John McCain for president; Mike Johanns for U.S. Senate
by Bob Hoig, Publisher
Midlands Business Journal
It’s no overstatement that America faces difficult times.
Islamic jihad and the nuclear ambitions of Iran are testing our resolve.
Militantly nationalistic Russia under Putin has invaded neighboring Georgia and is showing signs internally and externally of wanting to reassemble the old Soviet Union along dictatorial Joe Stalin lines.
The nuclear nations of Pakistan and North Korea are in differing states of uncertainty or unrest.
The U.S. economy is strong but troubled. Radical Marxism and socialism are trying to win in American classrooms what they never could on farms and in factories. Illegal immigration remains unresolved.
The point is that this is no time for rookies. Proven, steady leadership is needed and this takes us away from Barack Obama and to John McCain and his running mate Sarah Palin.
Long range, other than immediate issues of war and terrorism, the most important decision McCain or Obama will make is to fill the expected one to three vacancies on the U.S. Supreme Court. Even war and terrorism often end in 5-4 votes on the court over how to fight them.
Palin brings to Washington a reformer’s zeal for real change. As Alaska governor, she cut spending on the grand scale of shelving the wasteful “bridge to nowhere” federal project down to what bureaucrats might call chump change. She sold the state airplane in order to save money by going on commercial airlines.
Like McCain, Palin is a maverick. She drove members of her own party from power on the Alaska Oil Board and in state government when she saw they failed to act in the best interests of the people of Alaska.
McCain’s approach to government is focused on generally conservative principles of tax cutting and restraining spending. He showed courage in being a chief backer in the Senate for the successful troop surge in Iraq. Obama opposed the surge. Both Obama and his party seem more invested in America’s defeat in Iraq than in winning there.
Obama began as a messenger of hope and change.
Hope soon yielded to an orgy of class warfare and promises. Change has come from his changing positions on major issues such as public campaign finance, which he first supported, to his abandonment of even close personal loyalties, such as renouncing his longtime spirit guide and mentor, the America-hating Rev. Jeremiah Wright.
It’s strange that the voters might soon be handing over control of every agency of government to a man with a record of alliances with highly questionable people like the Reverends Wright, Pfleger and Farrakhan, Tony Rezko and terrorist turned Marxist-anarchist William Ayers.
Obama, his supporters and/or his surrogates have robo-jammed computers and switchboards to try to keep one Obama critic, Stanley Kurtz, off Chicago radio station WGN. Anchor Barbara West of Orlando station WFTV was blacklisted by the campaign, and her husband investigated for daring to ask hard but relevant questions of Joe Biden about whether Obama was a Marxist. “Joe the Plumber” has been investigated more than Obama himself since he asked what turned out to be an inconvenient question when Obama visited his neighborhood.
Militant Obama bloggers called for a boycott of the Midlands Business Journal when this writer noted that some Obama tactics were similar to Nazi moves against newspapers who criticized them in Germany.
The Obama campaign asked for a U.S. Justice Department investigation of a Houston media outlet for a criticism of Obama. What kind of investigations will Obama make if he controls Justice and the FBI?
The American elite media, always left-leaning and skewed towards the Democrat Party, is hardly behaving as a watchdog for the public interest as it openly seeks to convoy Barack Obama to a win Nov. 4.
In the U.S. Senate race, Nebraskans should elect Mike Johanns. He was a formidable governor and steward of conservative policies, especially on matters of state spending and building cash reserves for times such as these.
He was a credit to his farm state upbringing in the experience he brought to Washington as President Bush’s secretary of agriculture.
October 2008
