Free Republic

If McCain Doesn't Want to Talk Fannie and Freddie, Why Is He Running? Palin is bringing up Barack Obama's long connection to William Ayers... okay. I don't doubt that not enough Americans know about Obama and his ties to Ayers, and what an unrepentant domestic terrorist and SOB Ayers is. But that message is going to come up against a media that is hostile, determined to downplay the ties and/or willing to lie. (What the heck got into CNN lately? The past few weeks, they're getting things 180 degrees flat wrong, again and again, about easily verifiable facts and the...

BARACK OBAMA Obama, In September 2007: 'Subprime lending started off as a good idea -- helping Americans buy homes who previously couldn't afford to.' Adding a point to the post below — imagine if Barack Obama had given a speech at NASDAQ in September 2007 where he said, "Subprime lending started off as a good idea — helping Americans buy homes who previously couldn't afford to." It was a good intention, perhaps, but not a good idea. Or if, in the same speech, Obama had said, "Repeated calls for better disclosure and stronger oversight were met with millions in mortgage...

As others have noted, today’s New York Times carries a story on the relationship between Barack Obama and unrepentant Weather Underground terrorist, Bill Ayers. The piece serves as a platform for the Obama campaign and Obama’s friends and allies. Obama’s spokesman and supporters’ names are named and their versions of events are presented in detail, with quotes. Yet the article makes no serious attempt to present the views of Obama critics who have worked to uncover the true nature of the relationship. That makes this piece irresponsible journalism, and an obvious effort by the former paper of record to protect...

The Biden Error/Lie/Hallucination List (UPDATED to 22) Below, you’ll find a list of 14 “lies” Biden told last night, distributed by the McCain campaign. I’d just note two observations: first, when you tell stories of things that didn’t happen with the frequency of Joe Biden, coupled with his fervent belief of these untrue and inaccurate statements, I don’t think “lie” is the appropriate term. “Hallucinations” seems more accurate, I think. Second, they missed a bunch, so Biden’s list of li- er, hallucinations is well beyond 14. THE CONSTITUTION: Biden: "Vice President Cheney's been the most dangerous vice president we've had...

I'm posting because it is indicative of the anger in lots of reader email I'm seeing: The Ifill issue is front and center. Last night on Brit Hume's program, the consensus was that they all knew Gwen and she is a swell person, and of course she wouldn't do anything partisan. Just where the hell are these people coming from? Day in and day out, out here in the real world we see obvious bias, obvious double standards and yet the Republicans and a lot of the "conservative" media either don't see it, or if they do, they let it...

"John McCain is pleased to see that the SEC has finally decided to permit alternative accounting methods to mark-to-market accounting for securities where no active market exists. There is serious concern that these accounting rules are worsening the credit crunch, making it difficult for small businesses to stay afloat and squeezing family budgets. In March, John McCain called for a meeting of accounting professionals to discuss whether mark-to-market accounting was magnifying problems in the financial markets."

Rescue Patrol [Kathryn Jean Lopez] Republican leadership is also sending this around: Following is myth/fact document regarding the current draft of the economic rescue legislation. Myth: Windfall for ACORN. Fact: The Frank-Dodd proposal created an affordable housing slush fund and directed 20 percent of net benefits from the program to be directed to ACORN-type organizations. The proposed compromise does not include any affordable housing slush fund and directs all net benefits back to the Treasury to pay down the national debt. Myth: Tax increase on financial industry. Fact: The proposed compromise imposes NO tax on the financial services industry. The...

ohn McCain delivered a solid performance in the first presidential debate of the general election Friday night, one more impressive than that of Barack Obama. Obama’s surrogates are complaining in every available venue that McCain was “condescending” and “mean,” a sure sign their man lost. For our money, McCain wasn’t tough enough on Obama. On issue after issue, he let Obama get away with murder: Corporate tax cuts are a gift to big oil, the financial crisis is the exclusive responsibility of Republicans, Obama’s apparent leftism really just shows how much he opposed Bush. McCain passed up obvious shots: When...

