The Festering Swamp

Happy Turkey Day! And Facebook Sightings.

2008-11-27T11:08:00.000-08:00

I'm off to my favorite sister's house (inside family joke, I have three sisters, and call each my favorite) in a couple of hours to consume mass quantities of my favorite comestibles. I hope you all can do the same. If not, enjoy the solitude of a peaceful Thanksgiving.

I've been seeing a couple of Swampers on Facebook since I joined at the kind invitation of Luke Yelasdi Thompson. There's Luke, of course, and Mike LaRoche.

Being half a century old, I had originally shied away from the social networks for fear of being the geezer in the group. But after joining, I found a lot of my friends were already there, having fun and updating people with their activities. Some friends from far away were there. Social networks are an amazing distance-destroyer, allowing you to create a cozy community no matter where you are.

Some people take the friends function too far, adding hundreds of people to their network. How can you keep track of so many, let alone consider them your friends? Techblogger Robert Scoble carried this to the extreme when he added so many friends he reached Facebook's 5,000 friends limit. (Since increased). And he complained about it!

I've got a little more than two dozen friends on Facebook now. And while that number will grow significantly, I'm not going to pretend that I can be friends with thousands of people.

But Swampers who read this are cordially invited to be my Facebook friend.

Have a wonderful Thanksgiving Day and weekend!

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Still Here

2008-11-19T20:44:00.000-08:00

It's been more than a week since my last post, so yes, I'm still around, and no, I haven't forgotten the Swamp community.

As I cautioned a few weeks ago, I can't post with the frequency I used to, because of the demands of my job. I'm regularly blogging there now at bizblogs.nctimes.com and you can see from the frantic activity there where most of my blogging is directed.

With the help of David and Julie Scott, and I hope LYT and others, we can keep things lively here.

As for the job, we just went through significant layoffs at my newspaper. While I'm still employed, about 25 of my colleagues on the news staff were laid off. As a business reporter, even while I mourn the lost talent, I understand the reasons -- profits plunged at our parent company by 72 percent in the most recent quarter over a year ago. With ad revenues continuing to skid, the trend was going to take us into the red very soon. Since we're not a government entity or a financial institution too big to fail, running at a deficit is not an option.

I am trying to keep in mind the one good thing about bad financial news: It concentrates the mind, and encourages people and institutions to try new things and question old assumptions and ways of doing business that may be wrong. So I personally am trying new ways to connect to our readers, and to get new readers.

Regardless of what happens to any individual news organization, there will always be a need for good journalism. The world is just too complex, and too much is going on, for people to take it all in without someone to help pick out what is significant and explain why. There is value in that; the trouble is finding out the appropriate way of making it work financially, or as they say in the tech industry, "monetizing" it. (I hate the word, but it is concise and describes what has to be done).

And above all, I just plain enjoy what I'm doing. I almost always look forward to another day at my job. I'm learning interesting things and telling them to people who want to learn about them. Just now, I've returned from an extraordinary event, listening to four veteran CEOs tell their war stories about their failures, and what they learned from it.

The title of the event: "Failure IS An Option". It was a humorous and compassionate rebuke to the just-can't-lose stories of people who defied impossible odds to succeed. It was moderated by Neil Senturia, an entrepreneur who has known dismal, stomach-churning, sleep-destroying failure as well as success. And out of his despair turned into success, he emerged as devastatingly funny in dissecting everything that can go wrong -- the things rotting away in companies that most people prefer to keep hidden.

In real life, failure happens frequently, and often, it's beyond our capacity to stop. If your company decides a certain job is expendable, it may not matter how well you've done that job. And when you hear top CEOs say things such as "much of life is random," and "do not ever underestimate the power of good fortune," it takes some of the sting away from failure. Even the most successful people don't have all the answers.

One things these CEOs have in common is that they learned from their failures, and applied their lessons to their next ventures. They painfully learned the need to keep a distinction between one's business and personal identities -- a business failure is not the same as personal failure. As journalists look for jobs and news outfits look for economic models that work on the Web, these are good words to keep in mind.

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Washington Post Gets Really Tough With Obama

2008-11-11T19:38:00.000-08:00

Of course I'm joking! The Post has published a faithfully-in-the-tank fable about how Obama's team acted to "keep its distance" from lobbyists.

"Obama backtracks on no-lobbyists pledge" would have been closer to the truth. For Obama campaigned for president vowing not to let lobbyists work in the White House. But after pointed questions on how he could do such a thing, Obama changed his absolute no-lobbyists vow to one of not letting lobbyists "dominate" in the White House.

And in the above-linked WaPo story, Obama further went back on his promise to the public: Lobbyists can work in his administration, they just can't be officially hired to work on issues they lobbied for. The reality is lobbyists and their connections cross every which way.

Obama's transition chief, John P. Podesta, is a prime example of the interlocking nature of lobbying. From the WaPo story:

"I've heard the other complaint, which is we're leaving all these experts on the side. . . . We're leaving all the people who know everything out in the cold," Podesta said. "And so be it." He said a similar ban was likely to be in effect for the actual administration, including an extension of the lobbyist ban to two years.

But Podesta himself has been a lobbyist, according to a biography by the New York Times: "He was a partner with his brother, Tony, in a prominent Washington lobbying shop."

That's all the space the NYT deems fit on the subject, not even deigning to name the lobbying shop. It's the eponymous "The Podesta Group". On its site, the group says it represents "corporations and trade associations as well as local governments and nonprofits."

The firm doesn't shy away from the lobbyist label. It even touted a Politico article dubbing it a "powerhouse lobbying firm".

To recap: First Obama says lobbyists won't work in his White House. Then he changes his pledge and says they won't "dominate." Then Obama hires as his transition chief a veteran of a powerhouse lobbying firm, and allows lobbyists to openly work in the White House, as long as they're not officially working in areas they've lobbied about.

It's a nice fig leaf -- it hides something that everyone knows is really there.

And topping it off, a gullible (or worse) WaPo reporter uncritically swallows the story and gushes about Obama keeping his distance from those lobbyists. And of course, nowhere does the WaPo article mention Podesta's own lobbying background.

I hope, probably naively, to see the Post do better in giving Obama critical coverage. But this is an abysmal start.

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Cowardly and Useless

2008-11-08T12:54:00.001-08:00

Sarah Palin was absolutely right in calling the attacks on her from unnamed sources in the McCain camp "cowardly." Safe from the anonymity supplied by reporters, the McCain operatives scrambled to protect themselves by throwing mud at their bosses' former running mate.

This is the unlovely truth behind political campaigns -- those behind the scenes are often more concerned with serving their own interest instead of that of the candidates they allegedly work for.

The only ones who benefit from this sleazy charade besides the operatives are the reporters and news organizations that enable them. The public is poorly served by being dished up accusations from sources whose identities are unknown. That's one part of the media that could go extinct and America would benefit.

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There is No Joy in Maverickville

2008-11-04T16:16:00.000-08:00

UPDATE: At least we didn't have to wait long to find out. After Ohio was called for Obama by the networks, including Fox News, it was all over.

Fox News, in a mastery of understatement.

Congratulations, President-Elect Barack Obama. May you be worthy of the trust the American people have placed in you.

UPDATE REDUX: Slate sees things the way I do, calling the election for Obama based on his win in Ohio. This is just common sense. But worried they'll be condemned for the grievous sin of calling the election when people are still voting -- even though the outcome is now certain -- news outfits play this game of pretending not to know what they know, because the unwashed masses can't be trusted with the truth lest they not do their civic duty.

Bloomberg, for example, headlined its story, "Obama's Win in Ohio Throws Major Roadblock in Front of McCain". (The headline has since changed, but that's what it originally said).

This is treating the public like children who have to be coddled. Yes, Virginia, there really is a Santa Claus. Yes, American Public, McCain still really has a chance of winning the presidency, so just you go vote and don't worry your pretty little head about what we media types are telling each other. (A reporter in Ohio told me hours ago the Buckeye State had gone for Obama).

Hurrah for Slate for not holding to this ridiculous charade. Shame on the rest of the MSM, including Fox News, for pussyfooting around this elephant in the living room.

Or I should say, this donkey.

UPDATE UPDATE REDUX: A wry look at the McCain victory party turned concession speech by the Washington Post's Dana Milbank.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Sigh. I did my voterly duty early this morning, contrary to most of the Californians at the polls, who voted for Obama*. (Polls have not closed in the Golden State, but I feel safe calling California for Obama.)

The indications look ugly from my perspective. The funereal mood of poor John Derbyshire echoes that of many who voted mavericky. But I wasn't really a fan of the 2008 McCain anyway.

And I can only hope the combination of Obama and a Democratic Congress won't be as catastrophic as I think it will be.

Obama supporters, go ahead and rejoice. (Unless, of course, a miracle occurs.)

I'll update later.

*Once again, I emphasize any opinions expressed here are purely my own, and not necessarily those of my employer.

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You Must Believe In Him

2008-11-02T21:23:00.000-08:00

Such are the perils of not believing in The Messiah.

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Two More Reasons To Vote For McCain - UPDATED

2008-11-02T07:25:00.000-08:00

And

And . . . Affleck as Olbermann

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Barack Petty Obama

2008-11-01T06:23:00.000-07:00

Petty, certainly, and even spiteful, are the words that describe Obama's decision to remove from his campaign plane three newspapers who endorsed McCain -- the NY Post, the Washington Times and the Dallas Morning News.

This has been discussed at length by other bloggers, so I'll just make a point that, as a reporter, I consider important that none of the others made: newspaper endorsements are not what they are represented and understood to be. They are much less important.

The common mystique is that a newspaper endorsement or editorial represents the considered voice of a journalistic organization. Those endorsements ring with self-important, august or sometimes Stentorian rhetoric in reflection of that delusion. They aid this deception by not including any bylines, as if the newspaper, as some collective entity, congregated in mind-meld to produce those pearls of wisdom. If you buy into this mistaken view, it might be understandable, if still petty and spiteful, for Obama to rid his campaign plane of reporters whose newspapers have endorsed his opponent.

The truth is newspaper editorials, like everything else in the paper, are ultimately controlled by the newspaper's publisher or owner. If you think of the presidential endorsements as just the opinion of one person, who happens to control a newspaper, you'll usually be right.

In any decent paper, news articles, written by reporters, are free of blatant influence by the owner. But newspaper editorials are another matter. If the publisher or owner doesn't really care about the subject, the top editors can usually get their way and delude themselves into thinking they're great opinion leaders. But the big bosses always reserves the right to step in and impose their views on any subject of great importance to them. And presidential endorsements are considered important. (Yes, I know that the Sam Zell-controlled LA Times and Chicago Tribune endorsed Obama, and Zell gave $40K to support McCain. But Zell is really known for being anyone-but-Hillary. With her out of the presidential race, Zell can afford to humor the editors, while the reporters get sacked.)

That's why I think unsigned newspaper editorials are phony and should be killed. Hugh Hewitt said it well in his masterful piece on what the LA Times and newspapers need to do to survive, Refusing to Bleed Out: "Drop the anonymous pulse-killers of the unsigned editorials. Give them bylines or let them go."

And they are pulse-killers most of the time, valuable space wasted by editors pontificating and bloviating on stuff they often know little about, or so wildly biased as not to even understand there could be another side. Los Angeles Times editorials are masters of the genre. Mere reporters, who have bylines on their work and are as such accountable, can't get away with that stuff. But the reporters get blamed by those who disagree with the editorials, because they are who the public sees, not some self-absorbed clique mentally masturbating.and congratulating themselves on their importance.

We hear a lot about biased reporters, and with good reason. But the public should really be outraged about editors who express their bias regularly, and hide behind the shield of anonymity. -- bravely letting the reporters get blamed. They should blame the editors and publishers, who usually spend their days isolated from the public in endless oxygen-draining meetings about how to better reach the public.

The deceptive conceit of unsigned editorials can produce hilarious results.Years ago, I heard of an editorial page editor who greatly disagreed with the publisher-imposed views on many subjects. To get his revenge, said editor would intentionally write the editorial in such an extreme or pompous fashion as to undercut the publisher's argument. The publisher would give it a look, interpret the ridiculous editorial literally, and be pleased.

This story underscores that newspaper editorials are not the voice of the newspaper, they are the voice of the publisher, who doesn't even write the editorial. Or, to be fair, on a subject the publisher doesn't care about, it's the babbling of hypoxic editors. If this was generally realized, the public wouldn't be outraged by these editorials, they'd just shake their heads at the shabby pretense.

If Obama has any savvy or class, he'll cancel his ill-considered verdict and let the NY Post, Washington Times and Dallas Morning News back onto his plane. Punishing the reporters for the sins of the editors is not only unfair, it's stupid.

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Those Who Live On Bridges To Nowhere . . .

2008-10-28T21:06:00.000-07:00

Sarah Palin unwisely tried to blast as federal pork a earmark to study fruit flies "in Paris, France" (as if the location had anything to do with the project's worthiness, or the lack of it.)

Palin appeared to be cribbing from the Citizens Against Government Waste's awarding of an "oinker" to a Democratic congressman for appropriating $212,000 for olive fruit fly research. That project's value is hard to ascertain from CAGW's announcement, which contains no details about why it thinks the research is so wasteful.

Given her own record on the subject, Palin ought to do more research before deriding something as pork. Just because it looks ridiculous at first glance, as fruit fly research does to those who are not knowledgeable about science, doesn't mean it is ridiculous. As the lefty site ThinkProgress pointed out in the link I gave, fruit fly research has been quite useful to understanding human diseases. Many fruit fly genes are quite similar to human genes; they exist for the same reasons and do the same thing.

Of course, this grant is not aimed for human health; it is for research on an destructive agricultural pest. California is continually battling such invasive pests. One can debate the merits of the federal government funding such research, but it's hardly wasteful per se. Here's more info on the olive fruit fly's threat.

Olives are a minor crop in California. In 2004, UC Davis Agricultural Extension estimated the value of California's olive oil industry at about $85 million annually. But there's more -- according to the Napa Valley Register, the earmark also goes to fund research into Pierce's disease, a bacterial pest of grapevines. That has been a major concern of winegrape growers in California, and its ravages has sharply cut back on the acreage of vineyards in areas like Temecula. And wine, and the grapes that make them, are much more significant economically. The value of grapes, for wine and table grapes, was $2.76 billion in 2004, according to the Agricultural Resource Marketing Center.

However, why do the olive fruit fly research in France? The author of the earmark, Rep. Mike Thompson, gave a reasonable answer in the Napa Valley Register article:

“The Olive Fruit Fly has infested thousands of California olive groves and is the single largest threat to the U.S. olive and olive oil industries,” he said. “I secured $748,000 for olive fruit fly research and irradiation in the (fiscal year 2008) appropriations bill for the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The USDA will use some of that funding for their research facility in France. This USDA research facility is located in France because Mediterranean countries like France have dealt with the Olive Fruit Fly for decades, while California has only been exposed since the late 1990s. This is not uncommon; the USDA has several international research facilities throughout the world, including Australia, China and Argentina.”

One could argue that the agricultural growers should themselves be funding the research, since they have such an interest in the issue. But the research is by no means as ridiculous as CAGW or Palin say it is.

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Ending Radio Silence

2008-10-26T21:45:00.000-07:00

I hope so, anyway.

Regardless of various and sundry inter-personal dramas (a good deal of which I seem to have missed), it's been a bit hectic at the homestead lately.

I contracted an antibiotic-resistant ear infection in the middle of August. It lasted for over a month and a half, with five doctor visits and four different medication regiments - three antibiotics of increasing power and one steroid along with various fever-controllers, pain-killers, ear drops, etc.

It basically felt like I was underwater, with sounds distorted, odd sensations of pressure, and the odd pain or dizziness. Plus I was constantly exhausted. Things finally cleared up when I was prescribed an antibiotic powerful enough that it had several warnings and my mother (who is a nurse) felt obligated to lecture me about the side effects and dangers for nearly an hour.

About a week after I started feeling better, the Boo came down with bronchitis, which lasted an unusual two and a half weeks (thankfully Julie's contract had just ended, as the doc kept the Boo out of school for a full week for starters). Boo was sick and miserable and we couldn't do anything, so we started catching up on the new Battlestar Galactica, and wound up watching the whole thing whilst the Boo slept in the other room with her humidifier. Mostly loved it, though the writers were certainly bastards here and there.

But anyway, almost two months gone. Just sort of faded in and out. Managed to keep the job up, kept eating and just... recovered. First time I've ever been that sick (I'm very blessed). But still.... fast forward, man. Pretty weird. Like it never happened, except I know a lot about Battlestar Galactica and earaches and have a mild phobia of my earbuds.

Things are finally starting to be normal again now... spent a lot of this weekend preparing for a High School Musical party the Boo was invited to... I had assumed since it was about 'high school' it wasn't a First Grader thing, but I sure was wrong. We watched the first two and then went to the party, which was where one of the Boo's friends' moms had decided to buy tickets to the movie for all the girls in her class(!) and their parents(!!) and rented a hotel ballroom by Disneyland(!!!) so we could have cake and the kids could get face-painting and balloon animals from a professional clown-type(!!!!) as well as getting entire HSM purses full of HSM swag(!!!!!).

I wasn't too excited about High School Musical, but we actually really liked it. Probably because the leads are all so adorable, especially the main couple, who have amazing chemistry (it helps that Vanessa Hudgins has an almost preternatural elfin charm, apparently partially because she's anglo-hispanic-asian-pacific islander.

So, G-rated musicals aside, how about that free market? Would you have believed ten, five, even one year ago that Congressional Republicans and George W. Bush would be buying bad mortgages and banks and sponsoring trillion dollar 'bailouts'? It seems to have passed under the radar to a large extent, but still... what the hell is that?

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Ha!

2008-10-26T09:30:00.000-07:00

As usual, comedy is more truthful than regular reporting. Watch the SNL video spoof of Biden and Murtha and see if you don't agree.

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Bookmark Patterico.net - And Contribute If You Can!

2008-10-25T07:24:00.000-07:00

Patterico.com is out of commission, and may be forever, since it has been cyberjacked with the help of 1&1 Internet. So think carefully if you have or are considering an account with this sleazeball. Here is what was briefly advertised for Patterico's site.

Patterico has endured a lot of inconvenience and expense shifting to a new host (who appears to be much better at keeping his site active, btw). And since his site is heavily into politics, the disruption this close to the election is exceptionally troublesome.

