The False and Dangerous Promises of the Pelosi-Reid-Obama Triumvirate

Republican strategist and conservative writer Michael Johns, a former White House speechwriter and Heritage Foundation policy analyst, this afternoon will discuss the dangers inherent in giving liberal Democrats sole control of the White House and both houses of Congress in tomorrow’s Presidential and Congressional election. His analysis can be heard globally on Sirius Satellite’s Indie Talk Channel 110, hosted by Sirius’ Joe Salzone, from 5pm EST/2pm PST to 6pm EST/3pm PST today.

Source: Michael Johns

Barack Obama: The Wrong Prescription for America’s Ills

Republican strategist and conservative writer Michael Johns, a former White House speechwriter and Heritage Foundation policy analyst, will discuss Americans’ lingering reservations about the experience and policy proposals of U.S. Presidential candidate Barack Obama this afternoon on Al Jazeera television.

The broadcast, which is available throughout Africa, Asia, Australia, the Americas, the Middle East and Persian Gulf, will air at approximately 4:15pm EST/21:15 GMT. It also is available online at: Al Jazeera television.

Source: Michael Johns

Michael Johns to Discuss Presidential Election Tonight on Al Jazeera

Republican strategist and conservative writer Michael Johns, a former White House speechwriter and Heritage Foundation policy analyst, will discuss the 2008 presidential election on Al Jazeera television tonight, October 25, at 10pm EDT/3am Greenwich Mean Time (GMT). The broadcast will be available live in Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, the Middle East, and North and South America and at Al Jazeera’s online web site at: Al Jazeera.

Johns argues that recent polls, including one conducted by Associated Press this past week, show the race between John McCain and Barack Obama tightening and that American voters, including those in critical swing states, continue to harbor major reservations about Obama’s political ideology and qualifications for the presidency.

Source: Michael Johns

Michael Johns to Appear Globally Tonight on Al Jazeera Television

Republican strategist and conservative writer Michael Johns, a former White House speechwriter and Heritage Foundation foreign policy analyst, will appear tonight in a one hour global television interview on Al Jazeera, one of the world’s largest news organizations. Johns will discuss the United States presidential election, American foreign policy and other topics.

The broadcast, which will air from 01:00 GMT to 02:00 GMT (8pm EDT to 9pm EDT), is available in Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, the Americas, the Middle East, the Persian Gulf and elsewhere. It also will be available at Al Jazeera’s online site and through other global media outlets.

Source: Michael Johns

McCain: Why He’s Trailing, How He Can Prevail

Republican strategist and conservative writer Michael Johns, a former White House speechwriter and Heritage Foundation policy analyst, will discuss the 2008 Presidential election in two global interviews later today, Wednesday October 8th. In these two interviews, Johns will discuss recent poll results that show Republican nominee John McCain falling behind and the steps that McCain can take in the coming four weeks to make up ground in critical swing states and prevail in the November 4th election.

Johns will appear on Sirius Satellite’s Indie Talk (Channel 110), hosted by Sirius’s Joe Salzone, from 5:30pm EDT/2:30pm PDT to 6pm EDT/3pm PDT and then later in his weekly appearance on The Warren Michaels show from 8pm EDT/5pm PDT to 9pm EDT/6pm PDT. Both programs are available globally, and The Warren Michaels show can be heard both live and by archived replay at The Warren Michaels show.

Source: Michael Johns

The Obama Gaffe: For $85 Billion, Should We Not At Least Know Their Name?

By Michael Johns

With some of America’s largest and most prestigious financial institutions undergoing a threatening liquidity meltdown, Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama has not hesitated to seize the opportunity to exploit the situation for political gain. Despite being the second largest recipient of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac political donations in the entire United States Congress, he is brazenly and hypocritically railing against the very Washington lobbyists who have poured money into his campaign in an effort to buy his influence. This despite the fact that, just a year ago, Obama pledged that he would take no private funding for this election, a promise the major media have never felt too obligated to hold him to.

Obama’s political demagoguery and contradictions come at a critical moment. Yesterday, in the largest governmental bailout in American corporate history, the Federal Reserve Board announced that it would lend American International Group, the 18th largest corporation in the world, $85 billion in exchange for a 79.9 percent equity stake in the company. In all probability, this massive infusion of federal funds is just a stop gap measure as the company likely now seeks to liquidate itself in an effort to fend off bankruptcy.

For Obama, the whole mess is not a time for national unity; it is, rather, great political fodder. This morning, in an effort to extract political gain from the situation, he issued a statement, which said in part:

“The fact that we have reached a point where the Federal Reserve felt it had to take this unprecedented step with the American Insurance Group is the final verdict on the failed economic philosophy of the last eight years.”

American Insurance Group? For $85 billion, Obama and his big government, tax and spend economic advisers apparently don’t fret too much over the details in an effort to make their partisan jabs. One wonders if that $85 billion United States Treasury check would even cash had Obama’s Treasury Secretary made it out incorrectly to one “American Insurance Group.”

After the glaring error was pointed out, the Obama campaign quietly issued a corrected statement. And to be fair, in the frantic nature of a presidential campaign, one should be forgiving to the inevitable misstatements that will occur when some of the world’s most aggressive journalists are following one’s every move through a taxing schedule that often includes up to half a dozen campaign appearances in multiple states in one day.

But what is troubling about the Obama misstatement is that, despite his rhetoric of bringing a new bipartisanship to Washington, he has been as quick as any political candidate in recent memory to exploit and distort any and all statements made by his Republican rival and his surrogates. When former U.S. Senator Phil Gramm, the Texas Republican, told The Washington Times this past July 9 that “We have become a nation of whiners. You just hear this constant whining, complaining about a loss of American competitiveness, America is in decline,” the Obama camp did not cease exploiting the statement until Gramm, one the brighter economic minds of our nation, was ultimately forced to reliquish his role as an advisor to Republican presidential nominee John McCain.

As recently as yesterday in Colorado, Obama was still quoting Gramm in a twisted effort to suggest that the McCain campaign is somehow out of touch with the economic challenges of ordinary Americans.

Then, this past Monday, amidst AIG and Lehman Brothers’ liquidity meltdown, McCain quite properly and understandably sought to reassure Americans, stating accurately that the “fundamentals of our economy are strong.” But within hours, Obama was distorting this statement too, suggesting that it somehow implied that McCain did not grasp the magnitude of two major American financial institutions confronting bankruptcy, or that he somehow felt that there did not exist major challenges in the current American economy.

Such is the hypocrisy that has guided the Obama campaign from the beginning. Promise to run a campaign with no private financing in an effort to present a candidacy of independence from the Washington establishment, and then quietly reject that promise and actively seek mammoth corporate, political action committee, 527 group, and other private donations. Rail against unnamed Washington lobbyists for corrupting the American financial system with sub-prime mortgage loans, while simultaneously championing a regulatory mandate that American financial institutions be required to make these loans. Demand an expeditious removal of American troops from Iraq, and then privately instruct Iraqi leaders–in probable violation of the Logan Act–to cease negotiating such withdraws with the Bush administration and to wait for the next administration. Run on a campaign of “change” and then anoint one of Washington’s most entrenched liberal partisans as a running mate.

In citing an $85 billion federal loan to the “American Insurance Group,” Obama should be reminded that his promises of bipartisanship should be matched with some basic political civility and respect. McCain properly rejects Obama’s big government redistribution schemes as the solution to our economic woes. Nothing in that rejection suggests, as Obama has been inclined to say, that “John McCain just doesn’t get it.” And Obama opponents should operate similarly on an assumption that an error on a campaign statement, even one as glaring as Obama’s was this morning, is not enough to suggest that the Obama camp does not have a grasp of the complexities of the current crisis. We need look no further than his policy proposals to know that.

Source: Michael Johns

Obama Doublespeak and Liberal Complicity in America’s Banking Crisis

In remarks yesterday in Golden, Colorado, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama passed around plenty of blame for America’s unfolding banking crisis: He blamed American corporations. He blamed Washington lobbyists. And he even blamed Republican presidential candidate John McCain.

But the core of political blame for America’s banking crisis, conservative writer Michael Johns argues, lies with a Democratic-led Congress that actually mandated much of the very sub-standard mortgage lending that is now setting off a snowballing liquidity crisis at some of America’s largest financial institutions. Meanwhile, Johns says, Congress and Washington regulators failed in their responsibility to ensure appropriate regulatory oversight of high-risk leveraged borrowing that now threatens the solvency of these financial institutions.

In seeking to assign political blame for this crisis, and especially in assigning the blame wrongly, Johns says that Obama has revealed the hypocrisy of his pledge to work in bipartisan ways, which he has rarely done throughout his political career and is not doing now. While pointing blame in politically convenient directions, Obama also has been an advocate of many of the exact policies that created this crisis, and is now proposing even worse policy prescriptions that could deepen it even further.

“I’ve spent my career taking on lobbyists and their money, and I’ve won,” Obama said yesterday in Colorado. In reality, however, the exact opposite is true: Among all 535 members of the United States Congress, only U.S. Senator Christopher Dodd, the Connecticut Democrat, has taken more in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac campaign contributions since 1989, and Obama has only been in the Senate since January 2005.

The reality: Obama has welcomed close connections with the precise lobbyists and corporations he now contends that he has been “taking on.” And as Obama has set about seeking and receiving this support, he has brazenly and shamelessly violated his September 2007 pledge to forego private funding in this year’s Presidential election.

In his weekly interview with The Warren Michaels show this evening from 9pm EDT/6pm PDT to 10:30pm EDT/7:30pm PDT, Johns will discuss the origins and policy remedies to the crisis currently confronting American financial institutions. The broadcast is available globally, both live and by archived replay, at: The Warren Michaels show.

Source: Michael Johns

The Hollow Candidacy of Barack Obama

Republican strategist and conservative writer Michael Johns, a former White House speechwriter and Heritage Foundation policy analyst, will discuss the United States Presidential election and other current events in his weekly appearance on The Warren Michaels show this Wednesday September 10, 2008, from 9pm EDT/6pm PDT to 10:30pm EDT/7:30pm PDT. This broadcast is available globally, both live and by archived replay, at: The Warren Michaels show.

Source: Michael Johns

The Republican Message, 2008

Coinciding with the 2008 Republican National Convention, which convened this afternoon in St. Paul, Minnesota, Republican strategist and conservative writer Michael Johns, a former White House speechwriter and Heritage Foundation policy analyst, will speak on the 2008 Republican message to voters in several global and national media interviews this week, including:

• Monday September 1, 2008: “The Republican Message, 2008,” Grizzly Groundswell Network with Stephanie Davis, 8pm EDT/5pm PDT to 9pm EDT/6pm EDT. This show is available live and by archived replay at: Grizzly Groundswell Radio Network.
• Monday September 1, 2008: “The Republican Agenda for Health Care Reform,” Bio-Med, 9pm EDT/6pm PDT to 9:45pm EDT/6:45pm PDT. This show is available live and by archived replay at: Bio-Med Radio.
• Tuesday September 2, 2008: “The Republican Message, 2008,” The Halls of Valhalla (live from Republican National Convention), 8pm EDT/5pm PDT to 10pm EDT/8pm PDT. This show is available live and by archived replay at: The Halls of Valhalla.
• Wednesday September 3, 2008: “The Republican Message, 2008,” Heading Right Radio, 8pm EDT/5pm PDT to 9pm EDT/6pm PDT. This show is available live and by archived replay at: Heading Right Radio. The show’s press release on Michael’s appearance is available here: “Former White House Speechwriter Michael Johns Provides Americans Inside View of Washington Politics.”
• Wednesday September 3, 2008: “Presidential Campaign, 2008,” The Warren Michaels show, BlogTalkRadio, 9pm EDT/6pm PDT to 10:30pm EDT/7:30pm PDT. This show is available live and by archived replay at: The Warren Michaels show, September 3, 2008 episode.
• Thursday September 4, 2008: “The Republican Message, 2008,” Grizzly Groundswell Network with Stephanie Davis, 8pm EDT/5pm PDT to 10pm EDT/7pm PDT. This show is available live and by archived replay at: Grizzly Groundswell Radio Network.
• Friday September 5, 2008: “The Republican Message, 2008,” The Wanda Fay show (Christian religious program), 2am EDT/11pm PDT to 3am EDT/midnight PDT. This show is available live and by archived replay at: The Wanda Fay show.

Each of these broadcasts is available globally.

Source: Michael Johns

Government, Not Free Markets, is the Real Impediment to Quality Health Care Access

Health care executive and Republican strategist Michael Johns today said that Democratic Presidential nominee Barrack Obama’s plan to vastly expand the role of the federal government in American health care is likely to reduce, not increase, competitive pressures among health care payers, resulting in a reduction of quality health care access and potentially even the ultimate rationing of health care services, as has happened in other countries with similar nationalized health care systems.

On the other hand, the health care plan of presumptive Republican Presidential nominee John McCain, Johns said, will greatly expand consumer engagement and competitive market forces in health care, leading to enhancements in the quality of care, access to care, and a reduction of overall health care costs.

Johns, a former White House speechwriter and Heritage Foundation policy analyst, will discuss his support for McCain’s health care plan prior to Obama’s acceptance speech this evening, from 7:30pm EDT/4:30pm PDT to 9pm EDT/6pm PDT on The Warren Michaels show. The broadcast can be heard globally, both live and through archived replay, at: The Warren Michaels show, August 28, 2008 broadcast.

Source: Michael Johns