So it baffles me, really, why so many Democrats are pushing for what so many of their constituents are against.  Even Super Liberals like Michael Moore and Cindy Sheehan (yes, that whackjob) are coming out against the bailout.  (Hard to believe, but the whackjob, Cindy Sheehan, is running against Nancy Pelosi in the upcoming election.  Apparently, Nancy isn’t liberal enough for her.   That’s a bit like Goebbels saying Hitler wasn’t fascist enough for him.)

Even more amazing – and puzzling – is that while Nancy Pelosi stood upon her pink soapbox in the House of Representatives today lamenting the fact that the need for the bailout is the result of the “Bush administration’s failed economic policies”, she was voting with – and pushing others to vote with – none other than George Bush.  Huh?!?

Now, you would think the media would be all over this – the Democrats pushing a bailout bill supported by George Bush, all the while blaming the same George Bush for the crisis precipitating the bailout.  But no.  The media, somehow, has not been able to connect the dots.

Instead, the media is (not surprisingly) pushing the Democratic line of blaming the failure on House Republicans – who, actually, are opposing George Bush.  Never have I seen a more blatant example of the Democrats trying to have it both ways (and the media happily obliging them).  Democrats are blaming the bailout’s failure on House Republicans who are refusing to support George Bush’s current economic bailout idea, while at the same time castigating the very same House Republicans for previously supporting George Bush’s economic ideas.  Huh?!?

The logic here is so simple that even Paris Hilton can figure it out:  if Republicans are stupid for supporting Bush’s past economic plans benefiting Corporate America and Democrats are now supporting Bush’s current economic plan to benefit Corporate America – what does that make the Democrats?   Geniuses?

The fact is this:  Democrats know this bill is – as it has been called – a “crap sandwich”.  They don’t care.  All they care about are the political brownie points they think they can score by proving to Americans that they are “doing something”.   Ummm… except that when John McCain went to Washington to “do something”, they called it a political stunt and told him to go home.  Apparently, there is only enough room under the circus tent for left-leaning clowns.

The bailout bill failed by 23 votes.   Nancy Pelosi and Barney Rubble Fife Frank are blaming House Republicans for the loss.  Clearly, they failed to notice the 95 Democrats that voted against the bill.  Instead of blaming Republicans, why not blame the 95 Democrats that didn’t dutifully bow at Pelosi’s altar?   Democrats are blaming John McCain for not persuading enough Republicans to vote for the bill.  What’s wrong with Pelosi’s skills of persuasion?  She only needed to threaten persuade 24 of her fellow House Democrats.  

House Republicans overwhelmingly voted against the bailout bill because, by a 10 to 1 margin, their constituents were against it.  Given that we are supposed to have a representative government, it would only seem logical that members of the House of Representatives would represent the wishes of their constituents.  Unless of course, you’re a Democrat.  In that case, you just do whatever you damn well please knowing that the lemmings you call supporters will vote for you anyway.

Even the most ardent supporters of the bailout bill publicly admit that it’s not a good solution – yet they support it anyway because, they say, “it’s better than nothing.”   Sometimes, nothing is actually better. 

What is particularly galling to me is that Democrats – and in particular, Barack Obama – have been running around the campaign trail playing class warfare in their yellow camouflage and telling all of us how he is going “close Corporate loopholes” and “stop rewarding big companies that ship jobs overseas” and excoriating “fat cat” CEO’s and these evil lending institutions that have taken advantage of poor, innocent, minority homebuyers.   And yet, these same Democrats – and in particular, Barack Obama – are standing in full support of an economic bailout package that will create a gaping Corporate loophole, pardon big companies that shipped jobs overseas, let irresponsible fat cat CEO’s off the hook and reward lending institutions for making bad loans. 

Gee, I hate to use the Hitler analogy again, but that’s a little too much like railing against Hitler for the Holocaust and then giving him a gas chamber for his birthday.

Democrats like to paint Republicans as out of touch, but at least they are voting in accordance with their constituents.   Democrats, in full liberal style, have once again adopted the “we know better than you do” position and have totally blown their constituents off.

Did you ever stop to ask yourself why?   I’ll answer why – that’s what I’m here for.

Democrats (and some Republicans) want to bail out the financial industry so that the whole problem will just go away.  People will be so relieved that the government fixed the problem, they’ll stop wondering how the problem occured in the first place.  Without the bailout, the problem continues.  And if the problem continues, people will demand answers.   Usually that means that the Congress would conduct another banana republic Senate Hearing – but that’s not going to happen because calling Coporate bigwigs to the carpet to answer for how they got away with their shenanigans invariably leads to the Corporate bigwigs pointing finges at the members of Congress who facilitated it.  And they certainly aren’t going to do THAT before an election.

Their biggest worry is the media, who often takes it upon itself to investigate these matters independently – which is precisely what they would be doing right now were it not an election year.  Fortunately for the Democrats, the media is too busy campaigning for Obama to get involved in an investigation that might compromise Democrats and Obama.  So they are dutifully ignoring such investigations until after the election. 

Should John McCain win the election, look for those investigations to begin on November 3rd and the journalist who uncovers it to win a Pulitzer. Also look for Bob Woodward to write four books about it, all of which will be reviewed and lauded on MSNBC.  Look for Chris Matthews to confess that chapter 14 gave him a tingle up his leg. 

Should Obama win the election, look for those investigations to begin never.  I shouldn’t say that.  If Obama wins the election, some journalist will eventually investigate it.  Look for him to be accused of being on a witch hunt.  If he writes a book, they’ll accuse Karl Rove of being the ghost writer.

