Neal Boortz has some good comments on the Fairness Doctrine today:

Note, please, that whenever despots try to seize control of a government, and with it a country, they first seize control of the means of communication. How can you observe this in country after country with despot after despot engaged in coup after coup and not understand that this is exactly what our own politicians do when they try to increase their control over broadcasting? How will the Democrat’s looming attempt to reign in talk radio be any different than Hugo Chavez’ attempts to shut down opposition newspapers in Venezuela?

Any political attempt to silence political speech of your political opposition or to intimidate them is clearly against the intent of the first amendment – ensuring that opposition to politicians has a full right to be heard, including using the latest technology. Boortz also makes the observation that if the nonsensical idea of “public airwaves” is the basis upon which free political speech on radio stations can be regulated, newspapers are delivered on “public highways” and can also be regulated. I’d add that magazines use the “public postal system” and that even web sites use “public cyberspace.” While certainly the government can regulate what is broadcast on radio, TV, etc., the idea of the Fairness Doctrine as a political weapon to silence your opposition is blatantly unconstitutional.

And guess which wing of the Supreme Court would be more than willing to accept the idea of the government having the power to regulate political speech over the airwaves?

As James Gattuso from the Heritage Foundation explained:

Arguments that the Fairness Doctrine is needed because certain types of media are too conservative, too negative, too partisan, or too anything actually strengthen the case against the regulation. Any law that is targeted at media based on the content of what is being said raises greater constitutional concerns and is much less likely to pass constitutional muster–and for good reason. Regulating speech in order to alter its content is exactly the sort of meddling that the First Amendment is meant to prohibit. It is simply not the job of politicians to “correct” the mix of opinions being expressed in the marketplace of ideas, even if–and especially if–they disagree with those opinions.

Liberals, if your basic commitment to the rights of citizens doesn’t convince you the Fairness Doctrine is a bad idea, take note: the Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon administrations used the Fairness Doctrine to intimidate their critics in the media. You do not want to go down this path. Perhaps you’d like Obama’s administration to have this power, but are you really that confident of success in 2012/2016?

Interesting quote from an African-American pastor:

The neo-Marxist left has achieved cultural hegemony. Through the news media, government education, and the entertainment media, Americans have been shaped and molded into the kind of people who view Ron Paul as a political hack, while applauding gay marriage (one of the first lines out of Obama’s mouth last night was an acknowledgement of homosexuals), wealth redistribution, and government intervention in the free market! How ironic. We sent our children to Caesar for their education, and yesterday they voted just like Romans (the majority of 18-30 year-olds flooded the polls for Obama whether they were professing “Christian” or not). These young people believe hatred and racism are America’s biggest problems, and that the election of Mr. Obama is the cure (along with Hate Crimes Legislation). They believe America is evil because we don’t have universal healthcare like the Europeans. They believe homosexuality is innate, the existence poverty is a sin, and abortion is an ethical (and completely personal) means of birth control. They believe in anthropogenic global warming, Darwinian evolution, Gramscian Marxism, and Freudian Psychology. In short, they believe what they’ve been taught during their 14,000 hours of government indoctrination.

Kids are being taught by government, in government schools, that government is the answer. And many people in this country fully expect government to deliver.

Don’t buy it. If the left intends to fully deliver on their promise, they’ll run America into the ground, just like the stagnating European countries that have been playing around with socialism for decades. Most likely, though, they’ll just continue the path of corruption and do their best to entrench their own power. Maybe Republicans will learn their lesson and get it right – or maybe we’ll have to look to another party to accurately reflect the ideal of limited government. (Libertarian? Constitution? Another?)

No human government has ever managed to do what Obama is promising, not without significant tyranny and oppression of the opposition. In that sense, Obama’s promises are pretty much empty ones – Americans, most likely, do not have the political will to endure giving any politician that much power over them.

But I could be wrong about that.

