On Candidates for Vice-President in 2008

On April 20, 2008 Karl Rove made public the wishes of Dr. Condoleezza Rice. She has told him that she has no intention of seeking elective office. Such sentiments expressed at this time would remove her from all considerations during this election year.

On the Democrat side presently there is speculation about whether one of the major candidates would take a position on the Democrat ticket as vice-president. When you understand the motives of those two people, Clinton and Obama, there is no doubt about their intentions. We can safely predict that neither one will run as anyone's vice-president. A vice-president has no power to give pardons. So that position will not interest either Clinton or Obama.


WHY IS BARACK OBAMA RUNNING FOR THE PRESIDENCY?

Now that politician Barack Obama is getting the vetting he has avoided for twenty years, we have some information about who he is and where he might take this country if people vote to put him in charge.

No one should be surprised that Obama's history has gone unexamined for so long. Remember John Kerry? He had a free pass from the liberal media for thirty years. We only learned by way of some swift-boat veterans why he served six months of a twelve-month tour in Vietnam and what really happened during those six months.

So now we are learning a lot more about Obama. We have to ask the question "Why is this man running for the presidency?"

He doesn't have the managerial experience to be President. It is a big task that has been offered to governors and accomplished mayors with good reason.

He has no big ideas to solve the country's problems. When this was pointed out repeatedly he came up with 700 billion dollars in give-away plans. He would revive the Civilian Conservation Corps (though he doesn't call it that) and promises to help everyone with their health insurance, etc. Make no mistake where the money would come from if he pushed any of this through a compliant Democrat Congress. If you pay taxes now, expect to add another twenty percent to your tax bills for the next four years.

He calls himself a "uniter" but there is a complete void of evidence that he has been any such thing in the past. He is the Senate's most liberal voter. On important issues he never has sought common ground with the other side.

He has no military background or experience of any kind to support his elevation to Commander-in-Chief. In fact, he is tone deaf on the threat posed to this country by international terrorism. We are winning on the Iraqi battlefront and Obama is still insisting we are losing and should not be there.

The Obama campaign slogan should be "Keep Despair Alive" (a summary coined by Matt Labash of the WEEKLY STANDARD). We have learned how Obama has been suffused by the hate-filled rhetoric of Rev. Wright. And we know that the Obama family has bought into those views. Michelle Obama, lacking her husband's caution on the campaign trail, has let the cat out of the bag. She has said America is "downright mean" and not had anything to be proud of for her until her husband has been running for the presidency. She has advised people not to try to move up into the middle-class. These are strange views for a couple of yuppies until you consider those twenty years of reinforcement of their dismal liberalism.

So what in the world is this person doing running for the presidency against the inevitable candidate with the name of Clinton? The only practical reason that comes to mind is that the Daley political machine in Chicago is going to be in need of some Presidential pardons. Now if you are a Chicago politician this is a masterful stroke. Tony Rezko, a close friend and supporter of Obama we now know, is in court. He will be smiling knowing that if all goes badly in the courts he will receive a get-out-of-jail-free card from the next president.

Yes, Rezko could buy one from the next President Clinton. but there are more uncertainties there. She has had high negatives and might not get elected. And the cost would be some hundreds of thousands of dollars per pardon to the Hillary Clinton Presidential Library. I should point out here to young people and some inattentive citizens that the selling of pardons is illegal. But Bill Clinton showed everyone that it can be done without any consequences. His supporters will tell you with a straight face, "Well, everyone is a crook, you know. Other presidents do the same thing."

I would speculate that about two years ago a meeting was held in a smoke-filled room in Chicago. William Daley, Barack Obama, and a few selected witnesses arranged that the Daley machine would back Obama's run for the office of President against the Clinton machine. In return there will be all the pardons the Chicago boys need when the time comes at no further cost. They will have been paid for beforehand.

Not everyone is a crook, friends. It just looks that way when we let so many bums get away with these acts that damage our collective welfare and might lead in the coming years to the destruction of this republic.

Mark A. Hall
Minneapolis, MN
March 29, 2008

A FEBRUARY 2008 ENDORSEMENT FOR
Dr. Condoleezza Rice for President

THE FASHIONABLE CANDIDATE

Condoleezza Rice is a woman...a black person...a conservative...and ready to serve from day one. Everything America seems to want in 2008.

America is very much in need of a steady hand at the top of the Executive Branch. Congress is back in the hands of one party. And that party is doing a dismal job of running the Legislative Branch. The Judicial Branch is already making some poor decisions and will make even more if the wrong judges are appointed by the next President.

There is a war on. The Iraqi battlefront is improving greatly. The Afghan battlefront is not yet secure. The enemy is now shifting to a Pakistani battlefront and we must make the right moves to contend in that arena.

The homefront is now better guarded than before the year 2000. Our attention to homeland security must not flag. It should not be turned over to people who showed us in the 1990s that they had no idea how to keep America secure.

Ninety-five percent of Americans who want to work are employed. Many of those people want to improve their lot. So it should be the intention of the future government to allow them to do that.

The future economy does have problems (there are always varying problems allowed to fester) and they must be addressed. We saw how difficult it is to get politicians to work on them when cures for the Social Security dilemma were shouted down.

