McCain was correct in criticizing the way GW initially fought the Iraq War and McCain was correct in supporting the surge. McCain was early and the public is just catching up to his judgment.
Obama opposed both the war and the surge and cannot bring himself to admit the latter's success. Had we listened to Obama we would have pulled out years ago, lost in Iraq and no telling what the consequence would have been in terms of Iran and our veracity going forward.
McCain has been in favor of off shore drilling, nuclear and came recently to realize drilling in Anwar is now acceptable. McCain has been right and the public now has shifted over to his position.
Obama opposes virtually all drilling and nuclear and is a captive of the Greens.
Realistically, we will continue to use oil for the next thirty years, hopefully less going forward. We must begin developing and embracing alternative energy sources. Whether Obama understands we will be dependent upon oil for a long period is not clear. Furthermore, from a security standpoint alone, oil dependency from unstable foreign sources is dangerous. Thus, one would think it wise we develop as much of our own resource base as is feasible. It took $4 gasoline to get the nation to understand this reality and change its previous anti-exploration views.
McCain opposes raising taxes and with a weak economy he is correct because anything that discourages capital formation directly impacts employment. Furthermore, capital investments in research and development makes us more competitive and enhances worker productivity.
The public is divided on this issue because Democrats have been effective in selling the populist line about wealth disparity. Facts suggest almost 1/2 of the nation's revenue comes from less than 2% of the population.
Obama wants to raise taxes and redistribute the income in a typical socialistic fashion. Obama also wants to increase spending and the size of government in pursuit of fairness. What is fairness and how would bureaucrats define it? Can fairness even be defined or is it too subjective and something more in the eye of the beholder?
If Obama has his way, Americans and their corporations will become the highest taxed of any developed nation.
In the matter of protecting our nation from terrorism and external threats McCain knows more about this subject and has been involved in this area more years than Obama has been an adult. Democrats have a fairly ragged record when it comes to defense expenditures and/or maintaining a strong military posture.
Obama comes across as a typical liberal when it comes to the military. He favors negotiations but fails to recognize the years of fruitless negotiations the Germans, French, Brits and ourselves have engaged in with Iran. What about Iran's rejection of the entire world community's efforts acting through the U.N? Iran's behaviour parallel's Sadaam's in this regard.
McCain is in favor of allowing education choice and challenges ingrained union resistance to competition. He urges unions to change their outmoded and counterproductive thinking.
Obama remains a captive of teacher unions and though he talks about improving education he seeks to do so through the existing system. He is willing to cheat his own race's youth of a decent education that will prepare them for life.
Ironically, black children are the ones most impacted by our current education approach and Obama's head in the sand attitude is most negative toward their education prospects. Are black voters, whose children suffer from poor education , sophisticated enough to understand this? Probably not, because they are not well educated themselves, are heavily influenced by black leadership which preaches dependency on government and is historically beholden to unions.
On these five issues - Taxes, Defense of the Nation, energy dependency, the Iraq War and education the two candidates are miles apart.
As for the candidates themselves, Obama is very young, has a thin resume. McCain is old enough to be Obama's father and it would take Obama another 25 years to match McCain's experience and public service.
Obama is a new face, an accomplished orator and presumably in good health. McCain is a face that has been around a long time, has recovered from melanoma and is a dull un-inspirational speaker.
Obama has run a tight and disciplined campaign. McCain is still trying to gain campaign traction.
Obama has a fairly checkered history of questionable associations. McCain seems to have fewer association skeletons in his closet.
Obama has demonstrated a willingness to change his mind, almost with abandon, and this has raised questions about his value system and what unshakable principles, if any, he holds dear. Obama has a sparse voting record, seldom on any major issue so it is difficult to discern what he truly believes.
McCain has also switched his thinking in order to align himself with some of the far right views of his party but he has a long consistent voting record.
This is the way I see both candidates on critical issues. Both have warts. In Obama's case I believe his are scarier. McCain may not turn me on but Obama certainly turns me off.
Is the campaign horse Obama saddled up beginning to buck? (See 1 below.)
