Orson Scott Card, Mormon and well-known science fiction writer and (former) Democrat voter, has a (rather lengthy) column as to why he’ll be voting Republican tomorrow. He calls it “The Only Issue This Election Day”.

There is only one issue in this election that will matter five or ten years from now, and that’s the War on Terror.

And the success of the War on Terror now teeters on the fulcrum of this election.

If control of the House passes into Democratic hands, there are enough withdraw-on-a-timetable Democrats in positions of prominence that it will not only seem to be a victory for our enemies, it will be one.

Unfortunately, the opposite is not the case — if the Republican Party remains in control of both houses of Congress there is no guarantee that the outcome of the present war will be favorable for us or anyone else.

But at least there will be a chance.

I say this as a Democrat, for whom the Republican domination of government threatens many values that I hold to be important to America’s role as a light among nations.

But there are no values that matter to me that will not be gravely endangered if we lose this war. And since the Democratic Party seems hellbent on losing it — and in the most damaging possible way — I have no choice but to advocate that my party be kept from getting its hands on the reins of national power, until it proves itself once again to be capable of recognizing our core national interests instead of its own temporary partisan advantages.

To all intents and purposes, when the Democratic Party jettisoned Joseph Lieberman over the issue of his support of this war, they kicked me out as well. The party of Harry Truman and Daniel Patrick Moynihan — the party I joined back in the 1970s — is dead. Of suicide.

Personally, I have a number of other issues that I agree with the Republicans on, and hence my predilections to vote for them anyway. But this is worth noting, coming from someone of the religious Left (and while I and others may have some doctrinal and theological differences, we’re not going to debate the LDS religion in the comment thread; violations will be cheerfully deleted).

Card hits many topics–nation building, the hope of democracy, the Sunni/Shi’ite dynamic, historical blunders that Democrats are willing to repeat, the anti-American media, the questions of Iran and North Korea, Bush’s conduct of the War on Terror–to make the point that Bush is indeed playing his cards quite right in the Middle East and the world, and that, in spite of obvious problems in the short term, the long term strategy should continue, and America shouldn’t bail out on people whom we’ve helped liberate until they are ready to pick up the mantle themselves.

Card knows who he’s going to vote for, and he makes quite the case for his decision. This is one article really worth reading before you step into the voting booth.

Technorati Tags: Orson Scott Card, election, terrorism, War on Terror, Democrat, Mormon

There’s certainly no ambiguity as to who these guys wants to win.

Everybody has an opinion about next Tuesday’s midterm congressional election in the U.S. – including senior terrorist leaders interviewed by WND who say they hope Americans sweep the Democrats into power because of the party’s position on withdrawing from Iraq, a move, as they see it, that ensures victory for the worldwide Islamic resistance.

The terrorists told WorldNetDaily an electoral win for the Democrats would prove to them Americans are “tired.”

They rejected statements from some prominent Democrats in the U.S. that a withdrawal from Iraq would end the insurgency, explaining an evacuation would prove resistance works and would compel jihadists to continue fighting until America is destroyed.

They said a withdrawal would also embolden their own terror groups to enhance “resistance” against Israel.

“Of course Americans should vote Democrat,” Jihad Jaara, a senior member of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades terror group and the infamous leader of the 2002 siege of Bethlehem’s Church of the Nativity, told WND.

And there’s more.

Muhammad Saadi, a senior leader of Islamic Jihad in the northern West Bank town of Jenin, said the Democrats’ talk of withdrawal from Iraq makes him feel “proud.”

“As Arabs and Muslims we feel proud of this talk,” he told WND. “Very proud from the great successes of the Iraqi resistance. This success that brought the big superpower of the world to discuss a possible withdrawal.”

Abu Abdullah, a leader of Hamas’ military wing in the Gaza Strip, said the policy of withdrawal “proves the strategy of the resistance is the right strategy against the occupation.”

Read the rest of this entry

Chuck Asay gives us “A Brief History of North Korea’s Weapons of Mass Destruction Program”.

Giving foreign aid to countries because we’re afraid of what they’ll do with a nuke doesn’t curtail proliferation, it promotes it. Rogue states get what they need to prop up the dictator, and thus the lives of its citizens are made to be anything from miserable to fatal for the coming years. In the meantime, said rogue state still continues to work on obtaining nukes. There’s never any penalty to be paid, other than a nasty-gram from the UN, so there’s no real reason to live up to the agreement.

This is textbook codependency. We’re enabling the very actions we’re hoping to prevent. And when we try to cut off the free ride, others accuse us of being cold-hearted. The world is acting like the wife of an alcoholic man. And neither situation is healthy for the parties involved.

Technorati Tags: North Korea, Chuck Asay, nuclear bomb, codependent

Looks like they continue to do what the Bush administration said they would. The economy keeps growing, and with it, tax receipts.

The federal budget estimate for the fiscal year just completed dropped to $250 billion, congressional estimators said Friday, as the economy continues to fuel impressive tax revenues.

The Congressional Budget Office’s latest estimate is $10 billion below CBO predictions issued in August and well below a July White House prediction of $296 billion.

The improving deficit picture _ Bush predicted a $423 billion deficit in his February budget _ has been driven by better-than-expected tax receipts, especially from corporate profits, CBO said.

People have more to spend, and they’re spending it, growing the economy, creating jobs, and increasing tax receipts, just like they did after the Reagan tax cuts.

So what do the Democrats plan to do if they win back control of Congress?

To do that [don’t increase the deficit], [Pelosi] said, Bush-era tax cuts would have to be rolled back for those above “a certain level.” She mentioned annual incomes of $250,000 or $300,000 a year and higher, and said tax rates for those individuals might revert to those of the Clinton era. Details will have to be worked out, she emphasized.

“We believe in the marketplace,” Pelosi said of Democrats, then drew a contrast with Republicans. “They have only rewarded wealth, not work.”

But the more money you have, the more you can spend and keep the job & economic growth fueled. Yeah, let’s penalize those who are doing the most to increase tax receipts by taking their money away. Why do Democrats think it makes sense to siphon off tax money before it’s used, removing it from the marketplace, rather than collect it as part of an expanding economy?

Technorati Tags: taxes, tax cut, Nancy Pelosi, Democrat, Ronald Reagan, budget deficit

Paul Harvey’s line is, “Self-government without self-control is self-defeating.” The latest exhibit before the jury is this.

THE al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an armed wing of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah faction, have threatened for the first time to kill Hamas leaders, including exiled political chief Khaled Meshaal.
The threat marked an escalation in the power struggle between Fatah and the ruling Hamas movement after two days of internal fighting in the Gaza Strip and the occupied West Bank in which 12 Palestinians were killed and more than 100 wounded.

In a statement, the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades said it held Meshaal, Palestinian Interior Minister Saeed Seyam and senior Interior Ministry official Youssef al-Zahar responsible for the deaths.

“We in al-Aqsa announce, with all might and frankness, the ruling of the people in the homeland and in the diaspora, to execute the head of the sedition, Khaled Meshaal, Saeed Seyam and Youssef al-Zahar, and we will execute this ruling so those filthy people can be made an example,” the statement said.

Meshaal is based in Damascus, while Seyam and al-Zahar are in the Gaza Strip.

(Hat tip to the Jawa Report, who wishes both sides “the very best of luck in battle”.)

When political parties have their own milita–as does Hezbollah, Hamas and Fatah–those groups are not ready for government of the people, by the people and for the people. They are not ready to resolve their differences peacefully. They are not ready for a representative republic.

And yes, I’m aware of the bit of irony in using a phrase Lincoln used when dedicating a cemetery during the Civil War. Yes, we had our internal war, but I see a main difference. Most civil wars, as is the one in the Palestinian territories, are for control of the government. Ours was fought over the issue of separating from the government. And while that is a big, black mark on our history, we’ve gotten past the idea that political parties should stage military battles against each other. In fact, in a manner of speaking, if you grant that the South was acting as though it were a sovereign nation, even the Civil War might not be considered a war between factions within a country.

