Why the Smears Won't Work

Another day another scandal. Actually they are coming faster than that. The latest Sarah Palin non-scandal has to do with a supposed affair she had with her husband's business partner and his efforts to have his divorce records sealed, but it has already been debunked (via Hot Air):

Nutcase bloggers will have to find another smear against Sarah Palin ... again. Did you hear that Todd Palin's former business partner tried to get his divorce records sealed? Conspiracy theorists immediately began speculating on line that Sarah Palin -- that vixen! -- must have had an affair and broken up the marriage. Why else would the partner suddenly act to seal his records?

As the Smoking Gun discovered, Scott Richter wanted them sealed -- to protect himself from conspiracy theorists...Isn't that an extra dollop of irony? Mr. Richter wants to protect his son from lunatics. What happens? The lunatics use that as "evidence" that Palin had an affair with Richter and descend on him to get the dirt.

If Obama's supporters have not figured it out yet, I'll give them a tip -- their scandal strategy isn't going to work. Here are a few reasons why:

1. Sympathy. They started off with a vile rumor that Palin faked the pregnancy of her fifth child, then turned it into an attack on her 17-year-old pregnant daughter. The fake pregnancy rumor was false. Not only were they shockingly nasty and vicious, they were also wrong. They lost their credibility and created sympathy for Palin in the process. Palin has shown she doesn't want or need anyone's sympathy, but she got it just the same, thanks to those who sought to destroy her.

2. Sarah Palin has connected with the American people. 37 million people heard her speak, in her own words, without interruption or editing from the Obamedia. It will be harder to make a scandal stick to someone America feels they know. Who ya gonna believe? The witty, down-to-earth straight talker with the beautiful family and the inspiring life story or the slimy rumor mongers who already tried to feed you a pack of lies?

3. People want someone to work to solve their problems. Are they going to be more likely to have a good opinion of a campaign that is addressing the problems they have or the campaign that appears to be obsessed with tearing their opponent apart?

4. The Obamedia has been exposed. Over the past year or more the media have fawned over Barack Obama. Over the past week the media have hit Sarah Palin with dozens of accusations based on little more than nutty leftwing hate site rumors. Recent polls show over 50 percent of the American public believe the media is trying to hurt Sarah Palin.

5. They just don't know how to do subtle. Instead of picking one or two really good scandals, they are throwing scores of them out there willy nilly, without fact checking or even, in some cases, bothering to read them in their entirety. One example is the list of books Palin supposedly banned -- the problem is that many of the books on the list were not even published yet when Palin supposedly banned them. Another accusation was that Palin cut funding for pregnant teens. Those circulating that one evidently were not so good at reading or at math. The document they presented as proof, actually showed an expansion of the program, but that did not keep the accusation from being reported by the Washington Post and the New York Times. Yet another accusation was that Palin cut funding for special needs children. Not true, and easily debunked in a matter of minutes with a Google search, yet it also was widely reported as fact and was even cited by Soledad O'Brien on CNN.

Some of the rumors mentioned above were repeated on television and on the front pages of some of the most respected newspapers in America. If the initial fake pregnancy rumor had not backfired so spectacularly, ensuring Sarah Palin the massive audience of 37 million, some of these other rumors reported in the MSM might have really hurt Palin. Even though they weren't true, voters would not likely learn that until they had already formed a negative opinion of Palin. Now that the public has gotten a good first impression of her, and they know that many of the rumors out there are turning out to be false, the scandals to come are likely to hurt Palin about as much as Bill Clinton's scandals hurt him.

Source (See the original for links)

****************************

Palin now greeted by 'Sarah! Sarah!'

The banners, buttons and signs say McCain-Palin, but the crowds say something else. "Sa-rah! Pa-lin!" came the chant at a Colorado Springs rally on Saturday moments before Republican nominee John McCain took the stage with Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, a woman who was virtually unknown to the nation just a week earlier. The day before, thousands screamed "Sa-rah! Sa-rah! Sa-rah!" at an amphitheater outside Detroit. "Real change with a real woman," read one sign at a Wisconsin rally. "Hurricane Sarah leaves liberals spinning," cried another.

In the short time since McCain spirited the 44-year-old first-term governor out of Alaska and onto a national stage as his running mate, Palin has become an instant celebrity. And since her speech at the Republican National Convention, watched by more than 40 million Americans, she is emerging as the main attraction for many voters at their campaign appearances. "She's the draw for a lot of people," said Marilyn Ryman, who came to see her at the Colorado rally inside an airport hangar. "The fact that she's someone new, not the old everything we've seen before."

McCain has sought to portray Palin as a bulldog who will help him "shake things up" on Capitol Hill. Washington, he said Saturday, is "going to get to know her, but I can't guarantee you they'll love her." "We do!" came a cry from the crowd.

"Colorado, it's going to be a hard-fought battle here," Palin said. As soon as she began speaking, a group of supporters interrupted her with a cheer of "Sa-rah! Sa-rah!"

More here

************************

ELSEWHERE

It looks like the Obama birth certificate controversy is not going away.

McCain 54 to 44 among likely voters: "Republican presidential candidate John McCain leads Democratic contender Barack Obama by 50 percent to 46 percent among registered voters, according to a weekend USA Today/Gallup Poll, USA Today reported. The surge in enthusiasm following the selection of McCain's running mate Sarah Palin marks a turnaround from the poll taken just before the Republican convention opened in St. Paul when he lagged by 7 percentage points, the newspaper reported. The new poll, taken Friday though Sunday, shows McCain leading Obama by 54 percent to 44 percent among people most likely to vote and was conducted among 1,022 adults, including 959 registered voters, with a margin of error of plus or minus 3 points for both samples, the newspaper said."

Another dishonest criticism of Sarah: "It is said that with five children, she has too many other obligations to take on the role of vice president. Give me a break. She can't vote in the senate when there is a tie? C'mon! This charge emanates from left-wing feminists, of course. Suppose Hillary were to have had five children the ages of Sarah's. Would the legions of her supporters be making this case with regard to Mrs. Clinton? To ask this is to answer it. In that case, Hillary's ascendency would only serve as evidence that "You can have it all." The hypocrisy of these "feminists" stinks to the high heavens. They do not support the idea of women breaking through the so-called glass ceiling. Rather, they favor left-wing socialist females being given positions of authority and responsibility. This is something very different. It is a rare occasion that these feminists have been caught with their contradictions so much in the public eye. All those sick and tired of these harridans ought to thank Sarah for this one boon alone."

Bill Kristol thanks the media for their role in boosting Sarah Palin: "The astounding (even to me, after all these years!) smugness and mean-spiritedness of so many in the media engendered not just interest in but sympathy for Palin. It allowed Palin to speak not just to conservatives but to the many Americans who are repulsed by the media's prurient interest in and adolescent snickering about her family. It allowed the McCain-Palin ticket to become the populist standard-bearer against an Obama-Media ticket that has disdain for Middle America."

For more postings from me, see OBAMA WATCH, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here or here or here

****************************

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)

****************************

Sarah Palin: A woman of character

Chuck Sr [her father] was the high school cross-country and athletics coach. She ran on his teams and earned the nickname "Sarah Barracuda" for her fiercely competitive nature on the basketball court. On one memorable occasion she came on with a fractured ankle to score the winning shot for the Wasilla Warriors in the state championship.

"Headstrong" is how her coach, Don Teeguarden, described her: "She knew her own mind and was generally willing to express her opinion. She didn't agree just for the sake of agreement. At the time I thought those were positive attributes and I still do."

