Change - Semper Fi Style!

Subject: Fw: change. Semper Fi style! (See 1 below.)

Dennis Prager explains his current support for McCain, acknowledging he did not support McCain's nomination. Prager, like so many, is faced with a choice. Perhaps a choice he did not want but you have to play the cards in your hand. That's reality showbiz!(See 2 below.)

One sided cease fire continues. (See 3 below.)

Carl Leubsdorf and The Supreme Court's future look. (See 4 below.)

Keep track of the flip flops according to Steven Stark and Holden Caulfield. (See 5 below.)

Have a great and safe Fourth. Off to wedding.

Dick

1)Candidates toss it around without saying what they want to change to.
Years ago, there was an old tale in the Marine Corps about
a lieutenant who inspected his Marines and told the 'Gunny' that
they smelled bad. The lieutenant suggested that they change their
underwear. The Gunny responded, 'Aye, aye, sir, I'll see to it
immediately'.
He went into the tent and said, 'The lieutenant thinks
you guys smell bad, and wants you to change your
underwear. Smith, you change with Jones. McCarthy,
you change with Witkowskie. Brown, you change with Schultz.
Get to it'.
The moral: A candidate may promise change in Washington
but don't count on things smelling any better.


2) Why I Support John McCain
By Dennis Prager


Last week, a conservative magazine reported that I would not vote for John McCain for president. The magazine based its claim on a column I had written in May 2007 about why I could not support John McCain for the Republican presidential nomination.

The magazine was wrong. Though I did not support Sen. McCain in the Republican primaries, the moment he became the presumptive Republican candidate I endorsed him wholeheartedly for president of the United States. Having not been a supporter from the outset, perhaps my endorsement of John McCain will carry more weight among conservatives who are still undecided about whether to vote for John McCain.

My bottom line is this: The gulf between John McCain and conservatives is miniscule compared to the gulf between John McCain and Barack Obama. This is true regarding virtually every issue of significance to America. The America that a President Barack Obama would shape, with the help of a Democratic Congress and a liberal Supreme Court, would be very dissimilar from the America shaped by a President John McCain.

Conservatives who will not vote for McCain are well-intentioned utopians. They are comparing McCain to a consistently conservative candidate. The reality, however, is that McCain is not running against a consistently conservative candidate. He is running against a consistently left-wing candidate. And America cannot afford to have its first leftist president ever. It can afford liberal presidents -- such as Bill Clinton, or Jimmy Carter (who governed as a liberal but became a leftist after leaving the White House), or John F. Kennedy, or Lyndon Johnson, or Harry Truman -- i.e., all the Democrats who have been president since World War II. But the Democratic Party has moved well to the left of liberalism. And Barack Obama is at the left of that left-wing party.

Furthermore, given the strong possibility of a Democratic House, a Democratic Senate, and a liberal Supreme Court for decades to come, given the number of Supreme Court appointments a Democratic president will be able to make, an Obama victory will move America more radically leftward than ever in its history.

That is why the argument that an Obama administration will be so destructive that Americans will reject the left and then elect a real conservative to undo the damage done in an Obama presidency is deeply flawed.

First of all, other than impeachment, there is no way to undo Supreme Court appointments, two or three of which a President Obama would likely make. And given how active most liberal judges are, it won't matter much if the country has some conservative epiphany and then elects a Republican president and Congress. Because even if the Congress and the president will not pass liberal legislation, a liberal Supreme Court will. On almost any social issue that matters -- the right to bear arms, late-term abortion, the definition of marriage, capital punishment, and many others -- a liberal Supreme Court will rule on these issues, and there will be nothing that a post-Obama Republican president, even with a Republican congress, will be able to do about them.

Moreover, the argument that Americans will have a conservative epiphany after four years of an Obama presidency is predicated on America being greatly damaged by his policies. What kind of mindset welcomes such damage to the country it loves for the sake of potentially gaining politically after the damage is done? Is it, for example, really worth a considerably weakened economy (which Barack Obama's tax and other economic policies would likely lead to), with its widespread suffering and unforeseeable social and political consequences, just to -- hopefully -- get a conservative into the White House four or eight years later?

And the damage won't necessarily be undone. Even Ronald Reagan, the most popular conservative to ever serve as president, could not roll back most liberal creations. He never could get rid of the useless Department of Education, for example. Nor could a then-popular President George W. Bush do a thing about Social Security even when he had a Republican House and Senate. And how will Barack Obama's successor undo the damage done to Iraq, the Middle East, the War on Islamic Terror, and the credibility of America's assurances to allies once Iraq slides into chaos as a result of America's precipitous withdrawal from Iraq?

