John McCain TV Ad

No point in waiting for the Dems to decide who their nominee is going to be before launching the GOP National Campaign. Here is a John McCain National TV ad. Very tastefully done if you ask me:

Dems Spin McCain's "100 Years" Comment

The Dem campaign strategy seems to be "Always lie first, then obfuscate the truth later." Due to the complicity Old Media voluntarily gives the DNC, it is an easy thing for them to do. But only the most naive and ignorant will actually follow them on it.

Their latest attempt at spinning an untruth has to do with a comment that John McCain made about Iraq. Now, before we get to what the Dems are spinning on this, let's look at McCain's full quote. From Kathryn Jean Lopez writing for TownHall.com:

What the "100 years" talk refers to is something McCain rightly said in response to a question during a New Hampshire town hall meeting in January. The question regarded Bush's statement that we could be in Iraq for 50 more years. McCain sensibly responded: "Make it 100. We've been in South Korea ... we've been in Japan for 60 years. We've been in South Korea for 50 years or so. That would be fine with me. As long as Americans are not being injured or harmed or wounded or killed, that's fine with me. I hope that would be fine with you, if we maintain a presence in a very volatile part of the world where al Qaeda is training, recruiting and equipping and motivating people every single day."

If you read that whole thing, you know that Senator McCain was referring to keeping a U.S. presence in a very unstable part of the world. We've done so in Europe and the Far East since the end of World War II. Those regions, which up to that point had been extremely volatile, have been stable ever since.

Nowhere in that quote did Senator McCain advocate keeping the war going for 100 years. But the Dems, true to their strategy of misinformation, would have you believe just that:

"Instead of offering an exit strategy for Iraq, (Sen. John McCain is) offering us a 100-year occupation," Sen. Barack Obama said on the fifth anniversary of the coalition's move on the then-oppressed Iraq. But it could have been any day; Obama uses the sound bite often enough. In late March, Sen. Hillary Clinton refused to be charmed by McCain's call to close Guantanamo Bay and droned on as she does: "While there is much to praise in Sen. McCain's speech, he and I continue to have a fundamental disagreement on Iraq. Like President Bush, Sen. McCain continues to oppose a swift and responsible withdrawal from Iraq. Like President Bush, Sen. McCain discounts the warnings of our senior military leadership of the consequences of the Iraq war on the readiness of our armed forces, and on the need to focus on the forgotten front line in Afghanistan. Like President Bush, Sen. McCain wants to keep us tied to another country's civil war, and said 'it would be fine' with him if U.S. troops were in Iraq for 50 or even 100 years. That, in a nutshell, is the Bush/McCain Iraq policy."

So, the Marshall Plan, along with the strategy of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Winston Churchill and later, Harry Truman were all simply precursors to the Bush/McCain Iraq policy? Any student of history would be rolling on the floor with laughter at this point.

The Dems need to pick up a history book and read it thoroughly. They are completely clueless when it comes to foreign policy issues and how to effectively deal with them.

Oh yeah, they also might want to consider actually telling the truth for once, as hard as that will be for Hillary and Barack to do.

You can access the complete column on-line here:

Dems Attack McCain's '100 Years'
Kathryn Jean Lopez
TownHall.com
March 28, 2008

Uprooting The New Racism

In a previous post in which I excerpted a Pat Buchanan column, I stated that I have no white guilt to give. Well, in his most recent column, Pat illustrates why this is so.

Barack Obama gave a speech in which he explains why there is white resentment, but then back-peddled to the same old worn-out liberal rhetoric that tries to draw on white guilt which just doesn't exist.

From TownHall.com:

"Most working- and middle-class white Americans don't feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race," said Barack. "As far as they're concerned, no one's handed them anything. ... So when they ... hear that an African American is getting an advantage in landing a good job or a spot in a good college because of an injustice that they themselves never committed ... resentment builds over time." On this issue, Barack seemed to have nailed it. But then he revealed the distorting lens through which he and his fellow liberals see the world. To them, black rage is grounded in real grievances, while white resentments are exaggerated and exploited. White resentments, said Barack, "have helped shape the political landscape for at least a generation. Anger over welfare and affirmative action helped forge the Reagan Coalition. ... Talk show hosts and conservative commentators built entire careers unmasking bogus claims of racism while dismissing legitimate discussions of racial injustice and inequality as mere political correctness or reverse racism." What Barack is saying here is that the resentment of black America is justified, but the resentment of white America is a myth manufactured and manipulated by the conservative commentariat. Barack is attempting to de-legitimize the other side of the argument. Yet, who is he to claim the moral high ground? Where does this child of privilege who went to two Ivy League schools, then spent 20 years in a church where racist rants were routine, come off preaching to anyone? What are Barack's moral credentials to instruct white folks on what they must do, when he failed to do what any decent father should have done: Take his wife and daughters out of a church where hate had a home in the pulpit?