This election is not over for John McCain. The media likes to spin this as essentially over, but Republicans tend to do better than the polls indicate, and there are a lot of undecided voters in just about every poll. Many of these are undecided about both candidates, but overall, Obama represents the more radical departure and is not as likely to get those voters as McCain is. McCain would be, without question, a phenomenal commander-in-chief, and has been a model of bipartisanship for years. He is a moderate, and as undecided moderates make up their minds they will likely vote McCain. The only question is, will they actually go and vote, and will it be enough?

The other factor is Sarah Palin. The media isn’t reporting very heavily, but she routinely attracts thousands to her rallies, while Biden attracts hundreds. I don’t think the polling data is taking into account the attraction she has to women who do not regularly vote. If Obama is going to be turning out the African-American vote this year – a rather reliable voting block for Democrats, anyway – Palin will be turning out the “stay-at-home-mom” vote this year, a mixed voting block that can turn this election.

To be clear, many things have to go right for McCain for him to win tomorrow. But it is not impossible, and I’d venture to say that it is not even unlikely that he can win, especially with the polls trending towards him currently.

But with the way Obama’s victory has been painted as a sure thing, be prepared for all hell to break loose if he loses. Riots, certainly. There are cities where riots happen when their sports team wins. But also the angry left will get a heck of a lot angrier, and they will (still) forget that the only Democrat to get elected President over the last 30 years campaigned as a conservative. The loss will be blamed on everything but the utter liberalness of their candidate.

An Obama win, however, could be even more devastating to the Democratic party. If Obama fulfills most of his promises – which will be likely given Democratic control of the house and senate – he will seriously erode the strength of the economy. The economy is weakening and on the brink for a full depression, and bad policies have a very likely tendency to just push it over the edge. They will still blame George W. Bush, of course, but after four years that will not resonate with voters.

Add any kind of serious foreign crisis – which Biden famously assured us will happen – and as Obama blunders it he will lose a lot of the luster he’s built up for himself.

On top of that, I guarantee you that the Democrats will try to re-enact the Fairness Doctrine, in a move to silence conservative talk radio. Obama has said that he doesn’t support doing this, but Pelosi and other congressional Democrats are big supporters of it, and will, at a minimum, try it. Doing so will ignite conservative opposition in a way the left has never seen, and will usher in huge changes in the election that follows (either 2010 or 2012).

In some ways, I’m interested to see how things would go with Obama as president. How nutty will the Democrats get, and how much will the media let them get away with? But in reality, I have to vote my conscience, and my conscience says this:

1) I will never vote for a candidate who supports partial-birth abortion, sucking babies brains out of their heads while they are halfway through the birth canal. Likewise I will not vote for a candidate who could not find it within themselves to take a stand and support the idea that healthcare must be provided to children born alive after a botched abortion. These issues speak volumes about the character of a person, even if they believe abortion should be legal.

2) I will vote for a candidate who has shown leadership in suggesting and supporting military strategies that result in more peace and stability, rather than the candidate who vowed to pull out troops, even if that meant chaos and instability in a country whose leaders we deposed after years of UN inaction. We do not need to prove Osama bin Laden right and act as a “paper tiger.”

3) I will never vote for a candidate who believes that it is a proper role of government to “spread the wealth around.”

4) I will not vote for a candidate who has a laundry list of radicals among his friends, mentors, and associates. Obama’s frequent lies about his relationship to Jeremiah Wright, his refusal to release records during his college years, his shady dealings with convicted felon Tony Rezko, and his associations with radicals such as Ayers and Khalidi, all are sufficient reason to vote against him.

5) I will not vote for a candidate who thinks that unions should be formed without a private ballot – Obama’s support for the (deceptively-named) Employee Free Choice Act is indefensible, and will encourage union organizer’s intimidation of workers.

