Joseph Farah and other “Anti-McCain” so-called “conservatives” backed McCain in the end

You might remember earlier this year when so-called “conservatives” said that, if McCain were nominated, they wouldn’t support them. I knew, of course, that they would anyway. Rush Limbaugh led the way on both accounts. The tactic they’ve been using is to attack Obama relentlessly. That way, they can say, “I never supported McCain, only opposed Obama.”

Certainly, Obama needs to be attacked. But so does McCain. Which is why I’ve been attacking both here. I’m not sure which I’ve attacked most, probably McCain because he represents the Neo”conservative” Trotskyites and Bush. But I’ve dished up plenty at Obama, too.

By contrast, consider WorldNetDaily.com, edited by Joseph Farah, who earlier this year said he never would support McCain, writing on March 19, 2008:

But will a McCain presidency represent a qualitative difference for the country? Or, is it better to let the Democrats take the full blame for their policies for the next four years, counting on a revived and re-energized Republican Party prepared to take power in 2012?

In other words, the fundamental question on the table is: Just how bad is John McCain?

I’m afraid the answer is: Very, very bad.

Backing torture

Farah even attacked McCain on one of the few areas where McCain has been right, in opposing (for a brief period) Bush’s use of torture — in violation of U.S. law, Christian ethics, and common decency. Farah wrote:

Need I remind everyone it was John McCain who nearly single-handedly stripped our troops of the interrogation tools they needed to defeat the enemy and prevent attacks on innocent Iraqis and our own soldiers? More than anyone else in American politics, McCain led the fight to stop coercive interrogations, an absolutely essential weapon in our arsenal in the conduct of this war and future wars.

McCain calls it torture. But it is not. Coercive interrogations are a necessity of any successful war campaign. When he stopped them with his legislative campaign, his actions not only prolonged the war and led to higher casualties for American troops and innocent Iraqis, he also ensured any future war will be far most costly in U.S. lives.

Actually, it is torture, and McCain in the end caved in and supported the Stalinesque Military Commissions Act, which allows torture at the discretion of the president.

As I write, today’s WorldNetDaily front page (which may have changed by the time you read it) devotes its first 16 headlines/stories to attacks on Obama. (Two ads are interspersed inbetween some of the articles.)

I don’t care what Farah says, that’s supporting McCain.

What you gonna do when they come for your (bad boy)

No doubt Farah fears, rightly, that President Obama will sic the IRS on him the way President Clinton did.  That’s terrible. But then Farah shouldn’t have spent the past 8 years backing some of President Bush’s vast increases in government power, which now will be wielded by Obama. He especially has favored Bush’s wars. Yet, if history has taught us anything, it’s that wars — especially long wars like those Bush started — always increase domestic rights abuses.

Well, when Farah and I are in the same cell under the Obama Overlordship, and we’re both being tortured, I’ll be able to turn to him and say, “Thanks a lot, Joe, for cheerleading the U.S. government’s use of torture.”

Correction: After being contacted by Mr. Farah, I corrected the penultimate paragraph to read “some of” instead of “most of Bush’s vast increases in government power.” See the comments section.

Obama still will win

John McCain’s supporters are getting an adrenaline high that, if it were a substance, would land them in jail as part of the unconstitutional “war’ on drugs they support. McCain bested Obama for one day, 48-47, in a Zogby Poll. Rush Limbaugh, even though early this year he pledged never to support McCain, now is pulling out all the stops to support him.

But McCain still is going to lose.

The best judge of this race is Intrade, where people bet real money on the election’s outcome. In 2006, it got right every U.S. Senate race, something no poll did.

Intrade now has Obama’s odds at 84.8 to McCain’s 16.4.  It means there’s an 84.8% chance Obama will win, 16.4% chance McCain will. Check their site here.

You can see that the Obama dropped below 50 right after McCain’s Palin pick. That was the only time McCain was in the lead. Then, as the economy crashed big time in the last half of September, Obama’s numbers took off, and haven’t looked back.

Poll numbers for races always tighten at the end. The economy isn’t bad enough — yet — that this will be a blowout. But enough folks have lost their jobs and houses, and enough others worry about that happening, that the incumbent party will be punished.

