This web site is a perfect example of why people don't want to go into politics. Such sliminess is unbelievable. But it's all in a day's work for the likes of Daily Kos, Andrew Sullivan, and other gullible bloggers I once respected who ought to know better.

I hope this poor girl gives a tearful press conference and reveals to the nation that she was never pregnant with her brother.

Bastards.

MORE: Ann Althouse shares her thoughts in a post titled "Stop prying into other people's vaginas, even if you happen to oppose them politically. What is wrong with you people?"

"Think before you write" is her advice to Andrew Sullivan, and I hope he takes it to heart.

And there's this:

Pictures are posted, with captions like: "Sarah's waistline never changed. Her wardrobe still remained tight and professional." Note the gratuitous insult to pregnant working women. They can't possibly dress in a professional manner. There are also enlarged photos of the 16-year-old daughter with comments about the shape of her abdomen. The whole world is invited to talk about that teenager's body.

Despicable, sexist trash. Shameful.

This is a horrible thing to do to a young person who never harmed any of her attackers. They ought to be ashamed of themselves, but they're probably delighted.

Roger L. Simon takes issue with the conventional wisdom lumping so-called "social issues" together:

The preeminent social issues - gay marriage and abortion - are quite separate. Lumping them together, as is often done by the media and by ideologues on both sides, is insulting to our intelligence.

In general, my philosophy is the less government, the better.

Roger said "I remain pro-choice because I would prefer the government not be involved in these highly personal decisions."

I'd prefer the government not be involved in a lot of highly personal decisions. But the people who go into government go into it because they want to tell people what to do, and the people who get excited by politics often have the same motivation.

As Roger says, the social issues are not the same. But the people who want to manipulate social issues to gain power benefit from saying they are. Thus, they come up with phrases like "family values" and repeat them so often that they start to believe that if you disagree with them, you are "anti-family." (Or at best, not "family friendly.")

Fortunately, the "social issues" are not part of the president's job, which is simply to uphold the Constitution and carry out the law of the land. If voters understood that, the social issues would not be election issues, but would remain personal issues.

But many voters don't understand that, and there aren't many votes to be earned in telling them that.

Which is why politicians insult the intelligence of those who do understand, and why they struggle to make personal matters political.

I'm not normally one to praise Jimmy Carter, but I just stumbled onto an interesting tidbit I'd never seen before that (because of my admitted bias) warmed me to him.

Not all Pit Bulls are bad, but they are strong and, when tested, they do attack with a bone-crushing, mutilating bite. The American Pit Bull is too much dog for the average dog owner, and should only be purchased by people who are willing and strong enough to channel that power into productive areas. Nevertheless, they are loving and protective of their families, and owners report them particularly responsive to training: herding, obedience, schutzhund and weight-pulling. An incredible Pit Bull weighing less than 70 pounds set a record by pulling 2,000 pounds. A host of admirers included Helen Keller, Theodore Roosevelt, Thomas Edison (whose dog, "Nipper," was the RCA model) and Jimmy Carter, who had one as a boy. Actors Michael J. Fox and James Caan are current owners.

(Emphasis added.)

Amazingly, there's a picture taken in 1937 of young Jimmy with his pit bull:

The dog's name was "Bozo," and the picture is right there at the Wiki page. While the Wiki writeup says nothing about Bozo, looking at the picture, the dog is obviously a pit bull, no question about it.

Very damning, I'd say.

I guess this means I'll have to step up my efforts to defend this much maligned breed.

Just kidding, folks!

Because, in light of his enlightened pit bull ownership, just for today I thought I'd find something nice to say about Jimmy Carter. So there's this:

Did you know that before he was elected Jimmy Carter had more executive experience than either of the two current candidates for President?

It's true. Carter was Governor of Georgia for four full years (from January 12, 1971 to January 14, 1975).

Why, that's four more years of executive experience than vice presidential candidate Joe Biden, who is often described as "experienced" but who has has spent his entire political life as a legislator, never as an executive.

In terms of hands-on executive experience, only Governor Sarah Palin can approach Jimmy Carter. While it's true that because she was sworn in as Governor on December 4, 2006, she's not quite as experienced as Carter, in terms of executive experience, she's the leader of the current pack.

And that happens to be the truth, regardless of what anyone thinks of pit bulls.

Politics is sleazy, and I'm quite used to dirt-digging, bogus allegations, wild exaggerations, and things blown out of proportion to their actual importance. I've seen so much mud-slinging over the years that I often think I've seen everything.

One of the first things I thought when I heard about Sarah Palin's nomination was that she'd be subjected to especially ruthless and cruel scrutiny of the sort male politicians don't generally have to endure. That's because conservative women tend to be hated as by the left as "traitors," while conservative men are seen as living up to the usual male-bashing stereotypes. Conservative women can expect to have their personal appearances, lives, even wardrobes mocked in a way that conservative men don't. Thus, I am not surprised at all to see Sarah Palin widely ridiculed for having been a beauty pageant contestant, and I expect to see more. Feminist lefties like Maureen Dowd have the best of both worlds, for not only do they get to ridicule women with impunity, but they even get to claim that they (the insult-hurlers) are the ones really being insulted!

Palinistas, as they are called, love Sarah's spunky, relentlessly quirky "Northern Exposure" story from being a Miss Alaska runner-up, and winning Miss Congeniality, to being mayor and hockey mom in Wasilla, a rural Alaskan town of 6,715, to being governor for two years to being the first woman ever to run on a national Republican ticket. (Why do men only pick women as running mates when they need a Hail Mary pass? It's a little insulting.)

Sarah is a zealot, but she's a fun zealot. She has a beehive and sexy shoes, and the day she's named she goes shopping with McCain in Ohio for a cheerleader outfit for her daughter.

Dowd's column is even titled "Vice in Go-Go Boots." What is it about women and shoes, anyway? If Dowd were a man, I'd almost be inclined to call it a form of sexism.... Seriously, what national columnist would ever care this much about a male politician's feet? (Well, there was Larry Craig, but no one accused him of wearing Go-Go boots....)

Accustomed as I am to such nonsense in politics, I was genuinely taken aback this morning by the latest charge (by the Kos camp) -- that Sarah Palin faked her pregnancy, and only pretended to give birth to a baby with Down's syndrome.

One of the blogosphere's better debunkers, John Hawkins, has photos showing an obviously pregnant Sarah Palin.

Not that an allegation like this should even need debunking, but who knows? Maybe the Palin Pregnancy Truthers are the left's revenge for the Obama Birth Certificate Truthers... (What's next? Will Palin get a stern scolding for having smoked marijuana?)

On the bright side, one of my problems is that I sometimes hate politics so much that I have to struggle to keep a sense of humor, but I face no such struggle today.

By injecting much-needed humor into the race with their antics, the Palin Pregancy Truthers have restored my faith.

Well, maybe almost.

(It's time for a fake pregnant pause....)

* Such people still care deeply about Condoleezza Rice's shoes.

MORE: "Footnote" added above. (I can say that, can't I?)

AND MORE: Speaking of hurricanes, Glenn Reynolds links recent reporting from Brendan Loy that Hurricane Gustav is weakening:

Based on Gustav's current location and forward speed, I'd say we're looking at a six-hour window, or thereabouts. If the pressure doesn't drop significantly by, say, the 5:00 PM advisory, we'll probably be able to say we've dodged a bullet.

I don't know what on earth God might be thinking, but considering what's on some of the leading minds of the left, an inevitable question arises.

When will the coast be clear for conservative or libertarian women to buy shoes?

Eric Dondero of the Libertarian Republican blog has some very kind words for Sarah Palin.

Sarah Palin has long been considered to be a libertarian-leaning Republican. As Mayor of Wasila (Anchorage suburb), Palin was friends with local libertarian Republican elected officials, and worked closely with them on tax cut proposals.

She is known to have spoken to two Libertarian Party meetings in 2004/05. She was endorsed by the Libertarian Party of Alaska in the final days of her race for Governor in 2006, even though the LP had it's own candidate. On election night, Ms. Palin at the Egan Center, went out of her way to acknowledge the Libertarian Party's support in her victory speech. Immediately afterwards, she embraced then LPA Chairman Jason Dowell in the crowd. Dowell, and other Libertarians had stood on street corners waving signs for Palin the final two days.

Editor's Note - As many of you all know, our own Contributing Writer Adam Brickley of Colorado is the Founder and Chairman of the Draft Sarah Palin for VP Campaign. (I guess, as of this moment the group should happily go defunct.) We are extremely proud of Adam's efforts. And we are proud to have lent our support to Adam, and played a role in this effort.

Lets have a look at the Washington Post to get some details.

Online, politicians and their supporters both leave digital footprints.

And so it was that yesterday's announcement of Gov. Sarah Palin as Sen. John McCain's running mate led us to Adam Brickley, a young Republican who's a recent graduate of University of Colorado at Colorado-Springs. In Feb. 2007, months before the first-term Alaskan governor, was on anyone's radar screen, the 21-year-old created the blog Draft Palin for Vice President.

Yesterday, much to his own surprise, his dreams were answered. Brickley wrote around 6 p.m. Friday: "Just so that you all know, I did receive a brief phone call tonight from Todd and Sarah Palin.Thanks to them for being so kind."

Earlier today, Brickley told The Trail about the call. "They thanked me for my tenacity," said Brickley, who now lives in Washington, D.C., and works as an intern for the conservative site TownHall.com.

Brickley's blog grew into a Facebook group. In the summer of 2007, when McCain's campaign was languishing and Rudy Giuliani and Fred Thompson were atop the polls, Brickley also created the pro-Palin Facebook group Draft Palin for Vice President. Today that group lists more than 1,400 grateful members.

I think it is now time that the rest of us Libertarian Republicans went out and made a difference.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

This happened a while back but I'm just catching up. The DNC has moved a considerable portion of its operations to Chicago.

"This is part of the implementation of the plans Paul [Tewes] discussed last week with the state party chairs," Finney said. "As part of the efforts to fully integrate DNC operations with the Obama campaign here in Washington, in Chicago and in the states, political, field and constituency operations are moving to Chicago to work in the Obama headquarters. The goal is to consolidate these efforts into one operation and effectively drive one national strategy."

Anglachel's Journal has an interesting insight into the move.

I've been involved in the merger of two good sized US corporations. It's not something that can be done at the drop of a hat. Costs have to be scoped, budgets established, plans made, landlords current and prospective contacted, vendors hired, bills paid, accounts closed in DC and opened in Chicago, equipment purchased, staff relocated, reassigned and/or terminated, letterhead and business cards printed, signage created, phone service changed, and that's just the stuff off the top of my head.

I'm not buying the claim that it was a recent decision, quickly executed. Who knew about the merger and when did they know it what remains to be unearthed. Not a word of this was out in the blogs or in the news before this week thatI am aware of. How did such a major logistical operation remain under wraps?

This casts the repeated insistence that Florida and Michigan not be allowed to change the outcome in a new light. If the DNC had agreed to relocate, but Obama lost the nomination, that would have made for a lot of explaining as to the DNC itself taking sides. It also makes the silence of top party leaders over the brutal treatment of Hillary by the press more explicable - they needed her to lose in order to give their own machinations some cover.

The news came out around the middle of June. Assuming it takes three months to plan such an operation that would mean plans had to be made in April. Or earlier. So the question is who bought the Democrat Party and what do they intend to do with it?

Let me see. Obama had a Marxist mentor. He sought out Marxist professors. He spent 20 years in a Marxist church and his political career began in the home of a Marxist bomber and his Marxist wife.

I think we have some clues.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

I'm sorry, but with remarks like this, Obama is asking for it:

The Obama campaign is not backing down. "The fact that John McCain does not know how many houses he owns when millions are struggling to stay in the only house they have shows he's out of touch with the lives of real Americans," said Obama spokeswoman Linda Douglass Saturday afternoon."McCain is promising to double down on the economic policies of George W. Bush which have benefited corporations and CEO's while leaving middle-class families behind. John McCain just doesn't get it."

(Emphasis added.)

Hmmm...

OTOH, maybe he thinks the media memory is short. Here's how ABC reported it:

Obama maintains his relationship with Rezko was "above board and legal" but has admitted bad judgment, calling his decision to involve Rezko "a bone-headed mistake."

Rezko's behind-the-scenes connection in the Obama house deal became public as Rezko revealed personal financial details as he sought to post bail.

While Rezko's wife paid the full asking price for the land, Obama paid $300,000 under the asking price for the house. The house sold for $1,650,000 and the price Rezko's wife paid for the land was $625,000.

Obama denies there was anything unusual about the price disparity. He says the price on the house was dropped because it had been on the market for some time but that the price for the adjacent land remained high because there was another offer.

Obama then expanded his property by buying a strip of the Rezko land for $104,5000, which the senator maintains was a fair market price.

Obama later told the Chicago Sun-Times, "It was a mistake to have been engaged with him at all in this or any other personal business dealing that would allow him, or anyone else, to believe he had done me a favor."

Obama had known Rezko long before the house deal, calling him a "friend."

An ABC News review of campaign records shows Rezko, and people connected to him, contributed more than $120,000 to Obama's 2004 campaign for the U.S. Senate, much of it at a time when Rezko was the target of an FBI investigation.

"It surprised me that late in the game he [Obama] continued to take contributions from somebody who was under a rather dark cloud in the state," said Cynthia Canary of the Illinois Campaign for Political Reform, a group that has worked closely with Obama and supported his legislative efforts.

In the wake of the Rezko indictment, Obama says he has given $44,000 of the Rezko-connected money to charity.

Since when is a "bone-headed" deal with a Syrian crook like Rezko indicia of being in touch with the lives of real Americans?

I'm thinking maybe Obama should tread lightly where it comes to real estate issues.

I'm a sucker for puzzles, especially when I can't figure them out. Someone could probably trap and kill me by using the human equivalent of the monkey trap if the trap consisted of something I couldn't figure out, but which looked as if it maybe could be.

I think that whether puzzles are a waste of time depends on whether they are enlightening or possibly entertaining. But you really "get" nothing, other than a vague and fleeting sense of accomplishment in having figured out something that someone put there for you to figure out. Perhaps I'm a twisted sort, but I get more pleasure out of solving the kind of puzzles that people really don't want me to solve. But I don't like to waste time spinning my wheels trying to solve things which can't be solved.

I say this because like the monkey with the monkey trap, I was unable to ignore a puzzle in the form of this ordinary Master Combination lock, which the previous occupants left in the basement.

It's your typical low security locker room type combination lock that most of us used at high school or college. While they can be hammered open or opened with a shim like this, without a combination the lock alone is useless absent a trip to a locksmith (who'd probably charge more money than it would cost to buy a new one).

A sensible person would probably have thrown it away, but I just couldn't resist temptation, and it ocurred to me that there might be information about how to crack the combination. Sure enough, there are innumerable sites and videos demonstrating in detail how to do it, but they seemed a bit hokey, and I was skeptical. Even if you follow the directions exactly, the whole thing requires patience. More patience than most people have. Factor in skepticism, and you find yourself wondering (as I did) "what if this is a complete and utter waste of time?"

Now, a combination lock marked from 0 through 39 with three combination numbers yields 64,000 combination permutations. Only an insane person or a savant would actually sit there and go through them all in the hope of opening the lock. But website after website (and video after video) claim that you can reduce the number of permutations to 100 -- provided that you first discover the crucial third (and final) number of the combination.

To my astonishment, I found that the third number can be found by the method demonstrated in this YouTube video,

What you need to do is summarized here (and described in detail in many other places):

First, we need to find the last number of the combination. To do this pull the "U" shaped thing away from the lock. It helps if its attached to something. (A Locker?). While pulling it out, start to rotate the dial from "0" so you know where to end later. You will notice that the lock will stick to a certain number. Now release the "U" for a second and then start to pull while you start to rotate again.

3) Next write down all the places the lock got stuck at while you were rotating it. There should be exactly 12 places if you did it right. One of these 12 numbers will be the last number of the combination.

4) Now we need to eliminate all of the numbers, but 1 to find the last. There are two types of places where the numbers you found got stuck at. First type is exactly on a number which means it won't move left or right while pulling up the "U". The second type is when the number you found was actually stuck between two numbers on the dial, and it would budge a little to the right or left.

5) Since we can determine, which of the 12 numbers were in between two numbers we can now eliminate them. There should have been 7 of those, which means there are only 5 left on you list.

6) Take a look at you list now and you should see that 4 of the 5 numbers left on you list have the same one's place digit. (ex: 05, 15, 25, 35) These 4 numbers you found are fake and should be eliminated. This last number you have left should be the last number of you combination.

7) To find out the Master Lock Combination is easy now that you have the last digit. You now have 10 first digit possibilities and 10 second digit possibilities. This means you have to try out a maximum of 100 combinations. And don't think that's too many because this is much better than having to deal with 64,000 combinations.

So that had to be it, right? I was still skeptical, though, and I was even more skeptical when I ran the number through this Master Lock Combination Calculator and saw a huge list of possibilities.

There's something about the thought of trying 100 different combinations when you're not convinced the whole thing isn't hokey that's a bit intimidating. Suppose you get to the end and it still hasn't opened? How would you know whether:

the Master Lock company changed its lock algorithm as the conspiracy theorists claim;

you didn't get the correct third number;

you make a mistake and didn't line up a number correctly, or passed one not enough or too many times; or

the whole thing is some sort of Internet viral hoax.

I cannot describe the inexplicable and irrational feeling of satisfaction when it opened. I actually felt as if I had accomplished something.

However, I wish I had taken to heart this commenter's advice:

Just cracked a newer 800xxxx serial lock using this method (and the combo calculator linked). Was 5th from the bottom of the list though. Maybe that was done on purpose? I would recommend starting from the end of the list and working up. Good luck!

Furthermore, because I had originally found the lock open, I really wish I had known about this!

There's a few more tricks to narrowing down the possibilities. One is if you find the lock open, hold the clasp in locked position and rotate the dial counterclockwise. The dial will catch, causing the clasp to rise, at (I believe) 6 numbers before the FIRST number in the combination. That will narrow the possibilities down to under 10. And, in my experience, the difference between the first and second number (and the second and third number) is always 6 or more. That'll help narrow down the possibilities by about a third.

Then there was this, which I have no way of verifying because I never had the "official" combination to this lock:

Also tried it with a lock I knew the combination on and I ended up with a completely different combination that still opened the lock. I wonder how many different combinations you can use on the same lock? I'm guessing several.

But alas! The problem with the theory that I "learned something" is that had I failed, I'm sure I would have "learned" some very different lessons....

MORE: I don't know why it took me so long to put two and two together, but I just realized that there is no need for anyone needing to figure out the combination for one of these locks to go through the 100 permutations as I did. All you need to do is the following, which I'll break down into two broad steps:

When you have the first and the third numbers, you'll be able to isolate one grouping of ten from the list generated by the Master Lock Combination Calculator, and you'll only need to try ten combinations.

Ten is easy!

"A vote for McCain/Palin is a vote for gay marriage."

Thus, argues the site, "Sarah Palin's veto gave gays the same rights as married couples in Alaska," and "a vote for McCain/Palin is a vote for gay marriage."

What I can't figure out is whether the web site ("Sarah Palin Supports Gay Rights") is for her or against her.

Not that something like that would matter....

MORE: A number of people are claiming that Sarah Palin is anti gay, and they cite this Boston Globe piece as authority. And it appears that the Globe has her on record as being against state health benefits for same-sex partners:

In October of 2006, the Anchorage Daily News described Palin's positions on social issues in a lengthy profile:

"A significant part of Palin's base of support lies among social and Christian conservatives. Her positions on social issues emerged slowly during the campaign: on abortion (should be banned for anything other than saving the life of the mother), stem cell research (opposed), physician-assisted suicide (opposed), creationism (should be discussed in schools), state health benefits for same-sex partners (opposed, and supports a constitutional amendment to bar them)."

Once again, I'm wondering whether there are two completely different worlds -- Google and Lexis.

If (like me) you believe in "trust but verify," how do you know what story actually appeared in the newspaper? How is anyone supposed to verify anything?

I can only conclude that the following statement is probably true:

"She is against gay marriage although she did support equal access to benefits for same sex couples in Alaska."

Perhaps she's one of those rare birds who does not allow her religious views to interfere with her legal duties. While I don't know enough about what she thinks (or why she thinks it) to render judgment, many voters would find such an approach refreshing in politics.

MORE: I keep reading the linked piece (which has two parts) looking for the language cited, and it just isn't there. Why would the Boston Globe and so many blogs be citing it? I find it hard to believe that none of them read it. Can it be that it was altered, and that the original only appears in Lexis?

I hate to sound like a nitpicker or a whiner, but seriously, how can I discuss a story if I don't know what the story is?

MORE: Are Obama's people trying to pass themselves off as anti-gay bigots? Commenter Mark astutely points out that the site I linked -- "Sarah Palin Supports Gay Rights" -- was checked out by LGF, and it appears that the IP numbers are the same as those of obamadefense.com -- which in turn redirects to the Obama campaign's FightTheSmears.com.

I smelled something funny, but it didn't occur to me that it was the Obama campaign, or that they'd be so blatant about it.

This isn't even disguised. (And what's with the purloined McCain logo at the top of the website?)

Puh-leeze!

MORE: Obamadefense.com no longer redirects to the Obama campaign's FightTheSmears.com.

Hmmm.....

Whatever is going on, it has the smell of skullduggery.

FWIW, sarahpalingayrights.com is registered at the GoDaddy.com proxy site. Which means it could be anyone.

A comment from No Quarter which is a pro Hillary site.

Comment by Clinton Fan 2008-08-30 06:19:01

I might, too. I gave his campaign $20.08 and told them Hillary sent me!

Obama's strategists miscalculated. I'm mad as hell, not gonna take it any more, and NOT getting over it.

Time to put Howard, Donna and company in the "naughty chair."

The American people are tired of the corruption, voter fraud, and the cesspool that American politics has become. I'm seeing comments like the above at all the pro-Hillary sites and even the pro-Obama sites before they are scrubbed.

There is anger out there like I have never seen before. More intense even than the Contract with America revolution. Why do I say that? Because the anger is bi-partisan.

Let me quote from commenter Neil who had a few words on my post Motherhood, Apple Pie, And Oil.

Mitt Romney would've been the safe choice--he would've delivered Michigan, along with a 51% victory.

With this choice, McCain has stated his intention to "shoot the moon". He's solidified his existing alliances and has now reached out to many disenchanted Democrats, but without alienating his base of support.

