Looking on the bright side

Obama won. There are some good points to take from this.

Firstly, from now on when people say that the US is fundamentally racist, we will all know it's bullshit.

I am glad that when you tell a little black boy that he can be president one day, he will believe you. Unfortunately if you still tell a little girl of any colour that same thing, they wont quite.

Perversely, for all this talk of redistribution of wealth from Obama, the very fact that he is president might make Black people and Americans in general go more self-reliant. If minorities really believe that "yes we can" achieve status and wealth and power then they might be less despondent about their future and less dependent on welfare as a group.

Obviously this is a historic moment, just like Thatcher becoming the UK's first woman PM. The next test becomes whether that person fights for the narrow interest of their group within society, or really does govern for all. But the guy deserves props just for getting elected.

Or as we say in Australia, "Good on ya, mate".


Secondly, it looks at this point that the Democrats will not achieve a filibuster-proof super-majority in the Senate. That means that their most drastic agenda for change can be delayed and stopped though rigorous debate. The Dems control the white house and both houses of congress, but they will have to explain what they do and bring others with them. Rather than "crash through or crash" in the Whitlam-style.

I think Obama will be like Rudd. He will be cautious about implementing his change, aka income redistribution and proto-socialism. There are still close to 50% of Americans who disagree with it, and most of American history disagrees.

Obama is already watering down is rhetoric and managing expectations. Talking about a hard road or whatever in his acceptance speech, and how we all need to make sacrifices etc. It sounds like he's going to leave them in a bit of a rut for while yet. He's not going be be anyone's saviour in a hurry.

Obama will be loathe to tinker with, let alone pull apart, a system that fundamentally works. After all, it worked well enough to put him where he is.

On foreign policy, it's one thing to bash Bush for taking action, but when you are commander-in-chief and you risk something going very wrong if you dont take action, like Israel getting nuked, then you change your mind pretty fast. I think,like Blair, Obama is driven by ambition (not to say vanity) and he will be very worried about his legacy. He does not want it to read "they guy who sounded cool but allowed America to become weak in the eyes of the world." Blair was a left-winger swept to power by wets who became a stauch ally of the US in the war in Iraq. When Obama says he'll invade Pakistan, i believe him.

"Yes we can" change American foreign and domestic policy, but do we really want to?


Thirdly, and i think most importantly for the long term future of America and the world, the American conservatives have been electorally punished so badly that they must now reform.

The Republicans conceded this election when they nominated McCain. McCain was too much of a maverick to have a direction, see Ace on that. I was rooting for Giulianni 18 months ago. He still might have lost against Obama but this race was not a walkover, and if the Reps had hit Obama hard over the economy, which McCain never could because he hates Wall St too, they could have had a chance.

BUT Giulliani was a deal-breaker for the religious right in the US because he was not socially conservative enough. They stopped him getting the nomination. I dont like those guys. They freak me out. They freak alot of people out both in the US and abroad. I also think they are part of the reason why the GOP lost.

I supported Bush because i thought he was a strong leader and a defier of conventional weakened wisdom of the hippies in suits and no ties who run the media. i did it because i am a conservative. I am not religious. I dont think you have to be religious to be conservative. It's about pride, patriotism, hard-work, honesty, self-reliance and a fundamental distrust and distaste for the politics of pity. It should have nothing, or very little, to do with religion.

I do not begrudge people their religion and I dont think anyone should be excluded from a political party on the basis of religion, but when the whole identity of a party is bundled up with a religion I don't like it. The Christian right have too much control over the US Republican party. They should be a part of it, but not the dominant part.

The other conservatives, the economic and foreign policy conservatives, need to form a values platform that can compete with the Christian right, so that they can then compete with the values-talk of the left, of which Obama is the master. They need to create a form of Social conservatism that is not based on religion. To talk about real-world rational reasons why we need to take responsibility for ourselves in our personal lives, as well as defend basic personal rights in the same rational way. If you have religious reason too, fine, but that should not be seen a sufficient justification on it's own from now on.

I feel a bit apprehensive in saying this, because i'm not an American and i dont really know that much and it's not really any of my business. But i think it's true. I hope these will be the last words I say on the topic of US politics for some time. I got a country of my own to worry about. Good luck y'all, and if there is a God, may he/she bless America.

Obama Toast?

This article by Malstrom, a guy i had never heard of till today, has got some seriously juicy bits on why the polls are so far off. He is predicting a crazy upheaval on election night. Saying all the pundits have it wrong. It's long but I recommend the whole thing. He focuses on Pennslyvania, where the candidates are appearing on the stump. It's a big blue state about to turn red, he says. Here is one paragraph that jumped out at me as directly relevant to Aussie politics:

Lying to pollsters is frequent and a necessity in Pennslyvania due to the unions. Many union bosses will call their members, posing as a ‘pollster’, and if the member gives the wrong asnwer, a thug is sent to the house. The Teacher’s Union there has sent strict orders to vote for Obama “or else”.

I just watched Insiders on-line and am saddened to see Alexander Downer predicting an Obama victory. I guess that's why he was never PM. He's not suspicious enough of other's motives. Too much of a gentleman I suppose you could say.


So what are my feelings at this late hour? I'm exhausted. It seems like only last week, it was last November, that we fought our own election here and i had to ignore polls for a year prior to that to keep from going insane. I'm not game to make a prediction to the contrary of the polls now. I've been burned.

I will say however that the legacy media bias in this election for Obama has been unprecedented. A few years ago I, like Downer probably, would had dismissed it a quarter-arsed conspiracy theory. No longer. It's a deliberate attempt to "break the spirit" of the conservative voters. My guts fell out last year when the OZ started pulling for Rudd. I've seen the media line up candidates before. I've seen it in Britain with David Cameron's bid for the conservative leadership. I've seen it with Rudd. Now i'm seeing it with Obama. I desperately want to believe that the unelected ideologues in the MSM can be kept in check by the people. I hope tomorrow this is shown to be so.

Maybe i should not be so melodramatic. My girlfriend is more upbeat. She said something yesterday that had not occurred to me because I was living in Britain for the 2004 campaign here. She said "This whole Obama thing is just like what happened with Latham." I didn't realize the media had lined up Latham in the same way as Rudd, and been denied. Nice.

I guess the difference between the 2004 and the 2007 Federal elections was the sustained poll advantage Rudd had in the lead up. But the article at the link above debunks all the current US polling, and towards the end says stuff that can easily be compared to the Latham case:

America is right of center. While Carter and LBJ were the last Democrats to win over 50% of the vote, LBJ didn’t bother to run for a second term due to how despised he had become over Vietnam, and Carter was flushed out during the election of 1980. The point is that there is an acceptable level of leftness the electorate will accept. Clinton campaigned and acted a little left which was acceptable to the electorate. But LBJ and Carter went way too far and the electorate sank them. Obama has likely gone too far left which is why the ’socialism’ charge is sticking to him.

The Aussies ditched Latham for being too far Left. He freaked everybody out. The ALP had to put the (false) safe face of Rudd on their lefty agenda. Are the American political and media establishment about to learn a lesson in political reality they they could have got from watching us Aussies? For the US equiv of the ALP, the Democrats, the moderate candidate is Hillary. She won the primaries in the rust belt states like PA that Obama now stands to lose.

If Obama does lose it will be the end of the far Left for another generation. It will also be the end of the legacy media's special status as truth providers. They have staked so much on predicting an Obama victory that no-one will ever believe them again. I mean that here in Australia too. The falsity and bias will be exposed, but that is too much to hope for.

Still, if I were religious i'd be praying for it. I am not religious but i love hymns. So maybe i'll sing instead of pray. These lines are from the Battle Hymn of the Republic, which became an anthem for the Union (Northerners) during the American Civil War. I may not be in the mood to quote it tomorrow, so in the hope of a McCain victory, i'll do it now. For "the Lord", read "The People".

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord:
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;
He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword:
His truth is marching on.

Glory, glory, hallelujah!
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
His truth is marching on.

Bit too passionate for ya? Is so, feel free to get lost.

I just upgraded my Joe the Plumber to Tito the Builder

Dead.Set.Legend.



Attempted transcript of the last and best bit, with omissions:
"I'm gonna tell you why i dont want it (socialism). Because they throw you a few crumbs just to keep you down there. Here you go little poor man. And that keeps you happy so you dont question their connections and their philosophy. So they can keep the power."

But you have to listen to it in his hispanic accept to have to beauty of his latin metaphors. These guys know corruption when they see it

Plus those shades. Awesome!

A Point of No Return

As the OZ gets stuck into the important issue, such as whether Sarah Palin is a diva in expensive clothes, Mark Steyn writes a brilliant article about how the sole remaining super-power teeters on the brink of Socialism and unfreedom and weakness.

An Obama Administration will pitch America toward EU domestic policy and UN foreign policy. Thomas Sowell is right: It would be a “point of no return”, the most explicit repudiation of the animating principles of America. For a vigilant republic of limited government and self-reliant citizens, it would be a Declaration of Dependence.

[My emphasis on the poetry.]

All you Aussie Obama fans should have a good hard think how the power balance of the world, let alone the Pacific region we are in, would be shifted if America became a bunch of touchy-feeling weeklings living of govt handouts.

Think and sh1t your little knickers.

Quick post of final US Prez debate

Thought McCain was way better. Was smiling and taking the piss out of Obama throughout, Obama seemed ruffled and put off to me. HE rambled with some of his responses, which did seem like amateurish bureaucratic interfering in people's lives (or they did to me).

McCain main great headway out of the "spread the wealth around" remarks Obama made on the campaign train recently, particularly by addressing to "Joe the plumber" straight down the barrel of the camera were great and warning him that is was his wealth that Obama was about to spread (read: take).

McCain ironically praising Obama for his "eloquence" and then offering to decode Obama's speech for the audience. brilliant.

It seems now that we are seeing enough of the real Obama for McCain to be able to create a aura of uncertainly around him. Just what is Obama gonna do? The more he talks the more he sounds like a real socialist. That freaks people out. When Obama says he wants to take America in a fundamentally different direction he means it!

And it's not just a different direction to the last 8 years as he says. It's different to the entire history of the United States. It's socialism.




Via Ace of Spades HQ

They are a bit down on the debate, and make the point that McCain didn't pin subprime on Acorn/Dems/Obama. At least he brought up Ayers!

US Prez Debate: Closing remarks said it all

Just finished now. (no link)

I'm biased (that honestly tells you i'm a conservative) but i'd call it McCain by a nose. Not a game-changer unless people really let some of the messages sink in. I'd say the game has been kept alive. McCain did well enough not to sink his campaign.

I was glad to see McCain on the attack about Obama's record on the current crisis and foreign policy, and still homely and physically embracing the serviceman in the Audience. I'm disappointed Ayers did not come up, i guess that means there as still aces in the pack, and McCain had to confront the economic message of the Dems head on. Still, Obama was pretty slick and seemed to have a counter attack for every attack on his record.

For me, the real difference came not in the debates over specifics but the visions of both men. Before i read a single line of commentary i'd like to say the closing statements said it all, paraphrased below:

Obama: I was poor to start with and rose to great heights that i could never have hoped for in any other country. Now it's time to change the country fundamentally. I hope you are with me on this amazing journey (destination not specified)

McCain: (in unspoken reference to his POW years) I know what suffering is like. I know what it's like when others look to you for hope. I know what it's like when others pick you up and give you hope. I ask the American people to give me another opporunity to serve because through all this it has always been "my priviledge to to put my country first."

That last part is a direct quote.

Obama's statement was all about himself, and how the country has to change to suit him.

McCain's was all about his country and how much he loved it and was willing to sacrifice himself for it.

Oh yeah. There are "fundamental differences" alright.

One candidate understands the words of Kennedy "Dont ask what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country"

The other is a total wanker.

Some people's legs might shake when Obama speaks. I was almost in tears when McCain spoke.

I never knew he had it in him.