cypherboy's Blog

This week I listened with some incredulity at the Treasury Secretary calmly and casually scraping the bailout plan he had gotten congress to pass a few weeks ago.  Instead of buying up bad debt with $700 billion of taxpayer money, the Treasury is going to inject cash into banks and take an ownership stake in them.  It might work to get banks lending again, but who knows. 

Honestly, at this point, what's the point?  These banks have been lending to people they shouldn't have.  Giving them more money either though a stock purchase or a purchase of bad debts is a bad idea.  Some of these banks need to fail so the better run banks can step in and pick up the pieces.  But really, will that get us out of the mess we're in?  Probably not.

Since congress passed a bill that allows the Treasury to essentially do anything it wants with that $700 billion, I have a much better idea: Give it to us.  "Spread the wealth around" as Barack Obama would say.  Here's the plan:  equally divide the $700 billion by every citizen in the country.  With 300 million people living here, that's $2,333.33 for each of us.  Think of what would happen if every citizen got such a check. 

I would imagine many families that had fallen behind on their mortgage payments would all of the sudden be able to catch up.  People with huge credit card debts could pay them down.  Car sales would pick up.  The holiday shopping season would be the best in years, saving many retailers from having to make big cutbacks in January.  Of course, some families in financial trouble would still spend that money on frivolous things they don't need.  No worries, it's still economic activity that could save some jobs.

Would the banks start lending money again?  Maybe, maybe not.  With that much money in the hands of the consumer, maybe they wouldn't have to. 

Okay, in all seriousness, this is not a good idea.  As I've said before, the $700 billion is a horrible budget-buster.  We shouldn't have done it.  Consumers would spend the money better than the feds, but we don't need to get big checks from the government every time there's a little economic trouble.   That just solidifies the notion of the nanny state. 

I say all of this to highlight the foolishness that's going on in Washington right now.   The biggest problem is that we have elected a President and congress who think all of this sort of thing *is* a good idea and they want to do more of it.  Down the road, we're all going to pay a steep price for this out of control spending.  It'll make this little economic problem look like a cake walk. 

The video you will see below is a look at what happens when a bunch of Repbulicans hold a peaceful march through the streets of Manhatten.  It has been my observation that many liberals and Democrats are intolerant of people with opposing viewpoints.  This is a great example of that on display.

About the stock market mess: Our leaders don't get it.  We don't have confidence in them.  That goes for members of both political parties.  The biggest problem in the market right now is fear.   There was no logical reason for the market to go down as far as it did except for the fact that people are afraid about the future and our leaders are doing nothing to calm that fear.  Instead of inspiring rhetoric looking to better days ahead, the President talks about how serious the problem is.  The Presidential candidates largely did the same thing, but at least Barack Obama had the good sense to suggest that things eventually would be fine once change came to Washington.  That's a message John McCain needed to be delivering.  Instead, he talked about the people Obama associates with. 

About the DISD mess: The school board needed to do the following things before cutting even one teacher's job:  

1. Cut the staff in half at the administration building.  They screwed this up, they should bear the biggest burden.
2. Cut Hinojosa's pay in half.  It was nice of him to voluntarily give up 5% of his pay, but the board needed to send the message that they're not happy with his leadership.
3. No pay raises or bonuses for the remaining administration staff.
4. Get rid of the district's credit cards.  Remember that mess?  Just get rid of them and pay for things with whatever cash you have on hand.  And if they don't have the cash - too bad.
5. Don't pay for any travel to conferences, etc for district staff.  It seems silly to pay for some to go to conferences on reading etc, while cutting the teachers who could actually deliver that message to the kids.
6. Don't pay for any sporting activities.  This might mean canceling most or all high school football games, etc.  If the parents and PTA want the kids to keep playing, they need to pay for the travel and venues.  The district simply can't afford to do it this year. 

About Adam (don't call me Pacman) Jones:  I'm a bit torn here.  He got in a fight with his bodyguard.  No charges were filed.  No one was arrested.  No one went to jail.  In his case, the threshold of tolerance should be pretty low for the Cowboys and the NFL.  But if there are no charges, what exactly do we have here?  He needs a good "talking to" by the team, but other than that I don't think this incident warrants the kind of obsessive coverage it got by the media this week.  Why was it the lead story on the news for two nights in a row on most stations?  This isn't Tony Romo or T.O. - it's Pacman (err, sorry..Adam) Jones.  He's a cornerback - and not a very good one either.  He's a bit player on this team.  The only reason he gets so much attention is all the trouble he was in when he played for another team.  I wouldn't have hired him in the first place after all the previous arrests.  But that's me.  Jerry Jones has a track record of turning these trouble makers into decent players who stay out of trouble.   I'll trust him in this case to deal with it as he sees fit.  It is, after all, his team. 