6) I will vote for the candidate who has promised to nominate judges whose desire is to uphold the rule of law, and interpret the Constitution and the laws of the land as they have been written, rather than the candidate who believes that the most important qualification for a Supreme Court justice is a “sense of fairness.” If we continue to allow judges to rule as it seems fair to them, then none of our rights are safe.

As you can tell, most of my vote tomorrow will be against Barack Obama. I urge you to do the same.

Finally, there are many other races tomorrow that are worth watching out for, but there are two that I actually really, really hope for a Democratic defeat. First of all, if Al Franken is elected Senator that will represent, to me, the end of a sensible electorate. Second, John Murtha has still not been held accountable for his despicable verbal attacks on the Marines regarding the Haditha incident. Both of these races are close. If Obama wins and Franken and Murtha lose, I’ll consider election day a draw.

You absolutely must read this. Boortz expertly summarized the issues at stake in this election. After discussing some basic issues, he gets into the main concerns:

• Wright, Ayers, Rezko, etc. – “If Barack Obama was applying for a security clearance as a government employee, these associations would disqualify him. We are, my friends, about to have a president who doesn’t qualify for a security clearance.”
• Tax Policy – “Obama didn’t wish to use the police power of the state to collect taxes necessary for the legitimate functions of government; he wanted to use his taxing power to promote some vaporous ‘fairness’ in our economy.”
• Wealth Redistribution – “Just what percentage of voters out there do you think are going to vote for Obama simply because he is promising them someone else’s money?”
• Increasing Small Business Taxes – “It is not the percentage of businesses who will have to pay the increased taxes; it’s the percentage of the total of small business employees who work for those businesses.” While 95% of small businesses have a revenue of less than $250,000 a year, those are largely the ones with 1 and 2 employees – they’re also struggling, and quite often failing (many lasting less than four years). The other 5% with higher incomes are the “larger,” more stable small businesses, and have many more employees. A large percentage of small business employees will be hurt by Obama’s tax plan. When faced with increasing taxes, small businesses owners will typically cut expenses. And their employees are usually their biggest expense.
• Employee Free Choice Act – Obama wants to remove the secret ballot from union elections. “This is nothing less than Barack Obama and his Democrat pals legitimizing union intimidation in the workplace.”
• The Supreme Court – “A recent and rather shocking survey showed that around 80% of people who support Barack Obama believe that the Supreme Court should base its decisions not on the Constitution, but on what’s ‘fair.’” Supreme Court justices are supposed to uphold the law, according to the Constitution, not create new rights and judge on a vague sense of fairness.

Yet another reason why I do not like Democrats…

Many people I know are upset with Saxby Chambliss (R) for voting for the bailout bill, and are prepared to vote for Jim Martin (D) for Senate as a punishment. I understand the desire to do this. The bailout bill went from a 2-page bad proposal to a 450-page bill full of junk, that still wouldn’t work.

There’s an ad out in support of Jim Martin that is attacking Chambliss’ support for the FairTax. Every two years we get candidates on the Democrat side who have the bright idea of running ads against the FairTax. The problem is, they always misrepresent it. Watch the ad here.

The ad claims that Chambliss wants to add a new 23% national sales tax. Which is inaccurate in the sense that it is incomplete. Any mention of the FairTax that only mentions the new sales tax is inherently misleading and deceptive when it does not also mention that it removes all other federal income, payroll, inheritance, capital gains and business taxes, while at the same time providing a rebate for all taxes paid up to the poverty level consumption.

Denise Majette tried this four years ago when running against Johnny Isakson. Her actions four years ago turned me from a casual FairTax supporter into a die-hard one. It also turned me into a Boortz reader/listener. Democrats repeated similar attacks in 2006 to very limited success.

The problem with these types of attacks is that when someone finds out the truth, they will no longer trust you. This is not the kind of thing where you’re cherry picking issues out of complicated votes, or parsing statements to make them sound worse than they are. These kinds of attacks are plainly false, as anyone who understands anything about the FairTax can tell you.

Most of these attacks on the FairTax, including this one, are actually paid for by the national Democrat committees. This one was paid for by the Democrat Senatorial Campaign Committee, led by Chuck Schumer. The Democrat Congressional Campaign Committee has been running similar ads – see the FairTax.org Hall of Shame.

Do me a favor. Send Democrats a message that these kinds of attacks will backfire, as they did four years ago. The FairTax needs Senators who will continue to support it. Vote for Saxby Chambliss, even if you have to swallow hard before you do it. The FairTax is that important.

And if you don’t understand the FairTax, honestly, it’s the simplest thing in the world to understand. Read about the basics of the plan (including answers to common criticisms), and if you’re so inclined, read the full text of the FairTax bill. It replaces 7,500 pages of IRS tax rules with a simple 133 page document.

If you like, as a comparison, you can view the full current tax code here. Good luck with that. Apparently, Democrats like Jim Martin think that 7,500 pages of tax code is far more preferable to 133 pages of tax code.

You likely won’t see this as news in the mainstream media, but rest assured that if Palin had made this kind of gaffe it would have been front page news.

When asked about the role of the vice presidency, Palin agreed that the vice presidency is a flexible position, and covers both the executive and legislative branches (since the VP is also the president of the senate).

Biden disagreed by criticizing Cheney as “the most dangerous vice president we’ve had probably in American history.” I’ll let historians debate that point, but he backed that up by saying:

He has — he has — the idea he doesn’t realize that Article I of the Constitution defines the role of the vice president of the United States, that’s the executive — he works in the executive branch. He should understand that. Everyone should understand that.

First of all, Article I describes the legislative branch – as McCain’s website says, “otherwise known as the branch in which Joe Biden has served for the last 36 years.” The executive branch is described in Article II. Second, the ONLY duty ascribed to the vice president (other than counting the electoral college votes) is given in Article I as the president of the Senate, which indicates that he does indeed have a major role in the legislative branch. Some framers actually refused to sign the Constitution because they felt that the vice president’s dual roles was a violation of the goal of separation of powers!

Rest assured, if Palin had screwed up like that, it would be covered far and wide, as proof-positive that she is unfit for the vice presidency. (More history on the power and role of the vice president can be found at senate.gov.)

The second gaffe, which is really more of an outright lie, was when Biden claimed that “This is simply not true about Barack Obama. He did not say sit down with Ahmadinejad.” Obama himself tried to lie about this at the first presidential debate, as I mentioned last week.

This is so easily provably false that it’s ridiculous. Here’s just one video:

John McCain’s site has a full report on Obama’s statements in this regard, including quoting from interviews and press conferences:

Harry Smith: “You said, ‘I will talk to so and so and Hugo Chavez and etc., etc.’”

Obama: “Exactly, and without preconditions.” (CBS’ “The Early Show,” 10/15/07)

Obama: “There has been no confusion. I have been absolutely clear on this. I will meet not just with our friends but with our enemies. I will meet without preconditions.” (CNN’s “The Situation Room,” 2/4/08)

If you don’t believe all of this, how about Obama’s website, even today?

Diplomacy: Obama supports tough, direct presidential diplomacy with Iran without preconditions.

Look, this should be no surprise to anyone who followed the primary process. Obama said repeatedly, unwaveringly, that he would meet with these leaders, personally, without preconditions. And Biden himself called this dangerous.

Biden: “Would I make a blanket commitment to meet unconditionally with the leaders of each of those countries within the first year I was elected president? Absolutely positively no.” (Remarks At The National Press Club, Washington, DC, 8/1/07)

Clinton: “I thought that was irresponsible and, frankly, naive to say that you would commit to meeting with, you know, Chavez and Castro and others within the first year.” (ABC News,’ “Good Morning America,” 7/25/07)

I’d love for some Obama supporters to try to defend this. But there’s simply no way that you can. Not only was his original position dangerous and naive, but now he’s making outright lies about it to try to win the election.

If all of that isn’t enough for you, McCain’s site details a list of 14 lies Joe Biden made during the debate. Topics include tax votes, offshore drilling, troop funding, clean coal, alternative energy, health insurance, oil taxes, General McKiernan’s comments, regulation, and more. On just about every topic covered in the debate, really, Biden resorted to distortions and lies.

More of the same!

Overall, the debate was pretty good. McCain was consistent as I expected, and Obama backtracked on many of his primary positions as I expected.

There was something I really wish McCain had hammered Obama on, though.

Obama kept bringing up that we need to focus on why the financial crisis happened, and kept blaming it on Bush (and McCain). McCain did mention that he had warned about this a few years ago, but he should have more explicitly blamed the problem directly at the feet of the Democrats.

The following video does a great job of explaining this entire mess with the mortgage crisis (note, embedded video updated):

He could have easily pointed out the political pressure that the Democrats placed on the mortgage industry, dating back to the 70′s and increased in the 90′s, to provide loans to people who would normally not qualify for them. He could have pointed out Obama’s relationship with ACORN (where he was a “community organizer”), suing and threatening banks into writing more and more risky loans and driving up home prices in the meantime. And he could have called Obama out on Jim Johnson and Franklin Raines.

I have a theory as to why he didn’t, though – McCain is currently in the middle of working out a bailout deal and didn’t want to jeopardize it by placing the blame so publicly in the Democrat’s lap, where it belongs. Still, if Obama wants to analyze the reason for the crisis, McCain should have obliged him.

Another point he could have made easily is that Obama wants to raise taxes on businesses by closing loopholes. It would have been the perfect opportunity to point out that businesses don’t pay taxes, Senator, their consumers pay the taxes, embedded in the cost of the product or service. We need politicians who are willing to point out basic economic principles when other politicians try to pander to American ignorance.

There were many other areas where McCain did hammer Obama, and I’m glad he did. Obama was definitely backing away from his position on direct presidential diplomacy. In the primary debates, he stated that within the first year he’d personally sit down with Ahmadinejad without preconditions. Tonight he tried to paint that as starting with low level ambassadors and working his way up, which is exactly what everyone else has always supported. McCain adequately explained why this is dangerous, because direct talks legitimizes the kind of behavior Ahmadinejad has been displaying. Obama then tried to make it sound like Henry Kissinger was supportive of his approach, which is absolutely ludicrous. Look for that one to be played over and over again.

The other thing McCain harped on was Obama’s stance on the surge. Obama did not, and could not, adequately explain his opposition to the surge, and would not admit that he was wrong about it.

McCain also pointed out Obama’s initial response to Russia’s invasion of Georgia was weak and unequivocal. Obama denied it, but it’s true. His initial statement was “I strongly condemn the outbreak of violence in Georgia, and urge an immediate end to armed conflict.” McCain, on the other hand, called Russia out by saying “Russia should immediately and unconditionally cease its military operations and withdraw all forces from sovereign Georgian territory.” The differences are rather huge.

Stanley Kurtz (the guy Obama tried to silence on issues surrounding Ayers) has been pouring through the details of Obama’s time at the Chicago Annenburg Challenge, where Obama served as chairman of an organization created by the 60′s radical and unrepentant terrorist, Bill Ayers. Kurtz wrote a good column today detailing some of what the CAC was about, how it was tied to ACORN (where Obama did his “community organizing”), and how it went about it’s radical agenda.

There is a reason why Obama isn’t talking about his time there, and doesn’t want anyone else to, either.

The Obama campaign has cried foul when Bill Ayers comes up, claiming “guilt by association.” Yet the issue here isn’t guilt by association; it’s guilt by participation. As CAC chairman, Mr. Obama was lending moral and financial support to Mr. Ayers and his radical circle. That is a story even if Mr. Ayers had never planted a single bomb 40 years ago.

Read the full column for details.