Personal Aside: Big Pooh-Bah Jesse Jackson Again Spews

Anti-Jewish Bigotry. But Do Jews Care? Nah.

News that overage racial warrior Jesse Jackson promised that an Obama administration would end slavish U.S. concern for Israel should not be taken as a serious rupture in U.S. Jewish allegiance to the Democratic party. Religion only pertains to the miniscule religiously observant Jewish population. For the most part, prosperity has lessened ties to the old faith. Secular Jews use their identification for social and political purposes…professing to take umbrage at what they call transgression of Jefferson’s “wall of separation”—especially with respect to Christmas observations on public property: but for the most part this is all show. But they have long since passed into observance of a civil religion…something like Rotary Club blandness…with most of them happily trooping to the polls to vote for Obama and all other Democrats.

Old man Jackson…chafing that his influence is declining beyond the earshot of his stentorian rhetoric… spoke at the first World Policy Forum held at a posh French lakeside resort last week. The most significant change would occur in Middle Eastern policy, he said, where “Zionists who have controlled American policy for decades” remain strong but will lose their influence when Obama takes over.

Naïve Republicans may chortle that this speech was a great gaffe but the Jewish vote…and more significantly…Jewish money…is indissolubly Obama’s, something windbag Jackson won’t change. It all goes back to a meeting I attended twenty plus years ago at a synagogue in Skokie when Ariel Sharon, then an out-of-power Israeli general and politician spoke. After he finished he sat down heavily, gulped his iced tea and responded to my question about the Jewish vote. I began by telling him I am a Catholic.

“There are very similar circumstances between our two faiths,” he said. “You used to have Catholics who voted for their faith. Now they vote all the way across the board and there is no discipline from the bishops to correct them. Jews in this country have become so enmeshed in success, in material prosperity, in their own continued well-being that Israel is a matter of little concern to them. Look—our greatest allies here should be evangelicals but I hear all the time Jewish concern that they’re trying to convert us. What rot! Evangelicals see the historic Biblical tie between Judaism and them. The greatest danger to Israel is this secular mentality here and in Israel that wants to erase any distinctions between our religion and secular humanism.”

Nonetheless, look for Obama and his two Jewish slippery surrogates…less observant than secular by virtue of the deals they have made with their opportunistic trade…David Axelrod and Rahm Emanuel to dissociate further with Jackson. These two dine out on affiliation with the religion (Emanuel winning the House nomination by raising his eyes hypocritically heavenward in holy horror because some old coot at St. John Cantius parish-- unsanctioned by the Nancy Kaczak campaign-- alleged Emanuel held dual citizenship. He was wrong but Emanuel squealed like a pig caught under a rusty gate—which was enough to turn the tide. …to try to shush old Jackson. But it won’t make any difference because Jackson himself as a vestige of the old con days when he was busily extorting money from white companies—something that many African Americans want to turn away from. The only following Jackson has is in the Chicago “Sun-Times” where Michael Cooke…not altogether different from Michael Moore…thinks he can wring a few extra readers out of the numbing semi-literate void by publishing the boilerplate column written for Jackson recycling standard Democratic pap.

If it were not for the evangelical vote, pragmatically speaking the Republicans would be well advised to ditch the Israeli cause which drags them down in certain paleo circles anyhow--especially since their loyalty is spurned by the Jewish vote. I can hear crotchety Ron Paul rasp now.

The Week Just Passed: Voter Uncertainty Triumphs Over Boob Media as the Unrecorded Story is Misgiving About the Unknown Young Man on the Make.

This election came be won by focusing on three Chicago issues-- but John McCain iwill have to dwell on them despite the ferocity of the liberal boob media that insist these issues don’t impinge on anything important. In contrast, media insist the election will turn on details on the economy such as Obama’s plan to provide an expansion of the earned income tax credit to allow single workers to receive as much as $555 a year. Sorry but voters’ eyes swim when confronted with a welter of statistics. The fact that that even at this late date, McCain is only six points under Obama with likely voters shows that the electorate understands future of this country depends less on who has the better refundable tax credit than who has shown greater character and patriotism for the job.

What are the Big 3 Chicago issues? They’re in the form of questions and I have asked them before in this space and on WLS Sunday.

1. What sort of man is it that four straight times…as chairman of the Illinois Senate’s Judiciary committee…killed the “Born Alive” bill in the Senate…thus depriving babies born alive from botched abortions to receive nutrition and medical care?



McCain has only touched on this sparingly. In response, Obama’s people have devised two answers for the liberal boob media—both of them incorrect. One answer was that the legislation was different from the Born Alive bill that passed the Congress subsequently. Not so—so David Axelrod, the Obama chief strategist abandoned it. The second was that protection for such infants has already been provided for in Illinois law. Obviously the protection was not sufficient as a live infant was tossed like a disposable Kleenex into a dirty linen close at the hideously misnamed Christ Hospital in Oak Lawn where heroic pro-life nurse Jill Stanek discovered the child.

If protection is insufficient, ample precedent exists in law to be sure that there are no exceptions and no one slips through the cracks. On the issue of civil rights alone—as Obama well knows—after the Civil War there were three separate constitutional amendments enacted to protect blacks’ rights—the 13th, 14th and 15th as well as the Civil Rights act of 1866. In our own time there have been various extensions of legislation to protect rights—the civil rights acts of 1957, 1964, 1991 and various executive orders.

Obama killed the bills as judiciary chairman because he was a young man on the make in Chicago politics, as responsive to opportunism as a gerbil, eager to be seen as a liberal in order to ingratiate himself with the liberal Daley machine extension in Hyde Park, the lefty subdivision of Chicago surrounding the University of Chicago. Thus this is the first of the three Chicago issues he should be confronted with—notwithstanding the media’s claim that it does not bear any importance to the presidency. It wholeheartedly does.

Here’s the next one.

2. What sort of man is it who sits in a church for 20 years while his pastor…his good friend…curses America regularly as a racist country and denigrates whites…a pastor to whom Obama entrusted the “spiritual” guidance of his children? In that regard, what sort of man accepts the support of Chicago’s Louis Farrakhan who called Judaism a “gutter religion” and accused the CIA of using crack cocaine to enslave blacks?



Again, the answer is that Obama joined this church as a young political wanna-be on the make because he saw that it was packed with black liberation activists who could elect him to office. It is a testament to the supine, cowardly Chicago news media that it neglected to uncover Rev. Jeremiah Wright because they wanted to protect Obama. A doughty evangelical woman who runs a blog here, Fran Eaton, went to the church and bought DVD’s the Wright’s sermons and reproduced them. Still the Chicago media shrank from the task. Finally ABC-TV nationally sent a reporter to the church who bought the DVDs and exposed them.

Obama and Axelrod first explained that the DVD’s were “snippets” which the liberal boob media initially bought--but that answer wouldn’t wash because the sermons were drenched with racism. Obama and Axelrod went to Wright and told him to shut up in the future and be a good soldier or he would jeopardize Obama’s election. Wright refused and continued to prattle his racism so Obama and Axelrod had to throw him under the bus. Now any mention of Jeremiah Wright is shushed by the liberal boob media as racist and not germane to a presidential election which is supposed to concentrate on other issues.

Thankfully, Obama and Axelrod breathe a sigh of relief that the supine boob media have refused to cover Farrakhan’s laudatory and effusive support. Farrakhan can never escape the likelihood that he ordered the murder of Malcolm X (ignored by the liberal boob media) —a speculation that has built Farrakhan’s fearsome role as a racial racketeer on the South Side. Recently he told a group that those who attack Obama “will be dealt with” which brought a respectful hush to the crowd. Last week, addressing 20,000 at the annual “Saviour’s Day” celebration, Farrakhan compared Obama to the founder of the Muslim religion, Fard Muhammad who also had a white mother and black father. Not a peep from the Chicago media on the story. What little notoriety that came from Farrakhan’s speeches were doused with cold water by Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton who said, “Sen. Obama has been clear in his objections to Minister Farrakhan’s past pronouncements.” Of course the liberal boob media has accepted this at face value.

3. What sort of man is it who arranged his “coming out” party in Chicago machine politics in Hyde Park to be held in the living room of Bill Ayres and Bernadine Dohrn, two unrepentant terrorists…Ayres who bombed the Pentagon and the U. S. Capitol…and used his close working relationship with Ayres on school issues with the same foundation to advance in Left circles?