Yep. Sen. Obama is the last person who should be lecturing us. Instead of a "dialogue" that he himself called for, he is merely lecturing the same race-baiting tripe that has been coming out of the mouths of leftist politicians for years.

More:

Longshoreman philosopher Eric Hoffer once wrote that all great movements eventually become a business, then degenerate into a racket. That is certainly true of the civil rights movement. Begun with just demands for an end to state-mandated discrimination based on race, it ends with unjust demands for state-mandated preferences, based on race. Under affirmative action, white men are passed over for jobs and promotions in business and government, and denied admission to colleges and universities to which their grades and merits entitle them, because of their gender and race.

Supporters of Barack Obama need to get a clue. This guy is a racist, marxist political hack who will lead America into a disaster, socially and financially.

You can access the complete column on-line here:

Uprooting The New Racism
Pat Buchanan
TownHall.com
March 28, 2008

The $53 Trillion Asteroid

I like watching Glenn Beck and so does my wife. But Glenn can put together a pretty good column too. Lately, he takes on Social Secuirty and laments how everyone knows it is going to go belly-up but no one seems to want to fix it.

As an analogy, Glenn uses an asteroid strike. We know the asteroid is getting closer and closer, but because the actual impact is so many years in the future, everyone assumes a future government will take care of it. Apparently, our government has the same attitude towards the Social Security crisis.

From Glenn's column:

Let me give you three numbers that will put this economic asteroid into perspective: $200 billion, $14.1 trillion, and $53 trillion. - $200 billion is the approximate total amount of write-downs announced so far as a result of the current credit crisis. - $14.1 trillion is the size of the entire U.S. economy - And $53 trillion is (drum roll please) the approximate size of this country's bill for the Social Security and Medicare promises we've made. While no one will ever mistake me for Alan Greenspan, it seems to me that the third number is quite a bit larger than the other two. It also seems very few people care. According to the latest Social Security and Medicare Trustees report (and I use that term loosely since it has the word "trust" in it) released earlier this week, the economic asteroid will first make impact in the year 2019 when the Medicaid trust fund becomes insolvent.

Let's see, that is a little over ten years away. So what are the plans for dealing with this? Nothing, so far.

More:

Realizing that Americans have become pretty much numb to these kinds of ridiculous sounding proposals, U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson tried to up the ante this week. "Without change," he said, "Rising costs will drive government spending to unprecedented levels, consume nearly all projected federal revenues, and threaten America's future prosperity." Now, I know we're all worried about important sounding things that none of us understand, like CDO's, SIV's, and Credit Default Swaps, but did you hear what our Treasury Secretary just said? "Rising costs will ... consume nearly all projected federal revenues ..." Translation: Every single tax dollar that is sent to Washington will be used to pay for just these two programs. That means no money is left for anything else. Nothing. No Department of Defense or Homeland Security, no Department of Energy, no Department of Justice, no Environmental Protection Agency, no Internal Revenue Service. Actually, knowing our government, they'd probably keep the IRS going somehow.

It seems pretty clear that Social Security is going to go under and it is threatening to drag the entire U.S. economy down with it. Either we need to seriously reform it (perhaps personal, private retirement accounts) or do away with it altogether by phasing it out.

You can access the complete column on-line here:

The $53 Trillion Asteroid
Glenn Beck
CNN.com
March 14, 2008

If Principles Matter, So Does McCain

Are you one of those "Principled Conservatives" who is till seething over Senator McCain's clinching of the GOP nomination for President? If so, you really need to read the latest column by Mark Hillman, former Majority Leader of the Colorado Senate. He was the type of Republican who supported the "anybody but McCain" mantra but has since come out in support of Senator McCain's candidacy.

