McCain: Policy Suggestions for the Campaign

John McCain's decision to put America first by focusing on the victims of Hurricane Gustav and scrubbing most events on the first day of the convention and replacing political events with a fundraising appeal for the American Red Cross and other organizations, this week being the crowning moment of his political career, the long-awaited Republican nomination, once again shows the contrast in leadership from the Hurricane Katrina debacle 3 years ago. Here are some of my suggestions for a President McCain agenda:

Announcement of No Holdovers From the Bush Administration

Thank President George W. Bush for his service to the country through difficult and challenging times, including 9/11, Enron and other financial scandals, Iraq, and the subprime mortgage crisis. Acknowledge Bush's successes in tax policy, prescription drugs for senior citizens and education and progress in places like Libya and North Korea, but it's time for new leadership.

A New Bipartisan Cabinet

Just as McCain focused on country-first in his bipartisanship in the Senate, he will bring diversity to his cabinet as well.

A Foreign Policy Based on Regional Stability, not Clinton-Bush Nation Building

With federal budget constraints, we can no longer afford to be the world's unpaid policeman, and we cannot afford in the future to spend blood and treasure micromanaging internal disputes of other countries.

More Competitive Business Taxes and Job Retraining/Education Tax Credits

While Obama demagogues companies looking to shift unprofitable enterprises to areas with improved costs, including more competitive tax policies, McCain must lower business taxes which are uncompetitive and constitute a barrier to business development and job creation.

Whitebox Federal Spending Decisions, Nonpartisan Ratings of Earmarks, Freeze Periods for Expenditures, Lobbyist Waiting Periods, and Legislator Ethics Reform

We should require every member of Congress to fully disclose any conversations regarding advocacy of expenditures primarily benefiting his or her own district or state and to disqualify himself or herself from directly voting on any such expenditure. Lobbyists would be banned from the drafting of legislation, and there should be exanded minimal periods before a lobbyist could assume a position on a Congressional staff or a former member of Congress could serve as a lobbyist.

Federal Amendment on Judges

We should establish a mandatory retirement age of 70 for federal judges and a single 12-year term to the Supreme Court. We should also institute an alternate Supreme Court justice to serve in the event of illness or death in a manner similar to the Office of the Vice President.

Expanded Federal Education Initiatives Focusing on Secondary Education and Math/Science Literacy

We need to progress beyond the obsolete agrarian school year and consider federal incentives for longer school days, more days in the school year/maximum period between terms (e.g., 3 weeks), achievements like graduation ratio and certain standardized scores.

Means-Tested Flat Deduction for Interest/Dividend Income

Bipartisan Focus on Controlling Federal Spending and Ending Earmarks

Republicans should work with the Blue Dog Coalition to go beyond pay as you go and eliminate redundancy, reengineer business processes and intelligently leverage technology and industry "best practices" for government operations.

Americas Trading Bloc and Merit-Based Immigration Reform

Latin America cannot dump unemployment problems resulting from poor economic policy or undesirable elements (i.e., criminals) on the United States. Border protection must be a priority, registration and tracking of undocumented workers respecting the laws of the United States, and the primary focus of border enforcement should be terrorists and criminal elements. I would like to see free trade agreements with all countries in the Americas. The United States should consider diversification of raw materials, goods and services, including Latin American-based suppliers. We must revamp obsolete immigration quotas and provide preferences for entrepreneurs and in-demand professional services (including qualified family doctors and nurses in underserved rural and inner-city areas).

Federal Energy Savings Tax Vouchers, No Corn Ethanol Subsidies, Tax-Advantaged Biofuel Pipelines, and Writeoffs of Biofuel Tank Conversions

Provide progressive tax credits for people trading in older, energy-inefficient appliances or low-mileage primary household vehicles for certain minimal mpg/alternative-fueled or energy-star standards. Immediate full writeoff for converting gasoline or other fuel tanks to dispense E85 or other biofuel concentrates. Lower tariffs on Brazilian ethanol and focus subsidies on promising or actual more energy-conserving alternatives (e.g., tropical maize).

Catastrophic Health Insurance

Maximize the amount of out-of-pocket health expenditures by any household for a given calendar year. Bob Dole once suggested this vs. HillaryCare. We should especially provide incentives for high-risk people (e.g., diabetics or morbidly obese people) to seek proactive medical care, including free annual checkups, in order to minimize tragic, high-cost remedial care.

Imported Oil Barrel Floor Tax

Setting a minimum price per oil (say, $100/barrel) would encourage investment in substitute fuels feasible up to the price point.

Creation of an American Services Corps

Provide scholarships, grants, or loan forgiveness, plus market/merit-based wage supplements, including certain overall/major GPA targets for in-demand majors and professional requirements. For example, we could provide premium teaching salaries for secondary school education majors with a mininum GPA (say, 3.6/4.0) in science core courses, if they agree to serve 5 years in poverty-stricken, urban or rural areas. Similarly, we could provide similar incentives for professional services, such as family physicians and registered nurses.

A Speech by Barack Obama is Like....

intellectual cotton candy. All fluff and airy. It leaves you with a sugar high, but does not satiate. It leaves one pining for some protein, like fish (brain food). Conservatives believe in teaching a person how to fish, to provide for his or her own sustenance, not rely on Obama's variation of a socialistic safety net where market distortions yield fish shortages and some government bureaucrat decides whether you have fish and if so, what type and how much you may have. Furthermore, Obama's nanny state will even regulate how you may prepare and cook your fish.

Democrats this past week paid homage to Obama this past week, standing at the foot of the Barackopolis. Obama scorned Reagan's vision of America as a shining city on the hill; he's far more concerned with validating the cheers of thousands of anti-American European socialists whom resent American leadership and influence. Obama wants to outsource American leadership to international bodies like the UN, which has been impotent in resolving crises such as genocide in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia, and Darfur.

Barack Obama pays lip service to bipartisanship and listening to alternate points of view and points out his "proven judgment", showcasing a speech he made in 2002 against the liberation of Iraq. But for more than 18 months while politically exploiting Iraq at the center of his candidacy, Obama voted for unconditional withdrawal from an unstable Iraq, voted against funding the surge policy, which by any objective account has been a success, and refused to consult with or visit with General Petraeus (beyond a perfunctory question or two in committee meetings). Tell me, Barack Obama: is that your idea of validating your readiness for assuming the mantle of Commander in Chief of the United States? Now that the military footprint advocated by Senator McCain, on the record, as early as 2003 and not accepted by Bush until late 2006, has worked to lower drastically military and civilian casualties in Iraq, the Iraq military and police force has grown to a critical mass where the fighting has now transitioned in many cases to the Iraqis with American logistics support, where significant progress has been made on 15 of 18 benchmarks--benchmarks, by the way, which were established by bipartisans without Obama's support, Obama now wants to take credit for (without sharing any of the political cost, which McCain has borne) withdrawal with honor made possible? Tell me, if Obama refused to negotiate benchmarks and funding, to go beyond perfunctory questioning of Iraqi operation commanders, what exactly is the post-partisan, bipartisan politics Obama spent the first part of the campaign talking about? It seems to me he is taking about little more than token Republican participation with no real impact on the decisionmaking process. But even more to the point of this sham pretense of Obama being Commander in Chief, while running down the need to replenish military hardware and possibly buff up our forces in Afghanistan, Barack Obama is talking about cuts to the Defense Department. Thus, is there any quesion about why the GOP considers Obama not ready to lead?

Oh, but Barack Obama has a simple solution to that: he'll just have all his 3AM calls call-forwarded to Joe Biden. No doubt Joe Biden can find something Neil Kinnock wrote on American foreign policy he can use.

The Democrats have had the New Deal, the Great Society, and now the Obamanation. I find the Obamanation abominable. Barack Obama hearkens us back to the Golden Age of the Clintons. You remember, right, when the average unemployment rate was higher than under the past 8 years (despite 9/11, the stock market meltdown, Enron and related financial scandals), fewer Americans owned homes, taxes were higher, and federal revenues lower? When a Republican House kept President Clinton honest, prevented him from expanding the federal bureaucracy into health care, kept sending him welfare reform measures until he finally passed it, and produced the first balanced budget? When the economy was goosed in the late 1990's by Greenspan flooding the economy with dollars in advance to a much-hyped Y2K crisis and companies expedited purchases originally planned for the early Bush years?

Obama opposes what John McCain has suggested: lowering uncompetitive business taxes, among the highest (next to Japan's) among the developed economies. So he rephrases it as a "giveaway" to Big Oil. Yet at the same time he whines about American companies shifting unprofitable businesses overseas and investing where taxes and other business costs are lower. He says he wants companies to invest more in our domestic economy. Obama just doesn't get it (I'm using Obama's choice of words); why exactly does Obama think McCain's business tax is intended to do? Barack Obama, you had Ted Kennedy pass the torch to you during the convention. John F. Kennedy was my President. He cut business taxes. And, Senator, you are no Jack Kennedy.

Obama has made lots of promises. He would have promised a chicken in every pot, but Obama's support for the Bush-Cheney Energy Bill, opposed by McCain and which included tax giveaways to Big Oil and to Big Agriculture in terms of inefficient corn ethanol, has helped ignite food inflation, including chicken feed, which ultimately results in higher-costing chicken. Obama has been egged on by billionaire Warren "I don't pay enough taxes" Buffett. I have a suggestion for Warren Buffett and every other wealthy American (including Bill Clinton) whom wants to validate Obama's socialist ideals: Instead of simply using your accountants to minimize the amount of taxes you pay, why don't you volunteer to pay the pre-Reagan rate of 70% to the Treasury (I have it on good authority the IRS will accept more than the minimum due), and instead of leaving $32B to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, why don't you bequeath your estate to the federal government in gratitude for what this country has provided you during your lifetime?

Obama wants to reassure people he's talking about a virtually painless type of socialism that only affects 5% of households. He wants people to conveniently forget than the Reagan-Bush tax cuts have taken millions of working Americans off the income taxroll (with the exception of FICA payroll taxes). Now, of course, if Americans earn more money, they just might have to pay some income tax. So Obama is going to give citizens not paying a dime in income taxes a tax rebate. Imagine that--the government will actually pay you for not working or not working to advance your earning power, courtesy of Obama. Conservatives have a word for that--it's called welfare.

