Even the media can’t save Obama now

Don’t get me wrong they won’t quit trying but at this point I doubt even the likes of DNCTV (MSNBC), NBC, CNN, ABC, etc can’t save Obama from himself anymore.  Obama hasn’t figured out how to react to the news that McCain picked Gov. Sarah Palin as his VP.  He has had his media surrogates running around questioning her experience which we have already detailed as laughable.  Actually of the four presidential and vice presidential candidates it is quite possible that Governor Palin is the MOST qualified of the four.  She is leaps and bounds more qualified than any of the top four candidates the democratic party put forth in the primaries this year.  She is likely ahead of most of the republican field as well.

Back to the media.  They are running around trying to make up news, with help of the loony left blogosphere, questioning the paternity of Palin’s youngest child.  Trying to invent news that Palin has hurt her standing with conservatives because of pregnancy of Palin’s oldest daughter.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  Conservatives look at how the Palin family has handled this and look at Bristol Palin and the father taking responsibility for their actions and making very real grown up decisions.  To conservatives it looks like very well grounded family, yes there are challenges, yes our children enter into adult decisions too early sometimes.  The difference is that the Palin family has chosen to support their daughter and work very hard to help Bristol and the father through this.

The media for their part simply can’t find anything meaningful, Obama has nothing at all to offer on the subject so the media will try to keep up the drumbeat of experience so let’s look at the "experience" of several former VP’s and VP candidates:

• VP Dick Cheney: Secretary of Defense during Gulf War I, CEO of Haliburton, Member of Congress.  Clearly qualified.
• John Edwards: One term Senator. No executive experience, no foreign policy experience.  Clearly not qualified.
• Joe Lieberman: Four term Senator (currently), great deal of foreign policy experience in the senate.  One could make a case either way for Joe.
• Al Gore: Two term Senator, no foreign policy experience, no executive experience.  Clearly not qualified and an absolute disaster as Clinton’s VP.
• Jack Kemp: Former Housing Secretary, nine term member of congress, while in Congress authored (or co-authored) numerous bills that helped provide the tax relief Americans enjoyed during the 1980’s.  Clearly qualified.
• Dan Qualye: Two term senator, two term congressman.  No specific foreign policy or executive experience.  Even I have a hard time making the case that he was qualified.

So let us detail Sarah Palin’s experience:

1. Governor of Alaska
2. Former Mayor of Wasilla, Alaska
3. Former Chairperson of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission
4. Former Member of Wasilla City Council
5. Has a track record of reducing government and reducing taxes

While Governor Palin lacks foreign policy experience she has a great deal of executive experience and that is of much greater value in a Vice President.  Having great executive experience means that you can assemble a team, you can bring the best and brightest to your team on every possible subject or issue.  Governor Palin has done this and done it well, not only is Governor Palin more than qualified for the position of Vice President, she is more qualified than most of the people to either run for or occupy the office of Vice President over the last twenty years.

So while the media questions Governor Palin’s experience, Americans begin to see that the democratic ticket doesn’t have the experience to lead a small town let alone a country.

Yes, we CAN drill our way out of this

You must have seen or heard it. It’s been repeated ad nauseum by Democrats on floors of both houses of Congress, before TV cameras and radio microphones and at recent campaign events. “We can’t drill our way out of this.” The donkey party’s latest mantra has been hammered home by the usual suspects from Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid to Barack Obama. Like most Democrat talking points, it’s a falsehood.

Yes we CAN drill our way out of this. Just the announcement of our intention to drill in any one of the Big Three Forbidden Zones (off the Continental Shelf, in the Baaken or in ANWR) would have a considerable impact on the speculators who have been driving the price of oil ever skyward for the past several months. Hugh Hewitt makes the point:

No one wants to get caught holding the contract for high priced oil when new reserves are discovered.

In fact, the speculation which has driven up the price of oil is only made possible because we have tied our hands to prevent ourselves from exploiting our own considerable domestic supplies:

In the current oil market unreasonable speculation is simply a symptom of the problem. That problem being the lack of a stable supply of crude oil.
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Current oil production levels are virtually identical to demand with very little excess capacity available in the event of an interruption. Political instability, weather hazards, refinery breakdowns, terror attacks, kidnapping/attacks on oil platforms and hostage taking, and other interruptions in production increase the risk that oil supply will not be able to meet the demand in the future.
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That is where the market comes in. If you are a large consumer of oil you purchase futures contracts, offering to buy oil in the future, at a set price that the seller has to deliver at that price — no matter what interruptions occur between now and then. In order to make a profit traders have to build in a premium in the cost of oil to offset that ever increasing risk.
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Increasing domestic production — Drill Here, Drill Now, Pay Less — would greatly reduce much of the speculation by mitigating many of the uncertainties. From the list above, if you developed domestic supply in various regions of the US (Both coasts, Rocky Mountains, Alaska, Plains) you would mitigate the major effects of weather, political instability, terror attacks, attacks on platforms, and many other interruptions because there would be additional supplies from the remaining stable US regions. Increasing refining capacity would help mitigate the effects of refinery breakdowns.
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This fundamental misunderstanding of the oil markets and the refusal of the Democrats to allow increased energy production has empowered the speculators in ways not seen since the markets began trading, resulting in a direct increase in the price of gasoline. The Democrat’s tactic of deflecting blame to the oil companies only serves to increase the speculation as additional restrictions and increased taxes on domestic oil producers historically leads to reduced domestic production.