I am generally appalled at the plan to rescue U.S. financial institutions by having the federal government buy their bad debts.  It takes the risk out of business and tells everyone, "don't worry, uncle sam will save you if you really screw up"  It removes all reason for banks to behave differently. 

The worst part is that the people who got us into this mess, the banks, get about a trillion dollars of our money.  Supposedly we'll get that paid back if this resolution trust corporation entity does what it's supposed to do.  I'm not holding my breath.

The treasury secretary says he had no choice but to do something like this.  Indeed there's a story out today that details the kind of calamity we could have faced had they not stepped in.  You can read it here.  What really bothers me about this is the idea that we couldn't have handled a 22% drop in the Dow Jones Industrial average.  We've done it before.  1987 we saw exactly that kind of thing happen when the Dow was in the 2-3,000 point range.   The Dow is now in the 10-12,000 point range.  A drop to 8,300 would be bad, not not catastrophic. 

It's certainly true that a bunch of businesses would have closed and a bunch of banks would have failed.  That's what happens in an economic downturn.   We've had them before and survived.  My concern is that we now have a government that seems panicked by the notion of a recession and actively fights to keep us out of one with reckless spending. 

In 2001, the economy was sluggish and indeed contracted for one quarter.  It was not technically a recession.  Bush got his tax cuts passed, but only with some conditions.  One condition was that the government would send out rebate checks to give an immediate boost to the economy.  It worked.  The tax cuts themselves spurred the economy further in the years to come, leading to strong economic growth and record tax revenue for the government. 

This year we had the same kind of concern crop up about the economy and the solution was much the same: government money in the hands of the people to give the economy a boost.  It worked.  The last quarter's GDP was up 3.3%.  Again, we have probably avoided a recession.  

Now we're taking a trillion dollars of our money and putting it into a banking industry that has been behaving recklessly for more than a decade.  Money has been cheap and they've loaned it to people who can't afford to pay it back.  Rather than have the banks that were the worst offenders at this go out of business we have propped them up so they can continue their foolish ways. 

Here's where I see a real mess on the horizon.  The national debt essentially just jumped by a trillion dollars in one day.   It wasn't due to social security or other entitlement programs going out of control, it was the treasury and the fed deciding to spend that much money to avoid an economic downturn.  Entitlement spending is still a problem and now we're that much closer to the day when the U.S. government has borrowed so much money that they can't raise taxes high enough to pay to service the debt.  Put another way, at some point down the road (could be 20 years, could be 10.. who knows when)  the bank that will be insolvent will be the U.S. Treasury and we won't have anyone there to bail us out. 

So I have a solution.  There is a way to pay for this bailout without putting the burden on the U.S. taxpayers: get rid of about 500 billion dollars in U.S. federal spending each year.   Can that be done?   To borrow a phrase we've heard so often this year: yes we can!

A simple bill could be passed by congress and signed by the president that would do the following:  close the department of education, the EPA, the interior department, the commerce department, the homeland security department, the veterans affairs department, the health and human service department. (and maybe some others)  Some of their functions would be moved to other departments, but their big buildings with high paid cabinet secretaries and thousands of staff people to back them up would be let go.   Their assets would be sold off.  Much of what those agencies do are duplicated at the state level anyway and are simply not needed.   

Furhermore, we'd close our military bases in Japan, Germany, the Phillipines, Iceland.. and a whole host of other peaceful areas.   It seems foolish to have troops in peaceful parts of the world while we need them in other non-peaceful parts of the world.

I'd also cut the pay of all members of congress (both house and senate) in half.  Cut the pay of the President and Vice President in half.  Cut their staff budgets in half. 

More importantly, social security, medicare and medicaid need to be scrapped and reconstituted in such a way that entitlement spending no longer exists.  We've set up these programs that say if you meet x criteria you get y amount of money.  The problem is that we can never budget for this.  We just borrow money and pay for it.  In the case of medicare and medicaid, they've interfered with the normal supply and demand functions of the healthcare market and are causing costs to skyrocket.  (private insurance is doing the same thing)  These program need to be reworked or scrapped.  I'm not trying to throw grandma out on the street or create a society where we let people die because they can't afford healthcare.  I'm just saying we have to find a different way to deal with this that gets the government out of it.  Maybe private charity is the answer.  I don't know.  But I do know that what we're doing now is crippling our country. 

Social security should be removed from the federal budget.  The problem has been that it runs a surplus some years and the politicians love to use that to show our budget deficit isn't as bad as it really is.  Social security will go out of business down the road if we don't do something to fix it.  I have a solution for that too, but it's a little too involved to go into here.  Essentially I'd privatize half of it, change the way it's paid out and make sure that we have enough money to pay for it. 

The fact is that the federal government needs to cut spending enough so that we can run a 500 billion dollar budget surplus every year for at least ten years.  It's the only way to pay down our debt enough to avoid a real economic calamity. 

