“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?”
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.
Ramesh Ponnuru is very careful not to be caught out. He calls this Newsweek piece a possible scoop, for reporting a McCain litmus test that no one else has heard. If she had a scoop, she would have told us when and where he said that. This is merely an invention.
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.
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.
Iraq is poised to receive a flood of foreign investment, thanks to improved security. More than $74 billion in projects have been submitted for government approval in just the past five months, according to Iraq’s state investment regulator.
The investors include companies from the U.S., Europe, and Gulf Arab states. Their proposals all involve sectors other than oil, including a $13 billion new port for the southern city of Basra, several hotels and thousands of housing units nationwide, says Ahmed Ridha, the chairman of Iraq’s National Investment Commission.
But there’s this dismaying item:
Only one of the projects has broken ground, while most others are still awaiting government approval, which has been difficult to obtain.
Maybe Iraq is modeling itself after the West too much.
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.
This is the second story today about CNN being taken in by a Palin story that’s already been debunked. In this one, CNN follows the AP in failing to discern the difference between praying for X, and asserting that X is true.
The Michigan Supreme Court has affirmed a lower court ruling keeping the “reform” initiative off the ballot. (Via Volokh.)
Here’s a reminder of what the Democrats were trying to pull. In their own words, the initiative’s purpose was “changing the rules of politics in Michigan to help Democrats.” This was cynical even for Democrats.
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.
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.
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.
Just about everyone is mocking CNN for its reporter Lola Ogunnaike buying into a Photoshopped Palin-in-bikini-with-rifle that had already been debunked for about a week:
I mean, McCain has been really good about painting Obama as this lightweight, using the word “celebrity” as a pejorative. They don’t want to have a boomerang effect. They don’t want that to come back on Sarah Palin, and people say, yes, she looks good in a bikini clutching an AK-47, but is she equipped to run the country?
With allthewell-justified mockery, there’s one vein that is being missed: The woman in the photo isn’t even holding an AK-47. I’m hardly an expert on assault rifles, but the AK-47 has the most distinctive profile of any rifle, and that sure isn’t one. It looks to me like an ordinary hunting rifle.
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.
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.
Tom Brokaw said to Sen. Biden yesterday, “When Barack Obama appeared before Rick Warren, he was asked a simple question: When does life begin? And he said at that time that it was above his pay grade. That was the essence of his question.” No, it wasn’t, and I wish people would stop getting this wrong. Warren’s question was pretty well formulated so that it could not be answered with the usual who-knows-when-life-begins claptrap. Warren asked, “At what point does a baby get human rights in your view?”
Brokaw’s version of Warren’s question was a vague and theological, and to it Obama’s “above my pay grade” answer would be a standard, weasely response. The real question was a legal one, and Obama’s answer made no sense at all. (Most likely, Obama came prepared with to answer an abortion question, and didn’t consider that his answer failed to fit the question.)
For some reason, the media’s “errors” always lean the same direction.
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.
As Google comes under ever increasing scrutiny for the power it has over our lives, the web giant is tiptoeing back from its long-held corporate motto, Don’t Be Evil. . .
Some have interpreted the ceaseless criticisms of Google’s privacy policies and its co-operation with totalitarian regimes as a sign the Don’t Be Evil goal is unattainable for a profit-driven company. At the very least, the corporate motto has encouraged the public and the press to hold Google to a higher standard.
“It really wasn’t like an elected, ordained motto,” Google’s vice-president and 20th employee, Marissa Mayer, said in an interview during her trip to Sydney last week.
“I think that ‘Don’t Be Evil’ is a very easy thing to point at when you see Google doing something that you personally don’t like; it’s a very easy thing to point out so it does get targeted a lot.”
MSNBC’s experiment with hyper-partisan news anchors is at an end. Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews are being relieved as MSNBC anchors by NBC reporter David Gregory:
MSNBC tried a bold experiment this year by putting two politically incendiary hosts, Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews, in the anchor chair to lead the cable news channel’s coverage of the election.
That experiment appears to be over.
After months of accusations of political bias and simmering animosity between MSNBC and its parent network NBC, the channel decided over the weekend that the NBC News correspondent and MSNBC host David Gregory would anchor news coverage of the coming debates and election night. Mr. Olbermann and Mr. Matthews will remain as analysts during the coverage.
The change — which comes in the home stretch of the long election cycle — is a direct result of tensions associated with the channel’s perceived shift to the political left.
“The most disappointing shift is to see the partisan attitude move from prime time into what’s supposed to be straight news programming,” said Davidson Goldin, formerly the editorial director of MSNBC and a co-founder of the reputation management firm DolceGoldin.
