Internet Scofflaw

ACORN, which is basically a criminal enterprise, could be a major recipient of the proceeds of the bailout plan. Incredible. The Democrats are utterly shameless.

UPDATE: Republican leader John Boehner sounds the alarm. (Via the Corner.)

UPDATE: Urg.  Under the Democratic plan, the bailout doesn’t even need to make a profit to channel “profits” to ACORN.

Obama for America wrote the following letter (pdf) to TV stations airing an NRA ad:

September 23, 2008

Re: NRA Advertisement

Dear Station Manager

As General Counsel to Obama for America, I write about an advertisement sponsored by the National Rifle Association (“NRA”) that may be airing on your station. The text of the advertisement, and a thorough explanation of its falsity, is attached.

This advertisement knowingly misleads your viewing audience about Senator Obama’s position on the Second Amendment. In an article published today, the Washington Post fact-checks this advertisement and awards it three “Pinocchios,” meaning: “Significant factual errors and/or obvious contradictions.” For the same of both FCC licensing requirements and the public interest, your station should refuse to continue to air this advertisement.

(Via Snowflakes in Hell, via Instapundit.)

As is his practice, Obama cries “liar” whenever he is criticized. The letter goes on the discuss the “inarguable falsities” of the NRA ad. In fact, the falsities are indeed arguable. To the contrary, David Kopel argues that the ad is entirely accurate. But that’s not the main point.

The point is that Barack Obama, who wants to be President of the United States, is threatening to shut down TV stations that accept advertising that criticize him.

Forget the business about whether the ad is true or not. There’s no way to police politics for truth, since a big part of politics is people don’t agree on the truth. (No ad was ever more dishonest than the DNC’s 100-year-war anti-McCain ad, but somehow the DNC stood by it.) Stripped of the noise, this letter is a brazen effort to intimidate a TV station, not through boycotts or other legitimate means, but by threats of government action. Free speech is fine, as long as it doesn’t criticize Barack Obama.

It’s also amazing to contemplate Obama’s thin skin. Obama has managed to tame the media so much that, not only will they rarely utter any criticism of him, but when his opponent criticizes him, they will repudiate their own reporting on which that criticism is based. But it’s not enough for Obama to be spared by the press; when his opponents spend their own money to criticize him, he tries to shut them down.

MORE: It’s not an isolated incident either. Gateway Pundit notes a story by KMOV TV in St. Louis that reports that the Obama campaign is asking Missouri law enforcement to target his critics:

Senator Barack Obama’s presidential campaign is asking Missouri law enforcement to target anyone who lies or runs a misleading television ad during the presidential campaign.

This should be shocking to anyone who believes in free speech.

Again, let’s not have any nonsense about how only liars need fear prosecution. The story mentions two specific items they don’t want anyone to contradict: (1) Barack Obama is a Christian, and (2) he wants to cut taxes for anyone making less than $250k a year. I hereby contradict them. Barack Obama is not a Christian. (No, he’s not a Muslim, as some have alleged, but neither is he a Christian.) Barack Obama will probably not cut taxes at all, and will certainly not cut taxes on everyone making less than $250k. If I lived in Missouri, would I be facing the law now?

A willingness to engage in legal harassment of his critics should be an immediate disqualification for any office of public trust, especially the presidency. I cannot believe that America is contemplating electing this man.

UPDATE: Another instance I’d forgotten.

UPDATE (11/10/2009): Updated the Gateway Pundit link. The WMOV video seems to be gone now, but I transcribed the above lede myself. Gateway Pundit notes that WMOV later silently edited their story to soften it, but I can’t find any indication that they ever retracted their original reporting. Moreover, if this wasn’t an effort to intimidate critics of Barack Obama, why recruit only law enforcement?

UPDATE: The WMOV story is posted on YouTube:

Stanley Kurtz, who has been trying to investigate Barack Obama ties to unrepentant terrorist Bill Ayers and the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, was denied access to the Challenge’s public records (housed at the University of Illinois — Chicago) for several days. We have no way of knowing what happened to the collection during that time, although it doesn’t seem likely that Kurtz was put off for no reason.

However, we do know more about the circumstances of the delay, thanks to a Freedom of Information Act request that Kurtz filed:

In “Chicago Annenberg Challenge Shutdown?” I tell the story of how UIC’s Richard J. Daley Library reversed its initial decision to allow me access to the records of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge. The Chicago Tribune has since revealed that I was barred from the collection following an August 11 call to UIC from former CAC executive director, Ken Rolling. In the Tribune story, Rolling appears to claim that contact with UIC came at his own initiative. Steve Diamond questioned Tribune reporters further on this issue, and was told that Rolling claimed to have unilaterally contacted UIC library on August 11, after seeing reports about CAC on the Internet at about that time.

Yet August 11 happens to be the day I first contacted UIC’s Daley Library requesting to see the CAC archive. How likely is it that Rolling called UIC requesting that the documents be restricted on the same day, purely by coincidence? It seems far more likely that some as-yet-unidentified person at UIC tipped Rolling off to my request, prompting his demand that the records be embargoed.

In any case, we know that on August 11, the same day I asked to see the CAC records, Rolling quietly called on the library to close them to the public.

(Emphasis mine.) An official cover-up of possibly damaging documents relating to Barack Obama’s past. Isn’t that the sort of thing the media is supposed to be interested in?

A letter to the Washington Post:

While witnessing, but not participating in, the home real estate frenzy in 2005 and 2006, I kept asking: Who is the idiot buying up all these mortgages issued on inflated home prices to all these people who have neither the capacity nor the intention to repay the loans?

Now I learn it was me.

(Via Volokh.)

Democrats want to blame deregulation for the market meltdown, but the policies that led to the meltdown were anything but laissez-faire. Ed Morrissey highlights a fascinating, anti-prophetic article from the LA Times in 1999. The article touts the great “successes” of Bill Clinton’s interventionist housing policies, including:

• Requiring banks to lend more to low-income communities.
• Directing Fannie and Freddie to buy up mortgages and turn them into securities.
• Directing Fannie and Freddie to buy up high-risk mortgages, thereby encouraging banks to make more high-risk loans.

Does any of this sound familiar?

(Previous post.)

CBS’s Bob Schieffer reports that McCain became involved with the bailout negotiations at Secretary Paulson’s request, who asked McCain to help bring Republicans on board:

BOB SCHIEFFER: I am told, Maggie, that the way McCain got involved in this in the first place, the Treasury Secretary was briefing Republicans in the House yesterday, the Republican conference, asked how many were ready to support the bailout plan. Only four of them held up their hands. Paulson then called, according to my sources, Senator Lindsey Graham, who is very close to John McCain, and told him: you’ve got to get the people in the McCain campaign, you’ve got to convince John McCain to give these Republicans some political cover. If you don’t do that, this whole bailout plan is going to fail. So that’s how, McCain, apparently, became involved.

(Via the Corner.)

It would seem that Harry Reid’s statement that McCain’s involvement is not helpful is (like so many Harry Reid statements) complete crap. (Via Hot Air.)

UPDATE: Bill Clinton lauds McCain’s decision. Also, Ed Morrissey has the Schieffer video and some additional thoughts.

UPDATE: More on Reid. The day before telling McCain not to come to Washington, he was demanding McCain’s help. One might be forgiven for concluding that Reid just isn’t honest.

UPDATE and BUMP: Reid reverses again:

With the economic news only getting worse each day, I call on the President, Senator McCain and Congressional Republicans to join us to quickly get this done for American families.

But wait, that’s not his last reversal:

Senate Democratic leaders accused John McCain on Thursday of interfering with progress on a Wall Street bailout, saying the Republican presidential candidate is parachuting into the debate at the last minute.

Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said McCain has played an insignificant role on banking issues and is now trying to capitalize on the situation when it is nearly concluded — a point echoed by other Democratic leaders.

That’s four positions in three days, which is impressive even for a politician.

It’s a difficult line for Democrats to walk: they need to do something, which means they need someone (McCain) to whip up Republican votes, but they need to deny McCain any credit for fear of helping his campaign. Yuval Levin summarizes:

The consensus yesterday (well expressed here) seemed to be that a bailout couldn’t pass if McCain wasn’t on board. The Democrats would fear a trap, and Republicans would lack cover. Yesterday’s signal from McCain was loud and clear: it drove the Democrats to move quickly (so something could be hatched by the time of the White House meeting and McCain would not get credit too explicitly) and it will probably get most (surely not all) Republicans to agree. Obama, though, has been essentially irrelevant.

The Hill reports the findings of the House panel created to investigate the scandalous falsification of a House floor vote in August 2007:

The House’s Aug. 2, 2007, “Stolen Vote” committee released its findings on Thursday, concluding that the result of controversial roll call vote 814, which the Democrats won, was incorrect.

