Breakfast at Edna's (an education on education)

A forensic scientist I am not. However, the following comment to M. Simon's post about the suicide of Michael Scott intrigued me:Was Scott left-handed? In my personal experience, I have found that a good way to tell which hand a...

"the name tells us a lot"

That's what Shepard Smith on Fox News just said about the officer who is described as the primary gunman who killed 12 people and wounded 31 in a mass shooting at Fort Hood Texas. He is described as "a convert...

"outside the Democratic norms of our society"

The United States Chamber of Commerce is being subjected to unprecedented attack by a variety of forces on the left. Its crime? Refusing to go along with the monstrous cap-and-trade scheme which would destroy what's left of the economy. Here's...

"Palling around" becomes official policy

"Clearly the White House has no problem being associated with Bill Ayers." That is absolutely true, and the proof is here. Ayers delivered a major speech before The Renaissance Group's 20th Anniversary Celebration in Arlington, Virginia. Speaking at the event...

Is Kevin Jennings Fit For Office?

Eric asks that in his recent post on Kevin Jennings in response to my post on Kevin Jennings (for sure the Google rankings are going up now). He says something to the effect of: "is it good to be demonizing...

Discrimination against religion leads to discrimination in favor of religion?

Is there a conflict between freedom of speech and freedom of religion? I don't think there is, but I think the courts may have screwed things up to the point where people are forgetting something about the nature of free...

He Helped Write A Book

It seems some one helped Mr. Obama write Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance. Christopher Andersen in Barack and Michelle: Portrait of an American Marriage says it was American terrorist Bill Ayres. Ron Radosh had this...

"he figured he could get away with it"

How stupid does President Obama think the unruly teenagers American people are? That was my reaction when I saw this question: Why did the president feign ignorance of ACORN when his relationship with the group goes back almost 20 years?...

But aren't certain ideas outside the conservative mainstream?

A post by Ann Althouse got me thinking about agents provocateur, and frankly, it's giving me the heebie jeebies. Thanks to all my readers who gave immediate and overnight pushback to a vile new commenter... ... who I assume was...

So little time, so many distractions!

This San Francisco Chronicle editorial reveals so much about the leftist mindset that I found it almost charming. Their position on Van Jones is not that there's anything wrong with his thinking, but that the Obama administration is too busy...

Tips for travelers wishing to avoid loopholes

For some reason, I was under the impression that Malaysia was one of those modern, "progressive" Muslim countries, where things like caning people for drinking alcohol did not go on. Wrong!KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia - An Islamic court in Malaysia on...

Bewitching symbolic resemblances just burn me up!

One of my most frequent complaints involves the tendency ((of activists, usually) to blame people who did not do something for the actions -- often criminal in nature -- of people who did. The blame game usually takes the form...

Who's Afraid Of The Big Bad Health Care Crisis?

The scary Obama-Joker face seems a perfect fit for this truly awful AFP article shilling for the President. But Obama, hoping to offer healthcare to the 46 million Americans who currently have no insurance, attempted to cool the boiling...

Union Thugs Beat Black Man

It seems the Obama health care plan is attracting a LOT of unwanted attention from dissenters. Kenneth Gladney, 38, a conservative activist from St. Louis, said he was attacked by some of those arrested as he handed out yellow flags...

What Is Wrong With Republicans? #2 In A Series

The Cash For Clunkers Program that I wrote about here is a rousing success. So much so that the $1 billion that was supposed to last three months is gone in a week. The Obama administration is telling lawmakers that...

All signs point to an endless recovery!

Sean Kinsell has a cute post (titled "SLOW: stimulus area ahead") about something he considers a relatively minor annoyance, the spending of millions of dollars in highway funds for "economic recovery" signs:The Pennsylvania Department of Transportation is spending $60,000 of...

Announcement

I am pleased to announce that a new blogger will be contributing here at Classical Values: Dave Price, best known to commenters as "Tall Dave." Dave is a regular blogger at Dean's World, a good friend of M. Simon, and...

