If You're feeling discouraged and think your vote won't matter

... you know, because of the polls, here's a little reminder.

A little word about polls. Polls are models, too. It's not like everybody who is going to vote is going out every day and voting in these polls.

Pollers poll a sample population, and then guess how well that sample represents probable voters, and what percentages of probable voters. To describe that, they ascribe weight factors to the numbers they collected in the sample and try to project what the actual voting population will do.

They are affected both by their inputs and their assumptions and their accuracy depends on how well the poller matched them with each other and how valid the assumptions he came up with actually are.

They can provide useful information, but they should not be confused with reality. They are mathematical descriptions about what the modeler believes describe reality. You know, like climate models. :-)

We Are the Grandchildren

“I have talked face to face with the godless communist leaders. It may surprise you to learn that I was host to Mr. Kruschev for a half day when he visited the United States, not that I’m proud of it. I opposed his coming then, and I still feel it was a mistake to welcome this atheistic murderer as a state visitor. But, according to President Eisenhower, Kruschev had expressed a desire to learn something of American Agriculture — and after seeing Russian agriculture I can understand why. As we talked face to face, he indicated that my grandchildren would live under communism. After assuring him that I expected to do all in my power to assure that his and all other grandchildren will live under freedom he arrogantly declared in substance:

“ ‘You Americans are so gullible. No, you won’t accept communism outright, but we’ll keep feeding you small doses of socialism until you’ll finally wake up and find you already have communism. We won’t have to fight you. We’ll so weaken your economy until you’ll fall like overripe fruit into our hands.’

“And they’re ahead of schedule in their devilish scheme.” (Ezra Taft Benson “Our Immediate Responsibility.” Devotional Address at Brigham Young University. circa 1968.”)

If you're my age, you are about the same age as Benson's grandchildren.

Now, look at this quote from an Obama supporter Peggy Joseph at a Florida rally after Obama's 30 minute infomercial the other night:

"It was the most memorable time of my life. I ... I ... it was a touching moment. Because ... I never thought this day ever happen. I won't have to worry about putting gas in my car, I won't have to worry about paying my mortgage. You know, If I, if I help him, he's gonna help me."

I'd say we're about there.

The Party of Privacy

"Helen Jones-Kelley, the director of Ohio's Job and Family Services Division insisted that she has everyone who gets public attention checked to see if they owe family support. Now with more detail about the searches performed on Joe Wurzelbacher, Joe the Plumber, Jones-Kelley acknowledges she didn't quite tell the whole truth. Her department also ran checks on taxes and welfare payments to see if they could catch Joe the Plumber cheating the system.

For God sakes, if you want to tap a terrorist phone you have to go to FISA in the middle of the night, with hat in hand and beg ... a plumber, playing catch in the street on a cul de sac in Ohio asked a random question to one of our two presidential candidates, the one who insists he's an agent of change, and he ends up being audited and vivisected and and procto-examed like a farmer stolen from his bed by aliens in the middle of the night. Whitley Strieber, 'Communion'. "-- Dennis Miller 10/30/08

And, of course, they're the party of tolerance and open exchange of ideas. Like when someone's going on a radio program in Chicago who has a bone to pick with Obama, supporters are urged to flood the station with calls, or when WFTV Anchor Barbara West asks a straight question that Biden tries to laugh off, and now that station is banned from interviewing the candidates.

LA Times Tape

It's not really the tape.

It's the double standard.

If it were McCain, the Times would find within it some "duty" to release the tape.

In. The. Tank.

It's a Gas

When we left for California a couple of weeks ago, gas was $2.79 here. Got back and it was $2.39 ... now it's $2.29 ....

Oil prices are down below $85 a barrel.

Which just shows t' go ya, speculation had a BUNCH to do with it. You know, kind of like the housing market. It wasn't evil BushHitlerCheneyHaliburtonIndustrioMilitaryComplex ... no. It was Wall Street.

Pop quiz. Wall Street is backing mostly:

A) Democrats
B) Republicans

Bet most of America'd gets that one wrong.

A Good Thing

Sometimes we here at the blog that even fewer people read ;-) feel like we're not making much difference out there.

One thing I have noticed in the past few weeks, though is that I'm getting a consistent number of hits daily searching for mccain jobs overseas and variations of that where they get a hit on this post.

So it's gratifying to know that some people are getting my take on it.

Of course I also get consistent hits from people looking for how to build batting cages.