And while the report, which the panel adopted 6-0, found a great deal of fault to go around, it fell short of admonishing any individual members, including Rep. Michael McNulty (D-N.Y.), who was presiding over the House during the vote, and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), who had admitted in testimony to the committee that it was “certainly possible” that he helped create an atmosphere in which McNulty felt pressure to close the vote sooner than he might have otherwise.

The report dodged the question of who was ultimately responsible for the calling of the vote on the motion to recommit the Agriculture appropriations bill at 212-216, handing the Democrats a victory. . . The committee agreed that McNulty failed to follow proper procedures of waiting for the “tally sheet” from the clerks, and concurred with Hoyer’s admission that he may have brought undue pressure onto the situation. But it called for no punitive action for any member.

The panel did reach the unanimous conclusion, however, that the 212-216 vote was incorrect.

“There may be a disagreement about what should be the final vote tally, but one fact is indisputable: The vote tally of 212 yeas and 216 nays that was finally announced is incorrect,” the report read. “It is either 215 yeas and 213 nays, which would have reflected the tally at the time the chair prematurely announced the statement of result, or 211 yeas and 217 nays, which would have reflected the tally had [Minority Leader John] Boehner’s [R-Ohio] well card been processed.”

As expected, this is a whitewash. There’s no question about the correct result; the public tally showed that the motion was leading as McNulty gaveled the vote closed. The Democratic leadership refused to honor the result, and prevailed on several members to change their vote overnight after the vote was over. House majority leader Hoyer went so far as to lecture the protesting parliamentarian, “We control this house, not the parliamentarian.”

Also, the article doesn’t report anything about why the voting system was turned off after the vote and its electronic results erased. Was that even investigated?

(Previous post.)

Aaron Burns observes:

One face-off between Biden and the facts that, once again, the facts seem to have won.

Criticizing McCain for opposing negotiations with Iran, Biden said even the Bush administration now favors such talks — which Obama has long supported.

“After seven years, in which our senior diplomatic personnel were not allowed to make a single contact with Iranians, the Bush administration realized the absurdity of its own policy and sent our leading diplomat to Iran,” he said. “The Assistant Secretary of State as he went to Tehran, sat down at the instruction of the President of the United States.”

It sounds great for Obama and Biden that the president came around to something so close to their position on talks with Iran; trouble is, the event Biden described never actually happened.

(Via JWF, via Instapundit.)

Andy Kessler thinks that in the end the Paulson plan will end up making taxpayers a fortune (as much as $2.2 trillion).

(Via Instapundit.)

Despite being publicly dumped by the Obama campaign, former Fannie Mae chairman Jim Johnson is still advising Barack Obama, Politico reports.  (Via the Corner.)

There’s been a lot of talk recently about party identification, and the impact it has on polling. Presidential polls adjust their results to fit a target figure for what party people say they identify with. Recent shifts in the polls have resulted almost entirely from changes in the target figure, rather than any great changes in the responses of those polled.

For example, a week ago DJ Drummond showed that Obama had risen in the Gallup tracking poll despite losing ground or staying even in every category, due to a shift in Gallup’s weights. (Via Instapundit.) If you were to fix the weights to match historical voting patterns, McCain actually had a six point lead (as of September 18).

What is the appropriate weight for pollsters to use? I certainly don’t know. Clearly, no one thinks that the historical norms are appropriate (assuming Drummond is doing the math properly, which I cannot check), but why not, exactly? This Politico story, saying that the GOP brand is making a comeback, seems relevant. (Via Instapundit.)

In fact, a better question is: why weight by party at all? It makes sense to adjust to fit target figures that we can measure accurately, like race or gender, but why adjust to fit a figure that is pure guesswork like party identification? Certainly, you could determine a party-identification figure by polling, but then there’s no real difference from simply not weighting. I don’t get it.

The AP reports that Democrats will let the offshore drilling ban expire. (Via the Corner.)

Politico reports on a brief conversation in which Biden was asked about clean coal:

Biden’s apparent answer: He supports clean coal for China, but not for the United States.

“No coal plants here in America,” he said. “Build them, if they’re going to build them, over there. Make them clean.”

“We’re not supporting clean coal,” he said of himself and Obama. They do, on paper, support clean coal.

The answer seems to play into John McCain’s case that Obama has been saying “no” to new sources of energy. . .

“I don’t think there’s much of a role for clean coal in energy independence, but I do think there’s a significant role for clean coal in the bigger picture of climate change,” he told Grist last year. “Clean-coal technology is not the route to go in the United States, because we have other, cleaner alternatives,” he said, but added that America should push for a “fundamental change in technology” to clean up China’s plants.

What exactly those alternatives are, when you’ve eliminated every cost-effective energy source, is unclear. I suppose he has a secret plan he’ll reveal after the election.

What comes next should be familiar. McCain attacked Biden’s remark, and Obama called him a liar.

Today, Senator John McCain pounced on Biden’s remarks.

“I am going to put in place the priorities and policies that will create jobs in Ohio. One important way that we are going to create jobs here is with the development of additional nuclear plants and through investments in clean coal technology,” he said. “[Obama’s] running mate here in Ohio recently said that they weren’t supporting clean coal.”

Biden spokesman David Wade responded by calling McCain’s statement “yet another false attack from a dishonorable campaign.”

He continued: “Senator McCain knows that Senator Obama and Senator Biden support clean coal technology. Senator Biden’s point is that China is building coal plants with outdated technology every day, and the United States needs to lead by developing clean coal technologies.”

But the error here does seem to be Biden’s, and his remarks, and his apparent return to his primary position Tuesday, were striking because just three days ago, he praised the possibilities of coal to a crowd at the United Mine Workers of America annual fish fry in Castlewood, Va.

Whenever Obama is attacked using for his own words or actions, he always accuses his critic of lying. Somehow he gets away with it. Despite Obama’s flagrant dishonesty in cases just such as this, the media has decided that McCain is the dishonest one. Doubtless he’ll get away with this too.

(Via Instapundit.)

Politico comments on Katie Couric’s interview with Joe Biden:

“When the stock market crashed, Franklin Roosevelt got on the television and didn’t just talk about the princes of greed,” Biden told Couric. “He said, ‘Look, here’s what happened.'”

As Reason’s Jesse Walker footnotes it: “And if you owned an experimental TV set in 1929, you would have seen him. And you would have said to yourself, ‘Who is that guy? What happened to President Hoover?'”

(Via Instapundit.)

Now I’m confused. After the Obama campaign confirmed Amir Taheri’s allegation that Obama tried to stall negotiations with Iraq, I thought the matter was settled. But now some Republicans who were in a position to know what happened are defending Obama. (Via Instapundit.)

So what really happened? If the allegation isn’t true, why didn’t Obama deny it categorically, instead of issuing a non-denial “denial” that actually confirmed the central allegation? I don’t get it.

One possible explanation is that Hagel is a semi-supporter of Obama. Another is that Tapper’s story has no direct quotes from Hagel, so maybe it’s not even accurate. Neither explanation seems convincing to me, though.

The press doesn’t seem much inclined to investigate, so unless Taheri moves the ball with another story of his own, I doubt we’ll get to the bottom of it. As things stand, the waters are sufficiently muddy that I don’t think the issue is of much use to McCain.

The Telegraph reports:

Baroness Warnock: Dementia sufferers may have a ‘duty to die’

Elderly people suffering from dementia should consider ending their lives because they are a burden on the NHS and their families, according to the influential medical ethics expert Baroness Warnock.

The veteran Government adviser said pensioners in mental decline are “wasting people’s lives” because of the care they require and should be allowed to opt for euthanasia even if they are not in pain.

She insisted there was “nothing wrong” with people being helped to die for the sake of their loved ones or society.

The 84-year-old added that she hoped people will soon be “licensed to put others down” if they are unable to look after themselves.

Her comments in a magazine interview have been condemned as “immoral” and “barbaric”, but also sparked fears that they may find wider support because of her influence on ethical matters.

Lady Warnock, a former headmistress who went on to become Britain’s leading moral philosopher, chaired a landmark Government committee in the 1980s that established the law on fertility treatment and embryo research.

Thought #1: Pro-lifers warning of the day when the elderly are put down against their will have been dismissed as alarmists.  I don’t think they can be dismissed any more.

Thought #2: Isn’t it appropriate for the UK to reconsider their law, given that its “leading moral philosopher” who brought about the law turned out to be evil?

(Via the Corner.)

Rusty Shackleford lands a major scoop, showing that a Sarah Palin smear video was part of a malicious astroturfing effort run by a employees of a major Democratic PR firm. At this hour, the producer of the video has admitted his involvement, making much of Shackleford’s evidence moot.

The remaining question is who else was involved. Shackleford has shown that at least one additional executive of the firm (its president) was involved. Despite this, the smear’s producer claims that he paid for the video himself, and neither his firm nor any external client was involved.

