McCain Palin Will Allow Markets to Innovate Out Of this Mess

McCain Palin will not pursue the big government, interventionist policies to revive the US economy and the credit markets.

They are more likely to let the market innovate because history has shown that markets and people innovate not governments.

McCain Palin's opponents promise big interventionist policies that history has shown won't have its intended effect and worse, cost the US taxpayers even more.

From WSJ:

Mr. Obama's "deregulation" trope may be good politics, but it's bad history and is dangerous if he really believes it. The U.S. is going to need a stable, innovative financial system after this panic ends, and we won't get that if Mr. Obama and his media chorus think the answer is to return to Depression-era rules amid global financial competition. Perhaps the Senator should ask the former President for a briefing

McCain's Support of Free(er) Market Oriented Policies Is Right for The Current Credit Crisis

Markets work better than government. Government intervention on average does not help a financial crisis. It may provide short term relief but it is just delaying the inevitable.

From Minyanville:

"The view that the consumer is helpless and needs protection by a benevolent government is expressed [by the consumer advisory council]. The view, once widely accepted in this country that competition forces business to serve the public is not even given token nod...The Constitution of the United States was based in part on the belief that people needed protection, primarily from the government, and that free, competitive enterprise was the most efficient engine for promoting the public good.

“At one time, the intellectual climate of this country placed the burden of proof for the necessity of interference with the market process on those who would interfere. Interference was presumed to be an error unless an overwhelming case could be made for it. In the present intellectual climate, the reverse is probably true-actions by the government to regulate business are presumed to be beneficent and the burden of proof is on those who oppose."
James Lorie

McCain Supports Interstate Purchase of Health Insurance

Obama is against such a plan.

From WSJ:

Mr. McCain backs legislation sponsored by Arizona Rep. John Shadegg. Known as the Health Care Choice Act, it would allow individuals living in one state to purchase health insurance being sold to people living in other states. The policy would still have to meet the regulations of the state in which it is being sold, and would be subject to additional federal oversight.

In other words, the McCain-Shadegg reform would allow a person living in New Jersey or New York to buy health insurance that is being sold in and regulated by Pennsylvania or Connecticut. That's hardly the Wild West of health insurance.

About 18 million Americans today buy health insurance in the individual market because they don't have access to employer coverage or they aren't in a government-sponsored program (Medicare, Medicaid, etc.).

Blame Pelosi's Pals for the defeat of TARP bill

From WSJ:

Congressional leaders wondering why they couldn't muster the votes for the $700 billion financial-rescue plan could look to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's home state for answers.

Nearly half of California's congressional delegation -- 24 of 53 members -- voted against the bailout plan backed by congressional leaders and President George W. Bush. "No" votes came from an unlikely mix of left-leaning Democrats and conservative Republicans. The Democrats, in particular, wanted more relief in the bill for mortgage borrowers. Republicans wanted the banks to get less taxpayer money.

Obama Incorrect About Current Morgage Mess

From Greg Mankiw:

If Senator Obama really wants to transcend partisan politics, as he would sometimes have us believe, he might want to give a slightly more balanced view of the history of how this all started. He also might want to take note that the Bush administration warned about some of these problems five years ago and had its reform efforts stymied by prominent members of Senator Obama's own party.

Right Now, Right Here, We Need Judgement & Leadership - It Ain't Obama

It has been clear, Obama's lack of experience and his waffling on issues, that he lacks the core capabilities to be the next President of the United States.

Article Two and the Treaty Clause of the Constitution gives the POTUS the authority to negotiate treaties and the powers of ware and peace.

Obama's statements on foreign policy is an indication that he is not ready to be the next President.

From Commentary:

The general line was encapsulated by the television news star Anderson Cooper last year in a leading question to Barack Obama:

In the spirit of . . . bold leadership would you be willing to meet . . . during the first year of your administration . . . with the leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba, and North Korea, in order to bridge the gap that divides our countries?

Obama did not hesitate. “I would,” he replied. “And the reason is . . . that the notion that somehow not talking to countries is punishment to them—which has been the guiding diplomatic principle of this administration—is ridiculous.”

As is his wont, Obama later offered up a number of qualifications and clarifications of this statement. Electoral maneuvering aside, however, he stuck to his main position, which he seemed to treat as so obviously true as to be irrefutable. But is it? How valuable is diplomacy? Can it in fact “bridge the gap” with enemies by disclosing unsuspected common ground and thereby changing the equation between them and us? Has it ever done so?

Should we talk with our enemies? Yes—to tell them what we think of them, and what we ourselves stand for. We should talk to them, that is, on our own terms and not theirs, and with their captive peoples in mind. But to the question that Anderson Cooper put to Senator Obama, the simple and correct answer was “No.” If Obama ever gains the presidency, the world will be safer if he has figured that out before he enters office.