He's going to try for a blowout...

Cross Posted at Power and Control

I'm delighted by today's news. By picking Sarah Palin, McCain has hit it out of the ball park.

I'm also delighted that M. Simon proved to be so prescient.

MORE: Dick Morris says that Barack Obama delivered McCain a "body blow" with his speech last night.

Maybe so, but it looks like McCain can take it.

Come to think of it, I think he's taken a few body blows before...

(Yes he has, so yes he can.)

MORE: Here's an interesting reaction from CBS News:

It's more than surprising; it's the strangest running-mate decision since Dan Quayle. Sarah Palin spent a year working as a commissioner for the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, and has been governor for a year and a half. Now, she'll be the Republicans' vice presidential candidate, and if things go well for McCain, one heartbeat from the presidency. When it comes to being untested and unknown, Palin is in a league of her own.

Just yesterday, advisers to the McCain campaign conceded to the New York Times that McCain "thinks highly" of Palin, but "her less than two years in office would undercut one of the McCain campaign's central criticisms of Senator Barack Obama -- that he is too inexperienced to be commander-in-chief." So much for the McCain campaign's message.

Stepping back, we have the man who would be the oldest president in American history, who happens to have a record of health problems, picking a virtual unknown who's been a governor for less than two years. Amazing.

Or how about Walter Mondale's pick of Geraldine Ferraro, not even a governor, but a then-obscure congresswoman? I could be wrong, but I don't remember CBS complaining about her lack of experience.

(Of course, in those days, the news media used to at least pretend to be objective....)

MORE: Newsbusters points out that CNN's John Roberts is also plugging the "inexperience" meme.

Hmmm...

I wonder whether a media analysis would reveal whether "inexperienced" Republicans draw more media criticism than "inexperienced" Democrats.

UPDATE: My thanks to Glenn Reynolds for the link, and a warm welcome to all.

I really appreciate the comments.

Drudge Report says the GOP VP pick is Sarah Palin. Inspired. It will pick off a lot of Democrat women. It will attract the 51% of Americans who want to develop more American oil resources.

H/T Instapundit and Eric Scheie via e-mail.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

As an Englishman living in America, where Marmite is hard to come by, I'm all too familiar with the concept of scarcity, but a lack of resource in a local or a particular instance is a very different kettle of fish from absolute scarcity. The Malthusian idea of overpopulation leading to the gobbling up of finite resources has been around for a couple of centuries now and what is remarkable about it is how it has proven so consistently wrong-especially when it tries to lay the blame on the doorstep of civilised, industrial nations. I'll grant you that the image of some future New York where a hundred million people live cheek by jowl in polluted squalor until the oil runs out and then they fall on one another like starving rats as nations go to war over what scraps are left does have a certain dramatic appeal in a Mad Max sort of way, but the real world doesn't and never has worked like that.

Overpopulation is a problem, but only locally in certain, to be blunt, backward parts of the world and even there the problem isn't too many people, but too many tyrants robbing them blind. They don't suffer so much from overpopulation as poverty. A village of a hundred people ruled by a dictator with only enough food for fifty and no way to buy more is "overpopulated". A city of a free ten million that can import more than it needs is not.

In a word - no. There is plenty of oil in the ground at current prices. Is that true? Well lets do an inventory to check that assertion.

...the world oil shortage is political, not geological. In the U.S., the government makes it virtually impossible to drill in new areas offshore. In Nigeria, civil strife has shut down major production. In Libya and Iran, Washington effectively blockaded and isolated the nations for years to inhibit new production. In Iraq, of course, the U.S. destroyed much of the infrastructure since the first Gulf war in 1991 and then blockaded reconstruction. In nations such as Russia and Mexico nationalism and corruption curtail increased production.

Outside of developed Western countries, the single largest reason for oil "shortages" is government incompetence and ownership of the subsoil rights so that landowners don't benefit from oil discoveries. In Patagonia, Argentina (a nation with abundant oil), I was told how it was common for landowners to try to hide any evidence of oil seepages from underground, lest the government oil company come in and ruin their lands with no benefit to themselves. Private mineral rights ownership is the reason some 90 percent of all oil wells drilled have been in the U.S. Scientific advances and innovative engineers keep coming up with ways to both discover new fields and keep old ones in production almost indefinitely.

ANWR could become the fastest way to generate hundreds of billions of dollars of new oil. But laws need to be changed to fast track the leasing (there are 11 litigation choke points) and to create special courts to expedite environmental issues, as recently proposed by Rep. Michele Bachman (R-Minn.). Under current laws, it could indeed take 10 years to produce oil, compared to two or three years for the actual drilling and pumping. Additionally, leasing is done slowly, thanks to laws written when oil was plentiful. Such laws were designed to gain maximum upfront money for the government, not for speed. For example, BP recently paid $1.2 billion for a new offshore lease, some 400 miles east of Alaska's Prudhoe Bay. The cost and distance gives some idea of industry expectations as to the extent of oil reserves.

Washington has become paralyzed by dysfunctional government. France and China can build nuclear electric plants in just years; in the U.S. it takes a decade. Brazil will bring offshore oil online in 24 months, while for U.S. companies it takes 10 years. New refineries are virtually illegal to build. New electricity-generating plants using coal are now unable to obtain financing because of environment constraints.

This is destroying the value of the dollar and wrecking our balance of trade, making oil prohibitively expensive, and sending hundreds of billions of dollars to foreign lands--many of whom are no friends of America. No wonder 80 percent of Americans think their nation is on the wrong track. Washington needs to declare a national emergency program to produce energy. The reasons we don't are political, not technical. Indeed, new natural gas discoveries have knocked U.S. prices down by about 30 percent.

Are we done yet? Not by a long shot.

WASHINGTON -- House Speaker Nancy Pelosi opposes lifting the moratorium on drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and on the Outer Continental Shelf. She won't even allow it to come to a vote. With $4 gas having massively shifted public opinion in favor of domestic production, she wants to protect her Democratic members from having to cast an anti-drilling election-year vote. Moreover, given the public mood, she might even lose. This cannot be permitted. Why? Because as she explained to Politico: "I'm trying to save the planet; I'm trying to save the planet."

Here in the U.S., one out of every three ears of corn is stuffed into a gas tank (by way of ethanol), causing not just food shortages abroad and high prices at home, but intensive increases in farming with all of the attendant environmental problems (soil erosion, insecticide pollution, water consumption, etc.).

This to prevent drilling on an area in the Arctic one-sixth the size of Dulles Airport that leaves untouched a refuge one-third the size of Britain.

There are a dizzying number of economic and national security arguments for drilling at home: a $700 billion oil balance-of-payment deficit, a gas tax (equivalent) levied on the paychecks of American workers and poured into the treasuries of enemy and terror-supporting regimes, growing dependence on unstable states of the Persian Gulf and Caspian basin. Pelosi and the Democrats stand athwart shouting: We don't care. We come to save the planet!

They seem blissfully unaware that the argument for their drill-there-not-here policy collapses on its own environmental terms.

Did I mention that there are about 2 trillion barrels of oil shale in America and about 3 trillion barrels of tar sands in Canada where exploitation has only started? And don't tell me it costs too much. The Canadians are getting the oil from tar sands at about $15 to $20 a bbl. Oil shale, with water recycling to preserve precious water resources, might run $30 a bbl. We really don't know because the oil companies are not allowed to try. So what is the Republican answer? Watch this video (also above) to find out.

We don't have to pay high prices at the pump and send our money to people who don't like us if government would get out of the way. Republicans are on board. How about you Democrats?

Cross Posted at Power and Control

Al Gore had some strong words at the convention:

"John McCain does not care about ManBearPig!"

Only Barack Obama has a real plan to stop ManBearPig.

I'm super duper cereal (or serial, as the case may be).

I'm watching Barack Obama's speech, and I'm frankly surprised how negative it is. He stresses how awful everything is, and blames Bush, says McCain is clueless and out of touch, and keeps talking about the need for the government to take care of people.

In short, he's making the case for socialism, and he sounds angry. Much angrier than usual.

Whether it will work, who knows?

There's not much talk of freedom.

He keeps echoing the "I am my brother's keeper" theme and characterizes McCain's philosophy of saying "you're on your own." Im reminded of how much I prefer the latter.

Frankly, he's sounding more like a scold than ever before.

10:34 -- Now he's talking about reducing oil dependency, and bashing McCain for advocating drilling.

Talking about investing in renewable energy.

Education. (Right. Will we hear about Chicago Annenberg Challenge?*) He'll make sure kids can afford college.

10:37 -- Health care. What Congress has, everyone will get.

Equal pay for equal work. (Equals more government in the workplace.)

Ugh.

I don't know whether I'll get through this....

10:40 -- "If John McCain wants a debate over who has the temperament to serve as the next Commander in Chief, that's a debate I'm willing to have." Says McCain was wrong about Iraq, he was right.

McCain won't go after Obama "to the cave where he lives."

The Iraqi government and the Bush administration echo Obama's call, while McCain stubbornly refuses. Obama looks to future, McCain stuck in past...

10:43 -- We are the party of Roosevelt, of Kennedy. Don't tell me we won't fight. Bush administration has squandered this legacy.

Will end Iraq war responsibly, stop Iran from getting nukes, stop Russia, restore America's moral standing....

10:46 -- Have to change the idea that people cannot disagree without challenging each other's character or patriotism. (I agree with this, and hope he means it.)

"I've got news for you, John McCain. We ALL put our country first!"

If you don't have fresh ideas, you need stale tactics.

10:50 -- "All across America, something is stirring. This election is not about me. It's about you." Enough to the politics of the past. At defining moments like this, change doesn't come from Washington, it comes to Washington.

10:53 -- American spirit pushes us forward. Promise is our greatest inheritance. Refers to King's Dream speech of 45 years ago.

We cannot turn back! Cannot walk alone. Keep that promise.

That's it.

He kept it short, which was smart. It got better towards the end, but it was not exactly what I'd call a fun speech.

I would characterize Obama's overall position as a communitarian one. He believes that not only are we all responsible for each other, but that the purpose of the presidency is not to carry out the constitutional duties of office, but to take care of everyone by providing jobs, health care, etc. I haven't heard him sound this shrill (or negative) in any of his previous speeches.

Well, at least it wasn't boring. For Obama, it was guns blazing.

MORE: Speaking on Fox News, Charles Krauthammer thinks the speech was brilliant, as Obama needed to abandon his conciliatory tone he adopted while running against Democrats. Made himself the agent of change as defined very simply -- not Republican.

11:25 -- I think it's possible Obama deliberately came out with guns blazing because he wanted to show that he's not a wimp.

I just watched McCain's gentle congratulatory message, and what a stark contrast!

I like the way Ann Althouse made mincemeat out of Obama's Second Amendment remarks:

9:48: "We can keep AK-47s out of the hands of criminals." All right, then! Can I have an AK-47? I'm not a criminal. He's trying to say we can accommodate gun rights and gun regulations, but he won't admit to anything near the level of gun regulation he'd support, so he ends up sounding silly.

And Stephen Green did a great job of drunkblogging!

8:38PM More Clintonesque requirements of people who get government help. That's not a bad thing -- but it's not how he campaigned in the primaries. He's not just running against one lame duck, he's running as another.

8:37PM The longer this goes on, the more I remember why I suffered such Obama Fatigue during the primaries.

8:37PM Yeah, he just tried to buy Michigan with promises that he'll retool Detroit. Honda and Toyota build cars here people actually like, so why not give them money, too?

8:35PM The first person who gives me an accurate count of the number of times Obama says "McCain," I'll send a crisp twenty dollar bill. That's right, twenty dollars. But I'm not sure science can count that high.

MORE: Via Glenn Reynolds, I see that media people were observed cheering. And via Glenn Reynolds, here's the full text of the speech.

Enough.

(Sorry to plagiarize Obama's word, but that's just the way I feel.)

* Yes we will! Here!

Alan Boyle has the latest on the EMC2 fusion experiments.

Researchers have finished the first phase of an unorthodox, low-cost nuclear fusion experiment that has generated a megawatt's worth of buzz on the Internet - and they are now waiting for a verdict from their federal funders on whether to proceed to the next phase.

Richard Nebel, leader of the research team at EMC2 Fusion in New Mexico, declined to detail the results of the project, saying that was up to the people paying the bills. But he did said "we have had some success" in the effort to reproduce the promising results reported by the late physicist Robert Bussard.

"It's kind of a mix," he said.

Nebel said his leave from Los Alamos is due to reach the one-year mark in mid-September, but he doesn't foresee any problem in extending the leave if the second-phase funding comes through. Whether or not the Navy funds the next phase, the past year's effort has been worth it, Nebel said. "We're generally happy with what we've been getting out of it, and we've learned a tremendous amount," he said.

All that learning won't go away. "Regardless of what happens to it, we're going to get this thing well written up and documented," Nebel said.

Getting the experiment's findings down on paper will help the EMC2 team - or future teams of fusion researchers - advance the legacy left behind by Bussard. And that's a fitting tribute to the unconventional physicist as the calendar rolls toward the anniversary of his death.

"Bob Bussard was a truly innovative person, that's abundantly clear," Nebel said. "I hope he will be remembered for that. I think that will be the case."

I can't wait to read the full report.

H/T Correspondent Charles Connors.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

"The notion that somehow as a consequence of me knowing somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago, when I was eight years old, somehow reflects on me and my values, doesn't make much sense, George."

Most of us would think that stomping on the American flag is also detestable. Ayers proudly did that in 2001, when Obama was more than eight years old. Here's what Barack Obama said in May, shortly after a photograph showing Bill Ayers stomping on the American flag received too much public attention.

"Senator Obama is appalled by this disrespect of a flag we love and that so many have fought and died for. There is no excuse for anyone to treat that which we hold so dear with so little regard. But the politics of association required to link Obama to this picture in any way is ridiculous and a silly distraction from the important challenges facing the American people," said Obama spokesman Bill Burton.

The picture is from a Chicago magazine article in 2001. That is the same time Obama and Ayers served together on the board of a philanthropic organization called the Woods Fund. It is also around the same time that Ayers donated to Obama's state Senate campaign.

The Obama campaign has yet to condemn Ayers or his even more notorious wife, to say nothing of condemning the dreadful radical Marxist philosophy they share. But Stanley Kurtz -- the guy asking the key questions about Obama's connection with Ayers -- is being excoriated in the strongest possible terms:

"WGN radio is giving right-wing hatchet man Stanley Kurtz a forum to air his baseless, fear-mongering terrorist smears," Obama's campaign wrote in an e-mail to supporters. "He's currently scheduled to spend a solid two-hour block from 9:00 to 11:00 p.m. pushing lies, distortions, and manipulations about Barack and University of Illinois professor William Ayers."

"Tell WGN that by providing Kurtz with airtime, they are legitimizing baseless attacks from a smear-merchant and lowering the standards of political discourse," the note said.

"It is absolutely unacceptable that WGN would give a slimy character assassin like Kurtz time for his divisive, destructive ranting on our public airwaves," the note continued. "At the very least, they should offer sane, honest rebuttal to every one of Kurtz's lies."

Caller after caller to WGN read off talking points provided them by the Obama campaign alleging that Dr. Kurtz, and by implication and sometimes directly, Milt Rosenberg, was "smearing" Barack Obama and finding Obama "guilty by association." They also accused Kurtz of lying.

Yet, when pressed for specifics, these callers had none.

Now keep in mind for those of you not familiar with the Rosenberg show: it has run for decades and has always been thought of as a quiet sober discussion space; generally conservative but usually open to a range of views.

My father, a lifelong Chicago liberal and former Democratic party precinct captain, has called in and jousted with Rosenberg several times over the years (Milt called him a "professor of sophistry" in one exchange). Yet, listeners are blogging tonight that they have never heard anything like what happened this evening.

Perhaps we should not be surprised by the tactics of the Obama campaign - attempting to squash a legitimate discussion on the respected Rosenberg show of these sensitive issues.

But it suggests to me a whiff of panic inside the campaign. Sure, John Kerry should have gone after the swift boaters in the last election. But this is not swift boating. We are talking about a decade or more of close political activity involving Ayers and Obama.

Interestingly, the email from the Obama campaign has a heading which reads "The Facts on Barack and William Ayers," and after barely touching on the subject, goes on to list an odd compilation of opinions from Stanley Kurtz on unrelated subjects such as gay marriage in Scandinavia, feminism, and Larry Summers. (Obviously, the goal was to whip the lefties into a state of agitation in the hope they'd call. Which they did.)

The bottom line is that Obama has gone for Kurtz's jugular, while he has yet to denounce his colleague Ayers:

1. Barack Obama and his campaign have denounced Ayers's actions and at least one of Ayers's statements, but I think that neither Obama nor his campaign has ever denounced Ayers himself. As with the first Reverend Wright speech, this is no accident. Obama usually takes the "Christian" position: hate the sin, love the sinner.

2. Kurtz, unlike Ayers, is denounced in the most vicious and uncivil terms (there is a lot more than I quoted). If Obama or his campaign had ever denounced Ayers with the fervor that his campaign has now used in denouncing Kurtz, Obama wouldn't be having trouble on his connection to Ayers.

Other than denigrating Kurtz for being conservative, Obama's operatives have provided no response to the substance of his claims. In their only pretense of engaging him, they accuse him of telling "a flat out lie" that Ayers recruited Obama for the CAC. Though it is a reasonable inference that Ayers recruited Obama, the careful Kurtz has stopped short of making it -- observing only that Obama offers no explanation of how he was recruited if not through Ayers, his friend and the CAC's driving force.

The station, WGN, has made a stream of the broadcast available online, here, and it has to be heard to be believed. Obama's robotic legions dutifully jammed the station's phone lines and inundated the program with emails, attacking Kurtz personally. Pressed by Rosenberg to specify what inaccuracies Kurtz was guilty of, caller after caller demurred, mulishly railing that "we just want it to stop," and that criticism of Obama was "just not what we want to hear as Americans." Remarkably, as Obama sympathizers raced through their script, they echoed the campaign's insistence that it was Rosenberg who was "lowering the standards of political discourse" by having Kurtz on, rather than the campaign by shouting him down.

Kurtz has obviously hit a nerve. It is the same nerve hit by the American Issues Project, whose television ad calling for examination of the Obama/Ayers relationship has prompted the Obama campaign to demand that the Justice Department begin a criminal investigation. Obama fancies himself as "post-partisan." He is that only in the sense that he apparently brooks no criticism. This episode could be an alarming preview of what life will be like for the media should the party of the Fairness Doctrine gain unified control of the federal government next year.

Calling for a criminal investigation of free speech crosses a line going beyond any association with Ayers.

I think Glenn Reynolds got it right last night:

The Ayers connection itself is less interesting to me than the campaign's over-the-top response. It seems to me that they could have put this behind them already, but instead their reaction seems to be fanning the flames.

But according to the Obama campaign, "fear mongering" is defined as asking questions which make Obama uncomfortable, and it's strictly a right-wing phenomenon.

Only a slimy character assassin would accuse the left of such a thing!

I don't normally correct historical details in stuff I read, but in this case I thought I should, because it sheds a little light on the truly horrid background of one of Barack Obama's political sponsors who hasn't been getting enough attention. I refer to Bernardine Dohrn, a notorious and unrepentant terrorist I have called evil, whose praise of the Manson murders was detailed at the Corner by Andy McCarthy:

As I noted back in April in this article about Obama's motley collection of radical friends, at the Weatherman "War Council" meeting in 1969, Ayers' fellow terrorist and now-wife, Bernadine Dohrn, famously gushed over the barbaric Manson Family murders of the pregnant actress Sharon Tate, coffee heiress Abigail Folger, and three others: "Dig it! First they killed those pigs, then they ate dinner in the same room with them. They even shoved a fork into the victim's stomach! Wild!" And as Jonah recalled yesterday, "In appreciation, her Weather Underground cell made a threefingered 'fork' gesture its official salute." They weren't talking about scratching up the wall-paper.

I think it's worth noting that the people Dohrn called pigs (and in whose grisly fate she took such delight) were Leno and Rosemary LaBianca -- a small business owner (a World War II veteran whose parents were Italian immigrants) and his wife. They were strangers to the Mansons, and this was what happened to them:

Sometime during the early morning hours of August 10, 1969, Manson family members entered the LaBianca house. Manson and Watson awoke a sleeping Leno LaBianca, on the couch in his living room, at gunpoint. Leno was assured by Manson and Watson that he would not be hurt and that they only intended to rob him. Manson removed a leather thong from his neck and had Watson use it to tie up Leno's hands. Leno was then asked if there was anyone else in the house. He told Manson and Watson that his wife, Rosemary, was in the bedroom.[2] Manson went to the bedroom and awoke Rosemary. He allowed her to put a dress on over her nightgown before leading her into the living room where Watson had Leno tied up. Manson and Watson reassured the couple that they wouldn't be hurt, and were just being robbed. After collecting all the cash in the house, Manson ordered Watson to take Rosemary back to her bedroom where Watson placed a pillowcase over her head and wound a lamp around her head, gagging her with a lamp cord. He told her to stay quiet and remain in the room. Watson returned to the living room and Manson then left the house. Within a few minutes, Leslie Van Houten and Patricia Krenwinkel entered the residence and were instructed by Watson to go to the bedroom.[1]

Watson then began stabbing Leno repeatedly, only stopping briefly when Leno screamed, "Stop stabbing me!" Rosemary, hearing her husband screaming, began screaming and flailing around the room, still blinded by the pillowcase on her head. Krenwinkel and Van Houten called Watson for help. Watson left the badly bleeding Leno in the living room, and entered the bedroom to find Rosemary swinging the lamp still attached to the chord used to gag her. Tex lunged forward and stabbed her until she fell to the floor. By the time the stabbing ended, Watson, Krenwinkel, and Van Houten had stabbed Rosemary 41 times.[1]

Leno was still alive when Watson came back to the living room and the stabbing resumed. After Watson finished stabbing Leno, one of the family members carved the word "WAR" into Leno's stomach. Krenwinkel then stabbed him a number of times and left a carving fork protruding from his stomach, and a steak knife from his throat. The girls then wrote messages in Leno's blood. "Death to pigs" and "Rise" were written on the living room wall, and "Helter Skelter" [sic] was written on the refrigerator.[1]

After the murders, the family members remained at the house. Some ate food from the LaBianca's refrigerator, played with the couple's dogs and showered before hitchhiking back to the Spahn Ranch.[6]

But frankly, the whole thing gives me the creeps, as does Dohrn.