Obama and Democrats are addicted to higher taxes; they always lowball the costs of their social programs and then pass along increases time and again, just like they promised back in 1983 that with the payroll increase and gradually increasing eligible wage ceiling, social security was "fixed". Do you honestly expect when the wealthy adjust to increased tax rates and the Democrats all of a sudden fall below tax revenue projections, they will be satisfied? That's not change; it's more of the same.

The McCain-Palin team is reformist and maverick and represents authentic change; McCain and Palin have bucked their own party when necessary in the interests of the common good, are tight with the taxpayer's buck, and have reached out to people in the other party to get things done.

Sarah Palin vs. Barack Obama

One of the spins from the Democrats, in response to McCain's historic decision to name Sarah Palin to the ticket, is that Palin's brief tenure as governor of Alaska invalidates McCain's argument that Obama is not ready to lead. This is a double-edged sword argument that the McCain campaign welcomes. The fact that the Democratic Party has, once again, chosen career lawyer-politicians for their ticket is not change: it's more of the same.

The Selection of Biden

Barack Obama, on his very first executive decision, in a change decision, decides to name a 6-term liberal Democrat to the ticket, a career Washington politician whom had been in the Senate for years while McCain was still serving in the Navy. By any objective standpoint, this pick was defensive in nature, reflecting Obama's inexperience with military and foreign affairs. But let's look at this pick a little closer: Barack Obama has repeatedly crowed about the fact he gave a 2002 speech while a state senator in the Illinois legislature, without the benefit of national intelligence briefings, in which he opposed the liberation of Iraq. He considered his speech, delivered with no public accountability for his decision, to be a fundamental validation of his judgment. (Barack Obama has further attempted to claim his stand as a "profile in courage" which could have wrecked his changes at the Senate. On the contrary: over 20 Senate Democrats voted against giving Bush authorization, and Howard Dean seemed poised to grab the 2004 Democratic nomination as the anti-Iraq candidate until his campaign imploded.) But let's for the sake of argument grant Obama his judgment. Who does he pick? Given Obama's judgment and looking for a running mate with more military/foreign policy experience, Obama picks Biden--whom didn't share Obama's judgment regarding the Iraq liberation.

Now I'm not in charge of briefing Sarah Palin for her upcoming debate with Joe Biden, but I would relish the opportunity to point out that Democrats like Joe Biden, arguing our loss in international standing because of our more limited alliance in the liberation and stabilization of Iraq, actually opposed a much larger coalition of nations, including Arab countries, which participated in the first Gulf War following Hussein's conquest of Kuwait and his subsequent threats to Saudi Arabia. Taking a cue from Kerry's infamous nuanced defense of Iraq funding in the 2004 campaign, Joe Biden was in favor of a surge before he opposed the surge. And Joe Biden prominently proposed partitioning Iraq among the Shiites, Sunnis, and Kurds, which has been widely discredited since then, including by the Iraqis themselves. The fact is that the change in Iraq has resulted primarily by the surge, i.e., achieving a critical mass of American troops with the right anti-insurgency policies in place, to stabilize Iraq. And Obama and Biden both lacked the judgment that made change in Iraq possible, change that is now making possible American withdrawal with honor.

The salient question is--if Obama and Biden lacked the judgment to make the right call on how to stabilize Iraq, how does America expect them to have the judgment to make the right call on critical domestic policies?

But more on the Biden selection: Why did Obama pick someone with roughly the same far-left liberal voting record he has, e.g., a centrist? If he wanted a truly diverse ticket, he could have picked Bill Richardson (my pick for him in an earlier post), a Blue Dog Democrat like Rep. Jane Harman or Senator Evan Bayh, whom had a reputation as a centrist as an Indiana governor.

An Example of Being a Change Agent

I know, from my own history as a change agent as a professor and as a computer consultant, what it's like being a true change agent and having to deal with corruption and cronyism: I have arrows in my back to prove it.

This post is not meant to be autobiographical, but a single example will do. At the time, the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee had a step to achieve PhD supporting faculty status, which I earned through my research record. (The rules were changed after I qualified.) This basically allowed me to sit on comprehensive qualifying exam processes, dissertation committees, and the like.

There was a CPA whom decided to pursue a PhD in my MIS area, mostly because, as he said to me, UWM didn't offer an accounting major. He was popular with all 4 senior MIS professors but had failed the first of 2 qualification attempts allowed when I entered the picture. The four professors were compromised of two pairs typically at odds with each other. One of these pairs consisted of the informal head of MIS (we had an undepartmentalized School of Business) and his close colleague whom also happened to chair the PhD Program Committee.

All of the professors, including myself, had recommended that the CPA not take his final attempt the next semester (the earliest time possible), but he refused. He came to my office, trying to sniff out clues as to what question I might be submitting for the exam; he tried to brownnose me by telling me he had read all my articles in preparation. In any event, he took the exam, and once again he failed, by any objective standard, despite the fact that the first pair of professors had tried to game the rules in the student's favor. (We had a grading rule which required dropping the highest and lowest scores and averaging the others.) That is, for example, one of the professors would give the student a perfect score for a question the student had bombed, knowing that score would be dropped.

I then watched in disbelief as the four professors disputed how to handle the student's failure. The informal lead said (I'm loosely paraphrasing), "You two are going to have to tell him because I'm not going to do it. I already have a dissertation project lined up for him." The other pair liked the CPA and wavered in the face of the lead's challenge. I remember later asking one of the professors in question what they would have done, say, if the CPA had my blunt, direct personality, and without hesitation, the gentleman replied, "Oh, he would have been gone."

Taking the initiative, the lead motioned to suspend the failure decision, against my objection, and asked his PhD Program chair colleague to convene a committee meeting to revise the rules. The committee convened and quickly modified the process to allow a conditional pass at the discretion of the exam committee, involving the specification of additional work to be completed before approving full pass status. Our exam committee then reconvened and then immediately issued a conditional pass for the student, over my objections.

In my judgment, that type of cronyism constitutes a violation of professional ethics; the CPA knew the risks of flunking the exam a second time, had been advised by all the professors he was not ready to take the exam, but took it anyway and had flunked the exam, not by a point or two, and four professors conspired to change the rules after the game was played was grossly unjust and unfair to any student whom had played by the same rules.

There had been an earlier case with the same lead professor whom had refused one of his PhD students, whom I had befriended, to let me read his dissertation proposal, which was due to be defended shortly. The rules required a freezing of the proposal, and a copy of the proposal could be checked out by any of the faculty. The secrecy of the process had raised an obvious red flag. The reason of the secrecy became readily apparent; the dissertation chair was trying to negotiate with one of the companies he consulted with in the Wisconsin area to do a field study involving company employees. The backup plan was to use student subjects. The study didn't really flesh out how the hypotheses would operationalized, sample sizes, and statistical tests, etc. (under either scenario). I basically advised the student to withdraw his proposal.

The motivation for the PhD student in question to defend his proposal prematurely is that he wanted to enter the academic job market for the next year, and he realized he would not be considered seriously without ABD ("all but dissertation") status, i.e., following a successful proposal defense.

A few days later I had accepted a ride from the CPA student discussed above to go to a dog-and-pony show at one of the lead professor's consulting clients. And somehow I got separated from the CPA student, my ride, by the end of the visit, and found myself alone with the senior professor to give me a ride back to my apartment. As we neared my apartment building, the lead professor spoke, "I heard what you said concerning David's proposal, and I told him he needs to address your feedback. But I want you to understand one thing: You have no vote in your tenure process."

This threat was totally unexpected. But the lead professor didn't stop simply with the threat. He recruited in the interim before the defense a reputable heavyweight in the organizational behavior area, and that faculty member had one mission for the proposal defense: to personally take me out if I opened my mouth.

My motive had never been to sabotage the lead professor or the PhD student. When I was on the market in 1985-1986, I actually fell in love with a small college in northern Ohio which had made me an offer. The big stumbling point was that they only offered one graduate course in MIS, and this course was "owned" by a prominent local textbook author. After a long period, UWM finally made the offer. (Ironically, the person who ended up landing my Ohio job won early tenure, while my academic career was all but over. "Woulda, coulda, shoulda") I loved teaching and research, and I thought UWM was a better career move. The end result regarding the proposal defense was I decided that I had already done my due diligence, and it looked as if I was becoming the issue instead of the student's research. The student defended his proposal. The emperor wore no clothes. The co-conspirators who signed the proposal are accountable for their actions.

I somehow realized, at the point of that tenure threat, my first semester at UWM, that I would never win tenure there. But I think the saddest part was the fact that none of the PhD students asked me to be on their committees.

In some cases, I found support with the senior faculty, when we agree that the 9-hour undergraduate MIS major requirement was uncompetitive, and we doubled the hours. We still had a number of outraged students worried about their grandfathered MIS major program rights. On the other hand, there was the time I tried to push for industry experience to be listed among factors to be considered for entry to the MIS PhD program, which was immediately dismissed.

The point is not that politics also exists in academia and private industry. (I could list dozens of examples as a DBA where I ran into big political problems trying to get things done, ranging from resistance to change to professional jealousy, even bosses worrying I was a threat to their jobs.) It's about knowing one's place, to be seen and not heard (especially as a junior faculty member or legislator), biding one's time until you get to a secure position to change things, etc.

A final example from academia: When I was at UTEP, I soon discovered I had graduating MIS majors in my class whom could not write a computer program from scratch on their own. My colleagues had passed them along with pseudocode examples (i.e., making computer programs merely a typing exercise with some minor tweaks). And I said essentially, "The buck stops here." I was unpopular with students, whom felt I was applying different standards than other professors at their expense. Other people tried to warn me if all they wanted was a worthless piece of paper, why should I fight it? After all, once they graduate, their inability to find or hold a decent job doesn't really impact my own performance evaluation. To me, that didn't matter. I had a moral obligation to do everything in my power as a teacher to do the right thing. I put my students first, even if I got the lousiest evaluations in the history of the college.

