Wannagetaburger

Finito

2010-10-13T23:25:00.000-07:00

From now until the cataclysm I hereby declare this blog completed. I need to move to a concept less somber and more personal. I'm developing that concept, so from now until doom I'll post only at Of Mouse Matters . --On this-&-that, occasionally.

This Baby Got Legs

2010-09-18T16:59:00.000-07:00

Think I'll try a post, since I seem to have abandoned my other blog.

That excursion into the personal was oddly satisfying, but it seems to have served it's purpose. I'll probably go back to it. I think much of it was not so much the discussion of the personal as it was of the private, by which I mean the emotions everybody has but which are of relationships, and so limited in public scope; but it's the stuff we each live by so it's of exceptional value; it is the stuff of the novelist. I will go back to it. --In this blog, in fact, even though I expect to discuss the public, I may try to create the tone of the personal. I'm not sure just what that means, but I think if I can create a personality observing events, rather than just be a mind stating a view, I might be doing something with more emotional meat-on-the-bones than has been the case before. --I'm not sure what I mean, I do have a sense of what I mean.

I think I'll discuss the Tea Party, a movement as exciting as any I've ever seen. Basically it's simply a movement against over-reach.

Generally, most people have a private life and it's that life which is life, everything else is peripheral. They might have knowledge of a corrupt class but if that class is distant it's merely offensive, it doesn't impinge on the private. America certainly has a corrupt class, which I would define presently as just about anybody who has power, and that class is no longer content simply with graft and splendor within their own set, they want control; and there are so many now, and they are so insistent, that they have pervasively penetrated to the private, and that's their over-reach. And so there is a rebellion, they're "mess'n with people".

I've been offended with people "mess'n" with me my entire life, from the first day I attended school and found I had a teacher who insisted I should stop playing with some really neat big green blocks I found and instead sit around in a circle and listen while she read "See Spot run". I couldn't believe anybody could do that to me and I've never liked any group since. I'm extreme, but everybody has this sense, just with different periphery; but everybody in the "ruling class" has the opposite sense, they will make you sit in a circle, and they will shove their crap down your throat.

This impulse to control I find a matter for analysis. I innately understand the impulse to independence, I innately understand the impulse to self-aggrandizement, what I find puzzling is the impulse to control when it simply isn't necessary in terms of acquiring personal wealth, and really isn't necessary either in terms of acquiring power --that is, if the purpose of power is to contend with another power; instead it seems simply the impulse to control the citizenry, for no real purpose other than to control the citizenry.

Why? I think it's the impulse of hollow men to define themselves as having substance: if you can control, you're superior; if superior, of substance. I believe this is the whole soul of the present ruling class, of the modern intellectual class. There's nothing there, not of capacity, understanding, belief, or achievement. Nothing. But there is control, and if there are enough, and enough of the same mindset, with virtually no opposition, they can control; and in the mind of a man of nothing something is a lot. It is substance, it's as much as he'll ever have, as much as he can ever feel.

I see the whole impulse of the nanny state, and of modern Academe, as a drive to establish self conception. This self-conception, of course is splendiferous, and in practice a conception, a "substance" gained, not by achieving excellence (difficult, no modern writer is Dostoevsky), but by changing nature. In politics it's the servant nature of the ruling class to the democratic populace that's changed; in everything else nature is changed simply by definition; excellence is defined as excrescence and (their own) excrescence defined as excellence. And you gotta swallow it. --If there are enough of them, at the very least they can shove it in your face ("Piss Christ").

--And so this is what the Tea Party is against. They know how inferior these empty men are, and so they rise up unafraid. And the empty men? They can't possibly understand a populace that does have values, that can recognize excellence, that can properly place themselves within that hierarchy of the excellent. Empty men can't possibly understand the motivation of people of spiritual substance, they can't possibly fathom the contempt they engender. And so they can respond only in the same way they have always: more control, and more contempt for those they can't comprehend. This is adding fuel to the rebellion. People who don't like people doubly don't like people when the feeling is returned. But there are more in the Tea Party than the elite, and as long as there is still a vote, there is simply no way the Tea Party won't win. I can't see any possibility that the movement can lose force before there's been an upset in power. Contempt is a mighty force. For the elites, once they've earned contempt, especially an activist contempt, they'll never again earn respect. No member of the Tea Party movement will ever again placidly accept authority from those they now oppose. This baby got legs.

(Argument a bit scattered, concentration horse shit, but in just one or two posts more I should be back in rhythm.) (The edit lost the bottom two paragraphs. May make them the next post.)

Refudiate

2010-07-27T19:44:00.000-07:00

Last post July 14. I see I am establishing a torrid pace. My need to change the world is great.

From my notebook:

8:33 PM. Rainbow out. At 7:47 it was like night looking out my bay window. Sunset is 8:46. I thought I would drive out to the woods and try to get in my walk before the rain came. Made it three quarters of a mile from the truck before the downpour. Downpour Nature sucks. I made it back to my truck sopped (but did keep my pipe lit). Driving back I watched the rainbow. --The great thing about outdoors just before a storm is the light. It's unworldly, often an eerie green, touches of brilliant yellow-white. It does express the wild, and that right here inside the city. On either side of these woods I go to there are miles and miles of houses.

So, Refudiate.

I copy the original tweet as it's printed in an opinion piece by Bill Kristol:

“Ground Zero Mosque supporters: doesn’t it stab you in the heart, as it
does ours throughout the heartland? Peaceful Muslims, pls refudiate."

Originally I heard that the nutroots were going wild over new evidence that Palin was a moron: "She can't spell." So I went to the tweet and read it three or four time. I can't spell either, I know that, I couldn't post without spell-check, but as I read through that tweet I couldn't spot the misspelling. So I went to some actual nutroots commentary and I found the misspelling was "refudiate". I never noticed. The word was perfect.

And the Kristol piece makes the same argument:

Just before noon on Sunday, July 18, 2010, Sarah Palin enriched the English language. Referring to the planned Islamic center near the 9/11 site in New York, she tweeted: “Ground Zero Mosque supporters: doesn’t it stab you in the heart, as it does ours throughout the heartland? Peaceful Muslims, pls refudiate.”
Presumably, Palin was wavering between “refute” and “repudiate,” and, in the heat of the tweeting moment, typed or BlackBerried or iPhoned or texted the new amalgam, “refudiate.” Pedants in the blogosphere got all huffy. Palin decided to double down. A few hours later, she follow-up-tweeted: “English is a living language. Shakespeare liked to coin new words too. Got to celebrate it!”

Perfect. This is a mind that creates, and does it subconsciously, as do all the best verbal artist. And the nutroots? well, they of course don't create, can't think, and can't recognize excellence. I suppose that's why they find their nitch is being left, where "excellence" is whatever they define as excellent, and always in opposition to what has historically, over millenia, been considered excellent. That's generally the way of the present intelligentsia: So inferior to the past, so inflamed in their self-assessment, the only way they can achieve stature is to define the inferior as superior, crap as excellence. For them it's a very useful orientation, they're very good at crap.

The core of Kristol's argument is this:

Not that there’s anything wrong with “refute.” It means, according to Webster’s Third, “to overthrow by argument, evidence, or proof; prove to be false or erroneous.” Nor is there anything wrong with “repudiate,” meaning “to cast off . . . to refuse to accept as having rightful authority . . . to refuse approval or belief to.” And they’re distinct. To refute is primarily an intellectual act; a thinker refutes a claim or an argument. To repudiate is a practical or political act; a political party repudiates a sect that holds a discredited (and perhaps refuted) argument. A refutation that isn’t followed by a repudiation is just talk. A repudiation that doesn’t include a refutation is just arbitrary action.

The case for linguistic innovation is this: We need a word that captures and conjoins the meanings of refutation and repudiation. And we need it now. To save the country from the ravages of contemporary liberalism, we have to refute liberal arguments and see liberal politicians repudiated at the polls. So the conservative agenda is, in a word, refudiation. Indeed, given the dramatic moment at which we have arrived, one might say that we now have the prospect of a grand refudiation of liberalism.

This is good stuff. One other fellow (unfortunately I can't find the article now and so can't link) noted that in the middle of refudiate is the solid separate sound "feud", and no politician more than Palin is in a feud with the present powers and conformist thought of American leaders.
--And this fellow also thought there might fairly be read an historical allusion, to the Refuseniks of the Soviet era, those who resisted the tyranny of their time.

So in one word: Refute, Repudiate, Feud, Refuse. Pretty darn impressive. And it's a political mind that does that kind of thing effortlessly.

Last note. This is something I may expand on later because it's so much fun. Why did Sarah go through seven colleges before she got her degree? That's considered a negative. It's actually a splendid fidelity and a consideration on her part, and anybody who can't instantly recognize it as that is really dumb. The components are these: Her beauty, and her first love, Todd Palin. --Man, I'm in love with Sarah.

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Just a bit on the oil spill. This from the NYT:

The oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico appears to be dissolving far more rapidly than anyone expected, a piece of good news that raises tricky new questions about how fast the government should scale back its response to the Deepwater Horizon disaster.
The immense patches of surface oil that covered thousands of square miles of the gulf after the April 20 oil rig explosion are largely gone, though sightings of tar balls and emulsified oil continue here and there.
Reporters flying over the area Sunday spotted only a few patches of sheen and an occasional streak of thicker oil, and radar images taken since then suggest that these few remaining patches are quickly breaking down in the warm surface waters of the gulf.

And from an email I wrote April 4, though I could have written it just a few days after the spill began:

A little on the oil spill. Will there be environmental damage? Probably not that much, the media and enviro-wackos like to hype these things. There are many factors but the primary protection is just the distance from shore. That gives the oil time to separate into different components, and gives the really volatile stuff--the stuff that does the greatest damage to living cells-- time to evaporate. By the time it gets to land it will primarily be just gunk. Gunk is hard on feathers and fur, but that's about it. (Some of this separation happens just rising up through one mile of water.)

This is pretty obvious stuff, both as to what would happen with the oil, and what would happen with the media. The MSM thought process is always correct.

To Begin Again?

2010-07-14T19:02:00.000-07:00

May Start posting again. Wow, a whole year-and-a-half, no posts. I must have been undergoing a great sorrow or something, couldn't be that I just slobbed-out.

I have discovered I have a secrete admire... Not a female unfortunately, but a reader, and if somebody reads what I write I guess that's all the admiration I really need, or am going to get. The lonely life. --This post is just to see if the blog still posts.

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Ha! Worked! And Three Day Post comes up too. So now all I've got to do is find brain and I can change the world.

Who Needs Numbers?

2009-02-26T20:55:00.000-08:00

Didn't go for my walk today --snowstorm-- so made a note in my notebook instead and am going to now type it out:

The state of the nation? Right now I'm more concerned with the state of my mental state. Things are very odd, and it's hard to get a grip on what has happened. All this spending, and no sense that it's money...?

Things are different. The left, as expressed by the media, has collectively gone stir crazy nuts. Nancy and Harry are nuts, most Democrats follow as if nuts themselves (and probably are) and our new President is a loon. But what I always go back to is the media, because it's their propaganda that makes it all possible.

During Clinton's time they just covered for him. His "indiscretions" were charming, his policies either just fine or at least not attacked, and if ever he was attacked, the attackers were destroyed. Sort of typical partisanship.

With Bush things changed. They made things up. Gitmo and Abu Grabid as torture? Repeated and repeated it becomes fact. And Bush a liar? A man honest to the core of his bone marrow? Well of course. Repeated and repeated it becomes fact, no matter the consequences to the nation as the effectiveness of his presidency was destroyed.

Bush destroyed and gone, they now have their own fantasy creation, Barack, and he, as they, is rather attracted to the idea that government can do everything... Of course, it doesn't really matter if it can or not, what they really mean is: Government can control every thing. In this we know they're right. Fidel, Mao, Stalin, they all proved that true, and that in fact is all the left really wants: control. With control Happy Days Are Here Again... because they're on top, never mind the nation.

This is the program for the next many months:

Domestically we're piling up debt that's functionally useless and that can't possibly be repaid. More significantly, within the legislation, regulatory structures are being recast such that, without debate, more power is being given to the government.

Over seas we're offending out friends and giving comfort to our enemies. The friend of my enemy is not my friend. Europe may soon see that, and turn against us. Oddly, that would be good.

Afghanistan? Lost. Without Musharaf it would be a hard fight anyway, but without Bush there's no hope at all. I think the military has to recognize they're slated for defeat. Somehow they have to make this war as quiet as possible. If they don't get headlines, and there aren't too many dead bodies, they'll still get money, simply because Democrats don't want the embarrassment of a visible defeat. Yet. But the jihad's want that defeat, now! Afghanistan is the new flypaper, but instead of Al Qaeda being drawn to the slaughter, it will eventually be the Americans who are... withdrawn... sometime after some Concord of Understanding is signed with somebody wearing a rag on their head.

Russia? They get Georgia and Ukraine.

Israel? They get the shaft. Fortunately they now have Bibi, and Bibi served during Carter. He'll know what it means to go it alone, and will do as well as any leader could. Note: This is interesting. Though Hillary is no friend of Israel, she's far more an enemy of Barack. And they understand each other. Barack is trying to tie her down with people like Samantha Powers and Susan Rice and Charles Freeman. Hill can't possibly out-Hamas those guys. So she might switch. She might go pro Jew. If she does that she'll have a power base here at home. A lot of people support Israel. She could announce "agreements". What's Barry going to do, fire her?

So everywhere there's a mess. --I wonder if Europe, on it's own now, will develop a backbone? --And here on the soil of the States of America we have insanity, as the left runs through the candy store.

How long is this going to last? It's two years before congress can be changed, up until then we've got nothing but public opinion.

There could be some change among the rational left. There are some. There are some who don't want to see things go topsy-turvy. There are some who, though they did their good deed by voting for a black guy, don't really want their good nature to be taken advantage of. They gave him his presidency, that's enough. He should be pleased and not screw around like he actually is a President. A black guy in the White House --Oh, heart be still! --but that's enough, that's all the change they want. If they get more change than that that's ingratitude, and they're going to become very annoyed.

I think many are already annoyed, but it's not an annoyance easily expressed. They can't attack him. Among other, obvious, reasons, that would reflect poorly on their judgment and their vote; so they have to attack something else. That will be "Those around him", and of course the poor policies undertaken because of poor advice --whatever. It will be largely criticism within a created "construct of the proper". The construct (to be worked out) will be fake, but within it, the expression of angers will be acceptable. And once the construct is established, there will be a lot of anger. --I see the possibility of his approval ratings remaining high, at the same time as a lot of people are totally sick of him. People will ba able to say "he's popular", but everybody will know he's not.

But my God, we're only five weeks into the next four years! A lot is going to happen. I think I'm going to take a real big deep breath, and try to make it through one more week.

Ice Is Out

2009-02-18T20:50:00.000-08:00

Cold on my walk, about 20, with a wind. All the ice out, except on both shores, where it clings yet as a white beach to ten or fifteen feet out. Three days ago there was just a little water-breach along the East bank, like a meandering stream. The next day, over night, 3/4 of the ice was gone, and over last night, the rest. Strange to see the wide river as open water in the middle of the winter.

The beavers seem not present. I checked where I thought their burrow might be. There are three large trees that yet hold that bank from collapsing. Their roots are undercut, leaving a tangle extending for or five feet up from the gravel of the river bed, which in low water now extends out several feet as a flat margin of narrow shore.

I walked on that margin, peering in through the roots. The three trees are separated each by about twenty feet. It does appear that within those roots there has been a warren of activity. I couldn't establish pathways, but there was something through that tangle that seemed somewhat the arch of hallways, and under the southern most tangle, high up, there appeared a hole disappearing into the bank. I couldn't get my face close enough to peer into it, so can't for certain say that it extended deeply, and it did seem to constrict to only eight inches in diameter, which seems very small for animals so large. Still, if there is a burrow, that's where it's at.

I know the beavers hadn't been there because there were no tracks in the light snow that fell early last evening. Tomorrow perhaps I'll take a flash light and see if I can make better judgments.

Note: Though it was cold, and I'd carelessly dressed one layer shy of warmth, I still was happier with the weather than yesterday when it was so spring-like. Today was winter weather. It's winter. I seem to prefer that the weather be appropriate to the season.

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On the present state of our Republic. It's my idea that the most important part of the Presidency is keeping the other party from having it. Except in foreign policy, the President doesn't really have to do much. If one party has both the Executive branch and the Legislative, the Congress can do all the stuff that's important and the President can just sit there, or maybe give a speech now and then, or shoot some hoops. That may be the Democrat/Obama model. Obama will be media, Nancy and Harry will run the country. That could work. --If it come to be accepted by the country that Obama is just royalty, with no real function, he may very well remain popular, because who's going to bother to dislike a guy who in fact doesn't do anything? Could happen. Change.

It is intriguing that so many people have a need to believe in this guy. I don't understand it. It is going to be interesting to see how Obama plays his role, how the press plays that role playing... --I just have no idea who's making decisions, except that it's perhaps anybody who can.

Perhaps the Stimulus

2009-02-17T17:45:00.000-08:00

Ha! I just looked up from my computer and walked to the window and it's begun to snow; --7:26PM. Everything from brown this afternoon to white. --7:28, first car, first tire tracks, so it hasn't been snowing long. Coming down heavy.

Interesting. On my walk earlier, so mild, most of the snow gone, most of the river ice broken open just over night, I felt a little sad. So like Spring, but not Spring; four weeks of winter yet, maybe six. Spring is joyous. Warm weather? a thaw? not so much... It's not actually clear to me why I felt that slight sadness. But it's snowing now, the night is downy, everything is pleasant............

Half Way There

2009-02-15T21:08:00.000-08:00

Back from my walk. Pretty leisurely, two hours since I left. You'd think that in two hours time I'd have a deep thought, but it didn't happen.

The big thing today was the grumble mumble of the ice. Standing on the west shore down where I watch the beaver was when I fist heard it. It was a thump, like somebody had dropped down a really big rock about twenty feet out. It startled me. In fact I instinctively glanced behind to see who could possibly have thrown such a very large rock so far. But it was just the ice, expanding. --Or possibly, falling.

We had five days of thaw. The ice was shallow-puddled all over, though there was no open water. It seemed the sodden ice was sinking, and large, half inch deep melt puddle-formed all over. We've since had three days of freeze, this the third day.

Initially I thought the cracking was due to the sodden ice refreezing, expanding, building pressure, cracking. But it seems to me that that pressure-cracking should be like an explosion, sharp. This was more like a mumble grumble thump, sometimes quite a series, and less than as if from out the open air than as if from underneath, beating up, muffled, as if in protestation seeking escape. There is no creature that could make that thump.

It occurred to me that with the five days of thaw we had a substantial run off and rising water. And then three days of freeze. The soft ice would have been refreezing while it was yet buoyed by the higher water. But in the third day now of freeze it would seem reasonable that the high water has passed. It would seem that the grumble thumps are simply the disjointings of the newly rigid ice as it settles to its lower level.

Did see the beaver, didn't see the Titmice.

And I do rest more easily now one month into the Reign of the Obama.

The Sovereign is not savvy, which is good. It means there will be chaos in his government... which would be bad were he a democrat but which is good as he's totalitarian. Such a man I do not prefer be skillful. It does appear his function will be to jut out his jaw and make pronouncements, very much pleased with his own voice, but policy being made by whomever can.

In the congress this will be Nancy and Harry; in the bureaucracies it will be various greens, or similar such nuisance types; and in foreign policy...? I don't know, but it will be a mess, with the Very Important Ones fighting for their own turf and policy. I expect Hillary and Gates, being both reasonably sane, will work together and probably have the most influence on how things actually function.

There is the question of who has the ear of the President. I don't think it matters, I don't think he's capable of making a clear statement, or committing himself to a clear position. The last one who talks to him will think he has his support. This, of course, will be all within a liberal and "international" spectrum, but at least there will be internal conflict, confusion, misunderstanding, hard feelings, ill-will; and sabotage, scapegoating, and back stabbing. This is all good. The nation will drift and be damaged, but at least there will not be developed a well ordered and self-confident tyranny. All Hail the Confuse'd One... at least until Republicans regain majorities.

The press? They'll always be liberal, but liberals do squabble. With no internal enemy now left to be defeated the press will lose unity and begin to differ within itself. Never knowing clearly, or for very long, just whatever the administration's policy might be, they'll advocate their own. They'll argue. Sometimes they won't even like each other. This is good, Blue on Blue. They won't be able to so powerfully shape the opinion of the generally indifferent citizen, who can only receive a simple signal. No signal no ease. The casual citizen wants to know what to believe. It has to be something that can be picked up out of the atmosphere: Truth. Discordance is confusing, they will seek the clearest tune. That could be Republican.

I do think Republicans showed splendid unity in opposing the stimulus. It is a stinker, and will stink more as the days go on. It seems to me it will be a unifying force all the way through 2010; and with more rot and stink to come I'm thinking America's future isn't looking in quite such bad shape as only days ago I had still feared.

All of this pleasure in chaos and in the certain damage that will accrue to American interests is of course respondent on a recognition that it's better to have chaos than efficiency when the intent is the destruction of American values.

The only gift that the Little Indonesian brings to us is his incompetence.

Morning Muse

2009-02-11T11:14:00.000-08:00

I've kept up somewhat with the news, I haven't kept up with comment. My primary reason for comment is to keep track of the development of my thought. Thought tends to morph into: I've always thought that. In fact, thought does develop. Insight, of whatever its extent, comes slowly. Seldom are things seen beforehand as clearly as they after are remembered as "obvious". Clarity is always after the fact. Anything before the fact is speculation, and is never so firm as it's remembered. So I try to record my stumbles toward understanding. I've written little because in fact I'm uncertain what's happening. This morning I woke with an "insight". I think rather than an insight it's more just a slightly developed clarity of feeling and expectation. I put it down in my notebook, and now I'll put it down in this blog.

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Woke with some insight on Barack... but it has disappeared. I'm presuming that he has no political talent whatsoever, that he's totalitarian, partisan, and an "internationalist". His appeal is purely that he's black and pleasant. That will wear off on those who are not totalitarian, partisan, and internationalist, and that's most of America (where "partisan" means nut left liberal). So dissatisfaction toward him is going to rapidly become huge, but it may not show itself in the polls. It still is just not acceptable to say nasty things about our first pickaninny as President. The dissatisfaction instead will be expressed towards policies. The first is going to be the "stimulus", which everybody recognizes is just debt. It's the debt that's most scary, across all political lines. The specifics that incur that debt are of course upsetting to Republicans.

The specific question I have --the "insight, (which fled, though remains as a sensation) is just: Is the guy really the dodo bird he seems, or does he in fact have some very secrete (and sinister) political brilliance?

There's always a tendency to believe evil has brilliance. I think that's because evil is felt as a force, not as the choice and act of a specific, limited man. If God is good, and beyond our human understanding, so to, evil, as the intrinsic opposite of the good, is felt as a force beyond our understanding and beyond our capacities. That's why, if Barack is seen as evil, he's seen as brilliant. But he may in fact just be a deceitful little dope.

I'm presuming the later. but still, he does have the Presidency, and the constitutionally ascribed powers of that office; he does have the press; and he does have the congress. He can do a great deal of damage. The question is: How much? For how long? And: Can we recover?

But the question again is: Is there some force out there now that is more intelligent than seen in the normal ebb and flow of liberal and conservative?

Barack, and the Democrats, clearly believe they don't need the center or Republicans. "I won", and "We won, we wrote the bill", that's their attitude. Their intent is simply to muscle things through. Can they do it?

I think their idea is that with the levers of power, and with the propaganda of the press, they can Anschluss through with such force that in two years there can be no recovery. They'll control power, information, money, and elections. They will be rulers, and Americans will be subjects.

This is an attempt to destroy our American democratic experiment. It's no different in attempt and intent than the Lenin/Stalin take-over of Russia. But there is a difference. America is not Russia. We've never had a Czar, and I don't think we'll tolerate one now, whatever it's soft and beguiling name. Slowly we do move toward more government control, but I don't think we're yet Europeans. I think once the push towards serfdom and a ruling class is recognized, there will be resistance. At a certain point there will be Americans who will fight --and if this recognition comes early, and it might, it could be that the resistance will be merely a simple triumph at the ballot box. --I think that to establish servitude simply through manipulation, without an army, is probably beyond the Machiavellian brain of anyone just now heading the Democrat party.

But I do see a time of troubles, and I do see lasting damage. This is not a good time, but I do not yet see an irreversible defeat.

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So that was my note. We are in an ideological struggle, this is between the totalitarian and the free. It's forever. The totalitarian wins, always, in time. Free men are rare in history. But I don't think the time is yet.

The Age of Bozo, Day Second

2009-01-22T23:20:00.000-08:00

I don't know how long I'm going to maintain a daily comment. This is two days in a row now and I'm becoming fatigued, but the threat American tradition faces is of Democrat expansion of governmental power, and how effective that will be depends a great deal on how effective their President becomes. So I follow him a bit. I presume he's politically dumb as a stump, I would like to find evidence that he is. If he's really dumb he might create ill-will even on his own side, and that would slow down "change", which would mean some chance to preserve freedom.

First, a correction. I said yesterday that his first phone call was to Hamas. It actually was to Abu Mazen, Fatah. Don't know how I made that mistake but this is marginally less bad. He isn't giving legitimacy to those who are presently killing Israelis, only to those who have killed Israelis in the past, and will in the future. --I do note though that today he somewhat made up the slight to Hamas by calling on Israel to open the boarders to Gaza, while Hamas busily rebuilds it's capacity to kill more Jews. This has to be a comfort Hamas, somewhat. At least it's not so evident he's playing favorites between them and Fatah.

And I note he's also becoming firm with some other disrupters of orderly government, the press. Never mind that they're in his corner, that's not really the same as obedient. He was asked a question when he walked into the press room. Imagine that! Of course he was offended, and placed his hand on the reporters shoulder, and sternly explained to said reporter that when Obama walks into the press room, it is for the purpose of indicating that he is most gracious, it most certainly is not meant as an opportunity for the press to be the press. --'Course, the press hasn't been the press for years, so probably (rightly?) he assumes that his concept of the role of the press is the correct one and that it's just that, just now, a tiny infection has developed. Very tiny, but clearly in need of the healing touch of a gentle hand. No need to let things get out-of-hand. --Perhaps this is the way they do it in Zimbabwe. Barack would know that better than I. Or maybe that's just the way community organizers handle things in Chicago?

So that's all I know presently for day two but it's going to have to do for day two because I do not have much time to actually read much news.

Day 1 & 1/2

2009-01-21T23:16:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I bent over and kissed myself good-bye and today it's night and I'm still here? Wonders.

I hear Obama was in the Big House today, behind a big desk, being President. He made phone calls. Called Hamas, just to chat. Didn't want them to feel left out. So thoughtful.

What else? I guess no more Gitmo... in a year, whatever. In a year he ought to be able to decide what he wants to do. Or not. In a year no one will care.

I guess he had a very firm meeting with military types, on Iraq and Afghanistan, giving them the word on what's what. I imagine they said: "Yes Mr. President," and were just darn glad to get out of there finally and back behind their own desks...

And Mr. Barack, President, sits behind his. His is a bigger one.

And so the end of the first day. I imagine he did a lot of profile, with his jaw, I mean.

I wonder how long before it becomes clear this guy is nuts?

Our Little Indonesian

2009-01-20T00:20:00.000-08:00

Since we have inauguration tomorrow, less than ten hours, I thought for the record I'd put down my present judgments.

--What does Barack believe? --Talk to five grad students, ask them what they believe, take the average... or just take any one of them at all, it won't matter, and you'll know what Barack believes... at least as well as he does.

--Note: This belief will be all "conscience", but no courage. And it will be pragmatic. Pragmatic here, as is general with the academic class, will mean self interest, but in "good conscience" of course, and for noble purpose.

--So Barack will be pragmatic, no doubt about it, and "pragmatic" will be whatever the press just loves. That means a lot of speeches and a noble thrusting out of his chin and a calling out for higher things. Fundamentally, domestically, that means he'll do what congress does. Internationally he'll just keep a lid on. He couldn't care less about America's strength in the world, or place, or wealth, or reputation, as long as his reputation is high. --International things are going to bite his butt, and at some point he will bomb somebody, just because he don't like gett'n his butt bit.

--What does he really want? I mean his inclinations, the deep things, not his "beliefs" such as whatever they might be:

--First, Adulation.
--Second, votes (same same).
--Third, Reform. This means crapping on absolutely everything normal Americans love, because he knows America is evil. He does want to protect the rest of the world from these people he rules, but won't work at it too hard because he actually doesn't care that much for the rest of the world either; he will focus on America because he knows America really needs work.
--And he wants power. For himself I think he just wants grandeur, but in as much as he actually has any political philosophy I think he wants power for government. Because he really does have a great deal of contempt for this land, for her history, for her inferior masses. He does want to set things right; and though he doesn't know quite what that means, he does know it means rule by the elite. (Probably will get some help from John.)

So there you have it. We have a President who's a foreigner and a snot, sort of half French and half East Asian. The question is: Does he have any political skill? I really doubt it, I think his only skill is image. As long as he's popular he will have power, but I suspect that behind closed doors just about any politician of experience, opposed to him, will be able to tie him in knots. Blago did it.

So? Four years...

Will the press turn against him? No, you can't turn against a black guy. If it turns out he's not black they could turn against him --Clarence Thomas, for example-- but I think he's black, that is liberal, so he'll always be just fine. Two exceptions: While they can't turn against a black guy, they can fall silent, and perhaps sometimes actually discuss issues or report news... and it is possible that "embarrassing" news might develop. And again, behind the scenes, there might be a tremendous struggle for power and turf, and I doubt very much he'll have any control over the government at all.

So who will be President, the one actually making the decisions? I know he has his publicity team, they'll continue full throttle, but who'll actually make policy? I just don't know. I expect it will become a mess of bailiwicks in conflict. A foreign policy flare-up will perhaps give the first indication of what he's made of. A flare-up is one area where there does have to be one President. I sure hope for something soon. (Foreign flare-ups do have a way of coming out of the blue.)

So: Indonesia, Hawaii, Harvard, Corruption (Chicago, that is) --that's what we've got for a President. A real American.

And I do think he's nuts, living in a total fantasy of entitlement narcissism: The World Is Me.

But we'll see.

Last Night

2009-01-15T18:41:00.000-08:00

Bush just gave his last public speech, a brief, gracious fifteen minutes of farewell. He warned of continuing threat, but said he was confident of America's success because he was confident of American character. I notice he didn't say he was confident of the character of our congress, or the character of any of our leaders. He did say something to the effect: "I, as all Americans, pray for the success of our next President." I am very much going to miss this President, he's a good man to the core. I do not gladly welcome our next President, and I do not wish him success.

To hope and to pray that our next President will be a success is of course just an American piety; it contains the assumption that he will follow policies that are wise and good, that his success will be of benefit to America. I don't operate within that piety. Men are good or bad, and I do not pray for the success of a bad man.

This might be a good time to post a comment I made to another blog just a few days after the election, where the argument was made that we should be proud that America had elected its first black President:

Why should Americans be proud that they've elected an inexperienced black man to be our President? I feel shame. I had hoped that at some point some black governor of centrist orientation and proven competence would become our President on the basis of merit. Instead we've elected a black man purely on the basis of image.

This has been a deeply racial election, it will be a deeply racial administration; and since I expect it will be powerfully leftist I deeply hope it will fail.

It is interesting, that if I get my wish, that a leftist administration is defeated, it won't be because the right successfully parried the left, it will be because "racist" whites destroyed a black man. The black man who in the street today can say: "Now we have no excuse not to make something of our lives," instead, after the crumbling of the Obama administration, will say: "See, we don't stand a chance. Even if you're President the white racists will destroy you." I presume a century of racial hatred following a failed Obama presidency.

Of course, if the man proves himself wise, he could succeed. I don't expect it. If he proves himself clever, he might change the nature of our liberties. I don't want that.

I fear our first black President is the worst black President possible. I fear the consequences will be enduring.

I'm immensely skeptical of this young fellow. I see nothing in him of command or capacity, love of America, or the fundamental decency of George Bush. I have no idea how he will govern, I just fear that none of his instincts will be the same as mine. --I do note that so far there has been very little criticism that the critics of Obama are racist, but then the critics of Obama so far are simply ignored, barely noted; and there hasn't been much criticism anyway, probably for the very good reason that he's not yet President and nothing he says very much matters.

--------------
Just spotted this on Drudge:

OBAMA SKIPPED BUSH GOODBYE?

At 8 pm, just as pres bush began his farewell speech peotus obama left blair house for the 30 second drive to equinox restaurant on connecticut and I st.

Pool is holding outside... DEVELOPING...

As I said, the instincts of the peotus and mine are not the same. "Peotus", by the way, is a Drudge coinage, it's the first time I've seen it. Very good.

---------------
And guess I will close with this, a quotation from Henry Adams that I just spotted last night:

Power is a poison. Its effect on Presidents had been always tragic, chiefly as an almost insane excitement at first, and a worse reaction afterwards: but also because no mind is so well balanced as to bear the strain of seizing unlimited force without habit or knowledge of it; and finding it disputed with him by hungry packs of wolves and hounds whose lives depend on snatching the carrion.

And more directly to the point:

The effect of power and publicity on all men is the aggravation of self, a sort of tumor that ends by killing the victim's sympathies.

Check. It appears that the young man not only does not respect the man who is still his President, but went out of his way to show a discourtesy. The tumor of insensitivity seems already to have claimed its victim... and he's still just peotus.

Resolutions

2009-01-01T22:43:00.000-08:00

Think I'll stick with my tried and true:

--Drink more water;
--Drink less coffee;
--Smoke less;
--Exercise.

Actually, I have recently made progress in drinking less coffee. Iron will. And my exercise isn't that bad.

Matters of significance:

--Dumbo soon will be President. Absolutely nobody knows what he will do, or if he has any competence at all. Or if he's sane.

--Blagojevich. I'm pulling for him. I expect that in the rough and tumble of politics he's far smarter than dumbo, and I would like to see that illustrated.

--Israel and Hamas. I very much hope Israel is serious this time. Even though they seem to have dithered since that first very excellent day, I can't believe they're not going to crush Hamas, or at least decisively and clearly whip and bloody them. They simply can not suffer another defeat such as they suffered from Hezbolah in '06. If that happens again no Arab will ever again fear a Jew. Israel will have immense firepower but female courage. They have no choice but to do damage, and almost certainly that means at the cost of their nation's blood.

Some have argued that this is a political stunt, something to bring Labor and Kadima up in the polls. I can't believe that. There's too much time yet before the elections, six weeks. In six weeks everyone will know if it was a stunt or not. If it's a stunt, Benjamin is elected. --It is possible Olmert, Livini, and Barak miscalculated the difficulty, but I just don't believe it's possible they can quit at any point where Hamas can plausibly claim victory. --I would note Egypt and Saudi Arabia want Hamas defeated, and Egypt, amazingly to me, has been publicly severely critical.

--The economy? Who knows? I think the downturn has been panic, and that things should stabilize soon at some lower level of world wealth but without depression. I just don't see any lessened desire either to produce or to consume, and I see no destruction that should severely damage either; I just see fear... of what might happen. As that eases money should flow again and commerce resume. And the lower oil prices are a trillion dollar stimulus. --It is very necessary to avoid a government stimulus. That's debt, an infertile expenditure, and more governmental power and control of the citizenry. That I fear more than loss of wealth.

--Global Warming? It's becoming a public joke. Again, the great fear there is increased governmental control through cap & trade or whatever regulation they come up with, but it's so expensive, and now so laughable among so many, that I just don't see it as a great threat. Environmentalists will continue to do damage, they're always a net negative, but since there will be countervailing force the damage shouldn't be disastrous.

--And so forth and so forth...

--And dumbo. This really is the unknown. I consider him inept, dishonest, cowardly, totalitarian, and a friend to America's enemies. I'm fairly certain about all of that, but that doesn't mean I'm at all certain what he will do. --I wonder what the press coverage will be once decisions start being made? It still will be necessary to extol his great virtues, and certainly necessary to defend him against any attack from Republicans, still, a decision (whoever actually makes it) is something solid, there has to be a response. I will note that I think the first severe criticism is going to come from foreign nations. I expect most nations actually feel a patronizing contempt for him: only America would be so unsophisticated as to elect an affirmative action black as their leader. Once he starts doing things Americans do, they will pat him on the head, and while being polite, ignore him as well as they can, more so than they've ever ignored any other President.

These are my prejudices. I presume they're correct, but I just don't know. That's why I like this Blagojevich stuff so much. It's one area where he actually has to take some position in the three weeks yet before his inauguration. It will be the first evidence of how he will respond to a genuine political difficulty, and so will be the first real information we've ever gotten about him. --So far he seems to be getting his lines from Harry Reid. But Reid is going to get whipped.
----------------

--And will note that on my walk saw the Eagle again today. A great pleasure, but what the heck does he eat with everything all frozen over? It occurred to me that with those great wings he can't possibly get through the brush to get a rabbit. What the heck does he hunt?

Reverie Christmas

2008-12-25T22:14:00.000-08:00

Strange Christmas. Now that it's past --mere minutes left in Christmas Day-- I recognize how strange it was.

Yesterday, Christmas Eve, I spent alone in my house. It's hard to get invited to a Christmas Eve gathering, Christmas Eve is for families, and I wouldn't have accepted an invitation anyway, I wanted to be alone and see how I handled it. Third Christmas alone. The first two were not good, this one was a delight. And very odd.

Somewhere into the evening I had a memory of a Christmas past, a very splendid memory. --What I noted as the evening continued on was that I continued to have such memories. They would come unbidden, sometimes for a moment, sometimes for minutes, and they were keenly vivid, images of past times and past joy. Intermittently I did feel some sadness, but the emotions most often were those of remembered affections-- and those remembered affections were more real than the present.

That's gone now, the end of Christmas Day. Apparently there was some odd mental function that brought back the past in memory so clearly that it was present. There was no struggle toward that past, it merely appeared, and it was my life....

But, as I say, it's gone now. It doesn't hurt to recognize that at one time that past was not memory.

I do think this will be my last such Christmas. I think reverie can be real only once.

Maundering

2008-12-22T20:13:00.000-08:00

Since I find it impossible to take much interest in our present politics (uncertainty, dread and distaste, is not interest), but since I want to post, I've decided to put down a note from my journal:

-------When I woke from my little nap I felt sad and thought that my life is pointless. Well, my life is pointless. But then it occurred to me that there doesn't have to be much of a point for there to be a point, there just has to be something. The more important thing is to avoid self-absorption, and most significantly, to avoid selfishness. The personality that avoids selfishness simply can't long remain deeply unhappy --or at least, in avoiding selfishness, will not be drawn further into unhappiness. I'm certain this is true, and in this respect my orientation and aspirations are wholesome.

But then it occurred to me: What if the personality is dominated by selfishness? Will it be further drawn into selfishness? the argument being that to satisfy a corruption the corruption must ever become greater? --Actually, why do I speculate about this? I know the answer: There's a force in corruption that ever moves toward greater corruption. The personality that has lost the specific countervailing moral aspiration is a personality doomed.

But note:
The countervailing moral structure must always be there, it's simply the way we're made; but in a personality given over to a deformity, the countervailing moral expression will be a hypocrisy, and a very self-satisfied one at that, proportionate in its assertion to its failure in fact. The great hypocrite is greatly sincere. The need to countervail against an evil impulse is universal, and it will succeed in one way or another; but the wholesome personality struggles against what is indeed an evil, while the deformational personality simply separates the evil impulse from the good and finds both very well satisfied indeed, thank you...

This strikes me as true. It would explain how a morally wretched personality can appear to be a quite happy one. Self-satisfaction is a moment of happiness, at least during the commission of either the selfishness or the hypocrisy. But it doesn't strike me that this can be a quiet personality. It seems to me there would have to be a constant struggle for some narrow advantage on the one hand, and fundamentally, simultaneously a boasting of compassion and fine feeling and personal sacrifice on the other.

And so much for tonight's wisdom.

Note: I'm arguing that hypocrisy is the fulfillment of an internal need, not merely a satisfaction of a social demand.

Obama Poem

2008-12-20T03:02:00.000-08:00

This is a poem by the youthful Obama, with my interpretation, sent as a comment to The American Thinker.

Underground

Under water grottos, caverns

Filled with apes

That eat figs.

Stepping on the figs

That the apes

Eat, they crunch.

The apes howl, bare

Their fangs, dance,

Tumble in the

Rushing water,

Musty, wet pelts

Glistening in the blue.

---------
Comment: Dec 20, 02:52 AM

The Obama poem isn't bad.

First note that though the beginning line speaks of "Under water grottos..." the poem isn't titled "Under Water", it's titled "Underground". The obvious title isn't chosen, which suggests an intended complexity. "Under water" can simply mean "out of sight", but "Underground" is associated with particular types: spies, terrorists, criminals. And note that while ordinary people can live in "grottos, caverns" in these grottos these particular "out-of-sight" people are described as apes. Perhaps Obama doesn't like them.

These apes both eat figs and step on figs; that is, they both devour and destroy. Criminals, especially political, are commonly described as those who devour and destroy.

And note that in "stepping" on these "figs" (the little people) there's a deliciousness to it, there's a pause to note "they crunch". And in that pleasure the apes "howl, bare / Their fangs, dance, / Tumble in the / Rushing water". These guys really enjoy hurting people.

And note that "Rushing water" suggests not the sea, but a river, one that might flow through a city, much like the Chicago the young Obama later came to know.

Finally, what is the end of this devouring, destruction and celebration? It's "Musty, wet pelts / Glistening in the blue." Now, "wet pelts" from rushing water can not be "musty"; but consider "pelt" as "pelf", that is "ill gotten gain, booty." Then it makes a lot of sense: a political mobster makes money (not respected by the poet, thus "musty"), which he flashes about, "Glistening". This ill-gotten money glistens in the "blue", which might suggest the blue haze of something like a Speakeasy.

Give the guy a break. This is a good poem. He would have made a far better poet than he's going to make a President.

Go Blago!

2008-12-10T21:11:00.000-08:00

So, Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich has been arrested and released, something about bribes and trying to sell a Senate seat. Some people are saying nasty things, some people seem to be saying that he is not a very nice person. Heavens! He's from Chicago! When one is from Chicago one is bathed in radiance and in the white light of healing grace.

I will not hear it said that this is not so!!! The One is from Chicago, and he shall heal the planet. The Gov, though perhaps not quite so extraordinary, in that he is from Chicago also, shall heal as well... like, how about Illinois politics in general and Cook County in particular? He can do it, I know, I have faith; just give him some time.

I do like his options. The Dems want another Dem to fill the now very vacant chair of the One Who Ascends --all they need is a vote, any body will do-- but if Blag doesn't appoint, there might be a Special Election, and if a Special Election, maybe a Repub. Harry wouldn't like that.

But Blag has power now --no future, but power. He can sit on the appointment, he can sit on his Governorship, he can veto legislation, ignore legislation --he can appoint himself Senator anytime he wants... and it seems to me he's got a ride for at least two years.

And it seems he has a story to tell. White Knight Blagojevich! It seems to me that if he put his mind to it he could cleanup Chicago politics once and forever. This I know to be true. Faith! Those from Chicago are pure. Let them acorns fall where they may.

We're all George Bush Now

2008-11-12T23:31:00.000-08:00

In keeping with my slowly developing cognitive insight into emotional matters that to a non-dope should be instantly obvious, I don't think that the hostility I suffer from Obamabot friends has anything to do with me. The very opposite; they don't see me, they see George Bush. --Of course, they never saw George Bush either. He was merely the enemy they could hate. Because he wasn't really there, but merely held the power they wanted for themselves, their hatred didn't have to have any truth to it, or fairness or balance or any connection to reality at all. He was merely a power to be destroyed. The usurper of their power.

Hatred is a habit. What George Bush suffered so viciously and unfairly for eight years I suffer now, but not for any power I have but for my threat to the power that now is theirs. That this makes no sense, being that I'm just a guy who engages in conversation, doesn't matter at all, the habit has formed the mind, and where power is the consideration, hatred is the expression.

I shouldn't be surprised. This is just a simple transference. In political conversation these last years, any defense of Bush led to a vicious outburst against him. They were very angry at me, of course, but it was Bush they attacked. Bush isn't there now when I attack Obama, but the hatred is, so they attack me. --There is some restraint yet, but I'm sure it will pass.

Is there anything optimistic in this? Possibly one thing: There is no cost to attacking a President, especially since most of the people you know are going to agree with you anyway, but there is quite a cost to attacking a friend. They won't be your friend much longer.

I see some value to this. The people who so viscerally support Obama are going to become a closed group. That means that while they might be thugs, at least their numbers won't spread. They will encyst themselves... at least until they get their brown shirt Civilian Corps, when they can add fear to their bad manners.

The problem of course is that there are so many of them. They will have the power of the government, which is so utterly immense, and they have the press, whose function anyway is to offend the inferior (so they can't be deterred by losing the friends they don't have anyway.) I'm not saying we're not in for a very hard time, only that the hate-the nonbeliever phenomena, considered as a social disease, is to some degree self-limiting.

--It is interesting. He's only been just President Elect for one week now, and in my judgment he's already stacking up negative chits for his handling of the economy. Thank the Lord for irrationality, it can have it's utility.

--The people who don't like him now because he's a Democrat, are going to like him even less as time goes on. Bad times create anger, and the bad times haven't really yet hit. It takes awhile for Wall Street to trickle down to Main Street.

--My immediate concern these last few days has been personal, just how to conduct myself as the daily arguments arise. I still don't have the response fully worked out, because the element of personal attack is new... --I am wondering what part of the Barack coalition will crack first? There always are fringe groups. When the left has power the left fractures. Since Republicans are so weak now that might be their greatest strength. The Obama team is disciplined, they're Chicago. I'm not sure about the expanded team. After all, there is no vision other than government power; but it's clear, power is meant more for me than thee.

--(At some point I'll consider the Obama/Axlerod intent: New Russian or Old Soviet?)

--I am curious how academics are going to respond, because, while they now have "one of their own" it's "not really", he's affirmative action. I'm wondering when the snottiness and snark will start.

I Know Who's Side I'm On

2008-11-11T23:45:00.000-08:00

My, these Obama types sure can get angry. And turn on a dime, never mind this business of friendship or respect. But I guess that's the nature of conversion, you leave your past behind.

Think I'll type out a note from last night:

Woods walk fast. Was losing the light again. I simply have got to start getting out earlier but it's hard to get out early when night time comes in the middle of the afternoon.

Did see the big beaver mama. That was kind of interesting. I was on the North river slowly moving north, right on the shore line --and she came swimming past me from behind and maybe just fifteen feet out. A few feet farther, she turned, seemed to inspect me, and then went swimming pell-mell back and out of sight. I don't speak beaver and so wasn't able to inquire as to her thoughts, and she may not have spoken anyway, but it sure did seem that she swam to overtake me for some reason of beaver consideration and then, satisfied, rapidly swam a very long way back.

I also noticed there are no Robins. For a month now I've been seeing dense numbers in varying small sections of wood, maybe a couple of hundred in a mere twenty yard radius. At first I thought it was a flock working its way south --but then I continued to see them here and there day after day. They sure were being leisurely in their migration. Then it occurred to me what I was seeing was a succession of flocks, each serially passing through. This would be consistent with my seeing them in tight but varying areas. Whatever, the last flock now seems through. That probably happened Saturday, our first snow, and the day I saw the eagle so agitated.

--I believe anger should be amused, and rage should be light. Like a knife. It makes no sense to bombard an enemy with noise, they cover their ears. There has to be a target, there has to be precision, there has to be penetration. I'm thinking primarily of writing. Person to person it might be useful to bite off their nose.

I'm not certain just what it is we face but I know I've never seen anything like it before. It's not merely the right against the left. It is that of course, but it's also the right against the left with the left on some sort of religious steroid. There has to be some technique of personal battle, though I don't know yet quite what that might be. I content myself so far with saying: I know who's side I'm on. --But there might be one technique in the battle that shouldn't be overlooked: battle. Your friends might not find righteousness so much fun if you let them know you might punch their lights out.

-----------------
Something just occurred to me and this is encouraging. What if this worship crap is just an affectation, an excuse, like being drunk is an excuse, for a bastard to be a bastard? I certainly have had violent arguments in the past --I'm not shy about a certain amount of heat-- the difference now is the hair trigger. Any slight, and --Bam!-- I'm hit with the wrath of the righteous. It's so sudden it sort of takes the air out of the lungs --and it is oddly, insensitively nasty. But these are the same people --the same kind of people and sometimes the same people-- who would fight with me in the past. It's just that in the past they seemed to feel some need to defend their position, and if that proved difficult, fell back on hatred, toward Bush, towards Cheney-- but it was not hatred toward me! This seems the real difference: Bambi says it's okay to hate your friends!

This is interesting. I think I have discovered something.

-------------------
Mark Steyn:

Unlike those excitable countries where the peasants overrun the presidential palace, settled democratic societies rarely vote to “go left.” Yet oddly enough that's where they've all gone....

I disagree with my fellow conservatives who think the Obama-Pelosi-Reid-Frank liberal behemoth will so obviously screw up that they'll be routed in two or four years' time. The President-elect's so-called “tax cut” will absolve 48 percent of Americans from paying any federal income tax at all, while those that are left will pay more. Just under half the population will be, as Daniel Henninger pointed out in the Wall Street Journal, on the dole. By 2012, it will be more than half, and this will be an electorate where the majority of the electorate will be able to vote itself more lollipops from the minority of their compatriots still dumb enough to prioritize self-reliance, dynamism, and innovation over the sedating cocoon of the nanny state. That is the death of the American idea

A bit pessimistic for such a funny guy. He suggests that in 2012 we ought to at least have an American running against Barry --somebody a not-McCain-- somebody who advocates economic dynamism, self-reliance, individual liberty, The first Amendment, the Second Amendment.... That way we could at least chose: Give me Liberty or Give me...my Nanny.

---------------
The greatest part of insight on emotional matters is just being able to finally recognize the obvious.

Bad Advice from a Nice Girl

2008-11-09T14:08:00.000-08:00

Will have to expand on this late tonight, but Neo-Neocon has an advice piece out today: Avoid Barack Derangement Syndrome. We should all "take a deep breath." Apparently her idea is that we should all watch the bulldozer, politely. After it runs over our heads and squashes out our brains we can say: "Yes, indeed, it is a bulldozer." This is rational, apparently, and I suppose honorable, and at least we won't be like those nasty people on the left. I call this DBD --Deep Breath Derangement.

I will have to consider a more careful response, but I think she, and many like her, just don't want to recognize the internal danger we now face. "It will turn out all right, Pretend." It's fine to pray but to pretend is insane.

----------------
7:30 PM

Did my woods walk. Had to do it quick 'cause I was losing light. When you walk fast you don't see much. Did see the little beaver. Such a young little squirt he doesn't quite realize he ought to be afraid of me --or at least of those of us who walk on two legs.

It did occur to me --actually this thought occurs often-- that those creatures, those trees, the flow of the river, were about the same ten thousand years ago as they are now, and ten thousand years hence, when America is no longer even an historical memory, will be the same still. It's nice to know there's some permanence in the world.

But America will disappear and be forgotten. But we've had a good run, it's been a good nation, the only question now is: For how many years more?

I guess this fear of the extinction of our liberties would be considered "extreme", but please God, don't let me ever be referred to by others, politely, as "reasonable".

------------------
I think I'll give Neo-neo a break, after all she is a girl. I think instead I'll focus on some local guys, the guys at Powerline, normally not dumb. This was posted by Paul Mirengoff; he's giving the Marquess of Queensberry rules to conservatives in their opposition to an Obama administration. First Rule:

Pray that President Obama achieves greatness in office.

"Greatness", heavens.

Now, I know Obama is going to take us just as far left as he can. Mirengoff wants a great leftist leader. The greatest leftist leader of all time was Stalin. Mirengoff wants Stalin for America.

Is this an unfair reading on my part?

He then takes us through a series of Boy Scout "niceness" rules for how we must respond to our new President:

Don't assume that Obama is always wrong.
Be loyal in your opposition
Be patient in your opposition
Be persistent in your opposition
Be fair in your opposition
Be skeptical in your opposition ...&
Don't hate
Don't obsess

What a syrupy, blithering idiot. He forgot to include "Drink a nice glass of warm milk." And he forgot to include the only thing that he really had in mind: "Hey guys, this guy's black. We gotta walk on eggshells." How about just one rule: "Destroy the damn bastard."

I do think we're in for a hard time. The number of cautions we're going to get from PC conservatives is going to be stupefying, and the charges of racism from everybody else will be unending. Ugly before it gets better. --I'm kind of hoping Russia will nuke Duzzledorff, or at least that there's some big crisis fast. Maybe that will get people serious. The one thing I dearly hope we do not have is peace. If we have peace during depression the government will step in to "set things straight" and the left will succeed splendidly. We have to pray for catastrophe somewhere so we'll not have catastrophe at home.

Footprints in the Snows of Time

2008-11-08T19:33:00.000-08:00

A touch depressed. Went for my first winter walk.

Not much winter. Temp was maybe 33-35 degrees, above freezing anyway, at least when I started out. Darkly gray, a bit windy --some snow. At some places I actually left footprints, that makes it winter.

Quite a good walk though. I saw the Great Horned Owl sitting in the near tip-top of a skeleton tree across the water on Blue Bird Island; and I watched a Bald Eagle flying about, and about, back-and-forth. If I take the island as the center, his radius of flight was less than a quarter mile. Three times he flew over me at maybe only fifty feet, turning back --huge-- as though checking me out. That stretch of the walk, north along the river and then a return along the same path, takes about a half hour. I saw him that entire time. Often I see him there, but normally only for the time it takes for him to take flight to somewhere else, but today he was an agitated bird. I was thinking it might have something to do with the snow. As I said, it was very little and much like sleet though clearly snow. If was the first formal proof of the changing of the season. Maybe somehow that got him upset. It got me upset.

Back at my place I took a brief nap. Waking, the sun was dead. There was chill in the room, it was black outside my window, and I was thinking of my dead friends....

Winters shouldn't happen so often.

How about this? How long before John McCain and his newest "gang of fourteen" reach across the isle and destroy any chance for a Republican barrier to a Democrat agenda? It would make him the darling of the Liberal press again. Country first, you know.

Actually, I do believe he believes that, Country First, though I just don't know if he's philosophically bright enough to know what that means. And I genuinely don't know. His positions seem to splat all over the place. Was that because he all along has been positioning himself as a centrist for his run for President? Is it just ersatz? His presidential ambitions over, can he change? Will he see now the left as a threat? Will he hold firm? Will he see that opposition is the true defense of his country?

I do think if he set himself to do battle he could be effective. But I just don't think he sees the enemy. As he said himself, there was a time in his life when he was "tied up", but that was back when the internal enemy was first plotting and he didn't see it at all. He just doesn't know what he's up against.

Woods Wander Wonder

2008-11-06T18:04:00.000-08:00

Back from my walk. Late start, had to do the circuit fast, so saw little but did see the Great Horned Owl again in the Pondo Woods. He's been hanging out there now for a couple of weeks.

I'd gone about to the end of my path north along the river. Decided to turn back, because the weather was close to raw and it was darkling more rapidly than normal. And that's when I heard the soft --Hoot-- behind me. I turned, looked, listened, and had an odd directional clarity as to the source of sound. Normally the hoot is such a resonant whisper that there's no way to clearly sense just where from out of the dark woods it's coming.

I took a few steps more... and there the bugger was! just thirty feet in front of me and twenty feet up in a bare tree. He looked straight at me, the old tufted ears sticking up on either side of his broad head. And then he turned to the side again, leaned far forward, throat inflated, and said: "Hoot, da da, Hoo Hoo Hoo." --Each time I hear him there's a different pattern. I'm sure that means something, but I don't know what. --On each hoot, as the throat inflated, the head thrust forward, definitively, with a sort of nod, as if quite certain that what he had to say was very important. And then as I stepped further forward and underneath him he flew. What a suddenly massive bird with those blocky broad wings extended, twisting through the thick screen of twigs and branches, soundlessly.

Of course the reason my directional sense had been so accurate was because he had been so close. I rather expect he'd flown in behind me as I stood, pausing, looking up the river.

And I do wonder if we're going to continue as a democracy, or just continue as a Barack Banana Republic, a society that will continue to have elections but not one that the out party can ever win.

I keep hearing people argue that the press will turn on Obama once he disappoints his base. I don't believe that for a moment. I just don't see how he can disappoint --unless he does attempt to move to the center and govern wisely. But of course that's not going to happen; he wants what the press wants. Neither has any interest in a prosperous economy or a secure nation. Each want only a new government and one party rule. It's called conviction. The press simply isn't going to criticize as long as there's still an opposition, and a Constitution.

It's important to know when you have an enemy. I know we have an enemy in Al Qaeda, not everybody does. I know we have an enemy in Obama and the press and the Democrat leadership. Not everybody does.

-----------
Really really funny from Iowahawk.

-----------------
Note:

STOCKS CONTINUE POST-ELECTION PLUNGE... Dow, S&P 500 Post Worst Two-Day Decline Since 1987..

I guess when Barack said that upon the historic day of his election the seas would begin to recede he just misspoke, he didn't mean "seas" he meant NYMEX. I'm sure somebody will clarify that.

--Crude briefly went below $60. That's pleasant. In my neighborhood a gallon a gas is $1.96

--Will have to sometime check out poll numbers. But: Obama slightly above Bush 2004; McCain about 5 million below Kerry. Wonder who stayed home. Youth vote about the same as always, but more heavily skewed toward Obama. Hispanics slightly more in favor of the Democrat than normal. That actually surprises me.

----------------
I'll include this Neo-neocon post as one I found useful just after the election, the post and the comments. I entered some of my own. It was useful to find other people voicing the same apprehensions I felt. I really don't know if we've moved into a new structure of government --a kind of coup in fact and a great reduction of personal liberty (I know that's the liberal intent), or if it's just a swing to the left to be followed by a swing back to the right...? Actually, it is a movement left, no matter what. Our society has been moving left my entire life. And I know the left wants totalitarian rule, I presume that will be the end of our democratic experiment. I see this as the simple course of history. But there is a question of just how rapidly it will happen, and how completely...? And there is no reason that such a huge nation needs to stay united as one. There is no way every section would accept totalitarian rule from the East coast. I this consideration I'm thinking though in terms of two hundred years --or many anyway. What's more immediately important is what's going to happen in the next dozen. I do feel a foreboding I've not felt before... It is interesting that what bothers me most is the nut leftist press, Orwellian, creating reality... And this really is a very interesting awareness. Half the country already agrees with me that the press is corrupt. I do think if we could maintain an intelligent press we could maintain an intelligent people. --There seems something oddly clarifying in stating the totally obvious. Maybe I'm just very tired. I know that my greatest drive my entire life has been to keep my mind free. As long as I can get information I'm personally in fairly good shape. What's true for me has got to be true for others. If there are a lot of others there's a political movement. --I wonder if I'm thinking of some sort of dual nation within one? I think I am tired.

It Can't Happen Here; the 1st day

2008-11-05T08:54:00.000-08:00

I might as well get my opinion down. The Liberal mind is totalitarian, now they've got their champion and he has immense advantages. First, the financial meltdown. Who can object to the government assuming powers it's never had before? Aren't we in bad shape? Don't we need a strong hand? Haven't we started already with our "Paulson Plan" and the Treasury's buy-in to major banks? Don't we need more?

And this is a man with an extraordinary armor: "I don't like his plan, it's an infringement on free enterprise, on personal liberties." --"You're a racist."

I don't see any possibility of argument, discussion, or opposition. Cowed by the charge of racism by those who would use race as a tool.

This is a bad time. The first black man to be President is the worst black man possible. This is a very bad day for America.

Oh well, conflict happens. Empires decline, nations decline, democracy ends.

There has to be a battle, and the first battle has to be the personal and collective one to speak out on policy, and to insist with all vigor and even anger that policy is a legitimate aspect of government. --Kind of strange, to have to fight to establish the right to speech as a part of governance.

But maybe I over emphasize my worry. I don't at all overstate the totalitarian mindset, perhaps I overstate the weakness of those who would oppose it.

-----------------
A few notes:

--In the Senate McCain might do a great deal of damage. He'll "reach across the aisle," meaning that he will immensely weaken, perhaps destroy, the already limited possibility of Republican opposition. His problem in Barack's words, is: "He doesn't know what he's up against."

--It's possible that our foreign allies, so delighted that we are no longer racist, will be the ones who will reestablish our right to free speech. There's no doubt that, as soon as it's again in their own interest, there will be no hesitancy in allowing their own speech to flow forth.

--And self-interest can be of great utility in the service of liberty. The great unity of the Democrat party has been their desire to regain power. They have power now, perhaps now they will shatter. --The problem, of course, is they want so much more power. I don't know if that can hold them together or not.

--Finally, for this post: It's now no longer necessary to seek out Barack's past to find his character. He's public now. Those he knows are not those he didn't know when he was only eight years old. He's Chicago now... right in front of us.

-----------------
623 PM
Back to my lonely home. Walk was gray, with occasional sprinkles but very nicely warm, maybe 65 degrees. No wild life this time, though I did briefly see an eagle at quite a distance. --Woods felt a little bit wild, sort of a mellow wild. That's unusual, maybe unique. I am pretty pooped, and I am feeling really down. I do see Barack as a Marxist and a revolutionary. The only thing I don't know is how much he'll be able to do.

I note "responsible" conservatives don't touch this concept with a ten foot pole. I'm thinking of Bill Crystal. That's reasonable. It's certainly a viewpoint just now shared by very few in the public. Crystal does hope Obama "won't go too far left." That's a reasonable formulation, in terms of being a politically acceptable statement. But he will go as far left as he can, and fast. I do think he's insane, his ego is immense. His rise to the most powerful position on earth has been rapid and with no effort but an aim toward this end. He succeeded. There's no reason to expect caution, or any personal sense of limits.

Note:

--If Republicans in the House don't become strongly conservative they'll have no cohesion and no force at all. Pelosi is going to be radical. Republicans have to at least hope they have a voice.

--Obama picked Emanuel as White House Chief of Staff. That means he's going hardball, which is his manner. Some Republicans think Emanuel will be a restraining force, in that he favors free trade and national defense... I just don't think Republicans have any idea of the ruthlessness they're going to face.

--A nice confirmation of my views on McCain as Bozo Bipartisan Man in the Senate.

Obama will get the most lavish and extended honeymoon in history. Everytime he walks to the podium without falling down will be trumpeted as the greatest accomplishment since MacArthur returned to the Philippines. It will be the natural tendency of Republicans to join in the praise, and worse, to try to be "bipartisan" when it comes to legislation that is manifestly bad for the country and abhorrent to conservative principles. This tendency will be magnified by the Republicans' fear that any opposition to Obama's policies will be portrayed as motivated by racism rather than principle.

Senator McCain is an American hero, a remarkable man. I can think of few I respect more. But he's likely to be the first to be leading the charge toward bipartisanship. This would be a mistake of galactic proportions. This must be resisted.

I could easily quote the whole thing. It's splendid.

November Pleasure?

2008-11-04T10:12:00.000-08:00

Big day. Think I'll vote early, so I can sit around and do some blogging tonight.

--My partisan hopes are clear: --Republican.
--My hopes for the safety of the nation in terms of the capacity of the leader are clear: --McCain.

After that it gets murky. I do not know what "McCainism" is. For that matter I no longer know what "Republicanism" is, or even "Conservatism". I certainly have a lot of views on the matter, but nothing coherent. But "Baryism"? I know what that is, The State! So I certainly know what I fear. The core of all of my political thinking is fear of the totalitarian mindset.

A subset of my thought is concern with how well the monolithic media might control thought. How effective has statist MSM been in convincing Americans that Barry the Twit should be President? This will be hard to judge. He shouldn't even be the nominee, but once the nominee he is the Democrat, and this is a Democrat year, so the simple vote total doesn't so much speak of the media's propaganda success (other than that their covering for him has allowed him to be viable at all). So I'm going to presume something different, that the pollsters and the press are one and the same. If the vote is less than the prediction this to that degree anyway is a certain rejection of the media. In fact it's only by this rejection that it's possible at all that McCain can win. --The aspect of the media propaganda that I'm here considering is their simple thuggery, their making it racist to vote against a black guy. In terms of their keeping him afloat at all they certainly have been successful.

If somehow the media can be whipped, my that will be a pleasure.

--------------
Heaven's, it's already past 2:00 PM EST and as far as I can tell not one network has yet called the race for Obama? This is very very strange. I sense conspiracy.

But am now going to go out and vote, and maybe walk a bit in the woods. What a lovely lovely Indian Summer day.

