Adrift on an Ocean of Lies

By Alan Caruba

“The men the American public admires most extravagantly are the daring liars; the men they detest most violently are those who try to tell them the truth.”  -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)

One of the insights that age provides is that we are all adrift on an ocean of lies from the moment we are born to when we pass from this world. So much of what we initially “know”, taught to us at home and in school, broadcast via newspapers, radio and television, in the workplace, and, in particular, requiring us to make decisions about the politicians we select to govern in our name, are lies.

The British Prime Minister, Benjamin Disraeli, categorized them as “Lies, damned lies, and statistics.”

Lies and lying, however, may be the natural order of life because even nature employs lies when various species devise ways to camouflage themselves either as a means to deceive and lure prey or to avoid becoming prey.

The prevalence of lies in the affairs of men and nations accounts for why the U.S. has a CIA and a NSA, two giant intelligence and counter-intelligence operations. It is why a third branch of our government is the judiciary.

Americans are now experiencing an avalanche of lies in the form of political ads, media reporting intended to sway the outcome of the forthcoming elections, and the pronouncements and predictions of various politicians and pundits. Not all are lying, but it is safe to presume that most are.

The rise of talk radio and the popularity of personalities such as Rush Limbaugh are based on a hunger for the truth. The revelation that National Public Radio has a deliberate leftist agenda enraged many who genuinely enjoy its programs.

The great anger driving the midterm elections is directly traceable to the lies of the President, his administration, and the Democrat leadership in Congress. Beyond and behind these lies is a mortgage banking system that had been in place for years leading up to the moment that the critical housing market collapsed. The “American dream” of a home must still be earned and paid for. There is no free lunch.

Simply said, making loans to people who were never expected to repay them, turning around and selling those mortgages to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, two government entities who in turn “bundled” those bad loans and sold them as securities to banks and investment house was, in hindsight, a system that had to fail at some point.

Passing a “financial reform” act that did not mention Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, while vastly expanding the Securities and Exchange Commission only compounded the lies.

The elections are about the lies told to sell Obamacare, to hide the real numbers of unemployed, to shut down oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, and to insanely increase the national debt by borrowing more in two years than all previous administrations combined had done since George Washington was president.

The lies came at a dizzying pace from the day President Obama was sworn into office.

He told the world that America is not a Christian nation.

He said that “green jobs” were an answer to no jobs.

He said that Medicare “reform” was not a lie designed to implement a governmental takeover of healthcare, one-sixth of the nation’s economy.

He said that General Motors and Chrysler were taken over as wards of the federal government instead of being permitted to reorganize (shake loose of union demands) under the normal process of bankruptcy.

He said the stimulus act was a solution to a stagnant economy when it was, in fact, a laundry list of Democrat earmarks, a “porkulus” bill.

He pushed for a Cap-and-Trade act to sell “carbon credits” as the lies about global warming were crashing around the world. This is the year that the Chicago Climate Exchange will end carbon trading.

The President who dazzled so many with soaring oratory during his campaign proved so inept at explaining his actions that his formal press conferences virtually ceased while his access to the nation’s print and broadcast media increased.

His use of Teleprompters became a national joke.

In a world where lies and the use of violence have always been a driving force throughout human history, where greed is instinctual, we should not be surprised at the folly with which we are surrounded, but we can and must strive to educate ourselves about the truths that are essential to the survival of our form of governance and the future of America.

We can learn that humans have nothing to do with the Earth’s climate; that nothing compares with or can replace the original, totally natural biofuels—oil, coal, and natural gas—that socialism/communism always enslaves and always fails; and that telling the truth is always superior to telling a lie.

© Alan Caruba, 2010

Shouting Racism, the Last Resort of Scoundrels

Today's Prelutsky Quote and Another Call for Obama's Resignation

By Alan Caruba

One of my favorite blogger/commentators is Burt Prelutsky. A Hollywood denizen, he is a conservative among crazed liberals. He is also one of the funniest writers around these days, having honed his talent writing for many famed sitcoms. Here's the lead paragraph to his latest post:

"I believe it was Freud who was first got credit for saying he didn’t know what women wanted. Frankly, I don’t think he was half-trying. Quite simply, women want a man who is rich, handsome, sexy, is as interested in fabrics and color as they are, who can get weepy at sunsets, tear up at Judy Garland singing “Over the Rainbow,” and whose favorite movie is “The English Patient.” In short, they’re looking for a very successful interior decorator. I say, good luck to them. But it’s no wonder that so many married women feel they wound up settling."

Another blogger friend is J.D. Longstreet, a nom de plume for a true southern gentleman and fire-breathing conservative. His commentary today calls for President Obama's resignation and quotes from my June 2009 commentary that suggested early in Obama's first term that he was a disaster. I suspect Longstreet and I are going to be joined by many others in the weeks and months ahead.

The Internet has challenged the mainstream media and is contributing to the loss of circulation among newspapers and news magazines. It has transformed the political process. We are fortunate to have talented men and women whose voices now reach millions without being subject to the media gatekeepers.

Additions to our Website and Blog Roll

Warning Signs has added two other blogs to our links. They are The Freedom Post by one of our own "family" of readers, "The Capitalist", and Tom Nelson by, well, Tom Nelson. The latter is one of the best blogs following the intrigues of the environmental movement and their fellow travelers. The Freedom Post is a lively blog on political personalities, events and trends.

I recommend them both to you, along with the others listed.

Forcing Out Obama

By Alan Caruba

Permit me to indulge in a bit of wishful thinking. Not quite a prediction, but a possible scenario that would remove President Obama from office before he does further damage to the nation. History provides a template.

Americans survived the Great Depression despite the fact that the successive Roosevelt administrations did exactly what the present-day Obama administration is doing; prolonging it by raising taxes, increasing the deficit, and spending wildly on social programs.

The difference in the 1930s was that the only news Americans could get was their daily newspaper—as liberal then as they are today. News magazines were still a relatively new concept. The radio was a primary source and the Movietone News in the form of newsreels if you went to the movies. There was, of course, no television.

As a result, Roosevelt with his “fireside chats”, all carefully scripted in the same way Obama will not speak publicly without his TelePrompter, was able to convince people that expanding government and the fact that the economy just never really recovered, was just a passing phase.

In the meantime, the FDR administration sponsored all manner of make-work projects in addition to some useful infrastructure ones. The problem then as now is that all those projects had to be paid for with taxes. That meant Americans had less money to spend on their own needs, to start new businesses or expand existing ones. Insanely, industries were required by law to collude to set prices and one could actually go to jail for offering a product or service for less!