(Via Instapundit.)

WCBS (the New York CBS affiliate) reports that Democrats threatened the very existence of groups organizing a protest of Iran’s nuclear program if they did not disinvite Sarah Palin:

Hillary Clinton won’t be speaking at Monday’s anti-Iran rally at the United Nations — and neither will Republican Sarah Palin or any other politicians for that matter.

The reason? A heated behind the scenes tug-of-war.

Sources tell CBS 2 HD that a decision to disinvite Palin from the high profile rally after Clinton pulled out in a huff came as the result of intense pressure from Democrats.

“This is insulting. This is embarrassing, especially to Gov. Palin, to me and I think it should be to every single New Yorker,” Assemblyman Dov Hikind, D-Brooklyn, told CBS 2 HD.

Sources say the axes were out for Palin as soon as Sen. Clinton pulled out because she did not want to attend the same event as the Republican vice presidential candidate.

“I have never seen such raw emotion — on both sides,” said someone close to the situation.

The groups sponsoring the rally against Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad speaking at the UN were reportedly told, “it could jeopardize their tax exempt status” if they had Palin and not Clinton or Democratic VP candidate Joe Biden on hand.

So all politicians were disinvited, most prominently, Palin.

“It’s an absolute shame that this has happened,” Hikind said. “To threaten organizations … to threaten the Conference of Presidents that if you don’t withdraw the invitation to Gov. Palin we’re going to look into your tax exempt status … that’s McCarthyism.”

(Via Yourish, via Instapundit.)

Rich Lowry notes that investment banks that are converting to conventional banks are subjecting themselves to greater regulation, thereby fulfilling the call for greater regulation of investment banks without any direct action on that front.

Bloomberg columnist Kevin Hassett argues persuasively that the financial crisis is the fault of Fannie and Freddie, and of the Democrats that enabled them. First he argues that Fannie and Freddie were responsible for the widespread securitization of subprime loans:

Why did Bear Stearns fail, and how does that relate to AIG? It all seems so complex.

But really, it isn’t. Enough cards on this table have been turned over that the story is now clear. The economic history books will describe this episode in simple and understandable terms: Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac exploded, and many bystanders were injured in the blast, some fatally.

Fannie and Freddie did this by becoming a key enabler of the mortgage crisis. They fueled Wall Street’s efforts to securitize subprime loans by becoming the primary customer of all AAA-rated subprime-mortgage pools. In addition, they held an enormous portfolio of mortgages themselves.

In the times that Fannie and Freddie couldn’t make the market, they became the market. . . As of last June, Fannie alone owned or guaranteed more than $388 billion in high-risk mortgage investments. Their large presence created an environment within which even mortgage-backed securities assembled by others could find a ready home.

The tie to Democrats, including Barack Obama, begins with a 2005 effort to increase oversight of the mortgage giants:

It is easy to identify the historical turning point that marked the beginning of the end.

Back in 2005, Fannie and Freddie were, after years of dominating Washington, on the ropes. They were enmeshed in accounting scandals that led to turnover at the top. . . Then legislative momentum emerged for an attempt to create a “world-class regulator” that would oversee the pair more like banks, imposing strict requirements on their ability to take excessive risks.

The clear gravity of the situation pushed the legislation forward. Some might say the current mess couldn’t be foreseen, yet in 2005 Alan Greenspan told Congress how urgent it was for it to act in the clearest possible terms: If Fannie and Freddie “continue to grow, continue to have the low capital that they have, continue to engage in the dynamic hedging of their portfolios, which they need to do for interest rate risk aversion, they potentially create ever-growing potential systemic risk down the road,” he said. “We are placing the total financial system of the future at a substantial risk.”

What happened next was extraordinary. For the first time in history, a serious Fannie and Freddie reform bill was passed by the Senate Banking Committee. The bill gave a regulator power to crack down, and would have required the companies to eliminate their investments in risky assets.

(Emphasis mine.) Given that Fannie and Freddie’s promotion of risky investments caused the crisis, it might have been helpful if Fannie and Freddie had been forced to cut back their risky investments, mightn’t it? But, in rode the Democrats:

But the bill didn’t become law, for a simple reason: Democrats opposed it on a party-line vote in the committee, signaling that this would be a partisan issue. Republicans, tied in knots by the tight Democratic opposition, couldn’t even get the Senate to vote on the matter. . .

Now that the collapse has occurred, the roadblock built by Senate Democrats in 2005 is unforgivable. Many who opposed the bill doubtlessly did so for honorable reasons. Fannie and Freddie provided mounds of materials defending their practices. Perhaps some found their propaganda convincing.

But we now know that many of the senators who protected Fannie and Freddie, including Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Christopher Dodd, have received mind-boggling levels of financial support from them over the years.

Throughout his political career, Obama has gotten more than $125,000 in campaign contributions from employees and political action committees of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, second only to Dodd, the Senate Banking Committee chairman, who received more than $165,000. . .

There has been a lot of talk about who is to blame for this crisis. A look back at the story of 2005 makes the answer pretty clear.

This is political corruption of the highest order. Democrats, who ordinarily support regulation of anything and everything, go against their usual principles to oppose regulation of Fannie and Freddie, who just happen to be giving obscene amounts of money to Democrats. When it blows up, it costs the taxpayers trillions.

Finally, a footnote:

Oh, and there is one little footnote to the story that’s worth keeping in mind while Democrats point fingers between now and Nov. 4: Senator John McCain was one of the three cosponsors of S.190, the bill that would have averted this mess.

McCain needs to be shouting this from the rooftops.

(Via the Corner.)

The executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations has conceded that 9/11 wasn’t exclusively America’s fault:

“We should not blame the Muslims for taking part in the political process, and we should not blame the United States alone for the 11 September 2001 attacks, but we should also blame the perpetrators.”

How magnanimous of him. I’m glad to hear that the terrorists have to shoulder a little of the blame.

As he has done many times already in the campaign, Barack Obama is calling John McCain a liar, when he is the one who is lying. The latest instance is a McCain ad linking Obama to Franklin Raines, a central figure in the Fannie Mae failure. The Obama campaign says:

This is another flat-out lie from a dishonorable campaign that is increasingly incapable of telling the truth. Frank Raines has never advised Senator Obama about anything — ever.

Who’s lying? Not John McCain. His campaign cites two Washington Post articles that substantiate the charge. Either Obama is lying (again) or the Washington Post is in error.

BONUS: In its fact-check of the ad, the Washington Post is apparently unable to report accurately on the contents of the Washington Post.

ANOTHER BONUS: The ad is being called racist too, of course.

I’m not certain whether I approve of Secretary Paulson’s proposal to create an RTC-like entity to buy up bad debt. Perhaps the situation is dire enough to require such an action, but it’s deeply troubling. On the other hand, it’s easy to oppose Charles Schumer’s alternate proposal:

Schumer presented his own proposal for federal intervention, in which the government would lend struggling banks money in exchange for an equity stake. He said it would be conditioned on the banks agreeing to legislation that would let homeowners who have declared bankruptcy renegotiate their mortgages so they could keep their homes.

“An equity stake” means ownership.  Schumer wants the government to take ownership of the banking system.  To be sure, this is only partial ownership, but once the government has its foot in the door, it won’t be leaving.  This is nothing less than a proposal to begin nationalizing the banking system.

At least we shouldn’t have to deal with any bogus arguments that the Federal government will be a silent partner in banking.  Schumer’s condition makes it clear that the government will be running the show from the get-go.

According to Marc Ambinder of the Atlantic, 77% of Obama’s ads are negative, compared to 56% of McCain’s.  (Via the Corner.)  Personally I’ve got no problem with negative ads (lies are another matter), but a lot of people claim to hate them.

Joe Biden has gazed into my soul, and determined that I don’t really like America all that much:

Democratic vice presidential candidate Joe Biden says that paying higher taxes is the patriotic thing to do for wealthier Americans. . .

Biden told ABC’s “Good Morning America” on Thursday that, in his words, “it’s time to be patriotic … time to jump in, time to be part of the deal, time to help get America out of the rut.”

Democrats love accusing Republicans of questioning their patriotism, but they are the ones who actually do it. (For example.)

(Via the Corner.)

UPDATE: Good point:

You mean like this?

Biden gave average of $369 to charity a year

Boy, talk about reinforcing the “stereotype” of spending someone else’s money.

(Via Instapundit.)

ABC’s Jake Tapper fact-checks Obama’s Spanish-language ad, and finds it dishonest in every regard:

Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., has launched a new Spanish-language TV ad that seeks to paint Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., as anti-immigrant, even tying the Republican to his longtime conservative talk-radio nemesis Rush Limbaugh. . .

There are some real factual problems with this ad, which is titled “Dos Caras,” or two faces.

First of all, tying Sen. McCain – especially on the issue of immigration reform – to Limbaugh is unfair.

Limbaugh opposed McCain on that issue. Vociferously. And in a larger sense, it’s unfair to link McCain to Limbaugh on a host of issues since Limbaugh, as any even occasional listener of his knows, doesn’t particularly care for McCain.

Second, the quotes of Limbaugh’s are out of context.

(Via Instapundit.)

As Mark Hemingway notes, Palin gets it exactly right, whereas Biden’s comment is idiotic, and Obama’s isn’t even as clear as Biden’s.

BONUS: Also, Obama gets the name wrong.  To be fair, I didn’t know what AIG stood for either, but I’m pretty sure I would have found out before speaking to the press about it.

Fox News reports:

Hillary Clinton has pulled out of an appearance at a New York rally next week to protest Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad because she doesn’t want to be seen alongside Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin in a “partisan” event, her aides say.

Several American Jewish groups plan a major rally outside the United Nations on Monday. Clinton had initially accepted an invitation to join, but her aides objected when they learned Palin will also be part of the rally. The Alaska governor is also expected to meet with several foreign ministers during the U.N.’s opening General Assembly session.

She’s got every right to refuse to appear with Palin, and I can even see why she wouldn’t want to. Given that many Democrats are suspicious that her support of Barack Obama is lukewarm at best, creating a Clinton-Palin photo opportunity might cause her some troubles. However, this part is just silly:

“[Palin’s] attendance was news to us, and this was never billed to us as a partisan political event,” Clinton spokesman Philippe Reines said Wednesday. “Sen. Clinton will therefore not be attending.”

It wouldn’t have been a partisan event if Clinton had attended.  At the very least it would have been bi-partisan, and I strongly suspect the event was intended to be non-partisan.  But it will be a partisan event now, at least as viewed by the press.  Clinton has made it so.

Many people were puzzled by Obama’s denial yesterday of Amir Taheri’s allegation that Obama tried to stall an agreement between the U.S. and Iraq, since the denial seemed to confirm the allegation. Today, the consensus seems to be that Obama’s denial is making a distinction between the the Status of Forces Agreement and the Strategic Framework Agreement.

I originally discounted that explanation, since Taheri’s article nowhere specifically mentioned either agreement, so it could hardly be denied on that basis. Furthermore, the text of Obama’s denial jumbles the two together, at least as reported by AFP:

In fact, Obama had told the Iraqis that they should not rush through a “Strategic Framework Agreement” governing the future of US forces until after President George W. Bush leaves office, she said.

Also, although I wasn’t aware of it until Tom Maguire pointed it out, Obama’s campaign website combines the issues:

Obama and Biden believe any Status of Forces Agreement, or any strategic framework agreement, should be negotiated in the context of a broader commitment by the U.S. to begin withdrawing its troops and forswearing permanent bases. Obama and Biden also believe that any security accord must be subject to Congressional approval. It is unacceptable that the Iraqi government will present the agreement to the Iraqi parliament for approval—yet the Bush administration will not do the same with the U.S. Congress. The Bush administration must submit the agreement to Congress or allow the next administration to negotiate an agreement that has bipartisan support here at home and makes absolutely clear that the U.S. will not maintain permanent bases in Iraq.

But Taheri has taken Obama’s denial that way, and written a lengthy response, pointing out that the SOFA negotiations and SFA negotiations cannot be (or at least are not) separated.

Obama needs to be more clear about what it did and did not say to the Iraqis, and why.  So far they’ve merely issued a denial that doesn’t deny much of anything.  At a minimum, Obama has admitted going behind the Administration’s back to frustrate some of its negotiations with the Iraqi government.  That’s already pretty bad.  Whether it’s worse than that isn’t clear yet.

(Via Instapundit.)

ABC News reports.  (Via Instapundit.)

Obama identifies the key problem with our government:

“The domination of special interests, the domination of lobbyists, the loss of a civic culture in Washington among public [servants] has led not only to well-known disasters, like the mismanagement of the Katrina situation, but quiet disasters, where you’ve got entire agencies that have been hollowed out and you’ve got political appointees who aren’t concerned with the mission of those organizations,” Obama said. “So we’ve got to transform Washington and we’ve got to do some house cleaning… part of my job, I think, as president, is to make government cool again.”

In all seriousness, if Obama is elected, I’m certain the government will become the coolest place of all, at least as portrayed in the media.  Whether that will help solve any actual problems is another matter.

(Via the Campaign Spot.)

The Obama campaign has worked out an elegant solution to one of its problems, Obama’s tendency to commit embarrassing gaffes whenever parted from his teleprompter.  The solution is obvious really: don’t separate him from his teleprompter.

(Via Hot Air.)

Rasmussen reports:

Sarah Palin bests Joseph Biden 47% to 44% in a hypothetical head-to-head match-up for the presidency, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey. . .

Just over half of voters view both of the vice presidential candidates at least somewhat favorably, although 35% rate their opinion of Palin as Very Favorable while only 23% feel that way about Biden. Twenty-eight percent (28%) have a very unfavorable opinion of the woman governor of Alaska versus 20% who say that about the longtime Delaware senator. . .

When Palin is pitted against Barack Obama, the Democratic presidential nominee wins 50% to 43%.

In the same survey, Palin’s running mate, John McCain, beats Biden 49% to 45%.

Zogby was one thing, but Rasmussen I find credible. The latest Rasmussen poll has Pennsylvania tied at 47. The internals are even a bit worse for Obama:

The latest poll finds the Republican candidate is viewed more a bit more favorably among voters than his opponent. McCain is viewed favorably by 60%, up three points from a week ago. Obama’s ratings are at 52% favorable, down three points.

Also, by a 51% to 42% margin, voters in the Keystone State trust McCain more than Obama.

(Via the Corner.)

The Obama campaign has compiled a “fact sheet” for attacking David Freddoso, the author of an anti-Obama book. Ramesh Ponnuru points out that two of the three “lies” are actually true. (The third is hard to evaluate.) The most amusing is Obama’s citation of a Factcheck.org post that actually agrees with Freddoso.

According to the AP, lawyers for Sarah Palin have produced emails detailing the reasons for firing Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan.  They reportedly support the story told by Gov. Palin, and by Monegan for that matter.  Although articles on the subject rarely see fit to mention it, Monegan denies he was ever pressured to fire Wooten.

(Via Hot Air.)

Andrew McCarthy’s column on Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, Fannie Mae, and Freddie Mac is a must read. The punch line:

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson is to be commended for telling Lehman the gravy train has left the station. Back-stopping recklessness leads only to more recklessness, while punishing prudent actors who don’t buy the home they can’t afford, don’t lend to the dodgy debtor, and don’t create new commercial paper that bundles these dubious transactions for mega-trading.

But now that the adults have finally decided it’s time to pay the piper, we need to get a look at the actual bill. Put Fannie and Freddie on the books … and let’s see if the Pelosi Democrats will give the economy-wrecking practices of their beloved private/public partnerships half the scrutiny they’ve reserved for the firing of U.S. attorneys.

One thing he points out is the Federal Government is assuming Fannie and Freddie’s $5 trillion in liabilities (that’s over half the national debt), without feeling the need to put it on the Federal budget. Enron pales in comparison.

(Via the Corner.)

Speaking of which, LGF notes that Barack Obama is the second largest recipient of Fannie and Freddie’s contributions over the last ten years, despite having been in office for less than four!

You can’t make this stuff up: the NYT is concerned that Todd Palin might have influence in a McCain-Palin administration. Needless to say, the NYT (which endorsed Hillary Clinton) has been less than consistent in its concern about the potential influence of spouses.

(Via Instapundit.)

Color me skeptical, but a New York Post story says it might be, citing private polls. (Via Hot Air.)

Meanwhile, Tigerhawk wonders if all the stories about panic on the left might be a Democratic ploy.  (Via Instapundit.)

The Telegraph reports:

ISLAMIC law has been officially adopted in Britain, with sharia courts given powers to rule on Muslim civil cases.

The government has quietly sanctioned the powers for sharia judges to rule on cases ranging from divorce and financial disputes to those involving domestic violence.

Rulings issued by a network of five sharia courts are enforceable with the full power of the judicial system, through the county courts or High Court.

Previously, the rulings of sharia courts in Britain could not be enforced, and depended on voluntary compliance among Muslims.

It has now emerged that sharia courts with these powers have been set up in London, Birmingham, Bradford and Manchester with the network’s headquarters in Nuneaton, Warwickshire. Two more courts are being planned for Glasgow and Edinburgh.

Sheikh Faiz-ul-Aqtab Siddiqi, whose Muslim Arbitration Tribunal runs the courts, said he had taken advantage of a clause in the Arbitration Act 1996.

Under the act, the sharia courts are classified as arbitration tribunals. The rulings of arbitration tribunals are binding in law, provided that both parties in the dispute agree to give it the power to rule on their case.

(Via the Corner.)

This stinks to high heaven. Alaska Democrats supervising the investigation into the firing of Alaska Safety Commissioner Monegan have:

• Refused to appoint a non-partisan investigator.
• Insisted that the investigation must be complete by October 31, four days before the election.
• Promised, before any interviews were conducted, that the result will be damaging to Palin.
• Interfered with the list of witnesses that their own lead investigator wished to question.

An honest investigation would almost certainly clear Palin, given the basic facts:

Commissioner Monegan and state trooper Wooten are surprisingly mild-mannered about this “scandal” that’s blown into a national news story after Palin’s vice presidential appointment.

Monegan told the Anchorage Daily News on August 30 that he was never pressured to dismiss Palin’s former brother-in-law. “For the record,” he said, “no one has ever said fire Wooten. Not the governor. Not Todd. Not any of the other staff.”

Wooten, for his part, has reportedly turned down at least $30,000 from tabloids hungry for his side of the story.

But it doesn’t look like an honest investigation is likely.

(Via Hot Air.)

ABC’s Jake Tapper confirms that McCain doesn’t use a computer because of his war injuries:

Assuredly McCain isn’t comfortable talking about this — and the McCain campaign discouraged me from writing about this — but the reason the aged Arizonan doesn’t use a computer or send email is because of his war wounds.

I realize some of the nastier liberals in the blogosphere will see this as McCain once again “playing the POW card,” but it’s simply a fact: typing on a regular keyboard for any sustained period of time bothers McCain physically.

He can type, he occasionally does type, but in general the injuries he sustained as a POW — ones that make it impossible for him to raise his arms high enough to comb his hair — mean that small tasks make his shoulders ache, so he tries to avoid any repetitive exercise.

Again, it’s not that he can’t type, he just by habit avoids when he can repetitive exercise involving his arms. He does if he has to, as with handshaking or autographs.

It’s certainly possible that the Obama campaign did not know this, since McCain makes it sound in interviews as if this is a matter of choice, not discomfort because of his war wounds.

(Via Hot Air.)

I don’t understand McCain doesn’t fire back on this.  It’s great material for them; much better than the lipstick business.  Why are they reluctant to talk about it?

(Previous post.)

For what it’s worth, Zogby has McCain up in Pennsylvania, 49-44.  But then, Zogby has a virtual tie in Indiana.

(Via Hot Air.)

Rasmussen reports:

Republican challenger Dino Rossi has pulled ahead of Governor Christine Gregoire for the first time since February in Washington’s gubernatorial election. The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey in the state finds Rossi leading the incumbent 52% to 46%.

(Via the Corner.)

Rossi will have to win handily to put his election out of reach of the King County fraud machine.

Barack Obama is running a new ad mocking McCain for being unable to use a computer:

An AP story has some background:

John McCain is mocked as an out-of-touch, out-of-date computer illiterate in a television commercial out Friday from Barack Obama as the Democrat begins his sharpest barrage yet on McCain’s long Washington career. . .

“Today is the first day of the rest of the campaign,” Obama campaign manager David Plouffe says in a campaign strategy memo. “We will respond with speed and ferocity to John McCain’s attacks and we will take the fight to him, but we will do it on the big issues that matter to the American people.”

The newest ad showcasing their hard line includes unflattering footage of McCain at a hearing in the early ’80s, wearing giant glasses and an out-of-style suit, interspersed with shots of a disco ball, a clunky phone, an outdated computer and a Rubik’s Cube. . .

Obama spokesman Dan Pfeiffer said the campaign was not making an issue of the 72-year-old McCain’s age, but the time he’s spent in Washington.

“Our economy wouldn’t survive without the Internet, and cyber-security continues to represent one our most serious national security threats,” Pfeiffer said. “It’s extraordinary that someone who wants to be our president and our commander in chief doesn’t know how to send an e-mail.”

McCain has said he relies on his wife and staff to work the computer for him and that he doesn’t use e-mail.

ASIDE: Not making his age an issue? Please, that doesn’t even pass the laugh test. (Frankly, I think his age is a legitimate issue.) Also, is whether McCain can send email really one of “the big issues that matter to the American people”? But anyway. . .

Why do you think that McCain never learned to use a computer? Jonah Goldberg has a good theory. This Boston Globe story sheds some light on the matter:

McCain gets emotional at the mention of military families needing food stamps or veterans lacking health care. The outrage comes from inside: McCain’s severe war injuries prevent him from combing his hair, typing on a keyboard, or tying his shoes. Friends marvel at McCain’s encyclopedic knowledge of sports. He’s an avid fan – Ted Williams is his hero – but he can’t raise his arm above his shoulder to throw a baseball.

(Emphasis mine.) Hard to use a computer when you can’t use a keyboard, isn’t it?

I think this will prove to be a major unforced error by Obama. The rebuttal ad writes itself, and how many chances does one get to rebut an unfair attack while simultaneously highlighting your war record? This is much better material than the lipstick business.

UPDATE: Goldberg’s post is on Drudge now.

UPDATE and BUMP: Instapundit has been rounding up comment on this, and finds a fair amount of evidence that, notwithstanding his inability to type, McCain actually is pretty internet savvy. Plus, this comment at Ace of Spades:

I think they spent months trying to figure out how they can position Obama as better qualified than McCain, and basically came up with the fact that Obama can type.

Heh.

UPDATE : It gets worse; there’s not even a shred of truth to the attack. An eight-year-old Forbes story reported:

In certain ways, McCain was a natural Web candidate. Chairman of the Senate Telecommunications Subcommittee and regarded as the U.S. Senate’s savviest technologist, McCain is an inveterate devotee of email. His nightly ritual is to read his email together with his wife, Cindy. The injuries he incurred as a Vietnam POW make it painful for McCain to type. Instead, he dictates responses that his wife types on a laptop. “She’s a whiz on the keyboard, and I’m so laborious,” McCain admits.

(Via the Corner.)

UPDATE: Worst. Rebuttal. Ever.  In an effort to contradict Goldberg, the Huffington Post points out that McCain can use a Blackberry and a cell phone.  Not only does it fail to contradict Goldberg’s defense — since injuries that keep you from using a keyboard effectively would not necessarily keep you from using a Blackberry or a cell phone — but it eviscerates the entire point of the Obama ad.  Bravo.

(Via Perfunction, via Instapundit.)

The AP reports:

Republican John McCain has taken a modest lead over Barack Obama entering the final seven weeks of their presidential contest, buoyed by decisive advantages among suburban and working-class whites and a huge edge in how people rate each candidate’s experience, a poll showed Friday. . .

The survey—conducted after both parties staged their conventions and picked their vice presidential candidates—conforms with others that have shown the Republicans grabbing the momentum after a summer in which Obama had steadily maintained a slim lead. According to the AP-GfK Poll, McCain leads Obama 48 percent to 44 percent. . .

Eighty percent say McCain, with nearly three decades in Congress, has the right experience to be president. Just 46 percent say Obama, now in his fourth year in the Senate, is experienced enough. Another 47 percent say Obama lacks the proper experience—an even worse reading than the 36 percent who had the same criticism about Palin, now in her second year as governor after serving as a small-town mayor in her state.

(Via the Corner.)

Rassmussen reports that McCain is in striking range of Obama in Washington State, 49-47.  (Via the Corner.)  If Washington is in play, Obama is in very deep trouble.

We’ll have to see if Dino Rossi is allowed to win the Governor’s race this time.

The USA Today/Gallup poll I blogged two days ago has finally been published. (Internet Scofflaw: tomorrow’s news today!) The 50-45 advantage for Republicans I reported is among likely voters.  Among registered voters, the Democrats have a narrow 48-45 lead, but that’s still much closer than the double-digit lead they’ve enjoyed all year.  Bottom line:

The positive impact of the GOP convention on polling indicators of Republican strength is further seen in the operation of Gallup’s “likely voter” model in this survey. Republicans, who are now much more enthused about the 2008 election than they were prior to the convention, show heightened interest in voting, and thus outscore Democrats in apparent likelihood to vote in November. As a result, Republican candidates now lead Democratic candidates among likely voters by 5 percentage points, 50% to 45%.

If these numbers are sustained through Election Day — a big if — Republicans could be expected to regain control of the U.S. House of Representatives.

That’s how the NYT describes Joe Biden and his predilection for embarrassing gaffes.  I can’t believe they ran this story.  Are the gatekeepers on vacation?

(Via Instapundit.)

The blogosphere is abuzz about Palin’s answer to Charlie Gibson about Bush Doctrine, asking for clarification. I have to confess, I thought everyone agreed on what the Bush Doctrine is, but I was wrong. Apparently, different people take the phrase differently. (Dan Froomkin makes this point in a Washington Post column today attacking President Bush.)

