Nom de guerre: Rivrdog

It 's probably Obama vs. McCain

...so let's move on. Only a serious move under the table or a career-ending move by Obama could change things now.

I'm now watching CNN's coverage of Obama live at a rally in Oregon, where I live, for the most part, a life of my choice under a socialistic State government. As I listen to Obama detail what's gone wrong in the USA for the Average Joe, I can't fault him on his litany:

• Purchasing power has stagnated or declined since 2000
• Average jobs for Average Joes have been outsourced offshore
• Our national security is jeopardized by radical Islam (at least I thought I heard him say that, but somehow, he said the war vs. the Taliban is "good" and the war against their brothers in Iraq is "bad")
• Health care costs just keep climbing, pricing many Average Joes out of the market.

As far as I can see, there's little to find wrong with his observations.

But that's where he stops. He is only an observer. Even if you go to his website for clarifications, you just get more observations in greater detail, but nowhere is there the text or even a synopsis of proposed legislation to fix any of the above problems for us Average Joes.

The Devil is in the Details.

When are we going to see some of those details, from either you or the DNC?

Most of the solutions to the real problems Barack Obama sees are very complex, so we Average Joes, with our Average Educations should be given as much time as possible to look at them and decide if they are actually solutions, or maybe they will be horrific new problems themselves.

So, here's my open question to Senator Barack Obama:

Sir, you are an articulate, pleasant speaker who seems to be at least in touch with the nation's feelings and maybe even most of it's problems. You also seem to be well-enough organized to run a smooth campaign that seems to have overcome considerable opposition from the Clintons. You have the undivided attention and support of the younger generation(s) of our nation. In short, you could easily win the election and become the 44th President of the United States. Would you please share with us just exactly how you intend to address the problems you have so eloquently illustrated here in my state?

You see, Senator, those of us NOT categorized as the Younger Generation were brought up to revere a political entity, NOT politicians. That entity is, of course, the Constitution. That entity properly limits what you may do to solve the nation's problems, as well as how those solutions are applied. All of us either saw President Franklin Roosevelt's frequently-un-Constitutional attempts to solve similar problems, or we studied it, back in the day when our educational establishment actually taught contemporary history as it had happened, not as it wished it might have happened.

Senator, you actually seem to have the drive and energy of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and I believe you actually have FDR's desire to see the end result be a greater and more prosperous United States of America. Be advised, Senator, that emulating FDR's spirit and drive isn't a bad thing, but you must pay more attention to the Constitution that FDR did, because if you don't, there are still enough of us older generation around with enough voice to remind YOU how the Founders intended your job to be done.

Will US Jews finally get it?

One of the (D)emocrats' favorite and most loyal voting blocs is the Jewish community, last I heard, estimated at 8% of the electorate. The Jewish community has traditionally ignored conservative candidates, even though in many respects (foreign policy, military) they are more conservative than those candidates.

Perhaps it is because Israel is a Socialist, Jewish nation (OK, to curb argument, maybe the Jewish description should be first, I'd accept it either way).

In Israel, the Jews permit themselves to be taxed at a horrendous rate, and have state-paid everything, just as socialists in Europe do. Their representative government is run on the European socialist model.

It is a given that the Israelis, and by extension, their diaspora here, has a great tolerance for socialism, and since the (D)emocrats are much closer to socialism than are the GOP, their choice is easy.

Is that all there is to it?

Your blogger is of Jewish heritage. My father was Jewish, and my mother was a Christian. At the start of their marriage (which lasted 51 years and was only dissolved by the death of my Mom), they agreed that neither religion would be forced upon their children. So it wasn't, and I am not Jewish. Or Christian.

That puts me into a position where I can look at this diaspora issue a bit more dispassionately than most. Ever since I've been politically aware (I was going to say astute, but realize THAT could have set off side arguments also), I've wondered about the doughty, plucky Israelis and their preference for socialism, from which political system their first European troubles came. Those would be the Czarist "Pogroms" of the 19th Century, which transcended Russia's Revolution and were subsequently brought into the Communist plan (and brought my paternal grandparents to flee to the USA). Despite their horrible treatment at the hands of the Soviet regime right up until it's demise in 1989, the Russian Jews still advocate the very political disease that brought them all their hassles. And they do so here, in the USA, as well as in Israel.

Obama is a different sort of (D)emocrat, though. Not content with being  simply proto-Socialist as most of his bretheren and sisteren are, he wants to break the US political mold and start something new, something different, something extra-Constitutional as I fear.

