Nails it again…

Speaks for itself

The latest column by Thomas Sowell says this far better than I can:

Representative government exists, in the first place, because we the voters cannot possibly have all the information necessary to make rational decisions on all the things that the government does. We cannot rule through polls or referendums. We must trust someone to represent us, especially as President of the United States.

Once we recognize this basic fact of representative government, then the question of how trustworthy a candidate is becomes a more urgent question than any of the so-called “real issues.”

A candidate who spends two decades promoting polarization and then runs as a healer and uniter, rather than a divider, forfeits all trust by that fact alone.

If Ronald Reagan had attempted to run for president of the United States as a liberal, the media would have been all over him. His support for Barry Goldwater would have been in the headlines and in editorial denunciations across the country.

No way would he have been able to get away with using soothing words to suggest that he and Barry Goldwater were like ships that passed in the night.

If Barack Obama had run as what he has always been, rather than as what he has never been, then we could simply cast our votes based on whether or not we agree with what he has always stood for.

Some people take solace from the fact that Senator Obama has verbally shifted position on some issues, like drilling for oil or gun control, since this is supposed to show that he is “pragmatic” rather than ideological.

But political zig-zags show no such moderation as some seem to assume. Lenin zig-zagged and so did Hitler. Zig-zags may show no more than that someone is playing the public for fools.

Some people who see the fraud in what Obama is saying are amazed that others do not. But Obama knows what con men have long known, that their job is not to convince skeptics but to enable the gullible to continue to believe what they want to believe. He does that very well.

I will let those words speak for themselves!

Makes the point

What does “change” really mean?

Once again Thomas Sowell has asked exactly the right question: Exactly what kind of “change” will Obama bring and will it be a good thing?

The magic word “change” makes specifics unnecessary. If things are going bad, some think that what is needed is blank-check “change.”

But history shows any number of countries in crises worse than ours, where “change” turned problems into catastrophes.

In czarist Russia, for example, the economy was worse than ours is today and the First World War was going far worse for the Russians than anything we have faced in Iraq. Moreover, Russians had nothing like the rights of Americans today. So they went for “change.”

That “change” brought on a totalitarian regime that made the czars’ despotism look like child’s play. The Communists killed more people in one year than the czars killed in more than 90 years, not counting the millions who died in a government-created famine in the 1930s.

Other despotic regimes in China, Cuba, and Iran were similarly replaced by people who promised “change” that turned out to be even worse than what went before.

Yet many today seem to assume that if things are bad, “change” will make them better. Specifics don’t interest them nearly as much as inspiring rhetoric and a confident style. But many 20th-century leaders with inspiring rhetoric and great self-confidence led their followers or their countries into utter disasters.

Yes, I can hear the objections already… you’re comparing the US with communist dictatorships, etc.   Let me remind the objectors that all the communist governments supposedly began as more benign “socialist” states which only showed the ugly face of totalitarian communism once they were firmly in power.

Obama has already shown his socialist bent by his unguarded comment to Joe the Plumber: “we just want to spread the wealth around, we think that’s better for everybody”.  How is that different from this: “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.”? (from the Communist Manifesto)

His campaign has also shown a shocking willingness to use ugly tactics of intimidation (shouting down opposing speakers on radio shows in Chicago, pro-Obama district attorneys threatening prosecution of those who say anything “untrue” about him in Missouri, pressing the Justice Dept for criminal prosecution of a group who dared to run ads mentioning Bill Ayres) and massive voter fraud (ACORN’s huge numbers of phony registrations across the county… particulary in crucial swing states).

Obama is continually showing himself to be a good student of Saul Alinsky in following his strategy of “By any means necessary.”   To me it is just a restatement of the morally bankrupt excuse given since the beginning of time that “the end justifies the means.”

Joe Biden is an idiot

All the presidential and vice presidential candidates received their “transitional briefings” on national security issues last week.  The purpose of these is to make sure that whoever wins will be up to speed and ready to step in and handle these issues if and when they are sworn in.

Once again, as he has multiple times before, Joe Biden immediately goes out and demonstrates why he should never be trusted with classified information.  He goes out last weekend and blabs about his “guarantee” that the US will be attacked in the next 6 months and people need to “gird their loins” in preparation.

Where to begin?  In the first place, why in the world is he out there publicly hinting about classified material?  The quick answer to this is that he has always been in love with the sound of his own voice.  He is the living embodiment of the adage that you should make sure your brain is engaged before putting your mouth in gear.  He has a looooong history of grand and foolish public pronouncements all designed to make himself look important.  “Look at me, look at me… I now have access to classified information.  I must really be important now!”

Secondly, how stupid to be implying that their response to whatever crisis comes will look like they don’t know what they’re doing!  What a wide open invitation to terrorists around the world… come take a whack at us because we really don’t know how to respond!  John Kennedy’s weakness at his initial meeting with Kruschev convinced the Soviets that Kennedy could be rolled and led almost directly to the Cuban missile crisis.  Yes, Kennedy eventually stepped up and forced them to back down, but it took nearly starting WWIII to do it.  Do we really want to try that again with a thug like Putin or a nut job like Ahmadinejad?

Thirdly, what to make of this cryptic comment that it may look like we don’t know what we’re doing but we know what’s right?  It seems to me that this is just more of the elitism that has been the hallmark of the Obama/Biden campaign.  We know better… you don’t know anything… so just shut up and take orders!  Biden once again proclaimed his own “brilliance” by stating that he’s “forgotten more about foreign affairs that most of his compatriots know”!  Yeah, no arrogance there!?!

What is absolutely astounding to me is that some people still question Sarah Palin’s fitness to be president.  Those same people are strangely silent about the fact that this moron, Joe Biden, will be “only a heartbeat away” from the presidency!