I thought that the Bush Doctrine referred to President Bush’s pronouncement that we will not distinguish between terrorists and the states that harbor them. But Charlie Gibson takes it differently, saying that it refers to the right to “anticipatory self-defense.”

So I think Palin was wise not to assume that she and Gibson meant the same thing by the phrase. But I think there’s no escaping that her answer wasn’t very strong. After Gibson gave his (incorrect, I think) definition of the Bush Doctrine, her answer was rather unfocused.

This would have played out better if she had given her own definition, rather than asking for clarification. Particularly if she had used the definition I think is correct, she could have said that she did agree with it, and lamented the fact that Bush has abandoned it.

Since it turns out that no one knows what the Bush Doctrine is (or, more accurately, everyone knows but no one agrees), I think we have to acquit Palin of not knowing what Gibson was talking about. But she should have been more assertive about it, rather than deferring to Gibson for his definition.

POSTSCRIPT: Let me close with this letter, posted at the Corner:

Gibson: What do you think of the Constitution?
Palin: Could you be more specific?
Gibson: [Stares over glasses]
Kos: OMG SHE DOESN’T KNOW WHAT THE CONSTITUTION IS!!!!

UPDATE: A reader points out that Barack Obama has his own offbeat definition of the Bush Doctrine.

UPDATE: Charles Krauthammer, who coined the phrase “Bush Doctrine”, says Gibson was confused, not Palin. He says my version is Bush Doctrine #2, and Gibson’s is Bush Doctrine #3. “The” Bush Doctrine (his current policy), is Bush Doctrine #4, and is distinct from both #2 and #3. Given the ambiguity, it was reasonable to ask for clarification.

(Via the Corner.)

UPDATE: A page one Washington Post story agrees with Krauthammer:

Intentionally or not, the Republican vice presidential nominee was on to something. After a brief exchange, Gibson explained that he was referring to the idea — enshrined in a September 2002 White House strategy document — that the United States may act militarily to counter a perceived threat emerging in another country. But that is just one version of a purported Bush doctrine advanced over the past eight years.

The Intrade prediction market now favors McCain for the first time. McCain is selling at 50.6 and Obama at 48.8. This means that speculators think it’s ever-so-slightly more likely that McCain will win than Obama.

(Via the Corner.)

UPDATE: McCain has opened up a bit of a gap now: 51.6 versus 46.7.

UPDATE: Now 51.8 versus 45.5.

Reuters reports:

Canada’s Conservatives appeared on Monday to be riding a wave of public support that could hand them their first majority government since 1988, but the party did all it could to minimize such expectations.

The Conservatives, who formed a minority government after the last election in 2006, entered the second day of the campaign for the Oct. 14 vote with clear signs of being better organized and financed than their main opposition, the Liberals. Polls also showed voters strongly prefer Prime Minister Stephen Harper over Liberal leader Stephane Dion.

A Segma poll in Monday’s La Presse newspaper put support for the Conservatives at 43 percent, which would translate into about 183 seats in the 308-seat House of Commons. The poll gave the Liberals 25 percent, or about 62 seats.

(Via Vodkapundit.)

Or not.  (Via Hot Air.)

He says Hillary Clinton would have been a better VP pick:

At a rally in Nashua, N.H., a man in the audience told Biden how glad he was that Obama picked him over Hillary, “not because she’s a woman, but because, look at the things she did in the past.”

“Make no mistake about this,” Biden responded. “Hillary Clinton is as qualified or more qualified than I am to be vice president of the United States of America. Let’s get that straight. She’s a truly close personal friend, she is qualified to be president of the United States of America, she’s easily qualified to be vice president of the United States of America, and quite frankly, it might have been a better pick than me. But she’s first rate, I mean that sincerely, she’s first rate, so let’s get that straight.”

Biden’s mouth is his worst enemy.

(Via Instapundit.)

The latest Fox News poll agrees with the other major polls, giving McCain the lead 45-42. A major cause of McCain bounce is a surge among independents, who now favor McCain by 15 points, 46-31.

Like most polls, Fox is overweighting Democrats, with 42% in their sample against 35% Republicans. If it’s true that the GOP is closing the party gap (and McCain’s surge with independents makes that sound likely to me), this race isn’t even as close as the polls show.

In possibly related news, the Obama campaign is pulling out of Georgia.

Joe Biden:

“I hear all this talk about how the Republicans are going to work in dealing with parents who have both the joy, because there’s joy to it as well, the joy and the difficulty of raising a child who has a developmental disability, who were born with a birth defect. Well guess what folks? If you care about it, why don’t you support stem cell research?”

(Via the Corner.)

Of course this is incredibly offensive, but I want to point out that it’s also idiotic. Let’s count the ways:

• Republicans (and Palin in particular) do support stem cell research. Opposing stem cell research that destroys embryos is not the same thing as opposing it in general.
• McCain has gone further than many Republicans (and further than me), and reluctantly supported stem cell research on embryos discarded by fertility clinics. This is substantially similar to the Democratic position. I’m not aware that Palin has taken an official stand on fertility-clinic embryos.
• Induced pluripotent stem cells, which carry no ethical problems, have now come to dominate stem cell research anyway.
• Stem cell research cannot cure Down’s Syndrome. The promise of stem cells is their ability to take the form of any cell in the body. There is nothing to suggest that stem cells could be used to remove an extra chromosome from a body’s existing cells. To suggest otherwise indicates that Biden does not understand stem cells, or Down’s syndrome, or both.

A note to Gordon Brown and Guardian columnist Jonathan Freedland: The United States was founded on the principle that the British aren’t going to tell us what to do.  You can look it up.

At Opensecrets.org: (1) Dodd, (2) Kerry, (3) Obama, (4) Clinton.

Hmm.

(Via Instapundit.)

Jennifer Rubin writes:

Obama and his supporters never tire of telling us that we should assess his ability to govern as president by his performance in the campaign. Fine — let’s do it.

Has he shown grace under pressure? Not exactly. Has he controlled his own message? Nope. Did his own personnel pick (the serially obnoxious Joe Biden) set this slow-motion pile up in motion? Yup.

So here’s the rub: Palin has energized the GOP base, driven women and independent voters into McCain’s camp, and flummoxed the MSM, but her greatest accomplishment has been to unveil the Democrats’ true liability.

That basic liability has nothing to do with the fact that they are ultra-liberals and lack credibility on national security issues. Their biggest problem is that they have never led, never managed, never navigated during a crisis, and as a result never demonstrated calm under fire. It is one thing for the GOP candidates to state that in a speech — as many did at the Republican National Convention — but it is quite another to see it being played out before your very eyes.

The Democratic primary systematically eliminated their most experienced candidates, leaving the three least experienced, then the two least, before settling on the least experienced of all, a man who has never been in a seriously contested race. By taking advantage of the Democratic primary’s bizarre rules, he was able to win the nomination despite losing every big state to Hillary Clinton. It seemed inevitable that Obama’s inexperience would show as soon as his campaign faced adversity, but he never really faced adversity until now.

(Via Instapundit.)

Angus Reid Global Monitor reports:

Public support for Republican Party candidates to the House of Representatives increased dramatically this month in the United States, according to a poll by Gallup released by USA Today. 50 per cent of respondents would vote for the GOP contender in their congressional district, up eight points since August.

Democratic Party contenders are second with 45 per cent, down six points in a month. Six per cent of respondents would vote for other candidates or are undecided.

But don’t get too excited yet.  The poll has yet to appear on Gallup’s or USA Today’s web site.

Power Line reports that Obama did not, as he has claimed, sponsor legislation to secure loose nuclear weapons.

Here’s the video of Obama’s lipstick-on-a-pig remark:

I don’t think Obama meant to call Sarah Palin a pig, since there’s no upside for him to do so, but it’s very clear that his audience took him that way. You don’t get cheers and catcalls for an ordinary cliche.

What Obama should have done is disclaim the pig-as-Palin interpretation, while accepting some small responsibility for having been the one who actually chose the words. The problem with that is Obama would have to admit a mistake, which he is generally unable to do. Barring that, he has had to claim 100% innocence. But it’s disingenuous for him to argue that it was a purely innocent phrase when his own supporters took the insult and cheered.

McCain-Palin, on the other hand, should have stood back and taken it with good humor. It’s not a lie, and it’s not an attack on Palin’s family, which makes it less bad than 99% of what has been thrown at Palin lately. To get outraged at this cheapens their legitimate outrage at other attacks.

POSTSCRIPT: On the other hand, I can’t help playing the “if this were a Republican” game. Remember the hysteria when it was reported that Newt Gingrich, in a private conversation with his own mother, called Hillary Clinton a bitch? If McCain were the one who made this gaffe, the press would make it the defining moment of the campaign.

