Free Republic

On election eve I re-post my personal analysis and prediction for the 2008 election.

CARLISLE, Ky. -- Tabbatha Tubbs laughs at the thought of Washington politicians decreeing her hometown Appalachian. After all, there's not a mountain in sight from this gently rolling countryside best known for its thoroughbred horse farms. This is picturesque Bluegrass country: Black wooden fences surround grazing thoroughbreds. Golden stalks of tobacco hang from tiered barns. And herds of fat beef cattle mow their way across fields of green grass. It's hardly the heart of Appalachia, the rugged hills where President Lyndon B. Johnson declared war on poverty some 44 years ago. But like it or not, Tubbs and her neighbors...

While millions of American families struggle with falling house prices, soaring gasoline costs and tightening credit, some environmentalists, urban planners and urban real estate speculators are welcoming the bad news as signaling what they have long dreamed of -- the demise of suburbia. In a March Atlantic article, Christopher B. Leinberger, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution and a professor of urban planning, contended that yesterday's new suburbs will become "the slums" of tomorrow because high gas prices and the housing meltdown will force Americans back to the urban core. Leinberger is not alone. Other pundits, among them author...

CHESTER, Ill. -- The rookie state senator from Chicago had driven 340 miles to explore southern Illinois, but Barb Brown could muster only 20 Democrats in this small town on the Mississippi River to have breakfast with him. She asked her niece and sister-in-law, who were helping in the kitchen, to come out to pad the audience. "We tried to convince people that they needed to come out and meet with this senator from Chicago, who on top of everything else was African American," Brown, a circuit court clerk, said of the 1997 gathering. "We had people looking at us...

TCHULA, Miss. — Gasoline prices reached a national average of $4 a gallon for the first time over the weekend, adding more strain to motorists across the country. But the pain is not being felt uniformly. Across broad swaths of the South, Southwest and the upper Great Plains, the combination of low incomes, high gas prices and heavy dependence on pickup trucks and vans is putting an even tighter squeeze on family budgets. Here in the Mississippi Delta, some farm workers are borrowing money from their bosses so they can fill their tanks and get to work. Some are switching...

Driver's would love these pumps if gas goes through the roof, except human ingenuity has trumped technology. Junek's has the pumps set for half the price you'll actually pay, so if the meter reads you've filled up $20-worth, you'll still have to pay $40. duh

Texas Gov. Rick Perry wants to build a big highway through the Lone Star State. No, make that a really big highway, as in a monstrously big highway. The exact route hasn't been determined. The mega-highway would run roughly from Laredo on the Rio Grande River through the Hill Country and the Piney Woods and then through Texarkana in that tiny portion of the state that borders Arkansas. Imagine for a moment if that thoroughfare would be pointed in the other direction - from the Valley, through the South Plains and then through the heart of the Panhandle, right past...

As Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., avoids any real campaigning in West Virginia, the former president of the United States is out there ginning up resentments. Bill Clinton has the right to say whatever he wants, of course. But he's a smart man. Brilliant, even. He can do the math. He must know that it's quite improbable that his wife, Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., will be the Democratic presidential nominee. So what purpose does it serve for him to barnstorm a state like West Virginia and tell rural voters that Obama and his elitist political/media cabal allies are mocking Appalachia? He's...

Killing Local America by Donald Devine Issue 106 - April 23, 2008 So it is a conservative canard that government aid means government control? Liberal New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine is out to prove the conservatives right. He recently announced in his state budget message that he would drastically cut or eliminate state aid to its 323 towns with populations of fewer than 10,000 if they did not consolidate themselves into larger, more “efficient” units. There is not much greater control than elimination. Gov. Corzine won his reputation as a mergers and acquisitions chairman of the investment banking firm Goldman...

Before the Second World War, American Westerns presented what later came to be seen as a "naive" view of what might be called white borderer culture and conflicts. The "good" of the Scots-Irish based and European immigrant and settler population was not just an underlying assumption but a central and explicit thesis in the Westerns, most of which were made by “poverty row” studios and distributed to rural and small-town theaters—and seen by the grandchildren of the very people portrayed. By the 1950s, this was no longer the case. The movie Western had moved from “poverty row” (abetting the demise...

NARROWS, Va. (AP) -- Allen Neely eases his Chrysler Pacifica onto the bridge named in honor of Jarrett Lane, who grew up in this tiny town near the West Virginia state line. Mr. Lane, Mr. Neely says quietly, always wanted to build a bridge. Under the back seat are two pistols. Mr. Neely keeps them close these days. He and his construction crew were in Virginia Tech's Norris Hall a year ago this week when a mentally ill student went on a rampage, killing Jarrett Lane and 31 others. Since then, Mr. Neely feels safer if his guns are within...

The dirty little secret about Barack Obama's indictment of flyover country is that he said what liberals, including Hillary Clinton, believe. Sufficient proof of this can be found in the liberal outrage at Wednesday night's Democratic presidential debate, where Obama was pressed both by the moderators and Clinton to explain Bitter-gate, Wright-gate, Ayers-gate and Flag pin-gate. Consider the uncannily similar reactions of columnists Tom Shales and Stephen Silver. Shales expressed indignation that ABC News moderators Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos would dare ask Obama to justify his insulting remarks about small-town Americans and his relationships with certain anti-American people. Shale's...

Last week in Terre Haute, Ind., Mr. Obama explained that the people he had in mind “don’t vote on economic issues, because they don’t expect anybody’s going to help them.” He added: “So people end up, you know, voting on issues like guns, and are they going to have the right to bear arms. They vote on issues like gay marriage. And they take refuge in their faith and their community and their families and things they can count on. But they don’t believe they can count on Washington.” This is a remarkably detailed and vivid account of the political...

Presidential hopeful Barack Obama, accused of being elitist for remarks he made about small-town American voters, said on Tuesday the slap at his background is amusing and signals a nation in the midst of "political silly season." The Democratic senator, campaigning in Pennsylvania, dismissed the charges of being elitist and out of touch by fellow Democrat Hillary Clinton and by Republican John McCain as unfounded, given his background. "I am amused about this notion of elitist, given that when you're raised by a single mom, when you were on food stamps for a while when you were growing up, you...

The furor surrounding Barack Obama’s comments about “bitter” small-town voters and their faith clouds an emerging story line that stood to benefit the eventual Democratic nominee at Republican John McCain’s expense. That narrative was an ironic twist on longstanding partisan stereotypes: a November election that figured to be between a Democrat who is comfortable talking about faith and a Republican who is not. But the Illinois senator’s controversial remarks about “bitter” small-town Pennsylvanians who “cling” to religion and other cultural stances out of economic despair — comments immediately characterized by New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and McCain as condescending...

Typically when politicians want to bury bad news, they put it out late on a Friday -- which is precisely when this story broke. But for at least five reasons, this story may only gain steam in the days ahead. First, Obama and his campaign are attacking the problem head-on, seeking to "hang a lantern on their problem." The candidate sought to clarify his comments last night in Terre Haute, Indiana, and did more of the same today. But this morning in Muncie he also offered something approaching a mea culpa, which he pointedly did not last night. "I didn’t...

In their attempts to spin away from Barack Obama’s stunningly stupid remarks at a San Francisco fundraiser last weekend, Democrats and the Obama campaign have focused on only the least objectionable portion of the comment as a means to frame the national discussion. In a single sentence where Obama called small-town Midwestern voters overly religious bigots who cling to their guns out of frustration with George Bush, the Democrats have decided to build their defense on “bitter”. Here’s the original remark: And it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who...

Barack Obama showed his deft political touch today, and demonstrated his keen insight into the lives of the little people in this country, with a speech that is sure to be worth at least thirty points in Pennsylvania in the upcoming primary: You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them... And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade...

INDIANAPOLIS -- Hillary Clinton slammed Barack Obama for comments he made at fundraiser last Sunday where he said middle class Americans are “bitter” about the state of the economy. “I was taken aback by the demeaning remarks Senator Obama made about people in small town America,” Clinton said. “Senator Obama’s remarks are elitist and out of touch. They are not reflective of the values and beliefs of Americans, certainly not the Americans I know, not the Americans I grew up with, not the Americans I grew up with in Arkansas or the Americans I represent in New York.” Referring to...

INDIANAPOLIS - (WANE) - The Indiana Republican Party is calling on Indiana Democrats in Congress to denounce Barack Obama's criticism of Midwestern values at a San Francisco fundraiser last Sunday. Indiana Republican Party spokesman Jay Kenworthy issued the following statement on Barack Obama's comments posted below. "Indiana is full of decent people who support gun rights because they believe in the Constitution and place a premium on religion because they are people of faith -- not because we are bitter as Obama stated. Perhaps this is something Barack Obama doesn't understand, but surely our Congressional delegation does. "I can't imagine...