Politics

Reske Challenges Candidates to Second Public Forum

kpaul.mallasch — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 19:00:50 -0700

Reske also comments on the released tapes

ANDERSON, IN - Today State Representative Scott Reske (D-Pendleton) is asking both of his opponents for State Representative District 37 to join him in a second public forum.

“To direct the focus of this race to real issues, I challenge Kelly Gaskill and Robert Jozwiak to a second public forum where we can discuss the true issues at stake in this election -- jobs, property taxes, high gas prices, and illegal immigration,” said Reske. “I believe that a dignified public forum is what people really want from candidates.”

The Anderson Police Department released tape recordings today that Mike Gaskill used to file an unfounded complaint against Reske.

“The recording clearly shows that the complaint filed against me by the Gaskills is completely without merit and a political stunt,” said Reske. “The Gaskill campaign squandered valuable public resources by needlessly tying up the time of two police agencies for their own political gain.

“The tape demonstrates my honest effort to protect the community from a negative campaign and to ask the Gaskills to a mutual agreement to stay positive. I believe the people of Madison County are short-changed by dishonest campaign stunts such as Gaskills’. I take personal responsibility for all aspects of my campaign, and I encourage Gaskill to do the same.

“It is a privilege to serve the citizens of Madison County and I will always do my best to conduct myself accordingly. I understand the importance of conducting myself with integrity, and I again encourage the Gaskills to do the same.”

Source: Press Release

Making Sense: Why Ayers Matters

kpaul.mallasch — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 01:08:53 -0700

By Michael Reagan

To listen to the Obama spin-masters you’d think that the McCain campaign’s questioning of their candidate’s association with unrepentant terrorist bomber Bill Ayers is a smear tactic falsely elevating a casual relationship between the two men into one where they worked together in promoting Ayers’ far-left goals.

Their reaction to the continuing revelations that disprove that claim is one of sheer panic -- and they have a good reason to be scared witless that any in-depth probe of what went on between the two comrades will reveal Obama’s true colors -- all of them dark red!

If the truth becomes better known -- and it will if the Ayers issue is doggedly pursued -- it will be clear that Obama was not only deeply immersed the fetid swamp of Chicago’s far-left political scene, but was from the very beginning of his career carefully groomed by the city’s socialist left to follow the path he’s on now in his quest for the presidency of the United States.

Giving credence to the charge that Obama was “groomed by an older generation of radical leftists for insertion into the American political process, trading on good looks, brains, educational pedigree, and the desire of the vast majority of the voting public to right the historical racial wrongs of the [past]” as the American Thinkers’ Thomas Lifson has written:

• Obama belonged to the socialist New Party, described by Lifson as “a radical left organization, established in 1992, to amalgamate far-left groups and push the United States into socialism by forcing the Democratic Party to the left.” A March 22, 1998 article by John Nichols in These Times revealed, “After six years, the party has built what is arguably the most sophisticated left-leaning political operation the country has seen since the decline of the Farmer-Labor, Progressive and Non-Partisan League groupings of the early part of the century.”

• Obama has been allied with ACORN and their Project Vote, the radical leftist group now charged with massive vote fraud aimed at electing Barack Obama president of the United States. Obama has long been directly involved with ACORN. An article by Toni Foulkes of ACORN, “Case Study: Chicago-The Barack Obama Campaign,” which appeared in Social Policy magazine in 2004, Foulkes revealed ACORN noticed Obama when he was organizing on the far south side of the city with the Developing Communities Project. Wrote Foulks: “He was a very good organizer. When he returned from law school, we asked him to help us with a lawsuit to challenge the state of Illinois’ refusal to abide by the National Voting Rights Act … Obama took the case, known as ACORN vs. Edgar … and we won. Obama then went on to run a voter registration project with Project VOTE in 1992 that made it possible for Carol Moseley Braun to win the Senate that year. Project VOTE delivered 50,000 newly registered voters in that campaign (ACORN delivered about 5000 of them). Since then, we have invited Obama to our leadership training sessions to run the session on power every year, and, as a result, many of our newly developing leaders got to know him before he ever ran for office.”

• Obama and Bill Ayers were close associates for years, going back as far as 1995 if not earlier. According to CNN: “A review of board minutes and records by CNN show Obama crossed paths repeatedly with Ayers at board meetings of the Annenberg Challenge Project. The Annenberg Foundation gave the project a $50 million grant to match local private funds to improve schools… Obama was asked to serve as the board chairman in 1995… For seven years, Ayers and Obama -- among many others -- worked on funding for education projects, including some projects advocated by Ayers ... The board, for example, gave hundreds of thousands of dollars to Bill Ayers' small schools project… The funding, according to records… CNN reviewed, came directly from the Annenberg foundation which Obama chaired. While working on the Annenberg project, Obama and Ayers also served together on a second charitable foundation, the Woods Fund.”

No wonder the Obama campaign wants the Ayers connection to be off-limits.

Mike Reagan, the elder son of the late President Ronald Reagan, is heard on more than 200 talk radio stations nationally as part of the Radio America Network. Look for Mike’s newest book, “Twice Adopted” and other info at www.Reagan.com. E-mail comments to Reagan@caglecartoons.com.

©2008 Mike Reagan.

One Issue Voter

kpaul.mallasch — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 01:07:28 -0700

By Jane Roberts

On July 22, 2002 the Bush Administration refused to release $34 million to the United Nations Population Fund to please the Republican Party’s religious right and anti-United Nations constituencies. Colin Powell had testified that UNFPA did invaluable work in the world but it was he who sold women down the river by announcing the decision. He should have resigned.

Everything that UNFPA does saves and empowers women. It provides prenatal care, assisted birth, family planning. It educates against early forced marriage, female genital mutilation and violence against women. One hundred eighty countries supported UNFPA last year, but not our own. That is ugly.

For the last six years Lois Abraham (co-founder with me of 34 Million Friends of UNFPA) and I have been joyfully relentless in asking 34 million Americans to take a stand for the women of the world and their access to reproductive health care and family planning with at least one dollar. This grassroots effort is called 34 Million Friends. It is sending a positive message to the world.

What is at stake? The fate of the world’s women and girls and thus the fate of the world.

Women’s access to education and health including access to family planning is essential for reducing poverty, saving the environment, and for any chance at peace and stability in the future. Women’s equality in all realms including decision making power at every level of government is essential for balance and sustainability.

If the next President releases the funds Congress annually votes for UNFPA, then that President will have the values I have. He will support, help reform, and strengthen the United Nations. He will know that to reduce poverty and misery, people must be educated and healthy. His foreign assistance will line up with those values. He will believe that 500,000 women shouldn’t die in childbirth every year. He will believe that access to family planning will greatly reduce the 40 million abortions which take place in the world every year, representing twenty percent of the pregnancies.

He will believe that population matters. There are 6.7 billion people on the planet now, with over 80 million births over deaths each year. Nothing good can come of a predicted world population of 9 billion by 2050. This growth will come in the most poverty stricken countries many of which are politically unstable due at least in part to the low status of their women and girls. For instance, Pakistan which suffers from poverty, inflation, political instability, religious extremism and gender inequality, has a population of 164 million – rising to 304 million by 2050.

If Americans are paying attention, they know that there is increased hunger due to climate change but also to expanded use of grain for bio-fuels by the richer countries. Surging population in many of the countries where hunger reigns also plays a role. Ethiopia and India are examples.

They know that conflicts over resources (fresh water, fish, oil, wood, agricultural land) are increasing. They know that energy costs are rising and that the poor are least able to pay.

The question of whether the next US President will release congressionally approved funds to the United Nations Population Fund will be a symbol of how he understands the world. Under Barack Obama, our country will join 180 countries in supporting the women of the world through UNFPA. Under John McCain the question is wide open. Would he be enough of a maverick to take a stand for the world’s women and against the extremist fanatics of his own party? Too much is at stake. I won’t take that chance. I’m a one issue voter.

Jane Roberts, co-founder of 34 Million Friends of UNFPA www.34millionfriends.org, she is a retired French teacher from California. Her email is JulianRob@aol.com.

John McCain Can Still Win: Interview With Pat Buchanan

kpaul.mallasch — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 01:06:03 -0700

By Bill Steigerwald

Catching up with author and syndicated columnist Pat Buchanan during this election season is almost impossible. Up at 5 a.m. weekdays and still up many nights at midnight, commuting multiple times to Washington and sometimes to New York City, he’s always on the move -- and yet he’s a near-permanent presence on MSNBC, where he has become the house conservative in a den of liberals.

I caught up with Washington’s consistently jovial pundit by telephone from his Northern Virginia home on Thursday, Oct. 9.

Q: Do you think it’s over for John McCain because of this economic meltdown that seems to know no floor?

A: I just sent out a column that said I don’t think it’s over. McCain and (Sarah) Palin were winning this election for two weeks after the Republican convention. Since then we’ve had the worst market crash worldwide since 1929-1930 and we’ve had it in a telescoped four-week period. That has taken McCain from 2 points, or 3 points or 4 points up to around 8 or 10 behind in some polls, 11 in one tracking poll and an average of 6.

Is it over? No. I think McCain can still do it. But what he has to do is find a way to make Barack Obama no longer credible as an individual who can be president of the United States in a time of war and economic catastrophe. He has got to impeach his ideas, his record, his agenda and his judgment.

Q: Do you think these polls are accurately gauging support for Obama or do you think there is a "Bradley Effect" hidden in there?

A: I do believe that if the race turned out to be 48-48 with 4 undecided on Election Day, McCain would win. Look: People voting on the issue of race have already made up their minds. African Americans, I saw one poll, are 94-1 behind him. Of white Americans, there’s a minority who are going to vote for him because he’s African American and a small number who are going to vote against him for that reason.

Now is there a hidden factor in there? I don’t know. I don’t know the reason why, but Obama does not do well when he is closing. Hillary Clinton, as you know, beat him by 10 or 9 percent in Pennsylvania and about the same amount in Ohio and then by 41 in West Virginia and 35 in Kentucky. I think part of that is the Scots-Irish and those folks out there who don’t cotton to Obama not simply because of reasons of race, but class. He really is not one of them. I think Colin Powell would do far better, for example.

Q: You have roots of sorts out this way. Your mom was from the Mon Valley, right?

A: They’re all gone now. But my mom and uncles and grandparents were from Charleroi, Pa. I’ve got German-American cousins in Southeastern Ohio. They’re all German-Americans and I did very well. I was endorsed by the union at the steel plant over in Weirton. So those are sort of our folks. Barack Obama is too exotic. He’s too Harvard. He’s too Hyde Park, University of Chicago -- riding around on his bike with his little hat on. And then you get a picture of Sarah leaning back on a Harley-Davidson (laughs).

Q: Can Palin still help McCain or is she starting to lose some of her appeal?

A: She’s still got a tremendous appeal in getting the crowds out, there’s no question about that. She’s enormously exciting but she’s also been under vicious attack, savage attack, ever since she was nominated. She’s holding up well. She can grab the media at any time and she’s still a tremendously attractive commodity. But there’s no doubt that under fire she has been hurt a bit.

Q: Do you think Obama is playing it maybe too cool?

A: Obama may be playing it too cool. With Sarah Palin beating him up and McCain starting to work on him now, he better not come off as a wimp -- complaining about “they’re attacking me” and “they’re saying these terrible things about me” -- because wimps don’t win.

Q: Do you think Obama really believes all the neo-New Deal domestic policy and all the big spending programs and all the big-government things he’s talking about doing or does he just have to say that to win his party’s nomination and the presidency?

A: I think Barack Obama at core is a quintessential pragmatist who is interested in advancing the career of Barack Obama. I think he’s a nice guy. I think he’s got a nice personality. I think he’s a friendly sort. I think he’s a guy who does not like confrontation. But I do think he’s a pragmatist. He’s been moving very swiftly away from the left, where he was out there with his crowd in Chicago -- ditching Rev. Wright, dumping Bill Ayers and that crowd, agreeing with (Supreme Court Justice Anton) Scalia on the right to own a handgun in D.C., agreeing with Scalia that child rapists, even in non-capital cases, could be executed.

He’s moved steadily to the center of the Democratic Party because he knows that's where the election is going to be won or lost. He’s moved out of the far left of the party. He’s much tougher on talking with the dictators than he was to begin with. So he’s changed on a variety of issues.

Q: Do you think an Obama victory will really make that much of a difference in our foreign policy -- he’s an interventionist on everything but Iraq?

A: My guess is Barack Obama is looking on the idea of any war with Iran with less enthusiasm that John McCain and Joe Lieberman would. Look, while he’s taken this hard line in foreign policy, I think he’d be far less likely to get us into another war over there than John McCain on that issue. Even though he’s talking hawkish, I get the sense that he’s doing that because he’s got to satisfy some of those Hillary Democrats and conservative Democrats who want a tough president.

Q: Are we witnessing the end of the Republican Party’s 40-year cycle of power, as Chalmers Johnson says in The Nation?

A: I’ve written that. I think what is killing the Republican Party is the alteration of the electorate. You have to remember when we put this Nixon coalition together, probably 92 percent of the electorate was white. African-Americans were probably 7 percent, if that, because they didn’t vote in the South, and the rest was 1 percent. Now the white population is down to 66 percent and in voting terms it’s probably not much more than say 75 percent.

Republican (strategy) is (based on winning) the white vote. Nixon and Reagan won it by 67 and 64 percent and that simply was enough to win the election. But now you’ve got to do more than that. You’ve got to start getting some of these other minorities to put together a coalition and eventually, by the time as we move closer to the center of the century, if you got every white vote in the country, you couldn’t win on that alone. (laughs) And we can’t get them all! (laughs) Let me tell you this to make a flat statement: Foolishly, the Republican Party is condoning the importation of a brand new electorate which will doom the Republican Party.

Q: And that is?

A: This new electorate? Ninety percent of the immigrants coming in are from Third World countries and every single minority population which comes from the Third World votes Democratic -- anywhere from 60 percent to 95 percent. These folks are predominately poor -- and they believe in government. And the reason they believe in government is the best of reasons for them; they get more out of it than they pay in. The bottom 30 percent in income in the United States doesn’t pay any income taxes at all, I don’t think. When Barack Obama says we’re going to hit the top 5 percent (of income earners), the top 5 percent pay 60 percent of all income taxes.

Q: Is there anything John McCain can say or do to pull this out -- besides trying to out-promise Barack Obama with things like his promise to pay off our bad mortgages?

A: I don’t know why I paid my mortgage off (laughs). ... The main thing he has to do -- as the country desperately wants change and, as I write (in today's column), the Republican brand party is on the same shelf as the Chinese baby formula right now -- is he and his campaign and Sarah Palin have got to raise doubts in the public mind that Barack Obama has the ideas or the record or the judgment or the character to be president of the United States in a time of two wars and the greatest economic collapse maybe since the Great Depression -- to raise those question marks over Barack Obama’s head. Barack Obama’s assignment in those first two debates was to remove those question marks.

Q: And he didn’t do it yet?

A: I think he did it partly but I don’t think he’s closed the sale yet. That’s McCain’s opportunity.

Q: Which state will ultimately determine the race?

A: It could be Ohio or Florida. But it could be other ones. One could be Pennsylvania, if McCain could win that. But it could be Virginia, it could be Colorado, it could be North Carolina. Look, I’ll say this: If McCain doesn’t win Ohio, North Carolina, Virginia and Florida -- and Colorado -- I think he loses the election. He’s got to win all five of those and they are all up for grabs now.

Q: Intrade, the online “Prediction Market” where you can buy or sell shares of McCain or Obama based on who you think will win, shows Obama ahead 74 percent to 26 percent. Where would you put your money?

A: I think it’s very close to what I would put it. Yep, I wouldn’t disagree with that.

Bill Steigerwald is a columnist at the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. E-mail Bill at bsteigerwald@tribweb.com. ©Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, All Rights Reserved.

McCain Policies Good For Farmers and Consumers

kpaul.mallasch — Mon, 6 Oct 2008 08:14:37 -0700

By Mike Yoder
Elkart County Farmer & Chairman
Indiana McCain-Palin Farm Team

A McCain-Palin team is a "slam dunk" for farmers in the agriculture policy game. They stand for increasing trade now rather than denying trade to countries that do not meet certain standards the Democrats refer to as "fair trade".

Senator McCain supports increasing agriculture research and science-based agriculture to feed a growing world population that's set to double in 20 years. He understands the importance of modern livestock production practices to provide affordable food.

The Democrats seem to have gotten most of their grain and livestock policy information from environmental groups' websites and the U.S. Humane Society - too much CAFO bashing occurs in the Democrat ag policy to make me comfortable as a dairy farmer.

MCain-Palin team strongly supports more oil exploration and that could help farmers lower their input costs. The Democrats? Reluctantly, they have come to the table recently to support limited increases in oil exploration.

But farmers need to be looking at more than just a candidate's ag policy when they vote on November 4. The tax policy differences are huge between the two parties, and these differences will affect every farm family.

Wind fall profits. Barack Obama is beating up on the oil companies because market conditions have now increased profits in that industry. Without defining exactly what constitutes a "windfall", Obama wants to increase taxes on oil companies that make "too much" profit and send it back to the rest of America in the form of a "Making Work Pay" tax credit.

Before we talk more on this wealth re-distribution idea, let's consider a basic fallacy of this policy. What are the oil companies doing with those profits? Exactly what every business owner would do - trying to create more production so as to have more product to sell. I thought more oil was a goal - didn't you?

What about this basic concept of a business making "too much" money? US farmers are set to have back-to-back record years in profits because market conditions caused our commodity prices to increase. Does that constitute a "windfall profit"?

McCain supports extending the lower income tax rates passed in 2003. The other guy wants to repeal those. That means if your family's taxable income is $65,000, your tax rate will increase from 25% to 30.5%. If my math is correct, that is a tax increase of $3,575. In exchange he will give you a $500 tax credit from his "Making Work Pay" tax increase on those nasty oil companies.

In case you did not see the connection - with Democrats, the more you work - the more you pay, taxes that is. The other guy says that Americans need that money to help pay for their kid's college tuition and to make mortgage payments, etc. Must be he has forgotten that $500 does not even pay for your kid's books at college anymore.

McCain supports keeping the capital gains tax at 15%, the other guy will increase it. McCain wants to increase the estate tax (death tax) exemption to $10 million with a tax rate of 15% on the rest. The other guy - $7 million with a 45% tax rate on the rest.

McCain supported the 2008 legislation that extended the expensing option for businesses buying equipment and making technology investments, lowering taxes on small businesses. The other guy - we don't know because he was not present to vote.

The other guy is all about "change", which I agree is exactly what we will get with Democrats controlling the White House, the Senate and the House. The McCain team is all about creating additional wealth for every-day citizens with lower energy costs, lower taxes and more good paying jobs.

If you want "change" left in your pocket vote Democratic. If you want cash in the bank, vote the McCain-Palin team this fall.

A Movement to Break the Silence of Churches in Political Campaigns

kpaul.mallasch — Thu, 2 Oct 2008 23:12:21 -0700

By Floyd and Mary Beth Brown

In the summer of 1954, an ambitious senator from Texas running for re-election became afraid that he might not win re-election because several large churches in the state were speaking out against his liberal politics. So what did he do? Powerful Sen. Lyndon Baines Johnson rammed through Congress legislation that stripped these churches of their free-speech rights.

Fifty-four years after this travesty of justice became law; a courageous group of voices is breaking the silence.

Johnson manipulated the process and his fellow Senators who were anxious to leave for summer recess in 1954. No hearings, testimony or comments by any tax-exempt organizations occurred before this prohibition entered the Internal Revenue Tax Code. His amendment to the IRS Code bans intervention in political campaigns by organizations, including churches, which receive federal tax-exempt status. If a pastor speaks too loudly, the entire church can lose their tax-exemption. It worked like a charm for Johnson, and it stopped all criticism of him in Texas churches.

On September 28, a heroic group of pastors challenged the ban by testing their First Amendment rights. They are speaking out in their pulpits on politics.

But the question that begs to be answered is: has this prohibition contributed to moral decay in America? The moral decline of the nation accelerated after the ban was instituted. Abortion, sexual crimes, rape and pornography have all increased dramatically since Johnson’s gag order was passed.

“I believe the church has been silent too long, which is why we have so much corruption in the world now,” said one of those courageous ministers, Rev. Mike Gonzalez of Columbia, S.C.

The First Amendment of the Constitution provides that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…” Erik Stanley, legal counsel for Alliance Defense Fund, the organization that sponsored the Pulpit Freedom Sunday, argues, “IRS rules don’t trump the Constitution—and the First Amendment trumps the Johnson Amendment.”

A cloud of intimidation has been hanging over churches since 1954. “Pastors have a right to speak about biblical values from the pulpit without fear of punishment,” Stanley said. “No one should be able to use the government to intimidate pastors into giving up their constitutional rights…Groups like Americans United intentionally trigger IRS investigations that will silence churches through fear, intimidation, and disinformation.”

“They use that to keep religion out of morals,” says another pastor, Rev. Phil Ellsworth, who points out the church has historically always been involved in politics, using as examples the abolition of slavery, child labor laws and civil rights. “What some people call social issues, I call Bible. It’s our job to be involved.”

That’s why Rev. Gonzalez said to his congregation on Pulpit Freedom Sunday, “I urge you not to vote for Barack Obama or any candidate that stands in the same positions and activities that the Lord condemns.”

“The intimidation of churches by leftist groups using the IRS has grown to a point that ADF has no choice but to respond,” Stanley said, explaining why ADF felt the need to sponsor the “Pulpit Freedom Sunday” campaign to challenge the Johnson Amendment. “The number of threats being reported to ADF is growing because of the aggressive campaign to unlawfully silence the church. “

This ban on pastors “has always troubled me” said Rev. John W. Yates, a clergyman in the shadows of Washington from nearby Falls Church VA. “I’m skeptical about the government’s authority to dictate to the church in this way,” he said. “There is a cultural elitism in America that would like to keep religion privately comforting but publicly irrelevant! But if our biblical faith does not inform and shape our thinking on public policy and guide us in whom to vote for, we are simply failing in our responsibility as followers of Christ. We won’t always agree with one another, but it is unthinkable that followers of Christ wouldn’t evaluate candidates’ policies in light of the Word of God.”

Prior to the ADF designated Sunday encouraging pastors to defy the ban on political endorsements by churches, Yates said he did not plan to break the law. “But I could envision a time arising when I would feel that I would be disobeying God not to speak …about some political issue or election.”

Now we await the government’s next move, will they persecute the pastors that had the courage to stand up to this tyranny? America is watching.

©2008 Floyd and Mary Beth Brown. The Browns are bestselling authors and speakers. Together they write a national weekly column distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate. For more info call Cari Dawson Bartley at 800 696 7561 or e-mail cari@cagle.com.

Floyd’s latest book (with Lee Troxler) is “Obama Unmasked,” from Merril Press. Mary Beth's latest book is featured at www.condibook.com. Time magazine wrote of Floyd: "Brown has stature among devoted conservatives that almost matches his physical heft (6 ft. 6 in. and 240 lbs.)" See more at Floyd’s blog at www.2minuteview.com. To comment on this column, e-mail browns@caglecartoons.com.

Raging Moderate: Interesting Times

kpaul.mallasch — Thu, 2 Oct 2008 23:10:40 -0700

By Will Durst

Sweaty, wrestling scholars have yet to establish whether it’s a Chinese, Arabian or American curse; nonetheless somebody once said, “May you live in interesting times.” And sure as God made the larva of the coddling moth eager to worm its way into the core of little green apples, we are knee-deep in the middle of one of those “interesting times.” Any more interesting and psychiatrists will start franchising electro-shock therapy treatments at shopping mall kiosks.

The good news is Congress rewrote their $700 billion bailout bill and turned it into an $800 billion rescue plan. Totally different. Now it’s a rescue plan. Instead of a bailout bill. Sounds much friendlier. Besides, what’s $100 billion amongst friends? The bad news is they still haven’t done anything about it, which is surprising in the same way that discovering that the development of webbed fingers makes picking up dimes difficult, not to mention hair management.

What’s frustrating for us normal citizens who do not hold a doctorate in weekly misplacing the Gross National Product of Ecuador, is having absolutely no idea of what’s going on. And neither can anyone explain what this monetary CPR will or won’t do, or exactly who is going to end up with all that cash, or where they’re going to put it, and whether they’ll need countersunk hinges for the steel vault doors set over their newly dug underground bunkers to hide it all.

We have many questions. Such as who are we helping out: Wall St. or Main St.? Will I still be able to afford premium cable? Is this a Band-Aid or a full-body containment suit? Can displaced homeowners pack future CEO Golden Parachutes? And finally, and most importantly, is Nancy Pelosi’s face capable of any expression at all?

Twenty-five hundred dollars for every man, woman and child in America to help out broke stockbrokers just seems so, what do you call it, wrong. For all we know, Henry Paulson’s big bailout blueprint is to head straight to Vegas: “900 billion on red.” And that’s another thing. When everybody in America knows the name of the secretary of the treasury, that’s not good.

First the Sec Treas called it the Troubled Asset Relief Program. Then it was rejected as the Bailout Bill and embraced as the Rescue Package. Now it’s the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008. Glad they threw that date in on the end so that we’ll be able to distinguish it from the Emergency Economic Stabilization Acts of 2009, 2010 & 2010A.

The fact that this Bailout to Nowhere is growing faster than time-lapse bamboo may be prompting some members to pass it quickly before it swamps DC in paper and debt. In less than a week, it bulked up from 3 pages to 102 to 451 pages and is swallowing buckets of steroid-ed earmarks as we speak. Rumors have it that one of its newer provisions loosens accounting rules for Wall St. HEY! Isn’t that what got us into this mess in the first place?

Being largely a crisis of confidence over our foundering Ship of State, it is more comforting than polar bear fur against a naked buttock knowing George Bush is steady at the helm. He actually said out loud in front of people holding microphones “we’re working hard on economic turmoil.” Thanks George, Mission Accomplished. Finally gets one thing right, and its economic turmoil. I ask you now: What are the odds?

Copyright ©2008 Will Durst.

Making Sense: Whodunit?

kpaul.mallasch — Thu, 2 Oct 2008 23:07:46 -0700

By Michael Reagan

I listen to all this talk in the media about the failure of the bailout in the House Monday -- what happened? Where did it go wrong? Why didn’t it pass? They’re running around pointing fingers -- saying it was the Democrats, it was the Republicans, it was the White House -- and nobody has a clue of what really happened and who made it happen.

