In a recent speech, President Obama appealed to “the Young, African-Americans, Latinos and women” to support him and vote Democrat.

 Hmm.. I’m beginning to feel unloved.

I know I’m speaking in generalities, but it seems to me, especially if he meant single women in particular, that Obama is targeting the 47 percent of the population that doesn’t pay income tax against the 53 percent who do.

Oh, and the insurance companies and Wall Street are the enemy.

So much for uniting the people, and being the post-racial president.

I wonder what the press would say if the tea-partiers said that they’re particularly looking for support from “senior citizens, whites, and Christians.  They’d probably call them racists who are trying to frighten and divide the country.

Oh, wait they’re doing that already.

In other news, Medicare’s (i.e., the administration’s) chief actuary official announced that, with the new health care bill, it looks like millions of people will lose their health insurance, that health-care costs will rise faster than they would have without the new law, and that people will have a more difficult time finding a doctor. 

I’m so glad they’re telling us now—but, as Nancy Pelosi told us before Congress voted on the Health Bill, “We’ll have to pass the bill in order to find out what’s in it.”

Also Obama thinks it’s “irresponsible” to enforce immigration law, and is checking if he can stop  Arizona from doing what his administration refuses to do.

Man, we’re sure lucky we don’t have an socialist, racist, anti-American president.  That would be terrible.

Well, it’s good to see that there’s finally some indication that the the wheels are falling off the Global Warm… oops, I mean Climate Change bandwagon. It looks like it soon may be ok again to actually express scientific skepticism of the fevered claims of Gaia’s acolytes without be labeled a “denier” and threatened with prosecution for crimes against humanity.

The Copenhagen summit was a gratifying bust, and then to see the MSM finally report on the dishonesty of the advocates of this crock has been a real treat.

Of course when you’re dealing with religious fanatics it’s never easy.  How many times has Al Gore or Prince Charles or some other brain-damaged dweeb announced that “THIS IS OUR LAST CHANCE!!  IF WE DON’T TAKE THE DRASTIC ACTIONS THAT I ADVOCATE WITHIN THE NEXT 30 (60, 90) DAYS, WE’RE ALL DOOMED!!  DOOMED I SAY!!!”  Like the Christian sect that keeps re-calculating the end of the world every time the last prediction didn’t come true–but all the rank and file just keep accepting the changes!  These guys need some of those sandwich-board signs to walk around downtown with.

The only question I have is what percentage of this fable is spearheaded by scientists to climb onto the gravy train, and how much of it is about the anti-American Left’s never-ending crusade to strip us of sovereignty so we can all be good little suffering socialists together?

Speaking of anti-Americans, more good news on the Obama front. Remember the Dems whining that conservatives were really, really bad because we didn’t want the President “to succeed”?  As I mentioned at the time, that all depends on what he’s He’s trying to do. Well, as that becomes clearer, it appears that we’re not the only ones who don’t want what Barry’s selling.

In Massachusetts of all places. Unfortunately, I don’t think he’s He’s smart enough to start triangulating himself towards the center as Bill did after 1994. Of course Clinton was just for Clinton, while Barry (NMI) Obama is a real internationalist Messiah who can’t bear to give up on his His dream of American socialism.

All we can do it keep our fingers crossed and hope the trend continues.

Just reading the newspaper this morning, and realizing how much trouble America is in.  Does anyone even disagree anymore - whether we are liberal, conservative, or whatever, it seems like we can all agree that things are getting worse and don’t look to be getting better anytime soon.

So my question for the WEF minions is this - at root, why are things going so wrong with America (and with the world).  I mean not only politically, not only economically, but also socially and culturally.  The whole deal.  If you can isolate one thing, what is it?  My answer is in the comments.

Only #3? You can tell I’m not posting enough.

Way back in April, in Rant #1 I mentioned that I was only three out of four on my criticisms of our new president : Anti-American, Socialist, Racist and a Fraud. I’m not particularly happy to point out that I’m now four for four. Of course, I haven’t been paying much attention lately so I might have missed a lot before now.

Barry told us he didn’t know anything about the Cambridge PD arrest of the black Harvard professor (and I use the term loosely — ethnic studies?) Then he immediately said that the police were stupid to arrest him and that it’s an example of evil racist police actions. Gee, what would he have said if he did know something about the incident?

Even with all the criticism he’s facing, he then goes for the standard, “I regret that the press is making a big deal over what I said, and that people are upset,” rather than admitting he was just wrong. At this point, he’s gone as far as saying that there were mistakes on both sides. Wrong again, but that’s probably the best we’ll get. Anyway I think our “post-racial” president knee-jerk judgement on this incident qualifies as racism. Of course on the other three, the evidence keeps piling up.

On another topic,

The Obama Supreme Court Screening Tool:

(From the Website The Nose on Your Face: News so Fake You’ll Swear It Came From the Mainstream Media)

Do I want Obama to succeed? Hell, first tell me what he’s trying to do.

Comments?

For the first time in my life I am worried that my work will be graded not on merit but upon ideology.

It has always been the case - going back as far as middle school when my teachers told me I couldn’t do a report on Rush Limbaugh because he was an “evil man” - that my professors have disagreed with most of my opinions.  However, I was always confident that if I argued logically my grade would reflect the logic of my argument and not the perceived “rightness” of my conclusions.  I am no longer sure that this is the case at LSE.

As I became more interested in economics the age old questions of whether markets or governments are better at allocating resources began to rear its head again and again.  Most of my professors see the usefulness of markets but think that the best way to deal with market failure is via government regulation.  My professors at LSE are a more anti-market than my previous professors.  My latest review session scared the living bejesus out of me.

Question: International Financial Regulation cannot address problem of systemic instability; the response can only be found at the level of markets and governments. Discuss.

