Smoke, Fire, BO

The Obama campaign is now smearing, Stanley Kurtz, for having the audacity to investigate BO’s long relationship with the terrorist Bill Ayers.

The key take, from the mind of former federal prosecutor, Andy McCarthy, National Review:

Obama and Bill Ayers had a working relationship.  Yet, Obama claimed Ayers was just “a guy who lives in my neighborhood,” and has otherwise minimized the relationship.  Aside from the fact that Obama is not telling the truth, which itself is important, the details of the relationship are important.

Jim Lindgren, Volokh Conspiracy, wry notes:

Kurtz, unlike Ayers, is denounced in the most vicious and uncivil terms

Apparently in BO’s private universe, it is a greater crime to investigate the Messiah than to blow up public buildings.

John Hinderacker, via Ed Driscoll asks:

[I]f Obama is elected President, will he appoint an Attorney General who will carry out politically-motivated prosecutions like the one he is now demanding?

I wonder if Janet “Butcher of Waco” Reno will want to throw her bonnet in the ring?

Addendum I: (Bit)

Have you guys seen the document dump in this stuff that Michelle’s been keeping?

As to Ed Driscol’s question, is there anyone on earth who doubts that, Ed? I certainly don’t.  Of course, you see, there are a large number of Democrats who see that as a GOOD thing…. Witness; Have there been any objections from prominent Democrats to this latest move to silence the opposition  by governmental intimidation?

I’d also suggest checking out MichielW at Q&O this morning.

Addendum II:  (David L)

Point of clarification, the author of the question is John Hinderacker, Powerline.  Ed Driscoll was quoting and llnking to John.

Point, the BO campaign evidently studied that MSM’s reaction to John Kerry and the Swit Boaters.  They failed to note, some major differences between the Swities and the BO- Ayers connection.  The Swifties made many allegations against Kerry.   In turn, the Kerry campaign managed to raise quetions about one or two or the allegations.   The media in turned treated all the Swift Boat allegation as if they had in refuted.

In contrast, the B)-Ayers ad makes few allegations against Barack Obama, all which appear to be true and none of which the BO campaign has refuted.    The only thing the ad attempts to is raise questions about BO’s judgment, which of course his only claim to be even remotely qualifed to serve as President.

The McCain campaign is sending this one around:

Today, workers at Invesco Field are putting the final touches on the newest wonder of the modern political world — The Temple of Obama (“The Barackopolis”). It is upon this pulpit that Barack Obama will tomorrow night address thousands of screaming, adoring fans.

There may be some confusion among the press about the venue and appropriate dress code for Barack Obama’s big speech. To help out, we wanted to provide the following tips on appropriate attire. The toga may have gone out of style centuries ago, but after Obama’s temple speech tomorrow night, they’re sure to be flying off the racks.

All you’d need is lots of Mustard.
(OK, that one may be a bit out there for people who are not real fans of “Animal House”)
To-Ga! To-Ga! To-Ga! To-Ga! To-Ga! To-Ga! To-Ga! To-Ga! To-Ga! To-Ga! To-Ga! To-Ga! To-Ga! To-Ga! To-Ga! To-Ga! To-Ga! To-Ga! To-Ga! To-Ga! To-Ga! To-Ga! To-Ga! To-Ga! To-Ga! To-Ga! To-Ga! To-Ga! To-Ga! To-Ga! To-Ga! To-Ga! To-Ga! To-Ga! To-Ga! To-Ga! To-Ga! To-Ga! To-Ga! To-Ga! To-Ga! To-Ga! To-Ga! To-Ga! To-Ga! To-Ga! To-Ga! To-Ga! To-Ga! To-Ga! To-Ga! To-Ga! To-Ga! To-Ga! To-Ga! To-Ga! To-Ga! To-Ga! To-Ga! To-Ga! To-Ga! To-Ga! To-Ga! To-Ga! To-Ga!

(By the way, with Obama playing up the Celebrity thing again, isn’t it going to be a little hard for him to keep up the image of being Joe Lunchbox?)

