Fred Thompson Says it Best: Why All Americans Should Vote McCain

Fred Thompson boils the key elements of this election down to essential principles so this is a must watch for everyone:

President Zardari of Pakistan Under Lal Masjid Fatwa for Comments to Palin

In a bizzarre turn of events President Zardari is under a Fatwa from Lal Masjid, (yes, that Lal Masjid,) and it was issued by a relative of Abdul Rashid Ghazi, instrumental in the deaths of many students from the Mosque. From IBN Live:

A Pakistani cleric has issued a fatwa against Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari for flirting with US Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin. Maulana Abdul Ghafar of Islamabad’s Lal Masjid said that Zardari’s behaviour was un-Islamic and that the President has shamed the entire nation.

The Maulana said that President Zardari’s indecent gestures, filthy remarks and repeated praise of a non-Muslim lady wearing a short skirt is not only un-Islamic but also unbecoming of a head of state of a Muslim country.

He said that the manner in which Zardari shook hands with Sarah Palin and expressed his deep desire to hug her is intolerable and shameful.

“We are fighting the American war in our country and thousands of our people have been killed just to please Uncle Sam. Therefore, we demand that the military operation in the Pak-Afghan tribal areas be immediately stopped as it is creating hatred amongst the general public against the Pakistan army”, he added.

More at National Post

Energy and Jobs

As long as energy is expensive and less abundant we will be harming our ability to compete on the world market, and decreasing jobs at most local levels. It’s a steady static downward spiral that we cannot afford to stay in.
One party has blocked new sources of energy steadily for thirty years, and during that time we’ve seen steady offshoring jobs and decreasing expectations in America. It’s time to put a stop to that, it’s time to build America anew. But ignoring reality will not gain us any relief.

There are new technologies for solar, wind, and geothermal that show a great deal of promise, but they are not ready today and cannot do the job. We must continue to use coal over the next thirty years, and we must find ways to make it cleaner while doing so. We must expand our use of nuclear energy as well to fill the gap of burgeoning energy needs.
Remember when energy prices go up, so too do food prices. While that’s a discomfort here in the US, in many countries it’s the difference between having flour or soy protein for a meal, or eating grass or foraging in the woods for food daily in poor countries. We must make energy abundant for our children and grandchildren, as well as relieve this dire pressure for the rest of the world, but we must first immediately increase our energy production capabilities across the board in our own country if we are to maintain the ability to solve the future energy problems. 50-70 Petawatthours of electricity will be needed by 2050, and we are in the 12-15 petwatthour range now. That’s a huge task and challenge, and it will take Americans working together and using an “all of the above” approach to solve.

The other impact to jobs of importing so much energy is that it’s money we send offshore – if we send the money offshore, it’s not here anymore working in our economy, which also leads to fewer jobs. The wealth of the future lies in energy creation, and it’s about time that the US started leading that new wave energy sources as we have all others. Here you see John McCain speaking in Ohio on the extreme import of extending the energy base we have now to create jobs and security while building the path to our energy future.

This topic might seem a bit dry, but it’s actually critically important to our future, especially now in this time of economic downturn. Please give it your attention.

Mum

McCain has spoken about the financial crisis at length, in a couple of places I do disagree with him. Much of the fault here does lie with Congress, and John seems unwilling to assign their portion of blame. Perhaps he’s saving that for the debates however, you’ve seen plenty of material here. One thing I do know: Capitalism works best with less regulations. This whole mess is because of a crazy quilt of financial regs including CRA that work at counter purposes and which result in two socialist government backed housing lending agencies both ripe for corruption and abuse.

Big Government Casts a Big Shadow

The latest McCain-Palin advertisements, Is Raines next to go under the bus?:

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More on this from Ed at Hot Air and at Jammie Wearing Fool

Hillary Dodges Sarah Palin

Interesting:

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton has canceled an appearance at a New York rally next week after organizers blindsided her by inviting Republican vice presidential candidate and Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, aides to the senator said Tuesday.

Several American Jewish groups plan a major rally outside the United Nations on Sept. 22 to protest against Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Organizers said Tuesday that both Clinton, who nearly won the Democratic nomination for president, and Palin, Republican candidate John McCain’s running mate, are expected to attend.

Crisis, and how to Overcome it

While the markets tumble Barack Obama is hob-knobbing with Celebrities and High Rollers in Hollywood.:

The polls are one thing, but it sounds like Barack Obama might make progress in other ways during two ultra-rich Beverly Hills fund-raisers Tuesday. According to Politico, the events could raise more than $9 million, which, if it happens, would be a one-day record.

More also at Jammie Wearing Fool.

It is also noteworthy that Obama made a remark about the crisis:

“Eight years of policies that have shredded consumer protections; have brought us to the most serious financial crisis since the Great Depression.”

If things got “shredded” then the Democrat-controlled senate Anti-trust Competition and Consumer Rights Sub Committee helped, and Barack’s running mate, Senator Joe Biden, was a member of that committee.

Wasilla Public Library on Sarah Palin: No banned books … EVER

On the left they are trying to paint Governor Sarah Palin of Alaska as a warmongering end-of-days rabid Christian dominionist, and one of their sallies is to say that she tried to ban books. I happen to know who and where the Christian dominionists and rabid Christian Identity movement people are since we’ve been actively fighting them over their attempts to get creationism into public schools. (See here.) I can tell you that Governor Sarah Palin is not one of them.

If you look at the records of asks to ban books (and the Wasilla Public library records them all,) there aren’t any from Sarah. Here’s the table of requests, and the actions the library took from their records:

If this is the best the left can come up with, they better get ready to weep November 3rd.
Resources: PDF file Link in Wasilla

Sarah Palin Uncensored

This is clear journalistic malfeasance, and Charlie needs to start wearing his tinfoil hat to interviews so America knows where he is coming from.

It’s aggravating that Charlie Gibson would not only ask mind numbingly stupid questions that only the tin foil hat brigrade is interested in during the ABC interview of Sarah Palin, but it’s even more aggravating that ABC would edit so viciously to take so much of the pith and wisdom out of Sarah Palin’s replies.

Charlie’s tortuous pimping of five year old talking points and gotchas ranged from terminal BDS misinterpretation of the “Bush Doctrine” to idiotic smears about book banning and global warming apostasy. In that environment it’s tough to have an intelligent conversation about matters essential to America, but Sarah still managed until they they edited out the pith that is.

Gibson was truly on a hunt for the damning sound bite, and not an objective interview. You can see this clearly in the transcript of sections of the interview edited out posted at Mark Levine’s. You see she’s much more knowledgeable about the nature of our relationship with Russia, and the strategy of the moment than Charlie is. You see she is definitely against Islamic terrorism, but that was left on the cutting room floor, and finally you see that she firmly supports Israel, but the part about working with Allies to throttle Iran’s quest for the bomb also didn’t make it to prime time.

With this interview Charlie Gibson has left the ranks of journalism and has become just another hack smear artist, aligned clearly with those on the left. We have those hacks on the right as well, but this is an important election as all presidental elections are. This is clear journalistic malfeasance, and Charlie needs to start wearing his tinfoil hat to interviews so America knows where he is coming from.

It appears that others are taking note of this.

A Study in Media Bias – Outlined by Bidinotto

This post is the last in which I will compare Bush and McCain, the differences are many, and that’s direction the left wants the conversation to go. I’d rather look at the future, as the candidates should be.

Robert Bidinotto has been doing the best job of detailing the media and blogosphere agitprop against Sarah Palin, this morning I recommend that you read his two part series on the ABC interview:

Sarah vs. ABC, Round 1 (UPDATE on MSM “spin”)
Sarah vs. ABC, Round 2: A case study in media bias

One other thing: the question on “Bush Doctrine” was obvious setup to declare McCain / Palin as four more years of Bush, which is the main campaign point that Barack’s campaign would have you believe. ABC’s collusion in trying to perpetuate that is ridiculously transparent in the snips I’ve seen. While the left will tell us that Charlie gave Sarah pause on the question, in reality it’s like asking her to futher the talking points of the left. I would have paused at that question too, since the Bush Doctrine means many different things to many different people, and the left boiling it down to “pre-emptive strikes” is foolishness. It really was more than pre emptive strikes, and it has changed over the years since 9/11.

My reply would have been “Which Bush Doctrine Charlie?” By making him specify what he was getting at she helped make the ploy transparent. The only thing she might have done better would be to say that the McCain Doctrine is what saved the Bush Doctrine from defeat in Iraq.

I don’t think the left’s BDS has as much traction or heft as they think it does, as President Bush’s poll numbers continue to rise while Congress’ numbers lie in the sewer. This post is the last in which I will compare Bush and McCain, the differences are many, and that’s direction the left wants the conversation to go. I’d rather look at the future, as the candidates should be.

The conversation needs to turn to energy, the economy, and victory in Iraq, not the crap we’ve been re-hashing for five years as that’s gotten rather circular.

Update: Charles over at Little Green Footballs has the interview up, it’s a must see.