My professor’s tactic was to look at each bit (intl/mkt/dom govt) - which is what I would have done - but his analysis of international financial regulation did not include the main argument/piece that I would have concentrated on.  When I brought it up he said the piece was little more than a red harring.  It was all about state capture of the cooperative process that led to inefficent and relatively useless cooperative arrangements in financial regulation, using US capture of the Basel One Accord as an example (which is the pivotal current example of interantional financial regualtion, since Basel Two hasn’t been fully implemented yet).  To me this is very much the reason why international financial regulation cannot address systemic problems.  Of course, it doesn’t apply if you are arguing that it can.  Which is apparently the only answer.  When he got to the point of the benefits of markets he didn’t really take it seriously - oh well, you know they’re supposedly “smarter” and “faster” … you know … didn’t even include a critique.  Then when he got to government regulations suddenly it was acceptable to start talking about capture by special interests (which is really just the same as state capture of international cooperation only on the domestic level).

The main point here is that the government solutions (whether domestic or international) were assumed to be proper and then looked at critically in order to see their shortcomings.  In analyzing the market solution, he didn’t even take it seriously enough to critique it!  Instead just listing “supposed” market benefits, assuming that the critiques were so obvious and unfixable as to be unmentionable. (I was laughing in horror by this point, btw, and getting very strange looks from my classmates who couldn’t figure out what was so funny.)

Perhaps even more humorously (in a horrific kind of way) this view of markets and governments not unique to the professor.  One of my classmates asked increduously, “but who would argue such a thing?” In regard to the statement in the question - that international cooperation wouldn’t work.  This prompted my prof to send us an email with an article from a market fundamentalist so that we could see that the mythical creature really existed. 

Anyway, in my fear I sent my professor the outline I had put together.  This is my conclusion:

Markets exist within an institutional and regulatory framework and as such it is difficult to decipher how self-regulating they might be if left alone.  It is clear, however, that government and international efforts at regulation have often had an undesirable impact.  Capitalism exists in booms and busts due to the intersubjective nature of investment (Keynes).  Until government and international regulations and institutions have been perfected to a higher degree, they tend to serve as a blanket placed over finance which allows disequilibria to go unnoticed for too long, ensuring that the eventual bust will be more destructive.

He said that he couldn’t look over the outline as he had already declined other people but that upon first glance “I’d say the conclusion overlooks the history of financial bubbles and crashes that goes back a few millennia, long before the emergence of financial regulatory institutions/law, central banks, etc).”

Of course he is right.  I didn’t mention that in my essay; though I believe I did allude to the fact that bubbles would exist anyway and it was only their severity that was affected by regulation. I do know about, say the Tulip Crisis Bubble in history and I could have debated over it; I just didn’t because of time constraints.  Which is going to be the case in any essay I write in fifty minutes - there will be valid counter-arguments that I haven’t addressed.  But I fear that if the valid counter-arguments are “conventional liberal wisdom” then my essay will not score well whereas if my essay subscribes to the “conventional liberal wisdom” then counter-arguments from those loonies on the right will be promptly disregarded leaving me with a good grade. 

The really annoying thing is that I quite like my professor.  He’s a good guy and he’s put up with many of my questions and my moreorless neurtoic pre-exam self.  I feel like I can’t really blame him for this situation, but I think I can safely say that I’ve now seen for myself how academia can be discriminating ideologically without actually meaning to be.

 What should I do in the exam?

Might as well start numbering them, it’s gonna be a long four or (God help us) eight years.

Obama Rant #1 was a short outburst in my “Resurection” post. (Hey, when are we going to fix this short display? That post’s already two “previous entries” away– This is ridiculous)

Anyway, the major problem here is that there’s just too many outrages to keep up with. By the time you’ve comprehended the monstrousness of the last one, it’s another day and there’s something worse arriving.

So let’s just go with a few that randomly come to mind.

Danial Ortega beats up on Obama about US policy in Latin America, including the Bay of Pigs.

Obama’s Response: I’m grateful that President Ortega did not blame me for things that happened when I was three months old.

Has any president ever responded to criticism of the United States in this way? Holy shit, Ortega was talking about the history of the entire country, but Obama can only respond as it relates to himself (hey, don’t blame me!) Doesn’t he seem a bit disconnected from this country? Does this guy even consider himself an American? I honestly don’t think so. His point of view seems to be that he is a “Citizen of the World” who is here to transform the previously evil U.S. into a good (read socialist) state.

Still time for another one. How is it in America’s interest to reopen the story of Abu Ghraib? Of course it isn’t, but he’s not interested in America’s interest. He’s more concerned with keeping the crazy left happy, further discrediting the previous administration, and hoping to make himself look like the savior he thinks he is. Again, no other president has ever acted like this., But of course we now have our first anti-American president. He has shown zero concern about our interests and the consequences of his actions, which can only be detrimental to the country.

The Abu Ghraib things even a bit personal, as we’re already planning how we’re going to deal with the surge in violence against us here in Iraq that might result when new photos are released. Again, what purpose will showing more pictures serve? Obama will be personally responsible for any American deaths or injuries that result, but it’ll make us look bad, and that’s the important thing.

I can’t bring myself to discuss right now the mutant he’ll undoubtedly pick as the next supreme court justice.

And as for his economic policies, the less said the better.

Let’s talk about torture next time.

And just in time for Easter!

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After an extended absence due to unfortunate personal issues (exacerbated, no doubt, by mounting despair over the national disaster that befell the country in November), I’m re-engaging. Not that the domestic crisis has passed, but because 1) there’s been some progress, or at least a way forward identified, and 2) you have to re-engage eventually, or things can get really weird.

