ABC NEWS: Obama Shuns Press Conferences, Sits With ‘EXTRA!’s’ Mario Lopez. Hey, now that the press has given its all to elect him, he doesn’t need them any more. So why take the chance that somebody might ask a tough question. Sure, it’s not likely, but . . . .
INFIGHTING ON California and gay marriage.
SIX ALABAMA COUNTIES have more registered voters than voting-age people. Plus this: “Well, considering a dog here in Pike County received a personally addressed voter registration form this month from the Alabama Democratic Party, we’d have to say there’s legitimate cause for concern.”
What’s the big deal? We’ve had “yellow dog Democrats” in the South for years. But I wonder if the voting system is like the credit system, with same-day registration and limited ID requirements kind of like those “no doc” loans, and questionable voting machines being like the dubious credit-rating schemes. As with the credit system, lots of insiders are making out too well from the current system to want to fix it, but when the inevitable crash comes the rest of us will pay the price . . . . Or is that analogy too much of a stretch?
HALF-PRICE cookware. I like half-price.
JUST TO BE CLEAR, the “Glenn Reynolds of Martinsville, Virginia,” quoted by the Huffington Post isn’t me. In fact, I’m pretty much in favor of miscegenation. And of cegenation, generally! Er, if that’s a word, anyway. (Apparently not.) Plus, I’m on record as being proudly pro-sodomy! Not sure what the other Glenn Reynolds thinks of that.
Apparently, there’s a lot of name confusion going on . . . .
YET GEORGE W. BUSH LOOKS CALM AND HAPPY: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad can’t take it anymore.
UPDATE: A reader emails: “Ahmadinejad probably took a look at this chart.“
GREG MANKIW FOCUSES ON WHAT’S IMPORTANT: “Here is a question that you may have been thinking about: How do the different candidates’ tax plans affect Greg Mankiw’s incentive to work?”
If there were no taxes, so t1=t2=t3=t4=0, then $1 earned today would yield my kids $28. That is simply the miracle of compounding.
Under the McCain plan, t1=.35, t2=.25, t3=.15, and t4=.15. In this case, a dollar earned today yields my kids $4.81. That is, even under the low-tax McCain plan, my incentive to work is cut by 83 percent compared to the situation without taxes.
Under the Obama plan, t1=.43, t2=.35, t3=.2, and t4=.45. In this case, a dollar earned today yields my kids $1.85. That is, Obama’s proposed tax hikes reduce my incentive to work by 62 percent compared to the McCain plan and by 93 percent compared to the no-tax scenario. In a sense, putting the various pieces of the tax system together, I would be facing a marginal tax rate of 93 percent. The bottom line: If you are one of those people out there trying to induce me to do some work for you, there is a good chance I will turn you down. And the likelihood will go up after President Obama puts his tax plan in place.
Perhaps this will lead a lot of people to “go John Galt.”
SARBANES-OXLEY AND OBAMA CAMPAIGN FUNDRAISING: “If it were a public company it would have to disclose a material weakness, and its auditors would wonder whether its ‘tone from the top’ had actually encouraged the practices in question. Fortunately for politicians of all parties, we do not hold government to anything like the same standard of accountability that applies to private businesses with public stockholders.”
A REVIEW OF Speed Racer on Blu-Ray.
FIRST IT WAS “I AM JOE THE PLUMBER.” Now it’s I am Bill Ayers.
DOG BITES MAN: High School Musical 3: Senior Year eviscerates W. at the box office. “And speaking of W., the Oliver Stone film sank like the proverbial stone. High School Musical 3 out-grossed it by something like 8 to 1 domestically. And that’s not including foreign, which, according to Nikki Finke, made the musical–at 82 million dollars for the weekend– the first American worldwide number one since The Dark Knight. (W. dropped 49.3 percent on its second weekend – disastersville.)”
THE USUAL END-OF-ADMINISTRATION REGULATORY RUSH: “The Bush administration is hurrying to push through regulatory changes in politically sensitive areas such as endangered-species protection, dismaying opponents on the left, just as conservatives were irritated by rules rushed out at the end of the Clinton administration.” (Via Administrative Law Profs).
