Political Football

Bill and Hill need to talk more… -pf

[Feb 2] There is a summary of the story with links here at powerlineblog today.

January 31, 2008

After Mining Deal, Financier Donated to Clinton Charity

By JO BECKER and DON VAN NATTA Jr.

Late on Sept. 6, 2005, a private plane carrying the Canadian mining financier Frank Giustra touched down in Almaty, a ruggedly picturesque city in southeast Kazakhstan. Several hundred miles to the west a fortune awaited: highly coveted deposits of uranium that could fuel nuclear reactors around the world. And Mr. Giustra was in hot pursuit of an exclusive deal to tap them.

Unlike more established competitors, Mr. Giustra was a newcomer to uranium mining in Kazakhstan, a former Soviet republic. But what his fledgling company lacked in experience, it made up for in connections. Accompanying Mr. Giustra on his luxuriously appointed MD-87 jet that day was a former president of the United States.

Upon landing on the first stop of a three-country philanthropic tour, the two men were whisked off to share a sumptuous midnight banquet with Kazakhstan’s president, Nursultan A. Nazarbayev, whose 19-year stranglehold on the country has all but quashed political dissent.

Mr. Nazarbayev walked away from the table with a propaganda coup, after Mr. Clinton expressed enthusiastic support for the Kazakh leader’s bid to head an international organization that monitors elections and supports democracy. Mr. Clinton’s public declaration undercut both American foreign policy and sharp criticism of Kazakhstan’s poor human rights record by, among others, Mr. Clinton’s wife, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York.

Within two days, corporate records show that Mr. Giustra also came up a winner when his company signed preliminary agreements giving it the right to buy into three uranium projects controlled by Kazakhstan’s state-owned uranium agency, Kazatomprom.

The monster deal stunned the mining industry, turning an unknown shell company into one of the world’s largest uranium producers in a transaction ultimately worth tens of millions of dollars to Mr. Giustra, analysts said.

Just months after the Kazakh pact was finalized, Mr. Clinton’s charitable foundation received its own windfall: a $31.3 million donation from Mr. Giustra that had remained a secret until he acknowledged it last month. The gift, combined with Mr. Giustra’s more recent and public pledge to give the William J. Clinton Foundation an additional $100 million, secured Mr. Giustra a place in Mr. Clinton’s inner circle, an exclusive club of wealthy entrepreneurs in which friendship with the former president has its privileges.

Mr. Giustra was invited to accompany the former president to Almaty just as the financier was trying to seal a deal he had been negotiating for months.

In separate written responses, both men said Mr. Giustra traveled with Mr. Clinton to Kazakhstan, India and China to see first-hand the philanthropic work done by his foundation.

A spokesman for Mr. Clinton said the former president knew that Mr. Giustra had mining interests in Kazakhstan but was unaware of “any particular efforts” and did nothing to help. Mr. Giustra said he was there as an “observer only” and there was “no discussion” of the deal with Mr. Nazarbayev or Mr. Clinton.

But Moukhtar Dzhakishev, president of Kazatomprom, said in an interview that Mr. Giustra did discuss it, directly with the Kazakh president, and that his friendship with Mr. Clinton “of course made an impression.” Mr. Dzhakishev added that Kazatomprom chose to form a partnership with Mr. Giustra’s company based solely on the merits of its offer.

After The Times told Mr. Giustra that others said he had discussed the deal with Mr. Nazarbayev, Mr. Giustra responded that he “may well have mentioned my general interest in the Kazakhstan mining business to him, but I did not discuss the ongoing” efforts.

As Mrs. Clinton’s presidential campaign has intensified, Mr. Clinton has begun severing financial ties with Ronald W. Burkle, the supermarket magnate, and Vinod Gupta, the chairman of InfoUSA, to avoid any conflicts of interest. Those two men have harnessed the former president’s clout to expand their businesses while making the Clintons rich through partnership and consulting arrangements.

Mr. Clinton has vowed to continue raising money for his foundation if Mrs. Clinton is elected president, maintaining his connections with a wide network of philanthropic partners.

Mr. Giustra said that while his friendship with the former president “may have elevated my profile in the news media, it has not directly affected any of my business transactions.”

Mining colleagues and analysts agree it has not hurt. Neil MacDonald, the chief executive of a Canadian merchant bank that specializes in mining deals, said Mr. Giustra’s financial success was partly due to a “fantastic network” crowned by Mr. Clinton. “That’s a very solid relationship for him,” Mr. MacDonald said. “I’m sure it’s very much a two-way relationship because that’s the way Frank operates.”

Foreseeing Opportunities

Mr. Giustra made his fortune in mining ventures as a broker on the Vancouver Stock Exchange, raising billions of dollars and developing a loyal following of investors. Just as the mining sector collapsed, Mr. Giustra, a lifelong film buff, founded the Lion’s Gate Entertainment Corporation in 1997. But he sold the studio in 2003 and returned to mining.

Mr. Giustra foresaw a bull market in gold and began investing in mines in Argentina, Australia and Mexico. He turned a $20 million shell company into a powerhouse that, after a $2.4 billion merger with Goldcorp Inc., became Canada’s second-largest gold company.

With a net worth estimated in the hundreds of millions of dollars, Mr. Giustra began looking for ways to put his wealth to good use. Meeting Mr. Clinton, and learning about the work his foundation was doing on issues like AIDS treatment in poor countries, “changed my life,” Mr. Giustra told The Vancouver Sun.

The two men were introduced in June 2005 at a fund-raiser for tsunami victims at Mr. Giustra’s Vancouver home and hit it off right away. They share a love of history, geopolitics and music — Mr. Giustra plays the trumpet to Mr. Clinton’s saxophone. Soon the dapper Canadian was a regular at Mr. Clinton’s side, as they flew around the world aboard Mr. Giustra’s plane.

Philanthropy may have become his passion, but Mr. Giustra, now 50, was still hunting for ways to make money.

Exploding demand for energy had helped revitalize the nuclear power industry, and uranium, the raw material for reactor fuel, was about to become a hot commodity. In late 2004, Mr. Giustra began talking to investors, and put together a company that would eventually be called UrAsia Energy Ltd.

Kazakhstan, which has about one-fifth of the world’s uranium reserves, was the place to be. But with plenty of suitors, Kazatomprom could be picky about its partners.

“Everyone was asking Kazatomprom to the dance,” said Fadi Shadid, a senior stock analyst covering the uranium industry for Friedman Billings Ramsey, an investment bank. “A second-tier junior player like UrAsia — you’d need all the help you could get.”

The Cameco Corporation, the world’s largest uranium producer, was already a partner of Kazatomprom. But when Cameco expressed interest in the properties Mr. Giustra was already eying, the government’s response was lukewarm. “The signals we were getting was, you’ve got your hands full,” said Gerald W. Grandey, Cameco president.

For Cameco, it took five years to “build the right connections” in Kazakhstan, Mr. Grandey said. UrAsia did not have that luxury. Profitability depended on striking before the price of uranium soared.

“Timing was everything,” said Sergey Kurzin, a Russian-born businessman whose London-based company was brought into the deal by UrAsia because of his connections in Kazakhstan. Even with those connections, Mr. Kurzin said, it took four months to arrange a meeting with Kazatomprom.

In August 2005, records show, the company sent an engineering consultant to Kazakhstan to assess the uranium properties. Less than four weeks later, Mr. Giustra arrived with Mr. Clinton.

Mr. Dzhakishev, the Kazatomprom chief, said an aide to Mr. Nazarbayev informed him that Mr. Giustra talked with Mr. Nazarbayev about the deal during the visit. “And when our president asked Giustra, ‘What do you do?’ he said, ‘I’m trying to do business with Kazatomprom,’ ” Mr. Dzhakishev said. He added that Mr. Nazarbayev replied, “Very good, go to it.”

Mr. Clinton’s Kazakhstan visit, the only one of his post-presidency, appears to have been arranged hastily. The United States Embassy got last-minute notice that the president would be making “a private visit,” said a State Department official, who said he was not authorized to speak on the record.

The publicly stated reason for the visit was to announce a Clinton Foundation agreement that enabled the government to buy discounted AIDS drugs. But during a news conference, Mr. Clinton wandered into delicate territory by commending Mr. Nazarbayev for “opening up the social and political life of your country.”

In a statement Kazakhstan would highlight in news releases, Mr. Clinton declared that he hoped it would achieve a top objective: leading the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, which would confer legitimacy on Mr. Nazarbayev’s government.

“I think it’s time for that to happen, it’s an important step, and I’m glad you’re willing to undertake it,” Mr. Clinton said.

A Speedy Process

Mr. Clinton’s praise was odd, given that the United States did not support Mr. Nazarbayev’s bid. (Late last year, Kazakhstan finally won the chance to lead the security organization for one year, despite concerns raised by the Bush administration.) Moreover, Mr. Clinton’s wife, who sits on a Congressional commission with oversight of such matters, had also voiced skepticism.

Eleven months before Mr. Clinton’s statement, Mrs. Clinton co-signed a commission letter to the State Department that sounded “alarm bells” about the prospect that Kazakhstan might head the group. The letter stated that Kazakhstan’s bid “would not be acceptable,” citing “serious corruption,” canceled elections and government control of the news media.

In a written statement to The Times, Mr. Clinton’s spokesman said the former president saw “no contradiction” between his statements in Kazakhstan and the position of Mrs. Clinton, who said through a spokeswoman, “Senator Clinton’s position on Kazakhstan remains unchanged.”

Noting that the former president also met with opposition leaders in Almaty, Mr. Clinton’s spokesman said he was only “seeking to suggest that a commitment to political openness and to fair elections would reflect well on Kazakhstan’s efforts to chair the O.S.C.E.”

But Robert Herman, who worked for the State Department in the Clinton administration and is now at Freedom House, a human rights group, said the former president’s statement amounted to an endorsement of Kazakhstan’s readiness to lead the group, a position he called “patently absurd.”

“He was either going off his brief or he was sadly mistaken,” Mr. Herman said. “There was nothing in the record to suggest that they really wanted to move forward on democratic reform.”

Indeed, in December 2005, Mr. Nazarbayev won another election, which the security organization itself said was marred by an “atmosphere of intimidation” and “ballot-box stuffing.”

After Mr. Nazarbayev won with 91 percent of the vote, Mr. Clinton sent his congratulations. “Recognizing that your work has received an excellent grade is one of the most important rewards in life,” Mr. Clinton wrote in a letter released by the Kazakh embassy. Last September, just weeks after Kazakhstan held an election that once again failed to meet international standards, Mr. Clinton honored Mr. Nazarbayev by inviting him to his annual philanthropic conference.

Within 48 hours of Mr. Clinton’s departure from Almaty on Sept. 7, Mr. Giustra got his deal. UrAsia signed two memorandums of understanding that paved the way for the company to become partners with Kazatomprom in three mines.

The cost to UrAsia was more than $450 million, money the company did not have in hand and had only weeks to come up with. The transaction was finalized in November, after UrAsia raised the money through the largest initial public offering in the history of Canada’s Venture Exchange.

Mr. Giustra challenged the notion that UrAsia needed to court Kazatomprom’s favor to seal the deal, contending that the government agency’s approval was not required.

But Mr. Dzhakishev, analysts and Mr. Kurzin, one of Mr. Giustra’s own investors, said that approval was necessary. Mr. Dzhakishev, who said that the deal was almost done when Mr. Clinton arrived, said that Kazatomprom was impressed with the sum Mr. Giustra was willing to pay and his record of attracting investors. He said Mr. Nazarbayev himself ultimately signed off on the transaction.

Longtime market watchers were confounded. Kazatomprom’s choice of UrAsia was a “mystery,” said Gene Clark, the chief executive of Trade Tech, a uranium industry newsletter.

“UrAsia was able to jump-start the whole process somehow,” Mr. Clark said. The company became a “major uranium producer when it didn’t even exist before.”

A Profitable Sale

Records show that Mr. Giustra donated the $31.3 million to the Clinton Foundation in the months that followed in 2006, but neither he nor a spokesman for Mr. Clinton would say exactly when.

In September 2006, Mr. Giustra co-produced a gala 60th birthday for Mr. Clinton that featured stars like Jon Bon Jovi and raised about $21 million for the Clinton Foundation.

