More from the debate.

MCCAIN: He (Obama) has voted in the United States Senate to increase taxes on people who
make as low as $42,000 a year.

OBAMA: That's not true, John. That's not true.

MCCAIN: And that's just a fact. Again, you can look it up.

OBAMA: Look, it's just not true.

Perhaps I should have said, "Liar, Liar, Liar pants on fire".

Let's look at the facts, shall we?

Obama denied voting for a bill that called for increased taxes on “people” making as little as $42,000 a year, as McCain accused him of doing. McCain was right, though only for single taxpayers.

To me, that makes McCain right, no apologies or caveat necessary unless single people aren't "people".

Want more Obama lies?

OBAMA: "Look, I mean, Senator McCain keeps on using this example that suddenly the president would just meet with somebody without
doing any preparation, without having low-level talks. Nobody's been talking about that, and Senator McCain knows it. This is a mischaracterization of my position."

Now, we all know what Obama said earlier in the campaign.

Barack Obama's original answer seemed crystal clear: last July, asked whether he would meet with the "leaders" of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba, and North Korea "without precondition," during his first year as president, he quickly answered yes.

Whether he changed his position now is irrelevant - the original was his gut decision.  As President, I can't wait for him to develop nuanced policy positions over the course of months or years.  No on the job training!

And on Russia and Georgia:

OBAMA: "Obviously, I disagree with this notion that somehow we did not forcefully object to Russians going into Georgia. I immediately said that this was illegal and objectionable."

Again, let's check the facts.

It's true, as McCain said, that during the conflict between Georgia and Russia, Obama said, "Now is the time for Georgia and Russia to show restraint, and to avoid an escalation to full scale war" in his first statement on the conflict. But so did the White House.

"So did the White House" is not a defense, and besides, Obama is running against McCain, not Bush.  Anyone notice in the various "fact check" references I made that there is always an attempt to defend Obama after having said that McCain was right?

Now, how about a science lesson for Mr. Obama, a leader in our fight against terror.

OBAMA: "And the biggest threat that we face right now is not a nuclear missile coming over the skies. It's in a suitcase."

Suitcase nukes closer to fiction than reality
Suitcase nukes said unlikely to exist

The biggest threat according to Obama is something that doesn't even exist!  But wait, we have to be worried about Osama bin Laden too, after all he's launched zero successful attacks against us in the last seven plus years.  Why should we still fear him?

OBAMA: And the point that I originally made is that we took our eye off Afghanistan, we took our eye off the folks who perpetrated 9/11, they are still sending out videotapes..

OHMIGOD!!!! Videotapes!!! I'm sooooo scared!  You know what, Obama even gets that wrong for the most part in that those videotapes are fewer and farther between than ever before.

One last thing....

MCCAIN: There is the Republican Guard in Iran, which Senator Kyl had an amendment in order to declare them a sponsor of terror. Senator Obama said that would be provocative....

OBAMA: Well, let me just correct something very quickly. I believe the Republican Guard of Iran is a terrorist organization.

We all know by now that the correct name of the group in question is the Revolutionary Guard.  However, it goes to show again that McCain leads and Obama follows!

Well, it looks like the bailout plan failed.  The only question is, who is the winner?

It's not President Bush, whose multiple pleas for unity fell on deaf ears.
It's not Nancy Pelosi, who couldn't convince her own party to vote for the measure. 40% of Democratic representatives voted against their leader's wishes.
It's not Barney Frank, who declared this a done deal several times.
It's not Jon McCain who made all that ruckus and couldn't convince his own party to vote "yes".
It's not Henry Paulson who got on his knees and begged Pelosi for acceptance.
It's not the American People who just lost another few percent off their retirement accounts.

Perhaps it's Obama, who didn't do anything except make some phone calls and try to keep his hands as clean as possible.  But then again, doing nothing is why he's in a position to gain the Presidency now.

Perhaps, it's Ayn Rand and Charles Darwin whose philosophies of naked capitalism and survival of the fittest is the ultimate driver of Congressional politics.

I'm moving to Argentina until all this gets worked out.

I haven't posted in 6 months, so I guess I've been content to read what other people have to say. However, there are some things about Barack Obama's B.S. and the failure of John MCain to criticize Obama's (albeit brief) record that just tick me off. I'm just going to run through some things I noticed from the debate. I apologize in advance for the length of this post.

First, I'll start off with the "I've got a bracelet too" remark. Let's ignore the fact that Obama disrespected the family's wishes for him not to use the bracelet as a political gimmick. (The fact the mother changed her mind afterwards doesn't change the fact of what he did).  Now let's talk about philosophy.  The McCain bracelet story contained hope for the future and a desire to make sure the soldier's sacrifice was meaningful.  That family believed that sacrifice is a legitimate part of the social contract if the end result makes a difference, and they clearly swa that the end could still be positive via McCain's leadership.  The Obama bracelet story was based on putting personal happiness over societal gain.  There the feeling expressed was claearly that there was no hope to make Iraq a better place and that sacrifice should be avoided entirely, regardless of the outcome to society.  Obama was seen as a "healer" to stop other people's suffering, a task best left to the true Messiah and not a politician.  As an aside, I hadn't realized that Sgt. Ryan Jopek's dad had served one year in Iraq as well. 

Regarding the financial crisis , Obama said, "Now, we also have to recognize that this is a final verdict on eight years of failed economic policies promoted by George Bush, supported by Senator McCain, a theory that basically says that we can shred regulations and consumer protections."  The crisis we are in is not one of either inflation, unemployment or even growth (although they have been getting worse), it is a function of the structure of the housing market whose problems can be lain directly at the feet of the Democrats as well.  See this video as to that specific argument.  Obama never mentioned his close ties to these failed institutions and their CEOs.  I mean really, he could have chosen any of hundreds of people to help him choose his VP and he chose a non-politician who is one of those people he claims to want to punish now.  John McCain said in 2005, "If Congress does not act, American taxpayers will continue to be exposed to the enormous risk that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac pose to the housing market, the overall financial system, and the economy as a whole."

