South Dakota Politics

Suppressing Speech in Missouri

A St. Louis television station reports:  "The Barack Obama campaign is asking Missouri law enforcement to target anyone who lies or runs a misleading TV ad during the presidential campaign."  More here, here, here, and here.  Since when does criticism warrant prosecution by the state?

Pakistani Tribes Fight Back Against Taliban

This seems like good news, and we should probably encourage this:  "Moderate tribesmen in parts of militant-ravaged north-west Pakistan are challenging Taliban extremists threatening to overrun their area, in what could develop into a mass resistance movement. . . . The resistance has parallels with the 'Sunni awakening' in Iraq, where tribesmen took on al-Qaida militants in Anbar province and elsewhere. The Pakistani movement relies on tribal customs and widespread ownership of guns to raise traditional private armies, known as lashkars, each with hundreds or several thousand volunteers. These tribal armies cannot stop individual acts of terrorism, like the devastating suicide bombing of the Marriott hotel in Islamabad last week that killed more than 50 people. But they aim to stop the development of an extremist mini-state in the north-west."  (h/t Instapundit).

Debate Viewers Low

Last night's debate audience was smaller than Bush-Kerry's.  Was it because it was a Friday, and Friday-related events held priority?  Or maybe because people outside the political junkie sphere just are not excited about this election?

UPDATE:  CNN's Poll vs. CNN's Spin.

Barackroll

Perhaps the best political video to come out thus far in the campaign:

SDP Poll: Who Won?

Who won tonight's debate?
	John McCain
	Barack Obama
	About even
	Debate?  What debate?
pollcode.com free polls

Just One Man's Opinion

You saw the debate, so you draw your own conclusions.  We all see these things partially through our own lying eyes.  Here's my two cents.

On the financial matters that started the debate, Obama largely ran circles around McCain.  Indeed, I think fifteen minutes into the debate this election was over, that is if it wasn't all ready.  Obama pummeled McCain and McCain responded weakly.  That said, the extent to which Obama demonizes his opposition and panders to the middle-class is breath taking.  We have seldom see such a transparent demagogue.

In my opinion, the foreign policy side of the debate was like Henry Kissenger debating the local high school debate champ.  McCain simply took Obama apart.  It is clear that McCain is knowledgeable and experienced on foreign policy while the Obama blathers with little content.  Did anyone else catch that Obama essentially said that we should have left Saddam Hussein in power as a check against Iran?  How's that for crass realist foreign policy.   

This was a foreign policy debate and McCain cleaned Obama's clock once they actually got to that subject, but McCain was so badly wounded in the first fifteen minutes that I don't think it matters.  Also, this is not a foreign policy election.  Obama clearly is far more comfortable and in command on domestic policy and apparently McCain is just unwilling to effectively attack.  How did we get through this debate without McCain mentioning the fact that Obama is a huge recipient of Fannie Mae political contributions and that he has close ties to Franklin Raines and James Johnson, both CEOs deeply implicated in the sub-prime greed?  Battle to McCain.  War to Obama. 

"McCain Is Right"

This didn't take long:

Liveblogging the Debate

Ann Althouse, Stephen Green, and Jay Reding are all liveblogging the debate tonight.  The Corner, as usual, will have comments through out the night as well.  If you're interested in microblogging, Twitter has set up a location that's aggregating debate talk.  I'll be simultaneously checking the blogs, following the Twins game at MLB.com, and working on a paper.  Might have time for reactions and analysis tomorrow.  Sorry for the light posting as of late, but graduate school is taking up a substantial amount of time right now.

Video Of The Day

What has caused our financial mess?

Oil’s Well that Ends Well

An election year usually doesn't see a lot of significant Congressional action.  The side that thinks it's going to win wants to wait until next year, and so will constipate one house or both so that Congress can't pass anything. 

