How many of us realized, when we said that any timidity in Iraq would be seen by our enemies as reluctance to respond to aggression, that the enemy we were talking about was Russia?

It's Scaaaarrrrryyyyy.

Watching the Olympics I'm getting really scared.  Seeing the industrialization of China on the TV screen is very scary.  China seems to be using the Olympics to send the message that American supremacy in the 21st century will last no longer than a Michael Phelps lap.

Our economic and political freedom will always give us an advantage.  But how long will it take 1.3 billion Chinese to overcome whatever disadvantage they might have from their oppressive government--especially a pro-ecomomic growth government.  It took our mighty industrial capacity to win the Cold War.  Do we have the capacity to win the Cold War with China?

Scaaaarrrrryyyyy.

Pelosi seems not to mind taking the heat for stonewalling any energy bills in congress.  And why not?  She feels very secure in her bluest of blue California congressional districts.  This shows one big problem in California's districting procedures.

We need to support any and all efforts to change the districting procedures so that no congressperson feels that secure.  The whole idea is that we would always be able to Throw the Rascal Out.

We can only hope that while taking the heat, the American people blame all congressional Democrats.  If we can throw out enough of the Democrats.

We need to be reminded of an incident soon after the 2006 elections.  Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) was chairing a hearing where Al Gore was testifying.  She was giving him extra time to present his views--at the expense of the Republican senator whose turn it was to ask questions.  Boxer responded, "Elections have consequences."

"Elections have consequences." This is a lesson we need to learn.  Every time someone talks about punishing the republicans and hoping they'll learn their lessons needs to know "elections have consequences."  Every time a conservative talks about voting anyone other than the republican they need to know "elections have consequences."

"Elections have consequences."  A lesson we need to teach the democrats.  The hard way.

If McCain loses, we may get SIXTEEN YEARS of Obamas, not eight.  Barry and Michelle may try to do what Bill and Hillary tried to do--and they might succeed!

The parallels are astounding.  It may seem far-fetched, but so did Hillary for President in 1992.

James,

You can make up names and badmouth people all you want.  But the choices for president in November are Barak Obama or John McCain.  If you think we would have a "liberal tyranny" if we elect McCain (and Romney?), you haven't yet thought about what a radical tyranny we would have during SIXTEEN years of Obamas (8 for Barack and 8 more for Michelle).  This guy is not even a Liberal Democrat. He's a radical.  And you and every other protest vote is putting him in the oval office.  I don't know if Baldwin is good or not, but right now it is Obama or McCain.  A vote for Bladwin is definitely a vote for Obama.

Luke seems to be missing part of the equation, however.  Romney lost in the south, not because he is unacceptable to southerners.  He lost in the south because Huckabee seemed more appealing.  If Huckabee wasn't on the ballot, we'd be choosing between Obama and Romney.

So why didn't Romney win?  All of those people who voted for Huckabee didn't vote for Romney.  You may question how much of a conservative Romney is.  But he is much more conservative than McCain, and he's a clear shot better than Obama.  By voting for the guy you liked, (Huckabee, or, if you'd prefer, Baldwin) you elected the more liberal guy (McCain, or Obama) instead of the more conservative guy (Romney or McCain).  People who voted for Huckabee and got McCain should have trouble looking in the mirror.  If you vote for someone else and we end up getting Obama instead of McCain, you should have trouble looking in the mirror.  Don't make the same mistake a second time.  This one counts.

As for the Massachussets Supreme court, remember that Romney's job was to execute the laws.  He can't pick and choose which he wanted to enforce and which he wouldn't.  I've read stories of legal maneuvering which may or may not have worked.  And even if it worked, they may have had such a backlash that it might have advanced the cause of gay marriage instead of having the backlash against it that we got here.  In any case, the same thing is happening in California, and I don't see any legal challenges in the works.

As for the life issue, I believe that you believe in life.  There are people who don't.  Isn't it possible, don't you consider it probable, that someone with good values who studies the issue might change their mind and come to agree with you?  Isn't the purpose of the pro-life movement, or any movement for that matter, to change the minds of people who look at the issue closely.  So here you have a "convert" to your side.  Someone who converted while he was governor, not while he was running for president.  And you assume bad motives for the conversion.  Do you have such little faith in your side that anyone who agrees with you must have come to your side for reasons other than, well, reason?

So the two big issues this election are security and the economy.  We need someone in office who understands the economy.  Well, we can't get Romney (except, perhaps) for VP), but certainly McCain is better on Security than "we'll be out in eighteen months" Obama.

I could not attack Obama for his relations with Pastor Wright.

