Conservative Blog

Uncle Sam's Crack Pipe

I am disappointed in President Obama. I didn't vote for him but I wished him well and hoped he would end business as usual in DC. I now realize I was hopelessly deluded.

His speech before Congress last night was populist, partisan, cocky posturing. Newsweek was right: We are all socialists now. Government will wipe away every tear, change every diaper, and pay for everybody's college. I guess I can drain my kids' college fund now and buy some kickass guitars and guns...

The Great Benefactor took control last night, but a few weeks ago he ceded leadership on the stimulus to Harry and the Pelosicrats, who hastily slapped together a trillion dollar monument to economic ignorance. I now understand why he did it: He is in complete partisan agreement with them.

Robert Samuelson, brilliant economics reporter and non-partisan honest broker, calls this monstrosity what it is: A liberal cornucopia of pet spending projects that is too unfocused to do any stimulating.

Republican governors are leading a revolt (Haley Barbour of Mississippi, Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, Butch Otter of Idaho, Rick Perry of Texas and Mark Sanford of South Carolina). Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal has actually read the stimulus bill, unlike the Democrats who voted for it. He points out that this is anything but a "one time" initiative...

The tens of billions of dollars of aid for health care, welfare and education will disappear in two years and leave states with no way to finance the expanded programs.

Mr. Perry sent a letter to President Obama last week warning that Texas may refuse certain stimulus funds. "If this money expands entitlements, we will not accept it. This is exactly how addicts get hooked on drugs," he says.

"There's no way politically we're going to be able to push people out of the program in two years when the federal money runs out," Mr. Sanford says.

No Comment | Posted in » Barack Obama, liberalism, stimulus  

WWII won by the rising as one voice!

Speaking at Holocaust Memorial and Museum Yad Vashem, Obama declares that the Holocaust was won because people rose up and spoke with one voice. Somehow, the 14 million allied military who lost their lives were forgotten. To my mind, this is an absolute outrage that, as of yet, is getting absolutely no play in the media.

Obama: WWII won by speaking out as one voice.

1 comments | Posted in » Barack Obama, Paul Zannucci  

Idiot Abroad: Obama Campaign Steps on Maliki's Toes

1 comments | Posted in » Barack Obama, Foreign Policy, Iraq, Paul Zannucci  

Obama prepares to flip-flop on Iraq

Using his strategist, David Axelrod, Obama now is backtracking on his Iraq stance, saying that he will certainly listen to military advisers as to when he will pull out.

Obama Flip-flops on Iraq

No Comment | Posted in » Barack Obama, Election 2008, Iraq  

McCain Wobbling on the Tightrope

No Comment | Posted in » Barack Obama, Democratic Platform, Election 2008, John McCain, Paul Zannucci  

Rant Time: Obama, Democratic Rain Man

Or maybe that's rainmaker. Anyway, according to reports all over the news today, Mr. Obama has decided to forgo public financing for his campaign and "just" use money raised by his campaign. What this means, besides the fact that he'll be able to outspend McCain by 3 to 1, is that I won't be able to watch television after the conventions, which is when this money will really start to hit. It's not bad enough that this guy has it all going for him--a complicit media and public. Now he gets to flood the world with unprecedented amounts of propaganda, perhaps $500 million worth, during the run-up to the election.

And this isn't counting all the ads from outside organizations like moveon.org. Never before in the history of American politics have we seen what we're about to see. Thank goodness for DVR's. One can only hope that there will be a backlash against it.

By the time the election gets here, anyone with any sense will be rolled up in a fetal position under their desks. Meantime, the majority of Americans will probably be flipping the Obama switch in their local voting booth, a vacant sort of grin on their faces.

Seriously, is there anything more insipid than a Democratic ad? Is there anything that can pack so much stupid dishonesty into 30 seconds? Is there anything that can make your blood pressure shoot to 290 over 180 quicker than watching some collection of "concerned citizens" telling you how worried they are about children and the elderly because of Republican policies?

Get ready. Brace yourself. Practice meditation. Count to ten, or maybe 500 million.

1 comments | Posted in » Barack Obama, Democratic Fearmongering, Election 2008, Paul Zannucci, Rant Time  

Obama, You Can't Have My Wallet

(New: See a collection of seven YouTube responses to the baby Alex ad)

Playing off the awful Moveon.org baby Alex ad, we have this nice piece:

4 comments | Posted in » Barack Obama, Democratic Fearmongering, Election 2008, Paul Zannucci  

With enemies like these, McCain must be making progress

McCain's call for opening up offshore drilling has riled up the usual suspects. So far, the League of Conservation Voters, the Sierra Club and the Socialist Party's nominee for President, Barack Obama, have all cried out against the measure.

From the Washington Post: "It's disappointing that Senator McCain is clinging to the failed energy policies of the past," said Tiernan Sittenfeld, legislative director for the League of Conservation Voters.

Actually, the failed energy policy that McCain is wanting to end is the one that has prevented offshore drilling for the last twenty-seven years. When this moratorium was first introduced, offshore drilling was a messy thing. Even when there weren't official spills, there were spills, and the fragile ecosystem off the coasts was under constant attack. That was twenty-seven years ago. Not only has the technology improved and become much cleaner, but we can now drill farther out to sea than ever before.

Again from the Washington Post: "John McCain's plan to simply drill our way out of our energy crisis is the same misguided approach backed by President Bush that has failed our families for too long and only serves to benefit the big oil companies," Obama spokesman Hari Sevugan said.

Yet, in fact, President Bush has continued to renew the moratorium on offshore drilling. But apparently this misleading statement, which managed to throw in the Socialist Party's favorite words, "big oil", into the deceitful equation, didn't contain quite enough hyperbole for the man who would be the Party's leader. Obama managed to spit out, "Oil money pays for the bombs going off from Baghdad to Beirut."

There's nothing like liberal dogma for giving me that warm and fuzzy feeling about the Republican candidate. Go, John McCain.

To read the story from the Washington Post, go here: McCain Seeks to End Offshore Drilling Ban

1 comments | Posted in » American Solutions, Barack Obama, John McCain, Oil, Paul Zannucci  

The Media Assault on Dems Who Won't Fall in Line

We're seeing much made of nothing as the mainstream media falls over itself in apoplectic indignation at the thought that some moderate liberals won't hop into the extreme left conga line that has formed behind Obama. When a liberal adopts a populist cause, such as assaulting the rich or big oil, the media never suspects political expediency, and yet that is exactly what it sees the moment a more conservative Democrat withholds his public adoration of the anointed one.

In this article from the AP, Not all Democrats falling for Obama, we have reporters Ben Evans and Sam Hananel offering such proper journalistic speculation as, "Some are counting on Republican votes in their re-election bids. Some are newly minted and in rematches with 2006 opponents. Some may be wary of how their constituents will react to a black presidential candidate. Some, too, have made it a practice of distancing themselves from the national party, fearing the inevitable campaign ad that has their face morphing into Howard Dean, the party chairman, and Obama."

Elsewhere they do the legwork to find someone, Senator Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., who will give them a quote to back up their theory, "They are all scared to death about getting beat by a Republican...I don't think that if the good Lord himself had been nominated as a Democrat that some of those folks would have endorsed him. They are afraid of looking too much like a Democrat because of the kind of districts they're from."

In its shrieking hysteria over the "defections", the article also manages to play the race card, the southern card, the headhunting Republican card. It is nearly enough to give one sympathy for poor Barack Obama, who can't count on anyone to support him due to mischievous, ulterior motives. We would all just absolutely love him if only he weren't black or spuriously labeled a liberal. One can feel the true angst coming out in these emotive journalistic masterpieces. Unfortunately, journalism is supposed to be something else altogether.

Update: Contrast the above article with this piece from The Hill, about 14 Republican members of Congress who won't endorse John McCain. Here, emotions are left on the cutting room floor and differences in political philosophies are blamed.

No Comment | Posted in » Barack Obama, Media Bias, Paul Zannucci  

Breaking New Barriers: The First African-American Jimmy Carter?

9 comments | Posted in » Barack Obama, Democratic Platform, Limited Government, Paul Zannucci  

Obama and his friends. A Mother's Nightmare.

