Last week there was an excellent editorial written in the Wall Street Journal outlining the reasons behind corporate america donating heavily to the Democrats for the 2008 election cycle.

The late Milton Friedman used to rail against what he called corporate America’s “suicidal impulse.” By that he meant that the business community continually financed the very politicians who were intent on robbing their profits and slitting their throats.

It’s happening again. The latest quarterly Federal Election Commission Report on political giving, released this week, shows the majority of corporate money flowing to the Democrats. Firms like Comcast, General Electric, Federal Express and UPS have shifted campaign giving away from the GOP. Employees of five major defense contractors including Lockheed Martin, Boeing and Northrup-Grumman spent $104,000 on Democratic presidential candidates, versus $88,800 for the Republican field.

Meanwhile, according to FEC data, about 85% of the donations from Roll Call newspaper’s top-20 list of corporate lobbyists are helping Ms. Pelosi and Mr. Reid protect and expand their House and Senate majorities. Roll Call calls it a “Democratic donor surge,” noting that many of the highest-priced lobbyists already “maxed out” — they’ve bumped up against the legal limit in how much they are allowed to give the Democrats.

The shift in corporate allegiance helps explain the Democrats’ commanding fund-raising lead. The House Democratic money-raising committee had $22 million of cash on hand at the end of August, the Republican committee $1.6 million. With more than $50 million in the bank, Hillary Clinton has as much cash as all the Republican presidential wannabes combined. The FEC report does note that Republicans closed some of the money gap thanks to a surge in small dollar contributions.

This deluge of corporate dollars comes at a time when congressional Democrats aren’t the least bit bashful about their agenda. Should they win the White House they’ll raise tax rates, pursue a trade protectionist policy under the guise of “fair trade,” and enact as much of Big Labor’s wish list as they can, from doing away with secret ballots in union certification elections to piling on more labor, environmental and health regulations. “There’s almost nothing in the Pelosi/Reid agenda that we favor,” one long-time industry government affairs representative tells me. “But we’re still giving the bulk of our money to them.”

In reading the balance of the article one thought comes to mind. What if they are wrong? Suppose the Republicans have a far better showing in 2008 than currently expected by many?

Patience is a virtue, maybe one which should be learned by those who act impulsively but leave open the possibility of their efforts failing long before the first ballot is cast.

Or, Mr. Moore could be correct that even if the Democrats do win on all levels next year, corporate america could still pay a dear price.

So why won’t business groups go to the mat for their friends and spend whatever it takes to defeat their enemies? Former Republican House majority leader Dick Armey explains that “the business groups are simply not ideological givers. They give to buy access and to minimize risk.”

He’s undoubtedly right. And so, if Democrats run the table in 2008, they will have corporate America to thank. But business is living in a fantasy world if they believe this will spare them from what is likely to be one of the most anti-growth agendas that Washington has seen in many decades. Nor should they be spared. When you sell the rope to the hangman, you deserve to have a noose around your neck.

HT: Mark Noonan who offers his own thoughts regarding this issue.

Republicans failed in an effort Tuesday to have the House censure Rep. Pete Stark, D-Calif., who said in a congressional speech last week that U.S. troops are being sent to Iraq “to get their heads blown off for the president’s amusement.”

Without debate, the House voted 196-173 to kill the proposal to censure Stark for “his despicable conduct.” The vote was mostly along party lines, with all 168 Republicans on hand supporting the measure offered by Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio. Five Democrats joined them….

…Stark initially refused to apologize despite condemnations from GOP lawmakers and others. Moments after Tuesday’s vote, however, he addressed the House to apologize to his colleagues, “to the president and his family,” and to U.S. troops offended by his remarks.

Kimsch at Musing Minds links to what looks like a fantastic idea when applied to campaign finance:

Comptroller Dan Hynes today unveiled a user-friendly website that allows citizens to track political contributions made by companies that have state contracts.

