Foolish consistency to resurface

Disgraced, corrupted Democratic Gov. Rod Blagojevich of Illinois, caught on wiretaps brokering President-elect Obama's Senate seat for campaign contributions, has just put his party in a vice--and particularly U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who said the party will never seat a Senator appointed by Blago.

He named former Illinois Attorney General Roland Burris, 71, to the seat. A revered figure in Illinois Democratic politics and trailblazing black officeholder, the Democrats will look terrible if they disallow the appointment of their body's only black member. They will also look terrible if they go back on their word, and seat a Blago nominee.

The problem is that the wheels of justice grind slowly, if at all, in Illinois and at the rate the legislature is moving to impeach and try Blago for his many crimes, it could be March or April before he's out of office. Then the Lt. Governor would take over and appoint a Senator. With the theft of a Minnesota Senate seat for comedian Al Franken likely to come up for a vote, the Democrats need the seat from Illinois filled as soon as possible.

Many members of the legislature in Illinois are bound up in Blago's transgressions, and as beholden as Blago is, to the Chicago Daily machine. They clearly see the truth of the scripture: "There, but for the grace of God, goeth I." Many would look like total hypocrites to impeach and convict Blago, but carry on their own transgressions.

The face-saving way out is to pass a bill setting up a special election, which Blago has said he will sign. Democrats in Washington hate this alternative, because in a single-shot election, given their total screwing up of the Senate seat, a Republican could well be elected to it.

Thoreau said "Foolish consistency is the hobglobin of little minds." This probably rings true to U.S. Senate Democrat ears, who are looking for a fig leaf to cover the acceptance of Roland Burris as the junior U.S. Senator from Illinois.

Obama birth flap a nonstarter

There is substantial evidence that Barack Obama was born in Kenya. There is testimony from his paternal grandmother of having attended the birth. There is a monument there, recognizing his birth. Since his white mother from Kansas was under 18 at the birth, the father's citizenship determines that of the son.

The other scenario is that paperwork exists that Obama's stepfather, an Indonesian citizen, signed to get Barack into the Muslim madrassa, where he went to elementary school, certifying that Barack was an Indonesian citizen.

Either of these scenarios, if true, would disqualify Obama, under the U.S. constitution, from serving as President.

Obama claims he was born in Hawaii, and shows a copy of a birth certificate from there. It is not a certified state original, however. He could easily clear up the whole matter, by simply having the State of Hawaii issue a certified, official birth certificate and put the whole matter to rest. The fact that they haven't probably means they can't.

Afterall, most anyone, such as this author, has had to run down to his local county clerk's office to get a certified birth certificate when applying for a passport. It took a good 3 minutes (and $10) for them to shell one out.

There are 9 different court cases filed against Obama and his campaign, alleging that he is unable to serve as President. The campaign is spending millions to defend them. They are copiously documented. No court has even heard a case, dismissing them out of hand. The U.S. Supreme Court declined to rule on the one case that has reached them so far, and another is scheduled there on January 9, 2009. Since this is three days after the Electoral College has met and certified Obama's election, it is considered highly unlikely that they will act.

Just because something looks right, doesn't mean you can find a government official with the guts to rule. At least 9 Americans are finding that out the hard way.

Blagojevich a piker, comparatively

Compared to the real pros who populate Washington D.C., Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, accused of conducting a public auction for President-elect Obama's former U.S. Senate seat, is a piker. He was only seeking a few hundred thousand in campaign contributions to his re-election, and only modestly well-paid jobs for he and his wife.

Former Democrat Bill Clinton has been forced by Obama to release the list of some 205,000 contributors to his private foundation and presidential library. It is rife with conflicts of interest among its some $200 million in gifts. It is loaded with foreign benefactors, led by Saudi Arabia.

You cannot say with a straight face that these folks were all normal, civic-minded citizens with no interest in buying influence.

Ha! If anything, the appointment of Hillary as Secretary of State will allow Bill to reload the arsenal. If it made sense to lavish $200 million on a former president, think how much more valuable a contribution will now be, with his wife as Secretary of State.

Blago, you think too small! The gov now says he will sign a bill from the legislature calling for an immediate special election for the seat, since Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid says the Democratic majority will refuse to seat any nominee selected by Blago. Talk about screwing up a sure thing. Impeachment proceedings against Blago are bogged down in the sewer of the Democratic-controlled Illinois legislature, and even the state supreme court has turned down the pleas of the opportunist Democratic Attorney General, to get involved.

Instead of a reliable liberal appointed by a Democratic governor, now the Republicans, in light of the scandal, will have a real shot at electing a U.S. Senator from Illinois in a few weeks in a special election.

Even in its atrophied, enfeebled, severely decayed state, the GOP managed to pull it together enough to elect a conservative Vietnamese immigrant to the seat of the freezer king, Democratic Rep. William Jefferson of Louisiana, last week. This is a district that is 75% black and 80% Democratic.

As incompetent as Illinois Republicans have been in recent years, the turf is not near as bad as Jefferson's district, and don't think for a minute they can't pull it together in a special election. In fact, two GOP congressmen are already licking their chops, eager to make the race.

The squeaky clean, deft Obama ship is leaking oil. What a gas!

It's a riot to see Obama and the boys tapdance

As the old style, Chicago Machine style, politics bubble to the surface once again in Illinois and in the budding Obama administration--it's a riot to see Barack and his team tapdance out of the way, to try to contain the damage.

What we're seeing in the indictment of Gov. Rod Blagojevich for trying to sell Obama's Senate seat to the highest bidder, along with his chief of staff John Harris and others, is based largely on the gut-spilling recollections of the major fundraiser he and Obama share: convicted felon Tony Rezko. The fawning Obama media hide the facts, but any reading of the 79-page indictment and the various insections in Blagojevich and Obama's careers, cannot fail to point out the obvious.

Assuming he goes to jail, Blago will make it four out of the last five Illinois governors who have heard the jail doors clank behind them. Several other prominent Chicago Machine politicians like Rep. Dan Rostenkowski, chairman of the U.S. House Post Office Committee when it ran up the huge postal account deficit scandal that snarled many solons, have done time too.

This is where Obama comes from, and had to trip through the Chicago Machine minefield, to get where he is today. He, Rezko and his chief campaign advisor David Axelrod, ran Blago's first campaign for Governor in 2002. He was re-elected overwhelmingly in 2006, dragging in one Barack Obama on his coat tails to the U.S. Senate. In fact, Blago and his father-in-law, Chicago Alderman Richard Mell, were major players in getting Obama's primary opponent off the ballot, so he could trot unimpeded to the Democratic U.S. Senate nomination.

Blago's wife Patty was the real estate broker of record when Obama purchased his Chicago mansion, with the significant financial help of Rezko.

There are many other ties on record. Just as the compliant liberal media has refused to probe Obama's college writings at Columbia and the Harvard Law Review, his tangled birth records, his William Ayres and Chicago machine connections--they are quickly cordoning off the Blago mess from Obama.

Why should we be surprised?

Chapter 11: car companies a textbook case

The charade playing out today on Capitol Hill in Washington D.C. on whether or not to bail out Detroit's Big 3 auto manufacturers is a farce. Of course they will be bailed out. The question is whether it will be on a more moderate basis that President Bush would be willing to sign right away, or on far more grandiose terms the United Auto Workers-beholden Democrats vote in after the new Congress takes office in January.

Make no mistake about it: this is a bailout of the extremely-generous pension funds, health benefits and other perks of the United Auto Workers (UAW) union members, and not of the companies themselves. They are dead meat, and the Democrats could care less about them. But their handmaidens in the UAW? How much do you need?

Just as the airlines, steel manufacturers and other industries survived and got stronger after filing Chapter 11, the auto manufacturers would too. The only hope that have, just as with these other industries, is to shed their onerous, burdensome UAW contracts and get busy competing with the Japanese, Korean and German firms already operating efficiently and profitably in the largely non-union southern United States.

The only way to shed these Big Labor behemoths is through bankruptcy court. The UAW had made a few "window dressing" changes in their contracts, but major surgery is needed, and only a bankruptcy judge can force that.

This would not be the unmitigated disaster the bleaters and moaners in Congress are bellowing about today. There are ready buyers for the profitable parts of GM, Ford and Chrysler, who would continue to buy parts and components to build cars from the Big 3's current suppliers. This realignment is the future of the business, and it ought to be done now with minimal taxpayer dollars, rather than later, after the feds have poured $25-$50 billion of your money down the UAW rathole.

If Congress does nothing now, it might accidently force at least GM into bankruptcy court, to get the process started. If Congress passes some stopgap plan now that Bush will sign, they'll almost certainly hang on for a major Democratic handout come January.

Salazar would continue Obama moderate appointments

The news that president-elect Barack Obama has put Colorado U.S. Rep. John Salazar on the short list for Secretary of Agriculture continues a trend of much more moderate appointments to the posts in his budding administration that we have had any reason to expect.

They're all liberal Democrats, of course, but not from the left-most perch of the Democratic Party. The foreign policy team of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, White House Foreign Affairs advisor Gen. James Jones,and Defense Secretary Robert Gates are all relative hardliners on terrorism, Israel and the United States position in the world. Jones, a former commandant in the Marine Corps who turned down a Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff offer from President Bush because of his policy disagreements with then Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, is far more conservative than such previous Democratic holders of the post like Sandy Berger in the Clinton administration or Zbigniew Brezinski in the Carter regime.

In some circles (certainly not mine) the Salazar family are considered political wunderkinds in Colorado. Ken Salazar is the senior U.S. Senator from the state and a former Attorney General. He won each of his races after a divisive, bruising Republican primary election for the post, and therefore was elected by modest margins as a result. His brother, U.S. Rep. John Salazar, represents the heavily GOP western slope district of Colorado.

He got elected as a successor to moderate GOP Rep. Scott McGinnis after the former went to the mat for his brother-in-law in the primary, who lost. With the moderate Republicans sitting on their hands in the general election, Salazar squeaked to victory, and with a Republican district to defend, has been a very moderate Democrat, voting much as McGinnis did before him.

