Any revolutionary change must be preceded by a passive, affirmative, non-challenging attitude toward change among the mass of our people. They must feel so frustrated, so defeated, so lost, so futureless in the prevailing system that they are willing to let go of the past and change the future. This acceptance is the reformation essential to any revolution. To bring on this reformation requires that the organizer work inside the system....

--Saul Alinsky

I feel lost a lot. And I recognize that the past is gone, and that change is in the nature of reality.

So how come I'm not supporting revolution?

Forgive me, but when I hear the word "change" (especially from people who seek greater power over me), I generally assume they want to make things worse -- but for what they claim is my own good.

One of my pet peeves involves ideologues who misuse the word "we" -- especially in a scolding manner which implies that "we" all oppress the poor, have abortions, engage in hedonism, hate God, etc. Whatever it is that that's the ideological complaint of the moment, "we" are said to all be guilty of it.

Predictably, the latest misuse of the "we" pronoun involves the economy. Richard Miniter tears into the idea that "we" did it in post titled "No, We didn't Cause This Wall Street Mess":

You must be as tired of hearing it as I am. Somehow, we are all at fault for Wall Street's meltdown. We demanded cheap loans for houses we couldn't afford and voted in corrupt dolts, who took from Fannie Mae and told us what we wanted to hear. Now, we are getting what we deserve.

Likewise, if McCain wins, I'll have to listen to the left complaining about how "we" are a very guilty and racist people for letting it happen. In neither case am I given credit for being an individual; I'm lumped into a group in which I don't belong, and my motives are impugned.

Miniter points out that "we" did not elect Barney Frank or Chris Dood:

Rep. Barney Frank was elected by a majority of the people of his district in Massachusetts. Senator Chris Dodd is brought to us by many but not all of the voters of Connecticut. And so on. Most of us never had the chance to vote for or against these solons. So why should we be blamed?

The regulatory changes that led us to this point were the work of lobbyists, bureaucrats and lawmakers including Dodd and Frank and corrupt executives, like Raines and Johnson. We know or can know their names.

The idea of blaming "all of us" is a way to avoid blaming those who did the deeds and reaped their ill-gotten gains.

The misuse of the "we" pronoun also helps the guilty parties escape blame:

What about cheap mortgages? Sure, some of us took them when they were offered. But who offered them and why? Yes, it is the Clinton-era changes to the Community Reinvestment Act that forced banks to lend more for "affordable housing." Law firms, including ones connected to Obama, sued banks that failed to meet their low-income quotas for mortgages. Bankers were not driven by greed, as everyone says, but by fear. Fear of the baying hounds of regulators and lawyers would call them racist and ruin their careers. But who unleashed the hounds on the bankers?

If you visit this blog regularly, you probably know that I have no tipjar, but that I occasionally urge readers to donate to other bloggers instead. Right now, Dean Esmay could really use your help. Details and tip jar here.

While it's a real drag to ask people for money, I'd like to give a couple of reasons why I think readers should donate to Dean.

One is that while I don't ask for money, I like to think that if readers like what they see here, they might consider it worth an occasional donation. So, as I'm lucky enough not to need to ask for money for myself, shouldn't I be allowed to redirect some of that "goodwill" to others? As I see it, I have a responsibility to use this blog that way if I can.

Two is that Dean is a great blogger and thoroughly worthy of a donation even if he wasn't in need (which he is). He's been a personal inspiration, and he was one of the first bloggers to link and encourage me when I was completely unknown and he was well established. Which means that any readers who like this blog and also like Dean's World have a double obligation to make this donation. In fact, I'd go so far as to say to any reader who likes both blogs, you have no excuse not to hit Dean's tip jar!

So please, go donate now.

UPDATE: My thanks to Glenn Reynolds for linking this post. Please help out if you can; I donated yesterday and I'm donating some more today. I'm not George Soros and I can't afford to match your contributions dollar for dollar, although I would if I could, because I think helping Dean is a worthy cause right now.

What's shocking (to me) about the clamor to "save people's homes" (see M. Simon's earlier post) is that in many cases, they're trying to "save" people who owe more than the house is worth.

I think it is economically dishonest to talk of "saving" homes in this context. When someone is allowed to walk away from a loan in excess of the property valuation, he is the opposite of a victim.

To illustrate, suppose I had bought a house with a $350,000 taxpayer-guaranteed mortgage, and the house is now worth only $250,000. I'm financially screwed, and I'm on the hook -- in a bad way. I'd be far better off renting.

If the bank is willing to let me walk away from the indebtedness (or will allow a short sale, which many do) I'd be ahead $100,000.

Being able to walk away from a bad investment and have the debt forgiven is hardly victimization. (It is even considered income by the IRS, although there's legislation pending to change that.)

How the left and the MSM are able to spin as victims people who manage to walk away from legitimately incurred debts is beyond me.

I used to think that buying a house was a big decision fraught with risk -- something to be engaged in by responsible adults. That contracts were binding, you should read them carefully, etc.

Something must have changed.

I think it might involve the profoundly evil meme that "housing is a right." I say "profoundly evil" because such a "right" cannot exist except at the expense of other people.

From where derives the idea that anyone has the responsibility to provide housing for anyone else? I'm not saying people who cannot care for themselves because of disability or mental incompetence should not be cared for, but there's a huge difference between that and defining housing as a "right."

Of course, it's easy for libertarian cranks like me to prattle on about how "we" don't define housing as a "right" here in the free United States.

Many of "us" do. And they vote.

Quite incidentally, the United States adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as part of its support for the United Nations. Article 25 provides as follows:

1. Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.

In her "Address to the United Nations General Assembly On the Adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights," US Ambassador Eleanor Roosevelt said this:

....my government has made it clear in the course of the development of the Declaration that it does not consider that the economic and social and cultural rights stated in the Declaration imply an obligation on governments to assure the enjoyment of these rights by direct governmental action. This was made quite clear in the Human Rights Commission text of article 23 which served as a so-called "umbrella" article to the articles on economic and social rights. We consider that the principle has not been affected by the fact that this article no longer contains a reference to the articles which follow it. This in no way affects our whole-hearted support for the basic principles of economic, social, and cultural rights set forth in these articles.

In giving our approval to the Declaration today it is of primary importance that we keep clearly in mind the basic character of the document. It is not a treaty; it is not an international agreement. It is not and does not purport to be a statement of law or of legal obligation. It is a Declaration of basic principles of human rights and freedoms, to be stamped with the approval of the General Assembly by formal vote of its members, and to serve as a common standard of achievement for all peoples of all nations.

Needless to say, the US faces ongoing criticism like this for its failure to recognize what amounts to an obligation as a "right":

The refusal of the United States to recognise the right to housing is of course symptomatic of a wider problem in the international community which arises with the tendency to give a higher priority to civil and political rights over economic and social rights.

Consider the following proposals from his Democratic colleagues:

Proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States regarding the right of citizens of the United States to health care of equal high quality (Jackson, D-IL)--H.J.Res. 30. Creates a constitutional right to equal health care.

Proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States respecting the right to decent, safe, sanitary, and affordable housing (Jackson, D-IL)--H.J.Res. 32 and Proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States respecting the right to a home (Rangel, D-NY)--H.J.Res 40. Creates a constitutional right to housing.

Proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States respecting the right to full employment and balanced growth (Jackson, D-IL)--H.J.Res. 35. Creates a constitutional right to full employment.

Considering that Jackson is Obama's national campaign chair, I think it's worth asking Obama how he defines rights.

But just as the word "socialism" is taboo, some questions can never be asked.

MORE: Suppose a clear majority of Americans decide that there is a "right" to property at the expense of others. Founder James Madison cautioned that what a majority might want is not necessarily an ideal standard:

There is no maxim, in my opinion, which is more liable to be misapplied, and which therefore, needs more elucidation than...that the interest of the majority is the political standard of right and wrong. Taking the word "interest" as synonymous with "ultimate happiness," in which sense it is qualified with every necessary moral ingredient, the proposition is no doubt true. But taking it in the popular sense, as referring to immediate augmentation of property and wealth, nothing can be more false. In the latter sense, it would be the interest of the majority in very community to despoil and enslave the minority of individuals; and in a federal community, to make a similar sacrifice of the minority of component States. In fact, it is only re-establishing, under another name and a more specious form, force as the measure of right....

Letter to James Monroe, Octr 5th, 1786

It's comforting to know that such things were on the minds of the founders.

Victor Davis Hanson has one of the best analyses of the current predicament vis-a-vis the election that I have seen in recent days. (A must read.) He thinks time is running out (that's the title of the piece!), and even though the most moderate Republican in history is running against the most left wing Democrat in history, ordinary voters still don't get it:

The truth is that we have an election between a moderate Republican whose centrist positions worry conservatives, who is pitted against a fringe-hyper-liberal candidate who must somehow assure the voters he is merely liberal. Never in recent history, have Republicans nominated one so moderate, never Democrats one so hard left. Yet we are not getting from a proud and unapologetic Obama "My left-wing views have at last proven prescient and arrived, and McCain's namby-pamby moderation is not what these crisis times call for."

Instead, it is dissumaltion all the time, as Obama (for now) essentially has refuted most of his prior positions on the major issues. Even his tax-and-spend plans are now on hold, pending the Wall Street uncertainty. We know nothing really of his background between Columbia and Harvard Law School. Few can figure out exactly what he and Ayers were trying to do with the Chicago Annenberg Challenge other than to give someone else's millions to further the hard-left agendas of a number of cronies whose efforts did not result in any marginal improvement in the Chicago schools.

In other words, the most liberal presidential candidate in our memory is suddenly posing as a moderate centrist not much different from McCain (e.g., "I agree with John..." ad nauseam). And McCain thus far has not been able to scratch the thin veneer. Had Palin once worked in community organizing with a Timothy McVeigh, or had McCain been the member of a white supremacist church for 20 years, or had McCain been judged the most conservative member of the Senate, the McCain-Palin ticket would have long ago imploded.

Hanson thinks the race card has been played very skillfully:

The most brilliant prepping has been an anticipatory demonization of the white working class in an effort through shame, fear, or pity to sway them to vote Obama. The narrative advanced is that if McCain wins, the real reason is because working-class Democrats--once they collectively get into the privacy of the voting booth--sighed and voted against Obama because he is of half-African ancestry, despite telling pollsters they would not.

In the last two weeks I think I have read at least 20 op-eds with one of the following three premises: (1) warning: Many Americans are racists, and the election will thus hinge on race, so you have one last chance to get it right; (2) shame: The world is watching, and will either like or dislike us, depending on our support for Obama; (3) fear: If Obama loses, expect furor or even near riots.

The white working class is tiring of the constant sermons on race, either chauvinism or veiled threats or overt insults. Obama's supporters really need to cool it, and stop suggesting that at each dip in his polls, Americans are proving less than noble people. The only thing that will really lose them the working-class vote is the gun-to-the-head, you'd better vote this way or else attitude.

I grew up among the Democratic working classes, and I can vouch for one eternal truth about them: anyone who lectures them about what they "must" do--or else--will simply achieve the opposite result, every time....

Endless accusations of racism and thuggish Obama Truth Squad tactics may be McCain's best hope.

UPDATE: My thanks to Sean Kinsell for linking this post in a great discussion of elitism.

Stephen Strauss takes a look at big science and comes away unimpressed. He talks about two exhibits he saw. One for the $15 billion ITER (pronounced EATER - heh) and another about neolithic technology - mat weaving, pottery making, chipping stone axes.

At the recent European Science Open Forum conference in Barcelona, for example, I was strolling through exhibits aimed at -- please don't gag -- science outreach. The underlying theme of all these displays seemed to me to be: since their schooling actually teaches many ordinary people to be discomforted by -- if not to actually fear and loath -- science, let's see if we can't do something in these venues to get people to hate science a little bit less.

Right across from ITER was an exhibit in which a group of paleo-archeologists had set up a display to show the technology of the past in operation. So you had a guy sitting cross-legged, banging away at a rock to make a hand ax. Chip, chip, and chip. You had someone else weaving plants together to make a mat. Weave, weave, and weave. Someone else was taking clay and making a pot. There was no placard asking: Hand axe making, will it always be 40 years away? There were no critics of the effort calling it a huge waste of national resources.

So what does the juxtaposition of the two very different demonstrations of technology tell us about disbelief?

To begin with, the ITER project and all hugely expensive big science efforts -- think the International Space Station, think Large Hadron Collider, which recently has received a tonne of press -- aren't like making hand axes. I looked at the man diligently chipping away and realized that the price of his failure wasn't very high. So what if it turned out the rock type you made axes from wasn't strong enough to chop wood? You simply went back and made axes from something else until you got an ax that worked.

And you, in this case, would simply be some intrepid carver and not some large part of the Paleolithic science world.

On the other hand, if ITER fails, it is massively unlikely there is going to be another effort to correct its errors. Research on its level is simply too big and expensive and time-consuming. But what if it succeeds -- but only kinda? What if its results show that you can produce energy, but that it is 10 time times more expensive than energy from other sources? What if figuring out how to make that equation more favorable will require at least three iterations of ITER?

What you put in place with these vastly expensive research efforts is a "can't afford to fail" paradigm. Unlike trying to find the best plant material to weave into a mat, ITER, the Large Hadron Collider, etc., must succeed on first go-round. With ITER, there is no second kind of rock to be chipped away, no other plants to be woven, no different type of clay to be baked into a plate.

And that's what I so disbelieve about it. It's not really experimental science; it's risky, we-can't-fail, all-or-nothing science and I would respond to that paradigm with the wisdom of stone axe makers.

Sometimes your research should be based not on how glorious success might be, but on how little you will have lost if you screw up.

Of course I have my favorites. Here is one that I described in the Fusion Report of 29 August 2008.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

So who is to blame for the mess we are in? Victor Davis Hanson has some thoughts on the subject.

no one dares to ask what really drove the wheeler-dealer portfolio managers. Who re-elected these shady politicians of both parties? Who fostered the cash-in culture in which both Wall Street profit mongering and Washington lobbying are nourished and thrive? We citizens did -- red-state conservatives and blue-state liberals, Republicans and Democrats, alike. We may be victims of Wall Street greed -- but not quite innocent victims.

Let me explain. The profiteering was not just the result of a few thousand scoundrels on Wall Street or in Washington, as greedy and as bonus-hungry as many of them no doubt were. Look at the housing market as a sort of musical chairs in which everyone profited as long he grabbed a seat when the music stopped. Then those left standing -- with high-priced loans and negative equity when the crash came -- defaulted and stuck taxpayers with debt in the billions of dollars. But until then, most owners who had sold homes cashed out beyond their wildest dreams.

Thousands of dollars in past profits are still in sellers' bank accounts or were spent on their own consumption. If the shaky buyer at the bottom of the pyramid should not have borrowed to buy an overpriced house, then the luckier seller higher up hardly worried that the cash-strapped fool was paying him way too much with unsecured borrowed money.

We created the cultural climate for this shared madness. Television shows advised how to "flip" a house after putting in cosmetic improvements. Real-estate seminars and popular videos convinced us that homes were not places to live in and raise a family but rather no different from piles of chips on a Vegas table.

We created the phony populist creed that everyone deserved to own a house. So lawmakers got the message to relax lending standards in service to "fairness." But Americans forgot that historically nearly four in 10 of us aren't ever ready, or able, to sacrifice for a down payment, monthly mortgage bills, home maintenance and yearly taxes -- and so should stick to renting.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

It is unwise to attribute to malice alone that which can be attributed to malice and stupidity.

We all know that smoking is conservative, because Republicans tend to defend tobacco, while Democrats tend to attack it.

With that principle in mind, I decided to look back in time at cigarette ads.

Sure enough, I spotted what can only be called "cultural conservatism" in this ad:

And there's no denying that genuine Paleo Conservatism is at play in this one:

Finally in the 1960s, LSD was added, and people started coming out of the TV!

But it was still a form of conservatism that had not yet been snuffed out.

(I hope there's no serious message here. I'd hate to think that conservatism might be as endangered as smoking. But nothing ever seems to remain the same. And therein lies the paradox.)

WHAT exactly does a "community organizer" do? Barack Obama's rise has left many Americans asking themselves that question. Here's a big part of the answer: Community organizers intimidate banks into making high-risk loans to customers with poor credit.

In the name of fairness to minorities, community organizers occupy private offices, chant inside bank lobbies, and confront executives at their homes - and thereby force financial institutions to direct hundreds of millions of dollars in mortgages to low-credit customers.

In other words, community organizers help to undermine the US economy by pushing the banking system into a sinkhole of bad loans. And Obama has spent years training and funding the organizers who do it.

THE seeds of today's financial meltdown lie in the Commu nity Reinvestment Act - a law passed in 1977 and made riskier by unwise amendments and regulatory rulings in later decades.

CRA was meant to encourage banks to make loans to high-risk borrowers, often minorities living in unstable neighborhoods. That has provided an opening to radical groups like ACORN (the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) to abuse the law by forcing banks to make hundreds of millions of dollars in "subprime" loans to often uncreditworthy poor and minority customers.

What is going on in my opinion is nothing short of a coup attempt. The American Thinker explains who planned it and how they plan to pull it off. Obviously these events are way beyond my control. The only chance we have is on November 4th. If Obama gets in with a Democrat Congress you can kiss the Republic goodbye.

Let me add that Eric has a very nice chart from the American Thinker article that gives the basics in a very quick look.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

Via Glenn Reynolds, I am delighted to see that the Ayers story is starting to be reported in the MSM.

Well, the New York Post might not be the New York Times, or the Washington Post, but it's a start:

CHICAGO - While Barack Obama has long downplayed his connection to Bill Ayers, a co-founder of the violent Weather Underground radical group, new documents show the two worked much more closely together in starting an educational foundation than has been previously known.

Recently released board-meeting minutes for the Chicago Annenberg Challenge show the two were present together at least six times in 1995 as the foundation's members discussed how to organize and operate the project, which was Ayers' brainchild.

So, in addition to getting this story out, there needs to be an effort to remind people that doing things like blowing up an NCO club is way uncool. Definitely not part of the mainstream.

And that people who were into stuff like that but wish they were more successful, well maybe they shouldn't really get to be mainstream.

And maybe their close cronies shouldn't get elected president.

I'm of two minds about the "Cloward-Piven Strategy" theory of Obama and Ayers, which is explained here and represented in the following chart:

While I first heard about it last night thanks to a comment from Donna Barber, it is a very interesting theory and it might well be true. In that respect, it is worthy of study. As is Gramscian Marxism.

However, there's another side of me that tends to worry about conspiracy theories (whether true or not) being used as an obfuscatory tactic, especially when they complicate relatively simple issues and appear out of nowhere and muddy the waters just when relatively simple issues have become tough to ignore.

I refer to Bill Ayers, and his close association -- possibly even mentorship of --Barack Obama, over a long period of time. Over the past few days it has struck me that this is just about to "break through" from the blogosphere and talk radio and into the MSM. And now that it seems about to do that, there's a sudden interest in what may or may not be the "root cause" of the Ayers-Obama association.

Forgive me if I seem blunt, but what's damning is Obama's association with an unrepentant terrorist.

A guy wearing a bracelet bearing the name of an NCO killed by a terrorist IED was a close collaborator and friend of a guy who wanted to kill other American NCOs with IEDs, and who regrets he did not do enough.

This -- the one thing that will outrage middle America more than anything about Obama -- is the subject of a desperate media and campaign coverup.

Yet suddenly, the topic shifts to a tactic floated by obscure Columbia professors in 1966.

Again, the theory might be correct. But why right now?

I'd hate to think that when Obama is finally asked about Ayers, he'll be able to snark back with something like, "Yes and they're also saying that my friendship with Ayers is part of something called the 'Cloward-Piven Strategy,' which I'd never heard of until now" -- to great laughter from a pliant and clueless audience.

If Obama is elected, there will be plenty of time to look for root causes. I may be wrong, but right now, I think the focus should be on Ayers.

MORE: M. Simon aptly summarizes the Cloward-Piven strategy as a practical application of Lenin's "Worse is better," and Alinsky's Rules for radicals. No doubt it is both.

As I've noted many times, the fact that socialism does not work because it requires more socialism means that failure is success. But saying that won't win an election.

The Boston Globe, normally a reliable liberal paper, says that Massachusetts Congressman Barney Frank (D - Corruption) has a lot to do with the mortgage crisis. It opens with a quote from Cong. Frank

'The private sector got us into this mess. The government has to get us out of it."

That's Barney Frank's story, and he's sticking to it. As the Massachusetts Democrat has explained it in recent days, the current financial crisis is the spawn of the free market run amok, with the political class guilty only of failing to rein the capitalists in. The Wall Street meltdown was caused by "bad decisions that were made by people in the private sector," Frank said; the country is in dire straits today "thanks to a conservative philosophy that says the market knows best." And that philosophy goes "back to Ronald Reagan, when at his inauguration he said, 'Government is not the answer to our problems; government is the problem.' "

In fact, that isn't what Reagan said. His actual words were: "In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem." Were he president today, he would be saying much the same thing.

Because while the mortgage crisis convulsing Wall Street has its share of private-sector culprits they weren't the ones who "got us into this mess." Barney Frank's talking points notwithstanding, mortgage lenders didn't wake up one fine day deciding to junk long-held standards of creditworthiness in order to make ill-advised loans to unqualified borrowers. It would be closer to the truth to say they woke up to find the government twisting their arms and demanding that they do so - or else.

The roots of this crisis go back to the Carter administration. That was when government officials, egged on by left-wing activists, began accusing mortgage lenders of racism and "redlining" because urban blacks were being denied mortgages at a higher rate than suburban whites.

The pressure to make more loans to minorities (read: to borrowers with weak credit histories) became relentless. Congress passed the Community Reinvestment Act, empowering regulators to punish banks that failed to "meet the credit needs" of "low-income, minority, and distressed neighborhoods." Lenders responded by loosening their underwriting standards and making increasingly shoddy loans. The two government-chartered mortgage finance firms, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, encouraged this "subprime" lending by authorizing ever more "flexible" criteria by which high-risk borrowers could be qualified for home loans, and then buying up the questionable mortgages that ensued.

However, I just came across an American Thinker article which asks the question: are the people behind this stupid? Or was it a plan?

Despite the mass media news blackout, a series of books, talk radio and the blogosphere have managed to expose Barack Obama's connections to his radical mentors -- Weather Underground bombers William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, Communist Party member Frank Marshall Davis and others. David Horowitz and his Discover the Networks.org have also contributed a wealth of information and have noted Obama's radical connections since the beginning.

Yet, no one to my knowledge has yet connected all the dots between Barack Obama and the Radical Left. When seen together, the influences on Obama's life comprise a who's who of the radical leftist movement, and it becomes painfully apparent that not only is Obama a willing participant in that movement, he has spent most of his adult life deeply immersed in it.

But even this doesn't fully describe the extreme nature of this candidate. He can be tied directly to a malevolent overarching strategy that has motivated many, if not all, of the most destructive radical leftist organizations in the United States since the 1960s.

The American Thinker article points out that the strategy behind it has a name. The Cloward-Piven Strategy of Orchestrated Crisis. Lenin also had a name for it: Worse Is Better.

I think a deeper look into what the American thinker has to say is in order:

Before the 1994 Republican takeover, Democrats had sixty years of virtually unbroken power in Congress - with substantial majorities most of the time. Can a group of smart people, studying issue after issue for years on end, with virtually unlimited resources at their command, not come up with a single policy that works? Why are they chronically incapable?

Why?

One of two things must be true. Either the Democrats are unfathomable idiots, who ignorantly pursue ever more destructive policies despite decades of contrary evidence, or they understand the consequences of their actions and relentlessly carry on anyway because they somehow benefit.

I submit to you they understand the consequences. For many it is simply a practical matter of eliciting votes from a targeted constituency at taxpayer expense; we lose a little, they gain a lot, and the politician keeps his job. But for others, the goal is more malevolent - the failure is deliberate. Don't laugh. This method not only has its proponents, it has a name: the Cloward-Piven Strategy. It describes their agenda, tactics, and long-term strategy.

The Strategy was first elucidated in the May 2, 1966 issue of The Nation magazine by a pair of radical socialist Columbia University professors, Richard Andrew Cloward and Frances Fox Piven. David Horowitz summarizes it as:

The strategy of forcing political change through orchestrated crisis. The "Cloward-Piven Strategy" seeks to hasten the fall of capitalism by overloading the government bureaucracy with a flood of impossible demands, thus pushing society into crisis and economic collapse.

H/T commenter Dan at Classical Values for the Boston Globe bit.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

ACORN is about vote fraud in Michigan.

Several municipal clerks across the state are reporting fraudulent and duplicate voter registration applications, most of them from a nationwide community activist group working to help low- and moderate-income families.
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The majority of the problem applications are coming from the group ACORN, Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, which has a large voter registration program among its many social service programs. ACORN's Michigan branch, based in Detroit, has enrolled 200,000 voters statewide in recent months, mostly with the use of paid, part-time employees.

"There appears to be a sizeable number of duplicate and fraudulent applications," said Kelly Chesney, spokeswoman for the Michigan Secretary of State's Office. "And it appears to be widespread."

