“It is astounding that Joe Biden, the self-adulated ‘everyman,’ can’t believe that an American making less than $250,000 a year might still be opposed to socialism.” – McCain campaign spokesperson Ben Porritt

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orritt was responding to Joe “Foot in Mouth” Biden’s attempt today to trash Joe the Plumber.  Here’s what Biden told a national TV audience this morning:

“We’re worried about Joe the guy who owns the gas station, the barber, the grocer.  Ninety-eight percent of the small business people in America make less than $250,000 a year, and they’re going to get a real break under our plan. Joe the plumber, whose making over $250,000, is not going to get any more additional tax cuts with us.” (ABC)

Yeah!  That’ll teach that SOB plumber to be successful!  That’ll teach him to employ people!

Despite the rantings from the left (read the comments with the link above for a hefty dose), Joe the Plumber (and Joe the Plumb-Crazy) have been a big net loss for Obama and his Robin Hood tax plan.

The bottom line – and McCain/Palin should be saying this at every whistle stop – Obama thinks he’ll be better at spending your money than you’ll ever be, so he wants you to fork it over.  Even in these times of economic uncertainty that are screaming for slashed spending, Obama’s credo is, “Because big spending on government programs hasn’t worked out too well, we’re going to try spending even more and see if that works out better.”

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his ad will no doubt join the list of campaign ads Obama classifies as negative in order to maintain his claim that 100% of John McCain’s campaign ads are negative (thanks to Patriot Room for the link):

Effective, yes. Negative, no. Negative ads assassinate character and misstate records. It is not negative to question the qualifications of someone running for office.

But of course Obama flips out whenever anything remotely negative arises to ruffle his carefully layered and oh-so-pretty feathers.

Speaking of the “100% of your ads are negative, John,” baloney Obama espoused last night, does anyone remember this particular McCain effort?

Show me one thing Obama’s done as classy as that. Especially when you consider that Obama broke his promise to use public funding and is rolling in dough, while McCain used up some of his dear public funds to run this ad.

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W

hen John McCain attempted to bring up the abhorrent behavior of hate-filled Obama supporters, beginning to mention the T-shirts seen at his rallies that said “Palin is a C***,” Obama immediately began loudly talking over McCain.

The preceding sentence from McCain was non-controversial, so Obama had no pretense to censor out McCain’s statement in a deliberate and planned tactic to deprive the American people from hearing about this incident, which reflects terribly on the mindset of the Obama supporter, a mindset that Obama does nothing to change or challenge.

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nce again this evening, I’ll be participating in the OC Register’s live-blogging of the debate, answering questions as they come from Reg blogger/reporter Martin Wisckol. He just posed, and I answered, the first one:

Q: What would you like to see in tonight’s debate that you haven’t yet seen?

A: I would like to see McCain clearly explain the sheer lunacy of Obama’s platform including, most importantly, the devastation that will be caused by his tax program. Obama is not giving tax cuts to 95% of the population because only 70% of us pay taxes. He is proposing to turn the IRS into a giant Robin Hood welfare agency that strips money from the successful who have earned it through hard work and gives it away as checks from the IRS to those who haven’t earned it. That’s anti-American and socialistic, and the extremely costly burden it will place on success and achievement will devastate the economy.

And I would like McCain to drop Ayres – ’nuff said already – and lay into him for his involvement with ACORN, complete with follow-up rebuttals to Obama’s disclaimers and dodges. Facts are facts, and Obama has been closely allied with ACORN, tried to get them goodies through the bailout, and supports the wholesale destruction of the American electoral system if it gets him elected.

Oh, yeah – and I’d like Obama to make some huge, jaw-dropping gaffe, from which he can never, ever recover. And Santa, one more thing …

For those interested – a multitude, I’m sure – Wisckol will be posting at The Total Buzz.

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lmost lost in our own election (and economic) news is this news from a country that suffered the rule of Liberals for nearly its entire history:

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper led his Conservative Party to victory Tuesday, but fell short of the majority in Parliament he sought in calling elections last month.

The Conservatives won or were leading in races for 143 seats, state-elections agency Elections Canada reported on its Web site. That would represent a gain of 16 seats. The Liberals, meanwhile, had 76 seats, which would be a loss of 19. A majority requires 155 seats.

The vote was another loss for the Liberals, who led Canada for most of the nation’s 141 years until a scandal four years ago rocked the party, and the Conservatives took over in 2006. (WSJ)

Harper was the target of the same sort of nastiness from the left that McCain and Palin are suffering today, and was not popular with the liberal Canadian media.  He was accused of being another Bush (hence the stencil above).  He got sideswiped by the global economic crisis and a statement which, like McCain’s healthy fundamentals comment, was ridiculed.  (In Harper’s case, he was guffawed for saying the falling Canadian stock market presented buying opportunities.  It will, of course, but it’s still about $3,500 below where it was in early September and it fell further today.)

