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October 30, 2008

Mark Steyn on Obama, the L.A. Times, and Joe the Plumber

Hugh Hewitt and the indispensable Mark Steyn got together for their weekly review of the news, and Steyn was in top form.

Hewitt started off by asking Steyn about the L.A. Times' refusal to release video it has of Obama at an Israel-bashing dinner.

MS: Well, I think there’s absolutely no reason to repress it. Clearly, when you look at the stuff that the media have been happy to leak since September, 2001, details of financial scrutiny of terrorist transfers, details of precise military and intelligence matters, it’s a shame that Khalidi and Obama weren’t sitting around discussing confidential troop movements in the Sunni Triangle, because then the L.A. Times and everyone else would have had it, they’d been happy to leak it on the front page of every newspaper. There’s no reason to keep this secret.

HH: Now you have known, you’ve been around journalism for a long, long time, Mark Steyn. Does their explanation, the source asked us not to leak it ring true to you after the source gave it to them for whatever use they got out of it?

MS: No. I find it very difficult to believe that. Let’s just say that the source, the source leaked it to the L.A. Times, so he wanted the story out there. And the video is part of the corroboration of the story. Now if there’s something in that video that might perhaps identify him or something like that, then it is certainly possible to release it in a form that takes care of that concern. But I’ve never heard of this kind of deal. And you say I’ve been in journalism a long time. You know, the L.A. Times isn’t in the journalism business right now. The problem with the American media is that they’re in the Obama electing business. That’s why, for example, it was the London Times which had this extraordinary story about Obama’s penniless aunt in a housing project in Boston. It was the London Times 3,000 miles away who broke that story rather than the Boston Globe which is in the tank for Obama. So these guys are not, at this stage in the game, they’re not, they’re in the Obama cheerleading business rather than the journalism business.

HH: Yesterday, I watched CNN’s Rick Sanchez mug Joe the Plumber, mocking him, along with David Gergen mocking him, for daring to have an opinion on Israel. It’s really gone over the top in many places, Mark Steyn.

MS: Yes, and I mean, I find this revolting. I mean essentially, they’re saying that Joe the Plumber being a citizen is unqualified to do anything except stand in the chorus and sing hail the great Obama. Maybe it takes a subject of a monarch to point out to these poltroons like Gergen that this is a citizen republic of citizen legislators. And the idea that somehow Joe the Plumber is demonstrating grotesque lese majeste, and having the impertinence to ask a question of King Barack the good, I think is revolting, and I think is one thing, actually, people are disgusted by when they look at the media. The media basically are behaving like a corrupt version of the House of Lords. So actually, it’s not even that good. The media have simply announced that they’re content to be the eunuchs in Sultan Barack’s harem.

The nerve of that man, having an opinion about the Middle East! Who does he think he is, questioning experts, doubting the wisdom of the rulers who know best what needs to be done?

Oh, wait a minute, is he a subject or a citizen?

There's a phrase that's been making the rounds of the punditocracy this election: "game changer."

Folks, I think this election is truly a game changer; although the left has been shrieking for years about the Bush administration destroying freedom in this county, there's only one party that seems to delight in trying to destroy an American citizen for committing the worst crime of all: Daring to disagree with their candidate.

And it ain't the Party of Lincoln.

Can we question their patriotism now?

Posted by Mike Lief at 11:04 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Obama's Slippery Tax Slope

The GOP has made good use of Obama's (ahem) flexible definition of who's too rich to avoid his tax hikes.

The ad uses Obama's own words, as well as the ever-loquacious Slow Joe Biden's revealing slip of the tongue, to highlight how hard it is to pin these guys down.

OBAMA (7/8/08): If you make $250,000 dollars a year or less, we will not raise your taxes. We will cut your taxes.

OBAMA (10/25/08): If you make less than $200,000 dollars a year, you’ll get a tax cut.

BIDEN (10/27/08): It should go to middle-class people… People making under $150,000 dollars a year.

VOICEOVER: As time winds down to November 4th, so does Barack Obama’s definition of “rich.” In July, Obama said if you make less than $250,000 dollars per year you get a tax cut. Ten days before Election Day, he changes it to $200,000. And now, Joe Biden changes the threshold to $150,000.

If you’re wondering where you fit in, the answer is … Who knows?

(PLUMBER JOE) WURZELBACHER: You know, $250,000 dollars now – what if he decides well, you know, $150,000 dollars, you’re pretty rich too, let’s go ahead and lower it again? You know, it’s a slippery slope… When’s it going to stop?

VOICEOVER: Yesterday, he promised you a tax cut. Today, he promises he’ll change again. And tomorrow, he’ll “spread the wealth” to those that don’t even pay taxes at all.

Change. Change. Change.

Yeah, that’s Barack.

Still think you're going to escape the Taxman's bigger bite?

Posted by Mike Lief at 01:19 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Dare to judge the Obamessiah

Posted by Mike Lief at 08:00 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Speaking about journalistic "integrity"

Proving that the AP's Calvin Woodward is the exception to the rule -- and that there's no bottom limit to how low the L.A. Times will go in its relentless campaign to protect Obama -- there's the ongoing refusal by the paper to release video in its possession of the Democratic candidate at an Israel-bashing dinner.

Hugh Hewitt notes:

This is an astonishing moment in the history of journalism. In the last presidential campaign, an arm of MSM attempted to influence the race by inventing a major story. This time, a different arm is influencing the race by censoring the news.

Times' owner Sam Zell and every single editor and reporter at the paper are thus now complicit in a decision to manage the news so that voters are not informed of all that might influence their choice of president. The videotape might be as bland as skim milk, or as incendiary as even the most inflammatory Jeremiah Wright sermon, but the content doesn't matter. The paper is suppressing the news and using Orwellian language to claim otherwise. The silence from other MSMers tells us all we need to know about their commitment to the mission of getting important facts before the public.

Imagine that the tape is of the sort as to tilt the election to McCain, but because of its suppression by the Times, Obama is elected. The paper then "owns" everything that follows on Obama's watch. This is of course true for the author of every partisan action that yields a decisive influence on an election, but it is an unprecedented position for an alleged newspaper to be in. Newspapers thump their chests when state secrets are revealed, claiming the need of the public to know even at the risk of damaging national security. What a turnaround to be wholly and irrefutably exposed as a mere agent in a presidential campaign rather than the guardian of the public's interest in truth.

It's astonishing, really, a complete repudiation of the Fourth Estates role in giving information, not withholding it from their readers.

Hewitt then makes the obvious comparison.

When the Times published stories on the SWIFT program used to track terrorist financing, I interviewed the Times' D.C. bureau chief, Doyle McManus.

HH: Is it possible, in your view, Doyle McManus, that the story will in fact help terrorists elude capture?

DM: I did…I neither believed it nor disbelieved it. I would believe I took that seriously. It’s impossible for me to evaluate independently to what degree…whether the potential assistance to terrorists…I think they actually didn’t argue that it would help terrorists. They argued that it would disadvantage, or make more difficult, counter-terrorist programs. But that’s probably a distinction without a difference. What…would that be momentous? Would it be marginal? I don’t know.

HH: Is it possible, in your view, Doyle McManus, that the story will in fact help terrorists elude capture?

DM: It is conceivable, yeah, although it might be worth noting that in our reporting, officials told us that this would, this disclosure would probably not affect al Qaeda, which figured out long ago that the normal banking system was not how it ought to move its money, and so turned to other unofficial and informal channels.

HH: The terrorist Hambali came up. He was captured in August of ‘03, mastermind/financier of the Bali bombing. Are you familiar with Hambali?

DM: I am.

HH: And did they alert you to the fact that they believe that Hambali was captured as a result of this SWIFT program?

DM: They did not. The first I knew of that was when I read it in the New York Times.

HH: Is it possible now that whoever was familiar with what Hambali did, those terrorists in Southeast Asia, could just simply reverse engineer his financing, and figure out what they shouldn’t do now?

DM: Well, I suppose it’s possible, except in effect, what we’re talking about here is the simple question of whether international banking transmissions are monitored….

The Times was willing to run the risk of informing terrorists about efforts to capture them, but is refusing to inform the American people about relevant, indeed, potentially decisive facts on the eve of an election.

And you still think you can get a fair take on the election by reading the L.A. Times?

Shame on you.

And shame on the L.A. Times.

Posted by Mike Lief at 07:54 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Obama infomercial debunked (with tax hikes, too)

Although the media continues in its role as the (un)official Press Office of the Obama campaign, there are a few surprising pockets of integrity and impartiality.

The Associated Press' Calvin Woodward picked through the dung heap deposited on the living room floors of those Americans who chose to tune in to the Obamessiah's primetime infomercial, and found -- Surprise! -- that the candidate is as "trustworthy" as any other cable-access guy flacking for some shady product in a 30-minute ad.

THE SPIN: "That's why my health care plan includes improving information technology, requires coverage for preventive care and pre-existing conditions and lowers health care costs for the typical family by $2,500 a year."

THE FACTS: His plan does not lower premiums by $2,500, or any set amount. Obama hopes that by spending $50 billion over five years on electronic medical records and by improving access to proven disease management programs, among other steps, consumers will end up saving money. He uses an optimistic analysis to suggest cost reductions in national health care spending could amount to the equivalent of $2,500 for a family of four. Many economists are skeptical those savings can be achieved, but even if they are, it's not a certainty that every dollar would be passed on to consumers in the form of lower premiums.

THE SPIN: "I also believe every American has a right to affordable health care."

THE FACTS: That belief should not be confused with a guarantee of health coverage for all. He makes no such promise. Obama hinted as much in the ad when he said about the problem of the uninsured: "I want to start doing something about it." He would mandate coverage for children but not adults. His program is aimed at making insurance more affordable by offering the choice of government-subsidized coverage similar to that in a plan for federal employees and other steps, including requiring larger employers to share costs of insuring workers.

THE SPIN: "I've offered spending cuts above and beyond their cost."

THE FACTS: Independent analysts say both Obama and Republican John McCain would deepen the deficit. The nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimates Obama's policy proposals would add a net $428 billion to the deficit over four years - and that analysis accepts the savings he claims from spending cuts. The nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, whose other findings have been quoted approvingly by the Obama campaign, says: "Both John McCain and Barack Obama have proposed tax plans that would substantially increase the national debt over the next 10 years." The analysis goes on to say: "Neither candidate's plan would significantly increase economic growth unless offset by spending cuts or tax increases that the campaigns have not specified."

THE SPIN: "Here's what I'll do. Cut taxes for every working family making less than $200,000 a year. Give businesses a tax credit for every new employee that they hire right here in the U.S. over the next two years and eliminate tax breaks for companies that ship jobs overseas. Help homeowners who are making a good faith effort to pay their mortgages, by freezing foreclosures for 90 days. And just like after 9-11, we'll provide low-cost loans to help small businesses pay their workers and keep their doors open."

THE FACTS: His proposals - the tax cuts, the low-cost loans, the $15 billion a year he promises for alternative energy, and more - cost money, and the country could be facing a record $1 trillion deficit next year. Indeed, Obama recently acknowledged - although not in his commercial - that: "The next president will have to scale back his agenda and some of his proposals."

Did you catch that last bit?

I told you just the other day that we only had Obama's word that tax hikes would be limited to Americans making more than $250,000; running-mate "Slow" Joe Biden added another gaffe-tastic remark to his list when he said that the tax hikes would only slam people making more than $145,000.

And now we have the guy at the top of the ticket announcing -- Hey, it's no bid deal, really! When I'm through with you, no one should be making enough to be rich! -- that $250,000 was too high.

Remember, a filibuster-proof Democratic majority in the Senate means Pelosi, Frank and Reid can pass as many redistributive tax bills as they can dream up -- and there's nothing to stop them from landing on the President's desk for signature.

The only factor -- the only factor -- determining whether Americans are defended with a Presidential veto or unceremoniously de-pantsed and relieved of their hard-earned money is which candidate is wielding either the veto pen or the lets-screw-the-rich-people-who-contribute-more-to-society-than-they-take-from-their-neighbors pen.

Posted by Mike Lief at 07:30 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 28, 2008

The spiders have returned to my backyard

Garden Spider on dew-laden silken strands. Click on image for full-size version.

The spiders have returned to our backyard, in greater numbers than before. We now have three large beasties lurking in the trees during the day, only emerging at night to fix the day's damage to their webs ... and feast on the liquified flesh of their prey.

This is the view during the daylight hours, just a shadowy lump nestled in the branches of the Bailey's Acacia. Let me adjust the exposure to give you a better view.

Yeah, a tree-dwelling relative of the crab, just biding his time until lunch comes too close. It gives me the heebie-jeebies to think of them sitting in the trees, watching me with all eight eyes (actually, twenty-four eyes, as there are three of them) ready to pounce.

Oy.

Posted by Mike Lief at 11:56 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

How long can a donated body part last?

Apparently, some donated body parts are more reliable than others.

Take, for instance the cornea taken from a Frenchman and implanted in a man's eye in 1958; he's still using it to see the world in 2008.

Now, a 50-year run is nothing to sneeze at, but it's even more impressive when you learn that the cornea's donor had been born in 1885.

OSLO (Reuters Life!) - Bernt Aune's transplanted cornea has been in use for a record 123 years -- since before the Eiffel Tower was built.

"This is the oldest eye in Norway -- I don't know if it's the oldest in the world," Aune, an 80-year-old Norwegian and former ambulance driver, told Reuters by telephone on Thursday. "But my vision's not great any longer."

He had a cornea transplanted into his right eye in 1958 from the body of an elderly man who was born in June 1885. The operation was carried out at Namsos Hospital, mid-Norway.

"I wouldn't be surprised if this is the oldest living organ in the world," eye doctor Hasan Hasanain at Namsos hospital told the Norwegian daily Verdens Gang.

In the 1950s, doctors expected it to work for just five years, Hasanain said. Such cornea operations date back to the early 20th century and were among the first successful transplants.

"It wasn't unusual to use corneas from elderly people who had died," Aune said.

The Eiffel Tower was built from 1887 to 1889. U.S. inventor Thomas Edison patented a film camera for motion pictures in 1888.

You see, quality parts are key. I figure if gearheads can keep antique cars running like new, there's no reason why we can' do the same for people, too.

Just don't over-torque my lug nuts, please.

By the way, did you know that the first corneal transplant took place in 1905? Neither did I.

Posted by Mike Lief at 07:49 AM

Top Gear's top dog on motorcycles

Jeremy Clarkson, the acerbic British journalist who stars on Top Gear, the best TV show ever made about cars, reviews a Vespa and offers his thoughts on two-wheeled vehicles.

Hilarity ensues.

Right, first things first. The motorbike is not like a car. It will not stand up when left to its own devices. So, when you are not riding it, it must be leant against a wall or a fence. I’m told some bikes come with footstools which can be lowered to keep them upright. But then you have to lift the bike onto this footstool, and that’s like trying to lift up an American.

Next: the controls. Unlike with a car, there seems to be no standardisation in the world of motorcycling. Some have gearlevers on the steering wheel. Some have them on the floor, which means you have to shift with your feet — how stupid is that? — and some are automatic.

Then we get to the brakes. Because bikes are designed by bikers — and bikers, as we all know, are extremely dim — they haven’t worked out how the front and back brake can be applied at the same time. So, to stop the front wheel, you pull a lever on the steering wheel, and to stop the one at the back, you press on a lever with one of your feet.

A word of warning, though. If you use only the front brake, you will fly over the steering wheel and be killed. If you try to use the back one, you will use the wrong foot and change into third gear instead of stopping. So you’ll hit the obstacle you were trying to avoid, and you’ll be killed.

Then there is the steering. The steering wheel comes in the shape of what can only be described as handlebars, but if you turn them — even slightly — while riding along, you will fall off and be killed. What you have to do is lean into the corner, fix your gaze on the course you wish to follow, and then you will fall off and be killed.

As far as the minor controls are concerned, well . . . you get a horn and lights and indicators, all of which are operated by various switches and buttons on the steering wheel, but if you look down to see which one does what, a truck will hit you and you will be killed. Oh, and for some extraordinary reason, the indicators do not self-cancel, which means you will drive with one of them on permanently, which will lead following traffic to think you are turning right. It will then undertake just as you turn left, and you will be killed.

