The media has been in a frenzy claiming that a few isolated hecklers at campaign events was evidence that the McCain campaign, and especially Sarah Palin, was ginning up anger by recounting Barack Obama's past alliances with former terrorists and bigoted pastors.

Especially eschewed as execrable was the Republican Vice-Presidential nominee's assertion that Obama's domestic alliances and foreign policies were "dangerous." The media went wild.

The next day, in response to a statement by an American citizen that said she was "scared" for Obama to be Commander in Chief, the ever timid of the opprobrium of the politically correct media, tone deaf John McCain defended Obama as non-scary. The media's designated most experienced foreign policy expert, the Democrat's VP nominee, begs to differ:

"Mark my words," the Democratic vice presidential nominee warned at the second of his two Seattle fundraisers Sunday. "It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy.

So what else is new about a newly elected Democrat being tested? Nothing, It's the norm.

With respect to JFK, I would point out that he later admitted his mistake in meeting with Khrushchev without preconditions and that his weak performance and failure in the Bay of Pigs invited and led to the Cuban Missile Crisis. Thankfully, the anti-Communist WWII vet that vowed to bear any burden in the cause of Liberty passed his test.

Not so for his successors.

President Lyndon Johnson allowed the Russian and Chinese communist backed Vietcong safe haven in North Vietnam and let Walter Cronkite drive him from office. He failed the test.

President Jimmy "inordinate fear of communism" Carter saw the Russians invade Afghanistan and back communist insurgents around the globe, as he abandoned the Shah of Iran under pressure from a "religious man [he] could deal with", the Ayatollah Khomeini launched the radical Islamist Revolution. He failed the tests.

President Bill Clinton treated terrorist attack after terrorist attack, including the clear act of war in the 1998 African Embassy bombings, as crimes for law enforcement to handle after the fact. Osama bin Laden cited Clinton's failures as showing America was a "paper tiger" that could be defeated and began planning the 911 attacks with operatives inside the United States as early as 1998.

Biden does not say that America would be so tested under a Republican President McCain. History is on Biden's side.

President Richard Nixon went after the safe havens in Cambodia and his "Vietnamization" strategy had essentially won the war before the post-Watergate Democrat congress intentionally lost the war in 1975.

Iran released American hostages they had held for 444 days within minutes of the 1980 Inauguration of President Ronald Reagan. Russia never tested Reagan. They surrendered without a shot.

As noted above, 911 was already planned before the Inauguration of President George W. Bush with UBL's most vivid recent memory of America presidents being Clinton's inaction and one of two partial exceptions to this rule:

Reagan's abandonment of Lebanon after the Marine killing bombing in Beirut and Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait test of President George H.W. Bush.

The former was remote in time and was not the same kind of test, given that the US placed the troops in country as peacekeepers.

The latter, however, does bear examination.

Most historians say that Saddam did not think he was testing Bush 41. Most agree that Saddam thought we had winked at the idea of the invasion.

I would say that UBL cites our refusal to finish the job in Iraq in 1991 as evidence that we were a weak horse unwilling to kill the king we struck.

Back to Bush 43. Immediately upon taking office he faced a belligerent Saddam, and al Qaeda. In February 2001 he told then National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice that he was "tired of [the USA] swatting at flies [in Afghanistan]" and directed her to have the CIA to plan removal of the regime.

That plan was placed on his Oval Office desk on September 10, 2001 and was the basis for the quick victory that deposed the Taliban, thus removing the safe haven from our enemies.

Libya surrendered without a shot and after several years of emboldening of the enemy by bushlied congressional democrats Kerry, the enemy and our allies got the message after the 2006 election that Bush was different. They saw the spine, intel poured in and the surge won the war.

Bush had to do this virtually alone, except for a minority of congressional republicans led by John McCain and one democrat, Joe Lieberman.

Yet now, Biden pleads for the kind of support for a besieged America under an Obama, that he and the rest of the democrats, especially including Obama (who Biden himself once denounced for voting to cut-off funds for the troops ala Vietnam), denied America under President Bush.

You need not worry Joe, should, by some ACORN miracle this neophyte gets the nukes.

Remember Bosnia, Kosovo and the Desert Fox bombing of Iraq under President Clinton? Speaker Newt Gingrich led the overwhelming majority of Republicans in vocally supporting Clinton.

So don't question our patriotism!

I am sure you agree that it is dangerous to be tested. Thanks for affirming one of the three main rules of life:

Death Taxes Democrat party weakness invites aggression

One of the reasons I left your party in 2000 (should have been years earlier) is when I realized that there was absolutely no reason for a foreign enemy to fear a Democrat.

[Caveat: Given your recent rhetoric and votes, as well as Bill and Hillary's statements, it appears that you three might be able to avoid a test. See if you can get Obama to step down. Or do you want us to be tested?]

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer columns

Race 4 2008

"One man with courage makes a majority." - Andrew Jackson

Originally published by Mike DeVine as Legal Editor for The Minority Report

Following the 1994 Republican takeover of the House of Representatives for the first time in 40 years, network anchors explained the historic event as one of "angry white males" having a childish temper tantrum. This election season, an overtly in the tank for liberal Democrats media is raising the spectre of anger incitement pre-emptively to thwart a Gov. Sarah Palin(R-AK) and Joe the Plumber inspired Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) energized base that threatens to overwhelm another leftist Democrat presidential nominee at the ballot box, or inspire an assassination.

