Realmscapes

Advent: Week 1 - HOPE, Titus 2:11-14

"...waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, who gave Himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for Himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works."

The 28 Principles

From W Cleon Skousen's The 5000 Year Leap - A Miracle That Changed the World:

Principle 1 - The only reliable basis for sound government and just human relations is Natural Law.

Natural law is God's law. There are certain laws which govern the entire universe, and just as Thomas Jefferson said in the Declaration of Independence, there are laws which govern in the affairs of men which are "the laws of nature and of nature's God."

Principle 2 - A free people cannot survive under a republican constitution unless they remain virtuous and morally strong.

"Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters." - Benjamin Franklin

Principle 3 - The most promising method of securing a virtuous people is to elect virtuous leaders.

"Neither the wisest constitution nor the wisest laws will secure the liberty and happiness of a people whose manners are universally corrupt. He therefore is the truest friend to the liberty of his country who tries most to promote its virtue, and who ... will not suffer a man to be chosen into any office of power and trust who is not a wise and virtuous man." - Samuel Adams

Principle 4 - Without religion the government of a free people cannot be maintained.

"Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports.... And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion." - George Washington

Principle 5 - All things were created by God, therefore upon him all mankind are equally dependent, and to him they are equally responsible .

The American Founding Fathers considered the existence of the Creator as the most fundamental premise underlying all self-evident truth. They felt a person who boasted he or she was an atheist had just simply failed to apply his or her divine capacity for reason and observation.

Principle 6 - All mankind were created equal.

The Founders knew that in these three ways, all mankind are theoretically treated as:

1. Equal before God.
2. Equal before the law.
3. Equal in their rights.

Principle 7 - The proper role of government is to protect equal rights, not provide equal things.

The Founders recognized that the people cannot delegate to their government any power except that which they have the lawful right to exercise themselves.

Principle 8 - Mankind are endowed by God with certain unalienable rights.

"Those rights, then, which God and nature have established, and are therefore called natural rights, such as are life and liberty, need not the aid of human laws to be more effectually invested in every man than they are; neither do they receive any additional strength when declared by the municipal [or state] laws to be inviolable. On the contrary, no human legislation has power to abridge or destroy them, unless the owner [of the right] shall himself commit some act that amounts to a forfeiture." - William Blackstone

Principle 9 - To protect human rights, God has revealed a code of divine law.

"The doctrines thus delivered we call the revealed or divine law, and they are to be found only in the Holy Scriptures. These precepts, when revealed, are found by comparison to be really a part of the original law of nature, as they tend in all their consequences to man's felicity." - William Blackstone

Principle 10 - The God-given right to govern is vested in the sovereign authority of the whole people.

"The fabric of American empire ought to rest on the solid basis of the consent of the people. The streams of national power ought to flow immediately from that pure, original fountain of all legislative authority." - Alexander Hamilton

Principle 11 - The majority of the people may alter or abolish a government which has become tyrannical.

"Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes ... but when a long train of abuses and usurpations ... evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security." - Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence

Principle 12 - The United States of America shall be a republic.

"I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America
And to the republic for which it stands...."

Principle 13 - A Constitution should protect the people from the frailties of their rulers.

"If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.... [But lacking these] you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself." - James Madison

Principle 14 - Life and liberty are secure only so long as the rights of property are secure .

John Locke reasoned that God gave the earth and everything in it to the whole human family as a gift. Therefore the land, the sea, the acorns in the forest, the deer feeding in the meadow belong to everyone "in common." However, the moment someone takes the trouble to change something from its original state of nature, that person has added his ingenuity or labor to make that change. Herein lies the secret to the origin of "property rights."

Principle 15 - The highest level of prosperity occurs when there is a free-market economy and a minimum of government regulations.

Prosperity depends upon a climate of wholesome stimulation with four basic freedoms in operation:

1. The Freedom to try.
2. The Freedom to buy.
3. The Freedom to sell.
4. The Freedom to fail.

Principle 16 - The government should be separated into three branches .

