WILL COLLIER: “So I turned forty today. Apparently I’m supposed to be depressed.”
Actually, I find the phrase “life begins at 40″ is surprisingly true. My own life, at least, has been happier and more satisfying since 40 than it was before.
WHETHER YOU’RE PREPARING FOR A CAMPING TRIP, OR SOCIETAL COLLAPSE, half-price sports and outdoor equipment may be a good thing.
LAW PROFESSOR JOBS getting harder to come by. Tennessee has avoided a hiring freeze this year — we’re hiring two — but many other law schools haven’t. My guess is that next year will be worse.
LOOKING AT MY ARCHIVES FROM 2004, I realize that I took a week off in late October (I wasn’t teaching that semester) and went scuba diving in Cozumel. For a week I didn’t think of anything involving politics, and — except for an emergency-decompression stop brought about by an equipment failure, which sounds more exciting than it actually was — it was entirely stress free. At the moment, I’m wishing I could have done that again. If I’m still blogging in 2012, I’m making a week off in October a priority!
PAYING DOCTORS NOT TO TREAT PATIENTS? Yes, but it’s not from evil profit-seeking HMOs in America, but Britain’s National Health Service:
Dozens of incentive schemes have been uncovered which allow GPs to profit by slashing the number of patients they refer for hospital care. Under one scheme, GPs stand to gain £59 for every patient not referred to hospital, if they cut an average referral rate by between two and eight per cent. Torbay care trust in Devon will pay up to £15,000 to the average-sized GP practice if it hits a swathe of targets, including reducing hospital referrals. . . .
A leading surgeon said that patients’ cancers had already gone undiagnosed after they were denied specialist care under two such “referral management” schemes. . . .
He said: “I recently encountered two cases in which patients referred to physiotherapists later turned out to have a malignant tumour. If they had been sent to a consultant the outcome may have been very different.
It’s not just the for-profit sector that can sacrifice patient welfare for money. It’s just that when the government does it, they don’t get the same kind of criticism.
IN WHICH I AGREE WITH GLENN GREENWALD: Skip past the pro-forma GOP-bashing and you can’t really argue with this point about the Cindy McCain/New York Times story, and a whole lot of other stories this year and in recent years: “But it seems rather obvious that there are now basically no journalistic standards left for determining when a political figure’s private life (or even that of their spouse) is ‘relevant’ — apparently, it’s all relevant now, down to the last tawdry detail. In partiuclar, adultery (without regard to whether the spouse consents) is, without any further consideration, a legitimate topic to report. That inevitably has to lead to an even further erosion (if that’s possible) of our political class, a further narrowing of the people willing to enter politics. And the vast disparity between the media resources and attention devoted to sleazy gossip like this versus actual investigation of true government corruption and crime seems to be growing by the day, such that behavior like this will further decay our already quite decadent journalistic class as well.”
Greenwald and I disagree about many things, but there’s not much room to argue where the poor state of the political and journalistic classes (and the increasing lack of differentiation between them) is concerned.
UPDATE: Various readers think Greenwald is just trying to set the tone advantageously ahead of a looming Democratic sex scandal. Well, that’s uncharitable, but we’ll see.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Rob Port comments.
A TEE-TOTALER? Professor Bainbridge finds a reason to dislike Joe Biden.
A MIND SWIMMING WITH SWORDS: An interview with videogame artist Ben Boos.
NOW THAT OBAMA SEEMS TO HAVE IT WON, the press rediscovers a conscience. Here’s a transcript excerpt from Howard Kurtz’s Reliable Sources today, via email from CNN:
On media coverage of money raised during the campaign
KURTZ: Mark Halperin, we learned this morning that Barack Obama in the month of September raised $150 million, the early estimates had been about $100 million. They always kind of leak a lower figure so they can exceed it.
If a Republican had not taken public financing and had raised all that money, and the Democrat was struggling financially, wouldn’t we see a lot of stories about one candidate essentially trying to buy the election?
HALPERIN: We would. We’d also see a lot of stories about his going back on his word saying that he would accept the public money and would reach out to Senator McCain to try to work out a deal. So I think this is a case of a clear, unambiguous double standard, and any reporter who doesn’t ask themselves, why is that, why would it be different if it’s a Republican? I think is doing themselves and our profession and our democracy a disservice.
There’s been a lot of that kind of disservice.
