Community Organizing for Fun and Profit

During the Republican National Convention, McCain's supporters pointed out that while their VP candidate was getting executive experience as the mayor of a (small) city, the guy at the top of the Democrat's ticket was a community organizer. This line of attack left many democrats puzzled. How could Republicans imply that being a community organizer was something less than ennobling? I saw one person equate it with social work. Just today, Jacob Heilbrunn of the Huffington Post seemed to think that Obama's days as a community organizer somehow gives him inside knowledge on economics.*

Others have pointed out that Obama doesn't really want people to look too closely at what it meant to be a community organizer. The concept was created by leftist Saul Alinsky. The idea is for organizers to use self-interest to band the poor together into a movement which can be exploited to further a progressive agenda. The organizers themselves are to use the cause rather than individual charisma to recruit people.

Obama was not at all successful. He spent two years as an organizer. For the first year he tried to use jobs as an inducement to get people to join the movement. the problem was that there weren't any jobs. By the second year he was reduced to orginizing people in order to demand repairs to the housing projects. He wasn't very successful at this either. After two years he gave up and went back to college to become a lawyer with the intention of going into politics. He decided that Alinsky had gotten it wrong. What was needed was charismatic leaders.

Obama never gave up his ties from those days. ACORN engages in the same sort of community organization that Obama did. He has had a close relationship with them for years although he has tried to hide it recently. In the 1990s Obama did legal work and taught classes for them. More recently his campaign employed them. He has also steered a lot of money their way over the years.

All of this puts Obama way to the left of his image.

What saves Obama is that very few people actually understand what a community organizer is. When someone explains that he was working with hard-core unemployed they accept it. They don't realize that getting jobs for the unemployed wasn't a goal, it was just a first step. The McCain campaign has never bothered to explain exactly what Obama did. If they had then Obama's associations with ACORN, Ayers, etc. would be hurting him a lot more.


* The reasoning is that Obama saw poverty first-hand. Obama used the same line of reasoning himself earlier this year when he said that having been raised in a foreign country made him an expert on foreign affairs. In both cases, the argument seems to be that you can substitute empathy for experience. Using this reasoning, then Palin's assertion that you can see Russia from Alaska does count as foreign policy experience.

More on Olbermann

I got a comment from Matthew Montgomery on my last post which was about Keith Olbermann.

You've lost the plot, evidently. Colbert, an unmistakable satirist, is making a joke about the perceived bias of Olbermann, not about actual bias &mdash grouping him with the New York Times speaks to this.

The same goes for the Get Fuzzy comment.

Yes, Colbert is a satirist but the comment in question was satirizing Seymour Hersh at the time. Hersh was predicting (one of many such predictions) that we already had a timetable for bombing Iran. He referred to this as "Dick Cheney's pipe dream". Colbert said that Hersh got it wrong, that Cheney's pipe dream was to drive a bulldozer into the New York Times while drinking light sweet crude from Keith Olbermann's skull. While Colbert is talented, I don't think that he is so multi-layered that he would try to satirize Olbermann in the middle of a dig at Hersh. Instead, he was referring to Olbermann's well-known bias. The same is true for Get Fuzzy. Olbermann's name was dropped the same way that Rush Limbaugh's is when referring to the right. The difference is that Limbaugh is not anchoring a newscast nor has he been paired with broadcast anchors to cover the election.

Matthew also pointed out that there are people a lot further to the left than Olbermann. I agree. However, none of the regular diarists on Kos anchor a news broadcast. What's more, Olbermann reads these guys and believes at least some of what they say.

I first became aware of Olbermann in 2004 when MSNBC had their anchors post blogs on msnbc.com. Olbermann was an infrequent poster until the election. The kids at Kos and the Democratic Underground were onvinced that their candidate couldn't have lost in an honest election. They were sure that Deibold voting machines had been tampered with to throw the election. For the next few weeks they came up with numerous instances where the vote couldn't have been what the machines said. These claims were made without any proof by people who were nowhere near the machines in question. There was no cross-checking to see if the counties in question even used the suspect Diebold machines (they didn't). Olbermann was a true believer. He suddenly started updating his blog regularly, sometimes twice a day. He believed every theory and repeated them without bothering to verify the story.

My point is that Olbermann is not fit to be a news anchor. Newsmen are supposed to relate what happened, not judge it. Olbermann can't do this. MSNBC tried using Olbermann and Chris Matthews to cover the conventions and quickly pulled them.

NBC anchors Tom Brokaw and Brian Williams have complained that Olbermann's and MSNBC's biases hurt NBC's news operation.

Brian Williams recently told David Letterman that the McCain camp is punishing him by not allowing him to interview Sarah Palin because the McCain camp is mad at MSNBC's extreme leftism as evinced by Chris "Thrill up my leg" Matthews and Keith Olbermann.

Olbermann is hurting NBC News so he should go. It's as simple as that.

Matthew also commented

As far as Olbermann's comment last night, the one paragraph you included was the only personal attack of the set of comments, and it wasn't entirely inaccurate.

I only included a bit of Olbermann's remarks. I'll quote a couple more.

McCain is up to his neck in toxic campaign waste of his own creation.

But though McCain's tone seemed to be vaguely reminiscent of his own campaign's weekend of descent into the muck, there was not a mention of any of the subjects or people about whom Sen. McCain and Gov. Palin obsessed.

Plus

You would also be hard pressed to find any candidate who said of Social Security, "We are not going to be able to provide the same benefit for present-day workers... that present day retirees have today."

This one wasn't an attack, it just wasn't accurate. Bush raised the same issue in one of his debates with Gore in 2000. Olbermann should remember that but he was too busy trying to find fault with McCain.

Time for Olbermann to go

Keith Olbermann is easily the most polarized pundit masquerading as a news anchor. It's time for him to go. He is giving MSNBC and its parent operation NBC a black eye.

You know things are bad when a news anchor's biases become the subject of jokes. It started last year when Steven Colbert said,

Bombing Iran isn't Dick Cheney's pipe dream. His pipe dream is driving a bulldozer into the New York Times office while drinking light sweet crude from Keith Olbermann's skull.

Now, Colbert pitches his show at the politically aware. If you aren't keeping up with politics then you miss half the jokes. But what does it mean when you make the comics page? In this case, I'm talking about Get Fuzzy and not Dunesbury or Mallard Filmore. The punchline of a recent Get Fuzzy is Bucky Katt saying, "Go watch Olbermann you reality TV-hating elitist."

If you are not familiar with just how over-the-top just compare the pundits here. They were asked who won the October 7th debate. Three pundits, none of them shrinking violets, gate fair assessments. Then there was Olberman who launched into personal attacks.

You would also be hard pressed to find a candidate who thought he would gain benefit from a format that him walk around a room like an ailing man, winding up walking directly in front of the moderator's camera as the moderator is trying to say good night.

By employing Olbermann as a news anchor MSNBC has raised its ratings, attracting the far left who want nightly doses of venom. That is not a foundation to carry a news organization. It could well back-fire, also. If Obama wins then Olbermann will either spend his nights defending the inept stumblings of an inexperienced candidate who is not qualified to be president or he will turn on the Obamesiah and his base will turn on him just as it did on Cindy Sheehan.

Economics 101

The left has been proclaiming that the era of Reaganomics is over. The proposed bail-out of Wall Street will user in a new era of expanded government and re-regulation. While that may be true, there are several lessons from the Reagan era that should not be forgotten - or in the case of Senator Obama, should be learned for the first time.

1. We cannot tax our way into prosperity.
This is a big one but easily forgotten. The government does a poor job of creating prosperity. Taxes take money that could be invested or spent and redirects it elsewhere. Bill Clinton likes to talk about the economy during his presidency but it was built on and continued Reaganomics (except for the gasoline tax that he enacted early in his presidency). Obama has talked about raising the corporate tax rate, either directly or by eliminating "loopholes". This will reduce the amount of money that corporations can invest and make it more desirable for them to move overseas.

1a. We cannot regulate our way into prosperity.
Some regulations are needed. Even staunch Libertarians admit that the marketplace needs laws and regulations to keep things honest. Once those basic standards are met, regulations can quickly become a problem. One factor in the current credit crisis was regulations designed to increase minority home ownership. Banks were told to start lending to people who previously had been denied mortgages. There was a good reason for denying these loans. This is where a lot of the defaults are coming from - people who previously did not qualify for loans.

1b. We cannot redistribute our way to prosperity.
Tax cuts stimulate the economy. Tax increases create drag. If you raise taxes on one group and cut them for others the best you can hope for is equilibrium.

2. Bubbles happen.
Bubbles happen fairly often. Some are fairly small and self-contained like the Beanie Baby craze in the late 1990s or POGs prior to that. Others are large and affect the entire economy when they burst. The dot-com bubble of the late 1990s and the Japanese real estate bubble in the late 1980s are examples.

