M. Sidney Wallace, Gulf1.com

 

In the first presidential debate on Friday evening, I was totally unimpressed with each of the two presidential candidates. On one side of the screen there was a tall dark babbling idiot that looked and spoke more like Alfred E. Newman than a leading candidate. What was even worse was the number of times that he kept saying, I agree with John on this issue. He had absolutely no original ideas on anything happening on the face of planet Earth. 

 

On the other side of the stage was an experienced senior individual who wanted to reach out to the other side to form a consensus and move the nation forward.

 

Here is the way I have made up my mind. I cannot vote for Obama because he goes against everything I have been taught from birth. He wants to totally destroy the United States from within. He wants a United States like his father’s homeland of Kenya. He wants every individual to have his own thatched roof hut to sleep in. He wants every village to have a whole gaggle of witch doctors to dance around camp fires to ward off evil spirits. He believes that his government bureaucrats can best determine what each individual needs.

 

I will vote for John McCain for one single reason. SARAH PALIN! Read article.

Mary Grabar, Pajamas Media.com

 

Watching first presidential debate, I shrieked when Barack Obama said in response to John McCain’s suggestion of a spending freeze to alleviate our financial crisis, “The problem with a spending freeze is you’re using a hatchet where you need a scalpel. There are some programs that are very important that are under-funded. I want to increase early childhood education and the notion that we should freeze that when there may be, for example, this Medicare subsidy doesn’t make sense.”

 

In response to McCain’s suggestion of considering a spending freeze except for “the caring of veterans, national defense, and several other vital issues,” Obama had the audacity to suggest increases for government preschools. Then he suggested cutting the military budget: “Let me tell you another place to look for some savings. We are currently spending $10 billion a month in Iraq when they have a $79 billion surplus. It seems to me that if we’re going to be strong at home as well as strong abroad, that we have to look at bringing that war to a close.”

 

Apparently, for Obama, government preschools will make us “strong at home.” Read article.

Steve Gill, Pajamas Media.com

 

A disturbing trend in recent elections has been the intentional use of skewed polling by the media to promote their ideological bent rather than to report the news. We got another dose of this biased effort to twist the news to the liking of the media giants just this week with the latest Washington Post-ABC poll, which “revealed” that Barack Obama has moved to a nine-point lead over John McCain in the presidential race.

 

The mainstream media breathlessly reported this information as indicative of McCain’s loss of campaign steam after the post-convention bounce and the recent euphoria over Sarah Palin.

 

But what the news outlets failed to report in their coverage about the Washington Post-ABC poll was the fact that 38% of the individuals who made up the poll identified themselves as Democrats, while only 28% identified themselves as Republicans. Read article.

 

Michael Barone, Rasmussen Reports.com

 

You can sum up much of 20th century history by saying that in the 1930s Americans decided that markets didn't work and government did, and that in the 1970s Americans decided that government didn't work and markets did.

 

The protracted and painful experiences of those decades changed basic public attitudes on the balance between government and markets, between regulation and enterprise, between government aid programs and self-reliance. The breadlines and depression of the 1930s moved Americans in one direction; the gas lines and stagflation of the 1970s moved them in the other.

 

Which raises the question of whether the financial ructions of 2007-08 (09?) will move them back again. Read article.

Ed Morrissey, Hot Air.com

 

The Illinois Attorney General has opened an investigation into the money granted in a Barack Obama earmark in 2001 to the spouse of a campaign aide, thanks to the investigative work of the Chicago Sun-Times. When Obama challenged Bobby Rush for his seat in Congress, he tried to drum up support from the Englewood neighborhood by earmarking state money to establish a botanical garden. 

 

Despite promises that Obama would remain engaged in raising more than a million dollars, Obama lost interest after losing the election and never fulfilled his pledge for action.   Now it looks like the state funds went no farther than Obama’s aide.

Eighty-five percent of the funds wound up going no farther than the pockets of Obama’s campaign volunteer.

 

Even if Obama didn’t deliberately participate in an attempt to pay off a volunteer with taxpayer money, what kind of judgment is that? And what does it say about Obama that after promising to “work tirelessly” on this project, Obama didn’t even bother to notice that only about $3,000 worth of work got accomplished from a $100,000 grant? Read article.

 

Associated Press

 

The Bernalillo County clerk has notified prosecutors that some 1,100 possibly fraudulent voter registration cards have been turned in to her office.

 

Some cards in New Mexico's most populous county have the same name as a voter who's already registered, but carry a different birth date or Social Security number; some list someone else's Social Security number; some have addresses that don't exist, Clerk Maggie Toulouse Oliver said Wednesday.

 

In one case, a series of about nine cards appears to have been taken directly from the phone book, she said.

 

"Those are sort of the big red flags," Toulouse Oliver said.

 

The questioned cards came in over a period of time. "Every once in a while, a card will pop up that we suspect might be possibly fraudulent and we sequester those," Toulouse Oliver said. "In anticipation of the upcoming election, we gathered those together and started to notify law enforcement." Read article.