The occasions for the present incarnation of evil right wingers have been isolated shoutings of "terrorist", "muslim" and/or "Arab" by hecklers at Palin rallies. (The Secret Service, after a review of campaign rallu audio tapes, debunked Obama's debate lie that someone shouted "kill him", which Palin heard but refused to denounce.) The media and Democrats have variously alleged that McCain campaign recitations of Sen. Barack Obama's (D-IL) past alliances with Weather Underground Marxist terrorist William Ayers, Black Muslim Louis Farrakhan and Kenyan Arab Odinga cousin Marxists are incitements, but has chosen not to feature the vile hecklers of Palin wearing obscenity words on T-Shirts and shouts of "warmonger" at McCain to suggest their lives are in danger.

But lets consider the drive-by media's "coverage" of angry words from angry white people directly associated with the Democratic Party leadership and the Obama campaign, shall we? (Obama and other authentically black definers frequently refer to the old Jim Crow "one drop rule" that classified any person as "Black" for legal purposes if they had at least 1/17th "negro blood" coursing through their veins. I apply that standard here for purposes of identifying angry whites.)

Consider how many of the following non-Secret Service refuted quotes could be considered incitements to violence; how many would not be known but for talk radio and the alternative media and how many have been credibly denounced, if denounced at all, by the Obama campaign:

1) Don't get snippy - Albert Gore

2) Selected not elected - all Democrats but Sen. Joe Lieberman and former Sen. Zell Miller, 24/7 for seven years and counting

3) [On 911] America's chickens coming home to roost - Rev. Jeremiah Wright

4) [On 911] I wish we (Weather Underground terrorist bombers) had done more - Ayers

5) Bushlied! (or cricket chirping silence) - all Democrats but Lieberman and Zell, 24/7 for five years and counting

6) He [President Bush] betrayed this country! He played on our fears! - Gore

7) Death of a President [movie depicting the assassination of President Bush]

8) America must stop air raiding villages and killing civilians in Afghanistan - Obama

9) Dropped bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and never batted an eye - Wright

10) Compares American soldiers at Guantanamo Bay to Nazis, Soviets in their gulags, or some mad regime -- Pol Pot - Sen. Dick Durbin

11) Marines guilty of murder in Iraq - Rep. Jack Murtha (D-PA)

12) American soldiers terrorize families in the dark of night - Sen. John Kerry (D-MA)

13) Abu Ghraib opened under new management - Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA)

14) Hitler was a great man. Jews have a gutter religion. Obama is The Messiah - Louis Farrakhan (honored by Obama's church and always referred to with the honorific of "Minister" by Obama)

15) Israel will be wiped off the map - Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

16) I would sit down with Ahmadinejad without preconditions - Obama

17) America is a down right mean country - Michelle Obama (may be an exception to the one drop rule, but we believe in affirmative action when identifying dangerous angry words that could incite violence)

18) Whites vote for Hillary in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Kentucky and West Virginia because they are bitter clingers to antipathy towards people that aren't not like them - Obama

19) God damned America. America invented AIDS to kill blacks in a world ruled by greedy white people. - Wright (to standing ovations at Obama's church)

20) Never been proud of America until 2008 - Michelle Obama

21) We need fundamental change in America. – Obama

Think any of the above could incite violence? The drive-bys aren’t interested.

Think Obama “clearly” doesn’t share the extremist views of his allies, as beltway conservative pundits George Will and Charles Krauthammer conclude? Clearly Obama does share the obvious conclusion of their anger, i.e. “fundamental change”, even if his rhetoric is delivered in a temperamentally calm manner.

And speaking of beltway conservatives:

22) Obama is a Mountain of strength that can't be moved - Brooks

23) Palin is a cancer on the GOP – Brooks

24) Problem that Republicans will have is that they will have a very angry base in 2009 and 2010, which isn’t the best way to attract [moderates]. – DaveG at race42008.com

25) I still don't know what [Palin] stands for. - Peggy Noonan

26) Sarah Palin is out of her league and should step down [as Republican Vice-Presidential nominee]. - Kathleen Parker

And finally, this gem from Ross Douthat, who, along with Brooks, Kristol and other beltway conservatives, advocated a McCain nomination for eight years, yet now are a part of the defeatist chorus:

27) And if I were Hanson or Levin or Steyn I'd be devoting a little less time to ritual denunciations of heretics and RINOs, and at least a little more time to figuring out how to build the sort of ship that will make the rats of the DC/NY corridor want to scramble back on board, however much it makes you sick to have them back. Who knows? It might just be the sort of ship that swing-state voters will want to climb on board as well.

It seems that while the leftist whites plus Michelle are angry at all things American, conservative and Palin, many beltway moderate-conservative pundits see a Reaganite conservative Palin as cancerous, but not a "heretic"? Go figure.

Yet, they calmly insult the social conservatives and neo-cons with which Reagan, Newt and Dubya fashioned a winning three-legged stool, and so avoid the "angry" label?

Not here they don't. They presume unto themselves immunity from being labeled divisive within their echo chamber and yell foul when anyone defends the cancer.

What do these admittedly diverse pundit critics have in common, Douthat asks elsewhere seeking to establish credibility in diverse numbers? All of the right leaning critics are harsh critics of at least one aspect of Reaganism, whether its Brooks' social liberalism; Bruce Bartlett's foreign policy "realism" or Douthat's fiscal liberalism.

They find in Palin, Reagan re-born, and truth be known, the blue-blood country-clubber Rockefeller's never liked Reagan, resented the infusion of the yahoo Christians, and were content as a minority eating scraps from former Speaker Tip O'Neil's table.

So, we see double-barreled, unprompted, real anger by those on the right and the left that announce the Reagan Era over, against conservatives, and especially its most authentic vessel, the Governor of Alaska.

We see dour faces on the conservative beltway pundits except when they allow themselves to climb the Obama-Mountain and get carried away with the America needs fundamental change chanter/worshippers of Farrakhan's Messiah.

What do we see in Palin, and increasingly in McCain?