-----------------
Just did my vote at 2:15. No line. About 15 booths, one vacant as I voted. Seems to be a steady stream but not a crowd. Had very pleasant chats with the women behind the tables as my registration was being checked. Hard to believe such friendly, pleasing women are actually evil Democrats. 'Course, I was just being friendly and chatty myself, they had no idea of my own hidden identity as an evil Republican. I suppose that's why they didn't shoot me. --Probably one Republican vote now in this precinct. I guess one party rule does bring us all together.

Note: Youth vote seems low, as I'd expected. The Messiah has gone stale. It's further, my speculation, that the black percentages might not so very strongly favor The One as has been expected, the reason being that some blacks by now may have decided to vote their faith rather than their race. I don't think a serious Christian can comfortably vote for Barack. This might have some meaning in places such as Georgia. This might explain why neither McCain nor Barack have campaigned there even though the pollsters say it's close. Possibly the two campaigns know that's not true, and it might be because of this change in the black vote. --Pure speculation on my part.

A worrisome thing is that apparently the real surge in voting is among those 65 and older. First, it's hard to believe there's much of a surge, since they anyway turn out in large numbers; but two, it's worrisome because I'm not sure they're going for McCain. Old farts worry about their SS check. With the financial turbulence, I fear there's some possibility they might be going for the Democrat, the one who will "keep things the way they are." It would be strange if Barack gets a boost because he's considered status quo.

---------------
3:50 PM
Read some. Not much news. No leaked exit polls? That means either that the media learned it's lesson from 2004, or that they're not looking good for Obama, or that they're looking so good they don't feel they need to try to depress the Republican vote. --I believe in being incisive in my analysis.

Think I'll note that I have been oddly sanguine for almost two days now. I can't justify this by argument, I think it's just because I've come to dismiss the polls as much as I dismiss the media. I simply never any longer take anything seriously that I read from MSM, I know they're wrong and that in time I'll get the real information. In terms of what's true they're meaningless. Now I think I feel the same way about polls. There is a problem with this. I don't in fact know that the polls are wrong, and, while with the media I can easily dismiss the accuracy of their reporting, that doesn't at all mean they don't influence people who spend less time reading. Crappy reporting can still lead to firm conviction. The polls could be showing that. But I don't think so. I think the pollsters, in their "weighting" of their data, are as out to lunch and as purposely deceptive as is the media.

But now another walk in this splendid afternoon weather.

---------------
6:15 PM
Back from my walk. Utterly lovely weather. Not quite the pleasure as normal because I had my transistor with me to get the latest. No latest, just a distraction. On a walk one watches, or muses. I was trying to do that, plus listen. That's multitasking. Gave me a headache.

Note: Heavy turnout. I'm thinking that this year heavy turnout favors Republicans. My reasoning is that heavy turnout means new or occasional voters. For somebody to get off their butt they have to have motivation. What special motivation do Democrats have? Blacks have a special motivation, but who else? I don't buy that youth are excited; that excitement passed once Barack became Chicago. So I see no new voters excited except blacks.

The other powerful motivation a voter has is dislike. I can't see that there's that much dislike toward McCain/Palin; it in fact seems dislike must be exhausted, because it was so powerfully directed toward Bush, and he's already been "defeated." However, on the Republican side there's immense dislike. They don't like Obama --he might be President, and Republicans see him as totally unsuitable. That's a powerful motivation. And then there's immense annoyance with the press. That is going to get a lot of Republicans off the sofa. And not to forget, a lot of Red Staters love Sarah, so that's additional. So turnout this year is a plus for Republican. And more Democrats are going to vote McCain than Republicans Obama.

So far the substantiation of this thought is that the networks aren't making early calls. Indiana, Virginia, Georgia, not yet called. --Polls have been closed over a half hour.

--------------
7:28
From Hugh: Obama hasn't yet taken one red state, hasn't yet broken the Bush bag. --McConnell hangs on in Kentucky, but so far three seats lost. That's 54 now for Dems. --Pennsylvania still without any precincts reporting, yet ABC and MSNBC have called it for Obama. Maybe they're confident, maybe they're deluded, maybe it's a conscious attempt at voter suppression? I guess I should note that they certainly are deluded... but could be right. --Shoot, Pennsylvania called by Barone for Obama. Bad one. No numbers yet.

----------------
7:44
Cambliss in Georgia. Georgia as well for McCain. So far it's blue/blue; Red/Red. Unfortunately it seems it's the red states that are being too close to call quickly. That's not a good sign, but does mean the vote is close, thus wins are possible. Clearly not a landslide election. Good. I still hope for a McCain victory. It does look bleak.

------------------
8:07
Geraghty: Fox News calls New Mexico, Minnesota, Michigan for Obama. And the killer - they call Ohio for Obama.

Looks like it's over.

-----------------
Ha! Retraction!!! Ohio was marked wrong!!! McCain yet lives!!!!

----------------
8:30
Ohio recalled for Obama. I can see no possibility for victory now. Unless somebody made a mistake, --Interestingly, the Northern Alliance isn't going along with the Ohio call. They don't have selected precinct information... Actually, sounds like a one hour delayed broadcast. So it probably is over.

-----------------
10:06
Race called for Obama. Oh my. --I'm not sure all of the calls are right, but it looks like he's got enough of a margin it wouldn't matter if they were off on say, Ohio or Virginia, except real embarrassment. --Going to take awhile to adjust. --Going to take a break.

Our Totalitarian Time

2008-11-02T11:41:00.000-08:00

Really tense. That's because of Tuesday. This I fear is our totalitarian time. There certainly seem to be many eager to subvert liberty, and many eager to submit. This is the way democracies end.

Actually, the way the press covers for Obama is no different than the way they covered for Clinton, though different maybe somewhat in degree. The difference though, the great difference, is in the man. Clinton did orient toward the center; Obama is left, Obama nuts. I suppose the only gift he's giving America is that he's also a dolt. Once it becomes okay to criticize a black guy --and that will break out suddenly, amidst viciousness-- he will be seen as both stupid and foreign. It will be an unpleasant time. --'Course, McCain could still pull it out. I regard most of the polls as as in the tank for Obama as the press. Could be McCain actually leads. If that's so it's because there are a lot of Americans left.

--Have had difficulty putting my thoughts down on this. Perhaps I'll do it tomorrow.

-----------
Wrote a laid back email to a friend who's life or death depends on an Obama victory:

Dear William,

I'm told you're a very busy fellow so I don't know if you'll get this, but for old times sake I thought I would give you my predictions.

First, I have mentioned to you that I'm a Republican. I don't know if I've mentioned that I call myself a "Dead Dog Republican". That is: If it's a dead dog, if it's a Republican, I'll vote for it. So I'm calling this race for McCain.

This isn't entirely mere optimistic partisanship. I do have a number of ideas as to underlying dynamics, but also one poll that supports my thought, IBD/TIPP. That's Investor's Business Daily (I don't know what the TIPP stands for). IBD is an exceptionally conservative publication and they sure don't like Obama, so that could skew their results, but they didn't much like John Kerry either, and yet they called the 2004 election closer than any other poll, so they can't simply be dismissed. Anyway, as of today they have it:

OBAMA 46.7%... MCCAIN 44.6%... NOT SURE 8.7%...

And it's my presumption undecideds will break for McCain. That's because, with it being so fashionable now to support Obama, if you say you're undecided, in fact you support McCain.

We'll see. I think Republicans will also do a bit better in the House and Senate than is being projected, though there will be losses.

The primary reason I'm making this judgment, which is counter to almost all polls and media opinion, is that I see a disconnect between the media excitement, and the mood of much of the public. The same things that excite a Chris Matthews, aren't even noticed by most Americans. They have their private lives, they simply don't see what all the fuss is about. These people will vote by the values they've pretty much always had, and that means it's probably pretty much a 50 / 50 election.

Roughly as many people will be firmly determined to vote for McCain as are excited to vote for Obama. Of course, everybody gets excited as the election nears, but still, the determining factor is mainly going to be: Do you lean Republican or do you lean Democrat? Despite the immense amount of hype, that split (hard and soft support) for the last 16 years has been pretty much equal, each party ending with about 50% of the vote. I expect it to be the same this year. I expect 90% of the analysis that this is a transformative election is pure hyperventilating. I expect most people will just vote their basic beliefs, and that will mean it's pretty much even-steven.

(Of course I'm speaking of the popular vote. How the Electoral College will turn out could be quite a different matter.)

I do consider people pretty stodgy in their ways. I see this race mainly as Republican vrs Democrat, rather than as McCain vrs Obama (despite all the personality puffery), and that's why I think it will be close.

We'll see.

See you, --Mouse

PS,
Congrats on the third coming child.

This is a bit misleading. I'm being laid back about what's going to happen Tuesday, I'm not at all laid back as to what will happen if there actually is an Obama administration.

Dean Barnett

2008-10-27T13:45:00.000-07:00

Just read about Dean's death. It's like losing another Tony Snow. Both, Dean especially, lived closer to death than most. Both lost. Death not within the natural course of time is a particular loss, and these two, such splendid, joyful, principled, loving men... It's a loss to me to see men like that lost to the world.

--------------
I'm going to include the one email exchange I had with him, many years back. I've forgotten the specific article on which he was commenting --I believe it dealt with the "need" for fetal stem-cell research. He did speak of his cystic fibrosis, and did comment on why claims of promise in a particular line of research are often so extreme:

Dear Dean Barnett,

The purpose of this email is only to say nice things:

"But they also have every incentive to put a hard sell on for their particular cause. The guy who comes in and says he’s going to make Christopher Reeve walk out of his wheelchair is likely to have a more compelling pitch than the guy who says he may someday be able to cure Diabetes in a lab rat."

Last night I was alone in my house, reading, wrought, utterly offended by this recent hucksterism passing as science, and I read that last line and broke out into a laugh. If you can make me laugh as annoyed as I was you're pretty good.

There are a great many men in the blogosphere whom I much admire and who have information and an ability to state a clear argument. They're very bright but they really can't write. When I read your pieces I see personality, humor, insight, structure, imagination, and just really fine prose. You can write.

I read because I want to understand but in your pieces I have as well the unexpected experience of pleasure. I just want you to know that's something I appreciate.

Not to put it on too heavy I will say I never heard of you before you started writing for Hugh and I went to Soxblog to check out some of you past work and found it impossible because that white-on-black is terrible. So there.

Mouse

Subj: Re: Nice Things Said
Date: 8/27/06 7:31:16 AM Central Daylight Time
From: Soxblog@aol.com
To: LttrMsgy

The white on black was wildly unpopular, but it was designed by my wife's best friend who's an artiste so, you know, I was kind of stuck. If I ever go back to Soxblog, I promise the white on black will be relegated to the ashbin of blogging history.

Thanks for the kind words!

DB

-------------------
This is the one thing I can add to the Dean Barnett history. I did just like the guy.

The Powell Affect?

2008-10-20T00:41:00.000-07:00

K,

Sorry I didn't have time to chat. I used to always head out around noon. Now I have less to do and leave around 3:00, but I was still running late.

Powell's endorsement? A lot of people say it will help swing undecideds. Maybe. But he's military. He's not supporting a military man. He's making it pretty clear: "It's all about race." A lot of people don't like getting race shoved down their throats. As I've argued with you many many times: Racists nominated this incompetent; rational, good citizens, will not vote for an incompetent just because he's black.

See you, --Mouse

PS,
Today paid $2.38 for gas.

The Obama Effect

2008-10-13T23:29:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I predicted that the stock market "crisis" was over, simply because everybody was bored with panic. Today it went up 11%. Credit for "investor confidence" is being given to "steps taken by European Governments to shore up bank liquidity..." or whatever. Okay, if they want the credit they can have it, they're the ones so much to blame anyway for causing the panic in the first place (primarily I mean the US government). If this makes them feel better, fine. And it is true that if the panic is truly passed, it's not coming back, so the real work of dealing with sour mortgage securities --and securities just generally over-leveraged-- can begin. That will be a matter of technical expertise, corruption, very expensive stupidities, and political profiteering. But the panic is gone because in something like this you can't cry wolf twice, so the markets will be okay. Probably sluggish (low volume for awhile), and with some volatility, just due to speculators playing the unease; but basically sound.

Crude up a bit though. That I don't like. Probably as a hedge --crude being better than treasuries-- perhaps also with some optimism, now that the Great Depression isn't going to be so great as forecast; and perhaps with some sober, soulful glee at the thought that OPEC intends to cut production and screw the West. Won't work, oil is going down. That's one bubble that's done. --Though, unfortunately, it is true that if Barack is elected oil is going back up, because there won't be any drilling, and no energy policy. No growth either, but mostly no new energy.

So, is Barack going to be elected? I say no, because if he couldn't put McCain away these last two week when The World Was Going To End, he certainly won't be able to do it now.

Of course, I am assuming two things:
--No new surprises (I am assuming markets will remain so-so);
--And the Obama Effect.

The Obama Effect is when an incompetent black guy is foisted on the American public by a lot of Liberal racists just because they like his grin and his color. Because he has been chosen because of his race, any criticism of him is because of race; and racists, of course, are despised. This makes it very difficult for anybody on the right to point out that he's a dolt.

The suppression of speech and opinion is race worship, it's a very liberal thing to do: it's powerful, pervasive, intimidating, effective, but the actual Obama Effect is what takes place in the quiet privacy of the voting booth. This is when good Americans judge that a dolt, a liar, a constant friend of those who swindle and those hate, a Messianic creation of race consciousness, is in fact not fit to lead a great and free republic.

I expect this to happen massively.

Note too:
--There are PUMAs,
--There's increased contempt for and dismissal of the press,
--There will be no surge in the youth vote. Blacks will turn out in record numbers, but the Barack the Messiah is stale now, so the youth will find absorptions others than civic resposibility.
--And good Jeffersonians will turn out in great numbers.

Boring. "Crisis" Over

2008-10-12T22:53:00.000-07:00

Boring:

(AP:HONG KONG) Most Asian stock markets recovered Monday after last week's historic sell-off as governments in Europe and beyond intensified efforts to stabilize the world's troubled financial system.

Hong Kong's Hang Seng Index, which tumbled more than 7 percent Friday, rose about 478.80 points higher, or 3.24 percent, at 15,275.67.

In Australia, the S&P/ASX200 index was up 4.71 percent in response to a government plan to guarantee bank and other lender deposits for three years. The benchmark plunged over 8 percent on Friday, its biggest single-day fall ever....

Bah! Humbug!

The region's markets showed signs of life after leaders of the 15 euro-zone countries unveiled measures Sunday to prop up the region's ailing financial institutions. Under the plan, governments would guarantee new bank debt until the end of 2009, allow governments to help banks by buying preferred shares, and vowed to rescue important failing banks through emergency recapitalization.

In the U.S., investors were waiting to see if the Treasury Department's newly announced plan to buy equity in troubled banks would help stabilize the volatility on Wall Street. Lawmakers have urged quick action by President George W. Bush on the effort, to be funded by the $700 billion bailout he signed Oct. 3.

I have my own opinion on the matter and predicted earlier this afternoon that the "crisis" was over. This is my reasoning: I'm bored stiff. Now, of course my being bored has no causal effect on the market but this has to be the dumbest stock sell-off in human history. There are a few hundred billions of bad securities out there. This is in a world market! A few hundred billions is pennies. Yet the lending apparatus is frozen, and because of that, and all the hype that businesses can't barrow, business can't borrow, everybody panicked: Depression! Depression! A Great Depression! The World Will Collapse! Oh for God's sake. Take your lumps. So a few businesses go broke. Send flowers. But to have this huge panic just because lenders are protecting their own skin --and now waiting for government goodies-- is just nuts. The business of business is to do business. If all the governments in the world just went off somewhere and played golf I imagine business would get to business and this whole perturbation would be over in a week.

Which gets to the boredom. The whole sell-off is a sell-off of panic. Just how many days in a row can you maintain panic and not get sick of it? I'm presuming that by now most people have pooped themselves out being afraid and so instead are going to start thinking in terms of opportunity. This sure is a great time to buy, and most companies are solid. I don't know why there shouldn't be a rebound, and I don't know why companies can't get together and for the short term just by-pass the chicken little financials and loan to each other. They don't have to loan much to get leverage, they just have to have a security, and if stocks start going up they've got it.

I do think government is much too impressed with itself, with a Napoleon or three in every cabinet. I sure would like to see them be proven unnecessary. --The government can offer guarantees to businesses infected with bad securities but otherwise sound, but it seems to me that's about all it has to do.

$2.89!

2008-10-08T23:25:00.000-07:00

Gas $2.89 a gallon 88 octane unleaded at the dinkly little filling station just three blocks from my house. I knew economic times were getting better! That's 'cause Sarah's cute and McCain wants to build forty new nuclear power plants. That means in a few years we won't need oil, world demand will be cut 25% and crude will be nine bucks a barrel. People are scared already, that's why they're trying to back out of the market and prices are heading down.

I'm sure this is true. No one understands economics like I do.

As to the debate. I said the man who wins is the man who changes votes, no other metric matters, and I said I thought McCain won because in such financially tumultuous times, nobody wants to experiment with a kid, they want to go with the old geezer who's been around, they don't want change anymore, they want to get back to the way things were. So "Hope & Change" is one dead done slogan. McCain, just by being old, probably gained votes.

But another way of considering who won is to speak of who changed the conversation. I'm going to consider both the VP debate and this one, since they came so close together, and the financial meltdown, since that has been part of these debates, (all three, actually) in terms of the emotional focus, the sense of importance, that these debates have engendered, and it certainly explains Obama's rise in the polls as a reflexive anti-Republican statement.

I say this is a totally different race than it was just two weeks ago.

First, anti-Palin derangement is different. She can no longer be dismissed as a dope. A hick and a hayseed, yes, and a racist of course, but no dope. And she knows she won, and is enjoying herself, and is going pit-bull. This is going to be real interesting: a really good looking woman attacking Bambi and just loving it. She's going to draw a lot of fire --racist, racist, racist-- but I don't see how she's attacked without acknowledging her charges. How do you call somebody a racist if you don't repeat what they said? So this will be an examination of Bambi's character.

The market meltdown? I don't see McCain being blamed for that personally. I think he's inured from that blame simply because it's so large. Only Bush is big enough to be creditably to blame, and he's not running, and McCain fought him on the bailout. Very very publicly fought. There can be blame yet as to who caused it, but in fact it was caused by Democrats and their insistence on sub-primes. This is an argument we should have, and however much it might be spun, it's one the Democrats can't win on the merits.

So HopenChange is dead, and the Dems should be on the defensive over the meltdown. This last would be automatic if the press reported facts. Such facts will be hard to get out, but some facts will out. It's what happens when things are true. --And then there are New Expenditures. Ha! Can't fly, not in these times. That takes the goody bag away from Obama, though, fortunately, He is so marvelous he's going to insist he can still do what he said before. This should twist him in some nice pretzels.

And finally, the Messiah. What happened to the Messiah? I think that's dead too. Partly it's just because the hypnotic trance has been snapped by the collapse of the markets. The tones been done broke. People are rubbing their eyes, looking again, saying: "Hey, this guy's just a kid!" --Of course, those already infected will still believe, but nicely, that powerfully means the Big M himself. And that's a self-conception that's going to express itself once-in-awhile, and in these times it will appear nuts.

So, the conversation is different now. The big thing is that it's different. McCain and Sarah will hammer Policy and Character, and Obama's minions will all hammer race... One very interesting thing about this race business. People don't like being called racists. They don't like having to hide their views for fear of being called racist. They will, because they are afraid. But how afraid will they be in the voting booth?

Dis da Dude

2008-10-07T15:57:00.000-07:00

Some notes I made last night, coming in after a long walk. May make a further note after the debate.

--No BDS anymore? It doesn't seem I've seen much. Perhaps partly because it's been redirected to Palin, but probably also because the campaign is now finally intense, and finally Bush just isn't the emotional focus.

--Part of the continuing tank in stocks might be because of the conviction that Obama is going to be the next President, and everyone realizes that not only is he a radical lefty, he's also out of his depth. --Very speculative speculation.

--Part might be because it's so clear the congress isn't serious. If they had been it would have been a one issue bill, no pork, and with a clearly stated plan. The way it is it's just Paulson handing out money to his friends. There's utterly nothing there to assure anybody he knows what he's doing. A less speculative speculation.

--McCain not making eye-contact with Obama in the last debate? A tactic.

Obama is an unknown, merely an image. He has to be defined. No one can more convincingly define Obama than himself. He has the veneer of the academic but in personality is fundamentally an inner city street thug. Part of that culture is one of immense self-esteem: Don't dare diss me, man! When McCain doesn't look at him, and constantly references: "He just doesn't understand," then Obama is being dissed. If McCain can get under his skin enough, he might get him to have an outburst. That would be a communication that he's not fit to lead, and it wouldn't be something anybody could spin, because it came from the Big O's lips.

I imagine this is conscious on McCain's part. He doesn't want to be aggressive, just dismissive. This is a super excellent idea. It would help if he could reference Sarah as superior. Oh, my oh my, how insulting that would be to a studly black dude. --Sarah could help if she could make some slighting statement just before... Problem, it would have to be covered. Maybe Bill could say something.

Note: Barack does already consider himself President. One is perhaps very set to be offended if one is already the president.

----------------
Debate

Debate just over, hard to score it. I'm only interested in who changed votes, and I can't make a judgment on that.

--McCain is stiff, and so seems old, but he's not old in his speech. He was "imploring" the entire time. I put that in quotes because it was also an earnestness and an intensity. I rather like it, I'm not sure about others.

--Barack is young, moves young, speaks young. Nothing special about that, it's a quality of being young. Nothing special about his voice, there's a clear attempt to have an authoritative tone. That I find offensive because fake, but I don't know how others respond.

--McCain didn't dis da dude. In the last half-hour, foreign policy, he did get Barack to show some annoyance: "John seems to think I'm green behind the ears." Yes. And earlier Barack insisted on having more time to statements McCain had made. I've got nothing against that, it's a question of how it played. McCain, then asserting that he also should have more time, seemed more a man asserting a principle of fairness, than a man irritated and demanding. But minor stuff.

--Don't much care for either of them on much of their domestic policy, but McCain, I thought forcefully, insisted on the need for nuclear power. That's a biggy for me. And in foreign policy he just clearly communicates more authority. Barack, in energy policy, constantly falls back on conservation, and green energy. There's no doubt at all that he would not drill and would not develop nuclear.

--But this is policy. Barack is through and through a liberal. McCain is sort of half-and-half. For myself, just in terms of policy, there's no doubt whom I prefer. But what about the uncommitted voter? I just don't know how they respond. Was there any separation in skill of answers that I missed that might means something to the less informed voter? Obviously, if I missed it, I can't comment on it. Of course I found a few of McCain's responses crisp and insightful, and saw none similar from Bambi.

--Each camp will claim victory. Barack has the media, he'll win the ratings hands down. I do think that "in trying times" a young kid has to come across as very powerful to be thought preferable to an old hand. So in this respect, though Obama will be declared the winner, and conservatives will bemoan McCain's "last chance" to make a dent, I in fact think he did well, and helped himself among those yet wavering.

----------------
Sent this in as a comment but have decided to include it in my blog, though it simply repeats what I earlier said:

McCain comes across as an old guy and stiff. He is an old guy and stiff, but his voice was earnest, his emotions imploring, and his mind competent. In foreign policy he communicates a natural command.

Obama comes across as a young guy. He is a young guy. There are a lot of them in the world. He definitely seems bright enough to be a grad student, but while he lowers his voice to sound authoritative, there's never a sense that he dominates.

I try to imagine the thinking of a swing voter. Who won the debate is the one who changed votes. Everyone just now recognizes we're in perilous times. That being the case, even ignoring how the debate might have been scored on points, who wants to go with a young guy who sounds just like every other young guy, rather than go with an old guy, who, while perhaps not coming across as brilliant, has at least been around for awhile?

It seems to me that for Barack to win he had to dominate. At best he managed a tie.

The reason I'm including it is the sudden sense I had while writing it that the change mantra is dead. We have change now and it's very unpleasant. Who wants more? Americans now want stability. Change in terms of specifics is still wanted, but as a mindless evocation of something exciting I think it's dead. I see that now as an advantage Obama has lost.

--Should note that most of the conservative commentary I've read is of the opinion that McCain did only moderately well and that a tie goes to the leader in the polls. Among low information voters I just don't see that. Nobody wants change anymore, they want to get back to the way things were. In that case I think a tie goes to the old guy. --I'll note that as exciting as conservatives find Sarah Palin, I'm pretty sure they're all pleased it's John McCain who's at the head of the ticket. For the non-committed voter, I don't see why that should be any different when the option is Obama. John is the old guy. We don't have to shake things up just now, we just have to make it through, and there's a stronger sense that we'll do that with somebody who's been tested than with somebody untried.

Bozo Bailout Bust

2008-10-05T23:46:00.000-07:00

Wow, over-night Asian markets are having their worst day ever! Other than for having the satisfaction of saying "I told you so" on this stupid, poorly considered 700 billion bozo bailout bill, I can't say I like seeing that happen.

I'm surprised. I'd somehow expected they'd be getting their own house in order, somewhat indifferent to and separate from what was happening in America; the idea being that basic wealth hasn't changed, only the mechanism is screwed up so some sort of temporary parallel structure should be possible. Guess I don't know nuth'n.

I wonder how politics is going to go in the morning, when all the political genius gents wake up and find their big bill did nothing? --How about the really dumb people, otherwise known as the US Congress, the US President, the US presidential candidates, and every appointed official within the US government, actually sit down and try to figure something out... other than just ask for a lot more money?

---------------
About Noon.

Dow down 500? 600? Who cares? Boring story. They keep running the same line, over and over.

We need a new script. How about we stand Barney & Dodd up on the capitol steps and cut their guts out? A new twist, so to speak.

Or maybe just burn 700 billion dollars and then light some candles at night? You know,
something effective.

--------------
Crude's down and I paid $3.07 for a gallon of gas yesterday. That's nice. --And Cuda is going after Bambi. That's about it for the good news.

---------------
Note Last, (for the time being)

Russia suspended MICEX:

Trading on Russia’s ruble-denominated stock market, the MICEX, was suspended today after its main index nosedived more than 15 per cent on worries about global financial turmoil.

So, since Russia is now tin-pot third world, viable only by natural resource exploitation, and since oil is now in decline, and their untrustworthy market in free-fall; since this is very bad for them, it might be good for us. They are a rogue nation, and still have some force, unfortunately, because so many of the leftist sort still think they're still the Soviet Union and still have power. They bluster, the left blinks. But the good thing about the present difficulty is that if we're badly damaged, they'll be wiped out. If it damages us, it will destroy them. Bye-bye Poots, and we won't even have to defend Georgia. --This is again, a silver lining. Perhaps there are more. --Unfortunately, it seems voter sentiment is now moving powerfully Obama. Maybe he can make Pootsie his Secretary of State.

-------------------
3:50
Checking in.

(AP:NEW YORK) Wall Street suffered through another extraordinary and traumatic session Monday, with the Dow Jones industrials plunging as much as 800 points _ their largest one-day point drop _ before recovering to close with a loss of 370....

Investors have come to the realization that the Bush administration's$700 billion rescue plan and steps taken by other governments won't workquickly to unfreeze the credit markets.

No. Investors knew that Friday, when the markets started down at the same time as the bailout passed. It's only financial writers who have now realized that 700 billion is piddle compared to 63 trillion of infected credit worldwide. Our very stupid Mr. Paulson and our herd-panicked congressman would have understood that as well, if they weren't so infected with the idea that it's fun to spend tax payers money while pretending that a command economy is more powerful than the private market.

So we're all going to die. Oh well, it's nice out but threatening rain. Guess I'll go out for a walk in the woods while I still can.

Crude hit $87.56. That's good. I'm hopping for $40. That will take care of Poots and the Sauds. At least we'll have won world war three. --Still need an energy policy though. That probably won't happen without the Cuda.

------------------
Jay Cost has splendid historical background explaining why Republicans are inescapably associated with this mess with the banks, and thus why about the only recourse left to McCain is to ignore the crisis and attack Obama's character. Obama, after all, is a pretty weak fish to be flopping in the oval office during a time of crisis.

Can they succeed at this? Perhaps. Again, Obama is unlike any major
party nominee seen in over a hundred years. Public opinion of him is based
largely upon political claims about him, as opposed to an immutable record
of accomplishment or even a long history on the national scene. That means
that the perception of who Obama is might be quite changeable. If the Republican
Party can succeed in changing it, they can win the election - even as the
banking industry's reputation falls into the gutter.

I say, "Bring it on!" At least it will be an entertainment.

Cuda Coulda Cracked

2008-10-04T13:16:00.000-07:00

But didn't.

As I continue my three day romance, Sarah back in my life, I'm going to note one point I saw in the debate that delighted me then and has stayed with me since: that point when I saw her break to a sudden grin, Joe speaking, then turn to him with the most courteous blade of the assassin, and begin to slice away flesh... as an entertainment! She was enjoying herself.

What a delight to see. "My girl" suddenly relaxed. It happened in only a moment, maybe two-thirds way through the debate, but suddenly, she knew she had taken the measure of this guy and she could handle him. And at that moment, though she may not have realized it until a day later, it was suddenly, at that moment, that she recognized she was a national player. She could handle these guys. She's never going to want for self-confidence again.

How Many Watched?

2008-10-03T06:55:00.000-07:00

Developing... as the Drudge sayeth. He includes this link, stating preliminary ratings show it as having drawn 33% more than the McCain/Obama debate. I would like to see actual numbers, but the more who watched, the fewer who can be spun by the media.

And the House plans a second bailout vote... Bummer. At least they're not fully confident yet.

And stocks have popped up a bit in very early trading --bargin hunting?-- bummer, and then pulled back a bit. I just don't want that bill. The problem is, I don't know what signal the market can now send with the vote so closely pending. If it goes up, it's "because the markets are encouraged", if it goes down, "the rescue is urgently needed." At least crude is down a bit.

I don't know why I put links in on stories that are going to be old in 20 minutes. --Can't get the Drudge link to work anyway.

-------------------
Notes From Last Night

--Very bad for the media, especially Couric and Gibson. If they couldn't get an intelligent interview out of this clearly intelligent and very engaging woman it's clearly because they didn't want to. And then of course, there was the cutting room floor, which implicates their entire organization, and the complicity of the rest of the media in celebrating and advertising this particular and strange coup. Of course, I recognize this as what was happening, as do millions of others, but after last night there will be millions more on board. --But truth to tell, the constant reiteration of the "message" even as it's recognized to be manufactured and intended to harm, still has an effect. Cuda coulda collapsed, and that created worry.

--He claiming the "change" mantle, within the contex of debating a botox gopher, is convincing. It's no doubt who it is who's fresh, who it is who represents change.

--Off topic. "malignant narcissism", the psychiatric diagnosis of Barack: an exceptionally high opinion of ones-self with no accomplishment to back it up. I wonder if this might be a contributing reason as to why blacks support him so powerfully, beyond the simple racial identification? Part of black culture is "self-esteem". This is especially true in the inner city, where the impressively ignorant are bountifully arrogant, and will not be "dissed". Possibly his pathology resonates with his.

------------------
Hot Dog!

House passes bailout, stocks plunge. It was passed somewhere shortly after 1:00PM. Is it possible to note any correlation? --Really really dumb bill. --Really really dumb bill. Now we're going to waste 700 billion under the control of stupidity.

-----------------

The only pleasing news. Last night's debate

42% higher than Friday's presidential debate between top-of-the-ticket contenders John McCain and Barack Obama

I'll say nearly half of America watched. That's everybody who's going to vote. That should make it impossible for the media to spin that Sarah is stupid. But we've still got that stupid bill that's going to stink like a dead fish in six weeks. I certainly wouldn't want to have to take credit for having passed that thing.

------------
I guess I'll post this since I wrote it. I won't bother to write it just as a post:

Dear J,

"I guess the French banks are okay."

PARIS/LONDON, Oct 3 (Reuters) - French Prime Minister Francois Fillon said on Friday the world stood on the "edge of the abyss", gripped by a global financial crisis now threatening industry, trade and jobs worldwide.

"The world is on the edge of the abyss because of an irresponsible system," Fillon said, alluding to widespread anger over past lax regulation of financial markets and excessive lending.

