Thought for Today

We cannot but be astonished at the ease with which men resign themselves to ignorance about what is most important for them to know; and we may be certain that they are determined to remain invincibly ignorant if they once come to consider it as axiomatic that there are no absolute principles.

~~~~~ Frederic Bastiat

John McCain – A Personal Glimpse

Ann Landers wrote, "The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good." Here's an almost forgotten story illustrating how John McCain lives by that creed: The Great McCain Story You've Probably Forgotten

What an old anecdote about Mo Udall in the hospital reveals about McCain's character.
By Michael Lewis

Back in 1996 and 1997, before John McCain was a presidential candidate or object of media fascination, Michael Lewis followed the Arizona senator around as he campaigned for Bob Dole and worked to reform campaign-finance laws. Lewis' pieces for the New Republic and the New York Times Magazine portrayed McCain as a passionate, cantankerous, astonishingly honest political character who frequently acted in ways that brought him no political gain. In the recent back-and-forth over whether McCain is a regular politician or a true outlier, we remembered a wonderful moment from Lewis' 1997 New York Times Magazine profile of McCain, "The Subversive." The passage below comes at the very end of Lewis' article.

Read it and learn about a man who doesn't need to fake good character because he personifies it.

Hat tip: Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit, who in turn got it from one of his readers.

"Hope and Change" vs. Reality

In his inimitable style, Mark Steyn explains what's at stake on November 4th in Obama in 2-D. Here's an excerpt:

In his Wednesday-night infomercial, Obama declared that his “fundamental belief” was that “I am my brother’s keeper.” Back in Kenya, his brother lives in a shack on 12 bucks a year. If Barack is his brother’s keeper, why couldn’t he send him a ten-dollar bill and near double the guy’s income? The reality is that Barack Obama assumes the government should be his brother’s keeper, and his aunt’s keeper. Why be surprised by that? For 20 years in Illinois, Obama has marinated in the swamps of the Chicago political machine and the campus radicalism of William Ayers and Rashid Khalidi. In such a world, the redistributive urge is more or less a minimum entry qualification.

You'll definitely want to read the rest of it.

It's too bad that those who would benefit most from the wisdom in Mark Steyn's article are least likely to read it. Instead, if they haven't already Early Voted their way to Obamatopia, they'll eagerly go lemming-like to the polls in two days and give away their birthright.

In a just world, only those who are foolish enough to believe in the false comic-book persona sold to them by Obama the Master Con Man and his enablers would pay the price for their gullibility. In the real world, though, that's not the way it works. Should they succeed in elevating their pseudo-messiah to the White House, we're all going to be learning a painful lesson about reality.

For three plausible scenarios of what an Obama administration might look like four years hence, see Jonah Goldberg's OBAMA 2012: FOUR YEARS LATER, Nicole Gelinas' OBAMA 2012: A TERM OF FI$CAL PAIN, and Ralph Peters' OBAMA 2012: HIS TRIUMPHS ABROAD.

Also, if you haven't already done so, check out what Obama had to say in a January 17, 2008 interview with the San Francisco Chronicle that has just come to light. See Coal official calls Obama comments 'unbelievable' in the West Virginia Record and Obama Called Out for Comments about Bankrupting Coal Industry from WSAZ, then listen to the audio for yourself.



Note that in addition to his revealing comments about coal, the source of nearly half of our electricity, he also states that he wants the cost of electricity to skyrocket. Taken together with his stated intention to move us away from gas and diesel and toward electricity to power our vehicles, it would appear that Obama's ultimate aim is to reduce our lifestyle to third-world conditions in some sort of quixotic quest for "fairness."

I wonder what Obama's fans will think of him then. It will be scant comfort to be able to tell them "I told you so!"

Thought for Today

The nation which forgets its defenders will be itself forgotten.

~~~~~ Calvin Coolidge

Putting Israel At Risk

Israeli author Naomi Ragen tell us about Learning the Hard Way. Here's a pull quote:

I know that I am helpless to stop this juggernaut towards disaster. Perhaps it is America's turn to experience first hand what we in Israel experienced: the consequences of electing a leadership which does not have the best interests of the country in mind; which has an agenda that has nothing to do with those interests. Sometimes people have to make horrible mistakes in order to learn that they are horrible mistakes. In Israel, this included over 25,000 terrorist attacks. Children dying in the streets. Being afraid to walk to the bus stop or enter a store.