See the video Barack Obama wants to bury:

[wp_youtube]zEeHl0h3NBo[/wp_youtube]

The Obama Campaign has not disputed single word in the video. Yet they want the Department of Justice to investigate both the organization and the individual donors behind the ad.  Michelle has more.

BO answer this question:  At what point in your some twenty year assocication with the terrorist Bill Ayers did you denounce him?  Date please.

• Been thinking about this one most of the day, Billy, and I must say,I can’t say I disagree with any of it. The Dinosaur media is sinking because of one major factor: Their bias. McClatchy is just one more in a series of such. Trust me, I won’t mourn at all. By the way, it looks like the rats are jumping from other ships, too.
• And while I have you, Billy, I’m reminded of all the twisted types on the street corners saying the world is going to end, repent, etc.  I’ve come to understand that this twisted ‘environmentalism’ is just one more religion, with it’s meaning and thereby it’s conclusions twisted by twisted minds.
• Wind Turbines, suppsoedly kill birds and bats. You know, it’s almost like they don’t want us using energy at all. Doesn’t it make anyone wonder why?
• Speaking of which,  Hey, Nancy… You’re currently enjoying a 14% approval rating. Are you sure calling the vast majority of the American voters, even including 70% of members of your own party, who want us to be drilling NOW, idiots, is really the way you want to go?
• How the hell did THIS happen? I wuld think data security at the Space station would need to be tighter than this. Apparently some IT heads need to roll here. Sheesh.
• Apparently, America isn’t alone, in calling Ahmadinejad ‘major threat’… Imams in his own country are now doing so.
• I said I doubt it’ll change minds, that speech of Hillary Clinton’s last night? Looks like I called it.
• Outside the DNC…. well, Boortz looks out his Hotel window and says:
  

  The demonstrators … OMG! You wouldn’t let these dirty, bedraggled bums take your daughter out for lunch, but we’re supposed to listen to their grand ideas on governance?

• McCain, meanwhile is planning a huge, three state rollout for his VP choice… which increasingly is looking like it’ll be Kay Bailey Hutchinson. Seems a reasonable choice, and one sure to look in a number of Clinton supporters.
• Another less than savory link from Obama to a radical Islamist. Jonah speaks to the idea that the left simply doesn’t understand why this stuff is problematic for Obama, and the Chicago Boyz take it from there.
  

  As I have noted before, the real troubling aspect of the Obama-Ayers relationship is that Obama comes from a political subculture in which Ayers is an accepted and unremarkable individual. Looking at Ayers, one is forced to ask exactly what kind of leftist extremism would be considered unacceptable by Obama and his cohorts.

  Exactly so. I have to wonder for example, if Ayers had blown up, say IRS offices, instead of the Penetgon, would the Democrats be quite so accepting of Obama’s relationship with him? Would that threshold be crossed?  I have to tell you… If such a threshold exists, there is no evidence of it. But… good lord… don’t question their patriotism.

