Children Of The Corn

Jonah Goldberg:

No Sale

No doubt due to some leftwing rapid response, I'm getting deluged with this clip from some documentary called "Jesus Camp" in which kids appear to be praying to Bush. A few quick points:

1. Yes, that stuff ain't my cup of tea either.

2. But, the kids are not in fact worshiping Bush. They're praying for him.

3. And most important, the clip and the activity it shows wasn't part of any campaign effort. The Bush campaign didn't use glassy-eyed kids in a messianic P.R. stunt to promote their candidate, nor did any affiliated outreach group. Meanwhile, that is precisely what the Obama camp is doing — with the active support of the head of NBC, the parent company of MSNBC by the way. The analogy doesn't work at all. And, for those lefty-readers who think the analogy does work, they should be ashamed of the fact that their candidate is in fact doing the same thing. Again: objectively, it's not the same thing, but if you're going to email me the Jesus camp video as some sort of gotchya, that is in no way, shape or form a defense of the Obama Youth video. It is, on your own terms, an indictment of it. If you want to defend the Obama Youth video, defend it. I'd like to see you folks try.

Oh and for giggles: imagine the shrieks and howls if Rupert Murdoch had anything to do with a Children of the Corn for McCain project like this.

Update: Correction!

It's a different Jeff Zucker.

I regret the error. I stand by the revulsion at the video.

Update II: From a reader:

The kids are praying for Bush because he's the President, not because he's Bush. They could/would just as earnestly pray that Bill Clinton, or Barack Obama would appoint judges who would overturn Roe v. Wade. (God CAN work miracles, after all.)

In our (Mo. Synod Lutheran — ask Mark Hemingway about it) church, we pray for the President just about every Sunday (we don't chant and lay on hands and stuff — heck we don't even clap for the choir); we've done it for every President I can remember, which would be about LBJ onward. As Lutherans, we also don't pray for particular policy decisions, more the generic "Thy Will Be Done" thing; but in any event, this prayer (in the clip) was a prayer that the President would DO the right thing, not a prayer to the Man who IS the Right Thing.

People Will Wish That ‘Planet Of The Apes’ Was Real And Was Happening Now

As accurate a take as you're going to find.

The Fix Is In

Great Anchoress post. It inspired this comment:

All of this is extremely distressing. We know the fix is in and the media are in love with someone they don’t know. Soneone no one knows.

Obama has no history to speak of, or at least nothing he’ll willingly share — just a vague terms like community organizer and lawyer. When people start asking questions or looking into his records, they’re shouted down and threatened.

There is no one from Obama’s past that vouches for him — that stands on the stage with him and says, “I know this man. I’ve known him for most of his life. This is who is is.” We haven’t heard from any friends or acquaintances from college, high school or his working years at a law firm or as a community organizer. Those he used for background on his website, Jeremiah Wright, Father Pfleger, etc., have all been thrown under the bus because they were so unseemly. Why doesn’t that frighten people?

We don’t know his grades or his coursework because his college record is hidden. He didn’t write any law review articles even though he was elected the president of the Harvard Law Review. His law firm records are hidden. His communications from his time as an Illinois State Senator are lost.

Information that does leak out does so in publications that aren’t widely read and the media chooses to mostly ignore. But that information is alarming. His work for ACORN, his connections with Saul Alinsky disciples Ayers and McNight his profile in The Reader and his few writings like his article “After Alinsky: Community Organizing in Illinois” offer a frightening look at what’shiding behind a seemingly pleasant demeanor.

The fix is in, and we know it because we know if a republican candidate was as far-right as Obama is far-left, the media would be apoplectic.

He is their ticket back to power, as the Anchoress noted, more than the haughty but dim John Kerry or the dull and unexceptional Al Gore. They’ve seen enough of his activist history, the history they won’t share because it’s so unpalatable, to know how he’ll use his power. So they cover his campaigning with romantic prose and let the voters project onto that pleasing outer shell whatever they want to see.

We are in for very dangerous times.

oh my. what a crisis and stuff.

dow up 4.7%, nasdaq up 5.0%. the sky is falling and we must repeat must enact socialism immediately.

No Doubt The Khmer Rouge Kids Sang Some Cute Songs, Too

Be afraid. Be very Afraid.

UPDATE: The Anchoress has a few things to say about this.

Cartoon

Here:

Mark Steyn

Link:

Burke's law

Peter, I always enjoy hearing Burke's admonition that a member of parliament owes his constituents his judgment rather than a spasmodic jerk to the latest opinion poll. But isn't it the case that we're in this mess because US politicians previously subordinated "the general reason of the whole" to "local interests" and "local prejudices"? That's to say, with their usual casual destructiveness dressed up in the baby talk of "diversity", they chose to turn the mortgage industry into just another branch of the affirmative-action racket. The United States government in effect decreed credit a human right rather than a privilege judiciously granted by one independent contractor to another.

Do those legislators understand the damage they did to "the general interest"? One of my problems with the "bailout" is the way it's presented not as an emergency measure to correct the stupidity of previous political interference but as evidence of the flawed nature of the market, and thus a justification for more must-pass "emergency" measures ahead. Exhibit A - President Sarkozy rejoicing in the end of "Anglo-American capitalism":

The idea of an all-powerful market without any rules and any political intervention is mad. Self-regulation is finished. Laissez faire is finished. The all-powerful market that is always right is finished.

As a general proposition, when told by unanimous elites that a particular course of action is urgent and necessary to avoid disaster, there's a lot to be said for going fishing. If the entire global economy is so vulnerable that only the stalwart action of Barney Frank stands between it and ten years of soup kitchens, can it, in fact, be saved? Or look at it the other way round: Given any reasonable estimate of the number of headless chickens running around, was the five per cent fall in Asian markets and seven per cent "plummet" on the Dow in reaction to the House vote really the catastrophe some of my pals round here seem to think it was? If fear of seven per cent falls is enough to justify massive unprecedented government intrusion into the private sector, we might as well cut to the chase and go for the big Soviet command economy.

McCain Is Angling To Lose

The Corner:

McCain: "Bipartisanship is a tough thing." [Andy McCarthy]

Since when?

What's tough is standing on principles you believe to be right even when doing so is unpopular. Bipartisanship is just a pleasant word for rationalizing tack-to-the-wind courses of action you actually believe to be wrong just so you can be in harmony with other people who are wrong. What's so hard about that?

The Right's fear of Obama is only going to get Sen. McCain so far. If he thinks he'll get the rest of the way by impressing us with his willingness to come together with the people who caused this problem, rather than leading the case that those people's policies caused the problem and demanding that those policies be changed, conservatives will stay home and Obama will win.

McCain, like most of the rest of the GOP, seems altogether unwilling to fight hard against the traitors who seek to destroy this republic. Now, why in the world would I want to go through another term or two of having to support a guy who doesn't even recognize the fight he's in? If McCain and the GOP are so altogether incapable of articulating the danger posed to this country by the crypto-Bolsheviks of the Jackass Party, and instead, seek to cooperate with them at every turn, thereby receiving only unmitigated hatred and fresh gusts of transparent propaganda as their reward, then screw it! The idea of being associated with such a bunch of losers is revolting to me. If McCain and the GOP are not going to articulate the dangers, name names, and fight them hammer and tongs, then the country will just have to receive its education the hard way. If we're going to have the country destroyed by the leftist sons of bitches without putting up a fight, then let's stop pretending and get it over with!

Prove me wrong, McCain!

I Didn’t Come To Convince Voters That I Could Be A Jeopardy Champion

What Palin ought to say (but won't).

excerpt:

Ever since Senator McCain made that selection, by the way, I’ve been working hard to get up to speed on foreign policy and global issues. The reason I wasn’t up to speed beforehand is that, curiously enough, I’d been focusing all my energy on doing the jobs I’d been elected to do. When I was elected mayor of Wasilla, I tried to be a good mayor. When I was elected governor of the Alaska, I tried to be a good governor. I didn’t regard either position as a stepping stone to anything else. I saw no need to go on fact-finding tours, at taxpayers’ expense, to foreign countries in an effort to bolster my geopolitical credentials for higher office...

If The Government Is Against The Very Idea Of Anyone Taking A Loss, Anywhere, At Any Time, Then We're In Serious Trouble

Charles Hugh Smith:

Here is how frequent contributor Harun I. put it this past weekend:

In his speech the other night, POTUS (President of the U.S.) warned that stocks might fall in value affecting retirement savings, house values may decline and jobs would be lost and banks would fail en masse. What he implied is that stocks can never go down again by more than a certain amount, and ditto for home values. Banks that make poor lending decisions must not be allowed to fail. In other words there can be no major downside to anything ever again without the taxpayer intervention. I would like to denounce this in some highbrow way but it needs to be called what it simply is: nuts.

As I write this I hear one of CNN's talking heads say that individuals and businesses won't be able to get loans unless we pass the bailout. No, they will be able to get loans but at much higher interest rates and for businesses that will degrade profits. For homeowners and sellers that means lower prices. (Emphasis added: CHS) Considering the distortion in prices, much lower. But the prudent will be rewarded with affordable prices and come back into the market.

Reframe the question.

What is really happening in the credit markets? The word is that there is no market for MBS. At the current prices that is true. If the entities holding these assets were to sell these assets at market prices and accept the inevitable consequences the credit markets would begin to function again. Instead they are trying to hold the economy hostage in hopes of a ransom (bailout) will be delivered that maintains as close to status quo as possible.

To be sure, the pain from all this will be severe but to think that there is an easy solution to skirt the effects of such a tremendous degree of greed and avarice is simply childish.

On a similar note, Frequent contributor U. Doran recommended this piece by Bill Fleckenstein: What's next, a ban on stock sales? Prices aren't to the government's liking, so it's changing the rules on the fly, and no one knows where or when new lines eventually will be drawn.

I spent an extraordinary amount of time last week discussing the human responses to betrayal and loss of trust. The reason is simple: these are the bedrock of human interactions and transactions which, once destroyed, cannot be rebuilt except via a painstaking, arduous, patient process of trust incrementally being earned, not bestowed.

The SEC's embrace of a ban on mark-to-market is based on an enormous fallacy: That letting banks keep fictitiously valued "assets" on their books for few years will magically enable them to make huge profits and re-capitalize via profits.

As correspondent J.F.B. has often asked: how are banks going to make money as lending and credit tighten and a recession removes the need, desire and ability to borrow? It seems all too clear: they can't make money with distressed assets which are doomed to depreciate far further, and in a recessionary era of over-extended credit and consumers.

The answer is not to enable fantasy-based accounting and then hope that worthless assets magically gain value: the answer is mark to market, and let buyers price the distressed assets. Every firm which is insolvent should be allowed to go under; buyers will appear at bankruptcy court auctions, and trust can be rebuilt, slowly and in baby-steps, with new regulators, new enterprises and new players.

Pravda Is Our Future

Link.

Karl Rove's Take On The Vote And The Utter Foolishness Of The Dems

This is a must-listen.

The Onion Has The Brutal, Shocking Truth

Link.

Cathartic

This is more than a year old, but you've got to watch Dennis Miller go nuclear on Harry Reid.

Really Cool Modernised Icons

Of the archangels. Today is their feast day...

A Tale Of Two Candidates

Great post.

Hey Nancy, Is It A Crisis, Or Isn't It?

Great moments in leadership.

Many A Prole Will Vote Himself Out Of A Job

The Corner:

Scaling Down [Jay Nordlinger]

Wanted to share with you an arresting letter from a friend:

Just thought I’d send some thoughts from small-business America. My husband’s business is a canary in the coalmine. When tax policies are favorable to business, he hires more guys, buys more goods, etc. When he is taxed more heavily, he fires people, doesn’t buy anything new, etc. Well, duh. So, at the mere thought of a President Obama, he has paid off his debt, canceled new spending, and jotted a list of whom to “let go.”

The first of the guys will get the news tomorrow. And these are not minimum-wage earners. These are “rich” guys, making between $200,000 and $250,000 a year.

My husband will make sure that we’re okay, money-wise, but he won’t give himself a paycheck that will just be sent to Washington. He’ll make sure that he’s not in “rich guy” tax territory. So, he will not spend his money, not show a profit, and scale his workforce down to the bare minimum.

Multiply this scenario across the country and you’ll see the Obama effect: unemployment, recession, etc. No business owner will vote for this man, but many a “middle-class worker” will vote himself out of a job. Sad the Republican can’t articulate this.

I’ll say. But she did, didn’t she?

A 'No' Vote Is The Opposite Of Irresponsible

The Corner:

I respectfully dissent [Andy McCarthy]

I do not understand why those who've voted no should be labeled "irresponsible." The senate evidently will not deign to take up this crisis legislation until Wednesday. Meanwhile, even if you don't reject the bill on philosophical grounds (see e.g., Dick Armey's article on NRO today), there is massive room for improvement. Why not take the time to try to improve it?

This was a terrible bill. To take just a few particulars, why is there no reform of the government interventions that got us to this point in the first place? Why aren't Fannie and Freddie being wound down — even after we've now had to make explicit the implicit, disastrous government guarantee? Why is Pelosi saying (as I noted in an earlier post) that the authority in the bill will allow the Treasury Department (perhaps soon an Obama Treasury Department) to take bad debt off the hands of mismanaged state and local governments?

Why don't we have a firmer formula for how Paulson (or, again, an Obama Treasury Secretary) will determine the value of the toxic debt before the government starts throwing money at it. Now, I've heard all the arguments about how, for the bailout to "work," a premium above current value would have to be paid. Even if I accept that as true for argument's sake, however, are you telling me I am wrong to worry that this bill gives the Treasury Secretary unduly wide latitude to feed taxpayer money into businesses that should fail because they've been irresponsibly leveraged and utterly mismanaged?

Why does the government have to buy the securities? If liquidity is the problem, why can't it make money available for loan, taking back collateral, placing the risk on the bad actors rather than the taxpayers, and letting market set a reasonable price for the bad debt by auction and other conventional methods. Most people will pay their mortgages so these "troubled assets" still have significant value. And there are buyers out there. The troubled entities are not selling at the price the market will bear because they (understandably) think they will get a wildly inflated price from the government — once again, perverting the market: penalizing responsible actors, rewarding the bad actors who brought us to this point, and keeping those bad actors in business.

Even as this deal has been negotiated, the market is carrying on. AIG worked out an enormous loan because it was better to nationalize it than let it fail — but at least taxpayers were protected. Lehman did not get the same deal because it didn't rate it ... and it failed. WaMu and Wachovia have been swallowed by JP Morgan and Citigroup. (See David Reilly WSJ analysis discussing how the JP Morgan/WaMu deal shows the system is working.) Central banks are acting to pump liquidity into faltering institutions in Europe.

Governments are obviously fully capable of expending tens of billions in taxpayer dollars even if Congress does not pass a sweeping bill — indeed, the real cost of nationalizing Fannie/Freddie may dwarf the $700B at issue in the failed legislation. But if these gargantuan expenditures are done on a case-by-case basis, less government intervention will be necessary and what intervention we may have to have will get appropriately high levels of scrutiny — with no blank check for the Treasury. Each new incident will remind voters that the policies of the nineties and the fraud at Fannie and Freddie were significant contributors to our woes, and Democrats will obviously not like that. But that's as it should be — our elections should be a referendum on the policies of the Clintons, Obama, Dodd, Frank, et al.

Does anyone doubt the truth of the following statement in the aforementioned Armey piece today:

Granting the Treasury broad authority to buy troubled assets from private entities poses a significant threat to taxpayers and fundamentally alters the relationship between the private economy and the federal government. Despite the sweeping breadth of the proposed bailout, there is virtually nothing in the bill that addresses the underlying problems that created the housing bubble and the oversized and over-leveraged financial services sector that grew with it. Taxpayers have become Wall Street’s newest financier, with little more than a promise — and a report to Congress on “regulatory modernization” — that Congress will not let this happen again.

FWIW, I think Armey is right about this, and it scares the daylights out of me. Of course, an economic meltdown caused by a drying up of credit scares me, too. But why should I assume the latter problem is necessarily worse than the former? I understand the impulse to obsess over the pain and potential catastrophe staring us in the face, but what if the wages of drastically altering the capitalist system that has been our engine of freedom are decidedly worse?

Socialist Termites Never Quit Chewin'

Well said:

Can't you people see you're being rolled? And you're BEGGING to be rolled! That's the funniest part. You're too stupid to even realize you're not getting a reach around.

Sure, I can see Nancy Pelosi coming back with a bill that says, "We plan to sell these toxic mortgages, which are the result of people with no income, no savings, and bad credit taking out loans they cannot possibly pay to buy houses they cannot afford, and use the profits to fund groups that help people with no income, no savings, and bad credit take out loans for houses."

She really is that dumb. And I hope she does it, because if you thought the Blue Dogs were pissed today, they'll be even more so then.

Also this:

"no, we paid $1 trillion to avoid being socialized. We can make the money back. We damn well know that structural changes could be forever."

Well said. Principle is everything, or it is nothing. If you're only principled until it becomes personally painful, guess what?

You're unprincipled.

