Obama-Reagan Debate

The most chilling words in this video—among many—are Obama talking about "fundamental change" to this country.

Unfortunately, that's one campaign promise that he intends to keep.

CNBC Reporter is Mad as Hell; You Should Be, Too

In case you haven't seen it, here is CNBC reporter Rick Santelli's rant on the floor of a stock exchange in Chicago. It's five minutes, but you should watch the whole thing, it's worth it.

If you want to know what Santelli is so worked up about, here's a quick run of some numbers:

This $75 billion program will cost $100 billion because of interest on the borrowed money (and that's a conservative estimate—do you really think that this program will go away when the current "crisis" is over?).

Let's say that the average, productive, mortgage paying citizen in his/her peak earning years from age 41-65 pays $5,000 a year in federal taxes. That comes out to $125,000 paid in taxes per person over those 25 years.

At that rate, 25 years of taxes paid by 800,000 productive citizens will go to pay the mortgages of other people. That's the entire population of Fresno, CA or New Haven, CT.

Many of these people struggle every day to pay their mortgages and their other bills. They now will be required to work for a quarter of a century to pay for the houses of those who don't pay their mortgages.

And I bet none of them ever get a thank you card.

Or you can look at it in terms of opportunity cost. Social Security, of course, comes from the general fund. That $100 billion could provide a monthly benefit check of $1,000 for 555,000 citizens for 15 years. That money is likely to be gone when the citizens of Greenville, SC or Denver CO try to get it.

Ten billion here, ten billion there, pretty soon you're talk about real money for which a whole lot of real people work a lifetime.

Excessive compensation for government executives apparently OK

News article, from the Washington Times:

Postmaster got $800,000 in pay, perks: "Postmaster General John E. Potter recently warned that economic times are so dire that the U.S. Postal Service may end mail delivery one day a week and freeze executive salaries. But his personal fortunes are nonetheless rising thanks to 40 percent in pay raises since 2006, a $135,000 bonus last year and several perks usually reserved for corporate CEOs."

So we are limiting pay and perks for CEO's of private companies who accept govenment bailouts but compensation for those in the government, in "public service" goes unchecked? A $135,000 bonus for an outfit that's bleeding red ink?

Shameful and disgusting.

Steele has no use for old school

News Item:

Inside the Republican National Committee's first-ever Tech Summit.: "'There are two things that will get you kicked off the team,' Steele says. (No idle threat—fired RNC staffers spent the day clearing out their offices.) 'One is to say, We've always done it this way.' The other is to reject an idea because it's never been done before. In either case, he says, 'I don't want to have anything to do with you.'"

You have to like this mindset by Steele. The GOP can't mosey along doing things the same way it has been. Sure the message needs to be fixed and voters have to be given actual choices instead of one between a Democrat and a Democrat Lite. But the way things are done, the way the message is spread, has to be updated. "The way we've always done it" has cost us both houses and the presidency.

That's just a sidebar in the article, well worth a read. There is a long way to go in catching up with the Obamaites but having key people like Steele and Newt on board is a big, big plus.

OK, so let me get this straight. . .

News item:

Geitner needs help, can't get it:

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, under intensifying pressure from Wall Street and Congress to complete his financial-rescue plan, is being handicapped by a dearth of staff experts critical to the effort.

Geithner’s strategy of forging a partnership with private investors to buy toxic assets would benefit from aides steeped in law and finance to thresh out the competing interests in the plan. Yet the administration has yet to nominate people for any of the Treasury’s financial posts as the White House seeks to avoid Senate confirmation battles.

Comment: So, let me get this straight.

When it comes to passing a massive chunk of legislation loaded with pork, pet projects and throw-ins that add significant chunks of power to the feds, it has to happen now, not next week, not 48 hours from now, to avoid a “catastrophe”.

But when it comes to getting people who actually might be able to get to the root of the problem and solve it, well, what’s the rush.

On top of that, what confirmation battles? Over undersecretary positions? As long as they can find a man or woman with an IRS bill stamped "Paid In Full", the Democrats' large Senate majority should be able to ramrod through virtually any nomination with minimal RINO assistance.

It's becoming more and more obvious that Obama is an eloquent hack who is in way, way over his head.

Article:

American Thinker: Murphy's Law, the Peter Principle and Barack Obama: "What happens when everything that can go wrong in a person's character formation does go wrong, and that person continues to be promoted to his level of incompetence?

President Barack Obama happens."

Comment: My only quibble here is when the author says that Obama's elevation to the presidency came thanks to the Peter Principle. I would argue that something else is at work here as Obama reached his level of incompetence as a US Senator, perhaps even as an Illinois State Senator.

Dems drop, "none of the above" gains

News item:

GOP within a point in generic ballot.: "Are Republicans winning the public relations battle over spending in the $800-billion-plus economic stimulus package? Democrats and Republicans are nearly even in this week's edition of the Generic Congressional Ballot.

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone surveys found that the Democrats’ lead is down to just one percentage point. Forty percent (40%) of voters said they would vote for their district’s Democratic candidate while 39% said they would choose the Republican (see crosstabs).

This marks the lowest level of support for the Democrats in tracking history and is the closest the two parties have been on the generic ballot."

Comment: Too bad the election isn't being held tomorrow.

The Dems in Congress have dropped seven percentage points since election day but the GOP has gained just a statistically insignificant two points. The current mess seems to be driving many into the "none of the above" category.

Julion meets Barak

I don't know if Julio's greeting here is scary or dripping with sarcasm. I think it's the former, I hope it's the latter.

The only thing we have to fear is hope itself (or something like that)

News item:

Charles Krauthammer : Crisis, Catastrophe: Are These Words of Hope? - Townhall.com:

"'A failure to act, and act now, will turn crisis into a catastrophe.'
-- President Obama, Feb. 4.

WASHINGTON -- Catastrophe, mind you. So much for the president who in his inaugural address two weeks earlier declared 'we have chosen hope over fear.' Until, that is, you need fear to pass a bill."

Comment: I guess that hope, change, and bipartisanship and all of that were just empty campaign words. I'm shocked, shocked.

The true catastrophe will come when we've burned through a trillion dollars and, because the whole process was rushed, we aren't any better off than we would have been without throwing money at it.

It ain't over yet

News item:

The Great Overreach by Jonah Goldberg on National Review Online:

"The stimulus bill has failed. Barack Obama has failed. The Trojan Horse of Hope and Change crashed into the guardrail of reality, revealing an army of ideologues and activists inside.

Now, before I continue, let me say that Barack Obama will still be popular, he will still get things done, and he will declare victory after signing a stimulus bill.

But Obama’s moment is gone, and politics is about nothing if not moments."

Comment: A good article by Goldberg, but it seems to me that he's celebrating prematurely. This is far, far from over and plenty of pork and left-wing payoffs will be in a "compromise" measure.

This is just too good

No introduction needed.

Beckel tells Dems to be afraid of Steele

News item:

RealClearPolitics - Articles - Democrats: Beware of Michael Steele:

"After blasting Republicans for an endless string of missteps last week, I concede the GOP finally got one right. Electing the former Lieutenant Governor of Maryland, Michael Steele, to chair the Republican National Committee is a smart move for the GOP and a warning for Democrats.

I have spent hours with Steele at the Fox News studios, and in dozens of TV encounters, and at dinners. Steele is a friendly, formidable, and very partisan man who should not be underestimated."

Comment: This is by liberal blowhard Bob Beckel and he's saying that his side should be very worried about newly elected RNC Chair Michael Steele, because he's an effective communicator and a staunch conservative.

The former never has been in question, the latter has been.

I'm not so sure that an endorsement by Beckel is a good thing, but it's interesting nonetheless.

A Lot at Stake—Virginia 2009

There is no allowance for election fatigue in Virginia.

There are no off years in the commonwealth. In even-numbered years we have the Federal elections along with the rest of the country. While most states take the odd-numbered years off. But in the Old Dominion, those years are for the elections for state offices.

In 2007, Virginia's shift from Red to Blue in the presidential race was foreshadowed when the Democrats wrested control of the Senate of Virginia from the GOP for the first time since 1999. Those are four-year terms and all seats are up for grabs at once.

The Republicans managed to maintain their control of the lower chamber, the 100-member House of Delegates, in '07. However, that once vice-like grip on control there has slipped. Since the 2001 elections, the Democrats have steadily added a total of 10 seats, giving the GOP a 54-44 lead with two independents.