Chesney said her office has had discussions with ACORN officials after local clerks reported the questionable applications to the state. Chesney said some of the applications are duplicates and some appear to be names that have been made up. The Secretary of State's Office has turned over several of the applications to the U.S. Attorney's Office.

I think it would be instructive to learn more about ACORN.

If you thought the New Left was dead in America, think again. Walk through just about any of the nation's inner cities, and you're likely to find an office of ACORN, bustling with young people working 12-hour days to "organize the poor" and bring about "social change." The largest radical group in the country, ACORN has 120,000 dues-paying members, chapters in 700 poor neighborhoods in 50 cities, and 30 years' experience. It boasts two radio stations, a housing corporation, a law office, and affiliate relationships with a host of trade-union locals. Not only big, it is effective, with some remarkable successes in getting municipalities and state legislatures to enact its radical policy goals into law.

Community organizing among the urban poor has been an honorable American tradition since Jane Addams's famous Hull House dramatically uplifted the late-nineteenth-century Chicago slums, but ACORN and Addams are on different planets philosophically. Hull House and its many successors emphasized self-empowerment: the poor, they thought, could take control of their lives and communities through education, hard work, and personal responsibility. Not ACORN. It promotes a 1960s-bred agenda of anti-capitalism, central planning, victimology, and government handouts to the poor. As a result, not only does it harm the poor it claims to serve; it is also a serious threat to the urban future.

It is no surprise that ACORN preaches a New Left-inspired gospel, since it grew out of one of the New Left's silliest and most destructive groups, the National Welfare Rights Organization. In the mid-sixties, founder George Wiley forged an army of tens of thousands of single minority mothers, whom he sent out to disrupt welfare offices through sit-ins and demonstrations demanding an end to the "oppressive" eligibility restrictions that kept down the welfare rolls. His aim: to flood the welfare system with so many clients that it would burst, creating a crisis that, he believed, would force a radical restructuring of America's unjust capitalist economy.
The flooding succeeded beyond Wiley's wildest dreams. From 1965 to 1974, the number of single-parent households on welfare soared from 4.3 million to 10.8 million, despite mostly flush economic times. By the early 1970s, one person was on the welfare rolls in New York City for every two working in the city's private economy.

What else has ACORN been involved in? Would you believe that part of their organizing has been an effort to get voters enrolled in states other than Michigan? And that in the original bail out plan ACORN was to get money from the plan?

Washington, Sep 27 - House Republicans have made clear that they will fight for an economic rescue package that protects the interests of families, seniors, small businesses, and all taxpayers. And as discussions continue in order to forge an agreement that reflects these principles, the American people are taking note of a left-wing giveaway Democrats are pushing to force taxpayers to bankroll a slush fund for a discredited ally of the Democratic Party. At issue is the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now - better known as ACORN - an organization fraught with controversy for, among other scandals, its fraudulent voter registration activities on behalf of Democratic candidates. Here are just some examples of ACORN's most recent scandals and unlawful activities:

- "ACORN is a long-time advocacy group with whom Obama was once associated. Recently, though, ACORN workers in two states have pleaded guilty to election fraud, an unlikely recipient of federal largess." (Fox News Report, 9/26/08)

- "Seven ACORN workers were charged with 'committing the biggest voter-registration fraud in [Washington] state history.'' (The Seattle Times, 7/26/07)

- ACORN workers submitted "just over 1,800 new voter registration forms, but there was a problem. The names were made up - all but six of the 1,800 submissions were fakes... The ACORN workers told state investigators that they went to the Seattle public library, sat at a table and filled out the voter registration forms. They made up names, addresses, and Social Security numbers and in some cases plucked names from the phone book. One worker said it was a lot of hard work making up all those names and another said he would sit at home, smoke marijuana and fill out the forms." (Fox News Channel, 5/02/08)

So who else was going to benefit from the mortgage bail out bill?

The housing package signed into law by President Bush extends an unlimited line of credit to troubled mortgage giants Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae and rescues homeowners near or in foreclosure. The measure also increases the federal debt limit by another $800 billion -- and sends millions of dollars in aid to [the National Council of La Raza] and the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN.

Representative Michele Bachmann (R-Minnesota), a member of the House Financial Services Committee, says she finds it "unconscionable" that the legislation included funding for the two groups, which serve as political action arms of the Democratic Party.

I wonder why ACORN has not been prosecuted under the RICO Statutes?

WASHINGTON, Sept 25, 2008 /PRNewswire-USNewswire via COMTEX/ -- James Terry, Chief Public Advocate for the Consumers Rights League, today testified at a joint House Administration and House Judiciary Committee oversight hearing on "Federal, State and Local Efforts to Prepare for the General 2008 Election," where he highlighted "corruption at every level of ACORN including embezzlement, cover-ups, misuse of taxpayer funds and voter fraud." An excerpt of his testimony follows:
James Terry, Chief Public Advocate, Consumers Rights League:
"ACORN routinely says it will clean up its act. Yet, given its decade-long history of voter fraud, embezzlement, and misuses of taxpayer funds, ACORN's pattern of fraud can no longer be dismissed as a series of 'unfortunate events.'
"The problem of voter registration fraud raises serious questions for this committee, and the Consumers Rights League appreciates that the right questions are being asked.
"Here are the most important questions right now: We know about the thousands of potentially fraudulent voter registration cards turned in by ACORN and caught by officials. But given the size of ACORN's efforts and the fact that the abuses appear to be systemic, we believe it is fair to question how many more fraudulent registrations have not been discovered, Furthermore, as this mega organization with a decades long history of violating the law is turned to get out the vote efforts, we believe it is fair to question how many fraudulent registrations may lead to fraudulent votes or what other activities they are willing to undertake to influence the election.

Oh yeah. If you want to learn more about how ACORN was also involved in mortgage fraud may I suggest reading: The Best Congress Fannie Could Buy.

Update: 29 Sept 008 0723z

Here is a present for ACORN that Chris Dodd and Barney Frank included in the mortgage bail out bill (Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac). A similar provision in the Wall Street bail out bill has been eliminated in the current version. So I'm told.

H/T commenter JBean at Just One Minute.

Update: 29 Sept 008 1129z

The American Thinker has an article that explains that the above documented methods of vote fraud are not an accident but part of a plan. Fraudulent names. The same name multiple times. Names out of the phone book etc.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

A sports blog this is not.

Regular readers know that the above might even be understatement, as I have less than zero interest in athletic events. Where it comes to sports, I'm like an alien visiting a strange planet. This has never been more true than since the move to Ann Arbor, Michigan where I find myself living just a block away from the Michigan athletic complex, in an area dominated by students, many of whom would be stereotyped as "jocks." However, I very much like the fact that even though they have loud parties, they generally mind their own business, don't care what other people do (nor do they express busybody fears of "pit bulls"), and I can enjoy the relative anonymity of being an older guy who happens to live in the neighborhood.

Just because I'm generally uninterested in organized athletic events does not mean that I'm hostile, though. I'm also ignorant about science fiction, but I'm not hostile to that. Why, were I to be plunked down in the middle of a Science Fiction Fair somewhere, I'd probably be curious enough to at least ask questions, and maybe read some of the most important things. (You know, the stuff that SciFi folks might see as basic "cultural literacy.")

Additionally, there's that slogan "When in Rome." Considering the absolute intensity of what happens when there's a football game down the street, I don't think it is any exaggeration to say that living here and not attending a football game at Michigan Stadium in Ann Arbor would be a bit like time-traveling back to ancient Rome and not bothering to attend a gladiatorial event. You'd not only be violating the "When in Rome" rule, you'd be missing out on an important aspect of the culture.

I think that's enough by way of a background explanation of what happened to me yesterday, which was in and of itself a highly unusual event in my life:

I went to a football game.

And not just any football game, but Michigan versus Wisconsin. The Wolverines versus the Badgers! Yes, by a process of inverse anthropomorphism, football apparently turns people into animals -- in this case it was a battle of the mustelids versus a weasel like group. Interestingly, both animals are quite vicious in real life, and although combat is unlikely in nature, I think wolverines could defeat badgers. (As happened yesterday with the human variety.)

The human variety of wolverine can be just as wild as the natural variety, especially when seen in its characteristic blue and gold phase:

Yes, that's me on the left, wearing a very fraudulent T-shirt. This year's official T-shirt is bright yellow gold. Too bright for me. So my blue color is out of date, plus I never attended Michigan Law School. And even though I am a lawyer, my only connection with "Michigan Law" is a blog post I wrote criticizing one. But I'll leave the T-shirt ethics to others; I am in Rome doing as Romans do, and that shirt is the "When in Rome" equivalent of a toga.

When I first entered the stadium, here's what it looked like:

Eventually, it was filled to capacity; around 110,000.

The first half of the game went so poorly that I was beginning to wonder whether everyone was a bit deluded about the Wolverines being such a great team. The Badgers scored two touchdowns and a couple of field goals, and were ahead 19-0. But finally, in the third quarter, the Wolverines showed their stuff. During halftime, I had heard someone talking about how they had "worn out" the Badgers and allowed them to get ahead, but they'd definitely come back and finish them off, but I thought this was wishful thinking. To my astonishment, the Wolverines did just that, and pulled off a wildly impressive upset victory. I don't think I've ever heard a crowd go as wild.

A couple of action pictures I took:

In the stands, a couple of very blue Wolverine fans:

And in the air, the Goodyear Blimp was replaced by the DIRECTV Blimp!

The final score was 27-25.

Here's a video of the final "Hail to the Victors" as the team leaves the field in triumph.

To show what a total ignoramus I am, I was already familiar with the tune, but because I'd heard it played repeatedly at Republican events and conventions I had assumed that it was a traditional celebratory tune intended for political rallies. Once I learned that it is the official Michigan victory song, I put two and two together, and realized that it had been seared into my memory as a "political" tune only because I had heard it played for years to honor President Jerry Ford, who was a noted football star here in the 1930s. (Fool that I am, I had unwittingly put a political spin on something that wasn't political.)

I can't believe that I had so much fun doing something I'm not supposed to like.

Gateway Pundit has the details.

This is MacRanger of Macsmind. As you know I was hacked by operatives of the Obama Campaign last month. Well, it happened again. Basically they flooded the site with "sql bombs" according to the host that caused the shared server to stop running. Subsequently be had to disable the site. This had to do with running the "Obama wants to Disarm America" post which more than 2 million people viewed on the site. Just like the goons in Missouri, the Obama truthers can't let the truth be known. I've now moved the blog back to blogspot at macsmind.blogspot.com at least temporally. Because of the hacking job I had to move to another host but unfortunately they haven't got the server up yet to redirect the traffic to blogspot. I would appreciate a mention to your readers. I'm getting a couple of hundred emails about "what happened", but as you can imagine it hard to get the word out by reply.

Thanks,

MacRanger

Cross Posted at Power and Control

Remember Barack Obama's "me too!" bracelet? In an amazing twist, it turns out that the woman who gave it to him does not want him to wear it anymore:

Ryan's father Brian -- who is no longer married to Tracy -- told Wisconsin Public Radio that his ex-wife had misgivings about Obama wearing the bracelet and mentioning their son on the campaign trail. It seems as though just as Tracy Jopek supports Obama and wants to end the war, Brian Jopek has a different take on what should happen in Iraq and may be more inclined to support McCain.

(You can listen to Brian Jopek about 10 minutes into THIS CLIP.)

After pointing out that he and Tracy are not married anymore, Brian says that "from what I understood from email exchanges with Tracy....she wanted to put a name, she wanted Sen. Obama to know Ryan's name...She wasn't looking to turn it into a big media event...She just wanted it to be something between Barack Obama and herself."

Bryan Jopek went on to say that "because of some of the negative feedback she's gotten on the Internet, you know Internet blogs, you know people accusing her of... or accusing Obama of trying to get votes doing it... and that sort of thing, she has turned down any subsequent interviews with the media because she just didn't, she just didn't want it to get turned into something that it wasn't. She had told me that in an email that she had asked, actually asked Mr. Obama to not wear the bracelet anymore at any of his public appearances."

Conservatives are now criticizing Obama for exploiting a fallen soldier whose mother has asked him to stop wearing the bracelet or mentioning her son's name. I'm not sure what the reality is behind this story -- I have a call into the Obama campaign and Tracy Jopek to find out more about this story, and will let you know what they say.

What seem not to be getting much attention are the dead soldier's thoughts on the war. What did Sgt. Ryan Jopek think?

Who knows?

When I read that Ryan Jopek's father had also served in Iraq, I just found myself wondering. Obviously, there's a family quarrel underlying this story, and if there's one thing I've learned, there are always two sides in a family dispute.

If Obama has weighed in on the mother's side, and she has changed her mind, it doesn't make his campaign look any better.

But any better than what?

Considering what Obama's friend Bill Ayers and his Weatherman group had in mind for Army NCOs back in 1970, I don't see how anything could make his campaign look worse. I'm not a member of the military, but according to Wiki, all grades of sergeants are NCOs. Which means Sgt. Jopek (the guy whose name is on Obama's bracelet) was an NCO.

Here's what was planned for the NCOs at the Fort Dix NCO Club:

In less than the blink of an eye, the blast of eight tightly-bound sticks of dynamite shattered the brittle wooden shell of the building hastily constructed during the Second World War, adding jagged splinters and rusting nails to the shrapnel that ripped through cheap tables and chairs, taffeta and chiffon, uniforms, and flesh.

Before the concussive shock waves reverberated off nearby buildings, half a dozen human beings closest to the outside wall of the NCO Club became mist.

The roof, lifted skyward by the explosion and suddenly absent a supporting wall as it returned to earth, crashed down on the dead and dying. Leaking bottles from the shattered bar fed the rapidly spreading flames, and deafened, dazed and bleeding survivors crawled or stumbled towards escape in ones and twos.

As soldiers from nearby buildings ran to help the bleeding and burned, a carefully-crafted 12″ pipe-bomb studded with roofing nails hidden in a nearby trash can went off, turning rescuers into additional victims.

Just outside Fort Dix confused onlookers sat in stunned amazement, as a pair of nondescript young women nervously laughed and counted ambulances for a half hour before losing count and heading back to the townhouse in Greenwich Village. The message had been sent.

Though he would have no way of knowing it at the time, the Weatherman's attack on the non-commissioned officer's dance would stand as the deadliest act of terrorism on U.S. soil for 25 years, 1 month, and 13 days, until Timothy McVeigh drove into Oklahoma City and infamy.

Oughton dedicated herself to the school and teaching and designed a fund-raising button that read, CHILDREN ARE ONLY NEWER PEOPLE.[13] It was at CCS that Diana Oughton met Bill Ayers. The two fell in love and soon began living together. In 1968, when the school ran into severe problems and lost its funding, Oughton and Ayers sought to become active elsewhere in the community.

I'm sure Ayers considers his deceased ex worthy of a bracelet; I don't. However, I find irony in the wearing of a bracelet to honor an American NCO killed by an improvised explosive device, by someone who befriended a guy who believed passionately in killing American NCOs by an improvised explosive devices.

Should I? Am I making more of this than I should? I realize that Obama was just a kid when the improvised explosive device failed to kill the NCOs, and took out Ayers' girlfriend instead.

But Ayers has expressed a lack of remorse, and has said he was sorry he and his group didn't do more, has he not?

My question is simply this:

Should someone who worked closely with a guy like that and may have been his protege be elected president?

I can't believe it's necessary to pose a question like that. But it's a damned serious question, and it isn't being asked. Seriously, of all the reasons Obama should not ever be elected president, I think the Ayers issue is Reason Number One. It's why I keep writing post after post after post about it.

Forgive me for saying this, but I'm seeing more irony than sincerity in Obama's wearing of the bracelet with that NCO's name on it.

MORE: Here's Joe Trippi (who thinks the election will be a rout for Obama):

In my view McCain may have sounded more dangerous to voters as he tried so blatantly to make them think Obama wasn't a safe bet in this very "scary" world.

Anyone who thinks McCain is scarier than Obama needs a dose of reality.

Is there a First Amendment right to intimidate people?

What is intimidation?

I don't see easy answers to these questions, because to a certain extent, demonstrations -- and demonstrators -- are intended to intimidate. (I have experienced this personally on a number of occasions, and I won't bore readers by quoting yet again from numerous posts.)

Not only do demonstrators fully intend to intimidate their targets, but their goal is to discourage people from sympathizing with their targets. If the target is popular (or sympathetic), the goal is to make him unpopular (and unsympathetic). And if the target is unpopular or unsympathetic, the goal is to send a message along the lines of "Don't even think of sympathizing with this scum!" Open mindedness becomes a casualty. In the name of "free speech" of course.

Whether demonstrations constitute intimidation in the legal sense is another issue. The standard legal definition provides no clear line:

INTIMIDATE - means to intentionally say or do something which would cause a person of ordinary sensibilities to be fearful of bodily harm. It is not necessary to prove that the victim was actually frightened, and neither is it necessary to prove that the behavior of the person was so violent that it was likely to cause terror, panic or hysteria.

Where this gets especially dicey is in the case of demonstrators targeting people who have to be at a certain place -- i.e. a captive target group. If you have to go to work, and the Teamsters are there in force, they have their First Amendment rights, but what about your right to earn a livelihood? And what if the demonstrators target your home? Even if that's done in a "peaceful" manner, it's enough to make most people give way to whatever the demands are. So I would call it intimidation.

What about jurors? While there are strict laws prohibiting "jury intimidation," these laws typically contemplate criminals, mob cronies trying to frighten individual jurors. Where it comes to demonstrators, it's a fuzzy area.

Not so fuzzy, though, to have escaped the attention of the Village Voice's Nat Hentoff. Writing about the trial of a police officer in the Abner Louima shooting case, he describes the scene:

And when this federal jury declared itself seriously divided, Reverend Al, in a televised weekend press conference, urged his supporters to insist that Schwarz [the accused cop] be thoroughly convicted. Accordingly, on the following Monday, while the jury continued to deliberate, busloads of anti-Schwarz demonstrators descended on the courthouse, shouting dire epithets and becoming so boisterous that Schwarz and his attorney, Ronald Fischetti, needed a police escort to get through. The intent was to convince the jury to do the right thing. Remember: This jury was not sequestered.

Remember, these jurors are not like military recruits trained and hardened in boot camp. They are ordinary people, who have to ride the subway home, and they know that what they are doing is a matter of public record, and that thuggish activists will remember whatever they do long after the case has faded away into oblivion. How many people remember Abner Louima today? Two groups: political junkies and angry activists. Political junkies won't hurt you, but it's in the nature of activists to always be angry, and never forget.

The thing is, our legal system requires that these cases be tried, and juries have to hear them. But who in the hell would want want to be a juror in a high-profile case that attracts the presence of demonstrators? This is not to say that demonstrators are necessarily wrong (in some cases I would agree with their position), but I do think their very presence has an intimidating on those inclined to be fair and impartial.

These are just a few examples. I can't draw the exact line, but I think there is real tension between the First Amendment and the right to be free from intimidation.

Hmm....

Maybe I should have titled this post "Why Activists Win, Part IV"

I've been in Ann Arbor for almost two months now, but I've hardly met anyone other than a few people in the neighborhood.

One of the coolest things about blogging, though, is that it can turn out you know more people in more places than you realized. I tend not to think of bloggers in terms of their geographic location, and perhaps for that reason, I had not realized (or remembered) until a couple of weeks ago that one of my very first friends in the blogosphere -- the legendary Dean Esmay -- lives within driving distance of here, and visits Ann Arbor regularly. So after touching bases by email, we arranged to meet up for a post-lunch coffee today at Mark's Midtown Coney Island, where I'd never been (I'm still finding my way around), but very much enjoyed.

It was a real honor for me to finally meet Dean after all these years. There aren't all that many classical liberals, but Dean is one of them, and he's been an ongoing inspiration to this blog from the very beginning. We might not always reach identical results in our thinking (does anyone?), but we share the same principles, and I wish there were more bloggers like Dean, whose integrity is impeccable, and whose ability to see through bullshit is second to none.

It's incredibly cool that I've moved more or less into Dean's hood. Having a respected old friend living in the area makes Ann Arbor go up in my estimation.

And speaking of hoods, after we had coffee and talked for a couple of hours, we went outside and posed on the hood! (Of Dean's car, that is....) There was no one around to take the picture, so I positioned my camera on a USA Today box, and set the timer.

Here are the two troublemakers on the hood:

And if you don't find that picture enlightening enough, you'll definitely be enlightened by Dean's bumper, which has the bumpersticker to end all bumperstickers:

Dean's own design, of course. Naturally I'm jealous, as they can't be bought anywhere.

Of course, now that I've unleashed Dean's logically unassailable meme on the world, just watch some leftist whiner design another bumpersticker that says,

"If Bumper Stickers Are the Answer, Then What Was the Question?"

While it's probably just a coincidence, I see that since our little get-together, Dean has issued a death threat against his readers. (Geez, he seemed so peaceful over coffee....)

Seriously, though, it's not easy being in a new place, and I'm grateful to Dean for making me feel welcome here. It's amazing to think that I was lucky enough to have an old friend, right here in my new place.

Another lesson in the magic of the blogosphere.

H/T No Quarter

I don't think I've ever said "I'm not an economist" as many times as I have in the past few weeks.

But I'm not.

My point is that I, along with a lot of people who are not economists, continue to sound off on a daily basis about extremely complex economic issues of vital importance to the country, without really knowing what we're talking about. While this is our sacrosanct right as American citizens, I somehow find myself doubting we would do quite the same thing if the issue involved the details of whether Ted Kennedy's brain surgery had been performed correctly.

Oh, I'm no brain surgeon either. But it doesn't a brain surgeon to comprehend that brain surgeons know more about brain surgery than non-brain surgeons.

With that it mind, I could readily understand what leading economist Greg Mankiw said about Ben Bernanke and the bailout plan:

I know Ben Bernanke well. Ben is at least as smart as any of the economists who signed that letter or are complaining on blogs and editorial pages about the proposed policy. Moreover, Ben is far better informed than the critics. The Fed staff includes some of the best policy economists around. In his capacity as Fed chair, Ben understands the situation, as well as the pros, cons, and feasibility of the alternative policy options, better than any professor sitting alone in his office possibly could.

If I were a member of Congress, I would sit down with Ben, privately, to get his candid view. If he thinks this is the right thing to do, I would put my qualms aside and follow his advice.

If only Greg Mankiw were a member of Congress right now.

He's not, though -- any more than I'm an economist.

My admitted ignorance about economic matters is analogous to my admitted ignorance of military matters. I can't count the number of times I've pointed out that I'm not a war blogger, and it's one of the reasons I can't offer much more than stressing the importance of victory. I want our side -- meaning this country -- to win.

While I know it's not an exact analogy, I tried to point out earlier that economists are like generals. Especially Ben Bernanke, who strikes me as the economic equivalent of General Petraeus:

If we were going to face the conditions which might trigger another Depression, we couldn't pick a better man to possibly prevent it than Ben Bernanke:

Bernanke is particularly interested in the economic and political causes of the Great Depression, on which he has written extensively. On Milton Friedman's ninetieth birthday, November 8, 2002, he stated: "Let me end my talk by abusing slightly my status as an official representative of the Federal Reserve System. I would like to say to Milton and Anna: Regarding the Great Depression. You're right, we did it. We're very sorry. But thanks to you, we won't do it again."

I think it's fair to say that (at least in academic terms) Bernanke's Depression-prevention expertise is roughly analogous to General Petraeus's Vietnam-prevention expertise.

I just wish our politicians and the chorus of self-appointed experts would try listening to him before grandstanding.

This is not to say "the experts" are always right.

But what kind of track record does Congress have? Why did they ignore Alan Greenspan's warnings?

BAIER: The legislation was blocked.

In 2005, Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan added his voice on Fannie and Freddie, after Fannie leaders admitted major accounting screwups. "Enabling these institutions to increase in size - and they will once the crisis in their judgment passes - we are placing the total financial system of the future at a substantial risk."

Adding later at another hearing on the topic -

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ALAN GREENSPAN, FEDERAL RESERVE CHAIRMAN: If we fail to strengthen GSE regulation, we increase the possibility of insolvency in crisis.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BAIER: But the two mortgage giants had staunch defenders. Democratic Sen. Charles Schumer said, "I think Fannie and Freddie over the years have done an incredibly good job and are an intrinsic part of making America the best-housed people in the world. If you look over the last 20 or whatever years, they've done a very, very good job."

And Sen. John McCain co-sponsored legislation pushing for regulation, delivering a speech on the Senate floor in 2006. "For years I have been concerned about the regulatory structure that governs Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. And the sheer magnitude of these companies and the role they play in the housing market, the GSEs need to be reformed without delay."

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BAIER: That bill made it out of the Senate Banking committee with a party-line vote. All of the Democrats voted against it. But fearing that they didn't have the votes to pass it, Republicans didn't even bring it up on the Senate floor. Sen. Obama did not weigh in on that bill.

"If This Campaign plays to type, McCain will hit an absolute home run tonight and the narrative will shift yet again."

So says the Corner's Rich Lowry.

With a buildup like that I guess I've gotta watch.

Right now I'm making blackened catfish with red beans and rice.

You know, a Southern flavored dinner for a Southern flavored debate.

