Listen, you hockey pucks, Don Rickles should moderate the debates

Out of 300,000,000 Americans, the unconstitutional Commission on Presidential Debates chose the 4 most boring to be moderators: Jim Lehrer in the first presidential debate, Gwen Ifill for the veep debate, Tom Brokaw for tonight’s presidental debate, and Bob Schieffer for the last prez debate on Oct. 15.

Years from now, sociologists will note that the nation’s crystal meth consumption rose dramatically during these debates, just so people could remain awake.

We need a reform: Don Rickles should moderate the debates. Imagine how Mr. Warmth, the Sultan of Insult, who just won an Emmy, would have handled the questions:

Rickles: Sen. McCain. Thank you for your sacrifice for your country. You’ve told us that time and time again. And thank you for hanging around the Senate all these years going, “What are they voting on?” Maybe that’s why you weren’t nominated in 2000. Obama just went, “That was a good one.” But seriously, Sen. McCain, you should be elected president — of a retirement home.

Sen. Obama, when are you going to stop writing autobiographies? You’ve got one coming out every couple of months. You know, you were a community organizer — whatever that is — then a politician. Can’t you get a real job like everybody else? We already have a president who never had a real job. They say you’re “The One,” who can heal all our ills. Could you help me to walk again?

Then there’s Sen. Biden, who went into a coma in 1999 and stayed in the Senate. Wilkes Barre Pennsylvania — what’s that town you come from?

Biden: Scranton.

Rickles: What, that’s better?

Rickles: Gov. Palin, tell me again what state you’re governor of?

Palin: Alaska.

Rickles: Isn’t that part of Russia? Didn’t you run the vodka store? Let me give you some advice from a friend: You shouldn’t have come. If I give you a cookie, will you go away?

Democrats’ platform: abortion, war, feminazism, anti-white racism, tax increases

I’ve been predicting a victory by Obama, but I might be wrong. Democrats again are bungling what should be a sure victory over Republicans. But Republican campaign managers know the mechanics of victory and pursue them with ruthless efficiency. McCain is supposed to be a “change” from Bush’s 8 years of disastrous policies. But McCain’s campaign manager, Steve Schmidt, ran Bush’s War Room in 2004.

So there isn’t any “change,” but the efficient, cynical management of perception.

But so far, Obama is running for Mayor of San Francisco.

Who knows, Obama still might pull it off. The economy continues to slide. Bush just started another war, in Pakistan, after losing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. McCain could make a big gaffe, or do badly in the debates. And the two previous incompetent Democratic candidates, Gore and Kerry, each almost won.

But for now, a good analysis of the Democrats’ disaster comes today from Lew Rockwell’s blog:

Democrats coasting to defeat

Posted by Ryan W. McMaken at September 14, 2008 12:33 AM

Everywhere I look, the polls show the Republicans surging and the Democrats receding at every level. How did the Dems manage to pull this off? In year 8 of the most unpopular GOP president since Nixon, the Dems look like they’re about to lose the presidency yet again. And, if the current trend keeps up, they’ll make far fewer gains in Congress than they’d hoped for.

Perhaps it’s their clueless platform. I’ll summarize.

The Dem platform:

1. Abortion: we love it. Everyone should have one. Anytime anywhere! More abortion! We love it! Hurray abortion! Sire, half the country is heartily opposed, but our funders tell us it’s a winning issue.

2. We hate all women who aren’t exactly like Hillary Clinton. See Bill Anderson on this one.

3. Sure, we’re in the middle of the most unpopular war in American history, but we’re too stupid to come out and say we’re opposed to it. So you might as well vote for the GOP.

4. We hate white (i.e. Anglo) people. Sure, they make up the majority of the electorate in most states, but we can’t be bothered with those people unless they have ivy league degrees.

5. Raise taxes! Every candidates that runs on raising taxes wins, right? Right? Right?

Bill Clinton joke

Why is Bill Clinton in a rage that Obama beat Hillary?

Because Bill was looking forward to meeting the White House intern Class of 2009.