To cope with all these issues we need to continue strong leadership in the White House. We were fortunate to have George W. Bush take over in 2001 and start to clean up the mess created by the prior occupants of the White House. The prior occupants had ignored homeland security and delivered up scandals so numerous they are encyclopedic in volume.

As a reward for the current President's industry he has been demonized by the people he ousted and by press operatives who voted twice for his opponents.

Now we need to find another leader. One of the few people with the preparedness, integrity and honesty to do this nearly- thankless job is Dr. Condoleezza Rice. I would appeal to her to seek and assume the presidency in 2009 at this time when the nation is most in need of someone with her credentials and familiarity with the Executive Branch. She is in a position to command the government and assemble the people who will administer all the arms of government. She will have the respect of our armed forces, of government workers, of all the voters, and of business leaders.

It will be a sacrifice for her to give more of her life to such an end. I expect it would be a great relief for her to depart the strain of her current work as head of the State Department. However, at this time we are in danger of passing leadership to people who are either weak or criminal in their intent. Some even manage to be both weak and criminal.

We cannot afford to repeat the mistakes of the 1990s or to yield power to those with little experience in getting things done. We don't need people who can only point to creating legislation as their deeds (and some cannot even do that). We need trustworthy people who can manage government to get things done. Our survival in a harsh world is at stake.



WHEN OUR TENT IS SO BIG, WHY DON'T WE HAVE BETTER CANDIDATES?

The year 2008 has turned into the March of the Political Pygmies. American voters are about to be faced with the sorriest choice of presidential candidates since Ford versus Carter.

The Democrats are offering up two people without the experience to command a country. One is still wet behind the ears. The other is a pathetic doormat of a spouse who never demonstrated the backbone to curb the endless infidelities of her sexual predator of a husband. Neither one should be taken seriously for the important post of President.

The Republicans have whittled down their options to one senator without the temperament or managerial experience to lead a country.

The future of America ought to be a picture of optimism, not the spectacle of question marks raised by such choices. Why are we faced with such choices from the two major parties?

Despite the welcome emergence of alternatives in daily media sources, the influence of the legacy media is still potent. The left-wing media hacks outnumber other voices. They still set the daily agenda. repeat false talking points, and play favorites.

The shortcomings of the two Democrats are obvious. If two people with such baggage were Republicans the major media would all roast them until they fled the scene. But the major media support the Democrats and give them a pass.

The American voters are not the victims of a cruel fate; they are in large part the victims of their own past mistakes. Twice they voted into power a couple who ran the White House as a playground and a money-making enterprise while neglecting the long-term welfare of the nation. That couple wants to go back and enjoy that power once again for another eight years.

The only alternative within the Democrat Party is a green (inexperienced) politician who looks good on TV and preaches "hope and change." In politics the words "hope and change" are known as glittering generalities. In civics classes they used to teach young people to be wary of such tricks. Perhaps they don't teach that any longer.

On the Republican side the undue influence of left-wing media operatives (not media owners, mind you) has bludgeoned up-and-coming Republican politicians into withdrawing from major races. One after another these biased media people have blackened reputations and used whatever sticks they could find to chase away men such as Lamar Alexander, George Allen, and Rudy Giuliani.

This is not new. George Romney was run out of a presidential campaign for saying he had been "brainwashed" during a briefing on the Vietnam War.

The presently-surviving Republican front-runner has been endorsed by some left-wing media already. It serves them, not the American people, to have a candidate either of the Democrats can beat in November.

It is still early in the election year. I hope it is not too late to find a way to draft Dr. Condoleezza Rice. Paired up with a strong vice-presidential candidate such as Fred Thompson, their team could fill the vital need for leadership in today's United States of America.

Mark A. Hall
Minneapolis, MN



OBAMA AND THE FEAR CARD

The oncoming Democrat candidate Barack Obama told an audience in Madison, Wisconsin:
"Instead of spending hundreds of billions of dollars in Baghdad, we could have put that money into our schools and our hospitals, rebuilding our roads and bridges. And that's what the American people need us to do right now!"

and

"We can't keep spending what we don't have in a war that shouldn't have been fought."

I am sure we could have saved a lot of money by not fighting World War II. Certainly a lot of American men and women would not have died. But Europe would still be living under a Nazi boot. And we Americans might be speaking German today as a requirement under the Nazis too.

This Obama rhetoric is plainly foolish. Iraq is a battlefront in a war that came to us. We don't relish war. We don't want it. We fight it out of necessity. We have a strategy that takes the battle to the enemy's turf rather than waiting (as Obama would) for the war to hit us here at home again.

Our enemies got their courage up and prepared for 9/11 while Obama's party was in the White House. Elect an Obama and our enemies will work their way back to strength and come here again. They will blow up those very schools, hospitals, roads and bridges that Obama talks about.

In his rhetorical fantasies Obama would probably call this "playing the fear card." I have heard this ploy already used by people who seem to have blotted out all memory of 9/11. They are fat and happy again, just as they were when Bill Clinton was in office. But now we are safe at home because our government is vigilant, not because it has its head buried in the sand as it was under Clinton.

Obama would repeat that posture. He promises to finance his road-building, etc. in part by ending "the war that shouldn't have been fought." He wouldn't end any war if he gained the White House. He has no capacity to end any war. He would only put the President's head back in the sand until the war came here with a second 9/11. Then it would be too late for America.

- Mark A. Hall