Gimme a break; I'm in Michigan now.

Maybe I'll have some time between bites to watch the narrative unfold....

08:57 -- The narratives are warring on both CNN and Fox, and the debate hasn't even started yet. I guess you could call this live-pre-debate blogging.

Damn, that catfish smells great!

And the kids in the hood are driving up and down the street honking their horns. Not in anticipation of the debate, mind you. They're honking in anticipation of tomorrow's Michigan versus Wisconsin game.

9:03 -- Lehrer begins by creatively switching from foreign affairs to the economy by means of a 1952 Eisenhower quote, and starts by asking Obama about the economy.

He's giving a speech.

Quite credibly McCain stresses the work involved in successfully coming up with a plan.

Obama is trying to reframe the issue as involving "deregulation" and saying he told them so. Incredible.

I need more catfish.

9:10 --McCain reminds everyone that he also said he told them so, but comes back quoting Eisehower with a real stinger about D-Day (brilliant) and accountabilty.

Obama is stuttering.

9:13 -- McCain is talking like a president. Obama is making speeches.

Wow.

Sincerity debates phoniness. I didn't think I'd see that tonight.

9:17 -- Pork barrel spending! McCain tears Obama a new one, and Obama looks defensive. Rope a dope fails. McCain is barely warmed up.

9:20 -- Asked about their differences in tax policy, McCain says he wants tax cuts, and reminds people that the corporate tax rate is 35%, and notes that Ireland's is 11%. Obama says businesses actually pay lower taxes because of "loopholes." (What? Like not being taxed on losses?)

Obama slams the market solution.

McCain calls this an example of "walking the walk versus talking the talk." Reminds of his record against wasteful spending.

McCain is relying on his record and his ethos, and it is working. Obama looks like a confused man trying to sound profound.

Now Obama is bashing the oil companies.

Please.

9:30 -- I'm captivated, and my catfish is getting cold.

But it's looking more and more as if Lowery was right about the narrative.

9:38 -- Obama tried the old "McBush" meme, and instead of being rattled, McCain saw it as a golden opportunity to contrast his position with Bush. And he reminded everyone about his position on Iraq, and how he was proved right.

Now Obama is talking about his original opposition to the war. (What was Obama then? State assemblyman or something?)

9:43 -- Glenn has a roundup of lots of other live bloggers with faster fingers than mine.

I'm just licking off the catfish juice.

9:49 -- I love the way McCain smiles when he's hit. Remarkable.

9:52 -- Ann Althouse also noticed McCain's calmness -- no glee -- under pressure:

McCain gesticulates and smiles. Obama looks a little pissed off and interrupts a few times with the muttered phrase "That's not true."

Brilliant. Just brilliant.

10:05 -- They went from the bracelets from mothers of sons who gave their lives (McCain wears one; Obama said he has one) to Afghanistan, to Iran.

Obama stressed Afghanistan and the Taliban, while McCain sees linkage in the overall war.

McCain says that opposes unconditional talks. Obama talks about direct diplomacy and cites Kissinger.

(McCain is again unfazed, with that little smirk.)

After Obama's speech, McCain retorts, "I'm not going to set the White House visitor schedule before I'm president; I don't even have a seal yet!"(That's the line of the evening, I think.)

He got Obama to stutter again. (Pointing out that talks with Iran legitimize their insane remarks about wiping Israel off the map.)

10:18 -- Russia. McCain again shows his strength. I look Putin in his eyes and I see a K a G and a B.

I think if anyone can make Putin stutter, McCain can.

(He's now got the Democrats gnashing their teeth the way the right wing of the Republican Party once did. Add he does it with a smile!)

10:21 -- Noting the danger, McCain stresses the importance of standing with the Ukraine. Obama follows, first agreeing, then nitpicking.

That's the pattern with a lot of this debate. McCain takes a strong position on something, then Obama agrees and tries to undercut it. (It's not man to man; it's almost leader-follower. I'd be tempted to pity Obama, except he wants to be president.)

10:29 -- Stephen Green is drunkblogging, and Bruce Carroll is Vicodinblogging (because he has some).

So why don't I get any?

10:35 - Flashback to Stephen Green: 8:09PM Pardon me as I wet myself while McCain spanks Obama over his promise to negotiate with Iran "without preconditions." It's like gay porn, only this stuff turns me on. (Sorry, Bruce!)

Now why didn't I think of that?

It's over, and I think McCain creamed Obama.

I did miss a pronunciation issue, though:

Why does Obama pronounce Taliban as "Tal-ih-ban"?? It makes it sound like a Japanese restaurant.

Pah-ki-stan, Tal-ih-ban. Ghen-gis Khan. Obama, Kerry.

10:46 -- The analysts are having at it, and no one seems to think Obama won, but they think he held his own. I think the differences in levels of experience and character was overwhelming. And McCain doesn't need to say anything.

Stephen Green:

7:58PM Do a shot every time McCain says "I have a record." He doesn't *need* to say, "And my opponent doesn't."

10:46 -- CNN calls it "a tie," and they're saying McCain engaged in name-dropping. Whatever.

I think McCain is so much more experienced, has so much more common sense, is so much more grounded, that it wasn't even a contest.

But they keep saying Obama "held his own" Held his own? Why are his supporters even saying that? He's ahead in the polls, right? He wants to be president of the United States and Commander in Chief of the most powerful armed force in the world, right?

To say he "held his own" sounds almost belittling.

UPDATE: Glenn Reynolds has a poll up. McCain is winning overwhelmingly. (10 to 1 the last time I looked.)

Meanwhile, CNN is nitpicking over minor verbal flubs of interest mainly to snarky political junkies.

MORE: On Fox, Giuliani just made a good point -- that "neither one of them demagogued on the economy."

And a couple of excerpts from the Corner:

Regarding McCain's "I Don't Even Have a Seal Yet" remark, Kathryn Jean Lopez says,

I bet most people watching don't know the backstory.

Watching at home here in NYC with her husband and two little babies: "I hope I am not assessing out of my pro-McCain bias, but McCain has had Obama on the defensive 90% of the time. And Obama is rambling on so much- good lord I can barely follow him!"

It will be interesting to see how ordinary voters react.

MORE: Here's Ed Morrissey:

McCain kept Obama on defense all night long, made Obama lose his composure, and maintained his own in a very presidential performance. This one is a clear win for McCain.

UPDATE: Glenn Reynolds links this analysis at Politico (arguing that McCain "gave one of his strongest debate performances ever") -- although Glenn didn't think McCain's performance was his best:

I'd say he gave a B-level performance and Obama was a B-minus. Edge to McCain, but not by a lot, and neither candidate distinguished himself. Both, I suspect, were tired and distracted from the economic events.

McCain likes a fight, he sparkles when he gets one, and he won't back down. He's turned Romney's Iraq "timetable" remark from a war over the words into something resembling a fistfight he provoked. Romney thinks it's about the words, but I think it's more along the lines of a duel.

Much as I hate to use the overwrought "pit bull" analogy, I know the breed well, and just this once I'll use it. McCain reminds me of a pit bull whose tail is wagging because an aggressive (but clueless) non-pit bull was dumb enough to accept a challenge. This is not fair, but fairness is irrelevant in the case of aggressive combatants. (McCain is no angel, but Romney is no innocent choir boy.)

I hope the pit bull with lipstick does as well!

MORE: For those who missed the debate, Dean Esmay has the video.

And Dave Price thinks McCain missed an excellent opportunity to bring up Bill Ayers:

I also think that when Obama rather snottily brought up the humorous "bomb Iran" song and some hyperbolic comments regarding N Korea, McCain should have countered with the Ayers card. Obama looked petulant and petty anyway with his "coming from you" remark, but pointing out that Obama had some level of relationship with an unrepentant terrorist that bombed the Capitol would have been devastating as Obama's complaint centered on McCain's national security judgment.

Also, last night was the first time ordinary people in middle America had a chance to see McCain and Obama debate and form impressions. McCain might not have wanted to come off as going straight for the jugular on their first date.

MORE: Just for the record, I don't think McCain held off bringing up Bill Ayers because he feared being arrested by the Obama Truth Squads.

MORE: Don't miss Jennifer Rubin's "Who Won the Debate":

on foreign policy McCain simply hit it out of the ballpark. He again and again came back to Obama's opposition to the surge and to his willingness to meet without conditions with Ahmadinejad -- who, he reminded viewers, has called Israel a "stinking corpse." Likewise, he skewered Obama for his initial response on the invasion of Georgia that both sides should "show restraint."

How did they hold up on temperament? Obama seemed peeved, and a number of observers - including Juan Williams and Alex Castellanos -- agreed. McCain was occasionally funny and poked at Obama but showed none of the nastiness or ill-temper which his foes identify.

But the "gotcha" may have been from Obama -- who eight times conceded that McCain was "right" on a point. McCain rushed out a video capturing a number of these.

UPDATE: Here's the recipe Donna asked about in the comments:

Cajun Blackened Fish Recipe Cajun blackened fish was made famous by New Orleans chef Paul Prudhommes. In this blackened fish recipe, fillets of fish are coated with a blend of herbs and spices, and pan-fried in butter.

1 teaspoon paprika
1 teaspoon dried thyme
1 teaspoon dried oregano
1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
1/4 teaspoon salt

1.5 pounds fillets

6 tablespoons butter (more or less)
1/4 red bell pepper, thinly sliced
1/4 yellow bell pepper, thinly sliced
1/2 green bell pepper, thinly sliced

Place all the herbs and spices in a bowl; mix well. Dip the fish fillets into the mixture to coat lightly.

Heat 2 tablespoons butter in a large skillet; add the peppers and sautée until softened. Remove the peppers to a warm platter and cover lightly with foil to keep warm.

Add 4 tablespoons butter to the skillet, heat until sizzling. Add the coated fish fillets and fry over medium heat for about 4 minutes on each side, until browned and cooked thru.

Transfer the blackened fish to a warmed serving platter and surround with the fried peppers.

Recipes, BTW, are not to be followed to the letter, but they are intended to give a general idea. Eat your mistakes and keep practicing.

The key is mixing the spices. I make a lot, store it in a jar with a screwcap, and dust the fish heavily before cooking. You don't have to cook the peppers if you don't have them, but cooking garlic in the butter ahead of the fish helps. Experiment!

Last night when I heard (via this link that M. Simon sent me) that the Obama campaign is threatening the licenses of TV stations that run NRA anti-Obama ads, I noted that Team Obama does not go ballistic unless the information is seen as:

-- devastating; and

-- dead right on the facts.

I think it's quite obvious they fear the gun issue, and they should, because they are vulnerable as hell on it.

This morning Glenn Reynolds linked Sebastian of Snowflakes in Hell who had a great post about this latest outrage -- the details of which turned out to be worse that I thought:

So basically, stop running NRA's ads, or your broadcast license could be in jeopardy. They detail the WaPo's FactCheck.org repetition as proof. This is Chicago politics at its finest folks. If you can't win fair, win dirty. This is not how a free society is supposed to function. This is not the kind of man I want leading my country.

Besides, every bit of what NRA claimed is true. It's the Obama campaign and the news media that's lying.

St. Louis City Circuit Attorney Jennifer Joyce and St. Louis County Circuit Attorney Bob McCulloch are threatening to bring libel charges against those who speak out falsely against Barack Obama.

KMOV aired a story last night, that stated that St. Louis County Circuit Attorney Bob McCulloch and St. Louis City Circuit Attorney Jennifer Joyce, both Obama supporters, are threatening to bring criminal libel charges against anyone who levels what turns out to be false criticisms of their chosen candidate for President.

I recently wrote a post about Obama being a threat to the Second Amendment, which included two of the NRA videos; M. Simon embedded the one that's upset the Obama Truth Squad in this post. Along with more links and this remark:

This is politics Vladimir Putin style. Every single Democrat on the ballot needs to be defeated.

Excuse me, but are these people insane?

Isn't the Obama campaign's hostility to the Second Amendment bad enough? Do they really have to trample on the First Amendment as well?

I agree with Glenn's reader Carolyn Gockel :

The whole NRA flap is going beyond gun rights advocates...I'm not as pro-gun as you and I am furious.

First, Obama's Truth Squads went after radio talk shows who dared to host Stanley Kurtz, and tried to silence them by threatening criminal charges:

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.

Then they tried to silence author David Freddoso, who wrote a book critical of Barack Obama.

And now it's threats of litigation, license revocation and even criminal charges for running NRA ads.

Anyone beginning to see a pattern here?

I'm with Glenn. Where's the ACLU when you need them?

I mean, who else are you gonna call? The Department of Justice? Aren't they're already compromised? See my post for more about that; I have to agree with the Volokh commenter who said,"I fear that under the Obama administration, the lawyers sending these letters will be government employees."

If Team Obama is acting this way in an election, imagine what they'll be like if they get power.

MORE: Via Glenn Reynolds, Patterico notes a larger pattern:

Let's face it: this kind of thuggery is standard operating procedure for the left. In 2006, when ABC ran “The Path to 9/11,” Harry Reid & Co. wrote a mafia-style letter threatening ABC’s broadcast license. In 2004, a group of Democrat lawmakers wrote Rupert Murdoch and threatened Fox News’s broadcast license over what they believed was skewed reporting. And the DNC threatened Sinclair Broadcasting’s broadcast license over an anti-Kerry documentary called “Stolen Honor.” Kerry spokesthug Chad Clanton was quoted as saying: “I think they’re going to regret doing this, and they better hope we don’t win.” He hastened to add that it wasn’t a threat.

[UPDATE: Beldar adds that the DNC and the Kerry campaign initially responded to the Swift Vets by threatening TV stations that might dare to air Swift Vet ads -- telling them that they should refuse the ads or be held "responsible."]

MORE: Video of Team Obama's St. Louis Truth Squad here.

That prosecutors, sheriffs and other law enforcement personnel could be on board with this assault on the First Amendment is amazing, and shocking.

If there is any criminal activity here, it's on the part of the officials who are violating their clear public duties.

Truth squads now may have consequences later.

MORE: Jonathan Gewirtz is a very careful fact checker. He has read all the posts relating to the NRA ads, and his careful analysis -- along with this fact check of FactCheck leaves little doubt that the ads are factually correct.

Via Glenn Reynolds.

Hmmm...

Does that mean they should call the Truth Squads the Lie Sqauds?

UPDATE: Missouri Governor Matt Blunt has strongly condemned the Obama Truth Squads as an abuse of law enforcement reminiscent of the notorious Sedition Acts:

JEFFERSON CITY - Gov. Matt Blunt today issued the following statement on news reports that have exposed plans by U.S. Senator Barack Obama to use Missouri law enforcement to threaten and intimidate his critics.

"St. Louis County Circuit Attorney Bob McCulloch, St. Louis City Circuit Attorney Jennifer Joyce, Jefferson County Sheriff Glenn Boyer, and Obama and the leader of his Missouri campaign Senator Claire McCaskill have attached the stench of police state tactics to the Obama-Biden campaign.

"What Senator Obama and his helpers are doing is scandalous beyond words, the party that claims to be the party of Thomas Jefferson is abusing the justice system and offices of public trust to silence political criticism with threats of prosecution and criminal punishment.

"This abuse of the law for intimidation insults the most sacred principles and ideals of Jefferson. I can think of nothing more offensive to Jefferson's thinking than using the power of the state to deprive Americans of their civil rights. The only conceivable purpose of Messrs. McCulloch, Obama and the others is to frighten people away from expressing themselves, to chill free and open debate, to suppress support and donations to conservative organizations targeted by this anti-civil rights, to strangle criticism of Mr. Obama, to suppress ads about his support of higher taxes, and to choke out criticism on television, radio, the Internet, blogs, e-mail and daily conversation about the election.

"Barack Obama needs to grow up. Leftist blogs and others in the press constantly say false things about me and my family. Usually, we ignore false and scurrilous accusations because the purveyors have no credibility. When necessary, we refute them. Enlisting Missouri law enforcement to intimidate people and kill free debate is reminiscent of the Sedition Acts - not a free society."

Tony Blankley tears the MSM a new one for its blatantly biased reporting as well as the more shocking non-reporting. Especially about Ayers:

...worse than all the unfair and distorted reporting and image projecting are the shocking gaps in Obama's life that are not reported at all. The major media simply have not reported on Obama's two years at New York's Columbia University, where, among other things, he lived a mere quarter-mile from former terrorist Bill Ayers. Later, they both ended up as neighbors and associates in Chicago. Obama denies more than a passing relationship with Ayers. Should the media be curious? In only two weeks, the media have focused on all the colleges Gov. Palin has attended, her husband's driving habits 20 years ago, and the close criticism of the political opponents Gov. Palin had when she was mayor of Wasilla, Alaska.

But in two years, they haven't bothered to see how close Obama was with the terrorist Ayers.

The public will be voting based on the idealized image of the man who never was. If he wins, however, we will be governed by the sunken, cynical man Obama really is. One can only hope that the senior journalists will be judged as harshly for their professional misconduct as Wall Street's leaders currently are for their failings.

The non-reporting of the Ayers story epitomizes the dimensions of the problem, and I think the Wall Street analogy is not a bad one.

Because at this point, by keeping the lid on the Ayers story, the non-reporting reporters are doing more than simply protecting Obama (or even Ayers). They're engaged in their own damage control, and trying to prevent a major credibility freefall.

I don't think the economists will be able to help them much.

I'm having trouble being optimistic right now.

About anything.

Which probably means I should stop whining now and delete this post.

But if I do that, I will have nothing to say at all.

The problem is that it's bill paying time, and paying bills always reminds me of death.

But hey, my checks are in the mail! Maybe I should cheer up; I'm probably worth more than the damned gummint.

And I have to say that an analysis by Steve Gill of a disturbing trend in polling has counterintuitively cheered me. Gill shows how a recent Washington Post-ABC poll is "a textbook example of how partisan media outlets manipulate 'news.'"

A disturbing trend in recent elections has been the intentional use of skewed polling by the media to promote their ideological bent rather than to report the news. We got another dose of this biased effort to twist the news to the liking of the media giants just this week with the latest Washington Post-ABC poll, which "revealed" that Barack Obama has moved to a nine-point lead over John McCain in the presidential race. The mainstream media breathlessly reported this information as indicative of McCain's loss of campaign steam after the post-convention bounce and the recent euphoria over Sarah Palin.

But what the news outlets failed to report in their coverage about the Washington Post-ABC poll was the fact that 38% of the individuals who made up the poll identified themselves as Democrats, while only 28% identified themselves as Republicans. (See poll question #901.) Not surprisingly, a poll of mostly Democrats revealed that most of them wanted Democrat Barack Obama to be president rather than Republican John McCain. (Last month, the same poll used a 13-point edge for the Democrats among likely voters to produce similar results heading into the conventions.) The heavily skewed partisan nature of the poll is the real story, not the bogus numbers produced as a result of what is essentially a "push poll."

I can't help notice that the front page story is authored by "TODD SPANGLER - FREE PRESS WASHINGTON STAFF," but the pollster is in Iowa, polling Michiganders by phone. It's all Greek to me, and I can barely remember any of my high school Latin.

It's like, reconciling the above with the overall average poll results at RealPolitics (which show Obama ahead only by 5.2.% overall) makes paying bills and balancing my checkbook look easy!

Which is a cheerful thought.

So I guess can stop whining now.

Instapundit reports:

Reader John Marcoux writes:

Congressman Paul Kanjorski (D-PA) was just on CNBC and said that his mail and calls on the bailout plan are running 50-50: 50% no and 50% hell no.

This is what Barney Frank is up against. Even if the Democrats ram through the plan without Republicans signing on, they will be left holding the bag if the plan fails, as it very well could, and have to face the wrath of their constituents.

I have already instructed my representative. Instruct yours:

Contact Government:

House of Representatives
The Senate
The President

Cross Posted at Power and Control

Obama threatening the licenses of TV stations that run NRA ads

Shut up about Barack's Gun Banning History

Obama Attacks - NRA Responds

This is politics Vladimir Putin style. Every single Democrat on the ballot needs to be defeated.

According to the New York Sun, the McCain campaign is gearing up to talk about Bill Ayers:

WASHINGTON -- The McCain campaign is gearing up to criticize Senator Obama for his past associations with the Reverend Jeremiah Wright and a former Weather Underground operative, William Ayers, in the home stretch of the presidential race.

The McCain campaign, according to one aide, decided it would play the Wright and Ayers cards after Mr. Obama's campaign ran ads linking Senator McCain to a talk radio host, Rush Limbaugh. "Our position is we are no longer going to feel constrained to avoid his very real associations in contrast to the very fictional associations he has imputed to John McCain in this campaign," this aide said.

The Wall Street Journal on September 19 quoted one of Mr. McCain's top aides, Mark Salter, as saying the campaign was "tired of catching spears." He also said, "They played it one way, we played it another way. Now we're both going to play it the same way."

Plus, Obama made no secret of his ties to Wright. Ayers is the real stealth scandal: a coverup within a coverup within a coverup. They are definitely hiding something.

Therefore, Team Obama would prefer that this all be about Jeremiah Wright. Naturally; that way, they can scream about how it's "old" news. And of course "racism":

Any decision to run ads that feature Mr. Obama's former spiritual adviser, Rev. Wright, is bound to attract jeers from the press. Already, Time magazine's Karen Tumulty has written that an ad featuring a former Fannie Mae chairman, Franklin Raines, was racist. Mr. Raines, like Mr. Obama, is an African American. An ad that pointed out Mr. Obama's longtime association with Rev. Wright, who emphatically hollered in one videotaped sermon: "God Damn America," will likely draw responses from Democrats claiming that Mr. McCain is appealing to the racial fears of Americans.

There's Ayers (although why he seems to be playing second fiddle to Wright, I'm not sure):

The McCain campaign's push will likely not be limited to Senator Obama's ex-pastor, whom the Chicago lawmaker criticized in the spring after having earlier said he would not disown him. Another association will be William Ayers, the former agent for the Weather Underground, a violent left wing group that exploded defense labs and other government buildings in the late 1960s and 1970s. Mr. Ayers, in an interview with the New York Times published on September 11, 2001, said he regretted not doing more when he was in the group. Senator Obama attended a fundraiser at the home of Mr. Ayers and also served on the board of the Woods Foundation with him in Chicago.

Mr. McCain's chief strategist, Steve Schmidt, on a conference call with reporters Monday said that Mr. Obama has not been as forthcoming as he should be about his relationship with Mr. Ayers. "What we know for sure and is beyond debate and argumentation is this: Senator Obama said that William Ayers is a guy he lives in his neighborhood. We know that that is a disingenuous and untruthful answer. ... There is a greater relationship than that of a guy who lives in my neighborhood between the two of them," he said.

There's now a lot more than the fundraiser at the home of Mr. Ayers and their service together on the board of the Woods Foundation. Surely, the Sun reads the Wall Street Journal. By now, they must have heard that a young lawyer somehow landed the top job handing out millions of dollars to radicalize school children in the name of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge.

Again, here's Clarice Feldman:

How is it possible that Obama in writing two autobiographies could ignore his 13 year-long association with Ayers if he were not purposely trying to hide or downplay it? How is it possible that the media could continue to ignore the CAC story? How is it possible that American voters, who regularly indicate such enormous concern over educational issues, could be so long kept in the dark by the Fourth Estate about the educational project Obama ran into the ground while he aided his revolutionary pals in recruiting Chicago kids to their extreme left wing mission?

Unless the goal is delay, I can't --

Oh, now I get it.

Is that it? Are they all locked into the traditional "October surprise" routine?

I guess I should remind myself that in the blogosphere, October surprises are usually rehashes of August and September news....

Maybe I should be patient.

Two public officials in Missouri are threatening to bring criminal charges against any one who speaks falsely against Obama. You know it should be illegal to blaspheme against The One. In a police state.

St. Louis City Circuit Attorney Jennifer Joyce and St. Louis County Circuit Attorney Bob McCulloch are threatening to bring libel charges against those who speak out falsely against Barack Obama.

KMOV aired a story last night, that stated that St. Louis County Circuit Attorney Bob McCulloch and St. Louis City Circuit Attorney Jennifer Joyce, both Obama supporters, are threatening to bring criminal libel charges against anyone who levels what turns out to be false criticisms of their chosen candidate for President.

St. Louis C of CC Blog has more on the Obama Truth Squads.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

It's not too often these days I see a headline that says "Why Obama will lose" so I was fascinated.

EDMOND -- When Benjamin Franklin was dispatched to France as ambassador of the United States in 1776, he won the hearts of the French through his authenticity. Rather than take on an affected and phony continental style, Franklin eschewed the powdered wig of the European gentleman and donned the fur cap of an American frontiersman. Original genius and polymath, Franklin understood that the French would see through any false pretension but respect an authenticity that sprang from an unpretentious and naive love of country.

What a contrast there is between Franklin and Barack Obama. Obama is a Harvard lawyer who is a mile wide and an inch deep. He is only the latest in a long line of shallow elites that consider it stylish and intellectual to despise their own culture and heritage.

