Dem ticket voted for infamous bridge

Now this one is just delicious. The Obama campaign has accused Sarah Palin of “first being for the Bridge to Nowhere – before being against it.” At first I was concerned that this could represent a chink in Palin’s heretofore shining reformist armor – but the plot thickens. According to the Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) – and verified via the track of votes cast, per the Congressional Register, here’s a bit of information that sheds more light on the whole story:

The Bridge to Nowhere was first funded in August 2005 through the 2005 SAFETEA-LU Act through a $223 million earmark inserted by then-House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman Don Young (R-Alaska). In October, 2005, Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) offered an amendment to the fiscal 2006 Transportation Appropriations Act to transfer $75 million in funding for the Bridge to Nowhere, along with money for the Knik Arm Bridge in Alaska, to support the rebuilding of the Twin Spans Bridge in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina. His amendment was defeated by a vote of 15-82. Senators Biden (D-Del.) and Obama (D-Ill.) voted against the amendment; Sen. McCain (R-Ariz.) was not present for the vote.

In November, 2005, Congress included language in the final version of the fiscal 2006 Transportation Appropriations Act that allowed the state of Alaska to either spend money on the two bridges or on other surface transportation projects. In October, 2006, Alaska Governor Frank Murkowski included $91 million for the Gravina Island Bridge in his budget submission for fiscal year 2007. As a candidate for governor, Sarah Palin expressed a mixture of support and doubt about the bridge, particularly about how the project would be funded. As governor, she submitted her budget on January 17, 2007 without any money for the bridge. On July 17, 2007, the Associated Press reported that "The state of Alaska on Friday officially abandoned the 'bridge to nowhere' project that became a nationwide symbol of federal pork-barrel spending." Governor Palin said in a statement that "Ketchikan desires a better way to reach the airport, but the $398 million bridge is not the answer."

"Media reports that Congress killed the Bridge to Nowhere are not accurate," said Schatz. "The 2006 transportation appropriations bill allowed Alaska to decide whether or not to move forward. Governor Murkowski said yes; Governor Palin said no. Any discussion about the project should begin with facts."

SO: both Barack Obama and Joe Biden actually cast votes preserving the earmark for the “Bridge to Nowhere” against an effort by another rock-solid anti-government waste conservative Republican (Senator Tom Coburn, R-OK), while Governor Palin, irrespective of whatever remarks she may have made during her campaign, actually DID kill the project once assuming office as governor.

In short: both Barack Obama and Joe Biden were “against being against… the Bridge to Nowhere” before Sarah Palin was just plain against it.

You can’t make this stuff up.

Fact check on Sarah vs. Charlie

Charlie Gibson's dishonest effort to trap, embarrass, and belittle Gov. Sarah Palin in his lengthy ABC interview with the Republican VP nominee is unmasked by the network's own transcripts and, in one case, by actual video of Palin addressing her church. If you like your news unfiltered, a few clicks will illustrate what I mean.

On Sarah's allegedly clueless answer to the Bush Doctrine question, here's Charles Krauthammer in National Review.

On the caricature of her as a scary theocrat and holy warrior against Iraq, here's James Taranto in the Wall Street Journal.

Finally, with a reprise of these topics plus the canard of Palin the warmonger spoiling for a fight with Russia, here's PJ Gladnick on Newsbusters.

Once again, we Republicans owe a vote of thanks to the ham-handed Obama partisans in the MSM for elevating and martyring McCain's everywoman running mate while eroding -- still further -- their own credibility. Keep it up guys, there are barely 50 days until this thing wraps up.

Big spender Obama faces deficit

When Sen. Obama’s imperial presence deemed it apt to break his own word in regard to public financing, a lofty goal of $300 million was set for the final months of the election. This number was to be gained in three installments of $100 million and in a manner which kept Obama on the trail and out of fundraisers. This seemed like a good plan, especially due to Sen. Obama’s inclination to speak his rather disdainful attitudes when ensconced in the comfort of a finance reception. But so far, this grand three-month plan has gone wrong. The DNC is lagging far behind the RNC in fundraising and Obama’s team has been unable to tax Clinton supporters to the degree that they first believed they could. Obama’s team seems also to be running into a wall where donors and potential donors are simply tapped out. Subsequently, Obama has missed his first month’s goal and indications abound that this shortfall may continue. Yet, have no doubt, Obama will still have substantial financial resources this fall.

Senator Obama, has, for the large part spent his way to success. However, his distributions during the general election have been bizarre, pie in the sky, and overly ambitious. Obama’s initial electoral strategy called for serious financial commitments in over 20 states. Included in these were reliably GOP states like Georgia and Alaska as well as the usual suspects of Ohio, Florida, Colorado, and Missouri. Strangely Obama has also made small commitments of money in places like West Texas and Utah. Obama can indeed raise money like the dickens, but he has shown, that he also has the will to spend it like the Tsars, Louis the XVI and Rachel Maddow.

One example of this is in Obama’s efforts to send paid voter registration teams to places like Chicago and New York City. While voter registration can turn the tide in a close state like Colorado, its use in a solidly blue state like New York is dubious at best.

