No Runny Eggs

Dear Senator McCain,

I just reviewed the latest Quinnipiac poll  information.   You should be very happy with the latest results.   In June, this poll showed you 17 points behind Obama in Minnesota.    The latest poll shows you trailing by 2 points and within the margin of error.

Frankly, I could never figure out the 17 point deficit from the June poll.   I know we have a pretty odd electorate here but I  couldn’t rationalize that kind of a deficit when we have  an extremely motivated “right of center” group as a result of over reaching by the State’s Democrats during the last legislative session.

While you’ve closed the gap on the overall vote, there was one issue in the poll that  stuck out like a Vikings fan at a Packer game.  

Before I address the issue, let me say that I’ll admit up front that I’ve never run for the office of President of the United States.   Heck, I’ve never even managed a political campaign.   I have however been pretty successful in my business career and a big portion of that required me to negotiate numerous contracts.   The contracts I negotiated were of a nature that I could only get them agreed to if I could convince the other parties to agree with my view of the future and the possibilities that could exist if my strategy was successful.   My point is that while I haven’t managed a campaign, I do have experience in molding people’s views and expectations and getting them to buy into a strategic view.

So here’s the issue:   When asked:

Regardless of whom you support, which candidate for President – Barack Obama or John McCain – has the best program for helping solve the energy crisis and making America less dependent on foreign oil?

The response in each of the 4 states polled was Barack Obama (OK, you tied in Colorado).

Senator McCain, what the heck? How can the candidate of No drilling, No nuclear, We get more than our fair share and need to cut back and we’re going to rely on “Alternate energy resources” that are nothing more than wishful thinking, have convinced more people than you that he has an “energy policy”, let alone an “energy policy” that would solve anything or make us less dependent of foreign oil? Interestingly enough, Quinnipiac gives us that answer too.

When asked:

Regarding the upcoming presidential election, would you rather the new president – Focus more on development of new sources of oil, natural gas, or nuclear power which some say could be a risk to the environment or Focus more on wind, solar, and biofuels, which some say could take longer to produce significant amounts of energy?

A significant majority of Democrats and Independents go for wind, solar and biofuels.

When asked:

Regarding the upcoming presidential election, would you rather the new president – Focus more on development of new sources of oil and natural gas or Focus more on conserving energy?

A majority of Democrats and Independents say the focus should be on conserving energy.

Unfortunately, a majority of the American people have bought into the guilt ridden, save the world solution for energy indepence that says we burn our food and put on more clothes when it’s cold. We’ve seen the impact of the first in our rising food costs and we saw the impact on the US and world economy when we tried the latter with Jimmah Carter….neither is a solution!

One last thing from the poll. When asked:

Which is more important to you when you decide how to vote for President – A candidate’s position on energy policy or A candidate’s position on the war in Iraq?

The response was that energy is more important than Iraq as the issue that will decide this year’s election.

Senator McCain, you have done yeoman’s work on Iraq. Your vision and perseverance, along with the amazing capabilities of US troops, have accomplished what many would have thought impossible; Iraq is not the leading issue of the 2008 election. Further, except for the few holdouts who want to see the US with a black eye, Americans see you as the candidate responsible for this success and who will continue to keep us safe. With Iraq improving and no longer the issue at the forefront, the implications of high gas prices and refusal to increase energy capacity with known, obtainable resources needs to become your focus.

It’s clear from the poll that the American people do not understand the difference between Mr. Obama and your positions on energy. May I be so bold as to suggest the following points for you to educate the American people on:

• creating Biofuels via the use of food products has a more severe impact on the US and world economy than does oil dependence on the Middle East.   First, we can’t grow enough corn to make a meaningful dent in oil.   Second, every incremental bushel we use for fuel means increased prices for food.   If you are concerned about food riots caused by increased corn prices, wait until we use 4X the current amount of corn for biofuels.
• If “We can’t drill our way out of our energy problem,” how will taking oil out of the SPRO reduce gas prices?   The effect that either of these actions has is to increase the oil supply on the market.   The only way drilling can’t solve our energy problem is if there wasn’t anything to drill for.   Which leads me to…
• We have enough accessible oil resources to supply us for 200 years plus.   Estimates including continental shelf, oil shale and Alaska could easily provide 200 years of oil for the US.   In fact, these estimates could well be conservative as just this week, 90 billion barrels of oil and 1,669 trillion cubic feet of natural gas were determined to be in the Arctic….energy that was on no one’s tally sheet just one week ago.
• The reason that Americans believe “alternative” fuels to be an answer is that they’ve bought into the nonsense that “carbon based fuels” are making our planet unlivable.   You have to “evolve” your position on global warming especially in light of continuing science showing that manmade global warming is at best wrong and at worst a hoax intended to socialize the world economies by virtue of taxing industry and productivity.
• Finally, there is clear, indisputable evidence that our economy is dependent upon energy.   Arguments for conservation often include the fact that we use significantly more oil/energy than any other country.   That’s true.   What’s also true is that our GDP is the highest in the world.   When you compare the GDP/capita with energy usage/capita as Frank van Mierlo did, it’s clear that our economy and energy are directly linked:

The only way for Americans to believe that Obama’s energy policies are the right ones are for them to also believe that their family should have a significantly lower standard of living than they currently have.

I understand this final concept isn’t one that everyone will pick up on quickly, it will take some clear consistent talk to get the message across.   In the end, the effort will be worth it.   As we learned with our current President, having lofty goals without the ability to effectively communicate them leaves an electorate confused and distrustful.   However, as we saw with “The Great Communicator,” the American people will go through walls if they see and understand the goal and the path to get it accomplished.

Following  his stop in Iraq, Barack Obama was interviewed about what he now believes his plan for troop withdrawal in Iraq should be.

If you want to see Barack in full living color (given what I see has happened on this site while I was away, I feel it necessary to point out that my use of the term “color” is not some subterranean racism that I harbor and therefore has nothing to do with Barack’s skin color but rather with seeing the full context of his comments, facial reactions, gestures, intonations etc….glad I got that covered!) give his explanation, you can do so here:   http://www.breitbart.tv/?p=137053  .   The essence of Barack’s comments were captured by his web site a few days ago:

A Responsible, Phased Withdrawal
Barack Obama believes we must be as careful getting out of Iraq as we were careless getting in. Immediately upon taking office, Obamawill give his Secretary of Defense and military commanders a new mission in Iraq: ending the war. The removal of our troops will be responsible and phased, directed by military commanders on the ground and done in consultation with the Iraqi government. Military experts believe we can safely redeploy combat brigades from Iraq at a pace of 1 to 2 brigades a month that would remove them in 16 months. That would be the summer of 2010 – more than 7 years after the war began.

Under the Obamaplan, a residual force will remain in Iraq and in the region to conduct targeted counter-terrorism missions against al Qaeda in Iraq and to protect American diplomatic and civilian personnel. He will not build permanent bases in Iraq, but will continue efforts to train and support the Iraqi security forces as long as Iraqi leaders move toward political reconciliation and away from sectarianism.

Some writers have been calling Barack’s recent update to his web site and his corresponding interview comments a flip flop. It’s not.

Take a look at this quote from Barack back in January of 2007; comments he made while the “surge” was being discussed:

The Obama plan, called the Iraq War De-escalation Act of 2007, would begin a troop withdrawal no later than May 1, 2007, but it includes several caveats that could forestall a clean break:

It would leave a limited number of troops in place to conduct counterterrorism activities and train Iraqi forces. And the withdrawal could be temporarily suspended if the Iraqi government meets a series of benchmarks laid out by the Bush administration. That list includes a reduction in sectarian violence; the equitable distribution of oil revenue; government reforms; and democratic, Iraqi-driven reconstruction and economic development efforts. Obama’s proposal also would reverse Bush’s troop-increase plan.

Notice that both in 2007 and today, Obama wanted a complete draw down of all combat troops. He also had provisions for leaving some special forces troops. At the tactical level, Obama hasn’t flip flopped. Obama’s plan as outlined on his web site this week looks very similar to the one he laid out in January of last year. But that is also his problem.

