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November 2008

Know Your Enemies

by Bill O'Connell on November 18, 2008

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For all the Bush bashing that has gone on since September 11, 2001, it is a pretty sure bet that when he leaves office on January 20, 2009, part of his legacy will be that he kept us safe for the last seven years.  The fundamental difference between the polices of the Bush administration and those of Clinton and Carter was that Bush saw it as a war, Clinton and Carter as crimes.  On a war footing, you take the battle to your enemies with the objective of destroying them.  On a law and order footing, you investigate the crime after the fact, arrest suspects, give them their Miranda rights, put them on trial, and if you are lucky, they may spend some time in jail.

Law and Order

In 1979, where it all started, Iranian “students” took over the U.S. Embassy and held it for over 400 days.  Jimmy Carter tried to negotiate a settlement, sponsored a botched rescue, and saw the hostages finally released his last hour in office.  The Iranians didn’t want to be holding American hostages when Ronald Reagan was president.  Reagan would have seen the taking of the U.S. Embassy as an invasion on U.S. soil, which is what our Embassies are.  He would not have tolerated a ragtag bunch of radical students occupying U.S. soil.

From that, and Somalia, Osama bin Laden saw the U.S. as a paper tiger that would cut and run if hit hard.  Clinton’s law and order approach can be seen in the response to the first World Trade Center bombing and the constructing of a “wall” between the CIA and the FBI.

War Footing

President Bush saw the attacks on the U.S. as a war.  He mobilized the country and struck back hard.  By going on offense rather than hanging back playing defense, he has kept the enemy pinned down in Iraq and Afghanistan, while simultaneous rooting them out aggressively wherever they went.  Those captured on the battlefield were sent to Guantanamo, where they were interrogated and held.  Lawyers in the U.S. began to complain that these prisoners were being held without being charged and that was unconstitutional.  Again, that is seeing it from a law and order perspective.  On a war footing, the enemy that is captured on the battlefield is held until the end of hostilities, like we held Japanese and German prisoners during WWII.  If it takes 50 years until the war is won and hostilities ended, then they should be held for 50 years.

Rooting Them Out

In trying to prevent another attack at home, Bush also aggressively sought to disrupt their operations.  Part of that process was to intercept their communications and learn what they were up to.  This caused an uproar over eavesdropping on Americans without a warrant.  However, the program was designed to intercept international phone calls, even if one end was in the U.S.  For example, if an Al Qaeda terrorist is captured or killed on the battlefield but their cell phone is recovered and their cell phone has an address book in it, the administration would set up all the numbers in the address book to be monitored and calls listened to. The purpose was to keep all Americans safe.

Many on the left believe that people in the Bush administration should be prosecuted for this practice.  They call this activity criminal.

Who Are Your Enemies?

President Bush tried to prevent our enemies, those who wished to kill as many of us as possible, from doing us harm.  He knew our enemies to be deadly and ruthless.

And then you have Joe Wurzelbacher, aka Joe the Plumber.  Joe the Plumber had the audacity to ask Barack Obama a question about how Obama’s policies would affect people like Joe.  Pretty dangerous stuff, no?  Since that chance encounter, Joe the Plumber has been investigated by six Ohio state agencies.  Did you see the ACLU representative on the evening news demanding what the Obama campaign knew about this and when they knew it?  Did you see Chris Matthews slamming his hand on his desk and saying, “This is AMERICA, not the Soviet Union!  We don’t investigate citizens because of their political beliefs.”?  Did you hear Senator Dick Durban rise in the senate to decry what happened to Joe the Plumber and compare it to the Nazis, the Soviet Gulags, and Pol Pot?

Neither did I.

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Kill the Detroit Bailout

by Bill O'Connell on November 16, 2008

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I was having lunch with a colleague the other day and the conversation turned to the economy. He spoke of some recent analysis of the number of jobs that would be lost if the Big Three failed.  He recounted not just the employees of the auto companies themselves, but the employees of their suppliers, advertising firms that produce car ads, and on and on.  His final tally was well over 1 million jobs lost.  He concluded by saying it would make the current financial crisis a walk in the park.

Getting enough exercise?

Does that mean that we are all going to start walking?  Not that that would be a bad idea, we could all stand to lose some pounds, but for someone who has a 23 mile one-way commute with no option for mass transit, it’s just not going to happen.  So what do we do?  Well, one of several scenarios is going to happen.