Ding, dong, the wicked witch has lost!

There’s not much to cheer about in this dismal election, but one is Hillary losing. Tonight she’s finally finished.

It took into June, but Obama finally dumped enough water on her that her candidacy melted.

As I pointed out last month, “Why did Hillary lose the nomination? Because they wouldn’t let the flying monkeys vote.”

So, we’ll be spared another 4 or 8 years of…

* Bill roaming the White House seducing interns until his bypass gives out.

* HillaryCare Version 2.0.

* Endless assaults on the country’s 150 million men as violent oppressors and guys who leave gals like Hillary staring at their cell phones on Saturday night.

* Hillary imitating Xena: Warrior Princess, by starting even more new, unneeded wars that Bush — to demonstrate Fallopian Power.

* Just looking at her for 4 to 8 years. Some things seem to be such a violation of the natural laws of the universe that they just never can happen, however close a call it may seem at the time.

Of course Obama, our next president, will be horrible in his own way. I’m already tired of him. But no way he’s as bad as Hillary.

Dingbat Democratic tax-increase proposal

Democrats aren’t long going to enjoy running the whole government — as they will after Obama wins in November — if they raise taxes. Their latest idea: a surtax on millionaires to fund Iraq War veterans’ benefits. Speaker Nancy Pelosi is supporting the idea.

For one thing, how about ending the war, as Democrats promised in their 2006 victory campaign, so there aren’t any new Iraq War veterans?

But here’s the “reasoning” we’re getting, from Rep. Mike Ross of Arkansas:

So someone who earns $2 million a year would pay $5,000. … They’re not going to miss it….

He might not, personally, “miss it,” but his investments and businesses will — as well as the folks hired by his businesses.

Let’s change the equation a little. Somebody makes $20 million a year, so he won’t “miss” an additional $50,000 in taxes. But losing that money means he’ll have to fire a middle-class employee making $50,000 a year. The fired employee will go on unemployment and welfare, costing taxpayers more money, leading to even more tax increases

I’ve explained this over and over to Democrats for 30 years, but they just don’t get it.

Well, China’s economy is growing so fast that America can keep up only if we not only avoid tax increases, but cut taxes. (Oh, and stop wasting trillions on dumb wars.) It’s the only way to stay ahead.

Of course, when China is running America, the Democrats will have a “solution” to that: Raise taxes to teach everybody Chinese.

More evidence Rush Limbaugh’s “Operation KAOS” backfired

I’ve been ridiculing Rush Limbaugh’s Operation Chaos as Operation KAOS, after the enemy secret agency on “Get Smart.”

Rush’s Operation KAOS urged Republicans to vote for Hillary in the later primaries, thus delaying Obama’s victory and prolonging the campaign. Except that, as I pointed out, it gave Obama more time to hone his campaign skills.

Now the New York Times reports:

Mr. Obama’s advisers said that as a result of the five-month series of primaries and caucuses, he had a nearly national campaign apparatus in place and had identified and registered thousands of new voters. That said, they acknowledged that they were at a disadvantage in two important states — Florida and Michigan — because those states had early primaries in defiance of the Democratic National Committee, and the candidates agreed not to campaign there.

“Organizationally, we have now built very powerful organizations in every state but Michigan and Florida,” Mr. Plouffe said. “That is one huge silver lining to how long this nomination fight has gone on.”

You might remember that Obama’s strong organization in Iowa brought him victory there, igniting the rest of his campaign. So, thanks to Rush’s Operation KAOS, Obama has strong organizations in many more states.

As Pyrrhus (shown at right) said in ancient times:

One more such victory and I am lost.

Hillary Clinton: working-class hero?

