« March 16, 2008 - March 22, 2008 | Main | March 30, 2008 - April 5, 2008 »
2 posts: (1) McCain's Foreign & Mortgage Policy; 43 on Iraq--The Home Front; (2) Obama's Saving Speech?--The Home Front; (3) Hill's REAL Whooper--and Eyewitness Bosnia Film!--The Home Front; (4) Conservative Compassion; Liberal Lassitude--The Home Front.
John McCain has given a major foreign policy speech laying out his views. It is eloquent in spots, and proposes a League of Democracies to get things done when the UN drags its feet. The whole speech is worth a read, albeit I could have done without the global warming stuff, but here are the money paragraphs:
I am an idealist, and I believe it is possible in our time to make the world we live in another, better, more peaceful place, where our interests and those of our allies are more secure, and American ideals that are transforming the world, the principles of free people and free markets, advance even farther than they have. But I am, from hard experience and the judgment it informs, a realistic idealist. I know we must work very hard and very creatively to build new foundations for a stable and enduring peace. We cannot wish the world to be a better place than it is. We have enemies for whom no attack is too cruel, and no innocent life safe, and who would, if they could, strike us with the world's most terrible weapons. There are states that support them, and which might help them acquire those weapons because they share with terrorists the same animating hatred for the West, and will not be placated by fresh appeals to the better angels of their nature. This is the central threat of our time, and we must understand the implications of our decisions on all manner of regional and global challenges could have for our success in defeating it.
And:
We have incurred a moral responsibility in Iraq. It would be an unconscionable act of betrayal, a stain on our character as a great nation, if we were to walk away from the Iraqi people and consign them to the horrendous violence, ethnic cleansing, and possibly genocide that would follow a reckless, irresponsible, and premature withdrawal. Our critics say America needs to repair its image in the world. How can they argue at the same time for the morally reprehensible abandonment of our responsibilities in Iraq?
And in a clarion call no one else who ran for President this time could make:
I do not argue against withdrawal, any more than I argued several years ago for the change in tactics and additional forces that are now succeeding in Iraq, because I am somehow indifferent to war and the suffering it inflicts on too many American families. I hold my position because I hate war, and I know very well and very personally how grievous its wages are. But I know, too, that we must sometimes pay those wages to avoid paying even higher ones later.
Pundit David Brooks labels McCain's speech the best of the season, and notes two earlier milestones as to the kind of leadership McCain can provide: a Sept. 28, 1983 speech in his freshman House term, in which McCain warned against sending troops to Lebanon, because troops could not stabilize Lebanese society, and a Nov. 5, 2003 speech in the Senate, warning that the strategy in Iraq was wrong, due to failure to conduct proper counter-insurgency, lack of troops and the arrogance of Paul Bremer in treating Iraqis as defeated rather than liberated. McCain's warnings proved prescient, with the Oct. 24, 1983 terror attack that killed 241 Marines and led the Reagan administration to exit in defeat, and well, we know what happened in Iraq.
The Wall Street Journal praises Big Mac's market-based policy, in contrast to Hill's socialist view that ignores the blame the government bears for its part in the mortgage mess, with a 90-day freeze on mortgage markets, a disastrous idea. Worth a read.
As is President Bush's forceful defense of his Iraq policy, in Dayton yesterday. Especially noteworthy are the data he provides (pages 2 & 3) on Iraq's economic progress and its increasing contributions to reconstruction and security--impressive sums.
Against Big Mac this fall, Charles Krauthammer writes, Democrats will mount their best defense: the Big Lie, distorting McCain's 100 years in Iraq line to imply a century of war, rather than a postwar presence as in Japan. CK quotes an Obama aide: "It's seldom you get such a clean shot." Read CK's column to see what Big Mac actually said, and realize what the GOP is in store for come the fall campaign. Put simply, the Democrats know they cannot defeat Big Mac with the truth re national security, so they will simply lie and hope to get away with it. Which demonstrates their manifest unfitness for high office.
Victor Davis Hanson has written an alternate text for Obama, that would, Hanson believes, have been far better and more healing. VDH's take is well worth a read.