Why is this happening? The background is the success of Fox News:
Executives at the channel’s parent company, NBC Universal, had high hopes for MSNBC’s coverage of the political conventions. Instead, the coverage frequently descended into on-air squabbles between the anchors, embarrassing some workers at NBC’s news division, and quite possibly alienating viewers. . .
The success of the Fox News Channel in the past decade along with the growth of political blogs have convinced many media companies that provocative commentary attracts viewers and lures Web browsers more than straight news delivered dispassionately.
Why is this happening? The background, as always, is Fox News. I’m not privy to any insight information, but it’s pretty clear that MSBNC made a business decision to move left, hoping to do what Fox has done on the right. But they missed something important. Given the biases of the rest of the media, there was plenty of room for Fox to position itself on the right and still do respectable news.
It’s not nearly so easy on the left. To get to the left of the media, MSNBC put Olbermann and Matthews into the anchor chair. In so doing, it moved beyond respectable news, and became an embarrassment.
It’s the story that wouldn’t die; claims that the Large Hadron Collider will destroy the world are back. Despite being thoroughly debunked, the story is in both the Daily Mail and Fox News today.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
DirecTV has been moving away from Tivo in recent years, but some have speculated that the two were on the verge of patching things up. This press release seems to confirm that.
This is good news, because Tivo really is quite a bit better than the competing DVRs.
“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 issupport), 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.
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.
IT WAS a humiliating week for Robert Mugabe. As the new parliament elected in March was convened for the first time, the chairman of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), Lovemore Moyo, won the vote to become speaker, beating Mr Mugabe’s candidate. Then the veteran leader was booed and heckled during his speech, for the first time in his 28 years in power. Negotiations between the ruling ZANU-PF and the MDC are still suspended, after the two sides failed to agree on who should hold executive power. Mr Mugabe, not one to take humiliation well, looks set to harden his stance: prospects for an early deal look slim. But it was a rare and telling victory for the opposition.
The Zimbabwean leader had violated ground rules, agreed on before the negotiations began, stipulating that the new parliament should not be convened, nor a new cabinet appointed, while negotiations were under way. Several MDC MPs have already been arrested, some as they were entering Parliament to be sworn in. Ahead of a regional meeting earlier this month, Morgan Tsvangirai, the MDC leader, and his party’s secretary-general and chief negotiator were both detained at the airport and their passports confiscated en route to the meeting; they were allowed to continue on their way after South Africa’s President Thabo Mbeki, mandated by the region’s leaders to mediate in the talks, apparently intervened.
I just discovered something interesting. Try downloading Barack Obama’s acceptance speech on iTunes, and it starts downloading instantly. But, try downloading Sarah Palin’s or John McCain, and my computer starts thrashing and the download bar doesn’t budge.
Why would this happen? I don’t know how iTunes works; perhaps the content is downloaded from a GOP server rather than Apple. Then it’s plausible the server might be unable to handle the load. Still, I can’t see why that should make my computer start paging.
UPDATE: Apple wrote back. They gave me their standard “here’s how to download podcasts you big dummy” reply. Hrmph.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.)
Microsoft only wanted all of our money. Increasingly, it seems that Google wants all of our data. In running away from the Evil Empire, have we now instead rushed into the arms of Big Brother?
More popular than Obama, McCain, or Biden, according to Rasmussen. When asked whether Obama or Palin is more qualified to be president, people split about even, with a slight edge to Obama. Of course, Palin isn’t running for president.
Jim Lindgren looks at Sarah Palin’s speech and Barack Obama’s speech and finds quantitatively that Obama was more negative than Palin. He also finds that neither was very sarcastic, least of all Palin. Nevertheless, the press is describing Palin’s speech as harshly negative and sarcastic.
The Palin analysis is here, and the Obama analysis here.
“I heard a very — by the way, and I mean that sincerely — very strong and a very good political speech from a lieutenant governor of Alaska, who I think will be very formidable — and very formidable not only in the campaign,” Biden said.
ASIDE: By the way, I don’t know anyone, in politics or out, who feels the need to reassure people of his sincerity nearly as often as Joe Biden. (And I really mean it.)
WHEREAS, September 5, 2007, will mark the 337th anniversary of the day when the jury, in the trial of William Penn, refused to convict him of violating England’s Conventicle Acts, despite clear evidence that he acted illegally by preaching a Quaker sermon to his congregation.
WHEREAS, by refusing to apply what they determined was an unjust law, the Penn jury not only served justice, but provided a basis for the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment rights of freedom of speech, religion, and peaceable assembly.