In January of 2007 the Surge was being debated. Had Obama had his way, the Surge would have never happened . Had Obama had his way and US troops been pulled out, LAST YEAR, we would likely be sitting here today not only with an Iran that was moving towards nuclear armament but also an Iran that would be establishing agency within Iraq. Obama may be right on the tactics…after the fact, but he was wrong on the strategy!

Here’s the thing. Many folks following the Presidential race, have gotten into debating whether Barack has flipped, flopped or contorted his position  in some other fashion. I’ll admit, I personally find some of that to be an entertaining past time. However, the issue with Obama, yesterday, today and tomorrow is that he is wrong on the Strategy.

It’s fun amongst we conservatives to play “Whack an Obama” (again I feel the need to inject that the word “whack” is not generated by a subterranean racism looking to harm Obama, rather it is a reference to the carnival game often seen at Chuck E Cheese) for flipflopping. We just need to realize that if we’re attempting to address or persuade the audience who find him appealing, but are open to thinking about it, they find that kind of activity to be on the level of name calling. Have fun with the flip flops but make sure that at the core of the issue is the repetitive errancy that Obama has on every strategic position he has taken.

How did I miss this one? Barack Obama uttered this back on July 2:

Obama repeated his pledge to boost the size of the active military. But he also said the nation’s future and safety depends on more than just additional soldiers….

“We cannot continue to rely only on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives that we’ve set,” he said Wednesday. “We’ve got to have a civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well funded.”

Note – there is a reason why I cut the two paragraphs I did; I will return to them later in the post.

The first mention in a search of my over-bloated feed reader came from Charles Johnson over at Little Green Footballs on the 8th. Michelle Malkin put it in the Hot Air Headlines on the 13th. There were a couple of other mentions between then and today, but still somehow I missed it until Leslie Carbone and Fred picked it up today.

If one only looked at the portions of the article I quoted, it would either be exceptionally-good news or exceptionally-ugly news. Does that mean I’ll be able to get that Paladin (I still qualify as a member of the unorganized militia as defined in the United States Code)? Does it mean that Asian Badger (an ex-Navy pilot) would not only be able to mount a minigun on AB1, but replace AB1 with an F-15E Strike Eagle, complete with bunker-buster bombs (I call back seat!)? If it means that, we’re looking at something north of $400 billion in spending.

Does it mean that the military loses those and future weapons to match the inability of the populace to get automatic weapons or explosives? After all, Obama is on record as advocating unilateral nuclear disarmament and a “slowdown” of developing new conventional military weapons.

I guess it’s time to bring in the “missing” paragraphs to help explode some fantasies:

“It also depends on the teacher in East L.A., or the nurse in Appalachia, the after-school worker in New Orleans, the Peace Corps volunteer in Africa, the Foreign Service officer in Indonesia,” he said.

Obama had first outlined many of the proposals he talked about Wednesday during appearances in Iowa last December.

It sure sounds like a combination of a return to the wussification of the standing military conducted under Bill Clinton and a massive expansion of the federal nanny state. Not at all surprising, yet disappointing, from a person whose first considered reaction to 9/11 was that the college-educated leaders of Al Qaeda just didn’t have enough education and welfare opportunities.

I know, I’m way late on this, but things have been a bit hectic here at the bunker. The issue, at least for me, is not as simple as Barack Obama abandoning the scheme of a publicly-financed general campaign. I view public financing of campaigns as an abomination to the process of elections.

There is, however, the twin matters of Obama previously promising to enter that scheme and endorsing the scheme for everybody else. Sooner or later, all those flips, flops, spins, bouts of hypocrisy, and lies are going to catch up to Obama. I only hope they catch up to him before November; it will be infinitely worse for all of us if they catch up to him afterwards.

I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this before but Mrs. Shoe and I are proud parents of twin Shoelets.   Thing 1 and Thing 2 (the Shoelets) turned 10 this weekend and we had a great time celebrating including a viewing of Hellboy II by the Shoelets and myself (they just don’t make movies like that anymore!)   The reason I tell you this, is that working with twins hones your parenting skills early on.  

