elsewhere.

America has not always suffered under a public school monopoly. Only in the 1830s did a campaign for centralized, socialistic public education begin. Horace Mann thought that education would eradicate poverty and establish a virtual utopia. He claimed that with public education “over nine-tenths of the penal code will be antiquated.“ These impossible dreams were not realized, and sugarplum delusions of perfection became stood in the way of realistic achievement. Americans only believe in this failed educational system because they know no better. Imagine if the government forced people to get their food the same way students get educated. People would pay heavy taxes and then be assigned to one restaurant where they’d be forced to eat every meal no better how abysmal the food is. This wouldn’t be tolerated, and neither should the monopolistic and socialized public school system.

Bankrupcy isn't just for companies anymore.

The mayor of Vallejo, Osby Davis, recently told reporters, "If you have a can that's leaking two ounces a minute and you put an ounce a minute in it, it's going to get empty." He is describing his city's coffers. Vallejo is an American city which has declared bankrupcy. Vallejo's financial crisis is a cash flow insufficient to cover contractual obligations. This fiscal nightmare came about because (to use figures from the 2007 fiscal year) each of the 100 firemen paid $230 a month in union dues and each of the 140 police officers paid $254 a month, giving their respective unions enormous sums to purchase a compliant City Council.

So a police captain receives $306,000 a year in pay and benefits, a police lieutenant receives $247,644, and the average for firefighters -- 21 of them earn more than $200,000, including overtime -- is $171,000. Furthermore, police and firefighters can store up unused vacation and leave time over their careers and walk away, as one of the more than 20 who recently retired did, with a $370,000 check. Last year, 292 city employees made more than $100,000. And after just five years, all police and firefighters are guaranteed lifetime health benefits.

These salaries are bizzare, and only serve as another example of business which doesn't have to compete in the free market. Nothing breeds laziness and kills innovation faster then monopolies and strong unions. Public employees have both of these.

Even the City Council has at last faced facts and voted 7-0 for bankruptcy. "The day after they voted," Davis says, "I didn't go out of the house -- I was that embarrassed."

In other states, municipalities can pay for improvident labor contracts by increasing property taxes. But Vallejo's promises were made in the context of Proposition 13, which 30 years ago wisely restricted California politicians' reach for property taxes. In 1996, the Navy base in Vallejo closed, which probably pleased some local liberals who share the anti-military mentality of San Francisco, to which some Vallejo residents commute by ferry. Liberals who, Tanner says dryly, "want Vallejo to look a certain way," were pleased when Wal-Mart moved to an adjacent town, which now reaps the sales tax revenues.

Vallejo is an ominous portent for other cities, and some states, few of which are accumulating financial resources sufficient to fulfill pension promises they have made to their employees. Are you weary of worrying about the crisis du jour -- subprime mortgages and all that? This coming storm is described with aplom and intelligence in Roger Lowenstein's magnificent new book, "While America Aged: How Pension Debts Ruined General Motors, Stopped the NYC Subways, Bankrupted San Diego, and Loom as the Next Financial Crisis."

It has arrived in Jefferson County, Ala., which includes Birmingham. Like Orange County, Calif., a few years ago, Jefferson County made risky investments in a desperate attempt to achieve a growth of assets commensurate with the cost of an infrastructure project. When San Diego was in the process of earning the sobriquet "Enron by the sea," firemen could retire at 50 with 90 percent of their pensions -- almost full pay for not working during half of their expected adult lives.

The Washingtom Post has said that state and local governments have a cumulative $1.5 trillion shortfall in commitments for retiree health care. But it is the pension crisis that most dramatically illustrates Lowenstein's thesis about the slow accretion of power by the unions. Pensions "are a perfect vehicle for procrastination; in the financial world, they are the most long-enduring promises that exist." Human nature -- the propensity to delay the unpleasant -- rears its ugly head: When pension benefits come due, the people who promised them, thereby buying labor peace and winning elections, are long gone.

Vallejo's unions contend that the city is solvent enough to meet its obligations. But last Friday a court disagreed, holding that the city is eligible for bankruptcy protection. A lawyer for Vallejo says the unions will have to negotiate a "plan of adjustment." Other cities are watching, perhaps including the one across the bay.

San Francisco recently reported that 184 of its employees made at least $30,000 apiece in overtime in the first half of this year. A nurse at the county jail made $128,000 in overtime, putting him on track to top his total 2007 compensation of about $350,000. Nice work it you can get it, and you can get it in many places ruled not by the marketplace, but by inept city officials.

What was he thinking?

Themost audacious move of the race so far is also one of the dumbest. It ranks right up there with Joe Biden's "clean-cut" comment and Fred Thompson's entire campaign. John McCain’s choice of Sarah Palin as his running-mate has set the political atmosphere alight with both enthusiasm and dismay.

McCain has based his campaign (correctly) on the idea that this is a dangerous world—and that Barack Obama is too inexperienced to deal with it. He has also acknowledged that his advanced age—he celebrated his 72nd birthday on August 29th—makes his choice of vice-president unusually important. Now he has chosen as his running mate, on the basis of the most cursory vetting, a first-term governor of Alaska.

The reaction from inside the conservative cocoon was at first ecstatic. Conservatives argued that Mrs Palin embodies the “real America”—a moose-hunting hockey mum, married to an oil-worker, who has risen from the local parent-teacher association to governing the geographically largest state in the Union. They praise her as a McCain-style reformer who has taken on her state’s Republican establishment and has a staunch pro-life record (her fifth child has Down’s syndrome). Who better to harpoon the baby-murdering elitists who run the Democratic Party?
Mrs Palin was greeted like the reincarnation of Ronald Reagan by the delegates, furious at her mauling at the hands of the “liberal media”. And she delivered a tub-thumping speech, underlining her record as a reforming governor and advocate of more oil-drilling, and warning her enemies not to underestimate her (“the difference between a hockey mum and a pitbull—lipstick”). But once the cheering and the chanting had died down, serious questions remained.
The political calculations behind Mr McCain’s choice hardly look robust. Mrs Palin is not quite the pork-busting reformer that her supporters claim. She may have become famous as the governor who finally killed the infamous “bridge to nowhere”—the $220m bridge to the sparsely inhabited island of Gravina, Alaska. But she was in favour of the bridge before she was against it (and told local residents that they weren’t “nowhere to her”). As mayor of Wasilla, a metropolis of 9,000 people, she initiated annual trips to Washington, DC, to ask for more earmarks from the state’s congressional delegation, and employed Washington lobbyists to press for more funds for her town.

Nor is Mrs Palin well placed to win over the moderate and independent voters who hold the keys to the White House. Mr McCain’s main political problem is not energising his base; he enjoys more support among Republicans than Mr Obama does among Democrats. His problem is reaching out to swing voters at a time when the number of self-identified Republicans is up to ten points lower than the number of self-identified Democrats. Mr McCain needs to attract roughly 55% of independents and 15% of Democrats to win the election. But it is hard to see how a woman who supports the teaching of creationism rather than contraception, and who is soon to become a 44-year-old grandmother, helps him with soccer moms in the Philadelphia suburbs. A Rasmussen poll found that the Palin pick made 31% of undecided voters less likely to plump for Mr McCain and only 6% more likely.

The moose in the room, of course, is her lack of experience. When Geraldine Ferraro was picked as Walter Mondale’s running-mate, she had served in the House for three terms. Even the hapless Dan Quayle, George Bush senior’s sidekick, had served in the House and Senate for 12 years. Mrs Palin, who has been the governor of a state with a population of 670,000 for less than two years, is the most inexperienced candidate for a mainstream party in modern history.
Inexperienced and Bush-level incurious. She has no record of interest in foreign policy, let alone expertise. She once told an Alaskan magazine: “I’ve been so focused on state government; I haven’t really focused much on the war in Iraq.” She obtained an American passport only last summer to visit Alaskan troops in Germany and Kuwait. This not only blunts Mr McCain’s most powerful criticism of Mr Obama. It also raises serious questions about the way he makes decisions.

