Hopefully, Sarah Palin's strong performance in last night's debate against Joe Biden will reassure Conservatives concerned about her recent nerves in interviews with Katie Couric and Charles Gibson.  Additionally, it is to be hoped that Palin's performance will silence liberal ignoramuses who think she's unqualified to be Vice-President.  Palin has had to put up with an enormous amount of crap from the mainstream liberal media and feminzai academic harridans who are scared spitless by the idea that the first woman Vice-President or President could be a conservative, religious, pro-life woman who takes assertive stands on foreign policy and national security  issues. 

Palin drew blood when she described the Obama/Biden Iraq policy as being appeasement.  She also could have mentioned that if Obama/Biden really want to "end the war" they'll have to go begging to Islamist hotspots such as Waziristan, the Gaza Strip, and numerous other locales around the world to appease the wrath of the Islamist galoots.  Palin ably empathized with the problems middle class families are having with current economic problems and demonstrated that the massive government intervention favored by Obama/Biden would be injurious to their personal economic well-being as well as to national economic well-being.

On the nuclear weapons question, Palin did miss an opportunity to explain why we need to modernize our nuclear deterrent by testing and how the threat of nuclear armed Iran and/or North Korea makes developing effective missile defense a priority.
Biden managed to avoid his frequent verbal diarrhea although he fails to understand that the Vice-President is a member of both the executive and legislative branches.  Guess, he hasn't looked at his Constitution lately, which is pretty disturbing for someone who was once chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Hopefully, the McCain-Palin ticket can build on the strength of her performance in St. Louis last night.  In the upcoming Nashville debate, McCain needs to look Obama in the eye and tell him that he is not prepared for the presidency and incapable of giving America the strong and decisive leadership we need at this challenging time.  Both McCain and Palin need to tell Americans with blunt ferocity that economic problems and our national security situation will be worsened if the electorate makes the mistake of giving the presidency to Obama/Biden and retains congressional control in the hands of the rabid Nancy Pelosi and the doddering senescent Robert Byrd, and the insufferably anal retentive Harry Reid.

It's easy to dismiss our northern neighbor Canada.  To do so is unwise, because what happens in Canada affects the U.S. economy and national security just as events in the U.S. impact Canada which is our largest trading partner.

Canada is holding its federal election on October 14.  After 13 years of Liberal Party misrule, Canadians elected a newly reconstituted Conservative Party to lead its government on January 23, 2006.  Canada's Prime Minister since then has been Stephen Harper who is an intelligent and principled Conservative from the energy rich province of Alberta.  The Canadian electorate gave Harper's Conservative a plurality but not a majority of House of Commons seats in that election and after a lengthy two and half year minority government, Harper recently dissolved Parliament and is seeking a majority for the Conservatives in next month's election.

Harper and the Conservatives have had some success in their governance.  They have cut the Goods and Services Tax (GST) which is Canada's national sales tax from 7 to 5%.  Significant ethics legislation has been enacted in the wake of scandals during the Liberal Governments of Jean Chretien and Paul Martin during their tenure in power from 1993-2006.  Canada has been less damaged by the mortgage market downturn than the U.S. and is benefitting from increased oil and natural gas revenues.  It's federal budget is in much better shape than the U.S.  Harper has a much more mature and responsible attitude toward relations with the U.S. than some of Canada's leftist opposition parties do.  Anti-Americanism has periodically been an ugly rhetorical whipping boy for some of these individuals.

Harper's government is beginning long overdue efforts to upgrade Canada's military after decades of budgetary neglect.  His government wants to increase Canada's naval presence in the Arctic which will be increasingly important as Russia seeks to assert sovereignty over polar seabed natural resources that are far beyond Russian territorial boundaries.  Harper's government has continued Canada's involvement in military action in Afghanistan begun by predecessor Liberal Governments.  Canadian troops have performed admirably under trying conditions and have taken significant casualties.  All Americans should appreciate the work and sacrifice of Canadian forces in Afghanistan!

