A Small Reminder.

Just because I'm blogging less does not mean you should visit less. It means you should visiit more. And send me more money. And buy ads.

I mean, if there's going to be any wealth-spreading going on, it should be via my tip jar. [Suddenly I'm smacking my forehead, realizing that if I'd only pretended to support Obama over the last two years I could have been in a great position to apply for some sort of NEA grant:

"Blogging as Art for Art's Sake."

"The Blog: Performance Art for the Unattractive?"

"Anais Nin vs. Ben Stein: Who Was History's First Blogger?"

"The Diaries of Virginia Woolf, Translated into Today's. Blogging. Patois."

"The Housewife as Insurrectionist: Erica Jong's 'Blood in the Streets' as a Metaphor for the Ancient Struggle Between Woman and Uterus."

"Blogging Families Such as the Reynolds-Smiths versus the Brontes: Who Is, Ultimately, More Fly?"

"Why Would We Want to Televise the Revolution, When We Can Probably Find It on You Tube and Embed Our Favorite Footage Into Our Web Sites?"

"The Madwoman in Cyberspace: How Patriarchy Deprived Women of Rooms of Their Own, Leading to the Weblog as a Creative Imperative."]

Tomorrow the Busloads of Californians Get Here.

I mean, I left L.A. last Tuesday. And tomorrow all these Bear-Flag-Come-Latelies will arrive in the Las Vegas/Henderson area. They'll take my favorite spot at the phone-bank table. They'll drink the coffee, and eat the nicest of the sandwiches and sugary snacks before I get to them. They'll take the choiciest areas for knocking door-to-door.

They'll hog the water. They'll take up my favorite corners for doing yoga and T'ai Chi during breaks, and they'll do the wrong kinds of yoga and T'ai Chi.

They will steal my yogurt out of the fridge.

I hate them already, and they aren't even here yet.

Stupid Californians; who invited them?

"Always Be Closing."

My father insisted today that I take a break from "getting old white men to vote" today, and return his phone call.

Before I leave the table I tell my cohorts about my father's line. The one person at the table who is white, male, and past the conventional retirement age says, "tell him you're sitting across from an Air Force Veteran his own age who thinks he should vote for McCain."

I smile. "I'm not sure you know what makes the old man tick," I remark.

Out in the parking lot I find myself a nice place on a curb and punch in Dad's code on the cell phone. "I'd sure like to see you this weekend, if you'll be back," he tells me.

"Ah. But I'm not going back until after the election, like I told you. That's why I went over the night before I left," I remind him. (I refrain from telling him that this is one of the reasons I left a several hours later than I really wanted to, and ended up spending the night in Primm, Nevada, on the way out here; I had to pack that morning, alongside my traditional try-to-clean-up-the-house-on-the-day-I-leave idiocy.)

"So, you're getting people to vote for Sarah Palin," he remarks. "She's just so . . . pretty."

"You know, Dad," I tell him, "if you vote for McCain, you'll be seeing a lot more of her on the news and in various magazines and newspapers. Not that I'd want you to make such a serious decision for such a superficial reason. But I'd hate to see you stuck looking at pictures of Barack Obama and Joe Biden for the next four years."

"Furthermore," I continue, "the Governor wears skirts more than she does pantsuits, so the average consumer of news would see a lot more leg with her than they would have with Senator Clinton."

He seems to be wavering. "Her legs are nice," he tells me.

"There's also the fact that if she and McCain win this one, the contest will be between Palin and Mrs. Clinton in 2012. Wouldn't that make the debates more fun?" I ask.

"Maybe. Will they be held in hot oil?"

I move in for the kill: "Not in real life. But with computer graphics, there will still be video of it happening in hot oil, and it should look perfectly realistic."

The only thing that could go wrong now is if my stepmother accompanies my dad to the voting booth in order to "help" him. Of course, it's just the Golden State, so what he does won't matter on the Big Battleground.

But still . . . . I would like to have made the sale.

Zo Rachel on How a Vote for Obama Will "Kill the Goose that Lays the Golden Egg."

Economics and theology from one of the most talented Classical Liberals out there, Alfonzo—the proprietor of Macho Sauce Productions. (Who is starting to be referred to simply as Macho Sauce himself. Why not? Alice Cooper was originally the name of a band.)

I know, I know: everyone complains about the hat. I like the hat. (Of course I like the hat; I've got one a bit like it.)

But the tile and the echo still bug me: I want to see Zo in a real studio, with better acoustics. That way, everyone can accuse him of "selling out." And there will be yet another golden goose out there, laying eggs that enrichen all our lives.

That's Gotta Hurt.

Schwarzenegger mocks the Obama-bod.

It may hurt worse if Sarah takes off one of her borrowed jackets and offers to arm-wrestle Big Zero. (Or, worse, decide the contest by shooting hoops against him: Palin is shorter than I am, and we all know who would win that contest.)

Via Insty.

Seattle Newspaper Places Target on Homeowners' Front Lawns.

The Seattle Stranger
1535 11th Ave., Third Floor
Seattle, Washington, 98122

Please do not plaster their offices with McCain stickers, or hang Joe Biden in effigy outside the building.

Via Moonbattery, via Ace.

Iowahawk Just Cut Chris Buckley a New One.

But it's okay; he did it in an upper-crust fashion.

A Video Letter to Barack Obama.

Apparently, he knows some of my husband's family out in Chicago. What a brave young man.

More Nevada News!

Last night, the Heaths (Sarah Palin's parents) and the Palins (Todd's parents) stopped by the Clark County Republican Headquarters. It was quite the distraction. I'd make a few calls, and then get up to get my picture taken with them, then make more calls, etc.

As I write this, Governor Mitt Romney is stopping by to help with precinct walking.

Saturday, Mayor Giuliani will be there in the evening; I'll probably miss it, due to a social engagement.

And on Monday, Governor Palin will be appearing in Reno (and another Northern Nevada town I don't recall the name of), while McCain holds a rally here.

I know people are sick to death of getting nagged. But my job is to nag them; there's no other way to make sure that people vote, other than to remind them that it has to be done.

In the Spirit of the Season . . .

Get Your 2009 Sarah Palin Calendar

. . . right here.

Via Hackbarth, who probably already has his on order.

"Confessions of an Obama Blogger."

It might be fake, but it strikes me as perfectly accurate.

The Effect of an Obama Administration on 1970s Sitcoms

According to D.C. Thornton, they wouldn't have been nearly as funny: just depressing.

Responding to Obama's Infomercial . . .

I agree with Insty: this would have been the best counterpoint.

Safe at the Undisclosed Location.

I'm snugged up in the home of a prominent Nevada blogger, who may or may not want to own up to having one of the black sheep of the b-sphere in his guest digs. (I think my husband had a full FBI-level background check done on The Gentleman Blogger before permitting me to stay here; A the H was deeply reassured that a mutual friend of all three of ours with a military intel background gave my host the thumbs up.)

So far, Gentleman Blogger has fed me bitchin' lasagne and given me the most essential information about politicking in Clark County:

a) It is not a taboo to refer to Las Vegas as "Vegas." (Not at all analogous to referring to San Francisco as "Frisco," which is a fun parlor trick for Californians who want to see their Bay Area relatives flip out. Try it some time.) Some locals say "Vegas," and some do not. Personal preference.

b) It is unacceptable to refer to the state as "NevAHda," as GB and I both did, instinctively. (That could be an "educators-in-the-family" thing, or a California native thing.) The locals taught him, and he taught me, that the first "a" should sound like the "a" in "dad."

Nice to get to talk to GB a bit tonight, since they'll keep me busy at McCain HQ all week. There are several of us volunteering from California, and even a few who travelled up from Arizona. ("An army of us from nearby states, who want to help you turn Ne-vatta red.")

This state is so important; this election is so important. If it weren't for the unions' stranglehold on Las Vegas, it would be a slam-dunk for McCain . . . but Las Vegas is, they tell me, considered an integral part of the state. One citizen I spoke with today said the whole thing would be a cinch if it weren't for the city of Vegas. "Well, yes," I replied. "And California's electoral votes would go elsewhere if we could surgically remove Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Oakland from it. Not that that would be fiscally prudent."

"Yup. The day I moved here from SF was the happiest day of my life," he affirmed.

"Well, we may be right behind you, once my husband retires," I told him.

Of course, no one seems to be asking what a carbon-correct version of The Strip would look like. I understand that Al Gore has been fantasizing about a "sublte," "toned-down" version of Las Vegas Blvd. that offers the tourist more of a "starry evening sky" effect . . . he's been consulting with Sarah Palin about whether a "Northern Lights" vibe would be classier and ultimately more compelling than all these tacky incandescent bulbs. Good luck with that, Al.

As to the work at hand, I've discovered that:

• I'm decent on the phones, except unable to properly cut short conversations with the uber-patriotic and the elderly; I tend to burn up "too much company time" telling them that if they are disabled and cannot travel to Henderson to help, the national phone banks may have campaign work that they can do from home, or, finally (with the very elderly, and very chatty) to explain that we're all praying very hard, too, and the race is neck-and-neck, if one accounts for crazy poll methodologies. "So keep the television off, and keep praying. Talk to your friends, relatives, and neighbors whom you might be able to persuade."

Of course, since I'm a volunteer no one has said a critical word, but I feel like I should be able to get through my calling lists more quickly, and entice more people to commit to some "get out the vote" time. I'm considering the "Jewish mother" approach: "I drove out from L.A. to spend nearly a week doing this, and you can't commit to three hours of precinct-walking this Friday? For people like you, I'm pouring my heart and soul into a campaign for a guy who isn't even quite libertarian enough for my taste?"

Then I'd tell them they need to eat more, and that they are breaking my heart.

• I'm fine on the door-to-door stuff. One has to balance the fact that I tend to get lost a lot (especially since my sunglasses aren't prescription-level, due to my cheap streak) against the fact that I'm learning (ever-so-slowly) to sweet-talk my way into the "guarded communities" (even tougher to get into than the "gated communities").

If all goes well I'll take off a little time to visit Attila the Hub's cousins on Saturday afternoon. It's a delicate matter, since a few of his relatives have defected to the Other Side lately, and we don't know if they have. (I doubt it; he's retired LAPD. Also, A the H's relatives trend as conservative as mine do liberal. Even in voting . . . I know there are California propositions that A the H and I voted on differently, and that's not even counting the gay marriage thing. Shockingly, we disagree as to when public monies might legitimately go to certain types of infrastructure.)

And if I can sneak away briefly on Sunday, there's a shootin' event I'd like to attend with some of the locals. I haven't clung bitterly to a firearm in a long time; my former editor at the gun journals tells me I just have to go to the SHOT Show one of these years, preferably when it's happening here. (The availability of ranges where full-auto weaponry is available is, of course, a draw.) I actually wonder whether that might be a justifiable expenditure, since they know I'm a decent gunwriter, and a damned good editor (if I do say so myself). It probably wouldn't hurt to re-introduce myself, although until I go on one hunt (even if it's a guided one) I'll always feel like a second-class citizen within the firearms community. (Though I do know a few prominent gunwriters who are not hunters; I choose not to "out" them.)

As Gary Sitton would say: "Be safe; and shoot straight."

Yes, Indeedy. High Registration; High Turnout.

The party breakdown, of course, tells us nothing. Except that California is, sadly, California.

Hello From Whiskey Pete's.

I got a late start, which was made later by traffic, and later still when it took me an hour and a half to vote in Downey. The line was long, like the line to a Disneyland ride.

That would have been good in a lot of places, but in L.A. County it probably just meant that a lot of people were excited about the election for . . . well, the wrong reasons.

So in order not the keep the blogger who will be putting up with me this week waiting up all night (this is a person with a real job), I decided to stop here for the night in lovely Primm—sort of The Gateway to Nevadan Decadence. There are three hotels/casinos here, and all of 'em are apparently owned by the same company. I'm not sure I understand what the point of that is, but it seemed like a good place to stop because 1) I had to put gas in the car anyway, and 2) rooms here go for $29 (though internet access costs more).

I tried to get a room at Buffalo Bill's, but apparently that is the casino this town reserves for high rollers; they do not take "walk ins."

"Okay," I asked the guy. "Which of the other two is cheaper?—or should I go on down the road to Jean?"

He ignored the second question, which implies to me that Jean and it's one, count 'em, one casino is not owned by the Primm people.

If it were up to me, the town of Jean would change its name to Proper. But I'm rarely consulted about these things.

Goodbye, Tony Hillerman.

You were, quite simply, the best. No one brought the West to life like you did, nor did anyone provide such illuminating glimpses into the the traditions of Native America.

You're who I want to be when I grow up (and I'm stealing that line, but I also mean it).

Goddammit, Tony. Goodbye.

Via Insty.

Light Blogging for the Next 24-168 Hours

I'm headed out to run a couple of last-minute errands, do the vote-in-person thing in Norwalk, and drive to Las Vegas, where I will spend the week helping with Get Out the Vote stuff.

Content will be haphazard at best; probably just a wind-down post at the end of the day, along with those Special Insights you can only get from Little Miss Attila. ("Wow. The air here is even drier than it is at home.")

"I Hope You Have a Good Time,"

My mother remarks, on the eve of my trek out to Nevada to assist with the McCain-Palin campaign. "I'm afraid I can't quite wish you . . . success."

"Understood," I respond. "Let's just say I'll try to have a good time, and I'll stay safe."

"There was a time . . . I might have considered voting for McCain."

"Oh, really?" I remark, trying to control my shock. RINO or no (and some call me a RINO—it's all in how we order our priority lists), the man does have that evil letter after his name.

"But then he appointed that . . . that woman," she concludes.

"So you're one of those people, then? The ones I thought didn't really exist? You were open to McCain, but were turned off by the Palin pick?"

"Oh, yes," she tells me. "I can't see how anyone who supported Hillary can possibly want that woman in the White House."

"There are plenty of them, though," I point out. "There's even a name for them—women, and some men, who were so disgusted at what they perceived to be sexism in the Obama campaign [see how delicately I phrased it?--ed.] that they are actively campaigning for McCain. I'm really curious as to why you dislike her so; we'll have to talk once I get back into town."

"Sure, Honey," she tells me. "And you have a good time."

I always have a good time knocking on doors to try to get people to the polls . . . But I pulled it off four years ago (me, just me—it was my efforts that made the difference), and it'll happen again this year.

After we hang up it occurs to me that my mother and I are our opposite numbers: she considered McCain a possibility until he brought "that unqualified woman" on board. I was going to drag myself to the polls and pull the lever for the good Senator until he tapped Palin to be his Veep.

Granted, I already knew Palin, since I'm a minor-league energy blogger, but the main difference as I see it is . . . the good old mainstream media. I get absolutely no data from them (though I do try to keep tabs on what they are doing, of course).

My mother gets information from nowhere else. And she doesn't even have cable TV—it's all broadcast news, all the time.

She enjoys, furthermore, no internet access, because every time I show her how to web-surf and check her mail she nods brightly, and then renews her phobia once I leave the house. Then she assures me a few months later that she's forgotten how to do either of those two things, and it is my fault that this has occurred. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

Because of my media skepticism, she seems to regard me as the informational equivalent of Randy Weaver: cut off from reality. Suspicious. Seeing black helicopters buzzing around this Presidential campaign.

And I apparently ruined the career of that nice Dan Rather man, for no reason other than vague suspicions and partisan malice.

Of course, someone raised me to be an iconoclast. Someone mentioned that one ought to question authority every now and then. And it wasn't the Great Pumpkin, either.

Et Tu, Kristol?

Bill is still hedging his bets; he's drinking the negative Kool-Aid and buying into the idea that McCain is the underdog in a race that may be more objectively neck-and-neck between McCain and Obama.

Yet he hasn't let the negativity in the air ruin his perspective completely.

And I agree with most of his policy prescriptions: attack, Senator McCain. Get on the air. Both you and the Good Governor need to be on the Sunday talk shows this coming weekend. Buy some airtime on Thursday night if the campaign can possibly scrape up the money, so as to respond to whatever Obama's going to try to do with his his own half hour of change, hope and pulling magical things out of top hats.

And cut out the infighting in the campaign, or at least keep it behind closed doors.

I do not, however, agree with Kristol's feeling that all the negative ads about Obama should be pulled. If the very libertarian, very unscary Goldwater could be defeated by one negative ad that distorted his positions, I see no reason to go wobbly at this point with respect to either Obama's disastrous economic proposals, nor his "cut and run" attitude regarding Iraq.

At this point, the surge has been so successful that some feel that we cannot lose in Iraq, and that is possible, though I feel one can usually find a way to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Afghanistan, however, still has to be secured, and it will be a tougher nut to crack than Iraq was—particularly with the degree of international involvement, which keeps us handcuffed in a number of ways.

Between Afghanistan, Russia, North Korea, Iran, and the delicate matter of renegotiating our relationship with some of our "friends" (the Saudis, the Pakistanis, and possibly the Chinese) we must be careful: we can't afford a newbie at the helm—much less a "partition Iraq"/"Obama will be tested"/"look at my I.Q." kook like Joe Biden.

As far as the economy is concerned, I realize that there are nuances involved. Barack Obama may no longer be a socialist at all. It's possible that he is simply an aggressive welfare capitalist, at the far left side of the continuum. And even in my libertarian circles a lot of people (if they are pressed hard enough) will admit to the feeling that there should be some sort of safety net for the unemployed, provided it is temporary, rather than a "lifestyle."

But the economy is at a point such that the best thing we could do for it now is get some jobs created, and that will not happen without small and medium-sized businesses getting some tax breaks and seeing a bit of lessening in the restrictions they face.

We are also at a point wherein every dime we can spare from defense should go to tax breaks for energy companies, so that they can "greedily" figure out how to address our energy issues without subsidizing our enemies. Which means, in the short term, more drilling in fecund areas like the Gulf and the Southern California coast (done, of course, in an environmentally responsible way), and—medium-term—R&D on all the other alternatives—especially those that are low in carbon emissions, and especially those that are renewable. In the long term, we're going to be relying more on biofuels and electricity (which, of course, can come from a number of sources). But we're still figuring out how to bring those costs down.

The worst thing we could do now is pull money out of the research that is shaping our future, as we move away from fossil fuels.

And that is what Barack Obama wants to do. There is no way to sugar-coat that.

This election is critical—militarily, economically, and environmentally. And as much as I respect Obama's brainpower and idealism, that is not enough. McCain has to win this one, or we will quite likely go into a full-on recession, and we might well be attacked again; we may not even see the support for Israel that we've been able to provide in the past, and whatever else Israel is, it is a toehold for democracy in the Middle East—one of very few examples (ironically enough) of multi-ethnic representative democracy.

Vote.

Another Hawkins Poll!

Center-right bloggers on McCain, Palin, the mainstream media, and the election.

What Does a Vice President Really Do?

Her role is primarily legislative, according to Glenn, who disapproves of the Gore/Cheney model of heavy Veep involvement in the executive branch.

My one concern there would be that the Veep must be kept "up to speed" on critical matters that she would have to deal with, were the President himself to die or become incapacitated. And any areas that represents knowledge gaps (such as foreign policy for Palin, keeping his mouth shut for Biden) would be areas they should want to work on actively, as opposed to the old canard that the Veep's job is "to sit around and wait for the President to die."

Ideally, the Veep would be kept busy: monitoring some of the President's policy meetings, receiving a number of the same briefings—keeping up-to-speed, should her services be needed in the top office—but, yes: presiding over the Senate, as the Constitution demands.

Here's the long version of Reynolds' article.

The Fundamental Question:

"Did the God of Socialism fail, or not?"

That is what this election is about.

Did the vampire of redistribution that had me enthralled during my college years ever lose its appeal?

Because it still wants blood, even now.

New McCain Economy Ad

Via Morrissey, who points out that it isn't so much a question of "the last eight years" as it has been the last year. Though the groundwork for that has been laid previously.

Let's go back to the "Never Find Out" hit parade:

Early Voters Indicate a Close Election

HillBuzz wonders why all the early voting runs counter to the predictions of the "Eeyore" pollsters and the "Eeyore" pundits.

Well, let's see. "Two schools of thought, there"—

1) There's a lot of wishful thinking out there regarding the possibility of an Obama presidency, and that serves as a rationale for poll samples that predict historically unheard-of turnout among young Obama supporters in all, um, 57 states;

2) We're being deliberately lied to—led to believe that a race that will be very, very close is isn't any such thing, and Obama's got it more or less in the bag.

Probably an act of kindness on the part of the Obamabots; they're trying to buffer the shock for us, in case McCain doesn't win.

They are just trying to be nice. So when we win, we should try not to gloat.

Did We Enter Syria?

I don't believe we did that.

At least, not purpose. I think our guys just got lost. Not enough landmarks in the area, and they were tired. Maybe the GPS thingies on the choppers weren't working properly.

It's a shame, though:

"Syria condemns this aggression and holds the American forces responsible for this aggression and all its repercussions. Syria also calls on the Iraqi government to shoulder its responsibilities and launch and immediate investigation into this serious violation and prevent the use of Iraqi territory for aggression against Syria," the government statement said.

Textbook chutzpah.

You know, I'd hate to see your friends in Lebanon get angry with you, Dudes. It would be a goddamned tragedy if weapons fell into their hands that would end up pointed in your direction. I'd feel awful about a thing like that.

On Thursday, U.S. Maj. Gen. John Kelly said Iraq's western borders with Saudi Arabia and Jordan were fairly tight as a result of good policing by security forces in those countries but that Syria was a "different story."

"The Syrian side is, I guess, uncontrolled by their side," Kelly said. "We still have a certain level of foreign fighter movement."

He added that the U.S. was helping construct a sand berm and ditches along the border. "There hasn't been much, in the way of a physical barrier, along that border for years," Kelly said.

The foreign fighters network sends militants from North Africa and elsewhere in the Middle East to Syria, where elements of the Syrian military are in league with al-Qaida and loyalists of Saddam Hussein's Baath party, the U.S. military official said.

. . . . . . . . .

The White House in August approved similar special forces raids from Afghanistan across the border of Pakistan to target al-Qaida and Taliban operatives. At least one has been carried out.

The flow of foreign fighters into Iraq has been cut to an estimated 20 a month, a senior U.S. military intelligence official told the Associated Press in July. That's a 50 percent decline from six months ago, and just a fifth of the estimated 100 foreign fighters who were infiltrating Iraq a year ago, according to the official.
Ninety percent of the foreign fighters enter through Syria, according to U.S. intelligence. Foreigners are some of the most deadly fighters in Iraq, trained in bomb-making and with small-arms expertise and more likely to be willing suicide bombers than Iraqis.

Foreign fighters toting cash have been al-Qaida in Iraq's chief source of income. They contributed more than 70 percent of operating budgets in one sector in Iraq, according to documents captured in September 2007 on the Syrian border. Most of the fighters were conveyed through professional smuggling networks, according to the report.

More:

The US has neither confirmed nor denied the operation took place. If the attack occurred, it would have been carried out by Task Force 88, the special operations hunt-killer teams assigned to target al Qaeda operatives as well as Shia terrorists in Iraq.

The US has shied away from conducting strikes inside Syria in the past. If confirmed this would be the first such strike inside Syria since the US invaded Iraq in March of 2003.

Syria has sheltered Iraqi insurgents and foreign al Qaeda fighters, and allowed the groups to run camps inside the country. Syria also facilitates the movement of foreign fighters into the country and across the border into Iraq.

If the raid occurred, the US military must have detected a senior member of al Qaeda in Iraq in the region. Abu Ayyub al Masri, the leader of al Qaeda in Iraq, is reported to have left the country earlier this year after the terror group lost its sanctuaries in Diyala province.

The US military may be closing in on al Qaeda’s senior leadership. US forces killed Abu Qaswarah, al Qaeda in Iraq's second in command, during a raid in Mosul in northern Iraq on Oct. 15. The military has also killed and captured numerous al Qaeda leader and couriers over the past several weeks. The information obtained during these raids help to paint a picture of al Qaeda’s command structure inside of of Iraq as well as in neighboring countries.

And yet more:

Wanted insurgent leaders, such as Mishan al Jabouri, openly live in Syria. Jabouri, a former member of the Iraqi parliament, fled to Syria after being charged with corruption for embezzling government funds and for supporting al Qaeda. From Syria Jabouri ran Al Zawraa, a satellite television statement that aired al Qaeda and Islamic Army of Iraq propaganda videos showing attacks against US and Iraqi forces.

Al Qaeda established a network of operatives inside Syria to move foreign fighters, weapons, and cash to support its terror activities inside Iraq. An al Qaeda manual detailed ways to infiltrate Iraq via Syria. The manual, titled The New Road to Mesopotamia, was written by a jihadi named Al Muhajir Al Islami, and discovered in the summer of 2005.

The Iraqi-Syrian border was broken down into four sectors: the Habur crossing near Zakhu in the north; the Tal Kujik and Sinjar border crossings west of Mosul; the Al Qaim entry point in western Anbar; and the southern crossing at Al Tanf west of Rutbah near the Jordanian border. Islami claimed the Al Tanf and Habur crossing points were too dangerous to use, and Al Qaim was the preferred route into Iraq.

The US military learned a great deal about al Qaeda's network inside Syria after a key operative was killed in September of 2007. US forces killed Muthanna, the regional commander of al Qaeda's network in the Sinjar region.

During the operation, US forces found numerous documents and electronic files that detailed "the larger al-Qaeda effort to organize, coordinate, and transport foreign terrorists into Iraq and other places," Major General Kevin Bergner, the former spokesman for Multinational Forces Iraq, said in October 2007.

Bergner said several of the documents found with Muthanna included a list of 500 al Qaeda fighters from "a range of foreign countries that included Libya, Morocco, Syria, Algeria, Oman, Yemen, Tunisia, Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Belgium, France and the United Kingdom."

Other documents found in Muthanna's possession included a "pledge of a martyr," which is signed by foreign fighters inside Syria, and an expense report. The pledge said the suicide bomber must provide a photograph and surrender their passport. It also stated the recruit must enroll in a "security course" in Syria. The expense report was tallied in US dollars, Syrian lira, and Iraqi dinars, and included items such as clothing, food, fuel, mobile phone cards, weapons, salaries, "sheep purchased," furniture, spare parts for vehicles, and other items.

The Combating Terrorism Center at West Point later conducted a detailed study of the "Sinjar Records," which was published in July 2008. The study showed that al Qaeda had an extensive network in Syria and the Syrian government has allowed their activities to continue.

"The Syrian government has willingly ignored, and possibly abetted, foreign fighters headed to Iraq," the study concluded. "Concerned about possible military action against the Syrian regime, it opted to support insurgents and terrorists wreaking havoc in Iraq."

Al Qaeda established multiple networks of "Syrian Coordinators" that "work primarily with fighters from specific countries, and likely with specific Coordinators in fighters’ home countries," according to the study. The Syrian city of Dayr al Zawr serves as a vital logistical hub and a transit point for al Qaeda recruits and operatives heading to Iraq.

