I’m seeing a lot of stuff about how people are now expecting a lot of Republicans to follow in the footsteps of Scott Brown. Seems like a rather simple plan to me:
- Pose naked for Cosmo.
- Smile a lot, sincerely.
- Crank out a couple of smoking hot daughters.
- Smile a lot, sincerely.
- Have at least one of them do a very popular reality show.
- Smile a lot, sincerely.
- Wear designer suits, perfect hair, and drive a truck.
- Smile a lot, sincerely.
- Be the absolute polar opposite of a life-long incumbent who recently died.
- Smile a lot, sincerely.
- Make sure and get a completely clueless opponent. Preferably one who is clueless about some local legend.
- Smile a lot, sincerely.
- Get the incumbent President of the United States to stump for your opponent. People like past presidents. It’s just the incumbents that are campaign killers.
- Smile a lot, sincerely.
- Keep an eye on the news. Support issues where polling has shown increased support, and keep quiet on those where the polling is going down. ( That’s called trending. People who join with you on the way up tend to stick with you. Those on the way down jump like rats on the Titanic. )
- Smile a lot, sincerely.
If you can pull all that off, you’ll win every single time. If you just pull off #16 you’ll have a fighting chance anywhere. I have believed my entire life that X percent of all votes are for the most attractive and confident looking candidate. That’s not a gender thing. Hillary, McCain, and Obama all smiled a lot. Hillary looked forced, McCain looked pained, Obama looked like he really was enjoying the whoopin he was dishing out. In Massachusetts, Coakley looked like she was not enjoying the race. People just don’t get excited about someone that is not excited. Brown looked like he was having a blast being the underdog.
Now, a lot of Republican pundits are saying it’s all about health care, the economy, Obama’s crazed liberal socialist policies, and whatnot that a Republican candidate can not control. What they can control is their own image. Just keep on smiling. Issues will change, attitudes will change, the economy will change. What will never change is people supporting an exciting candidate. Stick to the core philosophies of the Republican Party ( anyone remember those? ), and be something the voters want to look at for the next two, four, or six years. Or longer.
The most screwed up political issue of the Bush administration will be returning I imagine very shortly for the Obama administration. First, I want to make sure people understand where I’m coming from:
- The “Bush ban on stem cells” originally was passed in 1999. Bush wasn’t president, Bill Clinton was. This was a complete ban on all embryonic stem cell research. Nothing was allowed. Nada. This is the ban that people are so opposed to. However, they have pretty much successfully laid the blame squarely on George HW Bush’s head. In my opinion, it is this completley politically driven agenda that has hurt the issue more than anything else. Bush had no reason to deal with the issue outside of his moral concerns with human embryonic stem cell research. He was in a lose-lose situation. If he continued the ban, those that wanted the research would still blame him for something he did not initiate. If he lifted the ban, conservatives would have eaten him alive.
- On August 9, 2001, President Bush addressed the issue of the stem cell ban. He initiated the first federal funding into embryonic stem cell research. However, he left a large part of the Clinton ban intact. Because of this, opponents of the ban called it the “Bush ban on stem cell research”. He never got any credit for initiating the first ever funded research, he only got criticism for not opening the door wide open to any type of embryonic research. In my opinion, because of the continued misguided and purely politically driven politicization of the issue, Bush never addressed the issue again.
- In 2006, using stem cell research as a political issue, the Democrats regained control of the House and Senate. In a political gut check, the Republicans sponsored legislation in the Senate to expand stem cell research. It passed the Senate with primary opposition coming from the Democrats. The critics became quiet. The issue became moot. It never made it out of Nancy Pelosi’s Congress. One of the driving issues of the 2006 Democrat take-over of Congress was forgotten immediately after they took over, and none of the people who shouted the loudest about the issue for five years said a word once they realized they had been duped by the Democrats.
- In 2008, stem cell research again reared its head in the presidential general election. The Obama campaign ran ads stating McCain had interfered with stem cell research. Fact was that McCain had been a huge supporter of stem cell research since 2001. He in fact, was one of those critical of Bush’s limited policy in 2001. To the contrary, Obama had voted not to expand stem cell research in 2007. Oddly enough, media made no mention of this discrepency. Obama won the general election. Based on Obama winning the election, people are immediately assuming Obama will open the door wide open to human embryonic research.
