Those Awful Republicans

It's probably the influence of What the Matter With Kansas, but Democrats have convinced themselves that they are fine upstanding campaigners and Republicans are full of dirty tricks. This was a common theme during the primary. Hillary would run an ad like the 3:00 am one and Obama would say that only a Republican would do something so despicable. Obama's justification for not taking public financing was that he needed a big warchest to counter all of the coming Republican dirty tricks.

This post is typical:

Defensive plays like "FightTheSmears" are all well and good, but where's the offense? The GOP keeps throwing roundhouse blows. When they start to lose they make like Mike Tyson and bite somebody's ear off. Meanwhile Democrats fight by Marquis of Queensbury rules -- that is, if they deign to fight at all.

Kerry and Gore were such wooden candidates that the Democrats could as easily have nominated a wooden fencepost but they have convinced themselves that Kerry lost because he didn't fight back hard enough.

So, how clean are the Democrats' hands?

FactCheck.org doesn't think much of Obama's newest anti-McCain ad.

By using months-old quotes and selective editing, the Obama ad distorts McCain's assessment of the economy.

Then there is the way that the Democrats cut McCain's comments on the rich from the weekend His original answer and the way that the DNC cut it are both here. McCain gave a good answer, refusing to divide the country into class warfare. The Democrats totally changed what he said. After this, how can they ever claim that their hands are clean?

Where they ever as pure as they say? In 2000 they obsessed that Bush would pull an October surprise but they pulled a November surprise instead, releasing documentation that Bush had been arrested but not convicted of drunken driving during the days that he drank.

2004 had the Swiftboat Veterans for Truth who meticulously documented every assertion they made about Kerry. The other side ran ads saying that if Bush was reelected he would reinstitute the draft.

Then there was the 60 Minutes story about Bush being AWOL from the TANG. This was totally based on forged memos produced by a Democratic operative who insists that a woman he didn't know passed them to him at a rodeo and that, for his own protection, he copied the then destroyed the originals. The National Enquirer wouldn't run a story that fishy but CBS did and the Kerry campaign had a series of ads already prepared to run when the story fell apart.

The truth is that the Democrats fight dirty and always have. It's just that they don't recognize it because they feel that their cause is pure so anything they do is justified. On the other hand, they see the Republicans as evil so anything that the Republicans do must be a dirty trick.

Echos of 2004

On its surface, it is hard to imagine a bigger contrast between the 2004 and 2008 elections. In 2004 the Democrats ran a stiff white guy with a military background against a Republican incumbent with questionable military credentials. This time the Democrats have a dynamic black candidate with little experience in anything and the Republicans have an aging military hero. So why does the left sound so much like it did four years ago?

In 2004 the expectation was that John Kerry would beat President Bush decisively in the debates. After all, Kerry had been on the Harvard debate team and Bush was reputed (unfairly) to have the lowest IQ of any president. When Bush held his own the left cried foul. Bush must have had some sort of receiver and Karl Rove must have been telling him what to say. They spent a lot of effort looking at pictures of Bush's back, convinced that they saw the outline of a receiver.

There was nothing to this. Disinterested observers noted that the "lump" changed locations and shapes. Bush was sweating in the hot lights and the lining of his coat stuck to his shirt causing unusual folds. Further, an examination of their military records showed that Bush had a slightly higher IQ than Kerry.

In 2008, at the presidential forum in Saddleback, John McCain did better than silver-tongued Barack Obama. The format was that one candidate would go first while the other waited in a "cone of silence". Obama went first. McCain did so well that Obama supporters immediately announced that McCain must not have been in the cone of silence. As it turned out, McCain was actually in a motorcade during the first 20 minutes. His campaign insists that he was not listening to Obama's answers and his staff was not feeding him answers. Obama supporters are calling McCain a lier.

The Obama campaign should hush these complaints. They make Obama seem petty.

In 2004, the first claim by the Swiftboat Veterans for Truth was that John Kerry lied about spending Christmas in Cambodia. More than once Kerry had claimed moral authority because he heard President Nixon say that no US troops were in Cambodia while Kerry himself was delivering a CIA agent to Cambodia.

Kerry's Christmas story fell apart in several places. Kerry claimed that Nixon made this speech on Christmas but the only Christmas that Kerry spent in Viet Nam was 1968 and Nixon was inaugurated in 1969. A biograghy based on Kerry's own diary placed him elsewhere on Christmas. While the US did move into Cambodia, it was not until after Kerry's three month tour was over.

During the forum, McCain told a story about a guard who showed him some kindness and drew a cross in the dirt with his foot as explaination. Within hours the left was insisting that this never happened and that McCain stole the anecdote from Alexander Solzhenitsyn. The only proof that they could offer was that McCain didn't tell this story until years after it happened.

This is probably revenge for Christmas in Cambodia. The left woul love to tarnish McCain's record as Kerry's was tarnished. This is a poor place to start. They have no proof. The simple act of a guard scratching a cross in the dirt is universal enough that it could easily have happened to both men. This isn't even the only cross-related story to come from Viet Nam.

The most worrysome echo of 2004 for the left must be Obama's performance in the polls. When Obama took the nomination, pundits on the left announced that his poll numbers would only rise from there. Later, when they refused to go up, the pundits showed how a slight lead in the popular vote could translate to an electoral landslide.

In fact, Obama never got higher that 49% and his numbers have been dropping consistently in every poll. He is still ahead in the Electoral College but his numbers are behind Kerry's at this date. As an example, Kerry was ahead in both Ohio and Florida in mid-August but Obama is behind in both states. In 2004, Bush took both states.

Add in the Bradley Effect (the tendency of black candidates to generate higher poll numbers than they get on election day) and Obama might already be behind.

This might be the biggest resemblance to 2004 when the Democrats nominated a candidate who couldn't lose and lost anyway.

Rich and Poor

Back in the 19th century, Marx defined society as a struggle between the classes. To him, the working-class and the unemployed were the legitimate classes while the upper classes were guilty of exploiting them.

America never had a rigid class system like Europe so this had to be interpreted differently when Marxist sentiments influenced the American Progressive movement. The Progressives used wealth as a surrogate for class. If you were rich then it must be because you exploited those below you. It was up to the government to confiscate the funds that the rich had no claim to and give it back to the poor through social programs. This is the basis of the progressive income tax and the welfare state.

The Progressive movement subsided for decades. The progressives became liberals and the term Progressive was forgotten except for those on the far left.

Over the last few years the progressives have returned. Part of this is a re-branding. Liberals have taken so much blame for society's ills over the last few decades that no one wants to be a Liberal any longer so they have reverted to being Progressives. At the same time, the Democratic Party has moved to the left and is reviving some of their old Progressive ideals. One of these is that wealth is bad.

You can see this as the centerpiece of Barack Obama's economic program. He insists that the Bush administration favored the rich. He proposes multiple taxes on the wealthy including a repeal of Bush's tax cuts (but only on the rich), additional capitol gains taxes, and new social security taxes on those earning more than $250,000. At the same time he proposes additional tax cuts for the middle class and new government programs.

Obama has made one important change to the traditional Progressive platform. Instead of worrying about the poor and ignoring the middle-class, he now ignores the poor and treats the middle class as the New Poor.

All of this sounds like a great bargain for the middle class - elect Obama and get more money and benefits courtesy of the rich. The question is, who is rich.

Over the weekend, Barack Obama was asked who was rich. He defined families making $150,000 as middle-class. I would agree with that but I would also argue that someone making $160,000 is not rich. Even someone making $250,000 is not living the lifestyle of Paris Hilton. Then there is the implication that couples with no children living at home who make less than $150,000 are rich.

Obama's problem is that there aren't all that many people who are truly rich. This is a trait he shares with most Democrats. Often they pick an arbitrary percentage and define the truly wealthy as anyone above that percentage. This varies but is usually defined as the top 10%-20% of wage earners. (Anyone who earns more than 80% of Americans must be rich.) Often their definition of rich is so inclusive that a pair of married teachers qualifies.

This is a strange definition of rich. Wealth is usually defined in terms of assets instead of earnings. A family that makes $250,001 a year probably has a nice house and nice cars but also has a big mortgage. These people still worry about the cost of health case and gas.

(Personal note - my father was a doctor. The girl I dated in high school was puzzled the first time she saw our house. She assumed that a doctor living in a nice neighborhood must be living in a mansion. Instead our house was slightly smaller than hers. It was newer and a bit fancier but nothing like she expected. I suspect that this attitude is predominate among Progressives.)

Think about your earnings and your assets. Chances are pretty good that your assets are less than your annual earnings.

There are people who are really rich by anyone's standard. The top 1% by assets is going to be rich by anyone's standards. In a country of 300,000,000 there are going to be a lot of people in that top 1%. But, and this is a capital letter BUT, they don't have enough money to finance Obama's plans. That's why the Democrats have always included the upper middle class in their definition.

