H/T the comments at AAPS News of the Day which are a must read if you want to understand more.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

Ready or not, it's Halloween, so I wanted to wish a nightmarishly good time on all my readers. I'm not wearing a costume, but Coco managed to look a little ghoulish for the occasion.

And I did manage to carve my pumpkin before the sun completely set.

Lucky for me, and lucky for the pumpkin that there was a human to provide the necessary economic stimulus to bail it out and transform it into something useful before the deadline.

Seriously.

Just look what happens to pumpkins that wither and die without intervention!

Trick or treat!

In light of the previous post on free speech (and for innumerable other reasons), I find it tough to see how any libertarian could possibly justify voting for Barack Obama. I understand why McCain could be considered beyond the pale by libertarians, especially the purists of the Large L variety, and I have voiced my disagreements with him many times. But voting for Obama is something else. He's not merely a statist, but he may be the most statist candidate who ever ran for president.

Yesterday Glenn Reynolds linked Todd Zywicki's observations on this subject. He thinks it may have to do with the fact that libertarians simply find Obama personally likeable, and have not taken the time to think about his positions on the issues:

...I have slowly come to the conclusion that as bad as McCain is, Obama really is much, much worse than I realized for a long time. Maybe I'm just slower at this than others, but it really took a long for it to sink in to me exactly how far left Obama really is. On every single issue that I am aware of, he seems to be at the far left end of the Democratic Party spectrum. I mean really out there.

I think that my slowness to really pick up on this was due to several factors. First, Obama's demeanor is essentially moderate--he doesn't come across as a Howard Dean crazy type. I think this leads one to assume his policies are moderate. Second, my resistance to McCain was really quite strong--I've criticized him here before, especially for the way it seems that he approaches problems. Third, until recently McCain has really run a terrible campaign in terms of explaining the differences between himself and Obama in terms of illustrating exactly how far left Obama is. Fourth, because of media bias, the media has tended to reinforce the idea that Obama is a moderate and not to highlight the embarrassing parts of his message.

Perhaps most fundamentally, given the history of the world over the past 25 years I think I just had assumed that no serious politician or thinker would in this day and age hold the sorts of views that Obama seems to hold. Raising taxes in a recession, protectionism, abolition of the secret ballot for union elections, big spending increases, nationalized health care, and most appallingly (to my mind) the potential reimposition of the "Fairness Doctrine"--I mean this is pretty serious stuff. And when combined with a Democratic Congress, I think we may be talking about (to use Thomas Sowell's recent phrase) a "point of no return." I guess I just assumed that Obama would be sort of Bill Clintonish--"the era of big government is over" and all that stuff. That he would have absorbed the basic insights of recent decades on taxes, trade, regulation, etc.

I think most people who have studied Barack Obama's redistributionist views would agree that he is considerably to the left of Clinton, if not downright socialistic.

So what's up? Might libertarians for Obama be engaged in what Glenn Reynolds and Matt Welch characterized as wishful thinking?

In light of history, it would be hyperbole to argue that Obama is the antithesis of libertarianism. But consider this: there's already burgeoning movement of Americans (ranging from plumbers to economists) who are so appalled by Obama's incentive-stifling tax policies that they're threatening to go John Galt. (If that's not a clue for the apparently clueless, I don't know what would be. )

So, I understand why libertarians might want to vote for Bob Barr over John McCain.

But I find myself wondering whether those libertarians who are voting Obama are in effect voting to crush John Galt.

I hope it's ignorance and not cognitive dissonance.

M. Simon's post about the hypnotic qualities of Barack Obama made me recall something which might be of interest, and which may or may not shed light on the human perceptions involved.

Basically, I found Barack Obama interesting at first, and the fact that he had a more pleasant voice than Hillary made me favor his dulcet tones over her shrill screechiness. Not that I ever contemplated voting for him in the general election, but if I have to endure socialism, I'd at least prefer not to have to listen to shrill voices all the time. I have a real problem listening to unpleasant sounds, especially grating ones, and it gets worse as I get older. (This is not sarcasm, but a true statement.)

Yet I don't think this means I am being lulled into a false sense of security by the pleasant tones, much less hypnotized. I am one of those people who cannot be hypnotized (yes, it has been tried), because my overwhelming sense of skepticism is aggravated by the fact that hypnosis is a form of manipulation, and when I perceive that people are trying to manipulate me, I do not go along with them, even when I agree with them. (Hell, I couldn't even meditate when I tried, for which I was gently chided by a meditation expert who was conducting an MCLE seminar.) My friends consist of people who do not and would not try to mess with me or manipulate me the way so many people have over the years -- especially those who claim to want to "help." (My favorite bumpersticker is "DEAR GOD, PLEASE DON'T LET THE GOVERNMENT HELP ME ANYMORE.") So, for me, Obama's words don't have any sort of hypnotic effect. He's easy to tune out, though.

The problem I have with him is that I have already grown sick to death of him, and he hasn't even been elected yet.

Funny, because I found Mikhail Gorbachev refreshing too. Put a nice, fresh, pleasant face on Communism, eh? My father (a retired officer who had served in World War II) warned me that he could end up being far worse than the mean-looking guys, and that we would be better off with a scowling ugly Russian -- especially ordinary people who need to clearly understand the nature of the enemy. I noticed that leftists felt the same way about Ronald Reagan. They hated his likeability for reasons similar to my father's. Republicans were supposed to be mean and ugly like Nixon. Not avuncular and happy like Reagan.

I don't know where the hell I'm going with this, because it is not my purpose to compare Obama to Reagan or Gorbachev, or any of the three to each other.

But as to hypnosis, fortunately the conventional wisdom holds that people cannot be hynotized to do things against their will or against their better judgment. The people who want to be hypnotized by Barack Obama can go ahead and be hypnotized.

For me, his curtain of change is soundproof.

MORE: Speaking of Ronald Reagan, here's David Bernstein:

The last thing the U.S. needs is a left-wing Ronald Reagan, but that might well be what we get.

Tom Maguire asks some good questions about the recent news item involving Barack Obama's aunt:

Barack Obama has an aunt (OK, a half-aunt) living in Boston and we need a British newspaper to tell us this? What else are we going to learn about Obama after we elect him? And will we learn it from our own ever-vigilant press, or must we rely on the kindness of foreigners?

But there's a penalty to be paid. When they do, they are dropped from the campaign, and good luck covering anything after that:

The Obama campaign has decided to heave out three newspapers from its plane for the final days of its blitz across battleground states -- and all three endorsed Sen. John McCain for president!

The NY POST, WASHINGTON TIMES and DALLAS MORNING NEWS have all been told to move out by Sunday to make room for network bigwigs -- and possibly for the inclusion of reporters from two black magazines, ESSENCE and JET, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned.

[...]

After a week of quiet but desperate behind-the-scenes negotiations, the reporters of the three papers heard last night that they were definitely off for the final swing. They are already planning how to cover the final days by flying commercial or driving from event to event.

Meanwhile, retired military officers who have offered analyses to the occasionally vigilant press are finding themselves investigated by the FCC:

A Federal Communications Commission investigation of on-air military analysts is providing a glimpse of what Democrats and an Obama administration will do to critics once they capture Washington.

The FCC has sent letters to some of the nation's most prominent military analysts -- some of them pro-President Bush and pro-war -- suggesting they may have broken the law when they appeared on television stations to comment on and explain the war on terrorism.

The probe is sending chills through the ranks of military commentators, some of them decorated war heroes who share their expertise with millions of lay viewers. They see it as one in a series of moves the Left is making to intimidate and shut up its critics.

"We are seeing the dawn of a new era of the current Democratic leadership trying to muzzle free speech and the First Amendment," retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Tom McInerney, a Fox News analyst, told HUMAN EVENTS. "It may be the most invasive intrusion that we have seen in our history. There will be more of these tactics to follow."

Said retired Army Maj. Gen. Paul Vallely, one of Fox's first defense analysts, "It's an affront to freedom of speech. As retired officers, we're private citizens and can say anything we want under the First Amendment. The whole thing was to explain to the American people what was going on in war and analyzing it."

Democrats have more in store to try to muzzle conservatives. They talk of reactivating the so-called Fairness Doctrine in which federal government bureaucrats monitor radio and TV programs and rule on their fairness. Conservatives say the real goal is to kill right-leaning talk radio.

Considering the multi-level government investigation of Joe the Plumber (an ordinary citizen who asked Obama a question prompting his "spread the wealth" reply), I'd say that if Obama is elected, all signs point in the direction of a major crackdown on vigilance.

This is the first time I've ever seen a presidential campaign which has repeatedly sought criminal prosecution of its critics.

We've all heard that the price of freedom is eternal vigilance.

But if the price of vigilance means a literal loss of freedom, what then?

The last day or so I have been looking at the The Mass Psychology of Fascism and how to Escape from Freedom. Not the books. Stuff on the net. Let me start with Ali Sina's discussion of the cult of personality.

There are other disturbing similarities. Like Hitler and Khomeini, Obama also likes to create a cult of personality around himself. As stated above, when a large number of a population is discontent, a charismatic leader can seize the opportunity and present himself as the agent of change. He can create a cult of Personality by associating himself with the idea of change. He convinces everyone that things are terrible and a drastic change is needed. He then casts himself as the only person who can deliver this revolutionary transformation that everyone is waiting for. He portrays himself as a benevolent guide; the only one who cares about people and their needs and can pull them out of their alleged misery. In reality, they have no clue about how to address the problem - have no experience, no track record. But they are convincing because they are self assured.

These revolutionary leaders need foes. They exaggerate the problems. They make everything look gloomy. They lie, cheat and slander their opponents while casting themselves as the saviors of the nation. Hitler chose the Jews to blame for everything that was wrong in Germany. Khomeini made the Shah and his westernization plans his scapegoats. Obama has chosen President George W. Bush to smear. He can rally people around himself, as long as he can instill in them the dislike of Bush and equate his rival, McCain to him. Sigmund Freud wrote, "It is always possible to bind together a considerable number of people in love, so long as there are other people left over to receive the manifestations of their aggressiveness" (Civilization and Its Discontents).

A cult of personality is excessive adulation, admiration and exaltation of a charismatic leader, often with unproven merits or achievements. It is similar to hero worship except that it is created specifically for political leaders.

And then we have Fouad Ajami discussing Obama and the Politics of Crowds.

There is something odd -- and dare I say novel -- in American politics about the crowds that have been greeting Barack Obama on his campaign trail. Hitherto, crowds have not been a prominent feature of American politics. We associate them with the temper of Third World societies. We think of places like Argentina and Egypt and Iran, of multitudes brought together by their zeal for a Peron or a Nasser or a Khomeini. In these kinds of societies, the crowd comes forth to affirm its faith in a redeemer: a man who would set the world right.

As the late Nobel laureate Elias Canetti observes in his great book, "Crowds and Power" (first published in 1960), the crowd is based on an illusion of equality: Its quest is for that moment when "distinctions are thrown off and all become equal. It is for the sake of this blessed moment, when no one is greater or better than another, that people become a crowd." These crowds, in the tens of thousands, who have been turning out for the Democratic standard-bearer in St. Louis and Denver and Portland, are a measure of American distress.

On the face of it, there is nothing overwhelmingly stirring about Sen. Obama. There is a cerebral quality to him, and an air of detachment. He has eloquence, but within bounds. After nearly two years on the trail, the audience can pretty much anticipate and recite his lines. The political genius of the man is that he is a blank slate. The devotees can project onto him what they wish. The coalition that has propelled his quest -- African-Americans and affluent white liberals -- has no economic coherence. But for the moment, there is the illusion of a common undertaking -- Canetti's feeling of equality within the crowd. The day after, the crowd will of course discover its own fissures. The affluent will have to pay for the programs promised the poor. The redistribution agenda that runs through Mr. Obama's vision is anathema to the Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and the hedge-fund managers now smitten with him. Their ethos is one of competition and the justice of the rewards that come with risk and effort. All this is shelved, as the devotees sustain the candidacy of a man whose public career has been a steady advocacy of reining in the market and organizing those who believe in entitlement and redistribution.

One of the big clues for me that a lot of people see through him is that many people only half in jest call him "Dear Leader".

There is a bit I came across a while back claiming his success with at least part of the crowd is due to hypnotic techniques.

THE EVIDENCE IS HERE: This document contains over 60 pages of evidence and analysis proving Barack Obama's use of a little-known and highly deceptive and manipulative form of "hack" hypnosis on millions of unaware Americans, and reveals what only a few psychologists and hypnosis/NLP experts know.

The entire paper is located here.

I found this on another forum, contributed by one of the more certified liberal loons. On first blush my sentiments were "yeah right." But because it was Sunday morning and a slow news day, I decided to indulge my curiosity and my funny bone and have a look see into this assertion of mass hypnosis by one Barack Obama.

Needless to say, what I found was not only intriguing, but captivating in both presentation and common sense reality. What this writer has to say and the way that he presents his argument, not only captivates the imagination? But also causes the reader to call forth the images of their own personal recollections, while the author utilizes his own observations and experience to make his points and his arguments for the assertions he is representing.

And as I read th author's presentation the thought kept bouncing back at me that these are the very same techniques and principles (as being described) employed and deployed by all successful "preachers" and "charismatic speakers" historically. And that someone at some point had simply sat down and applied analytical thinking and deduction to the process of successfully leading people through manipulative speaking.

And where better to learn these techniques for a young Barack Obama, than at the feet of the professed and by observing and emulating the performances of charismatic preachers and others in his own life.

This is where Barack Obama had his "Eureka moment" in my estimation.

I am in the process of reading the pdf and I would have to say that it is slow going at first. Here is an excerpt from the beginning that I think is key.

Dr. Erickson discovered while working as a therapist, that he could hide therapeutic hypnosis within the normal content of an inconspicuous conversation with the patient, and avoid much of the patient's conscious resistance that normally accompanied hypnotherapy.18 Dr. Erickson realized the subconscious mind was always listening, and understood better than anyone before how to access it, and implant suggestions into it. What Dr. Erickson did was figure out how to put people into trance and hypnotize them and implant suggestions with seemingly normal conversation. He discovered that people could achieve this heightened state of hyper-suggestibility without the traditional difficultly-induced coma-like state traditionally associated with hypnosis. Though his pioneering understanding, he was able to do the same and much more often with simple plays on words and embedded meanings in a single sentence. The entire field of "covert hypnosis", or "conversational hypnosis" is based on Dr. Erickson's techniques, and is now primarily used by hypnotists and psychiatrists.19 Conversational hypnosis is often referred to as Ericksonian hypnosis. The word "hypnosis" is never mentioned and there is nothing overt to give away that hypnosis is being used. It is impossible to detect unless you know precisely what to look for. Hack versions of these techniques are unfortunately taught to be used as persuasion tools for salespersons, and even more unfortunately also for men looking to enhance their success picking up and seducing with women.

NLP was mentioned previously, so what is this NLP stuff? It is Neuro-Linguistic Programming. Let's look at what the wiki has to say.

NLP was co-created by Richard Bandler and linguist John Grinder in the 1970s through observation and imitation of gestalt therapist Fritz Perls, family systems therapist Virginia Satir and psychiatrist Milton H. Erickson. The originators emphasized modeling of excellence as the core methodology, that is, the observational and information gathering methods they developed to define and produce the models of exceptional communicators. They also claimed that the basic assumptions of NLP draw from aspects of neurology ("neuro-"), transformational grammar ("linguistics") and cybernetics ("programming"). It has often been promoted as an art and science of effective communication and defined as 'the study of the structure of subjective experience'. Others put more emphasis on the tools, techniques and applications specific to contexts such as psychotherapy, business management and communications training, motivational seminars, personal development, and teaching.

So can those techniques be taught? Neuro-Linguistic Programming for Dummies thinks so. I haven't read the book so I can't comment.

So what is the antidote to all this? Study the product before you buy. Be sure it is what you want and that the price is acceptable and know the techniques being used on you so you won't be bamboozled.

If you would like to listen to a perfect example of hypnotized Obama supporters just click on the link. Howard Stern does a fine job of ferreting out some people who do not know their product. At all.

Amazon has a set of videos explaining the techniques by Derren Brown. It looks interesting. Especially when he is seducing the girls. I'm sure such techniques could be used in the other direction by the ladies. If they knew how.

Here is a supposed example of street hypnosis by Derren Brown on YouTube. What do you think? I think that he does have some success but his failures are edited out. What makes me think that? I was never moved by Obama and now he grates on my nerves. If he grates on your nerves:

You know. It just came to me. It is all about Jeddi Mind Tricks. He is not the President we want. We can move along now and vote for McCain.

Watch Obama in action with appropriate music:

Update: 31 Oct 008 1357z

Commenter who, me? had this to say in the comments at Power and Control:

I was intensively trained in NLP in 1989, by some of the best and most ethical, with some overlap of Erickson methods. I've studied and used it professionally since then, in partnership with clients for the changes they explicitly want and need and agree to.

For the most part the article is accurate.

The difficulty with using it for argument is that NLP is derived from long-standing persuasive techniques, and thus BO can be regarded simply as good at giving pre-scripted persuasive speeches.

However, the elements are there as described. Notice particularly the Big Code Words -- nominalizations. The practitioner is taught to find the subject's favorite nominalizations, the ones resonant with life and promise for the listener --"criteria" words. The practitioner need have no hint of what the specifics are. Betsy Newmark refers to public education now operating on such "motivational" abstractions, thereby priming voters for this kind of packaged appeal.

I have avoided watching Obama's speeches. So I haven't directly calibrated his lulling pacing, tonal delivery, etc. But astonishing to me is, after 19 years of close attention to my own and others' thought patterns, I was finding a kind of "drag" toward Obama -- not the candidate but the voting target -- though I do not support him. As I anticipated going into the early-voting booth, I felt especially I needed to pay close attention, not to somehow go blank and vote for him. I've never ever felt that concern in any other election, as to any other candidate.

In short, both reading the article and noting with astonishment something in the air seemingly affecting me in spite of myself, there's a lot to this. But an a-logical demagogue-ready collective-mentality population really is key, otherwise the slick Package Nominalizations, gestures, and emotion-infused appeals to free-floating futile-program-based idealism wouldn't be so effective delivered wholesale.

Some MDs discussing the pdf paper. It is very interesting pro and con. Thanks to commenter Penny. Here is a very interesting comment from the "MDs discussing" link:

William D Horton, Psy. D. Says:
October 29th, 2008 at 5:52 pm

I am the co-author and technical advisor/expert for the article. My name is on it in several of the placements, but through an error, not all. I broke it down as a way to understand the Obama sudden rise to power. The co-author wants to remain behind the scene as he is fearful of negative feedback. I personally have respect for the skill Senator Obama uses these skills. I just wanted to point out the deep emotional response he elicits. I have talked about this on several radio shows and other outlets. If I had it to do over I would have removed partisan aspects, but I do stand by the techical aspects of the article.

William Horton Psy. D. CAC Master Hypnotist and NLP trainer

Cross Posted at Power and Control

Since we love rumors around here let me pass on another one. According to The Obama File a tape in which Michelle Obama is castigating racists for working for the defeat of her husband will air on FOX some time in the next few days (given the typical election calculations it will be out some time today - the Friday before elections). I discussed the tape a couple of weeks ago at Totally Unverified. Here is what the Obama File has to say:

A final agreement has been reached between African Press International (API) and Fox News Network (USA) on the dates to air the Michelle Obama tape arising from a discussion Mrs. Obama had with the API two weeks ago. The show will take place any day/time from now, with a 15 minutes alert on when it is to take place. Other programmes will be interrupted. This is a precaution taken to avoid interference from any quarter.

In the agreement, Fox News Network will broadcast 39 minutes of the 54 minutes long tape. The whole tape cannot be aired unedited due to security reasons and especially due to the explosive political temperature in the country because of the Presidential elections that is just around the corner, November 4th.

The tape will be aired in two portions by two separate units in the Network. API's representative will appear live in one of the shows.

October surprises generally happen on the Friday before the election and to insure the maximum dissemination with minimum rebuttal the news usually breaks around noon Eastern Time. About 1600 GMT for those keeping Coordinated Universal Time.

Of course the Obama camp will have their October surprise ready too. So we may have competing October surprises for a change. It will be interesting and should provide a lot of blog fodder if any of this happens.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

I was all set to write a post about the LA Times withholding the video of Rashid Khalidi's farewell party (which featured the Ayerses and the Obamas among other luminaries), when I saw that WorldNetDaily has stepped right up to the moral equivalency plate with a story about McCain giving Khalidi (or at least some previous political incarnation of Khalidi) some money.

That means, obviously, that I can't blog about the Khalidi video without looking like a hypocrite, right? Because, the thinking goes, if the Republicans gave money to Khalidi, then he becomes magically "respectable" and politically untouchable forever. Like Bill Ayers via Walter Annenberg.

The problem with that logic is that it shouldn't matter who gave him money or why. What matters here is that the tape is being withheld, in a manner which suggests they're playing the hide-and-seek game instead of reporting. (Which ties right in to what Jules Crittenden and Michael S. Malone said the other day.)

As to the "investigative journalists" who might get to the bottom of this and track down the Khalidi video, they're too busy going after Joe the Plumber and Sarah Palin, who unlike most politicians is not afraid to fight back.

What's interesting about the Ayers angle is that the LA Times (which is withholding the tape) didn't report that Ayers and Dohrn were there:

"But we should know about their relationship, including apparently information that is held by the Los Angeles Times concerning an event that Mr Ayers attended with a PLO spokesman."

McCain appeared to be referring to a Los Angeles Times article from April which said Obama knew and attended a farewell party for Rashid Khalidi, a former PLO spokesman, during his academic career in Chicago. The article makes no mention of Ayers's presence at the event.

"The Los Angeles Times refuses to make that videotape public. I'm not in the business of talking about media bias but what if there was a tape with John McCain with a neo-Nazi outfit being held by some media outlet?

"I think the treatment of the issue would be slightly different," he said, saying Ayers had a "long relationship" with Obama, who was eight years old when the Weathermen were waging their radical campaign.

At the risk of sounding like a wild conspiracy theorist, I'd be willing to bet that Ayers is at least part of the reason for withholding the tape. Maybe he and his wife were a little too chummy with people who didn't mind being chummy in 2003, but would find it immensely embarrassing right now.

Not being able to see it, no one will know.

There's more here, and had the New York Sun not reported on Ayers presence there, it's doubtful anyone would have known:

A spokeswoman for McCain said the senator based his allegation about Ayers on another newspaper article -- a New York Sun report in 2005 that Ayers had been at the same banquet.

The Sun article reported that Ayers had contributed to a commemorative testimonial book honoring Khalidi but did not specify whether that book was signed by dinner attendees or assembled beforehand. "A big farewell dinner was held in their honor by AAAN with a commemorative book filled with testimonials from their friends and political allies. These included the left wing anti-war group Not In My Name, the Electronic Intifada, and the ex-Weatherman domestic terrorists Bernadine Dohrn and Bill Ayers," authors Sol Stern and Fred Siegel reported.

McCain has spent weeks trying to make Obama's relationship with Ayers an issue in the campaign, saying that Obama had not been truthful with the American people about how close the two are.

The Los Angeles Times wrote in April about the banquet as part of a broader story examining Obama's relationship with the Palestinian community in Chicago. The paper issued a statement yesterday saying their source asked them not to release the video.

"The Los Angeles Times did not publish the videotape because it was provided to us by a confidential source who did so on the condition that we not release it," the paper quoted Russ Stanton, editor of the LA Times, saying. "The Times keeps its promises to sources."

Jamie Gold, the newspaper's readers' representative, said in a statement: "More than six months ago the Los Angeles Times published a detailed account of the events shown on the videotape. The Times is not suppressing anything. Just the opposite -- the L.A. Times brought the matter to light."

Who was there never would have been brought to light at all by the LA Times, and the only reason we know about it is because of the persistence of the 2005 New York Sun piece:

...when Columbia academic officials made this choice they knew they were getting a Palestinian political activist. From 1976 to 1982, Mr. Khalidi was a director in Beirut of the official Palestinian press agency, WAFA. Later he served on the PLO "guidance committee" at the Madrid peace conference.

In bringing professor Khalidi to Morningside Heights from the University of Chicago, Columbia also got itself a twofer of Palestinian activism and advocacy. Mr. Khalidi's wife, Mona, who also served in Beirut as chief editor of the English section of the WAFA press agency, was hired as dean of foreign students at Columbia's SIPA, working under Dean Anderson. In Chicago, the Khalidis founded the Arab American Action Network, and Mona Khalidi served as its president. A big farewell dinner was held in their honor by AAAN with a commemorative book filled with testimonials from their friends and political allies. These included the left wing anti-war group Not In My Name, the Electronic Intifada, and the ex-Weatherman domestic terrorists Bernadine Dohrn and Bill Ayers. (There were also testimonials from then-state Senator Barack Obama and the mayor of Chicago.)

I'll just bet they were chummy. I'd love to see the tape.

Precisely why they won't let me.

UPDATE: The LA Times' Khalidi tape coverup continues, and Ron Rosenbaum says that their latest response is "worthy of a Rumsfeld press conference."

Read it.

Don't ask me why.

I heard this and had an intense feeling something terrible was about to happen, then a flock of crows flew low overhead, in avian anarchist formation.

No going home.

MORE: I liked dr kill's comment to the last post:

Human reality is universal only at the border of life and death. The further Americans live from death, the less they understand how to determine the relative importance of deeds and ideas. There is nothing like witnessing a little death to realign one's priorities more realistically.

I don't know whether to call this the quote of the day, the quote of the month, or the quote of the year, but I think what Bill Quick says here is brilliant:

A free and healthy democracy cannot function when it has no way to determine reality.

While Quick's focus is on the "corrupt, degenerate, dangerous mass media" which made it happen, I think that academia -- especially post-Modernist deconstructionism -- has played a large role with their decades-old war on reality. The idea that there is no reality, that instead there are only competing realities, means that whatever version of the truth works for you is true.

Now, some religious people will tend to see a phrase like "the truth" and think in religious terms. Social conservatives often define morality in terms of absolute truths, and many of them define those who disagree as "moral relativists." I think this distorts the process further, because history does show that different societies and cultures -- including those squarely within the Western tradition -- have defined morality differently. Morality has a way of changing over time. I worry that seeing morality as absolute truth makes it more difficult to focus on regular, factual truth -- such as what happened on, say, September 11, 2001.

That there are such people as 9/11 Truthers, and that there is a well organized movement of them, is something I find deeply disturbing. People like that see truth as driven by what they want to be true, and to them, facts play a subordinate role.

Bill Quick's post was about the polls (which was why Glenn linked it), and the polls of course are all over the map -- which means they cannot possibly all be right. What this means is that depending on your preferences, you can seize upon whatever poll you want, or claim quite credibly that because they're so sloppy, none of them can be relied on.

Still, there's an old political saying that "the only poll that counts is the one on Election Day."

Shouldn't that be reassuring? Won't there be, um, "closure" after the results are in, no matter who wins?

In view of the ferocious, conspiracy-driven relativism that seems poised to supersede traditional ways of determining reality, I'm worried that no matter who wins, his victory will not be seen as real by large numbers of highly partisan people. People on both sides who believe that even numerical truth is whatever they and the people they surround themselves with want it to be.

Bush did not win in 2000, nor did he win in 2004. McCain will not win in 2008. Obama will not win in 2008.

According to the new truth, whoever wins will not have won.

What was once a free and healthy democracy will have lost.

If this looks depressing, sorry. I really should be more cheerful. Maybe I should shift to satire mode.

I should always keep in mind that the people who disagree with me have their realities, and I have mine, and what I say here is just a result of my cultural bias. And since someone else's realities are just as valid as my own, then reality is like, you know, a democracy. It's not up to me to determine it. I have to bow to the reality of the majority.

I should acknowledge that if there is no way to determine reality or truth, I can hardly expect to stumble across it in a blog post, or know it if I see it. And certainly I can't be blamed for thinking what I think.

That's right! If I think something is true, it is a product of my cultural conditioning, and absolutely not my fault.

I probably just need to be reeducated.

(Oh hell, they can just buy me off with truth serum....)

MORE: Via an email from M. Simon, I just learned about an interesting ad campaign advising people to vote twice!

They even have a button to go with it:

If there are multiple realities, I see no problem with multiple voting. I mean it's like if I feel twice as strongly as you about something, then shouldn't my vote count twice as much?

To not allow me to vote according to the views of my conscience would be disenfranchisement!

Economist George Newman tears into both candidates, although he offers some advice to McCain:

...Nothing reveals Mr. Obama's visceral hostility to business more than the constant urging of our best and brightest to desert the productive private sector ("greed") and go into public service like politics or community organizing (i.e., organizing people to press government for more handouts). Who in his ideal world would bake our bread, make our shoes and computers, and pilot our airplanes is not clear.

And if you think all this comes from an ardent John McCain fan, you couldn't be more wrong. The Arizona Senator has made some terrible mistakes, one of them trying to out-demagogue Mr. Obama to the economic illiterates. This kind of pandering never works. Such populists and other economic illiterates will always go for the genuine article.

Mr. McCain should have asked some simple questions -- pertinent, educational and easily understood by ordinary voters. Such as:

- If the rise in the price of oil from $70 to $140 was due to "greed" (the all-purpose explanation of the other side for every economic problem), was the fall from $140 to $70 due to a sudden outbreak of altruism?

- If a bank is guilty both for rejecting a mortgage ("redlining") and for approving it ("greed" -- see above), how might a bank president keep his business out of trouble with the law?

- If the financial turmoil of the last year or so was caused by inadequate regulation, which party has controlled both Houses of Congress and all of its financial committees and subcommittees (where such regulation would originate) in the last two years?

- If we bemoan the sending of $750 billion a year to our enemies for imported oil, which party has prevented domestic drilling for decades that would have made us more self-sufficient?

- You were unhappy with Congress, and in 2006 you cast your lot with those who, like Mr. Obama now, promised "change." Are you happy with the changes that have taken place in the last two years?

None of these questions have been asked loudly or often enough, while the other message -- everything is bad, it's all Bush's fault, and McCain=Bush -- has sunk in. So given his own penchant for business bashing, a McCain win would merely count as damage control.

I'm sure it's just coincidental that the "altruism" outbreak occured not long after McCain threatened to drill.

The Register UK is looking at how Greenpeace views fusion. Greenpeace is suspicious. Yes they are.

The (Joint European Torus) JET reactor in Culham, Oxfordshire was completed 25 years ago, and work is underway on ITER in Cadarache, France, a €10bn facility, backed by six countries (including China) plus the EU. The Czech Republic has a smaller-scale reactor, called Compass. All use magnets to force a fusion of two hydrogen isotopes, deuterium and tritium, releasing enormous amounts of energy. Eventually, it's hoped, more than goes in. ITER is designed to produce 500MW for 300 to 500 seconds with an input of 50MW.

"We'll certainly have it in fifty years," ITER's Neil Calder told the Swiss Broadcasting Corporation last week. But not if Greenpeace has its way.

Yes, the fuel for fusion is abundant, and far more productive than fossil fuel - one litre of seawater can produce as much as 30 litres of petrol. It's much safer than nuclear fission. And it doesn't release CO2. So what's the problem?

"Governments should not waste our money on a dangerous toy," Jan Van de Putte of Greenpeace International said when ITER was announced in 2005. Van de Putte predicted it will never be efficient - so why bother?

Spokesperson Bridget Woodman said: "Nuclear fusion has all the problems of nuclear power, including producing nuclear waste and the risks of a nuclear accident."

(Which must break the record for the number of false and contradictory assertions you can cram into a 17-word sentence. But that's par for the course these days. When you hear a phrase like "sustainable energy" the opposite is usually intended - the speaker is referring to an energy source that won't sustain anything for very long or very reliably.)

I think the following exemplifies the Greenpeace attitude.

Two of Greenpeace's co-founders, Patrick Moore and Paul Watson long since departed: Watson to run his own anti-whaling group and Moore criticising its anti-human, anti-development agenda. "By the mid-1980s, the environmental movement had abandoned science and logic in favor of emotion and sensationalism," Moore lamented.

Fusion seems to exemplify what Moore means: an anti-modernity superstition. Greenpeace doesn't understand what fusion is, but whatever it is it will be scary, it will be bad, and it must be stopped.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

FedBizOpps.gov has a solicitation for a bid for more experiments by EMC2, Doc Bussard's company now being run (at least on the experimental side) by Rick Nebel.

The Naval Air Warfare Center, Weapons Division, China Lake, CA intends to procure on an other than full and open competition basis a service to provide: 1) Research of Electrostatic "Wiffle Ball" Fusion Device. The contractor is to specifically investigate the required instrumentation to achieve spatially resolved plasma densities and spatially resolved particle energies. This requirement is sole sourced to Energy Matter Conversion Corporation, 1202 Parkway Drive, Suite A, Santa Fe, NM 87501, as the only company in the world investigating and developing this type of device.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

Update: Dave Price has some thoughts and more details.

Kim Priestap reports on early voting in Florida. Democrats seem to have a big advantage in turnout.

Democrats are beaming that their party is outperforming the Republicans in early voting, releasing numbers Wednesday that show registrants of their party ahead 54 percent to 30 percent among the 1.4 million voters who have gone to the polls early.

"We're thrilled at the record turnout so far," said Democratic Party of Florida spokesman Eric Jotkoff. "It's a clear indication that Democrats want to elect Barack Obama and Democrats up and down the ballot so that we can start creating good jobs, rebuilding our economy and getting our nation back on track."

But party breakdowns for turnout aren't the same as final tallies, and at least one poll offered a different view for the campaign of Republican John McCain.

A Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll gave McCain a 49-45 lead over Democrat Barack Obama among Floridians who have already voted.

And Republicans continued to show a traditional strength, leading 50 percent to the Democrats' 30 percent in the 1.2 million absentee ballots already returned.

OK. That is Florida which is looking pretty good right now. What about Maine and New Hampshire?

Tonight's been a busy night, in that we've talked to a half dozen people on three times as many subjects - including Team Hillary members in New Hampshire and Maine, who we know well from the primaries.

Here's the kicker: these people aren't McCain supporters. Several are working for Obama now in both states, because they have political jobs and thus must tow the party line. Others are voting Green and no longer campaigning for anyone, but are tuned into things in their states.

We know nothing about New Hampshire or Maine and have never pretended to. We won't start now. All we'll tell you is what these people told us tonight, and it's that they truly do expect John McCain to win both New Hampshire and Maine next week, for the reasons they gave below:

(1) In both states, they have never seen an enthusiasm deficit for Democrats like this. Hillary Democrats there say there are more "closet McCain supporters" than anyone can count. Despite what the media says, people are not enthused and fired up to go out and vote for Obama -- quite the contrary: people are scare of Obama's policies and will be voting McCain. The enthusiasm deficit in both New Hampshire and Maine is "as clear as day" according to those we spoke to tonight. They say they do not see anywhere near the level of Obama signs, stickers, buttons, etc. out this year, as they did Kerry, Gore, Clinton, and even Dukakis gear in years past.

It also looks like Joe The Plumber has had a big effect in Maine. And as Maine goes so goes the nation.

(2) We asked why people in these states are not voting for Obama and were told that in Maine, especially, a lot of it has to do with Joe the Plumber and redistributing the wealth. Much of Maine makes its living off the sea: fishermen pull in $200,000 or more a year in family businesses. Joe Biden's slip that Obama really intends to define "wealthy" as $150,000 a year or above sent terror through Maine's fishing community and other small business industries. We were told tonight that Maine and New Hampshire have more small family businesses that would be affected by Obama's redistribution of wealth than we could imagine. Joe the Plumber resonated with these people -- especially the fishermen.

It also looks like caucus fraud is also playing a part.

The other interesting tidbit that came out of the conversation tonight was that of the Hillary Clinton convention delegates who are openly supporting John McCain, the largest number of these people come from states that held caucuses.

We were told tonight that no one is yet picking up on the fact that Democrats in states that held caucuses, and who saw firsthand the fraud, voter intimidation, and other vile tricks Obama pulled in caucus states have NOT forgotten about any of this. These people are still LIVID that a Democrat dared to use Chicago fraud and intimidation to game the caucus system. The Clinton delegates from caucus states have been coordinating efforts amongst themselves for payback against Obama on November 4th, since no state will vote in a caucus then.

We're told this is the reason that Iowa is so much closer than we ever dreamed it would be. Remember, we have insisted McCain would lose Iowa because of his opposition to ethanol subsidies. So, we've been baffled by McCain and Palin's appearances throughout Iowa, or the fact internals we see show the state incredibly close. We never could figure out why -- and it was so obvious this whole time. THE CAUCUS FRAUD Obama committed back in January is coming back to bite him in a HUGE way. Because of the ethanol opposition, McCain should be losing Iowa by large numbers -- but the people we spoke to this evening says he'll end up winning the state, largely because of Democrats who are so disgusted by the behavior of Obama's followers during the caucuses.

This isn't just Hillary Democrats either. It's a large swath of Democrats who feel violated by the tactics Obama employed in their state -- bringing thugs from Chicago across the Illinois border to vote in Iowa's caucuses. People there remember the truth, and will have that in mind on November 4th.

Obama did not cement his relationship with those he defeated by offering them a large consolation prize (Hillary as VP) to make up for all the rubbed raw emotions the caucuses created. When he picked Joe Biden he made the hill he had to climb much steeper. And then along comes Joe the Plumber in the last two weeks of the campaign to put a large hole in his campaign below the water line. And Obama keeps enlarging that hole by lowering the threshold for those who will see tax increases. First $250,000, then $200,000 and finally (so far) $150,000. Worrying people the most I believe is not the actual number, but the fact that it keeps going lower. Where will it stop? I think it will stop with a huge Obama loss on the night of 4 Nov.

Do we have any other anecdotes and fuzzy data points? Yes we do. The results so far in Nevada show that the Obama/pollsters turn out model is not near what has been hoped/projected (change we can believe in - heh).

Analysts have predicted that new voters, young voters and Hispanic voters will turn out in record numbers in this election. But as Nevadans continue to flock to the polls, turnout among those three groups is lagging, at least in the early going.

While turnout statewide was nearly 25 percent through Sunday, it was just 20 percent among Hispanic voters, 14 percent among voters under 30 and 15 percent among those who didn't vote in the last three elections, according to an analysis of state early voting records through Sunday prepared by America Votes, an organization that works to mobilize voters.

The data provide a glimpse into the composition of the more than 300,000 Nevadans who had taken advantage of early voting over the first nine days of the 14-day period. The information comes from proprietary databases that political action groups purchase from commercial vendors, cross-referenced with the public data the state releases showing who has voted.

Traditionally, older people, whites and people who vote consistently tend to turn out at the highest rates overall, said David Damore, a political scientist at UNLV. But this year, much has been made of the idea that the youth vote, the Hispanic vote and first-time voters would turn out at unprecedented rates, galvanized by a heightened political climate and the candidacy of Democratic nominee Barack Obama.

"I would have expected those numbers to be a little higher," Damore said. "At the same time, the people who come out for early voting may tend to be the tried and true."

The idea that the electorate will be radically reshaped this year remains an open question, he said, and it's possible the Obama campaign faces a challenge turning out the untested voters it's relying on to win.

Recent polling shows Obama leading in the Silver State by varying margins. Democrats' hopes have been boosted by a tectonic shift in voter registration that has left them with more than 110,000 more registered voters than Republicans, but the GOP insists there's hope because the election will be decided by who votes and how.

"What Republicans have been saying is that registration is only half the game, and they have the tried and true model to get people out," Damore said.

U.S. Rep. Hilda Solis, D-Calif., was in Las Vegas on Tuesday working to rally Hispanic voters for Obama. She said she expects high Hispanic turnout this year.

So let me do a short analysis of why I think Obama will lose.

1. Caucus fraud rubbed Democrat voters the wrong way.
2. Failure to select Hillary was a failure to mend fences
3. Sarah Palin gave the Republican base and disaffected Hillary voters something to cheer about.
4. Joe the Plumber (a gift from the Maker) sealed the deal

But it is not over until it is over. Don't let any analysis - positive or negative - keep you from doing what must be done. And what is that you ask? Well I'll tell you. Again.

Vote. Vote like your life and your country depended on it. It may. If we get a very strongly Democrat legislature it is critical that McCain/Palin have all the support we can show to keep the legislature in check. So even if you live in a state that is a foregone conclusion one way or another, your show of support will matter come 20 January 2009. Vote.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

As Abe Greenwald makes clear, "Something Happened."

One week ago, the Zogby tracking poll had Barack Obama beating John McCain by almost 10 points among likely voters. Today, it's a four-point game. Yesterday, IBD reported, "After seesawing between 3.2 and 3.9 points over the weekend, Obama's lead slipped to 2.8[.]" Gallup's newest traditional poll has Obama leading by two points. Probing coverage of Sarah Palin's wardrobe didn't seem to do what the mainstream media had hoped. With the public losing interest in the crusade against Palin, a fresh news cycle has ushered in a serious challenge for Barack Obama. Americans are scared that the Democratic nominee is a socialist. And it's not attack ads or robocalls that have created this impression, but Obama's own words. Up until now, Obama has enjoyed a twenty-six-point lead among self-professed moderates, who make up roughly half the electorate. As there is nothing moderate about collectivism and wealth redistribution, the new charges could bury Obama.

Barack Obama's greatest advantage over John McCain has been his ability to convince Americans that he will take them someplace, transport them out of the War on Terror paradigm, off of the anti-American planet we currently inhabit and into a future in which America is somehow still the global leader without actually being better than any other nation, where somehow everyone is furnished with healthcare and education without this crippling the economy. Over the past few weeks, this last "somehow" has been defined. And if it points toward where Obama intends to take the U.S., Americans are rightfully fearful.

Even Obama himself admits that the "change" he promises won't be easy:

Obama's democratic socialist sympathies first came to light in when he told Joe Wurzelbacher of his plan to "spread the wealth." The worrisome sentiment was reinforced by an unearthed 2001 radio interview, during which Obama seemed saddened by the Supreme Court's inability redistribute wealth in accordance with need. On Sunday, Obama sounded a further collectivist note, when he told a Colorado crowd, "Now, make no mistake: the change we need won't come easy or without cost. We will all need to tighten our belts, we will all need to sacrifice and we will all need to pull our weight because now more than ever, we are all in this together."

Americans don't take kindly to the government-knows-best kind school of problem solving. If wealth is to be spread around, it will be spread by those who earn it. Sacrifices may be made, but they will not be dictated. Even today's PC-damaged Americans suspect that the collective good is most effectively, and ethically, realized in pursuing individual achievement. Less than twenty years after the defeat of the Soviet Union, we're faced with a potential president who thinks it's his place to tell us what we must give up and how it will be apportioned to bring about the common good. This won't fly. Eighty-four percent of Americans oppose the government redistribution of wealth.

While there has been evidence of extreme ideology in the Obama camp (it has certainly been presented here), as I keep saying, ordinary voters are not activists, political junkies, or readers of libertarian blogs. So it took someone they could relate to -- Joe the Pumber -- to get ordinary voters' attention:

Before Joe the Plumber, Obama managed to sell indecision as moderation and detachment as self-possession. Evidence of extreme ideology was skillfully sidestepped as ancient happenstance (as in the case of his association with Bill Ayers), or partisan misinterpretation (as in the case of Obama's abortion record). But Obama's sympathies are both recently held and clear-as-day. And that's a serious problem.

Joe the Plumber got their attention in ways that activists could not have and in ways that no amount of kvetching about Bill Ayers could have. I can condemn Bill Ayers' communist ideology and respectability from now till doomsday, and that has no effect on the electorate. The average person would say "Bill who"? But Joe the Plumber anyone can understand.

Many pundits have observed that negative attacks tend to turn off voters, and some newer commenters have told me repeatedly that my attacks on Bill Ayers are a losing "strategy." What they don't understand is that while I support McCain, this is my blog with my thoughts, not a McCain strategy. Furthermore, ordinary voters don't read this blog; when I last polled the readers, the number of undecideds was ridiculously small. (3 out of 176, to be exact.)

If attacking Bill Ayers is negative, so be it. At the risk of not persuading those three potential voters, I'll just say what I want.

Those who like Bill Ayers can keep attacking Joe the Plumber.

How much of any of these negative attacks will trickle down to the voters, I don't know.

But I suspect that if the voters were forced to decide, attacks on Joe the Plumber might poll worse than attacks on Bill Ayers.

I'm getting a bit tired of the fact that every time I write a post about Bill Ayers, I am told that the real issue is somehow G. Gordon Liddy. On the most recent occasion a commenter accused me of Nazism:

How is it that you support a neo-nazi fascist like G. Gordon Liddy, who happens to be a good friend of McCain?

Nazi murderous ideology, apparently is kosher to you.

Bear in mind that while I respect the fact that many people do not like Liddy and some think McCain should not have associated with him, I personally like Liddy, and came to know him over the years. I say this as someone who has disagreed with him on many occasions. In fact, disagreement was how I came to know him. While I had read and enjoyed his autobiography, Will, when it first came out, and I had seen him debate Timothy Leary in Berkeley, he had for me become a dim memory until the mid 90s when I learned that he had a talk radio show which was on the air in San Francisco. I listened, and I got ticked off hearing Liddy condemn Bill Clinton's plan to allow gays to serve in the military. Fully expecting to be ignored (if not ridiculed and insulted) I started calling in and sending faxes. To my astonishment, Liddy couldn't have been more polite to me -- notwithstanding a stubborn disagreement which remains to this day. I think the guy is a real gentleman of the old school, even though I disagree with a lot of what he has to say (yes, I know he has said many outrageous things), he is a lesson in the importance of civility even in the face of serious disagreement. This is why he has friends who are his polar opposites.

While I do not know Bill Ayers, I have been friends -- close friends -- with communists who share his ideological perspective. (I'm not running for president, so I get to pal around with anyone I damned well want without needing to explain myself.) For all I know, Ayers might be the kind of guy I'd enjoy having a beer with.

This does not mean I would agree with Ayers.

Nor does it mean that I think the two of them are the moral equivalent of each other in any way. In my view, Bill Ayers' ideology is far, far more heinous than G. Gordon Liddy's.

However, I think what's more important than who you pal around with is whether you share the ideology of your pals.

But since so many people seem to think the real issue is not Ayers but Liddy, and that palling around with Liddy is so much more egregious than palling around with Ayers, I thought a poll might be in order.

So here's a "palling around" poll:

MORE: Speaking of palling around, I nearly left out this picture of G. Gordon Liddy and Timothy Leary:

While I don't think this calls for another poll, I should probably disclose that I met them both, and found them both very likeable.

However, I prefer Leary's ideology on the drug issue, and Liddy's ideology on the gun issue.

During the discussion of Ayers' and the Weather Underground's genocidal plan to murder 25 million Americans, it occurred to me that focusing on tactics (like terrorism and murder) tends to sideline the murderous ideology that drives them.

In what I think is an attempt to frame the debate away from ideology, typical "fact check" discussions of Bill Ayers downplay his ideology, with words like "communism" not being mentioned.

From the Obama campaign "Fact Check" site:

"Is Barack Obama consorting with a radical? Hardly. Ayers is nothing more than an aging lefty with a foolish past who is doing good. And while, yes, Obama is friendly with Ayers, it appears to be only in the way of two community activists whose circles overlap."

The Facts

Bill Ayers has acknowledged that he was one of the leaders of a group known as the Weather Underground, which carried out a series of small-scale bombings at the Capitol and the Pentagon in 1970 and 1971 as a protest against the Vietnam War. He was charged with conspiracy to bomb, but the charges were dropped in 1974 because of prosecutorial misconduct. Over the last two decades, he has been better known in Chicago as an education expert, and it was in that role that he became acquainted with Obama in 1995. The two men served together on the board of an anti-poverty group, and Ayers contributed $200 to Obama's re-election campaign for the Illinois State Senate in 2001.

Yet Communism -- and Communists -- excuse such murders as being something other than murder. They are "liquidations" or the application of "revolutionary justice" to "enemies" of "the people."

Unfortunately, Ayers only stands out because of his involvement in terrorist acts. My concern is that the focus on terrorism misses this larger point, which is that his form of terrorism is incidental to and was always subordinate to the ideology of communism. Terrorism was but a tactic, and the fact that he does not currently engage in terrorist acts is tactical. His ideology has not changed in the least. So, the focus on Ayers' past terrorism (which must come as a relief to communists in general) avoids focusing on his past communism as well as his present communism, of which he is proud to this day.

Here's Ayers on the past:

Is one of those regrets that I took extreme measures against the United States at a time of tremendous crisis? No it is not. I don't regret that. The people of the world are being exploited and oppressed and militarized by the great imperialist powers, led by the United States. That is the situation today in my view.
...
And I'm not sorry about anything that I participated to try to end that war or against that government that was waging that war.

Is one of those regrets that I took extreme measures against the United States at a time of tremendous crisis? No it is not. I don't regret that. The people of the world are being exploited and oppressed and militarized by the great imperialist powers, led by the United States. That is the situation today in my view.
...
And I'm not sorry about anything that I participated to try to end that war or against that government that was waging that war.

Personally, I think it's sickening. The only thing I can say in Ayers defense is that he's within his First Amendment rights in glorifying murderers.

Yet Ayers and his supporters would disagree with my viewpoint. To him and those who think like him, Guevara is not a murderer, because his murders were committed in furtherance of his ideology. It will never be (and can never be) admitted by Ayers or his supporters that their ideology itself is murderous, and that communism cannot be imposed on people without murder, which of course it never has been.

Ayers is now a teacher, and as he subordinated his terrorist acts to the greater picture of communism, he now sees his educational efforts the same way.

Notice the way he conflates his past terrorism into merely a teaching opportunity in this YouTube interview with Chavista comrades (in front of the murderer's icon, of course).

Via Ed Morrissey who excerpts some pertinent quotes:

3:20 - The particular crisis we faced with the Vietnam War was a crisis that called on us to escalate, to resist in more intense and, and, uh, uh, in more extreme ways. But one way of looking at it is that the Weather Underground was a great teaching moment. And, to the extent that we didn't fully realize what we were trying to do, we were bad teachers, and to the extent that we did good things, we were good teachers.
5:42 - I mean, to go from underground, when we really thought we were in a revolutionary crisis ... and there's no question that when we left the underground, we lost something valuable -- we lost our treasure.

Obama says he barely knows him, but in the years when he was meeting and serving together on the Annenberg Challenge and the Woods Fund, as well as launching his career with a fundraiser in Ayers' Che Guevara-festooned house, Ayers made at least four Marxist pilgrimages to Caracas to praise Chavez's dictatorial regime.

He sits on the board of a Venezuelan government think tank called Miranda International Center, focused on bringing Cuba-style education to Venezuelan school children.

Recent polls show this turning of schools toward Marxist indoctrination terrifies average Venezuelans. Venezuelan dissidents also accuse Miranda of rewriting constitutions in South America to grant leftist leaders absolute power, with some saying Ayers had a role in 2007's effort to give Chavez total power inside Venezuela.

Again, except for mentions like that ,Ayers' murderous ideology -- Communism -- is largely overlooked, while the punditry focus on what was a tactic -- terrorism.

Either Communism doesn't matter or people are afraid to use the word.

What concerns me is that the focus on Ayers the terrorist turns inevitably turns into a debate over how old Obama was at the time of the bombings, how close his relationship was with Ayers, whether G. Gordon Liddy is comparable to Ayers, etc. and avoids any mention of communism, much less a serious discussion of whether it is appropriate for a president who (unless I am mistaken) sees nothing wrong with working with communists, and dispensing money to communists.

One of the lesser known communists who managed to receive nearly $2 million from Ayers and Obama is a guy named Mike Klonsky.

Andrew McCarthy (God bless him) has written a long, detailed piece about Klonsky, and he stresses what I have tried to stress in this post -- that the debate over terrorist tactics (and whether they are repented) avoids any focus on the murderous ideology behind the tactics:

With what little media oxygen there has been sucked out by the largely uninformative discussion of Ayers (and his wife and Weather Underground ally, Bernadine Dohrn) -- in which the mantra "unrepentant terrorist" has been a pale substitute for the critical matter of the Ayers's ideology that Obama plainly shares -- much has been missed. Significantly, that includes another key Obama contact, Mike Klonsky.

Here's what you need to know. Klonsky is an unabashed communist whose current mission is to spread Marxist ideology in the American classroom. Obama funded him to the tune of nearly $2 million. Obama, moreover, gave Klonsky a broad platform to broadcast his ideas: a "social justice" blog on the official Obama campaign website.

To be clear, as it seems always necessary to repeat when Obamaniacs, in their best Saul Alinsky tradition, shout down the opposition: This is not about guilt by association. The issue is not that Obama knows Klonsky ... or Ayers ... or Dohrn ... or Wright ... or Rashid Khalidi ...

The issue is that Obama promoted and collaborated with these anti-American radicals. The issue is that he shared their ideology.

Does anyone know?

As far as I can tell, the only hint of a discussion by Obama of whether he shares their ideology was the description of Ayers as "not somebody who I exchange ideas with on a regular basis."

Does that mean only irregularly?

From the comments at HillBuzz Sara P speaks

Ok, I want to clear my conscious a little. Hopefully you could make a blog post to help some fellow clinton supporters out.

I work for a campaign and can't wait for this week to be over.

I was doing it for a job. I was not a fan of any candidate but over time grew to love HRC.

The internal campaign idea is to twist, distort, humiliate and finally dispirit you.

