Set up a prepackaged bankruptcy.

I started to argue for something similar to this the other day, but the real world beckoned so I had to stop.  The biggest problem with an automaker going through bankruptcy is that it would be hard to convince buyers that their warranties were worth anything.  A fast tracked bailout or some kind of Congressionally designed “bankruptcy-like” process that would enable the Big Three to make necessary structural changes while assuaging concerns of prospective buyers is a good compromise.  Otherwise Congress will eventually just throw money, in the form of more loan guarantees, at the companies with only modest changes to their failing business model.

From Barack Obama’s Monday Night Football interview with Chris Berman:

“I think it is about time that we had playoffs in college football,” Obama said Monday on ESPN. “I’m fed up with these computer rankings and this and that and the other. Get eight teams - the top eight teams right at the end. You got a playoff. Decide on a national champion.”

McCain gave some useless answer about “performance-enhancing substances.”

Obama’s proposal is close to the one that I lay out for anyone willing to listen.  A playoff with eight teams - the conference champions from the eight participating conferences.  No “at large” bids.  No computers.  No polls.  Win your conference and you’re in.  Period.  Your conference not one of the eight?  Switch.  Notre Dame would have to join up or opt out (although I’m not too sure who might want them right now).  Only lost one game, but didn’t win your conference title?  Better luck next year.

OK, so maybe college football playoff preference is a superficial criteria for president, but damn it, I hate the BCS.  It was probably the safest position Obama took during the entire campaign.

Steven den Beste, one of the best essayists on our side, says it’s Not the end of the world:

It’s easy to let yourself go in despair and start thinking things like “We are well-and-truly f****d” or “This is the worst of all possible outcomes”. But it isn’t true.

I think this election is going to be a “coming of age” moment for a lot of people. They say, “Be careful what you wish for” and a lot of people got their wish yesterday.

And now they’re bound to be disappointed. Not even Jesus could satisfy all the expectations of Obama’s most vocal supporters, or fulfill all the promises Obama has made.

I think Obama is going to turn out to be the worst president since Carter, and for the same reason: good intentions do not guarantee good results. Idealists often stub their toes on the wayward rocks of reality, and fall on their faces. And the world doesn’t respond to benign behavior benignly.

But there’s another reason why: Obama has been hiding his light under a basket. A lot of people bought a pig in a poke today, and now they’re going to find out what they bought. Obama isn’t what most of them think he is. The intoxication of the cult will wear off, leaving a monumental hangover.

And four years from now they’ll be older and much wiser.

A lot of bad things are going to happen during this term. But I don’t think that this is an irreversible catastrophe for the union. I’ve lived long enough to absorb this basic truth: the US is too large and too strong to destroy in just 4 years. Or even in 8. We survived 6 years of Nixon. We survived 4 years of Carter. We even survived 8 years of Clinton, God alone knows how.

The President of the United States is the most powerful political figure in the world, but as national executives go his powers are actually quite restricted. Obama will become President, but he won’t be dictator or king, let alone deity. He still has to work with the House and the Senate, and he still has to live within Constitutional restrictions, and with a judiciary that he mostly didn’t appoint.

The main reason this will be a “coming of age” moment is that now Obama and the Democrats have to put up or shut up. Obama got elected by making himself a blank slate, with vapid promises about “hope” and “change” — but now he actually has to do something. Now he has to reveal his true agenda. And with the Democrats also having a majority in both chambers of Congress, now the Democrats really have to lead. And they’re not going to do a very good job of it. It’s going to be amusing to watch.

And the people who fell for the demagoguery will learn an invaluable lesson…

And it ain’t possible for the Democrats to deliver what’s been promised. Gonna be a hell of a lot of disillusioned lefties out there. A lot of people who felt they were deceived. A lot of people who will eventually realize that the Obama campaign was something of a cult.

Disillusionment will turn to a feeling of betrayal. And that will, in turn, convert to anger.

In the mean time, Obama and Congressional Democrats will do things that cause harm, but very little of it will be irreversible.

I would have enjoyed watching lefty heads explode if McCain had won. But we’re going to see lefty heads exploding anyway; it’s just going to take longer.