Roosevelt was not a fan of Wall Street or corporate executives whom he frequently called economic “malefactors.” In his personal life, all of his business schemes lost money and, although he had acquired a law degree, he wasn’t good at that profession. Politics was his métier and he was very good at that. Not until World War II came along was the American economy able to dig itself out of the same deep hole in which we find ourselves today.

As this is being written, joblessness has hit a 25 year high. The Dow is plunging and neither Obama nor Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner can open their mouths without making it go lower. There’s one sure sign of distress and distrust; few people want to join the top ranks of his administration.

Thanks to the Watergate scandal, in August 1974 Sen. Barry Goldwater and a delegation of Washington politicos paid a visit to then-President Richard M. Nixon and in effect handed him a letter of resignation to sign. Nixon was gone in days. He avoided impeachment.

Jerry Ford took over and was then replaced by the very toothy Jimmy Carter. It took Carter a bit longer to lose the confidence of the American people, but it was thorough and complete by the time he was defeated by Ronald Reagan. Carter was an idiot, but he wasn’t deliberately trying to destroy the economy.

Bill Clinton managed to avoid being impeached and still skates by with all that Bubba charm, but it might well be that senators didn’t want to have to deal with a “President Gore” if Clinton was removed from office.

Now let’s look at the future. No other President in the history of the nation has lost the confidence of the people as swiftly as Obama. Forget the polls. Ask your friends, family and co-workers. That’s the best poll.

There will always be true believers for whom reality never intrudes, but it has not escaped anyone’s attention that even the worshipful media is beginning to ask why things are going so badly. so fast, and beginning to blame Obama.

The answer for the swift decline is that Obama is a pathological narcissist and dedicated socialist who has surrounded himself for the most part with former Clinton operatives. Obama is, plainly speaking, a liar. Increasingly, the adoration heaped upon him by his supporters is beginning to resemble the same as that in the 1930s which led the Germans down the path to war, ruin, and the abomination of the Holocaust.

The key factor, however, is that these are not the 1930s. These are times in which everyone is connected to each other, the blogosphere, and a broad range of news media. The national mood coalesces in weeks, not months or years as in the past.

Obama is running out of time. Politically, the 2010 midterm elections are just around the corner and Democrats in the House and those in the Senate up for reelection know that Obama will put them all in the ranks of the unemployed. The anger directed at Congress is palpable. The White House will see increasing desertions as congressmen and women refuse to goosestep off the cliff for him

So here’s my wishful thinking. At some point early in 2010 a delegation of Congress critters will to show up in the Oval Office and hand the resident lunatic a resignation letter to sign. Some plausible excuse would be made to cover his exit. No doubt it would be hastened if Obama was confronted with evidence of misdeeds from the Chicago political cesspool in which he thrived.

If they don’t force his departure, the 2010 elections will likely repeat the 1994 turnover of Congress as voters of all descriptions elect any Republican candidate on the ticket.

In three months Obama has accomplished what some thought was impossible. He has made us nostalgic for George W. Bush.

The Academy Awards Farce

By Alan Caruba

First off, let me say that I did not watch the 81st Academy Awards. I watched “Patton” for the 172nd time because George C. Scott gave a great performance in a movie that clearly acknowledged the barbarity of war while also acknowledging that it is often the only way to defeat an evil, totalitarian regime.

I didn’t watch for another reason, a personal one. I went to high school with Frank Langela in the 1950s and can recall the skinny kid who was a member of the Parnassian Club along with other aspiring actors. In our 1955 yearbook, Frank was remembered for “his ability to make people laugh, his love for Italian lasagna, and those adlibs that livened up Senior Play rehearsals.” I remember Frank because I was the student stage manager at the time.

Frank was born to be an actor and his performance in “Frost/Nixon” deserved an Oscar. I think that among the reasons he didn’t receive it was that he was portraying one of the Left’s favorite bogymen. I guarantee you that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton would not have just been in China if Nixon had not opened up that nation to its potential as a trading partner.

Instead the Best Actor award went to Sean Penn who portrayed the slain openly gay mayor of San Francisco. Sean Penn who could not run fast enough to Saddam Hussein’s Iraq to defend that psychopath or down to Venezuela to embrace Hugo Chavez. Penn is the quintessential Hollywood Leftist and that is why he got the award. I am pretty sure it wasn’t because “Milk” was a box office blockbuster because it wasn’t. Penn did get one thing right when he addressed the audience saying, "You Commie homo-loving sons of guns."

I used to do PR for Actors Equity and it is a tough profession. Most of that union’s members are out of work on any given day. I came to know quite a few actors, many famous faces from former times and, while there were surely some who were intelligent and would have been successful in any job, the fact is that people become actors in order to escape their own lives and enter into the make believe of fictional ones. Occasionally, between the screenwriter, the director, and the actor, we get films that inspire us; nothing wrong with that.

What is wrong is turning an event like the Academy Awards into a political or social platform. If I want politics, I can turn on the news. I don’t need it, nor want it in a film.

A case in point is HBO’s “Taking Chance”, a film based on the true story of a Marine Lt. Colonel who sees the name of a lance corporal killed in action in Iraq who came from the same town where he grew up. He volunteers to escort the body from Dover Air Force Base to where he is to be buried in Idaho.

What we witness is the deep regard and respect rendered to each casualty of war by both the military and by civilians, some of them veterans, along the journey. It is not a polemic about whether the war was right or wrong. It was about the sacrifice that warriors—mostly young men—make for their nation because they believe in what that nation stands for. It’s a superb film and cast led by Kevin Bacon. Don’t miss it.

The Academy Awards have become a farce. It’s sad because I loved going to the movies when I was growing up. I don’t go any more.

The Shortest Honeymoon on Record

By Alan Caruba

This is likely to be the shortest “honeymoon” on record for a new administration.

The news that former Senator Tom Daschle has withdrawn his name from consideration to be the Secretary of Health is another bombshell to hit. The news that the new Secretary of Treasury, Timothy Geithner, had problems doing his own tax return just barely skated by the confirmation process. Grownups knew that he had cheated on his taxes until he was caught.

Whoever is nominated for Health and Human Services, they are going to have to convince Americans that a government that couldn’t respond effectively to Hurricane Katrina is perfectly competent to take over the nation’s health care system. Good luck with that!

Meanwhile, just below the radar screen, Nancy Killefer, who failed for a year and a half to pay employment taxes on household help, withdrew her candidacy to be the first chief performance officer for the federal government.