I don't actually know anything specific about the French system, but this is world wide. In your second email you're doing what is called "thinking". I have no problem with spending 700 billion dollars to avert catastrophe, but the reason I'm so opposed to this bailout is because there's no thinking behind the bill. It's throwing money up into the air, all under the control of only one man, with no intelligent sense of how to effectively use that money. The problem is the uncertain value of the assets that back loans, it's not that the assets have lost value. Some have value and some don't. That's because the bad assets have been mixed in packages with the good, but in such a complex way --traded again and again-- that it's exceptionally hard to know which is where. That's why nobody is willing to trust any. And that methodology of discovery is exactly what has not been addressed in this bill.

--All projects depend on loans, at least effectively. There is no economic activity not supported by loans.

--The banks, for the most part, are not stuck with these loans, they sold them all to Fanny and Freddie. Fanny and Freddie then mixed them with other assets and sent them out world wide. Other banks broke up these packages more to suit their own interests, and sent them out. By one calculation, 63 trillion dollars of assets are now infected by these bad loans. And nobody knows where they are.

--Many of these loans were no money down and interest only payments.

--When housing prices fell due to over supply, and adjustable mortgage rates went up, buyers could no longer either make their payments or sell for a profit. They bailed. The "loan asset", it's value based on their payments, were then zero. These zero value assets are now scattered all over.

--But the houses still exist, they are worth something. There still would be wealth and credit --though loss-- if people knew where they were. But since they don't, credit is frozen, and with no credit there's no economic activity. Thus the crisis.

--It's to keep things from total collapse that governments want to pump money into the system, to buy time.

--The question then though, is who is going to sort out that bad debt, and how? This is where the financial arguments become really difficult.

--I presume most of the good work will be done by individual businesses, taking loss but making arrangements enabling lending. A lot of government money being promised makes them less inclined to get to it; they wait for the bailout. This prolongs the crises, and makes it worse.

--The bailout bill is bad.

See you, --Mouse

PS
All of your reasoning is correct, but the problem isn't the loss of value, it's that this loss of value is intermingled all over, and disguised. That's why these assets are considered "toxic", rather than just a loss. People don't really know what packages hold them and which don't. --This anyway is my understanding. --At some point these house will be sold for some value. --And credit isn't actually "frozen". That's hyperbole. There's just a lot less credit being sought now because, to cover risk, it costs so much. I'm speaking of the private sector.

I'm sick of this stuff and disgusted and terribly afraid it's going to give us Obama, whom I consider meglomaniacly insane.

Dow Down

2008-10-02T10:47:00.000-07:00

Dow down, even after salvation by the Senate last night. Man do I hope the House defeats this lemon. I'm not particularly pleased at the thought of losing personal wealth if there's a severe downturn, but I'm much more concerned with the wealth of the nation. Everything I value is supported by that wealth. I want to see us do well, but to do well requires intelligent response, and everything I've learned about these matters over the past two weeks tells me that this is not a well considered plan; and I immensely resent the fear mongering, the attempt to stampede. Fear is wholesome because calamity is possible, but "Do it my way" is never an argument.

I regard the failure of the promise of passage of this plan to stem the decline of the markets as a certain argument that people who do know something about economics don't regard this plan's efficacy any more highly than do I. And then of course the low class twits who have been hyperventilating fear have made matters much worse.

---------------
1:45 AM
--Stocks lower overseas pretty much everywhere. Good. I hope that argues that our piddly 700 billion bailout really won't do much. We need not so much a bailout as new thinking.
--And Sarah did just fine. I'm delighted. And relieved.

------------------
3:30 PM. Closing:

The Dow Jones industrials fell 348 points to the 10,482 level, according to preliminary calculations.

Good. We're all going to die. Bring it on! But at least kill the bill. If the bill isn't going to do any good --it won't-- why not at least spend the 700 billion to pay my heating bills this winter? We ought to at least get something for our money. And kick Paulson out in the street without a sweater.

But crude is down to 93 bucks. I like that.

The Bad Boat Floats

2008-10-01T14:31:00.000-07:00

Dow closing only down .17%. Not bad, considering bad economic indices (the fall in manufacturing activity), and a plunge in the value of US auto stocks.

The bailout? The operative term is "unease", investors don't know if it's going to pass or fail. I have an idea nobody cares a great deal, not like Monday. If it fails, prices will drop a little, if it passes, prices will rise a little, but I think the moment has passed where the market believes that what the congress does or does not do is what will determine the movement of the economy. An influence, yes, but not determinant.

Crude down $2.07, that's with inventories reported much higher than expected. Seems like a proportionate response.

Once more on the bailout. "Officials in both parties predicted the measure would pass the Senate by a wide margin." That's from INO, perhaps it's the presumption at NYMEX. My preference would be that it fail. Then the FDIC and Mark-to-Market changes could be immediately passed, to salvage something, and congressional leaders could get back to coming up with a more intelligent way to spend a vast amount of money. It certainly appears that won't happen.

-------------------
Note: Best article I've so far read on how we got here. May comment on it later. Should speculate too, on political fall-out. McCain certainly has taken a tremendous hit on this matter. I really don't want Barack as my next president.

-------------------
Heavens! McCain back to within four in Gallup?! Considering how retched everything is, this is clearly impossible for a Republican. It must indicate that most voters have verypowerfully already made up their minds, "come hell or high water".

---------------
8:40
Bailout passes, about a half hour ago: 75 - 24. Not admirable. I don't know why the house can't just ignore it, or declare it null and void, since constitutionally it's the House that initiates spending bills.

(AP:NEW YORK) Wall Street is reacting cautiously to the Senate's passage of the banking bailout plan. Stock index futures, which give an indication of how trading will proceed when the market opens Thursday, are down moderately after the vote.

Dow Jones industrial average futures are down 48, or 0.44 percent, at 10,839.

This about 8:50. I guess this was what the hullabaloo was all about? To drive stocks down a bit?

-------------------
Honor Role:

Allard (R)
Barasso (R)
Brownback (R)
Bunning (R)
Cantwell (D)
Cochran (R)
Crapo (R)
DeMint (R)
Dole (R)
Dorgan (D)
Enzi (R)
Feingold (D)
Inhofe (R)
Johnson (D)
Landrieu (D)
Nelson (FL) (D)
Roberts (R)
Sanders (I)
Sessions (R)
Shelby (R)
Stabenow (D)
Tester (D)
Vitter (R)
Wicker (R)
Wyden (D)


--------------------
From INO, about 10:30 PM

(AP:NEW YORK) Financial markets reacted cautiously to the Senate'spassage of the banking bailout plan late Wednesday, with stock indexfutures falling and indicating a drop when trading resumed Thursday.There was no discernible change in the credit markets after the vote....

Wednesday night, Dow Jones industrial average futures were down 85, or0.78percent, at 10,802. The Standard &Poor's 500 index futureswere down9.8, or 0.84 percent, at 1,158.60, and Nasdaq 100 futures weredown 17.75,or 1.1 percent, at 1,561.00.

In Japan, the Nikkei index was down 0.99 percent.
Way to go.
---------
------------------
Update, about 11:30 PM.
"Asian stock markets retreated Thursday as broader concerns about a global economic slowdown outweighed any relief over the U.S. Senate's passage of the bailout package to rescue the U.S. financial system."
Yawn.
---------------------
       Interesting.  This bailout bill is not an unconstitutionally initiated spending bill coming out of the Senate, it's actually merely an amendment to a bill (the AMT bill: Average Minimum Tax) already originated and passed in the house, passed in the Senate, and now returned with this vast but legal amendment.

       Interestingly though, the house must either pass it exactly in its present form, or appoint conferees to work out a compromise in conference.  So no new goody -packed House bill....

       Except, I see no reason they couldn't just ignore it entirely.  I don't see why they have to vote on it if they don't want to, I don't see why they have to send it to conference.  They could just write a new bailout, and send it to the Senate, and the Senate couldn't do a thing about it.  And then when they do get this bill to conference they could just strike the bailout.  My.

Calm & Prosperous Voyage

2008-09-30T11:43:00.000-07:00

Okay, just checking the news for the first time today. This on Drudge:

CALM RETURNS

LONDON (Reuters) - World stocks were at near three-year lows on Tuesday but fears of a major market meltdown failed to carry through from Wall Street to Europe as confidence in bank rescue packages persisted.

The U.S. Congress's rejection of a bank rescue plan tore nearly 9 percent off the broad S&P 500 on Monday but European shares and many Asian stock markets clawed back from early losses on hopes the U.S. plan would eventually go through.

There's more, of course. I note the italics are mine. Again and again the statement is made that markets have solidified "on hopes the U.S. plan would eventually go through." There are a billion people making decisions whether to sell, buy, or hold, and this is the only thought they've got in there mind? This is perhaps one thought every mind has, but along with that other thoughts of a billion different varieties. To explain markets on the basis of what the U.S. congress might or might do seems to me to be thinking within a very small box. It's that small box made the whole globe that creates the hysteria.

I think the next thing we have to do is put Barney Frank in jail and there will be peace and plenty thereafter forevermore.

--------------
Hmm'n, it appears Nancy Pelosi doesn't want to put Barney in jail. This is at the end of the article and it's not specifically about Barney and I've inverted the paragraphs:

Emanuel apparently is concerned the roles former Clinton Administration members may have played in the mortgage industry collapse could be politically -- or worse, if the Department of Justice had its way, legally -- treacherous for many.

[He] has received assurances from Pelosi that she will not allow what he termed a "witch hunt" to take place during the next Congressional session over the role Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac played in the economic crisis.

Of course, to my mind if you do not put these people in jail, that is, publicly establish the cause of the collapse, you can have no resolution and no protection against the same thing happening again. I sure would like to see congress get out of the pass-the-money-around business and into the blame business.

-------------
Right now I think my attitude is that I wish congress would just go home, George Bush would just go play golf, Harry Hank Hooey Paulson --whatever his name -- would just fly off in his golden parachute, and all the old-men-hysterics having their period would just jump off a building. --Give the FDIC greater authority, and then let the financials work things out themselves. It's not that I don't think there must be some intelligent thing that could be done, it's just that I don't think there's anyone out there just now, in charge, who's not lunatic. --I would further note that the markets being positive when the congress is not in session is a pretty good indication of what the congress should be doing. I'll bet tomorrow when they start haggling they'll screw things up again.

---------------------
Gingrich on The Mess. Really good. Fire Paulson!

Fire the Tin Pot!

-----------
5:45 PM

Ha!

Statement by McCain-Palin senior policy adviser Doug Holtz-Eakin on the SEC's plan to relax mark-to-market accounting requirements: [Rich Lowry]

John McCain is pleased to see that the SEC has finally decided to permit alternative accounting methods to mark-to-market accounting for securities where no active market exists. There is serious concern that these accounting rules are worsening the credit crunch, making it difficult for small businesses to stay afloat and squeezing family budgets. In March, John McCain called for a meeting of accounting professionals to discuss whether mark-to-market accounting was magnifying problems in the financial markets."

This means the markets will be fine tomorrow. Now if only we can send congress to Mexico or the South Antilles or maybe to the South Pole where they can cool off.

Bailout Bull Is Battered

2008-09-29T11:35:00.000-07:00

205 yeas, 228 nays. One third Dems opposed, two thirds Repubs.

Absolutely splendid. Now the world will end, or we will be in the deepest depression since men lived in caves... Or not.

If we're not in soup lines by tomorrow, at the very least I expect the resignation of Secretary Paulson, and I think it would be good form for many conservative pundits and most radio talk show hosts to jump off a building.

Stocks down. Biggy. They'll be up again in an hour. And crude below a hundred. That I like.

If I'm wrong and the crash becomes permanent...? Whoops.

-------------------
Exact final tally:

207-226, with Democrats supporting 141-94, Republicans opposing 66-132.

My own judgment is that this defeat is good judgment, in that I don't for a moment believe that a bad bill done today is better than a good bill done in two weeks. And I am critical of those who say "My heart is against it but my head is for it." I don't think their head is working at all, I think they're merely creatures of panic and mob thought. You don't maintain a free and prosperous country by surrendering to the despotism of Barney Frank. This was a package put together by the very people who caused the problem. Unless there is honesty in debate, and proper cause and blame is assessed, then there can be no proper address to the cause; it in effect will just be more of the same.

The process has to start over. There has to be a true fight, there has to be a recognition of tough times, and there has to be judgment supported by courage. "Pass this or we'll all die" is an argument immensely offensive.

---------------
3:35 PM

From President Bush, exact quote:

"We've put forth a plan that was bad because we've got a bad problem."

Well, maybe not quite an exact quote.

Bailout? Version II

2008-09-27T23:46:00.000-07:00

Just spotted this:

Wall Street Journal, September 29, 2008, 2:01 A.M. ET

Lawmakers Reach Tentative Bailout Deal

Top U.S. policy makers emerged from hours of tense negotiations with a clear message just after midnight Sunday morning: A deal to bailout U.S. financial markets has been agreed on and all that remains to be done is to commit the legislation to paper.

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.), and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D.), were flanked by key negotiators in the Capitol as they announced that a $700 billion plan to have Treasury buy up toxic assets had been all but finalized after hours of exhausting negotiations. "I think we're there," an exhausted Mr. Paulson said, a sentiment echoed in the statements of negotiators such as House Financial Services Chairman Barney Frank (D., Mass.) and Senate Banking Committee head Christopher Dodd (D., Conn.)

And for the Republicans:

"We worked out everything," said Sen. Judd Gregg, the chief Senate Republican in the talks. He said the House should be able to vote on it Sunday, and the Senate could take it up Monday.

Pretty solid, and...

House Minority Whip Roy Blunt (R., Mo.) said that he planned to talk to colleagues and get reactions.

Maybe not so much.

And no Boehnor, Shelby, or Cantor. I think the Democrats may be taking a bow again, and applauding themselves. I don't see a lot that will particularly excite Republicans --the insurance idea for example seems to be nothing more than a verbal acknowledgment of concept. But then, nothing has been written down, so we'll see. They've probably just decided to muscle it through. The announcement now is for the Sunday TV shows.

Republicans might as well let them ride with it. If it's a successful program it's good for the country, if it's a disaster it's good for Republicans. I can't see any point in voting for it.

And I can't see why any of this should have been so "exhausting". It pretty much seems to me they've been talking to themselves.

--------------------
8:50PM PM

I've remained in a good mood today by not paying any attention to the news at all. I did just check and found this at Hot Air:

A source close to House Republicans has put out a Myth vs Fact rundown of the bailout compromise, announced early this morning....

Myth: Treasury plan is the only option available.

Fact: Treasury is given multiple options to deal with the current economic crisis, including insurance, public/private auctions, loan guarantees, and direct support to financial institutions.

Fact: Further, Treasury is MANDATED to create an insurance program (Section102) that protects the taxpayers and requires companies that wish to participate in this program to have some skin in the game by paying risk-based premiums.

I guess that's the only one I particularly care about. But while the written version is apparently now up, I haven't seen it, so I don't know if "mandated" actually means mandated. To my mind this is an exceptionally intelligent proposal --all that's really needed to restart the financial markets is to break the freeze, insurance would do that-- but if it's "mandated" but not pursued, it might be the same as if it didn't exist. --Otherwise, the only money immediately available to Paulson is 250 billion, and 100 billion more simply on the President's affirmation that it's necessary. Is it possible that that not being enough, Paulson would have to try the insurance option...? Which wouldn't cost a dime. --It also seems to me that temporary unlimited FDIC deposit insurance would prevent runs on banks and money markets, and that should unfreeze assets for lending.

Whatever, at least it's not unlimited power given to one man, and that somewhat maintains the idea of republican government. --Still think this is mostly hysteria. Apparently passage won't happen before Wednesday --the House Monday, the Senate Wednesday. It will be interesting to see if markets calm just on the thought "something will be done". Friday the Dow went up 121 points.

Apparently most of the Republican leadership is backing the bill, though again, that statement of backing has come before they've seen the actual written language.

------------------
I rather like this guy's attitude:

If the bailout doesn’t work, we will see further declines in the stock market and asset value than if we did nothing — so what ever they propose better be bullet-proof. Personally, I don’t have a lot of confidence in the Congress, Treasury, and Federal Reserve to cobble together a cohesive plan that covers all the bases.

With elections on the line, there is too much temptation to play politics and not do what is right for the market.

But still — perhaps the right thing to do would have been to listen to the lessons of Adam Smith and Milton Friedman and let the capitalistic market work.

Fundamentally my feeling. Maybe a lot of FDIC, but otherwise take a lot of time and do something bright and not political. And do it when the dimensions of the problem are clear. The only huge dimension of the problem just now is hysteria.

Bailout?

2008-09-25T12:10:00.000-07:00

From Fox:

Emerging from a two-hour negotiating session, Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., said, "We are very confident that we can act expeditiously."

Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass: "There really isn't much of a deadlock to break."

But:

Rep. Spencer Bachus, R-AL, the top Republican on Frank's committee, told FOX News "there is no deal yet," although he conceded there was progress....

House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-OH, agreed with Bachus.

"I am encouraged by the bipartisan progress being made toward an economic package that protects the interests of families, seniors, small businesses and all taxpayers. However, House Republicans have not agreed to any plan at this point," Boehner said in a written statement.

Actually, an hour ago, when it was reported widely as a "done deal", only Dodd, Franks, and Pelosi were quoted, with only some Republican mumble, and no authoritative statement. Now there is, from Boehner. Pretty obviously this was a "credit gambit", Democrats wanted to take credit for a done deal, so that if it later falls apart, then John McCain won't be the savior who made it all possible, but the man who caused it all to collapse.

-------------------
9:30 PM

Man, do I feel better. Appears the Paulson deal is breaking down. Good, we're Americans, not Soviets.

Republican house members have a very nice idea: Insurance. The idea seems to be this:

--There are trillions of billions of zillions of dollars out there in securities that would normally be bought and sold and used to finance lending. But it's all "frozen up". The trick is to unfreeze it.

--The idea is that those assets are frozen because they're tainted by the inclusion of subprime mortgages, but nobody knows what package contains what, so the true value of any package is not known, thus the hesitancy to buy.

--but the total of bad assets to good is actually tiny.

--This is where insurance comes in. The idea is that financial institutions should continue to deal with them as if they were all good. If it does turn out that a particular package is bad, the government covers the loss. That makes all of them good.

--But the government believes they can cover this cost by selling insurance. The idea is that institutions want to be able to do business. If for a small additional price they can do business, they will. Since it will turn out they are far more businesses traded that affected, the insurance will cover the cost.

Very very smart. And there are other ideas concerning additional infusion of capital and so forth, but this is the basic idea and it's free market and brilliant.

---------
As I understand, Barney is very upset. Ha Ha. I also understand a lot of Democrats in the house are warming to this plan.

And on the debates? Obama apparently has decided his presence is needed throughout the night. If it's needed tonight, it will be needed tomorrow, and there will be no particular reason for him to speed off to his debate, all by himself, while McCain continues to save the country.

Bring It On

2008-09-25T06:31:00.000-07:00

I say, if we're going to have a depression, let's do it. I'm immensely unimpressed that the people who let this financial problem develop --I'm thinking Bernake and Paulson-- are the two who should be able to fix it. They've already proved themselves incompetent, their prescriptions for cure can mean nothing. Buying their ideas is buying the pig. Right now the financial engine sputters. If we let things ride either something unclogs or something breaks, either way we know the problem because we'll be able to see it. Right now the diagnosis is all analysis, and it's not something I trust at all, and I don't like somebody telling me "Give me 700 billion because I'm right." I would prefer to give them the door, as failures, and then just wait to see what happens. I would presume that the markets, under stress, would discover some collective intelligence. I don't think the markets want a depression anymore than I do.

Hooey Ho Hum

2008-09-23T09:45:00.000-07:00

I think the Great Depression of the 21st Century has come and gone. This bailout business is baloney. I think it's dead. Dead probably through unresolvable partisan bickering rather than through a philosophic conviction that it's a bad idea, but dead, hopefully, nevertheless.

I will say that I have the impression that Bernake and Paulson seem quite impressed at their own heroic importance. I hope they get some flack during their testimony.

I don't know if I'll bother to write about this more or not. I can't see that a few billion in bad mortgages should have much affect throughout the financial system as a whole, poison-pill packged or not. A little freeze-up for a bit, maybe; that's happened, but it shouldn't take long for various banks to compute the possible loss and then just continue. It's just not very much money compared to all the money that's out there, and people want to lend and people want to borrow and people can figure out how to do it.

No bailout, because no problem.

------------------
6:00PM

This is interesting:

WASHINGTON - Democrats have decided to allow a quarter-century ban on drilling for oil off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts to expire next week, conceding defeat in an month-long battle with the White House and Republicans set off by $4 a gallon gasoline prices this summer.

Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey, D-Wis., told reporters Tuesday that a provision continuing the moratorium will be dropped this year from a stopgap spending bill to keep the government running after Congress recesses for the election.

Republicans have made lifting the ban a key campaign after gasoline prices spiked this summer and public opinion turned in favor of more drilling. President Bush lifted an executive ban on offshore drilling in July.

"If true, this capitulation by Democrats following months of Republican pressure is a big victory for Americans struggling with record gasoline prices,"said House GOP leader John Boehner of Ohio.

Yup. And it means speculators in oil have to fear more oil supply. They had presumed Democrats where going to get through their more-drill-no-drill nonsense legislation. Dems are whipped, apparently (to my surprise). Prices will head down again. --Crude about $106 just now.

-----------------
Note:

Will this mean drilling can commence? Not quite. The states have to lease the lands as well as the federal government, and states won’t likely do so without revenue sharing.... Congress has to approve that action, and right now it still appears that Democrats want to use that to limit production.

I don't know anything about this particular wrinkle. But Democrats lost the first fight due to public pressure, and in the same way will probably lose the second. Depends on how Republicans do November 4.

Nothn' Happened Sort of Day

2008-09-10T22:39:00.000-07:00

Strange, nothing-happened sort of day. I guess the only way I could feel this way --since probably as much happened as happens on most days-- is if I was expecting something. I think I expected something would happen in the polls; I think I expected they would go up, they remained steady. I think I thought that with the OPEC announcement of curtailed production something dramatic would happen with prices, up or down; they remained static. Possibly I thought something would happen with the lipstick comment, --it's remained negative for Barack but nothing dramatic. I don't know what I expected, but I do know I have no new insight into anything political.

--I do expect McCain's numbers are going to stay up because Barack had his shot and couldn't pull it off. I can't see any possibility he can get his act together because he only ever had one: I'm a black guy with a grin and I'm not Hillary. I've said again and again that "Hope & Change" never meant anything more than "I hope we can get rid of Hillary." But he only needed half of the Democrat party to do that and he's not going to get half of the nation who want to "get rid" of McCain and Palin.

--I don't believe Palin is going to continue to be anything but a plus, because I don't believe there will be any scandal associated with her, and I'm certain she will be far more articulate than Barry himself; and I don't believe the MSM will be able to hurt her because they'll be dismissed as so clearly in the tank for the dolt. And if Palin can continue to get Barry's goat he'll be the one making headlines.

--Biden is helpful. He slips into honesty every once-in-awhile, and he likes Hillary and McCain more than he likes Barack.

--McCain will remain steady. His image can't really be changed but his positives should go up now that more people will consider him a more probable president and will take a closer look. There's a lot there to like, and conservatives have accepted he's who he is.

--I don't think the economy will be that much of a drag. McCain wasn't President, he can't be blamed, and with recession threatening anyway, who's going to argue you should raise taxes?

--Energy might be very big.

--Iraq is a non-issue --though there should be some satisfaction that there's been victory. --There could be other blow-ups, all of which would favor McCain.

In sum, I see nothing but roses. 'Course, I totally ignore MSM. How many others do? They still are the enemy, but to the MSM I would say: You can put lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig.

And incidentally, Barry looks like a teenager.

Street Cool

2008-09-09T16:13:00.000-07:00

From Ben Smith's blog:

Obama poked fun of McCain and Palin's new "change" mantra.

"You can put lipstick on a pig," he said as the crowd cheered. "It's still a pig."

"You can wrap an old fish in a piece of paper called change. It's still gonna stink."

"We've had enough of the same old thing."

The crowd apparently took the "lipstick" line as a reference to Palin, who described the difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull in a single word: "lipstick."

Reported by Amie Parnes, from Lebanon, VA:

Obama wears lipstick?

---------------------
Read hundreds of comments on the lipstick comment, mostly from the Ben Smith Blog, somewhat leftish to my judgment. By a huge percentage it was understood that the lipstick comment referred to Palin, and the "old fish" comment referred to McCain. A few said, "So What? It's accurate," and some said it was just "a common expression," nothing to get excited about. It is in fact a common expression, but within the context of Palin's pit bull comment, and the fact of McCain's age, there is zero doubt about Obama's intent. (Normally, the fish comment would be "rotten fish", not "old fish".)

Marc Ambinder disagreed. He said it was obviously a slip, otherwise we would have to assume Obama was just colossally stupid; he couldn't possibly have used it purposely because he would have understood how offensive it would sound to so many. Ambinder misses the point. The guy is cheap. This is his personality, so that's what he expressed.

I'm not going to twist common observation into a pretzel so I can pretend Obama didn't do what. What he did was purposeful. But I suppose I could attempt psychoanalysis: Why did he do it? I can answer perfectly: Because he's cheap.

As to why he's additionally so politically stupid? I can answer that perfectly as well: Because he's had no experience. He's never had to run a race from the center against opposition. He's never had to pull together a coalition. Always, he's been either the chosen one of the Chicago machine (with all opposition eliminated prior to the race); or, as in the primaries, he's just had to express one half of the sentiment of the party that is one half of the political sentiment of America. He just had to be left, and an alternative to the hated Hill; but once with a foothold, he didn't really have to be personally politically astute. So that's why he's dumb.

Bottom line: A lot of people want a Democrat this year, it's getting so a lot of people don't want Obama.

Note on tactics: It does appear he can't control his inflated ego, tweak him and he strikes out; and it does appear that Sarah's got his goat. The clear tactic is to keep Sarah in his face.

This shouldn't be that difficult, after all, that's her job, to be the pit bull. She legitimately can attack his policies and experience. If she uses good humor, she can mock everything about him. If she maintains her crowds she of course will be devastating, but in fact she probably only has to mock. He's unbalanced. It will drive him mad.

At some point Sarah should exactly respond with Hillary's words when he said she looked good enough... Whatever it was. Have to look it up... "That hurts my feelings...I'll have to bear up...?" Something in that nature. That response would bring a laugh, and the Hillary women would know exactly what she meant.

---------------------------
OPEC to cut output by 520,000 bpd.

This is interesting. If this doesn't stop the price slide, prices will plummet. I imagine OPEC is bright enough to recognize that this is going to be annoying to a number of other countries.

Crude was down to $102.06 earlier; just now (1:55 AM) it's $103.57.

Going, Going...

2008-09-08T20:53:00.000-07:00

Gone! Follow the bouncing ball... Hap.. . py days... are here... a gain. That ball is outta here!

The polls aren't coming back down. Normally a convention bounce is due just to four days of positive coverage to a race that most voters have only but already been following half-heartedly for a year. They know the narrative, but they get a big dose. But the bounce is temporary because in fact nothing has changed and once the excitement fades the commitment fades. It's back to ho hum for those indifferent voters and a general desire just to throw all the bums out.

The Democrat convention certainly was ho hum. Some drama, of course, but only for those already wrapped up in the race, and then a wrap up of more Obama which is too much Obama, he just can't be new anymore. His speech got no bounce at all.

But the Republican convention was different. There has been change. There is someone new now, and the narrative is different, and explosive and accelerating. The base is charged up, something no one would have conceived possible; and the opposition is faltering, creaking, crumbling. The "facts on the ground" have changed, this is our "surge", unexpected, but slowly devastating.

The numbers aren't going back to where they were.

----------------
I see the devastation as two fold: Sarah Palin has rewritten "woman's issues." Women, fundamentally, instinctively, desire to nurture kids, not kill them. To venerate and protect birth is a woman's issue, killing kids is just feminism. Far more women are going to be drawn to Sarah than to Hillary. The commitment to life is far more mainstream than "the right to chose." --Besides, Sarah did it on her own. She's far more super-mom / super-woman than Hillary, or any of the Democrat types who have claimed to speak for women.

And she's more manly than The Twit. This is the fraud I've been waiting to see fold for months now. I'm amazed he's hung on so long. But of course he hangs on because the press hangs on, and doesn't give up on its mantra that he's great. It's their conviction that they can create reality: what's reported is what's real. Obama, Obama, Obama. But in fact it's Sarah who's real, and The Twit is just a twit. Tiny, Twit. And people have eyes. When they see genuine capacity, even if inexperienced, they recognize it.

Generally the mind changes in an instant. Or rather, I should say, conscious understanding of belief and commitment changes in an instant. Of course, first there's a long preparation of doubt and uneasiness, always shoved under the consciousness, or to the side, the commitment to present belief reaffirmed with new bellicosity, covering doubt. But in fact, people do think and people do observe. It just takes a tiny straw sometimes, for them to suddenly see they've been suckered. The MSM, in many things, not just with Obama, has been creating fantasy as fact. They believe their fantasy, they've separated themselves more and more from fact. At a certain point, normal people just can't follow with them anymore, they see they've been suckered, and at that point the fantasy is rejected entirely.

I believe that's happened with a lot of people now. Sometimes it just takes a straw. Sarah Palin was a baseball bat.

The numbers aren't going back down.

-------------------
Just for fun, all of the major poll numbers Friday through Sunday (From RCP).

Poll Date Sample McCain (R) Obama (D) Spread

RCP Average 09/05 - 09/07 -- 48.3 45.4 ------------McCain +2.9

ABC News/Wash Post 09/05 - 09/07 LV 49 47 ------McCain +2
CBS News 09/05 - 09/07 655 RV 46 44 ---------------McCain +2
USA Today/Gallup 09/05 - 09/07 823 LV 54 44 ----McCain +10
CNN 09/05 - 09/07 942 RV 48 48 ---------------------Tie
Rasmussen Tracking 09/05 - 09/07 3000 LV 48 47 -McCain +1
Hotline/FD Tracking 09/05 - 09/07 924 RV 44 44 ---Tie
Gallup Tracking 09/05 - 09/07 2733 RV 49 44 -------McCain +5

--------------
And crude continues down despite Ike ($105.32; 1:00 AM). Could be because congress is talking drilling:

A bipartisan group, originally known as the Gang of Ten, that has crafted a drilling compromise gained more members and has grown to 22 senators. The group has proposed allowing drilling 50 miles off the coasts of Virginia, South Carolina, North Carolina and Georgia and off the Gulf coast of Florida.

Separately, Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., was preparing a proposal that also would include drilling in the currently off-limits eastern Gulf of Mexico and possibly elsewhere.....

Republican leaders are expected to push for broader offshore drilling and are likely to call for lifting drilling bans along both the Pacific and Atlantic coasts as well as the eastern Gulf of Mexico. They also have strongly opposed any additional taxes on oil companies....

Meanwhile, House Republican leaders on Monday demanded an end to all of the drilling bans on the Outer Continental Shelf's federal waters as well as in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

"We want a vote," House GOP leader John Boehner R-Ohio, declared at a gathering of more than 40 House Republicans on the steps of the Capitol, demanding that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., allow floor consideration of the Republican energy package.

What will happen who knows, but if we drill, the price plummets, because the shortage of oil is as fake as Obama is great or Global Warming is threatening. "Investors", the pension funds, etc., know that, and so they've been getting out now, steadily, since Bush first lifted the Executive Ban on off-shore drilling. Not a drop of new oil, but a threat of new oil, and that's enough to deflate the bubble of these irrational prices. Prices will move down toward the "last barrel" price of production. --Of course, the threat of new oil has to remain creditable.

Free, Free At Last

2008-09-07T19:54:00.000-07:00

Subj: Free, Free At Last

K,

Just got back. Went to the Net. This popped up on Drudge; from Gallup/USA:

"In the new poll, taken Friday through Sunday, McCain leads Obama by 54%-44% among those seen as most likely to vote."

And I'll include this, since it's something you're so concerned about:

"McCain has narrowed Obama's wide advantage on handling the economy, by far the electorate's top issue. Before the GOP convention, Obama was favored by 19 points; now he's favored by 3."

Also:

"McCain leads Democrat Barack Obama by 50%-46% among registered voters..."

I'll mention again that the Gallup and Rasmussen tracking polls are of registered voters, not likely voters; so with those two polls, were they weighted for likely voters, McCain's lead would probably be similar. And in the weighting of those two polls, it's always assumed Democrats have far more enthusiasm and will turn out in proportionately greater numbers. That's probably not true anymore, so just by that factor McCain's lead is probably greater than stated.

