Housegate… Not Quite As Billed.

So now, we see Barack Obama trying to make something out of the number of houses McCain does or does not own, and because he didn’t know the exact answer…(Seven, by the way, including investment property) this is supposed to suggest he’s out of touch.

Heh. The WaPo reports:

We’re delighted to have a real estate debate with Barack Obama,” said spokesman Brian Rogers, adding that the press should focus on Obama’s house. “It’s a frickin’ mansion. He doesn’t tell people that. You have a mansion you bought in a shady deal with a convicted felon.”

Well about that…

Obama Paid $300,000 Less Than The Asking Price For His Mansion, While Tony Rezko’s Wife Paid Full Price For A Vacant Lot Next Door On The Very Same Day. “Two years ago, Obama bought a mansion on the South Side, in the Kenwood neighborhood, from a doctor. On the same day, [Antoin ‘Tony’] Rezko’s wife, Rita Rezko, bought the vacant lot next door from the same seller. The doctor had listed the properties for sale together. He sold the house to Obama for $300,000 below the asking price. The doctor got his asking price on the lot from Rezko’s wife.” (Tim Novak, “Obama And His Rezko Ties,” Chicago Sun-Times, 4/23/07)

— The Seller Of Obama’s Home “Wanted To Sell Both Properties At The Same Time.” “On the same day Obama closed on his house, Rezko’s wife bought the adjacent empty lot, meeting the condition of the seller who wanted to sell both properties at the same time.” (Brian Ross and Rhonda Schwartz, “The Rezko Connection,” ABC News’ “The Blotter” Blog, abcnews.go.com, 1/10/08)

Obama Later Purchased A Portion Of Rezko’s Land For $104,500; It Was Valued At $40,500. “Later, the Obamas bought a 10-foot-by-150-foot piece of the lot for $104,500. An appraisal put the value of the strip at $40,500, a spokesman said, but Obama considered it fair to pay one-sixth of the original price for one-sixth of the lot.” (Peter Slevin, “Obama Says He Regrets Land Deal With Fundraiser,” The Washington Post, 12/17/06)

Rezko Was Convicted Of Wire And Mail Fraud, Money Laundering, And Aiding And Abetting Bribery. “A federal jury today convicted developer Antoin ‘Tony’ Rezko of corruption charges for trading on his clout as a top adviser and fundraiser to Gov. Rod Blagojevich. Rezko’s guilty verdict on 16 of 24 corruption counts could have broad repercussions for Blagojevich, who made Rezko a central player in his kitchen cabinet. It could also prove a political liability for U.S. Sen. Barack Obama, who once counted Rezko as a friend and fundraiser, as the likely Democratic presidential nominee heads into the general election campaign against Republican John McCain. … The jury convicted Rezko of wire and mail fraud, money laundering and aiding and abetting bribery. He was acquitted of attempted extortion.” (Bob Secter and Jeff Coen, “Rezko Convicted Of Corruption,” Chicago Tribune, 6/4/08)

SO, here’s what this comes down to, Gang:

“Does a guy who made more than $4 million last year, just got back from vacation on a private beach in Hawaii and bought his own million-dollar mansion with the help of a convicted felon really want to get into a debate about houses? Does a guy who worries about the price of arugula and thinks regular people ‘cling’ to guns and religion in the face of economic hardship really want to have a debate about who’s in touch with regular Americans?”

Once again, we see Obama bringing a knife to a gunfight. However we see quite a bit more than this, even:

1: We see Obama is exactly what we have been saying about him all along… we see Obama reinforcing the image he has spent the majority of this primary fighting.. that he is anti-capitalist, anti-private property, in short, socialist.

2: We see that he and his staff are extraordinarily inexperienced to the point of being amateurish. The US is going to be in for a world of hurt, with this guy and the people that hang around him in the White House, if this is an example of their best work.

3:We see also a note of desperation appearing in Obama’s discourse. We must assume that Obama and his staff are somewhat more talented than this lamebrain set of comments seems to suggest.  That being the case, the only conclusion that can be drawn is that Obama knows now that he is in serious doo-doo.

He’s just not sure WHY, yet.

• Yes, I’d seen the reports of the death of Stephanie Tubbs-Jones. I had nothing of any value to add to it, so I didn’t mention it. Of course now I’m taking Feedback claiming this lack of response to this death, shows how racist I am.  Is there something in Lake Erie that causes this kind of thing when it gets into the Cleveland city water supply?  There’s only one way that level of idiocy walks the earth… it comes naturally. Anyone with a conscious mind couldn’t possibly display that level of idiocy that well or that frequently.  Let’s be clear about this, because I don’t want any of this showing up in my mailbox again. I’m sorry she died, I’m sure the activists in NE Ohio considered her a leader. Within that framework, what I saw of her, she seemed a nice enough person in terms of social interaction. I disgareed with her polictics because as you might imagine I wonder by what right she took other people’s money to feed her social(ist) agenade. Theft, after all,  isn’t very nice at all. But I certainly didn’t wish a sudden death upon her, and I don’t care what color she is. That’s simply not me. Those of you in my mailbox last night on the other hand, may rate an exception to that rule. I can’t help but wonder what Tubbs Jones would have thought about the sludge I scraped out of my inbasket last night, ostensibly in her name. Are we clear on this? Good. Back to it, then.
• You will recall Billy and I had a little back and forth over the idea of Hillary Clinton putting some kind of coup together. Billy pretty much insists on it, I say I’ve not ruled it out, and now along comes JB Williams from the blogroll to suggest we’re both correct.
  

  After Barockstar’s near fatal empty suit performance at Saddleback Saturday, the Obama spin machine is in damage control overdrive. I wonder if they’ve had time to realize that they have been triangulated by the Clinton war room and set up to take a fall at the DNC convention?That old Clinton war room stench is in the air again… It seems the empty suit and his empty headed staff is not quite up to speed on Clintonian strategeries.

  You’ve gotta read the rest of this one. A brillilant bit of writing and analysis. Which, of course is why he’s in the blogroll.

• I spoke to this last night elsewhere, but didn’t say anything here until now… and anyway, Boortz says it well:
  

  After the U.S. and Poland agreed on a missile shield in Eastern Europe, Russia says that its response will “go beyond diplomacy.” Looks like Czar Putin really means business. I wonder how Barack Obama would respond to such a threat …In fact …I’ll go a bit further here. Putin is making these “beyond diplomacy” noises because he senses American weakness. This weakness has been brought about in part by leftist opposition to our war against Islamic terrorism, and in part by our embrace of The Chosen One. Putin possibly believes that Obama is going to be the next decision maker – the next commander in chief. He also correctly believes that Obama is an appeaser. There’s no time like the present to make your bold moves and stake your claims – while America is embroiled in an election, and the eventual winner looks like the kind of guy that Putin would have as an appetizer.

  Putin is playing the same game BinLaden did. And Iran. And Iraq. And Hugo Chavez, etc etc etc.  Gee, almost like a pattern. And where are these all seeing weakness? To our left, is where.

• As for stength, I note House Minority Leader John Boehner telling House Democrats yesterday to either “put up or shut up” on domestic drilling. No response from the Democrats yet.
• Look, I don’t want to say Obama’s a bore. I might get called racist again from the “Mistake on the lake”. But you look and decide for yourself
• Apparently, the state of California is to probe Chuckles the Clown Schumer for his overt role in the Demise of IndyMac. My systems are telling me we’re seeing lost of traffic coming from California to where my original writeup made it to Reuters. Apparently, there’s a large number… some 50… IndyMac workers quite vocal in their blame of Schumer for the place’s demise. By the way, there seems a bit of a recovery going on with IndyMac stock… unclear why, but we’ll keep watching.
• Let me explain to you again one reason I don’t fly. Aside from the cost, the hassle and the fellow passengers, I mean. I’m with John Madden, here. I’ll take the truck, thanks.
• Iran is now saying they’ll send a man to space. They’ll probably try to blow it up.
• Glenn wishes a few inches of Fay’s rain output would make it up his way. Don’t worry, it will.  It’ll make it up here, too… just the weekend I drag the camper out… you watch.
• It’s not a shift in energy policy that needs to occur, people… it’s a shift in environmental policy, and a shift in local zoning as regards refineries that needs to happen. We need to stop kissing envro-whack-job backside, and get the energy we need to keep the economy moving. We need a congress that will actually move in that direction, instead of roadblocking the thing and then going on vacation.

I note this morning a press release floating around from the McCain camp, posted by Rich Lowry this morning:

Please see comment from me on Barack Obama’s new ad supposedly running in Georgia:

“Barack Obama’s ad is ridiculous. Because of John McCain, corruption was exposed and people like Jack Abramoff went to jail.

“However, if Barack Obama wants to have a discussion about truly questionable associations, let’s start with his relationship with the unrepentant terrorist William Ayers, at whose home Obama’s political career was reportedly launched. Mr. Ayers was a leader of the Weather Underground, a terrorist group responsible for countless bombings against targets including the U.S. Capitol, the Pentagon and numerous police stations, courthouses and banks. In recent years, Mr. Ayers has stated, ‘I don’t regret setting bombs … I feel we didn’t do enough.’
“The question now is, will Barack Obama immediately call on the University of Illinois to release all of the records they are currently withholding to shed further light on Senator Obama’s relationship with this unrepentant terrorist?” —McCain spokesman Brian Rogers

Others who have seen this one, are suggesting it’ll be hearder for the dinosaur media to ignore this Ayres thing. I have my doubts anything will force them to recognize anything bad about The Chosen One.  Their conversion from news people to leftist propaganda people is that complete, I fear. Ask Stanley Kurtz about the efforts to keep this thing buried so far and how far he thinks they’re willing to go to keep it so.

Just One Minute has more on this, too. So do Hot Air, The Weekly Standard Blog, and  Sister Toldjah, Hewitt, Ace of Spades HQ, Flopping Acesand American Thinker, and Memeorandum

• My office at work is getting moved, so I spent half the day without connectivity. The ramble, as a result will be a bit shorter than it would have been otherwise.
• Well, we know one guy who won’t be the VP choice. Sad part is, he’d likely be a better choice than most of the other people who actually have a chance for the job.  Art’s right; all this hype driven speculation is nigh on useless.  I can’t really get into it at all. I will say that the choice for Obama does seem more important than in other years, but that’s pretty much negated by the list of people he’s LIKELY to pick.
• Maybe Obama could pick his brother? The new digs that go with the job would certainly be a step up from his old ones.
• Interestingly, I see Michael Moore is calling for Caroline Kennedy to be picked for the job. Interesting because a pick like that is a ‘Hail Mary” play, and it interests me that Moore thinks such a desperation play is needed. It seems clear that whoever that will end up being, the press will love ’em.
• No, Barrack, it’s called ‘the truth’. Granted, truth can be pretty insulting sometimes, but that doesn’t give you the right to duck the issue.
• No, Glenn, It’s not a ‘tax revolt’. A revolt would not involve petitioning the government to allow peple to keep more of their own money… they’d simply do it.
• The missile defense thing with Poland is a done deal.
• Hillary being nominated? That’s not a possibility that I’ve overlooked, Billy. Look, man, I’ve been saying right along that she wasn’t out of this thing... she was going to be in it on whatever level possible, if she hadda crawl over broken glass to get there, and no matter who she hadda step on in the process. That’s her nature.I”ve been saying for weeks now that her fine hands were all over the Edwards thing, for example. I fully expect a ‘Hail Mary” play from her at Denver.  How successful she’ll be is questionable, but it’s clear that Obama won’t benefit from whatever she decides to do… even should Obama with the nomination. Assuming she manages to get herself nominated by whatever means… a possibility which as I say I don’t rule out… she still has to get by half of her own party who as we’ve discussed in these spaces in the past… repeatedly… wouldn’t vote for Hillary Clinton were she the last person on earth.  What are her chances of getting the nomination? (Shrug) I dunno. But once nominated, I place her chances of winning the GE at around 40%, mostly on her lack of support within her own party.That said, I close this particular sub-entry with a bit of a rant… and it’s a point that’s been eating me for some days, now… See, I have an instinctive fear of getting too caught up in the hype thing thing is currently swimming in. That’s one reason my comments on the veepstakes have been, well, reserved. It’s like we’re watching some kind of Super-bowl with voting machines,instead of trying to decide our national, and frankly, world vector for the next decade or so. As you’ve so often said, Billy, ideas have consequences. It’s the ideas and their consequences that need to take center stage. And , of course, they’re not. They’re just not.Part of that, it seems to me is a product of Obama running a campaign not about the issues, but about HIM. The Berlin thing was the Damascus road moment for a lot of Americans that Obama is about building a personality cult, not about addressing issues…. and that when one gets down to the issues, Obama is simply repackaging the old socialism of yesteryear, that every Democrat since LBJ has been peddling. And come to think on it, perhaps that’s why he’s trying to ram this one through on persoality.. because he knows he brings nothing more than this to the table.

  I say all this because I’m concerned about the ideas and their consequences, which I thnk are tending to get ignored, in favor of stuff that simply doesn’t matter, in the end. As an offhanded example: Will someone please tell me what the hell the major policy differences are between Hillary Clinton and Barrack Obama? You can’t think of any? Guess what? I can’t either. So why does it matter which of them gets nominated?

  The whole of the Democrat party primary is being pushed on the force of each personality alone, and naught else. I suspect that’s why John McCain is doing better the last few weeks; Americans are starting to understand that what matters, isn’t even being touched by the Democrats. Take fuel prices, which 3/4 of Americans at least, lay the blame for at the feet of the Democrats, according to the polls. Obama’s answer? Same as Nancy Pelosi and Harry Ried… Tell Americans to “inflate your tires” and leave for a vacation most Americans couldn’t afford on a prayer. Lack of substance, a lack of connection to most Americans, by the way is also why John Edwards fell out of favor so fast. Niether Clinton nor Obama have learned that lesson, and I have no indcation they ever will.

• Speaking of Clinton / Edwards, yada,yada, and as if on cue… here comes the Edwards thing, Round II.
• Obama wants John McCain to acknowledge that Obama is patriotic, and to stop questioning his character. Perhaps some actual patriotism and character from Obama would help. I’ve no reason to think we’ll ever see any from the guy. I figure Obama being Patriotic and having patriotism and character  is about as likley as finding Bigfoot.
• Speaking of character/// I mentioned Gary Glitter, yesterday? Seems he’s still got issues.
• Hey, Four Ears!! Kind of weird… if a human were to suffer from such, it’d be uncouth to even mention it. As it is, this thing is all over the wires the last couple days.
• What would things be like without the American Soldier?
• I was right about Sitemeter’s placement being the issue. We’re getting back to normal around here.

My theory is the public is starting to realize that even with a Clintonesque gutting of the military, there’s still not enough money left to pay to feed all the Unicorns Obama is promising unless there’s some massive tax increases in store he’s not talking about. People aren’t completely stupid, they know the price of Purina UnicornChowâ„¢ and it ain’t cheap.

Purple Avenger, Ace (Language)

The experts are now starting to wonder if the tide isn’t shifting toward McCain:

Alexander Mooney at CNN:

In what could be an ominous sign for Barack Obama just days before he is formally named the Democratic presidential nominee, a new CNN poll of polls out Tuesday shows the Illinois senator’s lead over John McCain has been cut in half in recent days.

David Gergen:

Heading into the candidates’ appearances on Saturday night at Saddleback Church, the conventional wisdom in politics was Barack Obama should have a clear upper hand in any joint appearance with John McCain — one the young, eloquent, cool, charismatic dude who can charm birds from the trees, the other the meandering, sometimes bumbling, old fellow who can barely distinguish Sunnis from Shiias.

Well, kiss that myth goodbye.

McCain came roaring out of the gate from the first question and was a commanding figure throughout the night as he spoke directly and often movingly about his past and the country’s future. By contrast, Obama was often searching for words and while far more thoughtful, was also less emotionally connective with his audience.

…

A web site that averages all significant polls, RealClearPolitics.com, has previously projected that just looking at polls, Obama was ahead in states with over 300 electoral votes; now he is down to 275 — a tiny cushion since 270 is the magical number for winning.

At Saddleback, Obama surely held on to his base support but McCain strengthened his and probably appealed to some undecideds, too.

In short, the tide is moving for the first time in the Republican direction. And the realization is setting in that McCain might just win.

Gallup:

PRINCETON, NJ — Barack Obama has 45% of the support of registered voters and John McCain 44% in Gallup Poll Daily tracking for Aug. 16-18, as vice presidential announcements and the two conventions loom in the near future.

The LA Times:

Barack Obama’s public image has eroded this summer amid a daily onslaught of attacks from Republican rival John McCain, leaving the race for the White House statistically tied, according to a Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll released today.

Far more voters say McCain has the right experience to be president, the poll found. More than a third have questions about Obama’s patriotism.

Yesterday’s  Quinnipiac poll:

American likely voters say 55 – 27 percent that Arizona Sen. John McCain is better qualified than Illinois Sen. Barack Obama to deal with Russia and now trails the Democrat 47 – 42 percent, according to a Quinnipiac University national poll released today.

This compares to a 50 – 41 percent Sen. Obama lead in a July 15 poll by the independent Quinnipiac (KWIN-uh-pe-ack) University.

Even the left is getting publicly worried. Left Coaster complains:

Kerry at least lost his race in August, after the convention, whereas Obama lost this race in June and July, because he had a Sally Field-esque “You like me” moment over and over again. He believed the hype from his own Stepford cult about a new kind of politics, assumed he didn’t need to define his opponent because it was beneath him, and gutted the ability of the Democratic Party and its infrastructure to hold McCain accountable.

And them he took a victory lap tour overseas to get photo ops while McCain began to define him here at home, by trying out attack lines until some of them got traction. And then in typical GOP fashion, McCain found the ones that worked, hammered them over and over again, and turned Obama into a boring and iffy choice against a guy who should be ten points behind by now.

I’d say buyer’s remorse has set in bigtime, as I”ve suggested repeatedly for months now, it would.

Josh Marshal, too

With so many instances of corruption and influence-peddling around him and whatever problems with the candidate that are keeping the campaign from letting reporters interview him anymore, John McCain is now again charging Obama with what amounts to soft treason — wanting to lose the war in Iraq in order to make himself president. The lack of any consistent lines of attack against McCain is becoming palpable.

Well, look, Josh… maybe there’s nothing there Obama can really attack, huh?

I’ll bet they’re hoping for a really big bounce from the convention. Only one problem; The convention will be a bloody mess form the word go… what with left-wing protests outside and division between Obamanaiacs and Clinonistas inside,  this is going to be a real show, though I doubt it’s one the Democrats want to show the country. It will, in effect, re-raise all the negatives that Obama’s been fighting all along, and half of it will be Obama’s doing as he tries to unravel this mess.

Democrats know that the rockstar act in Berlin hurt Obama badly here at home, though apparently Camp Obama hasn’t figured it out yet. So, they’re still looking forward to playing the same act at Denver’s new sports stadium next week.  Lemmings, you see, like to travel in packs.

And let’s be honest, here. At no point in this long sordid mess has Obama EVER really had a solid lead. Press orgs poll left anyway, as has been demonstrated over and over. Democrats leading by  the margin of error or less in June will turn up losing in November.

Let’s go further, here. The Domocrats have been crowing about their own internal numbers suggesting they were going to extend their leads in both houses of Congress? Fat chance. Coat Tails work negatively, too, as we’re about to see over the next few months. The downright racist and anti-American campaign Obama’s been running has been successful only at hurting the Democrat party’s congressional hopes.

And the interesting thing about this, is the Democrats I see are saying this, as well as the experts I’ve quoted.   Poke around at Memeorandum among the blogs, such as TalkLeft, the Kossacks and the DU.  They’re scared to death, folks. After all the self-assured hutzpah we’ve been dealing with for the last 6 months, it is perhaps the most ominous sign of all for Obama. His loudest supporters have started to figure out they’re in more than serious trouble.

The really amazing part of this is, and I’ve seen Democrat after Democrat agree with me on this… all this is not because McCain is a strong canddiate. He’s not, and we’ve said this time and again from these spaces.  It’s just that Obama is such an incredibly WEAK candidate.  Picture this one, as one would two guy’s trying to outrun the lion.  You don’t have to be outstandingly fast… just faster than the other guy. It’s becoming quite clear McCain, for all his faults, is proving to be the stronger.

Two things;

1. I’ve noticed that our hit rates had dropped pretty badly, and I getting worried we did somehting wrong in the content. Turns out I had sitemeter in the right sidebar, when only the left shows up in single posts, (Inclduing the newsroom, and photo displays) so I was missing most of the traffic. A dumb mistake. As you see, I’ve put the old sitemeter back on top of the left column with a new touch to match the site’s look.
2. I’ve noted W3C says there’s an error in the new CSS. One. So, technically, I shouldn’t be flying the W3C flag. Turns out the new CSS is written for CSS3, not 2.1,  and since the Validator goes on 2.1, it would see the v3 scripting as an error. I’m not quite sure how to write what they’re tryting to do in 2.0 to make the error go away, but I’m not worried about it, really.

Racism is simply making an assumption based on race.  Race hucksters like Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson practice a sophisticated form of raciall bigotry, false equality.  That is thay demand equal outcomes without evidence of equal ability

Barack Obama has taken a play out of hte Sharpton and Jackson playbook, Obama:

Yesterday, Senator McCain came before you. He is a man who has served this nation honorably, and he correctly stated that one of the chief criteria for the American people in this election is going to be who can exercise the best judgment as Commander in Chief. But instead of just offering policy answers, he turned to a typical laundry list of political attacks. He said that I have changed my position on Iraq when I have not. He said that I am for a path of “retreat and failure.” And he declared, “Behind all of these claims and positions by Senator Obama lies the ambition to be president” – suggesting, as he has so many times, that I put personal ambition before my country

BO declares John McCain to be a man of virtue and demands to be treaded as if he too were a man of virtue.   Alas, unlike McCain, BO is not man of virtue.   BO tailors his political positions to pander to the expediancy of the moment:

From James Taranto, Best of the Web, on October 26, 2002 BO said:

I don’t oppose all wars. What I am opposed to is a dumb war. What I am opposed to is a rash war. What I am opposed to is the cynical attempt by Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz and other armchair, weekend warriors in this administration to shove their own ideological agendas down our throats, irrespective of the costs in lives lost and in hardships borne. What I am opposed to is the attempt by political hacks like Karl Rove to distract us from a rise in the uninsured, a rise in the poverty rate, a drop in the median income, to distract us from corporate scandals and a stock market that has just gone through the worst month since the Great Depression.

BO stated in no uncertain terms that there was no good reason to support the war and no good person who supported it.   Yet last Saturday, BO was singing a different tune about his support for the very same war:

Well, you know, I think the opposition to the war in Iraq was as tough a decision as I’ve had to make. Not only because there were political consequences, but also because Saddam Hussein was a real bad person, and there was no doubt that he meant America ill. But I was firmly convinced at the time that we did not have strong evidence of weapons of mass destruction, and there were a lot of questions that, as I spoke to experts, kept on coming up. Do we know how the Shia and the Sunni and the Kurds are going to get along in a post-Saddam situation? What’s our assessment as to how this will affect the battle against terrorists like al Qaeda? Have we finished the job in Afghanistan

So I agonized over that. And I think that questions of war and peace generally are so profound. . . .?

So if the call supporting the Iraq war as a tough of a decision as BO purported to to be Saturday, BO was slandering good people for score cheap political points.   That is to say, BO put his politics ahead of his country.

• Amazing, how the press isn’t covering the drop in oil prices the way they covered every penny of it’s rise. Despute a bit of bouyancy surrounding Faye ad the possiblity of disruptions from that storm, prices are back on their downward spike, starting at $111 and change this morning and $110 by 1pm.  Then back to $115 by 2pm. It’ll be back down by the time you read this. It’s done this several times since the bubble burst a month or so back… it keeps trying to rally, but it always drops in the end.
• The dollar, meanwhile, has hit a 6 month high.  And yes, these two are partially linked.  We are seeing prices rise by a fairly good clip just now, but I see tis as a trailing indicator due to oil’s recent run up. those will come down over the winter accrodingly and are no more than a short term worry, in my view.
• Remember, gang, the above two items started happening when the voters here in the US started making noise about domestic drilling. Imagine what happens when we actually start prducing the stuff.
• And I have to say that when even the LA Times starts saying ‘it’s time to drill’ it’s past time.
• Phil Collins got divorced again… bigtime payouts involved. POssibly the largest in British history. What, no pre-nup, Phil? What’s WRONG with you?
• I note increasingly hostile commentary on Obama and his attitudes about Justice Thomas. Good. He should get called out for it. Trouble is, his attitude isn’t all that unusual on the left. So much for post racialism.
• Driving into work this morning, I heard the strangest sound, coming from under my dashboard. Turned out to be the heater coming on. It was 60 degrees here this morning. Cold a morning as we’ve seen since May. Truck’s HVAC has been on automatic for so long I don’t even thnk about it anymore. Weird.
• I guess the surge worked.  No, it’s not what you’re thinking, but it does have implications…
• You need to go see this ad Hawkins has put together.
• Kaus is still on Edwards case.  And he’s right; this case does provide a clear view into how the press gets manipulated, …often allowing it willingly… by powerful Democrats.
• Why is this so damned hard? It’s the one thing that annoys me about an otherwise great vehicle… and even the Bose Stereo I’m messing with sounds great and has a great tuner. What is it about auto designers that they need to place you in a figurative box when you try to add something?
• McCain will announce VP pick on the 29th. AFTER the Denver fiasco. Smart move, John.
• I see Gary Glitter… (Yeah, him…) got released from that Vietnam prison he’s been in for trhee years. Actually, I’m amazed he survived.
• Heath Schuler is an idiot.
• Speaking of such things, there are two types of drivers, who when totaled up, I swear, must account for the vast majority of frustration-related accidents on the road today.
  • The left lane roadblock. This is the guy… or woman… in the older LTD, a Fleetwood, or more recently, the newer econobox, out in the left lane in 65mph territory, doing 55… usually with their right turn signal on. The effect is one of holding up both lanes of traffic, usually amounting in a rolling traffic gaggle, some 5 miles long.
  • The right lane obsessive. This is the guy… or woman… invariably in the above mentioned vehicle, who upon enetering the freeway from the left, will dive across three lanes of traffic inside of about 15 feet worth of foward mostion, simply because the right lane is where some habit- driven part of their brain feels most comfortable. This will usually cause at least one spinout and a great deal of brake testing data for highway safety investigators as drivers head for the weeds trying to avoid this moron. Here’s someone who doesn’t like driving on freeways…. and, irony abounds, most other drivers don’t like them there, either.
• Pot to Kettle, Roasanne.
• Did you see this moron in Florida folling with a parachute in the middle of a hurricane? (Video) Damn near the winner of today’s Darwin award.
• Yah, I did get a chuckle out of that, Billy. But what really burns my biscuts is they get $75 an axle for doing that… with power tools that make it twice as fast as what you did the job in. Or maybe $49 at the cut rate places. Sheesh. And they say oil companies are a problem?
• Michelle has an post up clled “WhiteWashing Helen Thomas.”.  Let me just say tthat a fresh coat of paint would do Helen a world of good.

Is this person really so craven that he would not“intervene” for himself? Would he really just stand there and let someone elsemaim or kill him without raising a hand in his own defense?

Billy, I have to tell you, I’ve been thinking about this one most of the day.

I share your reaction at an instinctive level. But assuming your response is not rhetoric -laden (Seems a safe assumption, since IME, you’re not given to rhetoric as a rule) I must say I’m taken aback a bit by your question, here.

OF COURSE he won’t intervene. Where the heck do you think cases like Heller come from, anyway? He is of a growing mindset in this country that says they don’t want anyone ELSE to intervene, either.

What must be summarily dismissed is his fantasy that able others are bound to stand around during that flash of time when innocence is bleeding and give up all their humanity and everything it means for “the law”.

Look, Billy, let’s eliminate that one right now. That’s not the core of the thing. It’s the underlying attitude. Think now….

The left, particularly the far left, is well known for stepping outside the law to make make a point. We’re about to see this in Denver, shortly. Given that record,  does anyone seriously think they’d think twice about breaking the law if they didn’t agree with it?

The fact is, they DO agree with it, and hiding behind the words ‘it’s the law’ is nothing but a hat to give their intentional inaction poliical cover.  It’s dastardly and more, but there it is. Regardless of the words used, this is not about the law per se.  And therefore you’re right when you suggest a POLITICAL point is being made. This is a case, clearly where the speaker holds the value of the politcs to be higher than the value of the individual at risk.  And e’s not alone, here.  Again, I point to Heller as a recent example.   Does the left devaluing an individual really surprise you? Your cite is merely one more example of the attitude. I thank you for pointing it out.

But don’t get tangled in the misconception that this is all a devotion to the law. It is not. It’s the devotion to the dastardly IDEA. The laws our subject asks about are merely the legal means of enfocing that idea.

Fellow Swamp Stomper Sister Toldjah takes on St Andrew the Incontinent:

June 30, 2008:

McCain himself disowned the Swift Boat nutters in 2004 as “dishonest and dishonorable.” I find both attempts to smear the war records of people who volunteered to fight for their country to be repellent. But the far right is too invested in the politics of Vietnam to take the high road.

August 17, 2008:

I’ve now heard it countless times. McCain has used what appears to be an intensely personal moment in a prison camp as a reason to vote for him in a campaign ad. As he tells it today, it was the pivotal moment in his struggle to survive in the Hanoi Hilton. And yet, in his first thorough account of his time in captivity, in 1973, the story is absent. The story is also hauntingly like that recounted by Solzhenitsen, as told in Luke Veronis, “The Sign of the Cross”:

Leaving his shovel on the ground, he slowly walked to a crude bench and sat down. He knew that at any moment a guard would order him to stand up, and when he failed to respond, the guard would beat him to death, probably with his own shovel. He had seen it happen to other prisoners.

As he waited, head down, he felt a presence. Slowly he looked up and saw a skinny old prisoner squat down beside him. The man said nothing. Instead, he used a stick to trace in the dirt the sign of the Cross. The man then got back up and returned to his work.

As Solzhenitsyn stared at the Cross drawn in the dirt his entire perspective changed.

I have one simple question: when was the first time that McCain told this story?

And he didn’t stop there.  He has continued on today here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

That’s 12, count ’em, 12 posts to date so far from the same guy who said back in June, “I find both attempts to smear the war records of people who volunteered to fight for their country to be repellent. But the far right is too invested in the politics of Vietnam to take the high road.”

Bruce McQuain observes:

I’m not sure why Andrew Sullivan believes this is something worth pursuing but if the same argument that was applied during John Kerry’s 2004 run (“they were in the boat with him”) is applied here, that ends the argument, doesn’t it?

The answer is rather simple, and fellow POW Orson Swindle identified the issue in clear toes when he said “These people are desperate”

Addenudum:  (David L)

Bit has afforded me the luxury of brevity.   There two differences beween the Swift Boaters versus John Kerry and the Andrew Sullivan versus John McCain dust-ups.

One, target.  John Kerry military record was, and is, not widely respected.   Kerry’s standing is akin to that of Hanoi Jane Fonda.   In contrast, John McCain military service was heroic, and is  honored and respected.   McCain served with honor,  Jenkis Khan  Kerry did not.

Two,  source.   Kerry was criticized by his fellow veterans.   Those who criticized Kerry had earned their right to do so.   Andrew Sullivan has earned no such right.   Call it Sullying McCain record.  Sullivan lacks the standing to Swift Boat any veteran.

Bruce McQuain at Q&O:

Bill Donahue of the “Catholic League” is demanding that certain “credentialed blogs” covering the Democratic Convention be cut from the list for being “offensive” to Catholics.

“The list of credentialed blogs include radical sites like The Daily Kos. Worse are blogs that feature anti-Catholic and obscene material. The two most offensive are Bitch Ph.D. and Towleroad.

Donahue goes on to describe what constitutes their offensive conduct and why they should be “nixed” from the list.

I’m not going to link to them because I share Donahue’s assessment. For the most part they are not the type of blog I would put on my reader, mostly for the reasons he lists.

However.

You knew there had to be a “however”.

However, the last thing I want to see are demands such as Donohue’s taken seriously for either convention.

How many times have we seen the same kind of play against people ostensibly of the right wing, where the left has bitched up a blue streak about it? say, Bill Kristol, and Coulter, the occasional Limbaugh spout, and so on. It’s the same game on their side as it is on ours. The major difference is that their side has very little in the way of shame, and therefore can’t be shamed out of its offensive writers. Certainly, if the Democrats took the value structure of Mr. Donohue and his organization anywhere near seriously, they denounced such sites as he complains about, and such writers a long time ago.

Bruce , you know as well as I do how this thing gets played. Donahue makes those demands, knowing full well that the Democrats are not going to take it seriously. The bigger value in making those demands, is in loudly linking the Democratic Party to those offensive sites. In the end, I think that’s the point that Donohue is making. He is making use of a trick the left has been using for decades; claiming offense to draw a negative attention to a particular group of people. Surreptitious, yet highly effective.

Donahue is not asking for governmental involvement in the silencing of what he thinks are the offending writers, (and for the record I, too, agree with his assessment) he’s asking for the Democrats to have the kind of standards that Henke was complaining about the other day, and deal with the problem exclusive to government, whereas I submit the Democrats would be screaming for governmental involvement as a first line of defense. Can you say “fairness doctrine”?

And also for the record I have no problem on that level with religious groups making such statements, long as they don’t have the backing of the government purely because they ARE religious groups, that is. That seems to me the context Donahue is operating in and frankly I have no problem with it in that context. They have the same right as any other group to express their views.

After crushing about 300 spam comments, today, I decided the highest priority is to get THAT nonsense under control. So, I’ve added an anti-spam tool in the comments.  Yeah, I know it’s a pain, but look; My database is showing around 80,000 comments, all but 2000 of which are automated spam.  Most of that, the old system I was using, caught. Still, given the large increase in spam that actually makes it through, I hadda do soemthing.

We’ll see how this goes.

• So, Iran now says it’s warplanes are able to reach Israel. Now why would they want to level THAT threat, I wonder? I mean, they could make it there, but they couldn’t make it BACK. Wouldn’t that be a suicide mission?  Oh. Wait a minute.  Ummm… Never mind.
• Ukraine is offering a missile deal to the US.  Why would they do that? It’s not like they have overly aggressive neighbors who need keeping in their place. Oh, wait, Never mind.
• Same for Poland, by the way.
• Give me all your money, sucker. Oops, never mind.
• Now why would Denver authorities be putting secret jails together for the upcoming Democrat convention? I mean, it not like there’s going to be problems from the left wing, huh? Oh, wait…. never mind.
• Of COURSE Al Gore has the moral authority to tell us what is ‘sustainable’ and what isn’t. Right? Oh, wait… Never mind.
• So, 62% of people in New Jersey want the waters off their coast drilled for oil and natural gas.  And the elected officials are supposed to run with the view of the people, right?  Oh. Never mind.
• So, Obama opesn his mouth basically calling for a comparison between himself and Justice Thomas, apparent,y thinking that nobody else would be able to do that…. Oh, wait. Never mind.
• Obama is the post racial candidate. Oh, never mind.
• Global Warming is a crisis… the world is going to end if we don’t act… Oh, never mind.
• Obama supporters are sreaming that McCain had cheated at Saddleback. Now, let’s think; WHY would they say this? Because they know Obama, without his teleprompter, didn’t come off as prepared for his ordeal. Turns out most people think so, too. How long until we hear “oh, never mind”?

Given the nature of this message I tend to doubt that NRO and Stanley Kurtz will mind my extensive quote here from his post, at all. Obviously, the intent is to get the message out, my intent is to help to that end.

Kurtz:

In the process of tracing down the Obama-Ayers connection, I located a large cache of documents housed in the Richard J. Daley Library of the University of Illinois at Chicago. These documents are the internal files of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, a small foundation, founded and inspired by Bill Ayers, for which Obama served as board chairman (almost surely at Ayers’s behest). Although the library initially promised me access to the Chicago Annenberg Challenge records, top library officials mysteriously intervened at the last minute to bar access. There followed a struggle between myself and library officials over my right to examine the documents. Although I cannot know for certain, there is reason to believe that Bill Ayers himself may have been consulted, behind the scenes, as the conflict grew.

The explanations offered by library officials for the last-minute decision to block access to the documents were contradictory and shifting. I cannot say for certain that we are dealing with a politically motivated cover-up, but it seems like a very real possibility. Before my access was cut off, an assistant at the library sent me a “finding aid” for the Chicago Annenberg Challenge records — a document of over 60 pages indicating the contents of the 947 file folders in the Collection. The evidence in the finding aid suggest that the Chicago Annenberg Challenge records could provide very important information about Barack Obama’s background and the history of his working relationship with Ayers.

I need public help to gain access to this critically important repository of information. Frankly, since the dispute over access, which played out late last week, I have grown concerned about the security of the documents. Public awareness is probably the best way to reduce the likelihood of documents being damaged or spirited away before I have a chance to break the embargo and gain access to the Collection.

There seems enough smoke here to warrant some pressure…. to mix a metephor.  And that the press is in the tank for Obama is more clearly shown all who will but note it. Tom Maguire at Just One Minute agrees:

So let’s see – Obama has been misrepresenting his relationship with Ayers to the press (this misdirection of Ben Smith of The Politico from last February is a comedy classic) and now someone is blocking access to the records detailing the workings of the group founded by Ayers and chaired by Obama.  In another world the press would smell a cover-up.  In this one?  My guess has been that the mainstream press will remain in the tank for Obama rather than risk annoying their remaining readers by appearing to be pawns of the right-wing attack machine.

This one’s heating up, people. Watch Memeorandum for more.

Addendum: (Bit) This post made the Chicago Sun Times. Thanks.