WHEREAS, September 5th, 2007, also commemorates the day when four of Penn’s jurors began nine weeks of incarceration for finding him not guilty. Their later release and exoneration established forever the English and American legal doctrine that it is the right and responsibility of the trial jury to decide on matters of law and fact.
WHEREAS, the Sixth and Seventh Amendments are included in the Bill of Rights to preserve the right to trial by jury, which in turn conveys upon the jury the responsibility to defend, with its verdict, all other individual rights enumerated or implied by the U.S. Constitution, including its Amendments.
NOW, THEREFORE, I, Sarah Palin, Governor of the State of Alaska, do hereby proclaim September 5, 2007, as:
Jury Rights Day
in Alaska, in recognition of the integral role the jury, as an institution, plays in our legal system.
President Bush’s top defense advisers have recommended he maintain 15 combat brigades in Iraq until the end of the year contrary to expectations that the improved security in Iraq would allow for quicker cuts, The Associated Press has learned.
Military leaders told the AP that the closely held plan would send a small Marine contingent to Afghanistan in November to replace one of two Marine units expected to head home then.
If Bush follows the recommendations, he would delay any additional buildup in Afghanistan until early next year, when another brigade would be deployed there instead of to Iraq.
That move would cut the number of brigades in Iraq to 14 in February.
Gen. David Petraeus, outgoing commander of the Multi-National Force in Iraq, is recommending that one U.S. army brigade be withdrawn from Iraq before a new administration takes over in January.
A senior U.S. Defense official who has seen Petraeus’ recommendations to the Joint Chiefs, Defense Secretary Gates and President Bush told FOX News the likely brigade to be shifted from Iraq to Afghanistan is the 3rd Brigade Combat Team of the 10th Mountain Division out of Fort Drum, N.Y. . .
Several reports also suggest that Petraeus is also recommending 1,500 Marines also be redirected from service in Iraq and sent to Afghanistan.
Allahpundit catches an AP article that misquotes Sarah Palin, and then builds an entire article around the misquote.
I do wonder why they bothered. Even the modified quote seems defensible (although, not having actually said it, she doesn’t have to), so it doesn’t even seem like an effective smear to me anyway.
Also, many believe Palin is more experienced than Obama, according to a new Rasmussen poll:
Over half of U.S. voters (51%) think reporters are trying to hurt Sarah Palin with their news coverage, and 24% say those stories make them more likely to vote for Republican presidential candidate John McCain in November.
Thirty-nine percent (39%) also believe the GOP vice presidential nominee has better experience to be president of the United States than Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama.
But 49% give Obama the edge on experience, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey – taken before Palin’s historic speech Wednesday night to the Republican National Convention.
While Republicans and Democrats predictably favor their party’s candidate by overwhelming margins, the experience gap among voters unaffiliated with either party is even narrower than the national totals. Forty-two percent (42%) say Obama has better experience to be president, but 37% say Palin does.
A few days ago, we were told Sarah Palin was a helpless noob, with no business in a national campaign. Today, Joe Biden is lowering expectations:
I will be unrelenting in my debate with governor, the governor of Alaska in terms of the positions she has taken. But I will not do what she is able to do so well, and many of it’s not bad. I am not good at the one-line zingers that go at, you know, that’s not my deal. So if that is going to be the measure of how these debates go, then I’m not going to do very well.
Actually, Biden isn’t good at n-liners, for any n in less than three digits.
One definition of fascism might be onomatopoetic: “fascist!” is simply the sound liberals make when they stub their toes on the hard corner of reality.
Whoa. If CBS’s poll is to be believed, McCain has picked up 8 points since the weekend, with most or all of the polling conducted before Sarah Palin’s blockbuster speech last night. The race is now tied, with McCain speech (and most of the impact of Palin’s) yet to be seen.
What’s happened since the weekend? Thompson and Lieberman were good, but not 8 points good. I think this is backlash against the disgusting behavior of the Democrats and their media enablers with regards to Gustav and Sarah Palin’s family.
The troop surge in Iraq has been more successful than anyone could have imagined, Barack Obama conceded Thursday in his first-ever interview on FOX News’ “The O’Reilly Factor.”
As recently as July, the Democratic presidential candidate declined to rate the surge a success, but said it had helped reduce violence in the country. On Thursday, Obama acknowledged the 2007 increase in U.S. troops has benefited the Iraqi people.
But even with this admission, Obama cannot admit he was wrong:
“I think that the surge has succeeded in ways that nobody anticipated,” Obama said while refusing to retract his initial opposition to the surge. “I’ve already said it’s succeeded beyond our wildest dreams.”
That’s right, nobody could have anticipated that the Surge would work. No one at all. He certainly can’t be blamed for it; it’s beyond our wildest dreams.