Obama is trying to fine-tune his definition of rich. He is trying to include enough people to pay for his expensive proposals. At the same time, his biggest support comes from the low-end of the "rich". He is counting on raising huge sums of money from people who earn between $100,000 and $250,000 but they may desert him if he plans on taxing them.

All of this is a throw-back to earlier times. Confiscatory taxes have been tried and they fail. They discourage wealth creation r they drive wealth to other countries. Most of Europe which has always been more progressive than the US has given up on such high taxes.

Obama is not willing to learn from history. Back when he only hung out with feminists and Marxists in college he decided that wealth is wrong and he never reevaluated this. If he is elected and carries out his agenda then he will hurt American productivity. This affects all Americans, not just the ones at the top.

Finding more racism

The latest example of finding something that isn't there is Marty Kaplan's scrutiny of Joe Lieberman's endorsement of McCain. Lieberman said:

In my opinion, the choice could not be more clear: between one candidate, John McCain, who's had experience, been tested in war and tried in peace, another candidate who has not. Between one candidate, John McCain, who has always put the country first, worked across party lines to get things done, and one candidate who has not.

What did Joe mean by this? To me we was contrasting the candidate who served (and sacrificed) in the US armed forces with the candidate who introduced himself to Germany as a "citizen of the World".

Not Kaplan. To him, this is code for "Obama is a muslim".

Affairs

Cenk Uygur at Huffington asks how Edwards affair is different from John McCain's. He points out that Clinton and JFK had affairs. McCain had one 30 years ago with the current Mrs. McCain.

Does John Edwards care less about poor people today than he did yesterday? Would his affair lead him to change his position on NAFTA? How would it alter his policy on Iran?

... So, why are McCain's actions any more excusable than Edwards'? Because it was thirty years ago? Does that wash it away? Will we be fine with Edwards running for office again in a couple of years because then it will all be in the past? What is the statute of limitations on an affair?

First, McCain's affair did hurt him in the past but there are some significant differences. The biggest one is that McCain didn't have a tawdry fling with someone then continue as if nothing ever happened. He divorced his wife and married the subject of the affair. Edwards claims that he had a brief fling and is back with his wife.

The fact that McCain is still married to Cindy, decades after leaving his first wife implies that there were problems with the marriage but not with his character. The same can be said about Ronald Reagan, the first divorced president. Most observers think of his second wife as the love of his life.

In contrast, Edwards had a fling with a woman on the side with no intention of leaving his wife. This implies that he views some women as sexual playthings who can be used and discarded.

Bill Clinton treated women this way. He promised that he had reformed when he first ran for President. He was sued by a woman who claimed that he harassed her and lied about his post-election trysts which led to his impeachment.

Kennedy was shameless prior to the sexual revolution. If any word of his multiple affairs had leaked out during his lifetime he would have been driven from office.

So, does Edwards' affair change his stand on issues? No. But it gives us more insight into his character. He lied repeatedly about having an affair. It implies that he only stayed with his (dying) wife for political reasons. There is a lot more to being president than holding the right positions prior to the election. None of todays' issues were major factors in the 2000 election. The unforseen happens. Character matters. Between his background as a trial lawyer and his affair, Edwards has proved that he has no character.

McCain has shown that he does have character in several ways including being faithful to one woman for 30 years.

Now, if it turned out that McCain had an affair in 2006 then his political career would be wrecked. The same can be said of Barack Obama.

Reverse Socialism

The Green movement is unique among social movements from the last 100+ years in that its goals will make things much more difficult for the working man. This puts them at odds with their far-left brethren.

Most social movements have come from the progressive tradition. This includes communism, socialism, and national socialism (fascism). All of these center around the idea of redistributing wealth from the undeserving wealthy to the needy poor. You can see echoes of this in Barack Obama's proposals to tax the wealthy and to confiscate oil company's earning. Most of the health care debate springs from this background, also.

Traditionally, the Greens incorporate many of these values in their platform. This led conservatives to refer to them as "watermelons" - green on the outside and red on the inside.

But the new cult of global warming, while recruiting from a progressive base, is diametrically opposed to making life easier for the poor. For example, Marburg, Germany is debating a requirement that all houses should have solar panels. This would affect any buildings that have renovations or install new heating systems. The law can be counter-productive. The article gives tha example of a man who already has a solar panel and wants to add insulation. This would require him to upgrade his solar panel at a cost of $8,000. Germany's Green party is paying close attention to Merburg in hopes of imitating its law elsewhere.

Then there is Duff Badgely, the Green candidate for governor of Washington. He wrote a recent editorial on the changes that the governor (that would be him if he was elected) should institute. Among his proposals is nationalizing (can a governor do this?) Boeing and divert them from making airplanes and war machinery to solar, wind and wave power equipment. He calls for carbon taxes on both corporations and individuals rising to $500/ton by 2020 (this would cost the average family $10,000/year for individual taxes plus the corporate taxed that would be added on).

He also recomends: adopting new land-use law. Require affordable density. Stop sprawl. Protect all trees as "common good" that critically benefit climate. Require a permit before killing trees. Outlaw single-occupancy vehicles, except where no public transport exists.

And, possibly the most important: Keep Seattle NBA-free.

He does throw a few sops to the poor. The poor could ride public transport for free and he wants to build 1,000 new housing units for the poor to shelter 1,700 homeless. This does not allow for the huge increase in poor and homeless that Washington would see as a result of his recomondations.

While Barack Obama does not go anywhere near this far, he also supports policies that would hurt the poor. His reaction to recent gas price increases wasn't that they are too high, but that they went up too fast. He makes fun of drilling for more oil but is also against new nuclear power plants. He proposes to transform American society through expanded use of flex-fuel and plugin hybrids without telling where the extra food to be converted to fuel and the extra electricity to power the cars will come from.

Then there is Al Gore who just bought a big boat (complete with a jet ski on the back). The changes that Gore has been urging on society will hurt the poor the while he can simply buy carbon credits and continue his profligate lifestyle.

Where the progressives of old used to worry about the poor, the new breed is so busy worrying about the planet that they overlook the poor. The global price of food has gone up due to ethanol mandates but Gore and company want to increase the amount of food burned. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi refuses to allow a floor vote on off-shore drilling because she is trying to save the planet.

Even non-carbon alternatives have to pass a green test before they can be considered. Since the 1960s the greens have had an unreasoning fear of radiation so nuclear power is off the table. Many greens dislike dams and would like to reduce the amount of hydroelectric power currently being produced.

In the Middle Ages, Europeans were bound to the land. They needed special permission to leave and most never traveled more than a dozen miles from home. Given half a chance the greens would love to see a return to this state. Then we will need a new progressive movement to save us from the greens.

Hyper Sensitive

Obama's supporters are sure that McCain and his supporters must be engaging in racism. They are so convinced of this that they find racism everywhere.

Take columnist Bob Herbert and the Paris Hilton ad. This ad uses footage of Obama's rally in Germany in front of the Victory Column. This is obvious to anyone who paid attention to Obama's campaign. But that's not what Herbert sees. He sees pictures of the Leaning Tower of Pisa and the Washington Monument and he is sure that these phallic symbols were used in conjunction with pictures of two blonds to subconsciously remind us that we should be afraid of black men.

So, how could Herbert make this mistake? Anyone who saw footage of Obama's German speech, or even someone who had only heard of it, would know what column was pictured and why (because that's where Obama gave his speech). Herbert must have seen pictures of it. So how could he get it wrong?

I can think of two possibilities. The charitable one is that he is so fixated on McCain's alleged racism that it caused him to see things that weren't there. The darker possibility is that he knew better but figured that his audience would not. In other words, he may have been willing to lie in order to perpetuate the illusion that McCain is running a racist campaign.

That is nothing compared to Slate's Timothy Noah. Noah was responding to a humorous column by Amy Chozick in the Wall Street Journal. Chozick wrote that someone as skinny as Obama cannot relate to a country of overweight voters. Noah found this a racist comment using some of the most strained logic I can remember.

Let's review the basics. Barack Obama is the first African-American to win a major-party nomination for president of the United States. African-Americans are distinguishable from other Americans by their skin color. This physical attribute looms large in our nation's history as a source of prejudice.

The promise of Obama's presidency, in many people's minds, is partly that America will move toward becoming a post-racial society. It's pretty clear, though, that we aren't there yet. When white people are invited to think about Obama's physical appearance, the principal attribute they're likely to dwell on is his dark skin. Consequently, any reference to Obama's other physical attributes can't help coming off as a coy walk around the barn.

To simplify, since Obama is black, any reference to his appearance that doesn't mention his skin color reminds us of his skin color through omission. So, not reminding people that Obama is as bad or worse than calling him the "N word". Using Noah's reasoning there is no way to refer to Obama in an unfavorable light without being racist.

That's what this is really about. Obama's supporters are trying to insulate Obama through cries of racism. This isn't working and invites a backlash. Obama is weakest among white voters and unjustified claims of racism will only hurt him with this group.

For 25 ways that you might be racist, see here.

Drilling

The most repeated phrase of the last couple of months is probably, "We can't drill our way out of this." Nancy Pelosi has said as has Barack Obama, and even T. Boone Pickens uses it when urging us to remake our energy infrastructure. What does this mean, anyway?

According to Democrat orthodoxy, there is no reason to allow drilling offshore or in Alaska because it will take years before we see any results. The amount of time is estimated at 7-20 years, depending on who is pontificating.

The answer to this is so obvious that Jay Leno has used it as a punchline - they've been using this excuse for over a decade. If the Democrats had allowed drilling in the mid-1990s then we would be seeing some of that oil right now. Also, unless the Democrats think that world-demand will decline in the next decade instead of going up then we will need that oil.

A different point is that there isn't enough oil to make a difference when compared to world demand. This is irrelevant. Additional oil will help prices. Increase supply and prices go down. That's how markets work. If you decrease supply by putting some oil fields off-limits then prices will go up.

Democrats are actually ok with this. They want oil prices to go up. In defending her refusal to allow a vote on drilling, Pelosi said that she is trying to save the planet. A few weeks ago Obama said that the problem was that gas prices rose "too fast". Not too high, too fast.

Democrats probably saw the rise in oil prices as a great opportunity. Their attempt at passing a carbon cap and trade bill failed but then oil prices started going up and people started driving less. If you are a believer in global warming (or the climate crisis as they now call it) then this is a good thing. Even better, Democrats didn't have to take the blame for it. They could blame speculators and oil companies.

Then Republicans started talking about drilling. Then public opinion started shifting. It turns out that environmentalism is a luxury. If you hit people's pocketbook hard enough then they reevaluate their priorities. Currently the country overwhelmingly supports off-shore drilling.

So, what will happen when the electorate realized Obama's plans for them? Last Spring he said that Americans cannot eat and drive as much as they want and set their thermometers to 72. Today he said that "It will take nothing less than a complete transformation of our economy."

It's hurting Obama in the polls, also. McCain is ahead (by an insignificant amount) for the first time since Obama clinched the nomination.

Republicans are pushing all options. Wind and solar power will not be enough and we cannot keep converting food into fuel (or replacing food crops with fuel crops). We have to build more nuclear power plants. We need to keep using coal and keep our options open on oil sand and oil shale.

Democrats are captives of the environmental lobby. They are under a lot of pressure to limit future options to insufficient "renewable" sources. The higher energy prices go the more voters are going to resent the Democrats. This could very well be the turning point in the election.

Finding racism

Earlier today I mentioned McCain's anti-Obama ad. This places Obama in the context of Paris Hilton and Brittany Spears - two women currently known more for being famous than for accomplishing anything. Bill Press of Huffington asks why these two?

Of all the famous celebrities they could have compared Obama to, why not Tom Cruise? Or Arnold Schwarzenegger, or Donald Trump, or Oprah Winfrey? Why Britney Spears and Paris Hilton? Why two white blond bimbos?

I thought that the answer was obvious - Tom, Arnold, Donald, and Oprah all have major accomplishments to their names. The point of the ad is to compare Obama who has few qualifications for the presidency to two people who are better known for their personal lives than their accomplishments. Schwarzenegger especially would be a poor choice since he is a successful governor.

That's not how Press sees it. He sees a dark conspiracy, placing two white blonds in the context of a black man can only be racist manipulation.

In juxtaposing Barack Obama with Britney Spears and Paris Hilton, the McCain campaign is simply trying to plant the old racist seed of black man hitting on young white woman. Not directly, but subliminally and disgracefully.

Huh?

So any anti-Obama ad showing a woman is a subliminal message? Had the ad limited itself to blacks then Press would be complaining that it was reminding us of Obama's dark skin. Some people are determined to find racism everywhere, regardless of actual intent.

Going Low

Barack Obama made a lot of claims about being a new type of politician, one who would take the high road. That doesn't match his rhetoric. In a recent speech he insisted that Bush and McCain (he seems to think that Bush is still running) will use racist appeals.

Nobody thinks that Bush and McCain have a real answer to the challenges we face. So what they're going to try to do is make you scared of me," Obama said. "You know, he's not patriotic enough, he's got a funny name, you know, he doesn't look like all those other presidents on the dollar bills.

This is the same reason that Obama gave for refusing public financing. He said that he needed to gather more money to combat the racist that McCain is sure to run. Considering that McCain's current ad equates Obama with Paris Hilton and Britney Spears, Obama's assertion seems a bit unlikely.

I would go further and say that Obama's insistence that white candidates will automatically conduct racist campaigns is offensive and racist on its own.

Unfortunately, if Obama looses then we will be hearing for years about the racist campaign that smeared him, even if no such campaign ever existed.

The Thought Processes of an Obama Supporter

Look at this article in Slate. I don't know much about the author, John Dickerson, but from the text, I can tell that he loves Obama and hates Bush. At the same time, he has some real doubts about Obama but he manages to assure himself that everything is ok.

He starts by quoting Obama as saying that he was never in doubt about foreign policy decisions. Since this sounds a lot like Bush, Dickerson goes on to assure us that Obama is a superior human being.

We know, of course, that Barack Obama, in fact, goes through life thinking in subtle, nuanced, and interesting ways. He's probably got lots of complex input from his visit to Iraq that he's dissecting and analyzing.

How is this being reflected? He admits that Obama isn't sharing much. Neither is Susan Rice, Obama's advisor who never answered Diskerson's questions.

And now that the trip is over, we have no better sense of how Sen. Obama thinks about Iraq. It's not that I expect grand revelations. But Obama still holds the same policy views he did more than a year and a half ago, even though a lot has changed since then in Iraq, and a lot of those events appear to contradict his earlier views. We know that Obama hasn't moved, but we don't know, really, why that's so.

Dickerson goes on to admit that Obama was completely wrong about the surge in 2007.

Even if you agree with the argument that the additional brigades didn't change much in Iraq on their own, you still have to account for whether the overall Petraeus strategy shift worked to assist the positive developments among Sunnis and Sadr's Shiite militia. Obama suggests the military had almost no role in the Anbar Awakening and the decision by Sadr's militia to stand down—that the two sets of events merely happened "at the same time."

Dickerson also quotes Obama as saying that the Anbar Awakening happened because the Democrats won Congress in 2006 even though the Awakening had already started.

Dickerson saves the worst for last:

Perhaps Obama doesn't want to share his views because his inquisitive mind sometimes takes him to contradictory places. In his book The Audacity of Hope, he writes about pulling aside reporters who were living in Iraq to get their views about the war. He expected them to agree with his call for a troop reduction. They didn't. They said a troop reduction would start a civil war. Obama called for a troop reduction anyway, but we know his mind is alive enough to capture and remember a piece of data that didn't fit with his pre-existing views. Are contradictory observations fine for a book but off-limits when you're a political candidate? Admitting you're wrong, or even that your thinking has evolved, is risky for a politician. Maybe too risky. That's certainly what George Bush believes.

Why does Dickerson give Obama so much credit and Bush so little? Bush changed course with the surge on the advise of people with experience in Iraq. Obama did the opposite. He heard something that contradicted his beliefs so he ignored it.

Dickerson gave every reason to vote against Obama but he is still gives Obama a pass on a major foreign policy mistake, assuming that it is just part of the campaign.

The Surge Worked

Get over it.

A couple of days ago Katie Couric asked an increasingly annoyed Barack Obama about the surge. A year ago Obama insisted that the surge would only make things worse. Now he admits that it made things better but refused to treat this as a positive result. Eventually he made it clear that he thought that winning in Iraq was a bad idea when the money it took could have been spent elsewhere. This gave McCain an opening to accuse Obama of being more interested in winning an election than winning a war.

A clip and transcript of the interview are here along with some rather slanted commentary. Since the commentary pretty much reads from Obama's playbook, I will address it.

Even if we could cast the "Surge" as an unqualified success, the overall strategy has netted America four major failures. And within the larger context of a failure to find WMDs, a failure to improve America's security, a failure to thwart or even impede al Qaeda in the wake of 9/11, and a failure to prevent malign regional forces like Iran and Hezbollah from increasing their regional influence, the "Surge" is entirely without relevance...

So, is the surge irrelevant? Not in the least. None of these four "failures" stand up to scrutiny.

First there is the WMD issue. The left buried it and the Bush administration allowed them to but it was proven that Saddam had the ability to reconstitute his WMD program as soon as sanctions were lifted. Had we not invaded then Iraq would probably be a nuclear power by now.

The next two "failures" are really the same thing said twice. Did the war in Iraq impede al Qaeda and therefore make America safer? Al Qaeda itself announced that it was making Iraq the center of its efforts. Had we simply left and spent the money elsewhere as Obama wanted then Iraq would have become a failed state, the sort of place that al Qaeda likes to use as a headquarters. By defeating them, we not only denied them a new base, we showed the world that we are stronger. Perceptions like this matter.