John is certainly the more conservative of the Salazar brothers, and as a working potato farmer and rancher, qualified to be USDA Secretary. Obama is looking for more Hispanics for his cabinet, and Salazar would certainly be a far better one than we Republicans could have expected. Both Salazars have the maddening propensity to vote conservative on "no-hoper" issues like the flag burning amendment and liberal on the important stuff, and then claiming to be moderates.

Ken Salazar is up for re-election in 2010, so we can expect his votes for the next two years to inch to the middle, as Rep. Mark Udall of the Citizens Republic of Boulder, certainly did in getting elected to the Senate this year, replacing U.S. Sen. Wayne Allard.

John Salazar has voted a relatively conservative line on natural resource, grazing, water rights and other ag issues, so could be a far more friendly USDA Secretary than we might have expected. He is also from the West, which would be a big help, as opposed to a southern cotton, peanut or tobacco farmer, or midwestern corn farmer.

He'd sure have my vote, for what little that's worth.

Clintonistas returning to Washington

I don't believe President-elect Obama has named a single cabinet secretary or other official to date, that doesn't have a strong pedigree in the Bill Clinton administration.

For the great apostle of change and hope, pledging to lead America on a new path, it is hard to see anything new. What possibly would be different, if, instead of becoming Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton had won and was staffing the new administration?

The liberal press, deeply embedded in Obama's pocket, sees this as wisdom, appointing experienced--and in their mind, distinguished--public servants to the new administration. But where is the change and exciting new direction?

For all the political bilge that many could see through as it rolled from Obama's lips, about America entering a post-partisan era without rancor or discord, what we are seeing is "the same old, same old."

That is not to say that this is all bad. In this perilous time economically and internationally, a good argument can be made that the stability of experience and familiarity is just what the times demand. From a John McCain administration, this is exactly what we were promised and would have expected.

But for the great agent of change, who rolled up some 57% of the popular vote and an even bigger margin in the electoral college, and arguably drew this strong endorsement because he promised something new--such a result would be disappointing and questionable, at least to a less fawning, and more objective news media assessment.

As a conservative, I like the looks of the Obama Administration a lot more than I thought I would, so far. And the far left is squealing in the blogosphere about Obama's more middle-of-the-road approach. But it's full steam ahead in the mainstream media, puffing each Obama appointee just a little higher than the last one.

Campaign promises are always tossed aside after the election is over. But Obama is setting a record for speed.

Left apoplectic at early Obama appointments

The far left constituency that elected Barack Obama as president-elect, is coming unwired on the internet and blogs, at his early appointments to the White House staff and cabinet.

It is turning out to be a business-as-usual, garden variety, middle-of-the-road Democratic administration. He is looking to govern from the center, as Bill Clinton tried to do, rather than larding up the administration with zealots and Georgia good old boys, as Jimmy Carter did. (Remember OMB head Bert Lance? Remember Carol Tucker Foreman, head of the radical Consumer Federation of America, as Ag Secretary? Obama is considering farmer-friendly former Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack. A huge difference.)

Obama's first appointment, Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, is no ideologue. He is a hard-edged, sharp-elbowed Washington insider. A scion of the Clinton administration, he brokered the conservative Welfare Reform bill that got Clinton re-elected, and brought in Republican Dick Morris to the White House, to shine up Clinton's strategy after the congressional election debacle of 1994, when Newt Gingrich and the Contract with America, swept control of both houses of Congress.

Obama's nomination of Eric Holder as Attorney General has the left beside themselves. He worked out the presidential pardon of international criminal wheeler-dealer Marc Rich. He is hardline on terrorism and internal security. (Despite what the Obama sycophants in the liberal press are reporting, Holder IS NOT the first black Attorney General. Edward Levi in the Gerald Ford administration was.)

Hillary Clinton as secretary of state is more of a hard liner on Iraq and terrorism. If he keeps Bush's Defense Secretary, Bob Gates, as he is hinting at this writing, it is shaping up as a reasonably hardline team.

All these people are well left of my preferences, but are not near as scary as who Obama might have appointed. If anything, it looks nearly identical to what we might have expected Hillary to set up, if she had been elected. All his transition team and the appointments so far, are old Clinton hands.

It sets up his administration as governing from the middle, and throwing very little red meat to his most ardent adherents. What a pleasant surprise!

Media already rehabilitating Bush, Cheney

Now that the White House is passing safely back into liberal Democratic hands, the unapologetically-pro-Obama mass media is starting to say nice things about George W. Bush, and yes, even Vice President Dick Cheney.

Presidents frequently rise when historical perspective sets in, as has already happened with Harry Truman and Ronald Reagan. It will take a while, but President Bush will go down as one of the great occupants of the office.

The current media is only admitting that he is gracious, and a nice guy, in hosting the Obamas at the White House. There is also a few references to how the Bush team is being a lot more cooperative with the incoming Obama transition group, than President Bill Clinton was with the incoming Bushies.

Clinton, as you'll recall, stripped the White House of furniture, nick nacks and trashed the West Wing offices, leaving communications systems and computers inoperable. It was so bad that the Justice Department forced the Clintons to return a lot of things.

What will take longer is to give proper credit to the significant accomplishments of the Bush White House: keeping America safe, as there have been no further terrorist attacks on U.S. soil since 9/11. For bringing the Iraq and Afghanistan wars to a place where democracy can flourish in those former dictatorships. For appointing John Roberts and Samuel Alioto to the U.S. Supreme Court, both distinguished legal scholars, regardless of philosophy.

Dick Cheney has been one of the strongest vice presidents in history, which is why the Democrats like to bash him so much. As a former leader in the U.S. House, Defense Secretary and White House Chief of Staff, Cheney had the institutional knowledge to see the value in restoring the power and prerogatives of the executive branch, and has worked from the inside to burnish the presidency. He has been the power behind the throne on terrorism, a strong hand for President Bush.

History will cut through the present day politics, and clawing for partisan advantage, to record what a strong presidency the George W. Bush administration really was.

Intellectual snobbery behind Palin blasts

The liberal media intelligentsia has seized upon the sour grapes of moderate McCain staffers, to slur the name of Sarah Palin, the GOP vice presidential nominee.

The backbiting and internal skullduggery of any campaign organization of human beings is always a sight to behold. You haven't heard about Obama's yet because they won the election. Believe me, it does exist and at some inopportune time for Obama, it will become public. The rivalries and clawing for attention exist in any campaign, and are only subdued by success--and then, only temporarily. Such is the human condition.

Sarah Palin proved to be a potent, able public figure. Her energizing of the conservative base of the Republican Party powered McCain to a respectable loss, rather than a complete blowout. By himself, or paired with some vanilla establishment GOP figure like Mitt Romney, McCain could never have garnered 163 electoral votes in the present political climate. Before Palin, the GOP base was sitting on its hands, prepared to do nothing.

This scares liberals witless. At only 44 years old, and the first natural politician the GOP has turned up since Ronald Reagan, Palin has unlimited potential. GOP moderates and the liberal media who never support Republicans of any stripe, have united to bury Palin before she has the opportunity to do them even more damage.

Using the anonymous leaks out of the remains of the vaunted McCain "organization," about Palin's alleged lack of intelligence (a complete lie), sophistication and worldliness, the liberal media is having a hay day. This will die down, as the Obama media drumbeat gets even stronger toward Inauguration Day, and crowds out all other "news."

By that time, the Democrats in charge of the U.S. Senate will have expelled the newly re-elected felon U.S. Senator, Ted Stevens, and Palin will be running in the special election. If they thought Palin was a thorn in their side as the veep nominee, wait until she is a new U.S. Senator from Alaska.

It ought to be delicious! I can hardly wait.

The divisive first Obama appointment

President-elect Obama (doesn't that sound strange?), certainly tossed his campaign rhetoric about bringing us together, reaching across the aisle, and entering a post-partisan era, overboard--as he made the first appointment of his administration the sharp-elbowed, abrupt, overbearing, hyper-partisan Rahm Emanuel as Chief of Staff.

The number three in the U.S. House Democratic leadership, Emanuel is known as a man who gets things done, but establishes a rather super-partisan, far left, confrontational tone for the new administration.

An old Clinton hand, Emanuel is also a well-connected member of the Chicago Democratic Machine and close friend of Obama's. While Obama downplayed the extent to which he had sold out to the Dailey machine to build his Illinois political career, instead playing up his roots as an outsider "community organizer," this appointment shows his true roots.

Emanuel was tight with Bill Clinton, but just the opposite with Hillary. In terms of healing the Democratic Party, for a united front in getting the new administration off the ground, there are a lot of aggrieved Democrats laying around in the bushes, who got in Emanuel's way over the years, and got run over.

It is fortunate Emanuel is a liberal Democrat, or the press would savage him for his success in private business, which rivals Hillary's career in commodities trading. In less than two years as a Wall Street bond trader after he left the Clinton White House, Emanuel wracked up some $16.2 million in commissions.

This rivals what Dick Cheney made in his brief career at Halliburton, and for which he has been continuously strafed by the left and their handmaidens in the mass media.

Emanuel's appointment does signify an aggressive start to the Obama administration, but not exactly what was promised in all the new prexy's soaring rhetorical flourishes.

No veto-proof Senate, at least

In a bleak, tragic night for the Republican Party the only ray of light is that it held on to 42-44 U.S. Senate seats. This means that with strong, courageous, able leadership (lacking for the last several years). the GOP could sustain filibusters of Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid's most odious legislation.

However, Republicans seem to have a death wish, as evidenced by the atrocious McCain campaign and the total chaos and lack of organization by the National Republican Committee and many state parties. This was not a Democratic victory--it was Republican loss.

Until the spirit of Newt Gingrich and Tom DeLay is restored to the GOP leadership, instead of the present "to get along, go along" crowd that run the party, losses of this magnitude will become the norm.

