THE MEDIA WON

They created Obama. They could have destroyed him in a minute if they had wanted to. Instead they promoted him, covered for him and used anything they could to discredit his opponents.

What lies ahead

One really has to ask the obvious question: If Obama's economic policies work so well, why isn't Detroit a paradise? In 1950, America produced 51% of the GNP for the entire world. Of that production, roughly 70% took place in the eight states surrounding the Great Lakes: Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York.

The productive capability of this small area of earth staggers the imagination. Virtually everything that rebuilt the industrial bases of Europe and Japan came from those eight states. Cars, planes, electronics, machine tools, consumer goods, generators, concrete - any conceivable item manufactured by industrial humanity poured out this tiny region and enriched the world. The region shone with widespread prosperity. People migrated from the South and West to work in these Herculean engines of industry. The wealth, power and economic dominance of the region at the time cannot be overstated. Nothing like it has existed in human history.

Yet, a mere 30 years later, by 1980, we called that area the "rustbelt" and it became synonymous with joblessness, collapsing cities, high crime, failing schools and general hopelessness.

What the hell happened? Obama happened. Of course, not Obama personally but rather the same ideas that Obama espouses. What those ideas did to the Great Lakes states, they can do to the entire country. What did they do wrong?

First, unions: Without any serious economic competition, unions could force virtually any salary, benefits and pensions they wished from manufactures. Worse, however, they could set work rules and conditions, effectively dictating the organization of a business and what technology, processes and methods it used. Since increasing productivity, by definition, means doing more work with fewer people, unions froze companies into the methods used in the mid-1950s and refused to let them adapt. Companies rode high for over 15 years, but by the late '60s they faced increasing competition and needed to change and adapt. The unions blocked this.

In the end, however, strong widespread unions turned out for workers to be merely a case of robbing Peter to pay Paul. Unions got workers in factories better wages, but the people who built the workers' houses, cars, consumer goods and stocked their groceries also had strong unions and the price of everything went up. Strong public-sector unions kept taxes high and public productivity low, so workers' taxes went up. By the time they paid all the increased cost of union labor in everything they consumed, the unions gave them little if any real increases in income.

Second, invasive government: People who grew up during the New Deal and WWII believed that government could solve almost any problem, and they supported high taxes so that government could fix society. Unfortunately, the supposed benefits of an expansive state, good schools, solid public infrastructure, low crime, etc. failed to materialize while zoning and land-use restrictions drove up housing cost and taxes and crime destroyed small businesses. Strong public-sector unions blocked tax cuts and reforms that could have saved them.

By the early '70s the states that once served as the industrial engine for the entire planet began to fall apart. Then came double-digit inflation and the energy crisis (both caused by leftist policies). By 1980, the industrial heartland of America lay in virtual ruins. People called it the "rustbelt" in analogy to the "dustbowl" of the Great Depressions. Even today, nearly 30 years later, the region lags behind the rest of the country in job creation and is steadily losing population to internal migration.

It can happen just that fast. A worker who entered the factories in 1950 at the age of 25 saw 20 good years before things looked bad. At 45 he saw repeated layoffs, and by 55 he was out of a job and his children had little hope of finding one.

Obama clearly plans to try to extend the rustbelt model to the rest of the country. "Card check" will let unions use intimidation to control workers. High taxes on capital gains will slow investment. Environmental regulation will starve workplaces of electricity and mandate inefficient modes of production. Great new bureaucracies will arise to restrain the freedom and creativity of the people.

Obama has no concept of business as a creative and experimental endeavor. On some deep unconscious level, he assumes that material wealth is something akin to a natural phenomenon for which no group of humans can take credit. Therefore, he sees distribution as the only serious economic issue and ignores how politics interferes with the actual process of wealth creation. We may soon be living in a repeat of '70s and looking back at the years 1984-2007 as a golden era.

Source

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

ELSEWHERE

Just the beginning for Sarah Palin?: "Today's defeat spells the end of Mr McCain's presidential dreams - but is likely to be just the start of his running mate's political ascendancy. Mrs Palin turned out to be an even bigger draw on the campaign trail than John McCain, the name above hers on the Republican presidential ticket. Her inner circle say the mother-of-five is likely to serve out her final two years as Alaska governor and then focus full time on a bid to become America's first woman president. Republican leaders say the election was just the beginning for Sarah Palin. Despite coming under fire for her inexperience, insiders say she is already being groomed to run for the presidency in 2012. She even let slip her own ambitions last week, saying in a TV interview that she's `not doing all this for naught'.

Voter-Fraud condoned in Milwaukee: "Last week Mike Sandvick, head of the Milwaukee Police Department's five-man Special Investigative Unit, was told by superiors not to send anyone to polling places on Election Day. He was also told his unit -- which wrote the book on how fraud could subvert the vote in his hometown -- would be disbanded. "We know what to look for," he told me, "and that scares some people." In disgust, Mr. Sandvick plans to retire. (A police spokeswoman claims the unit isn't being disbanded and that any changes to the unit "aren't significant.")In February, Mr. Sandvick's unit released a 67-page report on what it called an "illegal organized attempt to influence the outcome of (the 2004) election in the state of Wisconsin" -- a swing state whose last two presidential races were decided by less than 12,000 votes. The report found that between 4,600 and 5,300 more votes were counted in Milwaukee than the number of voters recorded as having cast ballots. Absentee ballots were cast by people living elsewhere; ineligible felons not only voted but worked at the polls; transient college students cast improper votes; and homeless voters possibly voted more than once.

Some coming disappointments for Peggy the Moocher: "Who is Peggy the Moocher? She's Peggy Joseph, a voter in Sarasota, Fla., who exulted earlier this week at a Barack Obama rally that this was "the most memorable time of my life." Why? As she told a Florida reporter on a YouTube video that has been viewed by hundreds of thousands: "Because I never thought this day would ever happen. I won't have to worry about putting gas in my car. I won't have to worry about paying my mortgage. You know. If I help [Obama], he's gonna help me." You can't blame Peggy the Moocher for viewing Obama as the superior Santa Claus. With a relentless messianic campaign, a grievance-mongering wife touting him as the country's soul fixer and a national infomercial promising to take care of every need from night classes to medical bills to rent and fuel-efficient cars, Obama effectively channeled Oprah Winfrey's Big Give.



RIP for a Ripley you can believe in: "John W. Ripley, a highly decorated former colonel who entered Marine Corps lore when he single-handedly blunted a major North Vietnamese offensive during the Vietnam War by blowing up a strategically placed bridge, died Oct. 28 at his home in Annapolis, Md. He was 69."

There is a new lot of postings by Chris Brand now up -- on his usual vastly "incorrect" themes of race, genes, IQ etc.

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 better for libertarians

I have been a lifetime Libertarian Party activist, for over 25 years. I've served in numerous capacities, including on the Libertarian National Committee, as a Libertarian State Rep. candidate, and as Ron Paul's Personal Travel Aide in his 1988 Libertarian Presidential campaign. I've also served as Ron Paul's Congressional Campaign Coordinator and as his Senior Congressional Aide for 7 years, 1997-2004.

This election year, I've been supporting Libertarian Presidential candidate Bob Barr. As a matter of fact, I'm the very guy who recruited his running mate Wayne Root into the race. Since the Spring, I've been the Party's lead petitioner around the Nation. I've collected tens of thousands of signatures to get Barr/Root on the ballot in Illinois, Ohio, Kentucky, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Maine and Rhode Island.

However, I was greatly encouraged by McCain's pick of Sarah Palin for his VP. Palin has a solid libertarian background. In 2005/06 she was the guest speaker at two Libertarian Party meetings in Anchorage. She has been called a "libertarian" by many in Alaska politics and in the Anchorage media. She even received the last minute backing of the Libertarian Party leadership in the State for her successful gubernatorial race, and today, she is the most popular governor in America.

Up until now, I've encouraged my fellow Libertarians to follow their conscience and vote for either McCain/Palin or for Barr/Root, if it suits them better. I now believe, two days before Election Day, that this campaign is just too critical to risk on such a strategy, and if Libertarians won't put the liberty of our country ahead of our party ambitions, who else in this country will?