In that "changed" mold, Obama wants to create peace and harmony between Israel and their Middle Eastern tormentors. No, their Middle Eastern blood enemies, "tormentors" is not strong enough. You see, the likes of Hezbollah, Iran, the Wahhabi throne in Saudia Arabia, Hamas and their allies, (Al-Qaeda and all the Islamist children-of-Allah mercenaries) don't just want to put pressure on Israel, they want to TERMINATE Israel, to the last Jew.

Obama thinks, in a Socialist, messiah sort of way, that he, as President of the US, can just step in, raise his arms, and order "Peace". Jimmah Carter thought exactly that, as did a few other Presidents.

The problem is, that the Jews are people of great patience. Their patience goes back thousands of years on this subject. Somewhere in the Torah, there must be an instruction that tells them that they must listen to, and at least try out the program of anyone who comes their way as a giver of "peace", even though that peace-giver is holding a sword dripping with fresh Jewish blood.

No, I doubt if the Jews will "get it" this year, either. There isn't a "clue-bat" mighty enough to smite reality into the Jews on this subject.

Sorry I asked.

Incumbency

If you want to know where political corruption starts, look no farther than the incumbency statistics for your local ballot.

We commit fraud vote by mail here in Oregon, so I just got my ballot for the May 20th primary. Since I am a registered Independent, I don't get to vote for any political offices unless they are legally non-partisan.

So, during a vertical moment, I perused the ballot. The vast majority of offices being voted upon are Judgeships. These are hard to vote for, because it is traditional for the judges NOT to campaign, and NOT release any of their opinions or stats on verdicts, etc. It's very hard to decide who has the temperament for the office and who doesn't.

In the Fourth Judicial District of the Circuit (superior) Court, there are fourteen judges running for re-election.

ALL FOURTEEN JUDGES ARE RUNNING UNOPPOSED !

Now, I seem to have read somewhere that 95-98% of Congressional seats up for election are re-election runs by the Congressional office-holders, and of those, over three-quarters usually get re-elected.

It's hard to wrap your mind around the totality of political corruption in this "free" nation, but these incumbency statistics give me a hint.

This Nation is led by a ruling class, an elite. You can take that to the bank.

Your politicians have already done just that.

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I wrote this post back on 5/5/08 and put it into the "to be published" stack, but failed to assign a publish date to it or  even push the immediate-publish button. My bad. Sorry.

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Research help needed (got it, Tks)

Yesterday, the McCain campaign got into a little pissing contest (the first of many, one hopes) with the Obama campaign over McCain's remark that Hamas would love to see Obama elected.

When I heard this, (and Obama's ineffectual answer like "Oh well, he's a geezer, geezers get it wrong sometimes") I had an immediate harken back to last year, when (I'm very sure about this) Hamas actually issued such a statement that they hoped Obama would win.

I was going to skewer the Obama folk for this here, but I haven't been able to come up with the quote, which I believe was from Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hamas in Lebanon.

Am I wrong, could it have been President I'm-ding-a-ling of Iran who made the claim of support for Obama, or could it have been both of the Islamist nut jobs?

We need to lock this down. Various anti-US leaders around the globe have been mumbling thoughts about how they believe they can essentially wrap Obama around their little fingers once he's elected, for over a year now, and we need to keep a running score on those statements, and keep them in front of EVERYONE.

I'm a little weak on setting up search engines to find stuff, and the keywords I ran last night were "Nasrallah on Obama" but got nothing except articles where both might have been mentioned in the same article, but not Nasrallah extolling Obama.

A little help please?

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1. I got some help from the pro-Israel Weekly Standard. Their chief correspondent thinks Obama WOULD meet with Hezbollah MFWIC Nasrallah (yes, I did cornfuse Hamaz and Hezbollah, AGAIN!). Thanks, EllTee.

2. World News Daily had a radio interview with the top political commissar of Hamas in Gaza, and he DIRECTLY said he wanted Obama to win, and furthermore, said that was Hamas' hope. Quoted in the Conservative Voice blog.

3. Fox News recently pointed out that Obama's church (the one with the wascally wevewend Wight) has reprinted Hamas talking points in it's regular news bulletin.

4. Apparently, this all started with a CNN smear of McCain back on April 19. Full story here. Thanks, Suds.

Straight Talk Express has a flat tire

They had a GOP primary in PA yesterday, although it wasn't BREAKING NEWS like the (D)onk one was.

McCain, the presumptive nominee, got 73% of the delegates.

Stand by to ho-hum...

Ummm, isn't the "Straight Talk Express" supposed to be on a downhill roll now? The bus seems to have a flat tire.

The Right is NOT united behind McCain yet, and if the man thinks he can just Whistle Dixie and wait for the convention, he's wrong.