Mr McCain had met Mrs Palin only once, for a 15-minute chat at the National Governors’ Association meeting, before summoning her to his ranch for her final interview. The New York Times claims that his team arrived in Alaska only on August 28th, a day before the announcement. As a result, his advisers seem to have been gobsmacked by the Palin show that is now playing on the national stage. She has links to the wacky Alaska Independence Party, which wants to secede from the Union. She is on record disagreeing with Mr McCain on global warming, among other issues. The contrast with Mr Obama’s choice of the highly experienced and much-vetted Joe Biden is striking.
Mr McCain’s appointment also raises more general worries about the Republican Party’s fitness for government. Up until the middle of last week Mr McCain was still considering two other candidates whom he has known for decades: Joe Lieberman, a veteran senator, independent Democrat and Iraq war hawk, and Tom Ridge, a former governor of Pennsylvania (a swing state with 21 Electoral College votes) and the first secretary of homeland security. Mr McCain reluctantly rejected both men because their pro-choice views are anathema to the Christian right.
The Palin appointment is yet more proof of the way that abortion still distorts American politics. This is as true on the left as on the right. But the Republicans seem to have gone furthest in subordinating considerations of competence and merit to pro-life purity. One of the biggest problems with the Bush administration is that it appointed so many incompetents because they were sound on Roe v Wade. Mrs Palin’s elevation suggests that, far from breaking with Mr Bush, Mr McCain is repeating his mistakes.

Left-Wing Nutjobs Celebrate Hurricane

Rotund propagandist Michael Moore said on television that Gustav is "God's wrath upon the dirty, evil Republicans," and seems to be wishing for as much death and destruction as possible in order to ruin the impact of the convention.

It isn't in a wacko like Michael Moore's DNA to understand that for most decent Americans, politics takes a back seat to the fear of lots of people dying gruesomely. Don't kid yourself: the deranged, debauched demagogue is hoping for a whopper of a storm, the bigger the better. The deadlier the dandier. They figure it will take a hurricane to make people forget about the stunningly brilliant vice-presidential pick.

But cheering for a hurricane to kill massive amounts of people isn’t just the purview of Moore. Caught on camera during a flight Democratic Party leader Donnie “Foul Fowler” Fowler giggles like a drunken sixteen year old girl who just found out her shirt is drenched with her own puke when he says to his fellow traveler that the hurricane is scheduled to hit right at the start of the Republican Convention.

Can you begin to fathom how pathetic one has to be to hope that a disaster helps erase some scored political points from the other side? Nothing like the image of helpless people being battered by a hurricane to make a good Democrat smile, I guess.
It was nice of Fowler to attempt a lame apology for being caught red-headed taking great pleasure and delight in the timing and potential severity of Gustav. But his apology is almost worse than what he said in the first place. In his pathetic “apology” he’s complaining about being recorded by a "right-wing nutcase", he pretends to suggest that he was making a "joke" about the late Rev. Jerry Falwell who said that 9/11 could have very well been an example of God's wrath. Does anyone believe this? The only nutcase in this situation is Fowler. See a truly bizarre human being right here.

Economic Ignorance is Far From Bliss

"I believe there needs to be a thorough and complete investigation of speculators to find out whether speculation has been going on and, if so, how much it has affected the price of a barrel of oil. There's a lot of things out there that need a lot more transparency and, consequently, oversight."

Those are the shrill campaign promises of presidential candidate John McCain. This man is the Republican?

There's more.

"I am very angry, frankly, at the oil companies not only because of the obscene profits they've made but at their failure to invest in alternate energy to help us eliminate our dependence on foreign oil. They're making huge profits and that happens, but not to say, 'We're in this so we can over time eliminate America's dependence on foreign oil,' I think is an abrogation of their responsibilities as citizens."

Let me get this straight. A potential president of a putatively free country scolds companies for "obscene profits," failure to invest in competing products, and therefore irresponsible citizenship. Why? Is McCain running for national economic commissar?

This is not the first time McCain has displayed an anti-capitalist mentality. In an early presidential debate he countered former businessman Mitt Romney's claim to superior executive experience by saying, "I led the largest squadron in the U.S. Navy, not for profit but for patriotism".

Why the put down of profit?

It's clear McCain does not understand how markets work or why they are good. He certainly doesn't understand the role of speculators and other middlemen. He's not alone. Speculators are among the most reviled people in history. When they were members of ethnic minorities, they have been easy targets for economically illiterate people who were jealous of their success.
McCain wonders "whether speculation has been going on." He needn't wonder. Speculation always goes on. Speculation means to take a risk on what the future holds in hopes of making a profit. The world's stock and commodities markets are based on this principle. Sen. McCain must have meant it when he told reporters, "I know a lot less about economics than I do about military and foreign policy issues".

I doubt that speculators are responsible for much of the run-up of oil prices. Why didn't they run them up sooner? Besides, there are too many other explanations: increased demand from China and India, the declining dollar and Middle East tensions.

Even if speculators did play a role, what McCain apparently doesn't understand is that speculators perform a valuable service. Most people don't realize this because on the surface speculators don't seem productive. They buy what already exists and resell it. How does that help society?

In fact, the hated speculator is a good guy because his buying and selling reduce volatility and uncertainty in an unpredictable world. He may only be out for his own profit, but that doesn't matter. As the intellectually immortal Adam Smith said, "It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest".

The prices of commodities often change unexpectedly, making business risky. The speculator brings a degree of certainty to otherwise risky ventures. When supplies of a commodity are plentiful and prices low -- but speculators expect the price to rise later -- they buy -- cushioning the collapse of prices. When supplies become scarcer and prices rise, they sell -- easing the shortage and lowering the price. Also, speculators may agree to buy a commodity in the future for a price locked in today. This reduces the risk for an oil producer or farmer who fears investing because he doesn't know what price his product will sell for next year.

As a result of these activities, volatile supplies and prices are evened out over time. Occasionally, speculators increase volatility. Markets are never perfect. (Although they are better than government regulation.) But in general, speculators increase liquidity and keep the market on a more even keel. This makes long-term planning easier for everyone.

It would be nice if McCain would finally learn some economics. He'll be far, far better than Barack Obama but McCain had better surround himself with economic advisers if he hopes to achieve anything like his so-called idol Ronald Reagan.

NEA: For education? Or for Communism?

The nation's largest teachers union, the National Education Association, attracted 9,000 delegates to its annual convention in Washington, D.C., over the July Fourth weekend. Delegates sported buttons with provocative slogans such as "Gay marriage causes global warming only because we are so hot," "Hate is not a family value," "The Christian right is neither" and "Gay rights are civil rights."

The delegates passed dozens of hard-hitting resolutions that now become the NEA's official policy. The resolutions authorize NEA members and employees to lobby for those goals in the halls of Congress and state capitols.

NEA resolutions cover the waterfront of all sorts of political issues that have nothing to do with improving education for schoolchildren, such as supporting statehood for the District of Columbia, a "single-payer health care plan" (i.e., government run), gun control, ratification of the International Criminal Court Treaty and taking steps "to change activities that contribute to global climate change."

The NEA fiercely opposes any competition for public schools, such as vouchers, tuition tax credits, parental option plans or public support of any kind to nonpublic schools. The NEA strongly opposes designating English as our official language even though such a designation is supported by more than 80% of Americans.