Oil, unfortunately, has slightly spiked, probably because of Ike.

See you, --Mouse

---------------------
Also, Sarah to give her first interview, to Charlie Gibson...In Alaska! This is splendid. She'll probably be in the Govenor's Mansion...office...whatever. He'll have to address her: Govenor. That makes for some gravitas, and probably a focus on issues of state, rather than issues of family. And then she might do a second one in her home, where questions about family would be more appropriate; but again, in her home, Gibson would have to be respectful. It appears the McCain Camp is being very bright. She has suffered a lot of slime. This is a way of commanding respect. Plus, in her own enviornment she'll probably feel more in command.

-----------------
And note MSNBC has dumped Olberman and Mathews, at least in terms of debate coverage. McCain and Sarah are already shaking things up.

---------------------
And Jindal is getting rave reveiws for his handling of Prep for Humrican Gustav "I'd give him an A-plus," said Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu. --Unfortunately, it looks like Ike is going to give him another test in just days.

Good day, though.

--------------
And one note of the obvious, though it just now popped into my mind. One reason Palin is so automatically compared to Obama, rather than Biden, is because that's what everybody has been doing for a year! That is, comparing one woman, Hillary, against the Big O. This is an exact continuation of that mental and emotional habit, though this time, unfortunately for Obo, the woman he's being compared to, Palin, is the VP, not the Presidential, nominee. Is Obs qualified to be VP? Interesting.

To State the Obvious

2008-09-05T14:50:00.001-07:00

At the risk of stating the obvious: The immense response to Sarah Palin has been prepped. She's an appealing woman, but that appeal doesn't explain the extraordinary emotion by which she's been greeted.

A man thrown a rope while seated in his living room might indeed be impressed that it's a very nice rope; a man thrown a rope in a rapids will grasp at it as though his life depended on it. Indeed, in that case it does. The American public just now is not in a rapids, but they are in a miasmatic swamp of propagandistic delusion, and they have seen a bright light --call it sanity-- and they grasp at it, delightedly. Obama is being sold as a man of great capacity. He's a dolt. No human of any sort of functional capacity, say the ability to breath in-and-out, can see him and not see a dolt. Yet he's extolled as exceptional.

Enter Sarah. She is exceptional. A beginner, but exceptional. It's a truism of criticism that the way to criticize is to compare. The one will be better than the other. So now you have two, beginners both. Which is the better?

This is a sanity, and once the American public has seen it they won't forget.

And they won't forget who attempted to perpetrate this fraud of a Messiah. It's not merely His Holiness of the Big O, it's something called... the Mainstream Press. This election could be a realignment. The Messiah is not the only one who has earned an identity.

---------------------
5:00 PM
It's official now:

John McCain has won the ratings race.

The Republican nominee beat Democratic challenger Barack Obama's record-setting convention speech viewership by 500,000.

McCain's address at the Republican National Convention on Thursday nightwas seen by about 38.9 million viewers, according to Nielsen Media Research.Obama received 38.4 million.

And crude is now at $106.70, and hit a low of $105.11. What a good day.

Note:
I read many of the comments on the ratings article. It seemed most said it was a terrible speech and they had fallen asleep. That's a defensive tactic, they're falling asleep to avoid being snapped awake.

-----------
12:18 AM
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/bdffd9a6-7b71-11dd-b839-000077b07658.html

This is interesting:

The conflict between Russia and Georgia began on the night of August 7, when Georgian forces, including commando units, tanks and artillery, assaulted the South Ossetian capital of Tskhinvali.
Russia says that at least 133 civilians died in the attack, as well as 59 of its own peacekeepers, according to figures released this week.

In response Russia launched a mass invasion and aerial bombardment of Georgia, in which 215 Georgians have died, including 146 soldiers and 69 civilians.

I wonder if this is "official." From the article (Financial Times) the Russian figures are a Russian release. It may be only in reference to the assault on Tskhinvali. The Georgian figures seem to be of the conflict as a whole, though where they come from I don't know. But these are really low figures for what supposedly was a decimation of the Georgian army.

Been a fun day.Hope to read even better poll results tomorrow.

Catch Up

2008-09-05T06:56:00.000-07:00

I've decided that rather than a dump I'll just briefly state what I've thought the last few weeks.

--On the Dem convention. I predicted that there would be no unity, and that Barack would get no bounce. There was no unity, though more civility than I'd expected. Hillary's speech was predictable, but far more skillfully written and delivered than I'd imagined. Bill's speech did surprise me, in that the words were so measured and "seemed" so positive. I guess he was content that things were going well enough so that he could "seem" to play ball, I suppose recognizing that nobody would believe him anyway. Together they gave Barack a four or five point bounce.

--Barack's speech, on the other hand, gave him no bounce at all. I had no prediction as to what the speech would contain, only that it would not be effective. That's because he's lost his brand. Only the already damaged can continue to think that he's new.

--On the Repubs: I didn't see Sarah coming. What a stunning, marvelous surprise. This is an elemental force, it's the force of the authentic. As long as she can hold up, she's a mirror to the lie of The Obama, and of the whole Democrat party. These last four years have been fantasy. All the opposition to the war, the nut stuff about Global Warming --everything-- has been the creation of a dream. But now there's a genuine woman --the VP!-- who's new and inexperienced yet more competent than the Democrat nominee. That's so sudden and unexpected that it may be the snap of the finger that ends the whole trance. Every Liberal position is illusion, opposition simply to discredit so that they might gain power. The creation of such a vast lie is vastly unwholesome. It may end. Snap.

--On Russia I've said that their invasion of Georgia is their new Afghanistan. I think that's holding true, though the method of war is going to be far more sophisticated than I'd thought.

Okay, this is brief enough. I do have my emails if I ever do need details.

----------------
10:30 AM

Tried to send this to Krauthammer but it won't go through. Doesn't matter, he'll get 10,000 similar emails. He argues that Palin can only succeed if she becomes another Obama, if she becomes a personality that deceives the public that she's ready to be president. Charles is really hung up on that ready-to-be-president bit. But that's not her function. She's clearly not ready. Her function is to make it unavoidably clear that Obama, the head of the Democrat ticket, is not ready either.

...............
Another Abusive Email

Dear Mr. Krauthammer,

You make this statement of Obama: "The sheer elegance, intelligence, and power of his public presence have muted the uneasy feeling about his unreadiness. Palin does not reach Obama’s mesmeric level."

You, my young friend, have been mesmerized. Obama does not have elegance, intelligence, or a powerful public presence. He's a stuttering, stumbling dolt, and comes across as such to anybody not already in a media induced trance. Palin's function is not to become Obama, but to be absolutely not-Obama. She's unready, but authentic; he's unready, but a created messiah. These come and go.

This is how it works: When authenticity meets fraud it's a snap of a finger, the veil falls, the King is naked. The particular nakedness of The Obama is not that he's not ready, that's recognized, it's that he is not intelligent, elegant, or in anyway a powerful public presence. When the trance is broken, he's a schoolboy. Sarah sees that. She's got two months to do her work. It is possible she might be broken by the press, but she certainly won't be fazed by a kid, and the kid she sees is the kid everybody else is going to see soon.

You, however, a normally bright man, are a hard case and do have that glassy stare. It would do you good to get out of Washington. Go shoot a moose.

------------
Note:
--McCain's acceptance speech may have drawn greater numbers than Obama's;and Palin's speech, all numbers added up, certainly drew more, about 40 million to 38.4. And according to Rasmussen, Palin is now more popular than either Obama or McCain, and McCain is now within two points of Obama in presidential preference, and that's including only one day post-Sarah's acceptance speech in a three day rolling average.

------------
And, 11:10 AM, crude continues down. $106.11 just now.

She's My Girl

2008-09-04T22:14:00.000-07:00

Haven't been posting but have been sending emails. May do a dump later just to have a record of what I thought when. That's supposed to keep me honest in my self assessments. Too bad I haven't been posting. Recently my predictions have been pretty accurate.

Here's one now just to get back in the spirit of sticking my neck out.

--------
K,

Don't know when you called. I was gone part of the time and then all evening had the TV turned up loud in the kitchen.

Thought I would make a couple of points. When I speak of McCain as being a "genius", I only mean I'm exceptionally pleased with the decisions he's made, but I don't in fact know if they're made by him or by Steve Schmit.

More importantly, I think the race is now going to turn around. In Berlin Obama made clear he wasn't an American, that was the turning point because there are more Americans who love America than hate America. But it takes awhile for people to change their minds, it takes awhile for them to even just recognize what it was they actually saw.

With Biden he lost the youth vote, at least in terms of increased turnout; nobody not already committed is going to believe in "hope and change" if the magical maestro picks the opposite of either as his second in command.

And at Invesco field he lost his magic. He gave that much touted speech... and nobody cared. He was watched by 37 million, and his numbers didn't move a point! Nobody cares about him anymore, though nobody has yet said that. True, he's still a Democrat and so will have a Democrat base, but he's now just an inexperienced hack from the machine in Chicago. His appeal had been that he was new, exciting, magical. Now he's no longer new, nor believable: and he's illustrated that his magic is mirage. He's just a Democrat, and one who's disappointed. He's going down.

McCain, on the other hand --"old as dirt", though still supported by nearly half the public-- has pulled off magic... with Sarah. She is new, she is appealing, and the magic is that Sarah is not being compared to Biden, but Obama is being compared to her! This is an unthought, instinctive comparison, but everybody recognizes it's the proper one: If Sarah is not ready, Obama is not ready either. That narrows the options. It's an argument everybody understands, and nobody has to say a thing. That's magic.

I predict that by Tuesday McCain will be in the lead, possibly he'll already be in the lead by tomorrow. I believe that the Obama implosion that I've predicted with a certainty has started.

This all depends on Palin being competent, but then, it is effortless to be more competent than Barack.

See you, --Mouse

Implosion?

2008-08-20T11:25:00.000-07:00

Reuters/Zogby: McCain 46, Obama 41

I note John McCain's lead is finally beginning to show up in the polls. I mean by that that Americans recognize that McCain is a man and Obama is a cheap suit. That's been apparent since the end of the primaries. With Democrats no longer having Hillary to kick around anymore they suddenly find themselves with what they thought they had been hoping for, a black guy with a grin. But that's not much. The Messiah from Chicago, all Chicago.

Everyone know knows the guy is nothing but a party hack, and they've been had. But if you're a liberal, how in the world do you change faith and vote against race? That would be improper, impious, wrong. Apostate. It can't be done... unless somebody gives permission.

I think it's Barrack himself who's given permission, by going on his one week vacation to Hawaii, and not coming back when things were happening in the world. It was a way of saying: I'm not really here, you're on you're own. And a number of people took him at his word and have begun to support McCain.

And it is true that he really isn't "here". When he was in Hawaii and by himself he was the Leader of the World. In his mind. Now, when he came back, he said to McCain: "You don't know what you're up against." My how grand one is when one lives delightedly within one's dreams.

The man is nuts. I presume that what has now begun, the sane judgment of Americans, will not alter in its inevitable flow toward a Republican victory this Fall. It's the change we've all been waiting for.
--------------
Another matter of great interest to me. Some numbers have now come out on the comparative casualties suffered in the Georgia conflict. Russia is reporting 64 killed, 3?? wounded. Georgia claims 160 killed, 4?? missing. Both are lying of course, but it certainly indicates there wasn't much of a battle. It was as I suspected, just an ordered retreat by Georgia, and the trap of world opprobium intangling the very stupid bear.

-------------- Ha! Looking for the article --I read it just this morning-- so that I could give the link and get the numbers exactly right, I can't find it! This is extraordinary. This is exceptionally important news, and it's disappeared!? I didn't read that much this morning, I presume I read it on Fox, and now it's not there? Very strange. Could have been pulled because it was just wrong, could have been pulled because somebody just doesn't want it out there... Or maybe I just can't find it again. But that's nuts; it's too important to be hidden or slighted.

----------------------
Checked the Small Wars Journal, they collect every relevant news story. Nothing. Very odd. - It was between 9:00 and 10:54 Central Time that I read the article. I know that from notes I made in a notebook or other matters.

Jottings

2008-08-18T14:11:00.000-07:00

Medvedev:

“If someone thinks they can kill our citizens, kill soldiers and officers fulfilling the role of peacekeepers, we will never allow this. Anyone who tries to do this will receive a shattering blow..... Russia has the capabilities — economic, political and military. Nobody has any illusions left about that.”

Big, tough, dumb, Russian.

Condi:

Russia is playing a "very dangerous game" with the U.S. and its allies: [She] warned that NATO would not allow Moscow to win in Georgia, destabilize Europe or draw a new Iron Curtain through it.... and said the alliance would punish Russia for its invasion of the Georgia and deny its ambitions by rebuilding and fully backing Georgia and other Eastern European democracies.

"We have to deny Russian strategic objectives, which are clearly to undermine Georgia's democracy, to use its military capability to damage and in some cases destroy Georgian infrastructure and to try and weaken the Georgian state. We are determined to deny them their strategic objective."

Pretty good. Of Medvedev:

She suggested [he] may be unable to exert power behind the scenes against his powerful predecessor, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, or the Russian military. She said she thought the French would be seeking "an explanation from the Russians for why the Russian president either won't or can't keep his word." "It didn't take that long for the Russian forces to get in and it really shouldn't take that long for them to get out."

Big tough dumb Russian toad.

Finally:

Obama: “I will win." --Hillary, months ago on with Katy Couric: "I will be the nominee."

Pelosi on Barack: "A leader that God has blessed us with at this time." (Pelosi on Barack: "A leader that God has blessed the Republicans with at this time... as am I.")

Know-your-power Pelosi

-------------

Parthian Thrust

2008-08-17T19:36:00.000-07:00

Been thinking about the Georgia imbroglio enough now to have a plausible scenario as to what happened. It requires that I presume Shaakasveli brilliant.

I presume that the high order of Shaakasvelian brilliance was such that he recognized Russia was bigger than Georgia. He knew Russia was massing troops, and since he wasn't living on a turnip truck he knew that the purpose was to invade.

What to do? Stand there and take it on the chin, or maybe try your own plan? He tried his own plan, which was to tap the old bear on the snout.

Dumb old bear, he charged.

Apparently as few as 2,000 Georgian troops put up a fight at Tskhinveli, they did it on their own clock. This upset the Russian time table, possibly for as little as a few hours, but at least enough to sow confusion. And then within hours they killed the commanding general. They had to have had that guy marked all along.

The enraged bear now brainless, the Georgians poked him more, and with the beast behind, they then in good order retreated toward Tibilsi --never that far in front of the bear! so that the beast would follow.

They passed through Gori, the beast followed, and Shaakasveli trumpeted to the world: The Soviet Hun Despoils Our Country!

Good message. You see, the Georgians had made a thrust, and the enraged and decephalate bear had followed into a trap, and the trap was world condemnation.

Pretty darn smart. And while the Huns ravaged the land, the Georgian army, functionally unscathed, retreated to their citadel, the easily defended Tbilisi... Actually, 2,000 Georgians retreated to Tbilisi, the others already there, dug in, and waiting.

And the bear snuffled about, looking really quite foolish.

Add to this that our President has declared he would send humanitarian aid by air, and Tbilisi has air superiority over the Russians, because nobody can complain that humanitarian aid is being sent, but of course the US would not send in aid without air escort. And there are humanitarian workers there now, and national leaders, and today Angela Merkel of Germany. Russia can not fly its planes, it would be a clear act of aggression against humanitarians and nations. One General referred to our airlift as "a continuous air bridge."

So Georgia is sitting pretty, the bear is a boob, and the world gathers against it. To speak in the voice of Shaakasveli: Just twist a bear's snout, and you can lead him to defeat.

----------May expand this later, and correct the spelling.

AM,

Wrote this note to a friend:

Dear K,

When I got home last night I wrote a brief blog entry but was too tired to do an email, so I'm just going to send the entry. I'm as delighted with this invasion as I was the day the Russians went into Afghanistan, because I knew then they would be defeated, and I know now they will be defeated in Georgia. The present American technological power vis a vis Russia is like a man with a baseball bat facing a rabbit, all we need is an excuse to fire. It probably won't come to that, but I would sure love to see some of their planes try to intercept our airlift.

Walks Are Wonderful

2008-08-02T22:55:00.000-07:00

Went out for my walk today, partly for muse, partly to loosen my sore butt muscle, and had an insight. As with most insights, once visible, this one is obvious; but it is new.

Insight: I've been wondering why people such as Josh Marshal have become so tedious to read, always seeing racism in the McCain campaign? That Republicans will be smeared as being racist I understand, it's a tactic, you know it's coming. But always? Well, yes, and always and only, and that's my insight: I finally understand why:

The only reason Josh Marshal supports Barack is because Barack is black. Josh Marshal lives in his world and critiques from his world and sees no world but his own. He totally and utterly and to the center and core of his bones is racist; he sees nothing but race. All support is racial, all criticism is racist. So this is not a tactic, this is what he is.

And so, I might add, are all those who support the extraordinarily unaccomplished fawn of the meadow. Except, of course, for just those few who actually would just like to vote Democrat. Unfortunately though, they're stuck with Twit, the wood-for-brain puppet from Cook. Poor Demos. This year they vote for Howdy Doody and big ears and a grin.

I predict! (I like to predict) I predict!!! That after the convention --presuming it is the sweet fawn that is nominated-- when there is no longer even a dream that there might be an alternative, there then will be one. In droves, disappointed Democrats will move to McCain. Only the racists will stay true to The One... and some few poor party faithful who just can't help themselves. Oh, unhappy the soul of the Democrat. This just isn't their year.

PS,
High oil futures are due to evil speculators.

The Price of Crude

2008-07-22T13:31:00.000-07:00

The price of crude, and Bambi love by the media, these are the two things that just now interest me, and the price of crude interests me most.

Dropping again today, about four dollars when I last looked. The explanation given is that Dolly has been down graded --and some other trivial thing as well.

I do believe that lifetime professional analysts of the oil markets are genetically stupid. They have to be. I've been interested in this matter about a month now, and have read no more than two dozen articles, yet even I know that Dolly don't matter; the price of crude is not dropping because of any economic event anywhere, it's dropping because the American people want more exploration --and a change in public attitude is long term!-- and if they want more oil it's possible it might happen. This frightens the sacred cow --otherwise known as "speculator"-- and despite the religious stupidity of my conservative brethren who have no redemptive belief beyond the mindless mantra --Supply & Demand-- in fact the great changes that may occur (on the basis of the tiniest suggestion that there may eventually be a change in supply), is because current sacrosanct "speculators" are not speculators in the historical sense, men willing to take risk, but are in fact manipulators, men who have used vast sums to inflate prices, at no risk! simply because great sums can control markets; and they never expected any increase in supply.

These are pension fund investors, who's investment was 13 billion in 2003 and is 260 billion now. That's enough to set whatever price they want.

They do have a problem though. It's not their money. It's not their business to take risks. They're charged with maintaining the security of the funds they've been given. Those funds are secure as long as they can control prices. Lose that control, and they're no longer fund managers but true risk takers. If things collapse, they've been criminal. They have reason to be worried. Worried men make mistakes.

Since the price right now is so far outside of the rational --it should be somewhere around the price for the production of the last barrel of oil, around sixty bucks-- if the price ever does tend back toward the rational, they'll be wiped out. Couldn't happen to a nicer group of guys.

I think right now they're merely nervous, some are trying to back up a little. But anytime you start to back up there's always the chance you'll turn and run. Panic happens, and an orderly retreat is far harder than an orderly advance. Collapse could happen. As I've said, that will be good. Hopefully then all money managers will be shot.

Of course, this is speculation of my own and only as a recent interest and based on very little information. But a couple of things are clear:

--No man is more piously stupid about oil markets than a conservative in obeisance to the great god Free Market. They can not countenance the outrage of questioning the perfection of the great Saint, Speculator.

--There is no longer any such thing as a free market in oil, because so much oil is produced by Muslim and leftist countries who, since 9/11, don't much like us. This being now true, they can now collude, either attitudinally or in fact, and effectively always keep supply below demand, no matter how much we produce. They're quite willing to do it because at $140 per barrel they do have an income stream.

--They only way that collusion can be broken is if the price spike can be broken. If it is broken, if the price moves again towards production cost, oil drops in value by half; the income stream is broken and collusion is broken; and more oil is then released, not less, and the price drops further. But the only way that spike can be broken (short term) is if the institutional investors panic, and tip the present house in a matter of days.

So, will it happen? Might. Sure would be fun if it did.

Conclusion: The free market in reference to oil is a dead concept. There can be no free market as long as Islam is united against the West. Some new thinking will have to occur, some new market structure developed. Oil is no longer a commodity, it is a weapon. (The new Star Wars we need is new energy policy --nuclear and oil shale).

Note: Supposedly some new regulations concerning oil shale production are to be proposed today? That's a nice little additional impetus towards uneasiness in the markets.

-----------------
Futures closed down $3.09, I don't know what market.

Should give credit where credit is due. There's a good chance the Democrat move to curb "speculation in oil markets", just by the virtue of its being undertaken, is having a positive downward effect:

"The demand for 'paper barrels' ... has begun to swamp the price signals that are generated by the more traditional hedgers and the large producers and the consumers of petroleum products in tune to the real time dynamics of supply and demand," said Energy Committee Chairman Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M.
Republicans said the bill would have little if any effect and said Congress should instead lift a ban on offshore drilling along the Atlantic and Pacific coasts and the eastern Gulf of Mexico.

It's painful to me that my party is the dumb party in this matter, but at least they do want more drilling. But as I've said, drilling won't do it, because unless the price spike is broken OPEC can always keep supply below demand, no matter how much we drill. Failing breaking the price, the only thing we can really do is go nuclear --nuclear and shale.

Matters That Matter Not Bambi

2008-07-18T19:22:00.000-07:00

Crude oil! Dropping like a rock! Maybe.

My own assessment is that this is not a suppy/demand equation, but a gremlin in the free market. At 60 dollars a barrel for the most expensive extraction now going on, but with oil at 140 a barrel, and supply only 500 thousand barrels a day short of world demand, it makes no sense that somebody isn't spending a hundred dollars to extract a barrel of oil for a forty dollar profit.

There can only be two reasons that's not happening: that the people who extract oil believe this is just a bubble, and so don't think the immediate extra expense to bring up low producing wells is worth the risk; or that there's just a gremlin inflating prices. That prices fell this week by nearly twenty bucks, just on the president's rescinding the Executive Order prohibiting off shore exploration, tells me it's a gremlin.

Just what the name of the gremlin is I don't know. It could be some sort of world wide hysteria, a belief that from now on and forevermore demand will always outstrip supply... This could be like a global warming scare, not believed with much reason but believed by everybody nevertheless.

Or it could be a resource nationalism, again a sort of global mind set, so many producing nations now content with the revenue they're getting, and content as well to draw things out so that their resources last longer. If this is true it would act like a restrictive collusion, though in fact just a shared mindset.

It could be the strangulation of environmentalism, such that oil shale and tar sands can't be developed. They certainly can't be developed just now on any large scale, and there's no present hope that environmental religiosity is going to pass anytime soon.

It could have something to do with fears of instabilities, but I doubt it, because it seems to me such fears produce spikes, not a steady climb. Same with "disruptions", that always happen here and there. Or it could have to do with...Speculators!

Actually, I'm inclined toward this idea, because of the vast sums new investors --institutional pension funds, that sort-- have put into the market. My reasoning on that is that pension fund money managers don't speculate, they invest in things that are secure. If that's true, then if they do "speculate" in oil futures, it's because they've come to see them not as high risk/high yield, but as secure. If they see oil futures as secure perhaps they see something most others don't, and what they see might be that if they can put in enough money, they can keep prices high, so that what had been risky become a sure bet. It certainly has been a sure bet for several years now. But Bush made an unexpected move when he removed executive objection to off shore drilling (He had been saying the congress had to act first, and no one would expect that a Democrat congress would act). But the worm begins to turn, the American people now support more exploration. If we could start drilling, that half million barrel per day deficit would disappear lickety-split. This becomes something of a fly in the ointment if you happen to be one of those with a lot of money tied up in futures. Maybe time to get out?

I haven't read any article were any analyst accepts that it was merely Bush's words that caused the downturn (many other reasons given), and certainly no professional analysts concerned for his reputation is going to suggest that speculators have anything to do with driving prices higher. But these people, after all, have their own pieties, just as well as anybody else: speculators are sacrosanct, presidents insignificant. But I have no such pieties, not pretending to expertise, I just note:

--Prices are way out of line with the cost of production, &
--If there is a gremlin, "speculators" --who "buy but don't sell"-- are certainly one possible villain.

-------------
In other matters not Bambi I wonder if there's going to be a floor fight at Denver... 'Course, I guess that is sort of Bambi too.

-------------
Note:
This is a link to the more standard explanations for the price drop. I'll note the drop started Tuesday, and continued Wenesday, Thursday, and Friday. Bush lifted the off shore drilling ban on Monday.

------------
Update, July 20.

Nice little post from something called American Sentinel, nicely written, making the argument that Bush rescinding the Executive Order prohibiting off shore drilling did make a difference:

Yes, yes, I know; as reported, the Bush43 order is mainly “symbolic.” But immediately following that announcement, the price of petroleum took a steep drop. Locally, we went from $4.05 per gallon to $3.90 per gallon in two days. Yes, yes, I know, there may be additional reasons why the price of petroleum plunged; but those reasons seem to be insufficient by themselves. According to Bloomberg, the factors at play were reduced tension between the U.S. and Iran; a slowing global economy; lower U.S. fuel demand; and rising supplies. But the lower domestic demand and the rise in supplies was not something major - - and even if the short term outlook has improved, why the steep drop in the oil futures market?

After all, the long term outlook for supply and demand hasn't improved, has it?

Actually, yes it has, and President Bushe's order on June 15 is an important part of why the futures market fell.

Always enjoy finding a man who agrees with me, at least on part of the argument. --Note: it was on Tuesday, not Monday, that Bush rescinded the order, and that was immediately when the drop started.

Cleavage

2008-07-17T13:21:00.000-07:00

Working with a new concept. How about: Obama's handlers aren't political geniuses, but just very disciplined, well financed fellows with a script? By this idea, as long as the script is "correct", in terms of responding to the given political dynamisms, they do all right. But when the dynamism changes, and they have to adapt, they stumble.

The illustration on point would be Iraq. It was supposed to be a quagmire, nobody foresaw the turn-around coming (nobody on the left). Barack would run as the antiwar candidate of superior judgment. But there has been a turn-around and his judgment stinks, and his attempt to reposition himself has been immensely clumsy, such that now nobody knows for sure just what his position is but neither the right nor the left trust him.

Certainly it was expected that if he won the primaries he would then tack toward the center. But there was no thought that he would have to tack to the center on Iraq, which would remain a disaster. Now that it's not a disaster, but his repositioning is, he's going to Iraq. But this is a seat-or-the-pants move, it wasn't in the script, and I doubt that the puppet masters have any idea how it's going to turn out.

I do though, expect that they know exactly what they're going to attempt: It's not that Barack is going to adjust his views to the reality on the ground, it's that with all the publicity, reality is going to be made to adjust to his views.

His Iraq speech of a few days ago will be his position --still a 16 month time table. His speech after he comes back will affirm that the reality he saw on the ground supports the prescient judgment made in that speech before he left. Never mind whether it does or not, the press will define what Barack says as what is real. After all, reality is narrative, and the massive media coverage will confirm that what he saw is true and that what he suggests is wise.

I presume this is their intent, to use the fawning massive media to define a reality that will work until November.

I don't think though that it will work, and not because of the counter arguments of the blogs or talk radio. I don't think it will work because I don't think New York likes Chicago. Chicago is trying to do this all on their own, I don't think New York will accept that Chicago is setting spin. After all, The Spin, is their business. Chicago just butchers hogs, and nothing else that anybody cares about. I think that even during the trip, and certainly after, there will be "discordance". The message will not mesmerize. There will be gaffes, and dishonesties pointed out. The New Yorker cartoon was not a critique of the right, it was a first mockery of the Messiah. It's time to take him down a peg or two, cleverly, of course. It's not that New York doesn't want a Democrat as president, it's that they want to make it clear who it is that controls that president's fate, his success or failure, --and it sure isn't Chicago.

Who Likes Barack?

2008-07-16T15:24:00.000-07:00

Nobody. He's not a likable guy. He's prickly, sour, and very tenderly full of himself. You can kiss his ring but you can't pull his leg. How can you joke about a guy you can't joke with? You probably can't, not in a good humored way, but you can mock. That means you have to dislike the guy, and the audience has to dislike him with you. Fifty percent of Americans do think he's a jerk, there's an audience out there.

But humor of it's nature, if it's mockery, is mean. And here's the PC rub: is it permissible to be mean to a black guy, a liberal black guy, even one so eminently mockable as this thin skinned thinly accomplished Barack?

Of course, No. One can not be mean to a jug-eared bozo if he's black. That would be "racist". But then, one man's racism is another man's satire. For myself I'll take my satire over your racism. And I'll chose to be a free man over a slave. No population that is afraid to mock its leader is temperamentally suited to be free. If Barack doesn't like jokes about himself neither does the Grand Ayatollah Kamenie. I don't like the Ayatollah and I don't like Barack, and besides, how do I know he doesn't like goats? He grew up in Indonesia, after all, and that's not America. I heard it said once that Bin Laden liked goats, --and people laughed. We do know that Barack likes Barack.

But I'm pretty sure the New Yorker doesn't like Barack. The cover cartoon that supposedly was mocking right wing attitudes towards the Obama's was in fact mocking the anointed one and spouse by the simple argument that they were the only ones on the cover. To assert, later, that this drawing simply illustrates the right wing's unfair stereotyping and paranoia is simply to assert, later, that this drawing illustrates the right ring's unfair stereotyping and paranoia. In fact the drawing is mocking Obama and wife, and only Obama and wife. Those so very sophisticated so very intelligent types who say: "Oh, I get it," don't get it; the cartoon mocks the messiah: and saying: "This is what the right wing thinks" merely makes the mockery PC acceptable.

Mockery was intended. In the same way that many on the left don't like Hillary there are many on the left who don't like Obama. It's just that it's very hard to criticize a black guy, so it has to be done by subterfuge and indirection. But the New Yorker, and I think now many in New York, really don't like that guy. The reasons aren't clear but they can be guessed. Some might be a mere Hillary preference, but I think most of it is pure Obama distaste. He's a new guy on the block, and an outsider. He's Chicago, and Chicago is trying to pull this off with no East Coast help at all. And of one thing I'm absolutely certain: the powers in the East are far more concerned that they keep their power within the left, than they are that there be a Democrat president rather than a Republican.

An Idea Worth Pursuit...

2008-07-16T00:06:00.000-07:00

To start: It's hard to make fun of somebody you don't like; nobody can make fun of Obama; therefore nobody likes Obama.

This makes sense to me. In conversation, it's only when with friends in a jovial setting that the humor comes easily. A lot of that humor is making fun of those friends. Of course, jokes can be made of people not present --presidents, for example-- but the jokes have to have some lightness. You don't get much of a chuckle if the "joke" is only a vilification.

The best humor, certainly the easiest, is among friends about someone reasonably well liked.

Late night comedians, "among friends" --their audience-- can not make fun of Barack. That still argues that nobody likes him.

How about this: If you hate someone, it's hard to get a laugh unless your audience hates him as well. Well, late night comedians don't hate the Barack --they certainly had best not. There's rumor about that nuts have been threatened.

Or how about this, simply: To get a laugh you have to be on the same page as your audience. This observation I pronounce as true. Still, nobody can get a laugh about Obama.

That's incredible. The guys perfect material for mockery. Tiny face, big ears, as a starter. Huge ego, no accomplishment, as a follow. Constant gaffes, ignorance, flop-flipping, weird friends, "inartful" statements, an objectionable, foolish, overpaid virago of a wife... The guy is an absolute gold mine of the mockable...

Yet nobody cracks a joke.

Another idea: As the Emperor has no clothes, the Obambi has no humor. Could this be why there are no jokes, because one joke would indicate he has no clothes?

This makes a lot of sense to me. Once the jokes started they couldn't stop, because there's absolutely nothing about this guy that's not a joke. Get off the seriousness, move to mockery, and the floodgates open. The material is endless, and it would be a release. This business of having to pretend to take seriously a dope is hard on everyone.