“Open Book” is a searchable database of state contracts and campaign contributions that combines information from the Comptroller’s accounting system with official semi-annual campaign disclosure reports filed by political committees with the State Board of Elections (SBE).

This sounds like something every state should emulate. It would be one way to restore faith in the fairness and honesty involved in many of these contributions to political candidates.

Have some fun at VA JOE:

Which 2008 Presidential Candidate Agrees With You?

Answer the questions below to find the 2008 presidential candidate that best aligns with your beliefs. More than 1 million people have already filled it out. Give it a try!

It only takes a few minutes to fill out this “quiz”, and who knows, perhaps the results will surprise you.

HT: Jack Army

If you have family or friends in California as I do, there is a live blog at the LAT which might be helpful in keeping up with the latest information involving these terrible fires.

Let’s hope the winds die down enough to allow those planes in the air so as to assist the weary firefighters.

Hope you find the above site helpful if you are following this story.

In a moving ceremony yesterday where the parents of Navy SEAL Lt. Michael Murphy presented President Bush with a gold dog tag with their son’s name on it, the president put the medal under his shirt and then presented the Medal of Honor posthumously to Lt. Murphy’s parents.

“What we were most touched by was that the president immediately put that on underneath his shirt, and when he made the presentation of the Medal of Honor, he wore that against his chest,” said the father.

After the ceremony, Dan Murphy said, Bush told the family: “I was inspired by having Michael next to my chest.”

The father, who fought back tears during the ceremony, said they were “deeply moved” by Bush’s gesture.

“It was very emotional on everybody’s part,” said Maureen Murphy.

Bush presided over a solemn ceremony honoring their son’s battlefield decision to expose himself to deadly enemy fire in order to make a radio call for help for his elite combat team.

“While their missions were often carried out in secrecy, their love of country and devotion to each other was always clear,” President Bush said. “On June 28, 2005, Michael would give his life for these ideals.”

Murphy’s parents both cried at points in the ceremony as they stood next to the president and listened to their son’s heroism recounted.

“There’s a lot of awards in the military, but when you see a Medal of Honor, you know whatever they went through is pretty horrible. You don’t congratulate anyone when you see it,” said Marcus Luttrell, the lone member of Murphy’s team to survive the firefight with the Taliban.

Murphy, Luttrell and two other SEALs were searching for a terrorist when their mission was compromised after they were spotted by locals, who presumably alerted the Taliban to their presence.

An intense gun battle ensued, with more than 50 anti-coalition fighters swarming around the outnumbered SEALs.

Although wounded, Murphy is credited with risking his own life by moving into the open for a better position to transmit a call for help.

Still under fire, Murphy provided his unit’s location and the size of the enemy force. At one point he was shot in the back, causing him to drop the transmitter. Murphy picked it back up, completed the call and continued firing at the enemy who was closing in.

He then returned to his cover position with his men and continued the battle. A U.S. helicopter sent to rescue the men was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade, killing all 16 aboard. It was the worst single-day death toll for U.S. forces in Afghanistan.

By the end of the two-hour gunfight, Murphy and two of his comrades were also dead. An estimated 35 Taliban were also killed. Luttrell was blown over a ridge and knocked unconscious. He escaped, and was protected by local villagers for several days before he was rescued.

Murphy, who died before his 30th birthday, is the fourth Navy SEAL to earn the award and the first since the Vietnam War.

As we reported a couple of weeks ago the NYT saw fit not to tell this story of heroism in Lt. Murphy’s hometown newspaper.

May he rest in peace, and may his parents take comfort in the fact their son died performing an act of bravery above and beyond the call of duty.

We here at J’s salute Lt. Murphy.

These invididuals spoke volumes on the prospect of a Hillary Clinton Presidency.