What I’m trying to say here is that, yes, bikes and cars are both forms of transport, but they have nothing in common. Imagining that you can ride a bike because you can drive a car is like imagining you can swallow-dive off a 90ft cliff because you can play table tennis.

However, many people are making the switch because they imagine that having a small motorcycle will be cheap. It isn’t. Sure, the 125cc Vespa I tried can be bought for £3,499, but then you will need a helmet (£300), a jacket (£500), some Freddie Mercury trousers (£100), shoes (£130), a pair of Kevlar gloves (£90), a coffin (£1,000), a headstone (£750), a cremation (£380) and flowers in the church (£200).

In other words, your small 125cc motorcycle, which has no boot, no electric windows, no stereo and no bloody heater even, will end up costing more than a Volkswagen Golf. That said, a bike is much cheaper to run than a car. In fact, it takes only half a litre of fuel to get from your house to the scene of your first fatal accident. Which means that the lifetime cost of running your new bike is just 50p.

[...]

I also liked the idea of a Vespa because most bikes are Japanese. This means they are extremely reliable so you cannot avoid a fatal crash by simply breaking down. This is entirely possible on a Vespa because it is made in Italy.

What’s more, because the heavy engine is on the right, the bike likes turning right much more than it likes turning left. This means that in all left-handed bends, you will be killed.

This is all consistent with my experience, surviving an encounter with a car's bumper while on a French two-wheeled motor-thingie back in the '70s.

I remember looking down at the car as I flew over it, watched with some interest at the road loomed large in my view as I lost altitude, listening to the crack of my helmet slamming into the road, accompanied by the CRACK of my knee slamming into the road, too, a followup to the CRUNCH when it was crushed between the bumper and the bike.

Surgery, a year of physical therapy, and the doctor's caution that it was 50-50 odds that I'd ever walk without a cane again, I was (almost) as good as new.

And started riding a shipmate's Honda CB450 while I was stationed up in Washington.

Hey, I was a young sailor living on a submarine, and taking risks was part of the job description -- or so I thought.

But I eventually came to some of the same conclusions as Clarkson, especially how everything related to motorcycles ends in, "and then you die."

One of the guys from my boat was hit and killed while riding his motorcycle, leaving behind a wife and infant son.

Yeah, they're a blast to ride.

And then you die.

Funny review, but all too true.

Posted by Mike Lief at 06:55 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

October 27, 2008

If you look at the victories and failures of the civil rights movement and its litigation strategy in the court. I think where it succeeded was to invest formal rights in previously dispossessed people, so that now I would have the right to vote. I would now be able to sit at the lunch counter and order as long as I could pay for it I’d be o.k. But, the Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth, and of more basic issues such as political and economic justice in the society. To that extent, as radical as I think people try to characterize the Warren Court, it wasn’t that radical. It didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the founding fathers in the Constitution, at least as its been interpreted and Warren Court interpreted in the same way, that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties. Says what the states can’t do to you. Says what the Federal government can’t do to you, but doesn’t say what the Federal government or State government must do on your behalf, and that hasn’t shifted and one of the, I think, the tragedies of the civil rights movement was, um, because the civil rights movement became so court focused I think there was a tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing and activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalition of powers through which you bring about redistributive change. In some ways we still suffer from that.

Posted by Mike Lief at 11:18 PM

October 26, 2008

A Harvard economist's take on the Obama tax plan

Greg Mankiw is a professor of economics at Harvard University. He analyzed the effect of the Obama tax plan on his earnings, compared it to the impact McCain's less-confiscatory plan, and came to the following conclusion: What's the point in working hard, when the harder you work, the more you're penalized -- er, forced to participate in the redistribution of your wealth in order to support the societal goal of "fairness."

Here is a question that you may have been thinking about: How do the different candidates' tax plans affect Greg Mankiw's incentive to work?

[...]

Let me try to put each tax plan into a single number. Let's suppose Greg Mankiw takes on an incremental job today and earns a dollar. How much, as a result, will he leave his kids in T years?

The answer depends on four tax rates. First, I pay the combined income and payroll tax on the dollar earned. Second, I pay the corporate tax rate while the money is invested in a firm. Third, I pay the dividend and capital gains rate as I receive that return. And fourth, I pay the estate tax when I leave what has accumulated to my kids.

Let t1 be the combined income and payroll tax rate, t2 be the corporate tax rate, t3 be the dividend and capital gains tax rate, and t4 be the estate tax rate. And let r be the before-tax rate of return on corporate capital. Then one dollar I earn today will yield my kids:

(1-t1){[1+r(1-t2)(1-t3)]^T}(1-t4).

For my illustrative calculations, let me take r to be 10 percent and my remaining life expectancy T to be 35 years.

If there were no taxes, so t1=t2=t3=t4=0, then $1 earned today would yield my kids $28. That is simply the miracle of compounding.

Under the McCain plan, t1=.35, t2=.25, t3=.15, and t4=.15. In this case, a dollar earned today yields my kids $4.81. That is, even under the low-tax McCain plan, my incentive to work is cut by 83 percent compared to the situation without taxes.

Under the Obama plan, t1=.43, t2=.35, t3=.2, and t4=.45. In this case, a dollar earned today yields my kids $1.85. That is, Obama's proposed tax hikes reduce my incentive to work by 62 percent compared to the McCain plan and by 93 percent compared to the no-tax scenario. In a sense, putting the various pieces of the tax system together, I would be facing a marginal tax rate of 93 percent.

The bottom line: If you are one of those people out there trying to induce me to do some work for you, there is a good chance I will turn you down. And the likelihood will go up after President Obama puts his tax plan in place.

Don't forget that the numbers that the professor plugged in to his formula are provided by the candidates; we only have Obama's word that he won't raise taxes even higher once he's able to rubber stamp whatever legislation lands on his desk courtesy of Pelosi, Reid and Barney Frank.

But that's okay, 'cause Obama's word is his bond. Like when he promised to accept campaign finance limits so this election would be free of the taint that comes with dirty money greasing the skids into the Oval Office.

What's that? He broke that promise and decided to spend more money than any candidate in the history of the Republic?

Well, I'm sure Obama won't break his promise to only tax the rich.

Or the upper middle-class.

Or the middle class.

Unless, of course, it helps advance the cause of "fairness," funded out of your apparently too-full savings account.

Because, you see, just like he told Joe the Plumber, "It's a good thing to spread the wealth around."

Too bad it's not the job of the government to do it.

Too bad for us, that is, if Obama is victorious.

Posted by Mike Lief at 11:55 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

The MAS Mle-36

While some of my pals are pistoleros, I enjoy collecting military rifles that saw action in The War To End All Wars, 1914-1918, and it's sequel, Part II, otherwise known as WW2.

The French MAS Mle-36 is an interesting rifle, little known or appreciated outside collecting circles, used little after May 1940, except for some post-war action in French Indochina and Algeria. It survives as a sniper rifle in some French Army units, albeit in a modified version rechambered for the NATO 7.62mm round.

While the French quickly joined the rest of the world in adopting self-loading battle rifles in the late '40s, the bolt-action MAS '36 lived on in police and reserve armories throughout the Francophone world until nearly the end of the 20th century, when they were dumped into the surplus market.

The MAS-36 features a tremendously strong action, darn near indestructible, really, with a distinctive bolt that turns down and forward. It's not cheap to shoot, given that it must be fed expensive ammo in a caliber used by no one other than the Frenchies.

I snagged mine in the early '90s, in what appears to be either unfired, mint condition, or the best arsenal-level refurbish job I've ever seen.

The price for them has gone up in the ensuing years, but they're still available for just a few C-notes. I found this one for sale on Guns America (it sold), but I really liked the description posted by the seller:

This is a very nice French MAS Mle-36 carbine. This carbine looks to be unissued with a nearly flawless stock and excellent parkerized metal finish.

Doubtful this rifle was ever fired at a German soldier.

Chambered in the 7.5 x 54 cartridge.

This rifle’s metal is in excellent, almost new condition and the bore is bright with strong rifling. The wood is in excellent, almost new condition. Includes the original leather sling.

The MAS Mle-36 has a bayonet that fits into a socket under the barrel. Perfect for grilling snails or as a mount for a white flag.

Asking $300.00

I don't care where you're from; that's funny.

Unless you're French.

Posted by Mike Lief at 08:43 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Democratic leader wants to gut defense

http://www.heritage.org/research/features/BudgetChartBook/fed-rev-spend-2008-boc-C6-Defense-Spending-Is-on-the.html

http://www.southcoasttoday.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20081024/NEWS/810240332/-1/NEWS10

After the November election, Democrats will push for a second economic stimulus package that includes money for the states' stalled infrastructure projects, along with help paying for healthcare expenses, food stamps and extended unemployment benefits, U.S. Rep. Barney Frank said Thursday.

In a meeting with the editorial board of The Standard-Times, Rep. Frank, D-Mass., also called for a 25 percent cut in military spending, saying the Pentagon has to start choosing from its many weapons programs, and that upper-income taxpayers are going to see an increase in what they are asked to pay.

The military cuts also mean getting out of Iraq sooner, he said.

"The people of Iraq want us out, and we want to stay over their objection," he said. "It's extraordinary." The Maliki government in Iraq "can't sell (the withdrawal deal with the U.S.) because it sounds like we're going to stay too long."

"I was teasing (U.S. Rep.) Jack Murtha (a key supporter of military budgets) and I said to him, 'For the first time, somebody else has got a bill that's almost as big as yours.' We don't need all these fancy new weapons. I think there needs to be additional review."

Rep. Frank called on President Bush to appoint a senior official to guide the economic stimulus packages through the transition to the Barack Obama or John McCain administration when it takes office in January.

And he said that if the Democrats can't find an adequate agreement on a stimulus package in the lame-duck Congress, they would rather wait until the new Congress takes over — likely with many more Democrats, if polling results bear fruit in the November voting.

The new package, he said, will be aimed at easing fears about lending and investing. "The psychological problem is even worse than the real problem," he said.

"There is money to lend and projects worth borrowing money to do. But people are afraid to lend. That's what we're trying to unfreeze."

States have many infrastructure projects — bridges, highways, etc. — that have been shut down because of a cash-flow problems, he said. So it is not the case that a stimulus will take months or years to wait for design and approval, since projects are already in progress or ready to go.

Also, he said, "we'll increase the federal share of medical care so states won't have to lay off people." Unemployment insurance benefits won't increase, he said, but the period of collecting them will, and eligibility requirements might be relaxed.

And, ultimately, there will be tax increases on the upper brackets. "We'll have to raise taxes ultimately. Not now, but eventually," he said.

Posted by Mike Lief at 09:17 AM

October 25, 2008

1911 was a very good year

http://www.sightm1911.com/

Posted by Mike Lief at 11:13 PM

What are they thinking?

Please take a few minutes and read Mark Levin's impassioned warning to his fellow American. He believes -- as do I -- that this nation stands on the brink of a terrible mistake, one rooted in anger, class envy, a cult of personality, and based on nothing approximating a calm, cool, clear-headed study of the merits of the candidates.

I sense what's occurring in this election is a recklessness and abandonment of rationality that has preceded the voluntary surrender of liberty and security in other places. I can't help but observe that even some conservatives are caught in the moment as their attempts at explaining their support for Barack Obama are unpersuasive and even illogical. And the pull appears to be rather strong.

Ken Adelman, Doug Kmiec, and others, reach for the usual platitudes in explaining themselves but are utterly incoherent. Even non-conservatives with significant public policy and real world experiences, such as Colin Powell and Charles Fried, find Obama alluring but can't explain themselves in an intelligent way.

There is a cult-like atmosphere around Barack Obama, which his campaign has carefully and successfully fabricated, which concerns me.

The messiah complex. Fainting audience members at rallies. Special Obama flags and an Obama presidential seal. A graphic with the portrayal of the globe and Obama's name on it, which adorns everything from Obama's plane to his street literature. Young school children singing songs praising Obama. Teenagers wearing camouflage outfits and marching in military order chanting Obama's name and the professions he is going to open to them. An Obama world tour, culminating in a speech in Berlin where Obama proclaims we are all citizens of the world.

I dare say, this is ominous stuff.

Even the media are drawn to the allure that is Obama. Yes, the media are liberal. Even so, it is obvious that this election is different. The media are open and brazen in their attempts to influence the outcome of this election. I've never seen anything like it. Virtually all evidence of Obama's past influences and radicalism — from Jeremiah Wright to William Ayers — have been raised by non-traditional news sources.

The media's role has been to ignore it as long as possible, then mention it if they must, and finally dismiss it and those who raise it in the first place. It's as if the media use the Obama campaign's talking points — its preposterous assertions that Obama didn't hear Wright from the pulpit railing about black liberation, whites, Jews, etc., that Obama had no idea Ayers was a domestic terrorist despite their close political, social, and working relationship, etc. — to protect Obama from legitimate and routine scrutiny.

And because journalists have also become commentators, it is hard to miss their almost uniform admiration for Obama and excitement about an Obama presidency. So in the tank are the media for Obama that for months we've read news stories and opinion pieces insisting that if Obama is not elected president it will be due to white racism.

[...]

But beyond the elites and the media, my greatest concern is whether this election will show a majority of the voters susceptible to the appeal of a charismatic demagogue. This may seem a harsh term to some, and no doubt will to Obama supporters, but it is a perfectly appropriate characterization.

Obama's entire campaign is built on class warfare and human envy. The "change" he peddles is not new ... It is change that diminishes individual liberty for the soft authoritarianism of socialism. It is a populist appeal that disguises government mandated wealth redistribution as tax cuts for the middle class, falsely blames capitalism for the social policies and government corruption (Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac) that led to the current turmoil in our financial markets, fuels contempt for commerce and trade by stigmatizing those who run successful small and large businesses, and exploits human imperfection as a justification for a massive expansion of centralized government.

Obama's appeal to the middle class is an appeal to the "the proletariat," as an infamous philosopher once described it, about which a mythology has been created.

Rather than pursue the American Dream, he insists that the American Dream has arbitrary limits, limits Obama would set for the rest of us — today it's $250,000 for businesses and even less for individuals.

If the individual dares to succeed beyond the limits set by Obama, he is punished for he's now officially "rich." The value of his physical and intellectual labor must be confiscated in greater amounts for the good of the proletariat (the middle class).

And so it is that the middle class, the birth-child of capitalism, is both celebrated and enslaved — for its own good and the greater good. The "hope" Obama represents, therefore, is not hope at all. It is the misery of his utopianism imposed on the individual.

Unlike past Democrat presidential candidates, Obama is a hardened ideologue. He's not interested in playing around the edges. He seeks "fundamental change," i.e., to remake society. And if the Democrats control Congress with super-majorities led by Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, he will get much of what he demands.

The question is whether enough Americans understand what's at stake in this election and, if they do, whether they care. Is the allure of a charismatic demagogue so strong that the usually sober American people are willing to risk an Obama presidency? After all, it ensnared Adelman, Kmiec, Powell, Fried, and numerous others. And while America will certainly survive, it will do so, in many respects, as a different place.

The changes that Obama seeks to impose on us are indeed fundamental and, contrary to the claims of the Candide-like chorus that waves away the dangers, anything but temporary. I believe that this is not an opportunity to give a well-meaning political novice a chance to tinker around the edges of our nation's machinery, but rather a wholesale home makeover, entrusted to an unlicensed contractor who happens to have an instinctual and deep-seated dislike for the very structure he's tasked with improving.

I remain hopeful that voters will look at the ballot in the privacy of the voting booth and decide that the vastly more experienced -- if also immeasurably less charismatic -- and politically and philosophically incoherent John McCain is nonetheless a safer choice than the untested, unvetted, unquestioned and underreported on Obama.

Posted by Mike Lief at 10:35 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

Examine the U.S. Federal budget

This is an interesting way to put spending into context, using visual representations of programs' relative funding (bigger budgets are reflected in bigger objects) in a dynamic, interactive chart.

Begin by clicking in the upper right corner to enter fullscreen mode, then click and hold your cursor to scroll around to an area of interest; you can click on the "+" or "-" button to zoom in or out.

There's a "menu" tab in the top center of your screen if you need help.

Posted by Mike Lief at 09:53 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 24, 2008

Krauthammer makes the case for McCain

Charles Krauthammer is an interesting man; a Harvard-trained physician and psychiatrist, he finished medical school while recovering from the diving accident that left him paralyzed for life, graduating on schedule with the rest of his classmates. He became the chief resident in psychiatry at Massachusetts General, then accepted a position in the Carter Administration, crafting policy dealing with the mentally ill.

Krauthammer joined the Carter-Mondale presidential campaign in 1980, writing speeches for the vice-presidential candidate; after the Democrats were demolished by Ronald Reagan, he became a journalist, winning a series of awards, including the Pulitzer Prize for the columns he penned for The Washington Post in 1987.

The man is no knee-jerk conservative, favoring legalized abortion, embryonic stem-cell research, and higher taxes on fuel to encourage conservation; he is opposed to the death penalty, creationism, and thinks private possession of firearms ought to be banned.

With that being said, Krauthammer has published an opinion piece today that is both a rousing endorsement of John McCain, as well as a scathing denunciation of the finger-in-the-wind conservatives who have rushed to endorse the Obamessiah.

Contrarian that I am, I'm voting for John McCain. I'm not talking about bucking the polls or the media consensus that it's over before it's over. I'm talking about bucking the rush of wet-fingered conservatives leaping to Barack Obama before they're left out in the cold without a single state dinner for the next four years.

I stand athwart the rush of conservative ship-jumpers of every stripe -- neo (Ken Adelman), moderate (Colin Powell), genetic/ironic (Christopher Buckley) and socialist/atheist (Christopher Hitchens) -- yelling "Stop!" I shall have no part of this motley crew. I will go down with the McCain ship. I'd rather lose an election than lose my bearings.

First, I'll have no truck with the phony case ginned up to rationalize voting for the most liberal and inexperienced presidential nominee in living memory. The "erratic" temperament issue, for example.

As if McCain's risky and unsuccessful but in no way irrational attempt to tactically maneuver his way through the economic tsunami that came crashing down a month ago renders unfit for office a man who demonstrated the most admirable equanimity and courage in the face of unimaginable pressures as a prisoner of war, and who later steadily navigated innumerable challenges and setbacks, not the least of which was the collapse of his campaign just a year ago.

McCain the "erratic" is a cheap Obama talking point. The 40-year record testifies to McCain the stalwart.

Nor will I countenance the "dirty campaign" pretense. The double standard here is stunning. Obama ran a scurrilous Spanish-language ad falsely associating McCain with anti-Hispanic slurs. Another ad falsely claimed that McCain supports "cutting Social Security benefits in half." And for months Democrats insisted that McCain sought 100 years of war in Iraq.

McCain's critics are offended that he raised the issue of William Ayers. What's astonishing is that Obama was himself not offended by William Ayers.

Moreover, the most remarkable of all tactical choices of this election season is the attack that never was. Out of extreme (and unnecessary) conscientiousness, McCain refused to raise the legitimate issue of Obama's most egregious association -- with the race-baiting Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Dirty campaigning, indeed.

The case for McCain is straightforward. The financial crisis has made us forget, or just blindly deny, how dangerous the world out there is. We have a generations-long struggle with Islamic jihadism. An apocalyptic soon-to-be-nuclear Iran. A nuclear-armed Pakistan in danger of fragmentation. A rising Russia pushing the limits of revanchism. Plus the sure-to-come Falklands-like surprise popping out of nowhere.

Who do you want answering that phone at 3 a.m.? A man who's been cramming on these issues for the past year, who's never had to make an executive decision affecting so much as a city, let alone the world? A foreign policy novice instinctively inclined to the flabbiest, most vaporous multilateralism (e.g., the Berlin Wall came down because of "a world that stands as one"), and who refers to the most deliberate act of war since Pearl Harbor as "the tragedy of 9/11," a term more appropriate for a bus accident?

Or do you want a man who is the most prepared, most knowledgeable, most serious foreign policy thinker in the United States Senate? A man who not only has the best instincts but has the honor and the courage to, yes, put country first, as when he carried the lonely fight for the surge that turned Iraq from catastrophic defeat into achievable strategic victory?

There's just no comparison. Obama's own running mate warned this week that Obama's youth and inexperience will invite a crisis -- indeed a crisis "generated" precisely to test him. Can you be serious about national security and vote on Nov. 4 to invite that test?

And how will he pass it? Well, how has he fared on the only two significant foreign policy tests he has faced since he's been in the Senate? The first was the surge. Obama failed spectacularly. He not only opposed it. He tried to denigrate it, stop it and, finally, deny its success.

The second test was Georgia, to which Obama responded instinctively with evenhanded moral equivalence, urging restraint on both sides. McCain did not have to consult his advisers to instantly identify the aggressor.

Today's economic crisis, like every other in our history, will in time pass. But the barbarians will still be at the gates. Whom do you want on the parapet? I'm for the guy who can tell the lion from the lamb.

That's as good a restatement of the foreign-policy rationale for opposing Obama as I've seen; it's hard to imagine a voter with a clear-eyed understanding of the dangers facing us casting a ballot for anyone other than McCain.

Look, I've said it over and over again: I'm not a McCain fan, but Obama strikes me as the wrong man at the wrong time to ensure the safety of the nation. Krauthammer is right, there really is only one logical choice.

Posted by Mike Lief at 07:13 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

Meet Nanny State

Posted by Mike Lief at 12:42 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 23, 2008

Obama's going to raise your taxes

National Review's Jim Geraghty takes a closer look at the tax increase that the Obamessiah promises isn't going to hit you and me.

Two days ago I wrote about a Paul Krugman column, in which he stated...

Mr. Obama proposes raising rates on only the top two income tax brackets — and the second-highest bracket for a head of household starts at an income, after deductions, of $182,400 a year.

Since posting that, I've been meaning to look at what defines the top two brackets for each different filing status. I found them for 2008 here.

If your filing status is single, you hit those top two brackets once you make more than $164,550.

If your filing status is married filing jointly, you hit those top two brackets once you and your spouse make more than $200,300.

If your filing status is married filing separately, you hit those top two brackets once you make more than $100,150.

Now, obviously, once you're in those brackets you're doing pretty well — although the cost of living varies a great deal; $200,000 buys you a very different lifestyle in Oklahoma than it does in Manhattan.

I'm not sure folks in that bracket think of themselves as "rich," and I'm not sure incomes at that level fit the public perception of "rich," either.

Notice all of them are well below the $250,000 number we hear endlessly thrown around by Obama and his supporters.

But Obmaa promised he wouldn't raise taxes if you made less than $250,000! Of course, he also promised to use government matching funds and limit his campaign's spending to a mere $85 million.

What's that?

He broke that promise and raised $150 million just in September alone?

I thought he was going to run a different kind of campaign, bring change to Washington.

Yeah, he brought change, alright, deciding to forgo the chump change that is federal matching funds, in favor of trying win the presidency the old fashioned way: Buy it with hundreds of millions of dollars in change.

New pol. Same as the old pol.

Posted by Mike Lief at 11:02 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Alfonzo Rachel: No longer Democratic ballot cattle

Alfonzo Rachel is a California musician (and YouTube auteur) who decided to post his take on the presidential campaign on his blog, using a series of videos to present a less constipated-than-normal rebuttal to the pro-Obama forces.

Rachel Lucas went to the trouble of posting a transcript of this particular video, for those of you who prefer reading (or still have dial-up).

This excerpt from the middle of the video, where he goes hammer and tong after the Dems -- and their complacent black supporters -- is particularly good.

They have been farming your votes for decades. For you are ballot cattle for the Democrat Party. It keeps their livestock fat with a healthy dose of pandering.

Here’s some feed for your victim mentality.

Here’s some feed to keep your prejudice against the Republicans so you’ll vote against them and vote Democrat instead.

Here’s some feed to stimulate your animosity against the rich as if a poor person can give you a job.

Democrats keep that livestock fat with them Welfare checks and food stamps.

And here the dependents come right on time on the 1st and the 15th, like chickens running out to the yard waiting to peck that feed.

Heeeere sucker, sucker, sucker, sucker.

Y’all, they got you. They been havin’ you. The system that you hate so much is the very system that you keep giving power to.

And right now, Obama is the face of that power.

[...]

It pains me to see y’all still on the plantation with chains on your brain. I escaped, y’all. And I’m trying to come back and pick the lock on them shackles that you still have on you.

You know, when people put crabs in a bucket, they don’t have to put a lid on it. You know why? ‘Cause if a crab tries to crawl out, another crab’ll grab it and pull it back down there with it. And that’s what liberals are like.

You got a brother that tries to climb out of the bucket and you got another hater that’ll pull him right back into that bucket. Back into that bucket of blame and victimhood.

Pretty strong stuff, from a man who says that he came to his opinions notwithstanding peer pressure, accusations of Uncle Tom-ism, and his family's staunch support for the Democratic party going back generations.

Well said.

Posted by Mike Lief at 10:01 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Okay, this one'll give you nightmares

From Australia comes this story, guaranteed to haunt your dreams for many a night.

THESE amazing images of a mammoth spider devouring a bird were taken in the backyard of an Atherton property, west of Cairns.

And the images, which are being cirulated via email worldwide, are real, according to wildlife experts.

The photos, believed to have been taken earlier this week, show the spider clenching its legs around a lifeless bird trapped in a web.

Joel Shakespeare, the head spider keeper at NSW's Australian Reptile Park, told ninemsn that the spider was a Golden Orb Weaver.

"Normally they prey on large insects, it's unusual to see one eating a bird," he said.

Mr Shakepeare told ninemsn he had seen golden orb weaver spiders as big as a human hand but the northern species in tropical areas were known to grow larger.

Mr Shakespeare said the bird, a Chestnut-breasted Mannikin which appears frozen in an angel-like pose in the pictures, is likely to have flown into the web and got caught.

"It wouldn`t eat the whole bird," he told ninemsn.

"It uses its venom to break down the bird for eating and what it leaves is a food parcel," he said.

Queensland Museum's Greg Czechura is reported ninemsn as saying cases of the Golden Orb Weaver eating small birds were "well known but rare".

"It builds a very strong web," he told ninemsn.

But he said the spider would not have attacked until the bird weakened due to its struggle to free its wings.

"The more they struggle, the more tangled up and exhausted they get and they go into stress."

"If a spider gets a bird, it`s a very lucky spider," Mr Czechura said.

But wait, there're more details to leave you laying awake at night, afraid to surrender to the soft, sweet, slumber that end with you in a silk-wrapped cocoon.

A 75-year-old retired Tableland man, amateur photographer and bird enthusiast, took the pictures that sparked an international media frenzy yesterday in his Tableland back yard, near Cairns, last week.

"It was an awful thing. The spider was just chewing into its head," he told The Cairns Post.

Give me a second here, will you?

"[C]hewing into its head."

I think I'm going to faint.

"The spider's head was going up and down, and it was gouging into him (the chestnut-breasted manikin) at the top of his beak. It was still wrapping it up."

Spider experts said yesterday the photographs showed the orb injecting venom into the stunned bird.

Oh, that's much better; huge, venom-dripping fangs injecting flesh-dissolving poison isn't nearly as terrifying as gouging into the head.

I'm getting dizzy again.

Happy Halloween.

Posted by Mike Lief at 07:25 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

October 22, 2008

Auto X-Ray should speed crossing border

The new, drive-through X-Ray machine making its debut looks like it'll link

The U.S./Mexican border at San Ysidro, California, is one busy place. In 2005 alone, more than 17 million cars and 50 million people passed through -- making it the world's busiest land border crossing. In an effort to speed things up, officials have unveiled a drive-through X-ray machine. From outward appearances, it looks like a simple car wash. In fact, the device is a huge "backscatter" X-ray imaging machine called a Z Portal. Car owners (or a border agent) drive through the device while the vehicle is screened for contraband. Downplaying any safety concerns, Custom and Border Patrol officials say a couple thousand trips through the Z Portal is equal the radiation exposure from a single traditional medical X-ray. The imaging machine was unveiled just last week, and San Diego officials claim it has already helped them seize more than 3,000 pounds of drugs. Thanks for the tip, Bob!

Posted by Mike Lief at 08:09 AM

Paying taxes is patriotic?

I've been thinking about what Joe Biden said about how paying taxes is patriotic -- a

http://hotair.com/archives/2008/10/22/how-many-will-pay-no-taxes-in-the-next-administration/

Under either John McCain or Barack Obama, millions of Americans will wind up paying no federal income taxes. According to the Tax Foundation, tax liabilities will drop to zero (or less) for 15-16 million more Americans than now, pushing that to almost half of all filers. While that may seem optimal to some, if it doesn’t come with significant reductions in overall revenue, it forces fewer people to pay for more government:

The tax code has always contained provisions that reduce the income tax burden for low-income workers, such as the standard deduction, personal exemption, and dependent exemption. Between 1950 and 1990, the percentage of tax filers whose entire tax liability was wiped out by these provisions averaged 21 percent. Since then, lawmakers have expanded credits—such as the earned income tax credit (EITC)—while creating a plethora of new credits, including the child tax credit, the HOPE credit, lifetime learning credit, and the credit for adoption expenses.

Most tax credits can only reduce a taxpayer’s amount due to zero, but the EITC and the child tax credit were also made refundable, meaning that taxpayers are eligible to receive a check even if they have paid no income tax during the year. Those tax returns have become, in effect, a claim form for a subsidy delivered through the tax system rather than a direct payment from a traditional government program like welfare or farm supports.

As shown in Table 1 below, the Tax Foundation estimates that there will be 47 million tax returns with zero income tax liability in 2009 under current law. That’s one-third of all tax returns, and those 47 million tax returns represent 96 million individuals.

Both the McCain and Obama plans would increase this number by expanding existing tax benefits or creating new ones. Senator McCain is proposing one expanded provision—the dependent exemption—and one new credit, a $5,000 refundable health care tax credit. The Obama plan contains seven new provisions, including a new “Making Work Pay Credit,” a “Universal Mortgage Credit,” and a plan to eliminate income taxes for seniors earning under $50,000.1

Taken together, the Tax Foundation estimates the McCain proposals would increase the number of nonpayers by about 15 million, bringing the total number of taxpayers who pay no personal income taxes to 62 million, roughly 43 percent of all tax filers. Almost all of this is due to McCain’s health care credit, which dramatically realigns health care incentives and gives people a powerful motive to buy health insurance. This tax provision has a bigger impact on cutting people’s taxes than any single proposal from either party.

This seems very unhealthy in terms of commitment to federal government. The government serves all Americans, and except for the poorest among us, we should all be contributing to its maintenance. Without that kind of connection, the people who pay nothing will have no risk in demanding ever-increasing services and flat-out welfare, which is what Barack Obama’s tax plan really delivers in its seven refundables. McCain doesn’t give away money to quite the same degree, but it has almost the same effect on taxpayers.

As the second chart demonstrates, the Bush tax cuts did not burden the poor. It had a similar effect as what both Obama and McCain propose here. Bush increased the number of people without any federal tax liability by 30%, from 25% to 33% overall.

We need to seriously consider Steve Forbes’ flat tax plan soon if we don’t want to turn the US into a welfare state. Our tax policies will drive capital out of our markets and into other arenas for investment if the capital class winds up funding all of the federal government, and the electorate continues to demand services for which they don’t pay. These graphs show a disaster ahead even if we didn’t already face two with Medicare and Social Security, which largely have the same origin.

Posted by Mike Lief at 08:04 AM

Glasses help cyclists avoid becoming roadkill

Anyone who's ridden a bicycle on urban -- and suburban -- streets knows vigilance and paranoia are necessary for avoiding distracted, inattentive and just plain insane motorists.

A new pair of glasses from Nike use old technology to give bicyclists a little early warning. Called Hindsight, the specs feature Fresnel lenses in the corners, giving the wearer an expanded field of view (call it Super Duper Peripheral Vision), useful for spotting a car sneaking up on what would otherwise be a potentially lethal blindspot.

Using old tech in a new way to say lives is pretty darn impressive. Especially given that it's been more than 160 years the Fresnel lens was first used in a commercial application.

Posted by Mike Lief at 07:44 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 21, 2008

Let's just say Slow Joe Biden is right

I've been thinking about what Joe Biden said about how paying taxes is patriotic -- a

Posted by Mike Lief at 10:52 PM

We just need to give (random unqualified person) a chance

The Obama phenomenon -- or should I say, delusion -- is quite revealing, more for what it says about its sufferers, than its namesake.

Joe Sherlock and his wife recently returned from a visit with old friends in Philadelphia; politics, a subject that had never come up during their 40-year relationship, suddenly intruded.

We were talking generally about life in the Pacific Northwest, nothing about politics though. Then, out of nowhere, the wife suddenly exclaimed, "I hate Sarah Palin."

I chose to disagree, pointing out that Palin represents the best of Pacific NW politicians - folks who are less party-centric and more focused on can-do politics.

She then lavishly praised Obama, saying that he will "change everything." I replied that Obama is very inexperienced and seems to offer platitudes, rather than workable solutions.

"Well ... Lincoln didn't have much experience either," she retorted. (This woman is a college graduate and former teacher. Her daughter is a history major.)

At this point I was wondering what alternate universe she was from. Abraham Lincoln began his political career in 1832 - 28 years before he became president. He served four successive terms in the Illinois House of Representatives. Lincoln was also a successful practicing attorney and earned a reputation as a formidable adversary during cross-examinations and in his closing arguments. He was involved in more than 5,000 cases in Illinois alone during his 23-year legal career. Lincoln and his partners appeared before the Illinois State Supreme Court more than 400 times.

Out of arguments, the woman concluded, "People just need to give Obama a chance."

Ummmm ... this is not how we elect presidents - picking people off the street and giving them "a chance." Fill in any other name - Howdy Doody, O.J., Mortimer Snerd, Pol Pot, Dracula, Paris Hilton, Groundskeeper Willy, Idi Amin, Madonna, Stewie Griffin - and it's obvious how silly her statement is. Example: "People just need to give Adolph Hitler a chance."

She's apparently been drinking the Obama Kool-Aid. Or maybe it's something they're putting in the Philadelphia water system.

For the rest of our trip, whenever we witnessed something strange or appalling, my wife would exclaim, "But ... people just need to give _____ a chance."

I'm sad to say this parallels conversations I've had with

Posted by Mike Lief at 09:26 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

My least favorite of the Marx Bros.

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Why not Obama?

If you had to point your friends and family to just one place to sum up the reasons why Obama is the wrong choice for America, make sure to send them here: The Comprehensive Argument Against Barack Obama.

Guy Benson, Mary Katharine Ham and Ed Morrisey do a fine job of working through all the lowlights of the Obama candidacy and political career.

Check it out.

Posted by Mike Lief at 11:43 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Palin on Biden's warning about Obama

You know, for all the talk from the left about Gov. Palin's (alleged) shortcomings, every time she speaks directly to the public -- bypassing the media Obama shills -- Palin seems to be a tough, to-the-point campaigner with a go-for-the-throat instinct.

Would that McCain had it, too.

Anyhow, check out what she had to say today in Reno about Joe Biden's warning about Obama.

Two weeks from today, Americans will be asked to cast their vote for the next president of the United States. There’s no time to wait. Let’s get right to it.

Did you hear what Senator Biden said at a fundraiser on Sunday? He guaranteed that if Barack Obama is elected, we’ll face an international crisis within the first six months of their administration. He told Democrat donors to mark his words – that there were “at least four or five scenarios” that would place our country at risk in an Obama administration. Thanks for the warning, Joe!

He didn’t specify what all those four or five scenarios will be, but for clues, let’s review the Obama foreign policy agenda.

Our opponent wants to sit down with the world’s worst dictators. With no preconditions, he proposes to meet with a regime in Teheran that vows to “wipe Israel off the map.” Let’s call that crisis scenario number one.

Senator Obama has also advocated sending our U.S. military into Pakistan without the approval of the Pakistani government. Invading the sovereign territory of a troubled partner in the war against terrorism. We’ll call that scenario number two.

He opposed the surge strategy that has finally brought victory in Iraq within sight. He’s voted to cut off funding for our troops, leaving our young men and women at grave risk. He wants to pull out, leaving some 25 million Iraqis at the mercy of Iranian-supported Shiite extremists and al Qaeda in Iraq. By his own admission, this could mean our troops would have to go back to Iraq. Crisis scenario number three.

After the Russian army invaded the nation of Georgia, Senator Obama’s reaction was one of indecision and moral equivalence – the kind of response that would only encourage Vladimir Putin to invade Ukraine next. That would be crisis scenario number four.

But I guess the looming crisis that most worries the Obama campaign right now is Joe Biden’s next speaking engagement. Let’s call that crisis scenario number five.

The real problem is that these warnings from Joe Biden are similar to his earlier assessment of Barack Obama. It wasn’t so long ago that he said Barack Obama wasn’t up to the job, and that, quote, “the presidency is not something that lends itself to on-the-job training.”

The same Joe Biden said he would be honored to run on the ticket with John McCain because, quote, “the country would be better off.” And here we have some common ground. I want a president who spent 22 years in uniform defending our country. I want a president who isn’t afraid to use the word “victory” when he talks about the wars we are fighting. I want a president who’s ready on Day One. I want a president with the experience and the judgment and the wisdom to meet the next international crisis – or better yet to avoid it. I want John McCain as our commander-in-chief.

Seems to me that Palin manages to make a concise, cogent argument against Obama -- and in favor of McCain -- by using Joe Biden's own words against his runningmate.

I hope McCain makes more use of Palin over the next two weeks.

My more fervent hope is that Joe Biden talks a lot between now and November 4th, too.

Posted by Mike Lief at 11:18 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Who is William Ayers?

I'm not convinced that William Ayers' relationship with Obama is of particular interest to most voters, but I am curious as to why so many liberals believe they have to come to the defense of the man, apart from his relationship with the Democratic nominee.

This video, by Kathy Shaidle, gives a more complete view of Ayers than either the media or, regrettably, the McCain campaign, has been willing to provide

Ayers is, without a doubt, a loathesome, and in his own words, unrepentant would-be killer of American citizens. He's also a fully accepted member of academia and the Chicago establishment.

Interesting how there's seems to be nothing a member of the Left can do to justify public opprobrium or shunning. Other than admitting that the Left is wrong.

Posted by Mike Lief at 09:33 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 20, 2008

Full steam ahead!

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1078643/Full-steam-ahead-Our-science-editor-takes-controls--giant-locomotive-built-50-years.html

Posted by Mike Lief at 08:25 AM

Another inconvenient truth about being Green

Disposable diapers are better for the Earth than cotton diapers thrown in the laundry and used over and over again.

That's the result of a study conducted by the government over in England -- not that you'd know it; the embarrassed Greens have ordered the report be killed.

According to the The Sunday Times:

A government report that found old-fashioned reusable nappies damage the environment more than disposables has been hushed up because ministers are embarrassed by its findings.

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) has instructed civil servants not to publicise the conclusions of the £50,000 nappy research project and to adopt a “defensive” stance towards its conclusions.

The report found that using washable nappies, hailed by councils throughout Britain as a key way of saving the planet, have a higher carbon footprint than their disposable equivalents unless parents adopt an extreme approach to laundering them.

To reduce the impact of cloth nappies on climate change parents would have to hang wet nappies out to dry all year round, keep them for years for use on younger children, and make sure the water in their washing machines does not exceed 60C.

The conclusions will upset proponents of real nappies who have claimed they can help save the planet.

Restricted Whitehall documents, seen by The Sunday Times, show that the government is so concerned by the “negative laundry options” outlined in the report, it has told its media managers not to give its conclusions any publicity.

The report found that while disposable nappies used over 2½ years would have a global warming , impact of 550kg of CO2 reusable nappies produced 570kg of CO2 on average. But if parents used tumble dryers and washed the reusable nappies at 90C, the impact could spiral to . 993kg of CO2 A Defra spokesman said the government was shelving plans for future research on nappies.

The comments following the article in the Times include a number of Brits saying that only a fool would launder diapers in Nature-raping hot water and then dry them in Mother Earth-molesting gas or electric dryers; lukewarm water for wash and line-drying in the backyard is the Gaia-loving answer.

An American reader -- of course -- ripostes that fecal coeliform bacteria survives gentle handling; it takes hot water and a hot dryer to make sure babies (and their families) don't suffer a diarrhea explosion worthy of Third World tapwater.

I'm not a partisan of cloth versus disposable diapers -- no kids yet -- and I even like the arguments in favor of cloth (they make great rags when the kids are potty trained).

The story is more interesting to me because of the immediate reaction to a result that doesn't comport with liberal, tree-hugging orthodoxy: Coverup, obfuscate, "adopt a 'defensive' stance."

How sophisticated. How intelligent. How open.

Posted by Mike Lief at 08:03 AM

October 19, 2008

Airstreaming with the Humans

"Why, yes, it is an Airstream, my Airstream, actually, although my humans like to think it belongs to them. Silly creatures, so full of themselves, so arrogant just because they have opposable thumbs and the power of speech, yet so feeble when it comes to fleetness of feet or olfactory -- hey, look! A squirrel! I'm outta here.

Now, where were we? Ah, yes, the Airstream. I let the humans take it to Buellton for a few days, mainly because I felt like visiting strange, exotic locales. And peeing on them. It's good being a dog.

What? Can't you see I'm busy working on my tan? Have your people call my people and we'll do lunch.

Posted by Mike Lief at 09:55 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

WSJ: The coming "Liberal Supermajority"

The Wall Street Journal sums up why this election presents the voters with a chance to change the nation in ways they may not fully realize, given the way the Senate and House work together -- or at cross purposes -- to craft legislation.

The editorial, A Liberal Supermajority, ought to replace the thrill running up Obamabots' legs with a chill running down their spines.

If the current polls hold, Barack Obama will win the White House on November 4 and Democrats will consolidate their Congressional majorities, probably with a filibuster-proof Senate or very close to it. Without the ability to filibuster, the Senate would become like the House, able to pass whatever the majority wants.

Though we doubt most Americans realize it, this would be one of the most profound political and ideological shifts in U.S. history. Liberals would dominate the entire government in a way they haven't since 1965, or 1933. In other words, the election would mark the restoration of the activist government that fell out of public favor in the 1970s. If the U.S. really is entering a period of unchecked left-wing ascendancy, Americans at least ought to understand what they will be getting, especially with the media cheering it all on.

The table [above] shows the major bills that passed the House this year or last before being stopped by the Senate minority. Keep in mind that the most important power of the filibuster is to shape legislation, not merely to block it. The threat of 41 committed Senators can cause the House to modify its desires even before legislation comes to a vote. Without that restraining power, all of the following have very good chances of becoming law in 2009 or 2010.

- Medicare for all. When HillaryCare cratered in 1994, the Democrats concluded they had overreached, so they carved up the old agenda into smaller incremental steps, such as Schip for children. A strongly Democratic Congress is now likely to lay the final flagstones on the path to government-run health insurance from cradle to grave.

Mr. Obama wants to build a public insurance program, modeled after Medicare and open to everyone of any income. According to the Lewin Group, the gold standard of health policy analysis, the Obama plan would shift between 32 million and 52 million from private coverage to the huge new entitlement. Like Medicare or the Canadian system, this would never be repealed.

The commitments would start slow, so as not to cause immediate alarm. But as U.S. health-care spending flowed into the default government options, taxes would have to rise or services would be rationed, or both. Single payer is the inevitable next step, as Mr. Obama has already said is his ultimate ideal.

- The business climate. "We have some harsh decisions to make," Speaker Nancy Pelosi warned recently, speaking about retribution for the financial panic. Look for a replay of the Pecora hearings of the 1930s, with Henry Waxman, John Conyers and Ed Markey sponsoring ritual hangings to further their agenda to control more of the private economy. The financial industry will get an overhaul in any case, but telecom, biotech and drug makers, among many others, can expect to be investigated and face new, more onerous rules. See the "Issues and Legislation" tab on Mr. Waxman's Web site for a not-so-brief target list.

The danger is that Democrats could cause the economic downturn to last longer than it otherwise will by enacting regulatory overkill like Sarbanes-Oxley. Something more punitive is likely as well, for instance a windfall profits tax on oil, and maybe other industries.

- Union supremacy. One program certain to be given right of way is "card check." Unions have been in decline for decades, now claiming only 7.4% of the private-sector work force, so Big Labor wants to trash the secret-ballot elections that have been in place since the 1930s. The "Employee Free Choice Act" would convert workplaces into union shops merely by gathering signatures from a majority of employees, which means organizers could strongarm those who opposed such a petition.

The bill also imposes a compulsory arbitration regime that results in an automatic two-year union "contract" after 130 days of failed negotiation. The point is to force businesses to recognize a union whether the workers support it or not. This would be the biggest pro-union shift in the balance of labor-management power since the Wagner Act of 1935.

- Taxes. Taxes will rise substantially, the only question being how high. Mr. Obama would raise the top income, dividend and capital-gains rates for "the rich," substantially increasing the cost of new investment in the U.S. More radically, he wants to lift or eliminate the cap on income subject to payroll taxes that fund Medicare and Social Security. This would convert what was meant to be a pension insurance program into an overt income redistribution program. It would also impose a probably unrepealable increase in marginal tax rates, and a permanent shift upward in the federal tax share of GDP.

- The green revolution. A tax-and-regulation scheme in the name of climate change is a top left-wing priority. Cap and trade would hand Congress trillions of dollars in new spending from the auction of carbon credits, which it would use to pick winners and losers in the energy business and across the economy. Huge chunks of GDP and millions of jobs would be at the mercy of Congress and a vast new global-warming bureaucracy. Without the GOP votes to help stage a filibuster, Senators from carbon-intensive states would have less ability to temper coastal liberals who answer to the green elites.

- Free speech and voting rights. A liberal supermajority would move quickly to impose procedural advantages that could cement Democratic rule for years to come. One early effort would be national, election-day voter registration. This is a long-time goal of Acorn and others on the "community organizer" left and would make it far easier to stack the voter rolls. The District of Columbia would also get votes in Congress -- Democratic, naturally.

Felons may also get the right to vote nationwide, while the Fairness Doctrine is likely to be reimposed either by Congress or the Obama FCC. A major goal of the supermajority left would be to shut down talk radio and other voices of political opposition.

- Special-interest potpourri. Look for the watering down of No Child Left Behind testing standards, as a favor to the National Education Association. The tort bar's ship would also come in, including limits on arbitration to settle disputes and watering down the 1995 law limiting strike suits. New causes of legal action would be sprinkled throughout most legislation. The anti-antiterror lobby would be rewarded with the end of Guantanamo and military commissions, which probably means trying terrorists in civilian courts. Google and MoveOn.org would get "net neutrality" rules, subjecting the Internet to intrusive regulation for the first time.

It's always possible that events -- such as a recession -- would temper some of these ambitions. Republicans also feared the worst in 1993 when Democrats ran the entire government, but it didn't turn out that way. On the other hand, Bob Dole then had 43 GOP Senators to support a filibuster, and the entire Democratic Party has since moved sharply to the left. Mr. Obama's agenda is far more liberal than Bill Clinton's was in 1992, and the Southern Democrats who killed Al Gore's BTU tax and modified liberal ambitions are long gone.

In both 1933 and 1965, liberal majorities imposed vast expansions of government that have never been repealed, and the current financial panic may give today's left another pretext to return to those heydays of welfare-state liberalism. Americans voting for "change" should know they may get far more than they ever imagined.

Posted by Mike Lief at 08:40 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

Really, race has nothing to do with it

In the least surprising presidential endorsement -- but perhaps the most disappointing one to those seven people who still believed that Colin Powell wasn't a hack -- comes news of whom he's backing on November 4th.

Yeah, I know, McCain probably wasn't holding his breath, either.