It's amazing what can happen in 2 weeks time.  It's been just over 2 weeks since Sarah Palin was named John McCain's running mate.  In that time, she's been attacked by left-wing blogs claiming her son is really her grandson.  That rumor was destroyed when she revealed her daughter is pregnant and video surfaced showing an obviously pregnant Sarah Palin shortly before she gave birth.  The troopergate thing has simmered in the background with Democrats ramping up the ante by issuing subpeonas for her husband - among others.  Palin gave a great speech to the Republican National Convention.   The McCain campaign has surged back to life and into the lead in the polls.  Money is coming in to the GOP at a faster clip than anyone expected.  And Sarah Palin gave her first one-on-one media interview.

It's at this point my view of this pick takes a different turn.  McCain's staff obviously worked to prepare Palin for the Charlie Gibson interview.  She had a lot of canned remarks at the ready.  Gibson had a very condescending demeanor (glasses on the edge of the nose, etc) and generally looked like a man who couldn't stand being around his interview subject.  (the "blizzard of words" comment was rude and unprofessional)  For all the unfairness I think Gibson demonstrated in the interview, there were more than a few troubling aspects of Sarah Palin's performance. 

The Bush Doctrine question was ridiculous.  As Chris Wallace pointed out on Friday's Good Day program, you could probably go around Washington asking that question and get a number of big name politicians to answer it with the same "what do you mean?" kind of remark.  It's like asking a Texan about the Perry Doctrine.  Or asking what the Clinton Doctrine was?  Generally speaking the Bush Doctrine is a media fabricated term to describe a variety of things.  The definition of it has evolved over time.  When Gibson finally got around to asking a specific question with a specific definition of what he meant, she gave a great answer.

But beyond that, I was troubled by Palin's responses to other questions.  Yes, some of the questions may be ridiculous, but her answers could have been better.   Mentioning that you can see Russia from parts of Alaska is just preposterous.  It has no bearing at all on her knowledge of foreign policy.   When asked if she had met a foreign head of state, the answer should have been one word: no.  Going into a dissertation on trade reps you've met or whether other VP candidates have met heads of state does not answer the question.  Just say no and move on.  Big freakin' deal.  So what if she hasn't met a foreign head of state.  I would assume she's been a little busy paying attention to the people of her state.  There's no shame in saying no.  Besides, John McCain has more foreign policy experience than the combined Democratic ticket.  

Her role as Governor gives her the title of commander in chief of the Alaskan National Guard, but she did not adequately explain why that gives her some knowlege of military affairs.  Both Bill Clinton and George W. Bush have cited their leadership of their state national guard units as important in preparing them for the Presidency for the simple reason that they got a better understanding of what you can and can't do with a military unit.  You learn how fast you can move x number of troops x distance, what it takes to supply them, etc.  It's good training.  She failed to explain that. 

Gibson asked Palin to cite how a McCain administration would be different from a Bush administration.  Her answer was shockingly weak.  Cut taxes, reduce spending and put government on the side of people was what I got out of it.  That's hardly a set of differences.   How about just flat out saying Bush has spent too much money and McCain would have vetoed a number of spending bills Bush signed.  McCain will not sign bills with earmarks, Bush has signed them repeatedly.   How about making the case that the increase in the size of government has decreased the size of the private sector costing us jobs.   Make the case that McCain will reverse that trend and Obama will continue it.   Point out that both she and McCain have a track record of working wtih Democrats to create consensus.  Cite McCain's recent comments that he'd have several Democrats in cabinet posts, just like Palin's done in Alaska.   She absolutely failed to answer this question well and it was probably the most important question asked.   

Honestly, I think Palin would have been better off if McCain's people had left her alone.  We'll see how she does with a friendlier environment this week when she's interviewed by conservative talk show host Sean Hannity on the Fox News Channel. 

I like Sarah Palin and I think she was a good pick for McCain.  She'll do just fine as Vice President and get up to speed pretty quick on a lot of the stuff that right now is pretty difficult for her to talk about.  But the McCain campaign has some work to do before she goes toe-to-toe with Joe Biden.  I just hope they let her be herself and not a machine that recites policy answers from the the campaign playbook. 

I've been concerned about who John McCain would pick for his running mate for quite some time.  I just didn't see anyone out there who would really make for an exciting pick.  Ultimately, candidates need to pick someone they are comfortable working with who can plausibly be president.  That's why Joe Lieberman was apparently so strongly considered.  He's a good man, but his liberal stances on so many issues would have caused a revolt in the Republican party.  It would have been a disaster. 

I also hated the idea of Mitt Romney.  He was a good governor of Massachusetts and what he did for the Salt Lake City Olympics was downright heroic.  But that said, he just doesn't impress me much as a candidate.  He's changed a lot of his positions to try to get the Republican nomination and many conservatives have accepted his shift as genuine.  I don't.  Furthermore, picking Romney would have opened up McCain to attack ads from Obama featuring nasty things said about McCain by Romney - AND the charge that it was two rich white guys who don't understand what the average American faces everyday.

Texas Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison would have been a great pick, but I truly believe she just didn't want to do it.  I think she told McCain long ago to not even bother to ask.  She wants out of Washington as soon as possible.  That's one reason why she may give up her Senate seat early to run for Governor in 2010.

Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty seems like a decent sort, but he's pretty unknown outside of his state.  He's a popular Republican governor in a Democratic state. He's a fairly solid conservative and was an early supporter of McCain's so it seemed like that could work.  I had read up on him and was actually getting pretty comfortable with the idea of him on the ticket. 

Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin has been talked about for some time, but it was not considered likely that McCain would pick her.  I knew a little about her.  I knew she was a solid conservative who had ousted the previous corrupt Republican governor in the primary and won in the 2006 general election over a former popular Democrat governor. (beating 2 governors in one election is no small feat)  When she went into labor while visiting the DFW area and flew back to Alaska to give birth to her 5th child a few months ago, I think most people figured that would take her completely out of the mix.  I think we should all learn to never underestimate the McCain campaign.

When it was announced that McCain would name his VP pick the day after Barack Obama gave his acceptance speech, it was generally considered a smart move to try to take away some of the spotlight from Obama's speech.  The pick of a virtual unknown woman as his VP absolutely blew the Obama speech out of the news cycle.  But it did so much more than that.

Palin came out and gave her first speech to a national audience with McCain by her side.  This is always the most important moment for any VP pick - particularly one that isn't well known.  Dan Quayle in 1988 was too energetic and really fumbled his moment.  Despite being a congressional veteran (2 terms in the house and in the middle of his second term in the senate) he was a drag on the ticket from that moment on.  Palin, on the other hand, gave a really good speech.  She does not seem intimidated by jumping onto the national stage at all.  She seems very down to earth and approachable.  Her tributes to Geraldine Ferraro and Hillary Clinton - along with the line that women still had a chance to break the glass ceiling this year - were brilliant. 

But beyond the speech, I had to wonder about how wise it was to pick someone as unknown as this.  Democrats immediately criticized her for a lack of foreign policy experience.  That's rich when you consider how inexperienced their PRESIDENTIAL candidate is.  She was a mayor of a small town for nearly 10 years before being elected Governor.  But you know what, she's been a mayor and a governor.  She's run a business as well.  She actually has EXECUTIVE experience.  That's something that Obama, Biden AND McCain cannot claim.   Someone asked her about her experience and she pointed out she's held elected office for 16 years.  That's 4 years more than  Obama.   He got in the U.S. Senate 3 and a half years ago and has been running for president for most of that time.

She's visited Iraq and has a son in the Army who is about to be stationed there.  She's the only governor of a state that borders Russia and Canada. I'm pretty sure she's studied up on foreign affairs enough to have some opinions she can state clearly.   The expectations for her in a debate with Joe Biden will be low.  If she does okay, that will be a huge defeat for the Democrats. 

I was really stunned when I heard about this pick and it took me a few hours to think about it and watch how people reacted to it.   It's become clear that there are a lot of positives to this pick.  She has immeditely energized the conservative base of the Republican party who have not been all that thrilled with McCain.  I'm not sure there is anyone else McCain could have picked who would have done that.  It could really help with fundraising and get a lot more people to the polls in the fall. 

Regardless of who wins this year, we'll make history with either the first black in the white house or first woman as vice president.  That definitely neutralizes some of the buzz around the Obama nomination.    Having a woman may tend to further cement some of the disaffected Hillary supporters in McCain's camp.  Palin is also the first person on a national ticket who isn't from one of the lower 48 states. 

Having a woman who is a working mother of 5 is another really compelling and energizing aspect of this pick.  There are millions of women who will identify with her immediately.  I heard one woman asked by a reporter if she thought Palin was qualified to be vice president.  The woman asked the reporter what she had done.  He mentioned she was the governor of Alaska and a mother of five.  The woman said "if she can figure out how to be a working mother of five kids, she's qualified to be vice president."  I don't know that I'd go that far, but I understand the sentiment very well. 

So far, I think this was a brilliant pick.  We won't really know if that's the case for several weeks.  We'll need to see how it all shakes out on the campaign trail.  Right now, I'm pretty optimistic about it. 

I watched most of Barack Obama's speech tonight.  What a scene.  The huge expanse of 84,000 people was quite a spectacle.  The fears some had expressed that the outdoor setting might be risky turned out to be unfounded. 

The speech itself was delivered with the same energy and effectiveness we've seen from Senator Obama in the past.  What struck me at first was the rather mean tone it took as he attacked Senator McCain and Republicans in general.  He talks about changing the tone, but it was so similar to what we typically hear that it seemed a bit hypocritical.  It was even worse when you consider that Senator McCain ran a TV ad in battleground states tonight praising Senator Obama for his historical achievement.