 

Cincinnati.com

 

Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner has a reputation as the most partisan state official in Ohio. And she works hard to earn it. The Democrat's latest stunt rejected absentee ballots for thousands of Republicans.

 

But it's not her first rodeo. Almost as soon as Brunner was elected in 2006, she tried to remove several Republican county elections officials, including Ohio Republican Party Chairman Robert Bennett. They accused her of "storm trooper tactics" to silence critics.

 

Then Brunner spread an alarm that Ohio's electronic voting machines were vulnerable to tampering - a favorite claim of the paranoid left. Elections officials who participated in Brunner's study called her conclusions over-hyped "leaps in logic" and said, "The report itself could be viewed as an attack on the elections system ... (that) planted seeds in the mind of the public to mistrust those who oversee elections."

 

Brunner also demanded an overhaul of voting methods just before the March primaries, causing meltdowns in some precincts.

 

And now she's hassling Republicans who want to vote for John McCain. Read article.

 

Thomas D. Segel, American Daily.com

 

The American voter….What logic. He or she looks at the current administration and ranks it among the bottom dwellers of the local sewer system. Then a vote is cast to remove this vile gang from the seats of power, only to replace them with the opposing group of bottom dwellers that had been cast aside four or eight years previously.

 

The American voter…What double standards. He or she looks at the makeup of Congress and sees lies, liars, crooks, cheats, and an inability to do anything rational to correct the problems of Americans. In the minds of Americans these are horrible, horrible people that have been placed in office by mistake and we rank them somewhere below whale manure at fifty thousand fathoms. Then a vote is cast…but, it is usually to keep the man or woman from the voter’s district or state in office. After all that representative or senator brings home the bacon. It is all the other incompetents who should be removed from office. The American voter…What a dreamer. He or she hears those promises to make life better, improve education, end criminal activity, stop war, fight fire and find an effective cure for dandruff…and believes them again, and again, and again. It has all been said before and it has always failed to materialize. But, this time…this time the candidate will get it right. How does the voter know this for sure? Why, because the candidate has said so. They don’t bother to check what the party said last week, or last month, or last year. They don’t match up the words spoken in our town with the words spoken in another town or another state. Our candidate said so…and it must be the truth.

 

The American voter…What a dreamer. He or she hears those promises to make life better, improve education, end criminal activity, stop war, fight fire and find an effective cure for dandruff…and believes them again, and again, and again. It has all been said before and it has always failed to materialize. But, this time…this time the candidate will get it right. How does the voter know this for sure? Why, because the candidate has said so. They don’t bother to check what the party said last week, or last month, or last year. They don’t match up the words spoken in our town with the words spoken in another town or another state. Our candidate said so…and it must be the truth. Read article.

Amir Taheri, NY Post.com

 

The way Barack Obama talks of Iraq, you'd think the whole county is a sea of fire and blood, created by the United States. So he might be surprised to learn that tour operators in Europe and the Middle East are touting this "sea of fire and blood" as a new holiday destination.

 

One program just put on the market by Terre Entiere, a leading French tour operator, offers a "Christmas Pilgrimage" in December to Iraq's biblical sites, some of which date back more than 2,000 years.

 

Another program starts in January. Called "Forgotten History," it includes visits to some of the most ancient sites of human civilization in Iraq, the ancient Mesopotamia.

 

"Frankly, we were surprised by the positive echoes we had as soon as we launched our program," says Pierre Simon, a spokesman for the French company marketing the Iraqi holidays. "People from many European countries, not just France, are showing interest. They want to go and see for themselves."

 

That Iraq should be a tourist destination is no surprise. Mesopotamia, or the Land of the Two Rivers, is universally recognized as the birthplace of civilization.

 

It was there that the first cities appeared and the first governments took shape. Sumer and Akkad invented the first forms of writing, the first bureaucracies and the first organized religious doctrines. In its heyday, Babylon, with its "hanging gardens," was the world's largest metropolis.

 

The first ever book, the Epic of Gilgamesh, was written in Mesopotamia some 3,000 years ago. Read article.

 

Ed Lasky, American Thinker.com

 

Barack Obama held a conference call this week with more than 900 rabbis (does the Obama campaign do anything that is not on a grandiose scale?) to extend greetings to them and their congregants ahead of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. I am unaware if he has ever held such a conference call before but he is in a tight Presidential race with the Jewish vote playing a key role in several battleground states. Many in the community have concerns about Barack Obama's support for Israel and the sincerity of the statements he has made on the campaign trail. Here is a quick fact-check after his latest expression of support for Israel. Read article.

 

Political Ticker.Blogs.CNN.com

 

Rep. Alcee Hastings told an audience of Jewish Democrats Wednesday that they should be wary of Republican VP nominee Sarah Palin.

 

“If Sarah Palin isn’t enough of a reason for you to get over whatever your problem is with Barack Obama, then you damn well had better pay attention,” Rep. Alcee Hastings of Florida said at a panel about the shared agenda of Jewish and African-American Democrats Wednesday. Hastings, who is African-American, was explaining what he intended to tell his Jewish constituents about the presidential race. “Anybody toting guns and stripping moose don’t care too much about what they do with Jews and blacks. So, you just think this through,” Hastings added as the room erupted in laughter and applause.

 

Hastings was joined on the panel by Rep. Steven Cohen of Tennessee, who is Jewish and represents a majority African-American district. Cohen, who recently remarked that Jesus Christ was a community organizer, took his comments about the founder of the Christian faith further Wednesday. “A lot of what Jesus talks about is wonderful,” Cohen said. “Talks about helping people and lifting them up and caring about people who are sick and all those things. He’s a great Democrat.” Read article.

 

Ben Arnoldy, CSMonitor.com

 

Observant Catholics are returning to the Republican fold now that Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has joined the GOP ticket - a shift that looks to be more enduring than a postconvention bounce. If the trend sticks, it will mark a partial setback for Democrats and the Obama campaign, who have vied vigorously for the pivotal votes of Roman Catholics.

 

Before the national political conventions, presidential contenders Barack Obama and John McCain were about splitting the votes of white Catholics who attend church weekly. That was a weak showing for the GOP's Senator McCain; in 2004, President Bush carried this group 3 to 2. McCain, however, has now opened a 16 percentage point lead among these Catholics, according to a poll released Thursday by the Pew Research Center. Still, there is good news for Senator Obama among Catholic voters: He continues to gain among Hispanics, two-thirds of whom are Catholic, and he is even with McCain in support among Catholics who attend mass occasionally or never. Read article.

 

James Morris, The Strategic Outlook.blogtownhall.com

 

Because of the current financial meltdown of the US economy and the attention that it has drawn from the national spotlight, key issues that normally define a US Presidential Election have been largely ignored by both the public and the press. This financial situation threatens to do great harm to our economy also has long term national security implications on top of the immediate consequences that will affect our pocketbooks and wallets; therefore the economy is of primary importance.

 

When it comes to the economy however, it is the US Congress that plays a significantly greater role than that of the US President. While the President’s bully pulpit can be used to champion a limited number of important issues, the hundreds of bills and debates that take place in Congress, along with its interaction with other elements in the US economy, including Wall Street power brokers, has more to do with its day to day running and it more responsible for its health and well being.

 

It is the Congressional approval rating by its constituency that more closely identifies with the current state of the economy than the approval rating of the President. Read article.

Bill O'Reilly, Stratfor.com

 

It has often been said that presidential elections are all about the economy. That just isn't true. Harry Truman's election was all about Korea. John Kennedy's election focused on missiles, Cuba and Berlin. Lyndon Johnson's and Richard Nixon's elections were heavily about Vietnam. Ronald Reagan's first election pivoted on Iran. George W. Bush's second election was about Iraq. We won't argue that presidential elections are all about foreign policy, but they are not all about the economy. The 2008 election will certainly contain a massive component of foreign policy.

 

We have no wish to advise you how to vote. That's your decision. What we want to do is try to describe what the world will look like to the new president and consider how each candidate is likely to respond to the world. In trying to consider whether to vote for John McCain or Barack Obama, it is obviously necessary to consider their stands on foreign policy issues. But we have to be cautious about campaign assertions. Kennedy claimed that the Soviets had achieved superiority in missiles over the United States, knowing full well that there was no missile gap. Johnson attacked Barry Goldwater for wanting to escalate the war in Vietnam at the same time he was planning an escalation. Nixon won the 1968 presidential election by claiming that he had a secret plan to end the war in Vietnam. What a candidate says is not always an indicator of what the candidate is thinking. It gets even trickier when you consider that many of the most important foreign policy issues are not even imagined during the election campaign. Truman did not expect that his second term would be dominated by a war in Korea. Kennedy did not expect to be remembered for the Cuban missile crisis. Jimmy Carter never imagined in 1976 that his presidency would be wrecked by the fall of the Shah of Iran and the hostage crisis. George H. W. Bush didn't expect to be presiding over the collapse of communism or a war over Kuwait. George W. Bush (regardless of conspiracy theories) never expected his entire presidency to be defined by 9/11. If you read all of these presidents' position papers in detail, you would never get a hint as to what the really important foreign policy issues would be in their presidencies.

 

It gets even trickier when you consider that many of the most important foreign policy issues are not even imagined during the election campaign. Truman did not expect that his second term would be dominated by a war in Korea. Kennedy did not expect to be remembered for the Cuban missile crisis. Jimmy Carter never imagined in 1976 that his presidency would be wrecked by the fall of the Shah of Iran and the hostage crisis. George H. W. Bush didn't expect to be presiding over the collapse of communism or a war over Kuwait. George W. Bush (regardless of conspiracy theories) never expected his entire presidency to be defined by 9/11. If you read all of these presidents' position papers in detail, you would never get a hint as to what the really important foreign policy issues would be in their presidencies. Read article.

Print This E-mail This

Share It: