Internet Scofflaw

Despite considerable support from her own caucus, Nancy Pelosi has steadfastly refused to allow a vote on offshore oil drilling.  Now The Hill reports that she is on the verge of capitulating.  At the very end of the article is a little fact that explains why:

Democrats realize that it will be difficult to end their legislative year in September without a vote because the offshore drilling moratorium must be renewed every year.

(Via Instapundit.)

Pennsylvania wants to suspend Megan McArdle’s driver’s license for underage drinking.  She is 35 years old and lives in D.C.  I’m so proud.

(Via Instapundit.)

Good lord. I truly hope this is a case of a Hollywood celebrity exaggerating his own importance:

Oscar-winner Clooney, 47, is said to be helping the Democratic candidate to polish his image at home and abroad. But he is also sharing with Obama his strong opinions on Iraq and the Middle East.

Sources say the actor has tried to hide the pair’s friendship for fear his Left-wing views and playboy image would hurt the Presidential hopeful’s bid for the White House.

But Democratic Party insiders have revealed that Clooney and Obama regularly send texts and emails to each other and speak by phone at least twice a week.

One said last night: ‘They are extremely close. A number of members of the Hollywood community, including Brad Pitt, Ben Affleck and Matt Damon, offered to help raise funds for Barack but it was with George that he struck up this amazing affinity.

‘George has been giving him advice on things such as presentation, public speaking and body language and he also emails him constantly about policy, especially the Middle East.

‘George is pushing him to be more “balanced” on issues such as US relations with Israel.

‘George is pro-Palestinian. And he is also urging Barack to withdraw unconditionally from Iraq if he wins.’ . . .

The acquaintance added: ‘He has tried to keep the true extent of their involvement out of the Press because he is frightened of alienating voters.’

Clooney himself has admitted in an interview: ‘I’ve had the conversation with him saying, “Look, I’ll give you whatever support you need, including staying completely away from you.”’

As if Samantha Power and the other loonies weren’t bad enough.

Yuval Levin at NRO reports that Barack Obama’s excuse for voting against Illinois’ version of the Born-Alive Act appears to be a lie:

Six years ago, Congress passed the “Born-Alive Infants Protection Act,” making it illegal to kill a child who is fully born during an attempted abortion. The bill passed without a single opposing vote in either house, and was signed into law by President Bush on August 5, 2002. When he was a state senator at that same time, Barack Obama opposed a state version of the bill in Illinois. His explanation for the vote since then has been that the state version did not include a so-called “neutrality clause” which says explicitly that the bill is not meant to influence the legal standing of a fetus before birth one way or another. The federal law contained such a clause, and the state law, Obama has long insisted, did not. As recently as June 30, the Obama campaign made that case to answer the charge (in that case from Bill Bennett) that Obama had opposed the Born-Alive Act.

But now, the National Right to Life Committee has uncovered proof that Obama in fact voted in committee against even the version of the Illinois Born-Alive Act that did include exactly the same “neutrality clause” as the federal bill. On March 12, 2003, when the bill was being debated, an amendment was added that inserted the neutrality language of the federal bill verbatim into the Illinois bill. Obama voted for the amendment (that’s the vote on the left-hand column on this committee vote record), and then voted against the amended bill (that’s the vote on the right on the same document). All the Democrats on the committee (which Obama chaired) followed his lead, and the bill was defeated.

This was, again, legislation that in the same form had by then passed unanimously at the federal level. Even NARAL did not oppose it. Apparently Barack Obama did, and his old explanation for doing so seems at odds with the facts.

It’s good to know that Pittsburgh doesn’t have the nation’s worst mayor, I guess:

Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick was ordered released from jail Friday on condition that he post $50,000 US cash bail and wear an electronic monitoring device.  He’s also forbidden to travel.

A lower court judge revoked Kilpatrick’s bail and sent him to jail Thursday for violating his bail conditions.

The mayor had made a trip to Windsor, Ont., on city business July 23 without informing the court in advance. That requirement was one of the bail conditions imposed on Kilpatrick while he and a former top aide await trial on charges of perjury, misconduct and obstruction of justice. . .

The charges against the mayor and his aide arise from their testimony in a civil trial last year, where they denied having a romantic relationship. Steamy text messages have cast doubt on that claim.

Moments after the judge’s ruling, Michigan Attorney General Mike Cox announced that he’s also charging Kilpatrick with assaulting a police officer for allegedly interfering with a detective who was trying to deliver a subpoena to a friend.

Cox said an arrest warrant has been issued and police are expected to pick up Kilpatrick at the Wayne County Jail, where he was being processed for release.

He writes:

Some 900 days after I became the only person in the Western world charged with the “offence” of republishing the Danish cartoons of Muhammad, the government has finally acquitted me of illegal “discrimination.” Taxpayers are out more than $500,000 for an investigation that involved fifteen bureaucrats at the Alberta Human Rights Commission. The legal cost to me and the now-defunct Western Standard magazine is $100,000.

The case would have been thrown out long ago if I had been charged in a criminal court, instead of a human rights commission. That’s because accused criminals have the right to a speedy trial. Accused publishers at human rights commissions do not.

And if I had been a defendant in a civil court, the judge would now order the losing parties to pay my legal bills. Instead, the Edmonton Council of Muslim Communities won’t have to pay me a dime. Neither will Syed Soharwardy, the Calgary imam who abandoned his identical complaint against me this spring.

Both managed to hijack a secular government agency to prosecute their radical Islamic fatwa against me — the first blasphemy case in Canada in over 80 years.

(Via the Corner.)

Bloggers have been going through Obama’s campaign filings:

Palestinian brothers inside the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip are listed in government election filings as having donated $29,521.54 to Sen. Barack Obama’s campaign.

Donations of this nature would violate election laws, including prohibitions on receiving contributions from foreigners and guidelines against accepting more than $2,300 from one individual during a single election, Bob Biersack, a spokesman for the Federal Election Commission, told WND in response to a query. . .

Last week, the Atlas Shrugs blog outlined a series of donations in 2007 made to Obama’s campaign from two individuals, Monir Edwan and Hosam Edwan, totaling $29,521.54. In an online form on Obama’s campaign site, the Edwans listed their street as “Tal Esaltan,” which they wrote was located in “Rafah, GA.”

Rafah is not a city in Georgia. The Atlas blog immediately raised concerns that the money may have been donated from the Gaza Strip town of Rafah. . .

A WND investigation tracked down the Edwans, who are brothers living in the Tal Esaltan neighborhood of Rafah, a large refugee camp in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip.  The Edwans are a large clan that include top Hamas supporters.

Speaking to WND, the two brothers praised Obama and admitted giving the money online to his campaign. They said they are not U.S. citizens or green card holders but are citizens of “Palestine.”

Byron York writes:

One thing that hasn’t received much attention in conservative and Republicans circles is the ongoing conversation on the left about the possibility of Nuremberg-style war-crimes trials for members of the Bush administration should a Democratic president take office. I’m not exaggerating or introducing the Nazi analogy myself; they actually use the phrase “Nuremberg-style” when they discuss “war-crimes tribunals.” And they are quite serious (although the more moderate of them prefer a “truth commission.”)

At the Netroots Nation gathering in Austin, Texas last month — that is the successor to YearlyKos — Dahlia Lithwick, of the Washington-Post-owned website Slate, did an interview with the Talking Points Memo site in which she described a panel discussion she had just taken part in on what is known as the “first 100 days of accountability.”

As Jerry Pournelle wrote a few months ago, this would bring the end of democratic government in America.

AP reports:

Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, charged with perjury and other felonies for his testimony in a civil trial, was ordered to jail Thursday because he violated his bond by taking a quick trip to Canada without notifying authorities.

Kilpatrick apologized and acknowledged that he made a mistake when he visited Windsor, Ontario, minutes away from Detroit, for city business last month. But 36th District Court Judge Ronald Giles was not moved, saying he needed to treat the mayor like any other defendant.

The glory of socialized medicine:

In the latest jarring illustration of the country’s doctor shortage, a family physician in Northern Ontario has used a lottery to determine which patients would be ejected from his overloaded practice.

Dr. Ken Runciman says he reluctantly eliminated about 100 patients in two separate draws to avoid having to provide assembly-line service or extend already onerous work hours, and admits the move has divided the community of Powassan.

Yet it was not the first time such methods have been employed to determine medical service. A new family practice in Newfoundland held a lottery last month to pick its caseload from among thousands of applicants. An Edmonton doctor selected names randomly earlier this year to pare 500 people from his heavy caseload. And in Ontario, regulators have heard reports of a number of other physicians also using draws to choose, or remove, patients. . .

The unusual practice seems to be a symptom of the times, said Jill Hefley, spokeswoman for the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario. A paucity of medical professionals has left an estimated five million Canadians without a family doctor.

UPDATE: More glorious socialized medicine in Britain:

The cleanliness of most NHS hospitals in England is threatened by frequent invasions of rats, fleas, bedbugs, flies and cockroaches, a report claims.

Figures released by the Conservatives show that 70% of NHS Trusts brought in pest controllers at least 50 times between January 2006 and March 2008.

Vermin were found in wards, clinics and even operating theatres. A patients’ group said the situation was revolting.

(Via Instapundit.)

Those who failed to compost their food waste could also have their garbage service cut off:

Garbage collectors would inspect San Francisco residents’ trash to make sure pizza crusts aren’t mixed in with chip bags or wine bottles under a proposal by Mayor Gavin Newsom.

And if residents or businesses don’t separate the coffee grounds from the newspapers, they would face fines of up to $1,000 and eventually could have their garbage service stopped.

The plan to require proper sorting of refuse would be the nation’s first mandatory recycling and composting law. It would direct garbage collectors to inspect the trash to make sure it is put into the right blue, black or green bin, according to a draft of the legislation prepared by the city’s Department of the Environment.

The program is designed to limit the amount of food and foliage that goes into the city-contracted landfill in Alameda County, where the refuse takes up costly space and decomposes to form methane, one of the most potent of greenhouse gases. It will also help San Francisco, which city officials say currently diverts 70 percent of its waste from landfills, achieve a goal set by the Board of Supervisors to divert 75 percent by 2010 and have zero waste by 2020.

Environmentalists are growing harder and harder to parody.

(Via the Corner.)

POSTSCRIPT: Zero waste by 2020!  That’s the best plan I’ve heard since Mike Huckabee said we should be free of energy consumption by 2017.  The laws of thermodynamics are really just guidelines, after all.

In response to falling oil prices, Brian Noggle writes:

Brothers and sisters, this is why Congress must act now! It’s not important what action they take, whether it’s foolish rule against oil speculators or more sensible plans to allow off-shore drilling or oil exploration on public lands.

What is important is that our ruling political class realize that unless it acts, citizens might get the impression that market forces alone can cause declining gas prices, and that sometimes the rain falls without the dances of the rainmakers on the floors of the House and Senate.

(Via Instapundit.)

As Glenn Reynolds points out, she can’t allow a vote because she knows she would lose. Fine, but the Speaker is no dictator. This seems like a perfect use for a discharge petition. The signatures on a discharge petition are public (a 1993 reform that hasn’t yet been undone), so it would serve to put Democrats on record.

Clark Hoyt, the New York Times ombudsman, has written his inevitable column on his paper’s rejection of McCain’s op-ed piece. (Actually, it came out a week ago, but it never got much attention and I only went looking for it today.)

Hoyt admits the paper screwed up. He concludes:

In the midst of an intense presidential campaign, publishing an Op-Ed from one candidate without a plan for one from his opponent, invites just the sort of beating The Times is taking this week.

