Sarah Palin

Inexperience IV

by Bill O'Connell on July 29, 2009

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Just what is a czar anyway? And I am not talking about the Russian royal family. A czar is essentially a presidential advisor. Take a moment to think about that. Why does President Obama need to appoint 32, give or take, czars in his administration? Could it be that he really, really needs a lot of advising?

In the campaign, the main stream media, somehow diverted the attention away from Obama’s glaring lack of experience as the Presidential candidate and put all their focus on Sarah Palin’s “lack of experience.” Sarah Palin had more executive experience as a sitting governor and I emphasize executive experience, than Obama, Biden, and McCain combined.

But the media tut-tutted, and said “it’s only Alaska,” as for her mayoral experience, “it was a very small town.” When Obama slipped his teleprompter and tried to claim he was running a very large organization, his campaign, it was laughable. But don’t worry, he had Joe Biden to lean on. I feel better.

Presidents and The Experience They Brought With Them

Let’s take a look back at past elected presidents and the executive experience they brought to office:

George W. Bush — Governor of Texas
Bill Clinton — Governor of Arkansas
George H. W. Bush — Vice President of the United States, Head of the CIA
Ronald Reagan — Governor of California
Jimmy Carter — Governor of Georgia
Richard Nixon — Vice President of the United States
Lyndon Johnson — Vice President of the United States
John F. Kennedy — None. He was a legislator and his inexperience nearly got us annihilated with the Cuban Missile Crisis, following the Bay of Pigs, and an embarrassing showdown with Khrushchev
Dwight D. Eisenhower — Five star general in command of all Allied Forces in Europe in World War II
Harry Truman — Vice President of the United States
Franklin D. Roosevelt — Governor of New York , Secretary of the Navy
Herbert Hoover — Secretary of Commerce
Calvin Coolidge — Vice President of the United States, Governor of Massachusetts
Warren G. Harding — Lieutenant Governor of Ohio
Woodrow Wilson — Governor of New Jersey, President of Princeton University
William Howard Taft – Secretary of War
Theodore Roosevelt — Vice President of the United States, Governor of New York, Assistant Secretary of the Navy

Legislators Versus Executives

So, from the beginning of the 20th Century until the election of Barack Obama, only once has a president with only legislative experience been elected, John F. Kennedy. Nikita Khrushchev took advantage of Kennedy’s inexperience in their first summit in Vienna, and then there was the aborted Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba and the attempted overthrow of Castro. On top of those two building blocks we got the Cuban Missile Crisis, which brought us closer than we have ever been to thermonuclear obliteration.

The Eternal Campaign

President Obama is no different. He has the least experience of any president since 1900. He effectively was only a United States Senator for two years, as he was busy campaigning for the next two years and resigned his last two years after being elected president. So what does he do? He does what he is comfortable doing and what he is good at, campaigning. He has held more press conferences in six months than his predecessor did in eight years. Who is running the show while Obama is running around? Is it Nancy Pelosi? Rahm Emmanual? His programs are falling apart. The stimulus isn’t working and more Americans say that it has hurt the economy rather than helped it (31%-25%) and that the rest of it should be canceled. His cap and trade plan is opposed by most Americans (56%) who don’t want to pay more in taxes to fight global warming. His government takeover of our health care is opposed by most Americans (53%-44%) and yet he presses on, figuring that with enough campaigning the American people will be won over.

This may be a long slog, waiting for 2012 and hoping our country does not get destroyed by all the power grabbing characters in Congress, who don’t care a whit about us, only about increasing the powerful control they have over our lives. We have the fight of our lives on our hands preventing the taking of our liberties.

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Beware the Barracuda

by Bill O'Connell on July 4, 2009

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If anyone thinks that Sarah Palin is beaten and is about to become a footnote in history, I would say to them, “don’t bet the rent on it.” In her address where she announced she was stepping down, she used a basketball analogy. After all, it was on the basketball court where she got the name “Sarah Barracuda.” She said what a good point guard does when facing a full court press is protect the ball, keep her head up with her eyes on the basket and she passes off at the right opportunity. What she didn’t say was what happens next. If anyone who watched Michael Jordan play knows, after passing off they don’t go sit on the bench. They maneuver into position to make the big play and if you take your eye off of them, they’ll kill you every time.

