May 17, 2012
FSM HOT TOPICS
Exclusive: Monday, September 1
by PRESIDENTIAL WATCH September 1, 2008
See outstanding satire, “Ode to Obama” - HERE.
See PUMAS for Palin! CLICK HERE.
Read and view Sarah Palin in her own words. GO HERE.
Has Joe Biden been drinkin’? This kind of campaigning isn’t likely to help Barack, against the McCain-Palin ticket! View video HERE.
Don't miss Tale of the Tape: Sarah Palin vs. Barack Obama!! GO HERE.
The Moose Hunting “Barracuda”
Dick McDonald, Dick McDonald.Blogspot.com
Sarah Palin was the point Guard on the state’s winning basketball team. The team members nicknamed her “Barracuda”. She and her father are big “moose hunters”. Her son will be fighting in Iraq soon. She opted to keep her new baby son with “Down Syndrome” at the same time the woman was the Governor of Alaska. Her first act as Governor was to sell the Governor’s private jet. She won the race promising to clean up the corruption including destroying Republican Senator Ted Stevens and his “Bridge to Nowhere”. Today John McCain has chosen her to be the nominee for Vice-President of the United States.
She must be something special she has five kids and was runner-up in the Miss Alaska contest in 1984. She has the toughest job in America – a mother. She is married to her high school sweetheart and they celebrate their 20th anniversary today. Right at this moment she is speaking for the first time and she is one powerful speaker who will make mincemeat out of many of her detractors. She is a reformer with a record and she has all those attributes men celebrate - and sometime wither under - a phenomenal memory and an ability to make us tow that line we so often want to cross.
She is a hockey mom and the wife of a commercial fisherman, a member of the NRA and a pro-life advocate. Can this election be any more different? Her approval rating in Alaska is above 80%, which is totally phenomenal in any state. Apparently her reputation with the people is that the countryside is littered with the bodies of those who challenged her. Wow! McCain you did it again. You found an attractive and effective women – I can’t wait to for this to all play out. Read article.
North to Alaska
The Editors, NY Post.com
Democrats would be foolish to take Palin's candidacy lightly. As one pollster told The Weekly Standard: "The landscape is littered with the bodies of those who have crossed Sarah."
And her record as a tough corruption fighter - especially against her own party - sends a much-more-powerful message about fighting Washington's ingrained culture than does Obama's uninspired selection of consummate DC insider Joe Biden.
Yes, Sarah Palin's selection is a gutsy, maybe even a risky pick - but one that reinforces McCain's image as a maverick who does the unexpected. Read article.
The Palin Pick
Editors, NRO.com
By picking Alaska governor Sarah Palin as his running mate, John McCain has wowed the public and enthused the Right. He has reinforced some of his winning themes — that he has the mindset of an outsider and a fighter against corruption. He has also reinforced his appeal as the candidate more in touch with traditional values on moral issues.
None of McCain’s possible choices was perfect, and attention is being paid to the way that Palin undercuts other McCain themes, such as the importance of experience in foreign policy. Palin will have to reassure voters of her steadiness when she speaks at the Republican convention and when she debates Joe Biden. McCain, meanwhile, will have to carry most of the foreign-policy load himself and showcase his good health.
We hope that the choice of Palin also signals a decisive turn toward a campaign theme of fighting for the middle class. McCain and Palin can and should say that they will fight to protect Americans from our foreign enemies, to stop liberal excesses, and to reform dysfunctional institutions. They should not accept the portrait of middle-class Americans as hapless victims that so many of the Democratic speakers this week portrayed; but they need to show that they share middle-class frustrations. Strength in foreign policy; reforms of taxes and health care geared to the middle class; and a moderate social conservatism: It’s a potentially winning message, and now Republicans have a ticket that is suited to it. Read article.
The Sarah Sensation
Martin Sieff, Human Events.com
Sen. John McCain has gone crazy as a fox in picking Sarah Palin, bold as a lioness, for his vice presidential running mate.
The move was brave and brilliant, and it puts McCain right back in contention just when Barack Obama thought he was poised to open up a wide and perhaps insurmountable lead. Instead he and his team will be reeling from the straight right McCain has just landed on his forehead.