The fact is, Democrats are so desperately trying to push through this bailout bill in order to quell interest in the story.  As these major companies fall, look for CEO’s and former members of various Board of Directors to start pointing fingers and naming names.  And look for many of those names to be Democrats.

Last week, OpenSecrets.org released a list of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac campaign contribution recipients from 1989 – 2008.  Here are the top three:  #1 – Chris Dodd (Democrat).  #2 – Barack Obama (Democrat).  #3 – John Kerry (Democrat).   What’s particularly interesting is that despite the fact that he’s only been in the Congress for 3 years, Obama managed to hit #2 on the list.    Now, pretty much every member of Congress has received some kind of campaign contribution from Fannie & Freddie.  They are equal opportunity pocket greasers.  But some pockets, apparently, required a little more greasing than others.   What you won’t hear/read in the media:  Over a period of 19 years, John McCain has received a grand total of $21,550 in campaign contributions from Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac.  In less than 3 years, Barack Obama has received $126,349.    Details here:

http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2008/09/update-fannie-mae-and-freddie.html

Bailing out all these Wall Street financial firms is the easiest way for Congress to guarantee they’ll keep their mouths shut and not name names.  That is the reason why Democrats are so eager to push through this bailout legislation despite the fact that their constituents overwhelmingly oppose it.

Unfortunately, there are two sides to this political coin.  One might ask why – if Democrats control both houses of Congress and don’t need Republican votes to pass this legislation – are they not just forcing it through?   If they believe this bill is actually going to save the economy and save “Main Street”, why not push it through and take all of the credit for it’s success – thus ensuring decades of Democratic government control?   Because they know the legislation is a “crap sandwich”.  Because they know it’s not going to work.  Because they know sticking the American taxpayers with $700bn in bad debt they can’t unload is going to blow up in their faces.  They want an equal number of Republican votes so they don’t have to take the blame themselves when it fails.  They want to be able to blame it on Republicans.  At the very least, they want the Republicans to share in the blame.  They want to be able to say they were bullied by President Bush and the Republicans – the same way they said they were “bullied” into supporting the Gramm-Biley-Leach Act of 1999 (signed into law by President Clinton).  This was the juicy bit of legislation that allowed banks and insurance companies to dabble into the financial markets and expand into areas outside their core business.   They’ve already absolved themselves of any responsibility for that, but they won’t be able to absolve themselves of any responsibility for the bailout wrecking the economy if they can’t get an equal number of Republicans on board.

In the meantime, the Democrats have absolved themselves from any responsibility for the bailout bill’s failure – blaming Republicans even though, as previously mentioned, their votes weren’t technically needed to pass the bill.

You’re going to hear a lot from Democrats about how they care about “middle America”.   Don’t be fooled.  If they gave a fig about “middle America” they wouldn’t be so desperately trying to shove a bailout nobody wants down middle America’s throat.

That, in a nutshell, is the sole justification for Obama’s candidacy.  Throughout the primary season, people allowed themselves to overlook his anorexic resume simply because he was “right” on Iraq.

The Obama compaign subsists on the support of the far left wing that demand nothing short of an immediate and full withdrawal of U.S. forces upon his inauguration.  For dessert, they would also like to see Democrats try the Bush administration for war crimes. 

The problem now is that Obama has been proven wrong on Iraq and has gone so far as to admit it.  Of course, the mainstream press is not reporting this as not to erode his foundation of support from the far left.   Unfortunately for Obama, this story is about to get some serious media attention.

On Monday, Amir Taheri posted an article in the NY Post that alleges that Barack Obama, during a trip to Iraq in July, asked the Iraqi government to postpone an agreement to begin withdrawing US troops until the new US administration takes over.   This became necessary when the Bush administration entered into negotiations with the Iraqi government over the Status of Forces and Strategic Framework agreements.  These negotiations include immediate drawn down plans of US forces and an extension of the UN-mandated Strategic Framework to allow a smaller number of US forces to remain in Iraq to continue training Iraqi forces.  Such an agreement is made possible only by the success of the US troop surge and passage of this agreement would be an acknowledgement of that fact by both the Iraqi government and the United Nations.

Obama and the Democrats do not want this major mark of success to occur on the Bush administration and Republican’s watch.  Should that happen, the entire premise of Obama’s campaign will appear a fallacy, the Democrats will be demonstrably embarrassed and hurt by all their talk of “failure” and the Republicans and Bush adminstration will get all the credit for the success. 

To avoid this, Obama asked the Iraqi government to postpone such an agreement until after (presumably) he takes office so that he and the Democrats can take credit for it.   The Iraqi government objected to this and were not amused that Obama wanted to play politics with Iraq’s national sovereignty and future.

Iraqi foreign minister Hoshyar Zebari – with whom Obama had these talks – told Obama he was uninterested in holding up the agreements in order to politically benefit Obama – and states that any new administration should be able to rethink or renegotiate the agreements, but that he was not willing to hold up the current agreements while Obama and Company mull things over and decide the most political advantageous way for them to proceed.

Yesterday, the Obama campaign vehemently denied Taheri’s allegations and tried to rephrase themselves with the usual song and dance about being “misunderstood”.   These clarifications always seem include deceptive phrases such as “as I’ve said all along” and “as I’ve said from the beginning” and “as I’ve always said” – even though he never said any such things.   In essence, the Obama campaign called Taheri a liar.

In response, Taheri published a new article in the NY Post today citing specific sources – including the Iraqi foreign minister and providing direct quotes.  There’s no way for the Obama campaign to worm their way out of it now.  The most they can hope for is that their friends in the media ignore the story.

In fact, Zebari quotes Obama as telling him that the “media” stories that he plans an immediate troop withdrawal are untrue and that he intends to keep US troops in Iraq to maintain security and continue training Iraqi forces.   This should come as news to the left wing, given that he has spent the past couple of years telling them (and the rest of us) the complete opposite.

In other words, Obama’s idea of “change” is to continue the status quo, but take credit for it himself.

What a worm.

Take for example two headlines that are currently appearing on CNN’s website.  One about Sarah Palin and one about Joe Biden. 

The Palin headline reads: “Campaign Confirms Palin Did Not Go Beyond Iraqi Border”.    Now the way that headline is phrased, it gives the casual reader (which constitutes the bulk of CNN’s readers who, they know, will simply scan the headlines for a synopsis of the news) the impression that Sarah Palin had said she visited Iraq and the campaign is now confirming that she did not.  This headline is meant to convey that she was caught in a “gotcha” lie, when in reality, no such thing happened.  Sarah Palin has never said that she went to Iraq.   As a matter of fact, when asks directly which foreign countries she has visited during Charlie Gibson’s interrogation, she mentioned Mexico, Canada, Germany, Kuwait and Ireland – but not Iraq.  One would actually have to read the article – which CNN knows many people will not do – to find that it was a spokeswoman who said she had been to Iraq.  When the press excitedly thought they had caught Palin in a “gotcha” moment, the campaign clarified that she had been to the Iraq border checkpoint, but had not crossed over.  It was a simple matter of her spokeswoman misspeaking, but the headline did not read that way.  Instead, it implied that it was Sarah Palin herself who lied.

Further down is a headline about Joe Biden.  It reads “Biden’s Son No Longer A Federal Lobbyist.”  Again, the casual headline reader will get the impression that Joe Biden is putting his money where his mouth is concerning his and Obama’s repeated promises to run the lobbyists out of Washington.  In this case, one further gets that impression even after reading the article that cites Obama’s refusal to employ any lobbyists in his campaign and his criticism of McCain for hiring former lobbyists into his campaign.  (One supposes if Obama considers McCain’s “former” lobbyists to still be lobbyists if he will consider Biden’s son, now a “former” lobbyist, as still a lobbyist.  Doubt it.  Double standard).

Not only is the headline of the Biden story misleading, but so is the story itself, because it fails to say why Biden’s son chose to resign from his lobbying career.  The answer is that he had become a political embarrassment for the Obama-Biden campaign and he was effectively forced to resign by his father following a Washington Post story (among others) that his son is involved in two lawsuits accused of defrauding a former business partner and investor out of millions of dollars.  CNN deliberately chose to give this story a positive spin by completely omitting the fact that his son is being sued for fraud.

This is just one example from one media outlet on one morning, but it’s symptomatic of the bias that occurs daily throughout the mainstream media.  A pattern has emerged and the Republican voters have noticed. 

As I noted earlier, James Carville said, “Never underestimate the Democrats’ ability to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.”   Democrats just can’t figure out how that keeps happening.  This is how.

Since the end of World War II, Europe has retreated back into its ostrich-like Chamberlain mode, comforted by the Traité de l’Atlantique which it shirkingly interprets as a one-way deal:  if anyone attacks Europe, the Americans will save them.   If anyone attacks America, the Americans will save themselves.  That’s pretty much it in a nutshell.  And to that end, the Europeans have spent the last 60 years reappropriating their military expenditures toward their burgeoning number of social welfare programs.  

What Europe lacks in military strength it more than makes up for in haughty platitudes, such that were on display in the run up to the Iraq War.  Their opposition has little to do with world view morality and everything to do with money.  Because they lack any military infrastructure – save, perhaps, for the Britains who are certainly not capable of (or even inclined) to defend the whole of continental Europe, they wield their economy as their lone sword.  Having only money to protect themselves, they are loathe to engage in battle with countries from whom they extract money.  The more money they make, the louder their opposition, as was the case with France.

They are also loathe to provoke Western hostilities, cognizant of the fact that should the U.S. be attacked as a result, they have a treatied obligation to lend military assistance.  Unfortunately, the level of assistance they’d be able to render is akin to tossing a cup of water onto a 5-alarm fire.  Failure to meet their treaty obligations would result in one of two things: the dismantling of NATO (thus leaving the Europeans unprotected against new Russian aggressions) or forced build-up of their militaries (which would require massive cuts in their social welfare programs). 

Because of this, Europeans see Barack Obama as their best hope of avoiding either of these two scenarios because they see him as a pacifist, a silver-tongued diplomat and, essentially speaking, a surrendering sissy (otherwise known as a Frenchman).  

Countries that are hostile to the U.S. also favor Barack Obama because they know it will allow them the freedom to continue their regional treachery and fomentation of anti-Western hatred without fear of retribution.  Terrorists know that any future attacks will result in a simple Keystone Cop man hunt that will result, at worst, in a prison sentence in a comfortable American jail – a relatively small price to pay for someone who is willing to blow themselves to smithereens.

They don’t want a U.S. President that will strengthen the U.S. or set the standard bar higher.  They want an American President that will weaken the U.S. and lower our standards so that they can feel better about themselves.   Obama is the equivalent of the teacher who refuses to pass out a failing grade and, instead, dumbs down the tests so that everyone can get an “A”.