They should have asked my wife, Colleen. That night she put her finger on it, saying that she --and millions of angry Americans who were dead-set against bailing out the very people who caused this mess -- were the ones who killed the measure.

Congress was deluged by a flood of phone calls and e-mails all warning that Americans were violently opposed to the bailout and would exact punishment at the polls next month from members who voted for it. The people spoke loud and clear, and their voices were heard on Capitol Hill.

As Colleen said to me, it just may be that we’re smarter than those people in Washington and Wall Street who think we’re a bunch of ninnies who they can con whenever they feel like it. We get it and we understand it.

They forgot what Abraham Lincoln advised when he said, “You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all of the time.”

This was one of the times they tried to fool all of us. It didn’t work. Back to the drawing boards.

We looked at it and we saw fear-mongering-- attempts to panic us into believing that the banks had no money to lend, and credit was dried up and loans were almost impossible to get -- all being peddled from the White House, the Treasury and the Fed, and all the way down to the House and Senate, Wall Street and much of the media.

We knew that was untrue because our daughter, Ashley, had just qualified and easily obtained a mortgage on a $360,000 townhouse from a small local bank. The bank had foreclosed on the house and was stuck with a defaulted mortgage of $560,000. Ashley, who is 25 and a schoolteacher, got the townhouse for $200,000 under what the bank held in bad paper.

Home sales in California in August were up 56 percent over August a year ago. Why? Because now is a good time to get in. There are all kinds of bargains available. Now there are possibilities of making a profit on investments. The market was up Tuesday. Why? Because it was a good time to get in. Maybe America just got it right.

Monday the market went down 6.7 percent, and it was panic time. Back in 1987, when my dad was president, the market dropped 22.6 percent -- a 508-point drop in one day -- it was the largest single drop in the history of the market.

Did President Reagan panic? Were there calls for bailouts? No. Instead, my dad simply said hold the course -- what goes down must in fact go up. He made sure that there was no panic. By remaining calm and steady he kept the nation and the market calm, and what happened? Since 1987, the market has been up as high as almost 12,000 points. Now it's down to a little over 10,000. In 1987, the market dropped all the way down to about 1786 points. And we didn't panic.

What's going on now in Washington is a panic-driven attempt to cope with a temporary problem. We seem to have forgotten the old adage about the foolishness of acting in haste leading to repenting in leisure.

Mike Reagan, the elder son of the late President Ronald Reagan, is heard on more than 200 talk radio stations nationally as part of the Radio America Network. Look for Mike’s newest book, “Twice Adopted” and other info at www.Reagan.com. E-mail comments to Reagan@caglecartoons.com.

©2008 Mike Reagan.

No Cheers for the Bailout -- Ron Paul Interview

kpaul.mallasch — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 23:20:33 -0700

By Bill Steigerwald

The Ron Paul Solution

You can't pin any blame for the country's financial meltdown on Congressman Ron Paul. The libertarian Texas Republican and former Pittsburgher has been warning for two decades about the unhappy -- and inevitable -- economic consequences of a loose monetary policy, fiscal irresponsibility and too much meddling in the marketplace by the federal government.

Not surprisingly, Rep. Paul says he is "positively opposed" to what he calls the Bush administration's "slipshod" $700 billion bailout plan. As Paul warned the House of Representatives Wednesday, "Our economy faces a bleak future, particularly if the latest $700 billion bailout plan ends up passing. We risk committing the same errors that prolonged the misery of the Great Depression, namely keeping prices from falling."

I talked to Paul by phone from Washington early Thursday evening as the Beltway political powers were still meeting and trying to agree on how to fix the problem they are largely responsible for creating.

Q: I suspect we won't hear you cheering about the bailout -- or "The Rescue" -- as they are trying to call it?

A: No way. I think that it's just going to bring more problems. You can't stop a problem of too much spending and too much deficits and too much monetary inflation with more of it. So I’m positively opposed to the bailout and believe it will just delay the correction that is required. We need to correct the imbalances and if you interfere, you just delay it and make it more difficult and make the problems worse for ourselves.

Q: Did you see President Bush’s 15-minute speech on the economic crisis Thursday night?

A: I did see part of it.

Q: Do you think he is telling the story as straight as he should be or is he glossing over some things?

A: Well, I’m sure he’s glossing over. I imagine he believes what he’s saying. But you know I was just on the (House) floor and a couple other members came over and showed me some articles and letters they’ve received. One was from a banker who’s involved with 1,500 banks in the South. He was positively opposed to the bailout. He said, “Why punish all of us when just a few people have really messed up?” Someone else came along with a chart that showed that credit has not frozen up and that there’s as much credit available in the last couple weeks as there was in the last six months. So that means the (bailout supporters) are working on some propaganda to sort of frighten members of Congress into voting for it. If you don’t vote for it, and there’s a problem, then you’re going to be blamed for it.

Q: Is this truly a national crisis? So many of national crises really are regionalized or localized problems.

A: I think of it as a crisis. I've been talking about it for a long time and have said we will have a financial disruption and an attack on the dollar. But I think the way they are talking is that if you don't pass it this weekend then by Monday the market might go down 10,000 points. I think it's not that type of crisis, but I think it's very significant that if we continue our ways we'll eventually destroy the dollar. Yet what they are doing is bringing that on because they are doing the wrong thing.

Q: You pin most of the blame for this crisis on government.

A: Oh yeah. More specifically, the Federal Reserve. (It's) responsible for the booms and the busts. You can't have this type of a boom cycle without a Federal Reserve and a central bank and it can be bounded with other parts of the government. Legislation might push an excessive amount of money into certain areas in addition to the easy-money system, and that's what I think happened. There were these affirmative action programs where banks were literally encouraged or told they had to make bad loans. The Community Reinvestment Act tells them they can be fined a lot of money for denying loans that are risky. It's sort of ironic.

And if one looks at the total problem of inflation, in which prices go up because of the increases in the money supply, certain areas go up much faster than others. So medical care and education and houses went up much faster but then there has to be corrections. They get out of whack and these prices have to come down. So we see the correction and the sooner you get the prices down, the better it is for everybody.

Q: From what I understand the major problem goes back to housing, housing, housing. Home prices were inflated and now the bubble has burst and you argue that prices should be allowed to fall to whatever their real level should be and not be propped up by a federal bailout.

A: That's right, and I accuse (Federal Reserve Chairman Ben) Bernanke of being a price-fixer. He wants to buy these illiquid assets and keep the price up and they may be worthless. So they want you to limit your thinking to the immediate problem -- the downturn in the housing market. But they don't want to talk about who caused the upturn and the excesses in the housing market -- and that was government. They don't talk about the cause. They just say, "We're here now. What are we going to do about it?" In medicine, you can't really treat a disease very well if you don't know the exact cause.

Q: The $700 billion figure. If you multiply roughly 3 million homes in foreclosure by $100,000 -- assuming they are underwater on their mortgages by an average of $100,000 -- that's "only" $300 billion.

A: So where's all this money going, huh?

Q: Yes.

A: Propping up derivatives; that's the scam. It's the so-called "illiquid assets." I think that's a misnomer. I think it's "worthless assets" that are being bought up so some of these big guys don't get wiped out.

Q: You say a $700 billion bailout is only a temporary fix.

A: Yeah, it is. If you come to the conclusion that you have to liquidate debt, the faster you get it over with the sooner the economy goes back to work. So they're propping up the prices artificially on houses and at the same time they are saying, "How can we stimulate housing growth?" Well, there are too many houses. You want the supply and demand of houses to adjust, so you let the prices of houses come down and let the houses get in the hands of people who really want them and can afford them and you quit building houses for a while.

So, yeah, you have a booming economy when you deceive the people and you stimulate the economy with easy credit. But you've got to make up for it eventually, and that's the part that nobody likes. We have prevented any attempt at correction essentially over the past 20 years. So we have a bigger bubble than ever before, which means we'll have a bigger correction than ever before. So the only question is, should it be a short, tough correction or a very long, tough correction?

Q: What is your solution for avoiding this kind of sudden national emergency?

A: You need to allow a liquidation of debt, which means bankruptcies. You should treat it like Lehman Brothers -- let them go broke and the good assets will be bought up. But you should restore confidence and encourage business activity. It isn't a lack of regulation that was the problem, it was the lack of the market being allowed to work.

We don't need more Sarbanes-Oxley (financial reporting) regulations like those that came out of Enron. But we should assure the markets that we are going to live within our means. I think the federal budget ought to be balanced. You could do that rather quickly by changing our foreign policy. But people aren't quite willing to give up the welfare-warfare state. But if you did that, things could come back very quickly.

Bill Steigerwald is a columnist at the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. E-mail Bill at steigerwald@caglecartoons.com. ©Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, All Rights Reserved.

Making Sense: Let's Get It Right

kpaul.mallasch — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 23:18:03 -0700

By Michael Reagan

Congress is running around in circles trying to figure out how to handle the hot potato the Bush Administration has handed them with its $700 billion bailout proposal, and how they can load it up with their own list of taxpayer-financed handouts.

If left to their own devices they’ll turn it into a giant cookie jar instead of taking the trouble to enact the measures that will boost the economy when it is in deep trouble.

The bailout is a panic remedy designed to prop up the crumbling mortgage market by buying up mountains of near-worthless paper currently poisoning America’s credit system while ignoring the root causes of the nation’s economic malaise.

No matter how it’s described, it is a socialistic answer to a capitalist problem. It does nothing to foster the system of free enterprise upon which America’s prosperity depends.

Put simply, that system is shackled around the ankles with chains fashioned by a series of Congresses, many of whose members either don’t understand the principles of free enterprise or simply despise it as a mortal enemy of the Marxist dogma many of them embrace with near-religious fervor.

The clear and simple answer to our current economic dilemma is to take those shackles off and allow our free enterprise system to function unimpaired with unnecessary bureaucratic meddling.

Turn America’s economic engine loose and all by itself it will create the kind of prosperity that saw a rustic combination of 13 British colonies transformed into the wealthiest and most powerful nation in world history.

“We did it before,” as the World War II song boasted, “and we can do it again.”

If allowed to, that is.

American businesses and America’s small businessmen and women who make $250,000 a year -- the people who create most of the jobs in the marketplace -- are groaning under the burden of corporate and personal taxation. At a corporate tax rate of 35 percent we have the second-highest in the world.

There aren’t enough people making $250,000 a year to finance Barack Obama’s extravagant spending plans, let alone the ability to pay for the $700 billion bailout. He has to look elsewhere -- in this case the only place he can look -- to the middle class.

Like Willie Sutton, who said he robbed banks because that’s where the money is, Obama is going to have go after the middle class because that’s where the real tax money is.

Eliminate capital-gains taxes, cut individual and corporate tax rates to the bone, and watch the economy soar and unemployment shrink.

Don’t allow boneheaded ideas like Barack Obama’s plan to increase taxes at a time of economic crisis become a reality. He tells us that his tax plan would reduce the taxes of 95 percent of the American people, but doesn’t say how he can give a tax break to the 40 percent of them who don’t pay any income taxes at all. Since they can’t get a tax refund for taxes they don’t pay, he wants the people who pay taxes to send them a check.

Obama also wants to throw a monkey wrench into the economy by allowing the Bush tax cuts, which set off an economic boom, to expire. That would be a massive tax increase and it would have a deadly effect on the incomes of the very middle class Obama professes to champion.

Congress should waste no time at all in repealing the ill-conceived Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which was allegedly designed to reform American business practices but instead drove scores of American firms abroad to foreign nations.

Let Congress get out of the way and let the American people and American businesses do what they have always done best -- put their shoulders to the wheel, their ingenuity to work, and perform economic miracles.

Mike Reagan, the elder son of the late President Ronald Reagan, is heard on more than 200 talk radio stations nationally as part of the Radio America Network. Look for Mike’s newest book, “Twice Adopted” and other info at www.Reagan.com. E-mail comments to Reagan@caglecartoons.com.

©2008 Mike Reagan.

Change We Can Spare

kpaul.mallasch — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 15:09:31 -0700

By Tom Purcell

"Boy, I can't wait for Obama to bring us the change we need."

"Change? What change?"

"At the Democratic National Convention, he said he's going to cut wasteful spending in Washington! We certainly need to rein in all the taxpayer dough those birds in Washington keep squandering."

"To be sure, Washington has been squandering plenty. President Bush's annual budgets grew from $2 trillion to more than $3 trillion in only six years. But why do you think Obama is the guy to rein in spending?"

"Because he and Joe Biden have a record of getting the job done."

"I hate to break your bubble, but, according to Citizens Against Government Waste, Obama and Biden are two of the biggest spenders in the Senate. Where spending is concerned, they are classified as 'hostile and 'unfriendly,' respectively, according to CAGW's rating system."

"They are?"

"On a scale of zero to 100 percent -- with 100 percent representing someone who manages taxpayer money frugally -- CAGW gave Obama a 10 percent score for 2007 and a lifetime score of 18 percent."

"That's not so good."

"Biden was given a zero percent score for 2007 and a lifetime score of 22 percent. The rankings make perfect sense. According to the National Journal, Obama and Biden are ranked as the first and third most liberal U.S. senators."

"What's so wrong about being liberal?"

"Nothing, except that many liberals believe more government programs are the best way to solve America's problems. Both Obama and Biden have a record of promoting bigger government and more spending. Neither met an earmark they didn't like."

"What do you mean by 'earmark'?"

"An earmark is an authorization to use taxpayer money to fund a specific project. Our esteemed politicians frequently slip them into various bills when nobody is watching. Some earmarks are useful, but many represent wasteful government spending at its worst."

"Why have Obama and Biden never met an earmark they didn't like?"

"Since he became a U.S. senator, Obama slipped nearly $1 billion in earmarks into various bills, such as three-quarters of a million to fund a visitors' center and another $700,000 to fund soybean-disease research."

"What's wrong with visitors and healthier soybeans?"

"I'm in favor of both, but why do you and I have to pay for them? As for Biden, he slipped in $120 million in earmarks in 2007 alone. His earmarks funded everything from oyster-bed revitalization to the renovation of an opera house."

"You'll be thanking Joe the next time you go to Delaware to take in an opera. Besides, don't all the senators waste dough? Surely McCain is just as guilty."

"The fact is McCain has never asked for a single earmark in all the years he's been in the Senate. Last year, he was given a 100 percent rating by CAGW and classified a 'hero.'"

"A hero?"

"He would have been classified a 'superhero,' the highest classification, had he not missed so many votes while on the campaign trail. McCain also was given a lifetime rating of 88 percent."

"OK, hotshot, then what about Sarah Palin?"

"CAGW's ratings apply only to members of the U.S. Congress. It is the Congress, not a governor, who funds earmarks. CAGW did, however, praise Palin for cutting wasteful spending in her state."

"Yeah, well what about that Bridge to Nowhere, the poster child of wasteful earmark spending?"

"Palin did support that project early on, but, like it or not, she was the one who finally killed it. And like it or not, it was McCain who opposed it and Obama and Biden who voted for it."

"So you're saying that Obama's promises of change and reduced spending don't correlate with his record?"

"I'm saying that if you want wasteful spending to be reined in, McCain is much more likely to do it than Obama -- if that's the kind of change you're looking for."

©2008 Tom Purcell.

Bill Maher's Nasty Circus of the Stars

kpaul.mallasch — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 01:18:58 -0700

By Bill Steigerwald

As Bill Maher watched Roseanne Barr deliver her inane rant on the Sept. 12 "Real Time With Bill Maher," it looked -- for half a millisecond -- that he, too, realized what a fool she was making of herself.

But Maher, the caustic comedian and fake libertarian who Larry King thinks is a political pundit and Jonah Goldberg has called a ”libertine socialist,” let his beloved Roseanne babble on about how Gov. Sarah Palin was getting away with racist comments and how rich people who work for big corporations don't pay enough taxes.

Roseanne was a special guest on Episode 132 of Maher's HBO show -- which was re-run all last week until a fresh show appeared Sept. 19 -- because some people Maher knew were saying her life story was a lot like Gov. Palin's.

Roseanne, like Palin, was a working-class mother with lots of kids who came out of obscurity to become famous. And, Maher cracked, whereas Palin has an infant with special needs, Roseanne was once married to Tom Arnold.

That was one of the funnier lines in an often obnoxious, mean-spirited, politically lopsided talk-and-quip show whose anti-Palin/anti-Republican theme was broken only by the occasional Bush bashing or token Bill Clinton joke.

Maher's three guest panelists were comedian Janeane Garofalo, author Salman Rushdie and Wall Street Journal columnist John Fund. Paul Begala, the loyal Clintonista, appeared via satellite.

Maher was the alpha attack dog. Saying he was "officially frightened" by Palin's interview with Charlie Gibson, he called Palin "a Category 5 moron" and said it's unfair to compare pigs to Palin because pigs are smart and "don't believe in creationism."

Garofalo, ill-mannered and looking and acting strange, accused Fund of being dishonest and a sexist. She said George W. Bush didn't win the election of either 2000 or 2004, when "democracy was hacked." And she semi-joked that Republicans should be jailed for being in favor of things like torture and against "reproductive justice."

Rushdie's two-rupees' worth of commentary was mostly liberal boilerplate about Republican misrule, but at least he was adult and civilized.

Poor John Fund. He was beaten up for being smug (by Rushdie), for being a cynic (by Maher) and for being a liar (by Garofalo).

Fund defended Republicans and conservatives, even when they didn't deserve it. But he was interrupted long before he could explain to everyone that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were not stereotypical corporations but government-sponsored enterprises that were poorly regulated and wrecked by politicians of both parties.

Fund's nuances were not appreciated. The partisan gang-bang became so obviously unfair that as time was running out Maher, not known for having a conscience, gave Fund a tip of the hat for putting up a good fight against 4-1 odds. "So what?!" Garofalo shrieked.

