Black Shards, In Your Eyes, Blinding

Hillary Clinton says she’s moved on after losing a tightly contested race for the Democratic presidential nomination.  I hope that’s not true and that she uses her speech tonight to say the one true thing that’s in her heart:  "Vote for me!  I would make a better president than Barack Obama and here’s why…"

Obama has taken the minimum public steps necessary to accommodate the Clintons, including giving them prime-time speaking spots.

But he has taken few of the extra steps that Clinton allies say would have gone miles toward fostering goodwill.

He did not work hard to help her retire her $24 million campaign debt.

He did not make a high-profile statement repudiating any suggestion that Bill Clinton played “the race card” in the nomination contest — an allegation that the former president considers grossly unfair and that continues to infuriate him.

The race issue is one of the great ironies as it applies to the Clintons.  While there are many reasons to vote against Hillary Clinton, race is not one of them.  Contrarily, there is no other reason to vote for Barack Obama unless one is enamored with the idea of following a rookie leader into an unspecified season of change.

Just as significant, Obama has maintained a certain cool diffidence toward the former president. They spoke by phone last week. But for weeks before that, associates said, Clinton had heard nothing and did not even know when he would be speaking at the convention. The Obama campaign’s only communication was a  form letter sent to all delegates.

Clinton loves to offer advice to fellow Democrats. But even in their conversations, Clinton friends say, Obama shows little deference or signs that he thinks Clinton, the only Democrat since Franklin D. Roosevelt to win two terms, has any special wisdom to offer.

“There is a lot Obama could have done to unify the party, and basically he hasn’t lifted a finger,” said one Democratic operative who is close to the Clinton team.

Much as I can’t stand the thought of seeing Bill Clinton roaming the halls of the White House that he despoiled, his wife would in fact be a better president than Mr. Obama.  She would probably be better than John McCain too, if not for her unfortunate party affiliation.

So here’s hoping that Mrs. Clinton will, for once - and perhaps for all - tell the truth tonight.

Update

Bill Clinton ruminates:

"Suppose you’re a voter, and you’ve got candidate X and candidate Y. Candidate X agrees with you on everything, but you don’t think that candidate can deliver on anything at all. Candidate Y you agree with on about half the issues, but he can deliver. Which candidate are you going to vote for?"

Then, perhaps mindful of how his off-the-cuff remarks might be taken, Clinton added after a pause: "This has nothing to do with what’s going on now."

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Judging from these two stories, the loony-toon tree is being shaken pretty hard out in Denver and the nuts are falling to Earth.

First, Alex Jones of InfoWars was caught on video stalking and harassing Michelle Malkin outside the Denver Mint.  Evidently that’s Alex’s idea of being clever and accomplishing something for his cause.  Wrong.  What a pompous fool.  Agree with Michelle or not, she deserves some respect for trying to do what she thinks is right and the freedom to do her job in peace.

Second, 4 presumed white supremacists were arrested on drug and weapons charges in what one of the men admitted was a plot to kill Barack Obama at the convention.

Sources told CBS4 police found two high-powered, scoped rifles in the car along with camouflage clothing, walkie-talkies, wigs, a bulletproof vest, a spotting scope, licenses in the names of other people and 44 grams of methamphetamine.

…

Nathan Johnson, 32, was also arrested. He told authorities that the two men “planned to kill Barack Obama at his acceptance speech.”

Sounds like the plot, and the Nazi wannabes, might have been half-baked.  Even so, Americans shouldn’t take Barack Obama’s safety for granted.  Pray for him, even if you’re a die-hard Republican.

Like Malkin, Obama has the right to do and say exactly what he wants without fear of bodily injury, without having to endure streams of verbal abuse.  The fact that I disagree with everything he stands for - and I do disagree, as you know - does not give me the right to harm him.

This fact is so elementary, so fundamental that it’s a slap in the face to be reminded that I live side-by-side with so many morons who clearly don’t understand the singular principle that underlies the American way of life.

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This little ditty says that some Hallmark stores owned by a small-time franchisee are refusing to sell the company’s new greeting cards that celebrate homosexual themes.

Good for them.  Franchise owner or not, a business person should be able to determine what merchandise is on the shelves of his/her store.  Here’s hoping they have the courage to hold out against the backlash that is undoubtedly heading their way.

At least the force that will be applied against these store owners is primarily economic.  In California, doctors offering reproductive services face legal penalties if they dare to follow their consciences when deciding whether to perform in vitro fertilization for homosexual couples or not.

The LA Times:

…the justices were clear on one point: Doctors, in the course of operating a business, cannot refuse a patient because of his or her sexual orientation, just as they would not be allowed to reject patients based on their race.

