OK, folks. I'll be out campaigning from now until the close of polls on Tuesday. This is me getting ready to go radio-silent. I'll be making calls during reasonable hours, and then working as a 'striker' in my local polling place during Election Day.
I do this because I believe that Obama is a danger, that he is a demagogue, and an idoloter of the state, and is fundamentally hostile to civil society and free enterprise. I believe he would cripple the American economy and the American military with his inexperience, his executive incapacity, and his demonstrated disregard for constitutional norms. His campaign has been an extended demonstration of the Orwellian Newthink principle, in which welfare is called 'tax cuts', government taxation is equated to a test of patriotism, it's selfish to object to the taxation of others, and to be one's brother's keeper is to fling him onto the public dole & into the care of strangers.
Now, I'm not going to tell you that our campaign will win. The polls still look unfavorable, and while any one poll can be wrong, if the aggregate stays against you as long as they have this season, your chances are pretty bleak. It would be easy to give up hope and go crawl into a corner.
Don't do what's easy. Don't put down burdens before their time. Don't give up before you're done.
Do what's right.
Even if it doesn't matter. Even if it's futile. Even if all your effort work slips quiet into the dark water and, leaving no ripples behind, disappears from sight un-remarked. Do what's right because it's right, and not for any other reason, not success, not victory, not even peace of mind.
Because we cannot perform miracles. We can only do every last thing that is in our power consistent with honor. It is only when we have done every last thing within our power and consistent with our honor that we can dare to ask for miracles.
Friday, October 31, 2008
There's nothing sharper and more ferocious than a convert: three ways the tanked media will try to depress Republican/Hillcrat turnout.
Thursday, October 30, 2008
I've got to track down something by this guy after the election. The idea of a male, African-American enka singer is just mind-bogglingly goofy-cool. I'm only afraid that mere reality can't possibly live up to the imagined potentials.
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
So, I ended up working the Palin rally last night. The call centre was shut down to concentrate attention on the event, so it wasn't as if I had anything better to do. It was my first political rally, well, ever. Unless you count walking past the Bush and Gov. Brown rallies on Old Main Lawn on the way to classes in '92, which I don't, since I didn't really care that much at the time.
I hadn't gotten around to getting a ticket for the event last weekend, so I just walked up to the waiting line to see if there was anything I could do. Ran into the guys running the county campaign operations, and Anthony gave me a volunteer badge & recruited me to go help with line control.
While we waited for the volunteers to be let into Rec Hall, I spotted some performance-artist protesters with the usual ugly signs. I went over to talk to them, to see what they thought they were accomplishing. Got into a minor debate with a clown-Palin-impersonator, and was a little intemperate. Not terribly, but a little. She kept chirping about her opinions... wish I had remembered the line about "opinions are prejudices with a college education". I said something about being sorry about what their politicians will do to them if their hopes come true, and then I think I turned off the Palin-pierrot by being sincere. She was looking for validation, not pity. Especially after I told her little group that I was technically pro-choice, and compared what they were doing to the pro-life protesters with the screaming-horror posters, back in the old days of the abortion clinic in the HFL Building. That kind of intrigued her less flamboyant friend, and we chatted a bit about my beliefs and priorities, until Anthony gave me a poke and I saw that they were letting the volunteers into the building.
Inside, I was tasked to play human traffic cone, and keep the folks moving into the bleachers and around the room until we filled things up. This took more energy than you'd think, if not an awful lot of mental acuity. Somebody had told one of the reporters following the Palin campaign about me, and I spent a good chunk of my time as a human traffic cone being interviewed by one Eli Saslow, or being photographed in action by a staff photographer.
I hope I wasn't too impolitic, but I tried to be as honest and forthright as I could be about what it is I do for the campaign here at the grass-roots, and what I expect and hope and fear for in the election. I said I was "half enthusiastic and half fey", and talked about why I "went all in", and what that means in terms of a volunteering commitment. I also talked about how many Democratic volunteers there are with the campaign in Centre County, and pointed him at Anthony Biviano, the door-to-door guy who basically canvassed the better part of College Township by his lonesome.
After about two-and-a-half hours of this, the Centre County staffers told the volunteers to go find the reserved section, and I went on up to take a seat. By that time I was both hoarse and tired, so I was glad for the rest. It looked like somebody had been deliberately sending the folks with Obama shirts and stickers to the volunteer section, presumably to keep things under control if there was any acting up. In the event, everyone was well-behaved and perfectly civil, so there wasn't any disruptions or unpleasantness. I had missed the Benninghoff and Thompson speeches while I was still playing traffic cone, but got into the stands in time for the Hank Williams, Jr. set.
I've never been a big fan of modern country, but I have a CD of Hank Williams, Sr., and I can appreciate the younger Williams' material for what it is. He was playing up the hillbilly angle pretty fiercely, and was a little un-PC at times, but in general it was a pretty good performance. He's written a campaign song for the trail, called 'McCain-Palin Tradition'; as campaign songs go, it wasn't half-bad. He played some of 'I Walk the Line', and that was cool.