The only comparable meltdown I can recall was Bill Clinton’s first weeks in office when he set off the “gays in the military” bomb that went so terribly wrong for him so terribly fast that he scrambled to come up with “Don’t ask, don’t tell” to get away from it.

President Obama’s decision to give his first formal interview to Al-Arabia, a major Middle Eastern television channel, did not go well. He came off as so weak that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad fell all over himself to get to the nearest microphone to demand that the new administration apologize for past “crimes” against Iran. Not a good start for a man who had already been described as “a house Negro” by Osama bin Laden’s right hand man, Ayman al-Zawahiri.

Overriding everything else, however, is the astonishing $819 billion “stimulus” bill that doesn’t promise to stimulate anything except the Democrat’s penchant for “earmarks” galore. Economists have denounced it along with anyone else who could find a media outlet.

Even the European Union let it be known that its “buy American” mandate was a very bad idea in the era of globalization where every nation’s economy depends on its ability to export goods, especially to the United States of America.

Nancy Pelosi has been running around defending millions for a program about sexually transmitted diseases and, by extension, insuring that fewer new Americans are born because in her view it would put a strain on the economy. Grandma Pelosi’s pronouncements have not been well received.

Cutting the Defense Department’s budget at a time the U.S. is still engaged in two wars has struck some people as a very bad idea, too. All we need now is another announcement by Sen. Harry Reid that “The war is lost.”

Just how tone-deaf are Obama and the Democrat leadership in Congress? And just how smart are those Republicans who have finally discovered their backbones by unanimously opposing the so-called stimulus bill? We may know soon enough when the 2010 elections are held.

Perhaps the most surprising aspect of these events has been the sudden collapse of Obamamania that extends even to the mainstream media who saw it as their duty to get him elected. Buyer’s remorse has set in very swiftly except among the totally brain-dead.

If the feeling spreads that Obama is simply unqualified for the job or overwhelmed by it, it is going to be one of the most difficult presidencies since that of Abraham Lincoln who wasn’t even sworn into office by the time several southern States had already met to declare they were seceding from the union.

The ultimate irony of all this is that Obama’s mastery of the Internet to raise gobs of money for his campaign is that he is only now discovering that the Internet community is equally capable of examining every aspect of every proposal he makes to “change” America into something most Americans don’t want.

The Endless Inauguration

By Alan Caruba

I am the last person you want to invite to a party. I am almost always the first to leave. There’s something about a whole bunch of people getting together to celebrate anything that doesn’t work for me.

I am one of those who far prefer a small group of people, perhaps no more than three couples, who can exchange their thoughts and points of view without having to shout over loud music or, worse, to pretend to be happy if they’re not.

That’s why I am already “partied-out” with the inauguration, not because it isn’t a historic occasion, but because it already seems to have gone on for too long when, in fact, it will not officially and formally occur until Tuesday.

It may have something to do, for example, with the fact that Time Magazine has put a portrait of President-elect Obama on its cover thirteen times in the passed year. That’s just stupid.

I can live with the fact that my political party’s candidate lost. I wasn’t that thrilled with him to begin with and, apparently, neither were several million Republicans who simply stayed home on Election Day. I am not one of those people who think that the nation is in great peril just because the other guy won.

I do think that many of the policies that will carried out in the next four years by the Obama administration will illustrate once again why liberals should never been allowed to be in charge. To be fair, however, the last eight years of Republicans turned out to be a nearly complete renunciation of the party’s principles. Let’s face it, they deserved to lose.

To return to my complaint of the day—if I am not cranky, you need to check my pulse—all the media coverage of every single aspect leading up to the event seems to demonstrate just how much those about to acquire power can lead this adoring media around to ensure hour upon hour of vapid reporting.

Monday will be no better and, of course, Tuesday will encompass the actual event, plus the parade, plus the many gala balls, plus whatever else is deemed momentous.

Only in America, a nation already engulfed by one of the worst financial situations in modern times, could we witness millions spent on an inaugural celebration and its attendant events.

I would have preferred a more subdued atmosphere, minus the theatrics of a train ride from Philadelphia to Washington, D.C., with a stop at Wilmington to pick up the Vice President-elect. The incoming President seems to need huge crowds on a daily basis and I am sure will love hearing “Hail to the Chief” everywhere he goes.

I will, of course, watch the actual inaugural ceremonies. There are moments in the nation’s history that must not be ignored. In 1963 I watched Dr. Martin Luther King deliver his “I have a dream” speech from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. I wish he could have been here for this inauguration.

Somehow, for all the criticism raised against America, we seem always able to utterly confound our critics and our enemies. That’s something worth celebrating.

Republican Remorse

By Alan Caruba

Just barely a week passed the election, a tsunami of Republican remorse is sweeping over the party and those who identify themselves as its members. It’s not pretty, but it is all too human and all too necessary if the GOP is not to remain in the political wilderness any longer than necessary.

For those of us who quite simply underestimated the charisma of Barack Obama, the words “President-elect” are jarring. We were so sure that John McCain could pull out a victory or, at the very least, were praying for some kind of miracle. There are, however, no miracles in politics, only votes, and in our system they have the final say.

It was, however, impossible to ignore the huge crowds that came out for the man we mockingly called the Messiah or “The One.” The contrast between the cool, self-assured Obama and McCain, particularly during the debates, was striking. If you turned off the sound, what you saw was McCain with his eyes blinking furiously, his hands flailing the air, and that smile of his that seemed to beg people to understand that he really was a very nice man.

McCain, who we had reason to believe would be a polished campaigner by now appeared to have no idea how to run. Maybe it was just the crushing realization that all the fates had conspired against him in this last hurrah. He had the burden of George W. Bush, a failing economy, and even a hurricane that delayed the opening of the Republican convention. He even believes in global warming despite the fact the Earth has been cooling for the past decade.

And, let’s say it—he ignored the fact that Obama had vanquished the powerful Clinton faction within the Democrat Party to thwart a woman candidate who had demonstrated considerable popularity of her own. So what did McCain do? He selected a woman as his vice president running mate! In retrospect, that was a form of political suicide, but at this point disappointed Republicans are actually bandying around the notion of running her in 2012. No, sorry, time for Gov. Palin to go back to Alaska. And stay there.

Having gained control of Congress in 1994 after forty years of Democrat dominance, Republicans went after Clinton with a vengeance and he “triangulated” by adopting programs that he now claims were his! Let us be gracious and say that the Democrats put forth two utterly lame candidates in Gore and Kerry. Were it not for 9/11, George W. Bush would not have his name—writ large—into the history books temporarily chasing the Taliban out of Afghanistan and invading Iraq.