If your comfortable sinecure means so much, might as well give 'em their Living Constitution while we're at it (in return for more bread and louder circuses, of course) and have done.

And this:

The reality is that this is a game of political chicken. The problem for Pelosi is that, at the end of the day, the House Republicans hold all the cards. If she jams through a party-line vote, Democrats lose at the ballot box. She knows it, and they know it. She needs their political cover and she knows a deal needs to get done. If the House Republicans are smart, they'll make sure it's done more on their terms than hers.

And this:

This is a boy who cried wolf problem. I have lost faith in congress to the extent that I am not going to simply believe them when they tell us that we need to spend another trillion dollars. I am not going to simply believe them when their solution furthers the interest of the most socialistic liberals nor when they have tried to load it up with give-aways to ACORN and who knows who else. I am not going to simply believe them when they now essentially admit that the figure of $700,000,000 was just intend to indicate a really big number and was not intended to actually represent reality.

I am tired of being manipulated and lied to. Maybe they are right this time, I don't know, but they have lied to me too many times in the past for me to accept their word for anything. Incidentally, if you think financial collapse is bad, try a little global warming. The polar caps are melting, polar bears are drowning, and even here in the Rocky Mountains we're going to get our feet wet. If you're willing to pay $1,000,000,000,000 to keep Wall Street happy, surely $1,000,000,000,000,000 isn't too much to keep from drowning. And I know that is a real problem because they told me so.

This Is Probably About Right

Rick Moran re:Palin. The post is entitled: "‘Unleash’ Palin? Get Real". It's basically pro-Palin, but takes the line that she is highly unlikely to all of a sudden turn into a genius during interviews.

This Is The Number One Important Story Of This Election. No Wonder The Commie Media Won't Touch It.

Excellent piece, too much good stuff to excerpt.

The Perpetrators In Action

Some historical video from Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac hearings of the past. Toward the end we have Franklin Raines saying that a 2% reserve ratio (50 to 1 leverage!) is fine because the assets are "so riskless".

Much Of The Toxic Waste Is Worth Less Than Zero

Some considerations I've seen nowhere else.

A Plea For Journalism Fundamentals

A fisking as well as an exposition about what should be standard journalistic principles.

excerpt:

I wrote before that the headline would be fine if Palin were a fundamentalist. But even if she were (which, again for the slow readers at the LA Times, she is not) the term is not to be used because it has become pejorative. For how long has it been pejorative? Many, many decades. Get with the times. In the 1910s and 1920s, the term referred to a Christian who believed in the “fundamentals” of the faith — the Virgin Birth of Christ, his sinless life, his atoning death, his bodily resurrection and his second coming in the clouds of glory. But since that time, the term has become an insult. Everyone knows this. And just because you want to insult the governor of Alaska doesn’t mean that it’s appropriate to do so on the news pages.

Sigh.

...


But . . . but . . . what do you make of this:

Her aides say Palin’s caution at the intersection of religion and governance is a studied effort to share her beliefs without forcing them on Alaska.

“She’s obviously an intensively religious person,” said Bill McAllister, Palin’s chief spokesman as governor. “She understands that she’s the governor and not preacher in chief. Religion informs her decisions, but she is not out to impose her views on Alaska.”

Isn’t it funny how the quote from Bill McAllister in no way supports the claim Braun makes in the set-up paragraph? I’ve noticed a lot of that in Palin stories.

And then here we go again:

[John] Stein said Palin displayed only hints of her fundamentalist Assembly of God upbringing when he first backed her for a nonpartisan run for Wasilla City Council in the early 1990s.

Again, “fundamentalist” doesn’t actually mean “church whose religious views stray from the Book of Common Prayer.” It doesn’t mean “rubes who actually believe the Bible.”

Considering that Palin is the most popular governor in America, it’s funny how every story I read about her predominantly quotes her political opponents. It’s like that 80 percent of Alaskans who favor her are just more or less invisible. To that end, Braun quotes more from Stein, who, again, she defeated.

Charlie Foxtrot

Scumbags:

The Bailout Follies: Taxpayers Will Be Forced to Buy the Bad Debt of LOCAL GOVERNMENTS [Andy McCarthy]

Orwell must be having a good laugh today. Nancy Pelosi yesterday released a summary of the bailout. Under the heading of "Protection for Taxpayers ..." Madame Speaker includes this whopper (my italics): The scheme "[a]llows the government to purchase troubled assets from pension plans, local governments, and small banks that serve low- and middle-income families."

So in addition to rewarding irresponsible lenders and borrowers, we taxpayers are now to be "protected" by buying the toxic debt of states, cities and municipalities. It's one thing to throw a life-line to the credit industry; local governments, by contrast, have the ability to cut spending drastically or raise taxes if their inhabitants want government services. Elected politicians are then accountable for runaway spending and mismanagement. If Detroit or Chicago is sinking because of big-government policies, that's what the citizens of those cities asked for by voting for Democrats year in and year out. Why should the rest of us be on the hook for that?

Basically, the agreement struck over the weekend with key participation from many of the guiltiest politicos provides no mechanism for valuing the debt that Americans are being asked to assume; places few meaningful limits on the public/private recklessness we will be forced to underwrite; would go into effect right before an election which, if Obama wins, would turn management of the bailout over to a new, big-government administration; and protects not the taxpayers but the defaulters to whom Democrats compelled the banks to extend credit beginning in the nineties (lighting the fuse for today's big bang), while responsible borrowers are denied what would otherwise be available credit and a more honest housing market.

Other than that, it's a great deal.

Ruin your local economy through the reckless choice of voting Democrat. Get bailed out. Rinse. Repeat.

What a bunch of crypto-Bolshevik traitors these guys are.

More Indicators Of A Monumental Scam

Item:

Sept. 29 (Bloomberg) -- The Federal Reserve will pump an additional $630 billion into the global financial system, flooding banks with cash to alleviate the worst banking crisis since the Great Depression.

The Fed increased its existing currency swaps with foreign central banks by $330 billion to $620 billion to make more dollars available worldwide. The Term Auction Facility, the Fed's emergency loan program, will expand by $300 billion to $450 billion. The European Central Bank, the Bank of England and the Bank of Japan are among the participating authorities.

The Fed's expansion of liquidity, the biggest since credit markets seized up last year, comes as Congress prepares to vote on a $700 billion bailout for the financial industry. The crisis is reverberating through the global economy, causing stocks to plunge and forcing European governments to rescue four banks over the past two days alone.

I swear, this congressional bailout is a $700B smokescreen to draw attention away from the real perpetrators. If the Fed can do all of this with zero authorization and oversight, then why the asinine circus in Congress?

"Community Organizers" Just Cost You $1 Trillion. Can You Afford To Put A "Community Organizer" In The White House?

Great blog post about the message McCain needs to communicate. Probably he won't. If not he'll deserve to lose. A party that cannot point out the blame that is so intensely warranted is a party that is of no use to America.

Heads Up

Important safety tip.

SNL Did A Pretty Decent Job With Their Skits

You can see them here. The third one (Clinton) is quite amusing. Interestingly the second one (McCain/Obama) does more to slam Obama for his sleazy Chicago connections than any MSM news outlet has ever done. And the first is an all-too-accurate spoof of the Palin/Couric interview. Sarahcuda had better get her interview mojo working soon, because it's been pretty wretched so far. I was fairly dispirited about this yesterday, but after having a look at the interview she did with Maria Bartiromo just before she was nominated, I know she's a lot sharper than she's lately been able to project. If she doesn't fix this soon, she's toast. Basically she needs to control the interview process, explain that she can't possibly know every detail they might want to ask her about at this point, state clearly what her general outlook and philosophy is, and name names on the other side. Screw the policy-wonkery gotcha stuff. There's no reason she needs to play that game. She doesn't really need to answer the questions put to her, but does need to use the time she's given to expound on general principles. I'm surprised that Republicans continue to be incapable of using a two-by-four where it's needed. Why don't any of them say something along these lines:

"You know, I've got a lot I'm going to need to learn about the finer details of foreign policy. However, I will tell you this. I can promise the American people that they can count on me to never do the outrageous things done by the Democrats in the last eight years. If you vote, as the Democrats did, to authorize a war, then Katie, that means you are all in. Under no circumstances after committing American troops should you start to bellyache in public that it was all a big mistake, and that the only option left is to lose. Such a thing is entirely disgraceful. You cannot pull the rug out from under the country like this. It demoralizes our men and women in combat, emboldens our enemies to wait us out, discourages the Iraqis from bravely stepping up to defend their country and build up their society, and sends a message all over the world, to both our enemies and allies, that America cannot really be counted on. As I just said it is a disgrace, and it's one of the many reasons I'm not a Democrat. I could just never go along with that kind of defeatism, that kind of cowardice, or that kind of treachery. Next question?"

I don't know what it is with Republicans. They are far too afraid to say what needs saying, and are hence part of the problem.

This Is Lots Of Fun! Oh, Uhhh, I Mean It's A Serious Crisis!

Two photos seen at The Corner. Both from the NYT, who replaced the earlier one with the later one. You know, to more accurately portray the gravity of the situation.

Cartoons

Here:





Here:

Bill Whittle

Has another good'un.

John Shadegg On The Bailout

Link:

Is a bailout necessary to save the economy at this point from complete collapse — from a major failure of multiple institutions at the same time?

I think that’s the most difficult question that could be posed under these circumstances, and it’s the question that I have struggled all week to find the answer to. I have talked to a lot of smart people who know Wall Street, know banking, know the economy quite well, and you hear different opinions. Some will tell you that it is absolutely essential. Quite frankly, I’m skeptical about that.

But I think that in some ways the question doesn’t matter any more. Because Secretary Paulson chose to raise the matter in the way he did — that is, to go public in a very high-profile way, not just with his concern, but with a kind of Chicken-Little, the-sky-is-falling kind of demand — it became a self-fulfilling prophecy.

That is to say, once the secretary of the Treasury announces to the world that there is a pending financial collapse, perhaps as great as the Great Depression, and Congress must act — he has sent a signal that essentially tells world markets that Congress must act. I will tell you that has been one of the most frustrating things about this since the very beginning...

I can’t tell you how many members of Congress were stunned at that news, and were stunned that none of their local bankers were calling them. And then they called their local bankers, as I called my local bankers, and my local bankers said, “I think things are just fine.” I talked to one banker who said, “Gosh, we’ve got money, and we’re liquid, and we’re making a profit. And we’re in the market selling loans, and we’ve got competitors trying to sell loans against us.”

So, at that point, there’s a disconnect. Secretary Paulson is claiming that this is a catastrophe of generational proportions that could go worldwide. And none of what we were hearing back home matches that. And I’m not speaking just for myself, but also for many of my colleagues who were making similar calls. They weren’t being called by their bankers, or by any of the businesses back home saying, “I can’t borrow any money”.... If, in fact, Paulson had struck a chord with the American banking community, wouldn’t you think that after he announced on Friday that there was a crisis of liquidity that threatens the entire nation’s financial solvency and Americans’ jobs from coast to coast, that my community bankers in Arizona wouldn’t have been picking up the phone by Monday morning, if not over the weekend, to say that “I share the Secretary’s concerns”?


The proposal for an FDIC-style agency that is funded by Wall Street sufficient to solve the current crisis — is it necessary?

I think it is a dramatically better vehicle than what Mr. Paulson proposed. And if he is absolutely convinced that is not sufficient, then it’s his job to step forward now and show that he has actually listened to the proposal and make the case for why it isn’t sufficient. Do I know if it’s necessary? ... Now that Paulson has made the assertion that we are in deep trouble, he in fact has to send the signal that we are taking the potential of the serious troubles seriously... He has not done a very good job of making his case, he has not had people rallying to his side, saying he’s absolutely right... If you’re in the banking business now and you’re a lender, you’re going to say “Wow, Paulson says the government has got to get involved... I guess I’ll wait until I see what the government involvement is going to be.” And so there may have been some restriction in lending this week. And I’m inclined to believe that’s because Secretary Paulson said there’s a problem...


According to the polls I’ve seen, the public opposes the bailout — it could be an issue as powerful as the drilling issue... Does it also give you a way to distance yourself from President Bush?

I certainly want to distance myself from him on this issue, anyway. Look — President Bush has a tendency to surround himself with smart people, and to trust them... Secretary Paulson earned that trust, evidently. And in this case, I would say he has abused that trust. And you can put that on the record.

I Console Myself With This Fact: They Are Merely Storing Up Wrath For Themselves On The Day Of Judgment

Jerks.

Cartoons

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Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

Republican Senator Jim DeMint:

Now, do you support the bailout?

No, I don't support it and I probably won't support it in any form. It should not have come to this. We knew this was coming and we didn't do anything about it. For years, a number of people, John McCain is one, have tried to change this system, but the Democrats have consistently protected Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- and some Republicans have been complicit in this easy credit game that we had going.

What I am trying to do is to cause enough anger and uproad through blogs, radio talk shows, and TV interviews that I am doing so that people will at least get their congressmen and senators to listen to some kind of alternative to what's been proposed that would keep us within the constitutional framework that we've sworn to uphold.

We can't have the government buying parts of companies, buying stocks, mortgages, selling those in the markets, and becoming a real player in the financial markets. We could do the same thing they're trying to do with insurance products, loan guarantees, things that have been used before with banks that assure the value of their assets, so they continue to do business. We can even get the banks to pay for that insurance -- but apparently, Secretary Paulson has promised Wall Street that we're going to come in and buy their assets at above market rates so they can come out like bandits.

The problem we have here is that by the government essentially promising to come in and do that, it is causing the credit markets to seize up. They're waiting for a government infusion of funds. They're waiting for the government to buy at a higher market rate, so they're not operating and credit is closing down in America. It's a self fulfilling prophecy...

A Video That Needs To Be Seen And Shared

I wonder if our betters at Google will censor it?



H/T The Anchoress.

Even Obama Doesn't Seem To Be Buying The Idea Of Destroying The Very Idea Of "Secured Debt"

Dick Durbin attempts an act of piracy that looks like it will be defeated. It's actually quite frightening the number of awful ideas with potentially devastating consequences that are now being floated.

Lifeboats Shifted From Steerage To First Class

Great rant.

What He Said

Seen in a comment at Ace Of Spades:

Rep. McCotter's (R-Mich) Forceful Rebuke of Bailout Plan on House Floor

Before I was elected to Congress we used to hear that when faced with a crisis, members of Congress would invariably soil themselves, throw money at the problem and hope that it went away.

Unfortunately, in these dysfunctional economic times, we find that this process has continued.

As Americans face a potential meltdown of the financial sector, we have seen what I believe to be an inappropriate response starting with this Administration.

From the time we were informed that a potential financial meltdown was going to occur, this separate equal branch of government which is the U.S. Congress was told that we had but one alternative and that if we did not pass it quickly — in the time specified *by* the executive branch — that our economy would be severely damaged.

It has been my opinion that we were elected, by the sovereign people of the United States, to make important decisions on their behalf, to do it with the due diligence and devotion that is due and to come up with a positive solution to their situation.

Last night, I was struck by the fact that again we were told [by the President] that again if we did not give unlimited amounts of money and unlimited powers to the Executive Branch that *we* were failing in our due diligence and responsibilities to the American people.

I heard the President of the United States say that we do not understand the need to act.

That statement is false. We understand the need to act.

We heard from the President of the United States that we did not care about American families.

That statement is false. We care very much about American families.

What we did not hear was a recognition that a three-page document that gives to the Treasury Secretary and the Chairman of the Federal Reserve powers — the likes of which Stalin and Mao killed people for — was not an acceptable response to give to this separate, equal branch of government.

Today, we are told that House Republicans are standing in the way of a $700 billion use of your tax dollars to bail out the very people who caused this problem!

Guilty as charged!

House Republicans believe there is an alternative.

The Administration tells us that their first, last, only resort is to go to the taxpayers and bail out Wall Street. We fundamentally disagree with this!

Wall Street should bail out Wall Street.

House Republicans believe that the toxic assets clogging up our economy should first attempt to be recapitalized by the very people sitting on the sidelines with their money waiting for you the taxpayer to be fleeced and put it in so they are “confident that the market will work”.

We can not re-inflate the bubble.

The people who on Main Street invested and saved and had good credit their entire lives should not be asked to go back in to help cowboy capitalists who shot themselves in the foot.

I have supported the President when he has been correct.

But he is in err now.

House Republicans stood and supported the Patreus surge.

Today House Republicans oppose the Paulson splurge so we can have prosperity in America in the long run.

We will not engage in a rush to judgment that destroys the possibility of the free market and prosperity for decades to come.

We will not walk out of this room after a forced vote waving a piece of paper in our hands claiming “fleeced in our time.”

We *will* do the job we were entrusted with.

Bye-Bye WaMu. Oh, And California Median Home Price Is Down 41%.