If Obama is fishing for votes he would be well advised not to use race bait. As I have suggested, and as does Victor Hanson, it will become Obama's IED.(See 2 below.)
Ward Connerly on Obama. (See 3 below.)
Pelosi is as slick as snake oil and now she has dug a hole that does not gush for her party. (See 4 below.)
5)What goes around comes around. (See 5 below.)
We buried a dear friend today. His younger brother gave the eulogy and I learned a great deal more about my friend and how broad, deep and varied his interests were. He was 56 and had so much more to live for. Mike's death was untimely and it serves to remind all to make the most out of each day.
Be sure to inflate your tires.
Dick
1) Time To Change, His Campaign That Is
By Jennifer Rubin
One of the downsides of living in the bubble of the MSM and the warm embrace of most of the punditocracy is that you think everyone buys what you are selling, or at the very least is too polite to mention that you are making a fool of yourself. When the McCain camp called Barack Obama out for playing the race card, I imagine the Obama camp was stunned. But by the end of the day on Thursday it became apparent that Obama’s gambit was failing, and creating far more problems than the Obama team anticipated.
Obama’s Bill Burton tried to take back the race card. (But whoops– not in sufficient time to prevent the New York Times from looking foolish. Yes, yes you have to get up very early in the day to do that.) When The New Republic calls Obama’s move a “blunder” and the Hardball panel unanimously calls out Obama, it’s time to fold your hand.
What lasting impact, if any, does this have? Well for starters I think Obama will stop overtly playing the racial victim. And that frankly is likely a good thing for him since few voters in the undecided camp are going to be swayed by that sort of thing. (The opposite is more likely.)
But the more lasting impact is the sense that one by one the lofty premises of the Obama campaign are crumbling. New Politics? He dumped public financing and shifted on a dozen issues. Post-racial? Reverend Wright and now amateurish race baiting. (Victor Davis Hanson dissects the utter message confusion on this score here.) A new era in international relations? An embarrassing overreach in Berlin.
Why isn’t it working? What’s wrong? You can imagine Hillary Clinton and her supporters banging their heads on their desks and emailing one another (”We told them!” “No one believed us!”) Time it appears has not been Obama’s friend. It has given more and more people time to think and discover that there may not be much behind the grand rhetoric. Others have figured out the degree to which Obama has concealed, evaded and fudged in setting out his political views. What does he believe? It’s unnerving to know so little and to realize he is perhaps the least forthright candidate in recent memory. And, of course, The Ego has just grown and grown so not even the MSM can ignore it. A smart Jonathan Chait has figured out that if the election is about Obama he loses. (Wow. From savior to drag on the Democratic brand in six months.)
But McCain supporters shouldn’t get their hopes up quite yet. Obama is adaptable if nothing else. And he is entirely capable of navigating back to bread-and- butter issues and effectively tying McCain to the Bush administration. Whether he can pour the old wine into new bottles — that is, find forums and language that are appropriately proportioned and are not open to ridicule –is what remains to be seen.
When you’ve been creating a “movement” that morphed into a cult, it is hard to dial it back. But if he does and gets back to talking about something other than himself, it is still his election to lose. It is remarkable, though, stunning really, that there is some possibility that he might do just that.
2) Why is Obama foolishly evoking race time after time?
By Victor Davis Hanson
And it's still only July...
Obama's problems with race have nothing to do with his half -African ancestry or his own experience with racism and unfairness, but boil down to his deftly wanting it both ways: reminding the Germans he is a different sort of American from what they're used to (false, they knew Rice and Powell well enough), while preempting by suggesting others will evoke race, but in a negative context. But his polls, I wager, will begin to slip from all this, because all this sophisticated triangulation is about to blow up in the public mind.
1) The voter is starting to hear serially from Obama about race; they were promised a racially transcendent candidate, but so far Obama seems obsessed with identity, either accusing others of racism, or using heritage himself for political advantage. This is a tragic blunder.
