Politically, I am guided by some important principles:  life and economic liberty are two crucial ones.  Understanding those principles with my advanced conservative brain helps me understand news that comes my way; for example, when Bush and Pelosi were talking about stimulus in early 2008, I didn’t like it.  (Note the independent-mindedness:  though Bush, a Republican, was in support of the idea, I rejected it on the basis of my political principles.  Also, since people from both parties supported it, I was non-party affiliated.  See how this works, moderates?  I use my brain to think and you use a moistened finger.)

There’s solid evidence that many “moderates” are stupid based on the last, oh – how many days has it been since November 5th, 2008?

Barack Obama won the popular vote by a 52.9%-45.7% margin over John McCain.  Obama started his administration with around a 65% approval rating.  Obama’s approval rating has dropped to 48% as of today, according to Rasmussen Reports.  That didn’t take very long.

Do you have any idea why this is?

Obama was a very popular candidate, but the more we see of his actual policies, the less Americans approve of him.  Health care ahs been a particularly devastating issue for him.  It’s great that we’re catching on, but I have this to ask:  where were all of you during the election?  Obama never should have been elected in the first place.  I chalk it up to the flimsiness of people in the “middle.”

For those of you who like to view yourselves as “moderate”:  it’s okay to be a conservative.  As James T. Harris says, the water is warm.  It’s okay to disapprove of black candidates and Presidents because you don’t agree with their policies, and it doesn’t make you a racist.  But actually be conservative, unlike Shelley Wynter – a “conservative” who said he was going to vote for Obama last year.

If the simple injection of money into the system works, why is the military being left out?

While Obama’s 2010 budget calls for a government the size of $3.6 trillion, but military spending, of course, isn’t on the menu.  While the military spending is increasing by a small amount – about 2% – this is a tiny raise compared to recent years.  Health and Human Services, meanwhile, expands by 7.5% in this budget.

The Environmental Protection Agency?  34.6%.

If throwing money down the EPA low-flow toilet is stimulus, then why not “stimulate” the Department of Defense – the ones who actually build new things?  The U.S. military, lest we forget, has many domestic companies build them stuff.  Tanks, technology, even electric vehicles.  Chrysler, for example, would benefit from Military “stimulus.”

Spending on the U.S. military also has the added benefit of, you know, protecting liberty.

Obama also said in his address to Congress that he wants more people to graduate from the college.  Hey, doesn’t the army have a program like that?

Of course, the original goal of the Democrats was probably something in the range of what they’re going to get anyway.  That’s how moderate Republicans define bipartisanship and compromise.

Or, I can let Ron Paul explain it:

Oh, wait.  That would require Republicans to vote like conservatives, instead of pansies.

According to the Wall Street Journal, a team of moderates from both sides are working on a “compromise” that would punch fiscal conservatism squarely in the nuts:

A group of nearly 20 moderates from both parties have been negotiating in hopes of cutting as much as $100 billion from President Barack Obama’s plan, which has ballooned to $935 billion on the Senate floor, with further add-ons possible during a long day of votes Friday.

This is why I don’t like moderates.

By “compromising,” these Republican moderates would be playing into Obama’s hands:

Late Thursday, Mr. Obama, on his way to Williamsburg, Va., to visit a House Democratic retreat, suggested he’s willing to accept $800 billion. “Our original figure was roughly in the 800 range,” he told reporters. “There have been some changes to our framework both in the House and in the Senate, but that’s I think the scale that we need to deliver for the American people.”

If you don’t like this, Michelle Malkin wants you to call Senators like Arlen Spector and give ‘em the business.

It’s a tough day when the political party that opposes your political ideals gains 15 seats in the House, 5 in the Senate, and takes the White House by a solid electoral margin.  In the end, I had to come to this conclusion:

Energy flows where attention goes.  This election was never about John McCain.  The entire time it was about Barack Obama.  About his pastor, his terrorist friends, his past, his votes, his “spread the wealth” themes.

In 2004, more people voted “against” Bush than they voted “for” Kerry.  In 2008, more people were “against” Obama than they were “for” McCain.

Now, I have no idea if that’s actually true statistically, but it certainly feels true.

Back in May, I had a feeling this was coming, particularly since conservatives never really had any candidate in the race.

The general election season hasn’t really started yet, but I see this becoming a trend:  Obama appearing stronger than McCain because he invented his message first, and McCain will just be reacting to him.

…
All these conservative pundits are unhappy with McCain, but they never stood by anyone to beat him.  I’m talking about you, Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity.  Rush was too busy attacking Mike Huckabee to rally his 20 million listeners behind a candidate stronger than McCain, and Hannity backed another weak candidate (Giuliani).

Conservatives should have embraced someone like Fred Thompson or Mitt Romney months ago, stood by him, tauted conservative principles, and forced Obama to prove he can do better.

In retrospect, McCain wasn’t as horrible as a candidate as I thought he’d be.  He’s a Republican running in a Democratic year, 8 years into an unpopular Republican Presidential administration, against a guy who somehow beat Hillary Clinton.

Where Conservatives Go From Here

Any “reinvention” that takes place needs to bring the Republican party back to the right.  Last night should stand as evidence that you don’t win elections against pure liberals with a moderate who can appeal to independent voters.

As Wisconsin congressman Paul Ryan noted last night, you just take your timeless principles and apply them to today.

We’ll still be Pro-life.  We’ll still be for low taxes.  We’ll still be for a strong, dominant military.  We’ll still be for competition in education.  We’ll still be for building rockets to Mars.

Well, I will be, anyway.

These things seem to happen in cycles, and look what happened four years after Jimmy Carter won the Presidency.  We don’t know what will happen.

What we do have to look out for are the RINOs and phoney conservatives that think political moderatism is the way to win.  Republicans lost a Senate seat in New Hampshire last night;  incumbent John Sununu had apparently tried to go moderate.

Our First “Black” President

Blah blah blah, history and what not.  America was just ready for a black President;  the fact that Obama could even become a candidate like he was was when history was already made.  The two top Democratic candidates this year were a white woman and a half-black man; the VP candidate for the Republicans was a woman.  This whole election seems to have opened things up.

Hopefully it doesn’t matter anymore.

Racism is still alive, on both sides.  I’m sure plenty of whites didn’t vote for Obama because he’s half-black, but conservative blacks were denounced as traitors and Uncle Toms by supporting John McCain.  I dislike Barack Obama for his policies and his questionable past; believe me, I wish a young, history-making charismatic Bears fan could be the candidate for me.  Alas.

The world was certainly pleased.  Going to European Websites like the Times Online had all-American coverage of the night; so much so that it was like looking at an American newspaper.

So while everyone on the left was celebrating last night, I had to write on my Facebook status that it was a “dark day” in American history.  Al Franken was leading in his bid for the U.S. Senate – ugh.  For the first time I’ve really been politically aware, I have a President who I disagree with on almost every issue.  And he has a Democratic Congress to get his liberal agenda going.

And then I realized one last thing, as if all of that weren’t enough:

Vice President-elect Joe Biden.

I’ve definitely worn out the “2008 Presidential Election” category here on the blog, but the day is finally here. Election day. Rather than do a straight column-style post, I thought I’d hit you with some quick thoughts.

• Lest we forget how long it’s been, I was writing election updates as early as February 2007 in this post.
• If Barack Obama wins, I and many others will be very disappointed. But I wouldn’t expect a huge stink over it. If John McCain wins, I’ll be happy, but the hippies might go bananas. There really could be rioting in the streets, which would be a shame and an embarrassment.
• Friend of BipolarNation.com Aaron Robertson has an election today: he’s running for state assemblyman representing the 83rd district of Wisconsin. The poll here has him 4% behind the incumbent, Scott Gunderson. Since Aaron is a pro-life, pro-business Democrat, he has the BPN endorsement.
• McCain/Obama and Robertson/Gunderson aren’t the only elections I’ll be watching today. Minnesotans have to keep Al Franken out of the Senate. Proposition 8 in California is aimed at overturning a gay marriage ruling in that state that said gays have the rights to marry. And hopefully the Democrats don’t get 60 seats in the Senate.
• Things will be so hotly contested today that I’d be shocked not to hear tons of stories about fraud and other voting problems.