This tied into the final "failure". A failed Iraq would have been overrun by Iran, Hezbollah, and al Qaeda to the benifit of all three. It would have taken decades for things to settle down.

It should also be pointed out that what the US did was not simply increase the number fo boots on the ground. We changed strategies. Soldiers stopped hiding in large bases. We built on the early Awakening movement and fostered it across Iraq. Anyone who thinks that the surge was nothing but extra soldiers patrolling the streets was not paying attention. This means you, Candidate Obama.

The Left has painted itself into a corner. They invested so much energy insisting that Bush was wrong and we could not win in Iraq that they are unable to admit victory. Obama is even deeper since his main qualification to the presidency is his judgement. If he admits that McCain was right about a major policy issue like the surge then he is admitting that he has no business in the White House.

How Bad is the Economy?

I keep seeing comparisons between the current economic state and the Great Depression. Sometimes someone will ask if the current economy resembles the 1930s or the 1970s.

All of this is ridiculous. By the standard measure of a recession, we are not even in one yet, just a slow-down. This probably will change and the economy has been hit by several blows but comparisons with he 1930s and 1970s are premature at the very least.

Currently unemployment is a bit over 5%. In the 1970s it got as high as 10% and 5% was considered full employment and nearly unreachable. During the Depression unemployment was above 30%. A third of the country was out of work (a lot more if you remember that women weren't supposed to work full-time, anyway).

Inflation is trickier. During the 1970s inflation was a constant factor. People were reluctant to bank their wages because inflation was running ahead of interest. Your money was actually worth less after keeping it in the bank for a few years. The cost of living went up so fast that union contracts specified multiple cost of living increases during a single year. Inflation for the last few months has spiked at a rate not seen since 1980 but we don't know if this year is an anomaly or a trend.

During the Depression, we actually had deflation instead of inflation. Money was so tight that the price of everything went down. If it is bad that housing is not holding its bubble price, think how much worse it would be if nothing held its value.

So, compared with the two earlier periods, things aren't so bad now. But that's not the real difference. The big difference is time. The Depression lasted from 1929 until World War II - more than a decade. The 1970s had recessions hitting so close that the economy hadn't really recovered from the previous one before the next hit. As I already mentioned, inflation and unemployment were both well above today's figures, even during the recoveries. And this went on from the late 1960s until 1983.

So, we haven't even started an official recession and it is already being compared to events that lasted more than a decade. Wait a year or two to see if the economy has recovered. If things are still bad in 2010 then it is time to start worrying. If we haven't seen a recovery in 2015 then you can start talking about the 1930s and 1970s.

In the meantime, 1992 and 2001 are better comparisons.

So why have this conversation at all? I suspect that it is Bush Derangement Syndrome. Liberals would love for Bush's legacy to be that he wrecked the economy. Even more, they would love to use this as a spring-board for even more government intervention. Barack Obama is on board with this. His response to every bit of ad economic news is that it shows the need for more government oversight.

Most economists now admit that the Depression was much longer than it should have been because of FDR's economic policies. Obama wants to repeat that mistake.

Who is winning?

It is three and a half months until election day. Who is ahead? Obama is consistently ahead in the polls but in most polls he is only ahead by a few points, often within the margin of error. Two polls have placed Obama way ahead but these have been so anomalous that most observers feel that there must be problems with their methodology. One of them, last month's Newsweek poll which placed Obama ahead by 15 points closed to a statistical dead heat in the July poll. Regardless, Obama still enjoys a consistent if slight lead in the polls.

So, is Obama winning? In my opinion he is performing well below where he should be. Consider:

• He has gotten a lot more publicity and a higher percentage of favorable publicity. Typically the only way that McCain can get any press is when he is asked for a response to Obama.
• He is a Democrat running at a time when the Republican brand name is damaged.
• Early polls usually favor the fresh face and he is a lot fresher than McCain.
• Obama continues to be much better at giving speeches than McCain.

Adding all of this together, Obama should be 20 points ahead of McCain. This implies a weakness in the Obama campaign. I've pointed out before that he is a much weaker candidate than his press coverage would indicate. There are reasons for this:

• A lot of Obama's support in the primaries came from his anti-war message. This is not as important to the general electorate.
• People are worried about his inexperience.
• The biggest worries now are the economy and energy prices. Obama's policies on these have not resonated with the public. McCain is also weak but favors off-shore drilling which the public supports by a wide margin.

Another worry for the Democrats - fresh faces and challengers usually do much better in the early polls then fade in late Summer.

Worse, Obama might not be doing as well as the polls indicate for several reasons. Democrats tend to do better in polls than on election day. When talking with a live pollster, people sometimes feel ashamed to admit that they vote Republican. This is even more true when being asked about Obama. Some people are going to worry about being labeled a racist if they don't say that they will vote for Obama. Then there are the real racists - people who will never vote for a black man but don't want to admit it. There were primaries where Obama did much worse on election day than in the polls. That is bound to be happening again, now.

Usually there are two ways to predict which candidate will win the presidency. The candidate who has the least trouble securing the nomination usually wins. McCain effectively wrapped up the nomination on Super Tuesday. In contrast, Obama didn't even become the front-runner until Super Tuesday.

The other indicator is which candidate's campaign seems to be flailing. This one is harder to call. McCain has some good ads running but, as I said before, he has a lot of trouble getting any coverage. He doesn't have any sharp attack ads like Bush 41 nor does he have a strong platform like Reagan.

Obama assembled a better campaign structure during the primaries but he doesn't seem to be going anywhere with it. One major sign of trouble is the number of times he has had to make major addresses on various issues. These always seem to be reactive. He made an address on patriotism in response to internet rumors. He made an address on Iraq after his own supporters accused him of changing positions.These are the actions of a losing candidate, not the front-runner. On balance, I would give McCain a slight advantage here.

There are still several events that could tip the election either way. The choice of a running-mate can make a difference. A bad choice can doom a campaign.

Obama's big chance is the Democratic convention. He has already hurt himself there by moving his acceptance speech to a larger stadium. The networks are cutting back coverage of the convention in order to cover the speech. A really good speech could give him a big enough lead that McCain can never catch him. This could be a trap, though. Expectations are high. If his speech isn't as good as his 2004 keynote address it will hurt him.

McCain's biggest hope is debates. Obama is at his best behind a teleprompter and at his worst in an unscripted debate. This is where McCain's experience shows. Both candidates know this. Most of the public is unaware of this which leads to hightened expectations that Obama cannot live up to. The big question is how many debates McCain can pressure Obama into.

The final factor is McCain's sense of decency. So far he has treated Obama far more fairly than Obama has treated him. Veterans of G. H. W. Bush's campaign in 1992 say that he lost because he was convinced that a sitting president didn't need to campaign hard. He didn't see the need for a strong campaign until mid-October - far too late to save his presidency. MoveOn has no such scruples. Will McCain concent to do whatever it takes to win?

The same question holds true for Obama. Rumor is that his campaign has gotten arrogant. They are not helping Congressional candidates. They have alienated the netroots. Are they willing to work with others or will they repeat Hillary's mistakes?

If You Can't Take the Heat

One of todays' top news stories - the New Yorker ran an article on the rumors and outright lies that have been passed around about Barack Obama. To illustrate this, the cover shows all of the myths at once with Barack dressed as a Muslim and his wife as a 60s radical with a portrait of Osama bin Ladin hanging from the wall and the US flag burning in the fireplace.

You would think that the Obama campaign would welcome a major magazine doing a debunking. You would be wrong. They are upset about the cover.

To put things in perspective, President Bush is regularly portrayed as Dick Cheney's puppet, as a chimp, as a devil with his ears forming horns, and as a Nazi soldier with blood dripping from his vampire fangs. Jon Stuart jokes that when Bush and Cheney get together they kill kittens. I won't go into the things that Michael Moore and Keith Olbermann say about him.

If Obama is upset about an ironic painting used to illustrate a smpathetic article in a sympathetic magazine then how will he react to the abuse that residents take? How will his supporters react?

Obama and English

In a recent speech, Barack Obama talked about language. He started out criticizing the people who stress the importance of English in America then went on to rag on Americans as a whole for being ignorant.

On the movement to make English the official language, he said,

I don't understand when people are going around worrying about, we need to have English only. They want to pass a law, we just, we want English only. Now, I agree that immigrants should learn English, I agree with this. But understand this, instead of worrying about whether immigrants can learn English, they'll learn English, you need to make sure your child can speak Spanish. You should be thinking about how can your child become bilingual.

Obama is either ignorant or playing dumb. If immigrants were learning English then we would not be having this conversation. In fact only around half of legal Spanish-speaking immigrants speak English well. Among the illegal immigrants, the percentage is much lower. This should be self-evident. Why would America have bi-lingual choices for nearly everything, even Spanish ballots, if the immigrants were learning English?