This fall looks to be different, if only because two pieces of major action can be accomplished by Congress not acting.  One piece is, of course, the financial bailout.  In this case, both parties seem loath to President what he wants.  Maybe something is going to happen, but it really looks like the financial market is going to have to sort this out for itself, and that's probably for the best.  I would add, though, that a period of turmoil right now can't be good for the Republicans. 

The other thing that is happening, largely behind the smokescreen of the financial crisis, is that the Democrats are about to let the ban on offshore drilling and shale oil development lapse.  It's unclear how much that will mean.  The removal of major legal impediments doesn't mean that Democrats will not find some other way to prevent the development of these resources next year, and they are certainly going to try.  But this is progress. 

There is no doubt that the U.S. should work on energy conservation.  Likewise, there is good reason to invest a little in alternative energy sources like wind and biofuels.  But so far the latter are soaking up energy rather than giving it back, and there is no prospect that that will change in the near future.  On the other hand, the U.S. apparently has more oil locked in shale than Saudi Arabia has underground.  Shale oil is more expensive to get at, but it is the pattern of American industrial development that what is prohibitively expensive eventually becomes cheap.  And of course, the oil offshore is still cheap.  For the rest of my life and yours, the world will be powered by petroleum and uranium.  We had probably better get used to that idea, and deal with it. 

Twins Sweep White Sox, Take 1st Place!

That, my friends, was a ballgame.  The ChiSox led six to two after the fourth.  But the Twins do not give up, and by the eighth it was tied six to six.  When Alexi Casilla walked to the plate in the tenth inning, with two out and Nick Punto on 3rd, he kissed his bat.  Well, he can kiss it again.  Casilla singled and Punto scored.  The Twins take first.  Now: don't jinx it.

Fannie Mae

Mickey Kaus:  "Tom Daschle invites John Kerry, Richard Holbrooke, and James Carville to breakfast with former Fannie Mae CEO (and ex-Obama-veep-vetter) Jim Johnson. Hard to see how they can pass that one up. .. Premature Comeback Syndrome: Shouldn't Johnson go have breakfast with John Edwards, wherever he is, is until, say, December?"

Plus this, from the Politico:  Former Fannie Mae chairman Jim Johnson was dumped from Obama's vice presidential search team, but he's still playing a behind-the-scenes role on the campaign.

How the Race Stands II

I am tempted to say "never mind," and leave it at that.  A quiver of new polls were announced today, and all of them show gains by Obama.  The scariest one, to the McCain camp, was the ABC poll giving Obama a 9 point lead.  If he really has that lead, McCain is finished.  But that poll is an outlier, and suspect for several reasons.  Fifty-four percent of the respondents "leaned Democrat," to thirty-eight and seven for Republicans and Independents.  If the Democrats are that dominant nationally, then again, the election is over.  I doubt it.  Most of the tracking polls and other polls show a tight race, with an Obama advantage. 

Where the Race Stands Now

Dead even, for all practical purposes.  The Real Clear Politics average gives Obama a lead of 2.3 points, nationally.  That figure, which is of dubious value except that it is frequently reported in the national news, is based on six polls, four of which show a small Obama advantage, one a small McCain advantage, and one a tie.  But the polls that favor the Democrat are mostly polls of registered voters, and one has a very small sample size.  The polls more favorable to McCain show likely voters, which is a better indicator of outcomes.  The CBS poll, giving Obama a five point advantage, has a reasonable sample size of about 1100 voters, but it includes 404 Democrats v. 305 Republicans.  That is probably based on recent voter ID stats, but the Republican brand has recovered substantially since the convention, and that kind of weighting may not be justified anymore.  All this suggests that the race is pretty much tied nationally. 

Of course the President is not elected by national vote, but by the several states through their Electoral College votes.  Polls in the battle ground states are the only way to get a direct read on this.  The RCP gives Obama/Biden 219 votes, McCain/Palin 189, with 130 toss up states.  It is pretty clear that, if Obama wins all the states where he has any lead at all, he wins more than the 270 he needs to be elected.  How do we game this? 

There are really only two ways.  The national polls, despite their legal irrelevance, have usually been the best indicator of the outcome.  A candidate who is ahead by more than five percentage points in most polls will probably win all the states where the local polls are close.  But here, obviously, the national polls are too close to give an indication.  The other way is to look at how the battleground states have gone in recent elections.  According to that kind of analysis, you'd expect Ohio and Florida to go Republican, Pennsylvania and New Mexico to go the other way.  But the map is rather confused on that score.  Florida, Ohio, Indiana, and Virginia are in the toss-up category.  That bodes ill for McCain.  But if the election remains close nationally, I expect that McCain will win all of these.  He had better, if he wants to win.  On the other hand, Minnesota and Wisconsin are also toss-up states, and Obama should be well ahead in both places. 

So right now it is hard to get a good read by any of the traditional methods.  If it's another squeaker, I won't be getting much sleep on election night. 

But there is one more consideration that is probably disturbing the sleep of a lot of Obama's court soothsayers right now.  It's the Bradley Effect.  In 1982, Tom Bradley, an African American candidate for Governor of California, was well ahead of George Deukmejian in the polls.  But Deukmejian won the election.  Pollsters offered this explanation for their failure: a lot of voters said they were voting for Bradley but instead voted for Deukmejian.  Why would an unusual number of respondents lie to pollsters? 

It is frequently said that the motive was racism.  Respondents didn't want to admit that they were voting against Bradley just because he was Black, but they knew in their hearts that they were going to do just that.  But that confuses two questions: why they lied when polled, if that is what they did, and why they voted the way they did.  It may well be that a lot of California voters felt that they should say they were voting for Bradley.  That would reflect a consciousness of the racial issue that is problematic, but nothing to be ashamed of.  But the Bradley Effect tells us nothing about what their motives were for voting as they did, once they were alone in the booth.  No doubt race was a factor, but there is no way to tell how much of a factor it was. 

So what if the Bradley Effect is working now.  A lot of voters nationally are telling the voice on the phone that they are voting Obama, but they really won't?  Some analysts believe that Obama can't win unless he is a good five points or more ahead in the polls.  That would give him a cushion to make up for the Bradley Effect voters.  If that is right, then Obama needs to gain some ground fast. 

If Obama loses, Democrats will cry far and wide that it was racism that defeated him.  That will make good political sense, as it will undercut the legitimacy of McCain's election.  But it will be nonsense.  Racism will no doubt be a factor in the election.  But so will doubts about McCain's age, contempt for Governor Palin's Christianity, women who like Palin because she is one of them, etc. 

I have no idea whose ahead at this moment, and that is a novel experience for me at this stage in an election.  Isn't this exciting? 

Obama Tells Lies

My esteemed Keloland colleague, David Newquist, reminds us once again of the mendacity of the McCain campaign. 

In the election campaign of 2008, we have what columnist Paul Krugman has termed "a blizzard of lies." Numerous stories in The New York Times, The Columbia Journalism Review, and other newspapers and magazines have noted that despite the many stories from fact checkers that assertions by the McCain campaign are proven to be untrue, the campaign just keeps making them.

David frequently relies on FactCheck.Org to make his points.  See this post at his home blog. 

Now I don't exactly disagree with my colleague on this matter.  It might be unrealistic to expect politicians to tell us the truth when what we really demand, and pay for, is that they tell us what we want to hear.  Democracy is when you get the government you deserve.  But even if we demand lies, we might at least want to know when they are telling us lies. 

David doesn't seem to notice that FactCheck.Org also monitors the Obama campaign.  Ruth Marcus gives us an example of what journalistic integrity looks like.

The symmetry of sin is suddenly looking more equal. Last week, I flayed John McCain for dishonesty -- flagrant and repeated dishonesty -- about Barack Obama's proposals. Obama was by no means blameless, I argued, but his lapses were nowhere near as egregious as his opponent's. I stand by everything I wrote.

But a series of new Obama attacks requires a rebalancing of the scales: Obama has descended to similarly scurrilous tactics on the stump and on the air.

Now I think that the mendacity of the Obama campaign was evident in many ways all along.  When Obama tore apart NAFTA on the stump, while dispatching an advisor to assure the Canadians that it was all for show, that was deliberate deceit.  But recently, no doubt spurred by his temporary dip in the polls, Obama has moused all scruple into recycle bin. 

On immigration, Obama is running a Spanish-language ad that unfairly lumps McCain together with Rush Limbaugh -- and quotes Limbaugh out of context. On health care, Obama misleadingly accuses McCain of wanting to impose a $3.6 trillion tax hike on employer-provided insurance.

Obama has been furthest out of line, however, on Social Security, stooping to the kind of scare tactics he once derided.

"If my opponent had his way, the millions of Floridians who rely on it would have had their Social Security tied up in the stock market this week," Obama said Saturday as he campaigned in that retiree-heavy state. "Millions of families would've been scrambling to figure out how to give their mothers and fathers, their grandmothers and grandfathers, the secure retirement that every American deserves."

This is simply false -- even leaving aside the incendiary language about "privatizing" Social Security. As the invaluable FactCheck.org noted, the private account plan suggested by President Bush and backed by McCain would not have applied to anyone born before 1950. It would not have changed benefits by a single penny for current retirees like the nice Florida folks that Obama was trying to rile up. The sensible notion was that workers at or near retirement age should be able to rely on promised benefits and should not be subject to the vicissitudes of short-term market fluctuations.

And then there is this:

Obama's ads on Social Security are equally misleading. "Cutting benefits in half, risking Social Security on the stock market," it warns. "The Bush-McCain privatization plan. Can you really afford more of the same?"

Cutting benefits in half? As FactCheck notes, "this is a rank misrepresentation." No one at or near retirement age would have been affected. Those retiring in the future would not have received benefits as big as what they have been promised under current law -- but those promises cannot be paid for under the current system or even through the payroll tax increase on the wealthy that Obama has proposed.

So FactCheck, FactCheck, Dave! says that Obama's ads are a "rank misrepresentation."  So explain this to me: do we have two big brothers, peddling their 1984 newspeak? 

Well, maybe.   But two Orwellian Big Brother's, working their techno-totalitarianism against each other, with the voters getting to decide who gets to run the telescreens for the next four years.  At the risk of disagreeing with an English professor about a famous novel, that ain't exactly what Orwell had in mind. 

Maybe we should demand that our presidential candidates be scrupulously honest.  We ain't gonna, for reasons I have mentioned, but maybe we should.  And maybe McCain has been plenty dishonest in some of his ads.  But if anyone votes for Obama because he or she thinks Obama is honest, that person is a fool. 

This Is Reflection And Choice?

In Federalist #1, Alexander Hamilton famously wrote:

It has been       frequently remarked that it seems to have been reserved to the people of       this country, by their conduct and example, to decide the important       question, whether societies of men are really capable or not of       establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they       are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on       accident and force.

As our Founders noted on numerous occasions, the problem of democratic legislatures is not that they act too slowly but that they act too quickly.  We need deliberation, not quick action, from our legislators.  The faster a legislature acts, the more it abandons reflection and real choice.

I confess to being sketchy on the details of the proposed $700 billion government bailout plan of investment bank.  But I did hear an adviser to the president on the radio today say that the president wanted a bill from Congress on his desk in a week.  I hope I am wrong, but this strikes me as foolish.  What we need is reflection and deliberate choice, not panic inspired bill that likely will create as many problems down the road as they solve today (see Sarbanes-Oxley). 

Bernard-Henri Lévy on Bloomberg TV

I was advised by Heidi Tan at Bloomberg TV that Bernard-Henri Lévy is appearing tonight on Night Talk.  You can download the show at: http://www.bloomberg.com/tvradio/podcast/night_talk.html

Obama Staffers Leave North Dakota

USA Today:

Barack Obama, who has deployed more than 50 staffers in North Dakota in an attempt to become the first Democratic presidential candidate to carry the state since 1964, is pulling out.

An Obama spokeswoman, Amy Brundage, confirmed Sunday that the campaign's North Dakota staffers were being sent to Minnesota and Wisconsin, where recent polls have shown a tight race between Obama and Republican John McCain.

She declined to say how many campaign workers were being shifted, but other Democratic activists put the number at more than 50. Obama has opened 11 North Dakota campaign offices and run television advertising in the state, which is unusual for a Democratic presidential candidate.

McCain's campaign has no paid staff or offices in North Dakota.

The Obama campaign's decision comes just before North Dakotans will begin marking early ballots for the Nov. 4 election. Absentee voting may start as early as Thursday, and county auditors have reported getting thousands of ballot applications.

Obama's Democrat Problem

Pittsburgh Tribune-Review:

You just knew that when Joe O'Connell, former head of the local AFL-CIO, got on stage here with John McCain and Sarah Palin things were not going smoothly for the Obama campaign among union voters.

"I am a lifelong Democrat, an intelligent Democrat, who is supporting John McCain," O'Connell said last week as a crowd of 7,000 waved "Another Democrat for John McCain" signs and roared its approval.

Entitlement Spending

My latest in the American News:

At the recent national conventions both political parties stressed issues they think will help them win votes, but there is one issue that both parties ignored: entitlement spending. That might be the biggest issue facing America.

According to economist Robert Samuelson, three programs - Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security - currently represent 40 percent of all federal spending. According to the Congressional Budget Office, by 2030 these programs will take up a full 70 percent of all federal spending.

David Walker, former U.S. comptroller general, reports that America currently has $53 trillion in unfunded promises represented in our entitlement programs. As comptroller general, Walker was the government's top accountant. Now he is waging a battle to convince Americans to take seriously the enormous burden we are leaving our children and grandchildren.

Walker says that the greatest threat to the United States is not a terrorist “hiding in a cave in Afghanistan or Pakistan” but “our own fiscal responsibility.” If we do nothing by 2040, our government will have money to spend on nothing else but entitlements and interest on the debt. That means no money for defense, homeland security, roads, education or anything else.

The rise in health care spending along with an aging population creates obligations in the tens of trillions of dollars that the United States cannot afford. Congress and President Bush made matters worse by passing the Medicare prescription drug benefit, a bill Walker calls “the most fiscally irresponsible piece of legislation since the 1960s.” To pay for the drug bill, Walker says the United States must immediately invest trillions of dollars. How much money have we invested? Zero.

The situation is masked by the slick accounting of the federal government. Congress and the president use the Social Security surplus to mask the real deficit even though they have actually spent that surplus for their and the voters' immediate gratification.

Walker has teamed with Peter Peterson, former commerce secretary, to raise the awareness of the American people to this dire situation. They have created a documentary film entitled “I.O.U.S.A.” to spread the message. Clips from the film and other media appearances by Walker are easily found on that the film's Web site, www.iousathemovie.com, and on YouTube.

Our major party candidates stressed, at their conventions, the need for uniting and putting country first. Both candidates claimed to represent a new politics that rises above partisanship and ideology, aiming simply to do what is best for the American people.

Yet neither candidate promises real reform. Barack Obama, in fact, favors a national health care program that would heap mountains of debt on top of the already enormous sum. John McCain fights against pork barrel spending, but the truth is that this kind of spending represents a miniscule amount of the federal deficit. As Walker points out, we could get rid of all waste in the Defense Department, for example, and it would have virtually no impact on long term deficit projections.

While McCain voted against the prescription drug bill as a budget buster, truth is during the course of the campaign both candidates have been conspicuously silent about entitlement reform.

The reason why is obvious. Americans have come to depend on the government to free us from responsibility for our own well-being while passing on the cost to future generations.

Any candidate who makes a serious proposal for reforming entitlements will be denounced as unfeeling and heartless. So candidates promise even more spending in an attempt to win votes.

Luckily, most of will be dead before the bill comes due.

BHL’s Apology for the Left

American Conservative thought, defined as a marriage of libertarian economic positions with a traditionalist stance on social issues, is relatively new.  It probably doesn't exist before the 1950's, and begins to emerge only with the publication of such works as William F. Buckley's God and Man at Yale.  Perhaps for that reason alone, Conservatives have had fewer opportunities to embarrass themselves by embracing foreign monsters than have their counterparts on the left.  There just haven't been a lot of conservative revolutions around the world in the last 70 years.  But there were plenty of radical leftist revolutions, and the American Left fell in love with each and every one of them in turn.  This always turned out badly. 

"My favorite atheist," Christopher Hitchens, has a review of Bernard-Henri Lévy's new book: Left in Dark Times: A Stand Against the New Barbarism in the New York Times.  Lévy is perhaps the most highly regarded philosophe in contemporary France, so much so that he is widely referred to there simply as BHL.  When now President, then candidate Nicholas Sarkozy called him up to ask for an endorsement, BHL was in an awkward position.  On the one hand, he considered the Left "his family," and felt obliged by filial piety to vote for the leftist candidate.  On the other hand, Lévy was firmly committed to opposing totalitarianism and barbarism in all their forms, and it was hard not to think that the French right, led by Sarkozy, was more likely to take a firm stance against the one and the other than the French Left. 

I haven't read the book, but from Hitchens' review, I gather it is a lengthy apology for the Left, combined with a serious critique of the Left.  Here is a gem:

"I'm convinced that the collapse of the Communist house almost everywhere has even, in certain cases, had the unexpected side effect of wiping out the traces of its crimes, the visible signs of its failure, allowing certain people to start dreaming once again of an unsullied Communism, uncompromised and happy."

If this is not precisely true, even of those nostalgic for "Fidel," apologetic about Hugo Chávez, credulous about how "secular" the Baath Party was, or prone to sympathize with Vladimir Putin concerning the "encircling" of his country by aggressive titans like Estonia and Kosovo and Georgia, still it does contain a truth. One could actually have gone further and argued that the totalitarian temptation now extends to an endorsement of Islamism as the last, best hope of humanity against the American empire. I could without difficulty name some prominent leftists, from George Galloway to Michael Moore, who have used the same glowing terms to describe "resistance" in, say, Iraq as they would once have employed for the Red Army or the Vietcong. Trawling the intellectual history of Europe, as he is able to do with some skill, Lévy comes across an ancestor of this sinister convergence in a yearning remark confided to his journal by the fascist writer Paul Claudel on May 21, 1935: "Hitler's speech; a kind of Islamism is being created at the center of Europe."

That gives you a sense of the issues that BHL has with his "family."  This is dead spot on.  With so many communist regimes out of business, or having legalized business, it is possible for young Leftists, at least, to dream again of a red dawn. 

And then there is the French Left's distaste for America, shared widely across Europe. 

In his last book, a retracing of Tocqueville's "Democracy in America," Lévy appeared in the role of mediator at a time when French-American relations were in a sorry condition. Here, too, he takes a stand against the mindless anti-Americanism that is so prevalent among the lumpen intellectuals of Europe. In his view, the phenomenon has two highly unpleasant subtexts to it. The first is envy and resentment, deriving from the fact that the United States has several times intervened to save Europe from itself and from the consequences of its ideological dementias. The second, perhaps not unrelated, is a no-less-envious perception of America as a handmaiden and vassal of the Jews.

That is Hitchens' view of Lévy's take on European anti-Americanism.  It would be entirely unfair of me to point out that these are the people who passionately hoping for Obama to win the American presidential election.  So I will not mention that fact.  I will only point out that, whether you are on the right or the left, you had probably better come to grips with the truth that Lévy points out.