However, it's easy to complain about people like her going directly from the FBI Most Wanted list to cushy jobs in the finest law firms right after being released, but I like to look for explanations. As it turns out, her employment was enabled by a very respectable man named Howard Trienens:

Dohrn's post-revolutionary successes are even more remarkable, considering she was the more notorious. During their underground days, she made the FBI's 10 most wanted list. Upon surfacing, Dohrn got three years of probation and a fine.

Today, Dohrn is on the faculty of Northwestern University's School of Law. She teaches a course titled Children in Trouble with the Law.

Neither Ayers nor Dohrn returned e-mail or phone messages asking for comment. So we cannot tell you how they see their ascent back to responsibility.

But it's hard for an outsider not to see the map of family connections behind their paths.

Ayers' father moved in philanthropic circles with Howard Trienens, an attorney with the powerhouse firm of Sidley Austin. The two served together on Northwestern University's Board of Trustees. Ayers was chairman of that group, then handed the post off to Trienens in 1986.

Trienens headed Sidley Austin when the firm hired Dohrn in 1984. She had never practiced law and had been out of law school for 17 years.

When I asked Trienens if he had hired Dohrn, he replied: "Yes."

Wasn't that a bit of nepotism, considering his relationship to her father-in-law? A lot of lawyers would love a first job with such a prestigious firm.

"We often hire friends," replied Trienens, 84.

Probably not. I don't have the right friends. Nor do we contribute to the same causes. (As it turns out, Trienens has given thousands of dollars to the Obama campaign.)

Eventually, Dohrn seems to have decided that she'd rather teach law. It just so happens that her pal Trienens was also Chairman of the Board at Northwestern, and he of course denies that he had anything to do with hiring her:

Dohrn's route to Northwestern is harder to discern. Trienens said he had nothing to do with it, though he was then board chairman.

"The dean hired her," he said, referring to Robert Bennett, who was then law school dean. (Bennett did not return phone calls seeking comment.)

Daniel Polsby, a law school faculty member in 1991, recalls Dohrn's appointment going through an academic side door. Because she was brought on as an "adjunct," she was never put before a faculty vote.

I've always wanted to be an adjunct anyway. Sounds like the best of both worlds.

Needless to say, the Tribune reporter got nowhere trying to figure out precisely how the hiring occurred:

Seeking clarification from the university, I was told to put my questions in writing. Which I did:

Was her appointment at NU's law school made by the dean acting alone? Did it have to be ratified by the Board of Trustees?

Instead of answering the questions, the university responded with a boilerplate statement of support: "While many would take issue with views Ms. Dohrn espoused during the 1960s, her career at the law school is an example of a person's ability to make a difference in the legal system."

Kill all the rich people. Break up their cars and apartments. Bring the revolution home, kill your parents, that's where it's really at

Might his mutilation at the hands of Patricia Krenwinkel (young enough to be his daughter) have captured the imagination of young Bernardine?

I realize this is just armchair psychology, but I don't believe the Ayers/Dohrn denials, and as I say, I like to look for answers. I think it just might be significant that Dohrn's father was another small businessman; fellow Weather Underground radical Mark Rudd described her as "just the daughter of a credit manager of a Milwaukee furniture store":

In Destructive Generation, Collier recounts a chance meeting at around that time between Dohrn and Mark Rudd, another radical leader who'd also been underground for a time. "She asked him what he thought about the whole experience," Collier writes. "He told her that he thought of it as seven years of wasted life; that neither he nor they had accomplished anything, and he wished he'd gotten out at the beginning. 'She got furious [Rudd recounts] and said: "But what about the contribution we made to the overall struggle for armed struggle and revolution in America?" I couldn't believe the rhetoric. The same old shit. I just said to myself, "Oh, later for you, lady," and took off. Later on it occurred to me how her ego was still totally involved with all that dead history. How little she had looked at herself all those years. She should have had to admit how wrong her ideas were, how meshuga her self-conception was. A great revolutionary leader' She had no great revolutionary ideas. None of us did. She was just the daughter of a credit manager of a Milwaukee furniture store.'''

(I'll bet she was too chickenshit even to give her dad the three-fingered salute!)

By any standard, Dohrn's past is absolutely dreadful, yet like her husband she is unrepentant to the core. What accounts for her success? What enabled her to go from the FBI Ten Most Wanted list to a position where she could assist in the launching of the career of a man poised to be president? And why are she and other unrepentant terrorists considered mainstream? (Like it or not, by prevailing liberal standards, they are.)

Perhaps the lesson here is that it's a mistake to be repentant.

(You might end up as just the daughter of a credit manager of a Milwaukee furniture store....)

MORE: To be fair to Sidley Austin, Howard Tienen, Northwestern University, and the countless others who have helped and enabled Bernardine Dohrn's place in the American mainstream, I think it needs to be remembered that this is no ordinary woman, but someone who is clearly driven. She may be a revolutionary Marxist, but she possesses the Midwestern work ethic in spades.

Really. Consider that when still in her twenties, she issued a Declaration of War against America, and she did her damnedest for years to carry it out. How many individual terrorists have declared war on America and actually had their war taken seriously? Osama bin Laden comes to mind, but in general, they're few and far between.

What employer wouldn't jump at a chance to hire a dynamo like that?

The critics missed the point of what Barack Obama plans to do tonight: he's not placing himself as a god in a mock temple, but rather cynically exploiting the 45th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.'s famed I Have a Dream speech -- with a mock Lincoln Memorial in a football field.

This is the scene he's hoping to evoke:

No doubt the press will flood itself with revelatory prose on its success, according to script.

It's all so manufactured, cold, and cheapening.

I hope that people do reflect on Dr. King's dream, ignore the color of Barack Obama's skin, and judge the candidates on the content of their character.

White guilt ignored, McCain is the better man.

More at:
Obama At The Bar
Where There Is Truth There Is Fire
Obama Threatens TV Stations
Ayers On Kerry
The Ad Obama Doesn't Want You To See

H/T Power and Control commenter Doug

It looks like Obama may lose his law license for lying on his application.

NATURE OF THE CASE: a) making a statement of material fact in connection with a bar application that the applicant knows to be false; b) committing a criminal act that reflects adversely on the lawyer's fitness to practice law; c) engaging in conduct involving dishonesty, fraud, deceit or misrepresentation; d) engaging in conduct prejudicial to the administration of justice; and e) engaging in conduct which brings the courts or the legal profession into disrepute."

I have no fear. The vast hordes supporting Obama will be out in force washing his dirty laundry. Just like they did last night on the Milt Rosenberg show on WGN Radio. Evidently looking into the career of one of Obama's associates is now considered abuse of The One.

Hope and Change

If you missed the show it is on WGN Radio 8-27-08. Which is to say a pod cast.

Update:

The script Obama callers used to try to shut down the broadcast. Follow along while you listen to the broadcast.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

Hillary Clinton called for the selection of Obama as the Democrat Party nominee for President.

"In the spirit of unity, with the goal of victory, with faith in our party and our country, let's declare in one voice, right here, right now, that Barack Obama is our candidate and that he will be our next president," Clinton said. "Madame Secretary, I move that the convention suspend the procedural rules and suspend the further conduct of the roll-call vote, all votes cast by the delegates will be counted, and I move Senator Barack Obama of Illinois be selected by this convention by acclamation as the nominee of the Democratic Party."

Cross Posted at Power and Control

I just watched Bill Clinton basically steal the show from Hillary, in the form of a rousing speech which made the case for a return to Clintonism. He kept saying that Barack Obama is ready (now that he has tapped the foreign policy experience of Joe Biden), and he kept ticking off his own accomplishments, which he says the Republicans have undone. Quite a speech.

I think he'd like to have the White House back, and I kept having this weird feeling that the role of Barack Obama (whether he realizes it or not) is to cement into place a return of the Clintons.

Next time, it will truly be their turn, and Hillary will have earned it. If things go according to this script, the radical Obama will lose, McCain will be the Republicans' last gasp, and America will return to "moderation."

MORE: Ann Althouse live-blogged Bill's speech, and I like the way she summarized it:

8:24: Bill Clinton is doing a fabulous job tonight. His superiority to everyone else who has spoken is painfully obvious. "American will always be a place called hope." Brilliant. He's the greatest!

8:26: And, now what is going through his mind? And that's how it's done you losers. Screw you for rejecting, Hillary's. Enjoy your doom, fuckers.

(My problem with the Clintons is that I'm still sick of them.)

MORE: I also watched Joe Biden, who sounded like an angry hack. I agree with Glenn that Bill Clinton is still the best the Democrats have.

Not long ago, I wrote a post in which I asked why gays shouldn't have the same right as any other American to support John McCain, and I quoted Richard Miniter:

Why do Gay rights advocates demand lock-step political obedience? Indeed they seem as vicious against Gay dissenters as they are toward evangelical Christians.

It has long struck me that if gays don't have the same right as anyone else to support or oppose whoever they want, then they are not free citizens. This is a principle objection to identity politics in general; it imprisons people. And by its nature, it is very condescending, and intolerant of dissent. Above all, identity politics vests self-appointed "leaders" with plenipotentiary powers to declare what is right for the group, and all who belong to the group must abide by the rules, or else be considered a "traitor." Nothing could be less democratic. A gay man who sees state-regulated same-sex marriage as something other than a "right" is seen as an Uncle Tom, even though his goal might just be to be left alone and live his life without official entanglements of any kind. By its nature, marriage invites the state into a relationship, and once it is legally in place, people in relationships can file palimony suits even without a formal marriage. Far from being a right, marriage is a state-enforced obligation, with tentacles reaching into many aspects of life. But back in the 90s, unelected gay "leaders" decided in a bloc to start demanding it as a right. At this point in time, it's the number one item on the agenda. If you are gay, you will support gay marriage. Or else. And you may not support anyone who does not!

Unless....

Unless, of course, that candidate's name is Barack Obama. He opposes gay marriage, but if you are gay you must support him! Or else!

Don't even think of supporting John McCain:

A successful real estate developer, [Jonathan Crutchley] founded Manhunt with his life partner, Larry Basile, in 2001. He ran into trouble when Out, a gay magazine, published an article about the website in its current issue. The article, in passing, referred to Crutchley -- who until last week was chairman of the board at Manhunt -- as a "liberal Republican." That tidbit apparently shocked gay blogger Andy Towle, who within seconds found Crutchley's donation to McCain on a contributor database and posted the news on his website.

The shaming and condemnation of Crutchley was swift and unforgiving.

The hue and cry over Crutchley's politics is all too familiar. Why can't gay activists countenance the idea of a "Massachusetts Republican"? Liberal intolerance. In the minds of too many on the left, gay people (like women and ethnic minorities) have to be liberal and support Democratic candidates. To do otherwise -- that is, to have opinions on issues (even issues utterly unrelated to gay rights) that don't follow the left-wing line -- is to be a traitor to the gay "community."

For too long, many gay-rights activists have acted as if throwing temper tantrums will magically bring about their political agenda. But labeling everyone with whom they don't agree a "bigot" does not help the worthy cause of gay equality.

Is it just me, or does it seem that the people who are the most demanding of tolerance tend to be those least likely to display it themselves?

Paul Colichman is trying to get John McCain elected. He thinks more years of Republican tyranny is good for Gay America. He is an idiot. We have canceled our subscription to The Advocate and urge others to do the same. John McCain, the adulterer may be the best thing for the conservatives of this country, but he sure is not good for the Gays.

There really is something to what Glenn says about tolerance. The interesting thing about Colichman is that he's not even a gay McCain supporter. Far from it; he's a gay publisher (and "die hard Democrat") who refused to support Obama because Obama refused to support gay marriage:

Colichman, 46, who owns The Advocate and Out magazines, GayWired.com, and Here, the premium cable network for gays, said he finally dealt with his disappointment over Clinton's defeat last week and came around to Obama.

"I thought, 'Get over yourself!' I had literally written out a check to the Obama campaign. And then I saw him in front of an evangelical group in Anaheim," he said.

Before Rick Warren at the Saddleback Civil Forum, both Obama and McCain defined marriage as a union between a man and a woman.

"I thought, 'Wow! He just threw the gay community under the bus,' " Colichman said. "My partner looked over at me, and we tore up the check."

"By tearing up his check for Obama, he basically wrote one to McCain," Genre editor Neal Boulton told us. "I openly - no, flamingly - endorse Obama, whether he says he's for gay marriage or not. . . . I know under Obama, it will only be a matter of time until the country sees the legalization of gay marriage." James Hipps, project manager for gay-marketing firm Vibe Media, wants gays to cancel their subscriptions to The Advocate. "I am appalled," he said. "For our gay-lesbian- bisxexual-transgender rights to continue to grow and not further diminish, then we need to stand behind [Obama]. Good luck with your life, Mr. Colichman. I hope you get to sleep well at night after McCain becomes elected. Shame on you."

Sheesh. What do they think McCain is going to do to them?

This identity politics stuff just gets crazier and crazier.

By the way, Bush got 25% of the gay vote, and I think McCain is better on gay issues generally than Bush was. In 1999, for example, he said that he would be "comfortable with a homosexual as president of the United States."

I'm sure there are people who find such blatant tolerance very threatening.

And some of them are gay activists....

I'm afraid that's about the best I can do with "Obama Biden."

(And I already repent....)

HT Ann Althouse.

It's August 27, which according to astrological tradition, is Glenn Reynolds' birthday.

So HAPPY BIRTHDAY GLENN!

While I'll spare readers my customary "666" nonsense (as well as evil shirts and crossed swords), I will note that on this date last year, Coco was in heat on Glenn's birthday, and in the middle of amorous pursuits. This year she's a bit more subdued....

I can't blame her. Maybe I should devote more time to topics more in line with the purported classical traditions of this blog. Like astrology, for example. As today is the birthday of the blogfather, what could be more relevant than, say, a look at what the planets were doing on the day of Glenn Reynolds' birth?

Here's a scan of an official ephemeris for August, 1960:

To see Glenn's aspects, you have to scroll down, you have to know what you're doing as an investigative astrologer (most importantly, you need to know the exact time of day of his birth), and above all, you have to believe!

Now, there's no way Coco could find any of that boring. Furthermore, not only does it fit with the classical theme of this blog, but the classical theme also ties in with the politics of today! That's right. Barack Obama has decided to deliver his speech from a miniature Greek temple! I kid you not:

DENVER (Reuters) - Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama's big speech on Thursday night will be delivered from an elaborate columned stage resembling a miniature Greek temple.

The stage, similar to structures used for rock concerts, has been set up at the 50-yard-line, the midpoint of Invesco Field, the stadium where the Denver Broncos' National Football League team plays.

Some 80,000 supporters will see Obama appear from between plywood columns painted off-white, reminiscent of Washington's Capitol building or even the White House, to accept the party's nomination for president.

He will stride out to a raised platform to a podium that can be raised from beneath the floor.

The show should provide a striking image for the millions of Americans watching on television as Obama delivers a speech accepting the Democratic presidential nomination.

One of these days I'll have to check out Obama's ephemeris. (Presumably, it's not a forgery....)

Hey, come on folks, get with the program. This is not just about Glenn Reynolds. Or Coco. Or even classical themes. Lots of people care deeply about such issues. I mean, like, check this out:

The astrological chart of Barack Obama shows he is a Leo. It isn't simply a matter of his having the Sun in Leo, although he does. The Sun is also strongly dignified; has no dispositor detracting from it and is the hyleg according to Bonatti's method of calculation. And he also has Mercury in Leo.

It all has to do with why Obama wants to rule the world!

Even those people with only a small allocation of Leo want to rule the world, although that might be only the small world they live in. Of course, not everyone can. In this case, the big question on everyone's mind is whether Obama has enough of that leonine energy to make him an effective leader in the bigger world.

What we can be certain of is that a Leo quality underpins much of what he does and is integral to Obama's image and what he can achieve professionally. Leos commonly do well in public life. They have a particular type of charisma that appeals to the world at large.

Leo is a sign that requires full expression of a healthy ego. Sometimes, this can cause conflict, especially when we consider the Aquarius ascendant. However, Obama's Sun is in the sixth house of service, showing that he needs to develop his ego in a way that serves others.

Uh, oh.

Looking closely at Glenn's ephemeris, I see that he too has (gulp!) Mercury in Leo.

Well, I guess someone has to rule the world....

(If you think this is bad, I happen to have a very valuable book which really has the lowdown on Obama's Sun-Moon combination. Depending on the time of day he was born, his profile is titled either "The High and Mighty" or "The Con Artist," and yes I am serious. Glenn is either "The Tranquilizer" or "The Sly Fox," but as I don't know the time of day of his birth I'll stay the hell out of it. There are some things we're better off not knowing....)

MORE: Speaking of faux Greek temples, Glenn accuses those who do not like them of being "homophobes."

Worse yet, in another post he goes out of his way to promote the beastly 666 meme.

Tranquilizer? Or Sly Fox? He may take many forms. Beware!

MORE: There's been a lot of discussion about the appearance of Obama's faux Greek temple. From the looks of the picture here, I think it looks a lot like the Greek Theater in Berkeley:

Wouldn't be the first time the Dems have plagiarized Berkeley.

And yes, anyone who doesn't like it is probably a homophobe!

Stephen Green explains what it is like covering the DNC.

To give you an idea, gentle reader, what a political convention is like, I've had a total of seven hours sleep in the last two nights, I've walked about ten miles, acquired a VERY nice tan, attended I don't know how many protests, filed two video reports, taken several hundred pictures, ridden four trains, driven about 300 miles, and consumed Alex Jones's weight in vodka. And now I'm stuck on a sofa waiting for a woman I can't stand to say uninteresting things about a party I won't vote for this year. THAT'S what it's like covering a convention.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

One of them is Alexi Giannoulias.

Giannoulias also hosted a fund-raiser for Obama in Chicago in September, 2007, omitting it from his public schedule and keeping it closed to the press. Could it be that Obama didn't want the press asking questions about a New York Post article published that same morning entitled "Obama's Mob-Tie $idekick"?

The NY Post story references the many questions about Giannoulias' ties to organized crime through Broadway Bank, a Chicago bank that his family owns and where Alexi Giannoulias listed himself both as President and as Chairman of the Board on FEC filings surrounding the campaign contributions mentioned above.

According to a Chicago Tribune article from 2006, Giannoulias "has faced questions about the bank's multi-million dollar loans to Michael Gioranago, a convicted bookmaker and prostitution ring promoter." Barack Obama was quoted in the article as saying that he "is concerned by revelations that the bank owned by Illinois Democratic treasurer nominee Alexi Giannoulias' family gave loans to a Chicago crime figure and said the candidate owes him and the public a full accounting."

Oh. Yeah. Why did this come up?

"We congratulate a fellow Greek-American, Alexi Giannoulias, for being selected as a speaker at the Democratic National Convention," said Gulas. "His place in the national spotlight is a testament to his rising star in the field of politics. It is also uplifting to see the pride he has displayed in his Greek heritage, and his strong desire to give back to the community."

Cross Posted at Power and Control

Larry Johnson is having a look at the response by the group running the Obama/Ayers ad to the suit filed with the Justice Department asking them to block the airing of the ad.

The Obama Memo argues initially that AIP's substantial and thorough 167-page documentation and research in support of the Ad, which was provided to your station and publicly posted on the AIP website (www.americanissuesproject.org) was provided for the purpose of 'hiding the truth' or attempting to confuse station managers regarding the Ad. The purpose of the documentation is, of course, the opposite.

My client was well aware of the need to carefully and thoroughly research and substantiate every assertion in the Ad, which is exactly what has been done. The research document in your possession includes the full articles and transcripts, not excerpts or headlines. Every statement in the Ad is clearly stated, with the documentation for that statement furnished in its entirety.

By contrast, the Obama Campaign has furnished as its 'documentation' to refute the Ad a two and one-half page memorandum, with twelve footnotes, three of which are to AIP's own research. None of the articles in their entirety were furnished, which would disclose that the 'sources' for the assertions in the Obama Memo include editorials by left-wing writers and publications, one transcript with an incorrect date, all without authors or titles of the articles, and none of which include the context of the statements cited to refute the factual statements in the Ad.

The Obama campaign asserts that the ad is "a malicious attempt to link Senator Obama to domestic terrorist activities." The Ad does absolutely nothing of the sort.

Instead, the Ad discloses information that is factually accurate regarding William Ayers and his domestic terrorist activities including bombing the U.S. Capitol and the Pentagon among other government buildings and targets. The fundamental information in the Ad discloses the relationship between Sen. Obama and Ayers, asking why a candidate for President of the United States chooses to associate himself with such an individual -- ever.

The serious attacks on Kerry didn't begin until after the Democrat convention. It appears that the Democrat convention is not helping Obama. I think he is headed for a disaster of historic proportions and that it will poison the well for the Democrats for at least a generation. The Democrats could easily lose the House and might have a serious set back in the Senate as well.

And what will be the new conventional wisdom? McCain Democrats.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

I was visiting Althouse and came across this comment by a guy bashing Republicans:

They prefer war to diplomacy

War is diplomacy by other means - Clauzwitz.

See, it works like this - if you have a carrot and a stick you can accomplish more than if you have a carrot alone.

And if all you have is a carrot and the other guy has a stick you are at a serious disadvantage. Such a situation is referred to as appeasement.

H/T Instapundit

Cross Posted at Power and Control

And using her ad against Obama is just plain mean!

That last post leaves me wondering about the "housecleaning" identified by Hot Air, and my question about why the Obama campaign would scrub its characterization of Bill Ayers as "mainstream."

Especially because I enjoy playing Devil's Advocate, it occurs to me that perhaps I should take another look at Barack Obama's position. The question is not whether his Factcheck website said that Bill Ayers is mainstream, for it did say that, and the Obama campaign is by no means alone in maintaining that Bill Ayers is mainstream. Obviously, if he is mainstream, that would appear to help Barack Obama (at least to the Obama campaign), because any associations between them would have been between a mainstream guy and an up-and-coming politician.

So why would the campaign scrub the contention that he was mainstream, and replace it with a quote from someone else saying he's mainstream?

Is Ayers mainstream or is he not?

I think the answer is that experienced and powerful Democrats fear that he may very well be mainstream, and that this makes the Democratic Party look bad.

Think about it. If it is "mainstream" to be an unrepentant terrorist who tramples the American flag and regrets not bombing enough, that is hardly an indictment of "the 1960s" (for the man has not changed his radical views), nor is it merely an indictment of Barack Obama.

It is in fact a horrendous indictment of what is apparently part of the Democratic Party's "mainstream."

So what if the Obama is right, and an extreme radical like Bill Ayers really is part of the "mainstream"?

The implications for the Democratic Party are very ugly.

Political dynamite.

No wonder the quote was scrubbed.

We can't have voters think that unrepetentant terrorism and extreme anti-Americanism might be part and parcel of the Democratic Party mainstream.

UPDATE: Via Glenn Reynolds, Shannon Love hits the nail on the head:

...the real troubling aspect of the Obama-Ayers relationship is that Obama comes from a political subculture in which Ayers is an accepted and unremarkable individual. Looking at Ayers, one is forced to ask exactly what kind of leftist extremism would be considered unacceptable by Obama and his cohorts.

Asking such a question can apparently lead to legal trouble.

Amazingly (and stupidly, IMO), Barack Obama's campaign is taking legal action against a group which produced a video asking that question. The video (claims the campaign) is malicious and false.

"Barack Obama is friends with Ayers, defending him as, quote, 'Respectable' and 'Mainstream,'" the group's ad states. "Obama's political career was launched in Ayers' home. And the two served together on a left-wing board. Why would Barack Obama be friends with someone who bombed the Capitol and is proud of it? Do you know enough to elect Barack Obama?"

In a letter to station managers, Obama campaign lawyer Robert Bauer wrote: "Your station is committed to operating in the public interest, an objective that cannot be satisfied by accepting for compensation material of such malicious falsity."

Bauer also wrote to Deputy Assistant Attorney General John C. Keeney, noting that the ad is a "knowing and willful attempt to evade the strictures of federal election law."

The campaign's aggressive tactics could draw more attention to a subject the campaign wants to go away. On Tuesday, the University of Illinois at Chicago will make available records of Obama's service on the board of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge. The group was set up to improve the city's schools. The documents could shed further light on whether Obama and Ayers had a relationship.

Perhaps someone can enlighten me.

At Obama's "Factcheck" website, this claim is made (all in caps):

AYERS IS A TENURED PROFESSOR AT THE UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT CHICAGO AND WAS A "RESPECTED ADVISOR" TO MAYOR DALEY ON SCHOOL REFORM

"Ayers is now mainstream..."

His campaign issued a 1,300-word "fact check" pooh-poohing his connection to Ayers and his wife, Bernardine Dohrn (another former Weathermen terrorist), as "phony," "tenuous," "a stretch" - but simultaneously defending them as "respectable fixtures of the mainstream in Chicago."

NOTE: That last quote (which has been cited by others) appears to have disappeared entirely from the Factcheck site. At least I can't find it there.

No, it is not there. A little "housecleaning" went on, says Hot Air.

Well then, are we allowed to ask why?

Who will check Obama's Factcheck?

Jacoby, of course, questions just how "mainstream" and "respectable" Ayers or his views are -- and he notes (as have others) that Obama's career was launched in the Ayers and Dohrn's home:

The key facts, reported by Ben Smith in Politico.com, are these: Barack Obama's political career was launched in Ayers's and Dohrn's home, when a group of "influential liberals" gathered in 1995 to meet the young organizer who was Illinois lawmaker Alice Palmer's chosen successor. In the years that followed, Obama and Ayers would serve together as (paid) board members of the Woods Fund, a leftist Chicago foundation, and appear jointly on academic panels, at least one of which was organized by Michelle Obama. Ayers would even donate money to one of Obama's political campaigns.

Arguably, none of this would matter if Ayers and Dohrn had long ago repudiated their violent extremism. But they have always refused to apologize for their monstrous behavior. "We weren't extreme enough in fighting against the war," Ayers told the Chicago Tribune in 2001. In a memoir published that year, he exulted: "Everything was absolutely ideal on the day I bombed the Pentagon." America, he said after Sept. 11, "is not a just and fair and decent place. . . . It makes me want to puke."

Is this Obama's idea of "respectable" and "mainstream" political thinking? If so, doesn't that tell us something about his judgment and standards?

Maybe the objection is to this question:

Why would Barack Obama be friends with someone who bombed the Capitol and is proud of it?

I think it's a good question, and one which will continue to be on a lot of voters' minds.

And it has never been answered. Instead, Obama has tried like hell to imply that he hardly knew Ayers, and the evidence is growing that he knew him well for many years, and worked with him closely:

...the so-called "Fact Check" at the Obama website does not disclose that Obama and Ayers worked together on a failed education reform project from 1995 to 2001, and had probably first teamed up on education reform in 1987.

2. Set aside the fact that Obama was a mere lad when Ayers was setting bombs; today Ayers is an unreconstructed hard-left radical with dramatic views on education and society - as he explained to Hugo Chavez during a speech in Venezuela in 2006, "La educacion es revolucion!"

Obama worked for five years with Bill Ayers on education reform while they were both with the Chicago Annenberg Challenge. Are we being asked to believe that, just as Obama initially claimed to have been unaware of Jeremiah Wright's views, he was also unaware of Ayers current radicalism?

Or else.

Those who ask questions may face a Justice Department investigation.

MORE: Some good advice from Michelle Malkin on the above video:

Spread the ad far and wide. Will they come after bloggers next?

Shut us up?

No, they can't.

MORE: And here's Ace on Obama's claim that the ad is "despicable":

Obama says the ad is "despicable."

You know what's despicable, Barack? Befriending an unrepentant terrorist who still supports violent terrorist bombing against your country, Barack.

When I read about Barack Obama's half brother living in poverty in a shanty area in Kenya, it occurred to me that the contrast between the two might become an issue in the campaign. After all, imagine what would happen if it were discovered that John McCain had a half brother living in squalor somewhere. As it is, the Obama team is tearing into McCain under the class war / Zero Sum theory that his wife's property ownership makes them somehow guilty of being rich at the expense of the poor, and he's even being savaged because his wife's sister was left out of her father's will:

Does anyone think if Mr. McCain had a sibling living in a trailer park making minimum wage (892 times more than Mr. Obama's half brother's yearly income) that the mainstream media and the Obama campaign wouldn't notice?

In fact, last week National Public Radio ran a piece titled, "Cindy McCain's Half Sister 'Angry' She's Hidden," highlighting that Mr. McCain's wife's half sister was left out of her father's will. The piece was duly filed under the publicly funded network's "conservative compassion deficit" media template.

While I don't think it is fair to be held responsible for the circumstances of people beyond your control, such "responsibility" is part and parcel of the liberal philosophy, and for any presidential candidate to escape scrutiny resulting from the plight of an impoverished relative would be abnormal in American politics.

What's utterly new is the idea that such run-of-the-mill political criticism is to be considered "racist" -- at least if the candidate is Barack Obama.

It did not take long for this meme to be applied to discussions of Obama's impoverished brother:

...On the same day that the Obama campaign was sprucing up Michelle's values for popular consumption, the Texas Republican Party released an ad that showed Obama's nice home in Chicago and a picture of his half-brother in Kenya standing by a shanty. The explicit argument of the ad was that Obama says he wants to help American families but does nothing to help his own. The implicit message: he's BLACK and his brother is an AFRICAN. In the weeks ahead, the Obama camp may well face a blitz of negative attacks that could make the Swift Boat assault against John Kerry look like a day at the beach.

Can warm-and-fuzzy beat mean-and-nasty-and-racist?

It is now mean and nasty and racist to point out that Obama's brother lives in squalor. That's because such criticism contains the "implicit message" that Obama is black.

Forgive me, but since when does the fact that Obama is black need to be implied? I'm a bit confused here. I know that there are racists in this country who think being black is bad and would not vote for Obama for that reason, but is that the sort of thing racists point out by implication? Can it be that David Corn is assuming that there are still racist voters in America who don't realize that a black man is running for president, but they'll be "awakened" to that fact by "implicit messages" involving an impoverished African brother?

I don't think so. Rather, I think this is evidence of a new standard that any criticism of Obama conveys the "implicit message" that he is black.

That's because your typical white person is implicitly mean, nasty and racist.

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

Comments appreciated, agree or disagree.

I don't actually believe in the Anti-Christ, but I've just been made aware of a conspiracy so dark and so ugly that I had to share it with the world: Dmitry Medvedev is actually 90s has-been faux-rocker Dave Matthews. My girlfriend pointed it out, and I was stunned to learn the truth!

If you're not convinced, then consider this description of Dave Matthews from the Best Page in the Universe (and who can argue with that?):

His music can be heard in Whole Foods stores, Live Earth concerts, or blasting from the speakers of open-topped Jeeps parked on curbs everywhere. The typical fan is either some dude wearing khaki cargo shorts replete with dangling rock climbing hooks, even though he doesn't hike because he can't afford to drive his gas-guzzling Jeep, or some chick with huge boobs, buck teeth, and an ankle-length floral skirt that she twirls around like an idiot because she thinks her awesome boobs give her enough social capital to make up for the buck teeth and hairy toes (they don't).

We already know about the dark secrets of the Whole Foods organic empire, and what could be more militaristic than the co-opting of the Jeep, not to mention their military style garb? And just what sort of gas are these Dave Matthews fan using in those Jeeps? You better believe it comes from mother Russia!

Now here's where their program gets a little tricky: trading in social capital? When capital becomes social, that way leads communism, my friends. Or should I say comrades?

Now I'm sure there are still a bunch of godless skeptics out there who will still have their doubts (even with the incontrovertible photographic evidence above!) and so I will leave you with this: Dave Matthews and Dmitry Medvedev have the same initials: D.M. which also happens to be the abbreviation for Dungeon Master!

Think about it!

James Carville, Bill Clinton's political strategist and a pretty smart guy, says the Democrats need to get on message. If they can find one.

(CNN) -- Have the Democrats wasted the first night of the convention?

Yes, says Democratic Strategist and CNN contributor James Carville.

Speaking on CNN, Carville said the party was too soft in its attacks on John McCain Monday night -- the same mistake, Carville says, Democrats made at the 2004 convention.

"The way they planned it tonight was supposed to be sort of the personal -- Michelle Obama will talk about Barack Obama personally, Ted Kennedy was a very personal, emotional speech," Carville said. "But I guarantee on the first night of the Republican Convention, you're going to hear talk about Barack Obama, commander-in-chief, tax cuts, et cetera, et cetera."

"You haven't heard about Iraq or John McCain or George W. Bush -- I haven't heard any of this. We are a country that is in a borderline recession, we are an 80 percent wrong-track country. Health care, energy -- I haven't heard anything about gas prices," Carville also says. "Maybe we are going to look better Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. But right now, we're playing hide the message."

Carville also said the party needs to do a better job of communicating its message to the American people.

"If this party has a message it's done a hell of a job hiding it tonight, I promise you that," he said.

Pollster Frank Luntz made a similar point. He said Obama must change his message. I think it is more fundamental than that. He has to get one.

The results of a focus group held by Frank Luntz, the leading American pollster, on the eve of the Democratic convention should sound alarm bells for the Obama campaign after a month in which Mr McCain, the Republican, has drawn level in the polls.

"The way that he gets here to the Democratic nomination - 'change' - is not how he gets there, to the White House," said Mr Luntz. "If it's change, by itself, he will fail. Change what? Change how? Change why?" Mr Luntz is a Republican but his work on focus groups is respected on both sides of the aisle.

Some 21 carefully-selected undecided voters were gathered in a conference room in a downtown skyscraper. Observed by The Daily Telegraph and a small group of other media through a one-way mirror, they were grilled by Mr Luntz about their views of the candidates in a two-hour session.

The Obama ad that attacked Mr McCain for having seven houses and not being able to recall the number fell flat. But Mr McCain's response ad that highlighted a land deal Mr Obama had struck with Tony Rezko, a real estate dealer subsequently convicted of corruption, prompted more than half the dials to shoot up.

A couple of the voters suggested that Americans did not resent wealth. "I really don't care how many houses you have but it does matter how you got that house," said Doug.

It may very well be, given his proclivities, that hiding the message is his best tactic. It doesn't appear to be a winning one.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

Bill Bradley is having a few words about the Obama vs McCain Campaigns and thinks because McCain is not getting much Shrinking Media attention for his campaign videos that McCain is losing the fight.

And naturally the conventional media doesn't link to the ad ... Doh!

The Obama team doesn't get a YouTube campaign. Obama is still Web 1.0. McCain is Web 2.0. Obama needs to get some young people on his team to explain it to him. McCain is running a 10 Mbaud campaign. Obama is running a 56K baud campaign. That is a 20X bandwidth advantage.

The McCain team has responses out in hours. Obama is taking days. In the words of fighter pilot Boyd - McCain is inside his OODA loop. If you read Boyd - lots of stuff on the www - you will understand McCain's campaign. Obama is not responding fast enough. It gives McCain an "unfair" advantage.

Take my blogging at Classical Values. I have 2 or 3 McCain videos to choose from every day. He puts them out, sees what sticks, and hammers that message until it gets stale and then he is off in another direction. All he has to do to gauge his effectiveness is watch the hit counters at YouTube. Much cheaper than poling or focus groups. And faster.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

Sen. Barack Obama has launched an all-out effort to block a Republican billionaire's efforts to tie him to domestic and foreign terrorists in a wave of negative television ads.

Obama's campaign has written the Department of Justice demanding a criminal investigation of the "American Issues Project," the vehicle through which Dallas investor Harold Simmons is financing the advertisements. The Obama campaign -- and tens of thousands of supporters -- also is pressuring television networks and affiliates to reject the ads. The effort has met with some success: CNN and Fox News are not airing the attacks.

If we make it enough of an issue on the 'net it will become a news item and get free exposure. The best revenge.

And just who is William Ayres? A picture is worth 10,000 words:

Considering that Barack Obama has many flaws, and plenty of questionable associations, there are many excellent arguments which can be advanced against his candidacy. However, I don't think the argument that he advocates genocide against black people is one of them.

Jeffrey Kuhner of the Washington Times, however, thinks Obama's support for abortion is a betrayal of black people, as well as a form of "genocide":

Mr. Obama may not be willing to betray his feminist base, but he is willing to betray African-Americans - his most loyal and devoted supporters. Abortion disproportionately impacts blacks compared to white women. Although blacks constitute roughly 13 percent of the U.S. population, 37 percent of all abortions are performed on black women, according to the Alan Guttmacher Institute, a nonprofit group that specializes in sexual health. Since Roe v. Wade, more than 10 million black pregnancies have been aborted (some watchdog groups put the figure closer to 13 million). America's current black population stands at 36 million. Abortion has claimed the lives of about one-third of the black community. This is genocide. For Mr. Obama to not speak out about this national scandal is a disgrace - both to him and his party. It reveals, like nothing else, that he lacks the moral clarity and courage to lead this country.

As to the argument that black mothers "murdering" their babies in numbers disproportionate to the number of murderous white mothers, wouldn't it be necessary to examine the relative pregancy rates to be sure about how disproportionate that number is?

I'm not quite sure who is supposed to persuaded by this "genocide" argument, or of what. Considering the many good arguments which can be invoked against Barack Obama, what's the goal? I mean, it's not as if the anti-abortion people were planning to vote for Obama, and I don't think it will make a dent in Obama's strength among black voters.

I think this may be another example of what I called "the PETA Principle" at work.

911 Truthers will not buy this, but rationally minded people should: the NIST has had what should be the final say on the collapse of WTC 7.

Evan at the Rogues Gallery has an excellent post highlighting the findings along with several sad examples of Truther denial and paranoia.

Here's the link, but for some reason the whole Rogues Gallery seems to be broken, so I'll reproduce the post below:

Never willing to be ignored, pop star Madonna has entered the political fray to help Obama's campaign in the most dramatic way possible. At the kickoff to her concert tour in Denver, she graphically compared McCain to Hitler, and Obama to Ghandi:

DENVER, COLORADO (AFP) - John McCain's campaign has hit back at Madonna after the pop diva kicked off her world tour with a concert that bracketed the US presidential candidate with Adolf Hitler.

McCain campaign spokesman Tucker Bounds angrily condemned the segment of Madonna's concert in Cardiff on Saturday that appeared to draw a comparison between McCain, Hitler and Zimbabwean strongman Robert Mugabe.

"The comparisons are outrageous, unacceptable and crudely divisive all at the same time," Bounds said in a statement reported by Fox News.

"It clearly shows that when it comes to supporting Barack Obama, his fellow worldwide celebrities refuse to consider any smear or attack off limits."

Madonna's apparent swipe at McCain came during a performance of the song "Get Stupid", when the Republican contender's image was flashed up alongside images of destruction and global warming as well as Hitler and Mugabe.

Towards the end of the song, pictures of Beatles star John Lennon, former US vice-president Al Gore, Indian Mahatma Gandhi and McCain's Democrat rival Barack Obama appeared.

Plus, there's the long-established rule that "in the future, everyone will be Hitler for 15 minutes."

There's something in the logic behind these comparisons that doesn't make sense, though. I mean, the Hitler comparison is overtly hostile to McCain, while the Ghandi comparison is overtly supportive of Obama, right? This means depicting McCain as Hitler (in a Nazi uniform) would be seen as hostile to McCain, right?

So does that mean it's OK to depict Obama as Ghandi -- half-naked, wearing that piece of cloth for which Ghandi was noted?

Not on your life. If someone put Obama in "Ghandi garb," you can bet his supporters would yell foul, with predictable charges.

Why, they might even think Obama was being compared to this Ghandi.

MORE: And what about this picture of Nancy Pelosi?

Achtung baby!

Earlier this year, police in Tallahassee, Florida raided the home of college student Rachel Hoffman, who friends say was a bit of a hippie-ish free spirit, and concede that she shared and sold small amounts of marijuana and MDMA within her social circle. Hoffman was at the time undergoing state-forced drug treatment after police found 20+ grams of marijuana in her car during a traffic stop. The raid turned up another five ounces of marijuana, plus six ecstasy pills and assorted pot-related paraphernalia.

From this, Tallahassee police apparently threatened Hoffman with prison time, then agreed to let her off easy if she'd become a police informant, and set up a deal with her supplier. They never informed Hoffman's attorney or the state prosecutor of the arrangement. They wired Hoffman, and asked her to arrange to purchase 1,500 ecstasy pills, cocaine, and a gun--a deal that would have run well over ten thousand dollars. Hoffman's friends and family have told me that all three purchases would also have been drastically out of character for her. Which means the dealers she was buying from were almost surely on to her.

Tallahassee police found Hoffman's body last week. The first thing they did was call a press conference in which they blamed Hoffman for her own death, stating that the arrangement she made with the police was consistent with department protocol, and that she agreed to meet with the dealers in a different location than the one previously agreed upon.

After public outrage, the city is now walking that back a bit, and has asked Florida's attorney general to look into the Tallahassee Police Department's procedures for dealing with drug informants.

Proving once again that the most dangerous thing about illicit drugs like ecstasy and marijuana isn't the drugs themselves. It's what the government does to you after you're caught with them.

Rachel's Parents intend to use the tragedy of their daughters death to get the laws changed. Including decriminalization of marijuana.

The Tribune noted that "Mike Weiss, Hoffman's stepfather, said he wants police to stop saying Hoffman broke protocol He asked how Hoffman could understand how important protocol is and how an untrained civilian could understand how to protect herself in such a situation. 'The reality is, untrained civilians of any age should not be put in that position by a police force,' he said. 'They took a 23-year-old relatively naive person and put her in a life-threatening situation.' Hoffman's mother, Margie Weiss, said she is forming a foundation to push for a requirement for confidential informants to seek legal advice before consenting to undercover work. It also would work to get marijuana convictions decriminalized. 'Her death will make history,' she said. 'It's a great loss. The only way I can make sense of it is by now having her memory live on.'

I'm going to go into some detail on the ships which is interesting in and of itself. However, the most interesting part to me is that the warships had to transit Turkey to arrive in the Black Sea. That I believe is the most critical development in the region of Georgia. Turkey is supporting Georgian independence from Moscow. By treaty they are supposed to allow small warships to transit the Straights of Bosporus. However, they made no diplomatic representation such as "We deplore the build up of Naval power in the region". I must say that it is a most welcome yet unexpected development. It also means that flights from Turkey to Georgia are also assured. Further it means that the Ukraine can be defended from Russian moves.

Here are the ships involved according to The US Navy.

BATUMI, Republic of Georgia (NNS) -- USS McFaul (DDG 74) pulled into the port of Batumi, Georgia, Aug. 24 to deliver humanitarian relief supplies to the country as part of the larger United States response to the government of Georgia request for humanitarian assistance.

The U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Dallas (WHEC 716) and USS Mount Whitney (LCC/JCC 20) have also on-loaded humanitarian supplies destined for Georgia. Dallas left Souda Bay, Crete on Thursday with more than 76,000 pounds of relief supplies and will arrive in Georgia within a week. U.S. Navy C-9, C-40 and C-130 aircraft have flown tens of thousands of hygiene kits into the country over the past week.

MOUNT WHITNEY (MTW) serves as the Command Ship for Commander, SIXTH Fleet/ Commander, Joint Command Lisbon/Commander, Striking Force NATO and has a complement of 150 enlisted personnel, 12 officers and 150 Civilian Mariners from Military Sealift Command. MTW was the first U.S. Navy combatant to permanently accommodate women on board.

MTW carries enough food to feed the crew for 90 days and can transport supplies to support an emergency evacuation of 3,000 people. The ship makes 100,000 gallons of fresh water daily and carries over one million gallons of fuel, enough for a round trip, 16 knot, 35 day voyage from Norfolk, Virginia to Mozambique in the Indian Ocean. The ship's two anchors weigh 11 tons each and are attached to 180 fathoms (or 1,080 feet) of anchor chain. Each chain weighs almost 25 tons. Total electrical capacity is 7,500 kilowatts, a sufficient amount to power a small city.

The ship's afloat communications capability is second to none. MTW can receive, process and transmit large amounts of secure data from any point on earth through HF, UHF, VHF, SHF, and EHF communications paths. This technology enables the Joint Intelligence Center and Joint Operations Center to gather and fuse critical information while on the move. As the most sophisticated Command, Control, Communications, Computer, and Intelligence (C4I) ship ever commissioned, MTW incorporates various elements of the most advanced C4I equipment and gives the embarked Joint Task Force Commander the capability to effectively command widely dispersed air, ground and maritime units in an integrated fashion.

Note that with the length of anchor chain supplied it could anchor in 250 to 350 feet of water. i.e. it doesn't need to be in a harbor to anchor.

So what kind of ship is it? In simple terms it is a floating command post. What does it represent in strategic terms? A challenge to Russian supremacy in the Black sea.

Want to hear a Russian General whine about the American forces being moved into the Black sea? I knew you did.

The deputy chief of Russia's general staff suggested that the arrival of the ship and those of other NATO members would increase tensions in the Black Sea. Russia shares the sea with NATO members Turkey, Romania and Bulgaria as well as Georgia and Ukraine, whose pro-Western president also is leading a drive for NATO membership.

"I don't think such a buildup will foster the stabilization of the atmosphere in the region," Russia's ITAR-Tass news agency quoted Col. Gen. Anatoly Nogovitsyn as saying Saturday.

What would the Russian objective have been? Control of the pipeline passing through Georgia. They didn't get it. That means they spent a fair amount of military resources and are not going to get any long term profit from it. In fact they will have the cost of maintaining their troops in a hostile territory. The odds are they will be pulling out as soon as they can do so without losing much face.

How do the Georgians feel about the arrival of the American Navy?

At dockside in Batumi, with the McFaul anchored offshore, U.S. Navy officials in crisp white uniforms were met Sunday by Georgian officials, including Defense Minister David Kezerashvili.

Speaking to The Associated Press on the aft missile deck of the McFaul, anchored a mile offshore, Kezerashvili said Georgians would feel safer now.

"They will feel safe not because the destroyer is here but because they will feel they are not alone facing the Russian aggression," he said.

In another sign of U.S. support for Georgia, Republican Senator for Indiana Richard Lugar met with the nation's leaders in Tbilisi. He urged European leaders to cut their dependence on Russian energy imports.

``It is imperative that the EU minimize energy dependency upon Russian gas and oil resources, even at this point, it is important for the United States to maintain a dialogue on the energy resources,'' he said.

In the long run we will have to get off oil. In the mean time there is no point in fighting wars over it.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

M. Simon sent me an email link to a remarkable (apparently true) revelation about Barack Obama's Communist mentor Frank Marshall Davis.

If this account is correct, in an autobiography the man admitted to sex with a 13 year old. A girl, by the way. While more people would be upset had this happened with a boy (not sure about the logic behind that), pedophilia is still pedophilia. I've known pedophiles, but their activities disgust me, and I tend to agree with M. Simon, who said this about the Davis matter:

I have nothing against kinky sex. Some people like it. Most others don't. And America is a free country. We have room here for all kinds. However, statutory rape seems to be pushing the envelope a little far.

The question for me is: was Obama a not only a willing student of Frank's Communism, but also involved in his other educational activities?

While associating with pedophiles does not make a person a pedophile, is it presidential?

And if Frank Marshall Davis was Obama's mentor, we're talking more than an ordinary association.

This kind of stuff is decidedly uncomfortable (at least it makes me uncomfortable), and it's beginning to have an cumulative effect.

You know, an uncomfortable association here, an uncomfortable association there, and pretty soon voters might start getting uncomfortable...

MORE: Here's Chris Muir's "Day by Day" on the latest news about Frank Marshall Davis:

After having been castigated for being uncertain about exactly how many houses (or how much real estate) his wife owned, John McCain has now spoken up in his own defense. I was delighted to see that he took issue with an idea that there's something wrong with his wife inheriting property:

"...I am blessed and very proud that [his late father-in-law] Jim Hensley, a war hero, a man who barely graduated from high school, was able to pass on to his daughter what he struggled for and saved for. That's the ambition that all of us have for our children and grandchildren. If someone wants to disparage that, they are free to do that."

Implicit in (and inseparable from) the attacks was the Marxist notion that property and money are evil, that the more you have the more evil you are, and that unearned property is more evil (and thus more deserving of shame) than earned property.

Americans forget that the ability to bequeath or give away whatever property you have does not make the property evil; it's a basic attribute of property ownership under a free economic system.

What you cannot alienate freely is not yours.

This has traditionally gone to the heart of a major distinction between the parties, with the Democrats taking the position that citizens are allowed to have only that property that the government allows them to keep. This fosters resentment towards those who have more wealth, by making it look "unfair."

Even Republicans (especially some of the red-meat conservative commentators) succumb to this disease; I cannot count the number of times I have seen Democrats and liberals attacked or shamed for having wealth. Usually this takes the form of calling them "hypocrites" for having their own money while advocating taking it away from other people, and while I understand the temptation, the logic is similar to the way the left attacks conservatives caught engaged in sex acts of the sort they'd publicly disapprove. However true the claim of hypocrisy may be, it is a bad tactic for three reasons:

it bolsters the Marxist position that wealth is evil; and

buttresses the undeserved feelings of guilt from which too many wealthy liberals are already infected; and

advances insidiously the mistaken (in my view) notion that Christian economic principles are in accord with Marxist doctrine.

Hmmm.... I guess they're also supposed to cringe in the face of bumperstickers like the one I saw yesterday which said "Who would Jesus bomb?" (Sometimes I worry that certain Christians want a more Mohammad-like interpretation of Jesus, but that's as disturbing as it is off-topic.)

The point is that opposition to wealth has an ugly toehold in American culture, and unfortunately it crosses the political spectrum. It would not surprise me to learn that wealth or class-based attacks have been mounted against Cindy McCain even from right wing commentators, but I'm in no mood to check. (It might upset me.)

I'm just glad to see McCain's statement of support for economic freedom.

MORE: Dick Polman advises populist Democrats to "employ this shorthand at every opportunity":

Out-of-touch McCain is so rich, he doesn't know how many houses he has.

Unfortunately, class warfare populism has a long history as an effective tactic...

I have been looking into a possible Obama - Chicago gang connection. So far all I have to go on is rumor and the knowledge that gangs such as the El Rukns and the Black P. Stone Nation are very big in Chicago politics. Then there is the Jesse Jackson, Jesse Jackson Jr. connection to Obama and Jesse Sr.'s brother in law Noah Webster.

I'm going to give you some of the rumors. If any one has anything more definite please leave a comment.

From the comments at Byron Crawford:

I was telling you guys ass that Hussain Obama was right in the thick of that Chicago shit that bol is talking about. It was right after he graduated from college.

He got his first job in the inner city of Chicago and was very friendly with all the muslim influenced brothers.

Jesse Jackson and Obama's nuts:

Plus, I haven't forgotten that a few years ago, Bill O'Reilly was trashing JJ because he refused to release financial statements from PUSH, Operation Breadbasket, and the Rainbow Coalition. Plus, plus he knew that his son, Jesse Jr. is a co-chair on Obama's campaign.

I guess after getting the endorsement of the infamous gang banging "Almighty Black P. Stone Nation" formly known as the "Black Stone Rangers." Obama pretty much has Chicago all wrapped up

Why hasn't the media reported on Obama's and the reveren Reverend Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright connection with the "Almighty Black P. Stone Nation."

fbi files show a tie between rev wright & chicago black terror gang 'the el rukns'

Jesse Jackson and the El Rukns

Obama's Environment - the Criminal Gangs of Chicago's South Side.

What would I look for in the Chicago Annenberg Challenge records? For disbursement to Chicago Street Gang Fronts.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

In a posted opinion piece "Biden pick shows lack of confidence" a pundit suggests that Biden brings a lot to the table in terms of national security credibility.

Biden brings a lot to the table. An expert on national security, the Delaware senator voted in 2002 to authorize military intervention in Iraq but has since become a vocal critic of the conflict. He won praise for a plan for peace in Iraq that would divide the country along ethnic lines.

BAGHDAD - Senator Joe Biden may be one of the only U.S. politicians that can get Iraq's feuding Sunni, Shi'ite and Kurdish politicians to agree. But not in a good way.

Across racial and religious boundaries, Iraqi politicians on Saturday bemoaned Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama's choice of running mate, known in Iraq as the author of a 2006 plan to divide the country into ethnic and sectarian enclaves.

"This choice of Biden is disappointing, because he is the creator of the idea of dividing Iraq," Salih al-Mutlaq, head of National Dialogue, one of the main Sunni Arab blocs in parliament, told Reuters.

"We rejected his proposal when he announced it, and we still reject it. Dividing the communities and land in such a way would only lead to new fighting between people over resources and borders. Iraq cannot survive unless it is unified, and dividing it would keep the problems alive for a long time."

H/T Instapundit and Sara

Cross Posted at Power and Control

No Quarter has this interesting bit of gossip:

I asked a friend who knows someone who has seen the video to Michelle Obama making disparaging remarks about "white" folks. You know, those angry God hugging, gun toting mouth breathers. He wrote me the following:

But there is a very strange air about Republican operatives. In the last three weeks, I've talked to real insiders in VA, GA, AL and here. They all remind me of a unit waiting to cross the line of departure on an attack. Quiet, determined, last cigarette, last "can of peaches out of the ration," radio checks, confident. They all use the term "safely nominated" when referring to Obama.

Once the counter attack begins it will be a slaughter. First a slash through the front lines and then tanks rampaging in the rear through the administrative troops.

For more of the military metaphor re: Obama see Housing War.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

Welcome Instapundit readers. You might also like Obama Chicago Gang Connection?

I'm thinking that Obama's pick of Joe Biden doesn't go far enough.

To really beat McCain, Obama needs to pursue a strategy of annihilation by total triangulation.

As I pointed out in a comment to Simon's post,

I'd feel more comfortable if Obama had reached across the aisle and chosen a man with hands-on experience. There being no limit to how many terms a Vice President can serve, the obvious choice would have been...

DICK CHENEY of course.

After all, they're known to be related.

Why not keep things within the family?

I don't see how it could fail.

One of the strangest things about Ann Arbor is the presence of ubiquitous signs like this one:

They're right in my neighborhood, but the reason I didn't have a photograph of my confused self standing in front of one with Coco is that I don't have an available photographer right now. But trust me. They are there, and they don't make sense.

They've been the subject of a number of articles -- some noting that the signs are only likely to increase accidents and deaths.

Amy Alkon has also noted the signs, and while she came to no definitive legal conclusions, she seems to think intent to injure or kill is required.

Do you really need to know that bad things will happen if you injure or kill a construction worker? Like, "Aw, shit, I was going to pick off the foreman until I learned about the $7500 fee."

At least one online analyst says that intent does not matter:

The "kill a worker" law has no provisions for intent or no intent. In other words, it doesn't matter if the SUV driver intended to kill or not - he still killed her and could still be charged with the "kill a woker" felony in addition to vehicular manslaughter charges.

And what if the "worker" is at fault? Sheriffs' departments routinely make juvenile delinquents put on orange vests and pick up trash along roadways, and I assume that they are workers. What if two of them get into a scuffle, and one pushes the other out into traffic and he gets hit? Is it fair to punish the driver?

Should "workers" be entitled to special protection not afforded ordinary citizens? Why should a city worker repairing a sidewalk crack in front of my house receive special protection I don't get if I'm repairing the same crack?

Perhaps this will lead to new identity politics victims rights initiatives. Many bankers work in buildings located on busy streets, and bankers are under a lot of pressure these days. Plus they're hated even more than street workers, and I see no reason why they shouldn't be entitled to the same degree of legal protection.

What about smokers? Under many city ordinances now, workers who smoke are forced to go outside onto dangerous public streets and sidewalks. And like street repair people and bankers, many people hate smokers. Why no sign for them?

Hell, we even warn motorists not to hit deer! And we close roads to protect newts, don't we?

Anyway, this is getting complicated, and I don't know which sucks more; the law or the sign.

But the "worker" business (especially the socialistic implications) bothered me so much that I wanted to alter the sign and put the word "BANKER" in its place. But alas! There's no "B" ready to copy and paste and I'm at least as busy with other things as I am lazy with my fingers.

So this will have to do:

I know it's one letter off, but come on!

At least it gives a general idea.

(If I really had time, I'd have changed it to "BUREAUCRAT," because I think they're the ones who deserve the credit for this nonsense.)

So who will be answering the 3 AM phone call in an Obama Administration?

Well, it's official. Joe Biden is Barack Obama's vice presidential choice.

Barack Obama picked Delaware Sen. Joseph Biden as his running mate, choosing a long-time Washington insider who could balance his thin resume on foreign policy over younger politicians who could have amplified the Democratic presidential candidate's message of change.

[...]

Sen. Biden, who has been in the Senate for more than 30 years, is chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and recently returned from war-torn Georgia, which he visited at the behest of that country's president. Sen. Obama, by contrast, is a freshman senator who is regularly attacked by his Republican opponent, John McCain, for his lack of foreign policy experience.

Polls have consistently shown voters trust Sen. McCain more than Sen. Obama on foreign policy and national security issues.

Interestingly, Biden has been a critic of Obama. Quite a critic:

Sen. Biden is a two-time presidential candidate himself, and during his short-lived run in the current cycle, he was at times critical of Sen. Obama's foreign policy bona fides. That will be a staple of Republican attacks in coming days. After news of the Biden decision spread, the McCain campaign issued a statement saying: "There has been no harsher critic of Barack Obama's lack of experience than Joe Biden. Biden has denounced Barack Obama's poor foreign policy judgment and has strongly argued in his own words what Americans are quickly realizing -- that Barack Obama is not ready to be President."

Commenting on a video (a McCain ad, no less!) documenting the Biden-Obama animosity earlier this morning, M. Simon opined,

The choice of Joe Biden for VP on the Obama ticket is a sign of desperation.

And what about the Democratic rejects?

(Maybe McCain could use a good man like Hillary.)

MORE: Here's Jennifer Rubin:

the selection of Biden as VP seems to cast doubt on the entire premise of the Obama campaign which is that experience doesn't matter. If we are back to including that criteria why not select the more experienced candidate for the top spot? It won't take very long for the McCain camp to point out that Obama's own underwhelming record compares unfavorably to his own VP. (We will also be treated to a good share of "His VP is smarter than he" clips, highlighting the areas of disagreement such as the initial Iraq war vote.) And Biden is not exactly a "safe" pick. If a secret ballot were taken among pundits and politicial office holders asking, "Which politician is most likely to make a jaw dropping, news cycle-stopping gaffe?" Biden would like be the unanimous winner. For a presidential candidate with a gaffe problem of his own, Biden might magnify this unwelcome attribute. Late night comics and pundits are already tabulating their top ten list of favorite gaffes, but it is no laughing matter for Obama who is struggling to get back on message and convince the voters he is ready for primetime.

And don't miss Pajamas Media's coverage of reactions with "It's Biden! The Fun Begins." Like this gem from Jonah Goldberg:

"I think it is an outright terrible decision on Obama's part to pick Biden. Yes, he helps balance Obama's inexperience on foreign policy, but he also reminds people of it. Yes, Biden could conceivably be effective as an attack dog. But Biden is such a gasbag he makes the Hindenburg look like a sack of rocks."

MORE: Glenn Reynolds has a roundup of reactions, including his own:

He's at least as fresh a face as Madeleine Albright.

Also, Glenn quotes Richard Miniter, who thinks Biden is like McCain:

"Biden is almost a 'neocon' in his foreign policy views. He voted for the Iraq War in 2002. . . . Does his elevation by Obama signal that that the Obama campaign is backing away from its timetable to withdraw from Iraq? Does Biden's position differ significantly from McCain's? Isn't he, in fact, closer to McCain's view on Iraq than Obama is?"

Update: A little more on Ayres' educational philosophy. Scroll down.

Yesterday I did a piece on the decline of the fortunes of Iran and its best buddy Hizballah No Deal. Today I got some news that fleshes out the story.

Since the 2008-09 marketing year began on June 1, Iran has bought more than one million tons of hard red winter wheat directly from the U.S., which is "a very large amount," said Bill Nelson, analyst for Wachovia Securities. The purchases mean at least 3% to 4% of domestic wheat exports for the marketing year will go to a country the U.S. hasn't done business with for more than a generation. Government sanctions don't prohibit U.S. agricultural exporters from doing business with Iran.

Investing in missiles and atomic bombs does not feed the hungry. Water projects should be taking priority.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

Michael Totten reports from Georgia

On Monday, I visited one of the schools transformed into refugee housing in the center of Tbilisi and spoke to four women--Lia, Nana, Diana, and Maya--who had fled with their children from a cluster of small villages just outside the city of Gori. "We left the cattle," Lia said. "We left the house. We left everything and came on foot because to stay there was impossible." Diana's account: "They are burning the houses. From most of the houses they are taking everything. They are stealing everything, even such things as toothbrushes and toilets. They are taking the toilets. Imagine. They are taking broken refrigerators." And Nana: "We are so heartbroken. I don't know what to say or even think. Our whole lives we were working to save something, and one day we lost everything. Now I have to start everything from the very beginning."

Michael has more. Read It All.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

In a marvelous essay about the animal rights organization PETA, Michele Catalano touched on two of my pet peeves -- animal rights and the tendency of shrill activists to drive ordinary people away by dominating issues they might support.

PETA's current attempt at activism only made me shake my head in dismay.

Who are they trying to reach with this? If PETA is attempting to convert people to veganism or, at the very least, get carnivores to think twice about eating meat, they are going about it the wrong way. The problem with such activism is it preaches only to the choir. No sane person is going to be moved by an ad equating the tragic beheading of a young man with eating breakfast sausage. Not even a person teetering on the border between chicken and tofu would look at something like this and say, "Well , my mind is made up. This upstanding, honest, respectable organization has convinced me with their well thought out Mommy Murders Animals comic book!"

It's standard activist fare. The irony is that most Americans abhor cruelty to animals, and they might be inclined to support organizations working to prevent it. But once they learn that the goal of many of these organizations is to outlaw meat-eating and virtually all ownership of animals including dogs and cats, they do the only sane thing, and run. Unfortunately, this lets the hardest hard-core activists have the playing field all to themselves, which is great if you're a hard core activist, but not the best way to get results on consensus issues.

Just as most Americans oppose animal cruelty, most oppose late-term abortions, as well as uncontrolled immigration. But what happens if they try to get involved?

Once again, they are driven away by what I might as well call the "PETA Principle." You want to oppose late-term abortion, you'll soon find that the people and organizations who dominate the playing field see their issues the way PETA sees theirs. Just as PETA thinks "a rat is a pig is a dog is a boy," those who dominate the anti-abortion debate think a morula is a blastocyst is a baby is a Supreme Court justice. And they also believe that RU-486 is just like Zyklon-B, and pharmacists who dispense it are little Himmlers. Ditto border control. The people who want draconian measures (or who believe in a vast North American Union conspiracy) will alienate ordinary people, and thus prevent the majority consensus goal of basic border control from ever being achieved.

In a way, I can't blame the activists. If they were careful not to drive ordinary people away, majority consensus on these issues might be obtained.

And who would pay attention to the activists?

I find it extremely annoying that the question of how many houses John McCain owns would be of any more interest to anyone than how many shares of stock he owns, how many cars, how many suits, how many websites, or how many guns.

Anyway, when asked the question, McCain said he wasn't sure ("I think -- I'll have my staff get to you..." "It's condominiums where -- I'll have them get to you.") -- not because he is senile or out of touch as the Obama campaign is implying in its ads, but because he apparently doesn't own any houses.

They are all in his wife's name. But even then, it's not clear to reporters who investigated how many there might be:

The correct answer is at least four, located in Arizona, California and Virginia, according to his staff. Newsweek estimated this summer that the couple owns at least seven properties.

A politico analysis later in the day found McCain's family owns at least eight properties, according to property and tax records, as well as interviews.

a liar if he said "four";

a rich gigolo living off his wife if he said "my wife owns four houses and I own zero"; or

a man out of touch with his own financial realities for not knowing.

I suppose if McCain had really wanted to get cute, he could have winked at the reporter and said "depends on who owns the word 'own'," or "I don't own my own house."

If they really are in his wife's name, perhaps he's what amounts to a tenant at will. In common parlance, a "crasher." And isn't that just a nice way of saying "homeless"?

Which means that the question becomes, is America really ready to elect a homeless man president?

Shouldn't we instead elect "a guy who made more than $4 million last year, just got back from vacation on a private beach in Hawaii and bought his own million-dollar mansion with the help of a convicted felon"? "A guy who worries about the price of arugula and thinks regular people 'cling' to guns and religion in the face of economic hardship"?

I don't expect McCain to make a wisecrack about being homeless, though. The "homeless" have become one of America's sacred cows. (We like to watch them wander about as if to provide a source of sanctimonious pontification -- as if poor personal hygiene, schizophrenia, and substance abuse are a housing crisis.)

The people who obsess over how many houses McCain or his wife might own are people who buy into the notion that private property is somehow immoral.

I know I've said this before, but think about it. People hate (or feel guilty about) unearned wealth. But unless it was earned by crime, property is not immoral.

Unfortunately, millions of unthinking people are conditioned to believe it is. What I'm having trouble understanding is why that wouldn't that make McCain the more virtuous candidate for not actually owning any houses.

There is a distinction between "unowned" and "unearned," is there not?

Hmmm....

(Perhaps I'm wasting my time trying to analyze why unthinking people think what they think.)

UPDATE: Recognizing the perils of the question, Richard Miniter has an excellent analysis of the "how many houses" nonsense, and he concludes that McCain should have just said his wife owns them all:

Here's two truths that the McCain campaign can't say: one, it is Cindy McCain's money and not his. Therefore, he doesn't know how she spends it. It is possible, even likely, that the senator has not even been to all of these houses. Most likely they are investment properties, which have full-time tenants. As for the homes that the senator and his wife actually use... let's say it is three. If McCain says three and it turns out there are two or three or four more investment properties, then it looks like he lied about something he should automatically know the answer to. He is too smart a politician to guess. So the classic senatorial "check with the staff" dodge. Maybe Cindy's accountant knows...

[...]

...McCain had one good answer open to him when asked how many houses he owns: None. My wife owns them all.

A lot of guys can identify with that.

The only people who actually need to "define rich" are the folks who are trying to establish a threshhold for redistributing your money.

Commenter JM hanes at Just One Minute

The deal brokered in Lebanon to end Muslim on Muslim violence is off. Maybe way off.

Several Sunni factions in Lebanon announced Tuesday night that they are freezing a truce they had signed with Hizbullah a day earlier.

The agreement, intended to defuse sectarian tension, prohibited any Muslim group from attacking fellow Muslims.

"The agreement will be temporarily frozen pending appropriate circumstances that allow for its implementation," Sheikh Hassan al-Shahhal, who signed the memorandum with a Hizbullah official, told reporters Tuesday, according to The Lebanese Daily Star. The Sunni community, he said, needed to stand "more than ever" united and to shun divisions, while the memorandum needed further study.

Hizbullah officials said Wednesday that they respect the groups' choice of freezing the memorandum of understanding for more discussions and revisions.

It appears the correlation of forces in the world is changing. Something has shaken Iran. Could it be economic troubles?

Tehran, 13 August: The punch line of economic models for single- product countries is that they can considerably quicken the process of non-reliance on mono-product policies.

Fundamentally, Iran's economy relies on oil revenues. The extent of this dependence is so much that some experts believe that Iran's oil should be named 'black disaster'.

Since the discovery of oil in Masjed Soleyman, the dependence of Iran's economy on oil sales has not decreased. On the contrary, it has increased on a daily basis and this process has gathered pace and accelerated. Based on this, when a national government with great ideals came to power, one its main mottos and strategies was the formation of an oil-free economy. Unfortunately this policy never materialized and compared to 50 years ago, the Iranian economy's dependence on oil has increased. However, oil prices and its fluctuation are also very dangerous and worrisome.

During recent days, oil price dropped from 140 to 113 dollars in less than a week. This drop happened while three important events which traditionally were considered reasons behind the increase of oil prices occurred in the world. These events included the Beijing Olympic Games, the start of the summer season and an increase in global oil consumption, and most important of all the regional war between Georgia and Russia in the Caucasus.

Perhaps the Russians and Iranians are anticipating further drops in oil prices over the coming year. Especially since the Russian grab for the Georgian oil pipeline has failed. Maybe not totally, but essentially.

Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the interests of the newly emerging states of the Caucasus and countries such as Ukraine and Belarus have repeatedly and fiercely clashed with those of Russia. In particular, they have competed with each other over energy resources and the transmission corridors of the former Soviet Union.

Russian interruptions of gas supplies to Ukraine, Belarus and the rest of Eastern Europe are legion - and so are the restrictions they have imposed on the transmission of Kazakh oil to the international market across their territory. If Russia controls the flow of energy, it also has dangerous sway over the economies of Western Europe.

The EU had been trying to wean itself off energy dependence on Moscow by developing a network of energy routes through Georgia. It's no wonder that the Russians turned their attention in that direction.

Talleyrand is reputed to have said something like: "you can do anything with bayonets, except sit on them". Maybe this is one of those cases where the bayonets must be sent home for lack of maintenance.

If America starts drilling for oil (which is looking more and more likely) it is more than possible we can put an end to a lot of unrest in the world by forcing oil exporters to focus on economics rather than war. And that may explain the changes in the correlation of forces.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

The US military has been training the Georgian Army since 2002. Us troops were scheduled to leave Georgia in March of 2009. It appears the schedule has been changed.

During the Soviet era, Krtsanisi military base outside Tbilisi was home to the Red Army.

Now it is US soldiers who are in charge and, according to the US Ambassador in Tbilisi Richard Miles, they are in Georgia to stay.

In 2002 the Bush administration set up an 18-month, $65m programme aimed at training and equipping Georgia's impoverished army.

The programme was part of America's war on terror and it started after the US confirmed Russian allegations about the presence of Chechen and al-Qaeda fighters in Georgia's Pankisi Gorge, on the border with Chechnya.

Details are still to be announced of the new permanent programme, but analysts say that any sort of US military presence is good news for the Georgian Government, which sees the US engagement as a security guarantee against Georgia's northern neighbour - Russia.

Some how I don't think this is what the Russians expected when they moved into Georgia. It also means that Russian resupply to Iran is complicated. In case of American "trouble" with Iran.

Last week, the Bush administration also called for Russia to remove its military and said it was even prepared to take up some of the costs needed for the relocation of Russian troops.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

Commenter Thomas says:

Now I truly understand how liberals think. I could not understand why my opinion of an issue was always the opposite of every liberal politician. Now I know. This video is well worth 45 minutes of your time.

It appears that Obama is losing the housing war. You gotta go and read the whole thing esp. if you are into military history. It is fookin hilarious. The second comment is most excellent as well. Don't miss it.

H/T Instapundit

Cross Posted at Power and Control

If you would like some words about the movie from the makers, here are some of them:

HYPE: The Obama Effect examines the Junior Senator from Illinois and his record. Is he the new Kennedy or recycled Jimmy Carter? Is he the one who will finally change Washington, or will challenges like the Tony Rezko trial reveal politics as usual? Is he the uniter the country begs for, or a liberal divider? HYPE: The Obama Effect seeks the answers.

Including interviews with political leaders, media experts, and social commentators, HYPE provides the in-depth analysis that can only occur in a full-length feature documentary. HYPE goes to Illinois and interviews those who know the Senator's record as a state legislator. Go on the road with the campaign and experience the enthralled crowds as they are consumed by the HYPE. Washington insiders analyze Senator Obama's Senate record, his views on abortion, his statements on the second amendment, his plan for a troubled economy, and his foreign policy-will the US be safer or will the US become a bigger target?

The Chicago Annenberg Challenge Ayer/Obama affair (discussed infra) is finally receiving national attention. More here and here. (Via Glenn Reynolds.)

While Glenn thinks the files have probably been "vacuumed of any seriously embarrassing matter," I think it's an embarrassment that a candidate for national office worked closely for years with an unrepentant terrorist.

Let me admit my bias here. Contemplating Bill Ayers and his evil wife makes me sick, and regular readers know that I don't say this about very many people.

They are longtime, avowed enemies of the United States who still call this country "the Beast," and who believe in overthrowing capitalism and replacing it with Communism -- the most murderous system of government ever seen in human history. Their terrorist activities were not intended to help the poor or right wrongs, but to bring about a murderous totalitarian state -- by using murderous tactics. The totalitarian state they had (and still have) in mind was to be built on systematic state mass murder -- along the lines of Mao, Stalin and Pol Pot.

We would neither forgive nor tolerate unrepentant Nazis or Nazi supporters or enablers. The fact that so many people are willing to look the other way in the case of Ayers and Dohrn is, I think, a national embarrassment. It's a stain on every institution which hired them and gave them tenure, and on every politician who has worked with them -- including Barack Obama.

No matter what details the documents might contain, their very presence is an a seriously embarrassing matter which cannot be vacuumed away.

(Any more than could the tens of millions who perished under Communism.)

UPDATE: Roger L. Simon has a great post on the subject of guilt by association, and on Obama's obfuscation:

I do have some feelings about past associations and what they mean from personal experience. Like it or not, to one degree or another, they are part of our fabric, though not in a simple-minded sense. Knowing communists in the past obviously does not make you one now, or then, for that matter. Nevertheless, the 1972 Roger Simon who gave money to the Black Panthers is a building block of the 2008 Roger Simon who now despises identity politics and thinks it a reactionary betrayal of black people. That past is part of my emotional and intellectual DNA. If I hid that from you, you would not understand my present, where it comes from and what it means. You would be missing important context with which to analyze my current views.

The same goes for Obama, only his past is being shrouded by the institutions and cronies above. No matter what the truth is, this obfuscation makes it worse.

Sounds like he hung in the same radical circles we did.

Of course, my past associations (and later ones) make me a "traitor" now.

Nothing logical about it unless you're a radical Marxist.

On Monday, "...five pro-Tibet activists unfurled a banner spelling out "Free Tibet" in English and Chinese in blue LED "throwie" lights in Beijing's Olympic Park tonight. The five were detained by security personnel after displaying the banner for about 20 seconds at 11:48 pm August 19th. Their whereabouts are unknown."

Now these LEDs were sewn to the banner, so I'd say that technically they weren't throwies, just LEDs taped to batteries, but the protesters refer to them as throwies.

The picture shows an interesting juxtaposition: The protest banner with "Free Tibet" in LEDs, shown with the famous Beijing Bird's Nest stadium in the background, another quite different showcase for LEDs.

China is high tech when it comes to electronics and backwards when it comes to political freedom. Not a surprise.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

In The Ties That Bind I discuss Russian proposals for selling nuclear capable missiles to Syria. And then I learn today that an Obama adviser was recently in Syria at an oil company sponsored conference to discuss what? Dried fruit exports? Maybe. Oil exports? Much more likely.

Barack Obama's Middle East Policy Adviser recently discussed presidential politics with high-level Syrian officials during a conference underwritten Syrian business interests and a Canadian oil company.

Adviser Daniel Kurtzer told the New York Sun the trip was not related to his campaign work, but that he did discuss the next president's role in Syria's relationship with Israel with Syria's Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem.

"I urged him to move ahead in the Israel-Syria negotiations as much as possible so that whoever is the next president would not start from too far down the track," Kurtzer told the Sun. "I did not say anything about Obama or McCain. I said whoever is the next president is not going to want to inherit a process that isn't going anywhere."

The exchange took place at lawyer's conference organized by the British Syrian Society in Damascus in early July. Kurtzer was invited because he is on the board member of the American Bar Association's Rule of Law Initiative.

I think we have to get serious in America and turn on the oil spigot to restrict the incomes of folks who mean us ill. Democrats - are you listening?

Cross Posted at Power and Control

You have to wonder what the Russians are thinking.

Syria's official news agency SANA announced Mr. Assad would begin a "working visit" to Moscow on Wednesday at the invitation of Russia's President Dmitry Medvedev.

Ahead of the visit, Mr. Assad told Russia's Kommersant daily on Wednesday that his country's defence ties with Moscow, in the context of developments in Georgia, would be the main issue during his talks. "Of course, military and technical cooperation is the main issue. Weapons purchases are very important," he said, adding: "I think we should speed it up. Moreover, the West and Israel continue to put pressure on Russia."

Mr. Assad said a new situation had arisen after Moscow came across the use of Israeli military equipment by Georgia in its conflict with Russia.

"I think that in Russia and in the world everyone is now aware of Israel's role and its military consultants in the Georgian crisis. And if before in Russia there were people who thought these forces can be friendly, then now I think no one thinks that way."

Speaking on the conflict between Georgia and Russia over Georgia's breakaway republic of South Ossetia, Mr. Assad said: "On this issue we fully support Russia. The war, which was unleashed by Georgia, is the culmination of attempts to encircle and isolate Russia."

Earlier, Iran's Press TV, quoting Israeli media reports, said Russia planned to position the nuclear-capable Iskander missiles in Syria. The Israeli report also said Russia could also release to Iran, the advanced S-300 missiles, which had so far been withheld.

Analysts point out the release of advanced Russian military equipment to Syria and Iran is likely to dampen the sentiment of war against Tehran in U.S. political circles. Nevertheless, a large flotilla of U.S. British and French naval ships has been heading towards the Persian Gulf. The naval taskforce, believed to be largest in Gulf waters since the first Gulf War, includes the U.S. warships -- Theodore Roosevelt, Ronald Reagan, and Iwo Jima.

Here is the final nail in the coffin of the rumor featured in your post of August 12. Is a retraction in order? (I apologize if I have overlooked it).

This rumor was widely circulated in the Internet and in the Middle East media, so this is not a trivial issue.

Stop the presses: no naval armada has sailed to blockade Iran!

Summary: For a week rumors about a US armada sailing to the Gulf circulated around the Internet and in Middle Eastern media, despite having almost no supporting evidence. One of the two major sources for the "US fleet sailing to blockade Iran" story now has admitted his error. No word yet from the other (and more high-profile) source, Debkafile (does Debkafile post retractions?) or the blogs which promoted the rumors.

Now what do I think? The Theodore Roosevelt was in port at the time I wrote my report according to sources I have found of late: i.e. comments at blogs. However, that does not in my opinion invalidate the general idea of an Iranian blockade in the works. I'd like to wait a week or three and see what happens. He may be right about no blockade. However, it seems if Iran and Syria are getting nuclear capable missiles that could lead to pre-emptive attacks by Israel and precipitate a blockade of Iran by the USA.

It is really hard to see where this is all going. I thought it was 1936 (re:Germany France and the Rhineland) it may be much later than that - 1939 (re: Germany and Russia dismembering Poland). If so we may have a very big war on our hands. All this could have been prevented if the USA was supplying more oil to the world markets limiting the profits of our enemies Russia and Iran, not to mention our "best friend" Saudi Arabia.

Who do I blame for this situation? The Democrats who have declared new American oil sources off limits. Had they allowed drilling and mining of new oil resources it might have defused this run up to a what appears to be a very serious oil war. Evidently they have decided that Blood For Oil is better than drilling for oil. Scum of the earth. And if a single Democrat who is against American contributions to the world oil market is left in the House after November it will just prove we deserve a world wide oil war.

You can watch a video that gives Harry Reid's opinion of drilling for oil and the response of an ordinary citizen at Harry Reid Makes Me Sick. An eye opener.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

I've stumbled onto a very entertaining and informative site that covers "political ephemera, drug hysteria, vintage sex & health items", and the latest entry is on the work of a guy called Dick Hafer. This anti-gay tract from 1986 reads like modern satire mocked up to ridicule the attitudes of the past. It's the sort of thing Mad magazine might do if they were to cook up a nutty right wing hate comic, and in many ways it reminded me of the Onion's fake editorial cartoons. I kept thinking it was tongue in cheek, but this guy was apparently the real deal. And like those ubiquitous Jack Chick tracts that you find in train stations and restrooms, this comic captured my attention for the artist's skill, determination, and sad delusion.

What a waste, and what an odd legacy.

In response to my post Let the Games End, commenter Karl notifies me that a petition to revoke the Winter Olympic Games in Russia in 2014 has been started.

If you want a badge for your site this is the place to go.

It is the least we can do.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

Yesterday I wrote a long post about Barack Obama's long relationship with Bill Ayers. What did not occur to me was that my criticism of Bill Ayers might very well be interpreted as racist. That's because my criticism of Ayers is necessarily criticism of Obama, and all criticism of Obama is racist:

In his color-coded article, "The Color-Coded Campaign," John Heilemann doesn't just hint that racial prejudice will prevent Barack Obama from winning the White House. He states it directly and without equivocation. The reason America's first black major party presumptive presidential nominee hasn't blown out the intractably boring and uninspiring John McCain in the polls, given "surging" Democratic voter registration and voters' disenchantment with Republicans, is his skin color.

It wouldn't have anything to do with Obama's liberal beliefs, inexperience, gaffes, and inconsistencies, would it? No, it's because he's black, says Heilemann and other liberals. Lurking just below the surface of any white person's criticism of Barack Obama is racial bias. Heilemann's article leaves the impression that Obama longs to take the high road and rise above such distractions; Republicans and other white people just won't let him.

I was all set to update the previous post with a couple of videos showing how unrepentant Ayers and his wife are. (To them, America remains the enemy -- "the beast" to be exact.)

But because Ayers and Dohrn are longtime friends and collaborators with Obama, these videos probably have to be considered racist.

Readers are warned accordingly.

Here they're helping out Ward Churchill:

Here's the November 30, 2007 MSU SDS Reunion:

And here's Part 2, if you can stand another racist video ("inside the belly of the beast"):

My apologies.

UPDATE: Glenn Reynolds has a new Insta-Poll asking readers which of the following issues they think Obama is least anxious to talk about:

His relationship with Bill Ayers

His position on abortion

His childhood in Indonesia

His relationship with Jeremiah Wright

Progress in Iraq

Normally I would never have thought of abortion and Iraq as race issues, but I'm learning.

Harry Reid says coal and oil are making us sick. He has that right. High oil prices are funding jihadis and the new Russian Military machine. The high price of oil is killing Iraqis and killing Georgians. It is also severely squeezing the poor in America. And here you probably thought the Democrats were the champions of the poor. I guess he champions the right of the poor to decide if they want to eat this winter or freeze to death.

Phil Plait, the Bad Astronomer and incoming president of the James Randi Educational Foundation, has a post about Iran's failed satellite launch, but what interests me more is the text of Ahmadinejad's desperate prayer (quoted in turn from MSNBC):

Ahmadinejad was present at this launch on Saturday, and offered a prayer before liftoff: "In the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate. O God! We beseech you to hasten the lofty advent of your heir [the hidden Shiite imam]. O God! Present him with good health and your assistance; and grant us the honor of being his best companions and to testify before him."

Emphasis added, of course.

Here's how I imagine the scene:

There is talk of denying the Russians the Winter Olympic games in 2014.

Pennsylvania's Democratic Rep. Allyson Y. Schwartz and Republican Bill Shuster , the co-chairs of the House Georgia Caucus, announced they intend to introduce a resolution when Congress returns calling on the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to find a new venue for the winter games.

The resolution states that the Russia's invasion of the Georgian republic makes it an unacceptable host site and notes that Sochi is located about 20 miles from the current conflict zone.

"Russia must realize that its actions in Georgia will not be ignored by the international community. We stand by Georgia, our friend and ally, and call on the IOC to designate a new venue for the Russian Olympics," Schwartz said in a statement.

If a war starts up in the middle (or at the beginning) of the Olympics, that could be especially handy for purposes of finding victims (er, contestants) for the new sports. Perhaps we could start with an Olympic roping and throat slitting contest. Or maybe a pillage and intimidation race. And for the really adventurous a rape sprint and a rape marathon. You give the woman a head start and if the male catches her it is totally free style. No killing though. That should be reserved for the throat slitting contest.

I think this one case where it is past time for the games to end.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

For about five years America is going to depend on the Russians for access to the Space Station. Suppose because of happenings in Georgia the Russians decline to do their part?

"The new challenge we have is that for approximately five years, the plan -- which is a very bad plan but is the only plan that NASA and the administration and Congress have approved -- is to be dependent on the Russian Soyuz vehicle to get people to and from the international space station," said Tom Feeney, (R-FL). "And so now, with the political realities with Russia invading Georgia, we have a new wrinkle thrown in."

Full speed ahead with private efforts to get into space in the same way the US Government sponsored air mail contracts to get the fledgling aircraft industry off the ground.

How about a competition to get private industry to supply the space station?

Cross Posted at Power and Control

This is not my first post about the unrepentent terrorist Bill Ayers (to say nothing of his thoroughly evil wife Bernadine Dohrn). I've long thought that Obama's relationship with Ayers is far more serious than his interactions with Jeremiah Wright, but unlike Jeremiah Wright, Obama has yet to denounce or repudiate Ayers.

Far from it; he's now opted for full coverup mode, and I think it's because Obama knows that his relationship with Bill Ayers has the potential to make the Jeremiah Wright affair look like a cakewalk.

We're not talking about an outspoken anti-American preacher; Ayers is a longtime, sworn enemy of the United States who regrets that the Weather Underground did not bomb enough. I find it hard to believe that anyone in a serious position to be running for president would have a close association with such a man.

This is not to say that I judge people by their associations. Lord knows I have associated with criminals, dangerous radicals I will not name, and people whose conduct would shock most of this blog's readers. I think it would be horribly unfair to attribute their guilt to me in any way or to make a judgment that I am a bad person because I have associated with bad people.

But I must make two crucial distinctions at the outset between my associations and Barack Obama's. First, I am not running for president for God's sake! I've led a colorful life fraught with tragedies and mistakes, and I'm not about to consider running for anything. If I did, depending on the importance of the office, I would expect a certain level of scrutiny, and I would assume my opponent would make the most of the negatives in my past. That's just the way it is. Or at least the way it's supposed to be. (Except, it seems, in Obama's case...)

Second, there is a distinction between associating with someone and sharing the philosophy of that person. Obama did a lot more than "associate" with Bill Ayers in the ordinary sense. They were politically associated, and the Ayers/Weather Underground variety of terrorism was absolutely, 100% driven by political considerations. When a hard core unrepentant terrorist Marxist like Ayers gets behind someone politically, makes him the Chairman of the Board of a key project (as it appears happened), and then helps launch his career in elected office, that's a lot more egregious, in my view, than if they'd merely been drinking buddies at a local bar.

There's association, and then there's association. The sort of association which is being covered up is precisely the type of association which should worry the hell out of every voter in the country.

Back in April (doubtless thinking this would all blow over and would never be an issue) Barack Obama made two different statements about Bill Ayers.

From what Obama said at the debate, you'd think he barely knew who Ayers was:

This is a guy who lives in my neighborhood, who's a professor of English in Chicago, who I know and who I have not received some official endorsement from. He's not somebody who I exchange ideas from on a regular basis.

And the notion that somehow as a consequence of me knowing somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago when I was 8 years old, somehow reflects on me and my values, doesn't make much sense, George.

In an interview with Chris Wallace ten days later, Obama remembered Ayers' field, but characterized him as "a 60 plus year old individual":

Now, Mr. Ayres is a 60 plus year old individual who lives in my neighborhood, who did something that I deplore 40 years ago when I was six or seven years old. By the time I met him, he was a professor of education at the University of Illinois.

We served on a board together that had Republicans, bankers, lawyers, focused on education, who worked for Mayor Daley. Mayor Daley, the same Mayor Daley probably who when he was a state attorney prosecuted Mr. Ayres's wife for those activities, I (INAUDIBLE) the point is that to somehow suggest that in any way I endorse his deplorable acts 40 years ago, because I serve on a board with him.

That "60 plus year old individual" should have been a tip-off. What on earth does Ayers' age have to do with anything? As it happens, I'm a "50 plus year old individual." And Charles Manson (of whom the Weather Underground were unabashed admirers) happens to be a "70 plus year old individual."

Why say something like that unless the goal is to obfuscate rather than illuminate?

I think the evidence is becoming overwhelming that the goal is (and has all along been) a coverup.

After reading Stanley Kurtz's entire account about the University of Illinois's "last-minute decision to block access to the documents," I was shocked that a taxpayer-funded library would be assisting a coverup involving a matter of extreme national importance as to how closely a future president worked with an unrepentent terrorist and avowed enemy of this country.

When Obama made his first run for political office, articles in both the Chicago Defender and the Hyde Park Herald featured among his qualifications his position as chairman of the board of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, a foundation where Ayers was a founder and guiding force. Obama assumed the Annenberg board chairmanship only months before his first run for office, and almost certainly received the job at the behest of Bill Ayers. During Obama's time as Annenberg board chairman, Ayers's own education projects received substantial funding. Indeed, during its first year, the Chicago Annenberg Challenge struggled with significant concerns about possible conflicts of interest. With a writ to aid Chicago's public schools, the Annenberg challenge played a deeply political role in Chicago's education wars, and as Annenberg board chairman, Obama clearly aligned himself with Ayers's radical views on education issues. With Obama heading up the board and Ayers heading up the other key operating body of the Annenberg Challenge, the two would necessarily have had a close working relationship for years (therefore "exchanging ideas on a regular basis"). So when Ayers and Dorhn hosted that kickoff for the first Obama campaign, it was not a random happenstance, but merely further evidence of a close and ongoing political partnership. Of course, all of this clearly contradicts Obama's dismissal of the significance of his relationship with Ayers.

This much we know from the public record, but a large cache of documents housed in the Richard J. Daley Library at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), is likely to flesh out the story. That document cache contains the internal files of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge. The records in question are extensive, consisting of 132 boxes, containing 947 file folders, a total of about 70 linear feet of material. Not only would these files illuminate the working relationship between Obama and Bill Ayers, they would also provide significant insight into a web of ties linking Obama to various radical organizations, including Obama-approved foundation gifts to political allies. Obama's leadership style and abilities are also sure to be illuminated by the documents in question.

Please consider contacting the president of the University of Illinois system, B. Joseph White, to ask him to take immediate public steps to insure the safety of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge records, to release the identity of the collection's donor, and above all to swiftly make the collection available to me, and to the public at large. You can find an e-mail link for White here. Telephone, fax, and mailing addresses for White's offices can be found here .

414 Administrative Office Building, MC-760
1737 W. Polk St.
Chicago, IL 606l2
Phone: 312-413-9097
Fax: 312-413-8301
364 Henry Administration Building, MC-346
506 S. Wright St.
Urbana, IL 61801
Phone: 2l7-333-3070
Fax: 217-333-3072

B. Joseph White
President
bjwhite@uillinois.edu

I was referred to Thomas Hardy in the University Relations Deparment. He stated that the records were "provided as a gift" and that the University had not known that anyone had been looking at them until recently. Whereupon the University "realized that a deed of gift had not been finalized." They are (says Hardy) "not sure what circumstances were and why the deed was not provided," but he said they "would work to get documents finalized," either by working with donor or if things cannot be worked out, they'll return the documents to the donor. The University's position is that it does not own the documents, and thus cannot make them available.

I don't know the law in this area, but it strikes me that if something is put in a publicly-funded library for a period of years, at some point it ought to cease being private property. I also doubt very much that the University goes out of its way to check for a "deed of gift" document every time someone wants to look at an item in its repository.

Furthermore, the Chicago Annenberg Challenge was a non-profit charity, not someone's personal business records. Presumably, there's some sort of duty of accountability anyway -- regardless of where the records are located.

Stanley Kurtz has an update here which reflects pretty much the same position as what Mr. Hardy told me.

Kurtz also links Steve Diamond's most recent post on the subject. Diamond -- who has been repeatedly credited as the first to expose the close and lengthy working CAC relationship between Ayers and Obama is all over the University's lame "deed of gift" claim as a legalistic subterfuge:

...it's not the crime, it's the cover up and now the University of Illinois has provided the cover up.

Ironic, that a public university would attempt to prevent a legitimate author and journalist - with a Ph.D. in Anthropology from Harvard to boot - from accessing documents legitimately housed in their library. Ironic, and possibly illegal.

The flimsy manufactured excuse - most likely provided to the library by the University's general counsel - is that the University does not have a "deed of gift" which the university contends is required for it to, legitimately, claim possession of the archived material.

Unfortunately, this is a bad reading of the law.

...the larger question here is - why the concern? why the alarm bells? why the cover-up? is it simply because Dr. Kurtz is with National Review, the conservative magazine founded by William F. Buckley?

One remaining possibility, of course, is that somehow word that there was interest in the materials was leaked to Bill Ayers, who conceived of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, co-authored the original successful $49.2 million grant proposal, and then co-chaired the key operative body of the CAC, the Chicago School Reform Collaborative. The original CAC offices were housed in the same building as Ayers' office, rent free courtesy of the University. That was also where Ayers housed his Small Schools Workshop, headed by his old SDS buddy, the Maoist Mike Klonsky, which received a $175,000 grant from, you guessed it, the CAC, whose board was chaired by Barack Obama.

Ayers has been pretty mum of late and maybe quite nervous about the possibility that a close look at the day to day records of the CAC will reveal more about what I have already found out: that he and Barack Obama had a close working relationship during the life of the CAC. The CAC actively and aggressively intervened in a major political war going on in Chicago in the mid 90s over school reform - against the goals of the powerful Chicago mayor, Richard Daley.

(Emphasis added.)

As the saying goes, the coverup is worse than the crime. But if Diamond is right, what's being covered up might be pretty bad.

Unfortunately for Senator Obama, what might only stink in Chicago - a relationship with an ex-terrorist who had an authoritarian agenda in mind for Chicago school kids - is far more damaging on the national political scene.

If Obama assisted Ayers and his radical efforts, little wonder there's a coverup. He'd better pray that the coverup works, because if middle America ever gets wind of it, he'll never be elected president. Nor should he be.

There's a lot more to this than guilt by "association." It's called involvement.

What's being covered up might be more damaging than the coverup itself.

(I know the usual rule is that the coverup is worse than the crime, but I think this might be an exception.)

ADDITIONAL NOTE: For most of the above links to Steve Diamond's posts, I'm indebted Tom Maguire, who has been all over this, and who credits Diamond for breaking the story.

MORE: Another thing that should have been a tip-off was Obama's characterization of Ayers as a "professor of English." Not only is Ayers well known as a professor of Education, but their their long association together -- in the field of education -- makes it virtually impossible for Obama to have forgotten Ayers' field.

I suppose it's possible that Obama misspoke, and said "English" when he meant "Education." But the idea that he didn't know Ayers' field was is laughable.

UPDATE: Tom Maguire has more on the coverup, and thinks Obama might not want the public to know anything about the Obama-Ayers educational effort because it was a flop:

...why the cover-up? My guess is that the Obama campaign recognizes that education reform is a hot topic with voters everywhere. Obama, the man with limited executive experience, might not want to highlight his executive belly-flop here, undertaken in partnership with a hard left unrepentant domestic terrorist. But that is just a guess.

I think it's obvious that Obama does not want voters to know about his close working association with Ayers or the fact that their joint effort ended in failure. But if Steve Diamond is right, might not success have been even worse?

Can't this still be spun to Obama's advantage? I'm not running the Obama campaign for him, but maybe the voters should be happy that thanks to Barack Obama's "help," an unrepentant terrorist failed to take over the Chicago public school system!

UPDATE: Don't miss Tom Maguire's Pajama's Media piece, "Obama, Ayers and the Annenberg Challenge Cover-Up."

Read the article at the Wall Street Journal. My friend Tom Ligon is featured as well as Richard Hull. Read the back story on how the article came about at Talk Polywell.

You can follow developments in this line of research and McCain's interest at: Fusion Report 13 June 008.

You can also read more about Tom Ligon's efforts at World's Simplest Fusion Reactor Revisited.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

Update:

Commenter Schwimmer at my post Democrats Strike Out had this to say:

And so it begins. The party which has controlled the White House for the past 8 years and which has controlled Congress for the past 12 of 14 years is now the party of new ideas. The Democrats are rightfully trying to pursue an energy policy that will bring immediate relief as well as long-term solutions. They are doing so in a measured, thoughtful manner. The GOP is only trying for a last-minute land grab for Big Oil, prior to November when they will go into political irrelevance for the next decade or so.

See you in November.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

I was commenting at Althouse about Obama's performance on the stump:

Without a script Obama is a doofus.

Really? A doofus? You've been watching to many "Leave it to Beaver" reruns.

And Obama is still a doofus when he has to speak off the cuff.

Did you know we could save two trillion barrels of oil (the amount of American oil shale) by just inflating our tires? That is a heck of a lot of inflation.

I think Obama has been captured by Big Air. I guess that would make him an airhead.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

(and who isn't) you may not have read the Bleat in too long a time. Well, here's one worth reading (though you'll want to skip down a bit past the candle):

Well, let's see what's up with the Old Scout this week. Garrison Keillor's column - America's most peculiar example of a fine writer willingly demonstrating his shortcomings as a short-form essayist - begins with this startling observation:

"People accuse us old liberals of smarmy self-righteousness and God knows they are right."

They do? They are? People accuse self-righteous people of self-righteousness; seems to be enough to go around regardless of one's opinion on regulation and taxation, but I suspect he's winding up to a justification, not a condemnation.

It's all good fun and sage words on things political.

Barack Obama is doing his best to link John McCain to a vaguely labeled "machinery," and he just can't stop talking about a certain "book." Better worry, because things could get ugly:

Things could get ugly in the coming weeks, he warned.

"They've got a whole machinery that they're cranking out," Obama continued. "They've got a book about me, that just kind of sprung full bore out of this guy's head."

"John McCain, all he wants to do is talk about me. They know they can't win on the issues. So what they'll do is they'll try to scare people. He's risky. He's risky. We're not sure."

It's an old playbook, he continued, but Obama said, it's not going to work this time. "Not only do you have a candidate who doesn't take any guff. Not only do you have a candidate who will hit back swiftly and forcefully and truthfully.But you've also got American people who are rising up all over the country and saying, enough is enough."

I have to assume that the "they" Obama is referring to consists of Jerome Corsi (author of the flawed, conspiracy-theory-laden The Obama Nation), and attempting to transform him and the book into a vital part of the McCain machine.

Nothing could be further from the truth, but what is not being pointed out is that Jerome Corsi is anything but a McCain supporter.

Far from it.

He penned a series of WorldNetDaily attacks attacking McCain for (among other things) being Soros connected (and possibly abortion-friendly) and for having a sovereignty-undermining Hispanic activist on his staff.

And what about this?

In Jerome Corsi's new book "McCain, Let The Truth Be Told" Corsi confirms that McCain publically denounced the USA while in Vietnam in order to gain favorable treatment over his fellow US POWs in violation of American law. Corsi also proves that McCain was responsible for the deaths of 168 sailors causing the fire on the USS Forrestal and evading prosecution because his father was an Admiral. Corsi alleges that McCain had a homosexual tryst with his NVC chief interrogator while being a guest of the Viet Cong and states that not only is McCain too old to begin a presidential term, that due to brainwashing by the Communists during the Vietnam war, McCain is a danger not only to the nation, but to himself as well. That's probably why back in 2000 that Bush was selected over him as it was pointed out by McCain's own party that he is mentally unfit to lead. Corsi finishes off by successfully demonstrating how McCain's voting record puts him squarely in the anti-freedom gun confiscation camp; proving that he's a gun grabber with liberal ideas.

By Barack Obama's logic, "they" (meaning Obama and the Democrats) are obviously behind Corsi's allegations. I mean, isn't it a well known fact that the Democrats love to accuse Republicans of homosexual trysts?

What this all means is that Jerome Corsi is obviously working for Obama.

Case closed.

(Bear in mind that I've gotta keep my sense of humor.....)

MORE: The Corsi-Obama machine has also accused McCain of getting his money from organized crime.

The situation is even uglier than I thought.

Commenter RAH at the Belmont Club (5:26 pm) speculates on how the Green Movement and CO2 hysteria have played into the hands of the Russians.

Russian President Medeyev was Gazprom President. In his new position he is buying contracts from other countries. Venezuela sells oil to Russia; Libya just signed a contract with Medeyev and Gazprom. I believe that they got the contracts from Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan. Saudi Arabia provides oil to the US as well as Kuwait and they are our client countries.

They have been trying to secure outside sources for oil and gas. They recently this spring went to the artic to lay claim to the sources that may be there. Both Sweden and Finland are contesting those areas. Canada also has interest in the artic. The sea ice in the artic actually has changed and the melt has been prominent in the Russian area. The Canadian ice has been getting thicker. The Russia took advantage of the open sea to explore and lay claim. Russia has been the primary interest in the PARS field in Iran that the French company just pulled out.

So Gazprom has known about the need to get more sources since this is Medeyev's obsession. The clash for oil sources will be the 21st century issue for some time to come. The fools who decry no oil for blood are clueless about how seriously nations will get to secure their energy. Energy is really the life and blood of a nations economy.

After the Soviet fall the Communist and Marxists groups and agitators went into the Green Movement. The Green Movement and the global warming scare have been targeted at Europe. Now it is curious that Russia has been from the 1990's trying to become Europe's energy supplier as the Green movement has insisted that power generation be only from natural gas and not coal that Germany has in abundance. Also they forced Germany under Schroeder to phase out the nuclear power generators. Later Schroeder went and worked for Medeyev's Gazprom.

There is a true collusion from the promoters of Global Warming and the Green Movement that has been strangling Europe to work against its own national interests.
The vociferous attack against those that speak out about global warming as a product of human produced CO2 has been very strong and picked up by the liberal left and almost accepted doctrine in the West. Now we are just starting to show the cracks in that movement and science with bad methodology and sensors and cook algorithms.
Now what would be a good idea is to look at the funding of these groups and see if they have been funded or a disinformation campaign by Russia. The timing is right and the interests do coincide.

Russia never stopped working against the US and since we are their competitor on the world stage it is not surprising. Russia has fomented terrorism in Libya from the 1970's and then in Syria and Iraq and Iran. They are also working in South America with Venezuela and Bolivia. So Russia has never stopped the Cold War it just went in different direction and form

In any case it also fits with the idea of the Uber Enviros being like Watermelons: Green on the outside Red on the inside. They should be ashamed of themselves. Starting resource wars and all especially in the midst of plenty (at current prices).

Cross Posted at Power and Control

American Thinker recounts the latest moves in Congress with respect to drilling for new oil resources.

After reporting yesterday on Nancy Pelosi's desire to develop a comprehensive energy bill instead of an up or down vote on lifting off shore drilling restrictions, the GOP immediately saw through her transparent attempt to make the bill so poisonous some in her own party could never vote for it and have rejected the idea outright.

What do the Republicans want?

Republicans lambasted House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's (D-Calif.) energy plan Saturday advising her to "get out of the way" if she was not going to accept GOP solutions to the energy crisis.

In her Saturday radio address Pelosi announced that Democrats would consider opening up parts of the outer continental shelf for drilling as a part of a broad new energy plan that will be unveiled in the coming weeks.

[snip]

Republicans soundly rejected Pelosi's proposal - indicating it was too little too late.

"Madame Speaker, we ask you to work with us to help Americans feeling pain at the pump by developing more American energy," said Republican Study Committee Chairman Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas). "If you refuse, we simply ask you get out of the way and allow us to help the people that sent us here.They understand how flawed and out of touch your caucus is on energy issues, and so do we."

Republican Conference Chairman Adam Putnam (R-Fla.) added, ""There is no better, more qualified spokesperson for the Democratic Party's failed energy policies than Speaker Nancy Pelosi."

Most of Russia's current power and influence comes from its production and control of energy. According to the DOE, "Russia's economic growth over the past seven years has been driven primarily by energy exports, given the increase in Russian oil production and relatively high world oil prices during the period."

"Russia's economy is heavily dependent on oil and natural gas exports. In order to manage windfall oil receipts, the government established a stabilization fund in 2004. By the end of 2007, the fund was expected to be worth $158 billion, or about 12 percent of the country's nominal GDP. According to calculations by Alfa Bank, the fuel sector accounts for about 20.5 percent of GDP, down from around 22 percent in 2000. According to IMF and World Bank estimates, the oil and gas sector generated more than 60 percent of Russia's export revenues (64% in 2007), and accounted for 30 percent of all foreign direct investment (FDI) in the country."

Russia's major market for natural gas is Europe.

Mikheil Saakashvili, the Georgian president, said "there is no such notion anymore in Georgia as Russian peacekeepers".

"There can be no Russian peacekeepers, these are just Russian forces."

Saakashvili was speaking at a news conference in Tbilisi with Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, at which Merkel gave her support to Georgia's bid to join Nato, an ambition that is strongly opposed by Russia.

"Georgia will become a member of Nato if it wants to - and it does want to," Merkel said.

And in other news Ukraine has announced that it will make its Russian missile shield data available to the West.

KIEV -- Ukraine said Saturday that it was ready to make its missile-warning systems available for Western countries after Russia announced that it was pulling out of a long-term cooperation agreement involving them.

A ministry statement said Russia's abrogation earlier this year of an agreement involving two tracking stations allowed Ukraine to cooperate with other countries on missile-warning systems and satellite tracking.

Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko issued a decree last week putting an end to Ukraine's participation in the accord in view of Russia's own abrogation of the deal.

A top Ukrainian security official, meanwhile, on Saturday discounted any notion of a separatist rebellion in Crimea as President Viktor Yushchenko proposed Kremlin talks on the issue of the Russian fleet based there.

Yushchenko enraged Moscow this week by ordering restrictions on the movement of ships in the Black Sea Fleet, based in the Crimean port of Sevastopol. Russia's military vowed to ignore the rules, saying the fleet answered only to Russia's president.

It looks like the firm stand of the US and the former Soviet Republics has stiffened the resolve of Germany and NATO. And who would understand how the lack of resolve on the part of its opponents could lead to a larger war than Germany? Evidently they still study the moves of the Austrian Corporal there. It is too bad France could not redeem its honor by announcing the welcoming of Georgia into NATO. However, what better way to finally rehabilitate Germany than giving them the honor?

And the Democrats? I wonder how many will survive the November election? Evidently they never took to heart the contradiction: No Blood For Oil or No Drilling For Oil? They haven't yet figured which policy to pursue. The Republicans have figured it out. Thank the Maker. And Bush? I think he will be remembered for a long time as the protector of liberty and self government in the former Soviet Republics.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

Dennis here. I've been drawing again and have plans with some old friends to revive a few dusty old ideas for comic books and strips. But I've never quite found the right idea for this site. I tried my hand at political cartoons a time or two (or five) here, but it never quite caught on. Finally there's an idea brewing that I think may work, but in the mean time (and it may just end up being a long mean time) I thought I'd post some sketches I did today while trying out a new pen.

As you can see I still had my mind on trying some political cartoons, though I'm so behind the times I'm still focused on the Axis of Evil.

So here's a proposition:

UPDATE: Drew, you're so right, and I'm already feeling his wrath:

I've expressed skepticism about global warming, but it's not often that I see politicians doing the same -- especially in New Jersey:

Responding to various new scientific reports questioning the concept of global warming, Assemblyman Michael Doherty today called on Governor Corzine to hold off on proposing any new regulations associated with the state's Global Warming Response Act and urged the Legislature to repeal that act when it returns to legislative business after Labor Day.

"There are many credible members of the scientific community who have questioned the theory of global warming, and now we have some scientists actually suggesting the earth's temperatures may be entering a period of dramatic cooling," said Doherty, R-Warren and Hunterdon. "With this growing level of scientific uncertainty, it makes no sense to enact a new set of economically damaging regulations prompted by the global warming hysteria of recent years."

The Global Warming Response Act was signed last year by Corzine, which requires the state to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 20 percent by 2020 and 80 percent by 2050. The law required the state Department of Environmental Protection to release a report detailing how the state would meet the goals, with recommendations now expected to be issued this fall.

According to recent news reports, a top observatory that has been measuring sun spot activity predicts that global temperatures will drop by two degrees over the next 20 years as solar activity slows and the planet drastically cools down. They suggest this could potentially herald the onset of a new ice age. Following the end of the sun's most active period in over 11,000 years, the last 10 years have displayed a clear cooling trend as temperatures post-1998 leveled out and are now decreasing.

Maybe we should be taking ameliorative action to warm the planet. What if it turns out that what we've been doing is the best overall course for mankind and the planet?

And how do we know that the drive to stop carbon emissions might end up making the Ice Age worse than it would have been?

What about the Precautionary Principle?

Not to be an alarmist, but our real future may look like this:

A very grim scenario.

And the only way to prevent it is Nuremberg-style tribunals for Ice Age Deniers!

The Polish President is not a happy camper. He has issues with Germany and France.

WARSAW, Poland: Poland's president criticized the way France and Germany have handled the crisis between Russia and Georgia, accusing them Saturday of being too soft on Moscow due to their commercial ties with Russia.

Lech Kaczynski also said that European Union policy was being decided by the two EU giants without taking into consideration the views of new EU members such as Poland that once fell under Moscow's control during the Cold War.

"Once again, it turns out that the real decisions in this organization are being made between Berlin and Paris," Kaczynski said in an interview published by the daily Rzeczpospolita and also posted on his official Web site.

"Saying that the Union will have a common policy toward Russia is laughable," Kaczynski said.

He said that French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel were setting EU policy toward Russia, even though it is the easternmost members that have the most at stake.

Who stands with the Poles and Ukrainians and Georgians? The Americans. The Europeans are taking the same attitude towards Russia re: Georgia as they did towards Germany in the Rhineland incident in 1936. Or Poland in 1939. It is not our problem. And if it is a problem who cares about the Georgians and besides there is nothing we can do (so true) or will do (truer still).

If France and Germany want to be de facto Russian allies I say it is time to dissolve NATO. If they want some one to come to their aid in case of war perhaps they could enlist Russian help. Or perhaps China would be interested. Or their buddies in the Islamic world. Axis of weasels indeed.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

It seems Russian forces in Georgia have gone static.

IGOETI, Georgia -- Russian forces built ramparts of earth around tanks and posted sentries on a hill in central Georgia on Saturday, seemingly digging in amid Western pressure for Moscow to withdraw its forces under a cease-fire deal signed by Russia's president.

Near Igoeti, a Georgian journalist photographed a Russian armored personnel carrier that had broken down and was set afire by its occupants, who preferred to destroy it rather than let it fall into the hands of the Georgians.

In addition there are rumors the Russians have withdrawn their jets from the battle space. That is something you don't do in mobile warfare. It means death. Just ask Rommel.

George Patton had a few things to say about mobile warfare:

"I don't want to get any messages saying, "I am holding my position." We are not holding a Goddamned thing. Let the Germans do that. We are advancing constantly and we are not interested in holding onto anything, except the enemy's balls. We are going to twist his balls and kick the living shit out of him all of the time. Our basic plan of operation is to advance and to keep on advancing regardless of whether we have to go over, under, or through the enemy.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

Stories like this provide a constant reminder of how important it is to vote against the activist left and their political supporters:

On June 20, 2006, William Bruce approached his mother as she worked at her desk at home and struck killing blows to her head with a hatchet.

Two months earlier, William, a 24-year-old schizophrenic, had been released from Riverview Psychiatric Center in Augusta, Maine, against the recommendations of his doctors. "Very dangerous indeed for release to the community," wrote one in William's record.

But the doctor's notes also show that William's release was backed by government-funded patient advocates. According to medical records, the advocates -- none of them physicians -- appear to have fought for his right to refuse treatment, to have coached him on how to answer doctors' questions and to have resisted the medical staff's efforts to contact his parents. As one doctor wrote, William told him his advocates believed he is "not a danger, and should be released."

William's father, Joe Bruce, obtained his son's medical records from Riverview eight months after the killing. "I read through the records and I just remember crying all the way through," Joe Bruce says. "My God, these people knew exactly what they were sending home to us."

Some doctors, hospital administrators and mental-health veterans argue that advocates are endangering the mentally ill and the public by too often fighting for patients' right to refuse treatment. Many advocates "have a strong bias," says Robert Liberman, a director of a psychiatric rehabilitation program at the University of California, Los Angeles.

"I don't know if they are doing people a service when they assert the right of mentally-ill individuals to remain psychotic," says Ron Honberg, director of policy and legal affairs for the National Alliance on Mental Illness, an education, support and advocacy group.

What galls me the most about this is that the patient advocates are getting my money. By enabling people deemed dangerously psychotic to roam about and kill, they're arguably as dangerous to society as the killers. And of course, the patients who end up not getting the treatment they need because of activist intervention are also victims.

This cruel scheme hurts everyone.

It would be bad enough if some group of crackpot volunteers ran around gratuitously freeing dangerous people. But forcing the taxpayers to pay for such antics strikes me as profoundly immoral.

It's worth noting that when the legislation enabling this nonsense (the "Protection and Advocacy for Mentally ill Individuals Act of 1986") was passed, President Reagan signed it. Did they realize that the result would be stuff like this? Perhaps Republican politicians will start thinking about the consequences, and perhaps they'll cut some of the funding that goes to these activist groups; I don't think the Democrats will.

That's because patient advocates and their ilk are one of the Democratic core constituencies.

Or am I exaggerating?

Are any of them Republicans?

Yep. Russia is exporting women. Always the sign of a country in decline when the women no longer care for the local men. This has got to be a blow to Russian pride.

As a commenter from Norway said in response to one of my posts here at Classical Values, the chief exports of Russia to Norway are criminals, cheap vodka, and whores.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

There's been talk lately that Russia has its eyes on the Ukraine, and I think I've discovered their first move:

Hollywood actor Sylvester Stallone, mighty destroyer of Soviet opponents in the "Rambo" and "Rocky" movies, now plans to advertise Russian vodka.

Russian vodka producer Synergy said on Friday it had signed a one-year contract with Stallone, who will appear in television and newspaper advertisements for the vodka brand Russian Ice, starting September 1.

Sources valued the deal at $1 million.

Big deal, right? I mean, a Hollywood star taking a million dollars to hawk a product? It happens all the time. But there's something just a little sinister happening here. Just you wait for it:

Stallone -- whose film character John Rambo killed Soviet troops by the dozen in Afghanistan and whose Rocky Balboa humiliated Soviet boxer Ivan Drago -- will advertise the product under the slogan: "There is a bit of Russian in all of us."

Not me. And I have serious doubts whether there's any Russian in the Italian Stallion, either. But let's hear them out:

"The advertising campaign concept was based on the fact that the actor has Russian roots," Synergy said in a statement, referring to Stallone's great-grandmother, Rosa Rabinovich, from the Ukrainian town of Odessa.

Aha! If Stallone's great-grandmother from Ukraine was Russian, then that means Ukraine is Russian. Do you think I'm paranoid now?

Either that or starved for material.

MORE: Can it be any coincidence that the company is called Synergy, and that Russia has designs on reintegrating former Soviet republics? Synergy is just another way of saying "Workers of the world, unite!"

In an earlier post about the Georgia situation, I agreed with Victor Davis Hanson's characterization of the moral bankruptcy of the Western Left.

From Chomsky on down, the ability of the Left to both scold the United States while obsequiously apologizing for villainous regimes (as long as they're anti-American) never ceases to amaze me.

But the above is a generalization. In fairness, I have to admit that not all apologists for anti-American villainy are on the left. This morning, Pat Buchanan (who sounds for the world like a newly minted Russian lobbyist) reminded me that I shouldn't be too quick to assume that "only the Left" would cozy up to the Bear at a time like this:

American charges of Russian aggression ring hollow. Georgia started this fight -- Russia finished it. People who start wars don't get to decide how and when they end.

Russia's response was "disproportionate" and "brutal," wailed Bush.

True. But did we not authorize Israel to bomb Lebanon for 35 days in response to a border skirmish where several Israel soldiers were killed and two captured? Was that not many times more "disproportionate"?

That Putin took the occasion of Saakashvili's provocative and stupid stunt to administer an extra dose of punishment is undeniable. But is not Russian anger understandable? For years the West has rubbed Russia's nose in her Cold War defeat and treated her like Weimar Germany.

The problem with Buchanan is that he's such a good writer that I enjoy being annoyed -- even tortured -- by him. Almost as much as I enjoy being annoyed and tortured by James Wolcott (who these days is "light[ing] a little candle each evening that McCain will choose Joe Lieberman as his all-bran vice presidential sidekick--the Sunshine Boys of Cold War II.")

Such a paradox is nothing new. In Dr. Strangelove, Group Captain Lionel Mandrake admitted that his swinish torturers made good cameras:

...when they tortured you did you talk?

Group Capt. Lionel Mandrake: Ah, oh, no... well, I don't think they wanted me to talk really. I don't think they wanted me to say anything. It was just their way of having a bit of fun, the swines. Strange thing is they make such bloody good cameras.

I was commenting at Winds of Change and some one asked if Bush had thought through his moves:

And, of course, it helps to think through what comes next.

1. Poland gets an anti-missile defense.
2. Ukraine is working to expel the Russians from the Black sea.
3. Ukraine and Poland get mutual defense pacts with the US.
4. Its international prestige declines hourly.
5. It has made abundantly clear that doing business with it is a very risky proposition.
6. Its population is declining 1/2% a year
7. Its birth rate is 1.4 - replacement rate is 2.1
8. It exports its women - brides and white slavery

And it is not over yet.

As Canaris said to a Spanish diplomat who asked a similar question about Germany's leader of the time: "Calculated nothing at all."

The next question of course is what happens when Russia cuts off Europe's gas and oil?

My take on all this - Russian oil output is on the decline with the expulsion of Western oil companies. It has to conquer or die. Germany 1939. Japan 1941.

My guess? Russia is bluffing and its bluff has been called.

===

And of its arsenal of nuclear tipped missiles - how many will work when fired? As many as 30%? 50%? Or 10%?

When you bluff it is wisest not to let your opponent see your cards. i.e. had Russia pulled out after its initial depredations it might have kept its credibility intact. Now it has to show its cards or fold. Bush is calling their bluff.

Had Europe in the run up to WW2 stood firm on Czechoslovakia or Austria resisted the Anschluss, a general war in Europe might well have been avoided. I believe that is the motivation behind current events. Once you let the little guys get picked off it then comes to a bigger war not too much later.

"Britain and France had to choose between war and dishonor. They chose dishonor. They will have war." Winston Churchill

Cross Posted at Power and Control

Russia has threatened to nuke Poland.

The General Staff of the Armed Forces of Russia warns Poland that it may become a priority target for Russia in the event the USA deploys elements of its missile defense system on the territory of this East European nation. To put it in a nutshell, Russia may strike a nuclear blow on Poland, which is possible after the recent change of the Russian Federation defense doctrine.

"The USA is busy with its own missile defense system; it does not intend to defend Poland at this point. Poland lays itself open to attack giving the USA a permission to deploy the system. The country may become an object of Russia's reaction. Such targets are destroyed in the first instance," Anatoly Nogovitsin, Russia's Deputy Chief of Staff said commenting the recent agreement regarding the deployment of the US missile defense system in Poland.

Nogovitsin stated that Russia may use nuclear weapons in cases as stipulated by the defense doctrine.

"It clearly states that we can use nuclear weapons against the countries possessing nuclear weapons, against allies of such countries, if they somehow support them, and against those countries, which deploy other countries' nuclear weapons on their territories. Poland is aware of it," the general said.

Is there an Obama angle to all this? You knew it was coming.

I will cut investments in unproven missile defense systems...

...I will not weaponize space...

...I will slow development of future combat systems...

...and I will institute an independent "Defense Priorities Board" to ensure the quadrennial defense review is not used to justify unnecessary spending...

...I will set a goal of a world without nuclear weapons...

...and to seek that goal, I will not develop nuclear weapons...

...I will seek a global ban on the production of fissile material...

...and I will negotiate with Russia to take our ICBMs off hair-trigger alert...

...and to achieve deep cuts in our nuclear arsenals...

As to unproven missile defense systems, Obama might want to look at this video of a nice laser job knocking down missiles. And to think it is only a prototype.

In any case it looks like events are outrunning Obama's pronouncements. His August surprise. I wonder what surprises are in store for him in September, October, and November.

H/T Powerline and Powerline

The government's accusations of looting in the deserted town have been backed up by closed-circuit television images.

For those left behind every day has brought news of another promised troop pull-out which has never materialised, while they have struggled without electricity, fuel or water.

Gori is the closest town to the breakaway region of South Ossetia. Russia has stressed the need for it to be "secured". Soldiers have been rounding up Georgian weapons.

In Tbilisi, refugees try to pick up the pieces of their shattered lives, at least temporarily, waiting until they can return home. But the future holds few guarantees.

"It's all so difficult but our government is helping," said one woman. "You know I am very ashamed. We don't have any money left and I am so hungry."

In any case the losses for Russia keep coming. Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko wishes to have a word or two with the Russians.

"I sent an urgent request to the Russian president through official channels to start negotiations... to regulate our relations during military actions like those seen at the start of August," Yushchenko said in a statement.

Yushchenko on Wednesday signed a decree imposing new restrictions on the Black Sea fleet, that was described by Russia's foreign ministry as an "anti-Russian step."

The decree included a requirement that the Black Sea fleet, which is based in the port of Sevastopol, seek the permission of Ukraine's armed forces "at least 72 hours prior to ships or aircraft crossing the Ukrainian border."

The announcement heightened fears that Ukraine, a close ally of Tbilisi, could be caught up in a conflict that has raged in recent days between Russia and Georgia.

On Thursday a Ukrainian official said the decree would require Moscow to ask permission before returning ships active off the coast of Georgia.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

Bob Novella at the Rogues Gallery has more sensible information on metamaterials and invisibility than is found in the news reports, and has some disappointing words for all the nerds out there:

So many stories focus on the invisibility angle and there is some beef in that hamburger. This could potentially scale up and offer some impressive visible light invisibility but an inviso-cloak like Harry Potter might be unworkable. A moving flowing cloak maintaining stealth could be impossible or orders of magnitude more difficult not to mention that the cloak may need to be a hundred times bigger than the object it is cloaking. Harry would need a big backpack to put that in.

Personally, I'm disappointed that we'll never see Pluto's Helmet become a reality, though perhaps we can tip our own hats to the Greeks for inventing this fantasy mainstay and for prefiguring in some sense a bit of ultra-modern technology. It's most famously used by Perseus in the slaying of Medusa and escape from the Gorgons:

And truthfully, I think the coolest possible application would be one suggested by a commenter at the Rogues Gallery: a Romulan cloaking device. That should be far easier and more practical than a dumb old cloak.

If anyone has information on the attack of the Russian trolls - examples, how to spot them, ip addys etc. Please leave a comment. It will help us expose them and help them improve their game.

Shelves.

Other than the kitchen (and some rough wooden ones in the basement), this house doesn't have enough of them, and I have waaay too many books. Hiring a finish carpenter to build them was out of the question, so I shopped around, and found three 28 by 72-inch units on sale for only $25.00 each. Such a deal! All I had to do was assemble them, put them in place, and put the books on them!

(At least, so I thought.)

The boxed units were incredibly heavy and I could barely get them into my car. Hours later (with very sore arms and lower back), they were finally assembled. What I had wanted was a large bookcase that would take up most of a wall, and there was an ideal wall which would allow the three bookcases to be aggregated as one. The only problem was that there were only two electrical outlets in the entire room, one being located right in the middle of the wall slated to become a wall of books. Cutting a hole for an outlet in a bookcase seemed flaky, and running extension cords behind the bookcase seemed even flakier.

So I thought it over. Extending the outlet made sense, and raceway wiring does not look bad when done properly. So it was off to the store for materials.

But not so fast. The problem with the outlet I wanted to extend was that it was old and not grounded, and the nearest source for a good outlet was in an adjoining room. This meant drilling, fishing through walls, and many hours more work -- just so I could have a decent outlet.

But finally, the job was done, and I was able to put the shelves in place and screw them together as one large wall unit:

It's easy to say, "I just want some shelves for books."

But just one thing leads to just another thing, and pretty soon you're talking real work.

Quite incidentally, while I was working yesterday I heard a very odd droning sound in the air over the house.

It turned out to be the Goodyear Blimp -- flying directly over my yard!

Obviously, this is an omen from the gods. Perhaps they are telling me that there is something more important going on than the installation of my new shelves....

UPDATE:

A ride in the Goodyear Blimp

(Via Ann Arbor News.)

The Russian Federation has given the United States an ultimatum. It must choose between Georgia and Russia. The American answer was not long in coming.

Poland and the United States reached an agreement Thursday to base American missile interceptors in Poland, the prime minister said, going ahead with a plan that has angered Russia and threatened to escalate tensions with the region's communist-era master.

Speaking in an interview televised on news channel TVN24, Prime Minister Donald Tusk said the United States had agreed to help augment Poland's defenses with Patriot missiles in exchange for placing 10 missile defense interceptors in the eastern European country.

"We have crossed the Rubicon," he said, referring to U.S. consent to meet Poland's demands.

Tusk said the agreement was initialed by negotiators late Thursday in Warsaw and includes a "mutual commitment" between the two nations -- beyond that of NATO -- to come to each other's assistance in case of danger.

Russia's behavior in Georgia has definitely altered the world scene. Not to Russia's advantage. Had they kept their agreement to pull out of Georgia I believe this deal wouldn't have happened. Russia has definitely overplayed its hand.

H/T Instapundit.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

Is it 1939 all over again? No. Far from it. What we have is a much milder variety. What we have is a nudist war.

On the one side white bottoms burn in the sun. On the other side conservative swimming trunk-wearers turn up their noses at the naked beachgoers.

Now a heated argument has broken out between the exhibitionist Germans and the prudish Poles.

For the last fifty years sun-loving Germans have been preserving their naturist traditions from Ahlbeck (Mecklenburg-Vorpommern) to Swinemünde.

But following the Schengen agreement in December 2007 the fence separating the German and Polish parts of the beach was removed.

Now German nudists are battling the Poles for their freedom to prance around naked in the sun.

"It's ridiculous" said Swinemündes minister Edward Zajac. And Anja (28) from Poland, who clearly think the German nudists are real swines, said: "It's horrible. We would never bathe naked - we are Catholic."

According to the story some Poles are offended and some just want to watch. Let us hope the Poles and Germans can come together and put an end to this friction.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

The New York Times has a report:

Of gripping importance to the Georgian government now, Western diplomats and Georgian officials said, is whether the agreement gave the Russians room to interpret the occupation of Gori and a zone around the city as agreed upon in the cease-fire, thus allowing them to control the main east-west road through the country, isolating the capital, Tbilisi, from the Black Sea coast and cutting off important supply routes.

In response, the United States began sending troops to Georgia to oversee aid to the capital on Wednesday.

France brokered the deal as the country holding the rotating presidency of the European Union. Bernard Kouchner, the foreign minister of France, visited Tbilisi and left with a four-point cease-fire plan.

The conditions were: no use of force; cease hostilities; open humanitarian corridors in the conflict areas; and Georgian and Russian troops withdraw to their pre-war positions.

In meetings in Moscow, the Russians insisted on two additional points, the Georgian official said, and Mr. Sarkozy carried these demands to Georgia, landing shortly after 10 p.m. Tuesday and driving straight to the Parliament building to meet Mr. Saakashvili.

Negotiating from a position of strength, the Russians demanded the fifth point, allowing their troops to act in what was termed a peacekeeping role, even outside the boundaries of the separatist enclaves where the war began, with an understanding that later an international agreement might obviate this need.

The vague language of the fifth point allows Russian peacekeepers to "implement additional security measures" while awaiting an international monitoring mechanism.

Compare how the Russians will be treated long term in Georgia vs how the US is now seen in Iraq. So what is next? I expect long term pressure by American forces to get the Russians out of Georgia.

I expect mutual defense pacts among the states ringing Russia. I expect American trainers to join many of the Armies of those states. I expect they will be buying American arms even if they cost more than Russian equipment. Why support your enemy?

So who won? Long term the Georgians. They now have many more friends than they used to have.

What we know now is that the Russians have not changed their behavior. They can't be trusted. And their armed forces behave more like a gang of criminals than a professional military.

H/T Information Dissemination which has more links and a good discussion of the video and links.

Recently Chicago Magazine, the magazine of the University of Chicago, posted a short bit on a protest by a group of about 100 faculty members against the Milton Friedman Institute. The Chicago Maroon has more details.

More than 100 academic faculty members have united in protest over the University's soon-to-be established Milton Friedman Institute, sending a letter to President Robert Zimmer in which they take issue with the economics research institute's name and its foundational precepts, and requesting a meeting of the complete faculty to discuss their concerns.

...approximately eight percent of the University's faculty members were concerned enough over what they believe to be the Institute's potential biases that they formally expressed their concerns to Zimmer and Provost Thomas Rosenbaum.

"It was a heterogeneous group," said Bruce Lincoln, a professor at the Divinity School. "But we all felt a reason to discuss this."

Lincoln, who helped draft the letter, said that some of the issues raised by the faculty were a perceived ideological bias for the Institute toward a conservative agenda, disciplinary narrowness, and the amount of money being spent. The University plans to invest $200 million in the project.

"This endeavor could reinforce among the public a perception that the University's faculty lacks intellectual and ideological diversity," the faculty wrote.

Now for the irony part. In the same issue of the magazine, an article reprinted in the Maroon, discusses the best way to allocate scarce water resources where people have water rights. And what was the conclusion?

One solution, says Coursey, is to persuade senior-rights holders to curb their water consumption and sell the surplus to junior owners for profit. Under current laws, community members can't exchange or sell water rights; Coursey's market system would change that. Think of it like a lemonade stand, he says. "I have water. You want to buy it. We make a deal." Based on market prices, owners would decide whether to keep the water to which they're entitled or else lease or sell their rights on the open market.

"People are slowly but surely realizing the power of markets" to cope with scant environmental resources, says Coursey, whose past research includes evaluating the relative value people attach to environmental quality versus other public goods, such as education and safety. "Regulatory markets not only help you achieve your goals, but help you achieve them more efficiently." To this end, Coursey and researchers at the University of New Mexico (UNM) have conducted economic experiments to predict how a water market would work. Using UNM undergraduate volunteers to represent farmers, city water officials, and environmental groups, the researchers track quantities traded and sale prices under differing conditions, such as average water supply or predicted drought.

As with any stock exchange, participation in the Mimbres market is voluntary. "If you want to sit on your rear end and do the same thing that your great-grandfather did with the water, that's fine," says Coursey. Those who choose to buy and sell can boost their profits while also helping manage a scarce natural resource. "Greed," he says, "leads to a water system that is much more efficient than a situation where trading isn't allowed." Such avarice is good news for Mimbres residents who otherwise might not have enough water to go around.

So I sent an e-mail to Chicago Magazine saying:

I note in the latest Chicago Magazine (July-Aug. 2008) that 101 Professors decry naming an economics institute after Milton Friedman. In the same issue another scholar's work (Don Coursey) shows that property rights and greed are the best way to allocate scarce (water) resources.

Evidently there are a number of UC professors pontificating well outside their areas of expertise. Too bad there is no list (or a link to a list) of the 101 so future students can tell which professors to avoid.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

Commenter JL provides a list of the signers.

A man who runs a gay cruising site has taken flak for the crime of being a gay person who dared to support John McCain.

Reflecting on the rather strange rule that All Gays Must Support Barack Obama Or Else!, Richard Miniter asks some good questions:

Why should a particular sexual orientation demand a particular political orientation? Sweater-knitters and ice-skaters are not organized along political lines-and neither are all straight people expected to vote for one particular party. Why do Gay rights advocates demand lock-step political obedience? Indeed they seem as vicious against Gay dissenters as they are toward evangelical Christians.

The irony fascinates me, and I'm reminded of Anita Bryant putting gay rights on the cover of Newsweek in the 1970s and Jerry Falwell selling lurid videos filmed at Gay Pride events. All moral issues aside, I think people are titillated by such things, and they are a good way to get attention and bring traffic.

The problem for the attackers is that they bring attention and traffic to the people attacked. If I wrote a book and it wasn't selling, I'd be tickled pink to see WND attack it. With any luck, that might lead to bigger, more organized attacks -- the AFA, the FRC could chime in, and then maybe some angry television personalities.

This phenomenon of profiting from attacks is well known in the blogosphere -- something any unknown blogger lucky enough to be attacked by a big blogger knows. (That's why most big bloggers would ignore attacks by little bloggers, but few little bloggers would ignore attacks from big bloggers. Threats of litigation by the big against the little are even better.)

Which is why I think Miniter's concluding questions apply to both "sides":

What trouble do they have with a free society where everyone is entitled to go their own way? Why are they tribal, not pro-individual?

I can think of no better illustration of how seriously this threat is taken than the attempt by the Seattle public school system to define individualism as a form of racism.

(That very revealing definition has since has been purged of course, but they showed their hand.)

That is a take off on the "joke" going around that the Russian troops are "touring" the beautiful Georgian countryside. This has to be another complication for the Russians. This whole Georgian episode is spinning out of control for them. It has got to be bad for business. And if there is anything the gangsters in charge of Russia hate it is bad business.

A U.S. military cargo plane is heading to Georgia with relief supplies and Bush said he directed Defense Secretary Robert Gates to organize a humanitarian aid effort. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will travel to Georgia to confer with President Mikheil Saakashvili.

``Russia's ongoing actions raise serious questions about its intentions in Georgia and the region,'' Bush said today at the White House in Washington. He said he was concerned about reports that Russian forces continue to move through Georgia in spite of an agreement on a cease-fire.

``The United States and the world expect Russia to honor that commitment'' to halt military operations, Bush said. He held out the threat that the U.S. would withdraw its support for Russia's ``aspirations'' in diplomatic, economic and security organizations.

Cross Posted at Power and Control