Dear Pup once said to me, “You know, I’ve spent my entire life time separating the Right from the kooks.”
Well, Chris separated from the Right… indeed.
More later.
UPDATE
Richard Miniter dropped by bloggers’ row and I asked him what did he make of the Buckley statement?
Richard says that Christopher Buckley went ot Hampshire College, and despite the Buckley name doesn’t have the Buckley ideas, and he swims with the intellectual elite that is given to fads.
We then talked about how there’s been a shift in the quality of intellectual and political elites. For instance, C. Buckley and others are taking astrology seriously. In other times common sense and learning were a basis for rationality, and an education meant you had read a set of books; now an education is a piece of paper.
“I feel bad for McCain,” said Sam Rodriguez, the president of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference and a prominent supporter of George W. Bush in 2004, who is neutral this year. “We find ourselves between the proverbial rock and the hard place. We really like John McCain. We really don’t like the Republican Party.”
Perhaps.
However, this assumes a couple of things:
1. That “Hispanics” vote as a block.
2. That “Hispanics” are unaware of Obama’s position on entrepeneurship. abortion, born-alive legislation, and gay marriage.
The article makes a good point,
And [McCain]’s been unable or unwilling to attack Obama—who was once thought to have taken a lethally liberal stance by supporting granting drivers licenses to illegal immigrants—from the right.
House Republican leader John A. Boehner of Ohio escalated the war on ACORN today, calling for it to be cut off from all federal money and going so far as to call for a ban on ACORN contracting with candidates for federal office.
ACORN, a community organizing group allied with Democrats, has been blamed by the GOP for pushing housing policies that Republicans say contributed to the housing crisis. It has been the subject of investigations for voter registration fraud and its Nevada offices were recently raided.
Here’s Boehner’s statement:
“Election cycle after election cycle, this organization has been at the forefront of breaking the law in order to promote their left-wing agenda. All the while, they have been the recipients of millions of dollars of federal funding through various federal programs and third-party groups. House Republicans took at stand recently to cut off funding to an ACORN slush fund created by their allies in the House Majority, but now more must be done.
“All federal funding to ACORN must be stopped. The ACORN slush fund must be disbanded. Sources of federal funding through the Department of Housing and Urban Development or any other agency must be stopped. Contracting for services between candidates for federal office and ACORN, as Senator Obama has done, must end. Now that the taxpayers own Fannie Mae, any funding from Fannie Mae’s nonprofit foundation to ACORN must stop.
“ACORN spent decades promoting the housing policies that brought America’s economy to the brink, and similarly over the years has committed fraud on our system of elections, making American voters question the fairness and accuracy of the exercise of their most fundamental right under the Constitution. Now it is time to cut off ACORN before it grows even more destructive.”
In North Carolina, where Obama has been running nonstop ads, ACORN has registered a record number of new voters, many of them suspicious. Statewide, Democrats are doing better than the GOP in new converts — even in traditionally Republican counties.
…
What does all this have to do with Obama, besides the fact that he’d be the beneficiary of most, if not all, of these new votes?
For starters, Obama paid ACORN, which has endorsed him for president, $800,000 to register new voters, payments his campaign failed to accurately report. (They were disguised in his FEC disclosure as payments to a front group called Citizen Services Inc. for “advance work.”)
What’s more, Obama worked as executive director of ACORN’s voter-registration arm, Project Vote, in 1992. Joined by two other community organizers on Chicago’s South Side, Obama conducted the voter-registration drive that helped elect Carol Moseley-Braun to the Senate that year.
The next year, 1993, Obama joined the civil-rights law firm Davis Miner Barnhill & Galland, where he sued the state of Illinois on behalf of ACORN to implement the federal “Motor Voter” law, which the GOP governor at the time refused to do. Then-Gov. Jim Edgar argued, presciently, that the Clinton law would invite voter fraud.
Ohio - ACORN tells Cuyahoga County’s election board that they can’t stop themselves from committing fraud.
Indiana - Over a thousand new applications from ACORN appear to investigators to be fraudulent, and that should be no surprise, since Indianapolis now has 105% of its population registered to vote.
You can listen to the podcast here.
Please note my next podcast will be on Tuesday
In today’s podcast I’ll be talking about Thomas Szyszkiewicz’s article, Nature as a Privileged Minority where he discusses the new Ecuadorian constitution.
Yes, Mother Nature is now a juridic person in Ecuador.
Chat’s open by 9:45AM Eastern, and the call-in number is 646 652-2639.
I saw some conservative blogs asserting that the New Party was founded by the Democratic Socialists of America. I’m not entirely clear on the proof of this. More than one DSA newsletter had a New Party Update, but one of those newsletters discussed “a proposal that Chicago DSA affiliate with the New Party” suggesting an affinity but no clear pre-existing close relationship. The newsletter said that the DSA decided to “explore affiliation” with the New Party, but also with another party. Clearly, they were fellow travelers, but I urge readers to read any assertions of a connection with a skeptical eye.
However, it is clear from the above links that Obama was a member of the New Party; and it is clear that the Democratic Socialists of America were particular fans of Obama’s. The Democratic Socialists endorsed Obama in 1996 and again in 2000 , saying:
As I have pointed out before, Obama’s associations and affiliations point to two issues:
On the judgement side, Obama worked for an extended period of time in two political projects with an unrepentant terrorist who travels to Chavista schools to advocate the overthrow of democracy.
On the experience side, Obama’s only real administrative experience track record is as dismal as it can get. $160 million of CAC money? gone.
And so is the $75,000 of Woods Fund money that went to Arafat’s crony Rashid Khalidi.
The problem is, the McCain campaign is out of ideas. It has not proposed any major new idea to provoke public discussion, to excite its base, or to give us all something to vote for. The Republicans appear to be out of gas, and I fear that it is too late to refill the tank. If John McCain offers new policy ideas now they will not be taken seriously because they will seem desperate.
If you doubt me, ask yourself this: What will the McCain administration do in its first 100 days? We know what Barack Obama will do — raise our taxes (or at least my taxes), go about restructuring the healthcare system, re-regulate business from the agencies, try to negotiate his way to peace European-style, accelerate the withdrawal from Iraq, and appoint judges that turn the Constitution upside down. Since I dislike all that stuff (except maybe the health care piece) I am going to vote for McCain, but I am still left with the question, what will John McCain do?
Interestingly, the person who may have that answer is Sarah Palin.
Nicolas Sarkozy won as a maverick in his own party running against both Chirac and the Socialists because he could tell you exactly what he was going to do. Obama’s promised hope, change and economic ruin. It’s time McCain spells out what he’s going to do.
