Making Vitamins Too Costly for Your Health

By Alan Caruba

At age 72 I have been taking a full range of vitamin and mineral supplements for years. Even I find it amusing to open more than a dozen bottles every morning to extract vitamins A, B, C, D and E, along with zinc, potassium, selenium, and fish oil. On the advice of my physician long ago, I also take a low dose aspirin every day. I also take some herbal supplements.

In early January I fell and broke my collar bone. A month later it was completely healed. I don’t get the common cold, although I do experience seasonal allergies that are controlled with anti-histamine. In sum, I am as healthy as a person of my age can hope to be.

So why have Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-ND) joined to introduce an amendment to the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act that would deny freedom of easy access to these vitamins and minerals that are now commonly available in supermarkets, pharmacies and other outlets at affordable prices?

Why would they conspire to make dietary supplements such as purified fish oil seven times more expensive than it is today?

It is irrational, not to say obscene, at a time when a debate is raging over the costs of Medicare and the various illnesses that afflict Americans to introduce a law that would raise the cost of vitamins, minerals and herbal supplements that are among the best forms of preventative medicine available to the general public.

Who, ultimately, will benefit from such a law? The answer is the pharmaceutical companies. Dr. Steven Joyal, M.D., vice president of science and medical affairs of the Life Extension Foundation, says “This bill aims to further pharmaceutical profits by creating wide-ranging, unprecedented FDA power to reclassify natural nutritional products as drugs.”

I am a free market capitalist, but I also know that many companies engage in “rent seeking”, a term to describe how they use the ability of Congress to pass laws and regulations that improperly and unfairly increase their profits.

The bill, titled that “Dietary Supplement Safety Act of 2010” is a classic example of how an ever-expanding federal government continues to get between Americans and the freedoms they have come to take for granted. High on the list is the freedom to maintain one’s health; in this case with affordable and easily accessible vitamins and minerals.

The “Dietary Supplement Safety Act of 2010” has nothing to do with freedom and everything to do with increasing the profits of pharmaceutical companies. It does not enhance safety because vitamins and mineral supplements are already manufactured under some of the most stringent restrictions placed on any products sold anywhere in the world.

My friend, Frank Murray, is the author of nearly 50 books on health and nutrition. He is the former editor of Better Nutrition, GreatLife, and Let’s Live magazines. His books have documented how various vitamins and minerals, as well as herbal supplements have preventative and curative affects on a wide range of ailments and afflictions.

His latest book, “Sunshine and Vitamin D” describes the research concerning this vitamin’s ability to reduce or ameliorate cancers, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, cystic fibrosis, and a host of other ailments. And that is just one common vitamin!

It is astonishing how vitamins, minerals, and herbal supplements can aid the body to resist the many pathogens in our environment, to digest the food we eat, and to enhance many of our mental and physical abilities.

This latest bill in Congress should be defeated. Its two sponsors should be held up to scrutiny to determine how great a role the donations of pharmaceutical companies to their election campaigns played in the drafting and introduction of this bill.

There is not enough scorn that can be heaped upon the bill’s sponsors and any member of Congress that votes for it.

I don’t want and I don’t need a doctor’s prescription to purchase the vitamins and minerals I take daily. Neither do you!

(c)Alan Caruba, 2010

People I Don't Want to Hear About in 2009

By Alan Caruba

If I had the power, there are any number of people from whom or about whom I would not want to hear, see, or read anything in 2009. Here’s a short list!

Al Gore. This pusillanimous fraud, a leftover from the Clinton administration who was defeated for president in 2000, has devoted his time to issuing warnings against global warming, the greatest hoax of the modern era. He tends to be most vocal during blizzards.

Dr. James Hansen. Right behind, with his nose deeply buried in Al Gore’s posterior, is the man who started the global warming hoax when, in the 1980s, he testified to Congress that the whole world is doomed. To his name I add the hundreds of other alarmists.

Rep. Nancy Pelosi. The Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives is quite possibly the most stupid person to have ever held that post.

Sen. Harry Reid. The Senate Majority Leader, like his counterpart in the House, holds a lot of idiotic ideas and beliefs. He continues to oppose the opening of Yucca Mountain, a multi-billion dollar repository for spent, but radioactive nuclear fuel.