A mandatory "right," imposed by the majority?

When I saw the title of Senator Bernie Sanders' piece -- "Health Care Is a Right, Not a Privilege" at Real Clear Politics, I was irritated, because I disagree wholeheartedly. But when I clicked on the link, expecting a philosophical...

So who owns "socialism"?

A question which has been plaguing me lately is whether it is possible to have a legitimate debate over socialism without sounding like a rabid, hysterical, over-the-top, far-right conspiracy theorist. It would be nice to have time for an essay-length...

Today's bigots

While Janeane Garofalo's charge that the Tea Party Movement consists of racists attracted a great deal of attention, I'm fascinated by the way she slipped in an admission that not all of the participants were white. It's almost pathological or...

trying not to care about unfair credit

Because I'm no political naif, it came as a shock to see that I had apparently been duped. (Well, at least so it appeared.) While catching up on email, I found an apparently official announcement from the American Family Association...

Distinctions keep getting blurrier

Because of inconvenient (and very time-consuming) personal business, I was nowhere near a computer I could use yesterday. Ironic, because I was surrounded by computers I could not use. (Like the old expression "water water everywhere and not a drop...

the airbrushing of the airbrushing

I'm surprised at Dave Weigel (a guy I usually respect, who's a Contributing Editor of Reason Magazine -- to which I am a loyal subscriber). Surprised and annoyed, and I'll explain why. After citing Glenn Reynolds' link to a Gateway...

Atlas Is Shrugging

First a couple of books mentioned in the video: Atlas Shrugged and The Road to Serfdom Stephen Moore, who you saw in the video, started the ruckus with the article in the Wall Street Journal called Atlas Shrugged': From...

First The Spending Then The Plan

President Present is about to unveil his new spending plan. His old plan was spend first and plan later. Could it mean the old way has passed its expiration date? President Barack Obama said Saturday his administration will outline a...

Meanwhile in Ann Arbor....

The things I miss, being here in Berkeley! Back in Ann Arbor, terrorism has been redefined -- by two experts on the subject. I refer to Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn -- who were promoting their new book to a...

Spain Is Depressed

Europe is hurting from the economic slow down but Spain is looking at a depression. Falling exports will hit Germany hard. Europe's largest economy is also the world's biggest exporter and will likely shrink 2.3 percent this year, it said....

Politics Doesn't Stop

Mr. Obama's big problems so far have been his relations with corrupt politicians. I think it will be a continuing problem with his new administration. However, his biggest problem is that the Democrat Party is prone to strangling the...

A Certain Lack Of Solidarity

A protest against Israeli operations in Gaza was called off because not enough Palestinians showed up. RAMALLAH - It's quiet in Ramallah. At the northern entrance to the city, not far from the mall, a new fountain spouts water. Next...

Siemens Bribes Governments For Contracts

Evidently it is not just Senate seats that are up for sale. Siemens AG apparently paid for contracts. The problem with such schemes is that the contracts go to the highest bidder. And now you know one of the reasons...

Bail Out Boat Sinking

It looks like the unpopular auto company bail out is going to have a tough time passing in the current Congress. Republicans were preparing a strong fight against the aid plan in the Senate, not only taking on the Democrats...

WorldNetDaily versus the State of Hawaii

Speaking of WorldNetDaily, the place has become almost a full time Birth Certificate Truther site. This morning I counted no less than eleven articles devoted to the subject at their front page. The crux of the matter is the claim...

Bailing Out Mr. Potatoe Head

Yeah. That is a funny spelling of potato. It is former Vice President Dan Quayle's trademark. Well Mr. Quayle is at it again. He is global investing chief of Cerberus Capital Management which owns Chrysler. And of course Chrysler wants...

"Will this put a stop to the idiotic rumors? Of course not!"

I have one of the most liberal comment policies in the blogosphere. No authentication or sign-in is required, and I almost never delete comments for offensiveness. (See these gems if you doubt me.) I have on rare occasions edited a...

A secret masquerade

I almost forgot about Halloween. I don't know how many readers would care, but I went to a party dressed as Hannibal Lecter. In a last minute idea, I wore a tuxedo with a goalie mask -- and while it...

Who's expanding the Culture War?

I hate the culture war. Yet I have been writing about it for years, spilling tens if not hundreds of thousands of words in post after post. As to how many hundreds of hours of my life this has consumed,...

Our news is not your news!

I was all set to write a post about the LA Times withholding the video of Rashid Khalidi's farewell party (which featured the Ayerses and the Obamas among other luminaries), when I saw that WorldNetDaily has stepped right up to...

No wonder they hate Joe the Plumber, Part 2

As Abe Greenwald makes clear, "Something Happened." One week ago, the Zogby tracking poll had Barack Obama beating John McCain by almost 10 points among likely voters. Today, it's a four-point game. Yesterday, IBD reported, "After seesawing between 3.2 and...

Ideological heirs

During the discussion of Ayers' and the Weather Underground's genocidal plan to murder 25 million Americans, it occurred to me that focusing on tactics (like terrorism and murder) tends to sideline the murderous ideology that drives them. In what I...

More on the respectable Mr. Ayers

In a riveting interview piece titled "Eyewitness to the Ayers Revolution,"Bob Owens has more on the incredible story of the plan (by Bill Ayers, Bernardine Dohrn, and others) to kill 25 million Americans:Pajamas Media: You stated in your interview in...

Trolling for success, and the paradox of "outrage"

I think I've figured out what may be going on with the Philadelphia Inquirer writer whose recent column argued that white people should not be allowed to vote, and because it touches on a longstanding paradox, I thought it merited...

Putting on Ayers

Reason links this very amusing YouTube video showing Bill Ayers calling the cops on reporters and Bill O'Reilly advising Obama to throw Ayers under the bus: (Via Glenn Reynolds who's having fun with O'Reilly putting on Ayers.) While I also...

Respectable dedication?

Yesterday's post about Ayers became so long with updates that it's looking cluttered. When I started it, I had not seen the video about Ayers and his buddies' plans to murder 25 million Americans, nor had I had a chance...

the singularity of the narrative

In the early days of the Obama phenomenon, I harbored hopes that Barack Obama's viable candidacy might cause a sea change in the way America sees itself in terms of race, as it does appear to be genuine evidence --...

Ayers didn't do enough

I've written a number of posts about Bill Ayers, and I was especially horrified by his organization's plot to blow up American soldiers at the Fort Dix NCO club. And while I know that terrorists are generally unconcerned with civilian...

How Bill Ayers became respectable

If there's one thing that's worse than Bill Ayers, it's his respectability. How did it happen that a guy like that came to be respectable? The same way bad people always become respectable, of course. Nice respectable people fail to...

Haven't I seen you somewhere before?

"He did not write a blurb for his book," Burton said. "He did not." So said Obama spokesman Bill Burton, specifically denying what Zombieboy had to go out and specifically track down. Here's the picture. Of what Barack Obama absolutely...

"In what kind of nation do the media investigate critics more than candidates?"

"He didn't ask for Senator Obama to come to his house. He wasn't recruited or prompted by our campaign. He just asked a question. And Americans ought to be able to ask Senator Obama tough questions without being smeared and...

Bill Ayers Is Personna Non Grata

The renowned educationalist Bill Ayers will not be speaking at the University of Nebraska. The Omaha World Herald had this to say: Just 11 days after next month's election, the University of Illinois-Chicago professor, William Ayers, is scheduled to speak...

The terrorist and the "plumber"

In the ongoing campaign to minimize Bill Ayers (discussed previously in this post and others), the latest meme is an attempted moral equivalency comparison between Obama's friend Bill Ayers the terrorist, and McCain's friend G. Gordon Liddy the Watergate burglar....

Mainstreaming the despicable

As I have been saying, there's a bigger problem than Bill Ayers' unrepentant terrorism and his present day radicalism, and that is his mainstream respectability. For. The. Umpteenth. Time. Bill Ayers should not be respectable or mainstream. For some reason,...

Youth and idealism versus age and experience

I didn't live-blogging tonight's debate, but I noticed the 25 year age gap as never before. I'm worried that current economic problems favor youth, for reasons that are neither fully understood, nor rational. The conventional wisdom is that it hurts...

"ex" bombers and double standards

Jeff Jacoby takes issue with the claim that calling attention to Barack Obama's close working relationship with Bill Ayers constitutes unfair guilt by association: ...Obama's defenders have been insisting that to call attention to these deplorable associations is to engage...

Funny for me, serious for thee?

In a discussion of the bizarre new rules of engagement (that all criticism of Obama is racist) Ruth Ann Dailey sees little hope for racial absolution: When Republicans finally started paying serious attention to the man who was poised to...

"note the plural noun"

So snarks Frank Rich triumphantly, in what he obviously feels is a summary "refutation" of Sarah Palin's remark about Barack Obama "palling around with terrorists." (Also characterized by Rich as a "violent escalation in rhetoric.") While I can understand why...

Economy bad! Change good!

I'm absolutely fascinated by the conflation that is going on. Now that McCain (who has barely mentioned Bill Ayers until very recently) has decided to finally say something about Obama's unrepentant terrorist buddy, he's being accused of not only ignoring...

Radically different values

McCain campaign has been getting a lot of gratuitous advice from the left lately. A lot of his enemies are saying that the reason he is losing is because his focus on Bill Ayers while the economy collapses makes him...

Barack Obama could easily clear this up!

Might Bill Ayers have ghost-written Barack Obama's "Dreams from My Father"? It's an intriguing question, and Jack Cashill offers a fascinating analysis. It's long, but here's an excerpt: To add a little science to the analysis, I identified two similar...

"Get control of their money and use it against them."

In a CNN Commentary piece titled "Why Ayers case is risky for McCain-Palin," Roland Martin asks a rhetorical question about the late philanthropist who funded the Annenberg Challenge:...never mind the fact that Ayers and Obama were involved in a multimillion-dollar...

Too Risque - Needs A Coverup

It seems that Mr. Obama is not proud of his friends. It also looks like McCain is going after this with everything he has got. I suspect this is not the end of this subject, either. I'd expect at...

Time to replay a golden oldie

This campaign has gone on so long I'm already getting nostalgic. No, seriously, I was just thinking back. Only six months back, but it seems like an eternity. Anyway it occurred to me that if Hillary Clinton could bring up...

Some things are worse than terrorism

If this doesn't make Barack Obama lose the endorsement of the Humane Society of the United States, I don't know what will:Senator Barack Obama, recently taking more criticism for his associations with unrepentant terrorist William Ayers and racist preacher Jeremiah...

Axelrod Makes An Offering

David Axelrod is having a hard time explaining when Mr. Obama first found out William "Bomber Bill" Ayers was a domestic terrorist. So when did Obama find out that Ayers had been a member of an organization the FBI called...

So why bother with the debate?

The election is over, says Howard Wolfson. It's over because the economy is more important than Bill Ayers, and therefore, what Wolfson calls "swiftboat tactics" won't work. While I often wish the election were over so I could blog about...

Ayers And Obama Care About Children

B. Obama and unrepentant terrorist Bill Ayers were on a panel together in 1997 sponsored by the University of Chicago discussing Bill's book A Kind and Just Parent: The Children of Juvenile Court. Bill thinks the government can be a...

The definition of "racism" changes to fit the Times

Sarah Palin commented on the New York Times story I discussed yesterday, and here's what she said: "Turns out one of Barack's earliest supporters is a man who, according to The New York Times, and they are hardly ever wrong,...

Above and beyond the crossed paths

Considering the number of posts I have written about Barack Obama's friendship and collaboration with unrepentant former Weather Underground leader Bill Ayers, I guess I should acknowledge -- however grudgingly -- that the New York Times has (on a Saturday,...

Vote for Obama! Or else!