But his critique is really that they should have finessed the issue better; he excuses the actual rejection:

Andrew Rosenthal, the editor of the editorial page of The Times, said McCain’s Op-Ed was not rejected. Shipley was asking for revisions, just the way The Times asks every Op-Ed contributor for revisions, Rosenthal said. “Barack Obama’s Op-Ed was also edited,” Rosenthal said. “We asked for revisions, and it was edited. Every article in The New York Times gets edited.”

But McCain was not being asked for some minor, routine editing changes. What Shipley wanted amounted to a total rewrite.

This is a distinction without a difference. As anyone in academia knows, almost never is a paper rejected outright. Instead, the author is invited to resubmit the paper after making major revisions. Often, those required revisions are enough (or even intended) to scuttle the paper.

What revisions did the NYT ask of McCain? Just this:

“We don’t use the Op-Ed page for people to respond directly to articles in the paper or other Op-Eds. That’s what letters to the editor are for,” Rosenthal said. “The McCain campaign was aware of that before they sent in their draft.”

Shipley told Michael Goldfarb, the deputy director of communications for the McCain camp, “It would be terrific to have an article from Senator McCain that mirrors Senator Obama’s piece.” The article “would have to articulate, in concrete terms, how Senator McCain defines victory in Iraq. It would also have to lay out a clear plan for achieving victory – with troop levels, timetables and measures for compelling the Iraqis to cooperate. And it would need to describe the Senator’s Afghanistan strategy, spelling out how it meshes with his Iraq plan.”

The first bit (arguing that they don’t publish responses to op-eds as op-eds) is not really true, but more importantly it’s a red herring. If they wanted a non-response, they could have simply asked for that. Instead, they went on to give a set of requirements that were tantamount to an outline of the op-ed they would be willing to publish.

Here’s the point that Hoyt misses.  The New York Times is hostile to McCain.  They don’t want to publish an effective McCain piece, and even if they did, they don’t think like he does (as is quite evident from their outline’s talk of timetables).  The New York Times simply cannot expect to dictate the content of an op-ed by the candidate they hate.  If they really wanted to publish a piece from McCain, they needed to give him the latitude to convey his own message.

Hoyt misses two other points as well.  First, their claimed “no response” rule, even if we accept that it is a real rule, hardly makes sense in this context.  Obama’s op-ed attacked McCain, and attacked the policy McCain has advocated (i.e., the surge).  Is it reasonable that Obama can attack McCain, but by virtue of having published first, he cannot be rebutted?

Second, even if we set aside the NYT outline, a piece explaining McCain’s policy would be pointless.  He already has a record, and has consistently and publicly advocated the course that we are finally on.  Unlike Obama, there is no need for McCain to explain what his policy is.

A new Rasmussen poll:

Sixty-nine percent (69%) of the nation’s voters say they’ve seen news coverage of the McCain campaign commercial that includes images of Britney Spears and Paris Hilton and suggests that Barack Obama is a celebrity just like them. Of those, just 22% say the ad was racist while 63% say it was not.

However, Obama’s comment that his Republican opponent will try to scare people because Obama does not look like all the other presidents on dollar bills was seen as racist by 53%. Thirty-eight percent (38%) disagree.

This is looking like a major unforced error by Obama.

(Via LGF.)

Power Line notes:

In 2005, Congress considered energy legislation that included an off-shore inventory. The inventory would provide an estimate of our off-shore reserves. Taking it wouldn’t mean drilling; it would just tell us what’s out there. Yet Obama voted to kill the off-shore inventory provision. So, unfortunately, did John McCain. However, the effort to kill the inventory failed, and the first inventory report was issued in February 2006.

Obama, though, did not give up in his efforts to keep the public ignorant. In January 2007, he proposed legislation to eliminate the authorization to conduct the inventory, as established in the 2005 law. . . The key provision . . . provides that “Section 357 (42 U.S.C. 15912) (relating to comprehensive inventory of OCS oil and natural gas resources)” is “repealed as of the date of enactment of this act.” It’s my understanding that Obama is the only sponsor of this legislation.

Ironically, Obama called his legislation “The Oil SENSE Act.” How audacious a label for an act that would deprive the public of key information relevant to deciding whether off-shore drilling makes sense. . .

It’s wonderful that Obama now thinks it might be ok to drill off-shore, provided that such drilling is part of an “overarching really thoughtful” energy package. Perhaps now, as part of the package, Obama will stop opposing an inventory of our off-shore energy assets.

Dan Balz, a Washington Post blogger, reports:

Was it Barack Obama, who not so subtly pointed to John McCain and seemingly accused him of trying to scare voters by drawing attention to the fact that Obama doesn’t look like (read: he is African American) all the other presidents? Or was it McCain’s campaign, which cried foul over Obama’s statements with such vehemence that race became the story of the day on all the networks, in all the papers and on all the blogs? . . .

Four things are already clear from the controversy. First, Obama campaign officials, lacking any example of McCain ever pointing directly or indirectly at Obama’s race as an issue in the campaign, have backpedaled rapidly away from any suggestion that their Republican opponent is using the very tactics Obama suggested on Wednesday.

Campaign manager David Plouffe was pressed hard during a conference call on Thursday for examples and could not point to any. An inquiry to the Obama campaign later in the day produced no immediate response and later no answer to a direct question asking for evidence to buttress Obama’s suggestion that McCain would try to scare people into not voting for Obama because he’s black.

(Via Hot Air.)

