Archive for 2008

OBAMA DIDN’T HAVE TO ATTEND THE SERMONS: He had the tapes.

YOU DON’T GET TO BE the same again.

GUBERNATORIAL THREE-WAYS? Jeez.

More here.

JEFF JACOBY: “Nowadays, the thought of losing a war isn’t as hateful to some Americans as the thought of losing an election. . . . Were Patton alive today, his opinion of such defeatism would assuredly be unflattering – and unprintable. But his conviction that Americans have no patience for losers would be reinforced by the public’s mounting confidence that the war in Iraq will be won.”

INDEED:

One understands why that might not seem obvious to black people of a certain age: Condi Rice, for example, has childhood memories of a segregated south and racial violence. But that’s what makes Obama’s association with Wright so significant. He’s not from Alabama. He’s a biracial middle-class Kenyan-Kansan Hawaiian-born Indonesian-raised Columbia and Harvard graduate who chose to immerse himself in the most corrosive and paranoid end of a racial-grievance ghetto mentality that is nothing to do with him, his family or his upbringing. He doesn’t have the same excuse as a Jackson, Sharpton or Farrakhan.

Read the whole thing.

JAMES LILEKS COULD DO A LOT WITH THIS COMMERCIAL. Actually, it already sounds like his voice asking “It’s a what?

UPDATE: Oh nooo! Reader Lawrence Person emails:

So I submitted your Swing Wing link to Fark, and it got greenlighted:

http://forums.fark.com/cgi/fark/comments.pl?IDLink=3471323

Which led inexorably to this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O7wdk44Jsws

I hope you’re happy with what you (and Amazon) have unleashed on the
world…

I feel kinda guilty. Not, you know, Robert-Oppenheimer-guilty. But still, I can sort of see how he’d feel . . . . (Bumped).

AT THE MOMENT, the Fed’s rate cut isn’t doing the markets any good.

UPDATE: Kudlow comments.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Asian stocks tumble, dollar sinks.

David Bernstein: “I’ll say it again. I simply didn’t, and still don’t, understand how anyone could have thought that giving people, often people with terrible credit histories, mortgages with no money down and often with no documentation of income–and after an unprecedented increase in prices left the market especially vulnerable to a downturn in prices–was a good idea.”

AN OPRAH, OBAMA, WRIGHT UPDATE: “It has been reported that Oprah Winfrey, who endorsed Obama, is the other famous member of Wright’s now controversial church. However, she seems to have moved away from that church quite some time ago.”

SUPERDELEGATES in a quagmire.

JAMES LILEKS on Naked Sushi. Hey, they had that in New York in the ’80s.

THE IRAQ WAR FADES AWAY: “News directors say they are putting more effort into covering the presidential election, and the usual stories (celebrity scandals, disasters of any sort, notorious criminals). But there are other reasons for ignoring Iraq. Since last Summer, more good news than bad news began to come back from the front. This was not useful for news organizations. Bad news makes money (by attracting larger audiences for advertisers), good news is useless. Moreover, only about five percent of Americans (military personnel and their families) have any personal interest in Iraq.”

WHERE WE ARE this Sunday. Plus, a response to Matthew Yglesias.

LOTS OF INTERESTING EMAIL on the Glass-Steagall post, below.

SO THIS IS PRETTY COOL: The folks at Draft Magazine (“Life on Tap”) sent me a year’s worth of back issues to peruse and I like ’em. Their website is at DraftMag.com.

NEWSWEEK EXAMINES ELIOT SPITZER’S LIFE: Jeralyn Merritt observes: “I find it more likely he got drunk with the power of being Governor and thought he was invincible. Today he knows differently. It’s just too easy to blame the parents.” Or he could just be a jerk.

ANOTHER FED RATE CUT: Will it help? Beats me. It sure won’t help the dollar.

THE MUDVILLE GAZETTE: Trendspotting in Iraq. No surprise, he’s outperforming Reuters.