…

Physicians can refuse to perform any procedure, such as abortion or in vitro fertilization, that they find morally objectionable. But if they do perform such procedures, they cannot provide them to some groups of patients and not to others. It is true that artificial insemination is an elective procedure, not a matter of saving life or limb, but that’s not the issue here.

No?  Pray tell then, what exactly is the issue?

The arrogance of the California Supreme Court is simply staggering.  How dare these so-called guardians of the law presume to compel doctors - the best and brightest among us, perhaps the only professionals whose services are utterly irreplaceable - to perform acts that they find morally reprehensible? 

By what right do the judges lay claim to this legal power?

A clothing store may choose not to sell polo shirts. But once it sells polo shirts, it cannot withhold them from customers based on their race, religion, sexual orientation and so forth.

It’s preposterous to equate a highly trained medical professional to a common retailer, just as it’s ridiculous to compare the ultimate in human responsibility - the creation and nurturing of life - to t-shirt sales.  It’s nonsensical, this new leftist logic. 

Bear in mind that we’re not talking about whether lesbians can have the in vitro procedure - they can.  The issue is whether a doctor can be compelled under force of law to perform that procedure.  The answer, at least in California, is a crystal-clear, “Yes!”

If this is what law is in the 21st century, perhaps it is time to do away with this century’s perverse legalism and begin again.  Using this twisted logic, how long before it’s outright illegal for the mom-and-pop-owned Hallmark store to decline to sell gay greeting cards? 

Another question comes to mind as well.  Given a medical system in which doctors can be forced to perform procedures that are anathema to their beliefs, how long until physicians begin to quit the field and the quality of care declines as the best potential medical students pursue other fields?

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I rarely watch network televisions programs (with the notable exception of Mad Men, which is aired on AMC and so not exactly in the mainstream), so I couldn’t say one way or another whether NBC airs quality programs or not during regular prime time.

But the network deserves a round of applause for editing gold medalist diver Matthew Mitcham’s homosexuality out of their broadcast.  Thanks, NBC, for providing the information that matters and skipping the unsavory side of Mitcham’s life story.  I’m glad that someone finally realized that it’s not mandatory for every TV storyline to feature this sort of relationship as the new hip way to have sex.

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That’s the pile of bullshit that Jacob Weisberg dropped at Slate this morning.  Small wonder that the majority of Americans now recognize a distinct liberal bias in the media.  How could they not?

Weisberg:

If it makes you feel better, you can rationalize Obama’s missing 10-point lead on the basis of Clintonite sulkiness, his slowness in responding to attacks, or the concern that Obama may be too handsome, brilliant, and cool to be elected. But let’s be honest: If you break the numbers down, the reason Obama isn’t ahead right now is that he trails badly among one group, older white voters. He does so for a simple reason: the color of his skin.

I guess it has nothing whatever to do with his utter lack of credentials, his ultra-liberal voting record (one that’s been deliberately crafted to avoid controversy in this election cycle), or his plans to significantly increase taxes and government spending.

According to Weisberg, not only would voting in John McCain as president be a vast conspiracy of racial discrimination, it would also be cause for a vote of no-confidence in the U.S. by the rest of the world:

To the rest of the world, a rejection of the promise he represents wouldn’t just be an odd choice by the United States. It would be taken for what it would be: sign and symptom of a nation’s historical decline.

Just curious, but what exactly is it about Russia, for instance, that the U.S. should want to emulate?  Or England, France, or Spain?  Or Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, or Venezuela?  What drivel.  There are very few nations that the U.S. could learn anything from, Australia and South Korea being two of that elite group.  Far better for the U.S. to keep setting the pace and hope that the others will someday grow up and catch up.

Weisberg does make one decent point that I’ve touched on before:

We would finally be able to see our legacy of slavery, segregation, and racism in the rearview mirror. Our kids would grow up thinking of prejudice as a nonfactor in their lives.

This is the only reason that a vote for Barack Obama makes any kind of logical sense given his lack of qualifications and the monopoly on power his election would give to the Democrats.  It is also a powerful argument. 

Weisberg says that 27% of whites say too much has been made of the problems facing black people.  Count me as one of them.

Electing Barack Obama would remove one of the major crutches that black society relies on to explains its problems.  It would also free African-Americans from the grasp of Louis Farrakhan, Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, etc., leaders who have profited immensely from racial divisions and who have done a lot to make sure those divisions continue.  An Obama presidency would invalidate them by making their positions, policies, and authority irrelevant.  Small wonder Jackson wants to castrate Obama.

I am sympathetic to that reason for an Obama vote, just as I’m sympathetic to those who say that we should elect anyone who’s not a Republican given the mess they’ve made of the last 8 years.