Axelrod has first come out with the statement that since Ayres’ bombings occurred when Obama was 8 years old, Obama could not be held responsible for such an association…and indeed Obama didn’t know of Ayres’ activity since it happened so long ago. The liberal boob media quickly accepted this explanation and has pronounced the issue is not worthy of discussion in a presidential campaign. Two things wrong with this. (A) Bill Ayres, the radical son of a boss of Commonwealth Edison, the giant Chicago utility, has with his wife continually dined out on the celebrity both have earned as terrorists. Personal experience: in 1993 I was visiting a naïve liberal in Hyde Park who had just bought a rickety old mansion and was rehabbing it. He said, “you know what? I just rented our carriage house to Billy Ayres and his wife! Wanna meet them?”

I said sure. I went in and Ayres regaled us…knowing I am a conservative Republican… with stories of his terrorist days, declaring jocularly he was still a terrorist. That was approximately the time when Obama came to him for help in his political career. Thus the thought that Obama didn’t know Ayres’ connection is ridiculous. Answer; Obama was once again a young candidate on the make and Ayres would prove to be beneficial to him. Ayres should have been sent to prison but the liberal ACLU got him off because of supposedly illegal wiretaps. Ayres and his wife joined the Daley machine as leaders of the ultra left Hyde Park contingent and got lucrative teaching posts at prestigious Chicago universities who are indebted to any favors the Daley machine can confer.

Daley’s Co-optation of the Left.

But-but, say some who still remember with misty eyes the old Richard J. Daley who saved this city from becoming another Detroit—and who fought the revolutionists to a standstill during the 1968 convention—how is it that the lefties like Billy Ayres and Bernardine Dohrn are not inserting fuses in time bombs to blow up city hall, given their revolutionary makeup? Simple. Old man Daley was a man of some principle and had nothing to do with revolutionaries. His son…trading on his Irishness as did the old man, is unlike his father: a man of no principle, supporting abortion rights and gay rights: in short anything that would ingratiate himself with the Hyde Park left. While there were definite things Richard J. Daley wouldn’t do—espouse abortion or gay rights or make a deal with enemies of this country…that doesn’t deter Richard M. Daley a bit. So he hired them all and they are as placid as the average precinct captain. Smart in a Machiavelli sense if you aren’t bothered with conscience.

Example: During the 1968 insurrection, the media went to a scroungy girl with stringy hair, bad complexion and worse breath who carried the title of Director of Security for the SDS, working closely with Billy Ayres. She advocated throwing studded nails on the street to stop the police cars. She bragged she had had so many abortions she lost count. Then I always refused to shake hands with her for fear I would catch some loathsome disease. I was on a PBS panel with her a few months ago and the same thing goes—a nod or recognition but no handshake.

Now whenever the boob media want to talk about Billy Ayres, the Daley administration and the Obama people refer them to her. As the only straight political commentator in this city says (John Kass of the Tribune) she is a p. r. maven and has become rich through lavish contracts with the city. She does public relations with the Police Department’s community policing program, Daley’s housing authority, Daley’s city colleges, Daley’s city law department, Daley’s department of aviation, Daley’s department of environment, Daley’s department of health and human services, Daley’s public health department, Daley’s streets and sanitation, Daley’s intergovernmental affairs and Daley’s department of special events. These contracts could pay as much as $5 million each.

And when the boob media need to answer the charge that Obama is a tool of the Daley machine they go to her. Why, she says, Hyde Park is a bastion of independence! Not now. Daley’s machine doesn’t care whether you’re an ex-revolutionary or a young black man on the make. They’ll accommodate you if you accommodate them. They accepted Obama with open arms and in return Obama supported a prime Daley machine black hack, a psychological study in administrative incompetence, for election as president of the Cook county board. Another example: in the 1970s I was chairman of a bipartisan committee to fight vote fraud in Cook county. Old man Daley called me in and told me “there’s no vote fraud in Chicagaw.” I said, listen Mayor, if I lived in Chicago I’d probably vote for you…but you don’t need to steal votes, you can get `em on the legit. His pink jowls waggled and I was shown the door with the rejoined “there’s no vote fraud in Chicagaw.” As soon as young Richie took over, anti-vote fraud died because he hired all our sweet, idealistic volunteers and gave them big jobs. So vote fraud goes unchallenged and the bright young idealists are working on the city dime.



Nothing like good old taxpayer’s money to cool the revolutionary blood. Getting back to my favorite former revolutionary woman, when liberal media boobs ask her about Ayres’ revolutionary past, she tells them Ayres was a radical a generation ago (something Ayres doesn’t say about himself, to give him credit)—and he and Dohrn lecture at such prestigious schools as Harvard, Vasser and Wellesley…so they have paid their dues. Baloney. As a former Harvard teacher I can testify that’s where a revolutionary would go. And in that connection I know full well how affirmative action works: with the Harvard Law Review granting him the presidency when he did no academic writing for that publication.

McCain Can Win.

If you take a look at the polls, the surprising thing is that McCain is still within distance of overtaking Obama—which tells me one thing: the American people are not being taken in by the big media as they once were and they have grave reservations about this young candidate on the make…with sophisticated charm… as he was when I first met him and interviewed him as a state senator.

Examples: At this writing, Realclearpolitics.com’s national average has Obama at 49.8%, McCain at 43%, a spread of 6.8% That’s doable. With all the crises that have been popping recently, Obama should be duplicating Franklin Roosevelt over Alf Landon. He’s not. Electorally, with 270 needed to elect, Obama has 277, McCain 158 and the rest tossup. In the battleground states, Colorado Obama is up for 4%, Ohio by 2.9%, Florida, 3.8%, Nevada 2.9%, Missouri 2.3%, Virginia 6.3%.

My theory is that there is a great hidden factor here that hasn’t surfaced in the polls. You may ascribe it to race but I don’t think that’s right. A Colin Powell running on either ticket…a 4-star general, former national security director and secretary of state…would be in a commanding position by now. No there’s a hidden, lurking something about the radical nature of Obama that has certified that as hard as he and Axelrod are striving, they have not made the sale. Moreover Gallup and Rasmussen polling agencies report that more interviewees than ever before are declining to state their preferences: the first time this happened since the Harry Truman victory over Thomas E. Dewey in 1948.



What bothers the voters is not Obama’s race: it’s Obama’s affected faux intellectuality. He preens himself as an intellectual but his resume is devoid of things he has written—no papers for the Harvard Law Review where he was president or scholarly journals afterward. Affected faux intellectuality, the seeming concern with issues so complex the average palooka cannot fathom them did in a number of Democratic candidates in the past. The media always make the same mistake.

Democratic candidates are always presented as deep-thinking and intellectual; Republicans are always dumb. Adlai Stevenson was deep while Dwight Eisenhower the 5-star general who liberated Europe was dumb. Remember Jimmy Carter in 1976 debate with Ronald Reagan when he said that his 13-year-old daughter Amy came to him and said she was concerned about “nuclear proliferation?” Reagan looked skeptical and the nation laughed.

Then Walter Mondale was supposed to be the intellectual’s candidate—thoughtful, deliberate. So thoughtful and deliberate he called for a tax increase which greatly pleased the boob media. Not the voters.

Again, Mike Dukakis was supposed to be so-o-o much smarter than George H. W. Bush—this the boob media bought in spades. Dukakis inhaled and exhaled deep issues. Then came the question in debate on what he would do if his wife were raped and killed—would he favor capital punishment for the offender? His answer, pure Boston Brahmin elitism, turned off the electorate. Al Gore was another “intellectual” (no matter he flunked law school, he agreed with the Deep Thinking media on issues). Gore ruined himself by emitting deep patronizing sighs during a debate. Boob media got him a Nobel prize but it hasn’t helped. John Kerry was another one a gigolo who married two very rich women and so deep, so incisive over that rustic cowboy George W. Bush. Wind-surfing killed him. It didn’t work.

There’s something out there that registers voter uncertainty with Obama. I wonder why. It stems from what John Kass calls “the Chicago Way.” Obama’s chief financial supporter was Tony Rezko now in federal prison. His spiritual adviser and mentor was the Rev. Jeremiah Wright of god-damn America notoriety. And the guy who got his him only administrative job and put him in charge of doling out $50 million is William Ayers, the domestic Osama bin Laden of yesterday. See what I mean?