Bill Clinton. Having cost Hillary a shot at the presidency and failed in so many ways during his own two terms in office, one fervently hopes he will busy himself giving million dollar speeches in Abu Dhabi and other venues far from the U.S. This is the man who once said, “We just have to slow down our economy and cut back our greenhouse gas emissions ’cause we have to save the planet for our grandchildren.” Well, he got his wish; the economy is slowing to a crawl. Happy now?

Jimmy Carter. This friend to every dictator on Earth was once elected President of the United States. Mistakes happen.

Barney Frank. Don’t hold your breath waiting for this House of Representatives’ Elmer Fudd impersonator to take responsibility for the nation’s financial crisis. He spent the last few years defending Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac while both purchased billions in sub-prime mortgage loans.

George W. Bush. I have had to listen to President Bush for eight years and that is quite enough.

John McCain. America has voted, but less than half for you and most of them held their nose when they did.

Keith Olbermann & Chris Matthews. These two alleged political pundits so thoroughly embarrassed themselves and MSNBC during the campaigns that their co-workers refuse to sit at their table in the company cafeteria.

Al Sharpton & Jesse Jackson. The next President of the United States of America is an Afro-American. Millions of white people voted for him. Now go away.

Mahmoud Amadinejad. This loony is convinced that millions must die so that a mythical Twelfth Imam can return to bring Islam to all mankind. Meanwhile, Mahmoud and the ayatollahs have been busy destroying Iran when not taking hostages.

Hugo Chavez. This Fidel Castro wannabe has managed to destroy Venezuela’s economy with his communist ranting. I miss the good old days when the CIA was encouraged to rid us of such pests.

Osama bin Laden. With any luck, this sucker is dead.

The United Nations. Anything that comes out of this institution should be treated like toxic waste.

So many annoying, deranged, and stupid people; we can be assured that the mainstream media will hang on their every word.

Too Many Coincidenses

By Alan Caruba

My mind keeps circling back to the recent campaign and focusing on two coincidences. I am the last person to subscribe to conspiracies, but it is entirely likely that two events during the campaigns were something less than just coincidence.

At a point in the campaign when John McCain looked like he had a decent chance to aggregate enough votes to win, Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson held a sudden press briefing in which he put forth a three-page proposal that would put him in sole control of the distribution of billions of dollars.

Let us grant that the prospect of major investment houses collapsing and taking Wall Street with them would have been enough to scare the daylights out of anyone in his position, but let us also grant the crisis had been in the making since at least 2006. Let it also be said that the announcement could not have come at a worse time for the McCain campaign. His response, going off-schedule, rushing to Washington, D.C., didn’t help. By contrast, Obama remained preternaturally calm.

History hinges on such events, but try to imagine how the campaign might have gone without that dramatic event? It wasn’t as if the “bundling” of those worthless mortgage loans hadn’t been going on for a very long time and at the time McCain was tied neck-and-neck with Obama for much of the campaign.

The second coincidence was the way the price of oil dropped precipitously during the last months of the campaign. Indeed, exactly four months before Election Day. A friend and veteran oil industry insider suggests that this was “a deliberate move by OPEC to get the American public to forget about high gasoline prices before the presidential election,” adding, “I would say that OPEC’s plan worked perfectly.”

Recall now that in June “the main issue in America was high fuel prices.” When John McCain said he favored lifting the ban on offshore oil drilling, the prices began to fall. Currently, President-elect Obama who previously signaled that he agreed with McCain now says he favors continuing the ban on offshore drilling.

The likelihood is that oil prices will begin to rise again. OPEC wants the price of a barrel of oil to hover around $70.00.

To this day, I have neither heard nor read any of the usual pundits make a connection between the skyrocketing cost of oil that made it impossible for any business to accurately plan for the future. It kicked off the cascade of business failures, lay-offs, defaulting mortgages, and foreclosures that led to the financial meltdown.

Over the weekend the leaders of various nations will meet to try to find ways to restructure the international banking system. There is one way to deal with the financial crisis and that is to let the “market”, the millions of individual decisions people make regarding what to purchase and where to invest, correct itself.

After all, banks are in the business of making loans and a nation with sufficient energy reserves is in control of its own fate.

It has always been government intervention in the “market”; interfering in some way or other that triggers these financial crises. And now the federal government has purchased ownership in banks, insurance companies, and is contemplating a multi-billion bailout of some automobile manufacturers who fell victim to both predatory unions and bad management decisions. The “market” would let them fail.