Rush Limbaugh's take proves why he's the most biting -- and funny -- commentator from the right side of the radio dial.

Rush Limbaugh said Colin Powell's decision to get behind Barack Obama appeared to be very much tied to Obama's status as the first African-American with a chance to become president.

"Secretary Powell says his endorsement is not about race," Limbaugh wrote in an e-mail. "OK, fine. I am now researching his past endorsements to see if I can find all the inexperienced, very liberal, white candidates he has endorsed. I'll let you know what I come up with."

As for Powell's statement of concern this morning about the sort of Supreme Court justices a President McCain might appoint, Limbaugh wrote: "I was also unaware of his dislike for John Roberts, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Anthony Kennedy and Antonin Scalia. I guess he also regrets Reagan and Bush making him a four-star [general] and secretary of state and appointing his son to head the FCC. Yes, let's hear it for transformational figures."

If there's a plausible explanation that doesn't include racial solidarity, I've yet to hear it, so I'll fall back on my original thesis: Colin Powell is simply a hack of the first order, one who values race above competence.

Posted by Mike Lief at 07:51 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Where have they been hiding this McCain?

John McCain and Barack Obama were the guests of honor at the 63rd Annual Al Smith Dinner in New York, and McCain gave a speech that was surprisingly funny, relaxed, and even classy, too.

If the campaign was about connecting with voters, making them like the candidate, this McCain would be unbeatable.

Make sure to check out the reaction of Hillary Clinton when McCain focuses on her and her husband.

This is the guy they should have sent to appear on Fox News Sunday today.

Posted by Mike Lief at 09:24 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

We're Screwed '08: Sunday Edition

Just saw the interview with John "Can't We All Just Get Along" McCain on Fox News Sunday, and it highlighted his seeming inability to go for the jugular, to make a forceful case for himself and his candidacy.

Host Chris Wallace asked some fairly tough questions, answered rather unpersuasively by McCain.

The part that really grated was when Wallace pointed out that, with the Democrats poised to increase the size of their majority in both the Senate and the House, a McCain victory would seem to promise nothing more than gridlock.

Now, the obvious response is that an Obama victory would put a wildly liberal Congress in a position to pass a number of tax-raising, gun-banning, economy-crippling bills -- and send them to a president for signature with the knowledge that Pres. Obama had been the single-most liberal member of the Senate, guaranteeing not a veto, but the Oval Office okey-dokey into law.

It seems to me that the smart answer for McCain would have been that it's good to have a president who's willing to say "No!" to an irresponsibly free-spending Congress; that gridlock isn't necessarily a bad thing when the alternative is working together to pass perfectly awful proposals; and that the American people support the idea of fighting for what's right, even if it means sometimes disagreeing with the other side.

Instead, "Kumbaya" McCain treated us to a series of "Reagan worked with Tip O'Neill" lines, talked about "reaching across the aisle" to the Democrats; and said that Americans are tired of gridlock, tired of partisan bickering.

Excuse me?

EXCUSE ME?

Time out; I need a stiff belt of early morning Maker's Mark fine Kentucky bourbon. I'll be back in a few minutes.

[ten minutes later]

Man, that's good.

Anyhow, where was I?

Oh, right, McCain wanted to Row the boat ashore, Hallelujah!" with the help of "my friends" in the Congress.

Seriously, was I watching the real candidate, or a replay of a Saturday Night Live skit?

The Democrats -- especially Reid and Pelosi -- are piranhas, albeit rather stupid piranhas, but still, nasty little creatures given to ripping prey to pieces at the first sign of blood in the water -- or the GOP equivalent: talk of bipartisan hands across the aisle.

When McCain says the American people are tired of gridlock, what is he talking about? Pres. Bush vetoed almost nothing during his two terms in office, so the logjam wasn't on his desk in the Oval Office.

The biggest obstacle to anything substantive getting done in Washington has been the inability of Pelosi and Reid to move legislation through Congress, a result of both their incompetence and the unpopular nature of the bills they've backed.

When Congress has the lowest approval rating in polling history -- George Bush is a rock star compared to these guys -- do we really need the GOP nominee talking about how he's going to pull their chestnuts out of the fire, rather than ... hmm, running against the Democratically-controlled legislature and their quasi-Socialist nominee ("I'm for spreadin' the wealth around!")?

McCain had yet another opportunity to make his case about why Obama is the wrong man at the wrong time for the wrong job, and he squandered that opportunity -- again! -- in favor of his happy talk.

My gawd, the man is simply the worst campaigner in modern politics; he's like a perfect amalgamation of the charisma of Bob Dole, the passion of Michael Dukakis, and the killer instincts of Pee Wee Herman.

Notwithstanding the recent tightening in the polls, I'm afraid the theme of this campaign is still, "We're Screwed '08."

Posted by Mike Lief at 08:43 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 17, 2008

Moonbat trading cards

I'd love to see the rest of this set of trading cards.

Found here, via The Smallest Minority.

Posted by Mike Lief at 08:41 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 16, 2008

McCain makes the case

Nicely stated. Now get the damn thing on the air.

Posted by Mike Lief at 07:30 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 15, 2008

Feels like taking crazy pills

The Politico's Ben Smith posts an e-mail from a Republican consultant who showed a hard-hitting ad to a focus group of voters.

The reaction wasn't quite what he had expected.

Reagan Dems and Independents. Call them blue-collar plus. Slightly more Target than Walmart.

Yes, the spot worked. Yes, they believed the charges against Obama. Yes, they actually think he's too liberal, consorts with bad people and WON'T BE A GOOD PRESIDENT...but they STILL don't give a f***. They said right out, "He won't do anything better than McCain" but they're STILL voting for Obama.

The two most unreal moments of my professional life of watching focus groups:

54 year-old white male, voted Kerry '04, Bush '00, Dole '96, hunter, NASCAR fan...hard for Obama said: "I'm gonna hate him the minute I vote for him. He's gonna be a bad president. But I won't ever vote for another god-damn Republican. I want the government to take over all of Wall Street and bankers and the car companies and Wal-Mart run this county like we used to when Reagan was President."

The next was a woman, late 50s, Democrat but strongly pro-life. Loved B. and H. Clinton, loved Bush in 2000. "Well, I don't know much about this terrorist group Barack used to be in with that Weather guy but I'm sick of paying for health insurance at work and that's why I'm supporting Barack."

I felt like I was taking crazy pills. I sat on the other side of the glass and realized...this really is the Apocalypse. The Seventh Seal is broken and its time for eight years of pure, delicious crazy....

Honestly, this disconnect, wherein voters admit they're aware of all the reasons why Obama is the wrong choice -- and yet they'll vote for him anyhow -- is just a symptom of how deeply damaged is the Republican brand, and how John McCain is the wrong candidate to mend it.

I keep telling my friends that if you can't vote for McCain, then vote against the other guy.

These voters are allowing their distaste for the GOP and its nominee to drive them to voting-booth malpractice.

Vote in haste, repent at leisure.

Or, to quote Bill Murray in Groundhog Day, "Don't drive vote mad."

Posted by Mike Lief at 09:28 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

Rachel Lucas has met the enemy: stupid people

Rachel Lucas is in high dudgeon, courtesy of two videos exposing what she believes to be the biggest problem facing the nation: the essential stupidity of vast swathes of the electorate -- and of at least one of the candidates.

In the first video, Obama illustrates that stupidity by saying something that makes sense only if the listener is no smarter that a room-temperature glass of tap water -- or if you're a believer in socialism, the engine of economic ruin and enemy of liberty. In the second, Howard Stern does a variation on Jay Leno's man-on-the-street interviews, quizzing random Americans on what they think about Obama.

The first one is via Ace and it’s Obama at a campaign thing, shaking hands and being a politician, when a man asks him about raising his taxes (the back story I read somewhere else says the guy owns a plumbing business that makes over $250K). Obama says:

“It’s not that I wanna punish your success, I just wanna make sure that everybody behind you, that they have a chance at success, too. I think we need to spread the wealth around.“

Of course you do. You’re a socialist asshole who sees nothing wrong with killing the incentive for people to work hard, nothing wrong with taking what I have earned and giving it to someone else so that they can “succeed,” too. And we’re supposed to believe this man is a brilliant thinker.

The second vid is from the Howard Stern show and is a soul-crushing example of why that socialist asshole is probably going to win. Because people are stupid. Stern’s guy goes out in the streets of Harlem and asks people who they’re voting for. Most of them say, without hesitation, “Obama.”

Then Stern’s guy basically says, “okay, what part of his policies do you like the most? Do you like him because he’s pro-life or because he wants to stay in Iraq and finish this war?”

Most of them answer something like “both.” I shit you not. Even though Obama is neither pro-life nor intent on staying in Iraq. You know who is? Mr. John McCain, that’s who.

And the best part is, he then asks them if they like Obama’s pick for VP - “Sarah Palin” - and if they think SARAH PALIN will make a good vice president if Obama wins.

They all answer yes.

I swear, if one more person tells me it’s fascist to require a basic political comprehension test to have the right to vote…

It's a crime for a politician to buy votes, yet campaigning on a redistributionist platform, promising to take money from one group of taxpaying voters and giving it to another group of non-taxpaying voters is, to my keen lawyer's eye, nothing more than buying votes with someone else's money.

Lucas pines for an intelligence test to enter the voting booth; I wonder if it makes more sense to add an economic element to gaining access to the franchise. People who don't pay taxes have no incentive to control government spending and keep taxes low, as they profit personally from programs funded by those members of society who pick up the tab. Things like the "Earned Income Tax Credit," a check that goes to people who aren't paying anything to the IRS are Orwellian double-plus ungood euphemisms for Federal welfare checks -- a direct transfer from your pocket into someone else's.

Conservative columnist John Derbyshire has written in a similar vein, calling for the suspension of voting rights for civil servants, arguing that the payola is even more direct and blatant, candidates saying without shame that they'll raise the salaries of prison guards, cops, firefighters, teachers, judges -- and, yes, prosecutors, too.

Derbyshire argues that this is corruption in its most base form: "I'll give you more money for your vote!"

And yet actually handing the cash to the voter at a rally is a crime.

Chew on that, buddy.

Posted by Mike Lief at 07:18 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

October 14, 2008

Gun collectors, take note

The comments following posts are often a good resource, exemplifying the information multiplier-effect of the internet.

I was reading a post over at Kim Du Toit's place on shotguns, when I followed a link provided by one of his readers to The Box O' Truth. Poking around a bit revealed this page, featuring a series of articles of interest to collectors of Curios & Relics, including tips for removing Cosmoline and the proper way to cleanup after shooting corrosive ammo.

Check it out.

Posted by Mike Lief at 11:30 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Consumer dissatisfaction, Fiat edition

Now here's a creative way to let an automaker know you're not happy with your wheels.

The Fiat Doblo van pictured above apparently belongs to a tradesman who has experienced the same craptastic driving experience my Dad did, albeit about thirty-five years later.

When Dad's VW Bug was totaled in the hospital parking lot by a runaway Cadillac, his joy at the thought of being rid of der Fuhrer's People's Car was something to behold. Dad collected the insurance check and celebrated by getting something fun, something sporty, something decidedly unpractical -- the un-Bug.

Dad got the Fiat 124 Sport Spider, which is also known in the Lief family as the biggest turd on wheels since the Yugo, a car so unreliable Chevy Vega drivers laughed at us as they passed by while we sat by the side of the road, waiting for the tow truck.

The Fiat went through engines, transmissions and brakes faster than bad sushi through someone with irritable bowel syndrome, although it did do one thing well: the convertible top was easy to raise and lower.

The Fiat was replaced by a Honda Accord in '78 or '79, marking the end of Dad's flirtation with Italian junk.

Of course, if Dad had been as creative as the owner of this Fiat van, it's unlikely he'd have gotten as good a price for it as he did (there's no explaining people's taste in cars).

Still, all in all, it sure was a pretty car.

Via Autoblog and Noisy Decent Graphics.

Posted by Mike Lief at 08:11 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

October 13, 2008

Anytime you're ready, my friend

Posted by Mike Lief at 10:04 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

The Sun has never looked so good

Van Der Leun said these pictures of the Sun were stunning; he's understated their jaw-dropping power.

Awesome.

Mind-blowing.

Don't take my word for it; look for yourself.

Posted by Mike Lief at 07:20 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Can you feel the hatred?

The MSM has carried stories over the last few days, lecturing and hectoring McCain for the behavior of people at his rallies. According to critics, hate-filled Republicans are picking up on subtle cues from their candidate, leading them to make racist, inflammatory statements, threatening to turn this campaign into a Klan lynching.

However, the evidence to support these charges is somewhat lacking, as in non-existent.

Well, I should say it's non-existent if you're trying to slime Republicans as rage-filled thugs.

On the other hand, the evidence of appalling behavior from the ranks of the Obama-bots is widespread, although nowhere to be seen in the reportage of the official press office of the Obama campaign, i.e., ABCCBSNBCCNNMSNSBCNewYorkTimesWashingtonPost, Inc.

Michelle Malkin provides a one-stop solution to that information deficit, chronicling libs behaving badly.

Well, the man did say he believed in change; you just assumed he meant for the better.

Posted by Mike Lief at 05:07 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Shootout for Scouting

Posted by Mike Lief at 07:51 AM

October 12, 2008

The bravest man you've never heard about

Guy Gabaldon

http://www.wtj.com/articles/gabaldon/

http://www.dvdtalk.com/dvdsavant/s2321war.html

Hell to Eternity

Posted by Mike Lief at 10:51 PM

The Peolsi Premium

http://gop.gov/web/guest/pelosipremium

Posted by Mike Lief at 10:49 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Taking a break

Butterfly detail. I like how the sun is casting a warm glow through the gossamer-thin wings. Casio EX-V8, ISO 50, 1/320", f3.4. Click on image for larger version.

Here's a more complete view of the weary traveler. Casio EX-V8, 1/100", f3.4. Click on image for larger version.

Gale force winds blew through Ventura this weekend, forcing all manner of creatures to seek shelter from the storm -- including this butterfly, hunkered down in the lawn. It was clearly exhausted; appearing uninjured, it allowed me to get quite close without complaint, only shifting away from my camera when I crossed some imperceptible inter-species boundary of propriety.

Posted by Mike Lief at 09:40 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Ventura sunset

Ventura palm trees at 6:56:27 p.m. Taken with the Casio EX-V8, 1/2", f3.6, underexposed 1/3 stop.

Posted by Mike Lief at 09:25 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Does McCain even want to win?

The question foremost in the minds of every conservative, Republican, or anti-Socialist voter this weekend ought to be -- must be -- "Does McCain even want to win this election?"

It's a fair question, one made necessary by the candidate's seemingly inexplicable reluctance to take the fight to his opponent, a man with huge vulnerabilities, starting with his -- and the Democratic Party's -- responsibility for the current economic crisis.

It's not stretching the truth to say that McCain was prescient about the Fannie Mae, Freddy Mac implosion; he was one of the signers of the letter below, written in 2006.

McCain and the other signers warned:

We are concerned that if effective regulatory reform legislation for the housing-finance government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) is not enacted this year, American taxpayers will continue to be exposed to the enormous risk that Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac pose to the housing market, the overall financial system, and the economy as a whole. ...

Today, almost half of the home mortgages in the U.S. are guaranteed by these GSEs. They are mammoth financial institutions with almost $1.5 Trillion of debt outstanding between them. With the fiscal challenges facing us today (deficits, entitlements, pensions and flood insurance), Congress must ask itself who would pay this debt if Fannie or Freddy could not? ...

It is vitally important that Congress take the necessary steps to ensure that these institutions benefit from strong and independent regulatory supervision, operate in a safe and sound manner, and are primarily focused on their statutory mission. More importantly, Congress must ensure that the American taxpayer is protected in the event either GSE should fail.

Neither Obama's name (nor that of any other Democratic senator) is anywhere to be seen on this letter; he has never played a role in trying to reign in the runaway lenders, never contributed to the debate, never done anything before the crisis to prevent it, slow its arrival, ameliorate the damage done by congressionally-mandated ill-advised lending practices.