It's time for the GOP to clear out the old hacks, cronies and fossils in the congressional and statehouse leadership--as well as the party organization--and usher in new ideas, new methods and fresh-faced, young leadership.

I'm not holding my breath, because I don't like to turn blue, but just maybe this devastating Republican defeat will usher in desperately-needed change.

McCain-Palin ticket closing strong

John McCain and Sarah Palin have put all their apples in the Ohio and Pennsylvania baskets. McCain did six rallies today in Ohio and Palin has made similar appearances in Pennsylvania. They will continue through the weekend.

It is highly unlikely that they can win without carrying both states. If they carry both states, they can afford to lose Virginia or a couple of small western states like Colorado, New Mexico or Nevada.

There are no polls showing them ahead at this late date in any of these states. What the late polls do show is that the ticket is closing strong, and at least a couple of polls, including the esteemed Gallup Poll, put them within two points of Obama nationally.

At this point, several factors could break McCain's way. One is that voters under 25 to do not traditionally make voting a high priority. This is where Obama is strongest. Senior citizens, where McCain is strongest, vote--come hell or high water.

Another is that Hispanic voters are the least accurately polled bloc of voters. McCain should be strong with Hispanic voters. He was on their side in the immigration debate, supporting and introducing amnesty legislation. If he runs more strongly than the polls show with this bloc, it could help him carry Colorado, New Mexico and Nevada.

The special interest groups, particularly the National Rifle Association and the National Right to Life, are suddenly running hard line anti-Obama commercials. This should pull White Catholics and rural hunters--both crucial blocs of voters in carrying Ohio and Pennsylvania.

The election is tightening up on this final weekend, and some think there still could be a surprise come next Tuesday.

Embarrassing Obama tapes surface

Reportedly the Obama power brokers are livid--all the circuit breakers going off--over two recently-discovered and long lost Obama tapes. One is from a public radio interview on a call-in show from 2001, which was posted online by Matt Drudge and is the hit of the blogosphere. It has been reported on Fox, but ignored by the other major media.

The second is a videotape of the going-away party for pro-Arab Israel basher Rashid Khalidi from 2003, which was addressed by Illinois State Sen. Barack Obama, as well as his good friends William Ayres and his wife, Bernadine Dohrn. Khalidi was leaving the University of Chicago faculty to go to Columbia to head a Middle East studies center, where he has maintained to this day a virulent anti-Semitic, anti-Israel diatribe.

In both these tapes, Obama says grossly embarrassing things for his presidential campaign. On the 2001 talk show, he blasts the nation's founding fathers, the U.S.constitution, and says the Earl Warren Court was too conservative for failing to implement redistributionist schemes. On the 2003 tapes, he gushes about his good friends the Khadilis, who babysat his daughters, as well as Ayres and Dohrn--who he has said in his presidential campaign that barely knew.

At best, Obama comes off as far left, and at worst, Anti-America, Anti-Jew and Pro-Arab.

The mass media has conspired with the Obama campaign to keep these, and other embarrassing documents, under wraps until after the election. Such documents include his writings for the Harvard Law Review, term papers from his Columbia and Harvard days, and full details of the place of his birth and the possibility that he held dual citizenship in either Indonesia or Kenya--making him ineligible to serve as President.

That Drudge and other conservatives are finally unearthing these truths at this late hour, is driving the Obama campaign bonkers. It just might not be too late for a McCain rally.

Wright omission a serious McCain error

If the McCain campaign goes ahead and loses, as all the polls say it will, it will have missed a historic opportunity.

By declaring the rantings of Obama's 20-year pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, off limits--McCain will have effectively blown one of the prime issues available to discredit Obama as a future president. Wright is so far beyond the pale, and known to most Americans from all the spring's heavy TV play of his racist, incendiary sermons, that he is a legitimate issue. His tight ties with Muslims like Louis Farrakhan and Moamar Khadafi--as well as his replacement upon retirement by Obama friend, the Black Nationalist Otis Moss--would shock the sensibilities of a lot of Americans, if they were reminded.

At the very least, a 2008 version of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth is needed, to replay the Wright tapes and remind voters of the truly radical ties Obama has. William Ayres is certainly a bad friend for Obama to have, but anyone under the age of 55 doesn't even know who he is. Ayres and his wife Bernadine Dohrn were violent terrorists in the anti-Vietnam War protest days and have refused to repent for their actions, but most voters in 2008 didn't live through that.

Letting Obama off the hook for his ties to Rev. Jeremiah Wright, who conducted his wedding to Michelle and baptized his children, is missing a great opportunity. With all the videotapes around of Wright's rabid radicalism--the most famous of which was his rant God Damn America--Obama can only claim that he was a very poor church attender or that he slept through the sermons.

And as fiery as Wright is, that would defy credulity.

It's not much of a shot, but it's a shot

I've got the stratagem for John McCain and Sarah Palin to pull out the election here in the last 10 days.

The polls mostly show Obama and Biden comfortably ahead. But they also show that the duo really hasn't closed the deal, as many of their backers, when questioned more deeply, still express vague doubts.

The line is this: America has a proud democratic tradition of a government of checks and balances. There won't be any if the Democrats gain the presidency, 60 seats for a veto-proof majority in the U.S. Senate and pick up 20 seats in the U.S. House. The Democrats are going to control Congress in all likelihood, so the only check and balance on congressional power is John McCain as president.

To some extent, this throws GOP candidates for the Senate and House under the bus, but many are going to lose anyway. Sen. Elizabeth Dole in North Carolina is already using this line in her latest ads, saying the Senate needs her to keep it from having a veto-proof 60-vote Democratic majority. As long as Republicans have at least 41 seats, they can sustain a filibuster.

The tax argument that McCain is using does have some resonance, but the checks and balances argument is even stronger. It's not tool late for Americans to rethink what they're doing, and pull out a narrow McCain victory,

He'd probably lose the popular vote, as Obama will sweep some states like Illinois and Massachusetts by huge margins and McCain will carry enough to win, but by very tiny margins. But that's the way the electoral college works--it takes 270 votes to win, and if you carry enough states to make that happen, that's all that counts.

McCain has a very narrow window of opportunity, with very few good options. He must carry all the states Bush carried, or lose a couple small ones and carry a big state like Pennsylvania.

It's not much of a shot, but it's a shot.

Why is Associated Press not joining liberal pack?

Associated Press, a normally reliably liberal news source, for some reason has an accurate poll on the presidential election, showing McCain and Obama tied. All the new-method polls, with various adjustments to them to account for the new legions of black voters, youth voters with cell phones only, etc., show Obama 10-14 points ahead.

McCain supporters are more energized, according to the AP poll, and Obama supporters less so. The GOP candidate has been shown behind at this stage in all the recent presidential elections, and has either won or come much closer than the polls show.

Only the AP has picked up this happening again.

The liberal pollsters, and of course the liberal press, like to the make the Democratic nominee look as good as possible.

The only mystery is why the AP isn't participating this time.

The election is not over, and with the Bradley Effect to boot, McCain still has an excellent opportunity to be elected.

Gross media distortion hides inconvenient truths

Let a Republican even attempt, much less pull off, what Barack Obama and Joe Biden have gotten away with--and the liberal media would be screaming bloody murder. Because its Obama and Biden, it's "no harm, no foul."

The outrageous whoppers Biden pulled off in the debate with Sarah Palin were barely acknowledged in the mass media. He re-wrote history, told of eating at a restaurant the other day that's been closed 20 years, and completely mischaracterized the U.S. constitution and what it says about the power an duties of the vice president. Sarah Palin had it right and Biden wrong, but neither the pro-Obama moderator nor the liberal media afterward even acknowledged it.

Biden is the one in the early Democratic debates who referred to his own running mate as "a clean black candidate," and continuously savaged him for his thin resume, lack of foreign policy experience and questionable Chicago machine connections. Yet he lied about what Obama said in the early debates about meeting with no conditions attached, with the brutal dictators of Cuba, Iran and North Korea.

Obama will have raised over $600 million for his campaign by the time its over. This is obscene, and would be blasted if a Republican did it, as pandering to the special interests, selling out to Wall Street and taking payoffs from America's enemies. By the way, even though its illegal, Obama has received contributions from over 160,000 foreign nationals, according to his required campaign finance filings.

Obama is outspending McCain 3 to 1 in the battleground states for TV commercials. This is because McCain accepted federal funds, limiting his take to $85 million. If a Republican had refused federal funds as Obama has, he would be tarred and feathered.

Obama has been given the star treatment by the media, not having to answer inconvenient questions about his Muslim elementary education, the disappearance of any of his college writings from Occidential, Harvard and Columbia universities, his 20-year relationship to Rev. Jeremiah Wright who hates whites and preaches black liberation theology, his cavorting with terrorists like William Ayres and crooks like the Syrian national Tony Rezko.

The hypocrisy and double-dealing of Obama and the mass media is nothing short of breathtaking. No matter how hard the mass media has tried, McCain is still within two points in some polls and the trends seem to be going his way.

Sen. Ken Salazar: master of cheap shots, piling on

Colorado's embarrassing, soon-to-be-senior U.S. Senator, Ken Salazar, is at it again. He is the master of harvesting cheap political hay at the drop of a hat.

Today alone, he piled on two situations that are already on their way to be being resolved, and don't require his intervention. But alas, he's up for re-election in two years and needs to garner all the favorable publicity he can get.

Most noted for his ridiculous cowboy hats and boots, as well as his inarticulate, painful speaking style, Salazar works his Hispanic heritage for all its worth. Salazar certainly is not a cowboy, but a 17th street lawyer. Presumably, the cowboy hat covers up his failed comb-over, and serves as some sort of badge of identification--a politcal brand, if you will.

The real problem is that his head and stature are too small for the big hats, making real cowboys laugh.

Even worse are his political cheap shots and piling on. Today he called for the resignation of Chief Federal District Judge Edward Nottingham, a great jurist who has diminished himself by consorting with prostitutes in strip clubs and lying about it.