We pay people and organize people to go to all the online sites and "play the part of a clinton or mccain supporter who just switched our support for obama"

We do this to stifle your motivation and to destroy your confidence.

We did this the whole primary and it worked.

Sprinkle in mass vote confusion and it becomes bewildering. Most people lose patience and just give up on their support of a candidate and decide to just block out tv, news, websites, etc.

This surprisingly has had a huge suppressing movement and vote turnout issues.

Next, we infiltrate all the blogs and all the youtube videos and overwhelm the voting, the comments, etc. All to continue this appearance of overwhelming world support.

People makes posts to the effect that the world has "gone mad"

Thats the intention. To make you feel stressed and crazy and feel like the world is ending.

We have also had quite a hand in skewing many many polls, some we couldn't control as much as we would have liked. But many we have spoiled over. Just enough to make real clear politics look scarey to a mccain supporter. Its worked, alough the goal was to appear 13-15 points ahead.

see, the results have been working. People tend to support a winner, go with the flow, become "sheeple"

The polls are roughly 3-5 points in favor of Barack. Thats due to our inflation of the polls and pulling in the sheeple.

Our donors, are the same people who finance the MSM. Their interests are tied, Barack then tends to come across as teflon. Nothing sticks. And trust, there were meetings with Fox news. The goal was to blunt them as much as possible. Watch Bill Oreilly he has become much more diplomatic and "fair and balanced" and soft. Its because he wants to retain the #1 spot on cable news and to do that he has to have access to the Obama campaign and we worked hard at stringing him a long and keeping him soft for an interview swap. It worked and now he is anticipating more access. So he is playing it still soft.

This is why nothing sticks.

The operation is massive, the goal is to paint a picture that is that of a winner, regardless of the results.

There is no true inauguration draft or true grant park construction going on. There will be a party, but we are boasting beyond the truth to make it seem like the election is wrapped up.

Our goal is to continue to make you lose your moral. We worked hard at persuasion and paying off and timing and playing the right political numbers to get key republican endorsements to make it seem even more like it was over and the world was coming to an end for you all.

There is a huge staff of people working around the clock, watching every site, blogs, etc. We flood these sites. We have had a goal to overwhelm.

The truth is here. I could go on and on, but you get the picture.

I am saying this because I know HRC was better for the country, and now realize this. I was too late by the time I connected to her. To me Barack was just a cool young dude that seemed like a star. I didn't know him or his policies, but now I understand more than I care to and I realize his interests are more for him, and the DNC and all working like puppets with dean. I always thought a president wanted the better good for the country. The end result I see is everyone dependent on the government, this means more and more people voting for the DNC. This means the future is forever altered. I don't see this as america, so I am now supporting John Mccain.

Sarah Palin is a huge threat, and our campaign has feared her like you can't imagine. If it seems unfair how she has been treated, well its because she has had a team working round the clock to make her look like a fool.

this is a big conspiracy and I am so shocked that its not realized.

We released a little blurb the other day that the Obama campaign was already working on reelection and now putting our efforts towards 2012. This was to make it seem like it was above us to continue caring about 2008. Trust me, its a lie. David is very smart, but its a sticky ugly not very truthful kind of intelligence.

Its not over yet, but I think the machine is working. And its a hill to climb.

I will be quitting my post on nov 5th and my vote will be for John Mccain. Fortunately, my position has been a marketing position and I don't feel I had any part of anything I would feel guilty for. But I look forward to getting out of this as the negativity and environment upsets me.

I wish you all well, and goodluck.

PS my name is not really sarah. but I am a female and I understand your plight.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

HillBuzz needs your help with their get out the vote effort for McCain/Palin.

We need to ask for your help. We're putting together a canvassing trip into Ohio this coming weekend to bring what we hope will be about 70 DeMcCrats for McCain and Young Republican supporters into Ohio to canvass for McCain/Palin in the Buckeye state. We're $1,500 short of what we need to rent buses for this trip, and cover the accommodations and costs for our volunteers while there. We're also buying as many DeMcCrats for McCain and other McCain/Palin buttons and stickers to hand out in Ohio as we can. This is a bipartisan effort here in Chicago -- and the biggest push we've ever made for canvassing. It's a long ride from Illinois to Ohio, and the bus is expensive. We've all scraped together what we can, but need help covering the rest.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

The Wall Street Journal has a memo from the McCain Campaign. Let me just give one highlight that touches on something I wrote about yesterday: The PUMA Question.

* We are beginning to once again get over a 20% chunk of the vote among soft Democrats.

Importantly as well, our long identified target of "Walmart women" - those women without a college degree in households under $60,000 a year in income are also swinging back solidly in our direction.

Finally, in terms of critical improvement, even as this track shows more Republicans voting for us than Democrats supporting Obama, we are witnessing an impressive "pop" with Independent voters.

As I said during our Sunday briefing, we do substantially more interviews per day than any public poll, but, given the shift we were witnessing, it was my expectation that by Tuesday/Wednesday multiple public polls would show the race closing. A quick glance at Real Clear Politics would indicate this is happening by today, Tuesday, and that's good!

The memo writer also notes that there are no good models for voter behavior in this election season. So it is all seat of the pants for both campaigns and the people who do public polling.

H/T The StrataSphere and HillBuzz comments.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

In the comments on my post A Funny Thing Happened In The Voting Booth commenter Dr. Nobel Dynamite made the following point.

"Not to mention the PUMA factor." [that was me - ed.]

You need to turn off the propaganda for a while, my friend. Just because Neil Cavuto trots out a cigarette hag that claims to speak for disgruntled Hillary supporters doesn't make PUMAs anything more than wishful thinking from Fox.

No Bell,

In science/engineering we look at unusual results and outliers for undiscovered phenomenon.

It is more than possible that I may have discovered some interesting effects.

BTW the reports on the PUMA effect started in the high 30s. Dipped to the low 20s and then started rising again to the mid 30s. (that would be % of Hillary voters going for McCain). Since the last reports of that rise there has been no news of the PUMA effect. Did it just disappear? Or was it a case of "did not fit the narrative"?

A defection rate as a % of the total vote of 3.75% (roughly 20% [defectioon rate] of 1/2 [Hillary voters] of 37%[Dems in the electorate]) can be overcome. It will be offset by a 13% or so R defection rate (about 5% of the vote). If the defection rate is 40% of Hillary voters that is a 7.5% loss. Killer.

The question is: is that defection rate being measured accurately? Since the announcements of the PUMA factor have stopped, I'd have to say no. If it had dropped it would have been announced. If it rose above 40% it would be buried.

How about what DJ Drummond has to say on the subject of polls.

Gallup has noted the strength of early voting this year. The most significant points from that article are these; early voting is stronger than expected this year, and so far republicans have been just as eager to vote early as democrats. The third point is the most important signal of all. Says Gallup; "Early voting ranges from 14% of voters 55 and older (in aggregated data from Friday through Wednesday) to 5% of those under age 35. Plus, another 22% of voters aged 55 and up say they plan to vote early, meaning that by Election Day, over a third of voters in this older age group may already have cast their ballots."

The last two statements are very good news for McCain and bad news for Obama. This is because it demonstrates that enthusiasm to actually vote by republicans is equal to enthusiasm to vote by democrats. This runs directly against claims made in polling up to now, demonstrating that participation in polls is not directly related to voting this year. Second, the higher participation by senior voters and weaker participation by younger voters is directly in line with historical norms, again running against the poll expectations that this year would see a wave of young people voting but seniors staying at home. Gallup's own data proves this is not happening as they predicted, and the polls are therefore invalid in those respects, in addition to obvious flaws in the party weighting. The reasonable expectation from these facts, would be for Gallup to back down and correct its weighting to match the observed behavior. As of yet, Gallup has not taken that step.

What we're hoping for the polls to tell us is how people will vote in the future. In order to figure that out, we start by asking some number of people how they would vote today.

Obviously, we don't and can't know how people would really vote (Obama could be caught with a dead girl and a live boy and Fox News with a camera.) But it's everyone's best guess, and they have a chance to answer "O" or "McP" or "undecided".

Now, if we could ask every single person who will be voting this question, we'd get a fairly precise number --- not exact, but pretty close. Asking 130 million people their opinion is pretty intractable, so they ask a much smaller number. There are mathematical reasons to let us make an estimate of the amount of error we get by just asking that smaller number, and that's where this "margin of error" comes from. The wy it works is basically like this: say we have 130 million red and blue marbles, in proportions of 51 percent red and 49 percent blue. Since they're well mixed, we can be confident that most of the time, if we scoop out a bucket full of 1000 marbles and count the colors, there will be something close to 510 red and 490 blue. It's extremely unlikely --- although possible --- that we'd scoop out 1000 blue marbles. It's also very unlikely that every time we scoop up marbles, we'll get exactly 510/490. But let's say we try it 100 times. Roughly 95 times out of 100, we'll get a count between 495/505 and 525/475.

That's exactly what the "margin of error" is: we know, mathematically, that 95 times out of 100, our random scoop will deliver a number plus or minus 1.5 percent (or, total, 3 percent) of the "real" value we'd get if we counted all the marbles.

The problem is that when we talk about a real poll, our "marbles" aren't perfectly mixed. If we were to, say, call the first thousand people in the Cambridge Mass phone book, that wouldn't represent the country as a whole very well. So instead, polling companies call a lot of people, carefully selected, and try to work backwards to what a "perfectly mixed" sample would have been like.

Now, say we were talking about the marbles example again. We know, because they were our marbles to start with, that exactly 51 percent of them were red, 49 percent blue. So when we scoop out 1000 of them, we have an "ideal sample" in mind. A little algebra lets us then compute what the perfect sample would have looked like, and it is going to come up 51/49 every time.

But now let's say we don't know what the real number is; we just think we have roughly 51 percent red when we start. now we scoop out 1000 marbles and apply the same adjustment; we think it's 51/49, and we scoop them out, checking each scoop. If they're really 51/49, the numbers we get should cluster around 51/49. If not, then we can compute what the "real" proportion is.

But now, what if we start with the wrong assumption that they're really 55 percent red, 45 percent blue? When we compute our adjusted values, we're going to "slant" what we think the real value is toward the red ones. we may compute a guess that it's really 53/47.

And that's where the polls are right now. Each one starts with an assumption, or model, of the real electorate. That assumption causes the values to slant one direction or another; how good that initial guess is will determine how good the eventual result is when all the marbles are finally counted.

A lot of the polls have fairly radical assumptions, like that people identify themselves as 40 percent D, 25 percent R, 35 percent independent. Those polls also show Obama with a big leads. Other polls have closer assumptions, and get smaller ranges. That's why I said above that the way to read the polls is really "IF the mix is really like this THEN the election results would be roughly so".

Works pretty well if you're interested in hypothetical colored balls in hypothetical giant urns, or growth of plants in a controlled experiment, or defects in a batch of factory products. It may even work well if you're interested in blind cola taste tests. But what if the thing you are studying doesn't quite fit the balls & urns template?

What if 40% of the balls have personally chosen to live in an urn that you legally can't stick your hand into?

What if 50% of the balls who live in the legal urn explicitly refuse to let you select them?

What if the balls inside the urn are constantly interacting and talking and arguing with each other, and can decide to change their color on a whim?

What if you have to rely on the balls to report their own color, and some unknown number are probably lying to you?

What if you've been hired to count balls by a company who has endorsed blue as their favorite color?

What if you have outsourced the urn-ball counting to part-time temp balls, most of whom happen to be blue?

What if the balls inside the urn are listening to you counting out there, and it affects whether they want to be counted, and/or which color they want to be?

If one or more of the above statements are true, then the formula for margin of error simplifies to

Margin of Error = Who the hell knows

Because, in this case, so-called scientific "sampling error" is meaningless, because it is utterly overwhelmed by non-sampling error. Under these circumstances "margin of error" is a numeric fiction masquerading as a pseudo-scientific fact, and if a poll reports it -- even if collected "scientifically" -- the pollster is guilty of aggravated bullshit in the first degree.

The moral of this midterm for all would-be pollsters: if you are really interested in how many of us red and blue balls there are in this great big urn, sit back and relax until Tuesday, and let us show our true colors.

Until then, fondle your own balls.

As to the fondling balls question. I'm looking for volunteers of the female persuasion. Urn fondling in return. Then maybe a cigarette afterwards.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

In a riveting interview piece titled "Eyewitness to the Ayers Revolution,"Bob Owens has more on the incredible story of the plan (by Bill Ayers, Bernardine Dohrn, and others) to kill 25 million Americans:

Pajamas Media: You stated in your interview in No Place to Hide that you wanted us to "imagine sitting in a room with 25 people, most of which have graduate degrees, from Columbia and other well-known educational centers, and hear them figuring out the logistics for the elimination of 25 million people." A lot of people have now had the opportunity to listen to you, and contemplate the horrors these people planned. Can you recall who these people are by name, and who the ringleaders of this plan were?

Larry Grathwohl: Conversations regarding this occurred in Cincinnati, Detroit, Flint, and Buffalo. Participants included Bill Ayers, Bernardine Dohrn, Mark Rudd, Linda Evans, Jeff Jones, and many others.

Pajamas Media: Was this merely an academic matter to them, or were they serious about killing 25 million Americans that would not bend to their political will?

Larry Grathwohl: I suppose you could consider this a purely academic discussion in that the Weathermen never had the opportunity to implement their political ends. However, I can assure you that this was not the case. There was an absolute belief that they, along with the international revolutionary movement, would cause the collapse of the United States and that they would be in charge. Nixon was of great concern and how his end would be conducted. This may sound absurd in today's context, but the Weatherman believed they would succeed.

While the plan to murder 25 million Americans is so outrageous as to seem unbelievable, the fact is that monstrous people with monstrous plans have come and gone many times in human history. The ones who stand out in history are the ones who succeed. The Weather Underground are remembered because they had some success, although they of course came nowhere close to acheiving their despicable goals.

As despicable goals go, murdering 25 million is about as despicable as it gets.

I'm glad that Barack Obama has condemned Bill Ayers' actions as despicable, and while no one has seen fit to ask him about the plan to murder 25 million, I don't doubt that he would condemn that out of hand, and he'd probably point out that not only didn't he know Ayers or Dohrn at the time, but he was just a small boy. And he would have been only 15 or so when Ayers dedicated his book to Robert F. Kennedy's assassin, Sirhan Sirhan.

But by the time 9/11 rolled around and Ayers was stomping on the American flag and saying he hadn't done enough, Barack Obama was in his 40s. By that time, he had:

been the object of a career-launching fund raiser in Ayers and Dohrn's home

sung the praises of another book by Ayers, in which Obama was mentioned

attended many board meetings with Ayers

appeared on at least two panel symposia with Ayers and at least one with Dohrn

disbursed large sums of charitable money with Ayers, to the latter's favorite causes

worked in the same building as Ayers for years

I guess if that makes Ayers OK, then the fact that serial murderer John Wayne Gacy managed to pose with Rosalyn Carter should make him OK too. This is not to suggest that Ayers was like Gacy, because the latter didn't just plan mass murder; he actually did kill 33 people. And his murders were not ideologically driven, but committed for pleasure.

However, I do think Ayers is comparable to Unabomber Ted Kaczynski, who no one would argue should ever be allowed to become respectable.

For. The. Umpteenth. Time.

Something is wrong with allowing a man who advocated the genocidal murder of 25 million of his fellow countrymen to become respectable.

I realize Ayers has supporters, but I think it is a mistake to elect as president a guy who thinks such respectability is OK.

Even if he hardly knew the guy in the neighborhood who helped launch his career in whose book he was mentioned and whose book he blurbed and with whom he shared a work address for a few years and with whom appeared on panels and boards and with whom he distributed millions, why can't he just say that Ayers should not be respectable?

H/T Drudge Report

Cross Posted at Power and Control

"Rain and snow this evening. A snow shower or two overnight"

Where's my global warming?

I realize weather is not climate, but I'm not all that cheered up by this chart:

Moreover, I see that Ann Arbor is not alone. In fact, tonight's weather is a result of an unseasonably cold "Noreaster" in combination with the "Lake Effect".

This chilling chart explains:

I just took a dog walk, and at 33 degrees, it's too cold for comfort. Coco agrees.

Winter is still nearly two months away.

I wish I could vote for warmer weather, but I'm afraid that's a fantasy. There's nothing that can be done.

How dare a local Philadelphia CBS affiliate ask Joe Biden anything but softball questions?

How dare they?

Naturally, the station has been put on the campaign blacklist.

Hmmm...

With all the talk about media bias, I think outlets like this should be singled out for praise.

I'm also wondering whether pliant news outlets that inevitably kowtow to pressure (by avoiding tough questions) are displaying bias in the usual sense of the word.

Is fear-based bias the real thing?

Or is it insincere?

I'm sorry to read (via Hugh Hewitt) that Dean Barnett has died. Hugh Hewitt remembers him, and his inspiring desire to live despite a battle with Cystic Fibrosis that shortened his life:

Dean told me early in our friendship that his disease had forced him to deal with the possibility of living too short a life and that he thus threw himself into everything. This ferocious desire to live well and fully is what I will always tell people marked Dean Barnett. That and the love he had for his wonderful wife Kirstan and his family and friends. His extraordinary story is told in his short essay, The Smart Spunky Kid with the Fatal Disease, and his example will long be an example to others battling with Cystic Fibrosis. I hope we can report some day soon the news that a cure for CF is in hand, and on that day toast Dean for all he did to raise awareness of the disease. I will also toast him whenever I hear smart, persuasive arguments on behalf of common sense conservatism and fierce attachment to the opportunities liberty bestows.

I've always believed that the old saying -- "live each day as if it is your last" -- is a good one to live by if you can.

Dean Barnett did, and left the world a better place for it.

MORE: Via Glenn Reynolds, William Kristol remembers Dean Barnett as "a remarkable man--principled, witty, and to all of us, a model of grace and courage."

He will be missed.

UPDATE: Roger L. Simon remembers Dean Barnett. Not just as a great blogger, but as someone he liked "just as much in person as I did online."

Red State has an interesting anecdote about some Democrats who got together to vote early.

Yesterday, I heard a great story from a friend who describes herself as a "Legacy Democrat" she says that everyone in her family has been a registered Democrat as far back as she can remember - parents, grandparents, great-grandparents... you get the picture. Well the other day, her and four of her friends, all proud Nevada Democrats piled into the car and together went to early vote for Obama.

On the way to their polling place, she said they were all very excited but she kept having this funny feeling in her stomach. Upon entering the voting booth, she said, the anxiety worsened and standing there poised to cast her vote a little voice or call it instinct began gnawing away at this life long Democrat (life long - well she's only 35) She finally said "I can't do it... I can't vote for Obama, he's just not ready" and voted for McCain.

She said she was shocked walking out of the polling place, she didn't think she would ever vote for a Republican... Ever!!!

On the ride home with her four friends the mood was a bit somber I think she even called it sobering. About halfway home she let the cat out of the bag, so to speak, and told her friends she had voted for McCain and her reasons for doing so. Their reaction was shocking, even to her, all but one said they had done the same thing and for the same reasons.

H/T The Infidel Bloggers Alliance

Cross Posted at Power and Control

In an email, I was sent a painfully funny video showing a character played by the buffoonish William Shatner who Newsbusters describes as,

"helping" Barack Obama as he defends the Second Amendment.

I've never seen the series it's from, but the episode is discussed here.

A mannequin dressed up to look like Sarah Palin is hanging by a noose in front of a West Hollywood home.

WEST HOLLYWOOD, Calif. (AP) ― A Halloween decoration showing a mannequin dressed as vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin hanging by a noose from the roof of a West Hollywood home is drawing giggles from some passers-by and gasps of outrage from others.

The mannequin is dressed in brunet wig, glasses and a red business suit. Another mannequin dressed as John McCain emerges from a flaming chimney.

Chad Michael Morisette, who lives in the house, told CBS 2 News that drivers and bus passengers have been stopping to snap pictures of the macabre scene.

Morisette says the effigy would be out of bounds at any other time of year, but it's within the spirit of Halloween.

Caption: A mannequin hanging from a home in West Hollywood has been outfitted to look like Governor Sarah Palin.

I love this explanation of the tax code which has been floating around for several years:

Suppose that every day, ten men go out for beer and the bill for all ten comes to $100. If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go something like this:

The first four men (the poorest) would pay nothing.
The fifth would pay $1.
The sixth would pay $3.
The seventh would pay $7.
The eighth would pay $12.
The ninth would pay $18.
The tenth man (the richest) would pay $59.

So, that's what they decided to do.
The ten men drank in the bar every day and seemed quite happy with the arrangement, until one day, the owner threw them a curve. 'Since you are all such good customers,' he said, 'I'm going to reduce the cost of your daily beer by $20.' Drinks for the ten now cost just $80.
The group still wanted to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes so the first four men were unaffected. They would still drink for free.
But what about the other six men - the paying customers? How could they divide the $20 windfall so that everyone would get his 'fair share?'
They realized that $20 divided by six is $3.33. But if they subtracted that from everybody's share, then the fifth man and the sixth man would each end up being paid to drink his beer.
So, the bar owner suggested that it would be fair to reduce each man's bill by roughly the same amount, and he proceeded to work out the amounts each should pay.

And so:
The fifth man, like the first four, now paid nothing (100% savings).
The sixth now paid $2 instead of $3 (33%savings).
The seventh now pay $5 instead of $7 (28%savings).
The eighth now paid $9 instead of $12 (25% savings).
The ninth now paid $14 instead of $18 (22% savings).
The tenth now paid $49 instead of $59 (16% savings).

Each of the six was better off than before. And the first four continued to drink for free. But once outside the restaurant, the men began to compare their savings.
'I only got a dollar out of the $20,'declared the sixth man. He pointed to the tenth man,' but he got $10!'
'Yeah, that's right,' exclaimed the fifth man. 'I only saved a dollar, too.
It's unfair that he got ten times more than I got' 'That's true!!' shouted the seventh man. 'Why should he get $10 back when I got only two? The wealthy get all the breaks!'
'Wait a minute,' yelled the first four men in unison. 'We didn't get anything at all. The system exploits the poor!'
The nine men surrounded the tenth and beat him up.
The next night the tenth man didn't show up for drinks so the nine sat down and had beers without him. But when it came time to pay the bill, they discovered something important. They didn't have enough money between all of them for even half of the bill!
And that, ladies and gentlemen, journalists and college professors, is how our tax system works. The people who pay the highest taxes get the most benefit from a tax reduction. Tax them too much, attack them for being wealthy, and they just may not show up anymore. In fact, they might start drinking overseas where the atmosphere is somewhat friendlier.

David R. Kamerschen, Ph.D.
Professor of Economics
University of Georgia

For those who understand, no explanation is needed.
For those who do not understand, no explanation is possible.

So does authorship matter?

I think it does. And I say this at the risk of being overly concerned with truth and facts:

Using stuff like truth and facts is so passe and reeks of a bourgeois attitude.

For the record, I plead guilty. I'm a hopeless bourgeois sentimentalizer who sympathies often, um, lie with the, um, truth.

Yet if I didn't think truth and facts mattered, I might run afoul of one of my newer (and, I think, temporary) commenters, like this one who worries about the impact of honesty on the very "classical values" I'm supposed to be championing here!

Does it bother any of you that Joe the Plumber lied about the whole thing, or is that not part of the equation? Moreover, all the info released is a matter of public record, so...
You know, classical values don't include lying, just so you know.

So I better be very careful here lest my bourgeois classicism become as passe as the ancients!

I still think the parable in question is helpful and amusing, and because of its nature, I don't think it especially matters who wrote it. Interestingly, the people who have attempted to beef it up with fake scholastic attributions only weakened its appeal, by allowing it to become tainted as "another Internet hoax."

I like it the way it is.

(But I'm thinking that right now I might like it more if it had been written by Joe the Plumber....)

Speaking of outrages, don't miss the recording of an on air PBS interview from 2001 in which Barack Obama discusses how best to implement the redistribution of wealth. (M. Simon linked it earlier, and I don't want to be duplicative, so just scroll down to his post to listen.)

Obama says that the courts might not be the best place, but he makes it clear that he's all for the concept.

Via Newsbusters, a link to the transcript of the video (which I've posted below, for those who want to read it).

Looks like the unlicensed plumber was onto something.

MORE: Bill Whittle reacts to Obama's utterly damning statements:

...we have never, ever in our 232-year history, elected a president who so completely and openly opposed the idea of limited government, the absolute cornerstone of makes the United States of America unique and exceptional.

If this does not frighten you -- regardless of your political affiliation -- then you deserve what this man will deliver with both houses of Congress, a filibuster-proof Senate, and, to quote Senator Obama again, "a righteous wind at our backs."

That a man so clear in his understanding of the Constitution, and so opposed to the basic tenets it provides against tyranny and the abuse of power, can run for president of the United States is shameful enough.

Read it all.

I think I've figured out what may be going on with the Philadelphia Inquirer writer whose recent column argued that white people should not be allowed to vote, and because it touches on a longstanding paradox, I thought it merited a post.

This is not about the merits of the deliberately inflammatory argument that white people should not be allowed to vote. (More on that in M. Simon's post and in this one from Newsbusters.) Rather, I think it touches on one of the paradoxes of the nature of success.

I suspect that the author (Jonathan Valania) seeks success as a writer, and that he hopes that his inflammatory editorial will become an important stepping stone in his career. If this is any indication, the author may well realize that his music column is not doing well, so he's seeking to be fired for a sexy reason:

"OUTTA THERE! Taking my shit to the Inquirer. More coming... standby," he said today in an email. Inky arts desk, we do not envy you today. And if we may address our prodigal son directly for a moment: Like we said before, Jonathan -- it?s not that we wanted you to get fired, it?s just that, well, you deserved to.

If they fire him now, he "wins." (Beats being a washed up music reviewer, eh?)

Nice way to launch a blog? Two words come to mind.

Professional troll.

(I've been blogging long enough to know it when I see it.)

Posted by fgomarty 11:18 AM, 10/26/2008
That the Inquirer would give space to a column like this tells one all one needs to know. This column is absolute trash, the type of thing one would find on the internet, but not in a formerly respected newspaper. What substance was being ingested when the editorial board approved this? The writer is obviously seriously mentally deranged and I would recommend immediate professional help.

Posted by Xi Jah 11:26 AM, 10/26/2008
Great. PNI is now giving crazy people space in their failing papers. That should save them.

Posted by BlairW 11:49 AM, 10/26/2008
Mr. Tierney, seriously? I honestly thought this was an article from the Onion.

Posted by Casca 09:43 AM, 10/27/2008
And this from the same fishwrapper that a few weeks ago published an incredibly incendiary piece from some woman replete with threats of riots in the event of an Obama defeat. While it is unpleasant to see them inflict their pathologies on their subscribers it is useful as a window into the minds of the leftist wingnuts that are about to become our masters.