Well, actually there are a few people who anticipated it would work. His opponent, John McCain, is a notable example. General Petraeus, with whom Obama refused to speak until recently, is another.
A hotel that refused a wounded soldier a room, forcing him to spend the night in his car, was backed into a “grovelling” apology today after receiving a barrage of abusive phone calls.
Metro Hotel, in Woking, Surrey, had to call in the police as their lines were flooded with angry, abusive and threatening calls from members of the public.
The attack on the switchboards came after it emerged that Corporal Tomos Stringer, 24, had been told by hotel staff that it was company policy not to accept members of the Armed Forces as guests.
A soldier since the age of 16 and veteran of multiple tours in Northern Ireland, Iraq and Afghanistan, Cpl Stringer had travelled to Surrey to help with funeral preparations for a friend killed in action.
Cpl Stringer, who was not in uniform, presented his army warrant card when asked by the hotel for proof of identity. After the receptionist refused him a room, he was left with no choice but to bed down in his tiny, two-door car, his wrist, broken during a convoy ambush, encased in plaster.
Metro Hotel did not exactly get out in front of this:
After a resolute silence, the hotel, owned by a company called American Amusements, issued a statement.
“The Metro Hotel, Woking, sincerely regrets any upset caused towards Corporal Stringer and his family. The hotel management has always had an open-door policy to all its visitors and guests, including members of the military and Armed Forces.”
The statement said that the receptionist on duty at the time had made a mistake.
But their belated statement’s “open-door policy” turns out to be a lie:
A personal letter received by Mr Williams, MP for Caernarfon, went further, saying that the hotel had recently experienced “some rather serious incidents” involving soldiers from the nearby barracks.
Michael Chaussy, the manager of Metro Hotel, insisted there was no blanket policy, but that it was “a decision for the manager to assess whether the hotel booking is to be accepted”.
A poorly made film about Ronald Reagan, shown to the delegates on Tuesday night, included the outright lie that “the media hated” Reagan, when just the opposite is closer to the truth.
Reagan’s time in the White House was a virtual love affair with the press, whom he charmed as infectiously as he charmed the whole country.
I’ll wait for you to finish laughing.
But seriously, when Reagan’s former critics have retroactively become his admirers, I think that’s the most sincere complement they have left to pay.
Still, Shales really shouldn’t call people liars when he’s the one that’s wrong.
The truth is that my foreign policy is actually a return to the traditional bipartisan realistic policy of George Bush’s father, of John F. Kennedy, of, in some ways, Ronald Reagan.
Detroit mayor Kwame Kilpatrick (who still apparently does not belong to a party) has pleaded guilty to two felonies and no contest to a third. He will resign within two weeks. (Via Politico.)
His appointee, Police Chief Ella Bully-Cummings has also resigned. The article does not say why, so I assume it’s unrelated to Kilpatrick’s legal woes.
Investors are also unnerved by the aftermath of the five-day war in early August. Russian shares have lost about a third of their value since hitting record highs in May. Russian and Western bank analysts polled by Reuters have cut forecasts for Russia’s gold and foreign exchange reserves.
As much as $25 billion in foreign capital may have left Russia since the Georgia conflict started, they said: while their growth forecasts were little changed at 7.5 percent, the crisis sharply cut the liquidity of the banking system. . .
The stock exchange’s benchmark RTS index, over half of it populated by oil and gas stocks which could have offered strong ‘buy’ opportunities for those keen to ride high energy prices, suffered its biggest decline since the financial crisis in 1998.
This comment at Marginal Revolution seems relevant though:
This is missing some other factors. In particular, the Russian government targeted and destroyed Mechtel (NYSE: MTL) by alleging that the company had engaged in price fixing. I think some of this sell-off can also be attributed to investors — many of whom are foreign — realizing that the Russian government can selectively liquidate equities by accusing them of corruption.
Anyone who hoped she would wilt under pressure is sorely disappointed tonight. I just hope people were watching.
UPDATE: By the way, you know that a speech is a home run when the talking heads find it necessary to point out that she didn’t write it herself. Speechwriters? Who knew?
UPDATE: People were watching. Excellent. (Via the Corner.)
Also: these guys actually seem to be serious about the speechwriter line of attack! I can’t believe it.
Looking to the future but with one eye on the past, Biden also promised that an Obama-Biden government would go through Bush administration data with “a fine-toothed comb” and pursue criminal charges if necessary.
“If there has been a basis upon which you can pursue someone for a criminal violation,” he said, “they will be pursued, not out of vengeance, not out of retribution – out of the need to preserve the notion that no one, no one, no attorney general, no president, no one is above the law.”
