GOVERNMENT & POLITICS

From the ‘Non Compos Mentis’ File

“Mark my words: It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy,” warned Democrat vice-presidential nominee Joe Biden over the weekend—not just once but on two different days. “The world is looking. We’re about to elect a brilliant 47-year-old senator president of the United States of America. Remember I said it standing here if you don’t remember anything else I said. Watch, we’re gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy.”

Given that the Biden Gaffe Machine doesn’t come with a filter, he continued: “I can give you at least four or five scenarios from where it might originate… And he’s gonna need help…[W]e’re gonna need you to use your influence… within the community, to stand with him. Because it’s not gonna be apparent initially, it’s not gonna be apparent that we’re right.” Perhaps that’s because they almost certainly won’t be right.

Biden concluded, “I’ve forgotten more about foreign policy than most of my colleagues know, so I’m not being falsely humble with you. I think I can be value added, but this guy has it.”

It’s obvious that Biden doesn’t remember much foreign policy. He certainly doesn’t remember the words of George Washington: “To be prepared for war, is one of the most effectual means of preserving peace.” If the United States is saddled with an Obama presidency, we may learn again what this means.

Biden is the same guy who thinks “J-O-B-S” is a three-letter word, the guy who boasted 20 years ago to a reporter, “I think I probably have a much higher IQ than you do.” And he’s possibly going to be one heartbeat from the presidency?

This week’s ‘Braying Jackass’ award

“Joe sometimes engages in rhetorical flourishes. But I think that his core point was that the next administration is going to be tested regardless of who it is. The next administration is going to be inheriting a whole host of really big problems and so the president is going to be tested and the question is will the next president meet that test by moving America in a new direction by sending a clear signal to the rest of the world that we are no longer about bluster and unilateralism and ideology but we’re about creating partnerships around the world to solve practical problems.” —Barack Obama

Campaign watch: Double standard

In a related story, Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin interviewed with CNN’s Drew Griffin this week and the subject of Biden’s comments came up. Palin didn’t hold any punches, asking, “Why does Joe Biden get a pass on such a thing? Can you imagine if I would have said such a thing?… I think that we would have been hounded and held accountable…[Y]ou guys would have clobbered me.”

All Griffin could do was admit, “You’re right.” (Even Dan Rather conceded, “Certainly if Sarah Palin had said this it would be above the fold in most newspapers.”)

Later in the interview, Griffin did try to clobber Palin, and he lied in order to do it. “The press has been pretty hard on you,” he said. “The Democrats have been pretty hard on you, but also some conservatives have been pretty hard on you as well. The National Review had a story saying that, you know, ‘I can’t tell if Sarah Palin is incompetent, stupid, unqualified, corrupt, or all of the above’.”

Palin repeatedly pressed Griffin for a name—“Who wrote that one?” —but Griffin refused to supply it. The author, it turns out, is Byron York, a National Review contributor, but what he said was quite different from the way Griffin portrayed. York wrote, “Watching press coverage of the Republican candidate for vice president, it’s sometimes hard to decide whether Sarah Palin is incompetent, stupid, unqualified, corrupt, backward, or—or, well, all of the above. Palin, the governor of Alaska, has faced more criticism than any vice-presidential candidate since 1988, when Democrats and the press tore into Dan Quayle.” Clearly, this was not his opinion, but the media’s portrayal of her. This is what now passes as journalism?

Bottom story of the week: Powell endorses Obama

Former Secretary of State Colin Powell reinserted himself into public life this week by endorsing Barack Obama on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” The Barack-worshipping media has treated the endorsement as a cataclysmic event for the GOP, but Powell’s endorsement has been a long time coming.