A vast majority of the fighters entering Iraq from Sinjar served as suicide bombers. The Combating Terrorism Center at West Point estimated that 75 percent conducted suicide attacks inside Iraq

My emphases.

I just feel terrible about violating Syria's sovereignty. I'll be home alone in my room, crying all day, if you need me.

BTW, I'm stealing all this stuff from Vinnie's entry at Ace's site. I feel terrible about that, too.

I had a little sorrow, Born of a little sin, And found a room all dank with gloom And shut myself within.

And, "little sorrow weep," said I,
And, "little soul, pray God to die.
And I upon the floor will lie
And think how bad I've been.

Alas for pious planning!
It mattered not a whit.
As far as gloom went in that room,
The lamp might have been lit.

So up I got in anger,
And took a book I had,
And put a ribbon on my hair
To please a passing lad.

And, "one thing there's no getting by,
I've been a wicked girl," said I.
"But if I can't be sorry, well . . .
I might as well be glad."

—Edna St. Vincent Millay

I may not be word-perfect on the Millay poem; that was from memory. No time to look it up.

As Long As We're Firing Up the Nuclear Power . . .

why not dust off our atomic weapons at the same time?

Via Kat-Mo at Ace's digs, who points out that if we'd just make a bit more war, we might be able to make love in peace.

Murtha and Biden on SNL.

Got it from Ace.

Did I mention that he watches TV so I don't have to?

Now That Is Counter-Revolutionary Sentimentality.

A cop-killer/unrepentant terrorist with a red star on his shirt leaning on "property" rights and calling the police for protection from the media.

Loves it.

Via AlllahP at Hot Air.

Another Cartoon from Darleen!

Think of how much more interesting life will be under Obama!

Darleen lives here, and sometimes hangs out here.

Amy Dropped by The Grove

. . . with some crafts & quips. She even cut one of her fans' hair, which scares me a little. (Of course, she used to cut her brother David's hair, and he turned out okay . . . mostly.)

The Chris Muir Trail

Day by Day is especially good today, but it's an extended Sunday edition; you'll want to go to Muir's site to see it in all its glory, or you'll drive yourself mad scrolling around in my sidebar. *

And, well—I see why Obama feeds the media Miracle-Gro. He kind of has to. But I can't help but think that good old Purina Reporter Chow would be more cost-effective. (Some bloggers, on the other hand, prefer Purina Puppy-Blender Chow, but that's probably a specialized taste.)

* Titanic trivia questions:
• Which of the four funnels on the Titanic was merely ornamental?
• Which of the Titanic officers, in addition to being a crewmember, was also a yachtsman—a sailor?
• What tipped the passengers off on the rescue ship that something was awry, and how did they get information that they were headed into colder waters?

Shatner on Takei

Video on the "wedding snub" here. Of course, there's never any way to win with weddings; someone's feelings always get hurt. But inviting Nimoy, but not Shatner? Mmm.

Shatner: "We don't either one of us have many years left on this earth."

None of us do; I'm so happy Takei got married, and I do think it would be nice if he and Shatner could mend bridges. Especially since I rather like them both, though I agree with Shatner that carrying that resentment around hasn't done Takei any good. Maybe, now that he's married, he can start to let it all go, for his own sake.

The stress of all those years in the closet . . . it must have been horrible, horrible. And it could twist a person's perceptions, particularly with a strong personality like Bill Shatner's.

And Shatner is a good man. He really is. He and the husband did a few "pitches" together (that is, they had a animated television show they shopped around a bit some time ago—Shatner's idea, fleshed out by the husband—and I like it, goddammit). No one bought the show, but the two of 'em had a lot of fun putting it together: I think Bill's sense of humor meshes well with Attila the Hub's.

So did Ben Stein's, for that matter, but that one never got off the ground, either. (Cue Charleton Heston, "Darn the luck!")

So many near misses. So many deals that just didn't quite happen. A the H keeps pitching, and I'll have to redouble my efforts as well to bring more dough into the house. There's a lot of brainpower around here that never quite sees the light of day, due to his back luck and my indolence.

Via American Digest.

Best Gas-Sippers of the Past Few Decades.

Apparently, their time frame didn't allow them to include the VW bug, which of course was the industry standard for a long time when it came to parsimonious fuel use.

Oddly, the list includes the original Honda Civic, but not those tiny little Honda Civic-precursers: CVCCs, I think they were called? My friends all either loved 'em or hated 'em.

"They are death traps!"

"Cute, though."

Via Insty, who—one way or another—is going to get me to subscribe to Popular Mechanics this coming year: they are just so good at comparing our future options when it comes to energy, and they tell us which organizations are doing it best—if you want to know who's going to win the "energy race," you need to be reading them.

And Jeri Thompson . . .

drops by Fox News to pwn Alan Colmes:

I'm still confused as to why people are confused about the VP having a role in the Senate: the VP has always been the head of the Senate, and some have handled that in an active way, whereas others have treated it as a "tie-breaker-only" position. But the VP of the U.S. absolutely "presides" over the U.S. Senate.

And this is not the only position in the U.S. government that straddles two branches: who is in line to be President of the U.S., if the POTIS and VP are both taken out? The Speaker of the House. (Now Pelosi may have taken this a bit far lately, in making the Speaker position into a mini-Presidency, but she is at this moment the third in the line of succession to be POTUS, and in that way has responsibilities—real and potential—to both branches.)

And, let's see: where is it that Supreme Court Justices come from?--Oh, yes. Appointed by the President, and approved by the legislature.

There is nothing wrong with Palin acting as a liaison between the White House and the Senate, and presiding herself, rather than delegating that duty. Who knows?—the two branches might start working together, instead of against each other. Anything's possible.

Fred Thompson Lays It on the Line.

There's a nice address here from FDT that spells up what the risks are, should Obama win the election—with a focus on the economy.

It's ten or fifteen minutes long; you might want to pour yourself another cup of coffee, or a fresh drink.

'S good stuff.

"Americans Are Saving Too Much."

So if the government takes our money and saves it for us, we'll be better off . . . right?

Another "Let Freedom Ring" Ad.

This is from the same series of ads that is testing so well in terms of explaining issues to people in ways that they can understand, and respond to immediately. They need to be getting more play.

Let's take 'em viral!

Via Ed Morrissey at Hot Air, who says he hasn't seen these ads before, though I know it was Hot Air that turned me on to 'em (presumably, that was an AllahPundit post). They are often shown alongside the response numbers that they provoke in test groups, with the graph numbers superimposed by the people who work with communications expert Frank Luntz.

Naturally, I prefer 'em straight, without the graph lines. I trust Luntz that they are testing well.

Thank You, Azmat!

This will buy me a salad and/or a sandwich; when I'm on the road I try to have one actual meal each day. (The rest of the time it's protein bars and "Tiny Twist" pretzels. I won't eat the ones that are shaped like little sticks, because I am old-school: pretzels should be pretzel-shaped. Period.)

Okay. I'm Back on the Line on Proposition 8.

Because this really pisses me off.

Teachers' unions have done a lot to destroy young people's lives, and to keep teachers who are particularly talented and inspiring from getting paid any more than those who are simply glorified babysitters.

They are evil—like AARP, which purports to help retirees, but uses the money instead on gun control.

I shall try not to behave reflexively, but some of these groups—especially unions—that take people's hard-earned pay and then use the money to advance agendas that have nothing to do with their supposed missions—make me truly livid.

My mom was a teacher for years. And except in some arenas (she's a landlord who vigorously opposes rent control, because she sees up-close the damage it causes), she's pretty far to the left.

I'd be shocked if she did not vote for Obama in November.

But even my mom would prefer to choose her causes, rather than having others choose them for her.

Iowahawk's Ode to Bill the University Professor.

Sure; Dave may be late in recognizing this great man's contributions to American culture, but this panegyric makes up for it:

Editorial note: my previous "I AM JOE" post seems to have struck a chord, and possibly a nerve or two. As one new fan writes:

I think it's hilarious you wingnuts want to embrace this wifebeating tax cheat non-plumber as your new populist poster boy. Funny I didn't see your concern when the Murdoch media was trying to destroy Bill Ayers' life.

You make an excellent point, T.S.! Why should us flag-humping reactionaries get all the good flesh-and-blood lumpenproles to rally behind? So, in preemptive compliance with the coming Fairness Doctrine, please allow me to ladle up another helping of righteous populist indignation on behalf of another lovable everyman who's gotten the shaft from the media for daring to speak up. Bumper stickers coming soon.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Hear me now: when you mess with Bill Ayers, you're messing with me.

Because I AM BILL.

I AM BILL. I am the everyday forgotten little guy in your neighborhood, the quiet anarcho-syndicalist family man who gets up early and punches the clock at the local state university, writing the manifestos and polemics and grant proposals that keep America humming. I'm just doing my job, and all I ask in return is a little respect. And tenure. And Chicago Citizen of the Year awards. And two graduate assistants to grade exams for Practicum in Imperialist Racist Hegemony 311, because I'm teaching two sections this semester. Also, a sabbatical to Italy next summer would be nice.

I AM BILL. I grew up in a simple little gated community just like yours, with white picket fences and where all the aux pairs and gardeners know your name. When my dad came home from a hard day's work as a CEO, he was never too tired to help me with my homework or tousle my hair for winning the Lake Forest Academy essay contest on Hegelian Dialectics. Yes, he was a simpleminded bourgeois technocrat of the capitalist war machine, but he made sure I got the tuition and tutors and sailing lessons and allowance I needed to make it on my own. I wish he was still alive so I could tell him how much I really planned to kill him last.

I AM BILL. I work with my hands, grizzled and calloused from years on a non-ergonomic keyboard. Maybe I don't know pipe wrenches, but I know pipe bombs, and I've built them right there in my communal kitchen and I've watched with pride as they've offed a couple of pigs. Sure, maybe I've made a few mistakes with wiring or detonator timing and it ends up killing a couple of comrades. But you know what? I get up, dust myself off, and get right back to the drawing board. Because when it comes to international Maoist revolution, quitters never win and winners never quit.

One of the Hawkster's best; read the whole thing.

Did "Drill Here, Drill Now" End Russia's Invasion of Georgia?

It looks like it contributed. Via PJ Media:

Ours is a petroleum-based economic system, and the high prices for oil and natural gas drove the cost of most things up. The subprime borrowers were scrimping to get by and the increase in food prices, in fuel prices, and in the prices of most items due to higher transportation costs pushed many subprime borrowers into default. This crisis was decades in the making — with the Community Reinvestment Act and demands by government that lenders make these subprime loans — but came to a head at this juncture because of spiraling energy costs.

And Russia invaded Georgia.

During the first presidential debate, the subject of this invasion came up and Obama hemmed and hawed with the standard “we must use our allies to pressure” fare. John McCain had the perfect opportunity, but let it pass, sounding strikingly similar to Senator Government in his analysis of the situation. He has since repeatedly missed the opportunity; the answer was “drill here, drill now.”

Russia is resurgent because of energy, and the invasion of Georgia was largely over the natural gas pipeline built to supply Europe and bypassing both Russia and Iran. The Russians tried to destroy it with air raids in the opening days of the war. Vladimir Putin’s strategy for a return to superpower status for Russia is built on oil and gas money; the increase in worldwide demand has made Russia rich, and Putin and his oligarchy own a piece of most oil and gas companies operating there. Their power is based on their control of this wealth and the stability of the Russian government hinges on the stability of these commodities. A drop in the price of fossil fuels is destabilizing to the princes of Muscovy.

And the financial crisis in America is, indeed, hurting them. Russian oil companies have been forced to cut prices, leading investors to withdraw $33 billion from the Russian economy. Russia already has serious problems finding people to work the Central Asian oil fields, and depopulation problems have driven them to offering free land to American farmers if they would become Russians. (Perhaps we should settle illegal immigrants there; many have a working knowledge of U.S. farm practices, work hard, and want a better life for themselves.) Economics is a tyrant, especially where a nation is ruled by plutocrats and not by laws. Putin cannot afford the slow bleed of petroleum wealth.

His war in Georgia was costly. The current hemorrhage in oil prices makes military adventurism just too expensive.

That is why John McCain should have called for “drill here, drill now” in the debates, and it is why he should harp on this issue. McCain is positioned to take advantage of the drop in oil prices, since it was the threat of new U.S. drilling, led by his own party, that brought those prices down.

This is a winner: good for the economy; a foreign policy success, if unintentional; and a clear difference between himself and Barack Obama, who has employed the audacity of soap to scrub his connections with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, along with Tony Rezko, William Ayers, Jeremiah Wright, communist Frank Marshall Davis, Raila Odinga, ACORN, the Chicago Democratic Socialists of America, etc., from under his fingernails. McCain should remind everyone, and continuously, that four-bucks-a-gallon gas is only the beginning if Obama strolls down the Potomac to the White House.

The stock market crash in 1929 became the Great Depression because taxes were raised at a time when the market needed liquidity—and Smoot-Hawley placed tariffs (taxes) on imported goods at a time when free trade was needed most. Obama proposes raising taxes and rethinking NAFTA, while wanting higher gas prices. Anyone can do the math, if it is laid out for them. The Obama plan makes economic collapse likely. Oil is the lifeblood of our economy and McCain has already promised to remove ethanol subsidies. This is a winner for him, and he should trumpet this to the heavens.

If he’ll only listen.

That's what 527s are for, Boys and Girls. And Vice-Presidential candidates.

Joe the Senator Trumps Joe the Plumber

Via Hot Air.

OPEC Meeting Today.

I'm wondering what our overseas overlords have in mind for us. By that I mean Saudi Arabia, of course, in consultation with Iran and with a tip of the fedora to Russia.

Please build more electric/hybrid cars, continue researching renewables such as wind and solar, exploit clean coal, utilize natural gas, and build us some French-style, super-clean nuclear-power plants.

Oh, and . . . what was that other thing? Right: drill, Baby. Drill. Especially here in SoCal. We gots us the building permits, the pipelines, and everything. Just create a ruckus so the enviro-extremists aren't looking for a year or two, and we'll have your petrol right here. Hangin'.

A commenter at Gail's post informs me that electric cars are expensive. Maybe—but they are getting less so. Meanwhile, there are plenty of gas-sipping alternatives, including a lot of cute offerings from Toyota, Nissan, and Honda—as well as the bitchin' Mini, and the kinky, fabulous Smart Car, which is shockingly inexpensive and downright adorable.

These aren't hybrids, but they get gas mileage that is as good as or better than my old VW bug did. (With better safety, superior handling, more power, etc.)

And if you really do need hauling space or the comfort of a sedan, there are plenty of hybrid SUVs and sedans (e.g., the Camry).

Of course, now that I live in a condo development, all the plug-in cars are a lot less sexy to me: I'd either need a huge extension cord that would go down three stories, or I'd need to cut a deal with the HOA and charge directly from their garage—paying an additional electric bill based on their estimate of how much extra electricity we were using. Sounds a bit icky, at least from the perspective of a possible pioneer: I'd rather deal with a hybrid that had a battery.

Or (my favorite) a flex-fuel vehicle.

Or (my other favorite) one of those Mercedes that runs on biodiesel, or French-fry oil. Free fuel might well be worth living with a car that smells like a fast-food joint.

More on that "Face-Carving" Incident: I'm Wrong.

UPDATE: I'm wrong. But at least this woman told the truth, and is facing the music. I hope she serves as an inspiration to Al Sharpton and others like him.

She certainly apologized in a more timely fashion than the Rev. Sharpton did (which is to say, never).

One hopes she will therefore get the treatment she needs. I wish to G-d she had not done what she did, but I'm grateful that she came clean so quickly, and I hope that she can correct the imbalances in her brain that made her mark up her own face.

I am, of course, leaving my post up.

* * *

I happen to believe this young woman, because very few 20-somethings risk scarring their faces just to smear a political opponent. Especially women.

Morrissey is still warning us to keep our powder dry, since there are lunatics in every election—perhaps a few more in this one.

Ace seems genuinely conflicted about this, which I can understand: one of these two people (the mugger or the victim) is out-of-the-ordinary crazy.

My gut tells me she's not making it up, but I could be wrong. And no campaign should be villified because the act of one mentally ill person.

Still, as usual there's a . . . lively . . . debate going on over at AOSHQ.

The Anchoress weighs in, and also presents the definitive roundup on this case:

This story—should the mainstream press deign to report it—could convulse the Obama campaign. So one has to be a little suspicious, if one is to be fair. Yes, I know, the press and the Obama campaign were not skeptical or fair about the (erroneous) reports of a couple of chuckleheads shouting inflammatory things at a rally, but I like to think we’re better and fairer than that—you know, more open-minded and less hateful.

But inflammatory words are very different from physical attacks, and if this story is true, it is at least the second attack on a female McCain supporter within a month—and a disturbing portent of things to come. If the story is not true, this is also disturbing. Either way, this is not good.

My emphasis.

Jimmie at Sundries Shack counters the skeptics on the likelihood that this assault (beyond the mugging, which does not seem to be in question) occurred.

The Anchoress is right: real or fake—neither bodes well for our country's political future.

UPDATE: The way this young woman is handling it at this point is better than I could have expected. I think she must be experiencing some severe mental distress.

But bringing such a tense political campaign into her personal problems—it will take me some time to forgive that.

Here's Our October Surprise!

When he was young, John McCain used to smoke!

That's it; I'm voting for Obama.

h/t: James, Outside the Beltway.

Campaign Finance Fraud in the Obama Campaign

The whole thing is a bit . . . overt. Not subtle-like. Bordering on indiscreet.

Ace:

I say again: Try entering false addresses when ordering a $10 DVD from Amazon. You will get rejected.

And yet Barack Obama has overridden this basic security feature in order to allow the world to donate to him, and to rack up millions and millions in illegal over-the-limit donations.

Where.

Is.

The Fucking.

Cocksucking.

Media.

The hell with the media; where is the fucking Attorney General?

Where indeed?

I'm starting to think that it's just an embarrassment of riches with the "tanning-bed media": they cannot decide whether to report on voter fraud in Ohio and other swing states, or credit card fraud in Obama's online fundraising efforts.

You see how that goes? You argue and argue all day over which story is more important—and then you look up and the day is over, and you haven't gotten around to covering either one.

So you go home; what else is there to do?

UPDATE: Jim Geraghty:

The press has been telling us about Obama's amazing online donations for more than a year now. There is absolutely no excuse for not digging into this story.

What about a bad case of ennui? Low blood sugar? Iron-deficiency anemia? You're a heartless bastard, Jim.

Dafydd at Big Lizards

. . . speculates on possible "October surprises" from the Democrats:

—An independent congressional watchdog whistleblowing reform taxpayer's association has stumbled upon shocking evidence that "Senator Clean," John McCain, has allowed taxpayer money to be diverted into his own pocket for half a century. This diversion of funds went unchecked even after he was elected to the Senate. Do we need four more long years of the Republican culture of corruption?

. . . . . . . . . . . . .

— Many of those closest to hunter-killer Sarah Palin have noticed a frightening instability in the would-be vice president's emotional health. This instability manifests nearly every month; its symptoms include the inability to fully control her emotions, sudden anger with little provocation, distracted attention, inexplicable pain, and sudden bleeding from unknown lacerations, possibly self inflicted. Doctors have expressed grave concerns whether Mrs. Palin is medically fit to serve, given her condition. We feel sorry for anyone with such an infirmity -- but America needs a president who is healthy, emotionally stable, and mentally balanced.

Yeah. Elizabeth R was like that, too, but she did okay.

"Obama Knows a Thing or Two About Rhetorical Flourishes."

Yes; he does.

Hat tip to AllahP at Hot Air, who remarks

Irresistible, partly because the inane “rhetorical flourish” spin richly deserves to be mocked but partly too because of how she pauses and savors those laugh lines. There’s no other politician in America I can think of, McCain included, who’s not only willing to hit The One but to savor it.

(AllahP also notes that CNN is trying to claim that Biden never claimed Obama couldn't handle a crisis, so he has video to disprove that. I didn't look at it, since Biden has said it several different times, in several different ways.)

Me? I like the polar bear pin on her jacket.

Jack Shafer at Slate

Admits that he's a criminal, but that it's okay: all the rest of the American citizenry is as well.

Sounds like projection to me:

Finding the crease in the zone, where both inclusion and integrity reign at the American voting precinct, is probably impossible. If you care enough to see your candidate win, you probably care enough to cheat outright or, if not cheat outright, then bend the rules and rewrite them to your party's unfair advantage. Not even Solomon could satisfy everybody if he were in charge.

So there is no honor among (election) thieves, and Jack Shafer is one of the self-professed thieves.

After all, anything that happened during the Colonial era, or under Jim Crow laws must be legit. That is, apparently, the standard of the Democratic Party. (I almost wrote "new standard," but since the Dems are the party of slavery and Jim Crow laws, it's nothing new at all.)

Via Insty, who writes, "Old spin: Fraud is a myth! New spin: What's wrong with fraud? As I've said before, if the NRA were registering Mickey Mouse to vote, the press would be a lot more upset about it than it is about ACORN."

Indeed.

So. Is Bill Ayers "Respectable"?

As Eric Scheie points out, that is the key question. The Obama-Ayers connections are strong and deep, but even if it were a question of "serving on a board" or two with "a guy from my neighborhood," or being the beneficiary of a "political coffee" at that same man's house, Obama's actions in Illinois contributed to the respectability of a guy who made detailed plans to kill people (most of these plans were, thankfully, unsuccessful) and planned to kill (if he could only get the power) 25 million more.

He is, by his own admission, "guilty" of cop-killing and large-scale attempted murder, and his own writings espoused an American holocaust.

Eric:

I should quote the exact words from the video above [of an FBI informant from Ayers' group—Eric's got it in his post]:

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

That would have been about 10% of the United States population of the time.

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

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

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

But at least Nazis aren't considered respectable.

That's one of the pivotal issues, here: not so much "what did Ayers do for Obama's career?" (a lot, it seems), but "what did Obama do for the rehabilitation of a would-be mass murderer, who has never repudiated his crimes, nor his murderous philosophy?"

Please read the whole thing: Eric has really done his homework, and he goes in-depth on how Ayers himself felt about the lives of innocent people—including those of African-American patrons of a restaurant next door to one site of an attempted bombing.

Morrissey on the Attack/Maiming of a McCain Supporter.

Ed strikes the correct tone, here. We don't want to blame an entire campaign for the act of one lunatic.

(Even though, of course, the media tried to do exactly that with the fictitious case of the "kill him" yell at a Palin rally. Sigh.)

I do think this particular contest is the ugliest one in my lifetime, or at least the ugliest one I can recall. Wait: I take it back. I do have a vague memory of the RFK assassination. So, second-ugliest.

There are moments that I just want it to stop. Moments I don't even care who wins. I just want it to be over with.

But I also believe that Obama's economic policies (and possibly his foreign-policy approach) will do the country damage that may well be permanent. And, yes: I believe that we are still suffering from mistakes made during the Carter era (and continued during the Reagan era to some degree, though Reagan was busy enough winning the Cold War that his failure to pay attention to Islamo-Fascism in its toddlerhood is at least forgiveable).

So on I fight.

A friend of my husband's is as deeply in the closet as he is (they both work in entertainment). But he feels strongly about this election, and eventually put up a McCain-Palin yard sign in front of his suburban West Valley home. A neighbor confronted him about it: "what are you trying to do with that? Are you trying to piss people off?"

"No," our friend replied. "But there's an election coming up, and I thought I had a right to support my candidate."

Needless to say, the next day the sign was missing. He told my husband he intended to replace it. This led to a discussion between A the H and me about what the best substance would be to coat the back of the sign with. We discussed tar, that sticky substance used to keep birds off of fences, scrapings from rat traps, and a homemade concoction of crushed charcoal with shortening from the pantry (I decided that something with a powdery component would be good, since that would leave a trail that could be followed early the next morning, and might lead to the perp's door.)

Goldstein on "Socialist" as Yet Another Code-Word for "Black."

I don't understand this. If we (Classical liberals / libertarians / conservatives / Republicans) were as racist as the lefties claim we are, couldn't we just use "black" as a code word for "black"? It would save everyone a lot of trouble: less time and effort encoding everything we say and write, and less time decoding on their end. We'd save a lot of time for arguing about . . . the electoral college or something.

Jeff:

Again and again I’ve highlighted the end game for speech codes, and for the slippery slope that is inherent in the post-structuralist movement to un-tether language from intent.

Here, it is now being alleged that socialism is being used as a code word that signals a distrust of blacks. To believe this, however, we must willingly bracket from history all of the whites who have also been accused of communist or socialist / radicalist / Maoist sympathies (including, quite recently, Ayers, Dohrne, and several white members of the New Party, among whom one counts the inarguably pasty faces of Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky, and Barbara Ehrlenreich).

Such attacks serve no other purpose than to put the accused on the defensive — and so in a very real way speak to a supreme irony evidently lost on “intellectuals” like Mr Diuguid: they have become the new McCarthyites, even as they pretend to be fighting against a kind of neo-McCarthyism of their own creation.

Up is down. Black is White. Josie is the Pussycats.

When I use a word, it means just what the leftist kooks around me choose it to mean—neither more nor less.

But my quarrel with Jeff is that I now have the theme song for Josie and the Pussycats going through my head—and I fear that it might stay there for a good, long time.

There's nothing for it, then: I must spread the earbug around; everyone's better off that way:

At least, that's what I've been told.

Turns Out It's . . . Easier To Give Money To the Obama Campaign Than to the McCain Campaign.

How odd.

Ace:

Not a Bombshell: Barack Obama's Campaign Website Encourages Fraudulent Donations

John Galt of Ayn Rand Lane (zip code: a nonexistent 99999) was able to donate with no problem—despite the fact that the cardholder's name and address did not match the name he provided.

John McCain's website? Rejected the same non-matching-information donation.

I guess when you're gathering up tens of millions from the Saudis and Gazans you have to be a little lenient on matching up credit card donations. Incidentally—when I fucking order cheesesteaks from my local deli, I get dinged when I forget my current zip code and give them my old one.

Again, though: If Obama were demanding that credit card information matched donor information, he couldn't draw in $150 million largely from fraudulent overseas donors.

Anyone see a pattern? Jennifer Brunner [Ohio's Secretary of State] isn't bothered by "voters" with non-matchable information casting votes; Barack Obama doesn't take the most basic safeguard of ensuring that a donor's information matches the information on his credit card.

Try buying something anywhere with a credit card. You check to see if you can get away with entering false information about your name and address. An automated check bounces all such attempts. Unless this safeguard has been specifically disabled.

And why would anyone do that?

I just can't think of a single reason.