So, I have solved the riddle: There are no jokes because, one joke cracked, the facade is cracked, and mockery pours through. It would be "the shot heard round the world." One wise crack would bring down the Messiah.

Interesting.

New York Hammers the Hog Butcher

2008-07-13T21:02:00.000-07:00

From a Republican perspective things are going nicely: New York has decided to take out the Obama. Two evidences of this:
--The New Yorker July 21 cover, showing Obama as a Muslim, and his wife as a gun toting revolutionary; and in the same issue
--An article by Ryan Lizza: "Making it, How Chicago Shaped Obama", indicating not a great deal of accomplishment, but a certain comfort with the city, mayor, cronies, et al.

The hammer is falling. Why must it fall? This is the argument, from the beginning:

Obama is a puppet. The proof is that he's a dope, but he's been very successful. How can a dope be successful? Answer, only if somebody is pulling the strings. Who's pulling the strings? Well, Obama's never been anywhere but Chicago, thus, Chicago is pulling the strings. But who's "Chicago"? Not known, not determined, but it's clearly, et al. It realy doesn't matter, it's Chicago.

But in the most perfectly proper of all worlds who is it, properly, who "pulls strings", controls nations, sways governments, intimidates presidents, and just in general has knowledge of all that is moral? Why, The Great City. Surely. New York! Always! And always must it be so. So what happens if Puppet Barack becomes president? Fate! The World! Who would control the world? Well, not New York... but... dare it be said... the Hog Butcher! So gross!!! This the estimable men of the Center of All can not allow, and so they must take down the puppet (not that they have anything against the puppet, mind you) but they just can not allow goodness to be left to the ham-handed mercies of the Masters of Chicago. The spinning globe would unbalance, things would tilt, confusion would reign, men would be dizzied, the compass askew... And anyway, so gross, a president Hog Butcher defacto.

So the puppet Obambi must die. He may not win!

First strategy? Smear. Second strategy? Smear. Et al.

Supposedly the New Yorker cover is mocking the rabid Right's racist view of Obama and wife. My: "Bad racist Right. Shame!"; and the article is "objective".

If the Cover satirized the Right, some sort of rabid goon should be apparent somewhere, how else establish that only in the eye of a mind like that could there be such a racist view as this? But there is no such goon, and only one "eye" in this composition, the overview of that splendidly liberal cover moniker, The New Yorker. It's only, The New Yorker, as the "eye" sitting atop this scene, that casts down its gaze on this most problematic couple. And this is in fact what that eye sees: a problem. Never mind just what problem, and to whom, but they are a problem, and one thing you can do to people who are a problem is make them a threat. In an electoral system, those seen as a threat, if it's a wide enough and great enough threat, are no longer a problem. It's threat that the New Yorker wants to convey and it's threat they do convey, though not of the Right, but of the man they actually do fear.

So, so much for the cover. --The article, on the other hand, seems not to be a smear. I've read about as much of it as any ordinarily healthy American is going to read (they do have dull writers) and from what I've seen it seems fair. Damaging, of course, because, relatively at least, fair.

So, the Titans struggle. New York takes v Chicago. Goody. All we actually need is a tie. A death grip would be nice but a tie is just fine. That will give the reasonable part of the country an entertainment and a rest, and then that part of the country can give john McCain something to do for the rest of the next four years.

Tony Snow -- The Easy Life

2008-07-12T13:53:00.000-07:00

Died today at 53. He had a wife whom he loved and who loved him. He had three kids, all apparently healthy, whom he loved and who probably loved him, about as much as kids do. And he was cheerful. What an easy life when you're cheerful.

And what a hard life when you're bitter. But how easy to be bitter and how hard to be cheerful! The cheerful in fact is magical, and the cheerful man a magician.

What a gift such a man is to himself and to those around him. There is good in life and there is bad. Stuff happens, and the good is certainly easier than the bad; but with either, if the fundamentally cheerful man is there, there is magic. How immensely I admire that magic, how splendidly Tony Snow plied that gift. It is a gift, yet I expect it takes work.

I am more cheerful for knowing that there can be a Tony Snow.

More Money Maunderings

2008-07-11T15:59:00.000-07:00

An exceptionally interesting idea just popped into my mind as I was on the way to the bank to withdraw some of my own personal many millions: The reason the Obama campaign opted out of public financing is not because they expected to raise such huge sums, but because, not being tied to public funding, they would be in total control of whatever was raised.

If they accept public funding, after the convention they only control 84.1 million dollars. If they don't have that limit, they can request that all funds that would otherwise be contributed to Democrat groups in support of the candidate instead be contributed to the campaign directly. McCain's group, all sources combined, expects to raise and spend about 400 million between now and the election. McCain will only control the 84.1. Suppose Obama does only as well. His campaign would control all 400 million, that's 315.9 million more of control than McCain will have directly over his own campaign.

Here's why it's important: Obama has no accomplishments and no capacities. If groups other than his own put out ads, even though favorable to him, they won't be quite what his own organization would have put out. This means that there will be dissonance. Dissonance does not lull one to sleep, the mind still functions. Obama's campaign is purely one of mesmerization, no intellectually functioning human could think he's suitable to be president. That's why they need complete control. If the pro Obama arguments ever start to vary, the spell is broken, and the mind is free to think. Whether it will think or not is open, but at least then thought will be possible.

This is a good idea. I remember how when I was a kid I used to hypnotize chickens in my Grandparent's farm yard. You hold them firmly, lay them on their side with their necks stretched out a bit, and then slowly draw a line in the dust in front of their beaks. Withdraw, and they just continue to lay there. Just why that happens I don't know, but it does, and it's just amazing to see a perfectly healthy chicken just lying there flat on its side, paralyzed from movement.

I used to see how many I could get down at once. Sometimes I could get down a dozen, but there was always one problem: if there was any kind of wind at all, at some point a light leaf would be blown in front of the chicken's line of sight. And the spell would be broken. Up would get the chicken, slightly shaking its head before getting it's bearings back and suddenly scuttling off. Then they would all get up, all the chickens. All my work ruined by just that one little light flying leaf.

So too the Obamians. It's true that many are not quite so bright as a chicken, but many are. If the spell is broken, a lot of them are going to cease lying there with their necks stretched out. A lot of them will get up, shake their heads, and go do something else.

The Obama camp has to control the message. Anything off message, and the regular pendular swing of the golden coin is broken, the spell is broken, and the chump just stands there with his grin.

I do expect this will happen, and when it does it will happen like the snap of a finger.

Money Update

2008-07-10T23:38:00.000-07:00

Dear K,

I don't know how well your news sources follow this, but this is what I know:

--McCain raised slightly more money in June than in May, and in May he raised slightly more than Obama. (Obama hasn't reported his totals yet for June and doesn't have to until the 20th.)

--The RNC is raising many more times money than the DNC. Almost all of this money goes to support McCain.

--Taking these two sources together McCain has about three times as much in the bank as Obama, and expects to have 212 million ready to spend after the convention (84.1 public financing; that's the only money McCain will directly control).

--A lot of the nutroots --the small donors that supposedly explain the Obama fund raising phenomena-- are saying: Not another dime from me! That's because they don't like his move to the center.

--Hillary's big donors are not forking out. They intend to --Democrats uber allas-- but haven't yet, just because in private meetings with Obama they haven't liked his condescending manner. ("Underwhelming", quotes Robert Novak.)

--And Democrat dissatisfaction with Obama is rising! However he might be doing with independents, more Democrats dislike him now than during the primaries (there are polls showing this, as well as increased acrimony in the comments sections of liberal blogs). Since he doesn't technically yet have the nomination sewn up, that's not really the direction he wants to go; and Hillary is doing nothing to help him. She in fact made a point of showcasing his flip-flop on FISA (which for some reason does actually matter to the far left). She voted against it --feisty girl!-- while he placidly went along with it.

--Obama's numbers when they come out will be interesting. His contributions have been falling 20% a month since January. What he gets from small donors will be down for sure (there's no real reason to give just now, plus so many are now angry); and who the big donors are will be important. If a lot of them aren't Hillary supporters he'll be in bad shape, even if he actually out-raises McCain.

--The joke on the web is that he's going to have to flip-flop-flip; he'll have to decide public financing is a good idea after-all. Nobody actually knows how he's doing.

--A lot of Hillary supporters still haven't given up. There's a group called PUMA (Party Unity My Ass). As a Republican I have to say they're my kind of people.

See you, --M

Great Minds...

2008-07-08T15:12:00.000-07:00

...think alike. I'll have to do more on this latter.

But someone, someday in the major media is going to wake up and take a good long look at Barack Obama's campaign and notice something very strange; it is staffed from top to bottom with Chicagoans who have mostly made their bones working for Mayor Richard Daley and the Chicago Machine.

It is not an exaggeration to say that Barack Obama's campaign is being run out of Chicago. He recently moved most of the Democratic National Committee functions to the Windy City and his campaign headquarters is there as well.

The question the press might want to ask would be is there anything being "run" in Chicago that doesn't have Mayor Daley's fingerprints all over it?

And I'm going to speculate how it might be possible to make the New York Times bitter about this. After all, it is New York that controls the world, and not some hog butcher in the Midwest.

Whoops. For some reason the above link doesn't work. It's from a piece by Rick Moran at The American Thinker; so instead I'll post the link to the article from which Moran's is taken: Seth Gitell, writing for the New York Sun: A Cog in the Chicago Machine.

To Post Onward!

2008-07-07T19:10:00.000-07:00

I think I've had enough of a break now from the political season to go back to writing a bit without gagging. I really did overdo the primaries. Who in the world cares that much? Life gets thin if it's just politics.

My present appreciation of Obama is that he's just a "Yes Massa" black boy from Chicago with a grin. "What Obama really is?", "What Obama really believes...?" Who cares? Silly questions. I don't think Obama even is. I don't think he has anything to do with his campaign and I don't think he'll have anything to do with his presidency. I think he's pure Chicago. Chicago runs his campaign, Chicago will run his presidency. He'll do what he's told.

Who"Chicago" is, I don't know, I just know it's not Barack. His whole career has been white people giving him things. Now he wants white people to give him the presidency. It could happen. But at least it won't be Barack, "the radical", running things, it will be "Chicago boyz" running things, Chicago style. That's probably good, it just means corruption and graft; but we'll be safe. No mobster would want Al Qaeda moving in on his turf.

I suppose this is an idea that could be fleshed out. I'll say now only that it's strongly my impression. I has been my unchanged impression for weeks. I simply never see any evidence of Barack being in command; I've seen no evidence that anytime in his life he's ever been in command.

Witch In the Weeds

2008-06-05T07:24:00.000-07:00

In the interest of getting off a post, but somewhat pressed for time, I'm going to again make use of an email.

Dear K,

Don't know when you called. I fell solidly asleep unexpectedly just moments after 11:00. I only sat to rest a bit and woke at daylight. Going back to bed soon for about an hour.

Don't let Hillary fool you. She's hiding in the weeds. She's maintaining control of her delegates, is "allowing" states who haven't completed their caucus delegate selections to continue to elect delegates to support her; has stated that the Democrat party is "two parties now", and that it's her obligation to unite them (and guess who controls half of that party); and just generally is going to disappear for awhile, avoid the flack that would be hitting her if she stayed visible, and will wait for Obama to screw up. Might or might not happen (I presume it will), but at any rate it's her only strategy. I believe it's a determined strategy.

--I would note that Clinton supporters are not swayed by party leaders or the main stream media; in a psychological sense they've become similar to conservatives; these are people for whom they have great contempt, and you don't pay attention to people you consider garbage. So I believe they'll stay loyal to Hillary, and just watch as others celebrate Obambi frenzy. Friday I expect Hillary will state her terms, which will be the direction she gives her troops. Then she'll just wait.

As I've said, I'm absolutely certain Obama is going to implode, I just don't know when.

See you, --M

----------
Note:

Huckabee did a similar thing. After Super Tuesday, when McCain won California, Romney conceded, Huck didn't. This was fine with me, I supported Huck and disliked Romney, but Huck faced a lot of flack, he was being a "spoiler". He handled it I think brilliantly: he went to the Cayman Islands to give a speech. He was mocked for taking a "vacation", but he totally avoided the venom that would have been directed toward him if just at that point he had continued to campaign. As it turned out, he never did catch fire beyond his base, but it was a good campaign, he's still very much respected by his base, and his base is reasonably well disposed toward McCain. Romney, who did the conventionally correct thing and dropped out and supported McCain, is still much disliked by McCain, and McCain is much disliked by Romney supporters. In this case, Huck's decision to stay in the race was the politically intelligent one, Romney's was unintelligent; nothing was resolved simply because he did concede, the process didn't run its course, resentments continued to simmer.

With Hillary the parallels certainly aren't exact, she is fundamentally tied with Obama, it's only media "exuberance" that has declared Obama the nominee, but where the parallel is exact is in going to the Cayman Islands. Hillary has to disappear for awhile, just to escape the venom. That's what it means to "suspend" her campaign. In fact the campaign goes on, it's just that the strategy is different. Just now she's going to let the other guys fight. Possibly she'll then be able to step in over the pieces.

The Queen Makes the King

2008-06-04T18:00:00.000-07:00

Just a note on a matter others have noted earlier though which just sunk into my head this afternoon: Hillary's got all the cards. Barack, ahead of her by a sliver thin margin of pledged delegates, claims the nomination and now wants to "unify" the party. Says who? Half the party thinks he's a skunk.

Hillary probably thinks he's a skunk, but she probably has some influence over those who voted for her. If Barack is very nice, Hillary might be nice in return. She's got an 18 million voter army behind her, the troops Barack wants. What's he going to do, pretend she doesn't exist?

And on Barack's side, what's he got? Half of what he needs, plus all the media, and apparently, all the party leadership. Piffle. He's had them for six months, and 18 million have ignored them. All of the media, all of the leadership? Piffle.

It does seem he intends to campaign against McCain. Piffle as well, and pretend. The young fellow is assuming something he doesn't have, leadership of the party as it's nominee. To stride out to do battle is a bit silly, who's going to follow? The media, the leadership, and only half the army he needs.

I do think the media and the leadership and Barack all think that that's all he needs because that's their narrative, they're the party and if they all say it is so, it is so. But 18 million haven't followed that story for six months and they're probably not going to follow it now.

We'll see. I don't know how much contempt those 18 million have for the leadership, the media, and Barack. Contempt is useful, it's a kind of strength. No way in the slightest am I swayed by the Democrat leadership, the liberal media, or the lightweight Barry. Follow me, all you 18 Million! 'Course, I'm a Republican and am going to vote for McCain, but if the very-barry disaffected feel anything like me Barry's going to be out in the weeds without any herd behind him. We'll see.

I have gone from liking the guy to an emotion that is not at all the same. It seems to me he does that to people. What will happen with the 18 Million?

---------------
Just posted this and then just read this:

The Clinton campaign announced late Wednesday that it wouldbe hosting an event in Washington, D.C, on Friday to “thank her supportersand express her support for Senator Obama and party unity.”

But also this:

According to a senior Democratic source on Capitol Hill,she acknowledged there were “two wings in the party right now,” and it was her obligation to “unite them."

Democratic sources also have said Clinton will suspend her campaign rather than close it down entirely. By suspending her campaign, Clinton would retain nominal control of her delegates and could continue to raise money to pay off campaign debts. She also would allow late-primary states to finish up the process of electing pro-Clinton delegates to theAugust convention.

To me this doesn't sound like quitting, it sounds like hiding in the weeds, but we'll see.

So, How Was Your Day?

2008-06-03T17:05:00.000-07:00

Pretty much no coverage all day on the actual voting. From Fox I understand that Hillary is doing well in South Dakota and Obama is doing well in Montana. This is what every body expected, but no statements about the expected margins.

One correction: Apparently it's Montana that has the open primary, South Dakota is closed, so I got it backwards. By my "theorizing of a change in dynamics" though, an open primary should be the one that benefits Hillary. This is ignoring demographics, merely presuming performance will change somewhat within individual demographics, and presuming, in general, that a rural, fundamentally all white demographic is beneficial to Hillary. I have no idea why Montana would be more pro Obama than South Dakota? Maybe they're just more anti Hillary.

All the speculation today has been centered around the number of superdelegates Obama might pick up. To my mind that means nothing if Hillary chooses to decide it means nothing.

----------------
8:09
Hillary's got South Dakota in the bag. Fox reports that with 9% of precincts reporting Hillary leads 56.08% to 43.92%. Landslide, wipeout, the nominee by acclamation! And I think McCain's got a shot too.

----------------
8:19
At 14% Fox does project a Hillary win. Well, that's fun. Apparently they do expect a large margin because I can't believe the exit polling is extensive. I certainly hope for a wipeout. We'll see. Maybe an hour yet before anything from Montana.

--------------
This is interesting, from pollster.com:

About seven in 10 in both states called Obama honest and trustworthy. Nearly as many said that about Clinton in South Dakota but barely half inMontana called her honest and trustworthy.

That might explain the Montana orientation, not that they're more pleased with Obama, but more offended by Hillary. Good, Montanans aren't creeps.

----------------
8:58
The margin remains remarkably constant:
31% in: Hillary 55.85%, Obama 44.15%. --I must say I am indifferent to McCain's speech, or Obama's speech. I'm only interested in the poll numbers, and Hillary's speech. I'm waiting for the change in dynamism. --I would much prefer a 20 or 30 point win for Hillary.

----------------
9:10
From Talk Left, who live blogged the speech, excerpts:

Everyone had a chance to vote. Nearly 18 million of you cast your vote for our campaign. We carried the popular vote with more votes than any candidate in presidential history. We won together the swing states necessary to get to 270 electoral votes.

You wanted a leader who will stand up for our values, a country who will count every single vote...

I am committed to working to take back the White House in November. None of you are invisible to me.... I want the 18 million who voted for me to be respected and no longer treated as invisible.

Where do we go from here? This has been a long campaign and I will be making no decisions tonight.... I want to hear from you. Go to HillaryClinton.com and tell me.

I will be meeting with party leaders and supporters and determining the best way to proceed.

These are blogging paraphrases, but clearly no concession.

---------------
Geraghty says: "One of the most defiant speeches I've ever heard."

-------------
I note the networks called Montana for Obama immediately at the close of the polls. I wonder if the margins are really that strong, or if it's just part of the presumption?

---------------
Montana numbers have been very slow to come in. I wonder if there's any possibility that it could be because the real numbers aren't turning out to match the projections?

---------------
I must say I'm not terribly pleased with this "historic night". Nominating a black guy who's at the opposite end from what I admire in character and belief hardly seems a pleasing historical event. And now --unfortunately and probably-- it's Republicans who are going to have to face all the charges of racism. It's going to be an unhappy campaign.

Hillary can still help. It is possible, all her own personality deficits aside, that she could see a Barack presidency as a disaster for America, much in the way I do. It's possible she might stay in not simply from personal ambition but from love of country.

Anyway, stay in. It's one of my settled principles that you always make the other guy sweat, no matter how weak your hand. So, keep control of the delegates, keep a low profile, and wait. That seems the best course, and only course (presuming she does hope to keep Barack out of the presidency). This celebration of self just for voting for a black man may wear off. Right now probably 75% of America is celebrating probably about the way I am. Maybe that 75% in time will have some force. Hard though to say anything negative about a black guy who's liberal. Not proper. Has to be a black guy who's conservative, then he can be criticized just as much as if he were a Christian.

-------------------
Nice comment from Geraghty:

It sounds like Obama kept all of the praise for Hillary in the speech,even though she threw down the gauntlet in hers. She basically said that his verbal commitments from the superdelegates, along with two bucks, will get him a cup of coffee at Starbucks. She bragged that she had more votes,reminded everyone that she carried the swing states, jabbed at the Michigan and Florida decision, and invited her supporters to give her an excuse to remain in the race...

I always enjoy it when a man agrees with me.

----------------
11:10
Montana results starting to come in. 26%. Looks like it's 60/40 Obama. Oh well.

Hysteria

2008-06-03T12:02:00.000-07:00

The Iraq war is a quagmire, and of course, the surge hasn't worked...? Funny how that "reality" is becoming a little weak now, though of course it's true because the MSM believes it's true. I do believe that the MSM does believe that whatever they choose to believe is true, is true. They're insane. I suspect the same is happening in their attitude toward Hillary, their conviction that she's about to drop out and that the Twit has won. My personal conviction is that the Twit is twiddling down and nearing implosion. A rational recognition of what's happening should encourage Hillary to just chuckle, and as I've said, just say: See you in Denver, we'll have a discussion.

There are many arguments that the race isn't over:

Today's Primaries and the Popular Vote [Byron York]

There's been an assumption that Barack Obama would finish out the primary season with wins today in South Dakota and Montana. In Montana, it looks like Obama is indeed ahead, but there could be a Clinton upset in South Dakota.... As for the popular vote, according to Real Clear Politics, the most generous (to Obama) reading has Obama ahead by four-tenths of one percent. In other readings, Clinton is ahead by as little as one-tenth of one percent or as much as eight-tenths of one percent. Whatever happens today, look for Clinton to continue to claim, with some reason, that she won the popular vote.

AP says he's clinched:

Obama Clinches [Jonah Goldberg]....

WASHINGTON (AP) - Barack Obama effectively clinched the Democratic presidential nomination Tuesday, based on an Associated Press tally of convention delegates, becoming the first black candidate ever to lead his party into a fall campaign for the White House.

The AP tally was based on public commitments from delegates as well as more than a dozen private commitments....

The 46-year-old first term senator will face Sen. John McCain of Arizona in the fall campaign to become the 44th president.

You think so? I note that this tally requires "more than a dozen private commitments." My own opinion is that even the public commitments don't mean squat if Hillary chooses to ignore them.

It certainly would be interesting if Hillary were lucky enough to win both contests today, or perhaps just a blowout in South Dakota. That would embarrass the twit when he tries to claim at the Excel Center tonight: By my private count I know I've won; in my heart I know I've won. He's been trying to claim for some time a victory he can't quite get. I think it makes him look foolish (Exhibits him as he is, and desperate). There is evidence Hillary might do well:

Pew: Steep Drop in Obama Support Among White Women, Independents. Interesting numbers from the Pew Research Center that I haven't seen discussed elsewhere...
Recent declines in Obama's image have been pronounced among whites -- especially white women. Currently, just 43% of white women express a positive opinion of Obama, down from 56% in late February.

Favorable opinions of Obama among independent voters, who have provided him strong support in several of his primary election victories, also have declined over the course of the campaign. Obama's favorable ratings among this pivotal group have fallen from 62% in late February to just 49% in the current poll...

It doesn't seem unreasonable to note that South Dakota has a lot of white women, and possibly three who are black. I also believe South Dakota is open, so independents might figure as well.

I also note that this coronation of Obama by the MSM probably isn't simply bandwagon strategy, I think they probably believe reality is what they say it is. It sure would be nicely bracing if Hillary simply ignored them. What happens to "reality" when somebody important just doesn't see what you see?

-----------------
Ah, I discover a man of my own thinking, Thomas Lifson:

The next stage of Hillary Clinton's battle with Barack Obama is coming into focus. With the primary season closing today, her efforts turn to the super delegates, who don't have to decide (in the only meaningful way) to support either Clinton or Obama until late August. There is yet time for them to be convinced that nominating Obama would be a disaster for the party...

He notes some of the matters that might lead to what I call "implosion", and concludes:

...Hillary will stick it through to the convention in Denver.

I believe so. It makes sense. She just has to be contemptuous of the consensus. --I have by the way, so far found no coverage of the voting.

The Hillary Matter

2008-06-03T01:17:00.000-07:00

It's late. Just so I'll have something of a predictive post I'm going to post an email I just wrote.

Dear K,

I don't know if you called a second time or not. I was in the basement after 12:00.

Read a lot on the Hillary matter, though not nearly all the articles that were available. The overwhelming opinion seems to be that she will drop out within days after Tuesday. I have no idea, not on the basis of having read anything that seems like solid information. I do know my own opinion: If she drops out she's got rocks for brains.

I've gone through my arguments before: They're tied 50/50, since March 4th she's been doing very well, and Barack is going down hill. By the Democrats own rules the race isn't over until the superdelegates vote in August. What they say as to who they endorse means absolutely nothing in any formal sense. She could simply announce Tuesday: We're tied 50/50, see you in Denver; and I don't see how anybody could fairly object, especially if she ceases to publicly spar with Obama, which actually is nearly automatic anyway since there aren't any more contests after Tuesday. My own opinion is that at some point Barack is going to sink like a stone. If that happens before the convention and they still make him the nominee, she's certainly in a position to later call them utter fools.

And there is evidence that that change in dynamism that I've been expecting is happening. Take a look at this from this weekend:

ARG 05/31 - 06/01 600 LV Obama, 34 Clinton, 60 Clinton +26.0

Compared to this one of two months ago:

Daily Herald 03/24 - 04/03 267 RV Obama, 46 Clinton, 34 Obama +12.0

Of course, this is comparing apples to oranges, but there's no option because there are no other polls; no one is polling this late, unimportant state; and both polls are suspect, the ARG poll because it's a weekend poll, the Daily Herald poll because of its small sample, and of registered rather than likely voters. Still, the swing is huge, and I don't think it's because Clinton has suddenly become remarkable, I think it's because Obama has finally become ordinary, and with a lot of baggage people are just learning about.

Obama was supposed to win these two states, Montana and South Dakota, easily. As the near certain nominee he should win them by 80 to 90 percent (even though they're not a natural demograpic or region for him). If he loses one at this late stage it means a lot of Democrats are very unhappy.

See you, --M

So I am going to predict Hillary wins both states, South Dakota by a lot, Montana by a squeaker. I really have no basis for that prediction other than that I continue to assume that at some point antagonism toward Obama is going to set in. "Buyers remorse", perhaps; and I do think the race will become racial.

Goodman Barack

2008-05-31T16:03:00.000-07:00

Barack has resigned from his church.

(CNN) -- Sen. Barack Obama's campaign confirmed Saturday that he has resigned from the Chicago church where controversial sermons by his former pastor and other ministers created repeated political headaches for the Democratic frontrunner.

The resignation comes days after the Rev. Michael Pfleger, a visiting Catholic priest, mocked Obama's Democratic rival, Sen. Hillary Clinton, for crying during the runup to the New Hampshire primary.

Previously, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, former pastor at Trinity United Church of Christ and Obama's minister for about 20 years, drew unwanted attention for the campaign when videos of his fiery sermons surfaced.

What a man of judgment! Absolutely everybody in America is impressed. In a mere twenty years he's managed to figure out that there's something offensive in being racist.

The interesting thing now is this: Since he has now thrown the entire congregation under the bus (all those cheering Pfleger and Wright and the new pastor, Moss) will there be some in that congregation who will decide to throw Obama under the bus? I would imagine that there could be some testimony that Barack was a'cheer'n bro too.

This stuff is cumulative. One wonders when the Democrat party will have enough sense to throw Barack under the bus? This should encourage Hillary to not accept any compromise on MI and FL delegate seating. She doesn't have to, it keeps her options open not to, right up to the convention. This politically necessary but surprisingly sudden resignation is blood in the water, and blood in the water is encouraging.

---------------
6:25
Ha! Byron York asks the obvious questions everybody will ask; and then this:

Hillary's Threat: On To Denver! [Byron York]

From Harold Ickes, moments ago at the DNC rules and bylaws committee meeting.
Mrs. Clinton has instructed me to reserve her rights to take this to the credentials committee.
05/31 06:59 PM

This is an everybody-sees-the-same-blood a-swirling-in-the-waters sort of response.

I sure will be pleased if it's the Democrats who get rid of Obama, rather than leaving it up to Republicans. Anybody who dumps on the Bambi will be a racist. Let the racists all be Democrat.

Note: I first spotted this story on Ace of Spades HQ, posted by Drew. Turns out that Drew himself used to be a Nazi, but he apologizes and doesn't want it held against him because he just didn't know they said "things like that" in an Aryan church. He firmly expects that no American will be so racist as to not accept his apology, and recognize that he is pure in heart.

Incoming

2008-05-20T16:09:00.000-07:00

Early Exits: Hillary by 31 in Kentucky; Obama by 15 in Oregon. Of course the Oregon "exits", since it's an all mail-in ballot and there are no polling booths, is actually a phone poll, which makes it another degree removed from accuracy from the ordinary exit polls, which themselves seem always to somewhat over poll for Obama.

Also just heard that that erie, one man 75,000 political draw --the photograph showing one man on the stage, and all those people watching-- was actually opened by a free concert given by The Decemberists, apparently a very popular rock band. That's fine, but no statement of that in any of the news coverage. That's a total lie by the media. (Drudge was part of that too. Disappointing).

Everybody was deceived. This from Rich Lowry:

Obama's Crowd
It's already been discussed in here, but 75k is really extraordinary. A friend of mind today said when he first saw the pictures he thought it was a gathering for the pope. (And in a way, it was.) He'll probably be getting crowds of 100k in the fall. Doesn't mean he's going to win. We've seen in his race against Hillary that crowd size isn't necessarily an indicator of votes. But what a phenomenon!

What a phenomenon is right, that how he attracted the crowd was reported nowhere.

----------------
7:40 PM
71% reporting: Clinton 65, Obama 31. --Apparently Hillary won every demographic again, including the demographics that so heavily favor Obama in Oregon. Probably won't be any meaningful numbers from Oregon before Midnight, if then.

So Goes Portland So Goes the Nation

2008-05-20T11:53:00.000-07:00

I don't know how to call Oregon. I've said that I think this has become a racial election. If that's true Hillary will do surprisingly well; but it's also possible it's become a fascistic election, in which case Obama's support will be overwhelming.

Oregon is half conservative and half liberal, but only the liberal half will be voting Democrat. Liberals have an inclination towards the strong man, Fidel Castro and Robert Mugabe come to mind. Obama personally is a weak fish, but he certainly has a nice contempt for the democratic process and for all those who don't support him. Who knows how well that might appeal to Portland?

I'll stick with Hilllary by two points, because a white response to black racialism would be wholesome, and it might happen; but then there is that extraordinarily unnerving 75,000 soul rally Obama had just this weekend, of the brain dead, the committed, the violent. These are extraordinarily dangerous people, in that their contempt for opposition is absolute --any means to any end. Such people in any society tend to be in the minority, simply because such violence of conviction requires an absorption most people don't have time for, just because they're too busy being involved in their own private life...

But then this is just an election. Just one primary. It's easy to just send in a ballot, just like your vocal neighbors... But then it's also very easy just to send in a ballot the opposite of your neighbors, just because you're sick of them being such intemperate jerks.

We'll see.

------------------
A word on the possibility that Obama may claim victory tonight in Iowa in terms of having secured a majority of pledged delegates. As it's expressed in the New York Times:

The results from the Kentucky and Oregon primaries on Tuesday will almost certainly allow Mr. Obama to reach a threshold that his campaign has long sought to establish as the critical measure of the will of the party: winning a majority of the delegates awarded in primaries and caucuses. (emphasis mine)

And as countered by Michael Barone:

Obama is not likely to have enough superdelegates lined up by next Tuesday night. As this is written, RealClearpolitics.com has Obama at 1,891 delegates. Current polling gives him 58 percent of the two-candidate vote in Oregon and 34 percent of the two-candidate vote in Kentucky. That should give him, under the proportional representation rules, about 17 delegates in Kentucky and about 30 in Oregon. That puts him at 1,938.

The number needed to declare a majority, and that's only by totally disenfranchising both Michigan and Florida, is 2,025. To get to that number he would need superdelegates. Superdelegates are not elected in primaries or caucuses, thus to suggest that he's gotten to 2,025 is to mislead; and anyway, the expressed will of the superdelegate has no legal standing, since at anytime they can change their mind. Their votes can only be determinative when cast at the convention.

Note: The best article I've found on the complexities of the Democrat math, both in counting the delegates and determining the popular vote.

Note once again: I finally understand what's being argued. By the end of tonight Obama will have a majority of the delegates that are to be selected through primaries and caucuses, but not the number needed for the nomination, which is dependent on the superdelegates; neither candidate having the possibility of gaining that number through the vote. I've always understood that to be the case. Why did I misunderstand that tonight Obama would be claiming the number needed for nomination? I would have to review what I've read, but I have an idea there's been some word play, such that "pledged delegates" were conflated with the delegates to be selected by the vote tonight, suggesting he had won a majority through the electorial process, and leaving out mention that his majority depended on the superdelegates. --Or maybe I just read carlessly and should just scratch this post. --I think I'd better start a new post.

Oregon?

2008-05-16T23:47:00.000-07:00

Did West Virginia matter? I say it did.