In his interview with Sarah Palin, Charlie Gibson had this to say about the Obama tax plan:

“Why do you both keep saying that Obama will raise people’s taxes?  It’s been pretty clear what he intends. He’s talked about middle-class tax cuts, extending Bush tax cuts on everything but people who own or earn more that $250,000 a year – cuts taxes on over 91 percent of the country.  Why do you keep saying he’s going to raise people’s taxes?”

Let’s examine this.  The first thing that struck me was his use of the phrase “people who own or earn more than $250,000 a year”.   What does that mean?   What does “own” more than $250,000 a year mean?  Does that mean he plans to raise taxes on people who earn more than $250,000 per year or have a net worth in excess of $250,000 a year?   Because that’s exactly what Charlie Gibson seems to be saying.

He also says that Obama is going to cut taxes for 90% of the country.  Of course, he fails to mention that the 90% does not include business owners who employ 90% of the country.  He also fails to mention that 42.5 million people – or just over 14% of the US population – already doesn’t pay any income tax.  That means that people who don’t pay any income taxes will receive more money back from the government and a greater number of people who currently pay income tax will no longer do so.  In fact, that number will shoot up to 49% if Obama gets his way.  Between his tax cuts, tax credits and the elimination of taxes on all seniors making less than $50,000 a year, nearly half the U.S. population will be absolved from paying any income tax.

Given the fact that Obama has proposed $1 Trillion in new social spending, how can Charlie Gibson suggest that, after taking half the population off the income tax rolls, that Obama is actually going to lower people’s taxes?   It’s just not mathematically possible.

Democrats – including Charlie Gibson – will likely tell you it’s because he’s going to repeal the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy 1%.   Two problems with that.  1) The wealthiest 1% do not produce $1 trillion in income tax revenue; and 2) Obama came out this week and said that, due to the current economic situation, it would be unwise for him to repeal those tax cuts at this time.

So what does that mean?  Does that mean that he’ll try to raise the revenue through other taxes?  Or does it mean he’s going to just back burner all his social programs until the economy turns around?  I certainly doubt it’s the latter.

Democrats also point to the extra money we’ll save by ending the Iraq War.  This is, at best, a completely ignorant argument.  This argument supposes – incorrectly so – that the money spent on the Iraq War is part of the federal revenues.  It’s not.  They incorrectly believe that this money constituted our “surplus” and that the excess has been derived by existing revenues.  It’s not.  The money spent on the Iraq War is money OUTSIDE of the budget.  It’s not money the federal government had.  It’s not money that the federal government had collected through tax sources.  It’s money that the federal government BORROWED.   That means when the Iraq War is over, we have to start paying that money back to the people we borrowed it from – most of which are foreign held credit notes. That means that when we are done repaying our debt, the only way to have that money again to spend on other things is to BORROW it again. 

It’s not the taxes that Obama says he’s going to cut that we need to worry about.   It’s the taxes he’s going to have to raise in order to afford the tax cuts that we have to worry about.  It’s the taxes he’s going to have to raise in order to afford the $1 trillion in new social spending we have to worry about.

The numbers just don’t add up and Professor Gibson is not interested in doing the long math.  If I cut my salary by 30%, it will require that I cut my spending by 30% in order to maintain my current lifestyle.  But Obama isn’t talking about maintaining our current lifestyle.  He’s talking about giving us a lavish new lifestyle.  Yet he – and Charlie Gibson – haven’t explained to the public how he plans to pay for a bigger lifestyle on a smaller paycheck.   That can only be done two ways:  either fund our new lifestyle on borrowed money or raise taxes.   He’s been very clear that he intends to pay down our debt, so he obviously isn’t planning to borrow the money.  That means he’s planning to raise taxes.

But on whom?

Oh yes – those vague entities known as the “wealthy” and “big business”.   Of course, it’s those very same wealthy people and big businesses that provide the rest of us with jobs.  If we lose some of our income, what do we do?  We cut back on our spending.   Well, what does Obama think the wealthy people and big businesses are going to do if he takes more of their income away?  They’re going to cut back on their spending.  And what do they spend money on?   Our paychecks.

This will result in an avalanche of job losses because Obama will have essentially siphoned off the money they were using to pay you with.  Businesses are in business to make money.  That would be the entire point of being in business. So when faced with an increase in overhead due to increased taxes, which do you think is more likely: that they will cut their profits?  Or that they will cut their expenses?  Let me put it more simply: if you had been saving $500 a month toward retirement and you suffered a pay cut, which would you be more likely to do: cut your retirement savings?  or cut your weekly pool service?  

This onslaught of job losses will have a two-fold negative effect.  It will reduce the amount of income taxes that the government will receive and, instead, put millions of people on the unemployment and welfare rolls.  This will require Obama to raise taxes even more, because now he’s collecting even less and having to pay out even more. 

The loss of these jobs will also have a negative spiraling effect on the rest of the economy.  More houses in foreclosure, more defaults on debt, more bank failures, more businesses reporting sales losses and a major drop in the stock markets, which will bottom out investor confidence both domestic and foreign.   It’s a domino effect – but you’re supposed to feel good about this because Obama is promising to “stick it to the man”.   He just conveniently omits to mention that stickin’ it to the man means that the man is going to stick it to you.  This is how it works in a free market democracy.

Obama said he’s going to stop giving tax breaks to companies that move jobs overseas.  Sounds good, doesn’t it?   Companies are doing bad things to American workers and our hero Obama is going to stop rewarding them for it.   What he once again fails to mention is that the reason companies are moving jobs overseas is because of strangling government regulation.  Between increasing regulation and the unions, the government has created a business environment that has decreased competitive market advantage. Obama seeks to completely eliminate it.  Obama will point only toward the corporate tax rate, but fails to point to the exhorbitant overhead associated with all that government regulation.