This is interesting:

Most citizens know little about politics. They are rationally ignorant. Because there is so little chance that your vote will be decisive (less than 1 in 100 million in a presidential election), there’s no incentive to acquire political knowledge if your only reason for doing so is to cast a better-informed vote in order to ensure that the “right” candidate wins. Numerous studies find, however, that swing voters – defined as those who are in the ideological center and don’t have any strong identification with either party – are among the most ignorant. For example, in my research using questions from the 2000 National Election Study, I found that self-identified “Independent-Independents” could on average correctly answer only 9.5 of 31 basic political knowledge questions, scoring much lower than self-described “strong Democrats” (15.4) and “strong Republicans” (18.7). Many other studies find similar results.

Thus, the voters who know the least are the ones who tend to determine electoral outcomes. Not exactly a comforting thought.

Why do swing voters tend to be so much more ignorant than the rest of the electorate? It’s tempting to assume that it’s because they are stupid. However, ignorance is not the same thing as stupidity. Even very smart people are inevitably ignorant about a great many things. Indeed, as noted above, for most voters political ignorance is actually quite rational.

Barack Obama’s proposed “Emergency Economic Plan” is unabashed redistributionism. He would give one-time rebates of $1000 per family paid for by a “windfall profits tax” on oil companies. A purer form of buying support with stolen money I have never seen.

Setting aside the immorality of robbing Peter to bribe Paul, the windfall profits tax has been tried before and failed. According to the Tax Foundation, the Congressional Research Service (a non-political government agency that provides analysis services to Congress) found that Carter’s windfall profits tax raised one-quarter of the projected revenue (or one-eighth, depending on how you count), and hampered domestic oil development by 3-6%, thereby increasing US dependence on foreign oil by 8-17%. Obama wants to try it again.

David Axelrod, Obama’s chief strategist, on Good Morning America:

Obama’s chief strategist, David Axelrod, acknowledged on “Good Morning America” Friday that the candidate was referring, at least in part, to his ethnic background.

When pressed to explain the comment, Axelrod told “GMA” it meant, “He’s not from central casting when it comes to candidates for president of the United States. He’s new to Washington. Yes, he’s African-American.”

David Axelrod, on NBC’s Today:

Barack Obama’s top strategist said Friday that John McCain’s campaign manufactured a racial debate when it accused Obama of “playing the race card” the day before. . .

Axelrod said in his interview Friday that Obama “in no way” intended his comments in Missouri to be interpreted as racial.

“He does this in a self-mocking way: ‘Look, I know I’m not from central casting when it comes to presidents of the United States. I am new. I am relatively young, I haven’t spent my life in Washington. And yes, I am African American, and that will be some fodder,’” he said.

But Obama was talking about Republican scare tactics at the time. And he has made the claim before.

At a June fundraiser in Florida, he said: “We know what kind of campaign they’re going to run. … They’re going to try to make you afraid of me. He’s young and inexperienced and he’s got a funny name. And did I mention he’s black? He’s got a feisty wife.”

I’m confused. It’s not racial for Obama to refer to his race in the context of “Republican scare tactics,” but it is racial for McCain’s campaign to respond to that? How’s that work?

I think Obama is making a mistake to pick a fight on this terrain, where the facts are so favorable to McCain. They don’t want to blow this up, they want to make it go away.

UPDATE: Obama himself admits it:

“I don’t think it’s accurate to say that my comments have nothing to do with race,” Obama said.

. . . and Obama ought to know it, according to an NYT op-ed:

LAST weekend, Barack Obama dazzled crowds in Europe. Discussing international security, he spoke eloquently about needing an American-European partnership to defeat terrorism.

In Paris, he said that “terrorism cannot be solved by any one country alone,” and that we should establish partnerships. In Berlin, he expressed hope that Europeans and Americans “can join in a new and global partnership to dismantle the networks” of terrorists worldwide.

But there’s one problem. We already have a counterterrorism partnership with the European Union. And it works. Indeed, despite news media caricatures of aggressive Americans feuding with pacifist Europeans, both groups are quite serious about protecting citizens by working together. . .

In 2004, J. Cofer Black, the State Department’s coordinator for counterterrorism, testified about the success of these partnerships before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s subcommittee on European affairs. Had Senator Obama, who now heads that subcommittee, read the transcripts from the meeting, which took place before he came to office, or had he held a similar hearing, he might have known that the partnerships he called for last week already exist.

After years of investment and sacrifice, Americans and Europeans deserve accurate information about our efforts to defeat international terrorism, especially from a prospective commander in chief.

(Via Instapundit.)

UPDATE: Power Line has some text the NYT cut from the piece. Here’s the original ending:

In 2004, the top State Department counter-terrorism official testified about such success before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Subcommittee on European Affairs. Interestingly, Senator Obama now chairs the same committee yet has not held a single hearing to become informed about the US-EU counter-terrorism partnership.

He explains that he has been too busy campaigning while maintaining that he possesses sound judgment. Yet, in matters of international cooperation against terrorism, the best judgment is informed judgment. As a potential commander-in-chief, Senator Obama would do well to study the successful US-EU counter-terrorism partnership and support its continued success.

One way to do that when overseas is not to focus on dazzling a public that envisions the next Kennedy gracing Berlin’s streets. Instead, he can learn from the intelligence and law enforcement professionals in Europe who protect the public. Otherwise, they may revise the famous quote in honor of Senator Obama: “Ich bin ein Beginner.”

You can’t make this stuff up: Louise Lucas, a Democratic Virginia state senator, drives a Hummer to her press conference blasting John McCain’s energy policy.

The Obama campaign concedes the obvious:

Sen. Barack Obama’s chief strategist conceded that the Democratic presidential candidate was referring to his race when he said Republicans were trying to scare voters by suggesting Obama “doesn’t look like all those other presidents on the dollar bills.”

The comment had triggered a charge Thursday from Sen. John McCain’s campaign manager that Obama had “played the race card… from the bottom of the deck.”

Obama’s camp initially denied the remark was a reference to Obama’s race. . . “He was referring to the fact that he didn’t come into the race with the history of others,” Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs said Thursday. “It is not about race.”