Another case is in regard to Obama’s expenditures in the State of Georgia. Obama has spent over $2 million in a state that the GOP won in 2004 handily. For his investment Obama fought to within 6-9 points of McCain, which obviously isn’t enough to win the state. Now Obama seems to be pulling out of Georgia, but oddly his team seems happy with the Georgia results noting how far they were able to cut into the GOP’s 2004 margin. If these indications pan out Obama will have succeeded in wasting $2 million in the state for no real return.

Now take a look at Alaska. For a time it looked like Obama might be able to capture this state. Some polls even had him even with McCain and so in Obama logic the campaign put financial resources into the State. Then Gov. Palin made it on the GOP ticket and put Alaska out of reach by 20 points. With the Palin development it would make sense that Obama would pull out of Alaska. After all, why waste money on a state that you trail in by such a margin. Obama’s team, however, insists that they are still going to push forward in Alaska, a financial decision that should send rational minds out the window.

Sen. Obama has repeatedly shown a lack of financial sense in his campaign. When faced with tough decisions on where to spend money he seems to be keen on spending it everywhere. Instead of using financial sense to run his campaign, Obama seems to prefer a policy of simply taxing his contributors over and over again. His distribution of campaign funds lacks sense and his proclivity to go back to the well for more is disturbing. This policy raises serious questions about his ability to manage a complex budget. His own behavior exemplifies the fundamental idea of "tax and spend" in epic style.

Sen. Obama is very fond of using the argument that he has managed a campaign as a qualification to be President. I think Americans should acknowledge that argument. Acknowledge it and then take a serious look at how exactly Sen. Obama has been running his campaign. What they will see is a financial house of cards that is frightening and a will to tax supporters and waste money that is downright Roman in scale.

Shoulda said rouge on a corpse

I absolutely don't believe Obama was jabbing at Sarah Palin with his "lipstick on a pig" remark yesterday, and I hope she and McCain laugh it off or shrug it off. Repay him with grace for his gracious refusal last week to drag Bristol into the campaign. Send him a gift box of lipsticks from Avon and move on. I'll bet that around the Illinois Senate where Obama served, as around the Colorado Senate where I served, two of the cliches to describe a futile spin effort were that you can try to put lipstick on a pig or rouge on a corpse, but you'll fool no one. Young Obie probably absorbed both in his vocabulary when Sarah was unknown beyond Wasilla. Don't you know he wishes now that his preferred cosmetic for mocking his opponents' claim of change had been rouge.

If the remark wasn't a slur, though, it was still a gaffe, a big and easily avoidable one. Which gives more evidence that Obama is badly off his game right now, rattled by the Palin phenomenon and the dramatic momentum shift since his Invesco acceptance speech. (How long ago that already seems!)

Any candidate thinking clearly on his feet, as you simply have to do at every moment in the big leagues, would have done a silent self-edit when "lipstick" and "pig" presented themselves in the same sentence and instantly substituted -- rather than added, as he did, too late -- the smelly fish reference or something else with no double entendre. Barack did this to himself because he's obviously not thinking clearly at this season of unexpected adversity.

You can hardly blame the poor guy. It's tough out there all of a sudden. Exhibit A would be the New York Times front-page story last Sunday: "Rival Tickets are Redrawing Battlegrounds. Palin Helps GOP Put More States in Play." It said in part:

Fresh from the Republican convention, Senator John McCain’s campaign sees evidence that his choice of Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate is energizing conservatives in the battleground of Ohio while improving its chances in Pennsylvania and several Western states that Senator Barack Obama has been counting on, [including] Nevada, New Mexico [and] Colorado.

Exhibit B, corroborating this, is the 13,000 who turned out for McPalin in Colorado Springs on Saturday. With any other running mate, Mac would have drawn about 1300.

Exhibits C and D, a couple of columns that have made waves this week on talk radio and the conservative blogs. Pundits can say anything, of course, and two swallows don't make a summer, but what's striking is the confident prediction of not just defeat but decisive defeat for Obama, partly as a result of the VP matchup.

Heather Higgins, board chair of the Independent Women's Forum, wrote on Townhall.com:

Here’s an unconventional prediction: in this race, unlike those before, the Vice President will actually matter, particularly in what they capture relative to that anti-Washington sentiment. Barring major mishap, here’s a second unconventional prediction: this isn’t going to be a close election, but will look far less like 2000 or 2004 than it does like McGovern in ’72.

And Spengler (pseudonym of an Asia Times columnist whose identity not even Google seems to know) wrote in his latest piece, which Rush Limbaugh trumpeted to the world on Tuesday:

Obama will spend the rest of his life wondering why he rejected the obvious road to victory, that is, choosing Hillary Clinton as his vice presidential nominee. However reluctantly, Clinton would have had to accept. McCain's choice of vice presidential candidate made obvious after the fact what the party professionals felt in their fingertips at the stadium extravaganza yesterday: rejecting Clinton in favor of the colorless, unpopular, tangle-tongued Washington perennial Joe Biden was a statement of weakness. McCain's selection was a statement of strength. America's voters will forgive many things in a politician, including sexual misconduct, but they will not forgive weakness.