Make no mistake about it.  Obama does not believe in free market enterprise.  He doesn’t want the market to regulate itself.  He wants government to regulate it and, ultimately, he wants government to control it.   He has given new meaning to the previously ominous phrase, trust me, I’ve from the government.   He’s now convinced the mindless masses that government is their only friend.  Government can cure what ails them.   Government can fix all of these problems.   He just fails to mention that government is the cause of all these problems.  Obama is merely engaged in political Munchausen by Proxy.

In Obama’s perfect world, the government would control all industry.  The government would provide you with your paycheck, benefits, health care and housing.

Does this setup sound familiar to you?   It should.   It’s called Communism.

In other words, we are intolerant and close-minded because we don’t agree with liberals who have self-appointed themselves as the sole arbiters of tolerance and open-mindedness.  Yet, when you truly look at it – it is the liberals who are the quintessential poster children of intolerance and close-mindedness.

The very fact that all of these things we don’t believe in exist in society proves that we are tolerant and open-minded.  Even though we personally choose not to believe or participate in any of those things, we obviously accept the choices others make – otherwise, none of these things would exist in society.

Yet it’s not enough for liberals that conservatives agree to disagree.  Not only do they want to have their way, they want us to abandon our beliefs and proclaim that their way is the only way.  That’s their idea of tolerance and open-mindedness.   And until we do that, they will continue to brow beat us by calling us “stupid”.

That’s the liberals’ fall back reason for why we don’t agree with them.  They can’t accept that someone might see the world differently, so the only explanation they can come up for it is that we’re stupid. They are the “enlightened” ones.  We are the knuckle-draggers living in the Dark Ages. 

They are so open-minded that they don’t see a difference of opinion as a manifestation of the human experience.  They see it as a threat.  And not just any threat – a threat greater than any known to man.  It’s more threatening than terrorism.  It’s more threatening than nuclear war.  It’s more threatening than world famine or disease.  It’s so threatening that they blame us as the cause for all those other threats. The only thing they consider more threatening than us is global warming (though they do consider us the cause of global warming too because we keep populating the world with all these babies that should have been aborted in order to save the endangered rain forest maggot).

Every election cycle, without fail and right on schedule, they start screaming at the top of their lungs that we are going to overturn Roe v. Wade and force women to turn their uteruses into fetal assembly lines.  They’ve been bleating this for 35 years and despite 4 conservative Supreme Court appointments, it hasn’t happened.   That doesn’t seem stop Chicken Little from telling us the sky is falling every four years.  It’s the final book in the secular bible:  Abortion Armeggedon.

We keep hearing from the left how they are constantly under threat and attack – from whom besides their own paranoid minds?   We hear about the “Republican attack machine”.   They quake in their Birkenstocks every time Karl Rove is mentioned.  Mwuahahahaha!   

And yet it is the conservatives who are under constant attack from the left.  There is no better example of the pot calling the kettle black than to hear a liberal complain about being attacked.  It would be laughable if it weren’t so damn sad.

Leftist attacks are a part of daily life for a conservative.  The insults are hurled at us from every conceivable angle.  They’re in the television shows.  They’re in the movies.  They’re in the music.  They’re in the nightly news broadcasts.  They’re in the newspapers.  They’re in the awards shows.  They’re in the concerts.  They’re in the magazines.  They’re in the books.  They’re on the radio.   That’s because – with a few notable exceptions – the entertainment and information industry is controlled by liberals.   And despite this 90+% control, they consider the biggest threat to be Rush Limbaugh.  They control 90% of all media yet want to institute the Fairness Doctrine so that Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity can’t complete a sentence without Michael Moore being able to interrupt and call them stupid.

Ask a conservative why he or she believes what they believe and they will almost invariably point toward the Bible as their source of moral foundation.   Ask a liberal why he or she believes what they believe and they’ll spout off a bumper sticker slogan.  They don’t know.  They just know that it’s “cool” to believe what they believe and in order to be considered cool and be accepted in society, they need to believe this stuff.  They can’t rationalize any of it and the few that try actually end up unwittingly paraphrasing scripture.  Of course, when you point out to them that they just described a biblical principal, they’ll arrogantly deny it and say that it’s just “basic morality” – as if it just organically sprung up out of the dirt and was absorbed into our consciences by osmosis.

To be fair, many of the tenets of liberalism are rooted in Judeo-Christian values.  They just won’t acknowledge that.   The idea of helping the least among us.  The idea of forgiveness.  The idea of compassion and understanding.  Yet for some reason, they can’t seem to align their words with their deeds.  They help only the least among themselves.  They forgive only themselves.  They have compassion and understanding only for themselves.  They believe in equality for all people, but treat conservatives like second-class citizens to be scorned and banished.

To a liberal, forgiveness, compassion, understanding and help means not only accepting immoral behavior, but condoning it and providing it with the fertile ground in which to flourish.  To a conservative, forgiveness, compassion, understanding and help means to separate the sin from the sinner and to help him or her not continue in their destructive behavior.   This is a core difference between liberals and conservatives.

Here’s an analogy.  If a liberal came to dinner at a conservative’s house and started eating his dinner off the dirty floor, the conservative would give him a plate and lead him to the table.  If a conservatives came to dinner at a liberal’s house and said he didn’t want to eat his dinner off the dirty floor, the liberal would call him stupid and kick him out.

This is not to say there aren’t intolerant and close-minded conservatives.  There are, but they are usually isolated to specific groups.  With liberals, it’s an institutional intolerance. 