In February 2007, a company called Uranium One agreed to pay $3.1 billion to acquire UrAsia. Mr. Giustra, a director and major shareholder in UrAsia, would be paid $7.05 per share for a company that just two years earlier was trading at 10 cents per share.

That same month, Mr. Dzhakishev, the Kazatomprom chief, said he traveled to Chappaqua, N.Y., to meet with Mr. Clinton at his home. Mr. Dzhakishev said Mr. Giustra arranged the three-hour meeting. Mr. Dzhakishev said he wanted to discuss Kazakhstan’s intention — not publicly known at the time — to buy a 10 percent stake in Westinghouse, a United States supplier of nuclear technology.

Nearly a year earlier, Mr. Clinton had advised Dubai on how to handle the political furor after one of that nation’s companies attempted to take over several American ports. Mrs. Clinton was among those on Capitol Hill who raised the national security concerns that helped kill the deal.

Mr. Dzhakishev said he was worried the proposed Westinghouse investment could face similar objections. Mr. Clinton told him that he would not lobby for him, but Mr. Dzhakishev came away pleased by the chance to promote his nation’s proposal to a former president.

Mr. Clinton “said this was very important for America,” said Mr. Dzhakishev, who added that Mr. Giustra was present at Mr. Clinton’s home.

Both Mr. Clinton and Mr. Giustra at first denied that any such meeting occurred. Mr. Giustra also denied ever arranging for Kazakh officials to meet with Mr. Clinton. Wednesday, after The Times told them that others said a meeting, in Mr. Clinton’s home, had in fact taken place, both men acknowledged it.

“You are correct that I asked the president to meet with the head of Kazatomprom,” Mr. Giustra said. “Mr. Dzhakishev asked me in February 2007 to set up a meeting with former President Clinton to discuss the future of the nuclear energy industry.” Mr. Giustra said the meeting “escaped my memory until you raised it.”

Wednesday, Mr. Clinton’s spokesman, Ben Yarrow, issued what he called a “correction,” saying: “Today, Mr. Giustra told our office that in February 2007, he brought Mr. Dzhakishev from Kazatomprom to meet with President Clinton to discuss the future of nuclear energy.”

Mr. Yarrow said his earlier denial was based on the former president’s records, which he said “show a Feb. 27 meeting with Mr. Giustra; no other attendees are listed.”

Mr. Dzhakishev said he had a vivid memory of his Chappaqua visit, and a souvenir to prove it: a photograph of himself with the former president.

“I hung up the photograph of us and people ask me if I met with Clinton and I say, Yes, I met with Clinton,” he said, smiling proudly.

David L. Stern and Margot Williams contributed reporting.

Link

If I can be allowed a bit of whining here… there are two assumptions made in the post below from powerlineblog that I would like to understand more…

1) I don’t believe that Rudy and John’s # of appearences in Iowa or NH were all that different and neither engaged in the Straw Poll.

2) Keeping Rudy out of the headlines is only under the control of the Main Stream Media who I still believe think (as powerline notes below) Rudy is the strongest candidate for the general election.  The MSM will have done their job minimizing his candidacy to an electorate that just has NOT been paying attention.

Rudy was NOT going to win the early primaries regardless of strategies and he did compete at the retail level as I’ve mentioned before – he was actively fundraising or handshaking and townhall-ing, nearly every day since he announced in Feburary 2007.

Sadly (although his attacks against Romney on the time table issue are lame) – I can support McCain but Rudy is clearly the more conservative of the two by a country mile.  Not even close.  And I don’t think he can beat Clinton. And McCain standing beside the rhetorically sublime Obama – he will fail the visual test too (screams past v. future) – people will not take time to listen to issues.  I’ve lost a lot of faith in the electorate in the last months.

What does it say about a system where the press can report a demise and then make it so? Conservatives will get what they wanted (Rudy out of the race) but if they get McCain as an alternative – who won? -pf

(emphasis added below is mine..)

——————————————

Every indication is that Rudy Giuliani is sinking like a stone in Florida. Barring a miracle, he’ll finish either a bit above or a bit below Mike Huckabee. Once Florida Republicans saw that Rudy was dropping in the polls, I think a lot of them jumped ship, thinking they’d rather make a choice between McCain and Romney than use their vote on a candidate who isn’t going to win. Hence, I suspect, the continued downward slide.

If Florida is between McCain and Romney, then the nomination race is between McCain and Romney. It’s too bad; I think Giuliani might have been our strongest candidate in the general election. He was expected to fight McCain to be the first choice of the party’s moderate wing, and, given the problems McCain has had with the party’s base, Rudy had every reason to think he could come out on top and be one of the last candidates standing, even if he skipped the early primaries.

That strategy was a huge gamble, and it doesn’t appear to have paid off. One lesson, I think, is that Rudy’s participation in the debates, in which he always performed well, wasn’t enough to keep him in the public eye given his absence from the day-to-day headlines associated with the early primaries. It’s too bad; at the same time, it’s hard not to credit McCain for going out and wresting the finalist’s slot through hard work in the early states.

Barring a surprise in Florida, Republican primary voters and caucus-goers on mega-Tuesday will face a stark but classic political choice: do they go with Romney, whose views across a broad range of issues are more palatable to conservatives and whose economic expertise may be badly needed, or with McCain, who seems pretty clearly more likely to prevent the Clintons from re-inhabiting the White House? It’s not an easy choice. We’ll have more to say about it in due course.

Neither Bear or Hawkeye football carried into January, but politics remain.

January was a struggle, completing the County Caucus and watching Rudy’s chances for the republican nomination diminish day by day. Iowa was particularly painful as I had to manage a balance between running Rudy’s county efforts and running the county caucus. In most cases the county efforts prevailed.

The Iowa Republican Party (RPI) is dysfunctional. Just today one of the county chairs from my district sent a blistering email to most of the republican hierarchy in the state, complaining about the lack of communication, grass roots engagement and over all dysfunction of RPI. All of this was enforced by the newspaper reports that Ray Hoffman, the Chairman of RPI had just resigned – later in the day we heard (again through a newspaper article) that a new Chairman was unanimously voted in (swell).

Anyway, about the caucus. We drew over 1220 voters and it was a mess. I have been complimented by many people for my efforts but a lot of people were involved and worked hard, and it was still a mess. Here is one email I replied to a disconcerted caucus goer – complaining that the event was not very well organized…

Well I was the organizer for the caucus so you can blame me for your woes. In my defense I spent over 200 hours of my personal time organizing the caucus including 2 weeks vacation and on the phone calling people for the last 2 months on weekends. Those calls included 4 people your state congressman gave me who thought would help for your township. All turned me down, and no one attended from your township to pull from in 2006.

There were 50 volunteers who helped including 10 from the Community College Republican Club, 10 from the Republican Women’s Group and central committee members as well as temporary chairs – no one from your township.

We registered over 200 new Republicans in less than an hour in a first ever “same day registration” mandated by a new Iowa law. Though crowded, some over crowded and mistakes made – most precincts and townships ran fine.

I did focus on organizing the larger caucus groups, making sometimes 10 calls to get a commitment to find the ones who finally ran them. Those that had no chairmen were supposed to be joined with other townships in the cafeteria but that never happened, alas, they were overwhelmed themselves. Won’t blame them for that… At that point I went to two of those smaller townships myself to get them started and proceeded to laugh with some friends from one that I didn’t know were Republicans and got yelled at from a guy from the other who thought I should have spent 200 and ONE hours prepping for the chaos that ensued.

I drove 60 miles round trip on Christmas Eve Day to talk to two township caucus leaders who were caucusing on their own as they usually do.

We also had one or two caucus chairs that could have done a better job. We need to work with them. We had 30 people attend pre-caucus training session in December that no one had conducted before and some of us traveled to Mt Pleasant for other training.

One caucus chair we decided at the last minute should stay home due to health problems and a couple stepped up that night volunteering to run that precinct as you did yours.

We fed 250 people and raised $700 and another $500 in general donations for the scholarship fund at the soup supper.

Now we know who to contact for your township. Again, thanks for helping on the 3^rd. We promise to use our lessons learned to improve the process for the next large group, which we will not expect in 2010 but do hope the party grows.

Please remember this is fully a volunteer effort and we could use volunteers.

Keep up to date on Republican happenings by viewing the county website http://muscatinecountygop.org which I maintain in my spare time as a volunteer for county republicans and my role as secretary of the central committee.

Regards,

Then there was this story – Link

I asked a local well known businessman to give the speech for Rudy. Initially I was hoping to get Tommy Thompson to attend and speak for Rudy but that would have been nuts in hind-site and the campaign decided not to send any surrogates in to speak.

Today, I am still organizing data (caucus chairmen, delegates, alternate delegates, junior delegates) we still need to get the platform planks posted and organize other county convention issues.

Next caucus even though we don’t expect as large of a crowd, we will plan for it and have registration and check-in INSIDE the precinct or township room locations.

Our County Rudy totals, however small – ranked 5th of the 99 Counties in Votes for Rudy by total votes cast.

Now about Rudy. I still firmly support his candidacy. I’ve hesitated writing this because it sounds like some paranoid conspiracy theorist but this campaign has made no sense to me. But first yesterday in Naples:

I thought I would write this – putting a stake in the ground before Jan 29 (the FLA primary).

The media has been declaring Rudy’s campaign dead since Iowa, but let’s think about this.

Rudy’s numbers started to tank with this fake story. Link

You can read story after story I’m posting on this site documenting the bias against Rudy.

The political pundits seem to want to be the shining face of the 2008 race, not allowing the candidates and certainly not the facts tell the story.

Tonight the pollsters were off by double digits forecasting Obama’s win. The Rudy staff still thinks Rudy will win Florida even though media pollsters have him behind by double digits today. The NY Times seems to have picked up on the absentee ballot program Rudy’s team has been working on the ground all month, and Romney’s team is now spinning how little time Mitt has spent there. (lowering expectations)  Be prepared to see Rudy’s numbers get propped – the pollsters need to hedge their bets. (sad)

Have you noticed almost every talking head (including radio talk show host) seems to be supporting a candidate? Free Advertising, and ZERO of it is for Rudy. James Carville and Paul Bagala were removed from CNN reporting because of their obvious shilling for Clinton – because Obama complained. IS that ALL you have to do? (but it’s only until after the Democrat Convention, so we’ll still see them shilling for a Dem later)

People see McCain and Rudy as similar type candidates (moderates) but they are very different. McCain, IMO is too old – he would be older than when Reagan was first sworn in if he wins; and he’s already said he’s in it for one term only. Rudy is much more fiscally conservative – and McCain is just too prone to compromise – something that is useful in the Senate but not as a leader of the free world. I’ve told people McCain is my 4th or 5th choice, with Rudy my 1st 2nd and 3rd choice. Romney is 5th or 6th, no one else is on the list.

And what is this about McCain picking Lindsey Graham for his VP?  Bleh!

Just something about Rudy that is strong, knows his mind, sticks to it, tough on crime and prosecution of the terrorists’ war on us.  I like his stat programs, AND I’m pro choice in the same way Rudy is… We can’t legislate morality, we must change hearts and minds… But he would still appoint judges that don’t re-invent law. Tough guy with a heart – Link.

To watch these politicians duck and weave is disconcerting. The media is making a game of this race and not listening to what Rudy says – he never planned to play to win in any state before Florida. (even though Rudy has raised as much money and appeared in Iowa and New Hampshire about the same number of times as McCain did) Rudy just keeps telling his story and putting out white papers on what he would do and gathering some great people around him like Ted Olsen, Bill Simon and Steve Forbes (and check out the video at the bottom of the page).

Whether Rudy’s strategy makes sense can’t be known until Jan 29. To decide and pronounce otherwise is to affect election results. Deciding election results is no more the media’s job (as much as they would like it to be) as it is right to announce the “forecasted” winner before the polls close.

All the talking heads saying “Rudy’s campaign is dead” haven’t spent much time on the ground in Florida.

Will write more later. Rudy is my guy – and is right for 2008 -this is why (video)

Although Rudy was in Iowa and New Hampshire about as many days as McCain – he has also said since the start of his campaign almost a year ago – his measurement of success will be winning Florida.  Where is the surprise he’s been there for a while?

note – early voting did not start in Florida until January 14, 15 days before primary day.

note – early surge in voting has not been reported as deceptive practices in prior elections or even in the Clinton/Obama race – but Rudy?

