Just Sayin'

If I was going to select someone to dispense earnest campaign advice, I might try to find someone who didn't confidently claim that John McCain was an "even chance" to win Massachusetts.

Socialist of the Day

John McCain. After all, a free market tax scheme would try to tax all types of income relatively equally and trust the market to distribute resources. But McCain wants to "pick winners and losers" and benefit investors as opposed to people who earn money through wages or salaries. Oh, the humanity!

And, of course, proposing a capital gains tax cut as a remedy to...a collapsing stock market makes it a super-brilliant idea.

Jonah Goldberg: Collective Ownership of the Means of Production Isn't Socialism, But Progressive Taxation Is

Shorter Jonah: My grasp of the word "socialism" is every bit as firm as my grasp of the words "nepotism" and "meritocracy."

Submitted for its potential sociological interest

Mrs. Joe X, a resident of San Angelo, TX, writes in response to this:

"It is only 8:30 in the morning and I have had my laugh for the day. It is impossible to believe that a "constitutional scholar" such as yourself would attempt to convince the American people that the redistribution of wealth has actually benefited the super wealthy. Only a fool living in "la la liberal land " would think in those terms. For those of us in the real world, the facts tell a different story. Please give me one example where socialism succeeded. Just one. Europe, Russia, Cuba, or the wonderful state of Michigan? The human spirit desires freedom, ownership, working hard and being proud. Say for a
moment that the United States evenly divided all the money and assets. Everyone started out with the same amount. One year later, I guarantee that you would have those that squandered everything, did not save a cent,and refused to work. And then you would have those that worked hard, invested, saved, and produced. In essence, I am saying that after one year, things would be back to where they are now. We are a country of hard working achievers as well as individuals content to feed at the public trough and believe they are entitled to every government handout. John Edwards was right after all--there are two America's. Those that work hard and build something and those who live in an entitlement world.My husband and I have a successful cotton farming operation here in Texas. We have built a legacy for our children and grandchildren. He has worked like a SOB his entire life. If you and your liberal/socialist/communist ilk think that we are going to stand idly by while you attempt to take it away and "redistribute" our lifetime of work to individuals who have no ambition and refuse to better themselves-you have misjudged us (and the American people).Joe the plumber must have really touched a nerve on the left. To write an asinine column about the super wealthy benefiting from the redistribution of wealth is an insult and a stretch for anyone who has any understanding of economics and the free market.I know that there are people who need our help and assistance. But we have become a nation of "takers". The government is not our benevolent father and we don't need the government to tell us what to do.Your ideology is code for "let's make everyone equally poor and governed by the elite few". Of course, the elite few would include intellectuals and scholars such as yourself."

I suppose the email columnists get is only slightly more respectable than conversations Tom Friedman has had with cab drivers the world over as a source of social insight, but I do get a lot of missives that sound exactly like this. The translation device in these peoples' heads is extremely powerful.

On a tangential note, I enjoy reading Andrew Sullivan's site for both straightforward and ironic reasons, and in the latter category I especially enjoy the "email recognizing the blogger's unique insights, courage and intelligence" genre.

Big Ten Goes Blue

I fear that this is too good to be true:

Illinois	Obama 61%	McCain 32%
Indiana	Obama 51%	McCain 41%
Iowa	Obama 52%	McCain 39%
Michigan	Obama 58%	McCain 36%
Minnesota	Obama 57%	McCain 38%
Ohio	Obama 53%	McCain 41%
Pennsylvania	Obama 52%	McCain 41%
Wisconsin	Obama 53%	McCain 40%

The Indiana and Ohio findings seem particularly optimistic. On the other hand, the September 19 poll was very favorable to McCain, even more so than most of the Midwest polls of the time.

If you talk to God that's called prayer

If God talks to you that's called schizophrenia.

So observed Thomas Szasz, in his interesting if extreme critique of the concept of mental illness.

Nevertheless, some people actually are certifiably nuts. And we're going to be hearing a lot from them in the next few years. Just wait until Scaife et al start funneling serious money to Philip J. Berg, Esq. et. al. et. seq.

Spin Prediction

The McCain campaign's response to this bit of news will consist of some variation on the following:

Americans should be comforted to know that al-Qaeda's assessment of John McCain's temperament as president roughly parallels everything that Sen. Obama has been saying on the campaign trail.

If the McCain campaign won't run with it, the wingnuts are by all means welcome to have it. In which case, my official response will be some variation on the following:

Wingnuts should be comforted to know that their analysis of al-Qaeda's analysis of the American presidential election was anticipated by the half-serious analysis of a freedom-hating, nihilistic, left-wing professor who may or may not have been half-drunk when he first thought of it.

This, via Ackerman, will also do nicely:

I Can Haz Moral Abomination?

This is the funniest thing I've read all month.