A MAP OF newspaper endorsements in the United States. (Via Jack Lail).
THOUGHTS ON SEXISM IN THE CAMPAIGN:
I cannot predict who will win the presidential campaign, but I already know who will lose big: all women.
I realized this when I saw a 20-something male student who attends a class in the community college where I teach, wearing a T-shirt that read, “Sarah Palin is a C-.” He wore it in public, in broad daylight, and without shame or even consciousness of what he was doing. . . .
It was the encounter with the young man that woke me up, but there were signs all along the campaign trail. First, with the candidacy of Sen. Hillary Clinton, who won 18 million popular votes from the people of the United States and was ridiculed, marginalized, and put in her place when she wasn’t even offered the vice presidency slot.
But the really big attack on women occurred when John McCain selected only the second woman in history to be on a major-party ticket. He chose a governor of a state critical to our energy crisis. She is a very popular governor with an 80-percent approval rate. She was elected on her own merit without previous political ties. She is her own political creation, not the wife, daughter, sister or mistress of a politician.
I thought Americans would be proud of her nomination, whether we agreed or disagreed with her on the issues. Was I in for a shock.
Like Crusaders heading for the Holy Land, when you campaign for The One all sins are forgiven in advance. (Via TGW).
UPDATE: Related thoughts here.
DOG BITES MAN: At the U.N., Many Hope for an Obama Win.
MURTHA AND MORE, on Saturday Night Live. “The best Bill Russell campaign commercial you’ll ever see. A nationally televised seven-minute goof on Murtha as a demented crank a week before the election? Thanks, Lorne!”
Mark Hemingway thinks it’ll hurt Murtha in his district, too. We’ll see.
IN THE HARTFORD COURANT: Dodd’s Campaign Money Shift Raises Questions.
Sen. Christopher Dodd’s bewildering odyssey of entitlement, evasions and deceptions continued last week. He shed more credibility as he staggered through new excuses for concealing from the public documents related to his cut-rate mortgages of nearly $800,000 from subprime giant Countrywide Financial.
On Wednesday, Dodd announced he wants to wait until the Senate Ethics Committee completes its investigation of his mortgage deals. There’s no Senate rule requiring Dodd to remain silent during the investigation. There’s no legitimate reason for Dodd to withhold from the public the array of documents, e-mails and letters from the mortgage swag bag Countrywide gave him.
A Senate investigation isn’t like a Countrywide mortgage: It’s expensive to prove there’s nothing there.
Dodd has caught a lucky break, as senators often do. The Federal Elections Commission allows Dodd to use campaign funds from the Friends of Chris Dodd re-election committee to pay his legal and other expenses incurred in the ethics investigation.
Yeah, Senators have amazing luck in all kinds of ways . . . .
Plus this: “In their distress, the humbled financial wizards of Wall Street should spare a moment to revel in their smartest investment paying off in their darkest hours. They contributed the money that Dodd may be using to pay for his defense, and he supported putting taxpayers on the hook for $700 billion for them.”
ARE YOU CONNECTED? A new dispatch from Michael Yon.
ROGER KIMBALL: Europe on the brink? (And Russia close behind?) I hope not. And I’m worried about China, too.
WASHINGTON POST: Obama’s Take Raises Questions About Web: “Sen. Barack Obama’s record-breaking $150 million fundraising performance in September has for the first time prompted questions about whether presidential candidates should be permitted to collect huge sums of money through faceless credit card transactions over the Internet.”
ZOMBIES IN ASHEVILLE: But they pose no threat.
HMM: Prosecutors widen Chicago police torture probe. Since it can’t be used against Bush, I don’t expect this story to have much media traction. (Via NewsAlert).
THE KNOXVILLE NEWS-SENTINEL endorses McCain.
HOW DID I MISS THIS? New poll shows Russell over Murtha, 48-35. Booting Murtha would not only be a consolation prize for a lot of Republicans even if Obama wins, it might also encourage a degree of circumspection in the new Congress. If a guy like Murtha can lose in a Democratic year, then nobody can feel too safe. Here’s Russell’s site.