Here's why:

Recently, some conservatives behave as if they have nothing to lose if McCain loses. But a McCain loss equals a Barack Obama win, and we have plenty lose from that. Conservatives remain unified on three key policy objectives: pro-growth tax policy and no-nonsense budgeting, judges who respect the constitution, and a resolve to defeat Islamic terrorists. On these key issues the choice between McCain and Obama cannot be dismissed as the lesser of two evils. The choice is clear and the stakes are enormous. McCain is one of just five Senators who flatly reject pork-barrel budget earmarks. He has vowed to veto any spending bill containing earmarks and has already incurred the wrath of several pork-loving Republicans. That's a welcome change from the you-scratch-my-back, I'll-scratch-yours spending of the last eight years. By contrast, Obama has promised programs calculated to grow the already bloated budget by $900 billion. Despite his vote against the Bush tax cuts, McCain has vowed to fight to preserve them. Obama conveniently forgets that middle class families benefited most from the Bush tax cuts and instead demagogues against "tax cuts for the rich." However, he can't pay for his big government utopia without squeezing the working class hard. As a Vietnam veteran, McCain understands the lasting consequences of an ignominious defeat. America's stature was badly damaged for years after Vietnam. We now see that McCain's prescription for Iraq after Saddam was right, and the Bush-Rumsfeld strategy was wrong.

But it is the question of Supreme Court Justices that should weigh the heaviest on the minds of "Principled Conservatives." What differences will we be looking at there? What are the potential losses on that front?

However, two things are indisputable: the constructionist justices on today's court were all appointed by Republicans, and the Democrat appointments are all undeniably liberal activists. John Paul Stephens and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the two justices most likely to retire soon, are both activists who re-write the constitution in contravention of the plain text. Replacing either or both with another John Roberts, Antonin Scalia or Clarence Thomas — each of whom McCain supported — could at last restore the court's historic role as a defender of broad individual liberty and a restraint against over-reaching government. If Obama makes the next appointment, we can be certain he will fortify the court's activist wing. Should a constructionist justice retire or die, Obama could swiftly reverse the gains of the last 28 years.

And finally, Mr. Hillman addresses the idea that allowing a liberal to win the White House would somehow be a good thing.

Some conservatives argue that a Democrat victory would galvanize Republicans for 2010 and produce a public backlash, a la 1994. That's a tremendous gamble. Democrats controlled Congress for 40 years from 1955 to 1995. In the Senate, Democrats ruled for 34 of those years. Here in Colorado, perhaps more than anywhere else, Republicans should realize how quickly political fortunes can change and how hard it is to reverse that tide. Conservatives generally recognize short-sighted self-indulgence when practiced by others. Now many conservatives are in danger of practicing a suicidal self-indulgence of their own. We must put aside self-pity and frustration and do what we always have done: choose the right and responsible course for our country. If instead we purposefully withhold our votes to gratify our personal pride and prejudice, the surrendered freedoms, suffocating tax burdens, and national insecurity that result will be as much our responsibility as that of those we "helped" to elect.

That last paragraph says it all. It should be emblazoned on banners all over the Republican Convention in Minneapolis-St. Paul.

You can access the complete column on-line here:

If Principles Matter, So Does McCain
Mark Hillman
TownHall.com
March 26, 2008

Veterans Support John McCain For President

If you are a Veteran, please add your name to the Vets4McCain Roll Call. You can sign-up here:

Veterans For John McCain

Obama's De Facto Running Mate And A Brief For Whitey

Bill O'Reilly has labeled it the "Pastor Disaster." Yes, I am talking about Jeremiah Wright. I know, Old Media tried to bury the story by inserting a small gaff John McCain made in Iraq, but that turned out to be small potatoes compared to this. Even Hillary Clinton is turning the spotlight back to this story.

But I am revisiting it for a different reason. While growing up, many in the establishment tried to make me feel guilty for being a white man. Well, I'm not. Apparently, Barack Obama is banking on people like me have this "white guilt." He's going to lose on that bet. I have no white guilt to give. And here is why: racism coming from blacks is just as bad as racism coming from whites.

Doug Patton gives a good example of how Obama is simply a black racist. From his most recent column:

Barack Obama would not have stayed in this Afrocentric, separatist church run by a paranoid, bigoted leader if he did not subscribe to the rhetoric that was being preached. His insistence on defending Jeremiah Wright tells us a great deal about what Obama himself believes.