That is why McCain will win in November, and by a landslide, barring some unforeseen event. Obama is the most talented and persuasive politician of his generation, the intellectual superior of all his competitors, but a fatally insecure personality. American voters are not intellectual, but they are shrewd, like animals. They can smell insecurity, and the convention stank of it. Obama's prospective defeat is entirely of its own making. No one is more surprised than Republican strategists, who were convinced just weeks ago that a weakening economy ensured a Democratic victory.

To repeat, and use another cliche, these are but straws in the wind. But it was interesting to hear Hugh Hewitt, no incautious cheerleader, also speculating yesterday that we may be seeing everything start to crumble for Barack Obama and the supposed Democratic sure thing.

One reason, then, for Obie not to have made the safer remark in his Ohio speech that "You can't put rouge on a corpse" is that he may be starting to get morbid feelings about his own chances in November. Final cliche: Never mention rope in house of a hanged man.

Two utterly opposite candidates

Mirroring this extraordinary political year the conventions of both parties were unusual, unpredictable and given to striking twists and surprises. Aside from the continuing guerrilla warfare between the Clinton and Obama camps - a media delight - the truly remarkable aspect of the Democratic convention was the stunning spectacle of the nominee’s acceptance speech. Probably not since the Roman Coliseum mounted extravagant triumphs for the return of victorious emperors has the world seen such spectacular pageantry revolving around one man.

Without question the Obama nomination is a historic milestone which certainly justifies a reasonable degree of grandeur. Oddly however despite Obama’s well-deserved reputation for spellbinding oratory, informed opinion concluded that the show was better than the speech.

Throughout the campaign John McCain has struggled to avoid being eclipsed by his opponent’s money, media dominance, and sheer star power. Occasionally his efforts have been rather weak - visiting a German restaurant in Ohio to counter Obama’s entertainment of 200,000 Berliners - but most of his quick-release counterpunching ads have been effective, and they have clearly drawn blood -- notably the brilliant enlisting of Paris Hilton and Charlton Heston to tag Obama as a celebrity lightweight.

McCain, however, surpassed himself with his vice-presidential announcement. The “leak-free” timing - barely a dozen hours after Obama’s acceptance speech - was masterful, and the selection -“surprise” would be a gross understatement - of Sarah Palin turned the whole news cycle upside down and caused a jaded and chronically self-congratulating national media to scramble and rework countless assumptions about the state of the campaign.

Beyond stepping all over any “bounce” from the Obama speech, the Palin selection, when contrasted with the weak and defensive choice of Washington “lifer” Joe Biden, recasts the whole question of who is the real “candidate of change”.

The Republican convention - truncated by the sudden eruption of the hurricane season - sharply contrasted with the doings in Denver. While the Democrats put on a sound and light spectacle - unburdened by any substance - the GOP event was by comparison muted, and even drab, but redeemed by its Spartan brevity and the arresting acceptance speeches of its candidates.

So, in the wake of the two conventions, what can be said about this contest for the world’s most important job?

The dominant reality is the closeness of the polls. Historically Democrats have exited their convention with leads ranging from 16 (Kerry) to 25 (Dukakis) points and then drifted downward. Today the race is virtually dead even. Despite economic distress at home and an unpopular war abroad that had Democrats plausibly dreaming of a 1964-type sweep Obama’s numbers have consistently underperformed what voter identification and generic matchup numbers suggest they should be doing.

There are two reasons for this. The lesser is that in McCain - despite the heartburn he has given conservatives over the years - Republicans ended up with the one and only candidate who could effectively compete in that ocean of independent and weakly partisan voters who decide every Presidential election.

The greater reason however is the continuing mystery that is Barack Obama. Despite unprecedented albeit not-too-probing media focus, Obama remains essentially an unknown commodity. Moreover a significant slice of the electorate harbors abiding suspicion that he is very different from what he claims to be.

Evidence revealing Obama’s true identity is not hard to find. A close reading of his 1995 autobiography - written before he entered politics and therefore surprisingly candid - his associations as a community organizer (ACORN and the Gamaliel Foundation), his record as a state legislator, notably his acquiescence and participation in the notoriously corrupt practices of the Daley machine in Chicago, and various unguarded public and private utterances (e.g. “clinging to guns and God”) unmask not just the Senate’s most liberal member, but rather an extreme radical deeply alienated from and contemptuous of the mainstream culture and value system of the country he seeks to lead.

Only the relentless determination of the national media to hear, see, and speak no evil regarding the “Chosen One” have sustained this stealth candidacy and prevented the American people from discovering the unpalatable truth about Obama. To date only Jeremiah Wright and William Ayers have tumbled out of Obama’s dark closet -- and not even the full story about them.

The truth is that never in our entire history have we had two presidential candidates so utterly opposite in their character, experience, vision, and values. The election will turn on whether this reality is revealed or remains concealed.

William Moloney’s columns have appeared in the Wall St. Journal, USA Today, Washington Post, Washington Times, Philadelphia Enquirer, Baltimore Sun, Denver Post, and Rocky Mountain News.