Next year there will be elections for Governor, Lt. Governor, Attorney General and all 100 seats in the GOP-controlled House of Delegates.

It's not hyperbole to say that this local election will have global implications.

If the Republicans can take back the Governor's Mansion from the Democrats (VA has a one-term limit so incumbent Democrat Tim Kaine can't run), and strengthen their control of the House of Delegates, that would be taken as a message that the state's Blue status in '08 may have been an isolated phenomenon. Such victories would be a major morale boost to the party nationwide.

If, on the other hand, the Democrats keep the governor's chair and take away most or all of the seven seats they would need to control the HOD, talk would be of a permanent realignment. Liberals everywhere would be emboldened while Republicans would be dispirited.

The GOP nominee for governor is Bob McDonnell, who is the sitting Attorney General. On the Democratic side, the candidate could be a Clinton-era figure, Terry McAuliffe. The former DNC Chairman has lived in McLean for many years, but he would need a road map to find his way outside the Beltway.

McDonnell is considered to be a strong favorite, but a year ago it was odds on that the Old Dominion would go for the GOP presidential candidate.

Nothing will happen unless all Republicans, especially those of us who live in Virginia, make it happen.

New GOP Site Message: “I don’t get it!”

The GOP has cranked up a Website entitled "Republican for a Reason" to try to get grassroots input about the future of the party.

Good idea, horrible execution. My experience there shows me that the rushed this out with no beta testing leading to a poor user experience. It screams "I don't get it" coming from the GOP.

I went to leave my text input and I took some time to compose a message. When I hit the button to submit I got an error message saying that I used "illegal symbols" in the text. I had nothing that could be confused as an HTML tag, just parenthesis and apostrophes. There is no link to help besides a token set of FAQ's, nobody to whom I can report the problem.

In a more minor annoyance, they assign you a randomly-generated password when you sign up but there is no place to go to change it something you can, you know, actually remember.

I'll check back at some point but I'm not going to waste time dealing with a bug that I can't report.

The key phrase above is "I'll check back". A lot of current and potential Republicans won't.

Here’s the problem

Here is one reason why the GOP is struggling right now.

As I type this, Congressman Eric Cantor is getting ready to appear on Fox News Sunday. Presumably he will be talking about the future of the Republican Party and how it's going to pull itself back up. He's about to be elected Minority Whip, the #2 Republican post in the House.

I am on the email list for both the Cantor campaign and the Republican Party of Virginia. Yet I received no notification that Cantor was going to appear on FNS. No email, nothing posted on either website. Nothing.

The most powerful Congressman from Virginia in quite some time is on a prominent national news show and we have to stumble on that information on our own.

I should have received an email at the very least. There should be a place on both websites to sign up for text message alerts and one should be sent out for something like this. The appearance should be touted on both websites.

The national GOP site fails to make any mention of the appearance either. God forbid they should attempt to promote one if their rising stars.

Say what you want about Ron Paul's supporters, but they get it. Every time their guy is on national TV his crowd knows about it in advance and they have an opportunity to persuade their friends to tune in and listen to his message.

The Cantor camp and the VA GOP are always are eager to send out emails about fund-raising events and to solicit contributions. But where they miss the boat is in giving us information that might eventually make us want to reach for the credit card and send fifty or a hundred bucks their way every once in a while.

Unless and until that disconnect is repaired and the GOP moves in to the 21^st century when it comes to communication the party will continue to struggle.

Judge Napolitano—Politicians Ignore Constitution

There's not much to add to this.

Dog Bites Man: Post Coverage had Obama Slant

Stop the presses: The Washington Post's coverage of the 2008 election favored Barak Obama.

The papers ombudsman, Deborah Howell, reviewed the paper's political coverage from November 11 of last year through Election Day 2008. She reported the following:

The Post provided a lot of good campaign coverage, but readers have been consistently critical of the lack of probing issues coverage and what they saw as a tilt toward Democrat Barack Obama. My surveys, which ended on Election Day, show that they are right on both counts.

The ombudsman was, of course, shocked, shocked to find liberal bias in virtually every area from op ed stories to photographs to uneven treatment of the vice presidential candidates.

Immature, Unprofessional, Cowardly Jerks

I'm not normally one to pile on. If I'm a few days late in delivering criticism I'll usually just let what others have said stand and let it be.

But at the risk of drawing a 15-yard penalty, I'll jump on the pile here and take a shot at those incompetent McCain campaign staffers who decided that it would serve them well to trash Sarah Palin well before the corpse of the failed campaign was even cold.

A detailed autopsy is a critical part of any failed venture of the magnitude of a losing presidential campaign. But there is a difference between a sober assessment conducted in private and a public trashing of an individual who was a major part of the venture.

The McCain campaign staffers who spread the stories about Palin thinking that Africa was a country or that she greeted staffers who came to pick her up in a bathrobe or towel (depending on which account you want to believe) are nothing more than immature, unprofessional, cowardly jerks.

And that's not me talking, even though I am in complete agreement of the assessment of those gossip mongers. Those are the words of the Governor of Alaska herself.

RedState.com has undertaken Operation Leper and all fair-minded people should consider taking part in it. The site is identifying McCain staffers who blabbed about happenings that should have stayed private (if, indeed, they happened at all). The idea is to make those gossips political lepers. Any candidate who is considering hiring these buck passers needs to know what they might do if the campaign should be unsuccessful. In fact, Operation Leper will actively work towards ensuring that those campaigns are failures.

This is a very worthwhile effort and The Rational Conservative fully supports it. The idea originated in this post and there is a petition to sign here.

Introducing The Rational Conservative

John McCain inspired me to get back into politics.

That inspiration came at the very end of his campaign for president. In the closing week of the campaign, with the odds stacked high against him, in his stump speech he urged his supporters to "Get up and fight!"

I looked at the polls that indicated that my state of Virginia would go blue for the first time since 1964.

Get up and fight!

I looked at the certainty that a Democrat would take the Senate seat up for grabs in Virginia, making my state's Senate delegation entirely under Harry Reid's thumb.

Get up and fight!

I looked on as over half of my fellow Americans who cast ballots voted for the candidate who promised to "spread the wealth around".

Get up and fight!

A few weeks earlier, during one of the debates, I watched McCain, the candidate I supported, talk of having the federal government buy up the mortgages, signaling that personal responsibility was no longer in vogue.

Get up and fight!

I watched as the media went to great lengths to dig up dirt on Sarah Palin and on Joe the Plumber but the kid gloves were on when it came to investigating the background of Barak Obama or highlighting the gaffes of Joe Biden.

Get up and fight!

And then I looked at myself. I used to be fairly involved politically, up to date on all of the issues, informed of what was going on in Washington, always ready and willing to attempt to persuade others to consider my point of view.

But then, well, I got complacent. In Richmond, I was in the middle of a solidly Red state with two GOP Senators. Both chambers of the Virginia legislature were Republican. An occasional conservative Democrat in the governor's mansion was hardly a cause for alarm. Republican president? Check. GOP in control of the House and Senate? Check.

So, I tuned out of politics. Not completely, mind you, but my interest devolved to a very superficial level. I was disturbed two years ago when George Allen was "macacaed" out of office and the Republicans lost control of Congress but that was just an unfortunate isolated incident. No reason to get all worked up, I thought.

Then along came 2008.

Looking back at all of this and with McCain's words echoing in my head, I've decided that it's time to get off of the sidelines No longer will I sit back, rooting for the GOP to prevail, letting the other side define the terms of the debate.

Get up and fight!

My blog here, The Rational Conservative (or Raticon for short), is part of my part of the fight. I'm going to introduce my ideas into the arena and highlight the best of what others have to say. In addition, I'll take others to task when I disagree with them, regardless of what side of the political spectrum their thoughts may reside.

I will do more. Next year I will work to support the Republican nominee for governor of Virginia (likely to be Bob McDonnell, a solid conservative). In fact, I'll start that effort right now. I have no campaign fatigue since I didn't do much in this one besides sit back and watch everything go down in flames.

And in elections after that, and in between elections as issues come before the legislatures, I'm going to get up and fight.

I look forward to engaging in conversations with those of you who are of like mind and those of you who have reasonable disagreements.

It's good to be back in the fight.