The problem with bubbles is that you can never have enough regulations to stop them. They are a product of the free market and they never happen the same way twice. There is also a phase when the participants believe that growth will continue in a straight line forever. During the 1990s, Bill Clinton spent a lot of time bragging about the Internet and the New Economy. People claimed that it would be recession-proof and continue to grow past all previous limits. The Japanese insisted the same thing about their economy in the late 1980s. There was a major craze in the US for emulating the Japanese way of doing business. as it turned out, Japanese business growth was tied directly to real estate prices in Japan. Companies that were losing money reported paper profits because the land that their offices sat on appreciated. At one point a single block in the Tokyo business district was reputed to worth more than all of California.

A second problem with bubbles is that no one wants to end them. It usually becomes obvious to outside observers that the bubble cannot last but by that point, breaking the bubble will cause pain. No one wants to be the one to do that. There were several warnings over the last few years that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were buying too many questionable loans but stopping this practice would make home ownership more difficult so nothing was done.

Housing values present a difficult problem. On one hand, they are too high which creates an entry barrier for the same low-income people that were supposed to be helped. On the other hand, lowering the value of housing back to reasonable levels will hurt everyone who bought during the bubble. Probably housing values will essentially freeze for several years until the actual value catches up with the inflated value.

3. Government interference in the marketplace often turns out badly.
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are terrible examples of the free market. They are public/private entities. They have access to below-market interest rates but private ownership. It has always been assumed that they are too bid to fail and that the government will bail them out if they get into serious trouble. That encourages risky behavior. The government is involved in every level of the current crisis. For example, Real estate prices started to climb when the Fed reduced interest rates to historic lows in order to stimulate the economy after the dot-com crash.

Senator Obama's solution to every problem is more government involvement. In the last century we have had two periods when we expanded the size and scope of government - the 1930s and the 1960. Both were followed by long-term economic hardship. The problems of the 1960s didn't end until the 1980s and the start of Reagonomics. A return to the economic principles of the 1960s and 1970s almost guarentees a return of stagflation and the other economic ills of that period.

Class dismissed.

Hedge funds are not as tightly controlled by the government and are not having the current problems.

McCain, Obama and the Bailout

I still haven't made up my mind out the bailout. Was it worth it? Should we have let AIG and other big companies fall, taking lots of others with them? Or should we commit nearly a trillion dollars to the national debt?

Regardless, my subject for today is McCain's decision to suspend his campaign to help work out the bailout. He challenged Obama to do the same but the senator from Illinois declined.

So, why did McCain do it?

Some people have suggested that it was a move made out of desperation. That he was behind in the polls and knew that he didn't have a chance otherwise. This isn't likely for several reasons. The most important is that he isn't that far behind in most polls. In fact, he is within the margin of error. He is on the wrong side of it but he is close. More important, the Electoral College doesn't look too bad for him. Granted he has lost a few states including Virginia but he is very close in several states including Pennsylvania. A one-point gain in a few states and the election is his.

Plus, McCain may already be ahead. There were several stories last week about how Obama is having trouble with white male Democrats. There is also speculation that he is polling higher than his real support. This isn't surprising considering the number of Democrats who have announced that the only racists will vote against Obama.

The first debate is on foreign policy which is expected to favor McCain. In fact, the debate in general is expected to favor McCain. He did better against a crowd of Republicans than Obama did against either a crowd of Democrats or Hillary by herself.

The safe thing to do would be to continue to campaign and count on a enough of a bump from the debate to put McCain in the lead.

Obviously McCain didn't do that.

Many people think that it was a political move. There is something to that. It never looks good for a candidate to have to follow the other's advise. At the same time, by not following McCain, Obama is giving some clear signals about his priorities.

The main thing here is that McCain could have easily continued running campaign ads while looking presidential in DC. He didn't which could cost him with the election so close.

So, what if McCain is serious about the need to put the country first? He is not only a candidate for president. He is also a senator. If this legislation is as important as President Bush claims then McCain's place is in the Senate.

What about Obama? He is a senator, also, but he has not rushed back to the capitol.

"This is exactly the time when the American people need to hear from the person who in approximately 40 days will be responsible for dealing with this mess," Obama told reporters in Clearwater, Fla.

Ironically, Obama wants to someone else to deal with the mess for the next 40 days. He is too busy running for President to be part of the fix. He is perfectly happy to delegate the problem to someone else until he is sworn in. If McCain is putting country first then who is Obama putting first?

Note to Obama: The election may be in 40 days, but Bush continues in office in until January 20. You might have seen the 1/20/09 bumper stickers.

The Election and the Economy

A few days ago I was planning a post on how Obama's own qualities make him an unwinnable candidate. Since then there has been a major financial melt-down which gave Obama a sizable bounce. I would hate to see Obama win on this for a couple of reasons. The first is that the Democrats' fingerprints are all over the crisis, right beside the Republicans. The roots of the problems go back to the Clinton administration and actions taken after the Internet Bubble collapsed (Remember that? Bubbles happen under Democrats, too.).

The bigger reason is that Obama's proposals would strain the economy at any time. They would break it under current conditions. The reason that the Depression lasted so long and got worse under FDR was his response to the economy that he created. The problem is that he was seen as trying to help. Even if policies such as a punish-the-rich tax code and trade isolationism caused long-term damage to the economy, they were seen as being pro-worker. Obama is running hard as FDR's 5th term.

A view of socialized medicine

Read A Tale of 2 Sickbeds. The author contrasts his experience with a severe urinary tract infection in the UK and, a decade earlier, in New York. He relates several horrific experiences that happened to him in England. The bottom line is that you get what you pay for. The UK system is over-stretched and offers sub-standard care. The US system can be expensive but you never feel ignored nor do you find patients calling for help for an hour at a time.

Personally, I prefer the threat of high costs to the idea of being in a noisy, crowded ward without enough beds.

Back in the Pocket

Yesterday I complained about Senator Biden calling tax increases on the "rich" patriotic. Today I am going to analyze the other part of that statement. Biden said, We want to take money and put it back in the pocket of middle-class people.

The interesting part of that statement is the word "back" and the implications it has. At first glance Biden is just playing Robin Hood, taking money from the rich and giving it to the poor (who they refer to as the middle-class). If that was the case then he would have phrased it differently.

By using the word "back", Biden implies that the rich somehow have money that they took from the poor and it is the government's job to give it back. How does he come by that notion?

Democrats have been insisting that Bush's tax cuts were unfair because they favored the rich. This can be argued either way but the important thing here is that Bush did not raise taxes on the poor (or middle-class). He lowered them. No money was taken from the poor.

Maybe Biden means that Obama will take the tax cuts that should have gone to the poor (middle-class, whatever) and give them where they belong. But that isn't what he said, either.

I suspect that Biden's statement comes from a socialist zero-sum view of economics. If someone is rich, it is because he took advantage of the poor. This view matches Biden's statement. The rich were allowed to make too much money so it is up to the government to redistribute some of it from the undeserving rich to the deserving poor (they deserve it because simply they are poor). This fails economics 101. If I sell you something I may make a profit but that doesn't mean that I took advantage of you. You were free to not buy from me (there are exceptions to this but most involve government-sanctioned monopolies). You gained something of value to yourself.

There have been hints before that Obama was influenced by Marxism. Apparently Biden has a similar background. The idea of government redistribution of income seems like classic Marxism.

A side-note to this. Rep. Chris van Hollen (D-md) tried to justify Biden's statement this way:

Look, as Barack Obama himself has said, and as we all know, nobody likes to pay taxes. But I would ask Governor Palin a simple question; How do think we're providing equipment to our troops in the field in Iraq and Afghanistan? How do you think we're supporting the wounded veterans who are coming home at places like Walter Reed and other military hospitals? How are we supporting our troops in Afghanistan?

I thought it was patriotic for all of us to be supporting the troops in the field and providing them with the resources...

This is disingenuous. Biden was not suggesting that the rich pay more taxes in order to support the troops or even to lower the deficit. He (and Obama) want to give the money from the new taxes to the poor. If Obama and Biden were suggesting an across-the-board tax hike with the rich paying most of it then Biden might have a point. This is nothing of the sort.

A second side-note. The Democrats love to point out that McCain was against Bush's tax cuts but wants to keep them. They say that this represents a flip-flop. It does not. McCain voted against the tax cuts in protest because he wanted matching budget cuts. Regardless, he has pointed out that rolling back tax cuts years after they passed amounts to a tax increase which he also opposes.

Maybe this is too nuanced for the democrats.

Patriotism?

Democrats insist that they are patriotic (even the ones who claim that the US was behind 9/11). So what does patriotism mean to a Democrat? In Senator Biden's case it means redistributing income.

We want to take money and put it back in the pocket of middle-class people. It's time to be patriotic ... time to jump in, time to be part of the deal, time to help get America out of the rut.

Keep in mind that this is coming from the vice-presidential candidate. Also remember that their definition of rich is a numbers game. If you make more money than 90% of the population then you are rich and don't deserve your ill-gotten gains. If you are under that magic 90% then you are the deserving poor (or middle-class).

