California Conservative

Speaker Pelosi is making the rounds of the talk shows to promote her new book. According to Drudge’s headline, it debuted at #869. Considering that she’s the first female Speaker of the House, you’d think that it would start in the top 10 bestseller list. That’s pathetic for a history-making figure.

To put things in perspective, I don’t recall a Dick Morris book starting outside the Top 10. Ditto with Newt’s books. Ditto with O’Reilly’s books.

UPDATE: Rush just updated the story, saying that it’s now #899, dropping 30 places since Drudge posted the story.

Technorati Tags: Amazon, Bestseller List, Nancy Pelosi, Dick Morris, Newt Gingrich, Bill O’Reilly

Cross-posted at LetFreedomRingBlog

Yesterday, Barack Obama issued a challenge to Sen. McCain. That doesn’t mean he’ll accept the opportunity to debate Sen. McCain on taxes, though. Here’s what he said yesterday:

“I want to cut taxes for middle-class families, ordinary folks who are working hard and playing by the rules,” he said. “I’m ready to duel John McCain on taxes right here, quick draw.”

Sen. McCain quickly responded:

“If Barack Obama wants this so-called duel then why did he and his entourage run for the hills when John McCain challenged him to 10 town halls,” said McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds.

The truth is that the Obama people want nothing to do with a debate. They’ve seen the Obamessiah away from the teleprompter. He’s a disaster. The gravitas gap would be substantial, noticeable and embarassing.

That’s why he can’t afford to do anything more than be lippy.

I’ve said it before and I’ll repeat it again: Sen. Obama is a gifted orator in an empty suit. That won’t change anytime soon.

Technorati Tags: Obama, Debates, Taxes, John McCain, Gravitas, Election 2008

Cross-posted at LetFreedomRingBlog

According to this article, US combat deaths will show a massive decline from the 66 combat deaths from July, 2007. This month’s combat death toll currently sits at 5. To be fair, though, it should be noted that last July, US troops were just getting started with the Surge’s offensive.

With those statistics in mind, we should ask Sen. Obama some questions. Here’s the first question I’d want answered:

Q1: How flexible would your 16 month plan be if Gen. Petraeus said that he didn’t want to lose the gains that the Surge has produced?

Q2: Do you think the Iraq war is winnable? If you don’t think it’s winnable, why not?

Q3: Are you committed to winning in Iraq so that we’ll have a strong, stabilized ally in the heart of the Middle East? If you aren’t committed to winning there, why aren’t you? (more…)

Lord knows that Freedom’s Watch is doing alot of good things. Between supporting the troops to ridiculing Democrats on high gas prices, they’re generally moving the ball down the field. I say generally because Carl Forti, in talking about the Democrats planning on running ads tying Republicans to Big Oil, gave this quote to the LA Times:

So what’s a Republican candidate to do?

“You hunker down and ride it out,” said Carl Forti, a former congressional GOP strategist and now executive vice president for issue advocacy at Freedom’s Watch, a conservative organization.

Mr. Forti couldn’t be more wrong. You don’t hunker down. You go on the offensive. Instead of hunkering down, you highlight this quote from the Sierra Club’s Carl Pope: (more…)

The NY Post’s Amir Taheri questions the purpose of Sen. Obama’s trip in his latest column. Consider it today’s must reading. Let Mr. Taheri’s excoriation begin:

TERMED a “learning” trip, Sen. Barack Obama’s eight- day tour of eight nations in the Middle East and Europe turned out to be little more than a series of photo ops to enhance his international credentials.

“He looked like a man in a hurry,” a source close to Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said last week. “He was not interested in what we had to say.”

Why am I not surprised to find out that Sen. Obama didn’t bother listening to the Iraqis? In fact, the better question might be this:

Shouldn’t we expect a man of Obama’s arrogance to be indifferent to listening?

Notice this exchange with Tom Brokaw on Meet the Press:

MR. BROKAW: When you get home and Michelle says to you, “Barack, what did you learn that surprised you? And did you change your mind about anything based on this entire trip?”

SEN. OBAMA: Well, I, I, I didn’t see a huge shift in the strategic policies that I’ve laid out throughout this campaign. It was clear to me that Afghanistan is the central front on terror, that the Taliban and al-Qaeda have reconstituted themselves.