Powell served his nation with great honor and dignity in Vietnam, during the Reagan administration as National Security Advisor, and as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the first Gulf War. All this history, however, never indicated that Powell was a standard bearer for the Republican Party. Many people assumed his association with the GOP because his most recognizable public service came during Republican administrations. In his aborted attempt to run for president in 1996, he admitted to his closest colleagues that if he ran, it would be as an independent, not a Republican. His views on domestic policy—Powell is pro-abortion and pro-affirmative action—run closer to liberal orthodoxy than the can-do spirit of personal achievement lauded by conservatism and his recent actions clearly demonstrated that he would be more at home with an Obama administration than a McCain one.

The Obama campaign has been consulting with Powell on military matters for some time. Powell’s announcement is meant to hit those voters still undecided because of Obama’s complete and utter lack of experience in foreign policy. Obama’s team has cast Powell as the sole voice of reason in the Iraq war, conveniently disregarding the fact that it was Powell who made the case for the 2003 invasion to the United Nations.

Another item forgotten by the press is that while Washington was turning itself inside out to find out who leaked super-secret CIA agent Valerie Plame’s name to the press, Powell knew all along that it was his Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, but he never said a word. Lewis “Scooter” Libby took the fall for the cover-up and leftist conspiracy theorists still twist in the wind over the un-indicted co-conspirators Dick Cheney and Karl Rove. GOP team player Powell is not.

Meanwhile, Barack Obama’s fundraising continues to shatter records. In September, Illinois’ junior senator brought in $150 million, much of which is suspected of being illegal. His campaign total now is more than $600 million. Considering that Obama thinks we should “spread the wealth,” we call on him to split his campaign money with John McCain. To quote Joe Biden, it’s “just simple fairness.”

News from the Swamp: Fannie & Freddie hearings

King of the congressional investigation Henry Waxman (D-CA) has vowed to drag the heads of government-sponsored fiascos Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee—he’s just going to wait until after the election to do it. House Republicans have been clamoring for Waxman, chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, to get to the bottom of just how Fannie and Freddie turned into such a colossal mess, but he has been reluctant to engage.

Waxman is stalling because he realizes that an investigation into the failed mortgage giants would seriously damage the Democrats. It was the Democrats who relaxed lending restrictions at both institutions, it was Democrats who for seven years repelled every Republican attempt to avert the coming disaster, and it was the Democrats’ relaxed lending restrictions that led to the collapse of the housing market and the ensuing economic crisis. But Waxman found a way out of this political pickle: simply postpone the Fannie and Freddie hearings until after the election. After all, they don’t want the public to know tidbits such as the fact that Barack Obama was the second largest recipient of political money from Fannie Mae, and that a number of sitting Demo representatives and senators were complicit in creating the financial crisis they now blame on the Republicans. Still, it is unlikely that inconvenient truths would be discovered by a Waxman hearing in any event.

NATIONAL SECURITY

Department of Military Correctness: Just words

File this one in the “Keen Sense of the Obvious” file. A recent report written by a U.S. military “Red Team” says that words like “jihad” and “Islamist” are, in fact, needed when discussing America’s current terrorist enemies. Imagine. The report also notes that federal agencies that avoid such words are ignoring the actual link between the religion of the terrorists and their violence. Obviously, none of this will sit well with Islamist front groups such as The Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), which argues that such terminology only fans the “religious hatred” of Americans.

The report was written by civilian analysts and contractors for the U.S. Central Command and is the first major official document that challenges those bureaucrats who will not call our enemies what they really are. “The fact is our enemies cite the source of Islam as the foundation for their global jihad. We are left with the responsibility of portraying our enemies in an honest and accurate fashion.” Clearer words could not have been spoken.

Interestingly, the report also says that “jihad,” an Arabic word meaning “to strive” but usually translated as “holy war,” is one of the language’s most sensitive words. Appearing about 30 times in the Koran, 10 of the occurrences clearly refer to fighting, and it has been used in a military context throughout Muslim history, as today’s Palestinian Islamic Jihad group demonstrates. The report also says that under Islamic law, jihad is an obligation of all Muslims and must be performed “until the whole world is under the rule of Islam.” The politically correct crowd counters that the Koran says that the embrace of Islam must be voluntary, not forced. That sentiment is small comfort to fellow infidels whose heads have been sawed off by jihadis. All in all, this report is a breath of fresh air and an exercise in clear thinking in the Long War.