But Obama’s chief strategist, David Axelrod, acknowledged on “Good Morning America” Friday that the candidate was referring, at least in part, to his ethnic background.

When pressed to explain the comment, Axelrod told “GMA” it meant, “He’s not from central casting when it comes to candidates for president of the United States. He’s new to Washington. Yes, he’s African-American.”

That seemingly obvious reference sparked the first real fireworks between the two camps as backers of both candidates accused the other of trying to subtly inject race into the presidential contest.

Curiously, Axelrod also conceded that McCain’s “Celebrity” ad was not racist:

The Obama campaign made clear Thursday that they did not believe McCain was using Obama’s race, but accused the Republicans of “low road politics.”

(ASIDE: Will Josh Marshall and the New York Times retract their accusations of racism now? I won’t be holding my breath.)

For my part, I think it was a good ad. Obama has striking weaknesses as a candidate. He has no legislative accomplishments to speak of, is the most liberal Senator, is prone to gaffes, and has a bizarre inability to admit even obvious mistakes. But Obama is not a mere candidate, he is a phenomenon. His rallies resemble rock concerts or revival meetings as much as political rallies. When he travels, all the major anchors travel with him. Pop stars compose videos that sing his praises and recite his speeches. Indeed, many of his followers (including his wife) see him as a literal messiah.

For McCain to win, he needs to cut Obama down from a phenomenon to a candidate. That’s what the “Celebrity” ad tries to do: ridicule the Obama phenomenon and get voters to see him as a mere candidate. As a candidate, Obama can be beaten.

Of course Obama and his adoring fans hate the ad. Not only is it effective, but as the saying goes, “one easily bears moral reproof, but never mockery.”

(Previous post.)

UPDATE: It seems to be working.

UPDATE: Just for fun: more gaffes.

ANOTHER UPDATE: From the very mouth of the anointed one:

“I don’t think it’s accurate to say that my comments have nothing to do with race,” Obama said.

Power Line catches the latest Obama gaffe:

Barack Obama is a lot like Sean Penn or George Clooney. If you give him a script, he can deliver it pretty well. But if he tries to talk without a script that has been written for him by others, he quickly reveals that he is poorly-informed if not downright ignorant. Today he delivered another classic, by claiming that if only we would all properly inflate our tires, we could save as much gasoline as “all the oil that they’re talking about getting off drilling.” . . .

The stunned silence with which the crowd greets this howler suggests that most Americans have a more practical understanding of energy consumption than Obama.

Just for fun, I did the math. . . [Calculations omitted.] So, on the above assumptions, it would take only 11,308 years of proper tire inflation to equal “all the oil that they’re talking about getting off drilling.”

Obama is a curious case. He gives the impression of being an intelligent guy, but through his unscripted comments we have learned that he knows little about history, science or mathematics. He also seems rather shockingly short on common sense, as this most recent gaffe illustrates.

It’s no wonder why Obama cut off debating Hillary Clinton when people started paying attention, and is now dodging debates with McCain. Will the media be able to protect him until Election Day? Time will tell.

UPDATE (8/6): ABC takes Obama’s claim more seriously, but still finds it wanting. They’re bending over backward to be charitable to Obama, taking into account only the continental shelf (not Alaska) and assuming, implicitly, that we could only double oil production there. Even with those assumptions, they still come up with a full order of magnitude between drilling and tire inflation. (Via Instapundit.)

UPDATE (8/7): Time tries to cover for Obama.  Hilarity ensues.  (Via Instapundit.)

His successor will have some mighty small shoes to fill.

The AP reports:

Democrat Barack Obama, the first black candidate with a shot at winning the White House, says John McCain and his Republican allies will try to scare them by saying Obama “doesn’t look like all those other presidents on the dollar bills.”

Stumping in an economically challenged battleground state, Obama argued Wednesday that President Bush and McCain will resort to scare tactics to maintain their hold on the White House because they have little else to offer voters.

“Nobody thinks that Bush and McCain have a real answer to the challenges we face. So what they’re going to try to do is make you scared of me,” Obama said. “You know, he’s not patriotic enough, he’s got a funny name, you know, he doesn’t look like all those other presidents on the dollar bills.”

(ASIDE: Setting the race card aside, “other people” might be more apt than “other presidents”, since Obama is not a president, and neither were Hamilton or Franklin.)

(Via Instapundit.)

The left is getting on the bandwagon, as witnessed by this Josh Marshall post, where he argues that John McCain’s “Celebrity” ad’s allusions to Britney Spears and Paris Hilton are presumptively racist, and that criticizing Obama for pretending he’s the president when he’s not is also presumptively racist:

I note with interest today, John McCain’s new tactic of associating Barack Obama with oversexed and/or promiscuous young white women. . . Presumably, a la Harold Ford 2006, this will be one of those strategies that will be a matter of deep dispute during the campaign and later treated as transparent and obvious once the campaign is concluded.

But what I’m most interested in today is the new meme the McCain campaign has been pushing for the last few weeks that Obama is presumptuous, arrogant and well … just a bit uppity.

(Via the Corner.)

When the left is willing to see racism in cases like this, where there is not a hint of it, the game plan is clear. Any criticism of Obama will be castigated as racism. There’s no reason it will end with the election either. If Obama is elected president, for the next eight-to-ten years anyone who opposes to his radical program will be charged with racism. Naturally, many will still oppose him — particularly when his policies bring disaster — and the ensuing racism charges will leave America much more racially divided than today.

UPDATE: The Obama campaign tries to backpedal:

Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs said Thursday that the senator was not referring to race.

“What Barack Obama was talking about was that he didn’t get here after spending decades in Washington,” Gibbs said. “There is nothing more to this than the fact that he was describing that he was new to the political scene. He was referring to the fact that he didn’t come into the race with the history of others. It is not about race.”