Some teachers get a lot of kudos for their efforts. Others, like me, get cheap shots. When I taught at more teaching-oriented places like Illinois State, I would hear comments like, "I could have get published, too, except that people who research cut corners at the expense of their students, and I put my students first." And I would simply smile and think to myself, "You know, if you had no social life and worked 80 or more hours a week, you could have time for both teaching and research." You just have to develop a thick skin. Some students noticed, like the one whom said, "You know, this is the first course I've ever taken here where somebody brought up the topic of object-oriented programming."

Before I left UWM, Frank, a manager at one of the lead faculty member's clients and a new PhD student, called me and told me he was sorry to see my leaving UWM because he had heard great things about my graduate systems analysis course and had been looking forward to taking my class. After the call, I thought to myself, that was the first time I heard anything positive about all the work I put into that class--and Frank never knew my failed attempt to change the MIS PhD program so people like him would have a better chance. You don't do these things for external validation.

Barack Obama vs John McCain/Sarah Palin as Change Agents

The concept of a change agent goes beyond something like getting a large increase in funding for a local program. That can reflect something as simple as political standing or quid pro quo.

Barack Obama will never understand. I'm not saying there was a film crew every time he showed up at a community gathering, and I honor him for doing things like that, just like millions of other people whom do these things without any intent of a political career or for a blurb in the local media.

John McCain knows. He had been targeted for being disloyal to a Republican President for criticizing troop staffing levels in Iraq and recommending the termination of the Secretary of Defense. He then faced open revolt from media conservatives in the failed attempts to reform immigration, while bearing the political costs as the highest profile legislator standing for the surge, especially as casualties initially increased. He said as his last chance for the Republican nomination seemed to melt away that he was willing to accept that price in order to do the right thing for America.

Sarah Palin knows. Named as ethics commissioner for the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, Sarah resigned after discovering her whisteblowing was being ignored, and then exposed the Republican state party chairman and Attorney General, forcing their resignations. Sarah subsequently unseated the incumbent Republican governor, whom had appointed her to the commission, and went on to defeat a former Democratic governor whom outspent her.

What do we know about Barack Obama? Obama was elected state senator from Chicago, notorious for its ruthless politics. In 1996, a Democratic state senator decided to attempt election to a US Congressional seat. opening the way to an Obama candidacy. When the incumbent had second thoughts and attempted to refile for her seat, Obama refused to step aside and in fact hired lawyers to successfully throw out her refiling petition--and then similarly challenged the remaining candidates in the primary for a safe Democratic seat, running unopposed. I'm not arguing there weren't legitimate petition issues, but it's fairly difficult to believe that disqualifying an incumbent officeholder from a primary on a legal technicality reflects sportsmanship.

Then there was the 2004 Senate race where Barack Obama was struggling behind frontrunner Blair Hull, whom had latched onto the idea of importing prescription drugs from Canada, when about a month before the primary, when a tabloid-like story broke out based on domestic violence allegations by Hull's ex-wife.

On the Republican side, Jack Ryan, a Kennedy-like candidate with a story, an investment banker whom gave up his wealthy position to teach at an inner-city Catholic school, had coasted to a victory. Obama's backers had fed the local media reports on Ryan's divorce from his Hollywood actress ex-wife Jeri. A Chicago newspaper subsequently sued to get Ryan's divorce papers unsealed, despite opposition by both Ryan and Jeri. (Reportedly Ryan had wanted an unwilling Jeri to have sex with him in certain sex clubs.) Ryan subsequently withdrew, and the GOP, unable to field a substitute local candidate, imported an out-of-state candidate Alan Keyes, whom was never a serious challenger.

A side note goes to Rod Blagojevich, the unpopular Democratic second-term Illinois Governor whom once had Presidential aspirations of his own. There are several issues being considered, including alleged links of campaign donations with no-bid contracts and/or political appointments and Blagojevich's refusal to live in the Springfield governors mansion, instead billing the taxpayer for an expensive daily commute from Chicago. In particular, note that Blagojevich has continued to add to state spending, despite wide concerns about state pension funding, while increasing tax burdens. (Contrast this scenario with Sarah Palin's auctioning off the state plane on eBay and dismissing the housecleaning staff.)

I'm not suggesting a link between Obama and Blagojevich, but they do share a common fundraiser whom recently was convicted on 16 counts of influence peddling: Tony Rezko. The point is more that Barack Obama is willing to mix it up in tough Chicago politics, do whatever it takes to win and associates with the likes of Jeremiah Wright, Tony Rezko, and William Ayers most genuine reformists would avoid. Obama does not transform Chicago politics any more than Obama worked to defuse a Senate crisis over judicial nominees (i.e., he was not part of the Gang of 14, headed by McCain). In fact, Obama intended to participate a filibuster of Judge Alito and also voted against Chief Justice Roberts, despite the fact that both judges were highly qualified; before the infamous Bork nomination, judicial nominations usually were not decided on party line votes.

Barack Obama has not been a change agent. You cannot claim to be a change agent if you are voting the same way over 90% as your fellow Democrats. In contrast, John McCain has worked with multiple Democrats (Feingold, Kennedy, Lieberman, and others) on several key reforms. Sarah Palin has named bipartisan boards.

Leadership/Management Style

After rehabilitation for his POW injuries, McCain was given his first command, the Navy's largest air squadron in Jacksonville, including over 750 officers and enlisted personnel. About a third of the A-7 light attack planes were out of service, due to parts shortages and other maintenance problems which veteran lieutenants believed to be irreducible. McCain took it as a challenge to get all of the A-7's in operation, did a lot of listening to the ranks, rotated out people whom weren't with the program, promoted people from the ranks into key positions that could make things happen, scavenged parts, and inspired the ranks to take up the challenge versus simply clocking in their 8 hours. Not only did McCain eventually get the entire fleet flying, the squadron won its first Meritorious Unit Commendation, set a safety record and qualified its first female pilot. Like all true change agents, McCain found a way to make things happen.

Now, of course, running a country is qualitatively different than running a fighter squadron. But John McCain's quick read and analysis, his ability to question strategy and staffing decisions in Iraq in 2003, and the like, as well as his rapid analysis and condemnation of the recent Russian incursion into Georgia, which preceded President Bush's and Obama's eventual recognition of the same, simply shows that he is a more credible Commander in Chief than Bush or Obama.

Similarly, Sarah Palin has been able to get things done since winning election on a clean government platform. She has instituted a tax increase on balking energy companies, has an agreement to set up a natural gas pipeline which will connect to Canadian pipelines for shipment to the lower 48, has cut property taxes and instituted a $1000-plus energy rebate for Alaskan residents. She has done a lot to cut spending, e.g., on administration expenses.

When we talk about being "not ready to lead", we are discussing more than just familiarity with national defense, foreign policy and economic issues. Obama is someone prone to gaffes (e.g., his irresponsible statement implying unilateral action in Pakistan without their consent, his waffling on Israeli-Palestinian issues, US-Canada trade, his confusing flip-flops on things like gun rights, the death penalty, etc.), someone whom can deliver a fine speech if well-prepared, but often seems unable to think on his feet, whether it was a Democratic primary debate, the Saddleback Civic Forum, or even a 7-year-old girl asking him why he wants to be President.

Real leaders don't go around talking in terms of "we'll get everybody together and figure something out"; they don't engage in analysis-paralysis. They size up a situation, know how to set priorities, and if they don't have the right personnel or materials to achieve their mission, they make the necessary adjustments. If they face a roadblock, they do what it takes to meet it head on or to work around it. They have a commitment that goes beyond, say, a typical 8-hour workday.

Even something like energy supplies come into play here. For example, years ago liberals put off things like offshore or ANWR drilling based on allegations of time to market. Now as we face what many refer to as a Peak Oil phenomenon, and boutique solutions, long advanced by liberals, among to maybe 5% of energy consumption after decades; worse, the 13 million barrels or so a day we need to import are increasingly eyed by competing economies which are willing to bid for it. Say liberals are right and it takes 9 years to go to market. Is this problem going to be gone 9 years from now--or is it likely to be even worse? So, you have parrot Democrats repeating the useless phrase "you can't drill your way out of this". Let's put it this way: If somehow $4/gallon gas can't get us to reduce, say, the two-thirds of our energy being imported, and similarly if we can't ramp up boutique solutions fast enough, we'll need oil. We cannot afford to wait another 5 or 9 years before we start drilling. That's why we need to drill now, regardless of whether liberals think it will have an immediate effect on prices. Obama has been completely disingenuous on this point. Time is money--the later we start, the worse off the average American customer is going to be; the problem isn't going to disappear--it'll get worse, not better. This is the kind of leadership America needs--not some memorized lines from campaign propaganda and a motivational speech with no substance.

Obama Campaign Lacks Class

John McCain not only stayed away from raining on Barack Obama's nomination acceptance speech yesterday, but he spent precious campaign dollars, despite the fact Obama has far more cash at his disposal, to run this classy ad:

JOHN MCCAIN: Senator Obama, this is truly a good day for America.

Too often the achievements of our opponents go unnoticed. So I wanted to stop and say, congratulations.

How perfect that your nomination would come on this historic day. Tomorrow, we'll be back at it. But tonight Senator, job well done.

I'm John McCain and I approved this message.


So after today's historic announcement of McCain's selection of GOP Governor Sarah Palin of Alaska, here is the Obama campaign's initial response:

Today, John McCain put the former mayor of a town of 9,000 with zero foreign policy experience a heartbeat away from the presidency. Governor Palin shares John McCain’s commitment to overturning Roe v. Wade, the agenda of Big Oil and continuing George Bush’s failed economic policies — that’s not the change we need, it’s just more of the same.

How utterly pathetic to damn the opposition with faint praise and to ignore the historic nature of breaking the gender glass ceiling for the Republican ticket!

You want to play hardball, guys? How about the fact that Governor Palin has more executive experience than the entire Democratic ticket (Obama-Biden) put together....

re: "former mayor of a town of 9,000": Does Barack Obama really want us to revisit his San Francisco elitist putdown of "bitter" Heartland America voters just not getting it, voting against their alleged best interest, clinging to their guns and Bibles and resenting a porous southern border, allowing possible infiltration by terrorists and/or Latin American criminal elements?