Link

Link

The Implicit Message Of The MSM: Democrat Corruption Is About As Newsworthy As The Sky Being Blue

The Corner:

Obama's Garden Grant [Jonathan Adler]

The Chicago Sun-Times reports the Illinois attorney general is investigating a $100K government grant tied to Obama:

A $100,000 state grant for a botanic garden in Englewood that then-state Sen. Barack Obama awarded in 2001 to a group headed by a onetime campaign volunteer is now under investigation by the Illinois attorney general amid new questions, prompted by Chicago Sun-Times reports, about whether the money might have been misspent.

The garden was never built. And now state records obtained by the Sun-Times show $65,000 of the grant money went to the wife of Kenny B. Smith, the Obama 2000 congressional campaign volunteer who heads the Chicago Better Housing Association, which was in charge of the project for the blighted South Side neighborhood.

I'm sure the Washington Post and New York Times will devote as much time to this story as they did to Gov. Palin's per diems and her involvement with the Wasilla public library. (roflol)

One Guy Led The Charge, One Guy Had To Be Summoned

Ed Morrissey.

McCain Is The Only One With Enough Guts To Take Ownership Of A Solution

The Anchoress has something of a mea culpa post about misjudging McCain yesterday.

Lots of good stuff, including pointing out that the execrable Harry Reid said:

"We need, now, the Republicans to start producing some votes for us. We need the Republican nominee for president to let us know where he stands and what we should do."

And pointing out that Harry Reid showed no particular interest in what the so-called "leader" of his party, Barack Obama, might have to contribute.

She highlights this Ed Morrissey quote:

"Notice that Reid never demanded leadership from the Democratic nominee for President. I guess he already knows that would be a futile request."

One Of The Guys Was Completely Dispensable

Good analysis of what the financial crisis tells us about the two candidates.

except:

A politician can declare that he is a leader. His political party can declare that he's a leader. And hundreds of thousands of acolytes around the world can swoon devotedly at his feet, and he can rack up all the trappings of leadership. But none of that in fact makes him into a leader if he actually isn't one.

Crises reveal, make, and define leaders. When the crisis is over, it's easy to recognize in hindsight who the leader was, even if there was some doubt as to that during the crisis itself. Looking back, we can recognize a leader because he's the one who the other potential actors and decision-makers actually followed.

...

What's already abundantly clear in this crisis, however, without the need for any hindsight, is that Barack Obama has failed to lead.

Indeed, when the crisis engulfed them, those who've had the best first-hand opportunity since January 2005 to watch him try to do his job — his fellow senators, even the leaders of his own party who mouth the words about him being "the next President of the United States" and the hope of a new generation — didn't call a halt to everything and send out a plea for his personal presence in Washington. Their actions and in particular, this inaction, shows that they know in their hearts that Obama is no real leader. They know he's simply a well-cut, slick, but empty suit onto which the trappings of leadership have been projected. And when it comes to putting their own careers, their own modest places in history, on the line, they certainly didn't look to him for guidance.

The only reason for Obama's abrupt 180-degree pivot today was to provide his campaign and his party with a fig leaf: Now they can pretend that both his and McCain's presence and participation in Washington were essential to the striking of any deal. To do otherwise would be to cede the election to McCain outright.

Nevertheless: Except for the sole purpose of maintaining his campaign's dignity, Barack Obama is today the single most dispensable member of Congress.

That doesn't mean McCain will win in November. But it means that he should.

Cartoon

Henry Payne has an "old-school" but wacky style:

A Game Of Chicken?

Arnold Kling:

I am concerned that the bailout might be the cause of the problem that it purports to solve.

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson described the problem as follows:

The underlying weakness in our financial system today is the illiquid mortgage assets that have lost value as the housing correction has proceeded. These illiquid assets are choking off the flow of credit that is so vitally important to our economy. When the financial system works as it should, money and capital flow to and from households and businesses to pay for home loans, school loans and investments that create jobs. As illiquid mortgage assets block the system, the clogging of our financial markets has the potential to have significant effects on our financial system and our economy.

The heavy use of the plumbing metaphor almost makes one picture Paulson with his pants riding down a couple inches, leaning over a financial toilet bowl. It is clogged with unwanted securities backed by mortgages, supposedly because the sellers cannot find any buyers.

However, the market could be clogged because the prospects for a bailout are destroying the motivation to sell mortgage securities. If you sell this week and take a big loss, you will look pretty stupid if there is a bailout next week where comparable securities fetch much higher prices.

It could be that a Congressional rejection of the bailout proposal, rather than clogging the markets, will unclog them. If Congress goes home having sent financial institutions a clear signal that there will be no bailout of any kind, then sellers will bring their securities to market, and we will find out what the market thinks they are worth...

Moral hazard never ends when the government is involved.

Great Rant Against The Paulson Plan By A Democrat

The Ministry Of Truth

Excellent manifesto against the MSM stripping us of our Republic.

excerpt:

I’ve noted before that we are now fighting an all out ideological war for the survival of the democratic republic. In fact, I’ve been making this same argument for years now: when the press, under the cover of “objectivity,” is allowed to function as an advocacy arm for a particular ideology and its titular representatives, what follows is a necessary skewing of facts — and a carefully constructed attempt to frame “stories” with “lessons” that the public will interpret “correctly” (according to those attempting to teach the lessons from the perspective of their own personal advocacy).

This is not hyperbole: a free society relies on a free press to inform. That the mainstream press leans demonstrably left is not the problem in and of itself; the problem arises when that demonstrable bias is given cover as “objective,” and when those who believe they are basing their support for a candidate or platform on objective reporting are in effect doing no such thing, but are rather being coaxed, prodded, directed, and manipulated — in everything from what comes to count as newsworthy to, in cases like these, shoddy reporting (which may or may not be intentional), the effect of which is to leave those who rely on the media literally less informed than had the media reported nothing at all.

A free society cannot run this way. If information is power, those who control the information and its mainstream dissemination are in a position to act as the most important swing vote in any election. That the press has given up, at this late stage (and despite declines in readership and public trust), any serious attempt to report objectively suggests that we are now quite immersed in a battle for the very principles of a democratic republic.

...

For my part, I’d just like to again reiterate that, should the press be allowed to comport itself this way under the current mythology that it is dedicated to “objectivity,” then every election will be necessarily skewed — if not by Evan Thomas’ infamous 15 percentage points, then at least by a number significant enough that it could very well be the deciding factor in every major election.

At which point, we’re dealing with no more than simulacrums of free elections, and the idea that we live in a democratic republic is but a useful fiction we tell ourselves as we slide ever more toward western European socialism and away from the principles this country was founded upon.

It's Basically The Same As What They Did With AIG, But With Fries

Good satire.

Dropping the MOAB

An argument in favor of the Mother Of All Bailouts:

Just now, Chairman Ben Bernanke said "This is a matter for psychology."

I was a Psych major, and a pro trader. I can speak to this.

We should talk about the crisis of confidence at work here; that too often gets lost in the noise. Ultimately, there's no "real" price for anything. Not even gold.

Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson wants $700 billion - a number that says "The government is going to take this entire problem down, all at once."

If you do it $150 billion at a time, the Treasury will end up with more than $700 billion on its books. $700 billion is intended to get guys like Warren Buffett to step in - guys who'll be thinking, "No sense letting the government sop up the excess returns generated by holding these things to maturity; I'll buy them myself, before the morons from Treasury get here."Minyanville's Why Wall Street Will Never Be the Same

$700 billion is a bazooka. If you arm your Treasury Secretary at all, you give him a bazooka, rather than a BB gun, precisely because you don't want him to have to shoot.

A BB gun invites invasion. A bazooka makes a point. I'm not in favor of government intervention at this point, but, if it's going to happen, it should happen big. That $700 billion was shooting for a comprehensive solution.

For the people selling, the difference between Congress going for the whole megillah or doing it in tranches is this: In tranches, every block that gets used up makes it less likely that another one is coming (because you gotta go back to Congress to beg some more). In effect, the government would eliminate a certain block of toxic assets but, in so doing, would make the rest of the group even more toxic (and therefore less likely to be backstopped by the government, and still untouchably by private hands).

If the government lays out all $700 billion, the last asset sold should, in theory, be at the same price or more expensive than the first. The illusion of the "holdouts" rising in value will, in theory, inspire private equity to get on board.

If the government does this in tranches, there will be literally no end to the outflow. If they do it in one, enormous, statement-making block, it's possible the system will start running again.

Either one hurts, but these are your choices, as a taxpayer: Do you want to get shot by a BB gun 10,000 times, or once by a bazooka? Now consider the same choice - but with the possibility that choosing the bazooka means there's a remote chance you won't get shot at all.

It would seem "Letting the Actual Criminals Get Shot" isn't a choice anymore. That being the case, I'll take the bazooka - and hope that I'll get lucky and escape being blasted at all.

Interesting Take

Here.

excerpt:

Remember in math, when they gave you a very complex looking figure and told you to find the area. The grunts in class would try to figure out all the many angles and tally up the area inside the figure. This almost always leads to careless errors or too little time to solve the problem given a limited test-taking time. The implicit lesson was to draw a regular figure (most often a rectangle) around the complex figure, calculate its easy-to-compute area, and subtract the areas that constituted the difference between the two figures. Voila... easy, fast, elegant and accurate.

I think the same lesson can be applied to credit default swaps. Instead of asking the obvious, complex, and obscuring question, "What value DO they have?", one should ask the elegant and simple question, "What value COULD they have?" Even a cursory examination would seem to indicate that the answer is either zero or less-than-zero. This comes from the interaction between debts and fees. In practice the greater the debt serviced (again concocted as if it had value), the greater the fee that would accrue in real terms to servicers. (Again this debt is curiously cast as an asset, often in ways that were supported by nothing other than increasing ostensible future returns that assumed unlimited resources and continuing ability to pay. One would have hoped that the dot.com bubble would have laid to rest the notion of hyped future returns as a good basis to assign value. )

Now we go to the 70 trillion dollar credit default swap market of last year. If only 1 to 2 percent "service fee" were charged in these transactions (which are based on illusory assets), we're talking nearly three-quarters to one-and-a-half trillion dollars in real term fees being siphoned off (i.e. hijacked from) the global economy for no productive, but merely parasitic, purpose. If these fees are attached to phony assets, as I have propounded, than that means a net loss of, say, a trillion dollars of capital taken right out of the system. No wonder we have a liquidity crisis.

Here is how the scam seems to work. Insure credit default with inadequate capital, assuming the market will always go up. I've heard actual figures quoted in articles I've read that fly-by-night operations were insuring billions of dollars of debt in major banks with only millions of dollars of collateral. So we're talking a tenth of a percent reserve, not ten percent, and the more exotic instruments apparently had no reserve or used the reserve to leverage other risky investments. As the market goes up, everybody's happy. Everybody appears to be making a killing, much like a pyramid scheme... as long as you can get the next person to pay. So now someone defaults in real terms, make that several million people. There aren't anything but IOUs in the system that have been treated as assets and capital. There is no money.

This is why I say that toxic assets may be toxic, but they are not assets, and that they have zero value and likely actually less-than-zero value. If I have insured against loss with only a tenth-of-a-percent reserve, and yet I am charging a percent or two per year for my services, I'm actually charging ten times more than I can actually pay out in case of a default. I guarantee you that those fees were not going into the reserve but into the pockets of the servicers.

Bill Gross Makes His Case

The bailout doesn't sound so bad on these terms. If these, are in fact the terms. But, listening to Paulson, Bernanke, and our politicians, I would have no way of knowing that these are, in fact, the terms. Are they the terms? If so, why isn't anyone in charge saying so? All concerned have earned my complete lack of trust!

There's A Case To Be Made That The Morons Who Elected All These Bozos Do Deserve Some Substantial Pain

Ed Morrissey:

[T]he fact is that this mess is not just of Wall Street’s making [see update below]. Right now, Congress is doing its level best to pretend it had nothing to do with this failure, and Chris Dodd — as the chair of the committee that was supposed to exercise oversight on this industry — is spinning the fastest. The more Congress can shove the blame entirely onto Wall Street, the better off it looks, but that’s simply not the case.

The heart of this failure came from a mandate by members of Congress from both parties that demanded easier loan terms for marginally-qualified buyers. At first, this meant working-class families, but it also resulted in easier terms all the way through to the highest income levels. Lower qualifiers meant more buyers, and buyers buying bigger houses. The net effect of this was to create a much higher demand for housing and for mortgages.

How did these get structured? The trouble came when people stopped providing solid down payments to ensure equity from the start of the loan. They got adjustable-rate mortgages for loans they couldn’t afford, betting that the quickly-rising price of housing would continue its trajectory and magically give them enough equity by the time the ARMs adjusted so that they could refinance their loans to something affordable. And for a few years, that’s exactly what happened — and so more and more people followed that example.

This produced two other effects. First, the government had Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac sponsor many of these questionable loans and convert them into investment products, which essentially infected the entire investment community with massive, poorly-secured loans. Second, the demand touched off a residential building boom as people attempted to provide inventory for the massive amount of buyers coming into the market.

Unfortunately, this created a big Ponzi scheme, one dictated by Congress and two administrations. It only worked as long as housing prices continued to increase. When the bubble finally popped late last year, it was analogous to the margin calls of 1929, only in slow motion. Once homeowners realized that their houses would not increase in value, they knew that they were stuck in ARMs that they wouldn’t be able to afford. The defaults would not just sink the banks but also the investors who bought the securities.

Who created this Ponzi scheme? Congress did. Who demanded lower qualifiers for home mortgages and then insisted on having Fannie/Freddie turn them into investments to support the lenders? Congress did. The lenders share the responsibility as well, but without Fannie/Freddie making their bad lending decisions profitable, they would never have jumped into the sub-prime market with the kind of enthusiasm they did. Now Congress wants to leave them holding the bag and all the blame — and that’s pretty convenient for Congress.

DeMint gets closer to the truth here than Shelby. Congress didn’t demand that Chrysler build K-cars and other lousy models and poor business practices that led to their bad performance, which is why Congress shouldn’t have had anything to do with the Chrysler bailout. That doesn’t apply here. DeMint, though, rightly points out that this is actually Bailout v4.0 in this crisis, and versions 1-3 didn’t solve the problem.

Taxpayers don’t want to be on the hook for the credit-market failure, but in the end, we’re responsible for Congress. Not many objected when home loans got so plentiful and our home equity skyrocketed over the last ten years. We need a responsible, market-based plan that undoes the damage our Congress created, and that means we’re going to have to shoulder some of the burden in the short term to make it happen. That’s our penalty for letting Congress run wild, and it should result in a lesson learned for the American taxpayer that, in Robert Heinlein’s words, there ain’t no such thing as a free lunch. The plan should have accountability for those running it, and it should include a plan to completely dismantle the government’s reach into private lending markets permanently.

Jerry Pournelle

Does a great job explaining the Wall Street debacle.

Cartoons

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Nigerians Are More Honest

A perfect parody.

"Had This Been Palin, The Election Would Now Be Over"

But it isn't. It's Biden. And he is a Democrat with more experience. VDH:

And the Media Worries about Palin's Experience and McCain's Age?

I think in the space of about the last 24 hours, Joe Biden claimed that the AIG bailout was bad, but then said it wasn't bad;

that we did not need to burn coal;

that his apology about the dirty McCain ad was, as they say, inoperative;

that FDR once went on television to address the nation after the stock market crash of '29 (that's a twofer that trumps Obama's Americans liberating Auschwitz);

and all but said that McCain took a $50,000 bribe.

Not a bad day's work — encompassing terrible energy policy, flip-flopping, historical ignorance, and slander. And this comes on top of Palin the "good looking" "Lt. Governor" of Alaska, Hillary as the better VP pick than himself, the patriotism of paying higher taxes, and so on.

And those in turn come on top of the primary remarks about Indians in donut shops, and "bright and clean" blacks. And those in turn come on top of . . . (Well, go back to the pilfered speeches and made-up bios.)

Something is very wrong here. While most forgive the silly slip like "Barack America" or asking the wheel-chair bound to stand up, I think the Obama staff must have gone from amusement to embarrassment and now to serious concern whether Biden is up to the job.

Had this been Palin, the election would now be over.

Here's a clip of Biden talking about President Roosevelt going on television in 1929, which would be before he was president, and before there was television available.

Why So Vapid, Hesitant, And Gutless?

Because being "front man" is a far different thing than being "head man". Cogent post at Ace of Spades.

excerpt:

Think of it like this: every time Obama says "uh" on camera, what he's really doing is flinching from the possibility that his campaign manager, David Plouffe, is going to whack him on the nose with a newspaper. Again. Hence the stutter.

Hitch writes that he's getting the feeling that Obama is a little scared of winning this contest. And why wouldn't he be? After two years of dancing to his minders' tune, being reduced to a mouthpiece for smarter, more experienced and more ambitious men and women, he can look forward to at least four more! This is an understandable fear.

But Obama's also feeling what a child feels after he has climbed into Daddy's truck and turned it on, believing that he's seen Daddy do it so many times that he can do it too. The Obama campaign truly has been the campaign of hope: as in, "I hope I can do this." Things are rolling now, but it's just starting to dawn on him that maybe he doesn't know as well as he thought how to control this thing. He's more likely to come to a screeching, crunching, grinding stop than to make a graceful finish.