On the same issue, Obama said, "Two years ago, I warned that, because of the subprime lending mess, because of the lax regulation, that we were potentially going to have a problem and tried to stop some of the abuses in mortgages that were taking place at the time.  Last year, I wrote to the secretary of the Treasury to make sure that he understood the magnitude of this problem and to call on him to bring all the stakeholders together to try to deal with it."  Once again, McCain leads, Obama follows.  Also, notice how Obama is arrogant enough to cliam that He had to eductae the secretary of the Treasury!
 

On taxes, Obama said, "Now, $18 billion is important; $300 billion is really important. And in his tax plan, you would have CEOs of Fortune 500 companies getting an average of $700,000 in reduced taxes, while leaving 100 million Americans out. So my attitude is, we've got to grow the economy from the bottom up. What I've called for is a tax cut for 95 percent of working families, 95 percent."

The truth is, if Obama is whining that $18bn isn't important, then certainly $750mm (Fortune 500 CEOs saving $700k each), is truly insignificant.  Sure, it will make people feel good, and raising CEO taxes might be the right thing to do, but to poo-poo earmark reform and put CEO pay at the forefront is just to stoke the class war.  I also like the ideological zinger that the people who have a generous income are not "working" families.  I'm doing very well personally, and although I don't think I'm quite in Obama's upper echelon, I still want to tell him a big "fuck you" on that point as I work 50-60 hour weeks and my wife has a couple of part-time jobs because we want to be in that upper echelon.  Maybe I should scale back to a being a teacher and taking the summer off, or take a 35 hour a week factory job so I could be considered a real "worker".
 

On employment and taxes, Obama said, "What I do is I close corporate loopholes, stop providing tax cuts to corporations that are shipping jobs overseas so that we're giving tax breaks to companies that are investing here in the United States."  Tax breaks for corporations!  Woohoo! Besides by the count of the Beaureau of Labor Statistics, there are 5.3mm more people employed today than when President Bush's first round of tax cuts were passed.  Even when times were really horrible for jobs in 2004, only 2.5% of layoffs were due to overseas relocations.  It was a bogus issue then, and it's a bogus issue now.  More xenophobia and class warfare.

Going straight to the end of the debate, Obama said, "You know, my father came from Kenya. That's where I get my name. And in the '60s, he wrote letter after letter to come to college here in the United States because the notion was that there was no other country on Earth where you could make it if you tried. The ideals and the values of the United States inspired the entire world.  I don't think any of us can say that our standing in the world now, the way children around the world look at the United States, is the same."  One, his father came to Hawaii in 1959.  Second, if everyone loved us so much back then, what a coincidence that the term "Ugly American" was coined in a 1958 novel.  And if we're such a horrible country now, why do we have an immigration problem?  And just a gut feeling, but does anyone really believe that there are fewer African immigrants today that 50 years ago?  Finally, I guess his father really didn't really care that "he could make it if he tried here" because the poor guy was able to land a senior government role back in Kenya as soon as he availed himself of our fine universities and never bothered to try to stay here to build a career.  By the way, Obama supporters, can you say "Legacy"?

I better post this before I lose it.

 

 

 

Hitchens speaks truth to potential power....

But is it "inflammatory" to say that AIDS and drugs are wrecking the black community because the white power structure wishes it? No. Nor is it "controversial." It is wicked and stupid and false to say such a thing. And it not unimportantly negates everything that Obama says he stands for by way of advocating dignity and responsibility over the sick cults of paranoia and victimhood.

At Protein Wisdom, Obama's advisors get some helpful hints.

Retired Air Force General Scott...Gration’s big idea is eliminating nuclear weapons globally — a position that would be considered monumentally reckless but for its near-impossible utopianism. Obama has said only that “he would seek a world without nukes but would never disarm unilaterally.” Mars has no nukes, so Obama can cross that one off the to-do list.

Busted!

The cast of Battlestar Galactica appeared on David Letterman to read the "Top 10 Reasons to Watch the 4th Season of Battlestar Galactica". Guess which number Number 6 read?

Old photos show flaws in steel of I-35W bridge

Did these flaws cause the collapse? Beats me - I'm no engineer. However, that article prompted me to click on to a fascinating retrospective called "13 Seconds in August" regarding the collapse of the same bridge. A long post-collapse photo is provided with a number next to each vehicle which fell with the bridge. By clicking on each car or truck, you can see a biography of the vehicle's occupants where it is known, and in some cases, video interviews with the survivors.

This post on normblog got me to thinking (as most of his posts do).

If the people of Iraq (or many American Democrats for that matter) don't believe that Iraq has been liberated, does that mean that they actually haven't been?

Certainly, the Iraqi people have suffered horrors of war which would not have occurred had it not been for the American invasion. But do we say that blacks weren't freed from slavery despite another hundred plus years of segregation, humiliation, lynchings and myriad other horrors? Do we say that G-d did not release the Israelites from slavery in Egypt, despite the fact that countless millions have been murdered and tortured over the millennia?

Iraq was indeed liberated by the United States. However, some have confused liberation with the end of suffering. Freedom is not a guarantee; it is a series of doors behind which opportunity, and potentially tragedy, knock.

These little critters were living in my attic. We wouldn't have known about it were it not for some water damage to the roof that we had to repair this morning. The wife is bringing them to the local animal wildlife center.