Obama is fundamentally opposed to virtually all libertarian stances on all issues. From taxes, to freedom of speech, to protecting property rights, to putting a halt to the ever-encroaching Nanny-state, and 4 years of an Obama Presidency will have disastrous results for liberty, and supporters of the limited government view. As evidence of this, Obama has taken to lodge a full frontal assault on the libertarian movement within the last couple days. In two separate speeches Obama accused McCain/Palin of supporting tax cuts because they believed in the "Virtue of Selfishness." ABC News confirmed that the phrase was most likely a direct hit at libertarian icon Philosopher Ayn Rand. By attacking Rand, and her Individualist philosophy, in essence, Obama has declared war on libertarians and the libertarian movement in these closing days of Election '08.

More here

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

Don't Rock the Vote, Baby!

Voter registration drives have been ubiquitous this election cycle. These efforts, however, could have a pernicious effect on the country and Americans' understanding of the duties of citizenship. Consider the `Rock the Vote' campaign. Begun in 1992, Rock the Vote "uses music, popular culture and new technologies to engage and incite young people to register and vote in every election." If you visit the Rock the Vote website, DJ Diplo will e-mail you a copy of your state's voter registration form. Bloggers rave about Diplo's work at registration events, noting that his music is so loud that groupies "can still feel the dull throb of the speakers blasting full force" 24 hours later.

Not to be outdone by Diplo, Bothervoting.org offers prospective voters maps to the polling places and runs an aggressive advertising campaign. One of the ads features a blond bombshell salaciously whispering "I just can't picture myself sleeping with a non-voter." Not only can you help solve the country's problems by voting, you might get lucky too.

With all the commotion about voter registration, one would think that barriers to registration abound. This is not the case. Since 1995, state governments have been required to provide uniform registration services through drivers' license registration centers and government offices offering public assistance benefits. The states also must permit citizens to register using mail-in forms. Or they can choose the old fashioned way and go to the local voter registration office to fill out the necessary paperwork.

Participation in local, state, and national elections is not something Americans should take lightly. In our system of government, the people are recognized as the ultimate sovereigns and exercise their power in special conventions (such as the conventions that ratified the Constitution) or during elections when they vote for representatives, and, in some states, for various ballot initiatives. In 1776, the General Court of Massachusetts summed up popular sovereignty as follows: "It is a maxim, that, in every government, there must exist, somewhere, a supreme, sovereign, absolute, and uncontrollable power; But this power resides, always in the body of the people, and it never was, or can be delegated, to one man, or a few." Thus, elections should be viewed as bulwarks of our Republic.

But for elections to serve this lofty purpose, the people must be informed. In recognition of this, the First Amendment was added to the Constitution, in part, to ensure the free flow and availability of information regarding public concerns. Because an informed electorate is a prerequisite to an intelligent exercise of the franchise, the Founding Fathers, in the words of James Madison, viewed the dissemination of information as "the only effectual guardian of every other right." An ignorant public exercising the franchise was seen as inimical to a free society.

Today's mass voter drives stand this notion on its head. Because it is already so easy to register without the aid of Rock the Vote or Bothervoting.org, one must wonder what sort of person the mass voter-registration drives are reaching. Obviously not people who take their citizenship seriously enough to register without the assistance of DJ Diplo or the enticement of a "party-on" atmosphere.

Although the First Amendment is still in place and information is readily available, an intellectual laziness has crept into much of society. Recent polls show that when asked to name two of Snow White's Seven Dwarfs and two of the nine U.S. Supreme Court Justices, 77 percent of those polled were able to identify two dwarfs, while only 24 percent could name two Supreme Court Justices. Regarding the basic structure of our government, only 42 percent of Americans could name the three branches, whereas 73 percent could name all of the Three Stooges.

If Rock the Vote and Bothervoting really wanted to contribute to solving the problems facing our country, they would focus less on numbers and more on knowledge. An ignorant voter is more dangerous to the Republic than a non-voter. Unfortunately, the registration movement teaches citizens that an uneducated vote is better than no vote at all. Such a lesson is pernicious and could have lasting effects on the electorate.

Source

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

Exit poll warning

We all remember how far off the exit polls were in 2004. But we don't recall how far off some of the leaked exit poll results were in 2006. In the races were expected blowouts - Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island - the exit polls were pretty accurate. But on some of the close ones - the ones where race-watchers want reliable data the most - they managed to botch it pretty badly.

Virginia Exit Poll Result: D: 52 R: 47. Actual result: Webb 49.59 percent, Allen 49.2 percent. The exit poll margin was 5 percent; the actual margin was less than one percent.

Montana Exit Poll Result: D: 53 R: 46. Actual result: Tester 49.16, Burns 48.29. The exit poll margin was 7 percent; the actual margin was less than one percent.

Arizona Exit Poll Result: R: 50 D: 46. Actual result: Kyl 53, Pederson 44. The exit poll margin was 2 percent, the actual margin was 9 percent.

Because they correctly predicted the ultimate winner, no one remembers these poll results as being egregiously off-base. But a few thousand votes here and there, and they would have had the wrong winner in Virginia and Montana. And you notice which direction these results skew.

Source

NOTE: Suitably Flip and Jim Geraghty have been looking closely at the public opinion polls and predict a McCain win.

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)

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

A great day

Note the date at the head of this post. Nov. 4th. A great national day of decision. A great race will be decided. Millions will watch the outcome. And the outcome will make many jubilant while others will be sad or indifferent. I am referring, of course, to the Melbourne Cup, Australia's premier horserace and the one race of the year for which everyone stops in Australia. They flock to their nearest TV or glue a trannie (transistor radio) to their ear. Businesses stop. Schools stop. Factories stop. Offices stop. And even Presbyterians have been known to bet on the outcome. Due to the peculiarites of timezones, however, the race will be run on Nov. 3 in America. And what happens in America on 4th, will happen on 5th in Australia.

My Presbyterian background is still a strong and valued influence and I basically never gamble but I will today enter a "sweep". It is early morning as I write this. In a sweep, you put in money to draw the name of one of the horses out of a hat. If "your" horse wins, you get all the money. It is probably the world's fairest gamble -- but it won't make you rich. There will be sweeps in almost every office and workplace in Australia today. It is a great day! Below is a good comment written by an American last year:

On the first Tuesday of November, most people in Melbourne get the day off for the public holiday. What holiday you ask? Is it the Queens birthday? Boxing Day? Australia Day? No friends, today is a holy occasion where a little over 100,000 people dress up, get drunk, and bet on a bunch of horses as they run around a track. Basically, everyone gets the day off for a race that only lasts minutes.

This is actually a big deal here. Someone told me that teachers in grade school have the kids do "play bets" on what horse they want to win. Women seem to especially love this day as they dress up all pretty and wear funny hats as you see below. There are several contests as well at the cup including "best hat" and "best overall dressed". Today a horse named "Efficient" won the cup and the owner won a prize of $5 million dollars. I know what you are asking me now, "well who won the best hat!?!" Well, I scoured the internet and couldn't find the winner of best hat, which is the thing I was really interested in. Again, what a fun and great country. I'm in Brisbane and so didn't get the day off, but I still got to enjoy a city full of pretty girls wearing funny hats.

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

Say Goodbye to America

No matter who wins Tuesday America is going to be a different country. When the sun rises on November 5, regardless of who the president-elect is, a more un-United States than has existed since the Civil War will wake to dispute the results of the disgusting campaign that has mercifully come to an end.

Whoever the losers, they will believe they were cheated, and will point fingers at those they believe responsible. Almost half the nation will view the winner as illegitimate, and will do everything in their power to undermine his authority as long as he's in the White House. With this animosity will come a new level of hatred between those of differing political persuasions like nothing our country has experienced in the modern era. Putting it bluntly, and without sounding too much like Rev. Jeremiah "G-d Damn America" Wright, there will be no such thing as Americans anymore.

Instead, there'll be Democrats and Republicans, Liberals and Conservatives, and encounters between the members of these groups will for years nay decades be at best unfriendly, and at worst quite hostile if not downright violent.

Think this an overstatement? Consider first what Wednesday will look like if John McCain pulls off the upset. To begin with, let's be very clear about one thing: Democrats believe that if they lose an election it's because their opponent cheated. It's never their fault. It's never because they ran a poor campaign. It's never because their opponent ran a better one. Heck no! It's always about voter fraud, disenfranchisement, not enough ballots, faulty machinery, hanging chads, negative advertising, intimidation tactics, campaign finance abuses, you name it.

Such is the legacy of Al Sore Loser Gore: regardless of how many news outlets went to Florida in January 2001 and found that if the counting had continued Bush still would have won, the overwhelming majority of Democrats think that election was stolen....

To make my point, I offer the now overly-discussed Bradley effect and how it relates to exit polls: How many people as they leave the voting booth Tuesday will lie to pollsters about who they voted for? Before you answer, try to imagine the pressures many people are going to feel in certain districts around the country to answer "Obama" rather than "McCain" irrespective of the truth. Also consider the possibility that many McCain supporters will just refuse to answer the question thereby skewing the results.....

Can you imagine the Rodney King-style rioting that might occur as a result, especially when folks like Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Chuck Schumer, and the usual suspects get in front of television cameras blaming Republicans and John McCain for stealing another election, this time from a black man? They'll be on all the morning shows Wednesday doing what they do best: fomenting hate, and pointing fingers....

On the flipside, although an Obama victory will likely not result in immediate acts of violence, Republicans already feel cheated by this campaign for a number of reasons, and understand full well that they literally have the most to lose in this election; the Messiah, contrary to all his lies on the stump, clearly intends to redistribute wealth, and it sure isn't Republicans that are going to be on the receiving end of the junior senator from Illinois' charity....

Once Hillary was tossed aside like so much garbage, media ignored each and every issue that could possibly undermine Obama's ascendancy while savagely attacking Sarah Palin as well as an Ohio plumber that had the unmitigated audacity to actually ask the Messiah a decent question. Don't even get me started on how the so-called impartial press overlooked every gaffe and misstatement made by Joe Biden while giving the Messiah a pass for going back on his promise to accept public campaign funds instead opting to raise and spend more money on his presidential aspirations than anybody ever believed possible....

Just imagine the kind of press McCain would have gotten if he had refused public financing, and spent the kind of ad dollars Obama has. Americans likely would have been told virtually 24 hours a day, seven days a week that rich Republicans were trying to buy the election. However, because this is the Messiah, such talk was practically verboten.

Without a doubt, the media playing field this campaign season was as un-level as most Americans have probably ever experienced, or, for that matter ever imagined, and if Obama wins, this is going to leave a bad taste in the mouths of Republicans for many years to come....

And therein lies the real tragedy, for November 4, 2008, could have been a shining moment in American history. After all, a black man is running for president, and might actually win. This should have united the country like never before, and come close to ending the racism that has been one of our nation's banes since its inception. However, because Obama used race to get himself to this point, while also pitting folks of differing incomes against each other for his own political benefit, it seems far more likely that tomorrow will divide our country like it hasn't been in over a century ushering back in hatred that will make Martin Luther King Jr. roll over in his grave.

More here

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

Fickle voters and other frights that pollsters dread

An old newspaper photograph haunts the dreams of every US pollster. A grinning Harry Truman, having won the 1948 presidential election despite every prediction, is holding up a copy of the Chicago Tribune. It reads: "Dewey defeats Truman". Could it happen again? Every pollster is predicting a victory for Barack Obama. Might a grinning John McCain be pictured on Wednesday triumphantly holding a pile of incorrect polling data?

There are two things that say that he might. The first is that American pollsters have not yet experienced what happened here in 1992 - when the polls pointed to a Labour victory but John Major won. The conventional wisdom is that 1992 was great for the Tories but terrible for the pollsters. In the long run, the opposite turned out to be true. Victory in 1992 turned to ashes for the Conservatives, whereas the pollsters used the debacle to get themselves sorted out.

Now British polls are properly and carefully weighted, taking account of what is known as the spiral of silence - the tendency of voters for the less fashionable party to keep their intentions to themselves. British pollsters weight their results to allow for these shy voters. US pollsters do not. It isn't unreasonable to believe that there could be a Republican spiral of silence. And that US pollsters are all missing it.

There is some evidence of mistakes among US pollsters. Every poll has a margin of error, to take into account the fact that a limited sample has been consulted. But the website fivethirtyeight.com has shown that during the primaries there was on average a 2.3 per cent pollster-introduced error, caused by poor methodology. This is not the case in Britain.

The second, widely canvassed, reason why the polls could be wrong is known as the Bradley Effect. In 1982 exit polls showed the African American Tom Bradley to be on course for victory as Governor of California. He lost. It is argued that voters had refused to support him because of his race but didn't want to tell a pollster. Could this happen to Obama? The Bradley Effect is talked about as if it were incontrovertible but it is only a theory. One of Bradley's campaign team pointed out recently that the same exit polls that predicted victory for Bradley also projected that the white Democrat Jerry Brown would be elected US Senator. And he lost too. These two question marks over the polls are ones that McCain can cling to as the campaign comes to a conclusion. They are not, however, the only reason to doubt the pollsters.

The other ones suggest that the pollsters may be underestimating, not overestimating, Obama. In an election where only 60 per cent may vote, all pollsters have to weigh their findings to reflect how likely respondents are to cast their ballot. The difficulty is deciding how. Usually pollsters use previous elections to help them to decide who is going to vote. But what if, in this election, different sorts of voters are going to turn out? There is reason to believe that young people and African Americans will turn out for Obama as never before. Some pollsters are adjusting for this, others are not (hence some of the variability in the polls). The result will depend to an extent upon who is right about this.

A second unknown is the use of mobile phones. A segment of the electorate - on the whole younger, poorer people - no longer have land lines. Yet pollsters use random digit dialling of landlines to build their samples. Some say that this undercounts Obama support by 2 or 3 per cent.

Lost in all this detail? Then cling on to this. The polls may vary, the methods differ, the lead goes up and down. But every poll by every pollster still agrees that Obama will win.

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)

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

Stealing the Election: The 1960 and the 2008 Contests Compared

If Obama Can't Win It He'll Steal It, note Floyd and Mary Beth Brown.

Obama's ties to ACORN go back much further than his presidential bid. In 1992, Obama worked as executive director of ACORN's voter-registration segment, Project Vote. Obama, along with two other South-Side Chicago community organizers, led the voter-registration drive that played a part in the election of Carol Moseley Braun to the U.S. Senate.

To tighten the connection, in 1993 Obama joined the civil-rights law firm Davis, Miner, Barnhill & Galland, where he sued the state of Illinois on behalf of ACORN. Then-Governor Jim Edgar argued that the Clinton National Voter Registration Act ("Motor Voter" law) would invite voter fraud, and refused to implement it. Consequently Obama and ACORN sued the state. Edgar was proven right about the "Motor Voter" law. Fund says it has "imposed fraud-friendly rules on the states by requiring drivers' license bureaus to register anyone who applies for a license, to offer mail-in registration with no identification needed, and to forbid government workers to challenge new registrants, while making it difficult to purge" voters who have died or moved away.

Despite all the documented evidence tying Obama to ACORN and the overwhelming stench of impropriety, Barack Obama has the unmitigated gall to deny his connection to this far-left, socialist organization. ACORN is the same group that pressured banking institutions into making the toxic loans that are at the heart of our current financial crisis.

Central to the successful working of our republic is honest elections. If citizens believe that politicians are winning elections by committing fraud, our entire governing consensus will break down. Cynicism and despair are the inevitable outcomes.

Paul Johnson goes into detail about how the 1960 election may well have been stolen and about how Richard Nixon decided, nobly and in spite of the evidence, not to contest the results. (Thank you, John McCain, for not choosing a similar path and being gallant and humble like a latter-day Abraham Lincoln.) Apart from that, Paul Johnson notes that

The gradual but cumulatively almost complete transfer of opinion-forming power from the owners and commercial managers of TV stations to the program-makers and presenters was one of the great new facts of life, unheard of before the 1950s, axiomatic by the end of the 1960s. And it was gradually paralleled by a similar shift in the newspaper world, especially on the great dailies and magazines of the East Coast, where political power, with few exceptions, passed from proprietors and major stockholders to editors and writers.

Owners like Hearst and McCormick (of the Chicago Tribune), Pulitzer and Henry Luce (of Time-Life), who had once decided the political line of their publications in considerable detail, moved out of the picture and their places were taken by the working journalists. Since the latter tended to be overwhelmingly liberal in their views, this was not just a political but a cultural change of considerable importance. Indeed it is likely that nothing did more to cut America loose from its traditional moorings.

The change could be seen in 1960, in the way the East Coast media (the New York Times and Washington Post, Time and Newsweek), handled the contest between Nixon and Kennedy. By all historical standards, Nixon should have been an American media hero. He was a natural candidate for laurels in the grand old tradition of self-help, of pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps. He came from nowhere.

Yet, from start to finish, the media, especially the 'quality' press, distrusted him, consistently denigrated him, and sought to destroy him, indeed in a sense did destroy him. At every crisis in his career - except the last - he had to appeal above the heads of the media to the great mass of the ordinary American people, the 'silent majority' as he called them.