Oh, and the main gripe about Harper’s Liberal opponent, Stephan Dion, was that he lacked the experience necessary to run the country.

Oh #2:  Voter turnout was low because Canada – which apparently lacks an active ACORN motor-voter lobby – recently implemented much stricter voter ID requirements.

Is this a warm wind for the GOP blowing out of the north?

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oth candidates came out swinging today, with new speeches honed over the weekend, designed to speak to a new America that’s much more nervous than the America they’ve been speaking to thus far in the campaign.

Both speeches focus on the economy. Both re-hash old proposals and introduce a few new ones. Both end with wrap-ups meant to inspire.

And they couldn’t be more different. (Thanks to RCP, here’s McCain’s speech, and here’s Obama’s.)

Let’s start with the most basic of differences: word count. McCain’s speech has 1,469 words; Obama’s is over twice as long, at 3,012. McCain has needed to slow down and explain his position for some time now, but he still rushes his speeches, giving bullet points not details, and this hurts him quite a lot. Here, for example, is the portion of the speech in which he rolls out five key new elements of his economic recovery plan:

I’m not going to spend $700 billion dollars of your money just bailing out the Wall Street bankers and brokers who got us into this mess. I’m going to make sure we take care of the people who were devastated by the excesses of Wall Street and Washington. I’m going to spend a lot of that money to bring relief to you, and I’m not going to wait sixty days to start doing it.

I have a plan to protect the value of your home and get it rising again by buying up bad mortgages and refinancing them so if your neighbor defaults he doesn’t bring down the value of your house with him.

I have a plan to let retirees and people nearing retirement keep their money in their retirement accounts longer so they can rebuild their savings.

I have a plan to rebuild the retirement savings of every worker.

I have a plan to hold the line on taxes and cut them to make America more competitive and create jobs here at home.

Got it? I hope you understand all the nuances of those plans and, more importantly, why they’re better than what Obama is proposing, because that 175 words is all you’re going to get. “McCain” may rhyme with “explain,” but his speeches have become bumper stickers.

By contrast, Obama lays out new initiatives designed to protect and expand the job market. He just spends 240 words on these five initiatives, but because he puts it in context rather than bullet points and provides at least a modicum of detail, we feel we understand his programs much better:

We’ve already lost three-quarters of a million jobs this year, and some experts say that unemployment may rise to 8% by the end of next year. We can’t wait until then to start creating new jobs. That’s why I’m proposing to give our businesses a new American jobs tax credit for each new employee they hire here in the United States over the next two years.

To fuel the real engine of job creation in this country, I’ve also proposed eliminating all capital gains taxes on investments in small businesses and start-up companies, and I’ve proposed an additional tax incentive through next year to encourage new small business investment. It is time to protect the jobs we have and to create the jobs of tomorrow by unlocking the drive, and ingenuity, and innovation of the American people. And we should fast track the loan guarantees we passed for our auto industry and provide more as needed so that they can build the energy-efficient cars America needs to end our dependence on foreign oil.

We will also save one million jobs by creating a Jobs and Growth Fund that will provide money to states and local communities so that they can move forward with projects to rebuild and repair our roads, our bridges, and our schools. A lot of these projects and these jobs are at risk right now because of budget shortfalls, but this fund will make sure they continue.

Five proposals well presented are more effective than McCain’s four edited-to-the-bone proposals.

Of course both speeches present more than this on the economy. Obama’s speech is focused entirely on the economy, spending paragraphs on programs that go to family finances and what he will do to protect our pocketbooks. McCain has more stuff to rush to (which isn’t all bad, as you’ll see), but on the subject of personal finances, McCain’s shorter, broader speech definitely loses to Obama’s longer, more carefully detailed one. Continue Reading »

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ohn McCain launches this critical week of campaigning – a week that brings us the final debate – with a new campaign speech in hand, a speech he says hits the reset button for his campaign.

Does it? Will it be enough?

I can’t answer. I haven’t heard the speech, but I have seen excerpts of it in a Politico article that decides the speech isn’t the reset that was hit, but the panic button. Here’s what we can glean from the speech from that source:

“The national media has written us off. Sen. Obama is measuring the drapes and planning with Speaker Pelosi and Sen. Reid to raise taxes, increase spending, take away your right to vote by secret ballot in labor elections and concede defeat in Iraq. But they forgot to let you decide. My friends, we’ve got them just where we want them.”

This tactic has worked well before. Americans are not big fans of arrogance. But McCain is going to have to explain to the American people how the Dems are conspiring to raise taxes when Obama promises to cut taxes for 95% of us. There is an easy explanation – how else will he pay for $700 billion in new spending programs? – but McCain hasn’t made it yet.