The NEA opposes home schooling unless children are taught by state-licensed teachers using a state-approved curriculum. The NEA wants to bar home-schooled students from participating in any extracurricular activities in public schools even though their parents pay school taxes, too.

The NEA wants additional (job-creating) services and programs — such as early childhood education — provided by public schools. NEA resolutions call for "programs in the public schools for children from birth through age 8" and for "mandatory kindergarten with compulsory attendance."

NEA resolutions include all the major feminist goals such as "the right to reproductive freedom" (i.e., abortion on demand), "comparable worth" (i.e., government control of wages according to feminist ideology), full funding for the feminist boondoggle called the Women's Educational Equity Act and censoring all masculine words such as husband and father. The NEA even urges its affiliates to work for ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment. The ERA was declared dead by the U.S. Supreme Court 26 years ago.

The influence of the gay lobby is pervasive in dozens of NEA resolutions adopted by 2008 convention delegates. Diversity is the code word used for pro-gay indoctrination in the classroom.

The NEA's diversity resolution makes clear this means teaching about "sexual orientation" and "gender identification." The NEA demands that "diversity-based curricula" be imposed on preschoolers.

NEA convention delegates were invited to an open hearing by the SOGI Committee. In case you don't know, SOGI stands for sexual orientation gender identification.

The NEA urges its members to offer "diverse role models" via the "hiring and promotion of diverse education employees in our public schools." The NEA puts "domestic partnerships, civil unions and marriage" on an equal footing.

The NEA wants every child, regardless of age, to have "direct and confidential access, without notification to parents, to comprehensive health education. That would include things such as learning how to use condoms for premarital sex, as well as social, and psychological programs and services."

The NEA wants public schools to take over the physical and mental care of students through school clinics that provide services, diagnosis, treatment, family-planning counseling and access to birth control methods. Family planning clinics are called on to "provide intensive counseling."

The NEA wants all sex-education courses, textbooks, curricula, instructional materials and activities to include indoctrination about sexual orientation and gender identification plus warnings about homophobia.

The NEA not only favors amnesty for illegal-immigrant students, but also in-state college tuition and financial aid to illegal-immigrant college students.

The NEA is strong for "multicultural education," which means "the process of incorporating the values" and influencing "behavior" toward the NEA's version of "the common good," such as "reducing homophobia."

Of course, the NEA supports "global education" to teach "interdependency in sharing the world's resources." It's also no surprise that it opposes any requirement that schools "schedule a moment of silence."

These platforms sound like they should coming from the ALCU or the DailyKos, not the organization that speaks for the nation's public school teachers. How can education attempt to be objective and unbiased when the NEA is spouting off garbarge like this?

Wake up Mac, Start Fighting not Sleeping!

Iraqi Prime Minister and political stooge Nouri al-Maliki has cut the legs out from under John McCain by basically endorsing Sen. Barack Obama's troop-withdrawal plan.

Just when McCain had Obama on the defensive over the Democrat's plan to surrender after we've won in Iraq, Maliki has made McCain look like General Ripper for opposing a timetable for withdrawal.

Unless McCain changes his approach, he's lost the use of this issue. He can't come out for staying in Iraq longer than the government we support wants.

The Republican needs to shift the debate to Iraq's future. Neither Obama's belaboring of his previous opposition to the war nor McCain's attacking the Democrat's opposition to the surge is relevant - both lines are history lessons best left in the classroom. What voters want to know is: What now?

McCain needs to hammer at one basic theme: that Obama's pullout plan will lead to a third Iraq war. The Democrat wants to keep substantial numbers of troops next door, to go back into Iraq if necessary. McCain should stress that a premature withdrawal will lead to a collapse - losing the hard-won stability in Iraq, opening the door to an Iranian takeover and al Qaeda revival, and potentially forcing a new US invasion.

Obama isn't a peace candidate, McCain can say - just an advocate of a deferred war. Just as the first President George Bush left the ingredients in place for a second war when he failed to depose Saddam Hussein in 1991, so Obama will fail to finish the job and invite yet another war if he abandons Iraq before our gains have been consolidated.

With Ralph Nader running on a strict antiwar platform, Obama is vulnerable on the left. If he seems to falter on a withdrawal from Iraq, or leave the door open to re-entry, McCain's attacks can drive liberals away from the Democrat.

It's literally true that if McCain is elected, there will be fewer US deaths in Iraq than there will be if Obama prevails. By pulling out only when it's safe to do so, McCain would finish the job and allow a peaceful transition to a stable democratic government. If we pull out too fast - and then have to go back in - the casualties will be many times those we now face.

Whiny leftists need reality check

At a recent press conference Sen. John Kerry was upset as he snarled as only an angry liberal can, "Oil companies in America are reporting record profits. Record profits."

When did profit become a dirty word? When did it become bad to be successful? Probably somewhere around the time it became good to be a teenage mom and go on welfare.

I wish the oil executives would face the media. They could say something like:

"What are you complaining about? What do you think we do with our profits? Buy fancy cars and homes? Well, we do, actually, but nearly all the money goes to looking for more oil and following environmental rules that you want us to follow. You should want us to make more profit. Anyway, we make less profit per gallon than your beloved government takes in taxes."

Gas prices may be setting a record, but on this issue Congress has set a record for inanity. What else are we to say about an anti-"gouging" bill passed last year by the House that would make it a crime to charge "unconscionably excessive" prices, "tak[e] unfair advantage of unusual market conditions," and "increase prices unreasonably" during an emergency?

Please. Lawyers will get rich debating vague words like those. Laws are supposed to be clear so we'll know in advance what's legal and what's not. But there's nothing clear about those "crimes."
That's not legislation. It's legislative posturing by the liberal fools in our Congress. Considering the perverse incentives of electoral politics, I'm amazed this bill got only 284 votes.

And Congress should know better. After Hurricane Katrina, Congress had the Federal Trade Commission investigate price gouging, and so the FTC studied price spikes going back years. But it found "no instances of illegal manipulation."

If the politicians do enforce anti-"gouging" rules, it will be akin to capping prices, and we tried that before. It was a disaster. Drivers had to wait in long lines, and some couldn't get any gasoline. Only when price controls were lifted did supplies rush in, and only then did prices go back down.

Why did prices spike recently? It's just supply and demand. Demand is up 3 percent, while supply is up just 1 percent.

And gasoline is still a bargain. Think about what it takes to bring it to us: Drills must bend and dig sideways through as many as seven miles of earth. What they find has to be delivered through long pipelines or transported in monstrously expensive ships, then converted into three different formulas of gasoline, moved in trucks that cost more than $100,000 each, and shipped to gas stations that have to have lots of expensive equipment to make sure we don't blow ourselves up filling the tank. Even after all that, gasoline is still cheaper per ounce than the bottled water gas stations sell.

There's no dirtier word in English than "gouging." But we've had enough unpleasant experience with price controls to know that all they do is create shortages.

Who, but the politician, benefits from that?

Let's Play the Numbers Game (I Don't Mean the Lottery.)

Presidential politics, like football, chess and other rule-bound competitions, is simple in objective but complex in execution. The objective is 270 electoral votes. This year the execution will turn on numbers such as:

48.3: In 2004, John Kerry won that percentage of the popular vote, the strongest showing ever by someone losing to a re-elected president. The lesson of this is that Democrats start from a position of strength.

251: That was John Kerry's electoral vote total. Barack Obama stands a better chance of holding Kerry's 19 states and the District of Columbia, and finding 19 more votes, than John McCain does of holding all 31 of Bush's states.