The system already has this one well in hand, and Salazar is simply piling on, trying to belatedly get on the correct side.

Similarly, he has called for a congressional investigation of soldiers from Fort Carson serving in Iraq. Too little, too late--Salazar's simply trying to get his mug on the news, playing tough guy.

Salazar has been a farce in the Senate. He claims to be a moderate. He accomplishes this hollow feat by voting conservative on no-hoper bills like the flag burning amendment, while voting liberal on everything else. He joins Barack Obama with one of the most liberal voting records in the U.S. Senate. There are no major bills, threads of vision or leadership in the Senate from Ken Salazar.

The product of a bitter GOP primary between Peter Coors and Bob Schaffer, Salazar was a fluke when he was elected, and hasn't gotten any better in office. Even as severely atrophied and emaciated as the Colorado Republican Party is, surely they can figure out how to bump off this ripe target in 2010.

Anecdotal evidence piles up of false polling data

While all the polls continue to predict an Obama victory in the presidential race, there are at least two things wrong this year, that probably render the polls inaccurate and unreliable.

Precinct worker after precinct worker continues to report that people won't put out yard signs or put on bumper stickers for McCain this year, winking to the worker and saying "of course we're voting for McCain, but we can't afford to risk publicly showing it." Voters are spooked about publicly opposing America's first Black major party nominee.

This also is skewing the polls, as people lie to the poll taker. They are hyper-sensitive about appearing racist. The safest thing to do is lie, and say "Obama" when they ask. This is a lot different situation than what voters will face in the privacy of the voting booth or at their kitchen table filling out their mail-in ballot. The so-called Bradley Effect is real, and no amount of liberal press wishful thinking will make it go away. Black candidates always run worse than the polls show, particularly in high profile races like President of the United States--and it is named after the loss Black Mayor Tom Bradley of Los Angeles suffered for the California governorship, when the polls showed him leading convincingly.

The second factor that is becoming increasingly crucial in polling today, is the extent to which cell phones are taking over from land lines. There is no directory of cell phone numbers. A lot of people have them precisely for that reason. Pollsters find it increasingly difficult to get people to answer poll questions at all, and those they're able to reach are not a true cross-section of the American populace.

Of all years, 2008 has proven to provide the diciest polling atmosphere in history. At least John McCain hopes so.

Sharp contrasts evident in last debate

Obama and McCain went at it hammer and tongs in the last presidential debate of the 2008 campaign, drawing sharp contrasts for anyone who cared enough to actually pay attention and listen. The two differed dramatically on abortion, vouchers, taxes and a plethora of other issues.

But for John McCain, it was the same problem as the other two debates: no major mistakes were made, neither candidate made any major gaffes and neither scored any major, obvious debating points over the other. That means the liberal media will declare Obama the winner and McCain will have lost one of his last big opportunities to break through in the election.

McCain tried valiantly to differentiate himself from President Bush and his policies. It is quesionable if he did it strongly enough, decisively enough, to establish himself as a true maverick in the public's mind.

The debate never really got around to McCain's strong points: experience and fighting terrorism. McCain set forth his economic recovery plan, but it was belittled by Obama, and that's what the media will report.

McCain failed to make the dramatic, master stroke, game changing breakthrough.

We can only hope its not too late, and that events will provide him another chance. He's risen from the dead at least twice in this present campaign, and with 21 days to go, he still needs one more miracle.

60 Demo votes in Senate a disaster

The Republican National Committee is borrowing several million dollars to shore up the campaigns of embattled Republicans in tight U.S. Senate races. It is a little late to be thinking of this, but speaks to the disorganization and calcification of the party apparatus.

That it should even come to this, is an embarrassment. There should have been excellent candidate recruitment, party building and training within each state where a Senate seat might be winnable over a year ago. This late in the game, the usefulness of a few extra bucks, without having laid the groundwork earlier, is open to question.

It shows the increasing desperation that is creeping into GOP ranks. There is no question, due to prospective Supreme Court ratifications, New Deal type social programs and reigning in taxes, a veto-proof Democratic majority in the Senate would be a disaster. Somebody should have thought about that a long time ago.

The Senate has been the main line of defense in the last two years of the Bush presidency, where the minority GOP forces could at least mount or threaten a filibuster to keep the Democrats in line. With 60 Democratic votes suddenly looking very feasible, an Obama presidency could not be kept in check.

When combined with the weak-kneed Republican leadership in Congress (to get along, go along), such a loss of seats would be an unmitigated disaster. Things could only be saved if such a Democratic wipe-out led to overconfidence and over-reaching, becoming a four-year Jimmy Carter type reign.

We can only hope.

Nobel prize goes for politics over science again

The liberal news media love to trumpet the importance of the Nobel prizes from Sweden, gushing and fawning over each fellow liberal recipient, as if they were fresh with newly-revealed truth.

Such a scene has repeated itself once again this year, as leftist New York Times columnist and sometime academic Paul Krugman won the Nobel Prize for Economics. Well known for blasting President Bush, deregulation of the economy and free enterprise economics, Krugman is hardly the distinguished economic scientist the prize was meant to reward.

More likely, the Swedish socialists behind the award, are trying to inject themselves into the U.S. election in 27 days, by bringing favorable news coverage to their pet nostrums and proponents. If the glory of the Nobel can some how rub off Krugman on to loyal foot soldier Barack Obama, so much the better.

That's why the Nobel prizes have become so hollow and predictable, done less for merit than political correctness.

Even Sweden has had to back away from socialism, as the rampant costs and deficits threaten to bankrupt the country. This doesn't keep the fellow travelers who lavish the Nobel cash on their friends from carrying on.

They are shameless.

Bill Ayres ghostwrote Obama's book

There's a bombshell out that you probably won't hear or read of in the mass media.

Weatherman Bill Ayres, a University of Chicago English professor, and unrepentant terrorist from the 1970s, ghostwrote "Dreams From My Father", Obama's first book, that drew in over $2 million in earnings to him and has been called the best written political autobiography in history.

Jack Cashell, is a syndicated columnist, PhD and author of the book "Hoodwinked", a tomb on how to detect fraud in writing. He has run Ayres' book "Fugitive Days" and Obama's "Dreams From My Father" through three different computer programs that gage reading difficulty, syntax and sentence construction.

He ran them after he read both books, and found them to be remarkably similar in imagery and literary style. It immediately struck him what a talented writer Ayres is, and how poorly Obama had written in the Harvard Law Review and in an Occidental College poetry magazine.

Obama's book is full of marine imagery, just like Ayres' book. There is no comparison in style between Obama's previous writing and that in "Dreams". Obama returned a $135,000 advance from Simon and Shuster, because he had writer's block and couldn't produce anything. That he would be suddenly turned into a literary genius who would be capable of producing the best selling "Dreams" defies rationality.

Obama's friendship with his neighbor Bill Ayres, holding his maiden political coming out party at Ayres' home, serving together with him on two non-profit boards and as a fellow faculty member at the University of Chicago. In addition to the literary similarity of their books, they had a close enough relationship for talented writer Ayres to ghostwrite the book.

Cashell is still analyzing Obama's second book, "The Audacity of Hope," a title cribbed from a sermon by Obama's 20-year pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

If this research draws more corroborative evidence from Obama, Ayres or a knowledgeable third party, it would be a bombshell. Vice Presidential candidate Joe Biden's first presidential campaign was shot out of the water by a proven plagarism in his main campaign speech, cribbing it from British pol Neil Kinnick.

Obama is already in trouble for consorting with the radical Ayres, Rev. Wright, shadowy Syrian financier Tony Rezko and prominent Muslims like Louis Farakhan and Moamar Khadafi. He has claimed that Ayres is a distant acquaintance, at best. This might shoot that duck out of the water.

Liberal hypocrisy running rampant

The supposed cries of racism and advocating violence toward McCain supporters at recent rallies reeks of hypocrisy.

At any peace rally or other liberal event, George W. Bush is hung in effigy at a minimum, and the calls for his assassination are usually not too far behind. Some knowledgeable people have said that all that has kept Bush from being knocked off is that Dick Cheney would become President.

Just because some Americans have the temerity to oppose Obama doesn't make them racists. Just because some even take on the liberal press and expose its well-known bias, doesn't make them hicks and thugs.

The Hate Bush movement has been operating and hailed ever since he defeated Al Gore in Florida in 2000. They have since become even more vituperative and outraged since Bush was re-elected in 2004. That he was able to get two relatively young, solid conservative U.S. Supreme Court justices confirmed--the high water mark of his administration--makes them even more livid.

That's why Obama tries so hard to tie Bush to McCain. He thinks there's political capital to be raised there.

This is a ludicrous comparison, because McCain ran against Bush in 2000, and has opposed many of his major initiatives, including the tax cuts, in the Senate. To the chagrin of many conservatives, McCain is not a carbon copy of Bush.

McCain is not dead yet, the election is still 30 days away. The liberal media is in the tank for Obama and trying its best to destroy McCain, but they may well be overdoing it, and the backlash will benefit the GOP ticket.

Alaska witch hunt ties to embarrass Palin

The illegal super-panel of the Alaska legislature that released its 263-page report today on Gov. Sarah Palin's firing of the state police commissioner, was a political document, designed solely to embarrass her. There was no good reason for the so-called nonpartisan panel not to postpone its deliberations until after the election, to end all possible appearances of partisan taint and seeking politcal advantage. There is no way, in four brief hours, the panel could possibly have read and digested the entire 263 pages.

You must remember that the panel was evenly balanced between Democrats and Republicans, with the chairman of the panel a very partisan Democrat. You must also remember that Palin was elected Governor in the first place by beating not one, but two, establishment pols in the GOP primary and then beat a prominent former Democratic Governor, Tony Knowles, in the general election. The State Senate majority leader and the majority of Republicans on the super-panel were not Palin Republicans to begin with.