As it is, it does not take a degree in economics to know that eight years of profligate spending and borrowing, topped by a war that is now into its fifth year, must be judged severely in retrospect. They cost Republicans the election.

In the near term, the Republican Party has to begin to stand for something other than horrible fiscal policies, bad military judgment coupled with a foreign policy that angered allies and enemies alike, and a hubris that has cost us dearly.

It should be said, however, that the nation has been so evenly divided politically for decades that whatever changes occurred in the red and blue map of the nation are more likely temporary shifts than long term predictions. If Democrats can return John Murtha to office and Republicans can re-elect a convicted Ted Stevens, anything is possible.

If President Obama turns out to be a pragmatist, he may just surprise a lot of people who have seen him up to now as a dedicated socialist with plans to reshape America, but the truth is that Americans has been adopting socialism for a very long time.

It goes back to the 1930s and 40s with FDR and moves forward unrelentingly through the all the presidencies and every Congress since. Most recently, there was the costly addition of a prescription program to Medicare that was advocated and passed by Republicans. Massive farm policy giveaways have been around long since they became unnecessary and wasteful. Et Cetera!

Just as Democrats could not believe they were being defeated by the likes of George W. Bush to the point of insisting he “stole” it (pretty funny for folks whose Chicago machine is famous for such tactics), Republicans need to take a deep breath and begin to formulate some policies that an entirely new generation of conservatives can agree upon.

We need to be less of a war party. Americans are quite thoroughly sick of war and military engagements. They were sick of it after ten years in Vietnam and they are sick of Iraq.

We need to move beyond abortion as the sole litmus test of political purity. It is the law of the land and has been now since the 1960s. Some battles, even the most noble, are just simply lost. Even Republicans have abortions.

We need to become the party of energy. We need to insist that America’s vast oil, natural gas, and coal reserves be tapped, along with the building of many more nuclear plants for the energy America will need by 2030. There is no such thing as energy “independence”, but there is a need for sensible energy policies, something Democrats have thwarted for decades.

Republicans have to fight to protect the Internet and talk radio from censorship. The Democrats hate both, except to use the former to raise campaign funding.

I could go on, but the message is obvious. WE LOST. GET OVER IT!

We had weaker candidates, weaker arguments to address the fiscal crisis that included a massive “bailout” using the public treasury to literally buy interest in banks and insurance companies (sounds socialist to me). Now we’re being asked to do the same for some auto manufacturers who bargained poorly with their unions and built cars a lot of people didn’t want to buy.

Republicans need to renew their commitment to smaller government, real fiscal prudence, fewer foreign entanglements (can you say ‘United Nations’?) and, of course, pride in and adherence to the U.S. Constitution.

Or, as one wag has suggested, “We’re all Democrats now.”

Green Drivel, Green Deceit

By Alan Caruba

We are all so besieged by the drivel that Greens put out daily that it is easy to forget how idiotic it is and, in many cases, how deceitful it is.

I recently received an emailed news release with the following headline: “If you don’t know what to buy for the holidays, the Better World Shopping Guide will help you decide.” The Guide is described as “a must-have guide for the socially and environmentally responsible consumer or those who want to improve their awareness.”

The guide purports to evaluate 1,000 companies and 75 product categories to determine “a product’s value by price point and its cost to society…” This, my friends, is bull feathers! When you are buying Christmas gifts this year, buy something the recipients will actually enjoy. If you’re in the mall trying to figure out which product threatens all life on Earth, you are certifiably insane.

Slowly, but surely, people are beginning to realize that the environmental movement is not about saving the Earth, but about destroying everything that passes for industry, business, and the enhancement of human life through the use of every kind of energy for transportation and other purposes.

An example of this is a recent editorial in New Scientist magazine titled, “The Folly of Growth: How to stop the economy killing the planet.” Using the “environment” to hide behind, all manner of lies are put forth to justify everything from preposterous schemes such as “cap and trade” of “greenhouse gas emissions”, also sometimes called “pollution credits”, to the claim that we have to scrap the most effective means of generating electricity, coal and nuclear, for wind turbines and solar panels.

The famous line from the movie about the Watergate scandal was “Follow the money.” Who will get rich selling “carbon/pollution credits”? Al Gore and his friends. Who benefits from efforts such as a proposition on the ballot in San Francisco to require that only “clean” energy be used? The owners and investors in wind and solar energy.

The bonus for the Greens is that these and other schemes will impoverish the economy worse than any sub-prime mortgage meltdown. If you have to pay out millions for “carbon credits”, as utilities around the nation are already doing, the person who gets socked with the cost is ultimately to consumer.

Making energy expensive is the single most effective way of wrecking the economy.

To achieve this goal, the nation’s environmental organizations are pouring millions into getting Barack Obama elected. The trade publication, Greenwire, has published an article that affirms the findings of Sen. James Inhofe’s (R-OK) investigation into the multi-million dollar funding and partisan political activities of environmental groups. They are non-profits that are not supposed to engage in partisan political activities, but as the article points out, “In every instance, the environmental groups are backing the Democrat.”

Whether it’s what to buy for Christmas, the increased cost of the electricity from your utility or national politics, the Greens are involved via propaganda, bizarre schemes to undermine the nation’s energy needs, or who gets elected.

You are being played for a chump while the Greens pick your pockets.

When You and Everyone Else You Know Are Crazy

By Alan Caruba

We are now entering the final two full weeks of the campaigns and, if you feel like you and everyone else you know is crazy, you’re right.

Elections bring out the worst in everyone because, without close friends and family with whom we can share our real feelings, we are required to be very polite and tolerant of the views of everyone who is voting for the other guy who is not your choice.

To make matters worse, if you are passionately devoted to one candidate, getting through the final two weeks requires that you mute all of the other candidate’s commercials, stop listening to the news on television, and read only the sports section of the daily newspaper.

The feeling that you are being manipulated does not come from some weird paranoid delusion. You are being manipulated. That’s what elections are all about. That’s what all those promises are about. That’s why you think the candidate you are not voting for thinks you’re a moron.

By the way, both candidates think you’re a moron.

This election will be further exacerbated by (1) the vast contempt voters have for Congress in general and George W. Bush in particular; (2) the vague feeling that either candidate is unqualified for the job based on their positions on the issues; and (3) the sure feeling that the nation is in a Recession that is going to get worse.

You’d have to be nuts not to be nuts by the time Election Day arrives.

Many voters have been nuts for a very long time. They include people (1) who think the Earth is warming even though it has been in a cooling cycle for a decade; (2) those who think that electricity that is generated by coal or nuclear power is a bad thing even though those two sources currently produce over 70% of all electricity; and (3) those who think a Black President will convince the rest of the world that America is not as racist as every other nation.