IMHO, the man is a troll. (I'd compare him to Ann Coulter, but the latter is a better writer.)

This touches on a larger issue though. Why do trolls so often succeed? Is it because appeals to reason, logic, or common sense are seen as more boring than red meat?

As someone who aspires to be a voice of reason, I have to say that what I just wrote is depressing to contemplate. The fact is, I've seen countless trolls succeed. Many of the big leftie blogs are written by them (although there are of course the Ann Coulters on the right.)

And there is no arguing with success. It speaks for itself.

Perhaps the concept of "troll" is a bit like "thief." On a small scale, being either is pathetic. But on a large scale, it represents something else. Caesar Augustus observed that the larger the theft, the more it tends to become legitimate -- a point which can be illustrated by comparing someone who steals a small amount of water to someone who manages to divert an entire river. Perhaps being a troll on a grand scale is similar.

Does this mean that if I wanted to become a big time successful troll, I should endorse, say, the Ayers plan to murder 25 million Americans, then later claim it was "satire"?

Nah. No one would believe for a moment that I meant it.

Hmmm...

I guess I'm stuck. I wouldn't even be taken seriously if I offered (as the ultimate form of "red meat") a proposal that all Communists be rounded up, tortured, and then executed, would I? Well, considering that a lot of leftists already think that's what's being done to them, a few people might think I was serious, but I doubt regular readers would be fooled. (Considering I can't even go along with the more conventional red meat conspiracy theories, I don't think I could do it and keep a straight face. As it is, I even get into trouble with commenters for simply trying to debunk such conspiracy theories -- or for that matter even trying to debunk Andrew Sullivan's assertions.)

I'm so locked into this stupid "logical and reasonable" mode, I couldn't be outrageous if I tried.

I don't think I could even start an outrageous and inflammatory anonymous blog. I'd be bored to death.

What do you do if you find deliberate outrageousness boring?

The answer in my case lies in the recognition that boredom is itself an emotional reaction. And because I dislike emotional reactions -- especially my own -- then the boredom that accompanies outrageousness must not be as boring as I think.

An outrageous paradox, if you think about it. So why am I not more outraged?

UPDATE: Sean Kinsell hails from the cultural background Valania sneers at, and in a post titled "Hold a chicken in the air / Stick a deck chair up your nose" he explains why Valania's hateful screed is a "masterwork of scintillating ninnyism."

You've got to read it all!

(My thanks to Sean for the link. Someone should hire him as a speechwriter...)

Yep. White people are messing up the election. But there is a fix for that. Don't allow them to vote.

As a lifelong Caucasian, I am beginning to think the time has finally come to take the right to vote away from white people, at least until we come to our senses. Seriously, I just don't think we can be trusted to exercise it responsibly anymore.

I give you Exhibit A: The last eight years.

In 2000, Bush-Cheney stole the election, got us attacked, and then got us into two no-exit wars. Four years later, white people reelected them. Is not the repetition of the same behavior over and over again with the expectation of a different outcome the very definition of insanity? (It is, I looked it up.)

Exhibit B is any given Sarah Palin rally.

H/T Newsbusters

Cross Posted at Power and Control

Whenever Obama is in trouble, these people clam up.

The worse something is for Obama, the quieter his followers get.

It's how we gauge the impact of something around here.

Not a single Obamabot comment in the last hour. We'd usually have 30 of them in our spam filter in that hour.

NOT A SINGLE ONE.

Where did they all go?

Cross Posted at Power and Control

Sgt. Mom looks at the deep wounds Sarah Palin has opened in the guts of the American aristocracy. Sarah is not one of them. She is a mom with five children. Way above the 2.1 considered normal. She kills her own food. A job best left to the servants. All in all a backwoods rube not fit for polite society.

Our career-serving political class, the education establishment, the traditional news media, the people responsible for (in a good and in a bad way) for our movies and television entertainment -- it seems of late that too many of them are singing with the same voice and the same song. Different words, perhaps, and out of some obscure motivation, but all to the same end, and now and again I detect some whisper of the same motivating contempt for the American public. Contempt for our tastes or lack of same, of our habits in shopping, amusing ourselves, our persistent attachment to religious beliefs, to habits of self-sufficiency, and our stubborn disinclination to do or believe as our self-nominated betters dictate -- it's all on very ugly display. The media gang-up on Joe the Plumber, for having the impertinence to ask a tough question of the favored candidate was just the most recent and most open, and the most unsettling display.

Really, what do these new aristos expect of the masses, the proletariat, the common citizenry? More and more I have the feeling that we are seen as a kind of herd animal, to be periodically sheared like sheep, relieved of whatever fleece or funds that the new aristos feel they could make better use of, to do as we are told, to not really consider our property, our children, or our earnings as our own. If the aristos decide that they require such things to be given up... well, then, fall in line the loyal peasantry. And don't forget to smile.

We are being put back in our place, after a two-hundred plus year experiment of being responsible and independent citizens - not so much by actual physical repression, but by words ... words and deeds wielded by the new aristos, to wreck our institutions from the inside, and water down those basic freedoms as established in the constitution, to shred free speech and condemn us to silence for fear of a mob - a mob directed by an unholy confabulation of the aristos. Not too late to go storm the Bastille though - on Voting Day. Don't give up. Ever.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

Apparently there's no end to defecting conservatives:

I'm announcing my full support for Senator Obama because trillion-dollar-a-go-go entitlements, tax hikes, socialized health care, and federally-funded day care for three-year-olds are exactly what we small-government conservatives are looking for.

Better read it all.

It's late and people have been taking me seriously and my investments are losing their value.

So I'm getting confused. But I don't want to go wobbly.

A few choice quotes, as overheard at the United Nations:

One American employee here seemed puzzled that he was being asked whether Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) was even a consideration. "Obama was and is unstoppable," the official said. "Please, God, let him win," he added.

[...]

"It would be hard to find anybody, I think, at the U.N. who would not believe that Obama would be a considerable improvement over any other alternative," said William H. Luers, executive director of the United Nations Association. "It's been a bad eight years, and there is a lot of bad feeling over it."

[...]

"We do not consider him an African American," said Congo's U.N. ambassador, Atoki Ileka. "We consider him an African."

[...]

"I have not heard a single person who will support McCain; if they do, they are in hiding..."

"The fact is that most conservatives, most Republicans don't worship at the altar in New York, and I think that aggravates them more than anything else," said John R. Bolton, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. "What they want is the bending of the knee, and they'll get it from an Obama administration."

For the small minority of U.N. officials who have stuck with McCain -- only two of 28 U.N. officials and diplomats questioned said they favored the Arizona senator -- life in Turtle Bay can seem lonely. "I keep my mouth shut," said one American official here who plans to vote for McCain. "Everyone is knocking on wood, counting the days to the elections. Some Americans here are planning to move to Washington," in search of jobs in an Obama administration.

"It will be devastating if Obama loses," the official said. "There has been such an amount of faith placed on the outcome."

Considering the emotional devastation caused by Kerry's loss, I'm thinking it might make Bush Derangement Syndrome look like a walk in the park.

Of course, they could always keep the sorry site going, and recycle pictures like this:

While I should probably be more grateful that some of my fellow citizens are apparently willing to apologize on my behalf if McCain wins, I'm still not planning to apologize, no matter who wins.

Gas prices are falling so fast that I'm actually worried:

CAMARILLO, Calif. (AP) - A national survey shows gas prices continue to decline, tumbling nearly 53 cents a gallon in the last two weeks.

The average price of a gallon of regular gasoline at self-serve stations was $2.78 Friday. Mid-grade was at $2.93 and premium was at $3.05.

That's according to the Lundberg Survey of 5,000 gas stations nationwide, released Sunday.

Gas was cheapest in Wichita, Kan., at $2.26 for a gallon of regular. It was most expensive in Anchorage, Alaska, at $3.50.

That's lower than I've seen in at least a year, and here's why I'm worried. I filled the nearly empty tank of my car at the going price a few weeks ago, and I hardly ever drive now, because nearly everything is within walking distance. So every day I'm watching my investment -- that full tank of gas -- plummet in value! With prices dropping the way they are, I have seen the value of my investment drop by over 15% -- just in the past two weeks!

With no end in sight! By any definition, that's a crisis.

I notice Glenn Reynolds is asking the obvious question

So where are all the cheap-gas news stories?

So what do I do now? I can't enjoy cheaper driving, because I paid a lot of money for that gas, and if I do drive, I have no choice but to use it at the price I paid for it, which is totally unfair, because other people get to drive around with cheaper gas. Who will bail me out? Can't the government do something to stabilize the value of my investment?

What I really want to know is, where are all of the gas pump price-gouging monopolists when we so badly need them?

UPDATE: More bad news from Glenn Reynolds:

GAS DROPS BELOW $2 A GALLON in Tennessee.

Or will Peak Oil save us?

The folks at Hillbuzz have managed to corner a Real Pollster™ to find out what is really going on in this election.

I was having dinner a night ago with a friend of mine who is a statistician for a well-regarded private polling company. They do some work for Republicans in California, but most of the work they do is for Democrats or Democrat-leaning operations (Unions, etc.). Anyway, her shop was retained to do a few Presidential polls for targetted states on behalf of a union so the union could decide where to spend their ad dollars for the last week. They did Ohio, Florida, North Carolina, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada and Missouri. After mocking the hell out of the voter id spreads used by Rassmussen, Zogby, etc. (and this is coming from a committed Dem who will be voting for Barry O) she said the results of their polling lead her to believe that McCain will definitely win FL, OH, NC, MO and NV. She says Obama definitely wins New Mexico. She said that Colorado and New Hampshire were absolute dead heats. She said she thinks there is a 55% chance Obama holds on in Pennsylvania and a 75% chance McCain wins Virginia. She absolutely laughed at the public polls showing Obama leading Virginia-and pointed out that all of those polls rely on Dem turnout being +4 and as much as +7, when in 2006, Republicans actually had the advantage by +3. She also pointed out that the numbers for Obama in SWVA look absolutely awful and that McCain is running 10 points better then Allen did in NoVa.

She said she has very little doubt that the public polling is part of a "concerted voter suppression effort" by the MSM. She said IBD/TIPP was the only outfit doing public polling that was "worth a bucket of warm piss".

Cross Posted at Power and Control

It might be a bit late in the game for my liking, but I'm glad to see that McCain is finally raising what I think is the best argument in his favor:

ALBUQUERQUE (Reuters) - Republican presidential nominee John McCain , trailing in the polls, raised the prospect on Saturday of a complete Democratic takeover of Washington as a reason to elect him over Democrat Barack Obama in 10 days.

Of course, once Bush was elected the Republicans held both branches, and it took until 2006 for the public to finally say they'd had enough. Whether that means they want to keep going, and get all the way into the fast lane to socialism, who knows?

McCain is a centrist, though, and considering that he'd be up against a hostile Democratic congress, his election would hardly mean GOP control as it's being spun. Clearly, Republican dominance is over, and I think the American electorate want it that way.

But how far do they want to go? Do they want the country under the total political control of the Democrats? It's a good question, a larger one than Barack Obama, and McCain should be hammering away at it -- if for no other reason than half the voters don't even know who Nancy Pelosi is. Political junkies tend to forget that what they take for granted as common knowledge is in fact uncommon. A lot of people simply don't know which party is running Congress. Considering the abysmally low approval ratings of the legislative branch, ordinary voters might need a reminder of who is in charge there, and that they actually have opportunity to proceed with caution. Maybe even apply the brakes.

Of course, if the voters want socialism, voting for Obama is like taking your foot off the brakes and getting in the fast lane.

Yes, the fast lane to socialism certainly is change. But is it the kind of change that American voters really want?

I realize that America's "progress" towards full blown socialism may be inevitable. As it is, government nationalization of the economy is continuing full pace, and when the astronomically high cost of baby boomer Medicare "entitlements" kicks in, even many Republicans may welcome socialized medicine because the inevitable rationing would build in a cost containment mechanism. And once these things are in place, they become politically impossible to undo.

With all that in mind, I prefer as much gridlock as possible along the way, and I see a vote for McCain as a vote in favor of maintaining at least some semblance of gridlock.

Yes, I know that "balance of power" has a much more pleasant ring to it, but this is a blog post, not a speech. "Gridlock" sounds very unappealing. Backward, even. "Fast lane," "progress," and "change" all sound appealing, promising, even sexy.

As unattractive, boring, and stultifying as "gridlock" may sound right now, once it's lost it will seem like a precious, time-honored American birthright.

Because if it's change they want, it'll be change they'll get!

(If only "they" didn't get to drag me into their "we.")

Reason links this very amusing YouTube video showing Bill Ayers calling the cops on reporters and Bill O'Reilly advising Obama to throw Ayers under the bus:

(Via Glenn Reynolds who's having fun with O'Reilly putting on Ayers.)

While I also love the delicious irony of seeing a man with a notoriously murderous attitude towards police go crying to the the brutal fascists about a reporter, an irony I find more delicious is to see culture warrior Bill O'Reilly (a guy I don't especially like) catching up with Classical Values.

Here's O'Reilly:

...I actually think Barack Obama should apologize for hanging with the guy. He should throw him under the bus like he did with Reverend Wright. Everybody makes mistakes. You made one. This a bad guy. Just say you made a mistake in judgement.

Mainstreaming Bill Ayers went too far, and for the good of the country, it should be stopped right now by Barack Obama. He should admit his mistake, and while I know it will sound hypocritical, I think that for the good of the country, he should throw Ayers under the proverbial bus.

A more serious issue, of course, is why won't Obama throw Ayers under the bus?

Considering that the people who he has thrown under the bus are tame by comparison, it seems like a no-brainer.

No downside that I can see.

(I for one would respect him a lot more if he did.)

MORE: Another delicious irony, noted by Victor Davis Hanson:

...there was a strange scene when the Fox reporter caught up to Bill Ayers and stuck a microphone in his face as he went up the sidewalk of his rather impressive home: Ayers, with a bright red star on his T-shirt, shoos away the reporter with the apparent mumble "this is private property" before the police arrive. How strange that an advocate for communalism and an erstwhile attacker of police stations reverts to the notion of property rights and police to protect him from an intrusive reporter. Right out of Thucydides Book III and the strife on Corfu, when the historian warns that those who destroy the protocols of civilization may well one day wish to rely on them.

I'm sure Ayers feels entitled to an impressive home, just as he would after the revolution.

Stalin and his henchman also felt quite entitled to live in the rather impressive homes they had confiscated from the people they had murdered. True, they were now owned "in the name of the people."

But imagine what would have happened to one of "the people" who ventured too close to what was now being held in his name....

You think you have First Amendment rights? Well, yes, you do. But try saying something that offends the ruling class, and you'll see what happens.

In a previous post, I characterized the invasion of Joe the Plumber's privacy thusly:

The way they have done a complete, invasive background check on this citizen is shocking. While few of us would withstand close scrutiny, what annoys me the most is that the dirt-digging has been done by the news media, and they have now essentially sicced the bureaucrats on this guy...

Silly me.

It now appears that there was government involvement in the dirt-digging itself:

"State and local officials are investigating if state and law-enforcement computer systems were illegally accessed when they were tapped for personal information about "Joe the Plumber."

Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher became part of the national political lexicon Oct. 15 when Republican presidential candidate John McCain mentioned him frequently during his final debate with Democrat Barack Obama.

The 34-year-old from the Toledo suburb of Holland is held out by McCain as an example of an American who would be harmed by Obama's tax proposals.

Public records requested by The Dispatch disclose that information on Wurzelbacher's driver's license or his sport-utility vehicle was pulled from the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles database three times shortly after the debate.

Information on Wurzelbacher was accessed by accounts assigned to the office of Ohio Attorney General Nancy H. Rogers, the Cuyahoga County Child Support Enforcement Agency and the Toledo Police Department.

It has not been determined who checked on Wurzelbacher, or why. Direct access to driver's license and vehicle registration information from BMV computers is restricted to legitimate law enforcement and government business.

This is why we cannot trust the government. There is no such thing as confidentiality. Fill out one of those mandatory forms requiring personal information, and depending on the whims of reporters or political campaign operatives, it can later be used against you. The citizen has no real recourse, but to sue. (And even that is iffy because of the innumerable government immunities.) However, the damage is done.

The McCain campaign points the finger at the Obama campaign, but naturally, the latter denies it had anything to do with the abuse of power (as we all know, only Sarah Palin would do that):

Paul Lindsay, Ohio spokesman for the McCain campaign, attempted to portray the inquiries as politically motivated. "It's outrageous to see how quickly Barack Obama's allies would abuse government power in an attempt to smear a private citizen who dared to ask a legitimate question," he said.

Isaac Baker, Obama's Ohio spokesman, denounced Lindsay's statement as charges of desperation from a campaign running out of time. "Invasions of privacy should not be tolerated. If these records were accessed inappropriately, it had nothing to do with our campaign and should be investigated fully," he said.

The attorney general's office is investigating if the access of Wuzelbacher's BMV information through the office's Ohio Law Enforcement Gateway computer system was unauthorized, said spokeswoman Jennifer Brindisi.

"We're trying to pinpoint where it came from," she said. The investigation could become "criminal in nature," she said. Brindisi would not identify the account that pulled the information on Oct. 16.

Records show it was a "test account" assigned to the information technology section of the attorney general's office, said Department of Public Safety spokesman Thomas Hunter.

Brindisi later said investigators have confirmed that Wurzelbacher's information was not accessed within the attorney general's office. She declined to provide details. The office's test accounts are shared with and used by other law enforcement-related agencies, she said.

On Oct. 17, BMV information on Wurzelbacher was obtained through an account used by the Cuyahoga County Child Support Enforcement Agency in Cleveland, records show.

They probably tried to take care to leave no telltale traces, but I'd love to know how the information was released, and to whom.

What's fascinating to me is that multiple government entities appear to have been involved:

Mary Denihan, spokeswoman for the county agency, said the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services contacted the agency today and requested an investigation of the access to Wurzelbacher's information. Cuyahoga County court records do not show any child-support cases involving Wurzelbacher.

The State Highway Patrol, which administers the Law Enforcement Automated Data System in Ohio, asked Toledo police to explain why it pulled BMV information on Wurzelbacher within 48 hours of the debate, Hunter said.

The LEADS system also can be used to check for warrants and criminal histories, but such checks would not be reflected on the records obtained by The Dispatch.

Sgt. Tim Campbell, a Toledo police spokesman, said he could not provide any information because the department only had learned of the State Highway Patrol inquiry today.

The lesson here is a very ugly one. Many people will be intimidated by seeing what happened to Joe, and that's no accident. I think that's part of the plan.

Chilling effect on free speech? Precisely.

Intimidation works. It keeps people -- especially ordinary people -- fearful and in line.

That's because they -- yes, the dreaded they -- know everything there is to know about you!

But as usual, the innocent have nothing to fear!

As long as you behave yourself, everything in your files will remain "confidential."

I love the logic at work here.

Nervousness about Barack Obama hurts the market.

Yet the more the market hurts, the higher Obama goes in the polls.

This would seem to be correlated in this chart:

This reminds me of the way people who are afraid of getting bitten by a dog will often end up getting bitten by the dog, who is of course responding to their fear of getting bitten by the dog.

But which fear is more rational?

Yesterday's post about Ayers became so long with updates that it's looking cluttered. When I started it, I had not seen the video about Ayers and his buddies' plans to murder 25 million Americans, nor had I had a chance to examine his book Prairie Fire in much detail, although I did note that Ayers still lists it proudly on his curriculum vitae (as if further proof was needed that he's unrepentant).

What I missed was a small item. Just a guy on the dedication page:

Interestingly, the book lists Sirhan Sirhan, Robert F. Kennedy's assassin, on the dedication page.

The problem with Ayers is his respectability, and that is a larger issue than his connection with Obama.

The argument that dedicating a book to Sirhan is no big deal because Ayers managed to hang out with Republicans is specious. This man should be considered totally beyond the pale. That he became respectable is, I think, a terrible mistake.

We have a candidate for president who has the opportunity to take issue with the propriety of that respectability, but who instead is helping to perpetuate it.

It should probably be the "wronged parties", but then we would be talking about citizens. Which will come up eventually but not quite in that context. And what is the context? Obviously some one is getting it. What the heck am I gibbering about? The inevitable political season wheeze that "we need to punish a given political party by seeing it defeated" in order to make it live up to its principles. Radley Balko is the latest purveyor of this trash.

Which brings me back to why the Republicans need to get throttled: A humiliated, decimated GOP that rejuvenates and rebuilds around the principles of limited government, free markets, and rugged individualism is really the only chance for voters to possibly get a real choice in federal elections down the road.

Radley: for good or ill we get the government we deserve. And for the Radleys of the world the answer is always the same: we need a better party. The Libertarians have been improving their party for 30+ years. So far the results are minimal. I propose a different tack. A long march through the institutions. Work to get a libertarian people. The libertarian government will follow shortly thereafter.

OH, yeah. Palin has more libertarian tendencies than I have seen in any other politician currently on the national scene. I'm voting McCain/Palin to give her a chance to show her stuff.

And for those of you who are a little short of love for the Republican ticket may I suggest:

I think people who try to steal elections (ahem, ACORN, hem) ought to be denied a victory on principle. It sets a bad precedent.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

In the early days of the Obama phenomenon, I harbored hopes that Barack Obama's viable candidacy might cause a sea change in the way America sees itself in terms of race, as it does appear to be genuine evidence -- in the broadest possible sense -- of the final demise of American racism as we once knew it. (And I'm old enough to remember it in its primeval ugliness.)

Little did I know that even if his campaign turned out to be successful (which it was when he won the nomination), that would not be seen as evidence of the demise of racism, but as occasion to turn up the accusatory, even inquisitory, volume.

Stuart Taylor Jr. looks at the racial grievance crowd's narrative, and sees it as expanding rather than contracting:

An African-American candidate with left-of-center views and less than four years in the Senate appears poised to win the presidential election over a seasoned white war hero who was until lately a media darling.

And Barack Obama's favorability rating (53 percent favorable to 33 percent unfavorable) in a recent CBS News/New York Times poll was "the highest for a presidential candidate running for a first term in the last 28 years" of that poll.

There is much to celebrate in this, even for supporters of John McCain. Win or lose, Obama has proved (if more proof were needed) that although many blacks are still mired in poverty -- a legacy of our racist history -- contemporary white racism has been driven to the fringes and is no longer a serious impediment to black advancement.

So, is the racial-grievance crowd celebrating? Hardly. Instead, the obsessive search for ever-more-elusive evidence of widespread white racism and sneaky appeals to it goes on.

The race boils down to racism.

Discussing the poverty of Obama's Kenyan brother "implies" that Barack Obama is black.

Bill Ayers is the new Willie Horton. (This was an improvement on the earlier narrative that discussing Ayers was "tinged" with racism.)

Socialism is code language for black.

Of course, if Obama loses, the country won't be seen by the grievance machine as a place where a black, left-wing, first term senator can become president, but as an evil racist place which will never allow a black man to get ahead. And we will all be in for the biggest collective scolding in American history.

What should the lesson be if Obama loses? "Racism is the only reason McCain might beat him," Weisberg asserted in August. "If Obama loses, our children will grow up thinking of equal opportunity as a myth. His defeat would say that when handed a perfect opportunity to put the worst part of our history behind us, we chose not to. In this event, the world's judgment will be severe and inescapable: The United States had its day but, in the end, couldn't put its own self-interest ahead of its crazy irrationality over race."

This is nonsense, and dangerous nonsense at that. A chorus of such commentary after an Obama defeat would reinforce in the minds of black children the pernicious myth that there's no point studying or working hard, because the white man will hold them down no matter how good they are.

If that's the narrative, then the narrative sucks. And I mean literally. The racial grievance narrative sucks so bad that it will engulf and devour anything in or near the periphery of its path.

Why, its sucking power is almost astronomical.

And while an astronomical term might be in order, don't expect me to use a racist term to describe it, OK?

Certain things can't be tinged with humor.

What's satire for me is someone else's deadly serious grievance.

Onward and downward!

What? You think this is some kind of Godwin joke? No my friends, it is not. It is for real. A. Hitler has made a Credit Card (CC) donation of $19.45 to the Obama Campaign. Obama has all the safeties turned off on his credit card (CC) verification system.

Frankly, its easier than I'd believe to do this. Courtesy of my (real) CC number and expiration date, the Obama campaign has just received a $19.45 donation from mister Adolf Hitler, whose occupation is "Dictator" at the company "National Socialist Party of Ger" (I got cut off). I captured screenshots to prove this.

No verification required. The listed address wasn't even close to my real address.

While I hate to think I'm giving any money at all to these bastards, its worth it to prove once and for all that they are engaged in fraud. I will verify whether my card gets charged and report back.

moleman

And yet it seems like our Shrinking Media is shrinking from this story. I suppose we could get their interest up if we reminded them that it was Republicans who were pretending to be A. Hitler. True Progressives™ would have pretended to be Hugo Chavez.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

Is California in play? You might think so given this report from Yreka, California in The Siskiyou Daily News.

Last week, Louise Gliatto, a volunteer at the Republican campaign office, handed out the last McCain-Palin yard sign. The last campaign button went a few days earlier. There is a good supply of McCain-Palin bumper stickers, however, and local Republicans have been visiting the campaign office to get them. At both offices, voters have been interested in information on the state ballot initiatives.

"A lot of Mount Shasta people have been coming in," Democratic office volunteer Mike Cassady said of the Yreka office.

The Democrats are staffing a single office in Yreka, while the Republicans have opened offices in Yreka and Mount Shasta.

Before Monday's deadline to register to vote, both offices were busy helping residents fill out registration cards. The Democrats also spent four days registering voters in front of Raley's in Yreka. Cassady said several dozen voters from both parties were registered.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

I've written a number of posts about Bill Ayers, and I was especially horrified by his organization's plot to blow up American soldiers at the Fort Dix NCO club. And while I know that terrorists are generally unconcerned with civilian casualties, still, I had not read about Ayers' role in an attempted Detroit police station bombing which could easily have killed black patrons of a business next door.

Nor had Bob Owens known about it, and he was as horrified to find out as I am to read about it:

What I did not know at the time that I wrote that article was that this was not the first attempt by the Weathermen to commit mass murder.

A month prior, in February 1970, Barack Obama's political mentor Bill Ayers plotted multiple attacks against the officers of the Detroit Police Department. He didn't care that one of the bombs he was planning to use would be placed in such a way that it "could easily kill" the patrons of a nearby restaurant that catered to an African-American clientele.

Such sentimentality was "unrevolutionary." The 44 sticks of dynamite would be used despite the fears of a military "expert" within the group (FBI informant Larry Grathwohl) that collateral damage from the massive blasts could kill the innocent diners nearby.

