Liberals

1 Comment Posted on '08 Election, Democrats, Liberals

funny stuff i read today

Rich Lowry on the plight of Sens. Dodd and Conrad and their involvement with Countrywide Financial:

It’s not easy being a U.S. senator. People trick you into taking special favors you didn’t even know existed. Shame on these unscrupulous people!

Connecticut Sen. Chris Dodd and North Dakota Sen. Kent Conrad, both Democrats, fell victim to the machinations of Countrywide Financial, which gave them breaks on mortgages as part of the “Friends of Angelo” program; the “Angelo” in question is Countrywide CEO Angelo Mozilo.

Of course they are just innocent bystanders in this whole thing, and totally clueless about any additional benefit they would be receiving.  Right.

Michael Graham mocks Mr. Hope and Change.

But I, for one, am hopeful that Obama will at least go through the motions of an election before he seizes power and institutes a new regime of lower tides, healed souls and 53 percent federal marginal tax rates.

Heh.   Whatever you may think of the Bush administration or the possibility of McCain continuing some of the Bush policies, it’s hard to believe that a President Obama could meet these staggeringly high expectations he and his campaign have set in front of the American people.  This difficulty is entirely Obama’s own fault.  He should start smaller and work up to the lower tides and healed souls.  Just my opinion. It also might be a good idea to stop giving the right so many easy targets.

Posted on '08 Election, Democrats, Liberals

smart move

Barack Obama and his team of advisors don’t really want to pick Hillary as VP.  We all know this.  So how does he deny her a spot on the ticket without alienating her supporters?  Simple.  Jackie Calmes reports in the Wall Street Journal that they would ask Bill to disclose donors to his presidential library, and both of them would have to go through a thorough vetting process (that could potentially disclose more skeletons in the Clinton closet) in order for her to even be considered as a potential VP.   Looks like a deal-breaker to me. Genius move.

Posted on '08 Election, Democrats, Liberals

our democratic nominee

First of all, I want to congratulate Senator Barack Obama for running an outstanding campaign (for the most part) and especially for defeating the Clinton machine.  Hillary is still standing, but my guess is that it won’t be for much longer.  He deserves credit for finding and exploiting the weaknesses in the Hillary candidacy, and for using his natural abilities to claim the second highest political title in the United States as one of the two candidates for president.   His achievement here is historic, and should be noted as such.

However, I fail to see why I should join in this collective group hug even though this milestone has been reached.  My intention is not to minimize what Barack has done.  I respect that achievement, but it would have the same distinction no matter which African-American became the first Democratic nominee for president.  We have our nominees — both imperfect representatives of their respective parties — and it is up to us to do our own homework and decide for ourselves which candidate can best represent our interests.  That would be easier to do if we could separate our personal feelings for Barack Obama with his ability to do the top job in the country.   It would also help if the media would do its job and keep both sides honest.  Guess that’s just too much to ask of them.

Posted on '08 Election, Democrats, Liberals, Republicans

no concessions

Silly Democrats. You thought that Hillary would just fade into the background after Barack clinched the nomination. Ok, so it was only a small percentage of your party who actually believed that, but still…the rest of you had to be surprised by the tone of her non-concession speech.

Thanks Hillary. Your speech distracted all of us from how totally uninspiring John McCain’s speech was.

3 Comments Posted on '08 Election, Democrats, Liberals

that’s a very big bus

Barack Obama’s bus would have to be quite large to absorb all of the people Barack has thrown under it.  The current endangered organism is his former church, Trinity United Church of Christ. It would almost be amusing to watch Barack Obama disown people who he intimately or barely knows, except that we do expect better judgment or discernment from a guy who wants to be our next president.   This stuff is no-win for Senator Obama.  If he says that he attended Trinity for 20 years, and had no clue that Jeremiah Wright was someone who would be damaging to his political career in the long run, then I’m not sure he’s got the great judgment that he is alleged to have. If he is acquainted with other Trinity pastors/ministers like Father Pfleger and yet he still lacks the ability to take their true measure, this is very troubling to me.  Either Barack used these Chicago-area ministers to build his street cred and didn’t really care much about (or intentionally ignored) their political views, or he completely bought what they were selling in addition to using them to further his local political career.  Either way, it doesn’t reflect favorably on the man.

I was ready to believe that this Jeremiah Wright stuff would be old news by November.  After all, he’s gotten this far with a very compliant and willing press supporting him no matter what he does.  If these quotes from Father Pfleger hadn’t come out, Trinity and Jeremiah Wright would have become less of a compelling story than they were when this controversy first started. In addition to that, Obama is not even making a clean break from Trinity.  Here’s part of what he said:

I am not denouncing the church. I am not interested in people who want me to denounce the church because it’s not a church worthy of denouncing. And so if they’ve seen caricatures of the church and accept those caricatures despite my insistence that’s not what the church is about, then there’s not much I can do about it.