Nothing could be simpler, or more clear, or more to the point.

Patton goes on to tell us more about what an Obama Presidency would mean to us:

He believes the government is a tool for redistributing wealth from those who earn it to those who don't. He thinks government, which rarely does anything efficiently, could and should dispense health care to 300 million people. He believes our borders should remain wide open and would do nothing to close them. He believes that abortionists should have the right to kill a newborn child who somehow miraculously survives an abortion. He wants to wave the white flag in Iraq, the central front in the war against radical jihadism, thereby surrendering to forces which will be further emboldened by our timidity, just as they were after Bill Clinton's misadventures in Somalia. ... He wants to raise taxes to levels this nation has never seen. His reckless collectivist economic policies would destroy small businesses, make everything more expensive and empower government to have more control over our lives than at any time in our history.

Any questions?

You can access the complete article on-line here:

Obama Has Chosen His Running Mate
Doug Patton
GOPUSA.com
March 25, 2008

---

So, why don't I have "white guilt?" Well, Pat Buchanan explains that with a no-holds-barred column about that very topic.

Pat wondered how Obama would respond to the revelations that Wright was a lying, bigoted racist. It turns out that Obama responded using the same old rhetoric that has been used by race-baters since the 70's. In other words, nothing we haven't already heard before.

From TownHall.com:

What is wrong with Barack's prognosis and Barack's cure? Only this. It is the same old con, the same old shakedown that black hustlers have been running since the Kerner Commission blamed the riots in Harlem, Watts, Newark, Detroit and a hundred other cities on, as Nixon put it, "everybody but the rioters themselves." Was "white racism" really responsible for those black men looting auto dealerships and liquor stories, and burning down their own communities, as Otto Kerner said -- that liberal icon until the feds put him away for bribery.

The so-called "leaders" of the black community seem to have only one rule: "Blame Whitey first." Well, Pat also looks at what Whitey has done to atone for the sins of slavery and racism.

Read on:

Barack says we need to have a conversation about race in America. Fair enough. But this time, it has to be a two-way conversation. White America needs to be heard from, not just lectured to. This time, the Silent Majority needs to have its convictions, grievances and demands heard. And among them are these: First, America has been the best country on earth for black folks. It was here that 600,000 black people, brought from Africa in slave ships, grew into a community of 40 million, were introduced to Christian salvation, and reached the greatest levels of freedom and prosperity blacks have ever known. Wright ought to go down on his knees and thank God he is an American. Second, no people anywhere has done more to lift up blacks than white Americans. Untold trillions have been spent since the '60s on welfare, food stamps, rent supplements, Section 8 housing, Pell grants, student loans, legal services, Medicaid, Earned Income Tax Credits and poverty programs designed to bring the African-American community into the mainstream. Governments, businesses and colleges have engaged in discrimination against white folks -- with affirmative action, contract set-asides and quotas -- to advance black applicants over white applicants. Churches, foundations, civic groups, schools and individuals all over America have donated time and money to support soup kitchens, adult education, day care, retirement and nursing homes for blacks. We hear the grievances. Where is the gratitude? Barack talks about new "ladders of opportunity" for blacks. Let him go to Altoona and Johnstown, and ask the white kids in Catholic schools how many were visited lately by Ivy League recruiters handing out scholarships for "deserving" white kids. Is white America really responsible for the fact that the crime and incarceration rates for African-Americans are seven times those of white America? Is it really white America's fault that illegitimacy in the African-American community has hit 70 percent and the black dropout rate from high schools in some cities has reached 50 percent? Is that the fault of white America or, first and foremost, a failure of the black community itself?

If there is to be some sort of dialogue, the above facts must be included in the discussion.

You can access the complete column on-line here:

A Brief For Whitey
Pat Buchanan
TownHall.com
March 21, 2008

Pope Baptizes Prominent Italian Muslim

Now this is something I doubt you will ever hear on the Today Show or Good Morning America. We've heard alot about everyday people converting to Islam and then expressing support for extremist elements. But when have we heard of the exact opposite occurring? When have we heard about a Muslim converting to Christianity because he/she opposed extremist elements?