Meanwhile, the studio audience, as usual, cheered wildly every time someone knocked Palin or McCain, praised Sen. Obama or said, as Garofalo so cogently did, that Democrats are fundamentally more "decent" than Republicans.

The unbalanced politics of Episode 132 -- not to mention its kindergarten level of discourse – was not atypical. It demonstrated why "Real Time" has become unwatchable for all non-liberals and libertarians or anyone who wants to hear more than a sentence or two of enlightening discussion or honest debate.

Maher has said his show’s first priority is not to achieve political fairness and balance but to provide adult, knowledgeable conversation. Episode 132 had little of either.

Republicans and President Bush deserve to be trashed from across the political spectrum for the many dumb and bad things they've done at home or abroad. It's also reasonable to question Palin's credentials or the decision to pick her.

But the Maher-Garofalo-Rushdie-Barr tag-team made fools of themselves. Nasty fools. And Episode 132 only accomplished what Maher's shows usually do -- validate every stereotype ever made about the simplistic politics, narrow minds and creepy values of Hollywood.

Bill Steigerwald is a columnist at the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. E-mail Bill at steigerwald@caglecartoons.com. ©Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, All Rights Reserved.

Raging Moderate: Old Piranha Pants

kpaul.mallasch — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 19:23:03 -0700

By Will Durst

Got a message for Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin. Hey, lady. How ya doing? Me too. It’s going around. Listen, the couch is over there and you might want to lie down and take a Zen moment to get over your bad self. You had a nice run: your moment in the sun, complete with an SNL skit featuring your doppelganger, Tina Fey, but now the honeymoon is over and you should moose up and use this quiet time to devise an actual stance in lieu of a pose. I’m sorry to be the one to have to say this, but you are SO earlier-this-month. It’s your partner, John McCain, who’s back in the news. And not in what you call your good way.

His iron grip on what is generally regarded as reality slipped like the manual transmission on a Model T Ford with a faulty handbrake parked on a San Francisco hill facing up. He’s reverted to his pre-convention state of fumbling and foundering and flummoxing and falling into a fevered form of flabbergast. And it’s that nasty old economy that’s the piranha in his pants biting his big white furry butt. Again.

Earlier this year he said he didn’t know much about it. And it’s not that hard to believe him. If he could point out three distinct differences between Lehman Brothers and the Jonas Brothers, I’d be as shocked as a giraffe on a glass escalator after too many fermented Blackberries that the Arizona Senator either did or didn’t invent. You might say he takes an arm’s length approach to the economy. You might also say that arm length is extended enough to qualify for frequent flyer miles.

It was drinking the Daily Gallup Kool-Aid that transformed Dr. Unconcerned into Mr. Proactive. But even with the makeup and the rubber mask, the role still seems a bit off-kilter on a man who is so notoriously free market that he escorted the French philosopher Laissez- Faire out of range of the security cameras, fed him a handful of roofies, then locked him in the evidence room behind a file cabinet wrapped in a pile of piano blankets.

Responding to the recent Chernobyl-sized melt down on Wall Street, the Bush Successor Wannabe insisted that, “The fundamentals of our economy are strong,” demonstrating a cluelessness you don’t normally associate with folks still in possession of a pulse, or not related to one of the judges on “So You Think You Can Dance.” But totally in line from a guy not sure of how many houses he owns. And I have a quick question here: When you own seven houses, how big do your pants pockets need to be to accommodate all your keys? He should do what I always do: Trade four houses for a hotel.

McCain jumped off the De-Regulation Express so fast, that Jamaican Bolt guy probably tried to buy his shoes. His cure for what ails us calls for empanelling a blue ribbon study group like the 9/11 Commission, sounding like reform the same way that a pneumatic jack- hammer sounds like a dial tone. He put off proposing concrete solutions, such as equipping tourists with steel umbrellas to repel falling hedge fund brokers, but maybe he’s squirreling that one away for his fact-finding commission. He did talk about dismantling the Old Boy Network in Washington, and that could actually work. Especially when you consider the Senator’s current standing as Ranking Old Boy.

Copyright ©2008 Will Durst. Will Durst is a political comedian who has performed around the world. He is a familiar pundit on television and radio. E-mail Will at durst@caglecartoons.com. Check out willandwillie.com for the latest podcast. Will Durst’s book, “The All American Sport of Bipartisan Bashing,” is available now from Amazon and better bookstores all over this great land of ours. Don’t forget to check out his “Burst of Durst” 60 second videos at YouTube.

How Low Will Obama Go to Win?

kpaul.mallasch — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 19:21:11 -0700

By Floyd and Mary Beth Brown

Barack Obama is habitually saying one thing to one group, then something entirely different to other people. That is, if he thinks they want to hear it, or if it will benefit him.

Duplicity, which Webster’s dictionary defines as “doubleness of heart or speech; the act or practice of exhibiting different or contrary sentiments, at different times, in relation to the same thing,” perfectly describes this character flaw in Obama. However, a more commonly used term is “two-faced.”

If this were a one-time occurrence, it would be one thing. But Obama wants to win so badly that he is willing to do almost anything -- to win. His celebrated trip to Iraq serves as a recent example of Obama’s duplicity.

“While campaigning in public for a speedy withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq, Sen. Barack Obama has tried in private to persuade Iraqi leaders to delay an agreement on a draw-down of the American military presence,” the New York Post said in an article covering this latest controversy.

In the Post piece, Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said Obama’s primary theme in his discussions with Iraqi leaders was that of delaying withdrawal of U.S. troops. "He asked why we were not prepared to delay an agreement until after the U.S. elections and the formation of a new administration in Washington," Zebari said. Obama told the Iraqi leaders it was in both sides’ interests to wait and not negotiate with the Bush administration in its "state of weakness and political confusion." Instead of reaching an agreement with Bush, Obama advised Iraqi leaders to request an extension of the U.N. mandate.

What Obama really meant but didn’t say, is that it is in his own self interest, not America’s or Iraq’s, to wait until after the election, so that he can look good by pulling out the troops as the new president.

Besides Obama’s oft-repeated line about pulling the troops out of Iraq, in the past he frequently liked to boast that his campaign was going to be above board, saying, “We're going to have a campaign free of the usual manipulations and distortions, we're going to run a campaign we can be proud of.”

Is ridiculing a war veteran’s disabilities sustained while a POW something of which Obama is proud? Obama mocks Sen. McCain in a recent campaign commercial for not being computer savvy. A sarcastic voice in the ad says, "It's extraordinary that someone who wants to be our president and our commander in chief doesn't know how to send an e-mail."

If Obama had not been so quick to make fun of McCain for not using email, he would have found out the reason why the Vietnam War veteran is not able to use a computer keyboard. His war injuries keep him from being able to do according to the Boston Globe.

His smacks at Sen. McCain over the recent troubles on Wall Street also ring as two-faced. Senator McCain has tried to reform Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. Sen. Obama is on record as opposing these reforms. He received large financial support for his campaigns from the executives in these firms because of his steadfast refusal to support real reforms of these broken firms.

Obama is the darling of these and other troubled firms on Wall Street if you judge their wishes based on the cold hard cash they are pumping into his campaign.

Moreover, let’s not forgot Obama’s now-famous quip about people living in small towns that he said behind closed doors at a fundraising event in wealthy Marin County /San Francisco, thinking those small-town folks would never hear them.

"You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest… it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them."

With the election drawing close and November right around the corner, it will be interesting to see in the coming days just how low Obama will go to win.

©2008 Floyd and Mary Beth Brown. The Browns are bestselling authors and speakers. Together they write a national weekly column distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Floyd’s latest book (with Lee Troxler) is “Obama Unmasked,” from Merril Press. Mary Beth's latest book is featured at www.condibook.com. Time magazine wrote of Floyd: "Brown has stature among devoted conservatives that almost matches his physical heft (6 ft. 6 in. and 240 lbs.)" See more at Floyd’s blog at www.2minuteview.com. To comment on this column, e-mail browns@caglecartoons.com.

Raging Moderate: The Unkosher Candidate

kpaul.mallasch — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 20:27:08 -0700

By Will Durst

Settle down people. For crum’s sake, you’re going to burst a collective blood vessel here and end up squirting self-righteous juice all over your nice slacks. All this garment staining simply because Barack Obama said his opponent’s call for change was similar to applying lipstick to a pig. Which made John McCain go crazier than a drunken evangelist in a transvestite strip bar, accusing Obama of insulting Sarah Palin. I’m not sure, but I think the senator from Arizona called his own vice-presidential pick a pig. That can’t be good. Or does the wizened albino iguana know something we don’t?

Perhaps the problem is the Democratic nominee needs to be more explicit. In order to determine proper porcine provenance, preciser information needs be provided. What kind of lipstick? And what kind of pig? Not all pork is created equal you know. And neither, as any woman over the age of 12 can tell you, are all lipsticks. What are we talking here: Chanel Rouge Noir on a Jambon de Iberica? Or Maybelline on a Hormel Picnic Ham? Is there a pineapple glaze involved? Some sort of weird double-runic clove ring spiked into the top? Is the pig in question publicly displayed or secluded in a poke? And most importantly, do you need a ten-foot pole to poke a pig in a poke?