A big part of her own party, and certainly the Democrats, were never Palin fans in the first place, and relished the chance to derail her vice presidential ambitions. That's why the panel barged ahead before the election, to extract its maximum pound of flesh. All Palin has ever had were the people of Alaska, who gave her an astonishing 80% approval rating in the polls.

The Alaska state government has a permanent body in place to handle such investigations, the State Personnel Board. For this partisan creation of the legislature to handle it instead, is highly irregular. Two Alaska courts, with judges appointed by Palin's predecessor, the disgraced Frank Murkowski, merely declined to intervene. They never ruled on the legality of the legislative panel.

The liberal media, who have disdained Palin all along, will have a field day with this report, without putting it in proper context. Read and hear the ensuing Palin lynch mob in the mass media with a big grain of salt.

But once again, Democrats have overplayed their hand. Just like the nationally-televised, highly partisan "funeral" for Minnesota Sen. Paul Wellstone, which resulted in St. Paul Mayor Norm Coleman defeating former vice president Walter Mondale for Wellstone's Senate seat, this partisan hatchet job on Palin is likely to ignite a huge backlash of sympathy and understanding, in light of the eager piling-on.

Obama background finally coming out

There is no secret, or sudden, rush of anti-Obama smears gushing forth, as he'd like you to believe.

For whatever reason, the mainstream press is finally giving some scant space to what has been known from the getgo--the strange background of Barack Obama. It is no freshly discovered truth about Obama's close relationships to Weatherman Bill Ayres and his wife Bernadine Dohrn. That's been public and documented for years.

It is no secret either, about Obama's relationship with shadowy Syrian financier Tony Rezko--who put up the dough so Obama could buy a mansion he couldn't otherwise afford, and has poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into his poliitical campaigns. The only new information is that Rezko was indicted and convicted of fraud in the last few months. That the press has chosen to virtually ignore it is all that makes it seem like a fresh revelation now.

The blackout on Obama's world tour with the radical left after he quite Occidental College in California, his writings and activities at Columbia and Harvard Universities, and his role with the socialist New Party in Illinois--the facts are just waiting to be brought out.

Obama's juvenile drug use--which has has written of in his two books--has been roundly ignored in the mainstream media, but should spark at least legitimate questions.

Obama's extensive ties to Muslims and terrorists are also a legitimate area of questions. His Muslim half brother in Africa, his Muslim half sister in Hawaii. His attendance in Muslim schools until the sixth grade. His relationships with Rev. Jeremiah Wright and Louis Farakhan and Moamar Khadafy, the brutal Muslim dictator of Libya. All these are legitimate areas of concern and questions that the mass media has given Obama a pass on.

What if John McCain had a 20-year friendship with Klansman David Duke, or was tight with right wing religious figures like Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson or James Dobson? Just the opposite is actually true--but how wild would the mass media go if anything like this could be said about McCain?

Let's face it: Barack Obama is one of the least vetted, least tested and most fawned over by the mass media, presidential candidates in history.

That someone--anyone--is now questioning this, is more than they can take.

McCain has got to shuffle the deck

The boring bomb of a debate last night is, as predicted, being chalked up as a win for Obama.

McCain must develop what one CB radio brand advertised, back when those were popular. (CB radios were probably done in by cell phones--Breaker, Breaker, good buddy . . .)

That brand advertised itself as having Punch--being able to break through the clutter. That's exactly McCain's problem--he has to develop Punch to get his message through all the mass media chatter, the web chatter and the neighbor-to-neighbor buzz.

There's plenty of problems with Obama--he's far to the left of most Americans. He is a typical corrupt Chicago machine pol, having taken money from all kinds of unsavory characters and done them favors in return. His resume is so thin as to be hardly in existence at all. His ties to Muslim extremists and his own faith are very troubling.

McCain's done it at least twice already, quite successfully. One was backing the surge in Iraq and the other was selecting Sarah Palin. They were gambles that paid off. Returning to Washington to solve the economic schmozzle was not so successful.

A terrorist attack on U.S. shores would certainly tip public attention McCain's way. None of us want that, but it could happen.

Something less drastic than that is needed, and McCain's brain trust has just a few days to figure it out.

Steadiness, experience show in debate

The mass media will undoubtedly figure out a way to spin an Obama victory in tonight's presidential debate. That was obvious before the first question was even asked at Belmont University in Nashville.

But listening to it, forming an overall impression of the debate as a whole, leads to a conclusion quite different from the media spin, the clever answers to "gotcha" questions and the regurgitation of campaign talking points--all in abundant supply at this media spectacle.

Against the backdrop of the U.S. financial debacle, the shaky national security situation with terrorist attacks in Pakistan and the unresolved wars in Iraq and Afghanistan--Americans will decide, in the secrecy of the voting booth or with their mail-in ballot at the kitchen table, how much change will they really want in these unsettled times?

John McCain is not flashy, certainly looks his age and is not a creative, gee-whiz kind of guy--but he does give off a strong aura of steadiness, familiarity, experience and heroism that in the final gasp, will reassure a majority of Americans.

Obama certainly acquitted himself well in the debate, avoided any obvious gaffes and was the smooth, calm politician he has the reputation of being. The silent role of race, which Americans won't talk about or even lie about to pollsters--is very evident in watching the debate and will influence many citizens final decision, whether they admit it or not.

People reach for a reassuring father figure in times of crisis, like they did FDR in the Great Depression, Dwight Eisenhower in the early Cold War and Ronald Reagan during the economic crisis and hostage holding in Lebanon at the end of the Carter years.

With 29 days until the election, McCain has a tough row to hoe. But Obama has problems too, with his race, age, radical associations and slim resume. But in the final analysis, Americans will be seeking comfort and assurance, and the question will come down to who can best give that to them.

Obama beginning to squeal as truth emerges

Barack Obama is beginning to squeal as finally the truth is coming out about his relationships with shady characters like Bill Ayres, Rev. Jeremiah Wright and Tony Rezko. Their cozy relationships with Muslim terrorists, the big money raised to support them, and the hatred for America that permeates their public utterances--it's all coming home to roost.

The company we keep, and the causes we support, do matter and count for something. If such things turn out to be embarrassing, well--we should have thought about that before we did it. The record is the record.

Obama is accusing the McCain campaign of trying to get the focus off the economy, of smear tactics and anything else it can think of, since he cannot deny the basic truth.

These were his friends, the ones who put him where he is today. There are too many public records, too many video tapes and too many documented news stories in creditable media to deny it. The facts have been there all along, but only now is the mass media beginning to report it.

Is it too late? Will Obama's radicalism register with the public now? Will the state of the economy trump Obama's record?

It ought to be an interesting three weeks, until the election.

Media injects race into presidential contest

A thoroughly predictable response by the liberal mass media to the truth coming out about Barack Obama has arisen: race baiting.

As it is increasingly documented that Obama does keep company with terrorists, like whites Bill Ayres and Jeremiah Wright, with Muslims, and outright crooks like Tony Rezko-- the liberal mass media, already in the tank for Obama, declare that such a line of questioning is racist and out of bounds.

Led by the Associated Press, the media is shreeking "don't confuse us with the facts" because we don't want the facts to rain on our parade or interfere with our coronation of Obama.

There is no factual, legitimate defense to the truth of Obama's associations. He did what he did. It is on videotape, published in respected publications and available in his voice on audio tape or in his own handwriting in his books, from which he's made some $6 million in the last two years.

Added to his ultra-thin resume of either executive or legislative experience, the Obama candidacy is thin gruel indeed.

Just don't dare point it out. You will be tarred with the racist brush.

McCain, Palin need to hit Obama harder

Finally, with just three weeks left until the election, Sarah Palin pointed out the obvious: that Barack Obama pals around with terrorists, who hate this country.

She was referring to Bill Ayres, the Weatherman founder, who was acquitted of terrorism charges back in the 1960s, although his wife Bernadine Dorn, did time for terrorism and attempted murder. Ayres and Obama did one of his "community organizing" gigs together, involving millions of federal dollars and private foundation money. Obama took over $150.000 out of the program for personal expenses. Ayres and Dorn are his neighbors in Chicago, and hosted campaign events for his Senate race.

Ayres and Obama were both on the faculty of the University of Chicago, where they became friends. Ayres has written a radical book excoriating the U.S. education system, preferring a system more similar to Israeli kabutzes, where its easier to indoctrinate children in his far-left dogma. Ayres has no business being close to a U.S. President, since he hates this country and what it stands for, and has only regretted not going far enough in trying to bring the government down in the 1960s.

This is far from the only evil relationship Obama has maintained. The big financier of his Chicago campaigns was convicted felon Tony Rezko, as well as the one who financed the mansion purchase Barack and Michelle live in. Much more needs to be said about his pastor, Jeremiah Wright and his extremist, pro-Muslim views and their friendship with Louis Farrakhan and other Muslims. More needs to come out about Obama's early Muslim education, and the extremist views of his late father, carried on today by his half brother and sister.

Fortunately, the same people who were behind the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth in the Kerry campaign four years ago, are starting to crank up the commercials and campaign to bring out the truth about Obama. Books by David Federoso and others have been predictably buried by the mainstream media--but the truth is slowly leaking out.

It is completely appropriate for McCain and Palin to acknowledge the facts--and expect the mass media to blast them for doing so. Actually, they are doing the job the mainstream media refuses to do, which has given Obama almost a complete pass on his early life.

Only the voters thought Palin won

The prognosticators and the pollsters have done their best to give Joe Biden the victory in last night's vice presidential debate.

All their blizzard of data and spin proclaimed the Biden victory, but two things stand out that really matter: this debate was watched by about the twice the audience the first presidential debate was, and secondly, most viewers were spectators, not intellectual tit-for-tat fact checkers.

On this basis that John Q. Public (and Joe Six Pack) used to score the debate, Sarah Palin came across as a nice person they could relate to, with incredible charisma, warmth and charm. Joe Biden was the archtypical 36-year Washington hand, all wrapped up in himself, facts and figures--blustering on, but seemed terribly "old politics" and "old school." The world has changed in the internet age.