Invariably, all families have people who will vote for the other candidate. This ruins the Thanksgiving Day dinner every election year.

The point being that elections are a period of mass psychosis in which candidates make appeals to the reason that has long since deserted us after months of listening to the candidates, their surrogates, and the pundits telling us what the polls mean and which states are in play.

Since the craziness affects Democrats and Republicans equally, the few people who dislike both parties and their candidates are left to decide who wins for the rest of us.

Will things change if Obama is elected? Yes, they will get worse. Will things change if McCain is elected? Yes, they will get worse. It’s only a matter of degree.

Too Close to Call

By Alan Caruba

As someone who gives praise to a merciful God for the invention of the Internet connection to my banking information, I will not pretend that I understand much about the arithmetic of polls except that they seem to be wrong a great deal of the time.

There are so many variables regarding how a poll is conducted, the respondents, the nature of the questions asked, and the fact such things are then quantified and expected to be “accurate” in any sense of that word has got to qualify as a miracle.

To put it another way, people change their minds all the time. The candidates are essentially pitching their message at this point to the great, messy mob of “independents” and “undecideds.”

So here’s what I am thinking. I am thinking the race is so close that everyone involved, the candidates, their campaign teams, and the media mob pursuing them do not want to admit that it’s a toss-up.

The other day John McCain positioned himself as behind Barack Obama, telling a crowd that they had to turn out on Election Day and drag their Aunt Sarah to the polls with them. It was a passing statement and many candidates find it advantageous to suggest that they are battling to “come from behind” and need their followers to make a special effort.

Years ago, I used to assist the Republican committee in my little hometown. The town had been solidly Republican for decades, but then lots of young Democrats began to move in. One evening it was obvious that the only Republicans left were about a dozen of us sitting around in the mayor’s living room. All this talk of Red States, Blue States and Purple States is really a discussion of who has moved in or out.

The fact is that Obama is ahead in dollars and television commercials. I can’t remember the last campaign ad for McCain I’ve seen in the New York tri-state area.

I suspect that the GOP has had more than its share of problems getting the rank and file to pony up some bucks for McCain and other candidates. Since the base is definitively conservative and since the Republicans in Congress were spending as fast as the Democrats, the party is dealing with a lot of disaffected members.

Disaffected, but not suicidal. Even if they didn’t send money, that doesn’t mean Republicans won’t show up on Election Day. Most like what McCain is saying and, in the end, it is votes that matter.

Finally, the notion is beginning to circulate among the cognoscenti that this financial meltdown has occurred far too conveniently just before the election. To the extent that such things can be manipulated, the financial crisis could not have come at a more advantageous time for the Obama campaign.

I would bet that the financial crisis is the “October surprise” that people always talk about as affecting campaigns just before Election Day.

What I find more interesting, however, is how swiftly the stock market seems to be rebounding. The government opens the spigots of the Federal Reserve and, within a week or so, everybody has concluded that the problem has been solved.

Too close to call is my take on the campaign. Stay tuned.

At the Core of Election Corruption

By Alan Caruba

A lot of people who know politics far better than I are beginning to openly worry if John McCain can close the gap with Barack Obama. At a time when voter registration investigations and scandals are erupting in more than a dozen states, McCain insists on calling Obama “a decent man”, but his record suggests otherwise.

At the heart of the voter registration abuses is an organization called ACORN, an acronym for Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, and Obama has a long history with it.

ACORN is officially a taxpayer-supported “non-partisan” organization. The truth, however, is that ACORN has an anti-free market, radical socialist agenda.

1985 - 88 Barack Obama’s political mentor was ACORN’s Madeleine Talbot. Barack Obama trained Talbot’s ACORN cadre.

1992 - Barack Obama was director of “Project Vote” which coordinated with ACORN.

1993 - 02 Barack Obama was on board of directors of Woods Fund which gave hundreds of thousands of dollars to ACORN.

1995 - Barack Obama was attorney for ACORN in a “motor-voter” case.

1995 – 99 - Barack Obama was chairman of the board for former Weather Underground, domestic terrorist, William Ayer’s Chicago Annenberg Challenge which gave millions of dollars to ACORN.

1999 - Barack Obama endorsed ACORN state chair Ted Thomas for alderman.

2000 – 02 - Barack Obama was on board of directors of William Ayer’s Chicago Annenberg Challenge funneling money to ACORN.

2004 - ACORN endorsed Barack Obama for US Senate.

Feb 2008 - ACORN endorsed Barack Obama for President.

Aug 2008 - Barack Obama’s presidential campaign gave $800,000 to ACORN.

Nov 4 2008 – ACORN’s alledged voter fraud could possibly elect Barack Obama President. Recall how close the Florida race outcome was between Bush and Gore.

The Chicago political machine is virtually the template for political corruption and Obama has been a part of it now for decades. The fact that this raises no doubts or questions in the minds of his supporters is a serious cause for concern for the rest of us.

It well may be that the financial crisis gripping the nation may so distract voters that the wish for “change” will be sufficient for them to ignore some very ugly truths about Obama. If that proves true, the real losers won’t just be John McCain and the Republican Party. It will be the American people.

Politics Versus Economics

By Alan Caruba

Congress reminds me a lot of the Wizard of Oz these days. They keep telling us to ignore the man behind the curtain, but they are the man behind the curtain.

We have now reached the point where we can hope that the children we elected to Congress will get passed finger-pointing and blaming each other for the mess we are in. For whatever reasons they individually had, the decision to defeat the “bailout” or “rescue” plan signaled that the gravity of the problem had finally begun to penetrate the minds of our nation’s legislators.

Wall Street predictably took a nosedive. A lot of what constitutes the buying and selling of stocks is purely emotional. In good times everyone wants to get into the market and at the first hint of trouble, everyone wants to get out. There are signs, though, that even Wall Street thinks Congress will step in soon and assume a big chunk of the bad debt.

Politics is fluid, but there are real laws of economics that are well known, if often ignored. Money has to flow. There has to be “liquidity” and a consumer society requires a measure of constant, prudent lending to grease the wheels.

Grownups get nervous when there is too much debt on the books. Children think that debt is an illusion. Whoever tells you that having a huge national debt and bad balance of payments is not a problem is blowing smoke up your skirt.

Whoever tells you that it's a good idea to lend money to people whose chances of paying it back are slim to none is lying. That is the cause of the current problem; a lot of bad debt and it can all be traced back to Democrat-inspired programs, loosely labeled “social justice”, to justify the odd notion that poor people should live like the Middle Class. If they weren’t poor, they would be Middle Class. They’re not.