I’ll be following this up with an e-mail announcing that, for my part, WExForce is open again and ready for business. I’m a bit disappointed that the remaining WEFers didn’t do a little better job in picking up the slack during the past few months. But that’s all in the past…

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Of course the big news is the coming of the littl’est WEFer. Welcome to Earth, WEF3.1! We got to see him for a few days, and I was very impressed. Those really are genuine smiles, which is pretty amazing, and he’s rapidly becoming attractive–clearly he takes after me!

WEF3.0 did (and is doing) a great job. Naturally, I’m also gratified on the choice of a name. I had no idea WEF3 and 3.0 had such a high regard for the father of the American Navy.

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Let’s see, I think I called Barak (NMI, unless he’s in Europe) Obama the first anti-American president, as well as a racist, a socialist, and a fraud. Let’s see how I’m doing.

1) Anti-American: Anyone who’s followed his remarks during his recent European travels shouldn’t be in much doubt about how he feels about America. Until, of course, he became president.

2) Racist: Hasn’t had a chance to demonstrate that one yet. At least, I don’t think he’s called anyone “a typical white person” so far.

3) Socialist: Next!

4) Fraud: How’s that post-partisan stuff working out? And the pledge to reduce (eliminate?) congressional earmarks?

I’d say I’m three out of four so far. Discussion?

I have been having very vivid daydreams about the imminent assasination of Barack Obama.  He is about to be vowed in in a glass building.  He has recieved the most death threats of any previous presient-elect.  This isn’t exactly  fictional.

Clearly, his assasination is the worst thing that could possibly happen to America - today certainly, this year most probably, indefinately possibly.  As such, it is fantastic stomping groud for impressive ‘what if’ scenarios.  What if Washington burns again?  What if the riots don’t stop?  What if the black urbanites declare the cities annexed from the United States and vow to kill any white people who dare remain within them?  What if liberal shame leads the white to step down?  And they all move to the rural areas?  Industry breaks down; officies close; transportation becomes color coded - with no means of moving supplies between the two areas.  The black urbanites would begin to starve.  Pride would fall to the basic survival instinct.  Those white urbanites who had been liberally guilted into leaving would try to help, would want to help, but the rural whites would stop them.  The resources being theirs.  The rural whites being angry at the expullsion, allowing the black urbanites to starve to death, thinking they deserved it.  Would the UN intervene?  Would the races decide they could never live in harmony?  War over the land?  One group expelling the other.  Would Britain take American refugees?  Would it matter which race won and which race was in refuge?

Would it be possible to repair race relations in America following this event?  Ever?

What do you guys think?  What if he was assassinated?

So, while I was in Poland this summer one of the professors/camp councilors had a seminar on drugs.  Now, we are all familiar with the classic argumetn about how teh war on drugs is expensive, ineffective and criminalizes a victimless crime.  However, most people (likely only to avoid seeming insane by being too outside the mainstream) also maintain that drugs themselves are bad and people who do them are making a mistake.  They should have the right to make said mistake, but it is still a bad idea.

A teacher at the camp, however, maintained that drugs are not unlike everything else.  Anything can be taken too far - people who exercise to an extreme, diet to an extreme or eat to an extreme are also overdoing things and are being unhealthy.  Thus, people who abuse drugs are drug addicts and that is never going to be a good thing.  However, just because some people take drug use too far does not mean that people who use substances in a responsible manner should be placed in the same category as an addict.  The people at the camp were clearly all, “but you do heroin once and you’re addicted!”  The councilors response, “I’ve done heroin,  I’m not addicted.”  Hard to argue with.  I’ve known several people who have tried heroin but aren’t addicted - and that is supposed to be the worst of all the drugs!  We’re not even talking about marijuana or the more mid-range danger drugs.

Moreover, this attitude seems to fit better with some cultural evidence and even past uses for currently “bad” and “wrong” drugs.  LSD used to be used under the care of physicians to get people to make important and difficult life decisions, such as convincing alcoholics to quit drinking.  Tribal societies have (and I think still do) use substances such as Peyote to expereince life-altering jouneys.  Are these people drug addicts?  I think not.

And so I leave you with waht you must all know by now is my most favorite quote: The life which men praise and regard as successful is but one kind. Why should we exaggerate any one kind at the expense of the others?
-Thoreau

Thoughts?

Unfortunately, your experience with pressure to conform to the instructor’s (and other students) beliefs is not particularly unusual these days. It’s usually done by people who give lip service to thinking independently and pretend to applaud non-conformists. It’s not surprising that they are only applauded if the independence” and “non-conformism” conforms with approved attitudes.

You probably know of these already, but in case you don’t, here are some interesting web sites :

Students for Academic Freedom is connected to former leftist organizer David Horowitz. It often specifically addresses the problem of teachers who are intolerant of other’s point of view and spend class time preaching their politics rather than teaching the subjects they were hired to teach. It also features the “Academic Bill of Rights.”

FIRE (Foundation for Individual Rights in Education) concentrates more on campus Speech Codes and defending students (legally if need be) when they are punished for exercising their free speech rights.

I just got out of Math class. The first half hour of math class is us listening to Mr. Goldfarb give his opinion on numerous topics unrelated to math. Occasionally we offer our own opinions up, but for the most part our Tutor talks. Until today I have not had a problem with this set-up. When we’ve discussed politics, Mr. Goldfarb has been careful not to push us to one candidate or another, though we all know that he’s pro-Obama.

But today was different. Today people felt the need to discuss politics with me pre-Class. When a student said that he couldn’t help but rub in McCain’s loss, another student (conservative, but not “out” like I am) asked why. I pointed out that I hadn’t felt the need to rub it in anyone’s face when Bush won his second term, and I didn’t see why I couldn’t get the same respect. This was followed by 5 minutes of “You were pro-BUSH?!”…and then we returned to Obama/McCain. Oodles upon oodles of fun.