John McCain’s decision to suspend his campaign was made in the hopes that politics could be set aside to address our economic crisis. In response, Americans saw a familiar spectacle in Washington. At a moment of crisis that threatened the economic security of American families, Washington played the blame game rather than work together to find a solution that would avert a collapse of financial markets without squandering hundreds of billions of taxpayers’ money to bailout bankers and brokers who bet their fortunes on unsafe lending practices. Both parties in both houses of Congress and the administration needed to come...

How Not to Toast a Tyrant September 19, 2008 National Review Online Paul Marshall & Nina Shea Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won’t be given a prestigious academic podium this time in New York when he returns to address the United Nations General Assembly on September 23, but neither will he be given the kind of reception befitting a dangerous tyrant. In fact, he will receive another propaganda gift perhaps more valuable than last year’s Columbia University forum. Courtesy of new General Assembly President Miguel D’Escoto, who is Nicaragua’s foreign minister, and a coalition of left-wing American Christian groups, he will...

A global financial panic arrived this week, sparked by the effective collapse of liquidity at major brokerage firms. As the crisis touches all corners of the globe, politicians are reflexively pointing fingers at Wall Street. But few observers are offering concrete recommendations to stem this crisis and to avert a snowball effect in the weeks and months ahead. Lehman Brothers declares bankruptcy. Merrill Lynch is forced to sell itself to Bank of America. AIG is backstopped by the government to the tune of $85 billion. I could go on for pages describing these historic events. But with forty years of...

September 17, 2008, 7:00 a.m. If He Can Make It There . . .McCain shows strength in New York. By David Freddoso ‘Within striking distance in New York . . . � These words come from a New York Republican party press release, so take them with a grain of salt. But with a new independent poll showing McCain just five points behind Democrat Barack Obama in New York State, the idea is not necessarily as unrealistic as it first sounds. A Siena poll of likely voters, conducted on September 8 and 9, shows Obama with an anemic 46...

The Middle-Class Wallet By the Editors By historical standards, tax rates are low, Fed policy is loose, and trade is free. Growth has been picking up. Resurgent inflation threatens the economy more than recession does. Most people have no reason for fear about their jobs. But a lot of people are getting squeezed by higher prices. A conservative economic agenda can address the public’s concerns better than a liberal one can — and John McCain has an opportunity to present one. Here is our eight-point plan to protect the middle class.

It's Just a Matter of Time Before Team Obama Tries to Shut Us All Down Team Obama targeted our own David Freddoso last night. Guy Benson forwards the attack message: Dear XXXXX, The author of the latest anti-Barack hit1 book is appearing on WGN Radio in the Chicagoland market tonight, and your help is urgently needed to make sure his baseless lies don't gain credibility. David Freddoso has made a career off dishonest, extreme hate mongering, even calling legislation to protect people from hate crimes the "Thought Police."2 And WGN apparently thinks this card-carrying member of the right-wing smear machine3...

ABC News anchor Charles Gibson may have thought he was giving a fair but “tough” interview to Governor Sarah Palin of Alaska, in the first press contact with the new vice-presidential candidate. But ABC did itself no favors. Viewers watching the dagger-and-sheath interview — aired on national television last night and endlessly replayed on “YouTube” — could easily draw a different conclusion. Unconsciously or not, Gibson’s manner and language fairly dripped with condescension and disbelief. It was the flourish of a trial attorney who chooses to substitute body language for substance, in persuading the jury that the witness is unworthy....

Military Refusal Corporal Tomas Stringer is a Welshman (hence the spelling of his Christian name). A paratrooper, he’s serving in Afghanistan, and he has one arm in plaster because he’d broken his wrist jumping from a truck when a roadside bomb went off. Back in Britain to recuperate, he was helping organize the funeral of a friend killed in action. He’s made a reservation at the Metro Hotel in Woking, a quiet and somewhat suburban town in Surrey, where incidentally in the nineteenth century the first mosque in Britain was built. Corporal Stringer arrived at the Metro in civilian clothes,...