Glenn's also baffled:

"[A] retired insurance manager who occasionally submits recipes to the local paper says someone used a credit card to donate [$175,000] in her name. No charges ever showed up on her credit card statement." Now why would someone do that?

Quite the puzzler.

Note to Chicago pols: you're supposed to be subtler when you're working in the national arena. The entire country isn't 100% acclimated to the Illinois style of Getting Things Done.

Editor's note: I fixed Ace's punctuation and paragraph breaks because I did not like them. And one little teensy verb tense. So feel free to consider that first blockquote a paraphrase of what he actually wrote.

Treacher, Burge and Biden Are Having a Satire-Off

We've already reviewed Iowahawk's entry—at least [looking over my glasses] those of you who have been keeping up with your homework have.

Next up, Treacher's got a scorchingly funny take on Joe-the-Senator when he gets all . . . Bideney:

Biden's statement to the press:

"Ya know, I kinda put my foot in my mouth the other day... [chuckle] You folks know how I can get, with the words and the talking and the babbling and the yammering and so forth. But I just wanted to clarify those remarks. I know I speak for Obama when I say that we are ready to lead. Come what may, we are gonna be out there in front.

"Because I gotta tell ya, when this great man, this fantastic young African-American kid who I'm proud to call my closest friend, when he becomes president, the American people need to know that you are all gonna be grabbin' your ankles every April 15 for the rest of your probably-shortened lives.

"I mean, the taxes, they're gonna be unbelievable. Holy f***. So we'll need your help with that. You're gonna have to pay 'em. There's no way we can repel a full-scale nationwide tax revolt without resorting to nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons, at least in the scenarios they've shown me, so we're countin' on you to do the right thing.

"And I'd say to America, this land that I love: You've all seen what an agent of change Barack Obama is. He's brought together people from all walks of life. He's inspired every single person in this country, no matter who you are or what you look like or even if you're into, y'know, the funny stuff. [chuckle] Which is gonna be a great comfort when the Obama administration strangles the U.S. economy and sets off a long, terrifying race war.

Read the whole thing, of course. It's the stuff, for sure.

But I'm afraid I shall have to give the Joe Biden Parody Prize to . . . Biden himself. He's just . . . . he's wonderful. Self-satirizing. Smarter than anyone else on earth, or at least ready to tell us so. Prepared to negate, in a few small sound bites, Obama's five-to-one financial advantage over McCain-Palin.

Ready to encourage us once more to disregard those obviously rigged poll results, and vote. Joe: you've brought this one home for the team. Thank you.

So. Who Is William Ayers?

Zombie Time has William Ayers' Weather Underground manifesto, Prairie Fire. He has passages, excerpts, commentary, and scanned pages from Ayers' book.

William Ayers is a communist. But don't take my word for it. He said so himself . . . . And not some nicey-nice peace-and-love kind of communist. Through his group the Weather Underground, Ayers was planning to "seize power" in a violent communist takeover of the United States.

[scanned passage from the Ayers book]

The quotes above were scanned directly from a now long-forgotten book entitled Prairie Fire: The Politics of Revolutionary Anti-Imperialism, which was written and published in 1974 by William Ayers, Bernardine Dohrn and other members of the Weather Underground. In this slim volume, which functioned as the Weather Underground's ideological manifesto, Ayers declares himself to be a communist, and announces that his group's bombing campaign was intended to start a violent revolution to overthrow the American government.

After a long search, I was lucky enough to finally get my hands on a copy of the original edition of Prairie Fire, which is now extremely rare and hard to find. It was written in secret while Ayers and his fellow Weather Underground members were still in hiding and on the run, and still actively engaging in bombings and other violent acts.

This essay features many high-resolution scans of quotes and entire pages taken directly from Prairie Fire, which journalists, bloggers and other media members are free to copy and re-post.

If you're interested only in viewing or downloading the scans taken from Prairie Fire, scroll down this page to see a large selection of shocking quotations which you can use as you see fit. My introductory explanation below simply provides context and elucidates why the text of Prairie Fire is so significant at this very moment in history.

So far in 2008, there has been almost no mention of this manifesto and its insurrectionary goals. It seems as if the media, William Ayers, Barack Obama and his supporters don't want you to know about Prairie Fire. Which is exactly why you need to see it.

How Is This Relevant to the 2008 Presidential Campaign?

There's nothing illegal about being a communist. People in this country are free to hold whatever political beliefs they so choose. I don't know William Ayers, I've never met him (that I'm aware of), and I have nothing against him personally.

This essay only exists to correct and unequivocably debunk claims routinely made by the mainstream media over the last few weeks about William Ayers, his beliefs, and the purpose behind his bombing campaign during the 1970s.

Specifically, when questions arose during the 2008 presidential race about Barack Obama's past associations with William Ayers, many media reports and articles blandly described Ayers as a "Vietnam-era radical" and the Weather Underground as a group that set bombs "to protest against the Vietnam War." Both of these characterizations are demonstrably inaccurate.

Furthermore: Obama and his supporters at first claimed he barely knew who Ayers was, but when public awareness of the connections between Obama and Ayers became too numerous and too strong to deny, Obama's supporters have now begun resorting to a fallback position: that William Ayers wasn't such a bad guy after all, and that it is no shame to be associated with him. The now-standard talking points are:

• Ayers was simply protesting against the Vietnam War, and a lot of people protested against the Vietnam War back then, so there's no shame in that.

• Ayers was never actually convicted of setting any bombs or killing anyone, so there's no real proof that he ever did anything wrong.

• Ayers is now a respected, mainstream, mild-mannered and popular professor, so obviously his political views couldn't have been that extreme.

This essay disproves all of these claims. The text that William Ayers authored in Prairie Fire, and the additional documentary links provided below, prove that:

• Ayers was not simply protesting "against" the Vietnam War. Firstly, he wasn't against war in principle, he was agitating for the victory of the communist forces in Vietnam. In other words: He wasn't against the war, he was against our side in the war. This is spelled out in great detail in Prairie Fire. Secondly, and more significantly, the Vietnam War was only one of many issues cited by the Weather Undergound as the justifications for their violent acts. As you will see below, in various quotes from Prairie Fire and in their own list of their violent actions (and in additional impartial documentary links), Ayers and the Weather Underground enumerated dozens of different grievances as the rationales for their bombings -- their overarching goal being to inspire a violent mass uprising against the United States government in order to establish a communist "dictatorship of the proletariat," in Ayers' own words.

• Ayers and his co-authors freely brag about their bombings and other violent and illegal acts, and even provide a detailed list, most likely typed up by Ayers himself, of the crimes they had committed up to that point. Ayers' list, scanned directly from Prairie Fire, is shown below. He may have escaped conviction due to a legal technicality (the prosecutors failed to get a warrant during some of their surveillance of the Weather Underground), but this in no way means that Ayers was factually innocent of the crimes. As has been widely reported, after the case against him was dropped, Ayers described himself as "guilty as hell, free as a bird."

• Just because Ayers tries to appear respectable now doesn't mean that he wasn't a violent revolutionary in the past. In fact, as the text of Prairie Fire shows, Ayers was one of the most extreme extremists in American political history. And as the links given as the end of this essay will prove, Ayers is just as politically radical now as he was back then. He has never renounced the political views he professed in the 1960s and 1970s. The only difference is that now he no longer commits violence to achieve his goals. After his stint as the leader of the Weather Underground, he shifted to a different tactic: to spread his ideology under the aegis of academia. But the goal remains the same: to turn America into a communist nation. Ayers' contemporary writings contain many of the same ideas (and even the same phrases) found in Prairie Fire, just toned down to make them more palatable in polite society.

But Where Is the Obama Connection?

This essay is only about William Ayers' past and present political views. It is not about the connection between Barack Obama and William Ayers. That issue has been covered (and continues to be covered) elsewhere in innumerable news reports and blog postings. Yet as evidence mounts of the extensive and long-standing connection between Obama and Ayers, making their association more and more difficult to deny, Obama's campaign and supporters have started shifting their strategy; Sure, they say, Obama may have had a connection with Ayers, but why is that so bad? Look at William Ayers now: He's a completely respectable man. What -- he protested against the Vietnam War? So did everyone. He's no extremist.

I see these arguments made in countless blog posts, comment sections, and even news articles. This essay exists to stop that political escape route. There's no getting around it: William Ayers was a violent communist revolutionary bent on overthrowing the government and "seizing power" in the United States. The proof is on this page. And the only difference between the 1970s William Ayers and the William Ayers whom Barack Obama associated with is a change in rhetorical style; a re-wording of his radical philosophy to make it seem more mainstream. But the underlying political thesis (i.e. communism) remains the same.

Authorship of Prairie Fire

How do we know that William Ayers himself co-authored Prairie Fire? Doesn't the cover say it's by The Weather Underground as a group, and doesn't mention him specifically?

Well, it's simple enough to prove. Because in the introduction, the four actual authors sign their names -- Bernardine Dohrn, Jeff Jones, Billy Ayers, and Celia Sojourn.

My emphasis, mostly.

Via Mikal.

Bloggers, do your duty.

Great Interview at Right Wing News

Katie Favazza has an amazing interview up with Phil Valentine over at Right Wing News.

They cover Valentine's new book, The Conservative's Handbook: Defining the Right Position on Issues from A to Z, and myriad other subjects.

He's a bit of a Renaissance Man (and Favazza, a Renaissance Woman), so it's hard to summarize the interview, but here are a few appetizers:

Favazza: How would you describe the ways in which your book differs from other popular conservative books?

Valentine: I don't mean this in a cocky way but there's really nothing else out there like it. Don't get me wrong, there are some great conservative books out there from some great conservatives. There's just not anything out there this comprehensive as far as laying out conservative principles on a whole host of issues. Readers tell me they use it as a desktop reference book to refute liberal arguments. That's exactly why I wrote it.

Hm. Maybe that'll tell me why I'm supposed to be so angry about "amnesty," and up in arms about "illegals." (I mean, I get that we can't afford porous borders in this day and age, and I understand the argument that illegal immigration may be a net drag on the economy, but I don't really see crossing the border to get work unavailable in Latin America to be an act of "contempt for our laws," as so many of my colleagues do. I think people are just trying to get by, ya know?)

Favazza: How is your biofuel coming along? Can you briefly explain what you're trying to do for Bennie the BioBenz and your brand of "going green?"

Valentine: Yeah, my going green is all about more green in the pocket. I was just tired of getting jerked around by Big Oil and Big Terrorism. I also wanted to see if your average Joe with no mechanical inclinations could actually do it. It took me over a year to finally stop talking about it and take the plunge but once I did, man, what a liberating feeling that was. I remember the first time I poured biodiesel into Bennie that I had made and started him up and drove around town, I was on Cloud Nine. When Nashville went through the gas shortage in September I saw people lined up for blocks for gas, if they could find it. I drove right on by in Bennie the BioBenz. It was great.

Is it for everyone? Probably not, but I don't think our solution to foreign oil dependency is going to be one thing. It'll be a combination of solutions that gradually move us away from foreign oil. Some states penalize people who make their own fuel. Fortunately, Tennessee does not and it's encouraging all sorts of people to delve into different kinds of alternative fuel.

If the Mercedes people wanted more people to buy their cars, they'd start offering the conversions to biodiesel—if not vegetable oil—themselves. (Though these urea-injected Mercedes diesels are intriguing—perhaps not in an energy- or cost-saving sense, but certainly in terms of reducing particulate matter. What's needed might be more aftermarket firms that convert used vehicles on behalf of The Unhandy. There's a conversion primer here, to get you started. And you can read all about Valentine's adventures in his book.)

Is Self-Defense a Human Right?

Obama says "no. Absolutely not."

Via Morrissey, who has covered this story before.

...[C]lick the link [right above] and get the background on Hale DeMar and Wilmette’s attempt to charge him with the crime of defending himself. Where does Barack Obama come into the story? He was on the wrong end of a lopsided 41-16 vote on a bill that didn’t even remove Wilmette’s gun ban, but only prevented prosecution in case of real self-defense. This would have been a great example of bipartisanship — except Obama voted with the minority of the party to keep prosecuting people who had the temerity to defend themselves.

The vote on SB2165 and Obama’s continuing efforts to keep laws in place to prosecute victims demonstrate that Obama has tried hard to mislead voters on his hostility towards gun ownership. He was in the minority of his own party on this issue. That makes him an ideologue, not a post-partisan moderate.

It's okay, though: Obama's position against self-defense arose from his suspicion that someday his own family would enjoy Secret Service protection, and wouldn't need to worry their pretty little heads about such matters.

Grabbed the vid and the text from today's entry on Hot Air, right here.

Why Are Oil Prices Going Down?

You've got questions? Gail the Actuary at The Oil Drum has answers.

From where I stand, they aren't dropping so fast that people aren't relatively tramautized when they fill their tanks. And no one is going to forget what happened this summer, so I think we can push forward on increased domestic production and making renewables more efficient. This small lessening of the pressure shouldn't lose us a lot of momentum.

Omamanomics!

H/t goes to one of the hottest PUMA sites, Lotistics Monster.

Why the Polls Are Wronger than Usual

. . . this year.

Like, a lot more wrong. Wronger than they've been in decades.

Which means that Ace's friend Steve in Huntington Beach may well end up owing me a steak dinner. I'm leaning toward filet mignon.

Once Again, Google Creates a Ground-Breaking Approach.

This time, it's a new tool to avert drunk emailing.

I do not believe that Movable Type has a feature like that; I've looked.

h/t: Girl on the Write

McCain on What a . . . Classic . . . Politician Barack Obama Is

Morrissey at Hot Air has the story:

John McCain continues to improve his message while campaigning through swing states. In Pennsylvania today, McCain used Barack Obama’s support for both the Phillies and the Devil Rays as a revealing moment about Barack Obama the politician. He will say and do anything to get elected, but afterwards …. well:

Now, I’m not dumb enough to get mixed up in a World Series between swing states, but I think I may have detected a little pattern with Senator Obama. It’s pretty simple really. When he’s campaigning in Philadelphia, he roots for the Phillies, and when he’s campaigning in Tampa Bay, he shows love to the Rays. It’s kind of like the way he campaigns on tax cuts, but then votes for tax increases after he’s elected. Or the way he says he backs the middle class and then goes and attacks Joe the Plumber after he’s asked a tough question.

McCain didn’t let up on the lessons of Joe the Plumber, either:

After months of campaign trail eloquence, we’ve finally learned what Senator Obama’s economic goal is. As he told Joe, he wants to quote “spread the wealth around.” He believes in redistributing wealth, not in policies that grow our economy and create jobs and opportunities for all Americans. Senator Obama is more interested in controlling who gets your piece of the pie than he is in growing the pie. This explains some big problems with my opponent’s claim that he will cut income taxes for 95 percent of Americans. You might ask: How do you cut income taxes for 95 percent of Americans, when more than 40 percent pay no income taxes right now? How do you reduce the number zero?

Well, that’s the key to Barack Obama’s whole plan: Since you can’t reduce income taxes on those who pay zero, the government will write them all checks called a tax credit. And the Treasury will have to cover those checks by taxing other people, including a lot of folks just like Joe.

That may be the best stump-speech explanation I’ve heard yet from McCain about Obamanomics. How do you reduce zero? You start another branch of welfare, and you rob capital from sources that could otherwise create jobs to do it. That won’t grow the economy, but it will expand the dependent class who will then vote to protect the patronage they receive. That’s another version of the Chicago Way.

McCain also included Joe Biden’s latest gaffe as a demonstration of the danger an Obama administration would represent to national security:

This weekend, Senator Biden guaranteed that if Senator Obama is elected, we will have an international crisis to test America’s new President. We don’t want a President who invites testing from the world at a time when our economy is in crisis and Americans are already fighting in two wars.

What is more troubling is that Senator Biden told their campaign donors that when that crisis hits, they would have to stand with them because it wouldn’t be apparent Senator Obama would have the right response. Forget apparent. We know Senator Obama won’t have the right response.

We’ve seen the wrong response from him over and over during this campaign. He opposed the surge strategy that is bringing us victory in Iraq and will bring us victory in Afghanistan. He said he would sit down unconditionally with the world’s worst dictators. When Russia invaded Georgia, Sen. Obama said the invaded country should show restraint. He’s been wrong on all of these.

McCain seems to have hit his stride again, thanks to Joe the Plumber and Joe the Leak. It’s a great speech . . .

Ed has the entire transcript of McCain's speech over at Hot Air, BTW.

The Comprehensive Case

. . . against Barack Obama, by M.K. Ham and Guy Benson; edited by Ed Morrissey.

It's a long essay, punctuated with videos as evidence. This basically constitutes "the fine print," so make sure your undecided friends see it—along with any of your Democratic friends (non-PUMAs, that is) who are probable Obama voters. Provided, that is, that they actually read the ingredients list when they buy food.

One should know what one is getting, no?

"But . . . But We've Been Busting Our Butts to Get You Elected!"

Pejman on the "pay to play" system the media face if they want to cover the Obama campaign on election night.

I do so hope their high-priced credentials will keep the riff-raff out.

Don't forget your black armbands, folks. It's going to be a loooonnngg, sad tale. I mean, evening.

Macho Sauce Again!

He's so good. We need to get this guy a real studio:

That tile background isn't doin' it for me any more: they say he's in a corner of his basement, but it looks more like a bathroom to me. Anyway: no matter. But I'll be the audio would improve a little without the sound bouncin' around like that.

Still . . . he's Macho Sauce! He's got something no one else has. I mean, apart from the hat, which I can't help but like. And that tatt that I can't quite make out.

And that one camera angle thing was very cool, with him looking down into the camera and the camera turning. Loves it.

Patterico, on . . . The L.A. Times

The Times just did a big story on Sarah Palin's college years.

This is, presumably, its way of making up for never having covered Barack Obama's time at Occidental and Columbia.

See how that works?

Special Election Edition Bleg

BUMPED: Still a few hundred shy of my goal! Scroll down for new posts.

I just heard from the Nevada organizers, and they'd like me to come out and act as a poll observer, to keep things fair, and/or assist with their "get out the vote" effort.

I can manage this if I stay at a Motel 6 (or the equivalent), and if I can get $20-$40 from each of my regular readers.

I know that you all know I'm broke. I'm willing to contribute my time, but I'll need your help with housing and gasoline.

I eat next to nothing when I'm doing political travel, and since I'm driving out there I can load the car up with cheap snacks: apples and Luna bars have worked well when I'm playing "Girl Reporter." They'll also work fine for long days of getting out the vote (they tell me I may be at it for 10-12 hours a day). And I'll drink some milk each day, and take my vitamins.

But I cannot do this unless I raise $500-$700 from readers over the next week. (The more you give, the longer I can stay. They'd like me for ten days, but if I can stay there for a week it'll still help them out enormously.)

This is the most important election in a very long time—for economic reasons as much as for national security reasons. So please hit my tip jar, and send me out into the desert.

Thank you!

UPDATE: Bumped; I'm only halfway there, so keep those donations rolling in. No, I'm not going out there if I have to sleep in my car. Not in the high desert. If McCain loses Nevada and you didn't send me out there . . . well, you wouldn't want that on your conscience, now, would you? (Bumping this back up.)

Palin Weighs in on Biden's Latest, Um . . .

. . . Colorful, provocative verbiage:

h/t: Moe Lane at Red State.

Joe Biden Hits the Stump

Iowahawk has the scoop: don't misunderestimate this guy!

Biden also warned the audience that the first days of the Obama administration would bring some inevitable disappointments.

"I'm not going to lie to you - it doesn't take a weatherman to know that hey, Mr. Tambourine Man, a hard rain is gonna fall, all along the watchtower," said the Delaware Senator, strumming on a pantomime guitar. "There will be a point -- maybe one week, maybe two weeks after the inauguration -- when the opinion polls will look bad. Really horribly bad. Despite our best efforts, a couple of mid-size cities will inevitably be vaporized. People will be complaining. 'Why are you nationalizing the Safeway?' 'When is Omaha going to stop glowing?' 'Why do the Chinese soldiers keep asking for my papers?' When this happens, we will need you to keep supporting us because, trust me, you really won't want to be observed not supporting us."

"But I promise you, if one of these inevitable nuclear attacks is, God forbid, successful, Barack Obama and I will conduct tough and open negotiations with our new overlords," said Biden. "Ol' Joe Biden learned how to negotiate at his dad's used car lot in Scranton PA, and if these overlords think they can swing some sort of lowball occupation deal, I'll just tell them 'I gotta go get my manager,' and then... boo-yeah! In comes Barack Obama to upsell them undercoating and extra exercise yard privileges for you and me."

It's at moments like these that I truly regret our having put Mayor Bimbo on the ticket.

McCain Supporters

. . . run off anti-Islam bigots! Hoorah!

So—were these people cranks, or plants by the Obama camp? I think it's significant that they weren't willing to give their names.

Via AllahP at HotAir, via Ace.

Preach It!

Especially in Florida.

Via Hot Air.

Kathy Shaidle's Ad

. . . is fresh off the blog at Five Feet of Fury.

I'm not so sure about the music, but I think she gets the point across.

h/t: RightGirl.

(X-posted at Right Wing News.)

Is It Me . . .

Or is Melissa just a bit annoyed at Peggy Noonan?

I just don't get Noonan lately. I've certainly had arguments with conservatives about Sarah Palin with conservatives (is she a brilliant retail politician, a la Ronald Reagan, or is she McCain's answer to Harriet Miers? And can you compare a management position with that which must be occupied—by definition—by a legal scholar?)

But John McCain heads up this ticket, and whatever else he is, he is neither an extreme right-winger, nor an idiot. There are, in fact, a number of ways in which his communication skills are far better than Obama's (e.g., his sense of humor is far superior to The One's).

Noonan used to be a bright writer; an interesting voice. A thinker. Now she's merely a silly classist hack. Over the past several years I've found her to be more and more unreadable: less thoughtful. Less challenging.

So there won't be much to miss, for me. Ronald Reagan, on the other hand, may be spinning in his grave.

New Media-Vetting Site!

A new site is being put together by a colleague of Ace of Spades to keep track of reporters who do not fact-check their stories adequately, who display undue bias, or who go after less-newsworthy targets (e.g., Jodi Kantor serving up warmed-over gossip about Cindy McCain as "news").

The project is very likely too late to affect this election, and is most certainly not soliciting funds. ("Give to the McCain campaign, or to a 527," it recommends right now.) But it will provide an invaluable resource in the years ahead, so we can keep track of the most aggressive purveyors of slime against people such as the Palin family, and (most egregiously, of course), Joe the Plumber.

After the election the project will be needing researchers, data-entry people, and writers.

In retrospect, we've needed a mediapedia for a long time, and it's exciting to see this finally happening.

(Cross-posted at Right Wing News.)

Reuters: Obama Ahead by Three Points

No, not just a Zogby poll; Reuters and C-Span also participated. I'm hoping that means the methodology was reasonably balanced. The good news: margin of error is 2.9 points on this.

Of course, I need to go back and check on the Electoral College: I know the widget I've got on my sidebar is based on the traditional practice of oversampling Democrats, so I should probably ditch it for something better. (Something that's less demoralizing to most of my readership.)

Irrespective, this thing is going to be close, which means that minimizing fraud and keeping the turnout high are key. Remember the old Hugh Hewitt line: "if it isn't close, they can't cheat."

Democrat Barack Obama's lead over Republican John McCain in the presidential race has dropped to 3 points, according to a Reuters/C-SPAN/Zogby poll released on Sunday.

Obama leads McCain by 48 to 45 percent among likely U.S. voters, down 1 percentage point from Saturday. The four-day tracking polll . . . has a margin of error of 2.9 points.

Pollster John Zogby said the numbers were good news for McCain, and probably reflected a bump following his appearance in the third and final presidential debate on Wednesday.

"For the first time in the polling McCain is up above 45 percent. There is no question something has happened," Zogby said.

He said the Arizona senator appeared to have solidified his support with the Republican base -- where 9 out of 10 voters now back him -- and was also gaining ground among the independents who may play a decisive role in the November 4 election.

Obama's lead among independent voters dropped to 8 points on Sunday from 16 points a day earlier.

'RED FLAGS'

"If that trend continues, it is something that has got to raise red flags for Obama," Zogby said. "It suggests to me that his outward look of confidence may be as much strategy as it is real."

Other national polls have given Obama a double-digit overall lead, fueled by perceptions he would do a better job managing the faltering economy and unhappiness with McCain's attacks on him over the past week.

But he has cautioned his supporters against overconfidence and most polls now put his lead in single digits.

Obama, 47, who would be the first black president, enjoys strong support among black, Hispanic, Catholic and Jewish voters while the 72-year-old McCain holds a narrower lead among male and white voters.

Women, who are expected to be an important factor in the election, still favor Obama by a 6-point margin, although this has been declining in recent days.

It's weird, what happens when you out yourself as a socialist. And when your running-mate is out-drawn by his opposite number by a 4:1 ratio, that can't help but be a little bit embarrassing.

Vote, no matter what. Vote, even if you live in a solid blue/red state like I do; they still need to hear your voice on legislators and initiatives, bond measures and the like. (CalTech Girl tells me that Halloween is usually "Initiative Weekend" in her family—they get together and read all the initiatives and bond measures. They do it aloud, but we might not do it that way here, since A the H and I nearly came to blows over Prop. 8.)

If your state is still solidly blue, a robust showing in the red counties will make the other side sweat, and vice versa. Turn your state purple for democracy!

Halloween is probably also the weekend to run over your legislators' records, so you aren't just using the voter guides sent out by your pet group (whether it's NRA or the Sierra Club) for that kind of thing. Particularly given the work Congress and Senate have ahead of them (passing laws, or--my preference--overturning 'em) in order to save the economy, we need to do our homework there. For the record, capitalism is better run by capitalists. And capitalism creates more jobs than any other system. So a few pro-business people in Congress and in your state capitols will help us enormously, given the times we find ourselves in.

It's probably better to vote early in the day, rather than late, but I've never managed it. If you vote after work, don't get "Florida Panhandled": if you cannot keep the news from affecting whether you make it to the polls, best take a "media blackout day" in case some states are "accidentally" called early at some news desks.

To be honest, I think a lot of states will "accidentally" be called early and incorrectly this time. We cannot listen. We cannot.

Most of us will be better-served by keeping the radio off, and the TV off for that one day until we've gotten home from the polls.

Obama is out-spending McCain about four to one at this point. If he doesn't win in a landslide (which he will not), it's going to make him look a bit bad.

All we need do is turn the screw one more notch.

Now This Was Funny.

John McCain really does have the best sense of humor of any candidate out there right now; his timing is good.

Via CalTech Girl, who observes, "if the whole campaign was just a giant roast, it would be no contest." Yup.

Want Higher Taxes? Vote Big O!

Via Malkin.