Optimism and Joy at what America has been, is and can be. We see a love for a God blessed America that, when given the opportunity to elect an unabashed, unapologetic conservative, does so every time with conservative Democrat votes, to boot, producing large majorities as the lukewarm independent rats the beltway pundits want to capture remain wallowing in the spew from God's and America's mouth.

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer columns

"The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race." - The Chief Justice

Race 4 2008

"One man with courage makes a majority." - Andrew Jackson

"Game Changer", this year's ubiquitous word of evidence of the extreme laziness and lack of curiosity of most in the media, is the latest incarnation of this theory. Everytime I hear it is like the sound of fingernails scratching a blackboard.

This theory, while also subscribed to by a large percentage of conservative pundits who worship at the feet of their poll obsessed Beltway idols, is actually an election outcome explanation advanced by the Left for more than 30 years, in the Drive-by Media and the national Democratic Party, to serve three inter-related purposes:

a) Prevent modern day liberalism from being discredited due to its proven failed policies;

b) Prevent modern day liberalism from being blamed for Democrat election defeats; and

c) Establish TV events as the causes of election outcomes so as to enhance the importance of television election coverage and increase viewership.

Conservatives that appear regularly on TV naturally fall into the trap as it enhances the perceived importance of their own work. But even those that don't earn a living via television fall into the trap out of brainwashed ignorance and laziness. At root, such a theory and view is an insult to average Americans, treating them as fickle in making this very important decision.

I say the theory is poppycock.

First of all the theory and the obsessive use of the term "game changer" (as in "gravitas" in 2000) this season, perfectly fits Rush Limbaugh's description of the increasingly non-mainstream, and increasingly impotent, media, as like those engaged in a drive-by shooting.

Its easy to report an event. Much harder to report on complicated human beings and trends that would require actual work to discern the trend, especially when the "trend" is against one's modern day liberal substitute for religion.

The theory is also inextricably tied to polling that invariable shows republicans trailing before the conventions; getting a bounce after their convention; then "falling behind" until 24-72 hours before Election Day, when, miraculously, the media usually gets the winner right, at the last moment (7 out of the last 10 the winner has been the GOP and always is when the Dems nominate a leftist).

All bumps in their polls are always tied to events...that occur on TV, i.e. usually debates or campaign gaffes.

Polling is an art, not a science, and the artists are mostly liberals. Its mostly a scam, obviously, when one looks at their samples of dems and repubs.

I think the scam began in the late 1960s with a non-election "report" from a man I don't hate, i.e. Walter Cronkite. The man who was deemed the most trusted man in America and that signed off every evening news broadcast with the declaration, "and that's the way it is," told us that the Communist North Vietnamese had defeated the armed forces of the United States.

That was not the way it was. And in slandering the US military he also drove a president from office and gave voice to those that would ensure defeat and subsequent genocide at the hands of 1975 congressional democrats.

I look back now and see that we, as a nation, have been betrayed on many levels by the media, as long ago as the 1950s after they inherited a monopoly thanks to the spectrum limiting technology of analog TV to three liberal networks, but I digress.

Reagan did not beat Carter in a landslide because he cocked his head and said "There he goes again." He didn't win a landslide against Mondale because he wouldn't "hold his relative youth and inexperience against him." Dukakis didn't lose 40 states because he looked funny helmeted in a tank.

In all of the above cases, modern day liberalism's vessel lost because it is anathema to the values and principles of 60%+ Americans and because liberal policies are proven failures, domestically and as weak on defense.

What enemy of the United States would fear any of the above, John "international test" Kerry, or Barack "no preconditions for a summit with Iran's President" Obama"?

Not one.

People may finally decide late in the game, for whom to vote, and, of course, there are events everyday that a lazy liberal "post hoc ergo propter hoc" illogical media may try and pass off as logical fact.

But people accumulate knowledge over time. Events occur that are filed away as they try and get a feel for the candidate and especially, to determine how that person's policies will affect their family, in their safety from attack and in their pocketbooks. They also see if they share their values and have the character to be worthy of the job. Everyone weighs these factors in differing ways.

What comes across as the height of arrogance, both from liberal and conservative "journalists" is that while they scoff at the idea that they would make their own decision on some isolated campaign event, they are knee-jerk is insisting that most voters do, or at least that a significant portion do, always having a poll close by to "prove" it.

More poppycock.

Americans know that they vote on Election Day. Most, unlike me and other politics obsessed people that includes the media, understanding that, don't pay much attention to politics until close to that day, knowing from elections past that they can discern the best candidate in time.

I think a lot of conservatives are simply acting human in their acceptance of poll obsession and this false theory. Laziness is not the complete explanation. Heck, everyone does it.

But no, I think the main reason is the fear of the unknown, coupled with the desire to be the first to know, even if it means a reckless announcement of gloom and doom with the added wicked joy of being the first to announce the bad news. Get over it children. It wears off.

People get insecure as so many around them "know" the outcome. Forget that many have "known" based on polls in April, July and yesterday and have switched whom they "knew" would win multiple times.

Any fool can read a poll an extrapolate it out and think they know. What we really need are people like Andrew Jackson in media and the blogosphere, who said

"One man with courage makes a majority."

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer columns

Race 4 2008

As usual the mainstream media, and that includes Fox News, misses the big story while they act out their roles on "game-changers" and their historically ignorant and discredited "Debate Moment" theory of Presidential election outcomes.

The game changer is not a debate moment. Its that liberals rarely win this game.

But they did manage to miss a major gaffe by Obama and the major message he sent that puts him in the unelectable liberal category.

America saw a man that thinks that plumbers, and, by implication, those small business owners economically equal to and better off than plumbers, should pay higher taxes. That he says 95% of taxpayers will get a tax cut loses its power when middle class people that think themselves akin to plumbers or better off, see that Obama puts them in the 5% that will get a tax hike.

Then, Obama contradicts himself by saying that the plumber is too poor to be subject to a fine for not providing health care. Clearly he was flustered by McCain demanding he state the amount the government would fine small business owners for not buying government prescribed health care for employees.

So, as he often does, when corner like a rat by a cat, Obama lied.

His tax plan and health care plans both consider one rich at the same income level.

Obama will always have trouble getting a low price for plumbing services given his desire to plumb the depths of their profits to spread their hard earned wealth around to others that didn't crawl thru the mud to fix pipes, but the leak in his message that he is a champion of the middle class is now huge flood that can't be plugged at any price.

Originally published By Mike DeVine, as Legal Editor for The Minority and HinzSight Reports

"This new information about Barack Obama's relationships with ACORN and William Ayers raises a lot of questions." - (insert TV political talking head's name here)

Wrong.

The information coming out now, during the "attentive voter season" before Election Day, answers all the questions voters have before they vote every four years.

Does this candidate share the Judeo-Christian values that have defined our Nation and have served us so well for so long? Does he have the character worthy of occupying the most powerful position on Earth? And would enemies of the United States fear that he would aggressively defend us?

To listen to TV talking heads, even those named Hannity and Gingrich, from whose Thursday night discussion I culled the above paraphrase, no questions are ever answered. Rather, what are, in deed, revelations, only reveal to a brain dead media another line of questioning that Obama could theoretically trump with some glib retort, on their television shows. For you see, if questions are ever definitively answered, there would no reason to tune in and listen to them any more!

Moreover, even our conservative pundits, like ourselves if we don't be careful, can be just as guilty of elitist tunnel vision as liberals. Add to that, the all too common, "the world was just invented this election cycle", of so many of the poll-obsessed yutes in the blogosphere, egged on by a media that sells the idea that past election losses by, leading in the polls until the end, Democrats were decided by debate moments or clever ads late in the campaign, and you witness the rampant defeatism of so many conservatives for whom McCain can never attack aggressively enough.

I heard all this from 1980-1988 and 2000-2008. Absent a known leftist and a Perot, we win.

The only slightly credible argument advanced by the defeatists is that Obama is not a "known" leftist. But even on this, a certain kind of elitism blinds the defeatist.

The defeatist knows Obama is a far left appeasing, Marxist that is unfit for the office of President of the United States. He sees it oh so clearly and, due to historical ignorance, allows his emotions to be manipulated by polls. Moreover, and more importantly, he thinks that the average, mostly inattentive for the past four years, mostly non-political potential voter, does not see Obama for what he is, and that he won't see Obama for the extremist he is unless John McCain and Charlie Gibson say exactly what the defeatist thinks ought be said in just the way our defeatist hero wants.

I say, get over yourselves.

One mistake the defeatists make is that they watch the news in a different way than the average voter. We political junkies watch news reports about the Obama revelations to see how the media spins the revelations. The average voter, on the other hand, sees and hears the revelations. They are new to the average voter. And they are about the business, NOW, of getting attentive to make their choice on Election Day. They know that they get to vote on that day. They have lived through other election days and remember that they made the right choice then. They will this time.

The now attentive voters were already jolted into noticing Obama by the God-damned America sermons Obama sat thru for 20 years. Their common sense prevents any glib excuses to drown out the din of his pew-parked butt on that matter, nor on the fact of the new video of Farrakhan dubbing him the Messiah. They understand that it would not be appropriate for any candidate to hang with a less competent Timothy McVeigh that got off on a legal technicality and serve on boards to craft an "education reform" on radicalism short of bombing government buildings in Oklahoma, just because they were wetting diapers in the 90s. Same with Ayers.

The public sees and hears, just like us. Yes, we saw and heard months ago. It’s our life. These "swing" voters have real lives. They had real lives in the past as well, and looked up just in time to see what we knew and elect Reagan twice, Bush 41, and Bush 43 twice.

Why? Because they saw that Mondale would raise taxes; abandon the conservative economic policies that were working; and not be feared by the USSR. They saw that Dukakis would do the same and that he didn't share our values with respect to crime, criminals and the appropriateness of the recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance by school children. That Gore lacked character as revealed by his three characters and would abandon Bill Clinton's Reaganite economic policies and that Kerry would turn over US sovereignty to Kofi Annan.

They saw the liberal and rejected the liberal, just in time.

This past week these people, wracked by economic crisis, saw a slick lawyer that claimed he never represented the far left ACORN vote fraud community organizers as a lawyer.

Gamecock asked the question months ago if it were too much to ask Obama to name one client and one member of a community he organized. We already knew that he tried to hide the hopelessly audacious racist pastor/mentor praying in a church basement as he announced his candidacy. We, and even the usually inattentive American, have seen the wife he can't hide preach her un-proud of America cynicisms.

And this week we found out why Obama has never volunteered a satisfied client because his clients are vile. But more than that, this is not a case of a lawyer defending a criminal as part of his duty to the bar in our justice system. No. This is a case of his representation of his ideological brethren.

He was caught in a flat out lie could not possibly have been un-covered because of the "whole truth" compilations of appellate case reporting going back to US Reporter Volume One from 1790!

Obama is listed in federal reports as a lawyer for ACORN. For the non-legal, do you recall seeing those endless rows of identically bound thick volumes in courtrooms and law libraries? Those are books of ALL of the opinions of appellate cases in all courts of the United States and the states. They cannot be refuted.

Obama is caught in a brazen lie. And the beauty of it is that the lie ties him to not only ACORN, but also to Ayers "education" minutes on Annenberg, Obama's book review of Ayers book, and all the lies about their supposedly neighbor waving a neighbor thru a stop sign in the morning relationship. An ad of Obama and the nervous crowd laughter when he said teaching sex ed in grammar school and kindergarten is "the right thing to do" is on the air.