Victor Davis Hanson has one of the best analyses of the current predicament vis-a-vis the election that I have seen in recent days. (A must read.) He thinks time is running out (that's the title of the piece!), and even...

So why isn't it cool for presidents to have terrorist friends?

Via Glenn Reynolds, I am delighted to see that the Ayers story is starting to be reported in the MSM. Well, the New York Post might not be the New York Times, or the Washington Post, but it's a start:CHICAGO...

So many dots! So little time!

I'm of two minds about the "Cloward-Piven Strategy" theory of Obama and Ayers, which is explained here and represented in the following chart: While I first heard about it last night thanks to a comment from Donna Barber, it is...

Barney Frank Frankly Not Frank

The Boston Globe, normally a reliable liberal paper, says that Massachusetts Congressman Barney Frank (D - Corruption) has a lot to do with the mortgage crisis. It opens with a quote from Cong. Frank 'The private sector got us into...

ACORN Is Not About Nuts

ACORN is about vote fraud in Michigan. Several municipal clerks across the state are reporting fraudulent and duplicate voter registration applications, most of them from a nationwide community activist group working to help low- and moderate-income families. Advertisement The majority...

Bracelets, NCOs, and improvised explosive devices

Remember Barack Obama's "me too!" bracelet? In an amazing twist, it turns out that the woman who gave it to him does not want him to wear it anymore:Ryan's father Brian -- who is no longer married to Tracy --...

I want my narrative shift, dammit!

"If This Campaign plays to type, McCain will hit an absolute home run tonight and the narrative will shift yet again." So says the Corner's Rich Lowry. With a buildup like that I guess I've gotta watch. Right now I'm...

First, they came for the radio talk show hosts...

Last night when I heard (via this link that M. Simon sent me) that the Obama campaign is threatening the licenses of TV stations that run NRA anti-Obama ads, I noted that Team Obama does not go ballistic unless the...

What? No Ayers bailout plan?

Tony Blankley tears the MSM a new one for its blatantly biased reporting as well as the more shocking non-reporting. Especially about Ayers: ...worse than all the unfair and distorted reporting and image projecting are the shocking gaps in Obama's...

"Old" news about to re-break?

According to the New York Sun, the McCain campaign is gearing up to talk about Bill Ayers:WASHINGTON -- The McCain campaign is gearing up to criticize Senator Obama for his past associations with the Reverend Jeremiah Wright and a former...

Whose fault will it be if he loses?

It's not too often these days I see a headline that says "Why Obama will lose" so I was fascinated. EDMOND -- When Benjamin Franklin was dispatched to France as ambassador of the United States in 1776, he won the...

The great Obama versus Obama debate? Why not?

Now that John McCain has suspended his campaign and postponed his appearance in the debate, it appears that Barack Obama is planning to go it alone:Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., McCain's representative in debate negotiations, told The Associated Press that McCain...

the coverup of the coverup of the coverup

The biggest story of the campaign is that a man running for president was not only a close associate, but was quite possibly even a protege of an unrepentant terrorist. It's huge, rapidly unfolding news, but aside from yesterday's WSJ...

Helping to bring about "change"?

Is education still an issue? Anyone who thinks it is, or who wants to learn more about Barack Obama's background in the field should read "Obama and Ayers Pushed Radicalism On Schools":Despite having authored two autobiographies, Barack Obama has never...

Fanning the frames of flames

According to Matthew Rothschild, "the race boils down to racism": With Election Day approaching, McCain surrogates or supporters may not be able to resist the temptation to fan the flames of racism. Expect the snippets of the Reverend Jeremiah Wright...

Just say no! To Bush!

Things look pretty bad for McCain right now. The left has been pushing the McCain=Bush meme for so long that a lot of people have come to accept it through osmosis. And now that there's been an "economic meldown," there's...

Thirty Missing Investigators

H/T The Patriot Room Welcome Instapundit readers. Here is something else that needs investigating. Crony Capitalism. Since the cronies are in Congress and include all of the Democrats (the Black Caucus is especially strong in that area) and many...