But other gratifying hits are on things like "political orientation quiz" and "selective misquoting" and my review of "an inconvenient truth" (often looking for that Winston Churchhill quote).

My favorite, though, lately, is sane thinking re the current election -- though I'm afraid that post isn't too much help, I'm glad it landed them here. Huh. It's outdated (from 2005) -- And both of the links in the post no longer work. Sorry guys.

It will be interesting to keep track of these predictions

From Pat Buchanan ... not one of my normal reads, but I gotta wonder where he's wrong on most of these:

What does the triumvirate of Obama-Pelosi-Reid offer? Rep. Barney Frank is calling for new tax hikes on the most successful and a 25 percent across-the-board slash in national defense. Sen. John Kerry is talking up new and massive federal spending, a la FDR's New Deal. Specifically, we can almost surely expect:

-- Swift amnesty for 12 million to 20 million illegal aliens and a drive to make them citizens and register them, as in the Bill Clinton years. This will mean that Nevada, Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona will soon move out of reach for GOP presidential candidates, as has California.
-- Border security will go on the backburner, and America will have a virtual open brder with a Mexico of 110 million.
-- Taxes will be raised on the top 5 percent of wage-earners, who now carry 60 percent of the U.S. income tax burden, and tens of millions of checks will be sent out to the 40 percent of wage-earners who pay no federal income tax. Like the man said, redistribute the wealth, spread it around.
-- Social Security taxes will be raised on the most successful among us, and capital gains taxes will be raised from 15 percent to 20 percent. The Bush tax cuts will be repealed, and death taxes reimposed.
-- Two or three more liberal activists of the Ruth Bader Ginsberg-John Paul Stevens stripe will be named to the Supreme Court. U.S. district and appellate court will be stacked with "progressives."
-- Special protections for homosexuals will be written into all civil rights laws, and gays and lesbians in the military will be invited to come out of the closet. "Don't ask, don't tell" will be dead.
-- The homosexual marriages that state judges have forced California, Massachusetts and Connecticut to recognize, an Obama Congress or Obama court will require all 50 states to recognize.
-- A "Freedom of Choice Act" nullifying all state restrictions on abortions will be enacted. America will become the most pro-abortion nation on earth.
-- Affirmative action -- hiring and promotions based on race, sex and sexual orientation until specified quotas are reached -- will be rigorously enforced throughout the U.S. government and private sector.
-- Universal health insurance will be enacted, covering legal and illegal immigrants, providing another powerful magnet for the world to come to America, if necessary by breaching her borders.
-- A federal bailout of states and municipalities to keep state and local governments spending up could come in December or early next year.
-- The first trillion-dollar deficit will be run in the first year of an Obama presidency. It will be the first of many.

Only time will tell.

Woah -- didn't see this

Barack Obama:

I think it’s a remarkable document…

The original Constitution as well as the Civil War Amendments…but I think it is an imperfect document, and I think it is a document that reflects some deep flaws in American culture, the Colonial culture nascent at that time.

African-Americans were not — first of all they weren’t African-Americans — the Africans at the time were not considered as part of the polity that was of concern to the Framers. I think that as Richard said it was a ‘nagging problem’ in the same way that these days we might think of environmental issues, or some other problem where you have to balance cost-benefits, as opposed to seeing it as a moral problem involving persons of moral worth.

And in that sense, I think we can say that the Constitution reflected an enormous blind spot in this culture that carries on until this day, and that the Framers had that same blind spot. I don’t think the two views are contradictory, to say that it was a remarkable political document that paved the way for where we are now, and to say that it also reflected the fundamental flaw of this country that continues to this day.

I assume he's talking about slavery and racism. The Constitution does not even mention slavery or race. The blind spot was in the culture. The document itself was not sullied by slavery, and the Constitution was used to justify the correction of that flaw (which was far from unique in the world at that time.) No change to the document was necessary, though an amendment was made to clarify that race doesn't determine personhood -- men who were created equal and endowed by their creator, etc, etc.

To add to the Constitution the idea that people should be treated differently according to their ethnic backgrounds would be to introduce the non-existent flaw he wants to "correct" in the first place and could be used to justify all kinds of injustices.

The Old Politics

You almost can't hit this guy because it's gonna come back at you [...] but the whole thing about "it's a different politics" -- that's the "old politics" when you point out that he's practicing the old politics. - Dennis Miller

With friends like these ...

From this article.

Despite the media hype that we need to rehabilitate ourselves in the eyes of the world, the United States of America remains the number one destination of immigrants from around the world, some of whom take desperate chances with their lives to get here, whether across the waters of the Caribbean or by crossing our dangerous southwest desert.