As soon as your born they make you feel small,
By giving you no time instead of it all,
Till the pain is so big you feel nothing at all,
A working class hero is something to be,
A working class hero is something to be.
— “Working Class Hero”
by John Lennon

Lexi wrote a good comment after my last post, in which I said I didn’t think it was smart for Hillary to bring up race. Lexi:

The “white working-class” are the vast majority of Americans. If you don’t even have their support among Democrats, you stand little to no chance of gaining “white working-class” Independents and crossover Republicans. Do you what that means? It means you get blown out in the key States that you need to win to put together an Electoral College victory. That’s her point–and she’s correct. They’re the hardest and most important constituency to win over, and once they turn against you, they’re the hardest to get back. Parenthetically, they also love their War Heroes. Get it?

Got it.

Pat Buchanan just wrote something similar:

What Hillary and Begala are saying is politically incorrect, but it is also patently true. Hillary was describing what may now fairly be called the Hillary Democrats — a.k.a. the ex-Reagan Democrats who did not vote for Obama and may defect to John McCain.

If Obama can win over these voters who gave Hillary big victories in Ohio and Pennsylvania, he is the 44th president. If McCain does not win a goodly slice of these Democrats, he will lose.

Who, exactly, are the Hillocrats, half of whom said in the exit polls from North Carolina and Indiana that, if she loses the nomination, they will stay home or vote for McCain?

They are white, working- and middle-class, Catholic, small-town, rural, unionized, middle-age and seniors, and surviving on less than $50,000 a year. They are the people most belittled by the condescending commentary of Barack behind closed doors out at Sodom on the Bay.

So — I could be wrong.

Yet — having come from a blue-collar family from a blue-collar area, and with most of my friends working-class types, it still strikes me as strange that Hillary is a working-class hero. She’s not. She’s the real elitist who wants to run our lives as if we were all her children on an “It Takes a Village” feminist commune.

Obama vs. McCain

As to Obama vs. McCain, that’s a harder case for me to make concerning working-class whites voting for Obama. But it can be made. It’s such folks who gave LBJ his landslide in 1964, when LBJ painted Barry Goldwater as a psycho would get us all killed. Goldwater’s slogan was, “In your heart you know he’s right.” To which LBJ’s people replied, “In your guts you know he’s nuts.”

In the working-class area where I grew up, in my fourth-grade class we had one of those practice elections American schools are fond of. I was one of two kids out of 30 who voted for Goldwater. Of course we reflected the preferences of our families, almost all of whom had a dad who was a UAW member and worked in a factory and mom who was a housewife. Little did they know that LBJ was the one who was the warmonger who would send their sons — the older brothers of my classmates — to Nam, wreck the economy with war spending, welfare and inflation, and wreck neighborhoods with “urban renewal.”

The slogan was wrong about Goldwater being a nutty warmonger, but McCain really is a nutty warmonger. It’s not just the Iraq War and the potential Iran War. It’s Russia and China. With the demise of communism, there’s no reason to antagonize these countries. They’re capitalist now and can be accommodated. A prudent policy would help them mature as countries that are taking back their places as major world powers.

Instead, Dr. Strangelove McCain wants to confront them:

The Arizona senator has already signalled that he intends to confront Russian president Vladimir Putin more directly than George W Bush if he wins the White House in November.

In a recent foreign policy speech, Mr McCain advocated removing Russia from the G8 group of major industrialised powers, while this week he announced he would not attend the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics if he were in office because of China’s suppression of Tibetan protest.

His experience of foreign affairs is one reason why the 71-year-old Vietnam war veteran has drawn level with both his potential Democratic rivals, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, in opinion polls, suggesting the public may accept his more muscular approach to the world.

Robert Kagan, who wrote much of the speech delivered in Los Angeles, told the Daily Telegraph: “Russia will loom large for both Europe and the US, and John McCain has been ahead of the curve and has seen this coming down the road.

“We have made the mistake of being too passive as Putin has consolidated his autocracy. There have been key moments when he took away power of opposition parties, suppressed the media and arrested key figures, which were greeted with relative silence in the West.

“Because Putin feels he has to maintain the trappings of democracy there are opportunities to be stronger but the West hasn’t done that.”

Kagan is the fanatical, warmongering, bloodthirsty, chickenhawk Neocon who devised Bush’s disastrous “surge” in Iraq.