Harper is helped by having four leftist political parties in opposition.  The Liberals, who have regularly been Canada's governing party for many recent decades are lead by Stephane Dion who is from Quebec and is seeking to impose a carbon tax on Canadians which would have horrific economic questions.  Dion is a weak leader and the Canadian Conservative Party has a website at http://www.notaleader.ca/ which ably dissects Dion's manifold weaknesses.

Then there is the New Democratic Party (NDP) lead by Ontario's Jack Layton.  The NDP is a Social Democratic Party which combines organized labor and some leftist agrarian populists and is the party that is one of the intellectuals godfathers of Canada's nationalized health care system.  To add to further spice to this leftist goulash is the Bloc Quebecois lead by Gilles Duceppe.  This is a Quebec separatist party who's goal is to make the province of Quebec an independent nation.  Finally, there are the Greens lead by Elizabeth May. 

The Conservatives have made gradual inroads against the Bloc Quebecois in Quebec and have a chance of picking up a significant number of rural seats.  The Conservatives base is in Western Canada, particularly Alberta, where they hold all 28 Albertan seats in the House of Commons.  (Alberta, by the way, is a wonderful place to vacation.)  If the Conservatives can pick up enough seats in suburban areas near Toronto, they could get a majority.

While some Canadian Conservatives are more liberal than American conservatives, there are many who would fit comfortably in American conservative gatherings.  U.S. conservatives should pay close attention to the Canadian election as a bellweather and, hopefully, inspiration to our cause.  The Conservative Party website www.conservative.ca/ 
features campaign advertisements and detailed information about our Canadian partners in political arms.

In one of my earliest blog postings, I mentioned that I like reading articles from the Canadian newspaper the National Post which is that country's premier conservative newspaper.  There is an excellent and insightful analysis of our current financial problems in today's edition of the National Post by economic historian Michael Bliss which correctly asserts that politicians and bankers can't be blamed exclusively for this crisis but that blame must also be placed at the feet of a credit infatuated society that wants everything now.  Go to www.nationalpost.com/news/world/story.html?id=814048 to read this excellent analysis.  It's okay to blame our political and economic figures, along with governmental legal and regulatory structures for our current economic crisis, but truly honest assessments of this must also involve looking in the mirror to see if our own economic practices and desires for immediate gratification are also responsible.

Today we hear of the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the absorption of Merrill Lynch by the Bank of America.  Recently, we've heard of the federal government's de facto takeover of Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae.  It's another sign of the economic troubles facing the domestic and the global economy.  Self-righteous liberals are strutting that these calamities are reflective of a conservative rush to deregulate and alleged Bush Administration mismanagement.  That's not quite the case.

Federal agencies draft regulations and industries such as the investment banking industry follow regulations based upon laws passed by Congress and signed by the President.  These laws and regulations have been approved by Republican and Democratic administrations and congresses.  No one party can take all the blame for these problems.

Our society has become to infatuated by the seductive allure of easy money.  We need to learn to adhere to the old Puritan maxim to not spend what you don't have.  We need to restrict the use of credit cards and easy credit schemes which seductively entice people into the illusion that they can spend more than they can pay.  The mortgage industry needs to reform by only allowing fixed rate mortgages where people will have a realistic understanding of what they will pay for their homes each month.  Laws and regulations allowing uncreditworthy individuals to purchase homes without a down payment and with fraudulent gimmicks like bubble mortgages must be ended.  Instead of bailing out Ginnie Mae and Freddie Mac, these entities should be broken  up into several smaller companies that will be able to offer mortgage holders more competitive choice and more accountability for their actions.  It amazes me that businesses or government agencies expect the federal treasury to bail them out for their economic incompetence and criminal stupidity!  As a taxpayer, I don't want to pay for the incompetence and stupidity of a reckless bank loan officer!