Granted, this is only the first part of his answer but it’s verification of what Mr. Taheri is saying. He learned nothing. The trip was just verification that he was right all along. Stop after stop, Obama’s policies were verified in his mind. Why didn’t Sen. Obama ask Gen. Petraeus his opinion on his 16-month plan? Was he afraid he might get this response? (more…)

‘Cuz nothing brings out the vote like class warfare.

Media Research Center reports: Missing a golden opportunity to correct a specious presumption behind of Barack Obama and his liberal supporters that the wealthy are under-taxed, CBS reporter Chip Reid on Monday night highlighted how “ending the Bush tax cuts for people making more than $250,000 a year and using the money for a tax cut for the middle class” is one of Obama’s highest priorities and one supported by “Warren Buffett, the richest man in the world who, despite his billions, says the rich are not taxed enough.” Reid, who later in his story asserted “critics wonder how” McCain could possibly balance the budget “given his support for extending all of the Bush tax cuts,” failed to inform viewers of how the wealthy increasingly pay far more than their fair share of income taxes.

The Tax Foundation reported on July 18 that new 2006 IRS tax data revealed “both the income share earned by the top 1 percent of tax returns,” those earning $388,806 or more, “and the tax share paid by that top 1 percent have once again reached all-time highs.” Gerald Prante pointed out those top 1 percent “paid about the same amount of federal individual income taxes as the bottom 95 percent of tax returns.” The top 5 percent, those over making $153,542 or more, earned 36 percent of all the reported income, but they paid just over 60 percent of the total income taxes collected.

Read more here

The Tax Foundation reported on July 18 that new 2006 IRS tax data revealed “both the income share earned by the top 1 percent of tax returns,” those earning $388,806 or more, “and the tax share paid by that top 1 percent have once again reached all-time highs.” Gerald Prante pointed out those top 1 percent “paid about the same amount of federal individual income taxes as the bottom 95 percent of tax returns.” The top 5 percent, those over making $153,542 or more, earned 36 percent of all the reported income, but they paid just over 60 percent of the total income taxes collected.

For the Tax Foundation report: www.taxfoundation.org

USNews & World Report: Is Obamanomics
Really Recessionomics?

RELATED: Democrats & Taxes: California is “#1″

Believe it or not, Nancy Pelosi doesn’t just see herself as a history-making person by becoming the first female Speaker of the House. She’s also given to the belief that it’s her role to save the entire planet:

With fewer than 20 legislative days before the new fiscal year begins Oct. 1, the entire appropriations process has largely ground to a halt because of the ham-handed fighting that followed Republican attempts to lift the moratorium on offshore oil and gas exploration. And after promising fairness and open debate, Pelosi has resorted to hard-nosed parliamentary devices that effectively bar any chance for Republicans to offer policy alternatives.

“I’m trying to save the planet; I’m trying to save the planet,” she says impatiently when questioned. “I will not have this debate trivialized by their excuse for their failed policy.”

“I respect the office that I hold,” she says. “And when you win the election, you win the majority, and what is the power of the speaker? To set the agenda, the power of recognition, and I am not giving the gavel away to anyone.”

What Ms. Pelosi is saying when she says that she won’t give the gavel away to anyone, what she’s really saying is that she won’t let the representatives vote on drilling in ANWR and on the OCS, something that the vast majority of the people of the United States of America want. In other words, Nancy Pelosi is telling America’s voters that she’ll stand with K Street environmental lobbyists instead of with those that make Main Street work. (more…)

The AP’s Beth Fouhy has written a particularly offensive hit piece against Sen. McCain. This shocks me not even a little, though it’s more than a little disappointing. Consider these paragraphs as why I think it’s a hit piece against Sen. McCain:

Just last month, McCain reversed himself after years of opposition and called for lifting the federal ban on oil drilling off the U.S. coast. The Arizona senator promotes energy development as a way to boost the economy, and a recent poll found many voters are open to offshore drilling as a way to ease gasoline prices.

But McCain’s views could be troublesome in California, which has seen its share of catastrophic offshore oil spills. Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a McCain ally, opposes such drilling and in a television interview indicated he would be open one day to serving as the “energy czar” in an Obama administration.