There are those who do not believe anything that happens is “accidental.” Those who believe that everything that happens is part of a “conspiracy.” And those who believe that whatever happens could have an element of both involved.

If one draws no other lesson from this financial crisis, it is that the world runs on oil.

The failure and the refusal of America’s leaders to permit our own vast reserves of oil to be tapped will keep us all at the mercy of OPEC and other foreign suppliers. The minute America’s energy potential, its reserves of oil, natural gas, coal, and of nuclear power, is unleashed is the minute America becomes a powerhouse once again.

It’s like Pogo said, “We have found the enemy and they are us.”

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.”

Ruining America

By Alan Caruba

George Washington warned against “factions” by which he meant political parties, but even in the earliest days of the new republic, the most natural of human inclinations was to band together with like-minded people to elect one’s preferred candidate to office.

Indeed, in the early years of the nation, elections were the occasion for candidate vilification of a sort that would appall the modern voter. All manner of calumnies and slanders were heaped upon each other by the early candidates and it was considered a perfectly natural way to campaign.

The provision of booze was considered another standard element of running for office. One could whet one’s whistle and get a bite to eat in exchange for listening to speeches and debates. Since this was what passed for entertainment in the days before mass communications, nobody thought it improper.

Eventually, it became the practice of those running for president to not even campaign in any way we’d recognize these days. Instead they stayed home and had surrogates represent them. It would have been deemed unseemly to actually want the high office. You had to be drafted by your friends and admirers.

For a long time in U.S. history, if you hadn’t been tested in battle, you might as well not even run for public office. Teddy Roosevelt so hungered for the warrior’s glory, he put together his own fighting unit, the Rough Riders, to participate in the Spanish-American War.

Today’s political battles are fought daily with endless emails and news releases, disputing every word the other side says about anything. Then the television and radio ads pile on. Major issues are reduced to “sound bites” and irrelevant charges about the smallest aspect of the candidate’s look or behavior are instantly analyzed.

In person together for a debate, Sen. Barack Obama and Sen. John McCain shook hands and exchanged an hour and a half of tedious conversation, elements of which had been carefully tested in advance. Obama did well because he is blessed with a serene demeanor that has nothing to do with his mind-boggling leftist agenda whereas McCain is a mass of twitches, blinking eyes, and inappropriate smiles. It makes one yearn for the polished affability of Ronald Reagan.

If you locked McCain in the Oval Office and sent in sandwiches, he probably would do a very competent job of running the madhouse we call America. Obama, on the other hand, in between sips of his mocha latte will bring the economy to total ruin with the help of a Congress that will more resemble the Russian Duma than anything that passes for an independent, bicameral chamber.

So now, for the remainder of the campaign, we will be assured that the “other” side will destroy the nation and, in the case of the McCain campaign, they will be right to issue such warnings. One need only listen to the ravings of Barney Frank, the lunacy of Nancy Pelosi, or rock bottom stupidity of Harry Reid, to know that.

I lived through the 1960s with the rioting in the streets, the drugged-out hippies, the terrorists like Bill Ayers, and know I do not want to live in a nation where those perpetrating hostile activities in the name of The Revolution are in charge or at least whispering in the ear of President Obama.

Things look grim. I remember the ugliness surrounding President Johnson’s escalation of the Vietnam War and the national welfare state he tried to create with his Great Society program. That, in turn, facilitated the election of Richard Nixon. In the wake of the Watergate Scandal that brought down Nixon, we ended up with Jimmy Carter, a virtual unknown with a big toothy smile who turned out to be straight out of Mad Magazine.

Just voting for “change” in bad times ought to require knowing and understanding what that change will be. So, yes, Obama’s “change” will ruin the nation by returning to all the failed programs the Democrats have foisted on us since the days of FDR.

The IRS Will be Hiring

By Alan Caruba

If Barack Obama is elected, the Internal Revenue Service had better double its workforce because the amount of cheating on tax returns will rival Italy’s.

The scariest thing about the final debate between the candidates is that both appear to be utterly oblivious to the way the Stock Market dropped 700 points on Wednesday after a brief rally the day before.

Hearing either candidate talk about spending billions to fix this or that was surreal. I don’t even know how deep in debt the nation is at this writing, but I am of the view that we don’t have billions to “fix” education, health care, or anything else. Of course, John McCain did talk about taking an axe to the budget and Barack Obama did talk about using a scalpel, but who’s kidding who here?