Their minds may be open, but they are only open enough to let their own opinions in.

Instead of considering the cultural seriousness of his statement, the Obama campaign and liberal media just tried to get some cheap political mileage out of it.   So I’ll do what the Obama campaign and liberal media hasn’t the intellectual honesty to do.

Most people today, particularly the under-30 youth, are living in a world of reality tv where many have grown up voting people off the island and off the stage.  To them, this national election is no different.   It has nothing to do with the issues.  Most of these people have absolutely no indepth knowledge of any of the issues.  In fact, most of these people – particularly young people – get their news from Comedy Central.   In a world of iPods and iPhones, these people have neither the time nor inclination to take the time to study any of these issues for themselves so as to be able to separate the political wheat from the chaff. 

The blogosphere was afire today with people ridiculing Gov. Palin for supposedly not knowing what the “Bush Doctrine” was when asked about it by Charlie Gibson.   They condescendingly and churlishly comment as if everyone knows what the Bush Doctrine is – as if it were the Monroe Doctrine or the U.S. Constitution.   The fact is – a fact that Charlie Gibson deliberately failed to point out – is that there is no “Bush doctrine.”   It’s merely a term coined by the media to describe any of several different national security philosophies that President Bush has articulated since 9/11.   In fact, there are four different such positions that the media has alternately referred to as “the Bush doctrine.” 

Look up the term “Bush doctrine” on Wikipedia and it is defined as “a term used to describe various related foreign policy principals of United States President George W. Bush.”    VARIOUS related foreign policy principals – yet Charlie Gibson professorially defined it for her, as if she should have known which of the four he was talking about.   He said, “the Bush doctrine as annunciated in September 2002.”  What he’s actually referring to is the National Security Strategy of the United States text that was issued by the National Security Council – not President Bush – on September 20, 2002.   And that document, which Gibson colloquially refers to as “the Bush doctrine” contains several different principals – not just the one that Gibson referred to.  So how could she possibly know what he was specifically talking about?  He didn’t even know what he was talking about!

All that said, people aren’t interested in any of that.  They don’t know what the Bush doctrine is and they aren’t interested in learning what it is.  The only thing they are interested in is the idea that Charlie Gibson caught Sarah Palin in a “gotcha” moment – even if the reality is that Gibson iwas the one caught in an embarrassing “gotcha”.

Rick Davis is right.  This is a popularlity contest.  The issues are irrelevent because time after time people have shown their abject (and, frankly pathetic) ignorance of the issues and the media is more than happy to take advantage of that by reporting the news through that prism of ignorance.

Take the Democratic primary for example.  There was almost no difference between any of the candidates that were running in terms of policy positions.  If you actually read where they stood on the issues and researched their voting records, you would see that there was a negligable difference between all of them. 

Now, if government experience and knowledge of foreign issues were the main qualifications for President – as the Democrats are now insisting as it pertains to Sarah Palin – then we would have a Democratic ticket of Joe Biden/Chris Dodd.   Between the two of them, they have 62 years experience in the U.S. Senate!

So why didn’t they get the nomination?   Maybe it’s because they’re just a couple of boring, old-looking white guys.  That’s not what our celebrity-obsessed culture wants.  They want something jazzier.  And so the nomination came down to the two people – Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama – who, ironically, were the two people running in the Democratic primary with the LEAST amount of experience.

So why were they picked?  They were selected because they were the novelties.  One was black.  One was a woman.    When it came down to just those two, however, people went for the bigger novelty.  The Democrats already put a woman on a Presidential ticket before – Geraldine Ferraro, back in 1984.  They never had a black person on a Presidential ticket before and they despised the fact that the Republicans had the distinction of appointing the first black man as Secretary of State and the first black woman as Secretary of State.   They desperately wanted to trump them.

And so basically what the Democrats ended up doing was holding a popularity contest, in which they awarded the Presidential nomination to the most popular, but least qualified, candidate.  This is their idea of being “progressive”.   It’s my idea of being “idiotic”.

What has Democrats so up in arms about Sarah Palin is not her lack of experience.  For the life of me, I do not know how – after nominating the least experienced candidate of all the Democrats running – that they can sit there straight faced and actually feign concern over Palin’s experience.   What scares Democrats about Sarah Palin is that, like Obama, she has an appealing personality too.  She is popular too.  She’s young too.  She’s an outsider too.  She’s all those novel things they love about Obama, except in a conservative flavor.

So that’s what this election is going to come down to:  a personality contest.   People will pretend they care about the issues, but when you consider that the vast majority of the electorate is utterly clueless about the issues (save for whatever sound bites they managed to pick off of Comedy Central), they are going to be voting Red Team vs. Blue Team.   That’s all this is.   And to pretend it’s anything else is dishonest.

I can say, with absolute certainty, that Charlie Gibson never asked Barack Obama if he was prepared to be President.  As a matter of fact, throughout Mr. Gibson’s long career in journalism, I don’t believe he has ever asked a Vice-Presidential candidate if they were prepared to be President.    The question in and of itself was a subtle dig at McCain’s age by hinting that he might die while in office.

If I didn’t know any better, I’d think that the Obama campaign itself wrote these questions out for Charlie.   Take the following question, for example:

Gibson: “Didn’t George Bush come to Washington 8 years ago talking about reforming Washington in the same kind of language?  Ran as something of a maverick really; came to Washington.  Eight years, hasn’t changed the ethos in Washington particularly.  Why are you any different?”