Hopefully the Obama-Pelosi-Reid connection will be further exploited in the speech. The people should think long and hard before handing the entire federal government over to the Dems. Congress’ approval ratings are so low there’s plenty to exploit here.

“Let me give you the state of the race today. We have 22 days to go. We’re six points down. …

“What America needs in this hour is a fighter; someone who puts all his cards on the table and trusts the judgment of the American people. I come from a long line of McCains who believed that to love America is to fight for her. I have fought for you most of my life. There are other ways to love this country, but I’ve never been the kind to do it from the sidelines.”

Ugh. I don’t want any more talk for McCain about how tough he is if he can’t match it with tough actions and visionary plans for dealing with America’s woes. The fighter angle’s a non-starter because we’ve heard too much already about McCain’s fighting spirit, but haven’t seen that spirit since he crawled back from sure primary defeat – and that was a long time ago. Since then, we’ve seen him check out on the economy by quietly accepting the $700 billion bail-out package, and check out on health care, as he tries half-heartedly to defend a program neither he nor we understand.

The fighter was cool when Iraq was the main issue; it’s not so cool now. And as for the real fighting, he has to convince us he’s not fixated on Iraq.  He should demand, as Obama does, that Iraq start footing more of the bill. And he should level Obama on Afghanistan, saying the obvious: The only reason why the Taliban is on the rise there is because we whipped jihadist butt in Iraq, and they’ve gone back to their caves.  He should play up the recent resurgence to convince us that the war on terror is real and isn’t going anywhere, and that Obama is not the one to continue the fight.

McCain needs to show he’s a fighter, not say he’s a fighter. We’re waiting and we’re hopeful he’ll deliver somewhere in this speech, as CNN hints it will:

“The theme is the new direction that Sen. McCain will take the country through his specific plans for creating jobs, helping those nearing retirement, keeping people in their homes and curbing spending,” the aide said.

McCain’s speech comes the same day that Democratic candidate Barack Obama is laying out his economic rescue plan for the middle class.

The Republican presidential candidate will “speak directly to people’s fears and worries about the state of our economy and the other challenges we face,” the aide said.

Speaking to the fears and worries is fine, but if Obama rolls out one of his patented multi-point plans, which he always makes clear on the surface at least, and McCain is just speaking of fears and worries, without laying out a powerful alternate vision of his own and showing the fallacies of Obama’s, then it will be time to hit the panic button.

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“B

ad judgment … blind ambition … too risky for America.” That’s the new tag line the McCain campaign is using and it should push a few buttons, even if we’re told by Obama-Americans that “risky” is code for black. Here’s the ad with that tag:

It does a decent job of nailing down the Obama-ACORN connection and the ACORN-market melt-down connection, but it could have been stronger. I would have like to see this Obama quote in it:

“I’ve been fighting alongside ACORN on issues you care about my entire career. Even before I was an elected official, when I ran Project Vote voter registration drive in Illinois, ACORN was smack dab in the middle of it, and we appreciate your work.”

The ad is 1:30 long, which means it’ll be an expensive TV placement. The McCain Web site makes it easy enough to email the ad to others and it’s up on YouTube, but it doesn’t provide a direct link to the ad, so posting it to the blog requires finding it on YouTube, picking up the url and posting it – they’ve got to get smarter than that. And they have to re-cut it at 30 and 60 seconds to increase its reach (which they’ve probably already done).

Connecting Obama to the melt-down is the McCain campaign’s last, best hope. Obama sued banks to force them to make risky mortgages, he had senior Fannie/Freddie execs in his circle, he took their money, he paid them for voter registration and – because he supports the radical idea of unjustifiable home loans to urban blacks – he did nothing to stop the mess.

That’s the one message that should be coming from the McCain camp, and this ad is a good enough start. Time to build on it.

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fter last night, I’m thinking about changing my license plates because I’ve discovered (again!) just how much I hate presidential debates.

These are not debates; they are hope-athons. I hope McCain will break through. I hope Obama will say something so wretchedly awful it will cost him the election. It’s like watching NASCAR just for the crashes. And because that’s what they’ve become – thanks to 30+-page memorandums of understanding between the candidates, thrashed out by lawyers – the candidates are so careful about not saying something wretchedly awful that they simply cannot break through.

If a high school debate team performed like these two men who want to be the leader of our country, they would fail to score a point. In a debate, you are expected to answer the question and counter your opponents answer with a logical rebuttal. All we see is block and bridge, block and bridge, block and bridge: They quickly dismiss the question at hand and bridge to a talking point from their prep sessions, too often a point they’ve made thrice already.

If I hear John McCain say one more time, “I know how to do this,” I’m going to puke. Don’t tell me you know how, show me what you know and let me decide whether you know how or not.