In the mean time, those of us who didn’t want Obama to be president have to accept that he is. And let’s not give in to the kind of paranoid fever dreams that have consumed the left for the last 8 years. Let us collectively take a vow tonight: no “Obama derangement syndrome”.

There’s more. Read the whole thing.

Barack Obama did it.  He pulled off an impressive victory over John McCain to be elected as this country’s 44th President.  Congratulations to him and his supporters.

I’m surprisingly not upset, probably because I wasn’t too excited about the prospects of a McCain presidency or him being the standard bearer of the GOP.  I also don’t think Obama will be as bad as most conservatives do.  The biggest problem is that he will be the beneficiary of a natural economic upswing and people may equate his economic policies with success.

Let me say one more thing about Obama’s win.  I do not want to see or hear conservatives whining like childish liberals did after Gore and Kerry lost.  Don’t enjoy the loss, but don’t let it consume you.  Lear from it - what can be done better, what are Obama’s legitimate weaknesses, etc.  I don’t want to hear anyone say Obama stole this election.  Not a word of it.  If ACORN manufactured one million votes and Black Panthers scared away one million McCain supporters Obama would have still won.  Deal with it.

Democrats dominated locally.  Parker Griffith inexplicably won the election to represent Alabama’s 5th district in Washington.  I just can’t imagine people connecting the arrow beside his name given what he has done and his utter lack of integrity and honesty.  At least it is only a two year term.  The Republicans better start looking high and low for a better candidate to run against him in 2010 before he becomes ensconced in office.  Wayne Parker is a fantastic individual, a truly decent man.  But that isn’t a qualification for Congress and Parker just isn’t a great politician.

After a quick look at the numbers the big surprise for me is how many people voted for McCain and then turned around and voted for Griffith.  Here in Madison County McCain won 57% of the vote and Obama won 42%.  In the AL-05 race Wayne Parker only won 49% of the votes - 8% less than McCain.  So it wasn’t an onslaught of straight ticket Dem votes that beat Parker.

In Madison County one would be tempted to call it a Democrat victory, an artifact of Obama’s long coat tails.  I’m not so sure.  It seems more like people voted for every incumbent.  Every contested incumbent Democrat won by a margin of about 60% to 40%.  There was only one contested incumbent Republican, Judge Dick Richardson, and he won as well, although his margin was a slimmer 55% to 45%.

This was the first time that the Madison County Republican Party ran a full slate of candidates.  They picked a hell of a bad year to start that habit!  I privately figured that winning one race would constitute a victory.  In the end the candidate who did the best was probably the least qualified, but they all lost big.  Hopefully they learn from the experience and don’t let the challenging circumstances of this race dampen their future attempts.

In other races…

Bobby Bright narrowly defeated Jay Love by 1,766 votes.  I’m actually not surprised by this one.  Bright was a great candidate and Love’s bitter primary battle turned off a lot of voters.  Mike Rogers kept his seat as expected, but the margin of victory (53% - 47%) over a guy who was a nobody a few months ago really demonstrates the tarnish on the Republican brand right now.

It looks like Twinkle Cavanaugh is going to lose her bid for president of the PSC to Lucy Baxley, although the race has not been called yet.  Twinkle = under performer.  Alabama Republicans need to quit voting for her in primaries regardless of (or becaue of?) her allegiance to the party.  The Supreme Court race also is too close to call, but Greg Shaw has a 14,000 vote lead over Paseur with 99% reporting.  If Shaw can hold on it would be one of few bright spots for the GOP.

Silver linings…

The Alabama GOP better be happy our legislative and gubernatorial races are in 2010, not 2008.

McCain isn’t the face of the Republican Party going forward.  Now the party can redefine its identity.  My personal hopes?  Slant more towards the libertarian philosophy.  Support actual limited government and be willing to stake principled, although possibly unpopular, positions.  Ron Paul was the only Republican candidate to actually energize people in the way Obama did for the Democrats.  Sure, some of his positions were too “out there,” but he was on to something.  Take the good, leave the bad.  Oh, and learn to use the internet to raise money.  Barack and his fellow Dems just took you to the mat on that one.