In the early primaries the candidates all insisted that they were progressives instead of liberals. In Obama's case, this is correct. The progressive movement was heavily influenced by socialism and emphasized class warfare.

Biden has now codified patriotism as including class warfare.

Are We Safer?

I would have posted this on September 11 but it's hard to keep up when you are on vacation. Anyway, are we safer? I would say yes, for several reasons.

First, we were not really paying attention to possible terrorist activity prior to September 11. This was a bi-partisan problem.

More important is what has happened to al Qaeda in the last seven years. While bin Ladin is still at large, a number of al Qaeda leaders are dead or in jail. Their communications structure has been disrupted. What had existed as a de-centralized organization is now a bunch of independent cells. They can no longer coordinate well enough to do anything on the scale of 9/11. While it is true that the Taliban is gaining strength in Pakistan, it is unclear how much al Qaeda has profited from this.

Then there is Iraq. Al Qaeda sent tens of thousands of jihadists there. Most are dead or captured.

Internationally, bin Laden's stock is down. Immediately after 9/11 he was seen as the hero who brought the mighty America to its knees. Now he is seen as the person who provoked America into overthrowing Afghanistan. He announced that the fight for Iraq was of central importance. not only did his forces loose, they also killed Muslims indiscriminately. Bin Laden is now seen as a loose cannon rather than as a leader.

Of course, none of this means that we can declare victory and quit. That's what makes the next election important.

Lipstick on a Pig

Ok, this is a common expression and Obama (and McCain) may have used it before. Obama probably didn't mean to explicitly call Palin a pig. Given all of that, Obama still deserves all the grief he has gotten over this remoark for a couple of reasons.

Fisrt, the most memorable line out of both conventions was the one about the difference between a pit bull and a hockey mom - lipstick. After that, Obama and his advisors should have scrubbed his speaches so that there were no mentions of lipstick, just to avoid this sort of situation. He didn't do this and is paying the price.

The second reason has to do with how Obama's supporters have been acting during the campaign. For months they have been disecting everything said about Obama, looking for hidden, racially coded messages. Suddenly, anything could become a racial code word. When Biden described Obama as "articulate", he didn't add, "For a black man." This was added for him by Obama supporters who then forced Biden to appologise for something that he hadn't said.

Obama never did anything to stop this. Instead, he benefitted from it. He could easily have made a statement saying that he was positive that Biden did not mean anything racial. Obama never did this, even when he invited Biden onto the ticket.

Obama ran a campaign where every utterance can be twisted into a coded reference so it is fitting that this should be used against him.

A Convention Roundup

The two parties conventions are over. Now the campaign begins in earnest. How did they do?

The Democratic National Convention was a mess. It was a good-looking one but a mess, never the less. In modern politics, the purpose of the convention is to sell the candidate. Everything else is secondary. So what did the Democrats do?

The first night was split between Michelle Obama and a tribute to Ted Kennedy. Michelle was practicing damage control after some widely-repeated remarks earlier in the campaign. Kennedy was a distraction.

The next two nights featured the Clintons. This is where the convention really failed. They felt that they had to give Hillary speaking time in order to reconcile her followers with Obama. They also felt that they had to give Bill Clinton speaking time. I'm not sure why since Obama (and Hillary) ran campaigns promising the end of Bill's compromises with the Republicans. Neither Bill nor Hillary made more than a token effort to elect Obama. any momentum from the first night was lost.

Joe Biden gave a speech somewhere in there. No one paid attention.

Obama was the main even on Thursday. Instead of addressing the convention, he addressed a campaign rally. He stood on an O-shaped island with a backdrop of Greek columns. His speech was toned down quite a bit from some of his other rhetoric. He didn't say anything like "We are the ones we have been waiting for" (translation; I am the one you have been waiting for). He didn't repeat his assertion that he would stop the oceans from rising and would heal the earth. He did go through a long laundry list of new programs and give-aways. Better yet, he said that he would reduce taxes and insurance payments for 95% of the country and pay for it all without new taxes.

Obama's ratings were through the roof - around 40% of the country watched.

The Democrats left their convention feeling pretty good about themselves. The Republican convention was to start a couple of days later on a holiday, Bush would be addressing the convention, and a hurricane was bearing down on New Orleans, threatening to cancel the Republican convention.

But there were some whispers that things weren't going so well. The old-timers were concerned that Obama wasn't attacking strongly enough. according to some reports, the stadium crowd wasn't impressed by Obama's speech. Where normally uninspired speakers like Gore and Kerry had given the speech of their life, Obama's was rather ordinary... especially for him.

Then things really went sour. McCain announced a surprise VP pick - Sarah Palin from Alaska. The Democrats' first response was to jump on her hard in the hope that they could hurt her reputation enough that she would have to withdraw. McCain's candidacy would have never recovered. Nothing was too extreme in this blitz. It failed and left the Democrats looking mean and petty. Obama had to denounce his supporters more than once.

The hurricane helped the Republicans far more than it hurt them. The first night of the convention was cancelled. This solved the problem of what to do about President Bush. He was too busy to address the convention in person. He ended up making a short address by satellite.

With an hour of airtime to fill, the networks covered the hurricane. The only real story there was how much everything had improved over Katrina.

The Republicans compressed their convention into three nights, all devoted to selling McCain and Palin. Palin's speech on Wednesday established her as a rising Republican star and matched Obama's ratings. McCain's speech on Thursday wasn't as inspired but he did manage to tie his POW experiences to his candidacy. Overnight estimates of his ratings put him higher than Obama.

So, where does this leave us? Often the conventions will give a candidate a bump in the polls that is enough to win the election. Clinton got a huge bump in 1992. Bush was running behind Kerry in 2004 until the Republican convention gave him a bump. On the other hand, Kerry got a slight negative bump, possibly because he overplayed the "reporting for duty" bit. McCain is in danger of doing this with his time as a POW but has not reached that point.

Obama got a slight bump from the Democratic convention but it only put him back to where he was in June. That bump has vanished by now. McCain is not showing much of a bump, either. He is back to running slightly behind but within the margin of error.

The real indicator is the electoral college. Polling by state is out-of-date and still reflects Obama's temporary bump.

With the two candidates running neck and neck, the debates will probably produce a winner. That is bad news for Obama. He is not as good without a script. He has poor instincts and the first thing he says is often wrong. His statement about meeting with hostile foreign powers without pre-condition came from a debate and he is still trying to live that one down. Expectations are lower for McCain which, as with Bush, makes it easier to win a debate.

Biden the Attack Dog

Most Democrats spent Thursday complaining about attacks by Sarah Palin. Joe Biden showed that he could up the ante. When asked about trying the current President Bush and associates as war criminals, he seemed to be saying that they are already working on it. Biden is trying to back off of his comments but you can judge for yourself. The video is here.

The Experience Issue

The Left keeps harping on Sarah Palin's lack of qualifications to be "a heartbeat away from being president". When Republicans point out that their ticket has the experienced candidate on the top, the Left counter-charges that Obama's campaign is good enough.

Now, you could make the point that running a national campaign is a big job and should count as executive experience but that isn't what they mean. Newsweek's Johnathan Alter is typical:

Obama won 18 million votes, faced countless tough interviews and emerged with a reputation for fluency in discussing affairs of state, whatever one thinks of his politics. Palin's vote totals for mayor were measured in the hundreds; she has served only 20 months as governor of a state half the size of Brooklyn, and knows nothing of national or international issues beyond energy.

Part of this is easy to dismiss - Palin has served 20 months as governor, Obama has served 32 months as junior senator and spent most of it campaigning. If all you count is time in office then Obama is unqualified.

The size of the state is also relevant. Ross Perot pointed out in 1992 that Arkansas is a tiny state (although more populous than Alaska) and one of the poorest. Does Alter think that Clinton was unqualified?

Obama's credentials on foreign affairs are debatable. Alter is impressed. I am not. Obama was against the war with Iraq but has never said how Saddam should have been handled instead. He was against the surge. He spent part of the primary in a bidding war with Hillary over how fast they would pull our troops out of Iraq. He still has not admitted that we are winning.

He promises to get along better with other nations (Bush also promised to be more humble when dealing with the international community) but he has also caused concern with trading partners. He threatened to start bombing Pakistan (an ally and a nuclear power) while promising to meet with national leaders who want the destruction of the US. Most recently he seemed to be unaware that Russia has veto power in the UN Security Council. Obama talks a good game but has not shown any real depth.

And, it should be pointed out that presidential candidates seldom have any real foreign policy experience. The last one who did was George H. W. Bush (former ambassador and vice-president). Prior to that you have to go back to Nixon (former vice-president) and Ike. We often elect governors as our president, valuing executive experience over foreign affairs. Palin is just one more in that line and not even at the top of the ticket.

Obama has indicated that he would make up for his lack of foreign policy experience by leaning on Joe Biden. Biden, it will be remembered, was for chopping Iraq into three parts then abandoning it.