They watched the presidential debates, know where the candidates stand on a number of issues and have done plenty of thinking about the two men vying for the White House.

But Keith and Jana Wells of Wauwatosa have yet to decide whether they will vote for Democrat Barack Obama or Republican John McCain on election day.

“I’ll probably make a decision tomorrow,” said Keith, while watching over his 1-year-old daughter Sunday afternoon.

Jana laughed, then said she will make her choice “probably the day of.”

If you’re informed about the two candidates, you know they stand for two completely different sets of principles. If you’re still undecided now, you have no political principles.

I can tell you right now that these are probably two Obama votes. “Moderates” tend to be liberals in disguise.

There’s a lot of people who claim to “vote for the man,” as if they can get a good read on a person’s character by watching them make speeches and debate. Apparently this is a horrible way to gauge a person’s character, because there are still people out there willing to vote for Obama. Obama, if you’ll recall, supported allowing fetuses that survived abortion to die and went to a church with a racist pastor for 20 years.

When you say something like this,

“I want to get more of a feel for the candidates,” he said.

you just sound stupid.

Want more evidence these people either 1. have no voting principles or 2. ignore them? Observe.

Both [different people now] said they think Obama has a better message on the economy. But Jana, who said she opposes abortion, worries that Obama does not share her views on the issue.

“I watch him speak and think, ‘Yes, he’ll be a good leader,’ but then I have that in the back of my head,” she said.

Lately, she’s been thinking she probably will vote for Obama anyway, mostly because of the negative campaign material she has received in the mail from McCain supporters.

You oppose abortion, but the negative campaign material you received in the mail from John McCain is what’s going to throw your vote?

What?

This is why I said if you’re stupid, don’t vote. I’m not referring to formal education – I mean, anyone who considers that an honest barometer of intelligence is either a teacher or a retired teacher.

I meant voters who oppose abortion but won’t vote against Obama because McCain’s mail rubbed them the wrong way. You may be “informed,” but you can still be stupid.

My gut tells me it’s going to be a closer election than many of the polls suggest, and that McCain has a chance if he gets the right turnouts (mostly old people) in the right states.

Elections are coming up, and people who are voting for Barack Obama need to think about what he’ll actually bring. Not that people who plan on voting for Barack Obama can be trusted to do any independent thinking, but hey, I’m blogging here.

What would an Obama presidency bring?

He’s already given “first act” status to signing the Freedom of Choice act. (link)

Here’s how Wikipedia describes the act:

The Freedom of Choice Act (H.R. 3719/S. 2020) is a bill in the United States Congress which, if enacted, would abolish all restrictions and limitations on the right of women in the United States to have an abortion, whether at the State or Federal level.

What does that tell you about Barack Obama – that his supposed first act will be to support the liberal notion that murdering your own children is actually about “personal choice”?

Not only is he 100% in support of the liberal sacred cow of killing unborn children, he thinks it’s so important he wants to make it his first act. If he’s not the most liberal candidate ever (and he might be anyway), he’s up there.

How about taxes and government spending? Take it away, Thomas Sowell.

Politicians telling businesses how to operate? That’s been tried in countries around the world, especially during the second half of the 20th century. It has failed so often and so badly that even socialist and communist governments were freeing up their markets by the end of the century.

The economies of China and India began their take-off into high rates of growth when they got rid of precisely the kinds of policies that Obama is advocating for the United States under the magic mantra of “change.”