Barack Obama, TAKE A HINT: Each and every time you or someone on your staff feels this arrogant, presumptous, condescending compulsion to suggest that your opponents or the voters "just don't get it", shut your mouth! You are just digging yourself into a hole ever deeper. We are far smarter than you can ever imagine--we recognize a used liberal idea salesman for what he is--trying to push his failed "creampuff" Big Government "solutions" on sucker voters. Americans recognize the same old same old snake oil Democrats have been trying to sell over the past 4 decades: overpromise and underdeliver. It's just MORE OF THE SAME.

Let's go on with the sham analysis of Governor Palin: "zero foreign policy experience". Hmmm. Maybe you guys need to take a course in geography. West of Alaska is: Russia. East of Alaska is: Canada. Do you think maybe an Alaskan governor has to deal with trade or border issues? Oh, and by the way, Sarah Palin has been to Iraq lately just as many times as Barack Obama. Unlike Barack Obama, she, like McCain, has a vested interest in the success of Iraq--her firstborn son, who enlisted in the Army, is due to ship off for Iraq on September 11.

Some suggest that John McCain can't use the inexperience argument against Barack Obama because Sarah Palin lacks comparable experience. Obviously there's a difference between the top spot on the ticket and the veep. Didn't Bill Clinton himself during his convention speech point out he also lacked foreign and military experience? But you know, if the Obama camp wants to bring up that 3AM phone call, this lady has been up at 3AM in order to join her dad in moose hunting. And she looks a lot better holding a rifle (if you've seen those Iraq clips) than Mike Dukakis did in his infamous tank film clip. She's smart and decisive (her basketball point guard nickname was "Barracuda"); I would find her far more believable as a Commander in Chief than the two career lawyer/politicians whose only reason for getting up at 3AM is to go to the bathroom.

You really want to bring up abortion to a woman whom made a decision to have her youngest son after he was diagnosed in the womb with Down syndrome? This tells us more of Sarah Palin's optimistic view of life, her capacity for love, and her inner strength, of what a strong woman is capable of doing in coping with life's challenges--a working mom whom truly serves as an inspiring role model for our young women and girls. Not a token pick but a highly capable, energetic, proven executive in her own right.

Agenda of Big Oil? You obviously don't know about the oil taxes Governor Palin fought to implement against oil producers and her proposed $250M alternative energy fund focusing on hydroelectric, wind, solar and other energy projects.

George W. Bush's ecoomic policies--including his failure to rein in massive increases in federal spending? Governor Palin said "no" (as did John McCain) to the "Bridge to Nowhere" boondoggle. Sarah Palin takes no prisoners in her zeal to cut through bureaucracy. As is the case with Senator McCain, Governor Palin insists on being tight with tax revenues (making do with her SUV or other transportation in lieu of an expensive state airplane) and has targeted property tax relief.

At the Bottom of August, McCain Hits a Home Run!

With reformist Alaska Governor Sarah Palin on board, Senator John McCain has hit a home run to take the lead in this 2008 race for whom really wears the mantle of change. When the first critical decision of Barack Obama was to choose a professional Washington politician, 6-term Senator Joe Biden, John McCain, who has bucked the establishment during his tenure in Washington, has reached for a maverick tough-as-nails, former athlete female governor of Alaska with fresh ideas and priorities from outside the DC Beltway.

Sarah Palin, like John McCain, has solid conservative Republican roots, pro-life, pro-gun rights, pro-traditional-values/marriage, pro-energy production. She's a working mom, including an infant recently diagnosed with Down syndrome. Like John McCain, Sarah Palin has taken a no-nonsense position on corruption and spending. She has cracked down on Big Business/Big Oil to make sure Alaska residents are getting their fair share of oil revenue.

I have mentioned Sarah Palin before in my posts, and I thought she was probably out because of a local controversy involving the employment status of her state trooper brother-in-law whom is divorcing her sister. But I understand she is encouraging the investigation. But I have repeatedly mentioned my desire in these posts for McCain to pick a woman, and Sarah Palin has been among the top of my list. In McCain's pick of Sarah Palin, I see the same maverick Republican whom captured the heartland in 2000 with the Straight Talk Express.

God bless McCain-Palin, and God bless America! Country first!

Michelle Obama Still Loves This Country

Hmmm. Why is it that we are convinced more by Michelle's spontaneous comment last February: "For the tirst time in my adult lifetime I'm really proud of my country." (because of her husband's political success and support for "change")? What about the fact that President Bush vastly increased foreign aid to Africa, which has had a material effect on AIDS there? What about the way this country came together in the aftermath of 9/11? How we opened up our wallets in the aftermath of the huge tsunami which devastated southern Asia in late 2004? The way that Americans opened their wallets and contributed their time to helping the Hurricane Katrina victims and assisted in the rebuilding of New Orleans? How about that millions of people, not Big Government, volunteer everyday to work in hospitals, deliver meals to shut-ins, tutor students, participate in Scouts and Big Brothers and Sisters, and charity telethons and related events?

I'm proud of the America that gave my French-Canadian ancestors the chance for a better life; my grandfather an opportunity to own and operate his own business; my parents, without a college degree and limited means, see 5 of their kids graduate from college and succeed in different professions: college professor/computer consultant, registered nurse, chemical engineer, elementary school teacher/librarian, and certified public accountant.

Just as someone loves a spouse or child despite their occasional faults, I love America despite the challenges we see--the United States which has led the fight against Nazi aggression, Communist expansion, and Islamic terrorists and which has opened its doors to the persecuted. I'm proud of the country which has admitted to and addressed problems: the emancipation of slaves, environmental protection, financial institution solvency and securities fraud, organized crime, and food and drug safety.

So, Michelle Obama, you are not proud of the America which afforded you and your husband, despite growing up in middle-class families, to attend some of the best universities in the world, far beyond your families' means, namely Columbia, Princeton, and Harvard?

But you are proud of a country and a political party which would nominate someone whom has no administrative experience, no military or foreign policy experience or expertise or significant legislative accomplishments requiring unpopular compromises? You're proud of Americans whom support your husband primarily because they like the inspirational rhetoric but can't specify his positions on key issues or any legislative accomplishments?

Tell me, Michelle, are you proud of the political party which nominated your husband, the same party founded by slave owners, which opposed abolition, which for a century after emancipation voted against civil rights legislation, instituted Jim Crow laws, set up roadblocks to impede the rights of blacks to vote, and fought desegregation? That your husband in 2006 helped support Senator Byrd's reelection, despite his past membership in the Ku Klux Klan and opposition to landmark civil rights legislation? (In contrast, the GOP refused to support David Dukes in his Louisiana races.)

You know, Michelle, in your address the other night, you missed the point over the charge of "elitism". It's not an issue of whether you dined at 4-star restaurants or spent your summers in the Hamptons or Martha's Vineyard growing up or hired a surrogate to bear your own children. In part, it's the implied rejection of pre-election 2008 America and you're putting yourself in a position to pronounce judgment. It's the idea that the idea of "change" is owned by Barack Obama. The idea that first-term senator with a voting record almost identical with establishment liberals, whom was not part of the Gang of 14 which defused a Senate crisis over judicial nominations, and whom is not identified with a single piece of relevant legislation with a single concession which is opposed by Democratic special interest groups is "change"? What "change" are you talking about? Changes from policies which ave kept America safe from a second Al Qaeda attack, drove Al Qaeda out of Iraq and on the run elsewhere?

I don't believe that the February quote is unfair or something taken out of context. I think it reflects an identification of you with the well-established concepts which were spoken by the pastor whom married Barack and you: the same Rev. Jeremiah Wright, whom Barack said he could no sooner deny than his own maternal grandmother, whom baptised your children, and from whom Barack stole the title of his book, The Audacity of Hope; that same Rev. Jeremiah Wright, whom said "God damn America", tried to blame the terrorist victims of 9/11 for what happened to them, and advanced crackpot theories of government genocide on American blacks. Does anyone really believe that what you said is inconsistent with Reverend Wright's negative view of America? Why did you and Barack not only fail to publicly distance yourself at the time of Rev. Wright's rants, when it REALLY counted, but continued to attend services until the comments became known--and then simply pay lip service to disagreeing with Rev. Wright's more extreme statements.

You claim in your convention speech that the reason you love this country is (I have to reword it to make it more coherent) that someone like Barack Obama has the opportunity to lead this country, with all its problems and imperfections, to a better place; that the alternative is fear of change from the imperfect status quo and the result is more of the same "hopeless" America.

The claim of loving this country is convoluted and seems contrived. The reason you love this country is it can be a better country? Do you say you love your daughter because she can be a better daughter? You love your child unconditionally because he or she is your child. This is not that you do not correct your child's misbehavior.

Human endeavors are imperfect, reflecting the limitations of men and women. If you think somehow Barack Obama's policies will result in some utopian America, you are going to be disappointed.

But, Michelle, what do you say when I tell you, as Jesus did (John 12:8), "for you always have the poor with you". Does this mean we do nothing? No, for as Deuteronomy (15:11) says, "Therefore I command you, saying, 'You shall freely open your hand to your brother, to your needy and poor in your land."

No, Michelle, if John McCain disagrees with Barack's agenda, it's not because John McCain doesn't believe that America doesn't have challenges and doesn't believe in changing things. Rather, John McCain points out, Big Government, trying to prescribe solution best left to the private sector, can make things worse, such as the fact that inefficient corn ethanol has had an adverse effect on food inflation, which is an implicit regressive tax.

John McCain understands the universal hope that parents want their children to have the same or better opportunities they have had for a better life. He understands that in order for our government to be more effective, leaders have to reach across the aisle to get things done. Compromise means having to accept things that are opposed by your base or colleagues. John McCain has worked with a number of Democrats on major initiatives including campaign reform, immigration, and climate change; he led the Gang of 14, which defused a Senate crisis over judicial nominees.