Democrats “intense interest”

Rudy “flaws in early voting exposed”

Link

January 27, 2008

Surge in Early Balloting Shifts Florida Races

By ADAM NAGOURNEY

BOCA RATON, Fla. — A surge of early voting by Florida Democrats and Republicans has startled officials here and injected additional complexity into the state’s presidential primaries on Tuesday.

Democratic candidates are not overtly campaigning here because of the Democratic National Committee’s decision to penalize the state for moving its primary to an earlier date than authorized by the national party, but the number of early votes cast suggests intense interest in the race.

The activity appears fueled in part by unofficial efforts by Florida supporters of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York and Senator Barack Obama of Illinois.

By Friday night, nearly 350,000 Democrats had cast early votes, either in person or by mail, and party officials predicted that about 400,000 will have voted by Election Day. By contrast, just 97,000 Democrats voted early in the 2004 presidential primary, which was not as intensely contested. There are 4.14 million Democrats registered to vote in Florida.

The level of interest, if it is matched by turnout at the polls on Tuesday, could make the results in Florida more important for Democrats than they had assumed, given both the absence of candidates here and the fact that no delegates are at stake. The Democratic National Committee penalized Florida for holding its primary too early, saying it would not seat its delegates.

Along with the Democratic contest in South Carolina on Saturday, the Florida results could help set the stage for the almost nationwide primary battle on Feb. 5. Three days before the polls are to open here, the number of Democrats who have voted here has already exceeded the turnout in Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada.

“There is a race going on,” said Karen Thurman, the chairwoman of the Florida Democratic Party, who has been urging Floridians to defy the national party and vote. “And there will still be a headline: ‘So-and-so has won Florida.’ ”

There has also been a flood of early ballots from Republican voters which has, again, already exceeded the turnout in the contests in Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada. As of Friday night, nearly 400,000 party Republicans had cast early votes, either in person or by mail, party officials reported. By contrast, just under 200,000 Republicans had voted in person or by mail at this point in 2006, when there was a heavily contested Republican primary for governor. There were 3.8 million Republicans qualified to vote on Tuesday.

That development offers at least a glimmer of hope to Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former mayor of New York. He has made a calculated effort to get his supporters to vote early over the past month, hoping to bank a substantial number of votes before losses in other early states raised questions about his viability and his competitors arrived in the state, driving down his numbers in the polls.

As late as Thursday, Mr. Giuliani, at an appearance here, was still reminding supporters to vote for him early, as he has done at almost every stop here this month. “We are already voting, right?” he asked the crowd.

Florida is one of 37 states that permit residents to vote early, either with early voting or wide-open absentee voting, according to Electionline.org, a Pew Center Web site that tracks election law. This is the first big test of the practice in 2008, preceding the Feb. 5 primaries, when seven more states will count early votes as part of their final tallies.

Advocates of early voting argue that it makes it easier for people to vote — in some states, 50 percent of the votes are cast in advance — while taking pressure off voting machines and making Election Day easier to manage.

But the practice has been questioned by some academics, who note that voters often make their decisions before they have a chance to hear all the arguments that lead to a final voting decision. Mr. Giuliani’s supporters and some rivals said his effort to bank early votes could save him from a devastating defeat, even though it may not be enough to bring him victory, and thus serve as a case study of one of the objections to the system.

“This is a case where some of the flaws in early voting are exposed,” said Paul Gronke, a political scientist at Reed College in Portland, Ore., who is a consultant to Electionline.org.

The rush of Democrats to vote before Tuesday’s primary has come despite Democratic candidates having stayed out of the state in deference to the Democratic National Committee and a pledge they signed to the four states with authorized early contests: Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina.

Still, unlike in Michigan, the other state that defied the Democratic National Committee and went ahead with an early primary, the names of Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Obama and a third candidate, John Edwards, a former North Carolina senator, are on the ballots that Floridians saw when early voting started 15 days before the primary and on absentee ballots that were distributed as early as Dec. 15.

The Democratic surge here is hardly taking place in a vacuum. Mrs. Clinton has a network of supporters, including elected officials, who have organized get-out-the-vote efforts and are planning statewide victory parties. One prominent Clinton supporter, Gerald W. McEntee, the president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, was headed here this weekend to urge union members to turn out for Mrs. Clinton.

“We have 26,000 members and we probably have a like amount of retirees there,” Mr. McEntee said by telephone. “We are going to have three or four meetings and give our pitch in terms of Hillary Clinton and ask them to be active in the remaining days of the campaign with the specific focus of trying to bring out three our four neighbors next Tuesday.”

Mrs. Clinton is scheduled to fly here on Sunday for two fund-raisers. Although the events are not open to the press or public — her aides said she would attend no public event that would result in her breaking her word — her arrival here the day after the South Carolina vote seems likely to produce coverage on Florida television stations and newspapers on the day before the vote. On Friday, her campaign issued a statement saying that she would urge her delegates at the Democratic convention this summer to seat the Florida delegation.

Even as Mr. Obama’s advisers have sought to play down the results, his campaign has bought television time on national networks that has been hard to miss on Florida television stations. Grass-roots groups who say they are operating independently of Mr. Obama’s headquarters in Chicago have also been organizing across the state, trying to encourage support for him.

Terry Watson, who heads one of the grass-roots groups, said his organization handed out thousands of leaflets promoting Mr. Obama and asked Floridians to vote for him at a Martin Luther King Jr. Day parade in St. Petersburg last Monday. Mr. Watson said his group was “the largest grass-roots organization” in the state and was preparing to help Mr. Obama should he win the presidential nomination.

Mrs. Clinton’s aides are hoping that, delegates or not, the attention paid to a potential big victory in Florida, the nation’s fourth-largest state, if not as prominent as a victory in other states to date, will at least give her a public relations boost heading into Feb. 5, and will mitigate against a potential defeat Saturday in South Carolina.

“Here’s the bottom line: Hundreds of thousands of Floridians are going to vote,” said Howard Wolfson, the communications director for Mrs. Clinton’s campaign. “They have been watching this campaign, and their votes and their preferences matter.”

That has stirred concern in Mr. Obama’s campaign; a front-page poll in The Miami Herald on Thursday showed Mrs. Clinton with a sizable lead.

Mr. Obama’s campaign argued that the Florida vote is a meaningless beauty contest, given the absence of candidates in the state and the fact that no candidate will win delegates in a contest that both sides have increasingly viewed as a race for delegates, rather than states.

“Although Senator Obama did not remove his name from the Florida primary ballot because Florida law did not allow him to do so, Senator Obama is firm in his commitment to neither participate nor campaign in the Florida primary and its outcome has no bearing on the nomination contest,” Mr. Obama’s campaign said in a memorandum sent to “interested parties.”

On the Republican side, party officials said Mr. Giuliani had made the most concerted effort to get his vote early. Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, decided not to move early on, calculating that it would not make sense to do so until he scored some victories and appeared to look politically viable, which has now happened. Financial problems led Senator John McCain of Arizona to close down his operation in the state last fall and he did not have the organization here to do a significant early voter turnout program.

“Rudy’s people have aggressively worked the absentees, particularly in South Florida,” said Sally Bradshaw, a longtime Florida Republican operative who is running Mr. Romney’s campaign here. “It makes sense for them to do so. They knew Rudy was not strong in the early primary states and they needed people to vote for Rudy before the results from that state came on.”

WALL STREET JOURNAL

THE CASE FOR THE CANDIDATE
The Giuliani Tax Cut
By STEVE FORBES

In the presidential race, the Democrats’ idea of “change” is in reality more of the same — more power and more money for Washington. Mr. Giuliani has another idea. It begins by fixing the complicated mess of our tax code by offering something simpler, flatter and fairer.

Mr. Forbes is president and CEO of Forbes Inc. and editor in chief of Forbes Magazine.

NATIONAL REVIEW

The Case for Rudy 2
By David Frum

A little while ago, I met a Washington couple who took me aside to ask what they could do to help elect Rudy. I get asked this question a lot, but this couple was more than usually eager. I asked them why they liked Rudy so much, and they told me this story: In the first year of Rudy’s mayoralty, they were visiting New York to prepare for their daughter’s wedding in that city. They spent one afternoon with their daughter in a wedding boutique on upper Madison Avenue, supposedly one of the safer areas of the city. Shortly before closing time, the store’s buzzer rang. The store manager looked outside, saw two men in suits and ties, and made the decision to let them in. Big mistake. The men pulled out guns, demanded money and jewelry, and seized anything portable and valuable. On their way out the door, they shot both the man and the woman.

ARG put out a new FL primary poll today, and they show McCain winning handily – but, get this – they included independents, and Florida is a closed primary.

http://www.americanresearchgroup.com/pres08/flrep8-706.html

simply amazing.

Everything I’m hearing is that Rudy is doing really well and has a lot of votes sent in (absentee ballots) before others set foot in the state.

He’s using $ others don’t have any more for his campaign in FLA and Super Tuesday.

This may not work but the press and polsters are doing whatever they can to minimize his candidacy.

REAL CLEAR POLITICS

The Case for Rudy Giuliani
By Dennis Prager

I write this column aware that Giuliani may have lost his chance at getting the Republican nomination. But I could not live with my conscience if I did not articulate one week before the potentially decisive Florida primary why I believe Rudy Giuliani would make an excellent president of the United States.

This very serious threat is NOT getting enough attention. Politicians whoop Americans up about confederate flags, robo polling scams, the burst of the housing bubble and religion’s place in politics, but the terrorists war on us continues unabated.

Stabilizing Iraq isn’t enough; there are times I feel like screaming “FOCUS PEOPLE!” we are in serious danger of losing our way of life.

Think a bit on how you and large and small businesses depend on the internet for communication and commerce. Well now what about energy and municipal infrastructure support too? Turn all that off, and what do we have? The 19th Century? Worse? Katrina magnified? People in previous centuries knew how to take care of themselves without computers, we do not. All computers are at risk of attack. (sleep well tonight) -pf

~

CIA Admits Cyberattacks Blacked Out Cities

The disclosure was made at a New Orleans security conference Friday attended by international government officials, engineers, and security managers.

By Thomas Claburn
InformationWeek
January 18, 2008 06:15 PM

The CIA on Friday admitted that cyberattacks have caused at least one power outage affecting multiple cities outside the United States. Alan Paller, director of research at the SANS Institute, said that CIA senior analyst Tom Donahue confirmed that online attackers had caused at least one blackout. The disclosure was made at a New Orleans conference Friday attended by international government officials, engineers, and security managers from North American energy companies and utilities.

Paller said that Donahue presented him with a written statement that read, “We have information, from multiple regions outside the United States, of cyber intrusions into utilities, followed by extortion demands. We suspect, but cannot confirm, that some of these attackers had the benefit of inside knowledge. We have information that cyberattacks have been used to disrupt power equipment in several regions outside the United States. In at least one case, the disruption caused a power outage affecting multiple cities. We do not know who executed these attacks or why, but all involved intrusions through the Internet.”

Information about which foreign cities were affected by the outage and other information related to the attack was not mentioned and is unlikely to be forthcoming, said Paller.

A call to the CIA asking for further comment was not immediately returned.

Donahue said that the CIA had thoroughly weighed the pros and cons of making this information public, according to Paller.

The prospect of cyberattacks crippling multicity regions appears to have prompted the government to make this information public. The issue “went from ‘we should be concerned about to this’ to ‘this is something we should fix now,’ ” said Paller. “That’s why, I think, the government decided to disclose this.”

The delegates at the meeting were sharing data about cyberattacks on critical utilities and resources, and methods of attack mitigation. One topic of discussion was the new SCADA and Control Systems Survival Kit, a document of best practices for SCADA systems. SCADA stands for Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition and refers to devices that control critical infrastructure like power generators, traffic signals, and dams. The security of SCADA systems has been a concern among federal officials for years.

In San Francisco on Thursday, following a private screening of the new documentary The New Face Of Cybercrime, Howard Schmidt, a former Microsoft executive and government cybersecurity adviser, mentioned ongoing concerns about the vulnerabilities of SCADA systems and noted that 85% of the U.S. critical infrastructure is controlled by the private sector. “No one should be minimizing this issue,” he said.