Bob Tyrrell nails Hill's worst whopper: her claim to have helped ring peace to Northern Ireland. Tyrrell recounts:
The other whopper that has been exposed this month is her claim to having been instrumental in effecting the Irish peace settlement. "I was deeply involved in the Irish peace process," she has declared on the campaign trail. Now that Judicial Watch, a longtime Clinton critic, has forced the Clintons to release her heavily redacted White House schedules, it is apparent that she had nothing to do with the peace process other than to appear in public with her husband and smile. Irritated by her BS-ing, one of the participants in the peace negotiations, Noble Peace Prize winner David Trimble, has asserted, "I don't know there was much she did apart from accompanying Bill going around." A "wee bit silly" is how he characterized her boasts. Yet she claimed in January that "I actually went to Northern Ireland more than my husband did."
Maybe I was wrong about Hill's Bosnia tale being casual error. Perhaps she simply assumes that even checkable lies will not be checked. BUT WAIT!!! I AM WRONG! SEE THIS YouTube Video (58 sec.) SHOWING HILL'S HEROISM UNDER FIRE!!!!!!!
Columnist George Will reports that survey data show conservatives giving more money (both in amount and percentage of income), time and blood than liberals; especially telling is that those who told pollsters that government has a responsibility to equalize outcomes gave but 1/4 of what their ideological opposites gave. This is true, despite liberal families having on average 6 percent more income than their conservative counterparts. Will explains that those who think government should do the giving feel less need to do so themselves. Like Al Gore, who gave but 0.2 percent of his income to charity in 2000, they gave at the office--with taxpayers' money.
3 posts: (1) A Ray of Mortgage Market Sunshine--The Home Front; (2) Homeland Hazards: Appraisals--9/11, 3/1 & N/11; (3) "Obama Girl" Body-Slams Hillary--Class & Crass.
Economics maven John Rutledge finds good news: His March 24 blog posting hails a decision by the Federal Housing Finance Board to allow regional banks in the Federal Home Loan Bank system to add up to $150 billion in Freddie Mac & Fannie Mae mortgage-baked securities (MBS). Rutledge explains that this doubles the amount such banks can buy, and thus adds much-needed liquidity to the$4.5 trillion MBS market.
Rutledge then gives another of his classic mini-seminars on economics. The stimulus package, which aims to boost demand, does no good in a situation where the problem is the supply of credit. It is a demand-side solution to a supply-side problem. Good remedies are to increase transparency, so investors can better price securities and thus assess risks. Bad things include empowering lawyers to sue, which reduces transparency and will freeze capital markets, empowering bankruptcy judges to amend contracts, which reduces predictability and hence transparency, and letting Congress grandstand. Above all, he counsels against quick, temporary fixes, such as raising the mortgage lending ceiling for one-year, which would create an "orphan class" of securities hard to price.
Gerard Baker of the Times of London informs us that Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke has made a specialty of studying the causes of the Great Depression, and firmly agrees with the late Milton Friedman that policy errors by the Fed were a prime cause; Bernanke, writes, Baker, is determined to act decisively to prevent a repeat. The continuing danger is that politics in the short-term, in the person of people like Democratic Congressman Barney Frank, will undermine economic recovery in the longer term, in the person of Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson who, unlike Rep. Frank, really understands the situation, and has a far better guess at what to do to encourage recovery.
At last, Hillary has come under withering artillery fire! Amber Lee Ettinger, the fetching video-star whose earlier "Obama Girl" videos lit up the Internet with millions of website hits, posted an attack video smacking Hill for going on the attack against her candidate. It is 3 minutes of "We all have a crush on Obama" with Amber cavorting amidst images from the campaign, accusing Hill of helping McCain, and saying that she bets Hill is an Obama Girl too--the latter point with an Obama t-shirt pasted into a Hillary photo. Enjoy a chuckle in a campaign that gets otherwise uglier by the day. Now, if "Obama Girl" can just do a Sunday sermon video for her heartthrob....
Oh, Obama has another huge fan in Pamela Anderson of "Baywatch" fame. Don't laugh--this is important. Pam, now 40, told Ellen DeGeneres (no, I did not see the program) that while her head is with Hill, her heart belongs to Barack. Peril for the GOP this fall lies in the fact that loads of females are Obama Girls. If Barack wins in November, he will need a special amber phone to answer all the 3 AM calls he will get from Amber and her legions.
3 posts: (1) Rockets' Red Glare, Hillary Was Not There--The Home Front; (2) "They blow up so fast!"--Us v. Them; (3) Jesse & Barack's Granny--The Home Front.
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The Short War Upon Us