Political decisions are made in that narrow window when the public is actually paying attention and focusing on the matters at hand. And with early voting procedures now days, many were filling out their mail-in ballots as they watched the debate.

John McCain would be an idiot not to use Sarah Palin in a different way in the campaign now, than he has in the last two weeks. She has recaptured the magic from her GOP national convention speech, and never has stopped drawing incredible crowds where ever she appears.

Sarah Palin has turned things around for the Republican ticket once already, and now has done so again

Pay attention!

Palin wins veep debate, hands down

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin was bright, enthusiastic and factual in her vice presidential debate tonight. She made no gaffes, as even the liberal pundits acknowledged, but was very strong and confident, with no lapses, hesitation or halting.

Joe Biden was the old Washington hack he is. The consummate 36-year U.S. Senator, he looked old and tired, lapsed into the standard "hate Bush" lingo, and looked insincere in going after one of his best friends in the Senate, Sen. John McCain.

The mass media pundits were beside themselves to discredit Palin, since there was little to attack her for. They were forced to resort to how she dropped her g's, talked about her family and how uncharacteristic Alaska is.

Palin, due to low expectations, would win the debate just by holding her own, making no mistakes and looking presidential.

She did much better than that. She showed an easy and relaxed command of the facts, was almost casual, in playing to her strength as a Washington outsider and scion of the middle class.

Biden prefaced every answer with a gratuous attack first on Bush and then McCain and tying them together. He was great at rehashing the Obama campaign talking points and bringing up the past, but did not paint a picture of the future.

Sarah Palin built impressively on her strong performance in her GOP convention acceptance speech, and continued to fire up the base, as well as appeal to the majority of women--that is, all but the most radical women's lib fringe.

The contrast with Biden was stark--the past versus the future.

Senate bail-out vote resurrects tax cuts

The U.S. Senate has suddenly scheduled a vote for tomorrow night on the Wall Street bail-out plan, which has been sweetened with raising the federal insurance on bank accounts from $100,000 to $250,000, and a tax cut package. They evidently think they can get it through the Senate, which would put pressure on the House to switch at least 12 votes and pass it too.

The hope is to switch House Republicans based on the tax cuts, which the House previously rejected, and the added bank account insurance.

John McCain, Barack Obama and Joe Biden all plan to fly to Washington and vote on the Senate floor. That alone, puts a lot of pressure on the House.

Just a whiff of the possibility of the bail-out resurrection in the Senate hit Wall Street today, and it recouped 485 points of Monday's record 755 point drop in the Dow Jones Industrial average.

No one should pinch themselves yet at their good fortune. No one knows how much the bail-out will really help the economy. The tax cuts could do more than the bail-out, and anyone with $250,000 in spare cash to put in a bank account can do a whole lot better with it than leaving it in a federally-insured bank account.

The whole thing is probably smoke and mirrors. The appearance of action is more important than the action itself. Such is life.

The overwhelming hypocrisy of this whole mess still is astounding. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are at the bottom of the whole mess, quasi-government agencies that buy mortgage loans. Barney Frank, Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi and many others took major political contributions from the agencies, and then loosened up the lending standards and oversight, allegedly to facilitate more minority and low income homeowners.

That now these people now would be bailing-out their own incompetence and conflict of interest, defies credulity. But what can I say--welcome to Washington D.C.

Pelosi sabotaged bail-out package

Democrats are famous for over-playing their hand. The classic was the "funeral" for Minnesota Sen. Paul Wellstone, killed in a plane crash, and enmeshed in a tight re-election campaign with now-Sen. Norm Coleman.

The "funeral" was nationally televised, and the Democrats took it as a time to beat up on Republicans in prime time. There was no spiritual side to the event, precious little mourning of Wellstone or comforting of his family. It was just a steady drumbeat of digs at President Bush and the Republicans in Congress--and showcasing their replacement nominee for Wellstone, former Vice President Walter Mondale. It was crass, naked politics from the get-go, and the public wasn't buying.

Mondale was defeated handily by Coleman, and Republicans ran better than expected in races across the country.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi performed a similar act today, in her pre-vote speech on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives, excoriating President Bush and the Republicans for the present financial crisis. The votes were counted for a tight win on the bail-out bill, or it would never have been brought up for a vote. Pelosi poured gasoline on the fire, rather than doing what she claimed to want to do: reach across the aisle for a bipartisan solution.

Of course she drove away at least the 12 Republican votes that could have passed the package. It was as transparent and real as if she had clobbered 12 solons over the head with a baseball bat. But it was overkill.

Americans are already weighing in that the bill was a heavy-handed federal power grab that socializes the economy and does irreparable damage to the free enterprise system. Republicans who defeated it are already being cast as heroes.

The tide is turning away from the Democrats, who increasingly look like the power-mad opportunists they actually are, and are about to suffer a fate similar to Mondale's.

Mark my words--Pelosi overplayed her hand. She snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.

Low Palin debate expectations her trump card

The 36-year Washington hand, Delaware Sen. Joe Biden, should wipe the floor with Sarah Palin in the vice presidential debate this week. He is the vaunted chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, with depth and experience, who looks like a Commander-in-Chief.

Some 20 years older than Palin, with only a few years in politics in Alaska under her belt, his persona and swagger should carry the day.

But that's been the problem with Joe Biden, and why neither of his two presidential campaigns have approached even a 10% standing in the polls. He can lecture for hours, seem arrogant and upper-handed, suffering fools badly.

This is the perfect situation for Sarah Palin to walk into. The press thinks she is a lightweight, and cannot possibly stand up to the beknighted Biden.

Mrs. Palin is very glib and good on her feet, looks as charismatic and inviting as Biden does old and dull. She won't have to say much to steal the show. Especially if Biden Lords it over her, and is as condescending as he's been known to be.

As long as Palin does not commit a major gaffe, and is as charming, self-assured and vital as usual, she should handle Biden just fine. In fact, he is usually his own worst enemy.

Prepare to be surprised.

McCain looked, acted presidential in debate

John McCain looked like, and acted, like a president in the first televised debate this evening, while Obama was very stern and steely-eyed, he did not have the ready smile or easy command of the facts that McCain did.

Obama's inexperience showed, as he was constantly snipping and sniveling at McCain, and mainly repeating familiar Democratic talking points in an attempt to parry McCain's thrusts.

The hardbitten liberal JIm Lehrer, the very nominally objective moderator of the debate, did his best to cut McCain off when he was scoring points, and to keep Obama in the debate, but McCain was still able to overcome the double whammy.

Just as McCain was the leader in going back to Washington to do what he could in the Wall Street bail-out debate, while Obama said he was staying in touch by phone, McCain showed again in tonight's debate that he is a leader and Obama a follower.

The Democratic lie to try and over for Obama's incompetence in the bail-out debate, that a deal was in place until McCain came back and screwed it up--is just that, a lie. Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown, a rookie Democrat, let the cat out of the bag, pointing out that no deal was in place for McCain to screw up.

As expected, the liberal mass media is doing its best to cut down McCain and build up the pedestrian performance of Barack Obama. But the voters saw what actually happened, and the media spin won't cover it over.

House GOP holds up bail-out deal

In a strange time for suddenly standing up for principle and the taxpayers, House Republicans stand in the way of a bail-out deal that can pass Congress. It is strange, because all during the last two years, the House GOP has been the handmaidens of Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid--rarely standing up for anything, until the end of summer, when they blasted the summer recess, when so much business remained undone.

There has been some success from the venture, particularly the focus on Pelosi failing to allow a vote on lifting the ban on off-shore oil drilling. Democrats came back from the recess with the word from constituents that drilling must proceed. The Democratic plan would only have allowed limited drilling, if any at all, but the ban expires Sept. 30 anyway and so by doing nothing, the pro-drilling forces win.

The real problem is that the bail-out focus has been wrong from the gitgo, and now the House GOP is in open rebellion against the rest of the party. The focus should be on how little the bail-out might cost, since restoring liquidity to the nation's financial system should raise housing prices and stabilize the market.

This, as much as anything, is what will assure that taxpayers get hit the least for the bail-out, since the houses underlying the mortgages will be able to be sold off for more than is owed on them. Over a period of time, with wise management of the bail-out, taxpayers could pay little or nothing.

The focus instead has been on the $700 billion cost to taxpayers, which is unlikely even in the worst of circumstances, allowing the whole proposal to be weighted down in presidential and congressional campaign politics--and a quickly approaching recession and national pain the likely result.

John McCain tried to step forward as a statesman and bring a positive resolution, but it may be too bogged down, with too much baggage, to be salvageable.

Pot calling kettle black on the bail-out

The genesis of the loosened lending standards and defaulted home mortgage loans lies with the liberal Democrats in Congress, who passed legislation directing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to expand minority and lower income home ownership in the U.S. by easing qualification for loans and financing up to 100% of a home's purchase price.

Almost any good professional banker could tell you that this was a recipe for disaster, before the first loan was ever made. The more of his own money a buyer has in a property, the more committed he is to making the sacrifices necessary to stay with it. Without any of his own money involved, there is no commitment. He sees the home like a rental, that he can easily walk away from, and tens of thousands have.

Additionally, the Clinton administration used Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as sinecures for their friends who needed jobs, elbowing out the professional, knowledgeable lenders who could have prevented the crisis. Franklin Raines, Jamie Gorelick and James Johnson were up to their elbows in the mess. They also led the lending concerns in making generous political contributions to their friends on Capitol Hill, and the likes of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton.

The whole system, as it degenerated to the present day, was almost a prescription for disaster.

The massive hypocrisy coming out now in Congress, in lambasting Bush's plan to rescue the system, would be laughable, if it wasn't so tragic. Those who have the least right to say anything, given their votes to create the present system and take campaign money from it, are running the show in Congress.