I would like just once to hear a candidate say something like this:

Well, you know I have a health care plan that will [do whatever it does], and I think it’s a very good plan.

But you also know who American government works. I will submit my plan to Congress where there will be committee hearings, and amendments proposed, and language struck. There will be votes in two houses and conference committees and new votes. There will be lobbyists for insurance companies, doctors, hospitals, sick people, trial lawyers and who knows who else. There will be campaign contributions and junkets.

In the end, we may or may not get a new health care bill. You are not voting in November, ladies and gentlemen [or "my friends," if you're McCain], for who’s got the best health care bill, you’re voting for the one who you think has the best chance of getting a bill that is somewhat like what you’ve hoped for through that maze. Let me tell you why I’m that man.

But of course we never do. They argue pretend points about fantasy legislation and we’re supposed to judge them on which one misrepresents reality in the way most pleasing to us.

There’s been a lot of hoopla this morning about McCain’s housing bill, including a typically excellent wrap-up by Michelle Malkin with a zillion links. She says of it:

I can’t underscore enough what a rotten idea John McCain’s ACORN-like government mortgage buy-up is. I said it during my liveblog. And I’ll say it again: “HE WANTS TO EXPAND THE BAILOUT. He wants to do what ACORN wants to do. We’re Screwed ‘08.”

This was his supposed “game-changer.” This was the very first thing out of his mouth during the debate tonight — his big pitch right off the bat. The McCain campaign immediately sent out this fact sheet on the proposal, which will cost at least $300 billion. The proposal involves directing the Treasury Secretary to “purchase mortgages directly from homeowners and mortgage servicers.” That’s on top of the trillion-dollar crap sandwich (update - McCain says it would be included in the crap sandwich), the $85 billion to AIG, the $25 billion to automakers, the $200 billion in capital and credit lines to Fannie and Freddie, and who knows what else we’ll be forking over to California, Massachusetts, etc., etc., etc.

Because we no longer have real debates, McCain felt the need to have an anti-crash, a game-changer, hoping that people would really like this, and at the same time Obama would pull out a can of spray paint and spray “potatoe’ on the wall of hall.

Judging from the reaction and the instant replay, he failed on both counts.

I’m not as apoplectic as Malkin and her friends. (Full disclosure: My income from the land development and home building businesses has dropped precipitously this year and I’d like to get it back.) As you may recall, I proposed a similar plan on the eve of the bailout:

I do not want one penny of my currently very dear money to go toward saving people who lied about their income on “‘no stated income” loans. And not a penny to people who made bad bets on the market with nothing down mortgages. And the people who sold and repackaged these mortgages? Let them stew in their own desperate financial juices.

Not one penny to any of them, and I don’t care what the consequences are!

Here’s what we should do instead: Be a government of the people, not a government of the businesses and the lobbyists. We should set up a short-term (three years ’til it sunsets) federal mortgage repackaging house. It would have only one purpose: To rewrite an individual taxpayer’s loan as a 50-year fixed (or even a 100-year fixed; such mortgages are common in Japan).

People who are in bad mortgages or are otherwise about to lose their houses would have show an ability to pay, with the term of the mortgage being flexible enough to allow some pretty underqualified people to slide through. Interest rates, though, would be competitive, not written down at our expense, so the government would be able to sell the mortgages to the private sector at auctions.

McCain’s plan will supposedly keep out those who lied about their finances, those who multi-mortgaged to flip houses, and those who put no money down. Good. Now get out of the underwriting business and the interest-rate jiggering business and do as I say: Re-write the term of the mortgage and only the term. Then I’m fine with McCain’s plan; as it is, I’m not at all fine with it.

So Obama forgot his WWII history and mistakenly had the government inventing computers. And McCain laid out a mortgage plan that reminds us that he’s not a conservative, like we didn’t know that already. Did anything change last night?

Of course not. I H8 DB8S.

Photo: Steven Crowley, NY Times

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hat’s what MSNBC – yes, MSNBC! – asked about Douglass Daniels’ scandalous AP piece that included this gem of race-baiting:

By claiming that Democrat Barack Obama is “palling around with terrorists” and doesn’t see the U.S. like other Americans, vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin targeted key goals for a faltering campaign.And though she may have scored a political hit each time, her attack was unsubstantiated and carried a racially tinged subtext that John McCain himself may come to regret.

Granted, it was Joe Scarborough on Morning Joe, the only decent program in the MSNBC offering.  Here’s the clip:

When even MSNBC piles on, you know what you have a pile of.

I agree with Pat Buchanan’s advice to McCain on the clip:  It’s time to peel the hide of Barack Obama’s sham personna and let America see what lies beneath.  The media won’t like it.  They’ll do everything they can to create a backlash, but who cares?  They’ve shown who they’re betting on and the deserve no quarter.

hat-tip:  Jim

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