Not that it will matter much. Elections nowadays mostly are about patronage: which faction will divvy up the spoils of tyranny and plunder. It’s like Brezhnev vs. Khrushchev in 1964.

Nazinomics

The ongoing centralization of the U.S. economy is the same as that of the Nazi era. What does that tell us about Bush-Bernanke-McCain-Obama-Paulson-Pelosi-Reid? (Via LewRockwell.com’s blog.)

See if this sounds familiar, from Gunter Reimann, The Vampire Economy: Doing Business Under Fascism (1939), p. 174:

The most serious financial problem for the Nazi State is not the danger of a breakdown of the currency and banking system, but the growing illiquidity of banks, insurance companies, saving institutions, etc. . . . Germany’s financial organizations are again in a situation where their assets which should be kept liquid have become ‘frozen’. . . . But the totalitarian State can tighten its control over the whole financial system and appropriate for itself all private funds which are essential for the further existence of a private economy. Yet the institutions which still exist as private enterprises are not allowed to go bankrupt. For an artificial belief in credits and financial obligations has to be maintained in open conflict with realities.

Neocons are deserting GOP ship they sank

Say what you will about the Neo”conservatives” — who aren’t real conservatives, but Trotskyites — they predictably are disloyal. After they destroy you, they desert you.

As Ron Paul warned a year ago, the Neocons’ Iraq War would destroy the GOP. That has happened. Even out here in John Wayne County (Orange County), local Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, elected for 20 years in a formerly safe district, now is running the race of his life against a local leftist Democrat. Dana, alas, supported Bush’s Neocon wars, and now is paying the price.

None of that bothers the Neocons, who are migrating to Obama. Contrary to popular belief, Obama is not a peacenik, but just another warmonger like Bush, Cheney, or McCain.

In a piece in Sunday’s Neocon Washington Post, ultra-Neocon David Frum begins with a pro-forma trashing of Sarah Palin, something all the Neocons do nowadays. Except that the Palin pick brought McCain the only spike in the polls of his dismal candidacy, briefly putting him ahead of Obama for the only time. McCain didn’t sustain it because he “suspended” his campaign as the financial crisis worsened, then backed, with Obama, the bipartisan $700,000,000,000.00 bailout ripoff of Main Street to benefit Wall Street.

McCain, as I noted at the time, should have led the grassroots opposition to the bailout. When he didn’t, that was the end of his campaign. Ignorant of economics, he didn’t understand that the bailout made the economy worse, benefiting Obama even more.

Frum-flam

Frum:

In these last days before the vote, Republicans need to face some strategic realities. Our resources are limited, and our message is failing. We cannot fight on all fronts. We are cannibalizing races that we must win and probably can win in order to help a national campaign that is almost certainly lost. In these final 10 days, our goal should be: senators first.

Yes, the message — the Neocon message — is failing because it brought us the Iraq War quagmire, followed by the inflation to pay for it, followed by the economic crash.

First, with the financial meltdown, the federal government is now acquiring a huge ownership stake in the nation’s financial system.

No, Frum, the feds are not “acquiring” that — you Neocons are handing it over to them!

It will be immensely tempting to officeholders in Washington to use that stake for political ends — to reward friends and punish enemies. One-party government, of course, will intensify those temptations. And as the federal government succumbs, officeholders will become more and more comfortable holding that stake. The current urgency to liquidate the government’s position will subside. The United States needs Republicans and conservatives to monitor the way Democrats wield this extraordinary and dangerous new power — and to pressure them to surrender it as rapidly as feasible.

Why should Democrats surrender powers they crave, and which the Neoconized Republicans cravenly gave them?

Second, the political culture of the Democratic Party has changed over the past decade. There’s a fierce new anger among many liberal Democrats, a more militant style and an angry intolerance of dissent and criticism. This is the culture of the left-wing blogosphere and MSNBC‘s evening line-up — and soon, it will be the culture of important political institutions in Washington.

The Frum fatwa

Actually, the Democrats are only mimicking the “angry intolerance of dissent and criticism” of the Neocons, who have purged from the GOP and the conservative “movement” anyone who disagreed with them. Frum himself is the most notorious henchman. On the day Bush launched Iraq War, March 19, 2003 — a day that will live in infamy — Frum put on National Review Online a fatwa against a host of longtime loyal conservatives and libertarians who opposed the war. Its title: “Unpatriotic Conservatives: A war against America.” These included Lew Rockwell, Pat Buchanan, Thomas Fleming, Robert Novak, and many more.

