Dark Star

For the record. I'm very excited about Sarah Palin being on the ticket.

It's safe to say this is the first time this campaign season that I've been excited.

Check this out. McCain has taken in a cool seven million since the announcement. I'm far fromt he only conservative excited about this.
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After hearing how awful Bush has been for the past eight years, it' nice to see somebody put it in perspective.

Check it out.
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I tend to agree with the following:

A lot of conservatives are giving Barack Obama trouble for not helping his half-brother in Africa. I'm inclined to think this is a bum rap. Obama's father left him when he was 2. He saw him again only once in his life. Obama did seek out his relatives in Kenya, as he describes in his fictionalized memoir, but does he have the responsibility to track down the multiple children his bigamous and neglectful father sired and give them money? I don't think so. Of course, if he did promise to help one and then failed to follow through, that doesn't speak well of him. But I don't think he's shirking some continuing responsibility. If your father had done what Obama's father did, would you feel any responsibility for his other offspring?

The issue surrounding Rezko and Ayers, however, need to be covered and confronted more.
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Michelle appears almost half way through. You can skip ahead.



And they call conservatives fascist?
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Here's what Pelosi has to say about it:

The notion that the Catholic Church declared abortion a sin at the same time as the Pill is patently absurd, and shows that Pelosi has either lied about studying the issue in terms of Church history or lied about what she found. Church writings specifically naming abortion as murder appear as early as 70 AD in the Didache, the first written catechism of the Christian church:

“The second commandment of the teaching: You shall not murder. You shall not commit adultery. You shall not seduce boys. You shall not commit fornication. You shall not steal. You shall not practice magic. You shall not use potions. You shall not procure [an] abortion, nor destroy a newborn child” (Didache 2:1–2 [A.D. 70]).

Tertullian, sometimes known as the Father of the Latin Church, wrote with equal clarity and force:

“In our case, a murder being once for all forbidden, we may not destroy even the fetus in the womb, while as yet the human being derives blood from the other parts of the body for its sustenance. To hinder a birth is merely a speedier man-killing; nor does it matter whether you take away a life that is born, or destroy one that is coming to birth. That is a man which is going to be one; you have the fruit already in its seed” (Apology 9:8 [A.D. 197]).

“Among surgeons’ tools there is a certain instrument, which is formed with a nicely-adjusted flexible frame for opening the uterus first of all and keeping it open; it is further furnished with an annular blade, by means of which the limbs [of the child] within the womb are dissected with anxious but unfaltering care; its last appendage being a blunted or covered hook, wherewith the entire fetus is extracted by a violent delivery.

“There is also [another instrument in the shape of] a copper needle or spike, by which the actual death is managed in this furtive robbery of life: They give it, from its infanticide function, the name of embruosphaktes, [meaning] “the slayer of the infant,” which of course was alive. . . .

“[The doctors who performed abortions] all knew well enough that a living being had been conceived, and [they] pitied this most luckless infant state, which had first to be put to death, to escape being tortured alive” (The Soul 25 [A.D. 210]).

Saint Hippolytus, who sometimes found himself in conflict with the Church hierarchy, nevertheless agreed completely on abortion. He made the point that abortion managed to combine the sins of adultery and murder at the same time:

“Women who were reputed to be believers began to take drugs to render themselves sterile, and to bind themselves tightly so as to expel what was being conceived, since they would not, on account of relatives and excess wealth, want to have a child by a slave or by any insignificant person. See, then, into what great impiety that lawless one has proceeded, by teaching adultery and murder at the same time!” (Refutation of All Heresies [A.D. 228]).

The Catholic catechism is extremely clear on the nature of its position on human life, and has been remarkably consistent on this point for almost 2,000 years, and it finds that position in the Old Testament. Human life begins at conception, not at birth, and not at some point consistent with Roe for convenience. In Psalm 51, David refers to his sinfulness beginning at the moment of conception, and sinfulness requires physical life and a soul to exist.

Pelosi isn’t the only Catholic with a habit of self-deception or flat-out dishonest on this topic; Joe Biden also falls into this category. Douglas Kmiec shifted his support from Mitt Romney to Barack Obama, and as John McCormack points out at the Weekly Standard, he did so by claiming abortion to be one of many issues that Catholics must consider as part of their faith when voting. I addressed that thinking in an earlier post, but I’ll recap it by noting that the Church urges people to address “sinful” inequalities but does not demand any particular strategy for that purpose. It does, however, make abortion — even formal facilitation of abortion — an instantly excommunicating act.

Membership in the Catholic Church is voluntary. If people do not want to follow its doctrines, they should find another faith community that reflects their values — and at the least, they should learn what the Church teaches on abortion and life before mischaracterizing it on national television. Pelosi is either a fool or a liar, or perhaps both.

Hmmmm.
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Wow.


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Can't wait to read his new book.


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From Power Line:

At The Corner, James Robbins compares Barack Obama's current standing in the polls with John Kerry's, four years ago:

A handy feature on the electoral-vote.com web site is a one-click comparison of the current electoral map projections with those on the same date four years ago. Today's map shows Obama with a projected 275 votes to McCain's 250, with 13 up for grabs. Four years ago — Kerry 317, Bush 202, and 19 tied.

Glenn Reynolds adds:

Of course, Kerry was hurt by an overly grandiose performance at the Convention, and by media bias that backfired. Obama should be safe from that, right?

Interesting stuff.
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Power Line has a post this morning making a compelling argument for American action in Georgia.

It would be difficult for us to make a stand for Georgia considering our other engagements, but Russia needs to know the U.S. will respond somehow.
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From the Weekly Standard Blog:

Larry Kudlow makes an interesting suggestion in his article on NRO:

As Sen. John McCain and the GOP leadership nationalize the drill, drill, drill message, the Republican party might conceivably be riding a summer political rally. The question of offshore drilling, along with expanded domestic energy production, has suddenly become the biggest political and economic wedge issue of this election....There is a voter revolt going on, and it reminds me of the anti-tax rebellion that lifted Ronald Reagan into office twenty-eight years ago. Is the conventional wisdom about to be swept away?...

Without even realizing it, the GOP drilling offensive has become a new contract with America. And it appears to be working. The public is putting aside global warming and choosing instead new-energy production, a stronger economy, and more job creation. Voters want growth, not austerity. They want Ronald Reagan, not Thomas Malthus. And by resisting this grassroots call, the Democratic party is digging itself into one of the biggest political dry holes in history.

I've had the contrarian instinct for a while that global warming had peaked (both substantively and politically) as an issue. Al Gore's Nobel Prize felt like a pretty good contrarian indicator. And now the drilling issue is beginning to feel a little like tax cuts thirty years ago--key to, and emblematic of, a pro-growth, populist/capitalist/anti-declinist agenda. Obama's tire gauge is reminiscent of Jimmy Carter's sweater. And leave aside the tax revolt analogy; it's worth remembering that energy itself was an issue in 1980. Reagan took what seemed at first a politically dicey drill/deregulate position, and ended up clobbering Carter and being vindicated by the policy of deregulation.

Wishful thinking? Or the lessons of history?

I hope for history.
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From the Weekly Standard Blog:

Allahpundit's review is spot on: "She’s got a sense of humor, a thoughtful energy policy, and nearly as much federal legislative experience as Barry O. If grotesque overexposure and grandiose ego are now prerequisites for the presidency, then the choice is … actually, the choice still isn’t clear, is it?"

The humorless Obama campaign responds to the video with the following statement: "Whatever." Meanwhile, McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds seizes the moment and stays on message:

It sounds like Paris Hilton supports John McCain’s ‘all of the above’ approach to America’s energy crisis - including both alternatives and drilling. Paris Hilton might not be as big a celebrity as Barack Obama, but she obviously has a better energy plan.