Scenario 1:  The Big Three Close Their Doors

If this scenario came about, what would we do?  We would go buy Toyotas, Nissans, Hondas, Volkswagens, etc.  Those companies would have to scale up to fill the void caused by the Big Three closing their doors.  That demand would need people.  So a significant number, but by no means all, of the laid off workers from Detroit would move to North Carolina, Alabama, and other points south, and join these auto companies at their U.S. plants.

Likewise the suppliers would form new alliances to supply these car companies, as would all the other ancillary companies that currently support Detroit.  Would jobs be lost?  Yes.  Would it be anywhere near the number of jobs my friend projected?  No.

Scenario 2: The Big Three Reinvent Themselves

The liberty of the car companies to reinvent themselves is constrained by government regulations.  Surprise!  If the Big Three have any hope of reinventing themselves, they have to have the freedom to do so.  Start by eliminating the CAFE standards.  CAFE, which stands for Corporate Average Fuel Economy, is the mileage standards dictated by the government that the auto companies must comply with or face heavy fines, draining more money from the Big Three’s coffers.  So for every car that the Big Three build that may get 20 mpg, they may have to build and sell perhaps 3 that get 30 mpg, in order to meet the standard.  But what if they can make money on the 20 mpg car, but they lose money on every 30 mpg model?  What if the reason they can’t make money is because of their labor costs per vehicle, their pension costs per vehicle, their health care costs per vehicle, when added up are too high compared to their foreign competitors.  They are basically forced by the government to make an unprofitable product.

Why not abandon the CAFE standards?  Let Detroit build the cars and trucks that they can make at a profit.  Let the foreign manufactures make cars that they can make at a profit, including high mileage cars.  Let the American people have the freedom to choose which they want.  As the price of gasoline climbs as it did, and will again, people will want to buy high mileage cars, hybrids, electric cars, but they will also want to buy SUVs, luxury cars and light trucks.  Why does a particular manufacturer have to produce all kinds?  When has government ever made the right call on what products to produce? (Hint:  think of all the five-year plans and Great Leap Forwards from the Communist world).

Scenario 3: The Government Bails Out the Big Three

The government prints up a bundle of cash, $25 billion or more, gives it to the auto companies and hands the IOU to you and me.  The new Democratic Congress and Administration will toe the line for their backers in the environmental movement and demand higher CAFE standards for the auto companies in the interest of addressing: our dependence on foreign oil; green house gases; and helping consumers.  This will put increased pressure on the Big Three to make more unprofitable products and we will find ourselves back in the same place a few years hence.  More liberties will be vaporized as the government appoints a czar to oversee the auto companies to be sure they are building the right products, that management is not getting paid too much money, and well let’s face it, they would basically be nationalizing the auto companies.  Management talent would dry up, and socialism would make greater inroads into the U.S. economy.

The Best Scenario

The Big Three file for bankruptcy, if that is what they need to do.  The stockholders would probably be wiped out, the management team would be replaced, and this will let them re-negotiate their labor agreements.  Congress and the new Administration realize that people will want to purchase cars with higher mileage as the price of gas climbs regardless of any government requirement.  There is no justifiable reason that any particular auto company has to build a particular car because the government says so.  Achieving this state of enlightenment, Congress repeals the CAFE standards.  With the liberty to manage the company to make a profit rather than meet the constraints of a bevy of interest groups, a more energized management team takes the reins, and returns the Big Three to competitiveness.

Drawing a line in the Sand

If we don’t take a stand here and now, every company that wants a cash cushion will be working the halls of Congress to get their hands on your money.  There is not enough to go around.  In addition, many of the problems we are facing were created by government initiatives.  The mortgage mess was not the result of not enough regulation but by government programs that compelled lenders to give loans to people who could not afford them.  Detroit’s problems are a result of CAFE standards and onerous union contracts.  Since government created many of these problems why do we think that government knows how to fix them?  What we need to do is tell them to back off and let the free market work.