“Unpatriotic” he branded these patriots. It was especially disgusting because Frum is a left-wing Canadian who has spent more than two decades in America yet only got his U.S. citizenship papers when he became a speechwriter for Bush, and it was embarrassing to have a foreigner stuffing words into the mouth of the Great Leader. In that job, Frum came up with the “Axis of Evil” phrase that has caused so much mischief.  (His original version was “Axis of Hate.”) Frum is only good at purges of real conservatives, which he actually began as an undergraduate at Yale.

At the end of yesterday’s advice for the GOP, Frum said to Republicans that “the only argument we have left” to voters is that divided government — keeping some Republicans — would provide a slight check on Democratic Party excesses in using all those new powers the government has.

Powers which the Republicans, guided by Frum and other Neocons, have greatly expanded, not just in the past month but for 8 years. Let’s not forget the anti-patriotic “Patriot Act” that shreded our liberties, torture, legalized spying on anyone without a warrant — and so on.

As with everything Frum and the rest of the Neocons recommend, the opposite tack should be taken.

Good riddance to leftist Neocons

This election is over. But after the big losses next week, if Republicans want to survive, they should attack the Neocons, Bush, the Iraq War, and the whole central government apparatus of tyranny. Send Frum back to Canada, and the rest of the Neocons back to the Democratic Party from whence they slithered 30 years ago.

Embrace Ron Paul, whose attack on the murderous, profligate, bankrupt, robber U.S. government is the only way the GOP can revive itself.

I’m writing in Ron Paul on Nov. 4

I obviously am not voting for either of the two nearly identical duopoly candidates, John McBama and Barack OCain.

The Libertarian Party’s candidate, Bob Barr, it turns out isn’t so libertarian, and Ron Paul didn’t endorse him, instead favoring Chuck Baldwin.

Voting for Constitution Party candidate Chuck Baldwin would be a decent option in most states. But some shenanigans by the Neocons dumped Baldwin from the party’s ticket out here in the Pyrite State, and put in his place ultra-Neocon Alan Keyes, who opposes the party’s principles: noninterventionism and limited government. Baldwin is an official write-in candidate here.

But Paul himself is now on California’s ticket as an official write-in candidate, which means my vote will be counted.

I voted for Ron in the Republican primary here. He is the only man who can save America from perdition. So I’m sticking with him.

Socialist is NOT “an old code word for black”

I’ve been noting on this site that McCain and Bush are socialists. According to Lewis Diuguid, Kansas City Star Editorial Page columnist, that’s racist. He writes:

The “socialist” label that Sen. John McCain and his GOP presidential running mate Sarah Palin are trying to attach to Sen. Barack Obama actually has long and very ugly historical roots.

J. Edgar Hoover, director of the FBI from 1924 to 1972, used the term liberally to describe African Americans who spent their lives fighting for equality….

McCain and Palin have simply reached back in history to use an old code word for black. It set whites apart from those deemed unAmerican and those who could not be trusted during the communism scare.

Shame on McCain and Palin.

But wait! I’m confused. If it’s racist for McCain and Palin to call Obama a “socialist.” Then it must be racist for me to call McCain a socialist, even though he’s white like me.

Diuguid names several black leaders who were labeled “socialist.” Two are W.E.B. DuBois and Paul Robeson.

And the Lenin Prize goes to…

He has a point, actually. They went beyond mere socialism. In his old age, according to Wikipedia:

in the March 16, 1953 issue of The National Guardian, Du Bois wrote “Joseph Stalin was a great man; few other men of the 20^th century approach his stature.”^[36]…

In 1959, Du Bois received the Lenin Peace Prize. In 1961, at the age of 93, he joined the Communist Party USA…

And Wikipedia says of Robeson — a great singer, by the way:

Robeson became captivated with this new society and its leadership, declaring “that the country was entirely free of racial prejudice and that Afro-American spiritual music resonated to Russian folk traditions. “Here, for the first time in my life … I walk in full human dignity.”