Most people don’t yet see how sinister Google is. Maybe this will start to change that. The click-through license for Google’s new browser Chrome includes this:
11.1 You retain copyright and any other rights you already hold in Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. By submitting, posting or displaying the content you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. This license is for the sole purpose of enabling Google to display, distribute and promote the Services and may be revoked for certain Services as defined in the Additional Terms of those Services.
. . .
11.4 You confirm and warrant to Google that you have all the rights, power and authority necessary to grant the above license.
So anything you do on Chrome, you are giving to Google. If you’re not authorized to give it to Google, you are in violation of the license.
UPDATE: Wikipedia says that you can bypass the license by downloading the source and building it yourself. (Of course, that’s Wikipedia, so I can’t warrant that it’s true.) If so, I hope that someone will set up a site to distribute the non-license version.
UPDATE: Google says that this section was a cut-and-paste mistake, and they are removing it. I don’t really buy the explanation, but I’m glad they’re changing it.
I have always tended to think that conservative complaints about the media are a little exaggerated. There are occasionally obvious instances of bias and clear examples of a double standard, but most reporters don’t want to fall into those and some conservatives are surely too sensitive to them. But this week has changed my view. I have never seen, and I admit that I could never have imagined, such shameful, out-of-control, frenzied, angry, condescending, and pathetic journalistic malpractice. The ignorant assault on Palin’s accomplishments and experience, the breathless careless airing of deranged rumors about her private life, the staggeringly indecent mistreatment of her teenage daughter in a difficult time, the ill-informed piling on about the vetting process, the self-intensifying circle of tisking nodding heads utterly detached from a straightforward political event, have been amazing and eye-opening. . .
The spectacle reveals a deep rot at the heart of the political press, and has been among the most shameful chapters in the history of modern American journalism. Not everyone has joined in, of course, but essentially all of the important institutions of our political press have played their part in one way or another. We can only hope those involved have begun to come to their senses, and that they recognize the magnitude of their failure this week. That doesn’t mean they should go easy on Palin, . . . but the treatment she has received is not what just any VP candidate would get, and the attitude and assumptions underlying this week’s amazing assault raise very troubling questions about the cream of the crop of political reporters.
Based apparently on blog reports, the NYT reports that Sarah Palin was a member of the Alaskan Independence Party. It’s not true, which they could have found out themselves if they had bothered to look at voter registration records. This is journalistic malpractice, plain and simple. In fact, the entire article is “materially false,” says a senior campaign strategist.
More generally, the way the media has comported themselves over Sarah Palin is disgusting. After all the reams they’ve written, they have nothing other than the trooper allegation, which was already public and will prove to be nothing. Nevertheless, by relentless fixation on vicious rumors and private family issues, they’re trying to create a bad odor to Palin’s nomination.
Honestly, I didn’t think my opinion of the mainstream media could fall even lower.
Eric Posner collates various pronouncements of doom made by the NYT and its columnists on the Surge:
The only real question about the planned “surge” in Iraq — which is better described as a Vietnam-style escalation — is whether its proponents are cynical or delusional. — Paul Krugman, NYT, 1/8/07
There is nothing ahead but even greater disaster in Iraq. — NYT Editorial, 1/11/07
What anyone in Congress with half a brain knows is that the surge was sabotaged before it began. — Frank Rich, NYT, 2/11/07
Keeping troops in Iraq has steadily increased the risk of a bloodbath. The best way to reduce that risk is, I think, to announce a timetable for withdrawal and to begin a different kind of surge: of diplomacy. — Nicholas Kristof, NYT, 2/13/07
W. could have applied that to Iraq, where he has always done only enough to fail, including with the Surge — Maureen Dowd, NYT, 2/17/07
The senator supported a war that didn’t need to be fought and is a cheerleader for a surge that won’t work. — Maureen Dowd, NYT, 2/24/07
Now the ”surge” that was supposed to show results by summer is creeping inexorably into an open-ended escalation, even as Moktada al-Sadr’s militia ominously melts away, just as Iraq’s army did after the invasion in 2003, lying in wait to spring a Tet-like surprise. — Frank Rich, NYT, 3/11/07
Victory is no longer an option in Iraq, if it ever was. The only rational objective left is to responsibly organize America’s inevitable exit. That is exactly what Mr. Bush is not doing and what the House and Senate bills try to do. — NYT Editorial, 3/29/07
There is no possible triumph in Iraq and very little hope left. — NYT Editorial, 4/12/07
… the empty hope of the “surge” … — Frank Rich, NYT, 4/22/07
Three months into Mr. Bush’s troop escalation, there is no real security in Baghdad and no measurable progress toward reconciliation, while American public support for this folly has all but run out. — NYT Editorial, 5/11/07
Now the Bush administration finds itself at that same hour of shame. It knows the surge is not working. — Maureen Dowd, NYT, 5/27/07
Mr. Bush does have a choice and a clear obligation to re-evaluate strategy when everything, but his own illusions, tells him that it is failing. — NYT Editorial, 7/25/07
The smart money, then, knows that the surge has failed, that the war is lost, and that Iraq is going the way of Yugoslavia. — Paul Krugman, NYT, 9/14/07
These people don’t actually understand military operations. They have one template, Vietnam. Somehow, that template failed to work in the Gulf War and Afghanistan, but finally they thought they were getting to use it. Now, inexplicably, we seem to have won. What happened?