The Full Court Press

In the last year Sarah Palin has been hit with eighteen ethics complaints. Her record so far in these complaints is 15-0, with three still pending. The results of these complaints have been a lot of needless time and money spent by state employees investigating these complaints and clearing her name every time. The concern she expressed yesterday is that these are a distraction, a waste of state time and money robbing the people of Alaska of the limited government they deserve and it is also costing her family a fortune to defend. As you can see below, one of the ethics complaints is that she is raising money to pay her legal fees. So the full court press is throw every frivolous ethics complaint you can at her, complain if she tries to raise money to defend herself, bankrupt her if you can, and later you can complain that she spent too much time on these issues rather than on state business. Here is a summary of the complaints:

Troopergate — this one is the well known case where a state employee was fired for not doing his job. It also involved her sister’s ex-husband. The firing was deemed lawful.
Palin was accused of helping someone get a job in state government. I’m shocked, shocked that someone in politics actually helped someone get a job. Complaint dismissed by state personnel board.
Palin was accused of taking a public position on a mining ballot initiative days before the vote. Wow, she actually took a position. How refreshing for a politician. Any issue about it taking place within days of a vote is our misguided “campaign finance reforms” that curtail our First Amendment rights in the name of better government. Complaint rejected by the Alaska Public Public Offices Commission.
Palin filed “self disclosure” to get the Troopergate issue resolved once and for all.
Complaint filed by employee union over the firing of Mike Wooton, the trooper in Troopergate. Complaint dismissed.
Monagan, the individual fired in the Troopergate ethics complaint against Palin asked for a hearing to clear his name. The panel said there was no legal basis or jurisdiction for such a hearing.
Complaint filed with the Federal Election Commission about the $150,000 the Republican Party spent for her wardrobe. FEC said the expenditure was not banned.
Palin charged with abuse of power for charging the state when her children traveled with her. The personnel board found no wrongdoing. Palin agreed to pay $10,000 to the state to cover the costs.
Palin was accused of conducting an interview in the Governor’s office about the Vice Presidential campaign. Complaint dismissed by the state personnel board. I guess she should have conducted the interview outside. Let’s see, November in Alaska outside, perfect!
Palin accused of violating ethics law for campaigning for Georgia Senator Saxby Chambliss. Dismissed by state personnel board.
Complaint that Palin misused funds of the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute to promote her political ambitions by using advertisements featuring her. Her crime was that she allowed the board to use her image and did so before she was picked by John McCain. Complaint dismissed after a personnel board investigation.
Complaint alleging interference in job hiring by an individual whose identity could never be verified. The name used was that of a character in a British soap opera. Palin’s attorney said that no one in the state of Alaska could be found with that name and the filer refused to use a real name so the case was dropped.
This and 14 allege that two employees on Palin’s staff worked on state time to help Palin before and after her Vice Presidential campaign. This complaint is still pending.
Same as 13 covering the other employee. Pending.
Complaint Palin improperly used state property, time and equipment for partisan political purposes, including posting on the Governor’s web site that she was running for Vice President. Dismissed as lacking merit by the state personnel board.
Palin accused of a conflict of interest because she wore clothing with an “Arctic Cat” logo on it because Arctic Cat sponsored her husband’s team. Dismissed.
Complaint alleged that Palin’s work with a PAC violated ethics laws by misusing her position and accepting outside employment. Dismissed as lacking merit by the state personnel board.
Complaint alleging Palin is misusing the governor’s office for personal gain by accepting money from the Alaska Fund Trust. The fund was established by supporters to help Palin defray her $500,000 in legal bills run up by fighting all these ethics claims she keeps winning. Brilliant strategy. Hit her with baseless ethics claims and then fight her ability to pay her bills. This is still pending.

Add to this the personal attacks by the likes of David Letterman, the recent Vanity Fair article and her enemies standing at the ready to file ethics complaints every time she tries to defend herself, let’s her opponents set the agenda. If allowed unchecked for the next three years, no one could recover from that. On top of that is her personal focus to do what is best for her state. She does not want to waste state money and time on dealing with ethics complaints rather than governing, but these complaints have to be dealt with and they seem to be coming at a rate of about one every three weeks. She defeats everyone of them but it is a drain.

An Unconventional Move

The pundits are saying this is the end of her career. But let’s look at this.