This is where I am going with my opinions after seeing what has happened over the last nine years with this issue. Now, if you take into the fact that a Democrat, Bill Clinton, banned human embryonic research, no Democrat has ever passed legislation expanding funding for stem cell research, and given their opportunities, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and Barack Obama have all voted against expanding stem cell research, I find it very odd that people are assuming the door is wide open now that those people are in control. Sure, they’ve given a lot of lip service, but to this point, it’s all been lies.
Surely I’m missing something somewhere, so kindly fill me in if you wish.
Now, the past record of Livescience and the very vocal media is once the Democrats slam the door on stem cell research, the media immediately drops the entire issue like a hot potato. Michael J. Fox shuts up. Claire McCaskilll shuts up. Rosie O’Donnell blames it on Republicans and conservatives. The girls on The View talk about anything other than stem cell research. None of them can deal with the ugly fact that this issue has been a political toy for liberals for nine years and that is it. The same trick that worked in 2006 worked in 2008. Nothing has been accomplished in that time.
And the most pathetic thing about this entire issue, is most likely, human embryonic stem cells aren’t even needed. Now that blaming everything on Bush is no longer an issue, let’s see how this issue pans out. I’d love to see a major push into stem cell research, the ramifications are huge. However, I’d love even more to see this issue treated with professionalism and respect, something that has not happened to date. If we can’t treat this issue with the respect it demands, I’m not sure we need to be dicking around with human stem cells in the first place. Too many people are willing to use this for political gain. If they’re willing to do that, what would they do if something truly powerful came from this research?
Bottom line, stem cell research has continued unabated during the “ban” that doesn’t truly exist. It is being done in the private sector by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute among others. I trust people like HHMI a lot more than I do the political whims of any candidate for office. I’d prefer the issue be left alone so those people can do their job. The more people use this issue for stirring up emotions, either for political gain or selling advertisements, the more disservice is done to this issue.
Barack Obama is now referred to as President-Elect Barack Obama. Soon to be just President Obama. His sudden rise to The White House has not been the story I think most people would aspire to follow. Well, maybe they would, just not me. I’ll ignore his confusing youth of hanging out with terrorists and all the stuff that’s been beat to death in the papers and dwell instead today on what’s not been in the papers much.
In 2004, the Illinois US Senate seat was open. A whole bunch of peeps jumped on it. Twenty-two I think it was. A few distanced themselves at the top very quickly. Most notably on the Democrat side was Blair Hull. That’s when Obama caught his first break by getting the ringing endorsement from this lady:
That’s his main opponent’s soon to be ex-wife. She made Obama’s candidate look like a trailor trash reject. Accusing of an uncontrollable anger and made her fear for the safety of herself and their child. By the time she got done with Blair Hull, he was toast. Obama then cruised to the nomination. In the general, Obama was getting toasted by the Republican, Jack Ryan. Right when Ryan was set to crush Obama, Obama caught another break given by this woman:
Jeri Ryan, the soon to be ex-wife of Jack. She claimed Jack tried to get her to do it with other peeps in a pervy bar in Paris. Imagine that. Jack decided to not run. The opps waited for Mike Ditka to run, but he, I am sure, feared the effect this would have on his marriage, and declined. That left basically Alan Keyes, who was getting kind of strange at this point. And, more importantly, didn’t live in Illinois. It was a cakewalk for Obama.
Once he decided to run for President, the tide turned ugly for the opposition party as they were dealing with, of all things, this:
That, believe it or not, started a snowball effect that sort of fouled the press on the Republicans. So, the Republicans countered with John McCain, who, oddly enough, had been through a rather ugly looking divorce a few years back. The Dems made sure to mention that fact occasionally.
So, it just appears that Obama was either really lucky. Or, even more fearful, brings out something in women that makes them want to destroy their husbands if they appear to get in Obama’s way.
I won’t be getting in his way any time soon.
This is precious.
Immediately after the election, a few networks ran with the story that McCain campaign workers were claiming that Sarah Palin did not know Africa was a continent, among other ludicrous claims. Turns out, MSMBC’s source for the claim was one Martin Eisenstadt.
Turns out, Martin Eisenstadt isn’t real. He’s a fictional character.
Some people were quick to blame the creators of Martin Eisenstadt for the faux pas. However, the creators were quick to blame the shoddy reporting of MSNBC.