UPDATE [by SL]: It's obviously a rich comedy vein indeed, but my favorite part is Douglas's assertions about my colleague's lack of "rigor." Within the last week, you'll recall, Douglas wrote an intended-to-be-serious post about a transparently photoshopped hotel receipt showing Michelle Obama to have obtained rooms service (including a botte of champagne priced below retail) at a hotel in New York while she was at an event in Indiana. I think we can all agree that this is someone whose evauations of intellectual rigor shoud be taken with the utmost seriousness. I am eagerly awaiting his new post about the latest stunning revelations about this crucial subject!

UPDATE [by davenoon]: This is the last straw. Piss off, Rob. Now Donald is paying more attention to you than to me. Look. I found him; I brought his absinthian splendor to our threads; I made him the increasingly prominent neoconservative he is today. Stop bogarting my troll.

UPDATE [by Rob]: Use him or lose him, dude.

I Spend $12 On My Haircut. And It Shows!

ShorterVerbatim Don Surber:

Today’s big So What: It cost $150,000 to dress Republican Sarah Palin. It is all about image in politics.

A killer presidential candidate needs killer clothes. Democrat Hillary Clinton wore cheesy polyester pantsuits. If she shelled out a few bucks on something you couldn’t get at Kmart, she might be president...

Women are supposed to look good and smell nice. The reason that Democrat John Edwards was mocked for his $400 haircuts was it was a girlish vanity. The “I Feel Pretty” video aims at his masculinity. The song is sung by a girl.

A double standard? You betcha.

Fabulous. I was all prepared to say that the focus on Palin's clothing was as absurd and distracting as the similar attacks on Edwards, Gore, and Clinton, but Don has set me right...

The Stupidity Epidemic

This reads like a not-very-well-done parody of how the elite media reflect and magnify cultural obsessions with weight through pseudo-scientific musings about the supposed "obesity" epidemic.

(Shorter version: Because individual birds and rats are more or less prone to being startled by their environment, and hormones in the womb affect these proclivities, fat women might end up giving birth to more Republicans. Or Democrats. Or Illuminati. Or something).

Couple of points:

(1) If the thesis here is that the number of fat cells a pregnant woman has will affect her child's eventual attitude toward teh Terrorists or land sharks or whatever, then Judson is failing to take into account that the number of fat cells a person has is unaffected by whether they're "obese" or not (people don't gain or lose fat cells -- the percentage of which is genetically determined -- as they gain or lose weight).

(2) This is another nice example of how a totally bogus definition -- the notion that something magically starts happening when a person has a BMI of 30 or 31 that isn't happening at a BMI of 28 or 29 -- affects the views of educated people who don't know what they're talking about when they start speculating about the consequences of "obesity." The "obesity epidemic" is almost completely an artifact of the statistical circumstance that Americans who had BMIs in the high 20s a generation ago tend to have BMIs in the low 30s today. If one were to ask Judson if she thinks the babies of 185-pound women are going to have significantly different political views than those of 170-pound women as a consequence of the different body weights of the mothers, I assume she would perceive the obvious absurdity of the thesis.

Requiem For An Academic

Deposed Canadian Liberal leader was indeed a good and able man, but was pretty clearly unsuited to the job as a party leader, as his whining about garden-variety opposition attacks during the campaign makes clear. I wish he had succeeded but he certainly didn't.

Now we have to hope that torture apologist and "dirty hippies made me support the Iraq fiasco" jagoff Michael Ignatieff doesn't take over...

The Wages of Being Thankfully Wrong

As some readers may remember, I have a friendly wager with frequent commenter Howard about whether the Yankees will make the playoffs and win the AL East. Thankfully, my affirmative wagers were wrong! Hence, according to my promise, I have donated $50 to the No On Prop 8 campaign. The importance of not allowing an initiative to nullify marriage rights for same-sex couples can scarcely be overstated, and this is looking like a close race, so it's a cause worthy of your consideration.

And showing some flexibility since Howard is a jazz fan who's been kind enough to enrich my own too-small collection several times, I've donated the other $50 to the highly anticipated recording project of the Secret Society. Darcy is a virtual and meatspace friend who has drawn deservedly fulsome praise from Ben Ratliff among others. In addition, my original proposed honoree, Planned Parenthood, won't get stiffed -- I'll give to them this Christmas.

Readers should feel free, as Howard has, to match any donations of their choosing. Hmm, and maybe someone should make a reverse-hedge World Series bet with Atrios?

The "Impartiality" of Originalist Judging: A Video Representation

Starring Wilbur Hackett as Antonin Scalia.

Bonus footage: a new movie about Bush v. Gore, featuring Nelson Emerson as the Republican Party and Denis Morel as Justice Anthony M. Kennedy.

The Originalist Dodge

Clarence Thomas makes a typical argument in favor of originalism:

Let me put it this way; there are really only two ways to interpret the Constitution -- try to discern as best we can what the framers intended or make it up...To be sure, even the most conscientious effort to adhere to the original intent of the framers of our Constitution is flawed, as all methodologies and human institutions are; but at least originalism has the advantage of being legitimate and, I might add, impartial.