Recruited into the Weathermen, who valued his limited military experience, the Cincinnati resident worked with Ayers. Grathwohl found Ayers hard to love; he seemed self-important, a controller of subordinates, the type who loved to give orders. Ayers was a key leader. Grathwohl, a government informant, wrote that Ayers had helped direct a pair of attempted police building bombings in Detroit in February 1970. After doing his assigned job in reconnaissance, Grathwohl disagreed with Mr. Ayers over the placement of one bomb, which could easily kill black patrons who favored an adjacent restaurant, but that Ayers dismissed such sentimentality as unrevolutionary. The informant was glad to be dismissed from the operation by Ayers. Forty-four sticks of dynamite were then formed into two bombs and put into place, before Grathwohl's information allowed police to dismantle both. Ayers' memoir -- which freely admits to incompleteness -- says nothing of this episode, or Detroit, or the month of February 1970.

Reminding readers of the racist bombings in Alabama, Owens has an excellent question for those who consider criticism of Bill Ayers to be a form of "racism":

I wonder if John Lewis and other veterans of the civil rights movement would be so quick to rally around Barack Obama today if they knew his political mentor considered the lives of black patrons in Detroit to be merely "unrevolutionary" collateral damage.

Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn -- the host and hostess of Obama's political coming-out party and close associates of 21 years -- tried to kill hundreds of Americans. They plotted against military and police targets in particular, and Ayers was more than willing to kill innocent black families in Detriot if it served his hateful purposes. Is he any better than the Klansmen in Birmingham? Would his victims have been any less dead, or their families' lives less empty?

Why can't he say that they are not mainstream, and should not be considered respectable?

The only reasonable conclusion that can be drawn is that it's because he really thinks they are respectable.

I think that says a lot more about him than how well he knew them.

By the way, Larry Grathwohl (the informant quoted above) seems quite credible and checks out as a source. He has inside knowledge about the terrorist training provided to the Weathermen, and wrote a book about his experiences. (He was also interviewed in Time magazine.)

Chillingly, though, any "collateral damage" of the sort type described above would have been a drop in the bucket for the Weathermen.

As Grathwohl details in this interview, the Ayers/Dohrn gang had plans to kill approximately 25 million Americans:

Hmmm....

Makes me want to ask another campaign question.

Should people who wanted to kill 25 million Americans ever be considered respectable?

NOTE: Sorry if I sounded overly sarcastic in this post. I do realize this is quite serious. But dammit, these questions are not being asked by those who should be asking them.

(I think the problem may be that there's tension between trying to adequately communicate the horror, and the fact that this is after all just another blog post.)

UPDATE: Anyone who doubts that the Weather Underground patterned itself according to the usual Communist plan (and its murderous ideology) should read "Prairie Fire" which is reprinted here by ZombieTime.

It's of course standard Communist rhetoric about the destruction of imperialism and the seizure of power:

Our final goal is the destruction of imperialism, the seizure of power, and the creation of socialism. Our strategy for this stage of the struggle is to organize the oppressed people of the imperial nation itself to join with the colonies in the attack on imperialism. This process of attacking and weakening imperialism involves the defeat of all kinds of national chauvinism and arrogance; this is a precondition to our fight for socialism.

Revolution is a fight by the people for power. It is a changing of power in which existing social and economic relationships are turned upside down. It is a fight for who runs things, in particular, for control by the people of what we communists call the means of production...

Zombietime observes that Ayers has said nothing to change his thesis:

There's no getting around it: William Ayers was a violent communist revolutionary bent on overthrowing the government and "seizing power" in the United States. The proof is on this page. And the only difference between the 1970s William Ayers and the William Ayers whom Barack Obama associated with is a change in rhetorical style; a re-wording of his radical philosophy to make it seem more mainstream. But the underlying political thesis (i.e. communism) remains the same.

[...]

All of this is, of course, just the tip of the iceberg. To this day, nearly every word that Ayers utters and every sentence that he writes hews to the exact same communist line. You can easily find hundreds more examples yourself just by browsing through his blog or simply by Googling his name and searching for his writings and speeches, almost all of which still revolve around notions promulgated in Prairie Fire.

William Ayers is a communist. By his own description. He was a communist then, he is a communist now, and he was a communist for the entire time that Barack Obama worked with him and was associated with him.

Read it all.

And of course, not only has Ayers said nothing to change his thesis he articulated in Prairie Fire, but the book is listed proudly (under "SELECTED PUBLICATIONS") in his faculty profile, and in his Curriculum Vitae:

Dohrn, B., Ayers, W.C., Jones, J. and Sanchez, C. (1976). Prairie fire. New York: Red Dragon Press.

Sorry, but as long as his answer appears to be "yes," I will continue to maintain that he is unfit to be president.

MORE: Just so there be no mistake, I thought I should quote the exact words from the video above:

"they estimated that they would have to eliminate 25 million people, in these reeducation centers. And when I say eliminate I mean kill. 25 million people."

While it might seem like an incredible figure, it's not surprising.

In terms of history, killing ten percent of the population is standard Communist fare.

It's unspeakably awful, but it's no more suprising than the fact that Nazis killed millions of Jews.

But at least Nazis aren't considered respectable.

MORE: Bob Owens links the Larry Grathwohl video and Zombietime's post of the Prairie Fire book, and concludes,

You'll be stunned at the depth of the seething hatred of the United States and our way of life contained in these pages, and wonder how the protégé of these traitors, people who formally declared war against our nation and plotted murders on scale four times greater than the Holocaust, ever became the Democratic nominee for President of the nation they so loathe that they went to war against it.

APPARENTLY, Pol Pot wasn't the only one with that line of thinking. Good reason to own a gun or ten.

That there are people like Ayers is one thing. That his defenders would come here to quibble and call me a wingnut and a kook in the comments is to be expected.

I still think the most shocking aspect of Ayers is his respectability, and I don't care how many Republican asses he might have kissed to get it.

My question for Obama remains:

Should people who wanted to kill 25 million Americans ever be considered respectable?

MORE: Here's Jeff Goldstein:

We are only a few weeks away from potentially electing the chosen candidate of Bill Ayers, Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky, and the remainder of the moldering radicals whose last political efforts will be in the service of the glorious cause -- the handpicked protege of a man who at one point plotted, along with his fellow WU members, the elimination of 25 million stubborn capitalists who refused their proper re-education.

Bill Ayers was not just some idealistic young kid who was against the war in VietNam. Instead, he agitated for a communist victory, and has spent the years since working on weakening bourgeois institutions from within.

Barack Obama has helped him in that regard.

In today's Detroit Free Press, I read about an interesting promotional idea -- free pizzas in exchange for McCain campaign signs:

A Warren pizzeria owner received threatening phone calls Wednesday after a political pizza deal went awry.

"They've been actually calling here and threatening my life," said Salvatore's Pizzeria owner Diana Franzoni, who previously offered free, small pizzas to anyone who turned in a McCain-Palin yard sign after the Republican senator closed his Michigan offices. "It's just ridiculous. People have blown something completely innocent completely out of proportion."

Approximately 300 signs were turned in by young and old customers, but the promotion ended Tuesday when police visited the business after receiving complaints that some of the submitted signs were stolen.

"I'm really hopping mad about this," McCain campaign volunteer Ruthann Dawley of Rochester Hills said. "To me, it's like rewarding vandalism."

Dawley said political sign thieves have hit her home. Her McCain-Palin sign was snatched from her front yard and her car, which has a similar bumper sticker and window sign, was pummeled with mud balls in the last week.

But Franzoni said she didn't fathom that any of the signs brought into the pizzeria were obtained illegally.

"We would never advocate theft nor would we ever put a promotion up for such a thing," she said.

Warren police say no charges will be filed against Salvatore's Pizzeria for the incident.

"There was no criminal intent on their part," Dwyer said.

But a different sign inside the business at Ryan and 13 Mile is riling up McCain supporters for poking fun at his running mate.

It reads: "Want to hear a joke? Sarah Palin."

Worse yet, the signs for pizza offer could backfire in a fascinating manner I hadn't considered, and which I doubt very much the business owner in this case ever anticipated.

The owner intended that Republicans bring in the signs, right? OK, let's take her word for it, and assume they did. According to blogger "Republican Ranting," that could very well bankrupt the business:

Alright, so you have Salvatore's Pizzeria (Warren, Michigan) who's offering free pizza to people who bring in yard signs. Diana Franzoni, the owner claims that she just wants people to turn in their signs since McCain left the state. OK, people aren't going to do that. Honestly though, if I worked for the Republican party, I'd be doing that as a means to get food for my campaign headquarters. The state party would save so much money doing that that they could've cut down rent for the McCain stuff that's still in Michigan. If I were in the McCain campaign - I'd give my volunteers a set of 1,000 signs, which would be $1,000-$2,000, but it'd absolutely kill Salvatore's.

Seen this way, the offer might constitute feeding the opposition!

The more I think about it, the more I like the idea of feeding the McCain campaign this way.

I mean, who'd have ever thought Republicans could print more food?

Not merely ingenious, it borders on the miraculous!

Via Republican Ranting, here's the video:

Have you heard that McCain voted with Bush 90%-95% of the time? I've heard it so many times my eardrums are ready to burst. Of all the talking points in the Obama campaign, I think it is probably Point Number One.

I hadn't really given much thought to looking into the details, although it did occur to me that some of the votes had to have been of an either bipartisan or non-controversial nature, or on matters arrived at after compromise which represented some sort of consensus. But it never occurred to me that the figure itself was wrong, and I figured the McCain people would jump all over them if it was.

So I was genuinely surprised by the title of this post by Jim Geraghty -- In 2007, McCain Voted With Bush More Than Obama... By an Entire 13.45 Percent Geraghty looked at the percentage of times the two were in attendance, and found that because "McCain was only in attendance for 39 percent of them," "he actually voted the president's way 37 percent of the time."

Amazingly, Barack Obama voted with the president 40% of the time, but because of his 59% attendance record, his total vote percentage with the President is cut down to 23.6%.

37 versus 23.6

Concludes Geraghty,

last year, the difference between the two men in terms of how they actually stood in the Senate and voted was all of 13.45 percent.

In the debate this week, my opponent felt the need to inform me that he's not President Bush. And in fairness, I don't blame Senator McCain for all of President Bush's mistakes. After all, he's only voted with George Bush 37 percent of the time.

I, on the other hand, voted with the president only 23.6 percent of the time!

The voters would be scratching their heads all the way to the polls.

(Yes, the number in the title is rounded off. Obama's actual number is 23.6. Rounding off numbers is a scorekeeper's sacrosanct prerogative!)

Orson Scott Card is a Democrat. He is also a fierce critic of the press. The in the tank for Obama press.

An open letter to the local daily paper -- almost every local daily paper in America:

I remember reading All the President's Men and thinking: That's journalism. You do what it takes to get the truth and you lay it before the public, because the public has a right to know.

This housing crisis didn't come out of nowhere. It was not a vague emanation of the evil Bush administration.

It was a direct result of the political decision, back in the late 1990s, to loosen the rules of lending so that home loans would be more accessible to poor people. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were authorized to approve risky loans.

What is a risky loan? It's a loan that the recipient is likely not to be able to repay.

The goal of this rule change was to help the poor -- which especially would help members of minority groups. But how does it help these people to give them a loan that they can't repay? They get into a house, yes, but when they can't make the payments, they lose the house -- along with their credit rating.

They end up worse off than before.

This was completely foreseeable and in fact many people did foresee it. One political party, in Congress and in the executive branch, tried repeatedly to tighten up the rules. The other party blocked every such attempt and tried to loosen them.

If you want to redeem your honor, you will swallow hard and make a list of all the stories you would print if it were McCain who had been getting money from Fannie Mae, McCain whose campaign had consulted with its discredited former CEO, McCain who had voted against tightening its lending practices.

Then you will print them, even though every one of those true stories will point the finger of blame at the reckless Democratic Party, which put our nation's prosperity at risk so they could feel good about helping the poor, and lay a fair share of the blame at Obama's door.

You will also tell the truth about John McCain: that he tried, as a Senator, to do what it took to prevent this crisis. You will tell the truth about President Bush: that his administration tried more than once to get Congress to regulate lending in a responsible way.

This was a Congress-caused crisis, beginning during the Clinton administration, with Democrats leading the way into the crisis and blocking every effort to get out of it in a timely fashion.

If you at our local daily newspaper continue to let Americans believe -- and vote as if -- President Bush and the Republicans caused the crisis, then you are joining in that lie.

If you do not tell the truth about the Democrats -- including Barack Obama -- and do so with the same energy you would use if the miscreants were Republicans -- then you are not journalists by any standard.

You're just the public relations machine of the Democratic Party, and it's time you were all fired and real journalists brought in, so that we can actually have a news paper in our city.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

In my long discussion of the Michael Smerconish endorsement yesterday, I should have made it more clear that in terms of the big picture, Michael Smerconish is what film gangster Hyman Roth would call "small potatoes."

Most ordinary middle class people -- especially the undecideds who don't read newspaper pundits (much less blogs) -- have no idea who Michael Smerconish or Chistopher Buckley are is, nor do they care one bit about whether these to-them obscure figures are "betraying their conservative principles." And even if by chance they happened upon a discussion of them somewhere, they wouldn't be persuaded of anything one way or another. The antics of the partisan political punditry mean very little to that 51% of the country who don't know that Nancy Pelosi is the Speaker of the House.

This is not to say that the undecideds and the uninformed are necessarily members of the same class; only that the defections of people like Buckley and Smerconish can't be expected to change many minds in a way that will have much effect on the election.

However, the last minute endorsements of Barack Obama by Colin Powell and Ben Bernanke might. The timing resembles a one-two punch, and while I can't prove that this was deliberately orchestrated, these men share a reputation of being "above politics."

That Powell's endorsement appears to be a crassly political, finger-to-the-wind move on close analysis is beside the point. So is the fact that the Federal Reserve is supposed to be non-political.

As a move, the Powell-Bernanke one-two combination is brilliant. It fits perfectly with David Axelrod's strategy (characterized by TNR's Jason Zengerle) of "third-party authentication." Moreover, there's no hard evidence that this was deliberately orchestrated, and it might not have been. After all, the poll numbers are there, and the election is so close that the victory of Obama appears to be a certainty. So endorsing him is seen as a relatively safe no-brainer.

Above all, the endorsements of Powell and Bernanke are likely to be seen as reassuring. Because these men are respected. And above politics.

Call me a cynical contrarian, but life has taught me to be suspicious about anything that's supposed to be reassuring. It smacks of salesmanship, and I'm always suspicious of salesmen. Especially when they seem anxious to close a deal.

The problem with this particular "close" is that the reassuring message is rooted in the ethos of these two guys as being "above politics." Yet the fact of their last minute political endorsement demonstrates just the opposite.

If these guys were really above politics, they'd stay above politics.

Isn't partisanship bad enough? Must we be subjected to non-partisan partisanship?

Real Clear Politics has Obama up by 11 in Pennsylvania as of 22 Oct 008 0300z. And yet Governor Rendell is nervous about Pennsylvania and is asking Obama to return.

Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell has sent two separate memos to the Obama campaign in the past five days requesting that the Democratic Presidential candidate--as well as Hillary and Bill Clinton--return to campaign in Pennsylvania, Rendell told CNN's Gloria Borger.

Rendell said the McCain campaign is clearly making a push to win Pennsylvania, given the recent visits by the Arizona senator, his wife and his running mate. As a result, he wants Obama to appear in western Pennsylvania, Harrisburg and one more "large rally" in Philadelphia. Democrats generally worry that the race is significantly closer than what recent polls have suggested. According to Rendell, there is also worry among Democrats the McCain campaign has successfully raised the enthusiasm level among Republicans in the state.

"I don't want to be selfish," Rendell said. "But I'm still a little nervous, so I have asked Obama to come back. We understand he's got demands from 20 different states, but we'd like to see him here."

Obama's support appears to be weakest in the western part of the state, a region Pennsylvania Rep. Jack Murtha recently called 'racist,' and one where he badly lost to Sen. Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primary.

It also looks like the Obama campaign is having money troubles in Philadelphia. Specifically street money troubles.

When the Philadelphia Democratic Party's faithful gathered for their pre-election fundraiser last night, conversation among many anxious ward leaders kept coming back to the same question: Would Barack Obama come up with street money?

In the April primary, the presidential candidate spurned the Philadelphia tradition of distributing cash to ward leaders for Election Day operations, saying his campaign doesn't "pay for votes or pay for turnout."

Street money, typically between $100 and $300 per voting division, is used to pay expenses such as meals and transportation and sometimes pay election workers for their day's work.

Many thought Obama had changed his mind and would provide street money for the general election, but ward leaders said last night that they still hadn't heard of a commitment from the campaign.

"Honestly, they'd be crazy not to do it," said Lou Agre, leader of the 21st Ward in Roxborough and Manayunk. "We're the ones who can get those last five, six hundred people [in a ward] who haven't voted, and that's a big difference for the campaign."

City Democratic chairman U.S. Rep. Bob Brady said he's confident the Obama campaign will come up with the money.

But several ward leaders said Brady had told them he'd gotten no commitment from the Obama campaign, and Gov. Rendell said he didn't know what to expect.

"Who knows?" Rendell said when asked by a reporter. "I've recommended and Bob's recommended it, but we have no word, no word."

Maybe Obama was thinking that with his ACORNs in a row he didn't need the regular party machine. No money, no votes. One way or the other. Of course this could just be a negotiating tactic by Obama to drive the price down. And Rendell's moves could just be his way of driving the price up. This lack of honor among the thieves could be a serious problem for an Obama administration.

And one other point I want you to keep in mind:

Cross Posted at Power and Control

I just learned something new, and I am horrified.

While I often condemn socialists and socialism, until today I had not realized that the word "socialist" is code language for "black":

The "socialist" label that Sen. John McCain and his GOP presidential running mate Sarah Palin are trying to attach to Sen. Barack Obama actually has long and very ugly historical roots.

J. Edgar Hoover, director of the FBI from 1924 to 1972, used the term liberally to describe African Americans who spent their lives fighting for equality.

Those freedom fighters included the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., who led the Civil Rights Movement; W.E.B. Du Bois, who in 1909 helped found the NAACP which is still the nation's oldest and largest civil rights organization; Paul Robeson, a famous singer, actor and political activist who in the 1930s became involved in national and international movements for better labor relations, peace and racial justice; and A. Philip Randolph, who founded and was the longtime head of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters and a leading advocate for civil rights for African Americans.

McCain and Palin have simply reached back in history to use an old code word for black. It set whites apart from those deemed unAmerican and those who could not be trusted during the communism scare.

Shame on McCain and Palin.

I think it may be too late for tragedy, so I'll just take my lumps and throw myself on the mercy of the court of political correctness.

So if it's shame on McCain and Palin, I should say shame on me too! After all, I've been condemning socialism in this blog for nearly six years, and for many years before that in my pre-blogging life. And not once did anyone tell me.

I'm stunned. Flabbergasted.

But if socialist means black, what are the implications for National Socialism? I mean, we all knew how sneaky Hitler and those Nazis were, but this!

To think that after all this time it turns out they were secretly running a black nationalist front.

Who knew?

(Looking back, maybe I should have suspected something was up when Louis Farrakhan said "Hitler was a very great man.")

If there's one thing that's worse than Bill Ayers, it's his respectability. How did it happen that a guy like that came to be respectable?

The same way bad people always become respectable, of course. Nice respectable people fail to speak up. By "nice" I mean the very people I referred to in this post; the country club people. Nice, respectable upper middle class people who don't want to be embarrassed. Such people are often the product of generations of "refinement." They descend from nice pedigrees, and are raised by parents who themselves were raised by people who believe it is "rude" to disagree. Their children, when they reach adolescence, might at first glance appear to be less civilized (and therefore more "rude") and it might appear that they are, at least to their unsuspecting parents. But the latter need not worry, for their kids' early lessons in never speaking up even when they might think others are wrong will manifest themselves in another form of submission to the Tyranny of The Other. This is sometimes called "being cool," and sometimes being "politically correct," but it's really a variation on a very old theme.

In a nice, civilized society where gentlemen deal only with gentlemen and follow long-established rules, handshake deals, and gentlemen's agreements* it might be OK to avoid speaking up and endeavoring to never disagree.

But when evil people like Bill Ayers (who is himself a member of the "nice" class) come along, the system fails, and evil becomes respectable.

Interestingly, the aristocratic Winifred Wagner (pictured above) was said to have been privately disgusted by Hitler's persecution of the Jews.

Better not to bring something like that up, though. Might cause some unpleasantness at the club....

* I remember in the long distant past when there was a thing called noblesse oblige, which included strange ideas about privileged kids providing military leadership. Why, the elite even had ROTC!

MORE: Mickey Kaus is not afraid to condemn Ayers' respectability:

I still think it's creepy the way Ayers and Dohrn are accepted in Chicago, and Obama's acceptance is part of that creepiness.

As I keep saying, Ayers' respectability is a bigger problem than his friendship with Obama. The problem with Obama is that he goes along with it, and (as I said after the last debate) perpetuates it:

What annoys me the most about Obama's performance last night is his attempt to continue the mainstreaming of a murderous radical who should never have been mainstreamed in the first place.

Yes, I think Ayers, a murderous, admitted enemy of the United States, was lucky to avoid prison, and should never have been given tenure and respectability. Even now he should be fired, and removed from all semblance of respectability. I know this is not going to happen, and I realize there is no way to hold the people who hired, coddled and promoted Ayers accountable, but I think that if Obama can't at least denounce him as outside the mainstream, he is unfit to be president.

Instead of denouncing him, Obama promotes the meme that Ayers is an "educational reformer" (as he did last night). This is not much different from promoting the meme that Mao was an "agrarian reformer."

Like a lot of people, I've been wondering about those polls.

If McCain were to pull ahead of Obama (as he has four or five times before), wouldn't the Obama campaign be so scared that they would want the results either changed, statistically skewed, or somehow not reported?

I realize they don't have the kind of influence to skew the polls, but I was thinking about what Jim Geraghty's mentor said earlier:

"Believe me, there is someone in the Obama campaign who is deathly afraid of the 'McCain pulls even or goes ahead' poll." (And in Gallup, it was within 2 percent.) "That Obama strategist knows how much depends on the whole Chuck Schumer and Rahm Emanuel approach --.work with the media to demoralize conservatives, and keep the perception of a juggernaut going. But a day or two of a few bad polls, and that strategy backfires. The conservatives know they've still got a shot at this."

Well I for one am glad these are all reputable pollsters who would never skew their results in the juggernaut's favor.

Because if they were skewing the results to make it look as if Obama was ahead when actually McCain was ahead, then a McCain victory would come as a huge and terrible shock -- a gut-wrenching one that would be bad for the country, because people would think that either McCain "stole the election" or else the voters were a bunch of dishonest "racists" who "lied" to pollsters (the so-called "Bradley effect" -- which actually involves not hiding racism, but fear of being accused of racism.)

That wouldn't be fair at all. Because the more dishonest the polls were, the more they'd help convince voters that an Obama victory was inevitable (thus helping Obama), and more dishonest any McCain victory would appear to be (thus inflicting maximum damage on McCain if he managed to win).

I'm glad they're not doing that.

UPDATE: My thanks to Glenn Reynolds for linking this post, and a warm welcome to all. Comments always appreciated, whether you agree or disagree.

I notice that some commenters are interpreting this post as an insinuation that the polls are dishonest. Actually, I wrote it as a "what if" because I really don't know. However, the post Glenn links by D.J. Drummond does more than speculate about a "what if" scenario. People who think I'm being mealy-mouthed should by all means check it out.

Also, check out this from Mickey Kaus:

while Zogby's national telephone tracking poll shows Obama opening up an 8 point lead, his online state by state polls are not following suit. They have McCain moving ahead in Nevada 51.5% to 44%, behind in Colorado by only three-tenths of a percent, close in Virginia, New Hampshire, and Florida. I assume this is more a commentary on the accuracy of online polls than on the state of the race. Interesting either way!

UPDATE: The polls keep coming in.

WASHINGTON (AP) - The presidential race tightened after the final debate, with John McCain gaining among whites and people earning less than $50,000, according to an Associated Press-GfK poll that shows McCain and Barack Obama essentially running even among likely voters in the election homestretch.

The poll, which found Obama at 44 percent and McCain at 43 percent, supports what some Republicans and Democrats privately have said in recent days: that the race narrowed after the third debate as GOP-leaning voters drifted home to their party and McCain's "Joe the plumber" analogy struck a chord.

Three weeks ago, an AP-GfK survey found that Obama had surged to a seven-point lead over McCain, lifted by voters who thought the Democrat was better suited to lead the nation through its sudden economic crisis.

The contest is still volatile, and the split among voters is apparent less than two weeks before Election Day.

"He did not write a blurb for his book," Burton said. "He did not."

Here's the picture.

Of what Barack Obama absolutely Did Not Write.

While I'm at it, I figured I might as well scan page 82 of the book I so cherish owning:

("Hey, Barack! Since our paths have crossed, how about if I mention you in my book, and and you can write a glowing blurb!")

Noting that Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs also denied that Obama had written the blurb, Ed Morrissey opined that lying about a revelation like this is worse than revelation itself.

this wouldn't be an issue if the Obama campaign would stop lying about the nature of his relationship with Ayers. They've continually fibbed about it when the public record is pretty clear that they formed a political alliance meant to boost Obama's electoral career. Their inability to be honest about this relationship is what makes these lesser revelations more significant than they should be. A modest blurb on an obscure book would have no meaning at all absent the fact that Team Obama lied about it on two separate occasions.

Does anyone think they'd be ignoring this if McCain had given a glowing blurb to a book by Eric Rudolph or Timothy McVeigh?

I'm wondering about another overlooked detail also noted by Dave Price. It appears that Obama and Ayers worked in the same building for years. Not just any building, but a small architectural charmer. The kind of place where there'd have been no way for the two of them not to bump into each other on a daily basis.

Geez. People might not be taking this seriously, but at least Ayers is evolving. From "a guy in the neighborhood" to "a guy in the neighborhood in whose book I was mentioned and whose book I blurbed and with whom I shared a work address for a few years...."

"Crossed paths"?

Um, maybe just a little....

UPDATE: Incredibly, an anonymous commenter is quibbling over the definition of "blurb" -- arguing that in order for a blurb to be a blurb, it must appear somewhere on the book being blurbed. Nonsense. Blurbs are merely words of praise accompanying the release of a book, which can be placed anywhere -- the idea being to encourage readership and sales.

The word "blurb," while colloquial in nature, is rather old and the definition is well established:

Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1)
[...]
1. a brief advertisement or announcement, esp. a laudatory one: She wrote a good blurb for her friend's novel.
-verb (used with object)
2. to advertise or praise in the manner of a blurb.
[Origin: 1910-15, Americanism; allegedly coined by F. G. Burgess]

I'm wondering why there is such resistance to a very simple concept

What is quoted underneath Obama's picture is a brief, extravagant, commendatory notice.

A blurb.

If I were defending Obama, I too, might try to argue that he didn't write the blurb. One way to do this would be to point out that the news copy only states that Obama was reading the book, and that the blurb might well have been a standard blurb already written for the book's release by persons unknown. This might be seen by Obama supporters as rhetorically shifting the burden of proof to those claiming Obama actually wrote the blurb. (Then again, it might be seen as legalistic quibbling.)

But to say it is not a blurb is, I think, unreasonable.

Now that Philadelphia conservative radio talk show host and columnist Michael Smerconish has "decided" (for Obama), M. Simon is disgusted.

So am I. In fact, I am so disgusted that I don't know what to do. I realize that everybody's mind is made up so what could I say that chould make much of a difference?

Well, in Smerconish's case, I guess I can say something. I'll say that he has struggled for years to be an independent moderate conservative, and he has been relentlessly subjected to outrageous personal attacks -- against which I defended him repeatedly.

Considering that Smerconish works in Philadelphia where Obamamania has reached fever pitch, he's probably thinking about things like his future employment and getting along with people he works with. Who knows, considering that the attacks on him in the past have bordered on outright advocacy of violence, he might even be concerned about physical safety. If so, many of the red meat conservatives would call him a coward. (An easy charge to level for those who either don't have children or live in safely conservative communities.)

But that's just my speculation, and it's only one side of the equation. On the other side is a lingering, mutual grudge held between many traditional Republicans in the Northeast and the red meat, WorldNetDaily style right wing. I don't fit into either camp, but I do know that these people hate each other with the kind of bitter personal hatred that arises more from lifestyle issues than from actual political differences.

When I moved from the west coast to Philadelphia shortly before the 2000 election, I was a bit surprised to learn that people I have known since I was a kid and always considered hard core Republican loyalists (of the country club variety, but always dependably Republican in every election), were suddenly griping over the perception that the party had been taken over by religious nuts. While these people could handle even the hated Dick Cheney, the religious conservatives push them over the edge.

I think that years of systematized hatred directed towards them by the left has softened them up -- to the point that many of them are about to "go wobbly," and I worry that once they see Obama ready to win and the GOP collapsing like the House of Usher, they might be ready to bolt. I understand the desire to bash them, but I wish people doing that would remember that most of these people are not political ideologues or activists; all they want is to keep their money and be left alone to enjoy their damned country clubs and not be preached at by religious zealots who obsess over abortion and the "gay homosexual agenda."

Hey, well, at least I hate golf, OK? In that regard I'm an anti-country club bigot, am I not? Is that good enough, or do I have to be more, um, ideological in my anti, um, "traditional" Northeast Republican wrath? (Yeah, the quotes are for irony; it seems that some folks have tried with some success to replace "traditional" with "traditional" and everyone's confused, because everyone thinks everyone else's "values" suck or something.)

Like them or not, these country club Republicans have been in the GOP for many years, and this urge to chase them out of the tent reminds me of what happened to Joe Lieberman. If they don't feel welcome in their own party, and the other side beckons nicely, common sense suggests what might happen. I only hope that people like Chris Buckley and Michael Smerconish are rare exceptions and not a trend.

On a personal level, as usual I find myself personally annoyed by social conservatives. Nothing new there. But you'd think they'd have the sense not to engage in culture war baiting right before an election.

Last night, I clicked on Glenn Reynolds' link to a piece by the widely read and respected social conservative Roger Kimball and because I'm also against Obama and socialism, I assumed I would agree with Kimball wholeheartedly. And even though I did agree with 90% of what Kimball said and found his central point well taken, I found myself upset by his final conclusion which tried (at least, so I thought) to blame the Obama phenomenon on the deleterious effects of rock music. So I did something very rare for me; I left a comment:

Electric guitar?Woodstock? Values, habits, tastes, and pleasures?

Degraded pop culture?

I agree with your central premise about Barack Obama, but I don't see what my tastes in music or culture (which I'm assuming differ from yours) have to do with an abhorrence for socialism.

(But then, I've never understood the left's rule that if you are a homosexual you have to be a socialist, either.)

This was a minor disagreement, and it wouldn't have merited a post had I not learned about Michael Smerconish.

As it happens, I have defended Sarah Palin in more posts than I can possibly count, and I tried to stress that an alliance between libertarians and social conservatives is what the would-be rulers most fear.

I realize that I am writing from a libertarian perspective, but I don't think things like musical or sexual tastes should matter. What ought to matter is whether people want to use the power of the state to enforce these things.

But that falls on deaf ears when people think they are under personal attack. Frankly, blaming my tastes for the fall of the West is the sort of thing which many years ago might have inclined me to make an emotional mistake and vote for Barack Obama.

What makes this all the more painful is that McCain is a centrist who is trying to unite the party, and heal the deep divisions. I admire him for doing that, and find it quite ironic that he's alienating traditional (ugh! that word!) country club Republicans in the process. This does not bode well for attracting independents and disgruntled Democrats, which he needs if he is to win.

So, despite my differences for a lot of reasons with a lot of the people in the "tent," I can only say that I will vote against socialism. I wish the country club Republicans who are bolting in anger or fear would think again.

Smerconish, by the way, has been in the unenviable position of getting it from both sides for years.

Believe it or not, he has been subjected to vicious leftist attacks for liking the wrong kind of music:

I'm not saying there's a definitive link between a taste for shit hippie music and a penchant for sadly reactionary politics (although one should note that fellow right-wing opinionist Ann Coulter is a wicked keen Deadhead), but check out the mastalk.com intro page, and you're greeted with the hairy cocaine-stutter of the intro to Van Halen's "Ain't Talkin' 'Bout Love."

Who knew?

After pausing to bash Smerconish's bald head, the author continues with more music-bashing observations:

And that's why I love the choice of mock-rebellious poodle-metal as the theme music for the Smerconish site. It steals the clothes of rebellion. It has all the poses and postures of radicalism down pat, but ultimately it's the most conservative of music forms. It comes on like the love child of Emma Goldman and Che Guevara, all the while choking on cheesy corporate cock like the forelock-tugging lickspittle it really is.

And speaking of heavy metal faux-rebels, here comes Smerconish's friend--the wizened old ax-spanking-turkey-cock-dressed-as-spring-chicken Ted Nugent. Nugent--who once defended the apartheid regime in South Africa on the grounds that Africans "still put bones in their noses, they still walk around naked, they wipe their butts with their hands [and if] you give 'em toothpaste, they fucking eat it"--is a huge fan of Smerconish.

In retrospect, such innocent repugnance seems wise beyond its years.

BOTTOM LINE: I wrote this post because like it or not, a number of Republicans are in danger of bolting their party and voting for Obama (something that is being encouraged by the Obama campaign).

I don't think this is a good time to engage in pre-emptive recriminations.

There will be plenty of time after the election.

A certain person named Smerconish who claims to be a Republican has come out for Obama. A giveaway is that this missive was published in the HuffPo among other places.

Mr. S lists five concerns where he thinks Mr. Obama has better ideas than John McCain. The five are Terrorism, where he thinks Iraq is was a mistake. Of course by those lights the landings in Libya in 1942 were a mistake when the fight was with the Germans. The Economy, where McCain's statement that the fundamentals of the economy are strong is the killer. And yet despite the melt down year over year housing sales in California are up 68%. That is not a sign of fundamental weakness. Mr. Smerconish must not be paying attention. And now we come to the Woman Thing. The VP pick. Despite Palin's having way more successful executive experience as Governor of Alaska than Obama has had his whole life, the S says it is not enough for VP. Now here we come to the real mush. Opportunity. Mr. Obama can be a role model to all the missing black fathers and elevate the black community because he is an articulate black guy. And it is true. With the help of Mr. Rezko, Mr. Obama may soon become one of the most articulate black men in the American prison system. Just the sort of role model missing in the Black Community. Mostly what we get is inarticulate criminals and the occasional Republican. And now, let me give you the final bit of mush in full.

Hope. Wednesday morning will come and an Obama presidency holds the greatest chance for unifying us here at home and restoring our prestige around the globe. The campaigns have foretold the kind of presidency we can expect from each candidate. Last Friday in Lakeville, Minn., McCain himself had to explain to a supporter who was "scared" of an Obama presidency that those fears were unfounded. Another told McCain that Obama was untrustworthy because he is an "Arab." Those exchanges were a predictable byproduct of ads against Obama featuring tag lines such as "Too Risky for America" and "Dangerous," and a failure to rein in individuals at McCain events who highlighted Obama's middle name, all against a background of Internet lore.

Perhaps Mr. Smerconish didn't get the latest Joe Biden memo.

"Mark my words," the Democratic vice presidential nominee warned at the second of his two Seattle fundraisers Sunday. "It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy. The world is looking. We're about to elect a brilliant 47-year-old senator president of the United States of America. Remember I said it standing here if you don't remember anything else I said. Watch, we're gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy."

Cross Posted at Power and Control

It's getting colder!

That's what Lorne Gunter says in a piece headlined "Thirty years of warmer temperatures go poof":

In early September, I began noticing a string of news stories about scientists rejecting the orthodoxy on global warming. Actually, it was more like a string of guest columns and long letters to the editor since it is hard for skeptical scientists to get published in the cabal of climate journals now controlled by the Great Sanhedrin of the environmental movement.

Still, the number of climate change skeptics is growing rapidly. Because a funny thing is happening to global temperatures -- they're going down, not up.

On the same day (Sept. 5) that areas of southern Brazil were recording one of their latest winter snowfalls ever and entering what turned out to be their coldest September in a century, Brazilian meteorologist Eugenio Hackbart explained that extreme cold or snowfall events in his country have always been tied to "a negative PDO" or Pacific Decadal Oscillation. Positive PDOs -- El Ninos -- produce above-average temperatures in South America while negative ones -- La Ninas -- produce below average ones.

Dr. Hackbart also pointed out that periods of solar inactivity known as "solar minimums" magnify cold spells on his continent. So, given that August was the first month since 1913 in which no sunspot activity was recorded -- none -- and during which solar winds were at a 50-year low, he was not surprised that Brazilians were suffering (for them) a brutal cold snap. "This is no coincidence," he said as he scoffed at the notion that manmade carbon emissions had more impact than the sun and oceans on global climate.

Also in September, American Craig Loehle, a scientist who conducts computer modelling on global climate change, confirmed his earlier findings that the so-called Medieval Warm Period (MWP) of about 1,000 years ago did in fact exist and was even warmer than 20th-century temperatures.

Prior to the past decade of climate hysteria and Kyoto hype, the MWP was a given in the scientific community. Several hundred studies of tree rings, lake and ocean floor sediment, ice cores and early written records of weather -- even harvest totals and censuses --confirmed that the period from 800 AD to 1300 AD was unusually warm, particularly in Northern Europe.

But in order to prove the climate scaremongers' claim that 20th-century warming had been dangerous and unprecedented -- a result of human, not natural factors -- the MWP had to be made to disappear. So studies such as Michael Mann's "hockey stick," in which there is no MWP and global temperatures rise gradually until they jump up in the industrial age, have been adopted by the UN as proof that recent climate change necessitates a reordering of human economies and societies.

Dr. Loehle's work helps end this deception.

Don Easterbrook, a geologist at Western Washington University, says, "It's practically a slam dunk that we are in for about 30 years of global cooling," as the sun enters a particularly inactive phase. His examination of warming and cooling trends over the past four centuries shows an "almost exact correlation" between climate fluctuations and solar energy received on Earth, while showing almost "no correlation at all with CO2."

An analytical chemist who works in spectroscopy and atmospheric sensing, Michael J. Myers of Hilton Head, S. C., declared, "Man-made global warming is junk science," explaining that worldwide manmade CO2 emission each year "equals about 0.0168% of the atmosphere's CO2 concentration ... This results in a 0.00064% increase in the absorption of the sun's radiation. This is an insignificantly small number."

Other international scientists have called the manmade warming theory a "hoax," a "fraud" and simply "not credible."

Just think! If they'd gotten the restrictions they wanted when they wanted them, and the planet had cooled as it is now, they'd already be claiming credit!

This all begs the question, though....

What are we going to do about Global Cooling?

Alan Boyle brings us up to date on the latest news from the world of fusion. Of course I'm especially interested in what he has to say about Bussard Fusion and their progress to net power. I'll give you the short version:

"We've been pretty busy, but it's the same situation," Nebel told me today. "We're kind of in a holding pattern."

He's been able to keep the five-person team together and "doing a few things" during this holding pattern. There have been some rumblings to the effect that EMC2's results have been encouraging enough to justify pressing forward, but Nebel has declined to make a prediction about the project's future.

Nebel worries about the same kind of budget limbo that the U.S. ITER team is worrying about, even though his budget is an order of magnitude lower. Among the factors on his mind are the change in the White House and the changes in economic circumstances.

"The thing that usually gets hit the hardest is what they call discretionary funding," Nebel said, "and that's what we're looking at here. That'd be the biggest fear everywhere."

Cross Posted at Power and Control

Evidently in Britain there are fewer restrictions on polite conversation that there are in America. So Melanie Phillips says it:

You have to pinch yourself - a Marxisant radical who all his life has been mentored by, sat at the feet of, worshipped with, befriended, endorsed the philosophy of, funded and been in turn funded, politically promoted and supported by a nexus comprising black power anti-white racists, Jew-haters, revolutionary Marxists, unrepentant former terrorists and Chicago mobsters, is on the verge of becoming President of the United States. And apparently it's considered impolite to say so.

H/T Gateway Pundit

Cross Posted at Power and Control

You remember when Obama was way up in the polls? (Wasn't that like a week ago? - Yes it was [ed.]) Now that he is falling back in the polls Joe Biden knows why it is happening. Racism. It is like a disease. Once other people get infected it is only a matter of (not much) time until you get it too. And then the polls go down. Really. That is how it works. Vast swaths of America are just waking up and saying, "You know I just noticed Obama is black and I could never bring myself to vote for a black man, now that I have noticed."

ABC News' Matthew Jaffe Reports: As Election Day looms just over two weeks away, Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., said Saturday that with Republicans firing "vicious" and "dangerous" attacks at Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., voters are "having a difficult time" opting for the man who would become the nation's first African American president.

"Undecided people are having a difficult time just culturally making the change, making the move for the first African American president in the history of the United States of America," the Democratic vice-presidential nominee said at a San Francisco fundraiser Saturday evening. "So we need to respond. We need to respond at the moment, immediately, not wait, not hang around, not assume any of this won't stick."

Mr. Biden - it is not the racism you need to worry about it is

H/T Gateway Pundit

Cross Posted at Power and Control

Barack Obama likes to talk about cynicism, and in a very critical way. In the following speech before AIPAC in March, he expresses gratitude for having so many young people in his campaign, and describes "cynicism" as the biggest enemy we're going to have to fight. Presumably, he thinks young people are less "cynical" than old people, and those who are skeptical about his central message that the world can be changed are the ones who are being "cynical":

OK, I'm cynical. I freely admit it.

Some of that is because I'm not young enough. I've lived long enough to be skeptical. (Something I see not as cynicism, but as a form of wisdom.) Seeing a complete absence of skepticism among young people who are taught that believing in socialism constitutes "critical thinking" makes me very cynical about their false claim of skepticism. Many of them will eventually learn that they've been had, but by then it may be too late.

Anyway, right now I'm more cynical about Barack Obama than ever before. Mostly because he's riding into the White House as a result of an extremely racialized campaign, in which his opponent and his opponent's supporters find themselves falsely demonized as racists. My response has been to have a lot of fun in this blog ridiculing nonsensical accusations of racism -- yesterday's "mammoth racist waves" post being the most recent example.

The irony is that while we are poised to elect the nation's first black president, I'm more cynical about race relations than ever before.

However, as I said in an email to Glenn Reynolds, I didn't start that way. I once liked Obama, because I thought he meant it:

"Oddly enough, Obama started out as a nice guy, and I remember liking him. It was refreshing the way he tried to de-racialize things, but I think he's so wedded to the left and they're so wedded to these things that he's hamstrung. "

Yes, if the Obama running now were the Obama I saw when he started his campaign, I wouldn't be terribly interested in the outcome of this election. I'm most troubled by the thuggish attacks on critics.

Has he gone on record as saying that if he does lose (a very unlikely prospect), it will not necessarily be because of racism?

Maybe he has, but I have not seen the denunciations.

This is not to say that he'd win my vote by denouncing the meme, but I'd be less cynical about his attacks on "cynicism," and more comfortable with him as president.

I realize he might not win any votes by doing this, but he has the pulpit right now.

As things stand, I can think of few ways to engender cynicism than to falsely charge people with racism. For whatever reason. But when false charges of racism are made in order to advance a political campaign, the cynicism is heightened, because of the sheer opportunism and demagoguery involved. When the candidate involved does not denounce it, the cynicism is heightened further.

That's why I'd feel a lot less cynical had Barack Obama not described cynicism as the "biggest enemy."

And a lot more comfortable if he denounced the phony racist meme.

I love government coverups, especially when the purpose of the coverup is to keep government bureaucrats from being embarrassed. This time, British government bureaucrats are so embarrassed that they've gone on the "diaper defensive":

A government report that found old-fashioned reusable nappies damage the environment more than disposables has been hushed up because ministers are embarrassed by its findings.

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) has instructed civil servants not to publicise the conclusions of the £50,000 nappy research project and to adopt a "defensive" stance towards its conclusions.

The report found that using washable nappies, hailed by councils throughout Britain as a key way of saving the planet, have a higher carbon footprint than their disposable equivalents unless parents adopt an extreme approach to laundering them.

To reduce the impact of cloth nappies on climate change parents would have to hang wet nappies out to dry all year round, keep them for years for use on younger children, and make sure the water in their washing machines does not exceed 60C.

The conclusions will upset proponents of real nappies who have claimed they can help save the planet.

I'm not surprised in the least. The environmentalists' relentless crusade against anything "disposable" has always struck me as more emotional and moralistic than rational or logical. There's this idea that anything made of or resembling plastic is evil, and old fashioned things are more "natural" and therefore better for "the environment" (whatever that is). It's like, cultivating and harvesting plants, then extracting their fibers and weaving them into cloth for diapers, or chopping up sapling trees for pulp then making them into brown paper bags, is somehow morally superior to making plastic from petroleum. Never mind that all of these raw materials come from "the environment." The former is "natural," while the latter is "artificial." Logic has very little to do with it.

I also suspect there's a ferocious streak of neo-Puritan work ethic involved. Something about making ordinary people wash diapers -- by hand if possible, followed by hanging them up to dry -- appeals to those who manufacture morality.

Little wonder the British government is embarrassed. If there's one thing lefties can't stand, it's being laughed at:

Restricted Whitehall documents, seen by The Sunday Times, show that the government is so concerned by the "negative laundry options" outlined in the report, it has told its media managers not to give its conclusions any publicity.

The report found that while disposable nappies used over 2½ years would have a global warming , impact of 550kg of CO2 reusable nappies produced 570kg of CO2 on average. But if parents used tumble dryers and washed the reusable nappies at 90C, the impact could spiral to . 993kg of CO2 A Defra spokesman said the government was shelving plans for future research on nappies.

Take the recycling fad. (Please.) It costs cities more money to recycle than it would simply to haul everything to a landfill:

Recycling costs about twice as much as dumping the material at a landfill, says Bucknell University environmental economist Thomas Kinnaman.

He says recycling doesn't make much economic or environmental sense, but it's so popular with some consumers that it's understandable why cities do it.

"Recycling is more like entertainment," says Kinnaman, who recycles. "People enjoy it because it makes them feel less guilty about their effect on the environment."

In politically correct places like San Francisco where there are battles between activists with competing or contradictory goals, things can go from being merely embarrassing to utterly ridiculous. As if it's not enough that the city loses money on recycling, they had to implement severe legal sanctions against scofflaws who don't recycle, now the City of San Francisco is talking about tough new laws to crack down on independent recyclers!

That's because there's a "recycling war." On the streets of San Francisco:

A recycling war is breaking out on the Bay Area's curbsides.

Those ubiquitous, colorful recycling bins people set out each week for pickup stand squarely on a battle line between growing numbers of organized crews who snag cans and bottles and the official waste haulers who say "poachers" are increasingly hostile and dangerous.

It seems organized crews have been going out into the pre-dawn light to raid San Francisco residents' recycling bins. They then sell the glass, plastic and aluminum to recycling centers. The regular garbage collectors say the crews can be hostile and dangerous. Residents have filed thousands of complaints.

I see people picking through my recycling bins all the time. I never thought it was a problem. Little did I know that recycling theft is illegal, and that the city is losing lots of money to these scavengers.

But, if I have to choose, I'll side with the scavengers. It's obvious the people picking through the garbage need that money. Badly.

Are we putting profit before people, or are we putting the environment before people?

It's very confusing.

As I keep saying, newly manufactured "morality" can get incredibly complicated.

According to Frank Rich, there are only three ways McCain can win, and two of them involve race:

The election isn't over, but there remain only three discernible, if highly unlikely, paths to a McCain victory. A theoretically mammoth wave of racism, incessantly anticipated by the press, could materialize in voting booths on Nov. 4. Or newly registered young and black voters could fail to show up. Or McCain could at long last make good on his most persistent promise: follow Osama bin Laden to the gates of hell and, once there, strangle him with his own bare hands on "Hannity & Colmes."

Perhaps this explains why the dying Republicans racists are "bailing on a McCain resuscitation" and resorting to Stalinism, fatwas, and storm trooper tactics:

Even Republicans are rapidly bailing on a McCain resuscitation. It's a metaphor for the party's collapse that on the day of the final debate both Nancy Reagan and Dick Cheney checked into hospitals. Conservatives have already moved past denial to anger on the Kubler-Ross scale of grief. They are not waiting for votes to be counted before carrying out their first round of Stalinist purges. William F. Buckley's son Christopher was banished from National Review for endorsing Obama. Next thing you know, there will be a fatwa on that McCain-bashing lefty, George Will.

As the G.O.P.'s long night of the long knives begins, myths are already setting in among the right's storm troops and the punditocracy alike as to what went wrong. And chief among them are the twin curses of Bush and the "headwinds" of the economy. No Republican can win if the party's incumbent president is less popular than dirt, we keep being told, or if a looming Great Depression 2 is Issue No. 1.

This is an excuse, not an explanation. It absolves McCain of much of the blame and denies Obama much of the credit for their campaigns. It arouses pity for McCain when he deserves none. It rewrites history.

You'll notice that I've supplemented the chart to reflect the additional insight from Frank Rich about "mammoth waves of racism."

Yes, waves, Frank, waves! Note the plural! There have so far been at least four (maybe five) times in which McCain has pulled ahead of Obama, during each of which McCain would presumably have won had the election then been held. As Rich defines a win by McCain as occasioned by a mammoth wave of racism, then simple logic dictates that there have been recurrent periods of these mammoth racist waves. Who knows what causes them? Certainly not the economy, as that wasn't the leading issue during these earlier periods. Nor could they have been caused by people "bailing on a McCain resuscitation," as things were too early in the death game for the Kubler-Ross team to arrive. As to the "newly registered young and black voters" who "fail to show up," that wasn't a factor either, for the simple reason that no one has to show up in those kinds of polls.

Notice that the mammoth waves came and went without regard to Republican fatwas, Stalinist purges, or even (unless there was a repeat of Kristallnacht of which I'm unaware) the antics of Republican storm troopers.

What could be going on?

I'm stumped.

The mammoth waves must be some primal force of nature that only Frank Rich can explain.

"He didn't ask for Senator Obama to come to his house. He wasn't recruited or prompted by our campaign. He just asked a question. And Americans ought to be able to ask Senator Obama tough questions without being smeared and targeted with political attacks."

I've lost count of the number of privacy-invading personal attacks that have been launched on Joe the Plumber. Glenn Reynolds had a roundup yesterday (I especially loved Iowa Hawk), and the bottom line question is this:

"In what kind of nation, do the media investigate critics more than candidates?"

But parenthetically, in what kind of anti-virus company does a blog that asks questions like that get blocked with a message like this?

"Trend Micro Internet Security has identified this Web page as undesirable."

Address: http://politics.boogietrain.nl/ [etc.]

Credibility: Dangerous

Anyway, the attacks have gotten so frenzied that Michelle Malkin has called this "Joe The Plumber Derangement Syndrome. JTPDS." And there's a logo to go with it:

Because he asked Barack Obama a simple question, Joe has been subjected to the kind of scrutiny never visited on Barack Obama, much less Joe Biden. Today's Detroit Free Press is no exception. In today's Detroit Free Press, Mitch Albom devotes an entire column -- "Average Joe can't fix America's pipes" -- to this now-trendy litany of attacks:

It turns out Joe has no plumber's license.

Joe isn't in the plumbers union.

Joe never did a plumbers apprenticeship.

Joe's business likely would not be taxed under Obama's proposal.

Joe might even get a tax cut under Obama's proposal.

Joe doesn't believe in Social Security.

Joe's first name isn't Joe, it's Samuel.

And Samuel hasn't paid his taxes.

And that's just as we go to press. By the time you read this, Joe may be a member of the Weathermen. None of this surprises me. It is what you get in a country that seems to think everything is a form of "American Idol."

But let's stick with the reality TV standard for a second. If in fact the country considers everything to be a form of "American Idol," then why is private life of an aspiring small business owner of more interest than Barack Obama's drug dealer?

"It is worth noting that you have not employed your investigative assets looking into Michelle Obama. You have not tried to find Barack Obama's drug dealer that he wrote about in his book, Dreams of My Father. Nor have you interviewed his poor relatives in Kenya and determined why Barack Obama has not rescued them. Thus, there is a terrific lack of balance here."

I guess the rule is that a small time plumber with dreams of a better future is more worthy of press scrutiny than the guy who talks of dreams but implements dream-crushing policies. Via Glenn Reynolds, I see that the exact amount of money that Joe owed for his past traffic tickets is a bigger MSM concern than the future president's former drug dealer.

But I digress from from Mitch Albom. Maybe I'm complaining too much. At least Albom was nice enough to leave out the traffic tickets. And he said nothing about the now-discredited claim that Joe isn't registered to vote.

Instead, he kvetches about Joe's use of his middle name. Since when has it become a dishonest offense against liberalism to use your middle name as an appellation? Plenty of people -- liberal icons among them -- prefer their middle names (or nicknames) to their first names, and in Hollywood, many people don't use any of their given names. So Joe's using his middle name. If that's dishonest, then let's start calling Paul McCartney "James."

This is an argument? I can't think of anything more ridiculous.

Sheesh.

After running through the indictment, Albom says this:

...when you dig in, you see his circumstance might be the exact opposite of that for which he's being touted.