This leads into the reason that it is important for immigrants to learn English. Those who do not are creating a permanent under-class. They are cutting themselves off from the better jobs and education. Our country has been an enabler for this and it needs to stop. Consider this a form of tough-love. That is what the English only movement is all about.

Obama's suggestion that English-speaking children should be taught Spanish instead further enables immigrants who are not learning English.

If you want further proof, look at other bi-lingual countries. Canada's French population has come close to splitting and forming their own country. Belgium is having the same problem. Within a generation we could easily see some of our southern states wanting to secede from the USA and join Mexico.

Obama then continued:

We should have every child speaking more than one language. It's embarrassing when Europeans come over here, they all speak English, they speak French, they speak German. And then we go over to Europe and all we can say is merci beacoup, right?

This is not a surprising sentiment coming from a noted internationalist. He was probably taught it by his mother who spent most of her adult life living outside the US. Regardless, it is still insulting.

The implication is that Europeans are better than us because they all speak English but we can't speak their languages. This raises the question, which language should we speak if we want to communicate with the largest number of foreigners living outside the US? The answer is English and we already know that.

It would probably amaze Obama to learn that only 15% of English speakers speak it as their first language. Most of the world uses English to communicate. India, for example, has so many dialects that the only language that most Indians have in common is English. China has the same problem and is rapidly beginning to use English as the solution. The same is true for much of Africa.

This is not true of German. It was once true of French but those days are long gone.

Also, Europeans know several languages because Europe is full of languages. I can drive from Columbus to Obama's home in Chicago and speak with the local populous. A similar trip in Europe would land me in a different country with a different language.

Obama is probably counting on his comments to win him votes among Spanish-speaking voters (once he has been translated). This may help his campaign but it will hurt the country.

Obama Abandons the Democrats

What else can you call it? Barack Obama announced that he will give his acceptance speech at an outdoor stadium instead of at the Democratic National Convention. This has some implications for the party. Not only is he distancing himself from them, he is hurting their coverage. The networks decided to cut back on the amount of money they spend on the convention.

So, why is he doing it? His announced reason is, "Sometimes our conventions don't feel like they are open to everybody. For us to be able to do it in Invesco Field is an opportunity for 80,000 people who might otherwise not have been able to participate to get involved."

There are other possibilities. The Democrats in Congress have a lower popularity rating than President Bush and he might be afraid of it rubbing off.

Or he could be emulating Kennedy who did something similar in 1960. Obama has been trying to position himself as the new Kennedy including appointing JFK's daughter to the team vetting vice-presidents.

In the meantime, the Democrats need Obama to bail out the convention itself. The party is $12 million short of the amount they need to pay for the convention. They need Obama's deep pockets.

What Does Obama Stand For?

The Left wants to know.

During the primaries they thought that they knew Obama. They had every reason to believe that is a hard-left progressive. He lists a communist as a mentor. In college he would only associate with socialists and feminists. He spent time as a community organizer and doing work for the far-left ACORN. He announced his entry into politics at the home of one the the 1960s biggest radicals.

As the primaries dragged on, Obama actually moved to the left. He and Hillary were in a bidding war for who hated free trade more. His solution to nearly everything is more government regulation. His first action when inaugurated would be to order a rapid retreat from Iraq.

Obama's supporters expected that he would continue to run as a progressive and use his personal charisma to convince the populace that it didn't matter. Obama would win in a landslide with long coat-tails. He would then lead a purge of the Blue-dog Democrats and start work on a new progressive era to match Franklin Roosevelt's.

Instead he is running from the center and the left is having a fit. Arianna Huffington herself wrote a plea to abandon the middle and move back to the left. KOS announced that he is not making a contribution to Obama's campaign, after all. Even Keith Olbermann devoted a special comment section to persuade Obama to switch positions (again) on the immunity portion of FISA. He didn't even back General Clark when Clark questioned McCain's qualifications to be president.

Obama isn't doing much to sooth them. He switched sides on the immunity portion of FISA. He is back to wearing flag pins. He announced that he will expand Bush's faith-based programs. It even came out that his motto, Change you can believe in, and his logo were invented by his campaign staff and he doesn't like them.

There are a few possibilities. One is that Obama still has a far-left core of beliefs but is covering them up until after he is elected. This is certainly possible. For all of his talk about doing away with partisanship, he has never compromised with the right.

Or Obama could be a business-as-usual Chicago politician who will say anything to get elected and who will triangulate his policies just as Bill Clinton did. As we find out more about Obama he keeps looking like just one more corrupt Chicago pol.

Or he might be a centrist who simply followed the party line until he got a chance for power of his own.

I've seen it pointed out that Obama has taken positions that many of his followers dislike. Rather than questioning him they tend to assume that he is lying and that his true beliefs match theirs. With the current angst over his move to the center, possibly many Obama supporters are beginning to wonder what he really believes?

Clark Puts His Foot in It

Over the weekend General Wesley Clark made a statement that John McCain had not commanded troops during war so he is unqualified to be commander-in-chief. This is an interesting statement for a couple of reasons.

By Clark's reasoning, very few presidents were qualified for the job. This includes Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt.

If McCain is unqualified after years in the service then what of Obama? He has no military service at all. Some of his supporters say that Obama's record of good judgment (he gave a speech against Iraq in 2003) makes him immune to this criticism. This is a rather weak argument.

It is very possible that Clark was trying to position himself to be vice-president. If Obama had someone qualified to be commander-in-chief on the ticket, people might not notice that the experienced commander wasn't at the top.

If that was what Clark ws trying, he failed miserably. McCain denounced Clark's statement while taking the high road:

If that's the kind of campaign Sen. Obama and his surrogates and supporters want to engage in, I understand that. But it doesn't reduce the price of gas by one penny. It doesn't achieve our energy independence or make it come any closer. Doesn't make any American stay in their home who's at risk of losing it today. And it certainly doesn't do anything to address the challenges Americans have in keeping their jobs, homes and supporting their families.

This forced Obama to disown Clark. Worse for Obama, it distracted the media from what was supposed to be a major speech. Whatever he talked about, the only thing the press covered was his response to Clark. Any chance that Clark had of getting on the ticket is now blown.

Flipping FISA

For years people on the right (including me) have joked about Bush Derangement Syndrome - a hatred for President Bush that is so deep that it distorts rational thought. As Barack Obama moves to the political center, the effects of Bush Derangement Syndrome are becoming clearer. It is not possible to show examples where opinions changed according to who was supporting a measure.

As an example, take the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) and Keith Olbermann. The previous version of FISA expired earlier this year. Congress passed a renewal which Bush vetoed because it did not include amnesty for executives who cooperated with the government on monitoring phone calls. Olbermann, among others, had a fit over this provision. In a rage-filled commentary, Olbermann compared the communications executives to NAZIs. As far as he was concerned, Bush should never have asked for the immunity. The bill should have passed as it was originally presented.

He also implied that the communications executives should be tried for war crimes, something he has advocated for many people in Bush's cabinet.

Nevermind that without the immunity the communications companies would probably have cut off access to phone records.

Obama originally announced that he would never vote for a bill that included immunity. He was roundly applauded by the left.

Cut forward to June, 2008. Obama is now the unofficial Democratic nominee and needs to appeal to a wider group of Americans. The new version of FISA with immunity came up for a vote and Obama voted in favor of it.

So, how did Olbermann react to his candidate supporting the NAZIs? He applauded him for standing up to the left.

To be clear - when Bush supports immunity it is a national discrase. When Obama votes for a bill that includes immunity it is a sign of political courage.

Obviously, the difference is not the immunity, it is the person supporting it.

This might also be a documentable example of Obama's personal reality distortion. If he is for it, it must be the proper action. If he is against it then it must be wrong. If he changes positions then the issue must have changed because Obama always has the correct position.
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To summarize - if Bush is for something then it is wrong and must be opposed. If Obama is for it then it must be right and supported, even if it is the same thing.

There are limits to Obama's reality-warping. The Huffington Post, a pro-Obama mecca, was outraged at this support.

20 Years of Hot Air

Monday marked the 20th anniversary of Dr. James Hansen's first testimony before the Senate on Global Warming. Here are some scattered thoughts on the occasion.

Hansen's original presentation was a combination of staging and luck. The luck was that the country was in the middle of a major heat wave. The high the day that Hansen gave his presentation was a record 98 degrees. Hansen told his audience that the current heat wave was directly caused by global warming and that things would only get warmer. 98 degrees remains the record for that date. The high temperature for the anniversary was 86.

To be sure that the audience got the message, the air conditioning was turned off and the windows opened the night before Hansen's presentation.

I was skeptical from the beginning for several reasons. One was that other scientists were warning that sulfur dioxide emissions were going to cause an ice age (this was different from the ice age predictions of the 1970s). I already knew about the Little Ice Age which ended in the mid-19th century. To say that the world has warmed since the end of a natural cold period and that humanity is responsible is a lot like making predictions based on the temperature rise between January and August and projecting into September.