This much is true: She almost has as much experience as Barack Obama. Really. That's scary. And that's a GREAT response from McCain's camp.
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Full post from Power Line:

For some time I have been trying to make the case that Barack Obama doesn't know much about anything except how to win friends and influence people, and that he doesn't know what he's talking about. See, for example, the columns "The Kennedy-Khruschev conference for dummies" and "Anti-terror oops." In short, Obama is a bs artist. He is an extraordinary specimen, perhaps approaching the great American type of confidence man explored in literature by Herman Melville, Mark Twain, William Faulkner and Ralph Ellison.

In "Emperor Obama's new clothes," James Lewis invokes Hans Christian Andersen to explore the same phenomenon. Lewis does a good job with "one little example." He writes:

On May 19 Senator Obama proclaimed Iran to be just "a tiny country." That's a tiny country with seventy million people, half of it covered with mountains that you can tunnel under for your nuclear hidey holes. A half-million men in the army plus the fanatical martyrs of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard, a domestic terror apparatus to keep the people down, a growing nuclear and missile program, enough oil to finance it all, a strategic position at the head and the tiny choke-point of the Persian Gulf, a long, long imperial tradition, and an Islamofascist suicide ideology, thanks to Jimmy Carter's good friend Ayatollah Khomeini. The regime of this tiny country had a habit of sending hundreds of young boys to blow up mine fields with their bodies, wearing green plastic "Keys to Paradise" around their necks. It controls the "Shiite Crescent" from Lebanon to the Gulf using its powerful alliance with Syria and Hezb'allah, supplied by our good friends the Russians and Chinese. The regime has a habit of blowing up American soldiers in Iraq with state-of-the-art shaped-charge explosives. Iran has performed high-altitude missile tests that could only be used to set off a nuclear EMP explosion, designed to cripple any modern nation by zapping its electrical and communication grids. It's just a "tiny threat," said Obama --- until his staff told him that wasn't quite right, and he quickly changed his tune.

Obama's recommendation of the tire gauge and the tune-up to make up for the oil we would otherwise extract from areas in which drilling is currently prohibited is more of the same, though on this point his staff hasn't gotten to him and he hasn't changed his tune. Jake Tapper and Jim Geraghty find Obama reiterating his praise of the tire gauage as the overlooked remedy for our energy crisis yesterday. (What about tune-ups? Maybe his staff did say something to him.) In addition to his advocacy of tire inflation, Obama castigated his critics as "ignorant." Name-calling is the last refuge of a bs artist.

Yep.
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Michelle Malkin points out who started the comparison.

“Andy Warhol said we all get our 15 minutes of fame,” says Barack Obama. “I’ve already had an hour and a half. I mean, I’m so overexposed, I’m making Paris Hilton look like a recluse.”

That was in 2005.
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Stratfor reports that the United States is attempting to verify rumors coming out of Pakistan that al Qaeda's #2, Ayman al-Zawahiri, was killed in a July 28 Predator airstrike.

From the Jawa Report.

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American Thinker has a new piece discussing the empty suit that is Barack Obama. One of the last lines gets me:

For a man who promotes transparency, he sure has a funny way of showing it. His political principle, such as it is, may be "Do As I Say, Not as I Do".

Well, yeah. This is mantra of all the big libs, Hollywood types, Al Gore, the rich who are liberal and feel guilty about it. Hey just buy some worthless "carbon credits" from the jet.

That aside, the article linked herein makes some great points about Obama's need to hold every side of an argument and debate while keeping th epublic ignorant of the facts. Very interesting read.
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BAGHDAD, July 30 — The leader of the Sunni insurgent group al-Qaeda in Iraq and several of his top lieutenants have recently left Iraq for Afghanistan, according to group leaders and Iraqi intelligence officials, a possible further sign of what Iraqi and U.S. officials call growing disarray and weakness in the organization.

U.S. officials say there are indications that al-Qaeda is diverting new recruits from going to Iraq, where its fighters have suffered dramatic setbacks, to going to Afghanistan and Pakistan, where they appear to be making gains.

(Hat tip: LGF)
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From Time.com
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