They got the crowd pretty riled up for Gov. Palin, and then a small woman came out on stage, but it was just an aide coming out with the Governor's speech, then a procession of other aides cleared off Williams' equipment, and I amused myself by reading parts of the Governor's prepared speech over the shoulders of the operators of the teleprompter. Eventually, the Governor came out, and gave a pretty good stump speech, partially from the version on the teleprompter, and partially improvised. She's clearly given versions of this speech often enough to barely glance at the teleprompter, and to wander on and off the script as the situation and circumstances warrant. It was a good, solid, beautifully-delivered stump speech, hitting all the necessary elements of the address I'd expect from a Republican running for national office. I've heard parts of it from the convention speech, and parts of it from the vice-presidential debate, and others I've read in campaign coverage. I yelled myself a little more hoarse along with the rest of the crowd.
She really is an excellent, excellent politician. It was a beautiful performance; I can't imagine any of the vice-presidential candidates of the last forty years doing a better job; there may have been VP candidates with better policy chops - Jack Kemp comes to mind, and there may have been VP candidates with better experience and gravitas - Admiral Stockdale leaps immediately to mind. But Jack Kemp had the personal charisma and presence of an asthmatic beagle, and the press & a bad vice-presidential debate shattered the Admiral and made all of his heroism and sacrifice invisible, blotted out by the black shadow of a bad SNL skit.
There was about a hundred and fifty O-bots making noise and waving pictures of their Dear Leader at the rally attendees as we left the building. Some of the O-bots had ginned up a giant "Obamaville" banner on an oversized sheet strung between two two-by-fours. I couldn't believe they'd deliberately evoke Hoovervilles by associating the concept of shanty-towns strung together by the evicted homeless victims of a prior Great Depression - with *THEIR HERO*! I said as much to a journalism student, and we chatted a bit about my concerns about Obama supporters and their cult-of-personality habits and inclinations, pointing out their fondness for blown-up photos and images of their idol. I suppose you could call it my second interview of the evening, or possibly my third, if you count the protest-pierrots at the beginning of the evening.
I'd guess that there was at least five thousand in Rec Hall, and probably northwards of 6500 - there officially is seating capacity for 7200, but they had a section across the top of the auditorium blocked off by a big "Country First" sign. It was pretty much a full house, and we had kids with Obama shirts sitting in the stairs & folks leaning on the upper wall around the running-track during the speech proper, and the hundreds standing on the floor between the press stands at mid-court and the stage. Northwards of 6500 seems exceedingly likely, I would think.
Update: CDT says 7500, H/T rightwingprof @ Right Wing Nation.
I hadn't gotten around to getting a ticket for the event last weekend, so I just walked up to the waiting line to see if there was anything I could do. Ran into the guys running the county campaign operations, and Anthony gave me a volunteer badge & recruited me to go help with line control.
While we waited for the volunteers to be let into Rec Hall, I spotted some performance-artist protesters with the usual ugly signs. I went over to talk to them, to see what they thought they were accomplishing. Got into a minor debate with a clown-Palin-impersonator, and was a little intemperate. Not terribly, but a little. She kept chirping about her opinions... wish I had remembered the line about "opinions are prejudices with a college education". I said something about being sorry about what their politicians will do to them if their hopes come true, and then I think I turned off the Palin-pierrot by being sincere. She was looking for validation, not pity. Especially after I told her little group that I was technically pro-choice, and compared what they were doing to the pro-life protesters with the screaming-horror posters, back in the old days of the abortion clinic in the HFL Building. That kind of intrigued her less flamboyant friend, and we chatted a bit about my beliefs and priorities, until Anthony gave me a poke and I saw that they were letting the volunteers into the building.
Inside, I was tasked to play human traffic cone, and keep the folks moving into the bleachers and around the room until we filled things up. This took more energy than you'd think, if not an awful lot of mental acuity. Somebody had told one of the reporters following the Palin campaign about me, and I spent a good chunk of my time as a human traffic cone being interviewed by one Eli Saslow, or being photographed in action by a staff photographer.
I hope I wasn't too impolitic, but I tried to be as honest and forthright as I could be about what it is I do for the campaign here at the grass-roots, and what I expect and hope and fear for in the election. I said I was "half enthusiastic and half fey", and talked about why I "went all in", and what that means in terms of a volunteering commitment. I also talked about how many Democratic volunteers there are with the campaign in Centre County, and pointed him at Anthony Biviano, the door-to-door guy who basically canvassed the better part of College Township by his lonesome.
After about two-and-a-half hours of this, the Centre County staffers told the volunteers to go find the reserved section, and I went on up to take a seat. By that time I was both hoarse and tired, so I was glad for the rest. It looked like somebody had been deliberately sending the folks with Obama shirts and stickers to the volunteer section, presumably to keep things under control if there was any acting up. In the event, everyone was well-behaved and perfectly civil, so there wasn't any disruptions or unpleasantness. I had missed the Benninghoff and Thompson speeches while I was still playing traffic cone, but got into the stands in time for the Hank Williams, Jr. set.
I've never been a big fan of modern country, but I have a CD of Hank Williams, Sr., and I can appreciate the younger Williams' material for what it is. He was playing up the hillbilly angle pretty fiercely, and was a little un-PC at times, but in general it was a pretty good performance. He's written a campaign song for the trail, called 'McCain-Palin Tradition'; as campaign songs go, it wasn't half-bad. He played some of 'I Walk the Line', and that was cool.