Fellow conservatives, we also need to take a long hard look in the mirror!  For to long, we have glorified the reckless speculator and the excessively risk taking entrepreneur as arbiters of virtous economic practice and holders of esoteric economic knowledge.  We need to rediscover the virtues of true economic conservatism which include prudence, saving our resources, not spending money we don't have, planning for a rainy day, understanding that there will be economic bad times, recognizing that prudent saving and planning can mitigate the effects of economic downturns, and, most of all, recognizing that business and economic leaders must adhere to the same high ethical standards that we expect other political leaders and all individuals to adhere to.  We also need to teach ourselves and others that reckless economic behavior, as has occurred in the mortgage industry, is the road to increased governmental regulation of the economy which history and experience teach us to abhor.  We need to understand what government institutions can and cannot do to alleviate economic misfortune.

There's no telling how long our economy will live with the consequences of this fiscal recklessness.  We've felt it in our household when my wife was laid off several months ago from a support staff position she had with a local real estate firm.  This firm is competently run but the economic malaise we are in has kept her from being able to find full-time work again.  We can find solutions to our economic problems but they must be based on fiscal and moral prudence instead of looking for quick fixes from the federal government or naively expecting the market to work things out on its own.

Very frequently you will hear critics of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan claim they want to stop these wars.  Since many of these individuals are apostles of Bird Brain Barack and virulent critics of President Bush, the hope of the Obamaites is that once their messiah is ensconced in the oval office that peace will break out, the troops will come home, that birds of peace will sing melodic sonnets, and that nirvana will arrive.  Not going to happen!

These critics of the war better put on some walking shoes and birkenstocks and stock up on their frequent flyer miles if they want this war to end.  First of all, they'll  have to go to Waziristan in Pakistan or somewhere along the Afghanistan frontier and find whatever hole Osama Bin Laden and Zawahiri are in and persuade them that we should all just live in peace.  That vision alone would make a delightful made for tv movie!  I imagine Bin Laden and cohorts would have a few good laughs before they dispatch the imbecilic apostles of peace to their doom.  Then the Islamist appeasers will have to go to Kandahar or other regions of Afghanistan and make their entreaties to Mullah Omar and the Taliban gang.  I don't expect any better results there.

Continuing westward, they can head to Iran and try cross-cultural communication with Ahmadinejad and the terrorist-stained Iranian regime.  I'd love to see the peace activists dialogue with the ayatollahs on the "environmental evil" of nuclear power.  Perhaps these activists can convince the Iranians to "go green" and lessen their carbon footprint.  That won't happen either.  Next, our indefatigable useful idiots can head to Iraq where they can break bread with the remnants of Al Qaida about their desire for mystic harmony.  Perhaps Moqhtada Al Sadr and his "Mahdi Army" can be persuaded to wear peace signs and sing "give peace a chance."  I don't see this happening either.

Let's move on to the Mediterranean shores.  Hang a left and head to Gaza where you can see remnants of Yasser Arafat's Fatah engage in internecine strife with Hamas.  Invite Hizbollah to this barbecue which seeks to slaughter Israelis and whose nefarious ideological grip encompasses Lebanon and Syria.  Our true believers in peace also need to make pitstops in Somalia, Sudan, North Africa, Yemen, and other locales in the Gulf region.

I musn't forget Southeast Asia.  Let's head to Indonesia where Islamist demons have attacked Christians and destroyed churches, and to locales as diverse as the Philippines and Malaysia where Al Qaida sympathizers have spewed their venomous violence and odious religious doctrines.  If our believers in appeasing Islamist terror want to make a European jaunt, then I recommend they visit radical Muslims groups in Britain who have proclaimed their desire to impose Sharia on Britain and other countries, or to France where radical Muslims were involved in rioting in many French cities, or in Spain where Al Qaida blew up a Spanish commuter train and compelled a spineless Spanish electorate to vote out a government that courageously fought Islamist terror and replace it with a bunch of dithering and spineless Socialist simpletons!

The fact of the matter is we are in an ongoing war against militant Islam which wants to impose a Taliban like regime over the entire world.  They are contemptuous of anyone who disagrees with their world view and will stop at nothing to destroy those of us opposed to their sadistic and satanic Weltanschauung.  This 9/11 anniversary there will be plenty of commemorations of the attacks and we should justifably honor the dead.  This war will only "end" when these sadistic individuals are killed choking in their own blood and dispatched to hell or when they succeed in imposing their dark savage slavery over us.

