Author: COB6

This is what happens when you base your every decision on polls instead of principle.

Shifting from his previous opposition to expanded offshore drilling, the Illinois senator told a Florida newspaper he could get behind a compromise with Republicans and oil companies to prevent gridlock over energy.

The list of Obama’s “clarified positions” is growing:

Separation of Church and State
Gun control
War funding
Iraq withdrawal
Death penalty
Public campaign finance
FISA

Needless to say, the left is not very happy with the “Chosen One”.

The Irregular Times, hardly a bastion of conservative thought, puts it succinctly:

This week, it’s offshore drilling. During the Democratic primaries, Barack Obama said he was against lifting the ban on new drilling for oil along America’s coastlines. Now, the Democratic Party primary elections are all wrapped up, and Obama says that he’s willing to join George W. Bush again, this time to support offshore drilling.

Flip. Flop.

Oily Obama is siding with the big oil companies now.
It may not be something you can believe in, but oh, it’s change all right.

Progressives Against Obama are quite upset with the whole Democrat Party.

You may think that the Democratic Party owns progressive voters. We say that after years of failure to stand up against George W. Bush, the Democratic Party has finally lost us. If the Democrats want our votes, they need to earn them.

You may think that progressives can’t oppose Barack Obama in 2008. We say yes we can.

Only time will tell how much this might damage Obama but it certainly does nothing to appease the hardcore Hillary supporters.

Just think of the list of issues that Obama has flipped, clarified, lied about, whatever you want to call it. Now think of all the fringe leftist groups that have been thrown under the bus.

Oh yes, Denver is going to be high theater!

This is not good news for the Obama camp.

PRINCETON, NJ — According to Gallup Poll Daily tracking from July 29-31, John McCain and Barack Obama are now tied at 44% in the preferences of national registered voters.

The contrast between Obama’s recent advantage over McCain (ranging from six to nine points) and today’s result is particularly notable because this is McCain’s strongest showing in over a month. The last time Gallup found the race exactly tied was in late June. By contrast, in the weeks just prior to Obama’s overseas trip, he had led the race by an average of four points.

Internationally however, Obama is still enjoying huge support among socialists is Germany and France; and of course he has a landslide sized lead among Hamas, Hezzbollah, Iran and the al-Qeada training camps in Pakistan.

Though it should be noted that international terrorist and their sponsors do not count in the electoral vote.

The New York Daily News is reporting that Hillary Clinton has requested to not be nominated during the Democrat convention in Denver.

Hillary Clinton has decided against being nominated for President at the Democrats’ Denver convention, but many of her more die-hard partisans may vote for her anyway.

A source close to the New York senator confirmed she won’t file a formal request to the convention asking to be nominated along with Barack Obama, who eked out the victory in their fierce primary slugfest.

“She is not going to submit the signed request,” the insider told the Daily News. “People are still circulating petitions on her behalf, but this is a done deal.”

Hillary surrogate and former white house minion Lanny Davis is still demanding that Hillary be put on the ticket.

Wonkette apparently does not share his enthusiasm or reasoning:

…he wrote for the Wall Street Journal explaining why Hillary Clinton is the best, nay, the ONLY option for vice president if Barack Obama wants to be elected King of America.

Argument 1: Clinton will not energize the Republican base, and in fact would bring Republicans over to vote for the Democratic ticket.

Argument 2: Clinton, by virtue of her femaleness, will reinforce Obama’s message of new politics and change.

Bill Clinton will behave himself and not be a pain in the ass at all.
In other news, 2 plus 2 now equals 6, that email really did come from a desperately wealthy gentleman in Nigeria, and Lanny Davis is not a douchesack. Proof: he is now a columnist in the Washington Times.

At least one of Wonkette’s commenters seems to see the real reason that no sane person would select Hillary as VP:

Argument #3: Should President Obama accidently suffocate his black ass by clamping a pillow over his face, Hillary will be ready on day one.

This is only going to get better.

The Jawa Report has this from the Washington Post

BAGHDAD, July 30 — The leader of the Sunni insurgent group al-Qaeda in Iraq and several of his top lieutenants have recently left Iraq for Afghanistan, according to group leaders and Iraqi intelligence officials, a possible further sign of what Iraqi and U.S. officials call growing disarray and weakness in the organization.

Couple of points here:

Number 1: This punk-assed pansy is running like the beaten pig that he is. No thanks to Nancy and Harry but he and his hoard of brain-dead radicals have been thoroughly throttled in Iraq.

Number 2: He did not run to Afghanistan because he knows he would be hunted down and ventilated by US forces. He went somewhere far more friendly like Pakistan or Berkley.

His day will come however and the sooner the better.

Obama took a ton of heat today for making the following statement:

“I have become a symbol of the possibility of America returning to our best traditions.”

He deserved to get hit by such an arrogant comment and his campaign’s response did him no favors.

The polling hemorrhage that Obama was suffering seems to have subsided for now. The Obama camp has to feel good about that but let me remind you of a poll taken in the last week of July several years ago.

Dukakis led Bush by 17 points.

That didn’t turn out so good for the Dukakis folks did it?

Today President Bush signed the largest government bailout of private debt in history.

In recent weeks the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac financial fiascos have introduced a few relatively new or at least misunderstood terms into the evening news lexicon; Quasi-Governmental Organizations and Government Sponsored Enterprises.

The three most common questions I have received are:
What is a Quasi-Government Organization?
Where did they come from?
What can we do to prevent this in the future?

The framers of the Constitution had a fairly direct approach on how government would work. The executive branch got most of the authority of government while the legislative would provide accountability.

This concept worked fairly well for almost 100 years. The first significant breaks were in the form of congressionally mandated “commissions” such as the Civil Service Commission (1883) and the Interstate Commerce Commission (1887).