Palin is an even newer figure on the national U.S. political scene than Obama. She was the first female governor of Alaska and the youngest in the state’s history. She will now be only the second woman to run on the national ticket of one of the two main parties in U.S. history, almost a quarter century after Rep. Geraldine Ferraro (D-NY) crashed and burned as former Vice President Walter Mondale’s running mate in 1984.
Palin is a very strong conservative who is adamantly anti-choice. But she still has the potential to attract a significant number of female voters away from the Democrats and to embarrass Obama. Read article.
Palin? Perfect
IBD Editorials.com
John McCain's choice of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate is brilliant. Her individualism matches McCain's. But it's the new strengths she brings to the ticket that make the team formidable.
McCain's and Palin's similarities present an emerging political coherence and unity of message that should appeal to voters. But it's new strengths to the McCain ticket that make Palin's entry truly exciting. Several will add fire to McCain's campaign.
Palin, for example, represents the frontier. Alaska and its energy development are at the forefront of American interests. As oil prices soar to record levels, the state's oil and gas could free the U.S. from the tyranny of hostile foreign oil suppliers — including Russia, Iran and Venezuela — that are using high prices to amass power and create trouble abroad.
Palin has been a strong voice for liberating her state's energy for the benefit of the nation. Her recent legislative victory establishing a 7,200-mile natural gas pipeline across North America — after 30 years of failure — is a remarkable accomplishment.
Alaska's leadership will add to Palin's appeal in other frontier states in the Rocky Mountains, Great Plains and pockets of the rural Midwest and mid-Atlantic. Like Alaska with its oil, these are rugged regions desperate to develop their clean coal and shale oil resources.
Sarah Palin is a governor with two years of authentic executive experience. This spares this race the specter of an all-senator show. And history shows it's far better preparation for the presidency than other offices. A governor must execute budgets, pull factions together, compromise on tough issues and make the buck stop there. If Palin's short stint as governor calls into question her experience, it's still superior to Barack Obama's two years in the U.S. Senate. Read article.
Desperation from Democrats
Ed Morrissey, Hot Air.com
Now that almost a full day has passed since John McCain has named Sarah Palin as his running mate, we can already see the themes his political opponents will take in criticizing her. Irony runs through a number of these arguments, as most of them apply more to their own ticket than to the Republicans, and one in particular is just so despicable as to drop the jaw to the ground. Let’s take a tour of these, shall we?
It’s a desperation pick — he didn’t make up his mind until Thursday!
McCain did make his selection on Thursday, but apparently well before the Barack Obama speech that supposedly spooked him into foregoing Mitt Romney or Tim Pawlenty.
What of it?
When did Barack Obama make up his mind about Joe Biden? Biden had told reporters, “I’m not the guy” just days before finally getting picked as the running mate. Obama was desperate for anyone with foreign-policy gravitas after stumbling through the Caucasus crisis on his own. Paul Begala noted that it appeared Vladimir Putin had picked Obama’s running mate.
Besides, why would McCain be “desperate”? Read article.
Barack’s Chutzpah Moment
Larry Johnson, No Quarter.net.blog
I never realized how shrewd and smart John McCain could be. In selecting Sarah Palin, Governor of Alaska, as his running mate he dared the Democrats to make the case, as they have, that she’s not qualified because she “lacks foreign policy experience.” He understands that when the media decides to investigate Governor Palin they will be forced to conclude that she actually has more foreign policy experience than Obama. As Susan pointed out below, she was in Germany visiting wounded troops long before Barack sought to speak at the Brandenburg Gate. She is a Commander-in-Chief of the Alaska National Guard and those troops have been in combat.
So, if you are running Barack’s campaign, you don’t want to renew the focus on your own candidate’s zero experience as an elected executive do you? Oh hell yes. Clueless to the concept of irony the Barack team is trying to attack Palin’s “paltry” experience. They did this with a straight face. Did anyone think to check Barack Obama’s resume? As the media starts asking questions of Palin, which they have refused to ask of Barack, the discrepancy will become apparent and Barack will find himself in the spotlight. If the standard applies to Palin it must apply to Barack. Unlike Obama, Palin actually knows something about balancing a budget, getting the streets fixed, getting the trash picked up, and going after corrupt politicians and lobbyists.
Barack? Hell, he funneled money to the likes of Tony Rezko and did nothing to ensure that constituents in his district living in sub-standard housing were protected. And Barack’s one foray into “management” as the lackey of Bill Ayers on the Annenberg Challenge will be shown to have been a corrupt, insider trading scheme in which he helped steer money to cronies and ignored genuine education reform. That’s why is campaign is fighting so viciously to keep the media from looking at that part of his cuddling with unrepentant terrorist, Bill Ayers. Read article.