Even when dozens of governments around the world join the United States in coordinated efforts to fight international terrorism, the media will call our actions "unilateral" if some demagogues in France or Germany spout off against us.

The American nuclear umbrella has enabled Western European nations to escape responsibility for their own military survival for more than half a century.

Lack of responsibility has bred irresponsibility, one sign of which are unionized troops in NATO and NATO bomber pilots who have office hours when they will and will not fly, not to mention NATO troops letting American troops handle the really dangerous fighting in Afghanistan.

Maybe the time is overdue for NATO to try to rehabilitate itself and for Americans to stop trying to be "citizens of the world."

Read those last two paragraphs again.

Lack of responsibility has bred irresponsibility, one sign of which are unionized troops in NATO and NATO bomber pilots who have office hours when they will and will not fly, not to mention NATO troops letting American troops handle the really dangerous fighting in Afghanistan.

Maybe the time is overdue for NATO to try to rehabilitate itself and for Americans to stop trying to be "citizens of the world.

He's Alive!!!

Yes. Not dead.

Went out to California to visit some family for about a week. It was actually a nice vacation (mostly) from the political scene.

Since I was in sunny California I did look around at the political signs and bumperstickers. I did see the occasional McCain sign, but they were vastly outnumbered. I had to roll my eyes when I overheard a conversation in a restaurant on pollution laws and such where the person flat out said "well, we set the standard for the rest of the country."

And what's this I hear this morning about the top donor to date to the Obama campaign was the University of California?

Isn't that a State University? Where do they get almost $1,000,000 to donate to a Presidential Campaign? Inquiring minds want to know. Hopefully, it's some sort of bundle given from faculty & staff out of their own pockets.

So it's finally being talked about in the MSM that Obama is pretty much a socialist, though from a standpoint of incredulity that it's being charged. And people apparently don't care.

And then we have this, from Obama (2001)

"... the Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth and the more basic issues of political and economic justice in this society, and to that extent, as radical as, I think, people try to characterize the Warren court, it wasn't that radical; it didn't break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the Founding Fathers and the Constitution....

[..]

You can craft theoretical justification for it legally, and any three of us sitting here could come up with a rationale for bringing about economic change through the courts."

Of course, I've heard this spun off as "oh, he wasn't talking about wealth redistribution, he was talking about "community organizing".

Really? Ok, well to be fair, I left this part out which went between those two excerpts:

"One of the, I think, tragedies of the civil rights movement was because the civil rights movement became so court focused, I think, there was a tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalitions of power through which you bring about redistributive change, and in some ways, we still suffer from that."

So he was talking about doing "community organizing" to organize voting blocks to vote for "redistribution of wealth" and "redistributive change" and "economic justice".

But naw, it was just the community organizing bit. Community Organizing. That's a good thing. Isn't it? Yeaaaaahhhhhhhh....

One could also argue that the KKK was just "community organizing". So, see, "community organizing" isn't always a good thing.

Actually what he said, taken as a whole, doesn't make any sense at all. It's a bunch of carefully chosen vagueries strung together and seasoned with some tasty buzzwords. Which is pretty much par for the course for Obama. He means whatever you want him to mean. Until he's elected. Then he can argue that he actually meant something completely different.

I remember back in the Mainframe CMS days there was a buzzword generator (just google buzzword generator -- you'll find several. Here's one.) BUZZWORD EXEC actually produced a couple of pages of complete sentences made up of this stuff that sounded great, but said absolutely nothing.

And even if the Warren Court wasn't radical, that it was a tragedy that ... and this is basically what he's saying, but it was a tragedy that voting blocks weren't put together to lift these "essential constraints" that the Warren court, in his opinion, didn't violate. You know, so the courts could do something that those "essential constraints" would have prohibited, but now having been lifted -- wouldn't be violating the new, less ... uh, constraining ... constraints. I suppose it depends on what you think the definition of "essential" is.

But that's the game here that Obama is so adept at playing because people are intellectually lazy. "But he just said they were 'essential constraints'." Yes he did. Practically in the same breath with arguing that the constraints changed via voting blocks of "organized communities". Feh.

Joe the Plumber

Saw a headline in the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette this morning which said "Joe the Plumber isn't one".

That was the headline. Which is of course what sticks in people's heads.

