Found Treasure

When my dad was in his early 20's and 30's he took a lot of black and white photos of my mom and us boys. He did his own developing and printed a number of those images, but I always wondered what happened to all his negatives. My dad passed away in 1989 and I'm pretty sure my mom said she thought all the negatives were thrown out at some point. Well, last week I found them, thousands of them, in a box in my mom's attic. I've already scanned about 1400 images, finding a bunch of images that we have never seen before. And there are thousands and thousands more. Over the past several years I have been compiling all of our family images, digitizing, keywording and indexing them, so that everyone in the family can have their own full digital album of all of these images. Right now that album contains over 30,000 images. Finding my dad's negatives could add another 10,000+ images to the collection. Yikes!

Is Obama Invincible?

It didn't take long for the American left to really turn on President Bush. They have called him names (Hitler, dumb, a terrorist, etc), mocked him, protested against him, and spread unrelenting hate toward the man. It doesn't speak well of the left, a group that says it wants tolerance and peace, but sure has a hard time living it out. I tend to believe that a sizable bunch of loud mouths on the far left made a point of pulling Bush down through trashing him and altering the public's view of him. As for me, I've always liked the guy. If Iraq is given the chance to succeed, and becomes a positive influence in that region, Bush should be given full credit and be seen as a liberator on the grandest of scales. He has implemented humanitarian aid to a degree that previous presidents never did. For most of his presidency the economy was cruising along at a great pace. It is unclear whether the crisis we are in today has anything to do with this administration's economic policies, or if it is the result of a global perfect storm of failing institutions. He of course is the president, so he will get the blame. President Bush has not been perfect. No one believes he has been. Nor has he been a failure, despite what the left wants us to believe.

So here is my question: what would it take for these same people to turn on Barack Obama? Is he invincible, immune to any criticism? Would the left ever criticize the guy? This is The One after all. It sure seems like they see him as being someone who can do no wrong. He is "cool", the breath of fresh air, the one who has come to save our country and our world. He is already being set up as the greatest president this country has ever seen. It is only a matter of time before we see an Obama movie, staring Will Smith, where Obama is larger than life . . can do no wrong . . has no flaws . . no sin. I just don't see anyone on the left turning on him. Any mistake will be seen as showing his humanity, and quickly forgiven. If he opts to prosecute terrorists a la Clinton, rather than taking the fight to them, he will be heralded as a Nobel Peace prize candidate, even if years later it proves to come back to bite us (a la Clinton). All of this is especially true of the press. Will they continue to suspend their journalistic integrity by blindly supporting this guy, or will they investigate, ask tough questions, and demand answers? That will be our first sign: if the press starts asking questions. I would like to think that it is only a matter of time. Not convinced about that though.

Political Science

When it comes to politics, I'm one of those who enjoys observing it like a science as opposed to actually getting in there and doing something. I'm the movie critic, not the actor. So I always appreciate it when I get to read something intriguing about the political process, or something that to me just makes sense. Jonah Goldberg writes today an article that questions the merits of getting more people to vote, particularly the youth vote, as well as putting so much emphasis on undecided voters. I find it hard to argue against what he is saying here. Take a moment and read it . . it's short.

Respect For Obama

Obama and his team ran an impressive campaign. Organization and control are probably the two words that I would use to best describe Obama at this moment. Those are two good qualities, although control can easily morph into oppression if not careful. At any rate we as a nation should allow Obama the opportunity to pull together his administration and their policies. This could be a good time for our country to honestly debate several issues that have festered along the surface for years: most notably health care, taxes and wealth distribution, and our role internationally. I do not believe that any of us should roll over and just let Obama have his way. Many beliefs are worth standing up and fighting for . . hopefully not only will people do that, but their rights and ability to have a say in this administration will not be oppressed.

On the humorous side, Ann Coulter wrote today something that made me smile: "For now, we have a new president-elect. In the spirit of reaching across the aisle, we owe it to the Democrats to show their president the exact same kind of respect and loyalty that they have shown our recent Republican president."

President Obama

For the past few months I have been pointing out aspects about Barack Obama that I found troubling. Despite his presidential victory, those aspects still remain, and I still remain troubled by them. I've heard several pundits and news people over the past couple days conclude that they still don't really know who Obama is, and yet now he is president. We know he is ultra liberal, but we don't know how that will translate once he is in office. We don't know how much power Pelosi and Reid will have over Obama. We don't know what kind of constraints will be placed on all of them by the current economy or by the unknown "9/11's" that may come along and change their course. We can assume that Obama will be calm and slow with decisions . . we just don't know whether his decisions will be sound or if they will end up causing even more problems.