But in the Middle East, the Palestinian political parties are shooting at each other instead of wrangling this out in the political process. Politics may be ugly, but it’s better than this.

Technorati Tags: Palestinians, Middle East, Fatah, Hamas, civil war, Abraham Lincoln

Certain portions of the National Intelligence Estimate were leaked by the liberal media less than two weeks before the mid-term election. The NIE report was written 5 months ago, but only now does it get leaked. Blame it on a media holding back until an opportune time, or blame it on politically motivated leakers timing a leak they knew the media would rush uncritically into, but either way it’s nothing but a smear campaign with the media playing a prominent role. It’s a role that they should not have been part of–as skeptical as they claim to be–but they jumped in with both feet.

Today, President Bush called their bluff and released other parts of the report for folks to read for themselves. It’s a shame that in order to get a fair hearing the Bush administration has to declassify material. It appears that those on the Left and their supporters in the media are more than willing to compromise national security and break the law in order to gain political points.

So you wanna’ cherry pick quotations? John Hawkins highlights another blogger, allegedly a former member of the U.S intelligence community, who does his own cherry picking that paints a completely different picture. Worth a read.

Of course, Democrats, reading what they want and ignoring the rest, hold on to the spin and proclaim this as some sort of indictment against the war in Iraq. They’re playing pure politics with national security. Again. They’re holding up this snippet of a report as the gospel truth. Wonder what their thoughts were on the NIE report that there may be WMDs in Iraq. Actually, when that report was discussed, those on the Left noted more cherries picked other quotes from it that expressed doubt about their presence. At the time, as noted on Redstate,

But the NIE, I recalled from the discussions following the “NO WMD!” declarations from the Dems and the MSM, had said that there were WMD. When the MSM found snippets which expressed doubt, it was explained that the NIE contained a diversity of opinions and outlook.

That was then; diversity of opinion. This is now; monolithic groupthink. Short-attention-span Democrat voters will fall for it. But no one should.

Technorati Tags: NIE, Iraq, war, WMD, media

Joe Carter, in a recycled post at the the Evangelical Outpost which is just as relevant now as when he first posted it, deconstructs the idea that Christians somehow want to establish a theocracy in the United States.

When those of us on the “religious right” hear such paranoid ranting it naturally elicits a chuckle. After all, more than half of American evangelicals are either Baptists or non-denominational. We don’t even want a centralized church government much less a central government controlled by the church.

But since, as Joe notes, “even the most pernicious lie…contains some grain of truth”, he looks into the history of the idea and what folks typically mean by it today.

Technorati Tags: theocracy, evangelical outpost, christians

Gas prices are dropping. On queue, Bush’s poll numbers are rising. Again, just further proof that setting public policy based on poll numbers is never a good idea.

When the Clinton administration folks came up with the phrase, “It’s the economy, stupid”, all that meant was that they were poll driven. Want to push through your agenda? Manipulate the economy so that folks feel like things are better, and you can claim a “mandate”. That’s not the way to run a government. The Republicans have, correctly, not jumped at quick fixes for the most noticeable economic data point–gas prices–and they have paid for it in presidential approval ratings and hence in the liberal punditry as well. Republicans did the right thing, in spite of the short term problems in PR it would cause them. The market has corrected itself and the emotional sector of the public is coming back on board.

The economy is important, make no mistake. But it’s not so important that, as the catch-phrase implied, it’s the main thing. The economy is not something that government should be overly meddling in. Unfortunately, too much of the public has been conditioned to think that the state should run the economy, and when prices are high it’s the government’s job to “fix” things. They don’t see that, all over the world and throughout history, the more control of the economy the government had, the less free the people were, and the worse the economy functioned. Look at the socialist countries of Europe or the failure of centrally Communism for prime examples.

The people run the economy. Let ’em.