Obama often makes references to his distinctions as a candidate, such as saying there are doubts among some voters because he has “a funny name.” At times he refers to his race as well, saying he looks different from any previous candidate but then adding that the differences are not just about race. Addressing supporters Wednesday night at a fundraiser in Springfield, Mo., he said, “It’s a leap, electing a 46-year-old black guy named Barack Obama.”

UPDATE: In case anyone takes this seriously, this was Obama last month:

The choice is clear. Most of all we can choose between hope and fear. It is going to be very difficult for Republicans to run on their stewardship of the economy or their outstanding foreign policy. We know what kind of campaign they’re going to run. They’re going to try to make you afraid. They’re going to try to make you afraid of me. He’s young and inexperienced and he’s got a funny name. And did I mention he’s black?

This is the same riff, almost point for point: Republicans have no ideas, they’ll try to scare you, funny name, black. If it weren’t obvious from his actual remarks that he was referring to race, it is certainly obvious from the way he’s phrased those same remarks in the past.

(Via the Corner.)

UPDATE: The New York Times agrees that likening Obama to Britney Spears is a racial attack. Also, it’s “contemptible” to point out that Obama is playing the race card. (Via Hot Air.)

UPDATE: The Obama campaign finally concedes the obvious.

UPDATE: The McCain campaign fires back at the NYT.  (Via Hot Air.)

You might accidentally discover a non-existent religious denomination.  (Via the Corner.)

AP reports.  (Via Hot Air.)

(Previous post.)

Oh geez:

Palestinian officials from the Gaza Strip have distributed a set of carefully-staged photographs they say are evidence that the smuggling tunnels running under the Gaza-Egypt border are for milk and other essential goods, not weapons.

The photographs show masked Palestinian militants lifting jugs of milk and sacks of baby food from the entrance to one of the tunnels on the Gaza side of the border.

Israel insists that the tunnels, of which intelligence estimates indicate there are hundreds, are used to import small arms and advanced weapons like heavy mortar shells, anti-tank missiles and anti-aircraft missiles. The tunnels are also said to be the conduit via which the Palestinians receive the material used to build their Kassam rockets.

(Via Power Line.)

How to steal a state:

This November, voters in Michigan may be asked to consider a lengthy ballot initiative to revise the state’s constitution. Proposed by a group called Reform Michigan Government Now, the initiative’s ostensible purpose is to restore efficiency and accountability to Michigan government. A look at the fine print, and a recently disclosed strategy document, reveals something altogether different: A stealth campaign to restructure all three branches of government, including the state judiciary, for partisan advantage. . .

Buried in the text of the 19,500-word ballot initiative are provisions designed to shift partisan control of every branch of Michigan government, including the state courts. Among other things, the initiative would eliminate two seats on the Michigan supreme court and several more seats on the state Courts of Appeals. The constitutional revisions would also cut the size of the Michigan legislature, rewrite the standards for legislative districting, and adopt controversial election reforms, such as no-excuse absentee voting, which has the potential to increase voter fraud within the state. In all, the initiative would rewrite over two dozen provisions in the Michigan state constitution.

Proponents proclaim the ballot initiative is a bipartisan effort to improve Michigan government, but a recently disclosed strategy document revealed a more partisan agenda. According to a PowerPoint presentation drafted by political consultants working for initiative proponents, the ballot initiative’s primary virtue is its potential to hand control of Michigan government over to the Democratic party for at least a decade.

The presentation was delivered to a union leadership conference this past spring. A graduate student intern at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, a Michigan-based free-market think tank, discovered the slides on the United Auto Workers Region 1-C website. This discovery revealed a breathtakingly cynical stealth campaign to rewrite the state constitution. As the title slide explains, the plan’s true purpose is “Changing the rules of politics in Michigan to help Democrats.”

Reform Michigan Government Now presents itself as a bipartisan good government initiative that seeks to make government more accountable and efficient. Yet according to the presentation, the real problem facing Michigan is not bloated or inefficient government, but the Democratic Party’s failure to control the state legislature and governor’s office.

In order to ensure pro-Democrat redistricting in 2011-12, the presentation explains, the Democratic party will need to control all three branches of government: the governor’s office, state legislature and the judiciary. According to one slide, control of the supreme court is the “most important,” as the court “can overturn redistricting” done by the political branches. It seems judicial oversight is a particular concern because the traditional state redistricting criteria, such as keeping communities together, are “systematically biased against Democrats.”

Most distressing, and revealing, is how the Reform Michigan Government Now plan “reforms” the state judiciary. Specifically, the ballot initiative selectively alters the composition of Michigan state courts at every level — trial courts, appellate courts, and the supreme court — each by a different standard. The only unifying theme is that each reform will increase the proportion of Democrat-appointed judges.

As in many states, Michigan’s supreme court justices are subject to re-election, giving court critics ample opportunity to seek change through traditional political means. But, the presentation explains, defeating incumbent justices would be costly and difficult. So, rather than promote candidates for the Court who would rubber stamp a pro-Democrat redistricting effort, and seek to have them elected fair and square, initiative proponents want to seize partisan control of the Court in one fell swoop by eliminating two seats and removing two Republican appointees from the Court. This is no accident, as the presentation makes clear when describing the relevant plank in the proposal: “Reduce the number of Supreme Court justices from seven to five; two GOP justices eliminated” (emphasis added).

(Via the Volokh Conspiracy.)

The LA city council is displeased with the verdict of the market:

In the impoverished neighborhood of South Los Angeles, fast food is the easiest cuisine to find — and that’s a problem for elected officials who see it as an unhealthy source of calories and cholesterol.

The City Council was poised to vote Tuesday on a moratorium on new fast-food restaurants in a swath of the city where a proliferation of such eateries goes hand-in-hand with obesity.

“Our communities have an extreme shortage of quality foods,” City Councilman Bernard Parks said. . .