Citing two Government Accountability Office reports on SCADA security, Paller said that people have been adding wireless and Windows to SCADA systems without really thinking about security. “They’re gotten radically unsafe,” he said.

Mark Steyn – Hits a home run. A piece that interestingly describes the media that is not only making the news but controlling the message of this political season.  Look at the candidates and how they flex or try to flex to the drum beat the media creates.  The article would be very funny if it wasn’t so very sad.   -pf

Link

January 19, 2008, 1:00 a.m.
UnphenomenalTimes
Fake but … fake.
By Mark Steyn

Have you been in an airport recently, and maybe seen a gaggle of America’s heroes returning from Iraq? And you’ve probably thought, “Ah, what a marvelous sight. Remind me to straighten up the old ‘Support Our Troops’ fridge magnet, which seems to have slipped down below the reminder to reschedule my acupuncturist. Maybe I should go over and thank them for their service.”

No, no, no, under no account approach them. Instead, try to avoid making eye contact and back away slowly toward the sign for the parking garage. You’re in the presence of mentally damaged violent killers who could snap at any moment.

You hadn’t heard that? Well, it’s in the New York Times: “a series of articles” — that’s right, a whole series — “about veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan who have committed killings, or been charged with them, after coming home.” It’s an epidemic, folks. As the Times put it: “Town by town across the country, headlines have been telling similar stories. Lakewood, Wash.: ‘Family Blames Iraq After Son Kills Wife.’ Pierre, S.D.: ‘Soldier Charged With Murder Testifies About Postwar Stress.’ Colorado Springs: ‘Iraq War Vets Suspected in Two Slayings, Crime Ring.’”

Obviously, as America’s “newspaper of record,” the Times would resent any suggestion that it’s anti-military. I’m sure if you were one of these crazed military stalker whackjobs following the reporters home you’d find their cars sporting the patriotic bumper sticker “We Support Our Troops, Even After They’ve Been Convicted.” As usual, the Times stories are written in the fey more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger tone that’s a shoo-in come Pulitzer time: “Individually, these are stories of local crimes, gut-wrenching postscripts to the war for the military men, their victims and their communities. Taken together, they paint the patchwork picture of a quiet phenomenon, tracing a cross-country trail of death and heartbreak.”

“Patchwork picture,” “quiet phenomenon”… Yes, yes, but exactly how quiet is the phenomenon? How patchy is the picture?” The New York Times found 121 cases in which veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan either “committed a killing in this country, or were charged with one.” The “committed a killing” formulation includes car accidents.

Thus, with declining deaths in theater, the media narrative evolves. Old story: “America’s soldiers are being cut down by violent irrational insurgents we can never hope to understand.” New story: “Americans are being cut down by violent irrational soldiers we can never hope to understand.” In the quagmire of these veterans’ minds, every leafy Connecticut subdivision is Fallujah and every Dunkin’ Donuts clerk an Abu Musab al-Zarqawi with an annoyingly perky manner.

It was the work of minutes for the Powerline website’s John Hinderaker to discover that the “quiet phenomenon” is entirely unphenomenal: It didn’t seem to occur to the Times to check whether the murder rate among recent veterans is higher than that of the general population of young men. It’s not. Au contraire, the columnist Ralph Peters calculated that Iraq and Afghanistan vets are about a fifth as likely to murder you as the average 18-34 year-old American male. Better yet, the blogger Iowahawk meticulously drew his own “patchwork picture” of another “quiet phenomenon”: the Denver newspaper columnist arrested for stalking, the Cincinnati TV reporter facing child-molestation charges, the Philadelphia anchorwoman who went on a violent drunken rampage. As Iowahawk’s one-man investigative unit wondered:

“Unrelated incidents, or mounting evidence that America’s newsrooms have become a breeding ground for murderous, drunk, gun-wielding child molesters?”

Why would the Times run such a series? My columnar confrere Clifford May connected it to a notorious anniversary: Seventy-five years ago, in February 1933, the Oxford Union passed a famous resolution, by an overwhelming margin, that “this House would under no circumstances fight for its King and country.” The Union was the world’s most famous debating society, in a great university of the dominant global power; its presidents have gone on to serve as Prime Ministers at home and overseas, from Gladstone in the 19th century all the way to Benazir Bhutto in the 1990s.

So the debate and its resolution sent a message to Britain’s enemies: As Churchill saw it, the vote was a “disgusting symptom” of the enervation of the ruling elites. Clifford May sees that same syndrome today around the western world, but, in fact, it’s worse than that.

The Oxford debate took place a decade and a half after the worst carnage in human history. The First World War cost the lives of some 20 million people. Do you remember back in 2004 when Ted Koppel devoted one episode of Nightline to reading out the names of everyone killed in combat in Iraq? If he’d attempted a similar task with the British Empire’s war dead in 1919, the half-hour episode of Nightline would have had to be extended to ten months — or longer if Ted took bathroom breaks, or indeed pauses for breath. The war reached into the smallest English hamlet and culled a generation of young men. It swept through the glittering palaces, too: The brother of Queen Elizabeth (the mother of the present queen) was killed on the western front in 1915. It would be a statistical improbability to have been at that Oxford Union debate and have come from a home in which on some mantle or bureau there was not a photograph of a son or uncle or fiancé forever young.It would be as if millions upon millions had been slaughtered in the first Gulf war, and 15 years later Harvard or Yale were debating whether we should do it all over again.

In other words, we don’t have their excuse. Our war has one of the lowest fatality rates of any war ever, and, when they get so low that even Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid temporarily give up the quagmire bleating, the Times invents bogus stories to suggest that the few veterans lucky enough to make it out of Iraq alive are ticking timebombs ready to explode across every Main Street in the land.

A few days before the Times series began, The National Journal published the latest debunking of a notorious survey: in 2006, the medical journal The Lancet reported that the Iraq war had killed over 650,000 civilians, over 90 percent victims of the US military. That’s 500 civilians a day. Which is quite a smell test. The figure was over ten times the estimates even of hardcore antiwar left-wing groups. Who are these 500 daily victims? Why aren’t there mass riots by Iraqi civilians protesting the daily bloodbath?

Because it’s fake. It didn’t happen.

Yet it’s indestructible. I picked up a local paper in New Hampshire the other day, and a lady psychotherapist was twittering about our “mentally wounded” troops returning home after killing gazillions and bazillions of Iraqi civilians. In 1933, the debaters at Oxford were horrified by the real cost of war. In 2008, the editors of the Times, our college professors and Hollywood celebrities, are horrified by a fiction. Faced with an historically low cost of war, they retreat into fantasy. Who’s really suffering from mental trauma? Who needs the psychotherapy here?

© Mark Steyn 2008

This is a very long, but interesting article about why you should be very concerned about President Obama.

I first became concerned when I learned 4 years ago that he voted neither yes or no on a significant number of votes of interest in the Illinois legislature.

This man’s past requires some scrutiny and his recent past reveals some concerns to me. (over 100 votes) I’ve set in bold paragraphs of particular concern.-pf

Return to the Article

January 16, 2008
By Ed Lasky

The ascent of Barack Obama from state senator in Illinois to a leading contender for the Presidential nomination in the span of just a few years is remarkable. Especially in light of a noticeably unremarkable record — a near-blank slate of few accomplishments and numerous missed votes.

However, in one area of foreign policy that concerns millions of Americans, he does have a record and it is a particularly troubling one. For all supporters of the America-Israel relationship there is enough information beyond the glare of the klieg lights to give one pause. In contrast to his canned speeches filled with “poetry” and uplifting aphorisms and delivered in a commanding way, behind the campaign façade lies a disquieting pattern of behavior.

One seemingly consistent them running throughout Barack Obama’s career is his comfort with aligning himself with people who are anti-Israel advocates. This ease around Israel animus has taken various forms. As Obama has continued his political ascent, he has moved up the prestige scale in terms of his associates. Early on in his career he chose a church headed by a former Black Muslim who is a harsh anti-Israel advocate and who may be seen as tinged with anti-Semitism. This church is a member of a denomination whose governing body has taken a series of anti-Israel actions.

As his political fortunes and ambition climbed, he found support from George Soros, multibillionaire promoter of groups that have been consistently harsh and biased critics of the American-Israel relationship.

Obama’s soothing and inspiring oratory sometimes vanishes when he talks of the Middle East. Indeed, his off-the-cuff remarks have been uniformly taken by supporters of Israel as signs that the inner Obama does not truly support Israel despite what his canned speeches and essays may contain.

Now that Obama has become a leading Presidential candidate, he has assembled a body of foreign policy advisers who signal that a President Obama would likely have an approach towards Israel radically at odds with those of previous Presidents (both Republican and Democrat). A group of experts collected by the Israeli liberal newspaper Haaretz deemed him to be the candidate likely to be least supportive of Israel. He is the candidate most favored by the Arab-American community.

Joining Trinity United Community Church

When Obama moved to Chicago and became a community organizer, he found it expedient to choose a Christian church to join. Even though his father and stepfather were both Muslims and he attended a Muslim school while living in Indonesia, suspicions based on his days as a child are overheated and unfair. Still, his full name alone conveys the biographical fact that he has some elements of a Muslim background.

Saul Alinsky, whose philosophy infused community organizing in Chicago, emphasized the importance of churches as a basis for organizing. There are literally hundreds of churches on the South Side of Chicago that Obama could have chosen from. He selected one that was headed by Reverend Jeremiah Wright, Junior. The anti-Israel rants of this minister have been well chronicled. Among the gems:

The Israelis have illegally occupied Palestinian territories for almost 40 years now. It took a divestment campaign to wake the business community up concerning the South Africa issue. Divestment has now hit the table again as a strategy to wake the business community up and to wake Americans up concerning the injustice and the racism under which the Palestinians have lived because of Zionism.

Jeremiah Wright, Jr.

Pastor Wright is a supporter of Louis Farrakhan (who called Judaism a “gutter religion” and depicted Jews as “bloodsuckers”) and traveled with him to visit Col. Muammar al-Gaddafi, archenemy of Israel’s and a terror supporter. Most recently, as head of the UN Security CouncilGaddafi prevented condemnation of attacks against Israel. As Kyle-Anne Shriver noted,

The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan received the “Rev. Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr. Lifetime Achievement Trumpeteer” Award at the 2007 Trumpet Gala at the United Church of Christ.

Wright routinely compares Israel to apartheid South Africa and considers blacks “The Chosen People”. Wright sees his role not just as a religious counselor but also as an educator and political activist. As part of his schooling, he has posted the following tutorial:

Q: How many UN resolutions did Israel violate by 1992?
A: Over 65

Q: How many UN resolutions on Israel did America veto between 1972 and 1990?
A: 30+

Q: How much does the U.S. fund Israel a year?
A:$5 billion

Q: How many nuclear warheads does Israel have?
A: Over 400

Q: Has Israel every allowed UN weapon inspections?
A: No

Q: What percentage of the Palestinian territories are controlled by Israeli settlements?
A: 42%

Q: Is Israel illegally occupying Palestinian land?
A. Yes.

Tucker Carlson of MSNBC has called Pastor Wright a total hater and wondered why the ties that bind Obama to Wright have not been given greater scrutiny. Mickey Kaus of Slate has also wondered when the ties between Obama and Wright will receive more criticism, given Wright\’s seeming bigotry, which is in contrast to the soothing melody of unity that Obama has trumpeted on the campaign trail.

Some in the media have taken notice. The New York Times did have one front-page article on Wright by Jodi Kantor in which Wright was quoted as saying that should more information come to light about himself, “a lot of his Jewish support will dry up quicker than a snowball in hell”. After the article came out Wright attacked Jodi Kantor, referring to her Jewish heritage in a way that might create discomfort.

This fear is why Pastor Wright was disinvited at the last minute from appearing with Obama when Obama announced his run for the Presidency. Wright admitted in a PBS interview that he understands this distancing from the Obama campaign since “he can’t afford the Jewish support to wane or start questioning his allegiance to the Israel”

Wright has been disappeared by the campaign; Obama has replaced him with high profile white ministers who do not preach the racial exclusiveness and racial superiority that is a hallmark of Jeremiah Wright; however, they seem to share an anti-Israel bias.