Obama might capture the 2004 red states New Mexico (5 electoral votes), Nevada (5) and Colorado (9) - George W. Bush won them by a combined 127,011 votes - giving him 270. McCain, who in his 10-year campaign for the presidency has lingered in New Hampshire long enough to vote as a resident, might turn it red, gaining 4 votes.

Obama, however, has reasonable hopes of winning Iowa (7), which Al Gore won by 4,144 votes out of 1,315,563 cast in 2000. Bush won it in 2004 by 10,059 out of 1,506,908 cast. And Obama's estimated 90,000 caucus votes this year almost equaled combined 118,167 won by Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney, Fred Thompson, McCain, Ron Paul and Rudy Giuliani.

Furthermore, Obama might carry Virginia (13). Bush won it with 54 percent in 2004, but rapid demographic changes favor Democrats and Obama won this year's primary with 623,141 votes while McCain was beating Mike Huckabee with 244,135.

Should former Sen. Sammy Nunn (a name only found below the Mason-Dixon line) be his running mate, Obama might win Georgia. Obama's 700,366 primary votes were more than Huckabee's 326,069 and McCain's 303,639, combined.

41 and 21: Obama lost by 41 points the primary in West Virginia, which is contiguous to Pennsylvania (21 electoral votes), where he lost the primary by 10 points, partly because, as in West Virginia, he was unappealing to blue-collar whites. McCain might hope to win Pennsylvania - assuming that Obama's running mate is not the state's popular Gov. Ed Rendell.

7.2 percent and negative 1.2 percent: Michigan's first-quarter unemployment rate of 7.2 was the nation's worst and Michigan was one of just three states, and the only Midwest state, whose economies contracted (Michigan's by 1.2 percent) in 2007.

Democrats misgovern Michigan, so McCain, especially if running with native son Mitt Romney, might hope to turn Michigan, with its 17 electoral votes, red for the first time since 1988.

55: California has that many electoral votes, more than one-fifth of 270. McCain, who likely will be relying on $84.1 million taxpayer dollars, cannot afford to compete in California.

15: Obama, probably relying on voluntary contributions, will have enough to spend speculative millions on, say, North Carolina (15). In 2004, Bush won it with 1,961,166 votes (56 percent) but in this year's primary, where turnout was below what it'll be in November, Obama (875,683) and Clinton (652,824) got 1,528,507, slightly more than Kerry received in the 2004 general election.

56: That is the number of jurisdictions that will be deciding the allocation of the 270.
There are 50 states and the District of Columbia. Maine and Nebraska, however, award two electoral votes to the candidate who wins the statewide popular vote, and one to whichever candidate carries each congressional district. Maine has two districts, Nebraska three.
Since the two states decided to abandon winner-take-all allocation of their electoral votes (Maine in 1969, Nebraska in 1991), each state's congressional districts have not differed in their presidential preferences. But Nebraska's Second District is, essentially, Omaha. Obama might sense an opportunity.

4: That is the number of commas in the number of possible combinations of jurisdictions that can give a candidate 270 or more electoral votes. The votes disposed by the jurisdictions range from one (the Maine and Nebraska congressional districts) to three (7 states and DC) to California's 55, with 17 different numbers between three and 55.

2016: Assuming, that Obama wins, 2016 is the next time Hillary Clinton, who will then be 68, can seek the Democratic nomination. By then, the median age of the electorate will be 47, so for many millions of voters, Bill Clinton's tenure will seem only slightly less distant than Grover Cleveland's, the last Democratic presidency that did not make sensible citizens wince.

Flip-Flop and Overtalk

Democratic presidential wannabe Barack Obama seems to be flip-flopping on his "unconditional" willingness to sit down to tea and crumpets with the dictatorial leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea.

Obama's vow to meet with such leaders during his first year in office, without preconditions, drew widespread and well-deserved criticism. Over the past few polling cycles, however, he's tempered that to something the focus groups say America wants to hear.

"Without preconditions," he now says, doesn't necessarily mean without "preparations" - that is, without lower-level, informal contacts that would set an agenda for any meeting between leaders.

In the case of Iran, that's surely a welcome move. Just this week, the International Atomic Energy Agency warned that Tehran continues to hide the truth about its pursuit of nuclear weapons.

"There's no reason why we would necessarily meet with Ahmadinejad," Obama said Monday. "He's not the most powerful person in Iran."

And the Illinois senator's top foreign-policy adviser, Susan Rice, said over the weekend that Cuba must make "concrete progress" toward free elections, allow a free press and free political prisoners as a requirement to "initiate a process through engagement."

Of course, he hasn't fully ruled out sitting down with Tehran's tyrant, who has vowed to "annihilate" Israel and denies the Holocaust occurred and stones people to death for crimes such as adultery and immodesty in public.

These talks would have little (or no) effect on the government of Iran. A fundamentalist government which believes they are doing the will of Allah by fighting the infidel Americans who dare to let women go out in public wearing something that is pleasant to look at.

As GOP presidential contender John McCain said yesterday, "Many believe all we need to do to end the nuclear programs of hostile governments is to have our president talk with leaders in Pyongyang and Tehran - as if we haven't tried talking to these governments repeatedly."
Let's face it: Tehran, in particular, seems bent on building nukes - and continues to sponsor terror. Sitting down for a few photo ops isn't going to change that, and only someone as out of touch as Barack Obama would think it could!

Barack Obama: The Commie's Trojan Horse

As this long primary season drags on, the presumed Democratic nominee for president still won't bring his vision for "change" into focus. He continues to speak in glittering generalities, providing few details.

The reticence, combined with Obama's radical ties, begs the question: Is he hiding an un-American agenda?

We know his longtime mentor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, detests America and its capitalist system, viewing it as unjust, oppressive and enslaving to minorities. He and his fellow travelers think they have in Obama the perfect candidate to remake America into a self-loathing dispenser of apologetic largesse to victim groups at home and Marxist regimes abroad.
Key among these is reverend-turned-professor James Cone, who believes merging Marxism with the Gospel will liberate African-Americans from the supposed economic slavery of "white" capitalism. "Together," he says, "black religion and Marxist philosophy may show us the way to build a completely new society."

Cone is the mentor of Obama's mentor, Wright. Wright adopted Cone's "black liberation theology" as his church's core doctrine. According to Cone, the reverend "is really the one who took it from my books and brought it to the church."

Cone's books are required reading at Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ, where Obama has worshiped for the past 20 years. Trinity instituted the theology and its attendant "black value system" a full decade before Obama formally pledged membership in 1991.
Cone describes black liberation theology as "a faith that does justice," a concept embraced by Obama, who's even argued that "racial justice" cannot be achieved without "economic justice."
According to the theology, divine justice will come when black Jesus (Obama's church believes Christ was black) grants African-Americans the power to permanently destroy "white greed" and white institutions and replace them with their own "black value system."

Cone writes that "black theology will accept only the love of God which participates in the destruction of the white enemy" and all its institutions.

Trinity demands its members pledge allegiance instead to "black institutions" and "black leadership," and patronize black-only businesses. Obama himself has said America's institutions are "broken" and need to be "fixed."

Obama has recently tried to distance himself from his crackpot pastor, but he hasn't disavowed any part of the Marxist pseudo faith that embodies everything Wright has preached. He refuses to respond to even written questions about Cone and black liberation theology.
His campaign last year confirmed the doctrine is included in new-member packets provided by the church, and is taught in new-member classes. Both Obama and his wife have attended these classes, so it stands to reason they have been indoctrinated into the radical theology.
And Obama in his first book defended black liberation theology as sensible, and has even called his tutelage under Wright "the best education I ever had."