I have given Patterico $15 through Paypal, and hope other Swampers will do the same. It's not a lot of money, and if several of us give it will make a big difference. You can email it to Patterico at his eponymous Gmail address, patterico (at) gmail.com.

What happened to Patterico is a common nightmare to all bloggers, regardless of their politics. And we should show our solidarity with him in any way we can against the sleazy practices he's been a victim of.

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Patterico is at: http://70.32.75.225 -- And Vote McCain For Free Speech

2008-10-22T19:46:00.000-07:00

http://70.32.75.225 Remember that! Patterico is encountering difficulty with his URL over a renewal notification.* So bookmark this address above. Bad timing for such a breakdown, with the election weeks away.

*The original post said the renewal notice was misdirected. Patterico said in comments that is not the case:
"The renewal notification was not misdirected. It was properly directed to 1&1, and it was done two days before the expiration date. They have acknowledged this in e-mails.

I need a good civil lawyer.

Any such attorneys, whatever their political persuasion, who care about stopping such practices abusive to bloggers, please contact Patterico at the above address.

* * * * * * * *

BTW, I am voting for McCain, because I care about the First Amendment.* Obama and the Democrats have been hinting about reinstating the "Fairness" Doctrine, which is government-mandated time to favored political viewpoints. While McCain and conservatives have no love lost for the MSM, they're not showing any similar inclination to suppress the media.

The alarm raised by sensible conservative Stephen Bainbridge is persuasive to me. Bainbridge is no robotic supporter of Republicans; he has long expressed great dissatisfaction with Bush Administration policy and McCain. For him to endorse McCain over this issue is cause for all who think of supporting anyone other than McCain to reconsider.

My support of the First Amendment trumps everything else in this campaign.

And via a link from Bainbridge, a look at what's wrong with Obama from a Libertarian perspective.

*This is my personal political opinion, and does not necessarily reflect the viewpoint of my employer, the North County Times.

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The Palin Rap, And The Rap On Obama

2008-10-20T05:19:00.000-07:00

Sarah Palin took part in two skits on her SNL appearance. This one pictured, of her swaying to a rap song about her candidacy, was fairly funny. The other, not so.

That had some style. OTOH, the endorsement of Obama by Colin Powell, was little more than a bad joke. It's not that McCain is looking better to me, but that Obama keeps looking worse. His endorsement by a mealy-mouthed functionary like Powell did neither any credit.

I heard that profile in political cowardice endorsing Obama, and found it hard to believe my ears. William Ayers, Obama said, did "reprehensible" things in the Weather Underground. (Like a terrorist bombing campaign). However, Powell said, to bring up the subject today is also reprehensible.

That's the mush-brained moral equivalence that Obama excels in. It's reprehensible to bring up the past of an unrepentant terrorist, who has said he doesn't regret his bombing spree, but is a respected person to folks like Obama and Powell.

It may be necessary to hold my nose and vote for McCain after all.

However, I am delighted to announce that our mild-mannered Swamper qpdsteve is in the process of setting up his own blog.

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Caption Contest!

2008-10-17T12:57:00.000-07:00

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Weekend Update

2008-10-11T11:01:00.000-07:00

I've been remiss in posting, and no doubt you are anxious to hear from qdpsteve and David and Julie Scott. That I expect to start next week.

In the meantime I've been working -- and I admit, recreating -- to take my mind off of politics.

So I present this, an example of what I do every Halloween at work. Call it my Web development strategy.

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Too Popular?

2008-10-06T07:37:00.000-07:00

Patterico is among my handful of favorite blogs because its proprietor, Patrick Frey, insists on factuality more than any blog or reporter I know of. He is living proof one can have strong opinions and still be devoted to facts. And, he has savvy guest bloggers like DRJ and WLS.

He got a shout-out from another of my favorites, The Volokh Conspiracy, recently for prodding the LA Times into yet another correction. (See second correction, about the president's ability to fire the chairman of the SEC).

Trouble is, Patterico is harder to reach these days, apparently because his site is too popular for his Web provider's bandwidth.

Patterico, you're approaching megablogger status, so please upgrade your bandwidth! Especially with the presidential election at hand, you really don't want to have any lapses.

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Don't Like The Product? Change The Name?

2008-10-02T07:24:00.000-07:00

After the shock of the $700 billion bailout plan's defeat in the House of Representatives last week, the spinmeisters set to work finding politically correct language to dupe the rubes on Main Street to support it. "Economic stabilization", "rescue" -- anything to call it something other than a bailout.

Bloomberg is inching into this Orwellian transformation,

Bailout Bill Sent Back to House After Senate Passage (Update2)

By James Rowley and Nicholas Johnston

Oct. 2 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. Senate passed a $700 billion financial-market rescue package loaded with inducements for the House of Representatives to approve the measure following its rejection of an earlier version. . .

Michelle Malkin, as is her wont, scorns euphemisms and pungently calls it as she sees it:

Kill the bailout: Operation Hold The Line

By Michelle Malkin • October 2, 2008 05:32 AM

The massive, unprecedented trillion-dollar-plus (remember, they just pulled the figure from thin air) Bailout Crap Sandwich With Sugar On Top returns to the House. A vote is expected on Friday. I keep hearing and reading that public opposition to this rushed-through monstrosity has “softened” in the wake of the Senate’s approval last night. I’m not sure why the bailout pimps keep touting that talking point when countless Americans trying to express their vehement disapproval can’t even get through the FUBAR House e-mail system! . . .

I noticed the same thing as Malkin did -- lots of journo chatter on programs like NPR's Marketplace business report that sentiment is turning in favor of the bailout. But the actual evidence presented is very thin. Business journalists and newspapers have signed on for the bailout, and you're not going to get anything like an objective description of the reasons for opposing the bailout. Gwen Ifill would be more likely to back McCain.

Marketplace did a segment yesterday based on the oh-so-objective assumption that those opposed to the bailout were irrationally resentful, and willing to hurt themselves to get back at Wall Street's masters of the universe. I'd say the public is rationally resentful of having its pockets picked to help those far wealthier than themselves.

I'd also say it's irrational to cure a debt-caused crisis by loading up the country with still more debt. And still more irrational is the assumption that the presumption of mortgage-backed securities are undervalued now. Those securities were wildly overvalued during the housing/credit bubble.

This supposed disaster of falling prices is really just the market correcting that mistake. When that process is finished, the economy can start to grow again. And by the way, the affordable housing will have been corrected. The more government intervenes to (vainly) re-inflate the bubble, the longer this inevitable process will take, and the more taxpayer money will be wasted.

Instead of doing a pseudoscientific piece calling those who oppose the bailout as irrational, Marketplace could perform a much more useful service by probing the psychology of bubbles. There was plenty of evidence at the time that real estate values had gotten totally out of whack with economic fundamentals. But those who discussed this were ignored. Cheerleaders were more valued than expertise. Why do people keep making the same mistake, and how can we prevent it?

But Marketplace apparently isn't talking to folks like me.

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Clarity

2008-09-30T18:40:00.000-07:00

I was deliberately mysterious about the Swamp's future because I didn't know its fate. Plainly, the demands of work and the hassles of being the only poster were getting to me. I took a break of a few days, and the relief was amazing. I can't go back to posting as before, that's fer shur.

But I've had people volunteer to share the posting duties -- namely qdpsteve and the Swamp's original founders, David and Julie Scott. They have my thanks and gratitude.

So expect posts from these folks, and perhaps others, in the near future. We do want people from across the political spectrum.

Apologies for the confusion, over the past few days from my absence, but there you have it. I shall be one of several, now that I am handing back The One Ring of Swamp Control. See, those dopey Bored of the Rings references had a point after all, besides making me giggle uncontrollably.

And now for the political question: What about that $700 billion bailout being defeated? I was delighted. What about you? How did your congresscritter vote?

Oh, and the SEC has relaxed that dratted "mark to market" rule blamed for this meltdown. How about "mark to fantasy"? That, along with the ban on short selling more than a thousand stocks, will help hide that depressing negative information.

Don't you feel more prosperous already?

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So I Was Late! --- Here's Part Of The Tale!

2008-09-30T06:54:00.000-07:00

"If I were thee," said Goodgulf, "I would start on thy journey soon."

Frito looked up absently from his rutabaga tea.

"For half a groat you can be me, Goodgulf. I don't remember volunteering for this Ring business."

"This is not the time for idle banter," said the Wizard, pulling a rabbit from his battered hat. "Dildo left days ago and awaits you at Riv'n'dell, as will I. There the fate of the Ring will be decided by all the peoples of Lower Middle Earth."

Frito pretended to be engrossed in his cup as Spam entered from the dining room and began tidying up the hole, packing up the last of Dildo's belongings for storage.

"Lo, Master Frito," he rasped, pulling a greasy forelock. "Just gettin' the rest o' the stuff together for your uncle what mysteriously disappeared wi'out a trace. Strange business that, eh?" Seeing that no explanation was forthcoming, the faithful servant shuffled off into Dildo's bedroom.

Goodgulf, hastily retrieving his rabbit, who was being loudly sick on the carpet, resumed speaking. "Are you sure he can be trusted?"

Frito smiled. "Of course. Spam's been a true friend of mine since we were weanlings at obedience school together."

"And he knows nothing of the Ring?"

"Nothing," said Frito. "I am sure of it."

Goodgulf looked dubiously toward the closed door of the bedroom. "You still have it, don't you?"

Frito nodded and fished out the chain of paper clips that secured it to his tattersall bowling shirt. "Then be careful with it," said Goodgulf, "for it has many strange powers."

"Like turning my pocket green?" asked the young boggie, turning the small circlet in his stubby fingers. Fearfully he stared at it, as he had so many times in the past few days. It was made of bright metal and was encrusted with strange devices and inscriptions. Around the inner surface was written something in a language unknown to Frito.

"I can't make out the words," said Frito.

"No, you cannot," said Goodgulf. "They are elvish, in the tongue of Fordor. A rough translation is:

"This Ring, no other, is made by the elves,
Who'd pawn their own mother to grab it themselves,
Ruler of creeper, mortal, and scallop,
This is a sleeper that packs quite a wallop.
The Power almighty rests in this Lone Ring.
The Power, alrighty, for doing your Own Thing.
If broken or busted, it cannot be remade.
If found, send to Sorhed (the postage is prepaid)."

"Shakestoor, it isn't," said Frito, hurriedly putting the Ring back in his shirt pocket.

"But a dire warning nonetheless," said Goodgulf. "Even now Sorhed's tools are abroad sniffing for this ring, and the time grows short before they smell it here. It is the time to set off for Riv'n'dell."

The old magician stood, walked to the bedroom door, and opened it with a jerk. With a heavy crash, Spam fell forward ear first, his pockets full of Dildo's best mithril-plate tablespoons. "And this will be your faithful companion."

As Goodgulf passed into the bedroom, Spam grinned sheepishly at Frito with a lop-eared stupidity Frito had learned to love, futilely trying to hide the spoons in his pockets.

Ignoring Spam, Frito called fearfully after the Wizard. "But--but--there are still many preparations I must make! My bags-"

"Have no worry," said Goodgulf as he held out two valises. "I took the precaution of packing them for you."

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All Wil Be Explained Later This Weekend

2008-09-26T18:36:00.000-07:00

"This Great Ring is much desired by all, then," said Frito.

"And they desire a curse!" cried Goodgulf, waving his wand with passion. "For as surely as the Ring gives power, just as surely it becomes the master! The wearer slowly changes, and never to the good. He grows mistrustful and jealous of his power as his heart hardens. He loves overmuch his strengths and develops stomach ulcers. He becomes logy and irritable, prone to neuritis, neuralgia, nagging backache, and frequent colds. Soon no one invites him to parties anymore."

"A most horrible treasure, this Great Ring," said Frito.

"And a horrible burden for he who bears it," said Goodgulf. "For some unlucky one must carry it from Sorbed's grasp into danger and certain doom. Someone must take the ring to the Zazu Pits of Fordor, under the evil nose of the wrathful Sorbed, yet appear so unsuited to his task that he will not be soon found out."

Frito shivered in sympathy for such an unfortunate.

"Then the bearer should be a complete and utter dunce," he laughed nervously.

Goodgulf glanced at Dildo, who nodded and casually flipped a small, shining object into Frito's lap. It was a ring.

"Congratulations," said Dildo somberly. "You've just won the booby prize."

* * * * * * * * * *

The elf looked doubtfully at the boggies. "You guys know how to ride?" Without waiting for an answer he whistled loudly through his gold teeth.

A clump of high sedge rustled and several overweight merino sheep bounded into view, bleating irritably. "Mount up," said Garfinkel.

Frito, more or less athwart an unpromising ungulate, rode last in the procession away from the Gallowine toward Riv'n'dell.

He slipped his hand into his pocket, found the Ring, and took it out in the fading light. Already it was beginning to work its slow change upon him, the transformation of which Dildo had warned.

He was constipated.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

"This, too, is grave," declared Orlon. "It is only a matter of time before they come here," he said, pulling a shawl over his head and making a gesture of throwing something of a conciliatory nature to a shark, "and as neutrals, we would have no choice..."

Frito shuddered.

"The Ring and it's bearer must go hence," agreed Goodgulf, "but where? Who shall guard it?"

"The elves," said Gimlet.

"The dwarves," said Legolam.

"The wizards," said Arrowroot.

"The Men of Twodor," said Goodgulf.

"That leaves only Fordor," said Orlon. "But even a retarded troll would not go there."

"Even a dwarf," admitted Legolam.

Frito suddenly felt that all eyes were on him.

"Couldn't we just drop it down a storm drain, or pawn it and swallow the ticket?" he said.

"Alas," said Goodgulf solemnly, "It is not that easy."

"But why?"

"Alas," explained Goodgulf.

"Alackaday," Orlon agreed.

"But fear not, dear boggie," continued Orlon, "you shall not go alone."

"Good old Gimlet will go with you," said Legolam.

"And fearless Legolam," said Gimlet.

"And noble king Arrowroot," said Bromosel.

"And faithful Bromosel," said Arrowroot.

"And Moxie, Pepsi, and Spam," said Dildo.

"And Goodgulf Grayteeth," added Orlon.

"Indeed," said Goodgulf, glaring at Orlon, and if looks could maim, the old elf would have left in a basket.

"So be it. You shall leave when the omens are right," said Orlon, consulting a pocket horoscope, "and unless I'm very much mistaken, they will be unmatched in half an hour."

Frito groaned. "I wish I had never been born," he said.

"Do not say that, dear Frito," cried Orlon, "It was a happy minute for us all when you were born."...

It Was Fun

2008-09-24T11:10:00.001-07:00

Keeping up a blog can be a huge task if you're diligent about it. But now I have three blogs, this one, another about science and another about biotech.

It's too much, and something has to go, namely this blog. I have to put more energy into my work-related activities. The Festering Swamp, fun as it has been for most of the year and a half I've devoted to it, isn't something that I can spare the energy for. And there are many other blogs by Cathy's fans. I'll update this final post later with the names and links to some of them.

If anyone wants to take over, let me know in the comments, and I'll give them the information.

Thanks for playing!

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What Happened To The Fannie/Freddie Reform Bill?

2008-09-23T06:28:00.000-07:00

McCain supporters have been touting his cosponsorship of a 2005 bill that would have put tighter controls on failed mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

McCain certainly had the right idea with the bill, whose main sponsor was Sen. Chuck Hagel, (R-Neb).

Sadly, that bill, the Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act of 2005, never passed. McCain supporters say Democrats killed the bill. You can see that meme repeated on dozens of blogs. But I'd like to see more evidence on this point.

Republicans controlled both houses at the time. They had 55 of 100 Senate seats, giving them a margin of 10 seats. And in the House, the GOP controlled 232 of 425 seats, a margin of 29. But the bill never saw the light of day.

So what happened to the legislation? Were any Republicans opposed to it? What part did Democrats play in its defeat? Did they threaten a filibuster? What was President Bush's view of the legislation? How much of a priority was the bill for McCain?

I'd like you, dear Swampers, to find out. Dig into the records. Use the habit of historians, and go back to contemporary accounts. News articles, blog posts, government records, etc, are great. These will have the advantage of being written at the time, closer to the events. And, they will not have been skewed by the partisan lens of this election.

I will post what you find.

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The Dictator Clause -- Or, Rabid Right-Wingers To The Rescue

2008-09-22T15:27:00.000-07:00

“Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.”
-- From the $700 bilion bailout bill the Bush administration is trying to rush through Congress.

Michelle Malkin has much more about why conservatives should not trust Paulson.

Malkin did what I like best in such controversies -- she looked at the record and showed how Paulson had made a slew of falsified predictions about the housing and financial crisis since last year. Why trust him now? Malkin rightly asks.

Lefty and exposed sock puppeteer Glenn Greenwald writes about conservative opposition. Amusingly, even while trashing the "rabid" right, Greenwald reluctantly admits that support from those Neanderthals is essential to stop this power grab.

Right-wing opposition to the Paulson plan is vital for having any meaningful chance to stop it. Does anyone have any confidence at all in the Democrats' willingness and/or ability to impede this bailout train if the Bush administration and the Right were vigorously behind it, warning the nation of impending doom unless we submit to vast, unchecked government power of the type Henry Paulson is demanding? The instances of complete Democratic acquiescence under those circumstances -- including when they "controlled" the Congress -- are far too numerous to allow any rational person to think Democrats, standing alone, would stop the Paulson plan. As sad as it is, meaningful right-wing opposition is critical for that to happen.

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McCain's Mortgage Lobbyist -- And Obama's Smear Team

2008-09-22T07:52:00.000-07:00

Glass houses and all that.

The McCain camp has strongly criticized Obama for having links to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the failed mortgage giants. But McCain has his own ties, and one of them was revealed recently: McCain's campaign manager, Rick Davis, was paid $30,000 a month for five years to defend Fannie and Freddie against government regulation. (H/t to commenter doug.)

“You can say what you want about free-market distortions, but people like the system because it gets them into houses cheap,” Mr. Davis said to Institutional Investor magazine in 2000, adding that he would run the advocacy group out of his Alexandria, Va., lobbying firm.

That article appeared in today's New York Times. But U.S. News & World Report had it first, in a Sept. 19 blog post.

As John McCain said in remarks today:

The financial crisis we're living through today started with the corruption and manipulation of our home mortgage system. At the center of the problem were the lobbyists, politicians, and bureaucrats who succeeded in persuading Congress and the administration to ignore the festering problems at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

It seems a little bizarre then that McCain's campaign manager Rick Davis was hired—after running McCain's failed 2000 presidential campaign—to head up a group called the Homeownership Alliance, a Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac advocacy group, which the Wall Street Journal reported (in August 2000) had a website creed of being dedicated to: "exposing and defeating trends that would harm consumer access to the lowest-cost mortgage option." The group viewed as threats those who are "seeking to spread unfounded fears about risks to the housing system."

* * * * * * * * * *

Commenter Mike K. pointed out that Obama's campaign very likely is linked to a smear campaign against Sarah Palin. This is the result of a considerable amount of digging in the blogosphere.

Michelle Malkin neatly summarizes the evidence:

A collaborative investigative effort by our friends at The Jawa Report to expose an apparently astroturfed, anti-Sarah Palin smear campaign seems to have caused late-night panic in Barack Obama-linked p.r. circles. The bloggers digging into the provenance of anti-Sarah Palin smears on the web got results last night/early this morning while most elite journalists were still in their pajamas sleeping.

First, read this. Read the whole thing. Rusty Shackleford — with help from Jane of Armies of Liberation, Stable Hand, the Jawa team, Dan Riehl, Ace of Spades, and Patterico – traced a Palin-bashing YouTube video to a Democrat public relations firm, Winner and Associates, and one of its employees, Ethan S. Winner. They believe the voiceover for the ad — which spreads the lie that Sarah Palin belonged to a fringe third party, the Alaska Independence Party — was done by a professional whose voice they believe was also featured in several Obama ads and other spots produced by Obama top strategist and astroturfer extraordinaire David Axelrod’s firm.

UPDATE: Astroturfing is a particularly loathsome form of deceptive PR that creates the illusion of public sentiment for something by such tactics as planting manufactured evidence and ginning up phony support for some cause by operatives claiming to be just folks.

Here is a link to a Businessweek article describing Axelrod as the "master of Astroturfing".

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The Excuse -- If Obama's Defeated, It's Because Of Racists

2008-09-21T07:25:00.000-07:00

Yes, it's those racist folks called "Bubba" who may do in The Messiah, despite the polls (allegedly) showing him cruising to victory.

That's according to a Gannett News Service article, which seems to me like the first draft of revisionist history in case Obama loses. In the spring, Obama was supposed to be the Democrat's invincible candidate. Now that The Precious is looking like a mere mortal, who could actually lose to McCain, some people are ginning up a politically correct answer.

Of course, that answer is racism.

Ever since Tom Bradley got defeated for governor of California by George Deukmejian, despite being in the lead in polls, there has been talk of a "Bradley effect" -- that some people were reluctant to vote for Bradley as a black person, but didn't want to say so because racism is socially unacceptable.

WASHINGTON -- Former Republican House of Representatives Majority Leader Dick Armey calls it "the Bubba vote." Democratic Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland says Barack Obama's race is "the elephant in the corner."

No matter how bluntly it is put, the race question is one of several fuzzy variables in the 2008 presidential campaign that are giving pollsters fits. Much careful thought and second-guessing are going on throughout the nation's political polling industry.

Pollsters wonder if some Americans are lying when they say they are uncommitted or plan to vote for Obama in November, raising the question of whether the so-called Bradley effect has clouded the 2008 race. . .

"There's an awful lot of people in America, bless their heart, who simply are not emotionally prepared to vote for a black man," Armey said in an interview during the Republican National Convention. "I think it's unfortunate. I think it's deplorable. But it's there and it's real and it will affect the vote."

Let's stipulate that some people are racist, and would not vote for a black man (or woman). But there are also others who preferentially cast their vote for black people. Obama won the support of black Democrats in overwhelming majorities, far disproportionate to the Democratic populace as a whole, which was more closely divided. Why is that not also racism?

What was most lacking from this article was evidence to back up its claim of closet racist voters. Here is what passes for evidence, in its entirety:

In the 1982 California governor's race, former Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley, a black candidate, led in preelection polls but lost at the ballot box. Since then, there have been questions about whether poll respondents always speak truthfully about race.

A black candidate led in polls, but lost an election in 1982. So that raised "questions" about people speaking truthfully about race. And from questions, a conjecture is made, one that conveniently exculpates pollsters from any blame. There is no research cited to back up this conjecture -- it doesn't deserve to be called theory -- just a bunch of quotes.

Perhaps there is research backing the "Bradley Effect." If so, the reporter should have cited the evidence instead of writing such a slapdash article, one that places those who don't vote for Obama under suspicion of being closet racists.

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Who's Your Prevaricator? (UPDATED)

2008-09-20T07:14:00.000-07:00

(Since certain Swampers so strongly object to the word "lie" in describing politicians, I have rewritten this post to remove the l-word). I never knew the public was so solicitous about not hurting the feelings of politicians!)

Like Pinocchio, politicians prevaricate.
Instead of just looking at political prevarications one by one, it's time to do a comparison between Barack Obama and John McCain about their respective fibs, stretches of the truth and misleading statements. -- what they are, and how serious they are.

So I'm opening the floor for nominations. I'll examine the tall tales and come up with a comprehensive judgment of how badly each candidate has stretched the truth.

And I'll kick things off with the prevaricating palaver I think each candidate has told, directly or through their campaigns. I am going to count a fib told by a candidate's campaign as equal to one told directly.

Obama
His claims about not knowing of Jeremiah Wright's extreme anti-American views have to rank among the top truth-stretches. Obama was in his church for 20 years, and by Obama's own account was made a Christian, married and had his children baptized by Wright. And when Obama finally threw Wright under the bus, it was for statements Wright had made that were the same as he'd been making for years. And Wright said last year in a New York Times article that Obama had told him he'd have to distance himself politically from Wright in the election.

Obama also flatly said in 2004 that he would not run for president in 2008.

Obama promised to seek an agreement with McCain so they could both run publicly funded campaigns. When McCain offered earlier this year, Obama turned him down.

Obama has also shaded the truth about his close relationship with Tony Rezko, the crooked real estate mogul.

Worst of all, Obama has dissembled about the closeness of his friendship with unrepentant terrorist Bill Ayers, who has never apologized for his role in bombings with the Weather Underground.

New Addition: Factcheck.org says Obama told a "whopper" by saying McCain's Social Security plan would have put recipients' money in the stock market.

In Daytona Beach, Obama said that "if my opponent had his way, the millions of Floridians who rely on it would've had their Social Security tied up in the stock market this week." He referred to "elderly women" at risk of poverty, and said families would be scrambling to support "grandmothers and grandfathers."

That's not true. The plan proposed by President Bush and supported by McCain in 2005 would not have allowed anyone born before 1950 to invest any part of their Social Security taxes in private accounts. All current retirees would be covered by the same benefits they are now.

Obama would have been correct to say that many workers under age 58 would have had some portion of their Social Security benefits affected by the current market turmoil – if they had chosen to participate. And market drops would be a worry for those who retire in future decades. But current retirees would not have been affected.

New addition: Obama's campaign may be linked to a series of lies and smears of Sarah Palin, according to the Jawa Report.

Extensive research was conducted by the Jawa Report to determine the source of smears directed toward Republican Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin. Those smears included false allegations that she belonged to a secessionist political party and that she has radical anti-American views.

Our research suggests that a subdivision of one of the largest public relations firms in the world most likely started and promulgated rumors about Sarah Palin that were known to be false. These rumors were spread in a surreptitious manner to avoid exposure.

It is also likely that the PR firm was paid by outside sources to run the smear campaign. While not conclusive, evidence suggests a link to the Barack Obama campaign.

The research is pretty detailed. While short of absolute proof, it very strongly suggests an "Astroturf" campaign of the sort Obama media strategist David Axelrod, a PR flack, specializes in.

McCain
McCain claims to oppose lobbyists, and not to get advice from them yet his campaign staff is full of lobbyists. Campaign manager Rick Davis co-founded a lobbying firm, and McCain has dozens of lobbyists on his staff. (They don't lobby while working for McCain, but that's their profession before, and likely, after).

McCain has claimed a number of accomplishments for running mate Palin that are not factual. Among them, selling the governor's jet on eBay for a profit, that she told Congress that Alaska didn't need the Gravina Island bridge, and that Palin had never asked for earmarks for Alaska. (She asked for nearly $200 million this year).

Some of McCain's ads attacking Obama have been not entirely truthful -- according to Karl Rove!

So this is my starter list. These, just off the top of my head, show Obama as having told bigger fibs and prevarications than McCain -- but with his tall tales about Sarah Palin, McCain may be catching up. Still, I don't want to lend a sense of false equivalency. Obama's factually challenged statements are worse, because they are fundamental falsehoods about his own life and political beliefs. McCain's truth-stretchers about Palin are more in the line of puffing up credentials that were positive, if a bit thin.

Add your own favorite prevarications in the comments, and let's do a comparison!

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Johnny Mac, Your Economic Ignorance Is Showing

2008-09-18T21:38:00.000-07:00

Taking his pander act to a new level of inanity, John McCain has blamed SEC Chairman Christopher Cox for the current financial meltdown. McCain said if he were Bush, he'd fire Cox.

The idea that one person could have prevented the vast assortment of ill-advised investments and schemes that has made markets around the world shudder is nonsense. And attacking Cox, a champion of the free-market policies McCain supposedly supports, is something one would expect of leftists Democrats who know nothing about economics, not a Republican presidential nominee.

If any one person deserves blaming for our economic mess, it's not Cox, but Alan Greenspan. The former Federal Reserve Chairman -- who had a lot of help --inflated two bubbles, each bigger than the other.

The first was the tech bubble, which collapsed in 2001. The second was the credit bubble, of which the subprime market was just a part. Desperate to avoid a nasty recession, Greenspan got the Fed to lower interest rates in a dizzying downward staircase spiral from 6.5 percent, bottoming out in 2003 at 1 percent.

Taking inflation into account, 1 percent or anything in that territory was a negative interest rate. The staggering implications of this were overlooked at the time, until Economics 101 caught up with us: What you owe you will eventually need to pay back.

A negative interest rate means that saving money is punished, and taking out debt is rewarded. It's the very opposite of sound financial policy, and millions of Americans were encouraged to go into debt, supposedly for the good of the economy. Elaborate rationalizations were invented for this debt, the fallacy that residential real estate is a surefire investment being the biggest of them.

By the time Cox was appointed to the SEC, in 2005, the real estate and credit markets were topping out. There were no more vast pools of homebuyers to be tapped, because credit requirements were so lax.

There were not only subprime loans, but even scarier loans that required no documentation of income. Borrowers merely had to state their income, with no documentation required, to get a loan. These stated income loans popularly became known as "liar loans," because lying was implicitly encourged. After all, if a borrower couldn't pay, another borrower would come around ready to take the home off his hands, for an even higher prices.

At the end, "liar loans" were topped in audacity by loans that could be obtained without any verification: no income, no job no assets - so-called "NINJA" loans.

All these mortgages were used as the base of toxic debt securities repackaged and sold around the world. And in other parts of finance, other insane financial models were built on the assumption of ever-increasing wealth. Cox didn't crack down on these, of course, but had he tried opposition would have been fierce. And it wasn't an issue the likes of McCain were concerned with anyway.

The most vexing lie from all of this is the "lesson" that government regulators were lax, and should have intervened more diligently to prevent this financial excess. Government intervention brought on this mess by deranging economic fundamentals in a way that was doomed to collapse catastrophically once the greatest fool had entered the market and bought a home he couldn't afford.

Short-selling, the bugaboo McCain and some leftist Democrats invoke as the reason for the financial market's latest turmoil, is a symptom of what had gone wrong. In a market blinded by unthinking optimism, short sellers were the skunk at the garden party, revealing the nasty truth.

So-called "naked shorting," in which the seller of securities doesn't even arrange to borrow them or ensure a later purchase, is controversial, and McCain is reasonable when he condemns the practice. But he also condemned the entire practice of short-selling for supposedly destroying good companies. As the Wall Street Journal pointed out, that's a fundamental misunderstanding of what short-selling does for a market economy:

"It adds valuable information to the market about what investors believe to be the price direction of a stock. Demonizing short-sellers as a band of criminals, or barring short-selling outright in financial stocks, as regulators in the U.K. did Thursday, removes information from the market," the WSJ stated.

Removing information reduces market transparency and increases risks for investors. The logical result will be risk-shy investors, who already take enough risk in the market as it is, will be frightened out of stocks altogether, or at least lower the price they'll pay for them.

That's easy to understand for anyone except a pandering politician like McCain who is so desperate to become president he will say nearly anything if he thinks it will get him votes. (I'm being charitable to McCain here, by assuming he knows he's spouting nonsense. More chillingly, McCain may be truly ignorant of the basics of a free-market economy. Just like Barack Obama.)

The WSJ adds a further zinger to correct McCain's torrent of economic malarkey:

In case Mr. McCain is interested, overall short interest in financial companies actually declined by 20% between July and the end of August. That's right: Far from driving this crisis, shorts were net buyers of financial stocks this summer, as they must buy stocks back to close their positions and realize their gains (or losses).

McCain has previously admitted economics is not his strong suit. If McCain is to be worthy of the presidency, he should go back to school on the subject and stop proposing remedies that won't work for issues he doesn't understand.

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The Politician And His Terrorist Pal

2008-09-16T20:36:00.000-07:00

One of the faults of the press is that we gloss over stuff that happened long ago as "old news," even when it is significant. Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama's friendship with Bill Ayers, the unrepentant ex-Weatherman terrorist, is one of those issues.

Obama's refusal to disavow Ayers, who won't disavow his participating in a terrorist bombing campaign, renders him unfit to be president.

A little history: Ayers and the Weathermen fought violently against the Vietnam war. They were overtly inspired by communism. Ayers sports a red star on his own blog, which is worthy reading to see what a longterm chum of Obama's thinks of America.

Fortunately, the only casualties of their bombs were fellow Weathermen. Ayers went into hiding, and ultimately re-entered society after evading the statute of limitations for his crimes.

"I don't regret setting bombs," Ayers infamously said, in a 2001 New York Times article.

Obama, who worked with Ayers on the failed Annenberg Challenge, a multi-million dollar flop of a project to improve public education in Chicago, gives this explanation when asked about his refusal to disavow Ayers: Obama was 8 years old when Ayers committed his terrorist acts. And naturally, we're expected to believe, Obama today, when he presumably has learned of Ayers' bombing campaign, doesn't have to take that into consideration.

Click on the link above to see the Obama campaign's attempt to exculpate The Precious. You'll see a lot of quotes from various news organizations and individuals downplaying the importance of Obama's association with Ayers. But nowhere in that piece is Obama actually quoted condemning Ayers' terrorist actions, let alone calling on Ayers to apologize for them.

Obama denounced his former mentor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, after his pastor uttered hateful, racist and anti-American statements. But Wright never actually committed or planned terrorist acts. Ayers did commit terrorist acts -- he has admitted to being "guilty as sin" -- and has never apologized for them. Still, Obama refuses to disavow Ayers.

The conclusion is inescapable: Making politically inconvenient statements is a much bigger sin in Obama's book than being an unrepentant terrorist. That alone renders him totally unfit for the job of president, a position in which being able to distinguish between friend and foe is a prime requisite.

While there's plenty of fault to find with Republican presidential nominee John McCain, his record consists of opposing those who make war on America -- even at great personal cost -- not palling around with them.

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Palin/Hillary On SNL

2008-09-14T11:32:00.000-07:00

If you missed Saturday Night Live's Palin/Hillary parody, here it is. Just click the photo to see a video of goofy American politics almost as surreal as the actual thing.

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Thag You Very Buch

2008-09-13T10:40:00.000-07:00

Bilbo Baggins' cold-distorted words spring to mind, as I enjoy the company of what appears to be a rhinovirus. So I'll just make a few comments today, and do what the boggies do in Bored of the Rings, which is to say, lapse back into a coma, or at least a delirium, or uneasy drowsiness.

Where was I? Oh, yes, thank you very much for sticking with the Swamp in its vicissitudes. In a week or two, I plan to migrate this peripatetic blog to the new digs at WordPress, which I haven't yet finished. So . . . here's your chance to help out with some suggestions.

Mosey on over to the link and then give me your advice.

Links? What more should be added? I've got a fair amount, but I will miss some.

Design? Any thoughts on what's there? Ways to make it better? Things you like?

Commenting? Shall we use Haloscan? Mike LaRoche is using it over at SouthTexian. Nancy Catmull Matocha and cassandra may have some input as well. Mike K., too. And check out his post on how tax-loving Democrats ruin the fiscal structure of the states they move to.

Now here is an unplanned political rant goaded by what Mike K. wrote:

I emphatically agree that the most active Democrats, such as those who control the California Legislature, look on rich people and companies as suckers to be fleeced. They just assume this wealth will always be there, and don't know what to do when it leaves. They believe that social services are a natural right. And as Ayn Rand pointed out, this means those with the wealth and skills to provide these services are treated as slaves by those who don't have the skills.

It is one thing to say that it is a good deed for the wealthy to support the poor; quite another to make it an obligation to be enforced at the point of a gun. If you penalize wealth and success and reward poverty, guess what you're going to get?

Arnold showed some promise of being able to stem this tide. But he failed, and went along with the Democrats in supporting huge spending plans that have wrecked the state's budget again. Sadly, from my point of view, the Republicans who get it economically most often bring on a social conservative agenda I don't support. Moreover, social conservatives are motivated and energetic by their religious beliefs, while those who wish for economic and social freedom aren't similarly motivated.

Or to put it another way, libertarians (small-l and big-L) don't seem to have much support in either major party, the way Ronald Reagan managed to do with his grand coalition. So as someone of that libertarian persuasion, which rights do I vote to give up? My answer now is neither. I'd rather vote for a losing candidate, who stands for what I believe, than vote for a winner who doesn't stand for what I believe.

California doesn't even offer that bad choice now. California is sliding into a sea of Democratic welfare statism that if unchecked, will ruin its economy. I'm a native Californian, but Mike K. has lived here two years longer than I have. And what he sees of the Golden State's future should frighten all the state's citizens. It sure does me.

Don't laugh at our plight, Texas. You'll get your experience with Democratic nanny-staters before too long.