They got the crowd pretty riled up for Gov. Palin, and then a small woman came out on stage, but it was just an aide coming out with the Governor's speech, then a procession of other aides cleared off Williams' equipment, and I amused myself by reading parts of the Governor's prepared speech over the shoulders of the operators of the teleprompter. Eventually, the Governor came out, and gave a pretty good stump speech, partially from the version on the teleprompter, and partially improvised. She's clearly given versions of this speech often enough to barely glance at the teleprompter, and to wander on and off the script as the situation and circumstances warrant. It was a good, solid, beautifully-delivered stump speech, hitting all the necessary elements of the address I'd expect from a Republican running for national office. I've heard parts of it from the convention speech, and parts of it from the vice-presidential debate, and others I've read in campaign coverage. I yelled myself a little more hoarse along with the rest of the crowd.
She really is an excellent, excellent politician. It was a beautiful performance; I can't imagine any of the vice-presidential candidates of the last forty years doing a better job; there may have been VP candidates with better policy chops - Jack Kemp comes to mind, and there may have been VP candidates with better experience and gravitas - Admiral Stockdale leaps immediately to mind. But Jack Kemp had the personal charisma and presence of an asthmatic beagle, and the press & a bad vice-presidential debate shattered the Admiral and made all of his heroism and sacrifice invisible, blotted out by the black shadow of a bad SNL skit.
There was about a hundred and fifty O-bots making noise and waving pictures of their Dear Leader at the rally attendees as we left the building. Some of the O-bots had ginned up a giant "Obamaville" banner on an oversized sheet strung between two two-by-fours. I couldn't believe they'd deliberately evoke Hoovervilles by associating the concept of shanty-towns strung together by the evicted homeless victims of a prior Great Depression - with *THEIR HERO*! I said as much to a journalism student, and we chatted a bit about my concerns about Obama supporters and their cult-of-personality habits and inclinations, pointing out their fondness for blown-up photos and images of their idol. I suppose you could call it my second interview of the evening, or possibly my third, if you count the protest-pierrots at the beginning of the evening.
I'd guess that there was at least five thousand in Rec Hall, and probably northwards of 6500 - there officially is seating capacity for 7200, but they had a section across the top of the auditorium blocked off by a big "Country First" sign. It was pretty much a full house, and we had kids with Obama shirts sitting in the stairs & folks leaning on the upper wall around the running-track during the speech proper, and the hundreds standing on the floor between the press stands at mid-court and the stage. Northwards of 6500 seems exceedingly likely, I would think.
Update: CDT says 7500, H/T rightwingprof @ Right Wing Nation.
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Thursday, October 23, 2008
I did the numbers on the McCain health care proposal for the folks at my company, based off the new health insurance plan they're rolling out next month. Looks like it's a slam-dunk for me, personally - my total-cost-to-company is less than the $5000 credit, let alone the after-tax cost which would be incurred under the McCain plan. The full-coverage all-family plan is about three times more expensive, but it's still far and away neutral & the marginal tax increase caused by making the plan & employee contributions after-tax would be more than covered by the $5000 credit. In fact, the plan cost would have to be increased radically to incur an actual net tax increase.
Mind you, my company plan isn't particularly stingy. It's a good plan, from what the folks with families and kids say. Personally, I barely consume health care myself, and what I do is minor stuff out of pocket.
Mind you, my company plan isn't particularly stingy. It's a good plan, from what the folks with families and kids say. Personally, I barely consume health care myself, and what I do is minor stuff out of pocket.
Me, I think this means that the Obama people are trying to cut Fast Eddie and his people out of the slop-line, and Rendell was shrieking because his boys weren't going to get their taste. After all, who needs ward heelers when you've got an army of fanatical 'community organizers' to replace the old bulls and sleaze merchants?
This could be a very good sign, by the way. City machines run on experience and weaselly little rat-[expletive]s who know where the cracks are in a neighborhood, where the votes hide and who's movable by which levers. College kids and out-of-towners can't replace that kind of experience and guile, that was the lesson of the Howard Dean campaign. It might mean that Philadelphia's vaunted get-out-the-voter-fraud engine might be short a few functioning spark-plugs come the contest.
This could be a very good sign, by the way. City machines run on experience and weaselly little rat-[expletive]s who know where the cracks are in a neighborhood, where the votes hide and who's movable by which levers. College kids and out-of-towners can't replace that kind of experience and guile, that was the lesson of the Howard Dean campaign. It might mean that Philadelphia's vaunted get-out-the-voter-fraud engine might be short a few functioning spark-plugs come the contest.
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
I will be so blackly amused if the Obama Youth get their wish & their mirrorball messiah turns around and drafts their slacker asses. What the heck did you *think* all that palaver about "saving our souls" and "national service" was *about*, you young schmucks? Obama and Biden need a big, dumb army of raw recruits if they're going to go running around intervening in Darfur and provoking Pakistan. The current smart, professional, small army isn't big enough and crude enough to be the sort of blunt club clumsy fools can swing without cutting their own achilles tendons.
Although to be honest, I suspect the new draft will be for Bellamy-esque "industrial armies", set to work "organizing" society and replacing the institutions of civil society, replacing legitimate businesses where-ever possible, and so forth. They'll probably start by setting the little fools to patching asphalt. Expect tons of 'public works projects', putting up 'improvements' which will begin to crumble before they're even finished.
Although to be honest, I suspect the new draft will be for Bellamy-esque "industrial armies", set to work "organizing" society and replacing the institutions of civil society, replacing legitimate businesses where-ever possible, and so forth. They'll probably start by setting the little fools to patching asphalt. Expect tons of 'public works projects', putting up 'improvements' which will begin to crumble before they're even finished.
Friday, October 17, 2008
Sigh.
I was kind of wishfully thinking last night that one possible upside was the half-remembered false memory that Obama might be in favor of raising the Social Security retirement age to fix *that* coming disaster, and with a catastrophic Democratic congressional majority, he might be in a position to push painful entitlement changes.
Yeah, yeah, I know, and we'll fuel our flex-fuel hybrid vehicles with reprocessed unicorn farts. Bear with me, I was looking for the upside to a possible electoral disaster.
But no, he's selling a rise in taxes to cover the coming funding gaps. No neo-liberal hard choices for the Lightbringer! Everything can be papered over by screwing the rich! Won't that be fun! Grilled unicorn on a stick for everyone!
I was kind of wishfully thinking last night that one possible upside was the half-remembered false memory that Obama might be in favor of raising the Social Security retirement age to fix *that* coming disaster, and with a catastrophic Democratic congressional majority, he might be in a position to push painful entitlement changes.
Yeah, yeah, I know, and we'll fuel our flex-fuel hybrid vehicles with reprocessed unicorn farts. Bear with me, I was looking for the upside to a possible electoral disaster.
But no, he's selling a rise in taxes to cover the coming funding gaps. No neo-liberal hard choices for the Lightbringer! Everything can be papered over by screwing the rich! Won't that be fun! Grilled unicorn on a stick for everyone!
On a lighter note, in some quarters they're apparently slamming the Toledo native for not going by his first name. I should probably introduce y'all to myself, seeing as I've been lying to y'all all these years: my first name's actually Charles.
Like "Joe", I go by a nickname based on my middle name. I don't know - or care! - why Joe does this, but I do it because I come from a fairly long line of Charles Hagmaiers, and my parents didn't care to go searching for a new diminutive, so they just went with the middle name instead. I was just as glad, to be honest - I could have groaned under an unfortunate nickname like my paternal grandfather Chick. I can't imagine what my school-life might have been with that hanging around my neck.
So it's a conspiracy! We evil conservative plants are sneaking around behind your back, pretending and faking behind false names. Just like "Sam" Grant, "Cump" Sherman, and all of those examples the Minuteman pulled out in that link.
Boo!
Like "Joe", I go by a nickname based on my middle name. I don't know - or care! - why Joe does this, but I do it because I come from a fairly long line of Charles Hagmaiers, and my parents didn't care to go searching for a new diminutive, so they just went with the middle name instead. I was just as glad, to be honest - I could have groaned under an unfortunate nickname like my paternal grandfather Chick. I can't imagine what my school-life might have been with that hanging around my neck.
So it's a conspiracy! We evil conservative plants are sneaking around behind your back, pretending and faking behind false names. Just like "Sam" Grant, "Cump" Sherman, and all of those examples the Minuteman pulled out in that link.
Boo!
And Obama the Fair rubbed his face, and mused in front of his courtiers, "will no-one rid me of this turbulent plumber?"
Oh, God. Uncle Ron, how could you? Let your vicious young turks seize upon a home-town boy, rip his life apart before the crowd, and fling the bloody shreds to the hungry cannibal press? You *know* this will destroy him, no matter how good of a man he might have been.
Is there a reason you're not off destroying the life of, oh, say Obama's campaign treasurer, Uncle Ron?
Oh, God. Uncle Ron, how could you? Let your vicious young turks seize upon a home-town boy, rip his life apart before the crowd, and fling the bloody shreds to the hungry cannibal press? You *know* this will destroy him, no matter how good of a man he might have been.
Is there a reason you're not off destroying the life of, oh, say Obama's campaign treasurer, Uncle Ron?
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
So McCain put out his economic plan of the week, to follow up on Obama's plan-of-the-week. It had some sort of capital gains component to it. Obama responded, by mocking the idea of capital gains, sniggering that nobody's going to be enjoying capital gains anytime soon.
Think about that one, Obamaheads. Either Mr. Man can't think more than three months ahead of the game, or he doesn't care if anyone makes capital gains for the foreseeable future. No, he's too busy making plans to tax you so that he can turn around and give you a check. He's too busy planning on making *your* income the *government's* income, to be redistributed to you, and your neighbor, and *his* insolvent, drug-dealing neighbor who runs a meth lab out of her nominally-foreclosed too-expensive-for-her-means bubble-McMansion.
Obama just signaled with a big ol' three-story-tall signal-flag that he doesn't care to encourage business. That he isn't interested in the traditional liberal-New Democrat vision of business as a herd of sheep to be kept healthy, well-sheared, and growing wool for the new season. No, that's not Barack Obama's vision of private business.
To Barack Obama, private business is a vast buffalo herd, uncontrollable, unownable, a resource for his enemies, an obstacle for the socialist future, an obstruction to the iron rails he intends to lay across our national landscape. The Treasury Department in an Obama Administration will be a mercenary band handed buffalo guns, sent out like "Buffalo Bill" Cody to slaughter private business and leave the corpses to rot in heaping hills scattered across the landscape.
Friends, you and I are the Lakota.
Enjoy the Rez when they pen you in.