This is absolute nonsense.  What we are seeing with Trinity United Church of Christ is not a caricature. It’s a troubling pattern of behavior and attitudes, starting first with Jeremiah Wright and continuing with the new pastor as well as Father Pfleger.  But of course none of the people I’ve mentioned represent what the church believes or what its parishioners believe.  It’s only our misconceptions of what the church is based on the views of a few of their pastors.  How stupid does Barack Obama think we are?  Even when he makes the right decision, there is still this level of “pass the buck” in it.  Like we aren’t sophisticated enough to understand the true nature of people like Jeremiah Wright or his fellow travelers at Trinity.  We get it. He doesn’t seem to get it.  Even now.

3 Comments Posted on Iraq, Liberals

profiteers

The left should be grateful to this president for all the money they have made off of his presidency.  Criticism of President Bush is a very profitable business.  We have numerous examples of this, from former WH aides and former military personnel to talk show hosts with no greater purpose in life than to criticize the Bush administration for every single thing it does.  Why else would MSNBC give Olbermann millions of dollars for no noticeable talent other than saying inflammatory things about Bush and our military?  Say what you want about Iraq.  There’s nothing wrong with voicing opposition to the war, but those who watch the news recognize bias when they see it.  Unfortunately, it’s less clear when the media lies to the public to boost its own standing with their colleagues — whether it’s to fatten their wallets or increase their reputation with the popular anti-war people.

Scott McClellan is not blazing any new ground here with his tell-all book.  Has he gained any more credibility than he had when he was fired as Press Secretary?  Doubtful.  Why is that the left suddenly finds him to be a credible source?  Could it be because he now agrees with them on the Iraq war?  If you didn’t believe him before, why believe him now?  What Scott McClellan will soon find out is that the left will use him for their own ends, and then go back to laughing at him behind his back.  If he was really disallusioned by his experience in the Bush administration, I think it’s fair to let him know that his new friends may not be around very long — hope the publicity and some indirect money from George Soros was worth the price he paid for them.

And BTW, even arch-enemy David Gregory isn’t buying McClellan’s anti-Bush spin (h/t Townhall).

On Wednesday’s edition of “Today,” “NBC Nightly News” reporter David Gregory, who covered the White House while McClellan was spokesman, said, “There was never any indication that Scott McClellan, either publicly or privately, held these kinds of views about what was happening at the time on the war, on Katrina, on the leak case — which was his most difficult hour in the White House. He never expressed anything like this.”

I don’t share the opinion of those who believe that McClellan’s book will have a significant impact on the presidential race.  Those who aren’t intimately acquainted with campaign minutia like this (the average voter, for example) won’t pay much attention to what McClellan says.  To them, it’s just another WH tell-all that doesn’t add much to the discussion of where we are now and what to do next in Iraq.

3 Comments Posted on '08 Election, Democrats, Iran, Liberals

reply hazy

Good to know that I’m not the only one who is still confused about Obama’s potential talks with Iran. Marc Ambinder has a few additional questions for the senator, like what the difference is between preparation and pre-conditions. He points out that Barack Obama’s own website clearly says that he “supports tough, direct presidential diplomacy with Iran without preconditions” and that his own advisors don’t always follow the same script when discussing his position on Iran. Hunter at the Daily Kos assures us that no President would unconditionally meet with leaders like Ahmadinejad. It’s just a Republican talking point. Right.  Then those evil Rovian conspirators must have gotten to barackobama.com and changed some text around in that Iran section.

If Obama really believes that there should be strings attached to talks with Iran, he might want to change his website to reflect that and make sure that his advisors get that message out there.  There can’t be any confusion where he stands on this issue going into November against John McCain.  Right now, there is.

7 Comments Posted on '08 Election, Democrats, Liberals, Republicans

a challenge

John Bolton challenges Barack Obama’s non-cowboy diplomacy. Read it here.

At first glance, the idea of sitting down with adversaries seems hard to quarrel with. In our daily lives, we meet with competitors, opponents and unpleasant people all the time. Mr. Obama hopes to characterize the debate about international negotiations as one between his reasonableness and the hard-line attitude of a group of unilateralist GOP cowboys.

The real debate is radically different. On one side are those who believe that negotiations should be used to resolve international disputes 99% of the time. That is where I am, and where I think Mr. McCain is. On the other side are those like Mr. Obama, who apparently want to use negotiations 100% of the time. It is the 100%-ers who suffer from an obsession that is naïve and dangerous.

Negotiation is not a policy. It is a technique. Saying that one favors negotiation with, say, Iran, has no more intellectual content than saying one favors using a spoon. For what? Under what circumstances? With what objectives? On these specifics, Mr. Obama has been consistently sketchy.