Despite the left’s love of the Vietnam object lesson, they have never actually understood it. Vietnam was a counterinsurgency. That’s why the Gulf War and Afghanistan never looked like Vietnam, because those wars were not counterinsurgencies. (ASIDE: Afghanistan is a counterinsurgency, now. See below.) Those wars had enemies that we could defeat on the battlefield, and we did, easily. Iraq too had an enemy we could defeat (easily) on the battlefield. Our failure in Iraq was to anticipate that an insurgency would follow and prepare for it.
But insurgencies can be beaten, with the right force applied using the correct strategy. General Petraeus literally wrote the book on counterinsurgency. In the Surge, Petraeus changed our strategy and was given the force he needed. Now we’re winning. It’s as simple as that. The usual rule of thumb is it takes 10 years to beat an insurgency. Iraq isn’t over yet, but it looks like we’ll be done in far less than that.
ASIDE: The Taliban is reforming itself as an insurgency in Afghanistan, and has created a situation where we must employ a sound counterinsurgency strategy there as well. With General Petraeus in command at CENTCOM, I think we can trust that we will do so, if the next president lets him.
There is a lesson to be learned from Vietnam, but it isn’t the one the NYT thinks. The lesson isn’t “America will always lose” or even “America will always lose counterinsurgencies.” Indeed, despite all our mistakes (far more than in Iraq), we didn’t even lose the counterinsurgency in Vietnam. We ultimately defeated the Viet Cong insurgency, and then we defeated a North Vietnamese invasion. We left behind a South Vietnam that was able to stand largely on its own.
But then we made a historic mistake. The anti-war movement took over Congress and cut off all military support for South Vietnam. North Vietnam was still supported by the Soviet Union, and we stood back and watched as the communists conquered South Vietnam. At the eleventh hour we snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. It was America’s greatest humiliation.
What is the lesson of Vietnam for Iraq? We have (largely) defeated the insurgency in Iraq, and will leave a country that is largely able to stand on its own. Will we cut off all support for Iraq as we did for South Vietnam? The “anti-war” movement would like nothing better. If we do, we will again turn a hard-won victory into a humiliating defeat.
Allahpundit has an encouraging post about Sarah Palin’s political acumen. The Time article he links is particularly good. (I don’t get to use that sentence very often!)
Yesterday I predicted that the left would whisper that Bristol Palin was pressured to keep her baby, and that would be seen (by them) as terrible. Apparently I simply do not know how to think as a leftist.
I had it precisely backwards. It’s now being floated that Sarah Palin is a hypocrite because she did not pressure Bristol into keeping her baby. Palin is pro-life after all, so (it is argued) she should have pressured her daughter.
I know that the left’s favorite thing in the whole wide world is accusing religious conservatives of hypocrisy (even more than winning elections, it would seem), but they just don’t have the material here. The important point they are missing is that maybe, just maybe, Palin raised her children so that she didn’t have to pressure her daughter into keeping the baby. The fact that she never lectured Bristol about it does not mean that she wouldn’t have if she had needed to.
On CNN, Barack Obama compared his qualifications to Sarah Palin’s:
COOPER: And, Senator Obama, my final question — your — some of your Republican critics have said you don’t have the experience to handle a situation like this. They in fact have said that Governor Palin has more executive experience, as mayor of a small town and as governor of a big state of Alaska.
What’s your response?
OBAMA: Well, you know, my understanding is, is that Governor Palin’s town of Wasilla has, I think, 50 employees. We have got 2,500 in this campaign. I think their budget is maybe $12 million a year. You know, we have a budget of about three times that just for the month.
As his campaign has so many times recently, Obama completely ignores that Palin is governor of Alaska, and mocks the fact that she was formerly the mayor of a small town. One could just as well mock Obama as a former state senator. In fact, when Palin took office as mayor in 1996, he held no public office at all.
