An Informed Citizenry Is a Bulwark Against Tyranny

Ten minutes long, but don't miss a second of this.

The Lap Dogs That Aren't Barking

The sycophantic national press, having carried Obama throughout the campaign, now is providing ready-made excuses in advance for his upcoming struggles. No sooner does Obama call for reduced expectations, than the press obliges by telling us how hard he will have it. Why he's just like Lincoln and Roosevelt. Power Line comments:

"Well, yes, I can see the analogies. Like Lincoln, Obama will take office confronted by a threat of secession and civil war from the states that supported his opponent. No, wait....

The better analogy must be Roosevelt, who took office with the nation more than two years into a depression and with unemployment at 25%. Hey, at 6.5%, we're a quarter of the way there! In addition, of course, not only did Roosevelt face a "banking crisis" of his own, he had to worry about fascism rising in Europe and the threat of world war.

The 'two wars' meme is one we're hearing a lot, but by historical standards it's pretty silly. The war in Iraq is nearly won, while the Afghan conflict has so far claimed the lives of 609 American military personnel, every one of them a hero. But still: around 400,000 American servicemen died in World War II. Let's have a little sense of perspective here.

Actually, it isn't just Lincoln and Roosevelt who took office under more difficult conditions than Obama. Think of Truman; World War II was still raging and he had to decide to use atomic weapons to bring it to an end; beyond that, the Soviet threat was visible on the horizon. Or Eisenhower, who assumed office while the Korean War was going on. Or Richard Nixon: Vietnam and riots in the streets. Or Ronald Reagan, who began his Presidency with unemployment at 7.5 % and inflation at 12%. Was there a banking crisis? Oh yes, interest rates were at 18-20%. Now, THAT was an economic challenge! In addition, not only was the Cold War in full swing, the U.S. was losing with the Soviet Union advancing around the world."

Something's Happening Here

What it is ain't exactly clear. To quote the old Buffalo Springfield lyric. We're bombarded with "news" reports suggesting Obama has this election sewn up and the actual ballots are just a formality. Apparently the only questions left to answer are how large Obama's victory will be and how massive the Democrat majority in Congress will be. Yet there are many signs, for those who look closely, that the race is much closer than it is made to appear.

We wrote here about this topic and an excellent analysis of it by Zombie. A major element of the Obama campaign's strategy is to make an Obama victory appear to be a foregone conclusion. There are two benefits they are seeking: 1) to discourage opposition voters, so they give up prematurely and 2) to capture "go along" voters who will vote for whoever seems to be ahead.

It seems to be working so far, but is it really? All the polls show an amazing amount of "undecided" voters at this late date. It's less well-known, but there is also a large percentage of people who are refusing to participate in polls when contacted. There is reason to believe that both of these groups, when they actually vote, will be lopsidedly in favor of McCain/Palin.

Wynton Hall : Obama's Spiral of Silence - Townhall.com: "If Sen. Barack Obama loses the presidency or wins by far narrower margins than the double-digit lead some mainstream media polls predict, his weak performance will not be the result of the so-called “Bradley Effect,” which holds that black candidates underperform at the polls due to latent racism. Rather, the true culprit will be something public opinion scholars call the “Spiral of Silence Theory.”

In the 1970s, German political scientist Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann introduced a provocative and startling theory of mass communication she called the “Spiral of Silence.” Noelle-Neumann argued that when mass media create an impression that the majority of society holds one view on a topic, those who hold minority opinions are cowed into a “spiral of silence” for fear of reprisal or isolation from those in the majority."

Goodness knows it's hard to stick up for conservative ideas on the heels of George W. "No Government Spending Program Left Behind" Bush's administration. Add in the widespread attitude that anyone who would vote against Obama, or criticize him in any way, is a racist and/or dangerously angry. Most people will choose just to say nothing.

So will this Obama strategy work? It's up to us. Don't let yourself be deluded into not voting. Remember an election is not a "bet" where you win by voting with the majority. If a bad candidate wins, we all lose. Period. It could very well be that next Wednesday we'll wake up to the biggest election surprise since Harry Truman failed to lose to the inevitable President Dewey. Wouldn't that be fun to see. Even if Obama wins, at least you'll know that the disastrous results of his policies won't be your fault.

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Remember Republicans vote on Tuesday. Democrats vote on Wednesday. :)

We Are All Joe the Plumber

It's official. In less than a week the Dinosaur Media have already spent more time and effort investigating Joe Wurzelbacher, a regular guy who had the temerity to ask Obama a question, than they have spent in the past year investigating the candidate. It wasn't even a "gotcha" question, but Obama, unable to see his teleprompter from Joe's front lawn, accidentally blurted out something that betrayed his actual, i.e. socialist, views.

"It's not that I want to punish your success. I want to make sure that everybody who is behind you, that they've got a chance for success, too. My attitude is that if the economy's good for folks from the bottom up, it's gonna be good for everybody. I think when you spread the wealth around, it's good for everybody."

Before you could say, "Politics of Personal Destruction" the race was on to find some dirt, any dirt, on the man who asked the question that Obama whiffed on. John at Power Line writes of the crusade to discredit Joe in Bring me the head of Joe the Plumber:

"As Barack Obama made the rounds in his neighborhood, Joe the Plumber elicited Obama's frankly redistributionist statement that he seeks to 'spread the wealth around' in his tax plan. Clearly this cannot stand.

The question itself revealed a kind of offense against royalty that in French goes under the rubric of lèse majesté. Moreover, Obama's comment betrays a frame of mind that is unpopular among independent middle-class voters whose vote may still be up for grabs. Joe the Plumber embarrassed The Man Who Would Be King."

