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Home Archives for 2008 election

Let’s See What Happens

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OK, with Ohio gone I’m ready to concede the presidency to Senator Barack Obama. I offer well earned congratulations to those of you who worked so hard to get your candidate elected. Now, it is my hope that reason and sense will prevail among his advisers and him, and even with the specter of a Democratic majority in both houses of congress, Obama will avoid the temptation to oppress the country with a loony left liberal agenda. This goes against common wisdom, since as a senator, he really never reached across the aisle. However, as President, he better know that a plethora of liberal legislation would put a stranglehold on growth.

The prospect of a shit-pile of liberal legislation passing is daunting. How about a $10 minimum wage? Let’s have abortions for all! Tax, spend, and redistribute! Shut down conservative talk radio. Allow unions to strongarm their way into every business. Oh, and keep the teachers’ unions strong so the dastardly erosion of our public education system can continue.Tax corporations so heavily that they run for cover overseas. Penalize success. Reward indolence. Further the erosion of individual responsibility. Appoint activist judges with “empathy” instead of those who will try cases fairly and let them legislate from the bench. Pull out of Iraq before our goals are attained. Give everybody including illegal aliens health care so we have to further ration the already scarce services. The litany of potential liberal legislation goes on and on. Congressional liberals will want to expand their base by buying votes with all this legislation and more at the expense of the good of the country as a whole.

Will good sense prevail or will the spending floodgates be opened? At this point I don’t know if there’ll be a super-majority in the senate, but thank God it looks increasingly like there won’t be. Regardless, Obama’s role must absolutely be that of a moderating influence on an out of control Congress led by radical lefties Reid and Pelosi. Lord help us if they can ramrod their legislation unabated! One big problem I had with Bush is that he failed to wield the veto pen to stop the proliferation of profligate spending bills that crossed his desk. Obama needs to do better. He cannot allow Congress to spend our way to bankruptcy.

Problem is, we don’t know enough about Obama to predict whether he’ll be a moderator, a uniter, or a divider. We can only hope. He pretty much has a mandate here to do as he wants. Will he govern the country for all of us or just those who think he’s the Chosen One? No one knows what “Change” means now, but in a few months, we’ll begin to find out.

I am hopeful that we can avert a descent to the socialistic morass. I think a lot of far lefties will be disappointed. Meanwhile, the Republican Party must take this loss seriously—as it apparently didn’t in 2006—and reorient itself to being the party of small government and strong values. A makeover is a dire need, right here, right now.

Earlier, I wrote some comments to a reader that bear repeating here. So, here they are.

We’ve always survived cyclical socialism in the past; however, each time we leave a socialist phase, some vestigial programs remain behind. Through several generations’ increasing expectations, we as a society have come to rely more and more on handouts, as perceptions evolve from necessary evil to everyman’s entitlement. Everybody increasingly has the hand out and expects something for nothing. When that becomes the central theme of a society, it will ultimately collapse under the weight of decreased productivity, stagnant economy, and the already overfed public clamoring for mo’ money. The fragmentation inherent in this societal entropy sows the seeds for demagoguery and dictatorship.

I’ll do my part to restore my party’s greatness after the damage done by Rove, Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfield. We need to get back to being the mainstream party of the people, which is our rightful, historical position. If we can heal this society and make it strong again after Obama’s four years (assuming there are no major surprises tonight), we can get rid of the splinter groups that have screwed the party by their association with it.

If we lose big time, it should be a lesson. Of course, Category One voters are idiots and tend to vote against something more than for it. By the time four years of realization that socialism is oppressive has sunk in, I hope the lemmings turn away from the cliff and come back to Papa.

So, let us look forward to January 20, 2009 as a testimonial to the greatness of this country as exemplified by the peaceful transfer of power from one party to another and let us hope that those to whom the spoils of victory go remember what made this country great and how we got here. It didn’t happen by rampant pandering to a bunch of Category Ones. No, let’s unite this country with good, solid, moderate leadership that does more than just paying lip service to reaching across the aisle. Do you think Obama & Co. are up to it?

I hope the Obama Administration does not turn out to be another Jimmy Carter earn-while-you-learn program. History has been made tonight. Let that remain untarnished. President Obama will be my president as well as yours.

Let’s all breathe a sigh of relief that the campaign ads are over and we can get back to watching less annoying commercials for Viagra, Cialis, and Levitra and real news about Casey Anthony’s illicit attorney hugs. I wish you all brief and painless post-election hangovers.

The Mouse will return from time to time with comments from his soon-to-be opposition sofa, unless the congress shuts him down with the Fairness Doctrine.

