Cell Phone Genocide

The deadliest war since Adolf Hitler marched across Europe is starting again -- and you are almost certainly carrying a blood-soaked chunk of the slaughter in your pocket. When we glance at the holocaust in Congo, with 5.4 million dead, the clichés of Africa reporting tumble out: this is a "tribal conflict" in "the Heart of Darkness". It isn't. The United Nations investigation found it was a war led by "armies of business" to seize the metals that make our 21st-century society zing and bling. The war in Congo is a war about you.

Every day I think about the people I met in the war zones of eastern Congo when I reported from there. The wards were filled with women who had been gang-raped by the militias and shot in the vagina. The battalions of child soldiers -- drugged, dazed 13-year-olds who had been made to kill members of their own families so they couldn't try to escape and go home. But oddly, as I watch the war starting again on CNN, I find myself thinking about a woman I met who had, by Congolese standards, not suffered in extremis.

I was driving back to Goma from a diamond mine one day when my car got a puncture. As I waited for it to be fixed, I stood by the roadside and watched the great trails of women who stagger along every road in eastern Congo, carrying all their belongings on their backs in mighty crippling heaps. I stopped a 27-year-old woman called Marie-Jean Bisimwa, who had four little children toddling along beside her. She told me she was lucky. Yes, her village had been burned out. Yes, she had lost her husband somewhere in the chaos. Yes, her sister had been raped and gone insane. But she and her kids were alive.

I gave her a lift, and it was only after a few hours of chat along on cratered roads that I noticed there was something strange about Marie-Jean's children. They were slumped forward, their gazes fixed in front of them. They didn't look around, or speak, or smile. "I haven't ever been able to feed them," she said. "Because of the war."

Their brains hadn't developed; they never would now. "Will they get better?" she asked. I left her in a village on the outskirts of Goma, and her kids stumbled after her, expressionless.

There are two stories about how this war began -- the official story, and the true story. The official story is that after the Rwandan genocide, the Hutu mass murderers fled across the border into Congo. The Rwandan government chased after them. But it's a lie. How do we know? The Rwandan government didn't go to where the Hutu genocidaires were, at least not at first. They went to where Congo's natural resources were -- and began to pillage them. They even told their troops to work with any Hutus they came across. Congo is the richest country in the world for gold, diamonds, coltan, cassiterite, and more. Everybody wanted a slice -- so six other countries invaded.

These resources were not being stolen to for use in Africa. They were seized so they could be sold on to us. The more we bought, the more the invaders stole -- and slaughtered. The rise of mobile phones caused a surge in deaths, because the coltan they contain is found primarily in Congo. The UN named the international corporations it believed were involved: Anglo-America, Standard Chartered Bank, De Beers and more than 100 others. (They all deny the charges.) But instead of stopping these corporations, our governments demanded that the UN stop criticising them.

There were times when the fighting flagged. In 2003, a peace deal was finally brokered by the UN and the international armies withdrew. Many continued to work via proxy militias -- but the carnage waned somewhat. Until now. As with the first war, there is a cover-story, and the truth. A Congolese militia leader called Laurent Nkunda -- backed by Rwanda -- claims he needs to protect the local Tutsi population from the same Hutu genocidaires who have been hiding out in the jungles of eastern Congo since 1994. That's why he is seizing Congolese military bases and is poised to march on Goma.

It is a lie. François Grignon, Africa Director of the International Crisis Group, tells me the truth: "Nkunda is being funded by Rwandan businessmen so they can retain control of the mines in North Kivu. This is the absolute core of the conflict. What we are seeing now is beneficiaries of the illegal war economy fighting to maintain their right to exploit."

At the moment, Rwandan business interests make a fortune from the mines they illegally seized during the war. The global coltan price has collapsed, so now they focus hungrily on cassiterite, which is used to make tin cans and other consumer disposables. As the war began to wane, they faced losing their control to the elected Congolese government -- so they have given it another bloody kick-start.

Yet the debate about Congo in the West -- when it exists at all -- focuses on our inability to provide a decent bandage, without mentioning that we are causing the wound. It's true the 17,000 UN forces in the country are abysmally failing to protect the civilian population, and urgently need to be super-charged. But it is even more important to stop fuelling the war in the first place by buying blood-soaked natural resources. Nkunda only has enough guns and grenades to take on the Congolese army and the UN because we buy his loot. We need to prosecute the corporations buying them for abetting crimes against humanity, and introduce a global coltan-tax to pay for a substantial peacekeeping force. To get there, we need to build an international system that values the lives of black people more than it values profit.

Somewhere out there -- lost in the great global heist of Congo's resources -- are Marie-Jean and her children, limping along the road once more, carrying everything they own on their backs. They will probably never use a coltan-filled mobile phone, a cassiterite-smelted can of beans, or a gold necklace -- but they may yet die for one.

What if anything should the United States do about this?

Divagate?

John McCain's campaign is looking for a scapegoat. It is looking for someone to blame if McCain loses on Tuesday.

And it has decided on Sarah Palin.

In recent days, a McCain “adviser” told Dana Bash of CNN: “She is a diva. She takes no advice from anyone.”

Imagine not taking advice from the geniuses at the McCain campaign. What could Palin be thinking?

Also, a “top McCain adviser” told Mike Allen of Politico that Palin is “a whack job.”

Maybe she is. But who chose to put this “whack job” on the ticket? Wasn’t it John McCain? And wasn’t it his first presidential-level decision?

And if you are a 72-year-old presidential candidate, wouldn’t you expect that your running mate’s fitness for high office would come under a little extra scrutiny? And, therefore, wouldn’t you make your selection with care? (To say nothing about caring about the future of the nation?)

McCain didn’t seem to care that much. McCain admitted recently on national TV that he “didn’t know her well at all” before he chose Palin.

But why not? Why didn’t he get to know her better before he made his choice?

It’s not like he was rushed. McCain wrapped up the Republican nomination in early March. He didn’t announce his choice for a running mate until late August.

Wasn’t that enough time for McCain to get to know Palin? Wasn’t that enough time for his crackerjack “vetters” to investigate Palin’s strengths and weaknesses, check through records and published accounts, talk to a few people, and learn that she was not only a diva but a whack job diva?

But McCain picked her anyway. He wanted to close the “enthusiasm gap” between himself and Barack Obama. He wanted to inject a little adrenaline into the Republican National Convention. He wanted to goose up the Republican base.

And so he chose Palin. Is she really a diva and a whack job? Could be. There are quite a few in politics. (And a few in journalism, too, though in journalism they are called “columnists.”)

As proof that she is, McCain aides now say Palin is “going rogue” and straying from their script. Wow. What a condemnation. McCain sticks to the script. How well is he doing?

In truth, Palin’s real problem is not her personality or whether she takes orders well. Her real problem is that neither she nor McCain can make a credible case that Palin is ready to assume the presidency should she need to.

And that undercuts McCain’s entire campaign.

This was the deal McCain made with the devil. In exchange for energizing his base by picking Palin, he surrendered his chief selling point: that he was better prepared to run the nation in time of crisis, whether it be economic, an attack by terrorists or, as he has been talking about in recent days, fending off a nuclear war.

“The next president won’t have time to get used to the office,” McCain told a crowd in Miami on Wednesday. “I’ve been tested, my friends, I’ve been tested.”

But has Sarah Palin?

I don’t believe running mates win or lose elections, though some believe they can be a drag on the ticket. Lee Atwater, who was George H.W. Bush’s campaign manager in 1988, told me that Dan Quayle cost the ticket 2 to 3 percentage points. But Bush won the election by 7.8 percentage points.

So, in Atwater’s opinion, Bush survived his bad choice by winning the election on his own.

McCain could do the same thing. But his campaign’s bad decisions have not stopped with Sarah Palin. It has made a series of questionable calls, including making Joe the Plumber the embodiment of the campaign.

Are voters really expected to warmly embrace an (unlicensed) plumber who owes back taxes and complains about the possibility of making a quarter million dollars a year?

And did McCain’s aides really believe so little in John McCain’s own likability that they thought Joe the Plumber would be more likable?

Apparently so. Which is sad.

We in the press make too much of running mates and staff and talking points and all the rest of the hubbub that accompanies a campaign.

In the end, it comes down to two candidates slugging it out.

Either McCain pulls off a victory in the last round or he doesn’t.

And if he doesn’t, he has nobody to blame but himself.

Do you think McCain is regretting his VP pick?

The Political Informercial

Barack Obama will go on national television tonight and air a 30-minute infomercial about himself and his presidential campaign.

Several political image makers, both Republicans and Democrats, say it’s a smart move. But is there a risk of excess in it, as well?

While Obama hasn’t made many strategic mistakes in his campaign against Republican John McCain, he has, on occasion, shown a weakness for extravagance.

In July, Obama’s visits to Afghanistan and Iraq generated comforting images of the senator with military leaders and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. But his trip ended in Berlin with an image of 200,000 fans, mostly Europeans, chanting Obama’s name.

In August, his campaign navigated the minefield of the Democratic Party’s feuding families to pull off a convention that began healing the wounds between the Clinton and Obama camps. Then it came to its conclusion between two Greek columns where a triumphant Obama delivered an acceptance speech to a football stadium crowd of more than 80,000.

Today, Obama is dominating the television ad wars. As of Oct. 22, Obama placed 150 percent more ads than McCain in Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Missouri, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia, according to the Nielsen Co.

Despite all that, and despite his lead in national and most battleground polls, the campaign decided to plunk down between $3 and $5 million to buy half-hour blocks of time at 8 p.m. tonight on NBC, CBS, FOX, Univision, BET, MSNBC and TV One for delivery of his final argument to the voters.