UPDATE: Well, they’re obviously not doing it my way.

I’m not kidding. The left has officially gone off its rocker.

UPDATE: Heh: Pilate voted present.

UPDATE: Sheesh.  This line has now been used on the floor of the House of Representatives.  Do these guys even want to win?

This poll result from Rasmussen is striking, and frightening:

Most American voters (60%) [say] the Supreme Court should make decisions based on what is written in the constitution, while 30% say rulings should be guided on the judge’s sense of fairness and justice. . . While 82% of voters who support McCain believe the justices should rule on what is in the Constitution, just 29% of Barack Obama’s supporters agree. Just 11% of McCain supporters say judges should rule based on the judge’s sense of fairness, while nearly half (49%) of Obama supporters agree.

Only about a quarter of Obama voters think the Supreme Court should be bound by the Constitution.  Wow.

(Via Hot Air.)

Another of Obama’s high principles is now shown as a fraud:

There’s been a spurt of 527 activity on behalf of Sen. John McCain, but Barack Obama campaign has suddenly gone silent on the subject.

That’s because, after a year of telling donors not to contribute to 527 groups, of encouraging strategists not to form them and of suggesting that outside messaging efforts would not be welcome in Obama’s Democratic Party, Obama’s strategists have changed their approach.

An Obama adviser privy to the campaign’s internal thinking on the matter says that,with less than two months before the election and with the realization that Republicans have achieved financial parity with Democrats, they hope that Democratic allies — what another campaign aide termed “the cavalry” — will come to Obama’s aid.

The Obama campaign can’t ask donors to form outside groups; it can only communicate, through the public and the media, with body language, tells and hints.

The upshot: Obama’s campaign will no longer object to independent efforts that hammer John McCain, just as, in their mind, the McCain campaign has not objected to those efforts targeted at Obama. “I assume with their 527s stirring, some [Democratic] ones will as well,” another senior campaign official said.

(Via Hot Air.)

Is there anything left of Obama’s supposedly high principles?  His claim not to take money from lobbyists always was a fraud.  He’s reneged on his pledge to accept public financing.  Now he’s encouraging 527s to attack McCain.  Barack Obama is an ordinary politician, except with much less experience.

Tom Smith wonders.  (Via Instapundit.)

The NYT reports:

After months of record-breaking fund-raising, a new sense of urgency in Senator Barack Obama’s fund-raising team is palpable as the full weight of the campaign’s decision to bypass public financing for the general election is suddenly upon it. . .

The signs of concern have become evident in recent weeks as early fund-raising totals have suggested that Mr. Obama’s decision to bypass public financing may not necessarily afford him the commanding financing advantage over Senator John McCain that many had originally predicted. . .

Obama campaign officials had calculated that with its vaunted fund-raising machine, driven by both small contributors over the Internet and a powerful high-dollar donor network, it made more sense to forgo public financing so they could raise and spend unlimited sums.

But the campaign is struggling to meet ambitious fund-raising goals it set for the campaign and the party. It collected in June and July far less from Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s donors than originally projected. Moreover, Mr. McCain, unlike Mr. Obama, will have the luxury of concentrating almost entirely on campaigning instead of raising money, as Mr. Obama must do.

The Obama campaign does not have to report its August fund-raising totals until next week, so it is difficult to tally what it has in the bank at this point. A spokesman said that August was its best fund-raising month yet and that the campaign’s fund-raising was on track. But the campaign finished July with slightly less cash on hand with the Democratic National Committee compared with Mr. McCain and the R.N.C. The Obama campaign has also been spending heavily, including several million more than the McCain campaign in advertising in August.

A California fund-raiser familiar with the party’s August performance estimated that it raised roughly $17 million last month, a drop-off from the previous month, and finished with just $13 million in the bank.

(Via Hot Air.)

The fact that he’s losing now will hurt his fundraising too.  People don’t like to waste their money.

The latest Gallup tracking poll now fully incorporates McCain convention speech, and according to it, McCain has widened his lead to 5 points, 49-44 among registered voters. (Via Hot Air.)

This roughly agrees with yesterday’s USA Today/Gallup poll that gave McCain a 4-point lead among registered voters (50-46) . That lends credence to its stunning finding of a 10-point McCain lead (54-44) among likely voters.

Rasmussen gives McCain a smaller lead (47-46). Zogby (for what it’s worth), gives McCain-Palin the lead 50-46.

There’s a long way to go yet, but I’d certainly rather be up than down.

UPDATE: A reader points out this note on the Rasmussen poll:

For a variety of reasons, the Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll is less volatile than some other polls and always shows a somewhat smaller convention bounce than reported by others. This is primarily because we weight our results by party identification (see methodology). Looking at the data before adjusting for partisan identification, the Republican convention appears to have created a larger surge in party identification than the Democratic convention the week before. If this lasts, it could have a significant impact on Election 2008.

This goes a long way toward explaining why Rasmussen is seeing a smaller McCain lead than other polls; they weight their results by party affiliation to a balance that may no longer be accurate.  Rasmussen currently uses a weight of 40% Democrat and 32% Republican, whereas Gallup is finding that party identification has moved to near parity.  The note above doesn’t give any numbers, but suggests that Rasmussen might be seeing a similar shift.

The Washington Post takes a look at how the deal to build an Alaskan natural gas pipeline came to be.  (Via Instapundit.)

The same poll that gave McCain a 10-point lead among likely voters also has the GOP only one point behind Democrats in party identification, 48-47. This is huge if it’s accurate, as the GOP always does quite a bit better than party identification would suggest.

In 2006, polls showed the Democrats had pulled near even with Republicans on the question of national security. Now, a wide advantage for Republicans has returned.

Ed Morrissey credits the shift to the contrast between party spokesmen, with various Democratic know-nothings (e.g., Reid, Pelosi, Obama) measured against John McCain. I’m sure that’s some of it, but I think the main point is even simpler.

On the central national security question of the last two years, the Surge, Republicans were right and Democrats were wrong.  Now they continue to hurt themselves by refusing to admit they were wrong.  Many things escape the public’s notice; the success of the Surge has not.

Old line: Bristol Palin’s pregnancy is Sarah Palin’s comeuppance for supporting abstinence-only education.

New line: Sarah Palin’s support for condom education puts her out of step with her party, and will hurt her with evangelicals.  (Via Instapundit.)

ASIDE: I’m amazed to see the press recycling this “something-or-other will hurt Palin with evangelicals” line.  It’s pure wishful thinking.  These guys clearly don’t even know any evangelicals.

The latest Gallup poll, with two-thirds of the interviews coming after McCain’s speech, gives McCain the lead 48-45. That’s outside the margin of error, and a 13-point bounce since the day the convention was supposed to start. (Via Hot Air.)

The latest Rasmussen poll finds the race precisely even.

Expect the media to redouble their efforts.

UPDATE: Wow, this poll has to be an outlier, but I’m loving it anyway: USA Today has McCain up by 10 (54-44) among likely voters, and by 4 (50-46) among registered voters.  (Via Instapundit.)

Jonah Goldberg notes that the Atlantic is starting an advice column.  As I am sure countless others are finding, my question writes itself:

There’s a blogger I used to read; let’s call him “Andy”.  Andy was my first blogger.  I read him first every day, and he introduced me to everyone else that I still read today.

For a long time, I agreed with Andy about everything.  But then one day, Andy started to change.  At first it was little things, like imputing bad motives to people he once had lauded, for following policies he once had advocated.  Then he started reversing all his political views.

Now, he seems to practice everything that he used to stand against, like spreading vicious smears about politicians’ families.  When I started reading Andy, he would have named an anti-award after someone who behaved as he does now.

My question is: is there any way to reach someone like Andy?  I don’t imagine we can turn him back to his old views, but can he be convinced to behave like a decent human being again?  Please help.

Nick Cohen writes:

Instead of following a measured strategy, they went berserk. On the one hand, the media treated her as a sex object. The New York Times led the way in painting Palin as a glamour-puss in go-go boots you were more likely to find in an Anchorage lap-dancing club than the Alaska governor’s office.

On the other, liberal journalists turned her family into an object of sexual disgust: inbred rednecks who had stumbled out of Deliverance. Palin was meant to be pretending that a handicapped baby girl was her child when really it was her wanton teenage daughter’s. When that turned out to be a lie, the media replaced it with prurient coverage of her teenage daughter, who was, after all, pregnant, even though her mother was not going to do a quick handover at the maternity ward and act as if the child was hers.

Hatred is the most powerful emotion in politics. At present, American liberals are not fighting for an Obama presidency. I suspect that most have only the haziest idea of what it would mean for their country. The slogans that move their hearts and stir their souls are directed against their enemies: Bush, the neo-cons, the religious right. . .