Any budget cutting would be an improvement over the last eight years of George W. Bush’s failure to veto any spending bill Congress, controlled by Republicans until 2006, sent his way. Only after a Democrat epiphany did W actually wield the veto in the name of fiscal prudence. By then it was too late and talk of $700 billion bailouts filled the air.

It is essential to remember that the current crisis is entirely the creation of Democrats. Starting with Roosevelt’s New Deal programs, exacerbated by Jimmy Carter’s and Bill Clinton’s exploitation of Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac, ignored by congressional oversight, the Democrats own this one.

It’s no comfort that Speaker Nancy Pelosi cannot wait to get the House to enact a bushel of new spending bills. The Senate historically has been a break on the short-term Representatives (two years versus the Senate’s six year terms) who, when not devoting most of their day raising money for reelection, spend the rest of it on, well, spending the public treasury for various pet projects and special interests.

Congress seems to exist in some parallel universe that has no connection to the rest of the nation. Its disconnect can be seen in the way, since Jimmy Carter was in office, Congress has actively worked against any exploration or extraction of the nation’s oil, natural gas, and coal reserves. It imposed “windfall taxes” and other restrictions until now there are only three oil companies of any size, mostly due to mergers. Now Congress apparently hates coal, too.

Then there was the creation of the Department of Education, contrary to the Constitution that excludes federal involvement by not mentioning it. It effectively has nationalized the education system with a one-size-fits-all policy that totally ignores the fact that different children in different places learn at different rates. The failure of urban schools has less to do with the enormous amounts of money spent per pupil than the crime-infested, jobless streets they must walk to get to school. It’s not like their parents don’t want better schools. They do. The grip of the teacher’s unions makes that nearly impossible.

I could list other government programs, but the point is they all cost a lot of money and a lot of that money is just totally wasted. For example, the government has a host of idiotic programs involving “climate change” when no government on Earth can do a thing about the climate. Likewise, the only reason to maintain a “space” program is to hoist spy and communications satellites into position. Explore Mars? Are you kidding me?

John McCain and the Republicans are right about cutting taxes. If that doesn’t happen, this Recession I assume we’re in, will turn into a full-fledged Depression just like 1929. At that point, we won’t be able to borrow money from China, Japan, and elsewhere. At that point, it won’t matter who’s in Congress or the White House because they created the problem.

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.

Who Actually Votes?

By Alan Caruba

Given that we know the mainstream media is utterly devoted to electing Barack Obama, virtually everything they report and interpret will be favorable to his campaign, including the latest spate of polls showing he has gained a lead.

Most certainly, the McCain-Palin ticket has any number of negatives to address. There is the public’s dissatisfaction with the short invasion and long occupation of Iraq. The fact that the goal of establishing a stable, democratic nation in the Middle East has been largely accomplished or at least successfully begun seems to escape everyone.

The current financial crisis will spur some voters to pull the lever for “change” without considering what that change will be, but data indicates that those most likely to vote are more motivated by avoiding change and in uncertain times, that is likely to hold true.

A clever new book, “Bet You Didn’t Know: Hundreds of Intriguing Facts About the USA” by Cheryl Russell ($18.95, Prometheus Books, softcover) offers some glimmer of hope regarding what may be the deciding factor in what will surely be a close race.

“Politicians are old because voters are old and voters—like it or not—tend to select their own kind. Fewer than half of 18-to-24-year-old citizens cast a ballot in the last presidential election. Voting rates rise with age, peaking at more than 73 percent among 65-to-74-year-olds.”

We old people (I turn 71 on October 9) may well prove to be the margin of victory for another old person named Sen. John McCain.

Then there is the issue of race. “The nation’s politicians do not reflect the diversity of the United States because voters are not diverse. Non-Hispanic whites account for only 66 percent of Americans, but for nearly 80 percent of voters.” I repeat, 80 percent of voters.

Another critical factor regarding who votes has to do with wealth. “The average voter is considerably more affluent than the average American. Despite the fact that many voters are retirees, their median family income great exceeds the median income of the average family.”

These older, more affluent, white people vote to protect the status quo and Sen. Obama is the antithesis of the status quo.
The notion that either Hispanics or Blacks will hold the balance of power in the coming issue is wrong. Statistically, only two out of three Hispanics vote and Black votes are about the same in terms of turn-out.