Not that you'd know any of this, because McCain has some sort of mental block when it comes to highlighting the role he and fellow Republicans played in anticipating the mortgage meltdown.

Why?

Beats the hell out of me. I suppose you could say it's modesty, but that would be insane, given his supposed desire to win the presidency.

As I've often said, I'm not voting for McCain (although I am for Palin); I'm voting against Obama. It's too bad that the GOP candidate can't seem to articulate a reason for anyone else to vote for him -- or against the other guy.

Posted by Mike Lief at 05:24 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 11, 2008

Change

A reader e-mailed me, complaining that neither the media (which is to be expected) nor John McCain (which is inexplicable) have failed to point out something interesting about the last eight years.

George Bush has been in office for 71/2 years.

During the first six the economy was fine.

A little over one year ago:

1) Consumer confidence stood at a 2-1/2 year high.

2) Regular gasoline sold for $2.19 a gallon.

3) The unemployment rate was 4.5%.

4) The Dow Jones hit a record high of 14,000.

5) Americans were buying new cars, taking cruises, vacations overseas, living large.

But Americans wanted CHANGE! So in 2006 they voted in a Democratic Congress and yes - we got
CHANGE - in the past year:

1) Consumer confidence has plummeted.

2) Gasoline is now over $ 3.50 a gallon.

3) Unemployment is up at 6%.

4) Americans have seen their home equity drop by $12 trillion and values are still dropping.

5) 2% of American homes are in foreclosure

6) and as I am writing the Dow is probing another low. Americans saw $ 2.5 trillion evaporate from their stocks, bonds & mutual funds portfolios.

YES IN 2006 AMERICANS VOTED FOR CHANGE ... AND SURE CHANGE WE GOT !
Remember the president has no control over any of these issues - Congrss does !
And what has Congrss done in the last two years - ABSOLUTELY NOTHING !

Now the Democratic Candidate for president is promising us to give us more change --- with a democratic congress !

HOW MUCH MORE CHANGE DO YOU THINK WE CAN BEAR ????

Posted by Mike Lief at 11:28 PM

"The only thing we have to fear is me"

Pres. Ronald Reagan said, “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are “I’m from the government, and I’m here to help."

He was even more right than he knew.

A new study by prominent economists makes another president's most famous line, "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself!" a rather ironic counterpoint to Reagan's jab.

Two UCLA economists have discovered why the Great Depression lasted so long -- 15 years! -- and even identified the one person most responsible for prolonging America's economic misery: Liberal icon Pres. Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

After scrutinizing Roosevelt's record for four years, Harold L. Cole and Lee E. Ohanian conclude in a new study that New Deal policies signed into law 71 years ago thwarted economic recovery for seven long years.

"Why the Great Depression lasted so long has always been a great mystery, and because we never really knew the reason, we have always worried whether we would have another 10- to 15-year economic slump," said Ohanian, vice chair of UCLA's Department of Economics. "We found that a relapse isn't likely unless lawmakers gum up a recovery with ill-conceived stimulus policies."

In an article in the August issue of the Journal of Political Economy, Ohanian and Cole blame specific anti-competition and pro-labor measures that Roosevelt promoted and signed into law June 16, 1933.

"President Roosevelt believed that excessive competition was responsible for the Depression by reducing prices and wages, and by extension reducing employment and demand for goods and services," said Cole, also a UCLA professor of economics. "So he came up with a recovery package that would be unimaginable today, allowing businesses in every industry to collude without the threat of antitrust prosecution and workers to demand salaries about 25 percent above where they ought to have been, given market forces. The economy was poised for a beautiful recovery, but that recovery was stalled by these misguided policies."

Using data collected in 1929 by the Conference Board and the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Cole and Ohanian were able to establish average wages and prices across a range of industries just prior to the Depression. By adjusting for annual increases in productivity, they were able to use the 1929 benchmark to figure out what prices and wages would have been during every year of the Depression had Roosevelt's policies not gone into effect. They then compared those figures with actual prices and wages as reflected in the Conference Board data.

In the three years following the implementation of Roosevelt's policies, wages in 11 key industries averaged 25 percent higher than they otherwise would have done, the economists calculate. But unemployment was also 25 percent higher than it should have been, given gains in productivity.

Meanwhile, prices across 19 industries averaged 23 percent above where they should have been, given the state of the economy. With goods and services that much harder for consumers to afford, demand stalled and the gross national product floundered at 27 percent below where it otherwise might have been.

"High wages and high prices in an economic slump run contrary to everything we know about market forces in economic downturns," Ohanian said. "As we've seen in the past several years, salaries and prices fall when unemployment is high. By artificially inflating both, the New Deal policies short-circuited the market's self-correcting forces."

How many times must we rediscover that the greatest contribution government can make to prosperity -- be it of individuals or the nation -- is to get out of the way of those who would succeed.

Look at the most prosperous nations in the world, those with the highest standard of living; the greatest opportunity for a person of meager means to achieve unimaginable wealth, no matter how hardscrabble his beginnings; the most dynamic record of industrial innovation and growth; and the creative energies and ambitions of millions of entrepreneurs harnessed and converted into businesses, products, profit and employment.

I give you the free market.

I give you America.

Except when the government is "here to help."

There's more on FDR's role in screwing the U.S. economy below; follow the link.

The policies were contained in the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA), which exempted industries from antitrust prosecution if they agreed to enter into collective bargaining agreements that significantly raised wages. Because protection from antitrust prosecution all but ensured higher prices for goods and services, a wide range of industries took the bait, Cole and Ohanian found. By 1934 more than 500 industries, which accounted for nearly 80 percent of private, non-agricultural employment, had entered into the collective bargaining agreements called for under NIRA.

Cole and Ohanian calculate that NIRA and its aftermath account for 60 percent of the weak recovery. Without the policies, they contend that the Depression would have ended in 1936 instead of the year when they believe the slump actually ended: 1943.

Roosevelt's role in lifting the nation out of the Great Depression has been so revered that Time magazine readers cited it in 1999 when naming him the 20th century's second-most influential figure.

"This is exciting and valuable research," said Robert E. Lucas Jr., the 1995 Nobel Laureate in economics, and the John Dewey Distinguished Service Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago. "The prevention and cure of depressions is a central mission of macroeconomics, and if we can't understand what happened in the 1930s, how can we be sure it won't happen again?"

NIRA's role in prolonging the Depression has not been more closely scrutinized because the Supreme Court declared the act unconstitutional within two years of its passage.

"Historians have assumed that the policies didn't have an impact because they were too short-lived, but the proof is in the pudding," Ohanian said. "We show that they really did artificially inflate wages and prices."

Even after being deemed unconstitutional, Roosevelt's anti-competition policies persisted — albeit under a different guise, the scholars found. Ohanian and Cole painstakingly documented the extent to which the Roosevelt administration looked the other way as industries once protected by NIRA continued to engage in price-fixing practices for four more years.

The number of antitrust cases brought by the Department of Justice fell from an average of 12.5 cases per year during the 1920s to an average of 6.5 cases per year from 1935 to 1938, the scholars found. Collusion had become so widespread that one Department of Interior official complained of receiving identical bids from a protected industry (steel) on 257 different occasions between mid-1935 and mid-1936. The bids were not only identical but also 50 percent higher than foreign steel prices. Without competition, wholesale prices remained inflated, averaging 14 percent higher than they would have been without the troublesome practices, the UCLA economists calculate.

NIRA's labor provisions, meanwhile, were strengthened in the National Relations Act, signed into law in 1935. As union membership doubled, so did labor's bargaining power, rising from 14 million strike days in 1936 to about 28 million in 1937. By 1939 wages in protected industries remained 24 percent to 33 percent above where they should have been, based on 1929 figures, Cole and Ohanian calculate. Unemployment persisted. By 1939 the U.S. unemployment rate was 17.2 percent, down somewhat from its 1933 peak of 24.9 percent but still remarkably high. By comparison, in May 2003, the unemployment rate of 6.1 percent was the highest in nine years.

Recovery came only after the Department of Justice dramatically stepped enforcement of antitrust cases nearly four-fold and organized labor suffered a string of setbacks, the economists found.

"The fact that the Depression dragged on for years convinced generations of economists and policy-makers that capitalism could not be trusted to recover from depressions and that significant government intervention was required to achieve good outcomes," Cole said. "Ironically, our work shows that the recovery would have been very rapid had the government not intervened."

Posted by Mike Lief at 09:34 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

The real Obama, Part I

http://townhall.com/columnists/ThomasSowell/2008/10/07/the_real_obama?page=full

Critics of Senator Barack Obama make a strategic mistake when they talk about his "past associations." That just gives his many defenders in the media an opportunity to counter-attack against "guilt by association."

We all have associations, whether at the office, in our neighborhood or in various recreational activities. Most of us neither know nor care what our associates believe or say about politics.

Associations are very different from alliances. Allies are not just people who happen to be where you are or who happen to be doing the same things you do. You choose allies deliberately for a reason. The kind of allies you choose says something about you.

Jeremiah Wright, Father Michael Pfleger, William Ayers and Antoin Rezko are not just people who happened to be at the same place at the same time as Barack Obama. They are people with whom he chose to ally himself for years, and with some of whom some serious money changed hands.

Some gave political support, and some gave financial support, to Obama's election campaigns, and Obama in turn contributed either his own money or the taxpayers' money to some of them. That is a familiar political alliance-- but an alliance is not just an "association" from being at the same place at the same time.

Obama could have allied himself with all sorts of other people. But, time and again, he allied himself with people who openly expressed their hatred of America. No amount of flags on his campaign platforms this election year can change that.

[...]

The story of Obama's political career is not a pretty story. He won his first political victory by being the only candidate on the ballot-- after hiring someone skilled at disqualifying the signers of opposing candidates' petitions, on whatever technicality he could come up with.

Despite his words today about "change" and "cleaning up the mess in Washington," Obama was not on the side of reformers who were trying to change the status quo of corrupt, machine politics in Chicago and clean up the mess there. Obama came out in favor of the Daley machine and against reform candidates.

Senator Obama is running on an image that is directly the opposite of what he has been doing for two decades. His escapes from his past have been as remarkable as the great escapes of Houdini.

Why much of the public and the media have been so mesmerized by the words and the image of Obama, and so little interested in learning about the factual reality, was perhaps best explained by an official of the Democratic Party: "People don't come to Obama for what he's done, they come because of what they hope he can be."

Posted by Mike Lief at 09:20 AM

October 10, 2008

Save them, for they know not what they do

I don't know about you, but I feel really good about bailing out people who put themselves in this position.

The reality is, of course, that someone who is upside down on a home an walks away from it has suffered nothing more than the renter who walks out on an apartment and loses the security deposit; the defaulting homeowner had no equity in the house, so he was, in essence, nothing more than a renter with an option to buy.

So, aside from welching on an obligation -- something that Americans used to frown upon -- and having a bad credit history for a few years, it's not the kind of circumstance that requires the rest of us (who have been living within our means) to pony up the funds to keep these would-be defaulting renters in their too spendy digs.

Which is also why McCain's pandering on the issue -- he keeps blathering about stopping the decline in home values -- is so disheartening.

Home values are what they are; it's called a "market economy," with buyer and seller agreeing what the home's worth. The idea of the government inserting itself into the transaction and insisting that a home is worth X-amount of dollars more than the market will bear is a recipe for disaster, a cure far worse than the symptom.

About twenty years ago, we were suffering through another dip in home values, one deep enough that economists were counseling Americans to stop thinking of their homes as an investment, urging them to view it instead as -- get this -- "shelter," something they'd have to keep them, their loved ones and their nick-knacks out of the rain. Of course, within a few years, the market began moving again and homeowners began seeing the value of their houses rise.

The bottom line is that there's no compelling reason to alter the free market engine that has driven American prosperity through good times and bad.

But that would require some straight talk about biting the bullet for a while, honoring your word to repay a debt. And no candidate wants to say that.

Posted by Mike Lief at 07:41 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Winston Churchill must be spinning

This is not the England that Winston Churchill knew.

A gardener who fenced off his allotment with barbed wire after being targeted by thieves has been ordered to take it down – in case intruders scratch themselves.

Bill Malcolm erected the 3ft fence after thieves struck three times in just four months, stealing tools worth around £300 from his shed and ransacking his vegetable patch.

But Bromsgrove district council has ordered the 61-year-old to remove the waist-high fence on health and safety grounds.

Mr Malcolm, who has grown potatoes, onions, beetroot and asparagus on two patches at the Round Hill allotments in Marlbrook, Worcestershire, for the past eight years, said: 'It's an absolutely ridiculous situation.

Mr Malcolm said he had been robbed three times since June, along with around 16 of the 50 allotment keepers on the site.

'About £300 worth of tools were taken, including everything from a stainless steel border spade and pitchforks to screwdrivers and hammers,' he added. 'The thieves cut through steel locks on the shed, or broke in through the windows."

A spokesman for Bromsgrove council said: 'With regard to the barbed wire, when this is identified on site, we are obliged to request its removal or remove it on health and safety grounds.'

Sergeant Nick Husbands, of West Mercia Police, said: 'We can confirm that five thefts from Round Hill allotments have been reported in the past year.

'These have mainly been from sheds and our advice to allotment holders is not to leave anything of value there.'

Mr Malcolm's plight comes just weeks after Bristol council angered allotment holders by urging them not to lock their sheds in case burglars damaged them breaking in.

Up is down, black is white, and crooks must be protected from law-abiding citizens.

Hard to believe this isn't a Monty Python sketch.

Posted by Mike Lief at 12:39 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

The real reason why Obama's Ayers connection matters

The McCain campaign is trying to focus the electorate's attention on William Ayers, the domestic terrorist who has had a longstanding relationship with Obama. But blogger Neo thinks McCain and his strategists are missing the point.

if Republicans persist in using the approach of saying the problem is that Obama was tight with a domestic terrorist from the 60’s and lied about the extent of his involvement, they’re not going to go far with this. Obama can point—as he has so many times before—to the fact that when Ayers committed his crimes Obama was indeed a small boy, halfway around the world, as well as the fact that Ayers is now a highly respected muckamuck in the education field.

All this is true, as far as it goes. The shocking thing is that Ayers has risen to this level, because:

Ayers is a school reformer in the same sense, as City Journal’s Sol Stern put it, as Joe Stalin was an agricultural reformer.

The unanswered question is how Ayers, with not only his “unrepentant” terrorist past but his far Leftist present agenda became an influential educator. Whatever the answer (and we have not gotten it yet), the evidence is clear that for many years Barack Obama was his confederate and supporter in that endeavor and has covered up that fact. The media is now assisting in that coverup, and the Republican Party is not hitting hard enough at the real issues that need to be uncovered.

Here’s the program, folks, in Ayers’s own words, spoken just two years ago in that oh-so-progressive country, Venezuela:

An idea of what Ayers has in mind for America’s schools was provided in his own words not 40 years ago when Obama was eight years old, but less than two years ago in November 2006 at the World Education Forum in Caracas hosted by dictator Hugo Chavez.

With Chavez at his side, Ayers voiced his support for “the political educational reforms under way here in Venezuela under the leadership of President Chavez. We share the belief that education is the motor-force of revolution. . . . I look forward to seeing how . . . all of you continue to overcome the failures of capitalist education as you seek to create something truly new and deeply humane.”

Ayers told the great humanitarian Chavez: “Teaching invites transformations, it urges revolutions large and small. La educacion es revolucion.” It is that form of socialist revolution that Ayers, and Obama, have worked to bring to America.

We are seeing now the fruit of that program of transformation in an electorate that cannot—or will not—see what and who Obama is, or perhaps doesn’t much care.

[...]

The truth about Ayers and Obama needs to get out, and we can’t rely on the media or even the McCain campaign to do it.

I differ with Neo's assessment in that I think Ayers' unrepentant stance, his mocking taunt that he's "Guilty as sin, free as a bird!" despite his involvement in plots to plant bombs and kill Americans, does matter. There has to be some portion of the middle-of-the-road electorate that is disgusted by Ayers' hatred for America, and dismayed by Obama's long association with the man.