The choice between "originalism" and "nihilism" is a silly, false one; even to most realists, not all constitutional arguments are equally plausible. The idea that originalism is "impartial" is equally indefensible, not least because "originalism" rarely produces determinate outcomes when applied to concrete cases (and in the rare cases where "originalism" cannot produce a plausible conservative outcome on cases Thomas strongly cares about, he'll simply ignore the evidence anyway.)

This formulation is important, however, because unless the choice is "originalism or nothing" originalism has no chance to become a widely acceptable method. If there are multiple defensible interpretive methods, originalists would have to explain why it's normatively attractive to bind 21st century Americans to 18th century constitutional norms, a claim most people (including, when you actually get down to cases, most originalists -- like the "faint-hearted" Antonin Scalia, not to mention most of the founders themselves) will reject. Rather, originalism fails on both counts: it's not normatively appealing, and it doesn't constrain judicial discretion more than other theories of constitutional interpretation. Thomas doesn't address these arguments so much as make assertions that dodge the crucial questions.

Cutting Deals with Horowitz

On September 6, I opened up my e-mail and found the following:

Dear Robert Farley, I hope this email finds you well.

I am organizing a few discussions on Party of Defeat.
The book has been praised by seventeen members of Congress & Senate.

Have you read the book yet? I would like to send you a free copy and also offer you $1000 to write a critique of it for us, as we are welcoming a different perspective and debate/dialogue on this issue.

My first thought was "Have I read the book yet? Heh." My second thought was "$1000. That sure could buy a lot of whiskey sours." My third thought was "200. It could buy 200 whiskey sours, if I go to the right places. Maybe with a few Manhattans sprinkled in for variety." My fourth thought was "Hey, it could even pay for whiskey sours that I've already bought, and that are still hanging around on my credit card balance." It's fair to say, then, that I found the offer appealing from the get go.

I immediately IMed Matt Duss, who told me that the offer had been floating around the DC blogging/journalism community for a while. Duss (and others) had given thought to taking the deal, but then decided that engaging with Horowitz would grant him too much legitimacy. This, I thought, was true enough; it was the reason that Horowitz was willing to pay an outrageous sum for lefties to review his book. He was trying to buy legitimacy. The point was to create the illusion that there was something in Party of Defeat that was worth engaging with, and consequently that David Horowitz was a man of ideas, rather than a thug and second rate polemicist. As such, engagement with the work as meaningful scholarship could be fundamentally dishonest, in that it accorded the book a level of respect greater than the typical bar bathroom scrawl.

Then again, I have debts no honest man can pay. There was a certain comfort in the recognition that Horowitz' effort was transparent; taking the money to review the book was, in itself, subversive of the notion that Horowitz was a serious thinker. Of course, I would accept money to review a book that I had an interest in reading, but I would never read Horowitz were it not for the money. Indeed, had I initially been received the $500 offer that Frontpage is now making, I probably would have said "Thanks, but no thanks." After all, such an offer would only have netted me 100 whiskey sours, which is hardly worth the effort.

However, there was another issue; Horowitz and his people are thugs. Although my interactions with the contact from FrontPage have been polite, friendly, and completely above board, I couldn't rule out the possibility that President Lee Todd would be getting a letter at some point about my ideological unsuitability to work at the University of Kentucky. While I'm pretty low on the food chain, Horowitz (not to mention his fans) is pretty unpredictable, and while I didn't think that he could do any real harm, I didn't need the threat hanging over me. I discussed it with the Bossman, which reassured me somewhat, and I eventually managed to convince myself that I just wasn't important enough for Horowitz to bother with.

After a few days (I do have other responsibilities) I sent my correspondent at Frontpage an e-mail asking a few questions about process, editing, payment, and so forth. He assured me that the review would be edited only for spelling and minor grammar errors, and that payment would be issued after the review and a response by Horowitz were published by FrontPage. A reply to the response would be appreciated, but not required. I would have preferred a guaranteed kill fee for the review, but the response was reassuring enough to convince me to go forward. I asked for the book, and received my copy several days later.

And so on a Monday evening I set out for the Mellow Mushroom with Party of Defeat and a yellow notepad. I ordered a pitcher of beer and a pepperoni, pineapple, and jalapeno pizza, and settled in, expected to read roughly a third of the book. And then, about halfway down the first page, I noticed a serious problem with my plan. The. Book. Is. Unimaginably. Terrible. You may think you can guess how bad it is, but you can't. It's Benji Saves the Universe Terrible. It's notes on each of the first seventy pages terrible. It's spitting up your valuable, valuable beer terrible. There's just nothing there. It can't be engaged with, any more than the homeless dude with the tinfoil hat can. It's a disaster, and I just couldn't understand how I could possibly come up with a thousand words that could conceivably be termed "engagement", and still have any pretence to intellectual honesty.