That leaves Obama's votes and his participation in debates as his qualification to be president. What this really means is that the voters looked at Obama's thin resume and decided that they wanted him anyway. It doesn't reflect anything exect his ability to sell himself.

Palin wasn't (and isn't) running for president so she didn't get any votes.

Biden did run. He came in 5th. In New Hampshire he got 638 votes. He got a consistent 1%-2% of the vote. This raises the question, how can someone who was rejected by 99% of the primary voters be qualified to be vice-president?

All of this is partisan bickering. The Left loves Obama so he must be qualified. They see Palin's lack of experience as a way to hurt McCain so she isn't qualified. It is as simple as that.

Miscalculations

After listening to the Left for the last few days, you would have expected Sarah Palin's speech would make George W. Bush seem eloquent. That isn't what happened. She made a great speech. The crowd loved her and even the AP admitted that it was a "star-turning performance."

If the Democrats were surprised they have only themselves to blame. They have spent so much time belittling Governor Palin as the mayor of a small town that they overlooked her very real accomplishments. She defeated an incumbent Republican governor in the primary then defeated a former governor in the general election and went on to become a popular governor herself. This takes political skill. I'm betting that this is what made McCain put her on the ticket.

Keep in mind that the real job of the number two person on the ticket is to get the number one person elected. Sarah's first task was to present herself as a credible candidate. She did this very well, coming off far more presidential than Biden. I can see her running for president herself in four or eight years.

The Democrats should be worried about the vice-presidential debate. Biden is known for talking too much.

The Democrats have made other miscalculations in the past few days. They assumed that an unknown must have some disqualifying secrets in her background so they spent a lot of effort trying to find something. In the process they aired everything possible, no matter how irrelevant. Possibly the worst was posting a photograph of Sarah in college waring a tee shirt that said, "I may be flat broke but at least I'm not flat-chested!"

After these attacks, any doubts that Republicans had about Sarah were dismissed. They are far more supportive of McCain and Palin than they were of McCain by himself.

This push-back may spread to the general public. The press is getting stories from the DailyKOS and Huffington. Eventually the number of unfair attack will produce a sympathy for Sarah.

Update: according to the 9/4/8 Rasmussen Daily Polls, people think that the press has gone too hard on Sarah by a 10-1 margin.

The Democrats made one other miscalculation over the weekend - Hurricane Gustav. They were laughing over the prospect of a hurricane hitting New Orleans during the Republican convention. "This proves that there is a God," Michael Moore said.

I wonder if they are still laughing? New Orleans is still standing. FEMA is functional. Everything went as well as it possibly could have given that a major storm hit our coast.

Instead of reminding people about their outrage three years ago, Gustav has shown how much the government's response has improved. It also showcased the new Republican governor of Louisiana.

Update: Governor Jindal is now being talked about as a future presidential candidate.

It may prove that there is a god but it doesn't prove which side he is on.

Hating Sarah

If you had asked the Left a week ago who Sarah Palin is, you would have gotten a lot of blank stares. They didn't know (neither did most of the Right).

Now if you ask the Left about Sarah you will get a united answer - they hate her, they think that she is the least qualified candidate for vice president in history and by nominating her, John McCain has shown himself unfit for office.

Of course, they don't really think this. Some of them might have convinced themselves that this is what they believe. Many of them have worked themselves up over it. But, deep down, they don't really know or care anything about Sarah.

What they do know is that she is an unknown. They have probably been gathering dirt on the expected VP choices and sharpening their knives if it was Lieberman. Sarah's selection left them unprepared.

That didn't stop them from coming out swinging. The original statement from the Obama campaign was that she was the former governor of a town of 9,000 with zero foreign policy experience. Obama himself realized that this reflected badly on him (a former state senator with zero foreign policy experience) and issues a more gracious statement.

Over the weekend the Left has gone to extremes to try to find dirt on Sarah. They insisted that her child is really her grandchild (forcing a public announcement that Sarah's daughter is pregnant). They found a ticket that her husband got 22 years ago. They announced that the vetting process for a vice-president has to include a newspaper search and that McCain hadn't done one.

I hope that Sarah isn't taking any of this personally. The Left has devoted itself to tearing her down in an effort to bring McCain down. That is all they care about. Deep down, Sarah Palin is nothing but a possible tool to be used in securing the election of their chosen one. They don't care who they hurt in the process.

Is Nothing Out of Bounds?

The big story of the weekend is that Sarah Palin's daughter is pregnant. This was announced in order to stop rumors that Sarah's most recent child was really her grandchild who she claimed as her own. The proof for this claim was virtually non-existent but that didn't stop people posting to the DailyKOS from calling Sarah an outright liar.

Last week the former chair of the DNC laughed at Gustav hitting New Orleans around the time that the Republican convention begins. Here
"God is on our side."

Michael Moore thinks that Gustav proves that there is a god. Here. His reasoning is that the Republicans are at one end of the Mississippi and the hurricane is at the other end. Afterwards he realized that this was over the top, even for him, so he wrote a letter to God asking him not to hurt anyone. He assumes that God reads the Huffington Post.

The kids at KOS also celebrated when former White House spokesman Tony Snow died.

Was Tony Snow part of a Goebbels-like propaganda machine allowing a cabal of pillaging, warmongering thugs to seize War Powers of an Industrialized "Democracy" allowing said Regime to unrepentently torture, maim, and kill civilians in foreign lands while rationalizing his patrons Police-State Powers at home via the comprehensive, calculated dissembly of the Rule of Law?

Protesters at the Republican National Convention dropped sacks of cement on buses carrying Republicans.

The left has shown that nothing is beyond the pale. In fact, the thread (now deleted) about Palin's child had a survey asking if this was going too far. The overwhelming response was that this election is too important for anything to be out of bounds.

This is nothing new. Four years ago liberals tried to make a fuss about Dick Cheney's daughter being gay.

You don't see conservatives acting like this. Conservative attacks have been limited to Barack Obama and his documented record (the Obama is Muslim rumor is nasty but from the timing, it probably started with Hillary-supporters).

This raises an important question. The left thinks that they are committed to doing good. Why don't they act like it?

Women and the Presidency

With today's selection of Sarah Palin as McCain's running mate, I thought it would be interesting to look back at previous women running for president.

Wikipedia has a list of women who were nominated for president or vice-president by 3rd parties.

Although it was never official, Elinor Roosevelt must be mentioned. FDR's health was worse than they let on and she assumed some of his duties near the end of his life.

In 1972, Shirley Chisholm made a splash when 152 delegates voted for her in the Democratic National Convention. This made her the first black candidate and the first woman to be taken seriously as a presidential candidate.

In 1984, Walter Mondale was way behind Reagan. He decided that his only chance was to gamble on a woman. He chose an obscure congresswoman named Geraldine Ferraro. This didn't help him. He went down in a historic drubbing. Ferraro made the news earlier this year when she observed that Barack Obama's skin color was helping him in the primary just as her gender got her on the ballot in 1984. This led to Obama's famous race speech.

In 1988, there was a lot of pressure for George H. W. Bush to name a woman as his running mate. The Republicans had two women who were well-qualified - Elizabeth Dole who had held cabinet positions and Jeane Kirkpatrick, the Ambassador to the UN. The rumor is that Bush didn't like either of these women and wanted to prove that he could win on his own.

In 1992, the Clintons presented Hillary as a co-president. There was also talk of appointing her to the Supreme Court.

In 2000, Elizabeth Dole ran for president. Her candidacy didn't go anywhere.

And of course, in 2008, Hillary Clinton ran and lost by a fraction of a percent of the delegates. Hillary supporters have noted that the final choice was made by the super-delegates who decided to neuter themselves by ratifying the candidate with the most elected delegates, no matter how close the result.

Palin!

McCain finally announced his pick for Vice-President, Sarah Palin, the Governor of Alaska. This is an interesting pick, full of pluses and minuses.

One big plus, she was such an unexpected choice that she knocked talk of Obama's big speech out of the news cycle. With a holiday weekend coming up, his speech will be old news by Tuesday. This will minimize any bump Obama got from the convention. (Rasmussen shows a bump that is so small it is within the margin of error*).

A second big plus, she's not any of the other Republican candidates. I'm sick of those guys and I suspect that the rest of the country is, also. None of them had any wide support of McCain couldn't have wrapped up the nomination so fast.

A minus, she only has two years experience as governor and that is in a small state. On the other hand, she is still the only person on the ticket with any experience as an elected executive. If Obama is qualified to be president with four years in the Senate then she is qualified to be Vice-President with two years in the state-house. Hopefully the Republicans will use this argument against Obama.

She won the governor's race after a high-profile stint on an ethics board. The public is convinced that both parties are corrupt so this helps, especially against Obama's attempts to link McCain and lobbyists.

Her husband is a Yup'ik Eskimo. That means that her family is as exotic as Obama's (although she isn't as exotic personally). Between this and McCain's adopted daughter and Howard Dean should be forced to eat his words about the "white party".

She's in the NRA. Her husband hunts. Obama has already lost the gun-owner vote but this clinches it.