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Obama Watch — Week 2

by Bill O'Connell on November 15, 2008

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It’s now two weeks since election day and we are starting to see how Barack Obama will lead take shape.    Here is what we observed in week 2:

  1. Appointments — The balancing act begins.  Running on the premise that he is a unifying force, Obama has a challenge on his hand to carry that through.  Many voters in the middle and on the right who pulled the lever for him, took him at his word on this point.  There have been a number of prognosticators who have made their picks of what Obama’s cabinet should look like.  A name that keeps coming up on many of the lists is that of Robert Gates, the current Secretary of Defense.  He is well respected in the job he is doing, and if Obama keeps him, he will go a long way toward demonstrating his ability to reach across the aisle.  He will also go an equally long way toward angering his supporters on the left, who basically want everyone from the Bush administration behind bars.  So who does he pick for the most prestigious cabinet post, Secretary of State.  Kerry was lobbying for the position, but this past week Hillary Clinton’s name hit the news.  She could well be the ideological counterbalance to Gates, but could start a firestorm among the Hispanic vote who were looking for Bill Richardson to get the nod.  If Obama appoints her he could also have a tiger by the tail, in that they were arch rivals in the primaries and having her in his administration could be problematic if she becomes a loose cannon.  From Hillary’s perspective, does she really want to work for her rival and do his bidding? This will continue to be interesting.
  2. Dow Jones Industrial Average — Down 648 points.  The Dow which is considered a leading indicator dropped another 5% this week.  Perhaps it’s time for Obama to try to stop the skid by dropping his talk of tax increases.  If he does, he had better put his hands over his ears, because the squeal from the left will be ear drum shattering.
  3. Where’s Joe Biden, the voice of foreign policy experience? – This week Barack Obama had a phone call with the president of Poland, Lech Kaczynski and as a result of that conversation Mr. Kaczynski said that missile defense programthat was agreed to with the Bush administration, would continue.  Obama’s team released a statement saying, not so fast.  First of all, Obama publicly contradicts another head of state and one of our staunchest allies.  Second, coming only days after Russian President Medvedev threatened to install missiles near Poland if the plan went through, it makes Obama look weak.  If they’re still hiden’ Biden, they better get him out of the closet or we won’t have to wait six months for a crisis.
  4. Remember William Ayers, the guy from the neighborhood?  Now that the election is over, Ayers is out on the circuit promoting a re-release of his book Fugitive Days.  In it he wrote a new afterword which said: “[W]e had served together on the board of a foundation, knew one another as neighbors and family friends, held an initial fund-raiser at my house, where I’d made a small donation to his earliest political campaign.”  Sounds a bit more than just some guy in the neighborhood and makes it an outright lie that his career wasn’t started in Ayers’ living room.  Unless, of course, it was held in the den.

Stay tuned…

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Bailing Out the Auto Companies

by Bill O'Connell on November 11, 2008

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The conga line for companies with their hands out forms on the left.  The next ones bellying up to the slop trough are GM and Chrysler.  They need $25 billion to help them through a tough patch or they may go out of business.  It is a loan?  Is it buying a stake in the company?  Is it that thing of which we dare not speak– socialism?

What’s Next?

The question is are we, by the continued intervention of the government, managing our way out of a recession and into a full blown depression?  For all the warm memories of FDR, the depresion lasted more than twelve years thanks to, “We’re from the government and we’re here to help.”  Perhaps it’s time to take our medicine, pull the covers up under our chin, sweat it out, and get back on our feet.

Business, like many things, runs in cycles.  There are up cycles and there are down cycles.  We can’t eliminate them, they are a necessary part of the process.  But just as there is no cure for the common cold, sometimes it is best to let it take its course as soon as possible and be done.

Was Government Intervention Wrong?

I don’t believe so.  It was unfortunately necessary to end the panic.  When lenders have no confidence that if they lend they will be paid back, and if they have non-performing assets and they can’t sell them because they don’t know how to price them, the whole system locks up.  The system needs a lender of last resort and the only one big enough to step into that role is the government.  However, that should be for the least amount of time possible.

The Problem with the Auto Industry

The auto industry has had 35 years to figure this out.  With the Arab Oil Embargo of 1973, Japanese auto companies made major inroads into the automobile markets.  Imagine buying a car that got 20 miles per gallon, rather than 8, was better built, and cost less.  Well, that’s what the Japanese companies were offering, but what did Detroit learn?  Union contracts too expensive, let’s invest in robots and get rid of the expensive people!  GM bought boatloads of robots and later ended up scrapping them.  Why?  Because the workers weren’t the problem.