I keep waiting for Obama to implode. I can't see that he's got anything going for him other than that he's a "Not Hillary", and a black guy with a grin. He's also a vapor brain, a radical, a race seeped introspectionist --and thus as the first "post-partisan post-racial" very modern black man-- a liar and a hypocrite. And thin-skinned, hyper ego-inflated, and a pansy as well, just to randomly mention a few additional negatives.

My opinion: Four months ago I thought he was a simple soul but basically a nice guy who was honest. I think I note a change in my judgment; I can't believe other people aren't having a change in their judgment as well.

Normally, when discussing Republicans, I presume any change in my judgment is going to be the prevailing dynamic of the campaign. That tends to work well enough because as a Republican I'm pretty much in the middle, what happens to me happens to others. But these are Democrats I'm trying to consider. This is a different species.

I'm going to presume this: I'm going to presume some Democrats have emotions, and that not all of those emotions are ideological. I think this is safe. I think there probably is no such thing as a Democrat argument that's not ideological, but I do think there are non-ideological emotions that aren't that different from mine. And anyway, in this intraparty primary between two lefties, what's to be ideological about? This isn't "Any lie will do because the enemy is a Republican", this is tweedle against twiddle, so judgment can only be based on personal distinctions. It's pretty clear to me which one of the candidates is smarter, as well as which one it is who has balls. Yet it's the other who gets all the fawning attention.

It does seem to me that after awhile that gets annoying. There's no rational person who doesn't understand who would have the better capacity to govern, yet these rational people are pressured to abandon their brains and fall on their knees and worship blackness. For a lot of people that's not a worship they find terribly satisfying. That's why I think West Virginia was important. Every demographic in that state rebelled against the new pope. Once you have apostasy it can catch fire, and I think that's what may have happened. West Virginians --not so much hicks as Jacksonian frontiersman-- made clear it's okay for white folk to tell a black guy to shove it up his nose.

When the black guy in question is a snot-nose, this is wholesome. Hillary by two.

-----------
Note: A friend just called. Long chat. He wanted to prove to me he wasn't a racist for disliking Obama. It had just occurred to him that if Collin Powell were running he would vote for him in a heart beat. That this as a new thought to him I can believe because he's a Democrat and so possibly had never before considered that option. That he would in fact vote for Powell I can believe because I know how much he respects personal courage and integrity, and that's Powell. What's interesting is that he guiltily felt he had to justify his dislike. I have no such problem. Obama is a drip. Once it become acceptable to call a drip a drip Obama's numbers will drop.

-----------
To make a more standard argument:

--At the end of January in Oregon Hillary still had a substantial lead over Obama, it seems to me it was something like 65 - 35. She's gotten bad press since but Hillary is Hillary, she hasn't changed. If people liked her once they can like her again.

--The most recent ARG poll puts the numbers at: Obama 50, Hillary 45; 5% undecided. By the Bradley effect that means Obama has less than 50%, Hillary more than 45. --Late deciders go very heavily for Hillary. That puts her very close. Of those polled who had already sent in their ballots (about 25% ?) the numbers were split evenly, 49 - 49. Again, by the Bradley effect, that means that in the early going Hillary is in the lead.

Or course, polls are sometimes off. But I would say things look very good for Hillary. The demographics do favor Obama, but it's fundamentally an all white state, and I don't know that the dynamics favor Obama because he is running a don't-criticize-me-I'm-a-black campaign, and that's exactly the kind of campaign that could break on racial lines.

Our National Conversation

2008-05-13T13:04:00.000-07:00

Some thoughts on the West Virginia white-racist-hick-vote. No news I've read yet, I don't know if turnout is heavy or light.

This primary has no significance except as part of the "national conversation on race." It will pass as insignificant, a slightly off-color remark, unless the result is both large in margin and massive in turnout. Turnout may be down in part simply because Barack didn't campaign there. He's the catalyst. He hasn't ignored that state as a concession, he's ignoring it first to delegitimize it as a contest, and secondly to cut his loss; if he stays away the statement will have less force than if he campaigns and energizes his opposition.

I do think it would be best for the country if the Democrats did the whole racial fight themselves, and left the Republicans out of it. If he is the nominee and it goes to the general it will be not only a racial contest but one fueled by party partisanship, and that would have force and that would get ugly.

Hard to know what party it would hurt more. How many Democrat victim groups want to be held hostage to the demands of that one dominant victim group? I have an idea that within the party itself mutual animosities would become intense. It's not a rainbow coalition if one group is getting all the press.

But of course it would be the Republicans who would be the racists. It's interesting though, that in fact, most Republicans would be voting against Obama without much emotion, and very little of it racial. The guy is a loser, and very probably a loon, a vote against him is easy. Still, the vituperation in the press would be intense --against McCain, against Republicans, against whites. And in fact a lot of independent and Democrat whites, sick of being called racist, would vote "racist" as a way of establishing to themselves that this in fact is a very normal rational response to a rump party obsessed with race. But everybody would be in a very bad mood.

But who knows about tonight? One way to avoid all the unpleasantness of being involved in this kind of fight would be to just stay home, and that might happen.

Note: I've heard noise that Huckabee is being considered as a possible veep. Haven't read the articles yet but it occurs to me that he might be the one man who could diffuse this racial tension. If he could make clear the difference between the true Christian message and Wright's hatred, if he could persuade 20% to 30% of blacks that that mattered a great deal, then McCain might get that 20% to 30%. If that happened it would no longer be a racial contest because race itself had established that there were other issues besides race.

So tonight? We'll see. Either a big nothing, or something substantial.

--------------
5:45 CDT
Amazingly little coverage, but apparently heavy turnout, not sure if it's state wide. Presumably the margin will be wide. Could be a significant night.

Of significance so far:

--Barack is pretending this isn't happening, he isn't even going to give a concession speech tonight.
--75% of all voters say Barack shares "a lot", "somewhat", or "not much" of the views expressed by Wright; only a quarter say not at all.
--Fifty-nine percent of Clinton voters say they would not vote for Obama if he's the nominee. Thirty-five percent said they would vote for McCain, 24% would sit the election out.

Interesting numbers, and given some force as coming from people who have just voted, at a point in the primary cycle when people are normally already starting to coalesce around the presumptive nominee. It is possible this is a night that will have to be discussed.

----------------
6:50
Polls closed twenty minutes ago. From exit polls so far she's winning with 69% of the white vote. No official word yet on turnout. --And no exit numbers on the black vote. Some split would be an exceptionally welcome development.

My own feeling is that Barack is being a chump and a coward by not giving a gracious concession speech. He doesn't want coverage, but the message he's sending is that he's a chump, a coward, a sore loser, and a man who can not unite the country, who doesn't have the words for it, and can't even face the problem. It may indicate he's a political idiot as well. It's not as if this is a result he couldn't have foreseen and met with something more prepared than a duck and a dodge. It clearly indicates he's not prepared to be president of all the people.

-----------------
I'm stealing an entire Post from RCP Blog

Posted by KYLE TRYGSTAD

Quite simply, the exit polls show Hillary Clinton winning almost every demographic category possible.Groups Obama usually carried in previous primary states he lost tonight bysometimes two-to-one margins -- such as voters under the age of 30.

Voters in the West Virginia primary were overwhelmingly white (95%) andliving in rural or suburban areas (97%). Clinton won 69% of white voters,including 74% of white women.

Obama has regularly carried college-educated, higher-income voters. Butnot in West Virginia. Clinton won 75% of those with no college educationand 58% of those with a college education. She also carried every incomebracket. She won liberals, moderates and conservatives all by about two-to-one.

Two outside factors also helped Clinton: 79% of Clinton voters said BillClinton, who carried the state in the 1992 and 1996 general elections, campaigningin the state was important; and 51% of all voters said they think Obama sharesthe views of his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright -- and Clinton won84% of them.

Still haven't seen a black vote breakdown.

Geraghty has a similar very nice post.

--------------
9:40
Fifty-four percent reporting in: Clinton 65; Obama 28; and "anybody but either" 7%. Pretty good. Clinton won every demographic! But that's only white voters. Apparently there aren't enough minorities to be considered a fair sample, so no report on how the black vote fell out. And still no word on total turnout, just that it was "heavy".

Still, this is a very sobering result: Late in the race, Obama clearly the nominee, and not one white demographic supports him! That's probably never happened before since Rome.

West Virginia?

2008-05-12T20:56:00.000-07:00

In keeping with my practice of embarrassing myself, I predict: Hillary wins West Virginia. With a walloping margin. And with a walloping turnout.

It's only this last that's uncertain. Who's gong to bother to turn out to vote when the race has already been decided? And even on the safer question of margin, who's gong to vote for Hillary when they can vote for the winner?

Educated opinion differs. Normally, when there's a clear winner in the making, support swings solidly behind him. After all, he must be good, otherwise why should so many others support him? And of course the turn out is light because who needs to go to the trouble of casting a meaningless vote?

But who knows what the dynamics are now, with the black candidate supported by 93% of blacks, and the white woman of the same party --once popular-- now supported by only 7% of that same black voting block? That seems awfully racial, especially since that black candidate's political accomplishments seem only marginally more than those of your average grocery store clerk. It might be that all the hoopla over His Highness has come to seem offensive.

But who knows...

The problem with my pulling for Hillary over Obama is that I don't like either of them. I do want Hillary to win because I'm Republican and I want to see a fight in Denver and at the end of the season I want her to be a steam roller. But she wasn't in North Carolina, she wasn't in Indiana. No boil, no steam. What's the possibility she's going to create some heat in West Virginia?

I don't see it happening, but that doesn't mean things aren't hot. The massive, non-critical support for such a marginal black man as Obama is something that's a kind of fuel; and the fawning of the MSM and their declaration that the race is over and that West Virginian's are hicks is more than a spark.

If there is a very large turnout for Hillary it means there is a very great deal of ill-will.

That will be interesting. The party doesn't want to lose the black vote by "stealing" the nomination from Obama, but how much of the white vote do they want to lose if indeed the resentment towards Obama is immense?

I don't know the answer because it's a matter of numbers and intensity and close-vested thought, but this contest is now a racial divide and there's no way to pretend it's not.

I do think it's the black vote that has made it racial. Ninety-three percent Obama support after Reverend Wright is racial voting (91%?). Racial voting engenders racial response. If West Virginia goes 80% Clinton it's a result blacks have earned. We may be having our "racial conversation" through the ballot box.

But I don't know.

The Pudding...

2008-05-06T14:12:00.000-07:00

4:05 PM, is not yet in the bowl. I haven't even yet gotten a firm handle on whether the turnout is very heavy or not. And the final polls are all over. Barack by two in Indiana, Hillary by twelve. In NC Barack solidly in double digits, or maybe ahead only by four. --There do tend to be a lot of undecideds...

I will note my very strong prejudice that I want Hillary to be the one to knock Barack out of the race. I want all the bitterness to be intraparty, and not aimed at the Republicans. And I do maintain hope for a split in the black vote, which would declaw people like the Reverend Wright. It certainly would be wholesome and at this point I do see it as possible, because faith has now entered the mix, and it's not now merely politics. There doesn't have to be much initial change for it to be established as a dynamic.

-------------
7:17,
Mixed and poured but not yet taken its set; no numbers. Presumedly NC for Obama, and I presume Indiana for Hillary, though it hasn't been called. No network projected margin for Obama in NC. --It does appear things are going to turn out about as folks projected purely in consideration of demographics. That's pretty disappointing. --I'm yet sticking yet with my sense of the dynamisms, at least until I see some numbers. The most important prediction is some black split on Obama. The exits I think have it 92 - 8. If that's true it's terrible. But I wonder if there might be some Bradly effect here, that a black won't tell a pollster he didn't vote for a black? --Numbers later.

-------------
8:15
Going to hang it up for awhile. Numbers coming in very slowly, about 57% of precincts for Indiana, about 26% NC. Obama is way ahead in North Carolina, but I believe that will tighten considerably as the outlying districts report. Indiana looks like it will be a mid single digit win for Hillary. --I continue to presume the exits are off for NC.

----------------
8:45
50% Precincts NC: Obama 57%; Hllary 42%. This has closed from I think in the twenties.
Indiana, 73% precincts: Hillary 52.5; Barack 47.5. About what I had expected 30 minutes ago.

Black Vote Bubble Blunder?

2008-05-06T12:46:00.000-07:00

I'm hearing that the black vote in North Carolina is very heavy, therefore a solid win for Obama. Everybody knows that black people vote black.

I've also read an article in RCP by Stephen Thernstrom and Abigail Thernstrom. They argue that there is something of a black church in America --that is, a church of some shared heritage and shared theology-- and that parishioner Obama's and Reverend Wright's church have nothing to do with that black church at all.

I'm arguing that the bubble is that the liberal press and the liberal Mr. Obama can't see that faith is important to the black congregant in America and that they thus might be upset by Mr. Obama calling a racist church "the black church". That might mean that a heavy black turnout in NC is in fact not good for the big O.

We'll see. As I've noted before, this is a primary. A vote for anyone is a vote for a Democrat. It's not so hard for a Democrat to vote for a Democrat. But which one? Will race be the only consideration made by the black voter? Or will what the candidate is and believes matter as well?

I still think faith will matter to many, and in this respect Obama's faith is troubling.

This is how the Thernstrom article begins:

In his recent incendiary remarks, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Jr. claimed that criticism of his views is nothing less "an attack on the black church launched by people who know nothing about the African-American religious tradition." Can it really be that millions of black Americans regularly choose to listen to viciously anti-white and anti-American rants on Sunday mornings?

Happily, Chicago's Trinity Church is an outlier in that regard. Most black churchgoers belong to congregations that are overwhelmingly African-American and are affiliated with one of the historically black religious denominations such as the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME) or the National Baptist Convention. Rev. Wright's Trinity Church, on the other hand, is a predominantly black branch of a white denomination that is not part of "the African-American religious tradition." The United Church of Christ (known until 1957 as the Congregational Church) has a little over a million members; a mere 4 percent of them are black. Fewer than 50,000 blacks in the entire nation worship at a UCC church.

In contrast, 98 percent of the National Baptist Convention's 4 million members are African Americans. Add in black Methodists and Pentecostals, as well as other black Baptists, and the total comes to more than 14 million members of an organized, predominantly African-American church. These churches include a substantial majority of all black adults today. In terms of sheer demographic weight, they clearly represent the "African-American religious tradition"-as Rev. Wright's branch of a overwhelmingly white denomination does not.

In comparing this massive demographic to Wright's church (the church to which Obama now claims allegiance, rather than to the man) the article goes on:

The web sites of Rev. Wright's Trinity Church and the national body to which it belong stand in shocking contrast. Before the Trinity site was sanitized in early 2008, its material seethed with racial animus and hostility towards America. It described itself as "Afrocentric"; its motto was "Unashamedly Black, Unapologetically Christian." Its quasi-literate foundational document, "The Black Value System," devoted much more attention to blackness than to Christianity. It is the manifesto of a church for people of the black race, designed to be an "instrument of Black self-determination." Blacks were depicted as a race apart-the scurrilous perspective that pervaded Rev. Wright's April 27 Detroit speech, in which he contended that blacks and whites had completely different brain structures, one left-dominant, the other right-dominant. This is nothing more than an updated version of the pseudo-science once used to defend segregation in the Jim Crow South.
(Snip)
Clearly, Rev. Wright does not speak for mainstream black churches-and he has done them a gross disservice by claiming to do so. He shares neither their vision nor their values....

I'm pleased by this statement. I expect some black Christian repudiation of Obama as a man who holds views antithetical to their own. I just don't know the numbers.

Applecart Upset?

2008-05-05T22:06:00.000-07:00

In keeping with my intent to record my predictions --so that I can't later more favorably misremember my perspicacity-- I call Indiana plus ten for Hillary, and North Carolina plus two for her as well.

The reasoning is pretty simple, Hillary is a well known witch, her negatives can't get worse; Obama is a poorly known, very pleasant fraud, his negatives can only get worse as he becomes better known. He's had a very bad couple of weeks, with his pastor popping off, and this just at a time primary voters are most seriously focusing on the candidates. Hillary has not had a bad two weeks. She's been holding steady, has been pretty good humored, has been campaigning hard, --and most importantly, has had noting to do with the Obama self inflicted wounds. She can't be attacked as negative. The conclusion then is that Obama has been hurt, Hillary has been helped.

The greatly interesting race is North Carolina, and the most interesting demographic there is not the white working class, strongly swinging toward Hillary, but the black voter, presumedly 85% to 90% in the tank for Obama. Are they?

It's my presumption that there are black congregations in North Carolina that are actually Christian. It can not be a happy discovery for them to learn that their great black pride for president, such a pleasant seeming fellow, sat in a pew for twenty years listening to hate being spewed under the coloration of Christian faith. That's an abomination of the faith, and it immensely compromises the congregant who apparently found that message suitable for himself, his wife, and his daughters.

I have no numbers, but I would bet there are more blacks who take their faith seriously --its gentleness, it's love of neighbor, its aspiration toward moral self-improvement and personal salvation-- than there are those who consider it merely as a means to a vicious political struggle. I rather expect that the "angry black church" is pretty much just an inner city very liberal church; and I do think that a properly offended faith is probably the one power strong enough to counter what would be otherwise a justifiable pride of race in supporting an apparently good man as a viable aspirant to the presidency of the United States.

What percentage of the black vote did Jesse Jackson get? How large was the black turnout? I don't have the numbers but I know the answer is: less; and less. Barrack is heading in the direction of Jesse.

So in North Carolina the black vote will be somewhat depressed, and less favorable towards Barack than normal. The split now in the polls is fairly close, Obama always slightly over polls and he anyway has never been over 50%. And there is now a new dynamic, created by Obama and in opposition to Obama. I think this dynamic is powerful. I see a possibility that the more constant Hillary can profit from this dynamic and pull off a victory.

Note: It would be of extreme value to everybody if the black vote split. This race has become about race. If the black vote split it would become a race about personalities and beliefs. That would be far more wholesome.

Pennsylvania Indifferent

2008-04-22T18:56:00.000-07:00

Following what's being said in the blogs, but oddly indifferent. Exit polls seem strangely non-informative this primary.

I'm surprised I'm indifferent, I know exactly what I want. I want Hillary to absolutely cream Obama. If that happens the race continues and more information comes out about Obama. I've developed an extraordinary skepticism of the guy, and I would like the expose' to come from the Clinton people, rather than from Republicans.

I'm staying with my prediction of a fourteen point margin for Clinton. On balance, nothing I've read in the last hour supports that --or refutes it; just too much that's uncertain, but It would be a nice result.

----------------------
WASHINGTON (AP) - Women and older voters came out in force Tuesday in Pennsylvania's presidential primary, encouraging signs for Hillary Rodham Clinton as she sought a win to sustain her campaign.

------------
7:14
McCain Wins GOP Primary!

No call yet on Hillary/Obama

Fox is saying it's "too close to call." I suppose that's possible. Huge numbers of new voters and young voters. There probably are no certain models to predict their turnout, and since exit polling has so often been so wrong, and since how this turns out is very important psychologically to the race, perhaps they're just sitting on their guesses until a lot of real numbers come in. I can't imagine that Hillary doesn't win, but perhaps they don't want to say anything until there's have some solid sense of the margin.

------------
7:39
Clinton 67, Obama 33.
Now that's what I call a wipe-out!
One percent in.

------------
UPDATE: (From Geraghty referencing Fox):

Hume notes that they're "very worried" about the accuracy of the exit poll data that they're getting. But so far, she is up about 6 percent in their numbers.

-----------
8:46
Fox News calls Pennsylvania for Hillary.

No numbers. They're waiting to weight the exit polls against actual numbers. It seems there's a presumption that the exit polls will be off in a consistent enough fashion so that if some can be weighted against actual votes, then the rest can be used to predict actual numbers. One presumes some voters lie about whom they just voted for?

-----------------
9:10

Numbers are looking good. 42% reporting, 55 -- 45 Clinton, according to Drudge, and that would be with most of Philadephia County having reported, which is Obama's only really strong county. So as the night goes on it looks very stron for Hillary.

From Geraghty:

UPDATE: The King Number-Cruncher, the great Michael Barone, says that if Hillary ends up winning with 160,000 votes (his back-of-the-envelope margin), and you throw in the results of Michigan and Florida (even though Obama wasn't on the ballot in Michigan, just "undecided"), she actually takes the popular vote lead.

I think this is better than anybody expected. Also, from the tone of comments I've read (an uncertain thing) I get the impression that a lot of the media actually expected Obama to stage an upset, which might explain some of the reluctance to declare a winner: They just couldn't believe the numbers they were seeing.

Barack

2008-04-19T23:59:00.000-07:00

Have to make an entry. The idea this election season has been to put down my thoughts and predictions as a way of testing my understanding. If it's written down I can't misremember how perceptive I was. I have lost interest in the race.

Six weeks ago --whenever, but after Texas-- I said Barack was no longer the Messiah, so his support would have peaked. From then on the horse race would be just between a part of a horse and a hack from Chicago. Hillary's support wouldn't go down, because everybody who supported her already knew she was a jerk, but Obama's wouldn't go up because he was now just a politician, and not a very good one at that.

He certainly does have baggage, but the polls haven't gone quite as I'd expected. Some fluctuation, more to Obama's benefit than Hillary's, but actually fairly steady; neither has collapsed, neither has taken off. Obama is accumulating negatives, but so far it hasn't shown up in the polls.

McCain has gone up steadily. For this time of the season, with supposedly immense public dissatisfaction with his party's president, with woes economic and other, his numbers are extraordinary. He should be down ten or fifteen points, but instead he's even with, or leads, either Obama or Hillary. This rise is the general public's response to Hillary the horse and Barack the hack. There is movement among those only marginally attracted to the new king. But what about Democrats?

This is where I lack insight. It appears both camps are pretty firmly dug in and emotional and not about to change their preferences, whatever new information might come out. This surprises me, because, as I said, while I thought Hillary would be solid, I thought Barack could only be damaged, and to my mind he's been damaged more, and more quickly, than I had expected. Yet he has gone up in the polls. This makes no sense.

There has to be a pathology here. Maybe it's just that if you're a Democrat you can't criticize another Democrat if he's black? That would be racist. It seems this is a party piety, it's the faith by which you know you're a liberal.

I take pieties as being public. Always the right thing must be said. But how internal is that perfect faith? Can you say one thing, yet vote another? I don't know. I do know that among a certain set of liberals the more a back Democrat is attacked the more he must be defended, and the more justified the attack the more vehement the defense, the more powerful the commitment to the candidate.

This is pathology but it is a Democrat thing and it's going to happen. But what percentage? How many will say one thing but in a polling place do another? There have got to be Democrats who have followed the same path as myself, initially considering Barack a decent honest fellow fundamentally unconscious of race, who now find him not quite that; maybe rather: loser, jerk, snot, hypocrite and flim-flam man. Are they going to vote for a guy like that? After all, there is another Democrat available. It's true Hillary does have her own descriptive identity, but the difference between what she says and what she is doesn't fool anybody, and at least she's not a loser.

So, Hillary by fourteen points in Pennsylvania.

There. I've made my prediction. On this prediction my reputation will rest, to rise or to fall. Actually, mostly I'm just taking information from Jay Cost. He notes that Ohio and Pennsylvania are demographically very similar, and that the pattern of polling over time-- Hillary's fall in percentage, Barack's rise, though Hillary still maintaining a lead-- are virtually identical between the two states. That's all Jay Cost says. He makes no prediction. He says: "You can't predict tomorrow by yesterday", or something like that.

But he's just protecting rep. In fact the probabilities are that the dynamisms are the same (though some psychologically obscure) so the pattern will be the same. Add to that Obama's new negatives (which has to mean something to at least some Democrats) and I think Hillary's numbers will be better in Pennsylvania than in Ohio. Ohio she won by ten, so Pennsylvania she wins by fourteen.

My personal argument is this: polling is PC, and a public statement is a party piety, it's reflexive; but the voting booth is private, and I just bet'cha that in private a lot of Democrats will sin.

Bambi Meets Godzilla

2008-04-13T10:11:00.000-07:00

A friend of mine's wife has cancer. It may be very bad, we don't know yet, the tests aren't all in. I have a numbness in my left hand. For the past week we've been talking (via email) about the numbness in my left hand. It's a lot easier to talk about the insignificant numbness in my left hand than it is to talk about his wife's cancer.

A few weeks back we learned that for twenty years Obama has been a congregent to the hate spewing Rev Jeremiah Wright, a man he considers his spiritual mentor. We also learned that Hillary did not face sniper fire in Tuzla. Oh my gosh! Hilllary is a liar! Who would have thunk it? It's Hillary who went down in the polls, not Obama. It's a lot easier to be angry that Hillary told yet another lie (the response should be a yawn) than it is to face that the new American messiah is actually a black cracker who hates whites. That's painful, that's scary, so we pretend it's not true. The anger appropriate toward the black man is displaced to the damsel.

But a few days back Barack delivered himself of this bit of elitist contempt --towards Pennsylvanians "bitter" about job loss:

And it's not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

In America it is not acceptable to state that a black man is a racist; it's not acceptable to even feel or acknowledge that a black man can hate, though absolutely everyone knows that racist hatred in America pretty much only goes in one direction. But while that can't be felt, acknowledged, or stated, it is totally acceptable in America to feel contempt for an elitist snot, of whatever color. In democratic America a snot is called a snot.

Barack is going down. There are plenty of reasons to find him --how should we say-- "unacceptable", but now there's one that can be faced, felt, and stated: a snot is a snot is a snot; and there are plenty of other emotions to fuel the one that now can be publicly declared.

"Vote for Obama? Are you kidding me? Vote for that elitist Harvard out-of-touch rich guy snob with the whiny bitchy wife? Have you listened to what he says...?"

And so now that it's acceptable to find fault with the dear boy fault will be found. Few will point out that he's a racist, some will question his associations, and all around the edges of that concept there will be criticism. In a month he'll be a con man and a hack.

This will be good public discussion because one that's honest.

Cold Turkey 'Til Tuesday

2008-03-06T22:18:00.000-08:00

I'm going to swear off politics for a week. To my mind the dynamisms are set and nothing remains that's interesting until something happens new, some unexpected event, or perhaps just the time necessary for things to get complex again.

Obama has lost his messiahship. From now on it's just a bit of a hack against a part of a horse. The horse in the end will win. I could say though, that calling Obama Ken Starr won't work because Obama is not a Republican. Only Republican charges are dismissed. Obama will bring up the same charges from the past --where Hillary has been "vetted" and passed-- and in fact she won't pass now but will be damaged. And Obama is going to start looking very Chicago.

On the Republican side McCain has an immense opportunity to frame the debate to his advantage. He's got a chance to look almost co-presidential. And that Bush is a drag is nonsense. Bush is a real likable guy. Probably 80% or Republicans like him, that's a real plus for the man who hopes to take over. People who don't like him mainly don't like the world "he's left us". jBut after he's gone, same world. Most people are sane enough to recognize that and are going to want the man who can best deal with the same problems. It is true that means more war, and whether the majority of the public will accept that or not I don't know.

I of course have a strong interest in seeing just how McCain decides to use Huck.

Day After Despond

2008-03-05T05:54:00.000-08:00

It's impressive how "over" the race is for me. I of course want McCain to do well because he is man with virtues; and I want to see Hillary and Barack continue to claw at each other and create as much intra-party ill-will as possible, --but my great hopes for a Huckabee surge just didn't happen, so as I've said before: From now on it's just politics.

On the Democrat side Barack's momentum is over. A messiah can not have a set-back. So now he's just a politician, in fact just a junior hack from Chicago. Hillary and the press will eviscerate his holy image. From now on he'll only win in states with very large black populations. He may even have some difficulties in caucus states (Wyoming is Tuesday; I don't know if Hillary can get her act together that fast). She will win Pennsylvania huge and will enter the convention with momentum, and next to her Barack will be green and small and wilted. But he will have the delegate lead, and his core will not wilt and they are not green; they in their heart-of-hearts are the hate-Hillary-crowd and they're virulent. There will be a fight, the superdelegates will narrowly decide for Hillary as the more electable; blacks will feel disenfranchised and will sit out the election, and aged Yuppies will vote Nader. This will give McCain a shot.

Huck will support McCain. All conservatives will vote McCain, and if he has some care and delicacy they may even knock on doors and be enthusiastic.

--I don't think any of this is wild speculation, I think it's all pretty obvious. --Changing "facts on the ground" of course can change dynamisms; there is no downside to punditry prognostications.

Note:

--Huck's stature in the party will rise as he campaigns for McCain, because he will be identified not by his core constituency but by his function, which will be that of party unifier. Nothing will change between Huck and those who most powerfully support him, but the rest of the party will see him as larger than they saw him before.

--There will be a bump in energy among those who powerfully support Barack. The base is angry, and more angry now than Tuesday morning. They will work hard. For a short while he'll probably even bring in yet greater contributions. But among those who simply thought they had found salvation there will be a fade in numbers, and that will continue and continue as he's seen more and more just to be a man, and a rather prickly one at that.

--Hilary's supporters will be energized as well, because they see the juggernaut has been broken, --and the press, who helped create that juggernaut, will now help destroy it. Time to "get real". They'll now be the worldly, cynical, "objective" men they've all along considered themselves to be; this is their self identification and satisfaction.

--Poor Obama.

Tuesday: Redux or Revolution?

2008-03-04T19:23:00.000-08:00

I'm going revolution, simply because at this point I can. Won't be able to pay much attention until it's all over anyway. But Hillary wins three (pretty sure of that) and Huck takes Texas. That alliterates, so I'm going with it. Will check back in about an hour and a half.
(Innitially posted 7:11PM, but on the wrong blog. So I repost).

------------------
9:20PM

Oh well, when you predict by the power of alliteration you should recognize there's more than one way to alliterate: Huck Tanks in Texas. Oh well...

I'll still want to get specific results but the excitement is over. Apparently he's formally withdrawn and tomorrow McCain gets the formal endorsement from Bush. One problem Huck had is McCain just isn't a Republican Hillary. Conservatives who dislike him do so on policy grounds. While that can extend to matters of personality --mainly his complete dismissal of them, and I think, contempt, still, as a man he just isn't all that bad. He's pretty honest and reasonably witty, and he is tough and he has been a hero and he is a patriot. It's kind of hard to dump a guy way in the lead anyway who has qualities it's impossible not to admire. You can emphasize the negative. For me it would be his imperial attitude toward the populace, but he's not a Hillary so people by and large are going to like him. Huck never did criticize him, except for ignoring conservatives.

So it's all over. Just politics from now on, but nothing exciting.

Pill Pushing

2008-03-04T09:48:00.000-08:00

I advocate that all true patriotic American Democrats who love their country and who are particularly concerned about my particular Republican happiness vote Hillary today so that peace and prosperity and a convention fight and my own good Republican fortune might flow on forever.

This is playing with fire. It would be of immense value to the republic if Hill were knocked out of the race and we would be rid of the Clintons once and finally and forever and there would be no possibility of resurrection and the nomination and the presidency; but she simply can't lose that badly, and she's not going to withdraw if she has any chance at all on the convention floor, so it's probably best if she gets a win and the Obama momentum is stopped. He'll still have support, but he'll be damaged. Then if they both at something like equal strength continue on to August the infighting will be ferocious, and that from the Republican perspective will be good. If the fighting is bad enough there's a chance many Democrats will vote McCain; there could even be a realignment --depending on who wins-- as to choice of party.

I do think Obama is going down. The NAFTA/Canadian kerffufle is the proof. It's much like Hillary's Philadelphia debate and her clumsy answer on drivers licenses for illegals that just didn't die. It was a minor matter but it was an opportunity to rebel against the queen. This Obama business, with double speak on NAFTA, is of the same nature. He said (most probably) two different things to two different audiences. So what? Happens all the time. But the criticism and questioning has not stopped. It's been going on and on, the press won't let it drop, and that means that the press is now judging Obama as a politician rather than as Elvis or a messiah. Why the change is uncertain (though over due), but if he's a politician then he's a hack from Chicago. He's not bringing salvation, he's merely an anti-Hillary. That's powerful in itself, but it returns the battle to the rational. The rational is always good, and I can't see that he has any presidential merit at all.