Could it seem to some voters like overkill?

Republican political strategist Alex Castellanos says that it might. But even his advice is to go for it.

“It’s like football,” says Castellanos. “People may complain that a team is running up the score, but that team is still the one that wins.”

The Obama campaign scoffs at the idea that the infomercial is more luxury than necessity. This is, after all, a campaign scarred by its surprise loss in the New Hampshire primary after polls had shown double-digit leads.

On the campaign trail, Obama’s warnings against complacency are taking on increasingly urgent tones. He has vowed to finish the race on offense and the infomercial is a part of that strategy, say advisers.

“With this historic election only a week away — and John McCain’s angry, desperate attacks mounting by the day — we want to make sure every voter heading into the voting booth knows exactly what Barack Obama would do to bring about fundamental change as president,” a campaign statement noted.

Jim Jordan, a Democratic strategist, says the broadcast is timed to sway late breaking, undecided voters who can often tighten or determine a close race in the final days.

“There is a discrete segment of the electorate, primarily female, who are late deciders. They care about policy and elections, but they are very, very busy. They actively tune it out until the last week or ten days. Then they go and seek and acquire information,” he says.

The trick, of course, is getting them to watch rather than click away to ABC, the lone major network that won’t air the infomercial, or to some other Obama-free cable TV station.

Politicians have had mixed success at that in the past.

Before this year’s Super Tuesday primary, Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton broadcast a live town hall meeting on the Hallmark Channel. It was watched by 540,000 households, or about 705,000 viewers, according to the Nielsen ratings.

A better parallel to Obama’s strategy could be independent candidate H. Ross Perot, who aired 15 infomercials in the 1992 presidential campaign.

Perot’s programs drew an average audience of 11.6 million viewers, or 4.6 percent of viewers nationwide, according to Nielsen. His one simulcast on ABC and CBS on Nov. 2, 1992, attracted 26 million viewers, Nielsen found.

Ken Goldstein, director of the Wisconsin Advertising Project, said Obama may not draw as large an audience as Perot.

“Ross Perot was sort of new on the scene. People hadn’t heard of him,” said Goldstein. “I’d be surprised if there are a lot of undecided eyes or passive viewers watching the Obama video. It could be a lot of Obama house parties.”

But Goldstein and Evan Tracey, founder of Campaign Media Analysis Group, which tracks political advertising, said the real benefit to Obama could be simply the attention the infomercial draws from the mainstream press.

“It probably locks up 24 hours of the news cycle,” said Tracey. “It’s going to suck a lot of oxygen out of the room.”

Adds Goldstein: “John McCain’s only chance is to disqualify Barack Obama. He has seven days. Every day that people are talking about Barack Obama’s infomercial is a day that John McCain isn’t getting his message out.”

The biggest risk in airing the infomercials, according to the strategists, is that Obama could irritate people by interrupting their regular television viewing habits.

Joe Lockhart, a Democratic strategist, says that is less of a risk today given the hundreds of television shows to watch at any given hour.

“If this was 30 years ago, you’d be running a big risk that people who don’t want to watch it would be mad,” says Lockhart.

“The benefit is you get to make your closing argument in a dramatic way without the filter of the media. It gives you more context and texture than a 30-second or 60-second ad,” he adds.

Mike Murphy, a Republican strategist who was once a McCain adviser, agrees. “I don’t see any risk at all,” he said in an e-mail. “I’ve been urging McCain high command to do a TV show too, but….”

McCain, of course, could air his own show. Under federal law, if he sought to buy equal time, the networks would be required to sell it to him.

His problem is money. Unlike Obama, who has collected more donations than any other general election presidential candidate, McCain would be forced to pull money from a battleground state in order to pay for the national infomercial.

It’s that imbalance in resources that might touch the overkill nerve in some viewers and voters.
But Goldstein can’t imagine such a worry is even a factor in the Obama camp.

“Campaigns tend not to worry about overkill,” he says. “Campaigns, by definition, are overkill.”

So what is your verdict?
Smart or Overkill?

Fighting Texas Aggie?

Pittsburgh, Kansas police said a 20-year-old woman who originally said she was robbed and assaulted at knifepoint in Bloomfield because of her political views made the story up.

Ashley Todd -- who has a backward letter "B" scratched into her right cheek -- confessed to faking the story and will be charged with filing a false report, Assistant Police Chief Maurita Bryant said at a news conference Friday.

Todd, of College Station, Texas, admitted there was no robbery or attacker and said she had prior mental health problems, according to Bryant.

It's not yet clear whether Todd's face was mutilated by her, or if she had somebody else do it, because a police report states that she told them she can't remember.

"We suspect she may have inflicted the injuries herself. We don't think anyone else is involved," Bryant said.

Todd said she was driving around in her car, looked in her rear-view mirror, saw a "B," and the first thing she thought of was Democratic presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama, according to a police report obtained by WTAE Channel 4 Action News.

On Thursday afternoon, police reported that Todd told them she was using a Citizens Bank ATM at Liberty Avenue and Pearl Street when a man approached her and put a knife to her throat just before 9 p.m. Wednesday.

Police spokeswoman Diane Richard said Todd told them the robber took $60, then became angry when he saw a sticker for Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain on Todd's car. Todd said the man punched and kicked her before using a dull knife to scratch her face, Richard said.

"She further stated that the male actor approached her from the back again and hit her in the back of her head with an object, she doesn't know what the object was, causing her to fall to the ground where he continued to punch her and kick her and threaten to 'teach her a lesson' for being a McCain supporter," Richard said Thursday.

The woman refused medical treatment after the alleged assault, which happened outside the view of the bank's surveillance cameras. That seemed suspicious to police.

"We have robbers here in Pittsburgh, but they don't generally mutilate someone's face like that. They take the money and run," Bryant said.

Speaking to Channel 4 Action News on Friday, Richard said police decided to question Todd because the details of her story weren't adding up.

"We have learned that the victim's statement has a few inconsistencies in it and her statement has changed," said Richard.

Richard said Todd said on Friday she wasn't sure if it was a bumper sticker on her car or a campaign button on her jacket that angered the attacker. Richard said Todd added new details to the attack, saying at one point she lost consciousness.

"She also indicated she was sexually assaulted as well. She indicated that when he had her on the ground he put his hand up her blouse and started fondling her. But other than that, she says she doesn't remember anything else. So we're adding a sexual assault to this as well," Richard said.

Police said they gave a polygraph test to Todd, but they didn't release the results. During a follow-up interview, Todd came clean.

"Miss Todd stated she made up the story, which snowballed and got out of control. Miss Todd stated she was not robbed and there was no 6-foot-4 black male attacker," Richard said.

On Thursday, before police said the story was a fake, both the Obama-Biden and McCain-Palin campaigns released statements about the attack.

"Our thoughts and prayers are with the young woman for her to make a speedy recovery, and we hope that the person who perpetrated this crime is swiftly apprehended and brought to justice," the Obama-Biden statement said.

"The McCain campaign is aware of the incident involving one of its volunteers. Out of respect, the campaign won't be commenting. The campaign also confirms that Senator McCain and Governor Palin have both spoken to the woman," the McCain-Palin statement said.

Pittsburgh City Council Member Ricky Burgess is demanding an apology from the McCain-Palin campaign.

Burgess sent a letter to the campaign on Monday. He's asking for an apology because of the actions of a Pennsylvania McCain campaign staffer related to the fake attack story.

For more on that story and to read the letter, click here.

So why would this person do something like this?

One Week

Stay tuned for my Election Day forecast!

And yes...there will be prizes awarded!

Obama's First 100 Days

By Patrick Buchanan

Undeniably, a powerful tide is running for the Democratic Party, with one week left to Election Day.

Bush's approval rating is 27 percent, just above Richard Nixon's Watergate nadir and almost down to Carter-Truman lows. After each of those presidents reached their floors -- in 1952, 1974, 1980 -- the opposition party captured the White House.

Moreover, 80 percent to 90 percent of Americans think the nation is on the wrong course, and since mid-September, when McCain was still slightly ahead, the Dow has lost 4,000 points -- $5 trillion to $6 trillion in value.

Leading now by eight points in an average of national polls, Barack Obama has other advantages.

Not a single blue state is regarded as imperiled or even a toss-up, while Obama leads in six crucial red states: Florida, North Carolina, Virginia, Ohio, Missouri and Colorado. Should McCain lose one of the six, he would have to win Pennsylvania to compensate for the lost electoral votes. But the latest Pennsylvania polls show Barack with a double-digit lead.

Lately moving into the toss-up category are Nevada, North Dakota, Montana and Indiana. All voted twice for George W. Bush.

Not only is Obama ahead in the state and national polls, he has more money, is running far more ads, has a superior organization on the ground, attracts larger crowds, and has greater enthusiasm and more media in camp. And new voter registrations heavily favor the Democrats.

Though Congress is regarded by Americans with a disdain bordering on disgust -- five of six Americans think it has done a poor job -- Democratic majorities are certain to grow. Indeed, with Democrats favored by 10 points over Republicans, Nancy Pelosi's majority could grow by 25 seats and Harry Reid could find himself with a filibuster-proof majority of 60 senators.

Democrats already have 49, plus two independents: Socialist Bernie Sanders and Independent Joe Lieberman. Their challengers are now ahead in New Hampshire, Virginia, North Carolina, New Mexico, Minnesota, Oregon and Colorado, with a chance of picking up Georgia, Alaska, Kentucky and Mississippi.

We may be looking at a reverse of 1980, when Reagan won a 10-point victory over Jimmy Carter, and Republicans took the Senate and, working with Boll Weevil Democrats, effective control of the House.