Palin has been attacking Obama for all this and for what it says about Obama in explicit terms. McCain has ads up doing the same, one of which has Bill Clinton blaming the dems in congress for the Fannie Mae caused economic crisis. Palin is all over the Obama votes against saving babies that survive abortions.

And, for all you ostriches, Rush, Levin and others played numerous clips this week of McCain himself calling out dems by name, including Obama for the crisis.

In short, the questions are being answered before our eyes and yet so many politically correct TV talking heads continue with the refrain that Obama needs to answer questions. One wonders if these people asked that question after the confession in To Kill a Mockingbird as the credits rolled after The End!

Obama's actions of the past 20 years are the answers, not any non sequiturs he might belch out during a "debate.'

No amount of psychoanalysis will change what he DID. No words from his mouth will make it all ok for him to hold the nukes for four seconds, much less four years.

Defeatist poll obsessors, lend me your ears!

The American people can connect the dots, and are, in fact doing so now. They can see through the voice-overs by a liberal in the tank media they viscerally distrust.

There is nothing new under the sun. The conversations on conservative websites I frequent are the same as I had with nervous nellies in quadrennial Leap Year Octobers past while a Republican, and the flip-side of too confident libs when I was democrat and knew that the gray-haired old lady in the second row of the Baptist choir was a better predictor of the aftermath of Election Day than the latest hurling from Gallup.

And hey, Newt and Hannity, don't let answers to questions pass you by. And hey, fellow members of the conservative chattering class: Lower your snobbish noses a bit and you will see the knowing looks in the eyes of the non-chatterers, as Obama's 20-year mask is removed just in time for Halloween.

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer columns

Race 4 2008

Originally published by Mike DeVine, the Legal Editor for The Minority and HinzSight Reports

I had been considering doing a post-mortem on the recent two-week debate over the Paulson Panic Prevention Bill that was finally signed into law late last week. Given my exhaustion (and the recently announced retirement of alter ego Cockstradamus until after the election)from reading enough pages to have re-read Tolstoy’s War and Peace and having written five columns in 12 days that resembled Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, it was a great joy to me that an executive with one of the largest Banks in America (who also happens to be a close friend) wrote the following me after I requested he identify three issues he wanted addressed refuting Obama and Democrat positions on the great issues of the day, with facts, that he considered not being effectively addressed by the McCain campaign or the media.

My friend shares much of our (conservative segment of the GOP) frustrations with the campaign and the past eight years and echoes many of my own thoughts, but he brings more of an insider’s perspective on the current state of banking affairs, as well as an outsider’s perspective, not being a blogger or columnist.

He shall remain anonymous, but given that this is only the first of a series of columns featuring my friend’s thoughts and desires, and given that my offer to try and address concerns that would “float his boat”, I will refer to him as “Boata”:

IT'S THE ECONOMY, STUPID

The Dem mantra is 'We can't afford another eight years of the failed Bush economic policies', and McCain will not refute it - and neither will Bush Jr!

Here's the truth of the matter:

It started under Carter, and it accelerated under Clinton. The so called noble idea was that home ownership should be expanded from 60% to at least 70%. Through PR pressure and arm twisting on lending institutions by the government, the fear of being labeled as discriminatory by Jesse Jackson or other extortion thugs, and the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA), requirements for mortgage loans relaxed.

The CRA has various methods and penalties to persuade lending institutions to make available a certain percentage of their portfolio for 'affordable housing' (and they still do - Countrywide just received a directive to make loans to applicants with credit scores of 500-580! If nothing is done it will happen again).

Urban communities that no bank would seriously consider lending to were now badges of honor. Credit scoring, financials, current job, etc. - these were no longer paramount. This was doubly encouraged because Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae would buy these loans so the lending institutions didn't really have to worry.

GSE's hold approximately 50% of the nation's mortgage loans. In fact, the GSE's were established under the theory that by buying loans, packaging, and reselling them as investment instruments (CDOs, Auction Rate, etc.), they would be freeing up more cash for lending institutions to make more loans so everyone could own a home! On top of this, ARMs were invented and pushed as an easy way to afford a loan - the catch of course is that they are extremely risky and irresponsible. If you can't afford a fixed rate loan, you shouldn't be contemplating adjustables, but many lenders started pushing them to increase their commissions. Ditto for sub primes.

This is where the 'greed' comes in that Wall Street is accused of. On Bob Brinker's Moneytalk show yesterday, he had a NY Times economist on who posited this as the big reason the lenders and the GSEs hit hard times. He is right about the snowball effect, but how it started he is not (after all, he works for the NY Times). It started for the aforementioned political reasons.

Now it really gets complicated! With tried and true institutions failing or struggling, lending amongst themselves starts to dry up. Companies that depend on short-term lending for the regular business of stock and supply start freezing up because creditors don't have the money or fear default. This credit crunch is the fear that prompted the federal bailout (rescue) last week.

Prior to all this, both Bush and McCain tried to rein in the GSE's and their excesses, but the attempt fell on deaf ears in Congress - yet neither of them will explain this to the public. Former Fannie CEO Franklin Raines and his successor should be investigated for hiding the true dire financial situation there, but they won't be because the Dems hold sway in both houses and the Republicans have no backbone. The Republicans are complicit in the whole situation also because the sub prime lending really ramped up after the turn of the century. They raised no protests or red flags (outside of a few like McCain) for fear of being called racists or 'evil, rich Republicans'.

Lastly, Obama and Pelosi's continued hammering of the eight years of a failed Bush economic policy' is a non sequitur - they're two separate things. I blame the Bush Administration and the House Republicans for acting like drunken Democrats in spending even more, and adopting pork and earmarks as their own, but this is not the reason for the crisis.

However, this gives the Dems the ammunition they need; they would have done better to take the heat up front and do what's right. So the reason we are where we are all boils down to this: Republicans didn't have the gumption to stand up for what they believe when they finally gained the power to make REAL CHANGE!

I trust that Boata, like most of us in the conservative movement, is encouraged by the McCain campaign’s post-bailout bill signing, fact-laden refutations of and attacks against Obama and the democrats that echo much of the above, as well his the McCain ad that began running during the bailout bill debate that features the NYT praising McCain’s Fannie-Freddie 2005-6 reform attempts, and Bill Clinton’s assessment of blame against the democrats in congress (2003-2008), including the Obama-occupied, filibuster threatening Senate.

Gamecock echoes Boata’s call for McCain-Palin to show America that they represent real change for the economy.

[Despite the lack of a complete post-mortem following up on my econ columns (see my archive) opposing the bailout – albeit as a close call given the GOP improvements – especially given post-bailout market disasters here and abroad, I deem it appropriate to heed Boata’s desire for shorter columns and less self-congratulatory pajama geek echo chamber chatter! – I will address the other issues on a blog this week concerning Big Government central planning Bernanke-Paulson’s attempt to force Wachovia to be split in two, rather than let the free market and the legal system sort out the claims of Wells Fargo and Citibank.]

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer columns Legal Editor for The Minority and HinzSight Reports "The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race." - The Chief Justice Race 4 2008 "One man with courage makes a majority." - Andrew Jackson

By Mike DeVine

As I get up off my knees from thanking Nature’s God for our first and latest Treasury Secretaries, I see the current state of economic affairs in dimes not spared, gardens not grown and three non-filing stations near my Carolina home.

I ran out of gas today when none of the three closest stations to my home were selling any. But I didn’t run out of food despite the fact I don’t grow it and no brother asked me if I could spare a dime.

1929 it ain’t, and, despite our problems, it won’t be, unless We the People commit historical mass suicide and turn the Indispensable Nation’s affairs over to Nancy, Harry and Barack’s 21^st Century version of Herbert Hoover.

Given that Obama and Pelosi have not learned the lesson of the Quaker State’s first oil well and our delivery from riding Donkeys, it should not surprise us they from the party of that stubborn like a mule donkey, have also failed to learn the lessons of Hoover, for they want to repeat his post-1929 crash trade tariffs and tax hikes.

The Hoovercrats blame the current financial crisis on a lack of regulation, despite the fact that it was Clinton Era regulations that directed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to guarantee mortgage loans to credit risky borrowers in the name of fighting supposed “institutional white racism.” So the loans flowed, egged on by an overabundance of non-salaried realtors and loan officers whose universe of potential customers were mostly credit challenged. The Hoovercrats now label the fruits of their regulations, “predatory lending” and were successful in enacting a major bailout of ARM mortgagees a few months ago.

For their part, McCain-Palin are out there blaming the Housing/Credit Crunch driven financial market crisis on “corruption on Wall Street.” This is too simplistic an explanation and too shallow a justification for “more regulation”.

While I would denounce Michael Douglas’s “greed is good” declaration in the movie Wall Street, greed is, and always has been since Eve bit the apple. And our system has been and is the best at channeling same for good and mitigating the bad as has ever existed.

The fact is that no amount of regulation can prevent speculative bubbles in a free society. And the alternative to a free society is the biggest bubble of all: tyranny and its attendant deprivation that makes one long for our relatively puny bubbles.

This is a basic lesson from that early Babylonian garden: without free choice, there can be no real prosperity. The Founders understood that for wealth to be created, people would have to risk failure, with the prize for success being to get to keep the fruits of one’s labor.

After man left gardens and started hiring them out to Winn Dixies, it became necessary for government to grow, so the argument of big vs. small government is moot. The issue is how big and whether governed by basic principles or moral hazard.

Clearly, Fannie and Freddie guaranteed too large a percentage of mortgage loans and their failure, combined with other factors including a weak dollar and high energy prices, has caused a crisis that we remain in the midst of. But I am confident that President Bush’s genius at Treasury, Henry Paulson, who lately has eschewed Sunday rest, based on Christ’s adage that the Sabbath was made for man, and not vice versa, to do the yeoman’s work of adjusting the Hamilton edifice for a changing world.

But one thing has not changed, as evidenced by the recent spectacular rise in the dollar: The United States is THE indispensable nation. The world can’t thrive without selling their wares here and investing their money here. The rise in the dollar started soon after Putin over-reached in Georgia. A dying mafia nation flush with lottery oil money counted on western euro weenies to counsel their eastern neighbors on surrender. But Bush put the US military on land and sea in Russia’s path to Tbilisi while the former slave states flew their Presidents to the Caucasus to give Putin the middle finger.

Russia’s stock market crashed. But they have Ossetia and the North Pole.

The world is voting with their money on America, while the Hoovercrats want to take money from Americans while denying them their own oil on the hope for a wind driven alchemy even Merlin the Magician couldn't conjure.

President Bush twice tried to get Congress to limit Fannie and Freddie. Pelosi refused.

John McCain tried to do the same. John McCain wants to drill offshore. Obama does not. McCain wants you and the businesses you work for and shop at to keep more of the fruits of their labor. Obama wants to raise taxes.

One day, the USA will fall. Greece and Rome fell. Eventually we will fall, and eventually I will die. But I’m not throwing my body in front of a semi to hasten the day.

For the world, we are too big to fail, but for Obama, despite the role of non-accountability in the current crisis, wants to sell the idea that the government should ensure no one can fall. The last great such experiment ended with a wall falling near where his campaign began its descent in Berlin. For Pelosi and Obama, the government is still too small to satisfy their gargantuan egos. But they are blind to America’s greatness, greatness too big to indulge their historical ignorance.

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer columns

Legal Editor for The Minority and HinzSight Reports

"The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race." - The Chief Justice

Race 4 2008

"One man with courage makes a majority." - Andrew Jackson

By Mike DeVine (with voluminous excerpts from StephC of Hillbilly politics)

In the aftermath of the failures of hope, change, messiah impersonations and lipstick on pigs, the Obama campaign has decided to re-cast The One as The Gipper by asking America this question :

“Are you better off now than you were four or eight years ago?”

Before venturing into StephC’s (aka hillbilly) cornucopia of wisdom (in blockquotes below) that re-frames the better question of When did we stop being better off?, let’s look at the domestic and foreign political landscape of 1980 when Ronaldus Magnus first posed his four-year question to the incumbent president.

The Democratic Party had held congress for the previous 16 years and the White House for the previous four. This is key, so remember it.

The Congress had abandoned the anti-communist South Vietnamese army while they were winning the war an almost impeached republican president had turned around before resigning over an unauthorized third rate burglary he covered up. President Carter turned loose the Islamic and Communist, dawgs from Hell in Tehran and Afghanistan, respectively, with his recitations of our “inordinate fear of communism” and the Ayatollah Khomeini was “a religious man I can work with” as he abandoned the Shah. Soviet tanks rolled unencumbered by any fear they would be checked by any action save for less RSVPs for track meets.

A new economic statistic called the “misery index” had to be invented to fully translate what is still the worst economic recession since the Great Depression. Interest rates and inflation were mean 20% while unemployment neared 105. And Joe Biden was around to support moratoriums and/or regulations that have prevented the building of any new nuclear power or oil refinery plants and which have prevented the expansion of areas available for oil/natural gas on US soil of offshore since 1978.

Since Obama was only 12-15 years old when Democrats committed the above crimes against the United States, he is able to commune with them in good conscious.

Fast forward to present day (post defeat of the USSR by Republicans and a few Dem boll weevils in the Cold War) America and its near full employment and low interest rates; a decimated al Qaeda with terrorists fleeing defeat in a post three elections Iraq; and Roberts and Alito on a Supreme Court one vote shy of ending the slaughter of small human beings in the millions.

Eight years ago, faced with a tech bubble hangover from the Clinton years, President Bush and a Republican Congress passed tax rate cuts that nipped that recession in the bud and prevented one following the attacks of September 11th. After suffering multiple terrorist attacks in the 1990s, there has been no successful terrorist attack on American soil since that fateful day seven years ago.

No thanks to Democrats in Congress, including Obama and Biden. And even Hillary voted against funds for the troops and called General Petraeus a liar. Remember that “liar” word, for it weighs heavy on the ways in which hillbilly Steph describes when we stated to be worse off.

And while Democrats can claim no credit for the economic prosperity of this decade that has overall and minority homeownership still at record levels nor for the success of the surge that has overall victory in Iraq in sight, they sure do own most of the blame for our problems that have so many worse off.

Democrats who stopped expanded oil drilling/nuclear-oil refinery plant construction from 1980-2000 via Speakers Tip O’Neil and Jim Wright and President Clinton, have defeated all of President Bush’s attempts to revive same staring in 2001 thanks to Senate Majority Leader Daschle, Minority Leader Reid via filibusters, and Speaker Pelosi, the later despite extreme suffering by low-income families and all businesses that threatens the health of our economy.

It is Democrat created Maes (Fannie and Freddie) that are crumbling under the rubble of a credit/housing crunch partially caused by Democrat legislation and liberal court decisions that make lenders fear lawsuits for race discrimination if they don’t lend to credit challenged borrowers. So, even before Hurricanes Katrina and Ike devastated the Gulf, Hurricane Jack A*s kicked America in the teeth. In 2004, America rejected Tornado Kerry that spun off the Jack A*s. I will let StephC pick things up from there re:

1) Bushlied

In October of 2004, just a month before the elections, here came the meme, “Bush Lied, People Died.” If he did, so did Clinton and every member of Congress who stood for the war in Iraq but we’re not supposed to remember that. Kerry was getting stomped during the campaigning in spite of women drooling over him. They had to do something and this something was the precursor to the nation not being better off.

With yet another contested election to face, the Democrats also said they don’t recognize Bush as president. They continued the mantra of “Bush Lied, People Died” yet in spite of all the calls to impeach both Bush and Cheney, that’s all the Democrats had because they were the minority in Congress. In 2005, they ramped up the rhetoric against Bush and threw Cheney in as well and along came Katrina which created the perfect storm against Bush and Cheney.

2) Katrina

We all took an economic hit from Katrina. Gas prices soared because of the damage to wells in the Gulf, which had the domino effect of prices for everything going up. Money was tighter and we were still in the long war so the “Bush Lied, People Died” mantra worked in this gloomy scenario aided by the disaster that was Katrina. This couldn’t be helped and by the time prices were at pre-Katrina levels, it was too late.

Another by-product of Katrina was a greater amount of illegal immigration as they saw an opportunity to make loads of money and came in droves to fill up labor and construction jobs on the Gulf. Illegal immigration has always been something of a problem, even more so after 9/11, but Katrina was the straw that broke the camel’s back, so to speak.

We couldn’t absorb them into other jobs and the economic hit from having to deal with them on top of everything else just added to the Democrats’ gleeful meme of doom and gloom, although at the time the illegal aliens weren’t identified publicly as a big problem. I know this because my husband, being in construction was discussing with his boss whether they would be sending anyone to the Gulf to help with clean up when suddenly they were all told, they weren’t needed because crews were coming from Mexico. They came to make some quick money, but then, they stayed.

3) Democrats control Congress for last two years

The Democrats win Congress with their memes and that’s the turning point towards South. In the early months we didn’t see a lot of difference except for the fight against wholesale amnesty for untold numbers of illegal aliens. But then, Al Gore won an Oscar for his Global Warming scam which has profited him and anyone in it the scam with him but no one else. States raised taxes and the only real legislation that Congress has done in the last almost two full years, now, is mandates for ethanol and a host of other environmental indignities that have done nothing but take money out of our pockets because the price of basic foods went through the roof at an enormous pace. In addition, global demand for oil has risen as China has entered the global economy as a major player. So, gas prices go up as ever slave to the law of supply and demand.

While global warming mandates had already brought about a price increase in basic foodstuffs, also tied to the law of supply and demand, the increase in fuel prices made a bad situation worse. By the way, they still haven’t impeached Bush and Cheney and there’s a good reason why. It might make a good campaign slogan but there’s not much meat in it and that’s all they have. Impeachment hearings would bring out the fact that they all saw the same intelligence that Bush had and also the fact that 4 of the 5 components which Saddam was accused of possessing were found. Instead of wondering where the 5th component went to, it was more politically expedient to say Bush lied.

Oh, and gasoline isn’t the only thing that comes from a barrel of oil. Nor diesel. Something we take for granted every day comes from those barrels of oil: plastics. Everything we use on a daily basis has some plastic parts attached to it: home and cell phones, household appliances, computers, the knobs on your kitchen stove, and more. Some fabrics are made with nylon, a byproduct of oil as well. Vaseline is called petroleum jelly in its generic name… key word: petroleum. Some cosmetics are made using petroleum jelly as the base. And more. In short, there is no such creature as oil independence. There’s nothing to replace it in all its forms.

And Congress’ more open government? Well, since the Democratic majority, Congress has attempted to slip through all sorts of legislation without informing the public about what they’re doing and have subjected the other side of the aisle to indignities of all kinds, yet, complain about partisanship. Earmarks that were considered out of control before are now the norm. Between entitlements and earmarks we’re bankrupting the country and that’s a fact. And the Democrats promise more of the same. I read somewhere or heard somewhere that for every dollar put in for subsidized health care only 4 cents of it is actually spent on the health care.

That’s something for you proponents of government universal healthcare to think about. It may be expensive now but the government is going to give you only 4% of what you pay in. You may well find entire paychecks swallowed into universal healthcare at which point many will wonder why they work at all.

So, our government has thrown us into the global warming scam which has trapped us financially and ramped up earmarks, besides. They have passed legislation to bail out banks and mortgage companies who made bad business decisions. Case in point, Bank of America, which decided sometime early last year they were going to extend credit to illegal aliens. Those illegal aliens don’t have the same obligations that ordinary citizens do and just walked away from those obligations and left the rest of us to foot the bill. But Congress has the answer!!! Bail them out and let one of the bailees write the legislation.

So, Barack, you may try and jip the Gip, but I doubt you will be heard above the dins of your 20-year pew-parked in a Hate Whitey America Church while living in a house bought with funds from Saddam’s regime via Chicago Way Felon Rezko and a political career launched with Chicago Way Felon Unrepentant Terrorist Ayers.

You and Biden are part and parcel of the reasons we started to get worse off with your bushlied, terrorists rights bills that seek to handcuff the Commander in Chief in intelligence gathering and opposition to victory in Iraq.

I suspect that your impersonation of Reagan will fall as flat as your Jesus mime. But I know one or two characters that you could successfully mimic:

George McGovern and Michael Dukakis.

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer columns Legal Editor for The Minority and HinzSight Reports "The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race." - The Chief Justice Race 4 2008 "One man with courage makes a majority." - Andrew Jackson

The media focuses on horse races between men while the Earth turns. Some major events have occurred on the third stone from the Sun and significant dawgs haven’t barked within the din of mostly insignificant barking by McCain, Obama and Biden.

Russian forces occupy a small portion of former USSR slave state, Georgia. For the first days and weeks after Russia’s invasion, the media was filled with voices of doom that the US was powerless to prevent Russia from taking Georgia, Ukraine and even Poland. (Reminds me of a middle school bully bragging about smacking a wheelchair bound classmate in the boy’s room.) They focused on Putin’s smile in China, flight to “the front” as Bush’s beach volleyball party continued and years’ old soul peering stories.

Weeks later, Georgia exists. American military planes occupy Tbilisi with guns and butter ala Berlin airlift, but it is the presence of their bodies and the flag on their uniforms that keeps the bear (see cub circa 2008) at bay.

Ukraine, Poland and the rest of Free World New Europe (Rummy was right) have openly defied Russia with Poland allied with America on Star Wars. Thank you Gipper.

Iran endures riots and demonstrations in the street as MembersOnlyJacket-ijad has been forced to buy Great Satan brand wheat. They still breadlessly occupy Tehran and Qum, but no part of the Free World, including its newest member: Iraq.

The Olympics have ended with the USA the medal winner leader. The Big Question: How long will it take the thousands of homeless Chinese driven from their homes for aesthetic reasons to be re-located to their ramshackle lean-tos that look so spectacular to Obamas on NBC.

Ah, the luxury of obsessing on the utterances of a one-disciple chosen at 3am Messiah in a nation devoid of terrorist attacks from a still-free UBL (is dead free?) in a dangerous world.

Thank you President George W. Bush.

A President that liberated Iraq and saved Tbilisi and New Europe without firing a shot while rubbing sun tan oil on the back of a gold medal holding beach volleyball babe.

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer columns Legal Editor for The Minority and HinzSight Reports "The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race." - The Chief Justice Race 4 2008 "One man with courage makes a majority." - Andrew Jackson