Think about that one, Obamaheads. Either Mr. Man can't think more than three months ahead of the game, or he doesn't care if anyone makes capital gains for the foreseeable future. No, he's too busy making plans to tax you so that he can turn around and give you a check. He's too busy planning on making *your* income the *government's* income, to be redistributed to you, and your neighbor, and *his* insolvent, drug-dealing neighbor who runs a meth lab out of her nominally-foreclosed too-expensive-for-her-means bubble-McMansion.
Obama just signaled with a big ol' three-story-tall signal-flag that he doesn't care to encourage business. That he isn't interested in the traditional liberal-New Democrat vision of business as a herd of sheep to be kept healthy, well-sheared, and growing wool for the new season. No, that's not Barack Obama's vision of private business.
To Barack Obama, private business is a vast buffalo herd, uncontrollable, unownable, a resource for his enemies, an obstacle for the socialist future, an obstruction to the iron rails he intends to lay across our national landscape. The Treasury Department in an Obama Administration will be a mercenary band handed buffalo guns, sent out like "Buffalo Bill" Cody to slaughter private business and leave the corpses to rot in heaping hills scattered across the landscape.
Friends, you and I are the Lakota.
Enjoy the Rez when they pen you in.
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
OK, I talked to the woman who runs the Centre County Board of Elections. She claimed the reason that most of the absentee voters in the county haven't gotten their ballots was because of a lawsuit filed to keep Bob Barr off the ballot. I looked this up later, it was filed by an idiot Republican down in Cumberland County, the Libertarians were rightfully incensed. She claimed that it was an all-state issue, but when I confronted her about how I had made hundreds of calls to some of the Northern Tier counties and Clearfield & they were sending their absentee ballots out in a timely manner, she claimed to have the voters' best interests at heart and held up the prospect of those out-county-issued ballots being ruled invalid, and went on again about the Barr lawsuit.
When I came in to the office an hour later, I found that this lawsuit, while inadvisable and foolish, still had been dismissed on September 15th. The Centre County Board of Elections is holding up the absentee ballot mailings over a dismissed lawsuit.
Now, although there *is* another idiot lawsuit being filed in Philadelphia trying to kick *Barrack Obama* off the ballot for allegedly not being born in the United States (again, idiocy!), no rational individual would have the ballots of an entire state invalidated or held up over the chances that the nominee of the sodding Democratic Party might be kicked off the ballot!
My read is that the Board is A) lying to callers and visitors to their office as to why they're holding up the in-country absentee ballots (mind you, abroad and military absentee ballots have already been delivered from Centre County, showing that my interviewee's concern for the votes of her fellow Pennsylvanians doesn't extend to members of the military, expatriates and those journeying abroad) B) holding up the absentee ballots for this county for a therefore-unstated reason and C) they are thus disadvantaging the absentee voters of Centre County against their fellows in neighboring counties and those of us who normally vote in our local precincts' polling places.
Infuriating.
When I came in to the office an hour later, I found that this lawsuit, while inadvisable and foolish, still had been dismissed on September 15th. The Centre County Board of Elections is holding up the absentee ballot mailings over a dismissed lawsuit.
Now, although there *is* another idiot lawsuit being filed in Philadelphia trying to kick *Barrack Obama* off the ballot for allegedly not being born in the United States (again, idiocy!), no rational individual would have the ballots of an entire state invalidated or held up over the chances that the nominee of the sodding Democratic Party might be kicked off the ballot!
My read is that the Board is A) lying to callers and visitors to their office as to why they're holding up the in-country absentee ballots (mind you, abroad and military absentee ballots have already been delivered from Centre County, showing that my interviewee's concern for the votes of her fellow Pennsylvanians doesn't extend to members of the military, expatriates and those journeying abroad) B) holding up the absentee ballots for this county for a therefore-unstated reason and C) they are thus disadvantaging the absentee voters of Centre County against their fellows in neighboring counties and those of us who normally vote in our local precincts' polling places.
Infuriating.
Monday, October 13, 2008
Um, dude: the Rezko corruption case may be bringing down a mobbed-up bank operator/State Treasurer named Giannoulis. Obama was the main force behind Giannoulis's run for State Treasurer and this guy's bank is apparently the money-tree for Rezko's operations and was the bank which got Obama his sweetheart mortgage. The article goes into detail on what "the Chicago Way" means these days, but the short story is that the Outfit still exists, it's one of the mainsprings for how business and politics gets done there, and Obama and Blagojevich's 'fixer', Tony Rezko, is talking to the feds and Patrck Fitzgerald now that he's been convicted and looking for clemency.
Hey, it's "Fitzmas" after all. And if you fools elect the big O, you'll get to enjoy at least a year of the President-elect getting grilled by a federal prosecutor about his ties to actual, living, breathing Chicago gangsters. Won't that be fun?
That's assuming he doesn't fire the Justice Department on January 20th as a preventive measure.
H/T
Hey, it's "Fitzmas" after all. And if you fools elect the big O, you'll get to enjoy at least a year of the President-elect getting grilled by a federal prosecutor about his ties to actual, living, breathing Chicago gangsters. Won't that be fun?
That's assuming he doesn't fire the Justice Department on January 20th as a preventive measure.