He [Obama] never experienced his first taste of mainland American until he was already a grown man, and his experience was further indoctrination and immersion in universities with a radical leftist bent. He was further radicalized by 20 years of indoctrination in a Christian cult founded on the teaching of the Black Panthers and Malcolm X, one that taught a self-segregating, blame-casting "black values system" that added spiritual alienation to his pre-existing cultural alienation. He embraced an infamous domestic terrorist as a friend and partner in schemes designed to undermine core American cultural values to push small "c" communism and radicalism, and pissed away the future of a generation of Chicago's school children as he helped launder $150 million of educational grant money to former terrorists and radicals that sought to indoctrinate, instead of educate.

Barack Obama isn't anti-American, but he is un-American. Our cultural memory and experiences are something he read about in books, but never lived, and something he cannot feel.

I guess an inauthentic man needs an inauthentic excuse.

I'm usually a patient and reasonable person, but this time, M. Simon has gone too far.

At least, that was my reaction (Coco is in unilateral agreement, of course) to the above "Dog Man" picture. Especially when I read Beldar's link which led to this:

...wolves are more equal than caribou, says the Humane Society in its endorsement of Barack Obama. The Humane Society Legislative Fund's president writes that the group has never before endorsed a presidential candidate, but Sarah Palin simply poses too great of a threat to animals....

"One generation and out. We have no problem with the extinction of domestic animals. They are creations of human selective breeding."

I'll take a pit bull wearing lipstick any day!

And really. "Dog Man"? (Surely Simon must know what the term means in pit bull lingo....)

Not to get overly cute, but for the life or me, I just can't resist sharing a true story of a pit bull with lipstick:

Although something of a genius in working dogs, even Tudor had a problem with Centipede. When he walked the dog, he stayed back at the end of the leash. Puzzled, Tudor stopped and looked at the dog, and the dog lay down! As patient as he was with the dogs, he wasn't sure that he could ever get Centipede in shape. He decided to rely upon natural ability and endurance for his first contest, which Centipede won handily in less than thirty-five minutes.

The next opponent had a bit of a reputation, so Tudor enlisted his friend Red Howell to work the dog. Now Red was a real genius with dogs, a harbinger to the coming of Ham Morris just a few years later, another gem at training animals. Red never used force in training his dogs, but he understood their psychology. He discovered that Centipede was a natural house dog, and he would do anything for attention. Red's girls would dress Centipede up in dresses and put lip stick on him, and the dog thrived on it.

Red and Centipede worked out a deal. If Centipede would run the turn table mill for a specified time, he could go in the house after his rub down. Nothing else would work. Centipede was unexcited by cats, and if Red placed a dog in Centipede's view, his eyes showed fire, but the dog was too smart to not know that the harness was keeping him from getting to the dog, so he didn't run the mill. Somehow Red was able to convey to the dog that he would get a reward for running the mill. The first time he took a few steps on the mill, Red brought him in the house. Very quickly, the dog got the idea. So Centipede spent a good part of his keep in Red's house with his young daughters. Howell told Bob Wallace that Centipede was absolutely the smartest dog he ever saw of any breed. He would bring Red a bottle of beer, opening up the ice box to get it. Red swore that he could have taught him to open those bottles too.

The match between Centipede and Black Boy would qualify as a classic contest. The dogs met in the center like a couple of freight trains, and first Black Boy had the upper hand. In fact, the lead changed a couple of times, with its being anyone's match up until the two-hour mark. At that point, Centipede finally took command for good. Saddler gave it up in 22 more minutes in a desperate attempt to save his dog. (Emphasis added.)

NEPOTISTIC DISCLOSURE: Centipede's name appears eight times in Coco's pedigree.

A senior guy in the Obama Campaign says Obama is going to show up at the debate Friday no matter what. John McCain says he will only show up if Congress does what it has to do to resolve the Mortgage Securities crisis. No doubt Obama needs the face time on TV to bolster his failing campaign, because if it wasn't failing he would have no need to show up.

Obama campaign senior strategist Robert Gibbs predicted this morning that John McCain will change his mind after all and show up tomorrow in Mississippi for the first scheduled presidential debate, rather than skip it to concentrate on the financial industry bailout. "I believe the debate's going to happen as scheduled," Gibbs told reporters at a breakfast meeting hosted by the Christian Science Monitor. "I actually think he's going to come to the debate," Gibbs said of McCain. "I think he will decide a president is capable of doing more than one thing at a time." In any event, Gibbs said, Barack Obama will be there.

Lets see how that would work in practice. Obama on the right says I have always said... and when it comes time for the Obama on the left to respond it will be that is not the Obama I once knew. I sure hope the TV guys provide a laugh track.

Did I mention that McCain has Obama pwn3d?

H/T Just One Minute commenters.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

It appears that Bill Clinton has fired up the Democrat base. Not necessarily in a good way.

...the straw that really broke the leftwing camel's back was Clinton's statement today to Chris Cuomo on ABC's Good Morning America defending John McCain's request for a debate delay until after the financial bailout crises is resolved. Here are a couple of things that Bill Clinton said that drove the left absolutely bonkers:

We know he didn't do it because he's afraid because Sen. McCain wanted more debates.

...I presume he did that in good faith since I know he wanted -- I remember he asked for more debates to go all around the country and so I don't think we ought to overly parse that.

This caused a firestorm of anger at both the Daily Kos and the Democratic Underground. So just how angry is the leftwing blogosphere with Bill Clinton? You can get an idea by reading this sampling of comments posted at the Democratic Underground:

SHUT THE HELL UP BILL!!! I can't stand his ass anymore.

the reality is that his presidency was All About Bill, he screwed interns and progressive values with equal abandon, and he ushered in Republican control of all three brances of the government.

What "Jewish Holidays" was he talking about on Larry King,He said he would campaign for Obama after. The Jewish Holidays, WTF message is he trying to send. This is a man that knows exactly what his words are and mean.

Bill Clinton is a black hole that runs on egotism. I am so sick of tired, old act. Don't go away mad, Bill. Just go away.

The Daily Kos is also quite angry with Bill Clinton as you can see:

he has now put his legacy and his wife's future on the line with his comments this week...people will look back and place a lot of blame on him...otherwise Obama wins and Clinton is sent into the dust bowl of history...

now Bill clinton is hiding behind his freindship with McCain as cover for not attacking him. Would he be so charitable if Hillary were the nominee? i think not. The sooner we get both Clintons off the national stage, the better off we all are. I for one intend to rally New Yorkers to defeat Hillary in the next Senate race. Hers ad Bills type have seen their best days, and we should put them out to pasture. We all saw the real side of Bill Clinton during the primaries. He is a two faced little coward who once did some good things for the country, but that was then. What exactly has he done for anyonre lately besides side with Hillary in dragging down the Democratic party? besides, if he is the great all-knowing and powerful campaign person, why didnt Hillary win? Give me a break!!!!

I think Barry made a big mistake when he got Bill to promise to campaign for him. Heh. Well the long knives are out and it looks like Bill has the longest and sharpest one. What can Obama do? Well nothing. He needs those PUMA votes.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

Now that John McCain has suspended his campaign and postponed his appearance in the debate, it appears that Barack Obama is planning to go it alone:

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., McCain's representative in debate negotiations, told The Associated Press that McCain will not attend the debate unless there is agreement on a solution that is publicly endorsed by Obama, McCain, the White House and congressional leaders.

Asked whether the debate could go on, Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs said: "My sense is there's going to be a stage, a moderator, an audience and at least one presidential candidate."

The jockeying between McCain and Obama began after the senators spoke privately Wednesday.

Besides, Obama has flip-flopped on so many issues, this might be a good time for him to debate himself.

They could always start with the usual YouTube video clips, and give him a chance to, you know, respond.

Obama is going to have to raise a lot of money to maintain his required burn rate. His efforts should keep the television advertising business out of recession for a few more months.

Democrat Barack Obama's campaign has budgeted $39 million to win Florida, and that's just one of several "robust" set asides for swing states, campaign manager David Plouffe told supporters in a fundraising appeal this month.

That figure alone explains why Barack Obama decided to forgo taxpayer money for his general election campaign.

Simply put: His strategy for winning requires a bigger budget than public money would allow.

The Sunshine State strategic plan alone would have consumed nearly half of the $85 million allotted for the general election by the Federal Election Commission.

"This shows you the sheer magnitude of what we are trying to accomplish," said Plouffe. "We are spending more money and more time on the grass roots than any presidential campaign in history."
It's a strategy, however, that has many other Democrats worrying.

"They've had an experience where every time they had a problem, people would donate money," said one Democratic insider. Noting that some of Obama's key primary victories came after he dramatically outspent former rival Hillary Rodham Clinton, the insider asked: "What if they don't outspend John McCain in Ohio, Michigan and Virginia?

Lets look at some battle ground states and their electoral votes. And assume it will take money proportional to the electoral votes (very roughly) to win a state.

CO - 09 $13
OH - 20 $29
FL - 27 $39
PA - 21 $30
MI - 17 $24
VA - 13 $18

That is $150 million (roughly) to win those 6 states. That means he has to raise about $75 million a month just to win those states. If his calculations are correct. In August he only raised $66 million. Given other states he has to spend in and campaign expenses I'd say he has a problem. And that does not even count providing any money to down ticket races.

Look at it another way. He outspent Hillary by 3 to 1 or more in a number of states and still lost to her. No wonder why he has to rally by day and fund raise by night. If he maintains a pace like that he is going to be very tired by the last debate. And tired people make a lot of mistakes.

How is McCain dealing with the fundraising problem? He has decided to Leave The Money and Get The Votes. In other words he and Palin will be campaigning and doing very little fund raising. They will be rested and refreshed for the debates.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

Mr. Obama, who already has had a Johnson problem, is sticking his oar back in the same waters.

Former Fannie Mae chairman Jim Johnson was dumped from Obama's vice presidential search team, but he's still playing a behind-the-scenes role on the campaign.

Former Senator Tom Daschle, a top Obama backer, emailed a select list this afternoon that he and Johnson would be leading a briefing intended largely for Clinton's campaign brain trust next month.

"Jim Johnson and I have scheduled another informal breakfast discussion and update on the campaign early next month," he wrote to a list including Senator John Kerry, James Carville, and Richard Holbrooke, as well as Clinton's former top campaign aides, including Howard Wolfson, Geoff Garin, and Harold Ickes.

Johnson's involvement comes at a moment when political association with the failed mortgage giants is particularly toxic. He was already the subject of a McCain ad attacking Obama.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

If we were going to face the conditions which might trigger another Depression, we couldn't pick a better man to possibly prevent it than Ben Bernanke:

Bernanke is particularly interested in the economic and political causes of the Great Depression, on which he has written extensively. On Milton Friedman's ninetieth birthday, November 8, 2002, he stated: "Let me end my talk by abusing slightly my status as an official representative of the Federal Reserve System. I would like to say to Milton and Anna: Regarding the Great Depression. You're right, we did it. We're very sorry. But thanks to you, we won't do it again."

On a less serious note, can anyone Paul Krugman says is Satan be all bad?

I'm inclined to take another look, and I want to be fair. (It's the least I can do; especially because being fair is supposed to be one of my rules.) Like Professor Bainbridge I can change my mind. Who knows? there might be virtue in waffling right now.

Bernanke thinks that the government might not only be saving the economy by this bailout, but getting a good deal:

Bernanke said there is plenty of blame to go around for the current crisis, as he named Wall Street firms and banks that underestimated risk of the securities they were creating, rating agencies and regulators.

But he said the primary problem is a drop in home prices, which sparked a rise in foreclosures that have cut the value of trillions of dollars of mortgage-backed securities to what he termed "fire sale" prices.

The lack of demand for those securities, in turn, forced banks and Wall Street firms to take $500 billion in charges that dug into the capital they use to make loans.

Bernanke said that when the government starts buying the mortgage-backed securities from the banks, it will provide a market that doesn't exist now, and allow the prices to rise from the current depressed levels to ones more justified by the fundamentals of the loans, most of which are not in default.

"I realize it's a very complicated story," Bernanke said. "The bottom line, though, is banks are holding all these complex hard-to-price securities and their capital is low. Those two things together don't allow them to make adequate loans. This approach is one way to address the problem."

And he stressed repeatedly that while the Treasury Department plans to spend up to $700 billion buying the securities, it can expect to recoup most if not all of that money by selling them at a higher price later on, once markets have stabilized. He argued that doing nothing would cause the economy to slow so much that there would be a bigger hit to tax collections than the program will eventually cost taxpayers.

Bernanke said he expects most of the securities will be bought through a reverse auction, in which holders would offer them for sale and the government would buy those offered at the best price.

Maybe all the political hotheads (including myself) should try counting to ten, and at least listen to him. He might just be worthy of our trust. If he is worthy of our trust, and he turns out to have been right, it would be a tragedy to ignore him simply because there's an election and everybody wants to win. (I think it speaks highly of McCain that he suspended his campaign, btw.)

Earlier today, I did not hesitate to embrace the third rail. If I can do that, I see no reason why I can't occasionally waffle too.

And if the economic collapse of the United States isn't worth waffling over, then what is?

MORE: Please forgive the sloppiness of my thoughts and the spontaneous way I may have presented them here. It's late at night, and I probably shouldn't be writing a blog post. But I think this is damned serious.

AND MORE: For more on why this might not even be the bailout it's said to be, read The Paulson Plan Will Make Money For Taxpayers." It's fascinating, and here are former hedge fund manager Andy Kessler's conclusions:

.... it is possible, all in, for this portfolio to generate between $1 trillion and $2.2 trillion -- the greatest trade ever. Every hedge-fund manager will be jealous. Mr. Buffett is buying a small piece of the trade via his Goldman Sachs investment.

Over 10 years this could change the budget scenario in D.C., which can also strengthen the dollar. The next president gets a heck of a windfall. In the spirit of Secretary of State William Seward's purchase of Alaska for $7 million in 1867, this week may be remembered as Paulson's Folly.

That Obama has all the best friends.

A founding member of the campaign of Democratic presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois met in New York City tonight with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Jodie Evans, who co-hosted Obama's first major fundraiser in Hollywood in February 2007 just after Obama announced his candidacy and is a top fundraiser and donor to Obama's campaign, led a delegation of leftist anti-American groups that held a private meeting near the United Nations. The stated purpose of the meeting was to "serve as an opening for diplomatic resolution" to prevent war between Iran and the United States.

The government of Iran is listed as a state sponsor of terrorism by the State Department and is strongly believed to be developing nuclear weapons.

Obama has stated that he would be willing to meet with Ahmadinejad and other enemies of the United States without conditions. Evans met with Obama in Beverly Hills last week at an exclusive $28,500 per person fundraiser. As a bundler for Obama, Evans is granted regular briefings with top Obama staff members and meeting with Obama and his vice presidential nominee Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware.

Obama has come under heavy criticism from military families and troops support organizations over his alliance with Evans.

Evans is co-founder of the pro-terrorist group Code Pink and works with state sponsors of terrorism to undermine America in the war on terror. She also has publicly announced her support for the terrorists in Iraq, her sympathy for Osama bin Laden and her "love" of Hugo Chavez.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

The biggest story of the campaign is that a man running for president was not only a close associate, but was quite possibly even a protege of an unrepentant terrorist.

It's huge, rapidly unfolding news, but aside from yesterday's WSJ article, it's still not news to most voters, and I think it's obvious that the MSM want to keep it that way. They're more concerned with investigating the intricacies of an obscure Alaska bridge that wasn't built.

The Corner's Peter Kirsanow summarizes the latest:

Stanley Kurtz's piece today describing what appears to be an attempt to cover-up the extent of Sen. Obama's ties to William Ayers should have journalists salivating. This is a big story that, so far, the press seems determined to avoid.

A rookie reporter could look at what Stanley's adduced and clearly see that Sen. Obama has engaged in serious misdirection regarding his relationship with Ayers. The ties between the two are far more lengthy and extensive than Obama admits.

They have to. The mere possibility that Obama could be a protege of an unrepentant terrorist is immensely damaging, which is why it has to be covered up by Obama, and why the coverup itself has to be covered up by the MSM. If the voters learn about this, and have time to learn about who Ayers is, they will not want to elect Obama president. The longer it goes unreported, and questions are not asked, the better the chances that the voters will never know.

As to the swarms of reporters who have investigated every facet of Sarah Palin's life, they have done their damnedest to make her minuscule association with the Alaskan Independence Party a major campaign issue, but where it comes to an unrepentant terrorist having a close relationship with a presidential candidate, and who might even have been the guy's mentor, they don't consider it even worth a look.

...What did Ayers see in (or hear from) Obama that caused the former to take such an interest in him?

Stanley shows that there's a reasonable probability that Ayers plucked Obama from obscurity to chair the Chicago Annenberg Challenge ("CAC"). Then, after working together on the CAC and directing millions to radical organizations, Ayers hosted Obama's political coming out party. That certainly looks more like a mentor-protégé relationship than a tenuous relationship between two guys who happen to live in the same neighborhood.

The story of a why an unrepentant terrorist has such a close relationship with a presidential candidate should have reporters swarming over the Obama campaign demanding answers.

"The association between Obama and Ayers has received virtually no attention from the three broadcast networks, with the conspicuous exception of a primary-season debate sponsored by ABC when George Stephanopoulos asked Obama about his relationship with Ayers. Out of 1,365 broadcast evening news stories about Obama prior to the end of the primaries, only two mentioned Ayers - one a brief mention of the debate question on the April 17 'Nightly News,' and the other an April 20 'World News Sunday' story about [John] McCain raising the Ayers issue on 'This Week.'

"With just 42 days left until Election Day, the broadcast networks have not presented a single in-depth report on Obama's relationship with Ayers. But Kurtz's review of the documents at the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC) showed the two 'worked as a team to advance the CAC agenda,' which 'flowed from Mr. Ayers' educational philosophy, which called for infusing students and their parents with a radical political commitment, and which downplayed achievement tests in favor of activism.'"

Read Stanley Kurtz's full report here. More background here.

That a story of this magnitude is being ignored, involving as it does a man poised to be elected president, is nothing less than shocking.

Whether it's surprising is beside the point. There's only one way to get them to stop ignoring it, and that's to make noise.

MORE: Clarice Feldman looks at the close working relationship between Obama and Ayers, and asks some good questions:

How is it possible that Obama in writing two autobiographies could ignore his 13 year-long association with Ayers if he were not purposely trying to hide or downplay it? How is it possible that the media could continue to ignore the CAC story? How is it possible that American voters, who regularly indicate such enormous concern over educational issues, could be so long kept in the dark by the Fourth Estate about the educational project Obama ran into the ground while he aided his revolutionary pals in recruiting Chicago kids to their extreme left wing mission?

Evidently, despite the poll numbers, the Obama Campaign is in melt down mode. The ever popular Jane Pauley, a former NBC regular, is not a big enough draw to get many Obama supporters to come have a look. Quoting from the Times of Northwest Indiana about a panel discussion on the economy:

PORTAGE Former television news anchor and Hoosier native Jane Pauley returned to her professional roots Monday during a local appearance on behalf of Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama.

Pauley, who said she worked for the state Democratic Party before launching her successful news career, took part in a panel discussion aimed at touting the benefits of Obama's economic plans for Hoosiers over that of his Republican challenger John McCain.

While the subject matter was complex at times, Pauley occasionally took the opportunity to inject partisan humor into the discussion.

"Why would you want a maverick when you've had a cowboy in the White House for two terms already?" she asked, referring to McCain's description of himself.

Alas, Jane's witty comment didn't enjoy as much currency as it deserved. That's because only eight people showed up for the rally.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

I assure you that Democrat assistance for the McCain/Palin team wasn't intentional.

NEW YORK (CBS) ― Politics and diplomacy were not a good mix at Monday's protest rally against Iran at the United Nations.

Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin didn't participate in the "Stop Iran Now" rally and there were a lot of hard feelings about it.

It was a simple sign that read "We Want Sarah. Shame On The Rally Organizer."

Howard Webber from Brooklyn held it.

"As important an event as this is, you needed a unity of Democrats and Republicans to show Ahmadinejad that we're not going to accept a nuclear Iran."

Buddy Macy of Little Fells, N.J., felt much the same way.

"I'm so disappointed, upset," Macy said. "She would have brought 10,000-20,000 more supporters of Israel. People who were curious were stopped because of partisan action."

"Republicans benefitted more than the Democrats did," political consultant Hank Sheinkopf said. "Why? Sarah Palin wanted to be there, but it looks like she was purposely told not to and rejected. It gives her standing, particularly among those people who are thinking about voting Republican anyway."

H/T Instapundit

Cross Posted at Power and Control

It seems like Mr. Obama has heeded the call of President Bush.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- With extraordinary stakes on the line, President Bush has invited both presidential candidates and the leaders of the House and Senate to the White House on Thursday in hopes of securing a bill to rescue the economy. Bush took the unusual step Wednesday night of calling Democratic Sen. Barack Obama directly to invite him to the meeting, White House press secretary Dana Perino said. An Obama spokesman said the senator would attend.

But what were Obama and his pals saying earlier? Obama had a few words on the subject.

But he disagreed with McCain's call for postponing Friday's first presidential debate in Oxford, Mississippi.

"It's my belief that this is exactly the time when the American people need to hear from the person will be the next president," Obama said in Clearwater, Florida. "It is going to be part of the president's job to deal with more than one thing at once. It's more important than ever to present ourselves to the American people."

Good ole Harry Reid, the Senate Majority Leader, chimed in.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid issued a statement saying that the presidential debate should go on and that McCain's negotiations should not be a "photo op."

Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-New York, said McCain's move was "just weird."

"We haven't heard hide nor hair of Sen. McCain in these negotiations," said Schumer, chairman of the Senate Banking Committee. "He has not been involved except for an occasional, unhelpful statement, sort of thrown from far away, and the last thing we need in these delicate negotiations is an injection of presidential politics."

You know what is missing from the Democrat Machine is earpieces. So that when the message changes every one will be on the same page and speak with one voice. Axelrod needs to get right on it. Before his team looks even stupider. If that is possible. Given enough time I'm sure it is.

I forgot to add ∅ has been pwn3d.

And this little gem from Jim Ryan at Just One Minute.

By withdrawing into inaction, McCain leaves Obama with two intolerable options: follow McCain the leader or be left standing there with his dick in his hand.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

Harry Reid yesterday said McCain's help with the financial crisis was essential. According to a McCain adviser:

"Yesterday, Harry Reid said that consensus couldn't be achieved without John McCain's leadership. John stepped up and is providing that leadership.

A Democrat tells ABC News that, in a phone call late this afternoon, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., told Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., that it would NOT be helpful for him to come back to Washington, D.C., to work on the Wall Street bailout bill.

McCain this afternoon suspended his campaign and said he would skip the first presidential debate in order to return to Capitol Hill to work on the log-jammed Bush administration legislation, which, as of Wednesday afternoon, was in peril.

McCain had phoned Reid to ask about the prospects of him, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., and others to sit down and work together on hammering out a bipartisan proposal.

"Sorry," Reid said to him, a Democrat close to Reid says.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

John McCain suspends campaign asks Obama to do the same.

U.S. Republican presidential candidate John McCain will suspended his campaign tomorrow to work on the U.S. economy.

He has also requested a postponement of this Friday's presidential debate.

In addition, McCain has asked Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama to join him in setting aside campaigning to focus on the financial crisis.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

There were a couple of things that came up in comments that I thought bear repeating in a separate post.

One is this: check out the view of an economist I've been reading for a long time and whom I trust, Arnold Kling. Bottom line:

The risks of enacting the plan are far worse than the risks of doing nothing.

I realize that there are times when the urge to "do something!" becomes irresistible. An economic crisis weeks before an election is surely one of those times. But that does not mean that doing something is the thing to do. Sometimes, not doing something is the thing to do. It ought to at least be considered as an option. The problem is, when hysteria rules, one of the most common popular cries is what?

The government just sat there, doing nothing!

This was reflected in a column I saw by Rochelle Riley in yesterday's Detroit Free Press, titled "Candidates fiddle while Rome burns." Among other things, she says this:

While Rome burns, I don't want to hear the gladiators fight about who, why and wherefore of the Iraq war. That ticking sound we hear isn't counting down the days since the surge changed life in Baghdad. It is the sound of America's economy nearing Armageddon.

Even if we accept the historically problematic analogy to Nero, what is being forgotten is that the economic "fire" under discussion is in large part a fire the government started, whether intentionally or not. Unlike the Great Fire of Rome, which was falsely rumored to have been started by Nero, whose persecution of Christians was described by Tacitus as an attempt to stop the rumors by shifting blame. At any event, there were no fiddles in ancient Rome, so Nero could not have "fiddled" during the Great Fire any more than Governor Roosevelt could have gone on TV in 1929 to discuss the Great Crash. (And no, that is not a moral equivalency argument!)

But hey, if the Great Fire analogy won't work, I guess there's always Armageddon.

Anything to get the government to "do something!" What if the government has already done something? What if it has already done too much, and that any more will be like throwing gasoline on a fire uner the mistaken belief that it is water?

What's the hurry?

Anyway, amidst the endless talk about endless bailouts, and the immediate need for the government to do something, I have a nagging question -- especially for those who think "the government" is a blank check.

Who will bail out the bailout?

Or, if we look at the government the way a college kid looks at daddy's money, "What happens when Daddy's check bounces?"

