NYC Letter: Department Of Worship III

Countdown 90,689 minutes to awesome change

When a new administration takes office, no matter how historically wondrous it is, like Barack Obama, there's going to be someone out there on the other side who leaps to [sic] the chance to be the person who dumps on the parade every day. Is it going to be Sarah Palin?

Chris Matthews,
MSNBC "Hardball" anchor
and highly paid television person,
protecting while projecting
November 16, 2008 (NewsBusters)

An administration "historically wondrous" even before it is composed, before it is vetted, before it is invested, before it has done one single thing. [We kneel.]

The tingly Mr. Matthews has truly jumped the shark.

NYC Letter: Quote Of The Day: Rupert Murdoch

Countdown 91,454 minutes to awesome change

My summary of the way some of the established media has responded to the internet is this: it's not newspapers that might become obsolete. It's some of the editors, reporters, and proprietors who are forgetting a newspaper's most precious asset: the bond with its readers. ... A recent American study reported that many editors and reporters simply do not trust their readers to make good decisions. Let's be clear about what this means.

This is a polite way of saying that these editors and reporters think their readers are too stupid to think for themselves.

Rupert Murdoch, AC, KCSG,
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
of News Corporation and 2008 Boyer Lecturer
November 16, 2008 (cnet.com)

Readers too stupid to buy the newspapers that have done all your thinking for you (and this). Denken ist einfach. Verkäufe sind schwierig.

NYC Letter: Not-So-Imperiled Presidency

Countdown 93,074 minutes to awesome change

We were consternated to read this headline at LGF where it was given serious play.

OBAMA HAS MORE THREATS THAN OTHER PRESIDENTS-ELECT

Threatening a president or president-to-be of the United States with harm is abhorrent. We read on.

WASHINGTON November 15, 2008 (AP) - Threats against a new president historically spike right after an election, but from Maine to Idaho law enforcement officials are seeing more against Barack Obama than ever before. The Secret Service would not comment or provide the number of cases they are investigating. But since the Nov. 4 election, law enforcement officials have seen more potentially threatening writings, Internet postings and other activity directed at Obama than has been seen with any past president-elect, said officials aware of the situation who spoke on condition of anonymity because the issue of a president's security is so sensitive.

This is a now familiar formulary of news services: A sensational headline followed by a story built on sources not for attribution. Attribution used to be an important story ingredient. Attribution forms the basis by which story principals confirm or deny the claims reported and gives the reader a basis for judging the quality of those claims.

"Officials aware of the situation" tells us nothing, not the least because it is a construction that stands at a remove from "law enforcement officials". "Officials" does not tell us the affiliation or number or rank or stake of the source. An anonymous "official" can be anyone, a well-placed knowledgible informant or a passed-over bossling looking to splash a little kerosene or just somebody with a title and an opinion. Without being able to identify the sources, "officials" suggests far more than it means because it means nothing.

Still we were alarmed. Just what sort of threats are being made against the president-elect? We read on.

Earlier this week, the Secret Service looked into the case of a sign posted on a tree in Vay, Idaho, with Obama's name and the offer of a "free public hanging." In North Carolina, civil rights officials complained of threatening racist graffiti targeting Obama found in a tunnel near the North Carolina State University campus.

And in a Maine convenience store, an Associated Press reporter saw a sign inviting customers to join a betting pool on when Obama might fall victim to an assassin. The sign solicited $1 entries into "The Osama Obama Shotgun Pool," saying the money would go to the person picking the date closest to when Obama was attacked. "Let's hope we have a winner," said the sign, since taken down.

A sign, graffiti, and a "dead pool". Now these may be lapses in taste and judgement, but they hardly constitute "threats" to the person of the president. During the 2004 Republican convention in NYC, we dare say, there was an abundance of far worse than these on open display against Mr. Bush on any street in midtown at any given hour on any given day of the convention. Crude often obscene sentiments have been voiced against Mr. Bush right through his inauguration to the present day. These are protests not threats, part of the rough-and-tumble of political discourse.

Has the AP discovered any credible actual threats directed against the person of the president-to-be?

In Denver, a group of men with guns and bulletproof vests made racist threats against Obama and sparked fears of an assassination plot during the Democratic National Convention in August.

Just before the election, two skinheads in Tennessee were charged with plotting to behead blacks across the country and assassinate Obama while wearing white top hats and tuxedos.

In both cases, authorities determined the men were not capable of carrying out their plots.

Two threats, neither credible, both before the election, before Mr. Obama was president-elect. The AP in reaching to flesh out its story, belies the thrust of the post-election threats theme.

Then there is this.

A law enforcement official who also spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly said that during the campaign there was a spike in anti-Obama rhetoric on the Internet — "a lot of ranting and raving with no capability, credibility or specificity to it."

"A lot of ranting and raving with no capability, credibility or specificity to it." Why even bring this up? The AP quotes an anonymous "law enforcement official", who is not authorized to speak to the AP, about anti-Obama rhetoric on the Internet, which the AP tries to jigsaw into its threats theme even as the source disclaims any real threats. "Anti-Obama rhetoric" is the stuff of oppositional politics. The AP often reports this sort of thing as free speech. We would also note that this claim is pre-election, which contributes an additional nothing to the AP's post-election threats theme.

The AP then goes to the always-good-for-a-scare white supremacists, noting dramatic membership increases coincident with the election. But the numbers are miniscule -- just over 2,000 -- in relation to the civic expression by vote -- some 110 million. The white supremacist vitriol exampled in the AP report is pretty weak tea compared to comments on Mr. Bush that can be found any day of the week over at dKos or DU where minacious abuse, open threats, and vile wishes pass for free speech.

So is there a story here? No. Not much, not much out of the ordinary, if anything at all. We would posit a few theories behind the AP report.

1. The Continued Ascent Of Political Correctness. The current definitions of "hate" speech and what constitutes a threat have been so broadened as to quietly suck in legitimate political speech. Legitimate political speech as detailed in the AP story may not be pretty, but it is legitimate. Using the threat assessment standard applied the last eight years to the Bush administration, our guess is Mr. Obama is very nearly threat-free.
   
2. The Left As Eternal Victim. Having prevailed at the ballot, the left continues to see itself as under threat by a right composed of bitter, gun-clinging, Bible-clutching, anti-immigrant antipathists. The AP dutifully cooks up a story to confirm the left's hand-wringing.
   
3. Double-O Obama. Threats represent danger. In the teeth of danger a presidency that carries on the daily fight for spreading your wealth around vibrates with the excitement of an action movie. It becomes the presidency of 24, with cloak and domino darey-do just out of sight but broadly hinted at by the AP and other news slaves. Awesome.

NYC Letter: Department Of Worship II

Countdown 94,409 minutes to awesome change

So you voted for Mr. Obama, now what? How do you keep that crazy hope-change-screw-Bush buzz going? [Pause.] Why not splurge and have an Obama baby!

CHANGE YOU CAN CONCEIVE IN
Could Euphoric Obama Fans Be Sparking A Baby Boom?

November 14, 2008 (Newsweek) - The theory is almost too perfect to be true. Barack Obama, the son of politically progressive parents [i.e., they divorced], was born Aug. 4, 1961—almost nine months to the day after John F. Kennedy was elected to the White House. Is it possible Obama was conceived on that historic night?

And if so, could history repeat itself? In the hours and days since Obama's victory, many of his exhilarated supporters have been, shall we say, in the mood for love. And though it's too soon to know for sure, experts aren't ruling out the possibility of an Obama baby boom.

Newsweek's lede is as strong as its story. The 1960 election took place on Tuesday, November 8. And it wasn't close by bedtime. Kennedy won the popular vote by one tenth of one percentage point (0.1%) and carried only 24 states. Richard Nixon did not concede till the afternoon of November 9. But why let facts spoil Newsweek's gaa-gaa report.

November 4, 1960 was a Friday. A more likely theory is that the Obamas got busy going into the weekend.

Hope and euphoria, says University of Washington sociologist Pepper Schwartz, are a serious aphrodisiac. And voters under 30 went for Obama by a margin of 2 to 1. When you combine those two elements—randy people of child-bearing age—the likely result is what the online Urban Dictionary has already dubbed "Obama Babies" : children "conceived after Obama was proclaimed President, by way of celebratory sex." "If the amount of alcohol, happy people and major functions on election night is any indication, I suspect we'll indeed see a boom," says 25-year-old Brandon Mendelson, a graduate student in Albany, N.Y., who says he changed his vote at the last minute because "I wanted to be able to tell our future children that we voted for Obama."

Abbi Whitaker, 32, of Reno, Nev.:

On election night, my husband had managed to down a bottle and a half of wine in celebration and he was all about making an 'Obama election baby'. He thought it would be the coolest thing.

And in Chicago, where 28-year-old Chip Bouchard—a former Hillary supporter—attended Obama's acceptance speech, he says he looked over at his boyfriend, Chris, and thought:

This [is] the president under whom I [want to] get married and adopt a baby.

There are many good reasons to conceive. Drunkenness and politics and Mr. Obama, in combination or separately, are not good reasons. Of course, if you make a mistake, don't be punished with a baby.

Or maybe you don't realize your mistake until it is whining for a car, a cotillion, or college tuition. Consider humanely dumping your mistake in Nebraska.

NEB. PARENTS RUSH TO LEAVE KIDS
BEFORE LAW CHANGES

LINCOLN November 13, 2008 (AP) – The mother was running out of more than patience when she abandoned her 18-year-old daughter at a hospital over the weekend under Nebraska's safe-haven law. She was also running out of time: She knew that state lawmakers would soon meet in a special session to amend the ill-fated law so that it would apply to newborns only.

... The safe-haven law was intended to save "Dumpster babies" by allowing desperate young mothers to abandon their newborns at a hospital without fear of prosecution. But lawmakers could not agree on an age limit, and the law as passed uses only the word "child."

All states have safe-haven laws, but in every state but Nebraska, the law applies to infants only.

... To the state's surprise and embarrassment, more than half of the 31 children legally abandoned under the safe-haven law since it took effect in mid-July have been teenagers.

Eighteen teenagers — five 17-year-olds, two 16-year-olds, six 15-year-olds, two 14-year-olds, three 13-year-olds — have been abandoned, along with eight children who were 11 or 12. Five of the children dropped off have been from out of state.

But state officials may have inadvertently made things worse with their hesitant response to the problem: The number of drop-offs has almost tripled to about three a week since Gov. Dave Heineman announced on Oct. 29 that lawmakers would rewrite the law.

With legislators set to convene on Friday, weary parents like the Lincoln mother have been racing to drop off their children while they still can.

On Thursday, authorities searched for two teens — a boy and girl, ages 14 and 17 — who fled an Omaha hospital as their mother tried to abandon them. The mother was trying to take them from the car to the emergency room when they took off.

Let's hope Mr. Obama and the state are ready to be the loving parents you don't have the time or inclination to be.

NYC Letter: Quote Of The Day: Bill Ayers

UPDATE 11.15.08: Bonus quotes! First from Fugitive Days:

I can't quite imagine putting a bomb in a building today--all of that seems so distinctly a part of then. But I can't imagine entirely dismissing the possibility, either.

Not to worry. Should Mr. Ayers reconsider and blow you up, it's all about education:

Terrorists terrorize, they kill innocent civilians, while we organized and agitated. Terrorists destroy randomly, while our actions bore, we hoped, the precise stamp of a cut diamond. Terrorists intimidate, while we aimed only to educate.

On the heels of the above, understandably this next quote did not make it into Fugitive Days. Mr. Ayers in 1970:

Kill all the rich people. Break up their cars and apartments. Bring the revolution home, kill your parents, that's where it's really at.

Mr. Ayers today is a boogie homeowner and parent, so the above directive is probably no longer part of the social action program. Hhmmm. [Pause] If you are making more than $250K (or maybe $200K or $150K or maybe $120K) you might want to consider underemployment. Seriously. Being poor is the "at" where it's going to be.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Countdown 95,774 minutes to awesome change

We had served together on the board of a foundation, knew one another as neighbors and family friends, held an initial fund-raiser at my house, where I’d made a small donation to his earliest political campaign.

Obama’s political rivals and enemies apparently saw an opportunity to deepen a dishonest narrative about him, that he is somehow un-American, alien, linked to radical ideas, a closet terrorist, a sympathizer with extremism.

Bill Ayers,
un-American radical, extremist,
and once-upon-a-time domestic terrorist,
and present day self-excusing apologist
clearing things up for the curious
CHICAGO November 13, 2008 (Sun-Times)

The above is from a new afterword for the paperback re-issue of Mr. Ayers' Fugitive Days: Memoirs of an Anti-War Activist. Mr. Ayers wrote the new afterword this summer, July 8, 2008. Didn't think to share till the post-election cash-in book tour when anything touched-by-Obama translates to cash. [Indignant pause.] To further the revolution, comrade.

Mr. Ayers to this day asserts that he did not commit terror. He asserts that the Weatherman never killed or hurt anyone. That had they done so, everyone would have been very upset. [Pause.] But they did. And they aren't.

To claim that pipe bombs rigged with shrapnel, the Weathermen MO, "doesn't target people" is a lie. The express target of shrapnel is people. Shrapnel is meant to shred flesh, the envelope of a person.

And armed robbery never risks killing or injuring anyone. Oh, wait, that would be a lie, too.

Mr. Ayers the romantic revolutionary cannot renounce his past. And the boogie Mr. Ayers just cannot man up to it.

NYC Letter: Stay Objective, Don't Vote

Countdown 97,349 minutes to awesome change

I haven't been particularly clear in expressing myself on what the "symbolism" [of not voting] is. I know it's very idiosyncratic, but I would feel just a little hesitation, just a little drag on the airflow, if I went to criticize somebody, especially a president, for whom I had voted. It is driven by the same thing that used to make me keep my distance from the athletes I covered. I don't want anything, even that tiny bit of symbolic connection, to stand in between me and my responsibility to be analytical and critical.

Keith Olbermann.
MSNBC "Countdown" anchor
and highly paid television person,
explaining why he doesn't vote
MSNBC positional press release (portfolio.com)

When we first saw Mr. Olbermann's Countdown we thought it an over-the-top satire, like Jon Stewart's The Daily Show, only more over-the-top and even less funny. But surely satire. [Pause.] How wrong we can be.

Countdown is MSNBC's political deep-think show. Mr. Olbermann is not a satirist he is a political pundit-cum-sportscaster. At least that is what he and MSNBC believe.

Here, have a look and judge for yourself. [We wait on your look.] Combine this kerosene "political analysis" with Mr. Olbermann's antic television performance and you can understand why we thought Mr. Olbermann a satirist.

As Mr. Olbermann is an important TV personality, he seeks to reassure his public that his important opinions are not wild inflammatory rants but dispassionate analyses. How? By not voting. You see, Mr. Olbermann worries that voting might interpose itself between himself and a responsibility to be "analytical and critical", by which he seems to mean voting might color his judgement. Yes, the putty of his big brain is that pliant.

Take heart, Mr. Olbermann! Voting is the least of it!

Mr. Olbermann's analytic skills are limited to being loud and talking rapidly. His critical skills consist solely of an overwrought snit. He is intellectually empty.

Like the wife-beater who abstains from drink so his wife-beating is not misconstrued as drunken violence, Mr. Olbermann abstains from voting so his vitriol is not misconstrued as partisan vitriol. [Pause.]

Given Mr. Olbermann's fringy ideology, we do not press the argument that voting is a civic duty. A principle of not voting is not "symbolism". It is the cellophane veil behind which Mr. Olbermann thinks he has hidden his bias.

NYC Letter: Department Of Worship I

Countdown 100,424 minutes to awesome change

Some princes are born in palaces. Some are born in mangers. But a few are born in the imagination, out of scraps of history and hope. Barack Obama never talks about how people see him: I'm not the one making history, he said every chance he got. You are. Yet as he looked out Tuesday night through the bulletproof glass, in a park named for a Civil War general, he had to see the truth on people's faces. We are the ones we've been waiting for, he liked to say, but people were waiting for him, waiting for someone to finish what a King began.

Nancy Gibbs,
Time columnist and acolyte, writing on her knees
November 5, 2008 (Time)

[Hat tip: Bob Parks* at Black&Right]

------------------------------------
* Bob Parks does good work. B&R is currently running a $10 challenge to defray blog costs. Please pay B&R a visit and feed the kitty.

NYC Letter: More Awesome Change!

Countdown 102,359 minutes to awesome change

A NEW WRINKLE IN THE SENATE
It's The Young'uns Turn!

The Grand Dragon steps down! Robert Byrd (D-VW) the 91 year-old chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee yields his post to the 84 year-old Daniel Inouye (D-HI).

BYRD TO QUIT POWERFUL SENATE APPROPRIATIONS POST

WASHINGTON November 7, 2008 (NYT) - Senator Robert C. Byrd, Democrat of West Virginia, and the senior member of the Senate, agreed on Friday to relinquish his chairmanship of the Appropriations Committee, as Democrats and President-elect Barack Obama prepare to grapple with the gravest economic crisis since the Great Depression.

Mr. Byrd, who will be 91 this month, is a revered figure in the Senate but has had a series of health problems and hospitalizations in recent months. His Democratic colleagues increasingly feared that he was no longer up to the task of running the Senate’s most powerful committee on a daily basis.

... Mr. Byrd said that the time had come for new leadership, and that he would turn over the reins of the Appropriations Committee to Senator Daniel K. Inouye of Hawaii, who is next in line and who turned 84 in September. Mr. Byrd will remain a member of the committee and will continue to serve as the Senate’s president pro tempore.

Mr. Byrd is old and not entirely intacto. Erratic, drifty, often confused, he is an object of snickering in the Senate. Made more so by a heaping of deferrential pomposities (e.g., the "conscience of the Senate", a title with all the moral heft of "picture frame of the Senate") to dress up his senectitude, while, ironically, drawing attention to his colorful past.