A recent Washington Post profile of John McCain’s years at the Naval Academy portrayed him as an unruly, fun-loving, under-achieving Midshipman struggling with his obligation to live up to his family’s brilliant military legacy. It was “a four-year course of insubordination and rebellion,” McCain later wrote. McCain graduated 894th out of 899 in 1958, five spots above the “Anchorman,” the lowest-ranking midshipman. In this respect he did uphold one family tradition; his similarly rebellious father Jack, who would rise to the rank of Admiral and was the Pacific Command CINC while his son was being held prisoner in Hanoi, had...

Two masterstrokes were accomplished in the last two days of this year’s Republican National Convention. In her first appearance on the national stage — which can only be called a tectonic event — Sarah Palin secured the conservative base for maverick John McCain, while also reaching out to Democratic women. Then on Thursday night, John McCain struck again, making a play for the rest of the Democratic party. When John McCain was sewing up the nomination in the early spring, I spent a lot of time in many comment sections defending him in as many ways as I knew how....

The weather was awful, my flight was delayed, and I was late to the symposium — prototypical law school gasbaggery on whether captured terrorists were receiving sufficient due-process protections. So I missed the start of the professor’s keynote address, entering the hall as he railed about “the American Taliban.” It was 2004. Naturally, I assumed he was speaking about John Walker Lindh, the U.S. citizen who’d been seized on the battlefield in Afghanistan and whose case was then very much in the news. But as I listened, it became crystal clear that, in this room, the traitor who’d thrown in...

Pointlets on McCain’s Speech [Jay Nordlinger] 1. I’ll start by repeating what I said earlier, in my “instant react”: He was himself and he said what he believes. And that’s probably the most you can ask for in a candidate. 2. The introductory video was effective in its use of humor — “Some called him a hothead. Some called him things that can’t be repeated.” (I paraphrase.) Nicely done. 3. Seeing pictures of McCain’s dad reminded me that WFB knew him — stayed with him out in Hawaii. 4. “John McCain’s life was spared — perhaps he had more to...

As Ed Craig notes here, Palin’s home-run speech not only raised her market value, but the value of energy common sense as well. Palin offers conservatives (if the Goracle disciple at the top of her ticket agrees — a big “if”) a real opportunity to bring the dangers of green extremism home to Joe Sixpack. Here in Michigan, two counties are key to winning this swing state (they are national bellwethers too): White-collar Oakland and blue-collar Macomb which sit shoulder to shoulder north of Detroit. Palin’s personal story will be a powerful magnet for Oakland’s decisive soccer/hockey mom electorate. But...

What did we see tonight? Tonight, we either saw a watershed in American politics, a tour de force, the most striking and graceful debut in our nation’s political life, and a national introduction that makes Barack Obama’s 2004 convention address look like small potatoes… or we saw what we wanted to see, and the country’s persuadable independents saw something else. I’m afraid to believe. If I’m wrong, I don’t really know what Americans want. I know conservatives are thrilled to pieces, and they ought to be. She knocked it out of the park. I don’t think she could have delivered...

Sarah’s speech [Tom Gross] Sarah Palin is preparing to take the stage at the Republican convention, and here is a sneak preview of what she might say (as told to Claudia Rosett): There are a few more things you need to know about me. As a troubled teen-ager, I myself used cocaine and marijuana (yes, I inhaled), and as an adult... (snip)

I have always tended to think that conservative complaints about the media are a little exaggerated. There are occasionally obvious instances of bias and clear examples of a double standard, but most reporters don’t want to fall into those and some conservatives are surely too sensitive to them. But this week has changed my view. I have never seen, and I admit that I could never have imagined, such shameful, out-of-control, frenzied, angry, condescending, and pathetic journalistic malpractice. The ignorant assault on Palin’s accomplishments and experience, the breathless careless airing of deranged rumors about her private life, the staggeringly indecent...