As I so often do, I sought solace in alcohol. I gave some thought to bagging the project, because I didn't think that the $1000 was worth having to do a genuinely dishonest appraisal. Then again, I'd spent some time and intellectual energy; I also really wanted the thousand dollars. Finally, I latched onto the idea of treating the book as if it were a work of historical fiction, or perhaps even the novelization of some crazy right wing movie. I came up with the following (reconstructed from barely legible scrawls on yellow legal pad):

Horowitz and Johnson have produced what could be a killer script for a political/sci-fi thriller. However, there are some issues that need to be worked out. First, the "liberals" need to have some kind of scientific/supernatural power of persuasion. No one is going to believe that a tiny, unpopular minority could seize control of the United States unless they have some nifty superpowers.

As it stands, the script is entirely devoid of sex. This just isn't going to fly. As far as I can tell, we have four female characters; Nancy Pelosi, Cindy Sheehan, Valerie Plame, and Jeane Kirkpatrick. At least one of these characters needs to have an affair with some other character; maybe Kirkpatrick and the Shah of Iran? Plame and John Kerry? Even if we're aiming for a PG rating, we still need some steam.

We also have to start thinking about casting. Is Tim Robbins as George McGovern asking too much? Vinnie Chase is looking for work; maybe we could put him in the role of some young war protester who eventually devours the brain of a soldier? Even better, we could have Johnny Drama as the soldier; nice little in-joke. We might also try to land Alec Baldwin for the Al Gore role; if we can get Angelina for Valerie Plame, we could try to link them together.

It went on like that. After sobering up, it occurred to me that Frontpage would, likely as not, simply reject a submission along these lines. I could complain, but wouldn't have much of a legal leg to stand on; they were requesting a serious engagement with the book in what amounted to good faith. I'd get a good story, but not much else. So I began to think anew about how I could engage with the work. A couple days after starting the book, I talked a bit with Michael Berube about his interactions with Horowitz. I was reassured that FrontPage would play square, and that I should try to find a way to write a straight response.

After finishing the book and giving it some thought, I realized that what Horowitz was pushing amounted to a conspiracy theory. I could respond to it accordingly, with a variety of the typical tactics that one uses to respond to such claims, including a focus on mechanism, transparency, and so forth. Discussion with a couple of other correspondents convinced me that I needed to say something about Horowitz' narrow interpretation of democracy, which gave me the opportunity to bring up my one area of mild agreement with the book, which involved the useless "war of choice, war of necessity" distinction. Finally, I decided simply to not engage at all with Horowitz' use of evidence; factual claims in the book were designed for "truthiness" rather than for truth, and trying to start an argument about Plame or McGovern or Reagan or whatever else wouldn't be productive. I'd highlight a few howlers, and move on. I finished up the review (about 1600 words, which was more than I'd expected), sent it along to my editors (Duss, Erik Loomis, and the wife), then sent it to FrontPage. They accepted, sent me Horowitz' response in less than a day (I still haven't read the whole thing), and asked me if I wanted to reply. I tactfully declined; spending time replying would cut into my profit margin. I'd like to think that I produced an honest engagement with the book, while making clear that I didn't take it seriously as a work of scholarship.

I expected, when I began, that the effort would take about ten hours; five for reading the book, two for research, two for writing, and one for general nuisance. It ended up taking about seven (3 reading, 3 writing, one nuisance) which comes to an hourly rate of $142.86, which isn't half bad. When I got the check, I sent $100 to Barack Obama, $50 each to Bruce Lunsford, Victoria Wulsin (running to unseat "Mean" Jean Schmidt), and Joyce Merritt (running for District Judge in Fayette County), and spent $200 on a fantastic steak dinner with the wife. The rest goes to pay for the ghosts of whiskey sours.

PUMAs...

are like unicorns. Why this surprises anybody I can't tell you. I mean, Lady de Rothschild isn't leading a populist revolt in favor of more upper-class tax cuts in the Democratic party, I'm shocked!

The Incredible Vanishing "Voter Fraud"

Of course. But the point of the whole exercise was to get another apocryphal example of "voter fraud" out there for Republican vote suppressers to use as a pretext, so in that sense every claim is successful...

Sarah Palin in Your Kitchen

Sarah Palin is dissatisfied with the prevailing model of mass politics:

On the tarmac, Palin also referred to robocalls as “inside baseball,” suggesting it was not her call for the campaign to randomly call voters with negative attacks on Obama. “If I called all the shots, and if I could wave a magic wand, I would be sitting at a kitchen table with more and more Americans … and not having to rely on the old conventional ways of campaigning that includes those robocalls and includes spending so much money on the television ads that I think is kinda draining out there in terms of Americans' attention span,” she said.

That is to say, if Sarah Palin were calling the shots and bearing a magic wand, the United States would be as populous as a small town -- say, for instance, a small town in Alaska -- and she'd be calling Barack Obama a terrorist consort at your kitchen table.