2) He has the same want-it-both-ways with odious racists: Rev. Wright is a former spiritual advisor, and "brilliant" scholar who nevertheless serially slurs America, whites, Italians, Jews, etc. Ludacris is "a great talent" and "talented" to such an extent Obama wants him in his I-pod menu, and has met with him—but also a racist to be shunned. Ditto Pfleger. A pattern is emerging: Obama associates with or tolerates racists when such quasi-intimacy cements street-cred as an authentic minority or someone cool in the anti-Bush mode; but then when they inevitably revert to form, he not merely casts them off, but is "shocked" at their usual expression, and so like speed bumps they litter the roadway as he barrels ahead.
3). The "typical white person", grandma under the bus riff, Pennsylvania "clingers" rant etc. , 'no more disown Rev, Wright/ but now leaving Trinity Church', etc. themselves are immaterial, but in toto provide a thin margin of tolerance when something like Ludacris or Obama's latest accusation of racism surfaces.
4) Right now Obama does not need to solidify his 90% African-American base or the Moveon.org white liberal adherents; but instead he must remember why he lost all those primaries to Hillary and to what degree his campaign since then has addressed those concerns that lost him those electorates. When a West Virginian hears that Obama is accusing others of racism, or hears him promise that racial reparations will now be a matter of government deeds not words, or a rapper brags he is a favorite of Obama and then slurs Clinton, McCain, Bush in thinly disguised racist terms, it starts to create an image of someone who is not bringing people together, but precisely the opposite.
Why all this? Inexperience and hubris—the same overconfidence that makes him say we need a Pentagon-sized new civilian aid department, to inflate our tires to avoid drilling, and must stop merely talking about reparations and starting doing something about them. His handlers need to return to the teleprompter, since all these incidents have in common the impromptu moment.
3) My Preferences: John McCain, Barack Obama, and civil rights today.
By Ward Connerly
One thing I have learned from more than 13 years of fighting for equal treatment for every American regardless of race, sex, color, or ethnicity is that politicians can triangulate more about this issue than almost any other — and get away with it. A few days ago, Sen. John McCain gave his support to our effort in Arizona to prohibit preferences through a constitutional amendment. In explaining his reason for doing so, McCain said, “I have always opposed quotas.” Instantly, Sen. Barack Obama pounced.
Speaking at a convention of “journalists of color” (the participants gave him standing ovations at the beginning and at the end of his appearance), Obama said, “I am disappointed that John McCain flipped and changed his position. I think in the past he had been opposed to these kinds of Ward Connerly referenda or initiatives as divisive. And I think he's right. You know, the truth of the matter is, these are not designed to solve a big problem, but they're all too often designed to drive a wedge between people.”
Having been thrust into a presidential campaign, it is appropriate for me to offer my thoughts.
Over the past ten years, no American president, Congress, legislature, or governor has acted to eliminate preferences — in other words, to enforce the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which commands the government to treat us all “without regard to race, color, national origin or sex.” In addition, the United States Supreme Court has handed down conflicting opinions about the matter.
In response, I have led the national effort to enforce the act through ballot initiatives in states that allow them. I find it interesting that the only people who consider such initiatives “divisive” are the ones who oppose them, such as Sen.Obama. Such people never seem to find preferences themselves “divisive.” Apparently, as long as those who are harmed by such policies — and those who believe preferences are fundamentally wrong — keep their mouths shut, sweet harmony will ring throughout the land.
Also, it seems that Obama is divided against himself on the issue. In his famed “race speech,” when he was trying to appeal to white Democrats to get the issue of Jeremiah Wright off his back, he acknowledged that affirmative action engenders resentment. Just a few days ago, Obama suggested he was ready to support class-based instead of race-based affirmative action: “I am a strong supporter of affirmative action when properly structured so that it is not just a quota, but it is acknowledging and taking into account some of the hardships and difficulties that communities of color may have experienced, continue to experience, and it also speaks to the value of diversity in all walks of American life. We are becoming a more diverse culture, and it's something that has to be acknowledged.”
I concur, but I might define “properly structured” differently than Obama does. What he fails to say is that it is not only “communities of color” that experience hardships and difficulties. Nor does he say how, as president, he can achieve his stated goal of uniting the American people while asking those not “of color” to look the other way when discriminated against.
