Interesting perspective on Ayers and the Weather Underground by one of their intended victims.

Normally I wouldn't spend my time searching online for vintage "Ramar of the Jungle" episodes. But when I read (via Ann Althouse's link) about the African adventures of Amanda Marcotte, and after seeing pictures like these stirred up my superstitious imagination (if not my primitive jungle urges), I decided to go the extra mile.

The cover is pretty tame:

But the inside pictures are juicier. Check 'em out!

Amanda has been so nice to me in the past that after seeing the extensive discussion about the book, there was just no way I could sit idly by.

So, in honor of the blogosphere's leading jungle woman, I hereby present a very fitting Ramar of the Jungle episode -- "Mark of the Bola" (1952):

....featuring Jon Hall as Dr. Tom Reynolds - a.k.a. "the great white "ramar" - and his associate, Howard Ogden, and Willie. Ramar and crew have great adventures in the jungle - fighting for truth, justice and the American way - in the heart of Africa.

"the mere fact that a woman survived a calamity that struck down three strong men would arouse the superstition of any primitive mind."

Why, it's almost socially redeeming! See for yourself!

LikeTelevision Embed Movies and TV Shows

(If the above won't stream, the link is here.)

And be sure not to miss the famous Noxzema comfort shave commercial at the end. If you get tired of Ramar, it's separately clickable.

(Take it off! Take it all off!)

It's not every day that I open the Philadelphia Inquirer to an editorial page debate between Andrew Sullivan and a leftie activist. And when on top of that the topic involves collective responsibility, it's the sort of thing I cannot not write a blog post about.

Sullivan and Clarence B. Jones ("former draft speechwriter for the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and currently a scholar in residence/visiting professor at the Martin Luther King Jr. Research & Education Institute at Stanford University") are on opposite sides on the merits of Jeremiah Wright's denunciations of white America.

Sullivan's Op-Ed consists of excerpts from his blog posts, including some of what I quoted the other day (that Wright's performance was "a calculated, ugly, repulsive, vile display of arrogance, egotism and self-regard") as well as more:

Wright himself, it seems to me, has become part of what Obama is fighting against: the boomer obsessions with red/blue, white/black, pro-/anti-Americanism. Those need not dominate this election, and Wright's racially divisive and, yes, bitter provocation requires a proportionate response.

This is no longer about cynics trying to associate one man's politics with another's. It is now about Wright attempting to associate himself and some of his noxious views with the likely Democratic nominee. He has given Obama no choice - but he has given him an opportunity. Yesterday, Obama went a long way toward seizing it. But making that repudiation stick will take more work.

Like the Jeremiah Wright he defends, Clarence B. Jones would disagree with me, as he thinks that "white America" (meaning all white people living in America, down to the most recent arrivals from Eastern Europe) is collectively responsible for the bad things which other white people have done. Jones begins by citing with approval a quote from James Baldwin:

A vast amount of energy that goes into what we call the Negro problem is produced by the white man's profound desire not to be judged by those who are not white, not to be seen as he is, and at the same time, a vast amount of the white anguish is rooted in the white man's equally profound need to be seen as he is, to be released from the tyranny of his mirror.

Next comes Cornel West:

Cornel West writes that in this essay, Baldwin "spoke the deep truth that democratic individuality demands that white Americans give up their deliberate ignorance and willful blindness about the weight of white supremacy in America. Only then can a genuine democratic community emerge in America."

What does "democratic individuality" mean? It sounds like the type of indefinable code language used by people who want to win arguments without really having to say what they think. Like the left-wing communitarian term "social justice," which, although indefinable, clearly implies that the legal system should be involved in things like property redistribution and "human rights commissions."

I don't like it when people juxtapose unrelated concepts together and then repeat them until they sound like truisms. ("Structural violence." "Poverty is violence." "Pornography is violence." And of course "Jobs Not Guns!")

And if there is such a thing as "democratic individuality," then what stands in opposition to it? "Undemocratic individuality"? Does that mean the undemocratic individual should not be allowed to vote? (Or is it just code language for Republicans?)

Anyway, whatever "democratic individuality" is, I find it a bit insulting to read that "it" demands that "white Americans" (including, I guess, my white-ass self)give up "their" (meaning my) "deliberate ignorance" and "willful blindness" about the "weight" of "white supremacy in America."

How many mouthfuls (or mouthsful) of this do I need in one morning? Do I have to spend all day? If I am to be scolded for being ignorant, don't I get to hear what I'm ignorant about? I've studied American history in detail, and I think I'm at least as aware of slavery, racism, the Civil War, Reconstruction, the Klan, Jim Crow, the Civil Rights movement as most college graduates -- maybe more. I continue to read and I try to keep an open mind about these and other things. So what am I ignorant and willfully blind about? The weight of white supremacy? How can he be so sure that I'm ignorant and blind about that because I am white?

Or am I only ignorant and blind if I disagree over how the "weight"? Whose scale is to be used in its measurement, and who decides?

Jones argues that the reactions to Wright result from the "24/7 persistence of white racism":

Everyone seems quick to blame or condemn Wright for the possible impact or "political" consequences of his remarks on Obama's candidacy. My view is that whatever those consequences may be, they are fundamentally a result of the pernicious 24/7 persistence of white racism. Most white people (and, perhaps, some African Americans) are uncomfortable with a public discourse about or a reminder of this reality.

At the risk of sounding like a hopelessly ignorant cracker, let me just venture that people who disagree are not the ones with an aversion to discourse. Those who are uncomfortable with discourse are the ones who simply do not engage in discourse. As to why these silent hordes might be uncomfortable, I don't know. I can't speak for them. Maybe some of them just hate politics and political arguments. It seems like a major stretch to claim that they are all driven by 24/7 racism, but then, Jones is not so much attributing racism to the silent; he's attributing it to those who disagree with Wright.

To Jones, Wright is not the real issue. It's race:

Democratic primary voters have to decide whether Obama can address their concerns with high gas prices, rising foreclosures, absence of affordable health insurance, and the Iraq war. But the underlying issue, uncomfortably presented by Wright, is the reality of race relations in America.

That issue is the 800-pound gorilla in our national living room, which most politicians have been unwilling or too afraid to acknowledge or discuss.

The reactions of the media and political pundits to Wright's remarks are unambiguous reminders that white America remains seriously afflicted with amnesia with respect to its treatment of African Americans throughout most of our history.

Jones' argument is more illogical than guilt by association. It's collective guilt.

Guilt by birth. Guilt by skin color. Guilt imputed over generations. White America is collectively guilty, which means every white person is guilty. I am not merely responsible for the crimes of my ancestors; I am responsible for the crimes of other people's ancestors. (Unless, of course, I could show that I had been born with a black father, mother or other black ancestor; if so then the hereditary guilt of my white mother or father would be erased.)

This goes beyond guilt by DNA (although it may cross over to an emerging new area called "cultural DNA.")

It is deeply illogical, but to disagree with it is to be against dialogue, and to be in denial. More specifically, to be a state of "deliberate ignorance," "willful blindness" and collective amnesia. And, of course, to be motivated by a "profound desire not to be judged."

I don't want to dimiss Jones's argument out of hand, though. The reason I wrote this post is that I think that maybe the country could use some dialogue on the notion of collective guilt.

For what it's worth, I disagree profoundly with the idea of collective guilt, and I have condemned it in forgotten post after forgotten post after forgotten post. (No, it's not necessarily about race, nor is the idea limited to the left.)

Bear in mind that those forgotten blog posts do not represent any attempt at discourse or dialogue. Rather, they reflect the deliberate ignorance and willful blindness of my amnesia, and spring from my stubbornly profound desire not to be judged.

Which is a long way of saying that they simply reflect my whiteness.

UPDATE: My profound thanks to Glenn Reynolds for linking this post, and a warm welcome to all.

I appreciate the comments.

Nanocomp Technologies has announced a breakthrough in carbon nanotube production. They can make fibers in the 1 mm length range. This makes possible carbon nanotube cloth. Carbon nanotubes have wonderful properties. Very high strength. Light weight. Good electrical and thermal conductivity.

However, up to now, competitive commercial manufacturing processes have generally produced only short carbon nanotubes - usually tens of microns long - with current carbon nanotubes generally available in powder formats. And, as with most powders, they can be quite difficult to incorporate into final manufactured goods. Perhaps most importantly, final products made from traditional powdery nanotubes have poor bulk properties - exhibiting less than optimal strength and conductivity.

NCTI's patent pending processes change the game. We have developed methods to continuously produce very long, pure, carbon nanotubes, in the millimeter range of length, at high growth rates. Longer nanotubes mean greater strength, higher conductivity, easier handling, and greater product safety. They are key to providing the attractive properties exhibited by individual tubes.

* High Strength - our spun conductive yarns exhibit breaking strengths up to 3 GPa expressed or in other terms: 1.5 Nt/Tex or 450,000 psi and with fracture toughness that is higher than aramids (such as Kevlar® or Twaron® ). Our CNT sheets have breaking strengths, without binders, that range from 500 MPa to 1.2 GPa depending upon tube orientation. Aluminum breaks at 500 MPa, carbon steel breaks around 1 GPa.

* Electrical Conductivity - Capable of carrying more current than copper and are also more conductive than copper at high frequencies.

* Thermal Conductivity - Capability to transfer more heat than copper or silver on a per weight basis.

* Extremely Lightweight - Less than half the weight of aluminum

Cross Posted at Power and Control

In what probably won't shock most seasoned political junkies, it appears very possible that Jeremiah Wright's troublemaking conference yesterday at the National Press Club was set up by a Clinton supporter:

Shortly before he rose to deliver his rambling, angry, sarcastic remarks at the National Press Club Monday, Wright sat next to, and chatted with, Barbara Reynolds.

A former editorial board member at USA Today, she runs something called Reynolds News Services and teaches ministry at the Howard University School of Divinity. (She is an ordained minister).

It also turns out that Reynolds - introduced Monday as a member of the National Press Club "who organized" the event - is an enthusiastic Hillary Clinton supporter.

On a blog linked to her Web site- www.reynoldsnews.com- Reynolds said in a February post: "My vote for Hillary in the Maryland primary was my way of saying thank you" to Clinton and her husband for the successes of Bill Clinton's presidency.

The same post criticized Obama's "Audacity of Hope" theme....

There's more, including some devastating criticism of Pastor Wright.

Hmmm.... Maybe I should rethink what I said yesterday about Wright being on his best behavior.

While I'm in conspiracy mode, does anyone know for sure that this Jeremiah Wright is really a 100% Obama supporter, and that he always has been?

What about this?

It was widely linked, but quickly forgotten. Might there be more going on there than is commonly suspected? (Who or what is Bubba pointing at?)

If I really got into full-blown conspiracy mode, I might start wondering whether the entire Wright-Obama pageant wasn't orchestrated in advance to make Hillary look like the most centrist Democrat in history.

And hell I might as well push my full-blown conspiracy mode into overdrive, and ask another hellish question.

Why is Glenn Reynolds going out of his way to deny that he is related to Barbara Reynolds?

MORE: The plot deepens. Glenn Reynolds has all but admitted that the photo is true, which ought to stop all speculation in the comments about authenticity. (Of the photo; not the turkey; I see there's already been speculation over whether it's plastic.)

This narrows my area of inquiry to what did he know, and when did he know it?

Welcome all!

Unkulunkulu?

That name leaped out at me as I read John Derbyshire's Pajamas Media piece about atheism and science. Discussing some fascinating correspondence with author David Berlinski, he takes issue with what he calls Berlinski's "vague notion that atheism is a sort of religion -- "a doctrine," you say -- that people sign on to, perhaps after undergoing some formal instruction from a properly ordained minister."

Possibly it does take that form in some individuals, but far more often it is merely an indifference to supernatural explanations, on the part of people who find natural explanations sufficiently interesting. As one of those atheistical book authors says -- Hitchens, I think it is -- an atheist just believes in one fewer god than you. He is an atheist in respect of Yahweh in just the same way, and for just the same kind of reason, that you are an atheist in respect of Unkulunkulu.

What is your problem with Unkulunkulu, David? Why are you not willing to accept his mighty power? Are you secretly, in your inner heart, one of those arrogant atheists? Well, of course, so far as Unkulunkulu is concerned, you are!

I must confess, though, that I never believed in Unkulunkulu:

Unkulunkulu is the creator god and great ancestral spirit of the Zulu people. Unkulunkulu is believed to have grown on a reed in the mythical swamp of Uhlanga. In the isiZulu language, the name means "the very great/high one". According to tribal myths, he took the form of half-man / half-tiger having a human torso and lower body, but with a lion-like face and claws. It is said that he came down from the sky to fight an Evil Demon in South Africa and won against the Demon on a No Moon Day.

The most commonly accepted deity in the American cultural tradition is of course the great, apparently bearded deity described here:

It is probable that Yahweh was at one time worshiped by various tribes south of Palestine, and that several places in that wide territory (Horeb, Sinai, Kadesh, &c.) were sacred to him. The oldest and most famous of these, the mountain of God, seems to have lain in Arabia, east of the Red Sea. From some of these peoples and at one of these holy places, a group of Israelite tribes adopted the religion of Yahweh, the God who, by the hand of Moses, had delivered them from Egypt.[49]

[...]

Scholars in the 19th century discussed over what sphere of nature Yahweh originally presided. Some recognized in him a storm god, a theory with which the derivation of the name from Hebrew hawah or Arabic hawa well accords (see also the Book of Job chapters 37-38). The association of Yahweh with storm and fire is frequent in the Old Testament. The thunder is the voice of Yahweh, the lightning his arrows, and the rainbow his bow. The revelation at Sinai is amid the awe-inspiring phenomena of tempest. Yahweh leads Israel through the desert in a pillar of cloud and fire. He kindles Elijah's altar by lightning, and translates the prophet in a chariot of fire. See also Judg. v. 4 seq.. In this way, he seems to have usurped the attributes of the Canaanite god Baal Hadad. In Ugarit, the struggle between Baal and Yam, suggests that Baal's brother Ya'a was a water divinity - the god of Rivers (Nahar) and of the Sea (Yam).

Then, of course, there's Allah, said to be the Moon God. I'll upload his picture -- not because I think it's accurate, but just to demonstrate that I still live in a free country where graven images are not prohibited.

(Like I should care whether Allah -- or any other High Deity -- had origins with the Moon God.)

This all touches on my ongoing problem, which is that I see no contradiction between monotheism and polytheism. That's because I have no problem with polytheism, as I think that once you presuppose a deity, then there's no reason why there would have to be only one. God could do anything he wants, including reproduce. If God saw fit to make man, angels, a son, a devil, then what's the problem?

While polytheism is not necessarily at war with monotheism (because of the possibility of different manifestations of the god-spirit-deity to many people in many times and places) I have long seen monotheism as more at war with polytheism than the other way around, because it insists upon a limitation on the dimensionality of spiritual forces -- usually according to the demands of a particular deity.

Nothing new there, except that Derbyshire has now forced me to entertain what might be considered a provocative if not mean thought.

Are monotheists more atheistic than polytheists?

According to simple math, they may well be, because they disbelieve in more, and believe in fewer.

It's scary, because I've been called an atheist for not being a monotheist. It never occurred to me that the accusers were more atheistic than I.

Derbyshire is a bad influence.

Read it all.

House of Representatives
The Senate
The President

This shit (and if you watch the whole video that is no exaggeration) needs to get fixed at once. Total Bravo Sierra.

H/T Instapundit

Reading Harvey C. Mansfield's review of Donna Freitas's "Sex and the Soul", I was struck by the foolishness of young people who (assuming Freitas is right) make the most personal sexual decisions according to a herd mentality.

...college students today enter a low hook-up culture when they leave the classroom. In case you don't know, a hook-up is a brief sexual encounter between two partners who don't necessarily know each other before and who don't necessarily want to know each other after. And it's free. The sort of transient sex that once was available to men only for money can now be had, without paying, from college women - as long as the man is a fellow student and minimally artful about his approach. If he is thwarted in one overture, he may try another with a reasonable prospect of success.

No doubt lurid anecdote and popular myth cause us to exaggerate the actual frequency of campus hook-ups: Most college students do not share in these delights. But most students also believe that "everyone does it," even if the individual student, for some reason, cannot locate a partner. Thus an active minority sets the tone and makes hooking up a "culture." When there are no sexual boundaries, either official or informal, the standard becomes the extreme, and all students feel the pressure to appear more promiscuous than they are. The traditional double standard of sexual conduct - more restrictive for women than for men - has been replaced by the single standard of the predatory male.

So my first reaction was to decry the apparent lack of individualism in the students as portrayed in the Freitas book. If they're that way about sex, little wonder they accept uncritically the postmodernist nonsense spouted by leftist professors.

It was downright depressing. Anyway, I kept reading, hoping that someone, somewhere (either on the campus, in the book, or in the review) would remember that the right to do something includes the right to not do it, and that the right to say yes of necessity includes the right to say no. Contrary to what some believe, freedom is license. But license is a different issue than judgment and responsibility, and these things vary from individual to individual.

Since when is the right to do something stupid a duty to do something stupid?

Anyway, I found little talk of encouraging individuality. I did, however, find some advocacy of replacing peer pressure with peer pressure:

Ms. Freitas does not celebrate this state of affairs, but neither does she spend most of her prose denouncing it. Instead she wants to understand how the hook-up culture functions and what forces might be at odds with it. Rather than confine her interviews to secular colleges, she visits religious ones, both Catholic and evangelical. The Catholic colleges, she finds, are little different from their secular counterparts; they seem "more adept at creating lapsed Catholics than anything else."

But evangelical colleges make an effort to oppose the hook-up culture with a "purity culture," asking a level of sexual restraint that would seem, for most young people today, all but impossible. One is inclined to admire the students who attempt to meet the purity culture's strict demands. But it is clear that such students often suffer deep anxiety in their search for a mate. The boys find it troublingly difficult to put off sex, and the girls are fearful that they will have failed in college if they do not get a "ring by spring" (of their senior year). While students in the hook-up culture appear more promiscuous than they are, purity students appear more virtuous than they are.

Or is it that these kids are merely lying about their sex lives or lack thereof? Are virgins claiming to be studs and sluts, while sluts and studs are claiming to be chaste? So they can fit in with their respective peer pressure groups?

I don't know, but college sounds like an awful place.

I'm glad I don't have kids, because I wouldn't want to have to pay money for indoctrinating my kids on how to be followers.

We hear a lot about "choice," and we tend to think of it as an individual thing. At least, I've always thought of it that way. I'd hate to think that choice is being redefined as a choice of herds.

The promiscuous herd? Or the purity herd?

Another question which occurred to me is why religion keeps getting juxtaposed against promiscuous sex, as if it's one or the other, and the purpose of the former is to combat the latter. (Is the implication that atheists are sluts, while Christians are pure? Why?)

I'd almost swear this begins to resemble identity politics. (Which is "choice" masquerading as the antithesis of choice.)

UPDATE: My thanks to Glenn Reynolds for the link, especially for quoting from this post, and a warm welcome to all!

Comments invited -- agree or disagree.

Dennis The Peasant has a wonderful post up about the difficulties of being an uber feminist in an age of Political Correctness. It all revolves around Amanda Marcotte and some very delightful if politically incorrect illustrations.

H/T Insty

Cross Posted at Power and Control

On the radio yesterday, I heard Rush Limbaugh bragging that thanks to him (and what he called "Operation Chaos," but which I call "Operation Elect Hillary"), Hillary Clinton is now ahead.

When I distrust someone, I tend to be dismissive of whatever that person says.

Bad logical move. (Even liars sometimes tell the truth.)

Anyway, today I see news confirmation that things are going according to chaos plan:

WASHINGTON - Hillary Rodham Clinton now leads John McCain by 9 points in a head-to-head presidential matchup, according to an Associated Press-Ipsos poll that bolsters her argument that she is more electable than Democratic rival Barack Obama. Obama and Republican McCain are running about even.

The survey released Monday gives the New York senator and former first lady a fresh talking point as she works to raise much-needed campaign cash and persuade pivotal undecided superdelegates to side with her in the drawn-out Democratic primary fight.

Helped by independents, young people and seniors, Clinton gained ground this month in a hypothetical match with Sen. McCain, the GOP nominee-in-waiting. She now leads McCain, 50 percent to 41 percent, while Obama remains virtually tied with McCain, 46 percent to 44 percent.

Both Democrats were roughly even with McCain in the previous poll about three weeks ago.

The AP-Ipsos poll found Clinton and Obama about even in the race for the Democratic nomination. Underscoring deep divisions within the Democratic Party -- and a potentially negative longer-term impact -- 30 percent of Clinton supporters and 21 percent of Obama supporters said they would vote for McCain in November if their preferred candidate didn't win the nomination.

But then there's this interesting statement, which indicates to me that at least some people in the GOP leadership are beginning to think logically:

Also on Monday, the head of the Republicans' House campaign committee said the party would rather face Obama in November because the GOP believes Clinton would be more of a threat to McCain among moderate voters.

Said Tom Cole, a congressman from Oklahoma: Obama "is by any definition very liberal, to the left of Hillary Clinton, in a center-right country. That is very, very helpful to us."

This strategy actually predates Ann Coulter's pledge to vote for Hillary. It was Tom DeLay who actually pioneered the meme, when, back in February of 2007, he stated that the Republicans needed Hillary:

Hillary Clinton as president may be the best thing that ever happened to the conservative movement and the Republican Party.

In a post a couple of weeks ago, I linked a warning that was going around along the lines of "Be careful what you wish for, Rush."

I think they've been quite careful.

If the Neo-RINOs win and Hillary is president, what are the Paleo-RINOs to do?

(I've been predicting this sort of treachery for so long that words fail me. Honestly, I don't know what to title this post. The three letter title I started out with is beginning to look like understatement, but I'll leave it the way it is in the interest of politeness...)

UPDATE: My thanks to Glenn Reynolds for the link, and for quoting from this post!

A warm welcome to all. Comments always invited -- agree or disagree.

Today I learned that there's no escape from Pastor Jeremiah Wright.

I didn't watch his live appearance before the National Press Club on C-SPAN, nor did I check my email until after he spoke. But since Pajamas Media had been nice enough to ask me to cover the event, when I finally saw their email I emailed back and said I'd try to watch it on video anyway, even though it would probably be too late for a piece.

Was I ever in for a grotesque afternoon! I found the 6 part video on YouTube and rarely have I been more disgusted with a speech by any public figure. To call this guy a demagogue is an understatement. Really, I found it hard to sit through, but I did.

Finally, it dawned on me that if I couldn't stand to watch a single speech by this master of malevolence, how could Obama have sat through 20 years of it?

So even though it was late, I wrote my post for Pajamas Media, and I hope you enjoy it.

My thanks to Glenn Reynolds for the linking the piece in his roundup. After I wrote the PJM piece, I learned that a number of commentators are now wondering whether Wright might be sabotaging Obama. Glenn asks whether " the whole thing [is] being cleverly staged" to give Obama a Sister Souljah moment. (Plus, it might mean that Bill Moyer wasted his time over the weekend!)

Even Andrew Sullivan (long a Wright defender) has had it, saying this makes "any further defense of him impossible.":

This was a calculated, ugly, repulsive, vile display of arrogance, egotism, and self-regard. This is an outright attack on the stated beliefs and policies and values of Barack Obama in a secular setting.

All in all, not a good day for Obama.

Wright does seem to be going out of his way to create problems.

I'd almost think he was being paid, except I know there's no corruption in Chicago.

Who is the Devil? That would be me. Who says so? That would be Obama's Spiritual Mentor, the person who coined the phrase Obama used as the title of one of his books The Audacity of Hope, the irreverend Jeremiah Wright.

"Theologically, Malcolm X was not far wrong when he called the white man 'the devil.' The white structure of this American society, personified in every racist, must be at least part of what the New Testament meant by demonic forces... "

Yes, Wright's views certainly contradict Obama's stated beliefs, policies, and values.

My take on all this? The irreverend Wright is trying to help his close friend Barack Hussein Obama get elected.

Update: 29 April 008 0335z

The Telegraph Co. UK. has a few words:

Barack Obama's former pastor returned to plague his White House bid yesterday with a nationally televised speech in which he blamed US policy for the September 11 attacks and praised the controversial black leader Louis Farrakhan.

David Axelrod, Mr Obama's chief strategist, admitted to the cable news channel MSNBC that the campaign had no control over the minister. "Obviously we would not have encouraged him to go on a media tour," he said.

Joe Watkins, a Republican strategist and pastor, who is black, said: "This hurts Obama tremendously because all it's doing is causing people to remember that Barack Obama has been a member of this man's church."

If you qualify Purchasing Magazine is free. If you don't qualify there is still their www site.

What is Gnip Gnop? Ping pong spelled backwards. Officially Table Tennis. And what is so important about that? Let me see if I can narrow it down some. It is about state government. Illinois State Government. It is about FOO. FOO? That would be Friends of Obama (D, Rezko). Also FODu and FODa. That would be Friends of Dick Durbin (D, Corruption [State]) and Friends of Richard Daley (D, Corruption [City]). Like all tales of money in Illinois it has some interesting twists and turns. The LA Times tells the story.

WASHINGTON -- After an unsuccessful campaign for Congress in 2000, Illinois state Sen. Barack Obama faced serious financial pressure: numerous debts, limited cash and a law practice he had neglected for a year. Help arrived in early 2001 from a significant new legal client -- a longtime political supporter.

Chicago entrepreneur Robert Blackwell Jr. paid Obama an $8,000-a-month retainer to give legal advice to his growing technology firm, Electronic Knowledge Interchange. It allowed Obama to supplement his $58,000 part-time state Senate salary for over a year with regular payments from Blackwell's firm that eventually totaled $112,000.

A few months after receiving his final payment from EKI, Obama sent a request on state Senate letterhead urging Illinois officials to provide a $50,000 tourism promotion grant to another Blackwell company, Killerspin.

Killerspin specializes in table tennis, running tournaments nationwide and selling its own line of equipment and apparel and DVD recordings of the competitions. With support from Obama, other state officials and an Obama aide who went to work part time for Killerspin, the company eventually obtained $320,000 in state grants between 2002 and 2004 to subsidize its tournaments.

Obama's staff said the senator advocated only for the first year's grant -- which ended up being $20,000, not $50,000. The day after Obama wrote his letter urging the awarding of the state funds, Obama's U.S. Senate campaign received a $1,000 donation from Blackwell.

Obama's presidential campaign rejects any suggestion that there was a connection between the legal work, the campaign contribution and the help with the grant. "Any implication that Sen. Obama would risk an ethical breach in order to secure a small grant for a pingpong tournament is nuts," said David Axelrod, Obama's chief political advisor.

Business relationships between lawmakers and people with government interests are not illegal or uncommon in Illinois or other states with a part-time Legislature, where lawmakers supplement their state salaries with income from the private sector.

But Obama portrays himself as a lawmaker dedicated to transparency and sensitive to even the appearance of a conflict of interest.

Recently, Obama expressed regret over a property deal with Illinois power broker Tony Rezko after Obama was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2004. In an interview this spring with the Chicago Sun-Times, Obama said his regret was not just because the real estate and restaurant entrepreneur was under criminal scrutiny, but because he was "a contributor and someone doing business before the state."

Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs, who provided The Times with details of Obama's compensation from EKI, said Obama did nothing wrong acting on behalf of Killerspin. He said the state senator simply wrote a letter backing a worthy project developed by a constituent.

Killerspin's owner, Blackwell, was a political supporter and friend as well. Both men lived on Chicago's South Side. Blackwell, a savvy and successful entrepreneur, was one of the first donors to Obama's early campaigns, including the state senator's failed bid for a congressional seat in 2000. In the presidential race he is credited on Obama's website with committing to raise $100,000 to $200,000 for Obama's campaign.

When Blackwell sought backing for his table tennis tournament in 2002, other politicians, including U.S. Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) and Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley, offered support for the event. But Obama was the only one who provided a letter that became part of the initial application for state funds, state records show. In addition, he wrote a state Senate proclamation heralding the first tournament and an official letter that welcomed "table tennis friends" to the 2004 contest and thanked spectators for helping to "make Chicago the table tennis capital of this nation."

One thing you can say about Obama relative to Illinois politics. He is an honest politician. He stays bought.

So it all comes down to: who owns him. And you thought slavery was outlawed by the 13th Amendment to the Constitution. Obviously it does not apply to politicians. Obama is a Slave to the Machine. The Chicago Machine. It is a tough job, but Obama Can Do It.

Which brings us to speculation. Why was Obama pushed forward so hard in this election season? My guess is that it was the Chicago Machine's last hope to limit the damage from the Rezko mess. If Obama wins the Presidency he can slow or stop further investigations into how Illinois/Chicago operates. With Obama tanking it has got to be putting those guys into the house of fear. You can smell it in the air.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

In more posts than I can count, I've complained about the mandatory spay and neuter movement, which is built around the idea that whether your dog has testicles is the government's business.

Well now, via TigerHawk, I see that the busybody bureaucrats who can't stand balls on animals have ratcheted up their campaign, and they want to criminalize truck testicles! No, really:

TALLAHASSEE, Florida (Reuters) - Senate lawmakers in Florida have voted to ban the fake bull testicles that dangle from the trailer hitches of many trucks and cars throughout the state.

Republican Sen. Cary Baker, a gun shop owner from Eustis, Florida, called the adornments offensive and proposed the ban. Motorists would be fined $60 for displaying the novelty items, which are known by brand names like "Truck Nutz" and resemble the south end of a bull moving north.

I arbitrarily selected the blue balls, and I do not want any insinuations made, OK?

They come in colors, of course, and there are red and white ones to go with the blue ones, as well as green ones which would look great hanging from priapic Priuses.

What worried me the most was to see that the truck neutering ordinance was sponsored by a Republican. Might that mean that the war on sex (recently gathering steam among gay crackpots) is about to hook up with the animal neutering movement?

I hope not. (Otherwise, I might have to alter my earlier view that "Gonad Nazis" might be too strong a term for these nut-grabbers.)

In any case, I think that under established constitutional law principles, this law must fail. Not only because there's still a right to freedom of expression, but because there is a less restrictive alternative.

An ordinary vasectomy.

You know, a stitch in time?

Many, many people have dumped on John McCain for betraying North Carolina Republicans by trying to stop the now-famous political ad (which skewers Obama for the Wright and Weather Underground relationships, and concludes that Obama is "too extreme for North Carolina").

Maybe Obama is too extreme for North Carolinians, but I'm wondering about McCain's motivation for opposing the ad.

He certainly irritated the conservative Republican base in North Carolina, as well as a lot of other people. And he is being seen as opposing the truth:

Predictably, however, Obama's cheerleaders in the mainstream media, the left side of the Blogosphere and political fellow travelers in the Democratic party immediately began blasting the North Carolina ad. Typical was Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean who called the ad "racially divisive" and challenged presumptive GOP presidential nominee John McCain to pass this "test of leadership" by forcing the state party to stop airing the ad (which by the way has been viewed more than 200,000 times on YouTube at last count). Amazingly, McCain quickly joined this condescending chorus, demanding that the ad be pulled as "inappropriate" and "offensive to some." During a Friday conference call with bloggers, McCain added that the ad "is not the tenor of the campaign we want to wage." And he said the North Carolina GOP is "out of touch with reality." A McCain campaign spokesman was unable to say what part of the ad conveyed the objectionable tenor.