• While I agree that John McCain shouldn’t be pulling a John Kerry, by changing his middle name to ‘served in Vietnam’, (I’ve said so in these spaces several times in the past two years)  I wonder a bit at the over-sensitivity displayed by some o the left about this issue… particularly those who didn’t seem to think it was a problem back in ’04. Can it be that they understand that McCain’s refferences to his service are more convincing to the American people than Kerry’s were? And perhaps that difference in perception is affected by the ideas n the story above?
• I started working at this office I’m at a few months ago. I noticed what was obviously a new Hyudai that was a regular in the parking lot, here. I’ve never been much on Oriental cars, but I had to admit this one looked pretty good. Paint was all right, styling cues were all there… just seemed a nice car to drive.  In the time since then, I’ve begun to notice increasing numbers of dents, scratches a broken tail light lens, and just plain abuse on this poor thing. In only a few short months, it looks like hell. It’s sad to see, really.It’s at that point I started looking around at other, similarly priced cars. They too, to a larger degree than their more expensive counterparts, regardless of their country of origin, are not well-maintained, and look like they’ve been through a life of abuse.  Now, in fairness, it must be said that Hyundai, initially had quality control issues that would have crippled most car companies. Issues, as I gather it, they’ve solved for the most part; their product today is quite respectable. But, as if to prove build quality is not the point here, I don’t tend to see that among larger American cars, with larger price tags, and about whom there’ve been quality complaints for decades. American cars, Oriental cars, or German, Swedish, or whatever. It’s not the upper levels, or even the medium levels. Just the lower priced ones.I wonder a bit at what that tells us about the Human condition… things that cost us less dearly, we’re more likely to take for granted and treat it like it was a pile of crap, even though it’s really not.I wonder what lessons that holds for this election. Obama, for example, and his approach to Democrat voters, particularly Hillary Clinton supporters. Those voters he gets form the Clinton camp, he’s going to get fairly cheaply. Low cost. Similarly, John McCain, whose conservative bone fides are at least questionable, will get a whole pile of true conservative voters who, he figures will see him as the better alternative to Obama… or Clinton… and that’s certainly a fair assumption; he is a better choice.Yet, cars have a tendency to break down… even the well made ones, after a certain level of abuse, and they become less reliable. Similarly, voters have a tendency to rebel, their loyalty and dependability breaks down. One wonders if Obama and McCain are both wise enough to avoid that threshold? There’s some evdience that Obama has already gone over that line, and to a lesser degree, so has McCain.

By way of James Joyner, this morning, I note Kevin Drum trying to spin his way through the truth:

Bush expansion is over, and Brad DeLong describes it as “the first business cycle during which median household income in America falls from peak to peak.” And indeed it is. The closest we’ve come to such a dismal recovery in the postwar era was the dreaded stagflation-driven economic expansion of Jimmy Carter’s presidency.

(Shake of the head) Let’s break this down, shall we?

How much of the difference is due to external sources, such as oil manipulation, or the 9/11 attacks?

Carter faced the oil thing, true, and I’ll remind you the result was 21% inflation, and high unemployment, despite having a Rubber stamp Democrat run congress.

Bush faced the 9/11 attack, (And the resulting military commitments) the oil manipulation and a less than friendly Congress and came up with what is currently around 6.5% unemployment… a figure that most of the world would LOVE to have…(including the Europeans we’re supposed to be emulating) and inflation of around 5.5%, or around one quater of what Carter produced, when Carter started in a far better position than Bush did.

If we’re going to, as Drum proposes, compare presidential performance between Bush and Carter, let’s tell the whole story, shall we?  I can understand why Drum didn’t bring all this up; After all, it’s a little hard to sell this nonsense…

And yet, somehow we’re still supposed to believe that Republicans know how to manage economic growth? Can someone please explain this to me?

…when you consider these additional factors I’ve mentioned… and Drum did not.

Will someone please explain to me why so many find Drum so impressive? If this is an example of the best Drum can produce, I do NOT understand.

(And I’m not even going to attempt Delong, just now… there’s only so much illogic I can take from liberals in one day)

 Added datapoint from McQ quoting the Census report out today:

*Income. Median household income rose to $50,233 in 2007 after adjusting for inflation. That’s $665 more than a year earlier but still below the peak of 1999. Income in black households rose for the first time since 1999

* Poverty. The poverty rate remained stable at 12.5% of households.

*Equality. The top one-fifth of households took home slightly less of the nation’s income in 2007. The middle and lower-middle class gained the most.

* Insurance. The number of people without health insurance dropped 1.3 million to 45.7 million. The uninsured fell to 15.3% from 15.8%. The primary reason for decline: More people, especially children, are covered by government-sponsored insurance.

*sigh*

How in the world can a party preach gloom and doom when stats like that are published right in the middle of their pitch?

Well, yes… and note that Drum ignored all of this. Gee… I wonder why, huh?

If you want the honest truth, I never figured this to go down any other way.

HIllary Clinton last night at the DNC

Hillary Clinton gets up and makes her speech last night, introduces herself as a ‘proud Obama Supporter’. She makes a plea for unity.  And her supporters aren’t buying.

The speech, after all, was as Ben Smith says, a study of low expectations.

Clinton did little to sell Obama’s personal characteristics, his qualities or ability as commander in chief. She mentioned Obama 12 times, McCain 12 times.

But Clinton’s speech probably did what it had to, closing out ambiguity and putting Obama in a position to close the deal on Thursday.

The question is, what her supporters are going to do. Will these platitudes be enough to get them back down on their pledge to vote McCain come November 4th?  That remains to be seen.  I note James Joyner saying:

But, seriously, it’s simply bizarre to contemplate that all that many Clinton supporters are going to vote for McCain in a huff.  The amount of public policy light between the two Democratic contenders was miniscule, whereas McCain is a rock solid Republican on all but a handful of issues.  One can’t imagine, for example, partisans of Mitt Romney or Mike Huckabee flocking to Obama in a huff.

Thing is, as he also says:

I must confess, that I thought the healing would have taken place by now.  At times, it does seem like Team Obama has gone out of its way to poke Hillary supporters in the eye, as with the hiring of Patty Solis Doyle or by not even pretending that Hillary Clinton had any shot whatsoever to get the VP nod.

Fellow BitsBlogger, YetAnotherJohn says to James:

A lot of those Hillary voters were persuaded by Hillary pointing out the emperor had nice clothes but little experience. And he hasn’t gained any substantive experience since then. So if a voter is not blinded by party affiliation, really cares about the countries leadership, then why should they vote for an inexperienced pretty suit?

They were cheering when Hillary pointed this out during the primary so why should they be cheering Obama now?

Quite correct. I think James under-estimates the situation with Clinton supporters. Remember, as with Hillary herself, self-centeredness is the key to the whole deal. They’re going to need to be convinced that the party unity thing is going to benefit them in some way. We’ll have to keep an eye on the polling over the next week or so, but my guess is that if they were not so convinced before last night, last night isn’t going to tip that scale, either.

So I wrote about the Biden pick by Obama and opined that it was so poorly done in execution and substance that any bounce would be gone by Sunday. When Sunday arrived, the first post-Biden pick poll confirmed my suspicion. Today, we got another nail in the coffin. Bithead has already remarked on the poll, but I want to go into a bit more depth.

The Gallup tracking poll takes a daily poll of 1000+ likely voters and then combines them every day for a three day running total. So they take the latest day, throw out the oldest day and re-average every day. Starting with the Monday before the announcement, the tracking poll numbers look like this:

Obama 45 45 45 45 46 45 45 44
McCain 44 43 44 44 44 45 45 46

So the Friday before the pick, Obama was ahead 46 to 44, the first day of the pick, Saturday, the poll goes back to tied. The second day, it remains tied. The third day, Monday, McCain takes the lead. Now given that the three days before the announcement, Obama was tied or had a lead. This means to go back to tied, he had to have a “bad Saturday” to move the two point poll advantage from Friday. Further, once we got the Friday numbers out of the three day track, we get to see McCain take a two point lead.

Recognize that the polls have been showing Obama and McCain statistically tied for the last week and a half. So it is to early to tell if this is just statistical wobble or a harbinger of meaning something. Plus, it would be a polling anomaly for the democratic convention to have no bounce, no matter how small or how short lived. So we would expect the polls to come back down as the convention gets factored in. But this snapshot indicates that isolating the Biden pick, it certainly didn’t help (assuming the change is just statistical wobble) and it may have hurt. If McCain maintains or widens his lead over the next several days, despite the convention, then we will know that Obama’s pick was only to be matched by the McGovern-Eagleton selection. And given that Obama has a lot of McGovern’s far left tendencies, it may be something in the far left mindset that selectes VP’s who turn out to be a drag on the ticket.

• YetAnotherJohn gets a first place, and I get an Honorable Mention at OTB’s Caption Contest. It must be said, John has a nice touch for that kind of thing.
• I’ve noted a shift in the readership of BitsBlog the last few days… more of you are coming in the front door on your own, and not being referred to us by some other site. While I genuinely apprecieate what links we get, I’m always encouraged by people coming here on their own… as a first stop, if you will… and we’re getting a lot of that kind of traffic of late…. about half of you, it looks like. Other bloggers referring to us is great, but people thinking fo us and coming here on their own is a far higher compliment, I think… and I don’t take lightly.
• Yes, I do have some thoughts on Ted Kennedy’s appearance. Most of them derogatory, and so I won’t go into them at this statge of the game.
• Say what you will about Bill O’Reilly… I’ll tend to agree with you. But one of his producers is making a name for himself… going out and trying in interviews with them, to define what ‘change’ is, in THEIR context. One gets two distinct impressions. First they don’t know, and secondly they’re going to be seriously disappointed.
• Apparently, that assasination plot, wasn’t… and never was. I can’t help but think that particular story will help the Obama campaign, by among other things casting him a a sympathetic character. Certainly, the left-o-sphere has been playing this up for all they’re worth.  Amazing, since to most people I can’t think of much else that would cast him so.
• Ever try to get rid of tires and wheels from three cars ago? Don’t. The morons have latched onto this aspct of life.
• Ed Morressey notes the 3am ad came back to haunt the Democrats. James thnks it’s the best they’ve done yet, and I have to agree. Very effective ad.
• This Ayers thing isn’t going away. Every time Obama tries to answer some of the points about it, he brings up more questions. And the move to get the DOJ to shut down the ads connecting Obama to Ayers is fairly typical of someone with skeletons they don’t want revealed. Getting the government to shut down opposition to liberals. Gee… wasn’t that the idea of the ‘fairness’ doctrine? Barone has a great bit on all of this. So does Michelle. Actually she’s got another one, too.
• Oh… speaking of which… What’s this I hear about “Kill Michelle Malkin”?  And Levetating the Denver Mint? Did Obama know about this? After all, isn’t that what a 60’s radical would try?  Now, look at Memeorandum. Can you explan to me why, why these whack jobs as Michelle mentions, are so staunchly defended by the Left-o-sphere?
• Good God… John Kerry could be the next Foreign Relations committee chair. If that’s not a disaster, I don’t know what is.
• Been doing some digging on Obama and Acorn. A little dated, this one, but great background. Read.
• McQ offers some wisdom.
• So Nancy Pelosi is telling the Hillary Clinton supporters to avoid ‘victim politics’?  Isn’t victim politics exactly how Obama got nominated? Victim politics has driven the Democrat agendae for decades now. I don’t figure the seperation will be a success.
• Another example of Democrats eating their young: John Edwards last night.
• Hey, Democrats; Did any of you notice the Denver Archbishop’s statements about Joe Biden and Abortion? Personally, I’m waiting for him to try and get communion in Denver, myself.
• I note with interest it’s supposed to be a very cold winter.  First, so much for ‘global warming’. Secondly, what’s the situation with fuel going to be? Does anyone think the priorities aren’t going to change over this?
• And as if on cue, we caught 45 degree temps last night around here.
• So much for rewarding ability.
• Did you see this bit on Lou Dobbs Sunday night? Amazing how when you’re talking about liberals, stating the obvious can be newsworthy.
• A shout out to the Mortman… Yeah, Mort, well, only a Democrat pol would think that station in Wilmington is more impressive because government is involved. You’re along the most heavily traveled rail corridor in the country… how good does the place have to be to see lots of people using it? And does anyone forsee the station in Newark DE being used regularly again?

I remarked the other night about how Biden didn’t provide any lift at all for Obama’s polling numbers, and how if we were talking about a republican getting an equally tepid response, we’d be hearing about a ‘dead cat bounce’.

I was pounced on in the emails almost at once by people claiming that I’d not given the thing enough time… give it a few days, and we’d see a reaction.

I did wait

It didn’t react, according to Gallup this morning.

That’s a dead feline you’ve got there, fellas.

The BO campaign is in panic mode:   Here is a link the American Issue Project ad.   A link to the BO campaign response.

Here the text of the core of BO’s response:

Obama: I’m Barack Obama, and I approved this message.