Sarah Palin: antidote to age and Clinton's disaffected voters
Daniel Nasaw, Guardian.co.uk
Picking the Alaska governor is a bold play from John McCain for the potentially millions of disaffected Hillary Clinton voters who have remained impervious to Democrats' pleas for party unity. She presents a new face unfamiliar to most of America, and is likely to stir up the race and excite the news media.
At 44, she is a youthful addition to the Republican ticket. Sarah Palin is an avid angler and hunter, a member of the politically powerful National Rifle Association, and her husband has native-American roots. She is also a former runner-up in the Miss Alaska beauty contest.
But Palin brings several risks. She has been in office less than two years, and would be hard pressed to go toe-to-toe in debate with Democratic vice-presidential nominee Joe Biden, a veteran senator and foreign policy expert.
The Democrats will also raise questions about whether Palin passes the "commander-in-chief test" — that is, would she be able to assume the presidency should McCain, 72, become incapacitated.
Her nomination poses an interesting choice for the US electorate between the country's first African-American president and its first woman vice-president. Read article.
The Biggest Missing Story in Politics
Bruce Walker, American Thinker.com
The Battleground Poll, the most respected and thorough of all public opinion polls, released its latest results on August 20th. Although many people read this poll for the data on voter preference in upcoming elections, for voter opinions about the two major political parties, for what things matter most to voters, I always zip past this data in the first fifteen pages of poll results and go straight to Question D3, which very quietly and totally ignored proclaims the biggest missing story in American politics and which is the only story, in the long run, that really matters.
In August 2008, Americans answered that question this way: (1) 20% of Americans considered themselves to be very conservative; (2) 40% of Americans considered themselves to be somewhat conservative; (3) 2% of Americans considered themselves to be moderate; (4) 27% of Americans considered themselves to be somewhat liberal; (5) 9% of Americans considered themselves to be very liberal; and (6) 3% of Americans did not know or refused to answer.
Sixty percent of Americans considered themselves conservative. Does this mean that most Americans do not know what "conservative" means? No: The question specifically provides an out to people who are not sure about their ideology; it provides an out to people who want to be considered "moderate." Americans reject those choices. They overwhelmingly define themselves as "conservative." Read article.
This is not a peacetime election for Al Qaeda
Jonathan Rauch, JWR.com
The Democrats take the problem of terrorism seriously; the draft platform makes that clear. Where security strategy is concerned, the 2004 and 2008 platforms are basically the same, except that today's Democrats promise a brisk withdrawal from Iraq and add emphasis on Pakistan. Four years ago, as again today, the platform called for improved international cooperation against terrorism; better public diplomacy; a redoubling of efforts to stabilize Afghanistan and to roust terrorist havens; stronger measures to prevent nuclear proliferation and keep nuclear materials out of mischief; nonmilitary democracy promotion; energy security; and better-focused homeland-security measures.
What has changed in four years is not the strategy but the conceptual framework around it. In 2004, the Democrats' proposals were presented as stratagems in a war against "a global terrorist movement of many groups, funded from different sources and with separate agendas, but all committed to assaulting the United States and free and open societies around the globe."
In 2008, by contrast, the Democrats present their security proposals as steps worth taking for a host of reasons, of which thwarting terrorism is just one. Terrorism, indeed, is nestled among threats that include weapons of mass destruction, rogue states, weak states, rising powers, addiction to oil, and global warming.
Before Obama and the Democrats move on too quickly, a gentle reminder: This is not a peacetime election for Al Qaeda. This is a party whose base has at times managed to seem more alarmed and disgusted by President Bush's war than by Osama bin Laden's.
"When you think about Obama's vulnerabilities, and his need to capture wavering Democrats and swing voters, questions about whether he is strong enough and patriotic enough are definitely on the table," says Gil Troy, a historian at McGill University and a visiting scholar at the Bipartisan Policy Center, a centrist Washington think tank. Read article.
“Swiftboating,” Media Myths and the 2004 Campaign
Scott Swett, AIM.org
The media’s ability to shape opinion derives from its power to slant the news―the pervasive activism known as “media bias”―and also from its power to choose what is and is not reported. But 2004 marked a watershed in American political history. That was the year the old media lost control of our national conversation.