These new Republican girl rules are strict. First off, you can’t say anything negative about the candidate. “She was in favor of the Bridge to Nowhere before she was against it.” “Sexist pig.” “Being next to Russia gives her foreign policy experience the same way living next to McDonalds makes somebody an expert in FDA regulations.” “Chauvinist.” “Her hair is sort of Amy Winehouse-ish.” “Swine.” “She’s a she.” “Man.” Two legs good. Four legs bad.

If you consider Republicans crying “sexist” a little like a hurricane calling a tornado erratic, you, my friends, are not alone. In addition, certain words have been swept completely off the table since Ms. Palin branded them with her own personal narrative copyright. Until November 5, nobody in the Lower 48 is allowed to use the following words: “pig,” “pit-bull,” “lipstick,” “eye-shadow,” “Alaska,” “earmark,” “hockey,” “lacrosse,” “jai alai,” “mom,” “small-town,” “trooper,” “the,” “moose,” and “squirrel,” without the expressed written consent of the RNC, the FEC and Bud Siegel.

Gov. Palin is harder to pin down than a greased Berkshire on a Slip-N-Slide during a olive-oil squirt-gun fight. Partly the result of being cloistered for two weeks with Joe Lieberman, cramming for her vice-presidential finals, soon to be taken with rival Joe Biden. Whoa. Locked into a room with Joe Lieberman. Maybe we should all cut the little lady some slack. Sorry. Big lady. Big woman. Female candidate. The bespectacled Y chromosome-lacking person. This does get complicated doesn’t it?

Her single foray into Charlie Gibson’s paternal grimace penumbra proved inconclusive. People who liked her, still like her and those who didn’t, don’t. Rick Davis, the Palin/ McCain campaign manager said the press is not going to speak to her again until they start showing some deference. Deference? Politicians demanding deference now? Whoa. What a delicate little flower our raven-haired moose-killer turns out to be. Are we going to have to start addressing her as “Your Ladyship”? Will there be pillows for our knees whilst genuflecting? A ring to kiss? I just hope she takes it out of the back pocket of her jeans first.

Copyright ©2008 Will Durst. Will Durst is a political comedian who has performed around the world. He is a familiar pundit on television and radio. E-mail Will at durst@caglecartoons.com. Check out willandwillie.com for the latest podcast. Will Durst’s book, “The All American Sport of Bipartisan Bashing,” is available now from Amazon and better bookstores all over this great land of ours.

Campaign Jokes Are Telling

kpaul.mallasch — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 20:24:24 -0700

By Tom Purcell

If there's truth in humor, what do late-night jokes tell us about the presidential campaign?

John McCain is old. Most jokes about him dwell on his age. None of the jokes are biting, however, and many are laugh-out-loud funny:

"Earlier today, John McCain released 1,200 pages of his medical records. Or, as his doctor calls it, Chapter One." -- Conan O'Brien

"Cindy McCain sprained her wrist. Doctors say it's nothing serious -- she probably did it cutting John McCain's meat into little tiny pieces." -- Craig Ferguson

"Good news for John McCain -- his poll numbers are up 4 percent, liver spots down 3 percent." -- Jay Leno

Where jokes are concerned, there hasn't been much interest in Democratic vice-presidential candidate Joe Biden, but that may change if he keeps making gaffes:

"Joe Biden put his foot in his mouth the other day. He told a crowd that Hillary is as qualified or more qualified that he is. Plus she still has her original hair." -- Jay Leno

However, there's tremendous energy surrounding Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin.

Initially, the Palin jokes were nasty and targeted her political positions aggressively. Several jokes attacked Palin by way of her 17-year-old daughter, as reflected in this Conan O'Brien line:

"Vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin has many views. She says she's opposed to same-sex marriage. Yeah, Palin says everyone knows marriage isn't for gay people; it's for pregnant teenagers."

Other jokes tried to frame her as a good-looking ditz, a gun-toting nut job and a white-trash hick:

"The McCain people believe Americans will disregard her inexperience because they will fall in love with her story. She was a runner-up in the 1984 Miss Alaska Pageant, which may sound trite, but you try walking in high-heeled snow shoes." -- Bill Maher

"I saw that they're selling Sarah Palin action figures. Sad incident at Toys R Us today -- a Sarah Palin doll shot My Little Pony." -- Jimmy Kimmel

"We're learning more about Sarah Palin. It turns out she and her entire family once had a chair-throwing brawl on 'Jerry Springer.'" -- David Letterman

Now that Palin has upended the election -- notions of her as a ditzy religious-right radical are not sticking -- the tenor of the Palin jokes appears to be changing. There appear to be fewer biting jokes -- fewer in which she is the butt of the gags, as reflected in this line:

"Sources in North Korea say that dictator Kim Jong Il is very sick. He may have to shift power to one of his three sons. Still, there's an out-of-the-box chance he'll pick Sarah Palin." -- Conan O'Brien

A recent New York Times report examined why comics are having trouble getting a comedic bead on Obama. Is it because he's the new guy on the block and deserving of some slack? That he's the first black presidential candidate? That some in the audience are so attached to him they don't laugh at jokes about him? Or that he hasn't yet slipped up badly enough to give comics a fat, juicy theme?

Whatever the cause, comics use Obama to set up jokes, but he's hardly ever been the butt of them. Here's a very funny example:

"Barack Obama gave a speech in Germany and 200,000 people showed up. There were so many Germans shouting and screaming that France surrendered just in case." -- Craig Ferguson

Now that Obama's fortunes have shifted -- he's no longer the front-runner and trails in various polls -- the jokes appear to be changing. His rock-star status is the butt of this one:

"They're saying that Barack Obama is starting to slip in the polls. But don't worry. He has a plan. He's going to go back to campaigning in Europe." -- David Letterman

Some accuse late-night comics of hitting Republicans harder than Democrats, but, for the most part, they go wherever the laughs are -- their jokes often reflect what America is really thinking.

If Obama starts becoming the butt of jokes -- if the comics begin mocking his inability to win, as they did John Kerry in 2004 -- that won't bode well for his chances in November.

I doubt Obama supporters will find anything funny about that.

©2008 Tom Purcell. Tom is a humor columnist nationally syndicated exclusively by Cagle Cartoons.

Why Team Obama Won't Win Pennsylvania

kpaul.mallasch — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 03:38:46 -0700

By Bill Steigerwald

Long before Sarah Palin gave Republicans a reason to go on living, it was a good bet that Barack Obama would not win Pennsylvania in November.

It’s not because Sen. Obama is 50 percent black and Pennsylvania is 85 percent white. Or because, as Gov. Ed Rendell truthfully let slip back in February, some conservative white Pennsylvania Democrats are not yet ready to vote for a black man for president.

It’s also not because Pennsylvania’s population skews too old and too patriotic and John McCain is a 72-year-old war hero. Or even because Obama got caught uttering that elitist cultural slur about small-town Pennsylvanians feeling bitter and clinging to their guns and religion.

Sen. Obama is destined to lose Pennsylvania's 21 electoral votes -- and therefore probably the White House -- because he made one simple but huge mistake in his primary battle with Hillary Clinton here in April:

He didn’t play the “sports card.”

By failing to pander shamelessly to the largest and most important voting bloc in Western Pennsylvania -- white, socially conservative, Reagan Democrat sports fans -- Obama missed a golden chance to endear himself forever to hundreds of thousands of men, women and children in the region who own Pittsburgh Steelers or Pittsburgh Penguins game jerseys.

Obama’s failure to exploit the Pittsburgh area’s sports vote cost him dearly against Clinton. In Allegheny County, where the heavily Democratic city of Pittsburgh is and where about 75,000 blacks live, Obama beat Hillary by 55 percent to 45 percent. But he got crushed by her by roughly 2-1 ratios in the four surrounding counties.

So pay no attention to those presidential polls that now say Pennsylvania is essentially a tossup. Obama is going to lose the state because he’s going to lose big to the John McCain-Sarah Palin father-daughter team in Steelers Country.

Obama could sleep on the 50-yard line at Heinz Field and sing the national anthem at a dozen high school football games for the next seven weeks and it wouldn’t do him any good.

It's game over around here for his Blue team. To Pittsburghers -- who grow up worshipping sports stars, dress in black and gold on Sundays and think tailgating is the eighth sacrament -- Obama, despite his smooth b-ball skills, has become the nerdy guy who bowls like a girl and mis-calls the Penn State football team the “Nittaly Lions.”

Meanwhile, Sarah of Alaska and Western Pennsylvanians fell in love at first sight.

The moose-shooting hockey mom and former basketball starlet – a Steelers fan whose hubby is a he-man snowmobile racer and member of the Steelworkers union -- already has stolen the hearts of local sports fans. Of both sexes.