Announcer: With all our problems, why is John McCain talking about the sixties? Trying to link Barack Obama to radical Bill Ayers. McCain knows Obama denounced Ayers’ crimes, committed when Obama was just eight years old. Let’s talk about standing up for America today. John McCain wants to spend $10 billion a month in Iraq

Jim Geraghty, National Review, mines these four nuggets for just one paragraph of BO’s response:

1. It’s good to see the Obama campaign conceding that Ayers is “a radical” who committed crimes, not just “a professor who lives in Barack’s neighborhood.”

2. Why is McCain talking about the sixties? He isn’t. He’s talking about Obama’s relationship with Ayers over the past two decades or so, and Obama’s comfort working closely with a man who built bombs to kill American soldiers and cops.

3. The crimes were committed when Obama was eight. Well, Eric Rudolph committed his crimes quite a few years back. Does he get cut some slack?

4. I am sure the McCain campaign thanks their rival for running an ad in Ohio that depicts Ayers, calls him a radical, mentions his crimes. This will make it a much bigger story

BO’s only claim to be qualied to be President is his vaunted judgement.   BO’s long association with an unrepreented terrorist impugns BO’s judgement. 

BO now claims to have denounced Ayers.  When?  BO has been associated with Ayers since 1987.   So at what point in BO’s twenty year association with Ayers did BO denounce him?   The answer has to be damning.   

If BO now describes Ayers as a radicial criminal, why did when speaking to George Stephanopoulos, did BO describe Ayers merely as his neighbor?   At the time of the interview was BO not yet aware of Ayers’ criminal record and not yet denounced him?

For far more go to Memerandum..

For  a chuckle, Ed Driscoll  gives us some de ja pew:

John Kerry wants to be president because he is John Kerry, and John Kerry is supposed to be president. Hence his campaign’s flummoxed and tone-deaf response to the swift boat vets. Ban the books, sue the stations, retreat, attack. Underneath it all you can sense the confusion. How dare they attack Kerry? He’s supposed to be president. It’s almost treason in advance. . . . Inconsistencies are irrelevant, because he’s consistently John Kerry. And he’s supposed to be president.

In my lifetime, the only candidates the democrats have bave able to elect as President have been southerns, and since Lyndon Johnson, only southern governors.    So why the ‘rats so intent on running northern liberals for President?

I spent most of last night watching the convention.  Between all ego tripping, the pure nonsense, and the political positioning going on, there wasn’t really much to report. Trust me, the only way that anyone should be forced into watching the goings-on in Denver, is when they have several beers in them.

( ….the sacrifices I make for BitsBlog readers!!!)

However, in going over last night in my aching head, this morning, the one thing that keeps popping up, and the one thing that is threatening to become a major story out of all of this, is the story of Hillary Clinton and her not being on the ticket.

Wouldn’t you just know, that this would be all about the Clintons, eventually?  That’s all I heard about last night.  The polls showing that there is a good amount of anger among Hillary Clinton’s supporters, even amongst those who have said that they will bite the bullet and support Obama… and the running joke of the Day is that the whole thing is Hillary Clinton’s fault for failing to say forcefully that she was not in fact treated badly byBarack Obama. I think in the end, we both know better; she certainly thinks she had treated badly, and more certainly her supporters think so.  So much for the illusion of a united Democratic Party.

And who can blame the press for this?  I’ve talked about it here, for several weeks now.  Frankly it was the only thing that was even remotely interesting in the Democratic ticket, even the veep stakes, had Obama actually picked someone worthwhile, can’t hold a candle to the heat this thing with Clinton is generating.

See, that’s the trouble with conventions the way they have developed over the last 20 to 25 years or so; there is really no news to report.  No surprises in the script.  News people are going to concentrate on every situation where somebody goes outside the pre-scripted parameters of the convention, these days.  They hit the prayer mats every night praying fervently for such events to occur so they’ll have something to talk about… It’s only natural. Put a massive news people in one room the size of any convention center in any city in the country, and their natural instincts are going to take over.  They’re going to find the story, particularly if it doesn’t happen to match the script that they’re being fed.  It is akin to seeing a large aquarium filled with fish fighting over one piece of food that’s been tossed in.  The usual phrase describing this phenomena is “feeding frenzy’, and that’s a pretty accurate description for what I’m .seeing this morning.