Finally, it’s worth noting that in a Battleground Report, a noted bi-partisan polling group, at least 60 percent of those asked to identify their political point of view said they were conservative. The “silent majority” that Richard Nixon made famous is, in fact, conservative and that, too, will have an impact on the outcome of the coming election.

On the surface, a number of factors seem to favor Sen. Obama, but the known voting patterns of those who will actually turn out on Election Day tell a very different story.

A Month of Campaign Madness

By Alan Caruba

This is what you need to keep in mind between now and November 4th. It will be a month of complete political madness. Nothing you hear or read has any purpose other than to get you to commit to one candidate or the other.

If, in fact, you have already made up your mind, I recommend you do your best to ignore as much of it as possible.

This is not to say you shouldn’t watch the debates. They come as close to reality as one can hope, but every word that comes out of the candidate’s mouths has been pre-tested to determine how large groups or special niches of people will react to it.

I am not saying that the elections are all but over. The fact is that any kind of event could take the best laid plans of both campaigns and blow them to hell. The financial mess we watched for the passed two weeks is an example. I don’t think either campaign anticipated it because, in point of fact, no one anticipated it.

Pay NO attention to the big players, the pundits, the editorial writers, the reporters in the mainstream media who are already telling you that Obama has the election in the bag. That’s what they said about Al Gore and John Kerry. They both lost.

Indeed, we all know that the mainstream media, with the exception of Fox News and talk radio, are all in the tank for Obama. Giving anything they have to say any credence is unwise. We’re talking propaganda, not news, here.

Here’s what we know will happen. Some States that were red will go blue. Some States that were blue will go red. When you hear that McCain has pulled out of Michigan, remember, Obama quietly pulled out of Nevada and a few others. The campaigns are going to put what money they have left where they think it will do the most good. It does not mean McCain “has written off” Michigan. He just won’t spend big bucks on expensive television ads.

Every time Gov. Palin says something about Obama, it will make news. She acquitted herself well in the debate, so people are going to take her seriously, but I personally think she is a novelty, a sideshow of sorts, selected as McCain’s running mate to offset his age and to highlight that the Republicans can run a woman for high office even if the Democrats wouldn’t.

No one has won this election yet and we might very well have another Florida-type fiasco post-Election Day if the votes are so close that three people in Wyoming, two in Florida, and ten in Texas are all that decides the outcome.

For myself, I will pull the lever for McCain-Palin because the notion of voting for an inexperienced, wildly ambitious Senator with less than 150 days total spent doing the people’s business strikes me as insane. It helps to keep in mind that the strongest influences in his life were either Muslims or Marxists.

No Joy in Mudville

By Alan Caruba

As in the case of Mighty Casey at the Bat, unless John McCain comes out swinging for the remaining two debates, there will be no joy in Mudville after Election Day.

I cannot recall when I have seen Republicans so dispirited by events and by their candidate. Forget about the entertainment value that Sarah Palin brings to the ticket, nobody votes for vice presidents. The primaries seem so long ago that it’s hard to recall how he managed to get the nomination. Republicans were asked to choose from a relatively uninspiring group.

They worried over Mitt Romney’s Mormon religion, former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, an unabashed evangelical, and virtually ignored former New York Mayor Rudy Guiliani, Rep. Duncan Hunter, and the somnambulant former Senator-turned-actor. Fred Thompson, and finally a guy that just sounded a bit loony, Rep. Ron Paul. Paul has turned out to be more right on most of the issues of our time than the others.

That left Sen. John McCain, a genuine war hero with a long history as a “maverick” Republican. This turned out to mean he preferred political compromise to confrontation. Everyone agrees he is a decent, good man, even if he is a decent, good, old man by today’s standards. Age didn’t hurt Ronald Reagan’s candidacy, but John McCain is no Ronald Reagan.

When you add in the financial crisis—one that came along at a time that was very convenient to the Democrat Party—it almost doesn’t matter that their candidate, Sen. Barack Obama, remains a virtual enigma to everyone. He has a simple message of hope and change that appeals to the simple-minded, neglectful of the fact that we live in a very complex world.

There is only one thing that could change the drift that seems to be lifting Sen. Obama’s campaign and that would be another terrorist attack on the homeland. I don’t think Osama bin Laden is that stupid. I think he thinks he’s got his dream candidate at the top of the Democrat ticket.