After he finished his litany of attacks, Senator Obama - FINALLY! - got into some policy specifics.  That's where this whole speech got very costly.  He talked about helping people get healthcare, buy cars, get jobs, etc.  He talked about helping the auto industry retool to build more fuel efficient cars.  He talked about investing in new alternative fuels.  He talked about spending money on a whole host of things that government probably has no business getting involved in.  And he never once put a dollar amount on any of this.  

He did talk about cutting taxes for most families and some small businesses, but he never detailed exactly what he meant by that. 

I have never gotten the sense that this man has any idea how he'll accomplish these objectives.  If he tries to pull off even half of it, it'll balloon the size of government even more than George W. Bush has - and that's saying a lot. 

I have had many reasons to not like John McCain's politics over the past decade or so.  But one thing he has always been right on is the issue of spending.  The government spends too much money and needs to stop.  He gets that.  Barack Obama does not.  If John McCain can make the case that he can make your life better while cutting wasteful and irritating government spending, he'll beat Obama.   We'll see what McCain has in mind next week. 

It's got to be hard to plan a political convention.  It's tough to find a good place to hold one, get the security set and plan it out to maximize the help it can give your candidate.  It's got to be even worse when you have to plan the thing around other events.  Clearly the Democrats didn't want to run their party convention opposite the Olympics.  And they probably didn't want to do it before the Olympics in the middle of everyone's summer vacations, although that hasn't stopped them before.  But you have to wonder why they did the convention this week?

Thursday night the Obama campaign will stage a huge spectacle at Mile High Stadium when Barack Obama gives his convention acceptance speech.  At 27 other football stadiums around America, fans will be gathered to watch NFL exhibition games or division I-A college football games.   Millions more will watch those games on TV.  Despite the fact the NFL moved the start time of some of their games so that they would end before the speech begins, most of those games will still be going on.    That means that Obama has to hope millions of people will tear themselves away from their favorite football team to watch his speech. 

It's not that Obama won't have plenty of people see his speech. I'm sure he will.  I just think the pool of potential viewers will be much lower than usual.  

Next week John McCain will give his speech on Thursday night as well.   That night the NFL kicks off the regular season with one game on NBC.  Just like this week, the NFL moved the start time of that game earlier so that it would probably end before McCain started his speech.   There will only be two college football games that night. (Nicholls St. at New Mexico State and South Carolina at Vanderbilt)   McCain will have a regular season prime-time NFL game as his lead-in, not as competition.   It seems to me he has a pretty good shot at beating Obama in the ratings. 

I've always had a passing interest in watching some of the Olympics, but it's always been with a somewhat jaded view.  The games this year just re-confirmed what I've thought of them for a long time: they're heavily politicized and there is no level playing field.

In years past the Olympics were a time for the Soviet block countries to cheat and beat the western countries in an effort to show the superiority of the communist system.   The same is somewhat true today, but the players are slightly different.  China is trying to show that they are the tops in the world and they're cheating to make sure that happens.  For that matter, they faked some of the opening ceremony fireworks pictures because the weather wasn't cooperating. 

Anyone who watched the gymnastics competition saw a clear bias in the judging toward the Chinese and away from the Americans.  It's true that Nastia Liukin won the overall gold, but she should have won a lot more.  It's also pretty obvious that many of the Chinese girls were not of the right age to compete.   On the men's side there were several other instances where Chinese gymnasts were given much higher scores than they deserved - although it was at the expense of athletes from countries other than America. 

Now I hear that baseball and softball will be eliminated from the games.  Baseball primarily because the pros won't play and softball because no one can compete with the Americans.  That's just not a good excuse.  Basketball was included for years before anyone other than the Americans won the gold medal.  All this looks even more ridiculous when you see that BMX biking has been added to the games and we still have absurd sports like Water Polo in the games.   Why not add arm-wrestling and golf?

Overall, I just don't see why more people don't see the games for the fraud that they are.  Why are the games so popular when it's obvious many of the events are rigged?

Everytime I hear about a kid dying because they were left in a hot car I hear someone ask "how could a parent make that mistake? I always check the back seat of my car"  etc..

You know, I can almost understand some of these cases.  It's one thing if the kid is a few months old and sleeping in a rear-facing carrier.  They're small, quiet, sleep frequently and in some cases the parent didn't know the other parent had put the kid in the car.  Still, it's a horrible mistake that shouldn't ever happen.  If you have a car seat you should always check before you leave it.   I can understand in some of these cases why the distraught parent isn't charged. 