Speaking merely for myself, I've never heard a stronger rationale for eliminating the very idea of a kitchen.

... Jesus, what a maroon. I suppose, though, there's something to be said for creating the opportunity for millions of Americans to hang up on Sarah Palin. I'm tempted to add the "Send Sarah Home" plea here, but isn't there somewhere else we might send her instead? Does Oklahoma need a governor? Utah? Is there a town somewhere without a mayor?

Adelman? What about Ledeen?

The prospect of a McCain presidency is too awful even for Ken "Cakewalk in Iraq" Adelman to contemplate:

Primarily for two reasons, those of temperament and of judgment.

When the economic crisis broke, I found John McCain bouncing all over the place. In those first few crisis days, he was impetuous, inconsistent, and imprudent; ending up just plain weird. Having worked with Ronald Reagan for seven years, and been with him in his critical three summits with Gorbachev, I’ve concluded that that’s no way a president can act under pressure.

Second is judgment. The most important decision John McCain made in his long campaign was deciding on a running mate.

That decision showed appalling lack of judgment. Not only is Sarah Palin not close to being acceptable in high office—I would not have hired her for even a mid-level post in the arms-control agency. But that selection contradicted McCain’s main two, and best two, themes for his campaign—Country First, and experience counts. Neither can he credibly claim, post-Palin pick.

It bears mentioning that no one should draw much joy from the endorsement of someone who was pissing his shorts to invade Iraq; in the event of an Obama victory, Adelman would quickly return his face to the glue-lined paper bag, from which he's drawn sufficient breath to argue that a less "incompetent" administration would have run a better war. The correct point, of course, is that a more competent administration wouldn't have invaded Iraq in the first place. Still, as a measure of how objectively awful the Sarah Palin pick has been for McCain, this is one of the more useful, albeit obscure, bits of data.

Speaking of Hoaxes...

Besides not actually calling and denouncing non-existent African press organizations, Michelle Obama was also rumored the other day to have gorged herself on $450 worth of Iranian (ZOMG!) caviar, lobster and champagne at the NY Waldorf-Astoria. The pearl-clutching news, circulated on Limbaugh's show and elsewhere, apparently derived from a New York Post gossip item that's been deleted because -- imagine this -- Michelle Obama was nowhere near NYC on Wednesday.

Readers will be stunned, of course, to learn that self-proclaimed PUMA sites are promoting the story, complete with transparently awful photoshopped images of Michelle Obama's "receipt."

Even the renowned Citizen Journamalist TIDOS Yankee has scrubbed his post about the non-existent lobster feast. Probably because the Obama campaign threatened to add him to the Obama Death List.

...Whoopsie! I hadn't actually seen this at TIDOS Yankee -- it was at Americandonkeypunch. Even better!

"Our Greatest Vulnerability is that We're Complete Morons Willing to Spend Unlimited Amounts of Time Developing Insane Theories About Trivia" Part II

Remember that exclusive "African Press International" story? Where Michelle Obama was supposed to have given a Hate Whitey interview to a press organization manifested in a cheap-looking wordpress site? Fortunately, it's all been explained:

The circle was completed by Jammie Wearing Fool, who suggested that the API report may be "a clever bit of astroturfing by the Obama camp trying to dupe people into running with bogus information." (Why would they bother?)

Yes. That must be it. Although I can't argue with the proposition that right blogosphere is very, very easily duped.

Meanwhile, for bonus fun we can also see the Corner going back to the anonymous letter writer/apocryphal cab driver or cocktail party with sneering liberals genre. Always stick with the classics! Combining the two is even better...

Poetic justice? You betcha!

El Tinklenberg, who is running for the Minnesota congressional seat currently occupied by professional lunatic Michele Bachmann, saw his campaign bring in nearly half a million dollars in the 24 hours after Bachmann's unhinged performance on Hardball Friday evening.

Lunsford Remains Within Striking Distance

Bruce Lunsford stays close to McConnell.

Safe! Safe!

Apparently there's some kind of game going on tonight. Consider this a Rays-Red Sox open thread.

...congrats to the Rays!!

...[from davenoon] Though a Sox fan, I'm nevertheless glad to see the Rays prevail. Spread the wealth, I say. And if I'm not mistaken, Rocco Baldelli got the game-winning RBI, which is really cool given the fact that he started the year with some sort of weird-ass metabolic disorder. One additional point should be made: this is clearly bad news for McCain.

Ouch

Hilzoy is mean. I like it.

One-Handed Blogging

Shorter Americaneoclown:

If California voters reject Prop 8, my youngest son might never find lesbians as hot as I do.

I Would Like to Think This is Stating the Obvious, But...

"Income taxes" are a subset of the category of "taxes," but the former category does not in fact fully encompass the latter. Republicans like to pretend that you can't give a tax cut to people who don't pay federal income taxes because this conveniently ignores the regressive taxes that constitute a much higher percentage of the ordinary person's tax burdens. This is greatly aided by hack journalists who let this ridiculous bait-and-switch pass without comment.