The Hiss case did Nixon even more damage with the media, which, against all evidence, tried to turn this undoubted Soviet agent and perjurer into an American Dreyfus in order to portray Nixon as a McCarthyite witchhunter.

By contrast, the media did everything in its power to build up and sustain the beatific myth of John F. Kennedy, throughout his life and long after his death, until it finally collapsed in ruins under the weight of incontrovertible evidence. The media protected him, suppressed what it knew to be the truth about him, and if necessary lied about him, on a scale which it had never done even for Franklin Roosevelt. And this was all the more surprising because Kennedy had most of the characteristics of an American anti-hero.

The man who got it right at the time was the British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan. He grasped the important point that electing a Kennedy was not so much giving office to an individual as handing over power to a family business, a clan, almost a milieu, with a set of attitudes about how office was to be acquired and used which at no point coincided with the American ethic. Having paid his first visit after Kennedy's election as President, Macmillan was asked on his return what it was like in Kennedy's Washington. 'Oh,' said he, 'it's rather like watching the Borgia brothers take over a respectable North Italian city.'

Source

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

Palin: 'I Haven't Always Just Toed the Line'

The press has brutalized the Alaska governor, playing gotcha with her record, digging through her family life. The liberal intelligentsia has declared her unfit for office, a rube, a right-wing maniac. The conservative intelligentsia has accused her of being a lightweight, of "anti-intellectualism." Polls suggest a significant number of voters believe she is not up for the job.

Yet her supporters idolize her -- all the more because of the criticism. Mrs. Palin has, for millions of Americans, become a symbol of a reformist average Jane, a working mom, ready to take on the Washington they detest. Talking to Missourians before the event, I heard little mention of flashpoint issues like her religious views, or her experience. I was instead repeatedly, and vociferously, informed that a Vice President Palin would "fix that place" and "shape up the GOP." I also heard a lot about how she would accomplish all this because she was a "real" person.

The governor is one of those politicians with the gift of connecting with her audience, a trait that surely has helped with her quick political rise. "I'm so glad you're here!" she said as I walked in to the holding room, with such warmth I wondered if she might actually mean it. As in her staged events, she comes across in person as confident.

The tasks of "fixing" Washington and "shaping up" the GOP are no small things, whether from inside the West Wing, or depending on Tuesday, from some future role as a party leader. And so, after a firm handshake and an introduction to First Dude Todd, I ask the governor if we could forgo the stump speech and talk about her contribution to this ticket, and the future of the party. Why, exactly, are Republicans as a whole struggling so badly? Are the liberal pundits right that modern conservatism has run its course?

"The planks in the Republican platform are good, they are strong. Economically speaking, Republicans support a uniquely American system that rewards hard work and empowers the entrepreneurial spirit that made this country the greatest country on earth. And on the national security front . . . it is about strength through power, it is about diplomacy across this world, allowing America to lead us toward a more peaceful world. On those planks -- economic and national security -- the Republican Party has the right agenda."

The problem, she explains, is a failure to deliver. "We must prove to the American people that we will live out the ideals and the values articulated in that platform." She says that "in too many cases" the GOP has let voters down, in particular on spending and with the abuse of earmarking. She argues the most effective way to revamp the party is from the top, by putting her ticket in the Oval Office, where it will enforce discipline. "We have a track record that proves we can reform government. And ultimately, that will reform the Republican Party."

More here

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

America compared to what?

After the September financial meltdown, many abroad, and some at home, immediately - and with undisguised glee - blamed America's problems on cowboy excess and forecast the end of American global influence. But while those opportunistic critics had a point that reckless Americans had taken on far more debt than they should, the growing global economic downturn may well hurt others far more than the United States.... Why then would America in recession still be in better shape than others?

First, oil prices are crashing. That will soon save us hundreds of billions in imported-fuel expenses - while denying our overextended enemies in Russia, as well as in Iran, Venezuela and others in the OPEC cartel, half of their accustomed cash to cause trouble.

Meanwhile, the U.S. is increasing natural-gas production; is likely to increase drilling offshore; will all but certainly soon build more nuclear power, wind and solar plants; and is sitting on the world's largest coal reserves. A new generation of hybrid, electric and flex-fuel cars are on the horizon that could even shave off more from our imported-fuel bills.

Second, we are already way ahead of the rest of the world in dealing with toxic debt. Western Europe is discovering that its banks lent more against their reserves than did their American counterparts. European real estate was often more inflated than our own. Bankers in Frankfurt, London and Paris are looking at trillions of dollars in uncollectible Euro loans throughout Latin America, Asia and Eastern Europe. Most of our toxic debt was at least owed as mortgages by fellow Americans; far more of Europe's is owed by those outside the European Union.

Even when the United States is reeling from financial panic, foreign investment continues to flow into America; the dollar, meanwhile, is climbing against the Euro. China's export-driven and Russia's energy economies are in crisis. They may have hundreds of billions in dollar reserves, but as the world energy and consumer economies slow, both countries lack our institutions, infrastructure and broad flexibility to easily rebound.

Third, the United States is still growing as the population of Europe shrinks. The populations of Japan and China both age at a faster rate than America's does. Russia faces the perfect storm of a declining, aging and increasingly unhealthy population. The result is that America can much more easily grow itself out of a housing glut.

Fourth, the war in Iraq is no longer even a war in a traditional sense. Four times as many Americans were murdered just in the city of Chicago at peace in July than all those Americans who were killed in Iraq at war in the same period. The cost of deploying American troops in Iraq is nearing the expense to station them elsewhere abroad. As Iraqis continue to take over additional provinces, the American presence will further shrink.

There are also long-term reasons to believe the United States will better weather the current storm. We are a transparent society that blares out problems, affixes blame and then fights publicly over solutions. Japan's real estate meltdown of the 1990s took years to correct, given the emphasis on secrecy and shame within Japanese financial circles.

The United States military remains far stronger - and more battle-hardened - than the rest of the world's armed forces combined. Rogue nations and terrorists try to take advantage of economic uncertainty, but America remains the best-defended democracy in the world.

More here

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)

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

A Leftist lady is appalled at the attacks on Palin:

Like her or loathe her, Palin has captured the hearts, minds and hairdos of millions of Americans and they will vote for her on Tuesday. To them, she is the perfect antidote to the financial meltdown ravaging their country because she has managed to turn her campaign into a reality TV show. And she makes sense to the millions who put Bush junior and senior and Ronald Reagan in the White House.

They don't care about the 170,000 entries you get when you Google "Sarah Palin gaffes". And they don't care that she has become the most mocked bird in American political history. But the longer the mocking goes on, the more I do care. Somehow I can't help being niggled by the fact that if she were a man, the hysteria being whipped up by comedy writers and the commentariat about her shortcomings just wouldn't be happening. Not to this degree, that's for sure. Palin is not the first ill-experienced or ill-equipped person to run for high political office. The big difference is that these people are usually men and they are never - repeat never - subjected to the same scrutiny or reduced to the same kind of personal attacks as women.

The hullaballoo over her $150,000 clothing allowance is a classic example. Has anyone writing this stuff actually been shopping for women's clothes? Do any of them know how much hair and make-up costs? The woman is running for vice-president of the United States. Not secretary of Wasilla hockey club. If I were Sarah Palin I'd have a personal hair and make-up person too. Can you imagine the carry-on if she appeared onstage or on the telly looking as if she'd been caught in a wind-tunnel? Or if she stepped out in something that looked a little too hokey?

Why aren't we similarly learning about the price of Barack Obama's suits? Or what it cost to deck out Michelle and the kids in those colour-toned matching outfits at the nomination acceptance? I'd estimate $25,000 for the four of them on that night alone - minimum. It is plainly absurd, but the stories of Palin's clothing extravagances squeezed her and Cindy McCain back into jeans this week as a counter-blow while Obama spent millions of dollars on a single ad.

And just why has Palin become such juicy fodder for comedians when comment on Obama's race and colour are completely off limits? Clearly it's OK to pillory women but it's not OK to pillory people of colour. Why? I'm not sure. America, after all, has a proud history of burning white women at the stake [Salem] so it's not as though discrimination and recrimination have been exclusive to colour.

It would just be uncool to make fun of black people, so let the woman take the hit. Clearly. I don't like Palin and the thought of her in the White House terrifies me. But playing the woman - once again - as political sport is even less attractive to watch.

More here

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

ACLU Supports Fraudulent Voting in Georgia

A federal appeals court in Georgia is the latest venue where the ACLU is fighting to keep illegal "voters" on the rolls. The requirement to use Social Security and drivers license records to confirm that new registrations are what they claim to be, legitimate voters, comes from a federal law. The effort to keep illegal "voters" on the rolls comes from Democrat officials and their supporters.

The facts for this article, but not the legal conclusions, come from an article in the Augusta Chronicle on 23 October, 2008. The ACLU and the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund are asking a federal Circuit Court in Atlanta to prevent Georgia from removing apparent aliens from its "voter" rolls.

The state has used Social Security and drivers license records to identify 4,538 "voters," 3,821 of them newly registered, as noncitizens. Election officials sent letters to all apparently illegal voters, informing of them of the data mismatches, and giving them an opportunity to clear up the discrepancies.

The lead plaintiff in the case is one former alien who claims to have become an American citizen in November, 2007. However, he did not respond to two letters asking him to confirm his citizenship. The ACLU and the Mexican group claimed that the very sending of such letters are "a form of intimidation."

The article refers to these two organizations in its lead sentence as "voters rights groups." From the evidence of this case, now on appeal, these are "NON-voters rights groups." They are willing to have a close election in Georgia, at the local, state or national level, decided by "voters" who are not citizens, or for other reasons including death or multiple voting, have no right to vote as currently registered.

The same issue of using Social Security and drivers license information to verify the legitimacy of "voter" registrations have arisen in many states, because the use and comparison of such data are required in the Help Americans Vote Act passed by Congress. The opposition to using such data is coming almost entirely from Democrats and their ideological supporters, who apparently believe that the illegal voters they are protecting, will vote for Democrats if given the chance.

Source

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

ELSEWHERE

Pollster John Zogby: "Is McCain making a move? The three-day average holds steady, but McCain outpolled Obama today, 48% to 47%. He is beginning to cut into Obama's lead among independents, is now leading among blue collar voters, has strengthened his lead among investors and among men, and is walloping Obama among NASCAR voters. Joe the Plumber may get his license after all. "Obama's lead among women declined, and it looks like it is occurring because McCain is solidifying the support of conservative women, which is something we saw last time McCain picked up in the polls. If McCain has a good day tomorrow, we will eliminate Obama's good day three days ago, and we could really see some tightening in this rolling average. But for now, hold on."

Ohio corruption runs wild: "A federal judge in Ohio has ruled that counties must allow homeless voters to list park benches and other locations that aren't buildings as their addresses. U.S. District Judge Edmund Sargus also ruled that provisional ballots can't be invalidated because of poll worker errors. Monday's ruling resolved the final two pieces of a settlement between the Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless and Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner. The coalition agreed to drop a constitutional challenge to Ohio's voter identification law until after the Nov. 4 election. In return, Brunner and the coalition agreed on procedures to verify provisional ballots across all Ohio counties. The coalition was concerned that unequal treatment of provisional ballots would disenfranchise some voters"

Socialist Britain has plenty of money for an army of bureaucrats but little for its real army: "The head of Britain's special forces in Afghanistan has resigned, reportedly in disgust at equipment failures that he believes led to the death of four of his troops. Major Sebastian Morley, commander of SAS troops in Afghanistan, accused the Government of "chronic under-investment" in equipment in his resignation letter, The Daily Telegraph reported. He had repeatedly warned that people would be killed if military commanders and government officials continued to allow troops to be transported in the lightly armoured Snatch Land Rover vehicles, it said. Four of his soldiers died in June when their Snatch Land Rover hit a land mine in Helmand province, southern Afghanistan. Maj Morley believes they died needlessly, the newspaper said."

Obama Continues Airing False Ad: "Barack Obama's campaign continues to air a false and inaccurate TV ad that misrepresents the views of The Heritage Foundation. After formally requesting yesterday that the campaign pull its ad touting the candidate's tax plan, neither Heritage nor our attorney have heard from Obama's campaign (although a campaign spokesman issued a wholly unsatisfactory response). Heritage policy analyst Rea Hederman, who never said what Obama attributes to him in the ad, maintains that Obama's campaign is playing fast and loose with the facts in this new video."

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)

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

Axis Of Bias

A major newspaper suppresses damning video of Barack Obama partying with pro-terrorism radicals. Meanwhile, Obama punishes news outlets that do their jobs. Fairness Doctrine anyone?

Los Angeles Times owner Sam Zell must have thought of the Chicago Cubs when he OK'd the layoff of 75 editorial employees this week. Zell owns the lovable loser Cubs, who haven't won the World Series in a century, and the liberal media are turning into the Cubs of modern communications. But news-hungry consumers don't find it lovable when the media elite keep important stories to themselves. John McCain has demanded that the L.A. Times release its videotape of a 2003 farewell party in Chicago at which Obama is said to have grandly toasted guest of honor Rashid Khalidi, the late PLO head Yasser Arafat's spokesman. (Ex-terrorist Bill Ayers may have been there too.)

But the Times apparently doesn't think Americans are entitled to see Obama praising a terrorist mouthpiece before they decide whether to make him president for four years. Similarly, major news outlets buried this week's story of Obama calling for "major redistributive change" in a newly discovered 2001 radio interview.

But if you think we've got an unholy alliance between liberal Democrats in Washington and this country's media elite now, just watch what happens if Obama becomes president with a Democratic Congress - especially if it features a filibuster-proof Senate. Major Democratic congressional leaders like Senate Majority Whip Richard Durbin of Illinois, 2004 presidential nominee Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi want the reinstitution of the outdated, pre-Internet "Fairness Doctrine." They want to counter the news revolution in which blogs and talk radio have taken on the Big Three TV networks.

The Obama campaign claims Obama opposes a new Fairness Doctrine, but City Journal editor Brian C. Anderson doesn't think a President Obama would veto such a bill. Moreover, Obama and most Democrats want to impose more "local accountability" on broadcasters, "setting up community boards to make their demands known when station licenses come up for renewal," as Anderson notes. This measure is "clearly aimed at national syndicators like Clear Channel that offer conservative shows," Anderson says. "It's a Fairness Doctrine by subterfuge." Obama would pair that with relicensing stations every two years instead of the current eight.

We have already seen that Obama's forces have no scruples about punishing media organizations who do not act as disciples of "The One." Newswomen with both WFTV in Orlando, Fla., and the CBS affiliate in Philadelphia dared to ask running mate Joseph Biden about Obama's plans to "spread the wealth," as he infamously told Ohio's Joe the Plumber. The Obama campaign let the journalists know they were now personae non grata.

With both the executive and legislative branches firmly in the power of the most liberal leadership ever - Obama, Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid - it is naive to think they would not move against those who most threaten their prospects in the midterm elections of 2010. And that is Fox News and conservative talk radio, supported by the blogosphere. The establishment media and liberal Democrats constitute an axis of bias, arming to threaten the free speech of Americans. George Orwell, call your office.

Source

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

Mississippi voter rolls stuffed with dead and absent registrants

Mississippi's voter situation is hard to believe. Places like Madison County have over 123% more registered voters than people over the age of 18. Sue Sautermeister, First District Election Commissioner in Madison County, tried to purge the rolls, but ran into trouble when it was discovered it takes a vote of three of the five election commissioners and the purge cannot take place within 90 days of a federal election.

Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann is the first to admit the situation with voter registration in this state is terrible. "It is terrible," he says. "Combined with the fact that we don't have voter ID in Mississippi, anybody can show up at any poll that happens to know the people who have left town or died -- and go vote for them."

"Whenever we have a third party determined by payment, for example, as they did in Benton County -- 'walking-around' money -- and they determine what that vote is going to be, they've taken your vote, whether they may have voted like you would have or not, they've still thwarted the process and they've still have taken your vote away from you," added Hosemann.

Sue Sautermeister is working hard in the First District of Madison County to start a purging of the voter rolls as soon AFTER the election as possible. She has file drawers full of names of people who haven't voted in years and are known to be dead. "We have people who registered in 1965 who have never voted," she says. "We have 486 people (registered who are) over 105."

Hosemann says 190,000 new voters have registered for this election and he believes the turnout will be historic.

Source

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

McCain Owns the Kitchen Table

By Charles Krauthammer

Last week I made the open-and-shut case for John McCain: In a dangerous world entering an era of uncontrolled nuclear proliferation, the choice between the most prepared foreign policy candidate in memory vs. a novice with zero experience and the wobbliest one-world instincts is not a close call. But it's all about economics and kitchen-table issues, we are told. OK. Start with economics.

Neither candidate has particularly deep economic knowledge or finely honed economic instincts. Neither has any clear idea exactly what to do in the current financial meltdown. Hell, neither does anyone else, including the best economic minds in the world, from Henry Paulson to the head of the European Central Bank. Yet they have muddled through with some success.

Both McCain and Barack Obama have assembled fine economic teams that may differ on the details of their plans but have reasonable approaches to managing the crisis. So forget the hype. Neither candidate has an advantage on this issue.

On other domestic issues, McCain is just the kind of moderate conservative that the Washington/media establishment once loved -- the champion of myriad conservative heresies that made him a burr in the side of congressional Republicans and George W. Bush. But now that he is standing in the way of an audacity-of-hope Democratic restoration, erstwhile friends recoil from McCain on the pretense that he has suddenly become right wing.

Self-serving rubbish. McCain is who he always was. Generally speaking, he sees government as a Rooseveltian counterweight (Teddy with a touch of Franklin) to the various malefactors of wealth and power. He wants government to tackle large looming liabilities such as Social Security and Medicare. He wants to free up health insurance by beginning to sever its debilitating connection to employment -- a ruinous accident of history (arising from World War II wage and price controls) that increases the terror of job loss, inhibits labor mobility and saddles American industry with costs that are driving it (see: Detroit) into insolvency. And he supports lower corporate and marginal tax rates to encourage entrepreneurship and job creation. An eclectic, moderate, generally centrist agenda in a guy almost congenitally given to bipartisanship.

Obama, on the other hand, talks less and less about bipartisanship, his calling card during his earlier messianic stage. He does not need to. If he wins, he will have large Democratic majorities in both houses. And unlike 1992, Obama is no Clinton centrist. What will you get?

(1) Card check, meaning the abolition of the secret ballot in the certification of unions in the workplace. Large men will come to your house at night and ask you to sign a card supporting a union. You will sign.

(2) The so-called Fairness Doctrine -- a project of Nancy Pelosi and leading Democratic senators -- a Hugo Chavez-style travesty designed to abolish conservative talk radio.

(3) Judges who go beyond even the constitutional creativity we expect from Democratic appointees. Judges chosen according to Obama's publicly declared criterion: "empathy" for the "poor or African-American or gay or disabled or old" -- in a legal system historically predicated on the idea of justice entirely blind to one's station in life.

(4) An unprecedented expansion of government power. Yes, I know. It has already happened. A conservative government has already partially nationalized the mortgage industry, the insurance industry and nine of the largest U.S. banks.

This is all generally swallowed because everyone understands that the current crisis demands extraordinary measures. The difference is that conservatives are instinctively inclined to make such measures temporary. Whereas an Obama-Pelosi-Reid-Barney Frank administration will find irresistible the temptation to use the tools inherited -- $700 billion of largely uncontrolled spending -- as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to radically remake the American economy and social compact.

This is not socialism. This is not the end of the world. It would, however, be a decidedly leftward move on the order of Lyndon Johnson's Great Society. The alternative is a McCain administration with a moderate conservative presiding over a divided government and generally inclined to resist a European social-democratic model of economic and social regulation featuring, for example, wealth-distributing growth-killing marginal tax rates.

The national security choice in this election is no contest. The domestic policy choice is more equivocal because it is ideological. McCain is the quintessential center-right candidate. Yet the quintessential center-right country is poised to reject him. The hunger for anti-Republican catharsis and the blinding promise of Obamian hope are simply too strong. The reckoning comes in the morning.

Source

For more postings from me, see OBAMA WATCH (2), 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)

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

A small reflection about the relationship between England and Australia

Most Americans feel proud, pleased and blessed to be born in America. And rightly so. Australians and the English feel similarly and for similar reasons. But from the large and constant stream of English immigrants arriving in Australia, one gathers that a lot of the English like some sunshine with their English heritage. And there is more than sunshine to it. I remember a recent arrival in Australia who hailed from Yorkshire saying to me that Australia is "Yorkshire with brass", where "brass" is Northern slang for money. He was oversimplifying but there was a lot of truth in what he said nonetheless. The ties between England and Australia are a lot closer than either side will normally admit. Australians speak derisively of the English (calling them "Poms") and the English speak derisively of Australians (calling them "colonials").

But it remains true that both nationalities feel very much at home in the others' country. And I am probably a rather extreme example of that. When I was growing up in Australia in the 1950s, I grew up into a society that was very Anglophilic. Many Australian-born people still copied their parents' usage and referred to England as "home". And we had a Prime Minister (Sir Robert Menzies) who described himself as "British to his bootstraps". And I remember crying -- aged about 9 -- when it was announced that the King had died. An even stronger influence than all that, however, stemmed from the fact that I was a great book reader from an early age. And most if not all boys' books available were written and published in England for the English. So I grew up in a mental world that was half-English: Which was a very good start on understanding English thinking.

So when I first arrived in England in 1977 I found a few peculiarities but in general had no social difficulties -- which is saying something if you know the intricacies of English social rules. I imagine that I did transgress in various ways from time to time -- but never enough to be a bother. In fact my high level of social acceptance would have been the envy of many Englishmen. I was materially assisted in that by the fact that an educated Australian accent is quite close to RP ("Oxford" English) and accent is enormously important in England. Any Australian accent is in fact closer to RP than are many regional English accents. So I was often told in England that I had a "soft" accent -- meaning that although detectably Australian it was not beyond the pale in in the Home Counties. My conservative politics tend to go down well in the Home Counties too.

An amusing effect of this close but usually denied affinity is the way that some Australian women have constructed for themselves a version of English "society". In England there really is such a thing as "society" -- basically the English aristocracy. The Australian version is of course self-selected rather than genetically selected but they do a moderately good job of imitating the English original. And part of that is that they do a rather good job of imitating the speech of the English original. I remember one example vividly. When I was talking on the phone to Laurie, she sounded to me just like Margaret, who is an English lady I know who really is a born member of the English aristocracy.

So who was Laurie? She was the daughter of my father's accountant. In other words we both grew up in a small Australian country town -- going to school in bare feet in a tropical environment -- an environment beset by such perils as taipan snakes, funnelweb spiders, box jellyfish, finger cherries and crocodiles, rather than the more pleasant English phenomena of crocuses, daffodils, cuckoos and skylarks. From that humble beginning, however, Laurie had acquired all the language, mannerisms and values of the English aristocracy. And I imagine that she did so without ever visiting England.

It reminds me of something that someone wrote (probably Andrew Ian Dodge -- an Anglophilic American) when I first started putting up my "Eye on Britain" blog. He said that this is a blog about England from an outsider's point of view -- but the author really isn't an outsider because he is an Australian. Very insightful.

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

Don't Let the Polls Affect Your Vote: They were wrong in 2000 and 2004

By Karl Rove

There has been an explosion of polls this presidential election. Through yesterday, there have been 728 national polls with head-to-head matchups of the candidates, 215 in October alone. In 2004, there were just 239 matchup polls, with 67 of those in October. At this rate, there may be almost as many national polls in October of 2008 as there were during the entire year in 2004.

Some polls are sponsored by reputable news organizations, others by publicity-eager universities or polling firms on the make. None have the scientific precision we imagine. For example, academics gathered by the American Political Science Association at the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel in Washington on Aug. 31, 2000, to make forecasts declared that Al Gore would be the winner. Their models told them so. Mr. Gore would receive between 53% and 60% of the two-party vote; Gov. George W. Bush would get between just 40% and 47%. Impersonal demographic and economic forces had settled the contest, they said. They were wrong.

Right now, all the polls show Barack Obama ahead of John McCain, but the margins vary widely (in part because some polls use an "expanded" definition of a likely voter, while others use a "traditional" polling model, which assumes turnout will mirror historical trends but with a higher turnout among African-Americans and young voters).

On Monday, there were seven nationwide polls, with the candidates as close as three points in the Investors Business Daily/TIPP poll and as far apart as 10 points in Gallup's "expanded" model. On Tuesday, the Gallup "traditional" model poll had the candidates separated by two points and the Pew poll had them separated by 15. On Wednesday, Battleground, Rasmussen and Gallup "traditional" model polls had the candidates separated by three points while Diageo/Hotline and Gallup "expanded" model polls had the spread at seven points.

Polls can reveal underlying or emerging trends and help campaigns decide where to focus. The danger is that commentators use them to declare a race over before the votes are in. This can demoralize the underdog's supporters, depressing turnout. I know that from experience.

On election night in 2000 Al Hunt -- then a columnist for this newspaper and a commentator on CNN -- was the first TV talking head to erroneously declare that Florida's polls had closed, when those in the Panhandle were open for another hour. Shortly before 8 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, Judy Woodruff said: "A big call to make. CNN announces that we call Florida in the Al Gore column."

Mr. Hunt and Ms. Woodruff were not only wrong. What they did was harmful. We know, for example, that turnout in 2000 compared to 1996 improved more in states whose polls had closed by the time Ms. Woodruff all but declared the contest over. The data suggests that as many as 500,000 people in the Midwest and West didn't bother to vote after the networks indicated Florida cinched the race for Mr. Gore.

I recall, too, the media's screwup in 2004, when exit-polling data leaked in the afternoon. It showed President Bush losing Pennsylvania by 17 points, New Hampshire by 18, behind among white males in Florida, and projected South Carolina and Colorado too close to call. It looked like the GOP would be wiped out. Bob Shrum famously became the first to congratulate Sen. John Kerry by addressing him as "President Kerry." Commentators let the exit polls color their coverage for hours until their certainty was undone by actual vote tallies.

Polls have proliferated this year in part because it is much easier for journalists to devote the limited space in their papers or on TV to the horse-race aspect of the election rather than its substance. And I admit, I've aided and abetted this process.

In the campaign's final week, though, the candidates can offer little new substance, so attention turns to the political landscape, and there's no question Mr. McCain is in a difficult place. The last national poll that showed Mr. McCain ahead came out Sept. 25 and the 232 polls since then have all shown Mr. Obama leading. Only one time in the past 14 presidential elections has a candidate won the popular vote and the Electoral College after trailing in the Gallup Poll the week before the election: Ronald Reagan in 1980.

But the question that matters is the margin. If Mr. McCain is down by 3%, his task is doable, if difficult. If he's down by 9%, his task is essentially impossible. In truth, however, no one knows for sure what kind of polling deficit is insurmountable or even which poll is correct. All of us should act with the proper understanding that nothing is yet decided.

As for me, I've already cast my absentee ballot in Kerr County, Texas -- joyfully, enthusiastically marking the straight Republican column. I would like to have joined the line Tuesday outside the polling place in Ingram, where I've been registered the past few years. But I will be in New York, part of the vast horde analyzing exit polls, dissecting returns, and pontificating on consequences. I'll thoroughly enjoy myself that night, and probably feel guilty the next morning. But this year's 728 national polls and the thousands of state polls made me do it.

Source

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

McCain is Winning --Here is the Proof

Some not unreasonable optimism from Evan Sayet

John McCain has the upper hand in the November 4th election. How can I say that when the polls show Obama leading by anywhere from one (IBD, the most accurate pollster the last time out) to 13 from the folks who brought you Dan Rather and the use of forged documents to try and steal the election just four years ago. A brief look at the methodolgy of these polls -- the degree of over-sampling of Democrats corresponding almost to perfection with the degree of Obama's "lead" in them -- shows a tight race, with McCain actually leading by a point or two. This reality is underscored by events within the campaigns which, when analyzed, show an Obama camp in desperation.

1) The politically savvy Governor of Pennsylvania, Ed Rendell, is clearly panicking. Rendell has publicly begged the Obama campaign to send their star back to the state for no less than THREE major events to "close the deal" on a state that should have been closed for the leftists month ago. And it's no wonder the campaign is panicking, an Obama internal poll was accidentally released to the media and it shows The Anointed One in a statistical dead heat with his American hero opponent. And this was BEFORE John Murtha basically parrotted Obama's San Francisco speech in which The Anointed One candidly spoke of his disdain for the people of Pennsylvania. Murtha may not be as eloquent as The One, but the condescension and disrespect that he has for the people who "cling" to their Christianity and constitutional rights is exactly the same.

Murtha's poll numbers are cratering. I can't imagine that Obama, who shares Murtha's convictions, aren't doing the same. If I were a Republican strategist, I'd be runing an ad every ten minutes with nothing but these Democrats own words and the tag line "If this is what they THINK of you, imagine what they plan to do TO you."

2) Obama has "suspended" campaigning -- something he refused to do to help quell the financial crisis that he sees as working in his favor -- in order to visit his ailing grandmother. Since this is the same grandmother he had cynically thrown under a bus in his wonderfully eloquent speech in defense of his mentor, Jeremiah Wright -- a woman he later described as nothing more than "a typical white woman," it is fair to be cynical about his real purpose in suddenly caring so much about her he would actually visit her (when he barely spent a minute with her just a few weeks ago when he vacationed in Hawaii.) I suspect, more than anything, it was a desperate attempt to get his name out of the news for a few days, to let the stink of his campaign go away, after several disastrous stories made their way into the public consciousness.

Over the past few weeks a narrative of Obama's thuggery was more and more coming to the fore. Despite the leftist media's best efforts to protect him, the actions of his minions in the thugocracy of ACORN, his allies' vicious attacks on a plumber who merely asked a policy question and the close ties of Obama to the terrorist who segued from murdering Americans to brainwashing their children more and more reminded Americans that they really don't know this neophyte, first term, junior senator who somehow managed to rise to the top of Chicago's corrupt political landscape by affiliating himself with the worst of the worst of the worst. A quick trip to visit "granny" and suddenly questioning the "grieving" candidate would be seen as below the belt.

Meanwhile, it's obvious that Obama DIDN'T suspend his campaign but instead used his time in Hawaii to put together what his campaign is calling a "major economic policy" speech. Unless grandma is a Harvard MBA, it's highly unlikely he wrote, edited and rehearsed this speech at the bedside of the woman he "cares" so much about.

3) Candidates who are well on their way to a landslide do not make "major speeches" in which they introduce new policy. Candidates who recognize that there is a deep mistrust of their policies do. Again, despite the best efforts of the leftist media, Obama's deeply held Marxist beliefs have made it into the minds of mainstream America and Obama, without any lead in the polls, feels he must explain away the evidence.

4) If you'll recall, the reason the God of Change chose Joseph Robinette Biden -- a guy who has been sitting in the US Senate since he was about the same age as Britney Spears is today -- was because he would quell the rightful fears of an electorate that recognizes Obama's utter lack of executive or foreign policy experience. Now Joe has shown himself to be, well, to be nice about it, wholly unhinged. From ordering cripples to "stand up" to describing Obama's fiscal policy in "three letters...J-O-B-S, to his belief that FDR was president in 1929 and that Americans all sat around their televisions watching him, Biden's mental health needs to be seriously questioned.

These insanities, however, pale in comparison to Biden's promise that, should Obama somehow manage to win (or steal) the election, there will be an international crisis within six months BROUGHT ON BY OBAMA, not to mention Biden's expounding on the point by saying Obama's policies will appear to be the wrong response but trust us -- the wholly unknown Obama at the helm, the mentally unstable Biden his number two.

Just in case you think the recognition of Biden's mental instability is just my own, consider that even those fun-loving, Republican-hating kids at Saturday Night Live couldn't help but spoof Biden's insanity, titling their opening piece this week "Sen. Biden and Rep. Murtha Say Crazy Things..." What followed was an almost word-for-word re-enactment of Biden's actual speech.

Perhaps worst of all for the leftists is that cracks are beginning to appear in the monolithic and utterly corrupt media coverage. SNL's lampooning of Biden is but one example. Another is an interview that took place this week where Biden was actually asked a tough question or two. Biden, of course, failed miserably which, in turn, brought on the usual response from the Obama camp, the thuggish attempt to destroy, not Joe the Plumber but Barbara West, one of the few reporters Biden has met who doesn't work inside the cocoon of the Beltway or have aspirations to the anchor desk in leftist New York City.

Put together the panic in PA, the sudden "suspension" of the Obama campaign, the need for a major speech on "economic policy," the meltdown of the "experienced" one on the ticket, the gathering evidence of Obama's ties to thugs, criminals and terrorists, the over sampling of Democrats in the polls and more, and you get a clue as to where we really are in this campaign. With ten days or so to go, Obama's making moves of desperation.

Source

For more postings from me, see OBAMA WATCH (2), 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)

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

Group Pride, insecurity and the Left

Strictly speaking, the generalizability of the research below is limited by the sample they used but the conclusions are very ancient and almost certainly true. In ancient Athens, hubris (arrogant pride) was actually considered a crime while megalopsuchia (proper pride; big spiritedness) was a virtue. I follow the report below with a few notes about the wider implications of the research

From screaming baseball fans to political rally-goers, groups that engage in boastful self-aggrandizing may be trying to mask insecurity and low social status. "Our results suggest that hubristic, pompous displays of group pride might actually be a sign of group insecurity as opposed to a sign of strength," said researcher Cynthia Pickett, associate professor of psychology at the University of California, Davis.

The new study reveals how two types of pride are related to a person's good feelings about one social group or another to which they belong. These good feelings could come from being a Los Angeles Lakers fan (when they win), a war veteran, a member of a particular ethnic group or a sorority gal or fraternity brother. But while authentic pride is linked with real confidence in your group, hubristic pride is a false arrogance that belies insecurities about one's group. These results build on past research showing similar pride characteristics in individuals.

"It turns out, people who have the hubristic collective pride in their group, underlying it all is an insecurity about whether the group is good enough, really," said researcher Jessica Tracy, a psychologist at the University of British Columbia. The research was presented last week at a meeting of the Society for Experimental Social Psychology in Sacramento.

In three studies, Pickett, Tracy and their colleagues surveyed more than 300 undergraduate students, first asking each participant to write about an experience when they felt proud of their group. In one of these studies, students had to recall the UC Davis football win over Stanford. In another, Asian American students were asked to write about a proud experience tied with their ethnic background. Other experiences ranged from sports team wins to achievements by sororities, say raising a big chunk of money for a charity.

Each participant then rated to what extent they would use certain words to describe themselves at the time of the event or achievement. Some of the descriptors indicated hubristic pride, such as "snobbish," "pompous" and "smug," while others were linked with authentic pride, such as "accomplished," "successful" and "confident." Students also answered questions about the status of the group, including whether the group was valued by non-members, whether they themselves thought highly of the group, whether the group was under threat or in competition with another group, and other group-related questions.

The results showed that groups in which individuals boasted and gloated - a sign of hubristic pride - tended to have low social status or they were vulnerable to threats from other groups. So the worse the person felt about their group's status as well as how badly they thought the public viewed the group, the more likely that member would experience that empty, boastful pride. In contrast, those groups that expressed pride by humbly focusing on members' efforts and hard work tended to have high social standing in both the public and personal eyes.

Hubristic pride can rear its ugly head in both small groups like sports teams and larger groups like citizens of a country. "A lot of this has real-world implications," Tracy told LiveScience. "There are some kinds of collective pride where people get really angry and hostile and feel like 'it's not just that my group is great but my group is better.'" She added, "You can think of it as the distinction between nationalism and patriotism, with nationalism being the sense of it's not just that I love my country, it's that my country is best."

When group members show signs of hubristic pride, such as making grandiose statements about their country, that could be a sign of underlying insecurity, the researchers said. "When you hear groups starting to get into that type of rhetoric it may be because they're starting to realize they're in a losing position and that they need to do something to try to drum up respect, to drum up the kind of status that they feel they're lacking," Pickett said.

Source

The first thing that needs to be stressed about the above findings -- something the authors themselves imply -- is that not all group loyalty is dysfunctional. Tribalism or group action is very common in the animal world -- from ants to apes -- and it is part of humanity too. Leftists tend to deny that, however. They see any kind of group loyalty -- such as patriotism -- as primitive. And tribalism certainly is a prominent feature of primitive societies. That something is primitive does not mean that it is weak, however. And in fact tribal loyalties of one sort or another still to this day dominate most human societies. In Muslim lands, for instance, there is virtually no loyalty to the nation. All loyalty is to your tribe, to your clan, to your kinship group or to your religion.

As Emmanuel Todd, a French Leftist historian, correctly pointed out, it is the Anglo-Saxons who are deviant. To Southern Europeans, the English family is incomprehensible. It appears pathologically fractionated. Instead of strong family loyalties, the English simply go their own way once they leave home and have almost no further contact with one-another by normal human standards. I saw this in the late '60s when I was doorknocking with a social survey in an ethnically mixed area of Sydney. One of the questions I asked was: "How often do you see relatives?" The Greeks and Italians would usually say: "Every weekend". By contrast, about half the Anglo-Australians said: "Never!".

So if even family ties are so weak among Anglo-Saxons, one can understand that tribal loyalties are very limited -- usually seen only in attachment to particular sporting teams. Sport is a re-enactment of real combat so it is a very primitive thing and draws out primitive reflexes.

But tribalism DOES have some life among Anglo-Saxons outside sport. In particular, Anglo-Saxons do have some attachment to their own nation and ethnic group. They put up surprisingly well with having other ethnic groups living among them but their preference nonetheless is generally for their own ethnic group. See here, for instance. And this tattered remnant of group loyalty is what Leftist routinely stigmatize as "racism".

Ironically, however, it is Leftists themselves who seem to have the strongest group orientation. Contrast the lukewarm support of conservatives for McCain with the hysterical adulation for Obama on the Left. And, from Hegel through Hitler ("Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Fuehrer") to Obama, it is Leftists who glorify unity and seem to regard as ideal an anthill type of existence where everybody obeys implicitly direction from the top. So Leftists are clearly the political fanatics. And the research above does therefore identify them as the most insecure.

And there is reason for that insecurity and its compensatory fanaticism. They know that what they really want is the utter destruction of the "system" in which they live and there is always a great risk that the mask will come off that and expose them for the haters and destroyers that they are.

And that Islamic hypersensitivity about "insults" reflects insecurity is a common observation. They certainly have little to be proud of by way of real recent achievements and their sensitivity to slights shows that they know that a low opinion of them and their hamstrung lifestyle has some justification. By contrast, cartoons ridiculing Christians are routine (usually from the Left) but I have yet to hear of any Christian demands to behead cartoon publishers.

Reference: Todd, E. (1985) The explanation of ideology Oxford: Blackwell

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

Brookes News update

The coming Obama economic nightmare: Obama and his crew must love economic disasters, because that is what his economic policy would be. As for Obama himself. The man is an intellectual sponge. He soaks up these ideas without being able to carry them to their logical conclusion. This severe intellectual deficiency of his is concealed behind a carefully cultivated aura of sublime cerebral confidence. What sensible folk call intellectual posturing. Even his appearances are nothing but studies in theatrics
They are still getting it wrong on the recession: The recession is deepening and our economic commentariat still cannot get it right. Complete cluelessness on the nature of the crisis and what caused it has made virtually all economic commentary on the matter worthless
Obama, Alinsky and the Marxist Left: The Democrat Party has been taken over by the extreme left wing to the extent that earlier Democrats like Harry Truman, John Kennedy and Hubert Humphrey would not recognize it. A perfect storm of socialism has been developed by shrewd people behind the scene, a corrupt leftist media and careful long term planning
Paul Krugman's explanation of the financial crisis is pure baloney: Krugman admits that his forecasting record is not what one might call brilliant. In fact, if he had worked for a stock broker he would have been fired. My point is that accepting as accurate economic predictions from economists who ignore both monetary and real factors is akin to playing Russian roulette with 5 rounds in the chamber
The Joe-the-Plumber vote is bigger than you think: Obama's rich targets are not rich at all. They are high-income earners, many of whom believe that by rich Obama means the likes of Buffett. But the real rich will escape Obama's destructive tax net because it is designed to haul in incomes and not wealth. If Obama were really sincere about taxing the rich he would have proposed a wealth tax instead of taxes on getting wealthy
Obama's campaign built on lies: Journalists have delivered the equivalent of hundreds of millions of dollars in free advertising for Obama with puff piece reporting on his campaign, and far less favorable coverage of the McCain campaign. Not surprisingly, the mainstream media have been unconcerned about Obama's brazen dishonesty
Argentina's Obama policy of spreading the wealth sinks the economy: A massive surge in government spending, socialist redistribution schemes, confiscation of private pension funds and a contempt for the laws of economics sent the Argentinean economy into a downward spiral. These are also Obama's policies. He and his fellow Democrats are also greedily eyeing 401(k)s
The financial crisis and the worst campaign question: Because of those earlier political interventions, there are more malinvestments than ever. The liquidation of these massive malinvestments would be so jarring that all of official Washington is striving to postpone the day of reckoning with government controls and more easy credit from the Fed"
Obama's agenda is so "gay": If elected, Barack Obama - the 'change candidate' - will undoubtedly live up to his name. He will certainly institute sweeping change over the next four to eight years. But consider whether Obama's brand of change is change America can afford

For more postings from me, see OBAMA WATCH (2), 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)

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