McCain needs to assure us that:

1. His days of tinkering with the Bill of Rights are done, finished, over with.
2. He needs to assure us that "Maverick" means he will take the lonely road of fighting for his Constitution as written instead of doing the popular thing and trying to "evolve" it.
3. As to the Second Amendment, he needs to tell us NOW what part of "shall not be infringed" he doesn't support. Is it that pesky part about including modern military rifles? The part that all the other politicos think is "interpretable"?  Maybe it's the part that I see that says I'm "well-regulated" as to my Militia capabilities if I am prepared to demonstrate them or comply with whatever manual of arms, TO&E or other preparatory guide I'm given?

I'm probably going to vote for the man, but right now my only motivation to do so is that he is the lesser of several evils. McCain needs to understand that there are a LOT of us who are saying this right now, and if we ALL changed our minds, there is no way he could win the election.

I'm watching McCain like a hawk, and am ready to get off his Straight Talk Express at the next stop if he doesn't begin to reassure me he will defend the Constitution and the culture. If I get off and others like me get off, he won't have enough fare-paying passengers to get that bus to the tire shop and get that flat fixed.

Always the wonk, those Clintons

You can always count on a Clinton to be a wonk. In today's Senate hearings with GEN. Petraeus giving his report and answering questions from the Senators, here was one by Hillary:

(Using an accusatory tone and facial expressions): "GEN. Petraeus, you've given us a condition-based analysis here..."

Now, that term, "condition-based analysis" has no meaning for 99.99% of voters in this nation. There might be 100 people alive who know what Hillary was trying to say. This is an old debater's trick, using a deceptive term which you can then re-define to your own advantage later on. It doesn't fool debate judges though, since it is considered sophistry, and in a scored debate, you lose points for using sophistry.

Wonks are people who are mainly characterized by their excessive attention to tiny details, and their use of complex phrases so that they might appear to be more intelligent than they really are. The phrase "worrying about pissants while the elephant stomps you flat" seems to characterize Hillary here.

Don't be fooled by "wonk words". They do NOT confer any particular advantage to the person using them. Actually, they show us the weak side of the wonk uttering them: they lack both an in-depth view of what they are wonking all over at the moment, and they lack communications skills so as to be able to present their argument in terms all might understand.

My 15 minutes of fame sitting up are over, so back to the horizontal and my heating pads.

Department of the expected Department

We can all stop holding our breath now (were you doing that? I wasn't), Pope Al Gore of the Church of Holy Glo-Bull Warming is going to be appointed to high office by President Obama, assuming he survives the Clinton War Room's bag of election dirty tricks and whatever else the Clintons throw his way (bullets?).

Couple of thoughts on this. There are still some 9 1/2 months left for President Bush to run the country, and presumably, the Justice Department. What if His Holiness AlGore was investigated and indicted for interstate (International?) Wire Fraud for his selling of/shilling for "carbon credits", a Ponzi Scheme of the first order if there ever was one?

Do you suppose Mr. Obama would still impose the pompous fraudster on us if an indictment had been handed down?

We're definitely gonna get Gore imposed on us, with all his Socialist wealth-shifting ideas masquerading as "climate change" (notice that Obama is careful NOT to say 'Global Warming'?) if the "Warm-monger" is NOT indicted. For that matter, I wouldn't be surprised to see a President Clinton (either one) install His Holiness in a position of trust.

(Sighs)

It's gonna take some nasty action to restore this country to ANY level of Constitutional sanity....

Political hiatus over

OK, I've wound down enough from the high of the Road Trip and getting the 1RivrDaughter's post-surgical recovery off to a good start, so it's time to get back into the slog of the election campaign.

When I left off a month or so ago, Obama was leading and Hillary was being urged to leave the race. Today's status is that Obama is leading and Hillary is being urged to leave the race. I must have Rip Van Winkled, hmmm.

Folks, this is Politics 101. If Obama can keep the Hildebeeste in the fight, people will watch that fight and NOT expect him to be dueling national issues with McCain. This gives the Empty Suit a while longer to have his political bona fides only guessed at, and not revealed to be as lacking as they are. It also means that the press will concentrate on Obama v. Clinton, and will ignore anything that McCain brings up, so that the Stupid Party candidate gets only whatever momentum he can generate with his own campaigning, and none from the media.

So, what DID happen while I was pounding the Interstates and squeezing the trigger for fun and practice? Obama had a Wright moment, but did not learn to fly, and Clinton tried to paint herself as a war veteran, and THAT didn't fly, either. There you have it. the "Cliff's Notes" of punditry right here, for free.