When you read the article, you learn that Joe does, in fact, do plumbing for a plumbing company. Plumb-er. One who plumbs. He isn't "licensed", and he doesn't have to be to do the kinds plumbing work he does. He's a plumber.

Plumbers' Unions do not agree. But the people whose toilets and kitchen sinks function properly because of his work would probably say otherwise.

Journalists. Democrats. Unions. Democrats. Through the filter of the MSM? Joe the plumber isn't a plumber. Who might that idea help? Democrats. Who'd'a thunk?

It's a rationalization - a rhetorical vaguery ala "depends on what the meaning of the word IS is". Obama is very adept at this type of thing.

Krauthammer on the Xenophobia charges

Good article.

But I got sucked in to the comments section and found a lot of idiotic statements, one of which I had to respond to (he/she was referring to Palin).

.... Frankly I think the comparison and innuendo about Obama being a terrorist and/or Muslim are much worse than any marginal race-baiting ...

For the kajillionth time, Muslim is not a race. As a matter of fact, the assumption that if you're Muslim you must be of a certain race is much closer to "racist" than anything Palin has ever said. Incidently, neither is "terrorist".

Muslim is a practicant of Islam, which is a belief system with Sharia embedded in its core. Sharia law should be troubling to anyone who values liberty, freedom of speech, and freedom of religion.

I don't believe Obama is a Muslim. I also know several perfectly nice people who are Muslim. Some of them are pro-war Iraqis, -- I digress. But Palin didn't say anything about "Muslim". She did say something about "terrorist". And Bill Ayers, a white American, fits that description. It has nothing to do with race. The Left is the one who "made the connection". They're good at stretching logic to its limits and beyond. She said "terrorist" which is obviously a code word for "Muslim" which is the same as "Arab", which is non-white, so clearly she's trying to draw attention to the fact that Barack doesn't look like George Washington. She's a RAAACISSSSSTTT!!! Huh???????????????? The head reels unless you've been steeped in this garbage-logic for too long.

As a friend of mine once said, "yeah, we look pretty silly when people pretend that we say things we've never said." Or believe things we do not believe.

More on the debate

Well, McCain showed us that ... he's not a very good debater. He's still a good guy, and he's still getting my vote because what he stands for is waaaaaaaay closer to what I stand for than what the better debater stands for.

McCain did score a few points. I think his single most effective line was “I’m not George Bush. If you wanted to run against George Bush, you should have run 4 years ago.” Obama's smooth counter was that McCain voted "with Bush" an awful lot. McCain should have counter-countered, "only when he was right. And at least I voted."

All that being said, Barack did not repudiate Lewis' remarks as out of bounds, inappropriate, un-called for, or wrong -- he hedged, like he does about practically everything else, using careful language, and then threw it back on Sarah Palin for not repudiating things apparently said at her rallies ... things she may not even have heard -- or chose not to dignify with a comment. Like I mentioned in my last post, we don't even know who it was or why he said it.

We know who John Lewis is and why he said what he said. And so does Obama. And he still hasn't condemned the remark. I don't expect him to, either.

I don't know that the debate changed many minds. My guess is that your average undecided voter isn't someone who spends a lot of time thinking about, much less learning about, how the economy works.

The FBI is investigating ACORN. Most people remember Wright. And Ayers is not the non-issue Obama would like him to be. If it were JUST Ayers, maybe. But it fits into this pattern of radicalism that seems to swarm around him like bees around a hive. Where there's smoke, there's fire, and there's a lot of smoke (and mirrors) surrounding this guy.

Oh ... as far as Joe the Plumber goes, Obama said ... (I know I'm paraphrasing a little here and am unsure of the exact number of years -- doesn't change my point) that he wants to help Joe the Plumber 5 years ago. Which of course he can't do due to that whole space-time continuum thing. This is more of that slick eloquence McCain brought up a few times. He says something that sounds like he's sympathetic to Joe, that he wants to help him. But he's actually saying, if you pay attention is, "sorry Joe, you're paying the tax if you buy the company now. Too late. No soup for you!"

Which is not dissimilar to Obama's excuse for being wrong on the Surge and sticking with the Party of Defeat instead. It's not what we need to do about the situation we're in now -- it's all about what he would (or would not) have done ... 5 years ago. You know, it was a bad decision to go to war in the first place, therefore, we shouldn't try to win it.

Question for you, Barack -- what should we have done several years ago when Bush sounded the alarm on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- and McCain a little later? Mmmmm?