Amateur Night

Fox's MLB coverage is so abysmal that it inclines me to some charity towards TBS -- fewer nose hair and E-list celebrity shots, less Tim McCarver, you have to give them that -- but what a dog and pony show. Pre-empting the first inning for "Dick Clark's Funniest Home Celebrity Bloopers" probably isn't going to help them get the ratings they need to attract a second outside advertiser to permit them to cut the anti-smoking and mediocre impression ads show down to 80 a game or so.

Tonight's game will be fascinating if TBS will deign to show it.

No one knows who they were, or what they were doing

The McCain campaign has devolved into a machine that spits out the most amazing lies at a breakneck pace. Consider this "interview" (aka as an unpaid political advertisement) on Fox News this morning:

John McCain: I'm very pleased with what happened at the debate, because it helped define the issues with the American people. And Joe the Plumber is the average citizen, and Joe the Plumber is now speaking for millions of small business people all over America, and they're becoming aware that 'we need to spread the wealth around' is not what small business people want. And before we go into this business of, well, they wouldn't be taxed, etc., 50% of small business income would be taxed under Senator Obama's plan. That's 16 million small business jobs in America, and that's what Joe the Plumber's figure d out. Finally, could I just say, where are we in America where a candidate for president comes to a person's driveway, he asks him a question, doesn't like the answer, and all of a sudden he's savaged by the candidate's people?Savaged by them. Here's a guy who's a private citizen. What's that all about?"
...
John McCain: "I think his plans are redistribution of the wealth. He said himself, we need to spread the wealth around. Now..."
Fox News' Chris Wallace: "Is that socialism?"
John McCain: "That's one of the tenets of socialism, but it's more the liberal left, which he's always been in. He's always been in the left lane of American politics. That's why he voted 94 times against any tax cuts or for tax increases. That's why he voted for the Democratic budget resolution that would raise taxes on some individuals who make $42,000 a year. That's why he has the most liberal voting record in the United States Senate."
Wallace: "But, Senator, when we talk..."
John McCain: "So is one of the tenets of socialism redistribution of wealth? Not just socialism, a lot of other liberal and left wing philosophies. Redistribution of the wealth, I don't believe in it. I believe in wealth-creation by Joe the Plumber."

It is of course an unambiguous lie of the first order that the Obama campaign is attacking Joe the Plumber (I feel like I lost ten IQ points just typing that sentence). But the bigger and more important lie in all this is the claim that Obama wants to redistribute incomes and McCain doesn't. All politics redistributes incomes. It's a sign of the severe retardation of our political discourse -- and the fantastic success of right-wing propaganda over the last generation -- that it's necessary to point this out. Here's how 30 years of largely GOP rule have redistributed incomes.

It's an oversimplification to say that the Republican party exists for the sole purpose of redistributing as much of the nation's wealth as possible into the hands of the richest one-tenth of one percent of the population, and that everything else -- the cultural wars over abortion and gay rights and the death penalty and drugs and crime and the terrorists -- is just a dry-ice machine at a rock concert, obscuring the descent of a severely undersized Stonehenge monolith onto the stage of American political life.

Barely.

Powell: John McCain Has A Running Mate of Mass Destruction

The Powell endorsement shouldn't mean much, and probably won't mean much, but at least he didn't soft pedal it.

See also Benen.

We're Going to Talk About the White, That's What We're Going to Do

I suppose it's not news that to Republicans "real" America is white America, but it's probably useful to have a candidate on a Republican presidential ticket be so explicit about it.

It's very appropriate that this weekend would see yet another piece about Obama chasing white votes from Matt Bai. The print edition is headlined "Can Obama Close the Deal With Those White Guys," thereby borrowing the both the exceptionally irritating "close the deal" buzzphrase and the arbitrary division of the electorate into groups with white people somehow being more important from the Clinton campaign. Apparently, Obama's majority coalition won't be quite majority enough if it doesn't get whiter. But as both Clinton and McCain have or will soon demonstrate, white votes really don't count more.

Of course, the problem goes beyond any one writer and editor. There's nothing wrong, in isolation and in theory, with a lengthy article about attracting particular groups of voters per se (although I could do without such features as conflating "working class" voters with "rural whites.") The bigger problem is the obsessive focus on white male voters in particular. The real issue is that the Times would publish an interminable article about, say, John McCain trying to appeal to single women and pointing out that the GOP is doomed among this demographic until they repudiate their extremely unpopular anti-Roe position when there's a blizzard in hell.

Mmm... Snarky

Ahem.

Gov. Sarah Palin, campaigning, she said, in "real America," which apparently includes part of North Carolina, Rep. Michelle Bachmann, calling for a media investigation to determine whether Americans are real or not, and today, McCain all-around best surrogate Nancy Pfotenhauer (pronounced -- Foe-Ten-How-er, like proton power), said that parts of the state of Virginia, heretofore universally assumed to be in America, were not, in fact, in the country.

Now -- the Mainstream Media, typically clueless, has interpreted these remarks conventionally -- classically, you might say, as if we live in an Eisteinian universe with three dimensions of space and a quasi-dimension of time: either these women were summoning their inner Nixonian cultural warriors, or they were untethered from reality.

But three utterances of this nature for me lead to an entirely more edifying possibility: that Palin, Bachmann and Pfotenhauer were making a radical new claim about the fundamental forces and constants that compose the background of our universe.

For decades, theoretical physicists have sought to unify the theory of gravity with standard particle model of physics. So far, no dice. The dominant but by no means proven theory is popularly referred to as Superstring theory, or M theory, or some variant. No need to go into the details here. Crucially, though, some of the leading variants of string theory presuppose a universe of ten spacial dimensions plus time.

We cannot rule out the possibility that Palin, Bachmann and Pftoenhauer -- let's call them PBP for short -- are somehow about to perceive these extra dimensions, and that there is something fundamental about their physical constitutions that makes such perceptions unavailable to most everyone else.

The First Rule of Aircraft Carrier Club is...

...do not buy aircraft carriers from Russia. These photographs are pretty awesome (even seen an aircraft carrier in the middle of a field of snow?), but do not fill one with optimism about Russia's ability to deliver Admiral Gorshkov to India by 2009. In retrospect, it may have been a bad idea for India to build its naval aviation ambitions around the acquisition of an aging, poorly maintained not-even-really-an-aircraft-carrier from a country that has only minimal naval aviation experience, and no experience whatsoever at major naval reconstruction.

Via Feng at ID.

Lackey

Spackerman on Fred Barnes:

Fred Barnes might be the only reporter who's actually stupider and less coherent than Sarah Palin. Longtime New Republic staffers would reminisce around the office about how Barnes, a former TNRer, used to rewrite GOP press releases with minimal revisions. It's actually easy to pity Barnes, as he lacks a basic self-respect. After all, the guy wrote a fawning Bush biography after Bush nicknamed him "Barney," which is what Bush calls his dog.

That's all background to establish a general principle. While I see in theory the logic of sending a borderline-retarded journalist to lionize a particularly vapid politician, with Barnes, you're just going to end up accidentally running something that reveals Palin's basic unfitness for public life.

I always wonder -- does anyone take the guy seriously? Even to preach to the choir, the preacher needs a modicum of credibility. Although I suppose the very existence (and editorship) of the magazine he answers for answers the question.

Crazy Person of the Day

Michele Bachmann

With her boundless enthusiasm for demonizing those she views as godless, Bachmann cheerfully broke new ground in the Ayers/Jeremiah Wright culture wars by forging a series of associations between “leftists” and “liberals” and “anti-Americans,” inside and outside Congress, who in Bachmann’s view ought to be investigated.

And all this as her campaign for re-election in the Sixth District was already facing a nascent pardon request scandal and tightening polls. No wonder Bachmann seems so tetchy and fearful these days. Someone — specifically, that woman in the mirror – is out to get her.

Plumbing the depths

ARLINGTON, VA -- U.S. Senator John McCain today will deliver the following remarks as prepared for delivery at the McCain-Palin 2008 rally in Concord, NC, at 11:00 a.m. ET:

It's great to be here in North Carolina. This is a must-win
state on November 4th, and early voting is taking place now, so make sure you get out there and make your voice heard. With your help, we're going to win North Carolina, and bring change to Washington, DC. We had a good debate this week, and I thought I did pretty well, but let's have some straight talk: the real winner this week was Joe the Plumber. Joe won, because he's the only person to get a real answer out of Senator Obama about his plans for our country. Congratulations Joe. That is an impressive achievement.Now, Joe didn't ask for Senator Obama to come to his house, and he didn't ask to be
famous. He certainly didn't ask for the political attacks on him from the Obama campaign. Joe's dream is to own a small business that will create jobs in his community, and the attacks on him are an attack on small businesses all over the country that employ 84% of Americans. We learned more about Senator Obama's plans from Joe's question than we've learned in months of speeches by Senator Obama.We learned that Senator Obama's economic goal is, as he told Joe, is to quote "spread the wealth around." He believes in redistributing wealth, not in policies that grow our economy and create jobs and opportunities for all Americans. This explains some big problems with my opponent's claim that he will cut income taxes for 95 percent of Americans. You might ask: How do you cut income taxes for 95 percent of Americans, when more than 40 percent pay no income taxes right now? How do you reduce the number zero?Well, that's the key to Barack Obama's whole plan: Since you can't reduce taxes on those who pay zero, the government will write them all checks called a tax credit. And the Treasury will have to cover those checks by taxing other people, including a lot of folks just like Joe. In other words, Barack Obama's plan to raise taxes on some in order to give checks to others is not a tax cut; it's just another government giveaway.

I've been busy with conference stuff for the last couple days, so I'm not real up on this whole story but wtf is up with this Joe the Plumber business? Do the McCain people have some internal polls that makes them think this will work better than pointing out over and over again that Bill Ayers is Barack Obama's gay Muslim lover?

Some fact checking.

Seems like they're just thrashing around, putting Ronald Reagan's Greatest Working Class White Male Hits (Extended Play Version) on the turntable etc.

The Dude Abides

I can't take credit for writing the headline to this piece, but if you haven't learned quite enough about the Palin Family Circus, I have an article on Todd Palin up at MnIndy.

My expose on the Palins' pets will appear sometime next week.

Alterman vs. Hitch

Christopher Hitchens has returned from an alternate dimension, bringing a tale of terror and woe. Actually, that would explain a lot...

If someone hacked Hitch's gmail account and activated Mail Goggles, how long would it take the rest of the world to notice his absence?

The McCain-Cuba Connection

There's rather less to this article than I would have liked, or supposed. While I would prefer that John McCain and Joe Lieberman give the same kind of righteous, full-throated denunciation to Cuban terrorists that they give to, say, Democrats, the links that Bardach tries to provide between the two and the Cuban exile terrorist community are kind of weak. Moreover, the most compelling link is to Joe Lieberman, and not to John McCain.

On July 20, while campaigning for McCain in Miami and just prior to speaking at a McCain event, Sen. Joe Lieberman met with the wife of convicted serial bomber Eduardo Arocena and promised to pursue a presidential pardon on his behalf. Arocena is the founder of the notorious Cuban exile militant group Omega 7, renowned for a string of bombings from 1975 to 1983. Arocena was convicted of the 1980 murder of a Cuban diplomat in Manhattan. In 1983, Arocena was arrested and charged with 42 counts pertaining to conspiracy, explosives, firearms, and destruction of foreign government property within the United States. He is currently serving a life sentence in federal prison in Indiana.

Indeed, even that appears to be overstating the case against Lieberman, who on video promised only to convey the pardon request. The article also notes that the McCain campaign has connections with right wing Cubans who have connections with terrorists, but again this is hardly surprising; any Republican running in Florida (and, to be fair, virtually any Democrat) is going to be no more than two degrees of separation away from the genuine anti-Castro psychos.

John McCain is likely to have a terrible Cuba policy, and Barack Obama will very possibly be the first American President in forty years to pursue genuine, positive change in the US-Cuba relationship. I also think that Luis Posada Carriles and his ilk are murderers; they are more deserving (ironically enough) of detention in Guantanamo than most of the people incarcerated there, and they make Bill Ayers look like the raw amateur that he was. Finally, I do hope that somebody is working on unearthing some genuine ties between McCain and the terrorist anti-Castro right, because the American political elite (both Democrat and Republican) has been far too tolerant of people who blow up planes, as long as those planes are full of Cubans. Unfortunately, the Bardach article just doesn't get us very far.

6CA Participation in Vote Fraud Fraud Overruled

Excellent news:

Earlier today, the Supreme Court effectively reversed a Sixth Circuit decision which required Ohio’s Secretary of State to implement new procedures which could purge thousands of voters from Ohio’s rolls. The Sixth Circuit’s decision is a stunning piece of results-based judging, as the court not only divided entirely on ideological lines, it also flatly refused to apply a binding Supreme Court precedent to one particular plaintiff: the Ohio Republican Party. Yet, while it is completely inexcusable for the Sixth Circuit to exempt the Republican Party from following a binding precedent, that precedent has unfairly slammed the courthouse doors shut on numerous low-income Americans, so it is no surprise that the Republican Party did not want to be bound by it.

Like Millhiser, I find the rule created by the Rehnquist Court in Gonzaga problematic, but nonetheless while it remains good law federal appeals courts are bound to apply it, and the 6th Circuit conspicuously failed to do so in this case. It's good to the the Supreme Court reject this unprincipled support for Republican vote suppression efforts.

QOTD

Jesse:

Michelle Malkin is excoriating “liberals” for attempting to destroy Joe the Plumber. It isn’t just the pot calling the kettle black, it’s the pot wandering into the pot store and declaring all other pots black-tinged traitors to our great nation, then offering to run the pot reeducation camp to bring them in line with acceptable and decent container values.

...to be clear, I also endorse this from John Cole:

"Granted, the right-wing whinging is particularly rich after the Beauchamp/Schiavo/Graeme Frost incidents, and the attempts to blame media conduct in regards to Joe the Plumber on the Obama campaign are stupid and predictable, but just leave the guy alone. I don’t agree with him on a lot of issues, but the guy deserves the privacy I would want for myself and for the rest of you....there is a marked difference between reacting to stupid things he tells the press and rooting through shit on the internet speculating about him. Comment all you want to any idiotic things he says."