EVEN D.C. OFFICIALS ARE GETTING arrested for taking photos of the police.
IN THE MAIL: The Universe Twister. Three of Keith Laumer’s amusing Lafayette O’Leary novels in one paperback volume, edited by Eric Flint. And — in what I hope will be a trend — the cover makes clear that this is a reissue of previous works. Good for Baen on that one.
“The favorite of millions from Bronx to Miami, the key to the riddle is . . .” Oh, that would be telling.
JOHN TIERNEY: Heart-Warming News on Hot Coffee.
REDISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH: Theory vs. practice. And if you split the tip among two homeless guys, they can outvote the waiter every time!
OPPOSING THE PEOPLE’S TRIBUNE MUST BE A CRIME OF SOME SORT: Venezuela’s Chavez wants to jail rival.
MORE ON financial problems for Big Media. Add to that this story on the Associated Press’s problems. Key bit: “But in a world, and a Web, full of analysis, opinion and ‘accountability journalism,’ what’s missing is a neutral referee. Which is a bit like living in a world with a North Pole and a South Pole but no equator. If there’s no one to set the standard, how will we know when we’ve crossed the line?” Neutral hard-news reporting is the one thing the AP can do better than anyone else if it tries. So why isn’t it trying harder?
UPDATE: Reader Jim Warren writes: “Duh.The AP can’t do unbiased because they’re not. The Long March of the Left through the institutions continues apace, more often than not at the expense of the institutions themselves. The AP may have to be sacrificed for the greater good, and what of it? A small price to pay for educating the proles…”
If I owned stock in some of these media companies I’d be making a stink at the shareholders’ meeting.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Jim Stanton emails that it’s not “yellow journalism,” but “blue journalism:”
Shouldn’t this sort of partisan hackery have a name? Does it? Yellow journalism had a name and that helped identify it and eventually get rid of it. I came up with the term but others may have either seeded my thought unconsciously or come up with it first. I did a quick google of ‘blue journalism’ and got hits but it didn’t turn up much. I didn’t see any that seemed to indicate its use in this context. I like the term and would like your opinion of it.
The pendulum will eventually swing back I hope. The NYT actually made its name in the swing back from yellow. Some struggling organization will figure it out and ride the swing back.
Let’s hope. And reader Todd Hester writes:
Glenn, maybe that’s the next (and best) strategy: Buy up stock in these companies and make a stink at shareholders’ meetings. Heck, we could buy low, and–if we do our job well–end up selling high. Of
course, the strategy of buying stock is predicated on the hope that we’re not taxed into poverty first. . .
Activism that makes a buck! Hey, it works for ACORN . . . .
INDICTMENTS OVER underfunded public pensions. Sounds messy.
FOR THE FIRST TIME, gasoline cheaper than a year ago, as oil drops below $65. So where are all the cheap-gas news stories?
MAKING X-RAYS by peeling Scotch Tape.
JERRY POURNELLE on spreading the wealth. “Pure capitalism leads to business cycles, in which the low point is generally better (in terms of standard of living) than Socialism (and certainly preferable to Communism, if only because the low points in a business cycle are considerably shorter than the reign of the bureaucrats in either Socialist or Communist states, even if the Communism has a human face, which it seldom does). . . . One does wonder whether the efficiency of having a few very large financial institutions outweighs the cost of the disasters that ensue when a Black Swan appears; whether it might not be better to have, instead of one institution so large that it justifies paying its top executives $100 million a year, one hundred such institutions paying executives $1 million a year? Certainly this would be less efficient. The highs would not be as high. But would the lows be as low? Why must there be institutions so large that they cannot be permitted to fail, and must be rescued by the common purse?”
THE INSTA-DAD, ON THE BAILOUT: “The bad thing is that the federal government has figured out that it can borrow a lot more money than it previously thought.”
