South Dakota Politics

Evolution & Creation, Science, Politics, & Schools

The Times of London has two stories that involve the issue of teaching evolution alongside creationism in public schools.  One of them is about Governor Sarah Palin.  The Times Sarah Ebner has a moderate essay about the latter, but it includes some strange thoughts.  For instance, this:

There's little doubt that Palin, as evidenced by the birth of her son, Trig, and her daughter Bristol's pregnancy, is pro-life.

Is it really the case that only pro-life women are willing to carry a Down Syndrome child to term, or will not whisk their daughters off to an abortion clinic as soon as the pregnancy test forms an image?  Given the astonishingly low birthrates in most of Europe, maybe only pro-life women have children over there.  But Ms. Ebner is not unreasonable.  She tells us what "fires people up," about Governor Palin. 

It's not that Palin says only creationism - a belief that the world was entirely God's work, and evolved much as is laid out in the Bible - should be taught in schools. Nor is it that she would have any direct influence on school policy if she made it to the VP's office. What many people actually find inflammatory is that Palin, the daughter of a science teacher, says that creationism and evolution can be taught as different sides of the same debate. That's a tough call.

Now as I have pointed out, Governor Palin said this once in a debate.  She has not pushed for it as Governor, nor does she stand in favor of it as a policy now.  So it is not Governor Palin's public actions or intentions, but her beliefs that are objectionable.  Apparently, one is fit for office only if one believes the correct things. 

That, apparently, is the rule in Britannia.  Here again from the Times:

Michael Reiss, a biologist and ordained Church of England clergyman, agreed to step down from his position with the national academy of science after its officers decided that his comments had damaged its reputation.

His resignation comes after a campaign by senior Royal Society Fellows who were angered by Professor Reiss's suggestion that science teachers should treat creationist beliefs "not as a misconception but as a world view".

Now I am not certain exactly what Reiss proposed, but is it really a firing offense at the British Academy of Science to suggest that science teachers shouldn't tell their students that their religious beliefs are wrong?  Apparently so. 

What is going on here has nothing to do with science.  It has everything to do with politics.  Those people are not allowed to participate.  That is a perfectly political and perfectly intolerant position. 

At the risk of ruining my chances of ever taking a position with the Royal Academy (the thought of daily access to pub conditioned ale is attractive), I will confess that I agree with Reiss.  It's not that I think that evolution and Biblical creation should be taught alongside one another, as having equal status in a science class.  I don't.  Ms. Edner says this:

The major problem is that evolution can be proved (or at least explained), but creationism can't. It's akin, say some, to allowing children to debate if the world is flat or round, and giving both sides equal credence.

But that isn't the problem at all.  It is that Darwinian Evolution is a theory, and the Biblical story of creation is not.  A theory provides a model of some field of phenomena, and gives rise to a research program.  A theory is constantly tested as it is applied to various sets of data.  The Biblical story of creation has not, nor will it ever give rise to a research program. 

Science and faith are two rather different approaches to grasping the truth about what is.  A faith may be more or less reasonable, but it rests on the human capacity for commitment.  Science rests on the human capacity for questioning and the appreciation of uncertainty. 

Science class has to be about science.  But that doesn't mean that religious belief has to be shut out of it.  For many of the students, this class of ideas is what is really interesting.  Here is Reiss again:

"I realised that simply banging on about evolution and natural selection didn't lead some pupils to change their minds at all. Just because something lacks scientific support doesn't seem to me a sufficient reason to omit it from the science lesson . . . There is much to be said for allowing students to raise any doubts they have — hardly a revolutionary idea in science teaching — and doing one's best to have a genuine discussion."

Closing the door on the questions that most important to students is a very bad strategy.  Darwin himself frequently muses about Biblical explanations in his writings.  Couldn't these passages be used in biology texts to bring students into the discussion?  A clever writer could easily use such passages to focus the students attention on the specific questions of biology. 

Maybe this could work out and maybe not.  But apparently in England it is illegal to discuss it. 

Decisive Leadership for the 21st Century!

LA Times:  Obama votes 'Present' on new economic rescue plan for now

Sanity Regarding Financial Crisis

First, an important aside. Friend Joe Knippenberg has penned a piece about Ancient John McCain and Machiavellian Barack Obama.  Give it a read.  It is both short and sweet.  Kinda like Joe himself. 

To finance.  Prof. Blanchard's interlocutor has one of the most sober pieces on the financial mess I have read.  Alas, against my wishes and those of emailer Casey, the Federal Reserve seems poised to lower interest rates, not raise them.  Ugh!

The most sober pieces on the crises are Megan McArdle's and, as usual, Robert Samuelson.  There was also a fine piece yesterday in the Wall Street Journal arguing that the problem is not too much or too little regulation, but the wrong kind.  Alas, I cannot find the piece online now.  But McArdle makes a similar argument.  See also Todd Zywicki asking an uncomfortable question:  Where is Congress in all of this and does anyone care? 

SDP Jazz Note: Jazz Noire

Blanchard's theory of genres begins with the axiom that there is a platonic idea at the bottom of every genre. With horror, it's the idea of evil made physically manifest. With science fiction, it's the idea that the physical laws that govern the ordinary world can or soon will make the fantastic possible. Some genres depend largely on a coherent image or set of images. Give me hats, horses, and handguns, I'll give you a Western. Musical genres are harder to pin down, largely because the "language" of music isn't really language and doesn't translate into language.

It is very helpful, then, when a musical genre is somehow tied to a story-telling genre. Jazz is rather closely tied to the Noire genre, the school of film making that arose out of the collision between German cinematography and the "hard-boiled" American crime novel. And I would argue that the idea underlying the film noire is very simple: it is the idea of human loneliness and fear in a world without piety. Film noire characters are distinguished by the fact that they live without believing in anything. The police and politicians (higher levels of social organization are rarely mentioned) are corrupt. Goodness is possible; indeed, it frequently shines like a torch in a hero like Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe. But the hero is almost inevitably jaded, and with good reason. In the long run, his heroism is entirely hopeless. The most he can achieve are small acts of justice and mercy. Like everyone else, he lives without piety; but he has to go on living, and what makes it possible is observing. He finds his satisfaction in seeing things just the way they are.

Jazz is born and grows in pretty much the same time period as the noire genre, and I think it springs from much the same existential stance. Classical music is unthinkable without God or (what is much the same thing), an orderly universe. It's landscapes are those of the day, even if the sky is full of dark clouds. And while it may be played in Paris, it frequently finds itself recreating the countryside. Jazz begins and perhaps ends with lonely human beings, walking down a city street at night under no illumination other than that of a neon sign. I am of course exagerating my case. To be sure, a lot of jazz is happy and a lot of classical music stirs up existentially ambigous currents. But I think I get the two genres right in general.

This doesn't mean, of course, that you have to lose your faith to enjoy jazz, any more than you have to be sad to enjoy sad music.  It is just one way of appreciating the intense beauty of the human situation.

One of the best examples of the marriage between jazz and film noire is the French film Ascenseur pour l'echafaud, or Elevator to the Gallows. A young man commits a murder but gets stuck in an elevator while trying to leave the scene. His gorgeous accomplice and lover walks the streets of Paris, increasingly convinced that ... Watch it! Miles Davis created the soundtrack, playing while he watched the film projected on a wall. If you get the DVD, you can see a short clip of Miles in this process. Behind Miles was a group consisting of Barney Wilen ts, Rene Urtreger p, Pierre Michelot b, and Kenny Clarke d.

A more recent example of jazz noire is Terrence Blanchard's marvelous disc, Jazz in Film. All of the numbers are soundtracks, most of them from straight noire films. Having listened to it a dozen times recently, I now find myself looking for the DVDs.

Terrence Blanchard t, Donald Harrison as, Steve Turre tb, Kenny Kirkland p, Reginald Veal b, and Carl Allen d.

For samples from the music, visit my Jazz Note Site. 

A Letter about Wall Street

Long time reader Casey sends me this note in response to my musings on the current crisis, which I gratefully reproduce here.

I think the Wall Street crisis is a combination of 2 big factors hitting at once, the global credit crunch and the sub-prime mortgage crisis. I don't know nearly enough about global credit markets to know what causes or remedies the problem, but it is important that the issue is a global one and not limited to the US. Nor is it a case of the US sneezing and everyone else gets a cold. The warning signs have been popping up in Asia in Europe all year.