Why We Must Win

Continetti, commenting in The Weekly Standard on some of what's at stake in this election:

Obama says Washington needs to "invest" tax dollars in alternative energy, infrastructure, health insurance subsidies, and education before it starts worrying about deficit reduction. Paul Krugman writes that "now is not the time to worry about the deficit." Pelosi wants Congress to pass another $300 billion economic stimulus package by the end of the year--even though the previous $300 billion Congress spent last winter had no discernible effect. The GOP has been horrible on spending. The Democrats will be worse.

Then there's "card-check" legislation, which is, and we are not making this up, too liberal for George McGovern. Card-check would eliminate the secret ballot in union elections. Instead, a workplace would be unionized once a certain number of employees signed cards saying they wanted a union. This is great news if you are a boss at the jointfitters' local who wants to branch out into more "legitimate" enterprises. Under card-check, all that will be required is for you to send some employees--large, well-dressed, tatooed men with clever nicknames like "Walnuts" and "The Chin"--over to the nearby office park to "collect" signatures.

But card-check is bad news for just about everybody else. Unions hurt productivity. They freeze labor markets. They cause unemployment to rise. They politicize the workplace, increase bureaucracy, and weigh down business with regulations and negotiations. And they were a major factor behind the 1970s wage-price spiral, which contributed to stagflation.

The Democrats will undoubtedly pursue some of their other favorite activities, such as expanding government health care and enacting a cap-and-trade regime on carbon emissions guaranteed to raise energy prices. They may even reimpose the "Fairness Doctrine," which is, naturally, neither fair nor technically a doctrine. It's a Truman-era regulation requiring broadcasters to devote a certain number of hours to public affairs, and to present contrasting views.

Sounds nice. In reality, though, the Fairness Doctrine is an onerous and antidemocratic rule. Before the Reaganites dropped it in 1985, the nation's broadcasters, in order to avoid penalty, decided to feature almost no public affairs programming at all, and then only the most boring programming possible. That changed. The Fairness Doctrine's demise led to vigorous public debate, and to a new platform--talk radio--for conservatives. Reinstating it would be an assault on free speech. This would not stop Pelosi.

Add to this the protectionist measures the Democrats are sure to pass, and you have a recipe for disaster. There's a term for an economic program of government spending, higher taxes, and tariffs. It's called Hooverism. It didn't work out so well the last time, and this time it's likely to make the current recession worse.

A centrist Democrat with more experience might be able to tame Congress's worst excesses. But Obama will be America's most liberal president in decades, possibly ever, and he has almost no experience at all. His short career in politics has shown him to be a go-along, get-along kind of guy. How can anyone imagine his standing up to liberal bulls like Charles Rangel, Barney Frank, John Conyers, Henry Waxman, John Dingell, Charles Schumer, or Carl Levin?

It's true John McCain hasn't had much luck running against Obama (so far!). But that luck might change if McCain ran against the Democratic Congress in addition--and against the prospect of undivided, unchecked, liberal Democratic government. Compared with that, even "gridlock" might start sounding pretty good to the American people.

My emphasis.

"I Am Joe" and the Mystery of the Holistic Practitioner

Clouthier has yet another roundup on the persecution of Joe the Plumber, which may end up tipping this election, in a moment of Perfect Incandescent Irony.

Sarah! On SNL!

It was fun. Not that I went so far as to watch it; I just wandered around afterward looking for the clips:

Especially the part when Governor Palin tells Alec that Stephen is her "favorite Baldwin," and he tells her that she is "much hotter in person."

I'm sorry, but I really did like the rap number:

I stole the lyrics therefrom from AoS:

One, two, three
My name is Sarah Palin You all know me
Vice President nominee of the G-O-P.
Gonna need ya vote In the next election
Can I get a "What What" from the senior section?

McCain got experience,
McCain got style,
But don't let him freak you out
When he tries to smile.
'Cause that smile be creepy,
But when I'm V-P,
All the leaders in the world gonna finally meet me!

Howz it go Eskimos?
(Eskimos!)
Tel me, tell me what you know, Eskimos!
(Eskimos!)
How you feel Eskimos?
(Ice cold!)
Tell me, tell me what you feel Eskimos
(Supa' cold!)

I'm Jeremiah Wright
'Cause tonight I'm the preacha
I got a bookish look and ya all hot fo' teacha
Todd lookin' fine on his snow machine,
So hot for each other need a go-between.

In Wasilla we just chill, baby chilla,
But when I see oil it's "Drill, baby, drilla!"

My country 'tis of thee,
From my porch I can see,
Russia and such

All the mavericks in the house put ya hands up!
All the mavericks in the house put ya hands up!

All the plumbers in the house pull ya pants up!
All the plumbers in the house pull ya pants up!

When I say Obama you say Ayers
Obama!
(Ayers!)
Obama!
(Ayers!)
I built me a bridge it ain't going nowhere!
Ohhhhhhhhhh!

McCain/Palin gonna put the nail in
The coffin, of the media elite
(She likes red meat!)
Shoot a motherhumpin' moose eight days of the week!

[gunshots]

Now ya dead!
Now ya dead 'cause I'm an animal!
And I'm bigga than you!

'Hold of a shot gun, walk in the pub
Everybody party, we're goin' on a hunt

La-la-la-la
la-la
la-laaaaaa

[gunshots]

Yo, I'm Palin, I'm out!

I Hate It When the AQ Sites Go Down.

And there's only one of 'em left?

Hm. Maybe it's just for efficiency in keeping eyes on these scumbags.

But if their fundraising and recruitment is suffering . . . that's indeed a horrible thing.

"Western intelligence won't say" why the sites went dark on 9/10 of this year.

Curiouser and curiouser.

New Cigars:

Because of my fondness for medium-bodied Brazilians, I've picked up a Rocky Patel 1992. I also nabbed a Davidoff 2000. My cigar log got lost in the move, so I might have to blog on whether I like 'em.

I've been told that I should try non-Cuban Cohibas ("the other Cohibas"). Why not?—I like the Cuban originals, but I'm no longer convinced that we can subvert that island with capitalism; I may start enforcing the embargo in my own life and sticking with non-Cubans. (Also, the strongest stogie I really love is also Cuban: I adore Punch cigars. Love 'em. I wonder what the embargo-friendly answer to those would be.)

"I Am Joe" and the Clue of the Tennessee Law School

Glenn has his own roundup on the "I am Joe" movement.

People are angry; so angry. The way Palin was slimed was bad enough, but exposing every aspect of this guy's life, losing him his job . . . I think a lot of ordinary Americans are in a state of shock. Palin was and is a politician: she was put through a meat grinder we'd never seen any candidate go through before, but she emerged from it bloody, but unbowed. And we know that our candidates are, by definition, public figures.

Taking away a guy's dignity and livelihood because he asked a question of the Preferred Media Candidate that brought up an awkward response about an awkward little philosophical difference Obama has with the rest of the electorate?

We finally have a good definition for "the politics of personal destruction."

"Leave Jodi Kantor Alone!"

She doesn't like talking about her family; just other people's.

Fausta has her own article up on The New York Times sliming of Cindy McCain.

It's All About Class Now

Are we ready to elect a couple of guttersnipes to the White House? Has it really come to that? Sam Schulman of The Weekly Standard assures us that those dirty Republicans won't win—can't win. The social order will not be overcome by a couple of shabby nonconformists:

CLASS WILL TELL:
Why is Bill Ayers a respectable member
of the upper middle class,
and Sarah Palin contemptible?

Pour yourself a Johnnie Walker Black and remember. The presidential campaign was going to be about sex—the sex of the inevitable winning candidate. Then it was going to be about race. We dreamed we would atone for slavery and the Berlin Airlift, impress Europe and charm the Arab world. But the undecided voters who will determine the winner are no longer interested in race or sex. They are looking at social class. Which ticket best expresses the values and tastes of the upper-middle-class—and captivates the rest of us who follow the lead of the upper-middles?

It is, according to his theory, quite anxiety-making. We were already hamstrung by having a member of the military at the head of the ticket: and then we brought this stubborn trailer trash from the last frontier into the mix. I have started biting my fingernails.

Scheiber spoke to various people from Palin's past, all of whom have two things in common: Every one of them is smarter than Palin and none of them has been heard of since their encounter with her. Scheiber's pet specimen among what he calls "the more urbane members of the community" is a Dartmouth graduate who reads Civil War histories, self-published a book, and not only does but "savors" the New York Times crossword puzzle. This sort of résumé wouldn't get your niece an unpaid internship on L Street—but for a Rhodes Scholar lost in Alaska, the Dartmouth degree, the Civil War buffery, the Times crossword puzzle all take on huge significance. Unable to comprehend how Palin could have outpaced the Wasilla gentry, poor Scheiber clings for dear life to these sad fragments of class dignity.

While Palin threatens class solidarity, Obama is emollient. The more urbane members of the Hyde Park community are cleverer than their Wasilla counterparts and believe that they have captured Obama for their class--just as Richard Stern persuades himself that the still-radical couple he dines with are merely Unitarians in a hurry. But the man who may be president is cleverer still.

Obama and his surprising choice for vice president have spent most of their career working on their own images, smoothing out the rough edges, trying out devices, rhetorical and cosmetic, to make the nicer sort of people feel comfortable with them. Obama wrote his own life, and then wrote it again; Biden practiced for years in front of a mirror to overcome his childhood stutter. Carefully composed, Obama holds the upper-middle class in his steady hands, and has no need of Stern's help to assure our anxious electorate that he will not shock their class sensibilities.

The Republicans, alas, are stuck with this election's true and unrepentant revolutionaries. McCain and Palin have each refused, by sheer cussedness, to fulfill the social expectations of others. This may make them poison to undecideds who suffer, more than most, from class anxiety. But do not despise the undecideds. Even conservatives can contract Scheiber Syndrome. Think of David Brooks, Christopher Buckley, David Frum, Peggy Noonan, and George Will. The symptoms? Curiously amplified, obsessively repeated, sometimes elaborately stage-whispered doubts about the Republican ticket.

There is no cure, but there is an etiology. All share a dreadful secret—their writing is driven by an anxiety to be tastemakers to the gentry, not merely thinkers and entertainers. There is nothing more anxious-making than striving to create taste for the classes, not masses, or even to keep up with it. (The struggle to do so is etched in the lines of Tina Brown's face.)

But what the classes think is a matter to which the GOP standard-bearers are sadly but nobly indifferent.

Because, of course, McCain and Palin, according to Schulman, just do not know their place. My emphasis in the second quote.

This entire phenomenon will leave the upwardly mobile middle-class reaching for its valium (or its muffins) as the rest of this unfolds. Because it turns out there are a lot of working people out there, and all this time, they've been breeding. If McCain and Palin win, we don't just pass up our chance to atone for slavery: we do something far, far more serious.

We upset the cultural apple-cart. We take power away from the Costco shoppers and give it to the Wal-Mart customers.

This cannot stand. Read the whole wry essay: it's pure gold. At least, my father will get a bitter laugh out of it. Though he likes Sarah Palin's legs. If my stepmom isn't looking, gosh knows whom he'll vote for.

Had things gone the way Dick Morris thought they would: had this year brought us a Condi Rice/Hillary Clinton choice, my father's head might have exploded.

h/t: Memeorandum.

UPDATE: Darleen responds:

At her home blog, and

At the Protein Wisdom Pub

She's all like, "your trackbacks aren't working."
And I'm all, like, "I'm not sure they ever did."

I guess I should check with Pixy about that—at least when we update the site this fall.

The Weekly Standard:

"It ain't over till it's over."

Fortunately for his campaign, McCain does not trail by so large a margin as that which Humphrey and Ford had to overcome. Indeed, McCain's challenge is not dissimilar to that which faced Truman in the final weeks of the 1948 campaign--that is, overcoming a 5-point or so lead against a relatively unknown and aloof opponent who seems assured of victory.

McCain, like Truman, is burdened by an unpopular administration of his own party, though, in contrast to Truman, he has some chance of disassociating himself from it. Somewhat like Truman in 1947 and 1948, McCain has been preoccupied with foreign policy at a time when economic issues have seized the headlines. Many pundits in 1948 said that the New Deal era was about to end, just as some have said recently that the Reagan-Thatcher era will soon be over. Truman proved the pundits wrong in 1948 . . .

Underneath the Valley of Joe the Plumber

More on the "I Am Joe" Movement.

Iowahawk has the official graphic, and a link to the bumper sticker-sized logo. He reminds us that we need to produce these ourselves and tape 'em to our cars (or go to an office supply store, get blank bumper stickers, and print them out on that, if we want to get fancy).

The idea is that until or unless Joe Wurzelbacher sets up a PayPal account and we can send "every last red cent" of the proceeds to him, no one should be profiting off of the way the media has been persecuting this man.

Works for me!

More "I Am Joe the Plumber"

Jimmie from the Sundries Shack is another Joe the Plumber. There are a lot of us out there, of all creeds, colors, and sexes.

There's more good stuff about the JTP issue, and what it has to say about Obama's socialism, from Stop the ACLU. Here's a taste; more at the link:

Uh-oh. It's spreading:

Here's another one, from Copious Dissent. I don't know much about this guy, except that he's very angry, and has a heavy East Coast accent (he had to say the word "hammer" four or five times before I understood it):

Bill Maher has a novel explanation for Joe's skepticism about Obama's tax plan—one I'd never heard before. He's racist! That explains it. (If only Joe had taken an extra moment to think of a guy who could tap-dance but wasn't black, so as not to use the horrific phrase "Sammy Davis, Jr." Somehow I think that if he has said "Fred Astaire," it would have been racist as well—passing up a reference to a black dancer and using a white dancer instead would have been just as racist. Welcome to Wonderland, Alice.)

Rod Liddle of The London Times also points to racism, and to that inexplicable oddball American resistance to socialism that couldn't possibly be a matter of principle, and must therefore result from Yankee idiocy:

It’s entirely fitting, then, that the chap referred to as Joe the Plumber by both men is (a) not a licensed plumber and (b) not called Joe. His name is Sam Wurzelbacher and he has no professional plumbing certification. “Sam Wurzelbacher the Non-Plumber” has less of a ring to it, I suppose. Whoever he is, though, he is probably bad news for Senator Obama.

. . . . . . . . . .

On such things are elections won, I suppose – won already, so far as most of the British media are concerned, which has been yearning for an Obama victory ever since the candidate first emerged with that terribly winning aw-gee-shucks self-deprecating smile as a possible challenger to the scary and bloodless Hillary Clinton. Me, too, for that matter. But I am not so sure that it is as cut and dried as it seems.

In my mind McCain won the last debate by some margin and while this might not matter too much, his repeated point about Sam the Non-Plumber may, in the two weeks ahead, have some resonance. Much of the American public do not like the notion of tax increases which will impinge upon the income they think they might be earning in years to come.

This was the problem with Sam, who does not earn anything like the $250,000 a year which would put him in Obama’s punitive tax bracket, but thinks it entirely likely that he will soon do so. A large number of aspirant but blue collar Americans think it highly probable that they will soon be living the American dream, no matter how fantastical this notion might be. They resent the idea that this hypothetical wealth of theirs might be hypothetically taxed. Obama’s redistributive instincts are not in tune with an electorally crucial tranche of the country.

And there is still the question of quasi-racism, especially in some of those bad-tempered, working-class Midwest states such as Ohio and Pennsylvania. There are many millions of white Americans who would just love to see a black man elected president – but, y’know, maybe not this time around. Maybe later, some time. But not now. This contest is a long way from being over.

Emphasis mine. As any Briton knows, upward mobility is a "fantastical" notion, and if we knew what was good for us, we'd simply accept the socialism that our betters have prescribed for us.

There are some fucking clueless Limeys out there.

And an extraordinary number of clueless Americans.

Thank You, Gregory!

I love money. It's always the right color. It always fits.

And, now--to find the cheapest housing I can in Henderson/Vegas/etc.!

Gay Patriot West

plays the Eliza Doolittle card.

I got a better one: a very special ace:

Mmm. What a Subjective Fucking Argument.

Here's Ace on "elite" vs. "establishment." Sounds like the kind of crap people pull on Angelenos every fucking day. We just yawn.

Okay, look: there are a few different ways to determine what constitutes "class" in America.

1) E.B. "Aren't Jews outside the class system, anyway?" Um, okay. Whatevs. Yawn.

2) "Who is the most intelligent? Let's reward that." Sure. Because either you were born that way, or you were given a certain level of stimulation very early on in life. That's so to your credit.

Bite me. Yawn.

3) People who were born to a certain level—defined not so much by education or financial security, but by being able to tell who manufactured a particular piece of silver without looking at the marque.

Yawn.

4) Adhering to a code of conduct which maintains that all people are equal, no matter what the externals might indicate. (This happens to be the only type of class I really recognize, personally, and it's the reason I shop in Beverly Hills: because no one ever looked at my mother funny when we shopped there together, however frayed her sweatshirts were. Their motivations might not have been pure, but they were doing the right thing.)

5) Money as a measure of class. It ain't perfect, but it's more egalitarian than any other measurement, because in this country you can always get some, if you want it badly enough.

6) "Well. At least I don't live in the Los Angeles area; I'm from New York." Okey-doke.

Yawn.

7) "Well. At least I don't live in the Los Angeles area; I'm from San Francisco." Fine. Sounds good to me. Goodness; look at the time! Yawn.

My father is fond of telling me that he's a "elite" because he subscribes to the New Yorker. No, really: He's not quoting Freakaoid he sort of means it.

"On the other hand," I tend to counter. "I read books. And I finish some of 'em."

It's like shooting fish in a fuckin' barrel. I could use a bigger barrel.

"Class." "Elite." Please define your terms. I'm going to bed.

My Girl Drives a Mustang.

She's so perfect. It's blue. It has a V6. I'm with her parents after dinner, gushing about how well she'll come along, and which colleges might be good matches for her.

"Oh, gosh." (And this is only after two glasses of chianti, mind you.) "What if I'd ended up with her sister? I love them both, but I couldn't have handled that."

"Oh, I knew." Her mom grins. "I'm set that one up okay. I'm not as out of it as one might think."

She's travelling for the election, too. But they are making her go farther, because she has a law degree. I only have to go to Nevada.

Informal tally: among the adults at the table, three out of five voted for Clinton the first time around; most of us switched in 1996. Those of us (I mean, them) who were old enough had voted for . . . Carter.

We spend the evening talking about belief systems. "I don't believe in UFOs," I explain. "But I do believe in God. And, um, the big monster girl . . . Nettie?"

"Nessie," CalTech Girl finsishes.

"Right. You know how I am with nouns. That's what I meant. And the other creature. The one with the breasts. I believe in that one."

"Sasquatch?"

"That's what I said, isn't it?"

Dinner with the Bloggers.

Two attorneys, two science teachers (high school level, college level). And my sponsee into the church, who is one of the few bright spots in my life—and with whom I should spend much more time.

"Have you seen An American Carol?" my sponsee asks, brightly.

"Oh, yes. I have. As a matter of fact, I'm sort of known as being a . . . [looking around at CalTech Girl, gesturing wildly, in an I-don't-have-the-vocabulary sort of way] an enthusiastic, pi . . . ."

"—cheerleader." CTG finishes.

"Right." I add. "I, um. I liked the movie. I thought lots of people should see it."

Live by the Sword, Die by the Sword.

I'm normally against anything that smacks of blackmail, but, like Ace, I'm getting tired of the media getting a "pass" while they slime private citizens.

Just as (like Instapundit always insists) citizens should have a right to videotape cops who are videotaping them, journalists who essentially put people on trial for asking questions of politicians should themselves be "vetted."

I mean Joe the Plumber vetted. I mean Paula Jones vetted.

Vetted.

Update: Morrissey weighs in.

Remember: It's About the Civility. And I, Too, Am Joe.

As Dave Burge points out, a vote for Obama is a vote for civility.

Go brownshirts!

But, you protest—you wanted fresh Iowahawk? Here you go! The sweet, and the sour . . .

"I Am Joe"

I AM JOE

. . .[A] pre-emptive apology for the intentional non-humor to follow. I promise that all future non-humor will be strictly unintentional . . . .

We've all witnessed a lot of insanity in American politics over the last few years. Up until the last few days, none of it has seriously bothered me; hey, just more grist for the satire mill. But after witnessing the media's blitzkreig on Joe 'the Plumber' Wurzelbacher, I can only muster anger, and no small amount of fear.

Politicians—Sarah Palin, Bill Clinton, et al.—obviously have to put up with some rude, nasty shit, but it's right there in the job description. Joe the Plumber is different. He was a guy tossing a football with his kid in the front yard of his $125,000 house when a politician picked him out as a prop for a 30-second newsbite for the cable news cameras. Joe simply had the temerity to speak truth (or, if you prefer, an uninformed opinion) to power, for which the politico-media axis apparently determined that he [had to] be humiliated, harassed, smashed, destroyed. The viciousness and glee with which they set about the task ought to concern anyone who still cares about citizen participation, and freedom of speech, and all that old crap they taught in civics class before politics turned into Narrative Deathrace 3000, and Web 2.0 turned into Berlin 1932.0.

Godwin's Law! you say? if the jackboot fits, wear it.

If it's meta-memes and meta-meta-narratives these media headlice want, so be it.

I hope you will join me in expressing a simple bit of solidarity with this guy, Spartacus style. I AM JOE. I am a Wal-Mart schlub in flyover country who changes my own oil and unclogs drains without a license. I smoke and drink beer and toss the football in the front yard with my kid, and I figure I can [find] my way without handouts from some Magic Messiah's candy bags. Most everyone in my family and most everyone I grew up with is another Joe, and if you screw with them, you screw with me.

Are you a Joe? Say it proud. Leave it on every goddamn newspaper comment section and online forum. Let these pressroom and online thugs know you won't stay silent when they try to destroy the life of a private citizen for speaking his mind.

My emphasis.

The comparison I keep thinking of is Paula Jones, who also got slimed for "not knowing her place." When Americans are supposed to know their "stations" in life—and defer to politicians/media bigwigs—we have lost everything this country was supposed to stand for. We have got ourselves an Old-World style class system. And if you'll excuse another "hoochie-mama" moment: Fuck that noise.

I am a lifelong Angeleno whose family is from Nebraska farm country—and Michigan/Virginia on the other side. My hometown is Whittier, California, from the old days when it was an agricultural town. My ancestry sports both Mayflower refugees and a few Osage Indians. I'm married, childless, and not nearly as good at cars as Dave—though I do clear the drains and toilets in my home. (Because it doesn't take much finesse: just stubbornness, enthusiasm, and a willingness to bleach the entire room down afterward, given how physically clumsy I am, and how obsessive-compulsive.)

I'm overeducated, yet degree-free, and chronically underemployed due to my 'tude and a certain literal-minded "frustrated engineer" quality in my brain that renders me hopelessly impractical some of the time.

I'm a chronically depressed writer/editor.

And I am Joe, too. If people with college degrees and more original art in their homes want to look down on me, they are welcome to: I'll be on the porch with a cigar and a martini.

Need a palate-cleanser? Cool.

You say you still prefer your Iowahawk funny? Okay. Vaya con Dios.

—Joe

Hm. Two Nights Paid For!

I don't know who wants to be publicly acknowledged, so I'll just use first names. Thanks to Kevin , Joseph, David, Richard, Darrell, Marion, and Cathryn, it's about 75% certain that I'll be able to make it to Nevada. I'll pick up the gasoline costs myself, and the blogging readership has paid for two night in the local Super 8 Motel.

Again: They want me to go for a full ten days, but I might not be able to afford more than 4-7 days.

Keep the funds rolling in: I'll be able to do more "get out the vote" activities if I can go out early.

And thank you. I know the mainstream media will want to call the whole election before the polls have even closed on the West Coast, but if we take Nevada, they won't be able to do it.

The longer the media wait to start "deciding" things that are not in their purview to decide, the more people show up. The more people show up, the closer we come to the democratic ideal.

Voter Fraud, Shmoter Fraud.

It's good to be Queen. Especially in Ohio.

I just hope there are enough observers at the polls to dampen the instances of fraud in this election--because the accusations will be flying from both sides. No matter who wins.

Shine, perishing Republic.

The "Bradley Effect"

Ace meditates on is various possible permutations, racial and not.

Two nights ago I was in Old Town Pasadena, and a guy with a clipboard in his hand was looking for prey, so I kept my head down; I wasn't in the mood. But he made eye contact with another guy closer to his age—some 20-something hipster and asked brightly, "would you like to register for Obama?"

"Already working for him," the other kid replied. By then I was safely past, but I couldn't help but wonder whether Kid #2 is an Obama supporter at all, or whether he's discovered that this is the best way to gracefully disengage from such encounters.

I don't think that anyone who lives on either Coast, or in a college town, is going to be shouting it to the rooftops that they're voting for someone who has an "R" after his or her name.

And I think the polls are more meaningless in this particular election than they usually are, which is saying quite a lot.

Hey—have I mentioned lately that the Log Cabin Republicans are endorsing McCain, who refuses to allow gay-baiting in his campaign?

Meanwhile, the PUMAs are on the prowl; they may not want to be confrontational with their friends, but I don't think they're big fans of the misogyny in the Democratic party.

And there are plenty of black people who are voting with their brains—not their melanin.

Remember the story of the Florida panhandle in the 2000 election: voters in that second Fla time zone didn't bother showing up, because the media called the state for Gore before the polls closed in the panhandle. Had all the panhandle voters showed up, Florida never would have been disputed, and the nation wouldn't have had to suffer through "Bush v. Gore," the Supreme Court having to step in, the cries of "Hail to the Thief," and "He's Not My President." All that angst, all the drama. So unnecessary.

Vote. No matter what you read on the internet, see on television, or hear on the radio. No matter what state is called for whom. Just vote, vote, vote.

YOU ARE THE FLORIDA PANHANDLE; VOTE!

It's a Bittersweet Day . . .

for animation aficionados, and
Freakazoid! fans in particular.

So, No One Yelled, "Kill Him."

What a surprise.

I'm sure we'll be hearing an apology from the mainstream media and from Barack Obama himself (after all, he brought it up in the debate last night). But he'll be wearing his "Sarah Palin Is a Cunt" T-Shirt, so I may find myself doubting his sincerity.

"Joe the Plumber"

. . . speaks.

I suspect this guy is about to get trashed like a Bill Clinton girlfriend; the media will party like it's 1999.

Via AllahP at Hot Air.

Macho Sauce Is Back!

I love that guy.

h/t: Scumbucket, over at Rusty's site.

I Had Somehow Never Really Confronted Myself with This Reality.

It's like I just didn't let myself see it too clearly, or something:

h/t: Gregory.

When "Negative" Ads Work.

Via AllahP at Hot Air, who has a Fox News interview with Frank Luntz up about how effective this ad has been shown to be.

Apparently, Let Freedom Ring produces great negative ads about Obama. Here's another one:

I got a suggestion for you whiney, let's-give-up-now, we're-doomed-to-socialism bloggers: take these viral. After all, the average voter will actually be paying attention by . . . well, by Halloween or so.