Unable to say?

Why might that be?

Unless the primary is over, McCain is not yet running against Barack Obama. Is it possible that what the McCain campaign found objectionable was that the ad might cause North Carolinians to vote for Hillary Clinton?

Suppose for the sake of argument that McCain would rather run against Obama. (I've been arguing ad nauseam that Obama would be easier for him to beat.) Imagine then (hypothetically) that McCain came out out and said that he'd rather run against Obama than Hillary, and that he hoped Democrats would vote for Obama. It would become a huge campaign issue, and Hillary's campaign would seize on it so fast it would make your head spin. So, if McCain thought that, he could never have said it; likewise, if he opposes running anti-Obama ads, he has to advance boilerplate claims that the ads are inappropriate or offensive.

This might explain why his campaign is "unable to say" why.

In any case, I think it was a mistake for McCain to attack the ad. He should have just kept his mouth shut, and I agree with M. Simon and Glenn Reynolds that attacking the ad only helped publicize it.

Obviously, I don't know whether McCain wants Obama to beat Hillary, and this is only speculation. I also don't know whether his reasons for opposing the North Carolina ad matter.

Frankly, I feel a bit conflicted posting about this, because I want McCain to win in November, and I'm not sure it's especially helpful to his campaign to speculate about a possible hidden agenda. I'm also well aware of the possibility that the more I claim Hillary has a better chance to beat McCain than Obama, the more I'm helping Hillary.

What this means is that I may be a conflict of interest. I want to say what I think, yet I don't want to say things that might be harmful to McCain's candidacy.

Having disclosed that, I should probably relax, and just say what I think, lest I find myself in the McCain camp's "unable to say" position.

Because things are sure to get worse before they get better.

In a post titled "America's Worst Mom?" Dr. Helen questions whether New York Sun columnist Lenore Skenazy (who let her son take the subway home alone) is in fact the worst mother in the country, as many Newsweek readers contend. Said Skenazy,

"...Half the people I've told this episode to now want to turn me in for child abuse. As if keeping kids under lock and key and helmet and cell phone and nanny and surveillance is the right way to rear kids. It's not. It's debilitating--for us and for them."

When I was in graduate school in New York in the 80's, it was a far more dangerous place. I saw kids ride the subway all the time. No one seemed to care. Now that it's safer, no one thinks kids should come out of their homes.

Sticking the title "America's Worst Mom" on this particular mother, Lenore Skenazy, is rather ridiculous and alarmist given the things really bad mothers actually do to their children. The term should be reserved for people who deserve it.

As it happens, I have written a number of posts about the rash of subway and public transportation crime in Philadelphia. Most of the subway crime is caused by public school students, and I suspect the same would be true in most urban areas with subways.

But what is happening is that students are spilling out from schools (where they assault each other, and don't really receive attention until they do things like break the necks and jaws of their teachers) and into the stations, where they interact with the general public.

The "general public" includes many people who do not experience violence on a daily basis, but who instead imagine that they and their children can live in peace and harmony and in a nonviolent world. (Some probably adhere to the gentle John Lennon "Imagine" philosophy.)

This entire discussion simply begs the question of whether public schools aren't more dangerous than subways. In many urban areas, they clearly are, and it is just a given. The thing is, the kids who go to those schools, cause merchants to lock their doors as they spill onto the streets at 3:00 p.m. (an hour dreaded by the Philadelphia Police Department), are just as free to ride the subways as the children of the "lock and key, helmet/cell-phone/nanny-surveillance" moms.

But they are not living in the same culture, and I suspect that Ms. Skenazy's accusers are not only members of the latter group, but they perceive her to be either one of them, or someone who should be one of them. (Like affluent Berkeleyans who excoriate affluent moms for having too many kids, but think it's just peachy for the "oppressed" classes to do so. "Oppressed" is PC jargon for "non white lower class" of course.)

Our "society" (if I may use that word) is being overwhelmed by such hopeless and intractable double standards.

This touches on another double standard. Assaults on subways are treated as crimes, and the perps will be arrested if found. Contrast this with assaults in schools, which teachers try to ignore or sweep under the rug as best they can:

"Violence takes place on a day to day basis but it is rarely reported, because if you're a professional in the school district and you admit to any negative circumstance like a physical threat, you may lose your job."

(While this is a different topic, there is also a rather large double standard where it comes to crimes committed against children by children, which makes no sense legally, and which I have posted about before. I fail to understand why punching an adult in the face is so much more serious than punching a child in the face, but I'm probably elevating logic above the social reality that school children are supposed to tolerate what no adult would have to.)

Only some people live in a "lock and key, helmet/cell-phone/nanny-surveillance" world in which it is child abuse to let children ride subways. They are so out of touch that it doesn't even occur to them that they are proponents of a huge double standard -- which raises a glaringly obvious question:

If it is child abuse to put a child on an urban subway, then why isn't it child abuse to send a child to an urban public school?

The answer is determined not by reference to the legal system, or by reference to any fixed or ascertainable moral standard.

It is determined by class.

Don Surber has a nice bit on how Obama is self destructing. Or is it self deconstructing. Well what ever Obama is doing to himself there are a lot of twists and turns. Lots of them. Lots and lots of them.

He's looking less like Kennedy, and more like Steve Urkel.

In the 1980s, a smart, talented, hard-working, young intellectual came to Chicago and skyrocketed to success.

But enough about Steve Urkel. This is a political blog and so I must discuss again Democratic Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois.

Or rather his lapel pin, which has become like Donovan's mountain. First there is a lapel pin, then there is no lapel pin, then there is.

He put on a patriotic lapel pin shortly after 9/11 to show his patriotism.

He stopped wearing one when opinion swung away from the war in Iraq.

He started wearing it again after word spread that he told the radical chic in San Francisco that rural Pennsylvanians won't vote for him because they fear outsiders as they cling to their guns and their religion.

Finally, there is proof that Obama is his own man. He does not need the help of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright to make himself out as an out-of-touch, far-left radical.

H/T The Pundit of Knoxville

Cross Posted at Power and Control

A comment to M. Simon's earlier post (about the video linked by Glenn earlier) made me search for the original, because I'm too "vane" to need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows....

And no, I don't follow leaders, I watch the parking meters!

(But that's Allen Ginsburg in the background so Look out kid...)

Which reminded me of a photo I took yesterday.....

Yeah, I know her eyes are gone. Had to remove them to protect the poor stranger's privacy.

But the school aspect reminded me of another photo I decided it was safe to leave the eyes in. Scales and all.

Scales fall from eyes, of course then fish from ice to scales!

And from the metal to the petals (which fall too).

This saint who was standing nearby has probably seen many cycles of petal to metal.

If you don't want to listen, just watch it spin...

It'll work!

ZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.....................

In a PJM piece titled "Where Have All the Smart Media Moguls Gone?" Burt Prelutsky asks a couple of good questions about the news media:

....if you are a conservative and every time you pick up your daily newspaper, you find that everything you believe, not to mention all the things you hold dear, are being ridiculed not only on the editorial page, but throughout the entire paper, it shouldn't surprise anyone that the day finally dawns when a lot of them are going to say, "Why am I paying for this bilge?"

The question that comes to mind is why a business - any business - would go out of its way to antagonize, depending on the city, between, say, 40 and 60% of its market. Is it possible that while my back was turned, the DNC bought up every paper in the country except for the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Times?

I keep up my subscription, though, because I have this stubborn and maybe goofy idea that a daily newspaper is a hallmark of civilization.

And while I don't consider myself a conservative, I've found that in terms of reading a conventional daily newspaper, being a small-l libertarian is even worse.

Unless, that is, you think having twice as many things to disagree with a newspaper about is "better."

(From a blogger perspective, it may be!)

UPDATE: A related battle of the bilge (or maybe a battle between the bilges?) is the battle between newspapers and TV stations for online readers. This has produced what Jack D. Lail calls a "golden age":

A golden age amid the rubble of declining revenues for newspapers and local TV stations? A golden age amid downsizing that is shrinking to newsrooms to the lowest levels in decades? A golden age amid the the boardroom battles in some of the largest media companies?

It certainly is and I say freakin' bring it on.

All-media-meets on the Web has created a local news and advertising battlezone in market-after-market the likes of which I've never seen in a 30-plus-year career.

(And that's not even factoring in the role of blogs.... The more Golden Ages, the better!)

The National Rifle Association has more on Philadelphia Mayor Nutter's attempted enforcement of illegal and unconstitutional gun laws, and slams new Police Commissioner Ramsey for ignoring clear legal warnings from the District Attorney:

....while District Attorney Lynne Abraham previously advised Philadelphia's city council and mayor that their gun control proposals were unconstitutional, the city pressed on, defying the state's firearm preemption law in its attempt to circumvent the Pennsylvania legislature.

Enter Commissioner Ramsey, whose anti-gun leanings and arrogant, above-the-law mentalities have followed him to the City of Brotherly Love.

Not content with his city passing illegal gun control "laws," Ramsey is actually encouraging the City Council and Mayor Nutter to ignore the legal advice of city attorneys against enforcing the ordinances. Not only is he in favor of enforcing the illegal measures, he was recently quoted as saying, "As far as I am concerned, the laws are valid, and we will act as if this whole conversation with the D.A. just didn't take place."

When the City's Police Commissioner--the top law enforcement official--encourages the mayor and council members to ignore legal advice, that's not just blatantly arrogant and anti-gun, that's outrageous.

As expected, the National Rifle Association sprinted into court and got a temporary hold yesterday on the five gun-control laws enacted in Philadelphia.

Unexpected, however, was District Attorney Lynne M. Abraham's announcing that she wouldn't prosecute anyone charged under the new ordinances.

Call it selective prosecution.

Fed up with the daily shootings in Philadelphia, the City Council passed - and Mayor Nutter promptly signed - ordinances last week that limit handgun purchases, target gun trafficking, and subject gun ownership to much-needed greater oversight by the Police Department.

Kudos to Council and the mayor for their strong stand. Too bad Abraham refused to stand by them.

Lynne Abraham is a staunch gun control proponent, but because she is also bound by certain ethical responsibilities. If she were to deliberately bring baseless charges and engage in prosecutions she knew to be illegal, she'd be acting in bad faith, and could ultimately find herself in the predicament of Mike Nifong. Disbarred, and maybe facing prison time.

Would the Inquirer take her case?

Sheesh.

At the rate Nutter, Ramsey and the Inky are going, pretty soon they'll be calling their three ring circus a form of "civil disobedience."

I've long complained about lawbreakers who want to take guns away from law abiding citizens, and I remember what happened in New Orleans. But seeing lawless government officials encouraged by news media to break the law and violate the Constitution -- while an ethical District Attorney is slammed by the media for upholding the law -- reminds me that if it can happen here, it can happen anywhere.

I wish the Inquirer had the sense displayed in some of the local leftie alternative weeklies. Here's the Philadelphia City Paper's Michael Washburn:

How do we prevent tragedies like the one at Virginia Tech? One answer is to redefine gun control so that it's not something we inflict on good, law-abiding people, but rather, part of the package of punishments that we impose on those who have shown criminal and antisocial behavior.

But the problem with criminals is that they don't obey the law.

Maybe Nutter, Ramsey and the Inquirer can explain why.

At the risk of sounding like a bitter asshole, I want to make another stab at explaining my ongoing fascination with the synergistic relationship between McCain Derangement Syndrome (MDS) and Obamaphobia. (See "Real conservatives want their party to lose, but only to Hillary".) This is not to say that there's a 100% overlap; only that when they do overlap, sparks fly.

The Ann Coulter, Pat Buchanan group of McCain haters (along with the quieter Dobson types) hate McCain so much that they declared they'd either vote for Hillary or sit it out. I didn't like this, and I said so repeatedly.

However, it is important to remember that when the McCain haters made these pledges, they assumed that Hillary would be the candidate. Little wonder that they were more outraged -- and at a much higher volume -- than almost anyone once it began to appear that Barack Obama would be the nominee. They were willing to sit it out, and maybe even vote for Hillary, but who the hell was this pleasant-talking young leftist to come along and ruin their McCain boycott? It might have been OK to sit it out for Hillary, but Obama?

The man forces their hand. Obamaphobia literally forces the McCain-hating Obamaphobes to eat their words, swallow their pride, and face the prospect of voting for the guy they pledged to oppose.

I have to admit, part of me -- the vengeful part -- simply loves seeing activist blowhards get their come-uppance, and I see Obama as the punisher. The scourge of MDS. OTOH, another part of me wants simply to see the Republicans win, so I see Obama as the unifier. Either way, I find myself loving the unelectable Obama -- because if he is not stopped, he'll force the McCain haters to vote for McCain.

I admit, it is not nice of me to feel this way. Rather than loving Obama for squeezing the McCainophobes, perhaps I should be more compassionate. And perhaps it is not Obama I love. Perhaps I just love seeing the phenomenon of hatred canceling hatred. There is remarkable, almost mathematical beauty in the way Obamaphobia cancels out MDS, while at the same time it is fueled by it. (It's as if the hatred for McCain is being sublimated into hatred of Obama in a poorly understood psychological process.)

It's too simple to say that hatred of Obama is necessarily the antidote for MDS, though, for as long as Hillary lingers, there remains hope for MDS. Because MDS can coexist peacefully with Hillary but not with Obama, there's a fierce hope in certain quarters (probably grounded in denial) that if only Hillary can make it, we can go back to hating McCain and back to making solemn pledges we'll never ever vote for him. This may be fueled by the conviction that if enough energy is directed against Obama, he'll fall from grace, and it will be "safe" to oppose McCain again. The better Obama does, the more opposing McCain looks like political suicide. I'd even go so far as to speculate that there's a direct correlation between Obama's fortunes and anti-McCain activity: as Obama rises, anti-McCain energy wanes, but as Obama falls, anti-McCain energy waxes.

Of course, the more inevitable Obama appears to be, the more the bitter McCain haters cling to Hillary.

Hillary is the fly in the ointment, as she prevents the true synergy of hate from fully blossoming. Obama has not yet closed the deal and cinched the nomination.

If and when he does, all right wing hope of stopping McCain by sitting it out will be extinguished.

So, from the perspective of the McCain-hating Obamaphobes, Obama kills hope, and Hillary keeps hope alive.

Like I say, I'd like to have more compassion .

But where's the compassion for those who still suffer from Hillaryphobia?

(I know things are getting pretty bad when I can't tell phobias from philias.)

The Chicago Sun Times has an editorial about the surge in violence in Chicago with the advent of Spring weather. A lot of hand wringing. What to do? What to do?

We can't stop trying.

The problem is guns. No, it's not about guns.

The problem is bad parents. No, we can't make bad parents good.

The problem is drugs. No, we can't stop the drugs.

The problem is jobs. No, we can't bring back the good jobs.

The problem is our schools. No, we can't ask our schools to solve all the problems that flow from broken families and broken neighborhoods.

But we can't stop trying.

In a dramatic gesture, Mayor Daley has called for a summit at City Hall today to search for solutions to the bloodbath of violence -- almost all of it involving guns -- that has swept across Chicago's neighborhoods in recent weeks.

When we wrote that first editorial on Tuesday, the weekend body count was seven more dead and 29 shot but alive.

Now, horrifyingly, the week's tally is 12 dead and 40 shot, five of them in a single massacre in a Chatham home.

CHICAGO (CBS) ― Chicago police say the deaths of five people found murdered inside a Chatham neighborhood home were targeted, and neighbors should not panic.

Police said all the victims were beaten before being shot to death. And officers from the police prostitution, vice and narcotics units are also involved in the investigation.

Police brass called on the public to provide any information that may help solve the massacre. They added that the shootings appeared to be well-planned and that the home had been ransacked. Police said they do not know the motive, but they are talking to a number of people in the investigation.

What no one dares talk about is:

Ending Drug Prohibition

Seriously. How stupid do you have to be given Chicago's History with Gangsters.

Look at that word carefully gang         sters.

So how stupid do you have to be to avoid figuring out the obvious? To learn from our previous history of prohibition? About average stupid will do quite nicely.

H/T Insty

Cross Posted at Power and Control

I have no romantic illusions to buy or sell. I lived through that era. I pity the fools still stuck there (Dohrn, Ayers, Wright, etc.). Obama seems to attract them. He also seems attracted to them. Another fool to be pitied.

He should have read Hunter S. Thompson to see where it all leads:

Strange memories on this nervous night in Las Vegas. Five years later? Six? It seems like a lifetime, or at least a main era---the kind of peak that never comes again.

San Francisco in the middle '60s was a very special time and place to be a part of. Maybe it meant something. Maybe not, in the long run ...but no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that coner of time and the world. Whatever it meant.

And that, I think, was the handle. That sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn't need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting--on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark--the place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.

Dividing up the spoils always creates spoils (in the mining sense - a desolate area , a moonscape). The way forward is the study of science, technology, business. All the things the Obama kids and their Professors claim to hate. They suck off the tit but hate the momma. I don't miss being young and stupid. At all.

H/T Juanita at Stop Obama

Here's something Ben Stein calls interesting, and I think it is interesting:

Interestingly, McCain chooses Ayers as a line of attack, rather than Wright (perhaps because he has his own troublesome pastor).

"I think not only a repudiation, but an apology for ever having anything to do with an unrepentant terrorist is due the American people," McCain said earlier today.

Regardless of how the two might play out politically (and Wright still gets the lion's share of attention), I think Bill Ayers makes Jeremiah Wright look like small potatoes. As I have said in countless posts, I am very uncomfortable with attributing guilt by association. However, I have to admit that as guilt by association claims go, the Ayers Obama connection is a near 10 on the Richter scale, while Wright is in the 5-6 range.

Here's why: Wright is an incendiary speaker, but Ayers is an actual, unrepentant, hands-on terrorist. A man who not only advocated killing, but who did his best to practice what he preached, and who regrets that he didn't do more. (Anyone who wants to see this laid out in numbing detail should read this excellent discussion by Rick Moran, who supplies plenty of links.)

Wright may have talked the talk, but Ayers walks the walk. This, IMO, makes it necessary for Obama to address the issue head-on, instead of issuing evasive statements about how Ayers is a neighborhood English teacher who did bad stuff in the past, but who's now become "respectable."

Unfortunately, the latter happens to be very true. I think it's a major reason Obama wants to duck the issue. Ayers and his evil wife should never have been allowed to become respectable. That they did is not an indictment of Obama, but an indictment of the left -- especially the academic, America-hating, left. These people are deeply embedded in the highest echelons of the Democratic intelligentsia, and Obama does not want to offend them.

This Democratic propensity for being soft on terrorism, IMO, explains partially why Hillary dare not kvetch too much about left-wing terrorist connections. She's also very vulnerable on the pardon issue, and while that had been comfortably relegated to historical obscurity, she knows that this could bust it wide open. As I said earlier,

...if voters start wondering about terrorist pardons. (So let's us Democrats just agree not to talk too loudly about that one, OK?)

A few weeks ago, I took issue with the idea that Jeremiah Wright was like David Duke:

I don't think the comparison of Duke to Wright is completely valid, because Duke is a Klan leader, while Wright is reacting emotionally to people like Duke. Duke is more wrong than the people who react to him -- for the simple (if childish) reason that he started it. That's because people who overreact -- even in an improper manner -- are not as culpable as the people who started it.

It is hardly a defense of Wright, but he is no David Duke.

In that major respect, Ayers is more like Duke than Wright is. Actually, Ayers is worse than Duke, because Duke has never been convicted of any terrorist actions.

But having said Ayers is worse than Duke, I just put my finger on the problem, which involves another grotesque double standard.

Ayers is respectable. Duke is shunned by all decent people.

To illustrate, imagine if John McCain admitted to a friendship with David Duke, and it turned out that the two had served on a board together, and appeared at a "public intellectual" forum together.

It would absolutely kill McCain's candidacy. Few Republicans would defend him. No amount of backtracking or denunciations of Duke by McCain could possibly save the latter.

Once again, I will admit what's probably a form of personal weakness. I try to be so fair-minded person that I'd apply the same standard to McCain that I apply to Obama. So, I probably wouldn't tar McCain with guilt by association if he denounced David Duke, and repudiated any friendship they might have had.

But that's just me. I'm not the voting public.

Ayers is a problem for Obama, because he is like David Duke.

But I have a couple of lingering questions which go beyond Barack Obama.

Why is Ayers respectable?

What makes David Duke so much worse than a convicted, unrepentent terrorist?

CORRECTION: Commenter DRE notes that Ayers was never convicted of anything. Rather, he and Dohrn "escaped federal prosecution because of government misconduct in gathering evidence, but they don't pretend they were innocent."

My mistake, so I'll restate the question:

What makes David Duke so much worse than an admitted, unrepentent terrorist?

MORE: Ayers' wife, Bernardine Dohrn, was convicted and served some time:

The couple turned themselves in to authorities in 1980. While some charges relating to their activities with the Weathermen were dropped due to governmental misconduct[4], Dohrn pled guilty to charges of aggravated battery and bail jumping, receiving probation. [5] She later served less than a year of jail time, after refusing to testify against ex-Weatherman Susan Rosenberg in an armed robbery case[6]

Soon afterwards, Rosenberg was rewarded with a nice teaching post at Hamilton College.

In 2004, Roger Kimball asked similar questions to the ones I'm asking now:

As it happens, a key witness in the Brinks case refused to testify as the trial approached. Prosecutors dropped their earlier charges against Ms. Rosenberg, figuring that she could serve a long prison term anyway for weapons possession. At the time, she was quoted in the New York Times saying: "We're caught, but we're not defeated. Long live the armed struggle!" When she was indeed sentenced to 58 years, she announced that "we were busted because we vacillated on our politics. . . . Our own principles were not strong enough to fight to win." According to Mr. Castellucci, one of the officers who apprehended her interpreted this statement to mean that "she regretted not shooting them." Given the context, Mr. Castellucci notes, "he was probably right."

So why isn't Susan Rosenberg still in prison? Because in January 2001, Bill Clinton commuted her sentence. The outcry at the time was loud and furious. And no wonder. Just as important: Why is Hamilton College opening its doors to her?

In light of the Dohrn and Rosenberg standard, I suppose I could ask the question again that technically does not apply to Ayers:

What makes David Duke so much worse than a convicted, unrepentent terrorist?

And while I'm at it, didn't Dohrn host the same Obama campaign launch? And didn't they both speak at the same "public intellectuals" event?

Far be it from me to explain why hobnobbing with terrorists is worse than pardoning them, however. Sheesh. (If I don't leave off with this moral relativism, I might start asking about Hillary hobnobbing with IRA leaders. That "not all terrorists are equal" business can get divisive.)

MORE: While I was not thinking about the respective races of Wright or Ayers when I wrote this post, it is certainly true that Wright is black, while Ayers is white. Apparently, it is considered by the McCain forces to be a worse offense to attack a black radical than a white radical:

....McCain continues to give himself special dispensation to challenge Obama’s relationship with Weather Underground radical Bill Ayers.

Because, you see, raising questions about a Radical of Color is “not appropriate and unhelpful,” but raising questions about a Radical of Pallor is McCain-tested and RNC-approved.

Via this post by Ann Althouse, which caused Glenn to note that the commotion "ensure(s) wide circulation of the ad beyond North Carolina."

Regarding the same ad, M. Simon asked,

Are you so stupid about the Internet that you fail to realize that such a call will only draw more attention to it?

"Listen, I'm a f---ing steamroller and I'll roll over you and anybody else."

-- Eliot Spizter

Spitzer - identified in the Emperors Club criminal complaint as "Client-9" - was caught Feb. 13 on a federal wiretap arranging for Dupre, whom he knew as "Kirsten," to be delivered to his room at the Mayflower Hotel.

In the complaint, "Kirsten" insisted she didn't find the ex-governor very "difficult," even though her madam warned that he might want "unsafe" sex.

Law-enforcement sources said Spitzer didn't like to wear a condom.

The second hooker-informant also told investigators Spitzer was fond of using sex toys to enhance his own pleasure, the sources said.

"The full portrait of Mr. Spitzer's sexual interests has yet to be told," one source said.

I share the sex worker's sense of relief that Spitzer wasn't difficult. (Although I'm not sure that the many companies and individuals he prosecuted would agree.)

Beyond that, I really and truly don't want to know what toys he was into, much less what he did with them. I'm all for any governor's pleasure enhancement -- whether difficult or easy, and with or without toys -- as long as I don't have to pay for it. But if he was using taxpayer dollars to line his toy chest [CAUTION: very work-unsafe picture], that's when it's time to draw a hard line. At the very least, I'd impose a stiff fine.

I realize that saying this as someone who thinks prostitution should be legalized might make me look like a hypocritical libertarian.

But as the saying goes, hard cases make bad law.

Actually, in an earlier post about sex toys, I argued that "bad cases make hard law." Same difference (although Spitzer probably ought to avoid judges like the one I mentioned, lest his toys be confiscated and never seen again).

...singling out Clinton's voice as horrible necessarily invokes the woman-specific sexist context, even if that is not your intent.

So if you're inexorably compelled to criticize Hillary's voice, just know that you've got to own the sexist context, too.

Look, we make fun of male candidates. We joke around about how they look and sound and it's often unfair and unrelated to their qualifications for office. It's part of the vivid debate we have in America. We don't have to pull back and tone it down because a woman (or a black person) is running. The candidates are seeking vast power. We should be irreverent and unafraid.

McEwan apparently means to be a good feminist by saying things they teach you to say in Women's Studies class, hushing and chiding us, and grasping after moral high ground with vague references to "history," but this notion that a powerful woman needs special protection from the full force of political debate -- with all its vicious mockery -- is not good for women. It may be stupid or unfair to judge a candidate by her laugh, but to cry sexism is lame.

As regulars may remember, I downloaded the Hillary Clinton cackle, set it as the ring tone in my cell phone, and played it for Coco. I don't know how impressed she was, but she is female, and she prefers female humans to male humans.

Once again, here's Coco reacting to the Hillary cackle:

Melissa McEwan, are you calling my bitch a sexist?

On what basis?

Or am I the one who's accused of sexism for downloading the ring tone and playing it for Coco? Why? As it happens, I did exactly the same thing with Mitt Romney's laugh. So what? I didn't support Romney and I can't stand Hillary. And I laughed at both their laughs. Will someone explain why I am sexist only for ridiculing Hillary's laugh, but not Romney's? By this logic I guess I'd be racist if I made Coco listen to a Barack Obama ring tone.

Sheesh.

While this is almost enough to make me lose my sense of humor, at least I can say that the ostensibly feminist champions of a humor-free society haven't gotten to Coco. Here's a picture I took this picture of her just an hour ago:

(Clearly having the last laugh....)

MORE: Regarding the race issue, Glenn Reynolds links Ann Althouse's post, adding that "mocking Obama is always racist, no matter how mockable he may be." (So says the Obama campaign.)

And Rick Moran's post about Obama's friendship with Ayers ("in the Age of Terror... our President being on a first name basis with an unrepentant terrorist is probably a bad example to set") reminded me that every Republican should hope this unelectable man is the nominee, and the rational strategy is to vote for him to the extent possible. My worry, as I've said many times, is that Hillary can still beat him, and that in the course of the battle with Obama she'll come out smelling more like a centrist than ever before.

(Which would really give her something to cackle over....)

If there is a Republican argument for Hillary based on strategy, I'm all ears.

Further eco-folly from long ago, a few Paul Ehrlich quotes for your enjoyment. The first is from 1970...

I'm scared. I have a 14 year old daughter whom I love very much. I know a lot of young people, and their world is being destroyed. My world is being destroyed. I'm 37 and I'd kind of like to live to be 67 in a reasonably pleasant world, and not die in some kind of holocaust in the next decade.

Actually, he'll be 76 on May 29th. Meanwhile, back in 1974 he had this to say...

There are, indeed, "hard times a-coming." Even if there is no final boom and bust, the economic world of the near future will be a very different place from that of today...

The vast diversity of businesses that manufacture and distribute the goods of our "cowboy" economy will have largely disappeared.

Most of the Japanese firms that today shower us with electronic gadgets will have gone defunct as Japan's situation deteriorates, and the higher costs of necessities will have so reduced demand for television sets, radios, tape decks, and the like that few new firms will have entered the market.

Similarly, a wide array of non-essentials, from convenience foods to recreational vehicles, will have largely vanished...

Probably before 1985, a general recognition of the changed economic status of the nation will lead to a stock-market collapse even more severe than the one that preceded the onset of the depression of the 1930s....it is very likely that before the end of the century the stock market, as we know it, will disappear as a factor in the lives of individuals...

The most unnecessary, wasteful, and antisocial activities-such as the packaging and bottling industries, some kinds of weapons, aircraft, cheap plastic products, etc.-are likely to be eliminated either in a conventional depression or the real energy crunch.

Just one more? Please? I'll keep it really short.

"I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000."

For years now, ordinary lay people have been beaten down and subjected to "ringing" indictments of human activity by "scientific experts" who claim to know everything about past climates by reading tree rings. In a manner reminiscent of (and at least as accurate as) the ancient Romans' practices of auguring and divining, they have determined that man has heated up the planet to record levels, and that in the very near future, cities will be flooded, tropical pythons will be living in New Jersey, all the fish will die, etc.

Of course, right-wing spoil sports like me are fond of advancing claims that this, um, methodology, has been substantially called into question (also see Steven Milloy's "Tree Ring Circus").

But now it turns out that the 5000 year cutoff presumption (supposedly there are no trees older than that) is wrong.

What happened is that a particularly stubborn and recalcitrant Swedish tree, age 9500, has defied the overwhelming scientific consensus and lent support to the right wing agenda. That's because its existence demonstrates that it was a lot warmer (and a lot earlier) than the AGWOSC community claims.

The world's oldest tree has been found in Sweden, a tenacious spruce that first took root just after the end of the last ice age, more than 9,500 years ago.

The tree has rewritten the history of the climate in the region, revealing that it was much warmer at that time and the ice had disappeared earlier than thought.

[...]

It had been thought that this region was still in the grip of the ice age but the tree shows it was much warmer, even than today

....summers in Sweden were not only much warmer 9,500 years ago than the consensus view used to be, but ALSO warmer than today...even after all that awful carbon dioxide that man has released into the atmosphere in the past couple of centuries.

Yes, I'm sure media will be all over this story in the coming days...not!

Likewise, according to overwhelming scientific logic, it necessarily follows that if the tree's age lies in defiance of scientific wisdom, then surely its rings must also be lying. That's because only scientific trees tell the truth. And only scientific trees obey the Precautionary Principle.

That is, when their rings are properly interpreted by top scientists like Michael "Hockey Stick" Mann!

All hail the rings of trees!

But alas! Occasionally, there are times in this blog when I have to admit that I've been negligent in upholding the values I claim to cherish, and I'm afraid this is one of them. By my failure to engage in divining and auguring as I should have, I have been severely remiss in my obligations.

Now, while I might be (and have been) willing to analyze some animal entrails as the Romans did, it just so happens that because there's no roadkill handy nearby, I'm literally lacking in guts! Besides, I'm not sure my readers really wish to scrutinize gruesome pictures of possum innards. Moreover, the theme of this post involves plants, not animals, and rings, not guts.