Mrs. Shoe and I quickly learned that we needed to address issues with the Shoelets  straight on.   If we let issues slide, they knew how to push the rules.   If there was a complex issue, something like why one of their school mates had 2 moms, we needed to discuss it with them giving them enough information to make sense of it with where they were at mentally, without dragging all of the adult jargon and issues along with it.     This method of not avoiding issues, but not over complicating and over explaining them is referred to by us as “talking to two year olds.”

As I posted earlier, President Bush has removed the Executive Order barring off shore drilling.   As expected, Harry Reid came out to snivel about Bush’s action.   Harry’s action plan seems to include three points

• Crack down on “Excessive speculation.” – I’m not against this.   The problem I do have is that the DOPES used to tell us that the “Big, Bad Oil Companies” were gouging us.   After numerous investigations, they have yet to show us $.01 of gouging that has occurred.   If Harry can actually show me “Excessive speculation” I’m with him, until then, this is a red herring
• The “Big, Bad Oil Companies”should drill in all the acreage they already have – What a great idea!   I wonder why those nasty companies hadn’t thought of it?   Could it be that there isn’t any oil there?   That’s non starter two!
• President Bush, tear down that SPOR! – The Dems have said that President Bush should release the oil in the strategic reserve.   The strategic reserve holds enough oil to satisfy replace our  imported oil needs for about  2 months.

Releasing oil from the SPOR has become the new line in the sand for the Dems.   They seem unable to understand why this is a bad idea and why rather than reducing prices, drawing down the reserve could actually increase prices.

And this is where I start talking to the two year olds.

Nancy, Harry –

• You only have 700M Barrels of oil in the SPOR.
• You can only offset Imported oil for 60 days
• You claim it will take 10 years to get any new drilling on line (It won’t, I’m just spinning their illogic back at them)

What are you going to do between 2 months and 10 years?   If you really believe that opening SPOR will bring down prices, what do you do when it runs out?

The problem kids, is that you have offered no solutions that increase oil production, zip, nil, nada.   If you deplete the SPOR without increasing production, you may get a momentary drop but once you run the SPOR down, prices will go back up and that may be the goods news.   With the SPOR  depleted, prices will  likely move even higher than they were before because that “threat” is off the table.

Drill here, Drill now, pay less,

(H/Ts – Allahpundit and Ed Morrissey)

CQ Politics is reporting die-hard Clintonistas want a floor vote on the nomination at the convention. Do remember that neither Hillary Clinton nor presumptive nominee Barack Obama have enough pledged delegates to win on the first ballot; Obama got his presumptive status by virtue of stealing some superdelegates who were previously supporting Clinton.

Trailortrash beat me to the Comment of the Day™ – “i (sic) think i (sic) am going to need a bigger bag of popcorn"¦”

There are very few people whom I am unable to separate their leftist views from the rest of their careers.   While Hollywood is full of the hardcore left, I still see many movies that have well known lefties in them.   Heck, I even see movies that have Tim Robbins or Alec Baldwin  associated with them….I loved them both in “Team America!”   Robert Redford has been an exception to that rule for me.

Redford seems unable to separate his hard left views from his work projects.   This has become more evident as he gets older.   Perhaps the most egregious of his insertion of  political perspective was in his acting and directing of “Lions for Lambs.”  

Now however, I may have to rethink my position on Redford. I think we may actually agree on something.

In an interview over the weekend, Redford stated that if Redford’s Messiah doesn’t win the election in November,

you can kiss the Democratic Party goodbye

The facts are these:

• The Dems should be walking away with this election
• The driving force of the Democrats has become the extreme left, think DailyKOS and Huffington Post folks.
• Contrary to what he wants people to believe since he eeked past Hillary, Obama is the poster child candidate of the extreme left.   Every position he took during the primaries (and that he still honestly holds) are unrecognizable to the vast majority of Americans, think late term abortion, gun controls, religious “clingers.”
• Obama won the nomination with support of many new, untested voters i.e. young or previously not voted.
• While taking in the new voters, Obama’s recent attempts to move center have left him “not dancin’ with the ones that brought ‘im.”