Nowadays, Obama has another, prettier sounding term for his Afrocentric, black-first theology: the "social gospel." "Rev. Wright's sermons spoke directly to the social gospel," he has said, "and I found that very attractive." Apparently the social gospel Obama believes in is one where the CIA created AIDS and is secretly working with the U.S. government to exterminate black people so drug companies can test new drugs on them.

Wright says his sermons are inspired by Cone's books, the contents of which should repulse every patriotic American, white or black. "To be black is to be committed to destroying everything this country loves and adores," Cone writes.

That Marxist commitment to revolution doesn't stop at the water's edge. Obama's church in the 1980s rallied to the cause of communist regimes in America's backyard — from Cuba to Grenada to Nicaragua — while downplaying the threat posed by the Soviet Union.

From his pulpit, Wright whitewashed the brutality of the Sandinista junta and condemned the U.S. for backing the contra freedom fighters.

"Our congregation stood in solidarity with the peasants in El Salvador and Nicaragua while our government was supporting the contras, who were killing peasants in those two countries," Wright recently thundered.

The black liberation theology adopted by his church is "very similar," Wright says, to the "liberation theology" espoused by the Marxist revolutionaries whom the contras fought in Nicaragua.

Wright also condemned as "terrorism" the U.S. invasion of Grenada to oust a budding militant Marxist regime. "We bombed Grenada and killed innocent civilians, babies," Wright claimed.
Does Obama intend to carry on that tradition of appeasing socialist despots in our hemisphere, starting with Raul Castro and Hugo Chavez? Nicaraguan leader Daniel Ortega will no doubt also find support. The Marxist thug has already endorsed Obama's campaign as "revolutionary."
While Obama has refused to wear a flag pin or stand with respect during the national anthem, he certainly doesn't look or speak the part of an angry anti-American race revolutionist. But appearances may be deceiving. His positions often align with black liberation theology.

"I don't see anything in (Obama's) books or in the (Philadelphia race) speech that contradicts black liberation theology," Cone recently remarked. Obama has just sanded over the "radical edge to it," he said.

Does Obama speak in a code recognizable to fellow travelers but not to most voters, who would be frightened off by a radical agenda? "If you're black, it's hard to say what you truly think and not upset white people," Cone said.

Obama has learned a trick, however, to put the evil white America at ease: "smile" and act "well mannered." And don't "seem angry" or make any "sudden moves," as he shared in his first book, "Dreams From My Father."

Also, talk about "hope" without saying what exactly it is you're hoping for. That way, everybody will bring their own miasma of sugarplum delusions and just assume that is what you're talking about. Tellingly, Cone writes a good deal about "hope theology" — which "places the Marxist emphasis on action and change in the Christian context (and) is compatible with black theology's concerns."

Likewise, Obama has suggested he'd use his faith as "an active, palpable agent in the world," and a source of "hope" in overcoming "economic injustice."

"I still believe in the power of the African-American religious tradition to spur social change," Obama said in a 2006 speech to the Washington-based socialist group, Call to
Renewal.

Speaking of black revolution, Cone in his memoir said, "Hope is the expectation of that which is not. It is the belief that the impossible is possible, the 'not yet' is coming in history."
Here's Obama in his 2004 DNC convention speech: "Hope in the face of difficulty, hope in the face of uncertainty, the audacity of hope! In the end, a belief in things not seen, a belief that
there are better days ahead."

In his 1969 book, "Black Theology and Black Power," which Trinity uses as a second bible, Cone said: "When we look at what whiteness has done to the minds of men in this country, we can see clearly what the New Testament meant when it spoke of the principalities and powers."
Here's Obama, in his 2006 "Call to Renewal" speech: "The black church understands in an intimate way the biblical call to feed the hungry and clothe the naked, and challenge powers and principalities."

Louis Farrakhan, head of the Nation of Islam, says Obama has been "very careful" to avoid the path of failed presidential hopefuls Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, who openly militated for black causes. "He has been groomed, wisely so, to be seen as a unifier, rather than one who speaks only for the hurt of black people," Farrakhan said.

When Obama marched on Washington with Farrakhan last decade, he said blacks turn to "black nationalism whenever we have a sense, as we do now, that white Americans couldn't care less about the profound problems African-Americans are facing."

He added they have to be smart about how they protest and go about reforming the system. "Cursing out white folks is not going to get the job done," he said. "We've got some hard nuts-and-bolts organizing and planning to do."

His mild-mannered style has thrown off even some angry black radicals, who want him to speak out more forcefully about the legacy of U.S. racism and economic inequality.

One is Princeton professor Cornel West, a militant black and self-described socialist. Reportedly, West was reluctant to join the refined Obama's presidential campaign until Obama took him aside and explained to him that he had to walk a rhetorical tightrope to reassure whites. West is now solidly on board his campaign as an adviser.

West, along with Wright and Cone, has argued for reparations for blacks. Obama seemed to sow the grounds for such a case in his Philadelphia speech.

"So many of the disparities that exist in the African-American community today can be directly traced to inequalities passed on from an earlier generation that suffered under the brutal legacy of slavery and Jim Crow," he said. "We still haven't fixed them."

He added, "That history helps explain the wealth and income gap between black and white."
Trinity's mission statement calls for "economic parity." Such anti-capitalist views are reflected in Obama's rhetoric and proposals.

Rated by The University of Maryland as the most liberal member in the Senate, Obama wants to soak the most productive members of society and subsidize those who are not. He wants to hit small businesses and big corporations alike with major tax hikes — singling out for special rebuke oil producers and "Wall Street predators" who have "tricked" blacks out of their homes. At the same time, he plans to expand the welfare state with massive increases in domestic spending.
"We have more work to do," he told black graduates at Howard University last September. "It's time to seek a new dawn of justice in America. . . . We can right wrongs we see in America."
Cone says he wants to see a "new system" in America "in which people have the distribution of wealth." He adds, "I don't know how quite to do that institutionally."

Enter a Harvard-educated lawyer and Southside Chicago-trained community organizer who has a real shot at institutional power. As Obama promised black graduates at Hampton University last June, "We're going to usher in a new America."

Sounds like an attempt to backdoor traditional, pinko socialism.

New York Leftys Embrace Psuedoscience: Seek to end mandatory vaccination.

Measles which once killed countless American children a year, is making a comeback - and some left-wing nutjob lawmakers in New York are eager to help the disease prosper.

The Centers for Disease Control reports a surge in measles outbreaks; almost all the cases are in children who never received the routine shots for measles, mumps and rubella (MMR). Measles and other diseases are rebounding thanks to growing - but groundless - fears over the safety of traditional vaccines that are continually esposed by airhead talk show hosts (Oprah I'm looking at you.)

Driven by those fears, ever more parents are finding a way to forgo shots for their children - even though shots are required in most of the nation.

And some politicians are encouraging them. A proposed New York law, sponsored by far left Assemblyman Marc Alessi, would establish a "philosophical" exemption to mandatory childhood vaccinations.

Like many other states, New York has long allowed religious or medical exemptions, but this "philosophical" pass would let parents skip mandatory vaccines for their kids for almost any reason, just by filling out some paperwork.

The political hysteria comes from speculation tying thimerosal, a mercury-containing preservative in vaccines, to autism. In fact, the substance has been largely phased out of most shots, and exhaustive research has debunked the idea that it's linked to neurological problems.

The consequences of autism can be devastating, and the rise in the condition's incidence is of great concern. Yet too many people still cling to a few flawed ideas about its origin - none more prominent than the purported link to thimerosal.

Data on the issue has been reviewed in high-profile, public forums, including: the National Vaccine Advisory Committee, two recent meetings of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices of the CDC and the Institute of Medicine's Immunization Safety Review Committee.
Through its Vaccine Safety tracking system, the CDC has examined the incidence of autism as a function of the amount of thimerosal a child received from vaccines. The results of these and other reviews conclusively show that there's absolutely no link between autism rates and the amount of thimerosal children received.