Personal Aside: Hallowe’en an Aberration of U. S. Juvenilia: The Peter Pan Syndrome Encourages Mommies and Daddies to Decorate their Houses. Kids Have Little to do with It.

Hallowe’en Is Juvenilia.

The carnival nature of Hallowe’en is a lingering vestige of U.S. juvenilia, a mindless holiday for Mommies and Daddies. The sobering economic crash should cure all the absurdities of the feast. The open secret is that the holiday has moved from a kids’ event to something overgrown and not quite mature big kids (adults) play around with.

Time was when Hallowe’en was traditionally a kids’ fest. Parents stayed out of it since during the Depression and World War II they had far more serious things to worry about. We kids would arm ourselves with pea-shooters and pepper the windows with this stuff, running and hiding. Sometimes we rang doorbells and held behind the bushes to see what the adults do when they opened the door.

Originally the name was “All Hallows’ Even” with “Even” shortened for evening. It had to do with All Souls which the Catholic Church celebrated as the Vigil of All Saints. When I was a kid we were allowed to scoot around our neighborhoods a few evenings before the Feast. Because there were complaints about ash cans being dumped, some bland and kind souls conjured it as Trick or Treat Night where kids in costumes would visit doors where the porch lights were on to get free handouts.

Adults got into the fray in the 1990s when the Clinton prosperity caused so much fun that the grown ups took it over. That’s where you see the houses decorated with huge ghosts, tombstones and fake apparitions. Essentially it is a kind of decadence where Mommy and Daddy usurp the playtime of kids. In fact the kids are left out of it as overgrown adults construct make-believe graveyards in front of their houses.

This juvenilia will pass as the recession hits home. It will be one of the4 salutary things to happen. We have been treated to Mommy and Daddy playing with kids’ toys and now we are going back to the normal, sobriety where adults consider other things. Until that happens, the constant juvenilia…with billboards advertising Hallowe’en costume houses… does not reflect well on the maturity of the American public.

Our country has a long way to go to return to adult sobriety. Taking entertainment away from the moguls who run “Entertainment Tonight” featuring Brittany Spears and Lindsay Lohan’s lesbian fetishes are examples of decadence and excess from a nation awash with too much leisure time and money.

Returning Hallowe’en to its proper focus…a fun night for kids…will be a good beginning.

Personal Aside: A Medal Awarded to One Who Has Richly Earned It…and Another to One Who Chronicled Him.

Pure Silver: What Else?

A medal for overreaching on the issue of abortion is hereby awarded to Douglas Kmiec, law dean of Pepperdine University. Kmiec has been one of the intellectual leading lights of the pro-life movement, having served in high posts in the Justice Department under Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush. After having been passed up for judicial appointment by the aforementioned Republican administrations, Kmiec moved to a prestigious academic post at Pepperdine and in the words of George Washington Plunkett of Tammany Hall “I seen my opportunities and I took `em.”

On Easter Sunday last, no less, having served as a legal co-chair of Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign, the dean announced that he was switching to endorse the candidacy of Barack Obama. The announcement did not make a publicity stir since the name Kmiec was known to only a few…including me…who had relied on him faithfully in the past for interpreting difficult legislation with an eye to its beneficial effects on the pro-life movement.

So Kmiec had to…in the words of the p.r. industry…merchandise his defection. He was already scheduled for a speech at “Legatus,” a group of pro-life business executives in California. He made sure his “declaration of conscience” got around and then marched up in the Communion line to receive the Eucharist at Mass prior to his speech. The priest turned him down. Whereupon Dugout Doug had a terrific issue. He cycled it quickly to E. J. Dionne, a pro-abort Catholic political writer at “The Washington Post” who wrote it up as a classic case of Thomas More in reverse—the doughty lawyer who faced down a King. After Dionne finished with it, NPR picked it up.

Then there was a lag. It seems the Iraq War and economic troubles in the nation eclipsed the story of a defector to Catholic theology which has been an indissoluble part of church teaching for 2,000 years. Trying to crack the Chicago market (the town where he was born), Kmiec wrote an article for the always receptive “Chicago Tribune” pointing out that he—Kmiec—was born in Cardinal Francis George’s Saint Pascal parish. He skillfully tied his Catholicism to the Obama campaign and the “Trib” picked it up. Then another long lapse. According to Kmiec, the way to end abortion is to give up on naming pro-lifers to the courts but to mobilize all manner of federal programs in time-honored Democratic party tradition to end the slaughter of unborn children. You just squish your way around it, recycle old liberal programs and call it pro-life.


Now the “Trib” came to his rescue again with a column by Mary Schmich who happens to agree with Kmiec’s position (no surprise). Representing Kmiec as a devout daily churchgoer and frequent Communion recipient, Schmich recycled the old defector’s story once again…ignoring or not knowing (the latter is probably the case) that Kmiec’s church has been on record as opposing the practice since “The Didache” composed before A. D. 80. The fact that Obama has impressed Kmiec with his Catholic social views is noteworthy since Obama personally throttled to its death four times the “Born Alive” bill in the Illinois state senate when he was chairman of judiciary, which denied infants born after botched abortions nutrition and medical care to alleviate their suffering. As numb of any moral implication of the act as is Obama and his lawyer wife who continually lies about the legislation (it wasn’t needed; it would be used as a ploy to overturn “Roe v. Wade”, Schmich plays along with the scenario of Kmiec the defender of his Catholic conscience.

The other day in an interview which he strained at the leash to get, Kmiec said that some bloggers had called him a Benedict Arnold and related the story…faithful to history…that when Alexander Hamilton asked Washington what to do with the traitorous general if he caught him, Washington said: “shoot him!” The story is correct, reproduced in Hamilton’s notes. Kmiec thought the analogy was worthwhile to apply to him—meaning that there is something remaining of the old residual Catholicism in the duplicitous law professor after all. Kmiec would love to have himself cast as martyr. The fact is he isn’t important enough to warrant that designation although assuredly he will probably be named to the high court by Obama; it remains to be seen if the Senate’s pro-abortion majority will trust one who has already weaseled away from his church and canons of the law he once upheld.

And to Mary Schmich who faithfully chronicled this the second time the hoary old story has been recycled in the “Trib”—nice try.

Personal Aside: The 3 Questions that Could Decide the Election—and No They’re Not Issue Hairsplitting.

3 Questions.

Big Media want the presidential campaign to focus on “the issues” by which they mean the mesh of confusing statistics on the economy, tax cuts, energy and health care by which Obama…twisting and turning…endeavors to make himself invisible to hair-splitting evaluation. On the economy he is a master at changing direction to obfuscate the fact that he is a redistributionist. On foreign policy he is a veritable chameleon hiding the fact that in debate with Hillary Clinton he advocated negotiation with Iran with no preconditions. On energy he tongues-in-cheek a mention of drilling and says as an aside “yes, nuclear” but is the same-old, same-old. In issue debates, frankly, the truth isn’t in him. As he never has recognized absolutes of any kind, he is at a distinct advantage. He is a giant squid, inking the water with deception and the establishment media cheer him on—warning McCain that the worst thing he can do is to focus on “character.”
Nonsense, the only way McCain can win is to ask these three questions and take the furor that Obama and his media allies diffuse.
What sort of man is it who four straight times…as chairman of Senate Judiciary… killed the “Born Alive” bill in the Illinois Senate…thus depriving babies born alive from botched abortions to receive nutrition and medical care? No other Democratic candidate for president has taken that position. The answer contrived by Obama’s Artful Dodger, David Axelrod, that the legislative bill was different from the one that passed the Congress later is a lie. Obama…and his wife…were willing to allow infanticide to exist so that “Roe v. Wade” would not be jeopardized. A shocking disregard for human life that cannot be contrasted by any other Democratic presidential nominee.

Answer: A craven, rudderless opportunistic trimmer with no fixed principles who has always placed his own opportunistic career advancement ahead of anything else including human life.

What sort of man is it who sits in a church for 20 years while his pastor…his good friend…god damns the United States of America? And who then throws his pastor under the bus when it gets hot?

Answer: The same. A craven, rudderless, opportunistic trimmer with no fixed principles who has always placed his own career ahead of anything else including his once firm friends whom he later saw as impediments to his political career which he placed ahead of any other factor.