Who transformed the Japanese auto industry?  An American by the name of W. Edwards Deming.  After World War II, Japan’s industry was in shambles.  Deming went to help them get their industry back on its feet and taught them about statistics and quality control.  They learned their lessons well.  They focus on incremental changes every day.  If someone sees a problem on the assembly line and takes action to stop the line, he doesn’t get chewed out, he gets applauded.

The Big 3 have had all this time to figure out what they were doing wrong and fix it, but what did they do?  During the good times, they just rolled along.  If signing a big labor contract kept the peace and kept the factories running, they would buy off the unions.  But when the trouble starts, there’s no room to maneuver.

Leading the Way to the Future

The Japanese saw the need to cut back further on fuel consumption, but they knew there was a limit as far as how much mileage you could squeeze out of a gasoline engine, so they came out with hybrids.  Initially they were a novelty, but when gas was headed for $4 per gallon, they we economical.  Where was Detroit on this?  Lagging behind, of course.  Don’t develop a hybrid car until your customers demand it, but by the time they do, they would rather buy the tried and true hybrids being built by Toyota and Honda.  Ford promised to produce 250,000 hybrid cars but rescinded that pledge nine months later.  Why?

“According to a Ford spokesperson, an internal panel of experts analyzed customer interest in hybrid cars and did not feel that there was enough demand to warrant the expense of building 250,000 hybrids.”

What was the price of a gallon of gas when they made that decision? $2.20, the lowest it had been in ten months.  The other half of that article quoted above said, “Toyota remains top hybrid producer.”  GM is now placing a very big bet on the Chevy Volt, which will be an electric car scheduled to launch in 2010.  Although there is little fanfare, Toyota, Nissan and Mitsubishi are all planning electric cars in the next two years.

To Bail or Not to Bail?

So why should the taxpayer be on the hook for the mistakes of the Big 3 auto maker’s management for these past 35 years?  Perhaps they should just go into Chapter 11, reorganize and come out as more competitive companies.  Why prop them up so that they can stumble along for another 5-10 years until the next downturn and come back to the trough?  The stockholders have been electing the boards of directors for these companies for 35 years and buying their stock.  The boards have been hiring the management team and providing them with their compensation.  The management team has made the product decisions, negotiated the labor agreements, and all the other missteps.  Why should American taxpayers have to step up to the plate and bail them out.  They got themselves into this mess, let them get themselves out.

But that’s just my opinion.

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Obama Watch — Week 1

by Bill O'Connell on November 11, 2008

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Well it’s been a week since Barack Obama has been elected the next President of the United States, so a decent interval has passed for him and his family to enjoy the moment.  It’s time to resume the watch to observe in which direction he will lead us.  Here is what we observed in week 1:

  1. Appointment of Rahm Emanuel as Chief of Staff – Emanuel is known as a partisan with sharp elbows and a take-no-prisoners style. On the one hand it can be viewed as the first step in finishing off the opposition.  On the other hand, he may be spending more of his time protecting Obama from Congress and all the far left groups who are holding his IOUs.  So the jury is still out on this one.
  2. Dow Jones Industrial Average — Down 765 points.  The Dow which is considered a leading indicator is down about 8% in five days, not exactly a vote of confidence in the hope and change heading our way.
  3. Private meeting with President Bush today — After the meeting which was between Barack Obama and the President with no staff attending, it wasn’t long before the essence of what was discussed was in the newspapers.  Tradition has it that private presidential conversations are, well, private.  Bush was angry about the leaks.  Let’s see, private meeting, Bush and Obama, word leaks to the press, Bush is angry.  I’ll go out on a limb here and put my money on it was Obama who leaked the information.  Well that didn’t take long.  What else can he be trusted with?
  4. Obama pushes Bush to implement another stimulus package immediately and to help out GM and Chrysler.  Why would he do that?  Here’s a hypothesis, if Bush acts before Obama takes office, and it goes well, Obama can take credit for it by either saying that the recovery took place on his watch or that he prodded Bush to act.  If it goes south and the taxpayers are stuck holding the bag on yet another socialist grab, well Obama can do what he campaigned on, blaming Bush.  If nothing happens until he takes office, he will have to make the decision and bear the responsibility.  Remember what happened with the $700 billion bailout package, Obama stayed as far away as he could.
  5. Obama’s transition team is talking about rescinding some of Bush’s executive orders, including one that allowed more drilling for oil.  So with overwhelming support for “Drill here, Drill now”, Obama immediately wants to reverse course and drill less.  This should help drive the price of gasoline back up again.  But wait, this just in, his advisors are saying a decision hasn’t been reached yet.