Councilwoman Jan Perry, who proposed the measure and represents much of South Los Angeles in her 9th District, says that’s no accident. South LA residents lack healthy food options, including grocery stores, fresh produce markets — and full-service restaurants with wait staff and food prepared to order.

A report by the Community Health Councils found 73 percent of South L.A. restaurants were fast food, compared to 42 percent in West Los Angeles.

If the moratorium is passed, Perry wants to lure restaurateurs and grocery retailers to area.

Evidently, “healthy food options” have generally found South LA (formerly known as South Central LA) an unprofitable place to locate, otherwise there would be more of them there already. The LA city council did not explain how banning profitable businesses would make the area more attractive to unprofitable ones.

The latest Gallup tracking poll has Obama leading by 8.  The latest Gallup/USA Today poll has McCain leading by 4.  Hmm.

It’s no secret that the EU’s preferred strategy for dealing with the Irish no vote on Lisbon is for Ireland to vote again, and get it right this time. That’s now looking unlikely:

Almost three-quarters of Irish voters are opposed to a second referendum on the EU’s new reform treaty, a new poll published yesterday (27 July) revealed, dealing a blow to EU leaders’ hopes of rescuing the text.

71% said they do not want to vote again on the reform treaty, while only 24% are in favour, according to the Red C poll conducted for the eurosceptic Open Europe think tank.

Of those who voiced an opinion, 62% said they would vote no in a second referendum, while 34% said they would back the treaty, which aims to overhaul the Union’s institutions and procedures.

(Via Instapundit.)

Buchanan has a new book, the central thesis of which is (I gather) that WW2 need not have happened, and was only the result of the Allies’ unwise security guarantee to Poland.  Buchanan argues that absent that guarantee, Poland would have been willing to negotiate with Germany over Danzig and war could have been averted.

Sheer idiocy.  One does not have to be a military historian to recognize that Danzig was merely the latest in a series of increasingly unacceptable German territorial demands, and if granted, the demands would only have continued until Hitler ruled the entire world.

Victor Davis Hanson and Christopher Hitchens, who are military historians, take on Buchanan and the WW2 revisionists on NRO TV’s Uncommon Knowledge.

(Via the Corner.)  (Previous post.)

Jim Geraghty has uncovered the truth behind Obama’s cancelled visit to the Landstuhl Medical Center. (Obama has confirmed the principal facts himself.) To be fair, the truth looks a little better than the story did before. I think Obama still looks bad, but you can decide for yourself.

Apparently it was not a matter of bringing reporters and photographer to Landstuhl, but one specific campaign aide, Jonathan Gration, a retired general. General Gration, being campaign staff, not legislative or personal staff, was not permitted to attend. Gration “got torqued” (generals aren’t used to being told no) and shortly thereafter the visit was cancelled. The campaign has not revealed whether they considered the possibility of going without Gration.

The original story put out by the campaign, that the visit was cancelled because they didn’t want it to appear political, was misleading at best. If there is any truth to that story at all, their sudden concern about appearing political arose only after Gration got angry that he wouldn’t be able to go.

A second story put out later by the campaign was an outright lie. Gration himself, who was certainly in command of the facts, put out the false statement that the visit was scuttled by the Pentagon.

Will General Gration keep his job after causing this debacle and then lying about it to the press? We’ll see.

UPDATE: The NYT, of all papers, has started to wonder about this.  (Via Hot Air.)

Here’s a shocker: Obama Says Overseas Trip Confirmed Foreign Policy Views.

It covers the John Edwards sex scandal. I ignored this story as long as it was only in the National Enquirer, but now the Times has confirmed a key element of the story:

Every supermarket shopper knows that the preternaturally youthful former senator for North Carolina may have fathered a love child with a film-maker while Elizabeth, his saintly wife, is dying of cancer. There are sensational new details on the National Enquirer website, although most of the media have done their best to ignore them.

The tabloid magazine cornered Edwards, 55, leaving a Los Angeles hotel where Rielle Hunter, his alleged mistress, and her baby were staying, at 2.40am last Tuesday. He ran down a hallway and dived into the men’s bathroom. A hotel security guard confirmed the encounter. “His face just went totally white,” the guard said.

The most interesting aspect of this has been the US media’s treatment of the story:

Tony Pierce, editor of the Los Angeles Times, issued an edict to the paper’s own bloggers to stay off the subject. “Because the only source has been the National Enquirer, we have decided not to cover the rumours or salacious speculations,” he wrote.

Mickey Kaus, a blogger for Slate magazine, leaked the memo. He noted: “This was a sensational scandal that the Los Angeles Times and other mainstream papers passionately did not want to uncover when Edwards was a formal candidate and now that the Enquirer seems to have done the job for them it looks like they want everyone to shut up while they fail to uncover it again.”

The New York Times has not deigned to touch the story, although it recently ran thousands of words on a relationship between McCain and a female lobbyist, which appeared to be based more on innuendo than fact.

Byron York, a conservative journalist, finally broke the silence in The Hill, a reputable, non-partisan congressional newspaper. “The media looks down on the National Enquirer but you look at the Edwards story and say, ‘Wow! There appears to be a lot of knowledge there’. It is darned fishy,” York said.

Now that the London Times has picked up the story, the LA Times will need a new excuse.

As far as Edwards is concerned, it’s been perfectly obvious for years that he is as phony as a $3 bill. For example:

Edwards had told Kerry he was going to share a story with him that he’d never told anyone else—that after his son Wade had been killed, he climbed onto the slab at the funeral home, laid there and hugged his body, and promised that he’d do all he could to make life better for people, to live up to Wade’s ideals of service. Kerry was stunned, not moved, because, as he told me later, Edwards had recounted the same exact story to him, almost in the exact same words, a year or two before—and with the same preface, that he’d never shared the memory with anyone else. Kerry said he found it chilling, and he decided he couldn’t pick Edwards unless he met with him again.

