Ace:

Bear in mind, of course, Sarah Palin was a moron for taking on the less-spectacularly corrupt Alaskan political machine. See, if she had been as brilliant as Obama, she wouldn't have needed to respond with crude measures like fighting corruption and defeating corrupt politicians; she could have employed nuance and smarts to finesse around it, and even profit from it.

[sigh]

probably not going to be blogging much for a while.

What kind of country are my kids going to grow up in?

man...

The following is a continuation of a debate from elsewhere. Sorry if you're not in the loop.

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Put yourself in my shoes for a moment: I believe that human life is sacred, that life begins at conception, and that the chief responsibility of government is to protect innocent human life.

Now, if you believed what I just laid out, could you be “pro-choice but anti-abortion”?

Believe me, I do understand your viewpoint. I’d love it if I could just take the easy way out and say that I was personally opposed to abortion but “didn’t want to impose my values on anyone.” That would be so easy. But I’d have to ignore my deeply held principles about the dignity of the human person. I can’t do that, and you should understand that asking me to do so is like telling an abolitionist that if they don’t like slavery, they shouldn’t buy a slave.

As for whether or not using the term “infanticide” is “inflammatory”: if a child is born alive, is breathing, is moving, is fighting for survival, and it is simply left to die because it is unwanted… What would you call it?

I was going to write a big post detailing why I support John McCain and Sarah Palin, but to be honest I've grown so weary of this election that I just don't have it in me. So instead, I'll just rattle off some bullet points.

• In all honesty, I'm not a big fan of McCain. One can't help but respect him for his service to our country - I mean, come on, the man spent 5 years in a Vietnamese prison camp - but his political career has been a decidedly mixed bag; his desire for "reform" and constant need to be seen as the bipartisan maverick (see the gang of 10 judges compromise) has been a constant irritation.


• That being said, we have to look at the other viable option for president: Barack Obama. Obama makes McCain look like a staunch conservative by comparison.


• Foreign Policy: The dominant issue in this year's foreign policy debate has been Iraq. Obama has been consistently wrong on the issue, in my opinion. It's perfectly legitimate for him to have opposed the war in the beginning; that's fine. I disagreed with him then, and I would still do so today. But since his election to the Senate, he has consistently called for the withdrawal of troops from Iraq before the US had achieved victory. The fact of the matter is that once our troops had been committed to the theater of battle (which they had been in an overwhelmingly bipartisan fashion), I believe it is incumbent upon our political leaders to commit to nothing less than victory. Obama would have settled for far less.


• One of George Bush's weaknesses (and also one of his strengths) is his loyalty and stubbornness. This double-edged sword was never more in evidence than in 2006-2007, when he remained committed to the strategy being pursued by his generals in Iraq well past the point where it seemed necessary to make a change. John McCain, to his credit, very early on began to insist that we needed to commit more troops to Iraq in order to stabilize the situation and restore order. Barack Obama strongly opposed this troop surge strategy. Eventually, Bush came around to McCain's position, put General Petraeus in charge, and since the beginning of the surge violence in Iraq (as well as American casualties) have plummeted. I believe that the surge was the major test of foreign policy acumen for the two major presidential candidates. John McCain passed with flying colors. Barack Obama failed miserably.


• Beyond the war, Obama's shifting positions on whether he would or would not meet with our enemies (including Iran) for talks without precondition have done nothing to convince me that this man has any core principles upon which he would base his decisions. McCain has no such problems. And frankly, Joe Biden was right when he guaranteed that the world would severely test the young senator from Illinois within 6 months of his election. I simply have no confidence in Obama's ability to respond effectively to such a test, be it from Iran, North Korea, or Al Qaeda. I have no such doubts with McCain.


• Domestic Policy: Again, McCain isn't exactly a shining star of conservative thought, but he's practically Hayek compared with the alternative.


• Democrats don't understand the free market. Obama is a hard-left Democrat. Obama worked with ACORN. Obama and his ilk were instrumental in causing the financial meltdown. Is it wise to put the people who built the bomb that destroyed the market in charge of fixing the market? No.


• Barack Obama hung around with Bill Ayers, an unrepentant terrorist and real-life actual hardcore marxist. That's reprehensible to begin with, but the real problem isn't just hanging around with Ayers. It's that he worked for a decade with Bill Ayers on "education reform." Stanley Kurtz at NRO has done a fine job of detailing the type of "reforms" that Ayers and Obama were pushing. Browse his archives for the scoop. Or just consider this: in November of 2006, Bill Ayers was in Hugo Chavez's Venezuela where he said that he and Chavez "...share the belief that education is the motor-force of revolution." I can assure you that he wasn't talking about the Reagan Revolution. Is that the kind of reform that you want to see in your kid's school? How much of Ayers' belief and value system does Obama share? We don't know, and our incurious media has made no effort to inform us.