Unfortunately, there will also be a lot of multiculturalist politically correct mush seeking to excuse the perpetrators of Islamist terror and their apologists in the media, academe, and elsewhere.  I highly recommend these individuals view the documentary movie Obsession which ably chronicles the radical and nefarious nature of Islamist terror.  The movie's website www.obsessionthemovie.com/ provides good background on this essential cinematic work while also ably illustrating the unfathomable intellectual and ideological stupidity of antiwar critics.  We can only hope it awakens these deluded fools to the savage reality and long-term existential nature of the conflict we are in with this evil messianic ideology.

My first response on hearing Obama picked Delaware Senator Joe Biden as his running mate was "if you plagiarize enough you might get to be Vice-President."  Biden's first presidential run in 1988 went down in flames when it was revealed he had plagiarized one of his speeches with rhetoric used in a speech by then British Labour Party leader Neil Kinnock.  My next reaction is that by picking a Washington insider with 36 years in the Senate, that Obama is showing his own insecurities and destroying the remaining residue of his infantile rhetoric about "change we can believe in."  Joe Biden is an old-line liberal apparatchik who has received favorable treatment on a house sale from the influential credit card and banking industry in Delaware, a duplicitous demagogue who, while Senate Judiciary Committee chair in 1991, told Clarence Thomas, that he supported his confirmation than proceeded to try and stab him in the back, during the most sleazy confirmation battle in U.S. History.

Biden is a foul-mouthed undisciplined poltroon who has been an abysmal failure on the Democratic presidential campaign trail on two occasions.  None of the policies he's advocated for in his political career have improved the economic standards of anyone other than well-heeled liberals, he has no commitment to reducing spending or the size of government, he's a thorough going liberal including being a strong abortionist, and his much vaunted foreign policy acumen will not stand up against significant scrutiny.  He has criticized the war in Iraq without advocating credible alternatives to win the war.  His plan to partition Iraq by ethnic groups may have superficial appeal but it will not help that country achieve the cohesion it needs to be a stable part of the region let alone be able to contend against the dangerous menace a nuclear-armed Iran will pose to that region.  He has demonstrated no prescience on dealing with North Korea, a rising China and the threat it poses to Taiwan, he has failed to support Colombia in its battle against drug terrorists and the subversion against his government sponsored by Hugo Chavez, and has been timid in his response to Russian aggression against Georgia.  Do we really think such an individual has the foreign policy wisdom to advise Barack Obama?

 
It's hard to imagine Biden subordinating himself to Obama campaign prerogatives.  Obama's advisors better stock up on their favorite anti-stress or anti-ulcer medications over the next few months because they will need to consume lots of pills in response to Biden's frequent outbursts of verbal diarrhea.

McCain needs to pick a Vice-Presidential candidate who is a ferocious no holds barred debater who will know how to infuriate Biden when the Vice-Presidential debate is held.  The McCain campaign also needs to stress the danger of having an indiscreet and verbally imprudent demagogue a heartbeat away from the presidency.  Some Democratic politicos are portraying Obama's selection of Biden as a political masterstroke.  I think it reflects serious weakness and insecurity on Obama's part.  If Obama really wanted to  portray himself as the candidate of change he could have chosen someone like Virginia  Gov. Tim Kaine, Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, or arguably, Indiana Senator Evan Bayh.  This selection shows that Obama is committed to the political objectives of the Washington liberal elite and that he is not some advocate for substantive policy change that will produce qualitatively better living standards, governance, heightened international respect, and increased national security for the U.S.

Tonight NBC News was anointing Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman as a potential running mate for John McCain.  Since NBC is part of the liberal dominated mainstream media, this is not surprising that they would want a non-Republican to serve as the 2008 GOP vice-presidential candidate.  Lieberman is, by all accounts, an honorable man.  He is generally sound on national security and foreign policy issues.  Unfortunately, he is a Democrat to the core despite his support of McCain and his principled stands on the Iraq War and other national security issues!  He might even be a plausible Secretary of Defense or Secretary of Homeland Security.  However, is an enthusiastic supporter of scientifically dubious and economically injurious climate change policies such as carbon trading. Lieberman supports unrestricted abortion and has recently cosponsored legislation to extend domestic partner benefits to federal employees and their "partners."  Where in the Talmud did this supposedly orthodox Jew come up with such a contrarian theological dispensation to support such morally depraved lifestyles?