John McCain is scaring Democrats to death, suspending his campaign and returning to Washington to exercise his role as a Senator and try to craft legislation to solve the problem. Duty to country by putting it first, and politicking second, is totally foreign to the standard Washington modus operandi. Just as with the selection of Sarah Palin, Democrats don't know who to act.

It ought to be an interesting next few days.

Taxpayers could profit from mortgage bail-out

Lost in all the verbal-overkill of the news coverage of the proposed $700 billion bailout of bad home mortgages, is that the federal government could wind up making a profit, rather than costing the taxpayers anything.

The most famous case was the bail-out of Chrysler Corporation in 1987. In the form of loan guarantees, it provided the capital the firm was unable to raise on its own at the time. Later, when the company was sold to the German firm Daimler, the federal government made over $300 million for its effort.

Lost in all the media onslaught, is the fact that each of the troubled home mortgages is secured by a home, which has value and will be sold. That will bail out a big portion of the loan by itself. Some additional funds will be raised by a deficiency judgement against each borrower for the difference between the amount of the loan and what the home sold for.

Those deficiency judgements will be bundled up and sold by the feds to private firms at a steep discount, who will then profit from collecting them.

This is how the old Resolution Trust Corporation (RTC) worked, which was the bail-out of the failed Savings and Loan institutions back in the 1990s. It did wind up costing the taxpayers some money, but nothing like the total amount authorized by Congress.

A similar outcome, maybe even a profitable one, can be expected from this latest bail-out, if Congress ever gets around to approving it.

Congress' own balky, nefarious, self-serving hand wringing is deepening the crisis by the hour. Today, the stock markets actually opened up over 100 points, but by the time all the distinguished solons seeking facetime on television had performed in Congress, the market dropped like a rock.

The time is here for courageous action--admittedly not a strong suit in Washington--and less personal aggrandizement, even if it is an election year.

What's the alternative?

Life is full of so-called Hobson's Choices. My history knowledge has faded enough that I don't remember who Hobson was, or how he had the discovery, but I do know what it means. I face it everyday, and I'm sure you do too.

A Hobson's Choice is the often-faced dilemma of picking between two equally bad alternatives. There is no good thing to do, but simply selecting the least worst thing to do.

That's what's facing Congress this week with the $700 billion bail-out of bad mortgage loans. As costly and hideous as the bail-out is, what does the alternative look like?

A complete crash of the world's financial system would not be a pretty sight. People are not steeled, as they were during the Great Depression of the 1930s, to saving and scrimping by. Americans today have never had to do without, or make do. They may have to select a less costly choice, but basically get what they want.

The liberal Democrats have treated Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as personal piggybanks for years, funding whatever social schemes and dreams they wanted, and setting up lucrative sinecures for their buddies like Franklin Raines, James Johnson and Jamie Gorelick, when they needed a soft place to land.

The liberal orthodoxy was to get women and minority groups into home ownership, and wave the credit qualifications to do it. Fannie and Freddie bought the dubious loans from private lenders, which gave them the privilege of being the first ones to be bailed out in the current wave.

Franklin Raines, in particular, havested up huge salary and bonuses during his tenure there, as did Johnson and Gorelick. It was so odious that Al Gore had to pay the price for his friendship with Raines, and Obama had to remove Johnson from his vice presidential search committee, he was so tainted. Gorelick could well have caused 9/11, when as number two at the Department of Justice, she put a wall between the CIA and FBI to keep them from sharing information, crippling our national intelligence gathering capabilities. She was even able to cover for herself, when as a member of President Bush's task force, she could oversee the whitewashing of her role.

Now, we taxpayers are on the hook for $700 billion to cover the liberal's chicanery. You won't read that in the popular press.

Biden, mercifully for Dems, anonymous so far

The forgotten man so far in the 2008 presidential campaign is the Democratic vice presidential nominee, Delaware Sen. Joe Biden. They're even having trouble getting reporters to ride on his campaign plane, with only six present on a recent foray. GOP veep candidate Sarah Palin's plane was recently overweight, so many reporters were along, and a few had to be asked to ride commercial to the next stop.

This isn't a problem for the Democrats, but for the Republicans. Biden, famous for sinking his own presidential campaigns, has already made so many gaffes that the Obama-Biden ticket should be sunk already. Due to the lack of publicity, Obama has snuck by. It isn't just the liberal bias of the press keeping Biden's verbal slips quiet--they weren't even there.

A staunch Obama supporter is Missouri State Sen. Chuck Harrison, who is confined to a wheelchair. At a recent rally, Biden enthusiastically shouted out the names of prominent people at the rally, from a list provided by local supporters. With great bonhomie, Biden introduced Harrison, bellowing "Stand up Chuck, let the people see you!" Horrified local Democrats rushed to Biden, who tried to recover by trumpeting Harrison's courage in the face of adversity.

At another stop, Biden said Hillary Clinton would have been a better vice presidential pick. He was right, but did nothing for Obama's reputation for decision-making by pointing out the obvious. (I can't blame Obama. Can you imagine being president, with Hillary Clinton a heartbeat away from the presidency, after what happened to Commerce Secretary Ron Brown and Presidential Counselor Vince Foster? The strain on the Secret Service, alone, would be unbelievable.)

Biden has always had a magnificent facility for saying the wrong thing at the wrong time. As chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, he called for dividing Iraq into separate Sunni, Shiite and Kurd states. It was widely panned, particularly by the Iraqis themselves, and considered wrong by many noted foreign policy scholars and experts.

Biden's first presidential campaign blew up after it was disclosed he plagarized a speech by British Foreign Secretary Neal Kinnock, delivering it as his own. Biden is famous for his long-winded, overblown speeches at the drop of a hat--rarely being brief enough to produce the pithy, treasured 30-second television soundbite for the evening news shows.

It's merciful for the Democrats that Biden is out of the loop.

Desperate Dems grasping at straws

The national news media is doing its best to keep Barack Obama positioned in the presidential race, but it may be a losing battle. Despite polls such as the CNN composite "poll of polls" showing the race with John McCain within a point or two, state polls in key battlegrounds are not nearly so accomodating.

The race is decided in the Electoral College, not the popular vote, and McCain is running like a trojan in key Democratic strongholds, where President Bush never did win. In Minnesota, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, McCain is well within the margin of error in local polls. If he and Obama each carry just the states Bush and Kerry did four years ago, and McCain carries any one of these states, he wins the election.

There isn't much danger of Obama carrying any major Bush states. McCain is running strong in states Obama likes to claim he is fighting in: Virginia, Ohio, Georgia, North Carolina and Florida. Sarah Palin solidified McCain's base and then some, greatly narrowly what little chance Obama had in these states. I'm glad to see the media paint Colorado, New Mexico and Nevada as deciding the election, so we get to see the candidates in here so often.

However, if McCain carries any one of the big Democratic states he is within striking distance of, these smaller Western states won't matter. In fact, its folly to think that neighbor John McCain, who's home state of Arizona borders these three states, would lose all three. There's a greater likelihood he'll carry all three.

The economic crisis really isn't playing out in Obama's favor. The Democrats in Congress do not dare politicize the legislation coming through this week to deal with it, as the public is accepting that it is a dire national emergency and that action is needed urgently.

The elephant in the room, which nobody except me is brave enough to talk about, is that Black Democratic candidates usually run about 5% behind what the polls show, as a lot of white folks talk a good game to pollsters, but their prejudices come out in the secrecy of the voting booth. If this proves to be true, Obama needs to show up at least 5% better in the polls than McCain. Ask Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley, if he were still alive, about his campaign for Governor and former Virginia Gov. Doug Wilder about his narrow win, after leading stealthily in the polls.

As they say, its never over 'til its over--but McCain looks like a pretty good bet at this juncture.

It's socialism any way you slice it

The sense of inevitabiliy and sighing by John Q. Public in accepting the federal bail-out of financial institutions and the economy is breathtaking. The mass socialism being foisted on us by the pols, and our meek acceptance of it, is unprecedented.

You'd hope people would fight if Vladimir Putin marched onto U.S. soil and did the the same thing to us, imposing his collectivist will by military might. The old saying is that there are two ways to rob a man--with a gun or with a fountain pen.

Our freedom is being taken by the latter, and yet there is barely a whimper.

The notion that only government can save us from ourselves has never been generally accepted before. Today, everyone is laying down and saying "kick me one more time, it feels good."

The Weimar Republic in Germany and numerous other governments have fallen, and systems came crashing down, by diluting the soup of the currency with the government printing press. But that's what we're doing now, and no one seems to be the wiser.

It is like Nikita Krushchev, the grizzled shoe-pounding Soviet dictator, said in the 1960s, "We'll bury you, and some capitalist will hand us the shovel."

We're doing that to ourselves right now, right before our very eyes--and no one is lifting a finger to protest or complain. We've seen the enemy, the old warrior said, and it is us.

And this too shall pass

The gloom and doom on Wall Street, which Obama and the Democrats are trying to hard to exploit for political gain, will pass.

The market has over-reacted, as it frequently does, to some tough economic news, and it will recover, probably before the November election. What goes up must come down.

While McCain is backtracking from his assertion that the economy is fundamentally sound, he was right. A temporary burble or two does not a depression make.

The U.S. economy has been in far worse shape than it is now, and probably will be again some day. As long as the feds can print money to cover collapses like AIG and Goldman Sachs, and force deals like the sale of Merrill Lynch to Bank of America and Lehman Brothers to Barclay's--the economy will not crater.

The housing crisis, the burst bubble behind the current problems, was manufactured by liberals in Congress, who forced lenders to end redlining and make housing loans to unqualified borrowers. They subsidized it through quasi-federal agencies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and bailed them out too, when they got in trouble as a result.

The answer is to let free markets operate unfettered, and let lenders restore reasonable credit standards to making loans.

It will strengthen the economy and restore the stock market. The economy doesn't need a political solution--if there is such a thing. It needs to be left alone, and allowed to heal up and recover on its own.

Election excitement hits Colorado

For whatever reason, Colorado with its nine electoral votes, is "in play" this year, as a key determiner in the presidential contest.