I agree with the creators of Martin Eisenstadt. There was nothing outside of the fictional blog to suggest Martin Eisenstadt had anything to do with John McCain or Sarah Palin. With no verification from anyone, MSNBC, and others, ran with the story as if it were fact. Now, faced with the fact that their source was a fictional character, rather than very publicly recanting the story, and apologizing to Sarah Palin, they’re attacking a fictional character. That’s the very sorry state of major media today.
This is getting too predictable to ignore. However, the media in general pretty much has. See if you can follow me on this.
In 2000, we were definitely changing presidents. It was a neck and neck race with two very politically diverse candidates running. One was a staunch conservative Republican and the other was a wide eyed radical liberal Democrat. The market had been kinda shaky as the dotcom bubble was bursting. People were kinda iffy about the housing market. A crash had been predicted for years, but hadn’t materialized.
In September, the race was really heating up. At that point, CNN had the race looking like this:
CNN Tracking poll
The liberal Democrat was ahead.
From that point on, the Dow gave up 11% of its value in a constant downslide that many people contributed to everything from lousy lending practices to speculative start-ups, to of course, the failed economic policies of the outgoing lame duck president. At the end of the race, the conservative Republican made a sudden lurch to pull ahead in the polls, and the Dow went up suddenly. The economy didn’t get any better, but the Dow did.
In 2004, we may or may not have switched a president. However, the incumbent pretty well held his own all the way through the race. Things were close tho. As the challenger, a wild eyed liberal Democrat led at times, the Dow gave up 4%. When it became evident the conservative Republican was going to win, once again a week or so before the race was over, the Dow recovered.
Fast forward to 2008. We’ve got a moderate to conservative Republican running against a wild eyed flaming liberal. The market was cruising pretty well going into the final three months. However, there has been a huge anti-Republican sentiment mostly in the media. The assumption of course, is that the Republican could not overcome this media/Hollywood revolt of all things Republican. The polls pretty well sort of reflect this monumental anti-Republican sentiment by having the liberal Democrat ahead going into the final three months. The Dow since that point has given up 25% of its value since 9/2/08. As the polled numbers got worse for the Republican, the slide has been incredible to watch, dropping nearly 700 points at a time.
So, what do I see from Zogby today, almost on cue?
|
Three Day Tracking Poll |
10-7 |
10-6 |
| Obama |
47.1% |
47.7% |
| McCain |
45.2% |
45.3% |
The race is tightening again.
Expect a recovery on the Dow tomorrow.
Sandra Bernhard had this to offer when defending her man, Obama:
“Now you got Uncle Women, like Sarah Palin, who jumps on the sh** and points her fingers at other women. Turncoat b****! Don’t you f*****’ reference Old Testament, b****!” Bernhardt said. “You stay with your new Goyish crappy shiksa funky bulls***! Don’t you touch my Old Testament, you b***h! Because we have left it open for interpre-ta-tion! It is no longer taken literally! You wh*** in your f*****’ cheap New Vision cheap-a** plastic glasses and your [sneering voice] hair up. A Tina Fey-Megan Mullally brokedown bullsh** moment.”
I don’t know where to start. For that matter, I don’t think it’s necessary.
With friends like that, Obama does have to worry about the conservative voters.
The ultimate irony in all this, when looking at Hollywood as a whole, is that going into this election John McCain was considered to be a no-win candidate because he was too moderate. He didn’t appeal to the liberals because of his staunch conervative fiscal policies, and he didn’t appeal to the social conservatives because of his non-support for social conservative issues, and he didn’t appeal to the religious right at all. They were all disappointed when he won the nomination. However, Obama, sometimes intentionally, and sometimes not ( see this post ), has courted the wildest anti-conservatives you could possibly find. These people aren’t just liberal, they HATE conservatives and their values. Their actions, and with no real overt actions by McCain other than running with a conservative woman, have polarized an otherwise uncommitted block of voters.
And, if things continue the way they are, I think Hollywood ( ok, Hollywood is only symbolic of the entertainment industry as a whole ), is going to learn that conservative values are much more prevalent in the United States than the uber-liberal removed-from-reality crowds they cocoon themselves in. It will be a bitter pill to swallow, again. However, I guarantee you this, in four years, they will not have learned a thing.