Plenty of time to ejicate 'em.

My Pusher

. . . gave me 27 Lunestas, because he's concerned about the "profile" of Ambien for "long-term use."

I told him I'd heard that Lunesta can leave a bad taste in one's mouth—even to the point of making food taste bad.

But I shall give it a try. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe next week.

There's a Possibility of a Blog-Gathering This Weekend.

I trust that G-d will see to it that one of the following people show up, so that I don't cuss too much:

• The Stern Twin, who does not like to see her mother smoke, drink and cuss; nor her mother's associates. When we do, she gives us Stern Looks.*

• Baldilocks. Every time I cussed at the Palin rally (and the bloggers' "afterparty") the weekend before last she was able to point to a nearby child who might have overheard me. Eventually I realized that Juliette has a supernatural ability to transport children under the age of ten at will—provided someone in uses the F-word in her presence.

And it turns out that I used the F-word a lot. Who knew?

*The Stern Twin—whom I love as much as My Twin—always makes me think of this poem:

ON HEARING THAT THE STUDENTS OF OUR NEW UNIVERSITY HAVE JOINED THE AGITATION AGAINST IMMORAL LITERATURE

Where, where but here have Pride and Truth,
That long to give themselves for wage,
To shake their wicked sides at youth
Restraining reckless middle-age?
—W.B. Yeats

If I Never Read Another Conservative Blogpost Again . . .

it'll be too soon. Would you guys buck the hell up?

Grow a pair, goddammit. Testes, ovaries. I don't care: grow a couple of twin warts somewhere near your collarbone, for all I care. But grow something.

If I wanted to hang out with Eeyore, I would have bought myself a stuffed fucking animal, wouldn't I?

Vote Early, and Often

Leftists are being told not to let "them" steal votes.

Mickey Mouse is concerned; animated characters have a history of being underrepresented at the polls in any event. It's rumored that Hanna-Barbera characters will be especially hard-hit by voter fraud, such as we often see when nonexistent people aren't allowed to vote. Fortunately, ACORN is on the case.

Via Frank of America, who is considering taking me off his mail list, but can probably be bought off with a drink so we can continue using each other for oppo research.

The Nudist Olympics!

How fun. (And, as a reader reminds me—NOT SAFE FOR WORK!)

Make fun of the Bay Area all you want, but some of them aren't so full of themselves that they can't have a little good, clean fun by taking off their clothes.

There are worse things that people do for recreation.

I believe I may have an unusual number of friends who are nudists. Of course, I may also have a higher-than usual proportion of left-handed friends.

Too bad the next President isn't going to be a nudist. Somehow, that prospect would fill me with a wicked glee.

Karl Rove . . .

says it isn't over until it's over.

[T]he latest Gallup tracking poll reveals that there are nearly twice as many undecided voters this year than there were in the last presidential election. The Investor's Business Daily/TIPP poll (which was closest to the mark in predicting the 2004 outcome -- 0.4% off the actual result) now says this is a three-point race.

This week also brought a reminder that Sen. Obama hasn't closed the sale. The Washington Post/ABC poll found 45% of voters still don't think he's qualified to be president, about the same number who doubted his qualifications in March.

This is seven points more than George W. Bush's highest reading in 2000 and the worst since Michael Dukakis's 56% unqualified rating in 1988. It explains why Mr. Obama has ignored Democratic giddiness and done two things to keep victory from slipping away.

First, he is using his money to try to keep John McCain from gaining traction. The Obama campaign raised $67 million in September and may be on track to raise $100 million in October. Sen. McCain opted last month for roughly $85 million in public financing, giving him less than half of Mr. Obama's funds for the campaign's final two months. Even with robust Republican National Committee fund raising to augment his spending, Mr. McCain is at a severe financial disadvantage.

So Mr. Obama is spending $35 million on TV this week versus the McCain/RNC total of $17 million. Mr. Obama is outspending Mr. McCain on TV in Virginia by a ratio of 4 to 1, in Florida by 3 to 1, and in Missouri and Nevada by better than 2 to 1. The disparity is likely to grow in the campaign's final weeks.

Money alone, however, won't decide the contest. John Kerry and the Democrats outspent Mr. Bush and the GOP in 2004 by $121 million and still lost.

Mr. Obama's other strategy is to do all he can to look presidential, including buying very expensive half-hour slots to address the country next week. He wants to give a serious, Oval-Office type address. This is smart. People appreciate Mr. Obama's empathy on the economy, but as they take a long look at what he wants to do about it, they will be less impressed, especially if Mr. McCain draws sharp contrasts with clear policy proposals.

Mr. Obama is trying to make the case that his lack of experience or record should not disqualify him. But in doing so, he seems to recognize that the U.S. is still a center-right country. His TV ads promise tax cuts and his radio ads savage Mr. McCain's health-care plan as a tax increase. It's a startling campaign conversion for the most liberal member of the Senate. We'll know on Election Day if he is able to get away with it.

My emphasis.

I know I'm in the minority, but I still think "no." This depends partly on whether people can bring themselves to believe this "tax cuts" nonsense. If they remember the Clinton years, they'll be skeptical: the economy was healthy during the Clinton Administration despite his tax cuts, not because of them. Raising them now <>would drive us into a recession.

Similarly, Mr. McCain appears to be making three important course corrections. First, he and Gov. Sarah Palin are sharpening their stump speeches so their sound bites come off well on TV. Gone are offhand remarks and awkward comments read from notes perched on a podium. In are teleprompters and carefully crafted arguments. Mr. McCain is also more at ease than before and has an ebullient, come-from-behind underdog optimism that will serve him well in the final weeks.

Certainly better than Obama's smart-ass smile did tonight. That was coasting, and McCain was right to point out that polish isn't everything: one must listen to a person's actual words.

Second, Mr. McCain is shaping a story line that draws on well-founded concerns about Mr. Obama's lack of record or experience. Mr. McCain is also bowing to reality and devoting most of his time to the economy. His narrative is [that] he's the conservative reformer who'll lead and work hard to get things done, while Mr. Obama is the tax-and-spend liberal who's unprepared to lead and unwilling to act.

Mr. McCain is hitting Mr. Obama for wanting to raise taxes in difficult economic times, especially on small business and for the purpose of redistributing income, and for having lavish spending plans at a time when the economy is faltering. He's criticizing Mr. Obama for lingering on the sidelines while Mr. McCain dove in to help pass a rescue plan, necessary no matter how distasteful. And he's attacking Mr. Obama for not joining the fight in 2005 when reformers like Mr. McCain tried to rein in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Mr. McCain's other adjustment is his schedule. His campaign understands the dire circumstances it faces and is narrowing his travels almost exclusively to Florida, North Carolina, Virginia, Ohio, Missouri, Colorado and Nevada. If he carries those states, while losing only Iowa and New Mexico from the GOP's 2004 total, Mr. McCain will carry 274 Electoral College votes and the White House. It's threading the needle, but it's come to that.

This task, while not impossible, will be difficult.

There's a lot of negativity out there, and I think in some cases it comes down to ego: people would prefer to be proven correct, and they cannot help but keep track of the polls, biased as these may be.

That isn't how you win. You win by winning, not by throwing negativity around.

American people trust McCain in a way that they do not trust "Senator Government" (a big "thank you" here to Senator McCain's unconscious mind). The race will be be razor-thin, but McCain will still take it.

h/t: Hot Air.

I Just Talked to Joe the Plumber.

He says, "a plague on both your houses."

And who can blame him?

Tonight's Debate Drink! The ACORN!

Right here.

Mr. Squirrel Has His Own Website!

And he's fun and cuddly, too! He appears to travel around with a friend a lot of the time. (Is that Mrs. Squirrel? And how big is the extended squirrel family?)

Harry Smith of CBS talks to Mr. and Mrs. Squirrel about corruption in ACORN, and its troubling ties to Barack Obama throughout his political career.

Mr. Squirrel and his friends have a serious message, though:

We are a group of concerned squirrels traveling around the country in an effort to highlight Barack Obama’s relationship with ACORN, a group that is being investigated for wide-scale voter fraud. Some examples of Obama’s connections with ACORN include:

• The Obama campaign paying more than $800,000 to ACORN for Get-Out-The Vote efforts;

• the campaign having originally “misrepresented” the group’s work to the FEC;

• Obama having sought out and received the endorsement of ACORN’s political arm during the Democratic Primary, The Woods Fund (on whose Board Of Directors Obama served);

• [Obama] having given almost $200,000 in grants to ACORN;

• Obama having directed Project Vote and later having taught classes for “future leaders identified by ACORN and the Centers for New Horizons”;

• Obama having been a member of a team of lawyers who represented ACORN in a suit against the state of Illinois.

To see read more about Senator Obama’s relationship with ACORN, visit Obama's Acorn Tree!

Okay! I will!

See? Even the most fervent Obama supporters have questions about ACORN!

Via Jonathan Martin, via Memeorandum.

Were You Looking for Bitchin' Pumpkin Carving?

I always get a lot of search traffic this time of year for this classic Planck's Constant post. It originally ran two years ago, and it's got some great ideas/fine gourd-based artwork in it.*

* Okay. I don't think pumpkins are gourds, though I know that gourds were used in previous incarnations of the tradition. (My understanding is that root vegetables were carved in Ireland, which seems appropriate enough.) But "fine summer-squash-based artwork" seemed a bit unwieldy. Anyone have good ideas for recasting that last sentence in my entry? I don't seem to have any linguistic dexterity today.

Extortion in the Public Square

Iowahawk's hipster "guest columnists," wearing their "Sarah Palin Is a Cunt" T-shirts, lay it on the line:

Think about it. With Barack Obama in office, assholes like us will fade into a distant unpleasant memory. Don't get us wrong, we'll still be hanging around, probably as junior staffers in some federal arts agency. But you have our word on it -- we'll be practically invisible. No more C-word t shirts, no more intersection blockades, no more vandalism until the next election cycle. Nosirree, we'll be timid and well-behaved and quiet as church mice, working away on grant proposals. We think you will also be pleased to know that under Obama, negative news stories and the steady flow of shitty anti-American war movies will virtually disappear overnight.

We know what you're thinking -- "that sounds awesome, but what about the angry right wingers? Won't they suddenly start storming congressional hearings and vandalizing military recruiting stations? Won't they start producing Obama assassination fantasy plays at the local college?" Don't worry, as members of the incoming Administration, we will identify any potential troublemakers and prosecute them to the full extent of President Obama's new civility laws. And with the re-establishment of the Fairness Doctrine, you won't have to worry about accidentally tuning into right wing hate radio.

But it's a democracy, so by all means feel free to vote for McCain. But don't forget what we're capable of. Do you really think we'll give it a rest? Do you really think we've pegged our ugly-o-meter? Hey, friend-o, you ain't seen nothin' yet.

Democratic Voter Fraud, State-by-State

An ACORN Production.

First up: Dan of Gay Patriot, whose state-by-state scorecard reads like a "who's who" of swing states. Odd, that.

Gateway Pundit has more, here and here.

Via Jeff Goldstein, who writes:

Remember, though: before you get all ‘whiney’ and whatnot, most of those who have been fraudulently signed up to vote will probably be too drunk or hopped up from huffing aerosal to vote anyway. So, like, what’s the big deal? If anything, the “intense scrutiny” brought about by these allegations of voter fraud are likely to hurt the Democrats, who are the ones engaging in it, so who are you to complain?

I mean, this is none of your business, really, is it?

So please, can’t we just move past this procedural nonsense, wingnuts, and get on to the issues? It’s like all you conservatives care about is “fairness” — which, as those of you who’ve read your Stanley Fish realize, is but another of those right wing code words meant to maintain bourgeois status quo based on Enlightenment ideas that have been successfully coopted and owned by the white power establishment. The only “fairness” is to break from the pernicious ruse of fairness.

I Like Christopher Buckley.

But I cannot quite reconcile the notion that he has conservative or libertarian ideals, and still endorses Obama. Those two ideas simply don't go together.

AllahP thinks there's something not quite right about the break between Chris and National Review; like Ace, I'm fine with it. Though, perhaps, as usual, less brutal and less gleeful in my brutality. (That's why people read Ace, but do not read me. That, and his habit of "accidentally" downloading lesbian pron from time to time onto AoSHQ.)

Buckley is a great writer—and can be funny in a way that his dad never was—but isn't entitled to write a column in a magazine with a different ideology simply on the basis of his last name.

I don't want to sound mean, but no media organ is equivalent to an Ivy League school, where family connections matter more than nearly anything else.

Buckley's got talent, and he'll do fine. I don't think he was a terrific match for National Review, and I'm sure his erstwhile editors were just as sad as he was when it came time to part ways.

And, no,Ace: I don't buy that he did it just to get a property sold.

And, no, AllahP: I'm fine with having people in the tent who can't manage to pull the lever for McCain. I wish they would, for the sake of the WoT, but it isn't mandatory. Not everyone's going to have the stomach for that—particularly those who focus on immigration from a law-and-order standpoint, or on an economic basis.

My opposition to open borders is strictly a national security thing. Other than that, I'm pretty much a wetback-digger. Okay, I lied: I actually think that there is tremendous discrimination against Canadians, and those who aren't From the Americas. I'd love to see a system in place that respects freedom and capitalism, yet doesn't let a lot of people "cut in line." Unfortunately, that would require asking an American bureaucracy to do its job in an even-handed way, and with alacrity/competence.

What I would see as mandatory for a National Review writer would be not endorsing a corrupt socialist for the highest office in the land.

So it is a sad moment. But it was time.

Actually, I've Never Had Much of a Problem with The Word.

I mean, I don't mind cunt that much, and I'm not sure we do ourselves any favors by pretending that we are somehow physically harmed when someone uses it.

I've always gotten along just fine with my cunt. I get along just fine with my niggahz, too.

But to answer the larger question: Yes. Obama is perfectly willing to reap the benefits of sexism, just as McCain is perfectly willing to reap the benefits of female anger over same.

And, as most of you know, McCain's got a lot more female advisors than Obama (starting with his wife, his daughters, and his running mate).

And his campaign staffers are paid more, on average, whereas Obama's female staffers are paid less. Whaddya mean, the mainstream media didn't tell you that one?

Did they tell you Palin supports equal rights for same-sex domestic partnerships? Did they tell you she thinks distribution of condoms in high schools (and mention of same in sex-ed classes) is fine? Did they tell you she never took any action to restrict access to abortion in Alaska? Did they tell you that the charge about her allowing rape victims to be billed for evidence collection turned out to be a lie?

No? Hm. Either they're getting increasing lackadaisical, or they're in the tank for Obama. Wonder which one it is. Toughie.

Yes, It's RICO. On ACORN. In Ohio.

It's astart, anyway.

A few more states to go: the fraud seems to be egregious in maybe eight states. Oddly enough, with a couple of exceptions, this non-partisan voter fraud is occurring generally in battleground states.

You know--with a little affirmative-action voter fraud, we could get California into play. Just sayin'.

"You Knew."

"I knew you were vaguely interested in him; I didn't know you were helplessly in love with him. I thought you were his gal-pal, with an eye toward the future. Given the risk to you personally, do you think I would have encouraged you to hang out with him if I had known you were in love?"

What am I—the Dr. Mengele of human relationships?

There is a difference between

It's drizzling.

and

Hurricane Katrina is about to make landfall.

One can argue that it is simply a difference in degree, but I would argue that at that point it is a difference in kind.

Yeah, yeah. Maybe I should have guessed. But here is a question for you: what happened to your vaunted love for me? Was it simply a way of getting closer to him? Weren't you simply using me, all along?

This is a guy who made your name into a swear-word in the 1980s. He had grammatical rules put together for how to slander you. All in a spirit of "fun."

No. I never would have guessed. You would have had to tell me.

E.B. once alluded to having "betrayed" me, years after our last triangle together: the one that changed both of our lives for good, and forever.

"My, my," I remarked, rather mildly—hiding, I think, my shock—"what a big word."

And by that I meant that what happened in 1990 was utterly excruciating to me. But 100% necessary. And I paid for it in human relationships for a couple of decades; I'm still paying, actually.

But I don't begrudge them their happiness, and I wouldn't take a moment of it back.

Life hurts. Remember Mrs. Dalloway?

Those ruffians, the Gods, shan't have it all their own way-- her notion being that the Gods, who never lost a chance of hurting, thwarting and spoiling human lives, were seriously put out if, all the same, you behaved like a lady.

—Virginia Woolf

I could send you some couch-pillows, if that would help.

About that Nevada Trip . . .

I may not be able to go, for financial reasons.

If I do go, I'll leave a week from Friday.

If you want me to help out in a battleground state, please do one or both of the following things:

1) Hit my tip jar;

2) Buy an ad from me. (Which will release the Blogad money from the Pickens ad into my Paypal account--remember: I don't get money if I sell one ad. I get money if I sell two ads.)

Racism!

I can't believe this: just because Obama voters have names that are nearly as odd as Obama donors, the press is all over it. Sort of.

Turns out that “Doodad Pro” and “Good Will” are not the only phony contributors to Barack Obama’s presidential campaign. The New York Times finally bestirred itself to apply some basic investigative journalism attention to the Democratic presidential nominee’s donor list. The Times found nearly 3,000 other questionable donors like “Jgtj Jfggjjfgj” and “Dirty West” after what the paper admitted was just a cursory look at the Illinois senator’s September financial filings. But then Times reporters Michael Luc and Griff Palmer revealed an incredible level of naivety by stating “it is unclear why someone making a political donation would want to enter a false name.”

Quite unclear. I can't figure it out, either. It's just . . . . odd.

Mickey Mouse tried to register to vote in Florida this summer.

Orange County elections officials rejected his application, which was stamped with the logo of the nonprofit group ACORN.

I'm downright ashamed to be an American right now, what with all the namesism going on.

h/t: Insty, who had an interesting juxtaposition of posts up this morning.

Now, See . . .

I'd be able to formulate a much more sophisticated opinion on this Oil Drum article—which I think I agree with, mostly—if the Thomas Sowell book I'm currently reading (or was in the spring) hadn't gotten lost in the move.

The current financial meltdown is the result of under-regulated markets built on an ideology of free market capitalism and unlimited economic growth. The fundamental problem is that the underlying assumptions of this ideology are not consistent with what we now know about the real state of the world. The financial world is, in essence, a set of markers for goods, services, and risks in the real world and when those markers are allowed to deviate too far from reality, “adjustments” must ultimately follow and crisis and panic can ensue. To solve this and future financial crisis requires that we reconnect the markers with reality. What are our real assets and how valuable are they? To do this requires both a new vision of what the economy is and what it is for, proper and comprehensive accounting of real assets, and new institutions that use the market in its proper role of servant rather than master.

(Baldilocks and I are thinking of forming an anarcho-syndicalist used-Sowell-book collective. [By that I mean, we figured out that we could read his books twice as quickly if we started trading 'em after we're done with them. Unfortunately, that means 1) finding the box that most of his volumes ended up in when we moved, and 2) figuring out which ones are mine, vs. my husband's. I could simply confiscate what I feel are my share of the Sowell books, but somewhere I read that if I do that, I'll create disincentives for my husband to buy any more of 'em. It's all a bit fuzzy, to tell you the truth.] Oh, and Baldi doesn't know any of this yet, so don't tell her.)

Obama's "Tax Cuts"

The Wall Street Journal:

Because Mr. Obama's tax credits are phased out as incomes rise, they impose a huge "marginal" tax rate increase on low-income workers. The marginal tax rate refers to the rate on the next dollar of income earned. As the nearby chart illustrates, [Hah! That means you have to go read the whole thing; but it's short.—ed.] the marginal rate for millions of low- and middle-income workers would spike as they earn more income.

Some families with an income of $40,000 could lose up to 40 cents in vanishing credits for every additional dollar earned from working overtime or taking a new job. As public policy, this is contradictory. The tax credits are sold in the name of "making work pay," but in practice they can be a disincentive to working harder, especially if you're a lower-income couple getting raises of $1,000 or $2,000 a year.

Via Slublog, over at Ace's digs. Ace himself doesn't seem to be awake yet, and it's nearly eleven; should we worry?

Krugman Wins Nobel.

Hjinks ensue.

Moe to Johnny Mac:

"It's showtime, Senator."

He's right. It is.

These people have impugned your honor, and that of your Vice Presidential candidate—as well as her family and her children.

Keep that in mind. Worthy opponent, blah blah blah. Good family man, blah blah blah.

His people are in the process of stealing votes, and he hangs out with terrorists.

Now close the sale.

"Dark Market" Shuts Down,

after being run for years by . . . the FBI.

And they have actual names and addresses at this point. Warms the cockles of my heart, it does.

h/t Ace.

I Don't Get the Cocaine Thing.

I mean, I love the song. But the substance is a pathetic excuse for a recreational drug.

Someone on Twitter was just complaining about its after-effects, and the very thought made me take an antihistamine in sympathy.

I mean, I don't care how good it would supposedly make you feel: would you douche with alien-blood? Of course not: concentrated acid in the vagina = bad.

Well, then: why would you snort coke?

And, yes: I did try it once, it in 1980s. It achieved nothing. And why would it? I mean, under normal circumstances, I don't need something to bring me up. I need whatever it takes to knock me out, so I stand a chance of sleeping that night. Coke does the opposite of what a drug ought to do, while irritating one's nasal passages. Two birds with one stone: attacks a vulnerable body part while making it impossible to sleep. What is the upside supposed to be?

Okay. I'm done. For now.

(Attila the Hub: "Do you know the effect alcohol can have on the liver?"

"Yes," I respond. "But it's okay, because I gave up all other substances that are hard on the liver, like Tylenol. Also, I don't have to watch the damage occur. Also, there is no such thing as the cocaine equivalent of a nice little glass of red wine, loaded with antioxidants. The stuff has no legitimate use whatsoever."

To his credit, he did not roll his eyes before resuming reading his book.)

It Ain't Just Harlem.

And it ain't just Obama supporters, either.

'S funny,though.

Sure; the Santa Anas Are Blowing . . .

and there are a few senses in which one could take that.

On the other hand, the estrogen fairy has returned, and life is, once again, a perfectly lovely thing. There's Gatorade in the refrigerator, and all's right with the world.

Freeway closures? Hey—my car won't be out of the shop until tomorrow afternoon anyway. All's well.

ACORN, Explained.

As only Iowahawk can do it.

The house that voter fraud built . . .

The Real Levi Johnston.

Gosh. I feel like People magazine or something.

They grow up fast in Alaska; he seems like a level-headed kid. They'll do fine, whether Sarah wins this year or not.

OMG! People with Down Syndrome Are . . . Human!

Darleen Click on the irony of a culture in which teenagers show "more class" than adults regarding those who live with Down Syndrome.

Is It October Yet?

Surprise!

Ace may have taken down his flaming skull, but I still think that RICO action against ACORN is big news, especially given the close ties between ACORN and Obama.

It's always nice to see the traditional Democratic voter fraud addressed before an election.

And, remember: DON'T TRUST THE POLLS! Remember the 2000 election? You are the Florida panhandle! Show up and vote, no matter what you hear from the media.

Earth about to be destroyed by an asteroid? Vote first, and then say your prayers. Famine, earthquake, pestilence, locusts? Blood in the street? Fine. Just vote. You can always panic afterward.

In the middle of being mugged? Vote, and then draw your sidearm.

Turnout isn't anything in this election: it's the only thing.

As for Me . . .

I'm with Morgan Freeman.

Dril, Offshore—Drill.

Alex Mills, president of the Texas Alliance of Energy Producers, discusses the changes in technology that make drilling off-shore a different type of endeavor now than it was in the 1960:

An offshore spill near Santa Barbara, Calif., in 1969, almost 40 years ago, has been used over and over again by environmental groups to prevent offshore drilling in federal waters.

Many members of Congress from California, Florida and other states with shoreline rant and rave whenever someone suggests drilling offshore of their coast. They wrongly claim that drilling and production activities offshore are hazardous to the environment.

According to a study by the Mineral Management Service (MMS) at the Department of Interior, the largest man-made polluter of the oceans is ship traffic, and many of those ships are bringing imported oil to the United States. The MMS study shows that ship traffic accounted for 45 percent of offshore pollution, compared to just 3 percent from drilling and producing platforms.

The technology for drilling, producing and protecting the environment has changed dramatically since 1969, as has most everything else. This was recently illustrated in 2005 when Hurricanes Rita and Katrina destroyed about 115 offshore platforms and severely damaged 52 others. However, the MMS and the U.S. Coast Guard reported no major spills.

More recently, Hurricanes Gustav and Ike roared through the Gulf, causing damage but nothing near the catastrophic damage of Rita and Katrina. Still, no major oil spills have been reported from offshore rigs. An Associated Press story on Oct. 6 claimed that 500,000 gallons of petroleum and chemicals were released from gasoline stations, abandoned propane tanks, paint cans and other source, but MMS said of the 3,800 platforms in the Gulf, Hurricanes Gustav and Ike destroyed 52 and severely damaged 32 more. The only spill reported involved 200 barrels of oil.

Natural pollution greatly exceeds anything released by oil companies: through natural oil seeps, some 620,000 barrels of oil each year oozes from beneath the ocean floor, but the MMS estimates that oil companies spill about 6,555 barrels per years.

Santa Barbara - the site of the last oil accident from a production platform some 40 years ago - is home to one of the largest oil seeps in the world. Underground pressures force more than 100 barrels of oil up to the beaches in Santa Barbara daily. Ironically, if environmentalists would back away from their opposition to additional drilling, the pressure that forces out the oil naturally could be reduced, and so could the amount of oil seepage.

Any plan that reduces the rate at which tar messes up the beaches of Santa Barbara and Carpinteria gets my vote—as long as it isn't screwing up the surfing in those areas.

Mills' article is in an online newspaper called Go San Angelo.

Sean of New York (and Tokyo!)

Meditates on socialized medicine, and its friends and relatives:

Having lived in Japan for twelve years and had several friends who (unlike me) work in health care, I had a lot of lively discussions about the relative merits of socialized medicine. What always drove me crazy was when people talked as if the money for health care weren't going to have to come from somewhere. There's plenty of great health care available in Japan, but stories have surfaced recently about patients' being turned away or dumped by hospitals, and about desperate Japanese who travel to China for organ transplants. One doesn't want to be like the NYT Style Section and inflate every clutch of three colorful anecdotes into a Major Trend, but the aging society does mean that there will be fewer workers supporting more geriatric patients in short order. Everyone is worried.

Of course, that's a practical, not philosophical, problem. Whittle writes,

Constitutional rights protect us from things: intimidation, illegal search and seizure, self-incrimination, and so on. The revolutionary idea of our Founding Fathers was that people had a God-given right to live as they saw fit. Our constitutional rights protect us from the power of government.