I hope McCain doesn't think selecting Lieberman  will transform the political landscape.  Does McCain think that shamelessly pandering the the liberal mainstream media will help him defeat Barack Obama?  Doesn't McCain realize he will need the wholehearted enthusiasm of conservatives to be successful in this year's campaign?  Choosing Lieberman is a slap in the face to all Republican candidates committed to a conservative vision of traditional moral values and fiscally prudent governmental spending.   If a President McCain dies we will have a Democratic President.  Talk about the mother of stealth political coups. Picking Lieberman could recreate a scenario like 1912 when the Republican vote was split between William Howard Taft and Teddy Roosevelt producing a Woodrow Wilson presidency.  Conservatives would desert the GOP in significant quantities and we might as well hand Obama the White House keys and call off the entire campaign.

There are plenty of good conservatives McCain could pick as his running mate including Mitt Romney, Tim Pawlenty, Sarah Palin, Bobby Jindal, and Rob Portman.  McCain should remember he needs the commitment and resources of Republicans and conservative leaning independents if he is to win and if the country is to be spared the Obamination of a Barack presidency.

Barack Obama makes a big deal that he began his career as a "community organizer" in Chicago.  That term "community organizer" sounds innocuous like he was a social worker or some other benevolent philanthropist.  The truth is not quite so idyllic.  In leftist political rhetoric, individuals who are community organizers attempt to stir up rebellion against what they regard as unjust entrenched authorities.  This can usually take the form of agitating for rent control, protesting alleged police brutality against criminal elements, demanding greater welfare benefits or other forms of governmental financial assistance, and generally taking the view that members of ethnic minority groups are helpless victims unable to make rational or intelligence decision on their own and, consequently,  in need of greater governmental intervention in their lives.  Militantly radical left wing extortion groups like Association of Community Reform Now (ACORN) represent the evil organizational personification of "community organizers" that Obama romanticizes. Is this the "change" Barack Obama wants to impose on America?

What Obama should have done in  his community organizing days was encouraging people in economically disadvantaged neighborhoods to have their kids stay in school and apply themselves to their education.  He also should have encouraged them to refrain from using illicit drugs and alcoholic beverages, and to avoid sexual activity outside of heterosexual marriage.  Engaging in intelligent and moral lifestyles is the true way to advance one's economic fortunes and sociological prospects instead of agitating for greater governmental control of your life and money.  Obama should have advocated that the neighborhoods he was trying to "organize" receive greater police patrolling and that criminals face tougher penalties.

Of course, we all know that having individuals taking responsibility for their lives and actions is antithetical to the political power base and intellectual ideological worldview of statist liberals like Barack Obama and his cohorts in the Congressional Black Caucus and with the preponderance of Democratic Party activists.  Rather than bringing about real change in Democratic Party thinking on social policy, Obama wants to resurrect LBJ's Great Society programs which have proven to be an unmitigated disaster for American social policy including the family life of Black America as evidenced by high illegitimate birth rates, absent fathers, and a disproportionate number of black males residing in our prisons.  If Obama had the courage to consistently raise this issue and actually advocated policies which would change this situation, he would justifiably be regarded as a transformative political leader.  However, don't expect someone who compliantly listened to sermons from "Rev." Jeremiah Wright for decades and who hasn't demonstrated the rhetorical courage to denounce Jesse Jackson to have the intellectual, political, or moral courage to take such a step.

Community organizer Barack Obama is just another leftist political apparatchik who is congenitally incapable of articulating a vision or pursuing and implementing policies which will improve the lives of Americans regardless of their social or economic status.  He will remain content to espouse his vapid mantra of "change we can believe in" while advocating statist policies which have proven to be miserable failures in the United States and other countries around the world.