[Once again your BlaskaBlog was ranked #1 of Wisconsin's Most Influential Political blogs as measured by influence per posting, for two weeks (10-19 and 10-26) straight. I'm currently 15th.]
I am stressed out over two possibilities, come Tuesday:
- Barack Obama will win.
- Barack Obama will lose.
Indeed, Charlie Cook says it's over.
At this point, John McCain probably can't win without divine intervention. Say what you will about the campaign he has waged and the running mate he picked, but the collapse in credit markets and the stock market may very well have ended his chances of victory, notwithstanding anything he could have said or done differently. The senator from Arizona is a good man, who served his country admirably. And many would say that he deserved a better chance than he got.
I am afraid a President Obama will:
- Make Charles Lindbergh and John Nichols, with their protectionist, America First agenda, look like multi-nationalists
- Give labor unions free rein to bully workers with the card check scam that throws our tradition of secret ballots under the bus
- Dry up public discourse by reinstating the Orwellian-named "Fairness" Doctrine
- Give free reign to Pelosi, Waxman, Kucinich, Barney Frank et al. because Barack has never bucked his party
- Become the first pro-abortion president
- Practice "trickle up" economics he will redistribute your money [See Cal Thomas]
- Do exactly what his running mate suggested and serve as temptation to the axis of evil to test this unready president.
I am afraid Barack Obama will lose
After Bush prevailed in 2004 your BlaskaBlogger headed for the tall grass, such was the gnashing of teeth by people already pre-disposed to bitterness and paranoia (aka Liberals).
I've made the case before that bags of cement will be dropped from overpasses across the country if Obama loses.
I did Derrell Connor's program on WIBA Friday from 6:30 to 7:15 p.m. What a nice fellow! One of the best interviewers, laid back, intelligent, considerate. We had a real conversation. This guy could go far.
Derrell had just interviewed Jill Biden, the veep candidate's Missus, via telephone. Then the Blaskaman took the mic.
Of course, the first caller was furious that a conservative was allowed on Madison's airwaves. In between his shouting of epithets about "Fox" this and "Talk Radio" that, I tried to point out that those were the leavings from that liberal news media oligopoly of NY Times, Washington Post, ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC, CNN, AP., National Public Radio, Time, Newsweek (especially!) etc. [Listen about 15 minutes in]
But never mind that, why is this guy angry? His candidate is winning! My candidate is losing, if the polls are to be believed. I'm the one should be angry.
The other thing I got to worry about is those hordes of liberals streaming back into the U.S. of A. from Canada after eight years of self-imposed exile. How are we going to feed them all? Only solution is to spread the wealth.
Hal the computer from 2001 Space Odyssey had some good words of advice.
Deregulation?
Obama keeps saying the current financial crisis is "a final verdict on eight years of failed economic policies promoted by George Bush, supported by Senator McCain, a theory that basically says that we can shred regulations and consumer protections and give more and more to the most, and somehow prosperity will trickle down."
Could Mr. Obama really believe that the era of Sarbanes-Oxley was about letting "the market run wild"?
One had to look far and wide in the spring of 2002 to find anyone who thought the Sarbanes-Oxley law was an experiment in cowboy capitalism. For example, on its front page of April 25, 2002, the New York Times reported: "House and Senate negotiators agreed . . . on a broad overhaul of corporate fraud, accounting and securities laws aimed at curbing the rampant abuses that have shaken Wall Street . . . Some lawmakers called it the most sweeping securities legislation since the 1930s." -- Spitzer and Sarbox Were Deregulation?
Unhealthy Wisconsin
The Capital Times' irrepressible welfare entitlement defender Judith Davidoff wrote this in a Dec. 31, 2005 article about State Senate Democrats' "Healthy Wisconsin" $15 billion health insurance plan:
... Immigrants who qualify for the new program include those who are undocumented as well as those who are in the country legally, but haven't met the five-year residency bar for Medicaid.
(Understand, The Capital Times never uses the term "illegal immigrants." That would amount to journalism.) The former daily newspaper then editorially backed it as "the most serious health care reform proposal to be advanced in Wisconsin history."
Now the libs are crying "unfair" when political TV ads are calling various Democrat(ic) politicians on their support for Healthy Wisconsin. Aren't those Democrats proud of Healthy Wisconsin? Shouldn't they be touting their support for Healthy Wisconsin in their campaign lit? Or, if they oppose it, shouldn't they say so?