• Let's talk Jeremiah Wright: Wright subscribes to a system of belief known as Black Liberation Theology, which was developed by "theologians" like James Cone. The fact of the matter is that Black Liberation Theology, while it uses Christian terms and plays at being a Christian religion, is in fact not Christianity at all but is instead little more than a racist doctrine intent upon achieving black political power. Obama attended Wright's church for 20 years. He chose Wrights church. According to his own books, he did so at least in part because he identified with the messages that Wright delivered from the pulpit. Knowing what we know about Wright and his theology, this leaves us with 2 options for Obama, neither of which reflects well on him: 1) he really never did agree with Wright's theology, and attended Trinity simply to advance his community organizing activities and political career; or 2) he agrees with the racist theology espoused by Wright. It's odd to hope that someone was an insincere believer, but in this case, I do.


• The Moral Case against Barack Obama: Many of the issues that I feel strongly about in this election are, for Christians, prudential issues. Christians can disagree about issues of war and peace, of how to help the poor, of how to best approach economic issues. But Christians are not allowed to disagree on the fundamental issue of the sanctity of human life. On the issue of abortion in particular, Barack Obama has a record that should shock the conscience of, well, anyone, but at the very least should horrify those who believe that human life is created in the image of God and is therefore sacred.


• The most egregious offense of Obama against the sanctity of human life came in the Illinois senate, when he repeatedly voted against legislation intended to require that infants who survived abortion attempts be given adequate medical care. His reasoning for opposing the legislation was that if we acknowledged that these children who were born alive after a failed abortion were actually human, we would have to grant them human rights, and such an action might have a negative impact on abortion rights in the future. Keep in mind that we have the testimony of a nurse who had cradled one of these babies who had been left to die in a closet rather than be given any medical treatment.


• In other words - and I'll put this in a way that reflects best on Obama's position - he was unwilling to curtail a practice that could arguably be called infanticide because to do so would acknowledge that a fetus is actually human, which might have a negative effect on the "right to abortion" somewhere down the road. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: based on this reasoning, I have no problem calling Obama a moral monster.

In the end, I think it's clear that this election is a referendum on Barack Obama's fitness for office. It has been since the primaries ended. John McCain represents a safer choice for those who can't convince themselves that Obama isn't just far too risky to put in power. While I've never been terribly enthused about his candidacy, I can say for certain that John McCain is an honorable man, and I believe he will serve honorably in the office of the Presidency. I believe that Obama is something like Carter without the morals - he will be disastrous for our economy, and will signal weakness to our enemies, thus inviting attack.

McCain/Palin '08 is the clear choice this year. Here's hoping enough people see Obama for what he really is.

Remember, if you ask a question of The One, you implicitly agree that your entire personal and financial history is open to public and government scrutiny.

And the left has the balls to call us fascists.

Via NRO:

There’s just no comparison. Obama’s own running mate warned this week that Obama’s youth and inexperience will invite a crisis — indeed a crisis “generated” precisely to test him. Can you be serious about national security and vote on November 4 to invite that test?

And how will he pass it? Well, how has he fared on the only two significant foreign policy tests he has faced since he’s been in the Senate? The first was the surge. Obama failed spectacularly. He not only opposed it. He tried to denigrate it, stop it, and — finally — deny its success.

The second test was Georgia, to which Obama responded instinctively with evenhanded moral equivalence, urging restraint on both sides. McCain did not have to consult his advisers to instantly identify the aggressor.

Today’s economic crisis, like every other in our history, will in time pass. But the barbarians will still be at the gates. Whom do you want on the parapet? I’m for the guy who can tell the lion from the lamb.

The likelihood is that people won't listen, but I can hope.

Putting politics aside for a moment, I'd like to express my best wishes to Madelyn Dunham, Barack Obama's grandmother, who appears to be gravely ill. It's a rough thing to go through with any grandparent, and I'd imagine that this situation would be especially tough for Sen. Obama, considering that his grandmother played a major role in raising him when he was young. My thoughts are with Mrs. Dunham and the Obama family in this trying time.

If this isn't an implicit endorsement of McCain, I don't know what is:

“Mark my words,” the Democratic vice presidential nominee warned at the second of his two Seattle fundraisers Sunday. “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.”