Through his writings and speeches, Robeson went on to defend the foreign and domestic policies of the Soviet Union and Joseph Stalin. During the Soviet purges, Robeson allegedly told a Daily Worker reporter that “from what I have already seen of the workings of the Soviet Government, I can only say that anybody who lifts his hand against it ought to be shot!”^[18] After the formation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), Robeson proclaimed during a speech at the Paris World Peace Congress in 1949 that “It is unthinkable that American Negroes will go to war on behalf of those who have oppressed us for generations… against a country [the Soviet Union] which in one generation has raised our people to the full dignity of mankind.” Sugar Ray Robinson responded to this by saying that although he did not know Robeson he would “punch him in the mouth” if he met him.^[19] Even while many former left wing supporters of the Soviet Union learned of the atrocities being committed there and began publicly denouncing their former affiliations, Robeson held firm.

During his lifetime, Robeson always denied that he was a Communist Party member. But after his death, at the occasion of his 100th birthday in 1988, the American Communist Party issued a pamphlet “Paul Robeson: An American Communist,” by CP chairman Gus Hall, in which the Party acknowledged that Robeson had been a secret member. Hall wrote: “My own most precious moments with Paul were when I met with him to accept his dues and renew his yearly membership in the CPUSA.”

Robeson’s silence on Stalin’s anti-Semitism

And racism? How about Robeson’s silence during Stalin’s anti-Semitic “Doctors’ Plot” of the late 1940s and early 1950s. If Stalin hadn’t died in 1953, it might have been another Holocaust killing about 6 million Jews. Wikipedia again:

On July 8, 1943, at the largest pro-Soviet rally ever held in the United States, an event organized by the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee and chaired by Albert Einstein, Robeson met Solomon Mikhoels, the popular actor and director of the Moscow State Jewish Theater and the Yiddish poet Itzik Feffer. Mikhoels headed the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee in what was then the Soviet Union; Feffer was his second. After the rally, Robeson and his wife Essie entertained Feffer and Mikhoels.

Six years later, in June 1949, during the 150th anniversary celebration of the birth of Alexander Pushkin, Robeson visited the Soviet Union to sing in concert. Concerned about the welfare of Jewish artists, Robeson insisted to Soviet officials that he meet with Feffer.^[22] Forced to communicate through hand gestures and notes because the room was bugged, Feffer indicated that Mikhoels had been murdered in 1948 by the secret police. Robeson responded publicly during his concert in Tchaikovsky Hall on June 14 by paying tribute to his friends Feffer and Mikhoels and by singing the Vilna Partisan song “Zog Nit Keynmol” in both Russian and Yiddish to honor them.^[23][24] Upon returning to the United States, however, Robeson denied the widespread persecution of Jews stating that he “met Jewish people all over the place… I heard no word about it.”^[25].

You’d think a columnist like Diuguid might check a few facts. It only takes a couple of seconds to do a Google search.

And you’d think that his editors at the Kansas City Star, a paper most famous for giving Hemingway his start as a writer almost a century ago, would employ editors who  check this stuff.

In reality, socialism = racism

Oh, and what about such great, black, anti-socialist writers as Walter Williams and Thomas Sowell?  If they say that DuBois and Robeson are “socialists,” are they “racist,” too? One of Sowell’s best books is “Marxism: Philosophy and Economics,” a refutation of the ideology held so dear by DuBois and Robeson. And Sowell takes apart Obama here.

And one of Williams’ best is “The State Against Blacks,” showing how socialist governments — like that in the USA — actually hurt blacks by maniuplating the government system against those struggling to rise up in the world. Whereas in free markets, blacks are free to compete with anybody else; and if discriminated against, can — if government doesn’t “help” them — succeed anyway by working harder than the competition.

One example from Williams , from a recent column:

Two important surveys of academic economists were reported in two issues of the American Economic Review, May 1979 and May 1992. In one survey, 90 percent, and in the other 80 percent, of economists agreed that increasing the minimum wage causes unemployment among youth and low-skilled workers.

Minimum wages can have a more insidious effect. In research for my book “South Africa’s War Against Capitalism” (1989), I found that during South Africa’s apartheid era, racist unions, who’d never admit blacks, were the major supporters of higher minimum wages for blacks.