"I call you to witness that I was the first member of the Congress who ventured to come out in public, as I did in January 1776, in my Thoughts on Government ... in favor of a government with three branches and an independent judiciary. This pamphlet, you know, was very unpopular. No man appeared in public to support it but yourself." - John Adams

Principle 17 - A system of checks and balances should be adopted to prevent the abuse of power by the different branches of government.

"It will not be denied that power is of an encroaching nature and that it ought to be effectually restrained from passing the limits assigned to it." - James Madison

Principle 18 - The unalienable rights of the people are most likely to be preserved if the principles of government are set forth in a written Constitution.

The structure of the American system is set forth in the Constitution of the United States and the only weaknesses which have appeared are those which were allowed to creep in despite the Constitution.

Principle 19 - Only limited and carefully defined powers should be delegated to government, all others being retained by the people.

The Tenth Amendment is the most widely violated provision of the bill of rights. If it had been respected and enforced America would be an amazingly different country than it is today. This amendment provides:

"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

Principle 20 - Efficiency and dispatch require that the government operate according to the will of the majority, but constitutional provisions must be made to protect the rights of the minority.

"Every man, by consenting with others to make one body politic under one government, puts himself under an obligation to every one of that society to submit to the determination of the majority, and to be concluded [bound] by it." - John Locke

Principle 21 - Strong local self-government is the keystone to preserving human freedom.

"The way to have good and safe government is not to trust it all to one, but to divide it among the many, distributing to every one exactly the functions he is competent [to perform best]. - Thomas Jefferson

Principle 22 - A free people should be governed by law and not by the whims of men.

"The end of law is not to abolish or restrain, but to preserve and enlarge freedom. For in all the states of created beings, capable of laws, where there is no law there is no freedom. For liberty is to be free from restraint and violence of others, which cannot be where there is no law." - John Locke

Principle 23 - A free society cannot survive as a republic without a broad program of general education.

"They made an early provision by law that every town consisting of so many families should be always furnished with a grammar school. They made it a crime for such a town to be destitute of a grammar schoolmaster for a few months, and subjected it to a heavy penalty. So that the education of all ranks of people was made the care and expense of the public, in a manner that I believe has been unknown to any other people, ancient or modern. The consequences of these establishments we see and feel every day [written in 1765]. A native of America who cannot read and write is as rare ... as a comet or an earthquake." John Adams

Principle 24 - A free people will not survive unless they stay strong.

"To be prepared for war is one of the most effectual means of preserving peace." - George Washington

Principle 25 - "Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations -- entangling alliances with none."- Thomas Jefferson, given in his first inaugural address.

Principle 26 - The core unit which determines the strength of any society is the family; therefore the government should foster and protect its integrity.

"There is certainly no country in the world where the tie of marriage is more respected than in America, or where conjugal happiness is more highly or worthily appreciated." Alexis de Tocqueville

Principle 27 - The burden of debt is as destructive to human freedom as subjugation by conquest.

"We are bound to defray expenses [of the war] within our own time, and are unauthorized to burden posterity with them.... We shall all consider ourselves morally bound to pay them ourselves and consequently within the life [expectancy] of the majority." - Thomas Jefferson

Principle 28 - The United States has a manifest destiny to eventually become a glorious example of God's law under a restored Constitution that will inspire the entire human race.

The Founders sensed from the very beginning that they were on a divine mission. Their great disappointment was that it didn't all come to pass in their day, but they knew that someday it would. John Adams wrote:

"I always consider the settlement of America with reverence and wonder, as the opening of a grand scene and design in Providence for the illumination of the ignorant, and the emancipation of the slavish part of mankind all over the earth."

Quote for 2008, On the Pursuit of Happiness

"My friend, the Constitution only guarantees the American people the right to pursue happiness; you have to catch it yourself."

   --Benjamin Franklin

The Audacity of Democrats

"We're prepared to come back into session the week of December 8th to help the auto industry, but only if they present a viable plan that gives us, the Congress, the confidence that taxpayers, the autoworkers, will be well served."

--Senator Harry Reid, Majority Leader (D-NV)

"It is all about accountability. Until we can see a plan where the auto industry is held accountable and a plan for viability..."

--Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House (D-CA)

Well there you have it. The two Dem leaders on Capitol Hill telling the Big 3 American Automakers (GM, Ford, Chrysler) that they have to prove responsibility and "accountability" to the very party that over-regulated them these last decades to the point of non-competitiveness with Toyota, Honda, et al., and thus bankruptcy.

If anyone is bankrupt in this country it is the Democrat Party.

Doomsday Man

From AlGore.com

"A new study suggests the Mayan civilization might have collapsed due to environmental disasters:

'"These models suggest that as ecosystems were destroyed by mismanagement or were transformed by global climatic shifts, the depletion of agricultural and wild foods eventually contributed to the failure of the Maya sociopolitical system," writes environmental archaeologist Kitty Emery of the Florida Museum of Natural History in the current Human Ecology journal.'

As we move towards solving the climate crisis, we need to remember the consequences to civilizations that refused to take environmental concerns seriously."

This guy is seriouslly something else, and potentially at risk for chronic depression.

In any case, it's amazing how it is okay to consider the collapse of the Mayans due to them allegedly ignoring "climate morality" (what exactly were they supposed to do, stop driving SUVs some 1200 years ago...?!), and yet Christians are shouted down when we cite the collapse of the Canaanite, Persian, Greek and Roman empires being due, in signficant part, to the abandonment of natural morality.

2012 Election Dream Team

Just having som fun... :-)

This list may grow/change post-2010 since a some of these selections are strong gubernatorial candidates, and I would prefer them to remain in those capacities if they won. If I don't list it, then the position would remain with the incumbent I suppose:

President of the United States: Newt Gingrich
Vice-President of the United States: Sarah Palin

Secretary of State: David Petraeus
Secretary of the Treasury: Steve Forbes
Secretary of Defense: John Bolton
Attorney General: Rudolph Giuliani
Secretary of Commerce: Kay Bailey Hutchison*
Secretary of Health & Human Services: Rick Santorum**
Secretary of Veterans Affairs: Oliver North
Secretary of Homeland Security: Pat Buchanan

Press Secretary: Sean Hannity
RNC Chairman: Michael Steele

*Mitt Romney is my preferred choice, but he is not interested in Cabinet positions due to bad experiences that his father had as the HUD Secretary under Nixon.
**Alan Keyes would be a strong candidate for this position as well; at the least I would like to see him as the Deputy Secretary of State or of the HHS, OR the U.S. Ambassador to the U.N.

A-M-E-N

From Jed Babbin's "If You Want 2012, Earn It" at HumanEvents.com:

"The lesson of 2008 is that it’s not enough to sound like a conservative. Whoever wants the Republican nomination in 2012 is going to have to earn it by taking conservative actions, not just repeating conservative words.

For the next four years, presidential aspirants will have to prove their dedication to conservative principles by casting votes and signing vetoes, by taking political risks and helping fellow conservatives reorganize all across the nation.

The “moderate” wing of the Republican Party isn’t dead. Too many of them are still in Congress, among current and former governors and in the unelected Party leadership. Some can even be found among the conservative media. They will do their best to contain, confuse and prevent a conservative from gaining the nomination.

And they will do their best to becloud the forces that led to McCain’s defeat. Yes, the media and some pollsters contributed to McCain’s loss by promoting Obama and predicting his election by inflated margins. But pollsters and media bias were not the decisive factors in McCain’s loss. George Bush, John McCain and Barack Obama were.

The decisive factor is that the Republican Party drifted to the left, to big government, in irresolute prosecution of the war, and into the biggest economic crisis in living memory. The truth that Democrats caused the financial mess -- protecting Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, forcing banks to issue loans to unqualified borrowers by passing the Community Reinvestment Act -- was overshadowed because the Bush Administration didn’t foresee or prevent the crash. 

American voters lost confidence in George Bush. John McCain was the wrong choice to regain that trust because he is not an ideological conservative and chose to run a moderate campaign divorced from the issues in the front of voters’ minds. What else could explain the exit polls showing minority Catholics voting in tremendous numbers for pro-abortion Barack Obama?"

The 2008 Presidential Election: Afterthoughts

The Republican ticket lost for what I observe to be several reasons that I hope two years in Leftland will remedy:

Partisanship wins elections, Senator McCain and President Bush:
I can wholly appreciate the want to be honourable and a want to hold America's sacred offices in such high regard. But politics is a battlefield, with sides like any other. The current RNC committee and the GOP in DC is completely missing that for the last ten years at least and it is a grave mistake. For the McCain campaign it was also costly, literally...to the tune of $600 million in campaign funds to $83 million. Senator McCain assumed that Obama would be honourable and keep his word on public financing. Obama wasn't. Obama wiped out McCain's overexposed political flank. Surprise.

History will not say that Obama won on bi-partisanship and record-breaking voter turnout.

As of this post, there are around 116 million votes counted. That is less than in 2004 (122 million) and considerably less than the projected record number (133 million). That simply means that more Democrat voters were enthusiastic for their candidate. This is still a center-right nation, just not last night in the national elections. If you need proof of this, look at the same-sex marriage questions that won in Florida and California.

It cannot be overstated that the conservative base made a big impact by either not showing up or not voting for who is otherwise a moderate candidate (McCain). Forget what the Republican elitists say about appealing to moderates and Independents. Nearly two-thirds of "moderates" vote for Democrat candidates anyway. Tell me what about Obama's campaign was bi-partisan? He appealed to his liberal base on a clear platform of higher taxes, restricting capitalism, the environment, pro-choice, less American world leadership, ant-Bush rhetoric, and government expansion. And he won.

Here is the key: The polls over the last two weeks showed Obama getting between 20%-21% of the conservative vote! That is a ***HUGE*** statement to the Republican leadership that the base wants candidates who will represent our ideology carried so well by President Reagan. Thus the base is showing that it is willing to roll the dice on two of the most liberal Senators in Washington politics to force the hand of their leadership.

Conservatives are tired of elected Republican representatives and (prospective) Presidents who do not defend themselves or their base against leftist attacks from the media or in DC. Conservatives have indicated based on polls and turnout that they want leadership like that shown in Governors Palin and Jindal. The strategy is to get the conservative base back under the tent and then do our best to convince Independents to join us.

Governor Palin was misused
Conservatives nation-wide praised the selection of Governor Palin. McCain even surged ahead in the polls. Do NOT believe what the polls say about support of Sarah Palin wavering. What the polls are reflecting was the eventual realisation by the base that the McCain camp turned her into a mini-McCain in the first two weeks. They made her fit a template instead of allowing her to be herself. Eventually they allowed this, or more of it anyway, but by then there was alleged infighting between the advisor teams and Palin was allowed to flounder--no doubt as a way to "teach her a lesson".

Pulling her out of Michigan was a mistake. The upper Great Lakes states are a Democrat vulnerability waiting to be exploited.

Bottomline: Conservatives still love Sarah Palin, and we would love even more to see what she could do at the head of a ticket.

Senator McCain did not clarify the issues
This criticism goes with the first point. One has to be willing to be partisan if they are going to convince the electorate to vote for them.

CHARACTER - It wasn't enough just to drop names like "Ayers" and "Rezko". Most voters have no context. What Senator McCain needed to do, but was unwilling to do, is show how a man's ideology is shaped by the company he keeps. He needed to explain who these people were and their backgrounds and connections to people like Saul Alinsky. In a Presidential election character IS an issue, but the McCain camp soured the electorate by mishandling the presentation of the issue. Like Miyagi says, "Right side: okay; left side: okay; walk in middle *squish* just like grape." McCain walked in the middle on Obama's character.

Jeremiah Wright AND Father Pfleger (along with the above personas) are proof that it is Barack Obama and the Democrat party who are divisive and anti-American. There is not ONE person in this country, with at least an average reasoning intelligence, who does not know that one's character can be judged based on his associations and heroes--and should be when it comes to the office of President of the United States. Polls proved this during the Democrat primary.

The American people know the difference between racism and calling a politcal opponent on their poor choice of associates. I am sure that Senator McCain could have found someone prominent and respected from the black community to stand with him on this. Someone who could sincerely ask the questions: "Do you really want the likes of Jeremiah Wright to represent the black community? Do you really think that he and Louis Farakhan and liberal Democrat leaders want unity between black and white Americans?"

I love America and I love the great progress this country has made to ensure that ALL Americans have a fair shot at the American Dream. I understand that race is a sensitive and potentially nuclear political issue in a U.S. Presidential election. But the black community deserves so much better than the Democrat party gives them and Senator McCain could have used this election to passively open some eyes. Point out the way liberal Democrats have treated Michael Steele, Clarence Thomas, and Condaleeza Rice and I guarantee you that there will be some enlightenment.

ECONOMY - Senator McCain unwilling to be partisan also meant he handicapped himself on the economy issue. He needed to point to the electorate that Chuck Schumer, Barney Frank, Chris Dodd, Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid were key reasons why the economy tanked in August and September. Their links to the subprime crisis are exceptionally easy to find and draw a line to.

Also, the vast majority Americans disapproved of the bailout package. Instead of suspending his campaign, Senator McCain should have allowed President Bush to call both candidates to Washington (as he did anyway) and then seized on the opportunity to take a stand with the rest of America and reject the bail out proposals. For all the times that Senator McCain said that he stood in marked contrast to Senator Obama, this would have shown that he did. Voters most definitely would have noticed.

ABORTION, NATIONAL SECURITY, SUPREME COURT APPOINTMENTS - These were issues that the McCain camp allowed the media and the Democrats to bury. All three of these could--and should--have been part of the electoral landscape despite the dominance of the economy. (Immigration as well, but that is a non-issue with Senator McCain.)

Senator McCain should not have disconnected himself from President Bush
Despite what is shown in the polls and the media, at the end of the day, association with President Bush did NOT mean a loss of the election. For a President so unpopular, he still managed to win re-election in 2004. He did that with the evangelical Christian vote--a large part of the conservative base that Senator McCain failed to directly address despite that he had the perfect rallying point: Governor Palin.

Also, President Bush was in control of one of the best economies from 2002 thru the Spring of 2008. How could Senator McCain allow people to forget that? The subprime crisis has never been shown to be a crisis! A problem? Certainly. But a severe market correction had to happen--that is the nature of capitalism and the fall does (and did) bottom out. Voters needed to be reassured of the peaks and valleys of a capitalist system, and Senator McCain killed a vital economic argument by distancing himself from President Bush. Stating that he had been part of one of the most prosperous economies since the 80s through Bush's tax cuts would have allowed for some voter correction on the garbage being spewed out of the media and DC.

Saying "I did vote with President Bush the vast majority of the time on economic issues because he was right and economy prospered as a result", could only have helped Senator McCain in a way similar to Mel Gibson's character in The Patriot when that character used the American flag to turn a panicked rout into the victory it always was.

The 2008 Presidential Election: How I See It

Some Notes:

- States that normally would be rock solid blue are only light blue (or even toss-ups or solid red) because I am predicting that there will be a "Hillary Effect" wreaking havoc with portions of the map (see post below this one for explanation).

- I think that the tape documenting Obama's feelings towards the coal industry that hit the news Sunday/Monday is going to cost him any chance he had in OH and WV.

- Depsite the above, there are far too many factors going on in PA for me to feel confident to call that state for McCain.

- Wisconsin has gone for the Dem candidate in the last two elections by 0.2% (2000) and 0.4% (2004). The Hillary Effect may tip the balance, but it's too much of an X-factor here to call it for McCain since Obama did win the state during the primaries (but it was close--the delegate count was 42-32).

- As it pertains to VA, no one can really tell whether the northern part of the state (now heavily Democrat since 2000, and even 2004) will be enough to offset the rest of what is otherwise a very red state.

- Iowa: I've called for Obama, but only barely. I don't know if the epicenter of the Hillary Effect (and all the other intangibles re: this election) will be strong enough to ovecome such a large lead in the polls there. I do anticipate it to be no more than 1-2% for whomever wins.

- Oregon... my gut and the trend tells me solid blue, but the numbers based on county make-up and Hillary's decent showing had me marking this one as a leaner. The sum is that it still goes for Obama, and it's the only light blue I don't agree with. But I left it just to prove my gut feeling to myself for future reference lol. 

- My home state of Maine is a weird animal the last three weeks or so. For a state that's supposedly solid blue, it doesn't act like it here in District 2 (which covers 2/3 of the state and is home to the majority of ME's college population). The bigger point is that we have thousands of "Gordon the Fisherman" voters who were none to happy with what Barack told "Joe the Plumber", and Obama's numbers have declined ever since. District 1 (Portland and Newport) will no doubt go to Obama. But District 2 is very much in play by what I can tell, and it is very much Republican north of Bangor (you could accurately call it "Little Alaska"). Plus Nader does very well in ME, as did Hillary. All told, McCain could well end up with 3 of 4 crucial Maine votes.

This is the first time I have done this with an election. It was a lot of fun, and depending on how right this map turns out to be, I will reveal a bunch of my sources. Otherwise, what's the point ;-P

Distinctions

"We have not been willing to put our priorities properly. We have not been willing to say ... "Hey Russia, we won't expand NATO into the Ukraine and Georgia, right next to your borders, if you cooperate with us on Iran." ...

I think Iran and Israel are a hell of a lot more important than expanding NATO to Russia's borders. Why should we? What do we need it for? So let [Russia] invade Georgia. It's right next to them. Would we tolerate a foreign--a Russian army in Mexico? Which is more important to us Georgia or Israel, frankly?"   --Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY)

I am so tired of Democrats blurring the lines between good guys and bad guys. (And yes I am going to pick on them because they are the ones constantly doing the blurring--all the way back to the Civil War.) Frankly any American politican who can find similarities between Russia's motives and those of NATO's--while taking a passe attitude towards the sovereignty of said NATO allies--needs to be kicked out of office on the sheer basis of either their ignorance or arrogance.

NATO is a defensive coalition NOT an invading force--so hell yeah it should be supported and strengthened! Remember...

Russia is the (former) communist nation.
Russia is the one who plundered eastern Europe.
Russia is the one who decided to make a power play resulting in the Cold War.
Russia is the one who has hurt its own cause by invading Georgia and threatening Ukraine.
Russia is the one working with Iran, Venezuela, and Cuba to develop those countries' nuclear programs and/or military arsenals.

Russia is the country that needs to prove to the world that it is one of the good guys, not NATO members. 

This is what happens when a world allows too many shades of grey to saturate the spectrum of its politcal ideology.

Smoke and Mirrors

Polls have to be one of the most misleading barometers of public opinion in American culture. Too often they are used to create news on a slow news day, or to swing elections. And in the case of the latter, they have often been inaccurate when predicting Democrat victory for the White House.

