Thoughts Aloud

Archive for October, 2008

Possible voter fraud in South Bend:

A South Bend woman says someone tried to trick her into thinking she already voted.

Now St. Joseph County elections official are telling voters not to fall for the newest type of voter fraud.

“I feel really bad for my old age that’s the first time that I got scammed like that, terrible,” said the woman, who didn’t want to be identified.

She says she received a phone call from a woman claiming to be an elections official.

“This young lady was saying they’re doing something new and something different and I don’t have to go out and vote,” she said.

The caller said people could now vote by phone and asked her who she wanted to vote for.

The woman said John McCain.

She was then told her vote was cast and she didn’t need to vote Tuesday.

How are we to ever have the slightest confidence that any close contests were not stolen by these unprincipled Acorn type Progressives who will do absolutely anything required to win? What is the point of even bothering to vote anymore? ◄Dave►

The evidence continues to mount that much of the Anthropomorphic Global Warming (AGW) hysteria is junk science. Now MIT is turning on them:

Boston (MA) – Scientists at MIT have recorded a nearly simultaneous world-wide increase in methane levels. This is the first increase in ten years, and what baffles science is that this data contradicts theories stating man is the primary source of increase for this greenhouse gas. It takes about one full year for gases generated in the highly industrial northern hemisphere to cycle through and reach the southern hemisphere. However, since all worldwide levels rose simultaneously throughout the same year, it is now believed this may be part of a natural cycle in mother nature – and not the direct result of man’s contributions.

Methane – powerful greenhouse gas

The two lead authors of a paper published in this week’s Geophysical Review Letters, Matthew Rigby and Ronald Prinn, the TEPCO Professor of Atmospheric Chemistry in MIT’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Science, state that as a result of the increase, several million tons of new methane is present in the atmosphere.

Methane accounts for roughly one-fifth of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, though its effect is 25x greater than that of carbon dioxide. Its impact on global warming comes from the reflection of the sun’s light back to the Earth (like a greenhouse). Methane is typically broken down in the atmosphere by the free radical hydroxyl (OH), a naturally occuring process. This atmospheric cleanser has been shown to adjust itself up and down periodically, and is believed to account for the lack of increases in methane levels in Earth’s atmosphere over the past ten years despite notable simultaneous increases by man.

Quick, somebody invent an afterburner for cows to save our planet. ◄Dave►

With over 11 Million views, reportedly the highest of all the political ads on YouTube this year, I must be one of the few political junkies who hadn’t seen this:

Under two minutes… and very effective! ◄Dave►

The parents of this kid are lucky Child Protective Services isn’t asking them some embarrassing questions regarding why they put him up to this:

It is only 8 seconds, and the story is in The News & Observer:

CHAPEL HILL – After Shawn Turschak saw two sets of McCain-Palin signs disappear from his yard within hours of being planted, he took steps to protect the latest pair.

On Monday, he ran wires from his house and hooked the signs into a power source for an electric pet fence. Then he mounted a surveillance camera in a nearby tree and wired it to a digital recorder.

Tuesday afternoon, the camera saw this: A neighbor trotting up with an Obama-Biden sign, grabbing a handful of volts as he touched a McCain-Palin sign, then fleeing at top 9-year-old boy speed…

The video, Turschak said, makes clear that the boy was planning to switch the signs, which are essentially sheathes that slip over metal framework. The boy had only brought the Democratic sheath, not the legs.

If it had been his mother or father it would be hilarious. ◄Dave►

John Stossel has it exactly right.  Uninformed people have, “A Duty Not To Vote.”:

I keep hearing how important it is for everyone to vote.

Let me be politically incorrect and say that maybe some people shouldn’t vote.

I know I’m swimming against the tide. Get-out the-vote groups now register young people at rock concerts. HeadCount cofounder Andy Bernstein told me: “We registered over a 100,000 people. It is so imperative that this generation’s voice is heard.”

But wait. Is that really a good idea? Many kids don’t know much. At a HeadCount concert, “20/20″ asked some future voters, “How many senators are there?” One said 12, another 16, and another 64. One girl guessed, “50 per state.”

Most kids didn’t know what Roe v. Wade was about. “Roe vs. Wayne?” asked one. “Segregation, maybe?” “Where we declared bankruptcy?”

I have been saying this forever for the same reasons, but he goes on to develop the civic duty argument rather well. ◄Dave►

Wow, and the other way for a change. There must be some lucky and/or clever traders making a fortune; but for every happy buyer at the lows, there is an unhappy seller kicking himself.  Have they really found the bottom, or was this a lifeline thrown to McCain?  We will see if it can survive the profit taking in the morning.  I notice gold is holding steady at real bargain basement prices, so the hedge funds are still dumping bullion tonnage on the market to acquire cash for the big boys who are still bailing out.  Of course, the effects of inflation – some say there are now four times the number of dollars in circulation as before the crash – are yet to be felt… ◄Dave►

In The Crypt at Politico:

Boehner hits Obama on ‘redistributive change’

The Obama campaign immediately pushed back, arguing that the Right is deliberately misinterpreting a narrow legal argument Obama was making about decades-old court cases.

“This is a fake news controversy drummed up by the all too common alliance of Fox News, the Drudge Report and John McCain,” said Obama spokesman Bill Burton.

“In this seven year old interview, Senator Obama did not say that the courts should get into the business of redistributing wealth at all.”

Fake Controversy?  My turn to ask, “Is this a joke?” What was narrow about:

the Warren Court…didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution… one of the… tragedies of the Civil Rights movement was… so court-focused… there was a tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing and activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalitions of power through which you bring about redistributive change.

Please explain, Senator, exactly what you were trying to say, and just how much “redistributive change” do you have in store for us if you are elected? ◄Dave►

Our Constitution is just a political document that paved the way to where we are now… with a fundamental flaw that continues to this day? Hmmm… who is going to fix it? Here is 28 seconds of audio:

…that can make a crusty old man almost weep. ◄Dave►

This guy:

Michael S. Malone is one of the nation’s best-known technology writers. He has covered Silicon Valley and high-tech for more than 25 years, beginning with the San Jose Mercury News as the nation’s first daily high-tech reporter. His articles and editorials have appeared in such publications as The Wall Street Journal, the Economist and Fortune, and for two years he was a columnist for The New York Times. He was editor of Forbes ASAP, the world’s largest-circulation business-tech magazine, at the height of the dot-com boom. Malone is the author or co-author of a dozen books, notably the best-selling “Virtual Corporation.” Malone has also hosted three public television interview series, and most recently co-produced the celebrated PBS miniseries on social entrepreneurs, “The New Heroes.” He has been the ABCNews.com “Silicon Insider” columnist since 2000.

…is going to need a new gig.  I am amazed that ABC News actually published his “Media’s Presidential Bias and Decline - Columnist Michael Malone Looks at Slanted Election Coverage and the Reasons Why”:

The traditional media are playing a very, very dangerous game — with their readers, with the Constitution and with their own fates.

The sheer bias in the print and television coverage of this election campaign is not just bewildering, but appalling. And over the last few months I’ve found myself slowly moving from shaking my head at the obvious one-sided reporting, to actually shouting at the screen of my television and my laptop computer.

But worst of all, for the last couple weeks, I’ve begun — for the first time in my adult life — to be embarrassed to admit what I do for a living. A few days ago, when asked by a new acquaintance what I did for a living, I replied that I was “a writer,” because I couldn’t bring myself to admit to a stranger that I’m a journalist…

But nothing, nothing I’ve seen has matched the media bias on display in the current presidential campaign.

Republicans are justifiably foaming at the mouth over the sheer one-sidedness of the press coverage of the two candidates and their running mates. But in the last few days, even Democrats, who have been gloating over the pass — no, make that shameless support — they’ve gotten from the press, are starting to get uncomfortable as they realize that no one wins in the long run when we don’t have a free and fair press…

If the current polls are correct, we are about to elect as president of the United States a man who is essentially a cipher, who has left almost no paper trail, seems to have few friends (that at least will talk) and has entire years missing out of his biography…

Furthermore, I also happen to believe that most reporters, whatever their political bias, are human torpedoes & and, had they been unleashed, would have raced in and roughed up the Obama campaign as much as they did McCain’s. That’s what reporters do. I was proud to have been one, and I’m still drawn to a good story, any good story, like a shark to blood in the water.

So why weren’t those legions of hungry reporters set loose on the Obama campaign? Who are the real villains in this story of mainstream media betrayal?

The editors. The men and women you don’t see; the people who not only decide what goes in the paper, but what doesn’t; the managers who give the reporters their assignments and lay out the editorial pages. They are the real culprits.

And then he explains why, with a simple yet fascinating theory that I had not heard before.  Treat yourself to a good read. ◄Dave►

Here is the transcript of the NPR audio below in 2001:

Barack Obama:

“You know, if you look at the victories and failures of the Civil Rights movement, and its litigation strategy in the court, I think where it succeeded was to vest formal rights in previously dispossessed peoples. So that I would now have the right to vote, I would now be able to sit at a lunch counter and order and as long as I could pay for it, I’d be okay, but the Supreme Court never entered into the issues of re-distribution of wealth, and sort of more basic issues of political and economic justice in this society.

“And uh, to that extent, as radical as I think people tried to characterize the Warren Court, it wasn’t that radical. It didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution – at least as it’s been interpreted, and Warren Court interpreted it in the same way, that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties: [it] says what the states can’t do to you, says what the federal government can’t do to you, but it doesn’t say what the federal government or the state government must do on your behalf.

“And that hasn’t shifted, and one of the, I think, the tragedies of the Civil Rights movement was because the Civil Rights movement became so court-focused, uh, I think that there was a tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing and activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalitions of power through which you bring about redistributive change. And in some ways we still suffer from that.”

A caller:

“The gentleman made the point that the Warren Court wasn’t terribly radical. My question is (with economic changes)… my question is, is it too late for that kind of reparative work, economically, and is that the appropriate place for reparative economic work to change place?”

Obama:

“You know, I’m not optimistic about bringing about major redistributive change through the courts. The institution just isn’t structured that way… You start getting into all sorts of separation of powers issues, you know, in terms of the court monitoring or engaging in a process that essentially is administrative and takes a lot of time. You know, the court is just not very good at it, and politically, it’s just very hard to legitimize opinions from the court in that regard.

So I think that, although you can craft theoretical justifications for it, legally, you know, I think any three of us sitting here could come up with a rationale for bringing about economic change through the courts.”

Marxist; Socialist; Fascist? Pick one; but proud American Patriot, Capitalist, or Constitutionalist he ain’t. ◄Dave►

Gee, I find this audio blast out of Obama’s past strangely comforting:

Obama Bombshell Redistribution of Wealth Audio Uncovered

I had become so accustomed to his “rope a dope” – “aw shucks, I didn’t know what was going on around me” jive that I was starting to think the man was clueless. While still inarticulate, and unable to speak a complete sentence extemporaneously without stuttering, it is obvious here that he was very familiar with the subject matter. This means he is not clueless; but just a very good liar when he pretends not to be toying with Marxist principles. Perhaps this heretofore hidden intelligence might keep him from making too many serious blunders when confronted with the reality beyond the petty world of Chicago politics after all. One can at least hope so. We have survived lying political opportunists shoveling tax money into their enablers’ coffers before, and can do it again… but if he chooses to kill the golden goose for ideological “redistributive” purposes as punishment for the dastardly achievers, we probably won’t. Time will tell. ◄Dave►

If you make people think they’re thinking, they’ll love you; But if you really make them think, they’ll hate you. -Don Marquis (1878-1937)

I suppose that it is a good thing that I do not need much love, and don’t mind at all being disliked.

College professor, Lori Roman, has submitted an interesting perspective entitled “We cannot be Ignorant and Free“:

I keep hearing the same question asked:  How could so many Americans vote for Barack Obama, a man who advocates socialist policies and associates with radical people who hate America?

I believe the answer is simple:  We are not teaching our young people to understand and value the American experience and moral relativism has robbed them of their ability to make ethical judgments…

Academically our children are not equipped to appreciate and pursue the American Dream. Many children graduate from high school with good grades, but without fundamental skills…

Uninformed people are easily fooled.  Thomas Jefferson said: “If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.”…

My students believed that “government for the people” means that the government is supposed to do everything for the people.  My classroom would become quiet when I would tell them that the Declaration of Independence only gives them the right to PURSUE happiness–they have to catch it themselves.

This may seem bizarre, considering that my students were usually business majors, but they also had no appreciation or understanding of the beauty of the free enterprise system, or its role in the prosperity and freedom of our country. But the good news is that when I explained Adam Smith’s Invisible Hand Theory and showed them how one person’s quest for personal profit ultimately brings prosperity to others, THEY GOT IT!

I can take a classroom of statists and turn them into capitalists in 10 weeks.  This is not because I am such a great teacher, but because truth and common sense prevail…

My most discouraging day was in an ethics class in which I had asked the students to list the characteristics of an ethical person.  After a few minutes and a lot of silence, they listed: “A person who recycles and who does not make ethical judgments about others”. The reason they had such a difficult time with this exercise is that they have collectively been taught to believe the only truly unethical act is to brand anything that anyone else does as unethical.  That night I thought, “I can turn a socialist into a capitalist, but I cannot, in ten weeks, undo the damage of a lifetime of being taught that there are no moral absolutes.”

…We must reclaim our heritage and pass it on to our children before it is too late.  It is time–it is past time–to take back the textbooks and the classrooms and teach young Americans what it really means to be an American.

Only then will we see an informed electorate that will recognize socialism for the evil that it is–an attack on the God-given human right called liberty.

Indeed… if it is not too late already.  Stunningly, one commenter, “Way2Frank” submitted this gem:

74% of my economics students in a pre-test assessment believe “to each according to their needs, from each according to their ability” is a guiding American principle. Most colleges are not educational institutions, but rather political institutions that squander money on people and programs that offer little educational value. A government-run educational system has a difficult time teaching free market capitalism… because they cannot teach individual thought in a collectivist society.

If that is an accurate statistic, no wonder we are in the mess we are in… and I wouldn’t give you a plugged nickle for our future.  ◄Dave►

My man Neil Boortz has penned an epistle entitled, “To the Undecided Voter.” While lengthy, it is well worth the read:

This is long; very long. Hey, I’m a pretty entertaining writer … so give it a go. If you’re an undecided voter in this presidential election the least you owe your country is to try to base your final choice on some substantive facts. No, I don’t have all the facts here … but I have enough of them to perhaps convince you that voting one particular way on November 4th might not be the most brilliant move you’ve ever made.

This election is my 10th. My 10th presidential election since I became a radio talk show host. My 10th election since I began spending more time than the average American thinking about, researching, reading about and talking about the choices voters faces. Look; I mean no arrogance here. It’s just that the average American doesn’t spend from 15 (then) to 22.5 (now) hours a week over the period of a presidential race talking about the candidates, the issues, the non-issues and the consequences of voter choice.

Never in those ten elections can I remember choices so stark and possible outcomes so perilous. For the record, over those 10 elections I voted for the Republican candidate six times and the Libertarian four. Never have I voted for a Democrat for president. I see no need to vote for a Democrat since I have no plans or desires to become a ward of the government. Somehow I don’t think 2008 is going to be the first time.

I’ve noted that some other “pundits” out there are starting to post, in columns and in their blogs, the reasons they are going to vote the way they are going to vote. I’ll make no attempt here to refute their (oh-so refutable) arguments here. Instead, I’m just going to put my thoughts and reasoning in writing just to cleanse my mind. If you can make some use of them; whether it is for laughter, talking points or intellectual consideration, have at it. Me? I’m just pulling the handle.

Then, it gets profound; as in:

The Race Factor

Are many black voters going to vote for Barack Obama primarily because of race? Of course, many will. Surveys and polling have shown that the figure may reach 20%. I think it’s well more than that. Is race a sound reason to cast a vote? Probably not. Is it understandable? Absolutely. I cannot fault a black American for voting for Obama. It may turn out to be a negative vote insofar as their dreams and goals are concerned. It may not work out all that well for their children, especially if they’re ambitions and talented. But I don’t think many of us can absolutely say that we wouldn’t be casting the same vote were we in their shoes.

If you are a white American there is no way in the world you can look at this election through the same eyes as a third or fourth generation black American citizen. Several months ago a caller to my show suggested that Barack Obama’s ascendency in the presidential sweepstakes was Black America’s biggest accomplishment. I disagreed. Though I can’t remember the exact words, I said that, in a general sense, the shining moment for Black America may have been the show of patience and restraint shown by black men when they returned from putting their lives on the line in World War II and in Korea to a country with segregated schools, colored waiting rooms, whites only water fountains, beatings, lynchings, water hoses, police dogs and systematic discrimination pretty much every where they looked. The restraint showed by black Americans during the civil rights struggles of the 50’s and 60’s, though not universal, was something to behold.

Now .. try, though you won’t succeed, to put yourself into the mind of a black American. How can you experience or understand the legacy of segregation, violence and second-class citizenry your ancestors went through and not take pride in a black American on the verge of winning the presidency? How many black American voters do you think are uttering to themselves: “If my grandfather had only lived to see this.” It takes a great deal of maturity and a clear understanding of the possible future consequences for someone to put their racial pride aside and swim against the tide on this one. So, there will be no name-calling, at least not here, for people who cast their vote on the basis of race in this election. As I said, It’s understandable.

and excoriating as in:

The Republicans

One thing for sure … the Republicans deserve exactly what is happening to them in this election. It’s just too bad the rest of the country has to suffer the lion’s share of the punishment the Republicans so richly deserve. In 1994 the voters were fed up with Clinton and the Republicans swept to control of both houses of congress, largely on the strength of Newt’s Contract with America. Do you remember some of the promises? One that sticks in my mind is their promise to dismantle the Department of Education. Republicans – in 1994 – recognized that the quality of American education had been going steadily downhill since this government behemoth was formed. Well, that was then … this is now. The size of the Education Department, as well as the cost, has doubled. Republicans did this, not Democrats.

As a matter of fact, it’s not just the Department of Education; it’s our entire federal government. Spending has doubled. Size has doubled. All under the Republican watch inside the beltway. Pork barrel spending is completely out of control, and Republicans are behind the wheel. Education and pork spending aside, we have the Medicare prescription benefit, McCain-Feingold, Sarbanes-Oxley, a tepid response to Kelo vs. New London … all elements of a well-deserved Republican drubbing. The problem here is that the cure, that being Barack Obama, might well be much worse of than the disease.

The Republicans don’t deserve power in Washington just as you don’t deserve a boil in the center of your forehead. There are worse things, however. Complete Democrat control or, in the case of your forehead, a nice big melanoma. Pretty much the same things, actually.

It’s not that the Republicans did everything wrong. They got the tax cut thing right, and they responded correctly, for the most part, to the radical Islamic attack on our country. They just did so much wrong at the same time. They got drunk with power, and the hangover affects all of us.

Take the time to read the whole thing… and wish all your countrymen did too. ◄Dave►

911 News from the future:

Joe Biden sure wasn’t prepared for this remarkable interview by Barbara West of WFTV in Florida.  If only there were more journalists like her.  I am sure I will see her next on Fox News. ◄Dave►

Update:

Now it is available on YouTube and linked on a massive red Drudge Headline:

Did anyone catch Jeri Thompson (Fred Thompson’s wife) on H&C last night?  Palin may be a moose hunter, but Jeri came loaded for bear:

I love the way she handled Colmes. What spunk! Would she have made a cool First Lady, or what? Republicans need to stop hiding their women from the public. ◄Dave►

Frequently, when my own take on a political event or new issue differs from the herd, I look forward to Charles Krauthammer’s always thoughtful and insightful, if often contrarian, remarks on the matter.  If we differ, he usually articulates a cogent reason for me to at least rethink my position.

In an article entitled, “McCain the Stalwart,” he offers one of the most succinct arguments for voting against Obama that I have seen. After chastising “wet-fingered conservatives”:

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

…and then dispatching handily the conventional talking points and canards against McCain, he makes his case:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Put that way, and given no viable alternative, I couldn’t agree more. ◄Dave►

All hell is about to break loose in about ten minutes on the stock market.  Duck and cover… and wish us luck. ◄Dave►

Pat Buchanan nails it in an article entitled, “What if ‘SNL’ mocked Michelle Obama?”:

Perhaps the only institution in America whose approval rating is beneath that of Congress is the media.

Both have won their reputations the hard way. They earned them.

Consider the fawning indulgence shown insider Joe Biden with the dripping contempt visited on outsider Sarah Palin.

Twice last weekend, Biden grimly warned at closed-door meetings that a
great crisis is coming early in the term of President Obama…

Is Russia about to move on the Crimea? Is Israel about to launch air strikes on Iran’s nuclear sites? What is Joe talking about?

If one assumes Joe is a serious man, we have a right to know.

Instead, what we got was Obama’s airy dismissal of Joe’s words as a
“rhetorical flourish” and a media – rather than demanding that
Joe hold a press conference – acting as Obama surrogates
parroting the talking points that Joe was just saying that new
presidents always face tests.

Had John McCain made that hair-raising statement, he would have been
accused of fear mongering about a new 9/11. The media would have run
with the story rather than have smothered it…

“Rhetorical flourish” my butt.  This is a perfect example of how our institutions have broken down, leaving America incredibly vulnerable to the forces behind pranking us with the likes of the Obamessiah.  The rest of Buchanan’s article is worth the read, while we are still permitted to read about what is really going on. ◄Dave►