The way they have done a complete, invasive background check on this citizen is shocking. While few of us would withstand close scrutiny, what annoys me the most is that the dirt-digging has been done by the news media, and they have now essentially sicced the bureaucrats on this guy:

The plumber's union and the city of Toledo are on Wurzelbacher's tail after he acknowledged that he did not have a plumber's license.

"Joe the plumber really isn't a plumber," said Thomas Joseph, business manager of UA Local 50 of the Plumbers, Steamfitters and Service Mechanics Union, whose national membership has endorsed Obama. (Joseph said Wurzelbacher applied for an apprentice program in 2003 but never completed the work.)

Wurzelbacher said he did not need a plumber's license to do residential work with Newell Heating & Plumbing, but David Golis, a Toledo building-inspections official, disputed that. "We were just discussing that we will send a letter to the owner of Newell reminding him" of the city's requirement that all who do plumbing work be licensed or in apprentice or journeyman programs, Golis said.

But dare that unlicensed rooter guy ask an impertinent question of a media god, and all hell will break loose.

Now, while most people could care less about Joe's alleged tax liens, I actually do care. In fact, it makes me love the guy. Seriously, I'm on his side 100 per cent! And while I'm sorry for him, I think this particular attack may be illustrative of a real lesson going to the heart of what's wrong with this country (at least, where we're headed). Taxation is crushing ordinary people, and small potential entrepreneurs like Joe are hit the hardest. Yet rich snobs like Obama and Biden want to tax people more, while pontificating about how "patriotic" it is to pay taxes.

Few will say it, but I think it's more a badge of traditional patriotism to have a tax lien than to boast about how patriotic it is to pay taxes.

From the Declaration of Independence:

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our People, and eat out their substance.

As to whether Joe's business would be taxed more heavily under Obama's proposal, the Christian Science Monitor said it likely would be. Others are quibbling, and I don't doubt that a room full of economists could hold a debate on the subject. Do any of these people recall what started the debate? When the Obama entourage landed in front of his house, Joe just happened to be lucky enough to be able to ask Barack Obama a pointed question about whether he would pay more in taxes. At that point, Obama the candidate could easily have said this:

"I doubt you'd pay more, Joe. In fact, you might pay less in taxes. I'd have to know more about your total income, your potential expenses, and your overhead."

Another major crime is that "Joe does not believe in Social Security." Hey, many of the nation's top economists don't believe in it either. It is widely considered to be no longer viable and on the verge of collapse. Anyone with a lick of sense should be thinking in terms of providing for old age independently. Believing in that demagogic illusion we call Social Security might not be as silly as believing in the Easter Bunny, but once again, Joe merely demonstrates that he has more sense than his critics (whose moralistic clucking reminds me of the way a fundamentalist Christian might solemnly intone "he does not believe in God.")

Mitch Albom's conclusion comes dangerously close to what would have been my conclusion:

...McCain is now getting criticized. And how many people will want to hire an unlicensed plumber who owes money on his taxes?

And we haven't even mentioned a butt crack.

I guess I'm slow on the uptake. I have this deeply ingrained belief that Americans ought to be allowed a little privacy. Especially, you know, from those who champion the right to privacy in places like the bedroom.

(Perhaps they think the right to privacy only applies to people who agree with them.)

MORE: If Team Obama happened to drive down my street, I probably wouldn't want to get caught asking Barack Obama any tough questions because of the consequences.

Well then, suppose I were to ask a question about my inability to ask a question? Something like this:

Senator Obama, if I were to ask you a tough question, why would my personal lifestyle be considered more worthy of investigation than yours?

Wouldn't want to be subject to an investigation.

It's hard work being my muse, but Coco tries. Here she is perusing the newspaper in search of interesting tidbits for me to blog about.

But eventually, Coco tires of this, and she can become awfully annoyed at the endless (to her, very boring) tappy-tappy game I seem to be playing with the keyboard. When this happens she asks me -- no, I'm afraid she tells me -- to let her go outside to play with her toys -- her latest being a Cheng Shin model 53-559 mountain bike tire, which someone so helpfully discarded in a local park.

I could almost swear she suspects it's a giant snake which managed to get itself twisted into a stubborn infinity position, and that only she can shake it loose.

Considering that the tire was free, it's not only cheaper than her poor bedraggled Otis and Claude Bettie fetch throwing toy, but it's easier for me, because I only have to throw it once or twice, and Coco does the rest.

It's perfect for a psychotic game of tug-of-war too, but the shrieks and growls Coco makes when I pull and she won't let go sound a bit blood-curdling, and I have to think of the neighbors.

There are few things more irritating in blogging than having to reconstruct a vanished post. Fortunately, it doesn't happen too often, and usually, it's a result of carelessness or a software glitch. This time, it was because the cord to the power strip that feeds my computer was coming loose from the wall receptacle, and I spotted it just in time! At least, so I thought. Thinking I was being careful (and without pausing to save what I'd spent an hour writing), I pushed the cord all the way in. Unfortunately my act of pushing it in was just enough to somehow break the current flow for a millisecond, and everything went dead. Sure, I turned it right back on, but the post was now but an unsaved memory.

So I decided to set up my VCR (an easily postponed task involving technology I use maybe four times a year), and combined long walks with lunch.

After all that, the post still matters enough that I thought I'd make a stab at reconstructing it. That's because no matter how many times I complain about them, some things still matter. And no matter how many blog posts have been written by others on this subject (probably a lot), it's damned important.

In brief, what happened was that by uttering a single word on a taboo subject John McCain renewed my faith. He has an uncanny way of doing that, and it's one of the reasons I think he would be not merely a good, but possibly a great president. I don't care whether you like him or not, or agree with him or not, but the man is fearless in a way few politicians are, and what he did that was so special this time was to use the forbidden "S" word:

CONCORD, N.C. - Republican presidential candidate John McCain on Saturday accused Democratic rival Barack Obama of favoring a socialistic economic approach by supporting tax cuts and tax credits McCain says would merely shuffle wealth rather than creating it.

"At least in Europe, the Socialist leaders who so admire my opponent are upfront about their objectives," McCain said in a radio address. "They use real numbers and honest language. And we should demand equal candor from Sen. Obama. Raising taxes on some in order to give checks to others is not a tax cut; it's just another government giveaway."

Yes, socialism is a pet peeve. I'm a crank that way. And what I'm even more peeved about -- one of the peevest pets of my pettest peeves (whichever is more wrongless) -- is that most Republicans are too damned cowardly to even use the "S" word, much less condemn socialism.

I worry that there might be a point of no return:

I think the country might be approaching a turning point of sorts. We've gone about as far as it's possible to go with the socialist-flirtation, welfare-state mode without plunging over the abyss into the irreversible, tyrannical, full-blown variety.

I probably rant and rave too much against socialism and risk boring readers. (Always a mistake in blogging.) But the reason I do that is that I think this country is in serious denial, as if they want to have their socialism and not have it too. What will happen if the day of reckoning that Eric S. Raymond warns about ever comes? Is this just something to not think about the way we don't like to think about a nuclear attack on a major U.S. city?

Or is it paranoia? I mean, don't we have an unlimited supply of freedom, resources, and enough of the can-do American spirit of individuality to overcome all obstacles? What worries me is that socialism is incompatible with freedom. So is extreme debt. (Even the 13th Amendment to the Constitution allows that slavery in payment of debt is not slavery.)

Free countries do not declare massive "entitlements" by one class to the money of another class, especially when the money is not there. In free countries, no one is "entitled" to the property of someone else without just compensation.

What worries me is that the closer we get to full-blown socialism, the more the word becomes politically unmentionable. Even discussing an end to the entitlement system is politically taboo. This puts politicians who might want to do something about it in a very difficult position.

I know I'm a RINO and all that stuff, but my biggest worry involves creeping socialism, which seems to be galloping lately. A few socialistic programs here, a few socialistic programs there, and pretty soon you're talking about having the full-blown real thing. And while I know that by voting for the Republicans I'm supposed to be slowing the rate of socialism, if both horses are galloping towards the finish line, how enthusiastic am I supposed to be about voting simply for the slower horse? The semantic issue of whether Barack Obama is a "socialist" or is merely "socialistic" does not concern me at this point, because he is the faster horse, so I must vote against him in order to prolong the race.

Especially coming as it does on the heels of Joe the Plumber, this is all very heartening.

There's a slogan I used to see and hear all over the place when I lived in Berkeley -- "TAX THE RICH TILL THERE ARE NO MORE RICH!" Barack Obama has a slightly more sophisticated spin on it (which he'll deny, of course):

"SPREAD THE WEALTH TILL THERE IS NO MORE WEALTH!"

You don't have to be an economist, a sophisticated pundit, or even a caffeinated political junkie to understand where this leads. Here's "PanhandleWilly," commenting on an article about Joe the Unlicensed Plumber:

....Sen Obama is a socialist...because that's what national health care, 'spread the wealth around,' really means. Tax the rich till there aren't any more rich. Thus democrats aspire to be Cuba without the corny looking fatigues (for now anyway). Conservatives...and though the GOP needs some radical fixing, they still have conservative beliefs at their core...want as many people as possible to be rich and believe if minimally bothered by intrusive government they'll figure it out themselves because they have the requisite 'wanna' to get there. Yeah some fall through the cracks but there are social programs that cushion the fall so you can get up off the floor start up the ladder again. Democrats want to turn the floor into a nice low rent living room...YGBSM! That's what 'spread the wealth around' means. That's what Joe the plumber knows. That's what main street understands and because that was his message Sen McCain, in his less eloquent that Sen Obama diction, won the night and Sen Obama's conversation with Joe the plumber was a self inflicted wound because America finally understands that Sen Obama is going to rustle the fruits of their labors and give it to people who didn't earn it. That's not being Robin Hood...that's horse stealing. Wake up America! If you want to remain a free people with all the fruits of liberty that you are guaranteed in the Declaration of Independence and codified in the US Constitution, then you can't vote for Sen Obama. He is a great guy. He's smart, he's a great family man, and he speaks well...but he has wasted his fine mind in pursuing the wrong path of socialism. It doesn't work. The Declaration says we were all created equal. However equality is not an inalienable right...liberty is. Equality and liberty are not the same thing. Who arbitrates equality? What personal price to you pay to get it and who defines it? It's a slippery slope...just like Joe the P says. Forget the fact that he doesn't have a plumbers license. His point is irrefutable. Wake up America!

There is a problem, though, with the argument that socialism does not work, and this touches on another of my pet peeves.

They (the proponents of socialism) don't care. In fact, they don't want it to work. That is not a bug; it's a feature. The more it fails, the more "fixes" it will need, and the more people will be needed to "fix" it. Socialism requires massive social engineering by definition, and when it fails, the failures generate the need for even more massive engineering. It is a self-perpetuating, endlessly growing machine. Those who say that it doesn't work are right, but they miss the whole idea that it's not supposed to work, and then they get drawn into these red-herring debates with socialists who claim that yes it does work, or yes it can be made to work, when all of that is really irrelevant.

More ominously, once socialistic programs are in place, they become entrenched forms of property "rights" (dishonestly called "entitlements"). These are more impossible than bridge tolls to get rid of, because special interest groups spring up to defend their turf, and because the people who are getting something organize themselves to lobby, and to vote. This is why not even conservative Republicans can touch certain issues, such as the "Third Rail" of social security entitlements. And the reason I used the word "ominous" is because once they're entrenched, even talking about getting rid of them is seen as something akin to advocating civil war. Even if both sides are willing to agree that socialism does not work, once something becomes a vested property "right" whether the system "works" or not becomes a secondary issue.

In the era leading up to the Civil War, did anyone really stop to think about whether slavery worked as an economic system? Would it have mattered? Maybe in theory, but few are willing to go to war to win a theoretical debate. What made people willing to go to war was people who were going to lose their property. That slaves shouldn't have been property made about as much practical difference to the slaveholders as whether there should be an entitlement to a government stipend at age 65.

Similarly, people who own real estate would be more likely to be concerned over whether the government confiscates it than over some theory of the immorality of land ownership. People who hold FCC licenses would still fight like hell for their "turf" even if the government's original basis for regulating bandwidth became superfluous.

So, much as I agree that socialism does not work, I completely understand what an absolute quagmire it is to even mention it, much less actually discuss these things.

That's why I say McCain has restored my faith.

Whether he'll be able to restore our vanishing economic freedom is another matter. But hey, one step at a time.

(At least he's not dedicated himself to making wealth disappear in the name of spreading it.)

There are a lot of things I have not yet done in the area. I still haven't been to the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, nor have I been to the Detroit Institute of Arts, which is now featuring "Monet to Dali." There's a ton of stuff in Ann Arbor I have not explored; for example there's the Gerald Ford Library (although the Internet has revolutionized such places -- see this collection of declassified Vietnam War documents, for example.)

Then there are less well known venues. I have not been to the Contemporary Art Institute of Detroit (aka CAID), and even though I'm turned off by much of what passes for "contemporary art," events like their upcoming Halloween Funk Night Event on Friday the 31st look exciting!

FUNK NIGHT - Friday, October 31, 2008

We are happy to announce that all charges against the CAID's members have been dropped regarding the incident which took place on May 31, 2008 -during Funk Night. To celebrate we would like to invite YOU to come out and dance on Halloween at our Funk Night Revival party from 12AM-5AM. Door prizes for all who dress as a police officer for Halloween.

We will be showing the entire video from all surveillance cameras recorded during the illegal police raid on the CAID on May 31.

The understaffed and overworked Detroit Police Department raised eyebrows in May when its officers conducted a SWAT-like raid on young hipsters at a small west-side art gallery.

Cops issued 116 tickets for "loitering in a place of illegal occupation" and confiscated 44 cars. Police said the gallery sold beer and wine illegally.

Last month, the city agreed to drop all charges after American Civil Liberties Union attorneys argued that the Detroit nuisance ordinance is unconstitutionally vague and the cops had no probable cause.

The office of Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy, though, has taken a hard line on the impounded cars. Patrons who paid the standard $900 fee to retrieve their vehicles are out of luck. Their money won't be refunded, and the several people whose cars remain impounded still must pay the $900, plus towing and daily storage costs.

If that sounds harsh, consider the case of Jerome Price, a family therapist from Ferndale. After he paid the prosecutor $900 to get back the car his 19-year-old son drove to the gallery that night, someone stole the car while it sat in the impound lot at Boulevard & Trumbull Towing in Detroit.

"I've called the prosecutor's office numerous times," Price said. "They never called me back."

Price won't be getting his money back either, said Worthy spokeswoman Maria Miller. She said the vehicle seizure -- called forfeiture -- is a civil action that is separate from the criminal case and has a different standard of proof.

"Also," Miller said, "the purpose of the nuisance ordinance is remedial in nature and designed to discourage continuing nuisance behavior."

The ACLU is challenging the seizure of the cars on behalf of nine patrons whose cars remain impounded.

Michael Steinberg, the ACLU's Michigan legal director, called the car seizures "a comedy of errors" and "the ultimate Motor City shakedown."

He added: "It's mystifying why they insist on proceeding with these cases."

$900.00 for towing?

Bear in mind that most of the patrons were students:

The raid took place after 2 a.m. May 31 at the Contemporary Art Institute of Detroit on Rosa Parks Boulevard during a popular monthly dance party for members only called Funk Night. Heavily armed police dressed in black uniforms and masks stormed the small space. Witnesses reported police forcing people to the floor at gunpoint. Some patrons described officers as abusive.

Most of the patrons were college students or recent graduates. Police found no weapons, drugs or fugitives with outstanding warrants.

The raid took place after 2 a.m. May 31 at the Contemporary Art Institute of Detroit on Rosa Parks Boulevard during a popular monthly dance party for members only called Funk Night. Heavily armed police dressed in black uniforms and masks stormed the small space. Witnesses reported police forcing people to the floor at gunpoint. Some patrons described officers as abusive.

Most of the patrons were college students or recent graduates. Police found no weapons, drugs or fugitives with outstanding warrants.

Price said officials at Boulevard & Trumbull told him his car, a 1996 Chevy Corsica with 130,000 miles, was driven through a fence. June Lee, B & T's chief operating officer, confirmed Price's story.

Miller said Price's remedy is to sue B & T for the value of the car, which Price has done. Lee said the company is trying to work out a settlement.

Said Price: "My biggest problem is my kid was put facedown with a shotgun pointed at him" during the raid.

It is common to seize vehicles actually used in prostitution and drug cases. But several attorneys questioned how the prosecutor can forfeit cars belonging to people who simply used them to get to what many thought was a private party.

"Using the nuisance statute appears to be quite a stretch considering the cars were just driven to the gallery," said Jorin Rubin, a defense attorney and expert on forfeiture law.

Said the ACLU's Steinberg: "It just illustrates the purpose behind raids is to make money."

If I go to a damned museum for an event and they sell me a beer, it isn't my problem if they didn't get the proper license, any more than it's my problem whether the guy who cuts my hair has a frigging barber's license. Perhaps this makes me an anarchist, but the idea of being raided by a SWAT team, having a gun pointed at my head and losing my car to a bunch of theives after paying a $900 "civil forfeiture" fee to get it out is just outrageous. By any standard.

Trick or treat, anyone?

Maybe I should just stay home and send a Halloween check to the ACLU.

The renowned educationalist Bill Ayers will not be speaking at the University of Nebraska. The Omaha World Herald had this to say:

Just 11 days after next month's election, the University of Illinois-Chicago professor, William Ayers, is scheduled to speak at a student research conference held by the UNL College of Education and Human Science.

Gov. Dave Heineman released a statement saying that UNL leaders should not allow Ayers, a 1960s radical-turned-professor at the University of Illinois, to talk during a campus event on Nov. 15.

"Chairman of the Board of Regents Chuck Hassebrook and President of the University J.B. Milliken should immediately rescind the invitation extended to Bill Ayers to speak at the University," the governor said. "This is an embarrassment to the University of Nebraska and the State of Nebraska. Bill Ayers is a well known radical who should never have been invited to the University of Nebraska."

Meanwhile, Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Nebraska, today said in a statement that he is disappointed that UNL invited William Ayers to speak on campus Nov. 15.

"His past involvement in a violent protest group and incendiary comments are not consistent with the agenda of unity that we need in America today," Nelson said. "I encourage the university to reconsider this decision."

What is striking is that Ayers is an important deal politically in Nebraska. That says that the word is out on this mope and it isn't doing Obama any good in the rest of America either.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

In the ongoing campaign to minimize Bill Ayers (discussed previously in this post and others), the latest meme is an attempted moral equivalency comparison between Obama's friend Bill Ayers the terrorist, and McCain's friend G. Gordon Liddy the Watergate burglar. While others have made this comparison before, it's getting attention now because David Letterman brought it up in an interview with John McCain.

While I think the comparison is laughable in the extreme, I'm assuming David Letterman sees it as a serious moral equivalency argument, and not comedy, so I'll treat it as if it's serious. From the transcript of his interview with McCain:

JM: How long we interact with them and how we interact with them...But the point in this campaign is the economy, the economy and the economy.

DL: But did you not have a relationship with Gordon Liddy?

JM: I met him, you know, I mean...

DL: Didn't you attend a fund raiser at his house?

JM: Gordon Liddy's?

*** commercial break ***

DL: How about that Tina Fey?

JM: I know Gordon Liddy. He paid his debt. He went to prison, he paid his debt, as people do. I'm not in any way embarrassed to know Gordon Liddy. And his son, who is also a good friend and supporter of mine.

DL: But you understand that the same case could be made of your relationship with him as being made with William Ayers.

JM: Everything about any relationship that I've had I will make completely open and give a complete accounting of. Senator Obama said that he was a guy who lived in the neighborhood. OK, it was more than that.

DL: They served on a committee at one point.

JM: Yes, that gave $230,000 to ACORN which is now involved in what may be one of the great voter frauds in history. It could be. We need to know.

Ayers was a wartime enemy of the United States, whose organization was 100% on the side of the enemy, had declared war on America, and either murdered or tried to murder police, public officials, and (worst of all) American soldiers. While Ayers believed in killing our troops; Liddy believed in raising them.

For all of G. Gordon Liddy's faults (and I should pause here to disclose my unconventional view of his role in Watergate, as well as my admiration of him) it has to be remembered that Liddy -- working for a wartime president during a period in which domestic terrorists like Ayers were literally waging war against the United States -- was indisputably on the side of his country. He was never anything even close to being a terrorist.

Ayers was not only on the side of the Communist enemy, he considered himself to be waging a declared domestic war on their behalf. Liddy considered himself to be on the opposite side -- waging war against the domestic terrorists like (and no doubt including) Ayers. While both used and advocated illegal methods against enemies, to Ayers the enemy was America, and to Liddy the enemy was those waging war on America.

Yes, they probably would have killed each other. This does not make them moral equivalents of each other.

Ayers the Weatherman was a terrorist. Liddy the "Plumber" was a zealous anti-terrorist.

Ayers was and is fiercely anti-American, while Liddy was and is fiercely pro-American.

Or don't distinctions like that mean anything anymore?

If they don't, we might as well compare Julius Rosenberg to J. Edgar Hoover or Joe McCarthy. Or Jane Fonda to Bob Hope.

MORE: The video of McCain's Letterman appearance is here.

I thought he handled himself quite well.

(That last link is from CBS, so I can't embed it. The other ones I've seen keep getting flagged and taken down.)

This story about the 7th grade girl being called a "racist" for wearing a Sarah Palin t-shirt is so predictable that initially I thought it hardly merited a blog post:

VOLUSIA COUNTY, Fla. (WOFL FOX 35, Orlando) -- She's only 12 years old but Ashleigh Jones is feeling the heat of this election year.

That's because the seventh grader at New Smyrna Beach Middle School was called a racist by classmates for wearing a pro-Sarah Palin t-shirt.

Jones is volunteering at the Republican Headquarters in New Smyrna Beach. The Palin t-shirt was a gift from her fellow volunteers.

"Some of the students were calling me racist because I was Caucasian," she said. "I wanted the Caucasian man to win. And I told them that's not true. It's my freedom of speech, it's my opinion."

Jones' parents say they aren't mad at the school they just want everyone including their daughter to voice their opinion constructively.

Actually, I think it was in the 7th grade when that book was assigned as reading material; remarkably, I see that it still is. For all I know today's students are probably taught that it's about sex and the evolution of women's "reproductive rights" or something. Or intolerance by religious conservatives, as this reviewer claims:

The one thing in Scarlet Letter's favor is that it is politically correct. It's satisfying that the intolerant religious fanatics are the bad guys.

Such intolerance can even extend to extramarital pregnancy (an ostensible theme of the Scarlet Letter.)

In fact, the way some of the irreligious people treat the pregnancy of Bristol Palin can hardly be called tolerant. True, they're not labeling her an adulteress or fornicator, but I think the pregnancy carries a stigma nonetheless. A new and very ironic stigma, as if there's a new post-shame shame associated with pregnancy -- especially when that pregnancy can somehow be associated with the right wing. (Almost reminds me of the way conservatives are not allowed to be gay, and gays are not allowed to be conservative.)

Even though the "baby bump" is considered totally acceptable in Hollywood circles, Bristol Palin should be ashamed of her "baby bump" -- not so much for being a pregnant teen, but for being a teen who is "pregnant while Republican." Nice girls, "normal" girls (meaning affluent girls, especially affluent Democratic girls, i.e. "civilized" girls) are supposed to do the right thing, and have abortions.

At least, that's the "subtext" as I see it -- especially considering that there's actually a web site named "Saving Bristol" for the express purpose of raising "money and support for Bristol Palin to have an abortion and move out of her abusive household." They're asking for donations to Planned Parenthood and the "Lilith Fund" (whatever that is) in Bristol's name.

Moral lesson? Some teen pregnancies are tolerated. But the teens in the wrong category should be stigmatized for not having abortions, and they might as well be wearing the letter "P."

Hardly what I would call tolerance.

(I admire the 7th grader for her courage.)

Cross Posted at Power and Control

For more information visit getliberty.org.

H/T Eric of Classical Values by e-mail.

I have been thinking some about what all this voter fraud business means in the larger scheme of things.

It means that the left is on the wane in a very serious way. They can't win without cheating.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

As I have been saying, there's a bigger problem than Bill Ayers' unrepentant terrorism and his present day radicalism, and that is his mainstream respectability.

For. The. Umpteenth. Time.

Bill Ayers should not be respectable or mainstream.

For some reason, that issue is seen as irrelevant or nonexistent, and the Ayers issue is spun alternately as:

No one cares what Ayers did and it was a long time ago so it doesn't matter

Barack Obama was a child when the bombs went off so it doesn't matter

Obama's contacts with him involved working for "educational reform"

The economy is more important, so HOW DARE McCain even mention Ayers?

When he did last night (after Bob Schieffer brought up Sarah Palin's "palled around with terrorists" remark), here were Obama's words in response:

In fact, Mr. Ayers has become the centerpiece of Senator McCain's campaign over the last two or three weeks. This has been their primary focus. So let's get the record straight. Bill Ayers is a professor of education in Chicago.

Forty years ago, when I was 8 years old, he engaged in despicable acts with a radical domestic group. I have roundly condemned those acts. Ten years ago he served and I served on a school reform board that was funded by one of Ronald Reagan's former ambassadors and close friends, Mr. Annenberg.

That Obama would invoke Annenberg's name shows a clear intent to continue -- not denounce -- the ongoing mainstreaming of the unrepentant Ayers.

So does Obama's invoking the names of other members of the board:

Other members on that board were the presidents of the University of Illinois, the president of Northwestern University, who happens to be a Republican, the president of The Chicago Tribune, a Republican-leaning newspaper.

Mr. Ayers is not involved in my campaign. He has never been involved in this campaign. And he will not advise me in the White House. So that's Mr. Ayers.

McCain came back with this:

MCCAIN: Well, again, while you were on the board of the Woods Foundation, you and Mr. Ayers, together, you sent $230,000 to ACORN. So -- and you launched your political campaign in Mr. Ayers' living room.

OBAMA: That's absolutely not true.

MCCAIN: And the facts are facts and records are records.

OBAMA: And that's not the facts.

As to Ayers and Obama funding ACORN, it is true:

Obama's tenure with the Woods Fund is perhaps most noteworthy for his association with former terrorist Bill Ayers. Ayers served on the Woods board for three years of Obama's tenure and remained on the board after Obama departed. Hillary Clinton raised this issue earlier this year at the Philadelphia debate when Obama, as he has done throughout the campaign, tried to minimize his relationship with Ayers.

[...]

During Obama's time on the Woods Funds ACORN received grants of $45,000 (2000), $30,000 (2001), $45,000 (2001), $30,000 (2002), and $40,000 (2002) from the Woods Fund.

But I'll say this for Obama: he's come a long way since he described Ayers as someone he barely knew who was "a guy who lived in the neighborhood."

What annoys me the most about Obama's performance last night is his attempt to continue the mainstreaming of a murderous radical who should never have been mainstreamed in the first place.