A couple of months ago, you couldn’t drive anywhere in Los Angeles without seeing giant billboards that proclaimed, “I hate you, Sarah Marshall.” Well, we’ve all since long forgotten Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Judd Apatow’s not-quite-$100-million-comedy (if you look it up on IMDB.rpo, the first keyword is... (snip)

Got this most interesting note from a friend who is a touring musician: Hi, Jay, I’ve been traveling and have had to follow the Bristol Palin story on my BlackBerry. I’m just so disgusted by the MSM’s feeding frenzy that I woke up stewing about it well before dawn. It’s simply appalling and outrageous that they would use any politician’s child and her personal problems to try to destroy the parent’s candidacy. I hadn’t contributed to McCain previously, but I like Palin so much and so despise what currently passes for journalism that I contributed $250 at about 4:30 a.m....

September 02, 2008, 7:00 a.m. Another Rumor of WarMeanwhile, in Iran . . . By James S. Robbins A report in the Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf, picked up in the Jerusalem Post and Tehran Times, states that members of the Dutch intelligence service AIVD conducting infiltration and espionage against the Iranian nuclear program have been pulled from their positions because they believe that a U.S. attack on Iranian WMD targets is imminent. The Dutch? Anti-Iranian infiltration and espionage? Who knew? Way to go guys, seriously. Respect. Couple that with a recent report that the government of Israel has decided...

In 72 hours, the media has subjected Bristol Palin to more scrutiny than they've given to Barack Obama in two years. Perhaps that's a mild exaggeration. But pretty darn mild. UPDATE: Howard Kurtz notes, "Liberal radio host Ed Schultz was telling listeners Monday that Palin was an 'empty pantsuit' who had set off a 'bimbo alert.'"

By picking Alaska governor Sarah Palin as his running mate, John McCain has wowed the public and enthused the Right. He has reinforced some of his winning themes — that he has the mindset of an outsider and a fighter against corruption. He has also reinforced his appeal as the candidate more in touch with traditional values on moral issues. None of McCain’s possible choices was perfect, and attention is being paid to the way that Palin undercuts other McCain themes, such as the importance of experience in foreign policy. Palin will have to reassure voters of her steadiness when...

Have you ever been a friend or business associate of a terrorist? Not someone who, to your shock and horror, turned out secretly to have bombed government buildings. No, the question is whether you’ve ever befriended an unreconstructed radical whose past was well known to you when you entered his orbit and walked through doors he opened for you. Have you been chummy with an unapologetic terrorist who, years after you’d known and worked closely with him, was still telling the New York Times he regretted only failing to carry out more attacks — and that America still “makes me...

Denver — On the eve of the Democratic National Convention, in a downtown high-rise conference room lined with two-way mirrors, 21 undecided Colorado voters sit trying to decide whether they have more doubts and reservations about Barack Obama or John McCain. It’s not easy. The group has been convened by the pollster Frank Luntz, who usually does this sort of thing on live television but has instead organized the session at the behest of the American Association of Retired Persons and the related activist group Divided We Fail. As the voters answer Luntz’s rapid-fire questions, a small group of reporters...

At bottom, Obama is a calculating left-wing ideologue, and that is how he would govern when it comes to the war - and much else. His unvarying first instinct is that the pursuit of America's interests overseas, especially their pursuit by military force, is imperial and provocative. That pursuit, and not fundamentalist Islam's propensity to spawn violent radicalism, is for him the real threat. At home, Obama sees sensible measures to protect the country from attack as violations of civil liberties and a slippery slope to "profiling" - a revealing reminder of the race-conscious, criminal-friendly activism that marked Obama's years...

I called Orson Swindle, a fellow POW who is campaigning for McCain, to ask him about it. “I recall John telling that story when we first got together in 1971, when were talking about every conceivable thing that had ever happened to us when we were in prison” Swindle told me a few minutes ago. “Most of us had been kept apart or in small groups. Then, in 1970, they moved us into the big cell. And when we all got to see each other and talk to each other directly, instead of tapping through walls, we had 24 hours...