Fortunately, bloggers and others have started to note the views of Pastor Wright (which also include an unhealthy does of racial exclusiveness, in Tucker Carlson’s words) and . Finally these views may be crossing over to major media outlets. Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen published a recent column that criticized the award to Louis Farrakhan of the Reverend Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. Trumpeter Award — an award that supposedly was granted to a man who “truly epitomized greatness”. As Cohen noted, Farrakhan is not only a race-baiter but also an anti-Semite and a promoter of anti-Semitism. He falsely accused Jews of cooperating with Hitler and helping him create the Third Reich, has slandered Jews by his insistence that Jews have played an inordinate role in victimizing African-Americans (he has also called Jews “bloodsuckers”). Cohen questions why Obama has stayed steadfast in his allegiance to Pastor Wright over the years.

Obama has called Wright his spiritual mentor, his moral compass and his sounding board. He was the man who gave Obama the term, “The Audacity of Hope” after all. He was also the man who told Obama that there are more black men in prison then in colleges — a statement that Obama parroted until he was told that it was false. What other “facts” has Wright taught Obama? Has he taught Obama to blame 9/11 on America because of our foreign policy?

Nevertheless, an Obama spokesman told the New York Times he is proud of his pastor and his church.The church also is the largest recipient of Obama’s charitable donations. The pastor married Obama and his wife Michelle and baptized his two daughters. Obama has shown continued allegiance to a man who preaches racial exclusiveness, the superiority of black values over white middle-class values, and whose teaching contains anti-Israel diatribes. All these are sharply at variance with what Obama himself preaches on the campaign trail.

One should also note that the governing body of the United Church of Christ has taken a series of anti-Israel actions over the years. A broad coalition of Jewish groups have rebuked the Church for these actions.

Has Obama, the most famous and prestigious member of the Church and an inspiring orator who can move millions, taken steps to work with his church to moderate its anti-Israel invective? No.

He has been honored repeatedly by the church and has been its keynote speaker at various national assemblies. Has he called for change in the anti-Israel approach of the church? No.

For those who claim that Obama is the next JFK (an absurd claim and an insult to a revered President that was skewered recently) he is certainly not a Profile in Courage.

David Axelrod is Obama’s chief political adviser, he is also the man who always comes out to explain that Obama (the master orator) did not really mean some of the offensive off-the-cuff statements he has made about Israel on the campaign trail (see below). Axelrod has also come out with the typical bland statements that Obama does not agree with all the things that Wright says and does. This is a lame defense.

Recall, this is a church and a pastor who Obama has relied upon to shape his views, to be his sounding board; the church is the largest recipient of his charity dollars; he proudly states that he admires the church and Jeremiah Wright, Junior. He prayed with Wright before he announced his candidacy for President. He is a beacon for Obama.

If a white candidate belonged to a church where the minister promoted an anti-black, anti-Semitic theology he would be roundly subject to criticism (assuming his candidacy would even be viable in the face of this background). Why should Obama get a pass?

George Soros

As Obama took steps toward the United States Senate he found a very powerful sugar daddy who would help fund his rise: George Soros. The billionaire hedge fund titan began supporting Obama very early — as befits a legendary speculative investor always looking for opportunities. Obama coveted support from George Soros and Soros responded — along with many family members and probably the Soros ring of wealthy donors. Soros even found a loophole that allowed him and assorted family members to exceed regular limits on campaign contributions.

Soros is also a fierce foe of Israel, for years funding groups that have worked against Israel. He is also a man who has flexed his political muscle as a major funder of Democrat candidates and a slew of so-called 527 groups that are active in pushing their agendas (a reliance on international institutions, defeat of Republicans, Bush-bashing, Israel-bashing). He has also openly proclaimed his desire to break the bonds between America and Israel and has written of his desire to erode political support for Israel.

Soros also called for concessions to Hamas — a terror group that has killed many innocent people and that has called for the destruction of Israel. When this came to light, some leading Democrats personally denounced Soros; Obama had a spokesman issue this rather bland statement:

“Mr. Soros is entitled to his opinions,” a campaign spokeswoman, Jen Psaki, said. “But on this issue he and Senator Obama disagree. Sound familiar? It is similar to the response the Soros campaign has given regarding Obama’s close relationship with Pastor Wright.

This mild reproach did not prevent Obama from appearing a few weeks later with George Soros at a fundraiser.

Soros invests when he sees a large return as likely; he proverbially “broke the Bank of England” a few years ago speculating on the pound. Does he intend to break the American-Israel alliance?

“Blood on their hands”

Nor did anti-Semitism of another fundraiser seem to ruffle Obama or his campaign. A fundraiser was held at the home of Allan Houston, formerly of the Knicks, and a man who had previously very publicly proclaiming that Jews had Jesus’ “blood on their hands” and were “stubborn”. The American Jewish Congress protested and noted that Obama would not take any money from someone who had expressed the same sort of remarks about African-Americans. The very same spokesman who addressed the Soros controversy blithely dismissed the concerns of the Jews and said the campaign would not return the money or reject any of the contributions made by Houston.

Senator Obama’s stands

Obama has been a Senator for only a couple of years. His supporters will point to a string of votes that are supportive of the American-Israel alliance (foreign aid, for example). These generally are not controversial and routinely pass by large margins, precisely because they support an ally and serve American interests.

Iran

However, Obama did introduce the Iran Divestment Bill along with two Democratic Congressmen (Congressmen Barney Frank and Tom Lantos). Given that Barney Frank is one of the most knowledgeable members of Congress and chairs the House Financial Services Committee and knows the financial industry well, would know how to craft such a bill. I suspect that Obama signed on as a co-sponsor for protective coloration, while Frank and fellow veteran Tom Lantos felt it could not hurt to have a rising star as a co-sponsor.

This bill would:

Require the U.S. government to publish a list every six months of those companies that have an investment of more than $20 million in Iran’s energy sector. This comprehensive list will provide investors with the knowledge to make informed investment decisions as well as a powerful disincentive for foreign companies to engage with Iran.

Authorize state and local governments to divest the assets of their pension funds and other funds under their control from any company on the list.

Protect fund managers who divest from companies on this list from lawsuits directed at them by investors who are unhappy with the results.

Obama supporters and Obama himself trumpet this bill as Obama’s efforts to somehow “sanction” Iran. This bill does not sanction Iran; it merely requires the government to publicize companies that invest in Iran’s energy sector. Such companies are already listed various think tanks.

States and local governments are already divesting from these companies, so the second provision is superfluous. Protecting fund managers from lawsuits might be of help since we do live in a litigious society.

But there are grounds to doubt Obama’s seriousness on the issue. He has openly advocated outreach towards Iran, a state that makes clear its genocidal intentions towards Israel, funds Hezbollah and terrorism against America, Israel, and Jewish targets around the world. Obama has seemed to excuse attacks against Americans by Iranian-supported terror groups because we have provoked Iran by trying to liberate Iraq (we are in their neighborhood) or as Barack has put it, Iraq is under occupation by America (which makes one wonder how he feels about Israeli settlements).

The bill languishes, not promoted or pushed; but does serve as a nice campaign prop every now and then.

Furthermore, there already are targeted sanctions in place now. They can be employed against Iranians and Iranian groups identified as being terrorists or terror groups. Yet when Congress voted to identify the Iranian Revolutionary Guards as a terror group-thus making it susceptible to sanction-Barack Obama was not just AWOL (as has been widely noted, Obama has a history of missing votes and avoiding unpleasant decisions) but harshly attacked his political opponents for voting to so designate the Guards as a terror group. This is absurd: the Guard has been implicated in terror attacks against Americans in Iran, Argentinean Jews in bombing attacks in Buenos Aires, and has bolstered Hezbollah in Lebanon. Designating this group as terrorists is crucial in weakening its power. Yet, Obama objected to characterizing them as terrorists. That does not bode well for how seriously a President Obama would deal with Iran or how supportive he would be of our ally.

Obama has called for withdraw from Iraq, which would destabilize the region and lead to a further expansion of Iranian power. He also introduced a Senate Resolution on Iran that strips President Bush of the authority to take military action against it.

Unilateral nuclear disarmament for Israel

Obama has also called for the abolition of all nuclear weapons in the world and said that America, by not openly leading a campaign to end nuclear weapons is “giving countries like Iran and North Korea an excuse.”

This is naïve beyond belief and is identical to arguments made in the Arab world that justify their pursuit of nuclear weapons because Israel has nuclear weapons. We all know how such a program would operate in the real world: Western, open nations such as Israel would be stripped of the capability of nuclear weapons; dictatorships, such as Iran, would continue to operate their secret programs.

Israel’s nuclear arsenal has helped offset the strategic peril that comes from being surrounded by much larger nations openly declaring their goal of its destruction. Obama’s call would unilaterally work to disarm Israel.

Pressuring Israel

Obama has also blamed that “our neglect of the Middle East Peace Process has spurred despair and fueled terrorism” implicitly blaming Israel for terrorism and a sign that a President Obama would pressure Israel. Obama seems to ignore the roles that schools play in the Middle East in the teaching of hatred; the roles of mosques and Imams in stoking terrorism; the glorification of violence and martyrdom in the media; the role of jihad in the Koran.

He also was the only Democratic Presidential aspirant to sign a Senate Resolution that would ban the use of cluster bombs. These are the types of weapons used by Israel to counter massed attacks by Hezbollah, and are vitally important to her security; Hezbollah also used the same type of weapons. Does anyone think Hezbollah will refrain from using these weapons? How about suicide bombers who rely on similar types of “ordinance” to inflict mass casualties among civilians? Once again, high-minded rhetoric conceals an agenda of unilateral disarmament of the Jewish state.

Advisors

Every Presidential candidate assembles a foreign policy team of advisers. A glimpse into the makeup of Obama’s team has leaked to the media.

Martin Peretz of The New Republic — a supporter of Obama and of Israel — had this to say about Obama’s Foreign Policy team:

“I have my qualms, as you may know, about Barack Obama, and most especially about what his foreign policy might be. If elected (and actually before he were to be elected), the first decision he would have to make would be who would represent him in the transition to power from early November to January 20. And, frankly, I get the shudders since he has indicated that, among others, they would be Zbigniew Bzrezinski (I don’t know much about his son, listed as Mark, but I can guess), Anthony Lake, Susan Rice and Robert O. Malley.”

Lake and Brzezenski both earned their spurs in the Carter Administration. The Carter era led to the fall of the Shah of Iran (a stalwart ally of both America and Israel), which gave birth to the Iranian revolution. We all know how well that has turned out. Jimmy Carter, of course, has led a very public campaign of vilification against Israel-defaming it as an apartheid state (a view that Obama’s Pastor would concur with).

Anthony Lake has been all but retired for the last dozen years-living on a farm in the Berkshires. This makes one wonder what he is bringing to the table, other than his Carter-era pedigree and beliefs. He has been reactivated though-one of his roles seems to be as ambassador to the Arab-American community .

The appointment of Brzezenski elicited much dismay among supporters of Israel since Brzezinski is well known for his aggressive dislike of Israel. . He has been an ardent foe of Israel for over three decades and newspaper files are littered with his screeds against Israel. Brzezinski has publicly defended the Walt-Mearsheimer thesis that the relationship between America and Israel is based not on shared values and common threats but is the product of Jewish pressure. Brzezinski also signed a letter demanding dialogue with Hamas-a group whose charter calls for the destruction of Israel and is filled with threats to Jews around the world.

After Hezbollah launched attacks against Israel in the summer of 2006, murdered Israelis and took hostages, Israel tried to get its citizens back by moving into Lebanon. Warfare resulted. Brzezinski wrote that Israel’s actions amounted to the “killing of hostages” (the hostages being Lebanese caught in the battles). http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steve-clemons/zbig-brzezinski-israel_b_25821.html

Brzezinski’s son, Mark, is also on Obama’s foreign policy team. Evidently the apple does not fall far from the tree. Mark recently co-wrote an op-ed advocating that America forge ties with Iran.