Also on a political note, Al Gore seems to have disappeared, his GloBull Warming Death Cult buried in epic snowbanks almost everywhere north of 35 degrees of north latitude. The snow is a major PITA (it snowed here in Stumptown Friday, the latest recorded snowfall in 57 years), but it may just convince enough people not to follow the GWDC and Pope AlGore into the abyss of world Socialism, thereby being worth every back-breaking flake of the longest shoveling season in our lifetimes.

We note with regret the passing of a REAL journalist, Dith Pran, whose expose of the Pol Pot regime and the Khmer Rouge communists forever changed our perceptions of ugly little communist countries, and now there are only a handful of such regimes left, and even those seem to be lightening their grip on all their subjects' throats. The man's writings may have saved millions.

Now, go enjoy your Sunday brunch, and if the weather is nice, put on your white linen suit and find a Bocci Ball pitch.

Halfway there

The (D)emocratic Party, the "Party of Halves and Have-Nots" (spelling correct) brings us another half.

If a (R)epublican candidate were associated with, say, a preacher who countenanced the killing of abortion doctors, the (D)emocrats would cry that said candidate must rid him/herself of that association, entirely. Those (D)emocrats would be correct, and said (R)epublican candidate would do it.

So, Candidate Obama has closely associated himself with a pastor who preaches hatred of his country and claims that the Federal Government itself is the source of racism here. Then, subsequent calls, some of them by (R)epublicans, ask Candidate Obama to dis-associate himself from this hateful pastor.

Now, after resisting these calls for better than a week (and the calls actually started over a year ago, but only recently became loud and strident), Candidate Obama takes the half-way step of distancing himself from those hateful videotaped remarks of said Pastor Wright.

Candidate Obama did not denounce the man, he denounced the man's video-taped remarks, and carefully removed the remarks from the entire personna of the pastor as he denounced them.

This is classic liberal half-way confession. It is exactly what makes the liberal philosophy personally repugnant to me. Most followers of this political philosophy do not have the personal courage of their convictions to stand on said convictions.

Oh, BTW, it was reported last night that Pastor Wright has taken a vacation to an un-disclosed location, and after said vacation, he will be on a 3-month sabbatical from his church, and is therefor unavailable for comment.

The (D)emocratic Party, having held up Candidate Obama as a man who follows the Christian religion closely, and thereby has accepted it's principles, now takes his obviously UN-Christian pastor and hides him from public scrutiny just as that cleric's complete lack of Christianity becomes painfully apparent to the entire nation.

That would be the "ObamaNation" Pastor Wright has preached his hate to, not my Nation.

The (D)emocrats have only succeeded, with this half-apology, in further demonstrating their callous disregard of the basic principles of civilization here in my Nation, an important one of which says that an adult must take personal responsibility for the acceptance and following of any philosophy.

That's personal responsibility for the whole package, Senator Obama, not responsibility to snip out a few words from this hate-monger and approve the rest of it and the hateful man as well.

McCain blows it

Maybe we can just leave off the "it" in the title.

Incident: Local conservative radio show host Bill Cunningham is warming up a McCain rally crowd yesterday in Cincinnati, OH. He referred to Barak Hussein Obama by his full name, as I have just done, and he referred to him as a "hack politician from the Dailey Machine" or some similar barb. Some in the crowd cheered loudly, but some just stood silent, holding their campaign signs.

Enter McCain into the hall.

A LibPress reporter sticks a mike in his face and tells him that Cunningham has been working up the crowd with conservative bombast. Reporter then gives McCain a pre-answered question: "Is it OK to use Senator Obama's middle name?"

McCain: "No, that's never appropriate. I don't do that in this campaign." (or similar).

McCain then went on to repudiate and apologize for (!!!!!) Cunningham's remarks.

McCain could have just won some respect back from conservatives by telling the reporter that "Barak Hussein Obama" is on the man's birth certificate, and is therefore his legal name, and he could have agreed with the Dailey Machine remarks, which are true. Obama is completely a product of the Dailey Machine, his political career starting there in Chicago when Dailey got him on the ballot for State Senator (virtually unopposed), and continuing today.

So, instead of taking this opportunity to re-inforce his creds with conservatives, McCain has now drawn farther away from them.

Best thing about an Obama presidency: it will unite us like we've not been united since 1994, maybe since Ike.

Sorry, Mr. DuToit, I can't accept this man McCain, and would rather see a President Barack Hussein Obama take his best shot at wrecking this Nation and it's Constitution.

As a nation, we're resilient enough to survive it, and as individuals, we're tough enough to give back all the trash the Socialists throw at us.

My personal combat style is to face the fire, and not have to worry about being shot in the back.