Zee Links and Minifeatures: October 2008 Archives

Sitting here waiting for trick or treaters while the wife takes our own out:

News so twisted it takes Scrappleface to make sense of it: McCain Thanks L.A. Times for Hiding Obama Video

Q and O has the non-humorous version.

Q and O on The two faces of Obama on defense

Leading the disabled to vote for Obama

Isn't there something in the law about being declared legally incompetent removes your ability to vote? If not, shouldn't there be?

Can you imagine the uproar if this had been a John McCain supporter?

Obama doesn't need credit card security! Now read why this is a bad thing

Even the Washington Post is coming out of the tank enough to question this lack of validating security measures

Sen. Barack Obama's presidential campaign is allowing donors to use largely untraceable prepaid credit cards that could potentially be used to evade limits on how much an individual is legally allowed to give or to mask a contributor's identity, campaign officials confirmed.

Faced with a huge influx of donations over the Internet, the campaign has also chosen not to use basic security measures to prevent potentially illegal or anonymous contributions from flowing into its accounts, aides acknowledged. Instead, the campaign is scrutinizing its books for improper donations after the money has been deposited.

Ed Morrissey:

There is only one reason to deliberately choose to bypass those security processes, and that's to facilitate fraud. Team Obama claims that they vet the donations after the fact, but that's hogwash. It costs far more to do that than to screen for security codes and address verification up front, and everyone knows it. Obama counts on the fact that most of the fraud will fly under the radar of its victims, and the only cost they'll incur is when they have to process refunds after getting a specific complaint.

Blaming the reporters for reporting Obama's own words: Priceless

A beautiful explanation of why our tax policy is sending corporations and their jobs overseas, via Wizbang

Live from the Ministry of Truth:

Best tag line of the day: Atlas may not be shrugging, but Obama is.

Intelligent commentary on the subject from Q and O

I'm wondering: Is the first amendment really safe?

PURGE: SKEPTICAL REPORTERS TOSSED OFF OBAMA PLANE

Despite pleas from top editors of the three newspapers that have covered the campaign for months at extraordinary cost, the Obama campaign says their reporters -- and possibly others -- will have to vacate their coveted seats so more power players can document the final days of Sen. Barack Obama's historic campaign to become the first black American president.

And all three "just happen" to be from newspapers that endorsed John McCain? In an industry that favors Obama by at least two to one?

Especially when the people they're being thrown off in favor of "just happen" to be fervent Obama supporters?

Let me make one thing crystal clear: The campaign plane is essentially Obama property. Legally, it's entirely distinct from the White House Briefing Room. He has the legal right to include and exclude whomever he wishes.

However, it's not the sort of behavior one I would expect from a person campaigning for the office of President of The United States, who really needs to learn to tolerate criticism and dissent, as every president in my lifetime has done. They really should be demonstrating this capability before they are elected, particularly if they're already in federal office, as Obama is. Obama is asking us to trust him on this.

Furthermore, given many other antics of Barack Obama and his campaign to punish reporters and media figures who were doing their job by asking the same tough questions asked of John McCain, I have to ask, "What evidence do we have that this behavior will stop assuming he does get to the White House Briefing Room?"

If he didn't do it, hadn't done it, wasn't continuing to do it in the final stages of a campaign that has him acting more like the heir apparent than a candidate, there would be no reason to question him on this subject at all. This subject isn't even on the table for John McCain and Sarah Palin, who have continued access to reporters equally no matter who that reporter worked for, and in several noteworthy cases, no matter how in viciously partisan a manner that reporter or their employer had attacked them.

But when it does get to be the White House Briefing Room, continuing the behavior that Barack Obama and his campaign have been manifesting goes by a very ugly name when applied to government action: Political favoritism. This is the same principle that would allow the government to award money or take it on the basis of political professions. Basically requiring a loyalty oath, not to the United States or it's Constitution or people, but to an individual officeholder.

That would be vile.

If you are confident that this behavior will stop, assuming Barack Obama is elected, I'd like to see some supporting evidence, please. There's a lot of circumstantial evidence it would continue, but no direct evidence either way that I'm aware of.