A look at the tactics used to keep race-neutrality and other voter initiatives off the ballot:

“The key to defeating the initiative is to keep it off the ballot in the first place,” says Donna Stern, Midwest director for the Detroit-based By Any Means Necessary (BAMN). “That’s the only way we’re going to win.” . . .

The police had to be called when BAMN blocked the entrance of a Phoenix office where circulators had to deliver their petitions. “BAMN’s tactics,” she concluded, “resemble those used by anti-abortion activists to prevent women from entering abortion clinics.”

But BAMN proudly posts videos on its success in scaring away voters, or convincing circulators to hand over their petitions to its shock troops. “If you give me your signatures, we’ll leave you alone,” says a BAMN volunteer on one tape to someone who’s earning money by circulating several different petitions. . .

The war against citizen initiatives has other fronts. This year in Michigan, taxpayer groups tried to recall House Speaker Andy Dillon after he pushed through a 12% increase in the state income tax. But petitioners collecting the necessary 8,724 signatures in his suburban Detroit district were set upon. In Redford, police union members held a rally backing Mr. Dillon and would alert blockers to the location of recall petitioners. Outsiders would then surround petitioners and potential signers, using threatening language.

Mr. Dillon denied organizing such activity. Then it was revealed two of the harassers were state employees working directly for him. Another “voter educator” hired by the state’s Democratic Party had been convicted of armed robbery. After 2,000 signatures were thrown out on technical grounds, the recall effort fell 700 signatures short.

(Via Instapundit.)

This is weird:

One interesting detail from Le Figaro: The Obama-Sarkozy meeting will be conducted with a minimum of fuss, to mark it off clearly from the trappings of a presidential visit.

“Nicolas Sarkozy’s advisers received only one demand from the team of the Democratic candidate: no American flag for the press conference, because it’s a candidate being received, not the president of the United States.”

For a candidate with his own presidential seal, who is already planning his presidential transition, and who is holding a joint press conference with a foreign head of state, his sudden reticence to pretend to be president is a little odd.  But that’s nothing compared to his strange belief — if this is being reported accurately — that the American flag is for the president only.

(Via Media Blog.)

(Update appended.)

When I read that Obama had cancelled his planned visit to injured troops at the Landstuhl Medical Center because he thought it would be “inappropriate”, I was inclined to give him a break. In fact, I agreed that it would have been inappropriate to use our wounded troops as political props.

That was before this scoop from NBC News, who learned that preparations for Obama’s visit were already being made and that the visit was cancelled after the campaign learned they would not be able to bring the media:

A U.S. military official tells NBC News they were making preparations for Sen. Barack Obama to visit wounded troops at the Landstuhl Medical Center at Ramstein, Germany on Friday, but “for some reason the visit was called off.”

One military official who was working on the Obama visit said because political candidates are prohibited from using military installations as campaign backdrops, Obama’s representatives were told, “he could only bring two or three of his Senate staff member, no campaign officials or workers.” In addition, “Obama could not bring any media. Only military photographers would be permitted to record Obama’s visit.”

The official said “We didn’t know why” the request to visit the wounded troops was withdrawn. “He (Obama) was more than welcome. We were all ready for him.”

(Via Hot Air.)

This casts the cancellation in a rather different light. Rather than an exhibition of good taste and judgement, it’s just the opposite. It would seem that Obama cancelled, not because he saw it would be inappropriate to use wounded troops as political props, but because the military wouldn’t let him do so.

I’m sure Obama’s defenders will say this is merely coincidence; that his last-minute change of heart about visiting Landstuhl during a campaign trip had nothing to do with his being told he couldn’t make it a campaign stop. There’s to way to know for sure (given what we know now, anyway), but I have to say that if this was an instance of prudence and good taste, it was entirely out-of-character for this trip.

UPDATE: The facts are now known, and Obama looks a little bit better than this.  Apparently it was a matter of certain campaign staff, not the media, that aborted the visit.

The Washington Post gets it:

THE INITIAL MEDIA coverage of Barack Obama’s visit to Iraq suggested that the Democratic candidate found agreement with his plan to withdraw all U.S. combat forces on a 16-month timetable. So it seems worthwhile to point out that, by Mr. Obama’s own account, neither U.S. commanders nor Iraq’s principal political leaders actually support his strategy. . .

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who has a history of tailoring his public statements for political purposes, made headlines by saying he would support a withdrawal of American forces by 2010. But an Iraqi government statement made clear that Mr. Maliki’s timetable would extend at least seven months beyond Mr. Obama’s. More significant, it would be “a timetable which Iraqis set” — not the Washington-imposed schedule that Mr. Obama has in mind. It would also be conditioned on the readiness of Iraqi forces, the same linkage that Gen. Petraeus seeks. As Mr. Obama put it, Mr. Maliki “wants some flexibility in terms of how that’s carried out.” . . .

Yet Mr. Obama’s account of his strategic vision remains eccentric. He insists that Afghanistan is “the central front” for the United States, along with the border areas of Pakistan. But there are no known al-Qaeda bases in Afghanistan, and any additional U.S. forces sent there would not be able to operate in the Pakistani territories where Osama bin Laden is headquartered. While the United States has an interest in preventing the resurgence of the Afghan Taliban, the country’s strategic importance pales beside that of Iraq, which lies at the geopolitical center of the Middle East and contains some of the world’s largest oil reserves. If Mr. Obama’s antiwar stance has blinded him to those realities, that could prove far more debilitating to him as president than any particular timetable.

(Via Power Line.)

Over the past week, while Obama made his ballyhooed overseas trip, the proportion of voters saying he was too inexperienced to be president rose to 45%, according to Rasmussen.  Less than a third thought he would learn anything from his “fact-finding” mission.

(Via Instapundit.)

USA Today: “Why can’t Obama admit the obvious? The surge worked.”  (Via Instapundit.)