In the last sentence of my PJ essay I mentioned that this campaign contains many ironies.
What might they be? Continue reading →
And the winner is: Joe the Plumber
I’ve got an article up at Pajamas Media today. Does Joe the Plumber reveal Obama the secret socialist?
I must be a glutton for punishment: liveblogging the third Presidential debate
I must say my usual antipathy to debates has grown. And I don’t think these debates have made much of a difference at all so far—and barring some very strange and unforeseen circumstance, I don’t think this one will.
But duty calls, and I’m liveblogging.
So far it’s very wonky. I don’t know about anyone else, but I find Obama’s voice very monotonous.
“Spreading the wealth around”—McCain is wise to repeat that particular unsound bite.
If “Joe the Plumber” didn’t exist, they’d have to invent him. Continue reading →
You want polls?
He’s pretty good at analyzing them, too. The news is better than you might think, if you believe what he says. Scroll down and do a bit of reading; he’s especially good at analyzing the difficulties with state polls.
Are the polls being gamed, with Democrats oversampled? Continue reading →
Gee whiz
What a surprise! Not.
The surprise for me is how much Madonna is worth: about 500 million. I had no idea. I’ve never been a fan; always found her very harsh. But then again, I’m not a man.
The certain road to post-election happiness…
…is to own a liquor store. You win either way: those who are miserable will drink to ease their pain, and those who are ecstatic will be celebrating.
[Hat tip: Fox News interview of owner of wine store.]
The MSM still controls the message: change and hope
We can talk all we want about the power of the blogosphere and the talk shows. But the fact is that most people’s view of facts—and their interpretation thereof—is shaped largely by the MSM. For young people, the ground has also been lovingly properly prepared and fertilized by an educational system increasingly dominated by liberal and even Leftist thought.
Add to this the propensity of most people to either be so heavily involved with their own lives that they have little time to dig beyond the headlines and the TV ads, and those who just have little interest and inclination to do so, and you have a recipe for a populace more and more susceptible to media manipulation. Continue reading →
Obama the soft socialist
Bookworm has a piece at American Thinker in which she makes the point that it might be more instructive to divide ourselves on a continuum of Statists vs. Individualists rather than Liberals vs. Conservatives.
Obama, of course, would be a statist, of the “soft socialism” type. Continue reading →
Rules of the blog
Every now and then I decide to ban a commenter here. Sometimes it’s a no-brainer; the comment is so obscene and revolting it doesn’t see the public light of day for more than a few moments before I delete both it and the poster’s right to make more comments here.
Sometimes it’s not obscene, but so obviously of the “nah-nah-nah-nah-nah,” variety, merely insulting and taunting with no other content whatsoever. That’s an easy decision, as well; I’m not interested in that sort of discussion.
Sometimes it takes a bit longer to determine that it’s time to ban someone from commenting here. Continue reading →
Recommended Sunday reading
For those of you inclined to stay home today and do some reading, here are two articles that provide much food for thought in these very troubling times:
(1) PUMAs on the warpath against Obamaphile voter fraud. They are motivated not just by anger that Hillary lost the primaries, but by righteous rage at the dirty tactics Obama’s people used against them in the caucuses.
(2) ACORN way back in 2003 by Sol Stern, the guy who’s been on Ayers’s case for many years. From little ACORNs do mighty Leftist oak trees grow—ACORN hopes. Continue reading →
The Anchoress isn’t ordinarily…
…the angry type, so it takes a lot to get her to this point. I agree with her that the bias of the press—and in this case, the courts—has taken us to a point that should deeply concern and even anger all of his who value fairness and freedom of speech. This ought to be beyond party considerations, but unfortunately it is not.
Recommended reading: studying economics
I haven’t yet read Manias, Panics, and Crashes, published in 2000. But I came across a recommendation in the comments section of some blog the other day and found the title and the Amazon description rather intriguing:
“[Manias, Panics, and Crashes] is a scholarly account of the way that mismanagement of money and credit has led to financial explosions over the centuries.””“Richard Lambert, Financial Times
“This book sparkles with the best of Kindleberger’s wit, insight, and passion for financial history. A real delight.””“Robert Z. Aliber, Professor of International Economics and Finance, University of Chicago, Graduate School of Business
“What long has been the best history of financial pathologies is now even better. The reader who absorbs Kindleberger’s lessons will be prepared to foresee and navigate the financial crises that surely lie ahead. Like a true classic, Manias, Panics, and Crashes is both timely and timeless.” ”“Richard Sylla, Kaufman Professor of Financial History, Stern School of Business, New York University
“Foresee and navigate the financial crises that surely lie ahead”—ah, would that I had! Would that I could!
Book blurbs are often a literary form of “You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours,” and as I said I’ve not read this one so I don’t know how good it actually is. But it occurs to me that some book or other on this topic ought to be required reading in our public school system. It might help to inoculate the public against falling for the mania part of the cycle (ah, a person can dream, can’t she?) Continue reading →