But Barack Obama’s race is not a legitimate reason to vote for him any more than it’s a good reason to vote against him.  Similarly, voting for Democrats simply because they’re not Republicans is the last refuge of the ignorant and uninformed.

Neither has anything to do with race, despite Weisberg’s hysteria, and neither would be a good decision for America.

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Andrew McCarthy tells the tale of babies born alive after failed abortions and how Barack Obama was more concerned about doctors’ legal liabilities than the innocent lives at stake. 

The transcript Andrew quotes from shows a staggering lack of concern for the living newborns:

one of the things that we were concerned about, or at least I expressed some concern about, was what impact this would have with respect to the relationship between the doctor and the patient and what liabilities the doctor might have in this situation. So, can you just describe for me, under this legislation, what’s going to be required for a doctor to meet the requirements you’ve set forth?

As Andrew says:

Through Obama’s radical prism, everything “is about abortion and not live births.” But in reality, this had nothing to do with “burden[ing] the original decision of the woman and the physician to induce labor and perform an abortion.” It was about the legal and moral responsibilities of doctors and nurses in circumstances where, despite that decision, a living human being was delivered.

Moreover, it should be recognized that Mr. Obama lied on the public record about his vote against Illinois’ Born-Alive bill while serving as a state senator.

Regardless of the reasons for his vote, Mr. Obama cannot say that his critics are lying. He did oppose a bill virtually identical to the one unanimously passed in the U.S. Senate. And now, five years later, he might end up paying a political price for that decision.

Let’s hope justice is served.  Barack Obama is a smart person and, like many intelligent people, has a tendency to overanalyze things that are rather simple.  A baby born alive - despite medical science’s best efforts to kill it - must be helped or those who watch it die are in violation of every ethical standard Americans hold dear.  Yet Barack Obama defended this immoral inaction with his vote.

McCarthy on Born-Alive laws:

Such laws were enacted by overwhelming margins. In the United States Congress, even such pro-abortion activists as Sen. Barbara Boxer went along.

Not Barack Obama.  Whatever nuances of thought led him to his heinous decision to side against dying infants are lost on most of the rest of us.

Peggy Noonan lays it out:

…on abortion in particular, Mr. McCain seemed old-time conservative, which is something we all understand, whether we like such a stance or not, and Mr. Obama seemed either radical or dodgy. He is “in favor . . . of limits” on late-term abortions, though some would consider those limits “inadequate.” (In the past week much legal parsing on emanations of penumbras as to the viability of Roe v. Wade followed.)

As I watched I thought: How about “Let the baby live”? Don’t parse it. Just “Let the baby live.”

Simple, right?  It’s not such a complicated issue after all.

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There’s some buzz that says Public Enemy will be playing a gig at the Democratic Party’s National Convention.  Sounds like a perfect match to me!

Chuck D:

“We’re at a transition point where we have a black man who might be president. You’re starting to see all the ugliness come out, the lies and stuff,” he said. “My position is to be at the DNC in support of change. … In my heart I don’t want John McCain to win. I know Barack Obama will bring about change no matter what.”

That’s it - change no matter what.  No regard for whether it’s actually good for the country or not.  If it feels good - fair, in Obama-speak - do it.  Facts - and taxes - don’t matter.

Obama-mania is fading, though, and Peggy Noonan knows why:

Why is it a real race now, with John McCain rising in the polls and Barack Obama falling? There are many answers, but here I think is an essential one: The American people have begun paying attention.

Now that they are, what have they seen?  Barack Obama splitting hairs over abortion and possibly having Public Enemy introduce him to the nation as the Democratic candidate for president.  Please, let it be so!

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Democrats are having fun with John McCain’s inability to tell the press how many homes he owns. 

"I understand that Sen. McCain was asked yesterday this question, ‘how many houses do you own?,’ and he couldn’t answer that question. He couldn’t count high enough apparently to even know how many houses he owns," said [Obama V.P. prospect and Virginia Gov. Tim] Kaine.

But it seems that Kaine and the rest forgot, as usual, to ask the most pertinent question of all:  Which is worse, not knowing the exact number of investment properties one owns or to have, in effect, taken a kickback on a home-purchase deal from a known felon?

McCain camp via Time:

“Does a guy who made more than $4 million last year, just got back from vacation on a private beach in Hawaii and bought his own million-dollar mansion with the help of a convicted felon really want to get into a debate about houses? Does a guy who worries about the price of arugula and thinks regular people ‘cling’ to guns and religion in the face of economic hardship really want to have a debate about who’s in touch with regular Americans?”

For Obama that’s like taking an Olympic volleyball spike to the face.  Point to McCain, handily.