The sub-prime mess is a little easier to understand. The biggest cause of the crisis was the collapse in home prices. Lenders did not mind giving mortgages to high-risk borrowers because everyone assumed that the housing prices would continue to rise so even if a borrower took an interest-only loan the mortgage would never be worth less than the property. If the borrower had bought more house than he could afford, he could just sell it to pay off the mortgage. When housing prices fell, the lenders who borrowed too much were in trouble. Since they would then have to sell the property at a loss, it became easier to let the bank foreclose on the property than to try to find a buyer and sell the house at a loss and still default on the mortgage.

I think this whole mess was caused by easy money in the market. The Fed left the interest rates too low and the money supply went up. The banks were sitting on piles of cash and nothing to do with it so they came up with exotic mortgages for high-risk borrowers. Hopefully, this crisis will see an increase in rates which should create an incentive for people to pay off their existing debt and start saving. It will be tough going for a while, but we need to hit bottom before we can really start to recover. I agree that regulation isn't the solution. The financial sector is one of the most regulated industries in America and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are 2 of the most regulated companies in that sector. Increasing regulation just means more paperwork to sign and more verbiage that borrowers won't understand. I don't agree with your statement on stability. We do need to turn off the money tap and get individuals out from under their debt before they buy a house or start a business. Easy money is fine, but only in bursts. If it becomes the norm, then people don't save and take on too much debt.

But what do I know. I work at a not-for-profit, and I've been drunk since 9:30 this morning.

I have only a little to add. The financial crisis is, without a doubt, a global phenomenon. Apparently the Russian stock exchange (yes, there is such a thing), melted into rancid caviar this week. It's important to recognize that, before launching into major regulatory overhaul of our financial institutions. I think that some regulation for the sake of stability might be in order, but I certainly agree with Casey that the odds of regulation that is effective and not counterproductive are not good. I note that the view expressed above, that the money supply has been too liberal, is in agreement with my colleague, Dr. Schaff.

Finally, I hope the hangover is not too bad. Most of us schedule them for the next morning.

The Digital Brownshirts

Washington Times:  The new 'digital brownshirts'

See also this Chicago Tribune article entitled "Obama mobilizes rapid response on the Web."

Blanchard Explains the Crisis on Wall Street

Banking and finance is one thing I know little about.  But I heard someone say on NPR or somewhere that Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch got in trouble because they moved out of the kind of transactions they understood and began trading in types of loans they didn't understand.  The result was that they honestly didn't know whether they were in a hole, or how deep the hole was, and they still don't know.  Well, if those folks, with all their Harvard and Yale trained Wall Street Wiz kids don't understand this mess, I figure I can say anything I want to about it. 

Being rather simple minded, I figure it's like this: if you loan someone a gob of money, and he defaults on the loan, you shouldn'ta give 'im the cash in the first place.  If you loan lots of people lots of money, you aren't going to make the right call in every case.  So the trick is to make sure that you make a lot more money from the people who pay off than you need to cover the people whose checks are always a day late and a few hundred short.  When you can't cover your butt from day to day, it ain't workin'.  That, apparently, is where Lehman and Merrill, and AIG and the two F-Macs are right now. 

Liberals have a simple explanation for all this: Wall Street greed.  And they are surely right.  Big Wheelers don't loan people money because they think they will bring about a better society or stop global warming.  They loan money because they think they will get a lot more money back.  Corporations, like everyone else, get conned mostly because they are greedy and their greed makes them overly optimistic, and that's just as true when they con themselves. 

Conservatives also have a simple explanation: government intervention that keeps market forces from working.  And they're right too.  Congress has tried to "encourage" the markets to make home ownership more available, so the 65% or so of Americans who live in houses nominally theirs but really owned by God knows who will be joined by another five or ten percent.  But that means giving loans to people who wouldn't have got those loans before, and that probably means increasing the risk of a lot of foreclosures. 

Both Barack Obama and John McCain are busy denouncing Wall Street, and who can blame them?  Nobody really likes the guy who might be portrayed by Michael Douglas in Wall Street II.  The Left, more than the Right, is calling for more regulation.  Dubious as I am that Congress can understand what Merrill Lynch didn't, maybe some market regulation is in order. 