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A Plea From The Bowels

2008-09-12T07:32:00.000-07:00

One of the best things about this country is that when emergencies or disasters take place, people pitch in to help each other, without regard to race, religion or political beliefs.

The Republicans showed this solidarity in their recent convention by suspending most of the first day's activities, in recognition of the threat by Hurricane Gustav. They asked for relief supplies and donations, instead of political contributions.

Texans near the coast are faced with an even bigger threat now from Hurricane Ike. Swamper Mike LaRoche, in San Antonio, thankfully appears to be well out of harm's way. I don't know where our other TexaSwamper, TexasJew, is located, but I hope our oilman is far away from Ike, and his crew and equipment will be unscathed by Ike's passage.

McCain and Obama put aside partisan differences to appear at a memorial on Sept. 11. That, of course, was not a natural catastrophe, but the product of human hatred and violent Islamist extremism. The principle remains, however, that in times of dire need Americans cast aside all other differences and help each other.

So here's a weekend wish that the McCain and Obama campaigns will tone down the sniping for the time being. The right should stop with the phony lipstick on a pig talk about Obama. The left should show some decency and stop treating Sarah Palin as a Christian ayatollah in pumps. And online magazines that aim for respectability should think twice before they publish ill-informed drivel such as Cintra Wilson wrote about Palin.

And during this pause from the insanity, people of the left and right should try to understand one another. I'm not saying agree with each other, but understand where their ideological opponents are coming from.

The Palin nomination has revealed a huge gulf of incomprehension between her backers, who in some instances verge on cultish admiration, and opponents, who often treat her as a moose-eating Terminator programmed to destroy American democracy.

The wildly inaccurate Internet rumors about Palin, picked up by no less than Maureen Dowd, indicate that to many people, facts don't matter. A perfectly reasonable statement by Palin about praying that Americans are doing God's will in Iraq was transformed into a call for Christian jihad by a sloppy or biased Associated Press reporter. (The two possibilities are not mutually exclusive).

Far worse, ABC's Charles Gibson repeated the doctored quote in his interview with Palin. That's really inexcusable, but it's too often how the press works. If one reporter writes it, a falsehood becomes transmogrified into a "fact" cited by other reporters. At the least, Gibson owes Palin an apology. And Gibson should be more careful with his facts from now on.

For all of us, a little forbearance is in order, and a little less certitude. Whatever one's religion, or the lack of one, Oliver Cromwell's advice to the Church of Scotland is worth pondering:

"I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken."

And with that, here's a hearty wish that Mike L. and TexasJew will spend the weekend in a safe place, with friends and loved ones, sipping mojitos or downing Patron shots (or other favorite concotions) and avoiding the insanity.

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Basking In The '80s

2008-09-11T06:48:00.000-07:00

Ah, those 1980s. Ronnie and Maggie, a couple of decrepit Soviet leaders, then Gorby. "There you go again . . . make my day . . . Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" "Follow me around . . . they'd be very bored."

But this is not about politics. This is about another activity altogether, one that reached remarkable heights in that glittering decade . . . music.

MTV. Video killed the radio star, with style. And the bands. R.E.M. Devo. Berlin. The B-52s. The Beat Farmers.

So for a moment, leave behind the lipstick on a pig, earmarks, Barry O giving H-Rod the finger and all the other present puerilities. Walk through the transdimensional ovoid appearing in front of you . . . and give yourself an aural blast from the past.

Click the photo above to begin the musical journey.

Journey?

Nah. This trip is courtesy of the Belle Stars. A sign of great musical times.

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Sully And The C-Word

2008-09-09T18:38:00.000-07:00

The c-word is Christianist, a word Andrew Sullivan flings about quite liberally when speaking about conservative Christians. It's a word with really odious connotations, and Sullivan demeans himself by using it so freely.

"Christianist" is a parallel construction to "Islamist," which refers to those Moslems who wage war to establish an Islamic theocracy. Since Sept. 11, it's also been associated with terrorism.

There are certainly a few on the fringes of Christianity who could rightfully be considered Christianist by such a standard, but only a few. They don't represent most conservative or evangelical Christians, who live and advocate entirely peaceful lives.

Sullivan recently put James Dobson on his list for the awful crime of praying for torrential rain during Obama's outdoor convention event. Dobson's prayer -- which went unanswered, by the way -- is scarcely to be compared with the hateful prayers that emanate from Islamists daily for the destruction of Israel and the United States. It was nothing more than a cheap stunt.

Sullivan put Sarah Palin on his list for inquiring about possibly banning books from the city library. That was disturbing, to be sure, but Palin never actually acted on that idea. And of course, Palin never advocates violence, which Islamists routinely do. And Palin, despite her worrisome flirtation with creationist rhetoric, has not pushed for such an agenda in Alaskan schools.

As an atheist, I don't like the attempts by some conservative Christians to attach the trappings of their faith to government institutions. But I know enough to distinguish between certain conservative Christians (not all by any means) who are overzealous and not heedful of the equal rights of others; and of violent psychopaths who take shelter under the name of religion.

Those Islamist psychopaths, by the way, would gladly dismember Sullivan and his "Christianist" opponents alike. Sullivan, despite his hysterical rantings, is in no such danger from the likes of Dobson or Palin.

It doesn't speak well for Sullivan's grasp of reality that he can't tell the difference.

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Fiscal Reality Catches Up To The Precious

2008-09-08T20:05:00.000-07:00

Suddenly, the presidential campaign of Barack Obama is in deep doo-doo. Not only is it struggling to deal with the GOP vice-presidential selection of Sarah Palin, it's facing a serious financial disadvantage.

The New York Times describes Obama's financial woes in a new article. But the news isn't news for those who read the doughty blogger Patterico. His guest poster, WLS, has been saying for the past couple of weeks that Obama's victory balloon was more in need of money than hot air.

Obama, WLS calculated, had set himself an unsustainable burn rate to fund his vast, expensive campaign apparatus -- remember his boast of contending in all 50 states? That's gone now, as fundraising slows up, but the expenses remain.

And McCain, by collecting public money and keeping a lower burn rate, will have cash but also the time to campaign. He won't have to be kept busy fundraising like Obama will. And the Republican National Committee is getting plenty of money that can help McCain.

Obama has had trouble handling large sums of money before. When he and unrepentant terrorist Bill Ayers worked on Chicago's Annenberg Challenge to improve education, nearly $50 million was spent with very little to show for it.

It is good that we're finding out Obama's trouble with fiscal discipline now and not before he becomes president -- an event that now seems increasingly unlikely.

It is also fitting that Obama is now hoist by his own petard for breaking his promise to seek public funding. Obama cynically broke his promise for political advantage, but he would have been better off taking the money. It's a nice mini-morality play about the perils of lying.

WLS did a fine job of cutting through the numbers to tell the story, earlier than the MSM did. That's what can be done by someone who, unlike many in the MSM, isn't besotted with The Precious.

Go over to WLS at Patterico's, read the articles, and give your thanks.

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Bread And Circuses From The Rs And The Ds

2008-09-06T18:36:00.000-07:00

Both Democrats and Republicans say they want to discuss substantive issues; it's that other party which seeks to distract the conversation with trivial controversies. Both are wrong, and right. And two examples this week, one from each party, reveals the sorry state of political debate among the parties.

Lets start with the GOP: Fox News published a melodramatic claim by the McCain campaign that Democrats left thousands of American flags used in their convention in the trash. McCain supporters waved the flags allegedly rescued.

The move was an overt swipe at Obama from a campaign whose motto has been “country first.” But Democratic convention organizers claimed the flags were not going to be discarded — but instead were snatched from the site of Obama’s historic address to carry out a “cheap political stunt.”

McCain supporters said the flags were discovered by a vendor at Denver’s Invesco Field after the conclusion of the Democratic National Convention. The vendor supposedly found trash bags full of flags in and near garbage bins, and turned them over to the McCain campaign.

This is one of the stories both parties use to strengthen their narrative. It has nothing to do with issues, everything with perceptions. But David Harsanyi, columnist for the Denver Post, did a little more digging. He talked with the person who found the flags:

He thinks both sides are exaggerating a bit. He claims the majority of the bags with flags were near the trash and it was probably an "oversight" by the Democrats rather than a nefarious plot against the flag, but he doesn't believe anyone was coming to get them. "The flags were there for a week and a day and no one came looking for them," the person said.

* * * * * * * * * *

Meanwhile, Democrats and the left are having fun with an even more meaningless story: the apparent glitch in putting the Los Angeles-area Walter Reed Middle School on the screen behind McCain. (The McCain campaign denies there was any mistake, but just what connection the school has to McCain remains a mystery)

The lefty blog Talking Points Memo speculated that the GOP intended to put Walter Reed Medical Center on the screen, but the tech guys grabbed the wrong image:

One other interesting development: The California Democratic Party is actually holding a press conference in front of the school within minutes, where Dems will hit McCain for not knowing the difference between the school and Walter Reed Medical Center, which is believed to be the backdrop the McCain campaign really wanted. . .

Late update: Shortly after posting this, we got an email from Los Angeles Unified School District Board Member Tamar Galatzan who represents Walter Reed as part of her district. She had her own thoughts on McCain's use of the middle school:

"Though I am flattered that Senator McCain chose to use a school from my district as backdrop to his remarks at the Republican National Convention, I wished he had checked with me first. As a strong believer in public education, I don't think the Senator is the most appropriate person to showcase one of the premier schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District. He is unwilling to bring fairness and equity to No Child Left Behind and ensure that schools like Reed get the resources they need from the Federal Government. From what I've heard, that's not a priority for the McCain/Palin ticket."

There you have it: The two main parties of the world's most important democracy are busying themselves with meaningless posturing and attacking. Meanwhile, the economy continues to deteriorate. Jobs are being lost and mortgage giants Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae are being taken over and bailed out.

As cassandra pointed out in the comments to the last thread, we are getting the grim truth from the likes of the Housing Bubble Blog. I would add Mike "Mish" Shedlock, who writes for Minyanville and on his own blog, Global Economic Analysis. There, the facts are being laid out that the Democratic and Republican national leaderships won't honestly discuss with the public.

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Obama Weekend Special

2008-09-05T13:35:00.000-07:00

"Lies, lies, lies, ye-eah!
(They're gonna get ya!)
Lies, lies, lies, ye-eah!
Lies, lies, lies, ye-eah!"
-- Thompson Twins, "Lies"

Promises, dedication, -- and betrayal. Love? My 80s nostalgia kicking in? No, I'm talking about politicians, and the lies politicians tell.

This weekend, we're going to explore the lies of Barack Obama. Not just differences of interpretation, but palpable, proven lies. Swamper Eric Blair pointed out one obvious lie by Obama, put into the news by the Associated Stenographers, er, Associated Press, and noted by the National Review. Obama lied that the Republican National Convention hasn't discussed economics. (I'll post some examples later this weekend where it did).

No doubt Obama supporters would call this a non-story, a molehill that doesn't relate to policy issues. Any manipulation to divert attention from the fact that Obama blatantly lied about a fact that can be easily determined. But an impartial search for truth shouldn't be intimidated by propagandists who want you to focus only on the candidates they oppose.

So as part of my look at political lying in this season's crop of candidates, let's see more examples of blatant Obama lying. Post your nominations in the comments, and let's have at them.

* * * * * * * * * * *

Here is my take on the Obama lie Eric Blair pointed out. First, the lie, bold text mine:

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama said Thursday that Republicans at their national convention are attacking him to avoid talking about the sagging economy and housing problems.

"You're hearing an awfully lot about me — most of which is not true — but you're not hearing a lot about you," Obama said. "You haven't heard a word about how we're going to deal with any aspect of the economy that is affecting you and your pocketbook day-to-day. Haven't heard a word about it. I'm not exaggerating. Literally, two nights, they have not said a word about it."

Now, the debunking.

Remember, Obama can't be excused on the grounds of being rhetorical. Obama said he was not exaggerating.

As the convention speech transcripts show, considerably more than a word was said about how to deal with the economy.

From Sarah Palin's convention speech Wednesday: Bold test that shows the Obama lie mine:

When a hurricane strikes in the Gulf of Mexico, this country should not be so dependent on imported oil that we are forced to draw from our Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

And families cannot throw away more and more of their paychecks on gas and heating oil.

With Russia wanting to control a vital pipeline in the Caucasus, and to divide and intimidate our European allies by using energy as a weapon, we cannot leave ourselves at the mercy of foreign suppliers.

To confront the threat that Iran might seek to cut off nearly a fifth of world energy supplies ... or that terrorists might strike again at the Abqaiq facility in Saudi Arabia ... or that Venezuela might shut off its oil deliveries ... we Americans need to produce more of our own oil and gas.

And take it from a gal who knows the North Slope of Alaska: we've got lots of both.

Our opponents say, again and again, that drilling will not solve all of America's energy problems - as if we all didn't know that already.

But the fact that drilling won't solve every problem is no excuse to do nothing at all.

Starting in January, in a McCain-Palin administration, we're going to lay more pipelines ... build more new-clear plants ... create jobs with clean coal ... and move forward on solar, wind, geothermal, and other alternative sources.

We need American energy resources, brought to you by American ingenuity, and produced by American workers.

Now from Rudy Giuliani's speech Wednesday night, again, bold that proves the Obama lie is mine:

John McCain will lower taxes so our economy can grow. He'll reduce government to strengthen our dollar. He'll expand free trade so we can be more competitive. And he will lead us to energy independence so we can be free of foreign oil. And -- and he'll do it with an all-of-the-above approach, including nuclear power and, yes, offshore oil drilling. . .

This and a lot more is the kind of change that will create growth, jobs and prosperity, not what they want to do: tax us more, increase the size of government, increase tariffs, hurt jobs, send jobs elsewhere.

Fred "Mr. Excitement" Thompson, on Tuesday:

We need a president who understands that you don't make citizens prosperous by making Washington richer -- and you don't -- and you don't lift an economic downturn by imposing one of the largest tax increases in American history.

Now, our opponents tell us not to worry about their tax increases. They tell you they're not going to tax your family. No, they're just going to tax "businesses." So, unless you buy something from a business, like groceries or clothes or gasoline --or unless you get a paycheck from a business, a big business or a small business, don't worry, it's not going to affect you! They say they're not going to take any water out of your side of the bucket, just the other side of the bucket! That's their idea of tax reform.

* * * * * * * * * *

Obama could and will argue that the Republicans' ideas on the economy are wrong. But they were discussed in the convention, with far more than a word.

Stubborn facts don't matter much to politicians like Obama, when they get in the way of a good story.

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Enquiring Minds Want . . . More Than Trashy Rumors

2008-09-04T22:22:00.000-07:00

The National Enquirer recently took the political scalp of former senator and presidential candidate John Edwards (D-Priapus). As most of you know, it's now going after Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin with similarly salacious material, including an alleged Palin affair.

I bought and read the Enquirer, so you don't have to: Palin should be able to breathe easy. There is much less to the charges than the wild headlines imply.

The Enquirer made very specific charges against Edwards, including naming times and places he met his mistress, and published a photo. The reporting was solid.

But the Enquirer article on the Palin "affair" never actually says there was an affair. If you read it closely, the charge is attributed to a family enemy. An Alaskan blogger said the "affair" was actually just a flirtation 10 years ago that was never consummated. I am not vouching for this unverified tale, btw, just pointing out that's how rumors can mushroom.

The Enquirer twice referred to the charge of an affair as "incredible". One meaning of "incredible" is "so implausible as to elicit disbelief," which may provide a legal out in case the Enquirer is sued.

While the Enquirer article is just unverified gossip, there's a worthwhile question it raises: Why did the Enquirer print such a groundless article? Perhaps the Enquirer is trying to show it's bipartisan in scandal-mongering. If so, that's the wrong way to do it.

Alternatively, the Enquirer might think that hyping a Palin scandal would sell more papers. That's also wrong. Unless the Enquirer backs up its sensational coverage with something more credible than an enemy's trashy gossip, the tabloid's reputation may itself be headed back to the trash.

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Lies, Damned Lies, And Narratives

2008-09-04T06:33:00.000-07:00

Sarah Palin has been a reformist governor by the standards of Alaska, a state steeped in corruption. Palin fought sleazemasters in her own party. She tussled with the oil companies to wring out more money for Alaskans. She even cautiously began to tell Alaskans that their penchant for earmarked funds was making them unpopular in the Lower 48.

That's a decent narrative, especially compared to her Democratic counterpart, Joe Biden. That fixture of Washington is an undistinguished and ethically dubious politician, a serial liar and plagiarist who has a higher IQ than you. (Watch the YouTube video proving it).

But merely good was not enough for the GOP. This year's meta-narrative demanded heroics. So the Republican party exaggerated Palin's record. Palin herself has not only exaggerated but made blatantly false claims about opposing that infamous "bridge to nowhere". Palin unwisely repeated that lie in her speech last night.

Alaskan newspapers have pointed out that Palin was perfectly willing to accept federal money for the Gravina Island bridge, and only turned against it when it had become an object of national ridicule, and a symbol of wasteful spending that Congress was not likely to fund.

Hardly the stuff of heroism, it's more like pragmatic politics. What would have been heroic: If Palin had actually sent back to Congress money the state had already been awarded. But she never did that. And the now-useless road to the bridge that will not be built is still being constructed.

Moreover, Palin actively lobbied for many other projects, even sending a lobbyist to Washington D.C. to push for more pork -- er, I mean necessary projects for the good of her city.

Even more fatal to the narrative, some of Palin's projects ended up on the pork list of . . . wait for it . . . John McCain.

In 2001, McCain's list of spending that had been approved without the normal budget scrutiny included a $500,000 earmark for a public transportation project in Wasilla. The Arizona senator targeted $1 million in a 2002 spending bill for an emergency communications center in town -- one that local law enforcement has said is redundant and creates confusion. McCain also criticized $450,000 set aside for an agricultural processing facility in Wasilla that was requested during Palin's tenure as mayor and cleared Congress soon after she left office in 2002. The funding was provided to help direct locally grown produce to schools, prisons and other government institutions, according to Taxpayers for Common Sense, a nonpartisan watchdog group. Wasilla received $11.9 million in earmarks from 2000 to 2003. The results of this spending are very apparent today. (The town also benefited from $15 million in federal funds to promote regional rail transportation.)