When I look at Michelle's speech, I find a great deal presumptuous. John McCain doesn't need to be lectured to about the needs of the US military and veterans from someone whom never put on a uniform for his country. She speaks of the need to end the war in Iraq responsibly; but Barack Obama opposed the troop surge, which turned the tide and made withdrawal with honor possible. She talks about the high gas prices people pay, but Barack Obama has opposed offshore drilling and a summer gas tax holiday. She mentions making health insurance available, but Barack Obama refuses to deregulate the marketing of health plans across states and rejects John McCain's fairness principle whereby all Americans have a tax-advantaged bases for paying health care costs, not just the fortunate employees of companies offering relevant plans. She speaks of new spending on social problems, but ignores the failures of government at all levels, including the Louisiana Democratic mayor and governor, in handling the Hurricane Katrina disaster. And since when does John McCain need a lecture on cutting taxes for the middle class or getting people off welfare and into jobs? Republican tax cuts supported by John McCain have taken millions of lower-income Americans out of paying any federal tax beyond payroll (social security and Medicare), and he supported welfare reform in the 1990's while Clinton played flip-flop with the issue.

It always amazes me how Democrats like the Obamas can talk about identifying with the little guy when the average household earns about $50,000 a year. The Obamas can speak all they want over identifying with the needs of the underprivileges and their having worked with community service--but the bottom line is that Michelle Obama is on leave from a job paying over $300,000 a year, Barack has a multi-million dollar book contract and earns over $160K as a senator, and they live in a $1.65M mansion in an upscale neighborhood, not exactly where the underprivileged of Chicago live. As lawyers, the Obamas had other choices--e.g., that of a public defender of poor blacks whom don't have the resources to hire Harvard-trained lawyers. But then, it's not the first time we've seen rhetoric over performance, such as the Clintons' support for poor quality public education while sending their daughter to private schools. Now, I realize that there are other issues involved (e.g., the Obamas needing to pay off large college loans), but the Republicans can't be accused of hypocrisy.

But John McCain doesn't need a lecture about sacrifice, despite of how many properties his wife Cindy may own (he himself doesn't own any, and Cindy has a prenuptial agreement). He has two sons whom are serving in the military, including one whom has been to Iraq; to the best of my knowledge, they haven't appeared in any campaign spot, aren't on Access Hollywood, or in cute segments calling out, "Hey, Dad!" John McCain still bears the consequences of injuries suffered in Vietnam, unable to raise his arms above his chest; he had to undergo physical therapy on his return. Yet he turned down an opportunity to go home early (because of the fact his dad and grandfather were admirals), even though that mean more of the same physical abuse.

If McCain could spend years in a Vietnamese prison camp (and no, Jimmy Carter, he isn't trying to politically exploit his war hero status; he's trying to explain the sacrifice, hard decisions and other qualities it takes in putting America first), he has the character it takes to make the tough decisions, even at the expense of his own political popularity as last year showed when he was a high-profile supporter of immigration and the surge and his Presidential campaign went down the tubes.

Rumors Regarding McCain's VP Pick

The latest rumor going around that McCain has made his Veep selection and will announce/appear with him or her tomorrow. (There is also a rumor that McCain could try to steal the thunder from Obama's acceptance address tonight by swerving the press and naming his choice today, but I don't consider that credible.)

I've discussed in previous posts primarily 3 picks: (1) Mitt Romney, because of his business and executive experience as Massachusetts governor; (2) Tim Pawlenty, the Minnesota governor with a McCain-like populism; (3) a female, likely Kay Bailey Hutchinson (R-TX) or Meg Whitman, former eBay CEO, whom McCain specifically referenced in the Saddleback Civil Forum.

I was mystified by Obama's choice of Joe Biden, a pick I still regard as a strategic blunder. It's not that we haven't seen campaign rivals team up on a ticket before, the most prominent example being Ronald Reagan picking George H.W. Bush, whom infamously referenced Reagan's supply-side economics "voodoo economics" (and, before that selection, Reagan had approached former President Ford, a bitter rival in the 1976 Republican race). But I think there are 3 major problems over and beyond Biden's criticisms of Obama during the Democratic campaign: (1) Obama has made "change" and "postpartisan politics" a major focus of his campaign, and choosing a 6-term senator whom has essentially been part of Washington and the partisan wars for most of his adult life essentially negates his whole campaign message; (2) Biden is far more qualified to head the ticket, causing a stark competency contrast such as the 1988 Dukakis selection of Lloyd Bentsen; and (3) Biden's voting record is virtually identical (very liberal), which doesn't help Obama reach independents and moderates.

One of the persistant rumors is that McCain might try to shake things up by picking a pro-abortion-choice candidate, in particular, former Democratic Veep candidate Joe Lieberman, whom endorsed McCain months ago. There are problems with this, especially given the issue of McCain's age; we have only to recall that Lincoln reached across the aisle to pick Andrew Johnson for a national unity ticket, and after Lincoln's assassination, President Johnson vetoed the Republican Congress' first Civil Rights legislation for emancipated blacks. Second, Lieberman has at best a strained relationship with his Senate caucus colleagues; recent polls in Connecticut show his job approval ratings dipping below 50% and just 26% among Connecticut Democrats. If McCain was going to pick a national unity candidate, he needs to go beyond just military and foreign policy and look at so-called Blue Dog Democrats whom might also agree with him on economic policy, e.g., a federal balanced budget. In addition, Lieberman doesn't help him on the administrative or business experience front, and he would further aggravate already strained relations with the conservative Republican base. From my perspective, Lieberman is a non-starter.

I thought the McCain camp signaled, by immediately highlighting Biden's differences with Obama, it was all but conceding Romney would not be the choice. We have already seen Democrats trying to anticipate Romney's selection by talking about his "job killer"/"ship jobs to China" record at Bain Capital, the number of Romney's houses (after the infamous John McCain fumbled question on how many houses his wife owns or controls), etc. I think Romney would appeal to the base, complement and may shore up his chances at Michigan and maybe other states (but probably not his governed state of Massachusetts). However, I think Romney's flip-flopping would make it more difficult for the McCain campaign's desire to highlight Obama's politically expedient position shifts discussed in prior posts (e.g., capital punishment for child predators, the gun rights decision by the Supreme Court, offshore drilling, etc.), and I'm not convinced he would play well with independents and moderates; despite heavily outspending his Republican opponents, he prevailed primarily in places like his father's home state of Michigan and a few states McCain didn't actively compete for on Super Tuesday due to resource constraints.

Pawlenty would be acceptable to the Republican base and would add a great deal to the ticket, in terms of showing a bipartisan record as a Massachusetts governor and with a maverick reputation that is compatible with McCain's style of Republicanism. The major issues I see are his energy on the stump and his matchup with Joe Biden; in particular, we don't need to see a replay of the 1988 Bentsen-Quayle matchup. Perhaps most of all, Pawlenty would be a "safe choice" but not a bold stroke that McCain could use to trump Obama's predictable choice of Biden.

The bold stroke I mention in a prior post would be naming a qualified female, which would be a first in the history of the GOP and a master stroke to play off Obama's "change" decision to name a career Washington politician and to bypass the female politician whom drew over 18 million votes. There is some scuttlebutt on the Web that relations between McCain and Hutchinson are cool, and hence her star is fading, but I disagree. First of all, even if true (regarding interpersonal compatibility), one can point to multiple tickets of a similar nature, including JFK-LBJ and Reagan-Bush. Second, Kay Bailey Hutchinson is well-vetted, has a pro-life record and a business background as a banker (which is topical given the current housing/mortgage crisis) and prior administrative experience in state government. I'm fairly confident that Kay Bailey can hold her own with Joe Biden.

To me, it's an obvious choice, and I'm pleased to see her name pop up more and more in the media as John's decision nears. It would be a transformational pick that fits well with McCain's style.

The Lion King Redux

Ted Kennedy. To many conservatives and others, he will always be remembered for what happened on July 18, 1969 and the tragic death of Mary Jo Kopechne, a former secretary to his brother Bobby and the trapped passenger in his car which flipped off a small bridge into a pond: Chappaquiddick. As a young Catholic teen with memories of Ted's assassinated older brothers, perhaps I had unrealistic expectations of the remaining Kennedy brother, and there was a strong desire to give Ted the benefit of a doubt: what would I have done in his place if I was concussed, motivated by an instinct to survive, and unable to see in murky water under the darkness of the night? "Say it ain't so, Ted..." But too many nagging questions remain: Was he driving under the influence? What was he doing driving too fast in unfamiliar territory on dark roads? Why, with a pregnant wife at home, was he driving alone with an unrelated young woman? Even if he couldn't find the car to rescue Mary Jo, why hadn't he let someone, anyone know, on his way to the hotel, so emergency units could reach the scene? Was there a double standard applied to the benefit of Ted under the circumstances? In particular, the gap in time to reporting the incident to police cannot be explained away or excused. What's particularly sad is the policeman whom had observed Ted driving before the accident and whom Ted was trying to lose was simply trying to give an ostensibly lost motorist driving directions.

Ted Kennedy. The liberal lion of the Senate. Whatever the human failings of Ted and his late brothers, one can never dispute the commitment to public service and sacrifices made by the Kennedy clan. Ted Kennedy was set for life; he could have lived a life of leisure, but he had a passion and unquestioned commitment in support of people whom are not born into a family of means but whom struggle to achieve the American dream.

Ted Kennedy. A man who could do business with the GOP and President Bush, despite differences on issues such as the liberation of Iraq. A key figure in bipartisan efforts on education and immigration reform, pragmatic enough to compromise, honorable enough to stand by the concessions made to seal the deal, civil enough to treat one's opponent honorably and not with the disdain of his colleagues.

I still remember being disillusioned as a liberal Democrat (except for being pro-life) with the hapless Presidency of Jimmy Carter, and Ted Kennedy's entry, his only foray on the national scene, seemed a final opportunity to recapture the lost promise of Camelot. I stood for him in the Texas precincts. Unfortunately, Kennedy's preliminary lead over Carter evaporated as the latter got a "rally-around-the-chief" spike at the beginning of the Iranian hostage crisis. This was a Pyrrhic victory for Carter forced to defend a lackluster economy and a foreign policy overshadowed by the Iranian crisis. But Kennedy turned in a strong convention speech with his oratorical skills, his defiant voice brimming with confidence.