Why aren't these questions being asked? It's as if everyone is making a kneejerk assumption that the money is there to bail everything out and make everything OK. Yes, of course it is there. Why? Because, well, it just has to be there! Because, like, this is the United States and everything, and the government is just so huge and has so much money it's awesome man! The government has enough money to bail out everything, and if they run short, why they can always print more, right? And if that doesn't work they can always take it from the rich people, all those fat cats who've stolen it from the government and the poor people, right? So it's like, there will always be plenty of money to bail everything out, because all money comes from the government and like if it weren't for the government printing it you wouldn't even get the money they let you take home with your paycheck!

This is why the bailout beats doing nothing, even if it's the wrong thing.

Unfortunately, telling people what they want to hear is just as important now as it was in Nero's time.

And where it comes to "economic issues," the Democrats are far better at telling people whatever they want to hear than are Republicans.

MORE: Speaking of the "Do something now!" mentality, Ilya Somin has the Bailout Quote of the Day, from Mike Pence: "I must tell you, there are those in the public debate who have said that we must act now. The last time I heard that, I was on a used-car lot," said Rep. Mike Pence, R-Indiana. "The truth is, every time somebody tells you that you've got to do the deal right now, it usually means they're going to get the better part of the deal." (Via Glenn Reynolds.)

Used car lot? Would that be what Jeff Goldstein means when he says "Obamalot"?

Our financial troubles are caused by people treating the government as if it was their own piggy bank. And it is quite evident that our current troubles are a case of hogs gone wild.

In the past couple of weeks, as the financial crisis has intensified, a new talking point has emerged from the Democrats in Congress: This is all a "crisis of capitalism," in socialist financier George Soros' phrase, and a failure to regulate our markets sufficiently.

Well, those critics may be right -- it is a crisis of capitalism. A crisis of politically driven crony capitalism, to be precise.

Indeed, Democrats have so effectively mastered crony capitalism as a governing strategy that they've convinced many in the media and the public that they had nothing whatsoever to do with our current financial woes.

Barack Obama has repeatedly blasted "Bush-McCain" economic policies as the cause, as if the two were joined at the hip.

Funny, because over the past 8 years, those who tried to fix Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- the trigger for today's widespread global financial meltdown -- were stymied repeatedly by congressional Democrats.

This wasn't an accident. Though some key Republicans deserve blame as well, it was a concerted Democratic effort that made reform of Fannie and Freddie impossible.

The reason for this is simple: Fannie and Freddie became massive providers both of reliable votes among grateful low-income homeowners, and of massive giving to the Democratic Party by grateful investment bankers, both at the two government-sponsored enterprises and on Wall Street.

It looks like Sarah Palin has more value as a vote getter than as a fund raiser.

John McCain's campaign is scrapping, rescheduling or offering surrogates for nearly every one of the fundraisers Sarah Palin was to hold this month, instead having her campaign jointly with McCain, prepare for her sole debate next month and get some foreign policy exposure.

According to an internal fundraising calendar put together in late-August just before McCain's vice presidential selection, Palin was to have headlined nine fundraisers across five states by now.

She's attended just one to date.

And she'll miss several more that had been in the works for this week, having reunited with McCain to stump in suburban Philadelphia Monday before heading to New York City for two days of meetings with foreign leaders in town for the United Nations General Assembly.

"It only makes sense that we would maximize her time and make sure the schedule lets her spend time meeting with voters, mobilizing volunteers and communicating her record," said an aide to Palin, requesting anonymity to discuss strategic matters.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

George Will thinks that in the near-hysteria over how to control the current economic stampede, people are forgetting the big picture:

An enormous range of complex judgments will have to be made about who will decide -- and by what criteria -- to whom money will be directed, and how to value and price the financial instruments, and the assets behind them, that the government might soon own. But these micro problems, although quite huge, pale next to the macro problem, which is:

This crisis has arrived during the ninth month of a vast demographic deluge -- the retirement of 78 million baby boomers. As the population ages, the welfare state -- primarily, a transfer-payments pump providing pensions and medical care for the elderly -- requires more rapid economic growth to generate increasing revenues. To the extent that today's crisis results in large amounts of capital being allocated by considerations other than those of economic efficiency, the nation will be consigned to less-than-optimal economic growth.

The IBD correctly notes: "Allowed to grind on without real reform, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid will do what no invading army or cabal of terrorists has done or will ever do: bring this mighty republic to its knees. Increasing federal taxes by 150% will strangle economic growth."

I think the IBD is too optimistic. Even pushing tax rates to 100% confiscation wouldn't finance the entitlements black hole at the rate we can expect the client population's needs to grow -- especially not after 2050, when the demographics of the U.S. will tilt in a distinctly less favorable direction. A mere 150% increase in current rates certainly won't do it. One way or another, the Federal entitlements system seems headed for a terminal crash. The only question is when it will happen.

Raising taxes can delay this, but not prevent it. And might, actually, trigger it sooner; the historical evidence suggests that current tax rates may already be at above the minimum level where, by suppressing and unhealthily redirecting economic activity, they actually reduce total revenue. (One reason to believe this is that the much-derided "Bush tax cuts" actually increased revenues despite the effects of the dot.com bust.) But even if this isn't true yet, diminishing returns will set in at some point as rates go up.

The only alternative to raising taxes (or deliberately inflating the currency, which in this context has similar effects) is to buy debt and pay entitlements out of that, pushing the unsustainability problem into the future.

The fundamental problem is that income-transfer programs (and the interest service on the debt purchased to keep them running) are spending wealth in higher volumes than the economy can actually generate, and demand for that spending is rising faster than the economy is growing. Thus, raising tax rates is no longer a way out, if it ever was.

At some point, the U.S. government is going to lose both the ability to increase revenues and the ability to sell bonds. At that point the entitlements system will crash. Transfer checks will either stop issuing or become meaningless because the government has, like some banana republic, hyperinflated the currency in order to get out from under its debt obligations.

The problem is, even though the Big Crash is ultimately inevitable, getting rid of the "entitlements" could result in rioting in the streets. Even revolution. Politicians cannot face things like that. They can't even talk about entitlements, which have long been considered a "political third rail."

Fortunately, there is no such third rail for bloggers, because bloggers don't have to worry about getting elected. In that sense, they are either part of the current flow, or else they're ungrounded, depending on your point of view. So I can reach out and touch the third rail with complete impunity. I won't get shocked, not even if I say it's time to scrap the welfare state.

Why, I can even yell "Get rid of Social Security!" "Take care of yourself and your own family!" "Buy guns!" "Store food!"

But I wish that those for whom this really is a political third rail would remember that there's nothing to fear but the fear of death.

(Which means we have nothing to fear but the inevitable itself.)

QUESTION: Amidst the endless talk about bailouts, I have a nagging question for those who think "the government" is a blank check:

Who will bail out the bailout?

(Or, if we look at the government the way a college kid looks at daddy's money, "What happens when Daddy's check bounces?")

How many Eagletons do we need in this election?

I mean, no sooner was Sarah Palin's nomination announced than the liberals went ballistic with Palin/ Eagleton comparisons and predictions. Which went nowhere. It was just a lame attempt to rattle the McCain campaign.

So, when I read that poor Tom Eagleton's political corpse had been disinterred yet again by pundits invoking his specter vis-a-vis super-gaffer Joe Biden, I figured it was some kind of "Let's even the score!" deal. Possibly by vengeful right wingers (or by wishful thinkers on the left who want to float the idea while crediting the right wing).

That might explain the peculiar attempt to make it appear that the prediction came from Glenn Reynolds -- the "notorious conservative blogger" who has been dutifully not predicting Biden's Eagleton moment right from the start.

But will Glenn's "non-predictions" really fool the truly reality-based searchers for the truth?

To these seasoned conspiracy theorists, the fact that Reynolds would predict by not predicting (especially because as "notorious conservatives" go, he's notoriously non-conservative) makes infinite sense. As I have explained in more posts than I have written, expert analysts (especially Gleen Grenwald) have determined that when Glenn Reynolds says something, he really means quite the opposite, just as when he links something, he's really not linking it at all, but he's playing a complex game of passive aggressive linking. This also means that when Rush Limbaugh says something but Glenn does not, Glenn actually said what Limbaugh said, whether he did or not! (Likewise, when Glenn says someone is straight, he means they're gay. Hmm... Did he ever say Joe Biden was straight?)

So obviously (at least to anyone who studies these things in the detail that's required) it would be a simple thing for Glenn to predict something by not predicting it. As a matter of fact, I can't think of a more effective passive aggressive way of predicting something will happen than by predicting it won't happen!

The real question no one is asking is: who didn't predict this first?

That's how the Guardian describes the New York Times revelation that a lobbying firm owned by John McCain's campaign manager Rick Davis "was being paid $15,000 a month by Freddie Mac until last month.":

The story is this. The lobbying firm of Rick Davis, the manager, was being paid $15,000 a month by Freddie Mac until last month. That fact is a direct contradiction of words McCain had spoken Sunday night. At that time, responding to a Times story being prepared for Monday's paper revealing that Davis had been the head of a lobbying consortium led by Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae until 2005, McCain said Davis had done no further work for either mortgage giant.

Someone's lying - either Davis to McCain, or McCain to the public. I trust you see the problem here.

Who lied to whom? This is the kind of thing we might not know for a while, or maybe never. My hunch would be that Davis concealed it from McCain and that McCain, as is his wont, just winged it Sunday night, without really caring whether it was true, because that's what he does. But let me clearly label that a hunch. I don't know. But it doesn't really matter.

Yes, a campaign aide taking money from a robber baron in Robin Hood drag looks bad, especially when it was denied. (Whether the "everybody else did it" defense will work is questionable.)

But (IMO) nothing could top a candidate himself working with an unrepetentant terrorist to push radicalism on school kids.

Obama can't say everybody else did that, can he?

MORE: As commenter Debbie points out below, the McCain campaign says the Times's allegation is not true (surprised, anyone?):

...the allegation is demonstrably false. As has been previously reported, Mr. Davis separated from his consulting firm, Davis Manafort, in 2006. As has been previously reported, Mr. Davis has seen no income from Davis Manafort since 2006. Zero. Mr. Davis has received no salary or compensation since 2006. Mr. Davis has received no profit or partner distributions from that firm on any basis -- weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, bi-monthly, quarterly, semi-annual or annual -- since 2006. Again, zero. Neither has Mr. Davis received any equity in the firm based on profits derived since his financial separation from Davis Manafort in 2006.

Further, and missing from the Times' reporting, Mr. Davis has never -- never -- been a lobbyist for either Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac. Mr. Davis has not served as a registered lobbyist since 2005.

Though these facts are a matter of public record, the New York Times, in what can only be explained as a willful disregard of the truth, failed to research this story or present any semblance of a fairminded treatment of the facts closely at hand. The paper did manage to report one interesting but irrelevant fact: Mr. Davis did participate in a roundtable discussion on the political scene with...Paul Begala.

Again, let us be clear: The New York Times -- in the absence of any supporting evidence -- has insinuated some kind of impropriety on the part of Senator McCain and Rick Davis. But entirely missing from the story is any significant mention of Senator McCain's long advocacy for, and co-sponsorship of legislation to enact, stricter oversight and regulation of both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- dating back to 2006. Please see the attached floor statement on this issue by Senator McCain from 2006.

The New York Times has never published a single investigative piece, factually correct or otherwise, examining the relationship between Obama campaign chief strategist David Axelrod, his consulting and lobbying clients, and Senator Obama. Likewise, the New York Times never published an investigative report, factually correct or otherwise, examining the relationship between Former Fannie Mae CEO Jim Johnson and Senator Obama, who appointed Johnson head of his VP search committee, until the writing was on the wall and Johnson was under fire following reports from actual news organizations that he had received preferential loans from predatory mortgage lender Countrywide.

From Team Obama:

White privilege is being able to claim your experience as a POW has anything at all to do with your fitness for president, while being black and experiencing racism is, as Sarah Palin has referred to it, a "light" burden.

And finally, white privilege is the only thing that could possibly allow someone to become president when he has voted with George W. Bush 90 percent of the time, even as unemployment is skyrocketing, people are losing their homes, inflation is rising, and the U.S. is increasingly isolated from world opinion, just because white voters aren't sure about that whole "change" thing. Ya know, it's just too vague and ill-defined, unlike, say, four more years of the same, which is very concrete and certain.

White privilege is, in short, the problem.

The full "White privilege" quote, in its superb fulminating essence, can be found here. (It's from Tim Wise, a guilty white guy who conducts the kind of seminars the bureaucrats like to make guilty white folks attend.)

Here he is:

Obviously, whiteness is a disease.

MORE: If you liked the above, you'll love Wise's open letter to Hillary's female supporters -- "Your Whiteness is Showing":

First, for those of you threatening to actually vote for John McCain and to oppose Senator Obama, or to stay home in November and thereby increase the likelihood of McCain winning and Obama losing (despite the fact that the latter's policy platform is virtually identical to Clinton's while the former's clearly is not), all the while claiming to be standing up for women...

For those threatening to vote for John McCain or to stay home and increase the odds of his winning (despite the fact that he once called his wife the c-word in public and is a staunch opponent of reproductive freedom and gender equity initiatives, such as comparable worth legislation), all the while claiming to be standing up for women...

For those threatening to vote for John McCain or to stay home and help ensure Barack Obama's defeat, as a way to protest what you call Obama's sexism (examples of which you seem to have difficulty coming up with), all the while claiming to be standing up for women...

Your whiteness is showing.

When I say your whiteness is showing this is what I mean: You claim that your opposition to Obama is an act of gender solidarity, in that women (and their male allies) need to stand up for women in the face of the sexist mistreatment of Clinton by the press. On this latter point--the one about the importance of standing up to the media for its often venal misogyny--you couldn't be more correct. As the father of two young girls who will have to contend with the poison of patriarchy all their lives, or at least until such time as that system of oppression is eradicated, I will be the first to join the boycott of, or demonstration on, whatever media outlet you choose to make that point. But on the first part of the above equation--the part where you insist voting against Obama is about gender solidarity--you are, for lack of a better way to put it, completely full of crap. And what's worse is that at some level I suspect you know it. Voting against Senator Obama is not about gender solidarity. It is an act of white racial bonding, and it is grotesque.

Want to understand what happened?

Ace has a very terse and cogent explanation:

If the federal government were guaranteeing a trillion new dollars for no-money down car purchases with no credit checks or proof of employment or income, what do you think would happen to the price of cars?

They'd triple. For a while.

Housing market turns into dangerously overinflated bubble. Which is what always happens when a trillion fresh, cheap, easy dollars flow into a sector and begin chasing the same limited pool of goods.

Millions of credit-poor homebuyers -- with erratic and unverified incomes -- now have mortgages with payements well out of their range. But at least the homes are still worth their selling price... so if they default on a $350,000 house, no sweat, the bank now owns the $350,000 house, which can be sold for $350,000 to someone else.

But finally the bubble bursts -- and now all those credit-poor, erratic income homeowners now have mortgages for $350,000 on houses actually worth $150,000.

So what do they do? They walk away or stop paying. Which makes perfect economic sense.

Leaving Fannie and Freddie guaranteeing a trillion in bad mortgages. Which means you're guaranteeing them.

The bank made a $350,000 payment to the home-seller -- but now has only a $150,000 home to show for it. Uh-oh.

You the taxpayer just went on the hook for that $200,000 loss.

Wall Street's contribution? They stupidly bought up derivatives based on these junk mortgages, thus putting themselves, and the entire financial system, at dire risk.

As to what caused the push for no-money down home sales with no credit checks or proof of employment or income, it's easy. I've lost track of the number of posts I've written about it.

Ace singles out Barney Frank for especially harsh treatment, and while Frank is an insufferable fool, he's as replaceable as a piston ring. (As are "Chris Dodd, ACORN, Franklin Raines, Penny Pritzker, Jim Johnson, and of course Barack Hussein Obama.")

The problem is the relentless push for socialism (a word few will use), which has done enormous damage to the economy by the simple misuse of a two word phrase:

"Disparate impact."

This is the legal doctrine behind much of the abandonment of standards in the name of "fair lending," but it is not limited to banking. It has come to permeate almost every aspect of business culture, and it is explained here:

These [disparate impact] claims do not allege, and need not prove, that individuals were treated differently because of their race. Instead, it is enough to show that a neutral practice has a disproportionate effect -- that is, a disparate impact -- on some racial group.

For instance, if a landlord refuses to rent to people who are unemployed, and it turns out that this excludes a higher percentage of whites than Asians, then a white would-be renter could sue. It would not matter that the reason for the landlord's policy was race-neutral and had nothing to do with hostility to whites. The landlord would be liable, unless he could show some "necessity" for the policy....

There are lots of other examples of race-neutral policies that can be challenged because of the disparate impact they have in the housing market. Suppose a lender refuses to make home loans to felons -- or simply to people with poor credit ratings. Those practices also will have a disparate impact. The same is likely true if a city makes a particular zoning decision (the underlying controversy in Cuyahoga Falls) or has per-house or per-apartment occupancy limits (an increasing area of controversy in many communities).

Sound unfair? You bet. But this same basic operating principle lies at the heart of the heart of the crisis.

In an earlier post in which I discussed the abandonment of banking standards, an angry commenter came right back at me:

Sorry, but that's a rather desparate attempt to blame this Republican generated disaster on minorities and liberals. Phil Gramm is the perp here, loosening the rules for the benefit of the financial sector, not so minorities could get loans. The worse part is that you know it and can't admit it.

My complaint is with the elimination of standards. (No one has refuted the claim that "if Freddie and Fannie had stuck to low-risk lending they would today not be needing any government bailout.")

Standards were eliminated for everyone. Many of the bad loans were not made to minorities, who were used as pawns and suffered more than the fat cats. The claim that I blamed "minorities" when I did not is simply an attempt to impugn my motivation and make the claim that I do not really think what I think.

Saying "you know it and can't admit it" is a classic example of discounting my opinion by asserting that I actually think something else but am too dishonest to admit it. That is not an argument on the merits, and it's about as reasonable as saying that I'm bitter and cling to religion and guns.

Once again, I maintain that it was a mistake to eliminate lending standards. You can disagree with me, but accusing me of bigotry or saying I actually think something else (when I don't) does not refute my claim.

It is a lie. A lie grounded in labeling as "discrimination" things which are not. A lie promulgated and perpetuated by those who want to control the business sector. A lie which is always driven by the dishonest accusation that someone is guilty of discrimination. A lie backed by an ever present witch hunt mentality.

I realize, though, that "lie" might have too inflammatory a ring to it for some readers. But I think most reasonable people can agree that "disparate impact" is at least an error in logic.

I think it's a huge, tragic error. One for which we are all paying a very dear price.

Is education still an issue?

Anyone who thinks it is, or who wants to learn more about Barack Obama's background in the field should read "Obama and Ayers Pushed Radicalism On Schools":

Despite having authored two autobiographies, Barack Obama has never written about his most important executive experience. From 1995 to 1999, he led an education foundation called the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC), and remained on the board until 2001. The group poured more than $100 million into the hands of community organizers and radical education activists.

The CAC was the brainchild of Bill Ayers, a founder of the Weather Underground in the 1960s. Among other feats, Mr. Ayers and his cohorts bombed the Pentagon, and he has never expressed regret for his actions. Barack Obama's first run for the Illinois State Senate was launched at a 1995 gathering at Mr. Ayers's home.

The Obama campaign has struggled to downplay that association. Last April, Sen. Obama dismissed Mr. Ayers as just "a guy who lives in my neighborhood," and "not somebody who I exchange ideas with on a regular basis." Yet documents in the CAC archives make clear that Mr. Ayers and Mr. Obama were partners in the CAC. Those archives are housed in the Richard J. Daley Library at the University of Illinois at Chicago and I've recently spent days looking through them.

The Chicago Annenberg Challenge was created ostensibly to improve Chicago's public schools. The funding came from a national education initiative by Ambassador Walter Annenberg. In early 1995, Mr. Obama was appointed the first chairman of the board, which handled fiscal matters. Mr. Ayers co-chaired the foundation's other key body, the "Collaborative," which shaped education policy.

Which comes to the second reason Obama doesn't want to talk about his work with Ayers and the CAC. The outfit promoted a radical approach to education based on Ayers' view that student radicalism should be emphasized, and educational achievement de-emphasized:

The CAC's agenda flowed from Mr. Ayers's educational philosophy, which called for infusing students and their parents with a radical political commitment, and which downplayed achievement tests in favor of activism. In the mid-1960s, Mr. Ayers taught at a radical alternative school, and served as a community organizer in Cleveland's ghetto.

In works like "City Kids, City Teachers" and "Teaching the Personal and the Political," Mr. Ayers wrote that teachers should be community organizers dedicated to provoking resistance to American racism and oppression. His preferred alternative? "I'm a radical, Leftist, small 'c' communist," Mr. Ayers said in an interview in Ron Chepesiuk's, "Sixties Radicals," at about the same time Mr. Ayers was forming CAC.

As if that's not bad enough, they also steered money to ACORN:

CAC translated Mr. Ayers's radicalism into practice. Instead of funding schools directly, it required schools to affiliate with "external partners," which actually got the money. Proposals from groups focused on math/science achievement were turned down. Instead CAC disbursed money through various far-left community organizers, such as the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (or Acorn).

Mr. Obama once conducted "leadership training" seminars with Acorn, and Acorn members also served as volunteers in Mr. Obama's early campaigns. External partners like the South Shore African Village Collaborative and the Dual Language Exchange focused more on political consciousness, Afrocentricity and bilingualism than traditional education. CAC's in-house evaluators comprehensively studied the effects of its grants on the test scores of Chicago public-school students. They found no evidence of educational improvement.

Kurtz is right that there's a lot more to this than "guilt by association."

As CAC chairman, Mr. Obama was lending moral and financial support to Mr. Ayers and his radical circle. That is a story even if Mr. Ayers had never planted a single bomb 40 years ago.

But partnering with him to help bring about his radical educational ideas?

Appalling.

Whether the voters will ever know the details, I don't know. Obama continues to insist that the issue is how old he was at the time Ayers and his outfit were bombing people, and that his critics are stuck in the 60s.

What ought to matter is how old he was when they were both trying to bring about "change" in the 90s.

MORE: Noting that the MSM has "quite consciously and deliberately ignored and minimized this subject," Glenn Reynolds links the WSJ piece and also a great Hot Air post (from which I'll quote liberally):

Kurtz' report provides a very interesting look at the early political life of Barack Obama. He had already entered politics at the time he joined the CAC, and even at that stage had allied himself with ACORN, which has found itself at the center of more than a dozen voter-fraud investigations. Obama also allied himself with Ayers and helped the former Weather Underground fugitive push forward with his plans to radicalize an entire generation of schoolchildren in the area through the CAC. Note well the parallels to community organizing that play out in the activities of the CAC, and recall again how Obama claims that activity as a major qualification for the presidency.

Ayers wanted teachers trained to instruct against "oppression" and to push schoolchildren towards political beliefs Ayers valued -- apparently valuing them higher than actual education. Barack Obama agreed, and for several years worked in close partnership with Ayers to implement that educational policy. Even had Ayers never tossed a single bomb, this kind of educational philosophy would likely raise eyebrows with most parents, who desire a real education for their children and not some sort of political indoctrination camp. With the context of Ayers' violent radicalism, however, it makes the CAC even worse -- a breeding ground for future Weathermen, ready to follow Ayers' lead when the time comes for the revolution that Ayers and his wife (and co-terrorist) Bernardine Dohrn to this day desire.

Barack Obama not only supported this, he helped run this program for several years. What does that say about Obama's idea of mainstream, as he has repeatedly described Ayers and Dohrn? What does that say about his own politics, his own ideas on education, and what kind of philosophy he brings to American politics?

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.

You'd almost think Wright was a distraction from this, um, mainstream issue.

MORE: Joshua Muravchik, writing in Commentary, looks at the Obama Ayers collaboration and says,

"There may be much more, so far successfully hidden by all concerned; but even these facts suggest that Ayers was among Obama's closest collaborators."

I say "would" because I'm not convinced the Ayers questions will even be asked.

Regular readers know that I am a Life Member of the NRA and a staunch supporter of the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms.

I've said that I could never vote for Barack Obama because of his socialistic background. (The ACORN connection especially worries me.) But aside from being one of the most socialistic politicians in America, Barack Obama is also one of the most vehemently anti-gun politicians, and for that reason alone, I could also never consider voting for him -- even if I believed his malarkey about how he supports the free market system.

Like his running mate Joe Biden, Barack Obama is rated "F" by the NRA for numerous reasons, and that last link spells many of them out.

In short, Obama-Biden constitute the most anti-gun ticket in United States history.

Little wonder the NRA is running this ad:

I'm glad they're running it. This is a major issue that neither the complex economic debate -- nor the relentless promotion of the "Vote for Obama or else you're a racist!" meme -- should be allowed to obscure.

M. Simon sent me a link to some great NRA videos here.

In this one, a veteran who fought for his country says he will never vote for a man who wants to take away his right to own a handgun:

And here's one revealing Joe Biden's appalling record :

How anyone who owns a gun (or who believes in the right to keep and bear arms) could even consider voting for the Democratic ticket is beyond me.