We cannot attack someone for his religious observance (assuming it is legal).  Even if we confine our attacks to his handling of the situation--his lying, his deception, his failing integrity, and his lack of judgement--if we allow no way for him to have handled the situation properly, then our attacks are reduced to an attack on his religion.

Whether it is true or not, I need to allow that all three of these to exist at the same time:  a) Obama attending his Church, b) Obama being honest and trustworthy, and c) Obama having a viable campaign.

b), above,  may or may not be true.  But if true, I cannot allow a) to be the sole obstacle to c).  There must be a way for a) and c) to be true if b) is also true.

As long as I did not have a way for c) to be true if a) and b) are also true, the attacks on Obama are attacks on his religion.  But what is an honest, trustworthy Obama (assuming such an animal existed) to do?

This is why the statement Obama never gave matters.  That he did no handle it that way, we know that b) is not true, and hence c) is not true.  Obama's campaign has lost viability not merely because he attended his church, but because b) is not true.  He has shown himself to be deceptive, opportunist, and lacking the ability to handle a difficult situation honestly and with integrity.  If he cannot do it as a candidate, how could he do it as a president.

In many of our minds Obama’s relationship with Pastor Wright and his handling of the Wright problem disqualify him for the job of President of the United States.  Even for mainstream Democrats, the whole situation has cast a pall over the exuberant campaign of Barak Obama.

One question that needs to be answered is whether his relationship with his Pastor itself was a deal breaker for his election.  I hope and believe that it was not.

I hope it was not because that would tell every parishioner of Pastor Wright’s church and, if we believe Pastor Wright that he is the rule rather than the exception with black churches, every member of those churches that they could never be president.  Forget hard work.  Forget whatever package of integrity, experience and ideas you plan to put together, you will never be president, and probably never even hold statewide office--once your religious affiliation is revealed.  It has disqualified you.  That would be sad.  That would indicate that this country is a little less great than I believe it is.

I believe that Obama’s campaign was not doomed from the start because I can imagine a statement he might have given at the beginning of this thing that would have told the truth, and preserved the excitement that was his campaign.  I will present an example of that statement at the end of this message.

That he did not give that message is the poison that doomed his campaign.  That he, at first denied that the statements were representative of Pastor Wright’s views, and then, after it was shown that they were, denied that he had heard them, and finally, denounced his Pastor (whom he could no more disown than he could disown his own grandmother--has anyone checked with Granny lately?) shows that he is a politician.  No more, no less.  Not trusting us with the truth or, perhaps not trusting the truth, he lies.  He is an opportunist, doing what he needs to do to get elected.  He lacks the integrity of who he is, and he lacks the confidence that that is someone whom we would want to elect.  He knows who he is, but he keeps that from us because he thinks he is not someone people would want to vote for.  He is no change.

This, by the way, explains to me Michelle Obama.  They both sat in those pews for 20 years absorbing the views of the pastor.  Barak, being a good politician, would know to keep those views out of his public life, whether he agreed to them or not. Michelle may be a brilliant woman, but she is no politician.  She absorbed and has come to agree with the pastor’s politics, but is not politician enough to hide it.  As a member of his family, Michelle should not be attacked.  but when she gives speeches on his behalf, she becomes a campaign operative and, as such, needs to be responded to.

The statement that he should have given would admit what we know from his books.  That he was captivated by the charismatic pastor from the beginning.  That the pastor was a mentor to Barak and very important to his family. But also that he was aware of the pastor’s politics.  It would explain why he stayed there for 20 years.

I do not know how much truth there is in the statement I present.  I suspect that only Barak would know that.  It may true, however, that with the tangle of lies he was woven over the past several months he might no longer know.  I am sure there is truth in it, and I believe that it is close to the truth.  I think it could have saved his campaign.  I think it is too late now, because we learned too much about him in his mishandling of the whole situation.  But this is what he should have said:

“Much has been made about my relationship with Pastor Wright, and about Pastor Wright’s political views.  I have written in my book, The Audacity of Hope, that form the first sermon I heard him give, I was captivated by his charisma and his power and his ideas.  He inspired me and guided me in my work as a community organizer.  I was very young at that time, and my political views were in flux.  Since that time, we have become close.  He has always given me spiritual guidance.  He presided over our wedding.  He baptized our children.  He has been an asset to the church and the community and for that I admire him.  In that work, I have tried to emulate him.

“As my political views have developed, my views have grown apart from Pastor Wright’s.  We have discussed politics in private.  I have never told him that he was wrong, partly because of the respect I have for him, and partly because, as you all know, it is almost impossible to try to change someone’s politics.  But he is wrong.  I know he is wrong.

“The question becomes, then, why not leave the church?  Why sit in those pews for 20 years, if I disagreed with the pastor’s politics.  The truth is, we don’t attend church for the politics.  We don’t choose which church to go to because of the politics.  The truth is, we have developed deep ties to the pastor, the church and the community. And those ties are the reasons we belong to a church.  We belong just as much for what happens the other six days as for what happens on Sunday morning.  If we could never attend a Sunday Worship service again, we would want to remain in that church.  We would want to remain members of that community.

“There is also a larger truth here.  I do attend Sunday Worship services.  I do hear Pastor Wright’s sermons.  I value what teaches me each Sunday.  Not as history, because there, he is plain wrong.  Not as political doctrine, because his doctrine is repugnant in many ways.  But what he teaches is parable.  When he compares our soldiers in Iraq to the Roman soldiers that occupied the Holy Land, I know he is wrong.  I know our soldiers are carrying out a noble mission nobly.  We may disagree about the motivation of the politicians that sent them there.  We know the handling of the war was dreadful from the start. But we know our kids are the best.  We need to decide when they can stop the noble mission and come back home to the families that miss them and need them.

“What I learn form the pastor is that  power corrupts.  Not that our power has corrupted us.  But that there is always the danger that we could be corrupted.  This is a valuable lesson for me should I become president and commander-in-chief of the most powerful country in the world.  I will always have my conscience in the form of Pastor Wright’s sermons whispering in my ear the parable of the Roman soldier, and that absolute power corrupts absolutely.

“When he deplores the handling of the native Americans in our history, I know that it was wrong to mistreat them.  I also know that, should we have the power to undo all of that, this country would not be a great country.  We can mourn for what happened to the American Indian. We can be thankful to be living in the greatest country on Earth, and we can learn that we need to tread lightly when in the presence of another culture, another civilization. We need to beware of how we treat the people of Iraq, of Afghanistan, of Darfur, of the Balkans, of Columbia and everywhere else where we put boots on the ground.  We can not, and, perhaps we should not undo what was done to the first citizens of this continent, but we can certainly make sure that history does not repeat itself.

“The government did not develop AIDS to kill African Americans, but from that I learn that the United States has an imperative to do what it can to try to cure AIDS in Africa.  The Israelis did not develop a nuclear weapon that only kills blacks and arabs.  But I learned that the specter of nuclear war knows no boundaries, not national, not racial, and not religious.  We cannot be blamed for the attack on our country on 9-11.  But our actions have consequences--a lesson that all leaders need to learn.

“I could go on.  I sit in that pew and I hear the extreme politics, the separatist politics, some might even say the dangerous politics of my pastor.  Some people might say they are rants.  I might agree with those people.  But there is wisdom in those rants and great men learn from people with whom they disagree.  I aspire to greatness.  I want to be President of the United States.  A great country needs a great president.  I hope to be a great president.  I believe I will be a better president because I have absorbed the wisdom, the spirituality, if not the politics, of my mentor and friend, Pastor Wright.”

I've already commented on Obama's shift to the middle.

Donald Lambro documented his shift and includes this comment from a Democratic leader:

All of these and other changes in his campaign positions were "signs of increasing maturity and growth" in the young senator, former Democratic National Committee chairman Steve Grossman told me.

For my money, we need to leave Obama on the tree to finish ripening.  We should harvest no fruit before its time.  The presidency is no place for people to mature and grow.  It is certainly NOT another line on your resume.

I am reminded of A Man for All Seasons where Thomas More tells his future son-in-law that, "A year ago you were a passionate Churchman.  Now, you're a passionate Lutheran.  We can only hope that when your head stops spinning that your face is to the front again."

Israeli Settlements in the West Bank.

I thought it might be silly to put the same numbered topic on all of these posts even though the topics are all different, so I put in a subtopic.  Anyway.

Ralph Nader threw in a critique on Israel into his left wing rant (we can only hope he runs a good campaign and experiences some success).  He talked about settlements.  People talk about settlements.  They say they are an impediment to peace.  Let's think about this.

Settlers in the West Bank (aka Judea and Samaria) are cautioned that they may be required to dismantle their settlement or they may become residents in a Palestinian country.  For whatever reason, they still settled. This irks the Palestinians.  They would object to having a country with non-Palestinian residents.  This in spite of the fact that a) this is the same logic (a small group of non-arabs in an prominently arab land) originally used to argue for the destruction of Israel, b) this is what they are asking Israel to accept with their "right of return" which, worse than just inviting a Palestinian minority to become citizens, would likely create a Palestinian majority in Israel which, since Israel really is a democracy, would mean the end of Israel as a Jewish State, and c) refusal or eliminating this would be called "ethnic cleansing" if it was any other ethnicity.