Every little clue about the Clinton thing was examined in detail.  For example word on the floor was that Clinton advisers would not be attending Obama’s speech to the convention.    Hillary’s speech.  Bill’s speech.  Chelsea’s speech. I suppose that absent giving the Clinton’s actual power, it could be said thatObama couldn’t have been more accomidating. But of course, that’s exactly what Clinton and her supporters want; power.

Apparently, time also wanders into the picture.  When you have hours and hours of wall-to-wall coverage to fill, you have plenty of time for the Ann Lewis types of the world to drool into your microphones for however long they can keep breathing. Nice job, CNN.

Mind you, that’s not a matter of press bias, that’s simply a matter of the press is nature taking over.  Alas, that that kind of hunger for new stories doesn’t seem to work very well when the subject is Barack Obama, himself.  so potent is the nature of the Hillary Clinton’s story that it even overrode the “dead cat” bounce that Obama got out of Biden’s selection as fodder for discussion. either that, or the press would just as soon not discuss that particular gem, just yet.

However that is, the upshot of all of this, is that the Democrats have succeeded in losing their direction in this thing, on the very first night. They’ve lost all control of the message is getting out to the American people. This cannot be good news for Obama’s presidential hopes.

By the way, it should be said that the stock market took a tumble yesterday. Perhaps they were listening to the rhetoric coming out of Denver?

I’m sure the Democrats won’t say so, but by any objective measure, there is no other conclusion to draw but that last night was a disaster for the Democrats. if I’m John McCain, I’m smiling this morning.

• Been spending a great deal of time over the weekend, detailing my Rainier. I’m been jokingly talking about this black truck as my new exersize program, but really only half joking… it’s a lot of physical work… more than I envisioned. And that’s a good thing; I could use the weight loss. Too bad it rained Sunday night.
• Also been spending a lot of time the last few days in maintaining the MP3 collection. Updating the database, for one thing. Since I got the MP3 player, I’ve come to understand that’s far more important than it was when I was simply running it through Winamp at CasaDeBit.  It turns out that Winamp itself is the best way to deal with a lot of the problems involved in keeping the database up[ to snuff. It’s amazing to me how many files over the years end up being mislabeled. The sheer size of the collection here makes things a bit of an issue.
• I’ve been toying with the idea of adding a ‘today in history” to these nightly excursions into mediocrity. Always nice to see where we’ve been today, five years ago, for example. The blog’s already got a ‘today in history’ thingie in the pages, of course, but I mean what got blogged here x years back.  Let you know if I get that working.
• Playing with the sidebars a bit. Getting things to resolve a little faster. It’s amazing how the small stuff makes such a difference.
• The fallout continues on Obama’s choice of Joe Biden. If there was a bit of buyer’s remorse before, there’s nothing in the choice of Biden to slow it down. According to the AP, Biden got the call to be Obama’s coice while he was getting a  root canal. How’d you liked to have listened in on THAT call? Must have been the smartest sounding Biden’s been in a deacde. Biden apparently figured being Obama’s VP choice would be somewhat less painful.
• But as to the buy’er’s remorse… the kind of dealings Biden’s family has going make the Clintons look like wind-driven snow… The WaPo says:
  

  A son and a brother of Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.) are accused in two lawsuits of defrauding a former business partner and an investor of millions of dollars in a hedge fund deal that went sour, court records show.

  I said the other night that the Republicans were hitting the prayer mat every night hoping Obama chose Biden. This, (along with the Biden quotes we’ve posted here in Video form) are but a taste of why.

• From Denver. These idiots win the Orwell award. (BBCT: Glenn who has more)
•  CNN:
  

  Sixty-six percent of Clinton supporters, registered Democrats who want Clinton as the nominee, are now backing Obama. That’s down from 75 percent in the end of June. Twenty-seven percent of them now say they’ll support McCain, up from 16 percent in late June.

  It seems clear that Obama’s biggest task is going to diverting attantion away from this rift in the Democrat party. Obama’s biggest wedge, it seems to me is labeling McCain as a Riech-Wing Bush Synchopant. Watch for a lot of this in the rethoric from the stage starting tonight.