Yes, I think Ayers, a murderous, admitted enemy of the United States, was lucky to avoid prison, and should never have been given tenure and respectability. Even now he should be fired, and removed from all semblance of respectability. I know this is not going to happen, and I realize there is no way to hold the people who hired, coddled and promoted Ayers accountable, but I think that if Obama can't at least denounce him as outside the mainstream, he is unfit to be president.

Instead of denouncing him, Obama promotes the meme that Ayers is an "educational reformer" (as he did last night). This is not much different from promoting the meme that Mao was an "agrarian reformer."

In today's Wall Street Journal, Sol Stern (who has studied Ayers in detail) takes issue with that meme in a piece titled "Ayers Is No Education 'Reformer' -- The new media spin is worse than Obama's original evasion."

...[A]s one of the leaders of a movement for bringing radical social-justice teaching into our public school classrooms, Mr. Ayers is not a school reformer. He is a school destroyer.

He still hopes for a revolutionary upheaval that will finally bring down American capitalism and imperialism, but this time around Mr. Ayers sows the seeds of resistance and rebellion in America's future teachers. Thus, education students signing up for a course Mr. Ayers teaches at UIC, "On Urban Education," can read these exhortations from the course description: "Homelessness, crime, racism, oppression -- we have the resources and knowledge to fight and overcome these things. We need to look beyond our isolated situations, to define our problems globally. We cannot be child advocates . . . in Chicago or New York and ignore the web that links us with the children of India or Palestine."

The readings Mr. Ayers assigns to his university students are as intellectually diverse as a political commissar's indoctrination session in one of his favorite communist tyrannies. The list for his urban education course includes the bible of the critical pedagogy movement, Brazilian Marxist Paolo Freire's "Pedagogy of the Oppressed"; two books by Mr. Ayers himself; and "Teaching to Transgress" by bell hooks (lower case), the radical black feminist writer.

Two years ago Mr. Ayers shared with his students a letter he wrote to a young radical friend: "I've been told to grow up from the time I was ten until this morning. Bullshit. Anyone who salutes your 'youthful idealism' is a patronizing reactionary. Resist! Don't grow up! I went to Camp Casey [Cindy Sheehan's vigil at the Bush ranch in Crawford, Texas] in August precisely because I'm an agnostic about how and where the rebellion will break out, but I know I want to be there and I know it will break out." (The letter is on his Web site, www.billayers.org.)

America's ideal of public schooling as a means of assimilating all children (and particularly the children of new immigrants) into a common civic and democratic culture is already under assault from the multiculturalists and their race- and gender-centered pedagogy. Mr. Ayers has tried to give the civic culture ideal a coup de grace, contemptuously dismissing it as nothing more than what the critical pedagogy theorists commonly refer to as "capitalist hegemony."

In the world of the Ed schools, Mr. Ayers's movement has established a sizeable beachhead -- witness his election earlier this year as vice president for curriculum of the American Education Research Association, the nation's largest organization of education professors and researchers.

Bill Ayers epitomizes what has gone wrong in this country.

This is bad, bad, stuff. I don't know how many blog posts I've written over the years on the systematic destruction of the schools, the indoctrination of children, and the steady infiltration of radical leftists in the educational system. (A lot, I'm sure.) But here's a guy who, despite the fact that he is proud of his murderous, treasonous past, has been given enormous power to do all of these things, and a guy who helped him and worked with him closely is running for president. This would speak poorly of Obama, even if Ayers was not a famous Weather Underground terrorist.

But what happened last night really gave me the creeps. Not only has Barack Obama assisted in the deliberate mainstreaming of a dangerous radical, but he did it right there on national television for the world to see.

Let me repeat what I said yesterday before the debate:

Regardless of how Ayers came to be respectable and mainstream, though, the people who made him respectable are not running for president. Obama is, and so the issue of Ayers -- and his respectability -- is fair game. It is not enough for Obama to say Ayer's "past" is despicable if Ayers does not repent it. Nor does hiding behind the "everyone else did it" claim of Ayers' respectability.

The question is not whether Ayers' past actions were despicable, but whether Obama thinks being unrepentant about terrorism is despicable.

Similarly, the question is not whether Ayers is respectable, but whether Obama thinks he should be respectable.

So I have another.

Does Obama truly believe that Ayers' acts were despicable?

I wonder.

McCain almost touched on the problem when he said this last night:

...Senator Obama chooses to associate with a guy who in 2001 said that he wished he had have bombed more, and he had a long association with him.

Anyone who thinks Ayers is repentant in the least, watch this (from 1998):

Does Barack Obama think that such people -- who he admits committed "despicable acts" but who don't regret those acts -- should nonetheless be welcomed into and become part of the respectable mainstream?

Apparently yes.

Why? Might it be that he doesn't think what they did was all that despicable?

Should someone who thinks that way be president?

Have you ever wondered why big giant corporations and utilities have so many brainless morons working in things like "customer service" and "billing"?

I think I've figured it out.

Since my move from Pennsylvania to Michigan, I have spent untold hours on hold trying to have my utilities and services at the old address disconnected. I was assured that they were, and provided them with my new address for final bills. Yet to my astonishment, they went right on billing me!

Now, you could argue that the people who were supposed to close the accounts were incompetent. They probably were. Each time I got through to a person, I heard inordinate amounts of typing -- as if the person was writing a long essay instead of just the words "CLOSE ACCOUNT." I figured that they must have been doing whatever they're supposed to do to close my account, but I was wrong.

I had moved out in early August, and went through all of this, so naturally when the September electric and gas bills came, I was furious. So I called and told them I no longer lived there, and demanded that they close my account. To this they said that they could not close the account because they could not turn off service unless someone was there! I went around and around with them, saying I was in Michigan, and that it was up to whoever did or didn't move in to take care of any new service, but they disagreed, saying it was my responsibility. Amazing. (And absolute nonsense; I'm pretty sure thus was a cover for the fact that they just don't want to do their job and close the account, because they simply don't know how.)

Now, I have read many reports about people getting turned off for non-payment, so it occurred to me that this might be a legal loophole I could cleverly exploit to my advantage. So I told the insistent idiot to listen very carefully, and go tell her supervisor that I simply would not pay the bill, and that I was demanding that they disconnect me for non-payment! This did get her attention, so she put me on hold for around forty five minutes. (Fortunately, I have a speakerphone so I can do other things while on hold.)

Amazingly, her supervisor talked to a "field supervisor" and sure enough, the message was relayed back to me that I did not have to pay for the period after which I told them I was no longer there!

One thing that works to my advantage in dealing with customer service people is that I'm a veteran phone holder, and I'm onto the "long hold" game. I know that they realize most people will simply hang up, and let them "win."

Yes, many times when I have been in a hurry, I have given up and let them win, much as it kills me. But as Barack Obama would say, "Not this time."

If it had just been the gas and electric bill that this happened with, I probably wouldn't have bothered with a blog post. But I have seen similar behavior so many times and in so many companies that I have learned that stupidity and delay work to the advantage of companies that want your money, and once they have what's called an "account," the inextricably intertwined nature of incredibly incompetent people and deliberate understaffing can transform closing an account from a simple phone call into a major time commitment (but, if your persistence pays off, a real achievement is possible).

And just now, I had another major achievement! I got my water service finally turned off! Yes, I had called before (back in August), and went through the usual interminable hold which is called "billing," talked to the slow-witted people I know can neither count nor spell, and was told I would get a final bill at the new address. Two months later, I got a new bill today, for October!

Another call, another interminably long hold, while listening to the tappy tappy noises far in excess of the amount of tapping which should be required. Finally I was told that "someone probably made a mistake" but that "an email has been sent."

Whether I'll get a bill next month remains to be seen. But at least I didn't let them win by hanging up.

The magic of this, this corporate firewall of incompetence, is that it doesn't have to be created deliberately, and it might not have been originally.

Simply hire the most idiotic possible human beings to talk to any account holder who wants to close an account, and hire as few of them as possible. The result is that fewer accounts will be closed. For every determined asshole like me, there are inevitably other busy people who just give up and pay. Factor in the type of accounts that automatically debit people's credit cards, and the result is a lot of people paying for things they don't want, but can't get rid of because they don't have time.

(And if anyone thought this was bad, you should hear about the time I tried to close my satellite radio account. It took days. Only a crazy person should try it.)

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

The personal experiences related in the comments are fascinating.

(Obviously, I'm not alone in my suspicions.)

When I wrote an earlier post about the phony "race card" McCain is alleged to have "played" because unknown voices screamed things, I was assuming that the "Kill him!" allegation was at least factually correct. Surely (so I thought) no reporter would make up such a story.

Wrong! It was either made up, or a figment of reporter Davis Singleton's no doubt overstimulated leftist imagination:

SCRANTON - The agent in charge of the Secret Service field office in Scranton said allegations that someone yelled "kill him" when presidential hopeful Barack Obama's name was mentioned during Tuesday's Sarah Palin rally are unfounded.

The Scranton Times-Tribune first reported the alleged incident on its Web site Tuesday and then again in its print edition Wednesday. The first story, written by reporter David Singleton, appeared with allegations that while congressional candidate Chris Hackett was addressing the crowd and mentioned Obama's name a man in the audience shouted "kill him."

News organizations including ABC, The Associated Press, The Washington Monthly and MSNBC's Countdown with Keith Olbermann reported the claim, with most attributing the allegations to the Times-Tribune story.

Agent Bill Slavoski said he was in the audience, along with an undisclosed number of additional secret service agents and other law enforcement officers and not one heard the comment.

"I was baffled," he said after reading the report in Wednesday's Times-Tribune.

He said the agency conducted an investigation Wednesday, after seeing the story, and could not find one person to corroborate the allegation other than Singleton.

Hey, maybe Singleton could team up with Philip Berg, and report the "news" no one can confirm!

MORE: Noticing that they're still belaboring the false report, Glenn Reynolds calls this "Keeping up the narrative, regardless of the facts!"

America's great friend of the working man Joe Biden has attacked Joe the Plumber for -- guess what? -- making too much money!

To anyone who understands the way Biden's sleazy little mind works, this should surprise no one.

Yes, I think it is "sleazy" and "little" (with all respect to short people *) to smear a deceased truck driver by saying he was drunk when he wasn't.

This working man's "friend" has no shame. I hope he never becomes president.

* While height is irrelevant, it is interesting to note the height contrasts in the candidates:

Most estimates put the height of Barack Obama, the nominee of the Democratic Party in the United States presidential election, 2008, between 6 ft 1 in and 6 ft 2 in (approximately 1.87 meters).[1][2]

According to his medical records, John McCain, the nominee of the United States Republican Party is 5 ft 6 in (1.68 meters).[3] Were McCain elected to the presidency, he would be the shortest president in over 120 years.

The height difference between them is around six inches (15 centimeters) with McCain being approximately three inches (or 7.5 centimeters) shorter than the average height of all U.S. Presidents at 5 ft 10 in (178 cm): a number that has been rising along with the height of the general United States population.

Democratic Vice Presidential nominee Joseph Biden is 6 ft (1.83 meters) tall.[4] Republican Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin is 5 ft 5 in (1.65 meters) tall.

MORE: We've all heard the phrase "Working Class Hero."

I think Joe the Plumber is the real deal.

We are all against child pornography, right? Society deems people who send or receive [or possess] kiddie porn to be so evil and beneath contempt that we have laws punishing them with long prison terms, regardless of circumstances. The statutory scheme imposes (here in Michigan and in many other places) strict criminal liability for possession of any depiction of "sexually explicit conduct" involving a child (defined as a person under 18).

Ditto, federal law.

What is "sexually explicit conduct"?

Obviously, it includes all those things suggested by common sense. But additionally, the federal and state child pornography laws inject an element of nonsense, by defining "sexually explicit conduct" as including including:

graphic or simulated lascivious exhibition of the genitals or pubic area of any person;

You think I'm kidding, right?

Unfortunately, I'm not. The only reason I wrote this blog post was that the issue was staring at me this morning as I tried to drink my morning coffee, and I couldn't ignore it:

It started as a summertime joke by a Pinckney Community High School freshman, a push on the "send" button of a camera cell phone delivering a nude photo of herself to a couple of her girlfriends.

But once school started, the picture apparently was circulated to a couple of hundred other students in the school and to some in neighboring schools. Livingston County sheriff's investigators and the county prosecutor's office say they are reviewing whether to file pornography charges against those who disseminated the image or still may have it.

Investigators say they believe the girl intended for only two or three friends to see the picture, which shows explicit nudity and includes her face.

"I have no comment!" the 14-year-old's mother sobbed into the phone when contacted by the Free Press on Wednesday.

The girl didn't think through the repercussions, said Jeanne Reck of Hamburg Township, the mother of one of the girl's good friends.

"Kids do stupid things," Reck said. "But for it to go through the entire school like these girls let it out, they really wanted to do damage to her. It's a tough situation."

Principal Jim Darga found an anonymous note and a copy of the picture on his desk Oct. 7. Pinckney Community Schools Superintendent Dan Danosky said the Sheriff's Department was contacted and officials turned over phones confiscated during a school investigation.

Detective Lt. Todd Luzod said the department's investigation actually began in September after a teacher mentioned the photo to an officer who was visiting the school. The county Sheriff's Department has just under a dozen cell phones and is asking students who received the photo to turn over their cell phones or, at least, delete it.

"They could just erase it," Livingston County Prosecutor David Morse said Wednesday, comparing the photo to unsolicited junk mail. "You can't prohibit something from coming to you in the mail. But it's what you do with it once you receive it."

Those who keep the photo or send it along to others are committing a crime, Morse said.

The Sheriff's Department has a deputy trained in computer forensics gathering evidence from the confiscated phones for Morse's review.

He said cell phones that were confiscated with the picture will not be returned unless the owner pays for a computer forensics expert to verify the photo has been erased from the phone's memory permanently.

"They're out a phone, yes. We won't and can't give them back because it contains illegal material," Morse said, acknowledging the prohibitive cost of having an expert clear the phone. "It would be cheaper to buy a new phone."

But if the laws say it is, the laws need to be changed.

"Sexually explicit acts" should be defined as acts, not as nudity.

It's not as if there weren't warnings about the consequences of criminalizing child nudity. Back in 2000, Salon.com piece (titled "Is this child pornography? -- American photo labs are arresting parents as child pornographers for taking pictures of their kids in the bath") analyzed a number of these cases, and concluded:

there is no way to differentiate -- legally -- between a family snapshot of a naked child and child pornography.

Sounds like this girl was involved with the creation and distribution of child porn...that is a crime the last time I checked. It is not just some "joke" or "mistake."

She even attended the Homecoming Dance? Hello - parents? Ever hear of grounding your kid? Make her accountable for her actions - which are causing trouble for a couple hundred others? And I agree with NYPD15thSquad - charges should be filed against the girl. I bet if a male student had taken a pic of his penis charges would have been filed by now.

Since a bunch of boys will most likely become registered sex offenders over this, will the girl who originally sent the picture of herself be charged with manufacturing and distributing child pornography? Or will she be portrayed as the poor "victim"? Any bets?

Fortunately, the government has not criminalized either the nude pictures -- or the sexually explicit pictures -- I have taken of Coco. (Although I was accused of dog pornography, charges were never filed. Coco is over 18 in dog years.)

Actually I'm not sure my attempt at "doggie porn" humor works (even though a dog is a rat is a pig is a boy), because while I can laugh derisively at the idiocy of zero tolerance puritan zeal, there are real victims involved here.

Parents and child victims. Not of the "kiddie porn," but of the law.

I said "the law is an ass" in imitation of Dickens, but now I'm realizing that might be taken as suggestive or immoral.

So I'll just say the law is sick.

NOTICE TO COMMENTERS: Anyone who might want to leave a comment, be careful with the word "porn" because the anti-spam feature will not allow comments with that word. However, if you substitute a zero -- "0" for the letter "O" -- it should go through.

(I say this because I've gotten emails before about the problem, and there's not much I can do about it.)

If I didn't know better I'd say some one was trying to steal an election in Ohio. Jennifer Brunner is the Secretary of State of Ohio. She is a Democrat. She is not interested in finding out if every one registered is actually eligible to vote.

The court's 9-6 opinion, written by Judge Jeffrey Sutton, suggested that voters whose driver's license number or Social Security number does not exactly match those found on databases maintained by the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles or Social Security Administration could be required to use provisional ballots instead of conventional ones.

"The thing that concerns me is that Judge Sutton indicated that these mismatched names could be subjected to provisional voting and nowhere in [Help America Vote Act] is that the case. The Help America Vote Act is really not meant to be used to disenfranchise or to help determine voter eligibility," Brunner said in an interview today.

"Essentially that provision of HAVA is basically supposed to maintain voter registration databases," she said. "It is not for determining voter eligibility. The interpretation that seems to be coming from at least that particular judge takes HAVA and uses it as a means to exclude voters from a regular ballot. That is a concern."

The full 6th Circuit's opinion overturned the decision of a three-judge panel at the federal court last week and restored the ruling announced last week by U.S. District Court Judge George C. Smith.

Since Jan. 1, Ohio has 666,000 newly registered or updated voters -- all of whom fall under scrutiny by this latest court ruling. Brunner said an initial review found that at least 200,000 of them might have mismatched information. Once the office identifies all of the mismatched voters, Brunner will send the list to the county boards of election where the individuals have registered.

But state Republican Party Chairman Bob Bennett said Brunner's decision to not implement the verification system sooner without the court forcing her to do so has cost county boards of election valuable time reining in examples of fraud.

Something smells at 2885 Brownlee Avenue in Columbus, Ohio.

I strongly recommend that the Ohio Republican Party get on the case before it's too late. Today's the last day to challenge voters who registered early in Ohio before the run up to Election Day.

Here's the stench: An entire houseful of young, non-Ohioan Democrat activists have used the Brownlee Avenue address to register themselves to vote in the Buckeye State and secure absentee ballots under extremely shady circumstances -- all while mobilizing a large effort to register thousands of others for absentee and early voting. The activists are leaders of a group called "Vote From Home '08." The group is self-identified as having "extensive experience with political organizing, election administration, and Democratic politics." They were hailed as the "Justice League" by a Daily Kos blogger. Their Facebook page brags: "Want to turn the Presidential election blue in a key swing state? Vote from Home is a political organization that was founded by a team of young people for the purpose of assisting, aiding, and tracking voters to elect progressive candidates to the White House. Encouraged by the excitement of the 2008 elections and the movement around the Democratic candidates, Vote From Home will be in Ohio seeking to deliver 10,000 votes to Democratic candidates statewide."

Some one is paying these people. It would be interesting to find out who.

H/T Ace Of Spades HQ who has way more on the 200,000 suspect registrations.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

Now here is where it gets tricky:

Obama said, "My attitude is that if the economy's good for folks from the bottom up, it's gonna be good for everybody. If you've got a plumbing business, you're gonna be better off if you're gonna be better off if you've got a whole bunch of customers who can afford to hire you, and right now everybody's so pinched that business is bad for everybody and I think when you spread the wealth around, it's good for everybody."

Now how do economies actually get better off? Not by spreading the wealth. They get better off by more production. Passing out money may be OK as an emergency measure but making it a permanent feature has the bad effect of reducing incentive. Which reduces output.

So the Senator wants to reduce economic output with higher taxes and reduce government income with higher taxes in the name of fairness. What is fair about an under producing economy?

Cross Posted at Power and Control

Commenter Andrew has suggested this unedited YouTube version for those of who would want to see more. I also have another post up Joe The Plumber.

I didn't live-blogging tonight's debate, but I noticed the 25 year age gap as never before.

I'm worried that current economic problems favor youth, for reasons that are neither fully understood, nor rational.

The conventional wisdom is that it hurts McCain:

Many see the 25-year age gap as McCain's greatest vulnerability. It's what Obama is not so subtly reminding you of when he calls this election a choice between "the past and the future."

Obama is younger, but he's also greener in terms of experience. McCain is old, but he's incredibly energetic and vibrant. Almost crackling with energy. To see a younger man on the ropes (as Ann Athouse said, "I think McCain is getting to him") against a much older man says a lot about the stamina of the older man.

While McCain is the oldest so far, Republicans candidate are almost always older than the Democratic candidates. With the exception of Hubert Humphrey in 1968, they have been older than Democrats in every race since 1952 1948 (when the older Harry Truman defeated the younger Tom Dewey).

This is not to say that it's about age, but I don't think the age factor hurts McCain as much as some people think.

Glenn Reynolds noticed that "McCain looked like he was having a better time than Obama" and "Obama's smirking was unattractive." Considering a 25 year age gap, I like the fact that McCain has a more attractive smirk.

Anyway, I thought McCain won, although I wish he'd pushed back harder on Ayers. While but should'ves are easy, I think he should have spelled out why it was important, without getting emotional. (Obama accused him of making Ayers the central issue of the campaign, which indicated defensiveness on Obama's part and gave McCain a great opportunity.)

So I think McCain won, and Obama held his own as best he could. But I agree with Glenn that Joe the Plumber stole the show.

MORE: FWIW, I like the way McCain slammed big government. I'm very nervous about the country's slide towards socialism, which is tempting, but a terrible mistake. I'm glad McCain has the maturity to recognize the problem.

MORE: As I was reminded below, Truman defeated Dewey in 1948, not 1952.

Correction noted.

UPDATE: Jennifer Rubin has an excellent debate recap, and so does Glenn Reynolds.

Finally, even though I like him, at the risk of sounding wildly partisan, I must refuse to endorse Joe the Plumber.

MORE: England is talking about the star of the debate!

in the end, the real star of the third and final presidential debate was neither John McCain nor Barack Obama but a small town plumber called Joe.

Joe Wurzelbacher from Toledo, Ohio, has become an unlikely media star after finding himself the focus of the debate between the two White House rivals.

He is a tradesman who has worked 12-hour shifts for years and now plans to buy his own small plumbing business. The trouble for Joe the plumber is that this would take his earnings to more than $250,000 - making him a target of Obama's plan to tax the wealthy.

MORE: Here's Dick Morris:

Finally, John McCain came out swinging. In his feisty, aggressive style, he scored key points on spending and taxes. Coherent in a way that he has not been in previous debates, McCain repeatedly turned Obama's spending plans against the Democratic candidate. The continued invocation of Joe the Plumber brought a populist edge to the tax issue that it has lacked since Ronald Reagan.

[...]

McCain has now established the tax issue in a way he has not been able to do so far in the contest. Now he can widen the gap between the campaigns on this key issue. If the Republicans concentrate their campaign on the key issue of taxes and abandon the other lines of attack, they can use the lines developed in this debate to do better and better as Election Day nears.

And if you want to refresh your memory on how Obama got his start in Socialist Politics here are a couple of refreshers:

Socialists Win
The Senator Is A Socialist

H/T Gateway Pundit.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

In an earlier email discussing McCain's prospects, M. Simon said, "Maybe lower gasoline prices will have some effect."

I replied with a quote that I attributed to Frank J. at IMAO:

McCain only needs to threaten to drill -- and prices go down!

Jeff Jacoby takes issue with the claim that calling attention to Barack Obama's close working relationship with Bill Ayers constitutes unfair guilt by association:

...Obama's defenders have been insisting that to call attention to these deplorable associations is to engage in ridiculous and unfair "guilt by association."

But it isn't ridiculous to question the values of a candidate whose political career got its start in the Chicago living room of violent traitors like Ayers and his wife, Bernardine Dohrn, who have never expressed remorse for the brutal crimes they committed in the Weather Underground. There is nothing unfair about wondering how Obama could have worshipped for 20 years in Wright's church, yet never objected to the fanatic pastor's virulent messages: that AIDS was created by the US government as an instrument of genocide, that America is the "US of KKKA," that the 9/11 slaughter was "America's chickens coming home to roost."

Guilt by association? Not when the associations have such deep roots or raise such troubling questions about Obama's character and judgment. It was only in the heat of a presidential campaign that Obama finally repudiated his alliances with Ayers, Wright, and Rezko. It isn't irresponsible to ask what those associations tell us about a man poised to be the next president of the United States. It would be irresponsible not to.

I do see a problem with pointing the finger at Obama alone, though. After all, he wasn't the one who made Ayers a respectable mainstream figure, and it isn't fair to stick him with the blame for Ayers' respectability, which Obama used as a stepping stone to advance his political career as would many an aspiring young leftist politician in a similar position.

What is being missed by nearly everyone is that morally speaking, the only difference between Ayers and Ted Kaczysinski is that the latter accomplished more of what he set out to accomplish. While both are "ex" bombers in the sense that they don't bomb people now, the idea of either one of them ever becoming respectable ought to be unthinkable.

But the buck has to stop somewhere. Mainstreaming Bill Ayers went too far, and for the good of the country, it should be stopped right now by Barack Obama. He should admit his mistake, and while I know it will sound hypocritical, I think that for the good of the country, he should throw Ayers under the proverbial bus.

However he has not. Who cares how old Obama was when the Weather Underground bombs went off? Does anyone care how old anyone was when the Unabomber's bombs went off?

The point that matters that Ayers is and remains unrepentant.

Why won't Obama simply denounce Ayers not as the moral reprobate that he was but as the moral reprobate he still is? Can anyone imagine Barack Obama describing Ted Kaczynski as just "a respected mathematician" (which he was) or as "a guy in the neighborhood"? Even if he were released and worked in a Chicago community for ten years?

No, and I submit that the difference is only because the latter is not considered respectable. Ayers' respectability is the main reason Obama gets a pass.

Regardless of how Ayers came to be respectable and mainstream, though, the people who made him respectable are not running for president. Obama is, and so the issue of Ayers -- and his respectability -- is fair game. It is not enough for Obama to say Ayer's "past" is despicable if Ayers does not repent it. Nor does hiding behind the "everyone else did it" claim of Ayers' respectability.

The question is not whether Ayers' past actions were despicable, but whether Obama thinks being unrepentant about terrorism is despicable.

Similarly, the question is not whether Ayers is respectable, but whether Obama thinks he should be respectable.

I think these are not only legitimate questions, but important ones.

MORE: Glenn Reynolds links progressive voter Katie Granju, who thinks Barack Obama's association with Ayersis minor, but who also says this:

Much more disturbing than Obama's minor association with these people is the way Chicago's well-heeled progressive social-political elite have, over time, completely absolved the pair of their crimes and elevated them to radical chic status. Given the couple's standing within Chicago's high-status Democratic political hierarchy, it's not surprising at all that their paths would have crossed with Obama's repeatedly. Considering Ayers' and Dohrn's positions in Chicago's lefty academic scene,the fact that Obama has had some casual association with them due to overlapping political/social circles is pretty much to be expected. But it's still something that I, a progressive voter, find completely distasteful.

So, what about "Chicago's well-heeled progressive social-political elite" having "completely absolved the pair of their crimes and elevated them to radical chic status"?

Isn't it fair to ask Obama whether he embraces that?

He's running for president of the United States, not Mayor of Berkeley.