We haven't seen anything like this since Sarah Palin was tapped by McCain as his running mate. Sayeth The One: "Let he who is without sin ask the first question. The rest of you, shut the f*** up."

Surprise! Joe did have some things in his past he'd prefer not to have everyone know about. Who doesn't have something, be it a crazy uncle, some other nuts, a few old terrorist pals. or our own role in creating the financial crisis? Some members of the media section of the Obama campaign suggested McCain should have "vetted" Joe before talking about The Incident. However, Joe, along with the rest of us, was "vetted" back during the founding of this great country. We have the right, at least for now, to ask questions of our leaders, even questions that embarrass them.

The real issue isn't Joe or what he said, but who Obama is, what he says and what that means. The fact is that Obama's tax plan would raise tax rates dramatically on people founding and running successful small businesses. Joe doesn't own one yet, but, God bless him, he wants to and he's working hard to make it happen. That's what creates the wealth that Obama wants to redistribute to people who are, for the most part, not working as hard as Joe. And Obama calls his stealth socialism "good for everybody."

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Talk about a close call. Obama caught himself just in time. His initial thought was to say, "From each according to his abilities. To each according to his needs."

Obama said to Joe that he doesn't want to punish his success, and that's true. If he wanted to punish him, he'd give Joe a baby.

See also Mark Steyn's "Joe the Plumber vs. Joe the Hair-Plugger."

The Angry Right

Suddenly, the dinosaur media have discovered that some people at McCain-Palin rallies are angry. It seems some people there actually even dislike Barack "The One" Obama, if you can imagine. The impertinence! He has been annointed. Didn't those wingnuts get the message?

These reports of a few inappropriate catcalls from a crowd of thousands may be true, although we can't rule out plants from the Left attempting to discredit McCain-Palin supporters or plain media fabrications. Perhaps now that the MSM have discovered this angry speck in the eye of the Right, they might take a little notice of the log of seething rage that has been the public face of the Left for the past 8 years. Michelle Malkin has a good review of some of the fruits of Bush Derangement Syndrome (BDS), Palin Madness Syndrome (PMS), and McCain Hatred. Then there is this video of the wonderful, tolerant liberals of New York's Upper West Side, and Jim Treacher proves again that it's impossible to parody these guys. When we start to see MSM stories about the eyeball popping rage on the left, I'll start to take their opinions on the subject more seriously.

Which is not to say conservatives, even libertarian conservatives like myself, aren't angry. I am angry, although I'm not about to assault anyone. I'm angry about several things.

The MSM have become an arm of the Obama campaign, abandoning any pretense of objectivity. Could they bother to look into Obama's past at all? How about spending just 1/100th of the resources they spent trying to smear Sarah Palin looking into Obama's buddies: Rezko; Wright; Pfleger; and Ayers. How about equal billing for the true story of Obama's ties to the socialist New Party along with the false story of Palin and the Alaskan Independence Party? How about looking into his record in Illinois, at Harvard and at Columbia beyond what he says in his autobiographies?

Obama has been able to run his campaign as a complete cypher. He's a political chameleon, running to the left of Hillary and to the right of McCain in the same election. In the primary he was planning to gut the defense budget, including missile defense, but in the first debate with McCain, suddenly missile defense is essential to him. He's actually claiming that he'll prosecute the war in Afghanistan more agressively than McCain. Who really believes that? Not his Nutroots supporters, who know that's just a put on to fool the rest of us. If any previous statements become inconvenient, he just denies he ever made them, and the press plays along. He's a bullshitter, constantly puffing up his resume with exaggerated or phony claims.

While posing as a "post-partisan," "post-racial" candidate, Obama has managed to run one of the most visciously partisan and openly race-baiting campaigns in history. McCain runs an ad comparing Obama to celebrity airheads, and gets attacked for "racism." McCain points out the links between Obama and former Fannie Mae CEOs, one white one black, who made millions while ruining the financial system, and those ads are "racist." Palin notes the Ayers connection, and that's, take a guess, "racist." Is it possible there exists some way to criticize Obama's record, words or deeds that is not racist? Perhaps a McCain ad that agreed that we need Hope and Change, but claimed we should Do More would pass muster. Nope, racist.

Joe Biden is a walking gaffe machine, but for some reason that doesn't matter at all. In the debate with Palin he made some ridiculous statements about "when we kicked Hezbollah out of Lebanon." Had Palin said that, the election would have been over at that moment. Even accepting the "official" explanation that he meant to say Syria, it still made no sense at all. Recently, he claimed that Franklin Roosevelt went on TV after the 1929 Crash to talk to America. This was odd, since Roosevelt was not yet president and TV had not been invented. Right after 9/11, Biden had this brainstorm:

At the Tuesday-morning meeting with committee staffers, Biden launches into a stream-of-consciousness monologue about what his committee should be doing, before he finally admits the obvious: "I'm groping here." Then he hits on an idea: America needs to show the Arab world that we're not bent on its destruction. "Seems to me this would be a good time to send, no strings attached, a check for $200 million to Iran," Biden declares. He surveys the table with raised eyebrows, a How do ya like that? look on his face.

He's there as the foreign policy heavyweight to add "gravitas" to the ticket. We can all feel so much better about an Obama presidency, knowing that Biden will be guiding him in key decisions. Yet the MSM perpetuate the myth of Biden's foreign policy expertise.

Update: Added the forgotten link above to Biden's suggestion to send a $200 million jizya to Iran to encourage future bombings.