She had an unapologetic streak of stubbornness from early childhood. Sarah's siblings were astonished by her resolve in the face of a father whose decisions were the final word in their household. "She never lost an argument and would never, no matter what, back down when she knew she was right," Chuck Jr remembers. "Not just with me or other kids, but with Mom and Dad too." "The rest of the kids, I could force them to do something," Chuck Sr said. "But with Sarah there was no way. From a young age she had a mind of her own. Once she made up her mind she didn't change it."

Later on he would enlist the help of people she respected - especially coaches and teachers - to persuade her to see things his way. Yet he concedes Sarah was persuasive in her arguments and often correct. Later, when his daughter became governor, Chuck found it immensely amusing that acquaintances asked him to sway her on particular issues. He says he lost that leverage before she was two.

Like her siblings, Sarah was baptised in the Catholic church. When her mother discovered what she saw as a more meaningful path to faith, her family followed her to a different church - the Wasilla Assembly of God. Sally Heath bundled up the kids and took them to church every Sunday morning and evening and most Wednesdays, too. As a little girl, Sarah sat through services fidgeting. When she was 12, however, she asked to be baptised. She wanted to make a public statement of faith.

With Alaska's perpetual summer sunshine glittering off the chilly waters of Beaver Lake, Pastor Paul Riley immersed her. Her siblings and her mother were also baptised that day as friends and family watched from the shore. Sarah took the commitment she made to God seriously, becoming the leader of the high school's Fellowship of Christian Athletes.

She had a boyfriend, Todd Palin, who had come to Wasilla from Dillingham, a remote community in western Alaska where his Yup'ik Eskimo grandmother, Helena "Lena" Andree, was an important influence, teaching him the value of hard work and traditional native ways. He had fished with his grandparents from a young age, eventually taking over their commercial fishing operation. "He had a car and a truck and a job. He was a lot more grown-up than most of my friends," said Sarah. She and Todd lived five miles apart. In the evenings they sat on their porches talking on two-way radios that Todd used on his fishing boat.

After high school, much to her brother's amusement, Sarah entered the Miss Wasilla pageant and won. When he asked her why she would do such a thing: "She told me matter-of-factly, `It's going to help pay my way through college'." In Sarah's home there was an expectation that if you wanted something, you earned it. "We always worked," Heather, her elder sister, said. "We never had anything handed to us. We knew on a teacher's salary that we would all have to pay our own way through college. We knew we'd have to be independent."

At college in Idaho she studied journalism. Newspapers had been a passion since early childhood. During the summers she helped Todd to fish commercially in Bristol bay. They fished from a 26ft skiff with no cabin, a boat that could carry 10,000lb of salmon in eight holding bins below deck. It was the most physically demanding and dangerous work she had ever undertaken. "Sarah has toughed out many a cold night," Todd said. "Even with 100mph winds, you don't want to be the one that turns back just to find out later how good the fishing was." "Todd is a brutal boss," Sarah said. "He shows no mercy to anyone."

Sarah and her father sometimes fished without Todd while he worked at his oilfield job on Alaska's North Slope. Chuck Sr remembers Sarah driving the boat onto the trailer in dangerous surf when no one else was willing to attempt it. When she and Todd married and started a family, they named their first child Track, after the track and field season in which he was born. Sarah's father jokingly asked what they would have named their son if he had been born during the basketball season. Without hesitation Sarah answered: "Hoop."

Their first daughter, born in 1990, was named Bristol after the ocean bay where they fished. Willow was born in 1994, named after willow ptarmigan, Alaska's state bird. Their youngest daughter, Piper Indy, came in 2001. She was named after the Piper Cub that Todd flies and the Polaris Indy snowmobile he drove in the first of his four victories in the Iron Dog snowmobile race, a gruelling 2,000-mile run from Wasilla to Fairbanks.

Between babies, Sarah worked short stints at television stations and at a utility company - and began to take an interest in local politics. The Wasilla of her childhood had grown from about 400 residents to more than 4,000 in 20 years. Many new businesses had appeared in sprawling strip malls along the city's main thoroughfare. At the same time Wasilla was becoming a bedroom community for commuters who worked in Anchorage. A member of Wasilla city council, Nick Carney - the father of one her high school friends - invited her to run for a council seat.

Campaigning as a "new face, new voice", 28-year-old Sarah won easily. But after taking office she was dumbfounded by the inner workings of the city government. Coming from a small community, she knew everyone: the mayor, John Stein, had been in her aerobics class. "Right away I saw that it was a good old boys' network," she said. "Mayor Stein and Nick Carney told me, `You'll learn quick, just listen to us'. Well, they didn't know how I was wired."

She voted against a pay raise for the mayor. Then she crossed Carney. He owned the only garbage removal service in town and had proposed an ordinance requiring all Wasilla residents to pay for garbage to be picked up from their homes. "I said no and I voted no," Sarah said. "People should have the choice about whether or not to haul their garbage to the dump." She grew increasingly impatient with politics as usual. No matter what the issue, the entanglements of political cronyism were a frustration. Too much of government was being run for the benefit of those in office. "By my second term on the council, it was apparent that things weren't going to change unless there was a change in leadership," she said.

Promising fresh ideas, she challenged the mayor in a contentious and heated campaign. Stein felt the sharp edge of Sarah's competitive drive. Wasilla voters sided with her. On October 1, 1996, she defeated him, 651-440. Seizing her mandate for change, Sarah stormed city hall, not realising how hard it would be to make changes, especially in an administration that had become entrenched. "Nick Carney told Sarah to her face that he'd do anything he could to make things difficult," said Judy Patrick, a friend who had been elected to the Wasilla council. "There were some very cantankerous people on that council."

Stein's loss was a bitter one. Many of his supporters viewed the new young mayor as a kid playing a grown-up game. Police Chief Irl Stambaugh - another of her former aerobics classmates - was fired. Department heads were told to reapply for their positions. Jobs were cut.

Watching all this in the wings was Donald Moore, the regional "borough manager" (roughly equivalent to the chief executive of a British county council). Now retired, he observed that there is an "inverse relationship between the size of the community and the ease of management". In other words, a small town can be hell to govern. Everyone knows everyone and lots of people have axes to grind. "Sarah is a very gracious woman," Moore said. "But she does not suffer fools."

More here

************************

ELSEWHERE

Oprah Winfrey is copping a lot of flak from her listeners for having Obama on her show but refusing to have Governor Palin.

Snide antisemitism coming from Andrew Sullivan -- making the absurd claim that Sarah Palin is "being safely indoctrinated by Joe Lieberman and AIPAC". Ace comments at length. I doubt that ANYONE could "indoctrinate" Sarah Palin.

The astute Caroline Glick says that having the humility to accept his own limitations was behind McCain's choice of Sarah Palin and that he showed himself a master strategist by doing that.

Small-town residents boo the media: "Hundreds of angry people in this small town outside Milwaukee taunted reporters and TV crews traveling with Sen. John McCain on Friday, chanting "Be fair!" and pointing fingers at a pack of journalists as they booed loudly. On the first leg of the "McCain Street USA" tour -- which will take the Republican presidential nominee and his running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, to small towns across the heartland -- the 30 or so reporters and crew were walking back to their buses to join the McCain motorcade when hundreds of townspeople started yelling. "Stop lying! You are all liars! Tell the truth!" one woman yelled from the front of the pack. The crowd was not menacing or threatening, but was clearly angry. "You're telling lies! Stop the lies!" one man yelled. Asked why the crowd was so angry, Linda J. Green of Mequon, Wisc., said: "I'm thinking the press is very biased"

Zogby Poll: Republicans Hold Small Post-Convention Edge: "Republicans John McCain and Sarah Palin left St. Paul, Minnesota, with a smallish bounce overall and some energy in key demographic groups, as the race for the presidency enters a key stage and voters begin to tune in to the contest, the latest Zogby Interactive poll finds. The McCain/Palin ticket wins 49.7% support, compared to 45.9% backing for the Obama/Biden ticket, this latest online survey shows. Another 4.4% either favored someone else or were unsure."

For more postings from me, see OBAMA WATCH, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here or here or here

****************************

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)

****************************

McCain's acceptance speech was aimed at winning over independent voters and moderate Democrats -- so conservatives generally found it to be disappointing after the red meat of Palin's speech. From what I saw, the excerpt below is in fact one of the few conservative comments that really praised the McCain speech. The article is from Britain!

John McCain offered Republicans vision rooted in reality, not Barack Obama's empty promises



As the thousands of red, white and blue balloons, the tinsel and the tickertape descended from the rafters on the Republican convention moments after John McCain had finished addressing it, I at last worked out what had been the key difference between this event and the Democratic beano the week before.

The Democrats have a world view based (as Dr Johnson might have put it) on the triumph of hope over experience. The Republicans' is rooted firmly in reality

In Denver, speaker after speaker lauded and coddled one minority group after another and promised the largesse of the American taxpayer would alleviate their misery. In St Paul the message was about all Americans pulling together, getting government out of their lives, and making everyone richer and happier as a result.

When Mr McCain spoke, the faithful were still galvanised and awe-struck by the performance of his remarkable running-mate 24 hours earlier. In that sense anything he could say or do was bound to be an anti-climax. Yet his steady, measured, statesmanlike speech was the perfect complement to her benign but startling demagoguery.

Thus is the flavour of the next two months established. She will eat their opponents alive; he will be there to explain from the apparently limitless fount of his wisdom what will be done on the tree-strewn road ahead. It is a horrible clich‚, but of the two men aiming for the White House, Mr McCain has more of the demeanour of a president. This is nothing to do with his white hair, still less his white skin: it is everything to do with his gravitas and his record.

Some of us thought, and hoped, that he would win the nomination in 2000 over the manifestly inferior George W Bush. The qualities he had then are the same ones that give him the edge over his opponent now: a "story", to use the campaign's favourite word, of genuine heroism, service and leadership; coupled with what are now the first signs of a grasp of what it is possible to do to right America's economic wrongs without first making them considerably worse.

Mr McCain has been on Capitol Hill for 26 years. He not only knows how the system works, he actively despises it and wants to reform it. He brings immense wisdom and good judgment to the table. It is that, rather than a beauty contest based on some celebrity X-factor, that should decide the election on November 4.

In his speech to the delegates in St Paul Mr McCain dealt only in the broad brush. In this, he was rather like Mr Obama in the Broncos' stadium at Denver a week earlier. But unlike Mr Obama, Mr McCain littered his broad brush with odd moments of detail, and clear statements of vital principle. His delivery may have lacked the charisma and sonority of his opponent's, but what he delivered will have connected with tens of millions of Americans, consolidating the shock of the new imposed on them the previous evening by Sarah Palin.

The biggest gap remains his economic programme: he cannot much longer delay explaining how he is going to cut spending, cut the deficit, and provide the tax cuts he promises.

No-one deserves to get a job on Buggin's turn, or on the basis that he or she has been in the queue for it the longest; but that is not what qualifies Mr McCain for the White House. He drew attention to the most important fact about modern life: not the global economic convulsion, from which America has in the last fortnight started to show the first faint signs of recovery, but the fact that the world is a dangerous place, and getting more so. Mr Obama doesn't know where to start on this, and the claims made for his good ol' boy running mate Joe Biden being an expert on foreign policy are charitable to say the least.

In the next eight weeks Mr McCain needs to hammer home the perils to western civilisation not just of Islamic extremism but also of a new Cold War and a restless China. He made a good start yesterday, but this notoriously inward-looking country still needs more of a wake-up call. His television debates with Mr Obama, starting later this month, will be crucial in what must be his strategy of trumping charm and effortless superiority with raw experience.

The convention was a comparatively sober affair, not simply because of the shadow from Hurricane Gustav but because the revivalist hysteria that smothered the Democrats was absent here. But that, of course, is all about the connection Republicans have with reality, practicality running through their veins as idealism does through the Democrats'.

More here

****************************

ELSEWHERE

Iraq victory within sight - Palin: "A US victory in Iraq is "within sight," Republican vice presidential contender Sarah Palin said today. Mrs Palin attributed the imminent success to the surge of troops sent to Iraq last year who have helped quell violence there. She praised war veteran running mate John McCain's strong support for the surge at a time when it was highly unpopular and threatened to derail his campaign for the Republican nomination. "He refused to break faith with the troops in Iraq who have now brought victory within sight," the Alaska governor told an enthusiastic crowd in Sterling Heights, Michigan. "And as a mother of one of those troops that is exactly the kind of man I want as commander in chief." Mrs Palin, whose son will deploy to Iraq next week, attacked rival Barack Obama's opposition to the surge and warned that he would not protect the United States if he were to win the November 4 election. "If the United States military had suffered defeat at the hands of al-Qaeda in Iraq our nation would have been less safe today and millions of innocent would have been left to a violent fate," Mrs Palin said. "That tragedy would have happened if Barak Obama had gotten his way and Congress had cut off funding for the surge."

McCain Camp Attacks Media for Its 'Mission to Destroy Palin': "John McCain's top campaign strategist accused the news media this week of being "on a mission to destroy" Sarah Palin by displaying "a level of viciousness and scurrilousness" in pursuing questions about her personal life. In an extraordinary and emotional interview, Steve Schmidt said his campaign feels "under siege" by wave after wave of news inquiries that have questioned whether Palin is really the mother of a 4-month-old baby, whether her amniotic fluid had been tested and whether she would submit to a DNA test to establish the child's parentage, the Washington Post reports. Arguing that the media queries are being fueled by "every rumor and smear" posted on left-wing websites, Schmidt said mainstream journalists are giving "closer scrutiny" to McCain's little-known running mate than to Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama.... Schmidt spoke on the record in denouncing as "an absolute work of fiction" a New York Times account of the process by which the McCain campaign vetted Palin"

LOL: "But while half of the Republican movement protests that Sarah Palin is being targeted or ridiculed because she is a woman, one suspects the other half, like Mark Steyn, secretly dreams of being field dressed by her."

For more postings from me, see OBAMA WATCH, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here or here or here

****************************

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)

****************************

For people interested in politics, Sarah Palin is the only story in town at the moment. So I offer below excerpts from three good commentaries about her. Most of the Leftist attacks on her are too pathetic to be dignified with a reply but I do mention one of them below. For the rest, see the great job being done by my co-bloggers at STACLU and Astute Bloggers -- JR

Palin Could Make the Difference In This Close Race

By KARL ROVE

A running mate can have a larger "indirect effect." Mr. Campbell argued the VP choice "emphasized a strength or weakness" for the presidential candidate. Who VP nominees are and how they are selected provide voters information about the values and decision-making abilities of the candidate. This year, both Messrs. McCain and Obama made political picks, not governing choices. The political targets were not states, but attributes and voting blocs.

Mr. McCain made a dramatic, unexpected pick of someone who shares his maverick outsider attitude and is willing to challenge party orthodoxy and politics-as-usual. He selected a gun-owning, hockey-coaching, small-business-running mother of five. As a governor, Sarah Palin is the only candidate on either ticket with executive experience, heading a state government with an $11.2 billion operating budget, a $1.7 billion capital budget and nearly 29,000 state employees. Best of all for Mr. McCain, Mrs. Palin potentially appeals to suburban, independent women and small-town Hillary Clinton voters.