Nor am I willing to rent a chainsaw and cut down one of my trees simply to entertain and enlighten readers. Not only would that cost money and be bad for the environment of my yard, but it would be too much work. (Plus it would upset Coco to no end.)

However, I do have a lovely specimen of Allium cepa, which, by the grace of the gods, just happened to be sitting in a plastic bag inside my refrigerator! Even more remarkably, it had already been cut in such a way that the rings were clearly revealed.

To accomplish my divination, all I needed to do was take a picture, and fearlessly read the rings!

My classical mission is accomplished. And it didn't take much guts.

(Well, maybe a little Gore....)

MORE: Missing from the above picture was Bill Clinton's onion ring. That's because Hillary wouldn't let him have it, of course.

Doug Kmiec writing at Slate says he is an Obama supporter. He also gives evidence that he is a Republican. He actually has reasons or rationalizations or a rich fantasy life. Come to your own conclusions.

Today I endorse Barack Obama for president of the United States. I believe him to be a person of integrity, intelligence, and genuine good will. I take him at his word that he wants to move the nation beyond its religious and racial divides and that he wants to return the United States to that company of nations committed to human rights.

In various ways, Sen. Barack Obama and I may disagree on aspects of these important fundamentals, but I am convinced, based upon his public pronouncements and his personal writing, that on each of these questions he is not closed to understanding opposing points of view and, as best as it is humanly possible, he will respect and accommodate them.

As Americans, we must voice our concerns for the well-being of our nation without partisanship when decisions that have been made endanger the body politic. Our president has involved our nation in a military engagement without sufficient justification or a clear objective. In so doing, he has incurred both tragic loss of life and extraordinary debt jeopardizing the economy and the well-being of the average American citizen. In pursuit of these fatally flawed purposes, the office of the presidency, which it was once my privilege to defend in public office formally, has been distorted beyond its constitutional assignment.

Sept. 11 and the radical Islamic ideology that it represents is a continuing threat to our safety, and the next president must have the honesty to recognize that it, as author Paul Berman has written, "draws on totalitarian inspirations from 20th-century Europe and with its double roots, religious and modern, perversely intertwined. ... wields a lot more power, intellectually speaking, then naïve observers might suppose." Sen. Obama needs to address this extremist movement with the same clarity and honesty with which he has addressed the topic of race in America. Effective criticism of the incumbent for diverting us from this task is a good start, but it is incomplete without a forthright outline of a commitment to undertake, with international partners, the formation of a worldwide entity that will track, detain, prosecute, convict, punish, and thereby stem radical Islam's threat to civil order. I await Sen. Obama's more extended thinking upon this vital subject as he accepts the nomination of his party....

Well maybe he can go to the reverend God Damn AmeriKKKa for advice on what to do. After all Barack Hussein Obama could not disown him on the race question. Maybe Uncle God Damn, his good friend Calypso Louis Farrakhan and their buddy Momar Kadafi could help with answers to the most important questions of our time.

Don't read the whole thing. It is a waste of time.

Why do I subject myself to such suffering you ask? It is my lot in life.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

NEW ALBANY, Ind. - In a state he has called a potential "tiebreaker," Sen. Barack Obama on Wednesday predicted victory in the Indiana primary, despite an electorate that closely mirrors states where he has recently suffered sizable losses.

The day after Sen. Hillary Clinton easily beat him in Pennsylvania, Obama set high expectations for himself in the two May 6 primaries in Indiana and North Carolina.

If you're one of those people who has already dismissed the idea of Bob Barr's Libertarian Party candidacy being a serious threat to the GOP, check out Martha Zoller's thought-provoking piece at Pajamas Media. Barr seems to have learned a thing or two from the previous joke candidates:

One of the big stumbling blocks for old-time Libertarians was their view on open borders. In light of the existence of the nanny state in America today as well as a less than free market impeded by regulation, Barr is taking a more forward view than the Libertarian Party now professes on illegal immigration. He believes there must be border security but doesn't support a fence. In addition, he believes it is an issue of sovereignty. Libertarians have acknowledged that in a perfect world involving a free market and personal responsibility, an open border is not a threat because you have to make your own way. But this is not a perfect world and Barr's position on border security may play well with many voters.

There are many reasons why people decide to run as alternative party candidates. Sometimes it's to sell a book, get notoriety, or work to further an issue. Few candidates run with the idea they can win the presidency. However, if there is any election in recent years where an alternative candidate can make a difference, it is this one. The Republicans have their candidate. The Democrats are still tearing themselves apart. But there is still money out there for a candidate tap. Many people thought Ron Paul was a fringe candidate, but you can't deny his following and ability to raise money. This year a strong third party candidate could really muck things up.

In any case, I still think Barack Obama will do more to unite the Republican Party than Bob Barr will to divide it.

By "Satan" I of course mean the left's favorite Satan, in the form of Karl Rove (author of every last sinister scheme to disrupt, divide, and destroy the Democrats -- the recent "Crash the Convention" plot being a perfect example).

Today, Rove fiendishly offers the Democrats free advice on Barack Obama's candidacy, in a WSJ piece provocatively titled "Is Obama Ready for Prime Time?" (Hint: that's a rhetorical question.)

Citing numerous problems with Obama, from the "bitter" remarks to the preacher who says AIDS is government genocide, to problems with blue-collar working class voters, to Obama's increasingly vanishing credibility, Rove concludes with observations about Obama's style, and some advice:

...He has been manifestly unwilling to expend his political capital on urgent issues. He has been only an observer, watching the action from a distance, thinking wry and sardonic and cynical thoughts to himself about his colleagues, mildly amused at their to-ing and fro-ing. He has held his energy and talent in reserve for the more important task of advancing his own political career, which means running for president.

But something happened along the way. Voters saw in the Philadelphia debate the responses of a vitamin-deficient Stevenson act-a-like. And in the closing days of the Pennsylvania primary, they saw him alternate between whining about his treatment by Mrs. Clinton and the press, and attacking Sen. John McCain by exaggerating and twisting his words. No one likes a whiner, and his old-style attacks undermine his appeals for postpartisanship.

Mr. Obama is near victory in the Democratic contest, but it is time for him to reset, freshen his message and say something new. His conduct in the last several weeks raises questions about whether, for all his talents, he is ready to be president.

The way the magic works is that by being Karl Rove and actually offering Obama and his supporters some very good advice, he pretty much guarantees that they will reject it! (Similarly, if Satan told a devout Christian to help an old lady cross the street, he'd probably respond by pushing her into oncoming traffic. Such reverse psychology is why the Communist Party went out of its way to work for integration in the segregated South, and it is one of the operative principles of culture wars.)

Hmmm....

Maybe I shouldn't be revealing Satan's secret here. I mean, what if an influential Democrat were to read this blog and tell his fellow Democrats how the Rove plan works?

That would be bad.

Or would it?

Only Satan knows for sure.....

From a silly AP story (that also attributes Hillary's lie about Bosnia to a lack of sleep):

For her part, Clinton is a veteran of her husband's back-to-back White House races and is keenly aware of the toll it takes on body and spirit. She, too, takes short naps on her plane and eats a steady diet of hot peppers, which she believes has helped her stave off illness. But she says she's getting very little exercise.

Really?

The latest news blip involves a governor's daughter who was improperly awarded a master's degree she didn't earn:

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. (AP) -- Chastised for showing "seriously flawed" judgment in awarding the governor's daughter a master's degree she didn't earn, West Virginia University is weighing what must be done to recover from the scandal.

President Mike Garrison said late Wednesday it's unclear whether disciplinary action should be taken against the high-ranking academic officers who ordered a change in the academic records of Heather Bresch, daughter of Gov. Joe Manchin.

"West Virginia University is strong, and this process -- and our honest response to it, both from our office and the board of governors -- makes us stronger, and shows that we are a university whose governance is both shared and open," he said.

A panel led by two WVU faculty members issued a damning report Wednesday that said there was no academic foundation for retroactively granting Bresch a 1998 executive master's of business administration degree.

"Mistake was compounded by mistake. An unnecessary rush to judgment, spurred in some measure by an understandable desire to protect a valued alumna and to respond to media pressure, produced a flawed and erroneous result," the panel concluded.

The report does not conclude that Bresch did anything wrong in seeking clarification of her academic record. Nor does it directly fault Garrison, Bresch's longtime friend.

I haven't checked, but I'm assuming the governor has to be a Democrat, because the piece doesn't say.

But I could be wrong, so I'll check right now.....

Oh yeah.

I'm confident that this won't be another Republican Party scandal.

A friend emailed me some very happy thoughts (I'm being sarcastic), which are buried inside advice from a financial newsletter I found excerpted online:

The dollar will go to zero.
It doesn't matter, because nobody wants dollars anyway.
The US (the world) is entering a depression.
The international finance system is melting down.
The US is dying.
There will be a huge derivative explosion that will bankrupt all concerned.
We have too much domestic debt.
We have too much external debt.
We have no savings.
Our public education system is a disaster.
Our horrendous high school drop-out rate will lead to the US falling behind the Chinese and Indians.
The US is becoming a nation of obese and out-of-shape diabetics.
We don't make anything any more.
China will conquer the world.
The Russian will control all of Europe with their near-monopoly of oil and gas.
We've become the world's banker -- a bad idea.
We've become the world's policemen -- a bad idea.
The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are bankrupting us.
The Fed is pushing on a string.
Bernanke doesn't know what he's doing.
The boomers are becoming net sellers of assets to fund their retirement.
We are being overrun by immigrants.
Foreigners are buying up America.
Our children can't read or write.
We are morally bankrupt.
We are too dependent on imported oil.
Gas is heading for five dollars a gallon.
The western US is running out of water.
Social Security will implode.
There is not enough food to go around.
Global warming = global disaster.
Inflation.
Hyper-inflation.
Stagflation.
Deflation.
Depression.
Armageddon!

Hmmm....

I guess that beats tackling it head-on.

Aside from quibbling with the many inaccuracies and dubious assumptions in the above list, my main complaint is that omits a leading human worry:

We're all* gonna die!

It puts the rest in perspective.

* I realize that there exists a sizable group of people who do not believe that they are going to die, but I would respectfully suggest that they're mistaken. (Some argue they're biblically incorrect.)

I thought I'd take another look at some hard Pennsylvania numbers.

I'll start with the Republican primary vote totals:

Republican Pres. Primary

(99% of vote)

John McCain. . . 587,168

Ron Paul. . . 128,467

Mike Huckabee. . . 91,423

Republican total. . . 807,058

Compare the Democratic totals -- 1,260,072 (Clinton) plus 1,045,329 (Obama) for a total of 2,305,401 -- and divide that by Pennsylvania's 2004 Democratic (Kerry) vote (2,938,095), and you get a whopping 78.5% of the 2004 Democratic vote.

In the primary.

I'm only 53, but I have never heard of such a high turnout in any primary election.

The Republican low turnout is understandable, because after all, McCain is the known nominee, and it's pointless to vote. (Under these circumstances, the 200-plus thousand votes for Paul and Huckabee look especially ominous.)

I don't know what the political records are (or where they're kept), but the high Democratic turnout strikes me as nothing less than astounding.

Unless I am missing something, I think this means that Republicans face a serious problem in Pennsylvania. And if these numbers are similar elsewhere, may God help them to beat whoever the nominee is (and for the millionth time, I hope it is not Hillary).

No wonder people are treating the Obama Hillary race as if they're electing a president.

I think it is part of Rove's secret plan to energize the Republican base despite the fact that there is a lot of bad blood between McCain and the base. There is nothing like a major street action to make them see where their interests lie.

Heh.

H/T Instapundit

What's happening is an excellent argument for smoke filled rooms.

Right now it's looking pretty good.

Not just because I hate elections, and not just because this one is the biggest mess I've seen, but because regardless of who "wins," the whole game is idiotic. Parties are supposed to pick their own nominees, and the idea ought to be for the guys on the inside who know what they're doing to come up with whoever they think has the best chance of winning the general election, and who will hopefully be a credit to whatever the party believes in and wants to accomplish.

This pandering to various groups, to whoever screams the loudest in the primary, when anyone with common sense knows such people don't decide elections, is about as ridiculous as it would be for the employees of a company to elect the owner.

Does it matter that the old smoke-filled rooms brought us some of the greatest presidents the country has ever had?

Leftie blogger Jane Hamsher recently remarked on the irony that the smoke filled room principle is being rebadged as superdelegates "voting their conscience."

I just find it rather ironic that the same people who were quite recently whipping everyone into a frenzy about "deals in smoke filled back rooms" and the end of democracy are looking to that very process and having superdelegates "vote their conscience" in order to pull the party's bacon out of the fire.

Such yearning for the past is by no means limited to the left. In 1999, some forgotten Bush aide actually said that smoke-filled rooms produced better candidates:

The old days of the smoke-filled rooms, says an aide, produced better candidates than the current primary process that has seen Lamar Alexander campaign nonstop for six years. "The genius of the old system was that people with the interests of the party at heart made decisions," the Bush aide argues. "They knew the guys' characters: He's got it, he doesn't. He's clean, he's a slimeball. Clinton wouldn't have got very far under that system."

It isn't.

There's nothing in the Constitution requiring primary elections, and the modern system mainly arose because of activists who didn't get their way in the smoke filled rooms.

Personally, I kind of like the idea of activists not getting their way in smoke-filled rooms.

But then, I don't like activists, and I do like smoke filled rooms.

Must be elitism.

UPDATE: Speaking of superdelegates who might vote according to their consciences, Michael Barone looks at the potential peril they'd be in:

How would you like to be the superdelegate who casts, or is presented by the media as casting, the decisive vote? The vote that will determine whether Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton is the Democratic nominee. The vote that will determine whether you are overriding the delegates elected by the people or whether you are overriding the people who have cast the votes. The vote that will determine whether the party rejects the first black with a serious chance to be elected president or the party rejects the first woman with a serious chance to be elected president.

Even to be part of a large group of superdelegates that is seen to have cast the decisive votes is to be in a position of political peril and the focus of furious discord. To be the single superdelegate seen as casting the decisive vote is to be in the position of the senator who cast the single decisive vote against the conviction and removal from office of President Andrew Johnson. He was not heard from again until John Kennedy wrote (or had ghostwritten for him) Profiles in Courage 87 years later. Which superdelegate wants to volunteer for that position or find himself or herself in it after a game of political musical chairs?

UPDATE: My thanks to Glenn Reynolds for the link, and for quoting from this post! A warm welcome to all.

Please keep in mind that I do not advocate smoke filled rooms merely as a way of resolving the current impasse, but rather as a way of avoiding such deep party divisions and strife. Hillary has high negatives and so does Obama. But notice the sudden appearance of Sam Nunn in the Obama campaign:

In a better world, Sam Nunn (or a David Boren) would have been the party's candidate for president. Such candidacies remain impossible under the iron law of Democratic primary politics: No centrist can secure the party's nomination in a primary system dominated by left-liberal activists. The iron law produces candidacies such as McGovern (1972), Mondale ('84), Dukakis ('88), Gore ('00) or Kerry ('04), who pay so many left-liberal obeisances to win in the primaries that they cannot attract sufficient moderates at the margins to win the general election.

Comments welcome, agree or disagree.

A good question from Mickey Kaus:

If Hillary Clinton is so convinced she can win, but she desperately needs money, can't she and her husband just write her campaign a check for, say, $20 million? $109 million - $20 million still leaves $89 million, no? ... Then she'd be on solid ground asking others to sacrifice for her candidacy as well. ...

Well, I think the Clintons certainly can (write a check) because they have the money, and can more than afford it. I can only see two reasons why they won't spring for the money though (as Mitt Romney did when he was running).

Either they are greedy, or they are not entirely convinced that they can win. Or a little of both.

I think they can win, so the most likely explanation is greed.

(That and maybe a desire to avoid explaining the sources of their wealth.)

I'm having trouble seeing much difference between them.

Not only are they right next to each other, they have similar population density (Ohio, with 11,353,140, is ranked 7th, while Pennsylvania, with 12,281,054, is 6th) similar geography (Pennsylvania is ranked 33rd with 46,055 square miles, and Ohio is ranked 34th with 44,825 square miles), and similar population density (Ohio is ranked 9th while PA is ranked 10th).

As to the Democratic Primary election numbers, here's Pennsylvania:

Clinton 1,237,696 (54.6%)
Obama 1,029,672 (45.4%)

Total Votes 2,267,638

State population 12,281,054 (18.46% of state total)

Clinton 1,212,362 (54.6%)
Edwards 38,305 (1.72%)
Obama 982,489 (44.00%)

Total Votes 2,233,156

State population 11,353,149 (19.67% of state total)

If the Edwards vote is added to Obama vote, the total would be 1,020,794, and if the Edwards vote is added to Clinton vote, the total would be 1,250,667. (It's tough to say where the Edwards vote went, but I suspect that most went to Obama.)

Anyway, in terms of numbers, I'm not seeing any surprises. Whatever campaign events have unfolded since March (Obama's Wright speech, Hillary's Bosnia fabulism, Obama's Bittergate) seem to have helped or damaged both candidates equally.

Issue-wise, the main difference in Ohio seemed to involve who "opposed" NAFTA the most (and who got caught lying the most about it), and who would do a better job of answering the phone at 3:00 a.m.

I don't know whether the Pennsylvania numbers indicate a lower turnout than the numbers in Ohio, but if they do, that might be a clue to voter fatigue.

Otherwise, I'm not seeing much.

I was just a guest on Steve Gill's radio show discussing yesterday's Pennsylvania primary election, and I'd like to thank Steve (who also writes for Pajamas Media) and his producers for their hospitality, as well as the Pajamas Media reps who made this possible. (As I've pointed out before, I think I have a radio voice made for blogging, so I hope I did OK.....)

A warm welcome to new visitors who heard about this blog on the air.

Everyone else, be sure to check out the Steve Gill Show Website.

Don't miss Rick Moran's analysis of yesterday's election.

Excerpt:

Hillary Clinton received 62% of the white vote. Barack Obama received 89% of the African American vote. The question facing superdelegates is: how can they run a candidate who loses the white vote by almost 2-1 in a state they absolutely must carry to win the election? And it wasn't just the voter's race that made a difference. Clinton ran up astonishing majorities in the mostly white, mostly rural counties in the northeast part of the state. In Luzerne county she received 75% of the vote. She got 70% of the vote in Wyoming county. Culturally conservative but economically moderate, these blue collar voters in places like Scranton and Wilkes-Barre were considered at one time "Reagan Democrats" - reliable Democratic voters when it came to candidates on the down ballot but Republican when voting for President. In recent elections, they have returned to the Democratic party in greater numbers and have given the party a victory in the state in every election since 1988.

These are the voters Barack Obama told his rich donor friends in San Francisco were "clinging" to religion and guns rather than voting what he feels are their economic interests. Indeed, Clinton bagged 58% of gun owners in the state while taking 58% of those who attend church weekly. Obama received 56% of the votes from those who never attend religious services.

The only groups he does well with are blacks, young people, the rich (incomes over $150,000), and the poor (below $15,000). Hardly a winning coalition.

My conclusion? There's only one I can draw definitively:

McCain would beat Obama hands down in Pennsylvania.

But could he beat Hillary?

For the umpteenth time, I'm seriously worried that he couldn't.

Once again, the Limbaugh crossovers should be careful what they wish for. Obviously, most Republicans simply prefer Hillary to Obama. There's nothing wrong with having such a preference (it's probably a no-brainer) but should it translate into helping Hillary get on the ballot?

I don't think so. Which is why I voted for Obama yesterday, and I hope I'll be able to vote against him in the fall.

But I'm worried that after yesterday's lesson, the Dems will soon wise up (there are plenty of signs they are), and it is increasingly unlikely that he will be the candidate.

Still, I can hope, can't I?

Quick, would someone please tell the Democrats that we're not in a recession?

I don't know who the candidate will be (and God help us if it's Hillary, because I'm not convinced McCain can beat her), but both Hill and O take it as an article of faith that we are in a recession, that it's all doom and gloom, that it's All Bush's Fault, that it's All Because of Iraq, and that therefore it All Boils Down To this rather silly "equation":

McCain = Iraq = Bush = Recession!

I put "equation" in quotes, of course, because emotions are neither facts no numbers.

While I wouldn't expect news which is emotionally unsatisfying to reach the front page of the paper, the business section of today's Inquirer.....

Sorry there.

I was just about to supply a link to some good economic news, but I can't. For whatever reason, today's otherwise normal-looking article by Mike Armstrong does not appear online, at least, not in any form I can locate.

According to the headline, it's good news:

Regional Data point upward

At least, I think that's good news. So where the hell is it? Today's column doesn't show up on the front page of the business section, nor not in Mike Armstrong's blog. Nor can I find it if I search the Inquirer.

And in specific searches, neither the first sentence -- "To the vast majority of people, it doesn't matter whether the United States is in a recession or not" -- nor the last -- "The recent data sure don't indicate a recession" turn up in the online edition of the paper.

Nor do they seem to appear online anywhere. A Google News search for "To the vast majority of people, it doesn't matter whether the United States is in a recession or not" yielded nothing, and similarly, a Web search failed.

Ditto the last sentence -- "The recent data sure don't indicate a recession." Nothing in News nor in a general Web search.

[If anyone else can find this stuff, please let me know. I couldn't. However, I don't have Lexis Nexis search capability.]

What gives here? Is there such a thing as selective news?

Do I have to constantly photograph or scan my newspaper to discuss what's in it? I mean, I will, but this sometimes gets to be a bit of a pain in the ass.

Anyway, here's the scan:

And while my OCR software recoils at the task of pulling out words from gray text boxes, I was nonetheless able to convert the text, which appears below in full.

I'm no economist, but if "the good news" is that "the recent data sure don't indicate a recession," it ought to be reported.

I'm thinking, might there be a problem with the stubborn refusal of the economy to behave as it should and go into a recession in time for the election?

Is that why Armstrong's column is playing hide and seek?

I don't know, but the column reminded me of some gently sarcastic puzzlement expressed by leading economist Greg Mankiw the other day, when he linked the following chart:

That shows that the industrial production (a key measure of recessionary cycles) simply does not indicate a recession. If it did, we'd be in one of the gray bars.

Noted Mankiw (in what I think is a delicious understatement),

Someone forgot to tell the IP data that we're in a recession.

I don't see why I should have to go into full teeth-pulling mode in this blog, but I will. I wish I could do this by means of a normal news link.

But what I'm having to do seems more like a news leak.

The worst thing about this is that I'm no more an economics blogger than I am a war blogger. However, I'm noticing a similar rule of reporting in both.

Bad news is good and good news is bad.

Oh the irony.

MORE: I am not arguing that the Philadelphia Inquirer (or any other newspaper) has a duty to make their stories available online. (Under the First Amendment, they can do whatever they want.) However, I think that when a highly relevant story about the economy appears in the print edition in a newspaper which is generally available online, it would be fair to treat it the same way other news stories are treated.

In any event, I thought it was highly newsworthy. So much so, that I decided to "report" it on my own.

UPDATE: Yay!

At 1:07 p.m. today, Mike Armstrong's column was posted, and it now appears in the Inquirer as a blog post titled "Could states' economies predict national recession?."

(Not the same title as "Regional Data point upward," but at least it's there....)

...Obama supporters - lovers of popular democracy - are already threatening to tear down the Democratic Convention in Denver.

They call themselves "Recreate 68" (R68) and while they claim no association with Barack Hussein Obama, the facts speak otherwise:

1) Recreate 68's claim of being both against Obama and Clinton, is false. While there are no traces of "official Obama campaign" input into R68, an Anti-Clinton spirit predominates, and considerable R68 contingents are active in the official Obama campaign- with direct ties to influential Obama activists.

2) Leading R68 coalition members have both a history of harassing the Clinton Campaign, and pledging financial support for Obama.

3) Leading R68 organizers make explicit reference to stopping "superdelages" and emphasize a "fight against racism" and equally, the need to protest in Denver with "victims of racism". This obviously has nothing to do with Clinton, everything to do with Obama.

2. To maintain solidarity with and respect the guidelines of all permitted activities, recognizing that there are many individuals who seek a safe and peaceful protest.

6. Not to turn people over to the police, or share information with the police about other groups.
7. Not to publicly criticize the tactics used by other parts of our movement or cooperate with media efforts to be divisive or portray good protester/bad protester.
8. To publicly condemn police repression and brutality.
9. To be conscious that if violence or property destruction does occur, we will do what we can to help prevent it from being blown out of proportion and dominating the media coverage.
10. To remember that, when all is said and done, our greatest victory will be an activist community with a renewed sense of strength and unity.

And what is all this Strength and Unity blather? I have a link to a nice letter from 1968 explaining the necessity of Strength and Unity. The letter is from Czechoslovakia.

Which brings us back to Jeff Gold.

"Recreate 68" seeks to recreate the spirit of the bloody Democratic National Convention of 1968 held in Chicago, and speaks with two heads. One head issues veiled threats to Denver authorities about inevitable conflict, another head claims it seeks to recreate not the blood of Chicago in 68, but the spirit of uprising and revolution permeating the globe in a year when Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy were assassinated, Czechoslovakia saw its independence crushed, Paris was set a blaze by students, and Chicago became an American sideshow.

Now comes the second and possibly more interesting part of the story. Who is behind Recreate '68? Is there an Obama connection?

I stated previously, no evidence of official Obama campaign input into R68 exists. What we do possess, is evidence of R68 output into the Obama campaign. A clear relationship exists between those preparing disruptions in Denver, and those who support Obama. This explains why the disruptions R68 plans in Denver, will be minimal if Obama is elected, and maximum if he is not.

While R68 organizers claim neutrality in the Democratic Contest- by their own irrational admissions - if Clinton secures the Party Nomination, they promise 50,000 protesters. If Obama gets the nod, anywhere from 1,000 to 10,000 max.

If Hillary gets the nomination, we're going to have very large numbers -- a solid 50,000 people at every event," said organizer Glenn Spagnuolo. [politico]

If Hillary Clinton gets the Democratic presidential nomination, street protests at the party's national convention in Denver would number 50,000 people [source]
From my amateurish survey of R68's organization forces, their alliances, and their activists, a Clinton victory would provide them with a minimum 50,000 protesters. The reasons are plenty, and include Code Pink.

Then he gets to the heart of the matter.

For an openly pro-Obama and virulently anti-Clinton organization, to join in an effort to recreate the malaise of Chicago's 1968 Convention, amounts to extortion of the DNC; it is fascist, in its reliance on fear and violence.

R68 amounts to a strong-arming lf the DNC to submit the Party's Nomination decision not to the party or its vote, but to a vocal, and militant fascist minority!

It's as if Hamas regularly held rallies on Obama's behalf, contributed to his campaign, and then threatened to participate in uprisings against the DNC if Obama doesn't secure the nomination!

And there is more.

The last, and potentially most powerful organizations which has yet to declare interest in R68, but is part of R68 networks and has been communicating a similarly militant message of confrontation for over half a year, is non other than MoveOn.

MoveOn, was behind the creation of the Color of Change (CoC), has involved both itself and the CoC, along with the League of Young Voters, in a gigantic coalition to indirectly promote Youth Participation, a message consistently appearing in R68's main communication channel - the Guerrilla News Network "RedPill" publication!

So far, MoveOn has yet to formally endorse R68, but placing militant banners on R68's flagship newspaper, is already a call to action. The message reads:

Nobody Is Going To Give You Anything, You Have to Take It

As Stephen Green said in his post on the Pennsylvania election results.

The Democrats' process is designed to give everyone "a voice." Not a win, not a candidate, but "a voice." Unless, of course, the unelected and unaccountable "superdelegates" capriciously choose to strip the people of their voice. In which case, you know, too bad. What the Democratic primaries don't do -- what they seemed designed to put off doing -- choosing a nominee for the office of the President of the United States of America.

And for that, every pundit drawing a paycheck can be thankful. I raise my glass to Obama, to Clinton, to Howard Dean, to the DNC, and to every "bevoiced" Democrat across this great land of ours.

May they long be confused, and may the nation (or at least my paycheck) long prosper for it.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

Anxiety Insights reports that the inability to identify odors may be an indication of severe PTSD.

A world first study of Vietnam veterans' sense of smell has revealed that an inability to identify smells indicates extreme symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).

Researchers from the University of Melbourne and Austin Health conducting smell tests on 31 male war veterans with PTSD, recruited from Austin Health's Veterans Psychiatry Unit.

"The worse their ability to be able to name a smell, in a smell test of over 40 'scratch and sniff' odors, the harder it is to manage their emotions," said John Dileo of the University's School of Behavioral Science, who conducted the study.

Dileo says that the difficulty Vietnam veterans suffering PTSD have in putting the name to a smell may be indicative of weakness in brain pathways related to emotional processing. He says the same areas in the frontal region of the brain that are involved in identifying smells are also involved in regulating emotion.

There is a connection between the amygdala, smell, and memory.

Here is something I wrote a while back on the connection between the amygdala, PTSD, and fear memories. PTSD and the Endocannabinoid System. Here is one about PTSD Pot Alcohol & Substance Abuse.

We are really closing in on PTSD. I think a time will come when we realize the utter stupidity of making war on the self medicating.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

The site is up now. You can read a report of the hack at StopObama.Org.

My guess? The Democrats at StopObama must be causing the Obama folks a lot of pain.

Spengler at The Asia Times is taking a look at the world food crisis and sees it as a monetary phenomenon. He has charts and graphs. I think he is right.

The global food crisis is a monetary phenomenon, an unintended consequence of America's attempt to inflate its way out of a market failure. There are long-term reasons for food prices to rise, but the unprecedented spike in grain prices during the past year stems from the weakness of the American dollar. Washington's economic misery now threatens to become a geopolitical catastrophe.

Months ago, I offered that China, Russia and other cash-rich nations held the antidote to the incipient credit crisis: "If the US wants to remain the magnet for world capital flows it became during the 1990s, it will have to allow the savers of the world to become partners in the US economy, that is, to buy into its first-rank companies."(Western grasshoppers and Chinese ants, Asia)

No such thing occurred, of course, as Washington has made it clear that it would not allow sovereign funds to own the likes of Citicorp. What are the world's investors doing with the trillion dollars a year they used to invest in American securities, including subprime derivatives and various forms of collateralized obligations that turned out to have more obligation than collateral? They aren't buying American companies because they are not permitted to. They are buying food and other stores of value instead.

I think Spengler, who is usually so astute has missed the boat on this one. As he points out the normal way inflation is sopped up is the purchase of productive assets. A call on future production. Since in its wisdom, the US Government (yes it is true - a case of wise government) will not allow the purchase of major assets, the only thing left to sop up all those dollars is production.

Where does that lead? More investment in productive capacity. Leading to even lower cost production than the currency imbalance would indicate. It then becomes a virtuous cycle. As the dollar rises due to all the production being absorbed, the production prices do not go up as fast as straight monetary calculations would indicate.

By dumping dollars these folks (who are taking a short term view and panicking) have outsmarted themselves.

BTW the same thing is happening in oil. Productive capacity is rising but people are buying oil like crazy with dollars as a way to store value. Gasoline inventories in the US are rising. And what happens when the tanks are full? The excess buying stops. What happens to prices then? Look for big declines in the price of oil once the buyers run out of dollars.

H/T LarryD by e-mail.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

Instalanched. Thanks Glenn!

Well the polls have closed and it's now time to watch the returns.

So far, it's too early to tell anything. (Yeah, Drudge and others have reported various exit polls saying it's too close to call, but I try to ignore them.)

First thing I heard on CNN confirmed that the voting machine irregularity I saw this morning was no isolated incident.

Broken machines are reported all over the state.

Stay tuned....

MORE: In other news, via Glenn Reynolds I see that Bill Clinton is complaining that they played the Race Card on him. (No he did! Yes he didn't!)

Sigh.

If only McCain could play the Rice Card.

08:37 -- finally some raw numbers:

Clinton 1629 Obama 819. (67% to 33%)

8:47 -- With one percent of the vote in, Fox News has called it for Hillary Clinton.

Hey that was easy!

8:50 -- Now Fox is explaining how Hillary won. With 3% of the vote in, that was fast too!

8:52 -- CNN isn't calling it for Hillary. She's now ahead 55-45.

I guess that makes for a little suspense, even if they have to fake it.

8:53 -- Now it's 53-47.

8:59 -- Don't miss Stephen Green's drunkblogging at PJM.

9:00 -- The Philadelphia vote is only 54-46 for Obama. (CNN says this is a bad sign for him, and I agree.)

9:03 -- Right now the state totals are 52-48 for Hillary. Nope, now it's back to 53-47, and CNN is now projecting that Hillary Clinton is the winner.

I think I'll join Stephen and have a Martini....

9:19 -- It's 54 to 46, Hillary.

Pretty close to the double digits she needs.

9:20 -- No sooner did I say that when the numbers switched to 52 - 48.

9:30 -- At this point, the numbers are Hillary leading 179,824 (53%) to
Obama's 162,436 (47%).

9:39 -- An interesting statistic here:

If Obama does win the nomination, a quarter of Pennsylvania Democrats voting today say they'd either support Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., or sit out the contest entirely; if Clinton's the nominee, one in six say they'd either vote for McCain or sit it out.

9:53 -- I see that Hillary is winning by huge margins in blue collar and "red state" areas. I also noticed that Hillary seemed to be working harder, and making more appearances in those areas. While she was doing this, Obama was doing things like raising money in San Francisco -- where he bad mouthed the very people he should have been trying to win over.

It's almost a lesson in how to lose.

10:07 -- Hillary is now being introduced by Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter.

Smart move.

10:15 -- Following Nutter was PA Governor Ed Rendell, who introduced Hillary.

And now it's her turn....

The crowd is ecstatic, and they're chanting "YES SHE WILL!" and now Hillary is talking about her grandfather, and the dreams of Pennsylvanians like that who she carries. She's fighting for everyone who's paying for mortgages, high price of gas, etc.

The crowd loves it, and now she's congratulating Obama.

The women who were born before women had the right to vote, little girls who have hope....

Now she says she needs money to fight big money Obama.

More chanting.

She is very energized and it's a good speech (even if I can do without listening to her voice).

10:24 -- Now she's mentioning Earth Day, with clean renewable green jobs for all.

Ugh. I don't think I can take eight years of this.

Now it's health care.

A bigger UGH!

Why the relentless push for socialism?

I fear that the chief difference between Hillary and Obama is that she might be better able to implement this awful stuff, but he's just words.

10:29 -- She's now thanking Nutter, Rendell, Sestak, and Murtha. And her family. Her brothers Tony and Hugh, and her mother.

"A lot of work ahead."

I'll say.

10:31 -- Question isn't whether we can, but whether we will!

"My answer to any who doubt is, YES WE WILL!"

"Best speech I've ever heard her give!" exclaims Fox pollster Frank Luntz.

(I wonder what he'll say after the coronation.)

10:46 -- Now it's Barack Obama in Evansville, IN. He's thanking the Mayor and John Mellencamp, and "the hundreds of thousands of Pennsylvanians who have stood in our camp." Closed the gap.

Lots more speechifying. He's saying it's easy to get caught up in the distractions and the bickering.....

(I am sick of this election, OK? Can I say that?)

We are here because....

of the more than 100 workers in Logansport, IN.

We are here because of a young man without insurance.

We are here because there are families all across the country who can't pay their insurance and their mortgage.

We are here not here to talk about change for change's sake, but because families need it.

We are here because we can't play the same games....

Now he's knocking McCain for not being about change.

Iraq, war with no exit, etc.

Distracted us from Afghanistan.....

(Can I yawn now?)

Tax cuts offend his conscience. (Well, tax hikes offend more than that...)

10:58 -- Stephen Green:

Eight points is pretty clear and quite convincing -- that Hillary will go on, that Obama is a great pitch man but a lousy closer, and that the Democratic nominating process is dysfunctional at best and bipolar at worst.

Clinton can't quit now, not with Obama showing certain weaknesses with Democratic voters and near-fatal weaknesses with the general electorate. Keep in mind, voters want change, and voters in economically-distressed Pennsylvania more than most. But with them, Obama was either the wrong kind of change, not enough change -- or maybe too much change.

What's happening is an excellent argument for smoke filled rooms.

11:02 -- Obama says his wife reminds him he's not a perfect man, and won't be a perfect president. (No, not at the rate he's going, he won't.)

The status quo will fight. You have the power.

(Right now, I'm thinking he will not make the mistake of another overly long speech, which is good, because I'm tired and grouchy and fed up with blogging this.)

Now it's our turn! If we shed cynicism, doubts, fears, we'll change the country and change the world. That's our job, that's our task.

With that I'm signing off. Enough is eventually enough.

ONE LAST THING -- On Fox News, Laura Ingraham just boasted that Rush Limbaugh was a major factor in Hillary's victory.

I don't know how true that is, but Hillary has some strange allies....

I sent out this link in an email earlier, remarking lackadaisically that Hillary had eaten a cheesesteak in nearby Conshohocken (while Obama ate at a diner in Pittsburgh).

When I was reminded in a reply of the possible hazards of cheesesteaks (in particular, that a human being is supposed to "lose two weeks of life for each cheesesteak consumed"), I went back to the report to read it more carefully.

Sure enough, it does not actually say that Hillary ate the cheesesteak; only that she "picked up" one:

The former first lady greeted voters at a polling place in Conshohocken, in suburban Philadelphia. She also visited a local restaurant there and picked up a Philly cheesesteak.

Now come on! I'm not insinuating anything here. Any readers who think I am must have dirty minds!

I'm just saying, you know, with all the talk of elitism in this race, that the locals in Philly have a right to know whether Hillary ate that cheesesteak, and wasn't just putting on an act by pretending to be like the "little people" around here.

Despite the fact that it concerns little people, though this is no small matter. Some may recall that in 2004, John Kerry committed a horrendous Philadelphia cheesesteak gaffe by daring to order one with Swiss cheese!

During the 2004 presidential campaign, candidate John Kerry ordered a cheesesteak with Swiss cheese in South Philadelphia. According to the Philadelphia Daily News, "reporters snickered," because "in Philadelphia, ordering Swiss on a cheesesteak is like rooting for Dallas at an Eagles game. It isn't just politically incorrect; it could get you a poke in the nose."[12]

Needless to say, he lost.

And in 2005, Mitt Romney despicably declared the cheesesteak to have "no nutritive value":

In 2005, before Super Bowl XXXIX, Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney turned down a cheesesteak wager by Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell in the traditional pre-Super Bowl bet between leaders of the states represented in the game. Rendell later told reporters, "He said the cheesesteak had no nutritional value."

And we know what happened to him, don't we? It might not have the nutritive value that multimillionaires and health-conscious models from the Mideast crave, but around here, it's what people eat, and by any standard, it certainly has political value.

Obviously, cheesesteaks are very dangerous. Certainly, more dangerous than I initially realized when I saw the breaking news reports about Hillary's.

I decided to look further, and sure enough, the story of Hillary's cheesesteak is being reported all over the country (if not the world).

Yet the details of what she did with it are simply nowhere to be found.

Newsday reports that she "bought" one:

She dropped by a polling place in Montgomery County in suburban Philadelphia, stopped by a diner and bought a cheesesteak before launching a round of satellite TV interviews.

Campaigning outside Philadelphia, Clinton ordered a cheese steak at a restaurant as she continued her assault against Obama, brushing aside the suggestion that she has to score a big win today to remain competitive.

New York Sen. Hillary Clinton has spent the day so far making numerous campaign visits - even stopping for a mid-morning cheese steak -- in Montgomery County, a collection of Philadelphia suburbs that only recently became overwhelmingly Democratic.

After the press conference, Clinton visited a nearby restaurant where she ordered a Philly cheese steak to go.

Uh oh.

This looks bad. Not one story says that Hillary ate a cheesesteak. Ever.

Look for yourself!

I'm smelling a big, cheesy scandal.

DISCLOSURE: I grew up in the Philadelphia area eating cheesesteaks. I still do.

Yo Hillary! Better come clean!

(At least Kerry ate his.)

MORE: Photographic evidence that she did in fact carry it out:

UPDATE (04/23/08): Only in today's Inquirer did I learn that Obama engaged in an act of conspicuous consumption, and not only ordered, but sat down and ate his cheesesteak:

Obama got his obligatory dose of cheesesteak at a South Philadelphia landmark, Pat's King of Steaks at Ninth and Wharton Streets.

Along with his wife, he worked his way through the crowd to the counter, where he ordered two cheesesteaks, with onions. "Whiz with," Michelle Obama chimed in. (History: John Kerry infamously ordered his cheesesteak with Swiss.)

The couple sat down with a startled Charles McDermot of Roxborough and his daughter Ariel, 16. Obama had to fold his long frame to get under a bolted-down red plastic bench, at a bolted-down red plastic table, underneath the sidewalk overhang.

With the throng of cameras leaning over their shoulders, Obama and his wife tried to talk to their lunch companions. "We don't want to have Cheez Whiz dripping from our mouths," Obama said.

He ate all of the sandwich, then dipped into some French fries and opened a bottle of water. After taking a sip, he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

"Do I have cheesesteak in my teeth?" he asked McDermot.

(But it's too late to affect the results....)

For some time now, I've been trying to figure out what would motivate a Republican to cross party lines and vote for Hillary even if he thought that Hillary would have a better chance of beating McCain than Obama.

I have tended to assume that hatred of McCain or wanting the GOP to lose would be the only possible reasons, but it finally dawned on me that there might be an additional reason.

There may be Republicans who don't mind having McCain lose to Hillary if that were the price that had to be paid for preventing the possibility of an Obama presidency. Thus, this group may be voting for Hillary for entirely different reasons than commonly believed -- i.e., not to save the Republican party from defeat, but to save America from Obama.

While this might be a form of strategy, is it reasonable to call it a Republican strategy?

Does anyone know of any crossover voters thinking this way? I don't think I'm just imagining them as there's this bumpersticker:

Wherever they are and whoever they may be, if Obama's the nominee at least McCain won't have to worry about them sitting it out.

It has to be remembered, though, that in politics, nothing is permanent. Rick Santorum, for example, was long known as an "Anyone But McCain" man. Until yesterday, that is. Now he's explaining "Why conservatives should support McCain."

Why? Because McCain is not only Anyone But Obama, he's also Anyone But Hillary!

It is unknown why lemming populations fluctuate with such variance roughly every four years, before plummeting to near extinction.

-- Wiki Lemming entry

In fairness, though, it should be noted that while lemmings do occasionally jump from cliffs into the sea, the idea is migration, not suicide.

Pouncing is another matter. Usually we think of that as feline behavior.

So it was with great bemusement and puzzlement that I read an Obama staffer's remark about how Hillary Clinton's "lemmings" "pounced" on Barack Obama:

MIKA BRZEZINSKI: Well, but you can't argue that the Clinton campaign didn't do some serious damage in light of the Wright stuff and the bitter comments--

SCARBOROUGH: That wasn't the Clinton campaign.

BRZEZINSKI: They pounced on it like lemmings.

SCARBOROUGH: That wasn't the Clinton campaign--

BRZEZINSKI: Oh, please.

SCARBOROUGH: And I don't know if lemmings actually pounce. I think lemmings go over cliffs.

Like Mika with her metaphor?

It's going to be tough, but thought I would try to decontextualize and then recontextualize the conflated and mangled subtext of the lemmings.

Nah, on second thought, it's too nice a day and I don't feel like looking for presidents precedents. (I won't even attempt to tie in the time Jimmy Carter was viciously pounced on by a killer rabbit.)

I did find this, though:

(No, I absolutely do not feel like photoshopping in Barack Obama being bombarded by hordes of Hillary's Limbaugh-driven lemmings.)

My simple advice to Mika and the Obama campaign is this:

if you're stuck with lemmings (especially bitter lemmings), try making lemmingade.

Earth Day is fast upon us, and rather than crank out yet another primal scream of dismay, I have chosen (lazy me) to dredge the archives for crunchy nuggets of eco-wisdom past. They do say it's virtuous to recycle.

Earth Day: The Remix...

"We have about five more years at the outside to do something," ecologist Kenneth Watt declared to a Swarthmore College audience on April 19, 1970.

In January 1970, Life reported, "Scientists have solid experimental and theoretical evidence to support...the following predictions: In a decade, urban dwellers will have to wear gas masks to survive air pollution...by 1985 air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching earth by one half....

Harvard biologist George Wald estimated [in 1970] that "civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind."

At least their hearts were in the right place. Still are, actually...

September 14, 2006 A leading U.S. climate researcher says the world has a 10-year window of opportunity to take decisive action on global warming and avert catastrophe.

NASA scientist James Hansen, widely considered the doyen of American climate researchers, said governments must adopt an alternative scenario to keep carbon dioxide emission growth in check...

"I think we have a very brief window of opportunity to deal with climate change ... no longer than a decade, at the most..."

Ain't that a pisser? We're doomed again. Still doomed. Doomed on stilts, for pity's sake. But, can someone tell me what's up with this "widely considered the doyen of American climate researchers" bit?

Is this even true? Widely considered by whom? Where could you go to verify such a claim?

It passeth my meager understanding. Best we just move on.

A Good Day To Recycle...

Wherein our favorite peak oil profiteer, James Howard Kunstler, gifts an interviewer with his usual, calmly reasoned thoughts...

Mark Maynard: I can appreciate your pessimism, and, generally speaking, I share it, but do you think that yours is a message that will motivate people to change their behaviors? Are you so convinced that efforts to stop what is coming will be futile that you don't feel as though we should even try? Might it not be better to offer a chance for success, rally people together, and go out swinging?

James Kunstler: I resent the hell out of being labeled a "pessimist." In my writings, I offer a comprehensive view of how we can respond intelligently to these new circumstances. That's neither pessimistic nor cynical. So fuck you.

Slightly off topic, but still oh-so-satisfying. Truly, he is the gift that keeps on giving.

Merry Earth Day Mr. Kunstler...

Kunstler got a rock-star reception last week at Middlebury College, where he entertained a standing-room-only audience with provocative predications about where our unbridled consumption is likely to land us. An eloquent, funny speaker who is not afraid to use the f-word, Kunstler agreed to a follow-up email interview with Seven Days.

They've had three years to outgrow him. I'm beginning to doubt that'll be enough.

Still, hope springs eternal...

"Check all of your assumptions at the door," James Howard Kunstler advises reporters before he commences an interview. "Don't assume that anything you think about the way we live today is going to be the same 10, five, even three years from now."

That was back in May, 2005. Cripes, we've only got seven years to go. Or maybe just a couple of weeks. Those nice clean fusion generators can't get here too soon.

I'm so troubled, I'd even settle for nice (less) clean fission plants. It's not like we'd need to use them forever, is it?

Take a good look at America around you now, because when we emerge from the winter of 2005 - 6, we're going to be another country. The reality-oblivious nation of mall hounds, bargain shoppers, happy motorists, Nascar fans, Red State war hawks, and born-again Krispy Kremers is headed into a werewolf-like transformation that will reveal to all the tragic monster we have become...

There are two things that the newspapers and TV Cable News outfits are not covering very well. One is that the Port of New Orleans is not functioning, with poor prospects for a quick recovery, and with it will go much of the Midwestern grain harvest.

Another thing that has fallen off the radar screen is the damage done to the oil and gas infrastructure around the Gulf Coast, especially the onshore facilities for storing and transporting stuff, and for marshaling the crews and equipment to fix stuff. The US is going to run short of its customary supplies for a long time. The idea that these things will not affect an economy of ceaseless mobility is not realistic...

By October, the hurricane season will be ending and the stock market crash season will be underway. It is hard to imagine that companies like WalMart really believe they will keep their profits up when their customers are paying twice as much as they did a year ago to heat their houses and fill their gas tanks.

It's been three years now, and WalMart is still with us. Hmmm.

Have yourselves a happy Earth Day. I sure will.

When I got up this morning, today's much-anticipated Philadelphia Inquirer endorsement was available only online.

Well, for me, at least. And for my neighbors. I looked around, and no, they didn't just miss my driveway; there were no Inquirers to be found anywhere. Occasionally I'll have a missed delivery problem, but no papers anywhere is unusual. That it happened on Election Day raised my antennae a bit.

So naturally, I wondered who the Inquirer endorsed.

Obama:

The 46-year-old Obama offers the better chance of rising above the partisan rancor in Washington to achieve bipartisan goals. After eight years of George W. Bush's my-way-or-the-highway rule, Obama could become the uniter that Bush never was. His campaign has attracted people of all backgrounds and political persuasions.

Throughout his career as a community organizer and state legislator and senator, Obama has pursued justice for working-class people. The recent charge that he's an elitist doesn't wash, in light of his background and his life's work.

Opponents argue that Obama isn't ready to be president. Compared with Clinton and Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona, Obama has the least amount of Washington experience. But that is likely one reason he's winning over so many voters. People crave change.

And Obama has demonstrated the resilience to bounce back from challenges in this long campaign. His speech in Philadelphia on race relations quelled the immediate political furor over his former pastor's anti-white rhetoric.

But Obama's address did more than serve his own political needs. It called on blacks and whites to consider each other's legitimate motives, and to move beyond conflicting perspectives. Turning a tempest into an opportunity for national reflection and action is a sign of leadership.

The Inquirer goes on to criticize Obama for Bittergate:

Unfortunately, Obama followed up that memorable speech with a gaffe about "bitter" small-town Pennsylvanians clinging to religion and guns. He still hasn't explained adequately what he really meant. For someone whose eloquence usually seems effortless, it was an unforced blunder that may have cost him the chance to put away Clinton here and now.

Today's Inquirer, of course, slams Hillary:

Clinton, 60, like Obama, wants to end the war in Iraq as soon as possible. Her plan for universal health care would mandate coverage for everyone; his plan doesn't go quite that far. But the policy differences between them are few. For example, both aim to roll back the Bush tax cuts for top wage-earners.

A second Clinton presidency could be as polarizing as the first one. She hasn't displayed often enough an ability to connect with voters. And her infamous Bosnia-sniper story, while overblown, did highlight the public's mistrust of her truthfulness.

Republican voters - those who haven't switched parties this spring - will find three names on the presidential ballot. But the GOP race is effectively over. JOHN McCAIN, 71, who received our endorsement in January, is the presumptive nominee. Former Gov. Mike Huckabee of Arkansas abandoned his effort weeks ago, and Rep. Ron Paul of Texas is carrying on his obscure campaign for reasons known chiefly to him.

Obscure is definitely the word for the Ron Paul campaign, because I've seen no signs of it (at least, in my neighborhood).

Maybe it's, like, a double-secret, stealth campaign. With invisible canvassing and invisible leaflets. And maybe his voters are voting in secret polling places, known only to them. (Those who know don't tell, and those who tell don't know! Shhh!)

But frankly, the Hillary campaign is not doing the world's greatest job of canvassing, mailing or leafleting. I have received two leaflets from Obama in the mail, and I have been visited by two Obama campaign workers. One of them even braved Coco's anti-campaign worker intimidation tactics and placed this beautiful, color-coordinated hanger on the door latch:

Nothing from the Clinton campaign.

Anyway, my Inquirer endorsement not in hand, I finally arrived at the polls. While there were at least two Obama signs in front of the building, I didn't see any from Hillary.

It was crowded, and I had to stand in line.

(Faces blurred to respect privacy.)

The situation seemed aggravated by a malfunctioning voting machine, as the poll worker shut it down while someone with electronic gadgetry screwed around with it. And meanwhile the poll worker was on the cell phone (around 7:25 a.m.) reporting something.

No idea what the problem was, but finally they let the voters use it again.

I returned a little after 8:00 a.m., and the Inquirer was sitting there, as were the neighbors' Inquirers. It just arrived too late for most of the commuter voter crowd, that's all. Probably nothing except a coincidence, but the paper almost always arrives well before 6:00 a.m., and usually before 5:00.

Speaking of coincidences, today is Earth Day, and Lenin's birthday.

So what would Lenin do? What is to be done?

Who would he endorse? Who would he vote for?

(The answers to those last two questions might not be the same. I'm thinking that Lenin's vote would depend on whether ideology is placed ahead of tactics, a decision which might be tactical, but still ultimately ideological. These things are complicated, but I'm thinking Lenin would probably vote for Hillary.)

MORE: For continuously updated coverage on the Pennsylvania vote (as well as regular reports from Bill Bradley and Vodkapundit's Stephen Green), be sure to visit this PJM link regularly.

UPDATE: Speaking of unusual occurences, what's with all this sudden UFO activity in multiple states?

Are the aliens making an Earth Day statement?

Or is it a last minute alien endorsement of Dennis Kucinich?

In any case I don't think we should pledging to the flag. We should be pledging to the Constitution, like people who become naturalized, like people who join the military, like people who take an oath of office. It is not the flag that makes us Americans. It is the Constitution.

Not my title, but the title of Dick Morris's latest (and interestingly-timed) piece documenting Hillary's "close relationship with known terrorist sympathizers and Hamas supporters":

Her relationship with terrorists began in the mid-1980s when she served on the board of the New World Foundation, which gave funds to the Palestine Liberation Organization, at a time when the PLO was officially recognized by the U.S. government as a terrorist organization.

In 1996, the first lady initiated an outreach program to bring Muslim leaders to the White House. But, as terrorism expert Steve Emerson noted in The Wall Street Journal "Curiously, nearly all of the leaders with whom Mrs. Clinton elected to meet came from Islamic fundamentalist organizations.

"A review of the statements, publications, and conferences of the groups Mrs. Clinton embraced shows unambiguously that they have long advocated or justified violence. By meeting with these groups, the first lady lent them legitimacy as 'mainstream' and 'moderate.'"

Among these radical groups was the American Muslim Alliance (AMA) and the Council on American-Islamic Relations, both groups that support Hamas, who attended a White House reception hosted by Hillary in February, 1996.

Emerson says that its leaders "have sanctioned terrorism, published anti-Semitic statements, and repeatedly hosted conferences that were forums for denunciations of Jews and exhortations to wage jihad."

The American Muslim Alliance was headed in the '90s by Abdulrahman Alamoudi who met with Clinton and Gore in 1995. Emerson notes that "Mrs. Clinton [allowed] the American Muslim Alliance to draw up the Muslim guest list for the first lady's . . . White House reception."

Alamoudi, Emerson says was "the primary defender of Musa Abu Marzug, the Hamas political bureau chief responsible for creating the group's death squads." Marzug took "credit" when Hamas brigades sprayed machine gun fire into a crowded Jerusalem mall. But less than three days after Marzug was arrested by the FBI in July of 1995, Alamoudi said that Marzug "had never been involved in terrorism" and called his arrest "an insult to the Muslim community. Emerson reports that he "elicited contributions fro Marzug's defense fund" and called him a "political prisoner."

Then, Hillary ran for Senate on her own and suddenly it was payback time. On June 13, 2000, the American Muslim Alliance's Massachusetts Chapter held a very successful fundraiser for her candidacy. Tahir Ali, the chairman of the chapter, said "we must support all who have [Muslim] interests at heart."

Perhaps conscious of how controversial the contribution would be, Hillary or someone on her staff, tried to pull a fast one, recording the donation on federal filing forms as being from the "American Museum Alliance." But alert observers weren't fooled and Senate candidate Clinton was forced to acknowledge who the real donor was and, four months after getting the money, she returned it.

But by then, a few weeks before the election, she had abjured the use of soft money in her Senate campaign, so the donation was, in practical terms, useless, since it was well over the limits for hard money contributions.

The Palestinian terrorists know that Hillary hears their point of view. WorldNetDaily.com reported on Oct. 7, 2007, that leading terrorists have publicly called for her election. Aaron Klein, WorldNet Daily's Jerusalem correspondent, wrote, in his wonderful book "Schmoozing with Terrorists," Ala Senakreh, West Bank chief of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades terrorist group said "I hope Hillary is elected in order to have the occasion to carry out all the promises she is giving regarding Iraq."

Senakreh has high hopes for a Hillary presidency. He told Klein "I hope also that she will maintain her husband's policies regarding Palestine and even develop that policy."

Abu Hamed, leader of the Al Aqsa Brigades in Gaza, noting that "the Iraqi resistance is succeeding," said that "Hillary and the Democrats call for withdrawal." Then he added, helpfully, "Her popularity shows that the resistance is winning and that the occupation is losing. We just hope that she will go until the end and change American policy."

He explained that "President Clinton wanted to give the Palestinians 98 percent of the West Bank territories. I hope Hillary will move a step forward and give the Palestinians all their rights."

Clearly Barack Obama should not have stayed in Rev Wright's church and his campaign should not maintain a "friendly" relationship with William Ayers. But what about Hillary's service on a board that gave money to a terrorist organization? And her hosting of a terror supporting group in the White House? And her acceptance of a $50,000 contribution from that group? And the statements of terrorists that they are hoping for her to win?

These are far more serious connections than have been established for Obama and either Wright or Ayers.

Of course, while the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade may be supporting Hillary, Hamas seems to have changed its tune, as they've endorsed Obama.

I don't put much stock in these endorsements or statements, but there's certainly a pot-kettle-black situation which probably explains why Hillary isn't exactly howling about Bill Ayers.

MORE: As to why Hamas would endorse Obama, in a "Good Morning America" interview today, Hillary provided a clue:

ABC News' Chris Cuomo asked Clinton what she would do if Iran attacked Israel with nuclear weapons.

"I want the Iranians to know that if I'm the president, we will attack Iran," Clinton said. "In the next 10 years, during which they might foolishly consider launching an attack on Israel, we would be able to totally obliterate them."

I think she'd kinda like obliterating somebody.

It's not too late for the Al Aksa Martyrs Brigade to change their mind, but at this point I don't think it's really going to sway Pennsylvania voters.

MORE: Glenn also notes that Ann Althouse likes Hillary's hawkishness. (I did too, and it was one of the reasons I thought she won the debate.)

Richard Warman claims he has a bad reputation because of a possibly erroneous story published by The National Post newspaper of Canada.

REGINA -- Linking one blog to another and allowing comments on her blog postings has landed one prominent Saskatchewan blogger in a legal quandary.

Kate McMillan of Small Dead Animals is one of several named as defendants in a statement of claim filed by Richard Warman with the Ontario Superior Court on April 7. Others include Ezra Levant, The National Post and one of its journalists, Jonathon Kay.

In the statement of claim, Warman alleges he was defamed on a blog known as freedominion.ca. He alleges those comments were linked to or commented upon on other blogs, including McMillan's and The National Post's.

I expect by the time this goes viral on the 'net Mr. Richard Warman will have no reputation left worth defending.

And just to raise my Richard Warman score a bit I'm going to add a few more. Richard Warman, Richard Warman, Richard Warman, Richard Warman, Richard Warman, Richard Warman, Richard Warman, Richard Warman, Richard Warman, Richard Warman, Richard Warman, Richard Warman, Richard Warman, Richard Warman, Richard Warman, Richard Warman, Richard Warman, Richard Warman, Richard Warman, Richard Warman, Richard Warman.

With any luck Mr. Richard Warman, if Richard Warman is actually your name, will be able to find this without trouble.

H/T

Cross Posted at Power and Control

The great big Pennsylvania primary election happens tomorrow, and I couldn't be gladder, because at least it will be over.

Hillary is ahead of Obama here, and she has always been ahead. She'll win, but the only question is by how much. According to the punditry, if she wins by double digits, she may be able to claim not only a moral victory, but a real victory. If not, then the status quo continues.....

Bill Bradley sums it up pretty well:

Hillary needs a very big win [in PA] to make any dent in Obama's lead in earned delegates and the popular vote. Even if she gets that, it's hard to see her making up much ground elsewhere in the other contests remaining between now and June 3rd, when Montana and South Dakota close out the primary and caucus season.

The primary in Pennsylvania has got to be the last stand: not only has the state always been one where Mrs Clinton should, if she was to maintain any credibility at all, have had a strong win but it is now going to be a telling indication of how much damage has been done to Barack Obama by his disastrously misjudged comments about small-town, working-class Americans.

If you do not have the advantage of having been born and raised in America as I was - that is, if you are familiar only with British cultural assumptions - you may not fully appreciate why Mr Obama's remarks caused the political earthquake that they did or why they have been subjected to even more detailed exegesis than his previous most important utterances after the Rev Jeremiah Wright debacle.

To the British analyst (Janet Daley), the remarks illustrate more about the deterioration of the American bourgeiose than anything else:

In Britain, such sentiments about working-class people are expressed every day by politicians of all parties. They are the common currency of the patronising Left-wing snobbery that pours out of every orifice of the BBC.

Indeed, in the terms that Mr Obama gave to them, they would be seen as the kinder paternalistic version of the disdain that takes really visceral forms in more robustly contemptuous circles (for which organs such as the Guardian speak).

He clearly believed himself to be offering a sympathetic account of why Americans in (or out of) blue-collar jobs turned into gun-totin', Bible-bashing, benighted bigots. And given that he was addressing what was supposed to be a closed fund-raising meeting in San Francisco, we must assume that he believed himself to be among friends who would all discuss the redneck issue with frank loathing: by their standards he was being pretty gentle.

Since the Sixties, when a diluted and incoherent Marxist ideology took hold of higher education, and university became a Left-liberal sheep-dip through which every middle-class professional had to pass, respectability in America has generally involved contempt for precisely the people Mr Obama characterised as being so ignorant that they could not even understand the causes of their economic disadvantage.

In her analysis of this farrago, the Wall Street Journal's Peggy Noonan has written: "To rise in America is to turn left, unless you are very, very tough or protected by privilege of the financial or familial kind."

In other words, if you are somebody who came up from poverty, you cannot afford to buck the intellectual hegemony of right-thinking people (which is to say, Left-thinking people).

So yes, the US has discovered bourgeois guilt. It now has an educated class that believes, in the face of all the comparative evidence, that Big Government and enforced wealth redistribution must be the answers to poverty and that the wealth that is created by free markets is somehow tainted.

To hold on to socially or economically conservative views in this climate is to risk appearing backward - common, vulgar and comically downmarket.

But speaking of Marxist ideology and bourgeois guilt, what about Obama's terrorist friendship connection? Do the voters care? Shhh! We really shouldn't talk about that too loudly, or the voters might start wondering about terrorist pardons. (So let's us Democrats just agree not to talk too loudly about that one, OK?)

Obama thought he was on safe ground in San Francisco, of course, and he said what the downtrodden bitter classes all know he thinks anyway, but is too slick to admit. I think the reason "Bittergate" doesn't seem to have made as much of a dent in Obama's polls is because most Democratic voters are quite used to that attitude. In fact, here's the way the elitist newspapers like to portray them:

Of course, that's a pro-Hillary cartoon, but there's nothing unusual about that type of condescending sentiment. It's numbingly typical among Democrats, and Democratic voters are smart enough to realize that Hillary -- in her heart of hearts (yes, I'm assuming she has one) -- would think in a manner not much different from Obama. Plus, she's said "the wrong thing" so many times that it's tough for the voters to keep track.

This phenomenon -- of being caught saying the wrong thing at the wrong time in the wrong place -- brings up another issue, which is changing American politics. No one can get away with anything anymore:

....the old saying - that nothing is illegal unless you get caught - is out of date; with the preponderance of blogs, cable news networks, embeded reporters and more media attention to this campaign than any in history, everything will get caught.

There's another wrinkle to everybody being caught, and that is the backlash that can be created against the beneficiary of the attack:

In this groundbreaking year, in which one of three new precedents will be set, whisper campaigns threatening peril if any come to pass are sure to play a role. But while those underground smear attempts could hurt each candidate at which they are aimed, the benefiting opponent could find him or herself damaged in the backlash: Even if the offending group or individual is not associated with the campaign and merely tied to the party, a failure to respond fast enough could be grounds for criticism. This year, when everyone will be attacked unfairly, it could be the strength of the disavowal that proves more important than the offended candidate's outrage and response.

But there's another psychological wildcard in the related phenomenon of voter fatigue. I could be wrong about this, but people seemed more tired of Hillary a few weeks ago than they do now. Obama is seeming more like a broken record, while Hillary seems endlessly capable of reinventing herself. He also seems not to handle combat well, but she seems to thrive on it.

The longer she remains an underdog, the more likable she becomes.

What worries me is that Hillary is very capable of winning the nomination, and if she wins the nomination, I fear she will be unbeatable by McCain.

But then, I have a penchant for looking on the dark side.

MORE: Speaking of Hillary's unbeatability, Jeralyn at TalkLeft says that "Hillary Clinton is the better candidate to beat John McCain this fall," and has a post titled "Electability: Why Hillary Is More Likely to Beat McCain" which lays it out.

(HT Glenn Reynolds.)

For the umpteenth time, any crossover Republicans who vote for Hillary in the primary either want the GOP to lose, or are not thinking clearly.

MORE: Nora Ephron's view of white men echoes the dualistic bigotry reflected in the above cartoon:

This is an election about whether the people of Pennsylvania hate blacks more than they hate women. And when I say people, I don't mean people, I mean white men.

As I said when I first linked the cartoon,

No matter how they vote, they're suspect!

They simply cannot win.

If I were a white male Democrat, I might be starting to learn how it feels to be a Republican.

You may remember that four way debate on life extension over at Cato Unbound between Dan Callahan, Diana Schaub, Aubrey de Grey, and Ron Bailey. Nothing much came of it, except for the revelation that Diana Schaub gets a tad sanctimonious when her back is up.

If deathlessness ever arrives for human beings, I would cast my lot with the elephants who are said to gather and grieve over the bones of their departed. Elephant culture might already have surpassed the culture of immortalists. Based on the posts so far, cultural ignorance -- of the history of religion and love and politics -- is one clear cost of the quest for a non-transcendent immortality.

Huh. I'd wear a cap in her classroom every chance I got.

Oh yeah, Callahan's opinion is pretty much value free. Now there's an old nag that's crying out for pasturing.

I'd hoped for more.

And wouldn't you know it, the universe came through for me. The discussion got picked up over at Volokh's, leading to a truly original insight in the comments section by some guy named Dangermouse. He pretty much set everyone straight on the error of their ways (Bad life extensionists! Bad! Bad!) with an appeal to higher authority that, quite frankly, left me croggled. See, the quest for extended youth is evil and pointless because the Silmarillion tells us so. In the interests of scientific curiosity, I'm reproducing this mangled intellectual cud in its entirety...

This is the Akallabêth all over again. You people need to read more Tolkien:

But the King said: 'And does not Eärendil, my forefather, live? Or is he not in the land of Aman?'

To which they answered: 'You know that he has a fate apart, and was adjudged to the Firstborn who die not; yet this also is his doom that he can never return again to mortal lands. Whereas you and your people are not of the Firstborn, but are mortal Men as Ilúvatar made you. Yet it seems that you desire now to have the good of both kindreds, to sail to Valinor when you will, and to return when you please to your homes. That cannot be. Nor can the Valar take away the gifts of Ilúvatar. The Eldar, you say, are unpunished, and even those who rebelled do not die. Yet that is to them neither reward nor punishment, but the fulfilment of their being. They cannot escape, and are bound to this world, never to leave it so long as it lasts, for its life is theirs. And you are punished for the rebellion of Men, you say, in which you had small part, and so it is that you die. But that was not at first appointed for a punishment. Thus you escape, and leave the world, and are not bound to it, in hope or in weariness. Which of us therefore should envy the others?"

And the Númenóreans answered: 'Why should we not envy the Valar, or even the least of the Deathless? For of us is required a blind trust, and a hope without assurance, knowing not what lies before us in a little while. And yet we also love the Earth and would not lose it.'

Then the Messengers said: 'Indeed the mind of Ilúvatar concerning you is not known to the Valar, and he has not revealed all things that are to come. But this we hold to be true, that your home is not here, neither in the Land of Aman nor anywhere within the Circles of the World. And
the Doom of Men, that they should depart, was at first a gift of Ilúvatar. It became a grief to them only because coming under the shadow of Morgoth it seemed to them that they were surrounded by a great darkness, of which they were afraid; and some grew wilful and proud and would not yield,
until life was reft from them. We who bear the ever-mounting burden of the years do not clearly understand this; but if that grief has returned to trouble you, as you say, then we fear that the Shadow arises once more and grows again in your hearts. Therefore, though you be the Dúnedain, fairest of Men, who escaped from the Shadow of old and fought valiantly against it, we say to you: Beware! The will of Eru may not be gainsaid; and the Valar bid you earnestly not to withhold the trust to which you are called, lest soon it become again a bond by which you are constrained. Hope rather that in the end even the least of your desires shall have fruit. The love of Arda was set in your hearts by Ilúvatar, and he does not plant to no purpose. Nonetheless, many ages of Men unborn may pass ere that purpose is made known; and to you it will be revealed and not to the Valar.'

Settled their hash, didn't he? My condolences if you made it all the way through.

"Bloggers are the dealers in the world of internet addiction."

I have to admit, the South Park episode she links touches on one of my primal fears -- imagine if They were to actually shut down The Internet!

All I can say is that They better not, or We will declare war.

The problem with that is how do you declare war when The Internet -- the very medium from which such a declaration would emanate -- is not working?

The whole thing is a scary thought, and what makes it scary is that it doesn't matter whether it is true, any more than it matters to a small child whether there really are monsters in a dark room at night.

Nor does it matter whether bloggers are the dealers, or readers are users. Because we are all at least users. Whether we're in fact "addicts" is an issue for the shrinks, and a secondary consideration. Cut the supply (or the power to the supply), and we will be reduced to Stone Age primitivism. I'd have to go back to writing letters to the editor. Maybe sending faxes on occasion, if from time to time They are kind enough to turn on the electricity.

Nothing would be more degrading than having to go back to such groveling.

Fortunately, the experts have told me that it can't happen here.

But what if?

What if, say, the EPA decided to regulate Internet power consumption? Or suppose that power rationing -- already contemplated in Kansas -- kicked in as a result of failure to build more power plants? (Anyone who thinks the AGW crowd would support building more power plants should think again.) And while Solar powered Wifi sounds fine, if the broadband servers are down for lack of electricity what good is a solar router?

It's not the Internet which worries me; it's the power to the Internet. So long as we have the latter, the former is pretty resilient.

Last night I had dinner with some dear friends who are atheists. I'm not much of a religious debater, as I'm into contemplating my extreme ignorance of the unknown, and one can hardly argue from a position of extreme ignorance with those who have extreme knowledge.

I do love irony, though, and one of my atheist friends interjected last night that atheists spend more time thinking about God than most people -- maybe even more than many religious people do.

She's right. But then, atheism is a strongly held opinion about the nature of the unknown which posits mainly strong disagreement with the idea of deities.

Most organized religions also consist of strongly held opinions about the unknown.

Again I ventured my weary wish that people wouldn't spend so much time arguing with each other over the nature of the unknown. Both atheists and believers in deities hold that the unknown (and so far, still ultimately unknowable) is known, and knowable.

Fortunately, the atheists I ate with are good friends, so there were no arguments. But the way so many people can get into so many ferocious arguments over things which are unknown and unknowable never ceases to amaze me; it's literally a cosmic waste of time. People can get so nasty and so personal about unknowable things that I sometimes wonder whether they really know deep down as much as they claim they know.

Anyway, Glenn Reynolds put it quite well earlier when he mentioned the angry email he's getting for daring to link both sides of a discussion of a film discussing Intelligent Design:

I hate writing about this stuff because -- pardon me while I speak plainly -- the people on both sides of this issue are assholes. I mean, even by the low standards of Internet discussion. I'm getting email calling me a "theocon shill" for mentioning Stein, and email telling me I'll burn in hell for calling Intelligent Design "pernicious twaddle." Frankly, the rabid atheists and the rabid creationists seem an awful lot alike, and no proper hell could be truly hellish without the both of them yammering away at each other. Feh.

(If they know what's good for them....)

When the Patriot Act was passed, concerned civil libertarians were assured that the measures were to be used only against terrorists.

So what in the hell does a "24-hour street sweep" in which "federal, state and local law enforcement agencies pulled over cars, climbed on boats on the Mississippi River and served fugitive warrants" (link via Glenn Reynolds) have to do with terrorism?

Nothing that I can see. Except it's being called an "anti-terrorism initiative," called "Operation Sudden Impact."

And what are they doing raiding ordinary businesses?

According to a local news item titled "Do Tennessee Businesses Have Ties To Terrorism?" that's exactly what they're doing, and the explanation is downright pathetic.

MEMPHIS, Tenn. - Federal agencies raided several Memphis businesses in a coordinated effort to find information about possible terrorism ties.

The operation has been named known as "Sudden Impact."

The FBI along with hundreds of officers said they are looking for anything out of the ordinary. Agents take computers and paperwork from businesses.

"We're the FBI and we're just here to search for anything out of the ordinary?"

Can they get a search warrant for "anything out of the ordinary"? Or are they doing these things without even getting search warrants?

One store owner said he was told the agents were looking for stolen electronics. While some business owners feel they are being targeted, law-enforcement officers said they are just trying to track down possible terrorists before something big happens.

"What we have found traditionally is that terrorists are involved in a number of lesser known type crimes," said Mark Luttrell, Shelby County sheriff.

There has been no word on if any of the confiscated goods have led to any arrests.

Have the people involved no idea that we still have a Constitution? That police aren't allowed to just rummage through files and computers to search for "anything out of the ordinary"?

Before I lose it completely, let me try to calm down and be fair to the other side. The argument (if you can call it one) of the law enforcement officials involved is recited in the video here:

"Sometimes drugs, gangs and fugitives point to something else. Another crime: terrorism."

That way, they could conduct door to door searches to look for possible "evidence."

And remember! Terrorists are also making money selling cigarettes. (Fortunately, for our brave law enforcement officials, the task of searching for terrorist-connected cigarettes has been made easier by the fact that the terrorist-enablers who smoke have been forced outdoors and onto streets where they are easier to surveil and search.)

Sheesh.

I'm hoping this is just an isolated instance of a tyrannical fishing expedition, and that all of the officials involved are disciplined, or held accountable in court. Federalization of local law enforcement is unconstitutional, and the use of the Patriot Act for routine law enforcement ought to be illegal. I'd note that this is by no means the first time; last summer the Patriot Act was used to go after cockfighting in East Tennessee. (Say what you want about cockfighting, but it's just not terrorism -- by any stretch of the imagination.)

Until I hear a good explanation of what happened and why, "Operation Sudden Fascism" sounds like a better name for this than "Operation Sudden Impact."

Seriously, this is an outrage, and people need to stand up to it.

Of course, I don't live in the area, so the only thing I can think to do is possibly contribute to the ACLU.

Where's my checkbook?

MORE: Regarding the apparent cooperation of citizens with the authorities, I like Megan McArdle's recent observation:

...the act of moving in compliant herds through the TSA lines, mindlessly adhering to the most ridiculous procedures the government can think up, contributes to making us what Joseph Schumpeter called "state broken". Citizens should not acquire the habit of following orders with no good reason behind them.

When people attempt to rebel against the iron logic of nature, they come into conflict with the very same principles to which they owe their existence as human beings. Their actions against nature must lead to their own downfall.

-- Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf

May Mike Godwin forgive me for the post I am about to write.

Seriously, I hate it when people inject Hitler into every damned argument that comes along, especially when they do it in a serious manner. But what about Swiftian satire? Is that more forgivable? I mean, since we live in a time when everybody will eventually get to be Hitler for fifteen minutes, is it asking too much that I be allowed to make an occasional modest Hitler proposal?

Besides, this post really is not so much about Hitler as it is Lenin, who was in many ways Hitler's nemesis. Or at least one of his nemeses. The issue involves their respective birthdays. Hitler's birthday is today, while Lenin's birthday is on Tuesday.

And the issue really involves not a birthday, but Earth Day.

Tell me, pray, why must Earth Day always fall on Lenin's birthday?

What makes Vladimir Lenin so environmentally great? I can think of few things the man was more against than the concept of "bourgeois sentimentality," and the system he launched, inspired, and helped to build was so far from being environmentally green that it's fair to call it one of the nemeses of environmentalism itself.

Now, I realize that Lenin's state is now defunct, but if anyone thinks I am exaggerating about the monstrous anti-environmentalist attitude of the Soviet Union, consider that books like Marshall Goldman's The Spoils of Progress: Environmental Pollution in the Soviet Union were devoted to the subject.

[Goldman] devotes chapters to the pollution of Lake Baikal in Siberia, remarking that "Baikal is a unique lake in the world and all mankind will suffer from its desecration," and to the Aral and Caspian seas which is literally in danger of drying up as a result and the construction of hydroelectric statons. Proposals to restore the seas by building dams and reversing the flow of major rivers from north to south (Reshaping the Earth) may have equally profound and undesiarable results.

The book concludes by pointing out that the Soviet state is both manufacturer and polluter and its priorities lie with the increased production rather then conservation; with progress rather than restraint. Yet, hopefully, Goldman points to a number of beneficial state controls which if enlarged in the direction of restoring and protecting natural resources could have made Russia the most poweful and efficient of conservationists.

Across Russia's vast steppes and Siberian taiga, and into the seas from the Baltic to the Pacific, the Soviet Union and later Russia have dumped, buried, spilled and exploded chemical and nuclear substances that had only one purpose - to kill people. They were the ingredients or byproducts of weapons of mass destruction. They were the wastes of the Cold War. Now, they continue to damage the land and people.

Although the Soviet Union has collapsed, a full accounting of the contamination it loosed on the environment has never been made. For most of the Cold War, the Soviet Union kept the sources of this pollution - the arsenals and bomb factories - shielded by the strictest secrecy. Little is known even now about the clandestine dumping and destruction of chemical weapons and radioactive materials. Moreover, little is being done about it, despite the health risks. In some cases, Russian authorities simply deny a threat exists and continue to stamp the files "top secret."

"This place has been abandoned," said Pankratov, surveying the chemical weapons graveyard, which lies less than a mile from one of the declared depots where nerve gas is stored. "No one is responsible for it. This information about old destruction sites hasn't been opened, it's still classified, and we are talking about it now because we have to face the obvious - we are talking about a dangerous contamination of the soil."

The contamination may become an enormous economic burden to a country already flat on its back. Russia simply cannot afford to clean up the poisons left behind by 50 years of dumping and discharge by the military and its bombmaking industry. The pollution is a potential health time bomb, causing an increased incidence of cancer and disease for which no one wants to take responsibility, especially the beleaguered Russian military.

So much contamination by chemical wastes has been dumped into the drinking water supply that mothers in the Aral region cannot breast-feed their babies without running the risk of poisoning them (Feshbach, Friendly 2). The countries within the old Soviet bloc have the most appalling pollution problems in the world. These countries are riddled with polluted air, water, land, and devastated forests. Eighteen percent of the former USSR is classified as "very complicated" in terms of pollution. The most serious types (excluding nuclear wastes) are air and water (Dyukov 23).

This classic is titled "Smoke from the KMK steel plant":

Check the site out. There are plenty more, including scary pictures of sick babies, children playing in toxic slime, etc.

But be strong, and don't allow yourself to succumb to feelings of bourgeois sentimentality when you look at them. Progress means moving mountains, comrades! And diverting rivers!

Most timbering of the forests is done with clear-cuts, with as much as 70 percent of the cut timber going to waste. According to one estimate, acid rain is killing more than 500,000 hectares of forests in northwestern Siberia.

An official Soviet report on the "State of the Environment" in 1988 pointed to metal poisoning in various cities: cadmium in Odessa, manganese in Dnepropetrovsk and Rostov. "The highest degree of atmospheric pollution in 1988 was observed in 68 cities," mainly in the Ukraine, in Kuzbass, the Caucasus, east Kazakhstan and near the Ural Mountains. "The most polluted reservoirs in the U.S.S.R. are along the rivers and lakes on Kola Peninsula and along the Bug, Dnyestr, Danube and Don rivers."

There is no such thing as an environmental impact statement in the Soviet Union, although there are informal efforts to establish something like one. And no one can be certain who is responsible for most of the polluting because so much of it is associated with secret military enterprises.

Soviet agriculture is especially vulnerable, with much of the topsoil eroding. Farmlands have been heavily doused with pesticides and fertilizers. In the western Ukraine, thousands of square miles of farm land remain contaminated from the Chernobyl nuclear accident.

The most celebrated case of pollution involves the inland Aral Sea (see "The Death of the Aral Sea"). Once the world's fourth largest inland body of saltwater, the Aral Sea has lost two- thirds of its original size since 1970 and is expected to vanish by the year 2000 because massive Stalinist irrigation projects have diverted the waters of rivers that once flowed into the Sea into enormous cotton spreads.

So what's the point of talking about this today? Earth Day is still two days away, as it falls in Lenin's birthday.

Yet as we can see, it is the height of absurdity to call Lenin a friend of the environment.

Well, what about Hitler?

In terms of environmentalism, the man and his system were clearly way ahead of the times. While the Soviets raped the environment and poured pollutants willy nilly into the air and the water, the Nazi Party stressed respect for the earth.

In many varieties of the National Socialist world view ecological themes were linked with traditional agrarian romanticism and hostility to urban civilization, all revolving around the idea of rootedness in nature. This conceptual constellation, especially the search for a lost connection to nature, was most pronounced among the neo-pagan elements in the Nazi leadership, above all Heinrich Himmler, Alfred Rosenberg, and Walther Darré. Rosenberg wrote in his colossal The Myth of the 20th Century: "Today we see the steady stream from the countryside to the city, deadly for the Volk. The cities swell ever larger, unnerving the Volk and destroying the threads which bind humanity to nature; they attract adventurers and profiteers of all colors, thereby fostering racial chaos."31

Such musings, it must be stressed, were not mere rhetoric; they reflected firmly held beliefs and, indeed, practices at the very top of the Nazi hierarchy which are today conventionally associated with ecological attitudes. Hitler and Himmler were both strict vegetarians and animal lovers, attracted to nature mysticism and homeopathic cures, and staunchly opposed to vivisection and cruelty to animals. Himmler even established experimental organic farms to grow herbs for SS medicinal purposes. And Hitler, at times, could sound like a veritable Green utopian, discussing authoritatively and in detail various renewable energy sources (including environmentally appropriate hydropower and producing natural gas from sludge) as alternatives to coal, and declaring "water, winds and tides" as the energy path of the future.32

Even in the midst of war, Nazi leaders maintained their commitment to ecological ideals which were, for them, an essential element of racial rejuvenation. In December 1942, Himmler released a decree "On the Treatment of the Land in the Eastern Territories," referring to the newly annexed portions of Poland. It read in part:

The peasant of our racial stock has always carefully endeavored to increase the natural powers of the soil, plants, and animals, and to preserve the balance of the whole of nature. For him, respect for divine creation is the measure of all culture. If, therefore, the new Lebensraume (living spaces) are to become a homeland for our settlers, the planned arrangement of the landscape to keep it close to nature is a decisive prerequisite. It is one of the bases for fortifying the German Volk.33

This passage recapitulates almost all of the tropes comprised by classical ecofascist ideology: Lebensraum, Heimat, the agrarian mystique, the health of the Volk, closeness to and respect for nature (explicitly constructed as the standard against which society is to be judged), maintaining nature's precarious balance, and the earthy powers of the soil and its creatures.

Lowell Ponte argued that Hitler "would have kissed [Paul] Ehrlich on the lips."

And no less than Reason Magazine has called Hitler a "visionary environmentalist."

Strong words, to be sure. And I am sure that many left-wing environmentalists would take serious issue with the idea of Hitler as an environmentalist. But in terms of philosophy, it is undeniable that Hitler was much more of an environmentalist than Lenin.

So my question remains. Why celebrate Earth Day on Lenin's birthday, especially when the birthday of a visionary environmentalist is just two days earlier?

I realize that there is still some dispute over whether the placement of Earth Day on Lenin's birthday is just a coincidence. The case can be made that it isn't, of course (and I have made that case in previous posts, including one in which I noted another coincidence -- that the very first Earth Day was held on Lenin's 100th Birthday). But let's give the green devil its due and assume for the sake of argument that the Lenin Birthday Earth Day is "just a coincidence."

In light of the dreadful Soviet environmental record, is it not then a horrible, terrible coincidence? Wouldn't it therefore make sense to move it? I realize that it's a lot of trouble to move a day that people have gotten so used to, but I don't propose moving it all that far. Just a couple of days earlier, that's all.

And to those sensitive souls who might object to moving Earth Day to Hitler's birthday, the answer could simply be that it, too is a coincidence.

Hey, today might just as well have been chosen for being, like, 420 (cannabis culture). Not only are some coincidences actually true, but as the cannabinoidists say, "Hitler's birthday has nothing to do with 4/20."

Though it is possible to look at the celebration of marijuana as being strategically placed on Hitler's birthday. A lot of bad things have happened on April 20, aside from Hitler's birthday. The Columbine shootings happened on that date in celebration of Hitler's birthday, The Oklahoma City bombing took place a day before April 20, and certainly dozens of white supremacist groups rally on Hitler's birthday. So perhaps the reason the marijuana celebration is on Hitler's birthday is so these hateful psychos will just get high instead of committing acts of terrorism. You show me a guy who sits around all day smoking pot, watching Cartoon Network, and eating Fritos, and I'll show you a guy who is not a threat to society. Wouldn't it have been better if Timothy McVeigh had just gotten baked instead of bombing a building? Or if Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold had stayed home and smoked a bowl instead of going on a shooting rampage? The Red Army faction actually dissolved itself on April 20 in 1998. It might have been because they all just wanted to get high instead of trying to bring communism to Western Europe. Maybe if Hitler had gotten high on his birthday it would have made him lazy and less motivated. He would have sat around with Heinrich Himmler and Adolf Eichmann, eating bratwurst instead of starting a world war and committing genocide.

So like, by any reasonable or logical standard -- as well as in spite of any reasonable or logical standard, Hitler is far more deserving of the Earth Day Birthday coincidence.

Because it's time for a new coincidence!

UPDATE: Today's the day, man!

A crowd of about 10,000 people collectively began counting down on the University of Colorado's Norlin Quadrangle just before 4:20 p.m. today.

Yet the massive puff of pot smoke that hovers over CU's Boulder campus every April 20 -- the date of an annual, internationally recognized celebration of marijuana -- began rising over the sea of heads earlier than normal this year.

What more proof do we need that Earth Day should be moved to 4/20?

UPDATE: My thanks to Glenn Reynolds for linking this post, and for the reassuring words about possibly being forgiven by Mike Godwin. I try to leave Hitler out of most discussions. Honest!

A warm welcome to all! Comments always appreciated, agree or disagree.

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Former New York Times reporter Chris Hedges (author of American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America) has a thought-provoking Op Ed in today's Philadelphia Inquirer. He's fed up with the left for having sold out to "respectability" and to corporatism. And, in a charming echo of such conservative luminaries as Dobson, Coulter, and Buchanan, he's urging principled leftists to walk away from whoever the Democratic Party candidate is and support third party candidates:

The failure of the American left is a failure of nerve. It has been neutralized and rendered ineffectual as a political force because of its refusal to hold fast on core issues, from universal, single-payer, not-for-profit health care for all Americans, to the steadfast protection of workers' rights, to an immediate withdrawal from the failed occupation of Iraq to a fight against a militarized economy that is hollowing the country out from the inside.

Let the politicians compromise. This is their job. It is not ours. If the left wants to regain influence in the nation's political life, it must be willing to walk away from the Democratic Party, even if Barack Obama is the nominee, and back progressive, third-party candidates until the Democrats feel enough heat to adopt our agenda. We must be willing to say no. If not, we become slaves.

Hedges not only admits to being bitter, he's proud of it:

....every four years Democratic candidates pay lip service to the old values of the party, but then they head off to Washington and do things such as ram NAFTA down our throats, throw 10 million people off welfare, and peddle health-care proposals acceptable to the HMOs, huge pharmaceutical giants, and for-profit health-care providers who are, after all, the very sources of our health-care crisis. What we as citizens need and work for in a corporate state is irrelevant.

The working class has every right to be, to steal a line from Obama, bitter with liberal elites. I am bitter.

For all the talk on the right about returning to principles, the principled left has been so marginalized as to be all but muzzled. Why is it that conservative opponents of their party nominee get so much more media ink than liberal opponents of the Democratic nominee, anyway? (Seriously, I can't remember the last time I saw an Op-Ed like this. Surely Hedges cannot be alone.)

Fair is fair, and despite my penchant for complaining about the angry MDS conservatives, I think the dissenting left has every bit as much right to be heard as the dissenting right.

Is it possible that there's some sort of media double standard?

Normally, when conservatives and libertarians think of such double standards, we think of voices on the right being marginalized or shut out. But quite frankly, I've seen lots of ink devoted to angry right-wing GOP dissenters, but very, very little from Cindy Sheehan, Leslie Cagan, Medea Benjamin, and the Indymedia left types making it into the MSM -- despite the fact that such activists are the backbone of nearly every anti-war and anti-globalist demonstration. You'd almost think that either they don't exist, or the respectable liberal "corporatists" don't want them to exist. (Little wonder there's talk of Recreating '68.)

I'm beginning to think there might just be a perverse sort of pro-right-wing bias.

And in the liberal media.

Oh, the irony!

UPDATE: My thanks to Glenn Reynolds for the link, and a warm welcome to all!

Comments always appreciated, agree or disagree.

That's how Malcolm X described the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem in The Autobiography of Malcolm X:

I seized the opportunity to run down into the lobby, to see it again before Dr. Azzam arrived. When I opened my door, just across the hall from me a man in some ceremonial dress, who obviously lived there, was also headed downstairs, surrounded by attendants. I followed them down, then through the lobby. Outside, a small caravan of automobiles was waiting. My neighbor appeared through the Jedda Palace Hotel's front entrance and people rushed and crowded him, kissing his hand. I found out who he was: the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem. Later, in the hotel, I would have the opportunity to talk with him for about a half-hour. He was a cordial man of great dignity. He was well up on world affairs, and even the latest events in America.

There's one of the usual "neutrality disputed" Wikipedia battles, with post-modernist style bickering over whether the Mufti should be called an antisemite ("not sure that antisemite and fascist are the right terms") or even whether he was a Nazi ("Maybe he was a Nazi and maybe he wasn't, but we aren't going to learn the truth by privileging wartime propaganda from the Haganah over scholarly sources").

Please! Why Wiki has to allow itself to be tyrannized by nitpicking arguments against reams of historical evidence I do not know.

Anyway, his work with Hitler and Himmler, his formation of the Bosnian SS Handschar Division, his relentless murdering of Jews -- all this is beyond dispute.

See Indopedia, Yad Vashem , and innumerable links with plenty of pictures like these, excellent summaries of his life, and even a discussion of his American connection.

Here's the Mufti with Hitler:

And with Himmler:

(Via Gates of Vienna.)

This YouTube video of a German documentary is excellent (be patient; the English subtitles appear soon after the beginning):

And another documentary in English, which ties him to more recent terrorist acts:

Arguments like this are often made that the Mufti was the grandfather of Islamofascism and the precursor to modern Islamist terrorism:

The Mufti's years in wartime Nazi Germany, where he lived in a confiscated Jewish mansion in Berlin as head of a Nazi-Muslim government in exile and where he spent confiscated Jewish monies on a lavish lifestyle and on the launching of an international anti-Jewish propaganda campaign, is an extraordinary story and would be unbelievable if there wasn't so much evidence. Upon arrival in Berlin, 1941, the Mufti met with Nazi Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbontrop and was then officially received by Adolf Hitler on November 28. Subsequently, and thorough the war years, the Gross mufti von Jerusalem would meet regularly with high Nazi officials and would play a leading role, perhaps more significant than is commonly known or may ever be known, in the "final solution" against the Jews
of Europe. He was intimately involved in the training of Bosnian and other Muslim SS Hanshar divisions in Nazi occupied Yugoslavia and in other Nazi occupied areas with Muslim populations. His broadcasts from Nazi Germany, transmitted to the Arab world, are amongst the most blood-curdlingly anti-Jewish in history. The Mufti should be viewed as on par with any one of the top Nazi villains and was in many respects far worse. This shocking story begs to be told and retold.

After the War, and after his conviction as a war criminal at Nuremberg and the issuance of a warrant for his arrest from Yugoslavia for crimes against humanity, the Mufti fled to Cairo where, as a guest of Abdel Gamal Nasser, another of his many protégés, he remained in exile for the rest of his life. From Cairo, he devoted his considerable energies toward the destruction of the State of Israel and the poisoning of any vestiges of peace between Israel and the Arab states. He would help Nazi war criminals settle in the Arab world through what is known as operation Odessa. He would further encourage his followers to seize power in Arab capitals and to establish National Socialist style governments.

There were three important phases in the Grand Mufti's career. The first is the period from 1920 when he inspired the first pogrom against Jews in Palestine to 1937 when he meets with Adolf Eichmann in Palestine and assumes influence in the Arab world at large. The second is the period from the 1937 Eichmann meeting, through his involvement in the Nazi-inspired Iraq coup, and on to his activities in Nazi Germany until the end of the war in 1945. The third is his activities from the end of the war to his death in Cairo in 1974.

My contention is that Muftism, the poisonous and fanatic legacy of Haj Amin el-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, continues to maintain a firm grip in the Arab mind and the Arab world today much to the determent of both the Arab peoples who are forced to live under the regressive socialist jack-boot of Mufti inspired regimes and to the possibility of peace between the Israelis and the Arabs. After the defeat of the Mufti's Nazi sponsors in 1945, the Soviet Union and the international left largely filled the power vacuum and the left remains the primary booster of Muftism in the Arab and Islamic world today. Muftism bears a large responsibility for modern terrorism and fanatic Islamic movements. While Europe was largely de-Nazified after the war, Muftism, or Arab-Islamic Nazism remains a major political and philosophical force. Arab peoples continue to groan under Nazi-Arab oppressive regimes and Mufti influenced pan-Arabists continue to wage war against non-Islamic nations and peoples.

The Mufti's tireless and single-minded career contributed greatly to a regressive trend in the Arab world. Progressive forward-thinking Arabs who have sought freedom oriented sovereignty and the benefits of modern democracy were swept away by the thuggish and radical followers of the Mufti. His inheritance is a Fascist movement that continues to predominate. His philosophical offspring continue to be animated by a modern Islamic form of authoritarian Socialism that was advocated by the Mufti from his Nazi perch in Berlin. His influence, philosophical as well as literal, calls out for examination as a means of understanding the present crisis in the Arab world. If nothing else, the destructive career of the Mufti serves as a testament to the degree in which one individual can influence and change the course of history.

What was he doing in the early 1960s, when he met Malcolm X? In 1962, the Mufti headed the World Islamic Conference at which he again called for genocide:

The Mufti aided in Operation Odessa, which was a ratline smuggling thousands of Nazi war criminals into Egypt and Syria. Many Nazis, once settled in Arab capitals, changed their names, converted to Islam, and involved themselves in war against Israel. The Mufti promoted the so-called "right of return" for Palestinian Arabs, this after having exhorted Arabs to leave Palestine during Israel's war of independence. The Mufti worked to keep Arabs in refugee camps to be used as recruiting centers to fight against Israel. In his last public appearance in a speech before a World Islamic Conference in 1962, the Mufti called for the ethnic cleansing of all Jews from the Arab world. He died in Beirut July 5, 1974.

None of this is to say that Malcolm X approved of (or even knew about) the Nazi Mufti's politics; he may have been bamboozled.

But as Malcolm X moments go, I don't think it will be remembered as his finest. In fact, it doesn't seem to be remembered any more than what he said about the Jews.

Or for that matter, Catholics.

From a Playboy interview, a year before his Mecca pilgrimage:

MALCOLM X: Insofar as the Christian world is concerned, dictatorships have existed only in areas or countries where you have Roman Catholicism. Catholicism conditions your mind for dictators. Can you think of a single Protestant country that has ever produced a dictator?

PLAYBOY: Germany was predominantly Protestant when Hitler ----

MALCOLM X: Another thing to think of--in the 20th Century, the Christian Church has given us two heresies: fascism and communism. Where did fascism start? Where's the second-largest Communist party outside of Russia? The answer to both is Italy. Where is the Vatican? But let's not forget the Jew. Anybody that gives even a just criticism of the Jew is instantly labeled anti-Semite. The Jew cries louder than anybody else if anybody criticizes him. You can tell the truth about any minority in America, but make a true observation about the Jew, and if it doesn't 't pat him on the back, then he uses his grip on the news media to label you anti-Semite. Let me say just a word about the Jew and the black man. The Jew is always anxious to advise the black man. But they never advise him how to solve his problem the way the Jews solved their problem. The Jew never went sitting-in and crawling-in and sliding-in and freedom-riding, like he teaches and helps Negroes to do. The Jews stood up, and stood together, and they used their ultimate power, the economic weapon. That's exactly what the Honorable Elijah Muhammad is trying to teach black men to do. The Jews pooled their money and bought the hotels that barred them. They bought Atlantic City and Miami Beach and anything else they wanted. Who owns Hollywood? Who runs the garment industry, the largest industry in New York City? But the Jew that's advising the Negro joins the NAACP, CORE, the Urban League, and others. With money donations, the Jew gains control, then he sends the black man doing all this wading-in, boring-in, even burying-in--everything but buying-in.

Never shows him how to set up factories and hotels. Never advises him how to own what he wants. No, when there's something worth owning, the Jew's got it. Walk up and down in any Negro ghetto in America. Ninety percent of the worthwhile businesses you see are Jew-owned. Every night they take the money out. This helps the black man's community stay a ghetto.

Sorry for the late night posting, folks (I had zero time all day) and I wanted to squeeze in this post before midnight, because tomorrow is Hitler's birthday, and while pointing out that Malcolm X was just a handshake away from Hitler is one thing, I'd hate to have people question my timing.

MORE: Another mention of the Grand Mufti appears on page 350 of The Autobiography of Malcolm X (Grove Press, Second Printing, New York 1965.):

As some of the poorest pilgrims heard me preach, so did some of the Holy World's most important personages. I talked at length with the blue-eyed, blond-haired Hussein Amini, Grand Mufti of Jerusalem. We were introduced on Mt. Arafat by Kasem Gulick of the Turkish Parliament. Both were learned men; both were especially well-read on America. Kasem Gulick asked my why I had broken with Elijah Muhammad. I sad that I preferred not to elaborate upon our differences, in the interest of preserving the American black man's unity. They both understood and accepted that.

(The text is online here, and the "Hussein Amini" error is picked up and repeated here.)

A-rovin', a-rovin',
Since rovin's bin my ru-i-in,
We'll go no more a-rovin',
With you fair maid.

One night I crept from my abode,
Mark well what I do say!
One night I crept from my abode,
To meet this fair maid down the road.
We'll go no more a-ro-o-vin' with you fair maid.

A-rovin', a-rovin',
Since rovin's bin my ru-i-in,
We'll go no more a-rovin',
With you fair maid.

I met this fair maid after dark,
An' took her to her favourite park.

I took this fair maid for a walk,
An' we had such a lovin' talk.

I put me arm around her waist,
Sez she, "Young man, yer in great haste!"

I put me hand upon her knee,
Sez she, "Young man, yer rather free!"

I put my hand upon her thigh,
Sez she, "Young man, yer rather high!"

I towed her to the Maiden's Breast,
From south the wind veered wes'sou'west

An' the eyes in her head turned east an' west,
And her thoughts wuz as deep as an ol' sea-chest.

We had a drink - of grub a snatch,
We sent two bottles down the hatch.

Her dainty arms wuz white as milk,
Her lovely hair wuz soft as silk.

Her heart wuz poundin' like a drum,
Her lips wuz red as any plum.

We laid down on a grassy patch,
An' I felt such a ruddy ass.

She pushed me over on me back,
She laughed so hard her lips did crack.

She swore that she'd be true to me,
But spent me pay-day fast and free.

In three weeks' time I wuz badly bent,
Then off to sea I sadly went.

In a bloodboat Yank bound round Cape Horn,
Me boots an' clothes wuz all in pawn.

Bound round Cape Stiff through ice an' snow,
An' up the coast to Callyo.

An' then back to the Liverpool Docks,
Saltpetre stowed in our boots an' socks.

Now when I got back home from sea,
A soger had her on his knee.


Here is another version by a men's choir I like.

And what brought all this on? I have always been a fan of sea shanties and songs. Ever since the folk music craze of 50s. It was one of the things that influenced me to join the US Navy. And then there was this: What Would Karl Do?

A lot of people have been asking me publicly and privately, if the Bussard Fusion Technology is successful, can it be bottled up by special interests? I think the we have an answer from Dr. Richard Nebel who is now running the experiments in New Mexico.

Your concern is something that EMC2 has thought about. The Polywell is what is generally described as a "disruptive technology". Namely, it is a technological surprise that changes everything. A lot of people have/are investing a lot of money in energy technologies. The Polywell is their worst nightmare. Consider for a moment who isn't going to like the Polywell:

1. The fusion people. They've already gone ballistic (but we're not going to go there).
2. The fission people. They're working on a "nuclear renaissance".
3. The solar people.
4. The wind people.
5. Big oil.
6. The gas and coal companies
7. The biofuels people.
8. A few of the environmentalists.

As you can see, we are pretty much an equal opportunity irritant. We are very well aware that any number of people would like to sit on this technology and keep it out of the market. This is one of the primary reasons that Dr. Bussard chose to have this project funded by the Navy rather than privately funded (where we probably would have had a much easier schedule). With the Navy contract, we retain the rights to the intellectual property for commercialization.

Dr. Bussards's desires for this technology were very clear: he wanted it developed and used by the public ASAP. We intend to honor those wishes.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

It is not as bad as I thought.

...based on technology advances and strong new policy, it is now time for the U.S. to look beyond 2012 and to take the next step. We've shown that we can slow emissions growth. Today, I'm announcing a new national goal: to stop the growth of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 2025.

To reach this goal, we will pursue an economy-wide strategy that builds on the solid foundation that we have in place. As part of this strategy, we worked with Congress to pass energy legislation that specifies a new fuel economy standard of 35 miles per gallon by 2020, and requires fuel producers to supply at least 36 billion gallons of renewable fuel by 2022. This should provide an incentive for shifting to a new generation of fuels like cellulosic ethanol that will reduce concerns about food prices and the environment.

We also mandated new objectives for the coming decade to increase the efficiency of lighting and appliances. We're helping states achieve their goals for increasing renewable power and building code efficiency by sharing new technologies and providing tax incentives. We're working to implement a new international agreement that will accelerate cuts in potent HCFC emissions. Taken together, these landmark actions will prevent billions of metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions from entering the atmosphere.

These objectives are backed by a combination of new market-based regulations, new government incentives, and new funding for technology research. We've provided billions of dollars for next generation nuclear energy technologies. Along with the private sector, we've invested billions more to research, develop and commercially deploy renewable fuels, hydrogen fuel cells, advanced batteries, and other technologies to enable a new generation of vehicles and more reliable renewable power systems.

Lots of mandates in there. Do you know what it is called when the government controls an industry through regulation? Socialism. National Socialism.

First the auto mandate. He wants to go from a fleet average of 27.5 mpg to 35 mpg. Good. Sort of. And what if industry doesn't meet the goals? They pay a penalty. No mater what Bush has mandated an increase in auto prices. Swell. Just swell. Another thing that he doesn't take into account is that when cars get higher mileage at a given fuel price level people drive more. Cute. We will get higher auto prices and more road congestion. Brilliant move. So the saving in actual fuel consumption will be less than the numbers indicate. Of course with more people on the roads congestion will get worse. Cars that are in heavy traffic use more fuel for a given distance traveled even if they are hybrids. Another hit.

And the renewable fuel mandate? Well cellulosic ethanol sounds peachy. Except it is a dream right now. The technology is not available. In addition if it is based on crops like switchgrass it will still raise food prices because it will be in competition with land for food production. Another hit on the economy.

Mandated increases in appliance efficiency? The cost of appliances is going up. We will get more of the washers that require two wash cycles to get clothes clean. Where is the efficiency in that? Not to mention the cost in time. So what will it mean in terms of change? People will hold on to their old appliances longer. Genius.

And the lighting mandates? A study was done where a small town changed all its lighting to CFLs. What happened? Energy consumption went up. Why? With lighting costs lower people were not as careful in turning lights off when they were not in use. The hits just keep on coming.

The only positive thing in this whole bit is the work on new technology. That is the only thing that can fix the mess we are in. All the rest amounts to a huge tax increase on the economy. Oh well. At least he has put off the mandates for a while. By then we may be well into a New Little Ice Age and the Congress may be induced to repeal at least some of this non-sense.

We can only hope.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

Commenter Rhodium Heart has made a really good point in a comment to Eric's piece How far off base can the "base" get? I think it is very on point and also is a good answer to my piece Who Will Stand With Us? I'm going to quote it in full because it is a luscious piece of analysis.

As an intro: Rhodium is referring to the fracturing of the Republican Party and especially the social conservative wing who might very well go for Alan Keyes if he runs on the Constitution Party ticket. The anti-war Republicans would be going for Bob Barr who will likely be running on the Libertarian ticket.

==

Alan Keyes' candidacy would be a gift from God.

Harry Truman was supposed to get trounced in '48 because of the division of the Democratic Party. Republicans were united behind Dewey, but the Dems were split left and right. Strom Thurmond and the Dixiecrats on the one side; Henry Wallace to the left. And Truman won. Part of the explanation is that Wallace's left-wing candidacy assured centrists that Truman would not be overly soft on communism.

The media will love to cover the well-spoken, dynamic (and ultimately loony) Mr. Keyes. And that will serve to assure swing voters, moderates, suburbanites, soocer moms, and the vestigial Rockefeller Republicans of the Northeast that John McCain is not too far right. How could he be when the hard right is so angrily against him!

Keyes will help McCain win this election, despite his best efforts.

==

Thank you Rhodium. I do believe you are correct. In fact McCain has been hinting quietly at a new coalition. I do believe he means it.

Here is a look at the 1948 Electoral Map

Cross Posted at Power and Control

Barry The Big O had a few Dreams from His Father.

To avoid being mistaken for a sellout,I chose my friends carefully.The more politically active black students.The foreign students.The Chicanos.The Marxist Professors and the structural feminists and punk-rock performance poets.We smoked cigarettes and wore leather jackets.At night,in the dorms,we discussed neocolonialism,Franz Fanon,Eurocentrism,and patriarchy.When we ground out our cigarettes in the hallway carpet or set our stereos so loud that the walls began to shake,we were resisting bourgeois society's stifling constraints.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

Don't get me wrong. I think there is a future for Obama in politics. As a Chicago ward heeler. I'd start him out with a census of the local grave yards in order to figure out who is eligible to vote and get them registered before the next election.

Me? I practice politics Chicago style. I like my pizza from Pizzeria Uno and my hot dogs Chicago style too. And Italian Style Beef sandwiches with hot peppers? Yum.

HT Instapundit

Rachel Lucas likes Cesar Millan, aka the Dog Whisperer. And she recently used his techiques to ward off an ill-trained pit bull which some bratty kids were unable to control. She stopped what could have been a tragedy for all concerned, and none of the dogs were seriously hurt.

Good for her. I'm glad Millan's techniques worked, and I'm glad she and her dogs are OK. The people whose pit bull was off the leash give the breed a bad name.

As evidenced by this comment:

God-DAMN those pit bull owners. I fucking hate, hate, hate them. And don't tell me that it's not the dog's fault, man. I fucking KNOW that, stoner. It's just that that breed attracts those kind of tatooed idiot who wants his dog to project his 'toughness'. And they get a pit bull, and they can't handle it, or be bothered to train it, and it starts busting up the neighborhood pets owned by the local gentry.

We had one in our dog's first obedience training last year. Totally psychotic. Attacked any man, woman, child, or dog within 2 meters. The owner, a nice blonde lady, was trying to 'rescue' it from the pound. Needless to say, we left after telling the trainer that he had no business mixing that damaged canine in with other puppies. He said it was for socialization. Funny how we didn't want our pup torn up to rehab that monster. Wonder how the blonde looks with 4 puncture marks on the arm.

Want more? I just met one of our local assholes with a puppy on a fucking choke chain. Typical pit bull owner, tattoos, chin pubes, and hair that looked like a gorilla jacked off on it to get it spikey.

He was sooo proud that his brand new pit bull puppy was so tough that it needed a choke chain. At 8 weeks. I expect that the poor dog will have a permanent wheeze the next time we meet it. That, and a psychotic desire to attack my Shiloh Shepherd.

And the female that attacked Rachel was lactating. that means the owners are breeding her. Any bets on how thoroughly they researched the stud? How many generations they want back to check for inbreeding, line breeding, cross breeding, coefficient of (genetic) incidence?

What am I saying, any bets on whether they even tested the bitch for genetic defects known to the breed? Nope. It was just, hey, your male looks tough, let's mate them while we drink beer. We can sell the puppies for a bundle.

God, I wish my state had open carry laws. I'd target the pit bull second.

I wish "Hound of Doom" (the pit bull hate commenter) would take a look at this picture of Cesar Millan:

Don't you just f--king hate, hate, hate him?

God-DAMN those pit bull owners!

You want to target his dogs?

Don't you just f--king hate, hate, hate me too?

Want to target Coco too? You'll have to target me first, I'm afraid.

Because pit bull owners are all, you know, scummy tattooed psycho animal abusers like me with the chin pubes, hair that looks like a gorilla jacked off on it to get it spikey, etc.

And we're all bad people who should be targeted, because the good Mr. Hound of Doom says so.

Sigh.

I try to be polite and I'm 100% in favor of free speech, but sometimes it's hard to be polite.

MORE: I didn't realize it, but Cesar Millan has a web page devoted to fun facts and famous pit bills, and says:

"My kids are around pit bulls every day. In the '70s they blamed Dobermans, in the '80s they blamed German shepherds, in the '90s they blamed the Rottweiler. Now they blame the pit bull."

UPDATE: I should hasten to add something that should be obvious to anyone who reads this blog, which is that I do not consider Rachel Lucas responsible in any way for the commenter's words, any more than I am responsible for mine.

(I just couldn't ignore the comment, though.)

Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have been everywhere in my area lately. As the Inquirer says, the Philadelphia suburbs hold the key to victory in the primary.

Yesterday, "High Tech Hillary" first appeared at Haverford College (just a few minutes away from here), and later she went to the Annenberg Center in Philadelphia where she paused to fix some electronics equipment which even Stephen Colbert couldn't fix:

The Colbert cable-TV show, which was taping its final appearance in Philadelphia, afforded a bit of comic relief for Clinton in the closing days of her Pennsylvania campaign against Sen. Barack Obama, who campaigned yesterday in North Carolina.

At the Annenberg Center, Clinton waited off stage as the show's host, Stephen Colbert, noticed that the set's backdrop picture showing the Liberty Bell failed to appear.

Colbert called out for help but was told that all the technicians had left.

In stepped Clinton, offering to lend a hand.

"Are you using a digital or analog truck?" she asked in a series of technical queries. "Try toggling the input," she instructed, and the picture returned.

She nodded in approval, and as she turned to leave, Clinton quipped: "Call me any time. . . . Call me at 3 a.m."

Likewise, Barack Obama has been all over the place, and one of my friends got a great picture of him at a Town Hall meeting in another high school.

But I've been feeling, like totally left out of the campaigns. You'd think that after going to all the trouble of changing my registration they'd be grateful and invite me to events and everything, but no!

Finally today at around 1:00 p.m., I read something I couldn't ignore. Hillary was to hold a Town Hall meeting at the Radnor High School at 11:00 a.m.! While that's literally walking distance from where I live, by the time I read about it it was too late to attend.

I was beginning to feel, like, completely left out, as if I'd never get to see either candidate. The election is on Tuesday, and no matter how crucial this area is right now, they won't be wasting time around here after then. So against my better judgment (and mainly in the interest of entertaining you, my dear readers!), I figured I'd head over to Radnor High, just to see whether people were still hanging around. When I got there the driveways were blocked, cars were pouring out and everyone was leaving. So I parked nearby, and just walked in through the exiting crowd, atracting no attention at all. Yes, the event was over, but there were still buttons and Hillary teddy bears like these for sale outside:

People I asked said that Hillary had finished her Town Hall talk, but was still inside being given a tour of the school or something, so I walked in and saw that the main auditorium had emptied out, but there was a gaggle of cops and Secret Service guys were blocking access to a large hall that went towards the back of the school complex. They would not let me in, so I walked back out, then followed the driveway around to the back of the building, where I saw a line of media vehicles, and the campaign media bus:

There were at least a half a dozen Secret Service agents hanging around the nearest exit doors to that media bus, and parked in front of the doors were several identical, heavy SUVs with thick glass, with Secret Service standing around them. I decided to just hang around inconspicuously where the media trucks were parked in the hope of seeing Hillary exit. Periodically, a Secret Service guy would come along and shoo people away from the highest point on the hill overlooking the exits, so I just walked around and waited. It was incredibly boring, and too far away to get a good picture, but I figured I was already there. so why not wait? At one point I was asked what I was doing and I replied that I had been "sent by the Classical Values dot com web site" to cover the event. (A statement which is technically true; since I am the classicalvalues.com web site proprietor, I can in theory send myself anywhere I want, can't I?)

After around an hour, most of the Secret Service guys went inside the building, and shortly after that, the doors opened without warning and Hillary came out, accompanied by body person Huma and Secret Service people. The latter are understandably paranoid about the "coming and going from building to car" part of their job, and they moved her so fast from the building to the SUV that it was all I could do to get a couple of poor quality photos -- this one being the best.

No sooner did she get in the SUV than the caravan took off, and it was bye bye Hillary!

Better late than never, I guess.

There is one thing I learned today: a member of the paparazzi I'll never be. Too much sitting around waiting.

(OTOH, if I had a good zoom lens.....)

Yesterday, Glenn Reynolds remarked that Alan Keyes is getting nasty and linked this report about Keyes' announcement that he is leaving the GOP, apparently to seek the nomination of the Constitution Party.

While I share Glenn's skepticism about the Keyes candidacy, it just so happens that earlier I had earlier read an AP report that McCain was "winning back unhappy Republicans."

I occasionally tire of being a Republican traitor, and for the time being I am technically a Democrat for McCain. A DINO, if you will, because I will vote for McCain in the fall, regardless of whether I commit triple treason and fill out the form to change my party registration back to Republican before then.

Disgusted with both parties does not begin to describe how I feel. My problem is that I abhor activists (and activism) -- especially the tendency in both parties to impose conformity with all or nothing ideological laundry lists. I've written too many essays on the subject already, and this post is not about that subject per se. Rather, I'm intrigued by the dynamics of Barack Obama, especially what I'd call conservative Obamaphobia.

My theory is that from the conservative perspective, Obama has become a unifier. It's something that the far right is not comfortable with, because it wrecks the plan to sit the election out and let Hillary win. Obama is such a unifying force among disgruntled Republicans that he makes McCain far more palatable than he would otherwise have been.

WorldNetDaily describes Obama as:

one of the most dangerous men ever to be considered for the presidency of the United States of America.

The loser right might not want to acknowledge it, but Obamaphobia threatens to undo all their hard work, and they cannot sit idly by and allow Barack Obama to become the Republican unifier.

That, I think, accounts for the recent burst of third party activity on the right.

Last week it was Bob Barr as the Libertarian nominee, this week it's Alan Keyes as the Constitution Party nominee. Both parties are jokes, but taken together in a close race, the cumulative effect might pose a significant threat:

"It's my belief that McCain is very vulnerable on the right flank," adds Stephen Gordon, a former Libertarian Party political director. "Should both Bob Barr win the Libertarian Party nomination and Alan Keyes win the Constitution Party nomination, two of the three legs of the proverbial GOP stool will simultaneously be kicked very hard in November."

Ardent GOPers and Libertarians say McCain could be most vulnerable to third parties in the Rocky Mountain and western states. They also say small northeastern states with sometimes unpredictable contests, like New Hampshire, could be areas that McCain might suffer losses from third party gains.

Gordon says Barr in particular could do especially well in southern states because of his strong support for the Second Amendment, an area where many conservatives are distrustful of McCain's views. And even weak third party candidates could siphon enough votes in such states to possibly affect the outcome of the general election, notes Schnur.

It's conceivable that McCain could be hurt more by third party challengers than Democrats would be from a candidate like Ralph Nader, who's running under the Green Party ticket once again this year.

Dr. Keyes, more than anyone in the country, saw the dangers posed by the rise of Barack Obama, and was willing to endure the obvious ambushes that were set for him in the race, even though he knew there was little prospect of electoral success, and that the personal costs would be considerable. He knew that if he did not pick up the standard and run to the sound of the guns, a pro-abortion woman was going to be chosen by the GOP, and Barack Obama's evil record would never be exposed, smoothing his path to power.

Like the Lincoln-Douglas debates of an earlier century, the Keyes-Obama confrontations were of historic value. It's hard to imagine two men more different in their character and philosophy. It's hard to imagine two more disparate worldviews. And, it's hard to imagine how Alan Keyes, a man with broad Reagan administration foreign policy and national defense experience, could have rhetorically thrashed the inexperienced Barack Obama any more thoroughly than he did.

But, as you know, with the help of an Obama-loving media and a Republican establishment that was more in tune with the Democrats than it was with the timeless American principles represented by Alan Keyes, Barack Obama won the election handily, just as Douglas defeated Lincoln so many years before. And, as expected, Obama's rise to power in the days since has been swift, financed and promoted by the most radical and powerful forces of socialism in America today, including George Soros.

Alan Keyes, the great moral statesman of our day, has been foolishly betrayed by the Republican Party which he has faithfully supported and served throughout his adult life, and he is apparently about to leave it. And so, the duty of "we the people," the sovereign citizens of the United States, irrespective of political party, is to stand up and do the hard work necessary to make sure he's on our presidential ballot come November. We must go over the heads of the failed "leaders" and elites of our time, and make sure that he takes the oath of office in January.

How much of a dent it will make in Obamaphobia as a Republican unity factor remains to be seen.

I continue to think that the best hope of the loser right remains Hillary Clinton. If she's the candidate, the unity threat posed by Obamaphobia will largely dissipate, and I think they'll all breathe easier. While few will actually vote for her in November, the rest will feel a lot more comfortable sitting it out.

A lot of people laugh when Barack Obama is called the unifier, but I think he is. I'm still not sure what to call this paranoid fear of Republican unity that I see cropping up on the far right.

If it's fear of Obamaphobia, then wouldn't that make it Obamaphobophobia?

The problem with that is that while Obamaphobia -- and even the more esoteric Obamaphobe -- have arguably become established words (at least for political junkies), Obamaphobophia remains hitless. Ditto Obamaphobophobe. I'd sure hate to use the wrong word for right losers.

The problem may be that this stuff is just too new for words. And besides, don't we have enough phobias and enough phobes as it is? I'm sure I'm not the only person who's sick to death of sticking the "phobia" suffix on everything that comes along.

And where does it end? No seriously. Being an admitted anti-Limbaugh RINO DINO crossover strategist who fears the pro-Hillary MDS Limbaugh group, I'd have to attach yet another suffix to my yet-undiagnosed phobic disorder.

Obamaphobophobophobia.

Surely, there have to be limits.

MORE: Not to be outdone by the loser wing of the Republican Party, the loser wing of the Democratic Party (activists such as Leslie Cagan, Medea Benjamin, Cynthia McKinney) plan on recreating the famous 1968 Democratic Convention riots this summer. The slogan? "Recreate '68!

A coalition of anti-war groups is vowing to protest this summer's Democratic National Convention in Denver under the rubric "Re-create '68," prompting criticism from some on the left who are loath to revisit what they see as a disastrous time for both the anti-war movement and the Democratic Party.

It's an interesting read. Ironically, the gray-haired 68 rioters now find themselves deeply perplexed.

I'd say "what goes around comes around," but I don't want to be accused of helping to contribute to "cycles of violence"!

The angry right might be angry, but unlike the angry left, at least they're not into recreating historic violence.

I visit many sites on the 'net in the course of a day. And I see this kind of sentiment a lot:

I do not intend to send one penny until I know who the VP candidate is. I, too, would very much like it to be Mitt.

From what I can tell only the RINOs are supporting the party now in its hour of need.

They will own it. Which is good.

These are the times that try men's souls: The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Thomas Paine

As my friend Eric the RINO says: I have supported the nominee with money and time no matter what. No matter the stand on issues dear to my heart. What is wrong with the so called party faithful?

The Communists are pouring money into Obama's campaign and you will let McCain down because he is not Right enough for you? Because his VP choice is not announced?

As is so often found in the Bible, there are always some who will betray the city out of a sense of pique. Sad to find so many like that in so many places.

Give To John's Campaign

Cross Posted at Power and Control

From the Wiki entry for Osama bin Laden's father:

Sheikh Mohammed bin 'Awad bin Laden (Arabic: محمد بن عوض بن لادن‎), also known as Mohammed bin Laden (1908--September 3, 1967), a Yemeni immigrant to Saudi Arabia was a wealthy investor, businessman and patriarch of the bin Laden family. He married 22 times and fathered at least 55 children. Osama bin Laden is believed to be his 16th child and the only son with his tenth wife Hamida al-Attas, reportedly of Syrian descent.

Here's Ali Eteraz:

In America, Muslim polygamy exists.

Mormons are not the only ones practicing polygamy. And if you believe that Muslims, upon coming to America, become universally monogamous, you are sorely mistaken.

I haven't seen too much outcry from Americans who are shocked by Muslim polygamy (regardless of the age of the brides), whether in Muslim countries or here.

Is fundamentalist Mormon polygamy more shocking?

The reason I'm asking is because I was just watching Larry King Live, and there's quite a bit of fuss over fundamentalist Mormon polygamy. Women like this who "escaped the lifestyle" are prominently featured:

I just had this uneasy feeling that if the same sort of thing had been going on in a polygamous Muslim compound, there might not be the same outcry.

And they might not be describing women as having "escaped from polygamy."

Next thing you know, certain activists will seize upon this case as an argument for the "one man, one woman" ballot initiatives, with the usual unholy alliances.

It's all a little too predictable for comfort.

UPDATE: My thanks to Glenn Reynolds for linking this post, and a warm welcome to all!

Comments appreciated, agree or disagree.

Don't miss "The 'Useful Idiots' of Militant Islam" by Youssef M. Ibrahim. (Biography here.)

Analogizing to Lenin's "useful idiots," Ibrahim argues that their Islamist equivalent are everywhere:

Today's Islamist Lawrences are being cultivated among a broad swath of political analysts, scholars, anthropologists, pundits, missionaries, and even spies dissecting militant Islam and Islamofascism. While most carry out illuminating and necessary work, the fish they bait ends up ensnaring many.

A few recent catches: the archbishop of Canterbury urging the introduction of Sharia law in Britain; Harvard University, a bastion of secular scholarship, shutting its gym to men to accommodate Muslim women; authorities at Minneapolis's international airport negotiating for months with 700 Somali Muslim taxi drivers who refused to pick up passengers carrying liquor or depending on guide dogs.

Then there was President George Bush launching his Muslim initiative last June from the Islamic Center of Washington, a Saudi institution distributing educational material instructing Muslims to segregate themselves from other Americans.

Among other things, the Saudi-funded publications admonish Muslims in America "to dissociate from infidels, hate them for their religion, never to rely on them for support, and always oppose them in every way according to Islamic law." The question: how was it that among the estimated five million Muslim Americans with hugely varied institutions, the president's advisors picked a Saudi Islamofascist ghetto as a venue?

This cluelessness is spreading into the academy and the arts too.

And as I pointed out in another post, the Islamic scholar who was newly appointed President of Bryn Mawr College assisted in the prosecution of a man for criminal hate speech in Canada.

So, I completely agree that cluelessness is spreading. What I'd like to know is how long should such people are to be called clueless.

I mean, how many clues do they need?

MORE: In his review of the Fitna film, Nick Packwood sheds quite a bit of light on the nature of Western cluelessness:

Wilders has created a document whose power lies in its not being seen.*** I could find more inflammatory rhetoric on YouTube in five minutes but nothing so powerful as the argument we are not allowed to hear. The cowardice of the West is unfolding precisely as Wilders has foreseen. The cowards are doing all the rhetorical heavy lifting, proving his argument for him. There is only so long our culture can hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil before we walk civilization over the cliff and plummet into the abyss of a new Dark Age. Either that or until the consequences of denial are no longer supportable as neurosis, our conversion symptoms fail and we collectively undergo a genocidal psychotic break. They do not call psychoanalysis the "talking cure" for nothing. We either have to face our problems directly or they shall govern us until the end, whatever that end turns out to be.

WARNING: Gruesome discussion follows.

At least, I guess discussions of how to kill people are gruesome to some people. I suspect that that a few readers, though, might come here because of occasional discussions of gruesome things. (In fact, a commenter to my previous post on lethal injection mentioned the "Classical Values Torture poll.")

The Supreme Court just ruled 7-2 that lethal injection is not cruel and unusual punishment, notwithstanding the risk that the procedure (known as "protocols") might not be carried out correctly. That the prisoner might suffer is considered part of the punishment.

What that means is that for now, the death penalty remains. That's a good result for people (including myself) who support the death penalty, but I don't think it will stop the endless bickering over whether the procedure is humane. There will continue to be problems, and I think that's because the statutes require "intravenous injection" of certain fatal drugs, but the laws do not contemplate the difficulty of finding a vein and establishing and maintaining a good rate of flow. (Kentucky law in question calls for "continuous intravenous injection of a substance or combination of substances sufficient to cause death.")

I found the legal links at Ann Althouse's discussion of the case, and I notice that her very first commenter proposes Nitrogen asphyxiation as a form of humane death.

For that matter, the same nitrous oxide ("laughing gas") that dentists use is inert, inexpensive, and (unlike some of the explosive gases used by anesthetists) quite safe to administer. Lots of stupid people have accidentally killed themselves getting high with the stuff; why not use it deliberately?

If the goal is humane elimination of human life, I'd say it's another good idea.

Another commenter pointed out that vets use Pentathol only:

Vets use only one chemical ; it seems peaceful enough.

Is the dog perhaps conscious and struggling to breathe for 30 seconds, unknown to everybody? It would have come up. People love their dogs.

I suppose you could brain-scan and look for panic activity.

Somebody holds the dog down in case it's not peaceful, so maybe everybody isn't so lucky. Still, it's likely to be the best that can be done, on the average.

An overdose of sedative sounds foolproof to me, but for dogs anyway you don't want it to drag out over many appointment slots.

There is absolutely no reason why putting a man to death should be any more complicated than putting a dog to death. Considering ubiquitously available technology, there is no logical reason why there need be any infliction of pain.

I think there's an unacknowledged desire in some quarters among death penalty proponents to do more than merely cause the condemned person to die, and it may be rooted in the desire to inflict further punishment.

The idea of humane death being rendered inhumane because of human incompetence never should have become an issue in the first place. Don't get me started on how or why the government is incapable of doing what even the most mediocre veterinary assistant could do; I wrote a post, and people seem to have missed my point, which is that capital punishment can be made less vulnerable to these endless legal challenges by making it absolutely painless.

These gruesome torture rape murders in Tennessee (which I posted about extensively and about which Glenn Reynolds posted the update about last week) are a perfect example of why the death penalty ought to be rendered legally unassailable in that regard. Tennessee's legal wranglings over the procedure are so typical, yet so unnecessary. I want awful people like that dead; I don't want lawyers supplied with a single legitimate argument about why the lethal injections might be botched and might cause pain when that can be avoided entirely.

Any vet tech can kill these people painlessly, quickly, and efficiently.

The law should not require "intravenous injection" from start to finish; a simple initial injection of a sedative (or admininstration of nitrous oxide gas) to the point of unconsciousness, to be followed by the IV infusion of a massive dose of Pentathol would be fine, and completely painless.

If the goal is to humanely get them off the earth, why not use the most efficient and humane means to that end?

If we took away women's right to vote, we'd never have to worry about another Democrat president. It's kind of a pipe dream, it's a personal fantasy of mine, but I don't think it's going to happen.

-- Ann Coulter

Certainly not. Why, the idea itself is laughable.

Anyway, a few weeks ago M. Simon posted this hilarious YouTube video in which clueless college students were asked to -- and did -- sign a petition to end women's suffrage.

What made it funny was not merely because the kids didn't understand what they were signing, but because the idea of taking away the right of women to vote is comical.

Right?

Not so fast. A man named Gary D. Naler (who makes Dobson and Robertson look like flaming liberals) has written a book called The Curse of 1920, which I just heard being plugged on the radio. From the Amazon book review blurb:

In 1920, a three-pronged Curse was unleashed upon America and the world, effecting the most dramatic and destructive changes to man since the Garden of Eden. This three-pronged Curse is: the women's rights movement; jazz, rock 'n' roll, and rap; and abortion and euthanasia. The Curse of 1920 chronicles the wholly destructive affects of this Curse, affording conclusive evidence from multiple sources, and critically gets to the very root of our nation's most compelling governmental, social, and religious problems. As this book clearly reveals, the root of this Curse lies in women, the black man, feminized men, the church, and is even rooted 3,726 years before in Abraham. But exposing these problems is only the beginning; for unless we take specific measures to reverse the Curse of 1920, it will continue to destroy us! These measures are clearly laid out here.

The Women's Rights Movement:

The escalating destruction of our nation in the last ninety years has proven that the woman is the weaker vessel who is easily deceived, and needs the strengthening of the law to protect her from the temptation of filing for divorce, rejecting her head, leaving the home, and destroying the family, or getting involved in government. Our nation has sadly proven that abandonment of patriarchal government destroys the home and this nation. To reverse this Curse:

(1) The Nineteenth Amendment must be repealed and men alone be given the right to vote and to govern,
(2) We must restore the patriarchal government whereupon this nation was founded, including property and divorce laws, and
(3) We must establish a sunset law on public welfare so as to restore the structure of the home--a man and a wife--as well as initiative.

To restore the black man to the head of his home:

(1) Welfare must be removed so that the woman and children must learn to once again depend on the man, and
(2) Patriarchal government must be restored and divorce laws changed to reflect the man's legal right to all assets in the home, including the children. Responsibility produces responsibleness, for both parties.

To restore the family:

(1) The man is the head of the home and head of society, and the woman cannot exercise the authority of the man in either,
(2) The husband is to love and honor his wife,
(3) The wife is to obey her husband,
(4) Divorce is not an option (except in the case of infidelity),
(5) The married woman is to be the keeper of the home and refrain from working outside of it, and
(6) Children are to obey their parents in all things.

And, women need to:

Repent and get out of men's clothing and the place of the man and find their place in the home under their husband's authority, covering themselves in modest women's clothing.

Zimran Music:

Abraham's marriage to the cursed Canaanite, Keturah, and the six sons they brought forth, clearly evidenced the course this nation has followed under the Curse of 1920--music, ensnared, doubly contentious, forsaking, and sinking down into the mud. The curse of Ham came upon this nation through Voodoo music, effecting the curse of Satan-headed Africa with all its ill and destructive practices. Therefore:

We must bring our children under the protective covering of responsible and moral censorship of the music and entertainment industry, both through government and through the home.

As we will see here, because the woman has not allowed the man to rule over her, submitting to him, our homes and our society and our government are fraught with an imperiling tsunami of disastrous ills! [p. 26]

Two strong beasts came out of the sea in 1920--the first was violent and thrashing, and contrary to her name even intemperate, affording immediate devastation; the second was keen, cunning, and sly, and even more evil than her sister. Because of the wrath of the first beast, she was quickly slain. But her sister, who seemed to offer no harm, was allowed to go free. She, with deft shrewdness, walked the land as well; but learning from her sister, she moved silently and under the cloak of disguise. Waxed with persuasion and emotions and fed on self-rights and drunk on the need for power, she slew far more than her violent sister ever came near to. She, the latter, has been the far greater beast, for she has continued her violence unawares--the most destructive of all enemies! Now, she too must be slain! [p. 40]

Feminists have one purpose--to obtain power! And the only way they can obtain it is to erase the line of distinction between the sexes and create a government and society that is homosexual. From the standpoint of Yahweh's government, the sexual homogeneity of the government of this nation is a perversion, even as homosexuality per se is a perversion. [p. 53]

What then happens when the blood that comes from the bones becomes polluted? The blood then pollutes the whole body. Thus, that which is in the blood will be evidenced in the body. And in replication, that which is in government will be evidenced in society. So, why is there so much homosexuality in society today? The answer is quite obvious. Because there is governmental homosexuality--one and the same sex! Feminism! Removing the distinction between men and women in voting and in governing. When our government became homosexual, our society evidenced homosexuality. [p. 54]

[...]

And to repeat here once again, and will be drawn upon in Chapter 14--we must reject Africa's cursed matriarchy that has come upon this nation and legally restore our original patriarchal government. Marriage and voting laws must likewise be restored to uphold Yahweh's union of two into one flesh under the husband's headship. We must eliminate welfare, which continues Johnson's War on the Black Family. The coverings over women's bodies (and men's bodies) and heads that have become more and more like those of naked Africans must be restored--following in the lineage of Shem and not Ham. We must reject, eliminate, and censor the cursed black Voodoo Zimran music of jazz, rock, rap, et al., as well as the shameful and destructive excesses of the entertainment and advertising industries. And we must cease the slaughter of our innocent infants through abortion and the infirmed through euthanasia.

America, the heavenly kingdom, the blessed descendants of Shem, has been under the curse of Ham through the black man of Africa, the snake kingdom, and we must reverse this Curse of 1920 and cover our father's nakedness! [p. 222]

How many men would send a woman to an auto repair shop to have the car checked out? Not many, because the woman is vulnerable. So how could we fall for this now-proven failed idea that the family and this nation are better off with the woman having equal rights with the man? Is there a sanity check here? It is time we wake up to what is right and to what works and not be deceived--a quality all too often evidenced by the created. Our nation's ever-increasing rise in divorce rates since the 1800s is due to one thing--women's rights, the most destructive force today on the face of this earth! It destroyed the original Garden of God, and it is destroying America, the garden of God at the nations level. Again, Mrs. Annie Wittenmyer was right--suffrage has struck "a fatal blow at the home!" [p. 256]

Present-day conservatism is not masculinism, but homosexuality leaning to the right! [p. 270]

I don't know why the presidential candidates haven't been asked about any of these serious questions.

Sometimes I can't tell the difference between satire and reality. It happens when I have to spend a great deal of time trying to distinguish between what's serious and what isn't, and in cases like this, logic can actually cloud the process. After all, I am analyzing statements by real people, talking about a real issue, am I not? I guess this "movement" has to be considered right wing, doesn't it? Will right wing women support it? Should women get to vote on the question of whether they should lose the right, or is that hopeless paradox only part of the Curse?

I'm very confused.

However, I will make one serious observation grounded in my logical assessment of real life politics. It is my considered opinion that no movement to repeal the 19th Amendment will ever have the slightest chance of success. Not even if the 19th Amendment were first repealed, and that would be impossible.

A movement to repeal the First Amendment would have a better chance.

(There might be some slight irony in the last statement, as I doubt the First Amendment would pass today, but I don't want to speculate about such things as whether there's a "free speech gender gap," for that might be construed as offensive....)

MORE: Without regard to the question I just raised, nearly half of Americans think the First Amendment goes too far, although no gender breakdown is given.

But here are a couple of excerpts from the study:

Less than six in 10 agreed that people should be allowed to say things in public that might be offensive to religious groups. And barely a third of those surveyed said people should be able to say things that might be offensive to racial groups.

[...]

57% of those surveyed said that people should be allowed to say things in public that might be offensive to religious groups; the exact same percentage agreed that musicians should be allowed to sing songs with lyrics that others might find offensive. With regard to the latter right, differences in support between the sexes were particularly acute: 64% of men agreed with the right of musicians to sing offensive lyrics, as compared to 49% of the women surveyed.

UPDATE: The Padua Academy in the video above appears to be a private Catholic high school and not a college. Correction noted!

Anyone who enjoyed the Tweedledee and Tweedledum story as a child will enjoy David Kopel's piece in today's Wall Street Journal comparing Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama's positions on gun control. Instead of Tweedledum and Tweedledee, Kopel invokes an even sillier (and more surreal) spectacle -- Pat Robertson and James Dobson courting the gay marriage vote!

Imagine an election race of Pat Robertson versus James Dobson, each of them appearing at organic grocery stores and Starbucks throughout Massachusetts, with each candidate insisting that he alone deserves the vote of gay-marriage advocates. An equally silly spectacle is taking place these days in Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Indiana, West Virginia and Kentucky, as Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama compete for the pro-gun vote.

Kopel demonstrates -- in damningly meticulous detail -- that both candidates have awful records, and he concludes that "Civil libertarians who support Mr. Obama or Mrs. Clinton because of their purported fealty to the Second Amendment may be bitterly disappointed."

Well, if you're a Second Amendment supporter and you're not feeling bitter, just wait until one of them is in the White House.

It just so happens that I watched the debate last night and wrote this piece for Pajamas Media. On the gun issue, the only "debate" seemed to involve which candidate could demonstrate a superior talent for obfuscation and for the abilty to display willful ignorance:

....both candidates lost. They seemed to be engaged in some sort of perverse contest to see who was better at obfuscating the documented anti-gun records of each, as well as competing to demonstrate a near-total ignorance about the Heller case. Obama said, "I confess I obviously haven't listened to the briefs and looked at all the evidence," while Hillary said, "I don't know the facts." Riiiight. (While they're probably both lying, if they are telling the truth, neither one belongs in a legislature, much in the White House!)

Anyone who thinks there's more than a smidgen of a difference between them (or entertains delusional thoughts that either supports the Second Amendment) should go read Kopel's piece.

And be sure to laugh while you can.

After a long day in New Jersey, I settled down to watch last night's debate, and was up late writing this post for Pajamas Media.

My conclusion was that Hillary was the tactical winner, and nothing I saw alters my position that she is the stronger candidate, and would be the tougher one for McCain to beat.

Fascinatingly, they seemed to downplay the bitter churchgoing gun-clingers stuff (a lot more than I had expected), and Obama gave Hillary a pass on her Bosnia lies. But there were still plenty of sparks.

Last night I saw that NBC's Chuck Todd pronounced McCain the winner, and this morning I see that M. Simon has pronounced both of the candidates losers. I agree, and I suspect a majority of Americans would too.

So why not get the entire country to vote next Tuesday, and make it all be over?

Alas! November is still a ways off, and a lot could happen between now and then.

Like it or not, last night is what counts right now.

So if you want to see what I thought was happening last night, please check out my post!

Do you remember when Henry Kissinger said about the Iran-Iraq War "Too bad they both can't lose"? Well talk like that about Hillary and Obama is now entering the main stream press. Not that they actualy want them both to lose but, disaster is staring them in the face.

When they face off Wednesday night in their Pennsylvania debate, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama will be fighting each other for the Keystone State's 158 delegates. But they'll also be fighting a common foe: A growing belief that neither can win the general election in November.

It's a problem Clinton has had all along, and Obama, despite being the front-runner, is now proving he belongs in the same soup.

Clinton started with half of America's voters saying they would never support her for President, and the number hasn't budged. Against Republican John McCain, she would have to win virtually every voter who hasn't already decided against her.

Obama is closing in on her dubious distinction. His slam against small-town Americans, saying they "cling to guns and religion" out of bitterness over the economy, is certain to cost him in Pennsylvania among the white working-class voters he had trouble attracting in other states.

I have been saying for a while that Barry and Hillary are ruining the brand. It appears I have an echo chamber that is returning my shout louder than I screamed it. Wooo. Hooo.

I'm beginning to wonder just how bad this could get? We haven't even seen the convention demonstrations or anything of that sort. They will not start until 22 August. That is four months of hammering away at each other. Even if The super delegates decide after the last primary in early June, that is still almost a month and a half more of banging. Plus, if the Dems come to a decision in June that allows the disaffected voters a couple of months to get on the McCain bandwagon or develop a write in campaign for the general election and then two more months after that until the vote. Talk about being on the horns of a dilemma and having no good options. It has got to really suck to be a Democrat operative. The pain must be intense.

Just six months ago I was writing off Republican chances in '08. Heh. Who ever thought up the idea of running Obama against Clinton was a genius. A total genius. The Republicans should give him a Medal without respect to party affiliation. Who ever did it deserves it.

Class warfare, racism, sexism, and identity politics all unraveling. God I love the Democrat party.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

I have been looking at some of the live blogging of last night's Clinton Obama debate. And I found something extraordinary. According to commenter Simon (not me) at Althouse

Simon said...

Oh, and great answer from Obama on capital gains! Even though raising the rate lowers revenue and vice-versa, he wants to to raise capital gains tax to punish people who make too much money! Picture perfect!

8:10 PM

If this is some kind of Bondage game what is the Safe Word? How do we make him stop? Not voting for him is one way to register your preference. Not voting for any Democrat would be even better. Punish them all before they can punish us. That is the spirit! And I know a safe phrase they can use. "I want to go home". That is the ticket. In fact that seems to be the ticket Democrats are running on this year. The "Send Us Home" ticket. I'm all for it.

Jonah Goldberg at the Corner has this take:

I don't cry "class warfare!" very often. But the beginning of Obama's capital gains tax question was amazing stuff. He conceded the premise that revenues go up when you cut capital gains taxes. But he said it would be worthwhile to raise them nonetheless as an issue of "fairness" because some people are making too much money. In other words, even if the government loses money to pay for all of the wonderful things Obama wants to do, it'd be worth it because sticking it to rich people is a good in and of itself.

Well at least he has been listening to those U Chicago Economists about what happens when capital gains taxes get excessive. It is a start. I still think he needs to take a vacation for a couple of years in Illinois post Nov 08. After that perhaps he could retire "to spend more time with his family" post election '10. Or perhaps those of us in Illinois will get lucky and he will do it sooner. I'm praying for it. I want the punishment to stop.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

I just got an email from a friend who thought I'd get a laugh out of this. I have no idea if any of this is true. Sadly, the worst aspect of this is that it very well could be.

==

Your govt. in action!!!!!

A Washington , DC , airport ticket agent offers some examples of why our country is in trouble!

1. I had a New Hampshire Congresswoman ask for an aisle seat so that her hair wouldn't get messed up by being near the window. (On an Airplane!)

2. I got a call from a candidate's staffer, who wanted to go to Capetown. I started to explain the length of the flight and the passport information. Then she interrupted me with, "I'm not trying to make you look stupid, but Capetown is in Massachusetts " Without trying to make her look stupid, I calmly explained, "Cape Cod is in Massachusetts ; Capetown is in Africa "

Her response - click.

3. A senior Vermont Congressman called, furious about a Florida package we did. I asked what was wrong with the vacation in Orlando . He said he was expecting an ocean-view room. I tried to explain that's not possible, since Orlando is in the middle of the state. He replied, "Don't lie to me. I looked on the map and Florida is a very thin state!"

4. I got a call from a lawmaker's wife who asked, "Is it possible to see England from Canada ?" I said, "No." She said, "But they look so close on the map."

5. An aide for a cabinet member once called and asked if he could rent a car in Dallas . When I pulled up the reservation, I noticed he had only a 1-hour layover in Dallas . When I asked him why he wanted to rent a car he said, "I heard Dallas was a big airport, and we will need a car to drive between gates to save time."

6. An Illinois Congresswoman called last week. She needed to know how it was possible that her flight from Detroit left at 8:30 am and got to Chicago at 8:33 am. I explained that Michigan was an hour ahead of Illinois , but she couldn't understand the concept of time zones. Finally, I told her the plane went fast, and she bought that.

7. A New York lawmaker called and asked, "Do airlines put your physical description on your bag so they know whose luggage belongs to whom?" I said, "No, why do you ask?" She replied, "Well, when I checked in with the airline, they put a tag on my luggage that said 'FAT,' and I'm overweight. I think that's very rude!" After putting her on hold for a minute while I looked into it (I was laughing). I came back and explained the city code for Fresno , CA is 'FAT' - ( Fresno Air Terminal), and the airline was just putting a destination tag on her luggage.

8. A Senator's aide called to inquire about a trip package to Hawaii. After going over all the cost info, she asked, "Would it be cheaper to fly to California , and then take the train to Hawaii ?"

9. I just got off the phone with a freshman Congressman who asked, "How do I know which plane to get on?" I asked him what exactly he meant, to which he replied, "I was told my flight number is 823, but none of these planes have numbers on them."

10. A lady Senator called and said, "I need to fly to Pepsi-Cola , Florida Do I have to get on one of those little computer planes?" I asked if she meant fly to Pensacola, Florida on a commuter plane. She said, "Yeah, whatever, smarty!"

11. A senior Senator called and had a question about the documents he needed in order to fly to China . After a lengthy discussion about passports, I reminded him that he needed a visa. "Oh, no I don't. I've been to China many times and never had to have one of those." I double checked and sure enough, his stay required a visa. When I told him this he said, "Look, I've been to China four times and every time they have accepted my American Express!"

12. A New Mexico Congresswoman called to make reservations, "I want to go from Chicago to Rhino, New York ." I was at a loss for words. Finally, I said, "Are you sure that's the name of the town?" "Yes, what flights do you have?" replied the lady. After some searching, I came back with, "I'm sorry, ma'am, I've looked up every airport code in the country and can't find a Rhino anywhere." The lady retorted, "Oh, don't be silly! Everyone knows where it is. Check your map!" So I scoured a map of the state of New York and finally offered, "You don't mean Buffalo , do you?" The reply? "Whatever! I knew it was a big animal."

Now you know why the Government is in the shape that it's in!

Cross Posted at Power and Control

This letter to the Philadelphia Inquirer fascinated me:

David Reichenbacher
Philadelphia
This campaign is dragging on too long, forcing candidates and the media to make stories out of nonevents, like the definition of bitter. I'll tell you something, Hillary Clinton. I'm a Pennsylvanian, and I am bitter. Obama is in touch with us.

Painful?

Pain?

I can identify with that, because I have to drive to New Jersey and run around for the entire day, and there's nothing I hate more than being stuck in those awful suburban traffic jams. No seriously, it is pure pain. I don't want to go, and I'm delaying my departure by writing a blog post about the pain and bitterness I feel!

What would Freud say?

Back in the old days, we had a president who was elected for saying "I feel your pain."

"I feel your pain." Clinton looked at the unemployed man in the town hall debate forum... and many felt that was a crucial moment in his being elected. So much so that the phrase became a catch phrase of the 90's.

(Anyway, I can't decide who will best feel my pain right now, but I gotta go!)

MORE: Glenn Reynolds links a post about how Bill felt the pain of the little rural people back in 1995, after Hillary said "Screw 'em!"

In January 1995, as the Clintons were licking their wounds from the 1994 congressional elections, a debate emerged at a retreat at Camp David. Should the administration make overtures to working class white southerners who had all but forsaken the Democratic Party? The then-first lady took a less than inclusive approach.

"Screw 'em," she told her husband. "You don't owe them a thing, Bill. They're doing nothing for you; you don't have to do anything for them."

At that point, Clinton "stepped in, calm and judicious, not irritated, as if rehearsing an old but honorable debate he had been having with his wife for decades.":

I know how you feel. I understand Hillary's sense of outrage. It makes me mad too. Sure, we lost our base in the South; our boys voted for Gingrich. But let me tell you something. I know these boys. I grew up with them. Hardworking, poor, white boys, who feel left out, feel that our reforms always come at their expense. Think about it, every progressive advance our country has made since the Civil War has been on their backs. They're the ones asked to pay the price of progress. Now, we are the party of progress, but let me tell you, until we find a way to include these boys in our programs, until we stop making them pay the whole price of liberty for others, we are never going to unite our party, never really going to have change that sticks.

One of the best political analysts in the business (IMO) is the Philadelphia Inquirer's Dick Polman. While he says that Obama "screwed up badly during that fund-raiser in San Francisco," he finds it quite amusing that Hillary is portraying herself as a gun-loving, working class hero:

If you want to enjoy a belly laugh, here are three reliable suggestions: (1) rent an old Woody Allen movie, especially Bananas, (2) rent Borat, or (3) listen to Hillary Clinton, of all people, attack Barack Obama as "elitist."

This is the same woman who during the last seven years, as evidenced by her tax returns with Bill, has become a millionaire 109 times over; whose husband has long supported the Colombian free-trade deal (deemed hurtful to American workers); who long defended his signing of NAFTA; . . . who, during her Senate career, voted in favor of confiscating guns during a national emergency (one of only 16 senators to do so; Obama voted against confiscation); and who, during the Democratic debates, has refused to shed any light on why the Clintons are safeguarding the identities of the global heavy hitters who are bankrolling the Clinton Library.

Not that I would distrust what a guy like Polman says, as he's pretty careful with his facts, but still, there's "trust but verify."

So I checked it out, and it is absolutely true. Here are the votes from the Senate roll call:

Clinton (D-NY), Nay

Obama (D-IL), Yea

S.AMDT.4615
Amends: H.R.5441
Sponsor: Sen Vitter, David [LA] (submitted 7/12/2006) (proposed 7/12/2006)
AMENDMENT PURPOSE:
To prohibit the confiscation of a firearm during an emergency or major disaster if the possession of such firearm is not prohibited under Federal or State law.

Obama would let people keep their firearms during emergencies, while Hillary would confiscate them.

I realize that both candidates are terrible on the gun issue, but I'd love to know what sort of philosophical thinking might explain their different votes on this, because frankly, elitist Obama comes out smelling better than "populist" Hillary.

(For the record, I think they're both elitists, OK?)

In terms of the gun-clinging behavior that's been under discussion recently, I think most people would agree that during an emergency is when you'd most likely have a need to cling to a gun -- like insurance, it's a "when all else fails" kind of thing. I'm reminded of a remark Obama made about why you'd be more likely to need a gun in a rural area:

"And by the way, Michelle, my wife, she was traveling up, I think, in eastern Iowa, she was driving through this nice, beautiful area, going through all this farmland and hills and rivers and she said 'Boy, it's really pretty up here,' but she said, 'But you know, I can see why if I was living out here, I'd want a gun. Because, you know, 911 is going to take some time before somebody responds. You know what I mean? You know, it's like five miles between every house.'

"So the point is, though, we should be able to do that, and we should be able to enforce laws that keep guns off the streets in inner cities because some unscrupulous gun dealer is, you know, letting somebody load up a van with a bunch of cheap handguns or sawed-off shotguns and dumping them and selling them for a profit in the streets."

But what could be more condescending than Hillary's view that the government should take away people's guns during emergencies?

I agree with Polman that Hillary's pose is downright comical, and I think Obama was right to ridicule her as Annie Oakley.

If the dust ever settles on Obama's latest gaffe, people might begin to realize that his error was grounded in being too honest, because he reflected what is considered conventional wisdom among the Democratic elites. FWIW, I think Hillary is the one who is being dishonest right now in pretending otherwise.

Her campaign is in an emergency situation, and she's clinging to guns that by her own admission she has no right to have!

Jamal just rips into Barry O and his whole shtick. Let me give you a taste but you gotta promise me you will go read the whole thing.

In the same speech in which Barry0-the-Big-Zer0 attacks one part of America, he defends another. Hussein0s description of White Rural American was an attack on their irrationality, gun slinging, and xenophobia. Hussein0's reference to black America (slavery) was no doubt a reference to Wright. Rather than denouncing Wrights xenophobia and hysterical irrationality, The Faker excuses it with the word Slavery.

While chastising one group for being xenophobic, he excused another for being equally so. The magic difference - skin color- Keep It Simple Fools. Snoop is in da House.

This isn't the first instance of Barry's lack of even the the most rudimentary grasp on fairness. In fact, we don't stop seeing it. A Republican just called Obama a "boy" and he is groveling for pardons and the Obama camp is upset. When Obama's surrogates called Clinton a Whore, what did Obama's boys do?

Cross Posted at Power and Control

You can read the full story at Philly.com. Let me excerpt a little. The question is will the Obama regime take on the previous Bush administration and indict them for war crimes?

Tonight I had an opportunity to ask Barack Obama a question that is on the minds of many Americans, yet rarely rises to the surface in the great ruckus of the 2008 presidential race -- and that is whether an Obama administration would seek to prosecute officials of a former Bush administration on the revelations that they greenlighted torture, or for other potential crimes that took place in the White House.

Obama said that as president he would indeed ask his new Attorney General and his deputies to "immediately review the information that's already there" and determine if an inquiry is warranted -- but he also tread carefully on the issue, in line with his reputation for seeking to bridge the partisan divide. He worried that such a probe could be spun as "a partisan witch hunt." However, he said that equation changes if there was willful criminality, because "nobody is above the law."

The question was inspired by a recent report by ABC News, confirmed by the Associated Press, that high-level officials including Vice President Dick Cheney and former Cabinet secretaries Colin Powell, John Ashcroft and Donald Rumsfeld, among others, met in the White House and discussed the use of waterboarding and other torture techniques on terrorism suspects.

It seems to me that if there are going to be any war crimes trials those two mopes holding the poor guy down should be the first in the dock.

Further: Colin Powell, John Ashcroft and Donald Rumsfeld, discussed waterboarding and these guys actually practice it. Are they angling for jobs with the CIA?

HT Just One Minute

There is a picture up at EMC2 Fusion showing the WB-7 Test Reactor vessel. All polished stainless steel with a nice logo.

H/T Tom Ligon

A running mate. A Vice (Eliot Spitzer?) President Pick. Mayhill Fowler of "they are bitter because" fame reports.

Last night at a fundraiser in San Francisco, Barack Obama took a question on what he's looking for in a running mate. "I would like somebody who knows about a bunch of stuff that I'm not as expert on," he said, and then he was off and running. "I think a lot of people assume that might be some sort of military thing to make me look more Commander-in-Chief-like. Ironically, this is an area--foreign policy is the area where I am probably most confident that I know more and understand the world better than Senator Clinton or Senator McCain."

You know he has a great career ahead of him as Ackbar The Great, World Famous Prestidigitator. Count your fingers after shaking hands with him. He has lots of tricks up his sleeves.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

As I have been trying to make clear in these posts, I think Barack Obama's dismissive approach to people with different views is by no means limited to him. This approach is quite typical of the left, especially of the Democratic Party ruling class left (often referred to by the "embittered classes" as "the elite").

An assumption is made that when the "little people" are led, their thoughts are not their own, and can be discredited in much the same manner that one might dismiss "thoughts" uttered by a child who was repeating what he had heard from someone else. This reminds me of the Berkeley Code Pink group, which takes the position that grown men and women who believe in fighting to defend freedom or their country are children.

Here's a scan of one of the group's leaflets, which a friend and reader was kind enough to mail me.

The idea that people who believe in the war are children in need of "education" is standard fare for the anti-war left; I've seen statements like this in countless articles:

Zanne Joi of Code Pink, one of the organizers of the debate, said its purpose is to keep the war "front and center."

A frequent protester at the recruiting station, Joi said: "Our hearts are broken every time we're there, to see people who say we're fighting for our freedom--we need to educate and inform."

In October Morgan organized a counter- demonstration outside the recruiting office, which attracted hundreds of pro-war demonstrators, outnumbering the anti-war protesters.

Not to be picky, but I think maybe Zanne Joi meant "reeducate."

Sorry, but I was drifting away from the topic, and which is not "education," but the attempt by would-be rulers to marginalize -- and treat as children -- their would-be subjects. If people are children, it follows that they are followers. Some would call them sheep. But happens when a free citizen behaves as an adult, and refuses to be intimidated into accepting a subordinate role? In the event of clear evidence of stubborn recalcitrance, how is a free citizen who wants to be treated as an adult to be further marginalized?

One way to deny that he is thinking for himself is by attributing to him an improper or evil motivation. This happened to me once when, as a private citizen, I called the office of a San Mateo County Supervisor who was seeking to ban gun shows. Instead of listening to my argument, the receptionist only wanted to know whether I was a member of the NRA -- something which disqualified me from having an opinion. As I explained in another post:

One of the most common forms this classic ad hominem attack takes is to claim that an opponent works for or has been paid by some entity perceived as a malefactor.

The first time I experienced this personally, I had called the offices of a San Mateo County Supervisor who was seeking to prohibit gun shows, which I saw as a violation of the First Amendment. Before I could even state my position, I was asked, point blank -- "Are you a member of the NRA?" After I said I was, I was told that they had "heard enough from the gun lobby" and "we want input from ordinary citizens."

I'll never forget it. My argument was nullified without my being heard, much less addressed. I was considered a "lobbyist" -- simply because I had joined an organization and paid $35.00 or whatever it was. Not only was this deeply insulting, but it was profoundly illogical. Had I not bothered to join the NRA, my argument would have been exactly the same. And it would be exactly the same even if the NRA had paid me $10,000.

A hoodwinker, even.

It may be that the ruling class mindset tends to divides the opposition into two classes -- followers and leaders. The former -- like children -- are less culpable and in need of education (new leadership/rulers), while the latter are seen as either motivated for personal gain (lobbyists) or possibly as malevolent. As hoodwinkers who ought to be ashamed, but aren't.

After all, these "leaders" are the people who get the followers all stirred up, aren't they?

I've never been able to understand why I have to be stereotyped in this way. I am not a childish follower in need of reeducation, nor am I leading (much less trying to "hoodwink") anyone.

This is supposed to be a free and enlightened country, right? Why is it that so many of the people who want to rule have a problem with free individual citizens having their own opinions?

I like to think that I make up my own mind, and I lead myself. But having my own opinion doesn't fit the equation that says followers are wrong because they are misled, and leaders are wrong because they're evil people.

Now, as I've said many times, in a free country, there is a right to be wrong. I realize that it is natural for the people who disagree with me to think I am wrong, and I am not so arrogant as to deny the possibility that they might be right, and that I might just be wrong. I know I can't expect them to admit that they might be wrong, and I'm not trying to win an argument over the merits of any issues here.

I'm left with one simple question.

Can't I even be allowed to be wrong on my own merits?

AFTERTHOUGHT: I want to stress that I do not mean to single out or castigate Barack Obama here. It may sound ironic, but I think he deserves credit for shedding light on an important subject that is not supposed to be discussed. That he said what he said so reflexively, when he thought he was among friends, that he's having so much trouble with the fallout -- this means that he did far more than irritate potential voters. I think he touched a nerve within his own party, by inadvertently exposing a very uncomfortable truth about the way their ruling class thinks.

Again, this touches on what Mickey Kaus mentioned earlier about "not crediting the authenticity and standing of your subject's views" which he called "a violation of social equality" and "a more important value for Americans than money equality." Kaus also said that "liberals lose elections when they forget that."

This is no minor point. It goes to the very right to disagree. It's at heart of what drives talk radio.

Hmmm.....

I'd even suggest it drives much of the blogosphere, but because I am a blogger, I shouldn't say that lest I be discredited as part of some "Blogger Lobby," and thus unable to hold legitimate opinions about blogging.

For three days in a row now, Barack Obama's remarks about bitter churchgoing gun-clingers have been on the front page of the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Today's story is headlined "Obama says he 'mangled' Pa. remark," and there's an accompanying exclusive video interview with Inquirer reporters which ought to supply a fix to even the most strung-out, hard-core political junkies.

No matter what you think, don't miss it.

In the interview, Obama explains how he "mangled" two separate points that got "conflated." (Hmmm....)

Despite watching it repeatedly, I was unable to discern any clear explanation of what he meant by the the clinging to guns part. Instead, he now substitutes anti-gay and anti-immmigrant "sentiments."

What's that about? Is bigotry now supposed to be interchangeable with guns?

The more I think about this, the more I think he's only made it worse.

First of all, he's not giving people credit for thinking what they think -- something Mickey Kaus touched on yesterday:

Superiority of this sort--not crediting the authenticity and standing of your subject's views--is a violation of social equality, which is a more important value for Americans than money equality. Liiberals tend to lose elections when they forget that.

According to Obama, firearms ownership thus becomes not an individual choice, but something other people have planted in the minds of the "gun-clingers." Their clinging to guns becomes not an individual act, but something demagogic leaders drive people to as part of their exploitation of wedge issues. ("Condescending" is almost too kind a word to use for this ruling class-style denial of the fact that gun owners -- and I am one of them -- actually think what they think.)

And today, the guns have disappeared. They have been magically replaced by other "wedge issues."

Astounding.

While a transcript of the remarks has been posted, I noticed that they're "cleaned up" a bit, and don't accurately reflect the "uhs" and the pauses.

With the goal of full and complete textual accuracy in my mind, I listened to the interview repeatedly, and transcribed every word as accurately as I possibly could. Here's what I heard Obama say:

But I actually feel pretty good about, uh, the fact that I've tried to make it a hallmark of the campaign to say what I think, to say what I believe. Uh, the problem actually with this most recent episode is not that I was saying, uh, that that I was saying one thing behind closed doors and saying something else in public. The truth is actually that I've made these same comments uh, in a similar way, on the Charlie Rose Show, uh, back in 2004 or 2005, uh, I have said it in town hall meetings, in small towns. Um, the problem was that I just, mangled it. You know which happens sometimes.

The point that I was making was actually, two separate points that got conflated. Number one, that uh, people who have felt abandoned by, uh, Washington, and political leaders when it comes to an economy that's fallen apart. Uh, they find stability uh, in those things that they can count on. Their faith, the traditions, uh that have been passed down from generation to generation and in many rural communities that includes hunting. Uh, their family, their community - those are positive things. They also are vulnerable to, uh, you know uh, explanations for why the world is changing. Uh, and politicians seek to divide. And sometimes politicians over the last decade have used, uh, uh, anti gay sentiment, sometimes they've used anti immigrant sentiment, uh, and there've been, there's a long history of quote unquote wedge issues that I think distract from these very difficult issues that we have to deal with.

And so, my syntax was poor uh, but, uh as uh, as uh, as a wise, uh, older woman, uh, who was talking to me the other day said, uh, "You misspoke but you didn't lie."

Were they "mangled" by insertion? Or have they now been mangled out of existence, now to be discarded? Why is there not a word about them?

(Sorry, but "hunting" is not the same. Don't call me a "hunter," because I don't hunt.)

Has the Second Amendment become a secondary wedge issue now that Obama has thought it over? Or has gun-clinging behavior been subsumed into anti-gay, and anti-immigrant "sentiments" which people don't really feel honestly, but only imagine they do because of exploitative prodding by their leaders?

The disturbing implication, of course, is that under the right, uh, leadership, uh, the negative thinking (all that gun-clinging, and all that bigotry) will be made to disappear.

I'm feeling plenty marginalized by this. It's bad enough to be told that as a gun owner I don't really think what I think, but I have been led into it by others.

But now I'm told that my guns are not the issue because they might as well be bigoted sentiments against gays and immigrants! But that if I harbor these sentiments (which I don't), they are no more mine than my gun-clinging behavior was.

Sheesh.

I'm sorry, but this wedge issue substitution game is too much.

MORE: Speaking of vanishing issues, along with guns, "trade" also seems to have disappeared. Obviously, there's a whole lotta mangling that goes into Obama's conflation.

DISCLOSURE: I am a gun owner who lives in Villanova, Pennsylvania -- "a small town about 12 miles due west of Philadelphia." Although I do not adhere to any organized religion, I do believe in God. I do not like gun control, and while I sometimes have bitter thoughts about attempts to take away my guns, I don't appreciate Obama's apparent contention that my thoughts are not my own.

How would he feel if I told him his thoughts were not his?

UPDATE: My thanks to Glenn Reynolds for the link, and welcome everyone!

Comments welcome, agree or disagree.

I'm intrigued by Glenn's thought about the relationship between elitism and conflation.

I have a related post about the conflation of adults and children, which is by no means unique to Barack Obama.

(But is it elitist conflation or conflationary elitism?)

MORE: Here's the video of Obama's Inquirer interview:

(Via Real Clear Politics.)

The Mead piece on the Jacksonian tradition linked by M. Simon in an earlier post is a good read, yet it is also a reminder that I could no more be a large J Jacksonian than I could be a large L Libertarian. There's too much populist bigotry in the history of the former for comfort, and too much doctrinaire nonsense in the latter. Certain aspects of Jacksonian tradition are xenophobic, theocratic, and anti-melting-pot in the extreme, and almost remind me of the Know-Nothing movement. (But I do like their no-nonsense, take-no-prisoners approach towards self defense and military issues.)

While I can say what I think about most things, experience shows that adopting any label invites conformity to it. (Especially criticism from those who claim it.)

Once you say what you are, some asshole will come along and say that you're not, because he is.

Similarly, once you say what you aren't, some asshole will come along and say that you are, because he isn't.

It gets tedious.

(But fortunately, I don't have to run for office.)

UPDATE: Sean Kinsell links this post, and adds something which resonated with me:

The only problem with calling yourself a libertarian--besides, as Eric alludes to, being invited by supposed fellow travelers to engage in poker-faced debates over the most inane hypothetical situations imaginable--is that a lot of people don't understand that it doesn't mean "libertine" or "anarchist." I can't count the number of times I've had to explain that no, I don't think all governing bodies should be dissolved so we can frolic naked in meadows all day and subsist on game and wild berries. In general, though, even those who conclude I'm just a closet right-winger seem to give me a fair hearing without rancor.

I realized that libertarians waste far too much time debating things that will never, ever happen.

I don't often blog about products or gadgets, but this one seemed, well.... almost touching:

It's called the "TwoDaLoo" and it is billed as "the world's first toilet two people can use ... at the exact same time."

More here:

Environmentalism has never been so intimate as with the TwoDaLoo, billed as the world's first simultaneous-flush two-seater toilet. The side-by-siders can be emptied individually or in a single 2.6-gallon-saving flush. With a "privacy wall" and LCD television and iPod docking station add-ons, couples (and, perhaps, just good friends) will enjoy doing double duty for Planet Earth.

The price is $1400, but the minimum order is 12. Think about it, though: where else can 24 people have that much fun for only $16,800?

They don't have a picture showing actual models using the TwoDaLoo, but here's one showing a really cute crash dummy couple:

Maybe I'm a big square (perhaps I'm getting curmudgeonly in my old age), but sitting together on that thing (or whatever rhymes with sitting) just doesn't strike me as a terribly sexy or romantic thing for two people to do together -- even if they are in love.

And if they aren't in love, well, it seems even less sexy and romantic.

But I guess it's a good way to get to really know someone.

MORE: The pot plot thickens. Wouldn't this encourage men to sit to pee? In violation of God's law?

No seriously.

MORE: Commenter Kevin points out that "this product was spoofed on SNL probably about 15 years ago, except it was called the 'Love Toilet'."

Hmm...

Does that mean that SNL should be allowed patent holder's rights?

Libertarians talk a good game on national defense but hate all wars. Libs do not get that wars are a series of disasters leading to victory. They don't have the bottom to ride out the disasters and turn them around. They have turned into Copperhead Democrats.

They don't get the American Jacksonian tradition.

I'm a Jacksonian - which is why I could never be a Libertarian Party member with the party in its current form. Who is the Jacksonian in the race for president? Who said:

"We are Americans and we will never surrender, they will."

That man will be the next President of the USA.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

If I was a lefty politician and really wanted to help the poor you know what I would tell my megadonors?

Forget redistribution. You are the experts - start another business. I will get government out of your way. If you are successful we will not tax away your gains if you use them to start even more businesses. A roaring economy will do more for the poor than any government program I could ever devise.

Because what do the poor want? Not just money, but also the opportunity to make a contribution. To be proud of themselves.

It is why I have devoted the last year and a half to Bussard Fusion Technology despite my retired status. I want to continue to contribute. I want to maintain my self respect.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

In a post titled "Be careful what you wish for, Rush," Dave Kopel warns that the prolonged scrapping is making Hillary look better and better qualified to be president:

....I think that that the extended primary campaign is making Senator Clinton into a stronger, more appealing candidate.

Not unlike John McCain, she is more likeable as a scrappy fighter against a wealthier opponent than she is as the front-runner. Similarly, she is demonstrating toughness, resilience, and ability to adapt to unforeseen circumstances--good traits for a commander in chief.

Moreover, the polls appear to confirm what I've been dreading -- that if Hillary Clinton beats Obama, she'll likely beat McCain in the fall:

The Real Clear Politics polling averages already suggest that if the election were held today, Senator Clinton would beat Senator McCain in Ohio and Pennsylvania, and that Senator Obama would lose both of those states to Senator McCain. You've got to go back to 1960 to find a candidate who won the general election while losing Ohio, and in 2008 it would be very tough to defeat a candidate who won both Ohio and Pennsylvania. Senator Clinton is effectively using bitter-gate not only to improve her already-solid chances of winning the Pennsylvania primary, but to strengthen her general election message as a traditional Democrat who embraces the best of America's past, present, and future.

What worries me is that with Obama out of the way, recalcitrant anti-McCain Republicans will be able to breathe easy about sitting it out. Damn, just as he was emerging as the one guy who might be able to unite the GOP and their base, Obama just had to let loose with the bitter bullshit.

I know I'm sounding like a broken record again, but for years I've seen Hillary as inevitable, and for a while I thought maybe she wasn't, but then she was again. And now she is again.

Well, M. Simon still seems to think that Obama is still inevitable, but I don't share his sense of...of... optimism?

If they dump Obama there will be riots. Fires. Blood in the streets.

Remember '68. The left even is organized on that principle. Recreate '68

That is a position I do not believe they actually want to be in. May the hot heads prevail!

See what this election is doing? I can't even use ordinary words anymore.

Maybe I should hope pessimistically that optimism will be a bitter pill.

As I've explained before, I'm not so much into Global Warming denial as I am Global Warming Defiance. That's because the AGW political campaign is the largest attempted power grab I've seen in my life, and if there's one thing I do know, it's that bureaucratic attempts to solve problems are worse than the problems the bureaucrats attempt to solve. Basically, we the people emit carbon, and they the bureaucrats want to squeeze us and punish us any way they can, and tell us how to live. Nothing in the Constitution gives them such power, but they'll try to grab it anyway.

Global Warming, they say, results from certain human activities, which are therefore to be labeled "immoral." But which humans? American bureaucrats, working in tandem with international bureaucrats who generally hate Americans, take it as a given that Americans are the worst offenders, and should be squeezed the hardest.

Of course, one form this squeezing takes is persuading Americans to burn food as fuel -- which squeezes the world's poor by depleting the food supply. But never mind the rioting right now! For it is human activity that causes Global Warming, and the government bureaucracy says that burning food is the way to make it change.

As to alternative theories of which human activity might be the biggest cause, a guy blogging at Planck's Constant, however, maintains that Muslims are the worst offenders. However, at the end of his post, he offers a picture which casts doubt on his own assertion, for it clearly points to certain animals as the cause:

The irony is that while the above was meant to be humorous, according to the Global Warming Alarmists' own data, animals are in fact the biggest cause of greenhouse gases. (Something which isn't widely reported because the bureaucrats who have to implement these things realize it is much less palatable to go after farms than cars.)

Here, let me repeat myself repeating myself!

For the umpteenth time, by the environmentalists' own data, eating animals is the number one cause of Global Warming.

The whole Global Warming debate has become so fraught with politics and ad hominem attacks that any serious debate has become nearly impossible.

Things have reached the point where, largely because of a obnoxious meme called "The Overwhelming Scientific Consensus," important correlations go unnoticed and unreported.

Now, while I don't like to point the finger at certain humans, or certain human activities as the "cause" of something I'm not even sure is being accurately measured, what about certain human inactivities?

How many people realize, for example, that there is a direct, statistically significant inverse relationship between pirates and global temperature?

I kid you not; check it out:

You may be interested to know that global warming, earthquakes, hurricanes, and other natural disasters are a direct effect of the shrinking numbers of Pirates since the 1800s. For your interest, I have included a graph of the approximate number of pirates versus the average global temperature over the last 200 years. As you can see, there is a statistically significant inverse relationship between pirates and global temperature.

Very convincing, and very damning.

I don't know what the readers think, but I think that should end all debate -- not only about the real cause of Global Warming, but what should be done about it!

We obviously need to go back to basics, and regain our traditional walking the plank constant!

MORE: As a typical example of where Government Global Warming-mongering is taking us, consider that it's even creating artificially high prices of beer

...biofuel subsidies that are pushing more farmers to ditch their barley crops--which are necessary to make beer*--in favor of crops that earn them lucrative subsidies from regulators trying to fight global warming. Topping the list of these subsidized crops are rapeseed and corn, ingredient which are used in the creation of biodiesel and ethanol-gasoline fuel blends which supposedly reduce the greenhouse gasses that cause global warming.

Thanks to these crop shifts, the price of barley has doubled in the past two years, an increase that eventually gets passed along to consumers. Some brewers have raised their prices already, and many others are planning on raising them soon. German beer drinkers are already feeling the hit on beers like Erdmann's Ayinger, which raised its price from 6.10 euros to 6.40 euros over the last year. That's roughly fifty cents a beer for Germans who consume an average of more than 30 gallons of beer person each year.

But that seems like a fairly small price to pay for such a worthy cause, right? After all, if, as scientists like NASA climatologist James Hansen say, global warming threatens humanity with imminent catastrophe from climactic shifts and sea level rise, then biofuels might be a little more important than brew prices.

Problem is, it turns out that even if you consider climate change a serious threat, biofuels are hardly an effective means of preventing it. In fact, they just might exacerbate the problem. These days, anyone saying otherwise--like, for example, European regulators--must be sloshed.

BUT THIS IS MY BEER THEY'RE TALKING ABOUT, DAMMIT!

I have to say that I agree with the source of the above link:

rising beer prices [are] the point at which we must all stand astride history and shout "STOP!."

Not my question, but George F. Will's.

The answer here is NO.

Even though I'm a small l libertarian, and I like Bob Barr, I can't support his third party candidacy on the Libertarian ticket.

I think beating Hillary in November is too important.

And I wish Bob Barr would remember what the Clinton operatives did to him in retaliation for his role in the impeachment proceedings, and not help enable their return to power.

(Of course, it may be that Barr was under the assumption that the Democratic nominee would be Obama.....)

"That's a no-brainer. Of course it's a violation of international law, that's why it's a covert action. The guy is a terrorist. Go grab his ass." - Al Gore.

Heh

She's talking like she's Annie Oakley.

-- Barack Obama (on Hillary's sudden commitment to the Second Amendment.)

It is no understatement to say that if uncontained, Obama's remarks threaten the ethos of the Democratic Party, and of liberalism itself.

There's a lot of scrambling, with liberals -- especially Clinton supporters -- trying to sound like populists. Here's Reverend Bubba:

"One more time, the campaign opposite Hillary said, 'Well there really wasn't any difference in the Clinton years and the Bush years. Rural Pennsylvania really didn't do very well.' Do you agree with that?" he asked the crowd, which responded with jeers. Smiling broadly, Clinton continued: "I just thought I'd get a few witnesses here. You know I'm a Baptist. On Sunday, we look for witnesses."

But will the wealthy, well-educated Democrats (the ones whose support is necessary to fund campaign in the fall) be willing to throw Barack Obama to the wolves? That depends on the direction of the spin. Right now it's a bit too early to tell. If Team Obama can shake this, that's one thing, but they're in a tough spot, as they can't easily slough it off as mainstream Democratic thinking, and hence there's a major effort to explain the remarks "in context." For Team Hillary, the goal is to simply deny that the remarks are true, but avoid grappling with the fact that many of the Democratic intelligentsia agree with them. Thus, it is no accident that most of the "explanations" avoid looking at the one context which is the most important in analyzing any piece of discourse, and which is absolutely vital here.

The audience.

Without knowing the audience, it's nearly impossible to determine the context of a statement. No serious political candidate with even the most rudimentary rhetorical skills would imagine that he could give the same speech to a group of military veterans that he would give at a peace rally, and vice versa. Similarly, what might be said at an organization of business entrepreneurs would bomb at a union rally.

Why isn't more being said by the left about Obama's audience? It isn't as if the homework hadn't already been done for them. Well before these remarks broke, Zombietime did a great job of examining the attendees in detail. It's a hilarious post, and anyone who wants to understand the mindset of the rich San Francisco liberals who flocked to the Getty Mansion fundaiser need look no further. (Zombietime has audio too.)

I think the problem is that the Democrats need two things: as many votes from the bitter little flyover people who cling to God and guns as they can hoodwink them into delivering, and as much of the rich wealthy money as they can squeeze out of the types who attended the event covered by Zombietime.

By exposing the mindset of the latter, Obama's remarks are thus a much bigger threat to the Democrats' lifeblood than many analysts realize.

Which means that they may have to turn on him in order to redeem themselves. Yeah, I know it's more denial than redemption, but surely they can't be expected to admit that Obama the chameleon was only telling them what they wanted to hear so that they'd reach for the checkbooks, can they?

Needless to say, I'm not happy about this, because as I've said before, if Hillary can come from below and beat Obama, she will beat McCain. Middle America loves an underdog, especially an underdog from the "middle."

Yes, "middle" belongs in quotes, because whether Annie Hillary is really in the middle is about as "relevant" as the last time she fired a gun or went to church.

Hillary's "guns" have to be seen in context.

UPDATE: Speaking of context, Frank J. reports an additional remark by Barack Obama that never saw the light of day in the MSM:

"See, all I have to do is get those jobless crackers jealous of people with more money, and they'll forget everything I said. Stupid honkeys."

MORE: Commenter Al Maviva raises an interesting point:

what's the difference between [Obama's] position, and a cosmopolitican libertarian's position?

Bush II has a ranch in Texas. Reagan was notorious for working on his ranch to get away from Washington. Those guys knew how to connect with ordinary folks because they walked the walk. I would love to see Obama riding a horse. Or Hillary at an outdoor shooting range. Those are skills you don't learn in a weekend. That would be better than Dukakis riding a tank.


HT Instapundit

I think he can't help himself. He has a political persona and then there is the man underneath. And every now and then the man underneath leaks out. Keep faking sincerity Obama, until you get it Wright. Or as Flanders and Swann used to sing: "Always be sincere, whether you mean it or not."

HT Protein Wisdom

Justin thought readers might enjoy this animated GIF from the Wiki entry for Concealed carry in the United States.

The title is "History of changes to Right To Carry laws," and it shows the evolution of concealed carry laws from 1986-2006.

When I look at that, I see optimism.

Why is it that some people would look at that and see bitterness?

Obama's remarks about bitter Pennsylvanians clinging to God and guns made the front page of today's Inquirer.

Curiously, even though it's a Pennsylvania story, they ran a NY Times piece which does not appear at the Inquirer's web site. I figured it would be easy enough to find the piece (after all, I only wanted to quote a few words), so I Googled part of the first sentence -- "The Democratic nominating fight took a sudden turn..." All the links point to this piece by Katharine Q. Seelye and Jeff Zeleny, but I've been opening it up repeatedly, and the "sudden turn" language seems to have dissappeared. What gives? Did some reporter goof? Are they now trying to throw Obama a lifeline? I just want to know why the Times called the Obama remarks a "sudden turn" in the first paragraph and now they don't.

I thought that maybe I should analyze the now missing language. The entire first paragraph that stares at me from the Inquirer is now missing, but some dutiful Freeper (perhaps bitter about being called bitter) supplied it:

The New York Times ^ | April 13, 2008 | KATHARINE Q. SEELYE and JEFF ZELENY
The Democratic nominating fight took a sudden turn with Senator Barack Obama's comments about small-town Pennsylvania voters providing an opening for the Clinton campaign to raise anew questions about Mr. Obama's ability to lure working-class voters.

You know things are getting really bad when you have to go to the Free Republic to find the text of what's on the front page of the Philadelphia Inquirer!

The "sudden turn" language still appears in links to a few news aggregators like this and this but even that is disappearing, and I had to resort to the Google cache.

Thinking maybe the first paragraph had been dropped, I Googled the language from the fourth paragraph -- "the furor represented something of a last minute gift." Once again, the links pointed to the same Times piece, but the words were nowhere to be found.

Hmmm...

I had to go into full-blown, teeth-pulling mode, but I finally found the text which was nearly identical to that in the Inquirer at a site called the Ebolowa blog. Normally, I do not lift entire stories, but in this case, I had to work so hard to find it that I thought I should place it below so that interested readers can click to read it.

I'm curious about the mechanism here. Perhaps someone can explain to me how so much language could be first reported, then summarily dropped. Is the Times now acting like the BBC and changing stories when activists complain? Or are these stories put out through the news wire, allowing subscribing news outlets to run them in the print editions only, with the Times then changing them later?

I notice that the story below has a few very minor differences in wording from the Inquirer version, and closes with "Julie Bosman contributed reporting." The Inquirer version closes with "Inquirer senior writer Larry Eichel contributed to this article." As to Julie Bosman, she writes for the Times, and used to be the Washington assistant to Maureen Dowd, so I suspect that the story below is the original Times piece, as fed out over the wires. Larry Eichel is a longtime Inquirer reporter, widely respected as a straight shooter, and he made very few changes.

OK, while this example of "now you see it, now you don't," might not be the biggest deal in the world, let's assume subscribing newspapers are allowed to use these stories. Why would they not be allowed to place them online? Does the Times retain the right to control its Only Official Story, and make changes whenever it sees fit?

Maybe they do. Certainly, they can do whatever they want with their own words, as the First Amendment gives them the right to revise, alter, or delete whatever and whenever they want.

I have no problem with editing, and I do it all the time. But what happened here was more than editing. By taking out entire paragraphs containing language like "took a sudden turn" and "last-minute gift to the Clinton campaign" the entire tone and theme of the story is altered.

Any blogger who did this would not retain much credibility.

Anyway, I only wanted to comment on a couple of things. First, while the campaign did indeed take a sudden turn, the most sudden turn of all has been Hillary's very opportunistic claim to be a Second Amendment supporter. Just before the uproar over the Obama remarks broke, she was campaigning with Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter -- shortly after his dramatic signing of illegal gun control laws. While ducking the issue of whether she supported the laws, she renewed a call for the assault weapon ban:

Nutter often cites what he calls Clinton's ability to understand how to deal with the problems facing big cities as a reason he supports her. The New York senator's crime-fighting plan includes an anti-gun-trafficking initiative that would be based on partnerships between the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) and local law enforcement to improve tracking of gun crimes and to prosecute traffickers. It would renew the Assault Weapons Ban and repeal the Tiahrt amendment, which limits the ATF's ability to share federal gun-trace data with local law enforcement.

Nutter signed five new gun-control laws yesterday that would limit handgun purchases in the city to one a month and require that lost or stolen firearms be reported to police within 24 hours, among other measures. The new laws are controversial because gun regulation is under the state's purview, not the city's. The Philadelphia Inquirer reports that the National Rifle Association plans to sue.

Gun control as an issue has not come up very frequently with Clinton on the campaign trail, but it could be important here in Pennsylvania, a state with a lot of gun owners. In the lead-up to the Wisconsin primary, she made a point of talking about learning to shoot a gun and her experience hunting. She often says she supports the 2nd Amendment and she believes her cities and states have a role to play in confronting the challenges presented by firearms. But it was not clear whether she would support the Nutter measures specifically or these kinds of measures generally. When asked during an interview with local radio this morning about what she would do as president to address the issue of cities and gun regulation, she gave her standard answer before going on talk up the proposals in her anti-crime agenda.

"I would start looking for a balance and find some common ground and end the polarization that has gone on," she said. "Obviously, I take the issue of gun crime and gun violence very seriously, and I'm also committed to protecting people's constitutional rights under the 2nd Amendment to own and bear arms and I don't see why we can't do both."

Yes, bitter. I did say that, and I won't retract it.

I think gun owners often find themselves bitter. Not because of bad economic times, but because of the endless attempts to screw around with them. Similarly, religious people face situations like the one I blogged about earlier, when busybody bureaucrats treat religious views as outside the scope of normal First Amendment protections.

So I have to agree with the last part of Obama's statement that "it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion."

I find it very telling that he would use the word "cling."

Clinging is a very normal human reaction that we all have when people are trying to take away what is ours. Liberals (Obama and Hillary being only two notable examples) have a long record of trying to take away guns.

What gun owner would not cling to his guns, perhaps even with feelings grounded in bitterness?

While I can only speak for myself, liberal gun grabbers like Obama, Hillary and Michael Nutter often make me feel like clinging to my guns -- to the bitter end. (Isn't that reflected in the phrase "from my cold dead hands"?) And what Philadelphia gun owner wouldn't feel embittered by the lawless and reckless attempt by Hillary's supporter Mayor Nutter to take away their guns?

OTOH, considering the time I've spent clinging to the New York Times story to the bitter end, I might be clingier than average.

(But things could be worse! At least I didn't say that they could have the story back when they pull it from my cold dead hands.)

UPDATE: My thanks to Glenn Reynolds for the link, and a warm welcome to all.

Anyone who can explain the mechanism of how this spin control works, I'm all ears.

Not to mention the beginning of the video where he says white people have been doing him without them even knowing it. Now where is the fun in that? And does Michelle know about his secret life? He's out of the closet now.

Even when he is trying to sound serious he is ridiculous

As Ed Driscoll (who pointed me to this clip) says:

Four years ago, when another Democratic Senator running for the White House demonstrated that he was, in his own way, equally far out of touch with middle class voters, he at least did so by not knowing what to order on a cheesesteak (also involving Pennsylvania, in a nice example of retroactive synchronicity), or in a Wendy's, which Mark Steyn so memorably described. Or by not understanding that the average guy doesn't fly off to another state for a weekend of windsurfing whenever the mood strikes.

Talk about a rookie mistake: Leave it to Obama to make John Kerry's Brahmin hauteur seem earnestly goofy in retrospect.

HT Instapundit

At the University of Chicago students and staff are treated like Royalty and the neighborhood folks are treated like servants.

At my son's graduation there last summer almost all the wait staff were blacks from the neighborhood dressed like servants in the Jim Crow South (I lived there as a youth). It had an offensive feel to it. Just the way Jim Crow felt offensive to me.

That is the environment Obama was used to. His behavior fits in well with the people he associated with. And how do you behave towards servants? Well you certainly don't get into any kind of personal conversations with them.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

I report you decide. I was reading some comments about Obama's non-apology for his totally correct statement about values voters in Pennsylvania.

The following comments seem a little off key to me. What do you think?

USAF Sr. Airman April 11th, 2008 10:09 pm ET

I'm from Pennsylvania. I lost my civilian job due to outsourcing. I was VERY BITTER. Obama hit the nail on the head. It's not condescending, it accurate.

And then there is this one.

BluecolorworkerinPA
April 11th, 2008 10:10 pm ET

He didn't defend, he is affirming the truth!

Well the truth huts I suppose. And it is going to cost Obama a lot of votes. With any luck it will keep the Chicago Machine out of the White House. But please Lord, do not crater his campaign totally until he wins the nomination. I think Obama has some larnin to do about America and I really want him to feel our pain. Next stop for Obama? Job loss in 2010. America can be so cruel. Perhaps he has a Government plan that will help him keep his job. I'd like to see it. I'm sure I wouldn't like it but, I would like to see it. It is in cases like those where all those guns can come in handy.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

Update: Captain Ned in the comments says Sr. Airman is an actual rank