Moreover, a lot of the Middle Class assumed too much personal debt. Too many offers in the mail for credit cards. Too many inducements to purchase homes at inflated prices. Too many advertisements for vacations that probably should be spent closer to home. When you add in the jolt of rising energy prices and rising taxes, you get the perfect storm.

Republicans, for all intents and purposes, went along. Republicans, in case you haven’t noticed, abandoned all caution and prudence once they took control of Congress in 1994, helped to run up a huge national deficit, expanded some entitlement programs, expanded the federal government, and generally acted like Democrats.

The result is the present crisis. It is a crisis of confidence. The extraordinary low ratings that reflect the public’s regard for Congress and the President are entirely justified. The difference is that a huge Internet-informed public now has the capacity to flood Congress with messages warning against further foolishness.

Fixated on little more than raising money to get reelected, Congress critters will listen when they have to. They have to listen now.

What Americans want is a plan that will address the mortgage loan debt problem by finding means to deal with the bad paper, holding it until the housing market regains its value, and doing so in a transparent, carefully monitored, and rational manner. That will require a revised bailout/rescue bill; possibly one that has an insurance element to it, rather than a massive buy-up. Sticking the taxpayers with the bill is a very bad idea.

The last people who should be in charge of resolving the mess are those running Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac. Those two agencies need to be put out of business.

Bad politics, pandering for votes among the poor and minorities while fostering class warfare, produced the present crisis of confidence in the banking and investment system. The financial system must be protected. This isn’t about “greed.” Banks were put at risk because Fannie Mae, a semi-governmental entity, required bad loans be made.

The federal government must get out of the mortgage business. The government must get out of the provision of health and medical care. The government must get out of the nation’s educational system. The government must stop distorting agricultural decisions about what to plant. The government has to end its war on the oil industry.

What has not helped is the palpable sense of panic one could read on the face and in the words of Secretary of the Treasury, Henry Paulson, who failed to articulate the problem in other than apocalyptic terms. What has not helped has been the President’s flaccid response that suggests just how tired he is at the end of eight turbulent years spent trying to mobilize the public to realize we are in a long-term life or death struggle with Islamic fascists.

Here are three cheers for John McCain’s effort to bring Republicans to a point where they can forge a reasonable compromise with the Democrats who created this problem.

The distance Barack Obama wants to put between himself and the problem is an indicator of how he would lead. Obama’s agenda of more government programs and more government spending is nothing less than suicidal.

Social Justice or a Bad Idea?

By Alan Caruba

I have a close family member who is as liberal as I am conservative. We talk every day and, mostly, we avoid discussing politics. Most of us have family members whose politics differ from our own and most of us are wise enough to avoid such discussions.

Since my family member has spent his life dealing with Wall Street and advising people of great wealth how to protect and enhance it, one would think that the conservatism he brings to that goal would extend into his broader vision of the nation and the world, but it does not.

Indeed, Wall Street is a hotbed of liberals. Many of those who migrated to politics from Wall Street brought their desire to improve the lives of those less fortunate with them, but unfortunately, this is precisely what has led the nation to the present crisis.

The crisis of the Great Depression led to the politics of the 1930s and 40s, and demands for government intervention to ease the terrible burdens of a broken economy. The result were programs designed to alleviate the then-immediate crisis, restore trust in the banking system, provide make-work projects, and create Social Security to protect people against a penniless old age.

The driving political motivation was to introduce “social justice” into a society where many people had been impoverished through no fault of their own. Leading up to that earlier crisis was extensive speculative investment, often by people who could ill afford to do it.

If this scenario sounds familiar, all you have to do is consider a system put in place that permitted people who could ill afford to do it, to get mortgage loans and then required mortgage lenders and banks to make these loans.

The banks and mortgage companies were told that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, two government agencies masquerading as private entities, would back them up in the event of defaults on those loans. They bought what was essentially worthless paper based on the concept of “social justice.” Investment firms “bundled” that paper and sold it as a form of securities.

The current crisis is rooted in the “solutions” to the Great Depression. A reading of history reveals that it was World War II that employed a lot of people in the struggle to overthrow authoritarian dictatorships. Many unemployed men volunteered or were conscripted into the military. Opportunities for women to work opened up in the nation’s factories that thrived in the effort to provide munitions and the many products necessary to achieve victory. In a very real sense, though the threat was real, it was WWII that restored the nation’s economy.

When men returned from that victory, a grateful government provided the means by which they could attend college, learn new skills, and swiftly begin to contribute to a growing economy. Other men replaced women on the assembly lines.

In a new century the United States is attempting to function with ideas and institutions left over from the last major, economic, and military crisis. A lot has changed since then, but the concept of “social justice” has not. It has been the justification for the insane expansion of the federal government into every aspect of life in America.

While no one would argue that there is not a need for regulation. It is equally true that the banking and investment community is possibly the single, most regulated element of the nation’s economy. What failed was the judgment of those imposing “social justice” ideas from the 1930s and 40s on a $13 trillion economy embarking on a new century in a global marketplace.

Old ideas. Bad ideas.

Telling Detroit to build cars based on a false “global warming” belief that carbon dioxide emissions are a threat to the environment is a bad idea.

Influencing what farmers choose to plant based on the three-decade-old failed and false belief that ethanol can or should replace gasoline is a bad idea.

Imposing a one-size-fits-all straight jacket on the states’ educational systems is a bad idea.

Adding billions of new entitlements to already shaky Social Security and Medicare programs is a bad idea.

Refusing to allow the exploration and extraction of the nation’s vast reserves of oil, natural gas, and coal, is a bad idea.

Giving the Secretary of the Treasury a blank check to purchase billions in worthless loans will no doubt stem the panic regarding the stability of the nation’s banking system, but doing so without congressional oversight is a bad idea.

Adding to that blank check by including student loans and a host of other credit obligations is a bad idea.

At some point you run the risk of literally bankrupting the nation and that is a very bad idea.

The Real Winner or Loser?

By Alan Caruba

It is a truism that all national elections are crucial to the future of the nation. We choose a President and a Vice President, along with a whole bunch of other candidates whom we believe will do the best job of guiding the affairs of the nation.

It is not even a question of the world being a dangerous place. The world has always been dangerous. War has been, as often as not, the determinant factor in the affairs of mankind. “Si vis pacem, para bellum”; if you want peace, plan for war is a piece of ancient wisdom that still serves us well today.

