Links and Minifeatures 2008 08 04 Monday

Carnival of Personal Finance

Solzhenitsyn death leaves complex legacy in Russia

He spoke out against the communist abuses because he loved his homeland - but he wanted Russia to be powerful as well. By the time of his death, he was completely aligned with Putin.

But in his earlier years, he spent years as a prisoner of one of the most brutal, repressive regimes in history, in a system that has given it's name - Gulag - to a phrase of international horror, than an exile. He examined it without blinking, and stood up to be counted despite the personal cost. That's really speaking truth to power - not twitting an American president that since his term began has imprisoned precisely zero political opponents.

Ironically, without Kruschchev wanting to discredit Stalin, his "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch" would probably have never been published, let alone anything else.

Where I come from, we call this lying by omission. Obama took in a comparable amount of contributions from oil company employees and executives in the same time frame, but that's okay, because he's really the good guy, while McCain is that Evil Republican? I don't think so.

the ad is here

via Instapundit, the Ohio Republican Party has a great response. The music makes this one worth watching.

Obama makes a shift, says tap oil reserves

Barack Obama proposed tapping the strategic oil reserve on Monday to help lower gas prices, reversing an earlier stance, and called rival John McCain a tool of big oil companies as rising energy costs took center stage in the U.S. presidential campaign.

In other words, with the direction of the political wind clear, he's trying to make it look like he's flipping to the majority opinion, but if you notice, all he's doing is talking about tapping the strategic reserve, which is a small and pretty static amount (70 million barrels, about three days supply), not bringing any additional sources of new oil online. He's still anti-drilling, and since John McCain favors new drilling, John McCain must therefore be a tool of big oil. It's like prices that have more than doubled in the last five years, the consequences of those rising prices of every segment of our economy, and serious concerns about the political stability of some of our largest suppliers don't exist.

What's mildly frightening is that Obama acts like he expects people to believe this. I mean, PT Barnum's classic underestimation ("One born every minute") not withstanding, there are limits.

The Republicans are keeping the pressure on Nancy Pelosi regarding energy

Wizbang has more.

Good. About time congressional Republicans started acting like something other than Democrats lite.