Bush and Cheney's secret missions

Amen, and thank you, Mr. President:

"People say, 'Why would you do that?'" the president said in an Oval Office interview with The Washington Times on Friday. "And the answer is: This is my duty. The president is commander in chief, but the president is often comforter in chief, as well. It is my duty to be - to try to comfort as best as I humanly can a loved one who is in anguish."

Mr. Bush, for instance, has sent personal letters to the families of every one of the more than 4,000 troops who have died in the two wars, an enormous personal effort that consumed hours of his time and escaped public notice. The task, along with meeting family members of troops killed in action, has been so wrenching - balancing the anger, grief and pride of families coping with the loss symbolized by a flag-draped coffin - that the president often leaned on his wife, Laura, for emotional support.

"I lean on the Almighty and Laura," Mr. Bush said in the interview. "She has been very reassuring, very calming."

The purge begins...

The headline this morning on Drudge: The Big Purge... The NY Post, Dallas Morning News, and Washington Times were given the boot off the Obama plane. Interestingly, these three newspapers endorsed McCain a few days ago.

Well, there's really nothing wrong with that. The Obama campaign can invite and kick out whoever it wants. It's just funny that they did this soon after the publications endorsed the opposing candidate.

What's worse than an Obama presidency?

Mona Charen paints a bleak picture of an "Obama/Pelosi/Reid regime." Riding on Obama's surging popularity and the worsening economy (by the way, notice the correlation), the Democrats are within reach a super-majority in Congress, having enough seats to be filibuster-proof. If that scenario comes true, then the country will be looking at some very liberal changes in government which will trickle down into society, affecting the lives of everyone.

Democrats want bigger government, and obviously to support that you'd require more taxes. How else can government fund nationalized healthcare? How else can government give credit for college education?

These points seem lost to Harold Meyerson of the Washington Post, who writes:

...the Reagan-Thatcher faith in unregulated capitalism, to which every GOP presidential candidate was pledging allegiance just last winter, has collapsed? The doctrine of laissez faire has been so dominant, so pervasive over the past three decades that hundreds of Democratic politicians can deliver a paean to the market at the drop of a hat, but not a single Republican pol can plausibly defend government as a check on capitalism run amok, even at the drop of thousands of points in the Dow.

The truth is that laissez faire works. The credit crisis that's going on occurred because of government intervention in the first place! The government interfered with free market principles by passing legislation which created a subprime mortgage market. Any bank in its right mind would never offer loans to people who cannot afford to pay back. Yet the government forced banks to lend to subprime borrowers, then created Fannie and Freddie to back those loans, and look what happened...

The issue is beyond nationalizing banks and injecting trillions into the economy. Mr. Meyerson fails to point out that government was the problem, and now government still is the problem.

Freedom of speech only when it favors liberals

Evidently liberals believe in the First Amendment only when the other side is shut up. Michael Barone of Washington Times calls it "liberal thugocracy" --

Today's liberals seem to be taking their marching orders from other quarters. Specifically, from the college and university campuses where administrators, armed with speech codes, have for years been disciplining and subjecting to sensitivity training any students who dare to utter thoughts that liberals find offensive. The campuses that once prided themselves as zones of free expression are now the least free part of our society.

Not to mention liberals' infatuation of the "fairness doctrine," a weapon against the conservative media, especially talk radio. Liberal talk radio, Air America, crashed and burned because it simply cannot compete against conservative talk radio. Liberal bias permeates the print and television media, so who would want to listen to more of that nonsense on radio? If you can't beat 'em, silence 'em. That's the liberal way.

Obama the media darling

We're all aware of the left-leaning bias in the mainstream media (MSM). We should be thankful that there are outlets such as FOX News, conservative talk radio, and crazy right-wing bloggers to balance the information out there.

Tony Blankley of the Washington Times writes an op-ed labeling the MSM as "straight out propagandists for the Obama campaign." And he's right. The major media are infatuated with Obama and have cast their votes for president. Obama is the product of MSM hype. He's a pop star and the MSM writes his songs and scripts.

The 269 tie

The Washington Times has an interesting scenario which I'm sure both campaigns are aware of: the Electoral College 269 tie:

On Nov. 5, the presidential election winds up in a electoral-college tie, 269-269, the Democrat-controlled House picks Sen. Barack Obama as president, but the Senate, with former Democrat Joe Lieberman voting with Republicans, deadlocks at 50-50, so Vice President Dick Cheney steps in to break the tie to make Republican Sarah Palin his successor.

How crazy would that be for Sen. Lieberman and V.P. Cheney to ultimately shatter the Democrats' White House dream? Based on recent polls, the most plausible scenario would be New Hampshire turning red with its four electoral votes. I'm betting that N.H. is getting a lot of attention from both campaigns because of this.