Going into the 20th century more and more independent agencies were created such as the Tennessee Valley Authority and NASA. Although considered independent agencies, they functioned like any other government agency for the most part.

Then in 1962 the congress created the Communications Satellite Corporation. This was a private, for profit, company that would spearhead the US effort to dominate space communications. Congress rightly realized that a private company could do this much more efficiently than the government. This was the same argument that was used to create Public Broadcasting in 1967.

These entities have evolved and usually now fall into one of two main categories; Quasi Official Agencies and Government Sponsored Enterprises.

Quasi Officials Agencies such as AMTRAK and the National Academy of Sciences are both organizations that were never seriously expected to make money and therefore their primary link to government is more subsidy than service. The National Archives also fall into this category. Interestingly the National Archives’ only real accountability seems to be that they are required to report certain information annually “The United States Government Manual”, which incidentally, the National Archives publishes.

The next category is where it gets dicey, these are called Government Sponsored Enterprises (GSE’s). The biggest difference is that these organizations must have a federal charter authorized by congress and that they must be privately owned.

This is where Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and a few others come into play.

The government does not overtly subsidize GSE’s but what they do is more dangerous. GSE’s enjoy an implicit federal guarantee and as such have a limitless line of credit with the federal government.

This is where it gets kinda stupid. The mission of organizations like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is to put people in homes. Whether they can actually afford them is secondary. They were graded simply on how many new families they put on the rolls.

For a truly private enterprise, this makes no sense. Every bank and mortgage company in the country employ an army of risk managers to keep the bottomline in the black. GSE’s are not burdened by such common sense.

GSE’s have become a very lucrative landing pad for politicians of all stripes. Take the licks in an administration and land a job that will glean $13-18 million a year and a great parachute; not a bad gig if you can get it.

The fix is to make these GSE’s totally private and let the market decide their fate.

To put this in layman’s terms: GSE’s are a private enterprise when they make money and a government enterprise when they lose money.

If most folks knew this, these programs would go away with the next election.

Talk about a short-lived bounce!

As I predicted yesterday, the “snubbing the wounded troops” decision may be a bigger deal as time goes on. Within 24 hours, Obama dropped 0.7 points and the RCP average for today stands at 46.2 – 43.7 in favor of Senator Obama. The Gallup/USA Today still shows McCain with a 4 point lead.

A small bounce after totally saturating all media during his overseas tour was not great news; the fact that it dissipated in 24 hours has to be of concern to the Obama camp.

The Republicans have seized the opportunity to come out with political guns blazing. Senior Republicans are using the same tactic that the Obama camp has been using, you know the “third Bush term” talking point?

The idea was to tie McCain to a president with a dismal 29% approval rating. The Republicans plan to tie Obama to a congress with an even lower 17% approval.

Barack Obama returns to Capitol Hill on Tuesday to speak with House Democrats, and Republicans will try to spoil the party by linking the Democrats’ presidential nominee to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and their reluctance to allow votes on offshore oil drilling.

Rep. Adam Putnam (R-Fla.) and Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) will greet Obama’s arrival with a news conference in which they’ll assert that Reid (D-Nev.) and Pelosi (D-Calif.) are holding up votes on offshore drilling in order to protect Obama.

Obama has so far nor responded but spent the afternoon meeting with Fed Chair Ben Bernanke discussing the economy.

The Obama campaign did make a bit of a surprise announcement today.

Sen. Barack Obama’s presidential campaign launched a massive $20 million effort to attract Latino voters on Tuesday, hoping to erase the inroads the Republican Party has made with the key demographic group in the last two presidential elections.

I found this news to be a bit more interesting than most of the punditry. What has the Obama camp turned up in internal polling that makes pushing $20 million toward a demographic that conventional polls have them leading McCain 66% – 23%?

The Obama campaign has established a $42 million per month burn rate which is impressive but hardly sustainable.

Given the outrageous overhead of the campaign (over 2000 paid staffers which is more than five times that of any presidential candidate in history) and the odd distribution of resources; one has to question either Axlerod’s strategy or the MSM’s fawning polls.

Case in point: $20 million toward a supposedly locked voting block and 15 paid staffers and millions launched to Texas? Texas? That’s like a republican spending millions in Washington DC.

Stay tuned sports fans.

Today marks 100 days until the 2008 presidential election.

Normally by this point in a presidential campaign both candidates (and Ralph Nader) have settled into the glidepath toward the respective conventions (Nader actually has one, usually in a Waffle House beside the La Quinta Inn; they’re always together, no one knows why). The only drama at this point is usually speculation about Vice President picks and potential convention keynote speakers.

This is clearly not a typical election cycle.

As of today the RCP average has Obama ahead of McCain by 3.2 points but the Gallup/USA Today poll has McCain up by 4 points. I’ll keep a running tally on polling figures but keep in mind that a lot can happen in 100 days.

The stage is set for a historical race. The Republican presumptive nominee is not exactly endeared to the conservative base but is viewed favorably by fiscal and pro-military Republicans. The Democrat presumptive nominee is the most liberal member of the US Senate and defeated a former first lady by running left of all comers on all issues.

McCain is trying to appeal to conservatives while Obama is racing to the center, much to the chagrin of his far left base.

So, where are we on day 100?

McCain is trying to waffle on energy and he may even fold completely and propose drilling in ANWR. Obama’s dream tour last weekend was almost flawless. Almost is a big word in politics. Cancelling a trip to visit wounded soldiers in Germany because he couldn’t get a photo-op out of it may be more damaging than anyone originally thought.

This is going to be one for the books and Jonn, TSO and I will be here daily to try to filter the spin from the truth.