The point is that the extreme left is what the Democrat party has become and this election will be a competition about allegedly running away from Republicans and running to their ideology.   With the supposed built in “anti-R” sentiment, what message gets sent if Obama loses?   I’d say a worse message that what was supposedly sent to the Republicans in ’06.   If Obama loses, the left will have permanently alienated some portions of their core base and will never again see many of the “New Voters” who are involved simply based on emotion.

I’ll quibble with Redford in that while I think it would be a huge setback for the left’s ideology, Obama’s defeat, by itself won’t be “The End” of the Democrats.   However, if you add the gas price issue to the mix, and Nancy and Harry continue to tell Americans to “Pay more, Do less and Shut up,” I think the risk to the Dems could well be as severe as Redford paints.

Come to think of it, I may not change my position on Redford, but not because of ideology.   I can’t remember any of his films that I’ve been interested in since “The Sting.”

Thursday of last week, Michelle Obama was in Kansas City.   Her speech, made to a group of mostly women, was focused on reinforcing the empathy that her Baby’s Daddy has for women’s issues.   As part of her remarks she said:

His own mother, she said at the beginning of her remarks, was “very young and very single when she had him.” And, Obama added, he has observed his wife’s attempts to reconcile motherhood with her career aspirations.

As Michelle is wont to due, she attempted to make herself appear “one of the club” by saying:

He sees me, his wife, who struggles every day with that guilt that we all hold deep in our hearts as women,” she said. “That guilt that you don’t have the choice to stay home, and even if you do, you feel guilty

Michelle, just another victim in a campaign and party full of victims. Michelle, so full of guilt from not having a choice to be a stay at home mom.

What the hell?

In 2004, the Obamas had gross income of approximately $207K. I’ve never heard that they had financial issues so I’ll have to assume they were able to “get by” on that income. At the time, Barack was still an IL legislator and a “Constitutional Professor” and made about $85K. Michelle was a hospital administrator and made, around $122K gross. After tax, they made about $167K

In 2005, things got much better for the Obama’s. Barack’s income rose to about $154K as a US Senator, Barack’s book brought them about $1,141K, Michelle made about $361K. Their after tax income rose significantly to $910K.

Even in 2006 the Obama’s did well. Of a total gross income of $984K, Barack made $157K as a US Senator and $551K from his book. Michelle made $333K.

If $167K after tax was getting them by in 2004, they would have had $743K of excess income they could have invested from their 2005 after tax earnings and $530K from 2005. They could have had nearly $1.3M invested from those two years alone.

Barack now makes $162,500 a year as a US Senator. Let’s bake in a little inflation and say that the Obama’s gross of $207K in 2004, would now need to be about $220K. To make up the difference between Barack’s Senator salary and the  inflated gross, they would need to take, let’s call it, $60K each year from their savings to make up the delta if Michelle chose not to work.

Wow! if they had $1.3M in the bank and drew it down at the rate of $60K each year, they could do that for 20+ years and not run out of money….even without considering interest.

Yes they could, except for this one other little event of 2005. The Obama’s decided to trade up a bit. They decided they needed to trade up to a $1.65M home! The result of that one transaction increased their annual expenses for mortgage interest and real estate taxes from $18K in 2004 to $76K in 2006.

I have no doubt that Michelle feels guilty. Michelle probably even feels guilty due to her choice. However, for her to suggest that her guilt is because she doesn’t “have the choice to stay home,” is preposterous and shows her again to be nothing but a pandering elitist.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a neandrathal who thinks women should be chained to a stove. Women should make career and family choices that are the best for them and their families, whatever they and their families think that should be.

Michelle’s choice, was to buy an expensive house. Michelle’s choice could have been to be satisfied to live in the home they had, invest their gain and allow her to stay home with her children…if she had chosen to. If Michelle had chosen not to buy the big house, stay home and use savings…if they really couldn’t get by on $165K each year, the Obama’s would use about half of their savings as income supplement by the time their youngest daughter had graduated from high school.