When a hate campaign goes wrong, however, disaster follows. And everything that could go wrong with the campaign against Palin did. . . In an age when politics is choreographed, voters watch out for the moments when the public-relations facade breaks down and venom pours through the cracks. Their judgment is rarely favourable when it does.

(Via Instapundit.)

Yet another minor error in Obama’s biography:

Obama disclosed that he had once considered serving in the military.

“You know, I actually did,” Obama said. “I had to sign up for Selective Service when I graduated from high school. And I was growing up in Hawaii. And I have friends whose parents were in the military. There are a lot of Army, military bases there.

“And I actually always thought of the military as an ennobling and, you know, honorable option. But keep in mind that I graduated in 1979. The Vietnam War had come to an end. We weren’t engaged in an active military conflict at that point. And so, it’s not an option that I ever decided to pursue.”

There’s no way for anyone to controvert what Obama did or did not consider. But, Selective Service was discontinued between 1975 and 1980, so Obama could not have registered when he graduated in 1979. (Selective Service was reinstated the next year. Having been born in 1961, Obama would have registered the week of July 28, 1980, roughly a year after he graduated.)

UPDATE: Obama registered in September 1980. (That’s within a month of the required date, which I’m sure was no big deal.)

My original post is retracted. I was taken in by a bogus video. Here’s the full context and, if anything, it shows the exact opposite of the doctored clip.

Thanks to Hot Air for the correction.

POSTSCRIPT: This one is pretty interesting too, though. Obama is trying to have it both ways; to tie McCain to the excesses of the right while escaping the excesses of the left. Stephanopoulos will have none of it.

Dean Barnett writes:

Given that we’re more than halfway to the century mark in Palin smears, I think it’s time to take another brief look at the left’s method of smear dissemination. Yesterday on a blog hosted by the prestigious magazine the Atlantic, a post popped up at 11:49 a.m. with the breathless title, “Here We Go.” The post read in its entirety, “Todd Palin’s former business partner files an emergency motion to have his divorce papers sealed. Oh God.” The post linked to the Alaskan court system where you could see the motion if you cared to click through.

Although the author didn’t care to make his innuendo explicit, the insinuation was clear – the National Enquirer had previously reported on what it called “a rumor” that the former business partner in question had had an affair with Sarah Palin. The breathless title and the brevity of the post implied that the smoking gun for the affair laid in the court filings that the former business partner wished to conceal. Naturally, because the purported scoop had the imprimatur of the Atlantic, many other news sources picked it up in rapid order.

Quicker than you can say “conspiracy theory lunatic,” this particular lunatic theory jumped off the tracks. The Court denied the motion to conceal the papers, allowing the curious to sniff through them. Shock of shocks, Sarah Palin’s name wasn’t even mentioned in the filings. Nor was there anything regarding an affair with her. In this particular wild goose chase, the goose flew free.

The Washington Post reports:

“Many of these plans will cost money, which is why I’ve laid out how I’ll pay for every dime — by closing corporate loopholes and tax havens that don’t help America grow.”

Obama’s speech at the Democratic convention in Denver was full of costly promises, including expanded health-care coverage ($65 billion annually), increased education spending ($18 billion) and investments in green technology ($15 billion). But it is misleading for him to say he has shown how he will “pay for every dime” of his plans.

According to the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, the Democratic proposals would cost the federal budget about $377 billion in 2013. The analysis is based on the Obama campaign’s own figures, including the optimistic assertion that he can save $75 billion a year by closing tax loopholes and $55 billion by initiating a phased withdrawal from Iraq.

Committee President Maya MacGuineas accused both the Obama and McCain campaigns of “wishful budgeting.” She estimates that Obama’s promises to extend most of the Bush tax cuts put in place in 2001 and 2003 and to lessen the bite of the alternative minimum tax would probably cost the U.S. Treasury about $400 billion a year.

It will be worse than the $377 billion. Closing tax loopholes never generates the predicted amount of revenue, and although Obama might save some money (in the short term) by pulling out of Iraq, he has promised to deploy more troops to Afghanistan. And that’s before we even consider the cost if he goes through with his promised invasion of Pakistan.

In the interest of balance, the Post needs a questionable assertion from McCain, but what they came up with is ultra-flimsy:

“Russia’s leaders . . . invaded a small, democratic neighbor to gain more control over the world’s oil supply, intimidate other neighbors and further their ambitions of reassembling the Russian empire.”

McCain’s explanation for the Russian invasion of Georgia is oversimplified in the extreme — and omits an important fact that has never been recognized by the McCain campaign: Georgia attacked first.

The Post is parroting Kremlin propaganda. Oversimplified in the extreme? I would say it’s completely accurate. At worst, it’s a judgement call. Even if you reject Georgia’s claim that Russia actually attacked first (for which there is support), it is undisputed that Russia provoked Georgia and had a massive response moving much more quickly than it could have without prior preparation.

Finally, they conclude with questionable assertions from Biden and Palin, both of which are fair but minor.

The latest Palin smear is a bogus allegation that she tried to ban a long list of books. Some of the books she supposedly tried to ban weren’t even published yet when the supposed banning took place.

It is also being said that the allegation is being circulated by the Obama campaign. That’s not quite fair. The allegation was merely being circulated on the Obama campaign website. For some reason, the Obama campaign decided to make their website into a miniature Daily Kos and let anyone post there. Predictably, their lack of control has resulted in Kos-style smear material appearing there. So it’s fair to say that the Obama campaign paid for the smear and gave it a home, but didn’t actually authorize it.

(Via Volokh, via Instapundit.)

CNN reports:

The Alaska state trooper at the center of a probe into whether Gov. Sarah Palin abused her power says he has “made mistakes, and I’ve learned from those mistakes.” But in an exclusive interview with us, Mike Wooten, Palin’s former brother-in-law, also denies some of the biggest allegations against him.

Wooten says he has been offered $30,000 to tell his story to a tabloid. The Obama campaign has reached out to the head of his union.

(Emphasis mine.)  I’m surprised.  The media has shown no lack of enthusiasm on their own, and I would think Obama would rather keep his hands clean.

(Via Instapundit.)

The Denver Post blog reports:

This morning, Republicans tell me that a worker at Invesco Field in Denver saved thousands of unused flags from the Democratic National Convention that were headed for the garbage. Guerrilla campaigning. They will use these flags at their own event today in Colorado Springs with John McCain and Sarah Palin. . .

“What you see in the picture I sent you is less than half of total flags,” a Republican official emailed. “We estimate the total number to be around 12,000 small flags and one full size 3×5 flag.”

I’m not sure what the DNC was supposed to do with unused hand-flags, frankly. But the Republicans are obviously questioning someone’s patriotism here.

(Via Hot Air.)

It would be hard to dispose of so many flags properly (although they could have managed it if they had cared to), but it’s not at all hard to think of other things they could have done with them: First, ask attendees to take a flag home, and second, store the leftover flags, rather than throwing them away. Frankly, these are obvious things to do, if they had even thought about the problem. They even could have gotten a little bit of good press for it. Instead, they underscored their existing reputation.

It’s nice for the Republicans to rescue the flags, but I hope they don’t make too big a deal over it. It would look cheap, I think. Better to keep it in the background and leak the story to friendly media. And I sure hope they dealt with the RNC’s flags properly.

UPDATE: The Democrats are outraged, of course:

Democratic convention organizers claimed the flags were not going to be discarded — but instead were snatched from the site of Obama’s historic address to carry out a “cheap political stunt.”

UPDATE: The person who found the flags says they were sitting for over a week in bags near the trash.  Sounds discarded to me.  Until the Democrats decide to call him a liar, this is settled.

New blog here.  I just love the Internet.  (Via Instapundit.)

Charles Rangel gets the interest waived on a beachfront resort investment.  Also, he failed to report the income on his taxes.

(Via A Blog For All, via Instapundit.)

Hot Air has the Nielsen numbers: 28.3 million for McCain, 27.7 for Obama.

At Hot Air.  I guess he didn’t get the memo.

What might have been a defensible point becomes a lie with the use of one word:

“You’re hearing an awfully lot about me — most of which is not true — but you’re not hearing a lot about you,” Obama said. “You haven’t heard a word about how we’re going to deal with any aspect of the economy that is affecting you and your pocketbook day-to-day. Haven’t heard a word about it. I’m not exaggerating. Literally, two nights, they have not said a word about it.”

Emphasis mine, obviously.  The Republicans said plenty about pocketbook issues, but Obama could probably have defended his comment nevertheless, until he got fancy with the “literally” bit.

Or maybe he just doesn’t know how to use “literally” correctly.  Far too many people don’t.

(Via the Corner.)

Rasmussen also finds a bounce, pulling about even at 46-45.  This is with polling all before McCain’s speech, and two-thirds before Palin’s speech.  (Via the Corner.)