Stay tuned…

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The End of Racism?

by Bill O'Connell on November 8, 2008

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Throughout the presidential campaign there was an undercurrent of racism.  It bubbled up every time it looked like an issue could be effectively used against Barack Obama.  Talk about William Ayers?  You’re a racist.  Talk about Revered Wright?  You’re a racist.  Talk about ACORN?  Your a racist. Say you are not going to vote for Obama, then that proves you’re a racist.

What’s interesting is that the only people who talked about race and racism were the Democrats.  It was as if knowing that racism was receding to the darkest corners of society and withering and dying as it went, they had to resuscitate it and keep it alive.  One of the most powerful tools in their arsenal was looking about as potent as Jack La Lanne, at 94.

The Election Results

Barack Obama won the election for President of the United States with 53% of the popular vote.  That is a higher percentage than Bill Clinton got in either of his elections, while he had the hubris to call himself the first black president.  It was a higher percentage than Jimmy Carter got in 1976, the last Democratic presidential winner to garner more than 50% of the popular vote, with 50.1%.  You have to go back 44 years to Lyndon Johnson to find a Democrat that got a higher percentage of the popular vote.

Barack Obama and John McCain didn’t submit job applications to a committee, where Barack Obama might get a few extra points for being a minority.  He won in the popular vote and even more decisively in the Electoral College.  He even won three states from the old Confederacy (Virginia, North Carolina, and Florida). I think it’s fair to say that race wasn’t a significant factor.  He could not have won the race on the black vote alone and regardless of how other categories broke down, the fact remains he had to get substantial support from all groups in order for him to be close enough for the black vote to put him over the top.

Progress Has Been Ongoing

If you look around it was not just this one man who has succeeded, there are also many others:  Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, Oprah Winfrey, Charles Rangel, Clarence Thomas, Douglas Wilder, Lynn Swan, J.C. Watts, Michael Steele, Kenneth Chennault, Reginald Davis, Tiger Woods, and on, and on.  So perhaps we can put the deck of race cards in the drawer and leave them there.

The Next Chapter

How Barack Obama plans to lead would typically be revealed in his inaugural address.  I would like to offer some text that he might consider including to set the tone for bringing the nation together:

“As I look out on this crowd of great Americans I can see in the distance the Lincoln Memorial.  It was there some forty-five years ago, another great American, Martin Luther King, Jr., addressed a large crowd.  In that speech he said,

‘I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.’

As I stand here before you, I am humbled to think how momentous those words were then, and how great this country has become in the intervening forty-five years.  He also said:

‘I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.’

I was a little child when he said those words and I consider myself as much one of his children as his own flesh and blood.  So I say to you on this day, that we are about to write a new chapter, the fulfillment of that dream.  I pledged to bring change, to bring you hope, and to end partisanship and unite this country.  Therefore, I proclaim that we should end all Affirmative Action programs, and we should end them with two words:

MISSION ACCOMPLISHED

Including that message in his inaugural address would be on par with Kennedy’s “Ask Not….”  It would set him apart from the dull technocrats and bureaucrats and define his presidency.  Anyone want to wager if that will ever happen?

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Piling on Palin

by Bill O'Connell on November 6, 2008

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You have to wonder.  Now that the election is over you would think that the focus would be on the president-elect and his transition.  That is newsworthy and is being covered, but the continuing focus on Sarah Palin is surprising.

Finishing Her Off?

Could it be that the left is so fearful of Sarah Palin and her ability to energize crowds that they feel they must finish her off, so she does not come back stronger and more popular?  Could it be that they can’t imagine facing her with four more years of experience under her belt?

Do the Attacks Pass the Smell Test?