In the past two days we've had a very different circumstance play out in the Houston area that just cannot be explained as an accident.   A 3 year old died when his 44 year old grandmother drove to straight to work instead of dropping him off at daycare.  She found his cooked body when she got done with work 10 hours later.   The second case was worse.  The mother worked at a hospital and forgot to take her 3 year old to daycare.  This kid at least was able to get out of his car seat and into the front seat.  He found some keys and tried to start the car or open a window.   He struggled for life but passed out and died in the searing heat.   His mother broke the back window screamed for help, but it was too late.  He was dead.  Tortured really. 

In both cases no charges have been filed.  Why?  A 3 year old is big, noisey and in a forward facing car seat.   It's hard to miss them.. unless you want to.   Both of these women should be charged with murder.   I simply don't believe they could walk out of a car and not know the 3 year old was in the back seat.   A fitting punishment would be to lock them in a hot car til they die so they can get accustomed to the heat before the devil calls them to the eternal fiery pit they so richly deserve. 

I saw Shaun Rabb's report on the woman beating her kid with the shopping bag in the Willow Bend Mall parking lot and have a lot of questions that I did not hear asked:

If you look at the video it's pretty obvious someone was manning that camera at the time and was following this woman's walk to her car.   This wasn't some static shot where she just walked through the scene.  Someone was sitting in an office at Willow Bend watching this and following her by moving a joystick.  

Why were they watching her to begin with?

If someone in the security office of Willow Bend thought they had witnessed child abuse, wouldn't they be obligated to call the police or try to step in on their own? 

If they saw child abuse and didn't report it, what are the legal ramifications for the mall and the security guards who saw it?

It seems pretty obvious someone from that office sent Fox 4 the video. 

The three network news departments have announced that their anchors will follow Barack Obama around on his trip to Iraq. They will obviiously have to devote a significant portion of their newscasts to his trip in order to justify this expense. It will likely lead their broadcasts for several days.

When John McCain went to Iraq a few weeks ago, no anchor went with him. His trip was covered as "other political news." It was not the lead.

There is no way the networks can explain this as anything other than an extreme bias for Mr. Obama. They are campainging for him. They are trying to take his weakness in foreign affairs and turn it into a strength with highly polished positive news reports.

My suggestion is that the Republicans file a Federal Elections Commission complaint against the networks for providing him with free advertising while not doing the same for John McCain. Obama's campaign should be required to report the coverage as an in-kind donation. Unfortunately all of that is illegal under current election law. So, prosecutors should get involved and prosecute the networks and the Obama campaign for this violation of the law.

The Democrats took control of congress on January 3, 2007 after winning control of both houses in the 2006 elections. Since then the following has happened:

The unemployment rate has jumped by nearly a full percentage point.

The price of oil has more than doubled.

The price of gas has more than doubled.

The housing market collapsed.

The credit market collapsed.

The value of the dollar has cratered.

The economy has gone from steady growth to anemic growth and may slip into negative growth.

The budget deficit, which was dropping the past 3 years, could be a record of nearly a half trillion dollars this year.

I have many problems with the Republican leadership in Washington, but you cannot deny that things were NEVER this bad while Republicans ran congress.

These facts should be the mantra of the Republican party this year. They're not because the GOP is absolutely rudderless right now and they have no idea how to fight back. That's sad.

Earlier this week Shaun Rabb did a story talking a little about how the race might shape up so that the Presidential candidates would really care about Texas and campaign hard in this state.  I'd like to expand on that a bit since we now have more polling data.  As I've said before, I am not a fan of the poll-based reporting we get in the media.  However, this is a case where a discussion of polls is warranted. 

Right now the race on both sides of the aisle seems to be shifting rather dramatically.  ABC has a new poll out that shows Clinton's once huge lead is now only 5 points nationally.   McCain is now leading in the GOP race by a sizeable margin with Huckabee in second place.   These shifts have happened primarily due to the results of Iowa and New Hampshire and the way the media has reported them.  It's interesting though that the subtext of what's being said now is very different from what we heard the night of the New Hampshire primary.

On the Democrat side Hillary Clinton was getting that "comeback kid" label or "surprise winner" recognition.  It was all positive.  Now, not so much.  Obama got the endorsement of John Kerry and Bill Clinton came under fire for some comments he made about Obama.   Indeed some have claimed voter fraud was the reason for Hillary's surprise win in New Hampshire.  Regardless, the voters seem to be gravitating toward Obama.  The real story here isn't about Obama or Hillary.  It's about the total stagnation of the Edwards campaign.  He's been lost on the shuffle.  His inability to get into the top two in some of the upcoming states in the polls likely is fueling some of the shift to Obama.  Many of the Democratic voters who like Edwards are also voters who don't like Hillary.  If they see that their guy isn't going to succeed in stopping Clinton, they'll go with someone who can: Obama.   Clinton has always viewed Edwards as her saving grace since he splits the anti-Hillary vote.  He needs to win somewhere soon in order to stay in this race.   At this point, if Hillary can't beat Obama in South Carolina or otherwise slow down his momentum, super Tuesday could turn into a mish-mash of wins for both candidates with no clear lead for either one of them.   Coming out of that, Texas is the next big prize.  That could put the two of them in this state for a month of campaigning. 