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The Wall Street Journal says what I’ve been saying all along, that we can’t afford to allow Barack Obama to implement his idea of "economic fairness".

Obama economic advisers Jason Furman and Austan Goolsbee noted that taxpayers whose incomes exceeded $250,000 would face an additional Social Security payroll tax increase of four percentage points (in addition to a five-percentage-point increase in the top marginal income tax rate). This new payroll tax plan would affect the top 3% of earners.

The new payroll tax hike is more modest than the one Mr. Obama hinted at last fall, which might have uncapped the payroll tax entirely. But it would also do very little to shore up Social Security, since it means that no more than 15% of Social Security’s long-term funding gap would be closed. Thus, if Mr. Obama is indeed opposed to reductions in Social Security spending growth, he is necessarily committed to large future payroll-tax or general income-tax increases.

…

In a June 26 interview on the Fox Business channel, Mr. Obama said he wanted to roll back the Bush tax cuts for those in the top 5% of incomes — that is, about $145,000 per year. He also voted for the Democrats’ fiscal year 2009 Budget Resolution, which would raise taxes on individuals earning $42,000 or more.

John McCain may count people earning $5M as being "rich", but Barack Obama seems to feel that number is quite a bit lower than McCain’s.

It should be obvious to all but the most casual observer of economics that as a nation we cannot continue to spend money that we don’t have.  The buck has to stop somewhere and it should be with the next president and Congress. 

Bush has been a fiscal disaster and the spending spree he allowed and encouraged during his watch needs to be scaled back to affordable levels.  Phil Gramm was booed out of John McCain’s inner circle for telling the truth, that too many Americans want the government to provide them with a lifestyle that they cannot earn based on their own merits.

If Barack Obama truly wants to represent change for the better he should put Phil Gramm in charge of his economic advisors, map out a plan to balance the federal budget (without relying on faked Enron-esque profits as a tax base), and use his oratory genius to remind the American people what they must do in order to live in a financially responsible manner.

Not going to happen.

Van Helsing says:

His policy of taxing the productive to grow the unproductive means there simply won’t be enough wealth to stand up to the Chinese, the Iranians, the Russians, or even Hugo Chavez.

Indeed.

The problem with Mr. Obama’s fiscal plans is not that that they lack vision. On the contrary, the vision is plain enough: a larger welfare state paid for by higher taxes. The problem is not even that they imply change. The problem is that his plans are statist.

And expensive.

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John McCain may not advocate re-instituting the military draft but when given an opportunity he didn’t disagree with the idea either:

At a town-hall event in New Mexico today…a woman in the audience told the presumptive Republican nominee, “Senator McCain I truly hope you get the opportunity to chase Bin Laden right to the gates of hell and push him in as you stated on your forum. I do have a question though. Disabled veterans, especially in this state, have horrible conditions…. I think it is a sad state of affairs when we have illegal aliens having a Medicaid card that can access specialist top physicians, the best of medical and our vets can’t even get to a doctor. These are the people that we tied yellow ribbons for and Bush patted on the back. If we don’t reenact the draft I don’t think we will have anyone to chase Bin Laden to the gates of hell.”

McCain, without hesitation, responded, “Ma’am, let me say that I don’t disagree with anything you said and thank you and I am grateful for your support of all of our veterans.”

In my mind a military draft is obscene.  I’ve advocated staying in Iraq and Afghanistan until those countries are secured and the troops there are getting a raw deal in terms of extended tours, low pay, and poor conditions at the VA back home.  But would a draft resolve any of those issues?

The military doesn’t think so.  One big reason:

With a conscripted force comes higher personnel turnover, which results in substantial costs. Shorter enlistment terms, characteristic of a draft, result in high personnel turnover and a degradation in unit stability and performance. Also, high turnover means more recruits, and more recruits mean more supervision and training; and more training means more trainers. As a result, an increasing proportion of military resources are diverted from core readiness missions to support for military training. Thus, training costs would be higher under conscription.

If we’re unable to get enough volunteers, two causes are, in my view, primarily responsible:

1. The compensation package, inclusive of pay, leave, training, and medical care, is not sufficient
2. The mission(s) that predominate are not judged to be sufficiently important

Both of these reasons indicate failed policies on the part of the government, the former demonstrating that the true cost of the War on Terror is not being paid and the latter indicating that perhaps it is not desirable to fight it, at least in the form it’s being prosecuted now.

This is off the wall, but one way to get more volunteers would be to make public service compulsory - no exceptions - for 1 or 2 years at age 18.  Given that a young person must serve, he/she might volunteer for the military over a domestic assignment if the inducements were adequate.

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