Putting restrictions on international trade in order to save jobs at home? That was tried here with the Hawley-Smoot tariff during the Great Depression.

Unemployment was 9 percent when that tariff was passed to save jobs, but unemployment went up instead of down, and reached 25 percent before the decade was over.

Higher taxes to “spread the wealth around,” as Obama puts it? The idea of redistributing wealth has turned into the reality of redistributing poverty, in countries where wealth has fled and the production of new wealth has been stifled by a lack of incentives.

Obama also wants to slow down American business under the pretext of saving it. Oh, he claims to be for the middle class, but he wants to take money away from the people who employ the middle class – the upper class.

How about foreign policy? After all, we do live in a world in which crazy, non-life-valuing terrorists want to get nuclear bombs.

Economic disasters, however, may pale by comparison with the catastrophe of Iran with nuclear weapons. Glib rhetoric about Iran being “a small country,” as Obama called it, will be a bitter irony for Americans who will have to live in the shadow of a nuclear threat that cannot be deterred, as that of the Soviet Union could be, by the threat of a nuclear counter-attack.

Suicidal fanatics cannot be deterred. If they are willing to die and we are not, then we are at their mercy — and they have no mercy. Moreover, once they get nuclear weapons, that is a situation which cannot be reversed, either in this generation or in generations to come.

Is this the legacy we wish to leave our children and grandchildren, by voting on the basis of style and symbolism, rather than substance?

If Barack Obama thinks that such a catastrophe can be avoided by sitting down and talking with the leaders of Iran, then he is repeating a fallacy that helped bring on World War II.

In a nuclear age, one country does not have to send troops to occupy another country in order to conquer it. A country is conquered if another country can dictate who rules it, as the Mongols once did with Russia, and as Osama bin Laden tried to do when he threatened retaliation against places in the United States that voted for George W. Bush. But he didn’t have nuclear weapons to back up that threat — yet.

America has never been a conquered country, so it may be very hard for most Americans even to conceive what that can mean. After France was conquered in 1940, it was reduced to turning over some of its own innocent citizens to the Nazis to kill, just because those citizens were Jewish.

Do you think our leaders wouldn’t do that? Not even if the alternative was to see New York and Los Angeles go up in mushroom clouds? If I were Jewish, I wouldn’t bet my life on that.

What the Middle East fanatics want is not just our resources or even our lives, but our humiliation first, in whatever sadistic ways they can think of. Their lust for humiliation has already been repeatedly demonstrated in their videotaped beheadings that find such an eager market in the Middle East.

None of this can be prevented by glib talk, but only by character, courage and decisive actions — none of which Barack Obama has ever demonstrated.

Scared yet?

In the words of Yoda…

You should be.

For example, here is how I see an interview possibly happening.

Question: Governor Kenitz, it’s been said that you wrote on your blog once that you would cut Social Security and Medicare totally. What is your current position on these two issues?

Answer: Yeah, I’ll cut them. We won’t leave anyone hanging who currently relies on these programs, but no one new will get to take advantage of them.

Question: Does that mean people who have counted on Social Security for their retirement will now not have it there?

Answer: Yup. They’re outta luck. They should have planned better, and should know better than to rely on government for their living.

Question: Sheesh! You are brutal.

Answer: If by “brutal” you mean I think “people should be responsible for their own income,” then yes, I’m brutal.

Question: Now to public education. You’ve said that public education makes kids lazy, fat, and stupid. Can you clarify those comments?

Answer: What’s so unclear about lazy, fat, and stupid?

Question: In what way does public education hurt kids?

Answer: The same way government hurts virtually everything it touches: by taking out natural market forces and competition that makes individual schools and teachers accountable for actually providing value to civilization; not just molesting kids and being a babysitting service.

Question: Did you say that all public schools molest children?

Answer: No. But in 1991, it was reported that 82.2 percent of females who graduated from high school were sexually harassed at some point. (link)

Question: So what do we do about this problem?