Messrs. Petrocik and Shaw suggest Mrs. Palin might have more impact on the election than previous running mates. If Mrs. Palin is seen as a defective candidate, it will hurt Mr. McCain. On the positive side, however, Mrs. Palin's background could lead voters to see her as someone who understands kitchen-table concerns.

Taking on Alaska's good-old-boy politics and beating the incumbent Republican governor might be seen as evidence of the political courage and independence voters are looking for this year. And with women more undecided than men, Mrs. Palin could add more than a point to Mr. McCain's total -- maybe two or three -- which could make the difference in a close contest.

The threat Mrs. Palin poses is why Mr. Obama's campaign has moved rapidly to disparage her record, and why left-wing bloggers have engaged in nonstop character smears against her and her family. Some in the press have aided and abetted this because they feel left out of the preannouncement vetting process. The danger for Democrats is twofold: in highlighting Mrs. Palin's inexperience, they may focus attention on Mr. Obama's; and the harsh attacks levied against Mrs. Palin could completely undermine the Obama promise of a "new politics." In the vice-presidential debate, Democrats must be concerned about Mr. Biden appearing bombastic and condescending -- which is almost a permanent state of mind for the Delaware senator -- while Mrs. Palin comes across as fresh, straight talking, nonpolitical and therefore appealing.

More here

**********************

No enthusiasm gap now



Twenty years after Ronald Reagan left office, Republicans who have long missed him may have found a future Margaret Thatcher. If John McCain wins, conservatives may find one of the most enduring accomplishments of his term will have been what he did before it started: helping to fill the Republican Party's future talent bench with such a fresh and compelling figure. Sarah Palin is a conviction politician, a naturally compelling speaker and someone who can relate to her audience on very human terms. America has just learned why Mrs. Palin enjoys the highest approval ratings of any governor in America.

Some hard-bitten political observers I know were uncharacteristically impressed with the Palin speech. Hal Stratton, a former Attorney General of New Mexico, wrote to me as follows: "That's what we out west call openin' a whole can of whip a- on your opponents."

Sarah Palin probably went down better in Warren, Michigan than she did in Washington, D.C. -- but that was the whole point of her speech and her candidacy. Indeed, while Mrs. Palin certainly won't swing any deeply blue states in John McCain's direction, she may have an impact in swaying independent voters as well as boosting GOP turnout in swing states such as Colorado, Nevada and Michigan.

One of the standard operating theories this Election Year is that Barack Obama and the Democrats are much more energized, excited and willing to work hard for victory in November. After Sarah Palin's remarkably effective speech, I don't think any pundits or politicians will be able to count on a decisive Democratic enthusiasm edge. Sarah Palin electrified the hall, and from what I can tell from my e-mail inbox that excitement is being replicated in living rooms across the country.

More here

********************

Sarah Palin's Surge

With his nomination last night, John McCain is now the leader of the GOP (see here). But win or lose in November, Senator McCain has elevated Mrs. Palin to new prominence and jumbled Republican categories in a healthy way. The reaction at St. Paul's Xcel Center-and the fascination around the country-shows how welcome this is.

For the past several years, the GOP has been caught in the malaise of what we have often called the Beltway status quo. As insurgents challenging Washington mores in the 1980s and 1990s, Republicans were the party of ideas and energy. But over time, as the Bush Presidency ran into trouble and the Tom DeLay Congress began to care most about its own re-election, the party lost its verve, even its raison d'etre.

On Wednesday, Governor Palin offered a new populist excitement, both as a messenger and in her message. By "messenger," we aren't merely referring to her gender, though that seems to be the preoccupation of the media. Her relative youth (44) and large family-complete with its many complications-were themselves a cultural statement. Though many in the media claim she was chosen because she appealed to the Christian right, Mrs. Palin never even raised the subject of abortion. She didn't have to, since her youngest son, the one with special needs, is proof enough of her pro-life conviction.

The same goes for her record of challenging the powers that be in Alaska. With so many Republicans tainted by corruption, GOP voters have been aching for someone willing to challenge that business as usual. By all accounts, Mrs. Palin has done so in Alaska, and is popular for it. In the coming weeks, we'll learn more about her Alaska record, and rightly so. Her governing record is fair-even essential-media game, in contrast to her daughter Bristol's pregnancy.

It's being said that in choosing Governor Palin, Mr. McCain was making a play for disaffected Hillary Clinton voters. Yet we heard just one line invoke women as a political issue, and then only in a positive sense: "This is America, and every woman can walk through every door of opportunity." Our sense is that the Governor's real political potential lies in her appeal to Reagan Democrats and Truman Republicans, voters Mr. McCain will need in November.

Mrs. Palin was certainly helped this week by the media contempt for her selection. The condescension has been so thick that it offended not just Republicans in St. Paul but others who may have tuned in Wednesday to see if she was as unqualified as Sally Quinn and David Frum said she was. Mrs. Palin's refusal to be cowed is the kind of triumph over media disdain that most Americans relish.

More here

**************************

ELSEWHERE

Last Week's Economic News Was a Big Shot in the Arm For McCain: "John McCain may have won the presidential election on Thursday, Aug. 28. That was before Barack Obama gave his stirring acceptance speech at the Democratic Convention. It was four days before the Republican Convention even started. It was also before the media leaked the name of Sarah Palin as Mr. McCain's chosen vice-presidential running mate. Why Aug. 28? On that morning the U.S. Commerce Department's Bureau of Economic Analysis revised its assessment of GDP growth in the second quarter of this year. Rather than growing at the anemic pace of 1.9% as reported in July, the April-June quarter actually registered a healthy GDP growth rate of 3.3%. Growth at this rate exceeds the long-term U.S. growth rate of 3.1% over the past 50 years. Bill Clinton was right. When it comes to presidential elections, "It's the economy stupid."

A prominent Clinton fundraiser has jumped ship and joined the McCain camp: "The legendary Tammy Haddad snags a scoop for Newsweek, sitting down with prominent Washington DC attorney John Coale -- a fundraiser for Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-NY -- at the Republican convention, now backing Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. "Well I'm here to go from supporting Hillary, who I campaigned with, I campaigned with her husband, her daughter, her whole family, brothers, and the mother, over a period of months, big Hillary supporter, pretty big fundraiser for her, I'm here to support John McCain for president," said Coale, husband of FOX News' Greta Van Susteren. Coale has given thousands of dollars in donations to Democrats over the years. ... "I think John McCain is basically what Obama says he is and what Obama is not," Coale said. "McCain brings people together, he has an incredible record of integrity." Coale griped about sexism against Clinton, said Obama isn't experienced enough to be president, and argued that the Democratic party has "been taken over by the moveon.org types."

Not again: Palin "slashes" another children's program.... by increasing funding: "The Kossified media strikes again. In the wee hours of the morning yesterday, I told you about the Washington Post's false accusation that Gov. Sarah Palin "slashed" funding for a teen pregnancy program, when in reality, there was "over a threefold increase from the government funds they received from all sources in 2006. Many of you have contacted the WaPo ombudsperson about the lie. But she is apparently on vacation until next week. Keep after it - because the meme is spreading. The NYTimes has now recycled WaPo's nonsense with this apoplectic headline: "Palin's Budget Cuts Affect Teenage Mothers." And now, via Brian Faughnan, there's this new smear using liberal math to decry Palin's alleged "slashing" of special-needs funds. They're so screamingly desperate..... The Washington Monthly has retracted the accusation and regrets the error. What about the rest of the MSM?"