Gert Beetge, secretary of South Africa’s avowedly racist Building Worker’s Union, in response to contractors hiring black workers, said, “There is no job reservation left in the building industry, and in the circumstances I support the rate-for-the-job [minimum wages] as the second best way of protecting our white artisans.” Racists recognized the discriminatory effects of mandated minimum wages.

Let’s also remember a great black anti-socialist of the past, George Schuyler, who was published by fabled American journalist H.L. Mencken. Wikipedia notes:

Schuyler believed that socialists were frauds who actually cared very little about negroes. Schuyler’s writing caught the eye of H. L. Mencken who wrote “I am more and more convinced that he [Schuyler] is the most competent editorial writer now in practice in this great free republic.”

In 1931 Schuyler published Black No More, which tells the story of a scientist who makes a machine that turns black people to white, a book that has since been reprinted twice.

That would make a great movie. Too bad Hollywood Leftists won’t touch it.

I read his autobiography, “Black and Conservative,” back in the 1970s. It’s been 30 years, but my memory is that he was dismayed that his fellow blacks so easily were taken in by political hucksters. Of course, there’s no racial distinction there. White Republicans who think Bush and McCain are supporters of the free market are equally deluded.

It’s just beginning

Alas, we’re likely to get more ideological piffle like Diuguid’s when Obama becomes president.

The reality, though, is that Obama — like McCain and Bush — is a socialist. And if he and his supporters can’t stand being called what they are, then they’ll just have to lumpenproletariat.

They’re all socialists

It’s amusing to hear McCain say Obama is a socialist. Of course Obama is.

So is McCain.

McCain and Obama supported Bush’s $700,000,000,000.00 socialist bailout of Wall Street.

McCain supported Bush’s socialist No Child Left Behind takeover of American schools.

McCain supported Bush’s $40,000,000,000.00 yearly new socialist drug program for retirees, further socializing American medicine.

Among other Republicans, Romney imposed a mandatory socialized medicine on the people of Massachusetts when he was governor.

Huckabee imposed many new socilialist programs and taxes on the people of Arkansas.

And so on.

Only one candidate of either major party is not a socialist: Ron Paul. He also warned for years that socialist schemes would bring about the economic collapse we’re now going through.

Of the third-party candidates, two are socialists: Cynthia McKinney of the Green Party and Ralph Nader.

Two are not socialists: Chuck Baldwin of the Constitution Party and Bob Barr of the Libertarian Party.

That’s the choice this year, if it is a choice.

McCain easily “wins” last debate

I “live”-blogged first 2 debates, commenting as they occurred. I skipped the 3rd debate because, just before, a friend unexpectedly came over and we drank and talked, not about politics.

For tonight’s final debate, on domestic  policy, I watched as would a regular American, the mythical Joe Sixpack, sitting back and just seeing the show with some friends, drinking during the event. Not over-analyzing it.

McCain easily won. He made strong points that Obama would increase taxes on regular Americans, especially small businesses.

Of course, McCain’s scheme to take over failed home mortgages was socialism that would make matters even worse.

Obama “lost,” but probably not enough to hurt him. Today the stock market crashed another 9% (S&P), smashing 401(k)s and the whole economy. That can only help him. He just had to appear not totally idiotic and threatening. Misson: accomplished. The Intrade betting on the election saw Obama’s bets rise 4 points, to 84, compared to just 16 for McCain.

McCain also won the abortion debate. Obama was sputtering.

Bob Schieffer, the incompetent “moderator,” never asked about the inflation caused by Federal Reserve Board expansion of the money supply, the true cause of the coming Depression. Nor did he ask about the need for a gold standard.

The debate on education was pointless, because since the feds first got involved 50 years ago, they destroyed state and local control, and so destroyed standards and achievement.  Neither candidate called for entirely ending the feds’ destructive control of local schools.

What was needed was the injection of a wild card: one or more of the 3rd party candidates. How about Liberarian Bob Barr questioning the expense of No Child Left Behind, the dumbing-down Bush education scheme? How about Ralph Nader asking about the domestic costs and consequences of the expensive Iraq War?

Somebody should pack Schieffer up and send him to a retirement home. America deserved better.

What a dismal end to a debate season that was the worst and most boring ever. McCain “won,” but that’s like winning first place in a writing contest for illiterates.