Even when they were trying not to insult McCain, they were absurd. I was told that they used to like McCain, but his Campaign just made him seem so conservative. As an actual conservative, I found the idea of McCain being a legitimate conservative laughable at best.

And then Mr. Goldfarb came in. About ten seconds into his speech about Obama it became clear that I was going to have to take notes of the absurdities coming out of his mouth.

We were informed that Obama was certainly qualified for President and was in fact the most qualified, since as a black man he had to be twice as good to achieve a presidential nomination. The absurdity of this statement, considering his record compared to McCain’s record, is jaw-dropping. We were then told that there was no doubt that Obama was far more intelligent than McCain and that our tutor “personally thought” that we needed a bright candidate to address the complexity of the world today. Ah yes, so if you accept our President needs to be “bright” then you must vote for Obama! How clear. The only obvious advantage over McCain that Obama had was oratory skills. I’m not convinced that’s the most important quality our President should have, thank you very much.

The highlight of Mr. Golfarb’s speech was when he said, “There’s no such thing as empty rhetoric in unification.” Obama was the head of the Harvard Law Review. His peers are on record as having told reports that Obama could make two people with staunchly opposed views believe that Obama agreed with them both, while actually not ever showing his true opinion. That seems a lot like “empty rhetoric in unification”. There’s no true unity, both sides just aren’t arguing anymore because they both believe they’ve won. That is not unification.

Then Mr. Goldfarb talked about leadership through rhetoric, which gave me the distinct impression he did consider rhetoric the all-important sign of brightness and thus electability.

I was handling all of this pretty well, I thought. A 15 minute pro-Obama speech by my tutor during class…no big deal. But then he scampered off Obama. Suddenly Mr. Goldfarb was talking about the necessity of consistency—and the example he used as an “inconsistent belief” was that life began at conception. This clearly is an inconsistent viewpoint, since 75 percent of conceived eggs don’t implant, but spontaneously abort. I must admit that I began to contemplate leaving the room at that point.

The idea that life begins at conception is not inconsistent with the idea that 75 percent of eggs self-abort. I was gasping like a fish out of water at this point, and my Tutor saw me. He promptly “clarified”. He said he wasn’t discussing right or wrong, and that he was just saying to be consistent those self-aborted babies should have death certificates. That was not the inconsistency he was initially attempting to point out—initially he was attempting to point out an inherent inconsistency within the very belief that life begins at conception.

The entire experience was hellish, and it was only compounded by the fact that one of my roommates, who’s also in Mr. Goldfarb’s math class, told me she thought Mr. Goldfarb has been saying that between the two candidates Obama was the obviously superior choice. She actually said that Mr. Golfarb had explicitly said that Obama was obviously the best candidate and, while it’s easy to see that’s Mr. Goldfarb’s opinion, if that opinion had been presented as fact, as my roommate said it had, I would have walked out of the room.

Now that I think on it, that opinion was presented as fact. It just was never explicitly stated.

I am not an idiot for supporting Bush’s re-election. I am not an idiot for supporting McCain. I do not appreciate my fellow students implying that only an ignorant fool would support Bush or McCain. I dislike it even more when my own tutors imply such things. Above all, I dislike being told that I am being “sensitive” when I get upset about being told I’m an idiot for not seeing Obama’s superiority.

Well, he won.  God help us. But to respond to WEF1’s accusations: 

“In 2007, Obama sponsored an amendment to a budget resolution to add $200 million for Department of Energy work on clean coal technology.” - Factcheck.org“Develop and Deploy Clean Coal Technology. . . . As a U.S. Senator, Obama has worked tirelessly to ensure that clean coal technology becomes commercialized. An Obama administration will provide incentives to accelerate private sector investment in commercial scale zero carbon coal facilities . . . ” - Barack Obama’s Energy Plan

As the polling begins, I can’t let this one go by. Here’s the perfect capstone to the media’s handiwork this year. An example of exactly what I’m talking about. Unfortunately it’s from my brother’s newspaper.

Regarding the latest in a neverending series of smoking guns about Obama. This is the one on coal from the inteview he gave the SF Chronicle. The Chronicle was accused of burying this rather explosive statement about bankrupting anyone who builds a coal-powered plant.

Senior Chronicle political reporter Carla Marinucci wrote what was basically a rebuttal to that claim. It was nonsense, of course, but that’s not what concerns me here.

In an effort to help Obama out, she wrote the following, quoting him from the interview:

“So if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can. It’s just that it will bankrupt them, because they’re going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that’s being emitted,” he said. In the same interview, the senator said that “if technology allows us to use coal in a clean way, we should pursue it.”

Note the second sentence. In case you missed it I’ll repeat: “In the same interview, the senator said that “if technology allows us to use coal in a clean way, we should pursue it.”

Sounds pretty reasonable, eh? He doesn’t like coal, but he’d use it if it can be done cleanly. Pretty mainstream, right? Except Marinucci is a lying shill for Obama. Here’s the complete quote of that sentence:

“The only thing I’ve said with respect to coal, I haven’t been some coal booster. What I have said is that for us to take coal off the table as a (sic) ideological matter as opposed to saying if technology allows us to use coal in a clean way, we should pursue it.”

You can easily confirm this from the audio available on the web.

Obama specifically rejects the idea of using coal, even if it can be done cleanly. He wants to take coal off the table as an ideological matter as opposed to saying we should pursue a clean coal option if available. But that may hurt him now that someone has actually reported it. Can’t have that!

So Marinucci deliberately reverses the meaning of a damaging quote the day before the election. Now tell me why she should have a job anywhere as a journalist today? But instead, she’s just a run-of-the-mill cheerleader, doing what everyone else is doing, that is whatever she can to get her guy elected and corrupt her profession. They’ll probably give her a raise.