Susan Rice was John Kerry’s chief foreign policy adviser when he ran for President. One of the major steps Kerry suggested for dealing with the Middle East was to appoint James Baker and Jimmy Carter as negotiators. When furor erupted at the prospect of two of the most ardent foes of Israel being suggested to basically ride “roughshod” over Israel, Kerry backtracked and blamed his staff for the idea. His staff was Susan Rice.

Drilling down further we have Robert Malley. He was part of the American negotiating team that dealt with Yasser Arafat at Camp David. He has presented a revisionist history of those negotiations since then: presenting a view that blames Israel for the failures of the negotiations. His version has been radically at odds with the views of Americans and Israelis (including the views of American Middle East negotiator Dennis Ross-also an adviser to Obama- and President Clinton).

He has spent years representing the Palestinian point of view, co-writing a series of anti-Israel articles with Hussein Agha-a former Arafat adviser. Palestinian advocate. These have appeared in the New York Review of Books a publication that has served as a platform for a slew of anti-Israel advocates from Tony Judt to the aforementioned George Soros to the authors of the Israeli Lobby book Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer. Malley has also called settlements “colonies” — implicitly condemning Israel as a “colonial” state. His writings have been so critical of Israel that the media-monitoring group CAMERA has a “dossier” on him. (CAMERA also has a listing for Brzezinski).

Then there is this disconcerting article in the Financial Times about Democratic Presidential candidates and Israel. One of the key advisers to one of the Presidential candidates admitted to some tactical moves to garner pro-Israel support in America:

“The plain fact is there is no upside for candidates to challenge the prevailing assumptions about Israel,” said one of their advisers, who asked not to be named. “The best strategy is to win the White House and then change the debate.”

One well-regarded blogger, Rutgers Professor Judith Apter Klinghoffer believes this adviser was Ivo Daalder, who was quoted throughout the article and who is one of the foreign policy advisers to Barack Obama. Professor Klinghoffer is skeptical about Daalder and his feelings towards the American-Israel relationship. .

A snapshot of Daalder’s views: He has, like Obama, singled out Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz as being responsible for manipulating the levers of power to serve the interests of other countries (it bears reiterating, Perle had no official position in the Administration; Bush, Powell ,Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice-those were the decision-makers). Daalder has seemingly advocated talks with Hezbollah, Syria, Iran. Daalder stated that Israel’s bombing of Qana (an attack targeting Hezbollah missile placements that resulted in civilian death) in the war against Hezbollah imperiled Israel’s claim to the moral high ground. These and assorted other positions lend credence to Professor Klinghoffer’s view.

Scott Lasensky has also been appointed a foreign policy adviser to Obama. This step should also be viewed with a gimlet eye. In a book to be published this month, he and co-author Daniel Kurtzer write glowingly of the George H.W. Bush and James Baker’s approach towards dealing with Israel, but faulted Bush and Baker for inadequately derailing the pro-Israel lobby which was more skeptical of the push against Israel into Yasser Arafat’s arms.

He has called for Islamists and Hamas to be brought into the “peace process,” before this Mideast moment slips away.

He has called residents of Israeli settlements “obstructionists” He has been given the stamp of approval by the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, a notoriously harsh anti-Israel group .

He was also used by CNN’s Christiane Amanpour to castigate Israel in her widely criticized CNN’s Jewish Warriors “documentary” — a documentary that has been heavily criticized for its bias and factual errors)

Lasensky has been hosted by the activist group Brit Tzedek v’Shalom and will be hosted by Americans for Peace Now , both of which groups have been highly critical of Israel over the years.

He has recently called for aggressive American involvement in pushing for a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians — calling for the end of the incremental approach (which is “trust but verify” approach meant to test each side’s honesty and ability to bring about peace). Abolishing it would be a foolish and potentially disastrous leap of faith into the unknown.

He has called for engagement with Iran.

The group for which he works, the Unites States Institute of Peace, was the key organizer of the Iraq Study Group that produced a report that has very troubling recommendations concerning Israel (James Baker, whose approach towards Israel Lasensky admires, was one of the two people who headed the Iraq Study Group).

Obama supporters might counter that Obama has a wide range of foreign advisers and seeks input from people with a variety of views. Most likely, Dennis Ross-with deep ties to the American Jewish community-will be headlined in this argument. However, it is unclear what role Ross has on the team. He is clearly angling to join what may be the next Administration in the White House. How likely is it that Ross, who served the Clintons (now Obama’s opponents), will hold sway against the triumvirate of key Obama heavyweights: Lake, Brzezinski, and Susan Rice?

Obama and John Bolton

Conversely, Obama actively opposed the nomination of John Bolton as our Ambassador to the United Nations. Bolton\’s track record in support of Israel is impressive.

As Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security, Bolton took started a new project, the Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI), that has played a very important role in preventing hostile nations (including those in the Arab world) from developing weapons of mass destruction. Boats were interdicted on the high seas, for example, when suspicions arose that they carried suspect cargoes. The PSI was also responsible for helping to put an end to Libya’s nuclear program, which led to the unraveling of the A.Q. Khan nuclear weapons black market that has imperiled our friends in the region (and ourselves).

While at the United Nations, Bolton was a stalwart defender of American interests and those of our allies. He was also a firm supporter of Israel (next to Patrick Moynihan, probably one of the best) — a thankless task given the pervasive anti-Israel bias at the UN.

Bolton has continued to support the American-Israel relationship after leaving government service — for example, writing a series of op-eds, the latest of which support Israel\’s decision to bomb the likely nuclear plant in Syria.

Regardless of Bolton’s evident talents and drive, Obama worked to derail his career. Was it his views that Obama objected to?

Congressional support

Similarly, Obama supporters might rely on the support Obama has drawn from various Democratic Jewish Congressman (Wexler, Rothman, Schiff among them) over the last year. These stamps of approval might be met with some skepticism (Wexler went so far as to talk of Obama’s “love for Israel” based on a single trip Obama took to Israel when he began considering a Presidential run).

These Congressmen are well aware that Obama might be the next President-certainly it never hurts to have a friend in the White House. They are also Democrats who would want to bolster a fellow Democrat-particularly if it helps them with their own African-American constituents. Obama is a very compelling speaker — he has campaigned for fellow Democrats across the nation. Having a chit with Obama might be very useful in during the endless campaigning these Congressmen will be facing in the years ahead

The team seems to reflect an approach that should come as no surprise.

Obama would place a great deal of reliance on international institutions — the same international organizations that have opposed America and Israel for many years. Obama’s approach towards the Islamic world indicates an approach form weakness, as if, to invert Osama bin Laden’s dictum, people were attracted to the nicest horse. He would organize a meeting between Muslim leaders from all over the world and Americans so we can move forward with them as partners with “dignity and respect.”

Partners? To be sure this may be flowery diplo-speak. But most of these are leaders who are responsible for spreading hatred throughout their societies: a hatred that manifests itself in violence.

We have shown respect and dignity in our actions in Bosnia, Afghanistan, and yes, Iraq, We have liberated millions of people from genocide and dictatorship-we have given much in the blood of our soldiers and the billions in aid showered on the Muslim world (as the oil kleptocrats spend their billions buying up our corporations). Where is the dignity and respect shown towards America from these Muslim leaders? His approach towards terrorism was eloquently expressed by Wall Street Journal writer Dorothy Rabinowitz who wrote that a President Obama’s stance against terrorism would “consist largely of antipoverty programs, reassuring the world of our peaceful intentions, and attending Islamic Conferences.”

Speeches and public remarks

There are those willing to give Obama the benefit of the doubt and rely on his speeches to give comfort. Most recently, the New York Sun took excerpts from a speech he gave to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee in Chicago last march. I was there, just a few yards in front of Barack Obama. His speech was desultory and lacking the spirit and energy that are a trademark of the gifted oratory of Barack Obama. He clearly seemed to be going through the motions. The content of his speech gave many listeners qualms, including me. Others have their suspicions about whether Obama truly believes what he is saying in his speeches before groups supportive of the American-Israel relationship. .

Beyond that, how valuable are a candidate’s speeches for determining what his (or hers) true beliefs are? There are media reports that indicate he has “recalibrated his words about Israel and the Middle East” as part of his efforts to court the Jewish vote. So there are grounds for skepticism about relying on canned speeches as a guide towards divining Obama’s true views. Obama is a skilled orator; he has shown an adroit ability to hide friendships that might harm him on the campaign trail. Why not also hide his views behind a smokescreen of aphorism and bromides?

I think a more accurate reflection of these feelings and ideas are found in unscripted, off-the cuff remarks. As Michael Kinsley wrote, a “gaffe is a mistaken utterance or action which actually reveals what a politician truly believes”. Obama has a record of off the cuff remarks that are disconcerting. There is, of course, his well-known remark in Des Moines that “Nobody has suffered more than the Palestinian people” (which sounds like Pastor Wright is being channeled) that created controversy. He later tried to revise history by insisting he had said “Nobody has suffered more than the Palestinian people from the failure of the Palestinian leadership”. However, the well-respected Fact.Check.org and the Des Moines Register newspaper (which has an audio record) dispute Obama’s “redo”.

He also has objected to Israel’s security fence that has all but ended the suicide bombing campaigns that killed so many innocent people. In an interview in 2004 he stated:

“…the creation of a wall dividing the two nations is yet another example of the neglect of this Administration in brokering peace.”

There are not two nations (at least yet) and the security fence is not a wall, it is a fence (only a small percent, less than 5% can be considered a “wall” and that is only because of space constraints and the desire to prevent sniper fire from the Palestinians).

His use of the term “Cycle of violence” has caused ripples of concern for its intimations of moral equality between the Palestinians and Israelis; as has his elevation of “cynicism” as a core problem in the Middle East, rather than say, terrorism.

At an anti-war rally he stated that he was

“Opposed to the cynical attempt by Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz and other armchair, weekend warriors in the administration to shove their own ideological agendas down our throat” .

This is disturbing. Obama ignored the role of Colin Powell, George Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Condi Rice and other movers and shakers in the Administration. But Perle (who never even served in the Administration) and Wolfowitz (who was a Deputy Secretary) have been lumped together by many anti-Semitic conspiracy theorists as Jews who led us into the Iraq War to serve the interests of Israel. Who has Obama been listening to? His moral compass, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, Junior?

There are other remarks of Obama’s that have struck others as being less than supportive of Israel. . Among them are words that put the onus on Israel to change the status quo in its relations with the Palestinians. He was the only candidate at the National Jewish Democratic Council conference that burdens Israel with that role.

There are grounds to be concerned that he would discard the “Road Map” that provides guidelines for negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians. He has stated that the “Israel government must make difficult concessions for the peace process to restart.” The Road Map places obligations on both sides to take steps simultaneously on the road to peace. Israel is explicitly not obligated to take the first steps. This confirms the views he expressed to the NJDC that he would place the onus on Israel in future peace negotiations. .

Shmuel Rosner, the Washington correspondent of the liberal Israeli newspaper Haaretz, noted that that the prediction that Obama would be least favorable of any of the candidates toward Israel may partly be due to the fact that his “supporters come mainly from the left-wing of the Democratic Party and from the African-American community — from constituencies which are traditionally not that supportive of Israel”.

But Obama has on his own volition assembled his networks of friends, mentors, financial supporters and foreign policy advisers. In his judgment — a judgment that he regularly trumpets as being superior to others – these people are worthy of advising him. There are among those friends and advisers key people who seem to display a great deal of antipathy towards the American-Israel relationship.

These are the constituencies and associates that should warrant concern among all those who care about a strong American-Israel relationship. His electoral success will send a message to all future politicians that they can willingly ignore the views of those Americans who value a close relationship with the sole democracy and our only true ally in the Middle East. We may see the ramifications of Obama\’s ascent in the years yet to come.

Ed Lasky is news editor of American Thinker
Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/01/barack_obama_and_israel.html at January 19, 2008 – 10:32:59 AM EST

from Flap’s blog again
January 9, 2008

Rudy Giuliani Unveils His Tax Plan

Mayor Rudy Giuliani sat down with the Fox Business Network’s Neil Cavuto and talked about his plan for the biggest tax cut in American history. In addition to cutting the capital gains from 15% to 10% and slashing the corporate tax from 35% to 25%, Rudy said that his plan would provide much needed tax relief for individuals across all income levels. link to video

Again, some of the specifics:

• Make permanent the bush tax cuts NOW…not in 2010

• Permanently index the alternative minimum tax (AMT) and then eliminate it when practical (no timetable)

• Get rid of the Death Tax

• Lower the capitol gains and dividend rate to 10% and index to inflation. (Here is where he could go further and actually eliminate the capitol gains tax)

• Lower corporate tax rate from 35% to 25%

• Trio of tax free savings accounts – Roth style – available to ALL income classes

• Tax simplication strategy – one page tax return

• Three rates – 10% (40k), 15% (150k), and 30% (150k )

Pat Toomey of the Club for Growth has praised the plan:

“Giuliani’s tax cut plan will encourage capital formation, and capital is the key driver of productivity, higher wages, and a better standard of living for all Americans,” Mr. Toomey continued. “He does that by not only lowering the capital gains and dividends rates, but also by indexing capital gains to inflation. Also, the Mayor’s plan dramatically lowers marginal tax rates at the personal and corporate level, which will encourage a significant burst of economic activity and growth.”

“The current U.S. tax code is a monstrosity of inefficiency and deterrence, with some of the highest corporate tax rates in the developed world and a tax code that totals more than 66,000 pages. Mayor Giuliani’s tax cut proposal today would dramatically move the American tax code and economy in the right direction. This is exactly the kind of plan economic conservatives should embrace.”

And, what Flap likes are the lowering of the marginal rates and the optional filing of the FAST (Fair and Simple Tax) form. If your taxes are lower using the conventional 1040 then you have the option every year to choose the method of filing that is the best and lowest for you.

Steve Forbes comments on the tax plan in the following Link

Link

below from Flap’s blog and Real Clear Politics – this is getting ridiculous.

We already know Fox hates Rudy – all Brit Hume’s “panel” have their own candidates they’re supporting and find every reason to ignore or bash Rudy. But this is over the top. I would not agree with flap that a 5% lead in this atmosphere is “leading handily” but it’s also not 4th place. Polls are difficult to ignore but are not to be believed unless you’re going to read the background. Picking and choosing poll numbers is disingenuous at best and lying at worst. Interpreting the news is not “Fair and Balanced” reporting.

I’ve been watching RCP for new poll numbers for weeks two days ago they posted Rudy up from 2 to a 5 point lead. (again that’s not secure, just what I saw) We heard nothing about that poll. Then to quote a robo-poll as fact is just wrong. At the very least, just quote the RCP averages. That doesn’t totally balance outliers but mitigates them a bit.

The dumbasses, including Carl Cameron, over at Fox News said twice this afternoon that Rudy Giuliani was in fourth place in Florida.

Not true according to the Real Clear Politics averages.

Rudy is in first place and leads a crowded field handily.

Fox is referring to a Datamar poll which is a Robo-poll (automated dialer) and obviously an outlier.

Of course, we saw last night how good the pollsters and pundits are anyway in predicting last night’s Obama victory in New Hampshire.

Really? Link I disagree. 

McCain has burned as many bridges or more than Rudy has but McCain against Obama would highten the age difference.  And I’m still not convinced Obama will be the candidate dispite his recent surge. I’ve said it here before, I still expect algore to be in the mix at some point.  Agreed, Hillary is Rudy’s best opponent, but I’d still prefer to see her OUT of the race – she is WRONG for the country.  Not that Obama is right, but there is no out of control machine in his background (yet) to be concerned about.  And believe me, McCain has his problems with issues and temperment that have yet to be clearly exposed.  McCain has always been the darling of old media.  And Joe Lieberman will not run for VP again.

January 07, 2008

Only McCain Can Beat Obama

By Richard Baehr

I know John McCain does not go down easily among many conservatives. But with Barack Obama looking like the victor among Democrats, his party needs the Arizona Senator at the top of the ticket.

Conservatives may decry his support of campaign finance reform (a mistake to be sure — it simply moved the money around to new vehicles, but with less disclosure of contributors), his opposition to the size of the Bush tax cuts, his support for the Bush immigration plan, his embrace of global warming fears. But this is the reality ten months before the November election: if the Republicans nominate anyone other than John McCain, they are doomed to defeat against Barack Obama, maybe even a decisive defeat. McCain on the other hand, has a real shot at winning against Obama.

For a while, I thought Rudy Giuliani could also win. But his ideal match-up was against Hillary Clinton, not Obama. Rudy’s campaign has also been damaged by a steady drip of opposition research leaks, coming from candidates in both parties and publicized by a journalist rat pack, that have cumulatively eliminated his lead in the national polls. In a Rudy-Hillary race, the warmth factor would have been lacking on both sides (who do you want to sit down and have a beer with?), but Rudy could have won on his toughness and resilience after 9/11 and his record as Mayor (which trumps Hillary Clinton’s bogus claim of 35 years as a change agent — 20 of them as a first lady!).

One of the questions the Giuliani team needs to ask itself is why they relied so heavily on 9/11, and spent so little time highlighting Rudy’s record of accomplishment as Mayor in New York City, where he turned around a dangerous, declining city, and made it world class again by bringing back a sense of personal security and safety. Cutting the murder rate by over 70% was a very big deal. The Mayor had a “surge” strategy of his own in the use of his police force as Mayor, and as in Iraq, it worked.

Unlike certain defeatists, I think it matters that the GOP win the Presidency this year. This is not 1992, and the GOP is a party that appears to be in decline. The Republicans lost control of both Houses of Congress in 2006 and will not reverse that result this cycle. Much more likely are further Democrat pickups, particularly in the Senate. If a Democrat is elected President, Ruth Bader Ginsberg and John Paul Stevens will probably both retire from the Court, to be replaced by younger liberal jurists.

One of George Bush’s signature achievements, if you are a conservative, was getting both John Roberts and Samuel Alito onto the bench. The Democrats would strike back if Obama or any other nominee from the Party wins in 2008. That would likely lead to Anthony Kennedy pivoting left, giving liberals a 5 to 4 majority on the Court.

A Republican win could secure a more solid conservative majority on the Court. John Paul Stevens will not live forever. Would the Democrats filibuster Orrin Hatch were he appointed to replace Stevens? The Congressional GOP is not on the upswing as a minority party, ready to seize back power in 2010 or 2012. There is no Newt Gingrich to provide the intellectual firepower and energy to get that job done. So a Democratic presidential win in 2008 means years in the wilderness as a minority party for the Republicans, and the likelihood of re-election for Obama, a man with considerable political skills, in 2012.

For years, the GOP easily outspent their Democrat rivals in House and Senate races and in Presidential campaigns. No more. Bill Clinton evened things up by making money-raising (from whatever country) a key part of his mission for the Democrats. Now the Democrats have stormed past the GOP, and are the real money party. John Edwards may rail against special interests who control Washington, but the Democratic Party is in the grip of left wing unions, wealthy trial lawyers and environmental groups. In addition, many of the newly-minted mega-millionaires in finance and technology now identify with the Democratic Party, in part because of their greater comfort level with the more liberal social agenda of the party, and in the case of some, because they smell a winner, and want to jump on board.

I am convinced Obama will be the nominee. He appears to be headed for a big victory Tuesday in New Hampshire. His poll numbers are climbing every day, as Clinton’s drop off. He could win by a bigger percentage margin than in Iowa. Clinton’s stridency and lack of charm in the Saturday night debate won’t help her.

In the coming months as her campaign unravels, it will not be pretty. A woman who has aimed for the White House for 40 years, lived through her husband’s success and thought this time was hers, will not go quietly or in a dignified fashion into the night. One can sense the seething bitterness over this young interloper arriving on the scene to trump her glass ceiling-breaking vision of the first woman president with a much bigger ceiling-smasher, race.

And Obama is an African American (in the real sense of the word), with real political gifts. It is not in the debate forum where he shines, but on the stump and in front of an audience allowed to cheer and respond. Hillary Clinton leaves a lot of people cold. She is suffering some of the same fate as Mitt Romney on the Republican side — the hardest working star student who displays no warmth and argues from a list of debating points. Put simply, Hillary Clinton is a bore. A radio listener might have thought Clinton won the debate Saturday night, just as radio listeners thought Nixon beat Kennedy in their crucial first debate in 1960. But TV viewers took away something else Saturday: Obama calm and poised and unflappable; Clinton bitter and angry.

Obama would be a strong general election candidate. Many whites feel better about themselves for supporting him — as if they are personally closing the racial divide, and bringing back the better days of the civil rights movement. Obama has successfully morphed into the modern day Martin Luther King, while not emphasizing his race (it is obvious), unlike Clinton who now pushes her gender identity at every turn, in one more desperate attempt to fight back.

So how does McCain beat Obama? Obama has his weak spots, and over ten months we can expect some to come out. Look for GOP ads of Bill Clinton telling Charlie Rose that Obama is untested and not ready to run the country. This has the virtue of being true. Obama is three years removed from the Illinois State Senate, and half the time he has been in the US Senate he has been running for President. A case can be made that US Senators and House members who run for President should resign their seats. That is what Bob Dole did, very honorably I think, in 1996.

On national security and foreign policy issues, Obama is a novice, and already has made some telling mistakes during the campaign, including his support for pre-emptive action in our ally Pakistan, the very thing he opposed in Iraq, and his misstatement in the debate Saturday night on why the violence was down in Anbar Province in Iraq. Obama said the violence has ebbed in Anbar because of reconciliation between Sunni and American Forces once Iraqis read the results of the 2006 congressional races in America. In fact, what happened is that Iraqi Sunni insurgents turned on foreign Al Qaeda fighters. No less an authority on the subject than Osama Bin Laden has decried the Sunni insurgents for their treacherous behavior.

Obama has made it his signature issue that he was right on the Iraq War by opposing it from the start. But if he were President, he would need to follow-through on his pledge to end the war. And if he is in against McCain in the fall campaign, there is a huge opening for McCain to talk directly to the American people about our mission and how to wind it down with dignity and honor, and with success. That success has come from the Bush Administration’s belatedly rejecting the Rumsfeld light footprint approach and accepting McCain’s call for troop reinforcements (”the surge”) to re-establish security, the precondition for a political solution.

While Obama has enormous appeal to younger voters, and will attract many first time voters, older Americans vote in much greater numbers. In an interview with Bob Schieffer on Face the Nation Sunday, the CBS newsman was almost reverential toward McCain. The old warhorse, the former flyboy, has a lot of appeal to this group.

And McCain also may have a trump card or two. One of them might be to pledge to serve only one term — to get the job done right in Iraq. This would be consistent with a career of calling for sacrifice by Americans to contribute to a greater cause. And most Americans are at heart, patriotic. Unlike defeatists like Harry Reid, they would rather a good outcome than a defeat in Iraq, and that may now seem possible.

Compare McCain’s career and personal courage to Obama’s steely ambition, demonstrated by his current campaign, after categorically denying any interest in running for President in 2008. The Obama campaign is all about him, as the healer, the unifier, the political messiah. Over the next ten months, we may see a reality check. What has he done? What would he do as President? We are in the throes now of a star-struck media Obama lovefest. Something similar will happen again after the Democratic convention in late summer. But if I were a Republican, I would like to have John McCain debating Barack Obama one-on-one in the fall .

And then there is the vice presidential half of the ticket to fill. McCain could pick a social conservative like Huckabee who has demonstrated some of the same ability as Obama to speak directly to voters who are uneasy about their economic future — without the nasty class warfare rhetoric of John Edwards, who, thankfully, is going nowhere again, and now can go back to fighting for the middle class from his new 26,000 square foot house in North Carolina. On a more serious note, he can spend time with his ailing wife Elizabeth and their family, which many people think is where he should have been all along.

Or McCain could pick Joe Lieberman, creating a real fusion ticket, which might, I repeat might, threaten the Democratic Party’s long stranglehold on the votes of Jewish Americans. Given Obama’s past dalliance with pro-Palestinian groups in Chicago, and the perception that he will do nothing to stop Iran’s nuclear program, those Jews who are concerned more with Israel’s survival than Obama’s symbolism might think twice about how they vote. Jewish votes matter in swing states like Florida, and Pennsylvania, and maybe even New Jersey. McCain has indicated that if nominated he will select for his running mate someone who could fill in as President. In a time of war, that is a sounder policy than looking merely for geographic or ideological balance in a running mate.