My migration to conservatism, unlike others, was not inspired by Reagan. There was the part of me that has been always been suspicious of the fusion between his personality and his conservatism, his reliance on oversimplified soundbite gimmicks like the "misery index" and "evil empire", and the gap between promise and performance, e.g., the federal budget deficit. My transition actually began by taking the standard economics courses on the way to earning my MBA. None of my professors espoused an overtly political point of view.

My conversion was not a sudden one. People who have converted to other religions based on their own initiative understand. Let me give an example from a diferent context. In my academic discipline (MIS), there was a widely-used measure for computer user satisfaction. I was looking to develop my own measure for a different construct, and in the process of devising validation procedures, I took a closer look at the base measure and its process of validation. (It was based on a dissertation from an engineering school.) It suddenly occurred to me that the kinds of arguments and statistical tests being used were idiosyncratic and had no precedent that I could find in the applied psychology literature. But certainly a peer reviewer to this prestigious journal or many of the MIS scholars whom had reviewed and/or had used the measure would have noticed before me... While my own research went in a different direction, I now worried about the fact that other MIS researchers were using a measure I now considered questionable. I wrote an article which basically noted the emperor was wearing no clothes. The article was rejected with venomous personal attacks from anonymous reviewers (I suspect the article was sent to reviewers with a vested interest in the criticized measures).

The point is, I did not set out to question liberalism or its implementation in public policies. I was more concerned with why things didn't seem to be changing, despite all the money we were spending to solve the problem. Educational reform seemed to be on a collision course with the agenda of teacher unions, a key special interest group. I didn't understand the logic of college quotas that put lesser qualified students in classes or programs where they couldn't compete. I didn't see how we could address the poverty cycle without addressing extramartial sex and breakdown of the family. It bothered me that whereas business and state/local governments have to accommodate budget cuts due to a slowing economy, including staffing adjustments, there are no comparable cutbacks on the federal level. It puzzled me how legislators, dominated by those from the legal profession, whom had no business experience or background in economics, were imposing new costs on business with punitive policies (e.g., windfall profits taxes) or excessive regulations. I disliked the fact that a legislator could keep the Pentagon from shutting down an obsolete base or force it to accept military hardware it didn't need or want. I disagreed with the strategy of growing the federal bureaucracy rather than to foster cooperation with the private sector to achieve the desired goods and services.

I didn't necessarily disagree with the goals of Ted Kennedy. It's more about methods, footprint, priorities and realistic expectations. (For example, I don't think Democrats can simply will their way to technological breakthroughs in scalable alternative energy by picking winners and losers in the private sector and throwing money at them. Similarly, non-scientists cannot will their way to breakthrough stem cell-based therapies by simply throwing money at scientists. Throwing multiple cooks at an egg boiling doesn't make the egg boil any faster. What will help is providing support for college science and engineering majors, and ensuring high school students are prepared for rigorous science and engineering programs.)

Still, as I watched a frail Ted Kennedy, suffering from terminal brain cancer and traveling against doctors' orders, make his way to the podium, I remember and honor the man for whom I stood in the Texas precinct caucuses in 1980--valiant, passionate, undeterred from his goal to pass the torch to the new generation. But does Ted Kennedy remember that as a man of his word, he voted against the same poison-pill amendments to the immigration bill that Obama supported, even after having worked a concession in the compromise measure? I just wish King Mufasa had picked a more worthy Simba.

Barack Obama, I remember Jack Kennedy. He was my President. He didn't ask me what America could do for me; he challenged me to put America first. And, Barack Obama, you are no Jack Kennedy.

Black Americans and Obama: My Take

As a Franco-American, I cannot claim to understand what it is like to have been born and raised black American. Our family differs from many other Franco-Americans in terms of having blue eyes, fair skin, and blond or light brunette hair. We have faced other, more subtle slights; it still pains my Mom to talk about going to Catholic elementary school and hearing the Anglo girls mock her then French-accented English. Just as was the case for many children or grandchildren of immigrants, Mom had a yearning to fit in and to identify with American culture. In fact, when I asked my only maternal uncle, a priest, whom in fact did his seminary studies in Montreal, about the separatist movement in French Canada, he snapped back, "If you think Quebec is such a wonderful place, why don't you move there?" My bilingual uncle was constantly concerned his bishop would typecast him and shunt him aside to parishes with an ever-decreasing number of sparsely attended French masses, mostly attended by elder parishioners.

French was my first language, but when my kindergarten teacher threatened to hold me back because of my limited English, my Mom, determined her own kids would not be ridiculed the way she was, and my Dad decided on raising their kids English-only, and to this day, my siblings blame me for the fact they cannot speak French.

What had sparked my interest in my Franco-American roots was an undergraduate college requirement to attend a campus lecture by a then unknown black American author. I wasn't sure what to expect, but I soon found myself spellbound by his obsession for identity, tracing his family tree back to its slavery genesis in America--and then that catharsis, the Eureka moment, when the oral historian of an African tribe spoke the name 'Kunta Kinte'. The speaker, of course, was Alex Haley, and his upcoming book/mini-series, Roots, would become an American television and cultural phenomenon.

Other Americans may not realize it, but Franco-Americans have faced their own sets of issues. Marie Tessier writes the following:

"In the United States, the French language was a target of hate groups and repressive authorities throughout the 20th century. The Ku Klux Klan, numbering more than 100,000 in the 1920s, burned crosses to intimidate Franco-Americans in Maine.

"Until recent decades, children were beaten for speaking French in school, Francos were routinely insulted and kept in the lowest-paying jobs, and generations were raised on the notion that to be French was to be stupid."

I have been aware of issues in the African-American urban community since childhood. While Dad was transitioning military assignments and making arrangements for us, I attended Notre Dame Elementary School in Fall River. Our class, as part of a social justice project, adopted a needy black family in Washington DC. We would regularly send care packages reflecting various family preferences, sizes, etc., for food, clothes and other items. However, even then I became somewhat skeptical when the Roman Catholic sister told us that the black father's favorite brand of cigarettes was Pall Mall. Why in the world were we subsidizing a discretionary purchase, one, in fact, dangerous to one's health?

Still, I was moved by the heart-wrenching realization that millions of fellow citizens did not have a realistic shot of achieving the American dream: fatherless families; failed public school systems; high school dropout rates; dangerous, drug-ridden neighborhoods; large numbers of young black men in prison. The very first single I ever purchased with my own money was Elvis Presley's cover of the Mac Davis song, "In the Ghetto".

One sometimes wonders in these neighborhoods if role models go beyond sports and entertainment figures. People like the wonderful, personable Dr. Annie Brown, whom had overcome humble origins to head the MIS department at Grambling State University when I visited in the spring of 1994; competent professional DBA's whom I mentored as a senior principal at Oracle Consulting in 1998 and whom had subsequently served as job references; my EPA client administrator from Sumter, SC (my Dad was once stationed at nearby Shaw AFB) during my first DBA gig at the regional lab in downtown Chicago; the key account executive I worked with during my last year at Market Knowledge. All of whom who were/are well-qualified, earned their own way for everything they achieved in professional success, and had a strong work ethic, a positive attitude, and congenial personalities.

I was/am such an admirer of Jack Kemp, former pro quarterback, Congressman, Housing Secretary, and the Vice Presidential candidate for former Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole, whom championed things like enterprise free zones and alternatives to public housing where people have ownership interests in their own homes. Unfortunately, American voters reelected the Narcissist, whom had engaged in a pattern of behavior that would have resulted in his termination for cause under sexual harassment policies of most major corporations. (The Senate Democrats paid lip service to their feminist constituents and ignored material evidence of perjury and obstruction of justice; all is forgiven, even "boys-will-be-boys" behavior, provided you accommodate the politically correct position on abortion. What a role model for responsible, self-respecting American young men!)

The GOP is the party of emancipation; it also had allied itself with liberals to help pass landmark civil rights legislation over the objections of Democratic segregationists. In fact, Dr. Martin Luther King had registered as a Republican in the late 1950's. Yet we soon saw a massive movement in favor of the Democrats promoting the welfare state, hiring quotas, preferential contract set-asides, and ineffective, impersonal, paternalistic government bureaucratic "solutions" whereby one's concern for the underprivileged is not objectively quantified in terms of resulting higher basic knowledge and skills and/or graduation rates, post-high school education/training rate, small business starts and growth, home ownership ratios, decreased crime/drug statistics, etc., but in terms of whether you politically support throwing money down the rathole of dysfunctional, counterproductive programs and policies.

The end result is that American blacks, over the past several election cycles, have supported the national Democrats in near unanimous percentages of 90% or so. This level of groupthink in support of Big Government solutions which have not and never will work astounds me. The Democrats generally block access to alternatives to ineffective public education in urban areas, which is really key to breaking the circle of poverty. The Democrats are more likely to nominate judges whom undermine traditional Christian values, e.g., the definition of marriage, abortion, etc.

I have no doubt that the majority of American blacks take pride that the son of a Kenyan goat herder represents and identifies with their rich cultural heritage, even though he did not grow up in a traditional black American household or neighborhood. Still, one has to wonder if that faith is somewhat misguided and perhaps self-defeating; here we have a 3-year Illinois senator--whom has spent most of the last 2 of those years running for President full-time--with no trademark policy expertise, no major legislative accomplishments that bear on any concrete issue affecting black American lives, no administrative or business experience of any kind, college degrees from Columbia and Harvard (colleges beyond the realistic dreams of most blacks), someone whom lives in a $1.65M mansion in an upscale neighborhood that few blacks, beyond celebrity sports stars or entertainers, can afford... The only thing that distinguishes Barack Obama is his oratorical skills, but little of substance beyond the mantra "change". When you have distinguished Congressmen of color such as Elijah Cummings, John Lewis, and Charlie Rangel or highly qualified and experienced administrators such as General Colin Powell and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, is it really in the best interests of black America to see in the White House someone not really up to the job and demonstrably less qualified and accomplished than other experienced black leaders? If he fails, how will that affect the aspirations of more qualified black candidates in the future? If he doesn't get elected, can one really attribute the loss of a 3-year senator with no administrative experience or legislative accomplishments to racism? I can tell you right now I would seriously consider voting for General Colin Powell for President, but I could never, in good conscience, vote for Barack Obama.

Russia, China, and the US-Iraq Agreement

As the Democratic convention starts today, I need to take issue with some recent Obama claims on foreign pollicy.

Comparing Russian Invasion of Georgia with Iraq

Obama was recently quoted saying "We've got to send a clear message to Russia and unify our allies. They can't charge into other countries. Of course it helps if we are leading by example on that point."

This is a not-so-subtle reference to the 2003 operations to overthrow Saddam Hussein in Iraq. Saddam Hussein was a war criminal whom, without provocation, invaded Kuwait and Iran and used poison gas against civilian Kurds and Iranians. He was offering financial incentives to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers against Israeli civilians. The end of the first Gulf War resulted in a ceasefire, not a peace treaty; there were terms to that ceasefire, which Hussein materially violated. Hussein disregarded the terms of 17 UN resolutions and bought off Russia, China, France, and Germany with sweetheart trade deals. In 1998, Hussein threw out UN inspectors for WMD compliance. Hussein attempted to assassinate former President Bush during a visit to Kuwait. Hussein had Iraqi operatives in the US whom were intercepted by federal intelligence. Hussein had an undeniable "shake-and-bake" WMD capacity, meaning he had the know-how, the underlying infrastructure, and the motive. We also had to maintain indefinitely no-fly zones to protect Kurds and Shiites from yet additional genocidal attacks.

There are no doubt issues with the National Intelligence estimate--something Barack Obama did not have access to at the time--although it seems consistent with past estimates and other foreign intelligence estimates (including the French, whom opposed the Iraq operation). This is not to say I agree with how the nature of the operations or how Iraq was administered after Hussein's overthrow.

But the point here is that the circumstances between the invasion of Iraq and Russia's recent unprovoked invasion of Georgia. The trigger point seemed to be rebel attacks from one of the breakaway provinces on Georgia which led to a Georgian crackdown on the breakaway province. It was obvious from the hair-trigger response, nature and extent of the Russian invasion that it had been planned all along, only waiting for some excuse, like the Georgian crackdown, to be put into action.

Barack's comparison is manifestly absurd. Georgia is a democracy and is not a destabilizing regional threat. Russia did not bring its case as the US did, before the UN Security Council, or bring up resolutions before the UN General Assembly. There is no evidence that Georgia has attempted to assassinate Russian leaders or meddle in Russian internal affairs. Russia violated Georgian sovereign territory and did not restrict its invasion to the breakaway province, but also seized the other breakaway province and invaded Georgia proper.

The fact is, Barack Obama is engaging in the blame-America-first rhetoric of reactionary liberalism. He also implies an excuse, which is a rather condescending view of Russia, that Russia can be excused because it doesn't know any better and must rely on the example of the United States to figure out how to be a responsible nation. We know what all of this posturing is really all about: Russia is furious over the fact the West has backed the independence of Kosovo, which Russia's ally Serbia considers part of its territory; Russia is unhappy about Georgia and the Ukraine on the membership path of NATO; Russia is unhappy with the idea of an American missile base in Poland. Georgia is being used as a scapegoat, an implicit warning to the West, and an example to its other former East European colonies.

Casting international relations in terms of interpersonal dynamics, an inability to promote American interests in Europe and Asia, and superficial analyses of international disputes do not make for the judgment Americans need in their next President.

Promoting Investment in China vs. the USA?

Barack Obama was recently quoted as follows: "Everybody's watching what's going on in Beijing right now with the Olympics. Think about the amount of money that China has spent on infrastructure. Their ports, their train systems, their airports are vastly the superior to us now, which means if you are a corporation deciding where to do business you're starting to think, 'Beijing looks like a pretty good option.' "

Oh my God! I suggest that the McCain campaign run a relevant ad in every Midwestern state, including Ohio and Michigan. After all this campaign propaganda about punishing companies that export jobs, Obama is basically telling those same companies they are idiots for not investing more in China vs. the US! I think Obama is really intending to push his make-work infrastructure boondoggles. Maybe if Obama at Harvard Law School took more courses in business and tax law vs. "Victimization 101" and "Picking Liberal Activist Judges", he would recognize the best way to boost American business expansion and hiring is to minimize the government footprint on business and lower the business tax rate, which is uncompetitive among our trading partners.

But more to the point, Barack Obama: as usual, you seem to want to look at the symbolic picture of China they intentionally are trying to project vs. the reality. They had to all but shut down their local economy in Beijing during the Games in order to clear the skies. The difference between the have's and the have-not's in China is stark and causing some internal problems. They have factories operating on razor-thin margins that were not built with the idea of a global slowdown, as we are now experiencing.

There is a lot to be said in favor of improving America's infrastructure given bad roads, collapsing bridges and levees, archaic city pipes, and an aging power grid. But we have competing demands on our tax revenues and we shouldn't be trying to emulate gold-plated infrastructures used primarily for propaganda purposes.

The Recent Working Agreement between US and Iraq

For the past few months, Obama has been trying in laughably absurd ways to claim that McCain is taking his lead on Afghanistan, Iraq, and the like. There is no doubt, given the approaching Iraq elections and an expiring Iraq-US agreement, that Al Maliki needs to posture himself, as Iraq's leader, demanding a small, disappearing American occupier footprint in Iraq. That Barack Obama has put forward a 16-month plan has helped Al Maliki use the American election for negotiating leverage against the Bush Administration.

But Democrats' trying to portray al Maliki's "endorsement" of Obama's plan as an Iraqi endorsement is frankly intellectually dishonest. A key issue in Iraqi stability is a fragile sectarian peace between the majority Shiites and the minority Sunnis. The US has been the trusted broker, particularly by the Sunnis, whom are still wary about ties between the majority Shiite government and militias. A number of Sunni tribesmen, part of the coalition against Al Qaeda, are still being funded by the US and have not absorbed into the Iraq army or police.

There's also been a false argument by the Democrats whom are trying to save face in their on-the-record refusal to support the surge by attributing the military and political progress during the surge to an "independent" preexisting Sunni awakening. This ignores existing US military anti-insurgent policies, which, for example, Gen. Petraeus applied in Mosul after the invasion. Even if a coalition between US forces and Sunni tribal leaders chased out Al Qaeda, that did not address Sunni concerns over Shiite militias, lack of meaningful power sharing in the Iraq government, and fears of being shut out of a proportionate amount of oil revenues. The surge policy enabled US forces to consolidate control over liberated areas and to take the offense against insurgents, outlaw militias, and residual terrorists in Iraq.

In fact, President Bush has been drawing down combat troops to around pre-surge levels while continuing to maintain the lowest level of casualties during the occupation. As the long-time efforts to reach critical masses in the Iraq military and police have begun to take root and those organizations have proven their mettle taking an increasingly frontal role (with US troops in backup) in confronting terrorists, insurgents, and rogue militia, the Iraqis are increasing their sense of self-reliance.

The term "time horizons" vs. timetables simply refers to the fact that the US may be needed to shore up Iraq forces in the event of unexpected challenges, such as a large influx of terrorists seeking to exploit an American withdrawal or an uptick in sectarian issues.

Barack Obama is just trying to escape moral responsibility for advocating a unilateral withdrawal in 2007, despite ongoing military and civilian casualties and Al Qaeda much more of a factor throughout Iraq. I myself would not have approached the situation in Iraq as Bush did, and I find it very peculiar since Bush had derided the whole concept of nation-building heading into his initial election--and knew an invasion of Iraq would mean just that. But, just as a gift shop makes clear, "you break it--you own it". In other words, we had a moral obligation to leave a stable Iraq once we invaded it. I believe that Bush and the Pentagon miscalculated the manpower necessary to stabilize post-invasion Iraq, and we spent much of the next 3 to 4 years failing to correct that problem, despite John McCain's best efforts to push the footprint issue.

The fact is--Barack Obama lacked the necessary judgment: he was unwilling to listen to generals on the ground, like General Petraeus, explain what resources were necessary for the mission to succeed. He simply wanted to pick up his toys and leave and let someone else worry about the mess he left behind. That's not leadership. If we had let politicians micromanage military operations, the Revolutionary War would not have won independence following Gen. Washington's defeats, and the Civil War would have ended at Bull Run.

The abandonment of an ally would not have been lost on our other allies, including NATO and Israel.

Barack Obama's disingenuous attempts to exploit the hard-won fruits of an unpopular surge policy he never conceived nor supported and then claim leadership of the ensuing withdrawal with honor made possible takes unmitigated chutzpah.

Our House is a Very, Very, Very Fine House

Arugula-eating Barack Obama, back from his grocery shopping at Whole Foods, settles down in his $1.65M Georgian mansion in an upscale Chicago neighborhood, 6400 square feet, complete with a granite-floored kitchen, six bedrooms, 5 1/2 baths, a double steam shower, a marble powder room, a library with Honduran mahogany glass-doored bookcases, a music room, a solarium, four fireplaces, a 1000-bottle wine cellar, beveled glass doors and a four-car garage. (Barack, Michelle, and their two daughters had simply outgrown their prior home, a $415,000 condo.) Clearly Barack Obama got some great mortgage tips from his caucus colleagues Chris Dodd (D-CN) and Kent Conrad (D-ND) because he managed to get a 5.65% interest rate compared to the going range for "super super jumbo" loans of such size, compared to the going rate of 5.93-6% at the time, without paying points.

Not to mention the fact the Obamas purchased the mansion for $300K below asking price. Now originally the house and the adjoining lot had been sold together, but the owner listed them separately. The Obamas decided they wanted the lot, or at least a piece of it, but decided the $625,000 asking price was a little too rich for their blood. But what a stroke of good luck and coincidence! Mrs. Rezko closed on the parcel for the owner's asking price on the very same day the Obamas closed on their house and then sold a choice 10-foot strip of adjacent land to the Obamas. Tony Rezko, of course, is the longtime Obama friend, fundraiser and contributor, recently convicted of 16 counts of influence peddling. Isn't it amazing how despite all their differences, the Clintons and the Obamas seem to be like Teflon when it comes to questionable real estate transactions, while the people they're dealing with get convicted?