UPDATE: Reader Eli Israel emails:
To my mind, the phrase “seems to have it won,” gives Obama too much credit. What I see is a campaign with a poor poker face trying to execute a huge bluff, and counting on their friends in the media to corroborate it. It’s an attempt to suppress GOP turnout, and it remains to be seen who’s buying it. Don’t help the Obama campaign take this. If they are to win, they need to earn it.
Well, yes. I wouldn’t encourage anyone to skip voting just because of what’s on TV. And reader Donald Gately writes:
Don’t buy it for a second. I’ve been around for enough election cycles to see this played out exactly the same way many times.
After being in the tank for the Democratic candidate through the whole cycle, they start to pretend to feel bad about letting their built-in biases run amok, and say that they owe it to the American people to do better. But that is only in the hopes of getting the suckers to take their criticism (or, if the winner is the Democrat, lack thereof) seriously. Honestly, I don’t think they are going to be able to hit the reset button this time if their preferred candidate wins. It was easier for Republicans (and center/right folks who voted that way in 2000 and 2004) to let it slide a little in those years, because winning the election made it that much sweeter. If the press drags Obama across the finish line, there will be no forgiving or forgetting. It was way too blatant this year, largely thanks to the blogosphere.
Yes, I thought they were in the tank in 2004, but this has been a whole different order of flacking. Partly I think it’s because they actually like Obama, or at least the idea of Obama, while Kerry was just a not particularly well-liked means of getting rid of Bush. I think they also feel that as the big media lose viewers and circulation, this may be their last chance to swing an election, and so there’s no point saving their credibility for future engagements.
MORE: Another reader emails:
Glenn:
It’s the exact opposite of ‘buying’ the White House, and it’s far worse. It’s “selling” the White House, mortgaging it to a crazy quilt of private greed and power-grabbing. Obama is accumulating a long list of undisclosed debts to interest groups and indivduals, that he is supposed to pay off with government money and regulatory manipulation once in power. These debts are concealed from the public, and for good reason — the public’s benefit is not the purpose of these future reckonings. McCain has foresworn going into the White House with a secret agenda — Obama may win BECAUSE he has such a secret agenda. If McCain’s campaign does not make this point in ads on the TV channels hosting Obama’s half-hour pre-election special, before and after that half-hour, it’s another reason he deserves to lose. That the mainstream media declines to point this out on their own air time is — well, to be expected.
Glenn, please don’t use my name, only (if you can) identify me as a major news media employee whose company is facing major budget cuts, who doesn’t want to give grounds for being one item on the budget cut list.
That description is apt, as it’s somebody I know. It’s a climate of fear in the media, apparently.
THE HARTFORD COURANT ON CHRIS DODD AND THE COUNTRYWIDE SCANDAL:
Sen. Christopher Dodd sounded like Dr. Seuss without the depth last week. “It is what it is,” declared Dodd, mistaking Hartford for Whoville, when he told The Courant’s Rick Green that he had no plans to release documents from his $800,000 in sweetheart mortgages from subprime titan Countrywide Financial.
“There is nothing to the story and I’m just not going to keep on repeating it,” pronounced Dodd, as he morphed into Yertle the Turtle. “‘You hush up your mouth!’ howled the mighty King Yertle. ‘You’ve no right to talk to the world’s highest turtle.’”
Dodd will serve the state green eggs and ham before he’ll honor his pledges to release the documents from deals that will save him tens of thousands of dollars over the terms of the loans. Nonsensical answers, however, won’t smother persistent, serious questions about Dodd’s abuse of his office.
Dodd has answered almost no questions about the details of his 2003 mortgages. The senator cast an unflattering light on himself when he couldn’t settle on a credible response in June to the simple question of whether he knew he was getting special mortgage deals as a “Friend of Angelo.” That’s the privileged category of borrowers that Countrywide co-founder Angelo Mozilo made sure received cut-rate loans with hefty traditional fees waived. . . . In the history of this epic, Dodd has guaranteed himself a permanent spot in the pantheon of the privileged oblivious.
He’s basically gotten a pass from the national media, but the Courant has at least paid attention to this story.
RUBEN NAVARRETTE: The Democratic Party’s Drubbing of Joe the Plumber.
MORE MEDIA RETRENCHMENT:
The Boston Globe is consolidating its daily paper into four sections as part of a redesign that will launch Friday, Oct. 24. The paper will no longer publish a free-standing business section — it will be folded into the a newly named “Metro†section — except on Sundays.