In fact, a well connected Democrat elevated to the judgeship in Jackson County has taken the extreme step of stopping political speech that would make that very point without even hearing the other side.
A judge's apparently unprecedented decision Saturday to order a halt to political ads before hearing from the ad's sponsors drew immediate criticism as an unfair restraint of free speech. -- Milwaukee Journal Sentinel 11-1-2008.
Progressive who?
Who does the Capital Times support to fill Dave Worzalla's seat on the County Board? One Brad Wolbert. I've linked to their endorsement. See if you can find anywhere the Progressive Dane news outlet's mention of Wolbert's political party. Yep, ol' Brad is Progressive Dane. The party of public park pissing.
So, why does the on-line blog cover up that essential fact? Could it be that PD's brand is a little damaged? It's been a long time since the CT has come to Brenda Konkel's defense, when it used to do so almost daily. Wolbert running against the Democrat(ic) Party-endorsed Jeremy Levin. (And why no outrage over the partisanship of a supposedly non-partisan office?)
Willie Horton, victim?
In the current Isthmus, on newsstands everywhere, is a review of a movie called, "Boogie Man." It is a retrospective of the late, great political mastermind, Lee Atwater, the political genius who directed George Bush Sr.'s 1988 presidential campaign. I interviewed Lee once and found him warm, quick-witted and immensely intelligent. Atwater, in the world of liberals, stands guilty of two things:
- Being a conservative Republican
- Being successful.
Now, you are permitted to be one or the other, but not both. It is the same toxic two-fer that damns WMC. That earned Ronald Reagan eternal enmity. That made Tommy Thompson the bete noir of such good liberals as Chuck Chvala, Marc Pocan, Ed Garvey, and Dave Zweifel.
In his review, Kent Williams writes:
Atwater's legacy will have ... a lot more to do with having figured out that if you tell a lie often enough it starts to acquire an aura of truth.
Lie? Central to Atwater's "whole sordid story," as Williams calls it, is the Willie Horton ad. Horton is the felon convicted of first-degree murder whom Michael Dukakis, as governor of Massachusetts, permitted weekend furloughs! Is that public policy above criticism?
Where is the lie? Willie Horton was serving a life sentence for murder, without possibility of parole, when Dukakis gave him a weekend off. Let's recount that Horton earned his sentence in the course of robbing a convenience store. After the 17-year-old clerk handed over all the money as instructed, the bastard stabbed him 19 times, leaving the boy to bleed to death. His body was found dumped into a trash can.
Nonetheless, Dukakis gave the criminal the weekend off. Having escaped to Maryland, Horton twice raped a woman after pistol-whipping, knifing, binding, and gagging her fiancé.
You will find none of this in Kent Williams' review nor, I surmise from his article, in the movie being reviewed.
Caught red-handed, the libs found a way to avoid defending an indefensible policy when they hit upon the race strategy. They could charge racism, as if race exonerated an incredibly wrong-headed public policy.
And let us remember that the original Atwater television commercial for Bush Senior featured three white men for every black man rotating through the prison turnstiles. An independent group subsequently produced its own ad using a still black and white photograph of the actual perpetrator. Still fair game. The point is that the guy was every bit as mean-looking as his rap sheet: this was not Bryant Gumbel, Danny Glover, or C.C. Sabathia.
What amazes me is how liberals choose their victims. Somehow, in the liberal pantheon of Sainted Victimhood, Michael Dukakis and Willie Horton are martyrs.
Willie Horton has resonance because the same usual suspects are crying "Willie Horton" as John McCain notes Obama's ties to unrepentant bomber William Ayers. As CNN's Lou Dobbs noted the other day, how come the news media is staking out Joe the Plumber's home and not Ayers'?
[Jeff Jacoby of the Boston Globe tells the whole story. And Willie Horton wasn't the only furlough, as this account written at the time attests!]
Filed under Old Business
I don't know if you noticed but the parents of slain UW student Brittany Zimmermann, brought suit against the landlord of her apartment.
Their suit claims the West Doty Street area was known to the landlord and to the authorities as being "in a part of the city of Madison known to be frequented by vagrants, panhandlers and criminals who preyed upon, harassed, and sought to victimize residents in that area," and should have led to better security.
Time to man up, Andy Olson. Bad Andy, you will recall, wanted me, the proprietor of Stately Blaska Manor, to apologize to the bums, drunks, vagrants, and public pissers despoiling our public spaces. Why would I ever do that?
No, Andy, maybe you should apologize to Mr. and Mrs. Zimmermann. Time to man up, you weasel.