No Country For Left Leaning Liberal

From Obama's Leftism.

In sum, Obama comes to us from a background farther to the Left than any presidential nominee since George McGovern, or perhaps ever. This makes him an extremely unlikely leader to bridge the divides of party, ideology, or, for that matter, race. If he loses, it will be for that reason (though many will no doubt adduce different explanations, including of course white racism, to which every GOP victory since Nixon’s election in 1968 has been attributed).

Why does Obama Seek Support From a Racial Demagogue - Al Sharpton

From Commentary:

This year, Obama appeared before Rev. Al Sharpton’s National Action Network (whose official slogan is “no justice, no peace”) to seek its support. The candidate praised Sharpton as “a voice for the voiceless and . . . dispossessed. What National Action Network has done is so important to change America, and it must be changed from the bottom up.” Given Sharpton’s long career of reckless racial demagogy, it might seem shocking that a mainstream candidate should be seeking his blessing, but in this, at least, Obama was not unique: all of the 2008 Democratic aspirants did so.

The Man Who Never Was - Do you Really Know Obama?

From Tony Blankley:

The mainstream media ruthlessly and endlessly repeat any McCain gaffes while ignoring Obama gaffes. You have to go to weird little Web sites to see all the stammering and stuttering that Obama needs before getting out a sentence fragment or two. But all you see on the networks is an eventually clear sentence from Obama. You don't see Obama's ludicrous gaffe that Iran is a tiny country and no threat to us. Nor his 57 American states gaffe. Nor his forgetting, if he ever knew, that Russia has a veto in the U.N. Nor his whining and puerile "come on" when he is being challenged. This is the kind of editing one would expect from Goebbels' disciples, not Cronkite's.

The public image of Obama as an idealistic, post-race, post-partisan, well-spoken and honest young man with the wisdom and courage befitting a great national leader is a confection spun by a willing conspiracy of Obama, his publicist (David Axelrod) and most of the senior editors, producers and reporters of the national media.

Perhaps that is why the National Journal's respected correspondent Stuart Taylor wrote, "The media can no longer be trusted to provide accurate and fair campaign reporting and analysis."

Good Political Leaders Know When to Reach Out - Not Obama

Obama has one of the most partisan voting records in the Senate. That is not a sign of someone who will work with both parties to create policies that will benefit Americans.

If you go by Obama's voting record, one should expect gridlock politics if he becomes President.

From Joshua Muravchik:

Non-partisanship does not just mean Democrats coaching Little League, lovely as that is, but cooperating with members of the other party in developing compromise solutions to national problems. The Senate has a particularly rich tradition of such bipartisanship, but Obama appears never to have participated in it. On the contrary: according to Congressional Quarterly, which measures how often each member votes in accordance with or at variance from the majority of his own party, Obama has compiled one of the most partisan of all voting records.

McCain Leads with Walmart Women

McCain leads in one of this years crucial voting blocks.

From the WSJ:

Pollsters have emblematized part of the crucial working-class swing vote as "Wal-Mart Women," defined as more socially conservative women who typically don't have a college degree, who are feeling the economic pinch and are shopping at Wal-Mart for its lower prices.

The rise of Wal-Mart's female customers as a sought-after voting bloc has presented the Bentonville, Ark.-based company with an unprecedented opportunity to help choose the next president -- and it's trying to make the most of it.

The political poll, conducted for the company by a bipartisan team of pollsters, isn't the first Wal-Mart has conducted, but it is the first it has made public, said Wal-Mart spokesman David Tovar.

Obama's Group Hug Partner Andrew Cuomo Had A Hand In the Current Financial Mess

From the Village Voice:

Andrew Cuomo, the youngest Housing and Urban Development secretary in history, made a series of decisions between 1997 and 2001 that gave birth to the country's current crisis. He took actions that—in combination with many other factors—helped plunge Fannie and Freddie into the subprime markets without putting in place the means to monitor their increasingly risky investments. He turned the Federal Housing Administration mortgage program into a sweetheart lender with sky-high loan ceilings and no money down, and he legalized what a federal judge has branded "kickbacks" to brokers that have fueled the sale of overpriced and unsupportable loans. Three to four million families are now facing foreclosure, and Cuomo is one of the reasons why.

Obama's Supports Bill Ayers' Philosophy of Radicalism

From WSJ:

Mr. Ayers is the founder of the "small schools" movement (heavily funded by CAC), in which individual schools built around specific political themes push students to "confront issues of inequity, war, and violence." He believes teacher education programs should serve as "sites of resistance" to an oppressive system. (His teacher-training programs were also CAC funded.) The point, says Mr. Ayers in his "Teaching Toward Freedom," is to "teach against oppression," against America's history of evil and racism, thereby forcing social transformation.