For years, candidates flew over the Rocky Mountain and plains states, on their way from the vote-rich East and Midwest, on their way to California. Barack Obama spoke in Grand Junction, Colorado yesterday, the first Democrat since Harry Truman to campaign there as a presidential candidate.

This still seems questionable on a raw numbers basis, as big states like Michigan, Pennsylvania and Ohio are very close in the polls. It takes all the Rocky Mountain states together to equal what one of the biggies will do for your campaign in the Electoral College. And yet, Colorado broadcast airways are full of expensive presidential campaign commercials.

After Obama was here for the Democratic National Convention in late August, John McCain and Sarah Palin together were in Colorado Springs a week ago. This week, Palin was in Golden Monday, while Obama spent a day and a half here, visiting Golden again and Pueblo, in addition to the Grand Junction stop.

Colorado has a narrow plurality of registered Republicans, with Independents next and Democrats third among the registered voters. Bush carried the state both times, but more recently we have elected a Democratic governor in Bill Ritter, U.S. Senator in Ken Salazar and a majority of the seven-member congressional delegation are currently Democrats. That's why Obama thinks there's hope.

We undoubtedly have not seen the last of the major party candidates in the remaining 49 days until the election, unless one or the other jumps out into a big lead in the polls. McCain is from neighboring Arizona, so should sweep the Rocky Mountain states--but such a trend is not apparent yet.

We'll just continue to bask in the glow of all the attention.

Obama drops vision, becomes attack dog

The old saying is "dance with the one who brung ya."

Obama has abandoned the soaring rhetoric, the gauzy, fuzzy, feel good phrases in his stump speeches. He sounds like Al Gore or John Kerry, in the old liberal attack dog mode of "Hate Bush." Having little luck running against John McCain and Sarah Palin, he has fallen out of the visionary, futuristic "dream with me" of his early campaign, back into the same old Democratic tactics.

They failed in the last two elections, and almost certainly will this time. George Bush is term limited and can't run again. He is not a candidate in this election, and America is ready to move on. Obama is virtually abandoning the change theme to McCain and Palin.

As tragic as the big Wall Street blowout was today, and the inevitable collapse of Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch, blaming it on Bush is hardly going to gain credibility with the American people. Particularly since it was the liberals in Congress who outlawed redlining and virtually demanded that lenders make housing loans to unqualified people.

When the loans defaulted and brought the collapse of the lenders, hardly a surprise, it can't be credibly put at Bush's door. Obama has got to do better than that.

America is tired of sniveling and finger-pointing. They want solutions and and liberation from the past. McCain and Palin have seized on that, co-opting Obama's own message and rhetoric. Unless he returns to the vision and future message, he is a dead duck.

Stock market shakeout helps Obama

The last week's plunge of the Dow Jones Industrial average has left investors counting their pennies, and looking at their hole card.

It hasn't been a real rippy-dippy year in the Stock Market anyway, and the last week makes it much worse. There are always jitters at elecction time, and this will be the shortest presidential campaign in history, with just 60 days left until the election. Then the stock market will settle down at some level or another.

I'm no stock picker or market timer, but at some point investors will find stocks cheap and leap back into the market and it will go up. Are we at such a bottom right now? If I knew the answer, would I tell you?

The conventional politics is that a lower stock market helps Obama and hurts Republicans. Probably this is true, but so far the year is not running true to form. Republicans should have no chance whatsoever, given President Bush's unpopularity, the Iraq war's lack of broad-based public support and the economic slowdown.

However, the conventional choice of Hillary Clinton and Mitt Romney didn't hapen, and now McCain has upset the apple cart again with his selection of a running mate in the person Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin. She is wildly popular with values voters and has changed the chemistry of the race.

It's too early to tell, but seemingly Obama got very little bounce out of the Democratic convention, trumped by the Palin announcement. Her appeal to Rust Belt, gun-toting hunters is sterling, and to a lesser extent, snubbed women voters backing Clinton.

With all the bad economic news, Obama would be the conventional beneficiary, but 2008 is proving to be a very unconventional year.

McCain's speech very strong

Perhaps John McCain didn't hit the home run his running mate Sarah Palin did last night, but his speech was strong, positive and showed him to be very statesman-like, looking and sound like a President. He is not, and never will be Mr. Charisma and Charm, but came across warmly and professionally.

His minor jabs at Obama left a good impression, and his specifics about the economy, Republican failings in recent years, Iraq, energy policy, opportunity and the future set a good tone.

The CBS poll shows he and Obama tied going into the speech tonight, which is much stronger than anyone expected at this point. He and Palin look well positioned at the start of the campaign, and with Arnold Schwartzenegger's man Steve Schmidt leading the way, there is reason for hope. The Democrats will continue to control Congress, but the GOP team may well eek out a respectable victory. McCain's base in the Republican Party and with the Christian Right is very strong and energized, as it hasn't been since Reagan.

This is a seminal, change election, with no incumbent on either ticket for the first time in decades, and we will wind up with either a Black president or female vice president for the first time ever.

It is going to be an exciting fall.

Palin hits a home run

Having just turned off Sarah Palin's acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, I can make several observations:

1. She was strong and confident, tough but charming. Democrats are going to have their hands full, messing with her.

2. She said it all with her joke about hockey moms--the only difference between a Pit Bull and a Hockey Mom is the lipstick.

3. She demonstrated outstanding grasp of the energy issues, and heavily exploited her experience and knowledge in the oil rich state of Alaska. She was very effective talking about the $40 billion natural gas pipeline she signed the deal to build.

4. She shone brightly compared to the speakers ahead of her--Mitt Romney, Rudy Giuliana and even Mike Huckabee. Huck was funny and the most effective of the trio, but didn't light up the crowd like Palin. Romney never caught fire, just like his presidential campaign, and Giuliani may have pushed the bounds of good taste in going after Obama.

Palin really comes across as Every Woman, warts and all. A lot of Americans can relate to that. She will give Obama and Biden fits, trying to figure you how to handle her, without destroying themselves in the process.

Where was this Fred Thompson a year ago?

Tonight at the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, former Tennessee Senator and Law and Order star Fred Thompson delivered the keynote address.

He was animated, alive and delivered a real stemwinder, blasting Barack Obama, and playing up John McCain and Sarah Palin. He was very effective, both on television and in the hall. in front of the GOP base.

Thompson has always had this ability, and displayed it numerous times in being elected and re-elected to the U.S. Senate from Tennessee. There were times when he rose up and took a leadership position on some issue in the Senate, but most of the time he was just going through the motions, a very diffident, lackadaisical solon, at best.

So it was with his ill-fated presidential campaign last year. Some said his best speech was his withdrawl speech. Fred was laconic on the stump, ill-prepared and seemingly very unconcerned. He just walked through the debates, frequently unprepared and uninspiring. It seemed like his young trophy second wife wanted badly to be first lady, but that he was just going through the motions, to please her but not have to serve as President.

We Fredheads (As his backers were known) are asking, after watching him at the GOP convention tonight "Where was this Fred Thompson a year ago?"

Liberals fit to be tied

As Barack Obama's post-convention bounced never occurred or evaporated--take your choice--liberals are starting to panic. The uncoordinated, scattergun approach to what to do about McCain, and particularly his running mate Sarah Palin, shows desperation and uncertainty.

The Zogby poll shows McCain and Palin two points ahead--when a winning Democrat normally comes out of his convention with a 10-15 point bounce, a cushion to get them through the fall. They are apoplectic.

Former national chairman Don Fowler said Hurricane Gustav is a "gift from God." It is, but not as Fowler thinks. Instead of disrupting the GOP national convention, it is legitimately keeping George Bush and Dick Cheney away to take care of hurricane business, allowing the party to look very humanitarian in raising money for disaster relief and eschewing partisan politics. We don't know how the rest of the week will play out, but so far so good.

The only real negative is the protestors, who the Denver police had under control at the Democratic convention in their city, but are much more violent in St. Paul, throwing bleach at the Connecticut delegation, resulting in 80 arrests in one day--when Denver barely broke 100 for the week.

McCain and Palin look much more the change than Obama and his tired old-Washington-hand veep nominee, Joe Biden. The right is rallying around Palin in supporting her pregnant unmarried daughter, proving her anti-abortion credentials not once, but twice. This has forced Obama to declare family members off limits--ordering his staff not to politicize Palin's daughter.

It still looks like the perfect storm to this blog, with McCain having things well in hand.

Stars aligning right for McCain

Regardless what you think of John McCain or his selection of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate--the one thing that cannot be denied is that the stars are aligning right for the ticket at this moment in time.

Nobody wants to see a Hurricane Katrina repeat in New Orleans with Hurricane Gustav, but this just in: due to the impending possible disaster, and its attendant heavy responsibilities, President George Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney will be unable to attend the Republican National Convention this week in Minneapolis. (Wink, Wink. Nod. Nod.)

Now the liberal press will have to use four-year-old pictures of Bush and McCain bear-hugging, as the Prez is just too busy to go to Minneapolis. And Cheney can't be there either, gol darn it! And just when the liberals really wanted to get Bush's imprimateur all over the McCain campaign. Tough luck.

It even looks like McCain might have to do his acceptance speech by video from the Gulf Coast, due to the disaster. That means he's only leaving behind his running mate, Gov. Sarah Palin, to fire up the troops there on the ground in Minneapolis. Oh, the crushing weight of the call of duty, the sacrifices that must be made to put America first . . .

Not to be too cold and cynical, of course. But while the liberal media is doing its best to downplay it, the conservative GOP base has not been this fired up since the first Reagan campaign. As one old warrior told me, who has not been active in many years: "Stand back son, I'm lacin' up my cleats!"

If poor little Sarah Palin is there all alone in Minneapolis, to hold the hands of the 10,000 ecstatic Republican activists who are assembling as we speak . . .boy, that'll be a real downer.

Even more, looking around the television and Sunday papers, has anybody seen anything of Barack Obama or Joe Biden lately?