H/T
I'm getting concerned about absentee ballots in Centre County. The out-counties - Clearfield, Cameron, McKean, Potter - are doing great in terms of getting the ballots to the voters who requested them. Centre is... not doing so well. And I've been hearing some wild rumors from Centre County voters in terms of what the Board of Elections in the Willowbank Building has been telling them on the phone when they call to ask about their ballots, stuff that doesn't square from what I'm seeing online. I'm going to have to go down there tomorrow & see what they're up to if I don't hear otherwise tonight.
Thursday, October 09, 2008
Huh. It's well-known that Barrack Obama accepted endorsements from the popular front New Party in the mid-Nineties. For those of you who don't follow politics closely, the New Party was a left-socialist-progressive third-party fusionist attempt to combat the Democratic Leadership Council/Clintonista trend in Democratic party organizations. They endorsed leftist candidates against more left-central candidates, and generally acted as a pressure group for the more socialist, wilder elements which are always circling about in Democratic groups, trying to take over the party apparatus & convert the party into a Party. Some folks have found evidence here and there that Obama was not just an endorsee of the New Party, but was claimed as an actual party member in New Party publications.
Now, I don't think this is necessarily proof positive - it requires that we take the half-scrubbed publicity claims of socialist propaganda-hacks as gospel truth, and I wouldn't put it past these blowhards to occasionally claim sympathetic non-members as card-carrying party members in order to prove just how great a job the New Party was doing for its investors with their donations. But given just how much crap we've caught over much, much less on the subject of the Palins and the Alaska Independence Party, Obama & his minions deserve every tomato tossed their way on this subject.
Because Obama definitely started out as *some* kind of popular-front socialist "no enemies to the left" politician.
Just ask Bill Ayers.
Now, I don't think this is necessarily proof positive - it requires that we take the half-scrubbed publicity claims of socialist propaganda-hacks as gospel truth, and I wouldn't put it past these blowhards to occasionally claim sympathetic non-members as card-carrying party members in order to prove just how great a job the New Party was doing for its investors with their donations. But given just how much crap we've caught over much, much less on the subject of the Palins and the Alaska Independence Party, Obama & his minions deserve every tomato tossed their way on this subject.
Because Obama definitely started out as *some* kind of popular-front socialist "no enemies to the left" politician.
Just ask Bill Ayers.
I went into the campaign office with a pretty heavy heart from all the post-debate gloom. But I was asked to call a traditionally heavily-Republican precinct, and by God, they're equally heavy for McCain-Palin. It was a real kick in the pants, and I started really getting into it. Put in the best night so far this season, half again more calls than usual, and far more *good* calls - actual, amiable contacts rather than lines which never pick up or the vast sea of disconnected phones, wrong numbers, fax machines and work addresses which some precincts are prone to present.
Folks, if you're in a battleground state and you care about the direction this country is going and you can spare an hour or two to help, come on down to your local campaign office and help get out the vote. Every hand counts, every vote counts.
They plan on holding a parade. Let's give them a fight.
Folks, if you're in a battleground state and you care about the direction this country is going and you can spare an hour or two to help, come on down to your local campaign office and help get out the vote. Every hand counts, every vote counts.
They plan on holding a parade. Let's give them a fight.
Tuesday, October 07, 2008
So Obama's decades-long working relationship with a bombmaking, unrepentant communist terrorist is now being compared to McCain's having been on the board of an anti-communist organization which was accused of having anti-Semitic members? An organization whose founder and chairman worked together with those who made the accusations to remove the individuals who were the subject of the complaints? And then said anti-Semite-persecuting villain was later involved in the Iran-Contra conspiracy to arm anti-communist insurgents in a communist country?
Oh, Martha, get the smelling salts. McCain's a Republican! He's associated with known conservatives! Next thing you know, they'll be accusing him of associating with malefactors like Bud Day!
OK, that last one was fun, but I'm afraid that some folk who might come by here unexpected might not get that I'm being sarcastic. Bud Day's an American hero. Anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something pretty toxic.
Oh, Martha, get the smelling salts. McCain's a Republican! He's associated with known conservatives! Next thing you know, they'll be accusing him of associating with malefactors like Bud Day!
OK, that last one was fun, but I'm afraid that some folk who might come by here unexpected might not get that I'm being sarcastic. Bud Day's an American hero. Anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something pretty toxic.
Monday, October 06, 2008
From such small acorns do great harms grow.
A nifty graphic of the tangled roots of a debacle, although I'm not crazy about what I've read of the material behind it - looks like an unorganized linkfarm of blog posts at first glance. But the graphic is fine - and I will believe in the disinterested, objective media again when I see anything resembling it in the weeklies or a major paper.
A nifty graphic of the tangled roots of a debacle, although I'm not crazy about what I've read of the material behind it - looks like an unorganized linkfarm of blog posts at first glance. But the graphic is fine - and I will believe in the disinterested, objective media again when I see anything resembling it in the weeklies or a major paper.
Yikes. Tether sounds like a natural for a quick bear-hug endorsement by the McCain campaign.
A bureaucrat being hounded for holding contractors accountable for failures! [vizzini]Inconceivable![/vizzini]
A bureaucrat being hounded for holding contractors accountable for failures! [vizzini]Inconceivable![/vizzini]
A relative forwarded me an email supposedly from Bill Cosby which contained, among other things, an appeal for a radical protectionist program. The following was my response:
Sigh. Good thing he isn't an actual politician. 100% import tariffs. Just what we need on the cusp of a new great depression - our very own Smoot-Hawley Tariff - on steroids!
People claim that Hoover got us into the Depression by lax government oversight - 'laissez-faire'. This is a myth - a lie invented by FDR partisans & promulgated through partisan historical wallpapering. Herbert Hoover was a technocrat and a 'corporatist' - someone who believed in a co-operative alliance between government and big business. In Italy, corporatists were called fascists. In the US, we called them 'progressives'. Hoover worsened the banking crisis in 1930 by letting Congress pass the Smoot-Hawley Tariff, which was a punitive slate of heavy taxes on tariffs. The Republican Party up through the middle of the last century was a protectionist party, and high tariffs was party orthodoxy. It was also the very worst thing they could have done in the midst of an economic depression. It helped turn a sharp, deep economic downturn into a total catastrophe.
The other big things that Hoover did, which were totally his fault, was the institution of a series of aggressive, over-the-top public works programs designed to soak up unemployed workers, and to stimulate the economy. Hoover Dam was the biggest fruit of this ill-considered exercise in unifying government excess, but there was a lot of other stuff, most of it a lot more make-work than hydroelectric dams. The real problem here was that these public work programs were *expensive*, and Hoover pushed a serious income-tax increase to balance the budget. Income taxes were mostly on the rich and wealthy in those days, and the sad fact is that those with a lot of income and a lot of capital are *most* sensitive to signals from the the taxing authority - by which I mean to say, if Johnny Rich-bags has enough to keep his mansions in maintenance and his family in food, he doesn't have a burning need to make *more* money, if the marginal cost of the tax burden has increased such that for every new dollar he makes, X additional percentage is taken in taxes. The poor and middle-class have less margin above the necessities, so they tend to be less responsive to this sort of tax "signals". When the wealthy get over-taxed, they shut down & shift their capital or time into activities which are less likely to result in wasted effort for not enough gain - US treasury bonds for the capital, and off playing golf or tennis for their time.
So, Hoover provided the massive tax increase, Congress provided the idiotic protectionist tariffs, and the Federal Reserve provided the completely mis-managed financial crisis. Voila! Hoover-era Depression.
But it wasn't a "Great" Depression until FDR got his hands on the situation. He campaigned on a tax-cut - sound familiar? FDR promised to shrink the organs of government, which had greatly bloated over the two previous presidential terms - Hoover had been Coolidge's Secretary of Commerce, and had spent a lot of his time as Secretary building an enormous office complex for the Department of Commerce, and filling it with officious busy-bodies.
FDR *did* get the Smoot-Hawley Tariff replaced, which fixed *that* particular horror, but he made up for that by fiddling disastrously with the price of gold, and wasting three more years before getting us off the gold standard which was *generating* the financial crisis underpinning the world-wide Depression. Bernanke himself wrote a book endorsing the orthodox view that the world-wide depression was generated by the gold-standard financial crisis, btw, and did a lot with regression analysis showing that the sooner a country got itself off the standard, the faster the depression ended in that country.
Anyways, FDR looked at all the money-wasting that Hoover had done in public-works, and asked if this amp went to 11. Made Hoover look like a piker, and introduced the well-known galaxy of three-letter acronyms to seize control of the economy from the rich so-and-sos and put it in the hands of their well-educated college-professor neighbors and children and well-connected competitors. *That* went well. They managed to pour enough fiat money into the economy in 1936 to cause the economy to kick like a dead frog with an electrode stuck into its ganglia, and the unemployment rate dropped down to a balmy 13%-14%, just long enough to get the Democrats re-elected. Then the juice stopped flowing, the dead frog stopped kicking, and we were back in the 20% unemployment range again. Only the destruction by fire of the rest of the world's industrialized economies and the direct stimulation of a war command economy really ended the Great Depression in the United States.
Really, let's not do that one again. It couldn't have been fun the first time around, although I'm sure the NRA 'blue eagle' rallies must have been stirring.
Sigh. Good thing he isn't an actual politician. 100% import tariffs. Just what we need on the cusp of a new great depression - our very own Smoot-Hawley Tariff - on steroids!
People claim that Hoover got us into the Depression by lax government oversight - 'laissez-faire'. This is a myth - a lie invented by FDR partisans & promulgated through partisan historical wallpapering. Herbert Hoover was a technocrat and a 'corporatist' - someone who believed in a co-operative alliance between government and big business. In Italy, corporatists were called fascists. In the US, we called them 'progressives'. Hoover worsened the banking crisis in 1930 by letting Congress pass the Smoot-Hawley Tariff, which was a punitive slate of heavy taxes on tariffs. The Republican Party up through the middle of the last century was a protectionist party, and high tariffs was party orthodoxy. It was also the very worst thing they could have done in the midst of an economic depression. It helped turn a sharp, deep economic downturn into a total catastrophe.
The other big things that Hoover did, which were totally his fault, was the institution of a series of aggressive, over-the-top public works programs designed to soak up unemployed workers, and to stimulate the economy. Hoover Dam was the biggest fruit of this ill-considered exercise in unifying government excess, but there was a lot of other stuff, most of it a lot more make-work than hydroelectric dams. The real problem here was that these public work programs were *expensive*, and Hoover pushed a serious income-tax increase to balance the budget. Income taxes were mostly on the rich and wealthy in those days, and the sad fact is that those with a lot of income and a lot of capital are *most* sensitive to signals from the the taxing authority - by which I mean to say, if Johnny Rich-bags has enough to keep his mansions in maintenance and his family in food, he doesn't have a burning need to make *more* money, if the marginal cost of the tax burden has increased such that for every new dollar he makes, X additional percentage is taken in taxes. The poor and middle-class have less margin above the necessities, so they tend to be less responsive to this sort of tax "signals". When the wealthy get over-taxed, they shut down & shift their capital or time into activities which are less likely to result in wasted effort for not enough gain - US treasury bonds for the capital, and off playing golf or tennis for their time.
So, Hoover provided the massive tax increase, Congress provided the idiotic protectionist tariffs, and the Federal Reserve provided the completely mis-managed financial crisis. Voila! Hoover-era Depression.
But it wasn't a "Great" Depression until FDR got his hands on the situation. He campaigned on a tax-cut - sound familiar? FDR promised to shrink the organs of government, which had greatly bloated over the two previous presidential terms - Hoover had been Coolidge's Secretary of Commerce, and had spent a lot of his time as Secretary building an enormous office complex for the Department of Commerce, and filling it with officious busy-bodies.
FDR *did* get the Smoot-Hawley Tariff replaced, which fixed *that* particular horror, but he made up for that by fiddling disastrously with the price of gold, and wasting three more years before getting us off the gold standard which was *generating* the financial crisis underpinning the world-wide Depression. Bernanke himself wrote a book endorsing the orthodox view that the world-wide depression was generated by the gold-standard financial crisis, btw, and did a lot with regression analysis showing that the sooner a country got itself off the standard, the faster the depression ended in that country.
Anyways, FDR looked at all the money-wasting that Hoover had done in public-works, and asked if this amp went to 11. Made Hoover look like a piker, and introduced the well-known galaxy of three-letter acronyms to seize control of the economy from the rich so-and-sos and put it in the hands of their well-educated college-professor neighbors and children and well-connected competitors. *That* went well. They managed to pour enough fiat money into the economy in 1936 to cause the economy to kick like a dead frog with an electrode stuck into its ganglia, and the unemployment rate dropped down to a balmy 13%-14%, just long enough to get the Democrats re-elected. Then the juice stopped flowing, the dead frog stopped kicking, and we were back in the 20% unemployment range again. Only the destruction by fire of the rest of the world's industrialized economies and the direct stimulation of a war command economy really ended the Great Depression in the United States.
Really, let's not do that one again. It couldn't have been fun the first time around, although I'm sure the NRA 'blue eagle' rallies must have been stirring.
Thursday, October 02, 2008
Huh. So AIDS originated during the Belgian colonial apocalypse of the Edwardian era? From that account, it may very well have been brought into the colonial capital by one of those dying natives conscripted to build the Congo railroad, so memorably described in the opening pages of Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness". There's some sort of horrible irony in that - AIDS *is* a Western legacy, but it isn't the CIA/Cold War plot of which KGB-planted press libels convinced so many leftist conspiracy-fanatics. It's an ugly, terrible, blind echo of the criminally careless Belgian occupation of central Africa, of the very apocalyptic worst of European colonialism.
H/T.
H/T.
This morning on "Five Minutes of NPR is Five More Than I Can Take", it was chihuahuas. When I turned on the radio, it was all about how the poor little beasts are emasculated, and mocked by popular culture, about how all the coddling and accessorizing was diminishing a creature which heretofore was not aware that it was the punchline of the animal world.
Then they started in on the Los Angeles bulimics and closet homosexuals nattering on about all the designer crap they decorate their little bone-rattlers with. Way to undercut the narrative, NPR story editor! Are you pea-brains *trying* to drive every male member of middle America out of your audience? Because I now have the distinct urge to go buy a truck and drink some beer.
I *HATE* beer.
Then they started in on the Los Angeles bulimics and closet homosexuals nattering on about all the designer crap they decorate their little bone-rattlers with. Way to undercut the narrative, NPR story editor! Are you pea-brains *trying* to drive every male member of middle America out of your audience? Because I now have the distinct urge to go buy a truck and drink some beer.
I *HATE* beer.
Wednesday, October 01, 2008
NPR: Bums are early-voting in Ohio. [Subtext: think your vote counts? Ha! One 'homeless' trucked from precinct to precinct by ACORN wardheelers will cancel out *your* vote, your *relatives'* votes, and the votes of half the people you *know*. Why bother voting at all, breeder?]
NPR: Deaths in automobile accidents increase on presidential election day. [Subtext: don't go out to vote next November! You'll be killed in traffic!]
I'd say something about in-kind contributions to the Obama campaign, but somehow I suspect this will be more of an 'own goal'. After all, the NPR listening audience is overwhelmingly Obama-voting-friendly. It rather sounds like they managed to put out a voter-suppression message today to their own audience. Good job, National Democratic Radio!
NPR: Deaths in automobile accidents increase on presidential election day. [Subtext: don't go out to vote next November! You'll be killed in traffic!]
I'd say something about in-kind contributions to the Obama campaign, but somehow I suspect this will be more of an 'own goal'. After all, the NPR listening audience is overwhelmingly Obama-voting-friendly. It rather sounds like they managed to put out a voter-suppression message today to their own audience. Good job, National Democratic Radio!
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