Sure, Obama has said that he condemns Ayers' 60s-era activities, but Ayers never has repudiated his actions, instead lamenting that he didn't "do enough," by "do enough," meaning that he hadn't put enough time and effort into ensuring that the bombs were planted and the enemies of la revolucion blown to bits.

So, notwithstanding Obama's tepid condemnation of Ayers, the fact that he still considers the man to be a respected member of the Chicago establishment speaks volumes about the Democratic nominee -- and what it says isn't good.

Posted by Mike Lief at 12:18 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 09, 2008

Obama: Soft on crime (and "Present" when it counts)

I've had a number of conversations with a colleague about the impending presidential vote -- or as he prefers to think of it, the second coming of the Messiah (I'm paraphrasing).

As you might have guessed, he's voting for Obama, which is rather surprising, for several reasons, first and foremost being that my colleague is a law and order guy, a dedicated career prosecutor who is second to none when it comes to aggressively going after the hardest of hardcore criminals.

I've pointed out that of the two candidates, one is more likely to nominate federal judges -- and Supreme Court justices -- who believe that denying criminals pedicures and shiatsu massages is a violation of the Constitution's Eighth Amendment ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

My misguided coworker concedes that perhaps I'm right, that Obama may very well appoint soft-on-crime judges, but that's not a certainty.

I'm afraid that Obama's all-to-brief legislative record removes all doubt about what he'd do with -- and to -- the judiciary.

Back in March of 2007, The Hill dug into Obama's time in the Illinois legislature.

Sen. Barack Obama’s (D-Ill.) votes on crime issues during his tenure in the Illinois state Senate could prove harmful to his effort to win the White House. His opponents and critics are mining his short voting record for campaign fodder.

A review by The Hill found a number of votes by Obama on bills dealing with drug, gang and gun-control issues that could be used by opponents seeking to derail his presidential candidacy.

Observers have suggested Obama could be vulnerable to accusations that he is soft on crime.

In 1998, Obama was one of only three senators to vote against a proposal making it a criminal offense for convicts on probation or on bail to have contact with a street gang.

In 2001, Obama voted against a measure that would have expanded the penalties for some gang activity to include the death penalty. The bill was vetoed by then-Gov. George Ryan (R ) not long after he had issued a moratorium on the death penalty in the state.

Obama, at the time, said the bill would unfairly target minorities, stating, “There’s a strong overlap between gang affiliation and young men of color … I think it’s problematic for them to be singled out as more likely to receive the death penalty for carrying out certain acts than are others who do the same thing.”

Obama opposes the death penalty except for terrorists, serial killers and child-murderers, but his campaign added that he does not support the death penalty as it is currently administered in this country.

On a 1999 vote making adult prosecution mandatory for aggravated discharge of a firearm in or near a school, the senator voted “present.”

He explained the vote, saying, “There is really no proof or indication that automatic transfers and increased penalties and adult penalties for juvenile offenses have, in fact, proven to be more effective in reducing juvenile crime or cutting back on recidivism.”

And in 2001, Obama voted “present” on a bill that would increase penalties for trafficking in Ecstasy and other designer drugs.

The senator questioned the length of some drug penalties when compared to other crimes, noting that selling 15 tablets of Ecstasy was a Class X felony, as was raping a woman at knifepoint.

In addition to being soft on crime, Obama is also a political crapweasel of the first order. If a politician doesn't want to vote "Aye" on a bill, than have the stones to vote "No."

Obama's preference for "Present" is a profile in cowardice, an attempt to have it both ways: "I didn't vote for the bill" to its critics, and "I didn't vote against it" to its supporters.

Much as my colleague may detest Pres. Bush and loathe McCain, I'm not sure how he'll be able to square the circle that is Obama; the more you learn about the candidate, the less appealing he is to those of us who aren't into long walks on the beach, hugs and sloppy kisses for career criminals.

Posted by Mike Lief at 10:59 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

October 08, 2008

Day of Atonement

Posting will resume after Yom Kippur.

Posted by Mike Lief at 06:19 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 07, 2008

What Obama doesn't know

And what you don't know about Obama and his friends and mentors: Saul Alinsky, William Ayers, Tony Rezko, "Rev." Jeremiah Wright, and Franklin Raines.

Posted by Mike Lief at 11:24 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

On the other hand ...

This exchange on Israel may have cost Obama a win in Florida.

First, the question and McCain's response:

Shirey: Senator ... if, despite your best diplomatic efforts, Iran attacks Israel, would you be willing to commit U.S. troops in support and defense of Israel? Or would you wait on approval from the U.N. Security Council?

McCain: [snip] Let me say that we obviously would not wait for the United Nations Security Council. I think the realities are that both Russia and China would probably pose significant obstacles.

And our challenge right now is the Iranians continue on the path to acquiring nuclear weapons, and it's a great threat. It's not just a threat -- threat to the state of Israel. It's a threat to the stability of the entire Middle East.

If Iran acquires nuclear weapons, all the other countries will acquire them, too. The tensions will be ratcheted up.

What would you do if you were the Israelis and the president of a country [Iran] says that they are -- they are determined to wipe you off the map, calls your country a stinking corpse?

Now, Sen. Obama without precondition wants to sit down and negotiate with them, without preconditions. That's what he stated, again, a matter of record.

I want to make sure that the Iranians are put enough -- that we put enough pressure on the Iranians by joining with our allies, imposing significant, tough sanctions to modify their behavior. And I think we can do that.

I think, joining with our allies and friends in a league of democracies, that we can effectively abridge their behavior, and hopefully they would abandon this quest that they are on for nuclear weapons.

But, at the end of the day, my friend, I have to tell you again, and you know what it's like to serve, and you know what it's like to sacrifice, but we can never allow a second Holocaust to take place.

That was a crisp, clear statement of support for Israel -- the only Western democracy and reliable friend we have in the Middle East, and the home of Holocaust survivors and their children and grandchildren.

McCain understands that there can be no equivocating when it comes to the existential threat posed to Israel's existence by Iran and other Islamo-fascist regimes.

Note well that McCain understands that neither the U.S. nor Israel can afford to rely upon the United Nations, especially given the Russian and Chinese vetoes that leave the Security Council in a constipated state of paralysis when time is of the essence -- and the vital interests of the U.S. or Israel are at stake.

Now to Obama's answer.

Brokaw: Sen. Obama?

Obama: We cannot allow Iran to get a nuclear weapon. It would be a game-changer in the region. Not only would it threaten Israel, our strongest ally in the region and one of our strongest allies in the world, but it would also create a possibility of nuclear weapons falling into the hands of terrorists.

And so it's unacceptable. And I will do everything that's required to prevent it.

And we will never take military options off the table. And it is important that we don't provide veto power to the United Nations or anyone else in acting in our interests.

It is important, though, for us to use all the tools at our disposal to prevent the scenario where we've got to make those kinds of choices.

And that's why I have consistently said that, if we can work more effectively with other countries diplomatically to tighten sanctions on Iran, if we can reduce our energy consumption through alternative energy, so that Iran has less money, if we can impose the kinds of sanctions that, say, for example, Iran right now imports gasoline, even though it's an oil-producer, because its oil infrastructure has broken down, if we can prevent them from importing the gasoline that they need and the refined petroleum products, that starts changing their cost-benefit analysis. That starts putting the squeeze on them.

Now, it is true, though, that I believe that we should have direct talks -- not just with our friends, but also with our enemies -- to deliver a tough, direct message to Iran that, if you don't change your behavior, then there will be dire consequences.

If you do change your behavior, then it is possible for you to re-join the community of nations.

Now, it may not work. But one of the things we've learned is, is that when we take that approach, whether it's in North Korea or in Iran, then we have a better chance at better outcomes.

When President Bush decided we're not going to talk to Iran, we're not going to talk to North Korea, you know what happened? Iran went from zero centrifuges to develop nuclear weapons to 4,000. North Korea quadrupled its nuclear capability.

We've got to try to have talks, understanding that we're not taking military options off the table.

Uh, yeah.

If Israel is attacked, we don't know what Obama would do, because he chose not to answer the question. Instead he focused on how he'd try to prevent Iran from building its own nukes, by committing to concentrate on diplomacy and reducing our dependence on foreign oil.

That should ease Israeli fears about an Obama presidency.

Obama's answer was evasive, weak, and an incoherent non-sequitur.

McCain pledged to prevent another Holocaust.

I think that may have made a difference with the Florida vote.

Posted by Mike Lief at 11:08 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Debate

This may be the single-most awful "debate" I've ever seen.

I can't stand these guys; Obama for his positions, and McCain for being unable and unwilling to call Obama on them.

How many times have we heard Obama talk about "cutting taxes for 95 percent of all Americans," and how many times have we heard everyone -- anyone -- but McCain say that almost 40 percent of Americans don't pay one red cent in taxes, so you can't cut taxes for 95 percent; it's impossible.

Obama's so-called tax cuts for those no-tax-paying people are nothing more than income redistribution, taking money out of your pocket and giving it to someone else.

But you wouldn't know that from listening to McCain.

McCain was better on foreign policy, but there were so many opportunities that he let slip away, that Obama comes out on top simply by leaving viewers with the impression that he's far more moderate than his all-too-brief record shows.

On the merits, McCain actually did better than Obama:

McCain said health care is a responsibility; Obama said it's a right.

McCain said he'd come to Israel's defense; Obama said he'd go to the U.N. and seek sanctions.

Obama said he'd invade "Pock-ee-stahn," which happens to be a sovereign nation with nuclear weapons -- and that ought to scare the bejabbers out of you.

But none of this really matters.

Having had an opportunity to think about the debate in the two hours or so since it ended, I am disappointed.

I think National Review's Andy McCarthy strikes the right tone: "We have a disaster here."

We have a disaster here — which is what you should expect when you delegate a non-conservative to make the conservative (nay, the American) case. We can parse it eight ways to Sunday, but I think the commentary is missing the big picture.

Here's what Obama needed to do tonight: Convince the country that he was an utterly safe, conventional, centrist politician who may have leftward leanings but will do the right thing when the crunch comes.

Now, as the night went along, did you get the impression that Obama comes from the radical Left? Did you sense that he funded Leftist causes to the tune of tens of millions of dollars? Would you have guessed that he's pals with a guy who brags about bombing the Pentagon? Would you have guessed that he helped underwrite raging anti-Semites? Would you come away thinking, "Gee, he's proposing to transfer nearly a trillion dollars of wealth to third-world dictators through the UN"?

Nope. McCain didn't want to go there. So Obama comes off as just your average Center-Left politician. Gonna raise your taxes a little, gonna negotiate reasonably with America's enemies; gonna rely on our very talented federal courts to fight terrorists and solve most of America's problems; gonna legalize millions of hard-working illegal immigrants.

McCain? He comes off as Center-Right .. or maybe Center-Left ... but, either way, deeply respectful of Obama despite their policy quibbles.

Great. Memo to McCain Campaign: Someone is either a terrorist sympathizer or he isn't; someone is either disqualified as a terrorist sympathizer or he's qualified for public office. You helped portray Obama as a clealy qualified presidential candidate who would fight terrorists.

If that's what the public thinks, good luck trying to win this thing.

With due respect, I think tonight was a disaster for our side. I'm dumbfounded that no one else seems to think so. Obama did everything he needed to do, McCain did nothing he needed to do. What am I missing?

A lot can happen in a month, but I'm afraid that McCain's inexplicable failure to take the fight to Obama makes a GOP victory look less and less likely.

Posted by Mike Lief at 10:07 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

October 06, 2008

Why do you need to read blogs?

Why do you need to read blogs? Because the MSM (Mainstream Media) is so in the tank for Obama that you simply cannot be well informed if you don't venture onto the internet.

The latest -- and most repellent example -- comes via the eagle-eyed Patterico, who lives to expose the bottomless pit of mediocrity and mendacity that is The Los Angeles Times.

Today John McCain finally began to tell the country about his own efforts to regulate Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and the Democrats’ incredible inaction. Yes, as many of us had urged, McCain finally talked about the economy, and the conservative blogs went nuts. Republican bloggers know that McCain has to talk about this, because the economy is the top issue concerning Americans, and McCain has a good story to tell — even if it’s one that the media has been ignoring.

Speaking of which:

How did the L.A. Times cover McCain’s stunning speech taking on this core economic concern?

By pretending McCain never said it, and by quoting Barack Obama talking about how McCain is scared to talk about the economy.

I’m not joking:

At a rally here, McCain also lumped Obama in with Chicago politics’ history of corruption, while Obama responded that the Republicans were fostering political shenanigans and scare tactics.

. . . .

“It’s as if somehow the usual rules don’t apply, and where other candidates have to explain themselves and their records, Sen. Obama seems to think he is above all that,” McCain told the cheering crowd. “Whatever the question, whatever the issue, there’s always a back story with Sen. Obama. All people want to know is, what has this man ever actually accomplished in government? What does he plan for America? In short, who is the real Barack Obama? But ask such questions and all you get in response is another barrage of angry insults.”

That’s precisely the point where McCain started to talk about Democratic responsibility for the economy. McCain’s very next words, which never appear in the L.A. Times, were these words:

Our current economic crisis is a good case in point. What was his actual record in the years before the great economic crisis of our lifetimes?

At which point McCain launched into the amazing speech quoted by Ed Morrissey at Hot Air, during which he laid out the case, at great length, for the Democrats’ responsibility for the mortgage crisis.

Does the L.A. Times report one word of that?

No.

Instead, they cut the quote of McCain’s speech short there, right before he talks about the economy, and proceed to quote Obama as claiming that McCain is scared to talk about the economy:

Speaking with reporters in Asheville, N.C., where he is studying for Tuesday’s debate, which is to focus on the economy and domestic issues, Obama pointed to recent reports that the McCain camp wanted to get away from economic issues, a topic that polls show benefits the Democrats.

“I was a little surprised over the last couple of days to hear Sen. McCain say, or Sen. McCain’s campaign say, that we want to turn the page on the discussion of the economy and a member of Sen. McCain’s campaign saying today that if we keep talking about the economic crisis we lose,” Obama said.

“I cannot imagine anything more important to talk about than the economic crisis, and the notion that we’d want to brush that aside and engage in the usual political shenanigans and scare tactics that have come to characterize too many political campaigns, I think [that] is not what the American people are looking for,” he said.

Of course, the economic crisis, and who is responsible for it, is exactly what McCain talked about.

But you’d never know that by reading the L.A. Times. The paper does make sure, however, to include this Obama attack on a nearly 20-year-old scandal barely involving John McCain:

Democrats, mindful that unanswered allegations hurt Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry’s presidential bid in 2004, hit back by portraying McCain as a friend of the same kind of bankers whose subprime mortgage dealings are causing a crisis on Wall Street.

Right: they talked about McCain’s (non-)involvement in the ancient Keating Five scandal. That is worthy of mention. But when McCain talked at length about the responsibility for the current crisis, all we’re told is that he’s scared to talk about the economy.

Orwellian, isn’t it?

But it’s business as usual at this newspaper.

And yet millions of voters still think they're getting an impartial, fair accounting of what's being said by the candidates from the morning papers tossed in their driveways.

If you weren't reading Patterico's post, you'd think that McCain was indeed afraid to talk about the economy, and you'd also think that Obama wasn't a lying crapweasel.

But now you know that you'd be wrong.

No thanks to the L.A. Times.

Shameful.

Posted by Mike Lief at 11:58 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

We reap what the Supreme Court sows

Back in June I had this to say about the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Boumediene v. Bush:

It's been a week since the Court issued what may be the single most dangerous, unjustified -- and intellectually dishonest -- decision in the history of the American judiciary, when five justices ruled that unlawful combatants, captured on the battlefield, are entitled not only to more rights than POWs receive under the Geneva Conventions, not only more rights than members of the U.S. military, not only more rights than illegal aliens in the United States, but to the same rights as American citizens.

National Review's Andrew McCarthy notes that the Supreme Court's folly is coming back to haunt us all, as everyone but the Justices -- and the PC crowd -- knew it would.