Though the order “Lights, camera, action!” was given by Georgian president Mikhail Saakashvili, the wartime drama now unfolding in the Caucasus was devised, scripted, directed, and produced in Moscow by Vladimir Putin and his fellow siloviki (or former KGB kleptocrats.) For almost two decades Russia has sought to divide and destabilize the new independent states in its former backyard by helping to establish, finance, and protect “breakaway” ethnic statelets such as South Ossetia and Abkhazia within the sovereign territory of Georgia. These statelets fulfill two important functions. First, they provide the siloviki with country estates. Almost none of the officials...

It is not a compliment to human nature to say that there is something within us that is sometimes drawn to watching — for a limited period of time, anyway — the comically deranged on display. Which brings me to MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann. By now Olbermann’s hyper-partisanship and straight-from-the-fever-swamps mentality — witness just about any of Keith’s “Special Comments” for ample evidence — is well documented. What is interesting to me, during the times I’ve tuned in to his program, is that he never interviews anyone who holds an alternative point of view. He appears — unlike the competitors he...

Fred joins Mitt Romney, VDH, Jonah Goldberg, and others as a speaker on the National Review post-election cruise.

Five months ago, I returned to Iraq as an embedded journalist, some 18 months after I had completed a combat tour there. It was a worthwhile trip. I returned to Iraq to cover the progress the U.S. military had been making on the ground since the surge had begun. Mainstream-media coverage of the war had largely ignored the counterinsurgency’s success, rehearsing outdated notions of the conditions there. You could say I made the long trip to the front to cover an exposed domestic flank of American public opinion.

Disinformation Age OPEC lies, the SUV dies. By Clifford D. May The folks over at OPEC, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, must think we’re pretty stupid. The other day, Chakib Khelil, the current OPEC president, asserted that “the intrusion of bioethanol on the market” is responsible for 40 percent of recent increases in the price of oil. Now how exactly would that work? How does growing sugarcane in Brazil or corn in Iowa push up the price of oil sucked from holes in the ground in Saudi Arabia, Iran and Venezuela? If we roasted the corn and put the...

Seems like we've lost a lot of conservatives this year: Tony Snow, Charlton Heston, Frank O'Connell, Jesse Helms, E. Victor Milione, Robert Jastrow, and, of course, William F. Buckley, Jr.

<p>National Review Online has obtained an internal Bank of America "discussion document" (pdf here) on the subject of the FHA Housing Stabilization and Homeownership Retention Act of 2008, a.k.a. the Dodd-Shelby mortgage-lender bailout bill.</p> <p>Yesterday, Tim Carney reported that the prevailing sentiment on Capitol Hill is that the Dodd-Shelby bill "is exactly what Bank of America and Countrywide wanted." BofA is in the process of acquiring Countrywide. Countrywide is currently embroiled in a scandal over its V.I.P. program, under which several powerful politicians, including Sen. Chris Dodd, got preferential loan rates.</p>

Back when he was still struggling to win the Democratic nomination against the Clinton juggernaut, Barack Obama pledged to accept public financing for the general election if he became the nominee. Now that he is the nominee and has the potential to raise three times as much money as his Republican opponent, Obama has broken that pledge. So what? Politicians break promises all the time. Sure, this was a little more flagrant than most: Last September, Obama checked “Yes� on a questionnaire that asked whether he would accept public financing. He stressed his long history of support for the idea,...

The Chicago press mostly overlooked Obama’s worst scandals, instead griping about the trivial. Chicago papers, radio, and television haven’t been hagiographic in their coverage of local-rising-star-turned-Democratic-nominee Barack Obama. They dug deep into Obama’s real-estate dealings with developer/felon Tony Rezko, and provided gavel-to-gavel coverage of Rezko’s trial. But if one were to assemble a list of the revelations that have most damaged Obama’s efforts to win the presidency, two at or near the top would be the video of Obama’s pastor, Jeremiah Wright; and Obama’s long, working relationship with William Ayers, a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago and...

