Kevin Fagan, SFGate.com

 

It was here in Arizona, during John McCain's first run for public office in 1982, that the former Vietnam War prisoner came up with the line that assured his career in public office.

 

McCain, then 46 and struggling to capture the Republican primary for a seat in Congress, was grimacing during a campaign forum at the latest of many accusations that he was a carpetbagger, having just moved in the past year to the congressional district in Tucson he wanted to represent.

 

He'd been diplomatic up to that point. But his soon-to-be-famous temper, sarcasm and no-holds-barred qualities all suddenly exploded.

 

"Listen, pal," he snarled. "I spent 22 years in the Navy. ... We had to live in all parts of the country, all parts of the world. ... When I think about it now, the place I lived in longest in my life was Hanoi." The audience sat shocked, then erupted into thunderous applause.

 

McCain crushed his opponents in the election. He moved easily to the U.S. Senate four years later. Grant Woods, adviser to that first campaign and a close aide for most years since, sat in his downtown Phoenix office the other day and chuckled at the memory of the response. The POW horror, the military service to country, the shot from the hip, the roaming nature of McCain's life - it was the essence of John McCain back then, and it is who he is today.

 

"Cocky? In your face? Yeah, that's who John is, because that's who he has had to be," Woods said. "Just look at his life!" Read article.

 

Walter E. Williams, Townhall.com

 

There is a H.L. Mencken quotation that captures the essence of this year's politics: "The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed, and hence clamorous to be led to safety, by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." The media, economic "experts" and both presidential candidates are making bad-talking our economy key features of their campaign messages.

 

For politicians and their hangers-on, keeping the populace alarmed is a strategy to seize more control over our lives. It's so important that Senator John McCain took his economic adviser, former Senator Phil Gramm, to the woodshed for saying that America had "become a nation of whiners" and described the current slowdown as a "mental recession." Had Senator Gramm added that economically today's Americans are better off than at any time in our history, he might have lost his job altogether. Let's look at it. Read article.

Sher Zieve, RenewAmerica.us

 

The current financial crisis facing the United States of America and the world began with the US home ownership debacle and President William Jefferson Clinton. In 1994, Clinton signed a bill to promote low-income home ownership that Business Week calls "one that argues for creative measures to promote homeownership" for those applicants who did not qualify for fixed mortgages.

 

And these applicants came in droves and were almost always approved — no matter their credit histories or ability to pay. Said "creative ownership" began the heavy distribution of ARMs (Adjustable Rate Mortgages) that ensued. These ARMs began low but, are based on the market. As the market changed, the rates — and subsequent monthly payments for homeowners — rose to rates that the homeowners could no longer afford. Foreclosures on the ARM properties began and, like Dominos cascading onto one another, the current financial meltdown began.

 

Both Fannie Mae and Freddie MAC were essentially and quietly taken over by the Clinton Administration and his operatives and supporters — including Franklin Raines who ran Fannie Mae and ended up with over $6M his first year — raided both corporations which had become their personal slush funds. From his days of running Fannie Mae, Franklin Raines is reported to have accumulated a personal net worth of over $100M. Another Clintonian buddy — Jamie Gorelick (remember her from the CIA/FBI fiasco?) — is also said to be personally worth in excess of $100M. Read article.

 

Morris & McGann, Vote.com

 

The Wall Street mess now takes center stage in the presidential race. With company after company biting the dust, can John McCain survive as the representative of the incumbent party?

 

So far, McCain has focused on a populist criticism of Wall Street and its irresponsibility, firing away at corporate greed and lending practices.

 

But he has to fuse the issues of the economy and taxes -- to show how Barack Obama's tax proposals would lead to a catastrophic implosion of the nation's capital base.

 

With the top Wall Street houses crashing for a want of capital, how can Obama justify an increase, and perhaps a doubling, of the capital-gains tax?

 

Obama has already said he might drop his tax hikes if the economy weakens. After noting that it's pretty sad when your best idea for how to help the economy is to abandon your own proposals, McCain should call on Obama to give up on those new taxes right now.

 

People will sit on their capital rather than invest it if their gains are to be taxed at twice the current rate. And raising taxes on a troubled economy is akin to bleeding a sick patient -- medieval "medicine" that does more to kill than to cure. Read article.