With his tax cuts, defense buildup and rollback policy against the "Evil Empire," Reagan gave us some of the best years of our lives, culminating in America's epochal victory in the Cold War.

What does the triumvirate of Obama-Pelosi-Reid offer?

Rep. Barney Frank is calling for new tax hikes on the most successful and a 25 percent across-the-board slash in national defense. Sen. John Kerry is talking up new and massive federal spending, a la FDR's New Deal. Specifically, we can almost surely expect:

-- Swift amnesty for 12 million to 20 million illegal aliens and a drive to make them citizens and register them, as in the Bill Clinton years. This will mean that Nevada, Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona will soon move out of reach for GOP presidential candidates, as has California.

-- Border security will go on the backburner, and America will have a virtual open border with a Mexico of 110 million.

-- Taxes will be raised on the top 5 percent of wage-earners, who now carry 60 percent of the U.S. income tax burden, and tens of millions of checks will be sent out to the 40 percent of wage-earners who pay no federal income tax. Like the man said, redistribute the wealth, spread it around.

-- Social Security taxes will be raised on the most successful among us, and capital gains taxes will be raised from 15 percent to 20 percent. The Bush tax cuts will be repealed, and death taxes reimposed.

-- Two or three more liberal activists of the Ruth Bader Ginsberg-John Paul Stevens stripe will be named to the Supreme Court. U.S. district and appellate courts will be stacked with "progressives."

-- Special protections for homosexuals will be written into all civil rights laws, and gays and lesbians in the military will be invited to come out of the closet. "Don't ask, don't tell" will be dead.

-- The homosexual marriages that state judges have forced California, Massachusetts and Connecticut to recognize, an Obama Congress or Obama court will require all 50 states to recognize.

-- A "Freedom of Choice Act" nullifying all state restrictions on abortions will be enacted. America will become the most pro-abortion nation on earth.

-- Affirmative action -- hiring and promotions based on race, sex and sexual orientation until specified quotas are reached -- will be rigorously enforced throughout the U.S. government and private sector.

-- Universal health insurance will be enacted, covering legal and illegal immigrants, providing another powerful magnet for the world to come to America, if necessary by breaching her borders.

-- A federal bailout of states and municipalities to keep state and local governments spending up could come in December or early next year.

-- The first trillion-dollar deficit will be run in the first year of an Obama presidency. It will be the first of many.

Welcome to Obamaland!

So do you agree with this analysis?

For Those Problem Gamblers

Futures traders and sports books are setting overwhelming odds that the Illinois Democrat will win the presidency on Nov. 4.

Ladbrokes, a massive online sports book based in the United Kingdom, puts the odds of an Obama win at 1-10, meaning a bettor must risk $10 to win one more. John McCain, meanwhile, is an 11-2 shot, so a dollar posted on him would pay out an additional $5.50. The site now pays out less for a bet on Obama winning in a 370-plus electoral landslide than it does for a McCain victory of any margin.

Other books give the Arizona senator more favorable odds — Sportsbook.com has McCain at 4-to-1 — but across the board a bet for the Republican now pays off more than it has at any point during the general election, as bettors have soured on his prospects.

Paddy Power, Ireland's largest bookmaker, no longer gives McCain any chance at all, having called the election for Obama on Oct. 15 and paid out over a million pounds on bets for the Democrat, whose line had moved from 50-1 in May of 2005 to 1-9 when the book closed.

The wide spread between books — whose odds aren't intended to be predictive, but to split the action such that the house comes out ahead no matter who wins — stems from the relatively small size of the betting pool, which means they may not accurately represent expectations among the non-betting public.

Futures markets, in which buyers and sellers negotiate a price for a contract that pays off if a postulated event in fact occurs, are also down on McCain. An option that pays $1 should McCain win now sells for just 14 cents at Dublin-based futures market Intrade and 13 cents on the Iowa Electronic Market. Both prices are record lows.

Shortly after the Republican National Convention, McCain was a slight favorite in several markets, with a $1 option going for 54 cents on Intrade, and Ladbrokes giving the Republican 5-4 odds.

While polls show a snapshot in time of who voters want to win, betting lines and futures trades show who bettors think will win. The good news for McCain is that the gamblers have not always been right.

Just before the New Hampshire primary, Ladbrokes listed Obama as a prohibitive 1-33 shot to win, but he ended up losing that contest to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Intrade CEO John Delaney concedes that the predictive value of his market has been "mixed" so far this year. "They were sometimes wrong during the primaries, but often showed better clarity than the polls," he said.

Trading volume on the site averages 10,000 trades a day of $1 million worth of presidential futures, up over 700 percent from 2004.

The still relatively small size of the presidential betting markets, though, has left them open to charges of manipulation. Nate Silver, founder of the widely read electoral projections Web site FiveThirtyEight, noticed in September that "something is going on over at Intrade with respect to the pricing of the Obama and McCain contracts," when Obama futures in September were priced about 10 points less than at other markets, "the equivalent of the Giants being 3-point favorites at the Bellagio Sportsbook, and 7-point favorites at the Mirage down the block."

An InTrade investigation found that one trader made repeated countercyclical buys of McCain futures large enough to raise their price — thus purchasing the options for considerably more than the same product would have cost on another market.

InTrade's numbers are now widely posted around the Web, and seen, along with poll numbers, as a reliable gauge of the candidates' prospects — meaning someone with deep pockets has good reason to bend the numbers, and thus the perception of the race.

At a posting on the InTrade site, Delaney reported that "an extensive investigation" found that the single investor responsible for the fluctuations was "using our markets in good faith and in the ordinary course of their business," and "using increased depth in these markets to manage certain risks," which he later told the New York Times could mean another "bookmaker using Intrade to hedge risk from their own customers.”

Still, the markets have historically been very accurate in general elections.

In 2004, futures traders at Intrade not only correctly priced President Bush to win, but also got the winner of each state right.

Americans are barred from participating in InTrade's presidential futures market, whose members are mostly from Europe and the Middle East, and which is currently priced to show Obama winning many crucial swing states, including North Carolina (where an option paying off $1 for an Obama win now costs 64 cents, Pennsylvania (88), Indiana (59), Ohio (75), Colorado (85), Missouri (64), Virginia (80) and Florida (66).

Iowa Business School professor Thomas Rietz, who runs the Iowa Electronic Market, said futures markets are "a lot less volatile than polls."

One reason is that "heavily partisan traders tend to hang onto contracts that they shouldn't," Rietz said. "Buy-and-hold traders buy candidates they like, [while] price setters and volatility comes from independents."

The market, which until 1996 was open only to students, operates as an educational tool, maintaining that status by capping traders at a $500 investment. It frequently operates at a loss.

Since its founding in 1988, Iowa has run two types of futures markets, a winner-take-all market for predicting the winner—which has successfully "predicted" the winner of each of all six presidential elections—and a market where participants bet on the percent of the popular vote each candidate will receive, which has been off by an average of just more than 1 percentage point. It currently shows Obama winning 54 percent of the popular vote.

Like polls, markets and betting lines tend to tighten as Election Day approaches.

Ladbrokes spokesman Seth Woods warned against overvaluing the predictive value of betting lines, recalling that in 2004, "Bush was the favorite for the vast majority of the campaign until 24 hours before Election Day, when Kerry became a marginal favorite. Kerry was as short as 1-3 on the day of the election."


BTW....Tech is a -6.5 point dog as of today.
Stranger things have happened

ACORN Fights Back

by Richard Hopson

In the midst of the predictable partisan exaggerations, distortions and occasional lies that close election races generate, ACORN has become the focus of an extraordinary amount of attention over our voter-registration program. We submitted nearly 40,000 voter registration applications in San Diego and throughout California, and 1.3 million nationwide. In communities across the country, anxiety about the direction of our country, and more specifically our economy, is driving much of the interest in this year's presidential election. Voter turnout is expected to be of historic proportions. What is surprising is that these attacks, issued from partisan sources, have become relentless, and wildly exaggerated. We've even been accused by some Republicans of causing the global economic crisis.

The truth, plain and simple, is that no illegal votes will be cast as a consequence of ACORN's voter-registration program. In fact, illegal votes constitute fewer than 1 out of a million votes cast, and no illegal vote has ever been tied to ACORN, in spite of the almost 2 million registrations we submitted in 2004 and 2006. The small percentage of problematic cards that we have submitted to local election boards in 2008 -- and that we are required by law to submit, even cards that we can plainly see are invalid -- will not result in any illegal voting, contrary to over-the-top partisan claims. The irony in these attacks is that our registration drive and get-out-the-vote program is nonpartisan.

Why has ACORN (the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now ) become such a prominent talking point, sound bite and rallying cry? The answer, of course, is to win the upcoming election. What's troubling here is that a strategy to win can also include a strategy to suppress votes through tactics such as illegal purges of voter rolls, intimidation of voters at polling places and voter caging (a form of vote suppression that involves direct mail and challenging voter status).

Sen. John McCain (who as recently as 2006 attended ACORN events and supported some of ACORN's activities) suggested in the final presidential debate that ACORN poses a threat to "the fabric of our democracy," as if problems with some registration cards -- almost all of which ACORN pointed out to election boards - rise to the same level of danger to our way of life as do the economic crisis or threats from sworn enemies abroad. Eighteen months ago, when our voter-registration drive began, his claim would be laughable, but in the context of a close election and a shameful history in our country of disenfranchising poor people and people of color, including dirty partisan tricks aimed directly at impoverished communities of color in the past two presidential elections, there is nothing funny about it.

