Synchronized Presidential Debating

Exhibit A in why I didn’t watch any of them, and the best argument you’ll ever see for Newt’s modern-day Lincoln-Douglas proposal. Superb.

Obamamercial: A flop with critics, ratings

Obama kicks dissenting reporters off plane

Obama on low taxes: “Selfishness”; Update: Video added

This reveals the basic underlying philosophy of the Left - that one cannot possibly be charitable unless they use the government to redirect their funds.  Obama assumes that people who don’t want to pay higher taxes are somehow “selfish”, but that’s only true if one assumes that the so-called rich won’t do anything else with their money except sit around like Scrooge McDuck, counting it constantly.  Most people today invest it, which creates jobs, or spend it, which creates even more jobs, or donate it to charity — which works much more effectively and with much less overhead than filtering it through government bureaucracy.

Those who earn the money want to direct it in the manner they see fit, in the most efficient manner possible.  That’s not selfish, it’s just common sense.  Only someone in love with government power could see it as anything else.

Video: Obama supporter hails the bringer of all good things

Can you blame her? Run through Tapper’s litany of The One’s campaign pledges. Not only is there nothing he can’t do, there’s nothing he hasn’t promised to do, healing the planet included. Barry O’s spent 18 months building himself a halo, shrewdly enough to put him on the brink of the presidency but with one little catch: With expectations among his cultists this high, there’s only one direction for his approval ratings to go.

Which means it’s time for that halo to come off.

Barack Obama’s senior advisers have drawn up plans to lower expectations for his presidency if he wins next week’s election, amid concerns that many of his euphoric supporters are harbouring unrealistic hopes of what he can achieve.

The sudden financial crisis and the prospect of a deep and painful recession have increased the urgency inside the Obama team to bring people down to earth, after a campaign in which his soaring rhetoric and promises of “hope” and “change” are now confronted with the reality of a stricken economy.

One senior adviser told The Times that the first few weeks of the transition, immediately after the election, were critical, “so there’s not a vast mood swing from exhilaration and euphoria to despair”.

The media will make sure his grace period runs longer than usual, but we’ll know things have started to turn when Andrew Sullivan starts accusing him of having betrayed his, er, “true conservative” principles. Figure late summer/early fall 2009.

Krauthammer: McCain as a bulwark against Great Society II

And Obama has no track record at all of bipartisanship.  McCain has a long history of working across the aisle, to the consternation of his party at times, but Obama has none.  In an Obama administration with a Democratic Congress, Republicans will become irrelevant for at least the next two years.  The only bipartisanship Obama will show will be to name a couple of Republicans as advisers, people who will keep those positions only as long as they can stomach being mouthpieces for policy they won’t influence one single degree.

Krauthammer says it won’t be the end of the world, and he’s right.  We survived the Great Society and the Jimmy Carter presidency, too.  Unfortunately, we haven’t yet gotten past the economic and foreign-policy hangovers of either yet, and we certainly don’t need to add to that burden with the sharp left turn we’ll get in four years of Barack Obama’s leadership.

The price of a money machine: Obama would owe more favors than any president in history

Obama’s success as the biggest fundraiser in history means that he would owe his donors more than anyone in history if he were to take office. (That is, if you believe that big donors to political campaigns expect something in return. How cynical of you to think that!)

But wait! I thought Barack Obama’s amazing fundraising success stems primarily from donations under $200. Right?

Wrong. That’s another myth you’ve been sold, sucker.

In fact, in 2004, 31 percent of Bush’s donations came from people giving $200 or less. For John Kerry, the percentage was even higher: 37 percent.

All of this is necessary background for an excellent article by Patrick Range MacDonald in the latest L.A. Weekly, about Obama’s big donors, and the influence those donors are likely to wield in an Obama administration.

MacDonald’s article explores the question whether Obama is going to be the first guy in history to take scads of money from people and not let it affect the way he governs.

The reality is that the propaganda value of military deaths is what moves liberals to action, not the deaths of the soldiers themselves. A soldier killed on the practice range is apolitical and therefore not useful or interesting. That same soldier dying in Iraq is an antiwar, anti-Bush, anti-Iraq statement waiting to be made.

Again, all military fatalities are tragic. But war has objectives, and the question remains: has the military objective been worth it? The objective in the War on Terror has been to cripple world terrorist organizations and to stop this:

The war has accomplished these important tasks and John McCain gets credit right along with George W. Bush. And for all those conservatives, Republicans and rational independents who nowadays cringe at the mere mention of the name of our Commander-in-Chief during this election season, the shame and failure is yours. Shame because you dishonor a military achievement for which you begged seven years ago. Failure because your silence has allowed a complacent electorate the luxury of indulging in a socialist experiment at a time when an anti-military globalist in the White House will likely spell disaster.