This wasn’t a question.  This was a deliberate attempt on the part of Charlie Gibson to advance the Obama campaign’s strategy of tying together Bush and McCain.  Are we to believe it’s just a coincidence that he used the word “maverick” to describe Bush – a term never used to describe Bush, but universally used to describe McCain?  “Eight years, hasn’t changed…”??  Did David Plouffe himself write this question?

His next question was about taxes – but he didn’t ask Gov. Palin about the McCain tax plan.  Instead, he only asked why she and McCain were attacking Obama’s tax plan and accusing him of raising taxes.  To that end, Gibson provided a grossly distorted, gratuitous description of Obama’s tax plan – as if promoting it.   Here, Gibson had the perfect opportunity to question Palin about her knowledge of economics and the specifics of the McCain tax plan, but instead used the opportunity to put forth Obama’s tax plan and bash her for attacking it.

He then dishonestly and deceptively asked her about earmarks and to compare them to the earmarks Obama requested for Illinois.  The problem is, he didn’t use raw numbers.  What he said was that Gov. Palin received earmarks in the amount of $231 per person in Alaska while Obama only received $22 per person in earmarks.  This is deliberately misleading because the population of Alaska is 683.000 and the population of Illinois is 13 million.  One can draw no other conclusion but that Mr. Gibson fraudulently framed the question this way in order to make it sound like Gov. Palin had received more earmarks than Sen. Obama – which is false.

He also chides Gov. Palin for requesting earmarks to study the genetics of harbor seals – implying that she is wasting money – but doesn’t bother to mention that Obama had requested earmarks to identify the genes of every cattle and swine species in his state. 

Later, after answering a question about economics, Gibson said, “What you said to me at the beginning I don’t think anybody in the Bush administration would disagree.”    Again, Mr. Gibson has taken a blatantly biased shot at Gov. Palin by equating her economic plans with that of the Bush Administration in another effort to further the Obama strategy of equating McCain-Palin to Bush.  Is the DNC signing this guy’s paychecks???

This was not an interview conducted by an objective journalist.   An objective journalist would have simply asked her relevent questions regarding her positions on the issues.  Instead, he framed every single question from the perspective of the Obama campaign and repeatedly injected Democratic talking points into his questions.

This wasn’t an interview.  This was a cross-examination.

Is it any wonder that, in a Rasmussen poll released this week, a full 57% of Americans think the media is skewing their coverage to help Obama win?

Democrats love to say that if “all the votes were counted” in the 2000 election, Al Gore would have been President.  Interestingly, in 2008, those very same Democrats managed to Gore themselves.  Indeed, had “all the votes been counted” in Florida and Michigan at the time those primaries were held, Hillary Clinton would be the Democratic nominee.  That’s an inarguable fact and one that will haunt  and frustrate Hillary for years to come.

Barack Obama just eked out Hillary Clinton for the nomination and their national popular vote totals were neck and neck.   If you wanted to make sure that every single one of those voters came out to vote in November, wouldn’t it seem logical to create a ticket that included the two candidates that garnered the largest number of popular votes and delegates?

Yes, that would be logical.  Obama garnered about 18 million votes.  Hillary garnered about 18 million votes.  So it defies logic that Obama would choose as his running mate a former opponent that only managed to scrape up 63,000 votes.

Obama is sinking in the polls because he chose the wrong running mate.  He chose a long-time Washington establishment guy to join the ticket on his “change” campaign.   The only “change” that Biden brings to the table is a new name plate on the Vice President’s door.  

Hillary Clinton is a well-connected, well-respected Democrat with years of experience working in and around government and the law.  Granted, she may not have any executive experience, but to that end, neither does McCain or Biden.  But she has been involved in governmental affairs – in one capacity or another – since Obama was in short pants.   So how did he squeak a victory by her?  By being a novelty.  By being young.  By being black.  By being an outsider.  By having a huge “wow” factor.   He wasn’t the same old/same old that people have been forced to choose from time after time.  That’s why. 

So why did he throw a wet blanket on all of that by choosing Joe Biden?  For the life of me, this makes no sense.  Some will say that he did it to pump up his non-existent foreign policy credentials.  Fair enough, but didn’t Obama just spend the entire primary season convincing us that judgement trumps experience?   By picking Biden, he seems to be undermining his own argument.  It’s as if the Jonas Brothers decided to tour with Glen Campbell.   Sure, Glen has lots of experience on stage, but it sure does make for a weird concert.

Sure, McCain has been a fixture in Washington almost as long as Biden, but he also has a reputation as a maverick.  The Obama campaign is desperately trying to paint McCain as the second coming of Bush, but the only people buying into that are people who never had any intention of voting for McCain anyway.  He’s preaching to the choir.  Conservatives certainly aren’t buying it and, in fact, if they did buy it, it would only make them more likely to vote for McCain.   People who remember that McCain actually ran against Bush in 2000 aren’t buying it either.   For every piece of legislation that the Obama campaign can dig up to show that McCain voted with Bush (to whatever extent a President without a vote in the Senate can have), there is an equal amount of evidence that he hasn’t.  If he voted with Bush all the time – or even 90% of the time, as the Obama campaign claims – then conservatives wouldn’t have such a problem with him.  

Apparently, according to the Obama campaign, being a “maverick” means voting against your party all the time.  That wouldn’t make him a maverick.  That would make him a Democrat.

So to the extent that McCain is an old fuddy-duddy like Biden, he has two things that Biden doesn’t have:  1) a reputation as a maverick; and 2) a really cool biography.   In other words, McCain is a classic car, whereas Biden is just an old junker.