It happened in Italy. From TownHall.com.com:

Italy's most prominent Muslim, an iconoclastic writer who condemned Islamic extremism and defended Israel, converted to Catholicism Saturday in a baptism by the pope at a Vatican Easter service. An Egyptian-born, non-practicing Muslim who is married to a Catholic, Magdi Allam infuriated some Muslims with his books and columns in the newspaper Corriere della Sera newspaper, where he is a deputy editor. He titled one book "Long Live Israel." ... Allam, 55, told the newspaper Il Giornale in a December interview that his criticism of Palestinian suicide bombing provoked threats on his life in 2003, prompting the Italian government to provide him with a sizable security detail. ... Allam also explained his decision to title a recent book "Viva Israele" by saying he wrote it after he received death threats from Hamas. "Having been condemned to death, I have reflected a long time on the value of life. And I discovered that behind the origin of the ideology of hatred, violence and death is the discrimination against Israel. Everyone has the right to exist except for the Jewish state and its inhabitants," he said. "Today, Israel is the paradigm of the right to life."

Interesting.

You can access the complete article on-line here:

Pope Baptizes Prominent Italian Muslim
Nicole Winfield
TownHall.com
March 22, 2008

An Appropriate Cartoon

A Few Words About Pork-Barrel Spending

We all know what pork-barrel spending is. It is also known by the term "earmarks" and figured very prominently in that pork-laden transportation bill which, among other things, included money to build a bridge to nowhere in Alaska. It got quite a bit of attention as I recall.

But now, most of that attention is negative. Taxpayers are fed-up about paying for earmarks and Congressional spending sprees. House Minority Leader John Boehner tells us why in his most recent column:

House Republicans have taken a stand against wasteful Washington spending by calling for a complete freeze on all "earmarks" and pork-barrel projects. While our challenge has largely fallen on deaf ears — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, California Democrat, could shut down the earmark process tomorrow if she wanted to — our cause has a strong ally in Sen. John McCain. Mr. McCain has been a leader in the quest to end pork-barrel spending and has led by example — the senator, like myself, doesn't request earmarks. He strongly supported a one-year moratorium on all earmarks in the U.S. Senate. And as president, Mr. McCain has promised that any "earmarked, pork-barrel bill that comes across my desk, I'll veto it."

Ironically, a good number of Republicans in the Senate voted opposite John McCain.

But let's look beyond the Congress:

Mr. McCain's opposition to wasteful spending is a breath of fresh air to taxpayers who foot the bill for congressional spending sprees. Americans aren't interested in paying for teapot museums, peanut storage and "monuments to me," where congressmen name buildings and other projects after themselves. And with families feeling the pinch of high gas prices and skyrocketing health care costs, they're certainly not interested in tax increases.

That is absolutely the most prominent fact in the column. With energy costs going up, the last thing we taxpayers need is any kind of tax increase at all. Look at what subsidies for ethanol has done: given us higher gas and food prices and more dependence on oil. That was and still is madness.

Well, we know where John McCain stands on earmarks. Where do the two uber-liberal Dem candidates stand?

Not surprisingly, Mr. McCain's Democratic opponents have quite a different record on spending. In 2007 alone, Sen. Hillary Clinton, New York Democrat, earmarked $340 million in taxpayer dollars. Sen. Barack Obama, Illinois Democrat, earmarked more than $91 million. As recently as last week, both campaigns refused to disclose their full list of earmark requests. The pressure finally got to Mr. Obama, who released his 2005-06 earmark requests on March 13. His requests include $1 million for a hospital where his wife served as vice president of community and external affairs. While Mrs. Clinton continues to decline demands that she make her requests public, one nonpartisan watchdog group says the senator landed 360 earmarks from 2002 to 2006. In 2007, Mrs. Clinton admitted to seeking funding for a hippie museum in Bethel, N.Y. Her spokesman has stated flatly that Mrs. Clinton is "very proud" of her earmarks, which cost taxpayers more than $2.2 billion.

We definitely need to bring earmarks and pork spending under control. So far, only the Republicans have shown any effort to get rid of earmark spending. Where exactly does Congress get the money to go on spending sprees like this?

Read this:

Last week, Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama both voted for the Democrats' $3 trillion budget that included the largest tax increase in American history. According to the Associated Press, the budget would raise income taxes "on individuals making as little as $31,850 and couples earning $63,700" to pay for more wasteful spending.

We need to have John McCain in the White House and the Dems out of power in Congress.

You can access the complete column on-line here:

American Taxpayers Beware
Rep. John Boehner
TownHall.com
March 21, 2008