The story on the Republican side is much more complicated.  Huckabee got a good boost after Iowa and finished third in New Hampshire.  However, the resurgence of the McCain campaign to win New Hampshire became the big story.  As mentioned earlier he's now in the lead in national polls.  More importantly, he's competitive in this week's Michigan primary - a place he won 8 years ago.  Mitt Romney's loss in New Hampshire was bad and he's place a lot of importance on Michigan, where his father used to be Governor.  Michigan is really make or break for Romney.  If he loses Michigan, don't be surprised to see Romney either restructure his campaign or drop out.  A win will give him a big bounce in the media at least.  Keep in mind, the media just want a good story to cover.  They'd love nothing more than to have 4 viable Republican candidates duking it out for weeks to come.  

Huckabee is also strong in Michigan, but likely has little money to spend in the state.  He's hoping to do well or win, but is really putting more of his hope on South Carolina and some of the other southern states on super Tuesday.   The problem is that McCain's post-New Hampshire bounce has now put McCain in the lead in South Carolina.  The person who is really placing all of his hope on South Carolina is Fred Thompson.  His campaign has been languishing for months now and he's hoping for some kind of win somewhere.  The thing is, the polls right now show he's just not making the headway he needs to.   If he drops out, Thompson will almost certainly endorse John McCain.  He was McCain's national co-chair in 2000.  

After Michigan and South Carolina, the next big test for Republicans in Florida.  That's where Rudy Giuliani hopes to jump-start his campaign.  The problem for Giuliani is that if McCain builds up a head of steam by winning Michigan and South Carolina, he could easily jump up and win Florida.   It would be a serious blow to Giuliani and very devastating coming only days before super Tuesday.   The thing is, no one really knows what's going to happen on the GOP side on super Tuesday.  Huckabee leads in some states, Giuliani leads in some, McCain leads in a few (I think) and Romney is also well-organized in some of those states.   However, if McCain has run the table by then by winning Michigan, South Carolina (which both look possible at this point) and Florida,  I think you'll see the polls in all those states start to turn his way.  On the otherhand, if we have 3 different winners on the GOP side in Michigan, South Carolina and Florida, it'll be a total toss-up on super Tuesday.   Again, that could give Texas the chance to be a king maker this year.  

The interesting thing about Texas right now is that I have not seen any polls on who leads in the state on either side.   I suspect that's all we'll hear about if things are decided after super Tuesday.   

One other big wild-card for the Republicans right now is Ron Paul.  He's raised a mountain of cash and has spent very little of it so far. Maybe he's waiting for super Tuesday.  Who knows.  He's not faring as well as some thought he would in these early states - certainly not New Hampshire.   He has no chance to be the nominee, but I think many thought his money would at least make him a player.  So far, it hasn't.

Finally, a brief look ahead to the general election.  I make no predictions about who will win any of this, certainly not about a general election that's held 10+ months from now.   We recently saw discussion of New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg possibly running as an independent.   He's said he isn't running, but clearly he's looking at it.  He's got polling and research going on in all 50 states according to some reports.   I don't think Bloomberg will run if Giuliani is the Republican nominee.  The two men are pretty similar in their politics and Bloomberg owes his entire political life to Giuliani's strong endorsement and campaigning in 2001.  However, if someone more conservative is the GOP nominee, I think Bloomberg jumps in.   Worse, I think he'll budget about 1 billion dollars for the race.  Keep this in mind: he's not Ross Perot.  He's an elected leader with a pretty successful track record in a very difficult job.  Perot dropped about 65 million or so on his race in 1992 and got 19% of the vote after he got in, got out and got back in again.  Bloomberg is polling at about 11% in the polls now.  But a billion dollars would make me a credible candidate.  A guy with his record and that kind of money could be more than credible with a billion, he could be the front-runner.   I don't like this idea at all, but it's a real possibility.   Stay tuned. 

I've written recently of my admiration of Mike Huckabee's campaign for President.  However, I've heard MANY conservatives rip the guy over his record in Arkansas.  Specifically, they complain about tax increases, policies that are friendly to illegal immigrants, and his involvement in the release of 1,300 criminals from prison.  To Huckabee's credit, he's defended his actions on all of these issues.  I'm still comfortable offering my tacit support of the guy, but it does give one pause to ask: is there a good candidate in this race for conservatives?