In July 1999, the Public Health Service agencies, the American Academy of Pediatrics and vaccine manufacturers agreed that thimerosal should be reduced or eliminated in vaccines as a precautionary measure and to help ensure public confidence. And, since 2001, thimerosal has been removed from or reduced to trace amounts in all vaccines routinely recommended for children 6 and younger (with the exception of inactivated influenza vaccine).

A recent study of more than 30,000 Japanese children in Yokohama provides still more evidence nixing the thimerosol connection. Use of the MMR vaccine was briefly suspended there after reports that a manufacturing problem led the anti-mumps component of the vaccine to cause meningitis - yet the number of children with autism continued to rise. Before withdrawal of the vaccine, there were up to 86 cases of autism reported per 10,000 Japanese children; after the kids stopped getting the MMR shots, there were as many as 161 cases per 10,000.

As a culture, we have a troubling propensity to allow science to validate populist theories, but not to exclude them.

When it comes to vaccines, safety concerns have always been paramount - for these products are given to millions of otherwise healthy children. Any safety problems could have devastating consequences. For these reasons, and many others, vaccines are among the most closely scrutinized and carefully regulated health-care products on the market. But that reality, and reams of the scientific evidence, isn't enough to quell fears.

The result is 64 new cases of measles since January, according to the CDC - more than in all of 2006 and the highest number since 2001. The largest outbreak, 22 cases so far, is under way in New York, mostly in the Borough Park section of Brooklyn. (Source: New York Post)

Before 1963, when the vaccine became available, America saw 3 million to 5 million cases of measles a year, killing as many as 500 children a year and putting 48,000 in the hospital. The vaccine wiped out transmission by 2000, but measles can still be imported from countries where its incidence is wide spread.

Worldwide, measles kills about 242,000 children a year.

The recent outbreaks should be a warning to politicians here in New York, as well as those in 18 other states that have already passed loose vaccine exemptions. There's nothing "philosophical" about stoking a modern outbreak for the sake of some careless political pandering.

I am all for personal freedom. However, at some point that freedom is overriden by the public interest. Mandatory vaccinations are that point!

Friday Afternoon Stock Picks

If you had purchased one share of each of the stocks I had recommended in March, you would have made four dollars and twenty eight cents. That sounds much more impressive if you had purchased two hundred shares of each of the stocks I'd recommended, in which case you'd have made eight hundred and forty-six dollars from simply following the advise of an unqualifed person you don't know. So here we go again.

McDonalds-MCD-60.95

Why You Should Buy: Whether you believe the country is in a recession or not, it is a statistical fact that people are spending a lot less money on restaurants. What people are spending money on is fast food, when somebody is feeling the economic pinch, one dollar fries look pretty good. What better fast food chain to buy then McDonalds, which serves 54 million people a day?

Harley-Davidson-HOG-39.04

Why You Should Buy: A very stable stock, most Harley Davidson motor cycles weren’t bundled as a security and aren’t being leased. Sales might be stalling now, but I think the stock can rebound and this will be a good time to get in.

Parker Hannifin Corp-PH-81.98

Why You Should Buy- The tech stocks in general provide a good refuge from the shaky financial sector. PH is a cut above the rest of the group because rather than just marketing the “updated” version of a product everyone and their brother has, PH is actually an innovator in the field of motion control and electromagnets, something the tech stocks seem to be lacking in this world of cookie cutter companies.

99 Cents Only Store-NDN-9.65

Why You Should Buy- The reasons I pick MCD all apply to NDN as well. People are willing to buy the “Dupercell” battery over the “Duracell” because they want to save money. NDN is the epitome of the Wal-Mart idea, always low prices. Literally everything is 99 cents and that will make this a great and recession proof pick.

Talk About Blowing A Judgement Call

Barack Obama looked pale and wan at what he called his "big press conference" about the Rev. Jeremiah Wright on Tuesday afternoon. He looked numb with the shock of a problem he couldn't just "hope" into submission, or "change" with high-minded empty rhetoric.

Who knew that the greatest threat to his presidential campaign would come from the preacher who married him, baptized him and prayed with him? Obama should've known - that's who.

"Yes, we can"? Try: Yes, you should have.

For the last 24 hours, Obama's campaign grappled with how to handle the aftermath of Wright's whirlwind tour of hatred this weekend - from Dallas, where he decried his "public crucifixion," to Detroit, where he entertained NAACP bigwigs with impersonations of white people, mockeries of classical music and "white" marching bands, and lectures on racial brain theories, to the National Press Club, where he preened, strutted and head-wagged his way through an hour of bitter black liberation theologizing where it became clear the CIA not only killed Martin Luther King, but was behind AIDS and was conducting secret supersoldier experiments on black people.

At first, Obama downplayed Wright's public appearances. Now he tells us he had to wait 24 hours to denounce Wright's National Press Club speech because he "hadn't seen it." After all this time on the campaign trail, we're back to the Obama-as-clueless-naif narrative again.
When he finally did view the Washington speech, Obama explained, he was "shocked" and "outraged" and "saddened" because "the person I saw was not the person that I'd come to know over 20 years."

Pure, unadulterated horse manure.

Anyone with eyes can see that Wright's performances are finely honed, time-tested acts. His "imperialist"-bashing, anti-American, anti-white shtick wasn't developed overnight or over the past few years.

He's been peddling AIDS conspiracies for decades. He's been grievance-mongering about slavery for decades. He's been flirting with the Nation of Islam, which provided security for his speeches, for decades. He's been a shouting left-wing radical for decades.

Obama's best-selling "Audacity of Hope" is named after the first sermon of Wright's that he heard - decades ago - in which the pastor of racial resentment inveighed against an environment "where white folks' greed runs a world in need, apartheid in one hemisphere, apathy in another hemisphere." Yet only now has Obama concluded that Wright's sermons are "a bunch of rants that aren't grounded in truth."

Welcome to the Jive Talk Express.

A clergyman e-mailed after Obama's press conference: "It is inconceivable that Obama had no knowledge of Wright's views after 20 years as a member of that church.
"As a pastor, my heart-held, deepest beliefs and passions cannot be silenced. It is what I am. If I were given a microphone at the National Press Club, I would not speak on something that I had guardedly kept secret for most of my life. No, I would go to my main point, the center of my ministry, the core of my passion, to speak truth as I know it to be.

"How can Obama actually claim that this is news from his pastor? His mailman, butcher or plumber? No problem. His pastor? No way!"

It's not Wright who has changed his loony tune.

Just last year, Obama told the Chicago Tribune that Wright was his sounding board for truth: "What I value most about Pastor Wright is not his day-to-day political advice. He's much more of a sounding board for me to make sure that I am speaking as truthfully about what I believe as possible and that I'm not losing myself in some of the hype and hoopla and stress that's involved in national politics."

Just this March, in his racial-reconciliation speech, Obama urged us not to dismiss Wright as a "crank or a demagogue" and protested that he could "no more disown him than I can disown the black community."

Now, realizing how gravely his self-serving association with Wright has wounded his campaign, Obama himself has tried to do both those things - and expects us to believe his weak, belated claim that "when I say I find [Wright's] statements appalling, I mean it."

The only audacty is the arrogance Obama conducts himself with when he tries to fool the American public like that.

Circling the Corpses: Liberal Vultures Proclaim Defeat

On April 18, 2007, a series of five car bombs hit Baghdad, killing almost 200 people. Showing his customary lack of restraint and his trademark political opportunism, the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, attempted to score partisan points. Seeking out a gaggle of press microphones the next day, Reid proclaimed, "This war is lost, and this surge is not accomplishing anything, as is shown by the extreme violence in Iraq this week." Reid's comments, so close on the heels of a massacre, provided a tidy snapshot of how the vultures of the left operate. Whether in, the mainstream media, or even the U.S. Senate, they wait for bad news from Iraq and then swoop in with abandon to derive political benefit from a tragedy.

Reid's declaration of defeat would be an especially poignant embarrassment were the left capable of embarrassment. First of all, the intemperate and ludicrously premature comments in question came not from some 20-something blogger who lives with his parents and lives on Chinese take-out, but from the Senate majority leader! Furthermore, Reid was audaciously careless with the facts. When he declared the surge a failure in April 2007, it hadn't even fully begun. A large portion of the surge troops had yet to arrive in Iraq. The strategic changes that General David Petraeus was implementing were still in their nascent stage. Reid doubtless knew all of this, and yet still called the surge a failure.

But Reid's cravenness in this episode plumbed still greater depths. A ranking member of the U.S. government, Reid responded to a major terrorist attack by calling for surrender. If Reid had any concerns about how our enemies might take such a response and how it might incentivize their future actions, he didn't let those concerns slow his rush to criticize the Bush administration.

The vultures of the left habitually hover, waiting for bad news from Iraq. Whatever bad thing happens becomes their propaganda item du jour. For instance, the 4,000th American casualty in Iraq triggered a paroxysm of "commemoration" in the leftwing blogosphere and other anti-Bush outposts.

Some people insist that those on the left who mark such "grim milestones" do so because they are sincerely grieved. While it's impossible to know what lies in the hearts of the vultures, an objective look can't help but raise questions about just how grief-stricken they are. In the days before the 4,000th casualty occurred, one could almost sense the anticipation. When the time came, some left-wing websites chose to "honor" the fallen by running a portrait of George W. Bush and John McCain composed of tiny pictures of the 4,000 fallen. One wonders whether those involved in the project asked the families of the fallen if they felt this was an appropriate use of their loved ones' images.

What Reid and his fellow vultures reveal is that much of the American left reached its conclusions about Iraq long ago, even though the picture was fluid. These people won't let new facts disturb their settled view. Regardless of any results of the surge, Reid had his story and he was sticking to it. Even if the surge reduced civilian casualties by, say, 80 percent, Reid knew he would never concede its effectiveness.

In a fascinating piece in World Affairs, war correspondent George Packer took note of this phenomenon at a less lofty level. In his article he wrote, “Once, after a trip to Iraq, I attended a dinner party in Los Angeles at which most of the other guests were movie types. They wanted to know what it was like 'over there.' I began to describe a Shiite doctor I'd gotten to know, who felt torn between gratitude and fear that occupation and chaos were making Iraq less Islamic. A burst of invective interrupted my sketch: none of it mattered--the only thing that mattered was this immoral, criminal war. The guests had no interest in hearing what it was like over there. They already knew.”

It's one thing for a bunch of Hollywood airheads and future alcoholics to cherish a reckless ignorance. The worst they can do is make execrably boring movies that no one will pay to see. But it's quite another thing when this attitude finds a home among leading politicians.
After the fighting in Basra wound down last week, the vultures of the left once again took flight, and once more Harry Reid led the flock. While people of good will on both left and right were trying to figure out what the fighting in Basra meant, Reid needed no time to gather facts. Instead, he leapt to his usual conclusions, insisting that the Basra fighting foretold disaster and exposed Bush administration mendacity and incompetence. "Instead of making our own country safer," Reid droned, "we are greasing the pockets of corrupt Iraqi politicians and buying their temporary cooperation."

Elsewhere, other observers were trying to add something constructive to the conversation, an act that holds no interest for the vultures of the left. Writing in the New York Times, Lieutenant Colonel John Nagl, one of the authors of the Army's counterinsurgency manual, for example, offered a sober description of what lies ahead in both Iraq and Afghanistan. "The American people must continue to be patient," Nagl wrote. "In the 20th century, the average counterinsurgency campaign took nine years. The campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan are likely to run longer, and other commitments loom in this protracted struggle against Al Qaeda and its imitators."

Nagl is an expert on counterinsurgency and a supporter of the war, but his piece was no exercise in cheerleading. It was a good faith effort to level with the American people. It is precisely this kind of dispassionate and informed analysis that the events in Iraq require and that the American public deserves.

It is a sad commentary on the state of the political discourse that analyses like Nagl's have a hard time competing for attention in a marketplace dominated by the hyper-partisan squawking of the vultures of the left.

Crocker drops truth-bombs on liberal pinkos

Few minds on either side likely were changed by the congressional testi mony yesterday of Gen. David Petraeus, the top US commander in Iraq, and Ambassador Ryan Crocker.

Democrats, predictably, used the appearances to demand a precipitous end to the war. And the much-anticipated questioning of the pair by presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama produced no fireworks.

But anyone who listened closely to Petraeus and Crocker heard an honest and candid assessment of the situation - along with a pointed warning that pulling "too many troops too quickly" out of Iraq would be dangerous.

Though most Democrats refused to acknowledge it, Petraeus detailed how the troop surge begun last year has succeeded beyond expectation, and that the threat from Iranian-backed terrorists within Iraq has been "reduced significantly." (Actually, the day's most truthful observation was heard at a Capitol rally of Iraq vets who support the war: "You know who wants you to come home more than anybody?" asked Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC). "Al Qaeda - because you're kicking their ass.")

Indeed, the truth is that the US-led coalition seems largely to have rendered al Qaeda in Iraq militarily ineffective.

But even the significant gains of the past few months are "fragile and reversible," warned Petraeus - which is why he plans to halt further troop withdrawals in July for a 45-day assessment period.

Yes, Petraeus conceded that the recent Iraqi-led operation against Shiite militias in Basra was poorly executed.

On the other hand, such an undertaking would not remotely have been possible even a few months ago. Iraq's security forces may be a work in progress - but the key word here is progress.

Ultimately, it was left to Ambassador Crocker to remind Senate Democrats of the dangers of an Iraq surrender: "A major departure from our current engagement would bring failure," he said. "And we have to be clear with ourselves about what failure would mean."

It would mean a descent into bloody tribal chaos in an area of critical strategic value to America, and the world.

If the Democrats find that acceptable, then shame on them.

Wednesday Afternoon Stock Picks

With a market in turmoil, investors can make big gains with smart trading. What better place to get smart trading information then from a complete amateur.

Motorola- (MOT) Trading at 10.00

Why you want to buy: With Motorola’s largest investor Carl Ichan planning to spin off the cell phone division of Motorola, Wall Street speculation will result in a short term increase of Motorola stock. Sell it within a month though, the speculation won’t go on forever.

JPMorgan Chase and Co.- (JPM) Trading at 44.18

Why you want to buy: With the federally-funded take over of BearSterns, JPMorgan is experienced major stock turbulence right now. When the dust settles in a month or so, the price will be up. Don’t let minor downslides in the financial sector scare you away from purchases like this, the instability will only help the major players like JPMorgan. I wouldn’t be surprised to see even more acquisitions. Some investors are scared away from JPM because

Agnico-Eagle Mines- (AEM) Trading at 71.10

Why you want to buy: With a bullish market and the turbulence in the financial sectors investors will be looking for solid investment opportunities. For many investors that will mean a commodities market. When you combine that with the steady climb of gold prices, you really can’t go wrong buying a mine company. I personally like AEM over other mines because of it’s realistic production goals. Companies that set unrealistic goals often experience a massive drop-off when the gold isn’t realized. That isn’t a possibility with AEM.

Rubicon Minerals Corp- (RBY) Trading at 1.19
Why you want to buy: The same logic I applied to AEM, I’m applying here. Commodities and commodities manufactures a good bet in the bull market. RBY is a high risk pick though, low prices always are and RBY’s lack of diversification makes it even worse. I personally see big gains, but you could also see some big losses.

Costco Wholesale Corp- (COST) Trading at 66.62

Why you want to buy: With a recession (or at least fears of recession) coming, people will be looking to save money anyway they can, and this includes buying in bulk to save money. Costco and its competitors will all see a rise, what puts COST above similar companies is size. With 4000 SKU’s, COST can out-price its competition and attract customers.

Caveat: The moment this drops below 58, sell it like your life depends on it. Wholesale chains are vulnerable to a price drop when they face warehouse pull-out. Like a run on a bank if you don’t get your money out fast, you won’t get it out at all without COST reaching 52.


The above information should be taken as advise. You should consider seriously the risks and possible monetary damages before investing. If you are making investment decisions based a blog run by someone you don't know, you have Dennis Kucinich style mental issues and probably shouldn't be investing period.

Nobody was fainting during this speech

The beauty of a speech is that you don't just give the answers, you provide your own questions. "Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes." So said Barack “Hope and Change Man” Obama, in his Philadelphia speech about his pastor, friend, mentor and spiritual adviser of 20 years, Jeremiah Wright. This was a predictable, if belated, admission. But the more important question is: which "controversial" remarks?

Wright's assertion from the pulpit that the U.S. government invented the HIV virus "as a means of genocide against people of color"? Wright's claim that America was morally responsible for 9/11 — "chickens coming home to roost" — because of, among other crimes, Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

(Obama says he missed church that day. Had he never heard about it?)

What about the charge that the U.S. government (of Franklin Roosevelt, mind you) knew about Pearl Harbor, but lied about it? Or that the government gives drugs to black people, presumably to enslave and imprison them?

Obama condemns such statements as wrong and divisive, then frames the next question: "There will no doubt be those for whom my statements of condemnation are not enough. Why associate myself with Reverend Wright in the first place, they may ask? Why not join another church?"
But that is not the question. The question is, Why didn't he leave that church? Why didn't he leave — why doesn't he leave even today — a pastor who thundered not once but three times from the pulpit (on a DVD the church proudly sells) "God damn America"?
Obama's 5,000-word speech, fawned over as a great meditation on race, is little more than an elegantly crafted, brilliantly sophistic justification of that scandalous dereliction.
His defense rests on two central propositions: (a) moral equivalence, and (b) white guilt.
(a) Moral equivalence. Sure, says Obama, there's Wright, but at the other "end of the spectrum" there's Geraldine Ferraro, opponents of affirmative action and his own white grandmother, "who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe." But did she shout them in a crowded theater to incite, enrage and poison others?

"I can no more disown (Wright) than I can my white grandmother." What exactly was grandma's offense? Jesse Jackson himself once admitted to the fear he feels from the footsteps of black men on the street.

Harry Truman was known to use epithets for blacks and Jews in private, yet is revered for desegregating the armed forces and recognizing the first Jewish state since Jesus' time. He never spread racial hatred. Nor did good old grandma.

Yet Obama compares her to Wright.

Does he not see the moral difference between the occasional private expression of the prejudices of one's time and the use of a public stage to spread racial lies and race hatred?
(b) White guilt. Obama's purpose in the speech was to put Wright's outrages in context. By context, Obama means history. And by history, he means the history of white racism. Obama says, "We do not need to recite here the history of racial injustice in this country," and then proceeds to do precisely that. And what lies at the end of his recital of the long train of white racial assaults from slavery to employment discrimination? Jeremiah Wright, of course.
This contextual analysis of Wright's venom, this extenuation of black hate speech as a product of white racism, is not new. It's the Jesse Jackson politics of racial grievance, expressed in Ivy League diction and Harvard Law nuance.

That's why the speech made so many liberal commentators swoon: It bathed them in racial guilt, while flattering their intellectual pretensions. An unbeatable combination.
But Obama was supposed to be new. He flatters himself as a man of the future transcending the anger of the past as represented by his beloved pastor.
Obama then waxes rhapsodic about the hope brought by the new consciousness of the young people in his campaign.

Then answer this, Senator: If Wright is a man of the past, why would you expose your children to his vitriolic divisiveness?

This is a man who curses America and who proclaimed moral satisfaction in the deaths of 3,000 innocents at a time when their bodies were still being sought at Ground Zero.
It is not just the older congregants who stand and cheer and roar in wild approval of Wright's rants, but young people as well.

Why did you give $22,500 just two years ago to a church run by a man of the past who infects the younger generation with precisely the racial attitudes and animus you say you have come unto us to transcend?

Give me a Break (And I don't mean of that Kit-Kat Bar)

Anyone who knows me will know I hate Hillary "I Can't be Photographed While Eating" Clinton, but it is ridiculous what has happened to her after she made supposedly racist remarks. These remarks were that it took Lyndon Johnson to enact the civil rights act. The point she was trying to make is that change takes a strong leader, this is true and her example was true. Truth however, does not matter in the world of far-left pinko-commies who think George Bush is like Hitler and the Iraq War is actually a massive conspiracy to enrich oil producers. These people think Hillary is to conservative (which shows how crazy they are) and know the race card is great for sabotage (look at O.J.) and are playing it from the bottom of the deck. Tim "Rah-Rah Obama" Russert managed to be as unfair and unbalanced as Pete Caroll would be if he was a referee for a Trojans game. He played clips of Hilary's speech out of context, berated her, and acted very ungentlemanly.

I'm not sticking up for the Hill, I couldn't do that but I am saying the media is going to manufacture phony controversies and that everything said about race will be twisted. Unfortunately, it is simply impossible to have a frank discussion about race in America.

We Are The Champions

The Rose Bowl ended in a blowout with the amazing and awesome U.S.C. Trojans crushing the pathetic and over ranked Illinois Fighting Illini (what the hell is an Illini?) by a score of 49 to 17. It was a wonderful game to watch and shows that college football needs a playoff system, because if they had one John David Booty and the Trojans would come out on top.

Iowa Caucus Predictions

The children of the corn in Iowa are soon going to be caucusing, which is to voting what Vanilla Ice's raps are to music. In a caucus you go to someone's house (or barn) or your town hall. You organize into groups based on your candidate, but if you are one of the idiots who supports a candidate less than 15% of caucus goers support, such Dennis "Spaceman" Cucinich, Alan Keyes, Chris Dodd, or Mike Gravel, you can transfer your support to another, normal candidate.

Here are my predictions for the Iowa Caucus Results.

For the Democrats

1st Place- Hillary "Preying-Mantis in a Pantsuit" Clinton.

2nd Place- John "Too Cool for a Tie" Edwards.

3rd Place- Barrack "Hope Man" Obama

4th Place- Bill "Not Important Enough for a Nickname" Richardson

5th Place- Joe "Only a Few Years Until the Nursing Home" Biden.

6th Place- Chris "Who?" Dodd.

7th Place- Dennis "Spaceman" Kucinich

Last Place- Mike "Nobody Cares What You Think" Gravel

For the Republicans

1st Place- Mitt "The Polygamist" Romney

2nd Place- Mike "Preach To Me" Huckabee

3rd Place- Ron "Dr. No Income Tax" Paul

4th Place- John "Integrity" McCain

5th Place- Rudy "Mr. 9/11" Guliani

6th Place- Fred "The Actor" Thompson

7th Place- Duncan "Great Wall of America" Hunter.