Closer to Home: This is Ridiculous

Labour has long been "soft on crime". Daft would be a better word. It is simply wrong that a property owner cannot defend his property, his family even his life without fear of arrest. Clearly, Mr. Singh did not have benefit of legal counsel before he talked to the police.

Thus Spake Tito Munoz...

There is little better metaphor than this of the complete disconnect between the American left in general, the Democratic Party and Barack Obama on the won hand and the American people. Tito the Builder speaks truth to the propaganda arm of the Obama campaign:

“I support McCain, but I’ve come to face you guys because I’m disgusted with you guys,” he said. “Why the hell are you going after Joe the Plumber? Joe the Plumber has an idea. He has a future. He wants to be something else. Why is that wrong? Everything is possible in America. I made it. Joe the Plumber could make it even better than me. . . . I was born in Colombia, but I was made in the U.S.A.”

Apollo Rising

Art, even at its highest, is such a poor imitation of the handiwork of God. There are more pictures here.

Why the Pass?

Jonah Goldberg at the NRO asks, not unreasonably, why Obama gets off so easy compared with "the four white guys" who preceded him as teh Democrat's nominee. Goldberg is talking specifically about the criticism that Oboomboom is some kind of world citizen rather than an American, with a point of view centered somewhere between LA and Manhattan, rather somewhere between Prague and Paris. The GOP and much of the press raised the cosmopolitan issue with varying degrees of success about Dukakis, Clinton, Gore and Kerry.

The broader question though is the unprecedented free ride that Obama gets both from the opposing party and from the press on every issue that cuts against him. I'm prepared to wager that no candidate for head of government in any democratic country has ever been elected with so little scrutiny as has Obama.

The "Debate": Be Still My Beating Heart.

Will either of these two zombies be moved off their stump speeches?

Schieffer: subject is domstic policy (yawn: Obbi repeats welfare promise, McC will try to out-welfare him).

I hope McC calls Obbi on the tax breaks. They're what used to be called to welfare. I'll bet he doesn't.

McC goes first. Straight into stump speech. Fannie/Freddy. Will he name names? Frank, Dodd, Cox? No. Of course not. Back to the mortgage buyout. Yawn. Nothing new.

Obbi-wan: Straight into the stump speech. I wonder if there's anything on Animal Planet.

McC: Going after Obbi's exchange with the plumber in Ohio. McC is right, but just not making the case. He's doing the Palin thing..talking strtaight to the camera.

Obbi: Doesn't answer. No one will care. There he goes on the 95%. If McC doesn't jump on this he deserves to lose. Obbi is flat out lying about what he said to the plumber. Come on...it was only a couple of days ago...go to the video. I saw it myself.

Mc C: A little more animated. Joe the Plumber, Bob the Builder. Can we spend it, yes we can!

Obbi: First to mention Warren Buffett. Too early in my time zone to drink, but here's a virtual shot.

McC: Americans pay second highest taxes in the industrialised countries. Why raise them more?

Schiffer: What will you cut?
Obbi: doesn't answer, Schieffer dings him. Obbi says give me a minute. Line by line, page by page, cut programs that don't work. Uh-huh. We've never heard that before. Note to candidates: There is no such thing as a line item veto. Still no answer. I gotta see a man about a horse.

McC: I'll veto EVERY earmark. Every one? Come on.

Obbi: Still nothing specific. Big deficit, running against W. Here we go again.

McC: Finally calls Obbu on it. "If you wanted to run against President Bush, you should have run four years ago." Good line, wish he'd used it before.

Obbi is telling some outrageous porkies. "I'm for clean coal." "I opposed the trial lawyers on tort reform" "I opposed the teachers' unions on charter schools." None of that is true.

Leadership. Schiffer opens the door for McC to bring up Ayers/Wright/ACORN.
McC: Obama wouldn't face me early. Regret negative aspects. Skips Ayers, attacks John Lewis. Will Obbi repudiate JL? Goes after Obbi's flip-flops.

Obbo: "Nyah, nyah, I can't heeaaarrr you." Running against Bush again. Didn't repudiate Lewis. Nada.

McC: Sounds like he had his coffee this morning. No repudiation of Lewis, Obbi?

Obbi" I can't believe the Obbo gets away with calling black/white (was that racist?). He completely denies that Lewis was out of line. He's not going to talk about it. OK, Obbi himself has raised Ayers...

McC: He's pretty good now. Pissed off without getting murder in his eye.

Obbi: Can we change the subject please? What a spineless wanker this guy is.

McC: Finally. Ayers an "old washed-up terrorist" good combination of contempt and seriousness. Quotes Hillary.

Obbi: Talks about Ayers. I was eight years old. Barely no the guy.

Yeah, yeah and I wasn't born when Hitler was around, so can I be a Nazi?