If Obama is truly concerned about divisiveness, why didn’t he speak out when his foot soldiers at ACORN were taking pride in blocking our petition circulators from gathering signatures in Missouri? Their despicable tactics of harassment give new meaning to the term “divisive.”
It is true, by the way, that McCain has “flipped” about whether ballot initiatives are appropriate as a device for ending preferences. It is not true that he has “flipped” with regard to preferences themselves. He has consistently expressed disdain for preferential treatment based on race.
And even if he had changed his position substantively, he would be far from alone. Millions of Americans are at a different point in their thinking about race today than they were ten years ago, when McCain opposed legislation to place an initiative on the ballot to end preferences in Arizona. For this, Senator Obama should be thrilled. Without race “flippers,” he would not be the presumptive nominee of the Democratic party for president of the United States.
Until we reach the point that we are living out what Martin Luther King Jr. often called the “true meaning of our creed” that all men (and women) are created equal, how we deal with the issue of race will be a work in progress. Something tells me that, deep in his soul, Sen. Obama knows this. Certainly, he should.
4) Pelosi: Save the Planet, Let Someone Else Drill
By Charles Krauthammer
WASHINGTON -- House Speaker Nancy Pelosi opposes lifting the moratorium on drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and on the Outer Continental Shelf. She won't even allow it to come to a vote. With $4 gas having massively shifted public opinion in favor of domestic production, she wants to protect her Democratic members from having to cast an anti-drilling election-year vote. Moreover, given the public mood, she might even lose. This cannot be permitted. Why? Because as she explained to Politico: "I'm trying to save the planet; I'm trying to save the planet."
A lovely sentiment. But has Pelosi actually thought through the moratorium's actual effects on the planet?
Consider: 25 years ago, nearly 60 percent of U.S. petroleum was produced domestically. Today it's 25 percent. From its peak in 1970, U.S. production has declined a staggering 47 percent. The world consumes 86 million barrels a day; the United States, roughly 20 million. We need the stuff to run our cars and planes and economy. Where does it come from?
Places like Nigeria where chronic corruption, environmental neglect and resulting unrest and instability lead to pipeline explosions, oil spills and illegal siphoning by the poverty-stricken population -- which leads to more spills and explosions. Just this week, two Royal Dutch Shell pipelines had to be shut down because bombings by local militants were causing leaks into the ground.
Compare the Niger Delta to the Gulf of Mexico where deep-sea U.S. oil rigs withstood Hurricanes Katrina and Rita without a single undersea well suffering a significant spill.
The United States has the highest technology to ensure the safest drilling. Today, directional drilling -- essentially drilling down, then sideways -- allows access to oil that in 1970 would have required a surface footprint more than three times as large. Additionally, the U.S. has one of the most extensive and least corrupt regulatory systems on the planet.
Does Pelosi imagine that with so much of America declared off-limits, the planet is less injured as drilling shifts to Kazakhstan and Venezuela and Equatorial Guinea? That Russia will be more environmentally scrupulous than we in drilling in its Arctic?
The net environmental effect of Pelosi's no-drilling willfulness is negative. Outsourcing U.S. oil production does nothing to lessen worldwide environmental despoliation. It simply exports it to more corrupt, less efficient, more unstable parts of the world -- thereby increasing net planetary damage.
Democrats want no oil from the American OCS or ANWR. But of course they do want more oil. From OPEC. From where Americans don't vote. From places Democratic legislators can't see. On May 13, Sen. Chuck Schumer -- deeply committed to saving just those pieces of the planet that might have huge reserves of American oil -- demanded that the Saudis increase production by a million barrels a day. It doesn't occur to him that by eschewing the slightest disturbance of the mating habits of the Arctic caribou, he is calling for the further exploitation of the pristine deserts of Arabia. In the name of the planet, mind you.