Don’t Vote for the Con Man

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Barack Obama is a smooth talking, slow walking con man. He’s raised lots of money, which he’s used to deliver a mind numbing mantra that has sucked in a lot of marks. If you’re one of them and you haven’t yet voted, this Mouse suggests that you reconsider. If your vote has already been bought and paid for and your mind is closed, well, stop reading right now. You’re dead meat. Furthermore, if you’re one of those people who simply won’t read anything that doesn’t agree with your own narrow opinion, you can also stop reading. I’m just presenting my views here.

The public, weary from eight years of Bush, is ripe for a con job. That’s what you’re getting from Obama and you’re not going to like the results. You know it in your heart of hearts. Obamamania is merely a symptom of Anti-Bush Syndrome. However, is electing this smooth talking, panacea promising neophyte just for retribution not something that can and will backfire right in your vindictive faces?

I hear intelligent people defending Obama with non-sequiturs. Why? Because they cannot defend him with facts. Here’s an example of such an exchange:

A. Friend: I’m tired of defending Obama against charges of socialism when Bush has given $700 billion to the wealthy.

Me: What does what Bush did have to do with what Obama is?

A. Friend: [Alludes to my response being racist.]

Cool. When you speak nonsense and someone questions it, merely accuse them of racism to close the conversation. A time honored tactic of the bleeding heart leftaroos. I meant that Obama, by virtue of his voting and past performance, is a socialist, and that whatever Bush might have done has nothing to do with that intrinsic aspect of Obama’s orientation. Of course, Obama is a socialist! This is not a “charge”, it’s a fact! Why are his supporters so fearful of his reputation giving him away? Are they merely blinded by the light?

Oh, yeah. They say the same thing about me. I can’t see the light. You’re right, folks. I cannot buy into some nebulous concept of “change” from an untried slickster who talks out of both sides of his mouth.

Change for change’s sake—a well calculated plan to capitalize on national malaise. How can anybody not see through the Obama campaign’s dastardly plot? As mass psychologists, they have correctly gleaned that this country has been in short-term mode for a long time. We’ll vote blindly for whichever Dr. Feelgood promises us instant sweetness, without concern for the long-term effects of our impulsive action.

What gets me is that there are many people not voting for John McCain for two reasons that don’t make much sense. One is that he will be “just like Bush” and the other is that Sarah Palin is not qualified to be president if McCain dies in office, which a lot of them are saying is an almost certain thing.

What is this bullshit about McCain “voting with Bush 95% of the time”? Bush doesn’t vote. What kind of crap are you people listening to? McCain voted with his party 76% of the time, whereas Obama voted with his party 99% of the time. Obama speaks of “reaching across the aisle” to unite us, but he has no history of actually having done so. McCain has, most notably with McCain-Finegold and McCain-Kennedy, in which he co-wrote legislation with two seriously dyed-in-the-wool Democrats.

And Palin…what’s the deal? What, precisely, makes her less qualified to act as President than Obama?  Is her midwestern accent unpalatable to you East Coast liberals? Do Obama’s 146 days in the Senate, mostly voting for ultra-liberal legislation and running for president, qualify him any better for executive office than does running a state government? Has he ever held any executive responsibility? He has spent most of his political career running for office. Is there anything significant in his past that suggests that he is a leader? Oh, he was the first black editor of Harvard Law Review? What the hell good is that, other than as a feather in his personal cap? Obama himself is the deal breaker for me. Not only is his political orientation antithetical to mine but also he is naive and I do not want another Jimmy Carter “earn while you learn” administration. Please tell me why Obama is more qualified to run this country than Palin? WHY? Because he says so? Because the mainstream media says so? A comparison of their historical responsibilities sure as hell doesn’t say so!

I will do anything to prevent an irreversible turn toward socialism. The combination of Obama, Pelosi, and Reid is very scary, especially if the Bush backlash impels stupid voters bent on retribution to the extent that they blindly check the boxes of lesser qualified candidates to elect a Democrat super-majority in the senate. Al Franken—AL FRANKEN—is a viable candidate for U.S. Senate only because of these short-term thinkers. I cannot just assume the passivist position that “if they screw things up, they’ll be out in four years.” I maintain that they can and will screw things up beyond repair and that the effects will be with us for decades, if not permanently. With the president and the congress firmly in their grasp, they’ll control two branches of government, and then they’ll make enough liberal judicial appointments to control the judicial branch, too. Obama has posited that he wants judges with “empathy” for the downtrodden–at the expense of fairness–so you can count on de facto anti-capitalist legislation from the bench. By my count, that’s all three branches of Federal government, and that’s complete control by some dangerous people. If we wind up with a Euro-style, socialist, stagnant economy, your kids and grandkids will never know the life we have known. I think that’s within reach of this band of brothers; I don’t think it’s an alarmist exaggeration.