Therefore, as well meaning and sincere as many conservatives are, this mode of thinking -- let the country suffer under a left-wing president, Congress, and Supreme Court and then it will come to its conservative senses -- will likely lead to a downward spiral from which it is hard to see the country escaping for a generation, if it is lucky.

There is one person who can prevent this unhappy future -- John McCain.

He will not raise taxes, the last thing we should be doing in a weakened economy.

He will reduce government spending, and thereby prevent the state from controlling even more of American life.

He will ensure that America wins in Iraq. That will make one of the biggest and richest Arab states the freest of the Arab states. And it will hand Islamic terrorists the biggest defeat they have ever suffered. It will teach potential enemies not to attack America (whether Iraq did so directly is irrelevant to the point). And it will reassure America's allies around the world, many of whom, as in Iraq, risk their lives for America and liberty, that America will never abandon them.

He will appoint conservatives to the Supreme Court and to federal benches, thereby depriving the left of its most powerful weapon in reshaping America in its image.

He may attract enough Hispanic votes (while securing the borders) to prevent that critical constituency from identifying with the Democratic Party, something that would ensure left-wing victories for decades to come.

He will develop nuclear power, environmentalist (read leftist) opposition to which has been morally indefensible. We would all love to have a solar powered or wind powered country. However, on planet earth at this time, nuclear power may be the cleanest source of energy we have. That is why France, not heretofore known as politically conservative, relies on nuclear power for nearly 80 percent of its electricity.

However noble their intentions, conservatives who do not vote for John McCain will be morally complicit in what happens to America during an Obama presidency.

3) Qassam hits Negev, sixth since start of Gaza truce


Militants in the Gaza Strip fired a Qassam rocket the western Negev on Thursday, putting further strain on a fragile ceasefire deal in the Hamas-controlled territory.

An Israel Defense Forces spokesman said the rocket hit an open field near the Gaza border town of Sderot and caused no casualties.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the rocket fire, the sixth such attack since an Egyptian-brokered truce took effect on June 19.

Israel will close its border crossings with Gaza on Friday in response to the attack, an Israeli official said.

"Because of the rockets being fired today, the crossings will be closed tomorrow," said Peter Lerner, a defense official.

The crossings are generally closed from Friday afternoon to Sunday.

Israel has responded to previous rocket salvoes by closing border crossings used to bring supplies into the Gaza Strip, which Hamas Islamists seized from President Mahmoud Abbas's more secular Fatah forces a year ago.

The crossings were closed on Tuesday following a similar rocket attack. They reopened on Wednesday.

4) How Will Supreme Court Look?
By Carl Leubsdorf

John McCain calls the future shape of the federal judiciary "one of the defining issues of this presidential election," a point underscored by the recent spate of 5-4 Supreme Court decisions.

This area also provides one of the starkest contrasts between Mr. McCain and Barack Obama. A McCain victory in November almost certainly would enable conservatives to tighten their grip on the court and extend their influence to such issues as curbing or barring legalized abortions.

By contrast, an Obama triumph likely would put a brake on that process, though it probably wouldn't permit a return to the liberal control that marked the high court through much of the second half of the last century.

The reason is that the justices most likely to be replaced in the next four years are members of the court's liberal bloc. Mr. Obama would be unable to shift the court to the left, but Mr. McCain could move it even further to the right.

In a recent speech, Mr. McCain joined the outcry against judicial activism, ironic since Republican domination of the White House the past few decades means its appointees dominate the federal courts, including seven of the nine Supreme Court justices.

That court's two oldest members are pillars of its liberal bloc, Justice John Paul Stevens, an appointee of Republican President Gerald Ford, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a Bill Clinton appointee.

Mr. Stevens will be 89 in April, and Mrs. Ginsburg, who has suffered some poor health, will be 76 in March. Many court watchers believe the election of a Democratic president might prompt them to step down and permit the selection of successors with similar ideological views.

Still, that would only maintain the court's current balance, which basically has four conservatives, four liberals and one moderate conservative, Anthony Kennedy, who often tilts the balance.

Mr. McCain made it pretty clear he would tip the court even further to the right when he cited as judicial exemplars two conservative George W. Bush appointees, Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justice Samuel Alito. Mr. Obama voted against confirming both.

To be sure, there are limits on any president's ability to change the court's direction.

For one thing, justices sometimes vote differently from what nominating presidents expect. Witness the generally liberal record of David Souter, named by the first President Bush.

But the early track record of Justices Roberts and Alito indicate the second President Bush fulfilled his 2000 campaign vow to name justices like the court's more senior conservatives, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas.