The Republicans had pretty much owned Congress and the White House from the days of the Civil War until the days of the Depression. After that, the Democrats owned them with time-out for Eisenhower, a Republican war hero, and, following the debacle of LBJ, Nixon. Then following the debacle of Nixon, they gave us Jimmy Carter. Then it was back to the GOP until “Bubba” came along to turn the Oval Office into a bordello.

In bad financial times, voters turn to the Democrats even if, as is the present case, they are the cause of the bad times. The fact that Sen. McCain wants to keep this as much a secret as does House Speaker Pelosi, is one of those great mysteries.

There are four weeks left to the campaign. Republicans are looking for a good fight. They are not likely to get one from their party or their candidate.

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.

Electing the Second Choice

By Alan Caruba

This is shaping up to be a very strange election.

Consider that both parties are, in effect, fronting candidates that are at best their second choice. The Democrats wanted to nominate Hillary Clinton and now have buyer’s remorse with Barack Obama.

The Republicans had a field of candidates that did not seem to please any of them. Remember the excitement when Fred Thompson got in the race? When John McCain emerged the winner of the primaries, the conservative base of the party put on mourning clothes.

The problem for Republicans is that President George W. Bush turned out to be more liberal than they could ever have imagined; never vetoing a single funding bill until late into his second term, pushing for the federalizing of the nation’s educational system, and ignoring the illegal aliens. His domestic agenda got a pass because he was at least aggressively chasing the Taliban and ridding the Middle East of Saddam Hussein.

Whoever is elected in November is going to inherit a nation in financial distress and the voters already know they will be handed a bill by the federal government as it struggles to restore trust in the banking and investment systems.

The mess, of course, is the result of its own machinations and Wall Street’s natural predatory instincts. Neither candidate looked comfortable at Thursday’s White House emergency meeting with the President, but then nobody else in the room looked happy.

The Friday night debate was uninspiring. If you had a preference when you tuned in, you surely did not change your mind. If you were still undecided, age and experience seemed to be McCain’s trump card while Obama remained as aloof as usual. There is too much of the academic, the professor, in Obama. McCain still loves a good fight.

The problem for both candidates and for Congress is that, when you’re running an empire called America there’s a point at which you realize it is just too damned big. McCain talks of reducing the size of government and he is right. Obama has plans to add to it with billions more in “social” programs about healthcare and education. He is very wrong.

The Romans found out about being too large around the time the Vandals and the Visigoths were at the gates. All roads led to Rome and facilitated its sacking. Let us hope we are not witnessing the sacking of the taxpayer although, at this point, it rather looks like that. Why we expect the people we elect to high office to be smarter than the rest of us remains a mystery.

The first half hour of the debate was about avoiding the financial catastrophe. Not once was the Federal Reserve mentioned. Its cheap money, easy credit policies are a big part of the present problem. Neither candidate actually suggested getting rid of Freddie Mac or Fannie Mae. Why remind people that their government is at the heart of the mess?

Foreign affairs was the scheduled topic and did occupy a fairly boring second half of the debate, but Americans tend not to be much interested in what is happening elsewhere unless it involves a war or threat of one. We have an increasingly short attention span even for wars in which we are involved.

Chosen by a system that needs a complete overhaul, neither candidate evokes a great deal of enthusiasm. The winner in November could well be just a caretaker until the financial system rights itself and that is not likely to be any time soon.

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.

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?

Women Who Rule

By Alan Caruba

If you think about it, the U.S. is decades behind other nations that have been led by women. The United Kingdom’s former Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, comes rapidly to mind, along with her extraordinary partnership with Ronald Reagan. Then there’s Indira Gandhi who led India for while and, of course, Israel’s Golda Meir.

Today, Angela Merkel is the Chancellor of Germany. In truth, the list of nations in which women who have been or are currently in leadership positions is an amazingly long one. It includes Canada, Argentina, the Philippines, Pakistan, Portugal, Iceland, Norway, the Central African Republic, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Poland to name just a few.

So the notion that Gov. Sarah Palin is “one heartbeat away from the presidency” does not bother me one bit. Meanwhile, in Arizona, Janet Napolitano is Governor. M. Jodi Rell runs Connecticut, Linda Lingle runs Hawaii, Kathleen Sebelius is in charge in Kansas, Jennifer M. Granholm directs Michigan’s affairs, and Christine Gregoire is Governor of Washington.