The Anchorage Daily News pointed out Palin's exaggerations in her speech last night (emphasis mine):

PALIN: "I have protected the taxpayers by vetoing wasteful spending ... and championed reform to end the abuses of earmark spending by Congress. I told the Congress 'thanks but no thanks' for that Bridge to Nowhere."

THE FACTS: As mayor of Wasilla, Palin hired a lobbyist and traveled to Washington annually to support earmarks for the town totaling $27 million.

In her two years as governor, Alaska has requested nearly $750 million in special federal spending, by far the largest per-capita request in the nation, although she has cut, by more than half, the amount the state sought from Washington this year. While Palin notes she rejected plans to build a $398 million bridge from Ketchikan to Gravina Island, that opposition came only after the plan was ridiculed nationally as a "bridge to nowhere."

Even McCain has exaggerated his record as pork-buster, according to Factcheck.org. It wrote in November, 2007:

It is indisputable that McCain has been a vocal opponent of earmarks, and indeed of all government spending that he considers wasteful (he has said that Congress spends money “like a drunken sailor”). He has been recognized for his efforts both by the media and by taxpayer advocacy groups. But the three examples of spending highlighted in the ad – a “bridge to nowhere,” a study of bear DNA and a museum dedicated to Woodstock – seem chosen more for their impact than for any direct involvement McCain had in attacking them. In fact, he voted in favor of the bill that included the bear study funding; he was absent for key votes on the Woodstock museum (including one on an amendment he co-sponsored); and he never specifically tried to eliminate the bridge earmark and missed some crucial votes on that one, as well. . .

The transportation bill did include a total of $223 million (not $233 million, as the ad says) earmarked for the Gravina bridge – $100 million for construction, plus $18.75 million a year for four years, and an additional $48 million to build an access road. McCain tried, unsuccessfully, to add a “sense of the Senate” amendment to the bill, stating a general objection to earmarks; in the end he voted against the legislation.

Several months later, Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) tried to divert the Gravina funds to a bridge in need of repair over Lake Pontchartrain near New Orleans. McCain was not present to vote on Coburn’s amendment proposing this change, which did not pass. Instead, Congress removed Gravina’s earmarks, tossing that money into Alaska’s general transportation pot to be used however the state chose. McCain wasn’t there for that vote, either.

Like Palin, McCain has a penchant for exaggerating his accomplishments and fabricating narratives which don't coincide with the facts. That's hardly unusual in politicians. But it doesn't mesh with the heroic meta-narrative the GOP is peddling to voters.

No wonder Peggy Noonan was unhappy. But she made a mistake in saying so.

She stepped on the narrative.

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Palin's Speech -- Let's Hear From You - FINAL

2008-09-03T12:52:00.000-07:00

Kevin Drum, The Reasonable Lefty™, says Palin did a very good job:

SARAH PALIN'S SPEECH....As expected, she's doing a very good job. In a way, she's every bit the pit bull Giuliani is, all the way down to the withering scorn and sarcastic asides. But she brings it off better than Rudy: it's more straightforward, more earnest, and yes, more small town. I don't think this speech will stop the questions about her selection, but it's certainly going to have an impact. She's coming off very well in her appointed role, and making a tough, smart, and very appealing first impression.

But holy cow, can this woman pull off the culture war stuff, or what? I gather that she didn't, in fact, ever really support Pat Buchanan, but she's every bit his disciple and successor in spirit. Wow.

And maybe just one more comment: for all that both Giuliani and Palin attacked Obama for being too full of himself, I don't think I've ever heard two more adulatory speeches in my life. You'd think John McCain was the second coming of George Washington the way they sang their nonstop panegyrics to him.

But the crowd is definitely on its feet tonight. Quite a contrast from Tuesday.

* * * * * * * * * * *

Now for the Swamper liveblogging:

Praises McCain's "resolve" to persevere in his candidacy, and in Iraq.

There's a time for politics, and a time for leadership. A time to campaign, and a time to put our country first . . . a true profile in courage.

victory in Iraq is now "in sight".
Bradley J Fikes | Homepage | 09.03.08 - 7:40 pm | #

Anyone else tired of hearing about McCain? Or the "McCain narrative" or whatever it is? Too late now..

She's too cute. It's practically a drawback! As if she couldn't possibly be serious. Oh dear.
cassandra | Homepage | 09.03.08 - 7:43 pm | #

Discusses son Track, who will leave for Iraq on Sept. 1l, and refers to other children. Refers to birth of latest child .. ups and downs in her family. .. to the families of special needs children .. . says they will have a friend, an advocate in Palin.
Bradley J Fikes | Homepage | 09.03.08 - 7:44 pm | #

cassandra,
I was just thinking the same thing. She needs to get back to more serious topics, not just small-town reminiscences. "Every woman can walk through every door of opportunity," a pitch for the XX vote . . .
Bradley J Fikes | Homepage | 09.03.08 - 7:45 pm | #

Yeah you're right. Needs gravitas. Thatcher had it in spades.
cassandra | Homepage | 09.03.08 - 7:46 pm | #

What the hey????
cassandra | Homepage | 09.03.08 - 7:48 pm | #

Now she is talking about reform in Alaska ... about time! Her signature issue.
Bradley J Fikes | Homepage | 09.03.08 - 7:53 pm | #

There's your favorite line LOL
cassandra | Homepage | 09.03.08 - 7:55 pm | #

Gawd, she is repeating her lie about the "bridge to nowhere"!
Bradley J Fikes | Homepage | 09.03.08 - 7:55 pm | #

She said "thanks but no thanks" to a bridge with a $329 million funding gap. Such a profile in courage!
Bradley J Fikes | Homepage | 09.03.08 - 7:57 pm | #

I've heard so much of this before. She had a speechwriter, according to NRO.
cassandra | Homepage | 09.03.08 - 7:57 pm | #

Just one?!
Bradley J Fikes | Homepage | 09.03.08 - 8:00 pm | #

American energy sources. I like that. Her voice is better than I expected. Voice is so important and women often have problems coming across strong without soundling like screech owls..

She's got good delivery.
cassandra | Homepage | 09.03.08 - 8:01 pm | #

Now she's getting into meaty matters, taking on Obama, which is what she is supposed to do.
Bradley J Fikes | Homepage | 09.03.08 - 8:01 pm | #

Man those projections on the big screen behind her are distracting.
cassandra | Homepage | 09.03.08 - 8:03 pm | #

I am just getting the audio . . . maybe I will look at the video later.
Bradley J Fikes | Homepage | 09.03.08 - 8:04 pm | #

It doesn't show that often, just on the long shots. Must drive the delegates crazy.

Oh, enough about McCain. LOL
cassandra | Homepage | 09.03.08 - 8:07 pm | #

Now she gets into the POW stuff.
Bradley J Fikes | Homepage | 09.03.08 - 8:09 pm | #

"Voice is so important and women often have problems coming across strong without soundling like screech owls.."

I was thinking that its a good thing her voice is a bit adenoidal - its slightly annoying and that keeps one from being distracted by the attractiveness.

I think she's solid, comfortable and cool, not too girly. The family stuff is good - most of America doesn't know her (other than crap on MSM) and it was an easygoing introduction.

Energy stuff was great.

Best line: the presidency of the United States isn't supposed to be a journey of 'self-discovery'.
Heh.
Dana | Homepage | 09.03.08 - 8:14 pm | #

_____________________________________________________________________________________

Ok, folks, your considered verdicts?
Bradley J Fikes | Homepage | 09.03.08 - 8:15 pm | #

Mrs. Fantastic!
Mike LaRoche | Homepage | 09.03.08 - 8:17 pm | #

________________________________________________________________________________________________

I feel Chrissy Matthew's thrill running up my leg.
Dana | Homepage | 09.03.08 - 8:19 pm | #
________________________________________________________________________________________________

LOL! You know, all I can think is she's so damn cute - but it's not a bad thing. It's a whole new sort of personam for politics. I'm not used to it. She doesn't come across as cerebral or intellectual. Not sure that would fly anyway.

So, I'll bet the MSM is calling it a disaster, yes? I haven't checked yet.

The people will love her.
cassandra | Homepage | 09.03.08 - 8:30 pm | #

From the althouse thread going on concurrently. Dave here was responding to someone asking him, as an Alaskan, why he was expressing surprise at Palin's new porkbuster image, as well as national level readiness. But Gofer doesn't give a damn, an anti-vote is an anti-vote, no matter if it's a write-in or a Palin-drome, bub. She may not bust as much pork as Gofer had hoped, but she has shown she can bust a few chops. I'm thinking Obama takes the championship, but then I thought New England would annihilate NYG. Obama does have that Tom Brady smirk, and Biden would definitely secretly tape opponents signal calling. So, just maybe....take it, Dave.
.......

Dave said...

Whoa there. Ease up. Take a breath. I'm not slamming her; I voted for her, and I approve of her job as governor. But we saw her as national-ticket material in another four or eight years, after she had put together a more substantive record. There's a difference between being popular and having a large record of accomplishments.

You've got to understand a few things about Alaskans. We just got through with Governor Murkowski, a corrupt and unpopular leader. In comparison, anybody would be better than he. So part of Palin's popularity comes simply from being Not Murkowski, not necessarily because of things she's done.

We also love pork projects. This state is built on pork. That's why we keep electing Ted Stevens. Honestly, we need it. We'd shrivel and die without it. Governor Palin ran on promises of getting us more federal money, including money for our bridge to Gravina Island which outsiders have come to scorn. So that's another reason why we're shocked -- McCain campaigns against earmarks, and this state can't survive without them. It's the cold hard truth. Palin has cut back some on the amount of pork that comes in, but if she cut back too much, she'd cease to be an effective (and popular) governor of this unique state.

We also know that she doesn't deserve as much of the credit for ethics reform as she's getting. That was a legislative project that she was receptive to, so it was as much our legislature as it was the governor that got it done.

We've got more tax money from oil revenues than we know what to do with, thanks to the high price of oil. Fair or unfair, she doesn't get much cred in the state for creating a budget backed by such a surplus.

And I know this will rub some people the wrong way, but she's only been at it for 19 months. It's just not a long time. [refraining from comparing to Obama]

Sorry for the length... you asked.
bradley's gofer | 09.03.08 - 8:34 pm | #

Sarah Palin is probably more electable. You can't be a CEO without leaving a messy trail of electronic tidbits that can and will be used against you in the court of public opinion.

I was over at some Dem sites. Has there been some major TCP/IP breakthrough? I could swear the smell of fear was wafting from my browser.
doug | 09.03.08 - 8:38 pm | #

Palin included some subtle (or what I'd term as subtle) digs at Obama. I think she could have also alluded to the pathetic, very telling nature of a person who listened to years to a fanatic like Jeremiah Wright, and not only happily remained a member of that individual's flock, but made him a close advisor, a "sounding board." And then stopped sidestepping or excusing----or rationalizing away----the nature of that person's ideology, or theology, or sociology, only when public controversy grew too loud and too strong.

I see McCain and Palin and I think of grown-ups, of adults, in which there's at least a fair amount of honesty and integrity, and then I think of Obama and Biden, embraced by the brats of Hollywood (among others), who are saddled with an excessive degree of trial-lawyer mendacity and flaky attitudes.

And, quite honestly (and sincerely), I'm trying not to filter my impressions through the ideological differences between one camp and the other.
Mark | 09.03.08 - 8:41 pm | #

Well, it's easy to see why she moved up rapidly in the "list" after speaking with McCain. Damn, he was strutting around the stage like a proud father at his daughter's debutante ball.
doug | 09.03.08 - 8:42 pm | #

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Lieberman's Speech: B+

2008-09-02T21:07:00.000-07:00

Thanks to superior Republican technology, I was easily able to view Tuesday's Republican National Convention speeches on my Linux computer.

I focused on Sen. Joe Lieberman, who gave what appeared to be a very effective speech for McCain. As a Democrat, Lieberman put the McCain candidacy on a nonpartisan platform as doing what was right for America. He deftly used the experience of Hurricane Gustav to segue into issues of national importance, and minimize partisan differences.

His speech was respectful of Obama, while painting McCain as a leader of unique abilities who is right for America. It was even-tempered, without the red meat partisans like to throw to their peers. That was not his job, which was to paint McCain as reaching above politics for the good of the country.

Lieberman's speech was calming after the last few days' nuttiness with Sarah Palin this and Sarah Palin that -- nuttiness that took the spotlight away from the man who is, after all, the Republican nominee in the election. (Have you ever seen a presidential nominee so overshadowed by his running-mate?)

I differ with Lieberman and McCain on some important issues. Besides the Iraq war, I don't like the campaign finance "reform" that McCain talks so proudly about. It's doomed to fail, because people will always find a way to spend money to advance the candidates and views they like. And I think it should fail, because political advocacy is part of free speech. Forget the useless finance restrictions. Just require full and prompt disclosure, and put the information on the Web.

Lieberman was well-qualified as a Democratic maverick to endorse a Republican 'maverick', (even if McCain's reputation as a straight talker is overstated and largely false). McCain could not have chosen Lieberman, whom he has known and respected for years, because the latter's pro-abortion rights views made him politically non-viable. Joe Lieberman will have far more influence in a McCain presidency than will Sarah Palin, the running mate McCain barely knows and picked out of political necessity.

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I Officially Love Republicans

2008-09-02T12:27:00.000-07:00

As the necessary followup to my post about the lousy Linux-hating video technology at the Democratic National Convention, I am happy to report that the Republican National Convention (photo and video link to left) is not exclusionary.

The RNC is broadcasting prerecorded convention events through YouTube, along with live feeds. It's accessible on any Web browser that works with YouTube. The Dems made their Webcast available only on Windows and the Mac, with certain specified browsers.

So I've been able to tune in at home and at work, without having to worry if I have the pre-approved OS and browser.

My kudos to the convention organizers.

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Sully, Kos, Etc . . .

2008-09-01T17:15:00.000-07:00

. . . are beneath contempt for their prurient digging into the circumstances of Gov. Sarah Palin's latest pregnancy, the other vicious rumors they've been spreading, including digging into the now-confirmed pregnancy of her daughter Bristol.

I've avoided writing posts about the trashy slurs because they have nothing to do with Palin's political qualifications. And some of the talk, like how will she care for five children, is sexist. That wouldn't be asked of a male candidate. I have confined myself to issues relating to her stance on the issues, and will continue to do so.

But since silence can be construed as consent, I'm making it explicit. I long ago learned not to take Andrew Sullivan seriously. Sure, Sully writes well, but his frequent factless tirades and strange fixations make him utterly unreliable.

And as for the Kossacks, I think Swampers remember the horrible things some of them said about Cathy's battle with cancer -- one particularly vile being wished her a painful death. As you can see if you clicked, Kos let the thread stay up -- more than two years after the fact. These are hate-filled nutbags. Sadly, No! is the same. Alan Colmes is just a monument to leftist stupidity and sleaziness.

So when I criticize Palin, or anyone else, let it be clearly understood that the likes of these folks don't influence my thinking one iota. I would never trust disreputable sources like these on anything. My recent criticism of Palin came exclusively from reading her own words. It is the same criticism I would have delivered of OBiden.

I don't claim to be perfect, and doubtless will have to apologize from time to time for making errors. But they will be my own errors, not cribbings from such filth as Kos and addled brains as Sully's.

The other thing is, I will not pull any punches because of party, whether Democrat, Republican or Libertarian. I will say exactly what I think.

The tendency is to go easy on those whom you agree with more often than not. But that is exactly why the two-party system is in such bad shape. Republicans shy away from criticizing the excesses of Republicans, and Democrats do likewise to Democrats. That circling-the-wagons mentality enables massive abuse. It infantilizes politics.

Let's be as tough on those we agree with, when they err, as those belonging to that other party.

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Be Hungry and Multiply!

2008-09-01T07:15:00.000-07:00

While you're eating, drinking and being merry this Labor Day, here's something for you to chew on: Scientists at the Salk Institute in San Diego have discovered what they call a "master switch" that controls hunger and reproduction.

Okay, it was in mice, but the same structure is probably present in humans. And that could lead to new treatments for weight disorders and infertility.

Here's an excerpt from my article, in the (San Diego) North County Times:

The master switch, called TORC1, is regulated by leptin, a hormone that tells the brain enough food has been consumed. Leptin is made from adipose, or fat cells. Mice lacking leptin became overweight, according a 1995 study that caused great excitement in the scientific community.

Biotech giant Amgen Inc. of Thousand Oaks licensed the discovery for $20 million from Rockefeller University, and tested a leptin-derived drug as an obesity treatment. However, the leptin drug had a relatively minor effect in humans, so Amgen discontinued testing.

It's since been discovered that leptin is part of a complex set of regulatory mechanisms that govern appetite and obesity. So researchers think any one drug alone is not going to be sufficient to regulate weight and appetite.

San Diego-based Amylin Pharmaceuticals says it has made progress in understanding how the appetite and metabolic mechanisms work together. Amylin licensed the rights to the leptin drug from Amgen, and is now testing it in human clinical trials in combination with pramlintide, a drug it developed on its own.

Pramlintide is derived from amylin, a hormone that acts with insulin to control blood sugar and weight control. Pramlintide and leptin given together to rats produce greater weight loss than would be expected from the combination of their individual effects, according to a paper by Amylin researchers published in the July 31 issue of the journal Endocrinology.

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Palin Lied About Bridge To Nowhere

2008-08-31T11:41:00.000-07:00

I wanted to like Sarah Palin. I really did. She seemed like a breath of fresh air, taking on a corrupt establishment in her own party. She seemed far away from Washington politics.

But alas, Palin blatantly lied when she said she opposed the infamous pork barrel boondoggle, the "Bridge to Nowhere." The proof is on her own Web site.

Let's start with what Palin said she did about the boondoggle (emphasis mine):

"I signed major ethics reform. And I appointed both Democrats and independents to serve in my administration. And I championed reform to end the abuses of earmark spending by Congress. In fact, I told Congress — I told Congress, “Thanks, but no thanks,” on that bridge to nowhere.

"If our state wanted a bridge, I said we’d build it ourselves. Well, it’s always, though, safer in politics to avoid risk, to just kind of go along with the status quo. But I didn’t get into government to do the safe and easy things. A ship in harbor is safe, but that’s not why the ship is built."

