Lindsay's older girlfriend

Lindsay Lohan, 22, celebrated girlfriend Samantha Ronson's 31st birthday yesterday. Anybody worried that Linsday's being exploited by this older woman?

In utterly unrelated news, a 50-year-old woman has given birth to the child of Clay Aiken.

'Big Oil' hurts Republican

Potential trouble for November?

Being linked to "big oil" turned into a big problem for Tennessee Republican freshman Rep. David Davis, who became the first congressman from that state to lose in a primary in more than four decades.
Johnson City Mayor Phil Roe beat Davis by a 500-vote margin Thursday in the solidly Republican 1st District in the northeastern corner of the state. . . .
The race became increasingly acrimonious as the primary election neared. Roe ran a TV ad accusing Davis of selling out to "Big Oil" by accepting money from industry PACs and backing legislation supporting offshore drilling.

If being linked to "Big Oil" can hurt a candidate in a Republican primary (?!) what would be the effect of linking a Republican to "Big Oil" in the general election? Of course, there are plenty of Democrats in Congress who've taken money from "Big Oil" -- including Exxon's sweetheart Barack Obama -- so Republicans could possibly fight fire with fire.

The bigger problem, in my eyes, is that there appears to be such widespread economic ignorance that demonizing "Big Oil" can gain political traction like this. Does being profitable makes a corporation evil? Does being associated with profitable companies make a politician evil? That such arguments could win in a Republican primary is disturbing.

Blogs: Not a poli-sci class

If you want "insightful, intellectual nuance and persusion," I'm not sure that logging onto Memeorandum is the best approach, especially during an election year.

Sometimes, maybe I'd like to be . . . I don't know, Volokh or somebody heavy like that. But I think it's highly unlikely that anyone wants to read my opinions about Guantanamo. So if you want learned opinions about Guantanamo, go to the guys who do that.

It appears that Donald Douglas's complaint was inspired in part by a "snarky" retort aimed at my "Equality Is For Ugly Losers" post. My post wasn't written as an attack on any person, but as an attack on an ideology. Blogs don't come with bibliographies, but if you haven't read Edmund Burke -- "Believe me, sir, those who attempt to level, never equalize" -- then you may not understand the philosophical nature of my hostility to egalitarianism.

The series of posts that culminated in "Equality Is For Ugly Losers" began with a reaction to a New York Times article on a "women online" conference, and the fact that an organizer of that conference complained about the coverage: Boo-hoo-hoo, I'm being oppressed by the sexists at the New York Times. There are serious problems in the world; having a 1,2oo-work New York Times article about your femblogger conference relegated to the "Fashion" section is not one of them.

So, yeah, I called her an "idiot HuffPo woman." Excuse my lack of nuance. One of the fundamental problems is that, once a radical ideology embeds itself in our culture, it is no longer recognized as ideology. To question "equality" is, in the minds of many people, to question the unquestionable.

Entire books have been written about the "income gap" between men and women, to what avail? As long as "equality" is held up as a universal ideal, any difference in income -- or in education, legal status, etc. -- must be considered a social problem. Yet if perfect equality is unattainable (and it is), then the problem is not in society, but in the ideal of equality itself.

How do you get people to question the unquestionable? First you must get their attention. If an unnuanced putdown serves that purpose, OK. Feminists will never abandon their errors if they are exempted from criticism, if they are not occasionally made aware of how ludicrous they appear to those outside their own intellectual ghetto.

Considering that our universities are now groupthink factories where feminism is sacrosanct, I would suggest that vicious sarcasm aimed at the idiocy of feminism serves the salutory purpose of alerting the "empowered" occupants of academic sinecures that the rest of us are undeceived by their nonsense and unintimidated by their prestige.

That I do not preface every joke with an explanation of my purpose, or structure my posts as persuasive essays, does not mean that I write without purpose or that I do not aim to persuade. This isn't a political science lecture or an academic journal. It's a blog.

The medium is not generally suited for long-form discourse, and I've only gone on at such lengths here in an effort to make clear that I don't believe I'm guilty of "demonization" that contributes to the degradation of the 'sphere.

"Truth is great and will prevail if left to herself. She is the proper and sufficient antagonist to error, and has nothing to fear from the conflict, unless, by human interposition, disarmed of her natural weapons, free argument and debate; errors ceasing to be dangerous when it is permitted freely to contradict them."
-- Thomas Jefferson

No need to Name That Party

When a Republican is indicted, be sure that his party affliation will be in the first paragraph:

Missouri state Rep. Scott Muschany, R-Frontenac, was indicted today in connection with a reported sexual assault of a 14-year-old girl on May 17, the day after this year’s Legislative session ended.The alleged victim is the daughter of a state employee.
The girl’s mother and Muschany -– who is married and has two children --were romantically involved, the woman said. A Cole County grand jury returned an indictment today charging Muschany with the Class C felony of "deviate sexual assault." ...
Muschany, 42, was booked into the Cole County Jail today at 2:50 and he was released after posting a $5,000 bond.

The most dangerous man in the world is always "mom's boyfriend."

Murder in NY nightclub

While the jazz combo onstage was playing a peppy swing tune, and the creme de la creme of Manhattan society danced the night away . . . er, not exactly:

A 24-year-old Queens woman was beaten to death at a Times Square club packed with rap royalty celebrating Lil' Kim's birthday, and the prime suspects are club employees, police sources said.
A maintenance worker Wednesday found Ingrid (China) Rivera's battered body stuffed in a rooftop electrical room above Spotlight Live. . . .
She had been missing since Sunday when, wearing a blue dress and silver heels, she spent the night at Lil' Kim's bash, which was attended by Missy Elliott, Busta Rhymes, Lamar Odom and Wyclef Jean.

Kind of like the shooting during the Skynyrd show at that redneck bar down in Georgia . . .

Democrats leak party platform

Marc Ambinder has obtained drafts of the Democratic Party platform:

The bourgeois family will vanish as a matter of course when its complement vanishes, and both will vanish with the vanishing of capital. . . . The bourgeois claptrap about the family and education, about the hallowed correlation of parents and child, becomes all the more disgusting, the more, by the action of Modern Industry, all the family ties among the proletarians are torn asunder, and their children transformed into simple articles of commerce and instruments of labor.

Oops. Sorry. Wrong party. What Ambinder actually has is the Democratic Party platform, which Allah says is "written carefully and vaguely enough that you can extract whatever you want from it, which of course is the point." Which means that the moonbat left will be disappointed, as they would with any platform calling for anything short of the strangulation of the last Christian with the entrails of the last Republican.

Live at YAF! -- Day Three

Continued liveblogging of the Young America's Foundation National Conservative Student Conference.

9 p.m. -- Allen just said "there is no silver bullet for our energy problem. We need some silver buckshot."

8:10 p.m. -- The banquet entree is penne pasta with chicken in tomato sauce. My tablemates include YAF staffer Flagg Youngblood.

7:40 p.m. -- Former Virginia Sen. George Allen will be the speaker at tonight's banquet.

4:50 p.m. -- Michael Graham just said the ones who really lost the primary were comedians -- Hillary's a much better target.

4:45 p.m. -- Graham just referenced this interview:



4:35 p.m. -- Speaking of Obama's speech in Berlin: "Hey, if you can't trust the German people to pick a strong leader . . ."

4:30 p.m. -- Michael Graham: "I got the memo -- that's not comedy, that's hate. . . . Everything you say about Barack Obama is hate."

4:10 p.m. -- Radio hosts Doug Giles and Michael Graham are preparing to discuss "advancing conservative ideas through humor."

4:25 p.m. -- Doug Giles is also a Christian evangelist, and has a very strong personal presence. He interacts with the audience, teasing with some of his friends Benny Johnson and Rachel Coolidge in the front row. Kidding with Jason Mattera about when they go out for beer and cigars -- not exactly your stereotypical uptight preacher. "I found in Christ an example extraordinaire . . . if you read the scriptures straight, as I do my whiskey, you'll see quickly that Jesus was no bearded lady." He says when he goes to pastors' conferences, he tells them, "Thou shalt not bore should be a commandment."

2:40 p.m. -- Princeton University professor Robert George is talking about natural law theory, and just told students that philosophy requires them to choose between "the Humean or the Aristotlean view" of human nature. (George is Aristotelean, I think.)

UPDATE: Kirby Wilbur is addressing the men's luncheon. He addresses the tradition of chivalry, and says, "There's not really much wrong with that old code. If we still lived by that, he world would be a better place."

PREVIOUSLY:
This morning the panel on new media features YAF spokesman Jason Mattera, talk radio producer A.J. Rice, National Review Online editor Kathryn Jean Lopez, and Mary Katharine Ham of the Washington Examiner.

K-Lo recalls that when she attended NCSC about 15 years ago, "you could count the girls on one hand."

UPDATE: MK just showed her notorious "Obama On My Shoulder" video and warned students that this song will "be in your head all day":

Blogging of Day One and Day Two.

'Electability' returns

Resurrecting an argument from the Democratic primaries, Victor Davis Hanson says that Hillary Clinton would be the more electable candidate:

If the polls are right, a public tired of Republicans is beginning to think an increasingly bothersome Obama would be no better -- and maybe a lot worse. . . .
In a tough year like this, Democrats could probably have defeated Republican John McCain with a flawed, but seasoned candidate like Hillary Clinton. But long-suffering liberals convinced their party to go with a messiah rather than a dependable nominee -- and thereby they probably will get neither.

This is the real hope of the GOP this year: That liberals have once again demonstrated how smart they are by outsmarting themselves.

UPDATE: The question of whether Hillary is plotting something may answer itself, but the question of whether she should get a convention vote is still open to debate. Would it hurt Obama if her delegates should demonstrate their strength? Or would it hurt Obama worse if he appeared to be suppressing her supporters? Personally, I think Obama has nothing to fear from a roll call that he knows he would win. The imposition of a compulsory consensus makes the undemocratic nature of the process -- with Obama essentially chosen by the "superdelegates" -- too transparent.

WSJ wrong about the South

This is just wrong:

The party's rising prospects point toward a once unthinkable goal: a reversal of the "Great Reversal," the switch in political loyalties in the 1960s that made the South a Republican stronghold for a generation.

It was not until the 1990s that the GOP solidified its dominance in the South. While Republican presidents beginning with Eisenhower did well in the South, but that realignment didn't trickle down to the state and local level until the '90s. As recently as 1994, my native Georgia had two Democratic senators and only three Republican congressmen. It wasn't until 2002 that Georgia elected its first Republican governor since Reconstruction.

Incorrectly placing this realignment in the 1960s is part of a myth promoted by liberals, as a way of falsely suggesting that Republicans succeeded in the South because of race and civil rights. In fact, the South didn't become solidly Republican until two or three decades after the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Poll Watch

Gallup: Obama 46%, McCain 43%
Rasmussen: Obama 47%, McCain 46%

Rasmussen has a note about undecided voters:

If the race for the White House remains close, the final decision may be rest in the hands of voters who are not yet paying attention to the campaign. Each night, Rasmussen Reports asks survey participants to let us know how closely they are following the election using a 9-point scale. People answering "9" say they are following the race "on a daily basis." . . .
[A]mong the undecided voters, just 19% say they're paying that much attention. On that nine-point scale, most undecided voters say their interest in the campaign is a "6" or less.

This goes to a basic point: Elections always boil down to independent "swing" voters, who pay less attention to politics -- who are less informed -- than partisans.

UPDATE: Rasmussen also reports the influence of TV news:

Eighty-seven percent (87%) of Fox News viewers say they are likely to vote for John McCain, while those who watch CNN and MSNBC plan to support Barack Obama in November by more than two to one.
A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 65% of CNN voters plan to vote for the Democratic candidate versus 26% who intend to go for the Republican. Similarly, MSNBC watchers plan to vote for Obama over McCain 63% to 30%. ...
Among those who get their information on the presidential campaign from local television, the new survey finds that the amount of time one watches impacts how they plan to vote. Those who watch local news every day support Obama over McCain 52% to 42%. But for those who say they watch several days a week but not every day, it’s McCain over Obama 50% to 43%.

Not surprising.

Racism: Name that party!

The New York Times:

In the culmination of a racially fraught Congressional campaign in Memphis, a black candidate is linking her liberal-leaning white primary opponent in Thursday's contest, Representative Steve Cohen, to the Ku Klux Klan in a television advertisement. . . .
The advertisement for the challenger, Nikki Tinker, juxtaposes Mr. Cohen's picture with that of a hooded Klansman, and criticizes Mr. Cohen for voting against renaming a park in Memphis currently named for the Confederate general Nathan Bedford Forrest, a Ku Klux Klan founder.
"This makes you wonder," a black former county commissioner, Walter Bailey, says in the advertisement. "Who is the real Steve Cohen?"

Read the whole thing -- 662 words and "Democrat" is not one of them.

UPDATE: Linked by Instapundit and Small Dead Animals -- thanks! Meanwhile, we learn that Emily's List and Keith Olbermann are shocked, shocked that a Democrat would resort to such tactics:

"We were shocked to see the recent ads run by the Nikki Tinker for Congress campaign. We believe the ads are offensive and divisive," said Ellen Malcolm, the group's director. "EMILY's List does not condone or support these types of attacks."
Those ads brought Tinker another blast when MSNBC's Keith Olbermann named her tonight as his "Worst Person in the World," a regular over-the-top satire on his program.

While smearing Republicans is still fair game, Democrats aren't supposed to say such things about each other.

UPDATE II: Jammie Wearing Fool notices that a mayor of "unknown party affiliation" was sent to jail in Detroit.

Second-hand leftism

Routine plagiarism was editorial policy at an "alternative weekly" in Texas:

Like many alt weeklies, the paper's bread-and-butter is politics, and from the spring of 2005 on, its political op-eds comprise an apparently unbroken sequence of pilfered prose. The Bulletin's archives reveal a strong preference for the online magazine Salon -- in particular, the punditry of Joe Conason and Sidney Blumenthal. Compiling a complete annotated list of articles would require the services of a half-dozen unpaid interns, so a few examples will have to suffice.

Plagiarizing Sidney Blumenthal? Talk about desperation.

Keira: OK to be flat

She refuses to get breast implants:

Twenty-three-year-old box-office babe Keira Knightley recently refused to have her boobs enhanced in publicity photos for her new movie "The Duchess."
"She is proud of her body and doesn't want it altered," a source told Britain's Daily Mail last week.

I'm with Bethan Cole: Fake boobs are unnatural. If Hollywood wants skinny movie stars, it can't expect them to be both skinny and buxom.

New ad from Team Maverick

Keeping up the "celebrity" angle:



The message:

Is the biggest celebrity in the world ready to help your family?
The real Obama promises higher taxes, more government spending. So, fewer jobs.
Renewable energy to transform our economy, create jobs and energy independence, that's John McCain.

Simple and direct, reinforcing basic themes.

Poll Watch: Obama +2

Gallup: Obama 46%, McCain 44%
Rasmussen: Obama 47%, McCain 46%

Time magazine sees "trouble" in its latest poll showing Obama leading 46%-41%:

[O]n specific issues, Obama is treading water or sinking a bit. On the number one issue of the campaign right now, the economy, Obama leads McCain 43%-39%, compared to 44%-37% reported by TIME's poll in June. Despite his highly touted tour of Europe, the Middle East and Afghanistan last month, Obama may be in
something of a late summer slump. The poll shows that voters have increased
their faith in McCain's ability to manage the Iraq war, favoring him over Obama by a margin of 51%-36%, a five point jump since June.

Note, of course, that Time describes bad news for Obama as "trouble"; bad news for McCain would be ... Hope?

Live at YAF! Day Two

Former Virginia Republican Party chairwoman Kate Obenshain is the banquet speaker tonight at the Young America's Foundation National Conservative Student Conference. The dinner entree is filet of salmon.

UPDATE: Ms. Obenshain has apparently been cautioned not to get into campaign mode, so she refers to a "very prominent liberal" who lectures Americans that "We can't drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times ... and then just expect that other countries are going to say OK."

Ms. Obenshain also quotes the Huffington Post's Steven Posner's denunciation of patriotism as "crude flag-waving fanaticism." She responds to Posner by quoting such famous "fanatics" as Nathan Hale, Patrick Henry and John Paul Jones.

PREVIOUSLY:
Last night, I had the opportunity to speak to a conservative student superstar, Rebecca Beach. As a community college freshman three years ago, Rebecca decided to bring Iraq war hero Lt. Col. Scott Rutter as a campus speaker. When she sent an e-mail to faculty asking them to help promote the speech in their classes, she got an incredibly nasty (and ungrammatical) reply from an adjunct English instructor John Daly. Rebecca forwarded the e-mail to YAF and, next thing she knows, she's being interviewed by Sean Hannity -- sparking a national controversy that ended with Daly's resignation.

The atmosphere of repression on campuses includes lots of incidents you never hear about in the media, however. I just spoke to another student superstar, Jessica Austin, who told me about the controversy that erupted last year when she scheduled Tammy Bruce as a speaker at the University of Redlands. This resulted in death threats that police traced to the president of a gay student group, who was prosecuted. University administrators agreed to provide extra security for the event.

This kind of stuff never happens to liberal speakers. You can bring Al Gore or Michael Moore to campus, and there are never death threats or security hassles or faculty denunciations.

Polls or prophecies?

My latest column at the American Spectator:

Analogies from sports are often employed to describe the competitive clash of politics and I've used a baseball metaphor myself to describe the current presidential campaign.
However, my eyebrows were raised when I learned that Internet poll guru Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight (538 = total number of Electoral College votes) comes to political punditry from a background of baseball statistics. . . .
The results on Nov. 4 may very well match Silver's projections (currently 295 EVs for Obama, 243 for McCain), but this is merely the extrapolation of current numbers over an imaginary 90-day event-free path to Election Day, which cannot be assumed.

Read the whole thing. (That means you, Dave Weigel.)

She's totally ready to lead

"See you at the debates, bitches!"

See more funny videos at Funny or Die

Ben Stein is not amused:

This little tramp, who isn't even close to being pretty, is belittling a man who spent six years in brutal captivity for defending his country.

Ouch.

Live at YAF!

Greetings from the Marvin Center at George Washington University, where I'm covering the 30th National Conservative Student Conference, sponsored by Young America's Foundation. Will be updating regularly . . .

9:20 p.m. -- Rich Lowry was funny. And depressing. The steak was delicious and the carrot cake was good.

8 p.m. -- My tablemates at dinner include Kirby Wilbur, talk radio star of Seattle's KVI, and one of Doug Giles's daughters. Also, two students from Patrick Henry College, and Allison Aldrich of CNS News.

7 p.m. -- Just got back from a brief pre-dinner at TGI Friday's, where I interviewed Dan Flynn, who got his start with YAF as an undergraduate at U-Mass./Amherst back in the 1990s. Among other things, he protested the university's plans to rename the library after W.E.B. DuBois (who joined the Communist Party, praised Stalin and renounced his American citizenship). Flynn had the Flat Iron Steak.

4:50 p.m. -- Brooks just finished. He was introduced by YAF intern Alisa Kassil, Kings College in New York, who said of his speech: "I thought it was a refreshing look at the current state of affairs."

Next up, National Review editor Rich Lowry speaks at tonight's banquet.

4:15 p.m. -- Just met Sgt. Frank Anello, USMC, who is a student at Norwich University in Vermont. Anello, a married father of two, participated in the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and describes the opening day of the war as "the greatest day in my life," and says he "can't wait to get back" to Iraq. With more than 8 years in the service, Sgt. Anello is working toward a commission as a platoon leader. Semper fi!

3:45 p.m. -- David Brooks is speaking now. I've left my recorder in the auditorium for future reference, while I blog some shoutouts for a few of my peeps. Having seen them at previous YAF events and at CPAC, some of these future leaders of conservatism are becoming familiar faces: Sara Mikolajczak, Andrew McIndoe, Ruth Malhotra (who just won her lawsuit against Georgia Tech), Benny Johnson, Dan Lipian, Rachel Coolidge, Tom Qualtere and Gabby Shuster are here, to name just a few.

At any rate, I need to get myself chilled before going back in the room with the originator of "National Greatness" conservatism.

3:10 p.m. -- "You can't trust the Left to write their own history," Dan Flynn, author of A Conservative History of the American Left, told the hundreds of students gathered here. "They don't want to be reminded."

Flynn recounted the history of 19th-century socialist Robert Owen and his "New Harmony" commune, "a complete disaster." Flynn noted that Owen wished to abolish three great evils: private property, religion and marriage. "It is as it was -- not a lot has changed in 180 years," Flynn said.

The notion of "heaven on earth," of men running a godless temporal paradise is "the most harmful delusion in history," Flynn said.

New York Times columnist David Brooks speaks next. Mere coincidence ...

2:25 p.m. -- Just finished a panel on "Status of the Young Conservative Movement in 2008," featuring Charlie Smith, chairmon of the College Republican National Committee; Ron Robinson, president of YAF; Morton Blackwell, president of the Leadership Institute; and Douglas Minson, executive director of academic affairs at the Intercollegiate Studies Institute.

During the Q&A session, Crystal Boyd of UNLV asked a question about "brand damage," students who reject the "conservative" label. She spoke of talking to a fellow student who said, "I'm a libertarian -- I'm voting for Obama" -- rather a non-sequitur. Ron Robinson answered that this is "often more a question of self-identification," with students agreeing more with the conservative position on issues. "You have to engage them," Robinson said. "Do not abandon the conservative label," he advised, citing the fact that "conservative" is far more popular than "liberal" as a political identifier.

Blackwell pointed out that "the vast majority of college students are apathetic" and said conservative students have an "opening to get these people . . . get a good book or magazine in their hands . . . get them involved."

New ad: 'The original Maverick'

The brand independent voters love:

Obviously, this is to make sure Maverick's non-partisan brand ID is not lost due to his sharp attacks on Obama.

Obama NOT a flip-flopper

McCain spokeswoman Jill Hazelbaker:

"Senator Obama's stance on offshore oil drilling has been mischaracterized. He has not changed his position. He has continually campaigned against additional drilling, calling the policy a 'gimmick' saying it was a 'scheme' and ridiculing those who support it. With his steadfast opposition to John McCain's 'all of the above' approach to our energy crisis, Americans should know that Barack Obama remains opposed to additional domestic oil drilling. Speaker Pelosi, MoveOn.org and the Sierra Club can take comfort from the fact that Barack Obama still opposes additional domestic oil drilling. Meanwhile, the American people can be sure that John McCain will do what is necessary to reduce this country's dependence on Middle East oil and bring down prices at the pump."

That's going to leave a mark.

Obama the rootless

David Brooks puts his finger on something about the disconnect between The One and the many:

His childhood was a peripatetic journey through Kansas, Indonesia, Hawaii and beyond. . . .
His college years were spent on both coasts. He was a community organizer for three years but left before he could be truly effective. He became a state legislator, but he was in the Legislature, not of it. . . .
If Obama is fully a member of any club — and perhaps he isn’t — it is the club of smart post-boomer meritocrats. We now have a cohort of rising leaders, Obama’s age and younger, who climbed quickly through elite schools and now ascend from job to job. They are conscientious and idealistic while also being coldly clever and self-aware. It’s not clear what the rest of America makes of them.

Maybe this is why Obama used the word "planet" eight times in Monday's speech -- his identity is global in scope and, like many of his peers in the cosmopolitan elite, he views national and local attachments as inherently backward and reactionary.

UPDATE: John Zogby:

"The survey results come as Obama, fresh off what had been characterized as a triumphant tour of the Middle East and Europe, including a speech to 200,000 Germans in Berlin. That trip quickly became fodder for an aggressive response ad by the McCain campaign that questioned whether Obama's popularity around the world meant he was ready to lead the U.S."

(Via Instapundit.) Rasmussen shows McCain maintaining a 47%-46% lead for the second day in a row. Since July 21, Obama's lead in the RCP average has shrunk from 4.7 points to 2.3 points.

Headlines from Drudge

Totally random, OK?

• Gas prices fall to 11-week low
• Oil below $120/barrel
• Obama assails McCain as tool of Big Oil
• Rasmussen Poll has McCain ahead

Am I the only one thinking that maybe being a "tool of Big Oil" isn't so bad when being a "tool" puts you on the side of increased production that would drive down the price?

But this is just random coincidence ... and now Obama changes his mind about tapping the strategic oil reserve. How long before he endorses a gas-tax holiday?

Yeah, remember, when Team Obama said they were planning to send St. Hopey to Alaska? McCain +6 in Alaska. And remember when Team Obama insisted on disenfranchising Democrats in Florida? McCain +6 in Florida. North Carolina? McCain +4. Missouri? McCain +5.

These are all just isolated items, exhibiting no discernible pattern. It would be wrong to try to see them as remotely related in any way.

UPDATE: Now a "fact check" on Obama's accusation that Maverick's funded by those eeeevil guys at Big Oil. And Ed Morrissey points out, guess who has Big Oil guys as campaign-cash "bundlers"?

'It’s not a cure for cancer, it’s a blog.'

Rachel Lucas doesn't want you to misunderstand.

Josh Marshall loses it

The TPM pundit accuses Team Maverick of a "headlong dive into sleaze, xenophobia and gonzo bamboozlement." Because of a couple of ads. Andrea Mitchell shares this folie a deux:

Mattera vs. 'Cold Cash' Jefferson

'Most ethical Congress ever'!


(H/T: Michelle at Hot Air.)

Jason Mattera is at this week's Young America's Foundation conference in D.C. -- and in a few hours, I will be there, too. I'm spending three days covering the event down at George Washington University.

Obama whines about 'issues'

"Just another liberal Democrat" -- if Team Maverick were smart, that's how they'd tag Obama. For all his talk of Change, and all the talk that he's being hit with racist "code," The One We've Been Waiting For seems to be reading from the standard playbook.

Now, he's recycling the old complaint that Republicans won't talk about "the real issues":

"If you think about this week, what they've been good at is distraction," he said during an expansive and quite humid early morning press conference [in
Florida]. "You've got statistics saying we lost another 50,000 jobs. That Florida is in recession for the first time in a decade and a half. And what was being talked about was Paris and Britney."

Who's been talking about Paris and Britney, Senator? The "Celeb" ad was about your opposition to new oil drilling, and high fuel costs are a major factor in the recession -- Florida's a tourism-dependent state and, at $4 a gallon, folks can't afford to drive to Disney World. So instead of whining about "distraction," why not just tell us again about your plan to fix the energy problem with tire gauges?

Better yet, Captain Planet, how about pandering to the locals by promising more tax money for the space program?

Why Obama's losing

Ed Morrissey makes it explicit, for the benefit of lefty bloggers who pretend they don't get what's so stupid about this Obama quote:

We could save all the oil that they’re talking about getting off drilling, if everybody was just inflating their tires and getting regular tune-ups. You’d actually save just as much.

As Morrissey demonstrates from multiple sources, this is simply untrue, the silliness of the argument goes beyond its falsehood:

• The additional production from drilling ANWR and offshore would be many times greater than the amount from such improvements in efficiency.
• Even if conservation -- tire inflation, tuneups, etc. -- could reduce consumption, this doesn't mean that the additional production would be useless. If conservation reduces demand by factor X and additional production could expand supply by the same factor, why would we not choose a potential price savings of 2x from doing both?
• Checking your tire pressure is a hassle, and tuneups cost money, and thus Obama is demanding we spend our money and time doing these things, rather than simply lift government prohibitions against drilling that would give us cheaper gas without any extra money or effort on our part.
• There's a class issue and a hypocrisy issue involved. You can best believe that Obama's not checking his tire pressure, and his transportation is provided either by your taxes or by campaign contributors, so the cost of a tune-up doesn't come out of his pocket.

The rich, powerful, successful Harvard Law graduate is telling ordinary Americans how to live their lives, by engaging in expenditures of time and effort that he never has to make himself. Do you lefties think people in Ohio and Pennsylvania are too stupid to understand this?

Keith Olbermann, Kossack

Blogging to criticize The Washington Post's Dana Milbank for failing to kowtow to his demands that he issue a "correction" for a column. Milbank says, "I'm out of here," and Olbermann says that Milbank's failure to kowtow constitute's a "cloud" over Milbank.

I'd call Olbermann "arrogant," but David Gergen has ruled that word "racist."

The Politico: Success and failure

An item today on the Politico's success as a news organization, but Ezra Klein notes its apparent failure as a business model:

The success of Politico actually seems like an incredibly discouraging sign for the media. . . . A year-and-a-half after launch, it's getting 3.5 million unique visitors per month and 25 million page views. And yet not only is it unprofitable, but 60 percent of its revenues come from advertising in the 27,000 circulation print version. In other words: Politico got the online readership it dreamed of, but it hasn't come even close to figuring out how to monetize it.

OK, to start with, the failure of online advertising to create the kind of revenue stream needed to sustain a full-scale news operation is not news. This goes back to the era of the dot-com bubble, when Salon.com got a huge investment and a lot of hype and produced nothing but red ink -- or should that be "red pixels"?

In their defense, the Politico made some bad business moves during its first year of operation, hiring more staffers than it actually needed (including Amy Doolittle, a feature writer who'd done excellent work at The Washington Times) and then laying them off. So it may be that, with further streamlining to trim costs, they may yet become profitable.

Also, it must be pointed out that the Politico is part of a larger communications company that owns TV stations, etc., and if they can get some synergy happening, the Politico might be sustainable so long as its unit losses are relatively small compared to the overall profitability of the parent firm.

Still, Ezra's basic point is solid. The collapse of print news circulation and advertising has not been matched by the development of comparable profit opportunities online, and thus the news business is hurting. (Note that Klein is, himself, employed by the American Prospect, a non-profit funded with donations from rich liberals.)

My former boss Fran Coombs has some nostalgic thoughts about "The Front Page" and old-fashioned newspaper competition. Washington, D.C., is one of the few places left in America where you still have multiple newspapers (and other news organizations) racing to capture the "scoop." The news business thrives on that kind of competition, and unless we can develop new revenue models to fund reporting, the industry must suffer.

Expats for Obama

(Via Hot Air.)

Obama: Captain Planet

Saw part of this speech today:

Our changing climate is placing our planet in peril. . . .
When it comes to our economy, our security, and the very future of our planet, the choices we make in November and over the next few years will shape the next decade, if not the century. . . .
Without a doubt, this addiction [to oil] is one of the most dangerous and urgent threats this nation has ever faced -- from the gas prices that are wiping out your paychecks and straining businesses to the jobs that are disappearing from this state; from the instability and terror bred in the Middle East to the rising oceans and record drought and spreading famine that could engulf our planet. . . .
Will we be the generation that leaves our children a planet in decline, or a world that is clean, and safe, and thriving? . . .
For the sake of our economy, our security, and the future of our planet, we must end the age of oil in our time. . . .
Along with the cap-and-trade program I've proposed, we will reduce our dangerous carbon emissions 80% by 2050 and slow the warming of our planet. . . .
So there is a real choice in this election - a choice about what kind of future we want for this country and this planet. . . .
We can watch other countries create the industries and the jobs that will fuel our future, and leave our children a planet that grows more dangerous and unlivable by the day.

Buzz Lightyear for President! Only the Space Ranger of Star Command and the Interstellar Alliance can protect you from Emperor Zug! What a bunch of apocalyptic hooey . . .

UPDATE: Further analysis:

. . . peril . . . turmoil . . . the most dangerous and urgent threats this nation has ever faced . . . a threat that goes to the very heart of who we are as a nation . . . melting our glaciers and setting off dangerous weather patterns . . . our families and our economy suffer and our future is put in jeopardy . . . crisis we have no control over . . .

Holy crap: He's running as Al Gore!

UPDATE II: Linked by Dean Barnett at Weekly Standard, whose reaction to today's speech is ... well, required reading:

Terrific. The guy who lacks a single day’s experience in the private sector is going to transform our entire economy.

Except, I wouldn't say Obama's got no private sector experience. There was, after all, his magical book deal.

UPDATE III: Linked at Conservative Grapevine.

UPDATE IV: Captain Planet recyles . . . Bill Clinton's 1992 promise of a "middle-class tax cut"!

No 'surge' of hookers . . .

. . . for the GOP and Democratic conventions, police say:

As the Twin Cities and Denver gear up for four days of politics and parties during the Republican and Democratic national conventions, advocacy groups in both cities are getting set to combat what they believe will be a surge in prostitution.
But police in both cities say that the groups are mistaken and that research indicates there will be no increase in the sex trade. . . .
St. Paul police spokesman Tom Walsh said his department discussed the issue with police in New York and Boston, which hosted the 2004 Republican and Democratic conventions, respectively.
"And what they have reported to us is that is that there is not an increase in that kind of traffic," Walsh said. "There is so much going on, I don't know that there is a lot of unstructured time to be involved in any other activities. ... Is it something we are going to monitor? It is."
Lt. Ron Saunier of the Denver police said that while police in that city have set up several committees to deal with problems anticipated during the Aug. 25-28 Democratic convention, there's no committee on prostitution. "I have not heard of any information at this time about increased prostitution during the event," he said.

The Republicans will have a lot of blonde, busty women buzzing around, but those are just the wives of the Texas delegates. The Democrats will be too busy snorting coke to bother with prostitution.

Nancy says 'no'

No drilling for oil, ever, as long as Pelosi and the Democrats control Congress. If I were asked, "What's the one way Democrats might possibly blow this election?" this might be it.

McCain 47%, Obama 46%

Slept late and woke up to this:

This is the first time McCain has enjoyed even a statistically insignificant advantage of any sort since Obama clinched the Democratic nomination on June 3. . . .
A week ago today, Obama had a three-percentage point lead and the candidates were even among unaffiliated voters. Today, McCain leads 52% to 37% among unaffiliateds.

Allah: "It has to be the ads." Perhaps. Or perhaps weeks of relentless pounding by Team Maverick have gradually made Americans aware of the fact that Obama is a liberal who has only been in the Senate for three years and whose energy "plan" consists primarily of a Carteresque "windfall profits tax."

On the other hand, maybe Gergen's right: It's all about the "code."

UPDATE: Gallup has the trend moving the other way, with Obama now ahead 46%-43%, but that's registered voters, not "likely" voters as in the Rasmussen poll. Big difference.

UPDATE II: A good way to verify that I'm not just engaged in self-validated gloating is to check the lefty bloggers:

I've had a bad feeling about the direction of the campaign for the past couple weeks. . . . The latest tracking polls seem to indicate that McCain's negative attacks are having an impact. The corollary is that Obama's response hasn't been working, or at least it hasn't been enough.

The lefty makes the good point that national polls can be misleading because, ultimately, it comes down to getting to 270 the Electoral College and, as Allah noted, "The same Rasmussen poll puts the electoral college at Obama 273, McCain 227."

However, if Obama melts down in national polls, he'll also go down with swing voters in swing states -- and it's these voters who are being targeted heavily by McCain's attack ads. So a steady downward trend for Obama nationally would, eventually, be mirrored in swing-state polls. It would just take more time, because (a) Obama began with a substantial lead in most swing states, (b) states are not polled on a daily basis, and (c) Obama's targeting his own ads in these swing states, too, so that voters are being whipsawed by attack-and-counterattack.

The current poll trend means mainly that Obama's under pressure. His foreign trip was a flop that gained him nothing, while fueling the "arrogance" narrative. A negative poll trend takes the wind of "inevitability" out of his sails, and puts him on the defensive.

This is the point in the campaign when screaming matches at headquarters start to break out, where fingers of blame are being pointed, and people start looking for a scapegoat. Let Obama slip a few more points, and you'll start hearing "shakeup" rumors.

You're guilty of murder

You never even heard of Luis Ramirez. You've never been anywhere near Shenandoah, Pa. But don't try to deny it, says liberal columnist Walter Brasch:

On a street in Shenandoah, Pa., deep in the heart of the anthracite coal region, six White teens took their racial hatred to a higher level. They confronted 25-year-old Luis Ramirez, an undocumented worker, and beat him to death. . . .
Unindicted co-conspirators are millions of Americans and the far-right mass media. . . .
But now, self-aggrandizing politicians and media talk show hosts and pundits, who erroneously believe they are populists, spew hate-filled torrents of bigotry and fear-mongering.
I don’t know if the six teens who murdered Luis Ramirez listen to talk radio, watch Fox News, or read web blogs and anonymous call-ins and letters to the local newspaper. They don’t have to. Their community does.

Right. And immediately after watching "Fox & Friends" this morning, I'll go perpetrate whatever hateful atrocity Steve Doocy suggests. (He's like that, you know.)

Brasch's "argument" reminds me of the Matthew Shepard case, which caused liberals everywhere to blame the murder on the "Religious Right," even though there wasn't a scintilla of evidence that the two petty hoodlums who killed Shepard had ever had anything to do with either religion or the Right. The great thing about liberal belief, as Thomas Sowell has said, is that it renders evidence irrelevant.

UPDATE: Linked at AOSHQ headlines, which explains all the great comments.

Quote of the Year?

"McCain should return the $4,600 that the Hiltons donated and tell them to buy panties for their daughters."
-- Don Surber

Black reporter ousted at McCain event

By Secret Service:

Tallahassee Democrat senior writer Stephen Price on Friday was singled out and asked to leave a media area at the Panama City rally of presidential candidate Sen. John McCain.
Price was among at least three other reporters, and the only black reporter, surrounding McCain's campaign bus . . . when a member of the Arizona senator's security detail asked the reporter to identify himself. Price had shown his media credentials to enter the area.
Price showed his employee identification as well as his credentials for the Friday event.
"I explained I was with the state press, but the Secret Service man said that didn't matter and that I would have to go," Price said.
When another reporter asked why Price was being removed, she too was led out of the area.

Having covered Hillary Clinton three times and John McCain once on the campaign trail, I can tell you that the security for McCain's event was much more . . . uptight, I guess you'd say. In Wilkes-Barre, they had "crime scene" tape set up so nobody could get within 50 yards of the McCain bus. And reporters were not exempted.

There must be some training academy where Republican campaign staffers are taught to treat reporters like dangeorous scum. Team Maverick's use of Secret Service to hassle reporters is apparently an innovation that will be studied closely by GOP operatives in future campaigns.

Race more important to black voters

So says Juan Williams:

In a Wall Street Journal poll last month, 8% of white voters said outright that race is the most important factor when it comes to looking at these two candidates -- a three percentage point increase since Mr. Obama claimed the Democratic nomination. . . . Race is even more important to black voters: 20% say it is the top factor influencing their view of the candidates. . . . All this contributes to the idea that the presidential contest will boil down to black guy versus white guy.

Maybe David Gergen can explain this.

The Solid Cities

Ed Driscoll calls our attention to a column in the New York Post:

Today, America's urban areas have evolved into a political monoculture that increasingly resembles the "solid South" that provided a base for Democrats from the late 19th century to the 1960s. Since 1972, the year of the Nixon landslide, the Democratic share has grown 20% or more in most of the largest urban counties. . . .
The shift began in the late 1960s, when urban regions, from financial centers such as New York and Chicago to old industrial cities such as Detroit and Cleveland, began to suffer a massive exodus of predominantly white, middle-class residents.
This left behind an increasingly impoverished, highly minority population with very little proclivity to support conservative or even moderate Republicans.

Beyond economics and ethnodemographics, the collapse of public education and the disappearance of marriage in major urban areas probably explains a lot of this phenomenon. City public schools suck, and thus married families with children -- the bedrock of American conservatism -- refuse to live in big cities. As a result, cities are now populated mainly by (a) gays and childless singles, (b) rich yuppie couples who can afford private schools, and (c) people too poor to afford to live anywhere except in government-subsidized housing.

. . . insisted he's 'not a racist'

Bill Clinton, that is:

In his first broadcast interview since his wife dropped out of the Democratic presidential race, former President Bill Clinton said he still has regrets, and insisted he's "not a racist," despite controversies surrounding his comments about Sen. Barack Obama's win in the South Carolina Democratic primary. . . .
"But I am not a racist," he continued. "I've never made a racist comment and I never attacked him [Obama] personally."
Clinton was referring to an uproar surrounding some of his comments in the South Carolina Democratic primary that prompted anger among some in the African American community. After Obama, D-Ill., defeated his wife there, Clinton seemed to downplay the significance of the victory by noting Jesse Jackson had won South Carolina in 1984 and 1988, which some observers found offensive.

Trust me, Bill -- I feel your pain.

Hopemania

Liberal blogger Kathy has a suggestion for conservative bloggers (particularly Allah):

Try asking yourself WHY people are so enthralled by Obama. Rather than concluding that he is trying to palm himself off as a divinity or a messiah, could it be that what he’s communicating is simple kindness? A desire to listen to people? Could it be that he makes people feel understood?

Since Kathy's been so helpful, let me return the favor by offering a suggestion for liberals: Folks, if you're looking to a Chicago Democrat as a source of "kindness" and understanding, you should probably ask your psychiatrist to take you off those SSRIs and start you on Haldol or Thorazine, because you've obviously crossed the line from mere mood disorder into the realm of psychotic delusion.

If liberals were wondering . . .

. . . what Team Obama was doing with all that money while blowing a 9-point lead in the polls, now you know:

Obama's section of the plane rivals that of any first class. Recently the front cabin of the Boeing 757 was retrofitted to install four individual chairs that resemble La-Z-Boys. They are free-standing and made of plush leather with pockets on the sides. There is also a booth which seats four for a meeting or a meal.
His chair has his name and campaign logo embroidered on the back top --
"Obama '08" on one line and "President" underneath.

(Via Instapundit.) Obama One, with custom-embroidered leather reclining chairs, more luxurious than Air Force One -- but don't call him "arrogant" or a "celebrity," you racist!

UPDATE: Linked at AOSHQ by Slublog, who's now my Facebook friend.

Youth Against 'Hope'

My latest article at The American Spectator:

Support among younger voters and academics is Obama's greatest political strength. One poll last month showed the Democrat with a 12-point advantage among registered voters under 30, while Gallup reported Obama leading 54 percent to 39 percent among those with postgraduate degrees.
Despite such evidence of rampant Hope within academia, conservative activism on American campuses continues, as evidenced by the more than 400 students who are gathering in the nation's capital this week for the Young America's Foundation 30th annual National Conservative Student Conference.
YAF spokesman Jason Mattera says Obama's popularity among students is partly due to the idealism of youth who are "most susceptible to Obama's pie-in-the sky promises," having had little experience with "bloated federal bureaucracy" and its consequences. ...
YAF is dedicated to promoting another youth hero: Ronald Reagan.

Read the whole thing. A major reason the "Eggheads for Obama" factor is such a serious problem for the GOP this year is because the Bush administration, Republican leaders in Congress and the McCain campaign have so utterly abandoned the kind of limited-government principles Ronald Reagan stood for.

A Republican Party that doesn't stand firm on limited government -- and, from No Child Left Behind to Medicare Part D to nationalizing airport security, the Bush administration has completely repudiated Reaganism -- is ultimately doomed. You can't beat something with nothing, and a GOP that doesn't stand for anything can't hope to compete by offering a watered-down "me-too" version of the same big-government philosophy as the Democrats.

This is especially true on college campuses, where conservative students nowadays find themselves mocked for the indefensible idiocies of the Bush administration, and are at pains to point out that George W. Bush is not a conservative (a subject that former Reagan administration official Bruce Bartlett wrote a whole book about).

The non-conservatism -- indeed, the anti-conservatism -- of Bush is a major reason so many young conservatives supported the Ron Paul campaign this year. And, given the even-less-conservative deviationism of Crazy Cousin John, the disaffection of youth from the GOP is likely to get worse before it gets better, regardless of who wins in November.

Gergenism

A Nixon-era fossil remnant of Rockefeller Republicanism speaks:

There are certain kinds of signals. As a native of the south, I can tell you, when you see this Charlton Heston ad, 'The One,' that's code for, 'he's uppity, he ought to stay in his place.' Everybody gets that who is from a southern background. We all understand that.

Does the phrase "psychological projection" mean anything to you, Mr. Gergen? Allahpundit sez:

If you take this logic to its conclusion, there’s literally no non-racist way to accuse a member of a minority group of having an outsized ego.

Gergen is one of those vagabond Southern white liberals (e.g., Howell Raines) who love to put down everyone else as "racist," since in the liberal mind, the denunciation of racism constitutes public validation of their own moral virtue. (Thomas Sowell's The Vision of the Anointed explains how this liberal psychodrama works.)

Gergen is a profoundly deceitful creature, whose official biography begins by listing his job in the Reagan administration, even though (a) during both the 1976 and 1980 GOP primaries he worked against Reagan; and (b) he is not now, and has never been, a Reaganite. One recognizes in Gergen a too-familiar type in Washington, people who have convinced themselves they are engaging in "public service" as they backstab their way up the career ladder. Gergen has never served anyone's interest but his own.

ADDENDUM: I realize this assessment might seem harsh to those who don't know anything about Gergen's background, but his "reputation for opportunism" is well established, as this 1993 profile demonstrates.

Good news, isolationists!

Higher oil prices =
Higher transportation costs =
Less foreign competition!

Which means you'll pay more for damn near everything, but isn't that what you wanted? Higher prices, less efficiency, and all the other "benefits" of decreased international trade. And, hey, we didn't even have to increase tariffs to get it! Who says markets don't work?

Maybe you should go vandalize a Starbucks to celebrate this good news.

The Cult of Hope

A glimpse inside the Kool-Aid factory.

Wooing the Harley vote

Tattoos, beer, babes, Harleys, heavy metal and . . . John McCain?

A Sturgis rally expected to be smaller than recent years still will be an interesting cultural crossroads when KISS, Kid Rock and Sen. John McCain all are in town at the same time.
"The single biggest thing people ask me about is Senator McCain," says Rod Woodruff, founder of the Buffalo Chip Campground where the presumed Republican presidential nominee will take part in a ceremony to honor military veterans Monday.
McCain will find himself the opening act for Kellie Pickler, who will perform when the veterans tribute concludes, and for the evening's headliner, Kid Rock.

Maverick could use this as an opportunity to add a new element his energy plan. Hey, a Harley gets over miles per gallon -- everybody should ride one!

Media bias, Photo Dept.

The Washington Post can't deny it.

Eggheads for Obama

While searching for demographic data on the current election, I came across this from Gallup:

Barack Obama has by far his greatest strength among voters with postgraduate education, while John McCain has his highest level of support among voters who have a college degree but no postgraduate education.

Obama wins 54%-39% among those with a postgraduate education. In other words, Obama mostly represents "Hope" for Ph.Ds. The trend is most remarkable among white voters, the pointy-heads are the only educational subgroup that Obama wins:

So, while whites with a bachelor's degree favor McCain by a 17-point margin, whites with graduate degrees favor Obama by 7 points -- a 24-point gap between the academic elite and the middle class.

UPDATE: Remarking on Maureen Dowd's's Obama-as-Darcy analogy, certified egghead Ann Althouse asks:

If we're going to get all English proffy, heavy on the race-and-gender talk, shouldn't we critique Dowd for portraying the black man's pursuit of political office as a sexual exploit?

Yowww. Claw it out amongst yourselves, ladies. Good thing I resisted the urge to call that post "MoDo Gets Her Groove Back."

UPDATE II: More poll data from Gallup, showing that -- just like our academic superiors -- those enlightened Europeans also prefer Obama:

Oui, nous pouvons!

UPDATE III: The eminently eggheaded George Will points out that it is Obama who keeps injecting race into the campaign:

Via Hot Air, where Ed Morrisey says:

It wasn’t an inclusive statement, or a historical note, but an allegation that
McCain and his campaign used or will use race as a fear tactic. Unfortunately,
[liberals] have exactly zero examples of this to bolster these smears.

Yes, but having "zero examples" never stopped 'em. They've got exactly zero examples of successful liberal programs, but yet they keep advocating more.

UPDATE IV: Andrew Sullivan (a European import with a graduate degree from Harvard) accuses the McCain campaign of "playing the argula card."

Only 22% see 'Celeb' ad as racist

Rasmussen Reports:

Sixty-nine percent (69%) of the nation’s voters say they’ve seen news coverage of the McCain campaign commercial that includes images of Britney Spears and Paris Hilton and suggests that Barack Obama is a celebrity just like them. Of those, just 22% say the ad was racist while 63% say it was not.
However, Obama’s comment that his Republican opponent will try to scare people because Obama does not look like all the other presidents on dollar bills was seen as racist by 53%. Thirty-eight percent (38%) disagree.

Now, where is David Plouffe to explain to us once more what a horrible week John McCain had? By the way, Rasmussen's daily tracking poll this morning has it Obama 47%, McCain 46% -- and, most ominously for Team Obama, McCain has a 14-point favorability margin among independents.

UPDATE: Since we're doing polling, let me point out that recent polls have shown McCain leading in Missouri, a key Midwestern swing state, as well as in Alaska and North Carolina, two red states where Team Obama had suggested their "map-changer" candidate might compete.

UPDATE II: Linked at Hot Air Headlines. Thanks, guys.

UPDATE III: Don Surber asks, "[D]id the Year of the Democrats end on Memorial Day?"

UPDATE IV: Obama 45%, McCain 44% in the Sunday Gallup Daily. Also, please check out, "Eggheads for Obama."

Maureen Dowd's romantic Obama

As if Barack Obama were not already "celebrity" enough, now Maureen Dowd of the New York Times compares him to Fitzwilliam Darcy, the romantic protagonist of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice.

Pride and Prejudice. Get it? Groan:

In this political version of "Pride and Prejudice," the prejudice is racial, with only 31 percent of white voters telling The New York Times in a survey that they had a favorable opinion of Obama, compared with 83 percent of blacks.

As if this were prima facie proof of white "prejudice" against Obama, you see? Only because of his race do white voters hold him in low esteem, Miss Dowd suggests, as if there were no other reason to doubt the presidential aptitude of a man who, until 2005, had never exercised any public office beyond the Illinois state legislature.

A presidential election is not a romance novel, nor should it be a personal popularity contest. Now, like many other liberals, Miss Dowd wants to turn the election into a referendum on race, so that Obama's election would be the triumph of MLK's "dream," while Obama's defeat would symbolically ratify what liberals have always believed: Americans are a bunch of dimwitted reactionary bigots.

What Miss Dowd and other liberals should ask themselves is whether the much-noted "resistance" to Obama -- his inability to break open a major lead in the polls, no matter how many tongue-baths he receives from fawning enthusiasts in the media -- might actually be voters' reluctance to playing along with this game.

Ordinary Americans are smart enough to perceive that the elites are demanding that they vote for Obama to prove they're not racists. But the voters don't feel they have to prove any such thing, and they resent like hell the suggestion that they do have to prove it.

UPDATE: Welcome Instapundit readers, and thanks for the link, Professor.

UPDATE II: Also linked by Burke to Kirk, who is happy to discover "a simple solution to my complex problem," and by Rick, who declares: "I Am An Ordinary American." Say it loud, say it proud!

UPDATE III: "Ordinary American" T-shirts:

UPDATE IV: "Eggheads for Obama"! Also, law professor Ann Althouse asks why MoDo sees "the black man's pursuit of political office as a sexual exploit?" Let's face it, Professor Althouse, MoDo sees everything as a sexual exploit.

UPDATE V: When Fausta Wertz looks at Obama, she doesn't see Mr. Darcy, she sees . . . Urkel.

UPDATE VI: I've been Farked.

John Edwards scandal

Gossip blog mogul Ken Layne:

The story has everything a cable-news producer or magazine editor or soap-opera writer could ask for: adultery, political power, a monstrous mansion, betrayal, cash transfers, terrible lies, vanishing evidence, a fall guy, a saintly wife dying of cancer, a late-night hotel rendezvous in Beverly Hills, even a "love child." And it's perfect for the middle of summer, when there's very little real news because the newsmakers are all on vacation. But nobody wants to touch it . . .

Hmmm. Why not?

The Democratic convention is a month away, and while he wasn't anybody's top choice for Obama's running mate, Edwards was expected to give a prime-time speech at the Denver rally.

Bingo. This scandal kind of makes it hard for Edwards to give a convention speech talking about women and children and families, eh? Here's Johnny, with the unconvincing non-denial:

Edwards
by krs601

Celebrity update

We read the tabloid dirt, so you don't have to:

• Lindsay Lohan planning a lesbian wedding?
• Lindsay's miffed about L.A. police chief Bill Bratton saying in a recent interview, "If you notice, since Britney started wearing clothes and behaving, Paris is out of town not bothering anybody, thank God, and evidently, Lindsay Lohan has gone gay, we don't seem to have much of an issue."
• Former "Married With Children" star Christina Applegate diagnosed with breast cancer. She's only 36.
• "Indiana Jones" star Shia LaBeouf's hand was "crushed" in last week's auto accident, says the actor's lawyer, who also suggestied that LaBeouf, who was cited for DUI after the accident, may not have been at fault because the other driver ran a red light.
• More rumors that Joe Jonas of the Jonas Brothers band is dating "Bratz" blonde Chelsea Staub.
• "Mini-Me" actor Verne Troyer is suing his ex-girlfriend for $20 million. Dude, she's an "aspiring actress" -- where's she going to get $20 million?
• Britney Spears denies she's dating the hired help. Not that anybody's volunteering to date her for free or anything.
• People magazine wins the competition to feature Brangelina's twins, beating out OK!, which scored three consecutive celeb baby cover-photo coups (Jamie Lynn Spears on July 21, Jessica Alba on July 24 and Matthew McConaughey on Aug. 4).
• Why did Lance Armstrong dump Kate Hudson? She was too emotionally needy, a source says.
• Penelope Cruz talks about kissing Scarlett Johansen in the new Woody Allen movie.
• Nude photos of Ann Hathaway were among the items seized by the FBI when they raided her embezzler ex-boyfriend, Raffaello.

Don't worry, guys: I've already filed a Freedom Of Information Act request for those photos. "The people's right to know," and all that. Meanwhile . . .

World's weirdest body-building routines:

McCain's strategy

Chuck Todd of MSNBC wastes a lot of words en route to a valid point:

The McCain campaign has found a good way to begin undermining Obama's
credentials to be president and to try to turn his strengths into weaknesses. The problem is that McCain isn't comfortable running this campaign. You can tell by the tenor of his own defense of his tactics.

It is obvious to me, if to no one else, that John McCain is not comfortable with attack politics -- at least not against a liberal Democrat. He's never had any problem attacking fellow Republicans, but he's never been in a truly competitive election against a Democrat. This is a weakness, but perhaps not a fatal weakness for the Republican, if he can keep up the pressure on Obama (who's never been in a competitive election against a Republican). On the other hand, Todd's problem is that he's bought into the myth of Obama's inevitability:

Will the pundits say McCain was the best candidate to prevent a landslide but not the best candidate to provide the necessary contrast to topple Obama?

Which is to say, Todd assumes that Obama will win, that his route to victory in November will basically be a replay of his route to winning the primary. But there are no caucuses in a general election and no superdelegates, either. It is this assumption of Obama's inevitability that prevents Todd from recognizing the possibility that Obama may yet experience a McGovern/Dukakis kind of meltdown.

Newsweek's Jonathan Alter makes similar assumptions:

Maybe convincing nervous white voters that Obama is another Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson in his use of racial grievance politics will carry McCain to the White House.
But this is not 1988, when Vice President George Bush turned Michael Dukakis into an unpatriotic coddler of criminals. (Bush that year had a popular president and a strong economy behind him.) And it's not 2004, when his son Swift-Boated John Kerry. (The president would have likely won anyway by playing on post-9/11 fear.) This year, McCain is running under a tattered Republican banner, with more than 80 percent of the public thinking the country is on the wrong track.

See? Liberals are so euphoric over GOP "brand damage" that they whistle right past the graveyard, refusing to acknowledge Obama's weakness as a candidate.