What’s funny, though, is Obama’s statement of his own executive experience: running for president. He is arguing that running for president qualifies him to run for president. This is not a serious argument; by that argument it would be impossible to elect an unqualified candidate.
But suppose we do take it seriously. If his campaign is his qualification for president, he has to be saying that he would run his administration like a political campaign. (In fact, I don’t doubt that that’s true.) Is that the administration America needs?
A leading critic of Kremlin-backed leaders in the Russian republic of Ingushetia was fatally shot Sunday while being taken to a police precinct by officers, Reporters without Borders said.
The authorities in the volatile province in southern Russia said Magomed Yevloyev was shot in the head accidentally while resisting arrest, the Paris-based non-governmental organization reported. . .
Yevloyev was the owner of Ingushetiya.ru, a Web site that frequently took to task local leaders in Ingushetia, a small Russian republic bordering Chechnya in the North Caucasus, just north of Georgia.
According to The Associated Press, the site’s deputy editor Ruslan Khautiyev said that Yevloyev arrived in Ingushetia from Moscow on Sunday on the same plane as regional President Murat Zyazikov. He said the police blocked the jet on the runway after it landed in Ingushetia’s provincial capital, Magas, boarded the plane and took Yevloyev off.
Yevloyev was then whisked away in a car and later dumped at the side of a road with a gunshot wound to the head, he said.
I’m pretty sure you lose any benefit of the doubt when you dump the body at the side of the road.
I’m not speaking figuratively. They are literally going stark, raving crazy. Here’s the latest, a ridiculous fake video not even Dan Rather would believe. (Via Hot Air.)
Sixty-three percent of Americans say that if diplomacy fails to solve the Iranian nuclear crisis, they would approve of an Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear sites, a new poll has found.
The poll, conducted by Public Opinion Strategies and Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research and commissioned by The Israel Project, also finds that 87% of US voters feel that a nuclear-armed Iran would pose a threat to the US.
Meanwhile, 80% of Americans said it was likely Iran would use nuclear weapons if it acquired them.
The threat of Iran is apparently felt across the political spectrum, with 85% of Democrats and 97% of Republicans believing the Islamic Republic represents a serious threat to the US.
However, 62% of those polled also felt that it was still possible to find a diplomatic solution to the crisis.
The approval rate for American military action against Iran was lower than that of an Israeli operation, with 55% supporting targeted strikes by the US and its allies.
It’s good to see some good sense in the American public. It is a little dismaying to see the difference in support between an Israeli action and a U.S. action — apparently some people see the threat but want Israel to do the dirty work for us — but there’s still a majority without them.
A lot of people are wondering what political impact Sarah Palin’s daughter’s pregancy will have. For example, Charles Johnson asks:
This comes right after James Dobson and other far-right Christian conservatives enthusiastically endorsed McCain’s choice. It will be very interesting to see the reaction from that quarter.
I don’t take offense at the question. Despite being generally friendly to evangelicals, Johnson doesn’t really understand us, and unlike the Kos Kidz, he’s not licking his chops at the prospect of evangelicals eating Palin alive. But the question is easy to answer: this will not hurt Palin with them at all. If it has any impact, it will be the opposite. Anyone who thinks that this would hurt Palin with evangelicals has gotten their impression from Hollywood, not reality.
However, I predict that this will hurt Palin with far-left feminists. (Not that McCain-Palin had any realistic chance with them anyway.) They will whisper that Palin pressured her daughter to keep the baby, and that will be seen as terrible. Palin’s supporters will give two equally correct responses: (1) her critics have no evidence at all, and (2) there’s nothing wrong with talking someone out of an abortion anyway. Point 1 will be ignored, but the fact that point 2 is being made will taken as proof. How the argument will play out in the center is anyone’s guess, but I think that people will see that one side is behaving well and the other badly.
You heard it here first.
UPDATE: Like I said. (Via LGF.) Now waiting on prediction #2.
UPDATE: Haven’t seen prediction #2 fulfilled just yet, but Time’s Nathan Thornburgh is making the same prediction:
As for the idea — sure to be floated—that the avowedly anti-abortion Palin may have pressured her poor daughter to ruin her life by carrying an unwanted baby to term, I wouldn’t bet on it. The Palin family seems to share the same pro-life values going back at least as far back as anyone here can remember, and it wouldn’t be at all surprising if Bristol wore those values, however imperfectly, as her own. At least, that’s what the town thinks. And Wasilla, above all, is pretty sensible.
When Andrew Sullivan, formerly my favorite blogger, turned his politics around 180 degrees, I was disappointed, but I wasn’t ashamed I had ever liked him in the first place. Until now.