Profiles of valor: USA Spc Gibson

United States Army Specialist Joseph Gibson of the 2nd Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment, was on a mission to find and eliminate terrorists in Iraq in April 2008. Gibson and his fellow Rangers were being transported by helicopter. The chopper touched down at night and the soldiers disembarked, only to come under immediate enemy fire. One Ranger received a life-threatening wound in the firefight and Gibson helped navigate him over an uneven field filled with irrigation ditches to safety.

That’s when the fight got interesting. The Rangers continued with their mission, clearing a field with tall grass and canals near the helicopter’s landing zone. As Gibson walked through the field in the dark, he stepped on a terrorist hiding in a ditch. He took another step forward before turning to see what he had stepped on. The jihadi then moved to kill him and as many other Rangers as possible, but Gibson grabbed the terrorist’s rifle muzzle as he opened fire. Gibson wrestled him to the ground, stripping the enemy of his weapon, but the jihadi disarmed Gibson as well. Ferocious hand-to-hand combat ensued. The terrorist then reached for the detonator to his suicide vest and screamed “bomb!” in English. To put it simply, Gibson beat the jihadi unconscious. Then, “I got my weapon into his stomach and fired,” Gibson said. “He came back to consciousness after that, [but] I knew I got him. I stood up and neutralized him.” For his outstanding courage under fire and the daring rescue of his fellow Ranger, Spc Gibson was awarded the Silver Star.

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Iran denied Security Council seat

Some ideas are so foolish, even the UN can recognize them as bad. This week Japan narrowly edged out Iran, 158-32, in a vote among UN members for a two-year term in one of the UN Security Council’s non-permanent seats. Japan will be a welcome addition to the Security Council, and we congratulate our ally on winning a seat. Predictably, Iran’s representatives blamed the United States and its allies for its loss, saying, “These countries are uninterested in independent ideas… [They] do not have the tolerance to hear an independent voice.”

Iran’s failure just might have something to do with those five UN Security Council Resolutions that Iran has blatantly ignored (1696, 1737, 1747, 1803, 1835). It might also have something to do with Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadi-Nejad’s thumbing his nose at the UN: “You can pass all the resolutions you like and dream on, but you cannot stop Iran’s progress.” Or it might have something to do with the kidnapping of 15 British sailors and marines in 2007. Of course, Iran’s obscene obsession with destroying the “stinking corpse” known as Israel may have swayed a few nations to vote for a more rational member. On the other hand, this is the generally anti-Israel UN, which may explain the 32 votes for Iran. The ballots are cast in secret, so we will never know who the other 31 nations are that think Iran, the world’s Number One sponsor of terrorism, deserves a seat on the Security Council.

BUSINESS & ECONOMY

Putting out the fire with gasoline

In the wake of pushing into law a trillion-dollar bailout package (once total costs are tallied), House Democrats are proposing yet more spending. Who knew? And their rationale? Well, since a recession is imminent anyway, spending more now is preferable to losing that same money later as a result of reduced tax receipts and higher unemployment payments. So let’s get this straight: The same geniuses who were instrumental in setting up this train wreck want to help out by shoveling more coal into the boiler as the economy screams past the “Bridge Out” sign? Up to $300 billion in new “stimulus spending” is on the table in the House, including increases for food stamps and extensions of unemployment insurance—just what a failing economy needs.

Urban Institute senior fellow Rudolph Penne, former Congressional Budget Office director during the Reagan administration, described the situation fairly bluntly: “We’re going to make Ronald Reagan look like a piker in terms of deficit creation, I think.” There are several noteworthy distinctions between the Reagan years and now, however. First, Reagan’s tax cuts were just that: cuts, not redistribution schemes disguised as “stimulus packages” or “tax rebates.” Another difference: the Reagan tax cuts actually worked. They worked so well, in fact, that they ultimately eliminated the deficit—right up until then-Vice President Al Gore cast the tie-breaking vote in the Senate in 1993 on what was the largest tax increase in U.S. history. Finally, there is the small matter that most of the deficit spending under Reagan was used to rebuild a military decimated by Vietnam and the Carter years.