But these new so-called "rights" are about the government — who the Founders saw as the enemy — giving us things: food, health care, education... And when we have a right to be given stuff that previously we had to work for, then there is no reason — none — to go and work for them. The goody bag has no bottom, except bankruptcy and ruin.

And, of course, when the government is in charge of giving out goodies, it gets to set priorities and trade-offs for individuals. Is your need for a procedure "urgent"? What's an acceptable minimum for "quality of life"? Would you prefer to buy less health coverage and more of something else you value more highly? What happens when functionaries start telling fat people they don't deserve bypass surgery because they've spent their lives tunneling through five Entenmann's cakes a week?

Not, I hasten to add, that the current American system is anywhere near perfect...but then, neither is it a free-market system.

Just corrupt, is all—and not all it could be. Yet far, far, better than socialized medicine. More likely to let me decide which goodies are best for me. Which I should have, and which I do not want.

Read the whole thing, and follow over to Whittle's piece, while you're at it.

What Do We Do If We Lose?

What then?

More from Ron Coleman at Right Wing News

The Slow Dawning

Kids come back. Upsets happen. Truman beats Dewey. Never say never.

But let's just say we don't pull this one out. Panic aside, let's start thinking hard and smart -- not just hard, or hard and angry . . . about what at least two years in total opposition mode could look like.

Will we push for the institutional changes within the GOP, and demand new kinds of accountability, such as are appropriate in light of the massive and largely preventable reversal of fortunes that has occurred over the last six years?

Will we utilize new media intelligently to overcome, and perhaps bury, the inexcusable bias of the mainstream media against our candidates, our parties, our issues ... us?

Will we find a way to be aggressive, even combative in opposition, without being nutty... antidemocratic... or tolerant of the racism that will rear its head?

Will we find a way to do that without being enemies of our own representative government, which under the Constitution is still every bit ours regardless of who controls it?

Every political exile nurtures a potential political rebirth. Our side, and especially its leadership, has much to learn -- or, if we will say it has been learned, much to prove.

A lot of trust has been squandered by the Republican Party. In both houses of Congress the GOP has been involved, and disproportionately, in a shameful quantum of scandal, much of it epitomizing moral hypocrisy of the grossest kind.

They mainly chose mediocrities as leaders. Republicans in both houses, too, spent money both in and out of the majority like drunken sailors. Given a period of unprecedented control of both the executive and legislative branches, instead of revolutionizing government, the GOP smothered their own revolution.

The White House exercised zero leadership on this score. Given rebirth after the 2004 success, the Bush Administration still utterly failed to inspire or lead. It made no effort to discipline Congress's spending. It failed miserably at making the case on Iraq when at the critical political juncture at which it should have been made. Its routine appointment and nomination of marginally qualified insiders and operatives to important posts became a deep embarrassment for principled conservatives and removed a potent political weapon from our own arsenal for the foreseeable future.

Now, the winter for Republicans. [Editor's note: Maybe.] What will opposition look like? Who is the Newt Gingrich who will engineer the next return from Elba? And is there anyone who can make it stick this time?

"Make it stick?" No, we don't have that style of leadership: we just swing like a pedulum from better to worse until the end of days. Was it a "King" that you wanted, Mr. Coleman? ;)

Well, of course the first thing I'd do is talk to Newt Gingrich about how to create a political insurgency—how to become that thing all majority parties need: a loyal opposition. And how, this time, he might know how to keep the momentum up just a bit longer.

And, no: I shan't take my eyes off Sarah Palin. Nor off of Fred Thompson's PAC, which will doubtless be looking at matters behind the scenes. And we will have to go back over the record of each and every legislator to examine how he/she treats energy and economic issues, as well as his/her thoughts about "FoPo" and the War on Terror. That will tell us a lot.

And I would get ready for the 2012 scrum, which will almost certainly include our girls in the primary--joined, perhaps, by Governor Jindal, who may or may not feel like his work is complete in Louisiana by then.

(Ron Coleman is generally more upbeat at his blog, Likelihood of Success.)

Goodbye the the "Honeymoon" Concept Regarding the Presidency

From Glenn Reynolds' mail bag; a missive he finds "depressing"—

I consider myself a libertarian/conservative. Like many people of that bent, I was uncomfortable with Bush when he was nominated. But Al Gore's increasingly-erratic behavior during the 2000 election made me hope Bush [would win].

Once Bush won, and it became clear that the Florida democrats were trying to steal the election, I became something of a Bush loyalist. Throughout his first term, I took note of all the really horrible things that were said about him, saw that a large portion of the left would rather see Bush fail than see America succeed, and was alarmed by the complicity (and often, participation) of the MSM and mainstream Hollywood. It wasn't far into his second term that I succumbed to Bush Fatigue, due to his inability to make the case for his foreign policy to the American people, and his inability to find the veto pen. He has truly been a terrible steward of the Republican brand, and because of this, the Conservative and libertarian causes are suffering.

I'm no fan of McCain , but as I dislike Obama (and love Palin), I'll be pulling the lever for McCain in November.

This is surely small of me, but if Obama wins, I plan on giving him as much of a chance as the Democrats gave George Bush. I will gleefully forward every paranoid anti-Obama rumor that I see, along with YouTube footage of his verbal missteps. I will laugh and email heinous anti-Obama photoshop jobs, and maybe even learn photoshop myself to create some. I'll buy anti-Obama books, and maybe even a "Not My President" t-shirt. I'm sure that the mainstream bookstores won't carry them, but I'll be on the lookout for anti-Obama calendars and stuff like that. I will not wish America harm, and if the country is hurt (economically, militarily, or diplomatically) I will truly mourn. But i will also take some solace that it occurred under Obama's watch, and will find every reason to blame him personally and fan the flames.

Obama's thuggish behavior thus far in this election cycle—squashing free speech, declaring any criticism of his policies to be "racist" (a word that happily carries little weight with sensible people these days), associating with the likes of Ayers, Wright, and ACORN—suggests that I won't have to scrape for reasons to really viscerally dislike Obama and his administration. And even if he wins, his campaign's "get out the vote fraud" activities are enough to provide people like me with a large degree of "plausible deniability" as to whether he is actually legitimately the President.

I've seen a President that I [was] generally inclined to like get crapped on for eight years, and I've seen McCain and Palin (honorable people both, despite policy differences I may have with them) get crapped on through this election season. If the Democrats think that a President Obama is going to get some sort of honeymoon from the folks who didn't vote for him—as a wise man once said: heh.

[Reynolds responds:]

I understand where he's coming from, but . . . . Well, it makes me sad to think that this is where we are. Personally, if Obama's elected I intend to give him a chance and weigh him on his actions, not his party. But I agree that he's not likely to get much of a honeymoon—except from the press, which has been giving him one for about a year already.

UPDATE: Reader Ben Ellington emails:

I'm sad with you, but Mr. Gately's doing nothing more than describing the new rules of engagement as far as politics are concerned. If there was anything close to an honest and unbiased media in this country, those attacks just wouldn't work. But, the mainstream media is so far to the left that it fuels talk radio on the right, and their respective audiences just aren't interested in listening to one another any more.

I'm kind of looking forward to seeing how Obama takes it.

I'm guessing badly, in the event.

. . . Another reader emails:

Much though I dislike continuing a highly charged partisan atmosphere, Donald has it right in this case. Democrats cannot and should not expect Obama to receive any sort of honeymoon from McCain voters this cycle based on their behavior, and as I've often heard you say, don't reward behavior that you don't want to encourage.

Yes, the Angry Left schtick seems to have worked for the Dems, which suggests that if the GOP finds itself out of power it will emulate it.

[Joy here again]
As long as Christians and Jews don't take to decapitation/censorship of those who criticize their faiths; that would be going, I think, just a bridge too far in emulating the behavior of one's opposition.

Via Wolking's World, who remarks:

Funny, but I was just thinking the same thing yesterday.

Oh, and don't forget [those] "Sarah Palin is a c*nt" T-shirts.

Boy, this Messianic Post-Partisan Bringer of Hope and Change is really working miracles, isn't he?

In fact, the very aura that he is imparting to the nation is actually starting to look like his record.

(Cross-posted at Right Wing News.)

The Fire Last Time

h/t: Stacy McCain.

Treacher:

Dubs it "The Deathbed Media":

Every time I see another story about the looming collapse of the mainstream media -- ratings and circulation numbers sinking, layoffs pretty much every week, newspapers nationwide turning their backs on the Associated Press -- and then I look at the way most of them are treating the McCain/Palin campaign, it lends credence to the idea that they see this election as their last shot at making a difference. They've just got to get the evil Republicans out of office by any means necessary.

They've taken barely substantiated (if not outright unsubstantiated) reports about a few yahoos at a few rallies and whipped them up into Krystallnacht '08. All while ignoring pesky little details like, I dunno, firebombings and death threats and such from the other side. Is that really a sign of strength? Of confidence in a big, big win this Nov. 4?

These geniuses used to be a lot better at crafting a narrative, right? There was a time when they might have worried about ruining their own reputations in the process of advancing their political views. They'd at least make an effort to seem impartial. But if their whole industry is swirling down the toilet anyway, why keep pretending?

One last chance for glory before they check out for good.

The Deathbed Media.

h/t: Hot Air.

More on An American Carol . . .

It's still playing at 1600 theaters nationwide, though as Eric observes, they are not necessarily going to be the most convenient theaters in your particular town.

The Wikis put it this way:

An American Carol made $3.8 million in its opening weekend, placing it ninth among movies that week. Since it was shown in 1,639 theaters, it had a per-screen average of $2,325 ($3.8 million divided by 1,639). By comparison, the film's diametrically opposite competitor released around the same time, Religulous,[10] was the tenth-ranked movie, grossing $3.5 million in just 502 theaters, an average of $6,972 per screen.[11] However, the Religulous receipts were collected over a five-day period (the first two days in New York City and Los Angeles only), while those for An American Carol were collected over a three-day period.[12][13]

For its second weekend, An American Carol had a 58.8% drop in box office receipts and dropped to #15, grossing $1,505,000 at 1,621 theaters or $928 per screen. Religious only had a 35.5% drop in box office receipts and dropped to #13, grossing $2,200,000 at 568 theaters or $3,873 per screen.[14]

No word on how many days were covered under "weekend #2" for that second set of numbers.

But the competing ideas go a bit beyond whether Zucker's slapstick is funnier than Maher's . . . whatever it is that he's doing. Neither film is a big-budget flick; neither was meant to be a blockbuster.

If you want a blockbuster these days, you generally give it an anti-American theme rather than an anti-religious one. And you spend a lot of money, and bill it as a serious narrative.

More on An American Carol:

Interview with Greta
A David Zucker Interview
Newsbusters take it up
Suppression?
Enemy Action?
Carol vs. Religulous
Go to Rotten Tomatoes!

Violence Against McCain Supporters

. . . but there's nothing to see here: Move on.

h/t: Insty, who characterizes some elements within the Obama campaign as advocating "hope, change, and Molotov cocktails." And unicorns. And rainbows. And voter fraud.

Things have gotten positively Orwellian.

I Hadn't Realized . . .

that, no matter what, we were going to have a left-handed President come January.

How many have there been?

Somehow I feel like I read somewhere that Lincoln was left-handed, but I could be wrong about this. (And I am.)

And how many Presidents had their own cereals?

h/t: Insty.

And why didn't any of the VPs have cereals named after 'em? Sejanus? And how many of them were left-handed?

Dig It!

They got on Palin's case about calling Obama on his friendships with terrorists, and then they criticized her use of the plural. Wild!

I Could Eat.

But then I might get sleepy, and right now at least I'm sort of getting things done around the house, as I neurotically wander around. A little here. A bit there. I might get terribly ambitious and hang a picture . . .

Wow.

I've lost a handful of friends this fall, due to:

1) my own ADD + someone else's jealousy/control issues;

2) politics + the other person's Asperger's syndrome/suppressed rage;

3) politics + someone else's jealousy;

4) politics + mutual depression/hypersensitivity;

5) politics + the other person's suppressed rage about things that have nothing to do with me;

6) my drinking;

7) politics + the other person's perception that I'm high-drama. Where that idea came from, I have no clue.

If I could just find a way to lose three more relationships, I'd have a strike. Let's see . . . my mother . . . her dog . . . one more relationship down, and I win.

I can't find my Prozac, and it's been a week or so. But I'm too depressed to look for it. Besides: if I slow down the rate at which I'm alienating the human race, that lowers my hermit-score, and I'm working hard on this project.

Apparently.

I Could Get Something Done Around the House.

Or, perhaps, take a walk.

To do either of those things, though, I'd have to get dressed. Which means taking a shower. And that sounds like an overwhelming endeavor.

I hate shaving in the shower.

And the bathtub doesn't work, and we can't afford to fix it.

And my car doesn't work, and we can't afford to fix it.

And the sun is too bright, but we can't afford window treatments. And I could work something up with kraft paper and rice paper, but I'm too short. And we can't afford a higher stepstool than the one we've got.

The estrogen had better get here soon, or I may just go back to bed for the rest of the week.

Still Have the Blue-Dog Blues

I knew my mother was considering "re-homing" her dog—my beloved Mandy—because she (the woman) is 72 and may not be able to keep up with her.

What I did not realize until a few days ago is that because of breed prejudice, my mom doesn't consider her adoptable, and is considering putting her down.

I think the dog could use a little training, but the thought of losing her that way breaks my heart.

I'll obviously be making some phone calls this week, to see if I can find an enlightened shelter in Southern California; it's time to snap out of this. I may not be able to "keep" the dog, but I won't see her killed if I can help it.

Naturally, I live in a condominium that limits the size of pets. And my husband does not like Mandy; he refers to her as "that thing."

An American Carol in The Big Easy!

I just got off the radio with Greta of Kiss My Gumbo, the New Orleans radio show/blog that discusses politics and culture in Louisiana (or, as I call it, "the other L.A."). Greta's show on 790 WIST in New Orleans goes live on-air on Saturday mornings, and as a consummate egomaniac I assume she scheduled it for 9:30 Central just to make her West Coast correspondents get up early.

("Greta! Do you realize what 9:30 a.m. your time means, translated into Pacific Time?"

"I think it's two hours earlier, Joy. That's only 7:30 a.m."

"But you know how I am about mornings!")

We talked about An American Carol, and what a creative challenge that movie must have been for David Zucker, whose usual style is pure slapstick (most famously [infamousy?] in Airplane! and The Naked Gun). Making a film in which anti-Americanism is the target is not the same kind of creative project as those comically scattershot productions, but Zucker found a premise for tying the current story up into a delicious cream puff of pro-military patriotism: what if filmmaker Michael Moore, like Ebeneezer Scrooge in Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol," were nudged by supernatural spirits into seeing the error of his ways?

What, indeed?

The film's star is Kevin Farley, who had to gain so much weight to play "Michael Malone" that his family got worried and threatened him with Medical Attention until he confessed what he was up to—just getting ready to spoof an anti-American "documentary" filmmaker who likes to play it fast and loose with the facts.

A lot of the lefty blogs and reviewers have been thrilled to see that An American Carol "only" opened at #9 last weekend. (Because it was "beaten by Beverly Hills Chihuahua," which made more money, but somehow oddly at the same time it was "beaten by Bill Mahar's Religulous," which made less money on opening weekend [and opened at #10] but appeared on more fewer screens. So the methodologies for measuring success depend upon whether one is comparing Zucker's film to a bit of fluff by a smarmy pseudo-libertarian, or a talking dog that opened on many, many more screens than either of the other two movies. Confused? Me too.)

Because we all know that the film industry does not have any sort of leftward tilt; it's all about making money. That's why Mel Gibson had to work so hard and get such creative financing for The Film That Dare Not Speak Its Name—you know: the one that made a fortune, and launched several careers, and yet uniquely, in the history of the film business, kicked ass at the box office while inspiring no imitators whatsoever. Nothing about the lives of the apostles. Nothing about the Old Testament. Nothing about the other characters in the gospels. Instead, a feature version was made of Go, Speed Racer, because one can never go wrong by making a movie based on a television show from the 1960s.

I'm still definitely recommending An American Carol, although one does have to show up a few minutes early, double-check that the theater gave the correct showtime for the movie, and verify the title on the ticket stub, since teenage pranks by cineplex employees seem to have kept a few people away from this movie.

Like the Steve Martin/John Candy classic Planes, Trains, and Automobiles (directed and written by John Hughes, and just as chockablock-full of cameos as Zucker's Carol itself), this movie is that rare beast: a comedy with a real—and important—point to make. So don't be bothered if you can't buy your tickets online, and the movie's name doesn't appear on the marquee outside—just politely confirm with one of the staffers at the cineplex that American Carol is playing there, at such-and-such a time, and get your ticket. (And double-check that the ticket indeed says "An American Carol" on it.)

But please do not be discouraged by having to take a few precautions or spend a few extra minutes to see this film. After all, An American Carol achieved a major release, which never happened to a lot of other well-done films with a center-right take on the issues of the day, such as Indoctrinate U (Evan Coyne Maloney's takedown of bias within academic institutions); Ben Stein's Expelled (a meditation on why we are not allowed to discuss Intelligent Design as part of scientific inquiry—and a peek into the dark side of Darwinist extremism); Mine Your Own Business (a documentary about how those in the developing world are being kept in poverty by environmental True Believers); In the Face of Evil (the story of Ronald Reagan squaring off against totalitarianism), and Is It True What They Say, Ann? (a sympathetic yet irreverent look at Ann Coulter).

There's no conspiracy to keep us out of theaters that are showing An American Carol. There is, however, a grand opportunity for us to go to the movies this weekend without having our love of country insulted, or the military put down in some backhanded fashion.

And we don't have to order it on DVD and wait for it to get to our homes. And we don't have to make our own popcorn when we see it.

If I were you, I'd take advantage. I've done so, and I might just do it again.

UPDATE: The podcast is up!

(X-posted at Right Wing News.)

David Zucker on Larry King Tonight!

So, watch it.

It'll be on at 6:00 p.m. in God's Country, and 9:00 p.m. on the East Coast. You flyover people . . . just do the arithmetic.

Oh. So It's All About a Porn DVD.

Burge explains the financial crisis, which stems—he claims—from a loan he offered Treacher a while ago to buy an adult video for certain "biological" purposes. Unfortunately, the situation just kept . . . growing and growing. According to Burge. (Treacher's account of the situation differs slightly.)

Apparently, though, if we continue to hit the Iowahawk and Treacher PayPal buttons, we can avoid another Great Depression! Cool!

This afternoon Mr. Treacher and I sent a joint communique to global financial markets and key government central banks, declaring our intention to restructure our debt agreement. We have named our plan the "Save the Global Economy Fund." The terms are somewhat complex for the economic layman, but here are the highlights: I have agreed in principle to write off 50% Mr. Treacher's debt, and he has agreed to a 60/40 split of the proceed from the fundraising portion of the plan.

We have done our part to ease the jittery credit markets, but ultimately the success of our plan depends on the participation of the American consumer. And that's where you come in.

Click on the PayPal button on the left side of this page (Beer Fund) and make a financial sacrifice to me in the name of the "Save the Global Economy Fund."
Next, visit Jim Treacher's site and make a PayPal sacrifice to him. It should be 1/3 smaller than the first, reflecting his greater culpability for the crisis, and our 60/40 thing.

The actual amount of your sacrifice -- $1 million, $100,000, or even $10,000 -- is not important. The critical thing is that the markets see that we are pulling together to sacrifice as Americans to save the future of this country, just like the Greatest Generation of World War II. You can monitor the impact of this campaign by keeping a close eye on the financial markets. Is the Dow up? Great going, America! Let's keep up the good work, and repeat steps 1 and 2 with increasingly larger donations. If the Dow is down, however, this will be your signal that the markets think your donation was insufficient. In this case, you should instead repeat steps 1 and 2, with increasingly larger donations.

I had no idea that it worked that way.

Um. By the way. Darleen Click covered for my margaritas last Saturday night as we ate dinner with Baldilocks, Steve in Huntington Beach, Ace, and Patterico. I would hate to see the economic dominoes start falling just because she failed to exercise her due diligence by reminding herself that I'm an irresponsible flake when it comes to time, money, and all other human endeavors.

Left sidebar. Right between the purple Twitter update box and the picture of George Washington. Thanks. Just fork it over and I'll consider paying Darleen back, thereby averting a global economic crisis.

"Mighty Presidential Campaigns Grow . . ."

I like the special effects.

Via Malkin.

Newsbusters on An American Carol

Yeah, yeah: any pattern is a conspiracy. I've heard it all before.

Once again, we see the long knives sharpened against the right by employing innuendo and outright lies. This time it is against the movie An American Carol. On Tuesday, I reported that there was some concern that ticket sales for the movie were being diverted to other movies at certain theaters across the country. But I never said there was a "conspiracy" to do so.

The filmmakers also attempted to do some detective work to find out the veracity of the claims. But they didn't call it a conspiracy either. Apparently simply asking the question, though, is too much for Wonkette and Huffington Post to handle. They had to gin it up as some wild-eyed claim of a "conspiracy" on our part.

. . . . . . . . . .

In the blog's typical unprofessional style, Wonkette claimed the filmmakers are saying some great, leftist conspiracy is destroying the movie. The next day, an entry at the Huffington Post asserted the same thing. From there the lefty blogs took over to add to the din. Unfortunately for their hyperbole, the movie folks never asserted any such thing (for that matter, neither did I).

In fact, the folks that produced An American Carol went so far as to take down their page offering movie-goers a place to report incorrect ticket sales. I have been told by a spokesman from Mpower pictures that they had no intention of claiming there was some nationwide conspiracy being mounted against their film and that they will not be making any further public comments for the time being.

But there have been reports from many theaters that, among other things, fans have been handed tickets stubs from other movies instead of from the one they came to see. It was the responsible thing to do, in my opinion, to give fans a place to report the matter if they felt they had been one of those defrauded.

The concern here is if individual theaters or their employees were purposefully crediting ticket sales to films other than what should be credited.

. . . . . . . . .

This isn't the first time, though, such a thing has happened to politically charged products. Spike Lee has for decades complained about these sort of things, yet no one is attacking him for saying the same thing. And, we all have heard time and again the reports that books published by conservative radio and TV personalities have been hidden in books stores so that sales are hindered. Rush, Hannity, O'Reilly, they have all seen reports of this sort of thing.

Even so, no one is claiming that the booksellers are secretly conspiring to hinder book sales. What we are saying is that there are many millions of people out there that are not above taking it upon themselves to defraud or hinder the sales of politically charged products like books and movies. This is the case with An American Carol. If lone employees or individual theater owners are pulling a fast one on the film, it should be exposed. But, no one is saying there is some vast left-wing conspiracy going on.

The differences being that if I can't find the book I want at a bookstore, I can simply buy it online, and consuming it will be the same experience. It's very rare for centrist/libertarian films to make it into theaters in the first place; we usually have to buy the DVDs online (as with Mine Your Own Business, about the problem of poverty in Eastern Europe, and how it is exacerbated by misguided Western pseudo-environmentalism), or go to the one venue where something like Indoctrinate U or Expelled will be playing, for one night, in an obscure auditorium right off of Diagon Ally. Wearing hats and dark glasses, lest someone take a picture of us watching one of Those Movies.

I wonder if the limitations on film distribution are related to the fact that revival houses are largely dead: killed by cable TV, VHS tapes, and then DVDs. One used to at least be able to see something that wasn't 100% mainstream at the Fox Theatre, or at the Nuart. Or at one of the Laemmle Theatres. (Okay. Those are still around.)

But doesn't it seem like we're less motivated as a population to go see movies as part of a shared experience in a public square, and more inclined to stay at home, watching films in our little cocoons? I acknowledge that the wine is better, here—and the snacks are cheaper. Also, when one's spouse is in a good mood the movie gets paused whenever I get up to pee—a rare occurrence in a cineplex. Nonetheless, I feel as if something has been lost culturally with the more homogenized fare we're getting in theaters, and the fact that we tend to only see quirky stuff from our overstuffed couches.

Maybe it's just me.

Harvey Finally Gets a Vote!

Thank you, ACORN!

Iowahawk has the story:

ST. LOUIS - Attorneys for the voting registration organizations ACORN and Project Vote filed an anti-discrimination voting rights suit in the U.S. Federal District court this morning, alleging the United States government is involved in "a widespread, systematic effort to disenfranchise Imaginary-Americans and deprive them of access to polls."

"Participation in our electoral process is a fundamental right, and the foundation of our democracy," said ASDF ASDFG, a spokesperson for the National Association for the Advancement of Imaginary People, one of the groups named as plaintiffs in the class action. "We will not be silent when government denies people access to the polls on the basis of color, or sex, or existential status."

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

In Cleveland, Ohio Republican officials complained to the Federal Election Commission after early-voting sites barred observers when thousands of Invisible-Ohioans arrived at the polls aboard hundreds of invisible ACORN buses. In Ida Grove, Iowa, Ida County Registrar Debby Ballard expressed concern when a convoy of Chicago ACORN semis submitted 4,000,000 provisional ballots, 17 seconds before a 5 pm deadline.

"I'm proud that Ida County can boast of a 114,312% voter registration rate, but I'm not sure if I can get all of them processed by Monday," said Ballard. "I've got a pilates class in Sioux City."

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

After consultation with attorneys . . . . . ACORN -- which has received $800,000 from the Obama campaign for registration efforts -- filed a suit claiming the increased legal scrutiny was driven by a political agenda. Amicus briefs were added from several Imaginary Rights groups, adding civil rights violations to the list of complaints.

"Whether we are obituary notices, hallucinatory giant rabbits, or strings of random keyboard strokes, it's time for the chimera community to stand up and claim our rights as citizens," said ASDFG. "We will no longer be silent and invisible. Okay, maybe invisible."

In addition to $3.2 jubajillion in damages and free federal mortgages for homeless spectres, the suit also seeks enforcement of the Americans with Dimensional Disabilities Act. The Act requires voting places to make accommodations for existentially-challenged voters who have trouble completing ballots written in standard 3-dimensional reality. The accommodations include multiple site registration, time travel, and allowances for alcoholics to cast ballots for dependent D.T. phantasms.

"Many of our community inhabit the Tapioca subluster of the 11th Dimension, and it's hard for them to find a convenient spacehole to make it to the local elementary school," explained ASDFG.

I had no idea that the rates of disenfranchisement were so great among Imaginary Americans. It just breaks my heart that this has been going on for so long . . .

Perhaps I should register the characters from my stories and books; they should also be afforded the opportunity to be heard. And, of course, the voices in my head. Plus, the imaginary colleagues I blame when I blow deadlines. Also, our imaginary housekeeper, who is always behind on the dusting, dishwashing, and grocery shopping.

Alas, Poor Journalism. I Knew It, Horatio.

Stacy McCain observes the death throes of the dailies and weeklies as I visit the monthly consumer magazines in their own last days. At least in the glossy four-color industry we knew we were in a business; the daily guys seemed to think they were participating in some kind of church.

Stacy:

That a newspaper is a business -- that it exists to generate profit by providing a product to consumers, in the same sense that a shoe store sells shoes -- is an alien concept to most journalists. Notions like value-added, market share and comparative advantage never enter the minds of most journalists, who conceive of themselves as pursuing a profession that has nothing whatsoever to do with commerce.

So much of what newspapers have done, they've done at the behest of consultants, or by following the conventional wisdom doled out in ASNE conferences and journalism trade publications.

Hey; it worked for a while.

RTWT.

Stacy's observations are, as usual, clear-eyed, and he combines new-media savvy with a deep working knowledge of beltway politics. For what it's worth, the man can also hold his liquor better than most; that's probably how he gets his scoops.

How Obama Helped Create the Mortgage Crisis.

Pretty directly, in fact.

Barack H. Obama is running around telling everyone that the housing mortgage market collapsed primarily because of some vaguely described "deregulation" that took place sometime under George Bush--or maybe under Clinton; I'm not clear on that. I'm not sure he is.

Whatever his claim is, it's a lie.

The reality is that the housing market collapsed in large part because a coalition of race-baiting bullies brought very heavy pressure to bear on the banks to make more subprime loans on properties in low-income communities. Those who didn't approve the risky subprime loans were accused of "redlining"--i.e., refusing to make loans on properties in those neighborhoods.

Who were these bullies?

Some of the bullies were out in Washington pounding the tables and screaming at bank executives about "redlining".

At the same time, other bullies were stalking big city courthouses, filing frivolous and extortinate lawsuits against banks based on novel "disparate impact" theories of what might be held to constitute "redlining." In other words, even banks which [sic] were making lots of loans in low-income communities were being sued if they weren't approving just as many loans in low-income communities as they were in high-income communities.

Who were these mortgage extortionists?

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Yes, that "Barack H. Obama."

. . . . . . . . . . .

[H]ere's the thing: according to Obama's legal team, FIFTY-EIGHT PERCENT of a certain class of loan applicants living in 80%+ minority neighborhoods were approved for a loan. Far from being automatically denied, most of these applicants were approved. Also according to Obama's team, EIGHTY-ONE PERCENT of similar loan applicants living in 90%+ "white" (defined as European and Asian) neighborhoods were approved--and this is the source of the theory of harm put forth by the legal team.

Under the theory put forward, it wasn't enough, apparently, that most of the identified mortgage applicants in the minority neighborhoods were approved. The theory demanded parity in the statistics, despite the fact that properties in very different neighborhoods necessarily present very different risk situations. In other words, the lawyers sued Citibank because Citibank was, on balance, somewhat more likely to approve a loan for a property in a predominantly white neighborhood than on one in a predominantly black neighborhood. Given that predominantly black neighborhoods tend to be low-income neighborhoods characterized by low property values, was this phenomenon evidence of evil racism or just reasonable risk avoidance? I'll leave that to your judgment.

Yeah, it's one of Ragnar's entries. Read the whole thing anyway; he's right about this. It was exactly this type of legal pressure on mortgage companies that led to the economic challenges we're coping with right now.

Mark Steyn Verdict Due Tomorrow.

And you thought kangaroos were from Australia?

They're from Canada, Baby.

Via a tweet from All American Blogger—some fascinating stuff, there.

I Dunno.

I really thought that An American Carol delivered the goods, if one were relaxed enough to go with the slapstick flow.

But it's true that an artist is rarely as successful delivering a message versus simply making art for art's sake.

Except for Planes, Trains, and Automobiles. And 1000 Clowns. And Harvey, which did indeed have a point. Of course, that point was, "don't be didactic," which might be more zen than the average person can handle.

Boyz in the 'Hood . . .

Dig it: they find out about this friendship between Obama and Ayers, and then they make a bunch of videos about it:

Wild.

h/t: Ace.

"Just a Guy From My Neighborhood."

"You know: the one who tried to kill that nine-year-old kid—the judge's son."

Move along; nothing to see, here.

Barack: I think he did just say it to your face. But you can ask him about this again, if you like.

By All Means . . .

Please do say it to his face.

And a few more things while you're at it, Johnny Mac.

Okay: I'm Hearing More and More Reports of Suppression of An American Carol.

Enough individual reports are coming in via e-mail that I'm really starting to think that the managers of these cineplexes are either complicit in the actions of their mostly teenaged employees, or that these kids are taking matters into their own hands on a really grand scale:

• People are unable to buy tickets online for this movie, and have to get them at the cineplex itself;

• When one goes to the theater, the name of the movie frequently isn't on the marquee, giving one a sort of "am I at the right place?" moment;

• There are no posters up for the movie at the theater, reinforcing that "wait; was this supposed to be that place across town?" feeling;

• on the sign inside the ticket booth, the movie isn't even listed. This actually happened to me, and I was about to suggest to my husband that we leave, when I saw another couple ask for tickets to the movie--they seemed to be getting them, so I thought, "well, I guess it has to be playing here . . ."

• The second theater in town where the movie was supposedly was playing didn't allow one to pre-purchase tickets, so I called to check on the time. This particular movie house was a four-plex, and I listened to the long outgoing message twice. It gave me all kinds of information I didn't need to know, like how to get to the theater. And it gave me showtimes for three movies--but not An American Carol.

• I'm getting email and comments about people who are being sold the wrong movie tickets. They ask to see An American Carol, and are handed a ticket that they don't look at very closely (how many of us actually read these things when we're trying to figure out whether there's time to get popcorn before we get our seats?). Later on, though, they look at the ticket and see the title of a completely different film.

It's my understanding that this is often done by theater management "by accident" because they get less money for current releases than they do for films that have been in the theater for a few weeks.

But I'm starting to wonder about this: was there some underground communication among the kids who work at these places? It's starting to look like the phenomenon is a lot more widespread than a few days ago, when I just started hearing people ask questions.

Let's try it this way, folks: how many of you went to see An American Carol, and your ticket stub actually had the name of that movie on it?

I know the kinds of kids who work at movie theaters. I worked at two movie theaters when I was in college. I know what the cultural zeitgeist is—hell; I was part of it.

I didn't really believe at first that this was more than isolated incidents, but the appearance here is that there is an active effort underway to suppress box office numbers for An American Carol.

Previous Entries on the American Carol controversy:

Is this Enemy Action? Please Tell Me 'No.'

An American Carol Made More Money Than Religulous.

Mainstream Critics Didn't Like An American Carol; What a Sur-Prize!

How About . . .

Sarah at the top of the ticket, and Hilton at the bottom?

Via AllahP at Hot Air. He's right, though: we can't just walk out of Iraq with our little pet doggies in our little doggie-purses, teetering on our high heels . . .

Gun Control . . .

starts with knowing what a gun is.

There's Something to This.

When times get tough, women turn to cheap cosmetics.

And the movie business boomed during the Recession: we've all heard the theories that people wanted to see more luxury on the "silver screen" as real life became more and more difficult.

I was working at The Foodie Magazine during the beginning of the economic downturn, in the shadow of 9/11 (which, you will recall, did not help). One of the points that the editor kept making was that publishing recipes was a great thing to be doing during that time. The covers stopped highlighting celebrity chefs and high-end cuisine, though: instead, we ran more chicken pot pies and pot roasts. Food that was less expensive to make, or that might be the one luxury left as people had to cut back in other areas, became the focus.

Bill Whittle's New Political Party.

Sign. Me. Up.

I Got Nothin' to Add.

. . . . except that I want this guy on my talk show, when I get it going with the Bloggin' Chicks and Bear Flag Leaguers. Pure gold, Baby.

Via Dirty Harry.

Speaking of An American Carol

If you saw it and liked it, create a profile on Rotten Tomatoes and write a quick review with an honest ranking and your reaction to the film. Please!

That site is being overrun with leftists, unfortunately.

* * *

IF YOU DON'T, the proverbial terrorists will have won . . . (Not the real terrorists&mdah;just the ones who are fond of quoting Proverbs. The terrorists that really scare me, though, are the ones who carry the Psalms with 'em wherever they go . . . what's up with that?)

The most important thing, though, is to see An American Carol, and make your mind up for yourself.

UPDATE: Hey, whaddya know?—a lot of the mainstream critics hated it. Here's an article on that phenomenon in PJ Media, and the comments thread is a scream.

UPDATE 2: Following up on the ticket irregulariries post—
Despite my new readers' assurances that no one would actually manipulate ticket sales to make a political point, we certainly know that it's possible. In fact, we know that this is done, though the more-common motivation is plain old greed. This from a person who monitors this type of hijinks:

I do mystery shopping and merchandising, and sometimes I perform movie theater checks. I act as a typical moviegoer, and buy my ticket at the box office. Then I sit in the back of the theater and count the patrons at the moment the movie starts. I scan and email my ticket stubs, so they can verify that the ticket shows the proper movie.

Studios pay me (the company that hires me) to do this because theater owners/managers can and do fudge the ticket sales numbers. If you buy a ticket for a movie that opens this week, the theater sends most of the money to the studio. But if you buy a ticket for a movie in its fourth week, the theater gets to keep much more of the money. Thus, they train ticket sellers to monitor the number sold for the new movie. If it's not sold out, they may print you a ticket for the older movie, figuring that you won't notice. I've watched this being done.

Would they do this to tank a movie that they didn't like? Perhaps. It would likely be on instructions from the manager, and the ticket seller wouldn't know or care why. Ticket sellers are less politically aware than the average bookstore employee, and bookstore employees are known to hide or deny the presence of titles they don't like. But ticket sellers are often teens who are more concerned about the party they're attending after their shift, rather than the political party of the producer.

It could be happening. There's nothing wrong with checking your tickets and reporting any discrepancy to the AC folks.

UPDATE: Since you've been asking—Joy's coverage of potential sabotage to depress the box-office numbers of An American Carol:

http://littlemissattila.mu.nu/archives/275006.php

http://littlemissattila.mu.nu/archives/275114.php

No One Is Going to Tell You This.

So I will: David Zucker's An American Carol made more moneyon opening weekend than Bill Maher's Religulous did.

And it did it without resorting to the all Maher's prevarication about religion—the type of falsehoods that made Moore such a fitting subject for satire in the first place. (No, I don't believe Moore actually eats pizza once the mice have gotten into the pizza box. Nor do I believe that he agreed to make a terrorist training video. Nor do I believe that Charlton Heston once made a pro- gun-rights speech in which his tie kept changing color mid-sentence, or that there are banks that will let you take a longarm out the door as a premium on the same day you open a bank account with them—unless you're a famous filmmaker who has somehow convinced them that this sort or "creative re-enactment" will make them look good.)

I'll tell you one more secret: one of the reasons a lot of the reviewers didn't get the humor in An American Carol is that it required a smattering of knowledge about not just American history, but . . . . gulp . . . military culture.

And here's something else: (1) Sarah Palin had a rally in the Golden State on Saturday [tallish place on the West Coast—known for liking movies], which drew thousands of people away from the theaters; before and afterward most of the right-leaning political junkies in the nation have been biting their nails for about ten days wondering if John McCain was going to defend himself on the subject of the economy, or simply let the opposition tie G.W. around his neck like a rather good-natured albatross.

Well, he did and he didn't, and there's tremendous relief out there. There is still nail-biting, because this campaign will be close—and we have another month to go . But now that McCain's exaggerated sense of honor seems to allow for self-defense against the attacks coming from the other side, I think a lot of people may be willing to take a few hours off from the campaign—or take a little time to make a pivotal decision that's now on the horizon.

The one thing every single centrist/center-right person I've talked to about An American Carol has told me is this: it's nice not to be waiting for the other shoe to drop. It's lovely to laugh without wondering when the country's going to be insulted, or the military. You laugh at some jokes, and you don't laugh at others (slapstick being a bit of a scattershot endeavor). But you aren't mentally crossing your arms, wondering when "it" is going to come: the suggestion that we couldn't ever have won Vietnam and shouldn't have tried, the implication that Ronald Reagan was a crazy man who brought us to the brink of nuclear war (while liberating millions of people), the imputation that the Civil War was only about economics, and not slavery. The idea that most military men and women are war criminals, or ready to be.

The obscene absurdity that it is never right to fight back, whatever the provocation.

I hope Religulous stays in the movie houses for a long time, as An American Carol reaches more and more people via word-of-mouth. Because beyond the glamour of opening weekend (and opening at a high-risk time, during a Presidential election), there is the fact that some people in Hollywood have decided that they would actually like to make money. And maybe even make it doing something other than features based on TV series from the 1960s.

Yeah, yeah: I hear you, Guys: "Maher's movie opened on fewer screens, so it made more money per screen." Well, that presupposes An American Carol was credited with every ticket sale it was entitled to, and that it was as easy to find a showtime or tickets for AAC as it was for the other movies that opened last weekend. And it was not.

No, I'm not a conspiracy theorist. But I'm skeptical enough that I'm not going to take the Maher people's numbers (or their reasoning) at face value.

Because there's one more little comparison to be made: Zucker is funny. And Maher, the psuedo-libertarian, really, really isn't. He's just smarmy and smug.

Okay. Debates Are Almost As Bad As Rallies.

At least people are making an attempt to change others' minds, unlike those yelling matches on Saturday (and I'm talking about dinner with the other bloggers that evening at Chili's in Carso; the protests and counter-protests at CSU Dominguez Hills were nearly as bad).

Is the election over yet? G-d, I hate politics. It's just . . . well, being involved in this shit is like Capitalism: the ghastliest thing with the exception of any other possibities.

If Obama loses this election, he has an exciting career ahead of him as a used-car salesman.

I meant that, you know . . . in the good way.

As I understand it, he's going to give me lots of money, and better health insurance, and then he'll go find Bin Ladin, whether the dude still exists or not.

Furthermore, what Obama can apparently do is conquer the mountainous regions of Afghanistan and Pakistan via brute force alone, while wearing the handcuffs our allies have on us there. Oh, Baby: I want to see that, Because no one else has ever done it. Which means that Barack Obama is the most brilliant military commander in the history of the world.

Makes me wet, it does.

Watch It Fast!

Before they take it down again!

This is brilliant.

UPDATE: Oops, there it went again. You could always mosey over here, and see what's below the jump.

Malkin has the backstory about how the skit didn't merely portray George Soros in a not-quite-flattering light, but also "outed" the Herbert and Marion Sandler partnership as being one of the major forces behind the mess we find ourselves in now.

With a little help from, among others, Nancy Pelosi and Barney Frank.

No one I know can believe that the skit aired in the first place, though we all know the tried to pull it before it went viral. Otherwise, Herbert and Marion Sandler could become household names for having screwed many individuals, the taxpayers, and the economy in general. People would be hearing all over the place about the role Herbert and Marion Sandler played in the financial debacle, and they might not be able to operate behind scenes as effectively.

In fact, once the actions of Herbert and Marion Sandler became well-known, there is a chance that those who are upset about the fact that we are still in some danger of a recession might get miffed at Herbert and Marion Sandler fore helping to bring it about.

So, please: don't get upset at George Soros. Or at Herbert and Marion Sandler, who were just trying to deceive a few people so they could become enormously wealthy in a way that would put the economy at risk and turn a few poor and working-class people onto the streets, which I'm sure will improve their character just as it improved the portfolios of Herbert and Marion Sandler.

This Is Where the Rubber Meets the Road.

Via AllahP at Hot Air.

I Just Don't See Why Everyone Is So Hot Under the Collar About This Ayers Guy.

I have neighbors. Sometimes we say hi. Once in a while we work on boards together, trying to socially re-engineer education—or at least redistribute funds to socialist-leaning groups.

A board here, a nonprofit there.

Sometimes we have respectful disagreements about whether certain types of civil disobedience go too far. Like, is the attempted murder of Pentagon workers ethical? How about the attempted murder of nine-year-old children?

See how easy it is to get into these gray areas? Like when someone whose main regret in life is that his terrorism group didn't murder enough innocent Americans wants to host a political "coming out" party at your home, and launch your career from there? Way he's still cool with killing innocnt nine-year-olds, and you feel that only innocent American adults should be targeted.

Kind of a tough call, isn't it?

And here's a little touch of Harry in the night:

Dirty Harry, that is: the film reviewer. He's on fire today, so go to the main page and keep scrolling.

THEATER FRAUD? Sabotage of An American Carol and Its Opening-Week Numbers?

Now this sounds like enemy action.

Help me out here, folks: are these honest mistakes, or is there intent behind them? And how widespread is the problem?

I'm starting to hear complaints about unorthodox treatment of An American Carol by employees of theaters that are carrying the movie. So far, rumors suggest above-average irregularities regarding the handling of this movie in cineplexes and other theaters—particularly as regards ticket sales.

Is the problem systemic, or confined simply to a few (statistically insignificant) theaters in a nationwide release? I'm hearing tremendous curiosity/concern from other centrist/libertarian/center-right movie fans about whether any of these incidents seem to have had some sort of intent behind them.

People are being sold tickets that are supposedly for An American Carol, but have the names of other movies printed on them.

Obviously, this type of "error"/error theoretically requires collusion between employees--a way of marking the ticket so that you are sent to the correct theater, even though you've been sold the wrong ticket. (E.g., if the box office is outside the cineplex, and the person who tells you where your particular mini- theater is happens to be is stationed inside the doors, out of sight of the box office.)

As the customer, you'll want to actually read your ticket to check and make sure you weren't an unwitting instrument of an "error" (or even an error) that inflated another movie's box office numbers and deflated that of the one you had intended to support.

If you suspect that this might have happened when you went to see the movie, please go double-check your tickets. If they have the wrong title on 'em, send me a picture of your "American Carol" ticket.

Here are some subtler things to be on the alert for, in terms of possible attempts to suppress viewership / the appearance of viewership / box office receipts for this film.

Examples:

• The theater suggested that the movie was rated R (its true rating is PG-13);

• Posters for the film are not visible inside or outside the theater;

• An American Carol is not on the marquee, even though the movie is playing there;

• The film title not listed behind the clerk in the box office, so you have to ask if that movie is playing at that theater, never mind that you checked on the internet and called in advance (this actually happened to me);

• Showtimes are given on the theater's outgoing message machine for every movie playing except for An American Carol (this is also out of my personal experience: somehow the local four-plex only had showtimes listed on the phoneline for three movies . . . . hm);

• technical oddities: image or focus issues, problems with sound, and the like.

Please check those tickets, check those movie houses where the movie is supposedly playing (but you have to ask about it if you want to see it), and document everything you can. Put those cell-phone cameras to use whenever possible.

UPDATE: The Freepers have it now. So far, I've been skimming through the lefty sites that are linking my allegations about potential fraud and irregularities regarding An American Carol. It appears that their arguments are as follows:

a) If ticket sales are recorded for the wrong movie, it's not significant enough to affect box-office receipts for this particular film, because it isn't happening enough. But it doesn't happen anyway, and I am probably a paranoid schizophrenic for believing that it did.

b) In my original post, I clearly stated that An American Carol would have opened this past weekend in the #1 slot had there not been incorrect recording of box office receipts, and other irregularities at some theaters/cineplexes where the movie is playing. So I'm delusional as well.

c) "We, the left, absolutely hide any books that appear to take a centrist or center-right view whenever we're working at bookstores. Clearly, this indicates that we would never take equivalent action if we got jobs at theaters.

Q.E.D."

(d) "Little Miss Attila has never gone to a movie in her life. Nor has she ever worked at a movie theater. Because, see—the system is different at my local cineplexes than it is at hers. Since we've determined that she's delusional, we cannot trust anything to do with ticket-selling or ticket-taking procedures at her local theaters."

(e) "Little Miss Attila is ugly, so any assertion of fact that she makes is obviously wrong, because ugly people are always incorrect."

(f) "Little Miss Attila is fat. This further underscores the point that no irregularities could possibly be taking place with respect to sales / promotional tactics for An American Carol, because that is also the sort of thing that fat people get wrong. Fat, and old."

(g) "Little Miss Attila owns a gun. Gun owners are always wrong about everything (see 'Palin, Sarah')."

Aw . . . . it's a fair cop!

Freddy, Fanny, and Barack

Via Hot Air, where Morrissey makes the same point Geraghty did: this goes beyond the election. If we aren't clear on how the financial mess happened, it will happen again. And probably worse.

Patterico: The McCain Campaign Starting to Connect the Dots Between the Democrats and the Mortgage Crisis.

Patrick's got the money quote from Senator McCain:

This corruption was encouraged by Democrats in Congress, and abetted by Senator Obama.

Senator Obama has accused me of opposing regulation to avert this crisis. I guess he believes if a lie is big enough and repeated often enough it will be believed. But the truth is I was the one who called at the time for tighter restrictions on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac that could have helped prevent this crisis from happening in the first place.

Senator Obama was silent on the regulation of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and his Democratic allies in Congress opposed every effort to rein them in. As recently as September of last year he said that subprime loans had been, quote, a good idea. Well, Senator Obama, that good idea has now plunged this country into the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.

To hear him talk now, you’d think he’d always opposed the dangerous practices at these institutions. But there is absolutely nothing in his record to suggest he did. He was surely familiar with the people who were creating this problem. The executives of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have advised him, and he has taken their money for his campaign. He has received more money from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac than any other senator in history, with the exception of the chairman of the committee overseeing them.

Mr. Patterico's got homework for Johnny, though:

Here’s what’s required for the follow-through:

It has to be mentioned in the debate. Three times. Preferably with a memorable zinger.

DO NOT misstate even the TINIEST fact in making this argument. If you do, the media will fixate on that and forget everything else. [People still read the media? --ed.]

Don’t let it drop. We need endless TV commercials with clips of Democrats saying there is no crisis. Find the footage of McCain’s speech (if it exists) and run that too.

This is a good start — but it’s just a start.

Ed Morrissey agrees, as does Jim Geraghty, who points out that this isn't just about the election; we have to know how we got here in order to avoid getting here again.

Moe's got more at Red State, along with extensive quotes from today's speech:

Looks like we're going to have one whale of a debate tomorrow, assuming of course that we can get past the junior Senator from Illinois whining for twenty minutes about how mean we're being to him. And racist! Mustn't forget the racism; God knows that his supporters never do. So let's rock and roll. It'll be a thing.

Moe Lane

PS: Oh, Sarah?

Lock and load.

I believe she's doing just that, Moe.

An American Carol: Funny Even in NYC

h/t: Hot Air.

So make up for the so-so opening weekend by watching it this week; it'll be less crowded anyway!

McCain About To Go on the Attack.

Fine.

And I expect you to hit the Annenberg Challenge very hard.

But I also want to hear the following phrases: Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and Barney Frank.

And I want the people to know that mortgage companies were extorted by the Feds into making bad loans.

It's On, Baby.

We have an answer to Silverman's pleas to save Florida from the clutches of that senior-citizen guy who's running for President.

And remember, Nana: voting's private. You don't have to tell your grandkids whom you voted for!

r

Okay: Let's Go!

How did we get here? Fannie and Freddie had friends in Congress that enabled them to continue operating in an unsound manner.

h/t: AllahP

Spread the word.

Madame Vice President,

I'd pay good money to see this.

Go for it, Ma'am.

They Convicted O.J.!

Racists.

Palin's Albright Quote Off by One Word.

Crucify her! Crucify her!

What Albright clearly meant was that it is fine to act like a Queen Bee if the other woman involved is a Republican. Why is that so hard to understand, Governor Mayor Bimbo?

Lucky for Me

. . . that I tend to prefer antihistamines to decongestants, and that I live in a dry climate that keeps my allergies in check. I'm still on generic Claritin, and it's working just fine right now.

Pain control? I have to get that on the street, since I'm cramping up 28 days out of the month as menopause looms. And my doctor doesn't want me taking more than 10 milligrams of Ritalin a day. If I really need to get something done, therefore, I need to double up.

Via Insty: "He Should Have Known He Needed a Prescription for an OTC Drug."

Welcome to Wonderland, Alice. You only need to remember one thing: "I'm from the government, and I'm here to help you."

"Will We Need a Bailout from the Bailout?"

Maybe. If we don't change course.

Not Good Enough, I'm Afraid. Please See American Carol One More Time This Week.

If you didn't see An American Carol Friday or Saturday night, you may redeem yourself by seeing it tonight.

If that isn't possible, you must see it within this coming week, because we are not, to say the least kicking ass. (Well, okay: we're officially at #7, but that's hardly what we accomplished with Passion of the Christ.)

Or you will have forfeited any right to complain that "Hollywood" never takes your point of view into account, and never makes movies that don't either overtly or covertly bash the troop.

Perhaps you feel good that Beverly Hills Chihuahua took top honors this weekend? Or that Bill Maher's Religulous made more money on fewer screens?

The movie is not 100% comedy, by the way: there are serious moments. When Jon Voight (who, by the way, spoke at the Palin rally in Carson yesterday) plays George Washington, he plays him 100% straight, and there isn't a laugh in that scene at all: just Michael Malone complaining that the church is dusty, and Washinton opening the doors so one can see the wreckage of the World Trade Center outside.

Because Malone, as the film's "Scrooge," has to have a moment of epiphany. That's when it starts, and the slapstick continues as the truth begins to sink in.

But as with "A Christmas Carol," An American Carol is about redemption.

So redeem yourself. Go see the movie within the week. If you do not, I'll know about it. I've never told any of you this, but I have eyes in the back of my head . . . it looks kind of funny, actually, and I have to be careful about how I comb my hair.

Go. Now. Thxbai.

UPDATE: Let me know if I need to reduce or crop the image; the entry's displaying fine on my browser, but one never knows.

The Palin Rally Yesterday!

Darleen's got some pretty comprehensive coverage, and good pix.

One of Dar's pix, which I stole because her camera's better than mine.

Darleen also quotes sobering articles from U.S. News & World Reports and Patterico, who suggest that an ability/unwilingness to explain how Democrats created the financial crisis this past month could cost us a lot of votes, and perhaps even the election itself.

If this is the case, it's time for McCain's people to man up, and remind the American public that John McCain attempted, two years ago, to avert a crisis that was the brainchild of far-left legislators—that decided a decade ago it was a human right to own a home one could not afford.

And G.W. Bush had nothing to do with this, much as the far left would like to think that anything bad has to be his fault (along with that of his twin brother, John McCain, with whom he has never disagreed). The financial crisis was a debacle of the legislature, by the legislature, and for the legislature.

UPDATE:Fellow West-Coaster Zoey has video from the event, including Shelly Mandel's introduction to Sarah's speech.

Mandel, on Palin: "This is what feminism looks like."

Also, Greta Van Susteran wonders how many feathers Mandel—head of the L.A. Chapter of NOW—will ruffle by endorsing Palin.

I dunno . . . how many feathers did Tammy Bruce ruffle by suggesting that homicide of a white woman matters, even if committed by a black football hero?

One . . . two . . . three . . . many. Bruce had to leave NOW over the issue, and Mandel may have to as well. What a courageous woman. Please show your support of Mandel at Van Susteran's web page, linked above.

An American Carol, Reviewed

Wow. What a fun movie: and this coming from a woman who doesn't regard slapstick as high art, and isn't sure about physical comedy at all, unless it's being done by Steve Martin or Bryan Cranston.

But when this kind of thing is done well, it's got a divinity all its own. My memories of Airplane! are fading enough that it's probably a good excuse to see it again—but I can watch old episodes of Police Squad back-to-back and have a wonderful time.

I had two personal, private litmus tests yesterday on opening night for An American Carol. One: would my leftist/neoliberal friends laugh at it? Two: would there be enough left for me to laugh at, given that I've already run three trailers for this movie, along with the highlight reel?

The answers are yes, and yes: Zucker delivered, and he did it despite the fact that I've already seen a lot of good gags cherry-picked out of this thing. Fortunately, it's a fecund cherry tree—jam-packed with laugh-out-loud moments. (And George Washington didn't chop it down, after all.)

The film certainly answers those of my friends who tell me that they are "JFK" liberals. The man himself shows up to point out that he himself was no pacifist—that there are, indeed, things worth fighting for.

I was just worried, because the project was so intrinsically ambitious: I knew there was a serious message in there, and I knew that the movie—in the vein of A Christmas Carol, had to redeem a seemingly irredeemable character. And deal, at the same time, with the most horrifying issues of our day. Yet the final product still had to be funny—in that Naked Gun-ish way. Even with an amazingly talented cast, Zucker demanded more of himself in this effort than he ever had before.

He pulled it off brilliantly. The serious subtexts are there, and yet I would take my unreconstructed, neo-liberal mom to see this film, and she'd laugh. So the movie's appeal is really to anyone who loves to celebrate the Fourth of July, isn't fond of terrorists, thinks Neville Chamberlain's actions were not 100% effective, in hindsight, and senses that the ACLU exceeds its original mission on occasion to a teensy little degree.

Oh, right: and that gluttony is no more attractive than any of the other seven deadly sins.

This is opening weekend, Kids. Now that it's been certified safe for your centrist and center-left friends, you can take your entire social circle to see it tonight.

Tonight—and Sunday night, to some extent—will tell the tale on whether movies that don't toe the anti-American party line can still make people laugh, and (just as importantly, if you want the laughs to keep coming), make money.

So you went to see it on opening night? No reason not to go again tonight—and then once more on Sunday, for that matter. Remember that old Annie Hall advertisement from the 1970s?—"It's always best the third time."

Vote with your feet, boys and girls. And have fun.

[Please just work around the comment spam; I'll clean it up tonight after I get back from the Sarah Palin rally. I know it's been horrible lately.]

UPDATE: Comments shut down; if you need to comment on this thread specifically, send me a note. Or just scroll up a few entries to the next AAC thread.

I'll be getting with Pixy on the comment spam issue.

Sheesh.

I had no idea I was going to have to run this video. This debate was either a draw, or a slight win for Palin--very close; both Palin and Biden did quite well.

But it's being spun as a win for . . . Biden? Come on.

I guess that means that after the Republicans win this election again, it will have been stolen. Retroactively. 'Cause no one could possibly vote for McCain; not after he brought Mayor Bimbo on board.

Via Goldstein, who reads the mainstream shit so I don't have to. Read his entire analysis.

Oh, Silverman, My Silverman.

The Great Schlep from The Great Schlep on Vimeo.

Well, Sarah, I was going to visit my relatives in Nebraska, but it looks like they don't need me. And my family left Michigan and Virginia a long time ago.

Personally, I'm going to Nevada, since I can afford it if I drive, and stay at cheap hotels. I wish they would tell me what city/county I'll be assigned to, since I need to start looking for cheap rooms.

I usually eschew Motel 6, because of the paper-thin walls and the lack of Wi-Fi; my favorite cheap digs tend to be Holiday Inns (especially Holiday Inn Expresses). But I'm doing this if I have to sleep in a tent for the ten days before the election. (How I'll get internet access in a tent is not clear: maybe I'll do the overpriced Starbucks/T-Mobile hot spot thing until after the election. Or maybe I'll find a local Denny's, where the internet connection is free!)

Keep in mind that any Western state (other than California) is more vulnerable than it looks, because of the libertarian philosophy in the West.

(No; McCain is not a good libertarian, but Palin is, and she's clearly going to be an active VP—an uber-chief-of-staff, a la Cheney—rather than the kind who just "sits around and waits for the President to die, as the job was characterized a couple of decades ago. And even if age ere not a factor, I do not believe John McCain is shooting for a second term: he has his protegé ready, and four years will do it to train her.)

So it isn't just a question of us being able to take New Mexico, which we will. I also believe we could pick up Washington state (maybe even Oregon, but I don't trust the polls that place that state in the pale blue column).

Thanks to David Linden.

P.S. Sarah, my stepfather—a Jewish genetics prof at UCLA, drove a VW bug. Professor Purkinje—a Jewish biology prof—drives a Passat. But my stepmother—a Jewish artist—drives a Lexus SUV.

So are my step-parents cool? Do academicians get an exemption? Or are they naughty, naughty, bad Jews? Please let me know.

I used to have a bug—a blue 1969 that I adored. But it's okay because I'm a shiksa, right? According to Sandra Bernhard, that makes all the difference, and will get me lots of niggah dick. So I got that going for me.

So it's politically correct for me to read the New Testament, as I understand it, but not the Old—even if I skip the first five books. I'm trying so hard.

I'm still worried about that 1969 Volksie bug, though, from when I was 22 years old. It finally got stolen; does that mean I'm in the clear? Let's say my stepmom succeeds in teaching me how to make her exquisite, delicate matzo-ball soup—with very little salt, no chicken chunks in it at all, and more dill than I usually get. (Basically, it's the polar opposite of the deli-style matzo-ball soup I tend to go for when I'm sick.) I think I nearly had an orgasm last night as I was eating it.

Will that do it, Sandra? Mastering that recipe? I so want to be acceptable to you, and I'm on pins and needles right now . . .

UPDATE: You guys got that, right? One of the points I'm making here is that there is a different between between edgy/provocative and just being an offensive asshole.

Lots of people are angry. Anger can help a person be funny—if she/he has the right personality quirk—but it is not a substitute therefor. Learn it, Sarah: live it. You're a great actress, but you know what?—you've never made me laugh. Never.

Silverman could shit on a CD , and when I stuck it in the Cruiser's stereo, it would make me laugh, whether I agreed with its underlying point of view or not.

That's something, BTW, that neither Lisa Nova nor Tina Fey's writers at Saturday Night Live seem to get about Sarah Palin impressions. Nova's first skit about Palin played off of the idea that a war hero might need help, and that a woman with a strong personality might be more than he bargained for ("um, I thought you'd help with the annual White House Easter Egg Hunt . . . "). Classic sitcom-ish dynamic in which a man's man has to deal with an equally assertive woman, and figure out how to deal with it. There wasn't any underlying truth about the McCain figure being "weak," but we put up with it because it was funny to see Sarah's strong personality blown out to an extreme.

That first skit was fine. Now we're being treated to "Sarah is an idiot, and there's not a thing wrong with the way the Charlie Gibson interview was set up, planned, or edited." So, goodbye Lisa Nova.

The first Tina Fey portrayal of Sarah Palin was as much about the "Hillary" character (Amy Poehler) coming to terms with the Palin candidacy as it was about Palin herself—possibly more so. Again, as with the "man coping with a strong woman" archetype Lisa Nova played with in her first crack at Palin, it was funny because it caught a underlying truth about female relationships: we really, really, really want other women to be successful. Unless there is any hint that another woman's success might cut into the tiniest sliver of our own. At that point, many of us—even the staunchest feminists—turn on a dime and see if we can get these other fucking bitches out of our own fucking sandbox, as quickly as possible.

But Saturday Night Live has also abandoned any attempts at humor with respect to Sarah Palin, and now we're back to "Sarah's really an idiot." Goodbye, SNL.

The Palin-Biden Debate(s)

Please, Sir: Could I have more?

They're like potato chips: one is never enough. Come one, boys and girls: do a couple of town halls together. What could that hurt?

Biden did better than I expected; no major gaffes, and only about a dozen untruths (that's good for him, right?). Sarah's still playing catch-up on foreign policy, but didn't try to fake it there: she stuck to the fundamentals, and hammered away that we can we can deal most effectively with challenges from/in Iran, Pakistan, North Korea, and Russia if we seize the opportunity to finish the job in Iraq, and then double-back to Afghanistan to do some dusting and cleaning there.

The point is, she didn't utter any untruths, because one from her would have been worth 30 from Biden—and she knew it.

To my mind loses a few points for not pointing out that Biden kept insisting on timetables for our withdrawal from Iraq: she responded that we'd leave at the pace Iraqi political, law enforcement, and military leaders (with input from American/Allied generals) decide is correct. But no one should ever let the suggestion that a "date certain" is a great idea in any war; Senator Clinton certainly never let that one go by, whenever it was suggested.

Last night on Fox News Krauthammer suggested that a transcript might give the win to Biden, but anyone watching it (or hearing it) would have to give it to Sarah. It did remind me a bit of the clichés about the the Kennedy-Nixon debate, inasmuch as Biden was quite articulate, and he was able to keep his nasty side in check. But Sarah, despised by 95% of the media, did exactly what she needed to do: she went, Reagan-like, over their heads and spoke "to the American media," making it explicit that this was her intention: when Biden pointed out that she hadn't answered a moderator's question, she asserted sweetly that she had no intention of answering the questions to either his satisfaction, or Ifill's.

Peggy Noonan has now seen the light. I was pretty pissed at her for not "getting" Palin early on, but I suppose it was inevitable that any protege of Ronald Reagan's would eventually cotton to Palin's appeal. (And, yes: I've been impatient with those who didn't see it early on: I've been following her energy work, so I've known her a good deal longer than most. Palin is no Harriet Miers.)

The job that McCain is explicitly applying for (and Palin, implicitly) requires some brains, excellent management skills, the ability to to communicate with the American public even when the media are hostile to you (yes, G.W.—I'm looking at you), and charisma.

Speaking of G.W. Bush, Palin's biggest triumph of the evening—other than winking at the camera, and refusing to lose her cool, even when Biden implicitly accused her of sexism by playing the "poor widdow widdower" card—lay in her masterful ability to distance herself from the existing administration without throwing the sitting President—or his advisors—under the bus.

Biden kept handing her a tiny effigy of G.W. Bush and asking her to wear it like an albatross around her neck. Every time, she politely declined to engage in "looking backward" and "finger-pointing."

Naturally, the McCain camp produced the first comprehensive list of Biden prevarications from this event; I'll want to check some of these out at a few of the law blogs as well. They list 14. I suspect that the reality is at least a dozen—maybe a baker's dozen.

Joe Biden's 14 Lies

1. TAX VOTE: Biden said McCain voted “the exact same way” as Obama to increase taxes on Americans earning just $42,000, but McCain DID NOT VOTE THAT WAY.

2. AHMEDINIJAD MEETING: Joe Biden lied when he said that Barack Obama never said that he would sit down unconditionally with Mahmoud Ahmedinijad of Iran. Barack Obama did say specifically, and Joe Biden attacked him for it.

3. OFFSHORE OIL DRILLING: Biden said, “Drill we must.” But Biden has opposed offshore drilling and even compared offshore drilling to “raping” the Outer Continental Shelf.”

4. TROOP FUNDING: Joe Biden lied when he indicated that John McCain and Barack Obama voted the same way against funding the troops in the field. John McCain opposed a bill that included a timeline, that the President of the United States had already said he would veto regardless of it’s passage.

5. OPPOSING CLEAN COAL: Biden says he’s always been for clean coal, but he just told a voter that he is against clean coal and any new coal plants in America and has a record of voting against clean coal and coal in the U.S. Senate.

6. ALERNATIVE ENERGY VOTES: According to FactCheck.org, Biden is exaggerating and overstating John McCain’s record voting for alternative energy when he says he voted against it 23 times.

7. HEALTH INSURANCE: Biden falsely said McCain will raise taxes on people's health insurance coverage -- they get a tax credit to offset any tax hike. Independent fact checkers have confirmed this attack is false

8. OIL TAXES: Biden falsely said Palin supported a windfall profits tax in Alaska—she reformed the state tax and revenue system rather than instituting a windfall profits tax.

9. AFGHANISTAN / GEN. MCKIERNAN COMMENTS: Biden said that top military commander in Iraq said the principles of the surge could not be applied to Afghanistan, but the commander of NATO's International Security Assistance Force Gen. David D. McKiernan said that there were principles of the surge strategy, including working with tribes, that could be applied in Afghanistan.

10. REGULATION: Biden falsely said McCain weakened regulation—he actually called for more regulation on Fannie and Freddie.

11. IRAQ: When Joe Biden lied when he said that John McCain was “dead wrong on Iraq”, because Joe Biden shared the same vote to authorize the war and differed on the surge strategy where they John McCain has been proven right.

12. TAX INCREASES: Biden said Americans earning less than $250,000 wouldn’t see higher taxes, but the Obama-Biden tax plan would raise taxes on individuals making $200,000 or more.

13. BAILOUT: Biden said the economic rescue legislation matches the four principles that Obama laid out, but in reality it doesn’t meet two of the four principles that Obama outlined on Sept. 19, which were that it include an emergency economic stimulus package, and that it be part of “part of a globally coordinated effort with our partners in the G-20.”

14. REAGAN TAX RATES: Biden is wrong in saying that under Obama, Americans won't pay any more in taxes then they did under Reagan.

h/t: Captain Ed, who was faster at finding this starter Biden-debunking than I was; I'm just going to give you the main Hot Air link, though, because Ed and AllahP have a lot of good VP debate coverage on their front page; the entry I'm stealing from right now is "lies and sighs," which contains that second vid and the "Biden's Lies" list.

I pilfered the Noonan vid from Ace.

I Think I'm in Love with Joe Biden.

I always know that an ad will be particularly delicious when the McCain approval comes at the beginning: that's his way of announcing that he's takin' off the gloves:

He's just so . . . . straightforward. What you see is what you get. He can't help himself. He's Joe. Via AllahP at Hot Air, who remarks

The ‘Cuda is already wielding talking points about Biden ripping on Obama during the primaries for his vote to defund the war. Expect to see that tonight when the subject turns to Iraq in an attempt to bait him into losing his cool. Everyone knows that JB can BS his way through the Q&A; the challenge for him lies simply in not coming off like an abject jackass. If he can’t manage that for 90 minutes, he deserves to be replaced by Hillary.

To which the PUMAs would remark, "too little, too late."

The Morrester adds:

Here are the keys that I’ll watch on each candidate.

• Sarah Palin: She has to stay aggressive with both Joe Biden and moderator Gwen Ifill. She has to attack the assumptions behind the questions, as Ifill will attempt to box her into desired responses. Biden will damn her with faint praise, being condescending while on the surface seeming courtly. She needs to push back against that. Most importantly, she needs to stop worrying about details and speak to themes and concepts, similar to what Barack Obama needed to do in his debate, and mostly failed. Best attack point: Biden’s pork.

• Joe Biden: He has a tougher assignment. He has to give the appearance of jabbing while trying to throw haymakers. Normally, I’d expect a man with Biden’s experience to attempt to drown Palin with details, but Biden has a habit of inventing those on the fly. Would Ifill call him on that? Doubtful, but the post-debate spin could get brutal. He can’t attack on experience, either, given Obama’s own short record of service, and can’t get by with the Joe Sixpack routine, either. He’ll want to press his advantage on foreign policy. Best attack point: Foreign travel.

I expect this debate to be filled with canned sound bites, gotcha asides, and very little in the way of substantive policy debate. In other words, business as usual. However, Palin has the most to gain and the most to lose in this debate. Biden is a known quantity and even a poor debate showing won’t hurt Barack Obama, but a disaster from Palin will provide a drag on the ticket that only clear wins in the coming debates by John McCain can reverse.

May I remind everyone that—biased moderator or not—this is Sarah Palin against Joe Biden?

What does everyone going to think will happen? It isn't easy to get under Palin's skin; with Biden, it's impossible not to. If Biden takes his meds, he loses. If he doesn't, he loses.

I Think I Might Be Ready

. . . to kiss and make up with Ann Coulter.

Darrell, I assume you'll be needing video of that . . . .?

Wait! I've Changed My Mind!

The Politicians to Watch

Courtesy of John Hawkins, whom I'm quoting in full, this time only:

As many regular readers of RWN already know, in 2006 I organized a group of conservative bloggers to raise money for the GOP. Well, this year we've got another group of bloggers together.

Ace of Spades HQ, Atlas Shrugs, Conservatives With Attitude, Gateway Pundit, Moonbattery, PoliPundit, Power Line, Redstate, Right Wing News, & Wizbang! have all joined up to help raise money for worthy candidates in the last month of the campaign.

Now, let me tell you a little bit about the slate of candidates we picked.

They're all non-incumbents in competitive races who were unanimously approved by every blogger endorsing the list. All of our candidates are in the House because the amount of money we're going to raise can make a bigger difference in those races. I would also add that you'll find this batch of candidates to be very fiscally conservative, pro-life, and tough on illegal immigration. In other words, these are exactly the sort of candidates we're going to desperately need in Congress next year.

Now, I don't want to scare you, but I do need to be honest with you: whether McCain wins or not, on the Congressional level, it's entirely possible that the GOP is going to have a year that is just as bad as 2006 was for us. In other words, even if McCain pulls it out, it's going to be an ugly year.

That's why it's so important to do what you can, right here and right now, for candidates who can make a difference. As you look at the candidates we chose, I think you will see that they are worthy of your support.

Dean Andal (CA-11): Andal is a rock-ribbed fiscal conservative who's endorsed by the Club for Growth. He's trying to unseat Jerry McNerney, an ultra-liberal who's a poor fit with his moderately Republican district.

Lou Barletta (PA-11): Barletta is a rising star in Pennsylvania politics. He made a name for himself by passing one of the "toughest illegal immigration ordinances" in the country and was voted "Mayor of the Year by his peers in the Pennsylvania State Mayors Association." Now, he's running against liberal congressman Paul Kanjorski in a moderately Democratic district -- and he's winning. This is a guy we really need in Congress.

John Gard (WI-08): Gard, who has pledged to never take an earmark, is taking on one of the most liberal members of Congress, Steve Kagen, who is far to the left of his moderately Republican district.

Rick Goddard (GA-08): Goddard is a retired US Air Force Major General who's going up against Democrat Jim Marshall in a strongly Republican district that John McCain could conceivably win 60-40 over Barack Obama. This is a great opportunity to put this seat back in the Republican column for a long, long time.

Chris Hackett (PA-10): Hackett is a staunch fiscal conservative who has been endorsed by the Club for Growth and has promised to "oppose every attempt to grant amnesty and a preferential path to citizenship for those who are here illegally." Hackett is going up against Chris Carney, a liberal who may not be capable of holding off Hackett in a strongly Republican district.

Melissa Hart (PA-04): Hart is in a rematch against Democrat Jason Altmire in this moderately Republican district. Hart, who had a lifetime ACU rating of 92% during her three terms in Congress, is someone we desperately need back in action.

Andy Harris (MD-01): Harris is a conservative Navy vet who defeated RINO Wayne Gilchrist in a primary. Because Gilchrist is supporting Harris' Democratic opponent, this strongly pro-Republican district is much more in play than it would be under normal circumstances.

Tom McClintock (CA-04): McClintock is a rising star in the GOP and is the only candidate who is endorsed both by Tom Tancredo's Team America PAC and the Club for Growth. Normally, McClintock would need little help in this strong GOP district, but he's facing a tough opponent and the sitting Republican Congressman, John Doolittle, became enmeshed in the Jack Abramoff scandal and is retiring from politics. Replacing Doolittle with a man like McClintock would be a huge improvement for conservatives.

Pete Olson (TX-22): Olson, who served in the Navy and describes himself as an anti-amnesty "budget hawk" is going toe-to-toe with Nick Lampson in Tom DeLay's old district. This is probably the GOP's best chance of a pick-up in the 2008 elections.

Tom Rooney (FL-16): Rooney is an Army veteran who taught criminal and constitutional law at West Point. He's matching up with Tim Mahoney in Mark Foley's old district. The district is only marginally Republican, but McCain looks like he will do well there and Mahoney isn't particularly popular.

William Russell (PA-12): Russell is a 28 year Army veteran who was at the Pentagon on 9/11 and served in Operation Iraqi Freedom. He's going up against one of the most corrupt, liberal, loud mouths in the entire House -- John Murtha. It's a moderately Democratic district and Murtha will be loaded down with special interest money, but with Murtha being dogged by a slander suit filed by one of the Haditha Marines he smeared, he may be vulnerable enough to be brought down.

David Schweikert (AZ-05): Schweikert, who has been endorsed by the Club for Growth, is trying to take back JD Hayworth's old seat. His opponent is Harry Mitchell, who ran as a moderate and voted like Ted Kennedy. In a moderately Republican district, Schweikert is definitely capable of knocking Mitchell out, especially if Arizonans turn out in droves to vote for favorite son John McCain.

Steve Stivers (OH-15): Stivers is a Lieutenant Colonel in the Ohio Army National Guard who received a bronze star and has campaigned on balancing the budget. He's trying to retain a Republican seat held by Deborah Pryce, who's retiring.

Folks, it's now or never. This is your last chance to make a difference for the next two years. Make the most of it!

Check 'em out. I'll look them up tonight to do the Joy-RINO review and make sure no one on this list is (1) anti-gay; (2) enforcement-only on immigration; (3) drillingonly, with no plans to move beyond fossil fuels, ever; or (4) one of those weirdos who has never inhaled.

h/t: Hot Air.

I'm Starting to Think You People Are Just Obsessed with An American Carol.

Which, by the way, has just released a third trailer!

Come on, Folks—let's have a little team spirit, here. Do you really want W. and Religulous to beat Zucker's fun lampooning of Michael Moore and terrorists at the box office?

More on An American Carol!

Kevin Farley drops by to see the gals on The View. Elizabeth is wearing a short skirt, and it looks great—so you may watch the clip without fear.

My favorite part? Farley discreetly attempting to gain weight and grow his hair so he could play the "Michael Moore" character, and how his mom was concerned that he must be depressed, and wanted to take him to see the doctor.

I guess they have to ask Farley about his brother—particularly on a show like The View—but there is something awfully offensive to me about the fact that he keeps getting asked about Chris every time he's interviewed.

But them, we've established that I'm way too squeamish to be a real entertainment reporter!

Who Knew?

Most people have no idea how magazines are put together.

My comment:

No, no, no. This is not something that anyone could have "done anything" about, even if it had been noticed.

1) The front cover is put together by the editorial dept and by art. It often involves a completely separate shoot from anything else done for the magazine. Unlike other edit content and artwork, it also has to be seen and signed-off on by the publisher, the circulation manager, and usually several other people. It CAN'T be swapped out at the last minute.

2) The back cover is sold as a back cover--the three most prestigious, non-negotiable positions being a) inside the front cover, b) back cover, c) inside the back cover (also "opposite TOC," "first seven pages," "right page, full edit," etc.--I could go on and on . . .).

3) As magazines are being compiled they are usually laid out on a wall--sometimes two walls (one for editorial, one for advertising). Whoever is doing the final check to make sure that there's no conflict between editorial and advertising is looking for:
- Any ads across from editorial that look too similar (and, no: no sane person worries what C1 and C4 look like together, because THAT'S NOT HOW PEOPLE READ MAGAZINES!).
- Ads with similar content that look like they might be promoting products in the editorial opposite them.
- "Competitive Separation"--IF TWO SIMILAR PRODUCTS HAVE ADS PLACED TOO CLOSE TOGETHER--LESS THAN 5-8 PAGES, SAY--YOU LOSE YOUR JOB.
- Use of bright colors that will "bleed" on a web press, based on the imposition used, and mess up the look of pages that aren't near them chronologically, but will be next to them on the web press.

Had the cover image been one of Condi and Bush, I might have done something about it, since there's a particularly nasty connotation about calling a woman a dog. (Same thing if one of the politicians were from the Middle East.) But as it is, it's just a cute juxtaposition that one has to do something completely unnatural to even see--lay C1 and C4 against each other, which only Martians do. And any equivalence between the cute puppies and the not-as-cute politicians is bipartisan. It's fine.

But moving that ad--promised on C4--means getting that advertiser's permission, as well as the permission of the advertiser on C2 (the only other equivalent position) to swap them, and than making sure that this action didn't create much worse problems for the non-Martians who read magazines in a normal way.

You do that without the permission of the editor, the publisher, and the account reps for both of those advertisers, and you get fired. Which means you have to wake them all up at midnight, and they have to call the clients at midnight.

The cover is FINE. It's cute, but you have to do the Martian thing to even know it's there.

I'm Confused. You Mean the Democrats and the Mainstream Media Told Me an Untruth?

I think I'll have to be alone for a while.

Confederate Yankee:

The Media and the Democratic Party Lied:
Palin Did Not Charge For Rape Kits

We previously debunked this smear campaign . . . but it is nice to now have Governor Palin on the record in her own words.

Flush another steaming, stinking, Associated Press-carried, Democratic Party-complicit, liberal-blogosphere- astroturfed lie down the toilet:

The entire notion of making a victim of a crime pay for anything is crazy. I do not believe, nor have I ever believed, that rape victims should have to pay for an evidence-gathering test. As governor, I worked in a variety of ways to tackle the problem of sexual assault and rape, including making domestic violence a priority of my administration.

A small liberal blog started the rumor, apparently after two Democratic Party researchers scoured the archives of the Frontiersman for dirt, and came up with an ambiguous story from 2000 that quickly bounced to a muckraking liberal blog.

Top Alaskan Democrats for Obama Tony Knowles (whom Palin beat in the governor's race) and Eric Croft, the sponsor of the law HB 270, both claimed in a recent press conference that Democrats falsely asserted the law was passed because Wasilla's police charged victims.

That is a demonstrable, bald-faced, and proven lie.

Read the committee minutes for yourself: Palin, Fannon, and Wasilla are never mentioned.

Three expect witnesses testified that they knew of no police agencies in Alaska that billed victims. The law was needed because hospitals occasionally exercised bad judgment and billed victims.

The media and Democratic Party should be ashamed.

Update: The New York Times-owned Boston Globe is still attempting to carry on with the smear. Perhaps you should register for a free account and let them know what you think about their editorial standards--or lack thereof.

Emphases mine.

Did we used to have real newspapers in this country, or was that just an optical illusion?