(If you don’t know what this sewer diving is about — I haven’t been discussing it — you can look here, but I don’t recommend it.)
This is the guy that was supposed to shore up Obama’s foreign policy credentials.
If Obama wins (God forbid), this makes it a near certainty that Israel takes action before the inauguration. They wouldn’t be able to trust us once Bush leaves office.
UPDATE: I don’t think it changes anything if Biden said it three years ago. It’s being reported in the Israeli media today.
A credulous Reuters reports that Vladimir Putin has saved a TV crew from a Siberian tiger. I am not making this up:
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin was feted by Russian media on Sunday for saving a television crew from an attack by a Siberian tiger in the wilds of the Far East.
Putin, taking a break from lambasting the West over Georgia, apparently saved the crew while on a trip to a national park to see how researchers monitor the tigers in the wild.
Just as Putin was arriving with a group of wildlife specialists to see a trapped Amur tiger, it escaped and ran towards a nearby camera crew, the country’s main television station said. Putin quickly shot the beast and sedated it with a tranquilizer gun.
“Vladimir Putin not only managed to see the giant predator up close but also saved our television crew too,” a presenter on Rossiya television said at the start of the main evening news.
I’m going to have to see video before I believe this one. But, judging by the footage running on Russian television, they don’t have any.
UPDATE: Fox News has the right idea. They run this AP story, but give it the headline “Russian Strongman Putin Reportedly Saves TV Crew From Tiger Attack.”
The former head of the DNC has apologized for his remarks chuckling about Hurricane Gustav and how it shows that God is on the Democrats’ side.
Well, sort of. While “apologizing” he tries to blame his remarks on someone else who’s not even involved:
Don Fowler, who was DNC chairman from 1995-1996, said he was just mimicking Rev. Jerry Falwell when he was caught on tape during a flight from Denver to North Carolina Friday. . .
“This is a point of national concern. I think everybody of good will has great empathy and sympathy for people in New Orleans,” Fowler said. “Most religious people are praying for people in New Orleans. There is no political connotation to this whatsoever. This was just poking fun at Jerry Falwell and the nonsensical thing he had said several years ago.”
One point raised by Sarah Palin’s supporters is that she has military experience as Commander of the Alaskan National Guard. That point struck me as a little lame, although Palin has taken her military job more seriously than many governors (visiting troops in the Middle East and injured troops in Germany), it still didn’t seem very substantial. Certainly it never seemed convincing when Governor Bill Clinton made that point.
But, it turns out that there is much more substance to the Alaskan National Guard than I thought. A National Review correspondent writes that, due to Alaska’s location next to Russia, its National Guard is much more serious than any other. For example, it has a unit on permanent active duty manning a missile interceptor system protecting all of North America.
I’m glad to hear it. But, it still sounds lame. They need to get the facts out, and fast.
UPDATE and BUMP: Here’s two articles on the Alaskan Guard’s missile defense mission, from 2006 and 2007. (Via the Corner.)
Extremely cool. I agree with Glenn Reynolds that the deniability aspect doesn’t make much sense, but it would be just as awesome used overtly:
According to the developers, the accuracy of this weapon is little short of supernatural. They claim that the pinpoint precision can make it lethal or non-lethal at will. For example, they say it can either destroy a vehicle completely, or just damage the tires to immobilize it. The illustration shows a theoretical 26-second engagement in which the beam deftly destroys “32 tires, 11 Antennae, 3 Missile Launchers, 11 EO devices, 4 Mortars, 5 Machine Guns” — while avoiding harming a truckload of refugees and the soldiers guarding them. It reminds me of how the Lone Ranger could always shoot the gun out an opponent’s hand without injuring them; if that could really be done from an aircraft circling overhead, it would certainly be an impressive feat.
This precision should make the ATL a highly effective anti-personnel weapon, able to target (or “assassinate,” depending on your politics) a specific individual in a group with sniper-like precision.
A few months ago, researchers discovered that they could create stem cells from adult cells, thereby saving time and effort and avoiding ethical issues. Now, that discovery has been one-upped. A new technique skips the middle-man: it converts an adult cell into a different sort of adult cell, without creating any stem cell at all.
RideLust makes a great observation (within a larger article summarizing the extensive evidence that red-light cameras don’t work):
Under our current democratic government, good laws (laws that benefit everyone) are a “public good” (their “producers” don’t receive enough of their value to make it worth the effort) and thus are under-provided; while bad laws (laws that benefit special interests at the expense of everyone else) are a “private good” (their “producers” receive most of their value) and thus over-provided.
Posted by K. Crary 
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