DAN RIEHL IS UNIMPRESSED:
Look folks – I’m seeing this stuff about an alleged Obama affair being shipped around on the Right blogs. As far as I’m concerned, it’s a lot of nonsense and the people going on about “sources” and “confirmations” but the MSM is holding back aren’t doing themselves good service by trafficking in this.
Here’s the deal – you don’t need the MSM to break a story today. If you got the goods – spill it. If you don’t, then STFU.
Give me names, times and dates – because the media can’t ignore those. But rank speculation and disguised voices ain’t cuttting it with me.
Indeed.
JILL STEWART ON California’s ballot initiatives.
HEARING ABOUT UNTRUSTWORTHINESS from people you can’t trust.
BOB KERREY ON OUR IN-THE-TANK PRESS:
Kerrey, who’s now president of The New School, claimed that “the big unreported story” of the election cycle “is the tremendous spending advantage Obama’s got. If everything else is equal, and it’s not equal in this race, but if everything else is equal, McCain hasn’t got a chance.”
Asked why he thinks the story isn’t getting adequate coverage, he responded, “There’s a liberal bias. There’s a preference for Obama and it’s getting underreported as a result.”
Then Kerrey got specific.
“If this thing was running the other way, if Obama was taking the public money and McCain had opted out and raised $150 million in September, do you think The New York Times would have an editorial against it?
Indeed.
BIDEN GRILLED ON TV: Obama campaign responds by cutting off the station. Was the questioning out of bounds? Watch for yourself and make up your own mind. (Both links via Drudge).
UPDATE: Reader C.J. Burch emails: “He got a straighter run than Palin has. No one edited his answers. No one used false quotes against him. No one edited the video tape. No one took him out of context. No one pissed and moaned about his wardrobe or his hair plugs. No one has asked to see his kid’s birth ceritifcate. Thin skinned much, Obama campaign?” Note that they’re only getting these questions from local TV. There was a time when network folks laughed at softball local TV coverage, but in this election we’ve seen more hard coverage of Obama et al. from local media.
ANOTHER UPDATE: David Bernstein is sidin’ with Biden. And TigerHawk calls the questions “obnoxious to the point of being ineffective.” He also comments: “Second, journalists ask equally obnoxious, left-wing conspiracy-oriented questions of Republicans all the time. The effect is different, though, because we are used to seeing aggressive questioning in that direction.”
A SMALL VICTORY for Tennessee wine lovers.
HOORAY FOR POLIWOOD: A new PJTV show on Hollywood and politics, from Roger Simon and Lionel Chetwynd. Free to nonsubscribers. And it got a rave review from Power Line.
MORE MEDIA RETRENCHMENT: “The Star-Ledger of Newark, N.J., will reduce its newsroom staff by nearly half through voluntary buyouts as New Jersey’s largest newspaper seeks to return to profitability.” Whatever happens to the rest of the world, the news business is already in a depression.
THE BEST-LOOKING BLU-RAY EVER? “Shot in 70mm and scanned in 8K UltraResolution (8,192 pixels across the frame, the highest resolution available), the film looks incredibly gorgeous and detailed, and the DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 (@96k/24bits) is also impressive.”
VICTOR DAVIS HANSON has some questions about this election.
AT THE AMERICAN THINKER, BOLDLY STANDING AGAINST CONVENTIONAL WISDOM: Signs Pointing To A McCain Victory.
GERARD VAN DER LEUN WONDERS WHAT HAPPENS if we run out of “jobs Americans won’t do.”
HOW TO HATE your local grocery store.
WILL FEMIA: “Do we still need to begin articles about blogging with an explanation of web + log = blog? That’s only half a step away from ‘Webster’s defines blogging as…’”
ONE ON ONE with Joe Biden.
WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG? Designing packs of robots to hunt down uncooperative humans. I suppose the first customer will actually be the IRS . . .
State and local officials are investigating if state and law-enforcement computer systems were illegally accessed when they were tapped for personal information about “Joe the Plumber.” . . .
Public records requested by The Dispatch disclose that information on Wurzelbacher’s driver’s license or his sport-utility vehicle was pulled from the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles database three times shortly after the debate.