If you are not totally outraged by this stuff by now, you have not been paying attention. And they wonder why the Chronicle and rest of the MSM is going broke.

I really don’t know who’s going to win. I suspect it will be Obama, but that might just be because his campaign’s strategy from the beginning has been to demoralize the opposition by overstating his lead. They’re still doing it. I think it’s closer than it looks, but I must admit I don’t know anything, because I don’t trust any reporting that’s been done. I really won’t be particularly surprised by any outcome you could name.

Here’s what I do know.

McCain will be a huge problem for Republicans if he wins.

He’ll be so eager to please the press and appear bipartisan, we all better hang on to our wallets. The borders will be toast. I don’t think he’ll be able to resist infuriating conservatives with his Supreme Court picks, because that’s what makes him a “maverick” (gag). Maybe Palin can restrain him a bit, because he is going to owe her (and her supporters) big time if he pulls this off. At least he’ll let us win in Iraq, but his attitude towards the overall war on militant Islam is suspect. I’ve mentioned this before- A McCain win is not a victory for the good guys, it just means we dodged a bullet. the only real positive good from it would be watching the democrats’ heads explode.

Obama is orders of magnitude worse than McCain.

There is no evidence whatsoever that he is at all competent. It’s so obvious at this point that he has no accomplishments that the only thing his supporters can come up with is the fact that he’s a successful campaigner. But that’s not even true. His wins as a state senator and senator were against mortally wounded opponents (who may have had Obama and his Chicago thugs largely to thank for their “mortally wounded” political status). If he wins this one it will be in an environment that features a extremely unpopular Republican administration (even with Republicans), and an opponent who was chosen largely by independents, and doesn’t have the support of much of the Republican base (although I hope they show up in order to cast a vote against Obama). He also has huge numbers of people (and not just blacks) who will vote for him simply because of the color of his skin. Finally, and most importantly, he has the media in the tank like no one was ever in the tank before, repeating his talking points as the news of the day, and helping him unapologetically at every turn. And it’s still close.

He is a socialist.

He is a racist.

He is a fraud.

He has a history of enabling voter fraud, and in this campaign he is not just tolerating it, he is counting on it.

He has shredded other campaign laws as well, soliciting illegal campaign contributions from overseas and from people donating more that allowed under assumed names.

He has a disturbing tendency towards intolerance of any criticism, and a willingness to use whatever power he has to silence it.

In sum, he is anti-American– He doesn’t like this country or the people in it. He not only doesn’t have the best interests of the country at heart, but actively seeks to destroy the institutions that have made the country successful and free, starting with the Constitution.

But even worse than the candidate Obama has been the performance of the press. I have been disappointed in the presidential election several times in my life: 1968 (Nixon), 1976 (Carter), 1992 (Clinton), and 1996 (Crom! Clinton again). Like everybody else whose candidate doesn’t win, I was disappointed in the electorate, and wondered how the American people could make such a mistake. This is the first time I believe the political system has been so corrupted that the public will not get enough information to make a legitimate choice.

The self-interest that has always saved the press from themselves failed to work this time. Up until now, getting a good, important story trumped the press’ political preferences, at least for enough of them to get the story out eventually. Not this time. I think pulling off a major scoop or filing an investigative report that badly hurt Obama’s chances would not be a good career move for a journalist today.

The contrast between the outrageous hatchet-job done on Palin and the pass given Obama’s past is unbelievable. Even today, who knows the details of Obama’s activities as a “community organizer.” or about his days as a young politician in the Chicago Democratic machine? I leave it to your imagination what would happen if Palin or McCain has similarly questionable pasts.

American democracy doesn’t fail when the public makes the wrong choice; it fails when the public is purposely misled by the institutions we depend on. No matter what happens tomorrow, the system is now broken, and I’m not sure what it will take to fix it.

Well, a couple of days ago I had just about finished a post when WEF2 borrowed the computer and ended up accidentally deleting it. It was not a high point in the evening. It’s taken this long to become emotionally stable enough to try this again.

Here in Baghdad the weather is getting cooler, which is a relief. In fact we had a pretty impressive rainshower this afternoon. Still no indirect fire for a while, but there are reports some bad guys have begun returning from training in Iran, so we may see an increase in activity soon. The big news these days is about the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) that may soon be signed between the US and Iraq. The biggest sticking point is the immunity for US soldiers for any of their actions here. We’ll b probably see limited immunity with Iraq able to prosecute soldiers for crimes committed off duty. Almost certainly, the civilian security companies will lose their immunity, which will probably affect our ability to move around town.

Unfortunately the civilians companies (Blackwater in particular) brought this on themselves by some egregious examples of irresponsible behavior in the past. No one who was paying attention was surprised when this finally became a big deal.

With the end of Ramadan we had several celebrations with out Iraqi contacts. But the best one was the one we had with our Iraqi colleagues that work with us at the PRT. When I get some of the pictures I’ll post them.

The upcoming election continues to depress me. With the race tightening the democrats are working pretty hard trying to convince us that it’s all over. However there’s enough weirdness about this thing that I don’t think anything’s for sure. It looks pretty bad for McCain, with Obama still a few or several points ahead, depending which pooll you look at. I figure that probably means two or three in reality. Still stranger things have happened so I can’t really give up hope yet. Of course I may be just whistling in the dark, but there have been so many lies told it’s hard to believe anything, including the polls. There are questions of what the sampling is and how they are predicting an abnormal voter turnout– things that raise uncertainty.

Meanwhile, some conservatives are jumping ship. It’s interesting how many of them are those who wanted McCain over more conservative republicans.

When the democrats aren’t busy registering illegal aliens, dopplegangers, and imaginary people, and figuring out what other voter fraud they can get away with, they’re planning how they’re going to screw up the country as soon as they can. Maybe some more people will see the light before that and we can dodge this bullet.