Now let's take a look at the press release Gov. Palin issued last year announcing the project,, the Gravina Island bridge, was dead. I'm quoting the entire press release (emphasis mine)

Gravina Access Project Redirected

September 21, 2007, Juneau, Alaska - Governor Sarah Palin today directed the Department of Transportation and Public Facilities to look for the most fiscally responsible alternative for access to the Ketchikan airport and Gravina Island instead of proceeding any further with the proposed $398 million bridge.

“Ketchikan desires a better way to reach the airport, but the $398 million bridge is not the answer,” said Governor Palin. “Despite the work of our congressional delegation, we are about $329 million short of full funding for the bridge project, and it’s clear that Congress has little interest in spending any more money on a bridge between Ketchikan and Gravina Island,” Governor Palin added. “Much of the public’s attitude toward Alaska bridges is based on inaccurate portrayals of the projects here. But we need to focus on what we can do, rather than fight over what has happened.” The Department of Transportation has approximately $36 million in federal funds that will become available for other projects with the shutdown of the Gravina Island bridge project. Governor Palin has directed Commissioner Leo von Scheben to review transportation projects statewide to prepare a list of possible uses for the funds, while the department also looks for a more affordable answer for Gravina Island access.

“There is no question we desperately need to construct new roads in this state, including in Southeast Alaska, where skyrocketing costs for the Alaska Marine Highway System present an impediment to the state’s budget and the region’s economy,” said von Scheben.

“The original purpose of this project was to improve access to Gravina Island, and we will continue to work with the community to help them attain that goal,” von Scheben said.

The commissioner said his department would continue to work with local officials to discuss future plans for development of Gravina Island.

Far from refusing Congress' assistance, Palin was counting on it. Of the $398 million total, $329 million was to come from Congress. It was only when it became clear that Congress would not give the money that Palin said the project was dead.

The Alaskan press is now pointing out the blatant contradictions in what Gov. Palin told Alaskans last year and in her 2006 gubernatorial campaign, and what vice-presidential candidate Palin is now telling the rest of the country.

Here is what the Daily News-Miner says:

On Oct. 22, 2006, the Anchorage Daily News asked Palin and the other candidates, “Would you continue state funding for the proposed Knik Arm and Gravina Island bridges?”

Her response: “Yes. I would like to see Alaska’s infrastructure projects built sooner rather than later. The window is now — while our congressional delegation is in a strong position to assist.”

Assist -- is that what you call it when Congress is expected to supply 83 percent of the funding?

Palin is imploding -- not because of the crazy rumors spread by leftist nutbags -- but because of her own words. And McCain may have ruined his own rather good prospects to beat Barack Obama by neglecting an easily verifiable fact in Palin's vetting process.

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BS From The WP

2008-08-30T10:00:00.000-07:00

To your left is a perfect illustration of the brain-dead MSM media in action, at one of its most prestigious outlets.

That's Dan Balz, longtime Washington Post national political reporter, quoting from anonymous sources who bash Sarah Palin. These critics are identified only as Republican strategists, a description that says virtually nothing.

It's not surprising that a journalistic barnacle like Balz (at the Post since 1978) would call on his contacts, presumably Washington insiders. Nor would it be surprising if Balz were miffed at having to admit his ignorance about Palin, who exists in a world physically and culturally far from his own. And not at all surprising that insiders would not like a true Washington outsider like Sarah Palin intruding on their cozy little world.

Palin's record of fighting corruption in her own party must be frightening to them. She actually means what she says, and carries through with it! How different from the usual Washington phonies who do photo-ops but don't walk the walk, like Al Gore and his energy-guzzling lifestyle, or Fred Thompson with the red truck he never uses except for political events. These are typical Washington phonies that Washington insiders can relate to. Sarah Palin, who actually lives the life she praises, must make the insiders very nervous.

Presumably, the anonymous sources gave Balz the quotes he was looking for. Cowardly, they didn't use their names. Balz calls their cowardice being "candid." Who are these critics? How do we know they are worth taking seriously? Because Balz quoted them, that's why. Don't you just love that circular reasoning?

The more harrumphing I hear from Washington insiders, as relayed by their stenographers like Balz, the more I think McCain made the right choice with Sarah Palin. And the more I think the MSM is committing suicide by continuing to use the same recycled hackery most of us are sick of.

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Palin's Choice

2008-08-29T15:53:00.001-07:00

Overall, I am impressed with McCain's choice of Alaska governor Sarah Palin as his running-mate. She's a strong reformer, and the Republican Party in Alaska has long needed one. So does Washington, of course. She's geographically and politically nearly as far as you can get and still remain in the United States.

I don't like Palin's flirting with creationism. It's bad science, and I'm disappointed that she advocated it being taught along with evolution as an alternative. Scientists have used evolutionary theory to make many important discoveries, some far afield from biology.

Creationism has produced no scientific discoveries, and remains utterly without evidence, as even some backers of its offspring, intelligent design creationism, have admitted. Michael Medved, of the intelligent design outfit the Discovery Institute, made that clear recently: (emphasis and h/t from Little Green Footballs)

Q: Speaking of your desire for this kind of particularity, you are a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute that studies and believes in Intelligent Design. How do you, as an Orthodox Jew, reconcile with this kind of generality - with the view of their being a hierarchy with a chief “designer” - while believing in and praying to a very specific God?

The important thing about Intelligent Design is that it is not a theory - which is something I think they need to make more clear. Nor is Intelligent Design an explanation. Intelligent Design is a challenge. It’s a challenge to evolution. It does not replace evolution with something else.

Q: The question is not whether it replaces evolution, but whether it replaces God.

No, you see, Intelligent Design doesn’t tell you what is true; it tells you what is not true. It tells you that it cannot be that this whole process was random.

As is typical with the intelligent design creationists, Medved fails to comprehend that natural selection, as Darwin termed his theory, is not wholly random.

But while creationism is one of the dangerous anti-science idiocies found on the right, the far left has its own share of anti-science idiocies that may be even more deadly to science and human knowledge. Radical leftists like Obama's pal Bill Ayers explicitly champion an ideology-based teaching of science in which the search for facts by interrogating nature gives way to indoctrination:

In 1997, Ayers and his mentor Maxine Greene persuaded Teachers College Press to launch a series of books on social justice teaching, with Ayers as editor and Greene serving on the editorial board (along with Rashid Khalidi, loyal supporter of the Palestinian cause and the Edward Said Professor of Arab Studies at Columbia University). Twelve volumes have appeared so far, including one titled Teaching Science for Social Justice.

Teaching science for social justice? Let Teachers College professor Angela Calabrese Barton, the volume’s principal author, try to explain: “The marriages between capitalism and education and capitalism and science have created a foundation for science education that emphasizes corporate values at the expense of social justice and human dignity.” The alternative? “Science pedagogy framed around social justice concerns can become a medium to transform individuals, schools, communities, the environment, and science itself, in ways that promote equity and social justice. Creating a science education that is transformative implies not only how science is a political activity but also the ways in which students might see and use science and science education in ways transformative of the institutional and interpersonal power structures that play a role in their lives.”

So while McCain's vice presidential pick has implicitly indicated sympathy for a movement that would undermine biology to support Christian fundamentalism, Obama's mentor has explicitly endorsed a movement that would eviscerate all of science so students can be brainwashed into anti-capitalistic America-haters.

I know which side I'm wholly not on.

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NPR's Cogent Politico-Historic Perspective

2008-08-28T19:05:00.000-07:00

I just heard on an NPR convention segment about a new political phenomenon called the "hip-hop voter". As one twenty-something guy explained, these are young people who communicate and share their political beliefs such as opposing war through music.

I'm impressed with the depth of that trenchant analysis. There has never been anything like this in history. Why, go as far back as the '60s and you won't find anything like music being an organizing tool to protest war and the dominant American culture. The hip-hop voter is truly an amazing invention of today's youth, elucidated by NPR's astute, history-aware journalists.

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I Officially Hate Democrats -- Updated

2008-08-27T21:04:00.000-07:00

Updated -- If the Obama folks can't figure out how to make a video play in Linux (see rant below), perhaps this example from YouTube will help them. Click to play.

I tried to watch Hillary's speech on the Democratic National Convention site, and this is what I got on my Linux computer.

There is no reason a video broadcast like that from the Democratic National Convention needs to be OS-specific. YouTube can deliver video for all operating systems, why can't the DNC? What about the poor (or intelligent) folks who don't use Micro$oft or Apple?

I'm guessing the DNC's omission of Linux was caused by bribes, er, contributions, politics, and general technological incompetence. Not very good from those who aspire to lead all the country.

Fair warning: If I get this kind of crap next week from the Republican convention, I'll also officially hate Republicans.

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Scott Thomas Beauchamp Reconsidered

2008-08-27T20:42:00.000-07:00

Scott Thomas Beauchamp, the aspiring Hemingway who wrote articles in the New Republic alleging U.S. military insensitivity and brutality in Iraq, was discredited last year after his stories failed multiple tests of verification. The matter was settled, and the New Republic rather weaselly distanced itself from the articles without actually saying it retracted them.

But now the whole matter is re-opened. John E. Hatley, a U.S. soldier who bears the identical first, initial and last name of a soldier who disputed Beauchamp's stories has been identified by the Web site Moon of Alabama as the same soldier accused by his peers of covering up the murders of Iraqis.

Moon of Alabama says:

It is extremely unlikely that one battalion has two First Sergeants with the name John E. Hatley.

A few month after Hatley ordered and took part in the murdering of prisoners he denied some relative harmless though brutal behavior Beauchamp described, "this by no means reflects the truth of what is happening here." Indeed, what was really happening was much worse. The soldiers in his company (including himself?) were "the best America has to offer." Really?

The TNR should look into retracting its retraction of Beauchamp's accounts.

A few thoughts:
1: This allegation definitely requires investigation, not only by the New Republic, but especially by those organizations that investigated Beauchamp's claims and found them to be false.

2: Beauchamp could still have falsified his tales. He did not claim knowing of any murders that took place.

3: Whether or not Hatley is the same Hatley who disputed Beauchamp's stories, the murder allegation is far more serious than anything Beauchamp ever said. If the alleged murders took place, those organizations that mocked Beauchamp's stories on the grounds the military would never behave that way should eat large helpings of crow.

4: There will be a military investigation and quite possibly a trial of Hatley. Everything rides on that trial, if it takes place.

In regard to 4, Mike K. made these pertinent comments worth keeping in mind:

There have been a lot of similar allegations in Iraq, all of which have been disproved thus far. Haditha is one example. LT Pantano was another. Pantano was accused by a disgruntled sergeant he had demoted. All of the accused in those cases have been found not guilty, in spite of John Murtha's attempts to smear them.

This may suggest that Beauchamp was not as obvious a liar as he appeared but I would await events before getting too excited.

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Eye On Nature

2008-08-26T16:27:00.000-07:00

This is nature, as captured by Dana. Click the photo to see more at her Pfabulous Photoblog.

Be it the gracious Mission Inn in Riverside, a colorful lorakeet or the parched Whitewater mountains, Dana captures the essence of the subject matter. In the case of the latter, a commenter accurately noted that the photos evoked searing heat.

Here's to looking at pictures of tropical fish -- photographed by Dana in Tahiti!

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Good Wishes For Ody

2008-08-25T22:25:00.000-07:00

We haven't heard from Odysseus "Ody", for some time. The Army officer was a longtime commenter on Cathy's World, and was heard from time to time on The Festering Swamp.

I saw Ody's name again as I was copying links to our new home on WordPress. That filled me with nostalgia and sadness. Although I some years ago had harsh words with him, I came to respect his dedication to the cause of rebuilding Iraq as a democracy, while still disagreeing on the wisdom of the Iraq war.

So if Ody is reading this, or his friends, here's good wishes for your success, personally and professionally, and for your wife and the World's Cutest Daughter. When you are able to do so, please let us know you're still around.

As our lately absent friend James (who I also wish well), would say . . . peace. And victory.

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The Precious And The Plagiarist

2008-08-23T09:01:00.001-07:00

Barack Obama is one wily coyote. Besieged by character issues, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee has firmly put those issues to rest by choosing as his running mate a liar and serial plagiarist.

Senator Joe Biden became famous 20 years ago for clumsily ripping off a speech by Neil Kinnock, a Labor Party challenger to Britain's Margaret Thatcher. The Conservative prime minister handily dispatched the lightweight Kinnock, and Biden's borrowings sunk his presidential quest. A neat symmetry there.

And now Biden's ethically challenged conduct will be brought up again. Biden himself is making sure this will happen. When asked whether he was Obama's choice, Biden lied, saying "I'm not the guy."

That lie is the perfect entree to many a media article, not to mention the inevitable Maureen Dowd column, picking apart Biden's history of lying and plagiarism, going back to his law school days.

From Beldar, with a hat tip to Patterico:

Got that? Biden stole someone else's legal scholarship, and passed it off as his own. He's lucky he wasn't expelled outright, but the F he received in that course as part of the penalty for his misconduct doesn't explain by itself how he managed to graduate only 76th out of 85 in his law school class.

(John McCain also graduated near the bottom of his class from Annapolis, and that also reflected a middling academic performance brought further down by conduct demerits — but McCain's misbehavior mostly reflected his unwillingness to submit to Naval Academy hazing, and none of it involved cheating or any other violations of the Academy's famous Honor Code.)

Biden's law school cheating might be discounted if he'd learned his lesson and lived an exemplary, plagiarism-free life thereafter. But of course, he didn't. His own first run for the presidency exploded in 1987 when he was caught repeatedly plagiarizing again, and simultaneously caught telling obvious lies about his academic record.

So now the press will be fixated with refreshing these memories for the benefit of today's voting public. This strategy is simply brilliant on Obama's part. The more attention devoted to Biden's ethically challenged record, and the less to Jeremiah Wright, Bill Ayers, Tony Rezko, etc, the better for Obama.

And then there's the A-word: arrogance. Joe Biden loves the brilliance of Joe Biden. He's really, really smart. Just ask him! During his disastrous presidential run, Biden told a critical questioner: "I think I have a much higher IQ than you do."

The kicker is that really smart people know better than to go around boasting about their high IQs. By preening himself in public about his alleged intelligence, Biden showed that he's really rather dim. That's the S-word: stupidity.

Compared to Biden, Obama is not only humble, he's a Mensa charter member.

However, some of Obama's supporters who received text messages of Biden's selection don't appreciate his brilliance. They're annoyed because they got the message in the middle of the night.

It's 3:00 AM, and your children are safe and asleep...
...but there's a cell phone in the other room, and it's ringing. Must be one of your a**hole friends drunk-dialing you, or perhaps a wrong number from a different time zone. Wait, no: it's Barack Obama! He wants you to "be the first to know" something that CNN and the AP reported three hours ago: Joe Biden is his runningmate! . . .

. . . The Obama camp did an amazing job of keeping this secret all week, and especially all day yesterday, but they got greedy. They were never going to be able to keep it secret right up until a few hours before the rally. If they really wanted their supporters to "be the first to know," they needed to send the text yesterday evening during prime time, at the latest.

Instead, they waited too long, then panicked, and annoyed a bunch of supporters (and news/political junkies) in the process. Idiots.

Oh! The ingratitude of those who don't appreciate the brilliance of The Precious!

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Bookmark This!

2008-08-22T06:49:00.000-07:00

Ladies, gentlemen, archaea, bonobos and echidnas, here's a new bookmark for The Festering Swamp: http://www.thefesteringswamp.com/

Remember, it's thefesteringswamp.com -- the the is important. Not just Festering Swamp, but The Festering Swamp.

I registered this domain name -- thefesteringswamp.com (with or without the www, it still works) -- yesterday, while Journalspace was on the blink. Right now, I am redirecting it to a Blogger site for The Festering Swamp crowd. That's the beauty of having one's own URL -- it can be redirected at will, and you, dear readers, won't have to make another bookmark. Redirection can be changed at will; it just takes a few hours for the change to percolate through the Internets.

Haloscan commenting will continue as abnormal (one problem at a time, folks!)

This is a mirror entry, also posted at Journalspace for those who don't know of the change, as well at the temporary new digs at Blogger. These new digs may become permanent. That is where your voice comes in.

The question is, do we still want to stay at Journalspace, despite its sometimes unreliable performance? I personally am reluctant, due to Journalspace's history as a home to Cathy Seipp, and due to the much-appreciated labors of David and Julie Scott, who built this Swamp, built this Swamp, built this Swamp . . . on rock 'n' roll -- sorry, wrong song!

Or do we take another location, such as the Blogger site we are currently redirected to? Do we move to WordPress? The options are many. I remember that Charlotte from South Africa had problems a while back accessing the Blogger backup site. I don't want to impair access by our Siren of the Antipodes.

What do you all think about this?

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Re-Animated

2008-08-21T11:21:00.000-07:00

This is going to be our temporary refuge while The Festering Swamp is down on JournalSpace.

I am thinking of a more permanent fix, but comment here for now.

Here to kick off the discussion is this comment by Eric Blair about Richard Dawkins, science zealot and foe of religion:

Ah, that Richard Dawkins. Here are a few gems from his hit parade, Bradley. Let me start with my all time favorite:

"It is fashionable to wax apocalyptic about the threat to humanity posed by the AIDS virus, "mad cow" disease, and many others, but I think a case can be made that faith is one of the world's great evils, comparable to the smallpox virus but harder to eradicate."
-- Richard Dawkins, The Humanist, Vol. 57, No. 1

"You cannot be both sane and well educated and disbelieve in evolution. The evidence is so strong that any sane, educated person has got to believe in evolution."
-- Richard Dawkins, in Lanny Swerdlow, "My Sort Interview with Richard Dawkins" (Portland, Oregon, 1996)

"To fill a world with religion, or religions of the Abrahamic kind, is like littering the streets with loaded guns. Do not be surprised if they are used."
--Richard Dawkins, "Religion's Misguided Missiles" The Guardian, 15 September 2001.

...and my personal favorite...no...just read it for yourself:

http://www.secularhumanism.org/ l...wkins_21_3.html

My guess is that you are going to forgive Dawkins his extremism, snobbery, and what I consider to be straw man arguments. I too believe in evolution. But I am also a person who has faith in a Creator. So which of the three (or four) categories do I belong?

And by the way, I know John Endler, who tells..ah...a different version of that story. That is trouble with Dr. Dawkins, and I am far from the only scientist to have notice his thirst for media attention.