Orson Scott Card on the presidential election.

Full disclosure: Mr. Card is a religious Mormon, and can be expected to hew to the beliefs of that faith. However, reading the article, I do not believe that it is influenced by his religion in more than a background sense, and his listing of the facts is impressive.

More Obama Voter Supression, including a letter from Hillary Clinton's campaign.

Yeah, it's Free Republic. Even a stopped watch is right twice a day.

Carnival of Real Estate

Carnival of Personal Finance

Charles Krauthammer: McCain for President

Newsflash: John McCain's campaign is accepting money without adequate screening for violations of election laws! Clearly he needs to be disqualified from the presidency. Dirty fighter, dirty politics!

Oh, wait. The campaign guilty of that is Barack Obama's. So I guess it's all no big deal? Well, at least according to the mass media and other Obama supporters.

Intimidation of opponents and their supporters, suppressing freedom of speech when it opposes him, and now the dirtiest campaign financing operation in the history of the US. And this guy is supposed to be a "lightworker"?

Investigations afterwards could get to the truth of the matter. But since history is written by the winners, only if John McCain wins the election.

Video: Oil billionaire claims we're entitled to oil

First off, I disagree with him. If we're not intending to conquer Iraq and treat them as a satrapy, they need to be able to control their own oil. If we behave ourselves, they may choose to sell it to us (and I think they largely do), but there should be no compulsion. That's not what the US is about. That would make it a war for oil.

Furthermore, he forever drives a stake through the ideas that Iraq was a war for oil, or that big oil somehow controls the Bush Administration. If either was the case, we would have done precisely what he is suggesting in the first place, if not something even worse (e.g. giving the oil to Exxon-Mobil) .

Boy is this getting the approved left-wing spin:

Assassination plot targeting Obama disrupted

Read carefully:

In court records unsealed Monday in U.S. District Court in Jackson, Tenn., federal agents said they disrupted plans to rob a gun store and target a predominantly African-American high school in a murder spree that was to begin in Tennessee

and

Jim Cavanaugh, special agent in charge of ATF's Nashville field office, said the two men planned to kill 88 people, including 14 African-Americans by beheading. The numbers 88 and 14 are symbolic in the white supremacist community.

The men also sought to go on a national killing spree after the Tennessee murders, with Obama as its final target

First off, I want these idiots out of the gene pool, sterilized or placed somewhere that they never have a chance to reproduce. The only reason I'm being that merciful is that law enforcement - and it was BATF that took the lead and held the press conference, not the Secret Service as would be the case for a planned presidential assassination - is that they never committed any actual killings. If they had, I'd be willing to flip the switch on them myself.

But if you read the article, Obama was an afterthought in the nature of "If they haven't caught us by then," not the primary target. If that were the case, he would have been first, and it would have been the Secret Service taking the lead, not BATF

"They said that would be their last, final act - that they would attempt to kill Sen. Obama," Cavanaugh said. "They didn't believe they would be able to do it, but that they would get killed trying."

Sen. Ted Stevens found guilty in corruption case

I think I may fall asleep, that's such a surprise.

Q: What's the difference between Chris Dodd and Ted Stevens?

A1: The prosecutor in his state is from the same party as Chris Dodd
A2: His party has disavowed the doings of Ted Stevens
A3: His party isn't trying to make excuses for Ted Stevens
A4: (make up your own)

Oddly enough: The Stink in Farts Controls Blood Pressure

If this does not kill Barack Obama as a presidential candidate, I weep for our country. This is himself, talking on the radio.

Here he is, speaking in his own voice, talking about the Constitution as an impediment to what he wants. Right out of his own mouth, he convicts himself of worse that our current President has even been accused of.

Bill Whittle, which is where I found it, has much more.

I can't be the only one thinking John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it!, can I?

Things aren't looking so good for ACORN: Indiana SecState: "Multiple criminal violations" involving ACORN

Carnival of Personal Finance

Bill Whittle illuminates some real problems in our system of income taxation.