These next couple years will be "fun" to watch politically. I'm not sure Obama can live up to all the hype he has created for himself. He is sure to disappoint people who have blindly followed him, counting on him to provide free gas, a free education, free health care, free housing, no wars, and no taxes. No doubt Obama will conclude at some point early in his presidency that the economy handed to him was so bad that he will not be able to fulfill his promises. We still have not heard an exit strategy for Afghanistan. We know taxes will go up once the Bush tax cuts expire in 2010 . . still no talk about that. Still no real understanding what kind of class warfare he is about to unleash.

Today I am mildly depressed. Listening to Pelosi, Reid, and now Obama is like fingers on a chalkboard. Everything is now on them though. They cannot pass along their excuses or their responsibility onto the Republicans. They have to answer to their miscues and their own policies. At least you would think so. But one look at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, at Barney Frank and Chris Dodd, and you realize how accountability has a short memory. And so do promises. How many people can remember the promises made by George Bush in 2000, or even in 2004? I do know that "change" was part of his campaign in 2000; but the point is that within a couple years we usually forget what a politician was promising during the campaign. So 2-3 years from now most of Obama's supporters probably won't care that he is not giving them free anything. They probably won't realize that his brand of politics is pretty much the same as every other politician who came before him, and that Washington is still much the same. They may not even recognize the slow erosion of the 1st Amendment.

Up to now Obama has had virtually no record. For the past couple years he has been speaking in nuances that fit well in a college classroom or on a stage, but now he has to mold those nuances into policy. We'll see how all of this jives together. This is what we get when we hire someone who is inexperienced and untested. We have no idea what he will do or how he will perform. We have nothing to look at for an example. Like I said, this should be fun.

Obama and Fundraising

Whether Obama wins or loses the 2008 presidential campaign, there are questions about his fundraising that hopefully will linger large enough to catch the eye of an otherwise sleeping media. I don't mind using the word "fraud" in describing what presumably is taking place. First of all, there is absolutely no accountability in who is donating money to Obama. I thought there were rules about this, but either they don't exist or the Obama team is ignoring them or they are simply not being enforced. How can people contribute money via a credit card without any kind of verification? And how can people contribute without a disclosure by the Obama people of who and how much is being given? It is no wonder that he backed out of his "commitment" to use public finance. If you want a quick, 5 minute overview of what is going on here, please check this out. Don't expect a Reid/Pelosi/Obama team to ever look into this.

Obama and the Courts

Barack Obama has said that when it comes to appointing judges to courts, he will be looking for someone with "the heart, the empathy, to recognize what it's like to be a young teenage mom. The empathy to understand what it's like to be poor, or African-American, or gay, or disabled, or old." What? Is this really the stuff that makes for a good judge? I mean, sure, it sounds nice; but should this be part of the equation when it comes to selecting a person who's sole responsibility is to decide whether something is lawful or constitutional. By and large the law is dispassionate. If I do something unlawful and go before a judge that knows me, that judge will most likely bow out because they cannot be dispassionate in this case. Making judgements should be based on the facts of the case weighed against existing law. Empathy is not part of that, at least not for a judge. What if Obama said he would be looking for judges that understood the negative impact abortion had on our society and had empathy for drug dealers and domestic terrorists, and for wealthy businessmen? Wouldn't the public say "you got to be kidding"? No, what you look for is someone who understands the law, someone who does not invent law, and someone who has a track record of making decisions, not based on their own feelings and empathy toward certain people, but rather on the law . . period. The qualities that Obama wishes to find in judges are noble, but this just shows another aspect of Obama where he just doesn't get it. It also shows that maybe Obama really doesn't respect the law or the Constitution.

Consistency

Back when the Patriot Act was news, liberals were decrying it as a tool for the government to invade the privacy of American citizens, all in the name of national security. I applaud them for wanting to protect an individual's privacy and property. We should all be concerned about a government (or even a press) that seeks to destroy individuals or intrude into their private concerns, especially if it has absolutely nothing to do with the government or national security. But for liberals, their concern with the Patriot Act was a phantom hypothetical. There was no evidence that the Patriot Act had ever been used in that manner. But still it was enough to get them all worked up about the Bush Administration going too far. Because of that they now want a new administration that would not seek to invade privacy. If they think an Obama administration is the answer, they are in for a rude awakening. They have not seen anything yet.