Barry Farber, NewsMax.com

 

Once upon a time some colonists got tired of being pushed around by the king in the mother country. That gave us the United States of America.

 

One day the victims of Communism got tired of being pushed around, and that gave us the Poznan riots of 1956, the Hungarian Revolution later that same year, the Prague Spring, Solidarity, the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the end of European Communism. And once upon a time the Jews got tired of being pushed around and that gave us the State of Israel and the Six-Day War.

 

Now it's the Christians' turn.

 

The nomination of Sarah Palin is now the Hungarian Revolution and Six-Day War of American Christians. A mother who chooses not to abort a child with Down's Syndrome. An unashamed believer in God who un-apologetically participates in the all-day-singing-and-dinner-on-the-ground style of country-and-peasant Christianity.

 

Make no mistake. The very nomination of Sarah Palin is the revolver in the hand of the Ghetto Jew and the Molotov cocktail in the hand of the Hungarian Freedom Fighter. If I, as a Jew, am enjoying this dramatic payback, what must the Christians be feeling? 

 

Prediction: The unrelenting attacks on Palin's past will have as much success in stopping her as an imaginary line called the Belgian border had in stopping Hitler's tanks headed south into France in 1940. Read article.

 

Thomas Sowell, Townhall.com

 

Who was it who said, "crack-brained meddling by the authorities" can "aggravate an existing crisis"? Ronald Reagan? Milton Friedman? Adam Smith? Not even close. It was Karl Marx. Unlike most leftists today, Marx studied economics.

 

Is the current financial crisis going to lead to crack-brained meddling or to some rational actions?

 

Back in 2002, the Wall Street Journal said: "The time for the political system to focus on Fannie and Fred isn't when we have a housing crisis; by then it will be too late." The hybrid public-and-private nature of these financial giants amounts to "privatizing profit and socializing risk," since taxpayers get stuck with the tab when high-risk finances don't work out.

 

Both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have been generous in their contributions to politicians' political campaigns, so it is perhaps not surprising that politicians have been generous to them.

 

This is certainly part of "the mess in Washington" that Barack Obama talks about. But don't expect him to clean it up. Franklin Raines, who made mega-millions for himself while mismanaging Fannie Mae into a financial disaster, is one of Obama's advisers. Read article.

Stanley Kurtz, Online WSJ.com

 

Despite having authored two autobiographies, Barack Obama has never written about his most important executive experience. From 1995 to 1999, he led an education foundation called the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC), and remained on the board until 2001. The group poured more than $100 million into the hands of community organizers and radical education activists.

 

The CAC was the brainchild of Bill Ayers, a founder of the Weather Underground in the 1960s. Among other feats, Mr. Ayers and his cohorts bombed the Pentagon, and he has never expressed regret for his actions. Barack Obama's first run for the Illinois State Senate was launched at a 1995 gathering at Mr. Ayers's home.

 

The Obama campaign has struggled to downplay that association. Last April, Sen. Obama dismissed Mr. Ayers as just "a guy who lives in my neighborhood," and "not somebody who I exchange ideas with on a regular basis." Yet documents in the CAC archives make clear that Mr. Ayers and Mr. Obama were partners in the CAC. Those archives are housed in the Richard J. Daley Library at the University of Illinois at Chicago and I've recently spent days looking through them. Read article.

Gateway Pundit.blogspot.com

 

Democratic state Senator Hollis French, the lead investigator in the smear campaign against Governor Palin, promised his party that the results of the Troopergate probe would be an "October surprise" that would "likely be damaging to the administration."

 

French is one of the 20%'ers in Alaska who does not approve of Governor Sarah Palin.

 

He also is a staunch Obama supporter.

 

Governor Palin fired former public safety director Walt Monegan for several incidents of insubordination. Hollis French and Monegan are close friends.

On his resume French states that he served in the Marine Corps.

 

However, this does not appear to be accurate.

 

Hollis "Gunny" French (D)-- is guilty of misrepresenting that he served in the Marine Corps - when in fact his ONLY exposure to the Marine Corp was attending a Marine ROTC PLC - from which he was DISMISSED and granted a "Discharge" as a Private.

--He NEVER attended, much less graduate from either of the USMC Boot Camps.

--He FAILED to pass the ROTC Platoon Leader Course - thus failing to make the grade to become a Marine Officer.

--Hardly service as a Marine, and the folks in Alaska caught up with French's claims....

--Folks in Alaska to this day, still jokingly refer to the jackass poseur as "Gunny French" and he hates the reminder of his lie. Read article.

 

Austin Hill, Townhall.com

 

Is it time for America to “get even” with “rich people?”

 

It may have been yet another one of a long line of his famous political gaffes, but Vice Presidential candidate Joe Biden spelled-out the Obama-Biden economic plan with shameless clarity and candor.

 

In a recent interview on ABC-TV’s “Good Morning America,” Senator Biden said, “We want to take money and put it in the pockets of the middle class peop...” Do we need any further explanation?

 

For the entire nineteen months of his presidential campaign, Barack Obama has been crossing the country, fanning the flames of resentment towards people who are perceived to be financially successful. He has continuously criticized what he call’s the “Bush tax cuts for the rich,” implying that the Bush administration cut taxes for wealthier Americans, while leaving tax rates the same, or even raising them, for less wealthy income earners (this, of course, is not true, but Obama has made it clear that “the rich” don’t ever “deserve” to have their tax rates cut).

 

Obama has also proposed a “federal crack down” on what he deems “excessive pay” for corporate executives. Read article.

 

James Taranto, Online WSJ.com

 

Barack Obama's presidential campaign has prompted a lot of talk about the "Bradley effect," a k a the "Wilder effect"--the supposed tendency of opinion polls to overestimate support for black candidates. The effect is named for Tom Bradley and Douglas Wilder, the Democratic nominees for governor of California in 1982 and Virginia in 1989, respectively. Both men were black; their Republican opponents, George Deukmejian and Marshall Coleman, were white. Both seemed to be doing much better in opinion polls than they actually did at the ballot box.

 

Surveys a month before the election showed Bradley leading Deukmejian by a margin of between 9% and 22%. By late October, Bradley's lead had closed to 6%. Deukmejian won the election by a bit over 1%. (In mid-October Deukmejian had fired his campaign manager, Bill Roberts, for predicting Bradley's erosion of support and ascribing it to racial prejudice.) Wilder defeated Coleman, but by less than 0.4% after having led in the polls by 4% to 15%.

 

One problem with the hypothesis of the Bradley effect is that it rests so heavily on these two examples, both a generation old. A new paper by Daniel Hopkins, a fellow at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, addresses this objection. Read article.

David R. Stokes, Townhall.com

 

As this year’s campaign moves toward the final stretch, the frenetic media-driven discussion about whether or not Sarah Palin is prepared for the presidency continues. Apparently, few have noticed that she is not actually running for that office. But how does she compare to others who have sought the nation’s number two job since World War II?

 

With all the talk about whether or not a vice presidential candidate is prepared for the presidency itself, the fact is that the most effective running mates have not been people who instantly resonated with voters as presidential. On the contrary, the best of the lot have been good team players, hard campaigners, and politicians who understood that it wasn’t about them. They balanced, complimented, and did their best to help the person in the top spot to win.

 

Whether or not a person who steps from some other duty to run for vice president is prepared at that moment for the actual presidency is not the real issue. If elected, the vice presidency itself will provide ample training.

 

Sarah Palin may have a few things to learn in her new role as Republican vice presidential nominee, but she is certainly no Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. She is a superb campaigner, compelling communicator, and charismatic crowd pleaser. If John McCain is elected, he will make sure that she is prepared to become president, should circumstances ever call for that.

 

Of course, the real question is: Is anyone ever completely prepared to be president of the United States? Read article.

 

John Hawkins, Townhall.com

 

Barack Obama's surrogates have been trying to convince the American people that his judgment is so impeccable that his lack of experience is irrelevant. However, it's hard to make that case when the candidate in question is the single biggest gaffe machine to hit American politics since Howard Dean. You think Joe Biden cranks out a lot of dumb quips? Well, Biden is a rank amateur compared to Obama. As you read these brainless comments, keep in mind that the biggest challenge I had in creating this list was limiting it to only 10 snafus.

 

In fact, there were so many of them that some of Obama's most famous slip-ups, like "I don't want them punished with a baby" and "Why can't I just eat my waffle?" didn't even make the list.

 

Well, let's get to it, shall we? Read article.

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