Update: Well, speaking of gas prices, Betsy is pointing out the (unfortunately) predictable response of some to assume that the Bush administration is, indeed, practicing manipulation of gas prices for just such a bump in the weeks leading up to the mid-term elections. C’mon, folks, this is pathetic. She notes that USA Today provides the very obvious, market-driven (and even weather-driven) reasons. Is 40% of the public really that unaware of the news of the day that they’re willing to believe this? Given some of the manipulation they’ve come to expect from their government (that is, when they want the government to do it), I suppose it’s not completely unsurprising. But it is disappointing.

Update #2:  Back Talk uses some statistical analysis to show that because these two graphs correlate doesn’t mean one causes or influnces the other.  He notes that, for example, Bush’s popularity jumped before the 9/11 gas price jump rather than after.  He also shows a graph of Bush’s popularity vs. housing prices, but nobody’s tying those two numbers together.  Very good points and worth considering in this discussion.  I would only add that most folks know, day to day, what the gas prices are and not many know the value of homes around them very often, so gas prices would affect their perception more.  But I do appreciate Engram’s points.

Technorati Tags: oil, gas prices, economy, polls, communism, socialism

Polls drive me nuts. A measure of emotion is trumpeted as hard news and the media suggest that such numbers should drive public policy. One poll says that over a third of American’s think 9/11 was an inside job. But this is as much a measure of emotion as it is consideration of the (well-debunked) theories. In another poll, it says that 54% of people are angrier than they used to be. And Bush’s poll numbers have really tanked.

But what does this mean, really?

With a hat tip to Ian Murray at The Corner, and speaking of “tanking”, check out this graph that charts the President’s poll numbers against the price of gas. It’s incredible how closely the ups and downs of both track. As gas prices go up (on the graph, a higher prices is shown as a lower point), Bush’s numbers go down. You can almost predict one from knowing the other.

Yet pundits and journalists say that Bush should change his policies because of poll numbers. Tell ya’ what; can he get a mandate for allowing the NSA wiretaps if he repeals the federal gas tax? I mean, if polls should really matter that much, it follows, right?

One more reason why we don’t have a direct democracy. Thank you, Founding Fathers.

Technorati Tags: polls, approval rating, gas prices, media

Drudge’s big headline this afternoon is that gas is down to $2.05/gallon in Iowa. Did I not catch the news story proclaiming that the federal government had moved in and enforced price controls?

No, I (and you) missed nothing of the sort. Instead, as the Captain notes, market forces (remember those things?) are at work.

A number of factors play into this drop in price. First, as the article notes, the summer driving season has passed. Gas prices normally drop after Labor Day as children go back to school and family vacations make their way to the scrapbook. Also, this season has seen much lower levels of violent weather, and while we’re not out of hurricane season yet, the chances of a really damaging storm in the Gulf of Mexico gets less likely with each passing day. Traders buy oil on futures, which means their speculation now extends past the hurricane window — and since they had built bad weather into previous pricing, it makes sense that we would see a sharp drop now.

It seems that, just as Al-Qaeda has, the market, the weather, and American families have conspired to give the Democrats one less campaign issue. In the same way as leftist paranoids looked with suspicion on the release of terrorist videos, prepare for more hand-wringing over the “curious timing” of this news.

Yes, the market has been allowed to work and prices are now coming down. Understand, however, that I loved high gas prices. My wallet didn’t all that much, but I can telecommute 3 or 4 days a week, so it didn’t complain too loudly. But there were so many upsides to high prices, most of which liberals purport to love. There was the encouragement to conserve or telecommute or car pool. The higher prices increased the demand and the funding for research into alternative energy sources. They helped pay for college tuition (people in the middle class work for oil companies, too, y’know). There was so much good that came from them, yet liberals wailed and whined about it. Truth is, they’d rather the prices go up due to a tax increase so the government gets the money rather than R&D departments of the evil “Big Oil”. Then they could siphon it off, pad their wallets, and be magnanimous with the scraps as grants to R&D departments of the evil “Big Oil”.

By the way, will all the Democrats who wanted to blame Bush for the high gas prices now turn around and credit him for lowering them? Hold not thy breath.

Technorati Tags: gas prices, oil, free market, Democrats, paranoia