Meanwhile, not to be outdone in his MIA tour as Fed Chairman, Ben Bernanke has endorsed the Democrats’ sorry stimulus package, “all but submit[ing] his job application to Barack Obama,” as the Wall Street Journal wryly noted. The Journal also noted that Mr. Bernanke affirmed that “any help should ‘limit longer-term effects’ on the federal deficit,” effectively reinforcing Democrat opposition to permanent tax cuts. Nice job, Ben: first blind-sided by the subprime crisis, now panhandling to keep your job. Spines, anyone?

Speaking of spines, former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan testified before Congress this week, saying, “I made a mistake in presuming that the self-interest of organizations, specifically banks and others, was such that they were best capable of protecting their own shareholders.” In other words, he says he put too much faith in the free market. He couldn’t be more wrong.

Income Redistribution: Barack decides who pays

Why would the Party that has been relentlessly denouncing the Bush tax cuts turn around and give anyone another tax cut? Barack Obama’s “Making Work Pay” tax program would purportedly give 95 percent of Americans a tax cut—including 44 percent who would owe no federal income taxes. What seems a discrepancy, however, is really downright deception. Far from being a tax cut, Obama’s plan would actually give an income tax credit of up to $500 to folks who pay no income taxes. Rather it is based on what they pay into Social Security. As columnist William McGurn points out in The Wall Street Journal, this is not income tax relief but payroll tax relief. Of course, the relief wouldn’t come from the Social Security fund, as touching the Third Rail would be political suicide. Instead, it would come from “general revenues” —i.e., the taxes of those who actually do pay federal income taxes.

McGurn quips, “With one touch of the Obama magic, what otherwise would be described as taking money from Peter to pay Paul is now transformed into Paul’s tax relief: Where a tax cut for payroll taxes paid will not in fact come from payroll taxes. And where all these plans come together under the rhetorical umbrella of ‘Making Work Pay’.” Not only that, but it would also fundamentally change Social Security from an earned benefit, distributed based on an individual’s “contributions” into the system, into a welfare program, granted for not contributing. Propping it all up would be the confiscated dollars of wealthier taxpayers.

This week’s ‘Alpha Jackass’ award

“Yes, I believe later on there should be tax increases. Speaking personally, I think there are a lot of very rich people out there whom we can tax at a point down the road and recover some of this money.” —Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA)

Around the nation: Hawaii cancels ‘Keiki Care’

Just seven months after its adoption with great fanfare, the state of Hawaii pulled the plug on its program providing for universal child healthcare, known as “Keiki Care” for the native Hawaiian word for “child.” Governor Linda Lingle made the decision as part of a fiscal re-evaluation to address a looming $900-million revenue shortfall by 2011.

Intended to cover previously uninsured children with parents ineligible for Medicaid, the public-private partnership between the state and the Hawaii Medical Service Association had 2,000 enrollees when it was shelved. State officials had anticipated about 3,500 children would eventually enroll in the program (out of up to 16,000 estimated uninsured children in the state) but were surprised to find many parents dropping their existing private coverage they were paying for to enroll their children in the “free” program.

HMSA, the private partner in Keiki Care to whom the decision came as a “complete surprise,” announced that they would continue paying for the coverage through the end of the year. They also noted that they offer private insurance at $55 per month per child. While that’s significantly more than the $7 co-pay for office visits under Keiki Care that parents had to come up with for office visits, the state was paying $25.50 per month per child—while the cost was being supplemented by the HSMA, the rate was sure to rise as more children enrolled in “free” healthcare.