The Obama campaign has cried foul when Bill Ayers comes up, claiming "guilt by association." Yet the issue here isn't guilt by association; it's guilt by participation. As CAC chairman, Mr. Obama was lending moral and financial support to Mr. Ayers and his radical circle. That is a story even if Mr. Ayers had never planted a single bomb 40 years ago.

Bill Ayers & Obama Share A Common Radical Liberal Philosophy

From WSJ:

The Chicago Annenberg Challenge was created ostensibly to improve Chicago's public schools.

The CAC's agenda flowed from Mr. Ayers's educational philosophy, which called for infusing students and their parents with a radical political commitment, and which downplayed achievement tests in favor of activism. In the mid-1960s, Mr. Ayers taught at a radical alternative school, and served as a community organizer in Cleveland's ghetto.

In works like "City Kids, City Teachers" and "Teaching the Personal and the Political," Mr. Ayers wrote that teachers should be community organizers dedicated to provoking resistance to American racism and oppression. His preferred alternative? "I'm a radical, Leftist, small 'c' communist," Mr. Ayers said in an interview in Ron Chepesiuk's, "Sixties Radicals," at about the same time Mr. Ayers was forming CAC.

CAC translated Mr. Ayers's radicalism into practice. Instead of funding schools directly, it required schools to affiliate with "external partners," which actually got the money. Proposals from groups focused on math/science achievement were turned down. Instead CAC disbursed money through various far-left community organizers, such as the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (or Acorn).

Mr. Obama once conducted "leadership training" seminars with Acorn, and Acorn members also served as volunteers in Mr. Obama's early campaigns. External partners like the South Shore African Village Collaborative and the Dual Language Exchange focused more on political consciousness, Afrocentricity and bilingualism than traditional education. CAC's in-house evaluators comprehensively studied the effects of its grants on the test scores of Chicago public-school students. They found no evidence of educational improvement.

Obama Trails With Women

From the The National Journal:

The Women, Parts I & II: The most striking gap isn't between men and women, it's between white women with a college degree and those without.

Those who are married and have a college degree give Obama a very slight lead, 45 percent to 44 percent, while those without a degree overwhelmingly support McCain, 57 percent to 31 percent. Among white men, the difference is negligible. McCain is getting 56 percent among white men with a degree and 58 percent from white men without.

How does this compare with past elections? National Journal political director Ronald Brownstein tells us that in 2004, John Kerry took just 39 percent of married, white college-educated women -- 5 points below Obama's current standing.

But Obama is underperforming among single white women without a degree -- a group that Bush only narrowly carried in 2004, 51 percent to 48 percent. McCain has an 8-point lead among this group, 47 percent to 39 percent. Is this the Sarah Palin factor, or is something else at work?

Why Obama's Goverment Oriented Policies Won't Work

From John Stossel:

One reason decentralized markets are preferable to government central planning is that human beings are fallible. Mistakes are inevitable. Some investments will be errors. Mistakes in the market tend to be on a comparatively small scale. If one company invests in plug-in hybrids and it goes bust, only a relatively few people suffer. The assets of the bankrupt firm pass into more capable hands.

But decisions by government, especially the federal government, affect all of us. When government makes a mistake, the bureaucracy can't go bankrupt. Instead, it will use its failure to justify increased appropriations in the next budget.

If "green jobs" make so much sense, the market will create them. They will be created by private entrepreneurs and venture capitalists who are eager to profit from winning investments. The best ideas will rise to the top, and green energy will gradually replace coal and oil.

If politicians were serious about creating jobs and cleaner technologies, they would step aside and let the free market go to work

Obama's Windbagging On Clean Energy Won't Create Job

Government can't create 5 million jobs, as claimed by Obama.

From John Stossel:

"I'll invest $150 billion over the next decade in affordable, renewable sources of energy — wind power and solar power and the next generation of biofuels; an investment that will lead to new industries and five million new jobs that pay well and can't ever be outsourced," he told the Democratic National Convention .

Wow. Five million new jobs. All that work building windmills and creating biofuels are the "green jobs" that will come into existence when wise government creates the industries that will produce the energy and vehicles that will make fossil fuels obsolete.

Politicians always promise that their programs will create jobs. It's used to justify building palatial sports stadiums for wealthy team owners.

Governments create no wealth. They only move it around while taking a cut for their trouble.

Note that word "strategically." It is there to suggest that Obama knows how best to "invest" the $150 billion. (Of course it is not his money, and he'll have none of his own at risk, so from his perspective, it won't really be investment.) But how does he know that the things he names ought to get the money? Will he give it to cronies of his campaign contributors? Will he appoint Al Gore to pick grant recipients? Lobbyists will make a fortune steering "green" inventors and promoters to the $150 billion

Why You should Worry About Obama

From Kathleen Parker:

I worry that Obama isn't serious enough about terrorism and free markets. I worry about his out-of-touchness with the people who, he says, cling to guns and religion because of frustration and anger. I worry about a worldview that may have been shaped in part by a spiritual mentor who damns America in church and thinks the government invented the AIDS virus to kill blacks.

I worry about Obama's over-intellectualizing — that he will get lost in a maze of deep thoughts and fail to be decisive when necessary.

Obama's Hallucinatory Charisma

From David Limbaugh:

As the campaign unfolded, Obama imploded in every one of those categories. Without a teleprompter, he was stripped of his eloquence, down to verbal nudity. Under fire, his cheerfulness turned to sniping nastiness. His platform of change was exposed as the same old extreme leftist policy prescription rejected by 60 percent of Americans, which is why he tried to hide it under cover of vagueness.

His commitment to unity was betrayed by close relationships with paragons of divisiveness, racism and anti-Americanism and his elitist denunciation of small-town Americans. His grandiose pledge to bring us all together was obliterated by his failure to unite even his own party and his eager participation in a very strident and contentious campaign. Far from rising above deficiencies in his resume, Obama is not cool under fire and has less, not more maturity than an average person with his level of experience.

Having hung all their hopes on a haloed herald of hallucinatory charisma and having established superficiality over substance as the electoral standard, Obama supporters forfeited all credibility to criticize Sarah Palin for lack of experience or excess of charisma.

Obama's Advisor Rubin and Bill Clinton Helped The Financial Deregulation

How soon the media forgets that Bill Clinton signed the bill that repealed Glass-Steagall, the depression era law that separated deposit institution and investment banks.

From FreeRepublic:

The Repeal of Glass Steagall

In the background of the go-go economy, the feeling grew among some economists and the financial community that Glass-Steagall hampered America’s financial competitiveness. Among the many voices favoring this was Alan Greenspan along with former Goldman Sachs partner Robert Rubin, Bill Clinton’s Treasury Secretary. In a 1995 speech and testimony to Congress Rubin signaled the Clinton Administration was ready to repeal Glass-Steagall:

“The banking industry is fundamentally different from what it was two decades ago, let alone in 1933.” He said the industry has been transformed into a global business of facilitating capital formation through diverse new products, services and markets. “U.S. banks generally engage in a broader range of securities activities abroad than is permitted domestically,” said the Treasury secretary. “Even domestically, the separation of investment banking and commercial banking envisioned by Glass-Steagall has eroded significantly.”

Anyone who thinks the repeal of Glass-Steagall was forced on an unwilling Bill Clinton need only read Rubin’s testimony. A year later Sandy Weill set in motion the forces that would finally end Glass-Steagall.

Weill proposed the most audacious financial merger of in American history: he would merge one of the largest insurance companies (Travelers), one of the largest investment banks (Salomon Smith Barney), and the largest commercial banks (Citibank) in America. The problem was the merger was illegal in terms of Glass-Steagall. Independent Community Bankers of America CEO Kenneth Guenther captured the audacity of the deal in an interview with Frontline:

Here you have the leadership — Sandy Weill of Travelers and John Reed of Citicorp — saying, “Look, the Congress isn’t moving fast enough. Let’s do it on our own. To heck with the Congress. Let us effect this.” And so they move towards effecting it, and they get the blessing of the chairman of the Federal Reserve system in early April, when legislation is pending.

I mean, this is hubris in the worst sense of the word. Who do they think they are? Other people, firms, cannot act like this. … Citicorp and Travelers were so big that they were able to pull this off. They were able to pull off the largest financial conglomeration — the largest financial coming together of banking, insurance, and securities — when legislation was still on the books saying this was illegal. And they pulled this off with the blessings of the president of the United States, President Clinton; the chairman of the Federal Reserve system, Alan Greenspan; and the secretary of the treasury, Robert Rubin.

And then, when it’s all over, what happens? The secretary of the treasury becomes the vice chairman of the emerging Citigroup.

Weill convinced Greenspan, Robert Rubin and Clinton to sign off on a merger that was illegal at the time, with the expectation that Congress would repeal Glass-Steagall. Charles Geisst, a professor of finance at Manhattan College adds in a Frontline Interview:

Part of [Weill's] deal with the Federal Reserve was to get rid of all Glass-Steagall violations in the new Citigroup within two years. Otherwise, he would have been faced with a divestiture of a company which had just been put together, because of an old law which is still on the books. So it clearly behooved him, and many other people in the financial services industry who wanted to accomplish essentially the same sort of thing in the future, to push to get Glass-Steagall repealed.

So they pushed hard?

Pushed very hard. … They pushed so hard that the legislation, HR10, House Resolution 10, which became the Financial Services Modernization Act, was referred to as “the Citi-Travelers Act” on Capitol Hill. ..