McCain-Feingold-Stalin

It’s also amusing that Kagan, who could be McCain’s pick for Secretary of State, attacked Putin for taking “away power of opposition parties,” when in the United States there are no “opposition parties” (note the plural) only two virtually identical “major parties.” In the “free” USA, third parties are hamstrung by tyrannical regulations that make it impossible to gain traction with the electorate unless you’re a billionaire like Ross Perot.

Third parties were further suppressed by the Soviet-style McCain-Feingold-Stalin election “reform” law that shreds the First Amendment rights to freedom of speech and assembly.

Finally, I wonder how many of those white blue-collar workers are going to back McCain when they’re standing in unemployment lines during the Bush-McCain recession.

Hillary to Obama: Get to the back of the bus

In my 52 years, one of the few positive developments is increased equality for blacks. There’s still a long way to go. And some of the “solutions” — welfare, affirmative action — have made matters worse.

But there’s no more Jim Crow, no more separate restrooms or drinking fountains or bus waiting rooms (as in the sign at right), no more overt segregation (although plenty of covert segregation), no more blacks forced to ride in the back of the bus.

Except in the Hillary Clinton campaign. They’re now keying off the observation of Bill Clinton after Obama won the South Carolina primary way back in February, when Bill got in touch with his inner cracker:

Obama gets to play both sides of the race card. I told you he won South Carolina because he’s black, like Jesse Jackson.

Now here’s what the Clinton campaign is saying in May after Hillary lost North Carolina. Hillary:

I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on. [An AP article] found how Sen. Obama’s support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me.

Clinton henchman Paul Begala:

said the party could not win in November with just “eggheads and African-Americans,” that the party could not ignore white middle-class voters.

Except that most blacks are middle-class.  And in 1960, nobody in the Democratic Party griped that Kennedy won the primary and general elections with overwhelming support from his fellow Catholics, like blacks a key constituency.

And let’s not forget the Iraq War, which Obama always has opposed and which now is opposed by 2/3 of the American people. McCain favors the war. And Hillary voted for the war, and still supports it, despite her waffling. So Obama clearly wins that issue. So, what “broader base” is she talking about? If she wins the nomination, we’ll have two pro-war nominees, meaning 2/3 of the American people will have no voice on that issue (except third parties).

Blacks’ rock-solid Democratic support

For the last 50 years, blacks dutifully have voted 90-plus percent for Democratic presidential candidates. Even Reagan only got about 10% of the black vote in his landslide re-election in 1984.

For decades, I’ve seen Republicans try strategy after strategy to increase their share of the black vote above the usually abysmal 4-6%. They said tax cuts and welfare reform helped blacks. The first Pres. Bush appointed as HUD secretary Jack Kemp, who got good black support as a congressman from Buffalo. They talked education, housing, inflation. They said the Democrats were taking blacks “for granted.”

Nothing worked.

Blacks stuck with the Democratic Party, no matter what. Blacks’ 90-plus percent in all those elections was necessary, except for LBJ’s 1964 landslide, for every Demo presidential victory. With blacks about 12% of the population — and a little bit less than that of the whole electorate — that 90-plus percent translated into a guaranteed 10 percentage-point starting advantage for Democrats. Quite an boost.

Now blacks are asking for some payback. They have one of their as a candidate who’s smart, gives a great speech, and is likable. He can win. And he’s ahead in the delegate and total vote counts.

So what do Hillary and her campaign say? “Get to the back of the bus.”

Hillary joke

Why did Hillary lose the nomination?

Because they wouldn’t let the flying monkeys vote.

Rush Limbaugh wrong YET AGAIN on Obama

When your party’s been in power too long and lost its way, your sense of equilibrium gets thrown off balance. That explains Rush Limbaugh’s bad calls on the Democratic nomination. I’ve been detailing how he was wrong to call on Republicans to switch, for the primaries, and vote for Hillary to keep the Demo show rolling.