By the time Election Day rolls around, if she and McCain have been smart, Sarah will have been seen flirting with Steelers hero Big Ben Roethlisberger, skating arm-and-arm with Pens superstar Sidney Crosby and shooting holes through Osama bin Laden targets at local rifle ranges.

Obamaphiles, Hillary loyalists and public school teachers won’t fall for the Republicans' blessed mother. Neither will staunch libertarians, who realize she still is a loyal member of the GOP no matter how much she dislikes earmarks and reveres the Second Amendment.

But local women of a moderate-to-conservative bent who are balancing kids and jobs love Palin because she looks, talks and acts like one of them.

Local men aren't so complicated. They swoon over Sarah because she’s a looker and they are lookists, it’s true. But it’s also because she’s nothing like hard Hillary Clinton. Sarah is nice, normal, unaffected. Plus, they really like girls who like sports and guns.

OK, so maybe Sen. Obama still has a slim chance to take Pennsylvania. Like all Democrats running statewide, he can count on Philadelphia City/County to automatically produce the 300,000- or 400,000-vote margin he needs to overcome the Republicans who dominate the state's empty “T” counties.

Maybe the turnout in Philly and its liberal suburbs will save Obama. But in Western Pennsylvania, Sarah Palin has clearly grabbed the home-field advantage.

Bill Steigerwald is a columnist at the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. E-mail Bill at steigerwald@caglecartoons.com. ©Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, All Rights Reserved.

Barack loses his mojo on high ground

kpaul.mallasch — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 23:17:29 -0700

By Brian Howey

INDIANAPOLIS, IN - This is the time in the election cycle when the big Democratic wave is supposed to be lapping up against the Grand Old Pillars. Instead, Barack Obama - at least temporarily - has lost his mojo. This became evident in Terre Haute last Saturday.

On this Hoosier high ground, the Democratic presidential nominee stooped down to take a swipe at the latest American fad - Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin. “I know the governor of Alaska has been saying she’s change, and that’s great, She’s a skillful politician,” Obama said. “But, you know, when you’ve been taking all these earmarks when it’s convenient, and then suddenly you’re the champion anti-earmark person, that’s not change. Come on! I mean, words mean something, you can’t just make stuff up.”

Clearly, less than two weeks after Obama passed on Hillary Clinton to be his running mate, he is now flat-footed. Sarah is inside his head. Ticket toppers aren’t supposed to hunt veeps.

Just a month ago, I predicted it was unlikely that the historic and disciplined Obama campaign would lose its way as it heads into the critical home stretch. But the final two weeks of the veepstakes - played out vividly here in Indiana - was almost too cute. The secret text message went out at - 3 a.m. - leaving Hillary Clinton (and Evan Bayh) on the sidelines.

Then came the Democratic Convention when Bill and Hillary Clinton vividly endorsed the Obama campaign. Next was the speech of the century. But the more I reflect on what was supposed to be the Denver masterpiece, the more it seems that Obama descended from the lofty heights he used to derail Hillary, and became just another politician.

Quick, think to yourself two weeks later, what was the defining moment of that speech? Where is the “I have a dream” catch phrase? There wasn’t one.

About 13 hours later Sarah Palin walked out of the mist and into a Dayton basketball arena. Obama’s bounce moment was prematurely clipped in Ohio, first by Hurricane Sarah, and then during the following weekend with Hurricane Gustav. A week later, Palin’s Republican National Convention speech eclipsed the one John McCain would give 24 hours later. It seemed to capture the quote that is driving the Obama campaign nuts. “This election is not about issues,” said McCain Campaign Manager Rick Davis. “This election is about a composite view of what people take away from these candidates.” It’s becoming a race of personalities.

Even more ironic is that with cheering Republicans in the twin cities, McCain and Palin essentially ended up taking swings at the Bush-Cheney Republican legacy that was supposed to be the millstone around the party’s neck. The Republicans didn’t get religion; they got change. Now they talk about things like celebrity and lipstick on a pig instead of energy and healthcare.

In Sarah Palin, there finally is a personality that steals Barack Obama’s thunder. It is exacerbated by Obama’s decision not to accept federal election funding. Earlier this week, there were near-hysterical stories of the campaign pressing its financiers to step it up.

From the time Obama left Elkhart and Portage with apparent command and laudable discipline for keeping the veepstakes secret -- to Wednesday in Norfolk where he threw his hands up and accused the media of “lies, outrage and swift boat politics” -- we have witnessed the loss of O-mojo.

It was almost comical that the crux of his emotion came with his “lipstick on a pig” remark, playing off Palin’s convention pit bull classic zinger. “See, it would be funny, but the news media decided that would be the lead story yesterday,” said an exasperated Obama. “This happens every election cycle. Every four years, this is what we do. This is what they want to spend two of the last 55 days talking about. Enough! These are serious times and they call for a serious debate. Spare me all the phony outrage. Spare me all the phony talk about change.”

Then came Palin’s visit to Virginia on Wednesday where she and McCain drew 23,000 people. It was the biggest turnout for the GOP ticket and it came in a state where Gov. Tim Kaine had been another vanquished veepster. Should Palin turn up in Bayh Country, don’t think for a moment there won’t be a similar crowd.

Obama decided to go for Joe Biden’s “stature,” sidestepping Kaine’s Virginia 13 Electoral College votes and Bayh’s Indiana 11 Electoral College votes that might have been delivered. If Hillary had been added to the ticket, could this have inoculated him against the Palin dynamic?

The day following Obama’s DNC speech, the Howey-Gauge Poll had McCain leading in Indiana 45-43 percent. Those polled certainly took into account Palin’s ascendancy, but not the GOP bounce. It showed that 34 percent of Hillary’s Hoosier supporters were going to vote for McCain, but that was before the Indiana delegates began fanning out to their communities to try and convert the Clintonites. U.S. Rep. Brad Ellsworth said, “I don’t think you’ll see that many” Hillary supporters defecting in November.

Is there a silver lining for Obama? There are still 54 days left. Any campaign can expect a bad week and they hope it comes early. Obama’s bad week is coming moderately late, but there’s still time.

Howey is publisher of Howey Politics Indiana at www.howeypolitics.com

One Issue Voter

kpaul.mallasch — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 02:13:17 -0700

By Jane Roberts

On July 22, 2002 the Bush Administration refused to release $34 million to the United Nations Population Fund to please the Republican Party’s religious right and anti-United Nations constituencies. Colin Powell had testified that UNFPA did invaluable work in the world but it was he who sold women down the river by announcing the decision. He should have resigned.

Everything that UNFPA does saves and empowers women. It provides prenatal care, assisted birth, family planning. It educates against early forced marriage, female genital mutilation and violence against women. One hundred eighty countries supported UNFPA last year, but not our own. That is ugly.

For the last six years Lois Abraham (co-founder with me of 34 Million Friends of UNFPA) and I have been joyfully relentless in asking 34 million Americans to take a stand for the women of the world and their access to reproductive health care and family planning with at least one dollar. This grassroots effort is called 34 Million Friends. It is sending a positive message to the world.

What is at stake? The fate of the world’s women and girls and thus the fate of the world.

Women’s access to education and health including access to family planning is essential for reducing poverty, saving the environment, and for any chance at peace and stability in the future. Women’s equality in all realms including decision making power at every level of government is essential for balance and sustainability.

If the next President releases the funds Congress annually votes for UNFPA, then that President will have the values I have. He will support, help reform, and strengthen the United Nations. He will know that to reduce poverty and misery, people must be educated and healthy. His foreign assistance will line up with those values. He will believe that 500,000 women shouldn’t die in childbirth every year. He will believe that access to family planning will greatly reduce the 40 million abortions which take place in the world every year, representing twenty percent of the pregnancies.

He will believe that population matters. There are 6.7 billion people on the planet now, with over 80 million births over deaths each year. Nothing good can come of a predicted world population of 9 billion by 2050. This growth will come in the most poverty stricken countries many of which are politically unstable due at least in part to the low status of their women and girls. For instance, Pakistan which suffers from poverty, inflation, political instability, religious extremism and gender inequality, has a population of 164 million – rising to 304 million by 2050.

If Americans are paying attention, they know that there is increased hunger due to climate change but also to expanded use of grain for bio-fuels by the richer countries. Surging population in many of the countries where hunger reigns also plays a role. Ethiopia and India are examples.

They know that conflicts over resources (fresh water, fish, oil, wood, agricultural land) are increasing. They know that energy costs are rising and that the poor are least able to pay.

The question of whether the next US President will release congressionally approved funds to the United Nations Population Fund will be a symbol of how he understands the world. Under Barack Obama, our country will join 180 countries in supporting the women of the world through UNFPA. Under John McCain the question is wide open. Would he be enough of a maverick to take a stand for the world’s women and against the extremist fanatics of his own party? Too much is at stake. I won’t take that chance. I’m a one issue voter.

Jane Roberts, co-founder of 34 Million Friends of UNFPA www.43millionfriends.org, is a retired French teacher from California. Her email is JulianRob@aol.com.