HT: Real Clear Politics

Michael Yon takes on the media here at home in his latest post:

Clearly, a majority of Americans believe the current set of outdated fallacies passed around mainstream media like watered down drinks at happy hour. Why wouldn’t they? The cloned copy they get comes from the same sources that list the specials at the local grocery store, and the hours and locations of polling places for town elections. These same news sources print obituaries and birth announcements, give play-by-play for local high school sports, and chronicle all the painful details of the latest celebrity to fall from grace.

There are several key items in this post, but Michael has always had a limit on how much of his work can be reproduced and I have always honored that request.

Please take the time to read his work. This analysis is compiled by a man who has served alongside coalition and Iraqi troops for quite some time now. His dispatches have always been fair and truthful, he calls them like he sees them. No rose colored glasses for Mr. Yon.

There is a section of this article which lays out an idea for improving the quality of information from Iraq which is reported here at home. If you agree this is an idea worth pursuing, please take the time to make that one phone call or send an email to a local paper.

Americans deserve more than we have experienced through the MSM when it comes to reporting on this war, but most of all, our US military deserves credit for their many accomplishments. Perhaps Michael Yon will be the one who finally breaks through that barrier.

It’s an opinion. The thoughts of a woman who is a Nobel Laureate.

Pull yourself together America. September 11,2001 was no big deal. That’s right, we folks here in the USA just don’t get it. So please allow Ms. Lessing to enlighten us.

Nobel laureate Doris Lessing said the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States were “not that terrible” when compared to attacks by the IRA in Britain.
“September 11 was terrible, but if one goes back over the history of the IRA, what happened to the Americans wasn’t that terrible,” the Nobel Literature Prize winner told the leading Spanish daily El Pais.

“Some Americans will think I’m crazy. Many people died, two prominent buildings fell, but it was neither as terrible nor as extraordinary as they think. They’re a very naive people, or they pretend to be,” she said in an interview published Sunday.

“Do you know what people forget? That the IRA attacked with bombs against our government; it killed several people while a Conservative congress was being held and in which the prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, was (attending). People forget,” she said.

Nearly 3,000 people were killed in the Sept. 11 attacks. About 3,700 died and tens of thousands of people were maimed in more than 30 years of violence in Northern Ireland. The Irish Republican Army guerrilla group, which caused most of the deaths, disarmed in 2005.[Emphasis Added]

Following the logic of this Nobel prizewinner, those killled at the hands of the IRA would not be significant historically as they lost fewer people than were murdered during the Holocaust and those in Israel who have suffered due to terrorism for any years should just keep a stiff upper lip because after all their numbers simply cannot compare with the death toll overall in WWII.

To follow this pattern would be simple poppycock. Ms. Lessing is out of line in her comments.

We in the United States mourn the deaths of innocents all over the world, not just our own, but 9/11/01 will live forever in the minds of those who experienced the horror of that day. The lives lost not only in those two tall structures but in Washington and Pennsylvania will not be forgotten.

We are not a naive people and we certainly are not ignorant enough to tell you Ms. Lessing that any life is deemed more important than another when it is wiped away in an instant by those who hate. You may have your esteemed prize, but we in the United States have dignity, compassion and a deep sense of committment to our allies and friends around the world and the many they have lost in senseless acts.

By the way, when Ms. Lessing was contacted for comment this was the reply:

Attempts by The Associated Press to reach Lessing in London for comment Monday were unsuccessful. Her agent’s office said the author was unavailable because she was not feeling well.

Indeed.

Courtesy of Blogs for Fred Thompson, we offer you last evenings debate in nine You Tube videos of ten minutes each.

Part One

Self-proclaimed liberal and probably Democrat (I can’t remember) Camille Paglia has told an interviewer Hillary can’t win the election.

Firebrand writer Camille Paglia says Hillary Clinton “has no vision” and can’t win the general election against any of the leading Republican presidential candidates.

In an interview with Canada’s Globe and Mail, Paglia – who came into the public eye in the early 1990s with her denunciation of “political correctness” – declared:

“I don’t know where people are getting the idea that the Democrats are a shoo-in. I don’t see them gaining the White House unless there’s a third-party spin-off, like Ross Perot.

“I listen to conservative talk radio, because the callers really do give one a sense of where popular sentiment is at the moment. And I just don’t see how any of the Democratic candidates is going to be able to present the national-security credentials that will be crucial in this election.

“The Republicans have [Mitt] Romney, [Rudy] Giuliani, [Fred] Thompson, even [Mike] Huckabee - a series of candidates who would be way more credible than Hillary, if only because of the projection of strength they give.”

Paglia even doubts that Clinton will get the Democratic nomination.

“She has a powerful machine,” the author of “Sexual Personae” told the Globe and Mail. “But many, many other candidates will be draining off support … The Democrats around me don’t want to go backward into the Clinton years.”

Not only does Paglia – who now teaches at Philadelphia’s University of the Arts – believe that Hillary can’t win, she also asserts that Clinton shouldn’t win.

“There’s an over-clever, over-conceptualized political personality there who has trouble being an ordinary person.

“For someone with so much international exposure, she’s not great on the stage. She’s well prepared with her sound bites. But when she has to play outside her sphere of preparation, she seems taken by surprise…

“She’s essentially a policy wonk. She has no vision.

Sounds to me like she has her pegged. We’ll see if she’s right soon enough.

When the Republican nomination is sewn up we’ll all come together and support our candidate in the end. The alternative is to horrifying to imagine.

In a Zogby poll taken Oct. 11-15 of 9718 likely voters, 50% said they would never vote for Hillary Clinton, compared to 46% in the last poll in March.

You know how we feel about polls around here, but I find this to be a snapshot of how voters feel now, and it presents a big hill for Hillary to climb. Her negatives will only get higher as this campaign goes forward into the general election, despite her efforts to come off as a motherly figure.

Here’s how the other candidates fared:

Whom would you NEVER vote for for President of the U.S.?

%

Clinton (D)

50%

Kucinich (D)

49%

Gravel (D)

47%

Paul (D)

47%

Brownback (R)

47%

Tancredo (R)

46%

McCain (R)

45%

Hunter (R)

44%

Giuliani (R)

43%

Romney (R)

42%

Edwards (D)

42%

Thompson (R)

41%

Dodd (D)

41%

Biden (D)

40%

Obama (D)

37%

Huckabee (R)

35%

Richardson (D)

34%

Not sure

4%

In probably one of the most stupid statements I’ve heard or read I think the one by Charlie Rangel, Democratic Representative of NY, and a big Hillary supporter takes a lot of chutzpah.

In a cover story on Giuliani in this week’s New York Observer, Rangel went after Giuliani in unusually personal ways, expressing confidence that Giuliani’s frontrunning status will fade either because of the former mayor’s liberal positions on social issues or the operatic drama of his personal life.

“Referring to Andrew Giuliani’s reportedly distant relationship with his father since the ugly bust-up of Mr. Giuliani’s marriage with Donna Hanover,” the article says, “Mr. Rangel said it was because ’sons respect and admire their fathers, but they love their mothers against cheating gxxdxxn husbands.’ … Rangel said he regretted that all the personal problems surfaced so soon in the electoral process. ‘I’m sorry this damned thing turned out so early because, really, just like [embattled former Giuliani aide Bernard] Kerik, it would have bombed his ass out.’”

Mrs. Clinton responded there is no room for personal attacks, as well she should, but none of these things get said without campaign approval.

Do the Clinton campaign or the Clinton supporters really want to talk about someone else’s personal lives? I mean really?

Opposing candidates don’t even have to focus on her own marital problems brought on by her own cheating husband to get down and dirty with Hillary.

All they have to do is repeat her record since she was in Arkansas with a list that is too long to print.

Lost billing records, fired travel office employees, funny money from Chinese donors who can’t afford it and from some who are not even legal residents, using FBI files to spy on political enemies, listening to illegally recorded telephone calls from political opponents and on and on ad nauseum.

Go ahead and open up this can of worms, but I’ll bet you won’t like the things that come out of the cans.

The NYT confirms what many of us already know.

Matt Drudge has the potential to be a driving force in the 2008 Presidential campaign.

Aides in both parties acknowledge working harder than ever to get favorable coverage for their candidates — or unfavorable coverage of competitors — onto the Drudge Report’s home page, knowing that television producers, radio talk show hosts and newspaper reporters view it as a bulletin board for the latest news and gossip.

Because of the sheer number of people who look at it and because of the attention it gets from the media, what appears on Drudge can, for a few minutes or an entire day, drive what appears elsewhere, making it, “a force in the political news cycle for both the press and the campaigns,” said David Chalian, the political director at ABC News.

Nielsen/NetRatings has clocked three million unique visitors to the site over the course of a month, and the Drudge Report said its users clicked onto the site a combined 16 million times in the course of a single day last week. The site’s influence, which is not limited to politics, has survived the proliferation of blogs offering all manner of news, analysis and gossip, as well as the advent of one-stop shopping political sites like Politico, which has a big staff of established political reporters.

What sets Drudge apart as much as anything is its ability to attract well-placed leaks and traffic in the freshest and rawest material — though sometimes including what some have considered smears.

Most of us are no doubt included in those huge numbers of hits which Drudge receives daily. He has become a valuable tool in many instances for those who are “news junkies.” Has he been incorrect in his “reporting” from time to time, sure, but show me any newspaper, news program or radio commentator who has not. I doubt anyone can find one.

Senator McCain may be having difficulty gaining traction in his bid to win the Republican nomination, but apparently he had no problem garnering a standing ovation last evening at the debate with this statement:

HT: Power Line

My beloved Red Sox, who have broken my heart many times in my life, have made me a very happy person tonight with their 11-2 win against the Cleveland Indians.

Now on to the Colorado Rockies for the World Series.

Because of the game I missed the Republican debate (hey, you have to have priorities), but I can give you a link that gives you a flavor of what the debate was like.

I did TiVo the debate and will try to watch it tomorrow, mostly for my own edification, as everyone else will have told you about it anyway.

Right now I think I need toothpicks to hold my eyelids open and will get back to regular posting on Monday after I have my allergy shot.

Go Sox!

I said no posting today, but this is breaking news.

In the usually complicated election system of Louisiana Republican Congressman Bobby Jindal has won the governorship in one round of voting.

BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) - U.S. Rep. Bobby Jindal became the nation’s youngest governor and the first nonwhite to hold post in Louisiana since Reconstruction when he carried more than half the vote to defeat 11 opponents.
Jindal, the Republican 36-year-old son of Indian immigrants, had 53 percent with 625,036 votes with about 92 percent of the vote tallied. It was more than enough to win Saturday’s election outright and avoid a Nov. 17 runoff.

“My mom and dad came to this country in pursuit of the American dream. And guess what happened. They found the American Dream to be alive and well right here in Louisiana,” he said to cheers and applause at his victory party.

His nearest competitors: Democrat Walter Boasso with 208,690 votes or 18 percent; Independent John Georges had 1167,477 votes or 14 percent; Democrat Foster Campbell had 151,101 or 13 percent. Eight candidates divided the rest.

“I’m asking all of our supporters to get behind our new governor,” Georges said in a concession speech.

The Oxford-educated Jindal had lost the governor’s race four years ago to Gov. Kathleen Blanco. He won a congressional seat in conservative suburban New Orleans a year later but was widely believed to have his eye on the governor’s mansion.

Blanco opted not to run for re-election after she was widely blamed for the state’s slow response to hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005.

Now show the people of Louisiana that the state government can be run efficiently and not with all the corruption of the past. This is not to cast aspersions on Gov. Blanco because I know nothing of