Sometimes we are fortunate in our mistakes. It was a mistake to award a cruel dictatorship the Olympics. China’s rulers wanted to host the Games because they thought this would be a p.r. triumph. Instead it is turning into a p.r. disaster for them. As the torch wends its way to Beijing, shouts of protest meet it at every turn. It’s almost comical to listen to thugs in bureaucrats’ clothing as they denounce the machinations of the “Dalai clique.” That’s the way Mao Zedong talked. That isn’t what the “New China” is supposed to sound like at all — that...

Petraeus Patience By the Editors If Gen. David Petraeus wasn’t denounced as a traitor upon his arrival on Capitol Hill Tuesday, his testimony was the occasion for the same dreary willful obtuseness on the part of congressional Democrats as in September. Petraeus and Amb. Ryan Crocker again were cautious and understated, perhaps to a fault. Without over-promising, they explained how we have built on the tentative security gains that Democrats were so skeptical of six months ago, and that there has begun to be political movement. The progress we have won is “fragile and reversible” as they repeatedly said, dependent...

"John McCain won the Republican presidential primaries by running as a pro-life Reagan Republican, committed to low taxes and a strong defense. We assume that he will therefore pick a running mate who shares these views and whom conservatives can eagerly support. We assume, as well, that he is more interested in winning the White House than in redefining the Republican party, and will not try to make the party platform reflect each of his views. Should McCain’s judgment err in these respects, however, conservatives will not be powerless. Securing the vice-presidential nomination requires a majority of delegates to the...

Democrats are congratulating themselves on the political cleverness of the cheap shots they are taking at Sen. John McCain over his already-famous “100 years in Iraq” comment. What McCain said at a townhall meeting in New Hampshire in January was inarguably true. He was asked about President Bush’s comment that we could stay in Iraq for 50 years. McCain replied, “Make it 100. We’ve been in South Korea . . . we’ve been in Japan for 60 years. We’ve been in South Korea for 50 years or so. That would be fine with me. As long as Americans are not being...

A weird campaign cycle gets even weirder - three State Department contract employees have been caught nosing around in Barack Obama's passport file. Two were fired, one was disciplined. The first breach was on January 9; the inspector general is launching an investigation. ~snip~ A little while back, the Hillary campaign — specifically Lee Feinstein, the campaign's national security director, asked a question: As voters evaluate you as a potential Commander-in-Chief, do you think it's legitimate for people to be concerned that you have traveled to only one NATO country, on a brief stopover trip in 2005, and have never...

The Audacity of Hate By the Editors ‘The audacity of hope” just got less hopeful. Senator Barack Obama is facing questions about his closest spiritual adviser, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, from whom he cribbed the title of his second book and rallying cry of his presidential campaign. The controversy has forced Obama to schedule a speech in Philadelphia today where he will address race and the campaign. Over the weekend, he lamented how “the forces of division have started to raise their ugly heads again,” although nothing has been as ugly or divisive as what Rev. Wright has said. In...

<p>With the end of the first week of March, there has so far been only a single American fatality this month (incurred in a non-combat Iraqi helicopter crash). If that were to continue (and it could change tomorrow), we are in a period in which the entire war could be redefined as something analogous to ongoing operations in Afghanistan or even the Balkans. And that, coupled with Iraq’s strong economic performance and political improvement, would radically change the Obama message of Iraqi as an ungodly horror worthy of abject withdrawal.</p>

With the media preoccupied with the Democrats, the real victor of Super Tuesday II was John McCain. He won more than the necessary 1,191 delegates necessary to secure the Republican presidential nomination. McCain reminded his listeners that he did not grow up expecting to be president or believing himself entitled to the job. The contrast he made between himself and the two Democrats competing for the right to oppose him could not have been clearer. McCain talked about protecting the nation, assuring the safety of its citizens, bringing its enemies to their knees, keeping the United States competitive in an...