But, you know, the Obamas really needed that loan. Michelle had just been promoted by the University of Chicago Hospitals to VP, and they more than doubled her salary to $317K. (Well, that's fair, isn't it? Doesn't your typical breadwinner's salary more than double with a promotion?) And, of course, there's Barack's meager Senate salary of $162K and his little $2.27M book deal with Random House. But poor and middle class citizens know that Barack Obama feels their pain--that arugula is getting to be a little expensive, after all. And corn ethanol subsidies are central to Obama's alternative fuel objectives--even though Mexican peasants can't afford to buy corn tortillas anymore.

For instance, when Sandra Burt in New Hampshire lost her job at 65 and was having trouble making ends meet to pay her $2900 monthly prescription bills and she and her husband, whom had cashed in his life insurance and sold his beloved truck, were living in a trailer in the winter with the thermostat set a 64, Obama got it. He tossed her some tissues and then went into his "change" stump speech. And he remembers the incident enough to use Burt's story at subsequent rallies, wowing the huddled masses with his empathy, compassion, vision and oratorical prowess. Oh, and what did Barack Obama and his campaign do to see Sandra Burt got the help she needed in the interim? Nothing; she and her husband were still living in the cold trailer. Nothing like politically exploiting the misery of a senior citizen, raising unrealistic hopes.

Now there's a reason I'm writing this post. Barack Obama has been shamelessly attacking John McCain for not being certain about the number of properties (in particular, investment properties) his wife Cindy owns or controls. Cindy McCain is a main beneficiary of her father's beer distributorship and (I believe) is the current CEO. When John McCain married Cindy, he signed a prenuptial agreement. Cindy has not given John a blank checkbook; when his campaign imploded last year, he was flying coach and carrying luggage through airports. He was having to do things like borrow against his life insurance for a modest amount of campaign cash, while former venture captialist Mitt Romney was loaning his campaign tens of millions.

Personally, I think McCain and the campaign shouldn't have been caught off-guard by that question, because I think Kerry had been asked similar questions during the 2004 campaign. But in this case, McCain wanted to get the right answer for the reporter, and it's entirely possible that John isn't aware of recent investment transactions not under his control. But let's face the fact that many Washington politicians will have a home in their district/state as well as in the DC area and possibly a vacation home as well. Few Americans own two or three homes.

I think, though, McCain wants to stress the point it's not a bad thing to want to achieve financial success. Even a biracial politician can become a millionaire by writing two autobiographies before the age of 46.

But shame on Obama for attacking McCain as an out-of-touch elitist. McCain spent years as a prisoner at the Hanoi Hilton in very spartan cells. He has arrows in his back for trying to push a 2001 tax cut package oriented more towards lower/middle income Americans. He has refused to ask for corrupting earmarks. He has constantly pushed for political reform and against questionable, cozy relationships like Obama-Rezko.

CINOs: Biden, Pelosi, and Elective Abortion

In my recent post reflecting on Barack Obama's radically pro-abortion-rights agenda, which rejects any serious restrictions on abortion (even repugnant procedures such as partial-birth), promotes taxpayer subsidies for certain abortions, and specifies a litmus test for judicial nominees based on sustaining the crown jewel of judicial activism, Roe v. Wade, which invented a Constitutional right for a woman to abort her child, I took special note of Catholic Senators, including Vice Presidential nominee Joe Biden, whom have sold out the moral teachings of the Church for political treasure. But I was reminded of other prominent pro-abortion-rights Catholics in Name Only (CINO) on this morning's Sunday weekly news programs, Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Meet the Press and former dark horse Veep candidate Kansas Governor Katheleen Sebelius on Face the Nation.

I am Franco-American, a great-grandson of French-Canadian immigrants (on both sides of the family) settling in the Fall River, MA area, raised Roman Catholic as the oldest of 7 children; my Dad was a career Air Force enlisted man and my mom a housewife. Dad's pay didn't go very far; soda pop and ice cream were rare treats reserved for things like birthdays, and we occasionally went to McDonald's in celebration of my or a sibling's First Communion or other special event. I'm old enough to remember John F. Kennedy, the first Roman Catholic elected President and a Democrat. To a young Catholic boy, JFK was a role model, a symbol of what anyone, even a Catholic, could achieve, living the American dream.

I was very aware from the start that many non-Catholics are not accepting of and have misconceptions about Catholics; in particular, one could not help overhear comments about how if one came from a large family, he or she must be Catholic or Mormon, that Catholic women didn't know how to control themselves, etc. There is a complete misunderstanding of Catholics and their values. My fellow siblings in particular always wanted a dog; I will never forget the day that Mom rounded up the six of us kids and asked us, "What would you rather have--a dog or a new brother or sister?" To me, it was no choice; I enthusiastically wanted a new sibling. We don't see a baby in terms of a burden on the family budget; we consider a child a blessing from God. As the oldest, one within a few years of college, I was well aware that I couldn't count on financial support from my folks, and I had a vested interest in fewer vs. additional siblings. But never for a second have I regretted having 6 younger siblings; I think I'm a better person for having them in my life. And Vivian Renee was/is a beautiful gift from God.

I was lucky enough to land a paper route during my high school years which let me save up about $30/month towards college. While rolling up papers one day at the kitchen table, I noticed all this discussion of abortion in the paper and asked my Mom what an abortion was, and my Mom proceeded to give me a nonjudgmental, scientific explanation of the procedure. I was absolutely stunned and recall telling my Mom, "That's murder! What does the Church have to say about it? They can't possibly approve of this..." I did understand that having a baby is a decision that comes with obligations on one's time and resources. I once asked my sister Sharon how it felt being a real mom vs. playing with dolls as a girl, and she noted, "You can't put them away when you're tired of playing with them."

My own folks rarely talked politics, although my maternal grandfather, a mom-and-pop grocery owner, was one of those rare Massachusetts Republicans. I myself emerged as a liberal Democrat, working for the Carter campaign in 1976 and attending the Texas caucuses in 1980 in support of Ted Kennedy. (I leave it to a future post to describe my political migration since then.) But I could never understand the moral gymnastics it took to support a social justice agenda but to regard human life in the womb as unworthy of protection.

Fast forward to this morning's interview when moderator Tom Brokaw reviewed the infamous Barack Obama clip at the Saddleback Civic Forum when Obama was asked point-blank by Rev. Rick Warren at what point does the unborn child receive human rights as a person. Obama responds essentially, "I don't know, and in the absence of certainty, the benefit of the doubt has to go to the woman whom is faced with the burden of the pregnancy." This is rather like arguing in the holding of a suspected terrorist, "I don't know for sure whether he is a terrorist. But given ambiguous evidence regarding the charge, the benefit of the doubt has to go to his individual rights, even though there is a risk to society in releasing him."

Speaker Nancy Pelosi then goes on this "I'm a devout Catholic, mother, and grandmother, whom bakes cookies" kick and then attempts to claim she has personally studied the issue and that the Church's position in favor of human life at conception is a recent development in Catholicism, emerging only within the past 50 years or so. She goes on and particularly cites St. Augustine (and implicitly St. Thomas Aquinas) and those whom rely on Aristotelian concepts (of deferred ensoulment, whereby a boy is thought to be animated at 40 days and a girl at 90 days); that a feminist like Pelosi overlooks the obsolete, questionable basis for discriminating between gender in favor of trying to promote a viewpoint to retrofit a rationalization for her preexisting political support of unrestricted abortion is intellectually dishonest.

The Aristotelian theory of various stages of development of the fetus (vegetative soul/life, sensitive/animal soul, rational/human soul: a sort of evolution of life/souls) is, and has been, questioned by emerging science over the past few centuries. What Nancy Pelosi fails to tell listeners is that (1) Augustine's use of Aristotle did not influence the Church's pro-life stand during his lifetime and (2) Augustine never argued that abortion before ensoulment was morally acceptable; he simply argued it was a lesser sin. The Church has been consistently, repeatedly, throughout the history of the Church, regarded any elective abortion, past the moment of conception, as morally wrong. Period. Case closed. It's only varied in terms of when an abortion is considered murder, and only during certain periods when Aristotelian science influenced certain Catholic scholars and/or clergy. Elective abortion has never been accepted at any period, including the early Roman church, where abortion and infanticide were practiced. There is no support for the notion that early Christian women sought to rationalize abortion and infanticide to accommodate their acceptance in Roman society.

I use the term elective for a reason. There is a moral question that involves a situation when the mother and the child's lives are both materially at risk. (Note that pro-life forces are concerned that any such rare occurrences would be defined so loosely as to make any elective abortion restriction ineffective in practice.) Most of us who are pro-life would be willing to consider a legal exception for these circumstances where due diligence has been exhausted to save both lives and the mother is likely to survive with medical intervention.

The CINO's, however, are politically exploiting a reluctance of pro-lifers to accept a blank-check exception. They are being disingenuous, because they are uwilling to allow any real restrictions to a woman's right to abort her child. Do we allow abortion, because, say, the couple wants a boy and they're expecting a girl? Do we allow abortion so a young woman can continue to club at night and not be tied down by a kid? Do we allow abortion as a backstop because neither partner bothered to use contraception?

Nancy Pelosi, of course, trots out the tired argument of hypocrisy to pro-lifers resisting contraception. This is coming from a Catholic woman whom termed abstinence-only programs as "dangerous". Nancy, instead of using your position of influence to call on young people to engage in responsible sex within the context of marriage, something our shared Christian faith tells us to do, you decide that hey, kids are going to have sex regardless of what we say, and so let's spend taxpayer dollars to subsidize sex outside of marriage... (After all, kids can't afford condoms, the pill, etc. They can find ways to get booze, but not contraceptives.)

She then pays lip service about making abortion rare. Hillary Clinton and other Democrats have used the same smokescreen script to soften their pro-abortion-rights view. It will be child's play to expose their hypocrisy; if they ever try to put up an abortion funding of any kind, see how they react if pro-lifers introduce an amendment to limit such funding only to those cases where the mother's life is in danger. They are posturing.

Joe Biden, like any Democrat in Congress with national aspirations, takes his voting instructions on abortion from NARAL, not his parish priest. The idea that Barack Obama thinks he can appeal to Catholic voters to make up his current polling deficit by nominating a Catholic in Name Only to the ticket is a pipedream.