Why is it that on both the interview segments and the round table segments on This Week, this week, McCain is accused of flip-flopping because he is moving to the right to cement his base, but when Obama moves to the right to capture more of the independent voters he is engaging in brilliant politicking?

Hopefully, the effect of Obama's move to the middle will be the drying up of the support he is getting from MoveOn and its ilk who are providing him with so much financial help.

Flashback to 2006.  MSM was touting polls that said Americans were displeased with how the war was going.  Now some of these people may have thought we weren't prosecuting forcefully enough and some of them may have thought we needed to get out.  No matter.  MSM bumped them all together as "displeased with the war."

Now, fast forward to today.  The war is going well (knock on wood).  We are making a real difference in Iraq.  The MSM is not reporting it.  MSM is still touting polls that say Americans are displeased with the war.  I haven't seen any real details of the polls, but you have to wonder:  If many (if not most) Americans get their information from MSM, and MSM constantly upplays the very worst of the war and downplays the very good news, are they surprised public opinion has turned against a war that we are now winning?  Public opinion polls tell more about MSM than it does about what people think.

Now, we get to the round table.

First of all, George Will was missing last week.  Possibly on Vacation or Assignment.  His absence was sorely felt last week.  They had a conservative last week, but most of the time he spent positing was against McCain.  George Will has become mellower in recent years, perhaps a result of communing with liberals for so long.  Having someone to the left of George Will is not to have someone from the right.  Somehow George S. got the brilliant idea of asking Hugh to step in for George W.  Unfortunately, for some reason, he felt the need to temper Hugh with Ms. Huffington.  G-d forbid George S. would ever have a balanced round table.

Many are putting forth Pawlenty as a possible Veep nominee.  I still want Romney.  I saw Pawlenty on This Week.  He was OK, but not impressive.

George again brought up the report from the American Tax Policy Institute (I assume it is the same one Howard Dean used last week when, as the data supported Obama he lauded the study, but as the data went against Obama, Dean just said, "They are wrong.") that gave estimated tax savings from McCain's tax proposals.  The amounts of tax savings went up by orders of magnitudes as your position in the tax structure went up.  This supposedly shows that his proposals are Bushian tax cuts for the rich.  What the report didn't say, or perhaps did say, but which was not reported by my friend George, was the percent of the tax bill that the savings represent.  $150 may not seem much for the bottom number, but the largest number may be a significantly smaller percent of the final tax bill for that household.  The left always leaves out the unproportionate amount of the tax bill for the rich.  You always need to keep that in mind when talking about who gets the biggest cut of any tax reduction.  The "tax cut for the rich" people always talk about absolute numbers when discussing the tax reduction--never the percentage of the tax bill.

Well, Hugh was on This Week this week.  This made for a fun This Week, but there were a few issues with today's installment.

The show began with an Obama supporter and a Gov. Pawlenty for McCain.  And again, an Obama supporter was pressed for an instance of when Obama ever went bipartisan--going against the party for the sake of what is better for the country.  And again, the Obama supporter came up with Ethics reform.  The subtext is if you believe in ethics, the Democratic party will be against you.  I'll take it.

So they finally selected Obama.  Not that that has been in doubt any time within the past months.

It does bring to mine Leiberman's adventures in the last election.  Essentially, the radical left in Connecticut dumped Lieberman in favor of the anti-war Lamont.  There is nothing else that can describe him.  That is the only thing he ran on.  As Lamont ran as a Democrat, Leiberman ran as the CFL (Connecticut for Lieberman) party.  Of course, assuming that Connecticut was just over half-left and just under half-right (I know it isn't but, just follow along), and assuming the left was just over half anti war, and just under half war neutral (perhaps they have other priorities), this provides enough vote for the anti-war candidate to run for all of the people of the left, but only 25-30 percent of the general electorate.  In fact, Lieberman won 50% of the vote to Lamont's 40%.

The lesson is that when the radical left chooses their darling to run, that leaves out half of the country who would never ever ever choose such a radical candidate.

The lesson is that Obama will have a tough time with the great Middle since he is so far to the left. McCain, being center-right, should be a much easier fit for the great middle.  This is not a prediction for November, there are too many electoral variable to do that.  But, though Obama will be extremely popular in the reddest of red states, he should have a harder time in the more purple areas of the country.