As of today, RealClearPolitics.com now has Arizona, North Dakota, and Georgia as "toss-ups"--South Dakota, Arkansas, and West Virginia are now leaning away from McCain. I am sorry, but that is complete bunk.

A reading of the top ten National Polls reveals that the game is up... there is no concencus on how far ahead Obama is. Look at the ranges:

Obama +13 - CBS News
Obama +10 - Gallup (Traditional)
Obama +9 - ABC News/Wash Post
Obama +7 - Diageo/Hotline
Obama +7 - Marist
Obama +6 - Reuters/C-SPAN/Zogby
Obama +5 - Rasmussen Reports
Obama +4 - GWU/Battleground
Obama +3 - FOX News
Obama +2 - IBD/TIPP

Someone has to be wrong, and I will take this time to point out that the IBD/TIPP poll was the most accurate in 2004, predicting within a 0.6% of the actual result (or right around there). If you read the article above, you will discover that the CBS, ABC, and Gallup polls are historically three of the most inaccurate of all the polls. Why they continue to be cited in any serious election debate is beyond me.

The reason I tend to smart away from taking polls seriouslly is simply because the data that the vast majority base their anaylsis on is inheritantly flawed. To "represent" the country, between 3%-6% more registered Democrats are polled that Republicans. While I do not deny that there are more registered Dems in the country, the majority of them--namely those with low income, or who are students--simply do not vote. Their lifestyles just do not make time for it, and the DNC knows it.

There are two intangibles in this particular race that further make the polls--and especially during this election cycle--more or less useless. The first is the infamous "Bradley Effect", an X factor that pretty much has people supporting a black candidate in a poll so as not to appear racist, yet in reality does not support that candidate's policy views and thus votes against the candidate on Election Day.

The second intangible unique to this election, and which very very few are talking about, is the "Hillary Effect". If this Y factor rears its head on Tuesday, the Obama campaign may be in for a very long night. Over the last weeks I have been keeping track of various weblogs of people who supported Hillary Clinton during the primaries. Her supporters have been irate ever since the nomination was sealed that Obama team played the race card, allegedly bullied voters at the Iowa and NC caucuses, and the way the media dropped her like an ivy prep drops last year's beauty queen for this year's. Some of these voters (mostly women) have been conducting a grassroots drive to defeat Obama so that Hillary has a shot in 2012.

Forget Arizona and Arkansas. If the weblogs prove accurate, it may in fact be Obama who is unpleasantly shocked as he watches not only all the battleground states go to McCain, but also Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Iowa, Maine, Wisconsin, or New Jersey. I am not predicting any of these states will end up red. All I am pointing out is that Clinton won--or did very well--in all those states, and a "Hillary Effect" in those states combined with the other intangibles not caught by polling (e.g. "Joe the Plumber", recent gaffes about Obama's "tax cuts", voters angry at the media), could prove to be too much for the Obama camp to overcome on Election Day.

The absolution that is History waits.

Flawed

The Obama campaign provided The New York Times with a trailer from the taped portion of the ad that will be featured primetime. The footage is described as...

"...heavy in strings, flags, presidential imagery and some Americana filmed by Davis Guggenheim, whose father was the campaign documentarian of Robert F. Kennedy. As the screen flashes scenes of suburban lawns, a freight train and Mr. Obama seated at a kitchen table with a group of white, apparently working-class voters, Mr. Obama says: “We’ve seen over the last eight years how decisions by a president can have a profound effect on the course of history and on American lives; much that’s wrong with our country goes back even farther than that.”

Did you get that last line?

"...much that’s wrong with our country goes back even farther than that.”

Why would anyone want to run for President of the United States when they believe its Constitution to be flawed--indeed the very culture and ideology of the country is "wrong". Probably one that is only running because he sees a giftwrapped opportunity to seize broad authority to single-handedly "fix" what is "broken".