Information on Wurzelbacher was accessed by accounts assigned to the office of Ohio Attorney General Nancy H. Rogers, the Cuyahoga County Child Support Enforcement Agency and the Toledo Police Department.
It has not been determined who checked on Wurzelbacher, or why.
I think the “why” is pretty clear. Reader Bruce Penning emails: “They told me that if George W. Bush were re-elected, ordinary citizens would have their private records accessed. And they were right!”
Meanwhile, Joe is “scared for America.”
UPDATE: Or maybe I just have a suspicious mind: “It could very well be thuggish, but it could also be quite innocent.”
J.D. JOHANNES is back in Iraq. And it’s different: “I was here in the bloody days of the begining of the surge in 2007, when what is the reality now, was a mere potentiallity. (My documentary Baghdad Surge was shot in West Rashid in the Spring/Summer of 2007.) As I watched the soccer match I could not believe what I was seeing. Rather than complain about the violence or mortars or killings, the players wanted grass–grass to play on.”
ANN ALTHOUSE comments on George Packer. “Packer, I demand an abject confession of your self-isolation and rancidity.”
A TRAILER FOR the new season of Lost.
REASON TV HAS MORE ON SAVING SOCIAL SECURITY:
WANT TO BE AN INTERN AT REASON MAGAZINE? Here’s how to apply.
THIRTEEN FEWER VOTES: “Thirteen campaign workers for Barack Obama yesterday yanked their voter registrations and ballots in Ohio after being warned by a prosecutor that temporary residents can’t vote in the battleground state.”
READER DANIEL RUWE EMAILS:
I’m a student at Thomas More College, a liberal arts college in Northern Kentucky. Walking through the faculty/staff parking lot today, I did an impromptu count of the bumper stickers supporting both candidates. Result: McCain and Obama, tied at three. Granted, maybe there were lots of Obama stickers but I just missed them, and maybe all the McCain stickers belonged to the staff (as opposed to faculty), but still, how many other colleges can there be where this is true? Just thought I’d mention it.
Actually, in my faculty-staff parking garage the numbers seem about even, too, though what’s more striking is how few cars have any political bumper stickers — far fewer than 2004. That seems to be a general phenomenon, as far as I can tell.
VIDEO: Fred Thompson and Jeri Thompson on the elections.
HAVING FUN with Bill Ayers and Bill O’Reilly.
X-PRIZE UPDATE: Armadillo Aerospace won the $350,000 Level One prize yesterday, and is competing for the million dollar prize today. The webcast is here.
Here are some video highlights from yesterday.
IN THE MAIL: Gene Stone’s The 12-Step Bush Recovery Program: A Lifesaving Guide to Shaking Off the Horrors of the Last Eight Years, with Practical Advice on Relapse, Remission, and Recounts. This book is a joke, but . . . My sense is that a lot of people will need help getting over Bush Derangement Syndrome, and that as Bush fades from view some have managed to replace it with Palin Derangement Syndrome. Offering a market for a sequel!
MICHAEL S. MALONE: Editing Their Way to Oblivion: Journalism Sacrificed For Power and Pensions:
The traditional media is playing a very, very dangerous game. With its readers, with the Constitution, and with its own fate.
The sheer bias in the print and television coverage of this election campaign is not just bewildering, but appalling. And over the last few months I’ve found myself slowly moving from shaking my head at the obvious one-sided reporting, to actually shouting at the screen of my television and my laptop computer.
But worst of all, for the last couple weeks, I’ve begun — for the first time in my adult life — to be embarrassed to admit what I do for a living. A few days ago, when asked by a new acquaintance what I did for a living, I replied that I was “a writerâ€, because I couldn’t bring myself to admit to a stranger that I’m a journalist. . . . But in the last few days, even Democrats, who have been gloating over the pass – no, make that shameless support – they’ve gotten from the press, are starting to get uncomfortable as they realize that no one wins in the long run when we don’t have a free and fair press. I was one of the first people in the traditional media to call for the firing of Dan Rather – not because of his phony story, but because he refused to admit his mistake – but, bless him, even Gunga Dan thinks the media is one-sided in this election.
Read the whole thing. I’m getting email from journalists that suggests quite a few feel like Malone does.
THE BLOGOSPHERE EXPLAINED: “What Mr. Pundit likely does not understand is that without exception, anytime a reader purports to attack you for not blogging about X, his real beef is that you are blogging about Y, and the reader would really like you to shut up about Y.” Actually, I do understand that. . . .
CHERRIES DIVINE: Cherries can reduce bodyfat in rats.
A PROMISING NEW OBESITY DRUG: If it works, the market will be huge.
I WAS TELLING STUDENTS THE OTHER DAY that bankruptcy law is a good specialty for tough economic times. Did I say “good?” I meant “really, really, amazingly good!” “Fees could reach a record $1.4 billion for lawyers, accountants and other professionals working on the Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. bankruptcy, the largest in U.S. history.”
I’M SHOCKED, SHOCKED:
The Miami trial of a Venezuelan entrepreneur who grew rich doing business with President Hugo Chávez’s populist administration has exposed how some top government officials have profited from a corrosive web of corruption in the oil-rich country.
Kickbacks, bribes and secret payoffs have become a feature in the socialist administration, which had claimed a break from the past but instead has seen several officials implicated in multimillion-dollar corruption schemes, according to testimony and conversations taped by the FBI. The trial has also revealed the Chávez government’s determination to funnel state funds to its allies in Latin America and the lengths it will go to to keep the aid secret.
Corruption among socialists? But they’re for the people! Right?
ELDERLY JEWS MORE LIKELY TO SUPPORT OBAMA THAN YOUNGER JEWS: “So it turns out, at least based on this poll, that things are exactly as past elections would have predicted. Older Jews are more liberal than are younger Jews, so they vote in greater numbers for the more liberal candidate.”
POPULAR MECHANICS: 5 Top Retro Eco-Supercars: Best Fuel Sippers of the Past 34 Years.
HECK, WHY NOT? BAILOUTS ALL AROUND! Bailouts for ethanol producers?
DOING SOMETHING ABOUT NUT ALLERGIES? “I hope severe food allergies go the way of Small Pox, Consumption, and Polio.” Me, too.
TRANSATLANTIC POLITICS: Gazprom courts Romania for South Stream ahead of elections.
NATALIE SOLENT: What about people who bomb abortion clinics in America? “When reading on the internet about Islamic terrorism, commenters often mention that there is also terrorism by Christian fundamentalists in America, where there have been bombings of abortion clinics and shootings of abortion providers. . . . The last such murder was ten years ago today. When I first found out this fact I was surprised. Again and again I have read comments that assumed that this type of terrorism was less deadly than Islamic terrorism but was nonetheless a steadily lethal undercurrent of American life – a death here, a death there.”
Not so much.
BRINGING BACK supersonic transatlantic flights?
MAKING PAPER THAT’S STRONGER THAN STEEL, with nanotechnology.
CHARGES OF OBAMA FUNDRAISING FRAUD: “He may now be running the biggest underground finance operation since Nixon deployed the plumbers.”
PITTSBURGH MUTILATION INCIDENT A FAKE, according to police. Advantage: Ann Althouse and Michelle Malkin!
HOW TO MAKE smart toy choices for kids. Good advice as far as it goes, but how about toy guns to build shooting skills?
73-YEAR OLD BECOMES INTERNET PHENOMENON: Backstory from Jack Lail.
A LOOK AT the technology of keyboard-spying.
MORE ON THE TIM MAHONEY SCANDAL:New Allegations in Mahoney Sex Scandal Document: Rep. Allegedly Used Mistress as “Tease” for Big Donors.
WHAT’S IT ALL ABOUT, ALGAE? UK Starts World’s Largest Algae Biofuel Initiative.
TURNING SOCIAL SECURITY into a welfare program? Since FDR, the belief has always been that you have to make Social Security a social-insurance scheme to sustain political support. Has that changed?
A.C. KLEINHEIDER: You’re A Racist All Day.
PATTERICO’S domain has been hijacked.
HEH: “So let’s get this straight: we are going to see more than $4 trillion in new spending, have a big tax increase, and defund our military — while certain to face international challenges where ‘it’s not gonna be apparent that we’re right.’ And this is what Democrats are saying?”
PUTTING TERMITES TO WORK making ethanol. “Researchers at the University of Florida are reporting that the enzymes in the guts of termites could provide a powerful tool for making ethanol from non-food woody plants.”
A LARGE, GASOLINE-POWERED MERCEDES that gets 28 miles per gallon.
JAMES PETHOKOUKIS: Are investor concerns about an Obama presidency influencing the stock market? “Investors might not be worrying so much about a Democratic president, given the current one-way state of the polls, as they are about the combo of Obama + Nancy Pelosi + Harry Reid. And you can toss Charlie Rangel and Barney Frank into the mix as well.” Well, look at the recent history.
IN THE MAIL: Norman Podhoretz’s World War IV: The Long Struggle Against Islamofascism. Now in paperback, and with a 30-page postscript on where things stand now.
CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER: “Contrarian that I am, I’m voting for John McCain. I’m not talking about bucking the polls or the media consensus that it’s over before it’s over. I’m talking about bucking the rush of wet-fingered conservatives leaping to Barack Obama before they’re left out in the cold without a single state dinner for the next four years. . . . Today’s economic crisis, like every other in our history, will in time pass. But the barbarians will still be at the gates.”
UPDATE: A Fred Thompson election message: Thompson sounds a similar theme.
I THOUGHT THAT WAS BEN & JERRY’S NICHE: Baskin-Robbins doing its part for Obama.
UPDATE: Reader Jeff Schultz says Kaus is wrong:
Yes, They’ve got “Whirl of Change,” or whatever – but they’ve also got, IIRC, “Straight Talk Crunch.” At least I think that was what it was – each label very clearly identified it with its candidate.
Saw them both last Saturday.
We’re more a TCBY kind of household.
GO EAST, YOUNG MAN: “Occasionally, whenever one of us Samizdata scribes writes about events in the UK, such as loss of civil liberties, or the latest financial disasters perpetrated by the government, or crime, or whatnot, there is sometimes a comment from an expatriate writer, or US citizen in particular, suggesting that we moaners should pack our bags, cancel the mail and come on over to America. . . . But considering what might happen if Obama wins the White House and the Dems increase or retain their hold on Congress, I also wonder whether we might encounter the example of enterprising Americans coming to Britain, not the other way round.” Hmm. I just turned down an offer to teach at Cambridge this summer — maybe I should reconsider, as at least I could reconnoiter a bit . . . .
UPDATE: Rand Simberg says don’t go East, go Up. And James Bennett emails:
If Stephen Harper carries out his tax-cutting plans, and the Canadian Supreme Court decision permitting private provision of medical services is implemented, and Obama carries out his likely agenda in taxation and health care, Canada (Alberta, anyway) may end up having lower taxes and freer health care than the USA. Also, the “Human Rights” Tribunals have gone on the defensive, whereas who knows what Obama-Pelosi-Reid may bring in terms of “Fairness” Doctrine, internet regulation, etc.
Personally, I think I’ll stay in Tennessee.
SEEMS LIKE THINGS ALWAYS RUN DOWN UNDER SOCIALISM: “Despite having some of the world’s largest energy reserves, Venezuela is increasingly struggling to maintain basic electrical service, a growing challenge for leftist President Hugo Chavez. . . . Shoddy electrical service is now one of Venezuelans’ top concerns, according to a recent poll, and may be a factor in elections next month for governors and mayors in which Chavez allies are expected to lose key posts, in part on complaints of poor services. . . . Experts say Venezuela for years has skimped billions of dollars in electrical investments, leaving generation 20 percent below the level necessary for a stable power grid and increasing the risk of national outages.” Too much wealth-spreading, not enough wealth-creation and maintenance.