Answer: Cut the Department of Education and get government out of it. We’re exploring the option of giving families money to spend on these private schools as they please, but even that seems kind of commie.

Question: What about health care? Would you cut medicaid and other health care programs?

Answer: Yep.

Question: Won’t that create a health crisis?

Answer: Maybe.

Question: So how can you support cutting these programs if it might create a health crisis?

Answer: I’m running for President, not Chief Health Care Executive. It’s not the government’s responsibility to improve or protect health care. There’s no government involved in giving you free “food care,” yet there’s no food crisis in America. In fact, America is one of the fattest countries around.

Producer working in background: This guy is a gold mine!

Question: Uh…moving on, then. You recently committed what many people are calling a “gaffe” when you visited a pre-school and said to an aid “look at all the little monsters.” Many have remarked that you are avidly Pro-life, yet you seem to hate kids. How do you respond to that?

Answer: I wouldn’t say that I hate little kids, just that I’m strongly annoyed by them. And that doesn’t mean we should kill them before they’re born. I’m annoyed by you, but I don’t think you should be killed.

Question: Let’s move to foreign policy.

Answer: I have zero experience with foreign policy. I’m from Wisconsin.

Question: Are you saying you’re unqualified to be commander-in-chief?

Answer: Well, I’m more qualified than your average Joe, but I have zero military experience. That doesn’t mean I’ll be a bad one, necessarily. My foreign policy is to be as peaceful as possible, while building sweet lasers, huge bombs, missile defense, noisy boats, train tough people, and dominate space to support the continued sovereignty of the United States.

Question: That brings me to another point. You recently said that you would quintuple the budget for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Yet you have advocated against spending on government programs. Care to explain?

Answer: I’m for government spending if it’s for security – for example, missile defense is a great way for government to spend the money it makes. I’d give at least that much to NASA, and possibly more – all under supervision to make sure none of it’s wasted, though I’m sure just by the nature of it a lot of it will be wasted. But it’s important to fund NASA way beyond our current ideas because we want to get to Mars first, we want the first fleet in space, and we want to ensure the continued existence of the American people, even if huge meteors are heading towards Earth. Spending towards our security is perfectly consistent with what I’ve been saying.

Question: Quintupling NASA’s budget would put it at about a hundred billion dollars a year.

Answer: Is that all? Maybe they need more.

Question: If you’re going to lower taxes to a flat tax rate of 17% and increase veteran’s benefits, where would you get that money?

Answer: Cutting social security, medicare/medicaid, and other entitlements gives us more than enough to have a balanced budget and even a surplus.

Well, I’d vote for me.

How do they love him? Let me count the ways.

After Obama won the primary, the Facebook group “Brits for Barack” claimed “we did it!” as if they had any say in the matter.

The Berliner Morgenpost (translation: Berlin Morning Post) called Obama the “New Kennedy.” An editorial in the Frankfurter Rundschau (translation: “Hot Dog Rundschau”) had a headline that read “Lincoln, Kennedy, Obama.”

It’s not unusual to see a large picture of Obama on the front page of the Times of London, or the Daily Telegraph. And, hard as it may to believe – even a lot of French people like Obama!

Many Europeans are so pumped up about this election they’re saying they wish they could vote. Which, for some, I suppose, means they wish they were Americans.

There’s only one problem: they’re not Americans. They don’t get a vote. Nobody from Pennsylvania sees their “Obama/Biden” stickers. Nobody from Ohio will vote because “wow – Europe’s in a tizz!”

So bleep you, Europe.

For years, all we hear you say about U.S. foreign policy is that we do too much world policing. Okay, fine. But suddenly, during our elections, you want a say. Mind your own business. You don’t get a vote. And thank goodness for that, because you people often vote like morons. Plus, aside from the British Isles, you people have absurd, unenjoyable accents. And I’m from the Midwest – I know about absurd unenjoyable accents.