Once again… no double standard??? Give me a break!

“One man – many votes”

So here is finally the explanation for the oft-claimed “phenomenal” increase in Democratic voter registrations during this year:  Chicago style politics have hit the big time!  In Chicago, where I grew up, the common saying (only partly in jest) is “vote early and often”.  For decades going back to the original Mayor Daley’s reign, it was well known that hundreds of thousands of dead people voted in every election.  Precinct captains working for the Daley political machine always kept a large number of these “votes” in their back pockets to be added to the totals wherever needed to guarantee that machine backed candidates won any close race that might unexpectedly develop.

Now it seems that ACORN has taken the lessons learned in Chicago and unleashed them on a national scale.  As Deroy Murdoch notes in a recent column:

The 13 states investigating the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) are discovering “toxic vote registrations” to rival the “toxic mortgages” that triggered the current turmoil rattling financial markets. While roughly 95 percent of homeowners are paying their mortgages on time, the other 5 percent in default and foreclosure were all it took to spin the global economy out of control.

Similarly, the relatively small number of fraudulent vote registrations discovered so far could represent just enough systemic infection to sicken the entire body politic, especially if this election turns out closer than most now expect.

Still-unfolding revelations of shenanigans by ACORN and a handful of other groups should worry voters of all parties. Notwithstanding the fact that Barack Obama was ACORN’s one-time attorney, former trainer, and Woods Fund donor — and, more recently, the purchaser of its campaign services and its endorsee for president — these questions cannot be dismissed as one or two isolated incidents that Republicans are flogging for partisan advantage. As of Monday, ACORN was under investigation in Connecticut, Florida, Indiana, Louisiana, Michigan, Missouri, North Carolina, New Mexico, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Wisconsin.

He then goes on to document such incredible specifcs as:

• submission of forged registration for a 7 year old girl in Connecticut
• one Miami voter has 21 registrations on file
• among the 1,320 applications ACORN filed in Brevard County (FL), two thirds contain names of people already registered
• there are 644,197 adults in Marion County (Indianapolis) of voting age. Among those, 677,401 are registered to vote. Thanks to these 33,204 fake voters (most registered by ACORN), Indianapolis enjoys an amazing 105.15 percent registration rate.
• In Ohio, some 8,000 applications look extremely questionable, from among 72,000 new registrations that ACORN submitted.
• In Nevada, the FBI raided ACORN’s Las Vegas offices on October 7. ACORN tried to register the Dallas Cowboys’ starting line-up, including Terrell Owens and Tony Romo. “Tony Romo is nowhere on our voter rolls,” said Secretary of State Ross Miller, a Democrat. At least 46 phony registrations have come to light.

He goes on to point out that:

Nationwide, ACORN boasts that it has registered 3 million new voters since 2004. How many of these registrations are fraudulent? The outrageous cases discussed here have been exposed and should be corrected. But how many others slipped through before ACORN became a household name?

Anyone showing up at the polls in Las Vegas pretending to be Tony Romo may be arrested. But what about someone masquerading as Tony Ross, Anthony Russo, Tommy Russell, or any number of inconspicuous names that would leave red flags furled?

Just a handful of such bogus votes can exceed the margin of victory in incredibly tight races. Two months and three recounts after the 2004 election, Democrat Christine Gregoire became Washington’s governor by beating Republican Dino Rossi in a 129-vote landslide from among 2.9 million cast. Most famously, George W. Bush beat Al Gore in 2000 by a whopping 537 votes in Florida. Similar squeakers this November 4 could be decided by those who have no right to cast ballots, or those whose slogan is “One Man, Many Votes.”

With the election exactly three weeks away, the hour is late to sift through all of the nation’s voter rolls and separate live voters from dead ones, citizens from aliens, the law-abiding from felons, adults from minors, and real people from those merely fabricated. This needs to be done, but is unlikely to be accomplished in time.

With all this evidence piling up, how interesting that Obama lied through his teeth last night in claiming that he had no connection with ACORN and that his campaign had nothing to do with any of this.  His campaign gave over $800,000 to ACORN this year for “get out the vote” activities.  (Yes, now we see what “get out the vote” really means!)  This is in addition to his documented 20 year strong working relationship with ACORN going back to his community organizing days in Chicago.

If Obama really is the squeaky clean “force for change” he claims to be, why does he need to cheat (and then lie to cover it up) to win?

Unfortunately, the answer seems to be “No”

In the most recent round of political Jeopardy:  I’ll take “Bailouts” for $700 million, Alex.  The answer is “No” and the question (raised by economist Thomas Sowell) is: “Do facts matter?”

For the last several weeks, we have been constantly bombarded by the media first, and then Joe Biden in the debate, telling us that the cause of the current economic meltdown is “deregulation” championed by Republicans.  It makes a nice, convenient story line for the Obama campaign and its sycophants in the media, but there is just one problem: it is completely false!!

The roots of this housing meltdown and the current credit crisis are to be found in the Community Redevelopment Act, passed during the Carter administration and then ruthlessly pressed forward by the Clinton adminstration and its holdovers into the current administration.  It forced banks (under threat of Federal intervention and hefty penalties) to loan to “underserved” communities… which basically meant giving home loans to people who had no reasonable chance of paying them back!  It led to “no document” loans (where an applicant didn’t have to provide any proof of income or even of having a job) and to the counting of welfare payments and unemployment benefits as qualifying income for home loans.

Now the same people who pushed this and stonewalled any attempt to rein it in (read Barney Frank and Chris Dodd) are telling us that they are the ones to be trusted to fix it.  And that it “is all the Republican’s fault” anyway.  What absolute gall!

Update: For more on this. see Who Is In Charge: Karl Marx or the Marx Brothers?