The Globe, which has seen its revenue and circulation plummet in recent years, says it will save about 24 pages per week in printing costs.
Of course, by giving readers less, they probably won’t reverse the plummeting circulation trend. I continue to think that newspapers, and other media, might help their situations by producing a better product, with more useful and interesting news and less half-baked opinion, but that strategy doesn’t seem to be as popular with management as trimming page-counts and the like.
UPDATE: Reader Bob Schneider writes: “The pleasure some (not necessarily you) have at watching newspapers decline is unseemly. You know as well as anyone that it’s hard to do good reporting, and although the liberal bias of many cannot be excused, for the majority of stories it’s a nonissue. Liberal and conservative alike will miss the great dailies. ” Well, yes — and I certainly don’t look forward to newspapers’ demise, and would rather they just did a better job, as noted above — but when you go out of your way to make enemies, which the press has done, those enemies will tend to celebrate your decline.
TEST-DRIVING DIALING the new Google Android phone.
UNFAIR DOCTRINE is a new blog focusing on political efforts to suppress free speech.
Related item here.
SUCH CONFIDENCE: Pelosi: 100% Barack’s Gonna Win. Well, if Nancy Pelosi says so, it must be true.
KNOXVILLE’S BOOMING DOWNTOWN REAL ESTATE MARKET IS SLOWING, and the problem seems to be a mixture of financing and difficulty selling homes in the ‘burbs. Looking around the neighborhoods, my sense is that a lot of people remain unrealistic in their pricing, thinking that by expecting “only” four percent appreciation over the past few years they’re pricing low. In fact, the Knoxville market has never really appreciated faster than that. If I were selling my house, I’d probably price it at 2005 levels or even below. And I notice that people who do cut the price seem to sell a lot faster.
JAMES PETHOKOUKIS on government and the stock market.
VIDEO OF YOUR VOTE? Not in Kentucky. “Kentucky secretary of state Trey Grayson says a national YouTube project with PBS encouraging voters to video themselves in action on Election Day would be illegal in the Bluegrass State.”
A COMING social singularity?
JOHN STEELE GORDON: Speculators, Politicians, and Financial Disasters.
Many people, especially liberal politicians, have blamed the disaster on the deregulation of the last 30 years. But they do so in order to avoid the blame’s falling where it should—squarely on their own shoulders. For the same politicians now loudly proclaiming that deregulation caused the problem are the ones who fought tooth and nail to prevent increased regulation of Fannie and Freddie—the source of so much political money, their mother’s milk.
Does this answer my question about why Lehman’s collapse is being investigated more intensively than Fannie and Freddie’s?
A BUNCH OF PEOPLE HAVE BEEN EMAILING ME about Allen West for Congress in Florida. Should I be paying more attention to him?
IN THE MAIL: Tom Tomorrow’s The Future’s So Bright I Can’t Bear to Look. A lot of us feel that way about now, Tom . . . .
WHAT’S MISSING THIS ELECTION CYCLE: “I have not seen the establishment pundits writing/commenting on the joys of divided government. You know, like in 1996 when they suggested that the country would benefit if Democrat Clinton balanced the Republican congress.” Well, silly, there’s no Republican congress to balance this time!
YESTERDAY I MENTIONED THE GROWTH OF THE NONPROFIT SECTOR, and reader Toren Smith sends this story as a followup: Bay Area nonprofit executives rack up big salary gains:
Laurance Hoagland, chief investment officer of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, had the biggest paycheck in 2003 with a total of $738,094. Though that represents a 54 percent jump in cash compensation for Hoagland, it included a $215,000 retention bonus paid that year. Without that bonus, Hoagland would have ranked second on The List, earning exactly $1 less than the $523,095 paid to Richard Schlosberg, president of the David and Lucile Packard Foundation.
The San Francisco Business Times annual compensation survey of nonprofits and foundations found that 23 of the top 50 executives enjoyed double-digit compensation increases in their most recently available fiscal year. The survey is based on nonprofit’s tax returns, which are publicly disclosed. The Business Times survey excludes hospitals and research institutes. . . . The San Francisco Symphony’s musical director, Michael Tilson Thomas, does not appear on the list because he provides his services through a $1.5 million annual contract between the symphony and his corporation, MTT Inc. That’s up from $1.4 million in 2002.
No starving artist, he. The nonprofit sector is huge and lucrative, but perceptions and scrutiny haven’t caught up, though this article suggests that’s beginning to change: “Daniel Borochoff, president of the Chicago-based charity watchdog group American Institute of Philanthropy, said there’s a lot more scrutiny being paid to nonprofits, including an Internal Revenue Service review of 2,000 nonprofit groups as part of an investigation into compensation of nonprofit executives.”
BETTER ALL THE TIME: Phil Bowermaster rounds up a bunch of good news you probably missed.
JOE THE PLUMBER hits back at the press.
UPDATE: Ross Douthat on media hypocrisy.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Fairer election coverage from Al Jazeera?
THE CREDIT CRUNCH DOESN’T SEEM TO HAVE HIT BOTTOM: In the line at Target yesterday, I watched a woman have her credit cards declined. The response: Want to take out a Target Credit Card? On the other hand, her instant application for that was declined, too. She wound up writing a check for several hundred dollars worth of cakes, pies, and cookies. Meanwhile, I keep getting mailers from my credit-card companies inviting me to use the credit line with handy “checks” that produce an instant high-interest loan.
OBAMA RAISED $150 million last month. No word on how much came from Mickey Mouse. Or “Doodad Pro.”
HMM: Schumer Ripped IndyMac as Democratic Donors Probed Books. “New York Sen. Charles Schumer’s public criticism of IndyMac Bancorp last summer, which critics say helped spark a run on deposits that took under the troubled thrift, came while IndyMac’s assets were being eyed by investors who are major donors to the Democratic Senate campaign committee the senator chairs.”
ANOTHER SET OF TARGETS IF the “Fairness” Doctrine comes back: “If you’re a fan of Jay Leno or David Letterman, you may already know this: You have to listen to seven Republican jokes for every one the late-night comedians tell about Democrats.”
OBAMA’S LEAD slips to three points? Should we believe that? Beats me. Polls have seemed especially volatile this time around. It makes sense for both the campaigns to act as if it’s true, though.
UPDATE: Colin Powell endorses Obama. Dog bites man?
Meanwhile, spread the wealth around:
Currently, Barack Obama is outspending John McCain on the airwaves by something like four to one. It seems likely that he will succeed in buying the Presidential election.
But wait! We know that Obama is in favor of “spreading the wealth around” so as to achieve what he thinks is fairness. So presumably Obama will be willing to share his vast resources with the McCain campaign so the playing field will be level for the last weeks of the campaign. That’s only fair, right? What do you say, Barack? And if not, why not?
PAUL responds: Obama didn’t break his promise to rely on public financing (if McCain did too) for nothing.
If Obama can opt out of public financing for campaigns, can the rest of us opt out of public financing for everything else? . . . .
MORE: Roger Simon: Powell’s Obama Endorsement: the religious factor.
A HOUSE FULL OF questionable voters in Ohio: “Likely among them are the 12 people who have registered to vote since August using the address of the 1,175-square-foot Brownlee Avenue house. Some of them already have voted. Others requested absentee ballots but have yet to return them to the Franklin County Board of Elections. None of them, however, seems to have ties to Ohio — no close relatives, no public-records trail, no obvious intention to stay in the state past the election. The owner of the house also is coming under scrutiny. He has voted in Ohio even though he has lived and worked in New York since 2004.”
R.S. MCCAIN on Young Turks and Old T-Shirts.
WHAT? THEY’RE NOT REALLY ALL SPARTACUS? False Claims By Defeated Slaves Undermine Their Campaign.
SARAH PALIN ON SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE: You can see the video here. I think Amy Poehler gets the best-of-show award, though.
AIRPORT SECURITY REMAINS PATHETIC:
As a screener at Newark Liberty International Airport, Pythias Brown was supposed to keep deadly objects off airplanes. But for the past year, authorities allege, Brown has been swiping electronic equipment from luggage of the passengers he was supposed to protect.
A laptop here, a cell phone there. Within months, he had snatched more than 100 items, authorities say.
But this summer, Brown got too ambitious for his own good, allegedly stealing a $47,900 camera from an HBO crew and a camcorder from a CNN employee, authorities said. Brown attracted the attention of one of his victims — and eventually investigators — when he tried to sell the equipment on eBay, the online auction site, authorities said.
I’ve been complaining about airport security for years. Just remember: If he could get away with stealing things from checked baggage, someone else could have just as easily planted a bomb in checked baggage.
GAY PATRIOT: Three Democratic Scandals, Minimal Media Coverage.
Yes, following this election you can see how important a free, responsible, and unbiased press is — and how different things might be if we had one.
UPDATE: A reader emails: “Would someone please clue the DemSM that it wasn’t Joe the Plumber who caused our financial mess. It was Joe the Derivatives Banker , Joe the ACORN activist and Joe the Congressional Fannie Mae enabler.” One of those Joes is actually on the ticket . . . .
IF YOU WANT TO FEEL BETTER ABOUT BARACK OBAMA, Mickey Kaus has a suggestion.
UPDATE: Eric Scheie emails: “Oddly enough, Obama started out as a nice guy, and I remember liking him. It was refreshing the way he tried to de-racialize things, but I think he’s so wedded to the left and they’re so wedded to these things that he’s hamstrung. ” Yes, if the Obama running now were the Obama I saw when he started his campaign, I wouldn’t be terribly interested in the outcome of this election. I’m most troubled by the thuggish attacks on critics.
ARE WE FACING A LARGELY self-imposed crisis on energy?
ROSS DOUTHAT: What Is The Conservative Cocoon?
WHILE I FIND THE IDEA OF LARRY SUMMERS AS SECRETARY OF TREASURY COMFORTING, I can’t say I feel the same way about John Kerry as Secretary of State, or — perhaps worse yet — Chuck Hagel as Secretary of Defense.
THE NEW YORK TIMES stock price since 2004.
SQUABBLING OVER RECUSAL at the Sixth Circuit.
DID WASHINGTON waste millions on faulty voting machines? Hey, it’s not like this is a problem without a solution. Related item here.
REASON TV’S new talk show.
IN FORBES, HENRY MANNE is worried about the prospects for freedom. “We can anticipate a new reign of mercantilism, as the protectionists among us wield this strong new weapon against globalization and open markets. And all of this is true in large degree regardless of who wins the forthcoming election.”
What do I think? There is no fate. But there’s too much doomsaying nowadays, and not enough action against the predicted dooms. And even Manne ends on a hopeful note.
CINDY MCCAIN’S LAWYER pushes back at the New York Times. “It is worth noting that you have not employed your investigative assets looking into Michelle Obama. You have not tried to find Barack Obama’s drug dealer that he wrote about in his book, Dreams of My Father. Nor have you interviewed his poor relatives in Kenya and determined why Barack Obama has not rescued them. Thus, there is a terrific lack of balance here.” Ouch. More here.
UPDATE: Related thoughts from Jennifer Rubin: “If MSM wants to be treated as impartial arbiter, a ‘watchdog’ and not a lapdog of one candidate, its members should consider some behavior modification.”
FIVE WAYS to save money on tech in today’s economy.
“I AM JOE.” “I am a Wal Mart schlub in flyover country who changes my own oil and unclogs drains without a license. I smoke and drink beer and toss the football in the front yard with my kid, and I figure I can fend my way without handouts from some Magic Messiah’s candy bags. Most everyone in my family and most everyone I grew up with is another Joe, and if you screw with them, you screw with me.”
Related item here. Plus, Charles Martin and Tom Maguire issue complaints.
Anyway, the issue certainly seems to have some resonance out there.
UPDATE: “In what kind of nation, do the media investigate critics more than candidates?”
SAM SCHULMAN SAYS THAT CLASS WILL TELL: “Why is Bill Ayers a respectable member of the upper middle class and Sarah Palin contemptible?”
NETBOOK COMPUTERS selling fast worldwide. I’m not surprised.
TOM BLUMER looks at the Pelosi-Obama-Reid economy. I don’t think it’s fair to blame Obama that much, except perhaps atmospherically — he’s been running for President since the Democrats took over the Congress, and hasn’t been very active in actual legislating.
THE NEW FABLE II TRAILER IS OUT. Plus, Sony recalls a game because it contains passages from the Q’uran.
Joe and Barack’s Tax Problems.
I was stunned to see some document showing Joe the Plumbers’ tax problems on my 10pm (CT)newscast on the local NBC affiliate in Chicago on Thursday night. They have very little time for any national news and they actually spent time on Joe the Plumbers’ tax problems. Amazing!
But when an actual candidate — Barack Obama — released his tax returns, which on their face seemed to show an ethics violation of Illinois law, the press couldn’t care less.
Just to remind you, Illinois prohibits state legislators from taking speaking fees, and Barack reported “speaking fees.”
Funny how people in the news business set their priorities in an election year. Lindgren thinks it’s a diversity problem: “I really don’t blame Obama for not addressing this; he released his tax returns after all. The problem is the press, which seems to be having more trouble than usual doing its job this season. As I’ve said before, the best solution to the problem is integrating the newsrooms politically.”
If the fairness doctrine goes through, perhaps it’ll be possible to demand such integration! (Via TaxProf).
ROBERT FARAGO: General Motors Death Watch 205: The World According to TARP. “Why in the world would General Motors want to combine with Chrysler? Given their respective balance sheets and future prospects, the analogies pretty much suggest themselves. My favorite: the Titanic rescuing the Lusitania. . . . Many of our Best and Brightest have labeled this deal ‘America Leyland,’ referring to the disaster that was the combination, nationalization and eventual extinction of Britain’s car industry. Spot on. Should this deal down, that’s EXACTLY where this is heading. But it should be remembered that Leyland took more than a decade to take a dirt nap. GM’s management, as always, is thinking about next week. This is, of course, the reason for their demise. . . . I can hardly imagine a worse scenario for American industry, the American auto industry and all the people who depend on it for their livelihoods.”
PHYSICS AND MUSIC in Oak Ridge.
IN TNR, John McWhorter writes: “If Obama loses, let’s please not assume that racism was the cause.”
Hasn’t it already been established that there’s no reason to vote against Obama — or even to criticize his policies — besides racism?
UPDATE: I mean, heck, just wearing a McCain-Palin t-shirt gets you called “racist.” Even if you’re a seventh-grade girl. Her reaction was braver than a lot of pundits’, though.
IF NOTHING ELSE, perhaps the 2008 election will produce a better appreciation of plumbing. Reader Tim Belknap emails with a link to Hodding Carter’s Flushed: How the Plumber Saved Civilization and suggests that it deserves more attention. He says I linked it before, but I can’t find the post. Oh, well — here it is now!
COMPARING Obama and McCain on space policy.
PETER BERKOWITZ: Are Universities Above the Law? I agree on the need for transparency and accountability in higher education — and, in fact, I think we need more of that in the nonprofit sector as a whole. The past couple of decades have seen an anormous expansion not only in higher-ed, but in the nonprofit world, and what used to be a small and narrow niche is now a very large and fast-growing part of the economy, one that gets surprisingly little scrutiny.
BAYLOR UNIVERSITY has abandoned its pay-for-SAT program. “When Baylor was defending the program, it suggested that other colleges had similar efforts. While no other college came forward, it does turn out that other institutions are using little bonuses to get some of their numbers higher — in this case the number of applicants.”
Seems to me the U.S. News rankings are driving a lot of shady practices. Remember this when you hear the for-profit sector lambasted for tricky accounting . . . .
POPULAR MECHANICS: 12 basic plumbing supplies for home tool kits.
HMM: Lehman’s Collapse, Stock Sale Probed by Three U.S. Prosecutors . Can we get a similarly intense investigation into Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, or is there too much danger that it will involve members of Congress?
IN THE MAIL: A new edition of Roger Kimball’s classic, Tenured Radicals: How Politics Has Corrupted Our Higher Education. According to Kimball, the “Long March through the institutions” continues.
MCCLATCHY: Furor over ACORN allegations gaining momentum.
UPDATE: Sharing the talking points?
ANOTHER UPDATE: A reader emails: “If Obama is elected in Nov, how long do you think it will take for the FBI to shut down their investigation of Acorn?” Nonsense — that would be political interference in a criminal investigation.
A MAJOR COUP FOR THE CAMPAIGN: Scrappleface Editorial Board Endorses Barack Obama.
With a few exceptions (such as Vermont), “blue states” mostly turn out to be red states with a couple of big blue cities (Pennsylvania, for example, or even California). Almost by definition, an effective conservative executive – the kind you might want in the White House – can only come from flyover country.
So, when a conservative pundit mocks Wasilla, he’s mocking conservatism as it’s actually lived, as opposed to conservatism as a theoretical fantasy playground for the purposes of cocktail-party banter.
Read the whole thing.
OH, GOODY: Amid Pressing Problems, Threat of Deflation Looms.
The risk of deflation — generally falling prices across the economy, beyond volatile energy and food costs — remains slim. But the financial shock and a faltering economy can set the stage for a deflationary environment.
Federal Reserve officials view broad-based deflation as unlikely but possible.
Numbers don’t show it yet, and I hope they don’t. Dealing with inflation is painful, but dealing with deflation is much, much more difficult. Meanwhile, here’s some modest good news:
But for the week, the Dow rose 4.8%, its first such gain since the meltdown of Lehman Brothers Holdings set off a global financial crisis in mid-September. The gain was also the Dow’s biggest weekly rise in percentage terms since March 2003.
Stay tuned. If Obama is elected, I predict nothing but peace, prosperity, and cheerful camaraderie as far as the eye can see.
BLAME IT ON RIO FLORIDA?
A sex scandal involving teenage congressional pages drove Republican Rep. Mark Foley out of office and Democrat Tim Mahoney into the vacated Florida congressional seat. Apparently, Mr. Mahoney didn’t learn from Mr. Foley’s disgrace. The congressman allegedly began an affair with a staff member while he was campaigning for the seat on the promise of a “world that is safer, more moral.” It must be something in the water.
I’m disappointed. I thought this new Congress was going to be different!
Okay, not really.
MOCKING JOE THE PLUMBER ON THE CAMPAIGN TRAIL. Plus, for Joe Biden, “Jobs” is a three-letter word.
VLADIMIR PUTIN AND HIS satellite-collared dog. But did Putin mean to call it “Soviet Russia?”
UPDATE: Apparently that’s a Yakov Smirnoff reference from Engadget, though it purports to be a Putin quote. Reader Garry Belka emails: ‘Please be advised that in none of the reports on Putin’s dog, new GLONASS dog collar and Putin’s comments at the event in Russian sources he says anything about ‘Soviet Russia.’ That quote is apparently wholly made up, as happens often with a coverage of Russia in the US.”
Well, that’s good. I don’t like the idea of neo-Sovietism.
THE NEW YORK POST ON THE FEDS’ ACORN INVESTIGATION:
After weeks of reports of wide spread fraud, the FBI has opened an investigation into the far-left “community organizer” group’s nationwide voter-registration campaign.
Talk about bolting the barn after the horses are out. It’s extremely unlikely that anything significant will come of it before Election Day.
Still, the fact that the Justice Department has gotten involved signifies an appreciation that what ACORN has tried to portray as the inevitably haphazard efforts of local organizers is more likely a nationwide, coordinated voter-registration scam.
Frankly, it seems to be far too widespread to be anything but that.
Read the whole thing.
UPDATE: Charges of ACORN-like registration fraud on behalf of the GOP, too. I almost hope we’ll see more of this, as it’s the only way to get the press to pay serious attention to the issue . . . .
And at the risk of repeating myself, all of this is just more evidence that we need to make the voting system more trustworthy.
IT’S A DIVERSITY PROBLEM: Evangelicals are in the news, but not in newsrooms.
COLIN POWELL: About to endorse Obama? Not much political courage on display here if so — waiting until Obama has a clear lead, and the value of his endorsement is about to dissipate, to climb on the Obama train. Now if Powell were to endorse McCain at this point . . . .
SO I POSTED THIS POLL in response to Obama’s “spread the wealth” remarks and now it has this comment: “funny that instahack posted this poll suggesting that plumbers are ‘royalists’ before ‘Joe the Plumber’ became the right-wing darling.”
Yeah, that was exactly my point. The combination of cluelessness about the present — the “spread the wealth” remarks were made to Joe the Plumber, and linked in that very post — and sheer historical illiteracy is priceless, even by the standards of blog-commenters generally. It’s almost worth opening up comments regularly just to see if this can be bettered, but, really, you’d have to go to Kos’s place or Blue Texan’s to find this level of commentary on any sort of regular basis.
JOE THE PLUMBER WOULD PROBABLY BE IMPRESSED! “San Francisco’s Oceanside Water Pollution Control Plant may soon become the George W. Bush Sewage Plant.”
And anyone should be disdainful of those who look down on sewage treatment. Let them try living without it for a while . . . .
JOHN MCCAIN talks to Joe the Plumber.
SO WHO’S MORE POPULAR? McCain gives Letterman his biggest audience in years.
RUNNING FOR PRESIDENT OF EARTH: Barack Obama vows to ‘change the world’.
ER, “PROBABLY?” Cooking with a Corpse? Probably Not a Good Idea in a Restaurant.
THE CAPTAIN’S JOURNAL doesn’t like our new rules of engagement in Iraq.
SECRET SERVICE EXPLODES ANOTHER POPULAR MYTH: Secret Service Denies Blocking Reporters at Palin Rallies. Really, the reporting this election seems even worse than last time around. Or maybe I’m forgetting just how bad it was last time . . . .
UPDATE: Reader C.J. Burch emails: “They aren’t myths. They are blatant, intentional lies.”
Faith in the press seems low these days.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Okay, maybe standards are slipping: ABC News Used Obama Contributor as ‘Expert’ in Defense of ACORN.
A $10,000 SCHOLARSHIP for college bloggers.
RON PAUL GETS Strange New Respect.
REGULATORY RULE NUMBER ONE: Don’t Panic! “It may make sense for a concerned regulator to determine beforehand whether there are flaws in the inputs to the system that create undesirable instability, but this is very different than coming in after the fact to reestablish ‘true’ values.”
Plus this: “Are fear and greed a result, rather than a cause, of gyrations in the stock market?”
SIMS CREATOR WILL WRIGHT: Five Prophecies About Artificial Intelligence.
APPARENTLY, OBAMA THINKS YOU SHOULD BE prosecuted for even making claims of voter fraud.
PROGRESS TOWARD superconductors that work at over 200 degrees absolute. That’s not room-temperature superconductivity, but it’s a big deal. Faster, please.
ABC NEWS: Congressman Mahoney Admits to Multiple Affairs. Really, I want someone to call Mark Foley for a reaction.
ABC NEWS: Congressman Mahoney Admits to Multiple Affairs. Really, I want someone to call Mark Foley for a reaction.
BEATING UP REPUBLICANS in New York. “A spokeswoman for the Manhattan District Attorney confirms the authenticity of a story circulating on conservative blogs: That during a (rare, and small) McCain rally on Lexington Avenue and 51st Street in Manhattan last month, a hostile local grabbed a woman’s sign, broke it, and hit her in the face.”
ANGRY PLUMBERS wave plungers at Obama.
UPDATE: McCain defends the plumber:
Last weekend, Senator Obama showed up in Joe’s driveway to ask for his vote, and Joe asked Senator Obama a tough question. I’m glad he did; I think Senator Obama could use a few more tough questions.
The response from Senator Obama and his campaign yesterday was to attack Joe. People are digging through his personal life and he has TV crews camped out in front of his house. He didn’t ask for Senator Obama to come to his house. He wasn’t recruited or prompted by our campaign. He just asked a question. And Americans ought to be able to ask Senator Obama tough questions without being smeared and targeted with political attacks.
What would it be like with a President Obama?
MORE: Mess with Obama, and you’ll never plumb in this town again.
There are a few other problems with the attempts to smear Wurzelbacher. He did not claim he now makes more than $250,000; he said he plans to acquire a small company that would put him in that bracket. And it’s curious that Politico states that Wurzelbacher “would receive a tax cut if Obama were elected president”–as if Obama’s campaign promises have already achieved the status of established fact.
As for his unpaid taxes, blogger “Patterico” reports that Obama’s campaign treasurer has liens for unpaid taxes. That isn’t exactly an earth-shattering scandal either, but it is hard to see how it is less relevant than Wurzelbacher’s liens.
It’s okay unless Obama’s treasurer asks Obama a tough question. And how likely is that?
STILL MORE: Working in Jimi Hendrix. Why didn’t I think of that?
ULTRA-THIN-AND-LIGHT notebook computers from Samsung. “The X360 is lighter than the MacBook Air, weighing in at only 2.8 pounds, and can achieve up to 10 hours of continuous usage, according to Samsung.” Now that I think about it, it’s kind of odd that they weren’t already in this market, given their other products.
MORE FROM REASON TV on saving Social Security.
GREENHOUSE AGREEMENT MELTING DOWN? ” Fears of a sharp worldwide economic slowdown are threatening a hard-won European plan on climate change that European leaders hoped would set an example for the rest of the world. At a rancorous summit meeting this week of the European Union’s heads of state, several Eastern European countries and Italy said they might no longer be able to afford to slash greenhouse gas emissions as envisioned.”
A LOOK inside the Chevy Volt’s battery. It’s a far cry from your run-of-the-mill Die Hard.
WELL, THIS IS COOL: Volkswagen will build diesel version of Passat replacement in Tennessee. I liked my Passat wagon a lot, and a diesel version would provide superb mileage in a vehicle that can hold nearly as much as most SUVs. On the other hand, although I didn’t have too many problems with my Passat, a couple of my friends had miserable experiences, so VW had better work on the reliability, as well as the fuel economy.