But enough doom and gloom.

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–Tony was once shot in the neck, rushed to the hospital, underwent emergency surgery and was back on the job in just a few hours. Jack Bauer still can’t believe that pussy went to the hospital first.

–Jack Bauer sends an ambulance after he shoots your innocent wife above the kneecap. Jack Bauer has morals.

–Jack Bauer does not sleep. The only rest he needs is what he gets when he’s knocked out or temporarily killed.

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I was delighted to see how everyone enjoyed WEF5’s recent baby seal joke! So in the same spirit:

You’re welcome.

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BTW, how come nobody comments anymore on my Cool Airplane Photo Challenge™?

No matter, my mission to educate you in total coolness continues.

A hint: this one, like the last one, this belongs to the bad guys!

What the heck is this?

Perhaps I’ll have to break down and distribute some of the FABULOUS PRIZES to those worthies who have earned them in the past . Stay tuned…

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*

See my comments under WEF3’s post, but meanwhile..

I have an alternative website:

http://getdrunkandvote4mccain.com

*Yes, I realize there’s a bit of cognitive dissonance between the website and the bumper sticker, but consistency, after all, is the hobgoblin of little minds.

I will be taking a blog hiatus until mid-November. Until then, my last take on the election:

With Obama being pro-abortion and pro-bankruptcy, with McCain being pro-ESCR and pro-war, and with the new found knowledge that I can’t even write-in Ron Paul, I have decided to endorse Mickey Mouse for President.

Seriously.

He’s the only candidate that can unite all the dissatisfied voters that stretch all across the political landscape, be it left, middle, right, or lunar. Voting for Mickey forces our rulers to acknowledge that they are illegitimate. Voting for Mickey is a fancy way of voting “None of the Above”. Voting for Mickey is fun.

So go Vote Mickey. Campaign for him. Rent a Mickey suit. Hang out at the polls all day trying to convince people to vote for the world’s favorite mouse. Use humor to protest a political system (and culture) that has given us the likes of Obama and McCain. And see you in a month.

http://mickeyforpresident.com/

It looks like this worst of all elections may very well end in the worst possible way. We’ve got less than a month to go, and Obama is up several points. Democrats usually seem to poll high, and for Obama this is probably particularly true, but nobody ever made much money betting against the pollsters. And if the polls start to show too much separation, they begin to become self-fulfilling prophecies.

As you know, I’m much more anti-Obama than pro-McCain, which is part of McCain’s problem with a lot of voters. Every once in a while he still seems to go out of his way to remind Republicans why they didn’t support him in the primaries. He’s barely holding on to his commitment to control the borders before legalizing our new criminal class. Who has any doubts that when the Democrats reject his half-hearted attempt to to enforce the law, he won’t fight them very hard? “Hey, I tried!” And very soon he’ll reach across the aisle to embrace “comprehensive legislation”.

My guess is he’ll immediately stand down the marginally more aggressive enforcement policies recently put in place in favor of working on this new compromise legislation. With the Democrats behind him and Republicans in disarray, it’ll be the easiest legislation for him to pass quickly, starting out his term with an big early “win”. At the same time, he gets to do all the stuff he dearly loves: infuriate the conservatives, show how well he can work with his democrat buddies, tell everyone what a maverick (gag) he is again, and begin to work his way back into the loving hearts of the MSM. It’s a win-win-win-win-win! The only ones who lose will be the American citizens. Of course the last win, about regaining the love of the MSM, will never happen because they will never, ever forgive him if he beats Obama (You thought they held a grudge against Nixon for the Alger Hiss thing? You ain’t seen nothin’ yet).

On the bogus Global Warming (or, just to cover their bets,”Climate Change”) nonsense, McCain’s right on board with the rest of the Chicken Little crowd, and again, it gives him an easy win, and a chance to call conservatives dumb hicks, etc, etc, etc.

Finally, he made a big deal about going to the Senate when the Economic Crisis hit, but then just nodded his head with everyone else about how we’ve got to hand over, oh what do you think? Lets say… $700 Billion to the financial establishment in the hope that if we keep them happy it will magically save the day, even though everybody admits they don’t really know whether or not it will work. Way to go, Maverick!

So let’s just stipulate that I’m not enamored with John McCain. No matter what, this election is bound to turn out badly.

Despite all this, I am a strong supporter of McCain for President. He at least is pretty honest, is willing to stand up for principles (I think he really believes in his ruinous immigration policies) and there is some compelling evidence out there that he actually likes the United States and thinks it is a pretty good country. Heck, he may even be, God forbid, a Patriot!

In normal times the fact that one of the candidates is a patriot would have no bearing on whether he’s qualified to be president, but these are not normal times. In these times, the other guy not only is not a patriot, but is for all intents and purposes, anti-American. Well, of course for the last few years, the Democratic Party itself has been anti-American, but this guy is extreme even for them.

There is no indication that there is anything about the U.S. that Obama likes or approves of. When Obama talks about change, he means to change everything. Everything he has written prior to running has been obsessed with race and critical of the country. He has been seeped in anti-Americanism his entire life– from his mother to his pastor to his wife to his political allies. Wearing a flag pin thing and putting his hand over his heart for the Pledge of Allegiance are not big things, until you try to imagine Rev Wright, or Michelle, or Bill Ayers doing it. In the cultural and political environment where Obama lives, in their wildest imagination it would never occur to anyone to do these things. How could you when America is such an unjust, racist, capitalist, warmongering country?

Besides the tiny problem of having an anti-American president, what’s at least as disturbing is how the election process itself has been corrupted.