•  Obama’s second biggest job will be to ignore questions about his relationship with ACORN. This stuff is dirty, folks.
• Weekend after next. That’s the next date for camping in CasadeBit, mobile version. We avoid Labor Day weekend, calling it ‘Amateur Weekend”. Labor day and July 4th are the two worst weekends to go camping on. Spots are limited, particularly at the state parks, and the campers are unusually hard to live next door to. Lots of rented RV’s, and tent campers who obviously are ill-equipped for it. The weekend after, not so much. Haven’t decided where we’re going, just yet. Something along Ontario, or the St Lawrence would work. We’ll also be looking at Columbus day weekend, for the last run of the season. Looks like we’ll be doing Lake Erie State Park that weekend, as we often do.   It’s chilly, usually, but it’s stilla  blast… and you have the campground mostly to yourself.

A few ascute commentators have noticed something rather strange about this official BO poster. Thomas Lifson, American Thinker, and Doug Ross, Journal.   Even Richard  Nixon had the common courtesty to treat Spiro Agnew in public as an equal.   Joe Biden could do four years without ever having to leave his home state of Delaware.

Barack Obama is a man of modest intellect, limited achievement, much failure, but an virtually unlimited ego.  Lord knows why.

Point to ponder, the last person person to seek the presidency at BO’s age, albeit with a bit more experience, was John F. Kennedy.  Like Obama, Kennedy hid his medical records.  Kennedy could not afford to wait is turn to be President.  He was a dying man.   Is there a Kennedy like reason for BO’s urgent quest for always yet higher office?   Is Joe Biden doing what Harry Truman did in Forty-Six?  Running for office with a virtual dead man.  Tune back in say six month for a possible answer.

The New York Times, in a little noticed article on Natural Gas:

American natural gas production is rising at a clip not seen in half a century, pushing down prices of the fuel and reversing conventional wisdom that domestic gas fields were in irreversible decline.

That describes the whole deal, with only one period used. Amazing, ain’t it?

Almost like they’ve known all along.

Alex Knapp, who has been sceraming about Electronic voting systems all along, apparently sees some vindication on the idea that the systems themselves are problematic.

Voting Machine manufacturer Diebold admitted earlier this week that there is an error in its voting machines that could potentially lead to dropped votes.

A voting system used in 34 states contains a critical programming error that can cause votes to be dropped while being electronically transferred from memory cards to a central tallying point, the manufacturer acknowledges. 

The problem was identified after complaints from Ohio elections officials following the March primary there, but the logic error that is the root of the problem has been part of the software for 10 years, said Chris Riggall, a spokesman for Premier Election Solutions, formerly known as Diebold.

The flawed software is on both touch screen and optical scan voting machines made by Premier and the problem with vote counts is most likely to affect larger jurisdictions that feed many memory cards to a central counting database rapidly.

Riggall said he was “confident” that elections officials through the years would have realized votes had been dropped when they crosschecked their tallies to certify final elections results and would have reloaded cards so as not to lose votes. Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner has said no Ohio votes were lost because the nine Ohio counties that found the problem caught it before primary results were finalized.

Well,Not so fast, here. Let’s examine this for a moment:
First:

Riggall said he was “confident” that elections officials through the years would have realized votes had been dropped when they crosschecked their tallies to certify final elections results and would have reloaded cards so as not to lose votes.

In other words the reason the errors were not found until now and teh reason Diebold didn’t know about the bug until now, was because the people responsible for cross checking the votes, didn’t.

And who were the people responsible for cross checking this stuff? Well, again, we look at the article:

The flawed software is on both touch screen and optical scan voting machines made by Premier and the problem with vote counts is most likely to affect larger jurisdictions that feed many memory cards to a central counting database rapidly.

Bold is mine, to make the point; Who is it, that overwhelimingly runs the voting process in “larger jurisdictions”? Democrats.

Now, the implication is to move to paper and pencil. Only one problem with that.  It was a system pretty well nigh on that that caused Florida 2000. And may I remind us all again, who it is that ran that mess? Again, Democrats.

Gee… almost like there’s a pattern, here.