What sort of man is it who buddies with an undisguised, unrepentant terrorist (who never apologized for bombing the Pentagon) and who used this association in the early days to advance himself by gaining a foundation chairmanship and other benefits—throwing Billy Ayres under the bus when it became advantageous…Axelrod, the Artful Dodger, declaring that Obama never knew of Ayres’ connection because Obama was 3 years old when Ayres bombed the Pentagon?

Answer: A craven, rudderless, opportunistic trimmer with no fixed principles who has always placed his political career ahead of anything else including his once firm friends whom he later saw as impediments to his political career which he placed ahead of any other factor—including love of country.

A bit of history. There was never a time when Bill Ayres allowed his radical history to dissolve into the mists of time. He traded on it. I met him in the 1980s when he and Bernardine Dohrn lived in a Hyde Park carriage house adjunct to the house John McDermott owned. McDermott was his landlord. This was about the time Obama came to town. Ayres has always boasted of his hatred of the United States and always…to me particularly…said how he regretted not doing more damaged to the United States. In fact given this culturally deprived society we are living in, Ayres and his wife benefited from their terrorist associations…she landing a job in the law firm where Michelle Obama worked…he become a celebrity in the fey, decadent lefty society that comprised the Hyde Park of the time.

Axelrod gets away with the fiction that Obama didn’t know Ayres’ background because he trades on the lefty nature of the pro-Obama, supine media of Chicago…imagine a prominent TV “political reporter” on CBS-TV asked him to allow a photo taken with his family when he gets to the White House and to send him a Christmas tree ornament. That’s the objective nature of this local media beast with no teeth but gummy patronization where Obama is concerned. Why did it take a local blogger, Fran Eaton (kudos to her) to unveil the truth about Jeremiah Wright? Why did it then take a national ABC TV correspondent to make it national? Where was the supine Chicago media cross-eyedly Democratic ? Hoping to get THEIR kids to be photographed with the next president.

These are the questions that can make the difference—if. If McCain is willing to risk opprobrium. We’ll see.

Personal Aside: Reflections on Last Night’s Debate.

Tres Boring.

No winner means McCain lost because he is behind and he needed to reverse the tide. Beyond that the event was terminally boring.
We probably should have known that if anyone could take tens of thousands of questions from the Internet…mix them with queries from the 80-plus members of the Belmont University audience…and make it as tasteless as mashed potato soup, it WOULD BE Tom Brokaw—who is about as unexciting and predictable—and as overrated—as the aged snoozer David Broder. In the middle of Brokaw conducted an interview with John McCain and Barack Obama over whom they would pick for secretary of the treasury…zzzzzz. It makes me desperately want to recall Rick Warren who ran the best ever debate at Saddleback. Wonk-wannabe anchors are no good.
This deadly “debate” which had the two recite verbatim their stump speeches (with the exception of McCain’s outlining a mortgage rescue plan) set the cause of presidential debates back to 1976 when Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter stood woodenly and in silence after the power failed—standing at their individual booths looking like men who in a while-you-wait presser while their trousers were being pressed. Beyond this observation, the confrontation has impelled me to make these observations (see if you agree or disagree):

Unlike some other presidential campaigns, it is obvious that there is not going to be a determinative moment in the debate format…involving the next one with Bob Schieffer…which will form the outcome. There will likely be no decisive knockout.

The amazing thing to me: The eruption of a terrible economic calamity, the lingering state of an unpopular war, an historically low rating for a Republican president…all these things should have certified a polling landslide for Obama much like that of 1932 for FDR over Hoover, or 1936 for FDR over Landon. Nothing of the sort has erupted. Obama has been only a handful of points nationally—6 at my latest count—ahead and the battleground states are still quite close. Something has to happen to break the impasse or there may well be either an electoral tie or a tiny margin of victory for either man.

It is clear that the only thing that can make it determinative for McCain would be an international or national security crisis where his white-haired expertise could come to the fore. Barring that, it looks like a tiny eaking out for Obama.

Also it is clear that this generation of politicians are painfully ill-equipped to discuss the real nature of the economy as is presciently illustrated in the book “The World is Curved: Hidden Dangers to the Global Economy” by David M. Snick. Neither one understands that a tiny village in Norway can be wrecked financially because its financial managers invested heavily in Citigroup’s collateralized debt obligation…to the extent that when housing markets collapse in Florida and California, their debt obligations sour with the result that the Norwegian village had to padlock kindergartens and health care services for the aged.

This means that more than anything else, our future politicians must come from a more literate economic class. Snick says “retaining the free flow of capital to keep; globalization’s bloodstream pumping may also require the most sophisticated team of global financial brain surgeons…because the world today lacks a financial doctrine—or even much in the way of a set of informal understandings for establishing order in a financial crisis.”

What is also sorely needed is a new doctrine for the U.S. for measured withdrawal from being the global fireman determined to quench all the injustices of the world. Brokaw in his way tried to approach this in the debate by seeking to get both candidates to define a doctrine in their names—an Obama Doctrine, a McCain doctrine. A debate is the worst place to try to secure it. But one thing is sure: rooting out the cause of Islamic terrorism to defend ourselves is a necessary expedient…but this stuff of sending troops to eradicate every single instance of genocidal injustice in the world is starting to be a fruitless exercise—especially when our financial resources are strained to the limit.

Personal Asides: Archbishop Burke: Dems are “Party of Death”…The Ugly New Tribune and the Race to the Bottom with the Sun-Times

Archbishop Burke

Reprinted from the Chicago Daily Observer.
When Archbishop Raymond Burke was promoted to the Vatican curia and left the archdiocese of Saint Louis where he had made waves insisting that the Church’s stand on abortion really means what it says, there were some who said his transfer was not just a promotion but also Rome’s way of removing a pesky prelate who antagonized political minions of the U.S.’s relativist culture. For an outspoken bishop, being promoted to a high office in the stratosphere of the Vatican can be analogous to what happened to New York Judge Joseph Force Crater who hopped in a taxi on the night of August 6, 1930 and was never seen again…becoming a “cause celebre” as the “missing-est man in the nation” prompting the line with standup comedians “Judge Crater, call your office!”

I confess I was one who thought Burke was slated for a future of ecclesial anonymity along with a red hat in the musty offices of Rome. And, frankly, I’m still not sure that the feisty bishop WASN’T kicked upstairs—because Rome seems to want “unity” (just like Jesus Christ, right? RIGHT!). Burke was not like that: he was a glorious beacon to us authenticist Catholics—vowing not to give Holy Communion to Catholic pols of both parties who rise above principle to espouse abortion and trade on their churchly heritage.

He had the guts to challenge a popular coach at Saint Louis University who was a scandal to his young charges by saying they could forget the moral code on the hideous practice. He condemned the appearance of folk-singer Sheryl Crow at a benefit for a Catholic children’s hospital in Saint Louis and refused to attend the event. While a good many others cower under their red hats and grip their crosiers with trembling hands at the thought of controversy and alienating the all-important Democratic party (in Chicago the party runs everything involving policy—justifying Ed Vrdolyak’s boast to me and others in his hearing that Chancellor Jimmy Lago was “my best precinct captain”). Archbishop Burke served as a leading light for all of us who glory in the heritage of discipline from the pulpit.
So when Burke was “promoted” to Rome as head of the Vatican’s version of the U. S. Supreme Court, the “Apostolic Segnatura”—an institution vastly more complex—it was understood he wanted the promotion since as a superb canon lawyer he seems to have been born for the job…but we still wondered why of all people HE was chosen now just as he was getting his feet wet dispensing a welcomed authority in Saint Louis.
That question still remains to be answered—and probably won’t until we see the caliber of his replacement in Saint Louis (a typical accommodationist and the die will be cast)—but happily last week Burke made waves that rolled from the Vatican to the shores of these United States. He was asked in an interview with the publication “Avvenire,” the publication of the Italian bishops’ conference, to comment on the fact that Crow entertained at the Democratic National convention.
He answered: “That does not surprise me much. At this point, the Democratic party risks transforming itself definitely into a ``party of death’ because of the choices on bioethical questions as Ramesh Ponnuru wrote in his book ‘The Party of Death: The Democrats, the Media, the Courts and the Disregard for Human Life.’” Burke added: The Democratic party once was “the party that helped our immigrant parents and grandparents better integrate and prosper in American society—but it is not the same anymore.”

This is not to exculpate those Republican pro-aborts. God knows this writer hasn’t wherever they are…Big Jimbo Thompson, the lady with the prematurely orange hair, Judy Baar Topinka, Rosemary Mulligan, Mark Kirk et al. But the Democratic party is from stem-to-stern pro-abort. The last pro-life Democratic survivor in this state was Glenn Poshard who could have become governor over George Ryan if the Near North Democratic trendies hadn’t sold out to Personal PAC to help out good ol’ George.

In his statement, Burke expressed the view that more U.S. bishops are coming around to his view on barring pro-abortion Catholic pols from Communion, which was once seen as a distinctly minority opinion. How does that square with the pathetic statement one prelate gave to please the Democrat jingos in his audience: “It can be argued that the Republican party never had a soul!” “It can be argued” being the slippery parse. When confronted, he referred to Republican James G. Blaine [1830-93] the unsuccessful candidate against Cleveland (a footnote in history) who tried foolishly and unsuccessfully to ban federal support for parochial schools which he cited to counterbalance the record of a party formed to oppose slavery. How’s that for s-t-r-e-t-c-h-i-n-g?
Burke is right that other bishops are slowly coming around. A sample of prelate’s statements on the significance of abortion in this presidential election has been cited often. After House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the doctors of the Church have not been able to make that definition [as to when life begins]” a host of bishops issued rebuttals including New York Cardinal Edward Egan, Archbishop Charles J. Chaput and Auxiliary Bishop James D. Conley of Denver as well as Cardinal Justin Rigali and Bishop William Lori, chairman of the U. S. bishops’ pro-life and doctrine committees. Archbishop Joseph Naumann of Kansas City, Kansas has spelled out the reasons why the so-called “Catholic” Democratic Governor of Kansas, Kathleen Sebelius (the daughter of pro-abort John Gilligan who was governor of Ohio) should not be entitled to receive Communion. Other prelates who remained silent were probably thinking about how to parse without doing damage to their Democratic-prone connections.
The Burkean view and the actions of other bishops against his favorite liberal Democrats will be viewed with disfavor by Fr. Andrew Greeley weekly columnist for “The Chicago Sun-Times.” Greeley who trades on his photo where he is wearing a clerical collar has been long a faithful lip-synch mouthpiece for the Democratic party (he once boasted to me during the long ago period where we occasionally talked that he never, ever voted Republican), touting the candidacy of Barack Obama who four-times as a state senator killed the Illinois version of “Born Alive,” which would guarantee medical care for infants born from a botched abortion.

Thus Obama is the first presidential nominee to have not only espoused but to have legislative blood on his hands by killing a bill that would assuage dying infants born outside the womb from pain—opposing the measure because…as a Harvard lawyer (along with his wife another Harvard lawyer if you please)…he fancies it would threaten “Roe v. Wade”—a point on which he has been in disagreement with the great majority of pro-aborts in the U.S. Senate who passed an identical bill prior to Obama’s joining that body. Fr. Greeley says decorously his role as a priest forbids him to endorse anybody for office but has called Obama in his column “my guy.” The self-same Greeley wore a golden saxophone proudly on his black clerical jacket emblematic that he had maxed out to Bill Clinton, the abortion president—another one of his guys. Greeley is far from ostracized in Chicago ecclesiastical circles. He dines and goes to the opera with the very finest. For all of that, he is a Company Man along with Michael Pfleger-- meaning Democrat.

To the biblical injunction that one cannot serve both God and mammon, Fr. Greeley now finds himself roughly in a far more serious position but one that is analogous nevertheless as Jack Benny did in a skit on his late popular radio show. Self-publicizing himself as a skinflint, Benny was characterized walking down a dark street one night when he was approached by a robber who stuck a gun in his ribs and rasped: “Your money or your life!” There followed a long, painful silence. The robber repeated: “I said, buddy, YOUR MONEY OR YOUR LIFE!” To which Benny shouted—“I’M THINKING! I’M THINKING!” At his current age, over 80, Fr. Greeley has thus far avoided making the choice between God and mammon—mammon benefiting as he evades the argument. In fact that marvelous numb-dumb pro-Dem allegiance has blocked thought thus far. But in the immortal imagery of Francis Thompson’s poetic masterpiece “The Hound of Heaven,” Greeley may hear galloping footsteps coming near to him as he coasts into aged decrepitude. As one who is Greeley’s identical age, I advise him to cup a hand to his ear if that will help him hear the advancing Hound.

When the time comes to meet the Just Judge, Greeley will likely surround himself with all the accoutrements of the Church’s traditions he has so scornfully dissed—greedily seeking swinging incense burners and gallons of holy oils-- as he strives to get things right in the final cramming for finals. The man who once wrote during the last papal conclave that the Holy Spirit has proved Itself fallible by having picked so many sinful popes—a sacrilege and insult to his Church offered up for the yuks of his secular readers--neglecting to point out what we learned from the Baltimore Catechism that infallibility is the preventative to teach error in faith and morals only and has nothing to do with the caliber of the earthen vessels who occupy the papacy--will have to surpass all the skills he has shown as an earthly communicator to justify these words and the long-long record of slavish partisanship in behalf of those Democratic pols who have written into their party credo support for abortion along with defense of Obama’s pro-infanticide stand…the sin that cries to heaven for vengeance.
The Ugh Ugly New “Tribune”

Talk about a mountain groaned and a mouse ran forth…the ugh ugly putrid new “Tribune” is not only a badly reformatted edition of USA TODAY…it has somehow reincarnated the worst of the namby pamby previous Trib era that I thought was gone forever. The editorial on Sarah Palin’s debate victory tried to have it both ways. The same former cookbook editor is selecting letters-to-the-editor being sure Obama wins 2 to 1. Remember the song “Sam, you made the pants too long?” Sam, I don’t know how much you spent searching for a new format with focus groups but check to see if somebody didn’t put the ex-cookbook editor in charge of it—and then fire her. Send her to the “Defender”…what is it now, a weekly? Semi-weekly? ...which is where she belongs.

Okay, you moved Chuck Krauthammer to hard copy…just in time to have CK declare Barack is going to win—but that’s okay: Krauthammer’s quality stuff. You still haven’t understood that the editorial page (s) belong in the first section and not in the second section behind the Obits.

At the same time, Sam, you should take a lesson from “The Wall Street Journal” which has thrived under its new ownership of Rupert Murdoch despite the woeful predictions of the left that it would soon resemble “The New York Post.” Among the best things Rupert did was fire the deadly duo of lefties John Harwood and Jackie Calmes who sped over to “The New York Times”…appropriately…where Harwood (who doubled on MSNBC with David Gregory whose wife earned big bucks from Fannie Mae) has joyfully suggested that the conservative era in the United States has now ended gracias Obama—not waiting for the election.
Sam you have produced an inky disaster, a smudge-pot. You’re in a race with the disgraceful “Sun-Times” to the bottom in taste and quality. Still time to hunt up the old forms and return the paper to its pre-horrific clean presentation. It’s like seeing your favorite elderly aunt saunter down the street half looped, in Capri pants, false eyelashes and flicking ashes from a marijuana cigarette while she waggles her buns to attract the male idlers on the corners. Leads me to want to make a cross with the fingers of my hands in exorcism, saying to the horrendous creature purportedly constructed with the aid of focus groups-- “begone!”

The Week Just Passed: Palin Did Well Despite Team McCain’s Fumbles and My Misspelling. Tina Fey the Real Loser?

P-a-l-i-n. See? I can spell her surname right—Palin. Sorry about that. Put it down to senility or…if you choose to be charitable…my having no proof reader to peruse these things after my fingers fly across the keyboard between Biden with an “en” and Palin with an “in.” Thanks to E. A. and the 11,245 others who flooded by email on it.
***

Sarah Palin triumphed by doing what she had to do in the vice presidential debate. I wouldn’t say she won in stuffy debaters’ terms but she did something far better: her appearance guaranteed the confrontation scored a valuable knockout in the TV ratings, reinvigorated the McCain campaign and certified her bouncy 21st century style of debating and speech-making will become de rigeur in the future. I’m tempted to say the real loser in the debate was Tiny Fey—but nothing will stop the Saturday Night Live crew of liberals from mocking Palin anyhow.
The veep debate totaled a 45.0 overnight meter-market household rating—42% higher than the presidential debate between McCain and Barack Obama which means she was responsible (no one particularly tuned in to see Joe Biden). Clear evidence that Palin set aside any doubts about her abilities came when Obama chief strategist, Chicago’s David Axelrod walked into the spin room following the debate and exclaimed only that she hadn’t satisfactorily separated McCain from George W. Bush. The fact that Axelrod skipped commenting on her effective performance vis-à-vis Joe Biden is the highest praise that can be won from the Enemy.

Her triumph is all the more astounding in view of the near-mismanagement Team McCain made of her after her nomination. Rather than send her on the media road first to adulatory conservative audiences where she could further shore her confidence…getting her on conservative talk radio and on Fox-News…a group of esthete ex-Bush wonderboys hunkered down with her and allowed her only three major appearances in three weeks while they “prepped” her for two major TV appearances—on liberal broadcast venues. Charlie Gibson on ABC-News ran a three part series where he behaved as an Oxford tutor, his spectacles down on his nose, judging her responses, hitting her with a “gotcha” through inaccurate question on the Bush Doctrine (there are 4), exhibiting Stand Tall in Georgetown hauteur. Katie Couric, the host of CBS-Evening News, is so cross-eyedly pro-Democratic that when Joe Biden regaled her with the story that after the 1929 stock-market crash FDR took to the television to rally the country (ignorant of the fact that FDR wasn’t president and TV wasn’t around), her only comment after Biden’s misstating of history was this: “Relating to the fears of the average American is one of Biden’s strong suits.” U. S. history evidently isn’t however. Predictably Couric savaged Palin. Her obvious liberal bias is one reason why CBS ratings are the lowest of the once “Big 3.”

Palin had been so cautioned not to volunteer information by the pathologically defensive Bushies, she didn’t even volunteer to Couric what newspapers she reads every day—following their passive line that she had to crouch into a defensive mode. Anyhow, Overcoming all, Palin scored big in the debate. Still, given the overwhelming odds against McCain-Palin…economic melt-down, unpopular war, lowest ever rating for a president…it is problematic the team can win except for another unforeseen “events, my dear boy, events” that Harold Macmillan talked about as governing politics. At the same time, it amazes me that McCain is only a handful of points behind. Running with the handicaps he has would ascertain he would be double-digits in the rear. This may mean that Obama’s race is a deterrent no matter what the liberals have said.

Be that as it may, this much is sure: Sarah Palin has risen to formidable presidential contender for the future no matter what happens in 2008—equal to if not surpassing in popularity the likely inheritors to a future GOP presidential nomination: Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee, Bobby Jindal et al.

Palin’s New Style.

Carding the debate, initially I made a mistake—attributable to being an old geezer. Inured to senate-speak, I started giving too many debater’s points to Biden. Wrong. As one who has covered or participated in politics for 50 plus years…listening in the gallery to Everett Dirksen, Hubert Humphrey, the Kennedys et al… I had become accustomed to the old-fashioned, 19th century form of orating which Biden has mastered to a fare-thee-well. That style—heavy in oracular performance—was pioneered by William Jennings Bryan and carried throughout most of the succeeding century—and Biden is his most notable imitator.

FDR and almost all his presidential successors including JFK continued the bloviating style. Here’s JFK: “Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we will pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe…” See what I mean? Ronald Reagan brought that heavy-breathing strum und drang to an end when he said calmly to President Jimmy Carter in debate, “there you go again.”

His most notable speech commemorated the 40th anniversary of D-Day where he said in a semi-conservational tone yet dripping with subdued emotion he said: “These are the boys of Pointe du Hoc. These are the men who took the cliffs…”

Sarah Palin has brought to political discourse more than Reagan’s well-honed conversational radio style but added something he never could used because of his senior citizen status-- the refreshing immediacy of youth and its slang—“you betcha,” “get down to gettin’ business done” and “doggone it!” She was down-home with a vengeance, dropping her “g’s” and even coming up with a twang (do Alaskans have a twang? Never mind, she produced a fetching one).

Referring to her grade school teacher who spent a lifetime with kids, she exclaimed “God love her!” She told kids in the viewing audience they could get extra credit for tuning in. She described the hard-up $4-a-gallon people as urging “drill, baby, drill.” She broke tradition with past traditional pro-Wall Street Republicans by telling moderator Gwen Ifill “darned right it was predator lending!” as explanation for the mortgage meltdown. She called Biden after he performed an oracular senatorial moment: “Oh, man, it’s so obvious I’m a Washington outsider!...Someone just not used to the way you guys operate. Because here you voted for the war and now you oppose the war.” She zinged him with “say it ain’t so, Joe. There you go again, pointing backwards again!”

In doing extraordinarily well in the debate, Palin had great outside help. First, her persona had been so unjustifiably ripped by the mainstream media—including “Saturday Night Live’s” satirical comedienne Tina Fey-- she would gain on points if she merely showed up and didn’t wipe her nose on the auditorium drapes. Second, thankfully McCain fired Palin’s Bushie handlers who drilled her on avoiding mistakes not making points--ultra-cautious bureaucratic types from earlier George W. Bush campaigns.

Third, the moderator, Gwen Ifill, an unreconstructed PBS liberal who had earlier written a gloriously pro-Obama article in Essence a black pro-Obama magazine, was forced to be on her best behavior. Reason: she had “forgotten” to tell the presidential debate commission she had written a book with a laudatory Obama title due for release on Jan. 22 2009, Inauguration Day, meaning she has a financial stake in Obama’s winning the election.

But All the Same…

Still, Palin’s emergence from the debate as a 5-star asset to the McCain campaign doesn’t meant she didn’t miss valuable opportunities to score. She did. I chafed when she let Joe Biden get away with outrageous statements—akin to political malpractice--that misstated the record. Notably that Obama and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri el-Maliki agree on the details of troop withdrawal and “the only odd man here, one left out, is John McCain.” It was one of those Biden statements that cry to heaven for clarification.
Obama, Palin could well have said, has promised to withdraw the troops within 16 months of taking office (which would mean mid-2010). Bush and Maliki have agreed on no such withdrawal and McCain is by no sense “odd man out.” She never mentioned Biden’s own formula for ending the war which would have involved a partition of Iraq which was almost unanimously shouted down as hugely impractical. Again, she allowed Biden to muddy the issue of Obama’s having voted to cut off funds for the troops by the slippery debater’s charge that McCain voted the same way. McCain opposed any funding connected with a withdrawal timetable.

While she defended McCain adequately in most instances she never did take the battle to the enemy on the real culprits in the subprime-related bankruptcies. In obedience to Political Econ 101, she joined Biden in blaming the free market system for “greed” instead of citing the Clinton years for creating the market for the high-risk loans now infecting like a virus the balance sheets of many of Wall Street institutions. (Attribute it not to Palin directly but to McCain’s wish to be perceived as a latter-day Theodore Roosevelt. If he knew more about the real TR of history—a vain silver-spoon-at-birth blowhard who sought to “tame” trusts while conferring on John D. Rockefeller and J. P. Morgan a wink that meant he was doing it for his own self-aggrandizement---he’d not relish the comparison).

The Failings of Team McCain.

Failure to follow up aggressively on Obama-Biden is not Palin’s strategy but evidently that of Team McCain that constantly has flubbed the all-important economic issues which will determine the election. Team McCain has never pounded home the fact that in the Clinton years Democrats made clear to banks and other lending institutions that if they did not do something, and quickly, to bring more minorities and low-income Americans into home ownership there would be a heavy price to pay. Democratic party hacks running Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae including Obama pal and ex-adviser Franklin Raines became multi-millionaires by greasing their own salaries. Obviously McCain-Palin have determined that too much truth –telling in this regard would run the risk of Republicans being called “racist” since many of the poor are black as is Raines. Thus does political correctness and timidity cause the GOP to allow Biden to continue unchallenged.
Team McCain has made very slight mention of Obama adviser, Raines who as CEO of Fannie Mae form 1999 to 2004 is the individual most responsible for the sub-prime mortgage fiasco: it was on Raines’ watch that Fannie Mae went bankrupt. He has been accused of manipulating earnings statements so he could get bonuses to which he was not entitled in the shadow of its $6.3 billion accounting scandal. Nor did she refer to another Obama adviser, Jim Johnson (the son of a Minnesota DFL speaker of the house), another former CEO of Fannie Mae, one of three tapped by Obama to vet vice presidential candidates and who stepped down when it was revealed he in turn finagled earnings report so he could step down with billions, a man who bundled huge sums of cash for Obama’s campaigns.

Perhaps now that Palin did wondrously in the debate and has her sea-legs, she will move on to these juicy items soon.

The Rocky Road Ahead.

The value of the Bush-Paulson $700 billion rescue bill was always problematic. There is no doubt the meltdown itself soiled the Republican brand as being the more prudent party to manage the economy. Politically the safe stance to take initially seemed to be in opposition which guided the House to reject the package. Then with the threat that the entire banking system might explode, there was a change in heart with many voters. Also the pols on both sides loaded the original package with outrageous sweeteners. Ergo: it would be have been much better to pass the original bill than the one that finally got through the House last week.

Its passage could mean that the financial markets will be calmed, allowing the presidential campaign to continue along accepted lines. Still in all, economy will remain front and center as the issue and Palin’s triumph notwithstanding, the onus is on McCain to turn the race around. Democrats are optimistic of victory and not just the popularity polls but the vital Electoral College numbers show how difficult it is for McCain-Palin. The reliable Realclearpolitics.com poll of the College shows at this writing with needed to elect 270, Obama has 264, McCain 163 and 111 tossup. Already McCain has pulled his forces out of Michigan—once regarded as a possible for him—due to rising unemployment which has detonated his chances. He can’t prevail without holding onto most of the states Bush won in 2004 but McCain is virtually tied or trailing in at least ten of them—Colorado, Florida, Indiana, Iowa, Missouri, New Mexico, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio and Virginia.
The Sleepy Eye.

If one characteristic of this campaign has been the Macmillan factor that makes the candidates playthings of events, another is the one about the electorate’s Sleepy Eye. The axiom goes that unlike us political junkies, the great American consciousness still dwells on such things as the baseball players, the World Series, Friday night high school and college football games (this factor alone diminished the Obama-McCain debate viewership since it was held on a Friday night). Only occasionally will the Sleepy Eye of the U. S. will open and fasten for a short time on the presidential race. What it sees and registers before it snaps shut is, the legend says, determinative. There is no doubt that the Sleepy Eye opened for a moment and drew a favorable response to Sarah Palin (the whole debate was about Palin and Biden was not much of a factor). There is no doubt in my mind that the Eye opened and drew unfavorable vibes when McCain decided to put his campaign on suspension and chuck the first debate…coming back to keep the debate date after all. Obama’s masterful comment: we ought to be able to walk and chew gum at the same time may well have caught the Eye’s approval and register favorably for Obama. It did mine.
There is no doubt the Sleepy Eye opened during the credit meltdown and deduced the Republicans, being in control of the White House, must take the blame. The next time the Eye should open will be Tuesday’s debate No. 2 between McCain and Obama. As with all debates, likeability of the participants is a key factor (in the veep debate, Palin proved eminently likeable). The Sleepy Eye seems to deduce that coolness of approach is equivalent to presidential leadership—at least it so concluded with John Kennedy who was composed and calm during the first crucial 1960 meeting in Chicago in 1960.

Barack Obama is so cool that it can be doubted he would raise a sweat even if he were wrapped in towels in a steam sauna. John McCain on the other hand is often frenetic and rostrum-pounding. Whether the Sleepy Eye will once again pick the cool cucumber no matter his cerebral attainment…or the maverick ex-POW who can make his case with passion… we don’t know. Give me your view.

Personal Aside: Palin’s Down Home-Style Conversation…with Winks…May Have Won for Her More than Usual Political Staccato 19th Century Recitation of Pomposity.

Her Style Won It.

Carding the Palin-Biden debate, initially I made a mistake. As an old geezer, I showed my fondness for political tradition and was impressed with Joe Biden’s staccato recitation of facts and statistics…even lies…because that has been what I have grown up with. Having lived a span that extends from Franklin Roosevelt through most legislators who orate in that cavern known as the U.S. Senate, I have become at ease with those who rip off verbal paragraphs even if they have little relevance to the question involved. But I should have remembered. Ronald Reagan brought a new style of argumentation to modern politics—the conversational tone, the deferential bob of the head, shy smile and “there you go again.” So initially I was giving the debate to Joe Biden, albeit very thankful that Sarah Palin wasn’t gumming it up.

But midway through the debate I knew I was far wrong…and that Palen was winning. Three reasons.

First, , I realized the horrendous anti-Palin propaganda meted out from the mainstream liberal media actually helped her by lowering expectations. By the time the late night TV talk show hosts and most commentators finished, one was expecting her to stumble onto the stage and wipe her nose on the drapes. She gained terrifically through lowered expectations.
Second,…It came to me as she made the wry comment about the joke that she and Biden both attempted which the audience didn’t get: this woman is a speech-making revolutionary! Just as Reagan had brought a new style of conversational informality to politics—along with a light touch—Palen has restored it and has added a fascinating new touch. You don’t realize how both Reagan and Palin have changed the style of political speaking until you look at the old clips of politicians. FDR’s public speeches (excluding the brilliantly conversational fireside chats delivered in the Blue Room with no audience present, just radio engineers) were all bombast, orations which owed its allegiance to the late 19th century (notably Bryan). The same with Truman, Ike, JFK…

JFK: Remember “Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we will pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty?” Beautiful words but oracular, hearkening back to Bryan.
These all echoed the 19th century’s Bryan: LBJ (excessively so), Nixon (heavily so), Ford (ponderously so), Carter (boringly so), G.H.W. Bush (mechanically so), Clinton (unendingly so), George W. Bush (largely unimaginatively so). All 19th century-indebted. That same style carries over to the U.S. Senate of today. The senators I’ve heard and admired for speaking style—Humphrey, Dirksen, Simon (but only as an orator), Ted Kennedy et al—all owe their flavor to old 19th century orations. John McCain is resolutely 19th century as a speaker. And the epitome of the 19th century boffo, expansive, almost a caricature of pompous Senator Claghorn is Joe Biden. He’s so out of date next to Palin who is of this era, he seemed to be almost embarrassing.
To continue: Now when you got to Reagan, you realized he had abandoned the old 19th century ponderousness and rarely raised his voice (notable exception: “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”). Reagan’s most notable speech as president (to my mind) was his remarks at Pointe du Hoc, France commemorating the 40th anniversary of D-Day. There he signaled a break with the 19th century oratory. He spoke conversationally like the radio actor he was. Remember? His voice was soft. “These are the boys of Pointe du Hoc. These are the men who took the cliffs.”
Winding up this second point: Biden was good, the emblematic 19th century senatorial orator. Against another 19th century figment he might have won the debate. But he lost it to a woman who applied not just Reagan’s conversational style but her own 21st century youthful cadence which even a Reagan couldn’t have been expected to imitate. Palin has brought back the Reagan conversational tone but added something of her own—which is the next point.
Third, Palin’s style is contained in the youth and down-home twang (yes I heard a twang: does Alaskans have a twang or is it unaccountably western or midwestern?). Remember how she acknowledged the presence of her Dad in the audience with a self-confident wink? Notice how she drops her “ing’s”? She connected overwhelmingly with her audience as Frank Luntz’s focus group later showed. In essence, no other reasonable choice that McCain had for vice president…Mitt Romney, Tim Pawlenty, Bobby Jindal…could have done it like Palen.

My prediction is that her victory will not be recognized by the liberal media or intelligentsia but they know she has won. Therefore she will continue to be their target until November 4.
Now what has to happen now is this: The House will have to pass the rescue package. It should calm if not subordinate the markets. The long nightmare on the economy may subside for the campaign to continue on its normal basis.

Which means that since Palin has redeemed herself from the unjust attacks from those who were appalled at the Katie Couric-Charlie Gibson interviews…she will continue to be herself…will surround herself with a new staff which will understand her homey jargon…and the campaign will continue apace…even approaching the possibility renewed that this thing can be turned around.

Personal Aside: Free Sarah Palen and Do So Tonight!...“Axis Sally” Buchanan Strikes Again, Makes Neville Chamberlain a Hero…What Did You Expect When PBS “Moderates” a Debate?...Obama—The Mystery Man Leaves No Footprints…More About the Death of “Reform”...

Free Sarah Palin.

Now that Ronald Reagan has been installed as a conservative deity and immune from all criticism, few remember his disastrous first debate in 1984 with former vice president Walter F. Mondale. Reagan was 73…one year older than John McCain is now…and rumors dogged him that he was losing it because of advancing age. He validated some of those rumors by putting on the worst debacle of his acting-political career…veering away with controversy…even saying at one point (responding to a bland journalistic question why he didn’t go to church regularly) that the reason was he didn’t want to interrupt church services for everyone else by having the Secret Service tag along. The line was so absurd that it quickly became a staple on late-night monologues.
Years later both Mike Deaver and Ed Meese who were my guests when I taught political science at DePaul gave the identical answers as to the reason. A hugely protective White House staff of handlers had surrounded Reagan…and so worried were they that the Old Actor would make a mistake...they thoroughly drowned him not just with statistics but with admonitions on what not to say. For the next debate with Mondale, it was Nancy Reagan, Deaver said, who finally took matters in hand, had the handlers dismissed and instead mandated that Reagan make a list of a few central points he wanted…starting with the joke that won the day—that he would not make an issue of his opponent’s age (Mondale was 56)!

There is no doubt that a few days after her nomination, Sarah Palen was surrounded by well-meaning but entirely prissy and over-cautious former aides of George W. Bush who cautioned her….cautioned her…gave her verbal lists of what not to say…which thoroughly watered down her refreshing spontaneity. For example, they set as a goal not going to conservative talk radio and Fox television news but to do well on…of all vehicles…Katie Couric’s CBS Evening News! Katie Couric is an articulate instrument of the liberal cause in the media. Palen should not have gotten near Couric until well in the lineup…long after she had got her feet wet on the more acceptable vehicles of the media.

It is obvious Palen behaved like a performer on a high-wire with Couric, refusing even to enumerate the newspapers she reads or doesn’t read. Couric is the national version…although far better skilled in politics…than our local liberal dilettante in politics, Carol Marin who is so cross-eyedly lefty (her idol is Studs Terkel the ancient wealthy lakefront socialist) she cannot judge up from down.

I predicted here after the nomination of Palen which I enthusiastically endorsed the campaign by the Democrats and the allied mainstream media to make her appear dumb…the same people who believe all Republican conservatives are dumb—Eisenhower was over the hill and senile when he was president…Goldwater was dumb (until in his dotage he renounced social conservatism and then he was courageous)…Ford was dumb…Reagan was ultra-dumb…G. H. W. Bush was a closeted elitist and hence dumbly isolated from the average guy…his son with a master’s in business administration from Harvard is ultra-dumb…on and on.
So on the eve of the Palen debate, I say Free Sarah Palin. Kick the “moderate” handlers out and let her consult with some people from Alaska who helped her in the first place. Have her go to the debate determined to put Barack Obama…not necessarily Joe Biden…on the defensive. Her reward for winning the debate will be heightened media animosity—but so what? She is probably the only one who can save the election right now for McCain. She and the emergence of Events My Dear Boy serve as the only bastion against defeat which is endemic because of the unpopularity of this president and the economic meltdown.

“Axis Sally” Buchanan.

In his last gasp effort to assuage the hotly anti-British shade of his late father by re-writing world history for his own personal benefit, batty Pat Buchanan (who has called Adolf Hitler “courageous,” defended a Holocaust camp guard against deportation, termed Winston Churchill a disaster, the U.S. and the West losers although they won the Cold War…and forecasts terminal decline for the U.S., agreeing with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on this nation’s bleak future)…this same reincarnated Axis Sally, a remnant of the original who serenaded captured U.S. troops in Germany with broadcasts saying Hitler’s future was at hand …has now extolled Neville Chamberlain for his appeasement of the Nazis at Munich in 1938. It would now be appropriate for him to launch a preservation campaign to save the old Munich beer hall from which the “courageous” Hitler launched his putsch.

This insanity needs no labored refutation since history has been written—but just to let you know how a once good man has moved from eccentric to erratic and now irredeemably idiotic-wacko. Look for him next to justify George Lincoln Rockwell and his followers’ march on Skokie a generation ago…or announce he’s writing a biography of the late Rev. Gerald L. K. Smith who has been terribly wronged by history. No, there should not be a campaign to silence him: Just remember when you see him on McLaughlin or MSNBC, he’s called a conservative but is serving the new and alien god of revisionism.

Stop Me if You’ve Heard This One.

What were we to expect when we were told Gwen Ifill of PBS would “moderate” the vice presidential debate? That the debate would be skewed to the left, favoring Joe Biden, obviously. Now we find that she has written a book extolling the rising of a new black political class that is indebted to Barack Obama’s meteoric ascension. And it is to be released to the bookstores on Jan. 20, 2009, the presidential inauguration day. Now here are the counts against Ifill doing a fair job in running the debate. (1) She’s a “mainstream journalist” which means, according to the odds, it’s 87% she’s for Obama. (2) She’s black which means it’s 97% sure she’s for Obama. (3). She has a heavy financial interest in the election outcome with her book: you guess the odds. (4) She somehow neglected to inform the Presidential Debate Commission she had the book—now you guess the odds.

Oh, Sir, Just One More Thing.

I’m indebted to Jim Bowman, the former “Daily News” religion editor, inveterate blogger and sometime “Chicago Daily Observer” contributor for this one. News about Barack Obama is drowning the senses but Obama staff stonewalling prevents us from knowing what should be commonplace stuff. Jim reproduces a photo of the detective Colombo asking, “oh, wait—just one more thing” and wanting material any presidential candidate should be willing to produce.

For example, we don’t have his Occidental College records…no Columbia College records…his Columbia thesis paper…his Harvard records…his Selective Service registration…his medical records…his Illinois State Senate schedule…his law practice client list…not to forget the certified copy of his original birth certificate…nor the embossed, signed paper certification of his birth. Of course there is no record of his Harvard Law Review articles (well, there obviously are none), his University of Chicago scholarly articles (again: none, evidently), his record of baptism.

What are they hiding? Of course the…ahem…mainstream press here in Chicago and elsewhere wouldn’t dream of embarrassing the candidate by requesting this stuff—or writing it up when they are turned away. That would be racist.

The Cook GOP-IVI Coalition.

I wrote yesterday about my experience with the Cook county GOP-Independent Voters of Illinois coalition that succeeded in electing a fair number of people opposed to the original Richard J. Daley machine…using the issues of vote-fraud, patronage abuse, intimidation, dirty tricks as pretext. I was chairman of Project LEAP (Legal Elections in All Precincts) that mobilized many hundreds of honest judges of election starting in 1974. We estimated that one honest judge of election working in a high-incidence of vote fraud precinct could save up to 500 otherwise fraudulently cast ballots. When I served as LEAP chairman, Hyde Park was truly a hotbed of anti-Daley and anti-vote fraud leadership. They helped Republicans elect Bernard Carey as Cook county states attorney, defeating for reelection Ed Hanrahan…a former U. S. attorney here…who was certifiably a logical top successor to Mayor Richard J. Daley himself. Hanrahan’s defeat came as result of a major scandal where as states attorney he cooperated with J. Edgar Hoover and Nixon AG John Mitchell in trying to wipe out the Black Panther leadership by conducting illegal raids on them. They DID raid Fred Hampton’s apartment and riddled him into sausage with a flurry of machine gun bullets.
IVI particularly worked the precincts doggedly to elect Carey. Once he got in, I was in attendance at a closed-door session of the IVI board (on which I served). I was astounded…shocked I tell you…SHOCKED…to sit there and see stalwart ultra-liberal IVIers stand up and shout “where is my job? Where is my job?” in tried-and-true patronage style of Democratic regulars, demanding the same county jobs they had so piously denounced their regular Democratic brothers for parceling out in return for political work in the precincts. To be sure, Carey hired a good many of the IVIers and stayed in several terms. But when the Democratic regulars wised up and opened the gates to hiring IVIers…and under Richie embraced the liberal agenda of the national Democrats (pro-abort, pro gay rights) the “revolt for clean government” died.

The shouting and pietistic orations were ended because the liberals got their share of the swag—which is what it was all about anyhow. So when people tell you Barack Obama matriculated in the pure and pristine precincts of Hyde Park and thus couldn’t have become the darling of the Daley machine, don’t ever believe them.