Had Obama chosen Hillary – which, if he loses in November, he will forever regret – it would have completely neutralized the novelty of Sarah Palin.   Of course, it also would have turned the campaign into a veritable cat fight – at least that’s how the media would cast it.    It would be the battle of Conservative Feminist vs. Liberal Feminist.   It would have completely insulated him (and the media) from charges of sexism.  Instead, he would have Hillary to go after Palin.

Traditionally, it is the VP pick who takes on the job of “attack dog”.  Sarah Palin showed at the RNC convention that she’s up to the job.  Biden, however, has been little more than a lap dog.  He’s screwed and the media is the one who screwed him.  Because of the media’s blatant sexist attacks on Hillary Clinton and now Sarah Palin, Biden has to watch every single word that comes out of his mouth – a tremendous feat for someone famous for saying stupid things.  Republicans are hypersensitive to the sexism now and every single thing he says will be viewed through that prism – not only by the McCain campaign, but by the conservative media and Republican voters.

Idiots like Barbra Streisand are saying that it’s insulting to believe that women who supported Hillary will automatically vote for Sarah Palin just because she’s a woman.  That would be a valid argument if it could be established that the women who were supporting Hillary were doing so only because of her position on the issues.  But the fact is, as many of them admitted during the primary season (how soon Ms. Streisand forgets) that a lot of them were supporting Hillary DESPITE her positions, simply because they wanted to see a woman elected to the White House.  Even a number of Republican women registered as Democrats simply to get the chance to vote for a woman – just as many African Americans are supporting Barack Obama simply because he’s black.   They all just want to be part of history.  So to that extent, it is ignorant for Ms. Streisand to believe that women who were supporting Hillary only because of her gender won’t support Palin because of her gender. 

Oh yes they will.

You must also consider that there are a LOT of women who supported Hillary Clinton that are furious at the Obama campaign for their perceived sexist treatment of Hillary. Even more of them are furious that he passed her over for VP and have taken it personally; as if he passed THEM over.  And many of these women have publicly stated that they will NEVER vote for Obama as a result. Just as McCain said he puts country before party, many of these women will put gender before party.

It may not be a huge number of them, but in a race this tight, it can make all the difference.

There is nothing that America associates with mindless liberalism more than Hollywood and there is no faster way for Obama to get tarred and feathered as a flaming liberal than to have the Hollywood crowd turn out for him en masse.   And since the selection of Sarah Palin as McCain’s running mate, that’s exactly what they’ve been doing.

They think they are somehow helping Obama but, in fact, they are hurting him – and the polls are bearing that out.  Particularly among the coveted Independents who will decide this election.  Let’s take a look as some of the intellectual support that Hollywood has given Obama this week:

Pamela Anderson on Sarah Palin:  “I can’t stand her.  She can suck it!”  

Matt Damon on Sarah Palin: “She’s facing down Vladimir Putin and using the folksy stuff she learned at the hockey rink.  It’s absurd.”

Joy Bahar, co-host of The View, on Sarah Palin: “You know, the one thing that I don’t think anybody said yet is that she’s very mean to animals, this woman.”

Margaret Cho on Palin: “If Sarah Palin had her way, she would take away that right not to be a mom.”

Candace Bergen on Palin: “I heard her (RNC) speech and it’s scary.”

Jamie Lee Curtis on Palin: “I couldn’t hold my own for one minute in a debate on any issue with someone like Barack Obama or Joseph Biden and neither can Sarah Palin.”

Alec Baldwin on Palin: “Palin is Bush.”

Whoopi Goldberg on Palin: “This is a very dangerous woman.”

Richard Roeper (film critic) on Palin: “Sarah Palin sounds like Ted Nugent with a uterus.”

Russell Brand on Palin (at the MTV awards): “I wanted to say she was forcing her teenage daughter to have a baby because she is so anti-abortion.  But also, as a Republican she is pro-execution so she is going to give her the electric chair for being a little slut.”

Whoopi Goldberg, in an interview with John McCain about his possible US Supreme Court picks:  “Should I worry about being a slave?”

Michael Moore on Palin: “She’s an extremist.”

Cybil Sheppard on Palin: “Palin’s view on the biological integrity of women is so extreme,”

Bill Maher on Palin: “I, John McCain, am the only one standing between the bloodthirsty Al Qaedas and you.   But if I die, this stewardess can handle it.”

The list goes on, but you get the picture.  Everytime one of these celebrity morons opens their mouth, you can almost hear poor Obama groan.  They actually think they are helping him.   The irony about liberal elitism is that they have absolutely nothing to be elite about.  Most of these chuckleheads are uneducated trailer trash that managed to get rich on their looks.  And their fans – who parrot the same elitism in a more sophomoric graffiti form – are even lower on the intellectual food chain. 

It’s just a little ironic when I’m called stupid by a jobless 20-something with ink-covered limbs.  I was on a MSNBC forum earlier today when some idiot started slagging off Sarah Palin for saying we should go to war with Russia because we’re in NATO.   Now, I realize it’s not politically correct to toy with the mentally challenged, but I just couldn’t help myself.   After admonishing him for misquoting Gov. Palin and providing him a link to the transcripts, I asked him what NATO stands for and what it’s central tenet is.   “National Alliance”  is all he managed to rattle off before calling me a Kool-Aid drinker.   One can only hope that liberals don’t behave this way in the classroom:

Teacher: “Johnny, can you please explain to the class what the Pythagorean theorum is?”

Johnny:  “You’re just a big, fat poopy-head. “

These are the people who will be voting for Obama.  He must be so proud.  Then again, when your plan is to sail this country off into the socialist sunset, who better to man the oars than Lenin’s useful idiots?