Kyle-Anne Shiver read it, then wrote this Open Letter to Americans Who Love Israel. It begins like this:

Please, dear reader, do call me a skeptic; I am one. I started learning the price of gullibility in first grade. I traded my chocolate chip cookies to a third grader for his promise of a new pencil sharpener at recess. He lied; I learned.

My grandfather helped. He taught me to “always consider the source” before believing a promise and to never place my trust in an untrustworthy person. I lived and I learned.

Now that I’m well into my sixth decade of life, I’m a very hard sell. And the higher the stakes riding on the promise, the more care I put into my decision to proffer my trust.

When it comes to Israel and her survival as a free nation, the stakes are so high that it behooves even the most trusting American to examine closely the words and records of our candidates in this regard. And, sadly, we are forced to admit that the only reason Joe Biden had to make the reassuring statement above to Jews in Florida is that his candidate, Barack Obama, has the most tenuous, nearly nonexistent, and utterly unreliable “record” of any candidate ever to seek the presidency.

Especially in the arena of foreign affairs. Especially with regard to Israel and the Palestinians.

If you care at all about the fate of Israel, you'll want to read both columns carefully.

"Mom, how can that guy say that about you? He's never even met you."

Wondering what Sarah Palin is really like? For a revealing personal glimpse, check out this interview with Elizabeth Vargas on "20/20": Sarah Palin 'Not Going to Let Women Down'.

Getting Out the Vote – Good or Bad?

For a number of years, I have been of the opinion that Get Out the Vote drives were at best a waste of time, and at worst positively harmful. In general, those of us who are sufficiently motivated to register and vote all by ourselves also have sufficient initiative to make some effort to inform ourselves before voting. So what's the point of going out and rounding up the apathetic and the ignorant, registering them, and transporting them to the polls to vote upon matters about which they know nothing?

We all know the answer to that one, don't we?

Well, it seems that I'm not the only one who has been harboring such politically incorrect thoughts. In A Duty Not To Vote?, John Stossel makes an excellent case for the argument that the country would be much better served if the apathetic and the ignorant would just stay home on Election Day:

I keep hearing how important it is for everyone to vote.

Let me be politically incorrect and say that maybe some people shouldn't vote.

I know I'm swimming against the tide. Get-out the-vote groups now register young people at rock concerts. HeadCount cofounder Andy Bernstein told me: "We registered over a 100,000 people. It is so imperative that this generation's voice is heard."

But wait. Is that really a good idea? Many kids don't know much. At a HeadCount concert, "20/20" asked some future voters, "How many senators are there?" One said 12, another 16, and another 64. One girl guessed, "50 per state."

Most kids didn't know what Roe v. Wade was about. "Roe vs. Wayne?" asked one. "Segregation, maybe?" "Where we declared bankruptcy?"

Headcount's Marc Brownstein concedes, "there's a lot of uninformed voters out there." But he argued:

"Democracy is not about taking the most educated portion of the society and having them decide who's going to run the entire society. Democracy is about every individual having a voice."

I suggested that when people don't know anything, maybe it's their civic duty not to vote.

Go read the rest of it, and see if John Stossel's argument makes sense to you.

Just Look

From Gerald Van der Leun at the incomparable American Digest:

Just Look

"In his world … intentions and words do all the heavy lifting."

In Evil Under the Sun – Barack Obama and American exceptionalism, Noemie Emery presents a sobering assessment of Obama's worldview.

Yes, way back on June 17th, I predicted that Obama's Going to Lose, and I still believe it. But if I'm wrong, we're in for a very rough ride during the next few years.

More on the Folly of Early Voting

The other day, I wrote Early Voting – A Monumentally Bad Idea. This morning, over on Pajamas Media, Tom Blumer expresses the same thought, though far more eloquently, in Early Voting a Travesty.

It is becoming more obvious with each election cycle that that the widespread adoption of no-excuses-needed early voting has been a big mistake.

Pollsters are now revealing exit poll results to the public weeks ahead of what is still quaintly referred to as “Election Day.” They do this by breaking out their results between “early voters” and “future voters.” The former amounts to de facto exit polling, which can all too easily be designed by an unscrupulous pollster to influence the latter. Even worse, state officials are getting into the act. One such example occurred Saturday in Colorado:

"Slightly more Democrats than Republicans have voted in Colorado, either by mail or at early-voting polling places.

"State officials said Friday that 219,000 Democrats have cast their ballots, compared with 215,000 Republicans and 131,000 unaffiliated voters."

Doesn’t anyone care about how early voting is corrupting the process of free and fair elections?

Yes, Tom, a few of us do care. If you share our concern, go read the rest of Tom's column and see what he has to say.