Obama comes from the Chicago school of politics. Adversaries are to be destroyed. Get whatever dirt you can on them or just shut them out (Palin, Joe the Plumber, any journalist that doesn't ask friendly questions, etc.), whatever it takes to take them down. The Ohio government official who authorized the search of Joe the Plumber's records is an Obama supporter. The search has been characterized as unusual by those who were asked to make it. In other words, there was no reason for it other than political reasons. Even more disturbing is Obama's lack of regard for a person's private property. In his world anything that a person owns is subject to the state. Whatever money I make is not mine, it belongs to the greater good of the people. If it is deemed that I have too much money, or have too many things, the state is permitted to come along and take whatever it deems as "fair" in order to give it to someone else who has less. This is not a phantom hypothetical. It falls into place with much of what Obama has expressed during the campaign, and it falls into place with the philosophy he seemed to embrace during his life. How it will play out should he be elected will be interesting to watch, although I doubt it will be pleasant to experience.

I would like to believe that our Constitution and our American society is resilient to any outside political or economic system that a person or group would try to impose on it, whether it be Marxist, communist, atheist, or totalitarian. There is no question in my mind though that any "revolution" would be subtle, undertaken over years rather than overnight. Our country has seen a slow erosion of our moral compass (same sex marriage and abortion to name two obvious areas) in recent years. We have seen our schools and our press overtaken by a decidedly very liberal agenda that is shaping public opinion like no other force can. And we have seen a young, telegenic, inexperienced, untested, arrogant lawyer/politician come along and swoon the American public into believing that he is "The One" that will save us all. It makes me wonder if our country really can stand up to this kind of movement. The liberals who voiced their outcry about the Patriot Act were noticeably silent when it came to Joe the Plumber. Here they were given an actual American citizen, who's only transgression was in asking this young, arrogant lawyer/politician a question; for this his privacy actually was intruded upon by the government . . by an Obama supporting government official . . and the left was silent. Where is the consistency?

An Excellent Read

Please take a moment and read Thomas Sowell's assessment of Barack Obama. Short and to the point.

Chicago Style Politics

I mentioned yesterday how Joe the Plumber has been under investigation by the press and by the Obama campaign because he dared to ask a question. This was not the first time the Obama campaign has used Chicago style politics in this campaign. When Obama ran for state senator he aggressively set out to discredit and through loopholes find ways to knock his opponents off the ballot before there was an election. He was good at it. Today Anat Hakim writes about other tactics recently used by the Obama campaign to shut up anyone who opposes Obama (some excerpts below). And this is from someone who claims to bring a new kind of politics and who promises to reach across the aisle. I guess that becomes possible if you first destroy everyone on the other side of that aisle. It is chilling to consider what this country will look like should Obama become president.

On August 27, 2008, respected radio talk show host, Milt Rosenberg invited National Review journalist and Ethics and Public Policy Center Senior Fellow, Stanley Kurtz, to his nightly program in Chicago. Kurtz had been conducting thorough and in depth research into Barack Obama's extensive ties to the radical left, including the fraudulent get-out-the-vote group, ACORN. Kurtz was at that point already investigating Obama's connection with Bill Ayers and their collaboration on a left-wing education "reform" organization. After Rosenberg's producer called Obama's Chicago headquarters to offer airtime to challenge Kurtz's claims, the Obama campaign declined and instead sent out an Obama Action Wire email to its supporters encouraging them to inundate Rosenberg's station with complains and demands that the Kurtz interview be axed. A slew of enraged Obama supporters in fact bombarded the radio station's switchboard demanding that the interview not go forward. The Obama followers were instructed to report their guerrilla tactics back to the campaign through a special dedicated page on the campaign's official website.

A few weeks later, the Obama campaign again summoned its army of supporters through another Obama Action Wire, inciting them to once again inundate the same Chicago radio show with calls to deny airtime for an interview with author David Freddoso, author of the book The Case Against Barack Obama. The Obama campaign's justification for this attack on free speech was that providing Freddoso with airtime would lower the standards of political discourse.

A nonprofit called "Accountable America" that is headed by a former operative of MoveOn.com (which endorsed Obama) has been going through campaign-finance databases and targeting conservative donors with "warning" letters intended to depress Republican fundraising.

The Obama campaign demanded that the U.S. Justice Department stop TV stations from airing an independent ad focusing on Obama's relationship with Bill Ayers. Again, Obama's followers were summoned to inundate stations with tens of thousands of emails to kill the commercial. What's more, the Obama campaign has demanded that the Justice Department investigate and prosecute the group that produced the Bill Ayers ad (the American Issues Project) and the man who funded the group (Harold Simmons from Dallas, Texas). Most recently, the attorney for Obama for America has asked the U.S. Attorney General to investigate John McCain, Sarah Palin, and Republican Senators Voinovich and Cornyn and Representatives Bachmann, Blunt and Ryan because of the Republicans' attempts to draw attention to ACORN's fraudulent voter registration activities.