What I really don’t undestand is how people who I respect, people who are presumably highly intelligent, can buy into Obama’s melifluous mantra. They’re too intelligent to react to the hot-button issues that suck in the masses, although I know a few anti-religion folks who would do anything in their power to impede any candidate who admitted to going to church. (They’ll make an excuse for Obama’s support for faith based charities, which he agreed to in the name of more slick vote buying.) I have to think that they’ve turned off their bullshit detectors and they have entered Suspension of Disbelief Mode.

It seems that the populace is ready for that pied piper to come along and promise anything he thinks they want to hear. They’re buying a fancy looking used car without looking under the hood. It’s kind of mass denial. Why are they allowing themselves to be blindly led off this cliff, like lemmings? I can see the vacuousness in Obama, and I am just a mouse of average intelligence. He is smooth, slick, and nicely packaged. But what does he really have to offer, aside from the handouts he promises? If he gets elected, which seems likely thanks to the panacea seeking electorate, I’m going to stick my hand out just as far as everybody else’s. I’ll take my de facto payoff, even if I didn’t vote for him. I’ll do it without any conscience pangs because I don’t have a progeny to worry about.

In spite of the polls reflecting this national mania, I will not give up. I will vote for John McCain tomorrow with a clear conscience, for your progeny’s benefit. It might not make me very popular at tony, liberal, New York and D.C. cocktail parties, but I don’t get any invitations to them, anyway.

See How They Run

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I am a mouse with social anxiety disorder, for which I take Xanax. I come out from under the Nittany Turkey’s family room sofa to watch TV when he’s not looking, and the only thing that’s been on that TV of late has been the Democratic National Convention. I’ll share my opinions with you.

First of all, at the beginning of the evening there was a truly unique and moving moment in U.S. history in which the first African-American (a real one, in this case) was nominated by acclamation by his party, a party with some serious racist schisms in its past. (Well, it’s true. That’s why MLK Sr. and MLK Jr. were Republicans.) I remember a similar moment in 1984 when Geraldine Ferraro became the first woman nominated for the office of Vice President. We’re making progress, albeit slowly. Unfortunately, this is the wrong guy for the job, but I digress. Back to the happenings of the evening.

There were quite a few speakers I didn’t bother watching, among them the pompous and forgettable John Kerry. ????? ??????? ?????? ????? This Mouse would rather see an alley cat with hunger pangs than that haughty schmuck. He had his moment, he failed, and now let’s be done with him, already. He should be accorded the same polite dismissal that was given to Jimmy Carter. Why do the Democrats feel compelled to feature losers like Kerry? You’d think they would have better ideas about which side their bread was buttered on.

The feature event of the evening, of course, was former president William Jefferson Clinton’s address. Now there is a guy who can speak! ????? ??? ??????? ?????? Say what you will about his character or whatever the hell you airheads always resort to when you can’t think of anything better to nail him with, he could sell ice to Eskimos. He can mock sincerity better than anyone. And lie? That guy can lie so well he can convince himself what he’s saying is true. He came out to the tune of “Don’t Stop Thinking about Tomorrow”, which was his campaign theme song in 1992 and 1996. This time, it wasn’t sung by Fleetwood Mac, the original band that recorded the song. It sounded like it was sung by those backup singers on American Idol. You know, like the Supremes without Diana. Whatever.

Moving right along, Clinton covered the usual pedestrian Democrat subjects, but covered them convincingly and moved his audience. Starting with a five minute standing ovation, he finally hushed the crowd and spoke for a full 20 minutes, double the time allotted to him.

The topic of the night was to have been national security, and Clinton was tasked with conforming to the theme. He ignored those instructions and delivered a typical Slick Willie campaign speech. It was more about his accomplishments than about Obama’s, though. Why? Obama has not accomplished anything. Furthermore, when a Clinton speaks, it is always about the Clintons. However, Clinton was effective in calling for party unity instead of PUMA (Party Unity, My Ass!), a final whine by the dissed Hillary faction. He praised Hillary and promised her 18 million votes to Obama. Whether those votes will actually be delivered is anyone’s guess.