For more postings from me, see OBAMA WATCH, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here or here or here

****************************

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)

****************************

Bulletin from Wasilla



Here in Wasilla, the small Alaskan town where until two years ago Sarah Palin was mayor, her speech officially to accept the Republican Party's Vice Presidential nomination was greeted with tears and disbelief. Crowded into Tailgaters Sports Bar & Grill on Parks Highway, her friends and most ardent of supporters, many of them wearing 'Go Sarah!' T-shirts and badges that read 'The Hottest Governor of the Coldest State' watched the entire performance at full volume on flatscreen televisions, alternatively cheering, whooping, clapping, dabbing at their eyes, and, finally, giving her a standing ovation. Around them, hockey memorabilia hung from the walls - a reminder of Palin's 'hockey mom' background.

Still wearing his blue Postal Service uniform after a long shift, David Parcha, 47, told The Times: "I've seen this coming for four years, man. When she was inaugurated as governor of Alaska, I told my teenage sons, 'go to the ceremony, this is going to be historic.'" He admitted, however, that he was gobsmacked at the speed of her ascent to the race for the White House and impressed with the confidence of her speech. Half way through it, after Palin had witheringly referred to Barack Obama's authorship of two memoirs, Mr Parcha grinned and said, "Not bad, eh?[John] McCain needed her real bad. I wasn't even gonna vote for McCain until he picked Palin. Before that, conservatives didn't have a voice."

Others were similarly impressed. Overheard comments included: "I was on the fence and now I'm blazing the McCain trail" (a middle-aged woman) and "I wasn't excited until this, now I'm all fired up" (a grey-haired man). Meanwhile, at a table directly underneath one of the TVs, Lu Sackett, 70, wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the image of a grizzly bear and a floppy hat decorated with flag pins waved his burger in appreciation when Palin laid into the Democrats' tax plans. "She's like a moose going after a cabbage," he marvelled.

A woman at Mr Sackett's table pointed out that Mrs Palin knows how to 'field dress' a moose (which means skinning it and chopping it up after killing it, so that you can take the meat home to make stew). "All Alaskan women know how to field strip a moose," said Mr Sackett, nodding. "Besides, she ain't attackin' anyone," he added. "She's just tellin' it how it is."

The bar roared with approval when Track Palin, 19, who recently enlisted in the US Army and will soon to be deployed to Iraq,appeared on camera. "Look!" someone shouted from the crowd. "Track can't believe he's on TV!" More hilarity ensued when Piper Palin, 7, appeared to spit on her hand and use it to smooth down the hair of Trig, her baby brother. They cheered again for the appearance of Palin's husband, Todd, otherwise known as the 'First Dude'. With Palin's every line of argument, someone shouted "Good Point!", "Yeah!", or "Ser-rah! Ser-ah! Ser-rah!" ...

Speaking to The Times before the speech, Ms Clark... expressed support for Palin. "I'm very glad she's governor of the state of Alaska, you couldn't find a more apt individual," she said. "In this country, Alaska, they don't care if you're a man or a woman, they care about your word, your reputation. She'd make a fine vice president."

Source

***********************

Conservatism Isn't the Culprit

Thousands of Republican politicians, activists and partisans are now lining up behind John McCain and preparing to advance into the fall campaign. If they hope to win, many pundits maintain, their task is obvious: Ditch conservatism, which is intellectually bankrupt.

That might make sense if you equate the Republican Party with conservatism. The governing style that culminated in the GOP's defeat in 2006, however, shows that Republicans have suffered largely because they haven't been conservative enough. In his unsuccessful bid to become minority leader in the House, Rep. Mike Pence stated the problem plainly. "We are in the wilderness because we walked away from the limited government principles that minted the Republican Congress," he warned his colleagues. "The American people did not quit on the Contract with America, we did."

He's right. While in control of Congress, Republicans could have led the nation toward market-based reforms in Medicare, a program that threatens to overwhelm the federal budget in coming years. Instead, they made the problem worse: They passed a Medicare drug benefit that will leave our grandchildren saddled with trillions of dollars in liabilities. Republicans could have advanced their professed commitment to limited government and fiscal responsibility. Instead, they more than doubled the size of the federal government, hiding their pork in the plain brown wrappers of anonymous earmarks.

Imagining that they could continue to govern by pretending to be conservatives, Republicans have repeatedly betrayed - and finally lost - the trust of their most loyal supporters. The way to win in 2008 is to earn that trust back, since the American people remain committed to conservative ideas....

Liberalism is a bankrupt philosophy that has been tried and found wanting in one major policy issue after another, from national defense to social welfare, from education to the national economic policy. That's why candidates run away from liberal ideas when it's time for a general election. Republicans must run toward conservative policies if they want the tides of history to sweep them back into power.

More here

**********************

ELSEWHERE

Susan Estrich (Clintonista) defends Sarah Palin: "Should a mother with five children, one of them a pregnant teen and another an infant with special needs, be running for vice president? The question is being much debated, in newspaper stories and columns, on blogs and Web sites, and, yes, around kitchen tables across the country. No would be asking these questions if she were a man. No one asked whether Arnold Schwarzenegger should run for governor because he has four children. They looked at Maria, his wonderful wife, and said, what a beautiful family. A mother doesn't get the same treatment. This is how the double standard works.... If she thinks she can do it, if her husband and children support the decision, as they seem to, who are we to say otherwise? She deserves what every father running for office automatically gets: a chance to be judged fairly, based on experience and ideology, qualifications and competence, not our second-hand judgments of her most private decisions."

CNN wisdom: "Gathering after the speeches last night by Lieberman and Thompson, the CNN "political team" gathered to tell viewers what was wrong with what they said. No surprises there, except perhaps when Campbell Brown professed herself to be "surprised by the political nature" of the Bushes' speeches. Imagine that! Political speeches at a political convention!

Hollywood Leftism: "Why do so many Hollywood stars turn into Marx-huggers when it comes to politics? Some believe it's embedded in their DNA. Entertainers are professional emoters. People who emote for a living tend to see the whole world through their emotions. Cry for the camera; cry for "social justice." Moan for the microphone; moan for "equality of outcome." Mug for an audience; mug for "welfare rights." Others contend that they all live in Airheadsville"

For more postings from me, see OBAMA WATCH, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here or here or here

****************************

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)

****************************

Why the Palin Baby Story Matters

What it means to evangelical voters

At 6:30 Monday morning, at a hotel here in St. Paul, a team of senior McCain staffers got word from even more senior staffers that there was news about vice-presidential pick Sarah Palin.... a story would be breaking on the wires in a few hours reporting that Palin's daughter, Bristol, is, in fact, pregnant now. The father is Bristol's boyfriend, the staffers were told, and she intends to marry him.

The McCain aides' assignment was to call a list of about 40 top evangelical and other cultural conservative leaders. Each one would get a personal explanation of the story, and each was asked for his or her reaction. The McCain people reached nearly everyone before the story broke, and the verdict was unanimous - all the leaders supported Palin and her place on the McCain ticket.

When the day's business was over, I drifted around the Colorado and Ohio delegations - two critical swing states - to get a feel for the delegates' reaction. In the Colorado section, I ran into Sue Sharkey, from Windsor. When I asked what she thought, her reaction was not about Palin but herself:

"For me personally, it hit my heart this morning," Sharkey told me, "because I was a 17 year-old girl, just like Sarah Palin's daughter, and I had - I was in those shoes. And my son is with me, who will be 35 years old next week, and so I know what a difficult road there is for her." "I chose to have my son, and from that point I realized that I was a very strong right-to-life advocate," Sharkey continued, her voice wavering ever so slightly. Roe v. Wade had been passed just the year before, and I already knew girls who were going through abortions. It wasn't a choice for me; it wasn't in my heart to do that. So when I heard the news this morning, it struck close to home for me."