It isn’t a stretch to think that Fouhy’s intent was to label McCain a flip-flopper without calling him that directly. It’s also not a stretch to think that mentioning girlie-man Gov. Schwarzenegger’s desire to be Obama’s energy czar is meant to imply that Republicans are split on drilling.

Then there’s this: (more…)

Kevin Haslett has written a logical, compelling article on the drill vs. not drill battle. Here’s how he lays things out:

The economics of extracting resources is quite simple and intuitive. If you own property that has oil in the ground, then you have to decide how rapidly you wish to deplete your resource. If prices are low today, and you expect them to be much higher in the future, then you will hold off pumping a lot.

Open Spigot Now

If prices are high today and are expected to be much lower tomorrow, then you would rather open up the spigot now when profits will be higher.

Later in the article, Mr. Haslett opens both barrels on the D’s:

What about prices today? A vast body of academic literature finds that future prices and spot prices are intricately linked in a manner that could only occur if producers are constantly updating their plans based on expected prices.

A recent study by economists Param Silvapulle and Imad Moosa of Monash University in Australia found strong evidence of what is called bidirectional causality. Future prices and spot prices are inextricably linked.

Too Obvious

How strong is the case? My American Enterprise Institute colleague, former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich, has been a tireless advocate of a more rational energy policy that allows for more drilling.

In a recent post at his influential blog, Gingrich noted that the top academic energy journal, aptly named, “The Energy Journal,” recently rejected a study by economists Morris Coats and Gary Pecquet of Nicholls State University in Louisiana that found that higher production in the future would reduce prices today.

The study, Gingrich reported, wasn’t rejected because it lacked academic merit. It was rejected because the finding was so well known. James Smith, the impeccably credentialed editor of The Energy Journal described it this way to the unfortunate authors: (more…)

Because if you’re black, Yahoo and Google may not be good ’nuff.

No joke. Evidently.

In yet another submission to the you-can’t-make-this-shi’ite-up file, we find the following entry via SearchEngineWatch:

RushmoreDrive.com, the new “Super Search Engine” for the Black community from Barry Diller’s IAC (InterActiveCorp) announced its Range Rover Sport Drive Away Sweepstakes at the Michael Baisden LIVE event held at the Nokia Theatre in New York City.

The time has come. At long last, there shall be equality — online.

When it comes to searching the internet, no longer will blacks be shackled to conformity, forced to join whites and other non-blacks. As the Rev. Jeremiah Wright prayed for a miracle and new messiah Barack Obama the prophesy foretold, their people will now be getting a seat at the keyboard, righteously empowered to search the web as they please. Controlling their own destiny with a new “super” search engine for blacks, they will now be in charge of self-segregating themselves.

RushmoreDrive.com hopes to change the way the Black community searches the World Wide Web for information, jobs and news. The job search feature is especially important given the current job market and economic uncertainty caused by the sub prime mortgage crisis, high gas prices, etc.

Indeed, the job search feature is very important. And no longer should the “white community” impose its ways of online search on the “Black community.” There must be racial equality, both offline and on. Let the healing begin…

Michael Baisden encouraged members of the Black community to not only register at www.RushmoreDrive.com every day from now until the September 5, 2008 drawing for the Range Rover Sport, but he also reminded them that this first-of-its-kind search engine was built by Black people, for Black people.

RushmoreDrive.com employs a patent-pending technology that reputedly enables the search engine to identify sites with heavy online traffic from Black users and to elevate relevant information in the way in which it is listed.

Patent-pending technology. By the people, for the people. Word.

“Finally, Black people across the country have a search engine that is shaped by the interests and usage of the Black community,” said RushmoreDrive.com’s Johnny Taylor in a statement.

Finally. Amen. Praise be to Brother Barry Diller! May his stock (Nasdaq quote: IACI) rise like our collective prayers onto heaven, and may advertisers of all race, creed and color rejoice!

No comment provided on whether or not the giveaway Range Rover comes fully-loaded with extra bass speakers, sub-woofer, and special alloy rims. To do so would be stereotypical.

Truly ridiculous.

Disclaimer: Obama has not endorsed this search engine. And there’s no confirmation that he actually uses it. But he does want the “Black community” to vote for him, so maybe they’ll find out more online — on their own special, “super” search engine.

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