Nor is it a question of economic crisis. The United States has been through many cycles of financial crisis. It is endemic to the capitalistic system. Indeed, failure under capitalism is neither unusual, nor necessarily permanent. Companies, old and new, fail all the time because, among other things, new technology drives out old technology. Just take a look at the current plight of the newspaper industry as but one example.

What marks the current financial crisis as unusual is the size and scope of it. The price of having become an economic superpower has been the size of our government and the excessive intrusiveness into the marketplace that has come with it. Size, in this case, translates into billions for the bailout required.

The financial markets, however, are a barometer of hopes and fears. If there is anything rational to its constant fluctuations, I have yet to have seen it. The market, as a result, is subject to “bubbles” like the Dot.Com mania and the “corrections” that follow.

These are, of course, euphemisms for throwing money at untested, unproven or very dubious schemes such as the “bundling” of all the bad debt run up by sub-prime mortgages. They are mortgage loans which would not have existed if the government had not insisted on, required it, and then put its full faith and credit behind them.

Just how rational is Wall Street when prices rise and fall like yo-yo’s depending on the price of oil or some other momentary factor? The financial market is all about capitalism and capitalism is all about risk. It’s hard to be rational when you have your life’s savings or retirement on the line. Politicians understand this.

Whoever is sworn in as President next January is going to inherit, literally, a world of problems with which our essentially 1940s, bloated government is ill-prepared to deal.

The only reform worth considering is a massive down-sizing of the federal government. Whole cabinet departments need to be eliminated. Thousands of programs need to be ended. The government has to stop telling Detroit how to build cars. The government has to stop subsidizing ethanol and distorting the agricultural marketplace at home and worldwide.

This is why the U.S. Constitution existed originally to limit the size and powers of the federal government. In fact, it could not have been ratified without the addition of the Bill of Rights, the Tenth Amendment of which says, “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

The United States is a republic composed of fifty separate republics. They united "to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity."

We are that posterity!

Find where the Constitution authorizes a Department of Education or Energy? You won’t and you can’t. That power does not exist, no matter how many circumlocutions constitutional lawyers offer to justify it.

Time to clean house...but the next President will not be able to do so.

The natural tendency of Congress and the Executive is to acquire more and more power through taxation and regulation. Barring that, it is done by fiat; by declaring the power exists even if the Constitution states otherwise.

It is much the same with the money that will be conjured up to bail out the banks and, in AIG’s case, an international insurance company so big that it could not be allowed to fail. Fiat money, borrowed money, money that risks the devaluation of the U.S. dollar if Americans and the rest of the world lose confidence in it.

No President can allow that to happen on their watch. Not Bush, not McCain, and not Obama...unless he is the Manchurian candidate selected to destroy the nation.

So the question arises, who will be the real winner or loser of the next election? The man who becomes President or the man who dodged that bullet?

Political Twilight Zones

By Alan Caruba

Those of an older generation may still remember the popular television show, “The Twilight Zone.” It featured spooky stories every week about people encountering events that defied reality.

Well, the campaigns have entered their own twilight zones in which reporters, commentators, pollsters, and those whose business it is to be interested in such events will talk themselves blue in the face while the rest of us turn the dial, searching for anything else to pass the time.

Serious public interest will not reoccur until Friday, September 26, the date of the first presidential debate between Sen. John McCain and Sen. Barack Obama. Between now and then the candidates will be touring obscure towns in the so-called “battleground” States, hoping to gin up some excitement.

The real excitement, of course, is the fact that the kids have finally gone back to school. Their little dramas will be main agenda for most parents. Older ones will have departed for college, allowing for the fumigation of their rooms. Then, too, the football season, college and professional, has begun.

Meanwhile, for pure entertainment value, watching the left go completely insane over Gov. Sarah Palin provides more than enough fun for political junkies; those losing their wits and those watching them come unglued. The entire nation will tune in for the October 2nd vice presidential debate. It will be followed by two more presidential debates; one on October 7 and the next on October 15.

After that we all get to wait around for Election Day on November 4th, a day on which at least half the registered voters will not vote. This is a trend dating back to the 1960s.

Already, though, Sen. Obama looks like he just doesn’t care that much anymore. He’s fairly robotic these days, completely predictable as he responds to various events, and suffering from being “too cool for the room.” People are beginning to suspect he’s just too cerebral for the job. His supporters are more like teenagers going through their first real crush or Democrat pols doomed to endlessly repeat, “the failed years of the Bush administration.”

By contrast, Sen. McCain looks like he is having a great time. Gov. Palin looks like she’s hunting big game on the campaign trail. Who knew that Republicans could get this energized?

It’s not that Americans don’t enjoy politics. We do, but we also know that staying in a state of constant excitation over everything either candidate has to say is a waste of energy.

Probably the best part of the whole campaign is the way the mainstream media, like drug-crazed addicts, continue to debase what little credibility they have left. Aside from their economic problems—the loss of their classified advertising base and the flight of other advertising dollars—the once great newspapers of the nation are self-destructing from such biased reporting that only their obituary pages offer any promise of accuracy.

It’s okay to ignore the campaign for the next two weeks or so. Those who intend to vote have made up their minds. Those that haven’t will likely forget to vote.

The GOP Morning After

By Alan Caruba

Republicans woke up on Saturday morning with the realization they have nominated one of the most liberal candidates for President in decades. After eight years of George W. Bush who didn’t veto a single spending bill until after the GOP lost control of Congress in 2006, and after ballooning budgets and deficits, Republicans in Washington, D.C. have become Democrats.

Need proof? Sen. McCain’s preferred choice as his Vice Presidential running mate was his long-time friend and Senate colleague, Joe Lieberman, who you may recall was Al Gore’s running mate when he ran for office.

If Republicans have some unspoken regrets about their candidate, at least they are not Democrats who choose Al Gore, followed by John Kerry, and their current choice, Barack Obama. If the Democrats didn’t have an electoral death wish, things might look worse for the GOP.

Gov. Sarah Palin has energized the Republican base because she is, in many ways, everything Sen. McCain is not. She is a real conservative and the base knows it. At the same time, it must be said that vice presidential candidates do not win elections. Only the top of the ticket can do that.

Sen. McCain’s speech was just okay. No doubt it will be his “stump speech” for the next eight weeks, promising to sweep away Washington’s lobbyists and “special interests”, but only children believe such rhetoric.

The nation’s capital is all about politics. It’s a company town and everyone who lives or works there knows that “issues” may energize those who follow events from afar, but it is taxation and the redistribution of money that is the real business of Congress. Who gets to do that is the reason the two parties square off against one another.