But there is one thing I think we can all understand: making financial markets more stable means reducing loans to people and institutions more likely to default, and that means making money harder to get.  When money is harder to get, a lot of people will stay stuck in their apartments and a lot of entrepreneurs won't launch the next big idea in sandwich shops.  Conversely, helping more and more people to buy a house or start a business means more defaults and financial instability. 

When someone calls for more regulation, we might want to know which side they wish to err on.  Congress almost always acts at cross purposes in such matters.  Clarity on such matters is what one would like to see in the candidates' speeches and interviews.  Don't hold your breath. 

A Moment of Respect for Both Sides

The period between the national party conventions and the election does not bring out the best in people or in campaign organizations.  There is too much at stake, and the urge to push a little harder is irresistible.  I have long regarded Richard Cohen as a reasonable voice from the moderate left, but I see today that he has accused John McCain of "personal treason," whatever that is.  The accusation produces two pieces of evidence: the "lipstick on a pig" charge, and the "teaching sex to kindergarten pupils" spot.  I think he is right about the pig thing.  Obama didn't call Palin a pig, he used a perfectly respectable metaphor to criticize McCain's policy.  The kindergarten thing, despite how it's being treated in the media, wasn't a lie.  Byron York at the National Review has actually read the legislation.  But even if both charges were bald faced lies, does this deserve the word treason?  Cohen has gone a bit off the rails. 

The truth of the matter is that both sides are playing fast and loose with the truth.  Did McCain really say that he wanted the Iraq war to last one hundred years, as Obama charged?  Of course not.  I saw an ad yesterday in which McCain was criticized for saying that the Social Security System is a disgrace.  What he in fact said is that the system for funding it is a disgrace, which is a debatable but reasonable claim.  The ad was a lie.  Maybe we should be ashamed of seeing so many distortions peddled by both sides, but that might be the same thing as being ashamed of politics.  Clearly the system doesn't reward a scrupulous attention to the truth. 

Just right now, the Democrats have decided that half of America is despicable.  I am not sure the Republicans are there yet.  I don't see the kind of things that Democrats say about small town America being said by Republicans about city slickers.  But maybe my bias is blinding me. 

For the moment, let me offer some respect to both sides.  I begin with Senator Clinton.  For all the baggage that the Clintons carry, she did the hard work of politics.  Unlike Jesse Jackson, for example, she found a state and won a Senate seat.  She built a campaign organization that won almost half the votes cast in the Democratic primary season.  Like her or not, that is worth some respect. 

Barack Obama began his run with a smaller resume than one expects in a presidential candidate, and it is certain that half the Democratic Party fell in love with him before they knew anything about him.  That is partly due to the Clinton baggage mentioned above.  But in the very short time allotted he managed to build his own campaign organization and take the nomination.  That is all the system requires.  Maybe he will be our next President, and maybe not, but he has earned his place in our political history.  He has also shown, beyond a reasonable doubt, that anyone's son has a shot at the White House.  He deserves a large measure of national respect for that. 

And then there is John McCain.  Unlike Senators Clinton and Obama, he did not have to earn any special respect from his countrymen by running for the Presidency.  He earned enough for any man by his service to his country.  But he had earned that respect a second time by his campaign.  McCain has clearly wanted to be President for a long time.  A year ago his chances looked bleak.  But he reorganized his campaign, and came roaring back to win the nomination.  I have plenty of gripes with McCain.  I still think his campaign finance legislation was a monumental failure.  There were good reasons for a lot of Republicans to question their confidence in him.  But he won over the most difficult block of support by his choice of running mates.  That kind of judgment is what we need in a President. 

Hillary Clinton may yet be back.  She has earned a place in future contests.  But we are now down to two choices.  Both Obama and McCain have demonstrated a lot of political genius, and a magnificent force of will.  Both have earned their shot at the prize.  There is no reason to be contemptuous of either of them, or of either rough half of Americans who will no doubt line up on either side.  If we don't always like the way they are behaving, we shouldn't let them off easy.  But we should also remember that performers respond to the demands of their audiences.  The American electoral system is giving us all that we could reasonably demand of it: the campaign we deserve. 

"I've Got A Little List"

Some lists of note.

Here are the top Congressional recipients from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.  Of note, Barack Obama is #2 on the list while our own Tim Johnson is #7. 

And here are the top recipients from Lehman Brothers.  Again, Barack Obama is #2 while John McCain is #7.  Stephanie Herseth-Sandlin leads the South Dakota delegation, although she is well down on the list.

Here are the results of the latest Washingtonian survey of congressional staffers.  You'll notice that John Thune is mentioned as a "rising star," a "hunk" and "biggest jock."  Tim Johnson is one of the "least likely to star in a scandal."  Stephanie Herseth-Sandlin is considered one of the "babes" of the House.  Interestingly, John McCain is mentioned as both a friend and a foe of lobbyists.  The Washingtonian editors indicate that McCain is on both lists due to party line voting.  Barack Obama?  He's among the most eloquent and best dressed.  High praise indeed.  He also is labeled as the #2 "show horse" (as opposed to work horse) in the Senate right ahead of his running mate, Joe Biden.  Before Republicans get to excited, John McCain was the #2 show horse in 2006, although in that year he was also listed as one of the "worst followers," meaning he didn't take orders from the party, and also "straightest shooter."  He was also #2 for "worst temper."

Update: Here's a different Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac contribution list.  I can't figure out why it is different.  It seems to cover the same criteria over the same dates.  Still, in this list Tim Johnson is the 16th highest recipient of Fannie/Freddie money, although the total is the same, $61,000. 

The Minnesota Battleground

Mark Hemingway:  "I just spoke to some McCain campaign sources up in Minnesota and they pretty much confirmed what the polls have been telling us for a while — Minnesota really is in play for McCain."

Leo Thorsness

Power Line:

Retired Air Force Colonel Leo Thorsness is the Medal of Honor recipient who shared a cell with John McCain at the Hanoi Hilton. I reported on my interview of Colonel Thorsness in "Who is Leo Thorsness and why is he supporting John McCain?" Saturday's New York Times published a short op-ed column by Colonel Thorsness expressing his support for Senator McCain. The column is "A prisoner's mind."

Listening to Colonel Thorsness talk about his experience as a prisoner, I thought to myself that someone has to write this up. I have since learned that someone -- Colonel Thorsness himself -- has done so. His memoir Surviving Hell: A POW's Journey is to be published next month by Encounter Books. (The Encounter Books page on the book is here.) Based on my interview with Colonel Thorsness, I look forward to reading the book and commend it to your attention.

Colonel Thorsness ran against George McGovern for the Senate in 1974.

Anti-McCain Pornography

Readers of this blog will guess that we are not supporters of Barack Obama.  We are certainly a Republican-minded bunch, conservative in our view of politics.  But we have tried to be fair.  I for one would never argue that the Republican campaign for President has been scrupulously honest.  I would point out, and I have pointed out, that Obama has not met that standard either.  But I don't believe we have ever failed to respect Obama, or any other voice on the other side.  Regardless of my differences with Obama and his supporters, he is already a part of the history of the American Republic, and he well deserves some measure of respect for the role he has played. 

No doubt there are critics of Obama who have abused his person, and it is the job of the left wing blogosphere to point that out.  But I think this abuse of McCain is worth mentioning.  The Atlantic Magazine, to which I have subscribed for many years, is running a piece on McCain.  The American Digest brings us the story about Jill Greenberg, whom the Atlantic hired to do the photography.  Here is the Atlantic cover with Greenberg's photo.

 

Now that, frankly, is not bad.  It gives us all the lines in McCain's face, but I think it leaves him looking rather stately.  Of course, the words "porn" and "adultery" in the upper left hand corner suggest an absence of decorum on the part of the Atlantic editors.  I would not go so far as to suggest that this is some kind of subliminal message on their part, but if a long established magazine is going to take part in an American election, maybe selling the issue with sex is not quite up to the task.  Still, it's not bad.

But Greenberg apparently had a lot of fun with her images, altering some of them and posting them on the web.  You can go to the American Digest for the set, but here is my favorite:

 

Now as a political cartoon, the worst you can say for this is that it is utterly puerile.  A fourteen year old boy, maybe, could be proud of it.  But as the work of an adult photographer who has a shot at an Atlantic cover?  This is the work of someone who does not know how to be a grownup. 

I gather than the Atlantic has chosen not to use Ms. Greenberg's public photo.  I am kinda disappointed, as I liked it.  But frankly, no serious publication should employ her again.  To put this stuff out while a decision is pending suggests someone you cannot rely upon.  And as for the larger political message, a minimum of respect for the other side is an important asset.  We can't take the election seriously if we don't take each other seriously.  Barack Obama and John McCain deserve to be taken seriously.  Ms. Greenberg, and all those who see politics as she does, do not. 

More Blatant Kranz Bias

SD War College:  The Argus Leader’s sins of omission. Thune voted #3 rising star in US Senate, but Argus forgets to mention that?

A Very Late Correction

Way back in May I posted on Barack Obama as a Chicago politician.  I cited a David Newquist post on a similar topic.  I said that Prof. Newquist was wrong when he claimed Obama was fiscal conservative as an Illinois legislator. 

In an Internet quirk I can't figure out, just today I received an email from Prof. Newquist on my gmail account that Prof. Newquist wrote in May.  He wrote:

I said Paul Simon was a fiscal consevative.  I did not characterize Obama's record beyond his efforts to bridge partisan divides.

If you go to the link above you'll see that Prof. Newquist is right and I was wrong.  About four months late, but there's the correction.  My apologies to Prof. Newquist for its lateness. 

Obama Duplicitous on Iraq

Not that we haven't seen this before.  Early in his contest against Ms. Clinton, Obama campaigned hard against the North American Free Trade Agreement.  While he was doing so, he quietly dispatched one of his advisors to go and tell the Canadians that it was all for show. 

But this one is much better.  The most substantial point in Obama's case for himself has always been his opposition to the Iraq War, and his demand for a speedy withdrawal of U.S. forces from that country.  Now we learn that when Obama was meeting with senior Iraqi leaders, he actually tried to delay negotiations that would have lead to an American draw down.  From Amir Taheri at the New York Post:

WHILE campaigning in public for a speedy withdrawal of US troops from Iraq, Sen. Barack Obama has tried in private to persuade Iraqi leaders to delay an agreement on a draw-down of the American military presence.

According to Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, Obama made his demand for delay a key theme of his discussions with Iraqi leaders in Baghdad in July.

"He asked why we were not prepared to delay an agreement until after the US elections and the formation of a new administration in Washington," Zebari said in an interview…

Though Obama claims the US presence is "illegal," he suddenly remembered that Americans troops were in Iraq within the legal framework of a UN mandate. His advice was that, rather than reach an accord with the "weakened Bush administration," Iraq should seek an extension of the UN mandate.

Now it's not hard to see what is going on here.  The Obama campaign was afraid that an early withdrawal of at least some troops would make the Iraq war look like less of a failure, and so take away Obama's key issues.

So he was willing to act against this Administration's foreign policy and his own publically stated position on Iraq.  Maybe Taheri gets the story wrong, but frankly, this looks like our man.

Astouding State Polls

This is sure enough enough one of those times when one ought to take the polls with a grain of salt, especially when you like what you are seeing.  But we are now at the point when the immediately aftermath of the Republican convention is coming clearly into focus, and the improvement for McCain and his party generally was dramatic.

Jason reports below that the race is a dead heat now in Minnesota.  I have a hard time believing that McCain will carry that state, but for the race to be tied now is ominous news for Obama.  Not, however, as ominous as this, from the New York Post.

BOOSTED by the selection of Sarah Palin as his running mate, Republican John McCain has experienced a surge of support among women in heavily Democratic New York state - where he has closed the gap with Barack Obama, new private polls show.

The internal Republican and Democratic polls, details of which were provided to The Post, have stunned members of both parties - and produced deep worries among Democrats.

Apparently Obama still leads by five points, but with less than fifty percent support.  These are private polls, commissioned by the two sides, but they seem to agree.  If Obama has to shore up support in New York, he will surely be losing in Colorado or New Hampshire.

I still think the electoral college math is challenging for McCain.  But if these recent polls are relly the trend, they do inidcate a serious weakness for the Obama campaign.  McCain just has to exploit that. 

Minnesota Poll Has Obama, McCain in Dead Heat

The Star Tribune reports:

Minnesota has become a battleground in a presidential campaign that has dramatically tightened nationwide.

A new Star Tribune Minnesota Poll shows that the race is now a dead heat between Barack Obama and John McCain, each supported by 45 percent of likely voters in the state.

The new poll likely will stoke both sides' efforts during the final 51 days until the election, triggering a barrage of advertising, grass-roots politicking and, potentially, stepped-up visits by the candidates.

The poll found that McCain has made gains across the board since a May Minnesota Poll that showed him trailing by 13 points. He has picked up considerable support among men and to a lesser degree among women. He also has boosted his standing with whites, young voters and all levels of household income and education.

Polling data also shows that McCain is gaining ground in the battleground states of Pennsylvania and Florida.  And, to compound matters for the Obama camp, Rasmussen's daily Presidential Tracking Poll shows McCain reaching 50% in support for the first time since Obama secured the Democratic nomination.  McCain has maintained a three point advantage for three straight days, 50% to 47%. 

"Political Pornography"

Gerard van der Leun:  "To say Ms. Greenberg's use of this material in this way is 'unprofessional' and does the subject (John McCain) and the client (The Atlantic Monthly) a disservice is to vastly understate the case. Not only has Ms. Greenberg exposed The Atlantic to charges of bias it may well have not intended, it turns out she was engaged in dealing with Senator McCain falsely as well. She has, indeed, bragged about it to PDNPulse, a professional photographers' journal."  Note that she bragged about this, probably expecting to receive accolades and praise.  Among some segments of the far Left, she probably will.

Here's more on The Atlantic's photo scandal from Jeffrey Goldberg, who wrote the cover story:  "Greenberg is quite obviously an indecent person who should not be working in magazine journalism."

The Ethereal Left & Its Contempt for Half of America

My spirited interlocutor, BB, sends me a note from Deepak Chopra, Guru and Wizkid economist, who is about to lead a "soul of healing" retreat in New York.  What does Chopra think of Obama?  "He is calling for us to reach for our higher selves, and frankly, that stirs up hidden reactions of an unsavory kind."  So Deepak and Barack are just two Gurus trying to raise our consciousness.  Okay.  And what about Sarah Palin? 

Small town values — a nostaligic return to simpler times disguises a denial of America's global role, a return to petty, small-minded parochialism.

Well, it's nice to get things so clear.  Obama is "high minded."  Palin represents all those petty, small-minded rural voters.  And besides, Palin was Governor of Alaska.  How can you take that seriously? 

Her state of Alaska has less than 700,000 residents, which reduces the job of governor to the scale of running one-tenth of New York City. By comparison, Rudy Giuliani is a towering international figure.

It's no wonder he decided to hold his "Soul of Healing" retreat in New York.  Only there will you find creatures evolved enough to shell out, well, I couldn't find out how much it would cost me without giving Deepak my e-mail address.  But I did get some idea of what wonders await me there.

In the soothing environment of the Chopra Center & Spa at Dream, you will receive daily Ayurvedic massage treatments – and rasayana, a powerful cleansing therapy that slows the aging process and revitalizes the body, mind and spirit.

I'm not sure what "Ayurvedic massage treatments" are, but I am sure they must feel very good. 

I know a bit about Buddhism, which Chopra claims to channel on occasion, and I know that dividing the world into the high mind good people and the small-minded parochial people is the very disease that the Buddha thought lies at the root of human suffering.  And besides, it's bad politics.  If the election really comes down to a choice between "an ethereal atmosphere" at "discounted rates", and small town values, and it might, any guesses as to who wins?

Chopra is a joke.  Unfortunately, his way of dividing Americans into the higher and lower types, the New Yorkers who count and the Alaskans and South Dakotans who have no business having opinions, is not confined to new age hucksters.  Here is Bob Herbert in the New York Times:

While watching the Sarah Palin interview with Charlie Gibson Thursday night, and the coverage of the Palin phenomenon in general, I've gotten the scary feeling, for the first time in my life, that dimwittedness is not just on the march in the U.S., but that it might actually prevail.

So if McCain wins, it is not that a lot of Americans, thinking it through, disagree with Herbert.  It's that "dimwittedness" has prevailed.  My Keloland colleague and NSU colleague emeritus, David Newquist, certainly agrees.  He sees the recent rise of McCain in the polls as "The Rule of Imbeciles." 

In 2000 and 2004 the American electorate divided pretty evenly between two parties.  Maybe this isn't because one side was stupid, but because reasonable people can disagree.  And if you are trying to draw a few more people over to your side, maybe telling them they are dimwitted isn't the most intelligent strategy.