According to Matthew Rothschild, "the race boils down to racism":

With Election Day approaching, McCain surrogates or supporters may not be able to resist the temptation to fan the flames of racism. Expect the snippets of the Reverend Jeremiah Wright to resurface. Expect video of Michelle Obama sounding militant. Expect disgusting ads about Obama's admitted drug use as a very young man. Expect that picture of Obama in Muslim garb again.

This campaign will ultimately be a referendum on the intractability of racism.

The way things are going with these endless charges of "racism," I think it's more likely to be a referendum on the intractability of the imputation of racism. Which of course the imputers would claim proves their point. That's because when an issue -- dishonest or not -- is injected into a campaign as relentlessly as "racism" is being injected into this campaign, it's there, and it won't go away easily. The old "try not to think about elephants" routine. American voters are being inundated -- on a daily basis now -- with the following, deeply ugly, message: if you're white and you don't vote for Obama it's because you're a racist.

The only people who have any hope of a defense are Republican stalwarts. They can say "I just voted the Party line as I always do." Not so for Democrats and independents. If they vote for McCain, they will have to live with the unsettling knowledge that post-election inquisitors will always be able to ask them who they voted for in 2008, and if they answer McCain, it will be seen as suspect. And even if they say, "It's my business who I voted for!" leftie McCarthyites will take that as a tacit admission that they voted for McCain. And either way, they're obviously racists, right?

Not that I could ever convince anyone on the left that I'm anything but a cracker, but I thought it might at least be entertaining to take a look at the "flames" Mr. Rothschild cites in his indictment piece.

It's hard to forget a malevolent clown like Wright. I can't stand the guy, although as I have said many times, I think Obama's close association with Bill Ayers is far worse. Forgive me if I am wrong, but not only were the Wright snippets first dug up by Clinton campaign operatives, but what really upset people was the one showing the guy screaming "God damn America!" Please correct me if they were really upset by Wright's race and not by the hateful things he said, but that's my memory of it, and I don't see what Jeremiah Wright has to do with race. Unless, of course, it's the same identity politics formulation that because he is black, all criticism of him by whites is assumed to be racist. (Or might the author think that hating America is "black"? The thought would never cross my mind, but I'm just wondering.)

Militant? I remember a video in which she said that she was proud to be an American for the first time in her life, but that didn't strike me as especially militant. The debate revolved around her patriotism, which Obama's opponents were questioning.

Hmmm.... So what's with the word "militant"? Am I missing the videos of her calling for armed struggle against "the Beast" like Ayers and his odious wife? I doubt such videos exist, and even if they did -- even if she had been as loony as the Weather Underground -- how would pointing that out be a form of racism? I think "unpatriotic" is the correct word here. Why didn't he say "Expect video of Michelle Obama sounding unpatriotic?" Is it possible that Rothschild is uncomfortable with the word? Or does he think that "militant" is a better word to fan the flames of racism because somehow (in his mind, at least) militant equals black? (Frankly, if I didn't know any better, I'd swear that was racist thinking on Rothschild's part. But he can't be the racist, because he's leveling the accusation. So forgive me!)

Personally, I thought using that picture was a low blow, and the Clinton campaign should have been ashamed for doing it. But it fed into the meme that Obama was a Muslim, and Islam is a religion, not a race. I don't like anti-Muslim bigotry, but it is no more "racism" than is anti-Catholic bigotry.

I think the racist "flames" are being fanned by the hyperventilation of Rothschild's mind.

The problem is, if enough people want this race to be a referendum about race, it will become that.

Whether it should won't matter.

Things look pretty bad for McCain right now. The left has been pushing the McCain=Bush meme for so long that a lot of people have come to accept it through osmosis.

And now that there's been an "economic meldown," there's a huge "rescue plan" being pushed by Bush. The Democrats are jumping all over each other trying to make political hay out of it. (Adrianna Huffington's "The Bailout Plan: Welcome to Economic Shock and Awe" from this morning is typical.)

And so far, McCain seems to be going along with it (although not so loudly as to be irreversibly loud).

Far be it from me to offer advice that wouldn't be heeded. But I can reflect on what other people are saying, and I think Newt Gingrich got it right last night when he said that McCain should go against Bush on this one. Show he is in fact real maverick he's always claimed to be.

He has consistently condemned pork, and if this isn't pork, then what is?

Here's Thomas Sowell:

Whenever there is a lot of the taxpayers' money around, politicians are going to find ways to spend it that will increase their chances of getting re-elected by giving goodies to voters.

The longer it takes Congress to pass the bailout bill, the more of those goodies are going to find their way into the legislation. Speed is important, not just to protect the financial markets but to protect the taxpayers from having more of their hard-earned money squandered by politicians.

Regardless of what Barack Obama or John McCain may say they are going to do as president, after a trillion dollars has been taken off the top there is going to be a lot less left in the federal treasury for them to do anything with.

Already Senator Christopher Dodd is talking about extending the bailout from the financial firms to homeowners facing mortgage foreclosures-- as if the point of all this is to play Santa Claus.

bailing out people who made ill-advised mortgages makes no more sense that bailing out people who lost their life savings in Las Vegas casinos. It makes political sense only to people like Senator Dodd, who are among the reasons for the financial mess in the first place.

People usually stop making ill-advised decisions when they are forced to face the consequences of those decisions, not when politicians come to their rescue and make the taxpayers pay for decisions that the taxpayers had nothing to do with.

The Wall Street Journal, which has for years been sounding the alarm about the riskiness of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, recently cited Senator Christopher Dodd along with Senator Charles Schumer and Congressman Barney Frank among those on Capitol Hill who have been "shilling" for these financial institutions, downplaying the risks and opposing attempts to restrict their free-wheeling role in the mortgage market.

As recently as July of this year, Senator Dodd declared Fannie Mae and Freddie "fundamentally strong" and said there is no need for "panicking" about them. But now that the chickens have come home to roost, Senator Dodd wants to be sure to get some goodies from the rescue legislation to pass out to people likely to vote for him.

Obama=Bush! Maybe that's "change" -- but I don't know how well it will go over with Obama supporters.

The reason this makes so much sense is that there's so little time. Neither the voters nor the politicians will be able to understand (much less reflect on) all of the infinite permutations of 700 billion dollars worth of pork, and process that intelligently during the next few weeks while there's an election on. (I do not mean to sound condescending; I can't process it either.) When voters are confused, they tend to proceed with caution.

So I think McCain taking a true-to-his-character, anti-pork, maverick stance works for a variety of reasons.

Hell, it might even be the right thing to do.

(Ask me when I've had time to process the numbers, in a year or so....)

MORE: Megan McArdle has a very sensible post which attempts to answer an excellent question; How close was the financial system to melting down? Conclusion: Consider that the Great Depression came upon a society much less dependent on unsecured credit than we are. Then count your lucky stars that our financial officials are moderately competent.

How likely was this doomsday scenario? No way to know. But it was possible. That's quite scary enough. That it was scary is the whole problem. It's scary but economically scary, not war scary. This favors the Democratic Party, and unfortunately, their candidate is (IMO) an ardent socialist.

McCain has to stop him -- even if it means opposing Bush now at the risk of making the economy wait a month. I'm no economist, but I think hasty solutions have a poor enough track record.

The timing is not merely bad, it's f*cking insanely bad.

(Believe it or not, I'm actually sorry for the country.)

MORE: These poll results cheered me a bit:

This is not to say they agree with me (or Gingrich -- a guy I generally can't stand, BTW), but it's nice to know I'm not alone in my priorities.

Electing a socialist now would throw gasoline on the fire.

MORE: Don't miss "Catastrophic apocalyptic armageddon!
Or something." from Rachel Lucas. (Unless I'm reading her wrong, she seems to like Gingrich's idea.)

At the risk of displaying my ignorance, I do think the economy is beyond our immediate control.

Unlike the election.

MORE: Here's the view of an economist I trust, Arnold Kling:

The risks of enacting the plan are far worse than the risks of doing nothing.

Welcome Instapundit readers. Here is something else that needs investigating. Crony Capitalism. Since the cronies are in Congress and include all of the Democrats (the Black Caucus is especially strong in that area) and many Republicans the investigation will need to be done by the people. Throw the bums out.

BTW thanks to commenter ZZ Mike here is some text on the Thirty Investigators.

For those of you who asked: at a McCain Town Hall a woman got up and asked why there were 30 people in Alaska investigating Sarah Palin and yet no media people were in Chicago investigating the ties of Obama to Bill Ayers and the Crooks from Crook County (Chicago).

If one were to read Hugh Muir's politics diary at the Guardian UK, one might get the impression that Condoleezza Rice were slyly passing judgment on Sarah Palin or hints to herself by manipulating the Great Seal (cf. Barack Obama's glossy Seal 2.0, whose Latin phrase sounds whiny to me: "Really, we can!"):

Is Condoleezza Rice, who was often spoken of as a potential Republican presidential candidate, fully on board with the Sarah Palin phenomenon? She seems to be dropping hints that she might be still available, for now, or perhaps when the cavalcade rolls again in four years? On her recent trip to Libya on Air Force Two, the napkins that came with the drinks bore the great seal of the US; except that instead of E pluribus unum "From many, one", the legend read E pluribus unam. Most took this to be a misprint, but Latin scholars noted that unam is a feminine form. From many, one woman, is it? Which one?

It is a typo, and it says nothing about Condoleezza Rice that someone made a mistake on a cocktail napkin.

How do I know it's a typo?

Because I, unlike those mentioned by Muir, actually am a Latin scholar.

In the phrase e pluribus unum, the word unum (neuter gender) is in the nominative case, the case that names the subject. But unam (feminine gender) can only be accusative, the case that marks the object of a transitive verb (among a few other things, e.g., extent of space or duration of time).

The formulation with unam is meaningless without a transitive verb, while unum is a purely descriptive phrase not requiring a verb of any kind.

As an aside, e pluribus unum makes better sense when considered not as "one out of many", which is ambiguous, but rather as "a union (composed) of a great many (states)". (The preposition e/ex with the ablative case--i.e., e pluribus--can denote the material out of which a thing is composed.) That's why it's part of the Great Seal of the United States: it speaks specifically to the nature of the union, not about a melting pot, not about pluralities, but about many states forming 'one thing' (unum).

In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if the neuter idea underlying unum were not foedus, a kind of "covenant" or agreement underlying the idea of federalism. Then we're talking about one federal government which depends upon a great number of constituent states, and the very essence of the nation depends upon maintaining the sovereignty of those constituents.

Astroturfing by the Obama campaign?

Say it isn't true!

M. Simon posted about it last night, and the pieces are now all falling into place. The evidence is overwhelming. More here.

Michelle Malkin has posted one of the videos they've been desperately trying to pull. YouTube accounts are being closed left and right. It appears the chief culprit is the Winner & Associates firm.

Within an hour of publication of the Jawa Report's investigation, "eswinner" deleted the smear video that he had uploaded several times on September 11.

I figure that if they're such dishonest wimps that they can't stand behind their own work, the least I can do is republish here what they took down. That way, if they sue me for "copyright" violations, I can play "discovery" with them.

So here it is. (I've also downloaded it and saved it, and so have others, so it will never go away.)

(It's a lie, of course, as Palin was never a member of the AIP.)

People who want an encapsulated version of this story can find a good summary here, along with an observation:

If all of this is true and the Obama campaign can be connected to it, it would represent a massive set of FEC violations, as well as the ultimate repudiation of "hope and change" and "New Politics". In fact, it would be a massive demonstration of Chicago Politics on a national scale.

The only question now is how long the MSM can ignore this blatantly dishonest scheme. It took weeks for Dan Rather to be discredited.

Gee, I didn't realize how the words "Astroturf" and "Roundup" look together. I guess Astroturf is not Roundup proof after all.

UPDATE: Via Darleen Click in the comments below, Ethan confesses -- "But with lots of disclaimers. (heh)"

Also "Ace is rolling up the sidewalks behind and catching lots of other bit players in this nasty business."

While many have heard about how Barack Obama took over $100,000 from Fannie Mae ($126,349, according to Open Secrets), I think I've found the Fannie Mae trivia question for the day.

Who turned down $100,000 from Fannie Mae?

No, that is not a trick question or a joke. (Nor is the economic crisis triggered by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac a laughing matter, even if these things beg for ridicule.)

According to George F. Will (who is not laighing), the answer is the CATO Institute:

In the 1994 elections, Republicans ended 40 years of Democratic control of the House of Representatives. So in 1995, a vice president of Fannie Mae wrote a letter to Ed Crane, president of the Cato Institute, saying that Fannie Mae intended to give that libertarian, free-market think tank a $100,000 grant.

Politics produced Fannie Mae. It was created by the government in 1938 to further the government objective of increased homeownership. It was sold -- semi-privatized, sort of -- for a political purpose: to help President Lyndon Johnson finance the Vietnam War. Fannie Mae has no objection to interventionist government; the regulatory state created and cosseted it. And it has always known which side its bread is buttered on -- on both sides, by taxpayers, through the implicit federal guarantee of Fannie Mae's obligations.

But in 1995, Fannie Mae, attempting to ingratiate itself with conservatives, approached Cato with cash, thereby proving that it understands libertarianism no better than it understands subprime mortgages. When Crane responded that Cato never accepts government funding, he received a starchy letter from Fannie Mae hotly denying that it was in any way a government entity.

Will goes on to discuss another of the seemingly endless government subsidies (in this case more "corporate welfare for GM, Ford and Chrysler"), which also aren't meant as jokes, no matter how ridiculous they look.

And he closes by citing Marx. Which Marx?

Not Groucho, but Karl:

In "The Communist Manifesto," Karl Marx marveled that, such is capitalism's dynamism, "all that is solid melts into air." Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch should not be the last to learn the truth of that.

(I don't know what Groucho would have said, but at the risk of sounding optimistic, I don't think Karl took into account the dynamism involved in using gaseous emissions to solidify our liquidity to prevent liquidating our solids.)

"Catholic social doctrine as I was taught it is, you take care of people who need the help the most."

While there wasn't much media ink wasted on the statement (which was barely reported), imagine the uproar had Sarah Palin invoked the "social doctrine" of the Assemblies Of God.

Why? Because Sarah Palin is said to be a "Christianist" and a "theocrat," while Joe Biden never is.

What is a Christianist? Here's the definition, straight from the source:

I mean merely by the term Christianist the view that religious faith is so important that it must also have a precise political agenda. It is the belief that religion dictates politics and that politics should dictate the laws for everyone, Christian and non-Christian alike.

Precise political agenda about what?

Suppose that according to Catholic doctrine, abortion is a sin. If an anti-abortion politician were to cite Catholic doctrine in advocating abortion policy, why would that make him any more of a "theocrat" or "Christianist" than if he cited Catholic doctrine in advocating taxation policy.

What gives here? Why is abortion more Christianist than taxation? I mean, Jesus never mentioned abortion, yet the "render unto Caesar" line has been quoted to death. So if it is "Christianism" to have abortion policies dictated by Christianity, why isn't it even more "Christianist" to have our tax policies dictated by Christianity?

Hey, Jesus hung out with tax collectors, didn't he?

And while there is no biblical evidence that he hung out with either pro-abortion or anti-abortion people, he may well have, because it's beyond dispute that the Romans routinely practiced abortion, while Judaism generally frowned on the practice. (As to what the Talmudic scriptures teach about abortion, it's murky.)

So the question remains, why is advocacy of one Christian doctrine called "Christianism" and the other isn't?

Should start thinking of the IRS as a group of radical Christianists?

No, and the answer is simple. Opposition to abortion is right wing, which makes it automatically theocratic and Christianist. Support for tax hikes is left wing, which means it cannot be theocratic or Christianist, no matter how fervently religion is invoked.

Got that?

MORE: Damn! I didn't see it, but Glenn Reynolds beat me to calling Joe Biden a Christianist:

JOE BIDEN, CHRISTIANIST: "The political left likes to score Republicans for claiming that God is on their side, but here we have Mr. Biden claiming support from both God and Caesar. If Sarah Palin tried this, she'd send the boys at the Daily Kos into cardiac arrest. We won't get into a theological debate with Mr. Biden, except to say that Biblical tax rates tended to run around 10%, not the 39.6%-plus that Barack Obama's tax plan calls for."

That would be David Axelrod, Obama's Campaign Manager.

David Axelrod has long been known for his political magic. Through his AKP&D Message & Media consultancy, the campaign veteran has advised a succession of Democratic candidates since 1985, and he's now chief strategist for Senator Barack Obama's bid for President. But on the down low, Axelrod moonlights in the private sector.

From the same River North address, Axelrod operates a second business, ASK Public Strategies, that discreetly plots strategy and advertising campaigns for corporate clients to tilt public opinion their way. He and his partners consider virtually everything about ASK to be top secret, from its client roster and revenue to even the number of its employees. But customers and public records confirm that it has quarterbacked campaigns for the Chicago Children's Museum, ComEd, Cablevision, and AT&T.

ASK's predilection for operating in the shadows shows up in its work.

It seems nothing about Obama is what it seems to be. Except for his Chicago/Crook County connections. Which are better left in the dark. For Obama. Obviously McCain has other ideas.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

I hate conspiracy theories, especially blogging about them. Even more do I hate spending my time checking them out to see whether they have any merit. That's because few reasonable people care. Reasonable people don't waste time with conspiracy theories, and tend not to believe them. So, if a conspiracy theory is "debunked," the reaction of reasonable people is a collective "so what?"

OTOH, to the people who believe in conspiracy theories, there is no such thing as debunking. To the contrary; the latest scientific evidence is that debunking only heightens their determination to hold firm, dig in their heels, and relentlessly present "The Truth" -- and save the rest of us miserable people from our complacent selves.

So, trust me when I say that few things are more tedious than what I did last night, which was to stream a very tedious BBC broadcast and listen in the hope of verifying the "evidence" in support of recent contention that not only was last week's economic bailout a Bish coup, but that sinister Bush coups run in the sinister Bush family.

Oh yes:

The Bush family, in the form of Prescott Bush, has tried a more aggressive coup before in order to install fascism in this country. This treasonous plot was called "the Business Plot," because the high-level plotters - including Prescott Bush - were Wall Street men who openly supported fascism.

It seems this time around, the Bush family is trying the more subtle approach to open bloodshed: first create a crisis, then under the guise of addressing that crisis, overthrow democracy. Yes, it does sound terribly conspiracy-theory-esque when explained just this way. But what else does one call a criminal conspiracy to destroy Congressional powers permanently, alter Judicial powers permanently, and steal public funds?

But for the "coups are a Bush family tradition" meme I would not have had much to add. And frankly, if the same argument had been made a writer at Rense.com or some other conspiracy site, I would not have bothered to examine the "evidence." The problem is, the author in question here -- Larisa Alexandrovna -- happens to be the managing news editor for Raw Story. The latter is a site I visit regularly, and while I knew it was liberal in its orientation, reading that the news editor thinks this way hardly inspires confidence.

Nor is the author backing down from her claim of Prescott Bush's 1933 coup involvement. She has attacked her critics as "right wing idiots," and at her blog she also maintains -- apparently seriously -- that this is no conspiracy theory:

Another one [critic] actually thinks that the infamous Business Plot is a conspiracy theory. So much for history lessons. Who needs them anyway, right?

Again, here's the "history" this Raw Story editor believes is so settled as to be beyond dispute:

This treasonous plot was called "the Business Plot," because the high-level plotters - including Prescott Bush - were Wall Street men who openly supported fascism.

Here's how it is described -- by the BBC:

The coup was aimed at toppling President Franklin D Roosevelt with the help of half-a-million war veterans. The plotters, who were alleged to involve some of the most famous families in America, (owners of Heinz, Birds Eye, Goodtea, Maxwell Hse & George Bush's Grandfather, Prescott) believed that their country should adopt the policies of Hitler and Mussolini to beat the great depression.

Mike Thomson investigates why so little is known about this biggest ever peacetime threat to American democracy.

I hate seeing shit like that late on a Sunday night. Honestly, it felt like homework. Very ugly homework.

But like the dutiful schoolboy I never really wanted to be, I did my duty, and I found the entirety of the interview archived here, and I listened for more than 27 minutes.

At no point is there any allegation that Prescott Bush was involved in the Business Plot.

From the show, starting at 20:07:

...a shipping company called HAL was accused of providing free passage to Germany to American journalists willing to write favorable copy on Hitler's rise to power. The company is also alleged to have brought Nazi spies and pro-fasicst sympathizers into America.

John Buchanan has studied this latest section of the report and has discovered that one of the company's managers came from a very famous family:

"The thing that surprised me the most was to discover in the documents that this company Hamburg America Lines had in fact been been managed on the managed on the US side at the executive level by Prescott Bush, as part of a web of Nazi business interests that were all seized in late 1942 under the Trading With The Enemy act by the US Congress, and Prescott Bush is the grandfather of the sitting president of the United States."

In short, there's nothing whatsoever to tie Prescott Bush to the coup. (Ironically, Ms. Alexandrovna is right to maintain that this is no conspiracy theory, because there's no evidence to support it.)

This is confirmed in Prescott Bush's wiki entry, which contains a heading titled Alleged plot to overthrow FDR:

On July 23, 2007, the BBC Radio 4 series Document reported on the alleged Business Plot and the archives from the McCormack-Dickstein Committee hearings. The program does not in any way state or imply that Prescott Bush was involved in the plot. The program mentioned Bush's directorship of the Hamburg-America Line, a company that the committee investigated for Nazi propaganda activities, and the alleged 1933 attempt, supposedly led by Gerald MacGuire, to stage a military coup against President Franklin D. Roosevelt aimed at forcing Roosevelt to resign (or, failing that, to assassinate him) and at installing a fascist dictatorship in the United States. [6]

However, it's simply inaccurate for Wiki to say that the program "does not in any way state or imply that Prescott Bush was involved in the plot" -- because the program description clearly states exactly that. Again, the BBC:

The coup was aimed at toppling President Franklin D Roosevelt with the help of half-a-million war veterans. The plotters, who were alleged to involve some of the most famous families in America, (owners of Heinz, Birds Eye, Goodtea, Maxwell Hse & George Bushâs Grandfather, Prescott) believed that their country should adopt the policies of Hitler and Mussolini to beat the great depression.

Mike Thomson investigates why so little is known about this biggest ever peacetime threat to American democracy.

I suspect that some of the people citing the radio show as "proof" have not listened to it, but instead rely solely on the description.

Whether this was a complete waste of time, I don't know. Those who want to believe Prescott Bush was involved in a coup may have an emotional need to believe that, so in that sense this is -- and always will remain -- undebunkable.

This reminds me of the time I listened to a long radio interview with a crackpot who claimed he enjoyed sex and drugs with Barack Obama (and that the latter had acted as a sort of limousine tour guide even though he was a state representative at the time). I thought it was absolute nonsense, but I slogged through it, and eventually, the man's story was debunked. But at least there was an actual allegation made during the radio interview to be believed or disbelieved depending on whether you're a conspiracy theorist.

In contrast, here there is no accuser, and no accusation.

I don't think this rises to the level of a conspiracy theory.

(Even for unreasonable people.)

MORE: Back in 2004, Hugh Hewitt said something in another context that I think might -- and I mean might -- be helpful here:

It would not be hard for intelligence services from around the world to build blogs with an intent to deceive or manipulate, putting out solid content to gain an initial audience before using it to disseminate disinformation intentionally.

Of course, there's no showing that any intelligence service has been involved in promoting the "Bush family coup" disinformation.

For starters, the BBC is not a blog.

At least not yet.

Here is where it started for me.

Considering the way the vicious attacks on Sarah Palin generated sympathy for her (with a resultant backlash reflected in earlier polls), I would have thought that her attackers would by now have learned to control themselves, at least for the few weeks that remain in this increasingly ugly campaign.

Almost ten days ago, I opined that her critics just can't help it:

....the media feeding frenzy results from the fact that they find Palin irresistible for a variety of reasons. She's new, she's a woman (which in their twisted way of thinking makes her a traitor), she didn't go to Harvard (or Princeton, like Charlie Gibson), and she belongs to the wrong church. As Andrew Sullivan says, the mere fact that she belongs to the Assembly of God justifies the use of the Dowdification method of quotation falsification:

She is a long-time member of the Assemblies Of God. That's all you need to know.

Imagine the reaction if someone said that about membership in the Catholic Church.

So, they just cannot help themselves. That libertarians like David Harsanyi, Vin Suprynowicz, and Radley Balko (link via Glenn Reynolds) have praised her only makes them angrier....

The highly emotional "Disinvite Palin" campaign has all the earmarks of the "can't help it" mentality I described.

Sources say the axes were out for Palin as soon as Sen. Clinton pulled out because she did not want to attend the same event as the Republican vice presidential candidate. "I have never seen such raw emotion -- on both sides," said someone close to the situation. The groups sponsoring the rally against Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad speaking at the UN were reportedly told, "it could jeopardize their tax exempt status" if they had Palin and not Clinton or Democratic VP candidate Joe Biden on hand. . . ."It's an absolute shame that this has happened," Hikind said. "To threaten organizations ... to threaten the Conference of Presidents that if you don't withdraw the invitation to Gov. Palin we're going to look into your tax exempt status ... that's McCarthyism."

The same story quoted President of "Hillary Now" Bob Kunst: "I'm absolutely appalled at the behavior of the Democrats. I'm a Democrat and for the first time in my life I'm going to vote Republican. I can't take it anymore."

I don't know how much damage this will cause the Obama campaign. Noting that the activists demanding Palin's withdrawal included a man fired from the Obama campaign over his negotiations with Hamas, Jennifer Rubin asks some good questions:

It remains to be seen whether this issue will plague Obama as he continues to struggle to establish both his foreign policy credentials and his support for Israel. One supporter of the McCain-Palin ticket on Capitol Hill remarked ruefully, "Has it occurred that the reason that neither Obama nor Biden would show up is maybe that they would rather meet with Ahmadinejad without preconditions than protest his presence at the UN?"

This week culminating in the Friday's presidential debate will reveal whether the McCain camp intends to pressure Obama directly to explain why his supporters nixed the event and why his VP declined to attend in Clinton's absence.

Meanwhile, the controversy will continue to ricochet through the Jewish community. There is no shortage of questions: Why were specific groups with a partisan agenda allowed to prevail? Why did presidential politics overtake the larger issue of Iranian nuclear weapon acquisition? And why were the member groups of the Conference not all consulted?

For now, the only point on which most can agree is that those involved -- the rally sponsors, those who pressured the cancellation and the Obama campaign -- have brought unwanted scrutiny and provided ammunition for Ahmadinejad to claim that opponents of Iran's nuclear ambitions are neither serious nor united.

From the days of FDR, the vast majority of American Jews have identified with the Democratic Party almost if it were their religion. This included most especially secular Jews like me whose blasé attitude toward their faith and toward religious observance in general made such a replacement all the more important emotionally. This same Jewish majority also identified with the cause of social justice and, as Barack Obama among many others has noted, were some of the most active participants in the civil rights movement of the Fifties and Sixties. That was all how it should have been and was a perfectly logical and praiseworthy epoch in the development of our country.

Hello - those days are over! The events leading up to Monday's anti-Ahmadinejad demonstration by Jewish organizations at the UN put the final nail in an already long-moldering coffin. Jews should no longer align themselves with the Democratic Party any more than they should align with the Republicans. They should act and think for themselves, devoid of ideological or partisan bias. They should first be Americans, not Democratic Party Americans.

The virtual night of the long knives played out between the Democratic Party and various Jewish organizations surrounding the Iran demonstration, including allegations that party operatives were threatening the loss of tax exempt status over Sarah Palin's appearance, with more unpleasant revelations undoubtedly to come, is obviously causing people to reconsider this allegiance to the Democratic Party that approaches fealty.

I urge my fellow Jews to keep thinking about this and not to retreat into the cocoon-like safety of an outmoded tradition. Change is difficult. But remember that Hillary Clinton - that paragon of the Democratic Party, a woman who calls herself a "progressive" (oh, desecration of the English language!) - was willing to forego the protest of the man who is arguably the most significant enemy of the Jews since Hitler for partisan and (most likely) personal pique reasons. How morally repellent is that!

It is amazing that Sarah Palin is continuing to cause so many people on the left to miscalculate on such a grand scale, but for a lot of reasons, she is. The disinvition to an Ahmadinejad protest is proof that she triggers an emotional reaction which her enemies cannot control -- even when (as here) she agrees with them! Incredible.

Once again, they really can't help it.

AFTERTHOUGHT: This whole incident makes me wonder what other issues Sarah Palin's enemies won't allow her to agree with them on. (The more reasonable she sounds, the more they hate her. What would they do if she dared advocate separation of church and state?)

UPDATE: Thank you, Sean Kinsell for linking this post! Adds Sean:

The hysterical detractors are succeeding admirably--if that's the word--at getting the public to associate opposition to Palin with derangement.

It looks like Joe Biden and B. Obama have some mutual acquaintances. Or at least mutual once removed.

DENVER -- No matter what help Barack Obama might get from Sen. Joseph Biden, his newly named vice presidential running mate won't give Obama much cover on the Tony Rezko front.

Biden has described himself as a 30-year friend of a key figure in the Rezko trial who's pleaded guilty to a federal extortion charge in Chicago and is awaiting sentencing.

When the Delaware senator began contemplating his own 2008 presidential run, he initially was helped by Chicago lawyer Joseph Cari Jr., who also served as Biden's Midwest field director in his failed 1988 bid for president.

In 2005, Cari admitted to taking part in an $850,000 kickback scheme that prosecutors say was part of a larger political fund-raising operation for Gov. Blagojevich overseen by Rezko, who was convicted in June of wide-ranging corruption involving state deals.

On the day Cari's name first surfaced in the federal probe of the state Teachers Retirement System, the former finance chairman for the Democratic National Committee and for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee was to have hosted a Biden fund-raiser in Chicago. Cari was a no-show at that July 25, 2005, event.

Offering Cari a vote of confidence at the time, Biden said, "All I know is Joe Cari is a friend, and he's an honorable guy, but I don't know anything beyond that."

You can take the politician out of Chicago, but you can't take the Chicago out of the politician.

I'm looking forward to Obama's "I am not a crook" speech.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

My Pet Jawa thinks so.

It is also likely that the PR firm was paid by outside sources to run the smear campaign. While not conclusive, evidence suggests a link to the Barack Obama campaign. Namely:

* Evidence suggests that a YouTube video with false claims about Palin was uploaded and promoted by members of a professional PR firm.

* The family that runs the PR firm has extensive ties to the Democratic Party, the netroots, and are staunch Obama supporters.

* Evidence suggests that the firm engaged in a concerted effort to distribute the video in such a way that it would appear to have gone viral on its own. Yet this effort took place on company time.

* Evidence suggests that these distribution efforts included actions by at least one employee of the firm who is unconnected with the family running the company.

* The voice-over artist used in this supposedly amateur video is a professional.

* This same voice-over artist has worked extensively with David Axelrod's firm, which has a history of engaging in phony grassroots efforts, otherwise known as "astroturfing."

* David Axelrod is Barack Obama's chief media strategist.

* The same voice-over artist has worked directly for the Barack Obama campaign.

This suggests that false rumors and outright lies about Sarah Palin and John McCain being spread on the internet are being orchestrated by political partisans and are not an organic grassroots phenomenon led by the left wing fringe. Our findings follow.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

Noting Biden's attack on the "the cowboy mentality of the Bush-McCain era," Bill Quick comes out swinging in defense of cowboys:

I like cowboys. They are one of the greatest American icons.

Why do Obama and Biden hate America and her greatest icons?

Hey wait a second!

How does Biden manage to get away with attacking the "cowboy mentality" in a DC suburb while simultaneously clinging to his guns in the coal-mining country?

What he ">said to the coal miners was this:

"I like that little over and under, you know? I'm not bad with it.."

Geez. I don't mean to overanalyze, but as I've just finished attempting to comprehend what George Lakoff calls "biconceptualism," I'm like, all primed. I'm truly in the mood for what the PoMos call "subtext."

And considering Biden's remarks, there's no way to avoid the fact that the subtext of the moment involves cowboys.

I think that if we closely examine all possible facets and subfacets of this subtext, if we take into account the attacks on cowboys, the "cowboyesque" statements to the coalminers, the statement about liking "that little over and under, you know" and analyze all of this in the broadest possible spirit of "biconceptualism," it might be possible to come up with a new, um, frame.

Because deconstructing biconceptualism has to start somewhere.

Top Democrat issue framer George Lakoff has some advice for the Obama campaign. (From a psychiatric pdf file.)

Stop talking about issues. It's all about "character" (in quotes because according to Lakoff character is just "narrative"):

In 1980, Richard Wirthlin - Ronald Reagan's chief strategist - made a fateful discovery. In his first poll he discovered that most people didn't like Reagan's positions on the issues, but nevertheless wanted to vote for Reagan. The reason, he figured out, is that voters vote for apresident not primarily on the issues, but on five other "character" factors; values; authenticity; communication and connection; trust; and identity. In the Reagan-Carter and Reagan-Mondale debates, Mondale and Carter were ahead on the issues and lost the debates because the debates were not about the issues, but about those other five character factors. George W. Bush used the same observation in his two races. Gore and Kerry ran on the issues. Bush ran on those five factors.

In the 2008 nomination campaign, Hillary ran on the issues, while Obama ran on those five factors and won. McCain is now running a Reagan-Bush style character-based campaign on the Big Five factors. But Obama has switched to a campaign based "on the issues," like Hillary, Gore and Kerry. Obama has reality on his side. And the campaign is assuming that if you just tell people the truth, they will reason to the right conclusion. That's false and they should know better.

Unfortunately, it is also easy to manipulate these things with marketing techniques. As Cillizza points out, McCain and Palin are being marketed as American icons: the war hero and the ideal mom. Obama and Biden were marketed (honestly) as realizations of the American Dream, living hope that it is still possible - with Obama as the lone figure with the charisma, character and talent to actually unite the country and bring back the dream. So far, the McCain-Palin narratives are proving powerful. Palin has enormous charisma of her own. Meanwhile the Obama narrative is being given up in favor of "the issues." It is as though, after the Republicans attacked Obama's charismatic leader persona, the Obama campaign gave up on it, instead of realizing that they could capitalize on it.

However, he thinks Obama has character, because charisma is his "character." And because narratives and stereotypes are real reason which is reality, his charisma is also "real reason":

...the enlightenment theory of reason doesn't describe how people actually work. People think primarily in terms of cultural narratives, stereotypes, frames and metaphors. That is real reason.

Realities matter. To communicate them, you have to make use of real reason. That's what Obama did in the nomination campaign when he used his personal narrative to communicate about the country's needs. Obama needs to go back to being Obama. The Obama campaign's job is to shine a light on those realities through Obama's unique personal qualities as a leader and communicator.

Through a form of trickery known as "conservative populism" which was invented in the 1960s, the Republicans have hoodwinked working people into imagining that they agree with guys like Reagan and McCain (and presumably, they've tricked the working people into believing that these man have character). The real job of Obamacrats is to show them -- by "real reason" (meaning resort to charisma), that they have been fooled:

The Obama campaign has problems with conservative populism. They don't seem to understand it. Conservative populism on a national scale was invented in the late 1960s. At the time, most working people identified themselves with liberals. But conservatives realized that many working people were what I have called "biconceptuals" - they are genuinely conservative in their mode of thought about patriotism and certain family issues, though they are progressive in their understanding of nature (they love the land) and their commitment to communities where people care about each other etc. So conservatives have talked to them nonstop about conservative "patriotism" and "family values", thus activating their conservative mindset. At the same time, conservative theorists invented the ideal of "liberal elitism": that liberals look down upon working people and are not like them. Conservatives have been working at constructing this mythology for nearly 40 years and liberals have stood by and let it happen. Palin is a natural for the conservative populists. She understands their culture.

Conservative populism is a cultural, not an economic, phenomenon. These are folks who often vote against their economic self-interest and instead vote on their identity as conservatives and on their antipathy to liberals, who they see as elitists who look down on them. Simply giving conservative populists facts and figures won't work.

They tend to vote for people they identify with and against people who they see as looking down on them. The job for the Obama campaign is to reverse the present mindset that the Republicans have constructed, to reveal the conservatives as elitist Washington insiders who cynically manipulate them, to get conservative populists to identify with Obama and Biden on the basis of values and character, and to have them see realities through Obama's leadership capacities. Not an easy job. But it's the real job.

But then, if character is really just a narrative, and is actually a phony way of marketing charisma, then maybe he has a point. If not, then Lakoff (and the people who agree with him) are some of the most cynical opportunists in the business.

Call me a bamboozled biconceptual, but I think McCain's life is more than just a cleverly marketed narrative. Sure, there's a lot of political marketing involved in this campaign, as there always is. But no amount of marketing (in politics or anywhere else) can alter the fact that there can be genuine differences in the quality of what is being offered for sale. If character exists (and I think it does; hence the satirical post title), no amount of marketing can change it. There are vast character differences between John McCain and Barack Obama, and these will remain, regardless of who wins and who loses.

MORE: In a stunning show of "real reason," Joe Biden (campaigning in coalmining country) is appealing to the "biconceptual" crowd, and bitterly clinging to his guns:

One of rural Democrats' biggest fears about Obama? That he'll come after the Second Amendment. Not so, said Biden -- and he'd better not try.

"I guarantee you, Barack Obama ain't taking my shotguns, so don't buy that malarkey," Biden said angrily. "They're going to start peddling that to you."

"I got two, if he tries to fool with my Beretta, he's got a problem."

Biden has said he doesn't hunt, but shoots skeet with his two firearms. "I like that little over and under, you know? I'm not bad with it," he said today.

See what happens? Biden speaks reality, while Reynolds resorts to cynical activation of the "biconceptual" mindset!

Sorry. I really should take "reality" more seriously.

MORE: Rex Murphy looks at Obama's narrative, and his charisma, and thinks both are depleted:

...Mr. Obama was the slate; the crowds brought their own chalk.

This is the nature of Mr. Obama's particular kind of charisma. People project their best wishes on him, they fill in the blank of a very attractive and plausible outline. His is not, emphatically, a charisma of deeds. For what has he done, save run for president? He is an accommodating vessel - cool, smart, biracial and "unfinished." This is the Gatsby quality of him that others have noted. Like Gatsby, he is a receptacle of others' glamorous invention.

People see in him, or wish to see, the last great ideal of the American polity fulfilled, a final and full racial accommodation. That should he be elected president, America will have achieved, by his singular persona, the perfect emblematic demonstration of having exorcised at last the great stain of its racially riven origins.

Mr. Obama's charisma is, in this sense, external, something extended to the candidate. And it follows that that which is given may equally be taken away. The sparkle has, in fact, dimmed. He travels now in a lower orbit, closer to Earth - which is to say, he grows more mundane. The great word "hope" sounds less frequently now. He picks a running mate thick with the dust and rancour of many long years in Washington.

His acceptance speech in the Olympic-style stadium could not gather the inspirational energy of his earlier arias. Of late, the flash supernova of U.S. politics is seen "competing" with a second-on-the-ticket female governor of a remote state. There's more than a gap between the "audacity of hope" and "lipstick on a pig." The mouth that spoke the first phrase should not be capable of the second.

He has shrunk into a combative partisan.....

I got a kick out of the Issues-O-Meter that Ann Althouse linked earlier.

It lists ten issues, each one with a button which, when clicked, makes the figures of McCain and Obama slide back and forth on the scale below so you can see how close or far apart on a given issue they are.

On the economy, for example, it shows them as pretty far apart:

I thought this was all nice, wholesome, harmless entertainment, so I emailed the "Issues-O-Meter" link to a liberal friend. Imagine my surprise when he emailed me back with a snarky remark about their respective positions on gay marriage: "they look so cozy together!"

Hey wait a minute! How did they "look"? I went back to the test, clicked the "Gay Marriage" button (if that isn't a hot button issue, what is?), and sure enough, they are close. Touchingly close, in fact.

Why, they're closer than two figures on a wedding cake!

What's up with that? Isn't the Culture War supposed to be tearing the country apart?

I mean, according to Andrew Sullivan things have gotten so bad that the forces of theocracy are closing in:

"With Sarah Palin, America has taken one very large leap toward a completely theocratic politics."

Interestingly, the hated "Christianist theocrat" who's forced America to take this great leap was specifically asked about her religion was the other night, and here was her answer:

Faith is very, very important in my life. I don't believe I wear it on my sleeve and I would never try to shove it down anybody else's throat and try to convert anybody. But just a very simple faith that is important to me -- it really is my foundation.

What kind of "completely theocratic politics" is that? Not wearing it on her sleeve? Never trying to convert anybody? Not trying to shove her religion down anyone's throat. Not even Andrew Sullivan's?

How lame can theocracy get?

A hell of a way to run a culture war, I'd say....

Long time commenter and e-mail friend linearthinker brought that word to my attention. He quotes this definition:

"...the statistical analysis of elections. Psephology uses compilations of precinct voting returns for elections going back some years, public opinion polls, campaign finance information and similar statistical data."

One quarter of all registered voters are Catholics and Biden is losing Obama their votes.

Remember, you read it here first: on September 11 this blog reported a mounting backlash from Catholic bishops against Biden, Barack Obama's "Catholic" pro-abortion running mate. At that time I estimated eight bishops had come out to denounce Biden; the total is now 55. Beyond that, Biden is being trashed across every state of the Union by Catholic newspapers, TV and radio stations, and blogs. It is a tsunami of rejection.

The story has now hit the secular media. Last Saturday Time magazine asked: "Does Biden Have a Catholic Problem?" By Wednesday the issue had moved onto the front page of the New York Times. Joe the Jinx has blown it, big time. Biden has only himself to blame: he started this war, with his notoriously undisciplined mouth. He knew the dangers. Last August, Archbishop Raymond Burke, former Archbishop of St Louis and now Prefect of the Apostolic Segnatura in Rome, said communion should be denied to pro-abortion politicians "until they have reformed their lives".

Archbishop Chaput of Denver had already announced Biden should not receive communion because of his pro-abortion views. Defiantly, Biden took communion in his home parish in Delaware in late August. On September 2 the Bishop of Scranton, Pennsylvania (a crucial swing state) banned him from communion in his diocese. That is effective excommunication.

There are 47 million Catholic voters in the United States. One quarter of all registered voters are Catholics. At every presidential election in the past 30 years the Catholic vote has gone to the winning candidate, except for Al Gore in 2000. This year 41 per cent of Catholics are independents - up from 30 per cent in 2004. Psephologists claim practising Catholics were the decisive factor in the crucial swing states in 2004: in Ohio 65 per cent of Catholics voted for Bush, in Florida 66 per cent. They were drifting away in disillusionment from the Republicans and split 50-50, until Joe Biden worked his magic. This is electoral suicide by the Democrats.

CBS2 has a Democratic politician on record with the story of why Sarah Palin's invitation was rescinded after Hillary Clinton pulled out of the event upon hearing that Palin was also invited and planned to attend the rally to protest Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad speaking at the UN, with one Democratic lawmaker calling it "McCarthyism."

Once Clinton canceled and announced she would not attend, according to the report, the "axes were out for Palin" and the Jewish Groups which organized the event were told their tax exempt status would be jeopardized if Palin attended but Hillary Clinton or Democratic vice presidential candidate, Joe Biden did not.

CBS 2 spoke to Assemblyman Dov Hikind, Democrat from Brooklyn, who said, "This is insulting. This is embarrassing, especially to Gov. Palin, to me and I think it should be to every single New Yorker."

Hikind goes on to to declare, "It's an absolute shame that this has happened. To threaten organizations ... to threaten the Conference of Presidents that if you don't withdraw the invitation to Gov. Palin we're going to look into your tax exempt status ... that's McCarthyism."

The Siena Poll of New York likely voters is really going to upset the tummies of the Democrat Party, if they have any sense at all.

New York Jews have not voted Republican en masse since Ronald Reagan and as of six months ago didn't appear to have changed.

The tide has seemingly turned though. In the Siena Poll (cross tabs) section is a demographic which should make Mr Obama start thinking about what to do with all of his spare time after next November.

The issue would be Sen. John McCain garnering 57% of the New York Jewish favorable view and Mr Obama getting a miserable 38% favorable rating.

That is not good news for the Obama/Biden camp, since the last time this happened Ronaldus Maximus Reagan won in such a landslide the world doesn't even remember who his opponent was. (actually the guy who ran against Reagan went on to get a job building houses for free and roaming the globe trash talking the United States and Israel)

You know this is pretty stupid for a Harvard educated guy who taught at the University of Chicago. Not to mention the fact that he has spent his adult life in Chicago identity politics. He should have spent more time in the ethnic wards on the North Side. They have Catholic areas up there. Jewish areas. And don't forget the hippie contingent. He might have learned a thing or two.

I think he is one of those kind of people who are over represented in academia. Too smart to learn anything new.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

While I haven't spent as much time as I perhaps should on the subject of ACORN, last week's Detroit Free Press article about the group's connection with local voter fraud was hard to ignore.

Now (from Bob Owens, who is not surprised) I see that the group is up to the same thing in North Carolina.

Via Glenn Reynolds, who posed a subconscious question:

Shouldn't they be investigated by the Justice Department? Or am I dreaming here?

the Criminal Section has been given the green light to use these same criminal statutes to harass and prosecute political activists (particularly Republicans) who are engaging in protected political activity, not violence or the threat of violence. No candidate for federal, state, or local office should take this unprecedented threat lightly. The entire apparatus of federal election law enforcement was assembled for this conference including every FBI agent and Assistant United States Attorney responsible for election-related matters.

The Criminal Section is headed by a former ACLU attorney, Mark Kappelhoff, who was actually hired by this Administration. So much for the claim that the Bush Administration only hired "conservatives" in the Civil Rights Division. In apparent violation of a memorandum from Attorney General Mukasey that directed employees to be "particularly sensitive to safeguarding the Department's reputation for fairness, neutrality and nonpartisanship," Kappelhoff has contributed $2,000 to Obama -- not exactly the hallmark of "neutrality and nonpartisanship." But even worse was the presentation by one of his career lawyers, James Walsh, obviously made with Kappelhoff's approval.

Walsh is a former Voting Section lawyer who transferred to the Criminal Section after working for Senator Ted Kennedy on a detail. Not surprisingly, Walsh is also a contributor to Obama, which is certainly on par with the almost $150,000 that DOJ lawyers and staff who live in Virginia, Maryland, and the District of Columbia have contributed to the Obama campaign, including John Bert Russ, the lawyer in the Voting Section who is responsible for the observer program that will send out hundreds of federal observers on election day.

Walsh made it clear that the Criminal Section intends to use the civil rights statutes to criminally prosecute anyone they consider to be engaging in voter "intimidation" or "oppression." Now, that might sound like a reasonable idea until you realize that Walsh and Kappelhoff's definition of "intimidation" and "oppression" goes far beyond what you and I would imagine. Walsh stated that because we have an African-American presidential candidate, there would be voter suppression -- a baseless assumption that plays on left-wing stereotypes of America as a racist nation. Every single example of wrongdoing that Walsh and other presenters used in their presentations talked about Republicans: there was not a single example of any wrongdoing committed by any Democrats in the entire two-day conference.

When all is said and done, Civilizations do not fall because of the barbarians at the gates. Nor does a great city fall from the death wish of bored and morally bankrupt stewards presumably sworn to its defense. Civilizations fall only because each citizen of the city comes to accept that nothing can be done to rally and rebuild broken walls; that ground lost may never be recovered; and that greatness lived in our grandparents but not our grandchildren. Yes, our betters tell us these things daily. But that doesn't mean we have to believe it.

Over my lifetime I've seen wave after wave of what might be called "urban flight." People who stay in large cities learn to put up with a lot. They accept the broken urban infrastructure and the dysfunctional schools as facts of life, as things which simply cannot be changed. Try to change them, you'll go nuts. (A good friend simply quit teaching because of it..)

This is nothing new, of course. Nor is my cynicism. The term "You can't fight City Hall" goes back to the mid 1800s. Those who don't put up with it simply leave to the relative comfort, safety, and convenience of the suburbs or small towns, where they can live in ever-vigilant fear of "City Hall" -- which idiomatically is a large enough term to encompass the now-dysfunctional United States Justice Department and government in general. It probably includes the taxpayer-funded "charity" in question.

ACORN.

A little ACORN here, a little ACORN there, and pretty soon you're talking about real power. Most people would throw up their hands and say "There's nothing you can do about it!"

I disagree, and I say this as one of the more cynical people in the blogosphere. If I can notice ACORN's fraud in the local paper, and I can take time to write a post about it, and if Bob Owens notices it in his local paper and writes a post about it, then others can. The more noise that is made, the more likely something can be done about it -- if for no other reason than the "squeaky wheel" principle.

I realize that the organization's deep ties to Barack Obama might tend to intimidate those charged with investigating these things, for after all, they don't want to appear "partisan."

But this is an election, right? We still live in a democracy, right? There are still laws, right?

I'm cynical, but I'm not too cynical to make a little noise. Not that I'm expecting the Justice Department attorneys to start acting like pit bulls (lipsticked or not).

But ACORN's conduct is so blatant, so repetitive, and so egregious that it doesn't take a pit bull.

Even a squirrel would know what to do.

(I might not work for the Justice Department, but I can squeak, can't I?)

This is a story from August 15th so it is a little old. However, it ties in with this story about the interrelations among climate change profiteer Al Gore, climatologist Jim Hansen, and the financial firm Lehman Brothers. So lets look at the connection between George Soros and the now bankrupt Lehman Brothers.

George Soros thinks the world may be in for a long recession and that housing prices will continue to fall more than most economists expect. He thinks a "superbubble" has been forming for 25 years--and it's currently collapsing.

But he thinks Lehman Brothers is going places.

The notable philanthropist, political activist, and hedge fund investor who made a killing on smart currency bets in the 1990s, disclosed in a filing yesterday that his fund raised its stake in the troubled investment bank from 10,000 shares to 9.5 million shares during the second quarter.

The stake, worth about $188 million, comes to 1.4 percent of Lehman's outstanding shares.