If McCain were the nominee, the debate between the candidates in the Fall would automatically be focused more on national security and foreign policy than it would otherwise. That is the GOP’s strength, and this year the news on Iraq is much better than it was when the Democrats won in 2006. If the debate is primarily about national health insurance, global warming and stem cell research, the Democrats will have the edge. The economy may be in the doldrums in 10 months, another advantage for the Democrats.

But McCain, or whoever the GOP nominee is, can hold their own here, because substantial tax increases, as the Democrats are proposing, is exactly the wrong medicine for a recession or impending recession, and almost guarantees that any economic weakness will be intensified. Raising taxes on some, and cutting rates for others, will also not provide any real economic stimulus. Raising the social security income threshold to apply the payroll tax, which Obama has supported, will raise taxes for many Americans, not just the ultra rich.

McCain’s biggest challenge may be to get nominated. Mitt Romney may not drop out, even if loses a string of primaries, and his money supply is effectively unlimited. Fred Thompson may hang around hoping he can emerge as the consensus choice among conservatives, if Huckabee fades. Rudy Giuliani may get some momentum back in Florida and in the big state races on February 5th. But Republicans may want to heed the words of Bill Clinton and Bob Beckel, both very savvy Democrats, on the one Republican the Democrats do not want to run against this year- John McCain. McCain runs much better at the moment against every Democratic opponent than any other GOP candidate.

Many Republicans are not enamored of the Arizona Senator, of course. He is, to be sure, an imperfect Republican. But if only McCain can win for the party in November, Republicans might want to really consider carefully if they want to choose a candidate with greater ideological purity and the President Obama that will go with it.

Republicans next – Democrats first. A quick view of the war on Iraq tells volumes. Two of these three candidates were for the war before they were against it – or against it before they were for it, against it again then for it with the final vote; oops but now they seriously were against it all along. Serious issues require people of principle who make decisions that are not always popular at the moment. Obama? He hasn’t enough history for us to understand what he would do in a crisis or tough decision.

Obama – The Man of Wonderful Rhetoric – no flash in the pan, charismatic with a nice family, but people who follow him hear a melodious voice, not how he would make real change. A one term Senator can no way have enough experience to lead the free world and make the tough decisions to guide a divided nation. One thing that troubles me is his record in the Illinois statehouse. I looked it up when he was running for the US Senate, and found it odd that on many of the defining bills of those sessions, he neither voted yes or no. Indeed. America IS ready for a black president; is Mr. Obama ready to lead America? I think not.

Clinton – Bill was a fairly benign President with the 1994 “contract with America” congress imposing welfare reform and more. But Clinton also dismantled and disrespected the Military and underfunded the CIA boasting a “Cold War dividend” for which we are still paying a very high price. Bill will go down in history as a mediocre president – Hillary though, would be a complete disaster. To me, she is all about power; she would make decisions on keeping that power. It will be interesting to watch Hillary on defense as Obama rises and she loses her front runner status. In the Senate for her 2nd term she claims experience through being engaged in Washington D. C. and Arkansas while her husband was in office. America IS ready for a woman president, just not this woman.

Edwards – To me he’s almost a cross between the worst of the two others, but in his rhetoric he’s pandering to the traditional democrat base. This is one angry man and he wants you to be angry too. He wants you to be angry at rich people and successful businesses, but not him or the way he got his wealth. His triggers are easy and dangerous. His last tirade I heard was against big oil, telling his crowds that “they” are driving up the costs of oil.

The world market sets the price of oil. We do need what Rudy calls a “JFK-like challenge to get to the moon in 10 years” – to become energy independent in 10 years.

Those who call themselves republicans have not done us favors by the CEO golden parachutes tied to failing companies and more mis-steps, but business is not the enemy of democrat voters. We all have issues that need to be managed better and neither party has a automatic pass on ethics. But MY version of a republican wants a free market and limited government, caps on lawsuits and universal health care – universal health care NOT provided by the government. That republican is Rudy.

Those who call themselves democrats want a larger government presence in our lives and want us to depend on the government to protect us from everything, including ourselves. They want to increase taxes on those segments of our society that currently create tax revenue. By reducing those revenue opportunities, our tax revenue is REDUCED not INCREASED, most especially in the long run.

Additionally, it should be a surprise to no one that we live in a global economy. That can work for us or against us. We have things we can export. But, we can’t afford to “export” businesses that are unhappy with our tax structure. They can leave. Our citizens who are dependent on that revenue will not.

We elect presidents to lead the country, not to do the popular thing or whatever will buy them the next vote.

Well this is completely off topic, but my favorite actor when I was growing up (about 10-15 years old), just received her star (finally!) on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. There have been people behind the scenes working on this for years. RIP Elizabeth – deserved, but she never cared about awards…

A kicky site if you want to read more – click here. Sony did a great job of restoring the episodes and have released up to season 5 (I think) years 1-5 were the best with Dick York – very nice DVD sets to watch on a winter’s day. They used to release 35 episodes a year in the 1960s, now less than 25. The first three years are offered in B&W or colorized, and the colorized is well done (I, of course have both).

link to part of the ceremony here

Elizabeth Montgomery’s Biography will be rebroadcast Wednesday, January 9 at 7 AM on the Biography Channel and then again at 1 PM that day and then January 11 at 3 AM.

HOLLYWOOD, Calif. — Elizabeth Montgomery posthumously received the 2,353rd star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame Friday, nearly 13 years after the “Bewitched” star’s death.

Montgomery’s widower, actor Robert Foxworth, and fellow actress Elizabeth Sheridan, a longtime friend and racetrack companion, were among those attending the rain-soaked ceremony on Hollywood Boulevard. Montgomery’s children, Rebecca Asher and Bill Asher, will accept the star on her behalf.”Elizabeth would have adored the fact that it’s raining today,” said Sheridan, best known for her portrayal of Jerry Seinfeld’s mother Helen on the classic NBC comedy “Seinfeld.” “She loved the rain — I love her, and I miss her.”

Honorary Hollywood Mayor Johnny Grant told the crowd that Montgomery “is probably in the heavens laughing at us as we stand in the rain.”

Foxworth said Montgomery was a big fan of the rain and would have appreciated the wet weather.”It is a great tribute to her that there are so many of you here,” he said.”You will be surprised to know that Elizabeth was very shy,” Foxworth said. “Her shyness gave her roles an extra sparkle.”

Montgomery received Emmy nominations for five consecutive years from 1966-70 for her portrayal of Samantha Stephens, a good-natured, nose-twitching witch married to a mortal advertising executive.After “Bewitched” was canceled by ABC in 1972 following eight seasons, Montgomery starred in 21 made-for-television movies and the miniseries “The Awakening Land” from 1972-1995, receiving three more Emmy nominations.Born April 15, 1933, in Los Angeles, Montgomery was the daughter of movie and television actor Robert Montgomery and stage actress Elizabeth Allen.

Montgomery made her television debut in 1951 on the NBC dramatic anthology her father hosted and produced, “Robert Montgomery Presents.” She made 21 additional appearances on the series, and also appeared on such anthology series as “Playhouse 90″, “Studio One” and “Kraft Television Theatre.”

Her other memorable pre-”Bewitched” television roles included a portrayal of a prostitute on a 1960 episode of “The Untouchables,” for which she received her first Emmy nomination, and as a soldier opposite Charles Bronson in the 1961 “Twilight Zone” episode “Two.”

Montgomery’s movie credits included “The Court-Martial of Billy Mitchell,” “Johnny Cool” and “Who’s Been Sleeping in My Bed?”Montgomery died May 18, 1995, from colorectal cancer at the age of 62.

Montgomery’s star is a block west of her father’s. The Montgomerys join Frank and Nancy Sinatra and Danny and Marlo Thomas as father-daughter duos with stars on the Walk of Fame.

Link

The Tearing of the Conservative Fusion
By George Will
Saturday, January 5, 2008

WASHINGTON — Like Job after losing his camels and acquiring boils, the conservative movement is in distress. Mike Huckabee shreds the compact that has held the movement’s two tendencies in sometimes uneasy equipoise. Social conservatives, many of whom share Huckabee’s desire to “take back this nation for Christ,” have collaborated with limited-government, market-oriented, capitalism-defending conservatives who want to take back the nation for James Madison. Under the doctrine that conservatives call “fusion,” each faction has respected the other’s agenda. Huckabee aggressively repudiates the Madisonians.

He and John Edwards, flaunting their histrionic humility in order to promote their curdled populism, hawked strikingly similar messages in Iowa, encouraging self-pity and economic hypochondria. Edwards and Huckabee lament a shrinking middle class. Well.

Economist Stephen Rose, defining the middle class as households with annual incomes between $30,000 and $100,000, says a smaller percentage of Americans are in that category than in 1979 — because the percentage of Americans earning more than $100,000 has doubled from 12 to 24, while the percentage earning less than $30,000 is unchanged. “So,” Rose says, “the entire ‘decline’ of the middle class came from people moving up the income ladder.” Even as housing values declined in 2007, the net worth of households increased.

Huckabee told heavily subsidized Iowa — Washington’s ethanol enthusiasm has farm values and incomes soaring — that Americans striving to rise are “pushed down every time they try by their own government.” Edwards, synthetic candidate of theatrical bitterness on behalf of America’s crushed, groaning majority, says the rich have an “iron-fisted grip” on democracy and a “stranglehold” on the economy. Strangely, these fists have imposed a tax code that makes the top 1 percent of earners pay 39 percent of all income tax revenues, the top 5 percent pay 60 percent, and the bottom 50 percent pay only 3 percent.

According to Edwards, the North Carolina of his youth resembled Chechnya today — “I had to fight to survive. I mean really. Literally.” Huckabee, a compound of Uriah Heep, Elmer Gantry and Richard Nixon, preens about his humble background: “In my family, ’summer’ was never a verb.” Nixon, who maundered about his parents’ privations and wife’s cloth coat, followed Lyndon Johnson, another miscast president whose festering resentments and status anxieties colored his conduct of office. Here we go again?

Huckabee fancies himself persecuted by the Republican “establishment,” a creature already negligible by 1964, when it failed to stop Barry Goldwater’s nomination. The establishment’s voice, the New York Herald Tribune, expired in 1966. Huckabee says “only one explanation” fits his Iowa success “and it’s not a human one. It’s the same power that helped a little boy with two fish and five loaves feed a crowd of 5,000 people.” God so loves Huckabee’s politics that He worked a Midwest miracle on his behalf? Should someone so delusional control nuclear weapons?

Speaking of delusions, Edwards seems unaware that the world market sets the price of oil. He says a $100-a-barrel price is evidence of — surging demand in India and China? unrest in Nigeria’s oil fields? No, “corporate greed.” That is Edwards’ explanation of every unpleasantness. Mitt Romney’s versatility of conviction, although it repelled Iowans, has been a modest makeover compared to Edwards’ personality transplant. The sunny Southerner of 2004 has become the angry paladin of the suffering multitudes, to whom he shouts: “Treat these people the way they treat you!” Presumably he means treat “the rich” badly — an odious exhortation to one portion of Americans, regarding another.

Although Huckabee and Edwards profess to loathe and vow to change Washington’s culture, each would aggravate its toxicity. Each overflows with and wallows in the pugnacity of the self-righteous who discern contemptible motives behind all disagreements with them, and who therefore think opponents are enemies and differences are unsplittable.

The way to achieve Edwards’ and Huckabee’s populist goal of reducing the role of “special interests,” meaning money, in government is to reduce the role of government in distributing money. But populists want to sharply increase that role by expanding the regulatory state’s reach and enlarging its agenda of determining the distribution of wealth. Populists, who are slow learners, cannot comprehend this iron law: Concentrate power in Washington and you increase the power of interests whose representatives are concentrated there.

Barack Obama, who might be mercifully closing the Clinton parenthesis in presidential history, is refreshingly cerebral amid this recrudescence of the paranoid style in American politics. He is the un-Edwards and un-Huckabee — an adult aiming to reform the real world rather than an adolescent fantasizing mock-heroic “fights” against fictitious villains in a left-wing cartoon version of this country.
George F. Will, a 1976 Pulitzer Prize winner whose columns are syndicated in more than 400 magazines and newspapers worldwide, is the author of Men at Work: The Craft of Baseball.