I am pretty sure the Democrat Party, which always makes a big show of opening doors for women and various minorities, is in a panic over the Republican candidate with the guts to put a woman at the top of the ticket with him.

Men of my generation aren’t particularly “threatened” by women in leadership positions. Most of us recall that Eleanor Roosevelt was as popular and influential as FDR. In those days, mothers were powerful figures, too. Roosevelt’s mother held the family purse strings and actually lived in the White House with him. Ironically, Harry Truman’s wife, Bess, hated being First Lady and retreated to their home in Independence, Missouri for most of his tenure in office.

The mother of General McArthur of World War II and Korean War fame actually moved to a residence near West Point while he attended in order to keep an eye on him. I have always found it a curiosity of history that so many men who emerged as strong leaders also had equally strong mothers in the background.

None of this is to deny that there was and probably still is “a glass ceiling” for woman in America. I am not convinced that those who chose to make career and marriage work were or are that happy with the arrangement. I attribute it to the natural nurturing gene that women have and I still regard the role of mother as one of the most important in the world.

It is inevitable that the United States will have a woman President. One is reminded of the heroic and long struggle to achieve suffrage for women; the simple right to vote. That said, America is still a very young nation and subject to such errors and failures. What counts for me is the way we ultimately embrace change.

It strikes me that the choice of Gov. Palin is nothing short of brilliant. Thank you, John McCain. Thank you, America.

The Formidable Sarah Palin

By Alan Caruba

If Molly Brown was unsinkable, than Gov. Sarah Palin is formidable.

What a remarkable choice and what a good one.

Gov. Palin brings so many assets to the ticket it is hard to know where to begin. As she mentioned in her introductory speech, Hillary Clinton garnered 18 million votes. In my mind’s eye I saw those votes move into her column on Election Day.

There is another factor that will loom large in voter’s minds on November 4 and that is OIL. Alaska sits atop a huge reserve of oil and unknown, potential offshore of its coastline. It is Democrats that have thwarted efforts to drill in ANWR. They're going to wish they hadn't.

As the war in Iraq fades from the headlines, voters are increasingly focusing on domestic issues and high among them is the cost of gasoline and heating oil.

How tired Sen. Joe Biden will look beside this fresh new face of politics in America and how sad that the first thing the Obama campaign did was to deliberately ignore the fact that she is the chief executive of Alaska by commenting on her former office as the mayor of a small town.

Where I live, being mayor is an important job. Being governor of a U.S. State has to be one of the toughest.

Imagine doing that and being the mother of five children, the oldest of whom is headed for Iraq with the U.S. Army and the newest of whom is a Downs Syndrome baby?

Formidable! A remarkable person in her own right, but it gets better. Gov. Palin is a legitimate government reformer.

In the weeks ahead we shall hear much of Sarah Palin, but for now her resume alone must surely give her Democrat opponents pause.

As we all get to know her better, we will be asked to go to the polls and make a truly historic vote for the nation’s future.

Tonight's TV Schedule. What to Watch?

By Alan Caruba

Decisions, decisions. What to watch tonight? Turns out that, starting on Monday, all the television networks have decided that 10 PM is soon enough to go live at the Democrat Convention. This means most viewers will still be able to watch NBC’s “Deal or No Deal.”

Come to think of it, that’s a pretty good description of both conventions!

As for watching either or both, it’s more like watching a very long infomercial because that’s what political conventions have become. I suspect most Americans are quite unaware that prior to the television age, they were contentious affairs that often required many ballots before a nominee would be selected. They were smoke-filled, the booze flowed freely, and you couldn’t find a woman on the convention floor because they didn’t gain the right to vote until 1920. It took that long for the national woman’s suffrage movement to get a constitutional amendment passed and ratified.

We’ve had two women as Secretary of State in recent years and any number of Cabinet Secretaries since the days of FDR. We have a complete idiot as Speaker of the House and now they want one to be President! I’m telling you, it’s scary!

The conventions today are carefully scripted with the main speakers having been told what topic to address as opposed to speaking about something that might really matter to them. I am pretty sure that Bill Clinton would like to give a speech on his eight years in office, skipping over the impeachment part, but alas he will have to swallow his pride and hurt feelings to mouth some inanities about how great it is to be supporting Barack Obama. Hillary, too, will have to hold back her tears and tell her delegates to vote for that black guy who stole the nomination from her.

If you don’t want to sit through the entire session that will be provided on public television channels, you can turn to either “Prison Break” or “High School Musical”, “Decision House” or “Gossip Girl.” Any one of these would make for some light diversion from a succession of speeches about how totally fabulous Barack Obama is. We already know how fabulous he is. All we need do is read his autobiography.

Jerome Corsi gives another version in “Obama Nation” that includes some very inconvenient truths.

Presumably, the McCain campaign will be the “Gossip Girl” to provide some juicy items for us to contemplate. They have already had to respond to Madonna’s comparison of John McCain to Hitler. This is what we have come to expect from liberals.

It’s the same with the current Democrat mantra that McCain owns seven houses. He owns a home in Sedona, Arizona. I doubt he has ever stepped foot in the other real estate investments that are owned by his wife of 29 years. Apparently, being married to a wealthy wife is only acceptable if you’re John Kerry.

Oddly, the Democrats will be campaigning hard against anyone who’s rich. Millionaires = bad. Minimum wage workers = good. What this ignores is that those workers all want to be millionaires and, in America, they have a fair chance of achieving that dream. Obama has made it clear that, if elected, he wants to tax the daylights out of anyone or any couple making enough to own a home or put a kid through college these days.

I’m guessing, but I think that network ratings for the Democrat Convention will fall well below those for the recently completed Olympics. This may well be the case for the Republicans too. We have all been through a year of primary elections and are in count-down mode to get the national elections behind us.

I’m thinking that documentary on wild giraffes battling for mating rights should be interesting this evening.

Vladimir Putin Elects John McCain

By Alan Caruba

I had the odd thought while watching the news coverage of the Russian invasion of Georgia that Vladimir Putin had locked up the election for John McCain.

Earlier I thought that President Bush had partially handed over the Oval Office when he announced in effect that U.S. troops would begin to come out of Iraq in the foreseeable future. That pretty much took that issue off the table for Barack Obama.

Obama had shot to the top of the Democrat heap of candidates by emphasizing he had been against the Iraq war from the days before he was elected Senator. Then, after that, Barack managed to find it in his heart to vote for every funding bill involving the war. This has come to be called “refining” his views. Indeed, one can witness Obama refine his views on almost any issue between breakfast and dinner.

I am pretty sure that Vladimir Putin wasn’t thinking “This is a sure way to remind everyone we live in a dangerous world, filled with people like myself who actually want to go to war if it involves a very small nation that can’t fight back.”

The net effect of the Russian invasion of Georgia was to remind anyone over the age of 65 that the United States, following World War Two, was locked into a Cold War with Russia for nearly fifty years. During that time, there were a number of hot wars as well.

I have an older brother who served in the U.S. Army during the Korean War and, in 1962, I can remember being in Fort Benning, Georgia, getting ready to don full battle gear in the event the Russians tried to run the Cuban “missile crisis” blockade that President Kennedy had imposed. You don’t forget stuff like that.

And, of course, you don’t forget seven years of the Vietnam War stretching from Kennedy to Nixon. That was a proxy war, albeit a civil war. Even I participated in peace marches around the Washington Monument to get an end to that confrontation.

I have a feeling that Americans have mostly forgotten the fear that gripped us all on 9/11. If you lived or worked in New York, you were always scanning the sky for another wayward jet airliner. Soon enough we were laughing at the Homeland Security alert colors. The problem, however, is that we are still locked into a war with Islamic fundamentalists and are likely to be for a very long time to come.

Yes, there actually is a reason we have troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.

While the conflict in Georgia is occurring someplace most Americans could not find on the map, the video coverage of the long convoys of Russian troop carriers and tanks are a vivid reminder of the ugliness of war and the potential for an attack from anywhere at any time.

Ever since it became obvious that the U.S. had finally begun to win the war in Iraq, all coverage of that conflict disappeared from our television screens and the front pages of our daily newspapers.

The Georgia conflict is the kind of thing that influences voters; as well it should. Somewhere in the back of our minds we all know that McCain is an Annapolis graduate who fought in the Vietnam War and survived brutal treatment as a prisoner. Some of us may even know he comes from a family whose men served our nation in war going back to World War I.

The contrast between the statements issued by McCain and Obama was significant. McCain’s was clearly a strong denunciation of the Russians while Obama whimpered about the importance of the Russians and Georgians sitting down over a cup of tea to work things out.

So, thank you, Vladimir Putin. My guess is you just got John McCain elected.