How about nothing ... then we can blame it all on Bush next election, and pretend the Republican nominee is Bush and run against that. Even though we're the ones who blocked the reform -- probably for political reasons. I'd even place a small wager that it was blocked in part because it would be ... "racist".

Rude "pitchfork" types at Palin rallies

You know, I haven't seen anybody bring up yet that there is the possibility that the "kill him" folks were actually Obama supporters planting themselves at McCain rallies with the precise intent of precipitating this story line of the "hateful right wing" that we all need to be afraid of.

I'm not saying that it was. We have our kooks just like they do. But especially in this day and age of registering people to vote 73 times and hanging nooses on your own door and shouting "racism", or committing credit card fraud for Obama.... one has to at least consider the possibility.

And now for something a little more fun

A bit of training this weekend. Here I am clinging to my guns. I'm gonna have to find me a Gideon's somewhere and put it in a shirt pocket

Nothing to see here.

Nope, not moving in a socialist direction here at all. What, are you one of those crazy right wingers?

Count Every Vote

If you've been following along in your readers, you might recall me saying something about whose votes should count. I put out for consideration a minimum bar set at, you have to have the gumption to figure out what you need to do to do it -- and to do it yourself.

That cuts out people going and paying people to register, and then driving them to where they need to go to vote. In some states apparently you can do this all in one step as well. I talked about how easy voter fraud really is in practice, especially with no voter id law. Plus, if you can find out how to register and vote, you have at least a couple of rudimentary investigative skills.

Well, here's an argument for setting the bar a bit higher still.

Here's another

Calling John Kerry a socialist is just calling him a socialist.

But calling Barack Obama a socialist is racist. (like ordering a McDonalds Hamburger)

The title of the article is even What Right Wingers Mean When They Call Obama A "Socialist"

Conservatives, now and in the past, have turned to "socialism" and "communism" as shorthand to criticize black activists and political figures since the civil-rights era.

Well thanks for telling me what I mean when I say something. I wasn't sure. I couldn't possibly be calling him a socialist based upon his record and rhetoric.

And while we're on Sowell

His previous article is a must-read as well.

Fact Number One: It was liberal Democrats, led by Senator Christopher Dodd and Congressman Barney Frank, who for years-- including the present year-- denied that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were taking big risks that could lead to a financial crisis.

It was Senator Dodd, Congressman Frank and other liberal Democrats who for years refused requests from the Bush administration to set up an agency to regulate Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

It was liberal Democrats, again led by Dodd and Frank, who for years pushed for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to go even further in promoting subprime mortgage loans, which are at the heart of today's financial crisis.

Alan Greenspan warned them four years ago. So did the Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers to the President. So did Bush's Secretary of the Treasury, five years ago.

Yet, today, what are we hearing? That it was the Bush administration "right-wing ideology" of "de-regulation" that set the stage for the financial crisis. Do facts matter?

Update: While I was packing for a trip last night I flipped the idiot box on for a rare forray into the world of 24 hour news and was pleasantly surprised to see Bill O'Riely raising most of the points I raised in the last few days, including this one.

I still can't stand the format, but at least it's getting some national exposure.

Sowell's Series - The Real Obama

Thomas Sowell has a series of articles he wrote last week which, like all of the rest of his stuff, are worth reading. But this here's a 4 part series on Barack Obama and who he is and why it's important.

The Real Obama
The Real Obama: Part II
The Real Obama: Part III
The Real Obama: Part IV

"... one of the biggest and realest of all issues is the outlook and character of the President of the United States." - Thomas Sowell

And in keeping with my last post and several comments I've made on the internet over the past few months -- here's a BSIHORL for ya:

Only other politicians' special interests are called "special interests" by Barack Obama, whose world-class ability to rationalize is his most frightening skill. - Thomas Sowell

"Hate" ... again

Malkin has a pretty good response to the "Republicans Filled With Hate and Rage" meme that's gone out over the past few days. Sounds like a classic case of projection to me.

Apparently a few people at recent McCain rallies have been overheard saying less than savory things. Even when McCain denounces them, the moonbats still try to spin it into a McCain is a racist gay-basher thing. Unbelievable.

If you want to talk about rage and hate, the Left has generated an encyclopedia of it over the last 8 years.

I've also recently read several articles about how McCain isn't being honorable in this campaign. There are rarely any specifics, mostly allusions to bringing up Wright and Ayers as assoicates of The One. The lastest article alleges dishonorable and low and sleazy behavior on McCain's part, but fails to go in to any detail on anything, only bringing up Ayers and trying to once again minimize that particular relationship.

In this article, we see the lengths to which credulity will be stretched to paint McCain as a dirty, racist politician:

McCain struck the racial chord in the Nashville debate. When an African-American asked his question, McCain assumed that he was ignorant of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the entities the senator blamed for the Wall Street meltdown. "I'll bet you, you may never even have heard of them before this crisis"

A guy in the audience asks McCain a question, and in his answer McCain posits that the man (or the rest of us for that matter) probably hadn't heard of Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac before this financial crisis. If the man were white, nobody would have given McCain's comment a second thought. But the man was black, opening the door for the rationalization of a racist angle.

As I mused on Morgan's blog a while back

“The racist subtext was disturbing today when John McCain ordered a hamburger at McDonalds. As everyone knows, Ronald McDonald, when viewed in black and white, appears reminiscent of an actor in a minstrel show, clearly making fun of African Americans. Further, the buns on McDonalds hamburgers are white bread, surrounding the dark-colored meat which is oozing catsup, meant to represent blood, as the white buns depict two white men surrounding a black man and beating up on him - thus keeping him down. The “M” in “McDonalds”, the golden arches, is the first character in the word “Man”, as in “The Man” (also revealing his sexist nature). We can’t believe McCain’s racial insensitivity”

Once you get the hang of it, it's too easy.

What other mundane activity can you ascribe racial motives to? Maybe we should have a contest.

ACORN and other Tough Nuts to Crack

Riddle me this:

What if I told you that there are groups of people supporting a particular political party that goes to the poor and homeless, gets them to register to vote, often driving them to be registered and to vote? (Sounds so sweet and innocent and good-Samaritanly)

What if I told you that people supporting that same political party work in "Community Organizer" groups like ACORN who routinely submit false voter registrations?

And what if I told you that one political party in particular is vehemently opposed to voter identification laws?

I'll give you a hint. Voter ID laws "discriminate". They're "racist". They "disenfranchise." Which party really likes using those terms?

That would be the Democrats.

Now of the two current major political parties, people who lean to the more "personal responsibility" end of the spectrum tend to vote Republican. Those who lean more toward the "government is here to help" end of the spectrum tend to vote Democrat.

So let's think about this. Much howling has taken place during this election on the experience and education of a candidate in the #2 position on one of the tickets (the #1 position on the other ticket has pretty much been given a pass on this issue, but I digress).

What about the voters? Whose votes should count? I'm serious about the question. Let me also be serious about the answer.

If you can't get up off of your rear end and find out what you need to do in this day and age of unprecedented access, get registered yourself and cast your ballot yourself be it by mail or walking or driving or getting a ride to the polls ... then you don't have any business voting. It's not important to you. How can I have any confidence at all that you have taken the time to weigh the positions and make a decision on the issues? A minimal threshold is set, at least, if we only count votes of those who would take the time to, you know, get up and go vote, or register and mail in their ballot. This would be the position of the Party of Personal Responsibility.

If someone has to show up at your house and lead you by the hand to register to vote and to vote and to drive you by the vanload to get this done, then you clearly are accustomed to having things done for you and by George, we know how you're going to vote. And so do the Democrats. Which I suspect more and more -- is why they do it.

Now... let me tell you how easy voter fraud would be in places where you don't have to show an ID to vote. You "register" a bunch of bogus names in a certain district. You know who is on that list, because your organization "registered" them.

Now if you are associated with this organization and you don't live in that district, you can go vote in your district as you, and in another district as one of the bogus registrants, and another district as another bogus registrant... all you need to do is give your name and "verify" your address.

Or, you can take non-registered people, citizens or illegal immigrants, and send them to vote as bogus registrants.

Again, which party is supported by organizations that exhibit behavior that suggests this might be taking place on a significant scale?

Which party loves early voting, and same-day registration and voting? It's not just getting "everyone's" voice heard. No. It's not that benevolent. It's targeted.

And which party is vehemently against voter id laws?

And which one screams the loudest about voter fraud?

It's like raaaaaaaaaiiiin, on your wedding daaaaa-aaaay.

Question about the so-called "Bradley Effect"

Has anybody asked if the so-called "Bradley Effect" might not be so much to do with whites not wanting to appear biased toward the white candidate, but to blacks not wanting to admit that they're voting for the white guy?

I mean, I can't see too many whites giving two whits about the skin tone of someone I voted for. But it appears to me that if you're black and you're not voting for the black candidate ... you're some sort of sell-out, Uncle Tom, traitor to your race.

Just askin'. I always hear it portrayed as a phenomenon having to do with whites. Has the flip side of that question even been asked?

I'm guessing not. Because the conventional PC wisdom seems to be that only whites can be racist.

Update: RCP has this article out today by a Lance Terrance, Jr.

Christopher Buckley voting for Obama

Yeah, that Christopher Buckley... WF's son.

When he gets to the crux of his point, he says this:

But having a first-class temperament and a first-class intellect, President Obama will (I pray, secularly) surely understand that traditional left-politics aren’t going to get us out of this pit we’ve dug for ourselves.

Sounds like a huge leap of faith to me. Why would I imagine that Obama would do anything other than what his two autobiographies (at 47???), his record, or his campaign say he would do -- because he's intelligent? Because he's educated? Christopher ... really. An intelligent man bent on implementing the wrong ideas is far more dangerous than a man of lesser intelligence trying to implement the right ones.

And I really don't get why he thinks Gov Palin is an embarrasment. Because she doesn't sound like a Harvard Graduate? (Wait, George W Bush is a Harvard Graduate.) She seems to "get" conservative principles pretty well if you ask me. Better than Bush. Better than McCain.

She appears to be sincere, authentic, and best of all ... effective.

As far as "attack ads" against Obama -- what do you call Obama's ads against McCain? And while Christopher is banking on education and intelligent mattering ... I think character matters more in this position. Obama appears to me to be a self-absorbed activist. It's not only perfectly legitimate to bring up his associations with Wright and Ayers, it's of paramount importance to bring them up.

The Vicious Cycle

This graphic (shamelessly lifted from Morgan's post) says it all. And it ties in with this post (which has been getting a lot of hits from Google lately. At least people seem interested in checking out what the whole "jobs overseas" bit is about).

Of course, that's just the Jobs Overseas angle, and on a larger scale "State" can be replaced with "Federal" (if "state" can be taken here in the bigger meaning of the word "State", as in "Nation-State") and it still holds. In addition, "Businesses Move Jobs Overseas" is a subset of "Businesses Can't Afford to Hire Americans". So they either lay off Americans and hire nobody, thus shrinking their business and permanently employing fewer people, being less productive, adding fewer dollars to the taxable economic bottom line, further reducing government revenues ... or, they hire people overseas which might at least keep the corporate profits here in America where our government can tax them. Better for the government to tax more money than less money from the same company. Bottom line here is increasing taxes on companies has a detrimental effect on the company, the Americans working for the company, and the government collecting taxes from the now diminished company profits.

Economics is not a zero-sum game, ye Progressives.

The Election, in General

You may have noticed I've slowed down a bit over the frenzied post-fest of the past couple of months. Part of this is because I'm busier. And part of it is that ... there's not much that I haven't said on the subject of the campaign and I am getting a little weary of it.

Bottom line is, we've got two candidates running. They're both statists. One is the worst kind of statist, the other is much less so. One is in favor of preserving our Constitutional Republic roughly as outlined, the other would meddle with the First amendment (by pushing the so-called "Fairness" doctrine) and the Second Amendment ("sensible" gun laws ... as defined by big Democrat backer George Soros and his buddies on the left and in the U.N.) The other would not.

That right there is enough for me to endorse John McCain. I shouldn't have to say anything else to any sane person, other than go look it up and see if I'm telling the truth. I have confidence that you will find I am unless you're hell-bent on not seeing it.

I have been keeping up with what there is to keep up with. Frankly, little of it is relevant these days or it's a rehash of things we've already been over.

Barack Obama is a trans-national socialist ready to tell us we can't defend ourselves, we can't express our opinions, what cars we should drive, how much we should pay for energy, where it should come from, where to set our thermostats, ready to "radicalize" our children in the state-run schools, perhaps nationalize the oil industry ... it sounds a lot more like the USSR than the USA. There's so much more, but like I said, just that bit about the first and second amendments is enough for me.

Neal Boortz apparently pointed out (I got this second hand) that these are not "debates" we are seeing, they're joint press conferences. A debate would be where the people involved defended their postions on the issues or attacked the others' positions on the issues using logical argument. That's not what we're seeing.

Palin did what McCain needed her to do with the electorate -- he picked someone who has an American outlook... that is "American" outlook as defined by the first 200 years of the country's history, including lessons we learned along the way. Somebody everyday Americans can identify with. She gives me hope for the future and it's nice to know she'd be in his ear should he win the presidency. But she can't do it by herself. McCain needs to talk about why he's right on the issues, not just what his positions are. And he shouldn't be afraid to bring Obama's character and record in to question. There is certainly a lot to question.

And so it goes. Of course I'll continue to pipe up when something strikes me. Hopefully once every couple of days at least. I've got a couple of ideas rolling around in my head that I need to kick from a few more angles. But this is where I am right now.

CNN Focus Group Says Biden Won

Well, even if it did (it may have, as there may be a few people on the panel we can't see on the screen) it certainly was nothing like the way Soledad O'Brien characterized it.

"If you think Joe Biden won the debate, raise your hand... ok, that looks overwhelming."

"If you think Sarah Palin won the debate, raise your hands... so, small handful ... Joe Biden wins by a significant margin there, ... so, let's talk about..."

Sarah Palin mentioned in the debate how she has to speak through the filter of the mainstream media. I'm sure a lot of people pooh-poohed that line as a typical unsubstantiated right-wing talking point. Really?

Now I paused and went through it several times. What I found was, 14 for Joe Biden, 14 for Sarah Palin. Even if we're missing a few people, "overwhelming" and "small handful" and "Joe Biden wins by a significant number" does not describe what happened in the room. But she either saw what she wanted to see, or she didn't bother to look because she knew what she wanted the answer to be.

This is Joe Biden's count on the left, Sarah Palin's on the right (no, I didn't do that on purpose... but how appropriate, eh?) Click on the pictures for larger versions.












Watch the video for yourself.



Hat tip to Morgan on this.

Thanksgiving Comes First

This is a pet peeve of mine, and apparently of Morgan's as well. From Suldog. I'm with ya, Suldog.


I'm having trouble getting a widget on the sidebar, but as soon as I figure out what I'm doing wrong, it's going there for a while.

She Done Good

I watched the debate. I was quite happy with her performance. She done good.

"McSame"

This was a comment I left over at Morgan's place, but I thought it deserved a spot all it's own here.

This is a very simplistic tactic the Dems are taking with their "McSame", "4 More Years of the Same" campaign.

Basically, they want to say “Bush is bad. So anything Bush does is wrong. Therefore anyone who agrees with Bush is just as bad. McCain agreed with Bush a lot. Ergo, McCain is bad.”

This way they get to do a couple of things. They get to not talk, specifically, about which issues they believe Bush was wrong about. They get to avoid issues altogether. The issue is Bush. That’s their argument.

It conveniently sweeps under the rug the fact that Bush’s low popularity numbers have just as much to do with his lack of followthrough on many conservative principles as it does with pissing off the left by refusing to back down from them and their adopted allies in the Middle East. The left believes that Bush’s low approval ratings means all those people are in agreement with them on their issues. It couldn’t be further from the truth. It also conveniently sweeps under the rug that in the major cases where McCain disagreed with Bush — it was more often than not on the side of left’s issues. There are even issues wherein McCain agreed with Bush, such as on the illegal immigrant thing ... that he came down on the Left's side of the border.

The second thing they get to do is — now they get to run against Bush, who isn’t running, instead of McCain/Palin — who would be much more difficult to defeat.

I liked the way Palin brought up, a couple of times, that for a campaign running on “Hope” for the “Future” … they spend an awful lot of time pointing back at the Bush administration.

This is what the Republicans really need to start doing. Call the press and the rest of the left on their bullshit. And not subltly, either.

Patriotism

"No great nation can make renew itself and itself better without recognizing the wonderful things within it. That applies to everybody." - Peggy Noonan

She actually said that in response to someone wondering why Germans are discouraged from being proud to be German -- the had host interjected that it might have something to do with a "track record". Of course, she was talking about how patriotism is now denegrated as "rude", "jingoistic", "arrogant" or "national chauvanism", etc. She jumped in and said the above to the caller. She said "I know what you mean."

She had just come off of telling us about people she meets in New York, about how everyone there is from somewhere else, and she loves it when some one says I'm from Jamaica or Kenya, and I love it -- let me tell you why...

She also went on to say that as she's grown older she's come to appreciate that religious and political establishments exist for a reason, and that reason has something to do with accumulated wisdom, order, etc. They're not infallible, but they exist for a reason. Pretty well said.

Vote Breakdown

I was surprised to see this on the local news this morning, because it doesn't paint the Democrats in the best of light. They're correlating how much money house members recieved from the banking & securities industry with how they voted on the bailout bill. These numbers are repeated and analyzed here.