My late "Astroturf roundup"

Astroturfing by the Obama campaign? Say it isn't true! M. Simon posted about it last night, and the pieces are now all falling into place. The evidence is overwhelming. More here. Michelle Malkin has posted one of the videos they've...

Fannie Mae trivia question

While many have heard about how Barack Obama took over $100,000 from Fannie Mae ($126,349, according to Open Secrets), I think I've found the Fannie Mae trivia question for the day. Who turned down $100,000 from Fannie Mae? No, that...

Raines In Obama Parade

Ben Smith had this cute little piece out on 16 July of this year on the Raines - Obama connection. An ill-timed -- for Obama -- profile of former Fannie Mae CEO Franklin Raines, forced out in an accounting mess...

The Best Congress Fannie Could Buy

This is a long and complicated story about how Obama backers were behind the mortgage industry meltdown. It hast to start some where, so lets start with a well known Chicago name Penny Pritzker. It starts with a bank failure....

Out with the old!

Many people are being influenced (some may find themselves beaten into submission) by the idea that John McCain represents all that is "old," while Barack Obama represents all that is "new." I've lost track of the number of times I've...

Looking for signs of strength?

Last night, M. Simon touched on an important theme in American politics when he opined that Barack Obama, has come off as weak. And as I pointed out in Midway for Obama, Americans do not elect weaklings to office. How...

On The Verge

It seems things are not going well for The One we have been waiting for. In fact it seems like fewer and fewer people are waiting for him. The Democratic presidential candidate's slump in the polls has sparked pointed private...

Community organizing has a proud record of success

Jennifer Rubin has a carefully researched piece titled Obama and the Woods Fund ("Woods Hole" ought to be the outfit's name, but I guess that name's already taken). The whole piece is a must-read, I want to focus on a...

Forgetting leads to denial

Fascinating. Seven years into the war that officially started with the 9/11 attack, and even though Al Qaeda is serving up yet another boastful video, a large part of the world still claims not to know who was responsible for...

Some things are worse than regular pork

Here's some pork we can do without:Barack Obama was a founding member of the board of Public Allies in 1992, resigning before his wife became executive director of the Chicago chapter of Public Allies in 1993. Obama plans to use...

How to attack her

I hate to say this (and maybe I shouldn't be writing this post), but I think the best way to attack Sarah Palin is to make her out to be a far-right ideologue. If I am correct, that might mean...

cracking down on right wing fear-mongers

"The notion that somehow as a consequence of me knowing somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago, when I was eight years old, somehow reflects on me and my values, doesn't make much sense, George." Barack Obama to...

Bill Ayers' better (and successful!) half

I don't normally correct historical details in stuff I read, but in this case I thought I should, because it sheds a little light on the truly horrid background of one of Barack Obama's political sponsors who hasn't been getting...

Beginning Of The End

This ad will appear at the Republican National Convention. More at: Obama At The Bar Where There Is Truth There Is Fire Obama Threatens TV Stations Ayers On Kerry The Ad Obama Doesn't Want You To See H/T Power...

Where There Is Truth There Is Fire

Larry Johnson is having a look at the response by the group running the Obama/Ayers ad to the suit filed with the Justice Department asking them to block the airing of the ad.The Obama Memo argues initially that AIP's substantial...

What if Ayers really is mainstream?

That last post leaves me wondering about the "housecleaning" identified by Hot Air, and my question about why the Obama campaign would scrub its characterization of Bill Ayers as "mainstream." Especially because I enjoy playing Devil's Advocate, it occurs to...

"Why would Barack Obama be friends with someone who bombed the Capitol and is proud of it?"

Asking such a question can apparently lead to legal trouble. Amazingly (and stupidly, IMO), Barack Obama's campaign is taking legal action against a group which produced a video asking that question. The video (claims the campaign) is malicious and false....

The Ad Obama Doesn't Want You To See

Senator Obama has some associations he is not proud of. He wants to keep the above ad off TV. So obviously it is time to make the ad go viral. Email it to a friend. Heck. E-Mail it to...

Waiting To Cross The Line

No Quarter has this interesting bit of gossip: I asked a friend who knows someone who has seen the video to Michelle Obama making disparaging remarks about "white" folks. You know, those angry God hugging, gun toting mouth breathers. He...

Respectable Terrorism

Tom Maguire at Just One Minute has lots more on the Obama/Ayres relationship here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here. Whew. And that is just in the last week. Update: A...

Some things can't be vacuumed

The Chicago Annenberg Challenge Ayer/Obama affair (discussed infra) is finally receiving national attention. More here and here. (Via Glenn Reynolds.) While Glenn thinks the files have probably been "vacuumed of any seriously embarrassing matter," I think it's an embarrassment that...

Racist Videos -- watch at your own risk!

Yesterday I wrote a long post about Barack Obama's long relationship with Bill Ayers. What did not occur to me was that my criticism of Bill Ayers might very well be interpreted as racist. That's because my criticism of Ayers...

More than an "association"

This is not my first post about the unrepentent terrorist Bill Ayers (to say nothing of his thoroughly evil wife Bernadine Dohrn). I've long thought that Obama's relationship with Ayers is far more serious than his interactions with Jeremiah Wright,...

Gauging Your Tires

It appears that Republicans do agree that gauging your tires is a good thing. They are selling (at a hefty profit I might add) and giving away custom engraved tire gauges. Politico has the story. McCain aides are distributing them...

Who are they? Part IV

In a column titled "Hard to define, harder to shake," Inquirer columnist Karen Heller slams the blogosphere as a "courtesy free sewer," while taking issue with the word "elite": Connecticut is elite. New Jersey, with the highest median income in...

Please! Don't do something!

While I don't want to get hysterical about hysteria, I do find hysteria very tedious. Especially the high-decibel hysteria over the economy like that detailed here (quoting E.J. Dionne): This is the third time in 100 years that support for...

An unlucky jackpot

Citing a Rasmussen poll that John McCain is "Trusted More Than Obama on Economy, Iraq, National Security," Glenn Reynolds made the following observation:As I said before, a lot of Republicans don't like McCain, but it seems clear that the GOP...

What really happened? (I'll never have time to know....)

"The only news is that somebody within the administration has confirmed what a lot of us have thought for some time."That's Barack Obama's take on a "tell all" book by former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan. Having not read...

A tiny grave issue

In a piece with the irresistible title of "What Me Mullah?", Roger L. Simon looks at Barack Obama's wild inconsistencies on Iran, and foreign policy in general. On Sunday, Obama told the throng at Pendleton, Oregon: "Iran, Cuba, Venezuela --...

"a wonderful new voice selling old, discredited ideas"

That's what the McCain campaign is saying about Barack Obama, and it seems to be paying off. Defining one's opponent is a key task of any campaign, and simply put, McCain has had a long head start. As early as...

Harvard, Hamas, and elitist odds

In a piece called "Poison Ivy," Burt Prelutsky notes a correlation between bad American politicians and Ivy League Schools: ...much of what I don't like about American politics -- namely, American politicians -- can be traced back to Ivy League...

Condensed Hillary Obama Rush post (rant-free version)

I'll be out until late tonight, so I thought I'd write an uncharacteristically short post consisting mainly of links, with few comments. (It kills me, because I always want to say more. But OTOH, blogging is supposed to be done...

How many times can the shock wear off?

In a piece titled "Obama Rebounds From the Wright Stuff," Bill Bradley said something that worried me:Yesterday's CBS poll has even better news for Obama, showing him opening up a lead on Clinton again and also leading John McCain. This...

Obama Has A Friend That Can't Dance

This is a picture of Obama's close associate Bill "Bomber" Ayers. He looks so wimpy for a bomber. Let me see if I can decipher the captions. Let me start with the top one.The group was dealing with the...

Why they like them

In an earlier post discussing Barack Obama's political "friendship" with Bill Ayers, I maintained that people are missing a larger point. Wright may have talked the talk, but Ayers walks the walk. This, IMO, makes it necessary for Obama to...

The Coming Upheaval

This is a look back and a look forward. I was one of those "revolutionaries" back in the 60s. It all seems so stupid and puerile now. It must be by definition a youth thing, because despite the obvious...

Worse than Jeremiah Wright? As bad as David Duke?

Here's something Ben Stein calls interesting, and I think it is interesting:Interestingly, McCain chooses Ayers as a line of attack, rather than Wright (perhaps because he has his own troublesome pastor). "I think not only a repudiation, but an apology...

A bitch who prefers a cackling tone...

...singling out Clinton's voice as horrible necessarily invokes the woman-specific sexist context, even if that is not your intent. So says the common-sense-challenged Melissa McEwan, regarding a political souvenir pen that plays the famous Hillary Clinton laugh. Adds McEwan,So if...

"Hillary's terrorist ties"

Not my title, but the title of Dick Morris's latest (and interestingly-timed) piece documenting Hillary's "close relationship with known terrorist sympathizers and Hamas supporters": Her relationship with terrorists began in the mid-1980s when she served on the board of the...

Local hate is "stupid." "National" hate is a campaign issue.

Now that I'm back, I thought I'd look at two disturbing murders -- one local and one national. Here's what they have in common: Both were committed by teenagers Both are being called "hate crimes" by supporters of the victims.Beyond...

Not your typical closet

I've been reading Maureen Dowd for years, and I generally find myself irritated by her. But when she's good, she's good, and in her latest column, she's at her best. (Have to admit, I savored every word.) While it's obvious...

From gotcha games to passive-aggressive, true-feelings gotcha games...

I have no idea who Patrick O'Hara is, and I don't especially care. Certainly not enough to Google him and find out whether he's really the lifelong Republican he says he is. So for the purpose of this post, I'll...

A Little Exchange

Over at Just One Minute I spotted this exchange between some commenters.Obama's connections to Jeremiah Wright, William Ayers, Tony Rezko, and Nadhmi Auchi pose some serious questions about his judgement. Unless he gives the go ahead to Michigan and Florida...

may the best aroma win!

In an earlier post I attempted to apply some of my grandfather's wisdom to today's political mudslinging -- especially his advice to my father to "never get in a peeing contest with a skunk, because you'll smell like him." I...

Jokes that bomb

Former Weather Underground leader Bill Ayers (recently in the news for his Obama connections) has a "funny" sense of humor, and apparently no regrets about setting bombs: ''I don't regret setting bombs,'' Bill Ayers said. ''I feel we didn't do...

may the best votes win!

Regardless of who "wins" the Democratic primary elections next week, neither candidate will win enough delegates to win the nomination. All that will happen is that both will win more delegates in proportion to the vote. If the races are...

Premature withdrawal syndrome?

Matt Drudge sometimes pushes sensationalized stories, and I can think of few stories more likely to cause a sensation among political junkies than this:TALK OF HILLARY EXIT ENGULFS CAMPAIGNS Mon Jan 07 2008 09:46:28 ET Facing a double-digit defeat in...

Meanwhile Out West

It is starting to look more and more like Fred is every one's second choice. The candidate that everyone can compromise on. The Washington Post reports that Fred came in second in Wyoming picking up 3 delegates out of 12...

Ha Ha Huckabee, and Ho Ho Hillary

More words of wisdom from Ann Althouse:I don't see myself as the candidate-endorsing sort of blogger. Nor do I. However, sometimes I see myself as the opposite of the candidate-endorsing sort of blogger. My problem is that I just want...

Obama Is Silent

That is a truly novel approach to politics. Except when it comes to Obama's friend Antoin "Tony'' Rezko. Tony is a high powered developer of slum property with friends in City Hall. Well you know how it is in Chicago...

The hose of Babylon

In an op-ed titled "Trash rap makes Imus possible -- Gangsta shock-jocks gave him the seal of approval. Why are so many blacks stone silent about degrading lyrics and their consequences?" Earl Ofari Hutchinson offers a cultural sampler of acceptable...