How do you define “recession?”

Thomas Sowell gets routinely published in the Spokesman-Review and the fellow is way out there any more when it comes to trying to defend the present economy. Even to rehashing “rags to riches” types of fantasies. But when discussing with my sister using “Google Talk” the state of Sowell’s head when it comes to a severe economic slowdown, my sister who lives in Wisconsin has been discussing store closures and plant shut downs. If the economy is so sound, why is that, anyway? You would think that if a guy is going to proclaim how “conservative” he is, that he would at least resort to a few facts.

It is almost like he preaches some kind of economic theory from a university. Well now, families or individuals that make it to the top 1% and are eventually replaced by others from the bottom 5^th and blah, blah, blah.  But is that a fact?  Back in the 1950s, it may indeed have been truer than it is today.  Because at least in the 1950s, the marketplace was likely far more egalitarian than it is today.  Sowell’s problem is that he is continually skating around the real facts of the market, its ins and outs, its ups and downs, and the fact as well that there are those in the market that are truly greedy for as much money as they can get their hands on.  That will mean that “the bottom fifth” won’t rise to the top to replace those who crawl into the lap of gvt to “protect them” from competition. The competition, precisely, from the bottom fifth.  When Sowell can no longer face reality, he is also no longer credible.

Bob Barr–Libertarian candidate

From a recent Political Ticker post comes this little gem: Bob Barr, former Georgia representative to Congress who decided to abandon the GOP two years ago because of too much big government under their watch, is now the Libertarian candidate for president. In the comments section of this CNN blog, many of the commenters seemed to be highly dismissive of Barr and what they regarded as his principles. As a non Christian who served in the U.S. Military, I personally know for a fact that Barr has plenty of negatives to his name. Not the least was his insistence that Military bases should not accommodate witchcraft adherents. Well, that kind of reminds me of Pat Robertson who once declared that only “Christians” could really be patriots. In which case, the witches serving this country voluntarily in any of the U.S. Armed Forces should be denied that they can do their patriotic duty and even further be denied their religious freedom equal to Christians. At least according to Barr. But Barr proved to be unsuccessful. A further negative was the idea that a president could be “impeached” on low level misdemeanors. Yeah, President Clinton had an affair. So? And plenty of members of Congress had affairs as well.

So Barr’s emergence now as a Libertarian candidate has the GOP backing McCain squirming and the Democrats positively gleeful at the prospect.  I say, go for it, quite frankly.  After all, Rep. Barr was a thorough nut case during his four terms in Congress.  He represented what I can only describe as nut cases in his own Georgia district.  Only when he faced a redrawing of the district mapping that put a much better Republican candidate in the same district as himself, then I am prepared to believe that true conservatives had an opportunity to take out what was embarrassing the state and put in someone who might represent them better rather than the radical wing of the GOP.  I could only wish Idaho was so lucky.  So, go for it Barr, peel off enough of the radical votes come November and it is quite possible that McCain will have to compete for the center right along with Obama.  And the center, incidentally, is fully fed up with the last 8 years of Bush.

CNN, a bit wrong on who repudiated public campaign financing

Back in the year 2000 and again in 2004, GW Bush actually decided to opt out of public campaign financing on the basis that he was getting his large donations from big business interests. In 2004, Senator John Kerry followed suit and also opted out of public campaign financing in his race for the White House. So I would certainly suggest that CNN should correct its Thursday 19^th of June 2008 report that Senator Barack Obama is the first presidential candidate to opt out of public campaign financing as part of his fundraising ability. — He is only the first accepts no PAC money and receives tons of small donor money presidential candidate to opt out of public campaign financing.

Senator Russ Feingold demonstrates that yet again there are Democrats who have no spine. Even Bill Bennett agreed that Senator Obama may “not be principled” but “he is” still “smart.” Smart in the fact that Senator Obama will have to fight and fend off the Republican attack machine. He will need much moolah to do it. You can be sure that the GOP won’t be acting on “principle” in going after Senator Obama. So, if he is to gain the White House, he may as well have the means at his disposal.

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Here is a real laugh for the day:  A fellow selling election year buttons, this according to what is found on CNN “The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer;” seems there is a fellow who put what he called a “funny” on campaign buttons by asking if should [Senator] Obama win the White House if we can continue to call it that.  The GOP got into a public huff over what it called “racism.”  Well now, a little reminder for the GOP, they were playing up racism since the creation of “the Southern strategy.”  They were certainly exploiting race as an African-American with a middle eastern sounding name decided to announce for the presidency.  Isn’t it a little late to cry “racism” over some silly button now?

The “Comedy Central” of the McCain candidacy

Now Senator McCain has a certified Dem opponent. So, what does he do in response to making his case to the American public? Engages in the politics of division quite unlike what he was willing to do during his Senate years. And when he isn’t doing that, he decides that fear mongering about taxes, health care and etc. will be his primary platform. So let us take a moment to discuss McCain as presented on CNN, Wolf Blitzer show cased some of his comments.

1. Health care costs are too high, but Obama’s health care plan would be too expensive (and likely increase the size of gvt too). What we must do, so McCain argues, is bring down the costs of health care. How? Through gvt? The much vaunted market place won’t bring down such costs on their own.
2. Obama would increase taxes that would deeply hurt “struggling families.” This would surely include the dreaded Estate tax. How many “struggling families” out there have million dollar estates that would be immediately affected by such a detrimental tax?
3. So the question should be asked of McCain, who does he expect to pay for the wars that he expects to continue well into his presidency? The grand kids?

McCain can be a very funny guy when he shows up on “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.”  Too bad he doesn’t accept a permanent stand up routine with that channel.

The Robert Scheer editorial

Robert Scheer often gets republished in the Spokesman-Review of Spokane, Washington. When his editorial appeared, on 7 June 2007, it was titled, “Troubling unpredictability.” Basically, Scheer describes McCain’s flips and flogs between his Senate career and his campaign speeches as he seeks to attain the oval office. Scheer referring to the former as the “principled McCain.”

Will the real John McCain stand up? Actually, I don’t expect him to now that he is the Republican presidential candidate, pandering to the irrationalities that drive his party. Nor is it likely that the fawning mass media will pressure him to the point of clarity.

McCain is the most confounding of candidates, veering as he does from the stance of provincial reaction to sophisticated enlightenment within an almost instantaneous time frame. He did it last week, when he blasted Barack Obama for being soft in appraising America’s adversaries while, in the same moment, calling for sensible rapprochement with Vladimir Putin’s Russia on nuclear arms control. While such unpredictability can be appealing in a senator, it is unnerving in a possible president.

Yeah, I would have to agree. As Scheer goes on to describe Senator McCain: “Unpredictability is welcome as evidence of fresh thinking, but not when it suggests inconsistencies that may be born more of crass opportunism than of insight.” During the extra long campaign season, McCain actually lost some states to Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee was competitive for a while, And the news media such as CNN took considerable note that McCain hadn’t exactly won over the “conservative” vote. So, to “win over” such a vote, McCain flips and flops on what made him a maverick in the Senate and what he argues that he should be as president. As posted before, a continuation of GW’s foreign and domestic policies that he assuredly disagreed with while in the Senate. Literally, “go along to get along amnesty” McCain.

“Then there is the heroic-warrior McCain, who rose above his own wounds to team up with fellow Vietnam war hero Democrat John Kerry to pave the way for normalization of relations with Vietnam.  McCain had the courage to reach out to Hanoi, despite a very strong domestic opposition that accused him of betraying MIAs left behind in Vietnam.”  Further along in Scheer’s editorial, “On a related point, it is difficult to square the ex-POW’s unequivocal condemnation of torture with his accommodation of President Bush’s torture policy.”  Yeah, it sure is, isn’t it.  And makes it absurdly easy for Senator Barak Obama to make the argument that McCain would be a third term for GW.  All to get those “conservative” votes, I suppose.  —  Scheer’s full editorial can be found at Creators Syndicate.

The General election, at last… As GW goes…

Listening to Senator McCain’s speech this morning, I noticed again just how much he sounded like GW Bush in 2004, with just a slight change of wording. GW spent much of his campaign telling his highly select audience how “we were turning the corner in Iraq.” Even as the violence increased daily in that country. Now fast forward 4 years and McCain is trying to label Obama as weak on national security, even in the same manner as GW had made the argument in 2004 Against Senator Kerry. Senator Obama wants to withdraw our troops from Iraq… Well now, if we are succeeding in that country, why on earth would we want to continue to occupy a sovereign state? All Iran and Al Qaeda have to do is lay back and wait… The same “Defeatocrat” argument that Republicans made use of with great relish to prevent the slim Democratic majority of pushing an end to the war. Well now, if Al Qaeda is on the run, then there would be no purpose in arguing that we need to stay there and provide “support” to a nation that should be taking care of its own. Ever hear of Welfare dependency, McCain?

The Iraqi forces… accomplished taking out… but with the support of American troops. Wouldn’t the argument of “succeess” mean that Iraqi troops at the direction of their gvt could quell the violence brought about by Iranian “Foreign fighters” and remnants of militants without the need of support from American troops? What it comes down to is the slip sliding away of an argument that continually lacks consistency or “straight talk.”

Then there is the McCain rant that Obama would meet this nation’s enemies or even tyrants without “preconditions.” And how well did it work out when our allies p.o.ed GW and he made it plain he wouldn’t talk to them at all. Which guaranteed that this nation would get a major disapproval rating. But it also depends on the tyrant, doesn’t it? How about Putin? GW could make common cause with the fellow who decided that Democracy in the nation of Russia isn’t an idea he needs to pursue. The common cause with a Russian tyrant would mean that Putin would help us on the war on terror even as we refuse to look too closely at his own activities closer to home. Until of course, Putin starts putting war planes and ships near our borders. Which would certainly argue that McCain, wanting to be president, has some peculiar national security shoes to fill. Those left him by a fellow who just happens to be very weak on national security — GW Bush.

Obama’s Pfleger problem?

It was recently that the news media played up Reverend Pfleger a Roman Catholic priest who mocked Senator Clinton in a “homily” before Senator Obama’s church. What was certainly no lost on the viewing audience, was how much the members of that Chicago church enjoyed it. The priest’s speech could certainly be regarded as political heckling. But it certainly was no different in kind to the sort of commentary that Roman Catholic John Kerry got for being a Dem pro-choicer whom his church denounced during the 2004 presidential campaign and Roman Catholics should vote against, per certain priests within his church. No one in the media flayed those priests for being purely political in their support for protestant G.W. Bush. Nor said of them that they had become G.W.’s problem that should surely dog his campaign as they turned off the more “secular” voters — read: The people who aren’t as religiously minded as those who vote for the GOP. Yet today, when a priest takes a look at the Clinton shenanigans during the long Dem presidential campaign and proceeds to mock her much as political cartoonists had already done. He now becomes Obama’s problem. Why? He’s the one who spouted off, not Obama. And whether he spoke at Obama’s church or anywhere else and made the same remarks, because of his long history with Obama, he becomes Obama’s problem. Again, why?

I have actually blogged much the same thing about Senator Clinton Whiners in Chief that Pfleger stated in his soundbite with rather comedic histrionics. It would be hard to miss the particulars of how the Clintons actually have run their campaign.  It certainly would not be lost on the same Roman Catholic Priest.  So maybe the real question is not whether this is Obama’s problem, but whether Senator Clinton is up to the task of dealing with division that her own campaign has surely created and willfully so.  Whether she is up to the task of dealing with people who are going to make nasty comments about her should she actually get the Dem nod in their Denver National Convention.  Whether she could deal with nasty ads coming from the GOP through the general election to follow.  Of course the news media isn’t likely to follow up on that as they prefer again to hang something on Obama because he is that upstart in black face.  A leader in this nation should remember that the American political tradition is to heap scorn on the people we put in office.  If Senator Clinton can’t handle that, then she is certainly not ready on day 1 to be president.