But no one that I know of is claiming that all we should do is drill for oil to try to make ourselves more energy independent. Most advocates for increased domestic drilling see it as just one tactic in a compresehsive strategic energy policy which also encourages building more nuclear reactors, synthesizing liquid fuels from coal and waste celluloic stock, continuing the refinement of hybrid electric vehicles and developing hydrogen as a motor fuel, just for starters. We think that it’s really cool that used cooking oil can be easily made into something that diesel engines can burn. We see clean burning natural gas and propane as the logical alternative fuels for buses and fleet vehicles.

Nor are we only talking about the supply side here. Many of us have little or no problem with increasing the fuel efficiency of our vehicles, our homes and our workplaces. As conservatives, we have long argued that higher prices will help to drive down demand, and we are seeing that happen in the real world right here and right now.

The truth is that Democrats are so beholden to the environmental special interests that they’ve painted themselves into a corner on energy matters. The donkeys are trying to swim against an increasing tide:

Most voters favor the resumption of offshore drilling in the United States and expect it to lower prices at the pump, even as John McCain has announced his support for states that want to explore for oil and gas off their coasts.
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A new Rasmussen Reports telephone survey—conducted before McCain announced his intentions on the issue–finds that 67% of voters believe that drilling should be allowed off the coasts of California, Florida and other states. Only 18% disagree and 15% are undecided. Conservative and moderate voters strongly support this approach, while liberals are more evenly divided (46% of liberals favor drilling, 37% oppose).
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Sixty-four percent (64%) of voters believe it is at least somewhat likely that gas prices will go down if offshore oil drilling is allowed, although 27% don’t believe it. Seventy-eight percent (78%) of conservatives say offshore drilling is at least somewhat likely to drive prices down. That view is shared by 57% of moderates and 50% of liberal voters.
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Nearly all voters are worried about rising gas and energy prices, with 79% very concerned and 16% somewhat concerned.

Yes, it’s still “the economy, stupid” and especially pump prices for gasoline and diesel, not to mention the high costs the airlines are incurring for jet fuel. The GOP seems to be waking up to what conservatives already knew. Make energy your number one issue and offer doable solutions to the problems of energy security and high prices.

The Democrats, meanwhile, have sentenced themselves to doing hard time in Al Gore’s lockbox, and they’ve entrusted the key to the Sierra Club. Couldn’t happen to a more deserving bunch of people, one which has consistently put its own selfish political interests ahead of America’s security and her citizens’ bank accounts.

- JP

It’s the Oil Stupid!

Senate Democrats, unquestionably the least intelligent being walking the Earth today, have decided that American’s aren’t paying enough for gas.  With the price over $4 per gallon these mental midgets in the Senate want to institute a windfall profits tax on oil companies where congress will set what it thinks is an acceptable profit and then tax anything over that by 25%.  We’ve been down this road before and it failed miserably but Democrats, never willing to admit socialism a failure, won’t let that get in the way.

None of these Democrats have ever run a successful business so they are the last people on the planet who should determine what is acceptable profit for any business.  Aside from that they want to throw all the money from this boondoggle away more alternative energy failures like wind and solar.  I know many believe that wind and solar are great but the reality is that we have thrown away billions of dollars in the last thirty years trying to make this technology viable and it’s not.  The bottom line is that we need to increase supply and we need to increase refining capacity.

This plan, probably not even constitutional, will do nothing but increase the price at the pump because this is a cost of doing business and those costs will be passed on.  Why is it that Democrats refuse to learn from their failures, most people make mistakes, learn from them and move on.  Not so for congressional Democrats, they’re just not that intelligent.

Howard the Dean to the rescue

Proving yet again that they are all about power and not at all about democracy, the powers that be in the Democratic Party today came up with a great “compromise” basically deciding that Hillary should lose delegates that she rightfully won and Obama should get delegates in a state that didn’t even vote for him. 

Obama winds up taking 59 delegates in Michigan even though he wasn’t on the ballot there and wasn’t entitled to any delegates.  This infuriated the Hillary supporters and for good reason, I thought this was the party of “count every vote”.  No the Democrat party is proving to Democrats what conservatives and most Republicans have known all along, that they are the party obsessed with power and will screw any group they have to in order to obtain it.

For what it is worth Hillary seems ready to take this fight to the convention, which is a good thing.  She has almost no chance of getting the nomination from it but she can make sure that Obama doesn’t get it either.  She has done enough damage to Obama that he will certainly lose in November to McCain even though McCain is weaker today than Bob Dole was in 1996.  No for the sake of the party they will look to someone who has not been in this fight, someone recognizable but who has been above all this at least to this point.