First, the racialism that has come to dominate the Obama campaign’s strategy. As predicted, every time–every single time Obama is hurt by a criticism, a democrat media or political figure can be counted on to charge the critic with racism. That is the punishment for criticism. The campaign does it itself, when it thinks it can get away with it –or it’s sufficiently scared– but it normally lets someone else make the charge. But neither the candidate nor the campaign ever calls anyone on it. This from the post-racial campaign that loudly claimed to transcend this issue. If fact they are counting on it. There’s no reason to doubt that if Obama wins, he will follow this practice throughout his administration. We’ll be hearing these accusations for the next four years, and race relations will be the worst we’ve seen in generations.

That’s not the only punishment for criticism. The Obama campaign has tested the water several times about bringing legal action to shut up those they don’t agree with. It hasn’t been successful , so it uses political and economic pressure on any media outlet that dares to give critics a venue. In fact, the most characteristic feature of the Obama campaign is it’s attempt to shut down debate. Not control debate, of dominate the debate, but to close it down. They are actively seeking to gag their opposition so the public can never even hear about topics they don’t want to discuss. In normal circumstances, this would be impossible, because the media likes controversy even more than they like Democrats and can be counted on to follow a significant story. But these are not normal circumstances.

The media is doing something it has never done before. It is blatantly and largely unapologetically campaigning for a candidate for presidency. In elections before this one, it was obvious that the MSM wanted the democratic candidate to win, but they made an effort to appear neutral, and were often successful. This time, we seem to have reached a tipping point, with industry-wide pressure to do whatever it takes to ensure a democratic victory. I got the distinct impression that the MSM was counting on Charles Gibson as their representative in Palin’s first major interview to destroy her, and he was under a lot of pressure to do the job. I don’t think I even need to go into the unbelievable campaign against Palin, and how her every word is twisted, while Biden and other democrats tell major whoppers that are not just ignored, but repeated as truth.

While the MSM is sending reporters to Alaska to comb every inch of Palin’s life for anything negative, they have resolutely refused to examine Obama’s work as a community organizer and his time working with Bill Ayers. Now when McCain is forced to do the media’s job for them, he looks desperate (which he is).

A free press is essential to the proper functioning of democracy, but when a significant portion of the population sees that the press has its thumb on the scale, the democratic process is in danger of losing legitimacy. Combined with obvious but largely unreported voter fraud by democratic-supported groups like ACORN, there’s a growing anger in half of the country who don’t see this election as fair.

There’s plenty more to say, but I’ve managed to drive myself further into depression over this rancid campaign, so I’ll stop now to recover a bit before I can stand to think about this any more.

OK, OK, I give up! I’ve gotten such a tremendous response from people clamoring for more information on the last installment of “Cool Airplane Photo Challenge” that I’m just going to dedicate an entire post to it!

And, to avoid offending anyone’s tender sensibilities, I’ve reviewed all these photos for any possible nose art, and I can guarantee there are no drawings of any prurient nature among them!

I’ve got to admit that the last Challenge was pretty obscure. But these looked so bizarre, er…interesting, that I couldn’t pass them up.

In the 1930’s the Soviets conducted a series of projects termed Zveno, testing the feasibility of using parasite aircraft for various purposes. In all of these projects the attached aircraft were started prior to takeoff and the extra thrust of their engines used to improve takeoff performance:

–Zveno-1, A two-engined Tupolev TB-1 bomber with a modified Tupolev I-4 fighter (lower wings removed) attached to the top of each wing:

The I-4 was the first all-metal soviet fighter:

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–Zveno-2 used a four-engined TB-3 with two Polikarpov I-5s on the wings and a third one on top of the fuselage. A ramp was used to load the fighters. This made the wing-mounted fighters easy to load, but the one on top of the fuselage was so difficult to install by hand that they soon stopped even trying to launch it, and eventually took the wings off and used it strictly as a extra engine :

The I-5 was the standard Soviet fighter from 1933 to 1936,and was the first of a series of successful fighter designs produced by Nikolai Polikarpov’s design bureau. In 1929 their previous fighter design had been considered a failure by the government, so naturally all 450 members of the Design Bureau were imprisoned , with Polikarpov receiving a death sentence. In 1931 those bleeding-heart Soviets reduced the sentence to 10 years of forced labor and transfered him to the Special Design Bureau at Butyrka Prison. The government was so pleased with the I-5 that in 1933 Stalin released him and his design bureau. Polikarpov was later hailed as “King of Fighters”.

Below is an I-5 on the wing of the TB-3 about to be released–the tail is free, but the main gear are still attached:

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Zvenco-3: A TB-3 with a Grigorovich Z-1 fighter under each wing. Here’s a Z-1, which was a monoplane that was innovative in its own right, being designed to carry a single-shot recoilless rifle under each wing:

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The Zveno-5 carried one Z-1 stowed under a TB-3. The bomber couldn’t land or take of f with the Z-1 attached , so they had to hook up in the air. This led to the world’s first in-flight docking of two airplanes on March 23, 1936:

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–Zvenco-6 carried a Polikarpov I-16 monoplane fighter under each wing. They first tried it with the I-16s’ landing gear down, but on rough runways the aircraft would occasionally strike the ground on takeoff role. With the gear up the clearance problem was solved. The I-16s could unattach from the bomber, but they could not reattach.

The Polikarpov I-16 was a extremely successful fighter that was clearly the best in the world when it was introduced. Used extensively in the Spanish Civil War, it was the frontline soviet aircraft at the beginning of WWII. By that time it was generally outclassed by newer fighters

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–For Zvenco-7, the two I-16s attached in the air, but it proved too difficult to do so routinely.