The other panacea, yesterday's rage, is biofuels: We can't drill our way out of the crisis, it seems, but we can greenly grow our way out. By now, however, it is blindingly obvious even to Democrats that biofuels are a devastating force for environmental degradation. It has led to the rape of "lungs of the world" rainforests in Indonesia and Brazil as huge tracts have been destroyed to make room for palm oil and sugar plantations.
Here in the U.S., one out of every three ears of corn is stuffed into a gas tank (by way of ethanol), causing not just food shortages abroad and high prices at home, but intensive increases in farming with all of the attendant environmental problems (soil erosion, insecticide pollution, water consumption, etc.).
This to prevent drilling on an area in the Arctic one-sixth the size of Dulles Airport that leaves untouched a refuge one-third the size of Britain.
There are a dizzying number of economic and national security arguments for drilling at home: a $700 billion oil balance-of-payment deficit, a gas tax (equivalent) levied on the paychecks of American workers and poured into the treasuries of enemy and terror-supporting regimes, growing dependence on unstable states of the Persian Gulf and Caspian basin. Pelosi and the Democrats stand athwart shouting: We don't care. We come to save the planet!
They seem blissfully unaware that the argument for their drill-there-not-here policy collapses on its own environmental terms.
5) Hezbollah official: Group is stronger than before, ready for war
By Reuters
Tags: Hezbollah, Lebanon, Terrorism
A senior Hezbollah commander on Friday told the U.K. Telegraph that the militant group is stronger than before, and that it does not seek war with Israel but is prepared for a military confrontation.
Sheikh Nabil Kaouk, who commands Hezbollah's forces on Lebanon's border with Israel, was quoted as saying, "The resistance is now stronger than before and this keeps the option of war awake."
"If we were weak, Israel would not hesitate to start another war," Kaouk added. "We are stronger than before and when Hezbollah is strong, our strength stops Israel from starting a new war."
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Kaouk also said that Hezbollah is proud of its relationship with Syria and Iran, but declined to address whether the two countries supply Hezbollah's arms.
Meanwhile, Lebanon's new national unity government agreed to a policy statement on Friday that political sources said recognized Hezbollah's right to use all possible means to liberate land they say is occupied by Israel.
The statement, agreed to at the 14th meeting of a ministerial committee set up to draft it, will be presented to parliament next week for a vote of confidence.
All major parties are represented in parliament, including the U.S.-backed majority coalition and the Hezbollah-led opposition, and the confidence vote is seen as a formality.
The draft implies the group can keep its arms and opens the way for parliament to approve a new government that includes the militant group.
"The ministerial statement is drafted and forwarded to the cabinet with the agreement of all its members," Information Minister Tareq Mitri said after the meeting.
The cabinet, in which Hezbollah and its allies hold effective veto power, is expected to approve the draft on Monday before passing it to parliament.
The government was formed on July 11, in line with a Qatar-brokered deal in May which ended an 18-month political crisis that drove Lebanon to the brink of civil war.
The policy statement had been delayed by bickering over the role of Hezbollah's guerrilla army, which fought a 34-day war against Israel in 2006.
Prime Minister Fouad Seniora and his majority coalition initially wanted to exclude mentioning Hezbollah's right to regain Lebanese land by force and defer the subject to a national dialogue to be chaired by President Michel Suleiman.
Hezbollah's weapons became an even more divisive issue after the group used its military muscle to defeat its political foes in street fighting in Beirut and other areas in early May.
The policy statement recognizes the right of Lebanon, its government, people and resistance to use all means possible to regain Lebanese sovereignty over Shaba Farms and nearby Israeli-held parts of Ghajar village.
Israel and the United Nations say Shaba, captured during the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, is Syrian, while Damascus and Beirut, which never demarcated borders, say it is Lebanese.
The UN has recently backed renewed efforts to establish the identity of the territory.
Political sources said the statement renewed Lebanon's commitment to UN Security Council Resolution 1701 which ended the 2006 war and refers the fate of Hezbollah's weapons to the drafting of a "national defence strategy" to be agreed at the national dialogue starting in the coming weeks.
The statement also adopted economic reforms agreed at an international aid conference held in Paris in 2007.
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