She is against declaring polar bears endangered. That puts her on the right side of the global warming debate.

She adds a lot of vitality to the ticket, just as Biden drains some of the vitality away from the Obama ticket.

Among Republicans there is a strong feeling that McCain should be a one-term president because of his age. This introduces a new face who could potentially be the candidate in 2012 (probably against Hillary!).

* Speaking of Rasmussen, the latest set of state polls show terrible news for Obama. While he is still slightly ahead in the Electoral College, all ten of the states polls showed a shift for McCain. In some cases this was a shift from "solidly Democrat" to "leaning Democrat". If this trend continues then McCain will win in a landslide. We will not really know until next week when the race starts in earnest. Traditionally people are more willing to go for a new face in early Summer but they get serious about their choices in September.

Obama Annotated

My comments in red.

To Chairman Dean and my great friend Dick Durbin; and to all my fellow citizens of this great nation;

With profound gratitude and great humility, I accept your nomination for the presidency of the United States.

Let me express my thanks to the historic slate of candidates who accompanied me on this journey, and especially the one who traveled the farthest - a champion for working Americans and an inspiration to my daughters and to yours — Hillary Rodham Clinton. To President Clinton, who last night made the case for change as only he can make it; to Ted Kennedy, who embodies the spirit of service; and to the next Vice President of the United States, Joe Biden, I thank you. I am grateful to finish this journey with one of the finest statesmen of our time, a man at ease with everyone from world leaders to the conductors on the Amtrak train he still takes home every night.

To the love of my life, our next First Lady, Michelle Obama, and to Sasha and Malia - I love you so much, and I'm so proud of all of you.

Four years ago, I stood before you and told you my story - of the brief union between a young man from Kenya and a young woman from Kansas who weren't well-off or well-known, but shared a belief that in America, their son could achieve whatever he put his mind to.

It is that promise that has always set this country apart - that through hard work and sacrifice, each of us can pursue our individual dreams but still come together as one American family, to ensure that the next generation can pursue their dreams as well.

That's why I stand here tonight. Because for two hundred and thirty two years, at each moment when that promise was in jeopardy, ordinary men and women - students and soldiers, farmers and teachers, nurses and janitors — found the courage to keep it alive.

We meet at one of those defining moments - a moment when our nation is at war, our economy is in turmoil, and the American promise has been threatened once more.

Tonight, more Americans are out of work and more are working harder for less. More of you have lost your homes and even more are watching your home values plummet. More of you have cars you can't afford to drive, credit card bills you can't afford to pay, and tuition that's beyond your reach. More than when, exactly? More than last year, certainly but the highest unemployment rate under Clinton was a full point higher than the highest under Bush

These challenges are not all of government's making. But the failure to respond is a direct result of a broken politics in Washington and the failed policies of George W. Bush.

America, we are better than these last eight years. We are a better country than this.

This country is more decent than one where a woman in Ohio, on the brink of retirement, finds herself one illness away from disaster after a lifetime of hard work.

This country is more generous than one where a man in Indiana has to pack up the equipment he's worked on for twenty years and watch it shipped off to China, and then chokes up as he explains how he felt like a failure when he went home to tell his family the news. Democrats love to blame everything on outsourcing but outsourcing creates more American jobs than it cost us.

We are more compassionate than a government that lets veterans sleep on our streets and families slide into poverty; that sits on its hands while a major American city drowns before our eyes. The National Guard was dispatched to New Orleans as soon as the Democratic Governor of Louisiana allowed.

Tonight, I say to the American people, to Democrats and Republicans and Independents across this great land - enough! This moment - this election - is our chance to keep, in the 21st century, the American promise alive. Because next week, in Minnesota, the same party that brought you two terms of George Bush and Dick Cheney will ask this country for a third. And we are here because we love this country too much to let the next four years look like the last eight. On November 4th, we must stand up and say: "Eight is enough." This is the Democrats' big message - Bush=McCain

Now let there be no doubt. The Republican nominee, John McCain, has worn the uniform of our country with bravery and distinction, and for that we owe him our gratitude and respect. And next week, we'll also hear about those occasions when he's broken with his party as evidence that he can deliver the change that we need.

But the record's clear: John McCain has voted with George Bush ninety percent of the time. Senator McCain likes to talk about judgment, but really, what does it say about your judgment when you think George Bush has been right more than ninety percent of the time? I don't know about you, but I'm not ready to take a ten percent chance on change.

The truth is, on issue after issue that would make a difference in your lives - on health care and education and the economy - Senator McCain has been anything but independent. He said that our economy has made "great progress" under this President. He said that the fundamentals of the economy are strong. And when one of his chief advisors - the man who wrote his economic plan - was talking about the anxiety Americans are feeling, he said that we were just suffering from a "mental recession," and that we've become, and I quote, "a nation of whiners." Obama must be too busy campaigning to read the financial news. We are not in a recession and the last quarter's growth was fairly strong. The reference to a mental recession was referring to this. We think (or are told) that the economy is much worse than it really is.

A nation of whiners? Tell that to the proud auto workers at a Michigan plant who, after they found out it was closing, kept showing up every day and working as hard as ever, because they knew there were people who counted on the brakes that they made. Tell that to the military families who shoulder their burdens silently as they watch their loved ones leave for their third or fourth or fifth tour of duty. These are not whiners. They work hard and give back and keep going without complaint. These are the Americans that I know.

Now, I don't believe that Senator McCain doesn't care what's going on in the lives of Americans. I just think he doesn't know. Why else would he define middle-class as someone making under five million dollars a year? How else could he propose hundreds of billions in tax breaks for big corporations and oil companies but not one penny of tax relief to more than one hundred million Americans? How else could he offer a health care plan that would actually tax people's benefits, or an education plan that would do nothing to help families pay for college, or a plan that would privatize Social Security and gamble your retirement?

It's not because John McCain doesn't care. It's because John McCain doesn't get it. This is the second line of attack if Bush=McCain doesn't work.

For over two decades, he's subscribed to that old, discredited Republican philosophy - give more and more to those with the most and hope that prosperity trickles down to everyone else. In Washington, they call this the Ownership Society, but what it really means is - you're on your own. Out of work? Tough luck. No health care? The market will fix it. Born into poverty? Pull yourself up by your own bootstraps - even if you don't have boots. You're on your own. Europe has tried it the other way. The result? America is much better off. It is the Democrats philosophy that has been discredited.

Well it's time for them to own their failure. It's time for us to change America.

You see, we Democrats have a very different measure of what constitutes progress in this country.

We measure progress by how many people can find a job that pays the mortgage; whether you can put a little extra money away at the end of each month so you can someday watch your child receive her college diploma. We measure progress in the 23 million new jobs that were created when Bill Clinton was President - when the average American family saw its income go up $7,500 instead of down $2,000 like it has under George Bush. Again, he needs to look at the latest financial news. Income is up under Bush. And Clinton didn't have to cope with the devistation of 9/11.

We measure the strength of our economy not by the number of billionaires we have or the profits of the Fortune 500, but by whether someone with a good idea can take a risk and start a new business, or whether the waitress who lives on tips can take a day off to look after a sick kid without losing her job - an economy that honors the dignity of work.

The fundamentals we use to measure economic strength are whether we are living up to that fundamental promise that has made this country great - a promise that is the only reason I am standing here tonight.

Because in the faces of those young veterans who come back from Iraq and Afghanistan, I see my grandfather, who signed up after Pearl Harbor, marched in Patton's Army, and was rewarded by a grateful nation with the chance to go to college on the GI Bill.

In the face of that young student who sleeps just three hours before working the night shift, I think about my mom, who raised my sister and me on her own while she worked and earned her degree; who once turned to food stamps but was still able to send us to the best schools in the country with the help of student loans and scholarships.

When I listen to another worker tell me that his factory has shut down, I remember all those men and women on the South Side of Chicago who I stood by and fought for two decades ago after the local steel plant closed.

And when I hear a woman talk about the difficulties of starting her own business, I think about my grandmother, who worked her way up from the secretarial pool to middle-management, despite years of being passed over for promotions because she was a woman. She's the one who taught me about hard work. She's the one who put off buying a new car or a new dress for herself so that I could have a better life. She poured everything she had into me. And although she can no longer travel, I know that she's watching tonight, and that tonight is her night as well. Middle-management? Obama's grandmother was vice-president of a bank.

I don't know what kind of lives John McCain thinks that celebrities lead, but this has been mine. These are my heroes. Theirs are the stories that shaped me. And it is on their behalf that I intend to win this election and keep our promise alive as President of the United States. A man surrounded by 84,000 cheering fans tries to deny that he is a celebrity?

What is that promise?

It's a promise that says each of us has the freedom to make of our own lives what we will, but that we also have the obligation to treat each other with dignity and respect.

It's a promise that says the market should reward drive and innovation and generate growth, but that businesses should live up to their responsibilities to create American jobs, look out for American workers, and play by the rules of the road.

Ours is a promise that says government cannot solve all our problems, but what it should do is that which we cannot do for ourselves - protect us from harm and provide every child a decent education; keep our water clean and our toys safe; invest in new schools and new roads and new science and technology. If he stopped there he would be in agreement with everyone except the most hard-core Libertarians. I suspect that he wants government to do a bit more than this list.

Our government should work for us, not against us. It should help us, not hurt us. It should ensure opportunity not just for those with the most money and influence, but for every American who's willing to work. No fair taking lines from Reagan if you don't mean them.

That's the promise of America - the idea that we are responsible for ourselves, but that we also rise or fall as one nation; the fundamental belief that I am my brother's keeper; I am my sister's keeper.

That's the promise we need to keep. That's the change we need right now. So let me spell out exactly what that change would mean if I am President.

Change means a tax code that doesn't reward the lobbyists who wrote it, but the American workers and small businesses who deserve it.

Unlike John McCain, I will stop giving tax breaks to corporations that ship jobs overseas, and I will start giving them to companies that create good jobs right here in America. This is somewhere between a distortion and an outright lie abotu McCain's positions.

I will eliminate capital gains taxes for the small businesses and the start-ups that will create the high-wage, high-tech jobs of tomorrow.

I will cut taxes - cut taxes - for 95% of all working families. Because in an economy like this, the last thing we should do is raise taxes on the middle-class.

And for the sake of our economy, our security, and the future of our planet, I will set a clear goal as President: in ten years, we will finally end our dependence on oil from the Middle East.

Washington's been talking about our oil addiction for the last thirty years, and John McCain has been there for twenty-six of them. And Joe Biden was there for all 30. In that time, he's said no to higher fuel-efficiency standards for cars, no to investments in renewable energy, no to renewable fuels. And today, we import triple the amount of oil as the day that Senator McCain took office.

Now is the time to end this addiction, and to understand that drilling is a stop-gap measure, not a long-term solution. Not even close. He's beginning to sound like McCain here. It takes time to develop new technologies. Stop-gap measures can fill the gap. Peviously Obama hasn't admitted that there was any place for drilling in future plans.

As President, I will tap our natural gas reserves He means the Strategic Petroleum Reserves which are meant for emergencies, not high prices, invest in clean coal technology, and find ways to safely harness nuclear power. Nuclear power is already safer than other forms. Just how safe do you want it? I'll help our auto companies re-tool, so that the fuel-efficient cars of the future are built right here in America. Subsidies I'll make it easier for the American people to afford these new cars. more subsidies And I'll invest 150 billion dollars over the next decade in affordable, renewable sources of energy - wind power and solar power and the next generation of biofuels; an investment that will lead to new industries and five million new jobs that pay well and can't ever be outsourced. Except that most jobs from wind and solar power come from making the windmills and solar cells. A lot of these are already being imported from other countries. There is no reason that biofuels can't be outsourced, either, except for trade barriers.

America, now is not the time for small plans.

Now is the time to finally meet our moral obligation to provide every child a world-class education, because it will take nothing less to compete in the global economy. Michelle and I are only here tonight because we were given a chance at an education. And I will not settle for an America where some kids don't have that chance. I'll invest in early childhood education. Studies have show that pre-school does not improve a student's later performance. I'll recruit an army of new teachers, and pay them higher salaries and give them more support. And in exchange, I'll ask for higher standards and more accountability. No Child Left Behind II And we will keep our promise to every young American - if you commit to serving your community or your country, we will make sure you can afford a college education. even more subsidies

Now is the time to finally keep the promise of affordable, accessible health care for every single American. If you have health care, my plan will lower your premiums. If you don't, you'll be able to get the same kind of coverage that members of Congress give themselves. And as someone who watched my mother argue with insurance companies while she lay in bed dying of cancer, I will make certain those companies stop discriminating against those who are sick and need care the most. Under England's socialized medicine they would have quietly stopped treating her earlier.

Now is the time to help families with paid sick days and better family leave, because nobody in America should have to choose between keeping their jobs and caring for a sick child or ailing parent.

Now is the time to change our bankruptcy laws, so that your pensions are protected ahead of CEO bonuses; and the time to protect Social Security for future generations. By privatizing it. Oh, wait, he already said that this is bad. More taxes, then.

And now is the time to keep the promise of equal pay for an equal day's work, because I want my daughters to have exactly the same opportunities as your sons. If you look at people occupying the same job with the same experience then women already have parity. Women are paid less in general because they choose lower-paying jobs that give more flexibility.

Now, many of these plans will cost money, which is why I've laid out how I'll pay for every dime - by closing corporate loopholes and tax havens that don't help America grow. But I will also go through the federal budget, line by line, eliminating programs that no longer work and making the ones we do need work better and cost less - because we cannot meet twenty-first century challenges with a twentieth century bureaucracy. Every president since Clinton has made this promise. If it could be done it would have already happened. We can't even get rid of the Strategic Helium Reserve which was used for observation balloons in WWI.

And Democrats, we must also admit that fulfilling America's promise will require more than just money. It will require a renewed sense of responsibility from each of us to recover what John F. Kennedy called our "intellectual and moral strength." Yes, government must lead on energy independence, but each of us must do our part to make our homes and businesses more efficient. Yes, we must provide more ladders to success for young men who fall into lives of crime and despair. But we must also admit that programs alone can't replace parents; that government can't turn off the television and make a child do her homework; that fathers must take more responsibility for providing the love and guidance their children need.

Individual responsibility and mutual responsibility - that's the essence of America's promise.

And just as we keep our keep our promise to the next generation here at home, so must we keep America's promise abroad. If John McCain wants to have a debate about who has the temperament, and judgment, to serve as the next Commander-in-Chief, that's a debate I'm ready to have.

For while Senator McCain was turning his sights to Iraq just days after 9/11, I stood up and opposed this war, knowing that it would distract us from the real threats we face. When John McCain said we could just "muddle through" in Afghanistan, I argued for more resources and more troops to finish the fight against the terrorists who actually attacked us on 9/11, and made clear that we must take out Osama bin Laden and his lieutenants if we have them in our sights. John McCain likes to say that he'll follow bin Laden to the Gates of Hell - but he won't even go to the cave where he lives.

And today, as my call for a time frame to remove our troops from Iraq has been echoed by the Iraqi government and even the Bush Administration, even after we learned that Iraq has a $79 billion surplus while we're wallowing in deficits, John McCain stands alone in his stubborn refusal to end a misguided war. We have to surrender now while we still can.

That's not the judgment we need. That won't keep America safe. We need a President who can face the threats of the future, not keep grasping at the ideas of the past. Those who refuse to learn from the past are doomed to repeat it.

You don't defeat a terrorist network that operates in eighty countries by occupying Iraq. You don't protect Israel and deter Iran just by talking tough in Washington. You can't truly stand up for Georgia when you've strained our oldest alliances. If John McCain wants to follow George Bush with more tough talk and bad strategy, that is his choice - but it is not the change we need.

We are the party of Roosevelt. We are the party of Kennedy. The party of LBJ. The party of Carter. So don't tell me that Democrats won't defend this country. Don't tell me that Democrats won't keep us safe. The Bush-McCain foreign policy has squandered the legacy that generations of Americans — Democrats and Republicans - have built, and we are here to restore that legacy.

As Commander-in-Chief, I will never hesitate to defend this nation, but I will only send our troops into harm's way with a clear mission and a sacred commitment to give them the equipment they need in battle and the care and benefits they deserve when they come home.

I will end this war in Iraq responsibly by surrendering as fast as possible, and finish the fight against al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan by invading Pakistan. I will rebuild our military to meet future conflicts Draft?. But I will also renew the tough, direct diplomacy that can prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons and curb Russian aggression. Talking tough is only bad when Bush does it. I will build new partnerships to defeat the threats of the 21st century: terrorism and nuclear proliferation; poverty and genocide; climate change and disease. And I will restore our moral standing, so that America is once again that last, best hope for all who are called to the cause of freedom, who long for lives of peace, and who yearn for a better future. Like Iraq under Saddam?

These are the policies I will pursue. And in the weeks ahead, I look forward to debating them with John McCain.

But what I will not do is suggest that the Senator takes his positions for political purposes. Because one of the things that we have to change in our politics is the idea that people cannot disagree without challenging each other's character and patriotism. McCain never challenged Obama's patriotism, just his judgement.

The times are too serious, the stakes are too high for this same partisan playbook. So let us agree that patriotism has no party. I love this country, and so do you, and so does John McCain but not Sean Penn, Cindy Sheehan, Michael Moore, and several others attached to the Democrats. The men and women who serve in our battlefields may be Democrats and Republicans and Independents, but they have fought together and bled together and some died together under the same proud flag. They have not served a Red America or a Blue America - they have served the United States of America.

So I've got news for you, John McCain. We all put our country first. This from someone who introduced himself in Germany as "Barack Obama, citizen of the world".

America, our work will not be easy. The challenges we face require tough choices, and Democrats as well as Republicans will need to cast off the worn-out ideas and politics of the past. For part of what has been lost these past eight years can't just be measured by lost wages or bigger trade deficits. What has also been lost is our sense of common purpose - our sense of higher purpose. And that's what we have to restore.

We may not agree on abortion, but surely we can agree on reducing the number of unwanted pregnancies in this country. Which fell under Bush The reality of gun ownership may be different for hunters in rural Ohio than for those plagued by gang-violence in Cleveland, but don't tell me we can't uphold the Second Amendment while keeping AK-47s out of the hands of criminals Automatic weapons have been outlawed since the 1930s. I know there are differences on same-sex marriage, but surely we can agree that our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters deserve to visit the person they love in the hospital and to live lives free of discrimination. Passions fly on immigration, but I don't know anyone who benefits when a mother is separated from her infant child or an employer undercuts American wages by hiring illegal workers. This too is part of America's promise - the promise of a democracy where we can find the strength and grace to bridge divides and unite in common effort. Is it just me or did he come down on both sides of this issue?

I know there are those who dismiss such beliefs as happy talk. They claim that our insistence on something larger, something firmer and more honest in our public life is just a Trojan Horse for higher taxes and the abandonment of traditional values. And that's to be expected. Because if you don't have any fresh ideas, then you use stale tactics to scare the voters. If you don't have a record to run on, then you paint your opponent as someone people should run from.

You make a big election about small things.

And you know what - it's worked before. Because it feeds into the cynicism we all have about government. When Washington doesn't work, all its promises seem empty. If your hopes have been dashed again and again, then it's best to stop hoping, and settle for what you already know.

I get it. I realize that I am not the likeliest candidate for this office. Most candidates have some sort of experience and track record. I don't fit the typical pedigree, and I haven't spent my career in the halls of Washington.

But I stand before you tonight because all across America something is stirring. What the nay-sayers don't understand is that this election has never been about me. It's been about you. And your adulation for me.

For eighteen long months, you have stood up, one by one, and said enough to the politics of the past. You understand that in this election, the greatest risk we can take is to try the same old politics with the same old players and expect a different result. You have shown what history teaches us - that at defining moments like this one, the change we need doesn't come from Washington. Change comes to Washington. Change happens because the American people demand it - because they rise up and insist on new ideas and new leadership, a new politics for a new time.

America, this is one of those moments. Which is why I want a return to the New Deal

I believe that as hard as it will be, the change we need is coming. Because I've seen it. Because I've lived it. I've seen it in Illinois, when we provided health care to more children and moved more families from welfare to work. "We" means the people who actually did it. I've seen it in Washington, when we worked across party lines to open up government and hold lobbyists more accountable, to give better care for our veterans and keep nuclear weapons out of terrorist hands.

Everything from here down cold as easily have been said by Reagan.

And I've seen it in this campaign. In the young people who voted for the first time, and in those who got involved again after a very long time. In the Republicans who never thought they'd pick up a Democratic ballot, but did. I've seen it in the workers who would rather cut their hours back a day than see their friends lose their jobs, in the soldiers who re-enlist after losing a limb, in the good neighbors who take a stranger in when a hurricane strikes and the floodwaters rise.

This country of ours has more wealth than any nation, but that's not what makes us rich. We have the most powerful military on Earth, but that's not what makes us strong. Our universities and our culture are the envy of the world, but that's not what keeps the world coming to our shores.

Instead, it is that American spirit - that American promise - that pushes us forward even when the path is uncertain; that binds us together in spite of our differences; that makes us fix our eye not on what is seen, but what is unseen, that better place around the bend.

That promise is our greatest inheritance. It's a promise I make to my daughters when I tuck them in at night, and a promise that you make to yours - a promise that has led immigrants to cross oceans and pioneers to travel west; a promise that led workers to picket lines, and women to reach for the ballot.

And it is that promise that forty five years ago today, brought Americans from every corner of this land to stand together on a Mall in Washington, before Lincoln's Memorial, and hear a young preacher from Georgia speak of his dream.

The men and women who gathered there could've heard many things. They could've heard words of anger and discord. They could've been told to succumb to the fear and frustration of so many dreams deferred.

But what the people heard instead - people of every creed and color, from every walk of life - is that in America, our destiny is inextricably linked. That together, our dreams can be one.

"We cannot walk alone," the preacher cried. "And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead. We cannot turn back."

America, we cannot turn back. Not with so much work to be done. Not with so many children to educate, and so many veterans to care for. Not with an economy to fix and cities to rebuild and farms to save. Not with so many families to protect and so many lives to mend. America, we cannot turn back. We cannot walk alone. At this moment, in this election, we must pledge once more to march into the future. Let us keep that promise - that American promise - and in the words of Scripture hold firmly, without wavering, to the hope that we confess.

Thank you, God Bless you, and and God Bless the United States of America.

Numbers Games

A couple of weeks ago I complained about Barack Obama's definition of rich. He counts anyone who is making $250,000/year or more as rich. Now Dan Gross from Newsweek is trying to justify this reasoning.

Gross's case is the same one that Democrats have been using for years - if you make more than most Americans then you must be rich.

I have two pieces of bad news for the over-$250,000 crowd. First, the reversal of some of the temporary Bush tax cuts is probably inevitable, given the Republican fiscal clown show of the past eight years. Second, I regret to inform you that you are indeed rich.

To a large degree, feeling rich or poor is a state of mind, as John McCainrecently noted. "Some people are wealthy and rich in their lives and their children and their ability to educate them. Others are poor if they're billionaires." But income data can surely tell us something. And they tell us that $250,000 puts you in pretty fancy company. The Census Bureau earlier this week reported that the median household income was $50,223 in 2007—up slightly from the last year but still below the 1999 peak. So a household that earned $250,000 made five times the median. In fact, as this chart shows, only 2.245 million U.S. households, the top 1.9 percent, had income greater than $250,000 in 2007. (About 20 percent of households make more than $100,000.)

Ok, so making more than $250,000 puts you in the same group as Larry Ellison who is paid $72 million/year. That does not give you Ellison's purchasing power.

The thing is that making somewhat more than the average joe doesn't make you rich. The only thing that can make you rich is being rich.

Here's an example. Sean Combs (aka Diddy, aka Puffy, aka P Diddy, aka Puff Daddy, aka Sean John) is complaining because he can't afford the gas to fly his private jet.

As you know, I do own my own jet and I have been having flying back and forth to L.A. pursuing my acting career. Now, if I'm flying back and forth like twice in a month, that's like $200,000 or $250,000 round trip. I'm back on American Airlines right now. OK? Your boy Diddy right now is on American Airlines.

Did you get that? It costs Combs $250,000 to fly his private plane round trip across the country. I guarantee that someone making that much per year doesn't own a private jet to say nothing of spending a year's income on making one cross-country flight in it. Who can afford a private jet? Someone who is rich.

But Gross insists that people making $250,000 are rich, they just don't know it. Why not? Because they are comparing themselves to the wrong people.

But people in Georgetown mansions don't necessarily compare themselves to fellow Washingtonians in Anacostia. Relative income really works at the neighborhood level.

Again, I have news for Gross. People who make $250,000 are not living in Georgetown mansions. They probably paid $1,000,000 for a four bedroom, two bathroom house inside the Beltway and are struggling with the mortgage. I've seen what a half-million will buy in the DC market and it is no mansion.

But Obama has to be inclusive in his definition of who is rich. There just isn't enough money to confiscate from the truly rich (plus, they will shelter it before he cane take it) so he has to go after a larger group.

And Gross is an attempt to help Obama by a left-leaning financial journalist.

The DNC So Far

We are two nights into the Democratic National Convention. How are things going?

The first night was dominated by a tribute to Ted Kennedy and a speech by Michelle Obama. Kennedy was a distraction. Michelle's speech was meant to assure the electorate that she and her husband are regular people.

The second night was dominated by Hillary. She was supposed to talk between 10:00 and 11:00 EDT. She was late and the networks (or at least NBC which I had on) filled in by focusing on Bill as he gave hugs all around. Hillary eventually gave her speech. She said that Obama needed to be elected, mainly because he was a Democrat and McCain isn't. She assured the country that Obama would give them a laundry list of big-ticket items then she went on to talk about herself. I found the Harriet Tubman reference a bit over the top. Tubman risked her life repeatedly to help slaves escape to Canada. If caught, Tubman faced death or re-enslavement and mutilation. On the other hand, if Hillary lost then she faced what? A return to the Senate and a chance to give a keynote speech at the convention.

What is missing from all of this is a reason to vote for Obama. Obama has already won over the true believers but a lot of the country remains skeptical. He has made a lot of promises, some of them conflicting, and he has not spelled out how he will accomplish anything. He is a first-term senator with no history of reaching out to the other side or of breaking with the party ranks but he claims that he will end partisanship and reshape our economy.

With the war in Iraq off the table and the candidates in agreement on the war in Afghanistan, Obama has to convince voters that he can handle a domestic agenda better than McCain. So far he has criticized McCain a lot, often mis-characterizing McCain's positions. Obama has promised to reshuffle taxes and to spend a lot of money. In 2006 Democrats won partly on a platform of fiscal restraint. Obama threw that out the window.

Bill Clinton hit the nail on the head when he said this:

He said: "Suppose you're a voter, and you've got candidate X and candidate Y. Candidate X agrees with you on everything, but you don't think that candidate can deliver on anything at all. Candidate Y you agree with on about half the issues, but he can deliver. Which candidate are you going to vote for?"

 Then, perhaps mindful of how his off-the-cuff remarks might be taken, Clinton added after a pause: "This has nothing to do with what's going on now."

Bill is tonight's speaker. I doubt that he will spend much time convincing us that Obama can deliver on his promises. That means that it is up to Obama to sell himself during his acceptance speech. Even for a gifted speaker, this will be difficult. Moving his speech to a stadium instead of the convention plays up McCain's charges that Obama is a celebrity who is not ready to lead.

Even if Obama gives the speech of his life, the Republicans still have four nights to undercut him. Their candidate has a long history of achievement. The danger there is that he will fall into the same trap that Kerry did in 2004. Kerry spent too much time talking about his service in Viet Nam and not enough time talking about what he would do if elected. McCain needs to sell his vision of the future.

If the election comes down to Obama's talk of hope and change vs McCain's service to his country then Obama will win. If it is about Obama's ability to effect change vs McCain's then McCain will win.

Biden?

Barack Obama is supposed to be the first post-baby boomer candidate. So who does he choose to carry on his work if he dies or is incapacitated? Someone who was first elected to Congress during the Nixon presidency! While Biden is younger than McCain, both are pre-boomer.

Biden is also completely entrenched in the partisan Washington culture that Obama insists he will change. Biden's big draw is supposed to be his foreign policy experience. Yes, he has been on the Foreign Relations Committee but he also has a long history of being wrong on international affairs. Most recently he tried to divide Iraq into three pieces. This was one thing that the Iraqis united on - the thought it was a stupid idea.

Granted Biden is more experienced than Obama but that isn't a difficult accomplisment. The entire Senate is more experienced as are all state governors and former governors.

Are You a Liberal?

I was looking at a far-left site that had a test to see if you are a liberal. I didn't bookmark the site so this is from memory:

Half of a town's residents live well. They eat meat daily and throw away a lot of food. The other half is too poor to even buy meat and is usually hungry. What would you do?

The idea is to convince you that you are a liberal but didn't realize it. The situation is contrived to evoke an emotional response. You are supposed to either feel pity for the hungry poor or outrage at the callous rich.

I'm going to point out two immediate flaws. One is that, in the US, the obesity is a bigger problem among the poor than hunger. The other is that this exercise divides the town into "halves". In the real world you get either a pyramid with lots of poor on the bottom and a few rich at the top or a bell curve with very few poor or rich and most in between. For the sake of argument, I will ignore these problems.

As a Libertarian/Conservative (the think-man's conservative), I have a different take on this. I want to know more about the background. Why is there such a disparity? Let's consider a few alternatives:

1) The rich half exploits the poorer half. The rich must be the owners and the poor the workers. This is classic Marxist theory and the version that you are supposed to assume.

2) The "rich" half is hard-working. The "poor" half is made up of hard-core unemployables who can't hold a job even when they get one. They lack skills and motivation. They also call in sick regularly. Most of them are already living on public assistance (taxed from the wealthier half) but squander much of the money they receive on alcohol and drugs. By shifting the circumstances around I arraigned it so that the poor deserve to be poor.

3) This is a college town. The "rich" half is made up of college professors and staff. The poor half is made up of students. In the first two examples we have the hidden assumption that the two halves are static. If you were born in one class you will always be there. That is not true in America where there is a lot of shuffling over time. Most people have low wages in their early 20s but this increases with time as they have more to offer. The student living on Ramen noodles today might be a CEO in a couple of decades.

4) We are looking at China. The rich are the people in the cities who have good jobs. The poor are the traditional farmers, many of whom still live in the same conditions as their ancestors. Many have been displaced by the government in order to make way for more factories and larger cities. If communism is the ultimate expression of liberal politics then liberals have to recognize that China is where their policies lead. The government has nearly unlimited power and often abuses it. Just before the Olympics began NBC ran a story on a village of rice farmers who were facing starvation. The government had diverted the water supply that they needed for their crops to supply the Olympics. Where there had been rice paddies there was now dessert.

This is a valid test for liberals. They tend to approach the world as problems that government waiting for government intervention. They overlook realities - the people they want to help may not respond as expected, or they may not need help, or the problem may have been caused by previous government meddling.

So, if you react to a problem by deciding that increased government action is needed without knowing all of the facts then you are a liberal. If you want to know more about the root causes then you are conservative.

The 3am Text Message

The McCain campaign has been hitting hard at Obama as being a celebrity. Obama is playing into this.

Consider the way that the vice-presidential pick was handled. Supporters could register to be sent a text message to their phones so that they would know first who the pick would be. This was probably more of a way to get millions of supporters' phone numbers than anything else. It also failed more than one way. It was sent at 3am EDT when most people were asleep. If they set their clock alarm they would hear the choice on the radio before checking their phone. Not everyone got the message. Worst, the news media had the choice two hours before the text message went out. And then there is the fact that Biden was the front-runner since June so there was no actual drama to the announcement.

But let's put this aside for a minute and concentrate on the idea of signing up to be the first to know the pick. Is this something that presidential candidates actually do? I know that it is a brave new world and technology has improved since the last election so some options didn't even exist in 2004.

Still, the idea of signing up to get special texts from your candidate seems like something that Oprah would do.

People who care about getting the news first can normally sign up for news alerts to be texted to them anyway. You might get the message a few minutes later but the election is still months away. So what's the point of signing up?

It is to feel like the candidate has personally touched you. It's part of a cult of personality.

Obama and Guns

Back when he was in the Illinois Senate, Obama filled out a survey indicating that he was anti-gun. He has since tried to backtrack on that. With his selection of Joe Biden as his running mate, Obama has probably given up on gun-owners. Biden was the author of the assault-weapons bill passed under Clinton and of legislation that would have re-authorized it in 2007.

Obama's message to gun-owners, "Screw you, you bitter SOBs."

Drinking Age

A few days ago a long list of university presidents recommended lowering the drinking age back to 18. I've seen several conservatives reject this out of hand but before passing judgment it is important to know why it is 21 in the first place.

First, the age of 21 is so deeply ingrained in our culture that few people even think about it. It is actually a magic number (7 + 7 + 7) and reflects prehistoric fascination with seven. You find seven occurring constantly in our culture, especially the older parts. Think about the days of the week, the wonders of the ancient world, deadly sins, etc.

Three was also important (think of the Trinity) which is why three sevens was so important. Six was less important but three sizes is where the importance of the age of eighteen came from.

In ancient times the ages of seven, fourteen, and twenty one were all important. Among medieval nobility boys became a page at seven, a squire at fourteen, and a knight at twenty one.

In modern times it was established that you became an adult at 21. When laws were passed to keep children from drinking (this is fairly recent), many of them set 21 as the lower limit. This was not universal. Some states allowed drinking at 18. When I was growing up, Ohio was split. You could buy beer with 3.2% or less alcohol at 18 but you had to be 21 to buy wine or spirits.

Then came Viet Nam and Nixon. In 1969 Nixon changed the draft. You registered at 18 and your number was drawn when you were 19. Because of this there was a push to give greater rights to youths. If you could die for your country you should be able to vote (the voting age was 21) and drink. Most states lowered their drinking age.

By the 1980s a new organization was founded - Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD). They are the modern equivalent to the temperance movement. They reasoned that people in the 18-25 range caused most drinking-related accidents. If they couldn't drink then the acident rate would plummet. It was politically impossible to raise the drinking age to 26 so they went for 21. Congress passed legislation mandating that states raise their drinking age or lose highway funds.

MADD also convinced Congress to lower the allowed blood alcohol level even though that was not a factor in most drinking-related deaths.

The lower drinking age has been a disaster for universities. When the drinking age was 18 then nearly all college students could drink legally. That meant going to bars where they would be cut off before they got "too" drunk. It also kept them in smaller groups and the sheer cost of drinking in a bar limited binges.

Now most college students are too young to drink but a significant number are allowed to buy alcohol. They pool their money and buy kegs then throw huge parties. There is no supervision so students (and non-students who show up) get roaring drunk. Since they are in large numbers, things get out of control quickly.

This has become a major problem across the country. At times partying at Ohio State (which is only a few miles from my house) has gotten bad enough to make Jay Leno's opening monologue.

At the same time, alcohol-related deaths in Ohio caused by underaged drinking has gone up. Raising the drinking age has had the opposite effect than intended.

There comes a time when you have to look at the consequences of actions like this and reevaluate them. Drinking in general and binge drinking has gone up because the drinking age was changed. The experiment failed. Lower it back to 18.