Shire Network News #150 has been released. This week’s guest, Kathy Shaidle, has just released her new book (co-written with Peter Vere): "The Tyranny of Nice:  how Canada crushes freedom in the name of human rights — and why it matters to Americans".  Kathy blogs at five feet of fury and speaks to us about the abuses of the Canadian Human Rights system.  Click here for the show notes, links, and ways to listen to the show; directly from the web site, by downloading the mp3 file, or by subscribing with your podcatcher of choice.

Below is the text of my commentary.

Hi, this is Doug Payton for Shire Network News asking you to "Consider This!"

Are you an American who hasn’t yet determined who you’re going to vote for in the upcoming election?  Or perhaps you haven’t yet decided if you’ve determined who to vote for.  Or maybe you’re not sure if you need to decide whether or not to determine who you’re going to vote for.

Well please, make up your mind.  It’s time to pay attention to what some of us has been watching for over a year now.  Yes, yes, I may sound a bit condescending, but this is rather important.  Voting for the person who will be the presumed "Leader of the Free World" is worth a moment of your time once every four years. 

Unfortunately, if you’ve waited until now to start deciding, you’re not going to get much from the news organizations to help you.  It’s the 2-minute warning, bottom of the 9th and 2 outs situation; it’s sound-bite time.  Yes, now is the time when the complexities of all the issues of the day, national and international, must be distilled to 7-second audio clips.

"Vote for me; I’ll spread the wealth around."

"Vote for me; I won’t punish you with a baby."

"Vote for me; I’ll make Wall Street repave Main Street with the money they took from Elm Street."

"Vote for me; I’ll scale back our defenses and make everyone love us again, like they always used to."

Yeah, OK, this may sound like an ad for Barack Obama, and it almost could be, but these simplistic promises don’t convey the gravity of the situations they purport to deal with.  So as a public service to our as-yet-undecided listeners, here is the "Consider This!" Election 2008 Issues Quiz.  This is an open book quiz; you keep searching and searching until you find the right answer.  And with this latest fad all the kids are using, the Internet, you should have plenty of sources of information.

Question #1: "Joe the Plumber" questioned why he should:

A.  Be taxed specifically to "spread the wealth around".

B.  Be given more media scrutiny in 2 days than Barack Obama got in 2 years.

C.  Be demonized for trying to buy his own business.

D.  Trust the government to run a charity organization.

Question #2:  Barack Obama’s position on fixing the credit crisis is:

A.  Raise taxes to pay for the bailout.

B.  Don’t raise taxes in these times of financial difficulty.

C.  Both A & B.

D.  "Present"

Question #3:  John McCain’s position on energy independence is:

A.  Drill here, drill now, drill later.

B.  Nuke here, nuke now.

C.  Wind, solar, and clean coal.

D.  A, B, C, and anything else you can think of.

Question #4:  Barack Obama’s associations with people of dubious character include:

A.  An America-hating pastor, an unrepentant domestic terrorist, and a guy who makes shady real estate deals.

B.  Joe Biden

C.  Larry, Moe and Curly

D.  "Present"

Question #5:  If you were voting for the top executive position in the land, would you rather…

A.  Vote for someone who had actual executive experience, and took on government corruption even in her…um, his or her own party.

B.  Take a chance on someone who has spent most of their very short national political career campaigning.

C.  Go with the person who looks most like me (bald, left-handed or some other external feature).

D.  Do nothing, since my vote doesn’t matter.

If you answered D to that last question, you might as well stay home on Election Day.  For the rest of you undecided voters, it’s time to get into the game.  Check out the issues, find out the candidate’s positions, and get informed.  Take the time to consider this.

An article by Tara Ross at DoubleThink magazine is a very revealing look into the history of the mixing of church and politics, and the misnomer of "separation of church and state".  From Thomas Jefferson’s mistaken view of the matter to how unintended consequences from a Lyndon Johnson decision introduced the idea that politics and the pulpit don’t mix, this is a good history lesson for those that think things were always this way.

They weren’t.

Joe "the plumber" Wurzelbacher, for having an honest disagreement with Barack Obama over tax issues, has come under fire from the Left.  Well, "under fire" seems like a rather mild description.  The blog HolyCoast referred to it as a "crucifixion", not in the sense that he’s dying in the press for anyone’s sins, but he is getting himself turned inside-out for the sake of a very calm conversation he had with the Democratic Presidential nominee.  Both men, Joe and Barack, let each other speak, there was no heated arguing at all, and yet the Left can’t seem to bear to have The One(tm) contradicted.

Rather than point to all the individual examples, others have done the research that I’ll point to instead.  They’re good roundups of the incredible personal destruction that lefty blog sites and mainstream media — from the obscure to the prominent — have visited upon someone who simply disagrees with them.

Stop the ACLU notes that the preeminent blog of the Left, Daily Kos, plastered Joe’s personal details for all to see, including home address.  And there are others like Politico.com and the New York Times scrounging around for dirt. 

The Anchoress details reaction from the Right side of the blogosphere.  She also makes a great point.

But here’s the thing: what or who Joe the Plumber is does not matter. What matters is what Barack Obama said to him. The focus on Joe the Plumber – the obsession on him, and the need to somehow discredit him in the eyes of the nation – is meant to distract you from what Barack Obama said, and nothing else.

The lefty blogs and the NY Times (indistinguishable from each other, especially when a Democrat is having trouble) show their true colors.

Update: More links to the smearing of Joe at Redstate.  Add Andrew Sullivan to the list of the "honorable" Left.

Short take: McCain finally started hitting on the policy issues that he was missing in the first 2 debates.  Mostly, he took on some of Obama’s mischaracterizations of him.  He should have started this 2 debates ago.  I felt better about his performance, but the quick poll of undecideds on Fox showed movement toward Obama.

Random items:

* The "even Fox News" line from Obama shows how much a blind spot Democrats have for rampant liberal bias in the media.  And if this is his only shot at them, it only proves they are indeed balanced.

* "Joe the Plumber", Joe Wurzelbacher, got about 60 minutes of fame, well more than his allotted 15.  Folks that don’t read the blogs may not have known who he is (though the networks have wanted to make sure you know about that 106-year-old nun who’s voting for Obama), but McCain made sure he got the word out.  Hopefully, they’ll find out that this small business owner is going to get taxed more under Obama, and that "infuriates" him.  Maybe they’ll find the video of Obama telling him he wants to "spread the wealth around" (translation: From each according to his ability, to each according to his need).  Hopefully.

* Obama still insists that 95% of people will get a tax cut, ignoring the fact that many people pay no taxes at all.  And as a conservative pundit noted (forget which one), Bill Clinton campaigned on a middle class tax cut.  Amnesia set in as soon as he sat down in the Oval Office.

* Finally, McCain drove the point home that he wants to give you choice over your healthcare, and not introduce a federal bureaucracy into the mix.  Obama’s plan may sound modest enough, but it’s the foot in the door for an even bigger program.  "This worked, so let’s make it bigger and stronger."  That’s what happens to government programs.  McCain’s plan stops at giving you a credit and letting you spend it with no federal mandate whatsoever.  He avoids the slippery slope. 

And now, the home stretch.

Huge decline in gas prices.

The average U.S. retail gasoline price fell 33.3 cents over the last week to $3.15 a gallon, the biggest price decline ever recorded by the government, the Energy Department said on Tuesday.

When prices went up, Democrats blamed Bush.  Are they going to credit him now, or have they all of a sudden discovered the free market?

Shire Network News #149 has been released. The feature interview is with the Director of probably this year’s most universally panned movie (in the main stream media). Yes we speak to David Zucker, director of An American Carol. David speaks to us about the movie’s initial reception and the process behind getting an overtly conservative movie out of Hollywood. Click here for the show notes, links, and ways to listen to the show; directly from the web site, by downloading the mp3 file, or by subscribing with your podcatcher of choice.

Below is the text of my commentary.

Hi, this is Doug Payton for Shire Network News, asking you to "Consider This!"

Dave Ramsey is a syndicated talk show host here in the States, and he gives advice on how to get out of debt, something we Americans are in love with.  An occasional forlorn caller to his show will indicate the desire to make more money so that he or she can pay all their bills.  What Dave and many other financial advisors would say is; control your spending.  You have much more control over that, and without discipline and good habits on the spending side, no amount of money will ever be enough.

Well, somebody at the New York Times needs to give Dave a call.  In a recent editorial, the first sign of someone who is in deep denial about our financial situation was quite evident.  "The big issue for each candidate," they said, "is not spending, per se, but how the crisis will affect their promises on taxes."  What?  We spend 3 trillion dollars a year, and the problem isn’t spending?  Aside from perhaps the dire need to include wool research funding in a 700 trillion dollar credit rescue bill (and who could argue with that, really?), this is the top financial priority in the United States. 

Now, most Americans can’t just legislate more income (well, unless they work for a union).  The government is in a position to say both how much they earn…well, take…as well as how much they spend.  But the typical government mindset is to never decrease spending if at all possible, and to mischaracterize reductions when necessary.  When Sarah Palin tripled spending for pregnant teens, the Washington Post said she "slashed funding".  Now, when you hear the term "slashed" you think of someone losing an arm in a horror flick, not growing 2 additional ones.  And yet, since Palin didn’t quadruple the spending, as was originally requested, the Post said, with a straight face, that she "slashed" it by 20%.  Only in Washington, DC, and in its media, is a 200% increase called a 20% cut. 

This is a toxic environment for someone who should be taking Ramsey’s advice.  The liberal media are certainly one contributor to this, but there’s another culprit.  To quote the old comic strip Pogo, "We have met the enemy…and he is us".  The entitlement mindset of Americans who ask, "What has government done for me today?", is perhaps the primary culprit, if indeed we have a government "of the people".  Just see what would happen if a presidential candidate actually suggested the government should live within its means, spending no more than it takes in.  Hoo boy, the sparks would fly!  But after keeping our hands off welfare, staying away from entitlements, continuing those ever-so-badly-needed subsidies to all manner of businesses, and not touching each person’s pet project, we’d probably be in the same exact place we are now. 

You see, we are keeping our politicians from making the tough decisions.  Because as soon as they make them, they become our ex-politicians.  John F. Kennedy did not say, "Ask what your country can do for you", but today his Democratic party spends like a drunken sailor, finding new and exciting ways to live up to Robin Hood’s exacting standards.  And to be honest, Republicans, for the past 8 years, have certainly shown that they can get rather tipsy themselves.  A recent poll said that 60% of Americans would replace the entire Congress, yet their Congressmen and women keep getting re-elected over and over again.

My fellow Americans, do you want to help solve this financial crisis?  Look in the mirror and have a heart-to-heart with that guy or girl.  And my fellow Anglospherans…Anglospheriacs…Anglo…my fellow English-speakers from all over; you are getting hit as hard or harder by this, and you, too, have mirrors or silver tea sets or puddles of water you can stare into.  Let’s stop this entitlement mentality.  It begins with us.

And if you see someone on the street, staring at the side of a mirrored-glass building, talking to him- or herself, be glad to know that they took the time to consider this.

Now, she did this as a private citizen and not representing the National Organization for Women, but it’s still a big thing, and I wanted to highlight this, especially since the media is sure to ignore it.

Details at the Wizbang blog.

No matter who you are, the current credit crunch does affect you, even if you don’t have a penny in the bank or a stock.  Never mind (for now) the domino effect of the credit market seizing up, if you vote, it should affect you.

Item 1:  Rep. Barney Frank has called this current crisis two things that are both flat-out lies; a failure of the free market and the result of Bush administration policies.  Frank should, and likely does, know better, since he’s the chair of the House Committee on Financial Services.  There has been video all over the blogosphere, and linked here as well, that show he and his fellow Democrats denying any problems at all with Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac, and now he’s trying to solely blame Republicans.  There’s plenty of blame to go around in both parties, but he’s in a unique position, as committee chair, to pronounce the truth of the matter to us.  Instead, he’s politicizing this huge issue for partisan gain.  If you’re from Massachusetts and you vote, this should affect your vote.

Item 1a: Senator Joe Biden said the same thing about it being all about Bush administration policies.  This should affect your vote.

Item 2:  At the foundation of this crisis is an abandonment of free market principles, not the failure of them.  Republicans have (more often) been the keepers of the free market flame.  (That’s not been a constant by any means, but a good generality.)  The Community Reinvestment Act is a Carter-era program to basically force lenders to give home loans to those who would otherwise not qualify, and the default rate of these loans is higher than normal.  That, along with the Gramm-Leach-Billey act which allowed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to write or buy up these loans in a bigger way, released other banks from this higher-risk paper and continued us down the primrose path.  Again, videos highlighted here showed, one of Obama economic advisors Franklin Raines, who at the time of the video was CEO of Fannie Mae, insisted that home prices would always go up.  Now, there is no doubt in my mind that Wall St. greed fueled this as well, but with a government mandate to write high-risk loans, and a (for all intents and purposes) government agency ready and willing to buy them up, this was a recipe for disaster.

The point is, as honorable and as high-minded the intentions were to try to get more people into their own homes, it set more people up for failure.  You can say that the number of foreclosures wasn’t enough to be a problem, yet here we are, the engine of commerce about to seize up over securities backed by mortgages.  This started when Democrats decided that the free market wasn’t working and instituted policies to, in their eyes, fix things.  While it did get many into homes that might not have otherwise been able to, does it really help us in the long run when Congress has to eventually bail us out to try to avoid a recession or worse?  (And the jury’s still out on if the bailout will really do it, or if it’s just a short-term band-aid.) 

Those who think that the free market failed us then, and are now ironically blaming the free market again, are running for President in November.  This should affect your vote. 

It does affect you.  Or it should.

It’s just a debate moderator, the lefty blogosphere tells us.  She’s just asking questions.  What’s the big deal about her book?  Well, just a few questions.

1. So then, the next Presidential debate can be moderated by John Stossel and the Democrats would be fine with that?
2. If all the moderator does is ask questions, why wouldn’t Democrats even debate themselves on Fox News?

Either blatant partisanship, real or perceived, is to be avoided at a debate, or it isn’t.  Either moderators with their own biases, plain or hidden, can be fair questioners, or they can’t.  Just pick an answer and stick with it, or don’t be surprised when Republicans ask for the same deal the Democrats ask for.

Mr. Instapundit noted yesterday:

A READER AT A MAJOR NEWSROOM EMAILS: "Off the record, every suspicion you have about MSM being in the tank for O is true. We have a team of 4 people going thru dumpsters in Alaska and 4 in arizona. Not a single one looking into Acorn, Ayers or Freddiemae. Editor refuses to publish anything that would jeopardize election for O, and betting you dollars to donuts same is true at NYT, others. People cheer when CNN or NBC run another Palin-mocking but raising any reasonable inquiry into obama is derided or flat out ignored. The fix is in, and its working." I asked permission to reprint without attribution and it was granted.

UPDATE: The Anchoress hears similar things.

Water must be warm in the tank.