The Discerning Texan

I hope that Doug Ross will forgive me for posting his absolutely brilliant list of points here in their entireity. Personally I think this thing needs to go viral as soon as possible:

The Manifesto of the Silenced Majority

We believe that Barack Obama is a brilliant orator and a man possessed of more charisma than any politician since JFK.

• But we also believe that his philosophy of "spreading the wealth around" is an ill-disguised form of socialism that undermines everything America holds dear.

• We believe that a "tax cut on 95% of working Americans" when only 63% of Americans pay taxes is nonsensical.

• We believe that the Obama campaign's obfuscated funding for ACORN (originally described as "event planning") undermines the integrity of our elections and calls into question the legality of his tactics.

• We believe that Barack Obama's plan to form a "civilian national security force that's just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded” as our military is ill-considered at best.

• We believe that the Obama campaign's efforts to intimidate WGN (on two separate occasions) when it interviewed his political foes endangers free speech.

• We believe that Obama's choice of Joe Biden as VP runs counter to his twin aspirations of "hope" and "change".

• We believe that a man who could not otherwise receive a security clearance should not serve as Commander-in-Chief.

• We believe that Obama's 20-year relationship with his pastor, who he once described as his "spiritual adviser", displays a basic affinity for a racist ideology that runs counter to everything his candidacy should stand for.

• We believe that most of Obama's senate experience has been spent running for office; from the time he was sworn in as a U.S. senator to the time he formed a presidential exploratory committee, he logged only 143 days in the senate.

• We believe that Obama does voters a disservice by hiding his chairmanship of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (a $165 million dollar effort to improve Chicago's schools) when he used that service as his central experience in 2000 during his first run for Congress.

• We believe that Obama made a series of very poor choices by serving on boards and sharing an office with Bill Ayers (for three years); Ayers' organization killed three police officers, bombed numerous government facilities and nearly detonated a nail bomb at a Fort Dix Officer's Dance.

• We believe that, no matter Obama's relationship with Bill Ayers, his evasive and ever-morphing answers about their work together smack of a coverup.

• We believe that anyone -- no matter their position on abortion -- who supports killing an infant that survived a botched abortion is on the wrong side of any moral code.

• We believe that Obama's advisers and contributors -- from Tony Rezko to Valerie Jarrett to Allison Davis -- cost taxpayers millions in development fees for failed (and often uninhabitable) apartment complexes.

• We believe that Obama's Illinois state senate experience was insubstantial: it was, by his own description, a "part-time position" and he maintained two offices (one at the state senate and one at his law firm).

• We believe that Obama's state senatorial experience was further diluted by his 129 "present" votes, which, as NPR observes , "There's a saying in Springfield that there's a reason why the present button is yellow... [but] I don't think that Barack Obama was necessarily a coward for voting present on those bills..."

• We also believe that Obama's experience as a community organizer and as a trainer for ACORN are not qualifications for the presidency.

• We believe that the candidate has not been forthcoming with his background and the key influencing forces during his formative years.

We therefore believe that Barack Obama is ill-prepared and ill-suited for the Presidency.