Later predictions went back 400 years - to the height of the Little Ice Age.

At one point the IPCC accepted someone's doctoral thesis on historic temperatures based on tree rings. This was convenient because it showed that the Little Ice Age was an insignificant local event and that recent temperatures had risen sharply in a graph named the "hockey stick". Later investigation showed that the statistical calculations used to produce the hockey stick were flawed and always produce the same graph regardless of the input. The hockey stick graph is still used by global warming believers.

There is considerable difference in global temperature when you look at the land station based records that Hansen's department at NASA keeps and satellite-based readings. NASA manages to hit the world's warmest spots and miss the coolest.

Temperatures reached a plateau around a decade ago. This was not included in any models. After the fact, it was decided that the oceans must be absorbing heat but will suddenly release it in the near future. When you have to adjust your models for major events like this it is known as fudging your figures.

A new batch of deep ocean probes failed to find warming. In order to square with the new theory that recent warming has been going into the ocean, a lot of effort is being put into redefining the historic record to make it colder.

Nearly all land-based weather stations are affected by the uban heat island effect. NASA is supposed to be compensating for this but it is questionable how accurate these corrections are. In most cases, the corrections are greater than the recorded warming trends. A tiny mistake in these corrections could show a warming or cooling trend where none exists.

Hansen has insisted that any scientist who denes global warming must have been paid to express these views by the oil and coal industries. In his view, any amount of money is enough to taint a source.

In the last 20 years, huge amounts of money has been given as grants for studying global warming. This money is only available to warming believers. For some reason, this is not seen as tainting results.

On the 20th anniversary, Hansen called for arresting and trying oil and coal executicves for crimes against humanity. If it turns out that he is wrong and mankind beggars itself for nothing, should Hansen and Al Gore be tried for similar crimes?

An American Concept

It's strange to realize it but freedom of speech is unique to America. There aren't any other countries that give it the reverence that we do. A recent example is Canada's Human Rights Council which prosecuted journalist Mark Steyn for an except from his book America Alone. Canadian Muslims were offended by the book and, in Canada, it is a crime to offend anyone. More details here. 

When asked about free speech, Dean Steacy, an investigator for Canada's national commission, said "Freedom of speech is an American concept, so I don't give it any value."

This is true for most of Europe where Hitler's writings and Holocaust denial are imprisonable offenses.

Europe's reaction to the Muslim cartoons was mixed and strained. Some countries apologized for allowing their media to print anything offensive.

Of course, the rest of the world is even less free. Egypt and China have arrested bloggers. Hugo Chavez shut down an opposition TV station.

It's hard to imagine any of this happening here but why are we different? Most of the world would say that we are out of step and need to change our laws. The UN suggested that there be international limits on offensive speech.

Regardless, free speech in America is not only afforded constitutional protection, it was the first freedom so protected. Our unique history has a lot to do with this.

During the colonial period from the mid-17th to the mid-18th centuries the English government didn't take much interest in colonial affairs. This changed after the French and Indian War when the crown wanted the colonies to pay for their own defense and tried imposing taxes. The colonies wanted to choose their own taxed and objected. This dispute was a major cause of the American Revolution.

At the same time there was a philosophical debate going on as to the proper relationship between a government and the governed. Practices that had been considered normal such as presumption of guilt were questioned.

After the Revolution, the first attempt at creating a national government with the Articles of Confederation failed. The Constitutional Convention was an attempt at creating a stronger government. Many of the delegates had been dissidents under British rule. They were wary of giving the new government too much power and they wanted to preserve their right to dissent. Accordingly they enshrined what they considered essential liberties in  the Constitution where they would be difficult to change.

Jump forward a few decades to the French Revolution. The French talked a lot about liberty and equality but the post-revolutionary period in France was called the Terror for a reason. Rights were more by class than by individual. Marx and the other early socialists picked up on this class warfare and it infected European thought which in turn infected Canada.

So in Canada it is more important for a class of people to be protected from having their feelings hurt than protecting the individual right to free speech. The presumption of innocence is also thrown out. In the Canadian tribunals, an accusation means guilt.

Freedom of speech is not a given in the US. There are constant attempts to criminalize hate speech. Democrats are hoping to revive the Fairness Doctrine for radio which would be used to silence conservatives. Foreign laws are being cited as justification for US court cases. CAIR constantly claims Islamophobia.

If we are not careful we could see free speech vanish within out lifetime.

Climate Change and the Price of Gas

If you think that $4/gallon for gas is expensive just think about this - with all of the reported pain of $4/gallon, miles driven have only dropped by 2%. In order to reach the stated goals of 70%-90% (depending on who you ask) by 2050, gas will need to be a lot more expensive. $5/gallon will not do it. I doubt that $10/gallon will either. $20/gallon indexed for inflation would probably do the trick.

Electricity and natural gas need to have corresponding rises for the same reason. It needs to be painful enough that every time you turn on a light or get in the car you have to stop and decide if you can afford this? Do you really need the thermostat set for 65 degrees? Maybe all you can afford is 45, less if it is really cold outside.

That is what cap-and-trade is really about. The cap is the total allowable emissions allowed with fines on the amounts past the limit.. The trading part allows people or businesses that are under the limit to sell the difference but, by 2050, no one will be under the limit. Everyone will be paying fines. That's the only way to lower emissions.

Gore and company don't tell you this. They talk about unplugging phone chargers and switching to wind power. As this article points out, these are useless. Forget about solar and biomass, also. The only way to cut emissions is to give up oil and gas. That's going to be painful.

Will it me more painful than the predicted pain of climate change? No one is even admitting that this argument exists.

What if Obama Wins?

Right now Barack Obama is slightly ahead in the polls. Most analysts give him a better than even chance of winning. Even if we assume that a lot of this is wishful thinking, Obama has a good chance of being the next resident of the White House. What can we expect?

Liberals (or progressives as they now prefer) are hoping that an Obama presidency will bring in a new progressive era matching Roosevelt's New Deal and LBJ's Great Society. They expect universal health care, the resurrection of unions as a major force in America, income redistribution, a new energy policy that ends dependence on foreign oil and the threat of global warming, the resurgence of American soft power and respect and a new era of global peace.

They really expect all of this, probably before the end of his first term. Just check the Huffington Post.

Why do they expect this? He has a cult of personality, he is liberal (oops - progressive), and he talks about change a lot. He also promises to be a new-style politician who will move past divisiveness.

So, how much will he actually be able to accomplish?

In the last 50 years there have been four Democrat presidents. Their record is interesting. The last two, Carter and Clinton were southern governors who ran as moderates. Both of them came from small states and were initially overwhelmed when they got to Washington. Carter's only major accomplishments were as mediator. Clinton passed a gas tax and a few other pieces of forgettable legislation in his first two years then lost control of Congress. His main claims to fame came from working with the Republican Congress.

The other two, Kennedy, and Johnson, came from Congress. Kennedy is the one Obama is most often compared to but his supporters are hoping for Johnson-level accomplishments. Kennedy didn't really do much. despite coming from Congress, he didn't have much luck in getting his legislative agenda passed.

Johnson was a different matter. He knew how to twist arms. He also used Kennedy's death as a lever, insisting that Kennedy's stalled agenda be passed as a memorial.

Obama is more likely to be a Kennedy than a Johnson. Like Kennedy, he is a short-timer in Congress. He was the most junior senator when he started his campaign. He has no history of working with the other side or compromise. His supporters expect him to cow his opponents through sheer strength of personality. This might work or it might polarize the opposition more than ever. In addition, Obama has shown poor judgment in his campaign. He has repeatedly been embarrassed by campaign staff members. He changed his answer about his church several times. He dismissed questions about controversies as "distractions". And, for a "new politician" he has been rather nasty when referring to McCain. None of this suggests that, as president, he will have the skills needed to command bi-partisan votes to change America.

It is possible that Obama will have a larger working majority in Congress than the Democrats have now. The Republicans are defending more open seats and the Republican brand name is at a low. Will that be enough?

It wasn't enough for Clinton. His attempt at universal health care never had a chance. That's because LBJ and Roosevelt before him had something else going for them - social unrest. Roosevelt had the Great Depression. LBJ had huge civil rights demonstrations and rioting. In both cases there was a feeling that things had to change. There was also a rosy projection about costs.

While we are in an economic downturn with rising energy prices, the pubic mood is nothing like in the 1960s. What's more, as Democrats discovered when they considered legislation on climate change, the public isn't in the mood for legislation that will further raise the cost of living.

Obama will likely be as unsuccessful at changing America as Kennedy, Carter, and Clinton. This could help revitalize the Republican party name. In fact, I suspect that many Republicans are hoping for an Obama win for just this reason.

What Obama Believes

Barack Obama gave this speech three years ago this month. It has some interesting insights into his view of the proper role of government. Take this section:

[...] Once again, there are those who believe that there isn't much we can do about this as a nation. That the best idea is to give everyone one big refund on their government—divvy it up by individual portions, in the form of tax breaks, hand it out, and encourage everyone to use their share to go buy their own health care, their own retirement plan, their own child care, their own education, and so on.

In Washington, they call this the Ownership Society. But in our past there has been another term for it—Social Darwinism—every man or woman for him or herself. It's a tempting idea, because it doesn't require much thought or ingenuity. It allows us to say that those whose health care or tuition may rise faster than they can afford—tough luck. It allows us to say to the Maytag workers who have lost their job—life isn't fair. It let's us say to the child who was born into poverty—pull yourself up by your bootstraps. And it is especially tempting because each of us believes we will always be the winner in life's lottery, that we're the one who will be the next Donald Trump, or at least we won't be the chump who Donald Trump says: "You're fired!"

But there is a problem. It won't work. It ignores our history. It ignores the fact that it's been government research and investment that made the railways possible and the internet possible. It's been the creation of a massive middle class, through decent wages and benefits and public schools that allowed us all to prosper. Our economic dependence depended on individual initiative. It depended on a belief in the free market; but it has also depended on our sense of mutual regard for each other, the idea that everybody has a stake in the country, that we're all in it together and everybody's got a shot at opportunity. That's what's produced our unrivaled political stability.

An unintentional irony is that this was a commencement address. It is ironic because he quotes so much misinformation to graduating students.

The most important thought here is that allowing people to spend their own money on health care, child care, etc. is wrong. Obama believes that it is the responsibility of the government to make these very personal choices for you.

Other points - he totally misuses the term Social Dawrinism. He also totally misunderstands the role that private investment played in the railroads. For example, the first trans-continental railroad was privately chartered and federally backed. In fact, the railroad mis-managed federal subsidies in a major scandal which ended up determining a presidential election. This is not exactly the sort of ringing endorsement for government intervention that Obama believes it to be.

A different quote:

When the irrational exuberance of the Roaring Twenties came crashing down with the stock market, we had to decide: do we follow the call of leaders who would do nothing, or the call of a leader who, perhaps because of his physical paralysis, refused to accept political paralysis?

 
FDR's handling of the Great Depression was one of the worst things to happen to the US economy in the last century. His economic advisers believed that the problem was that the economy had grown too large and that the solution was to permanently limit the economy to around 2/3s the size it had been before 1929. From statements that he has made elsewhere, Obama may believe that the current US economy needs to be shrunken.

A few months ago he said "We can't drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times ... and then just expect that other countries are going to say OK." His commencement speech had a longer version showing that that this was no off-the-cuff comment.

All of that is possible but none of it will come easy. Every one of us is going to have to work more, read more, train more, think more. We will have to slough off some bad habits—like driving gas guzzlers that weaken our economy and feed our enemies abroad. Our children will have to turn off the TV set once in a while and put away the video games and start hitting the books. We'll have to reform institutions, like our public schools, that were designed for an earlier time. Republicans will have to recognize our collective responsibilities, even as Democrats recognize that we have to do more than just defend old programs.

This is another recurring theme with the Obamas - that Barack's election will be the first step in changing Americans. Remember this quote from his wife?

Barack Obama will require you to work. He is going to demand that you shed your cynicism. That you put down your divisions. That you come out of your isolation, that you move out of your comfort zones. That you push yourselves to be better. And that you engage. Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual, uninvolved, uninformed.

An Obama presidency sounds like a lot of work. It is also part of the recurring messiah theme. If you come to Obama he will heal your soul.

Anyway, I think that it is instructive to see what Obama was saying three years ago where fewer people were listening. It gives us a better idea of what his real beliefs are and what sort of change he believes in.

When Cooling is Warming

NASA says that the world is warming and that March was the third warmest month on record. Other measures say that the world's temperature peaked a decade ago and has been either steady or in a slight decline. What's going on? The computer industry web site the Register has a detailed study of this question here. You should read it but I'm going to summarize it anyway.

First, NASA has been fudging its figures. They have been altering historic measures with a bias to warming (older measurements have been adjusted down, recent ones up). They have not documented why this is being done but the result is that the world looks warmer that before the adjustments.

Next, of the three groups attempting to measure the earth's temperature, only NASA uses ground-based stations. This is an acceptable measure as long as you have sufficient stations to cover the planet. They don't. North America, Europe and Asia are covered pretty well but South America and Australia have huge gaps. Most of Africa is not included and only tiny bits of Antarctica are measured. Even in North America, Canada is somehow missed. Then there are the oceans which are mainly ignored. Funny thing about the areas that NASA is monitoring, according to the other measures, NASA is mainly measuring temperature in places that are getting hotter. They managed to miss the parts of the globe that are cooling (the majority of the globe).

The Register didn't speculate on how this happened but I will. Most of the areas being measured are industrialized. That makes it easier to place a measuring station but it also opens the station to false readings from urban heat islands. NASA is supposed to be compensating for this but this is a tough calculation to get right.

Finally, NASA used a known cold period as its baseline. This adds a few of degrees of apparent warming. Had they chosen the the warm period in the 1930s then their maps might be showing cooling rather than warming.

All of this calls NASA's ethics into question. The figures come from the Jet Propulsion Lab which is run by James Hansen. Hansen is the man who first introduced the concept of global warming to the world and is, by any measure, a biased source. Regardless, NASA keeps on producing figures showing warming and the news media reports them without mentioning the conflict.

Obama's Victory

Counting superdelegates, the Democrats finally have a candidate, Barack Obama. Considering the scope of his victory, I would be very concerned if I was a Democrat. Consider the following:

If Hillary had won a scant 57 more pledged delegates she would have been the winner. That is a shift of only 1.7%.

Even after all of that, Obama did not win the nomination outright. He had to have the support of the superdelegates. There is still an outside chance that something could happen to discredit him and Hillary could become the candidate.

His win came about because of Hillary's mistakes. Hillary didn't plan on running past Super Tuesday allowing Obama to win 11 primaries in a row. This gave him an aura of invincibility and the all-important 57 delegates.

When Hillary was in a position to compete she did well, right up to the final June primaries. Even after it was obvious that Obama would be the candidate, Hillary managed to win several primaries including some large states like Ohio and Pennsylvania.

Obama outspent Hillary by a huge margin, even in states that she carried.

Typically a candidate in Hillary's position, trailing with little chance of winning, would have run out of money months ago. As the final primary approached, Obama would have coasted to victory. This is how the Republican race went.

Even allowing that Hillary has resources unavailable to most candidates, we must speculate that a lot of her support came from an underground stop-Obama movement. This would be made up of people who do not dare to say that they oppose Obama out loud for fear of being called a racist so they disguise their motives as support for Hillary.

So the Democrats ended up with a weak candidate who looks stronger than he is because of the enthusiasm of his supporters and his run of 11 wins in February.

Green Jobs

Green activists insist that curbing CO2 emissions will be a huge economic boost. This claim is being repeated quite often. Here is an example. The idea is that new industries will open up with lots of opportunities. How will this work in real life? Let me make a proposal.

Congress passes legislation mandating that everyone has to own a car that gets 30+ MPG within the next two years. They also mandate new efficiency requirements for heaters and air conditioners and pass minimum insulation standards, all to be implemented in the next couple of years.

Not only will this have a major effect on CO2 emissions, it will revitalize the automotive industry and create hundreds of thousands of new jobs in the home HAV field.

Do you see the flaw in this? If not then think about the cost to you. I just proposed a mandate of tens of thousands of dollars. Where will you get the money? Will you stop going on vacation? Forget about purchasing new computers, HD TVs, and home appliances? Cut back on movies?

These cutbacks will cause massive unemployment. Will all of these people be able to find new green jobs building cars or installing insulation? Probably not, but this is what the green activists are promising.

What they are calling for is an unfunded mandate. Power companies will have to close perfectly good, coal-fired generators and replace them with more expensive ones. Yes, there will be new jobs but there will also be massive job loss elsewhere.

Conventional Wisdom

Conventional Wisdom says that Bracak Obama will be the next president. He is a Democrat and we have had a Republican president with a very low approval rating for the last eight years. The electorate should be hungry for a change. In most elections following a two-term president, the White House changes parties.

So how accurate is conventional wisdom?

In 2004, conventional wisdom said that any credible challenger could beat Bush. Kerry was favored right up through the early exit polls.

Over the last 60 years, there have been five two-term presidents (counting LBJ who served part of JFK's term and one on his own). One of these (1952) was an open election. The opposite party won however the winning candidate was Ike who had been courted by both parties and would probably have won, regardless of party affiliation.

In 1960, 1968, 1988, and 2000, the current vice-president ran and lost in three of the four elections. Three of these were very close and could have gone either way, especially 1960 and 2000 which had disputed states). George H. W. Bush won a decisive victory in 1988 on the strength of Reagan's performance. Humphrey in 1968 and Gore in 2000 were running on the coat-tails of unpopular presidents (Clinton's approval ratings were pretty low by 2000) and still came close to capturing the presidency. From this we can conclude that the election following a two-term president does not always switch parties.

In every election that I can remember (starting in 1968) the candidate who had the most trouble securing the nomination lost. Humphrey didn't even run in the primaries. He was selected by the convention in 1968. McGovern won a tight victory at the convention in 1972. Support for Reagan over Ford in 1976 was so strong that it shut down the convention for around an hour while Reagan supporters cheered. In 1980 Ted Kennedy challenged President Carter. In 1984, Mondale had trouble defeating Gary Hart. Bush secured the nomination well before Dukakis in 1988. Bush was challenged internally in 1992 while Clinton quickly secured the nomination. No Democrat seriously challenged Clinton in 1996. In 2000, G. W. Bush secured the nomination before Gore did. In 2004 no one seriously challenged Bush. In all of these cases, disputes in the primaries signaled a lack of support in the general election.

Which brings us to 2008. Obama has the nomination but he is still losing primaries in Democratic stronghold states. McCain's last challenger conceded two months ago. This
says more about the voters than it does about Hillary. Edwards got 7% of the vote in West Virginia and he dropped out months ago.

It is impossible to say for certain because voters will not admit it to pollsters but I suspect that much of Hillary's support is actually the anti-Obama vote. Some of this is racially motivated. A recent Washington Post story told about Obama campaign workers encountering raw racism (among Democrats).

A recent poll showed that most people think that the country is moving in the wrong direction and trust the Democrats over the Republicans on all ten issues asked. While this implies that generic Democrats should beat generic Republicans, it overlooks people's actual views on issues. On most subjects such as raising taxes and expanding government, the respondents were closer to the Republicans than the Democrats. This implies that a conservative Democrat could win over a Republican.

Much has been made of the special election this week where a Democrat won in a district that was solidly Republican in previous elections. What is overlooked is that, as with many of the recent Democratic victories, the winning candidate was a conservative Democrat. Congressional Republicans have managed a working majority on many core issues by reaching out to these freshman conservative Democrats. If the party gets too aggressive about disciplining these renegades they may switch parties. This happened several times in the 1980s.

So the electorate is likely to look at individuals and issues as much or more than party affiliation. That is why McCain is doing so well in the polls. You would expect at this point for the Democratic challenger(s) to be burying the Republican.

What does all of this add up to? It is really too early to say except that the election isn't as wrapped up as conventional wisdom would have it.

Cool on Warming

There are two poles of thought on climate. The one endorsed by Al Gore, James Hansen, most of the IPCC, and Realclimate.com believe that atmospheric CO2 is the principal determinant in global climate and is the basis for the panic over global warming. There have been posts on RealClimate speculating on how ice ages were started and ended by variations of CO2.

The other side says that CO2 is a minor contributor along with ocean currents, solar variations, excentricities in the Earth's orbit and shifts in the Earth's axis. There are a lot of people somewhere in between these two extremes.

A new model published last week in Nature has a lot of ramifications for the CO2 crowd. This projects that changes in the Gulf Stream will cool the Earth over the next decade or so.

Climate scientists in Germany base the prediction on what they believe is an impending change in the Gulf Stream -- the conveyor belt that transports warm surface water from the tropical Atlantic to the northern Atlantic and returns cold water southwards at depth.

The Gulf Stream will temporarily weaken over the next decade, in line with what has happened regularly in the past, the researchers say.

This will lead to slightly cooler temperatures in the North Atlantic and in North America and Europe, and also help the temperatures in the tropical Pacific to remain stable, they suggest.

On one hand this takes the pressure off of the CO2 crowd. They don't have to explain why temperatures have stabilized the last decade and actually declined the last few months. This model says that this is expected but assures that global warming will eventually start up again (or that it will be there all along but masked by other fluctuations).

On the other hand, this means that Al Gore cannot keep saying that the planet "has a fever" and that all recent weather effects are caused by global warming. It also takes away a lot of the urgency. It is a lot easier to push through major changes in the global economy if you can tie it to current events instead of projected ones. (Hansen proved this 20 years ago when he testified about global warming before Congress during a heat wave in a room where the air conditioning turned off overnight.)

There is a bigger problem for the CO2 crowd. The IPCC report says that this should not happen. Figure SPM4 of the assessment report for policy makers shows observed temperatures along with plots allowing for natural forcings and anthropogenic forcings. It clearly shows that, according to the IPCC models, natural forcings are having minimal effect on the climate.

So now we have a new model that shows natural forcings having a greater effect than anthropogenic ones. This raises questions about the validity of the previous models. Is it possible that the warming that the IPCC attributed to humans was actually natural?

I checked RealClimate to see what they made of this but they have not posted since the article was announced.

Just a regular guy

Barack Obama is running as two different people. On the one hand, there is the exotic, internationalist who understands foreign relations because of his life experience. On the other hand, he and his wife insist that they are just regular people who couldn't possibly be elitists or out of touch with other regular folk. A closer look at Obama's biography shows how pitiful this characterization is. His life to this point has been anything but ordinary.

Obama describes his mother as a Christian woman from Kansas. This is ingenuous and ignores most of her life.

Obama's mother was an early 60s radical and "the original feminist". She married a Muslim from Africa (against both families' wishes) at a time when people in a mixed marriage were shot at. That she married a second Muslim implies that her marriages were as much a political statement as the product of true love. She was also twice-divorced at a time that this was very rare.

Obama's mother pretty much abandoned her native country. She became an anthropologist and spent most of her adult life overseas. Obama had to move in with his grandparents in order to attend high school in America (they were kind enough to pull up stakes and move to Hawaii for him).

Obama admits to using a lot of drugs in high school and college. His college experience was ivy-league.

After college, he took a corporate job but felt very uncomfortable - "like a mole". As soon as possible he quit to go work as a community organizer.

This is a loaded term. Obama claims that he could not have told his fellow corporate workers what it meant, that it was up to him to define it. This is incorrect. The term community organizer has a well-understood meaning. The radical, Saul Alinsky, appropriated the term as a way for socialists to push for change without admitting to being socialists.

One thing that Obama did as a community organizer was to work as a trainer for ACORN. This is exactly the sort of organization that Alinsky described. Among their causes, they have endorsed confiscating vacant houses and giving them to the poor. They have been champions of increasing minimum wage except when applied to their own organization. They have also been involved in voter registration drives, sometimes increasing the voter rolls through election fraud.

Of course, for more than a decade, Obama has been a career politician.

So what part of this gives him insights into regular people's lives?

Obama and MAD

A few days ago Hillary said that her response to a nuclear Iran would be to stress to them that if they bombed Israel then we would obliterate them. She suggested that the way to prevent Iran's neighbors from pursuing nukes would be to sign similar pacts with them.

This is a variation of MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction). The reason that the US and the USSR kept the peace so long was the knowledge that neither side would survive a conflict. In this version Iran would be constrained from ever using its nuclear arsenal (once it creates one) by the knowledge that we would retaliate for any first strikes that they make.

This is the best way to preserve peace - make war too expensive.

NATO existed largely for this reason and it has been the policy of the US for both parties since the USSR exploded its first atomic bomb.

So why if Obama denouncing it? In a statement he said:

It's not the language we need right now, and I think it's language reflective of George Bush" akin to "bluster and saber rattling.

This comes pretty close to saying that Obama would not retaliate if Israel was attacked. Does he really mean to declare open season on Israel?

Once again, Obama's desire for a "new way" in politics threatens to undermine US policy.

Temper Temper

The Democrats are trying to dig up dirt on McCain but they aren't coming up with much. So far no one has met slipped Mary Mapes a secret memo at a rodeo. The best they can come up with are some instances of his temper. They came up with one involving a near fist-fight in Congress that has been denied by all involved parties.

In the newest one, which took place years ago, McCain's wife ruffled his hair and made a comment about him going bald in public. He replied with a couple of choice profanities that would give a movie an R rating but would be familiar to anyone in the armed services.

The Democrats are so desperate that they insist that this makes McCain ineligible for the presidency. Recently an Obama supported and long-time Democratic operative named Marty Parrish asked McCain about the incident at a town hall meeting. Of course, he didn't bother to volunteer his background.

This amounts to a double standard. The evidence this incident is purely hearsay. I have it on at least as good authority that Hillary got mad enough to throw things at Bill while they were in the White House. Which is worse?

Then there is Bill Clinton and his purple-faced rages. These were legendary. They were also common enough that some were caught on camera. Are Democrats willing to admit that neither Bill Clinton wasn't qualified to be president? Did any of them speak up about his rages, possibly suggesting anger management therapy? Of course not. This is a fake issue that they invented.

This is an issue that could backfire. He's managed to keep it out of the news for the last year but there were rumors that Obama has a bad temper back when he announced his candidacy. Then there was the near-scuffle between Obama and an autograph-seeker just a month ago.

If the Democrats focus too much on McCain's temper and Obama has an outburst then he will look all the worse for it.