If you’re going to debate this current financial market crisis or criticize the efforts to mitigate it, you HAVE to read this article by Noel Sheppard at Newsbusters.org:
…The Carter-era Community Reinvestment Act forced banks to lend to uncreditworthy borrowers, mostly in minority areas.
Age-old standards of banking prudence got thrown out the window. In their place came harsh new regulations requiring banks not only to lend to uncreditworthy borrowers, but to do so on the basis of race……
That’s the guts of what’s happening now. I don’t hear Obama mentioning it. And, I guarantee you won’t hear about it on CNN, ABC, CBS, MSNBC, NBC, or Daily Kos.
Something else you won’t hear any of them mention, John McCain’s speech in 2005:
Why he stumbled on this issue early in the week is beyond me. He should have just cited what he said three years ago.
And, the very last thing they’ll mention is this chart from IBD:
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac financials contributions from 1989-2008 (from IBD)
Although you’ll find Barack Obama has done quite well in a very short time, you’ll also find Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi have done quite nicely as well. Of course, with the media not the least bit concerned about showing their preference for the candidate of their choice, Obama has nothing to worry about.
But, if you’ve read any of this, you’ll have an answer the next time Obama blames this on McCain, or Pelosi blames it on Bush.
Fact is, this is what you get when you compel liberal policies on the private business sector.
And you know what, even in this meltdown, Democrats are STILL trying to compel lendors to expand subprime mortgage loans to high risk areas:
The heart of that? “meeting their obligations under the Community Reinvestment Act“. Folks, that’s a bill submitted by Democrat Jack Reed less than a year ago. Although it’s not gotten very far, it just shows that the Democrats in Congress don’t have the slightest clue about what led to all this.
That’s what caused this meltdown. When risk based institutions are not allowed to mitigate their risk, they are compelled to fail.
Henry Paulson has crafted a plan to bail out the finance industry for the very short run. It’s brilliant. However, unless Congress has the balls to gut the Community Reinvestment Act, we’ll just be doing this again in ten years or less.
If cities and states are worried about slums and people not being able to get loans in high crime areas, then do something about the crime so that the risk is mitigated. Once that risk is mitigated, then the private sector will be more than happy to develope it.
When the stock market tanked on news of AIG being bailed out by the government, and Lehman joining the ranks of failing spec banks, John McCain did the unthinkable, call it maverick if you will, and told the US the economy was fundamentally OK. Barack Obama immediately seized that comment and hammered away at McCain. McCain capitulated, trying to explain his comment. Obama, while offering no real definition of his own of why the US economy is not sound, still is hammering away at McCain over that comment. Now, a ew things come to mind over this exchange for me.
If Obama is truly convinced that the “fundamentals” of the economy are not sound, then he would have been saying so a while back. Changing the “fundamentals” of the US economy are huge. Changing the “fundamentals” involve things like socialism. The concept of “fundamentals” are free-trade. To an economist, they mean statistics. I don’t think McCain was referring to statistics. He was referring to the fact that every individual in the US is looking out for #1. The economy itself is a machine that just cranks out revenues and products. There are flaws and kinks in it, but “fundamentally”, there’s not a whole that can be done to stop it. Unless, of course, you eliminate those “fundamentals”. That will never happen. So, to criticize a comment that the “fundamentals” of our economy are strong is purely rhetoric. I hate rhetoric. IF Obama wants to truly seize the moment, he needs to quit being totally rhetorical and name specifics. What will he do to stop this current “crisis”? Not rhetorical stuff like “regulate”, but HOW and WHAT regulations? No one likes to be regulated. Especially if there is no real reason. Although McCain hasn’t looked too good in this exchange, I don’t think Obama has truly captured the moment because he’s done nothing but mock McCain without giving people what they want most. What they truly want from either candidate right now is assurances that things will be OK and this is how and why it will be.