By stepping down, the ethics complaints will stop.
The people of Alaska can have a government that is not wasting time on these issues.
Her legal bills will stop climbing
She can probably make $50,000 to $100,000 per speech on the speaking circuit and quickly pay off her legal bills
She can hit the campaign trail for Congressional and Senate candidates in 2010. She is still very popular and a very successful fund raiser. This will pile up political IOUs for 2012
She can speak out forcefully against the reckless policies of the Obama administration, raising her profile without complaint (ethics and otherwise) that she is neglecting her state duties.
She can work on burnishing her foreign policy credentials. Remember she was only on the campaign trail for about 60+ days, trying to get in sync with John McCain’s positions while being mishandled by his staff. Now she can stake out her own positions, carefully and thoughtfully

Is this a risky move? Sure. But to continue the basketball analogy, how conventional was Michael Jordan’s style of play? He did things that no one ever saw coming.

The 2012 Campaign

Some pundits are saying that Mitt Romney probably can’t stop pinching himself with his new found good fortune. Is that premature? After all, he and Sarah Palin are basically in the same position. They are both former governors. Yes, it can be said that Romney finished his term in office while Palin is stepping down. However, Romney as governor of liberal Massachusetts has some things on his resume that he would probably like to live down. Palin accomplished a lot in a short time in office without the same albatrosses. She is doing what she thinks is right for herself and for Alaska, not following some tired political playbook. Her approval/disapproval rating among Republicans is 73/17 compared to Romney’s 57/18.

Brand New Ballgame

Not being in office allows her to set the agenda rather than having to react to other people’s agendas. She doesn’t have to hold back. Consider how Dick Cheney came out forcefully so speak against Obama’s policies when others in the Republican party were trying to find their voice. His poll numbers rose dramatically.

Sarah Palin can speak with conservative principles that win elections. When Republicans stick to their conservative roots they win. When they try to be moderate they lose. It will be interesting to see how this unfolds, but I can see Palin having just passed off the ball driving to the basket while her opponents watch the ball, and soar into the air for the ally oop and the score.

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The Innocent Bystander: Government

by Bill O'Connell on February 22, 2009

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Don't Anyone Dare Say Government Caused This Mess

You can never solve a problem if you do not face up to the full scope of the problem. In listening to President Obama, and reading liberal columnists like Maureen Dowd, in the description of what caused the current economic calamity, the government is always given a pass.

We are in an economic morass because of the eight years of failed Bush policies, greed on Wall Street, tax breaks for the rich, etc. Government’s culpability which, I believe, is really the gravamen of our economic problems is never mentioned at all. Democrats and Liberals don’t dare point to Democrats and liberal policies as having anything to do with the collapsing economy. That is why they always say that this is the worst economy since the Great Depression, as they also said when Clinton ran for President. They don’t dare say it is the worst economy since Jimmy Carter, since that would remind the American people that the Democrats screwed up that one as well.

Unmentionable Causes of the Current Economic Mess

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac out of control. Explosive increases in debt taken on under the leadership of Franklin Raines (Democrat), and Jaime Gorelick (Democrat), remember she also gave us the firewall between the CIA and FBI that hamstrung the investigation of al Qaeda. Raines made over $90 million while at Fannie Mae and at the same time was accused of overstating earnings by $10.6 billion. So, where’s the demand for a clawback of Raines’s salary?
Barney Frank (Democrat) and Chris Dodd (Democrat) — Frank blocked every attempt to put in place greater regulation over Fannie Mae. The Bush Administration tried to increase regulation over Fannie Mae, but Frank blocked it. What you hear today is that the reason for the economic problems are a lack of regulation. Chris Dodd got VIP mortgage treatment from Countrywide mortgage before they went belly-up. Asked to come clean on the mortgages, Dodd first said sure, we’ll get around to it. Then he made some papers available for viewing, but not copying, and has since clammed up.
Community Reinvestment Act — Carter (Democrat) administration program to push home ownership for low income people, by forcing banks to report how much they were offering loans in low income neighborhoods and face the consequences if it wasn’t enough.
Janet Reno (Democrat) — in the Clinton Administration Reno threatened action against financial institutions if they weren’t lending enough low income individuals. What bank doesn’t want to be publicly branded a racist institution?

So we have homeowners, who should have never qualified for a mortgage, about to receive bailouts from all the responsible people who took mortgages they could afford, when they could afford them. Do you ever hear about any of this cast of characters mentioned by President Obama or the main stream media? No. It wasn’t the government actively pushing social policy on those people least able to handle it. It was greedy banks and unscrupulous lenders, trying to avoid being branded racists, who took advantage of these poor ignorant people. Perhaps if the government hadn’t destroyed our education system, these people might have read what they were about to sign.

How Do you Solve Only Half a Problem?

As these characters are never mentioned as having a role in the problem, how can you ever hope to fix the problem if these bad actors are still going about their business doing what caused the crisis and blaming everyone else. President Obama demonstrates his inexperience more profoundly every day, seemingly making things up as he goes along. That is not leadership and what we need now in times of crisis is leadership. Obama has never shown the courage or willingness to take on his own party. Without rooting out these characters and really fixing the whole problem, it will only happen again down the road.

What we need now is a leader. Someone who actually has experience running the executive branch of a state. Someone who is not afraid to take on the entrenched power of their own party and has succeeded in doing so. Is there anyone out there who fits that bill? Gee, that sounds like Sarah Palin.

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Experience Matters

by Bill O'Connell on February 7, 2009

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The balloons and bunting have been picked up, the Washington Mall has been swept, the ball gowns put away. The campaign, the election, the historic celebration are now in the history books. It’s time to govern. Sadly, with only three weeks in office, President Obama’s lack of experience is on full display.

Due to the looming financial crisis, the transition in power was unprecedented in the level of cooperation between the departing Bush administration and the incoming Obama team. Obama said he needed the second half of the $700 billion, Bush put in the request. Everyone knew what problem number one was. The economy was in crisis.

When Dealing With a Crisis, You Lead, You Don’t Delegate

When United Airways Flight 1549, which would end up in the Hudson River, was climbing after takeoff, the co-pilot was at the controls. When the plane struck a flight of birds and lost power, Captain Sullenberger coolly said two words, “My aircraft.” The co-pilot responded, “Your aircraft,” the captain took the controls and the first officer then set about trying to re-start the engines.

In the midst of this economic crisis, that President Obama keeps saying we have to fix now, he let Nancy Pelosi run the show, while he took a victory lap, visiting the White House press pool, writing executive orders closing Guantanamo, and speaking to al Arabiya. Nancy Pelosi was furiously stuffing the stimulus turkey with pork, and President Obama was inviting Republicans in for tea, thinking that by doing so, a new era of bipartisanship would emerge.

In several corporate jobs that I have had there were times of crisis. If we had to drastically cut expenses to deal with the crisis, it was all hands on deck. It wasn’t see what you can do and get back to me. It was, “Be on the conference call at 3PM prepared to tell the Chief, how you are meeting your expense reduction targets.” All senior managers were on the call and all got a turn to tell the Chief what they were contributing or, gulp, where they were falling short. If you were falling short, make no mistake, you better have a damn good reason and whether or not you did, your future career was now under a microscope. The point is, like Captain Sullenberger, in times of crisis, the leader is unmistakably in charge.

President Obama let Nancy Pelosi craft this disaster, without strong guidelines of what he would or would not accept, and did not demand that Republicans be involved from the start. You reap what you sew. Now he is scrambling to drag this stinking corpse across the finish line and it’s not pretty.

Why did this happen? Because President Obama was a Community Organizer. He never ran a business. He never held an executive position in government. His gossamery resume was obvious, but ignored. Sarah Palin must be shaking her head in disbelief.

Running Back to Safety Zone of Campaigning

Barack Obama was a master on the campaign trail, first dispatching Hillary Clinton, and then deftly outmaneuvering John McCain. So what does the inexperienced man do when he’s under stress? Go back to what he’s good at. This week we saw President Obama back on the campaign trail, with the same rhetoric. The problem is, you can take a fair degree of license with what you say on the campaign trail. When you govern, you have to deal with reality. George Bush is gone. Bashing Bush may have gotten Obama elected, but he’s got to put that one out to pasture. His claim that tax cuts caused this financial problem, and that the past eight years have been an economic disaster, just don’t hold up. It makes him look clueless. Sure it fires up the base, but so what. We need solutions, not pep rallies. Tax cuts boosted the economy for Kennedy, for Reagan, for Bush. In short, they work. Obama may not like them, but they work. To say otherwise is like hanging a sign over his head, saying Under Construction.

Cabinet Picks

And the late night talk show hosts were wondering what they were going to do without Bush in office. The hits just keep coming. Once again, you have to ask, who’s in charge? How did all of these slip through the cracks? Richardson, Geithner, Daschle, Soldis, Nancy Killefer, Eric Holder. Sure it’s noble that Obama took responsibility for Daschle. But if you stay with him too long you look, uh, inexperienced? With all of these problems, someone’s head should roll. The President is delegating what he shouldn’t and what he should delegate is a mess.

International

President Obama was supposed to usher in a new era of harmony in our relations with other countries. But what has happened?

Ahmadinejad– Candidate Obama said he would talk with Iran without preconditions. Ahmadinejad said he wanted an apology before he would meet with Obama
Several countries harshly criticize the stimulus package and its “Buy American” provision, raising the specter of the Smoot-Hawley tariffs that deepened the Great Depression
Iran shoots a missile into space to celebrate the Iranian revolution, with the subtext, “That was when we boldly took over your Embassy and held it for 444 days during the weak presidency of Jimmy Carter.”
Pakistan releases A.Q. Khan the nuclear proliferator in a snub to the U.S.
Kyrgyzstan tells U.S. to close military base that is key supply route to Afghanistan

I hope President Obama is a quick study, or we’re in for a long grim four years.

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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:

In vetting Sarah Palin, no matter how quickly or superficially it was done, how could they possibly miss issues so allegedly glaring?
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.
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:

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.”
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.
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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Comment on Adelman Article — Why a Staunch Conservative Like Me Endorsed Obama

by Bill O'Connell on October 26, 2008

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I watched every debate and I have been following this campaign closely still no one can point to his accomplishments. When interviewing a job candidate, you look at their resume, to see if what they have accomplished in the past would give an indication of what they will do in the future. Any job candidate can talk a good game about what they are going to do, but what experience of accomplishments can you draw on to validate their claims. But you can’t give me one accomplishment, other than to shoo me away to go read his website. Why does it take $600 million to make the case for Obama if it is such a slam dunk?
More on Sarah Palin
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

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How Could He Pick Such a VP Candidate?

by Bill O'Connell on October 21, 2008

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One of the first tests of a presidential candidate’s judgement concerns who he or she picks for their running mate. It’s hard to imagine how this presidential candidate could have possibly made a bigger mistake, and I am not talking about John McCain.

Much has been made about Sarah Palin’s qualifications, with Colin Powell being the latest to weigh in saying, “I don’t believe she’s ready to be President of the United States.” But what about Joe Biden? I am guessing that by now the Obama campaign has scheduled Joe Biden’s appearances over the next two weeks in Outer Mongolia. For the Republicans, he’s the gift that keeps on giving. His latest prognostication gave us the following:

“Mark my words. It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy. The world is looking. We’re about to elect a brilliant 47-year-old senator president of the United States of America. Remember I said it standing here if you don’t remember anything else I said. Watch, we’re gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy.

“I can give you at least four or five scenarios from where it might originate. And he’s gonna need help. And the kind of help he’s gonna need is, he’s gonna need you – not financially to help him – we’re gonna need you to use your influence, your influence within the community, to stand with him. Because it’s not gonna be apparent initially, it’s not gonna be apparent that we’re right.”

So let me get this straight, if we elect Obama, his Vice President guarantees we will have an international crisis on our hands and it won’t be apparent that they will do the right thing. Would that be like when Russia invaded Georgia and Barack Obama’s first comment was for both sides to exercise restraint. When he came to the realization that one country invaded the other, he offered up that the U.N. Security Council should debate this issue and offer a resolution. When he came to the realization that Russia has a veto over any U.N. Security Council resolution, he then lined up with John McCain’s position, that Russia should get out.

To summarize what Joe Biden said:

Obama is inexperienced
Our adversaries will see this inexperience as an opportunity for advantage and will purposely test the United States under a President Obama
It will be like when John Kennedy was President (where we came the closest in our history to nuclear war)
Whatever Obama does will probably be wrong
We need to stand behind Barack Obama until he finally figures it out and gets it right

This is the experienced half of the Obama-Biden ticket, telling us about an impending crisis and we’re supposed to pull the lever for Obama and what? duck for cover?

I don’t want leave you on such a depressing note so let me share some of the lighter Biden gaffes:

“Stand up, Chuck, let ‘em see ya” to wheelchair bound Missouri State Senator Chuck Graham.
“Hillary is as qualified or more qualified than I am to be Vice President of the United States of America. Quite frankly, it might have been a better pick than me”
“When the stock market crashed, Franklin D. Roosevelt got on the television and didn’t talk about the, you know, the princes of greed. He said, “Look, here’s what happened.” When the stock market crashed, Herbert Hoover was president, not FDR, and television had not yet been invented.
“Look, John’s last-minute economic plan does nothing to tackle the number one job facing the middle class, and it happens to be, as Barack says, a three-letter word: jobs. J-O-B-S.” Uh, that’s four letters, Joe.

If Barack Obama wins, I can only quote Bette Davis, “Fasten your seatbelts. It’s going to be a bumpy ride.”

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When is a Death Threat Not a Death Threat?

by Bill O'Connell on October 19, 2008

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The old adage goes, if a tree falls in the forest and there is no one there to hear it, does it make any noise? I guess today you could say, if a death threat is made toward Barack Obama at a McCain rally and the Secret Service agents who were present neither heard it nor can find anyone who did, did the threat really happen? If you are holding a deck full of race cards, apparently so.

Race has overshadowed this campaign from the moment Barack Obama won his first caucuses. The interesting twist is that those assumed to be the real racists in America, conservatives and by extension all Republicans, have scrupulously avoided any discussion of race whatsoever. The ones who can’t stop talking about race are those on the left.

By continually bringing the subject up and the keeping the whiff of racism in the air, they hope to force those who fear being called racist to vote for Obama just to prove they are not racists! Has John McCain given any speeches that brought up Obama’s race? However, after the Reverend Jeremiah Wright blew up in his face, Barack Obama went on to give a major speech in Philadelphia on race in America (A More Perfect Union).

What prompted the speech was the anti-white, anti-American sentiment expressed by Obama’s minister. In that speech Obama said that despite the positive and historic start to his campaign, race crept in. “We saw racial tensions bubble to the surface during the week before the South Carolina primary.” Wasn’t that Bill Clinton, a liberal Democrat, who was accused of that? He went on to describe his candidacy as seen by some as, “the desire of wide-eyed liberals to purchase racial reconciliation on the cheap.” it’s pretty self-explanatary who’s talking about race here. In another speech Obama talked about how he looked different than the Presidents whose faces were on our currency.

Congressman John Lewis, a hero of the Civil Rights movement, compared McCain and Palin to George Wallace. Based on what? Personal attacks, of course. What were the nature of these personal attacks? Well the Republicans said that Barack Obama was lying about his relationship with Wiliam Ayers. I fail to see that as a personal attack. Obama has hardly been forthcoming about his relationship with Ayers and only reveals another piece of the puzzle when he is forced to do so. At first Ayers was just a guy in the neighborhod, but as more and more facts were revealed about the extent of their relationship, Obama would release another “clarification” such as, yes they served on the same board, but seldom met. How is calling Obama on this considered a personal attack and where is the racism? If you want to know what a personal attack feels like, ask Sarah Palin.

Now Sarah Palin is being attacked as a racist because she uses the terms “Joe six-pack” and “Hockey Mom.” Apparently because blacks don’t play much hockey or drink six packs of beer, it is really a code word for “whites only” rather than meaning average Americans. I guess to be politically correct she should should say, “Hockey Moms, Basketball Moms, Football Moms, Cricket Moms, Soccer Moms, Badminton Moms…” and I don’t even want to get into the favored adult beverage of minorities for fear of that being a racist stereotype in and of itself. I’d rather listen to a speech that has a good cadence and is well written and delivered than something leaden that touches all the politically correct bases.

The latest race card drawn from the bottom of the deck is the death threats at McCain and Palin rallies. The U.S. Secret Service was unable to corroborate anyone shouting out “kill him”. But that hasn’t stopped the Obama camp from playing it for all it is worth. Why would they do that? One reason would be to get some independents to move his way out of sympathy and guilt. Another would be to keep those who are in his camp who are getting cold feet to stay in his camp rather than going over to the racists. I thought the term was Commander in Chief, not Manipulator in Chief. How do you feel?

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The Palin Puzzle

by Bill O'Connell on October 14, 2008

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After reading Christopher Buckley’s piece on why he is now an Obama man, I had to read Kathleen Parker’s piece on Sarah Palin, which he referred to. It has been a whirlwind the past five or six weeks since Sarah Palin was named to the ticket and from that first moment the fusillade from the mainstream media began.

It’s hard to tell where lies the true Sarah Palin. Throw in Tina Fey’s extraordinarily dead on caricature (Palin Watches Tina Fey) and you have to work double time to see if you are watching a comedy sketch or an interview. The interviews were clearly not her best moment, and I can’t say if the McCain camp, by sequestering her and force feeding her briefing material about McCain’s positions turned Palin into pâté.

However, I can’t get past the fact that as Alaskan governor she has a stratospheric approval rating of 60+% and in 2007 it was in the 90s. Compare this to the current Democratic Congress whose approval rating has been in the teens to low 20s, during the same time frame. Are the people of Alaska uniformly obtuse?

She also took on corruption in her own party and won. For a relatively new politician that is courageous to say the least, even if she wasn’t successful, but she was. What tough stands has Obama taken against his party? Heard any criticisms of Barney Frank or Christopher Dodd from Senator Obama lately?

So Sarah Palin may not be able to dodge a question as smoothly as Barack Obama, or maybe she was just trying to square her personal opinion with what was most in tune with the McCain campaign, and was playing defense rather than offense, while the cameras rolled.

Just before the Vice Presidential debate, McCain’s two top aides took over prepping Palin and the cry from the conservative base was to just let Sarah be Sarah, and when they did she seemed to do extraordinarily well in the debate.

Did the interviews go badly? Yes. Now was that because she was out of her league, or because she was trying to serve too many masters and not just be herself? In this campaign McCain seems to be overly cautious while Palin seems eager to bring it on. Let her.

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You’re gonna do WHAT?

by Bill O'Connell on October 14, 2008

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I read the article with great concern and disbelief, that yes, Christopher Buckley, son of William F. Buckley, Jr., was going over to the Obama camp. His father was the man who founded National Review at a time when socialism was advancing unchecked. In the mission statement for the new magazine he wrote, “It stands athwart history, yelling STOP, at a time no one is inclined to do so, or to have much patience with those who so urge it.”

The younger Mr. Buckley reiterated that he remains a conservative, so there must be a strongly compelling argument for his decision. I braced myself to be knocked down by a wave of reason and swept out to sea, only to be fished out of the water by a passing Obama skiff, and hustled off to the voting booth where, I too, would vote for change I could believe in. What happened next was anticlimactic.

Mr. Buckley begins by throwing Sarah Palin over the side, dismissing her as an error in judgment by McCain. He’s entitled to that opinion, but this election has been chock full of misjudgments by all parties. What about the top of the ticket? Buckley goes on to extol the virtues of Senator McCain, and he speaks as someone with first hand knowledge. However, all of his praises are in the past tense. He says the campaign has made John McCain “snarly.” As the final thrust of the argument he quotes McCain as saying, “We came to Washington to change it, and it changed us.” Et tu, Christo?

Buckley thus made a plausible argument to stay home on Election Day, but I was waiting to learn what pushed the needle all the way to the other side. The main points of the pro-Obama case were that Obama has a “first class temperament,” that he is intelligent and he writes his own books. With these attributes, Buckley reasons, he will soon discover that liberalism won’t work; he’ll change his ideas and we will once again live in Camelot, saying that if he doesn’t, “he will almost certainly reap a whirlwind that will make Katrina look like a balmy summer zephyr.”

It seems that Mr. Buckley is willing to go “all in” on that bet. I’m not. In the 20^th century only one President came right out of the Senate, with no executive experience. That was John F. Kennedy, to whom Barack Obama is often compared. Shortly after Kennedy took office we had the Bay of Pigs fiasco, a major embarrassment to the Kennedy administration. Later that year, Kennedy met with Khruschev, without preconditions, by the way. Does that sound familiar? Kruschev mopped up the floor with him for two days, prompting Kennedy to say, “He just beat the hell out of me. I’ve got a terrible problem if he thinks I’m inexperienced and have no guts. Until we remove those ideas we won’t get anywhere with him.” Two months later the construction of the Berlin Wall began, and the following year brought the Cuban Missile Crisis, where we came closer to nuclear annihilation than ever; after that began our greater involvement in Viet Nam. Hope, Change, Charm, Temperament, Intellect, Harvard. I’ll pass. If for the first time in nearly fifty years we have no choice but to elect someone from the Senate with no executive experience, I’d rather have someone whose been around the block a couple of times, no matter how surly the old salt is.

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You’re gonna do WHAT?

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