Huck? Who knows? He's hardly in the news and way behind in the polls. As per usual he'll do "better than expected" but in raw numbers there's no way at all to know how well that will be. His strength is that no one at all has any reason to vote for McCain since it's conceded the contest is over --McCain certainly believes it's over-- but conservatives have a strong impulse to vote because they don't trust the young fellow and at least a little want to put the screws to him. But I have no idea of the numbers. The military will do their duty and vote and their vote will be overwhelmingly McCain and there are 16 military bases in Texas. That's a lot of votes, but I don't know about any other demographic. It's going to be totally a turnout election. I doubt Huck's support has either grown or diminished because the values at issue are clearly known and McCain has done nothing to change the dynamic. Certainly he's not changed the dynamic in his favor, he's probably changed it a little against him, just by the way he's totally ignored Huck. This is the great fear conservatives have, that he will totally ignore them.

So who knows? I would dearly love to see the Huck punch him between the eyes and wake him up a bit but I have no idea what's happening on the ground so any prediction would be meaningless. "Better than expected", that's what I've got to stick with.

I believe Hillary will win both Texas and Ohio (at least the popular vote) and probably solidly; and probably Rhode Island too. I think tomorrow there will be consternation in the Obama camp. I would certainly hope the same for the Republicans.

Pondering the Poop

2008-02-28T23:55:00.000-08:00

The poop is that if Hillary doesn't win both Texas and Ohio --certainly at least one-- she's dead and Barack will be the nominee because he will be the people's choice. This is the poop. It's poop. The nearly 50% who will have voted for Hillary are not going to consider Barack the people's choice and they're not going to quit and Hillary isn't going to quite. Barack, to knock Hillary out of the race, has to beat her three to one. That would illustrate Hillary has been discredited. That's not going to happen. It's going to the convention and it will be decided by the superdelegates.

The probably nominee is Hillary. This is a turn-about from my opinion of just a week ago when I thought she was dead. I have to revisit my feelings of that time.

We've all been caught up in the "inevitability" story. Hillary the inevitable, Hillary the inevitable, we in effect have heard that for years now. So when it turns out she's not inevitable, that she might be defeated, we think in the terms that have conditioned our minds for so long and say that if she's not inevitable, why then she's dead. Those are the only two options, inevitable or dead, that's the way we've come to think.

In fact, she's just in a fight. This has to be the new focus. It's proven now that she's not inevitable, it's proven in fact that she can fall behind, that does not prove at all that she can't fight and can't come back and win.

I fear that I bought into the "momentum" meme after Wisconsin, when for the first time without doubt momentum was a factor and Barack made inroads into her base. "It's all over" I said --as did so many others-- but Texas is two weeks from Wisconsin and that's a long long time for such a light chip as Obama to sail with any force. Texas and Ohio will be a demographics, and not a momentum election, and the demographics --principally union and Latino-- somewhat favor Hillary. She'll probably win. If she wins both Texas and Ohio, for Obama it's going to be like a cork hitting a brick; Obama momentum will be spinning on the pavement. Then we'll see how he does at the convention.

I see all this as possible now while I didn't a week ago. Time is on Hillary's side. I'm convinced that the huge fuel to the Obama fire has zilch to do with anything so fine as hope but was just anti-Hillary hatred; and while that fuel still smolders I think that all that's combustible has already been lit. The people who like Hillary, by whatever poor judgment that may be, like her still, and with the two week calm now before the next fight what is Obama but just a platitudinous podge of smoke. He has to talk now, exchange nasty quips with John, and what-in-the-world has that guy got to say whenever it does comes to matter what he does say? He may be the Ascalon that slew the Dragon Queen (she is dead now you know, or so so many say) but when his mouth has to open and close in something like real debate with a man of a very different stripe what is he but a Kos Kids Kook?

Anyway, it's going to the convention. Barack is a vapor trail, he'll dissipate in the general. Most of the superdelegates will know that, they'll vote Hillary, and blacks will sit out the general. That gives Republicans a chance... except, unfortunately we've got John, who seems in the process of angering as many Republicans as Hillary is going to anger Democrats.

Daily News

2008-02-26T21:53:00.000-08:00

Obama continues to go up in the polls, Huck continues to fade in Texas. So good news/bad news. And everywhere else in the world: war, famine, pestilence. But do they like us?

That Barack is doing well is good because nothing can be more wholesome to the American body politic than to get rid of the Clintons. Everything about them is division and dishonesty, baiting Republicans against them so that their base will rise in their defense, and otherwise fantasizing facts to create a world that doesn't exist, and supported in that fantasy by the press because somehow that world is the one they want. Once they're gone a better tone might develop, and possibly some Democrat will emerge who will be willing to judge the world with more care for cause and effect. I don't know that, but the Clintons have been the Democrat ethos for 15 years and with them back in power it certainly won't change. With them out of power... maybe. But everything about those two is fantasy. Even Hillary's makeup is fantasy. She's sixty years old, and tries to look twenty. I don't know why, it simply communicates that she's been packaged: the face embodies the fake of everything that is Clinton.

That Huck is doing not so good is a disappointment, but I guess understandable in that McCain isn't such a bad candidate, is inevitable, and is generally likable enough. I don't myself see that he has any great gifts, excepting for force of character. He does have that; and strength, patriotism, and basic decency is a pretty good base on which to build a presidency.

I do take exception though to his "courteous" campaign. He went out of his way to speak well of Hillary and Barack as "good Americans" after a radio host who had been part of one of his rallies had said some things not quite so positive. If he actually believes those two --I guess I mean mostly Hillary-- is actually such a fine American then his head is up a dark spot. I do fear that he does believe that, and that he thinks the problem is with the people --Republicans-- and not with liberal Democrats. I do fear that he's now so much a creature of Washington that he believes Washington is America, and that the people are merely a pain. This thought is my very strong impulse behind hoping Huck will do very well.

Even as a campaign tactic I can see no purpose in going so obviously out of the way to assert "civility". Part of what a campaign should do is communicate something of the force of feeling that is felt by the base. I see some honesty in that, and the utility of honesty. But to be content with such sterile, intellectualized statements such as: We have deep philosophical differences, is to cast doubt that those deep differences exist at all. Deep differences should excite anger. I would like to see him dislike Hillary at least as much as he disliked Romney.

Unfortunately, we are stuck with McCain. I do fear that he's of the imperial clique of the American elite, and understands ordinary Americans about as well as Louie the Fourteenth understood peasants.

-----------------
Something of McCain's response to Bill Cunningham's remarks:

“It’s my understanding that before I came in here a person who was on the program before I spoke made some disparaging remarks about my two colleagues in the Senate, Senator Obama and Senator Clinton,” he said. “I have repeatedly stated my respect for Senator Obama and Senator Clinton, that I will treat them with respect. I will call them ‘Senator.’ We will have a respectful debate, as I have said on hundreds of occasions. I regret any comments that may have been made about these two individuals who are honorable Americans.”

Responding to questions from reporters, Mr. McCain said he did not hear what Mr. Cunningham said, saying that when he arrived, Mr. Portman was on stage.

“Whatever suggestion that was made that was any way disparaging to the integrity, character, honesty of either Senator Obama or Senator Clinton was wrong,” he said, “I condemn it, and if I have any responsibility, I will take the responsibility, and I apologize for it.”

He called Mr. Obama a “man of integrity” and said he was someone he had come to know “pretty well and I admire.”

He also said that it was not appropriate to invoke Mr. Obama’s middle name in the course of the campaign.

“I absolutely repudiate such comments,” he said. “It will never happen again.”

To which Cunnigham replied that he was peeved with McCain:

Mr. Cunningham said the media often say “nasty, negative things”about President Bush and Vice President Cheney, and that The Times had “smeared” John McCain on its front page.

Treat all the politicians the same. We’re not dealing with the messiah here. Obama cannot heal the sick and make the blind see. He’s a hack Democratic politician from Chicago, that’s all he is. Let’s treat him like every other hack Democratic or Republican politician.

Then he continued:

I’m angry at McCain. Why would John McCain repudiate me? I’ve been able to unite McCain and Obama against me. I might become a supporter of Ralph Nader.

No, Bill, in some ways McCain does live within a dark vista, but you can't support Nader. That's taking justified indignation a bit too far.

Obamaism Isn't

2008-02-25T23:55:00.000-08:00

That is, isn't an ism. An ism needs a superstructure. Somebody has to write a tome with postulates and world-historical-profound conclusions, and there has to be a "program", and "historical context", and then, "a way forward" --makes no difference if it makes any sense or not, but for there to be an ism there has to be a text, something the believer can study and memorize and recite --otherwise all you've got is mania. If you can recite you can always be superior to those who haven't studied the master, but if there's nothing to recite you've only got emotion, and emotion is up-and-down and in a down moment not much protection against those who scoff, so the emotion leaves. A mania leaves, only an ism is forever. Poor Barack is only a mania.

So Barack will fade and bomb, but hopefully not until Dracula is dead.

I also think Obamamania is an accident. I think his intent was just to make an apperance, that things took off was a surprize, that's why there will be nothing more in the playbook down the line. Just "hope & change", but once Hillary's gone every bit of change he stands for that means anything will have been achieved and only about 10% of Democrats will still find him exciting and the rest will simply have to make do with what they've got.

It's hard to imagine a candidate who will mean less three months from now. The people who will hurt him the most are the people who now support Hillary. They'll say: You're our candidate now, be specific; and since he will be their candidate then he will have to be specific, and then he will no longer be exciting.

Just hang in there, Barack, through the convention. We need you.

-------------------
4:15AM

An Empty Suit Can Wear Any Costume

Barack is upset that a photo is being circulated of him wearing traditional Somali attire:

"Everybody knows that whether it's me or Senator Clinton, or Bill Clinton, that when you travel to other countries they ask you to try on traditional garb that you have been given as a gift," he told WAOI, "The notion that the Clinton campaign would be trying to circulate this as a negative on the same day that Senator Clinton was giving a speech about how we repair our relationships around the world is sad. We are going to try to stay focused on what will make a difference in our foreign policy, including bringing the war in Iraq to an honorable end. "

He noted that he believes Americans are saddened when they see "these kind of politics."

And so on, and a great deal of offense taken by many in the blogosphere at this sort of "dirty politics".

A couple of things come to mind: The guy has zero sense of humor. He's wearing a rag and a diaper; that's funny. Secondly, it's extraordinary that a rag and a diaper can suggest to the average American that he's Muslim. I'm sure in fact that he's a very ordinary liberal Democrat, as firmly patriotic and deeply Christian as Nancy Pelosi or Harry Reid or Dick Durban. But what's marvelous is that he's such an absolutely vacant vacuous entity... that nobody really knows. There's so little substance there that any suggestion of substance of any kind is as good as any other, and as convincing.

This guy is the very definition of absolutely nothing at all. I wonder if there's any possibility that "Barack" could become synonymous with "dumb blond"? That would be rather "unifying".

And of course, as a political tactic it falls under what's called "The Dumb Hat Rule"; you wear a dumb hat and your opponent can fairly take advantage of it. It was established forever as a traditional part of American politics when Michael Dukakis wore a tank commander's helmet; on him, with his goofy grin, he looked as mighty and as military as Mickey Mouse. Undoubtedly cost him twenty points in the general.

-----------
Correction:
I've looked at a full photo and Barack is not wearing a diaper; he's wearing some sort of flouncy dress made out of diaper material. My mistake.

Minor Muse Moment

2008-02-24T03:53:00.000-08:00

Haven't read, have to make a post, will just muse.

There really isn't much that's interesting now in terms of the horse race. The only matter of consequence left that I care about is whether or not Huckabee will be able to establish himself as a force the Republican upchucks have to consider. Now that the nomination has been decided, if he still does well then he's not Harold Stassen, he's the leader of a significant voting block that insists it must be recognized. Nothing could be more wholesome for the Republican party --for the whole nation-- than to have a unified Christian conservative political movement --well led-- that can't be bought by a pander but has to be recognized as a force.

Huck is the man to do it because he can speak in the secular voice at the same time as there's no doubt he's a Christian. A nation can't be strong without a commitment to a faith --witness the entirety of Europe, so pleased in its contempt of faith but utterly dead as a culture; unable to protect itself even from it's lowest socioeconomic ragtag immigrant minority; a minority effortlessly contemptuous of the idea that there is strength in secularism, demanding Sharia, and easily proving themselves strong simply by being annoyed. --Liberated Europeans have difficulty with that annoyance, and find it annoying, because after all haven't they freed them selves from the centuries old constraining judgments of an angry God? That takes great intellect, you know, and courage. Intellect and courage, shouldn't that be achievement enough? How about some praise? They certainly do know its exhilaration, so very superior. Above constraint now, unanchored, they soar; unbound, they fly; within the wind they fly; within the wind they are of the wind... a wisp of wind. --There is no strength for any man except in faith. There are no exceptions. That is, if the enemy is of an alien culture and simply doesn't recognize sophistication when they see it.

Such ideas of course are not expressible in America; by much of America they're held in contempt, to make such statements is to lecture. No one listens to a lecture they don't like. But that's the beauty of a political movement. You don't have to lecture, you just say: "We got votes; what do we get?"

Such a wholesome dream... But this might be a good time for it to happen. The nominee --known-- is not a bad fellow. Any vote against him is really not a vote for another guy but a vote for a message. A mixed message to be sure, but undeniably a message. If Huck does well even with the nominee known it should be that even the best-of-us will not be so dense as to not recognize there is some dissatisfaction.

I hope this happens. The dynamics are in place --gently, there is no vitriol-- the whole question is just the matter of numbers: how many out there actually want the same kind of voice I want? I don't know. It's all numbers, it's all votes. That's democracy for you.

Note: This is exactly the argument Huck makes when he says if you want me to continue you have to vote for me. So simple, so powerful. He also holds out hope for a brokered convention. This is for those who want miracles. It could happen... as yet it's not impossible. It's a kind of pep talk, a pick-me-up. That's okay. It's possible there is no such thing as a powerful motivation that isn't seasoned just a bit with fantasy.

--I should at some point more deeply consider the pathology of Obamaisn. It seems sort of the sixties all over again, only instead of a Maharishi we've got a half-white guy who's a liberal who's called black. --I'll note the flower children never elected a president.

Decompress'n Down

2008-02-23T02:06:00.000-08:00

I think my entries for a bit will just be muse. The race seems now so finally finished that it just isn't interesting anymore.

It appears McCain effectively dealt with the "undue influence/sex scandal" before I even got around to reading about it. The immensely satisfying thing about that is that it argues he has political skills; he counters an attack, not simply with a press conference, but with a coordinated, many pronged counter utilizing many many surrogates. That he has that skill bodes well for a McCain presidency.

Of course there is yet Huck, my favorite guy. I fear the vine has withered. It's hard for his supporters to send a message vote when it's getting to the point where the message they might want to send is that they're getting to really like that guy McCain. I would still vote Huck, but I am getting to like that guy McCain. I do think the attack by the NYT, so weak, and the response, so massive and final, was just a godsend to his campaign.

I could note that right at the outset of the scandal --when no one then knew how it would turn out-- Huckabee was asked about it and said: "You know I have campaigned now on the same stage and platform withJohn McCain for 14 months, I only know him to be a man of integrity.Today he denied that any of that was true, I take him at his word. I have no further comment other than that for me to get into it is completely immaterial. Again I only know him what I know him to be and that's a good and decent and honorable man." And that's all he would say. Romney's aides were asked about the matter and said: Why couldn't this have happened two months ago?

...I imagine there are other world issues besides American primaries... Yes, I am sure there are.

One thing on last night's non-event debate between Hillary and Barack. It was said this was her last chance to make a difference, she should have done something to shake things up. I don't know if you can do anything to shake up mass delusion. As I understand she was her normal wonky self, that's who she is, and that may be her strongest card. No matter what she says Obama isn't going to lose his supporters as long as they're on their endomorpine high. She simply has to wait for the fit to pass, knowing it can't last... The problem here is the matter of time --she's got less than two weeks-- but even if the fit does pass and he's seen as just another politician, still there's this problem, he's not Hillary, and there are just a lot of people who just do not like Hillary. --I understand she still has a pretty good lead in Ohio.

--------------------
2:40AM

I see Gov Perry of Texas has had some harsh words for Huck:

Perry [said], "We had a mercy rule in six man football in Pan Creek, where I came from, and when you're behind by 45 points at the half, you just go ahead and salute the other side and say well done, and walkaway, before anybody gets hurt... I'd suggest to Mike it's time for the mercy rule to go into effect."

Huckabee has been campaigning hard in Perry's state and no symbolism was lost yesterday when Huckabee spoke in front of the Alamo in San Antonio, site of the "last stand" in the battle for Texas independence. That symbolism did not go unnoticed by Gov. Perry either, "I think Mike's already had his last stand. I think it's over for the republican nomination. And I respect Mike but it's time for us as a party to get behind Sen. McCain."

My personal feeling is this is probably the attack of a political idiot. He's saying exactly: The message doesn't matter, only the party. And that's the opposite of what Huck is saying, at least for this point in the race. Perry creates ill-will, and galvanizes Huck's supporters. It is true that the real danger Huck faces is embarrassment. If he does badly, he's badly embarrassed, and that could happen; but if he doesn't do badly he's giving an important voice to the public, and Perry ought to just suck it up and shut up.

The Fit Has Fled

2008-02-21T02:12:00.000-08:00

I no longer feel any interest in following the primaries, it has all been determined.

Hillary is dead. A party needs a leader. She had been awarded that mantle of "leadership" simply because she had been the most visible figure who had successfully fought Republicans. But now there has been discovered a new figure whom it is believed can more effectively contest that battle and so that figure now has become leader. And there is in fact no other question that matters; "Who can best fight Republicans?" is absolutely the only question that resides within the psyche of the Democrat, whether deeply buried and obscured by "issues", or right on the surface as "Who can win in November?" But that is the battle that has been fought between Hillary and Obama and Hillary lost. This is a judgment of faith and it can't change until there's been failure and that can't happen until it's over. Hillary's toast.

The question of how that judgment is made --Who can most effectively fight Republicans?-- is a different matter to answer and not in the least difficult because it's not accepted by many that this is in fact the only question asked. For my purposes just now I simply assert it is so.

So what is it that makes a Republican, this creature that must be defeated?

--First, a Republican is a member of the opposition, and therefore remarkably evil. If a man opposes goodness, how can he not be evil?

--Secondly, Republicans are the ones who have made the world the way it is, and that is, remarkably bad. It's Republicans who start wars and kill people. It's Republicans who destroy the economy and imperil the lives of the children. It's Republicans who torture people and give tax breaks to the rich and destroy the planet and create loneliness and failure and the rage that is within the heart of every Democrat. The world is a bad place and the world is Republican.

--But what if the world were Democrat? Why then the lion would lie down with the lamb, goodness would reign, and love and peace and admiration would shower down upon us and there would be nothing of the cold or the bitter or the sharp and nothing resistant would remain but there would be only adoration and that amongst us and forever, amen. For this is the fruit of goodness.

--And who is there among us who is the goodness candidate? For Heaven's sake, if you must ask, get thee behind me, Satan.

--So Barack will lead us not only to the nomination but to the promised land. --Pretty heady stuff, and the pill that is Hill thinks she can compete against that? Hill struggles yet against Elysium. Hill is Satan, and as I've mentioned once already, Hill is toast.

As for the Republicans? Well, they live in a different world and that world happens to be the real world, and they happen to have as a standard bearer a man who certainly isn't going to suggest posies and springtime. His very features are an argument. You can chose one world or you can chose the other but there can be no doubt about which world you are choosing.

So how will the election turn out? It seems it will depend on the ratio of the sane to the insane.

Taking Stock

2008-02-20T21:39:00.000-08:00

What a quite pleasing political season it's been so far these last two months, and I foresaw none of it. Romney, the great fraud, has been defeated. Hillary, the vast witch, is being defeated, probably has been defeated for good --and by her own party-- which means she will disappear as a memory and not linger as a martyr; and the Huck has arisen to lead us to Righteousness and Good Humor; talk radio has been revealed as a leprosy on the body politic; and McCain is a pretty good guy, actually showing more stature now than I've seen from him before. There may be something in him that's very fine, we'll have to see.

So this is an immense amount to have happened in just two months, so much more than I'd expected. My whole hope for this political season was only that Romney could be forstalled from buying the first two states and thus catapulting himself to the nomination. So much more good has happened than just that.

I haven't written much about the Democrats because they're very boring people. The whole dynamism is that the whole party for fifteen years has glommed around slime-ball one and slime-ball two, and now finally have the good fortune of deliverance through the agency of the high-minded TelePrompTer rhetoric of a man who, whatever else he might be, is definitely not slime.

So we have John and they have Obama. Good for them, good for us. The contest has contrast, that at least. And whatever else may happen, the American Republic now has a fresher scent for no longer having the Clintons.

Of the coming battle I say: "Bring it on."

Housekeeping:

--All those of stature who pushed The Romney still must be shamed, scourged, and beaten with sticks. I'm not sure just how that's going to be done but it's a good thing to do. --Perhaps they might just apologize for being fools, frauds, and manipulators.

--And the Huck must be allowed to run his course. It feels good to vote for a good man. It's a statement. If those who are his supporters are allowed to make that statement they're going to feel a whole lot better November about supporting the nominee.

--And the nominee has to yet continue to show stature and allow that course to be run, and appreciate that the electorate is expressing a voice that a wholesome nation would consider.

So, two really good months. But history does not stop. There will be kerfluffules yet, and I probably can't predict any better what they might be than I predicted the past.

Onward.

Wisconsin Knockout?

2008-02-19T08:05:00.000-08:00

(CNN) ElectionCenter 2008

McCain wants knockout

McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, is looking for big wins in the Wisconsin and Washington state primaries to demonstrate he is starting to unify the Republican party behind his nomination, including conservatives upset by his positions on immigration, campaign finance and other issues....

McCain also hopes he can score big enough wins to convince Mike Huckabee, the last remaining top-tier Republican candidate challenging McCain, to drop out of the race. The former Arkansas governor has vowed to stay in the race until McCain has enough delegates to win the nomination, saying voters deserve a choice.

"I'd like to think we've got enough support in Wisconsin, that we can actually win here, and it would be a very big thing for us," Huckabee said during a campaign stop in Hudson, Wisconsin, Monday. "But it would also be a good thing for Wisconsin for me to win, because it would show that the party was wrong to say this is over, and it would also be wrong to end the game before people in places like Wisconsin had a chance to vote.

We'll see how it goes. Later tonight I'll do my own "live blog", simply because it's an interesting way to follow the returns. My personal assessment is that there is a very large block of voters out there yet not at all ready to coalesce around McCain. But I don't know the demographics, I just don't know how many of the disgruntled there are in Wisconsin.

-----------------
6:50PM
As of 5:00PM (real time) Bill Bradlely has the simple statement based on early exit polls: 'John McCain will have a sizable win. --No details.

99.9% of coverage is Obama v Clinton. Geraghty: Possibly 60 - 40 Obama.

-------------------
7:25
From RCP:

8:00PM - Just caught some exit polling data from Fox:...
..................
*59-35: Huckabee is winning evangelicals.
* No numbers, but Huckabee is also winning conservatives.
* 54-31: Huckabee is winning "value voters".
* 53-47: McCain is winning Republicans, who make up 70% of all GOP voters. - BLAKE DVORAK

The big number here of course is McCain winning Republicans by 6%, in that all the others are subsumed as Republicans. McCain will also get most independents, the other thirty percent. So from these numbers it looks like a large win for McCain. But these are exit numbers, and early.
It is pleasing that evangelicals are finally coalecsing around Huckabee.

-----------
7:56
How soon will they call the winner?

-----------
8:01
CNN has already called for McCain, no numbers.

--------------
9:10
55 - 37 McCain, with 21% reporting. That's a very solid win. Huck did win the evangelicals 54 - 37% (simply to state it one more time), but there does seem to be a rough equivalency otherwise between him and McCain on what I would generally consider conservative issues. I guess he's close enough for nearly half the conservative electorate.

Over-all a disappointment to my hopes, though not so much to my expectations. I'm still assuming the final count will be a little closer --the rural areas reporting a little later.
--Have no idea how Washington will turn out.

---------------
10:28
This from Rich Lowry:

What Does It Say?
That running against the mathematically eliminated also-ran, Mike Huckabee,John McCain is getting about 55%? And that running against the once-fearsomeDemocratic frontrunner, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama is getting about 55%?

Should Hillary get out of the race?

----------------
10:44
This is very interesting, I don't know quite what to make of it. In Washington, 40% of the vote counted, McCain has 48%, Huckabee 21%, Paul 8%, and Romney, not in the race, 21%. This decidedly is a message vote. I doubt anybody expected that. Can't anybody get Romney to drop out! Get Paul to drop out! Doesn't everyone understand that everyone wants McCain and only McCain, and that Huckabee staying in just to "offer an alternative" is just offensive to everybody?

"Shock the World"

2008-02-18T22:38:00.000-08:00

Pretty much no news on Huck anywhere. Only a guy writing for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Dave Umhoefer, seems to have followed him at all. The same article that included the statement by Huck that it would "shock the world" if he should happen to win also included this:

He has not predicted victory here but has drawn an enthusiastic conservative following that he thinks the Republican Party ignores at its own peril....

A "growing chorus" of the GOP establishment and Washington-based officials want him to quit the race, he acknowledged. And former President George H.W. Bush is set to endorse McCain today in Houston. "I think it's going to backfire," Huckabee said of attempts to cut the primary competition short before one candidate amasses enough delegates to win.

I certainly agree with his sentiment. I have as little faith that the Republican heiarchy is democratic as I have that the Democrat leadership actually cares about expressing the will of the people. In each case they're simply of the leadership class that happens to be saddled with something called "the democratic process" and they have to game it to get more votes than the other guy so that they can be in power to do whatever they chose. I do see a separation of the leadership from the people that I've never sensed quite so powerfully before. Always leadership will be separate, but never before have I felt so strongly that leadership is contemptuous of its constituents. McCain has the nomination in his pocket, social conservatives can suck eggs. This is what I see anyway. That's why Huckabee is a hero. He's insisting that because he stands for a particular political view not so clearly held by McCain, it's necessary that the people have an opportunity to express their support for that view. If only McCain remained in the race a vote for him would seem to be a support for his values and program. In fact it would be a vote for him in preference to either Obama or Hillary, but it emphatically would not be an endorsement of all he stands for. With Huck in we have another shade, a "message", and that's a message I want to see sent. --And part of that message to the party elders is this: Screw you, two can play this game.

I like this poll:

Wisconsin
American Research Group, Inc.
Likely Republican Primary Voters

------Feb 6-7 --Feb 15-16
Huckabee -4% ------42%
McCain --51% ------46%
Paul ------7% --------4%
Romney -29% -------ni

It's the most favorable poll for Huck that I've been able to find. It also shows him trailing McCain 3% among Republicans, 8% among independents, but with twice as many Republicans than Independents likely to vote in the Republican primary. And it suggests virtually all Romney supporters switched to Huck and not McCain. That fits with what I would presume: Romney supporters all listen to talk radio, they've been programed to hate McCain, they probably actually believe Romney was a conservative, and so they've got no option but Huck.

I don't know that I place much faith in this poll, but I'll take good numbers where I find them, and it certainly does argue that the movement is in the right direction and that it's been extraordinarily rapid.
(Note: the link has changed, and the newest poll shows McCain 51%, Huck 43%)

In his last appearance in Applelton Wisconsin before heading to Little Rock to watch the returns there was this:

"If Wisconsin comes forward in good numbers for me, it changes the dynamics of the race," Huckabee said at a local bar and ballroom before addressing about 250 supporters.

Huck is absolutely right, but he was speaking at a bar and ballroom to about 250 people. We'll see.

Blindsided?

2008-02-18T02:06:00.000-08:00

Haven't read much. Huck's been in the Cayman's, should have been back to Wisconsin Sunday evening for a function. He's certainly not making news, no mentions of him except the mildly derisive ones referencing his being a long ways away in the sunny tropics. The "news" is McCain "squaring off" with Obama over his "flip-flop" on pledging to accept public financing, now turning down public financing because he can raise more money on the Internet. Lots a lots a print over the struggle among the Democrats over what to expect from the super delegates, should they follow their own judgment, or the expressed preference of the voter. Similarly, argument over the seating --or not-- of the Florida and Michigan delegates. And Bill having a fury. That's the news. Nothing on Huck.

I think Huck has positioned himself in Wisconsin as well as possible. There is no anger towards him as being divisive (how can a man in the Cayman's be divisive) so no one is going to vote against him in anger at breaking party unity. McCain is confident of a Wisconsin win, and so I believe has made only one visit. He's so confident of his nomination that he's gone into general election mode, ignoring the primaries, focusing on Obama as his probable November opponent.

And the grass roots are probably working like bees.

This anyway is my speculation. There are just a lot of people who still want to send a message, and there's just no one telling them that they shouldn't. A very great many of these people are going to quietly go vote Huck.

--People who are a bit stunned by Romney throwing in the towel and endorsing McCain may vote Huck. I don't know how many, most may stay home, very few will follow Romney's lead and vote McCain, but many may be angered and vote Huck because they do know he is a conservative and this time, at least as a message, they'll know they won't be wasting their vote on a fake.

--And a number of those who simply hate McCain may now decide not to expend their vote on Obama/Hillary --Obama's going to win anyway-- but may instead vote against McCain by voting for Huck. Not because they like him, but because it's the only effective way left yet to embarrass McCain --and it's not really a vote for Huck anyway since he sure isn't going to get the nomination.

So these things are all in play and they all favor Huck. How many people lukewarm towards McCain will vote for him just to be with a winner and to express party unity I don't know. I do suppose quite a few will not bother to vote because it's all been decided already anyhow.

These are very similar to the forces that were in play in Virginia where Huck had a run and made McCain sweat a bit (and in Wisconsin McCain won't have a military demographic to pull him through). It's true in Virginia the Huck surge fell short, but there is this difference in Wisconsin: In Wisconsin it's not winner take all, it's proportional, so close counts.

I expect Huck will have a good showing, and again, will "surprise". The principle reason I think he will surprise is because the party establishment, and the press for that matter, really doesn't recognize the force of the social conservative's feelings, and so don't even see these people on their radar. But I think they're there, and I see the possibility they might strike in numbers with a wallop. I'm certainly hoping that anyway.

Note: I don't believe I've ever heard Huckabee promise "change". He must be the only candidate in either party who's an insider and thinks things are just fine the way they are. I didn't know that.

It's Deju Goliath All Over Again

2008-02-15T07:32:00.000-08:00

I sure have come to like that Huck guy. I don't know how long he's going to stay in but I sure do appreciate seeing him put up the good fight.

Mr. Mitt has now joined forces with Mr. MaC. The Mitt gave the MaC his 282 delegates. How gracious of him... to give what was not his. He "released" his delegates. While there's debate as to what that means, it's possible he's released all 282 to vote for Huck if they want to.

The caucus delegates, about 176 of them, haven't even been named yet. The "pledged" delegates --those won in primaries, about 106 --are now free, at least in Massachusetts and Michigan, about 45-- to vote however they want, and that's probably true for the remaining states as well. If the Mitt had been patient he would have controlled all 282 at the convention, now he'll control 61 at most, and probably none. For fifty millions of his own dollars he sure didn't get much.

Of course, he is on the band wagon now, and since McCain is going to be the nominee I suppose it makes sense to hop on while you can at least pretend you've made a contribution. You can pretend, even if in fact you've potentially given Huck all or most of the delegates that cost you so very much.

Let's compute the best case scenario for Huckabee. He's got 234. Add 286, that's 520. Add Louisiana and Washington (best case! I don't believe any have been assigned) that's 38 more. Total: 558 to John's 724. It's starting to look like a race.

Now, I don't expect that going to happen and I'm not uncomfortable with McCain as the nominee, but this is politics, who knows what's down the pike? Mitt has in stunning stupidity given up control of 282 delegates, locked and put away. They're free now, who knows what might come up?

It should be noted that McCain does not have momentum, he has support. More people will vote for him than will vote for Huck. That's a good thing. It's good to have a probable nominee who can draw from independents and moderates. But I note for the next many contests those numbers are going to go down. McCain v Huck excites nobody, but Obama v Godzilla excites everybody. Anybody who can is going to throw their two bits into that contest, and John is going to lose a lot of bits he's come to depend on.

There's no way to know the final numbers, but the specifics help Huck. --And there's this as well: If McCain can't put Huck away in short order, a lot of people are going to start taking a second look. Everybody likes a scrappy underdog, especially such a pleasant one.

Wisconsin is big. Huck was really hurt in the Potomac states. A win coming off of a triple loss would be nice, but what he does have to do is at least beat expectations. That might not be too hard, since the coronation is now presumed.