I hear people like Rush Limbaugh gripe about Huckabee and suggest that Fred Thompson is the better choice.  However, even Rush doesn't seem to be totally on board with Thompson either.   I like Thompson, but his campaign has been a dud.  It started out with promise but quickly went nowhere.  Before he started running I read comments from him about how his race was going to be about getting entitlement spending under control before it consumes the federal budget.   That's an issue I care about, but it has been barely visible at all in his campaing.   I've heard his speeches and read his plans and frankly they just don't excite me.   One big problem is that he  supported the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform law that so many conservatives (like myself) despise. 

Speaking of John McCain, the campaign finance bill is one of many issues that make conservatives blood boil when they think of him as the Republican nominee.  He opposed the Bush tax cuts, has bought into the scare tactics and flaky science over global warming, and supported the gang of 14 senators who derailed some of Bush's good judicial nominees.   He has one issue that make him somewhat attractive to me: his opposition to pork-barrel spending.  No one has been a stronger advocate for the reduction of spending on idiotic programs than John McCain.  Aside from that he's a war hero, he's right about Iraq, he's pro-life and polls well against all the Democrats.   But it's such a mixed bag that it's hard to get excited about him.

Another heroic figure in the race to me is Rudy Giuliani.  What he did for the city of New York is amazing - and that has nothing to do with 9/11.  He took a crime-ridden city and made it one of the safest in the country.  He brought the place back to life.  His actions on 9/11 were heroic and I will always get kind of choked up thinking about it.   But (and you knew that was coming)  the guy has never been much of a conservative Republican.  He's pro-choice, pro-gun control, and pro-gay rights.   He endorsed Liberal Democrat Mario Cuomo in 1994 over Republican George Pataki.  Giuliani ran on the Liberal Party line when he won election in 1993.  Those votes gave him enough to win the office.  Clearly it was the only way a Republican could win in the heavily Democratic city.  Still, it shows you a bit about where he stands that the Liberal Party would give this guy an endorsement.  His personal life is another problem.  Basically, it's a mess.  He fooled around on his wife, got a divorce, then married his girlfriend.  His kids hate him and I think at least one of them is now supporting Barack Obama for President.  All that said, what he's been saying in the race this year sounds good.  He's got a good tax cut proposal and has sounded friendly to the idea of appointing strict constructionist judges to the bench.  I just think his personal life and liberal positions will torpedo his chances in the fall.  Many conservatives will just stay home if this guy is the nominee. 

Mitt Romney was a good governor of Massachusetts.  He likely would have been easily re-elected in 2006 had he not decided to give up the job to run for President.  But beyond that, he's changed positions on a series of issues over the years and it makes it hard for me to support him.  When he ran for the U.S. Senate against Ted Kennedy in 1994, he tried very hard to show just how liberal he was on issues like affirmative action, abortion and gun control.  Now he's changed positions on all three.  I just don't know what this guy stands for.  Worse, I think if he's the nominee the Democrats will effectively kill his candidacy by claiming he's just a rich white Republican who's trying to by the White House. 

Ron Paul is a rare breed in politics.  He makes promises and keeps them.  You can count on him to do exactly what he says he's going to do.  I admire the fact that he's never voted for a tax increase.  I admire his desire to slash the size of government.  Though I disagree with him on the Iraq war, I admire his consistent stand on the issue in the face of a changing political landscape on the issue.  I would have no problem if he stayed in the House and continued to be a lone voice for libertarians.  However, I don't want him anywhere near the oval office.  His isolationist ideas would be very detrimental to this country.  Beyond that, the man comes off as somewhat of a kook from time to time. 

Duncan Hunter is running for President. You may not know who this guy is.  He's a California congressman and he chaired the powerful House Armed Services Committee at one point in his career.  When I take the candidate matchmaker on myfoxdfw.com, his name frequently comes up at the top of my list.   The problem is, this guy is unelectable.  He's getting maybe 1 or 2 percent in the polls in the GOP race and just has no hope of winning.  It's a shame in a way because if you look at his congressional record it's really pretty good.  He's been a consistent conservative on almost every issue that I can think of.  It's just hard to throw your support behind someone who has demonstrated no ability to win.  

So back to my question: what's a conservative to do?   At this point I'll probably vote for Huckabee.  I like the guy and I like what he says he'll do as President.   It's no more or less complicated than that.   If other conservative choose to support someone else, that's fine.  It probably makes as much sense as my support of Huckabee.  The real point here is that right now there's just not a good reliable conservative in the race who has a chance to win.  Hearing that, some will argue that if we just all got behind one guy or another, they would have a chance.  The probelm is you can't control what others do.  Yeah, I could support Duncan Hunter or Fred Thompson, but that's not going to change the fact that their campaigns have gone nowhere.   This is not a good situation for the Republican party to be in this year.  My hope is that whoever the nominee is, that person is chosen before the convention.  I'm certain the Democrats will have a clear idea of who their nominee will be by the time we get done with Super Tuesday.  I hope Republicans can say the same thing.  If not, it's going to be a bad November for the GOP.