A Fox news story said that the McCain campaign became increasingly disenchanted with Palin toward the end of the campaign.  It said that her lack of knowledge of the most basic facts about civics and geography were alarming.  This raises some interesting points:

  1. In vetting Sarah Palin, no matter how quickly or superficially it was done, how could they possibly miss issues so allegedly glaring?
  2. The opposition, which included the main stream media, descended on Alaska from north to south to dig up dirt on Sarah Palin.  Bill O’Reilly reported that the National Enquirer went up there checkbook in hand, to get any good story they could.  What did they come up with? Nothing. The only thing that came close to a story was Troopergate.  Try as they might to make it a big story and even an October surprise, it flopped.  She was later completely exonerated by the proper investigative authority in Alaska (not the Democrats in the legislature).  Interestingly, the vindication didn’t make much of a news splash even though the findings were released before the election.
  3. Her approval ratings as governor were the highest in the nation.  Could a complete dunderhead be so widely approved of?

Just How Thin Was Her Experience?

Ironically, in an article that was used to sandbag Sarah Palin in a CNN interview, Byron York wrote in National Review (“Sarah Palin, Governor”):

… a look at Palin’s 20 months in power, along with interviews with people who worked with her, shows her to be a serious executive, a governor who picked important things to do and got them done — and who didn’t just stumble into an 80 percent job-approval rating.

She took on her own party when she saw ethics problems.  How many Democrats can say that?  The typical Democratic response to scandal is circle the wagons, stonewall, and counter attack.  Just think Bill Clinton, Gerry Studds, Tim Mahoney, the Keating Five, et al.

She renegotiated a pipeline project with major oil companies that was originally negotiated by her predecessor on terms unfavorable to Alaska.  She overhauled the state ethics laws, working with both Democrats and Republicans in the Alaska legislature.  She also vetoed spending on things that she determined were not a state priority, for such things as “dealing with killer shrubs and Zamboni blades.”

Byron York distilled how she approached governing with three points:

  1. She hires well.  “There was a pretty good team of people assembled right away to come in and start with her big-picture principles and develop a process and legislation to carry that out,” says Joe Balash, the governor’s oil and gas advisor, “I would say that her management style is to give her staff, her cabinet, a pretty long leash, but with very high expectations — and she’s not afraid to tell you that you didn’t get it right.”
  2. She is involved in details in big things but not on everything.  In other words, she doesn’t get lost in the weeds.  She keeps focus on the the important things.
  3. She is dead set on fulfilling campaign promises.  Imagine that! A politician who actually cares about what they say on the campaign trail and says what they mean and means what they say.

Sarah Barracuda

Sarah has shed the muzzle of the second fiddle in a presidential race.  She no longer has to pull her punches so as not to conflict with the top of the ticket.  She is back to being governor and the chief executive of Alaska.  So she can now set the record straight and she should do so enthusiastically.  She should take advantage of media outlets that are fair and balanced, rather than lying in wait for her.  She should come out swinging and really let the left know that if they were frightened of her before, they have awakened a sleeping giant.

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President Elect Obama — Day One

by Bill O'Connell on November 5, 2008

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From now until Inauguration Day we will get a sense for which Barack Obama will emerge as the 44th President of the United States.  Here are some thoughts:

“President Obama will face daunting challenges from the day he takes office. We look forward, however, to being part of the enormous wave of civic and political engagement that his Presidency has inspired and that will enable him to achieve the things that have been on the top of his agenda and ours. We look forward to the change all of us worked so hard to create.”

{italics and emphasis added}

Stay tuned….

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Queue Up for the Loyal Opposition

by Bill O'Connell on November 4, 2008

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Apologies to Yogi Berra, but it appears that Barack Obama will be the 44th President of the United States.  He displayed extraordinary political skill on par with Bill Clinton.  As commentator Juan Williams put it on Fox News, Obama was the stealth candidate.  He spoke in platitudes about hope and change, but he was flexible on the details.  In a period of just a few weeks his famous claim of a tax break for anyone making under $250,000, became $200,000 and through other allies it continued to decrease to $150,000 (Biden) and then $120,000 (New Mexico governor Bill Richardson).

Obama campaigned furiously against George W. Bush, despite Bush not being in the race.  McCain was no match for him as far a political skill was concerned.  McCain refused to mention Reverend Jeremiah Wright in the campaign, he failed to explain how his involvement during the bailout debate got the Republicans back in the game when Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid effectively shut them out of the discussions until McCain got involved.  Where else did he fall short?