Let's hope he's in it for the long haul, because the trade doesn't seem to be paying off so far. Lehman shares started the second quarter in the mid-$40s, falling to $19.81 by June 30.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

An anti-abortion group has sponsored this anti-Obama ad, in which Gianna Jesson (a woman who survived an abortion) points out that "If Barack Obama had his way, I wouldn't be here."

It's hard hitting, and intended to highlight the fact that Barack Obama's position on abortion is to the left of Hillary Clinton and Barbara Boxer.

While I think abortion is immoral, I oppose criminalizing early term abortion primarily for two reasons:

1. I am philosophically uncomfortable with the idea of imprisoning women who are so miserable with the idea of having a child that they decide to terminate their pregnancies. (However, this means that there is no excuse for waiting, and I therefore believe that the earlier the abortion is performed, the better. The longer a woman waits, the more immoral it becomes.) I have a problem with compulsory anything, including compulsory pregnancy, and it strikes me as especially unconscionable to require a rape victim to carry a child to term. (Again, though, there's no excuse for delay.)

2. I believe that in order for a human being to have rights, there must be a functioning human brain. What we would call consciousness. Where the line is to be drawn exactly, I do not know, but common sense suggests (to me, at least) that embryos are not human beings of the sort possessed of rights. Thus I do not consider the use of the morning-after pill to rise to the level of immorality. At some point in the fetal development (and there is no agreement on what this point is) there is a conscious human brain. Again, the earlier the abortion is performed, the less I'd be inclined to call it a crime (or put a woman in prison for it).

So I'm hardly in the anti-abortion ("pro life" I guess is what they call it) camp. Nor can I be considered solidly pro-choice. (I know I'll never have an abortion, though, so it's easy for me to shoot my mouth off.)

I don't agree with McCain on abortion, nor do I agree with Barack Obama.

But Obama's position strikes me as more outside the political mainstream than McCain's, and I think the above ad raises a legitimate point.

One of the red herring memes that has long annoyed me is the idea of an "unwanted child." This is said to be the worst fate in the world. Why? Clearly, this Gianna Jesson woman was unwanted, or else why would her mom have had her aborted? But she obviously would rather have not been aborted. So she's more content with having been an unwanted child than not to have been a child at all.

I think most unwanted children (aborted or born) would say the same thing. So it strikes me that "unwanted" is a rhetorically sneaky term having more to do with what the mother wants than what the child wants. Clearly, if a mother does not want a child, she can put it up for adoption. Is that really a tragedy? They make it sound like "unwanted child" is some kind of horror. I don't get it. Are there not also unwanted adults? So what? I can understand why a woman might not want to see her pregnancy through (and I have philosophical problems with forcing her), but because she is not required to keep the child after birth I don't see what the status of the child ultimately being wanted or unwanted should have to do with it. How do we know what person will be "unwanted"? It strikes me as implying a moral judgment based on the child's anticipated eventual status as a justification for the abortion. Little different than, say, a judgment that the child would be born into poverty. Or born with alcoholic (or homosexual) genes. It just strikes me as arrogant to decide based on some statistic that a child will be "unwanted," and that this is a terrible fate.

Do any of us know to a moral certainty whether we were really and truly "wanted"? If any of us learned that we weren't wanted, I don't see how that would have been an argument for abortion. Whether we agree with the right to an abortion or not, it is supposed to be based on a woman's right, not a judgment on the status of her child. I know the distinction sounds like nit-picking (and activists on both sides would not care), but I think there is a huge logical difference between "I cannot face going through with this pregnancy" and "The baby would be an unwanted child after its birth." The former strikes me as an understandable reason grounded in an individual decision, while the latter strikes me as grounded in communitarian social-planning eugenics.

Even if I'd thought my mother wanted to abort me, I'd rather have it be because she couldn't go through with the pregnancy. Not because she thought I'd be an "unwanted child."

I think there is a difference. It may sound silly, but I'd rather be murdered by someone who hated me than by someone who thought I was part of the overpopulation problem.

It seems that the Washington Post says that Franklin Raines really wasn't an Obama adviser. And by the way, you can't believe what we write in our newspaper. Talk about boosting the brand.

The Obama campaign last night issued a statement by Raines insisting, "I am not an advisor to Barack Obama, nor have I provided his campaign with advice on housing or economic matters." Obama spokesman Bill Burton went a little further, telling me in an e-mail that the campaign had "neither sought nor received" advice from Raines "on any matter."

So what evidence does the McCain campaign have for the supposed Obama-Raines connection? It is pretty flimsy, but it is not made up completely out of whole cloth. McCain spokesman Brian Rogers points to three items in the Washington Post in July and August. It turns out that the three items (including an editorial) all rely on the same single conversation, between Raines and a Washington Post reporter, Anita Huslin, who wrote a Style section profile of the discredited Fannie Mae boss that appeared on July 16. The profile reported that Raines, who retired from Fannie Mae four years ago, had "taken calls from Barack Obama's presidential campaign seeking his advice on mortgage and housing policy matters."

Well there is at least one impossible thing there I can believe before breakfast. Hope and Change people. Hope and Change.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

Reflecting on the discovery that a Tennessee Democratic legislator's son was the hacker who accessed Sarah Palin's email account (see Rick Moran's post on the general subject), Richard Miniter makes a prediction:

I predict that the same crowd that said that Palin should have been able to control her 17-year old daughter will defend the 2o-year old hacker by saying no one can control their kids. At least they will be right once.

At least, most people would think so. If they had a chance to read about it. But as Michael Silence notes, maybe they won't:

I find nothing on the story in the New York Times or the Washington Post. Oh, that's right, it wasn't Joe Biden's e-mail that was hacked. Seriously, unless my search was incomplete, how do you not carry something on that story?

The tabloids are too busy titillating their viewers with stories like these:

What this means, obviously, is that Biden's kids must be perfect angels. Well, even perfect angels occasionally get arrested, but isn't that just a technicality raised by mean-spirited Republicans to hide their hypocrisy?

Yes, hypocrisy. We all know that the rule that "no one can control their kids," only applies to Democrats. And the Republicans are hypocritical to maintain otherwise.

Republicans have long been held to a much higher standard, and therefore, so should their children! How hypocritical of them to demand that their kids be treated the same way as the kids of Democrats!

Misbehaving Republican children are sinful and their parents are hypocrites. Misbehaving Democratic children are normal and their parents are blameless.

It's, like, genetic or something.

Why, they even have a bumpersticker to go with the thought:

Republicans are mean people and they have mean children.

Only a right wing hypocrite with bad genes could possibly disagree.

Yeah. We all knew that. So that is not the story. What is the story? Look at who is saying it.

Former President Bill Clinton has largely kept himself out of the public eye since his wife lost the Democratic primary to Barack Obama.

However in a rare television interview tonight, the former president called Republican presidential candidate John McCain "a great man" and praised GOP vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin as an "instinctively effective candidate."

On a day when Obama sought to convince voters that he's best able to handle the economic crisis, the former president said it was his wife, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., who gave today "the most detailed position."

In an interview with CNBC's Maria Bartiromo, Clinton, who has tried to put to rest rumors of tensions between himself and Obama said, "I've never concealed my admiration and affection for Sen. McCain. I think he's a great man.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

It seems like the man with a plan for solving the Iraq War has No Plan for solving the economic crisis.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama said on Friday he supported efforts by the U.S. Treasury and Federal Reserve to shore up confidence in the financial markets and said he would hold off from presenting his own economic recovery plan.

"The events of the last few days have made it clear that we must take further bold and decisive action to shore up confidence in our financial markets and avoid a deepening economic crisis that could jeopardize the life savings and well-being of millions of Americans," Obama said in a statement.

One thing you can say for sure. Mr. Obama appears to have a lot of friends who are real estate geniuses. People who can take trillions and turn them into billions while making a tidy profit on the side.

It is my opinion that given his understanding of economics, we should all work hard to help Barack Obama keep his Senate seat.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

Time Magazine says this video ad plays the race card. Two black guys stealing from an old white woman.

This is hardly subtle: Sinister images of two black men, followed by one of a vulnerable-looking elderly white woman.

Let me stipulate: Obama's Fannie Mae connections are completely fair game. But this ad doesn't even mention a far more significant tie--that of Jim Johnson, the former Fannie Mae chairman who had to resign as head of Obama's vice presidential search team after it was revealed he got a sweetheart deal on a mortgage from Countrywide Financial. Instead, it relies on a fleeting and tenuous reference in a Washington Post Style section story to suggest that Obama's principal economic adviser is former Fannie Mae Chairman Frank Raines. Why? One reason might be that Johnson is white; Raines is black.

So I guess what we have today is a white guy and a black guy teaming up to steal from the white woman. We are truly fortunate that Mr. Obama is no racist. Otherwise the number of crooks he could partner with would be severely limited.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

I won't vote for Barack Obama. I can't, because aside from everything else, his politics and policies are too socialistic for me.

However, I have a long history of defending him in this blog -- which stretches all the way back to his run against Alan Keyes, which actually prompted me to start "RepublicansforObama.com." (Yeah, I let it lapse -- probably one of many of my financial mistakes in life.)

But my defense of Barack Obama (whom I saw as kind) did not end with a reaction to the candidacy of Alan Keyes (whom I saw as cruel).

When he was campaigning against Hillary Clinton, I found him to be pleasant and polite (again Obama the Kind) in contrast to Hillary the Cruel. I noted it in my Pajamas Media column about the South Carolina debate:

At least Obama sounds reassuring, even if his policies aren't.

This may be irrational, but if I am going to have to endure socialism, can't I at least get it with a more calming and soothing voice?

Well, at least I was cynical enough to recognize the political irony of this civility theme, which I amplified in a post titled "Hillary the Cruel does Obama the Kind":

Seen in old fashioned, politically incorrect terms, Obama is polite, and Hillary is rude.

But you can't say that.

No, really. If you think about it in identity politics terms, you can't say those things comfortably about either. Say Obama is polite, and you can be accused of implying that he's a rare exception, that the others in his identity group are rude. Say Hillary is rude, and you're "stereotyping women!" It's bad enough that such nonsense is promoted in nearly every college in the country. I hate to see it working its way into the highest offices of the land.

So, at the risk of being a racist pig, I'll say once again that Obama comes across as nice, while at the risk of being a sexist pig, I'll say once again that Hillary comes across as rude.

At the rate things are going, it will be considered racist -- and sexist -- to judge individuals by the content of their character.

In light of yesterday's news, I don't know whether I was a rube to see Obama as kind. Or civil. Or polite. Or whatever word is allowed these days.

Let me stop right there before I get to the news item.

I'm not engaged in overwrought political hyperbole "whatever word is allowed these days," because apparently I'm not supposed to talk about civility.

At least, not according to writer Frank Furedi who was given an official warning from his publisher:

I was moved to despair when I found out that one of my favorite words, "civilized," ought not be used by a culturally sensitive author because of its alleged racist implications.

Anyway, the news is that Obama seems to have abandoned what probably in retrospect ought to be called his "politeness meme":

"I need you to go out and talk to your friends and talk to your neighbors. I want you to talk to them whether they are independent or whether they are Republican. I want you to argue with them and get in their face," he said.

There went my argument in favor of Obama. (With that statement, he's demonstrated that he doesn't mind moving to the style of the shrill and angry Alan Keyes. Or the venomous Ann Coulter. Yeah, or even "Anndrew Coulter.")

I might not have wanted socialism, but I had at least hoped for civility. I know I'm not perfect in that regard, and I've often admitted I don't live up to my own standards. I can't say I've never lost my temper or succumbed to the temptation of in-your-face politics, because I have. But standards -- and civility is a very important standard -- set a goal, and not living up to them does not make the standards wrong.

With civility out the window as a standard, can condemning civility itself be far behind?

If liking civility is now considered a form of racism, what does that mean? Incivility becomes good? Rudeness and in-your-face politics are now desirable ways to communicate?

Forgive me if I say that it's not looking like a better world.

AFTERTHOUGHT: I realize that there are those who would accuse me of racism for disliking Barack Obama's recent angry rhetoric. (And probably for liking the older, kinder, Obama.) According to this view, not liking angry rhetoric coming from a back man is racism (if the critic is white).

Well then, what about my intense dislike -- for many years -- of Alan Keyes' angry rhetoric?

I don't remember any accusations of racism.

And I might be wrong, but I suspect that if Keyes had a sudden change of heart (and did a Culture War about-face) his newfound white friends would not be accused of "racism" for liking him!

MORE: From Glenn Reynolds, a question:

if Obama is President, will Time regard every criticism of his administration as racist?

H/T Hot Air

Many scary stories have been written about the dangers of catastrophic global warming, allegedly due to increased atmospheric concentrations of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (CO2) from the combustion of fossil fuels. But is the world really catastrophically warming? NO. And is the warming primarily caused by humans? NO.

Since just January 2007, the world has cooled so much that ALL the global warming over the past three decades has disappeared! This is confirmed by a plot of actual global average temperatures from the best available source, weather satellite data that shows there has been NO net global warming since the satellites were first launched in 1979.

Since there was global cooling from ~1940 to ~1979, this means there has been no net warming since ~1940, is spite of an ~800% increase in human emissions of carbon dioxide. This indicates that the recent warming trend was natural, and CO2 is an insignificant driver of global warming.

Furthermore, the best fit polynomial shows a strong declining trend. Are we seeing the beginning of a natural cooling cycle? YES. Further cooling, with upward and downward variability, is expected because the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) has returned to its cool phase, as announced by NASA this year.

LONDON - Lehman Brothers shut down its carbon emissions trading desk after the bank filed for bankruptcy protection, a source close to the company told Reuters on Monday.

"Everything's stopped, blocked ... it's a bit anarchic," he said.

Lehman declined to comment on the matter.

Al Gore's carbon trading business GIM was banked with Lehman Bros. It will be interesting to see how this will play in the future but I suspect that this increases the risk of participating in Carbon trading. Merrill Lynch was also deeply involved in this business.

Last year Lehman Brothers released a long and highly publicized report about climate change in which they preached about decarbonization, trying to make their investors keep getting high profits from the Kyoto carbon trade scheme and the support of huge public subventions. All that, of course, with the applause of the usual choir of politicians, the entire media and the Greens.

Last year Lehman Brothers released a long and highly publicized report about climate change in which they preached about decarbonization, trying to make their investors keep getting high profits from the Kyoto carbon trade scheme and the support of huge public subventions. All that, of course, with the applause of the usual choir of politicians, the entire media and the Greens.

A year ago they couldn't predict their bankruptcy but were predicting the climate 100 years ahead. Thousands of green militants have been using the Lehman report as a proof of global warming and impending chaos. Lehman Bros said it! sacred words! Its scientific advisor is James Hansen!

Cross Posted at Power and Control

Ben Smith had this cute little piece out on 16 July of this year on the Raines - Obama connection.

An ill-timed -- for Obama -- profile of former Fannie Mae CEO Franklin Raines, forced out in an accounting mess a few years ago.

The Style Section piece reports that he's recently been taking "calls from Barack Obama's presidential campaign seeking his advice on mortgage and housing policy matters."

So who is Daniel Mudd? I think it will come as no surprise that he lives in a Mudd hut. A 22-room Mudd hut. Evidently ripping off the taxpayers pays very well. Very well indeed.

As more than a million US homeowners face devastating mortgage foreclosures, ousted Fannie Mae CEO Daniel Mudd continues to live in an opulent Washington, DC, mansion replete with expansive gardens, servants' quarters and a home theater.

Mudd, whose former company is being bailed out by billions in taxpayer dollars, calls home a 22-room Colonial mansion on Newark Street in tony Cleveland Park, built on the former property of President Grover Cleveland.

The eight-bedroom, eight-bath pad includes large public rooms with fireplaces, a home theater, a gym, a wine cellar, a solarium, servants' quarters, a terrace off the master-bedroom suite, and a gourmet kitchen.

The gated, landscaped property also features a pool, fountains, gardens and a guesthouse.

The property is so lavish that some company employees dubbed it "Mudd Manor."

And they're furious that the executive at the helm of the ship as it sank into profound crisis has surfaced relatively unscathed, at least for now.

"Hey, he lost his limo and corner suite [at the office], but Mudd Manor is not a bad place to contemplate your next move," said a bitter Fannie Mae employee who requested anonymity.

"Most Fannie Mae employees are reeling from their employee stock-option-plan account balances' going to cents on the dollar."

That Obama has some really swell friends.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

It looks like Congress is planning to leave town without addressing the financial meltdown.

Sept. 18 (Bloomberg) -- The Democratic-controlled Congress, acknowledging that it isn't equipped to lead the way to a solution for the financial crisis and can't agree on a path to follow, is likely to just get out of the way.

Lawmakers say they are unlikely to take action before, or to delay, their planned adjournments -- Sept. 26 for the House of Representatives, a week later for the Senate. While they haven't ruled out returning after the Nov. 4 elections, they would rather wait until next year unless Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke, who are leading efforts to contain the crisis, call for help.

One reason, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said yesterday, is that ``no one knows what to do'' at the moment.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

I've long thought that correcting misinformation (often called "debunking") helps enable human understanding. I think this is a principle which many bloggers believe in, to the point where it's often considered one of the basic advantages of the blogosphere. As the theory goes, the more bloggers do this, the more "self correcting" the blogosphere becomes.

So I was a bit taken aback to learn about a study which claims that correcting misinformation can have the effect of causing people to adhere more strenuously to the misinformation which is being corrected.

a series of new experiments show that misinformation can exercise a ghostly influence on people's minds after it has been debunked -- even among people who recognize it as misinformation. In some cases, correcting misinformation serves to increase the power of bad information.

In experiments conducted by political scientist John Bullock at Yale University, volunteers were given various items of political misinformation from real life. One group of volunteers was shown a transcript of an ad created by NARAL Pro-Choice America that accused John G. Roberts Jr., President Bush's nominee to the Supreme Court at the time, of "supporting violent fringe groups and a convicted clinic bomber."

A variety of psychological experiments have shown that political misinformation primarily works by feeding into people's preexisting views. People who did not like Roberts to begin with, then, ought to have been most receptive to the damaging allegation, and this is exactly what Bullock found. Democrats were far more likely than Republicans to disapprove of Roberts after hearing the allegation.

Bullock then showed volunteers a refutation of the ad by abortion-rights supporters. He also told the volunteers that the advocacy group had withdrawn the ad. Although 56 percent of Democrats had originally disapproved of Roberts before hearing the misinformation, 80 percent of Democrats disapproved of the Supreme Court nominee afterward. Upon hearing the refutation, Democratic disapproval of Roberts dropped only to 72 percent.

Republican disapproval of Roberts rose after hearing the misinformation but vanished upon hearing the correct information. The damaging charge, in other words, continued to have an effect even after it was debunked among precisely those people predisposed to buy the bad information in the first place.

Disconcerting, to say the least. But it might explain what it is that makes what we call the "hard core" hard and loyal to the core.

The Rathergate scandal stands out as an example of what I saw as the blogosphere doing its job. Dan Rather lost his job as a result, but he maintained his innocence, and he still has a core of devoted followers. The 9/11 Truthers are probably an extreme example of this phenomenon.

Speaking of "debunking," longtime readers may remember my role in debunking dishonest web site called "Capitol Hill Blue." At least, so I thought at an earlier point in my blogging career. As I was to learn (and as I explained here), there's no such thing as permanent debunking. At least, not to the loyal readers of Capitol Hill Blue:

Longtime readers may remember that I devoted a great deal of time to debunking that rather ridiculous "news site" run by Doug Thompson -- which featured fictitious characters like the disappearing "George Harleigh." I remember being foolish enough to think that because Capitol Hill Blue had been "discredited" that it would just go away. Not so. Capitol Hill Blue and Doug Thompson have a seemingly endless capactity for self reinvention -- which in turn is now forcing bloggers to reinvent the wheel doing what was supposedly done long ago. In "UPDATE 2: He's Baaack - More Lies, Hilarity & Hypocrisy from Doug Thompson & Capitol Hill Blue" and "One Man, Two Phantom Sources, a Few Fictional Friends, and Zero Credibility a very thorough blogger has painstakingly built yet another case against CHB and Thompson. I'm delighted to be cited as a source, but I wish it wasn't necessary for anyone to be doing this all over again -- especially in such painstaking detail.

Is there any way to debunk anything so that it stays debunked?

I guess the rule is that if you're dealing with a true believer of any kind, forget it. If the study's conclusions are right, attempts to change his mind will only have the opposite effect of strengthening his position -- especially if you're using facts as opposed to opinions.

And of course, opposing opinions are also wasted on true believers, which most activists are.

I don't know how scientific the study is, but it would appear confirm something I have long suspected -- that arguments are generally a waste of time.

They might make things worse.

Yesterday I wrote a post ("The government giveth standards, the government taketh them away") in which I cited economists who see the lowering of banking standards as a major cause of the current economic mess.

Investors Business Daily has an editorial titled "Congress Tries To Fix What It Broke" which notes the prominent role of Democrats (especially Barack Obama) in abandoning "lending standards that had served the banking industry well for centuries."

Everyone in the subprime business -- from brokers to lenders to banks to investment houses -- absolved themselves of responsibility for ensuring the high-risk loans were good.

The mortgage lenders didn't care, because they were going to sell the loans to other banks. The banks didn't care, because they were going to repackage the loans as MBSs. The investors and traders didn't care, because the MBSs were backed by Fannie and Freddie and their implicit government guarantees.

In other words, nobody up and down the line -- from the branch office on main street to the high-rise on Wall Street -- analyzed the risk of such ill-advised loans. But why should they? Everybody was just doing what the regulators in Washington wanted them to do.

So everybody won until everybody lost, including the minorities the government originally mandated the banks to serve.

The original culprits in all this were the social engineers who compelled banks to make the bad loans. The private sector has no business conducting social experiments on behalf of government. Its business is making profit. Period. So it did what it naturally does and turned the subprime social mandate into a lucrative industry.

Of course, it was a Ponzi scheme, because they weren't allowed to play by their rules. The government changed the rules for risk.

In order to put low-income minorities into home loans, they were ordered to suspend lending standards that had served the banking industry well for centuries.

But I don't think the goal here was to help minorities so much as it was to advance socialism.

The more the system fails, the more socialistic things become. Abandonment of lending standards guaranteed that the system would fail.

But in socialist terms, the failure was a success.

Whatever it is, the Germans who write stuff like this certainly want to get people's attention over here in Amerika. I mean, look at this crap:

End of an Era

In fact, it really does look as if the foundations of US capitalism have shattered. Since 1864, American banking has been split into commercial banks and investment banks. But now that's changing. Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch -- overnight, some of the biggest names on Wall Street have disappeared into thin air. Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley are the only giants left standing. Despite tolerable quarterly results, even they have been hurt by mysterious slumps in prices and -- at least in Morgan Stanley's case -- have prepared themselves for the end.

"Nothing will ever be like it was before," said James Allroy, a broker who was brooding over his chai latte at a Starbucks on Wall Street. "The world as we know it is going under."

Many are drawing comparisons with the Great Depression, the national trauma that has been the benchmark for everything since. "I think it has the chance to be the worst period of time since 1929," financing legend Donald Trump told CNN. And the Wall Street Journal seconds that opinion, giving one story the title: "Worst Crisis Since '30s, With No End Yet in Sight."

But what's happening? Experts have so far been unable to agree on any conclusions. Is this the beginning of the end? Or is it just a painful, but normal cycle correcting the excesses of recent years? Does responsibility lie with the ratings agencies, which have been overvaluing financial institutions for a long time? Or did dubious short sellers manipulate stock prices -- after all, they were suspected of having caused the last stock market crisis in July.

The only thing that is certain is that the era of the unbridled free-market economy in the US has passed -- at least for now. The near nationalization of AIG, America's largest insurance company, with an $85 billion cash infusion -- a bill footed by taxpayers -- was a staggering move. The sum is three times as high as the guarantee provided by the Federal Reserve when Bear Stearns was sold to JPMorgan Chase in March.

The most breathtaking aspect about this week's crisis, though, is that the life raft -- which Washington had only previously used to bail out the mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- is being handed out by a government whose party usually fights against any form of government intervention. The policy is anchored in its party platform.

"I fear the government has passed the point of no return," financial historian Ron Chernow told the New York Times. "We have the irony of a free-market administration doing things that the most liberal Democratic administration would never have been doing in its wildest dreams."

But what form of denial would it be?

Why aren't the economists I occasionally read such as Arnold Kling, Greg Mankiw, and Megan McArdle in a similar state of panic?

I'm no economist, but my initial gut reaction is that what's driving stocks downward (and the concomitant panic thinking) might be connected to the huge AIG bailout. I'm not alone:

Heavy-handed federal bailouts started this mutually reinforcing spiral rolling downhill by scaring anyone still holding stock in similar firms. And other regulations make it more likely to end badly.

Every blunder of government regulation invites an understandable impulse to give failed regulators more money and power. Yet financial markets invariably notice looming financial problems (e.g., Enron) months before credit-rating agencies notice anything amiss - regulators even lag behind the rating agencies.

In the process of turning US taxpayers into involuntary stockholders in AIG, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, federal bullies shoved the voluntar