Dropping Keiki Care may not seem like the child-friendly thing to do, but given the examples set for government intrusion into healthcare on the mainland, Hawaiian parents may have been saved big tax bills in the long run.

CULTURE

Faith and Family: Abortion coupon

Two hotels in New Jersey are giving discounts to certain customers. The catch is, the customer has to be a woman who can provide a receipt from the nearby abortion center. The Clarion Hotel in Cherry Hill and the Quality Inn in Maple Shade will reduce room rates by as much as $50 for the receipt. The Quality Inn throws in “free pancake and egg breakfasts” to women with a stamped clinic pamphlet.

The Family Research Council (FRC) reports, “According to volunteers from the area’s ‘40 Days for Life’ campaign, many of the patients leaving the Cherry Hill clinic are alone, crying, and in extreme pain. After their digoxin injections, these mothers are sent home or to area hotels to wait for their babies to die. The next day, they return to the clinic to deliver their dead children. Do these area inns really want to facilitate the killing process? And, from a legal standpoint, are they prepared to incur the liability if any medical complications arise?” Not surprisingly, New Jersey does not have a parental notification law. The FRC adds, “Ironically, both the Quality Inn and the Clarion are part of an umbrella corporation called Choice Hotels International.”

Meanwhile, South Dakota voters will once again consider a ban on abortion, two years after it was rejected. The current form of the bill is less restrictive than the one rejected in 2006, adding exceptions for rape, incest and the life or health of the mother. Many voters indicated that they wanted those exceptions.

Climate change this week: Record cold

“Funny how economic concerns pull the mind away from foolishness such as global warming,” writes Investor’s Business Daily (IBD). “But weather goes on, and in many places it doesn’t happen the way fear mongers predict.” Case in point: Alaska’s glaciers actually grew during the winter of 2007-2008 after about two centuries of shrinking. This is a trend not confined to Alaska. The International Arctic Research Center says there was 29 percent more Arctic sea ice this year than last year. Oregon and California are reporting record low temperatures and Boise, Idaho, even saw nearly two inches of snow earlier than ever before. South Africa and New Zealand are just beginning to come out of winter but are still experiencing record snow and cold. As IBD notes, “These… developments, taken together or separately, don’t disprove the global warming theory. But unlike climate projection models, which are often wrong but endlessly thrown in our faces as examples of hard science, they are real world events wholly contrary to the story the alarmists have been spreading.”

Meanwhile, another sign that winter is fast approaching is Al Gore’s recent speech at Harvard University. He told students that our future challenge will be to find truth in the climate crisis and “use that as a basis of a new concept of who we are.” Ironically, Cambridge, Massachusetts, hit near-record low temperatures the night of Gore’s speech. We’re just surprised it didn’t snow.

And last…

Remember Cindy Sheehan? She was the “peace mom” who lost her son in Iraq and eventually bought property across from President Bush’s Crawford, Texas, ranch in order to heckle him. It wasn’t long before she gave up and ran for Congress, challenging House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco)—because Pelosi isn’t leftist enough. Her campaign is what put Sheehan back in the news this week. She’s complaining that her campaign is being sabotaged by “dirty tricks.” Cue up the world’s smallest violin. Her allegations include the following: Her hotel phone in Denver during the Democrat Convention was bugged; Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa personally kept her from speaking at a music festival there (we thought she was running in San Francisco); a former volunteer was a “spy” for Pelosi, forcing Sheehan to get a restraining order; the tail lights of her RV were broken; recent “robo calls” she paid for began running at 10:30 on Saturday night instead of earlier in the day on weekdays; and, best of all, she’s been summoned for jury duty during the week of the election. We can only hope the jury isn’t deciding something important.

Veritas vos Liberabit—Semper Vigilo, Fortis, Paratus, et Fidelis! Mark Alexander, Publisher, for The Patriot’s editors and staff. (Please pray for our Patriot Armed Forces standing in harm’s way around the world, and for their families—especially families of those fallen Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Marines and Coast Guardsmen, who granted their lives in defense of American liberty.)