Bolton also says that countries like Iran can use negotiating talks as a ploy to buy time while they continue to chart the same destructive course. To be fair to Senator Obama, we do need more specific details under what circumstances and conditions he would agree to meet with countries like Iran. It’s possible that his foreign policy vision has undergone some evolution from the beginning of his campaign until this particular challenge, so if Barack Obama really wants to fight this battle directly with McCain, I’m with John Bolton — bring it on.

I’m anxious to hear his grand plan on how to get dictators and other foreign heads of state who desire our destruction and Israel’s to stop their evil intentions. In truth, foreign policy is a difficult business. No president has ever handled it perfectly. We have no guarantees that Barack Obama or John McCain will make every right decision, but we should have this foreign policy debate before we decide who should be President.

3 Comments Posted on '08 Election, Democrats, Liberals, Republicans

not so fast

You know that conventional wisdom that this overwhelming Democratic turnout in the primary will lead to certain electoral success in November? Not so fast. The Washington Times found some researchers who insist that’s there’s no coorelation there. Jay Cost of Real Clear Politics says that, at best, the connection is unproven, and that the financial advantage Obama currently enjoys would have more significant impact on John McCain’s chances in November than the Democrat primary turnout numbers. I agree.

It’s not that the enthusiasm shown by the Democrats for their two candidates (but mostly for Obama) shouldn’t be a cause for concern for Republicans going into the general election in November.  What we have seen so far is that nothing is guaranteed for the Democrats, unless John McCain succeeds in completely alienating the rest of the conservatives who were resigned to voting for him with his stupid climate change nonsense.  I’m not ruling out that possibility, by the way.  McCain is trying very hard to separate himself from George W. Bush, and he might just succeed.  I can see how this would be a strategy his internal polling might suggest, but he won’t win with just Democrats and independents.  He still needs conservatives and other Republicans, even though he would like to pretend we don’t exist.

Obama will lose a significant amount of his appeal if he selects Hillary as VP.   She represents what has become the old politics.  It’s not 1992 anymore.  Many Obama supporters weren’t even paying attention during the Clinton years (with a few notable exceptions). He doesn’t need her, and she makes him less electable than he is now.  You can’t talk about the new politics and embrace a Washington insider like Hillary.  I know the Democrats want to end this process, but this isn’t the way to do it.  He can withstand the attacks that the Clintons have thrown out there.  She hasn’t put a glove on him, even with all this bad publicity he has gotten lately.  Obama can wait for the nomination.  He knows that he will eventually win it.

More disturbing for the Republicans and John McCain is that all these side issues that are affecting Obama will be old news by the time the election rolls around.  We need a better game plan than the Clintons had, and a candidate willing to make the case against Obama.  Is McCain that guy?  Stay tuned.

Posted on Democrats, Liberals, Republicans

democrats attempt to punish big oil

They might want to remember what happened last time we imposed a windfall profits tax.

Interesting findings from a 2006 Congressional Research Service Report (quoted here). Full PDF here.

This is the most interesting part:

Reinstating the windfall profit tax would reduce recent oil industry windfalls due to high crude and petroleum prices but could have several adverse economic effects. If imposed as an excise tax, the WPT would increase marginal production costs and be expected to reduce domestic oil production and increase the level of oil imports, which today is at nearly 60% of demand. Crude prices would not tend to increase. Some have proposed an excise tax on both domestically produced and imported oil as a way of mitigating the negative effects on petroleum import dependence. Such a broad-based WPT would tend to reduce import dependence, but it would lead to higher crude oil prices and likely to oil industry profits, potentially undermining its original goals.

Because the pure corporate profits tax is relatively neutral in the short run — few, if any, price and output effects occur because marginal production costs are unchanged in the short run — a possible option would be a corporate income surtax on the upstream operations of crude oil producers. Such a tax that would recoup any recent windfalls with less adverse economic effects; imports would not increase because domestic production would remain unchanged. In the long run, such a tax is a tax on capital; it reduces the rate of return, thus reducing the supply of capital to the oil industry.

So US oil companies would have reduced profits if a windfall profits tax was ever enacted, but according to this study, production costs would go up and the level of imports would also increase.  In other words, it would cost more to produce domestic oil, and we would end up importing even more oil than we do now.  Great solution.

If we tax both our own oil production as well as the imports, it might level the playing field (and by that, I mean punishing everyone equally).  It also could lead to higher crude oil prices and keep those oil company profits high.  These aren’t the best solutions to high gas prices.  Congress needs to figure out that high taxes discourage production, and if they really want to increase domestic oil production,  they should allow domestic drilling and let the oil companies build more refineries.

The Democrats are just saying what they think people want to hear.  That’s common enough for politicians.  What annoys me more than anything is that I don’t see much fight in Republicans to challenge the Democrats on any of their stupid proposals.