  • He failed to adequately explain his health care plan leaving him open to attacks from Obama which went largely unchallenged.
  • He took a pounding from Obama and Biden who said he voted with Bush 94% of the time, but he failed to tie Obama to Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi when Congress had an approval rating about half of what Bush had

The Next Four Years

As the loyal opposition we have to be on guard and speak out against the radical positions that Obama has espoused, but are out of sync with the American people, only 27% of whom call themselves liberal.  What to watch for:

  1. The Fairness Doctrine — this is an effort to squelch our voice.  The Fairness Doctrine which was set aside by Ronald Reagan, required that a broadcaster provide equal time to present opposing viewpoints whenever a political position was expressed.  This would mean that if a radio station broadcast a popular show like Rush Limbaugh, they would have to broadcast three hours of an opposing viewpoint such as was heard on Air America, the liberal network that failed for lack of listeners.  Faced with this, many broadcasters would drop talk radio and go back to playing Top 40s.  Liberty under attack — The First Amendment guarantee of free speech
  2. Card Check — Right now if a union wants to organize a workforce there are two methods that can be used:  a secret ballot, or by having the potential members fill out a card and give it to the union.  They choice of which method is to be used is up to the company, many of whom choose the secret ballot.  Unions want that choice to be theirs and they favor the card system.  This would allow the union to apply pressure to workers at home and other places off the job.  This is even opposed by none other than George McGovern, who has run commercials opposing the union’s position.  (McGovern Interview on YouTube) Liberty under attack — the secret ballot.
  3. Redistribution of Wealth — Obama has spoken extensively, although not recently excepting the Joe the Plumber slip, about the redistribution of wealth.  Joe “Buck-a-Day” Biden, which represents how much this multimillionaire gives to charity, says that paying more taxes is our patriotic duty.  Obama scoffs at descriptions of him as a socialist, by saying that if he gave half his peanut butter sandwich to a schoolmate, he’d be called a socialist.  But sharing your peanut butter sandwich with a schoolmate is charity, having your teacher take away your peanut butter sandwich, your cell phone, and your Legos, and give them out to your schoolmates and maybe, maybe, give you half of your peanut butter sandwich back, that’s socialism.  Liberty under attack — The Fourth Amendment right to be secure in your person, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures.
  4. Bankrupting the Coal Industry — The United States generates 49% of its electricity through coal.  With more and more focus on electric cars and other alternatives to using foreign oil.  Obama has said that “If someone wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can.  It’s just that it will bankrupt them.”  We are the “Saudi Arabia” of coal, with an estimated 200 year supply.  To take coal off the table, would be very dangerous and increase not decrease our dependence on foreign oil.  Liberty under attack — our economic freedom.
  5. Crisis — According to Joe Biden, we have about 6-8 months before we will have a crisis to test Obama.  Many liberals point to the budget surpluses of the Clinton Administration as proof of the prudent fiscal leadership of the Democrats.  However, they accomplished those surpluses mainly by gutting the military.  This led to some of the disasters of 9/11/2001 and what followed.  At a time like this and with Obama’s plans for massive increases in government spending, what will happen to our military and as a result what will happen to our ability to deal with a crisis.  Liberty under attack — providing for the national defense

This is an historic moment in American history with the election of the first African American as President of the United States.  As the loyal opposition, it is our duty to make clear whenever he and his followers stray from the principles on which this country was founded, those of Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. We must make sure we fight any challenges to the First Amendment and we must preserve our ability to raise our voices and speak our mind.

God Bless the United States of America

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Crushing the Fourth Estate

by Bill O'Connell on November 1, 2008

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It has been reported that Barack Obama has kicked three newspapers off his campaign plane for the remainder of the campaign.  The newspapers whose reporters have been kicked off are:

  • Dallas Morning News
  • Washington Times
  • New York Post

These are not small time newspapers.  It is also reported that these newspapers will possibly be replaced by Essence and Jet magazines.  What is the common thread among these three newspapers?  Their editorial boards have all recently endorsed John McCain.

This is the man of proclaimed even temperament, who wants to reach out, to heal the divisions in Washington.

Silence the Opposition

One of the first steps typically taken by a dictatorship is to silence the media.  One of the fundamental liberties embedded in our constitution is freedom of the press.  However this and other instances indicate that such freedom is under attack. There have been other accounts were Obama lawyers has threatened radio stations for playing certain ads or having guests with a viewpoint critical of Obama.  There are instances of videos being yanked from YouTube because they cast Obama in a bad light.  This is a very troubling side of Obama that many Americans do not see or realize.

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