The problem for the rest of us is that the two parties are too often virtually indistinguishable these days. Both are for big and bigger government. Both intend to ignore the gathering storm of under-funded entitlement programs. Both will, if the public lets them, grant instant citizenship to millions of illegal aliens. Both will talk tough about the renewed Russian menace.

Though Bush and now McCain were accused of being war-mongers, the United States could not have invaded and occupied Iraq without the funding support of Democrats in Congress. It was Democrats who wanted to run away when things got tough. It was Republicans who saw the conflict through to a successful outcome.

Then there's the factor that is rarely acknowledged. For nearly fifty years, barely half of the registered voters actually showed up to cast a vote. For the more recent presidential races, the results have been so close that it revealed how sharply divided voters are. There is a liberal base. There is a conservative base. They are the ones who vote.

The problem for conservatives is that we have been severely disappointed by the last eight years of the Bush administration in all, but one respect, his response to 9/11. Conservatives understand the need to go on the attack against our enemies and to remove threats to global peace.

The Bush administration’s failure to be aggressive regarding the nation’s need for energy security is just barely obscured by the Democrat’s aggressive efforts to leave America vulnerable to energy-rich unfriendly nations while thwarting efforts to develop our own national energy reserves.

Lastly, we tend to forget that Sen. McCain is among a swiftly diminishing group of people who believe "global warming" is real and that programs involving the reduction of carbon dioxide emissions are needed. As a new Little Ice Age takes shape, this is about as wrong as one can get, especially if one is President.

What Sen. McCain has going for him is character and experience. He has been tested by life. Perhaps more than any other factor that will undermine Sen. Obama’s quest is the growing perception that he has little to show for his brief time in public service and a host of very questionable friends and associates.

How these factors play out over the next eight weeks will determine the shape, content and events of the next four years.

Voter Fatigue

By Alan Caruba

When the Republican convention concludes with a speech by John McCain, a lot of people from both parties or no parties are going to heave a great sigh of relief. We all will have had two weeks of the most intense media concentration on matters political and it induces fatigue.

Without any research or study to support my view, I have long thought that people either make up their minds quite early in any election cycle or do so close to or on Election Day. In either case, an appallingly few registered voters actually show up to vote.

It is the job of journalists and pundits to pay close attention to every word that a candidate utters, but most political speeches are almost instantly forgotten. It’s all airy promises of either increasing (for worthy new or expanded government programs) or decreasing your taxes (because individuals and the economy works best when people are allowed to decide how to spend their own money), reforming the “mess” in Washington, D.C, and defending the nation against a world of enemies.

Occasionally, events intervene to create extraordinary circumstances. We saw that with the Depression of the 1930s and FDR’s subsequent four terms, the last of which was completed by a Vice President, Harry Truman, who few would have considered qualified to be President. Historians now say Truman did an excellent job. Wars, too, are transformative events that call out the best in Americans who hate wars. We have a reasonably good record of winning them. Now the watchword is terrorism; a very different kind of war, but a war nonetheless.

Voters, however, elect and send Representatives and Senators to Washington, D.C. to deal with these and other matters. They have businesses to run, jobs to do, auto and mortgage payments, children to raise, and a thousand other things to think about.

The reality is that it has been the rare national election when more than 55%—at most—of those registered to vote actually show up at the polls.

In 2006, out of 135,889,600 registered voters, only 80,588,000 or 43.6% voted. In 2004, 55.3% voted. In 2002, only 37% voted!

You have to go back to the1960s to find a significant voter turnout. In only one year, 1964, did a whopping 61.9% of the voters show up to exercise what is arguably one of the most valuable rights a citizen possesses. That was the year a liberal Democrat, Lyndon B. Johnson, soundly defeated a conservative Republican, Barry Goldwater. LBJ would soon immerse the nation in the Vietnam War, evoking such resistance that it would deny him seeking reelection. It would leave over 50,000 dead American warriors in its wake.

The point of this exercise in historical statistics is that, for the past 46 years between 1960 and 2006, voters have proven themselves to be a largely indifferent crowd. Perhaps as the result of all the media attention and the unfortunate length of political campaigns these days, beginning as they do the day after the last election, people simply grow indifferent to the outcome?

Perhaps they look at Presidents and events, and conclude that whoever is in that office doesn’t make much difference? They are, of course, wrong. Very wrong. It’s more than just politics. It’s the nation’s survival at stake and it has been thus from the first day George Washington took office.

A Palin Family Problem

By Alan Caruba

Let’s face it. A lot of born-again Christians are going to have to swallow hard to find any good news in the report that Sarah Palin’s 17-year-old unmarried daughter is five months pregnant.

This is not the kind of news that can be “spun” for much other than Bristol Palin’s intention to marry the baby’s father. It will be hard to count how many shotguns there will be at that marriage ceremony! There’s the bride’s family, possibly the groom’s, and an entire contingent of Secret Service agents.

This is such a common scenario for families around the nation that one wonders if it will be greeted with more than a shrug, depending on the mood of voters. I am old enough not to care that much, but there is a vast age group, married, raising teenage children, who might not be so inclined. No doubt many single mothers and their families will see it as a reflection of their own lives.

Reportedly, too, McCain was aware of Bristol’s forthcoming bundle of joy and signed off on Palin anyway. I can’t say why, but I rather like that. A President capable of such understanding of human failings is quite appealing. It suggests a tough, but compassionate man.

All things considered, though, I think Americans in general would prefer not to have this soap opera element added to the national campaign.

What this does, of course, is raise the issue of abortion to a new level for the campaign and the general national debate about the right to life of all unborn babies. Both GOP candidates are pro-life. Voters may conclude that a President McCain would be inclined to appoint pro-life judges to the Supreme Court. For many, that would be a good thing. For many others it would not.

Poor John McCain, not only did Hurricane Gustav rearrange the Republican Convention schedule, but now he will have address the private life of the teenage daughter of his choice for Vice President. Given the way religion intertwines with politics in America, it adds an unneeded element to the campaign.

Sen. Obama, to his credit, declared the story "off limits." Earlier, during the primaries, he said he would not want either of his daughter’s “punished” if they became pregnant outside of marriage.

My guess is that McCain will make a single statement and refuse to say more. The press, largely devoted to electing Obama, is probably drooling over the prospect of using this to denigrate the McCain campaign. That is likely to blow up in their faces.

There isn’t a single parent of a teenaged girl (or boy) who doesn’t lose sleep over the possibility of an unwanted pregnancy. All the church attendance in the world rarely affects the weakness of the flesh.

It is the unpredictability of politics that makes it so interesting. The baby won’t care. Maybe we shouldn’t either?