Of course, there was a significant amount of McCain bashing, with the usual distortions and exaggerations about the dire straits the Republican administration has brought us. Interestingly, Clinton mentioned that the Republicans had the White House and the Congress in 2001, which was the start of all this badness, but he didn’t mention that the Democrat controlled Congress elected in 2006 has done next to nothing at all. ????? ????? ?????? (Still, I think the combination of a Democrat controlled congress and a Democrat in the White House can only mean that oppressive socialism is right around the corner.) He implicated McCain in all of Bush’s failures, and the failures of congress. It all went over very well with the bunch on the floor.

In all, Clinton’s speech was a rebel rouser, if you’ll excuse the expression, and it is sure to give Obama a bounce in the polls. It might even bring in some of the 18 million Hillary votes. His endorsement, however, doesn’t mean a thing. He only wants to set the stage for another Hillary run at the White House. Nevertheless, his speech will surely work to Obama’s benefit, and it will probably help the Clintons pay their campaign debts, if you know what I mean. That’s this Mouse’s opinion.

Funny thing. I watch these conventions and see the euphoria they create, which distorts people’s ideas about what’s right, what’s wrong, and who is going to win all this stuff. I saw it with the really ridiculous Kerry euphoria in 2004. How could anyone really get excited about Kerry-Edwards? Yet people were all ga-ga after the convention. Problem is, only those of the appropriate mindset who actually watch the convention proceedings feel that way. The voters, quite appropriately, tend to want to reel in many of these euphoric wacko expectations when November rolls around.

Next up on the podium was Joseph Biden, who did his duty to the ticket. Again, as anyone who has observed the senator from Delaware over the years would have expected, Biden was a blow-hard. A lot of the speech was concerned with his experience and accomplishments. Why? Because Obama has no track record and Biden likes to talk about himself. Where Biden was “useful” was in the traditional vice presidential nominee role as attack dog. Only thing is, Biden was not convincing in his excoriation of John McCain, particularly because he contradicted his own heartfelt words about McCain by suddenly questioning McCain’s character. I think the Dems are really worried and have amped up the rhetoric from merely berating the current administration’s policies and predicting more of the same with McCain. Now, they have begun to attack McCain’s judgment. I suppose it is a smokescreen when their own candidate has no track record and no qualifications. However, I am convinced that Biden was being a good attack dog and personally knows better about McCain. He certainly chose not to mention that he and Obama were both wrong, while McCain was right about the surge in Iraq. Of course not. He knows better. So, Biden did not pull off the job of explaining how an Obama-Biden ticket will enhance national security, which, after all, was the theme of the evening.

Biden’s other job was to convince the electorate that the Obama-Biden ticket will have the experience and knowledge to run foreign policy for this country. I think that Biden brought this off for those who chose to listen. However, rarely does a vice president run anything, foreign policy included. So, Biden talking about all his Senate Foreign Relations Committee experiences didn’t move me.

At the end of Biden’s speech, his wife, Jill, came up on stage and told him she had a surprise for him. Of course, the surprise was Obama walking out on stage to great adulation by the lemmings on the floor. Children and grandchildren flooded the podium, and Obama spoke.

Before I get to his well rehearsed speech, it is interesting to note that the two men who stood at center stage, the Democratic ticket for 2008, consist of two senators Barack Obama and Joe Biden, with the the #1 and #3 most liberal voting records in 2007, respectively. By contrast, Hillary Clinton ranked #16 that same year. (Teddy Kennedy, ranked #2, appeared on Monday night.)

Obama’s brief speech gave a clue that the Dems were suddenly concerned about public perception of the planned spectacle at Invesco Field, which, careful to sanitize any reference to corporate America, he referred to as Mile High Stadium, its former generic name. He sounded defensive in explaining that the reason he decide to throw the big to-do at Invesco was because he essentially wanted all the people who ever worked toward his election to be able to participate. The people. My people.

In what? In a self-directed coronation? The Greek columns, the elevated rising stage, and the general hype suggest it. Has any presidential candidate since John Kennedy felt the need for such a massive production? It seems to this Mouse like overkill, like Obama has something to prove. His defense of the venue and the grandiosity only amplifies this feeling in my furry little rodent brain. If Obama wants to be the candidate of the people, he should skip the rock star appearances. They make him look like alternatively like he’s either a megalomaniac or he’s insecure in his current position, which is way the hell over his head, and he’s trying too hard. Is that what we want from a President of the United States?

Let’s face it: if you don’t have the goods, you have to make a good show of it. An end run. Throw up a great smoke screen and the lemmings will march with you right over the damn cliff.

So, tomorrow, we have the spectacle. It won’t feature Charlton Heston, because he’s a Republican. (A little levity there.) This Mouse will be back with a recap of Thursday’s, um, festivities, if my Internet connectivity ever returns. We’ll also have something to say when John McCain announces his choice of vice president.