Wizbang: Gallup and New Coke

Yet another iteration of the Rule of 48. For several years, it was believed that humans had 48 chromosomes. There were multiple studies that announced this result.

The (reasonably) comprehensive argument against Barack Obama

Would the Last Honest Reporter Please Turn On the Lights?

A very good article: What's good about McCain-Obama mudslinging

I'll push my own Straight Talk Express even further: Any democracy demands negativity. Our nation rests on the idea that ordinary citizens can replace one set of leaders with another. But to make that change, we need those out of power to explain what's wrong with those in charge. The beauty of our system is the peaceful transfer of power, and that absolutely requires negativity.

Criticism that is truthful and to the point serves a vital function. So does criticism that is not - it tells you quite a bit about the people making or sponsoring it. And who does the vetting? The individuals who see it. Criticism is a two-edged sword. It has the potential to hurt the one making it as badly as the one who is the target of it. This makes it valuable to those making the decision.

The problem is neither advocacy nor negative ads. The problem is that the guardians of public discourse (major media) are pretending to be neutral when they are not. In actual point of fact, Fox, reviled on the left for its supposed right wing bias, has repeatedly been measured to be the only major network within the margin of error of being neutral.
(as determined by ratios of percentages of positive and negative mention of partisans on each side of the aisle). The others are all Democratic partisans to the tune of multiple sigmas. This would be tolerable if they held themselves up as Democratic partisans - but then they'd lose audience share even faster than they are. So they cling to labeling themselves neutral, even though they are not.

Don't believe me? Here's a side by side comparison between the Obama campaign's official talking points, and the New York Times.

A reporter hallucinating that the crowd at a Palin rally was saying "kill him!" (Obama). The Secret Service never heard it. Neither did any of the other witnesses interviewed.

now a second allegation has the Secret Service investigating, but again finding no evidence.

by comparison, a search on Google yields almost 800,000 results for "kill bush", and while I was typing it, Google was trying to suggest "kill bush games" and "kill bush online games" among others.

Two allegations by single individuals in crowds of thousands where no other witness has come forward, and it's a problem for Obama and his supporters. Nearly 800,000 instances from an on-line search anyone can do and verify for the incumbent president, and it's somehow not a problem for Obama's supporters? Including at least three commercial enterprises (on the first page of results) and some unknown number of their subscribers, large enough to make offering such things profitable?

1) Is the entire game simply to slander Obama's way into office?

2) Are they really that stupid that they cannot see the contradiction?

3) Do they think it is somehow okay because "We're the Good Guys&trade"? Last I checked, they were slandering the American military, who really are the Good Guys, for holding enemies captured in battle as prisoners of war and not doing enough to not kill people they don't absolutely have to, even when those involved are enemy combatants and our own troops take casualties because of it. The point is this: The Good Guys are the Good Guys because they don't think like that, and they don't act like they think like that. People who think and act like this aren't the Good Guys.

Let us suppose that Obama is inaugurated President, and some sick Republicans decide to copy the "kill bush" games straight across to "kill Obama", changing nothing but the name (and target silhoutte, if appropriate - I certainly wasn't going to sign up for something that sick). Is there anyone reading this that would think that would somehow be okay? How could one possibly be acceptable - to the Secret Service or anyone else - while the other one is not?

For that matter, I must be some kind of old dinosaur for believing the whole idea is unacceptable. And let me ask: What next if the unthinkable does happen and we lose either Bush or the new president to an assassin's bullet? How funny is it going to be then? Do you think there might be a little bit of societal backlash? For illustration purposes, suppose there had been an ongoing "Kill Kennedy" game going on in 1962 and 1963? Do you think maybe there would have been some blowback when Lee Harvey Oswald did his deed? And here's a really chilling thought: Suppose Lee Harvey Oswald had participated in such a game? What do you think might happen to the other participants and those who ran such games? Obviously, in that case, it wasn't all harmless fun. There would be a dead president to prove it. Prosecution of such individuals and corporations would not be likely to be dismissed under the heading of "protected speech," because there is a clear exception in the law for threatening speech or expression of any sort, under which heading this sort of nonsense would obviously fall in such circumstances.

I was unable to watch the debate last night, as I was with clients and forgot to record it.

Disco tune "Stayin' Alive" could save your life

That's enough for me to forgive the Bee-Gees for having recorded it. I was a senior in high school when it came out, and I will never like the tune, which was played ad nauseum (and almost ad infinitum) everywhere that year. I was driving to work one day, and it was synchronized to the word on three different radio stations. Bad enough that they all - even FM stations - played it every hour. It was alright the first few times, but after several months of you can't listen to music for five minutes without hearing it, I was ready to do violence.

One of those moments you can't stage: Ramona was taking her bath last night when Julia (our dachshund) evidently decided that she was dirty. Either that, or she just wanted into the bubble bath to play with Ramona!

About time: Boehner declares war on ACORN

The pattern seems very clear. Wherever ACORN works, they file hundreds and thousands of bogus registrations. These aren't isolated incidents, but strongly suggest a systemic effort to undermine democracy. Not only should taxpayers not fund such an organization, but the Department of Justice should treat it the same way they treat organized-crime syndicates.

Video: The implications of adding government-sponsored "rights"

When the government pays for something that everybody has to have, the government has the right to set terms of service, which means the government gets to control behavior. When government is the sole provider and sole controller, you can't opt out. In many cases, the difficulty of opting out is extreme (i.e. "free" mandatory school), which means the government controls those subject to it.

It seems to me that we as a society are trying to nibble the 13th Amendment to death. You know, the one that says "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime where of the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction."

Political Theater: The report that claims Sarah Palin abused her authority

The Branchflower Report is a series of guess and insupportable conclusions drawn by exactly one guy, and it hasn't been approved or adopted or endorsed by so much as a single sub-committee of the Alaska Legislature, much less any kind of commission, court, jury, or other proper adjudicatory body. It contains no new bombshells in terms of factual revelations. Rather, it's just Steve Branchflower's opinion -- after being hired and directed by one of Gov. Palin's most vocal opponents and one of Alaska's staunchest Obama supporters -- that he thinks Gov. Palin had, at worst, mixed motives for an action that even Branchflower admits she unquestionably had both (a) the complete right to perform and (b) other very good reasons to perform.

and even so:

Finding Number Two

I find that, although Walt Monegan's refusal to fire Trooper Michael Wooten was not the sole reason he was fired by Governor Sarah Palin, it was likely a contributing factor to his termination as Commissioner of Public Safety. In spite of that, Governor Palin's firing of Commissioner Monegan was a proper and lawful exercise of her constitutional and statutory authority to hire and fire executive branch department heads.

Hot Air has a video of a press conference of the early days of seeding the financial meltdown.

Right Wing Nut House on the disparate expectations of partisans on the right versus the left.

I think it has to do with desensitization. For the last eight years, the unhinged left has been saying anything it could think of, no matter how hate filled, to get at George Bush, who took it like the believer in the First Amendment that he is. It's both a matter of having taken eight years to build up to this level, as well as the fact that the first time someone says "Destroy America!" it's treason, the fifty-thousandth, it's passe. Now that there is a Democrat of comparable stature, the left doesn't like what happens when a pale reflection of their own behavior gets reflected back at their own candidate, and because for the first time, they are coming it for a pale shadow of their own treatment of the opposition.

Here's a prediction: Unless Mr. Obama declares martial law (something I'm not nearly as skeptical about as I would like to be, especially given his electoral tactics, and his supporters Manichean world view and religious mentality, anointing themselves "The Good Guys&trade" while the opposition is "obviously" more foul than Morgoth or Sauron), the criticism Obama hears now is nothing compared to what he's going to hear after he's elected when it becomes undeniable exactly what he wants to do, what he stands for, and who his friends are. Considering Mr. Obama's history, comparing what George Bush has been accused of to what Barack Obama has publicly said he wants to do to the Constitution is like passing gas in a hurricane.

You want insane hate? Michelle Malkin documents some real insane hate and range.

Instapundit:

NO JUSTICE, NO PEACE? So we've had nearly 8 years of lefty assassination fantasies about George W. Bush, and Bill Ayers' bombing campaign is explained away as a consequence of him having just felt so strongly about social justice, but a few people yell things at McCain rallies and suddenly it's a sign that anger is out of control in American politics? It's nice of McCain to try to tamp that down, and James Taranto sounds a proper cautionary note -- but, please, can we also note the staggering level of hypocrisy here? (And that's before we get to the Obama campaign's thuggish tactics aimed at silencing critics.)

The Angry Left has gotten away with all sorts of beyond-the-pale behavior throughout the Bush Administration. The double standards involved -- particularly on the part of the press -- are what are feeding this anger. (Indeed, as Ann Althouse and John Leo have noted, the reporting on this very issue is dubious). So while asking for McCain supporters to chill a bit, can we also ask the press to start doing its job rather than openly shilling for a Democratic victory? Self-control is for everybody, if it's for anybody. . . .

He has some links for documentation if you visit his site.

I couldn't make this up, but Howard Stern found it was real. Wizbang has the recording. Nasty language warning applies - it is Howard Stern. Nonetheless, the ignorance is mind-boggling. Nor do I believe they were just pretending to go along. What they might have been is a select, non-representative sample. But the observation remains, and these people are intending to vote. If that doesn't scare you, Steven King doesn't stand a chance.

Can't Keep A Bad Idea Down Department Obama calls for 90-day moratorium on foreclosures

Democratic Barack Obama on Monday called for more immediate steps to heal the nation's ailing economy, proposing a 90-day moratorium on home foreclosures at some banks and a two-year tax break for businesses that create new jobs.

I hammered San Diego's City Attorney for this several months ago. (sixth entry here)

Question: Will this 90 day moratorium somehow mean the people owe less money? That they will somehow miraculously be able to afford their mortgages. Keep in mind, it's not an end to the interest, the payments, or anything else. All it means is another 90 days for the bills to pile up, another 90 days that lenders have to sit on non-performing assets, another 90 days of denial.

Will this mean that homeowners will suddenly have the equity to refinance to something they can support? No. Will it mean they suddenly have the income? No. Will it mean the rates drop to enable those around the margins to refinance into something better? No, quite the opposite - it will cause rates to rise. Not only will it cause rates to rise, it will cause the underlying indices to rise, as lenders will want more money in return for lending theirs. This will mean that it will knock those on the margins away from being able to afford properties they might otherwise have been able to hand onto, dumping more properties onto the market, adjusting price equilibrium down, setting us up for another entire round of this nonsense.

This is an idea tailored to populist, class warfare appeal. But like so many ideas of that bent, it's severely stupid in that it will make the situation much worse, as in "we might as well have set that $700 billion for the bailout on fire."

Investors with large amounts of money are not our enemies. They are what provides the seed money for factories, builders, consumer goods of all kind, increase our standard of living, etcetera. I'm not rich myself, but it is past time for adults to start calling the willfully ignorant children who propose this crap to task.

It's also another piece of evidence: A vote for Obama is a vote for economic disaster. If any of his vaunted and ballyhooed advisors sat him down and explained this to him, he chose to disregard the facts. I'm a pretty easygoing sort, by and large, but one of the few things I find it difficult to have patience with is willfully blind ignorance. Just because you want it to be true doesn't mean it is.

Neighborhoods of La Mesa: Lake Murray

I've also added links to a couple of my social media pages in the sidebars.

Oh, my: Is this the smoking gun that costs Obama the election?

On a Martin Luther King zero to ten scale for judging people by the content of their character rather than the color of their skin, this is pretty much a zero.

Sauce for the Goose Department: Can you imagine what the outcry would be if John McCain were on the record as saying something like this about black people?

This disgusts me. Serving their country, found a dog they want to adopt, and stupid military brass decides to make jerks out of themselves.

Stuff like this does not just hurt one soldier. It hurts the whole unit, at a minimum. Were I that officer's superior, they would be relieved for unfitness for command. The more attention the situation generates, the more likely a favorable resolution.

An ad that has been purchased for during the debate tonight (October 7th)

Which candidate supports EFCA? Barack Obama
Which candidate is against it? John McCain.

When George McGovern speaks out against a union sponsored bill, in agreement with John McCain, you know something is rotten on the other side.

Nothing to see here. Move along. Democrats refuse to talk about Fannie, Freddie in Oversight hearing

Christopher Shays ripped the Oversight Committee for its refusal to investigate Congress itself:

"The reason we haven't scheduled hearings on these two institutions and haven't requested documents from either is because their demise isn't someone else's fault -- it's ours, and we don't want to own up to it."

Here's the thing about debates: You have to pay attention. It only seemed like a snoozefest on the surface.

For example: There was one question asked tonight about the use of force in the future. Obama gave some standardized platitudes that didn't really mean anything, although he still managed to contradict his earlier position. McCain started talking about Iraq. Even I, a McCain supporter, was thinking, "Get out of the tunnel, John!" However, he used that point about Iraq as a starting point to tie into the future use of force and how if you don't stay and finish the job you start, you end up having to go back under worse conditions, which impacts your ability to respond to the other situations that are certain to pop up. Planning and execution of this brilliant improvisation: two minutes, on the fly, just McCain himself - no staff, no focus groups, no nothing. Nothing too emotional, just a compelling story told in an intelligent way from a current starting point that illustrated he was right, rather than just claiming to be right. But the intellectual beauty of doing so on the fly like that was inspiring. It left me in no doubt which of these men has the intellectual resources to better lead the nation.

I did think Obama made some good points, but he also outright lied half a dozen times, most egregiously about Fannie and Freddie and the causes of the current meltdown. No, McCain didn't knock him out. But if Obama had been a boxer, he would have been bloody, bruised, and just barely aware of where he was. If the vast majority of the media were not Obama partisans, Obama wouldn't be even close to John McCain in the election.

Was his performance good enough to turn this thing around for McCain? Not by itself. But he did set himself up well. Now he has to go out and solidify what he started with the American people, and he's going to have to dish out a lot more red meat than he has of late. Playing it safe when you're behind towards the end of the game isn't going to cut it.

On that same question Obama's 180 on genocide

In such cases, answered Obama, "we have moral issues at stake." Of course the United States must act to stop genocide, he said. "When genocide is happening, when ethnic cleansing is happening . . . and we stand idly by, that diminishes us."

But that wasn't how Obama sounded last year, when he was competing for the Democratic nomination and was unbending in his demand for an American retreat from Iraq. Back then, he dismissed fears that a US withdrawal would unleash a massive Iraqi bloodbath. "Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama said Thursday the United States cannot use its military to solve humanitarian problems and that preventing a potential genocide in Iraq isn't a good enough reason to keep US forces there," the AP reported on July 20, 2007 (my italics).

Which is it? Do you think we might have a moral obligation to stay in Iraq, having broken their previous state? Or should we have abandoned the Iraqi's to genocidal civil war, having no moral reason whatsoever to stay?

My vote is that it's just Barack Obama telling a given audience what he thinks they want to hear.

Michael Barone: Three reasons William Ayers is relevant to the election

Carnival of Real Estate

Joe Biden:10 factually incorrect claims in the debate

Ace says 14. Here's his list

I stopped counting after six egregious, known and verified.

Palin may have shaded the truth and had some instances of tunnel vision, but nothing where the numbers and facts were flat out incorrect. For instance: Pre-surge troop strength we were at 138,000 troops in Iraq. The surge boosted that to about 160,000. We're now at 142,000 and falling. The claim is closer to true than not. On a grayscale from 0 (black) to 10 (white) give it an 8 for simple mathematical proportionality. But on the same scale, Biden's factual errors were dead wrong zeroes. I do not know if he was intentionally misstating ("lying") or simply mistaken. Neither one is precisely laudable, and they both have their plusses and minuses relative to each other, but neither is as good as having the facts correct. For that matter, neither one is good, period.

Palin solidly outpointed Biden. She told the truth, or close enough to be within the bounds of legitimate differences of opinon. Biden did not. She didn't school Biden like John McCain did to Barack Obama, but if this was a boxing match, there's no doubt which candidate would win the decision from honest judges.

Michael Totten weighs in

Sarah Palin was closer than Joe Biden to the Vice-President's constitutional role.

(The president has the ability to delegate executive powers to other people. I don't read anywhere in the Constitution a prohibition on him delegating such power to the Vice-President, especially as the Vice-President is the only other official with a claim to national direct election. It's just that with a party (the Democrats) who have first filibustered opponents and then denied them point blank when they got voting control of the Senate for no other reason than George Bush wanted them, denoting the Vice-President as being the president's delegate removes the ability to obstruct the confirmation process.)

Was Obama telling the truth about al Qaeda? Not when you look at actual evidence.

The pressure is on al Qaeda every which way it turns and it is losing, not winning.

Using the slack monitoring of smaller contributions to break campaign finance rules: Obama's 'Good Will' Hunting

Consider the cases of Obama donors "Doodad Pro" of Nunda, N.Y., who gave $17,130, and "Good Will" of Austin, Texas, who gave more than $11,000--both in excess of the $2,300-per-person federal limit. In two recent letters to the Obama campaign, Federal Election Commission auditors flagged those (and other) donors and informed the campaign that the sums had to be returned.

Tackling the fibs on McCain's proposed health-care plan

The figure Obama provided, $12,680, comes from a study published last month in the journal Health Affairs. That study found that "average annual premiums in 2008 are $4,704 for single coverage and $12,680 for family coverage." But that same study reported the average cost people pay for employer-provided health care coverage is $721 for singles and $3,354 for family coverage. The rest is covered by the employer.

Those figures back up a conclusion from the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center: that McCain's health plan, offering a tax credit of $2,500 per individual and $5,000 per family, would be a net tax cut initially for many. As the CNN Truth Squad has previously reported, the center calls McCain's health care plan a tax cut for virtually all Americans through 2013 and for the middle-class through 2018, which is as far as the center has projected. But the center says long-term, some of those benefits might erode if the tax credit did not keep up with costs of health care.

We have got to get away from the idea that employers are responsible for our health care, and linking health care inextricably to employers. It has all sorts of implications that vary from undesirable to outright bad. The only "advantage" is that many people who are employees start thinking of health care as essentially free, which it is not.

Three and a half minutes. Worth every second, no matter who you support.

Thomas Sowell: Do Facts Matter?

Just looked at my site traffic for the past month, and I have a new one day record - at least since the hosting changeover - of 4759 from September 12th.

Thank you all for stopping by.

Journalism is dead. Proof.

Speaking of which, with tonight being the VP debate, what happens if Sarah Palin handles Joe Biden?

She's been nothing but slandered in the media (except for Fox) for the last month. Probably a lot of McCain's recent slide has to do with the fact that the media has portrayed her so negatively, casting dubious aspersions on his judgment.

So what happens if she hits a home run? Or even just a good stand up double?

The debate is the one chance where even if the moderator is a declared Obama partisan, Sarah Palin has a chance to shine with very little ability to frame and edit on the part of the media. What happens if she demonstrates a grasp as good or superior to Joe Biden, one of the more gaffe-tastic of our Senators? Had the media been doing as much hard reporting on Joe Biden as it has been slandering of Sarah Palin, we would be looking at a very different race right now. So what happens if Sarah demonstrates she's at least as sharp as Senator Foot, Ankle, and Knee in Mouth? Could this turn into a different race?

What if all of Joe Biden's gaffes came out of Sarah Palin's mouth?

I'd say there's at least a fifty percent chance of her handing Gormless Joe his head. But we'll see.

relevant humor here

Private Papers: Time Is Running Out (for McCain)

People unclear on the concept Department: tax loopholes

The Integrity Gap

Who's Really Beholden to Special Interests

Note that John McCain only leads Barack Obama among three of the twenty industry groups, and one of those "industries" is "retired"

Anti-theft lunch bags? I'm pretty sure it'll work