When the convention rolls around I submit that it will be Howard Dean who emerges victorious in Denver.  Why Dean, well he pulls all the strings, he has the most to gain, he knows when it comes to Florida Hillary needs those delegates seated, but with Michigan he also knows there is no way Hillary will stand by and let Dean give Obama 59 delegates that he didn’t win.  Dean knows that Hillary will fight this to the convention, he knows that this will create such a mess that he can come in and be the savior.  He will make the case to the super delegates that both these candidates are so damaged by the primary process that neither can win in November. 

This is true, but his claim will be that he is the only person who can save them from this looming disaster.  Will this be true, could Dean save this party from itself, I doubt it.  More than likely he will hand his party a crushing defeat in November, but at the end of the day it’s all about the thirst for power and they will gladly step on each other in their quest for it.

More empty threats from Hollywood

After listening to Alec Baldwin threaten to move to Canada if Bush was elected or re-elected, or whatever, I have no stomach to listen to the likes of Susan Sarandon threaten to move to Italy or Canada if McCain gets elected.  If it were true then that alone would be a valid reason for voting for McCain but like all the other Hollywood socialists and the Democratic Party leadership they have no intention of keeping their word…

Racist church trumps scathing memoir

Just when the Democrats figured it was safe to come out of the Chicago churchhouse, Pfather Pfleger rose… er, sank to the occasion. Now the Dems and their pfrontrunner for the party’s presidential nomination, Senator Barack Obama, can’t seem to get pfree pfrom the quagmire that is Trinity United Church of Christ.

They thought that had found the perfect “get out of manure free” card. What could be better to get the shamlessly racist church Obama has chosen to attend for over two decades out of the headlines than some new scandal-mongering aimed squarely at the object of the left’s obsessive derangement - Chimpy McBushitler? Former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan, nouveau riche with thirty pieces of silver from the book deal he had cut with a publishing house connected to leftist sugar daddy George Soros, had just started making the round of television talk shows to publicize his “scathing memoir” just chock full o’ “explosive” revelations about the Bush Administration. Hot on his heels was an army of Dem footsoldiers who, in a stretch which would impress even the Fantastic Four’s Reed Richards, were trying to use the flap the media was sure to generate over McClellan’s book to taint the campaign of Republican presidential nominee John McCain.

If this sounds to you like a scheme worthy of a Roadrunner cartoon script, you’re right on target. Wyle E. Coyote, the perpetually hapless Dem, was yet again let down by what seemed to be a sure-fire solution from big brains at Acme Inc. And things seemed to be going so well, too. Both people and press were growing tired of hearing about Jeremiah Wright, and the Obama connection to unrepentant domestic terrorists William Ayers and Bernadette Dohrn never sparked true outrage in any sector beyond the patriotic right. Obama’s daily gaffes didn’t seem to be hurting him much, either. So the Dems thought they had found a big story with legs which was a great twofer - it would give them a fresh club to beat President George W. Bush with, and they would use those of McClellan’s charges which were related to the Iraq war against McCain. Ah, but it only lasted about a day and a half. Along came Pfather Pfleger to cut the legs out from under the McClellan story, steal Scotty’s thunder and drag Obama’s First Church of Hatred kicking and screaming back into the limelight.

Fr. Michael Pfleger, ordained a priest for the Archdiocese of Chicago in 1975, has pastored the mostly African American Saint Sabina Catholic Church in Chicago’s Auburn Gresham neighborhood since 1981. His social activism has put him in league with Jeremiah Wright, Louis Farrakhan, Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson. Blogger Sultan Knish calls Pfleger “the white Rev. Jeremiah Wright.” The good Pfather says that he’s known Obama for 20 years.

Indeed, it was at White’s Trinity United Church where Pfleger stepped into the limelight (not to mention the manure) of the presidential campaign.

Can you say “racist”? I knew you could.

After this bizarre display by the radical priest, the Obama campaign, professing “disappointment,” was forced to remove Pleger’s endorsement of Obama from the “faith” page of the Obama website. There’s been a lot of “cleaning up” on that website over the past weeks…

No, the lackluster McClellan just can’t compete with the likes of Pfather Pfleger, a true rock star. But Scotty’s story would have probably collapsed under its own weight, even without the antics of a pathologically progressive priest to help push it to the back pages. After all, Scott McClellan didn’t even try to hide the fact that he was just another disgruntled former employee:

He reveals that he was pushed to leave earlier than he had planned, and he displays some bitterness about that as well as about being sometimes kept out of the loop on key decision-making sessions.

Also, the connection between McClellan’s publisher and George Soros leaves little doubt that Scotty and his book are just teeth on a cog in a much broader agenda. And if anyone still has any doubts, here’s what McLellan had to say about the 2008 presidential race:

Scott McClellan, making the media rounds to promote his book and push back against the ferocious counter-attack by Bush loyalists, declined to come out tonight for John McCain and said he liked what he had heard from Barack Obama.

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“I haven’t made a decision,” McClellan told Katie Couric on CBS’s “Evening News,” when asked if he was backing the Arizona senator. McClellan paid homage to McCain, saying that the Republican nominee had “governed from the center, and that’s where I am.”

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But without prompting, he said he was “intrigued by Sen. Obama’s message.”

Oh, well. Back to the Acme catalog. There’s just got to be something in there that will work next time…

- JP

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