Remember, Bradley, that Dawkins is not just talking about people who think dinosaurs never existed, or the folks at the Discovery Institute. He also means people who do not believe his personal view of what evolution means.

Dawkins is a mirror image of the religious intolerance he says he detests. How he can go from a "meme" (!) suggesting that everyone is open to the idea of natural selection (as they should be) to how people who don't agree with his view as being stupid or insane boggles the mind. Oh, I left out "wicked."

I'm guessing that we will have to agree to disagree on this one, but I hope you will agree that Dawkins' stating that faith (not organized religion, I would remind you) is worse than plagues like AIDS, is easily the equal of your post.

Personally, I consider Dawkins' personal style, combativeness, and sneering arrogance to dwarf his prior sizable contributions to biology. He does great damage to the cause of evolutionary thought from a public point of view.

But then, William Shockley invented the transistor, and was also a raging racist.

Sigh. Not a good way to end the evening. But in digging through my files about dear old Dr. Dawkins, my mood soured.

I wonder how often Dr. Dawkins considers the old term "hubris"? Not often, I would wager.

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Placeholder Cuties

2008-03-11T23:00:00.000-07:00

Mike K. asks me in the comments:

"Bradley, when are you going to get Spitzer's ugly phiz off the front page ?"

Waaaaaaaal . . . I'm a little brain-fried at the moment, having busted my neurons on an upcoming story about the use of t-PA for stroke patients. t-PA is considered the ultimate thrombolytic, the treatment of choice, for patients whose strokes are caused by blood clots (it only makes things worse for bleeding strokes, so care must be taken in diagnosis. And it's best given within three hours of the onset of a stroke.

Hospital standards on the use of t-PA differ, and the details of stroke diagnosis and treatment are complex and forbidding for a layman such as myself. So there. I don't have another brilliant post just now.Sorry. Maybe I'll get inspired later.

In the meantime, you've kept a merry discussion going about New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer's prostitution scandal, U.S. policy toward Iran, Mary Ann from Gilligan's Island getting busted for pot (thanks David E.), the imminent first anniversary of Cathy Seipp's untimely death, and other events. These posts are just decorative bunting. The comments are where the action is!

(Cathy died at 49, so she never had the experience I just did, of opening my mail to find an AARP card. Preternaturally youthful and sinfully beautiful to the end, Cathy never mentioned her age. So I wonder if she'd have written about the soul-crushing experience of being notified about joining the ranks of geezerdom. One among the many sad never-wases.)

The Cathy. Need we say more?

And to get back to Mike K.'s burning question, I've added another photo that will take your mind of the gurning, grimacing guilty Gov. Priapus. Although it includes yet another priapic politician, whose proboscis' probing prowess needs no preamble.

In this instance, I think H-Rod had nothing to worry about.

Enjoy!

"I brought the Altoids just for you!"

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Into The Absurd

2008-02-29T11:36:00.000-08:00

Christopher McCandless, a recent college grad, angry at man's inhumanity to man, gave his life savings to feed the hungry, renounced materialism, and journeyed to Alaska in 1992. He died there in Denali National Park that summer from a tragic mistake.

That's the portrait the public is told of McCandless, first in a book by Jon Krakauer then in a recent movie, "Into the Wild," by that well known intellectual Sean Penn.

Before the pretentious intellectual narcissism took hold

I saw "Into The Wild" last weekend. My eyes were rolling like a slot machine's dials within 10 minutes, so heavy-handed was the leftist propaganda. (Learning about the joys of renouncing materialism is so much more meaningful when it comes from a Hollywood millionaire like Spicoli). Bored to tears with the torrent of leftist cliches, I took out my cell phone and began reading Web pages and sending text messages.

However, the elements of the story interested me, so I wanted to find out the truth behind McCandless. The real story is quite different from Penn's fanciful description, aided by Krakauer's wishful imagination.

McCandless' noble gift of $24,000 to Oxfam came from a trust fund. Yup, Christopher McCandless, disdainer of materialism, was a trust fund baby. How perfect.

McCandless died of starvation, not by mistakenly eating poisonous plants -- an invention of Krakauer for which an autopsy found no evidence.

And McCandless could have walked to safety at any time -- had he only brought a map. But infatuated with romantic nonsense about the wilderness from reading Jack London, McCandless didn't bother. Actual Alaskans generally aren't sentimental, and think of McCandless as a fool. They've seen too many folks from the Lower 48 come to Alaska thinking of it as some romantic refuge of wilderness and a place to reinvent themselves. Such folks are running away from themselves and like McCandless, find the reality doesn't match their dream.

As one Alaskan was quoted as saying in Men's Journal:

"He points to a clear pool in a stream not 50 feet from the bus, in which dozens of foot-long grayling swim against the current. "You could practically shovel those out with a spruce branch," he tells me. "And I just don't get why he didn't stay down by the Teklanika until the water got low enough to cross. Or walk upstream to where it braids out in shallow channels. Or start a signal fire on a gravel bar." He peers inside the bus and shakes his head at what he sees as a greenhorn in over his head who had retreated to the only sign of civilization for miles when he realized he couldn't make it. "Tough enough to live out here without trying harder," he says. "We're hard up for heroes if that's what it takes -- some guy who starved to death in a bus."

Here's another unsentimental take on McCandless

that kid had been alot of places and done alot of things in his short life but what it boiled down to is that he was a bum counting on the helping hands of others to get him out of tight spots. when there was no one there to bail him out he died, he obviously had zero skills needed to survive in the wilderness, he didnt even make the summer.

And another:

Krakauer makes a reference at the end of the book about how he thinks maybe McCandless wanted to find a blank place; that maybe he wanted to just disappear and come back with a story that no one else had. The problem with that is we've explored this world. As Krakauer says, there are no more blank places. Maps exist for a reason. That he considered nailclippers a necessity, but not a map...well, it's silly. A map would have ultimately saved him. Nailclippers just made sure his hangnails were taken care of. It's like he lacked the common sense he needed to have a real, true adventure, which made him a walking death wish instead. Bury the damn map until you need it to get out. At that, even with a map, you're still in the wild! What's the difference? He died never knowing that he wasn't even anywhere that wild...with cabins and highways within basic walking distance.

An instructive movie could be made of those facts: Trust-fund baby's narcissism, pretentious leftist intellectualism, ignorance of the wilderness, and callous disregard for family, leads to his death. Not the kind of movie that would have affirmed the certitude of leftist pseudointellectuals like Sean Penn and soft-headed McCandless acolytes. It would, however, have been true.

Today, Spicoli shows his profundity by cuddling up to leftists the world over.

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H-Rod's Arrogance Repaid

2008-02-26T08:22:00.000-08:00

Heeere, voter, voter, voter!

Hillary Rodham Clinton could have learned a lesson from John McCain's stumble with controversy earlier on Tuesday. But she didn't, and went on making her characteristic mistakes in Tuesday night's debate against Barack Obama.

McCain (see below) defused a potentially embarrassing controversy by a full, free and absolute apology for nasty remarks one of his supporters made against Barack Obama. McCain offered the apology even before reporters asked him about the remarks. And Obama promptly accepted it.

McCain did even more than he had to, because the slimy remarks were not his, nor did he order them. But since the offender was speaking on his behalf, McCain forthrightly seized the initiative and left no doubt he disagreed with the statements and was sorry for them. So we move on, and I have a renewed respect for McCain and his willingness to do the right thing without being forced to.

Contrast this with the way Hillary Rodham Clinton's continual too-clever-by-half attacks against Obama keep backfiring. Tuesday night, Clinton took umbrage that she got the first question. She tried one of her obviously scripted lines.

"Well, can I just point out that in the last several debates, I seem to get the first question all the time. And I don't mind. I -- you know, I'll be happy to field them," Clinton said after taking a perfectly legitimate question about the trade policy issues that are so central to the Ohio primary fight that will be decided March 4. "But I do find it curious, and if anybody saw ‘Saturday Night Live,' you know, maybe we should ask Barack if he's comfortable and needs another pillow. I just find it kind of curious that I keep getting the first question on all of these issues. But I'm happy to answer it."

The Web site of the hard-left The Nation headlined its account: "Clinton's Cringe-Worthy Moment"

On a night when she needed to turn in the best performance of her political career, the former frontrunner instead seemed petulant, even desperate.

"Barack, you ignorant slut!"

They weren't the only ones. The conservative Web site Town Hall also called it a blunder.

Hillary should have relished the opportunity to go first. Explaining her position wouldn't even have been as important as using the opportunity of going first and framing the views of her opponent, since Barack Obama doesn't give views on anything except the war. He's a change guy. He's a hope guy. He's a big picture/concept guy. Obama doesn't get into specificity, so Hillary could easily have put him on the defensive.

She didn't. Hillary Clinton said she was curious about the media in the last few debates always going to her first, citing Saturday Night Live and offering to give an extra pillow to Obama to make him more comfortable. Groans and boos immediately erupted from the crowd. Want to know another signal that a campaign has come completely apart at the seams? Look at the debate prep. Hillary Clinton didn't just walk into the auditorium in Cleveland tonight and throw caution to the wind. She prepared for this debate. She had people coaching her on what to say. The 'change is something you can Xerox' line was scripted. It laid an egg.

A week later, she tries again to make another sarcastic joke about the media's love afair with Obama. Again, it was an awkward egg laid by Mrs. Clinton. If I were a campaign manager, and my candidate flopped like that in two consecutive debates, whoever was prepping her wouldn't just be fired, but probably sued for oratory malpractice.

It's painfully obvious that H-Rod is trying to find the magic combination of scripted words that will deflate the Obama balloon. Perhaps she was thinking of the way Walter Mondale devastated Gary Hart in 1984 with his own scripted "Where's the beef?" line. But H-Rod is terrible at delivering such scripted attacks. Their artificiality is obvious from the get-go, which deprives them of their punch.

At this point, H-Rod needs much more than clever words. Her entire campaign is suffering from a lack of organization, attention to detail, and an arrogant, top-down mentality that plays into the worst media-spread stereotypes about her phoniness. What good is all her alleged experience if she keeps screwing up like this?

Click the photo to hear H-Rod make her case against Barack Obama.

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

John McCain understands what so many people in the public sphere don't -- when you apologize, make it a real apology. Not some mealy-mouthed "If anyone was offended . . ." non-apology. Just say it and get it over with.

It happened after a McCain supporter used very inflammatory language to attack Barack Obama at a speech in Cincinnati.

Republican John McCain quickly denounced the comments of a radio talk show host who while warming up a campaign crowd referred repeatedly to Barack Hussein Obama and called the Democratic presidential candidate a "hack, Chicago-style" politician.

Hussein is Obama's middle name, but talk show host Bill Cunningham used it three times as he addressed the crowd before the likely Republican nominee's appearance. . . .

Aside from using Obama's middle name, Cunningham also mocked the Illinois senator's foreign policy statements about his willingness to meet with the leaders of rogue nations. He said he envisions a future in which "the great prophet from Chicago takes the stand and the world leaders who want to kill us will simply be singing Kumbaya together around the table with Barack Obama." . . .

At one point, Cunningham compared Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to Madeleine Albright, whom he said "looks like death warmed over." He also commented on the difference between former Ohio Rep. Rob Portman, whose wife is named Jane, and Massachusetts Rep. Barney Frank, an openly gay member of Congress. "Jane's the main difference. But that's a different story," Cunningham said.

McCain's response was as decent as it was emphatic:

"I apologize for it," McCain told reporters, addressing the issue before they had a chance to ask the Arizona senator about Cunningham's comments.

"I did not know about these remarks, but I take responsibility for them. I repudiate them," he said. "My entire campaign I have treated Senator Obama and Senator (Hillary Rodham) Clinton with respect. I will continue to do that throughout this campaign."

It's heartening to see McCain still has a basic core of honor, even after his nauseous pandering to the religious right. I can't imagine Hillary Rodham Clinton making anywhere near as forthright an apology.

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Click the illustration to see more great political cartoons at www.caglecartoons.com

That's as in the arrogance of Hillary Rodham Clinton's presidential campaign toward the press. An undifferentiated arrogance can come back to bite, as it did in this tale of journalism students seeking to cover various presidential campaigns. (H/T to the indispensible Romenesko).

"Because the Obama campaign treated us like pros — they called us back within minutes, set up interviews, got us press passes, went out of their way to make the campaign accessible. The Clinton campaign, in contrast, didn’t return a single phone call, didn’t provide press access, and did virtually nothing to encourage our coverage. It was either arrogance or disorganization on the Clinton campaign’s part.
Here’s one example: Jeff Giertz, the Obama team’s on-the-ground point person for the press, answered my phone call when I called to ask about press access to the Obama event on Feb. 8 at KeyArena. He said he’d check on getting passes for my students. I figured I’d wait and see if he actually did. Within five minutes he e-mailed me back, saying it was a go, and he could provide four press passes for my students. I was impressed. Clearly he had a vested interest in getting college students into the press area — and he did what a campaign person should do: He treated us well and welcomed us to his candidate. He told me to call him anytime.
So I did.
Lots of my students wanted to cover this event, so I called Giertz back six hours later and asked for four more passes. He said yes. The next day, when some of my students arrived at KeyArena after the local police had locked the doors and weren’t allowing anyone in — including reporters from local TV and radio outlets — the students dialed up Giertz and he personally came and vouched for them. He followed up the day after the event with an e-mail checking in on how I thought things went.I don’t for a moment think he did all this just to be a nice guy. He had motives, of course. Still, it’s telling that I made the exact same pitch about “access to college students” to the Clinton campaign, and they didn’t do anything to facilitate our coverage."

And it wasn't just Obama's campaign that was nice: the Ron Paul, McCain and Huckabee campaigns were also helpful:

The Obama and Clinton campaigns weren’t the only ones to come to town. On the Republican Party side, Ron Paul held a rally on the UW campus. Janet Huckabee held a rally at Northwest University, and her campaign team reached out to my students covering her husband’s candidacy — returning calls and making sure they had press access. McCain’s campaign aides went out of their way to let my students know about his press event at the Westin, and to get them in. For those scoring at home, five presidential campaigns came to town — and four reached out to my students, treating them like what they are: journalists and citizens.

Responsiveness and niceness doesn't guarantee victory. But contemptuous treatment hurts -- multiply these examples by the hundreds and word gets out. H-Rod was supposed to be inevitable, so her organization prepared for a coronation, not a campaign. This was a big miscalculation. And so when the Clinton campaign began taking on water, fewer voters were available to bail her out than she counted on.

Another factor is the role of Romenesko's Web site, widely read by journalists. What would have been just a local story of the Clinton campaign's arrogance is now known across the country. Other accounts of similar treatment will get wider notice now than before. Hillary Clinton's struggling campaign has just got a bitter lesson in the power of the Web. Had it not been Romenesko, some other Web site would have spread the tale. What's amazing is that even at this late date, a major political campaign needed this reminder.

Hillary just can't wash that Obama man out of her hair.

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Talk Show Hosts Falling?

2008-02-06T20:54:00.001-08:00

UPDATE: Here's a Luke Yelasdi Thompson video from Super Tuesday:

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We've got a lively thread going here, so I'm going to add on top of it. Also, the lack of a new post for Thursday from me may encourage our newest poster, Lewis Fein, to make his virgin post. If Lewis has trouble losing his post virginity, we can arrange for some coaching from David E.

I am going to expand on a point I made earlier about the failure of Rush Limbaugh, Hugh Hewitt and other conservative talk show pundits to derail John McCain. I have a theory -- and it is mine! -- that the talk show hosts became the kind of big media they originally were an alternative to. Bemused by their legacy trappings of power, the Limbaughs and Hewitts of the world failed to notice they were out of step with their listeners, and ended up showing that while they have lots of listeners, their ability to influence followers who don't want to be influenced is not very profound.

The word "legacy" is the key here, because Limbaugh & Co. are Old Media, a characteristic they share with the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, CBS, ABC and other traditional media outlets. Despite their ideological differences, Old Media is distinguished by a scarcity of voices, controlling assets of great value, that provide a barrier to entry to competitors. They form an oligopoly.

When Limbaugh became big in the late 80s, he seemed like a revolution, only because he catered to conservatives, who the leftist media often ignored. Ditto for Fox News. But the top-down we-will-tell-you-the-news model continued. Limbaugh and Fox didn't so much destroy the leftist media oligopoly as they brought conservatives into the mixture.

However, the Internet has busted this oligopoly wide open. Opinion influencers don't need a multi-million dollar broadcast license or a newspaper. All they need, like Matt Drudge, is a modem and computer. And if the people tire of Matt Drudge, or Daily Kos, there are an unlimited supply of competitors, with a nearly zero barrier to entry. This is what blogs have brought us. Thanks to blogs, the media is more democratic than anytime in American or human history. You can read a blog, download a podcast, and find the information you want. People once restricted to a limited supply of prefabricated news and views can now go shopping from an infinite bazaar of information.

This has devastated Old Media's economic model, not just in newspapers, but in radio. Clear Channel, for example, became notorious for firing DJs and centralizing broadcasts in studios hundreds of miles away from their audiences. And of course, they crammed in increasingly annoying commercials. People had no choice. But with satellite radio, digital music and podcasts , people no longer had to listen to Clear Channel's audio garbage. By destroying any local connection to their audiences, Clear Channel's greedy, contemptuous executives paved the way for the creative upwelling of alternatives such as podcasts.

After years of seeing this Internet-driven democratization, Old Media types should by now have come to grips with it. If they want to survive, they have to adapt to the end of information scarcity and make their products more appealing to customers.

Yet perverse pride still reigns in many of America's newsrooms. Fusty editor and reporter types can't let a mention of the Internet pass without some derogatory reference

"Unlike the home page on your computer, a newspaper can't be customized. It's a mass medium that strives to satisfy a broad audience with as much information -- news, commentary and features -- as it can," wrote Ben Marrison, editor in the Columbus Dispatch, in a typical lament. Marrison was responding to a reader of the print edition who threatened to cancel because he read a column he didn't like.

"Maybe we as Americans have become spoiled in expecting everything tailored to our preferences.
After all, we can find radio talk shows that match our political viewpoints. We have cable television shows to feed any hobby you can imagine. We are a nation of choice, and maybe we expect the headlines, news, columns and photographs to be exactly what we want every day."

Forget the false humility of the "we as Americans." Marrison is really telling his readers that they are "spoiled" by too much "choice". In the eyes of the monopolist, choice and competition are evil words. Predictably, this Luddite editor is off on his technology. Computers don't have home pages -- Web sites do. And his newspaper's Web site could be reader-customizable. Marrison could have told that disgruntled reader to read the Dispatch online, and make sure the reader can read only what he wants. Everyone's happy.

I'm not suggesting newspapers (or radio talk show hosts like Limbaugh) are going to disappear. There will be a place for them for the forseeable future. Printed matter beats the Web when it's inconvenient to access a computer (or cell phone, where, Mr. Marrison, you can also get the Web).

But telling customers they are "spoiled" by competitors is a losing proposition. The proper response is to offer the alternatives your customers want. That's a timeless fact of business even a Luddite should be able to understand.

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

Besides the journosaur cluelessness about what customers want, there's a deep arrogance in traditional media types, an arrogance turning into bitterness as customers flee. Many editors are rethinking journalism to find out what they're doing wrong, or how they can do better. Others prefer to remain bitter, pretending to wear their robe of virtues, heedless that onlookers see no robe, just the naked pretenses of a dishonest fool.

John Carroll, former editor of the Los Angeles Times, is one such unclothed emperor who is too busy in his invincible ignorance attacking the Internet and blogs to learn from them. In 2006, Carroll gave a typically definitive screed, pontificating with the absolute certitude of the invincibly ignorant

Look at how Carroll frames the problem:

Young readers are going online and not coming back. Circulation revenues are dwindling. The equivalent of circulation revenues on the Web is negligible. Circulation itself is falling. Ad revenues are weak – not a good sign in a growing economy – and Web-based competitors are stealing our advertisers. Some of these competitors are even helping themselves to our stories and our photographs, which we have produced at great expense.

"Stealing our advertisers." What a perfect way to encapsulate the arrogant, entitlement mentality of newspapers. Newspapers own advertisers, and for Web competitors to win away their business is "stealing" newspaper advertisers.

Carroll's understanding of blogs is equally informed:

The blogs, noisy as they are, have virtually no reporters. They may be keen critics, or assiduous fact checkers, but do they add materially to the nation’s supply of original reporting? No, they don’t.

Trent Lott could have told Carroll otherwise. In 2002, Lott lost his job as Senate majority leader after bloggers kept after the story of his praise of Strom Thurmond -- a story that the Los Angeles Times (when Carroll was editor, btw), and other media outlets at first ignored. Today, in the Middle East, bloggers Michael Yon and Michael Totten supply reporting not often found in the traditional media.

But even someone in such denial as Carroll can't argue away the fact that the public doesn't trust journalists.

"Recently there have been efforts to clarify our beliefs, and to put them into plain language. A notable effort in this regard is the book The Elements of Journalism by our colleagues Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel.
It is important for us to understand, in clear English, what, exactly, a journalist is, and what a journalist is not. It is important for us to live by those beliefs, too, and to condemn those who use the trappings of journalism to engage in marketing or propaganda. And, finally, it is important for us to explain to the public why journalism – real journalism, practiced in good faith – is absolutely essential to a self-governing nation."

So to Carroll, it's all just a communications problem: We journalists need to speak to the public in "clear English". Next thing you know, Carroll's going to suggest hiring a PR agency, to do all the communicating us tongue-tied communicators are apparently incapable of doing with the public.

The real answer is something Carroll hasn't faced up to. Journalists are not trusted because too many are, like Carroll, untrustworthy. They dodge, evade and lie about their own biases and error and hope the public will believe their propaganda.

I'm not saying Carroll doesn't believe his own propaganda. I think he does. The most effective agent of a false message is often someone who has deluded himself into believing his own lies.

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

Rush Limbaugh used to be a conservative kingmaker. Bush I recognized the power of His Rushness, and deferentially courted his support. Since then, it's been an article of faith that conservative talk show hosts can mobilize millions of fans who act on their every word.

Yesterday's Super Duper Tuesday severely tested this faith. John McCain dominated the primaries, despite the most bitter opposition from Limbaugh and the Mini-Mes like Hugh Hewitt. So perhaps the talk show hosts' influence is overrated. They are good at mobilizing people who are predisposed to act in a certain fashion, but they don't seem particularly apt at persuading people to vote for or against a candidate.

Here's a sampling of comments along that line from Hugh Hewitt's blog. Notice how Hewitt and his fellow talk show hosts are branded with the dreaded "elitist" label once reserved for the leftist MSM:

McTex writes: Wednesday, February, 06, 2008 12:23 AM
McCain and Huck
both won even though Rush and the other talk radio crazies were all aligned against them as you said Hugh.
What does that say about their influence and yours?

johnnyboy writes: Wednesday, February, 06, 2008 12:24 AM
Talk Show Hosts are NOT the Rep. Party
Hugh, I am just totally sick of all the talk hosts trying to "force" this election for Romney. Mitt Romney was so far left of McCain 4 years ago, I swear he was a democrat. But you, Rush, Laura, Coulter, Hannity and the other jabber-mouths think you know better than us poor, dumb, regular people.
Well, wake up dude. The REAL Republican party is speaking right now, you just refuse to hear it.

Barnvette writes: Tuesday, February, 05, 2008 10:10 PM
Conflict of Interest
I love how the elitist, Hewitt, Rush, Hannity try to build up a slick Romney who has been fickle on his positions based on what race he's running for; stating he's the real conservative....
That is a bunch of crap. Huckabee is the real conservative. Reagan passed amnesty for Mexicans. I don't see Hewitt, Rush and Hannity talking about this. How about Bain Capital buying Clear Channel and how much revenue the talking heads get from Clear Channel.
I disagree with Karl Rove about McCain picking Huckabee. Huckabee would an excellent fit as a VP candidate.

There are many more comments in this vein. What do you think -- is the influence of Rush & Co. declining, or was it overrated to begin with?

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Super Duper Tuesday And The Super Duper Lyin' LA Times

2008-02-05T07:20:00.000-08:00

UPDATE IV: STUNNING NEWS:
TV Gasbag Makes Sense!

I feel faint . . .

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UPDATE III: Exit polls project that Obama will win Georgia by a landslide; on the GOP side, McCain narrowly leading Huckabee, with Romney third.

Hillary Rodham Clinton comes up dry in Georgia, while Barack Obama swims in votes.

* * * * * * * * *

UPDATE II: McCain scurrilously attacked Romney for the latter's comment about not wanting a letter of recommendation from Bob Dole. Thanks to Brett for bringing this to my attention. I thought Romney's comment was ungracious and unwarranted. But McCain exceeded that, by implying that Romney's attack on Dole, a World War II hero, was somehow a worse insult because of Dole's military record:

"Governor Romney's attack on Bob Dole is disgraceful, and Governor Romney should apologize. Bob Dole is a war hero who has spent his life in service to this nation and nobody has worked harder to build the Republican Party. Bob Dole deserves the respect of every American and certainly every Republican."

As I said, the attack on Dole was "ungracious". But it wasn't disgraceful. McCain's refuting criticism by wrapping himself in the flag is disgraceful.

* * * * * * * * *

UPDATE: Unexpectedly, Mike Huckabee wins all 18 of West Virginia's 30 delegates at stake today. Expectedly, Romney supporter Hugh Hewitt is whining.

* * * * * * * * *

Today's the day we've been fixating on. It's Super Duper Tuesday, when 28 kajillion states hold their primaries to select presidential candidates. Most of the drama appears to be on the Democratic side, where Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama are close to even in polls.

As the candidates made a last-minute push, a CNN?Opinion Research Corp. poll out Monday showed Obama erasing Clinton's lead among Democrats nationally. The two were in a virtual tie, with Obama at 49 percent and Clinton at 46 percent, the poll found
With a sampling error of plus or minus 4.5 percentage points, that margin is too close to say which Democrat is leading.

On the GOP side, John McCain holds a strong but not insurmountable lead over Mitt Romney, and is slightly behind McCain in California. In a desperate attempt to stop McCain, Romney has been campaigning non-stop, sleeping on the floor of a plane as he made one last appearance in California. But cruelly for Romney, even a narrow win in California wouldn't help much, because delegates are now awarded proportionately. In many of the other states Romney appears likely to lose, delegates are awarded on a winner-take-all basis. And as of this date, delegates begin to speak more loudly than polls.

Romney has been getting testy lately, comparing McCain's tactics to that of Nixon's, and responding to Bob Dole's defense of McCain in a letter to Rush Limbaugh by saying Dole was the last person he'd want to write a letter on his behalf.

As for McCain, his reputation for "straight talk" has been taking a beating of late, as Matt Welch's book on McCain has gotten more notice. An article by Welch in LA Weekly says McCain's image is largely a myth.

Newspaper endorsements — many featuring errors of fact — are gaining momentum: The New York Times, the Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, the L.A. Daily News, The Sacramento Bee, the San Jose Mercury News, and on and on.

As a direct result of his long media honeymoon, much of what we think we know about McCain is wrong. Exit-poll numbers out of the early states showed that McCain was doing especially well among primary voters who were antiwar. The numbers say something disturbing about our capacity to believe that independent antiwar voters are seriously considering a man who championed pre-emptive war three years before it ever occurred to George W. Bush, who personally told me that the U.S. share of defense spending — more than one-half of the world's total — was much too small, and who has demonstrated repeatedly these past weeks that he doesn't understand why any American would question the deployment of U.S. troops in Iraq 100 years from now. After more than seven years of increasingly unpopular war, Americans look poised to nominate the most explicitly pro-interventionist presidential candidate since Teddy Roosevelt. Don't say you weren't warned.

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Newspapers printing errors of fact about politicians? Say it ain't so, Matt! Unfortunately, doughty blogger Patterico has just documented another one, a bald-faced lie about President Bush that the Los Angeles Times is refusing to correct.

The L.A. Times is refusing to correct a blatant error — again.

Regular readers will remember that, on January 1, I wrote about an L.A. Times end-of-the-year political quiz that resurrected a viciously false canard: that George W. Bush “[e]rroneously said Nelson Mandela was dead.” . . .

. . . I finally heard from the Readers’ Representative today. As for my prediction, I’ll say only this: damn, I’m good. Here is her e-mail:

I’m sorry, I thought I’d already responded a while ago with this note: Editors in the opinion section did not believe that the point warranted correction. They say (and I agree) that the piece was a parody, and so that reference was within the bounds of that sort of opinion piece.

Jamie Gold
Readers’ Representative

You get that? It’s a parody!

I sure did, Patterico. Jamie Gold is a parody of a Readers' Representative and the LA Times is a parody of honest journalism. Nothing we didn't already know, but it's good to see the evidence keep piling up.

Paging Sam Zell! Stop cursing and start firing the lying journalists at the LA Times. Talk to Patterico, who has been taking names.

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Journalspace Down

2008-02-04T07:01:00.000-08:00

Journalspace was down much of the weekend. Not only that, but Charlotte from South Africa has not been able to access The Festering Swamp at all.

As a temporary solution, I am going to copy the content of posts to a Blogger Web site I created, called The Festering Swamp. Bookmark this address. If you have trouble getting to the primary site, go to the backup site. You'll still be able to comment, as I'll provide the Haloscan link.

Journalspace usually works very well, and for free we can't be too demanding. But the periodic outages are very inconvenient -- once Cathy's World was out for five days -- so we need a backup. Come to think of it, why just one backup? Others can do just what I did. Make sure to provide the Haloscan link for the current thread, and we're back in business.

Other than that, I'm going to write more later today about ABC's Jake Tapper's egregious misrepresentation of a Clinton comment on global warming.

Here is what Clinton said:

Everybody knows that global warming is real," Mr. Clinton said, giving a shout-out to Al Gore's Nobel Peace Prize, "but we cannot solve it alone. And maybe America, and Europe, and Japan, and Canada -- the rich counties -- would say, 'OK, we just have to slow down our economy and cut back our greenhouse gas emissions 'cause we have to save the planet for our grandchildren.' We could do that. But if we did that, you know as well as I do, China and India and Indonesia and Vietnam and Mexico and Brazil and the Ukraine, and all the other countries will never agree to stay poor to save the planet for our grandchildren. The only way we can do this is if we get back in the world's fight against global warming and prove it is good economics that we will create more jobs to build a sustainable economy that saves the planet for our children and grandchildren. It is the only way it will work.

I think that's pretty understandable. Clinton discusses one possible solution for global warming, cutting back economic growth, then dismisses it because the poor nations of the world will never go along with it. So "the only we we can do this", he says, is to "prove it is good economics." IOW, find ways to produce more jobs through environmental technologies.

Here's how Tapper described it:

In a long, and interesting speech, he characterized what the U.S. and other industrialized nations need to do to combat global warming this way: "We just have to slow down our economy and cut back our greenhouse gas emissions 'cause we have to save the planet for our grandchildren."
At a time that the nation is worried about a recession is that really the characterization his wife would want him making? "Slow down our economy"?
I don't really think there's much debate that, at least initially, a full commitment to reduce greenhouse gases would slow down the economy….So was this a moment of candor?

I guess that for Tapper, "long and interesting" means "I didn't really understand it and am straining to get a headline".
Tapper's blatant misrepresentation earned him the scorn of hundreds of commenters on his own blog. A semiliterate followup post by Tapper failed to settle the matter.

Lots of you -- and the Clinton campaign -- argue that it's obvious that Bill Clinton was spelling out that last point, he was describing what would happen if there isn't a worldwide effort, that he was setting up a straw man, because this is a false argument.
I can certainly accept that's what he meant. I don't think it was clear. But I wasn't certain.
That's why I provided the video links, the full quote, and gave a number of options as to what he meant.
And again, I think the larger point -- bigger than me, bigger than one president's comment -- is what would it cost to take action against global warming?

Digby said it well:
Actually, the important issue here is that most journalists not only have a misunderstanding of the issues, but are perpetually convinced of their own brilliance despite all efforts to the contrary. Admitting that they're wrong is like exposing themselves to kryptonite. And so journalistic standards brush up against arrogance and intransigence. The funny thing is that, despite claims that they are objective purveyors of the facts, it's ALL personal when it comes to these guys. They'd rather peddle a lie than be seen as wrong.

As one commenter on Tapper's blog wrote,
It's easy Jack: statements that follow the word "maybe" are hypotheticals. Statements that follow the word "but" address the shortcomings of the previous statement.
It's called "English" and is usually considered a useful skill for a reporter in an English-language publication. ABC obviously feels otherwise.

Over at the National Review, Iain Murray weighed in -- defending Clinton.

Jonah, that video is actually (and again, I can't believe I'm saying this) really unfair to Bill Clinton. The biter bit, you may say, but I don't believe this sort of manipulation by the media is in any way helpful. The clip is out of context. What Clinton actually said was:

And maybe America, and Europe, and Japan, and Canada — the rich counties — would say, 'OK, we just have to slow down our economy and cut back our greenhouse gas emissions 'cause we have to save the planet for our grandchildren.' We could do that. But if we did that, you know as well as I do, China and India and Indonesia and Vietnam and Mexico and Brazil and the Ukraine, and all the other countries will never agree to stay poor to save the planet for our grandchildren.

The bold section is what ABC chose to highlight in that video, plucked from the middle of words that have the opposite meaning. That's not good journalism in any sense.

How true. I used to think highly of Jake Tapper. My bad. Tapper is just another dimwit Roland Hedley type, pretending to have some profound insight and intelligence he doesn't have.

Journalists who persist in their delusions of inerrancy in the Internet age are not only making themselves fools before the world, they are bringing discredit onto the entire profession in the public's eyes. ABC is doing itself and journalism no favor by letting Tapper get away with his mealy-mouthed non-apologies.

UPDATE: Grist, an environmental journal, points out Tapper's evasive, dishonest attempt to retroactively restate what he said

Andy Revkin has a Dot Earth post today that reflects on Jake Tapper's hackery and, in my humble opinion, lets Tapper off way too easily. Look at this:

For his part, Mr. Tapper posted a series of updates through Thursday clarifying his intent, saying he found Mr. Clinton's speech confusing and was posing questions more than offering criticisms. And his main point, he told me over the phone late last night, was to examine whether Mr. Clinton was portraying efforts to curb greenhouse-gas emissions as something that would blunt the economy. This is a point that other proponents of gas curbs have sometimes downplayed.

"I didn't think I was accusing him of anything other than candor," Mr. Tapper said.

That is rank bullshit, on its face. Tapper's updates did not "clarify" anything, they just replied to an entirely just accusation with catty snaring meant to make his Village buddies giggle. There was nothing confusing at all about Clinton's speech -- unless, like Tapper, you are so immersed in shallow Beltway conventional wisdom that someone saying something different is like a foreign language. And he wasn't "raising questions" -- he straightforwardly portrayed Clinton as saying the opposite of what he actually said. Tapper did not "accuse him of candor." Clinton was quite candidly saying that he thinks we can make money shifting to a green economy. Tapper is convinced that environmentalism means economic pain, because that's what his right-wing sources keep telling him, so he was convinced that that was what Clinton was secretly saying. But that just means that Tapper's a vapid dunce.

I don't know enough about Tapper's sources or motives to agree with Grist that his misstatement of Clinton's speech came from right-wing sources. But I don't have to do mind-reading to conclude that Tapper is indeed a "vapid dunce."

Indeed, Tapper's kind of glib stupidity seems to be popular among media political analysts. I wonder how that works. Did ABC give Tapper a lobotomy, so he could only. Write. And. Understand. Short. Sentences? Anything requiring the least subtlety of thought or reflection seems to short-circuit the synapses of political analysts, especially shouters like Chris Matthews.

As Don Henley sang:

"And when it's said and done they haven't told you a thing."

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Hugh "Cherrypicker" Hewitt seems not not care that he's blatantly misrepresenting facts in his role as a Mitt Romney shill. His latest distortion is to select one poll from a bunch and talking about a growing Romney lead in California's Super Tuesday primary.

Here's Hugh:

And here's what Hewitt's link reveals:

Click on the photo above to read the result more clearly. Even without doing so, you should be able to see that Hewitt based his comment about Romney increasing his "lead" on one poll out of five. This is getting close to Jake Tapper territory, Mr. Hewitt. You should think about the long-term damage cherry-picking the facts to give a misleading impression does to your reputation. And I say this as someone who admires your advice to newspapers.

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