Too bad one of them will be the next president.

I’m stocking up on Dewar’s and Bulleit because President Obama is going to increase the booze tax for sure, maybe bring back Prohibition, taking away the only way to get through his depressing regime.

Obama and McCain should debate drunk

Have you ever seen anything more boring than the “debates” so far? They make even the 2004 Bush-Kerry debates look like Lincoln-Douglas. Worse, tonight stuffy Bob Schieffer is the “moderator.”

We need to liven tonight’s last debate up before the whole country slides into somnolence, misses Thursday’s work day, and makes the Depression even worse.

Here’s how: Get the candidates drunk during the debate. After every question, each candidate chugs a 1.5 oz. shot of the liquor of his choice, but it has to be 80 proof (40% alcohol).

I suspect Obama would choose one of those hoity-toity vodkas, like Grey Goose, while McCain is a bourbon man, like me, and would pick Jack Daniels.

Obama’s strength would be that he’s a young man and starts out more level-headed. His weakness, that he’s a thin guy who would start acting like Stan Laurel when he got tipsy in those great old Laurel & Hardy movies.

McCain’s weakness would be his old age. His strength would be that he’s beefier — more corpuscles to dilute the poison — and that Navy flyboys like him can hold their own.

Call it even.

After about 10 questions, each will have downed nearly a quart of the hard stuff. Then it might go something like this.

Schieffer: Sen. McCain, let’s talk about tax policy.

McCain (after chugging another shot of bourbon): Obbbbammma. He. He. Obaaaaammma would incr… (hic) incr… (hic) incr… (hic) incr… (hic…) incr… (hic) raise your taxes.

Obama (after chugging another shot of votka0:  Only onnnnn. Richhh. Reeech. Retchhhh. Your….. wife.

Schieffer: Sen. Obama, how would you deal with the economic crisis?

Obama (another vodka): I’mmm wooorkin. You’rrrrr workin… He workkkin. We’re all workinnnn. Whazzup?

Schieffer: Sen. McCain?

McCain (another bourbon): Huh? Uh?

Schieffer: Let’s turn to foreign policy. How about Iran. Sen. McCain?

McCain (to the tune of “Barbara Ann”): Boooomb, Booomb, Booooomb, Bomb, Bumbb, Boooomb Iran.

Obama (joins in, harmonizng): Bimb, Bomb, Boomb, Boombi, Bimbi. Bambi Iran.

Schieffer: Senators, this isn’t the Miss America pageant. We don’t have a talent contest any more than we have a swimsuit competition.

McCain (chugging two bourbons): Swimsuit?

McCain takes off his clothes to his underwear and begins preening for the audience. Obama follows suit.

McCain: Arnold Schwarzschwarzeschwarzene…that Kraut… is a Republican. I bodybuilder too!

Obama (mimicking Muhammed Ali prancing during a fight): I gonna float like a butterfly and sting like a bee!

After Obama begins jabbing McCain, McCain throws a roundhose punch. Obama grapples with him, and both candidates fall down on the stage. Schieffer tries to break it up. Obama and McCain both slug him, knocking him out. Then both candidates collapse into unconsciousness.

Really bad news for McCain: He’s losing Nor Carolina

The most accurate way to see how the election is going is not the polls, but Intrade, an online betting service (such betting, I believe, is illegal in the “free” USA; but watching the bets is legal — for now). Intrade correctly predicted every US Senate race in 2006. Intrade is more accurate than polls because people actually bet with their own money, like on sports games. And they think about the race more than someone called by a pollster during dinner.

I watch it every day and Nor Carolina just switched to Obama. The last time Democrats won NC was in 1976, with Jimmy “Why not the best?” Carter.

Overall, for the whole country, Intrade bets are 75 for Obama and 27.2 for McCain (as I write; may be slightly different when you read this). Just a month ago, they were pretty even.

Intrade is predicting 364 electoral votes for Obama, 174 for McCain.

I can’t reproduce it here, but if you go to Intrade’s home page, click on “30 Day Price Chart” and it shows how they were even. On Oct. 15, McCain was slightly ahead at  51.7, Obama at 47.1. That was the day the economic crisis rapidly worsened, if you’ll recall. And Obama’s Intrade numbers soared, as the chart shows.