Ed Morrisey notes that on foreign policy, Obama is much like Kennedy, who got his ass handed to him by Khruschev at their first summit meeting:

Kennedy wound up trading strategic intel and missile installations in western Asia in exchange for Soviet withdrawal of the nuclear missiles from Cuba. The entire Kennedy administration turned out to be a foreign-policy disaster that was only overlooked because of the tragic assassination of Kennedy in Dallas in 1963.

I agree with Biden. Obama is exactly like Kennedy in this regard, and our enemies will test us by threatening our interests around the globe if we elect Obama. I’d rather avoid the problem altogether and elect a man who puts enough fear into the minds of our enemies to keep them from testing us at all.

And we're probably going to elect this guy. God help us.

Treacher:

As if it's somehow relevant that Obama revealed to the whole world that he's a socialist. Who cares that he looked one of his inferiors in the eye and told the peasant he doesn't deserve the money he earns?

How is it that Bill Ayers can be considered "mainstream"? Only in Chicago:

Turn on the TV news when John McCain is picking up undecided voters by invoking Barack Obama's relationship with unrepentant American terrorist William Ayers and, invariably, some liberal talking head will sniff in disgust and say Ayers is no big deal where Obama comes from.

Unfortunately, that's true. Ayers is a terrorist. But this is Chicago.

Obama and Ayers are neighbors and they worked together on school issues with the same foundation. Obama's political coming-out party was held in Ayers' living room when Obama was running for his first political office.

And the boss of Chicago is Mayor Richard Daley. Mayor Shortshanks has thrown his protective embrace around both men. These are facts.

But the reason Ayers is not a big deal in Chicago has to do with the Chicago Way, and the left fork of that road that has been bought and paid for by the Daley machine, subsidized by taxpayers who foot the bill for public relations contracts from City Hall.

I suppose the body count is the main difference. And obviously there were ideological differences; McVeigh was interesting in revenge on a government that he felt had abandoned its original purpose and ideals; Ayers wanted to simply overthrow that same government and replace it with a completely different system. But both had ideologies that led them into violence, both committed acts of terror in service of their ideologies, and both are responsible for the deaths of innocents.

Only one of them got what he deserved after his crimes; McVeigh was, of course, executed. Ayers is a free man due to a mistake by law enforcement in the investigation of his case. And of course, because Ayers' crimes were conducted in the service of a leftist worldview, he is not only not ostracized, but rather welcomed into the polite intellectual circles of the left as something of a folk hero. He now spreads his vicious ideology as a Professor at the University of Illinois - Chicago.

And, apparently, mentors Democrat presidential candidates. What has happened to our society?

Charles Krauthammer absolutely nails it:

Today, on the threshold of the presidency, Obama concedes the odiousness of these associations, which is why he has severed them. But for the years in which he sat in Wright's pews and shared common purpose on boards with Ayers, Obama considered them a legitimate, indeed unremarkable, part of social discourse.

Do you? Obama is a man of first-class intellect and first-class temperament. But his character remains highly suspect. There is a difference between temperament and character. Equanimity is a virtue. Tolerance of the obscene is not.

The man has lousy judgement. No question about it:

BarackObama.com, the campaign’s official website, offers up a “fact check” that Obama was just eight years old when the Weathermen were active in 1969. The Obama campaign has tried to use the founding date of the Weathermen as a touchstone, claiming that the acts of the group were something that happened “40 years ago” when Obama was a child. Far closer to the truth is the December 6, 1990, sentencing date of Weathermen Susan Rosenberg and Linda Sue Evans, when the last of the Weathermen were sentenced for their role in a string of bombings in the mid-1980s, including bombs that detonated at the National War College, the Washington Navy Yard Computing Center, the Washington Navy Yard Officers’ Club, New York City’s Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, the Israeli Aircraft Industries Building, New York City’s South African Consulate, and the United States Capitol Building.

about damn time. Obama's biggest problem is his ideology. Time to start pointing out where it comes from:

The Republican campaign, falling behind Obama in polls, plans to make attacks on Obama's character a centerpiece of presidential candidate John McCain's message with a month remaining before Election Day.

Palin told a group of donors at a private airport, "Our opponent ... is someone who sees America, it seems, as being so imperfect, imperfect enough, that he's palling around with terrorists who would target their own country." She also said, "This is not a man who sees America as you see America and as I see America."

Who gives a crap what the media says about this line of attack. It's the truth. Hit Obama hard; he deserves it.

Via Ace. Silence, and then a dodge. Says it all.