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–Aviamatka (Airborne Mothership), took off with two I-16s under the wings and two I-5s on top of the wings; a Z-1 attached while airborne:

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–Finally, SPB (Sostavnoi Pikiruyuschiy Bombardirovschik, or Combined Dive Bomber) was essentially a Zveno-6, with two I-16s under the wings. In this case each I-16 carried two 550lb bombs. The purpose of the arrangement was to increase the range of the strike force and to allow the I-16s to carry heavier bombs than they could take off with on their own. The SPB saw limited action during WWII, with at least some success:

Sorry, as there were no winning entries on this challenge, no one will receive The Fabulous Prizes that were offered. Perhaps you’ll do better next time

So we have two consecutive posts by WEF3 telling us the end is nigh. First he approvingly links us to a doom-and-gloom editorial from Pat Buchanan, who gave up on this country a long time ago when we didn’t take his advice and retire from the rest of the world. Then we’ve got his own thoughts on the present crisis, which inexorably lead to “We will fall.”

Hey, turn that frown upside down, WEF3! Things aren’t as bad as all that, at least not yet. We’ve just got to take a page from the playbook of our country’s enemies, and never ever give in or give up. Why, right now many in Congress are working like BUSY… LITTLE … BEES to resurrect that travesty of a bailout bill and show all their “contributors” that their money was well spent. Because if you don’t deliver the goods, you might not get another payoff.

In any case, since I’m simply not up to taking on Buchanan’s fevered imaginings, I’ll settle for discussing WEF3’s latest post. I think his analysis of the crisis leaves out a very big part of this, which is simply WHY?

WEF3’s first two questions are pretty good ones. So are my responses:

1) “Home Prices are overvalued.” Why?

2)”People Obtained Loans for these homes…” Why? (Ok, maybe “How?”)

And he has a pretty good answer to question #1– “people with almost unlimited credit” could buy these houses. With more people buying houses (demand going up) prices went up too, but people could still get loans for these inflated homes, driving prices up further.

“Hey, would the bank lend me the money if they didn’t think I could pay it back? They’re the experts.” Besides, they figured as long as the price kept going up, they’d be fine, because “I’ll never get in trouble, because if all else fails, I’ll just sell my house at a huge profit, pay off the mortgage, and they’ll still be plenty of money left over for me to pocket.” Sweet. Until the price stops going up. Now if that gold mine in Alaska doesn’t pan out, and he can’t make his monthlies, selling the house won’t get him out from under his debt. So he’ll just have to walk away, and the bank can eat the loan.

Now for question #2. Why do people have “almost unlimited access to credit”? This one WEF3 never answers, so I will.

Enter our benevolent Government:

“The evil bankers aren’t providing home loans to the poor people who we want to vote for us! There must be some sinister motive behind this inexplicable behavior, because why else would they refuse a loan to someone with no job, no credit history, and no collateral ? Clearly these bankers are racists.

“Well, we’ll just pass some laws to make them stop being racists, and threaten them until they make those loans to anybody who wants a home, because it’s a God-given right to own a home whether you can afford one or not. Or at least it should be, if it will convince people to re-elect me!

“Oops, small glitch: While the bankers are evil and probably irredeemably racist, their money spends just fine. And if they are angry with me, that money will spend just fine for my opponent in the next election. So there’s no reason I shouldn’t make them happy so it can spend just fine for me instead!

“We’ll invent a GSE–no, two GSEs– “Government-Sponsored Enterprises”. These GSEs will buy all those loans from the banks so those banks are guaranteed payment, and the GSEs will assume the risk. Nothing to worry about– What part of “Government-Sponsored Enterprise” do you fail to understand? And we’ll make our pet GSEs exempt from the lending rules and standards we apply to everyone else, even from the laws we passed after the S&L debacle. Now we can put our friends on the payroll and if they have to cook the books a bit to afford those million-dollar bonuses… well hey, they’re providing affordable housing… For the Children!!”

So Fannie and Freddie buy up all the loans, relieving the Banks of all the risk, but not all the profits. So, being good responsible capitalist institutions, the banks make as many of these loans as they can. And the relaxed standards don’t just apply to poor people, so now middle class and rich people can also get loans on houses they can’t really afford. Why should the banks care? They’re making money hand over fist and the GSEs are buying the loans and the risk and loving every minute of it, since they’re making money hand over fist too. The gravy train will go on forever as long as they keep enough congressmen happy. And since they’re awash in cash, that shouldn’t be a problem.

And that’s why people could get “almost unlimited credit” on homes they couldn’t afford.

So, yeah, it is about the Government forcing banks to make bad loans to poor people. Of course then people that weren’t poor got in on the scam, and soon the Government fixed it so it didn’t even have to force the banks to make bad loans. Where there’s a will there’s a way– Its amazing what people can do when they set their minds to something. Why, it’s like the Dems own “Shackleton’s Valiant Voyage,” where human ingenuity triumphs over nature–at least for thirty years or so.

What it is not is an inherent flaw in the nature of credit. We don’t need to keep some kind of “balance” where the only way people can have extra money is if someone else loses it. Of course we rely on our future earnings when we use credit. But left to themselves people will make the best deal for both parties of the transaction. No sane banker would loan money to someone who had a good chance of defaulting on his loan with no collateral to cover the loss. That is, unless he thought someone else (like the Government) would make sure he didn’t lose money, essentially co-signing the loan. And, in a rational world, if despite his good judgment he made a bad loan, wouldn’t it be in his interest to make some kind of deal with the borrower to salvage something from the loan, rather than have him go into default without recovering a penny? But why would he make that deal to get maybe 50 cents on the dollar from the borrower when he thinks he can wait for the Government to pass a bill to get him all of his money back? Where is his incentive to work something out and avoid the default? Hello financial crisis. And when the markets expect the bailout from the criminal class in Washington, and keep prices up in anticipation, and suddenly they find out it’s not coming? Hello meltdown.

It’s a classic example of Government interfering with the market and distorting it so badly that when the chickens come home to roost all Hell breaks loose (to mix a metaphor).