The Next President of the US

Not long ago Obama looked unbeatable, but that is no longer the case.

Recent successes in Iraq makes the Republicans look like they knew what they were doing when Democrats were calling for withdrawal and surrender. China on the rise and Russians on the march make the world a scary place. As poorly as the 3am call ad flopped, it's true and American's know it. American's just didn't appreciate Hillary saying it because...well, she's Hillary. But war hero McCain will continue to make this charge and it will stick.

Inflation, a weak dollar, housing and auto industries in the toilet and bank failures make for a scary economic landscape. Most Americans are smart enough to realize government regulation and higher taxes are not good for America, especially now. The have-nots might embrace socialism because they stand to gain from it. But I think most of the working middle class believe big government is not their friend, even when its well intended, and run the other way.

McCain should pick a qualified conservative woman as his running mate. He'll nab a bunch of Hillary supporters and for the next two months we can watch multiple sound bites of Biden ripping Obama courtesy of the committee to elect America's Favorite Grumpy Grandpa. Not to mention the "pay grade" commercial that's coming courtesy of Mr. Smooth himself.

America may support generally the right for a woman to have an abortion, but most American's are not comfortable w/ the idea of late term abortions. The thought of fetuses surviving abortions and Obama somehow defending this horrible practice will hurt Obama. If the Dems can shift the debate to Roe v Wade this issue could favor them, but if the Republicans can keep the focus on late term abortions this will favor McCain.

Perhaps the greatest weakness of Obama, Pelosi and Reid is their claim that drilling for more oil will not help reduce the cost of oil. McCain wants to drill to save America from OPEC. Obama wants to save the world from warming by drastically reducing American consumption of oil and he's willing to let the American economy take a major hit to make this happen. Obama has pie in the sky pipe dreams about clean energy saving the planet but his only answer is to throw billions of taxpayer dollars at the problem. This approach failed in the 70's and will fail again. Having the government try to guess which technologies to back is a losing strategy. The end result will be billions spent on failed technologies and solutions that require permanent taxes and subsidies to keep them viable. Why not allow the market develop efficient sources in the first place? The one safe and effective renewable source of energy is nuclear and Democrats won't even consider it. We need more oil and more nuclear energy to keep American going while renewable technologies like solar and wind are being developed.

There is no reason for America to jump off the cliff of global warming and hope the solutions will be there by the time we hit bottom. All of the scientific studies on CO2 and warming have proven correlation (they occur at the same time) but none have proved causation. Even Al Gore's pop culture pseudo scientific documentary shows that warming has historically occurred slightly before increases in CO2 levels. Global warming may actually cause increases in CO2 (by facilitating its release from the oceans) instead of the other way around. A recent study measuring the temperature of the oceans for the last five years shows that the oceans have not warmed at all. A recent discovery of plant fossils in the arctic areas proves that thousands of years ago arctic regions were much warmer. In fact the earth has gone through several ice ages and warmer periods. Man obviously wasn't the cause of these warning and cooling periods and polar bears and all the other species on the earth today obviously survived. Species adapting to their environment is the foundation of Darwin's theory of evolution, but apparently liberals only believe in evolution as a way to keep God out of our schools. If warming and cooling are normal for the earth's environment, why are liberals asking us to sacrifice our prosperity in an attempt to maintain the temperatures of Al Gore's childhood? Because despite all the talk of scientific studies, saving the planet by halting global warming has become a matter of faith, a new liberal religion. Unfortunately, liberals are working to make warming the official religion of this country and force all Americans to sacrifice for the cause, regardless of reason, logic and science. And when liberals fail to get their policies adopted via the ballot box they will do an end run around democracy and have them adopted and enshrined by the courts.

McCain is old, ornery and possibly unbalanced. I pray he gets elected.

By Tom Martin