The Supreme Court [in June] had just decided, in the Boumediene case, to give constitutional habeas corpus rights (i.e., the right to petition the federal civilian courts) to alien enemy combatants held at Guantanamo Bay; a panel of the DC Circuit Court of Appeals promptly presumed to reverse the commander-in-chief's determination that the Uighur combatants — ethnic Chinese Muslims who were apprehended training in terrorist camps in Afghanistan — were not enemy combatants.

Now the next shoe is about to drop.

The Washington Post reports that a federal judge in Washington may be about to order the Uighurs released into the United States — i.e., to dwell freely among our population. This is the very nightmare scenario I warned about.

The courts' steps are outrageous, but predictable and inevitable. A lot of the blame here, however, goes to the administration and the military. They have long taken the position that radical Islamic ideology is not the problem, and that we need only worry about actively those taking up arms against the United States. They don't want us to talk about jihad — the better to keep us in the dark about jihadist ideology.

Thus, the government rationalizes, the Uighurs are not a threat to us, only to the Chinese. That was all the daylight the judges need to say: OK, then release them in the U.S., since no other country — except China, where they'd be persecuted — will take them.

The government's self-defeating argument is preposterous. Jihadists — and there is not question that the Uighurs are jihadists — do not recognize distinctions based on the Westphalia world of nation-states. In their view, it is Dar al Islam or Dar al Harb: i.e., you are either part of the realm of the Muslims or the realm of war, and the goal is to turn Dar al Harb into Dar al Islam by any means necessary.

Releasing trained jihadists into the United States on the theory that their beef is with the Chinese and they have no problem with us would be a delusional act of suicide.

But those in favor of trying to wage law, when our enemies are waging war, are clearly delusional -- and suicidal, too. Which is why I am confident that our judicial oligarchs won't hesitate to release these would-be jihadis onto our streets.

Posted by Mike Lief at 11:53 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

A different take on travel trailers

http://squob.com/travel_trailers/tabbert-paganini-jawohl/

http://www.caravaning-award.com/116.html

Posted by Mike Lief at 10:49 PM

Click in case of emergency

As the markets continue to slide -- European investors feel the pain, too -- and the odds of an Obama administration, abetted by a Democratic-controlled Congress become more likely, sites like this seem a bit more relevant.

Hope for the best, plan for the worst.

Can you tell I'm worried?

Posted by Mike Lief at 09:06 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

October 05, 2008

Der "America Way of Life" auf zwei Achsen.

http://www.tabme.de/en/models/tb-xl/

Mit konsequentem Luxus und repräsentativer Wohnkultur.
American Diner und großzügige Lounge.
Feines Leder und ein behaglicher Kamin.
Der "America Way of Life" auf zwei Achsen.

Du fühlst Dich hier wohler als zuhause? Kein Wunder!
Der T@B_XL ist Stil und Ambiente, Schönheit und Wertigkeit.

Sound-Anlage mit CD, DVD und Radio inklusive Subwoofer sowie ein
Flachbild-Fernseher ? für ein Schweben auf Klangwolke sieben.

Wir wünschen Dir viel Spaß und jede Menge Genuss!

Posted by Mike Lief at 03:17 PM

Amazing animal mimicry

Posted by Mike Lief at 09:39 AM

October 03, 2008

Is Airstream selling a defective product?

What's this? It's the aluminum skin of my Airstream Travel Trailer, showing signs of a production defect just a few months after I took delivery.

This defect, filiform corrosion, is a process that afflicts aluminum that has suffered a breach in the protective Clear Coat coating applied by Alcoa, the supplier of the lightweight metal used by Airstream to skin its trailers.

It often shows up around rivet heads and the edges of aluminum panels.

Let's see where else my Airstream is starting to look a little rough around the edges.

It doesn't just affect the trailer's skin; this is the grab handle outside the door. Notice how it's covered with creeping crud.

Nice.

Moving around to the back of the trailer, let's take a look at the picture window that frames the dinette area.

In this close-up there appears to be rust -- the conventional, red kind -- around one of the rivets.

This does not make me happy.

In this shot you can see more of the corrosion, as well as a bit of the discoloration of the caulking between the window and the frame -- some of which is already pulling away from the metal.

I am told that Airstream says this isn't covered under its warranty, which is astonishing -- if true -- when you consider that they'd be washing their hands of the distinguishing characteristic that defines the product.

Imagine, if you will, that automakers said that any defect in the paint or body wasn't their problem, but that of the paint supplier, or the mill that made the steel used in the body panels.

There's talk on some of the Airstream forums about a class-action lawsuit, which is a symptom of how widespread the defect is -- and how widespread is the unhappiness of Airstream owners.

Here's the deal: We really like the Airstream; it's well designed, stylish and fun to use. Traveling with Bogie, having a home away from home, is a blast.

But this is more than a little ding or a minor glitch in the manufacturing process.

Quite frankly, the Airstream is starting to look a lot like a fading Hollywood starlet: from a distance, she's the stuff dreams are made of, but when you get too close, the rot, the decay becomes obvious, and the bloom is seriously off the rose.

I am informed that Airstream has taken a hard line when it comes to complaints about the defective aluminum skins of its trailers; we'll see if they're truly as unwilling to stand by their product as the critics say.

This is less than six months since I took possession of the Silver Twinkie, and that's just not acceptable.

I'll let you know what Airstream has to say.

Posted by Mike Lief at 10:18 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack

October 02, 2008

Take a bite: Return of the Congressional crap sandwich

Michelle Malkin has it right: The enormous New-and-Improved! Bail Out Bill that sailed through the Senate last night accompanied by a sickening display of preening and self-congratulatory back-slapping has tossed this steaming pile of taxpayer-funded fiscal never-minds back into the laps of the House, where 12 Republicans and 95 Democrats blocked its passage a couple of days ago.

They need to hear from you that the American people are still opposed to its passage, especially in its bloated, revised form.

The massive, unprecedented trillion-dollar-plus (remember, they just pulled the figure from thin air) Bailout Crap Sandwich With Sugar On Top returns to the House. A vote is expected on Friday. I keep hearing and reading that public opposition to this rushed-through monstrosity has “softened” in the wake of the Senate’s approval last night. I’m not sure why the bailout pimps keep touting that talking point when countless Americans trying to express their vehement disapproval can’t even get through the FUBAR House e-mail system!

Now is the time for the fiscal conservative House Republicans who voted against the bailout on Monday (before it ballooned to four times its size) to buckle down. Refuse to be bought off. Refuse to be co-opted by the Orwellian “It’s a ‘rescue,’ not a bailout” propaganda ministers. Refuse to be pressured and panicked and bullied by the Apocalyptics. Refuse to submit to Pelosi/Frank/Paulson’s collective will.

Refuse to flip-flop. Refuse to swallow.

The bailout peddlers need 12 Republicans to turn. The payoffs are in the works:

“We need 100 Republican votes to pass this,” House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer told reporters at a Wednesday afternoon briefing.

House leaders “are bringing in the small business lobby and the banking lobby to buy the 12 Republican votes they need,” said Bob Borosage, the co-director of the progressive group Campaign for America’s Future.

To quote the great Lady Thatcher: “This is no time to go wobbly.”

The People’s House needs to hear from the people. Get your fingers dialing for Operation Hold The Line. Because so many of you asked, I’ve compiled the phone numbers for each and every one of the House GOP members who voted no on Monday. They need to hear from you again. Area code is 202 for all numbers:

Aderholt R AL legislator No 225-4876
Akin R MO legislator No 225-2561
Alexander R LA legislator No 225-8490
Bachmann R MN legislator No 225-2331
Barrett (SC) R SC legislator No 225-5301
Bartlett (MD) R MD legislator No 225-2721
Barton (TX) R TX legislator No 225-2002
Biggert R IL legislator No 225-3515
Bilbray R CA legislator No 225-0508
Bilirakis R FL legislator No 225-5755
Bishop (UT) R UT legislator No 225-0453
Blackburn R TN legislator No 225-2811
Boustany R LA legislator No 225-2031
Broun (GA) R GA legislator No 225-4101
Brown-Waite, Ginny R FL legislator No 225-1002
Buchanan R FL legislator No 225-5015
Burgess R TX legislator No 225-7772
Burton (IN) R IN legislator No 225-2276
Buyer R IN legislator No 225-5037
Capito R WV legislator No 225-2711
Carter R TX legislator No 225-3864
Chabot R OH legislator No 225-2216
Coble R NC legislator No 225-3065
Conaway R TX legislator No 225-3605
Culberson R TX legislator No 225-2571
Davis (KY) R KY legislator No 225-3465
Davis, David R TN legislator No 225-6356
Deal (GA) R GA legislator No 225-5211
Dent R PA legislator No 225-6411
Diaz-Balart, L. R FL legislator No 225-4211
Diaz-Balart, M. R FL legislator No 225-2778
Doolittle R CA legislator No 225-2511
Drake R VA legislator No 225-4215
Duncan R TN legislator No 225-5435
English (PA) R PA legislator No 225-5406
Fallin R OK legislator No 225-2132
Feeney R FL legislator No 225-2706
Flake R AZ legislator No 225-2635
Forbes R VA legislator No 225-6365
Fortenberry R NE legislator No 225-4806
Foxx R NC legislator No 225-2071
Franks (AZ) R AZ legislator No 225-4576
Frelinghuysen R NJ legislator No 225-5034
Gallegly R CA legislator No 225-5811
Garrett (NJ) R NJ legislator No 225-4465
Gerlach R PA legislator No 225-4315
Gingrey R GA legislator No 225-2931
Gohmert R TX legislator No 225-3035
Goode R VA legislator No 225-4711
Goodlatte R VA legislator No 225-5431
Graves R MO legislator No 225-7041
Hall (TX) R TX legislator No 225-6673
Hastings (WA) R WA legislator No 225-5816
Hayes R NC legislator No 225-3715
Heller R NV legislator No 225-6155
Hensarling R TX legislator No 225-3484
Hoekstra R MI legislator No 225-4401
Hulshof R MO legislator No 225-2956
Hunter R CA legislator No 225-5672
Issa R CA legislator No 225-3906
Johnson (IL) R IL legislator No 225-2371
Johnson, Sam R TX legislator No 225-4201
Jones (NC) R NC legislator No 225-3415
Jordan R OH legislator No 225-2676
Keller R FL legislator No 225-2176
King (IA) R IA legislator No 225-4426
Kingston R GA legislator No 225-5831
Knollenberg R MI legislator No 225-5802
Kuhl (NY) R NY legislator No 225-3161
Lamborn R CO legislator No 225-4422
Latham R IA legislator No 225-5476
LaTourette R OH legislator No 225-5731
Latta R OH legislator No 225-6405
Linder R GA legislator No 225-4272
LoBiondo R NJ legislator No 225-6572
Lucas R OK legislator No 225-5565
Mack R FL legislator No 225-2536
Manzullo R IL legislator No 225-5676
Marchant R TX legislator No 225-6605
McCarthy (CA) R CA legislator No 225-2915
McCaul (TX) R TX legislator No 225-2401
McCotter R MI legislator No 225-8171
McHenry R NC legislator No 225-2576
McMorris Rodgers R WA legislator No 225-2006
Mica R FL legislator No 225-4035
Miller (FL) R FL legislator No 225-4136
Miller (MI) R MI legislator No 225-2106
Moran (KS) R KS legislator No 225-2715
Murphy, Tim R PA legislator No 225-2301
Musgrave R CO legislator No 225-4676
Myrick R NC legislator No 225-1976
Neugebauer R TX legislator No 225-4005
Nunes R CA legislator No 225-2523
Paul R TX legislator No 225-2831
Pearce R NM legislator No 225-2365
Pence R IN legislator No 225-3021
Petri R WI legislator No 225-2476
Pitts R PA legislator No 225-2411
Platts R PA legislator No 225-5836
Poe R TX legislator No 225-6565
Price (GA) R GA legislator No 225-4501
Ramstad R MN legislator No 225-2871
Rehberg R MT legislator No 225-3211
Reichert R WA legislator No 225-7761
Renzi R AZ legislator No 225-2315
Rogers (MI) R MI legislator No 225-4872
Rohrabacher R CA legislator No 225-2415
Ros-Lehtinen R FL legislator No 225-3931
Roskam R IL legislator No 225-4561
Royce R CA legislator No 225-4111
Sali R ID legislator No 225-6611
Scalise R LA legislator No 225-3015
Schmidt R OH legislator No 225-3164
Sensenbrenner R WI legislator No 225-5101
Shadegg R AZ legislator No 225-3361
Shimkus R IL legislator No 225-5271
Shuster R PA legislator No 225-2431
Smith (NE) R NE legislator No 225-6435
Smith (NJ) R NJ legislator No 225-3765
Stearns R FL legislator No 225-5744
Sullivan R OK legislator No 225-2211
Terry R NE legislator No 225-4155
Thornberry R TX legislator No 225-3706
Tiahrt R KS legislator No 225-6216
Tiberi R OH legislator No 225-5355
Turner R OH legislator No 225-6465
Walberg R MI legislator No 225-6276
Wamp R TN legislator No 225-3271
Westmoreland R GA legislator No 225-5901
Whitfield (KY) R KY legislator No 225-3115
Wittman (VA) R VA legislator No 225-4261
Young (AK) R AK legislator No 225-5765
Young (FL) R FL legislator No 225-5961

Posted by Mike Lief at 07:59 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 01, 2008

Wednesday Bogie

Posted by Mike Lief at 11:35 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

You want to see a real camper trailer?

With apologies to Paul Hogan, "Now that's a camper trailer!"

I have a pal who likes to take his Jeep off road -- and when I say "off," I mean extremely off road, then hike for a ludicrous distance before pitching camp, which usually means sleeping on the ground in an old sleeping bag.

But I think this trailer appears to be hardcore enough to handle his Rubicon Trail-lite excursions, and yet be civilized enough to convince his son -- who's more David Blaine than Grizzly Adams -- to tag along more often with his old man.

The Tvan model is specially engineered to eliminate the problems found with conventional flip-over type campers (which stow the tent on the bed). With the Tvan, the tent is stowed in the rear hatch allowing your bed to be kept clean and dry. Even better, a hard roof over your head ensures a better night sleep.

As Track is experienced building military trailers, much of their heavy-duty technology finds its way into the Tvan. Features such as an asymmetric link suspension with Koni shock absorbers, 10 inches of wheel travel, and a 30-degree departure angle allow the trailer to follow the tow vehicle over nearly every terrain. With a hot dip galvanized steel frame, it is also built to take abuse and last. Of course, the kitchen appointments are stainless steel with abundant power outlets, lights, and ventilation to take the edge off of roughing it. It even comes with a 70-liter "food grade" water tank as standard equipment.

Head on over to Autoblog for more pictures.

Posted by Mike Lief at 09:27 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Creepiest video of the campaign

This one comes courtesy of fervent Obama supporters, who have enlisted a bevy of cute kids wearing their finest Obama-wear to film a quasi-religious musical tribute to the Supreme Leader.

Not surprisingly, once the Obama-bots began seeing how poorly this was playing with voters who haven't drunk deeply and often from their Kandidate's Kampaign Kool-Aid, they pulled the video off YouTube -- "disappeared" it from the collective memory.

However, nothing is ever truly gone from the internet, and conservatives are only too happy to keep this darned thing alive, for everyone to see.

It reminds me of nothing so much as the highly choreographed rallies for Maximum Leaders like Mao and Stalin, with stadiums packed with cheering children and starry-eyed adolescents -- much like the apple-cheeked kid in this video.

But Oscar-winning screenwriter -- and recovering Lefty -- Roger Simon found another video that's even closer in spirit to the Obama video than the one I linked to.

Hyperbole?

I think it's a fair comparison, if only to draw a parallel between the cult of personality that seems to animate the Obama campaign, and that which was so prominent in the totalitarian regimes of the last century.

Posted by Mike Lief at 01:13 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Creepy video of the week year

It's been a while since I posted a video guaranteed to make you cringe, and this is easily the equal of the last one.

Creepy. Very, very creepy.

Don't watch it if you share a phobia or two with Indiana Jones.

Via Gerard Van Der Leun.

Posted by Mike Lief at 12:04 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack