Six Days to Go….
Six days to the election. By this time next week we should know who the next president will be, at least I hope we will, and will not be facing another election like 2000. Note that I did not say we will know who won the election. Given the widespread voter fraud that has already been going on, if it is close, we may never really know who actually won.
The stakes are high. Our country is at war against radical Islam that threaten civilization itself, and if victorious would throw the world back into the middle ages. Russia is reemerging not only as a global power but as a very dangerous one that is more than willing to invade its neighbors and kill those who get in its way, even when they live in other countries. Iran is ruled by religious fanatics that believe it is their mission to bring about the return of the 12 Imam by means of an Armageddon like conflict. That would be bad enough but they are also getting closer to having nuclear weapons, and if the statement of its president are to be believed, will use them as soon as they get them.
Then there are what in more normal times would be considered very serious problem, but in the current international climate are relegated to the second tier status. North Korea remain dangerous and unstable, China continues a rise to dominance, while not as dangerous as Russia at the moment, it is still a major concern. Hugo Chavez in Venezuela is threatening to extend it despotic rule through the region. We live in very dangerous times.
On the home front, we likewise face serious threats. The obvious one at the moment is the current financial crisis. But there are the more lingering problems. While gas prices are down, unless the economy tanks, that is only temporary and our dependence on foreign old remains a problem. Rising health care cost remain a huge problem. But even more important than the problems is how we will address them. Republican and Democrats have vastly different visions of what our country should be that go to the very core of what it means to be American. Will our country continue to be focused around the individual and liberty as it has historically been and as Republicans want, or will we change to be more like Europe centered around the government and equality as the democrats seek?
In these momentous times, one would expect that momentous candidates would emerge. Having watched the two candidates since the early days of the primaries, I find my initial view has only been confirmed as we come into the closing days. In any normal year, both of these candidates would be fundamentally unelectable. Their only hope at the moment is that their opponent is likewise unelectable.
McCain, is a candidate at war with his own base. He won the primary, because nobody really excited the base and McCain attracted independents and moderates and with the help of a willing press, was able to exploit a base divided among other candidates until it was too late. As a general rule, a candidate who does not have his base going into an election loses. Now McCain has been able to counter this in three ways. First he down played all the issues that anger the base. That helped but it only gave him lukewarm support. More important has been the selection of Palin as VP a pick that fired up the base in ways that even those like me who hoped for her selection could not have imagined. Finally there is the outright fear among the conservative base of what would happen in a Obama presidency, which brings me to Obama.
Obama is rookie with little executive experience. His great speaking skills, at least when reading a teleprompter, would earn him some future consideration, after a few terms in the senate, or even better after serving as Governor. So in a normal year an Obama presidency would not be given serious consideration. Obama was able to win the primary because of this speaking skills. He is one of those rare gifted speakers who allows people to think he is supporting their hopes and dreams, when he is actually saying nothing at all. This got him to the point of a two person contest with Clinton, where because of the strange delegate rules the democrats have, she was never able to overcome his lead, despite winning most of the remaining primaries.
Such a weak primary finish would normally have spelled doom in the fall election, especially since while you can get by on hope and change in a primary, in the fall voters generally want more specifics. And here was Obama second major weakness. He relies on flowery rhetoric because he is far to the left of even many democrats. If he is elected I think people looking back will see a couple of passages from his book to have been very revealing, but largely overlooked. He wrote that when he went to work for an Investment banking firm he felt “Like a spy behind enemy lines” and that he learn the trick of getting what he wanted if he was “courteous and smiled and made no sudden moves.” True to form Obama will not make his sudden moves until after the election.
In fact the more you examine Obama the less electable he seems. Obama is basically an inexperienced rookie who is at the far left of even the democratic party. He matured politically in the Chicago machine, long noted for its thug tactics and in fact won his initial elections by getting his opponents off the ballot. He has allied himself with some of the most extreme elements unacceptable even to most democrats.
It is inconceivable that a republican candidate who either attend a white supremacist church or who allied himself with an abortion clinic bomber would even get serious consideration for dog catcher. But Obama sat for twenty year in a black nationalist church and was allied with a terrorist who bombed the Pentagon, and that is just the beginning. One of his early financers, one who was part of a questionable deal that allowed Obama to purchase his current home, was just convicted and is apparently talking to prosecutors. This raises at least the possibility that if elected Obama could need a special prosecutor before he is even sworn in.
Enough questionable associations have come to light to reveal a pattern. Obama’s first reaction is to lie and deny. Thus clips of Pastor Wright were out of context and not representative of his pastors views. If and when the first lie no longer works, Obama moves to a new lie. Thus now we are expected to believe that he sat for twenty years in his church and even quoted passages from sermons about “white greed” and yet did not realize what he was actually hearing.
With Bill Ayers, Obama first lie was to claim he was just some guy in his neighborhood. When this turned out be false, then Obama claimed he did know who Ayes was and that he thought he had been rehabilitated, without the conflict in these statements really being challenged. Similar patterns of lies and denials occur with ACORN and other questionable figures surrounding Obama.
All this should doom Obama chances, but whereas McCain was able to counter act some of his weaknesses, Obama likewise has been able to counter act his. It is simply a fact that negative information has no effect if it is not know, and the major media has been doing all it can to shield the public from this information.
But even here thing have changed. For many decades the press has tilted to the left. But with Obama, the press as for the most part drop any pretense to objectivity and are little more than an arm of the Obama campaign. Thus Sarah Palin has had more critical scrutiny by the major media in the short time since she was nominated than Obama has had in the entire campaign. Oh sure, a few things have slip out. Problems surrounding Obama’s connection with Rev Wright and Bill Ayers were known about for months before they finally got some coverage in the major media. When they did slip out, Obama make one of his denials, and the major media would quickly shift the focus of coverage to how nasty the campaign had been. In fact it is quite possible that Joe the plumber has received more critical investigated from the major media for asking a inconvenient question than Obama in running for President.
But the press coverage has gotten even worse than that. We are current in the worst financial crisis since the depression. And yet the major media seems singularly uninterested in finding out what actually happened. Just think back to the coverage following the Dot-com bubble, and the daily reports on Enron and CEOs such as Ken Lay. This is certainly far worst, so why no coverage?
While the details are extremely complex, the root of the problem is actually very simple. In a program started by Carter, and expanded under Clinton, government pushed banks to make risky loans. This was done through semi government corporations Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, on the one side and democratic groups such as ACORN threats to protest banks as racist on the other. Since the normal financial and oversight rules do not apply to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac these loans and there result financial instruments that came from them went largely unregulated until they spiraled out of control resulting in the huge financial crisis. Republicans saw the growing problem and tried many times to enact legislation that would prevent it over the last 8 years, but were blocked each time by Democrats, who because of Senate rules could kill any bill if they remained united which they did. Thus the current financial crisis.
While the root of the problem is simple, if reported it would doom Obama as some of his Financial advisors were executives earning tens of millions of dollars at the institutions at the root of the problem. So there is no serious reporting on the causes other than the vague reference to “corporate greed” which because of bias coverage lead many to falsely conclude republicans are responsible. Thus very democrats that caused the mess are allow to run around claiming this is the result of the Bush’s economic policies despite the fact that they block every attempt to avoid it.
One other example. The major media recently went into a frenzy on how angry and mean McCain supporters were, all based on a questionable report of one reporter, a report that Secret Service agents investigated and could find no one at the rally that hear the shout of “kill him.” Yet this was quickly portrayed in the major media as a common and systematic problem at republican rallies. Meanwhile, and unreported by the major media, is the growing problem of actual threats and violence by the left, cars being keyed because they have McCain bumper stickers, attacks on McCain campaign head quarters, death threats spray painted on Senator Coleman garage. But rather report what is actually happening on the left, the media prefers to report on made up stories about the right.
So who is going to win? Unknown. Some polls show the race tied, some show a wide victory for Obama. But one thing we have learned this year is that the polls can’t be trusted even when they agree. Obama had a big lead over Clinton in New Hampshire but lost. The simple fact is that the polls don’t even agree and Obama has consistently shows better in the polls than the election.
Then there is the issue of voter fraud. Some Democratic seemed to have convinced themselves, despite the facts, that Bush stole the election in 2000, and that this gives them the right to cheat this year. Problem with registrations are already showing up across the country in key states often tied to ACORN which receive $800,000 from Obama for their efforts. In Ohio, which was key last time, the Democratic Secretary of State seems to be going out of her way to make it difficult to catch any fraud. But then considering that Obama comes from the Chicago machine, this is to be expected.
On the other hand, given the internet and talk radio, some things are slipping out about Obama, despite all the attempt to hide them. The more recent examples would be his views on income redistribution, which slipped out with Joe the Plumber and then were confirmed from tapes of a interview before he ran for President, and his ties to a former PLO spokesman. But then the undecided middle is for the most part the least interested and least informed and thus the least likely to care.
Ultimately it comes down to this, the more people learn about Obama, the less likely they are to vote for him. If the major media can keep people focused on hope and change and not on who Obama actually is, and what he will actually do, then he will win. If McCain can break through the press barrier and can get people to focus either on who Obama is, what he will do, or on Obama and other democrats role in the current financial crisis, then McCain will win.
Hopefully, we will know next week at this time.