Yes, Michelle had a choice.   However, unlike the claims of her speech, for Michelle, material goods and personal fame won out over her desire to be a stay at home mom.

Building on yesterday’s favorite elected Republicans list over at Right Wing News, Shoebox, 40 other bloggers, and I chose our least-favorite elected Republicans (they had to be current governors, Congresscritters, or Presidents, so I couldn’t throw in Trent “Cave-A-“Lott, Mike Huebsch or Jeff Wood). Like the favorites list, I decided on sending 8 John Hawkins’ way:

– Arlen Specter
– Lindsey Graham
– Chuck Hagel
– Tom Petri
– Ray LaHood
– Christopher Shays
– Ted Stevens
– Don Young

To see which ones (if any) made the top 20, as well as the full top 20, head on over to Right Wing News.

With just a few days left to file for a possible Senate run, Jesse Ventura is playing coy with the media about his true intent.

In a morning report from NPR, Jesse seemed to be providing the latest inkling that he was going to enter the race:

That’s the reason I run. Not to sell books. I run because it angers me,” Ventura says.

and

All you Minnesotans, take a good hard look at all three of us. And you decide, if you were in a dark alley, which one of the three of us would you want with you.

Of course, as Jesse is prone to do, later in the day he told people the press didn’t get his quotes right:

I gave [NPR] the reasons why I would run,” Ventura said. “But I said ultimately, it will come down to whether I want to change my lifestyle and go to that lifestyle or not.

As I’ve said before, I would really like to see Jesse run. If he actually files I won’t have any problem finding things to write about until mid November!

That said, I went back and looked at the most recent poll from Rasmussen  showing a three way Minnesota Senate race. The short take on the poll shows Coleman winning a three way race and Jesse taking more from Franken than Coleman. In fact, with Franken’s ongoing revelations of “oops I forgot,” I wouldn’t be surprised that Franken goes further down as more of his support gives up on him and moves to Jesse who is really Dem lite. The revelation in my latest look at the poll is in the favorable/unfavorable ratings for each of the candidates.

The voting percentages for each of the candidates is roughly equal to 100% of their “very favorable” percentage and about 1/2 of their somewhat favorable percentage. This obviously works in Coleman’s favor as he has a total favorable of 51%. We’ve known for a while that Franken is a very unhappy man and it appears that Minnesotans recognize that in that 50% say they have an unfavorable opinion of him. The “revelation” was in looking at Ventura’s. Ventura’s unfavorable rating is 62%! and 38% have a Very Unfavorable rating of him!

In today’s NPR report, University of Minnesota political scientist Lawrence Jacobs says Ventura could win:

He’s coming in with about a quarter of the vote, and he’s not even declared his candidacy. That is much better than where he was in 1998, where he started off in single digits and frankly was a joke candidate

Jesse may be starting from a better place but today, unlike his last run, people in Minnesota know Jesse. For Jesse to win he would need to convince a lot of people that the charicature that was Jesse as Governor is no longer the charicature that would be a Senator. That will take A LOT of convincing.

Oh, and did I mention that Jesse is a 9/11 truther? I’m sure that fact alone will help his cause significantly!

In yet another incident showing Barack Obama’s inability to hold a position, he now announces Iran to be a “Great threat,” after it test fired nine missiles. In an interview this morning  on Good Morning America, Barack said:

“Iran is a great threat. We have to make sure we are working with our allies to apply tightened pressure on Iran,

What? A great threat? Is this the same Barack Obama who just six weeks ago ridiculed John McCain for saying Iran was a great threat by saying:

I mean think about it. Iran, Cuba, Venezula, their countries are tiny compared to the Soviet Union. They don’t pose a serious threat to the US.

Maybe Barack considers a “great” threat to be less of a threat than a “serious” threat? If so, it would show Obama out of touch with the majority of America for most of America learned from “A Few Good Men” that when it comes to individual or national security/danger, there is only one kind, and it’s always grave.