Now, Rush says he wants Obama to be the nominee! Supposedly because Barack is a worse candidate than Hillary:

I now believe he would be the weakest of the Democrat nominees. Barack Obama has shown he cannot get the votes Democrats need to win – blue-collar, working class people. He can get effete snobs, he can get wealthy academics, he can get the young, and he can get the black vote, but Democrats do not win with that.

This is part of Rush’s schtick that Obama appeals only to the elites, and is himself an elitist. Let’s see, when he was a baby, Obama’s Papa split for Africa. His Mom dumped him with Grandma. Obama did attend a private school in Hawaii. But my late father knew a guy who was from Hawaii and retired to Arizona. The guy said Hawaii’s government schools are so wretched — much worse even than mainland government schools — that anybody with a few coins to rub together tries to put his kids in private schools.

Obama went Harvard undergrad and Harvard Law because he’s really smart. True, his wife went Princeton undergrad and Harvard Law on affirmative-action scholarships, and resents it. But that only shows she’s not in the elite herself.

At the 2004 Demo convention, where he gave the keynote speech, Obama had trouble renting a car because his credit cards were maxed out. He’s done better since his books became bestsellers. And his wife got a big raise because he’s going to be the next president.

Then there’s the delicate matter of race, which nobody wants to talk about. Well, you won’t see many blacks at the elite country clubs around the country. There are a lot of “Country Club Republicans,” but no “Country Club Democrats” (although there are Limousine Liberals). Most people know that, so it’s hard to paint Obama as an elitist.

The real elitists

But let’s look at Rush, Mr. Proletariat: His father was a wealthy lawyer. Wikipedia notes:

Rush Limbaugh, Sr., Limbaugh’s grandfather, was a Missouri prosecutor, judge, special commissioner and served on Missouri’s state House of Representatives from 1930 to 1932.^[5] Limbaugh’s grandfather was very well respected as one of the “patriarchs” of the Cape Girardeau community.

Rush himself is worth several hundred million dollars and lives in a huge compound somewhere in Florida. The only reason he’s not in the calaboose for buying illegal dope is because he’s been a sycophant to the Bush family for 20 years, including the sitting president and, at the time of his arrest, the governor of Florida, Jeb.

His Bush Oval Office pal grew up in an elite family and was a “legacy” matriculant at Yale, where, like his Pappy the ex-Prez and his Grandpapy the ex-Senator before him, he pledged Skull and Bones, the most elite secret society in the known universe.

The military elite

And then there’s John McCain. In this case, I don’t want to make it seem like like I’m trashing him, because I’m not. But he was a top officer in the U.S. Navy, almost an admiral. His father and grandfather were admirals. It’s true that this is service to the country. But as most Americans used to knew back when most men were drafted and so had firsthand knowledge of the military, a large part of the officer corps — and even the NCO ranks — is made up of guys (and now girls) who grew up in military families. The Pattons and MacArthurs are the most famous families.

Of course, there’s still room for talented people from non-military families to rise to the top, like Colin Powell. But McCain has spent all his life in government, or closely associated with government. How is he going to connect with Joe Lunchbucket?

Obama’s appeal to workers

Although my late father was elected a judge when he was 42, he started out an humble tool and die maker and my grandfather was a master carpenter. They were union guys. I grew up in suburban Detroit, where the UAW dominated. 1/6th of my home town, Wayne, was a Ford factory. I can tell you that the unions will strongly back Barack, and their rank-and-file will follow them.

Another factor is that white working-class guys nowadays spend a great deal of time watching, even worshipping, pro players in the NFL (more than 60% black) and NBA (more than 90% black). Ever hear of Michael Jordan?

I think Obama will do exceedingly well among the working class. Maybe if Rush slipped out of his elitist compound and mingled with the masses, he would see that.

He also should face it that Republicans are going to get a well-deserved shellacking this November. After squandering almost every opportunity to reduce government since they won Congress in 1994 — leaving us with a government larger, nastier, nosier, and costlier than before — they deserve it.