A few feet away, members of the Ohio delegation were finishing up business, and I asked Patricia Murray, a delegate from Cincinnati, what she thought. "I don't even think this is an issue," she told me. "It's a family issue. It's a personal issue. The only reason it was made public was because of her mother." Nearby, Ben Rose, a delegate from Lima, said that, "In every case where I heard delegates talk about this, the first thought was to the human nature of it."

Earlier in the day, just after I heard the news, I called Marlys Popma, the well-known Iowa evangelical leader who is now the head of evangelical outreach for the McCain campaign. Like Sue Sharkey from Colorado, Popma had a story to tell. It turns out she had had a child out of wedlock nearly 30 years ago, and it changed her life. "It was my crisis pregnancy that brought me into the movement," Popma told me. "My reaction is that this shows that the governor's family is just like so many families. That's how my first child came into the world, and I'm just thrilled that [Bristol Palin] is choosing to give this child life."

I asked Popma what she thought the larger reaction among evangelicals will be. "Their reaction is going to be exactly as mine," she told me. "There hasn't been one evangelical family that hasn't gone through some sort of situation. Many of us are in this movement because of something that has happened in our lives."

As for now, at least, evangelicals seem to be completely on Palin's side. And McCain's. This is a group that has been skeptical of McCain in the past. Now, it's probably fair to say that he has never been more popular among evangelicals than he is at this moment. Whether that will last, or whether Palin will cost McCain support among other voters, is not yet clear. But within the confines of the Republican Convention, McCain's surprising choice of Palin - and the equally surprising news about her family - is paying off.

More here

*************************

ELSEWHERE

Palin consistency: "Sarah Palin has handed down her pro-life beliefs to her young daughter, Bristol who, at the age of 17 and unmarried, has decided to give her unborn child the gift of life. In their official statement on the matter, the Palins seemed far from the "rigid" label attributed to Sarah Palin by liberal critics, but instead assured their young daughter that she had their "unconditional love and support."

A good comment on the Palin family support for their daughter: "Quite a contrast with Barack Obama, who in March said he wouldn't want his daughters "punished with a baby." Congratulations to Bristol, her fiance and the grandparents-to-be."

A fun comment: "I think we can all agree that Palin's pick of an experienced statesman like John McCain to head her ticket shows that she is much better prepared to be VP than Biden who is trying to thrust an unqualified youngster who was a do-nothing state legislator before being elected to the Senate where he put in a few months of attendance before going AWOL to run for president."

'Stop! Or We'll Say Stop Again!': "With apologies to comedian Robin Williams, that's the line that comes to mind when weighing the European Union's declaration Monday on Russia's continued occupation of Georgia. At a special meeting in Brussels, EU national leaders told Russian President Dmitry Medvedev to abide by the terms of a French-brokered cease-fire, including a pullback of Russian troops to their preconflict positions. If he doesn't do so, they warned they will hold another meeting."

British Government Chooses Hitler-Loving Abortion Movement Pioneer for Stamps: "Marie Stopes, the notorious early 20th century contraception campaigner, eugenicist and anti-Semite, did for Britain what Margaret Sanger did for the US: preached the doctrines of eugenics and promoted contraception and sterilisation to achieve "racial hygiene." So successful was she at altering British society in favour of her eugenics doctrines, the British government has chosen her to be included in a "Women of Distinction" line of stamps. The Royal Mail announced this weekend that the face of Marie Stopes, who advocated the sterilisation of poor women to promote the "welfare of the race", will feature on the 50p stamp. The stamps will be available beginning 14 October 2008."

Obamanut Predicts Race War If McCain Wins: "Fatimah Ali, who is described as "a regular contributor" to the Philadelphia Daily News, writes today that, "if McCain wins, look for a full-fledged race and class war, fueled by a deflated and depressed country, soaring crime, homelessness - and hopelessness!" I would like to see this column distributed widely, since I believe it would impel many voters to support McCain just to deflate such pompous offensiveness."

For more postings from me, see OBAMA WATCH, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here or here or here

****************************

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)

****************************

Apologies for the absence of substance

Regular readers may have noted that I have not put anything up here today so far.

I have had a cable outage for over 24 hours now so the few bits I put up yesterday and today have been posted from an internet cafe.

I will try to put up a bit more but a lot depends on how soon my cable service provider -- the arrogant semi-monopolist Telstra/Bigpond -- get their cable service working again in my area.

******************

Interview with Charles Murray

by Bernard Chapin

My father always said that anyone who lived through John F. Kennedy's assassination remembers what they were doing at the precise moment the president was shot. This may well be true, but we also lucidly recall the circumstances of far lesser events such as the controversy surrounding the publication of The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life by Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray. The furor its conclusions caused is forever ingrained in my memory.

At the time I was a psychology graduate student and found that most of my associates were familiar with the work but deemed it a book to be burned rather than read. I, however, bought it anyway, and like to think that my purchase foreshadowed my eventual defection from the Democratic Party. While the mainstream media may deem Dr. Charles Murray a pariah, he has been a hero of mine for fourteen years. His fame preceded the 1990s, however. Losing Ground: American Social Policy 1950-1980 is a work that permanently altered public perceptions regarding the welfare state. Therefore, it was an honor to have him answer a few questions about his latest publication, Real Education: Four Simple Truths for Bringing America's Schools Back to Reality. Currently, he is the W. H. Brady Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.

BC: Congratulations on the publication of your new book, Real Education: Four Simple Truths for Bringing America's Schools Back to Reality, why does the future of this nation depend on the education of the gifted? Personally, I find your assumption non-remarkable, but why are so many of our elites offended by the notion that we should assist the strong?

Dr. Charles Murray: The academically gifted run the country. That's not what should be, that's what is. It can be demonstrated empirically that the overwhelming majority of people in positions of economic, cultural, and political influence is drawn from among those in the top ten percent of academic ability. That being the case, they need to arrive at those positions possessing an education-a classic, rigorous, liberal education-that gives them the best possible chance of being wise as well as technically well-trained. The resistance of the elites to this idea? It makes them feel'elitist. And above all else, we mustn't think anything that makes us feel bad about ourselves.

BC: Along these lines, is our nation's devotion to the education of the handicapped-as discernable in the billions spent on special education since 1975-at the expense of higher functioning students-an example of compassion gone mad? In your view, for what reason do we preference the disabled over the abled?

Dr. Charles Murray: I am an impassioned advocate for the proposition that none of us deserves the academic ability we possess, whether it be high or low. So I am happy to see money spent on the academically handicapped, as long as the money actually accomplishes something. Most of it doesn't, and meanwhile we have neglected the kind of education that might really make a difference in their lives (e.g., teaching them ways of making a living despite their handicaps). But neglecting the gifted is just as morally bankrupt as neglecting the handicapped. We don't consider deliberately withholding special training from the athletically or musically gifted-we would think it unfair (even spiteful) to the child to do so. The same logic applies to the academically gifted.

BC: The major group tests given to college applicants-such as the SAT and the ACT-assess academic skills, is it your position that new evaluation measures should be normed and implemented that incorporate cognitive capacity as well (due to it better identifying, for employers, students who will excel in a vocational setting)?

Dr. Charles Murray: The SAT and ACT are actually pretty good measures of cognitive ability. But I'm in favor of moving toward certification tests that are specific to a vocation (the CPA exam is the archetype), and that measure what a job applicant knows, not where he learned it or how long it took or, for that matter, what his cognitive ability is. If I'm hiring a carpenter, I want to know if he's a good carpenter. The same principle should apply if I'm hiring management trainees, physicians, or even, God help us, public policy analysts.