Obama's "change" will be about far more than just policy. It will be about hitting reset on American history and its sacred institutions and foundational beliefs. It will be about reducing America's influence in the world in the (false) hope that we can all sing "Kum Bye Yah" before each session of the U.N.

And don't forget how it is being specifically pointed out that he is sitting with "white...working-class" Americans. Tell me again which party is obsessed with focusing on race and divisive politics?

It is too bad that many of the Americans who vote for this man for the sake of making history will come to regret that choice should history be made on November 4.

The Politcal Toll of Liberalism

I will start by saying that I respect anyone who has served in the U.S. Military with honour and integrity, even if their views oppose my own. If there are any Americans who have certainly earned the right to hold a reasonable view, it is a military veteran.

Having said that, anyone who believes that General Powell did not know he was going to vote for Obama since (at least) the day of his nomination is naive. I will not go so far as to say that General Powell is supporting Obama for racial reasons; I am giving him the benefit of the doubt that he is too intelligent a man to base an endorsement on such a non-issue. But I 100% believe--despite what he says--that the former Chief of Staff withheld his endorsement until a time it could be of some significant use to Senator Obama.

Heading into today, Obama has been falling in all the major polls to the point that the race is (as of this writing) considered a dead heat. As "Joe the Plumber" continues to seriously hurt Senator Obama, in swoops General Colin Powell employing his own "Powell Doctrine" of overwhelming force against middle-class America. What this will do to the polls in the coming weeks one can only guess.

This endorsement frustrates me--not because it comes against my team, but because it is so exclusively political, as in anti-Bush political. Maybe the left-moderate Republican Powell is miffed that Senator McCain bypassed him for the young conservative governor, Sarah Palin. But I believe there is far more truth to the notion that General Powell feels betrayed that two Bush presidents refused to listen to him when it came to warring in the Middle East. (And this is not to suggest that the valid points he brought up against both wars were not worth considering.)

Also potentially to blame for General Powell's moderate views has to be his time spent in Vietnam and the liberal-stoked political backlash on the home front. In the decades following, veterans from this conflict (of whom my father is also one) seem to be increasingly moderating themselves or becoming Democrats. Ditto Gulf War vets, and even Iraq War veterans. It's not that I do not believe them to be neccessarily disillusioned with their service to their country. I am convinced that these veterans are tired of being unfairly disliked and having their noble service and sacrifice spit on in the media, TV, and film. Who can blame them?

President Bush has become the left's favourite punching bag. And in their severe, almost fanatical, criticism of the man, many such as General Powell have come to see an oppurtunity to finally have their service respected. Thus, General Powell has much to gain from supporting Obama as the Illinois Senator continues to try and win a Presidency on the coattails of a media-labelled unpopular President. Don't forget that it was Secretary of State Powell who got up before the United Nations to support the intelligence of WMDs in Iraq. A speech he is on record as calling a "blot" on his resumee of public service.

That being the case, his timing is pretty disingenuous to the family and party that helped elevate him to a position where his endorsement of a candidate could tip political scales (no doubt he considered this). It's not as if the former State Sec needed to take a clear moral high ground against the McCain ticket. By publicly endorsing Barack Obama, General Colin Powell is simply looking to balance his account, possibly at the expense of the American way of life, in order to save face with the Washington elite. The sad thing is that a military hero with such a proud military legacy should never be in a position to need to get out a dodge.

That is the despicable, maddening nature of the Left in this great country. They force you to apologise for doing what is right.

Quote for 2008, On Church and State

"Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."

   --John Adams, 2nd President of the United States (F-MA)

Two Excellent Articles

Both are from the Wall Street Journal:

This one gives a list of policy expectations of a country under a Democrat Supermajority...

And this one gives an anatomy of the U.S. polling system, and how the polls can be as partisan as elections...

Quote for 2008, On Accountability

"If there were a Republican to blame this [sub-prime mortgage mess] on, he would be sitting before congressional committees six weeks ago."

   --Rush Limbaugh