Obbi: Acorn has nothing to do with us. Oh yeah? How about that quarter-mil.
Obbi is very clearly not happy talking about this. Looks shifty for the first time in the campaign.

Why Biden is better than Palin?

Obbi: Because he agrees with me. Right.
In the immortal words of Popeye the Sailor: Had all I can stands, I can't stands no more

Obama Cult of Personality Watch 2

Dear Leader wannabe's embryonic cult of personality contiues to develop aided by a compliant media, useful idiots in the conservative camp and a generation of Americans stupified by television and indoctrinated by the academy. First it was Camp Obama, then the adoring German masses, then the obvious and profound contempt for democracy, then the Obama brownshorts (oops, that's brownshirts) at Acorn. Now he's in a middle school literature textbook. Fifteen pages. I'll bet Shakespeare doesn't rate that. He and his bitter half could end up as our own Nicolae and Elena Ceucescu.

How Did I Miss This?

I'm not sure how I missed this when it first came out. I just saw it on The Black Republican.

Pricing Socialism Into the Markets.

Post Hoc, Ergo Propter Hoc. To assume that because B follows A that A therefore caused B is a logical fallacy. But logic does not of rule out a causal relationship between A and B, only that such a a relationship must be demonstrated and not assumed.

Is anyone out there asking whether the markets are tanking not in spite of the efforts of various governments, but because of those efforts? Is it not possible, likely even, that the markets are pricing in the dead weight of government "oversight"? Is it not possible, likely even, that the financial markets, which represent the sum of tens of billions of individual self-interested decisions, are voting no-confidence in the ability of governments to "manage" the economy? Is it not possible that the market has weighed and counted the real costs of relying on the goodwill and competence of the State and reacted accordingly? Mene, mene, tekel upharsin.

Just asking.

I See Dead People, oops those are Racists.

Michelle Malkin in a syndicated piece at NRO has a hysterical send up of the race card playing on behalf of BHO. It's morphed into self parody.

Wearing white - racist. Referring to Obbi as "that one"-racist, associating Obama with WIlliam Ayers - racist, Talking about "hockey moms" - racist. Making reference to Odumbo's "career" as a community organizer-racist. By these standards of course not only is all criticism of the Obamessiah racist, but merely disagreeing with The One marks the forehead with a scarlet R.

McCain-Obama "Debate"

And here they come. McCain in his red tie, Obama in his blue. Was that prearranged? If McCain doesn't find a way to nail Obbi on his idiotic economic plans, he deserves to lose.

First question on the economy. Obama won the coin toss. Good sign, BHO is running against Bush. Calling for oversight, cracking down on CEO's. The question was how to get the economy up and running quickly. Obbi says middle class tax cut, fix this, fix that, no specifics,. It's his stump speech.

McC.: Doing his town hall thing walks right over to the crowd. Stop sending money to OPEC. Getting specific. RTC solution purchase mortgages directly, write down to positive equity. Not my preferred choice...sounds a little lame really.

Brokaw: Who will be your Secretary of Treasury? They aren't going to answer that and it's a waste of time. McC mentions Warren Buffett (Christ almighty), Obbi goes along he likes WB too. Yeah, yeah.

Q2: Bailout. McC needs to sound a lot more confident. Here he goes after Fannie & Freddie. Referes to "Obama & his cronies". Name names, will ya? "Some members of Congress". Follow up. Obbi, Dodd, Frank,....

BHO: Obbi-= crdit crunch still exists. He dodges. He's still running against W. He says he warned about the problem a year ago. Oops. Screw up. Pointing out that McC's bill didn't pass. That's the point, fool. Will McC jump on that?

Obbi on followup: back to his stump speech. Talking about "modernizing" regulation? Huh?

McC: Back to the buy-out mortgage idea. Now back to the stump speech. We're No. 1 rah, rah, rah.

Q3: How can we trust you with with our money? Obbi takes out after W again. Loser's game. Here he goes, government spends too much money and I'm going to spend more. Then he says he's going to cut spending. Which is it?

McC: He's trying to make Obbi count it up. This isn't going to change anybody's mind. We all know BHO is a big spender. Problem is that ALL of you are big spenders. If you don't see any reason to vote for McC, you won't see one now either. McC pointing out that the 700B we send to OPEC is exactly enough to cover the Bailout. Drill, gas, wind, solar, ....

Obbi-More government money to subsidise energy research. McC needs to call him on the spend more/spend cut paradox. Sheez, he's even using McC's "line by line" speech. Says McC will give money to oil companies. So who's going to get Obbi's subsidy? Ben & Jerry's?

Thirty minutes in. Neither of these guys has gone beyond the same script they've been on for a year.

Obbi-we're going to bring car manufacturing back to America. OK, but why? I'm going to double the Peace Corps. Maybe the Peace Corps volunteers could work in the auto plants. Yawn.

Is there any point to this? It's just the same old, same old. I'll be back if either of them says anything new.

McC: Nothing new. Climate change kool-aid time. McC goes nuclear. Finally. He sounds like Obbi, we can do it, yes we can.

Obbi: This (climate change) is one of the biggest challenges of our time. He confuses the invention of the computer with the development of the Internet. At least he didn't give credit to Algore. I'll subsidise a "new green engine." Yeah, yeah, how about a phaser gun and transporter booth while we're at it.

Brokaw is pathetic. Send him back to Old Hacks' Home.

Now McC is running against, I kid you not, "Bush and Cheney". Drill here, drill now.

Cue Twilight Zone Theme

The Dear Leader just gets, well it's overused but apt, creepier and creepier.

Black Box

I've put that little Black Box widget on the sidebar. I encourage you to play around with it. It can be addictive. I'm curious as to others' results. Almost none of the blogs I land at are written by men. I find myself delivered to an extraordinary number of blogs by women writers--all sorts of them, romance, mystery, sci-fi,soft porn, poetry, and one poor woman who has those pictures of the ghastly Fabio on all her books. There also seem to be a lot of blogs by women who are suffereing from one sort of chronic, perhaps terminal, disease or another. Is this a reflection of the blogger population? Just the ones who have the Black Box widget?

Once is an Accident, Twice is a Coincidence. Three Times Looks Like ...

Carelessness? Closer to stupidity, I'd say. Is there a major country anywhere run by such a collection of clowns, crooks,and losers as is the United States? The House passes the Soviet Economy Emulation Act of 2008 and the market, which had been up nearly 4 per cent, promptly tanks. In the words of the Financial Times:

Reaction on Wall Street turned increasingly negative after the vote. The S&P 500 – which rose as much as 3.6 per cent ahead of the decision – fell 1.4 per cent, closing below its level on Monday after the House voted against the bill.

Palin-Biden Debate

Palin looks cool and collected. Biden looks vaguely Presidential in a stern white-bread kind of way, but tired and has that weird Botox face. The eyelid job makes him like a white guy playing Fu Manchu.

McCain has made Palin drink the climate change kool-aid. It's clear she doesn't believe it and it made her sound hesitant on an easy environment question.

Finally she skewers JB on climate change...it's burn carbon, split atoms or turn out the lights.

She sounds much less hesitant now.

He's going for same-sex marriage. That'll get you the votes of all those people who were going to vote for you anywhere. Palin gives a Libertarian/Federalist answer. She's good.

Biden flips. Now it's no.

On to foreign policy. Iraq. She's nailing BHO using Biden's vote, she sounds like she's done her homework this time. Biden is talking nonsense...trying to make McC. look like he didn't support the troops is a lost cause. She nailed him, she's got the facts, there's just no way for Biden to spin Obama's opposition to the surge.

He's still trying....no one is going to believe it..now he's running against Cheney.

Pakistan/Iran: why does Biden get the first shot at every question but one so far...oh. I forgot Ifill has a financial stake in an Obama win. Biden (and BHO) have a point about the locus of the problem being in Pakistan.

Palin: party line on Iran..cannot be allowed nukes...quoting Ahmadi-Nejed...pulling out Obama's meeting quote. She's holding her own. WIll JB repeat the Kissinger lie? Obbi got taken to the woodshed on that.

JB: denies Obbi said anything of the sort. Claims A'jad not in control of Iranian security. He'll be surprised to hear that. JB is sputtering a bit, something about McC. refusing to talk to Spain.

Palin: backs up Israel, embassy in Jerusalem (yeah, right), never again.

Biden: running against Bush again. They'll never learn.

Palin: she's got him. Why are looking back, because you can't look forward. She just smiled and pointed out that Bush and Cheney aren't running.

Biden: still doing it, this is what Palin was waiting for, as long he's running against W, he's circling the drain.

Palin: on nukes. Didn't quite answer the question (when if ever should nukes be used) but showed she understands what deterrence is. She should have said that nukes are a last resort against an existential threat to the national security of the United states.

Biden: talked about Afghanistan. Also didn't answer the question.

Palin: good rebuttal. She's clearly been studying.

I expected a lot worse and I expected better of Biden. He's spent at least half his time complaining about Bush.

As I said....

Senate votes to nationalize the banking system with a pork-laden,corrupt monstrosity and the market promptly plunges nearly 400 points.

Who'd Have thought?

The Nixon, er Bush, administration attempts to extend government control of the economy to European levels, and the markets tank. The House of Representatives then refuses to Sovietize the entire US financial system, and the markets recover 500 points. Extra points for connecting the dots.