Aides said that Mr. Byrd was well-aware of the chatter among his colleagues and that he had made the decision of his own accord. Mr. Byrd, a fierce defender of Senate history and tradition, was also said to be uninterested in the manufactured title of chairman emeritus, which some Democrats had proposed as an incentive for him to step aside.

Give Mr. Byrd credit here for declining the ginned-up empty emeritus.

Mr. Byrd...continues to be a formidable force and one of the most eloquent voices in the chamber, often delivering impassioned speeches that hearken to an earlier era when rhetorical flourishes were a matter of deep pride and when senators spent far more time listening to one another in person rather than monitoring floor proceedings from their office by watching C-Span.

Yes, well, we think Mr. Byrd several hundred notches less than Ciceronian. More Claudian.* Here is an example of Mr. Byrd's celebrated "flourish". Here is another. Here another. Another. And another. And still another. [Pause.] The kindest thing that can be said of these painful performances is that they are embarrassing.

If Mr. Obama's ascent contributed to the descent of the entrenched Mr. Byrd, well, no denying it, that's a change.

------------------------------------
* Tiberius Claudius (Drusus Nero) Caesar Augustus Germanicus (10 BC - 54 AD), fourth Roman Emperor of the Julio-Claudian dynasty, was a rambling dizzy speaker.

NYC Letter: Awesome Change!

Countdown 103,379 minutes to awesome change

As the MSM relentlessly savaged the Bush administration, spun the war in Iraq as an over-reach and a certain failure, and gave cover to an incompetent reckless Democratic Congress, we have had to endure pious protestations of journalistic integrity and blow-offs of no foul. Just journalists doing their jobs. [Grand pause.] Well, brothers and sisters, no more. Mr. Obama is so super terrific that journalists will no longer feel obligated to lie about their objectivity or hide bias or disguise a plug.

Lordy, that is awesome change!

Case in point, tireless Bush critic Chris Matthews of MSNBC's "Hardball". Last Thursday on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" Mr. Matthews professed his job was to do everything he could to make Mr. Obama's presidency successful. When challenged by host Joe Scarborough -- who apparently hadn't seen the MSNBC "come clean" promo -- Mr. Matthews reaffirmed his true vocation. [Pause.] Really, he's serious.

MATTHEWS: Yeah, well, you know what? I want to do everything I can to make this thing work, this new presidency work, and I think that --

SCARBOROUGH: Is that your job? You just talked about being a journalist!

MATTHEWS: Yeah, that's my job. My job is to help this country.

[Cross-talk.]

SCARBOROUGH: Your job is to make this presidency work?

MATTHEWS: [Unintelligble stumble.] To make this work successfully. Because this country needs a successful presidency.

Apparently for the past eight years America hasn't been in need of a successful presidency. Lucky Mr. Obama to catch the break.

"IT'S OKAY TO BE FOR ME!"
In Fact, I Am The Only One To Be For
[Photo source: Times Online]

NYC Letter: Changing Change

Countdown 105,569 minutes to awesome change

Change is coming!

No. Wait! It's already here, but it's changed.

Mr. Obama is nothing if not about change. Change so, um, changey that it shape-shifts before your very eyes. Just as one can never toe-dip in the same Heraclitean river twice, so too the change flowing from the Office of the President-elect changes on the second read.

LGF watches the change change, story here.

NYC Letter: "I Have Seen The Decency Of George W. Bush"

Countdown 106,274 minutes to awesome change

Many liberals refuse to concede Bush's humanity, much less his achievements. But that humanity is precisely what I will remember. I have seen President Bush show more loyalty than he has been given, more generosity than he has received. I have seen his buoyancy under the weight of malice and his forgiveness of faithless friends. Again and again, I have seen the natural tug of his pride swiftly overcome by a deeper decency -- a decency that is privately engaging and publicly consequential.

Before the Group of Eight summit in 2005, the White House senior staff overwhelmingly opposed a new initiative to fight malaria in Africa for reasons of cost and ideology -- a measure designed to save hundreds of thousands of lives, mainly of children under 5. In the crucial policy meeting, one person supported it: the president of the United States, shutting off debate with a moral certitude that others have criticized. I saw how this moral framework led him to an immediate identification with the dying African child, the Chinese dissident, the Sudanese former slave, the Burmese women's advocate. It is one reason I will never be cynical about government -- or about President Bush.

Michael Gerson,
WaPo op-ed columnist,
THE DECENCY OF GEORGE W. BUSH
November 7, 2008 (WaPo)

At least someone in the press remembers. [Hard sigh.] And the shame of it is George Bush might've done more had friends stood fast, had a bitter opposition tempered its spleen, and had the fourth estate fairly and responsibly reported both the good and bad of Mr. Bush's presidency.

You too may want to remember. We encourage you to express your appreciation. Call or write our president. [Pause.] Just a simple thank you for, among other things, keeping America safe for the past seven years.

NYC Letter: Congratulations, President-elect!

Countdown 110,100 minutes to awesome change

We called it wrong.

NOT LIKE THE OTHER DOLLAR GUYS
America Overcomes Its Last Prejudice, Elects French President!!

At 10:00 CST last night Mr. McCain called Mr. Obama and conceded the race and congratulated him. Shortly after, he told the troops on the lawn of the Biltmore Hotel in Phoenix.

Good morning! Mr. Obama will be our new president, the One will be the 44th.

We believe Mr. Obama will be greatly surprised if not tempered by the real job of the presidency, in stark contrast to the fabulous job of healing and ocean-settling he talked up during the campaign. This was a quadrennial election not the Civil War, so we don't expect much healing will be necessary. After all it was the conservatives who lost, not the liberals. King Cnut had no luck taming the ocean, so we hope Mr. Obama doesn't spend a lot of time ordering the waves around.

Now Mr. Obama may not've been your man -- he wasn't ours -- but he is yours and my president. We wish him well.

NYC Letter: A Heartbeat Away...

Today, Vote

First, a reminder. Most polling stations close around 8:00P. If you haven't voted, vote. Now back to the post.

People often think we simply name-call when we say Joe Biden is an idiot. Some think we kid that Joe Biden is our foremost objection to an Obama presidency. [Pause.] We aren't and we aren't. He is an idiot. [Pause.] And a political whore. [Pause.] But that actually worries us less.

I never make any big, big gaffes. I mean, you guys love saying that about me, but I tell you what, just look at the numbers. I don’t have any problem with what I’ve said and there’s nothing I’ve said that I would back off of.

Joe "Hi-Q" Biden,
giving his authorized assessment of himself
November 3, 2008 (ABC)

Joe's boast is he "never made any big, big gaffes". You know, like the doctor who boasts he doesn't kill too many patients.

This struck us as "big, big":

When we kicked -- along with France, we kicked Hezbollah out of Lebanon, I said and Barack said, "Move NATO forces in there. Fill the vacuum, because if you don't know -- if you don't, Hezbollah will control it." Now what's happened? Hezbollah is a legitimate part of the government in the country immediately to the north of Israel.

Maybe Joe considers this a misinformed fairy tale, which disqualifies it as a gaffe.

We also thought this "big, big":

With regard to Iraq, I indicated it would be a mistake to -- I gave the president the power. I voted for the power because he said he needed it not to go to war but to keep the United States, the UN in line, to keep sanctions on Iraq and not let them be lifted.

The bill, H.J.Res.114, Mr. Biden voted for was titled "Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002", that was his first clue. The authorization (§3.a.1-2) reads:

The President is authorized to use the Armed Forces of the United States as he determines to be necessary and appropriate in order to:

(1) defend the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq; and

(2) enforce all relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions regarding Iraq.

We would call that the dinger, when the little foreign policy "expert" bell in Mr. Biden's big brain should have gone "ding".

And here is Joe on Meet the Press, August 4, 2002:

RUSSERT: If the president of the United States [scil., Bill Clinton] was saying four years ago clear evidence of mass destruction, do we have any choice but to eliminate Saddam Hussein and the threat?

BIDEN: We have no choice but to eliminate the threat.

So maybe VP candidate Joe is just outright fibbing about his support for the war. A lie, but, again, not a gaffe.

Finally from Meet the Press, September 7, 2008, this seemed glaringly "big, big" to us:

BROKAW: Here you were, just one year ago, on MEET THE PRESS. This was your take on the surge at that time, so let's listen to that, Senator.

"I mean, the truth of the matter is" "this administration's policy and the surge are a failure," you said, "and that the surge, which was supposed to stop sectarian violence and - long enough to give political reconciliation, there has been no political reconciliation."

Then you went on to say earlier in the year, "General Petraeus believes that it is a good idea, the surge. He may be the only one who believes that. Virtually no one else believes it's a good idea." Well, at the time, John McCain did, and all the indications are the surge has worked up to a point. It's not a victory...but the conditions are in place, and Anbar province...where there had been so much difficulty, the Iraqis now have taken over that province. We have brigades that have Sunnis and Shia serving side by side fighting the terrorists. But it's a process, and it's beginning, and the surge made that possible, did it not?

BIDEN: No. The surge helped make that--what made is possible in Anbar province is they did what I'd suggested two and a half years ago: gave local control. They turned over and they said to the Sunnis in Anbar province, "We promise you, don't worry, you're not going to have any Shia in here. There's going to be no national forces in here. We're going to train your forces to help you fight al-Qaeda." And that you--what you had was the awakening. The awakening was not an awakening by us, it was an awakening of the Sunnis in Anbar province willing to fight.

It takes a lot of twisting and magic tequila shots to see the surge in the Biden Iraq plan. It was never remotely conceived of as a surge. If it had been, well, wouldn't've Joe recognized his own ideas in the surge policy and supported it, not opposed it?

Maybe VP candidate Joe just considers this self-aggrandizing horse hockey. Bullshit, but, again, not a gaffe. [Pause.] Fairy tales. Lies. Bullshit. But no "big, big" gaffes. [We search the stars.] He's an idiot.

Well, tomorrow we won't have Joe Biden to kick around anymore, so we give one last glimpse of his big brain unbridled.

BIDEN OFFERS HIS TAKE ON GIRLS

LEE'S SUMMIT, Missouri November 3, 2008 (Fox) - "Hey folks, 37 more hours!" ... Telling voters in this swing state that "change is on the way," the Democratic vice presidential candidate offered one of his now-expected random introductory tangents.

The latest was about his sister, Val, his wife Jill, and Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill, who introduced the Bidens at the rally of 1,100 people in the gym at Longview Community College.

You know why I think Jill likes Claire McCaskill so well, Senator McCaskill? Jill is one of five sisters, Claire is one of three sisters. And I tell you what, you women raised with sisters are different than women raised with brothers," Biden said as both women joined him on stage.

My sister is smart, runs every one of my campaigns; is beautiful; graduated with honors from college; is homecoming queen. But she's a ... she is what I call a 'girl-boy' growing up, you know what I mean?

And I tell you what? Girl-girls are tougher than girl-boys. But there's one important thing I noticed.The great thing about marrying into a family with five sisters, there's always one that loves you. 'Cause you can count on splitting them a bit. You know what I mean?

I shouldn't be going off like this, but -- hey, folks, 37 more hours, 37 more hours.

Mercifully, we are spared and Joe denied at the polls.

NYC Letter: We Do Not Despair

Today, Vote

The polls are against the McCain/Palin ticket. The smart money gives the Obama/Biden ticket 10-to-1 odds. The electoral college is predicted to be a blowout.

But we do not believe the polls.

And for once, we do not believe the smart money. While the electoral college numbers are guesses based on the polls that we do not believe.

Perhaps some of this is obstinance in a partisan cause and tomorrow we may look like donkeys. So be it.

This election cycle MSM coverage has been so skewed -- at times vicious, at times petty -- but so blatantly skewed against the McCain/Palin ticket that even the media takes note. Polls about the polls, polls about the MSM consistently show that the viewerships, readerships, and listeners do not find the reporting credible.

If the McCain/Palin ticket were a complete disaster along the lines of the McGovern/Eagleton/Shriver ticket of 1972, well, we would concede the bleak picture the polls and the media present. But it is not:

• John McCain in his own right is an accomplished and well-respected Senator. He is not a divisive political figure and has a reputation as a conciliator.

• The bottom of the Republican ticket outdraws the top of the Democratic ticket at whistlestops and in television ratings.

• The McCain/Palin ticket may be plagued by gossips but it is not freighted with scandals like the Obama/Biden ticket. For that matter the McCain/Palin ticket is not freighted with Joe Biden.

It is curious that so little of this has been reflected in the polls. The McCain/Palin ticket has a natural constituency that simply disappeared from the polls after September.

The Obama/Biden ticket of course is greatly advantaged by the historical moment. There are a great many voters who will vote for a first black president. But having done that, the moment will pass and there will be no gauzy curtain between the ticket and its policies. This will come as a rude surprise to many voters who vote to make history. We are content to vote for responsible governance and leave history to sort itself out.

Going to the polls ourselves, we don't pretend we'd rather have our man 10 points down than 5 up. We wish the McCain/Palin ticket was a sure thing. [Pause.] But we don't believe in sure things.

NYC Letter: A View From The Great White North

Countdown 1 day to go

Obama is essentially offering the white population of the United States, in exchange for his residency in the White House, an end to the racial guilt complex that’s formed over 145 years of quasi-segregation of African- Americans, following what Lincoln called “the bondman’s 250 years of unrequited toil.” And as a bonus, this will also be the end of the hackneyed and checkered spokesmanship for the black community of scoundrels such as Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, Charlie Rangel and the Obama family’s recently discharged pastor, Jeremiah Wright.

... Under the Mephistophelean influence of the most biased media coverage of a U.S. election since Barry Goldwater in 1964, Obama’s peculiar associations have been downplayed and McCain has been portrayed as serving up a smear-job for raising them at all.

Twenty years of listening, each Sunday, to the demented ravings of Father Jeremiah; the relationship with unrepentant former terrorist Bill Ayers, as they squandered $100-million of the late Walter Annenberg’s money teaching Marxism but not raising test scores in Chicago; Obama’s relations with the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (Acorn), now being investigated for extensive voter-registration fraud in 14 states; and Obama’s provenance from the roughest, crudest, political machine in the country, the Democratic Party that has ruled Chicago and its suburbs for 80 years; all have been ignored or glossed over, and have received less investigative attention than Joe the Plumber’s tax returns or Sarah Palin’s wardrobe.

Conrad Black,
OP-ED November 1, 2008 (NatPo)

Worth the full read.

NYC Letter: "Got A Few Minutes?"

Countdown 1 day to go

Spare Fred Thompson a few minutes.

MAKING THE CASE FOR PROSPERITY OVER SOCIALISM
View Video Here

[Hat tips: Various correspondents]

Some money quotes:

“Obama's so-called tax cuts for people who don't pay income taxes, of course, aren't really tax cuts at all, just additional spending in the form of government checks, paid for by us, the American taxpayer.”

“Obama's idea of health care reform is moving more people away from private insurance into a Medicare-type government-run program. His education plan? Look no further than the federal bureaucracy that seems to work for the NEA, but not the American people. And his plan to defend the sanctity of life? Well, there would be none.”

“Obama and the Democrats believe that Americans in a time of crisis will be willing to sacrifice their freedoms, abandon their founding principles and common sense and ease into the mediocrity of the warm embrace of the Washington Papa Bear, who'll take care of all our problems.”

“We've always been able to accommodate constructive change without turning our back on our first principles. We must do it again. However, that does not include staking everything upon the eloquence and inexperience of one who has towed the extreme liberal and partisan line his entire political life -- as much as he tries to blur that fact now.”

NYC Letter: Drink The Kool-Aid: Obama Tax Cuts Redux

Countdown 2 days to go

Let me be absolutely clear. If you are a family making less than $250,000 a year, you will not see your taxes go up. Not your capital gains tax, not your payroll tax, not your income tax. No taxes. Your taxes will not go up.

Mr. Obama,
being perfectly clear about a $250,000 tax hike floor
SPRINGFIELD, Missouri July 30, 2008 (CNN)

So let's be clear about my tax plan... I want to provide a tax cut for 95 percent of Americans, 95 percent. If you make less than a quarter of a million dollars a year, you will not see a single dime of your taxes go up. If you make $200,000 a year or less, your taxes will go down.

Mr. Obama,
being clear about his tax plan
SECOND PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE
NASHVILLE, Tennessee October 7, 2008 (CNN)

Mr. Obama deliberately conflates two campaign messages, tax hikes for the rich, tax cuts for the middle class. This is a neat trick. The truth of Mr. Obama's tax plan requires careful parsing and cross-referencing different message stylings at different times, in different venues. Most listeners just take for granted they are in the 95 percentile because, well, it's a really big percentile.

Mr. Obama believes that the middle class ends at $249,999.99. If you stay below Mr. Obama's quarter million dollar earnings mark, you are a middle-class Joe. If you stay below Mr. Obama's $200,000 earnings mark -- Congratulations! -- you are a middle-class beneficiary of Obamanomics.

Or maybe not.

$200,000?

Obama's position in the past was that he would raise taxes on families making more than $250,000 a year and individuals making more than $200,000. But in his new ad, "Defining Moment," he seems to lower it to $200,000 for families. Mr. Obama:

Here's what I'll do as president. To deal with our current emergency I'll launch a rescue plan for the middle class That begins with a tax cut for 95 percent of working Americans. If you have a job, pay taxes and make less than $200,000 a year, you'll get a tax cut.

That seems kind of ambiguous, but the graphic on the screen says clearly:

Famlies making less than $200,000 get tax cut.

$150,000?

Joe "Hi-Q" Biden, October 27, 2008:

What we’re saying is that $87 billion tax break doesn’t need to go to people making an average of $1.4 million, it should go like it used to. It should go to middle class people — people making under $150,000 a year.

$120,000?

Bill "Et Tu" Richardson, October 31, 2008:

What Obama wants to do is, is, he is basically looking at $120,000 and under among those that in the middle class that there is a tax cut for those.