Can You Spot The Difference?

Link.

What A Doof

Link.

VDH Examines Wisdom

Good stuff.

Don't Confuse Us With The Facts

Link:

Who lacks health insurance in America?

According to data recently released by the U.S. Census Bureau, the number of Americans officially classified as uninsured in 2007 was 45.7 million. This figure is being used, naturally, to promote the case for radical "reform" that in practice would amount to a government takeover of the health care industry.

However, Sally Pipes, in her Sunday Examiner column, shows that the 45.7 million uninsured figure is misleading as a barometer of the state of health insurance coverage in the U.S. She identifies four groups within that figure: (1) people who will quickly transfer from one insurance plan to another, (2) illegal immigrants, (3) individuals who make more than $50,000 a year but who elect not to purchase health insurance (usually because they are young and healthy), and (4) individuals who are eligible for government assistance with their health care through programs like Medicaid and SCHIP, but who do not avail themselves of that assistance.

According to Pipes, if one subtracts these people from the 45.7 million figure, the number drops to approximately 8 million. If one adds back in those who make between $50,000 and $75,000 a year, the figure is roughly 16 million.

These numbers provide a much more realistic sense of whether and to what extent we face a crisis in health care coverage. They should also point the way to the most reasonable solutions to what indisputably is at least a problem. Those solutions do not include socialized medicine.

Let's Get Back At Palin By Killing More Babies!

A couple of things from the latest Impromptus:

Have a reader letter: “The same liberals who become apoplectic at the thought that some CIA/NSA cube-dweller may be sifting through Osama bin Laden’s e-mail without a warrant are perfectly blasé about what happened to Palin. How can that be? Would the waterboarding of Sarah be okay, too?”

That could be a real quandary.

...

A woman received an e-mail whose Subject line was “Brilliant Strategy.” And this is what the e-mail said (there’s a follow-up, so stay tuned):

Dear Friends:

We may have thought we wanted a woman on a national political ticket, but the joke has really been on us, hasn’t it? Are you as sick in your stomach as I am at the thought of Sarah Palin as Vice President of the United States?

Since Palin gave her speech accepting the Republican nomination for the Vice Presidency, Barack Obama’s campaign has raised over $10 million. Some of you may already be supporting the Obama campaign financially; others of you may still be recovering from the primaries. None of you, however, can be happy with Palin’s selection, especially given on her positions on women’s issues.

So, if you feel you can’t support the Obama campaign financially, may I suggest the following fiendishly brilliant alternative? Make a donation to Planned Parenthood. In Sarah Palin’s name. A Planned Parenthood donation is tax deductible, while a political donation isn’t.

And here’s the good part: When you make a donation to PP in her name, they’ll send her a card telling her that the donation has been made in her honor.

And this is what our correspondent wrote (to me):

Imagine getting this e-mail. Imagine telling women to make a donation to Planned Parenthood in Sarah’s name so that she’ll get a card. Her crime, of course, is that she has chosen life, that she is self-made, and that she has a beautiful family. And she’s happy.

As a woman who was a liberal on Long Island before 9/11 made me rethink things and Mark Steyn’s America Alone hammered it home, I’ll tell you what is spurring some of the most intense hatred from the sisterhood: Sarah makes them remember their own choices, i.e., their abortions, their commitment to self over family, to self over country, to self over God.

But the first one, well, that’s the kicker — we liberal gals were so blasé about abortions back in the day. Now we look at Sarah and think, “What if?” So . . . college would have been deferred a few years, and we ended up divorced from our first husbands anyway, so maybe a shotgun marriage that resulted in our true firstborn wouldn’t have been so bad, and are we really so happy now?”

The Plot Thickens

Caught red-handed, they destroy the evidence.

I'd Have Been 100% Behind You If You'd Just Invaded This Other Country!

Jay Nordlinger:

A New, Specious Line

For Impromptus today, I scribbled a great many items and thoughts. But there is an item I meant to include, but forgot about. May I lay it on you here? It has to do with Sarah Palin (wouldn’t you know?).

A new Democratic line has formed — it has shown up in my mail, and in opinion pieces. It is this: “Listen, we would have been all right with another vice-presidential nominee: a Romney, a Ridge, a Pawlenty, a Hutchison. They are all mature politicians. They have all been vetted. They are all unquestionably qualified for the vice-presidency. But McCain tried to get cute, foisting a novel, hickish dunce on the country.”

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’m sure they would have been just fine with any of those other picks. I can hear them now: “Why did we get just another Republican hack — just the same-old, same-old? I mean, McCain could have done something bold and creative! For instance, how about Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska? How about thinking outside the box? She’s a reformer, she’s independent-minded. She took on the Republican establishment in her state. She shook things up. She has broad bipartisan support. She’s not part of the old boys’ network. But maybe that is precisely the problem: Can you imagine the GOP putting a woman on the ticket?”

It’s kind of like invading a country: You always invaded the wrong one; you should have invaded this other one, or taken some kind of action against it. Then you would have had the support of the whole country.

I think of something else, too: When Bush 41 was president, liberal pundits said, “If only he were a sensible, decent Republican, like his father.” In fact, 41 had to defend himself against this line, at a press conference — saying, “I think my dad would be proud of me.” (I believe those were his exact words.) And then when W. became president, it was, “Oh, if only he were a sensible, decent Republican, like his father.”

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Look: They think Palin’s stupid. That’s the thing. It always comes down to that. And, as I note in today’s Impromptus, they always say that — almost always say that, about conservative political leaders. Check it out, and think about it.

Yup. Every last conservative who proves to be an effective threat is a stupid yet brilliant incarnation of the devil, and a Nazi to boot. And to an angry three year old, everyone's a poopyhead.

Look In The Mirror

VDH:

We Have Met the Enemy and He Is...? [Victor Davis Hanson]

In the sudden rush to blame the crooks in DC and on Wall Street, we should first take a long look in the mirror. For two decades, we — as in we Americans — expected to buy homes, flip them, and walk away with thousands — without much thought about what might happen to the johnny-come-lately at the bottom of the pyramid when the game was finally up and housing prices cooled or crashed. Walking away from a mortgage on a house with negative equity was "smart;" putting someone in one who had no ability to come up with a down payment, monthly payments, taxes, and maintenance was "fair"; borrowing unduly against equity for cash expenditures was "understandable."

We deified the masters of hedge funds, derivatives, and subprime mortgages, forgetting that passé oil production, mining, farming, manufacturing, engineering and construction were the real sources of our material wealth.

We assumed mega-returns on our portfolios, without a thought what Wall Street did to get them, or the effect on others who needed to borrow at such high interest to run their businessess.

Ours became a culture that wanted larger cars but less drilling to fuel them, more stuff and more credit from — and more anger at — the Chinese; less taxes but even more government hand-outs; ever more electricity, but fewer icky coal and nuclear plants — and always more health-care, education-care, prescription drug-care, housing-care, and always less care how to pay for it.

So by all means let us prosecute the lawbreakers, finger-point at the enablers, lecture the stupid, but at least spare us the sanctimonious "they" did this to poor "us." If there were not a Senate Banking Chairman like Chris Dodd without shame cozing up to the creeps at Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, or a Richard Fuld playing casino roulette with someone else's money, we would have had to invent them.

We should argue over the course of Paulson's unpleasant chemotherapy to deal with these symptoms of a metastasizing disease, but let us at least consider what were the catalysts for that deeper cancer.

The McCain Campaign Knows The Times

The Corner:

The McCain Campaign and the Times [Byron York]

Top McCain campaign officials have just finished a conference call to unveil a new ad, called "Chicago Machine," which highlights ties between Barack Obama and Tony Rezko, William Daley, Emil Jones, and Rod Blagojevich. The ad, the officials say, will air nationally and "across the depth and breadth of the battleground states." Among other topics covered in the call, campaign officials Rick Davis and Steve Schmidt were asked about a story in the New York Times concerning Davis' role in an advocacy group that included Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Davis defended himself, while Schmidt discussed the Times:

Let me first say we are First Amendment absolutists on this campaign. The press and anybody who wishes to cover this race from a blogosphere perspective or from a media perspective is of course constitutionally protected with regard to writing whatever they want to write.

But let's be clear and be honest with each other about something fundamental to this race, which is this: Whatever the New York Times once was, it is today not by an standard a journalistic organization. It is a pro-Obama advocacy organization that every day attacks the McCain campaign, attacks Sen. McCain, attacks Gov. Palin, and excuses Sen. Obama. There is no level of public vetting with regard to Sen. Obama's record, his background, his past statements. There is no level of outrage directed at his deceitful ads. This is an organization that is completely, totally, 150 percent in the tank for the Democratic candidate, which is their prerogative to be, but let's not be dishonest and call it something other than what it is. Everything that is read in the New York Times that attacks this campaign should be evaluated by the American people from that perspective, that it is an organization that has made a decision to cast aside its journalistic integrity and tradition to advocate for the defeat of one candidate, in this case John McCain, and advocate for the election of the other candidate, Barack Obama.

Let's Target The Losses To The Correct Parties

Open letter to the U.S. Congress.

Short Sellers Are Just The Messengers

Bill Fleckenstein:

I continue to see arguments that short-sellers and the no-uptick rule can ruin companies. Lehman is a perfect example of how that is not the case. Lehman's books were shown to virtually every person on the planet older than 16 with more than 50 bucks in his pocket, and nobody wanted it. People didn't want it because it was essentially a bankrupt entity (once its assets and liabilities were netted out).

To suggest that short-sellers made this happen is just ludicrous. If short-sellers were so stupid as to drive a viable, valuable company down below where it was worth, buyers around the world would have leaped at the chance to buy it. I know that's a bit of a digression, but I'm sick and tired of hearing the wrong people blamed.

Some Interesting Detective Work

Exploring how deep the rabbit hole goes. When the MSM used to do this kind of thing in the old days, they called it "investigative reporting".

Link

Link

Link

If You've Lost Mark Morford, You've Lost The Country

Morford is the guy who called Obama "The Lightworker". Now he has equally insightful things to say about Palin!

Great Camera, Great Lens, Great Candidate

Neat photos taken at the 60,000 attendee Palin rally in Florida, using just the equipment I'm planning to eventually upgrade to.

Money Laundering

How is this whole thing supposed to work? The government buys up $700B of "assets" that are not really worth $700B. They float bonds to pay for them. What market actor in his right mind is going to buy a bond that finances something that is worth less than the price of the bond? Would I lend you $20 so that you could spend it on something that you'd only be able to sell for $10 in order to try to pay me back? What kind of sense does this make? Why would I want to cut in a money-wasting middleman to effectively buy assets I wouldn't want to touch myself, and for more than I'd have to pay for them if I did, in fact, want them?

The only thing that would make me want to take such a deal is the expectation that the government will shake down taxpayers for real (as opposed to merely printed) money to pay me back. As a foreign creditor I'd only take such a deal on the understanding that the government actually intended to end the inflationary shell game and actually--get this--pay its debts. Otherwise, no deal.

It would be interesting if this turns out to be the end game for the alleged "Reagan strategy" of killing the federal beast by bankrupting it. Could you imagine the drastic cuts in government spending (besides debt repayment and bank reliquification) that would have to be made to genuinely solve this problem?

The Future Lies Ahead

Link:

Not only will the bailout plan not work, but it is set to spread the contagion to a crucial area that has so far been sacrosanct - the US T-bond market. There are several reasons for this. One is that continued government interference in the free market to defend wrongdoers from the consequences of their actions is rapidly destroying Wall Street`s credibility as a global financial center. A blatant example of this is the banning of short selling in the stocks of selected companies which amounts to nothing less than criminal interference in free market processes, which is what you would expect to see implemented in a Command Economy - this is the sort of thing the Commies used to do. The second is that the US government and the Fed are clearly treating international investors as idiots - does it seriously expect them to go on endlessly buying Treasury paper when they know that the proceeds are going to be used to bail out and prop up companies that have arrived at the brink of collapse due to mismanagement and incompetance? They are not going to and that is the reason for the collapse in T-bonds on Friday and when foreigners stop buying Treasury paper the US government has got itself a big, big problem - the result will be skyrocketing interest rates and an economic implosion.

Experienced gardeners know that if you want to maintain the health and vigor of a rose bush, you must on occasion make the sacrifice of cutting off the big, woody branches - endlessly cutting off small twigs simply does not work. In the same way periodic recessions within an economy serve to weed out inefficiency and excess, and create the conditions for renewed stable growth. However, in the "I want it all, I want it now" economic kindergarten of the United States of recent years, recession has come to be regarded as something gross and unacceptable, something to be avoided at all costs. This was why at a time when a recession would have been painful, but have had a necessary purging effect, the Greenspan Fed averted it by dropping real interest rates to near zero in the early years of this decade, thus sowing the seeds of the housing boom and the now unfolding disaster. Now the United States is like an old gnarled rose bush full of big woody branches and totally gone to seed - the only thing that will save it is to take an axe to it. The axeman is coming to the United States, and the desperate and pathetic attempts of politicians and corrupt business leaders, as displayed by their seedy and unwholesome display late last week, to prevent his arrival can only delay it a little, not prevent it. It's going to be painful folks, but as Mrs Thatcher, The Iron Lady of Great Britain used to say, "There is no alternative". Mrs Thatcher transformed Britain by taking painful but necessary steps to sweep away inefficiency and decay, which resulted in the relative prosperity of recent times, although that is now fading fast due to the UK having since followed the US down the debt path. Of course we can only make a limited comparison with Britain in the 1970's because the systemic problems now facing the United States are infinitely worse.

The big danger now is that the T-Bond "gravy train" will come to a screeching halt. If that happens the United States as we know it is finished. Having gutted its own manufacturing base, partly through outsourcing, and partly through simple lack of competitiveness, it is economically dependant on inflows of foreign capital and goods, a sizeable part of which is supplied by means of selling Treasury paper. If foreigners suddenly decide that they have better uses for their money, sales of T-bonds could collapse, leading to an immediate credit and funding crisis in the debt-wracked US economy and in order to attract buyers rates will have to be ramped up dramatically, which in the current fragile environment would lead swiftly to an economic implosion. The abuses of funds now being perpetrated by the government in order to bail out unworthy corporations and institutions are greatly increasing the risks of this happening...

Worth A Trillion Words

link:



H/T Brutally Honest.

"Ripped Off By Every Loan Merchant"

WaPo highlights the awfulness of "The Plan", and mentions some better alternatives.

Fisking The Plan

Michael Shedlock comments on this burgeoning atrocity.

excerpt:

Democrats Want To Expand The Bailout

"We're going to be buying up a lot of mortgage paper," said House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank, a Massachusetts Democrat. "Between Fannie Mae and Freddie now owned by the federal government and the mortgage paper we'll be acquiring here" and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. running failed bank IndyMac Bancorp Inc., "we should now be able substantially to reduce foreclosures," he said.

My Comment: Barney Frank is an incompetent socialist fool. Buying mortgages in and of itself will not prevent a single foreclosure. All buying mortgages will do is bail out the banks holding those mortgages. And one thing you can be most certain of is that it will be a selective bailout with no oversight as to who gets bailed out or why.

The Treasury plans to hire asset managers to purchase the assets through so-called reverse auctions, seeking the lowest prices, one of the people said. Congress will need to raise the limit for the federal debt to allow the government to borrow enough to fund the program, the person said.

Senator Richard Shelby, an Alabama Republican who has advocated that markets should be allowed to penalize bad bets, warned that bailout could saddle taxpayers with large debts.

"This could be the biggest bailout in the history of the country and could ultimately cost $500 billion to $1 trillion," Shelby, the ranking Republican on the Senate Banking Committee, said in a Bloomberg Television interview today. "Congress is not going to rubber stamp something."

My Comment: The odds of Congress not rubber stamping this are very slim.

Senator Christopher Dodd, the Banking Committee chairman, said the plan's framers should consider the full debt load of U.S. consumers, possibly including credit cards.

My Comment: Hells bells why not? Let's throw in credit cards, auto loans, boats, and casino debts? Why stop at credit cards and housing? Let's just have the government guarantee every debt in the country.

The temporary plan is likely to include a "second stimulus" proposal with infrastructure funds, low-income energy aid and Medicaid assistance, Frank said.

My Comment: Why stop at two? Why not four? Hell, let's just give everyone $1,000,000 and be done with it.

"Why You Should Hate the Treasury Bailout Proposal"

Link

excerpt:

Given that continuing to buy US assets will come under increasingly harsh scrutiny overseas, the US needs to bend over backwards to devise a plan that at least looks credible in terms of directing the funds that come from taxpayers and lenders to their highest and best uses and implementing reforms that will restore active and prudent oversight of financial firms. The Administration's demand for a free pass, even if Congress unwisely goes along, is likely to backfire with our foreign creditors.

See also this Yahoo News piece which rounds up all kinds of skeptical opinions expressed by economists.

The NYT also has a couple of good pieces.

Blame The Democrat Do Gooders

Nothing good comes of trying to play Santa Claus.

Another View On The Grand Bailout

Two very interesting posts. I hope they are substantially correct.

Link

Link

So Endeth The Rorschach Test

Even the Canadians are noticing: the narrative is dead.

excerpt:

The Obama candidacy, in its rocket-blast phase when he outsoared Hillary Clinton, drained the dictionaries of every superlative. The great "O" had them swooning in the stands. Why?

True, Oprah had passed her potent wand over him, but even the afternoon regent of a thousand therapies has stays on her sorcery. Mainly, his was very much a candidacy constructed by those who were drawn to him. If there was any meaning to that fortune-cookie poeticism that "we are the ones we have been waiting for," it was that his campaign was a feedback loop. People saw what they came to see. Mr. Obama was the slate; the crowds brought their own chalk.

This is the nature of Mr. Obama's particular kind of charisma. People project their best wishes on him, they fill in the blank of a very attractive and plausible outline. His is not, emphatically, a charisma of deeds. For what has he done, save run for president? He is an accommodating vessel - cool, smart, biracial and "unfinished." This is the Gatsby quality of him that others have noted. Like Gatsby, he is a receptacle of others' glamorous invention.

People see in him, or wish to see, the last great ideal of the American polity fulfilled, a final and full racial accommodation. That should he be elected president, America will have achieved, by his singular persona, the perfect emblematic demonstration of having exorcised at last the great stain of its racially riven origins.

Mr. Obama's charisma is, in this sense, external, something extended to the candidate. And it follows that that which is given may equally be taken away. The sparkle has, in fact, dimmed. He travels now in a lower orbit, closer to Earth - which is to say, he grows more mundane. The great word "hope" sounds less frequently now. He picks a running mate thick with the dust and rancour of many long years in Washington.

His acceptance speech in the Olympic-style stadium could not gather the inspirational energy of his earlier arias. Of late, the flash supernova of U.S. politics is seen "competing" with a second-on-the-ticket female governor of a remote state. There's more than a gap between the "audacity of hope" and "lipstick on a pig." The mouth that spoke the first phrase should not be capable of the second.

He has shrunk into a combative partisan. He crowds his own screen, leaves less space for projection. Others are not writing his narrative now - he's inscribing his own.

A candidacy that leached so much of its energy and drive from the imagination of others, Gatsby-like, is shedding its gift. The narrative stage is over. It's all tactics from here on in.

Just Seven Days Left To Get A Sense Of Humor

Link.

excerpt:

What Barack Obama lacks is simple--and a lot more important than it might seem: a sense of humor.

Evident throughout his campaign for the Democratic nomination--can you recall a single Obama witticism?--this proved especially striking at his party's convention. In an acceptance speech of some 4,600 words, Obama provided not a single good laugh.

True, you could have argued that so far he hadn't needed much of a sense of humor. Hillary Clinton hadn't had them rolling in the aisles herself. That changed the following week, when the Republicans held their own convention. In an acceptance speech of just 3,000 words, Sarah Palin provided no fewer than six laughs--real belly laughs, each followed by thunderous applause--five of which came at Obama's expense.

Gov. Palin's performance undermined Sen. Obama in two ways. It made him appear prim and self-serious by comparison. And it thoroughly unnerved the man. "I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a 'community organizer,'" Palin told the GOP convention, contrasting her work when she was mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, with Obama's efforts on the south side of Chicago, "except that you have actual responsibilities." For several days afterward, Obama appeared dazed. "Community organizer," he kept insisting at campaign appearances, was so a real job. Even now, more than two weeks later, he has yet to employ humor effectively. Instead he has "sharpened his speeches," to quote the Associated Press, adding "bite." Obama can take a blow. What he can't take is a joke.

...

One week from today, Barack Obama will debate John McCain. While McCain may never have delivered remarks as devastatingly funny as Palin's acceptance speech, Obama might want to review McCain's remarks during the October 2007 debate among candidates in the Republican presidential primaries. Denouncing legislation that would have devoted federal funds to a museum commemorating the 1969 Woodstock festival, McCain prompted gales of laughter, then a standing ovation, by explaining why he had missed the festival: "I was tied up."

Seven days. Obama has seven days in which to learn the uses of humor.

So, How Are Ivy League Presidents Working Out So Far?

Reagan was the last president who wasn't one. Ralph Peters on Palin.

20 Questions

Link:

The mega-bailout of the U.S. financial system is supposedly all about "restoring confidence." Let's examine that via 20 questions.

1. Are you confident the U.S. taxpayers' interests are being well-protected and secured by the assumption of every toxic mortgage and bad debt in the land?

2. Are you confident that housing will now leap up in price like the stock market?

3. Are you confident non-U.S. investors and central banks will buy U.S.-based mortgage-backed securities with the same abandon they did a few years ago?

4. Are you confident the new "owners" of Fannie and Freddie and AIG, i.e. your central government, will manage the firms in the best interests of the real owners, i.e. us taxpayers?

5. Are you confident that the political-influence conduit between big Wall Street donors and politicians has been severed?

6. Are you confident interest rates can stay low even as the U.S. Treasury sells a $1 trillion or more in new T-bills to fund the bailout, plus the existing $500 billion in standard deficit spending?

7. Are you confident that the ethics of Wall Street and the mortgage industry are sound, and that we can now trust these same institutions and players who ignored risk and embraced fraud and conflicts of interest for their own profit?

8. Are you confident risk will be properly priced in, despite the complete abandonment of any pretense of "moral hazard" now that the government is "backstopping" virtually all bad debt in the financial system?

9. Are you confident that all the toxic /worthless debt the government is buying/ taking on will have any value in the future, as many claim?

10. Are you confident that all the capital which is being provided by taxpayers will be allocated properly, and not mis-allocated like the trillions of capital that was lost in the easily-predicted meltdown?

11. Are you confident that politicians won't interfere in the liquidation of near-worthless assets in private capital markets?

12. Are you confident that all this taxpayer-funded "liquidity" will actually find creditworthy borrowers who will use the funds to expand real businesses?

13. Are you confident that the CEOs and investment bankers who took home billions in paychecks and bonuses during the speculative credit bubble are now chastened, despite getting to keep all their ill-gotten gains?

14. Are you confident that the trillions being promised in your name to protect stock and bondholders of insolvent banks will not be squandered, just as the first $1 trillion in bailouts and "liquidity" was squandered, to literally no effect?

15. Are you confident that banning short-selling of 799 financial companies will eliminate all the nasty horrible speculators--even though the largest speculators were the investment bankers we have just bailed out and made whole?

16. Are you confident that the U.S. consumer, even though he/she is weighed down with unprecedented amounts of debt, is now poised and anxious to borrow more money from banks?

17. Are you confident that this massive bailout has renewed foreign investors' confidence in the U.S. financial system, now that the U.S. government has taken control of the levers of that entire financial system?

18. Are you confident that banning short-selling will actually increase the value of U.S. companies even as the U.S. enters a long, deep recession?

19. Are you confident that the stock market is "forward-looking" and is rising because U.S. corporate profits are sure to soar next year despite a global recession?

20. Are you confident that the U.S. stock market is not being manipulated to persuade foreign entities and retail buyers that "it's now safe to buy and speculate in U.S. stocks, as long as you're buying on the long side"?

Special bonus question: Are you confident this bailout is legal, and that huge legal challenges stemming from systemwide fraud, conflicts of interest, etc., won't sprout like rank mushrooms and gum up the supposedly seamless works our fearless Fed and Treasury have cobbled together overnight?

The way I look at it, the very same bozos who couldn't see what has been brutally obvious for about the last 5 years (i.e. that the housing bubble was going to crash monumentally) now reassure us that they can fix it without pain. Right. You guys know exactly what you're doing!

A commenter to the above adds:

Michael Goodfellow

So looks like it's official. We are going to take the Japanese approach of trying to use the government's money to stop a depression. The best we can expect is what they got -- 15 years of stagnation, with periodic deflation. Japan also doubled their national debt.

I wonder if Congress and Paulson have the nerve to offer real "market value" for these distressed assets -- like 5 cents on the dollar, take it or leave it. I also wonder if they can resist the temptation to try and reflate the housing bubble. And I really wonder where they are going to get all the money for this!

They were already projecting a $400 billion deficit, and I don't think that included "emergency" appropriations for the wars. With the bailouts they've already done, and this new facility, we may see an actual deficit (amount of treasuries sold) of a trillion dollars. I can't see how they raise that without much higher interest rates. And I can't see how they reassure the markets that we're actually good for it without serious budget cuts. There's some market for Fed default futures. Has that reacted to this?

What's your guess as to what happens?

My response:

I think you've nailed it. Only I suspect our economy is even in worse shape than the Japanese economy due to our lack of savings and the enormous derivative positions still to be unwound. The Japanese economy looked rather simple by comparison.

I am thinking the only thing worse than socialism is socialism for the wealthy/powerful. I notice no one is suggesting the investment bankers who made billions (collectively) selling the taxic risky debt be taxed or suffer any civil penalties. oops, now take the debt off our hands seems to be playing OK with the "responsible" MSM.

I think we're in the midst of a financial hurricane without precedent and no one knows how it will play out, only that it will end badly.

Michael then added:

The more I think about it, the more amazed I am that anyone in the markets think this is good news. And it's not just U.S. investors, but worldwide. They must think the U.S. government is just made of money, with no credit limit!

I was talking to a friend about this today, and he's sure that Congress can't just leave it with some simple bailout. He thinks they will inevitably start "saving" their favored industries (like autos), making the economy even more political. Supposing we avoid that though, how will this new RTC decide what to buy, and at what price?

The old RTC got assets because the S&L went bankrupt, then they sold them for whatever they could get. This new one is going to be picking and choosing things to buy. That amounts to picking winners and losers. I can see banks being bailed out, but not hedge funds or something along those lines. Politically unpopular industries will suffer.

I also wonder if companies will now offload the really toxic stuff to subsidiaries, with the aim of letting them go bankrupt and be bailed out by the feds. I can't see how they will resist the temptation, if the Fed makes it clear they are cleaning up the worst cases first.

And of course, if they do offer pennies on the dollar for these assets (as they should), then doesn't that leave the banks insolvent? Or at least so far under their minimum capital requirements that they can't loan money? There were other comments today about "recapitalizing the banking industry", by which I think they mean the banks will sell shares to the Fed. I'm not sure how that makes an insolvent company solvent unless the Fed is paying too much. Which would be another political decision, with no respect for the economics of the situation.

Perhaps they can come up with something that impresses everyone, gets passed by Congress without a lot of fiddling and add ons, and actually works without needing a ridiculous amount of money. Or perhaps it isn't impressive, Congress balks, or the bill is just too high for foreign treasury buyers. Then I assume all hell breaks loose.

The press are still covering this as "another weird event in the world of finance!", not as "hey, the economy is collapsing. Here's the latest attempt to stop it." And I do wonder if Congress, Obama and McCain realize that if they do pass an expensive bailout, they can kiss any future expenditures goodbye. ( Emphasis added: CHS) The next administration (or three) will be about budget cuts, not new programs. McCain will find he can't fund his wars, and Obama will find he can't fund healthcare. Congress will really be under pressure to stop the pork spending. No fun for anyone in politics.

My second response:

I agree completely--the free-borrowing days are ending. Nobody seems to have noticed that the drop in oil has cut the Oil Exporters' free cash flow, and China is slowing down too, meaning less free billions floating around looking for a home.

The main issue now is: OK, so the banks are "recapitalized" by Federal gifts/bailouts; now who wants or needs to borrow money as the economy slides into recession? People are paying off debt and/or defaulting, not seeking to borrow more. So exactly how will these banks be profitable? Nobody seems to be asking that key question.

The answer seems obvious: once the flow of transactions slows to a dribble, then the fees which flow from transactions also plummet. Banks are essentially limited to making commoditized loans in a shrinking economy. Regardless of the bailout, I see a lack of profitable business as crippling the survivors.

I read somewhere that total banking system deposits are $6.7 trillion, and total banking system loans are just a shade greater. Which means that every single dime of deposits (and a little more) in this country are lent out. There's nothing whatsoever in the banks in the way of reserves. They are insolvent. A $700B bailout would merely bring banks up to a (somewhat) sane 10% reserve ratio.

Of course, the idea that the government can just do whatever the hell it wants regardless of what bondholders, foreign creditors, and others think is just pure farce. One way or another, this trainwreck is still going to happen. All we're doing is deploying airbags around the most crucial parts of the system. The panic will simply move from the financial/mortgage sector to the government bond sector, resulting in crippling interest rates and a plunge in the dollar. Eventually we'll reach a point where the government will be forced to throw in the towel and we'll enter a deep recession/depression with the banking system somewhat intact, and with the government finally making ruthless cuts to its own spending (except for interest payments and whatever is necessary to keep the banks liquid). In addition to the discipline imposed by creditors, there will be the added factor that voters taking oceans of pain in the private sector will finally be damned if they're going to let public employees/pensioners/unions/featherbedders/bureaucrats and other parasites skate while they suffer. People will finally favor the firing (or drastic cutting of pay) of the dead wood over keeping whatever "services" it is that they were allegedly providing.

In short, the government has made far, far too many fiscally impossible promises to far, far too many people, and these promises are going to be defaulted on.

At any rate, all the current actions will provide some needed "plausible deniability" to the politicians of both parties. Hey, they tried, and eventually there was nothing they could do.

Who knows, maybe this depression will result in changes that are the mirror image of what happened during the last one.

Clockwork Obama

Not far from the truth.

What A Coincidence!

Link.

Ace of Spades is on a roll and also has this (profanity wraning).

You Shall Be Judged By The Content Of Your Character

Ace of Spades rips on Obama for his constant playing of the race card.

Is The Media Fighting A Holy War?

Good stuff.

Keith Olbermann Issues A Special Comment On Yesterday's Lunch

Good spoof.



Backstory here.

I Will Gladly Have The Government Pay You Tuesday For A Hamburger Today

Good post at The Corner re:the meltdown and subsequent nationalizations.

At some point we're going to have to take our medicine. Perhaps a very deep recession caused by skyrocketing interest rates beats a collapsed banking system, and this is what the government is trying to engineer. But losses are losses, and they are going to need to be taken. Would you loan money for 30 years at 3% to a government that is buying everyone's unpayable debt? I sure as hell wouldn't. Eventually something's going to have to crack.

The Anchoress

Is exceedingly steamed. For good reason.

That Settles It

Hockey Moms For Truth:



H/T Mark Shea.

Bill Clinton Sabotages Obama (And Therefore The MSM) With A Little Honesty

Revenge:

Earlier this month, Barack Obama finally made the pilgrimage to Harlem to officially bow before the Temple of Clinton and ask for Bill’s assistance on the campaign trail. After a brief meeting, an unusually terse Clinton said he would campaign for Obama in Florida and maybe a few other places. Apparently that didn’t include CNBC, where the former president talked up … McCain and Palin?

Mr Clinton, acclaimed even by his enemies as one of the most consummate American politicians in recent history, said he did not agree with Republican vice presidential pick Mrs Palin on politics, but warned fellow Democrats not to underestimate her.

“She’s an instinctively effective candidate and with a compelling story,” Mr Clinton said in an interview with CNBC.

“I think it was exciting to some that she was a woman,” said Mr Clinton.

“I think she, I get why she’s done so well. It’s a mistake to underestimate her. She’s got good intuitive skills. They’re significant.”

Mr Clinton said he thought Republican presidential candidate John McCain, a Vietnam war hero and veteran lawmaker, was a “great man” and that the election on November 4 would be close, but he predicted Democrat Barack Obama would emerge triumphant.

That’s not exactly on message, Bill. Democrats have spent the last three weeks attacking Palin’s intelligence, sanity, integrity, sexual ethics, and maternity. They want to paint her as a country bumpkin unsuited for running a country. And they’ve managed to succeed a little in doing so, although she still beats Biden in favorability and in one poll topped Barack Obama on experience.

Instead, Bill decided to act more like a political analyst than … well, some of NBC’s own political analysts. Can you imagine Keith Olbermann or Chris Matthews saying anything like this on the air? Olbermann would have canned a contributor for saying anything this gracious or this accurate. Bill may be the only person on NBC’s cable shows to have called John McCain a “great man” in two years.

Was it all just graciousness? Those who have watched the Clintons operate will be rightly skeptical...

Elect Me, Or The Economy Gets It

Good point:

Barack Obama has the power to solve this crisis and ease your pain - but he won't do it unless you make him President

If Senator Obama really has the solution to our ruinous financial situation, why is he withholding it from Congress while they are in their final session of the year?

McCain Is Back On A Real Attack

Three ads highlighted here.

And here's another great one humorously taking advantage of a Biden blunder.

UPDATE: Yet another one!

On The Bright Side

There are some pluses.

Here's one:

5) Huge numbers of Wall Street executives will have the time to raise their children.

For years now Wall Street has been far too lucrative for a certain kind of energetic and ambitious person to justify anything but the most perfunctory personal life. Now that the market for his services has collapsed, he has time to go home and figure out which of the children roaming around the mansion are actually his.

In time, he will learn to love them and they him, and they will gain the benefit of his wisdom and experience. Perhaps one day they will put it to use as traders and investment bankers, on the Wall Street of the future, where they will report to those exalted creatures of high finance: loan officers.

There, slowly, they can earn the money they will need to pay off the mortgages defaulted upon by their forebears.

Royal Shaft: The Breakdown

Link:

My friend "CS" emailed me this evening:

----

I am almost shaking as I write this for what is happening to the capital markets, this country, and the free world. The impact of the past two weeks' action in the financial markets, if not reversed by cooler heads, will have irreparably changed the world in a way that only terrorist attacks and acts of war have in the past.

Nationalizing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, providing an emergency quasi-legal bridge loan to AIG, temporarily banning short-selling on all stocks in the US, and instituting an RTC-type entity to handle the toxic waste of the financial system is economic violence on a grand scale.

The long-term cost of these actions to dollar holders will likely be in excess of $1 trillion. The basic premise of a free economy is one governed by laws and not men, where property rights are respected, where individuals are free to make contracts with each other, and where honesty and transparency exist in the marketplace. It's questionable whether any of these currently exist in the economy of the United States.

Before I continue let me provide a partial list of entities responsible for the financial mess we find ourselves in:

* -Fractional-reserve banking, which is inherently unstable and entirely a confidence game

* -Congress for passing the Federal Reserve Act and creating the Federal Reserve, the third central bank in the history of the US

* -Woodrow Wilson for using the Fed to finance World War 1

* -Benjamin Strong, the President of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York from 1914-1928, for inflating the money supply in the '20s to help out Great Britain which led to the Great Depression

* -Herbert Hoover for his economic intervention from 1929-1932. He was not laissez-faire by any means.

* -John Maynard Keynes for laying the foundation of a miseducated public

* -FDR for banning private ownership of gold, enacting the New Deal, creating Social Security and Fannie Mae, and exacerbating the Great Depression

* -The FDIC for lulling the American public into a false sense of security regarding their bank deposits and training the public to unquestionably trust the financial system

* -LBJ for the guns and butter of the '60s

* -Nixon for severing all ties between the US dollar and gold

* -Reagan's intellectual duplicity, using free market, small government rhetoric while turning the US into a chronic debtor nation

* -Alan Greenspan, one of the most duplicitous, arrogant, and incompetent individuals in the history of the United States. If I had to pin this crisis on any one man, it would be he.

* -George W. Bush for cutting taxes while raising spending and his full embrace of Cheney's doctrine of "deficits don't matter"

* -Ben Bernanke for following the Greenspan doctrine to its inevitable conclusion

* -The heads of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac for using artificially low borrowing costs to create systemically-dangerous housing institutions

* -Christopher Dodd and Barney Frank for beating the socialist drum

* -Christopher Cox for thinking a ban on short-selling will solve anything

* -Hank Paulson for folding the hand he was dealt

* -The ratings agencies for rubber stamping garbage assets as AAA

* -The heads of the major banks and brokerages on Wall Street for turning a blind eye as their institutions were taking on massive leverage that threatens to take down the financial system

* -The hedge funds that levered up structured finance to dangerous levels

* -Generations of lawmakers for kicking the looming financial crisis can down the road

* -Home buyers who lied about their income and creditworthiness

* -Predatory lenders who put people into mortgages they could never afford

Frankly, I don't know where we go from here. Despite what government officials want, you cannot intervene your way to renewed credit and economic growth. The excesses of the past 25 years have come home to roost, and if we aren't careful this country's status as the hub of global capital markets and the holder of the world's reserve currency will disappear.

Freezing foreclosures, mandating artificially low mortgage rates, sweeping junk assets on bank balance sheets under a Level 3 rug, delaying the writedown of debt, pursuing a witch hunt against legitimate players in the capital markets, and having the government be the lender and borrower of last resort will do nothing other than recreate the mistakes of the 1930s. Short-selling isn't taking down financial firms, overlevered balance sheets of bad assets is.

This country has a lot of problems.

No Confidence

Ineptitude and corruption lead to irrelevance:

Congressional Irrelevance:

One interesting aspect of the recent government bailouts has been the complete irrelevance of Congress. The operation and decision-making seems to be run almost entirely by the Secretary of Treasury and Federal Reserve. Congress appears to lack the ability, the will, and the decisiveness to play any role except spectator, as a handful of senior executive branch officials have nationalized major portions of Wall Street.

What is further interesting is that Congress is not missed in the slightest. No one is clamoring for a greater role for our elected representatives in dealing with these problems. I haven't heard anyone saying, "We really need to get Congress more involved in this. They'll know what to do."

The other day, I offered my view that Congress today is fundamentally a silly place stocked with silly people. This latest situation illustrates the principle. I don't know whether Paulson and Bernanke are doing the right thing (I tend to think not). But I know for certain that I'd rather that they be making these decisions than Congress.

Moreover, this problem has become systemic. A recent Wall Street Journal article noted that the current Congress has enacted less legislation than any Congress in recent history--and that includes its many symbolic pieces of legislation such as renaming Post Offices. The output of administrative agencies dwarfs that of Congress. The Senate's behavior on judicial nominations is preposterous.

I sense a vicious cycle at work here. As Congress has become more dysfunctional and unable to address matters of public importance, the Executive Branch has stepped in to fill the gap. In turn, this allows Congress to behave in an even less-serious manner, which in turn necessitates further action by the Executive Branch. If the Executive waited for Congress to do anything, nothing would get done. So Congress essentially spends its time bloviating and posturing, while the unelected beavers in the bowels of the bureaucracy crank out federal regulations.

Put more generally, Congress's ridiculousness has increasingly caused it to forfeit its status a co-equal branch of government...

A Lecture From Our Superior

Link:

She said "nucular." Twice.

I realized three things tonight. For one, if you are a McCain/Palin/Bush voter, you and I do not have a difference of opinion. We have a difference in brain power. Two, she really is as ignorant as I feared. And, three, she really is kinda hot. Basically, I want to have sex with her on my Barack Obama sheets while my wife reads aloud from the Constitution. (My wife is cool with this if I promise to "first wipe off Palin's tranny makeup." I married well.)

Now, I want to be clear and speak directly to those of you who LOVED that Palin interview. You're an idiot. I mean that. This is not one of those cases where we're going to agree to disagree. This isn't one of those situations where we debate it passionately and then walk away thinking that the other guy is wrong but argued well. I'm not going to think of you as a thoughtful but misguided person with different ideas who still really cares about the country and the world. No, sorry, not this time. This time, if you watched those interview excerpts and weren't scared out of your freakin' mind, then you're mentally ill, mentally disabled, or mentally disturbed. What you are NOT is responsible, informed, curious, thoughtful, mature, educated, empathetic, or remotely serious. I mean it.

But I like to think that anyone can change.

Stop voting for people you want to have a beer with. Stop voting for folksy. Stop voting for people who remind you of your neighbor. Stop voting for the ideologically intransigent, the staggeringly ignorant, and the blazingly incompetent.

Vote for someone smarter than you. Vote for someone who inspires you. Vote for someone who has not only traveled the world but who has also shown a deep understanding and compassion for it. The stakes are real and they're terrifyingly high. This election matters. It matters. It really matters. Let me say that one more time. This. Really. Matters.

Let's Correct For All Pertinent Factors, Shall We?

I don't really understand why people regard Obama as notably intelligent, because it seems quite evident that he isn't. Perhaps he seems that way to the notably unintelligent (journalists), or to those foolish enough to believe that Democrat=smart and Republican=stoopid.

Vox Day critiques an assessment, noting that they left out a certain crucial something.

See also.

I Just Want To Make Sure I Have This Right

WTF?

So, the government takes over the mortgage industry. The government takes over the insurance industry. And now the government makes sure that the banking industry, the ultimate source of all the troubles, is given a "get out of jail free" card? Their bad debt is now my bad debt? When their balance sheets are sanitized are they then going to go back to making outsized loans to people who can't afford them and pocket the profits while making me take all the losses?

This is insane. At some point I hope the bond market gives a giant vote of "no confidence" to Uncle Swindler. Really, I don't know why the ten year bond is not at 8% at this point. The number one function of government would seem to be thievery.

The Democrat Message Is Simple And Straightforward: Fear Itself

Hinderaker muses on just what message Obama is supposed to be getting back to.

A taste:

So what, exactly, is the message that Obama should go back to? It's not an easy question to answer. He can't focus on his own achievements, because there aren't many. Worse, major areas of Obama's past are off limits. He really doesn't want to open up a conversation about his years in Indonesia or at Harvard Law School, or about his work as a "community organizer" in Chicago or the friends he made there. Nor can he talk in any detail about his role as a legislator in Springfield or Washington, since he has been a go along/get along careerist, not a reformer like John McCain or Sarah Palin.

What does that leave? Mostly, hoping for bad news...

Well, Whatever A "Reform Christian" Is, I Ain't One

Lileks fisks (starting about halfway down the post) a ridiculous Ann Lamott piece.

Phonetic For One, Phonetic For All, It's Only Fair

Link:

The Washington Post's Double-Standard on Quoting Politicians

Look closely at the way the Washington Post quotes Barack Obama yesterday:

He chided Sen. John McCain some at both. "Yesterday, John McCain actually said that if he's president, he'll take on the, quote, old boys' network in Washington," Obama said in Elko.

"I am not making this up. This is someone who's been in Congress for 26 years - who put seven of the most powerful Washington lobbyists in charge of his campaign - and now he's the one who will take on the old boy network?" Obama continued. "The old boy network? In the McCain campaign, that's called a staff meeting."

Look closely at the way the Washington Post quotes Sarah Palin yesterday:

"John? John?'' Sarah Palin called to John McCain. "Can I add somethin'?'' ...

One woman wanted to give her the chance to address those who say Palin can't be a mother and vice president. "Well, let's prove 'em wrong,'' Palin said to cheers.

She talked about her role if the ticket is elected: "Let me tell you, I know a little bit about energy. That's gonna be my baby when I get to Washington, D.C.''

"Somethin'" instead of "something"; "'em" instead of "them"; "gonna" instead of "going to." I don't doubt that's the way Palin sounded. But I've heard a lot of politicians drop their 'g's and 'th's, and this is the first time I've seen a newspaper put three of them in one story about a politician's speech.

Obama has suddenly discovered a drawl when appearing before audiences in the South, but I don't recall transcripts suddenly reflecting that. Those of us who have watched Obama on the stump know that "uh" punctuates his speeches with surprising frequency. Usually, we drop them when quoting him, as they're superfluous to covering the news.

Depending on your view, the dropped 'g's, etc., can sound folksy or uneducated. I just want newspapers to be consistent in their application.

UPDATE: A reader says that any fair ear would say that Obama was referring to the "ol' boys network" in his statement quoted above. I haven't heard the audio myself, but find that characterization quite plausible.

Weasels.

Whose Fingerprints Are All Over This Catastrophe, And Who Tried To Do Something About It?

Setting the record straight. H/T Brutally Honest.

A Conclusion In Search Of "Data"

What Ace said.

FYI

A post about the following cartoon:

Amusing

"The People Are The Vessel And Politicians The Water. The Latter Just Take The Shape Of The Former."

Great essay.

The Anchoress In All-Caps

Well done.

How This Screw-Over Happened

Nothing particularly new here, but nicely summed up in this WaPo article.

"He's Much Smarter Than You!! So You Should Vote For Him!!"

Actually, in all honesty, I don't perceive Obama as being particularly bright at all. I guess it's because I'm intimidated.

You've got to witness the wisdom of Joe Biden on the campaign trail. Un-frickin-believable.

How Exactly Is This More Important Than Tanning Beds In Alaska?

Good post at The Anchoress, concerning Obama's undercutting of US foreign policy.

McCain Was "On It", Obama Was "In On It"

McCain tried to do something about the GSE's 3 years ago, while Obama was taking tons of "contributions" from them. Link.

Cartoon

Here:

Okay, So In Addition To The Mortgage Industry, The Government Now Runs The Insurance Industry

Free enterprise.

Gaffe Machine

He keeps serving them up:

Obama 'Brags' About 'Negative Ads That Are Completely Unrelated to the Issues at Hand'

Ha!

"If we're going to ask questions about, you know, who has been promulgating negative ads that are completely unrelated to the issues at hand, I think I win that contest pretty handily," Obama said.

Just note that if McCain had said that, it would be seen as a sign of age and dementia. If Palin had said that, it would be a sign she's not ready for prime time. If Biden said that... well, that scenario presumes that a reporter would be around to notice, but if he did, it would mean that it's a Monday.

Gianna Jesson

Born alive after an attempted abortion, politically active, and quite a sweet person. I heard her speak at the Walk For Life in San Francisco. Amazing to hear Alan Colmes defend what should have been her death. Link.

Her ad needs to be picked up and nationalized by the McCain campaign.

Obama Wanted A 50 State Race, And Now It Looks Like He's Getting One

Link.

The True Story Behind Troopergate

Insubordination.

Look, Even If I Wanted To Outlaw Christianity In This Country, I Just Don't Have The Subcommittee Votes To Do It!

Hugh Hewitt:

Obama's Guns and Constitution Problem

Jake Tapper catches up with Obama's gun problem, and correctly notes that Obama's bizarre, rambling answer on guns to a friendly Pennsylvania audience on Friday September 5th has "ricocheted around the country," but Jake doesn't tell you why.

In a nutshell: Obama concluded his curiously defensive answer that day with a hypothetical:

"The bottom line is this. If you’ve got a rifle, you’ve got a shotgun, you’ve got a gun in your house, I’m not taking it away. Alright? So they can keep on talking about it but this is just not true. And by the way, here’s another thing you’ve got to understand. Even if I wanted to take it away, I couldn’t get it done. I don’t have the votes in Congress."

The idea that Second Amendment rights depend on Congressional inaction due to a lack of votes is the give-away here. First Amendment rights cannot be curtailed by Congressional Action. Fourth Amendment rights are not subject to majority vote. Gun owners and and originalists wonder why Obama is conceding that majorities in House and Senate can take guns away.

Gun owners don't believe Obama's reassurances because he talked too much and gave too much away.

Very much like his entire campaign.

Do Leftists Have Some Need To Be Working Out Their Mommy Issues In Such A Public Way?

Lileks gives a good introduction:

Here’s your Sarah Palin overreaction of the day. Presumably she took out the entrails, dried them, and used them to lynch librarians. It’s really obvious, isn’t it? She wants to kill Lady Liberty and all she represents. The plane is included in the picture because she personally shoots polar bears from above, like she’s GOD OR SOMETHING. The comments have the usual reasoned evaluations – she’s a PSYCHO, a LUNATIC. That picture is so sad and so true.

I don’t know if anyone’s stated the obvious yet, but this might be the first time people have become unhinged in advance over a vice-presidential candidate. Not to say some aren’t painting McCain as something the devil blurted out in a distracted moment during his daily conference call with Cheney, but a Veep? It took a while for people to believe that Cheney commissioned private snuff films with runaways dressed up to resemble a portion of the Bill of Rights, but Palin is She-Wolf of the Tundra right off the bat. And god help us she can use email, which means she will control the government. The most Spy ever did with Quayle was stick him in a dunce hat. By the time we reach the election Oliphant will probably draw Palin sodomizing by an oil derrick with guns for arms. I have to confess: I think Palin is an interesting politician, but the people she's driving batty are much more fascinating.

imagine 12 years of this.

He's talking about this. See also.

Conservatives Just Plain Do Humor Better

They take what they are dealt, and work with it. Example.

Not Surprising. For A Lot Of Europeans, 100 Miles Is A Long Voyage.

When it comes to ignorance, who's doing the wallowing?

You Just Overpaid by $25B. Fine. You're Now Worth $25B Less.

A good example of market discipline.

The Answer: "Affirmative"

Brutally Honest asks the obvious question.

Frowny Face

Correcting the young Barack.

Voiceover: "It's Unanimous. All Those Who Don't Like McCain Agree That McCain Is Bad!"

The meltdown continues. Ann Althouse looks at Obama's latest ad, which whines that lying liars are telling lies, backed up with authoritative quotes from the most discredited names in the drive-by media.

Content-free and prominently displaying the names of all the media organizations that have earned the contempt of the sensible. Brilliant, but only as some sort of cathartic pep-talk for the panicking "in-crowd".

Also, what's all of this "voted with Bush 90% of the time" stuff? The President is not a legislator.

Once Again, Mr. Ebert, Why In The Heck Would We Care What You Think?

Link.

I Take It, Then, That The Obama Phenomenon Is Also Doomed?

A strange piece of delusional MSM projection.

Sample quote:

The television networks appear to be treating Palin carefully, trying hard not to seem sexist or liberal or come across as intellectual, big-city bullies.

Well, Come On, It's A Non-Story

Because it's about Obama.

My guess is that the McCain campaign is sitting on an awful lot of "dry powder" to be used in October ("the Surge succeeded beyond our wildest dreams", for example). This latest is something that--even if ignored by the MSM--will hopefully be added to the October stockpile (assuming it is credible).

Focal Length Bias

Link. Again I say, the GOP needs to figure out a way to simply shut out the MSM. They have neither earned, nor deserve access.

One 'New Coke' Was Enough

Thankfully I've been spared from seeing what kind of abomination the new Sitemeter was. They're already ditching the changes after causing an uproar over the last day or two. Details here.

Great Comment

Seen here:

The problem for Obama is that this campaign is the hardest thing he’s ever had to do in his life. This is not the hardest thing McCain has had to do in his life.

Oh, Man

David Foster Wallace, R.I.P.

Leftists Can't Even Do "Professionalism"

The story behind McCain's cover photo in The Atlantic.

One of the key things the GOP needs to do is come up with a media strategy in which ruthless partisan hacks are simply denied access, and names are named. Enough with the passive naivete!

BTW, here are the images from the photoshoot that the dishonorable hack put on her own website. Link. Link.

Oh. And a couple more: Link. Link.

UPDATE: American Digest has a comprehensive post about this.

UPDATE: Chicago Boyz on what this tells us:

The important thing here is not that Greenberg took and altered the pictures. The import thing is that she felt comfortable bragging about what she did! She expected to receive accolades and approval from the Left for her dirty trick. This tells us a lot about what kind of ethics Greenberg believes the Left approves of. Given her immersion in the upper class, urban, articulate intellectual culture of the far Left, her assessment is probably correct.

The far Left has long since adopted the world view of the radical Marxist in which political utility equals truth. Incapable of believing themselves capable of intellectual error or moral failing, they see themselves obligated to acquire power by any means necessary. They view democracy as only a means of acquiring the legitimacy to use that power. If they must do so under false pretenses, then they will. They believe that the enormous benefits of their enlightened rule outweigh any consequences of the dishonest acts that bring about that rule.

Politics is an ugly business and dirty tricks abound. Individuals from every part of the political spectrum stoop to low tactics to win. What we see on the contemporary far Left, however, is a lack of shame about doing so and complete unwillingness to punish those who go too far.

We should worry if that mindset really does gain power.

UPDATE: Apparently this photographer is also a manipulative pervert of the first order.

More Analogies

Instapundit:

JIM TREACHER: Hitler was a community organizer, FDR was a governor. "If they can launch their moronic memes, why shouldn't we? We don't have Axelrod's astroturfing staff to spread it overnight, but I'm sure we can make do." Actually, it took surprisingly long for this particular discussion to Godwinize. . . .

UPDATE: Reader Don Leonard emails:

Someone commented on local Cleveland radio yesterday:

Pontius Pilate was the guy that voted: "present"

Ouch.

Wonder Woman Bloviates

Lynda Carter, who knows the mind of God well enough to know that no one can possibly know the mind of God.

I'd Assume That Those Held To Higher Standards Are Probably Better

And there are two very different standards in play.

Definitions

Democracy: Atheists and agnostics voting based on their understanding of morality and their theological worldview.

Theocracy: Religious people voting based on their understanding of morality and their theological worldview.

Thinking Christian examines this dynamic.

NOTE: I regard the statement "God does not exist" or the statement "God can not be known to exist" as part of a "theological worldview", since it is a statement about the nature of God.

Wacky

I can't quite follow the story, but the sound effects are good. Link.

Yet Another Backfire

Jonah:

Wondering No More [Jonah Goldberg]

Yep. The day after 9/11, as part of its "get tough" makeover, the Obama campaign is mocking John McCain for not using a computer, without caring why he doesn't use a computer. From the AP story about the computer illiterate ad:

"Our economy wouldn't survive without the Internet, and cyber-security continues to represent one our most serious national security threats," [Obama spokesman Dan] Pfeiffer said. "It's extraordinary that someone who wants to be our president and our commander in chief doesn't know how to send an e-mail."

Well, I guess it depends on what you mean by "extraordinary." The reason he doesn't send email is that he can't use a keyboard because of the relentless beatings he received from the Viet Cong in service to our country. From the Boston Globe (March 4, 2000):

McCain gets emotional at the mention of military families needing food stamps or veterans lacking health care. The outrage comes from inside: McCain's severe war injuries prevent him from combing his hair, typing on a keyboard, or tying his shoes. Friends marvel at McCain's encyclopedic knowledge of sports. He's an avid fan - Ted Williams is his hero - but he can't raise his arm above his shoulder to throw a baseball.

In a similar vein I guess it's an outrage that the blind governor of New York David Patterson doesn't know how to drive a car. After all, transportation issues are pretty important. How dare he serve as governor while being ignorant of what it's like to navigate New York's highways.

The Differences

Link:

I was talking to a friend of mine's little girl the other day. I asked her what she wanted to be when she grew up and she replied, "I want to be president!" Both of her parents are liberal Democrats and were standing there. So then I asked her, "If you were President what would be the first thing you would do?" She replied, "I'd give houses to all the homeless people." "Wow - what a worthy goal." I told her, "You don't have to wait until you're President to do that. You can come over to my house and mow, pull weeds, and sweep my yard, and I'll pay you $50. Then I'll take you over to the grocery store where this homeless guy hangs out, and you can give him the $50 to use toward a new house."

Since she is only 6, she thought that over for a few seconds. While her Mom glared at me, she looked me straight in the eye and asked, "Why doesn't the homeless guy come over and do the work, and you can just pay him the $50?"

And I said, "Welcome to the Republican Party."

Her folks still aren't talking to me.

And from the comments:

I was talking to a friend of mine's little girl the other day. I asked her what she wanted to be when she grew up and she replied, "I want to be President!" Both of her parents are liberal Democrats and were standing there. So then I asked her, "If you were President what would be the first thing you would do?" She replied, "I'd save the children of the world." "Wow - what a worthy goal." I told her, "You don't have to wait until you're President to do that. You can come to my house tomorrow and play with Jordan and Linda. They don't have any parents, you know. Then you can come with me to the crisis pregnancy centre and help us stuff envelopes. Next Saturday night, I'll drive you to the hospital for the candelight vig--"

"My body, my choice!" she interrupted.

Cartoons

Here:





Here:





Here:

Meta-Messages And Subtexts

So, let me see if I can read between the lines. Democrats despise: Business people. Small town people. Trailer trash women. Successful women. Stay at home moms. Working moms. Unmarried moms. Unaborted babies. The disabled. Bible-believers. And now, it seems, senior citizens.

You guys are getting very successful at getting your core message heard. But can it win at the ballot box?

Odd And One-Sided

A strange piece in Vanity Fair about how the media could be doing a better job getting Obama elected.

Item 3 is "Tough but fair investigations into McCain and Palin’s various lies, bad decisions, and questionable policies"

Isn't there something missing here?

From the comments to the piece:

What the media insists on not getting is not just how many of us do not pay attention to them anymore, but how many of us actively choose opposite the media's choices. And not all of us live in an echo chamber. All conservatives I know are related to, work with, and live near liberals. I was a liberal Democrat for 26 years. One of the things I learned (besides the rank hypocrisy of the so-called feminist movement, of which I had been a proud part, and which now so vociferously disses and excoriates Sarah Palin) was that the media is always, without exception, in the tank for the most liberal and least qualified candidates for any given office - the more anti-American, the better. I read and study a lot, as far as current events and politics go, but I pay no attention to the media except as a bellwether of where NOT to go and what NOT to choose. They have a perfect score and it's one I disagree with 100%. The hateful and self-degrading media spasms of the past 2 weeks reinforce my perceptions and decisions.

Posted 9/12/2008 by pegc


Wha? "V.F.’s James Wolcott feels that the Obama campaign would be aided by a braver press that unhesitatingly calls bullsh*t on the McCain-Palin campaign, but he concedes that it can be tough for those kinds of stories to gain traction." 'Scuse please? The problem with that approach - to "call bullsh*t" on one campaign but not the other - is that "the stories don't gain traction"? Not even lip service to any kind of even-handedness? Do you J-school folks still wonder why we non-J-school folks don't believe a word you say?

Posted 9/12/2008 by JamieMcArdle

Lost In A Blizzard Of Bias

Compare and contrast.

Dangerously Bellicose

Well done!

Of course, the problem is that nobody really believes a Democrat when he talks about a strong foreign policy (or is it pronounced pollisuh?).

How The Shark Was Jumped

Charles Krauthammer traces the parabolic trajectory of Obama by reference to five key speeches.

This Is What 'Integrity' Means To The MSM

Weasels.

Highlarious

Leftist humor highlighted here.

Inside Story

Richard Sternberg has published an interesting article about his side of the story. Sternberg was the guy at the Smithsonian who went through a whole lot of persecution for daring to publish a pro-ID article even after peer review. He comes across as quite intelligent and an independent thinker.

Poor, Innocent, Caught-In-The-Middle MSM

The Corner:

Mad How disease [Mark Steyn]

The Washington Post's media man, Howard Kurtz, is mad as hell and he's not gonna take it for more than another couple decades or until the management buy-out offer improves:

The media are getting mad.

Whether it's the latest back-and-forth over attack ads, the silly lipstick flap or the continuing debate over Sarah and sexism, you can just feel the tension level rising several notches.

Maybe it's a sense that this is crunch time, that the election is on the line, that the press is being manipulated...

Yes, indeed. Howie feels the press is being "manipulated" by the McCain campaign.

Maybe it is. A conventional launch strategy for a little-known vice-presidential nominee might have involved "manipulating" the media into running umpteen front-pagers on Sarah Palin's amazing primary challenge of a sitting governor and getting the sob-sisters to slough off a ton of heartwarming stories about her son shipping out to Iraq.

But, if you were really savvy, you'd "manipulate" the media into a stampede of lurid drivel deriding her as a Stepford wife and a dominatrix, comparing her to Islamic fundamentalists, Pontius Pilate and porn stars, and dismissing her as a dysfunctional brood mare who can't possibly be the biological mother of the kid she was too dumb to abort. Who knows? It's a long shot, but if you could pull it off, a really cunning media manipulator might succeed in manipulating Howie's buddies into spending the month after Labor Day outbidding each other in some insane Who Wants To Be An Effete Condescending Media Snob? death-match. You'd not only make the press look like bozos, but that in turn might tarnish just a little the fellow these geniuses have chosen to anoint.

John Hinderaker has more on Kurtz' descent into madness, while Roger Kimball calls the last two weeks an "act of auto-immolation" by the media. Alas, while setting their own pants on fire, Howie & co also managed to spill the lighter fluid all over Barack's coronation robes...

Trenchant

Extract from a Gagdad Bob post:

You hear Obama say what a shame it is that we are reduced to talking about lipstick and pigs when we should be talking about global warming and how much we hate President Bush, but he's only saying that because he got the wrong end of the stick this time. He loved it two weeks ago, when it was about John McCain not knowing how many houses his wife owns.

You see, there are people who are even more confused than liberals, and these are called "independents" or "moderates." I mean, if you don't even know whether you are a liberal or a conservative, you are either an ignoramus or a head case. It's like not knowing if you're a boy or a girl. Here's a clue for you, pal: if you don't know whether you're a boy or a girl, you're a liberal.

The point is, there is nothing on earth that could get me to vote for a leftist, as I am opposed to them politically, spiritually, philosophically, scientifically, cosmologically, economically, morally, educationally, psychologically, linguistically, culturally, ontologically, aesthetically, psychohistorically, and in just about every other way.

...

So the next fifty days of the campaign are not going to be aimed at you or me. Tactically, that would be a foolish waste of resources, wouldn't it? Rather, the main strategy must involve courting these so called "independents" (who are actually quite dependent upon accident and contingency), the idiots who are responsible for Obama being at 50% one week and 43% the next. What happened in those two weeks? What happened is that a sizable number of independent idiots heard some zinger or some fragment of a meme that was sufficient to influence their weak minds.

So no one should be surprised that political campaigns are largely about stupid and trivial things, because the election will ultimately be decided by stupid and trivial people. But you can never say that, or you will lose the election, for you will have insulted the stupid people, and forever alienated them. Indeed, this is why campaigns are so damn expensive. I'm guessing that the biggest expense is television ads, which are specifically addressed to stupid people who can be influenced to vote for someone based upon a television ad.

Is this an elitist view? No, not at all. That's one of the main points. For example, Sarah Palin doesn't have to pretend that she's a regular person, because she is, as are most real "temperamental" conservatives. But Obama is not a regular person, and doesn't seem to have ever even associated with them. Rather, he seems to attract -- or be attracted to -- notably abnormal people such as Bill Ayers, Rev. Wright, Tony Rezko, etc. Part of the problem with the stupid independents is that they cannot tell the difference between a real person and someone pretending to be real, like Obama. Which is why these effete liberals always look so silly when they try to bowl, or ride a bicycle, or drive a tank, or shoot a gun.

Damn. I forgot my fragment of a thought that I wanted to discuss...

Winners Know What Makes Their Opponents Tick

Losers, not so much.

excerpt:

It's always been true, but as the Palin mayhem demonstrates more extravagantly then ever, the left and their media allies possess a dangerous, childish ignorance of their conservative opposition. It manifests itself in their snide assessments of her as a white trash anti-woman, and in their hysterical bleating about her pregnant daughter, which was met with the sound of crickets and an indifferent 'So?' by the evangelicals that the news was apparently crafted to outrage. Yet that didn't stop them from trying as they frantically waved around the lifeless non-story, making it dance like a desperate puppeteer putting on a show for an alien species it had no understanding of.

Behind closed doors at MSNBC, there might have been puzzlement as to why nobody had, as yet, tried to stone Bristol Palin. "But that's what they do, isn't it? When they're not threatening gays?" Or take Sally Quinn's recent comments on Palin. She's fuzzy on the matter; but is pretty sure evangelicals are against women having jobs outside the home.

Extraordinary. They truly have no idea what makes us tick, and their willful misunderstanding has rendered them wholly incapable of dealing with the curveball Palin has thrown them. At the moment, it seems they're powerless to stem the rallying effect she's having.

At the root of this curious gulf of ignorance has always been the fact that the left is unable to understand that conservatives keenly understand them and the alleged rationales behind their policies. We know they think government needs an active role in social justice, that civic and free market mechanisms like business, church, and charity are insufficient to deal with poverty, urban decay, and the social pathologies that foster them. They think that in order to foster social progress, the state needs to assume active advocacy roles on a limitless range of issues. They think that the consolidation of wealth and influence embodied in the United States is internationally dangerous, destabilizing, corruptive, and worst, just plain unfair. We understand. We may utterly disagree and denounce it to hell, but we understand.

When conservatives see liberals, they see the proponents of bad, inefficient, and eminently corruptible state and social systems that with eye-watering predictability, corrupt those who administer them and harm their alleged beneficiaries. Often for generations.

But we also know that when liberals look at conservatives, no such courtesy or openness of mind is extended. They don't see considered issues, critical thought, or the faintest possibility of reason. They see white trash men waving bibles at teen brides, while a gaggle of kids groom each other for lice on a cracked linoleum floor. 'Bitter clingers' who mindlessly adhere to second-amendment rights so they can shoot baby possum off a tin fence on slow Friday nights. The other sort of conservative invariably invokes 19th century robber barons, plutocrat industrialists swollen with loot plundered from the proletariat, abating their whipping of Dickensian child labor just long enough to polish a monocle.

For reasons above my pay grade since it seems to be doing them no favors, the Democrats and media cling to and propagate these curiously garish caricatures about conservatives that would be more at home in the works of Bosch than in any recognizable reality. And not just in private; but as par for the course in the national discussion. For example, Sarah Palin doesn't merely have 'flawed policies'. In the space of two weeks, we've discovered she's apparently a power-drunk loon, an anti-semite, a hypocrite, an unfit mother, a religious fanatic, a redneck escapee from the set of Deliverance, a Nazi sympathizer, and an 18th-century secessionist. All she's missing is a mustache to twirl...

Well, we'll probably soon hear that she started shaving her mustache when she ran for governor.

Nightmare: Abortions Might Decrease

Trig Palin has a Canadian doctor worried.

Ace comments:

Canadian Doctor Fears Sarah Palin's Example Could Reduce Women's Reproductive Choices, By Encouraging Them to Choose Against Abortion

Hmmm... their "choices" will be reduced by their choice of a choice you obviously wish them not to choose.

...

Are you sure you're pro-choice? 'Cuz it sounds like you're just pro-abortion.

The Superdelegates Blew It

If not for their cowardice and dereliction of duty, we'd currently be looking at a Clinton/Obama vs McCain/Boring race.

Stick To Movies

Link:

Roger Ebert, Unhinged [John J. Miller]

The movie reviewer on Sarah Palin:

And how can you be her age and never have gone to Europe? ... Sarah Palin's travel record is that of a hopeless provincial. ... Palin is a shallow, chirpy person with those vaguely alarming eyeglasses. Now her fans all want a pair. Remember back when women wore glasses that departed their ears in plastic swoops and swirls? My theory is, anyone who wears glasses that look weird is telling me something I don't want to know. I trust the American people will see through Palin's facade, and save the Republic in November. The most damning indictment against her is that she considered herself a good choice to be a heartbeat away. That shows bad judgment

Balance

Link:

RE: Not Necessarily the News [Mark Hemingway]

John notes that the Washington Post seems to be downplaying the McCain-Palin rally in its backyard. But the bigger crime may be how the Washington Post article on the rally was written. Let's just do a by numbers comparison:

Number of paragraphs in the Washington Post story: 14

Number of paragraphs about pro-Obama protesters: 8

Number of McCain-Palin supporters present: 23,000

Number of Obama protesters: about 30

You do the math.