In May 2004, an unprecedented press conference took place at the National Press Club in Washington. Spokesmen for the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, a group consisting of hundreds of Vietnam veterans, charged John Kerry with lying about the extent of U.S. war crimes in Vietnam and with misrepresenting his own military record. The Swift Vets included Kerry’s entire former chain of command from Vietnam and dozens of eyewitnesses to his actions. Kerry, they said, was unfit to be America’s Commander-in-Chief.
The old media responded in classic fashion. CBS News ignored the charges against the Democratic nominee and attacked the veterans, using Kerry campaign talking points. Dan Rather labeled the group a “Republican operation” while Byron Pitts falsely reported that the veterans had used similar tactics against Senators Max Cleland and John McCain. ABC, NBC, and the AP simply pretended the event had never happened.
The story might well have ended there, but the veterans found other ways to reach the public. Read article.
We Have Set So Many Free – Obama’s background ignores America’s greatness
Lt. Col. Michael Burkert, NMJ.us
One of the issues that’s come out of the 2008 presidential campaign is that of extreme leftist ideology espoused by such liberal icons as Jeremiah Wright, Louis Farrakhan, William Ayers et al. All of these entities are close to Democrat candidate Barack Hussein Obama. He has yet to denounce their anti-American, racist and bigoted rants, with the recent exception of Reverend Wright. In that case, he only denounced Wright because of a perceived personal affront. Obama will not denounce William Ayers or Louis Farrakhan unless it becomes a political necessity to do so.
Sadly, Mr. Obama adheres to many of the themes of anti-Americanism and wears his radical anti-Americanism on his sleeve. Make no mistake about it; both Mr. and Mrs. Obama are radical liberal-socialists bent on destroying our nation, as we know it. They share the same disdain for Americanism, and as Mrs. Obama has declared, “we must change our history and our traditions.” After twenty years of anti-White and anti-American rhetoric, much of it has sunk into the Obama’s hearts and souls.
You are all familiar with the main theme, that being that all things American are bad, all things anti-American are good. Read article.
New Democrats’ Near-Sighted Gaze: Obama, Miles High on the past.
Ruth Wedgwood, NRO.com
In his coronation speech at Denver’s Mile High stadium on Thursday night, Barack Obama tried to wrap himself in the mantle of the Democrats of past generations.
Trouble is, the coat doesn’t fit. The internationalism of the old Democratic party has vanished.
Obama summoned the memory of Franklin Roosevelt. But FDR understood the importance of standing up to Hitler, beating back America’s traditional isolationism. He did not believe that “tough, direct diplomacy” would work against a thug like Adolf Hitler.
And then there’s Harry Truman, who brought Americans to realize that even after the burdens of fighting World War II, they had to provide leadership in a world that faced the second behemoth of Soviet Communism.
And of course, John Kennedy, who promised to bear any burden to protect liberty in the world.
The current Democratic candidate has turned his back on this tradition. His pollsters have told him that the economy is his strong suit. And certainly foreign policy is not a trump card for a politician from Chicago’s South Side.
So in the attempt to mask his weak suit, the senator chose to deliver what must, however reluctantly, be called an isolationist speech.
He denounced free trade, even though an open economy provides products that are cheaper for Americans to buy. He talked about the value of cost-free diplomacy. But the senator did not offer a strategy, much less a cut line, to meet urgent challenges. Read article.
Did Soros Pick the Plagiarist?
Cliff Kincaid, AIM.org
You don’t have to be a conspiracy theorist to detect the hidden hand of George Soros in Obama’s Biden pick.
The media pundits say that Biden has good foreign policy credentials. But that assumes that Biden has ideas of his own and is not “borrowing” them from somewhere else. Soros is probably the source of many of them. He has financially supported Obama, Biden and other Democrats on the Foreign Relations Committee.
What the public has to understand―and the media are not making clear―is that Biden may be the strongest supporter of the United Nations in the entire Congress today. He even supports an International Criminal Court. Plus, he helped ram Obama’s pro-U.N. Global Poverty Act and the U.N.’s Law of the Sea Treaty through his Senate Foreign Relations Committee. The former was accomplished with no hearings and the latter with stacked hearings.
Years ago, Biden wrote an article for the Wall Street Journal (assuming that he actually wrote the article) under the headline, “How I Learned to Love the New World Order.” This can only be understood by taking into account a pamphlet entitled, “NATO and the New World Order,” written by billionaire George Soros, a major funder of Democratic Party politicians, including Biden, and the left-wing of the party. The Soros plan, which is identical to Biden’s, is to make NATO, once an anti-Communist alliance, into a military arm of the U.N. Read article.
The Denver Dems Didn’t Make the Sale
Larry Kudlow, NRO.com
Do Americans really blame “rich” people? Or do they actually believe success is a good thing and should not be punished? Do rank-and-file working folks really want to do away with the secret ballot for unionization in the form of the so-called card check? And if there were a three-house Dem sweep, wouldn’t Obama’s middle-class tax credit be overturned in favor of even more government spending, just as Bill Clinton’s plans were subverted back in 1993? The National Taxpayers Union says Obama’s new spending would total $344 billion. That’s a big number. One has to wonder if that’s the opening bid or the final one.
The Obama economists sincerely believe that theirs is a growth program. His advisors are friends of mine — all of them terribly smart: Jason Furman, Austan Goolsbee, Robert Reich, Jarrod Bernstein. So this is surely not personal on my part. But I question their economic model. Raising marginal tax rates will minimize — not maximize — economic growth and jobs. Ditto for enlarging the size, scope, and sweep of government.
Business cycles come and go. Each has its own set of excesses and subsequent corrections. It is the nature of free-market capitalism. But heavy-handed government solutions are being rejected worldwide, and it seems foolhardy for the USA to move away from economic freedom when virtually the rest of the world is moving toward it.
One of the greatest tax reformers of all time was John F. Kennedy. He slashed marginal tax rates across the board for businesses and people of all income levels. The economy boomed in the 1960s. Reagan copied the JFK model in the 1980s. Are we turning back this supply-side model? I fear the Obama men are doing just that. I think that fear is worrying the stock market right now. Read article.
Barack Obama: Leap of Faith
Danniel Henninger, Online WSJ.com
Sen. Obama accumulated his victorious lead early with a liberal coalition willing to vote for him mainly for reasons of faith – upper-middle-class whites, black voters and young idealists -- all attempting to complete the civil-rights promise, answer the post-partisan appeal, or vote against the war and George Bush.
Hillary's wins in the big states above were portents. His coalition's limitations hit the wall in Ohio. Here Sen. Clinton discovered her Rosie-the-Riveter persona, and it worked. I watched her sell bread-and-butter policy before blue-collar crowds in Youngstown, Akron and Cleveland. She was tremendously good at it. He just wasn't. The Sunday before the Ohio vote, Sen. Obama abandoned Ohio. The way Hillary won in these crucial November swing states may have fatally damaged his candidacy.
Does a candidate for the U.S. presidency have to be able to connect somehow with white working-class voters who didn't attend college to win? The answer, 40 years after the Civil Rights Act of 1964, is no longer about race. It's about the most fundamental question a plain-thinking voter asks: Does this guy get me?
Sen. Obama's biography is as compelling as his supporters claim. His problem is that there is nothing in it to suggest he has spent any significant time thinking about these people other than as a political abstraction. It's made more difficult by the fact that it is so hard for them to get a sure grip on him. When a politician leaves no political trail, some voters get lost. For Sen. Obama, after this long campaign, too many still look lost. Read article.
The Mainstream Moron Media
R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr., Spectator.org
I believe I made a mistake when I decided not to attend the Democratic National Convention. The consequence of that decision has been that I have had to watch its highlights on national television. There the media gaggle, with few exceptions, has plangently repeated -- tediously and cheerlessly -- many things that I know to be untrue.
The preeminent untruth resounding across the airways is that the Clintons are political geniuses. They are to electioneering what Ludwig van Beethoven was to the piccolo, or Slobodan Milosevic was to ethnic cleansing, to wit, consummate artists. Since the early 1990s I have sedulously researched the Clintons' life and work. My finding is that they are mediocrities in all things political, save one: huckstering.
Moreover, they are accomplished hucksters solely because the media are composed of credulous ignoramuses. Do you think I am being ungentlemanly? I am not alone. Columnist Tony Blankley, a gentleman to the utmost, coined the term "the mainstream moron media." My guess is that Blankley was perfectly serene when he typed out that line. Read article.
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