As usual, this thing is being fought in purely political rhetoric without an ounce of substance from anyone. Is Obama or McCain truly a visionary for change or just hammering a political campaign ad? Let some numbers tell us what’s going on. Obama has repeatedly stated he knew this was coming and has the answers to fix it. Well, is that rhetoric or reality? You be the judge. Here’s the campaign receipts from employees of several institutions that have fallen in the last few weeks:
Obama McCain
AIG $75,899 $36,875
Lehman $313,025 $105,195
Merrill Lynch $173,234 $299,813
Bear Stearns $51,403 $88,050
Fannie Mae $80,149 $6,550
Freddie Mac $19,150 $9,100
$712,860 $545,583
So, it seems to me that although Obama claims these companies needed to be regulated, he was more than happy to accept their money. That’s a conflict of interest in my book. Sure, McCain’s got donations too, but his argument in the past has always been for a freer economy. That’s my gut feeling as well.
Lastly, I really feel that Obama is being very selfish in the way he’s handled this week. This week has been more an issue of panic than any fundamental issue. For various reasons, these companies lost the trust of their investors and money became a lot harder to come by. This has happened many times in the last seventy years. The Great Depression is only noteworthy because of the duration. We had a more catastrophic depression following World War I. The credit crisis of the late 70′s was much worse. The recession of the late 80′s was a crisis at the time, but didn’t last very long. And, people are already totally forgetting the late 90′s when we saw the financial world come crumbling down with Enron. In a time of panic, we don’t need candidates running around saying you need to panic some more. When that happens, people lose their jobs. Lives are ruined. Only for the sake of a campaign issue. We need people telling us that things will be OK pretty soon. Even if it is a lie.
The reason that lie is OK is because the lie itself would help mitigate the crisis the lie was about.
An experienced legislator apparently knows that. A sophomore legislator apparently does not. A candidate concerned about the welfare of the people knows that. A candidate only concerned with winning a race apparently does not.
If people look at what the candidates are doing and not at what their PR is promoting, this situation has exposed a huge issue that no one in the media seems to care about.
18
Sep
A lot is being written about John McCain’s sudden lurch to regulating the financial markets. This does contradict his earlier history of fighting over-regulation. And, quite frankly, I think it’s a tactical error. While appealing to the masses initially in a knee-jerk manner, it creates contradictions he’ll have to answer to. And, it’s not necessary. His gut instinct, in my opinion, is the correct response. It’s too much government interference that has us in this mess in the first place. That’s not a popular view right now. But, it was, in my opinion, the incentives of the last two Presidents, urging equality for all borrowers, that neutered Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and the large institutions into dumbing down loaning practices that had worked and made sense for the previous fifty years. If AIG, or whoever, turned down a black person living in the slums of Detroit, they ran the very real risk of getting hammered and possibly prosecuted for discrimination. The underlying principal to sound lending practices IS discrimination. You remove that element, you have no logical foundation to loan money. Sure, they could discriminate on credit score, which has turned out to be about the only mechanism left, but that is very easily manipulated as about fifty commercials an hour on XM radio will tell you.
So, McCain got it half right. The fundamentals of our economy are strong. There’s just too much of it to take a serious hit. However, his answer should have been a little more thought out and played to his strong suit. It was the over-regulation and interference that led to this mess and if left alone, legally, the markets would have been able to manage themselves or collapse before they got too big to do so. This is a market adjustment that has been long expected for a variety of reasons. I’m not shocked. Not even a lot surprised. The expoding values in certain markets were not supported by the economy. Reverse-mortgages and sub-prime lending in those areas were supported by neither the true value of the construction or the economy of the locality. The Dow Jones and NASDAQ were trumped up by a bogus rally in the late 90′s and never really settled back down to a pre-bubble level. In other words, a lot of things were inflated for no logical reason.
This is that adjustment. We are still paying for the Clinton faux-bubble.
That is the answer I would have given that I think fits a little more closely with the Republican agenda. And, I think it fits a lot more closely with what I expect from McCain than the answer McCain is giving now. Sure, it wouldn’t have been too popular of an answer right now, but it wouldn’t have given Obama fodder as well as giving people something to actually chew on.
The whole point of the Libertarian Party has always been about smaller and less intrusive government. However, when it behooves them, they’re more than willing and ready to use the weight of the government to impel their personal beliefs. Sure, Barr has a fine-print issue to press. However, the reality of the situation is most people have committed to their candidate. Even if he wins his lawsuit, which he won’t, then it would only create the hugest mess you could dream of on election day as they would have to count millions of write-in votes. And, given the anymosity created by stripping people of their right to choose, would guarantee Barr wouldn’t get nearly what he would have gotten before this ill-thought and mean-spirited lawsuit will create.