It's Not A Reference To His Race, It's A Reference To His Leftism

Clueless. Or maybe just disingenuous.

The God Gene

John Cleese!

Lightworker Schtick Pretty Much Dead

Mark Shea.

excerpt:

And speaking of stupid stupid STUPID, here's garrulous Uncle Joe Biden putting the first of many bullets in his feet:

"I hear all this talk about how the Republicans are going to work in dealing with parents who have … the joy and the difficulty of raising a child who has a developmental disability,” said Biden, who’s wife is a teacher. “Well guess what folks? If you care about it, why don’t you support stem cell research?”

This is stupid for so many reasons. First, does the Party of Exterminating the Unfit *really* want to take on a mother who loves her child and has not followed Dem party platform of liquidating the lebensunwertes leben? Doncha think that those tender images of Piper and Trig sort blow to hell all those "Abort Prolifers!" pics that the Dem base specializes in, Joe? Do you *really* want to suggest that she doesn't love her son right there on national television, you moron?

Second, having just established last week that you, in some mysterious Pickwickian sense, "believe" the Church's teaching the life begins at conception, do you really want to immediately follow that up with "So let's start cannibalizing those babies right away, on pain of being charged with contempt for the disabled!"

And finally, when you are trying to pass yourself off as the Voice of Science vs. Irrational Religious Dogmatism Interfering with Progress, Joe, doncha think you should, like, know what you are talking about just a little bit. For instance, doncha think you should know that Down's Syndrome could not be helped in the slightest by embryonic stem cells? Indeed, don't you think you could familiarize yourself with that fact that nobody's been helped by ESCR and that nobody opposes adult stem cells, which actually have been useful?

What. a. Maroon.

So: keep it up Team Obama. You're cracking up and you don't know what to do. I'll tell you what not to do: stop attacking Palin and her family. Get your mind off her fecundity, her kids, especially the disabled one who fills you with shame for your bloody advocacy of his extermination. Try to focus on the issues. Ignore the guilt you feel for 40 years of fanatical zeal for putting kids like him to death and pressuring women like her to kill him. Beat down the voice of your conscience while you yammer something about "integrity". Ignore the compulsion to call her a Pig in Lipstick. Muscle down the revulsion/shame/hate and fear that you feel when the damn kid who should have been killed in any truly hygenic society is loved by another member of that disgusting swarming brood of breeders. Be cool. Keep it together.

Suppress. The. Scream.

But you can't.

See also.

Parallels With The Dot Com Crash

Link.

Things Eventually Get Scary When There's No Real Reason You Should Be Running

Good stuff. It begins:

Rattled

It's the feeling you get in an earthquake.

It's also the feeling you get when the unexpected happens, rocking your world metaphorically.

Like, when you, God's Gift to the World, are comfortably leading your moral and intellectual inferiors in all the political polls -- but suddenly find yourself trailing, while everyone runs off to worship a new goddess.

You're rattled. And it shows.

For the first time in your charmed life, you don't quite know how to meet the challenge coming from a political rival. Your opponent was an aging politician running a listless campaign. But then, out of the blue, he picked her as his running mate. Nobody saw that coming. She is young, attractive, upbeat, and appealing, just as you are. But her attacks on you draw blood, because with rapier sarcasm and good-natured humor, she expertly targets the chinks in your armor. She wows everyone -- and, in the process, she makes your own choice of a running mate seem dull and unimaginative.

You suddenly realize everyone is focusing on -- and that you are being hurt by -- your opponent's vice-presidential candidate. She's getting all the media coverage now, not you. Overnight, she has stolen your celebrity status -- and your campaign theme of "change," to boot. Of all things, you never expected that.

So, you're rattled.

Irked by this crude upstart, who lacks all your education, grace, and stylistic sophistication, you go on the offensive. But for reasons you can't quite grasp, your dismissive attacks backfire badly, bringing her sympathy instead of scorn. Meanwhile, your supporters, including those in the media, are so viciously personal and over-the-top in their own assaults on her that they only make matters worse. There is a thunderous national backlash; millions of your targeted voters start switching sides. The daily polls bring news that is increasingly alarming.

You and your advisers have to retreat, regroup, and rethink this whole thing.

Finding yourself on the defensive, you become over-cautious. You stammer a lot more. You start making embarrassing slips of the tongue. These cause you to become the butt of mocking jokes -- worst of all, on late-night TV. You know that's the kiss of political death.

Which makes you even more rattled. Self-consciousness feeds on itself. Soon, everything you say seems either off-point or anemic or excessive. You stammer even more, because you're afraid of another excruciating verbal gaffe. Frustrated that nothing seems to be working, you stop smiling so much and try to suppress that growing edge in your voice. In fact, sometimes you lose your vaunted Cool and start to sound downright angry. The testiness makes you seem weak and whiny -- not good when you're trying to project "Presidential." By contrast, your opponents are upbeat, energized, relaxed, confident. They are having fun. You aren't.

People in the media comment about all this...

Well, Stuff What The Rest Of The World Thinks!

We're Americans, pal. Link.

excerpt:

The feeling is familiar. I had it four years ago and four years before that: a sinking feeling in the stomach. It's a kind of physical pessimism which says: "It's happening again. The Democrats are about to lose an election they should win - and it could not matter more."

...

If Sarah Palin defies the conventional wisdom that says elections are determined by the top of the ticket, and somehow wins this for McCain, what will be the reaction? Yes, blue-state America will go into mourning once again, feeling estranged in its own country. A generation of young Americans - who back Obama in big numbers - will turn cynical, concluding that politics doesn't work after all. And, most depressing, many African-Americans will decide that if even Barack Obama - with all his conspicuous gifts - could not win, then no black man can ever be elected president.

But what of the rest of the world? This is the reaction I fear most. For Obama has stirred an excitement around the globe unmatched by any American politician in living memory. Polling in Germany, France, Britain and Russia shows that Obama would win by whopping majorities, with the pattern repeated in Africa, Asia, the Middle East and Latin America. If November 4 were a global ballot, Obama would win it handsomely. If the free world could choose its leader, it would be Barack Obama.

...

If Americans choose McCain, they will be turning their back on the rest of the world, choosing to show us four more years of the Bush-Cheney finger. And I predict a deeply unpleasant shift.

Until now, anti-Americanism has been exaggerated and much misunderstood: outside a leftist hardcore, it has mostly been anti-Bushism, opposition to this specific administration. But if McCain wins in November, that might well change. Suddenly Europeans and others will conclude that their dispute is with not only one ruling clique, but Americans themselves [ooooh. How scary!]. For it will have been the American people, not the politicians, who will have passed up a once-in-a-generation chance for a fresh start - a fresh start the world is yearning for.

And the manner of that decision will matter, too. If it is deemed to have been about race - that Obama was rejected because of his colour - the world's verdict will be harsh. In that circumstance, Slate's Jacob Weisberg wrote recently, international opinion would conclude that "the United States had its day, but in the end couldn't put its own self-interest ahead of its crazy irrationality over race".

Even if it's not ethnic prejudice, but some other aspect of the culture wars, that proves decisive, the point still holds. For America to make a decision as grave as this one - while the planet boils and with the US fighting two wars - on the trivial basis that a hockey mom is likable and seems down to earth, would be to convey a lack of seriousness, a fleeing from reality, that does indeed suggest a nation in, to quote Weisberg, "historical decline". Let's not forget, McCain's campaign manager boasts that this election is "not about the issues."

Of course I know that even to mention Obama's support around the world is to hurt him. Incredibly, that large Berlin crowd damaged Obama at home, branding him the "candidate of Europe" and making him seem less of a patriotic American. But what does that say about today's America, that the world's esteem is now unwanted? If Americans reject Obama, they will be sending the clearest possible message to the rest of us - and, make no mistake, we shall hear it [damn right you'll hear it, you delusional meddling foreigner!].

This piece is so off-base that it even approvingly quotes Andrew Sullivan as a rational conservative, and seems to credit every cockamamie rumor about Palin. Unbelievable.

Umm, excuse me, Mr. Leftist English Toff, but do we really need lessons from you about how to hold on to national greatness? Slag off!

Tell Me That He Doesn't Sound Like Some Weird Guy Speechifying On A Streetcorner In Some College Town

Lipstick on a pig.

The Media Shafted Hillary, Now It's Trying To Shaft Us

Excellent points in this American Thinker piece. It begins:

If Barack Obama's past had been subjected to one tenth the media scrutiny during the full year of his candidacy, to which Sarah Palin has been subjected during the last 11 days, Obama very probably still would be junior senator from Illinois, and Hillary Clinton would be the Democratic nominee.

Deny it though she will, this galling reality cannot have escaped Hillary's awareness. As she watches the media devote its considerable resources to a smear and destroy attack on Governor Palin, Hillary must be seriously annoyed. And rightly so.

For during the last week-and-a-half we have been treated to an astonishing affirmation of how thoroughly our nation's impartial media can bird dog the tiniest, least relevant fact fact about a candidate, how quickly it can penetrate through the fog of time back to the beginnings of a politician's career, all with the laudable goal of testing whether the image the candidate projects accords with the record.

Where was this frenzy of journalistic zeal and competence when Barack Obama was building up an insurmountable delegate lead over Hillary?

"Freakish Enemies Of The Normal"

Mark Shea weighs in.

Only 29% Of Obama Supporters Think The Supreme Court Should Rule On The Basis Of What's In The Constitution

I wouldn't be proud if those were my supporters. Details here.

Kirsten Powers

Is a Democratic pundit and has a short piece called "How Obama Blew It". Lots of good stuff.

Live By 'The Cool', Die By 'The Cool', Obama

Nice slideshow of various Sarah Palin fashion "looks".

You're Going To Frickin' Lose This Thing Because Of The Kind Of Reasoning Seen In Your Lament About Losing

Self-fulfilling Huffington post article.

If P.Z. Myers Is Your Moderating Voice Of Reason, You're Done

P.Z. is not a total dufus. Link. H/T Mark Shea.

Def

Leftists Perceive Babies As Disposable Props

Proof.

Just in case DU tries to sanitize the record, I've got a screenshot here.

UPDATE: I'm not seeing the original graphic they posted anymore. It looks like a DU administrator nixed it and locked the thread, commenting:

Tastless and over the top.

Regards,
Krispos42, DU moderator

The Contrast

Jay Nordlinger:

A reader had an interesting observation about the two conventions: “Did you get the impression that McCain’s message was that the government needs fixing, while Obama’s message was that the country needs fixing? Quite a difference there.”

A sharp formulation.

And also this:

On the Corner, I remarked the opinion of an AP report that Palin “lacked the soaring oratory skills of Obama.” Reader wrote, “I suppose what they meant was that an hour after she spoke you could still remember what the speech was about.”

New Pennsylvania?

Obama!

Understanding 'Village Head Man"

Some anthropology lessons for the edification of the leftist master race.

"When A Man Believes That Any Stick Will Do, He At Once Picks Up A Boomerang"

Chesterton as quoted in this article from across the pond examining the media tantrums of the last week. H/T Ace of Spades.

Profiles In Crisis Management

Good points:

One of the thing that American's look for in a prospective President, and that actually can be revealed by the stress of running for President, is how that would be Commander in Chief, responds to a crisis.

This typically doesn't reveal itself in primary battles. Those are inter-squad scrimmages where everyone is on the same page, and the audience is specifically narrow and pre-disposed to give you the benefit of the doubt.

These instances arise after "first contact" with the other side. Opposing parties are capable of throwing any number of unforeseen or unexpected challenges in your way.

The selection of Palin presents Obama with the first truly legitimate instance in which the American people can see how he would respond to an unexpected event.

Can anyone say that Obama has displayed any sense of knowing how to respond adversity?

All he has essentially done since the Palin announcement is flounder. His responses have been all over the map. He criticizes her, then walks it back. He has surrogates attack her, then flips on that. He chief reactions have been those of denial (She's a Mayor of Wasilly) and self-pity (Why are the mean Republicans ridiculing my resume???)

Denial and Self Pity. Those are the traits that indicate he could handle the sudden vaporization of an American city?

When Bin Laden attacked was the American response one of denial and self-pity, or one of confidence, determination and resolve?

I would argue that the latter traits are the ones that McCain-Palin have been effectively conveying.

Palin, by essentially rising above her doubters and critics on the biggest possible stage. McCain by charting his own course, and doggedly sticking to it, despite an onslaught of personal attacks on his character, judgment, etc. One of the reasons the "Eagleton" meme was so weak is that, unlike McGovern, McCain never seemed to waver in his doubts about the quality of the person he selected. Even the little things like welcoming Levi into the campaign's extended family, display this.

I don't think anyone could seriously argue that the last week has been a "crisis management" success for Obama.

It's really his first test of leadership with the Country watching. And he has shown that neither he, nor Biden, the man Obama selected to be a steady hand can even rise to this occasion.

A Soldier Speaks Out

A heck of a video.

Cartoons

Here:




Here:




Here:




Here:




Here:

Lefties. Always Projectin'.

The human conscience is a fascinating thing. When you do something egregiously awful, it will drive you relentlessly in one of two directions. The first: contrition, making amends and changing your ways. The second: lashing out at the world, justifying yourself, and often enough, thunderously railing against the sins you've committed, but only as personified in others, guilty or not (most often, not).

After the unprecedentedly demented (and demonic) treatment his cult-followers dished out on Palin all week, Obama now says:

"We're not going to be bullied, we're not going to be smeared, we're not going to be lied about."

Yup, son. You've had a tough week.

Two Entirely Different Appeals

One of the most refreshing things I immediately noticed and appreciated in McCain's speech was that, rather than saying, as is the Democrat habit, "I will fight for you!", he said instead, "Fight with me!".

These are two very different appeals. The former is in the form of a promise (from a politician!) that the speaker will do for you what your sorry, oppressed, incapable, powerless self is incapable of doing for itself. You have no hope outside of him. Your life is controlled by outside forces, and you need a savior. In essence: "I have the balls you lack!"

The latter appeal is not a promise at all. It is an appeal that does not depend on the speaker, but depends on the hearer. The hearer is treated as an autonomous center of action, who does have the power and capability to change the world. The speaker is saying that he does not in fact have the power of a savior, but needs strong comrades-in-arms to move ahead. In essence: "You have the balls we need!"

Either emasculation or balls-out fighting for the cause. Your choice.

A Cheap Prop That Served Its Purpose

Highly symbolic.

Fun Comment

Here:

I’m not a fan of Obama’s mannered and stentorian public speaking style, but he’s a damn disaster when he talks off the cuff. He sounds like a sniveling weasel, trying to slip little insults into the end of every sentence, then rushes on to the next thing before anyone can object. It’s like he’s verbally cringing from a lingering fear that someone will slap his teeth out, or he somehow hopes he can repair the damage later and claim he was misquoted, if he lets every sentence trail off into a mumble.

He also seems incapable of opening his mouth without committing a cosmic blunder. I can’t believe he was dumb enough to drop that little bon mot about how “no one could have anticipated the surge would work,” or trying to shuffle off his terrorist ties by lumping them in with conspiracy theories about him being a Muslim. That’s like something a seven-year-old would try. What’s next, a candid interview where he says, “Some of my opponents accuse me of spending time in the strangest places, like alien spaceships and the pews of racist churches?”

Amateur Hour is well under way. It highlights how he’s only gotten this far because the media carried him. I never thought they’d be able to carry him across the finish line. Sooner or later, after all the fawning interviews, doctored magazine covers, celebrity endorsements, buried scandals, and styrofoam Greek temples (h/t S. Palin) have faded away, there needs to be a candidate who can answer questions, debate his opponents, and get through a twenty-minute interview with starry-eyed sycophants without making an utter fool of himself. There never was any there there.

In the last thirty years of American politics, the only media-inflated candidate who went the distance was Bill Clinton, and that was arguably more due to Ross Perot and a horrible Dole campaign than anything Clinton himself did. The fall of Obama is a tale we’ve heard many times before. Remember how Kerry was an unbeatable colossus with war-hero credentials to fool the hayseeds, and the MSM was swooning over his elegance and refinement? Or how Al Gore was a super-genius technocrat that couldn’t fail to win Clinton’s third term against the goofy cowpoke frat boy? Or how Dukakis was an urbane citizen of the world, into whose arms the voters couldn’t wait to swoon after eight horrible years of Ronnie Raygun’s jingoistic Fourth Reich? The higher they polled in the summer, the more the press insisted they were super-candidates, the further they fell. And this is the first time one of the Dem’s empty suits has tried to claim divine powers, so it ought to be a spectacular fall indeed.

Doctor Zero on September 6, 2008 at 12:48 AM