The history and hypocrisy is coming to light. On Monday, the Los Angeles Times reported that the Republican Party hired a firm (for $12 per voter registered as Republican). Their "Republican" program resorted to despicable tactics, such as getting people to register as Republicans by telling them they were signing a petition for tougher penalties against child molesters.

We all need to watch out that overblown charges against ACORN don't divert attention from or serve as a justification for unethical and illegal conduct in this election by those who are attacking ACORN. As for the impact on ACORN itself, exaggerated and false claims are not without consequence, as evidenced by a torrent of hate mail and phone calls to our offices, including death threats against our staff, and breaks-ins last week at our Boston and Seattle offices.

Enough is enough.

ACORN will keep working to reduce the incidence of voter-registration cards with problems. For those who make much of the fact that one of our canvassers registered "Mickey Mouse," we have great confidence in the ability of our election boards to ensure that neither "Mickey Mouse" nor any other illegal voter casts a ballot in this election.

The real issue is the 64 million Americans who will not be eligible to vote this November -- the worst citizen-participation rate of any Western democracy. Our work to reduce barriers to voting and to encourage participation in democracy is essential to reweaving "the fabric of our democracy." Ugly, cynical and partisan attempts to cast a shadow on this historic opportunity to reverse the disparities in the American electorate only create further divisions in our communities.

The citizens ACORN has helped register this year are very real. Many of them will be coming out to vote next month. McCain should welcome these voters to our democracy and campaign for their support.

We at ACORN intend to be vigilant in our efforts to ensure that every single American who should vote gets to vote. ACORN will be out in our communities on election day, walking people to the polls, and helping to make sure that everyone's vote -- and voice -- is heard.

Richard Hopson is the elected chair of California ACORN, the state's largest organization of low-to-moderate income families, with chapters in more than 75 communities. To learn the truth about ACORN, visit www.acorn.org or e-mail caacornsfro@acorn.org. To read studies on voter fraud, go to www.projectvote.org

So do you think there is anything to the claims that McCain/Palin have made about ACORN?

The Socialist Card

CINCINNATI, OHIO — A week after each candidate’s tax plan took center stage at the third presidential debate, the candidates continued to spar over Barack Obama’s comment that his plan would “spread the wealth around.”

At a Wednesday press conference in Richmond, Va., Obama gave his most extensive defense yet of his tax plan, pushing back against criticism that his economic philosophy amounted to socialism.

Republicans, said the Illinois senator, were trying to “fabricate an argument." When McCain first opposed President Bush’s tax cuts, noted Obama, the Republican nominee described them as irresponsibly targeted.

“Was John McCain a socialist back in 2000?” Obama asked. “Cause all I’m trying to do is reverse those so we can give relief to people who really need help.”

When asked whether his comments provided Republicans with an opening for attack, Obama said he had not.

“They have been trying to throw whatever they can up against the wall to see what sticks,” he said, “and this is their latest version.”

Obama held two rallies in Virginia, a state where he leads McCain in the polls but one that has not voted for a Democratic nominee since 1964. After a rally that drew 20,000 people to a Richmond coliseum, Obama flew to Leesburg, where he addressed a crowd of 35,000 at a park.

On the stump, Obama continued his attack on McCain, saying that wealthy Americans like himself don’t need a tax cut.

“I do want to roll back the Bush tax cuts for people like me,” said Obama, who became wealthy from his best-selling books. “I don’t need a tax cut.”

Last weekend, Obama’s economic plans gained support from a new ally: former Secretary of State Gen. Colin Powell.

"Taxes are always a redistribution of money," the retired general told reporters on Sunday after endorsing the Democratic candidate. “Most of the taxes that are redistributed go back to the ones who pay it. In roads, in airports, in hospitals, in schools, and taxes are necessary for the common good.”

But in a series of three events on Wednesday, McCain and his running-mate, Sarah Palin, continued to argue that their opponent is hiding his real agenda.

As evidence of the Democratic nominee’s plans, McCain cited a section of Obama’s second book, “The Audacity of Hope,” at a morning event in Goffstown, N.H.


“He writes of, quote, the need for ‘labor laws and tax laws that restore some balance to the distribution of the nation’s wealth.’ He’s talked elsewhere about how, in our day, ‘the distribution of wealth is even more skewed, and levels of inequity are now higher,’” he told the crowd of roughly 2,000.

“Whatever the right word is for that way of thinking,” McCain said. A voice from the crowd shouted an answer: “Socialism!”

McCain’s focus on Obama’s intentions has, over the past few days, been accompanied by an argument that Obama is concealing the true costs of his tax plan for middle-class Americans.The Arizona senator has also questioned Obama’s ability to cut taxes for 95 percent of all Americans, hitting him particularly hard for awarding tax credits to low-income families that pay no taxes.

“How do you reduce the number zero?” wondered McCain at a Green, Ohio rally. “Since you can’t reduce taxes for those who pay zero, he’ll write them all checks for tax credits.”

Obama says he’ll only raise taxes on families making more than $250,000 in annual income.

But the only way to pay for those credits and trillions of dollars in new federal spending, according to McCain, is by raising taxes on families making far less.

“Does anyone seriously believe that these trillions of dollars are going to come from only the very highest income earners?” asked McCain.

It’s a fear that was mentioned by the now-infamous Joe the Plumber, the Ohio resident who questioned Obama about his economic plans at an event several weeks ago.

Palin gave the country’s most famous plumber credit for raising the question.

In Ohio, Palin urged the crowd to identify with what she described as Joe Wurzelbacher’s belief in American entrepreneurs.

“You, too, you’re Joe the Plumber too. Knowing there are a lot of representatives of Joe the Plumber here, it doesn’t sound like many of you will be supporting Barack the Wealth Spreader in this election,” she said.

Obama put his own new twist on the Joe the Plumber story, saying McCain wouldn’t protect the blue-collar worker but rather “Joe the Hedge Fund Manager.”

“Don’t be fooled, I had a nice conversation the other day with Joe the Plumber,” Obama said Wednesday, subtly disputing charges that he’s been attacking Wurzelbacher.

“Joe’s cool. I got no problems with Joe. All I want to do is give Joe a tax cut. But let’s be clear who Sen. McCain is fighting for,” said Obama. “John McCain likes to talk about Joe the plumber but he’s in cahoots with Joe the CEO.”

Carrie Budoff Brown contributed reporting from Richmond and Leesburg, Va.

Have You Been Tested?

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) - Republican John McCain told voters in this key electoral state Tuesday he was personally tested by the same kind of crisis that Democratic vice presidential nominee Joseph Biden warned Barack Obama will almost certainly face if elected president.

McCain recalled being ready to launch a bombing run during the October 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, which Biden said over the weekend tested a new President John F. Kennedy and was the template for the kind of "generated crisis" the 47-year-old Obama would face within six months of taking office.

"I was on board the USS Enterprise," McCain, a former naval aviator, said in the capital city of Harrisburg. "I sat in the cockpit, on the flight deck of the USS Enterprise, off of Cuba. I had a target. My friends, you know how close we came to a nuclear war."

As the crowd of several thousand began to swell with cheers and applause, he added with dramatic effect: "America will not have a president who needs to be tested. I've been tested, my friends."

Biden told two fundraising audiences in Seattle over the weekend that he expected world figures to test Obama early if he wins the election in two weeks.

"He's gonna need you - not financially to help him - we're gonna need you to use your influence, your influence within the community, to stand with him," Biden said.

Biden predicted Obama would fare well because he's "got steel in his spine." In citing the Cuban Missile Crisis, though, he evoked a historic event in which McCain played a part.

"The Enterprise, sailing at full speed under nuclear power, was the first U.S. carrier to reach waters off Cuba," McCain wrote in his memoir, "Faith of My Fathers.""For about five days, the pilots on the Enterprise believed we were going into action. We had never been in combat before, and despite the global confrontation a strike on Cuba portended, we were prepared and anxious to fly our first mission."

He added: "Pilots and crewmen alike adopted a cool-headed, business-as-usual attitude toward the mission. Inwardly, of course, we were excited as hell, but we kept our composure and aped the standard image of a laconic, reserved, and fearless American at war."

McCain spent all day Tuesday in Democratic-leaning Pennsylvania, worth 21 Electoral College votes, before heading Wednesday into New Hampshire, a formerly reliable GOP state which Obama has made competitive this year. Though it has only four of the 270 electoral votes needed to win the presidency, New Hampshire could swing the election under some voting models which predict a very close Electoral College split.

The 72-year-old McCain regularly questions whether Obama - a first-term senator - has the experience to be president. He also questions whether the Illinois Democrat has the character to stand up to his own party and to stick with his core philosophical views.

In a region experiencing World Series fever, McCain underscored his argument by noting Obama had expressed support for both teams playing in the upcoming baseball championship.

Standing just miles north of Philadelphia, whose Phillies will represent the National League starting Wednesday against the American League champion Tampa Bay Rays, McCain noted Obama has identified himself with both teams while campaigning in their two politically important home states.

Obama said over the weekend in Philadelphia that while he was a Chicago fan, "Since the White Sox are out of it, I'll root for the Phillies now." On Monday in Tampa, Obama was introduced by a Rays pitcher and said, "I've said from the beginning that I am a unity candidate, bringing people together. So when you see a White Sox Fan showing love to the Rays - and the Rays showing some love back - you know we are on to something right here."

McCain told employees at TCI Millwork Inc. in Bensalem: "Now, I'm not dumb enough to get mixed up in a World Series between swing states. But I think I may have detected a little pattern with Sen. Obama. It's pretty simple really. When he's campaigning in Philadelphia, he roots for the Phillies, and when he's campaigning in Tampa Bay, he 'shows love' to the Rays."

As boos echoed through a cavernous warehouse, he added:"It's kind of like the way he campaigns on tax cuts, but then votes for tax increases after he's elected."

McCain ended his day with a rally at Robert Morris University in Moon Township, just outside Pittsburgh. He tried to criticize Obama for saying in April that working class Pennsylvanians "cling" to guns and religion when their economic fears rise and Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., for saying last week that some of his Western Pennsylvania constituents are racist. But McCain drew mostly silence as he fumbled the remarks several times before getting his point right.

"Sen. Obama's supporters have been saying some pretty nasty things about Western Pennsylvania lately. And you know I couldn't agree with them more. I couldn't disagree with you. I couldn't agree with you more than the fact that Western Pennsylvania is the most patriotic, most god-loving, most patriotic part of America. This is a great part of the country. My friends, I could not disagree with those critics more," McCain said.

Do you think it matters if someone has been or has not been "tested" when deciding who should be president?

Electoral Map - If Election Was Today

If The World Could Vote

I thought this was an interesting map

http://www.economist.com/Vote2008/

What do you think the reasons for this might be?

Colin Powell Endorses Obama

WASHINGTON - Former Secretary of State Colin Powell endorsed Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., for president on Sunday, criticizing his own Republican Party for what he called its narrow focus on irrelevant personal attacks over a serious approach to challenges he called unprecedented.

Powell, who for many years was considered the most likely candidate to become the first African-American president, said in an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that he was not supporting Obama because of his race. He said he had watched both Obama and his Republican opponent, Sen. John McCain of Arizona, for many months and thought “either one of them would be a good president.”

But he said McCain’s choices in the last few weeks — especially his selection of Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska as his vice presidential running mate — had raised questions in his mind about McCain’s judgment.

“I don’t believe [Palin] is ready to be president of the United States,” Powell said flatly. By contrast, Obama’s running mate, Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware, “is ready to be president on day one.”

Powell also told NBC’s Tom Brokaw that he was “troubled” by Republicans’ personal attacks on Obama, especially false intimations that Obama was Muslim and the recent focus on Obama’s alleged connections to William Ayers, a co-founder of the radical ’60 Weather Underground.

Stressing that Obama was a lifelong Christian, Powell denounced Republican tactics that he said were insulting not only to to Obama but also to Muslims.

“The really right answer is what if he is?” Powell said, praising the contributions of millions of Muslim citizens to American society.

“I look at these kind of approaches to the campaign, and they trouble me,” Powell said. “Over the last seven weeks, the approach of the Republican Party has become narrower and narrower.”

In an interview Sunday on Fox News, McCain said he was not surprised by the announcement.

“I’ve always admired and respected General Powell,” said McCain, who cited the endorsements he had received from former Secretaries of State Henry Kissinger, Alexander Haig, James Baker and Lawrence Eagleburger. “We have a respectful disagreement.”

Bolstering Obama’s international credentials
Obama said in an interview airing Monday on NBC’s TODAY that he welcomed Powell’s support and looked forward to discussing what role, if any, Powell might have in an Obama administration should he be elected.

“Here is what I can say for certain: He will have a role as one of my advisers. He has already served in that function even before he endorsed me,” Obama told NBC’s Matt Lauer. “Whether he wants to take a formal role — whether there’s something that’s a good fit for him — I think is something that he and I would have to discuss.”

Powell, a retired Army general who was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under the first President Bush before becoming secretary of state in the current administration, is one of the most highly decorated military officers of modern times and an admired figure in both parties. The Obama campaign is likely to cite the endorsement as an answer to critics and undecided voters who have questioned the foreign policy credentials of Obama, a first-term senator whose national experience amounts to four years in the Senate.

Powell said a major part of his decision to turn his back on his own party was his conclusion that Obama was the better option to repair frayed U.S. relations with allies overseas.

“This is the time for outreach,” Powell said, saying the next president would have to “reach out and show the world there is a new administration that is willing to reach out.”

In particular, he said, he welcomed Obama’s president to “talk to people we haven’t talked to,” a reference to Obama’s controversial statement that he would be open to direct diplomacy with Iranian leaders.

“I think that [Obama] has a definite way of doing business that will serve us well,” Powell said.


Won’t campaign for Obama
As recently as a month ago, Powell said that electing an African-American president would be “electrifying” for the world but that he remained undecided. The unsteadiness of the Republican campaign in recent weeks, especially on the economic crisis, went a long way toward pushing him off the fence, he said.

“It isn’t easy for me to disappoint Senator McCain as I have this morning,” said Powell, who emphasized that he would not campaign for Obama because of his admiration for McCain’s long record of service in the military and in Congress.

But as he examined both campaigns in the last few weeks, he said, he became “concerned” that “in the case of Mr. McCain, he was a little unsure how to deal with the economic problems.”

“Every day, there was a different approach,” he said, adding that he also “would have difficulty with two more conservative appointments to the Supreme Court.”

McCain would be a good president, Powell said, but Obama is “a transformational figure” who would be an “exceptional” leader.

“I truly believe that at this point in America’s history we need a president who will not just continue ... basically the policies we have followed in recent years,” he said. “We need a president with transformational qualities.”

For that reason, he said, “I will be voting for Barack Obama.”


By Alex Johnson of msnbc.com

What impact do you think this will have on the election?

18 Days

Sen. Barack Obama holds leads in four key counties that will go a long way toward determining the eventual winner in four important swing states — Missouri, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia — according to a new Politico/Insider Advantage survey.

Obama is poised to expand on recent Democratic gains in three populous suburban counties — Pennsylvania’s Bucks County, Missouri’s St. Louis County and Virginia’s Prince William County. In a fourth, Ohio’s Franklin County, home to Columbus and its suburbs, the survey also found Obama with the lead.

In Bucks County, a politically competitive but historically Republican suburb that shares a border with Philadelphia, Obama is running ahead of McCain, 47-41 percent. In 2004, Democrat John F. Kerry carried the county by a slim 51percent to 48 percent.

Obama bests McCain 50 percent to 42 percent in Prince William County, a Washington, D.C. suburb that voted for George W. Bush in both 2000 and 2004. Between 1976 and 2004, Prince William County supported Republican presidential candidates by an average margin of 18 points.

Obama also has opened up a wide 53 percent to 37 percent advantage over McCain in suburban St. Louis County, which does not include Missouri’s second-largest city, St. Louis. In 2004, Sen. John F. Kerry, the Democratic nominee, carried St. Louis County, the most populous county in the state, 54 percent to 45 percent.

In Ohio’s Franklin County, the state’s second-most populous county after Cleveland’s Cuyahoga County, Obama leads by a narrower 45 percent to 40 percent margin. Kerry carried Franklin County 54 percent to 45 percent in 2004.

InsiderAdvantage pollster Matt Towery explained Obama’s success in these areas is a result of his strength among independents and voters between the ages of 30 and 44.

“That is the most angry group of voters that we have this year, with regard to the Republicans,” Towery said. “I see that in almost every poll I look at.”

In Prince William County, Obama leads in this age group, 58 percent to 33 percent, and takes independent voters by an even wider, 55=percent-to-25-percent margin. McCain is scheduled to appear in Prince William Saturday, a nod to his vulnerability there and also to the electoral importance of that traditionally Republican area.

Obama’s advantages in Prince William County hold up in competitive locales across the country, with independents consistently picking him over McCain.

“The big swing, again, is that Obama’s picking up the lion’s share of the independents,” Towery added.

Independents in Pennsylvania’s Bucks County support Obama, 46 percent to 32 percent, and 30-to-44-year-olds pick him by a 10-point margin, 49 percent to 37 percent.

In central Ohio’s Franklin County, he takes 30-to-44-year-olds by a smaller, but still decisive 49 percent to 34 percent gap, and wins independents, 43 percent to 19 percent.

Missouri’s St. Louis County, where Obama is safely ahead of McCain, features Obama’s narrowest lead among 30-to-44-year-olds: he’s ahead there by 49 percent to 40 percent. Independents are breaking for Obama by a more convincing, 47-percent-to-31-percent margin.

During the Democratic primary, Obama won just a handful of counties in Missouri, but by running up big margins in the city and county of St. Louis, he was able to pull out a narrow statewide victory over Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Kerry’s 9-point margin in St. Louis County and his landslide 80 percent win in the city of St. Louis were not enough to overcome George W. Bush’s lead elsewhere in the state. But if Obama can maintain his commanding advantage there, it could help tip the state into the Democratic electoral column.

Currently, Towery said, McCain is headed for a major defeat in the area.

“In this county, he’s not even doing well with the 65-and-over crowd,” he said. “This is a wipeout.”

Unlike in St. Louis County, Obama did not perform well in Bucks County in Pennsylvania’s Democratic primary. Though the Philadelphia suburb was seen as favorable terrain for the Illinois senator, Clinton handily defeated him there, 63 percent to 37 percent.

Obama’s lead in Bucks County is within the poll’s margin of error and he is not performing as well among women as he is in the other counties surveyed. In Bucks, he has just a 4-point edge with female voters, compared with a 16-point spread in the Columbus, Ohio, area.

According to Towery, this can partly be attributed to McCain’s strong performance among middle-aged women.

“You’ve got an unusually high number for McCain in that 45-to-64 age group, and that’s got a lot of women in it,” Towery explained. Among voters in that age interval, McCain leads Obama 53 percent to 37 percent.

That Obama is ahead of McCain in Bucks County, anyway, suggests that he has been more successful than his opponent in reaching out to the suburban swing voters who dominate areas such as these.

A September poll commissioned by Hofstra University’s National Center for Suburban Studies showed McCain leading Obama among suburban voters, nationwide, by a 48 percent to 42 percent margin. The poll was conducted Sept. 15-21.

But whatever the national trend among suburbanites, Obama has edged ahead in key areas that are likely to influence the outcome of the election.

Recent public polling has shown Obama winning all four states in which these county-level polls were conducted. The RealClearPolitics polling average has Obama ahead by 14 points in Pennsylvania, Virginia by 8.1 percent, 3.2 percent in Ohio and 1.8 percent in Missouri.

This is the second round of Politico/Insider Advantage polling in critical counties. The first round results, published Tuesday, showed Obama tied or leading McCain in Jefferson County, Colo.; Washoe County, Nev.; Wake County, N.C.; and Hillsborough County, Fla.

The Politico/InsiderAdvantage telephone surveys in St. Louis County and Franklin County were conducted Oct. 13. The St. Louis County survey included 542 likely voters, with a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percent. The Franklin survey included 376 likely voters, with a margin of error of plus or minus 6 percent.

The Politico/InsiderAdvantage telephone surveys in Bucks County and Prince William County were conducted Oct. 14. The Bucks survey included 320 likely voters and the Prince William survey included 308 likely voters, both with a margin of error of plus or minus 6 percent.

Sorry, Dad, I'm Voting For Obama

Chris Buckley

The son of William F. Buckley has decided—shock!—to vote for a Democrat.

Let me be the latest conservative/libertarian/whatever to leap onto the Barack Obama bandwagon. It’s a good thing my dear old mum and pup are no longer alive. They’d cut off my allowance.

Or would they? But let’s get that part out of the way. The only reason my vote would be of any interest to anyone is that my last name happens to be Buckley—a name I inherited. So in the event anyone notices or cares, the headline will be: “William F. Buckley’s Son Says He Is Pro-Obama.” I know, I know: It lacks the throw-weight of “Ron Reagan Jr. to Address Democratic Convention,” but it’ll have to do.

Dear Pup once said to me, “You know, I’ve spent my entire life time separating the Right from the kooks.”

I am—drum roll, please, cue trumpets—making this announcement in the cyberpages of The Daily Beast (what joy to be writing for a publication so named!) rather than in the pages of National Review, where I write the back-page column. For a reason: My colleague, the superb and very dishy Kathleen Parker, recently wrote in National Review Online a column stating what John Cleese as Basil Fawlty would call “the bleeding obvious”: namely, that Sarah Palin is an embarrassment, and a dangerous one at that. She’s not exactly alone. New York Times columnist David Brooks, who began his career at NR, just called Governor Palin “a cancer on the Republican Party.”

As for Kathleen, she has to date received 12,000 (quite literally) foam-at-the-mouth hate-emails. One correspondent, if that’s quite the right word, suggested that Kathleen’s mother should have aborted her and tossed the fetus into a Dumpster. There’s Socratic dialogue for you. Dear Pup once said to me sighfully after a right-winger who fancied himself a WFB protégé had said something transcendently and provocatively cretinous, “You know, I’ve spent my entire life time separating the Right from the kooks.” Well, the dear man did his best. At any rate, I don’t have the kidney at the moment for 12,000 emails saying how good it is he’s no longer alive to see his Judas of a son endorse for the presidency a covert Muslim who pals around with the Weather Underground. So, you’re reading it here first.

As to the particulars, assuming anyone gives a fig, here goes:

I have known John McCain personally since 1982. I wrote a well-received speech for him. Earlier this year, I wrote in The New York Times—I’m beginning to sound like Paul Krugman, who cannot begin a column without saying, “As I warned the world in my last column...”—a highly favorable Op-Ed about McCain, taking Rush Limbaugh and the others in the Right Wing Sanhedrin to task for going after McCain for being insufficiently conservative. I don’t—still—doubt that McCain’s instincts remain fundamentally conservative. But the problem is otherwise.

McCain rose to power on his personality and biography. He was authentic. He spoke truth to power. He told the media they were “jerks” (a sure sign of authenticity, to say nothing of good taste; we are jerks). He was real. He was unconventional. He embraced former anti-war leaders. He brought resolution to the awful missing-POW business. He brought about normalization with Vietnam—his former torturers! Yes, he erred in accepting plane rides and vacations from Charles Keating, but then, having been cleared on technicalities, groveled in apology before the nation. He told me across a lunch table, “The Keating business was much worse than my five and a half years in Hanoi, because I at least walked away from that with my honor.” Your heart went out to the guy. I thought at the time, God, this guy should be president someday.

A year ago, when everyone, including the man I’m about to endorse, was caterwauling to get out of Iraq on the next available flight, John McCain, practically alone, said no, no—bad move. Surge. It seemed a suicidal position to take, an act of political bravery of the kind you don’t see a whole lot of anymore.

But that was—sigh—then. John McCain has changed. He said, famously, apropos the Republican debacle post-1994, “We came to Washington to change it, and Washington changed us.” This campaign has changed John McCain. It has made him inauthentic. A once-first class temperament has become irascible and snarly; his positions change, and lack coherence; he makes unrealistic promises, such as balancing the federal budget “by the end of my first term.” Who, really, believes that? Then there was the self-dramatizing and feckless suspension of his campaign over the financial crisis. His ninth-inning attack ads are mean-spirited and pointless. And finally, not to belabor it, there was the Palin nomination. What on earth can he have been thinking?

All this is genuinely saddening, and for the country is perhaps even tragic, for America ought, really, to be governed by men like John McCain—who have spent their entire lives in its service, even willing to give the last full measure of their devotion to it. If he goes out losing ugly, it will be beyond tragic, graffiti on a marble bust.

As for Senator Obama: He has exhibited throughout a “first-class temperament,” pace Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.’s famous comment about FDR. As for his intellect, well, he’s a Harvard man, though that’s sure as heck no guarantee of anything, these days. Vietnam was brought to you by Harvard and (one or two) Yale men. As for our current adventure in Mesopotamia, consider this lustrous alumni roster. Bush 43: Yale. Rumsfeld: Princeton. Paul Bremer: Yale and Harvard. What do they all have in common? Andover! The best and the brightest.

I’ve read Obama’s books, and they are first-rate. He is that rara avis, the politician who writes his own books. Imagine. He is also a lefty. I am not. I am a small-government conservative who clings tenaciously and old-fashionedly to the idea that one ought to have balanced budgets. On abortion, gay marriage, et al, I’m libertarian. I believe with my sage and epigrammatic friend P.J. O’Rourke that a government big enough to give you everything you want is also big enough to take it all away.

But having a first-class temperament and a first-class intellect, President Obama will (I pray, secularly) surely understand that traditional left-politics aren’t going to get us out of this pit we’ve dug for ourselves. If he raises taxes and throws up tariff walls and opens the coffers of the DNC to bribe-money from the special interest groups against whom he has (somewhat disingenuously) railed during the campaign trail, then he will almost certainly reap a whirlwind that will make Katrina look like a balmy summer zephyr.

Obama has in him—I think, despite his sometimes airy-fairy “We are the people we have been waiting for” silly rhetoric—the potential to be a good, perhaps even great leader. He is, it seems clear enough, what the historical moment seems to be calling for.

So, I wish him all the best. We are all in this together. Necessity is the mother of bipartisanship. And so, for the first time in my life, I’ll be pulling the Democratic lever in November. As the saying goes, God save the United States of America.

McCain Unveals Comeback Plan

Three weeks before Election Day, John McCain on Monday is unveiling what his aides call a more forceful new stump speech in which he portrays himself as a scrappy fighter on the comeback trail against an opponent who’s already “measuring the drapes” in the Oval Office.

“The national media has written us off.,” McCain says in excerpts released by the campaign. “Sen. Obama is measuring the drapes and planning with Speaker Pelosi and Sen. Reid to raise taxes, increase spending, take away your right to vote by secret ballot in labor elections and concede defeat in Iraq. But they forgot to let you decide. My friends, we’ve got them just where we want them.”

Allies are calling this “hitting the ‘reset’ button” on the campaign, with McCain re-emerging after a long Sunday strategy session with a feisty tack that uses candor and humor, at a time when his rallies have become known for raucous rage and clumsy attacks.

But it’s more like hitting the panic button. McCain is appearing Monday in Virginia and North Carolina — two states that are usually safe for Republicans in presidential races and that he should have put away long ago. But Barack Obama is pouring visits and staff into the former Confederacy, and he has caught McCain in many Southern polls.

Nationally, the Real Clear Politics average has Obama up 7.3 points. A Washington Post-ABC News Poll out Monday morning gives Obama a yawning 10-point lead, while a Reuters/C-SPAN/Zogby poll shows Obama up just four points.

"Let me give you the state of the race today,” McCain says in his new speech. “We have 22 days to go. We’re six points down. …

“What America needs in this hour is a fighter; someone who puts all his cards on the table and trusts the judgment of the American people. I come from a long line of McCains who believed that to love America is to fight for her. I have fought for you most of my life. There are other ways to love this country, but I’ve never been the kind to do it from the sidelines.”

The remarks reflect the graceful cadences of Mark Salter, McCain’s longtime aide and co-author, and suggest that the senator plans to fight without personally going viciously negative in the final days. He can leave that to the television advertisements.

The reference to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) is part of a new Republican effort to warn voters of the consequences of having one party dominate all of Washington, as Democrats would if Obama won in a landslide that helped his party rack up wider congressional margins.

The McCain campaign is beset from all sides. William Kristol, the influential conservative commentator, has a column in today’s New York Times with the headline “Fire the Campaign” and the lead: “It’s time for John McCain to fire his campaign. He has nothing to lose. His campaign is totally overmatched by Obama’s.”

Over the weekend, McCain advisers said he planned to announce new economic policies, including tax cuts designed to encourage investors to return to the markets. But after a tense strategy meeting on Sunday, McCain had not signed off on any new announcements, to the consternation of some key supporters who said he needs to do more to show a command on the economy, the top issue on voters’ minds.

The third and final presidential debate is Wednesday at Hofstra University, the largest private school on Long Island, N.Y. After that high-stakes encounter moderated by Bob Schieffer of CBS News, McCain’s chances of changing the dynamics of the race dramatically diminish.

Do you think this will change the current tide?

Fundraising Numbers

The Democrat had more than $77 million in the bank on Aug. 31, records show, and is on pace to raise at least $100 million more by election day.
By Mark Z. Barabak and Dan Morain
Los Angeles Times Staff Writers

October 13, 2008

Barack Obama's recent surge in the presidential race has been credited to a rise in voters' concerns about their money. It helps that Obama himself has a lot of money.

Spurning federal funds -- and the spending restrictions that go with them -- the Democratic nominee has racked up an enormous cash advantage that he is using to dominate the television airwaves.

The week before last, Obama outspent Republican nominee John McCain in all of the most competitive states, save for Iowa and Minnesota, where he has a comfortable lead in recent polls.

More significantly, Obama has used his financial edge to turn once-reliable GOP states into hard-fought battlegrounds. In that same week, according to an independent study, Obama outspent McCain by more than 8 to 1 in North Carolina and 3 to 1 in Indiana. No Democrat has won either state in more than three decades.

Obama has "stretched the playing field," said Edward Carmines, who teaches political science at Indiana University. "Now, in the last month of the campaign, Sen. McCain is having to make very tough decisions where to spend his money."

Obama's financial edge results from his decision to become the first candidate to forgo public funding since the federal system was adopted in 1976 after the Watergate scandal. McCain accepted $84.1 million from Washington, and that is all he can spend. But the Illinois senator rejected the taxpayer money, betting he could raise a lot more. And he has.

Obama had more than $77 million in the bank on Aug. 31, the close of the last reporting period, and is on a pace to raise at least $100 million more by election day. That would mean a cash advantage over McCain of better than 2 to 1.

In a sign of his flush finances, Obama plans a half-hour prime-time broadcast on CBS and NBC on Oct. 29, the first time in years that a presidential candidate has made such a substantial investment in national TV. Ross Perot, a billionaire who bankrolled much of his own campaign, drew an audience of 26 million to his 1992 simulcast on ABC and CBS.

Obama's money advantage adds to the already tough climb McCain faces in the final three weeks of the race. Polls have shown momentum shifting strongly in the Democrat's direction as the economic crisis has come to dominate the campaign. McCain has another chance -- perhaps his last, best one -- to reverse the direction of the race when the two men meet in their third and final debate Wednesday in New York.

At the start of the presidential campaign, common wisdom was that a candidate would need to raise $100 million to compete seriously in the early primaries. Obama, with his Internet-fueled fundraising machine, easily shattered that mark on the way to upsetting Democratic rival New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton.

In all, Obama has raised $454 million through August; he will easily top $500 million by election day. McCain collected $210 million in coming from behind to win the GOP nomination.

Early last year, Obama indicated a willingness to accept federal funding and abide by spending restrictions for the fall campaign. As late as spring, an Obama spokesman said the Democrat would "aggressively pursue an agreement with the Republican nominee to preserve a publicly financed general election."

But there was no such effort and Obama announced in June that he would opt out of public funding. Obama took a risk that his image as a reformer would suffer. McCain criticized the move and his aides have periodically raised the issue. But it has never gained much political traction.

Garry South, who managed the 2002 reelection bid of former California Gov. Gray Davis, is not surprised. Davis collected a then-record $78 million and was attacked throughout the campaign for his prodigious fundraising.

"Voters don't care," South said. "They're cynical and jaded about political money in any respect and every respect. And for one politician to say, 'I'm holier than thou,' to another politician never works."

Most of the money Obama raised is being spent on TV ads, the most expensive part of a campaign and one of the most crucial.

From Sept. 28 through Oct. 4, Obama outspent McCain by more than 3 to 1 on TV ads in Florida and Virginia, 2 to 1 in New Hampshire and Missouri and 3 to 2 in Nevada, according to data compiled by the Wisconsin Advertising Project, which independently monitors spending on campaign commercials.

The study found that Obama spent just less than $17.5 million on TV ads that week, compared with just less than $11 million by McCain and the Republican National Committee. The RNC, which can raise and spend unlimited sums, has been supplementing McCain's TV ad budget in several states. The committee raised a record $66 million in September.

But the advertising disparity is even larger than those figures indicate. If the Republican Party pays for half the cost of a McCain ad, then half the content is required to be general in nature, promoting, say, the GOP or its members of Congress. So, even in those states where McCain has equivalent dollars, "we don't have equivalent time," said one Republican ad maker who did not want to be identified discussing the challenges facing the party's nominee.

Obama has also benefited more than McCain has from spending by supporters who are advertising on the candidates' behalf.

Since Labor Day, the traditional start of the fall campaign, independent groups have spent nearly $15.8 million to support Obama, or oppose McCain, more than double the $5.4 million spent on behalf of McCain, according to Federal Election Commission records.

The largest amount of pro-Obama spending has come from organized labor, led by the Service Employees International Union, which has spent $7.7 million since Labor Day. Other unions have pushed organized labor's pro-Obama expenditures to more than $10 million, all of it in battleground states including Ohio, Wisconsin and Missouri.

Other than the Republican Party -- which has spent almost $10 million since Sept. 1 -- the biggest group promoting McCain has been the National Rifle Assn., which has spent $3.2 million to help elect the Arizona senator.

How much of an advantage is this in the last 25 days of the race?

Daily Polls

Real Clear Average:
Obama - 49.8%
McCain - 43%

Toss Up States:

Ohio: Obama +2.9
Florida: Obama +3.8
Nevada: Obama +2.9
N. Carolina: Obama +1.2
Missouri: McCain +.4
Indiana: McCain +3.8
Colorado: Obama +4
W. Virginia: McCain +2.2
Virginia: Obama +6.3

Points of interest:
The above states all went for Bush in 2000 and 2004
A Democrat has not won the state of N. Carolina since Jimmy Carter in 1976

Obama Outspending McCain 3-1

Barack Obama is outspending John McCain at nearly a three-to-one clip on television time in the final weeks of the presidential election, according to ad buy information obtained by The Fix, a financial edge that is almost certainly contributing to the momentum for the Illinois senator in key battleground states.

From Sept. 30 to Oct. 6, Obama spent more than $20 million on television ads in 17 states including more than $3 million in Pennsylvania and more than $2 million each in Florida, Michigan and Ohio. McCain in that same time frame spent just $7.2 million in 15 states. Even when the Republican National Committee's independent expenditure spending in Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin is factored in (a total of $5.3 million), Obama still outspent the combined GOP forces by roughly $8 million in the last week alone. (See full distribution after the jump.)

The spending edge enjoyed by Obama has been used almost exclusively to hammer McCain as both a clone of the current president and someone who is out of touch on key domestic issues -- most notably the economy. The assertion of Obama's spending edge has coincided with the collapse of the financial industry and a refocusing by voters on the economy to turn the election from a toss up to one in which the Democratic candidate has moved into a discernible lead.

While the struggles of McCain and his party over the Wall Street bailout bill that passed Congress last week after much sturm und drang have been well documented, the practical political impact of Obama's decision to forego public financing for the general election and McCain's choice to accept the $84 million in public funds has not been as fully explored.

Obama's fundraising machine has continued to churn in recent months -- bringing in $67.5 million in August alone and ending that month with more than $77 million on hand. (Reports for September are not due at the Federal Election Commission until Oct. 20.)

Obama's ad spending strategy has been based on the idea of stretching McCain to the limit in a series of non-traditional battlegrounds (Indiana, North Carolina, Colorado, Virginia), knowing that such an approach would force the cash-poorer Republican's hand at some point.

That decision paid off last week when McCain pulled down his television ads in Michigan, a move due in large part to the prohibitive cost of continuing to run commercials in the Wolverine State. A look at advertising in the last week in Michigan showed Obama dropping nearly $2.2 million as compared to $642,000 for McCain and just over $1 million by the RNC -- a difference of nearly $600,000 in favor of the Illinois senator.

A detailed look at campaign spending on ads over the last week shows clearly how Obama is using his financial edge over McCain. In 13 of the 15 states where both candidates were on television, Obama outspent McCain -- in some states, drastically.

In Florida, where recent polling suggests an Obama surge, the Illinois senator disbursed more than $2.8 million for television ads in the last week while McCain spent $623,000 -- a massive $2.17 million spending gap.

In North Carolina, Obama dropped approximately $1.5 million on television commercials last week while McCain spent only $137,000. Such a wide spending disparity explains why a series of polls has shown Obama trending upward in the Tarheel State of late.

Even in Pennsylvania, the state where McCain is now focusing much of his time and energy in the final month of the campaign, Obama's spending advantage is massive. Obama disbursed a little more than $3 million in the Keystone State last month as compared to $1.2 million in ad spending by McCain and another $807,000 by the RNC. It adds up to a million-dollar edge for Obama on television -- meaning that he outspending Republican by roughly 33 percent in Pennsylvania.

In Virginia, a state that has gone Republican in every presidential election since 1964, Obama's pronounced spending advantage is also being felt. Obama spent $1.6 million on ads in the Commonwealth last week while the combined forces of McCain and the RNC spent $909,000 -- giving Obama a $700,000 spending lead.

Only in Minnesota and Iowa did McCain have a spending edge on television over Obama in the last week.

In Minnesota, the McCain spent $377,000 on television, far more than the $196,000 Obama spent during the same period. Republicans saw a significant uptick in their numbers in Minnesota following the national party convention in August although most recent surveys show Obama reclaiming a statistically significant lead. History is also against McCain in the state as no Republican presidential nominee has carried Minnesota since 1972.

In Iowa, McCain spent $297,000 on television as compared to $224,000 for Obama. That's rough parity in a state where polling shows Obama with a comfortable lead. McCain has spent considerable time, attention and money in Iowa, however, a strategy that has baffled many within the Obama campaign. Iowa went for then Vice President Al Gore in 2000 by 4,000 votes in 2000 but George W. Bush carried it by 10,000 votes four years later.

Spending by the RNC's independent expenditure arm has kept McCain within shouting distance of Obama in several crucial states including Ohio and Wisconsin.

In Ohio, Obama spent $2.86 million on television last week while the combination of McCain ($1.1 million) and the RNC ($1.66 million) gave Democrats just a $100,000 edge. The same was true in Wisconsin where Obama disbursed $1.24 million, compared to $1.03 million for McCain and the RNC.

Is Obama's spending edge conclusive when it comes to determining the outcome on Nov. 4? No. External events can -- and always seem to -- intrude on even the best laid of political plans and strategies. But, Obama's fundraising prowess has provided him a major leg up in the final month of the campaign that, when combined with the detrimental effects the focus on the economy has had on McCain, make it an uphill climb to victory for the Arizona senator.

A Realigning Election?

It doesn’t matter how many negative ads are broadcast or how many moose are slain on the tundra, candidates and their actions don’t transform our politics nearly as much as outside events and circumstances do. Thus, if Barack Obama ends up winning a substantial victory next month, it may as much mark a revolutionary turning of the page in our politics as it would be a triumph for him. A decisive Obama win could have profound effects for at least a generation, ushering in a new political era marked by Democratic Party dominance (and triggered by the failures of George W. Bush).

Our presidential politics tend to be fairly consistent, divisible into eras clearly defined by national traumas that radically redraw party lines. The Civil War not only gave birth to the Republican Party, for instance. It also launched a long era during which the GOP’s supremacy on the presidential level was rarely challenged. Of 18 elections held from 1860 through 1928, the GOP won 14. The Republicans lost only when the Democrats nominated an extremely conservative candidate (Grover Cleveland - who won twice) or when the Republicans split themselves in half (1912, with the effects extending to the 1916 election).

But the Great Depression redefined the political landscape (with an assist from Herbert Hoover’s initial bumbling reaction to the crisis), giving the Democrats the upper hand in almost a mirror image of what had previously transpired. From 1932 through 1964, the Democrats won seven of nine elections. They ultimately lost power in that period after the GOP nominated Dwight Eisenhower, an apolitical national hero whose ideology was so amorphous that even the Democrats had sought him as a national candidate shortly before he began his political career as a Republican.

In 1968 the political map again dramatically changed, when the unrest caused by the Vietnam War - combined with conservative reaction to the civil-rights revolution - gave the Republicans another demographic and cultural advantage. Beginning in that year and continuing until our most recent election, the Republicans have won eight of 11 presidential contests. Modern Republican dominance has, in fact, been broken only when both the Democrats nominated a more conservative candidate from the GOP’s southern base (Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton) and when the GOP was either split in half (thanks to the candidacy of H. Ross Perot in 1992 and 1996) or the nation was facing the aftermath of the only presidential resignation in history (1976, following the bowing out of Richard Nixon two years before).

History in the making?

Statistics confirm the uphill road Democrats have faced in every election in this modern era. Since 1968, the party’s presidential nominees have polled above 50 percent just once - in 1976, and then only barely.

If 2008 were to follow that pattern, Barack Obama - from the northern, liberal wing of his party - would seem to have little chance to win. Even if he could somehow upset the recent trend, history suggests that he couldn’t garner much more than 50 percent of the vote. But that may happen this year. And if it does, it could signal that a new era of Democratic political dominance, last seen in the 1960s, has arrived.

Perhaps when historians look back at this election, they will see this one - not 2004’s - as the first real post-9/11 contest, with the nation having taken several years to come to terms with the trauma and the meaning of that event. So let’s posit a scenario. Over the past eight years, the reaction of the Bush administration to both 9/11 and the current financial mess has been, ironically, one that is traditionally Democratic: running huge deficits while creating vast new government interventionist bureaucracies to deal with homeland security and the credit crisis. The current administration also decided that this new era required an expensive, expansionist foreign policy, fighting “terror wars” on various fronts.

Now, the public may be in the process of deciding that, if a new era requires a more activist and expansionist government, Democrats are better equipped to handle these tasks. Voters may also decide that they are willing to accept the “risk” of a far more rapid military withdrawal from Iraq - which is, after all, the major foreign-policy difference between the McCain and Obama candidacies. Right now, Obama’s alternative looks attractive, especially given that military action always carries a huge price tag in what may be a coming age of austerity.

And then there’s the credit crisis which has just hit; admittedly, its effects may not be known for months or even years. But if Obama is able to win big because of it, it could serve as the final crystallizing event that allows the Democratic Party to reap the benefit for years to come. If that should happen, George W. Bush may be forever linked with Herbert Hoover. How’s that for a legacy?

GOP Peddles Economic Snake Oil

Suddenly Republicans are against market values?
By THOMAS FRANK
From the Wall St. Journal

OK, let me get this straight: The central axiom of conservative Republicanism is that government is inherently corrupt and can't do anything right.

Over many years of ascendancy, conservative Republicans have filled government agencies with conservative Republicans and proceeded to enact the conservative Republican policy wish list -- tax cuts, deregulation, privatization, outsourcing federal work, and so on.

APAnd as a consequence of these policies our conservative Republican government has bungled most of the big tasks that have fallen to it. The rescue and recovery of the Gulf Coast was a disaster. The reconstruction of Iraq was a disaster. The regulatory agencies became so dumb they didn't even see the disasters they were set up to prevent. And each disaster was attributable to the conservative philosophy of government.

Yet now we are supposed to vote for more conservative Republicans because we learned from the last bunch of conservative Republicans that government just doesn't work.
That is the advice of Sarah Palin, Republican vice-presidential nominee, in last week's debate with her Democratic counterpart, discussing the dread prospect of universal health care: "Unless you're pleased with the way the federal government has been running anything lately, I don't think that it's going to be real pleasing for Americans to consider health care being taken over by the feds."

Conservative misrule, prompted by conservative disdain for government, proves that government cannot be trusted -- and that the only answer is to elect another round of government-denouncing conservatives.

"Cynicism" seems too small a word for this circular kind of political fraud. One reaches instead for images of grosser malevolence. It's like suggesting that the best way to recover from pneumonia is to stand in the rain for three hours. It's like arguing that the way to solve nuclear proliferation is by handing out weapons-grade plutonium to everyone who asks for it.

Consider also the perverse incentives that such a logic would establish. If we validate Mrs. Palin's thoughts on federal bungling by electing her to the high office she seeks, we are encouraging her to bungle everything that comes her way. After all, by her thinking, such bungling will not discredit her doctrines but rather confirm them, demonstrate the need for more Sarah Palins down the road. We will be asking for it, and it's not much of a stretch to predict that we will get it.

In the three-ring circus of conservative blame-evasion, however, that's only one act. Over in the House of Representatives, a new breed of Republican idealists spent last week dazzling the faithful by taking a bold stand against the Wall Street bailout. The administration's plan was a "slippery slope to socialism," declared their leader, Jeb Hensarling of Texas.

One might have admired their pluck but for the breathtaking opportunism of their own counterproposal, the "Free Market Protection Act," which is described on the Web site of the Republican Study Committee. True, it is not a "slippery slope." It is a headlong stampede over a precipice, a running leap out a skyscraper window.

It starts by calling for "voluntary private capital" to solve the problem of bad mortgage-backed securities (MBS). Several sentences later it asks for a "mandatory" fee to be levied on all MBS, good or bad, and apparently without regard for whether it's held here or overseas, where American law doesn't apply. I asked William Black, the University of Missouri-Kansas City professor of economics and law whom I quoted last week, what he thought of this scheme. He replied, "This is significantly insane as a matter of finance -- and unconstitutional as a matter of law. This clause would cause a world-wide financial panic were it implemented."

Back at the study committee's Web site, I see conservatives call to "Suspend 'Mark to Market' Accounting." Suddenly our "free-market protection" gang has decided it's unfair to make companies value their MBSs at . . . the market price. Somehow the all-seeing market has gone irrational, and so companies must be allowed "to mark these assets to their true economic value," meaning, one might say, to mark them however they please, a practice that, to put it shortly, is what got us into this mess in the first place.

Space prevents me from discussing the plan's provisions to temporarily suspend capital gains taxes and repeal the Humphrey-Hawkins Full Employment Act. But I will note that, in discussing the derring-do of Mr. Hensarling and his hard-core colleagues, the New York Times chose to refer to them as "populists" -- friends of the common people. As an indicator of the confused state of our political discourse, the signals don't flash any brighter than this.

Years ago, conservatives realized that to destroy the legitimacy of your adversary's concepts is to destroy your adversary. Today we are surrounded by the wreckage. Much depends on our success in rebuilding.

Write to thomas@wsj.com

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