Second, it's unrealistic to expect any president to be able to name more than two Supreme Court justices in a single four-year term. The last one to do so was Richard Nixon, who filled four vacancies in his first term, in part because of the heavy-handed and ultimately unsuccessful way President Lyndon Johnson tried to install longtime crony Abe Fortas as chief justice after deciding against seeking re-election.

Fewer appointees are more likely to be the rule. Ronald Reagan picked only three justices in his eight years. Mr. Clinton and George W. Bush each named two in eight years. Jimmy Carter served a full term without naming any.

Third, nominees must pass muster with the Senate, which is likely to be more Democratic next year than it is today. That could force a President McCain to pick someone less conservative.

But it may not take more than one additional conservative justice to achieve the longtime No. 1 conservative goal of overturning Roe vs. Wade, the court's 1973 decision that legalized abortion nationwide.

That's something that should be of special concern to those moderate and liberal women who, upset by Mr. Obama's defeat of Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primary, talk of voting in November for Mr. McCain.

5)Conservatives Missing the Mark on Obama's Vulnerability
By Steven Stark

So far, Fox's Sean Hannity and many of Barack Obama's conservative critics have gone after the presumptive Democratic nominee for his "judgment" in surrounding himself throughout his career with such "radicals" as the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, former Weatherman Bill Ayres, and even Obama's own wife, Michelle.

They're on a fool's errand. And, if the company he keeps continues to be the GOP's principal criticism through to November, it will ensure Obama's election.

Every candidate has vulnerable blind spots, especially one new to the national scene, so there are ways to run against Obama. But the current approach has a particularly fatal flaw: it's untrue.

Say what you want about Obama, he's no radical. Yes, he has an unusual name, but once upon a time, all of our names -- whether Irish, Italian, or Hungarian -- were considered uncommon. Despite his unfamiliar persona, his is a charming and conventional American success story -- he grew up in a broken home, was raised by a relative, became chief editor of the Harvard Law Review (hardly the house organ for a bastion of bomb-throwers), and then spent most of his political career in the bowels of that well-known cauldron of Marxism: the Illinois state legislature.

Along the way, Obama clearly made the acquaintances of all kinds of folk -- including Ayres and Wright, the latter of whom became one of his many spiritual mentors and has already damaged Obama's candidacy all that he's going to. But the pattern throughout his career indicates that Obama apparently cultivated these gentlemen -- and undoubtedly many others -- more for what they could do for him and his political career than for what he could do for them. And he has already disassociated himself from both Wright and Ayres, albeit clumsily.

Does that make him very ambitious? Yup. But if that were a disqualification, we could eliminate virtually every presidential hopeful in history, including John McCain.

Follow the flip-flop

So how could the GOP make an effective case against Obama? The same way almost every successful campaign has built a case against a relative neophyte in the past. The more experienced opponents of Barry Goldwater (in 1964), George McGovern (in 1972), and Walter Mondale (in 1984) each ran the same kind of ad, accusing their opponents of flip-flopping on issues. Those specific assaults, of course, embodied a much larger critique.

Flip-flop attacks aren't really about the issues at hand. Instead, they're a way of reminding voters, "You don't really know this person well enough, do you?" Plus, they're a great way to make a candidate who appears to be "above politics" look as political as everyone else. In that sense, they are really character attacks on the opponent, and the reason they reappear so often in presidential politics is that they are often highly effective.

For obvious reasons, Obama may be vulnerable to just such a thrust. He's newer to the national scene than any candidate since Wendell Wilkie in 1940, and some voters are going to be uneasy because they've known him for so short a time. More than any candidate since Jimmy Carter, moreover, Obama is presenting himself as an anti-politician, promising to transcend the Zeitgeist of the era.

Since winning the nomination, Obama has shifted his positions -- on gun control and campaign finance, among others -- granted, in the tradition of nominees moving toward the middle in hopes of attracting independent general-election voters. But the mark of a good politician is that he can realign his post-nomination stance in a way that goes largely unnoticed. In contrast, Obama so far seems to be publicizing his flexibility, which is the kind of mistake inexperienced candidates often make.

If McCain is smart, this will be the focus of his critique of Obama. It has the advantage of making his own weakness -- he's old, and many voters feel they know him perhaps too well -- an advantage. After all, better to go for the steadfast and stubborn old face than the new guy who looks as if he can be pushed around.

Obama is young, and he speaks the truth when he says he's not very political in a conventional sense. Ironically, however, the more he attempts to moderate those attributes and his positions, the worse off he will be, especially since he will alienate his core supporters who provide the energy for his candidacy. In the end, he risks coming off as a phony -- and, like Holden Caulfield, Americans don't like phonies. Especially in the White House.