Obama: Behind the Hope, Part One: The Good

Over the next few days I intend to do a short series of blogs on the new President-elect of the United States of America, Mr. Barack Obama, to try and dig past the “Hope and Change” buzzwords, the “Messiah” talk coming from the left, and the “Evil Muslim Commie” talk coming from the right. This series will come in three parts: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.

First off, allow me to dispense with the obvious. The fact that America has elected a black man as their President and that coming generations will never remember a world where a black President of the United States was any stranger than a white one is a good thing.

More substantially, however, I would argue that there are upsides to his policy as well. He favours focusing efforts on Afghanistan and removing the forces from Iraq sooner rather than later. I think at this point we can all agree that Afghanistan is the “right” war, and this can only be seen as a step in the right direction. He’s promised to cut billions of dollars from the budget (of course, we can only wait and see if this will happen). He’ll most likely give the world a more favourable view of America, and while he may not have had as large of an impact as many thought, he’s clearly energized the youth of the country.

To ignore his positives is to close your mind completely to outside thought, and does both yourself, and conservatism at large, a disservice.

I’m not saying this will make him a “good” President, or that it won’t. I am saying these are his positives, and they aren’t negligible.

Pathetic U.S. Presidential Debate 2008

Maybe it is just me but it really sounded like Obama and McCain pretty much said the same things last night.

US bailout produces confusion

Here is an interesting article: Oil Prices Explode that links the recent bank bailouts to the commodities markets. Basically, the bailout leads to uncertainty in the dollar and inflation. As a result, investors move into commodities as a currency hedge — they are not being fooled. They know that printing money just leads to inflation and currency devaluation.

According to the CFTC, protecting yourself against a volatile market is manipulative and illegal. I guess bailing out banks and the Fed printing money — the cause of this mess — must be fine and dandy. How easy it is to blame the investors! Way to hide the problem!

Here is a frightening quote:

Analysts are debating where oil prices are headed from here. “With this new rush into commodities, the bailout has overridden the fact that demand is down,” says Peter Beutel, president of Cameron Hanover, an energy risk-management firm in New Canaan, Conn. “I don’t know where we’ll end up by the end of the week—$150 or under $100, I haven’t got a clue.”

The Hackers of the Left: Out of Hand?

First Sarah Palin’s email is hacked.  I’ll bet those hackers were horribly disappointed they didn’t find any dirty laundry they could air in that invasion of privacy.  Of course, instead of focusing on how low some people have sunk to find dirt on perhaps the most significant challenge Obama’s campaign has faced, the topics of choice are “Should Governors be using yahoo emails?” and “What was she trying to hide by not using her ‘official email’?”

Now some more hackers have spoofed Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s governmental email to send out false and slanderous emails.

The media insists calling these incidents the work of “pranksters”, but is anyone noticing a pattern here?

When is the left going to come out and acknowledge they have supporters who are out of hand and are causing discredit to their brand of politics?

Race Can’t NOT Be a Factor in the Presidential Election ‘08

The polls are close, and lefties are surprised.

What would account for this tight race?

Quality of candidate?  No.  Barack Poppins is practically perfect in every way.

Policies?  The Brilliant Obama has thought out carefully every one of his positions… which is why he votes the Democratic Party Line so much more often than McCain did for the Republicans.

No, it must be race.  More than half of the United States of America is deeply, profoundly racist.  And that half, coincidentally, overlaps perfectly with Republican voters.

Yeah, that’s it.

Yes, true believers.  No matter what happens in this election between now and November.  No matter what is said, no matter how the leaders campaign, no matter who is the better candidate.  If John McCain wins the election, it’s because America is racist.

A flowered hat tip to Wonder Woman.

Oprah’s an Obama Booster - Palin isn’t Welcome…

I’ll admit, it’s her show, she can do whatever she wants with it. But you have to wonder what kind of backlash could develop if she refuses to allow Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin to appear.

Oprah Winfrey may have introduced Democrat Barack Obama to the women of America — but the talkshow queen is not rushing to embrace the first woman on a Republican presidential ticket!

RNC’s Most Important Line Yet

Sarah Palin did a great job last night; Giuliani mopped the floor with the lore of Obama and President Bush managed a home run, but the most important line of the week was just given by Joe Gibbs, former Washington Redskins head coach:

Wouldn’t it be great if, when making those decisions [in Washington], someone said ‘What would God think of what we’re doing?’

If the GOP took this line to heart, and applied it in elected office, America would definately live up to the Obamian rhetoric of hope and the traditional religious right notion of America’s greatness amongst the nations. The fact that a political party’s convention would produce such a statement goes to show just how truly free and sane that party’s country can be!

David Warren on the Democrat Seige of Palin

I don’t even know where to begin to quote.  The whole thing is brilliant.

American Foreign Policy: a Ruinous War?

I hardly ever comment on American politics, but I was reading a piece on running mates for Obama, and I encountered a statement that made me think for a second.

If anything, Obama has rejected this notion — arguing with vigor and conviction that Washington’s “experience” led the nation into a ruinous war in Iraq (with prominent Democrats such as Clinton, Dick Gephardt and even enthusiastic Obama supporter Jay Rockefeller backing the preemptive war).

Is it ruinous?  That word stuck out at me.  I think that Iraqis are better off now than they were under Hussein.  I think that the Middle East is less volatile today than it was.  But considering what the USA has had to deal with to achieve this: deficit spending that hasn’t been seen in years.  Huge increases in national debt.  A spread out military means they haven’t been able to respond to other things.   There’s probably lots of other things but as I said, I am no expert.

The money alone seems to me to be ruinous.  I don’t have a hate-on for Bush the way most of my liberal friends do (and even some conservatives), but I don’t think what’s been achieved in Iraq was worth the cost to America’s economy, nor to its people.  I think Afghanistan has had much more immediate results with more gains for the people of Afghanistan, with less cost in lives and in spending.  But not Iraq.

I guess the difference is it is easy to say that in hindsight.

Paul Krugman’s oil policy is just talk

Paul Krugman advocates talking to oil suppliers as an economic policy to deal with high prices:

“Now, whether, you know, Bush is responsible for high oil prices, I don’t think you can make that case. But we should remember that he promised, he said back in 2000, that he had, he knew what to do. He would be able to talk OPEC into opening the spigots and, you know, they haven’t managed to do that, so this is a failed energy policy, for sure.” Krugman also argued that the increased drilling would have an “insignificant effect on the price.”

So, let me get this straight: talking to oil suppliers to increase supply is a good economic policy but increasing that supply domestically can not be significant. Whether off-shore drilling can provide enough oil or not to affect price is argumentative. I guess we could consult a geologist to give us an idea of what physical volume could be expected in off-shore America. [Maybe the geologist could tell us that it would be environmentally damaging to the American coast but that is not what Krugman is talking about. He is talking about supply affecting prices.] Is Krugman a geologic expert? I doubt it and I know I certainly am not. However, talking to a foreign supplier to change supply is advocating stupidity.

If the oil suppliers had profit to be gained by increasing supply, they would do it without the need of any American talking to them. Only a foolish economist would fail to grasp this obvious fact. Many of the oil producing nations have said that they have increased supply as much as they can. Maybe they are lying but that is their prerogative. They have no obligation to increase the supply. If Krugman wants to play the part of a good liberal economist discussing the oil industry, maybe he should point out things like this:

Many of Saudi Arabia’s 6-million foreign workers labor under conditions that are sometimes compared to “modern-day slavery.”

Instead, Krugman is just talking partisan politics with his wind of educated economic authority behind his back. Failing to incorporate basic market mechanisms in his prescriptions makes him pathetic.

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