I know a lady, whom I will not name, a recent immigrant from Africa, who made the incredibly difficult decision to leave her husband behind and bring her children to America for a better future. She had formal training as a nurse, and, as such, found a lot of opportunities here. Yet life has not been easy for her. It has been a long process to bring her husband along, which is such a terrible shame; so he is still back in Africa waiting in the long bureaucratic line to come to America while his wife works and raises their children here--without the father's influence.

Without her husband at her side, times have been harder than they should have been. She has gone back to school and taken a second job. She's doing her best. She's trying hard. She's asked for nothing, and, in fact, wants no help. She, instead, has been helping other recent immigrants, letting them live in her home as they get on their feet. She is my hero.

Sadly, her oldest son, just trying to conform and find camaraderie in a land so different from the one he came from, became involved in a gang at his high school, and it was not the Computer Club gang or the Youth for Obama gang. It was, sadly, quite a more serious gang than that. The situation came to a head one day when he was almost killed during an incident. The most fortunate, God-inserted, word there was "almost".

Within two weeks of the incident, his mother shipped him off. She recognized that with the amount of work and school that she had and that without a father to help, that her son was at an age where she could not effectively control the influences over him. Lecture him as she might, he was, at heart, a boy thousands of miles from home going through a time in his life when external influences begin to supersede Mommy. So he was gone, sent to a gentler place to enter manhood, a rural Arizona community where his grandmother had immigrated some years before.

I thought of this story this morning because of Barack Obama and his clear inability to pick his friends and acquaintances. From the folks who preached at his church of twenty years:

and recently convicted money-man Tony Rezko, a extortionist and close ally of Obama:

and Rashid Khalidi, the former PLO member:

to all the unnamed staff members running the gaffe machinery from behind the scenes: Obama's Inability to Hire Good Help Rears Its Head … Again.

One can only wish that my humble and hard-working friend from Africa were Obama's mother. I sense he'd be spending the summer in Arizona with her mother instead of jetting around the country running for office.

10 comments | Posted in » Barack Obama, Obama's Associates, Paul Zannucci  

Experience. It's not just for assistant managers anymore.

Barack Obama's nomination is a great accomplishment, not just for Obama but also for America. His successful bid, perhaps more than any other event in recent American history, demonstrates how far we have come since the Civil Rights Movement. Forty years after this turbulent time, which marked the end of a era so filled with racial injustice that it's impossible to imagine today, we have nominated an African-American for the highest position in the country.

It's made all the more remarkable, and simultaneously unfortunate, because Obama clearly lacks the credentials and experience required for the job, having only entered the senate in January of 2005. This lack of experience could be forgiven, perhaps, if not for his obvious weakness in foreign policy knowledge and tact. His errors are not mere gaffes. They are much worse than than mere slips of the tongue and moments of confusion. His errors far exceed President Bush's inability to quickly name obscure foreign leaders in an interview leading up to his first election. Sure, Obama called Prime Minister Harper "the president of Canada", but that's not what is most concerning. Sure, Obama said that Iran posed no threat because it was too small, but he came back and rephrased that soon after. No, Obama has errors of the catastrophic sort, rather like the Chernobyl of foreign policy gaffes.

Just for fun, let's do an abbreviated rehash, a sort of unenthusiastic beating of the dead horse.

1) Suggesting that we might unilaterally bomb Pakistan without permission from Pakistan's government.
2) Making it a policy of negotiating with terrorist states.

That should state the case rather clearly. We're going to bomb a nuclear power ally and talk with terrorist states. One (not me, but maybe you) can perhaps forgive and overlook the presumptive nominee for naivete on domestic matters. After all, the president does not write legislation. If he wants to sit, yoga style, in the rose garden and meditate on a 100% income tax, that won't bring the tax increase into being. But the Commander-in-Chief over the military has altogether too many powers to allow someone with such bizarre notions to hold that position. Whether you receive intelligence that terrorists are hiding in an apartment in east London or in the mountains of Pakistan, you don't bomb your allies without first discussing it with your allies.

And the Commander-in-Chief should absolutely never sit down to negotiate with a terrorist state like Iran. What could possibly be gained by talks with Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad? Is Obama actually willing to make concessions, implicit in the idea of holding talks, with the man who has repeatedly opined about wiping Israel off the map? Ahmadinejad is the type of leader you try to undermine, not cozy up to.

It may be true, as the San Fransisco Chronicle satirist, Mark Morford, says, that Obama is a "Lightworker" and not like the rest of us. The problem is that the "not like the rest of us" part denotes an alarming lack of common sense when it comes to foreign policy. Bottom line: Obama needs some more seasoning (a lot more seasoning) before he can be trusted with matters of national security. The experience simply isn't there. The naivete, glaring.

4 comments | Posted in » Barack Obama, Paul Zannucci  

The time to unify has come

6 comments | Posted in » Barack Obama, Foreign Policy, John McCain, Judicial Nominations, Paul Zannucci  

Camelot Again

This is great news for the home team. Every time our beloved friends on the left feel an oncoming loss they try to resurrect so called Camelot. The most recent news has Caroline Kennedy as a possible running mate (correction: as helping find a running mate) for Obama. I nearly did cartwheels (which would of course have landed me in the hospital) when this story crossed my path. We have them on the run folks. God Bless America

http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/06/04/caroline-kennedy-joins-obama-veep-search-team/

5 comments | Posted in » Barack Obama, D.Pitney  

Time to make my choice

Where do I stand? With the democratic primaries drawing to a conclusion (I think), the time draws near to make my decision. Even today I have on ongoing internal battle over voting for McCain. In my humble opinion he has spent way too much time in the middle compromising. I wish my dream of a true blue conservative would have come true but that is not the way the cookie crumbled. I am left mulling over a so called moderate maverick.

My choice will be to step in the booth and pull the lever for McCain. For me the most important consideration is Supreme Court nominations. Presidents come and go but the judges they choose last well beyond their administrations. Several of the current judges are in failing health and may retire soon. As a country we can not afford to have the highest court in the land take a further turn towards making law. We can not afford justices who believe the Constitution is a living document. We can not afford to have justices who are more than willing to overturn the “will of the people” to further a personal political agenda.

My friends we can not afford to elect Obama (or Clinton) for fear of their nominations. I can assure you any judge they set forward will absolutely support the radical left agenda. We will be staring down the face of having to accept homosexual marriages, radical gun control, limited speech, minority rules and on and on and on. I hope if nothing else this scares you to the booth to vote against a long standing push to the left. We must at all costs protect the Presidency until we have moved the Court back to a group of strict constitutionalists.

I realize that McCain is not many of our first (or even second) choice but we can not let that stand in our way. He is our candidate now and we must insure he is elected. The “religious right” must get off their duffs as they have in the last two elections and protect themselves. If a country allows moral decline they are only a step away from collapse. If the court moves any further to the left we will see the principles of the “Ten Commandments” upon which our laws are founded completely trampled under. I for one will not let this happen. I believe we still have a chance to turn this decline around and my vote against Obama is one of many steps I will take to stop the slide. God Bless America.

4 comments | Posted in » Barack Obama, D.Pitney, John McCain, Judicial Nominations  

No wonder liberals like Obama: Convenient Morality

<----Medal of Honor for the Libs

No Comment | Posted in » Barack Obama, Hillary clinton, Paul Zannucci  

Obama's Church Apology and Defection

From Townhall.com we have a Thomas Sowell piece: Irrelevant Apologies

Writing about Obama's recent defection from his church after being Pflegerized, Sowell points out the obvious, which the media nevertheless has missed, "For any politician, what matters is not his election year rhetoric, or an election year resignation from a church, but the track record of that politician in the years before the election."

Let's make something clear. This is a deserving dead horse Sowell is whipping here. That church has been proven to be a consistent source of racial hatred, preaching divisive sermons one after another. I even heard one African American commentator shrug it off the other day by saying (paraphrased), "Well, if you were familiar with the African American experience you wouldn't be so shocked at hearing this." I suppose that's like being familiar with the Hamas movement and not being shocked by suicide bombers. If you're reading this site, I know that you are not likely the type of person who has given Obama a free pass on this, but the mainstream media is ready to move on, and we can't let them.

It is not acceptable to be associated with a church of hate for 20 years and to quit only in the middle of a presidential election. It is not at all okay to surround yourself with hate and then only extricate yourself when the polls say it is time to do so.

This is one dead horse that needs to keep being beaten.

No Comment | Posted in » Barack Obama, Paul Zannucci