BC: For those of us who have been to college, the correlation between a Bachelor of Arts degree and future vocational achievement is not readily evident. What brought about the state wherein the four-year degree is a prerequisite for white collar employment? It seems that what many students learn at college is completely superfluous to the tasks they must perform after graduation.

Dr. Charles Murray: Except for a few technical majors such as engineering, a bachelor's degree does not signal professional competence, but is a no-cost (to the employer) screen for perseverance and a certain degree of intelligence. As the number of BAs grew from the 1950s onward, it has made more and more sense for employers to use it as a screen (as more people get BAs, the fewer good job prospects the employer is missing by requiring a BA). The problem is: It's a very coarse, low-information screen. Certification tests would give the employer more information by orders of magnitude.

BC: In your opinion, how politically corrupted are the liberal arts colleges within our universities? One always hears leftists say that the radicals in the news-as profiled in books like David Horowitz's The Professors-are not indicative of the whole.

Dr. Charles Murray: One of my daughters finished at Middlebury a year ago, got an excellent liberal education (in the classic sense of that phrase), and experienced little political correctness among her professors. Another of my daughters told me matter-of-factly that of course she had to incorporate the right feminist perspective in her senior thesis, because otherwise her thesis supervisor wouldn't accept it-and that was at Harvard. So I don't have a good answer to your question. It all depends. I'm sure my Middlebury daughter could have found courses that were corrupt and that many Harvard thesis advisors would be appalled at the idea of letting politics contaminate scholarship.

BC: How likely is any educational reform with the teacher's unions as strong as they are?

Dr. Charles Murray: In my experience, the teachers' unions are mostly a problem in the big-city systems. My younger two children went to the public schools in a small town. The teachers are unionized, but I can't see how it created any serious problems. I'm one of those who thinks that teachers are getting too much blame. The real problem with public education (again, except for the big-city systems) is the awful curriculum that the teachers have to work with.

BC: Even for higher functioning children-males in particular-given the exorbitant cost of a college education would not a career in the trades be a more prudent choice?

Dr. Charles Murray: Have you checked out the going rate for master stonemasons these days? Forget the ridiculous costs of a college education. Just take a close look at the real and large rewards, monetary and intrinsic, of becoming a master craftsman in almost any trade.

BC: I know a great many educators and the vast of majority of them wholeheartedly believe that educational deficiencies in urban settings are due to a lack of funding. Of course this is totally fallacious. Washington D.C. has some of the worst schools in the country and they are third on the list in terms of per pupil spending while Chicago is well above the national average. In your estimation, what's the best way to refute the horrendous argument that in education cash equals quality?

Dr. Charles Murray: It's been done. The technical literature has documented the unimportance of differences in per-pupil funding for more than 40 years, going back to the massive Coleman Report. So how do you get newspaper editorial writers and politicians to become technically literate? Beats the hell out of me. Maybe we should pass a No Journalist or Politician Left Behind Act.

BC: Thanks so much for your time, Dr. Murray.

Source

**************************

ELSEWHERE

Carpooling: Green, cheap and illegal in Canada: ""There's an online free global ride-sharing service called PickupPal that has been gaining traction with Internet users lately, most notably by partnering with concert promoters and other event planners to spread the word about their service. PickupPal matches up drivers and passengers who are headed to the same destination, tracks and publishes their reputations eBay-style and allows them to work out mutual arrangements for splitting the gas money and other costs of the trip. ... It is hard to see how such a thing could be anything less than a nifty social benefit of the Internet, but in Ontario, it is considered illegal. The province's Public Vehicles Act states, 'No person shall arrange or offer to arrange transportation of passengers by means of a public vehicle operated by another person unless that other person is the holder of an operating licence authorizing that other person to perform the transportation.'"

TSA = "Totally Senile Assholes"?: "With the news that hit the mainstream media on Wednesday, but has been part of the blogosphere for a day prior, Taking Scissors Away has morphed from a frightening tyrannical agency to a clear and present danger to the traveling public. Not content with turning airports into poorly run copies of East Germany, not content with stealing passenger's water, making mothers drink their own breast milk, harassing and/or torturing the handicapped, wand-raping pretty women, stealing medication, trying to steal a medal of honor from the NRA president, depriving travelers of their constitutional rights and imprisoning those who object, Totally Senile Assholes have crossed the line from seeing terrorists where none exist to manufacturing their own terror attacks."

For more postings from me, see OBAMA WATCH, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here or here or here

****************************

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)

****************************

The "death's door" argument

An email from a reader:

The Democrats' main line of attack against Palin is this: McCain is at death's door; he could go any minute; we don't want someone with limited experience having to step in. (Let's ignore the fact that the Democrats want to put someone with limited experience in the Oval Office right away).

Of course, this argument fails if one assumes (as everyone who plans to vote for McCain does) that McCain will not only serve out his first term but perhaps a second as well. In the meantime, Palin obviously grows in experience with every passing month and year.

Now then, what about the Democrat side of the coin? Everyone says: "Well, if something should happen to Obama, we've got good ol' Joe Biden waiting in the wings." (Let's ignore the fact that virtually no one wants Biden as President -- after all, he was utterly and overwhelmingly rejected by the Democrats themselves during the primaries).

But wait a minute. Biden is old, too: he will be 66 in November. And he has a history of life-threatening brain aneurysms. For all we know, he's more likely to keel over than McCain is!

And if that happens . . . then guess who becomes President? Nancy Pelosi. Yes, the facelifted but brain-dead Nancy Pelosi. So, if we're going to play the "death's door" game, the Democrats lose.

***************************

MCCAIN'S MAVERICK PICK

Comment by Jeff Jacoby



If it did nothing else, John McCain's choice of Governor Sarah Palin of Alaska as his running mate instantly changed the subject from Barack Obama's dramatic acceptance speech in Denver the night before. But that wasn't all it accomplished. With one stroke, McCain defied convention, galvanized Republicans, and gave Hillary Clinton's legions another reason to consider crossing party lines in November: It is McCain, not Obama, who will be sharing a national ticket with a gutsy and accomplished woman. The Palin pick is a vivid illustration of why the label "maverick" is so often applied to McCain.

Those who have observed the 44-year-old governor up close speak highly of her political skills and personal appeal. She took on her own party's ethically challenged leadership and beat it handily, and has gone on to earn stratospherically high approval ratings for her own performance in office. Unlike Alaska's better-known politicians, she is a spending hawk and a committed porkbuster; notably, she pulled the plug on her state's notorious $400 million "bridge to nowhere."

Palin is about as far from a "Washington insider" as anyone in US politics can be -- a striking contrast to Obama's running mate, six-term Senator Joseph Biden. Her family story is thoroughly all-American, authentic, and charming: The former beauty contestant and self-described "hockey mom" is married to her high school sweetheart, with whom she has five kids, ranging from the 18-year-old in the Army to the infant with Down syndrome. And it certainly upends familiar stereotypes to have a national GOP candidate whose spouse belongs to the Steelworkers Union and races snowmobiles for fun. Nothing "community organizer" about this candidate.

Of course McCain is taking a big gamble. Palin has been governor for less than two years, has no foreign-policy or national-security experience, and has never been through the gauntlet of a national campaign. Whether she can hold her own on the stump and under the withering glare of the national media, we will all know soon enough. Many voters will understandably read McCain's choice as cynical, in part because he has made such an issue of Obama's limited record. But surely Palin's lack of expertise on defense and international issues makes *Obama's* inexperience all the more conspicuous. The Democratic nominee is as green and untested as McCain's new running mate. (Arguably even more so, since Obama has never been an executive.) There is, however, one key difference between them: She's not running for president....

For all the ink and bandwidth devoted to the Veepstakes, it is almost always the candidate at the top who seals the deal with the electorate -- or doesn't. Palin and Biden will enliven the nine weeks remaining until Nov. 4, but barring some extraordinary development or colossal blunder, they won't change the outcome. The race isn't about them. It is about Obama and McCain. It is between the uplifting but insubstantial charisma of the former and the battle-tested experience and judgment of the latter.

More here

***********************

ELSEWHERE

Bureaucratic parasites: "Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) has been checking up on the attendance records of federal employees. And he doesn't like what he's found. Civil servants have been away from their jobs without permission much too often in recent years, Coburn says in a new report. Records from 17 federal agencies and the U.S. Postal Service show that workers were absent without leave for 19.6 million hours between 2001 and 2007, the study found. That's the equivalent of 2.5 million missed days of work, or 316 employees skipping out for entire 30-year careers, says Coburn, the ranking Republican on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs subcommittee on federal financial management."

The Timing of Hurricane Gustav 'Just Demonstrates That God's on [the Democrats'] Side?: "We all say things we regret, and many of us speak in public places - like, say, an airplane coming back from the Democratic convention - without thinking how they would look captured on YouTube. Having said that, former DNC Chair Don Fowler would be wise to apologize for his giggling comments suggesting that the timing of Hurricane Gustav making landfall, and the potential it could hit New Orleans, "just demonstrates that God's on our side."

Crazy Prediction: "Picture this scenario... One month from now, the Palin pick has proven a bonanza for the McCain campaign. A large chunk of Hillary's 18 million voters have been won over. Conservatives are unified and energized, and the previously-undiscovered "Maxim magazine vote" is suddenly giving McCain large margins among young males. Joe Biden will disappear from the campaign trail, and we will later learn it was to see a doctor. A previously-undiscovered, vaguely ominous health issue will be discovered, and Biden will sadly announce that he cannot continue as Obama's running mate. With a sudden need for a new one, Obama will turn... to Hillary Clinton"

For more postings from me, see OBAMA WATCH, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here or here or here

****************************

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)

****************************

Palin



It's tempting but I am not going to add anything to the uproar over Sarah Palin today. My fellow bloggers over at STACLU are doing a fine job shooting down the frantic Leftist and media criticisms of her. It's amusing how most of the things that Leftists criticize in her apply even more to Wonderboy (e.g. lack of foreign policy experience; insufficient administrative experience). They're really desperate. They say that running Alaska is "not enough" experience. As far as I am aware, Wonderboy has never even run a raffle.

I will say this, however: I predict that she will one day be President of the United States.

**********************

A summary of Olavo de Carvalho on the Leftist mind

Olavo de Carvalho is a Brazilian philosopher so his views principally reflect Lefism as it exists in Latin America -- but most of what he says is recognizable in the Anglosphere too

The Left (which he calls the "revolution") is not a unified ideology or agenda at all, but rather a way of seeing the world, and specifically it is an inversion of what normal people call common sense. And this inversion is the sole unifying factor, the one common thread running through the revolution since the 13th and 14th centuries

According to de Carvalho, revolutionary thought as we know it did not exist before about the 13th century; nor is it a function of chronological age. The myth that the young tend to be revolutionaries arises from the Left itself and serves the purpose of making the Revolution appear to be a natural phenomenon. Instead, this revolutionary inversion has its origins in an early Christian heresy (arrogating to itself the role of Christ the avenger) and has at least three aspects:

1-Inversion of the perception of time.

Normal individuals, based on common sense, see the past as something immutable and the future as something that can be changed (it is contingent, as de Carvalho puts it). Not so the leftist revolutionary, who sees the utopian future as a goal that eventually will be reached no matter what and the past as something that can be changed, through reinterpretation (what we call "rewriting history"), to accommodate it.

One example the author gives of this is how Soviet propagandists reinterpreted Dostoevsky, an anti-revolutionary of the first order. In his novel "Crime and Punishment," young revolutionary Raskolnikov kills his wealthy elderly landlady as an act of solidarity with the poor class, in keeping with his world view that ownership of private property is immoral and that the revolutionary is entitled to take possession of it by any means at his disposal. But Raskolnikov is caught and goes to jail where the only book available to the prisoners is a Bible, which he reads, and is converted to Christianity, abandoning his revolutionary ideology, which he now understands as immoral.

While fully aware of Dostoevsky's anti-revolutionary mindset, the early communists liked his novels and considered them too thoroughly Russian to ban, so they simply reinterpreted him posthumously and declared that his novels were written to highlight the need for more social justice. Thus the Left reached back into time and manipulated the thoughts of a man who would have been their adversary, making him posthumously a fellow communist.

2-The inversion of morality

De Carvalho points out that because the revolutionary (leftist) believes implicitly in a future utopia where there will be no evil, this same revolutionary believes that no holds should be barred in achieving that utopia. Thus, his own criminal activities in achieving that goal are above reproach. The author cites Che Guevara, who said that the revolutionary is the "highest rank of mankind." Thus, armed with such moral superiority, Che was able to cold-bloodedly murder his political enemies wholesale.

Another example cited in the lecture is Karl Marx, who had an illicit liaison with his maid and then, to keep bourgeois appearances, made his son, the offspring of that liaison, live in the basement of his home, never even introducing the boy to his brothers in wedlock. The boy was never mentioned in the family and went into historical oblivion. De Carvalho compares this despicable behavior with the more noble conduct of Brazilian landowners who had illegitimate children but made them heirs, yet made no claims of moral superiority!

To the revolutionary mind, it is normal that the revolutionary should pay no mind to the bourgeois morality, because after all, nothing he does can be construed as immoral, since the sum total of his actions hasten the revolution when justice will prevail. This is why conservatives frequently refer to the Left's hypocrisy (for example, environmental champion Al Gore's 20-fold electricity consumption compared to yours and mine).

By contrast, the author shows that by the Left's own definition of "revolution," the American revolution is not a revolution at all because our founders were men who held themselves (not just others) to high moral standards, and in no way tried to usher in a novel experimental utopian system, basing their actions and policies on older English traditions and common law, and modeling our Republic on these tried and true common-sense precepts.

3-Inversion of subject and object

When revolutionaries like Che, and Hitler's operatives, for example, killed innocent people, they would blame the people they killed for "making" them do it by refusing to go along with their revolutionary notions. This is one example the author gives of the inversion of subject and object.

De Carvalho also points out a number of other inversions and makes many fascinating points, but my purpose here is simply to clarify what the Left really is, to stimulate thought and to predispose the reader to buy his book when it comes out. You will be a better American for having read the writings of - a great American.

Source

**********************

Democrats oppose secret ballots

The better to intimidate people

Democrats narrowly avoided a major embarrassment before holding their abbreviated roll call of the states here on Wednesday night.

Politico.com reported that the Obama campaign was seriously considering letting delegates vote by secret ballot, the better to avoid intimidation and fear of reprisal from local party bosses. But the plan -- which was pushed on the Obama camp by supporters of Hillary Clinton -- was suddenly dropped when it was realized that a key plank of the Democratic Party platform backs a so-called "card check" provision being added to the nation's labor laws. Card check would effectively strip workers of the protection of secret ballots in union elections. Business groups and former Democratic presidential nominee George McGovern oppose the measure on the grounds that it exposes workers to harassment and intimidation.

That was precisely the concern of Democratic delegates who wanted to cast a secret ballot vote on the convention floor. The Obama campaign thought seriously about accommodating them until it realized how such a naked contradiction to the party's stance on union balloting might look to voters and the media.

Source

For more postings from me, see OBAMA WATCH, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here or here or here

****************************

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)

****************************