So what is it, $250,000? $200,000? $150,000? $120,000? [Pause.] The Obama campaign can reasonably argue that those between $250K and the tax-cut threshold won't have their taxes raised. That keeps them square with Mr. Obama's promise. But the Obama campaign cannot ratchet down the tax-cut ceiling, again and again, and Mr. Obama still credibly claim a tax cut for 95% of Americans. If 95% of Americans get a tax cut at the $200,000 threshold, lowering that threshold by 40% reduces those eligible for Mr. Obama's tax cut. Those newly above the lower tax-cut thresholds are moved one notch closer to a tax hike. As a practical matter it is doubtful that the Obama campaign having busted the 95% promise won't move the tax increase threshold lower also.

OBAMANOMICS: PROMISES, PROMISES
"I'm Barack Obama And I Approve This Kool-Aid"

The more telling question, is Mr. Obama's talk of a tax cut even plausible? The Congress has just authorized $700 billion in mad money for the next administration to intervene in financial markets. Atop that is $152 billion of "stimulus". Add to that the trillion dollars in new spending Mr. Obama plans and one question leaps out:

Who's paying for all this?

THE COST OF OBAMA'S PLEDGES

October 29, 2008 (CBS) - Without question, the Barack Obama infomercial served as a very slick and powerful recitation of the biggest promises he's made as a presidential candidate. But the very bigness of his ideas is the problem: he seems blind to the concept his numbers don't add up.

... Still Obama repeated his claim he can find the money to pay for every proposal.

I've offered spending cuts above and beyond their cost.

... Let's break all of this down, starting with his highly suspect, and widely discredited, claim that he can find federal "spending cuts beyond the costs" of his promises. Very few independent economists believe he has identified the savings needed to offset his remarkable list of tax credits, tax cuts and spending pledges.

Fact: The tax cuts he promises, which are mostly refundable tax credits (code for cash back), will cost $60 billion just in year one, according the National Taxpayers Union, though the Obama campaign's own estimates in July put that figure at $130 billion.

Fact: Obama's claim he will lower health care premiums by $2,500 is: 1) guesswork, which is 2) based on health care savings that might, in a perfect world, happen over 10 years - a fact Obama neatly glosses over.

Fact: Obama, when referring to savings he can make by leaving Iraq ($90 billion, according to Congressional Budget Office estimates), has spent these savings several times over, across several different promises depending on the crowd he's addressing.

Most of the time he spends the Iraq savings in the context of the roads he wants to build; sometimes it's for the teachers he wants to hire. Tonight, he riffed rhetorically on the savings, asking how many scholarships could be funded, or how many schools could be built. In the end though, presuming he really saves $90 billion, he can only spend it once.

Remember he also mentioned rebuilding the military ($7 billion per annum); his education initiative ($18 billion per annum); and his energy initiative ($15 billion per annum). He did not mention the $188 billion that he would spend on the brand new stimulus package he has proposed.

If he closes every loophole as promised, saves every dime from Iraq, raises taxes on the rich and trims the federal budget as he's promised to do "line by line," he still doesn't pay for his list.

The conceptual flaw in Mr. Obama's tax-and-spend plan is not that the rich do not pay enough taxes. The conceptual flaw is that there are just not enough rich to tax to pay for everything.

Finally, for those who are voting for Mr. Obama expecting tax relief, we would remind you that he is not the first Democrat that has come to office promising fabulous cuts.

I want to make it very clear that this middle-class tax cut, in my view, is central to any attempt we're going to make to have a short-term economic strategy and a long-term fairness strategy, which is part of getting this country going again.

Candidate Bill,
being very clear about what is central
DEMOCRATIC PRIMARY DEBATE
MANCHESTER, New Hampshire January 19, 1992 (ABC)

From New Hampshire forward, for reasons that absolutely mystified me, the press thought the most important issue in the race was the middle-class tax cut. I never did meet any voter who thought that.

President Bill,
mystified that he should make good on
the central economic precept of his campaign
PRESS CONFERENCE
LITTLE ROCK, Arkansas January 14, 1993 (CNN)

On May 27, 1993, the House adopted H.R. 2264, Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1993 in a 219-213-1 vote (D 218-38, R 0-175-1, I 1-0). June 24, the Senate adopted the bill in a 49-49-2 vote (D 49-6-1, R 0-43-1), Vice President Al Gore cast the tie-breaker. August 5, the conciliating conference report passed the House in a 218-216 vote (D 217-41, R 0-175, I 1-0). August 10, President Bill signed into law the largest tax increase in American history.

Democratic House + Democratic Senate + Democratic President =

Higher Taxes

Drink the Kool-Aid. And pay your increasing fair share.

NYC Letter: Arnie

Countdown 3 days to go

Arnie warms up the crowd in Columbus, Ohio.

WOWING OHIO
Making The Case For The Man Of Proven Courage
Over The Man Of Eloquence
View Video Here

Arnie money quote:

“John McCain has served this country longer in a POW camp than his opponent has served in the United States Senate.”

NYC Letter: Unleash Joe Biden!

Countdown 4 days to go

Where is Joe Biden? We believe Joe Biden can make a singular difference in this election. We'd like to hear more from the "experienced" half of the Demo ticket. [Pause.] No. Honest, we would.

(Background posts here, here, here, here, and here.)

HIDIN' BIDEN: REINING IN A VOLUBLE NO. 2

CHARLESTON, West Virginia October 29, 2008 (Time) - Anyone who has watched Joe Biden over 35 years in the Senate might have a little bit of trouble recognizing the guy who is running to be Barack Obama's Vice President. Oh, yes, he looks like the same fellow. But traveling with Biden during this campaign has sometimes been like reporting on a politician packaged in shrink-wrap. While his windy, off-point pontification was the stuff of legend among his Senate colleagues, Biden is now leashed to a teleprompter even when he is talking in a high school gym that is three-quarters empty. The exposure hound who in recent years appeared more often than any other guest on the Sunday talk shows is a virtual stranger to the small band of reporters on his plane — less accessible than even Sarah Palin is to her traveling pack of bloodhounds.

... The campaign's caution is understandable. With Obama leading in all the national polls, only a few things would seem to have the potential to throw him off course.

One of those things is his running mate.

... In the two days that I was aboard his Boeing 737 campaign plane, Biden ventured only a few steps outside his cabin at the front of the plane, which kept him safely away from the reporters at the back. When Biden suddenly appeared at the door to the main cabin, Dallas Morning News reporter Todd Gillman attempted to take a snapshot — a not-uncommon occurrence aboard a campaign plane — and was told by a campaign staffer, "We prefer that you not take photos." According to a blog post by Ryan Corsaro, the CBS News embed on the Biden plane, the candidate has not taken questions from the journalists aboard his plane since Sept. 7, but he has done numerous interviews with local reporters [and this].

... It would have been nice to ask that question of Biden himself, but a campaign spokesman told me the Senator was suffering from a cold that made it a strain to give interviews. (I didn't glean evidence of any symptoms during the four speeches that I watched him give over two days.)

The spokesman also said Biden would consider it "presumptuous" to talk about how he would perform the job for which he is running.

Or maybe it simply wasn't in the script.

And here we are thinking that campaigns are nothing if not a candidate talking "about how he would perform the job for which he is running".

No, vote first, surprises later.

NYC Letter: Let The Rich Walk

Countdown 5 days to go

REAL-ESTATE DEVELOPER OFFERS
‘OBAMA CONTINGENCY’

October 24, 2008 (New York Magazine) - Holy election tie-in: Erik Ekstein, who's developing +aRT, an 88-unit Chelsea condo that just began sales last week, says he's including an "Obama Contingency Clause" in all contracts that go into effect between now and Election Day. If Obama wins, the contract goes through, but if John McCain prevails, buyers can back out — and presumably move to Canada — "with no questions asked." (He says he came up with the idea after talking to potential buyers, who seemed to be holding off until the election.) Ekstein, a big supporter of the Democratic candidate, says he's not worried he'll lose business:

It's a very narrow window, and we're fairly confident he'll win.

[Snort.] This is rich. These condos range from $520,000 to $4.6M. No Joe the Plumbers here -- except to snake the toilet.

Mr. Ekstein's election clause is back-ass-wards. It is more plausible that buyers will want to walk away if Mr. Obama is elected.

NYC Letter: Pledges Are For Suckers

Countdown 6 days to go

It's evidence, if you needed any, that the Obama campaign has more money than there is ad time left to buy. ... The strategic brilliance of this for Obama is that he is going to consume about 24 hours of the news cycle. It boxes McCain in, takes the oxygen out of the room.

Evan Tracey,
Campaign Media Analysis Group, director,
commenting on the Obama campaign's
multimillion dollar ½ hour "roadblock" media buy
on CBS, NBC, MSNBC, Fox, BET, TV One and Univision
WASHINGTON October 29, 2008 (CNN)

When Republicans out-raised Democrats in campaign cash, Demos were all for "cleaning up" campaign finance and paving "level playing fields". Last year Mr. Obama pledged to campaign with public funding. Mr. Obama soon realized the advantage of a candidate with an almost unlimited cash draw against a candidate limited by public funding, and opted out.

Mr. Obama is no fool. But neither is he a man of his word.

DEMS' CAMPAIGN-FINANCE HYPOCRISY

OP-ED October 29, 2008 (NYPost) - On the question of public funding of presidential campaigns, we Democrats who strongly support Sen. Barack Obama's candidacy and who previously supported limits on campaign spending and who haven't objected to Obama's opting out of the presidential funding system face an awkward fact: Either we are hypocrites, or we were wrong to support such limitations in the first place.

The next time we speak of the virtue of level playing fields or state our strong belief that democracy can't survive in the modern age unless big money is taken out of campaigns, we'll be counting on our audience's forgetting our silence this year, when the free market was flowing in our direction.

A hypocrite is a person who puts on a false appearance of virtue - who acts in contradiction to his or her stated beliefs or feelings. And that, it seems to me, is what we're doing now.

... The argument that money is corrupting our democratic system is as old as our first election. And it is an argument usually made by liberals, who have proposed various interventions in the marketplace of political ideas.

... So maybe I was simply wrong about placing limits on spending and providing public monies in exchange for adhering to these limits. Of course, it's possible that I'm making a virtue out of a necessity - since my candidate is now winning in part because, by opting out of the system, he has more money to spend.

In the short term, I'm sad to report that hypocrite is a more accurate label. In the long term, perhaps this will be the moment that causes me to change my views. It certainly feels better than remaining a hypocrite forever.

[Editorialist Bob Kerrey is president of the New School, and a former US senator and governor of Nebraska.]

Mr. McCain pledged to campaign with public funding, kept his pledge, and has been skunked. Mr. Obama continues to take in cash, continues to extravagantly outspend him, three- and four-to-one.

Hyprocrisy in politics. We are shocked. Shocked.

Pave: Alumnus

Le jour 533 de Sarko

Long-time Pave readers may remember Pave once had a raucous collegium of editors. A lack of interest in France thinned the ranks to the current crew.

One of the fall-away editors was Josh Mercer. We recently discovered him over at Fidelis where he is Communications Director. Mr. Mercer has traded up and now fights the big fights for life, family, and faith.

We invite you to visit.

NYC Letter: One Nation, One President, One Party

Countdown 7 days to go

Here's a novel idea.

Elect us, hold us accountable, and make a judgment and then go from there. But I do tell you that if the Democrats win and have substantial majorities, Congress of the United States will be more bipartisan.

Nancy Pelosi,
Speaker of the House and one-party party girl,
promising one-party bipartisanship
(infra)

One-party politics is as old as thugdom. The novel idea is to hold a Democratic Congress accountable. In fairness, Ms. Pelosi only seeks "substantial majorities" for Democrats. A rump Republican minority will still be necessary to blame for Democratic rule.

Bipartisanship. Everyone has their role to play.

E PLURIBUS UNUM, BABY!
Less Dissent, More Party Time

PELOSI SAYS DON'T BE AFRAID OF DEMOCRAT CONTROL

MOUNTAIN VIEW October 28, 2008 (ABC/KGO) - In Cleveland Monday morning, Senator John McCain continued to link Barack Obama with Nancy Pelosi and the Democratic leadership, accusing them of wanting to tax Americans and spend their money.

Do you want to keep it and invest it in your future, or have it taken by the most liberal person to ever run for the presidency, and the Democratic leaders the most liberal who have been running Congress for the past two years, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. You know my friends, this is a dangerous threesome.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi promised that Democrats will do a better job.

It's interesting to hear Senator McCain talking about the dangerous Obama, Reid, Pelosi. Dangerous is not really a word that should be a part of a national debate as we go into a presidential race.

[Hat tip: Michelle Malkin]

No inflammatory rhetoric, please. [Pause.] Oh, unless you are ripping a Republican president. Ms. Pelosi on Mr. Bush:*

Oblivious, in denial, dangerous.

------------------------------------
* More sweetness and light from Ms. Pelosi here and here.

NYC Letter: Hope Vs. Calculus

Countdown 8 days to go

Here is a curious juxtaposition.

POLLS SHOW US JEWS PREFER OBAMA

WASHINGTON October 25, 2008 (JPost) - Two polls out Thursday show Barack Obama restoring his lead among Jewish voters to their historic Democratic levels, even in the crucial swing state of Florida where the candidate has come under much criticism from the Jewish community.

A Quinnipiac University poll released Thursday found Floridian Jews back Obama over Republican rival John McCain by a rate of 77 percent to 20%. And a Gallup survey found that nationwide, Jews prefer Obama by 74% to McCain's 22%.

POLL: ISRAEL VOTES McCAIN IN US ELECTIONS

October 27, 2008 (Ynet) - The survey found that given the right to vote in the US, 46.4% of Israelis would vote for the Republican nominee, John McCain. Thirty-four percent would vote for Democratic nominee Barack Obama, and 18.6% remain undecided.

Almost half of those polled (48.6%) believe McCain would better impact Israel, while 31.5% thought the country would better benefit from Obama's leadership. Just over 5% believe the candidates would have the same effect on Israel, while 14.2% remain undecided.

... Alon Pinkas, the former consul general of Israel in New York who currently heads the Rabin Center's institute for Israel-US relations, explained the results of the poll:

What we see here is a significant difference in positions between Jews in the US and Jews in Israel.

Israel is one of just three countries that prefer McCain over Obama. The other two are Georgia and the Philippines.

There is a vast ocean between Israeli Jews and American Jews, but there is one common concern, the defense of Israel. Isolated among hostile or regressive Arab governments, our guess is that Israelis have a keener insight than stateside Jews into which American candidate would make the better guarantor of Israel's security.

Just as Israel's enemies have a keen insight into who best advances their interests.

HAMAS ENDORSES OBAMA

April 16, 2008 (Powerline/WABC) - On Sunday, Aaron Klein and John Batchelor interviewed Ahmed Yousef, chief political adviser to the Prime Minister of Hamas, on WABC radio. Mr. Yousef:

We like Mr. Obama and we hope he will win the election. He has a vision to change America.

Yousef was asked about Obama's condemnation of Carter's visit with Hamas, but didn't seem troubled by it. Hamas, he says, understands American politics; this is the election season, and everyone wants to sound like a friend of Israel. Nevertheless, he hopes that the Democrats will change American policies when they take office.

LARIJANI: IRAN PREFERS OBAMA

October 22, 2008 (Ynet/AFP) - Iranian parliament Speaker Ali Larijani said Wednesday that Iran would prefer Democrat Barack Obama in the White House next year. Larijani also dismissed any idea that the US would attack Iran. Mr. Larijani:

We are leaning more in favor of Barack Obama because he is more flexible and rational, even though we know American policy will not change that much.

The American Jewish vote is traditionally Democratic. So it is not too surprising to see Mr. Obama hold Mr. Kerry's 2004 take of the Jewish vote. [Pause.] We wonder though if Mr. Obama would still command the Jewish vote if the MSM pressed him to explain himself.

THE L.A. TIMES SUPPRESSES OBAMA’S KHALIDI BASH TAPE
Obama, Ayers, And PLO Supporters Toast Edward Said’s Successor,
But The Press Doesn’t Think It’s Quite As Newsworthy
As Sarah Palin’s Wardrobe.

October 27, 2008 (NRO) - Why is the Los Angeles Times sitting on a videotape of the 2003 farewell bash in Chicago at which Barack Obama lavished praise on the guest of honor, Rashid Khalidi — former mouthpiece for master terrorist Yasser Arafat?

At the time Khalidi, a PLO adviser turned University of Chicago professor, was headed east to Columbia. There he would take over the University’s Middle East-studies program (which he has since maintained as a bubbling cauldron of anti-Semitism) and assume the professorship endowed in honor of Edward Sayyid, another notorious terror apologist.

The party featured encomiums by many of Khalidi’s allies, colleagues, and friends, including Barack Obama, then an Illinois state senator, and Bill Ayers, the terrorist turned education professor. It was sponsored by the Arab American Action Network (AAAN), which had been founded by Khalidi and his wife, Mona, formerly a top English translator for Arafat’s press agency.

Is there just a teeny-weenie chance that this was an evening of Israel-bashing Obama would find very difficult to explain? Could it be that the Times, a pillar of the Obamedia, is covering for its guy?

Earlier this year Mr. Obama minimized his relationship with Mr. Khalidi.

Now it would be nice if he explained the relationship.

NYC Letter: Drink The Kool-Aid: Destiny, Game Over

Countdown 9 days to go

UPDATE 10.27.08: See reader comment No.2. [Pause.] Bad news notwithstanding, the election will still be held November 4.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

You kinda get the feeling that the Obama campaign thinks this whole election process is just a formality. They've overlooked, though, the minor detail of earning your confidence and your trust and winning your vote. And judging from the media coverage, it does seem the coronation is already set.

Sarah Palin,
addressing a rally, quibbling over an electoral detail
TAMPA October 26, 2008 (TWT)

The election is over. Time to shutdown the laptop and pack rations for interment at the re-education camp.

Oh. Wait. No it's not over. We haven't voted yet.

The Obama campaign is engineering a funk among the opposition. The campaign has a lot of money, much of it legal, and it and a complicit media are doing their best to convince everyone that the election is over. If you are thinking about voting for Mr. McCain or -- more importantly Sarah Palin -- forget it, just stay home. Polls, media, pundits, Chicken Little conservatives -- all the important folk have signed off on the election. If you vote it will upset the Obama narrative.

Better yet, become part of that narrative, be part of this incredible historic moment and vote for Mr. Obama. Why not? Everyone is doing it, many legally (and this), some by choice. Vote as history ordains, otherwise your vote may not count at all.

MR. OBAMA PRESIDENTIAL DOLLARS
E PLURIBUS UNUM: Out Of Many, The ONE
Mark-Down After November 4th

[Pause.] Mr. McCain may lose, but frankly we do not believe the cooked Obama narrative that today, nine days out, it's a done deal. Consider this assessment by Professor Larry Schweikart of the University of Dayton (via Right&Black*):

DON'T LOOK NOW . . . BUT THERE WON'T BE AN OBAMA SWAG-BAG

October 26, 2008 (B&R) - Pollsters have slavishly reported survey after survey based on some mythical "turnout model" relying on "new voters," demonstrated in the "early voting."

Oops. Colorado's early voting showed a Republican advantage. Florida's early voting, so far, has produced a whopping 900-vote Democrat lead. Karl Rove estimated that Florida Republicans on election day are good for a much higher turnout. The numbers I'm hearing are a McCain win in FL of 10 points. Ah, maybe more.

More important, everywhere "early voting" is taking place, the pollsters' assumptions were that all these people would be checking the Obama box. Not so fast.

It appears Obama is supremely (pun, there) UNpopular with Jews; he's fading fast among Catholics; and we haven't even gotten to the infamous "Bradley Effect" yet.

National Review's Jim Geraghty has a source known as "Obi Wan," who has noted that the entire Obama strategy was to build up the perception that the race was over long ago. He cautioned that the first poll to show the race tied, or McCain ahead, would cause no end of problems for this strategy.

Even with their oversampling of Dems, pollsters Gallup, Zogby, IBD, and Battleground now are slowly locking into a 2-4 point race, and steadily trending up. Nevertheless, the drive-bys continue to tout whatever outlier they can find in a given news cycle—Quinnipiac, New York Times, whomever—that will render the shock headline of "Obama With Double-Digit Lead."

Except it ain't happenin'. At the state levels, for several weeks we've seen very close races. With early voting, they now are giving us evidence of what we've already suspected, namely that Obama would be extremely lucky to pick off any of the red states outside of NM and perhaps IA. Yet even there it's close, and McCain is spending a lot of time with those ethanol farmers.

Professor Schweikart then rounds on Mr. Obama's greatest electability liability:

McCain's other not-so-secret weapon is Joe Biden, who has succeeded in scaring the bejeezus out of everyone even paying a whit of attention to world affairs. He essentially yelled "SHARK" in a beach full of swimmers, and people immediately started looking for the lifeguard. Somehow, the Anointed One wasn't at his station.

A hard fought battle has a winner and a loser, not an annointed and an unannointed. We do ask that you to hope against hope. That is Mr. Obama's schtick. But a battle worth winning is a battle worth fighting and a battle well fought produces its own outcomes, not scripted inevitabilities. The last blow in this battle is still to be struck at the polls on November 4.

Or drink the Kool-Aid. Be part of the Obama destiny narrative.

------------------------------------
* Bob Parks of Right&Black is running for State Representative for the 2nd Franklin District, Massachussetts. We invite you to visit his site and do what you can to help.

NYC Letter: Caring You Can Believe In

Countdown 10 days to go

Ok. Here we go. Ten days.

I think most people understand that if you are not caring for your family, then you are probably not the kind of person who is going to be caring for other people.

Mr. Obama,
comments on making time to visit his ailing grandmother
INTERVIEW October 23, 2008 (TPM/CBS)

Visiting grandma makes nice headlines. Caring is nice too. So far -- everything's nice.

We take Mr. Obama at his word, but let's connect a couple of dots.

BARACK OBAMA'S 'LOST' BROTHER FOUND IN KENYA

ROME August 21, 2008 (Telegraph) - The Italian edition of Vanity Fair said that it had found George Hussein Onyango Obama living in a hut in a ramshackle town of Huruma on the outskirts of Nairobi.

Mr Obama, 26, the youngest of the presidential candidate's half-brothers, spoke for the first time about his life, which could not be more different than that of the Democratic contender. George Obama:

No-one knows who I am. I live here on less than a dollar a month.

... Embarrassed by his penury, he said that he does not does not mention his famous half-brother in conversation. George Obama:

If anyone says something about my surname, I say we are not related. I am ashamed.

... He has only met his famous older brother twice - once when he was just five and the last time in 2006 when Senator Obama was on a tour of East Africa and visited Nairobi.

The Illinois senator mentions his brother in his autobiography, describing him in just one passing paragraph as a "beautiful boy with a rounded head".

Of their second meeting, George Obama said:

It was very brief, we spoke for just a few minutes. It was like meeting a complete stranger.

And here's another dot.

POLITICAL STARDOM PROFITABLE FOR OBAMA

SPRINGFIELD September 27, 2007 (USAToday/AP) — Barack Obama has two best-selling books, a nice salary as a senator and a wife with a handsome income. Earlier this year he reported assets of up to $1.14 million in addition to his Chicago home.

That's small change to some of his presidential rivals, but more than enough to create entanglements and controversies for Obama, a Democrat who has been positioning himself as a friend of the little guy on financial matters.

... Obama's own success allowed him to buy a $1.65 million mansion near the University of Chicago in 2005. Political insider Antoin "Tony" Rezko, who was under federal investigation, bought the vacant lot next door and sold part of it to Obama, giving the senator more space.

... When he entered the U.S. Senate in 2005, Obama's salary jumped to more than $154,000 -- nearly triple what he had been making as an Illinois legislator.

His sudden political stardom also brought him a three-book deal worth $1.9 million from Random House Inc. The deal includes a children's book, and Obama says he'll give $200,000 from that book to charity.

His contract gives Obama 15 percent of the sale of each hardcover book, 8 percent or more from paperbacks and 10 percent from audiobooks. His first book under the deal, "The Audacity of Hope," has sold more than 1 million copies since it was released nearly a year ago.

(ABC and WaPo carried this AP story but it no longer exists in their archives. Site searches on components of the story return zero results. This story's newsworthiness apparently expired when Mrs. Rodham-Clinton was knocked out of contention.)

We do not pretend to tell Mr. Obama how to spread his own wealth around. [Pause.] But we do take him at his word.

NYC Letter: They Would Know

Countdown 11 days to go

RUSSIAN OBSERVERS TO MONITOR U. S. VOTE

October 23, 2008 (NatPo) - Andrei Nesterenko, a spokesman with Russia's Foreign Ministry, says Moscow will have eight election observers attached to a monitoring mission conducted by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).

... Russia's Central Elections Committee has also assigned its Centre for the Study of Election Technology to review the U. S. election campaign.

A preliminary report prepared by the group, after studying U. S. media coverage on the NBC, CBS and ABC television networks since September, has concluded Barack Obama, the Democratic presidential candidate, has a "hidden advantage." ... [The] U. S. television networks devoted more time to Republican candidate John McCain, but "the material that makes up that time difference can be assessed as negative."

The Russian study also said Sarah Palin, the Republican vice-presidential pick, has been subjected to more criticism than her Democratic counterpart, Senator Joe Biden [and this].*

It adds that when the presidential candidates' platforms are described, Mr. Obama's is described last, to make it look better, and when platforms are compared, "Obama's is presented preferable."

The observations appear to ape western criticisms of Russia's elections in which international observers have complained Russia's television networks are overwhelmingly pro-Kremlin and offer unbalanced and unfair coverage of opposition candidates.

Aped criticism for aped practices.

[Hat tip: AOSHQ]

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* For examples, see this and this (!).

NYC Letter: Joe Biden Is An Idiot

Countdown 12 days to go

Joe Biden is an idiot. The press knows he's an idiot, so why bother to bring it up (and this)? He is a special idiot because he is Mr. Obama's idiot, which makes him the press's idiot as well (and this). Smooth-talking but inexperienced Mr. Obama sought to balance his ticket with bumbling but experienced Joe Biden.

Idiocy is not the worst of it. Joe Biden is a resume Catholic with the convenient poll-tested self-serving convictions of a resume Catholic. He is opportuning, risibly arrogating, ungracious, clueless (and this and this), and desperate. Desperate to be a bigger footnote in history. In short, he is a small man who wants to be a big man without the natural capacity to be a big man. Joe Biden has attached himself to Mr. Obama, a man he believes not ready for the presidency, in hopes of advancing into the ranks of Trivial Pursuit.

Sarah Palin is not an idiot. Her story is inspiring, her accomplishments are real. The issue with Sarah Palin is does she have the experience to be a vice president? A demanding ceremonial job which requires being at the beck of the president, making appearances and dressing nice, and outliving the sitting chief executive.

How can lack of qualifying vice presidential experience be so vital, so gravely penalize a McCain/Palin ticket, when no qualifying presidential experience -- or any executive experience whatsoever -- is not an issue at all for the top of the Obama/Biden ticket?

What's wrong with this picture? Daniel Henninger picks up the complaint.

HATIN' PALIN

OP-ED October 23, 2008 (WSJ) - The complaint against the Alaska governor, at its most basic, is that she doesn't qualify for admission to the national political fraternity. Boy, that's rich. Behold the shabby frat house that says it's above her pay grade.

Congress has the lowest approval rating ever registered in the history of polling (12%!). She isn't the reason polls are showing people want the entire Congress fired, with many telling pollsters they themselves could do a better job.

Sarah Palin didn't design a system of presidential primaries whose length and cost ensures that only the most obsessional personalities will run the gauntlet, while a long list of effective governors don't run.

These rules have wasted the electorate's time the past three presidential elections, by filling the debates with such zero-support candidates as Dennis Kucinich, Mike Gravel, Al Sharpton, Duncan Hunter, Chris Dodd, Joe Biden (8,000 total votes), Wesley Clark and Alan Keyes.

Out of this process has fallen a Democratic nominee who entered the U.S. Senate in 2005 fresh off a stint in the Illinois state legislature, with next to no record of political accomplishment. He may be elected mainly because, in Colin Powell's word, he is thought to be "transformational." One may hope so.

By not bothering to look very deeply at the details beneath either candidate's governing proposals, the media have created a lot of downtime to take free kicks at Gov. Palin.

... If American politics is at low ebb, it is because so many of its observers enjoy working in its fetid backwash.

The primary discomfort with Gov. Palin is the notion that she doesn't have sufficient experience to be president, that Sen. McCain should have picked a Washington hand seasoned in the ways of the world. Such as? Here's an opinion poll question:

If as Joe Biden suggests the U.S. is likely to be tested by a foreign enemy next year, who of the following would you rather have dealing with it in the Oval Office: Nancy (of Damascus) Pelosi, Harry Reid, John Edwards, Joe (the U.S. drove Hezbollah out of Lebanon) Biden, Mike Huckabee, Geraldine Ferraro, Tom DeLay, Jimmy Carter or Sarah Palin?

My pick? Gov. Palin, surely the most grounded, common-sense person on that list of prime-time politicians.

Worth the full read. What has us concerned about an Obama presidency? [Pause.] Well, a good many things, but foremost is putting Joe Biden anywhere near the presidency. No joke. He's an idiot.

Bonus video. Why doesn't Sarah Palin get more play?

NYC Letter: And Now For Something Completely Different...

Countdown 13 days to go

Is that what that is, the presidential race? I thought it was the fuckin' gong show. If it wasn't for Sarah Palin, I'd move to fuckin' Sweden. It's pretty pathetic. I don't think you can be "pretty pathetic." It's mighty pathetic. Barack Obama, I guess if you want to be Mao Tse Tung I suppose you can be. I just don't think you should be the president of America. ...

Barack, fuck you. Joe, fuck you. John McCain, God bless you for discovering a Republican with massive amounts of balls. The good governor, Sarah Palin, is the bureaucrat-crushing, status quo-punching conservative that I've been looking for. I knew of her before John did, I had worked with Gov. Palin on numerous issues up in Alaska, where she proved she was a "we the people" person and not a bureaucrat monger. We are voting Republican this year, not because of John McCain as much as for Sarah Palin. ... We are voting Republican, because we see that Barack Obama's voting record, not what he has been so cleverly scripted to say, but his voting record. If the guy likes France so much, why won't he just go there?* Why would you want to turn America into France? There's already a France. That's the way I see it. It's a clusterfuck, and it's heartbreaking, really.

Ted Nugent,
R&R icon, sportsman, concerned American citizen,
recapping the election so far
in a VV telephone interview
October 20, 2008 (VV)

Worth the full read. See especially Mr. Nugent on child obesity and his differential on New York (our state domicile) and Texas (Mr. Nugent's state domicile).

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* But is Mr. Obama electable in France? See here and here and here.

NYC Letter: Commando Kerry

Countdown 14 days to go

Presidential loser John "Stuck In The Senate Not In Iraq" Kerry brags on his big macho sphincter.

KERRY’S ANSWER TO THE ‘BOXERS OR BRIEFS’ QUESTION:
HE GOES COMMANDO AND McCAIN WOULD SAY ‘DEPENDS’

CAMBRIDGE October 20, 2008 (politickerma.com) - Kerry, addressing a business summit on energy issues, kicked off his remarks with some light-hearted banter. Mr. Kerry:

These are the exciting last two week moments of the presidential campaign. So it's a very special time. I can't wait for it to be over. I am so tired of the press' silly questions that they ask along the way. And cable television which reduces everything to stupidity - the lowest common denominator of conflict. I don't know if any of you know what it's like. I do, obviously. I've been asked all of those brilliant questions that were repeated this year.

Barack got asked the famous boxers or briefs question. I was tempted to say Commando.*

Mr. Kerry likes that metrosexual thrill riding up his mesial groove.

The senator said Obama successfully parried that question but that John McCain, the GOP nominee, had some problems. Mr. Kerry:

Then they asked McCain and McCain said, 'Depends.'

Kerry said [this] to lots of laughter from the crowd.

First, who believes this is the original wit of John Kerry? [A show of no hands.] Lame paralipsis for lame joke. Is Mr. Obama auditioning candidates for a loser clown in his administration? No. That post is already designated. Oh. Too bad, Mr. Kerry.

Of course Mr. Kerry's sphincter is very muscular and powerful, having held his big head tightly in place for decades.

Donkey.

HOLDING HIS FUDGE
Mr. Kerry Crawls Around In A Body Diaper

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* The Commando invisible thong is precision-cut underwear made from a patented fabric. The Commando thong will lay smooth and flat on your body. It is constructed without using any trim, sewing or elastic, eliminating any panty lines.

NYC Letter: Drink The Kool-Aid: Experience

Countdown 15 days to go

'F' FOR BARACK'S SCHOOL FIX

October 20, 2008 (NYPost) - Chicago's former schools chief has flunked the education foundation headed by Barack Obama and founded by 1960s terrorist Bill Ayers - saying it failed to monitor projects and funded school "reform" groups that campaigned against boosting academic standards. Paul Vallas, the city's school superintendent when Obama chaired the Chicago Annenberg Foundation from 1995 to 1999:

There was a total lack of accountability. If you went back and asked, you'd be hard-pressed to find out how the money was spent.

Annenberg spent $49.5 million, mostly on grants to 211 public schools that partnered with community-based groups. But despite collecting millions, those schools performed no better than other public schools, a study found.

Keep in mind that, other than managing his election campaigns, the Annenberg Challenge represents the sum of Mr. Obama's executive experience. And there are those who scoff at Sarah Palin's experience.

[We cast our eyes across the aisle and scoff up ticket.]

INEFFECTUAL BUT EXPERIENCED
"I'm Barack Obama And I Approve This Kool-Aid"

While much debate has centered on Obama's relationship with Ayers, there's been virtually no discussion about how the Annenberg schools performed. Mr. Vallas:

Very little of the money found its way directly into the classroom.

Most frustrating, Vallas said, was that Annenberg under Obama and Ayers funded groups that fought his mission, under Mayor Richard Daley, to impose uniform standards and stricter accountability in low-performing schools. Mr. Vallas:

Many of the school-reform groups viewed greater accountability as an infringement of local control. Some opposed ending social promotion and grade retention.

A preview of the O-exprerience and the "spread around" of your tax dollars.

Drink the Kool-Aid. Experience over outcomes.

NYC Letter: "Spread The Wealth Around"

Countdown 15 days to go

It’s not that I want to punish your success, I just want to make sure that everybody that is behind you, that they have a chance for success too. I think that when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody.

Mr. Obama,
explaining his tax policies
October 12, 2008 (Pop Modal/Fox News

Rule of thumb: "Spread the wealth around" is popular in proportion to the spread received, it is unpopular in proportion to wealth appropriated for spreading.

There is no dearth of "spread the wealth around" models. There was the Soviet Union, which eventually ran out of spread. There is Cuba, which long ago ran out and now just spreads misery around.

More along the lines of Mr. Obama's model there is France, whose spreading around has made her uncompetitive and reduced the French to gloomy* pill-popping complainers, hand-wringers, and losers and cranks in the midst of plenteous unfunded** state candy. We have argued elsewhere against French "spread the wealth around" socialism:

French socialism is premised on net winners leveling up the losers in society. Winners are those who can pay for their own housing, food, clothing, and healthcare. The goal of socialism is to have everyone at the level of winners. In French socialism, the attainments of winners eventually become legal rights extended to losers (e.g., Droit au logement, DAL, or this).

Bravo, France! [Wait as applause subsides.] Now here's the rub.

Socialism raises losers at the expense of winners.

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