Larisa Thomason, aka “Countrycat” at Left in Alabama, wrote what was judged to be the best column in support of Barack Obama in a Huntsville Times competition.  It was published in today’s paper.  Her column, which I have not been able to find online yet, was well written and void of the adolescent hyperbole and general inanity that permeates Left in Alabama.  Not surprising as she tends to be one of the few reasonable individuals there.

Thomason’s piece struck quite a contrast with the accompanying pro-McCain piece.  The pro-McCain piece was actually more of an anti-Obama column, while Thomason’s was generally pro-Obama.  I think it highlights the dissatisfaction rank and file conservatives have with the Republican nominee.  There just aren’t that many positive things to say about him.  Sure, I agree there are plenty of reasons to oppose Sen. Obama (although I think there are far fewer than most of my conservative brethren), but until conservatives find a credible candidate who can articulate why conservative philosophy is superior its going to be hard to get excited and root for your own candidate.  (Just for fun I’d like to see commenters try to advocate for McCain without mentioning or even alluding to Obama.)

I must take issue with two items in Thomason’s article, though.  She trotted out the “95% of American families will get a tax cut” nonsense.  I’ve been over this before.  You cannot “cut” taxes for people who don’t pay taxes.  Obama is proposing a give away, an expansion of using the tax code not only as a means of wealth confiscation, but as a vehicle for outright wealth redistribution.  He will push the percentage of taxpayers who either pay nothing or actually get paid themselves over 40%.  To claim he is “cutting” taxes on 95% of families is pure rubbish.

Thomason chides McCain’s tax plan saying that “his plan gives the top 0.1% an extra $22,000 per month.”  I’ll ignore the class envy aspect of that statement and focus on the word “gives.”  It illustrates an all too common belief among liberals.  The way taxes actually work is that individuals earn money through profitable ventures, which may include selling your labor.  The government then takes a portion of your earnings.  If the government decides to take less they haven’t “given” you anything - they have merely taken less.  Barack Obama is the candidate who intends to “give” - from the achievers to the non-achievers.

I’m sure you’ve seen some form of this analogy.  Let’s say you are a school age child.  Every day on the bus ride to school a bully threatens you and takes your lunch money, all $5.  One day the bully happens to be in an uncharacteristically nice mood and he only takes $3.  In a liberal’s mind the bully has just given you $2.  In your mind he has still taken $3.

Just the same, despite our considerable political differences, congrats to Larisa for performing her craft well and contributing to the political discourse in a positive manner.

The red letter links at the top of the Drudge Report right now highlight an end game attack on Obama based on some comments he made about the coal industry earlier this year.  Obama said, “… we would put a cap and trade policy… So if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can. It’s just that it will bankrupt them because they’re going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that’s being emitted.”  The McCain campaign is using the comments, which are available on an audio recording, against Obama in coal country by saying Obama wants to bankrupt the coal industry.

It’s a smart political move, although I think it is quite disingenuous.  McCain, much to the chagrin of conservatives, has himself been an ardent supporter of a complicated, costly cap and trade system that is similar to Obama’s.  So basically McCain is attacking Obama for explicitly stating what a plan both of them support would do.  And to think this is the best guy that the Republicans could find.

From the AP:

Barack Obama’s aunt, a Kenyan woman who has been quietly living in public housing in Boston, is in the United States illegally after an immigration judge rejected her request for asylum four years ago, The Associated Press has learned.

Not only is his aunt - his own blood relative - an illegal immigrant, but she’s receiving taxpayer assistance to live in a public housing project.  I must say I am impressed with Obama’s nerve.  He is willing to stand up day after day after day and demand that rich people - a group he belongs to - involuntarily give more so that it can be passed along to others against their wishes while he chooses not to voluntarily give to his own aunt who lives in public housing.

Oh, and his illegal immigrant aunt has also illegally contributed $260 to Obama’s campaign.  According to the FEC:

Foreign nationals are prohibited from making any contributions or expenditures in connection with any election in the U.S. Please note, however, that “green card” holders (i.e., individuals lawfully admitted for permanent residence in the U.S.) are not considered foreign nationals and, as a result, may contribute.

I wonder how Obama would protect our borders when he can’t even keep his own family from coming here illegally.

So the national Republican party and John McCain have taken a fancy to calling Barack Obama a socialist.  Personally, I don’t think they have a whole lot of room to cast stones.  Remember the recent tax rebate that Bush and co. pushed to have sent to all taxpayers, for example?  The bottom line is that Barack Obama does not completely fit the technical definition of a socialist (or communist, etc.).  He might match some of the requirements, but so does McCain and other Republicans.  It is all a matter of degree.

Obama has earned the title, however inaccurate it may be, because of his tax plan.  As I recently said in a comment:

Over 30% of people in this country already have no federal tax liability. Obama can’t actually cut their taxes, as he promises.

Both Obama’s and McCain tax plans (neither of which will ever become reality) will push the number of “non payers” to over 40%. McCain wants to give individuals a health insurance tax credit and take away the business tax break. Obama plans on creating a litany of refundable tax credits. Do you know what that means? Many, if not all, of those 40-something percent will get a check from the government while owing nothing. Many already do due to existing “tax credits” such as the child tax credit and absurdly named “earned income” tax credit.

Obama simply plans to use the tax code for more social engineering and wealth distribution and trying to pass it off as a tax cut.

Call him a socialist.  Call him a Marxist.  I don’t care.  The real point is that the foundation of his philosophy is to forcibly take more and more from the “rich” (and the threshold for being rich will be lower than you might imagine) and give it to the poor.  It is wealth redistribution.  Do Republicans do similar things?  Regrettably so.  However, Obama is pledging to up the ante considerably.

Obama has fought back with the most idiotic argument I can imagine.

“By the end of the week, he’ll be accusing me of being a secret communist because I shared my toys in kindergarten. I shared my peanut butter and jelly sandwich.”

There is a glaring flaw with his logic.  He voluntarily shared his toys and sandwich (assuming his anecdote is even true).  What he is promising to do as president is to use the threat of force to take from some and involuntarily give it to another.  Imagine him, as a precocious tot, spotting a smaller boy with more toys and then taking some - over the smaller boy’s objections - so that the distribution was more equitable in his eyes.

I want to know why Obama, a millionaire, hasn’t shared his wealth with his own aunt, who was just found to live in a “rundown public housing” project.  I guess he would rather “share” my money and your money instead of his own money.

Here’s some food for thought.  Obama is one of the poverty warriors who wrongly think that forcibly transferring money from one group to another will solve poverty.  On that point he is horribly wrong.  Let’s say that he could magically redistribute all the wealth, though.  How would that work out for you?  As a crude estimate I’ll look at national and global GDP using the 2007 CIA World Factbook.

If Obama could equally distribute all the world’s wealth that would leave each person with just under $10,000.  That doesn’t sound too great.  If he could magically distribute all of the wealth in the U.S. it would leave each person with about $45,000 - still not very attractive for a lot of us.  That, of course, ignores the crushing blow that GDP would take as achievers responded by not working as hard just to see the government simply take the fruits of their labor.

The ugly truth is that by and large both poor and rich people got that way for a reason.  You can reset the game by “spreading the wealth around” but unless you can change people’s financial acumen and both natural and learned talents they will eventually drift back to their original camps.

Barack Obama wrote a review of Bill Ayers’ book A Kind and Just Parent: The Children of Juvenile Court, on Dec. 21, 1997. He said the book was “A searing and timely account of the juvenile court system, and the courageous individuals who rescue hope from despair.”  Obama is also mentioned in the book.

Remember that Ayers bombed the Pentagon, NYC Police, and the Capitol. Remember that Ayers tried to kill Judges and their families. Remember that Ayers said “I wish we had done more” on 9/11.

And then remember that Obama said that Ayers is “just a guy who lives in my neighborhood”.

Courtesy of zombie, read the whole thing (Zombie’s contributions are must reads / sees if you want to understand how hateful and deranged the Left is these days).

Barack Obama told a prospective voter that he will “spread the wealth around.”  That’s right, Obama is of the mindset that one of government’s roles is to actively distribute money.  I guess it is a more compact, folksy way of saying, “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.”