In today’s American Thinker, “Dave Smithee” (a pseudonym), does a fine job in pointing out the dangerous gamble that Liberalism has taken in promoting Barack Obama to the land’s highest office:

In a receding economy and aided by a political monopoly, President Obama is going to prove unable to resist his fetish for increased taxation and eco-regulatory strangulation. In a dangerous time, his vanity will lead him to grant legitimacy to nations that wish America ill. When an Obama presidency with majorities in the House and Senate ends in economic calamity, emboldened international foes, or both—as history wearily tells us it must—then the healing can begin.

...For the Democrats, it was an act of sublime short-term calculation to trot out Obama.  A man whose easy, telegenic charm was able to narcotize into irrelevance all the facts that would have rendered him unelectable in anyone else’s skin. The sewage of slum lords, communist sympathizers and domestic terrorists swirl about his ankles. And yet a flash of smile and a few words in his soothing baritone captured the American imagination and soothed a majority of the electorate.  But now the work is going to start. Results are going to matter, and if there’s one fact about Barry that the media was unable to obscure, it’s that he is a candidate truly uncluttered by moderation.

He is the proto-Democrat; liberalism’s gleaming new flagship. And that’s going to be a long-term problem for Democrats in ways they can scarcely now imagine.

If you’re looking for a bit of a lift and a boost in motivation, read the whole thing.

I think the article makes a great point, but I also think Liberalism’s great Obama gamble has a chance in succeeding.  In Western Europe, their late 20th century journey into socialism, made possible by an American nuclear umbrella, became effectively permanent when a tipping point was reached.  The moment the public began seeing government subsidy as a right, and government intervention as the only answer to hardship, the jig was up.  Government handouts, once commenced, rarely end.  It’s easy to envision going from a private healthcare system to government-subsidized socialized healthcare, but the other way around, please, don’t kid yourself.

America’s greatness is built upon a foundation of self-reliance.  Innovation in America, driven by entrepreneurship, has at its core the eternal truth that man will do best when he is incentivized and rewarded for his efforts.  Who can deny this?  Yet, if we believe that the American people are incapable of sacrificing their economic freedom in exchange for perceived economic security in the form of Liberalism’s siren song, we are mistaken.  America’s greatness, rooted in liberty, is not inevitable, it must be fought for continuously, in every generation, year after year and day after day.

How ugly is this:

I have a tough time buying that half of this is true.  How sad it is to watch the McCain campaign take out their rage at Sarah Palin, the one reason McCain had the level of support from the base that he could muster, given his repeated past indiscretions.

Lastly, is it just me, or did Fox’s Carl Cameron thoroughly enjoy conveying this report?

I had the distinct displeasure of spending last night in a room of 10 liberals in a Manhattan apartment.  Don’t get me wrong, these were friends, mostly, but it was anything but enjoyable.  There’s no way around it, last night was terrible.  Yes, it could have been worse, the Dems could have gotten to 60 in the Senate and losses in the House could have been much worse.  But what matters most is that Barack Obama has won the Presidency.  In my eyes this spells disaster.  I can acknowledge the historical significance of the moment and the monumental achievement of a country in which just 40 years ago black people were treated as second-class citizens.  I would, however, have been much happier had the achievement been bestowed upon a better man.

Looking back, I believe he was able to win for the following reasons:

1.  The biggest factor in Obama’s victory was the financial crisis, pure and simple.  The panic led to voters who would normally never vote for a politician of Obama’s stripe to see him as a viable alternative.  I see this as a case of prescribing an amputation for a broken hand, but it is what it is.  Whatever bounce in the polls McCain had coming out of the Palin pick and the convention was swiftly obliterated by the crisis.

2.  The media’s unbelievably bias coverage, most importantly of said financial crisis.  This not only paved the way for Obama to get away with lie after lie after lie (see here), but even more importantly allowed the public to believe the Republicans were to blame for the financial crisis, a shameful deception.  See Orson Scott Card’s Would the Last Honest Reporter Please Turn On the Lights? I am a firm believer that journalism died in 2008, but I also believe that not everyone witnessed its death alongside me.

3.  Barack Obama ran a spectacular campaign.  We can try to deny it, but the guy knows what he’s doing.  He first knocked off Hillary Clinton, then built a machine capable of turning out the vote.

4.  Obama’s gigantic money advantage was the final nail in the coffin.  He was able to amass such an advantage only because he lied about taking public funds and willfully encouraging campaign donor fraud through his website.

5.  As for McCain’s role, he could not articulate and was not sufficiently committed to Conservative solutions to this nation’s problems.  In the end, he was trying to out-Democrat a Democrat, not a good position to be in.  What Conservatism needs now is leadership that is capable of formulating and articulating Conservative solutions to the American public.  It’s not easy to defeat the guy who says he’ll give you everything, but it can be done because at heart the American people are a self-sufficient people and I do not believe that has changed.

6.  Lastly, I’ve heard a lot about how Sarah Palin is to blame for McCain’s defeat.  What nonsense.  The people saying this are doing so for one of two reasons; 1. they are liberals trying to damage Palin as much as possible in fear of her strength in the future or 2. they are republicans in search of a scapegoat.

As we are all witnessing, even beginning with last night’s victory speech, Barack Obama has already begun to lower expectations of what can be accomplished.  We’ve already heard “the road will be difficult and the climb steep” and “we may not be able to accomplish everything in the first year or even the first term.” It will not be long before we hear the cliched, “having seen how terrible of shape George W. Bush has left us in, I will not be able to hold up many of my campaign promises, but I assure the American people that change is coming, yes we can.”

Well, America, you took the bait, now comes the switch.

Rush Limbaugh linked to an extremely important, and scary, video today. 

Do you see the animosity towards individuals who work hard and earn their money?  He’s confused that these people have the audacity to think they’re entitled to the money they’ve worked for. 

Twilight Zone indeed. 

Fox News just called Ohio for Obama, so it looks like it’s over.  At least it doesn’t look like Democrats will get to 60 in the Senate.

Say hello to the wilderness, and say hello the beginning of the rebuilding of Conservatism.

If you want to know more about the character of John McCain, I haven’t found anything better than this story, by Michael Lewis, in which he discusses McCain’s relationship with Morris Udall, the Arizona liberal congressman with whom McCain would become lifelong friends.  An excerpt:

By 7:30 we were on the road, and McCain was reminiscing about his early political career. When he was elected to the House in 1982, he said, he was “a freshman right-wing Nazi.” But his visceral hostility toward Democrats generally was quickly tempered by his tendency to see people as individuals and judge them that way. He was taken in hand by Morris Udall, the Arizona congressman who was the liberal conscience of the Congress and a leading voice for reform. ...

“Mo reached out to me in 50 different ways,” McCain recalled. “Right from the start, he’d say: ‘I’m going to hold a press conference out in Phoenix. Why don’t you join me?’ All these journalists would show up to hear what Mo had to say. In the middle of it all, Mo would point to me and say, ‘I’d like to hear John’s views.’ Well, hell, I didn’t have any views. But I got up and learned and was introduced to the state.” Four years later, when McCain ran for and won Barry Goldwater’s Senate seat, he said he felt his greatest debt of gratitude not to Goldwater--who had shunned him--but to Udall. ...

For the past few years, Udall has lain ill with Parkinson’s disease in a veterans hospital in Northeast Washington, which is where we were heading. Every few weeks, McCain drives over to pay his respects. These days the trip is a ceremony, like going to church, only less pleasant. Udall is seldom conscious, and even then he shows no sign of recognition. McCain brings with him a stack of newspaper clips on Udall’s favorite subjects....

Aside from a congressional seal glued to a door jamb, there was no indication what the man in the bed had done for his living. Beneath a torn gray blanket on a narrow hospital cot, Udall lay twisted and disfigured. No matter how many times McCain tapped him on the shoulder and called his name, his eyes remained shut.

A nurse entered and seemed surprised to find anyone there, and it wasn’t long before I found out why: Almost no one visits anymore. In his time, which was not very long ago, Mo Udall was one of the most-sought-after men in the Democratic Party. Yet as he dies in a veterans hospital a few miles from the Capitol, he is visited regularly only by a single old political friend, John McCain.

A big thanks to John Hinderaker of Powerline for pointing out this story and editing the excerpt beautifully.

This is just beautiful.  The candidate of Hope and Change is nothing more than your typical lying politician, saying whatever it takes to get himself elected.  If you did happen to vote for him today, you owe it to yourself to watch this, just so you know that your expectations of this man shouldn’t be too high.

“Change.” Please.

This is only one example, let’s hope it’s not too widespread:

My voting process was smooth and quick, any stories out there from the readers?

I just wanted to bring this piece by Powerline’s John Hinderaker and Scott Johnson to everyone’s attention.

A Closing Argument for John McCain

McCain, however, also harks back to JFK – the JFK who represented a generation “tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace, proud of our ancient heritage – and unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of those human rights to which this Nation has always been committed, and to which we are committed today at home and around the world.”

Read the whole thing.

First up, John McCain opens up the show:

Next, McCain does The News:

And lastly, Ben Affleck destroys Olbermann: