Cobb

The Mortgage Problem

Maybe you house is like your car.

I can recall back in the days when I had a fat lot of money built up in equities due to some very well timed investments in the tech sector of the market. My best picks were Inktomi, and I made a nice pile channeling the mostly sideways nature of my own company's stock which traded in a group with the likes of Oracle and ePiphany. I could depend on several quarters of cycles when the stock would drop with the group until we made our earnings call when it would jump.

I got skeptical of the market for a number of reasons, but I do remember being an outsider as far as black money was concerned. The general consensus was that African American investors kept out of equities and spend disproportionately more on real-estate. There was basically a trust gap.

In light of that, perhaps there is some light at the end of the tunnel of the enormous decline in stocks and bonds over this year. People keep deleveraging, selling out of equities just to keep their losses to a minimum and this, especially from Boomers, will keep market prices low for some time to come. Ordinarily, such money would go to collectables, commodities and real estate, but now it's almost all going into money markets. There's a lot of money now sitting in cash like Mayo saying 'I got nowhere to go', when it would ordinarily go to real estate.

In all this momentary chaos, as people adjust to the reality of recession, several habits are about to change. But part of the looming promises of stimulus might foreclose the possibility of people developing the right habits. I am thinking particularly of the sentiment towards bailing out homeowners whose mortgages are under water.

As I said before, there is no particular political incentive to let banks and mortgage holders work out their own deal. Debt for equity swaps would work out just fine. The bank ends up owning more of the house, the homeowner owes less debt - problem solved. But there is a political incentive for the two jabbering candidates to promise to come to the rescue of the poor homeowner. There are, after all, some 21 million at risk of walking away from their obligations as they realize that a soft housing market means they owe more on their house than it is worth. Absence the debt to equity deal, that's the scope of the problem. It would bring on a second crisis which could be amplified by what most agree is going to be 7.5% unemployment this time next year.

But what if Americans were to treat their house like a place in which to live instead of an investment vehicle? What happens to the American dream then? Nothing. The 'problem' of being underwater on your mortgage is not a problem unless you need to sell your house. It's the same as being underwater on your car payment. Most people accept that their car is worth less than the payments owed, so most people 'drive their cars into the ground'. They accept that they're not going to sell it and suffer the indignities of the car dealership's well understood drive off depreciation. If these people would use that same common sense and live their houses into the ground, then we'd avoid the temptation for Obama and McCain to come up with something clever and expensive.

Maybe your house is not a piggy bank. Maybe it's just a house. Not a tax shelter, just a shelter. Live in it, live with it.

Buying the Center

Frank Marshall Davis was Barack Obama's mentor. Kengor opines.

As more and more audio and video emerge on Barack Obama's desire to redistribute wealth, not to mention his views on the housing crisis that has torpedoed the U.S. economy, I keep returning to two columns I've read by Frank Marshall Davis, the communist journalist-agitator who mentored Obama in Hawaii. While much attention has been paid to Obama's relationship with communist-terrorist Bill Ayers -- and rightly so -- much less attention has been devoted to Davis. That's a mistake, since Obama was influenced more by Davis than Ayers.

It is interesting to note how so many have gone on tangents about the associates of Obama without any clear evidence of what the character of the man actually is. But there is something of pertinence in this article which pricks up my ears. Firstly, understand that I am firmly convinced that there are no accidents with Obama, that his voting record in the Senate is exactly what it's supposed to be - 83 points to the left of Hilary Clinton. I'm convinced that he comes from the radical left typical of most grass roots black political activism. I'm also convinced that he wants this suppressed.

I'm picking up a creepy vibe, but I'm not ready to say so fully. All I want to briefly mention is that the fact that Joe the Plumber has had his child-support records outed is creepy. Hat tip to Dennis Miller on that one.

But here's the pertinent point. What are the chances that this upstart who is all about change, given his radical socialist roots, is not above monkeying with some basic ways that the government deals with capitalism during this perfect storm of political crisis? One of the reasons I am listening to Bloomberg every day is that I am taking measure of how economic analysts of all stripes are paying close attention to what the Fed is doing and changing their predictions. So far, the scariest most authoritarian things is that they are essentially deciding which banks live and which die - this is tempered by a general understanding that nobody wants zombie banks, rescued banks that don't loan. But the consensus is that the rules of the game haven't changed.

As I listen to people continually attempt to rhetorically triangulate both Obama and socialism itself into the mainstream, it is my focus on the infrastructure of capitalism and global finance that gives me a greater grasp on what is at stake in this election and beyond. Obama's tax policy is clearly redistributive and moves the burden on the rich (a descending target, now 50k less richer) towards the direction of unsustainable leverage. And it clearly hands out checks to those who pay no taxes, which although preferable to a welfare bureaucracy, still marches towards welfare. If this were the sum of Obama's fiscal reforms, I imagine we could sleep better than we do. But Davis writes:

"Before too long, our nation will have to decide whether we shall have free enterprise or socialism." He pointed to actions in Congress, where he quoted the then-chairman of the Congressional committee on small business, who, according to Davis, warned that "at the present rate, either the giant corporations will control all our markets, the greatest share of our wealth, and eventually, our government, or the government will be forced to intervene with some form of direct regulation of business."

"President Obama resists temptation to go socialist". Is that a headline we are likely to see? "Obama punishes fat cats." That's more of a guarantee.

The essential problem with Obama's claim on the political center is that nobody believes him. We on the Right are always going to say that he's too left. The Democrats are, by definition, too left except for Joe Lieberman who we admire as getting the big things right, big things meaning the War on Terror. (I'll follow up on a very salient point in Stark Differences). Obama, when it has counted in his pre-nominated state of grace, has not banked up enough political equity as a moderate centrist Democrat.

If it is true that Obama is being pounced upon over a few soundbites and associations, it is similarly true that they are significantly important to the electorate. And none of this would be of consequence if Obama were Edwards or Kennedy. But he is not. And there has not arisen anyone, aside from Colin Powell at the last minute, who has come to do anything more than a perfunctory defense of the man's political record and experience. And so he has lost his double digit lead in the polls in a matter of days. It is down everywhere to around 6 at the most and some places 2 and 3. Perhaps that big boulder has caught the Obama parade after all. Perhaps all that Teflon is being chipped by a hammer that cannot be ignored.

Writin' is Fightin'

The best thing I've read for my avocation is the phrase 'this is not writing and you are not reading'. It was published in a weblog of course, and its very existence was adequate proof. I am an essayist of a particular sort and I feel very much like a success. It is because of a number of reasons that I take a moment to say so.

Firstly, I want to thank the silent ones who continue to read Cobb. I know you're out there because it seems as though every day I'm getting email from a new individual or group presenting information of interest. As they say in the old media, keep those cards and letters coming. I do read them all. The influence on the silent ones is felt and I will continue to remember to be gracious and humble.

Secondly, there have been individuals and organizations that have invited me to contribute in various ways to their causes and to their presentations. I am very gratified by these offers and it pains me to decline them as I must most of the time. You see, I have yet to find the proper sponsor for my life and family outside of the computer industry, and as much as I would love, LOVE, putting together a radio talk show, a TV-style talk show (something in the format of Cranky Geeks, but with more comfortable chairs), a book, a panel discussion, or any other numerous sorts of publications, I simply must attend to the business of keeping my house going.

I probably need an agent.

Thirdly, I will continue to endeavor to grow the scope and depth of The Conservative Brotherhood. And I am very seriously considering putting together some sort of collegiate presentation in the near future.

Several years ago, before my epiphany, I was told by none other than David Horowitz that I might make a good candidate for Mr. Sciafe's enterprises. I'm not quite ready for that, but I'd bet there is somebody out there into whose salon I'd make a willing entry. In fact, I need to poke an friend from El Segundo about a similar opportunity.

Fourthly and certainly not least, I owe a specific debt of gratitude to Jimi Izrael and Farai Chedeya for hooking me up at NPR and a special shout out of love goes to my favorite radio producer Jen Longmire.

Fifth, much thanks goes out to newspaper editors and writers who have tasked their charges and themselves to make me fit into the proper number of column inches. I know I bloviate entirely too much, but I do much appreciate the consideration. I am a writer first and a politico second or third or something. I appreciate all writers and respect those organizations who keep them paid.

Last but not least, I want to thank everyone who supported me for the Aaron Hawkins Award. I am very proud of it, and glad to be of service to all my readers.

The point of all this is that I do need to consider how I will package myself as a writer and will come to some real shape in 2009. I'll discuss it here as well.

--
The kind of writer I want to be. Hmm. Well, I want to be an essayist, and I want to be both respectful and pugilistic - rather like a boxing priest, or even a sacred warrior, but I'd settle for a father confessor with a twinkle in his eye and a mean left hook. But what I am not, is a man on an evangelistic mission. I think it's rather difficult for some people to see that I'm not dying to change people's minds. Rather I want to take them away from their own for a moment and walk them down the paths mine goes. It is certainly conceited I must admit, but no more than the vanity of actors. I want to say more than Da Doo Doo Doo by my words do not scream for your submission.

Socialist Fishing

Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and he'll eat forever.

Give a fisherman a loan for a boat and he can feed himself, his family and sell more fish in the market. With sales tax on the fish you can pay a policeman to protect the fish market from theft. Grow the fish market through hard work and the man can pay off his loan save for a new boat, hire new fishermen and expand his fleet.  More fish allows him to trade with the next village. More spare time allows him to learn new ways of fishing, making his business more efficient, cutting costs, raising profits. Teach a man capitalism and you build a fishing industry.

But there are still people who don't know how to fish. There are still teachers of fishing who don't understand the dynamics of the fishing industry. All they know is that in this prosperous man's town there are still people who can't afford to buy a fish. So they tax the fishing boats. They put tariffs on the fishing export, they put more money into fishing headstart, even though it doesn't produce better boat captains. They say, I don't want to punish your success, I just want to spread the wealth around. They change society so that nobody feels the need to create a fishing industry - they just tax the one they have until... well until when?

The sea has a bad season and the cost cutting procedures no longer produce profits. Fewer boats can catch their limit so fishermen are idle. The taxes and tariffs have changed the cost of getting into the business, everybody has soaked the rich guy so that only rich guys can afford to stay in the fishing business. People depend upon the public services supplied by taxes, nobody wants to give them up. The bad cycle causes dislocations but with the tax burden it becomes unbearable. Fishing is kaput. People import fish from another country with no minimum wages,  retirement plans, health care, dental, vision, savings matching, and workman's compensation for the union fisherman.

The people demand social justice. They sue because the bedraggled business can't afford the quality control it once had. Popular politicians promise change. The President of FishCo closes his doors and takes his money and invests it in a less hostile business environment. He leaves the rest to his son whom he educated with an MBA. The politician regulates and adds more taxes for companies that take their business offshore. The politicians blame speculators, crooks, greed, corruption and promise jobs, jobs. They take tax money from fishing companies, and offer tax incentives to fishing companies so long as they follow the government regulations of the Ministry of Fishing which has a new cunning plan.

The inheritors of FishCo fight back. They hire lobbyists who understand the fish industry to change the laws of the ministry so that the fishing company can do what it used to do when it was profitable. They succeed. They go public and sell shares in FishCo and get listed on the exchange as FC.

OK this isn't fun any more.

Cooper Union

Another interesting tidbit from a cat named Radosh:

The question, then, is who is the real Obama? What will he do when he governs? Will he govern from the Center, using these same advisors and refusing to move the nation to the Left. But if his real views are those of the Chicago Obama, the man who made the now famous radio interview arguing for redistribution of wealth as a valid legislative goal, will he and the Democratic majority in both houses of Congress pass the most extreme legislative agenda that goes way beyond LBJ’s Great Society?

I frankly do not know which Obama will turn up. We will only learn that soon after his inauguration. I do not, however, hold any doubts as to what he once believed. Most people have not noticed this, but in a few interviews, Obama has said that in the 1980’s, he attended the Socialist Scholars Conferences held yearly at Cooper Union. That sounds like a scholarly assembly of intellectuals who approach their fields from a socialist perspective. Its innocuous name, however, is more than misleading.

I know this, because I was a founder of the original Socialist Scholars Conference, a group started in the 70’s by actual Marxist and socialist scholars, that discussed intellectual issues. The group held a few meetings, and it soon faded into oblivion. A decade later, its name was taken over by a new group that held meetings that were anything but scholarly. They were, in fact, an assembly of left-wing activists from extreme far Left to moderate Left, with panels galore on political issues and activism, without much scholarship of any kind being discussed. In 1983, for example, after my book on the Rosenberg case came out, they convened a panel to attack it from various perspectives- a panel to which I was not asked to participate or given any chance to answer the slanders presented to the audience. This was not an example of how scholars discuss serious and controversial works. There were also sessions attacking Israel, with no panels defending the Jewish state. I could continue, but the point is clear. I have often wondered which panels Obama attended, and what he got out of the meetings? No one has bothered to ask him.

Cooper Union was a big deal hangout in NYC back in the early 90s when I lived there. I was an organic Progressive and it was way to radical for me. Hmmm. I give this tidbit, on a scale of 1 to 3, three being unquestionably ducky, 1 Quack.

Media Buy Statistics

I was very surprised to learn that Barry spent under a million bucks to get 1/2 hour of primetime on CBS for his informercial. Can somebody shed light on what kind of deal that is? If I remember correctly, it costs 1 million per minute for a commercial during the Superbowl. If I'm buying a commercial in prime-time, what does that cost?

Stark Differences

Stark differences:

1. Obama does not believe in the War on Terror. He believes that the US should invade Pakistan, capture or kill OBL, declare victory and withdraw all troops.
2. Obama does not respect the opinions of Petraeus and Crocker.
3. Obama does not see any role for an extended presence of US troops on the ground in Iraq, nor does he believe that the US military through CENTCOM to be a stabilizing presence in the region.
4. Obama does not believe the leader of Iran to be dangerous, threatening or misguided.
5. Obama is not concerned about Hezbollah in Lebanon.
6. Obama beleives that Hamas can be trusted.
7. Obama does not acknowledge the improvement in America's relations in Africa under the Bush Administration.
8. Outside of his campaign to be President, Obama has no record of defying party leadership.
9. Obama beleives Pennsylvania is full of people who hate and fear blacks.
10. Obama is a multiculturalist who sees the Constitution as fundamentally flawed.
11. Obama prefers economic justice and political justice to a legal standard which doesn't take one's class or political background into consideration.
12. Obama consistently gets 100% ratings from pro-choice organizations.
13.Obama beleives that the Constitution is a living document. He is against strict construction.
14. Obama is ashamed about the fact that he smokes cigarettes.
15. Israel doesn't trust Obama at all.
16. Obama doesn't believe English should be the official language of the US.
17. Obama was voted the most liberal in the Senate by 99 votes.
18. Obama votes with the Democrat party line 96% of the time.

The Penultimate Words on Barack Obama

I am completely reconciled to the likelihood that Barack Obama will win the Presidency this fall. My campaigning against him continues and my disagreements with him, I will continue to make clear. While I cannot say with any certainty that I could be convincing on the broad variety of reasons I have to oppose his campaign I am very clear in the way I see him.

I think that a startling number of people who support Obama do so on the basis of his personal appeal with no regard or consideration of the history of the pedigree of his philosophy. They are ahistorical and show no intellectual curiosity when it comes to the principles underlying his promise of 'fundamental change'. They buy naively into narratives about the destruction of America that has no window beyond a twisted interpretation of what has transpired over the past 8 years. Whether the subject is war, diplomacy, tax policy, or the very capacity to build a public Ministry of Health - they are invested in the narrative of change which seeks to cast cynical shadows on the unique strengths of American institutions and an almost mystical belief in his ability to turn the ship of state on a dime.

Worse, supporters of this Democrat have completely ignored advice from the man who has become the grey eminence of their ticket, Joe Biden who said:

Mike Mansfield, a former leader of the Senate, said to me one day -- he -- I made a criticism of Jesse Helms. He said, "What would you do if I told you Jesse Helms and Dot Helms had adopted a child who had braces and was in real need?" I said, "I'd feel like a jerk."

He said, "Joe, understand one thing. Everyone's sent here for a reason, because there's something in them that their folks like. Don't question their motive."

I have never since that moment in my first year questioned the motive of another member of the Congress or Senate with whom I've disagreed. I've questioned their judgment.

I think that's why I have the respect I have and have been able to work as well as I've been able to have worked in the United States Senate. That's the fundamental change Barack Obama and I will be bring to this party, not questioning other people's motives.

They have injected the presumption of racial bigotry on their opponents.

It doesn't surprise me that the man who has raised the greatest amount of money in the history of presidential fundraising has been able to persuade masses of Americans. He has used television, radio, the internet, cell phones and even put billboards of himself inside of popular videogames. He has used skill and bravura to enhance his image not only in America but overseas as well. Photographic images of Obama in every possible flattering situation have flooded emails. Any unflattering image of the man is met with vehement charges of racism and deception.

Barack Obama is a man of the people who has appeared very suddenly onto the national scene and taken the country by storm at a time when people are insecure in their economic future, concerned about victory or failure at war and divided in their political loyalties as well as their fundamental beliefs in the proper direction for the nation. Obama has very cleverly situated himself as the conduit for change for an electorate which is frantic and agitated - not on the basis of fundamental philosophical agreement, but on faith in him as a change agent.

Very few people can say with any certitude what Barack Obama can or will do as President. He is very guarded and defensive, as are his supporters, about his background. And as a young man with less experience in national and world affairs than most any candidate in history, we have much more to learn about him.

Such difficulty I have with my perceptions of the Obama parade are typical of the kind of conservative I am. I don't expect that America will overnight or any time soon snap into a tight moral reasoning in their politics. I don't expect it on matters of racism, war and peace, job and family or education and religion. We have the public we have, and we have the political equilibrium that we do counting all the forces in this nation. It is not for me to suggest we have a better public, it is for me to deal with the public we have and to understand when they are motivated to do well or do otherwise - to ride the proper wave or to get out of the way and watch my back. It is eternally my hope that the strength and beauty of the system of justice we possess and the values underlying the defense of liberty are well understood, but that is a lifetime pursuit which is only marginally perturbed by popular elections.

As for the man himself, I very strongly believe that Barack Obama through his associations with radicals and socialists be they individuals or organizations has come to the realization of the very concrete limits of radical politics in America. After all, he left ineffective grass roots community organizing to attend Harvard Law. I think in that very specific and thoroughly Leftist and socialist way Obama shares a great deal in common with the politics of those his recent success has allowed him to leave behind. For a man as intelligent and ambitious as Barack Obama, there are no coincidences. Not in choice of political party, not in choice of backers, not in choice of churches, not in choice of legislative focus. There is a pattern and logic at work behind the rhetoric. These are details I think only his opponents wish to see clearly for the express purpose of situating Obama with his peers in world history. For it is America's place in world history that ought to be the ultimate concern of those who would be President. I am convinced that Barack Obama is not so concerned with America's role in the world so much as he is with the fate of the lower classes in America. This for me is the mightiest strike against him - not because I don't care for the fate of the lowly but because I recognize that the direction of the great is the most important factor in everyone's fate. Obama's solicitations to those, the least of his brothers at the expense of the great, gives me little confidence he will steer the ship of America in a way to insure its greatness.

A candidate with more seasoning and experience inside Washington would give someone like me less reason to be concerned. But I am particularly wary, in a way that I think I have learned the hard way with George W. Bush, of the particular influence of ideologues and partisans on the man in the Oval Office. Barack Obama, like no other candidate, seems to me to be the one who will depend most on Washington insiders to assist in crafting his agenda and enforcing his will. He will be a great prince in a warren of conniving viziers, not the least of whom is his running mate who has already rebuffed him in several dimensions. During this time of extraordinary and unprecedented change and chaos in financial markets, such concerns are hightened. I have no reason to believe that Obama will be more or less lucky or prescient than George W. Bush was on 9/12, but you can be sure that we will hear about it loudly should he win the Oval Office.

I have a great deal of confidence in this nation, and I expect that Obama would be an adequate president. But I don't forsee him doing a much better job of uniting the nation than Bush did. I believe that the presidency of Bill Clinton will be most instructive and will be the precedent for a President Obama. Nobody will simply 'move on'. Unity will come from events and from the bottom up, not from the top down as Obama's charismatic campaign seems to imagine. After the honeymoon is over and those young people energized by the war of campaigning go about their business, it will be as they said in Lawrence of Arabia: Young men make wars and the virtues of war are the virtues of young men: courage and hope for the future. Then old men make the peace, and the vices of peace are the vices of old men: mistrust and caution.

I for one will be such an old man in the peace following election day whichever way it goes. I would of course rather have such an old man as John McCain who would share my mistrust and caution. But I'm ready for the alternative.

Repulsion in the Orbit of Desire

I ran across this in an email passed by me:

The only thing that scares me are the men who are not out and living a lie as straight men. That scares me and every other straight woman.

I don't think I've ever heard that said before. I must admit that I'm not necessarily inside the heads of any women, although I'm getting much better. The weird thing is that I'm coming to understand the truth of something I read from Henry Miller a very long time ago, and Henry Miller is one scary dude. He said, women eventually take it all. As in dishing it out and taking it. Henry meant, as usual, something sexual. He was somewhat impressed in the fact that women do suffer through sorts of debasement that would destroy men. Miller did his damnedest to debase women, and still they remained women. And so in that strange way I have another confirmation of something I believe to be true about women's ability to give, even under hostile circumstances. Why are women illogical? Because they must be, and they know it. A woman's ability to soothe the savage beast in man is something fundamental, something very deep. I think it is something elemental to the power of femininity. The woman who flows knows this, the brittle woman doesn't quite.

Watching my daughters I am coming to understand something about a woman's relationship to her attractiveness to men which is central to her opinion of her self - of her confidence. A lady, I was instructed, puts herself in the line of sight of a man she's interested in. The man will do the rest, he only need see her. She only need be seen. And so a woman of confidence knows very well how men who see her want her. She will not be ignored. So she is to be sure that she is seen in a very specific way. Women spend huge amounts of time and effort in controlling their image and designing their orbit of desire. In the same way a martial arts master studies for years and can draw a circle on the ground with his sword, knowing he has a zone of fatality awaiting every foe, a woman architects her beauty as the central petal in a floral display creating an orbit of desire.

And it is in this way that I understand the quote above. The gay man who masquerades as a straight man is never drawn into this female orbit by desire. It must be horribly disconcerting to the woman who assumes attraction finds at bottom, indifference, distaste or repulsion.

Obama's Furman Buries His Past

I'm going to continue throwing smart rocks at Obama because he's a fun target. My search for ammo takes me far and wide. Here's an interesting piece from the WSJ. I excerpt.

Put simply, the McCain plan seeks to remedy a distortion in the health-care market that economists have spent decades begging politicians to fix: The tax code subsidizes insurance only if it is provided through employers. Individuals can't take the same tax deduction for buying insurance that businesses can. So Mr. McCain wants to "spread the wealth" of these tax breaks to individuals of any income through a refundable tax credit, no matter where they get coverage.

"The fact that the tax subsidy, which supports the employer-sponsored system, is better than nothing is a feeble excuse for resisting any changes to the status quo." That's not John McCain's judgment. It's a quote from Jason Furman, who happens to be Mr. Obama's economic policy director. In a cri de coeur published in the journal Democracy in 2006, Mr. Furman implored fellow Democrats and other progressives to confront "a critical missing link" in their health ideology -- the same link his boss now spends most of his time demagoguing.

So here looks to be something that I might, if I chose to be charitable, spin towards evidence of Obama's moderation - which is to say from a pool of moderate advisors, the claim on a similar plan to McCain's would score points. But I prefer to take the cynical angle which is that Obama's facility in being a media dominatrix scares otherwise reasonable people into shutting the hell up, lest he throw them under the Obama bus.

How I Generally See Obama's Tax Plan

Like these dudes Alan D. Viard, Alex Brill and Arthur C. Brooks in today's Washington Post.

To be sure, these "tax cuts" contain some sleight of hand. More than $400 billion of the money over the next 10 years would take the form of refundable tax credits paid in cash to people who already pay no federal income tax. It would be more accurate to refer to these cash outlays as cuts in payroll tax or -- even more accurately -- as transfer payments. Regardless of what the credits are called, though, they would put more money in the pockets of some American families. That sounds great in these tough economic times. Who can be against a boost to spending power and consumption?

We can. While a few of Obama's proposals may be sensible, the overall package would be bad for the economy. Unlike rate cuts for high incomes or reductions in investment taxes, most of Obama's proposed tax cuts would do little to reduce the tax penalty on work and saving. For some households, the penalty on work and saving would even increase because the new tax credits would be phased out as income rises. These proposals wouldn't deliver the economic growth that incentive-based tax cuts would.

Read the whole thing. As I think about it, again, there's the trend for 'stimulus packages'. Ick. It's a populist voter's rebate. We can't afford it. Have we simply given up the notion that Americans on the low end of the economic totem pole simply can't be incented to do anything smart with their money?

Skinheads & Seas of David

Remember back in the good old days before Malvo? You know, when the comics all used to say in their black vs white routines that only whitefolks had mass murderers? Yeah well. And remember when they used to say there were no black terrorists and then we had Seas of David, the crackheads who figured they'd blow up the Sears Tower for al Qaeda? I seem to recall that some people said that the FBI was infiltrating a bunch of innocent black muslims who were not really capable of doing any real harm. I wonder if any of those folks are saying the same thing about the knuckledraggers who just got busted for their fantasy of taking out several dozen blackfolks including That One.

Hoo boy.

We've got some sick and twisted cretins over here, but you know the good guys tend to win. I still can't really watch a Virginia Tech football game without thinking what those folks went through. Every time I think about LSU football, I think how they rallied in the post-Katrina morass. I swear to God I still think of that nutcase in the UT bell tower just as often as not when I hear 'Hook 'em horns'. I don't know why I have these strange associations with death on college campuses - maybe I'll invent a good reason now. The colleges come back. Their spirit returns. I know that we have some morbid political goofs who won't let the soul of Bunchy Carter rest, and so every once in a while (OK more often than not) Lefties make a point in mentioning it whenever they have their 'America has so far to go' speeches at UCLA. But most of the time, kids on campus get on with the ambitious and happy business of filling their heads with knowledge in search of brighter horizons. And so it goes.

I think these particular dregs didn't really have much of a chance to carry out their evil loser plot, and we're indebted to the locals and feds who are generally on their game, as they were this time.

Tuesday Fragments

Stevie
This morning - as with every morning I have the great blessing of waking up with a song in my head. Today it was 'All Day Sucker' by Stevie Wonder. I realize that my iPod has been naked, so I set out to remedy that one. It turns out that I have about nine hours of Stevie Wonder and listening to him reminds me of so much that I haven't been talking about on the Old School cultural side of things. I don't think that anyone can listen to Fingertips and recognize how much Stevie had an immediate intimacy with all the dynamic energy of soul music. I still say 'Do I Do' is the happiest song ever written. There's something magical about his Secret Life of Plants album, especially the majesty of his organ fugue 'Ecclesiastes'.

BRK.B
I would have lost a thousand bucks if I had invested in BRK.B a month ago when the impulse hit me. Glad I hesitated. My hint was to change my eTrade password to some verb that makes me think of slowness. The market is second-guessing Warren Buffet big time. In this day when the market bounced something like 900 points, BRK.B lost ground. Astounding.

A Small Note

I was about to write about my sources of information, but I spent a lot of time erh hum dissing the recently departed Dean Barnett, which rather bummed me out for a couple days. I'm kinda back but really rather disconcerted about that entire business - which is why I didn't write as much as I wanted to Sunday and yesterday.

I'm adjusting a few things...

Tax Them Little Dogies

Between bouts of doubt of the sanity of my fellow citizens and their faith in rationality I get some folks who are more focused and patient than me finding out exactly what it is I want to know. I kept forgetting the name of The Tax Foundation. I should not again. I've used them once before, and I do once again.

Here's their press release:

Study Shows That Higher Tax Rates Discourage Growth and Expansion of Small Businesses

Washington, DC, October 27, 2008 - Restoring the higher, Clinton-era tax rates on the top two brackets, as Senator Obama and some Congressional leaders have proposed, increasing the 33 and 35 percent rates to 36 and 39.6 percent, respectively, would raise taxes on 45 to 55 percent of small business income, according to a new Tax Foundation study.

In Tax Foundation Fiscal Fact No. 152, "The Effect of the Presidential Candidates' Tax Plans on Flow-Through Businesses," Tax Foundation Vice President for Economic Policy Robert Carroll, Ph.D., explains that because most small businesses are not required to pay the corporate income tax, small business income instead "flows through" to the owners who report it on their individual income tax returns. Carroll explains that with 35 percent of business taxes paid in this manner by the owners of "flow-through" businesses—sole proprietorships, farm proprietorships, partnerships and S corporations—it is important to analyze how tax increases affect the entrepreneurial sector.

"Small businesses are an important source of innovation and risk-taking, creating between 60 and 80 percent of net new jobs, employing over half the labor force, and generating more than one half of the nation's gross domestic product," says Carroll. "High income tax rates reduce the investment spending of entrepreneurs and the likelihood that they invest at all, discouraging the growth or expansion of small businesses."

About 1.3 million tax returns will pat an extra $30.1 billion under Obama's plan to raise the top two tax rates. Carroll uses various definitions of "small business" to calculate the percentage of this tax increase that falls on business income. In the most inclusive definition, nearly 80 percent of taxpayers affected by the top two tax rates report at least some income or loss from a flow-through entity. Using this definition, 51 percent of small business income would see a tax increase totaling $15.4 billion. In another definition, where 65 percent of taxpayers in the top two brackets report positive business income, 55 percent of small business income would see a tax increase totaling $16.4 billion. 

"Under these alternative definitions, the fraction of taxpayers in the top two brackets with business income varies from 36 percent to 77 percent," Carroll explains. "However, roughly one-half of the $30.1 billion in higher taxes could be attributed to the business income regardless of the definition.

Redistributive Change

"But the Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of the wealth and sort of more basic issues of political and economic justice in this society. And to that extent, as radical as I think people tried to characterize the Warren Court, it wasn’t that radical. It didn’t break us free from the essential constraints that were placed by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution … And the Warren Court interpreted, in the same way, that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties … I think there was a tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalitions of power through which you bring about redistributive change.”
-- Barack Obama

So, from the lips of That One we have something approaching some principles of consequence. I have given some of my opinions about the socialist leanings of Obama, and attempted to get into those matters about a week or so ago in what turned out to be an interesting if not complete proof of those leanings as first principles. I was hoping that those who cover defensively for the good Senator might attempt some arguments on behalf of what they interpret as his deeper meanings. Instead we have been given to understand that he *is* deep but doesn't have to be explained. Why? Essentially because he's smarter than his opponents. And so long as he can demonstrate this facility in navigating the sharky waters of negative campaigns without not looking Presidential, we can take him at face value.

So perhaps this bite from 2001 gives clarification of his off the cuff remarks to Joe The Plumber and we have come up with something I consider to be a matter on which the Obama noggin has been contemplating at some length, and it's more than just a notion. I think at long last we know exactly what kind of change Obama has been all about. Redistributive Change. That's more like it.

Have we met the core of Obama's intellectual desire finally? Or is this just another bit of smoke and mirrors from the Denier?

A lot has been said about the intellectual incuriosity of Sarah Palin. I think it is a self-evident fact. But as a matter of principle, I'd rather have someone who cares little more to expand her mind beyond the requirements of a job, than one who claims intellectual superiority without being forthcoming about what motivates him beyond platitudes.

Uhm and just for your memory, for those not interested in that link. Here's exactly what I wrote 15 days ago having never seen the above quote:

Barack Obama represents himself as a candidate for Social Justice, and as such, based upon socialist ideas, defies the authority of America as the ultimate philosophical origin of his legitimate power. Obama believes more in social justice than in the American Constitution and will seek to change American life in deference to principles originating out of Leftist critiques of Capitalism and of Western Society.

Nailed him, I think.

Arthur Davis Fesses Up

"Like a lot of my Democratic colleagues I was too slow to appreciate the recklessness of Fannie and Freddie. I defended their efforts to encourage affordable homeownership when in retrospect I should have heeded the concerns raised by their regulator in 2004. Frankly, I wish my Democratic colleagues would admit when it comes to Fannie and Freddie, we were wrong."
-- Artur Davis, September 2008

American Thinker is the blog, by the way, for all of those people who pay a bit too much attention to the idiot side of the Right and pretend that we're all such dummies. It has a comprehensive timeline and includes lots of details about government action and inaction in creating the mortgage crisis, basically deconstructing the political rhetoric of Obama which claims that the failure is one of free-markets unleashed recklessly by 'the past 8 years' of Republican rule.

Obama's Tax Lies

Uh Oh. I think Senator Obama has been called on the carpet by someone who did the math. Cold Busted!

However, Senator Obama's dual claims seemed implausible, especially when it came to my Federal income taxes. Those implausible promises made me look at what I'd been paying before President Bush's 2001 and 2003 tax cuts, as well as what I paid after those tax cuts became law. I chose the 2000 tax tables as my baseline -- they reflect the tax rates that Senator Obama will restore by letting the "Bush Tax Cuts" lapse. I wanted to see what that meant from my tax bill.

I've worked as the state level media and strategy director on three Presidential election campaigns -- I know how "promises" work -- so I analyzed Senator Obama's promises by looking for loopholes.

The first loophole was easy to find: Senator Obama doesn't "count" allowing the Bush tax cuts to lapse as a tax increase. Unless the cuts are re-enacted, rates will automatically return to the 2000 level. Senator Obama claims that letting a tax cut lapse -- allowing the rates to return to a higher levels -- is not actually a "tax increase." It's just the lapsing of a tax cut.

Read the whole thing - see how much more you'll pay.

Boards of Canada Recovered

I recently changed my Facebook profile. I've got some new music in my head that speaks to me and I dig it enough to share.

The first is Joe Satriani. I've been listening to him for about three months now, and he's just the kind of stuff that makes perfect sense for me in my post Return to Forever summer concert days. It's odd that I was expecting more of this kind of music from Jaco Pastorius, but Jaco has never really moved me. I don't quite get Jaco, or maybe it is that I just don't like listening to him. I get Cecil Taylor. I get Sun Ra. I just don't like listening to them. Same thing with Rashaan Roland Kirk. I know, it hurts to say it, but these dudes aren't fun, or I just haven't heard any of their fun music. With the exception of Sun Ra's "When You Wish Upon a Star", their music is just too .... academic? spiritless? random? It's missing a strong narrative flow. What it does is way back in a corner of my mind, a corner that has little emotional connection with the rest of me. But Joe Satriani does that rock/jazz fusion like a champ and it flows and overflows with passion. I've got about 20 cuts of Joe's, and I'm liking him big time.

Anybody who follows me knows one of the things I hate most are broken links. So every once in a while I engage in what I call Recovery, which involves me accounting for the things I know I know somewhere deep inside of me but can't bring to mind at all. Like what's the name of that African dude from HBO's Oz? And what other songs did I actually know by Foghat other than 'Slow Ride'? And what is the name of that restaurant with the sawdust on the floor in the South Bay? And which book about Dick Feynmen did I actually read first, and did Thomas Sowell actually hip me to how the South African Nationalists used minimum wage laws to keep blacks unemployed? Sometimes Recovery takes work and intiative - sometimes answers to such mysteries just fall into my lap. Boards of Canada is one of those lap dances.

For about five years now that I have given up Winamp and been using iTunes, I have also been listening to SomaFM. Specifically there are a couple webcasts in the 'radio' section of iTunes under 'Ambient'. Groove Salad. I listen to Groove Salad, Secret Agent and Drone Zone very frequently. In fact, my next post is going to be an information review, because it's good to get that out there. Anyway, I can remember three years ago listening to a very cool tune that sampled a Mr. Rodgers kind of voice saying the word 'orange' and some kids voices saying 'yeah that's right'. I could never find the name of that song.

I didn't realize at the time that SomaFM would give artist and title of the songs in their stream and I never bothered to ask the stupid question by email. I was satisfied that I did at least learn about Cafe Del Mar which led me to Talvin Singh and all that bhangra. At the time it was very difficult to find an of the Cafe Del Mar albums at the record store or on Amazon. They were all 25 dollar imports if they were available at all. But when I finally got my hands on the Kid Loco mix of Traveller, well it is my chillout theme song. But I've been used to not being able to find the sorts of stuff that got play on Groove Salad, but their scrobbling has improved and now the artist and title shows up in iTunes.

Sometime two weeks ago, listening as usual, the 'orange' song came on. It turns out that the name of it is Aquarius, on the album Music Has the Right to Children - which makes perfect non-sense. Few such instrumental ambient songs have any names that make narrative sense. It turned out that AmazonMP3 had all the tracks, and I have also found Roygbiv, another funky-ass groove I knew in the back of my head but never on the tip of my tongue.

I might have saved many years knowing that the kind of music I like to compose as Sixoseven is exactly the sort that Boards of Canada does make. But I decided a few Christmases ago that I would not be investing in Pro Tools and the big Yamaha, despite all the love I was getting at the local Sam Ash. It is a great pleasure nonetheless to be grooving to my new favorite group, Boards of Canada. I hear they're Scottish.

Update from Filkins

Good stuff from one of the best guys on the ground.

The One

There is a young black man who is taking the world by storm. Two years ago almost nobody has heard of him, but he has come from nowhere to become a dominating force. I predict that in a matter of weeks the world will have no choice but to recognize that his intelligence, charm, competitive spirit and skill are unstoppable. He will be number one and I will salute. It took me a while to understand how he has become so successful, but in the end I have to admit that he has won me over. Some people said that he was too young and inexperienced to run against the big dogs, but he has shown time and time again that he has got what it takes. There's simply no denying it any longer. Whether you are from the left or the right from either coast or flyover country - stop fighting. So I hereby say, give in. He's The One.

Defeating Eight & The Social Contract

There are problems with all the excuse making for same-sex marriage. I see three.

The first has to do with the notion of love and family throughout history. If it is true that same-sex couples in all of their manifestations of love and family have always been true love, what did they have in that love that they would lack after Eight passed on November 4th? Nothing. There is nothing to recognize in homosexual love that will change or be any way better discernible after an election. 99% of the time.

The second has to do with the outside possibility that an officially recognized gay marriage would be something new that has never existed before, which is to say if the above comment has a leak, it is that after November 4th given the failure of this referendum, that gay couples will have something they never had before. But I suspect in the tone of the dissenting voices against Prop Eight, that they are not only against the proposition, but they are against the very idea that there should be a proposition. Which of course was the attitude of the judges who brought the necessity of the proposition by their initiative in declaring the prior declared will of the people unconstitutional.

Marriage is not only between a man and a woman, marriage is a public declaration of love and trust. Not only between two people but a contract with society. It is an invitation to judgment done with love and trust. When we publicly declare before God and man, our eternal devotion to another, we invite them into our business, to judge our behavior against a standard. Those who do not want to be so judged don't bother to be married - they elope, they shack up, they do whatever it is they do with no need or desire for others to pay them any mind. They depend solely upon the value of their love to sustain them - you and me against the world, baby. That's what's known (very well) as 'common law marriage' and it is what every serious domestic partnership has this very moment. It thus should be clearly understood that the true import of any resolution on marriage for gays is that all of us - the people of the State of California - being so invited to judge. And so it has come to this, where we discharge a duty as citizens variously capable and willing to begin a new regime of judgment or to leave well enough alone. And I think there is one thing everyone can agree on. Our judgments on the propriety of gay marriage will not change with the passage of law, this law is not for any of us who already know what we already know. It is for the instruction of children.

Implicit in this there may be some hope that the new, socially accepted Gay Marriage, could be to the next generation something other than the darkness of the shadow of whatever ghosts and fears of homosexuality lurk in whomever's minds. There might be some hope that officially married gays might be more open and comfortable, more supported in their family lives by a generation that accepts them more than we are presumed to in the status quo. I'm not quite sure what to make of such a hope, and that is because all of my close gay friends are closeted. And that only proves one thing - which is that everybody ain't cut out for Marriage, and some people are smart enough to recognize that fact.

Thirdly, this being California, there is no right anywhere, in any court, under any circumstance which is withheld from domestic partners. In fact, if this referendum fails, I will be able to be married, but I will not be able to be a domestic partner, but gay couples can be both. Any suggestion to the contrary is simply false. Which is why the language of Eight is so simple. The proposition is merely a defense of something we know to be true, that marriage is between a man and a woman, against something we don't quite understand at all. Or perhaps we do, whether our opponents think we do or not.

If Eight is defeated, on the best day the best that could possibly be said was that some electoral majority of Californians saw fit to judge the competency, quality and content of gay relationships who declared themselves Married against our own sensibilities. Then again, we do that anyway don't we? That's not really what this is all about. Defeating this proposition is a statement in defense of a broken principle - which is that all things should be considered equal whether or not they are.

I think there are no good reasons to put this matter up for grabs except that an error in judicial temperament forced the hands of people like myself who would rather have had all hands off the Constitution of California. I am satisfied with the status quo, and as I have said any number of times, I fully support, 100% civil unions for same sex couples with equal rights in every aspect of family court. I simply desire with all due respect that Marriage not be redefined for any reason at all.

While any number of parallels and analogies will be made I think they are of little use. I expect people to address the question directly now that we are brought to this crisis point, this moment of truth. I think I am wise enough to see that what is in people's hearts and minds, and how people are apt to behave will not be dramatically altered by any public declarations except to the extent that they decide to take it personally. With any luck, now you know how I stand.

The Chalkboard

My brief comment in response to the thread.

What strikes me odd about this is that there are thousands of (apparently) companies that keep pointing to youth and (maybe) understanding the technology that connects people together, but they seem to have no respect (or clue) to what people do after they are young. I don’t need another friend and friending as a verb is ridiculous to people who are married with children.

What would be transformational is if someone took another look at the most important things people do in life and built tools around the individual, especially the information intensive individual.

I work in the business intelligence business, and started out with at Xerox long ago under the influence of people like JSB. What I have come to learn is that people interacting with computing systems do indeed come up with verbs, and the most intense interactive experiences end up having their own verbs. Podcasting is an example, as is ‘friending’, ’surfing’. And yet it has only been recently that we have been ‘buying’ or ‘banking’ and obviously nobody has been ‘voting’.

None of these things work as transactions as well as they do as interactions. It’s not just a simple set of verbs but a set of interactions around important functions - this is the approach that works best, when a person’s activities become describable as a workflow. The problem is that we’ve got a bunch of discrete actions in most of our social computing - rather like old video games before the invention of the sandbox, or old top-down programming before simulation loops - that don’t give us the sensation of swimming or anything continuous, like life itself.

I would argue a la Chesterton that we not tear down walls before we understand why they were erected. I’ve enjoyed auditing video lectures of physics ‘at’ Berkeley as much as any student in that classroom. But I doubt many students would be comfortable with my voyeurism - there is a temporal wall in the non-live rebroadcast that gives some propriety, and we all need a certain amount of that.

I would also be wary of giving over to a Friereian view of ‘equality’ in the exchange of information from teacher to student and vice versa. I say so as an old man who is not entirely convinced that all questioning of experience is useful, moral or productive. Pay very close attention to what is given and what is taken, because whatever arrangements we conclude are superior must inevitably be sustained in order for them to be anything more than academic. Keep that in mind especially in view of the factoid about how much laptops cost vis a vis wages in the Third World.

One of the things that was fresh in my mind as I blasted through that comment was this set of improvisations and meditations on the improvement of the Bloomberg Terminal. As you all know I'm very much into Bloomberg these days - information monks from way back, they are, Yoda like in their inscrutable wonkiness. But also I'm thinking of sandbox decision making and how the shape of an environment is determined by the rules many of which are invisible.

We don't often have sandbox-like decision making abilities in our compute environments. They are very discrete. We simply don't have the economics to achieve that yet. Not until the price of sandbox environment development comes way down are we going to be able to break down walls of education and have real simulations of important interactions with realworld implications. I can visualize it all myself - I've been working in the environment forever - but it is only beginning to become economical for SMB much less the general public.

The Bet on Shale

Not long ago we were freaking out about the price of oil. Well, I wasn't freaking out but I was beginning to become a smart shopper for gasoline in ways I hadn't since college. I certainly realized that people were freaking out. And yet I still wanted, and still do want a Hummer. Turns out you can get them cheap nowadays. Well I'll have to move quickly because the price of oil is dropping like a rock.

Now I'm certain that I have said, somewhere in this blog, that the reason 'we' are not digging for shale oil is because the fact that it is increased demand from China and India that is driving up the price, not a short supply. The contradicts the direness of the Peak Oil scenario, but it was impossible to see the black swan of $70 oil once it was over $100/bbl and rising. Well I said that shale will be economic when it is, and we can continue on a regular pace of consumption because as the price goes up we'll exploit other types. But shale seemed to be economic at the time - yet investors were hedging against a decline in demand from China. If you put up a billion to build the infrastructure for extracting oil from shale at an economic price of 90 bucks a barrel, then you have to have a lot of confidence that price will remain stable at that level or higher for a long time. Nobody had that confidence to put the money out there. Looks like they were right.

Adam Sieminski the cheif energy analyst from Deutche Bank is forecasting $50 bucks for late 2009. Average prices will be about $60 which he sees as fair value. This is a sign of weakness in the economy. OPEC has even cut production and the price of oil keeps dropping. It's not oil itself that's driving all this. This is driven by consumption. Global growth GDP is 1.2% according to Sieminski. He's saying retail prices will come down. And by the way he's saying that the meaningful number for new exploration is now around $85/bbl.

The Fourth F

In a series of ventriloquist acts I once again attempt through my influence as a blogger to put words in the wooden mouth of John McCain.

On the domestic front, there are several big differences between McCain and Obama. One that interests me is the point about healthcare. On Prager yesterday morning, he talked about the story of a young pregnant woman who needs a C Section and doesn't have insurance to cover that procedure. She supports Obama because she believes his plan would help. It suddenly occurred to me that it would be too late, but maybe not for McCain's plan.

McCain, as we know, offers 5800 bucks in a credit applicable towards the purchase of the sort of health insurance that's out there in the market today. I think of it as a voucher. Obama wants to introduce a Federal Health Plan. I will now use loaded words to say what McCain ought to say.

"My Friends...My opponent has too much faith in government. He wants to see 45 million uninsured Americans get access to healthcare. So do I. My plan will put money in your hands so you can make the best choice. He wants to create a new Federal bureacracy of Health. Some people say his plan is Socialized Medicine. Well that may be too harsh a criticism. You know America won't stand for that kind of socialism. But think about it. If America sends Obama to the White House he can and, if he keeps his promise, will expand government and create a huge new government program a Federal Bureacrcy of Health.

I watched many of your skepticism of the government when it took FEMA so long to get aid and comfort to the victims of Hurricaine Katrina. Many of us said it would have been better for the government just to hand people checks instead of let FEMA manage the problem. Well I listened. That's what my health plan does, it gives you the check and lets you buy the kind of insurance that your neighbor has but you don't. How long do you think it will take for Obama's Federal Bureacracy of Health to help you out?

I share your skepticism of government bureacracy. FEMA was feeble, we've got a pain in the Fanny and Freddie's dead. A vote for Obama is a vote for another government bureacracy. Can you afford to wait?

I want to add one more thing. Some Republicans, most of them ordinary citizens, but some paid and volunteer operatives of the Republican Party have suggested that my opponent is a radical socialist terrorist just because he's been associated with radical socialist terrorists. I don't think he's a radical socialist terrorist or even a sympathizer. I think he's an experimenter. He flirts with such people and ideas because he thinks he can be all things to all people without any of the bad stuff sticking to him. Well, lying down with dogs doesn't make you a dog. But sooner or later you have to take a bath. If Obama still smells funny to you, I understand.

Obama says that those things happened when he was 8 years old and he knows nothing about all that. Well, my friends, I can tell you about a lot of things that happened when Obama was 8 years old that he knows nothing about.

But the bottom line is that he experimented along with certain EX-terrorists with money from a friend of Richard Nixon, Mr. Annenberg. A great American, a very rich man, and a philanthropist. I don't have to tell you that America is the most generous nation on earth, and we expect our rich citizens to give back, and they do. And Mr. Obama took Annenberg's money and tried to improve education. Who could possibly be against that. I strongly believe that Mr Obama's intentions were as noble and high minded as any. But his judgment was lacking - because in the end, his project was a failure and a waste of Mr. Annenberg's 150 million dollars. They tried and they got an F.

You know and I know that Mr Obama's tax plan is going to hit generous men like Mr Annenberg right in the gut. It won't be voluntary like the last time. It'll be mandatory. He won't sit and put together a nice proposal with all those good intentions on them. He'll just send the IRS to collect. Isn't it strange how Mr Obama pays back Mr Annenberg for all his generosity? And just whom will Obama experiment with next? Not just school children in Chicago with the money from one millionaire, but every American with the money from every millionaire. That kind of thing just keeps me up at night, because I don't think he has the experience to do that right.

FEMA, Fannie, Freddie. And next Obama's Federal Bureacracy of Health. Mr Obama, we don't need another F.

Hockey is Racist

The title of this piece is sarcastic of course and I want to take a moment to reiterate and focus on what defenders of Obama have said to me this morning. I happen to be an expert on racism - not in the academic way, but in the writer's way. I've isolated it philosophically and can be very precise in discussing it in the context of my worldview. It's not moving anywhere in my head.

Essentially it boils down to this. Calling Obama 'socialist' is 'racist'. Because it's a lie that he's socialist and there's only one reason people would lie about Obama - because he's black. There. I've said it. I have encapsulated the accumulated outrage of 20 million Americans in two sentences. I'm just brilliant, I am.

But I'm being sarcastic there too. What I think is really going on, quite seriously, is that Obama's weaknesses are turning the spotlights on all the cockroaches. When they run out of good reasons to support the man, and they refuse to understand why others do not, they assume the worst. What started off as a kind of awe inspired moment just a few months ago has soured into a lot of paranoid backbiting. I can recall when the overwhelming sentiment of blackfolks I was hearing was a kind of inspired pride and wistful longing that if only their dead grandparents could be around to see this day. And now that there is a possibility that Obama might lose - that this newbie can't win the world series his first time out, that it only proves their worst fears about racism are true. Obama has not demonstrated that he can unite the country. Nor has McCain, for that matter. 10% of blackfolks are still undecided. 20% of independent voters can't make up their minds. The issues that matter most have not been sufficiently addressed. We have a genuine Red vs Blue battle, not quite as starkly as 2004 but vivid nonetheless with a moderate Conservative and a moderating Lefty. But there are people out there for whom this difference *has* to be about race.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, another way. Sarah Palin is enormously popular with Americans. So is NASCAR. So is hunting, fishing and hockey. Dogsledding and snowmobiling... ehh no. But there are many Americans who feel perfectly comfortable going out of their way to disrespect those who enjoy NASCAR. As far as I'm concerned the only people who have a right are F1 and Rolex Cup fans like me. (Go Hamilton!) My point is that it's an old tired gripe that is destructive. I don't think that the people who say these things have any idea how their commentary is taken - I don't imagine they must care much. Their sense of outrage outweighs all other considerations. I find it tiresome and undignified, and I personally don't believe that Obama would approve their messages.

At least one of my interlocutors had the good sense to suggest that the controversy of Wright was indeed racial - and that's what it was all about. Some like to think it meant more than it did and of course they had their moment in the glare. But that was something everybody could see. There's a reason, of course, that the race card has to be played here. Because there are racists in America. (gasp). For those people who feel that it's the racists who are the cause of the attenuation of their hopes and dreams, there will always be some public figure for them to glom onto. It pays for Obama to have that demographic pushing his truck, but don't believe he'll let them under the hood. He swapped out the Wright engine. He swapped out the Ayers engine. He'll swap out the cockroaches too. Cool it baby. Mark my words.

I also want to say something else that I don't think I've said often enough, but my absolutely favorite Right Radio show is the Dennis Miller Show. Every day he genuinely does make me bust a gut laughing - but he's also an extraordinarily fine judge of character, and like me, he's a post-9/11 convert with a genuine grown ass man perspective on the loony-tunes that pass for thinking people. As stand-up guy in Hollywood, he really knows, and his get on Obama is spot on.

What is Miller's take? Basically that he's Mr. Smooth and smart enough to know exactly how long he needs to hang on to a deniable asset.

Technical Difficulties

Today's Barbershop had problems with the mic. This is the second time this week I had to get up at 5 in the morning. Damn!

Anyway, I tried to get in some words edgewise, but didn't do a good job this time. Hard to say what's going to make it to air and what won't. Basically, my colleagues were busting on McCain's 'robo-calls' pushing the Ayers hotbutton, which is interesting because I was prepped to talk about the one by Rudy Giuliani saying Obama is soft on crime. A little bias in the agenda switcheroo, I'd say. Because nobody has been talking about crime and punishment and I think Obama has something to prove in that regard.

The spin of the day was that this was all racial. I was going to counterpunch with a hard right that went a little something like this. Sarah Palin is enormously popular with millions of Americans. So is NASCAR. So is hockey. But if you're not in that demographic why do you have to assume those Americans are hostile? You have to on Obama's behalf because he hasn't shown in any way that he's ready to lead those Americans. I think everybody has this scenario in their minds which is becoming more real every day, that although Obama talks one game, that if he loses, he's going to have to stand up on national TV and say 'Cool it baby!'

I'm a little bit frustrated with people trying to make Obama more than he is, but I understand that this is what happens when you come out of left field without any institutional backing. More on that later. Anyway, this was a flubbed Barbershop show, and I'm sorry that I didn't get a chance to say all that I wanted. Basically I did want to say that I'm down with the Phillies, because anybody who beats the Dodgers has to win it all, just to prove that the Dodgers might have won it all but only got beat by the best - not the second best.

Working Assets: Weak

Once upon a time when I was a Progressive, I changed my long distance. Oops. Let me explain to the younger folks. Once upon a time, there were these things called RBOCs and... oh nevermind. Well, now that I think about it, one of the most successful deals in deregulation and re-regulation has been because of a couple successive brilliant directors of the FCC, namely Hunt, Kennard and Powell (yeah and who will Obama appoint?) are reasons we don't have taxes on the Internet. Anyway...

You used to have to choose your long-distance provider because there was a dumb law that local phone companies couldn't provide long distance (whenever you had to dial an area code) and vice-versa, but it was different for cable TV but cable TV couldn't do digital or voice or any of the cool things we have now. And this was back in 1994. So I chose a company called Working Assets, because they were, in a word 'correct'.

Working Assets used recycled paper to mail you your phone bill. Er, you long-distance phone bill. And, since they were 'correct' they weren't paying executives huge salaries and so they could pass the savings on to you, the consumer. I might have saved money - I don't remember. My long distance calls might have been just as good as MCI (remember them), but I don't remember. But I do remember that sense of self-righteous superiority I got from this type of moral conspicuous consumption. Note to self, 'moral conspicuous consumption' is great, use it again.

Well Working Assets is in the news again. Why? Because I just mentioned them on my blog, and I probably have more subscribers than they do. Seriously, they have contributed in over two decades, 60 million dollars to progressive causes, thus illustrating the power of non-governmental people power. Sixty million bucks?! That something like what Starbucks buys in paper cups every month, or some other unthinkably trivial expense, like the cumulative value of the houses my kids walk past on the way to school in the morning. Ok all three of my kids in a week - real estate aint what it used to be.

Still, that's a remarkably small number and Working Assets used to be a remarkably cool company. But I guess this level of success gives us all a reason to better understand how the Progressive agenda desperately needs politicians at the Federal trough where you can get 60 million on an annual basis without breaking a sweat.

Wanna Bet?

I am opening up a new category to the Cobbian oevre called 'Wanna Bet?' I am prompted to do so by the constant doom and gloom predicted by my bete noir and sparring partner (who may or may not be on my side but improves my punching game nonetheless) Craig Nulan.

I will entertain any and all comers to Mortimer & Randolph style betting (1 US Dollar) on any subject or prediction with which I have a significant enough difference that it gets my ire up. So. Come wid it bad bwoy! Put your money where your mouth is.

I will will publish all such bets in the Research Notebooks sidebar. They should be of a nature such that they are independently verifyable, and have a reasonable date attached to them.

One should note that you don't have to be the originator of the idea. For example you could say that the IMF predicts that France will go to Darfur in 2009 and commit at least 5000 troops. I can say that the IMF is full of it, and you can bet on their behalf. Makes no difference to me where the idea is from - if it's full of crap, then I'm down to book your wager. Nevertheless, the wager has to be with me. But I could be a proxy as well for somebody else. Fzample I may agree with MIB that the next Spike Lee movie will tank at the box office, and you may disagree. I might agree with MIB and take a bet on his position.

I don't expect to be dealing with more than 30 or 40 bets at any one time because I may be crusty, but I'm not that disagreeable. So I don't expect to have to limit the number of bets. Also, I don't need anyone to put up the cash until the expiration date of the bet itself at which point I will issue a margin call and expect a PayPal settlement. If you win, then you have to have a PayPal account too.

One more thing. No piling on. If you can't come up with your own bet, piss off.

If you don't like it. Don't play. As Prince said..."Sorry baby, that's the rules. I pay the rent in this raggedy m.f. all you do is fk up the food and eat. Uh huh. That's right."

Little Rocks & Big Boulders

I'm getting rather sick of the buzzwords and talking points. There is no greater sign of panic and intellectual constipation than when blowhards keep blowing the same chunks of spittle. What is that definition of a fool, the person who keeps doing the same dumb thing and expecting different results?

The following words have entirely lost their meaning, and all thoughtful Righties are hereby urged to dig deeply and find an alternate path in your opposition:

• Ayers
• ACORN
• Joe The Plumber
• Partial-Birth
• Socialist
• You Betcha
• Rezko
• Obama's Citizenship
• Hussein
• Muslim

The Right is making the fundamental strategic error of fighting a Doomsday strategy. They are hoping to find an October Surprise.  They assume this massive boulder of a Silent Majority of Americans on top of a hill would roll down and crush Obama's Army in the valley below - if they could only get these little pieces of wood out of the way. The little twigs are Ayers, Alinsky, ACORN, the ghosts of his Leftist past and all of the above trivialities and talking points. And they keep complaining that the Media is not helping them unearth these little sticks and get that Doomsday boulder rolling. Stupid. Desperate. Unstrategic.

The Doomsday device is not going to roll, by the time it does Obama's Army will have passed through the valley of the shadow of the boulder on the way to the White House.

Here is my suggestion for an alternate path, one of which is not just an Alinsky strategy but one that was used by Hannibal at Cannae.

Use the size of your opponents army as a force against him.

Barack Obama has made more money campaigning for the Office of President than any man alive or dead. He is a master propagandist. His appeal is singular and in order for him to win, you have to bleed him from 80 orifices all at once. If you attack him from all sides, he has to dilute the momentum of his mass by handling all the pesterization.  What John McCain needs to do right now is raise 15 important issues that Obama has said nothing about that an experienced Washington insider knows everything about. Then watch him try to marshall his huge army of partisans around policy positions that Obama hasn't articulated. Here are several that I, a lowly blogger can come up with on my own.

• Obama has talked about Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan, but what about Syria and Lebanon? What was he saying with the Left was taken in by the Qana fauxtography?
• What about Haditha? Was Obama on Murtha's side?
• Barack Obama has said nothing about illegal immigration. What about the Wall, will he have it built, or will he subvert the existing law passed by Congress?
• What is Obama's position on GM fruits and vegetables?
• Will Obama continue the course of GWB on North Korea or change it substantially?
• What would Obama do America's manufacturers of military hardware & comms equipment for export?
• Does Obama believe that Headstart works?
• Will Obama support the admission of Turkey to the EU?
• What church would Obama attend as President of the US?
• What, in Obama's opinion is the most important piece of legislation he has authored?
• Which of the cabinet positions will he fill with women and minorities? (!!!)
• What legislation would he introduce into Congress to improve race relations in America?
• What will Obama do to insure proper successful recruitment for the Armed Services which is dangerously low in a dangerous world?
• What percentage of dependence on alternative energy sources is his goal to achieve while in office?
• What will Obama do about credential requirements for teachers at the secondary level?
• What about Cuba?
• Will Obama raise the minimum wage?
• What would Obama do to help the family farm?
• What is wrong with the structure of Homeland Security?
• How many judges will he select for nomination over his term and how will he speed that process through congress?
• How much oil with America buy from Iraq under Obama?
• How will he deal with the effect of the stock market crash on pension funds?
• Which if any, of the departments of the Executive Branch will he expand the most, which will he cut the most?
• Will Obama change the depository & leverage standards for American banks?
• Is an attack on Israel an attack on America?
• What will Obama do to settle concerns about Mad Cow Disease in American beef for international markets?
• If a state in the union decided to change its flag in a manner considered offensive, would he use his power as president to stop them?
• What is Obama's position on trade with China?
• Should Venezuela's joint military exercises with Russia be met with increased American response?
• What is the number one issue America has in Africa?
• Should foreign investors be allowed to own American banks?
• What will Barack Obama do to settle fracases related to attacks on churches non-exempt tax status?

We understand that Obama has exploited his personal appeal to a broad coalition, but nobody on our side trusts his ability to deal with the complexities of the Oval Office. So why the hell are we talking about Joe the freakin' plumber instead of the complexities of the Oval Office? Because 'we' keep banking on a Silent Majority that's going to 'get it'. There is no Silent Majority. Nobody is shutting up in this election - everybody's talking, except they're all talking about the same idiot things.

There are 99 problems that the President will have from Day One. Do the American people have any idea of what McCain would do on 30 of them? Do the American people have any idea of what Obama would do on 30 of them?

No Means Yes

A very insightful few paragraphs encapsulate today's thought about Republican endorsements for Obama. This from OTB:

That said, I’m reminded of a line Jeff Medcalf posted on Dave Schuler’s Other Blog recently:  “[M]any of the people voting for Obama seem to be doing so on the hope that he doesn’t mean what he says, and most of the people voting for McCain are doing so on the fear that Obama means exactly what he says.”

Adelman closes his email to Packer:

I sure hope Obama is more open, centrist, sensible—dare I say, Clintonesque—than his liberal record indicates, than his cooperation with Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid portends. If not, I will be even more startled by my vote than I am now.

It strikes me as odd, indeed, to vote for a presidential candidate who disagrees with you on the most fundamental issues in the vague hope that he’s been lying to you throughout the entire campaign.

If Obama takes the cake, I'm going to listen to guys like Adelman very closely. As an aside, I think that whomever gets the White House will be a one term guy. They will be presiding over some very ugly stuff. I say so because I don't think either one of them is on top of the economy, and they don't really have any incentives to do anything but play blame games. See Zingales.

Zingales' Debt to Equity Swaps

Luigi Zingales is in today's economic lesson. His idea is that there is a private solution to the problem with mortgages. The answer, which Tom Keene considered brilliant, is debt for equity swaps.

Zingales' idea is this. You look for all of the mortgage holders by zipcode whose housing price has declined 20% or greater. Instead of them defaulting, they work out an agreement with the originator that reprices the mortgage with the provision that 50% of the profit from the sale of the house goes to the originator. Simple.

It allows the mortgage to be recalculated therefore lowering monthly payments, keeps the individual in their house, keeps people with a lot of equity from taking advantage, and doesn't involve any taxpayer money. Of course there will be no politicians to champion it because there's no end in it for them. It doesn't allow them to take any credit, spend any government money, raise or lower taxes.

Zingales also noted that the decision by the FDIC to insure all bank debt going forward for 3 years will cost the government 150 Billion. I figured this was coming. But almost nobody talked about what the FDIC has been doing - it required no Congressional oversight.

Finally Zingales zings the Paulson plan for saying one thing (the wrong thing) and then doing the right thing. He sees it as a logical consequence of the current Administration having too many friends on Wall Street and not enough in the international academy of economists. I agree.

The Impracticality of Philosophical Shills

I think that the most hurtful thing I have ever been accused of is being a shill for immoral people, which is the subtext of a number of comments recently posted here at Cobb. I do know how to respond, I'm just not sure that I'll do an adequate job. In the end, I'm sure that I can be seen as useless, which is probably the best outcome for all concerned.

I can recall when I became a national officer of a student organization in college. I had the thrill of being elected several times at the local, state and regional levels and finally at the national level. I was truly learning about leadership. I remember running for a second term at the national level and saying in one of my speeches that leadership was the best thing that ever happened to me as a person, and the worst thing that ever happened to me as an engineer. Today I talk politics, political philosophy and ideology. I find myself in the same ironic position. What I have learned about conservatism is the best philosophical thing I have learned and it is likely the worst thing that has happened to me as a black political partisan. It is ironic that in being a leader of engineers that I became a worse engineer and now that I have gained in philosophical wisdom it spells doom for me in politics.

It is clear to me that the practical things that many folks desire of this curiosity I have become, although not onerous, do not seem to grasp what I want to be all about. And I wonder if I'll ever have enough time or patience to explain how my study has changed me. That is because I am first and foremost a writer and my journey into the realms of how it is that people come to decide what they believe has taken me towards wisdom - a wisdom I often feel incapable of communicating, interactively at any rate. I have taken out my frustrations here noting as I have that half of the things that I find most interesting gain few remarks.

For example,  I attempted to identify Barack Obama in his Leftist roots and I've asserted that I feel kinship with him as he has triangulated rightward over the course of his campaign. I recognize how it is that the majority of black political opinion has been shaped by the Left and that it is the failure of this that moves us Right. As I told the reporter from the BBC, I just started my journey sooner than Obama. But it is also the case that in this kinship I assume that Obama's intelligence would compel him not to think his own experience was sufficient to frame his desire to use politics for good and that he would seek the wisdom of the ages, and having done so and landing to the Left of most Democrats that he would be following Socialist ideas and those originating with Marx as have so many black intellectuals of note. But all this has been taken as nothing more than beating of the black man on behalf of the white man, or if anything more than that then something of little use to anyone.

I have asked myself today what of my legacy - what is it that I seek to accomplish when all this writing is said and done, and I think that I have reached the limit of what writing can communicate in this form. If I am such a poor writer as to give such false impressions then I fail to see the point of continuing. This record assists me in making sense of everything I have said and thought on the subjects - almost seven thousand essays, reflections and comic strips over the years.

It is drudgery and I do wonder why I bother.

In discovering Oakeshott just recently I find that I have wasted a great deal of time and breath in evolving my understandings interactively. It is with that in mind that I am pleased to have upped my reading quotas this year, not that having all of these books on my sidebar has generated any discussion about them.

So here is what I'm going to do. I'm going to give up blogging until some distance after the election. Instead of writing new stuff, I'm only going to publish those partial thoughts which have backed up over the months. Maybe that will help. Other than that, the only idea that gives me comfort is the idea of turning off comments completely in the hope that writing without any expectation of interactivity might make me a better essayist in addition to the comfort of not having to attend to arguments which are really not what I want to talk about.

The Obama Bus

I've been trying to get a canonical list of people and ideas that Obama has thrown under the bus. Just because. I'll try to keep this list updated.

On The Bus
Austan Goolsbee

Under the Bus
Jeremiah Wright
Gen. Wesley Clark
Robert Malley
Samantha Power
Gun Control
FISA Reform
The Daily Kos
Ludacris
Tavis Smiley

Plausibly Denied
William Ayers
Tony Rezko

Rhetorical Patronage Part Two

Politics ain't beanbag: 'tis a man's game, and women, children 'n' pro-hy-bitionists had best stay out of it.
-- Finley Peter Dunne

What I have come to learn in this election season of black political partisans is that they remain too dainty. And as if on cue, here comes Colin Powell waltzing in to place his two beans on the doily. As I consider the matter at length, I think we are witnessing another manifestation of the power of rhetorical patronage. Of course I always run the risk of insulting too many blackfolks when I speak of them, but then again blackfolks of my generation have always insisted that they be taken separately as to the origins and meanings of their politic. And so I think blackfolks feel justified in having their own take on things that matter when it comes to electing Barack Obama, our great adopted son. So take my opinion as it is, or as one of the opinions of blackfolks. Your call.

As most people who suffer the affliction of the desire to be consistent, I am drawn to criticize those who apparently don't give a fig. And I have been singularly stung by the scorn and bigotry which I have categorized as lowball sniping at the figure of VP candidate Sarah Palin. By the way, whatever has prompted her handlers to have her appear on Saturday Night Live in the wake of some apparently devastating parody of her, must only be considered as entirely lunatic. In my attempt to actually promote the common bonds of working class folks I see in Plaid Flannel America, I have been reminded with some emphasis that although there may be but one Sherwood Forest, few of the camps in it share much love for each other. And as if on cue I have witnessed how clearly the culture of West Coast Customs is apt to clash with the culture of American Chopper. Thank you Discovery Channel. It ain't all good.

My conclusion? 'They' are racist. 'We' are the victims.

There may be other more significant issues to be brought to mind when considering how it is that the black electorate expends its social capital, but none of those counted for much in this election season. So far as I can see, there is nothing that Obama's plan does in service of black communities that McCain's doesn't do as well. Understand that I'm only speaking from a material perspective - you know, the nuts and bolts of an actual education program or tax package or health care provisioning. On those two things, both candidates can be considered moderate no matter how far they may have decamped from their respective ideological roots to get to this moment. But no matter how far either of them have traveled to get to the center, there is one thing they symbolically remain no matter what to black political partisans: they are true to their race.

A bit of traveling is necessary to understand the matters of this 'truth'. You need to go back to my past, because like most evolving partisans, I have a paper trail. As I embarked on my journey as Boohab to rid American politics from its curse of racial disrespect, I became rather popular. It is a popularity I have given up for a new sort which I think is a bit more honest (now), but a tangible popularity nonetheless. It was as Boohab that I was invited to be a host at Cafe Utne's Society conference. I understood multiculturalism backwards and forwards and while I didn't necessarily cosign identity politics, I was concerned about what flavors people gave up in order to be considered mainstream. It seemed to me then that a certain amount of cultural work was absolutely necessary to do proper respect to constituents of different flavors, and those who refused this work were not worthy inheritors of our democratic politics. There were object lessons in courting the Latino electorate, the black electorate and every other fungible demographic. Candidates and their campaign managers had to learn the lingo - what does it mean to invoke the dialectic between Booker T and WEB? This is what the evolved candidate must do.

Except I can't ever recall those names uttered by Barack Obama any more than you can recall them uttered by John McCain. I have grown to understand that politics ain't beanbag, and it also ain't Burger King. You can't have it your way. You take what you can get and you fight for every inch.

It only takes a minute girl, to fall in love. Nobody loves John McCain. Barack Obama is much loved. It only takes a minute to understand that in democratic elections, love trumps respect, and this is as it ever was even before democratic politics. It takes half a minute to understand that fear trumps love. So while it is obvious that McCain and Obama share signs of respect for each other, Obama has taken the time to sow the seeds of love for himself and fear of McCain for good measure. And so we have witnessed how devastatingly ineffective McCain's respectability has become in the face of the fear of 'McPalin' and the love for the candidate of 'our better selves'. Only us bloodless logicians appear to be immune and seek for well, as I said, consistency in political philosophy. Unfortunately, the metaphors of war and peace are not my running buddies in this matter as they have been in 2000 and 2004. Somehow all that's not so important as the threat Sarah Palin's flannel-clad associates are to the domestic tranquility of racism's zero-tolerance crowd. It's OK to hate and fear the people who pal around with Palin, but not Obama's pals. I've heard the confessions.

One of these days, blackfolks are going to learn the lessons of black history. I do hold out for that hope. Within black history is a path and a gateway to true humanity. I know this to be true. Slowly that road I trod, but with a steady beat. In the meantime they will obsess over their perceptions of whitefolks and fuss over every slight, real or imagined. And that will continue to fuel a certain sort of politics, as it does in communities of gay advocacy for those who, while recognized as equal in every aspect of civil rights, still demand to neuter our understanding of Marriage by law in defiance of the history of Stonewall. Until that great day arrives, as if it ever will, there will remain calls for a certain kind of rhetoric as a litmus for all. As for black partisan politics there stands a Black Knight on that road. Quoth he: 'None shall pass'. And should he even be demolished by simple and true logic, yet will he be intransigent, nor will he give the reason. It suffices only that he is the Black Night and has never been bested - it's all he knows. Just as all black politics has known is to be the underdog and to fight off all whiffs of oppression with a fury that is blind to nuance. What is racist is BLOODY RACIST and must be defeated at all costs, by any means necessary, with God as my witness, until death do us part, as it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, world without end Amen.

Barack Obama promises, without uttering a word, that no racists in America shall vote McCain into office. No one who disrespects Muslims shall have their sentiments respected. He's changing all of that in American politics. He is the racial pro-hy-bitionist. He's going to drive it all underground. He's going to ascend to the top of the mountain on the backs of 'never again', and he will end racism in life as in politics. Sorta. Well, enough. Well, he *says* the right things. At least he's not a racist like John McCain, well, like Palin, well like the people who like Palin. You know how she winks at them, you know. I mean which side are you on anyway?

I'm the guy who hates racism. But I don't need America to be less racist to succeed. I just push back at it, like all sin, in my everyday life. I got 99 problems but a racist ain't one. I deal with it when I deal with it. It's not a precondition for negotiations because I don't assume it to be human nature. Racism isn't the great evil in my world. But I hate it like all sin and I fight it like I expect to fight it for the rest of my life. Nobody can say magic words to convince me that they've got the solution because I understand human weakness to be what it is. Or at least I'm confident in myself enough to suggest that I have that understanding.

I wish more black partisans had that kind of confidence. I wish they could express their confidence in their own moral strength so as not to be taken in by those who work elections by fear and love. I wish it of all citizens knowing that it is wishful thinking. What's going on here has nothing to do with the rhetoric of fear, love and respect. It's about determining who holds the office of the most powerful man on Earth, and those aren't the kinds of terms by which we ought to be deciding at least between the policies of the two men before us. But we are who we are and we do what we do.

It may sound as if I pretend that whitefolks aren't playing the same game. I couldn't be convinced that they are not. But as I said, it is no secret that John McCain isn't loved. He is no Great White Hope by any stretch of the imagination. In any case, it is my desire to be consistent to political philosophy as a Conservative, in that I disregard the lowbrow commentary of the Right more swiftly than that of the Left. I don't know what exactly the Left is trying to be true to since everybody seems to deny any latent socialism in the Democrat agenda. Every comment about gender and race by the Left indicates to me that there is no modern principle at work, but post-modernist deconstructions of 'false' concepts like a citizenship that respects no color. It is the demand for the rhetorical patronage of just the proper narrative that is at work on the Left. And it is into that narrative that I see black Democrats marching in particular, those stepchildren of liberal desire, chained as they are to the popular bandwagon, like the rest of the donkeys.

One of these days, blackfolks are going to learn the lessons of black history. Today they wonder why I as a black conservative have the nerve to set myself apart from the things that bind them in their black partisan politics, in their love for Obama, in their fear of McCain and Palin, in their demands for zero disrespect in all political speech, in their need for liberal beanbag. It's simple. I was not built for bondage.

End War Demo: First Look

The worst thing about online multiplayer battle sims is that unless you are a clan geek, there is not a very good way to get complete strangers to listen to your commands and thereby gain an upper hand on the battlefield. The problem has been solved, and now I fell as if I can get all of the fun of an online multiplayer shooter without the headache of dealing with teenaged gamers.

The voice command works. I trained it in two minutes. I knows what I'm saying. End War allows you to play an

This could be one of those games, like that huge multiplayer

Drudgery

I wake up every morning with a pain in my left foot. I got it from playing volleyball three weekends ago - the very day that I said "I don't get injured, I just have to lose weight". And so my whole exercise program is on hold until I gin up the energy to hurt myself again. But I also wake up every morning with a song in my head. I'm beginning to think that it's the song that wakes me up. This morning it was something by the Isley Brothers, but I can't remember which, that's because I'm deep into Faure these days.

Boy is much better on the piano than I ever was. Sprite is annoyingly bad. BD doesn't bother.

Work is going interestingly. I'm doing really easy and light work, and my customer can't get their act together. I basically take new tweak specs every week when they can manage to meet and agree on what to do next and each week it pushes me out another week. It's rather expensive for them - rather like the commander who is too busy fighting the enemy to understand the complexities of the weapon that would wipe them out in a day - it's all done rather piecemeal. I don't feel bad. It's not often that I have assignments where I can say 'sure beats working'.

On the other hand I've got two colossal books on my plate. Actually six. The first is Terror and Consent, which I've put down for a week or so to concentrate on my economic studies. Everybody agrees that T&C is brilliant and dense. The second is a generic encyclopedia of economics, or rather I should say 'concise' at 600 pages. I haven't read any of it yet. What's front and center is Snowball, the biography of Warren Buffett. I've only begun and gotten about 60 pages in, and it's one of those books where you get mad when people disturb you in your reading. I want to say 'shutup' this is Warren Buffett. If I am sufficiently impressed with Buffett, I mean to the point of real transformation, then I may head to the sticks. Real estate is really dropping around here and there's a good chance that by this time next year I could walk into one fine piece of beach-y property. Somewhere on the net there's the story of a house in Santa Monica that was appraised at 1.4million this summer which is now priced at half that. There's a part of me that has never trusted California real estate... Anyway. I ingest Buffett, I'll get back to everyone on that.

The other three are Java books. I've got Eclipse and I have determined that Perl and ksh are not going to be sufficient for the rest of my technical life. So I'm on a five year quest to master Java - something I probably have started and stopped at least three times previously, once as far back as 97. Not to mention Ruby and Delphi.

I've been thinking about parallelizing in-memory resident Essbase partitions. If the partitioning area of the software is reasonably efficient, that would be extra cool in grid-ifying the technical mainstay of my career. There's something of an internal project to make it happen on EC2, which should be something of a no-brainer, but still. Grid multidimensional architecture is a cool enough concept to make me go deep technically again - not that there are 10 people in the world who'd buy it.

The context of my career is thinking about how I get to Bain, or some likely joint. I remember how Arbor, my old company, used the design expertise of FrogDesign. I've been thinking about how to get to the top level - state of the art in any field - I mean the super high end. I've been close, but I've always expected to go big. Maybe it doesn't always go big. Hard for me to read. If I lived in the sticks, I probably wouldn't care how big, but I'm running a high-octane household in the big city. It's just that I'm realizing, rather Dean Kamen-wise, that there are possibilities of doing the ultimate in a disconnected, yet sustainable setting.

I'm really ready for this election to be over. I'm sick of thinking about it and I will be so glad when everyone is. People are too feverish and it obscures the big picture. It's nice to be considered, and I do get lots of offers from lots of people to do lots of things, which I would if I didn't have to work, but I'm at maximum output as it is.

I really have to get rid of a lot of extra weight, and so for the past few weeks I have been seriously considering using chemicals. I hate the idea. Quite frankly I'd feel more comfortable with liposuction, though I'm hardly a candidate. So I'm going to grab some appetite suppressants and continue with my high liquid discipline. Today I am 216.

Speaking of frugality, I have rediscovered REI. I remember the last pair of brownshoes I had when I lived in ATL. Now is the time to buy a pair of 3 year shoes.

Everybody is calling to tell me that Colin Powell has endorsed Barack Obama. There is almost certainly a time where I would have said that I would find it difficult to be against Obama if Powell was for him. So right about now I'm feeling rather ill about the whole thing. More ill than usual.

One thing I am going to do is put together some video for the Purple States project. What's rather interesting to me is the extent to which a class of Americans (not in economic class terms, but just a specific group with certain attributes) are going to ride through this downturn without much change. They are the people who are prepared - those who have been living smartly. And I wonder how many are actually working for Obama out of a genuine appreciation of his novelty. As I said, anyone of sufficient means can hedge his way through 8 years of Obamahood and the smart person would anyway, but how many are throwing the lever like a monkey wrench? In Powell's text he talks about 'the tone' of McCain's campaign... it makes me say 'ick'.

Anyway, the song in my head now is 'Sittin on the Dock of the Bay'.

Look like nothing's gonna change Everything still remains the same I can't do what ten people tell me to do So I guess I'll remain the same, yes

Sittin' here resting my bones
And this loneliness won't leave me alone
It's two thousand miles I roamed
Just to make this dock my home

My agenda remains the same. I will watch the tide roll in and watch it roll away again.

Et Tu, Colin?

I'm going to be sitting on the dock of the bay watching the tide roll away.

I'm also troubled by, not what Senator McCain says, but what members of the party say. And it is permitted to be said such things as, "Well, you know that Mr. Obama is a Muslim." Well, the correct answer is, he is not a Muslim, he's a Christian. He's always been a Christian. But the really right answer is, what if he is? Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country? The answer's no, that's not America. Is there something wrong with some seven-year-old Muslim-American kid believing that he or she could be president? Yet, I have heard senior members of my own party drop the suggestion, "He's a Muslim and he might be associated terrorists." This is not the way we should be doing it in America.

David Brooks is correct, that Obama brings the least amount of experience to the White House in 100 years. So every time somebody I respect (or used to respect) talks about how much they like him, an alarm goes off in my head. That alarm says, boy won't it be nice to have his ear. The Friends of Obama Club is oversubscribed.

The Virtues of Poverty

Philosophically, it is clear that Barack Obama and those who think like him, most of them too ignorant or too disingenuous to identify their socialist roots, feel that the government should do for those who have the least - as identified by their income. There are a number of problems I have with this I'd like to bring forth.

I'm Not Going To Disneyland
As EC has just argued, the necessary inefficiency of transferring tax credits from the wealthy to the masses can be a reasonable response by the government to the treason of greed of rich elites. As the first point, I'd like to bring up the old story of how money changes people, or not. Now clearly Obama's tax plan is a great deal more dramatic to the average rich guy than to the average guy. There's a lot that can be done with 100k and not much that can be done with 1k. If I'm at the top I'm likely to pay 100k more in Obama tax and the guy at the bottom will get 1k for free. But let's imagine it were the big giveaway like the email that goes around - if we took the 700B from the Paulson plan and distributed it in 500k chunks to every household in America. What would change then?

How many bankers, doctors, attorneys and scientists do you think would quit their jobs and go to Disneyland? How many postmen, cops, telephone technicians? How many social workers, physical therapists, dieticians and paralegals? How many cashiers, cabbies, bus drivers, doormen? How many movers, gardeners, trashmen and janitors?

I Want My Five Percent
In Andrew Hacker's book Money, he says that the happiest people are people who get their five percent. That according to his survey, the desires of most people are about five percent out of reach and that if they could have what they really wanted, few people ask for more than 20%. It's only after they have gotten their five percent more can they see their way to wanting more. This is very much like the reverse of the boiling frog effect on aspirations. People are very sensitive to what they get and to what they lose. After a while they adjust. Note that this observation is strongly related to the first one.

Coupons and Buses
Yesterday I spent the afternoon with my two daughters and we went driving around the city in my large luxury sedan. Somewhere on Fairfax we noticed some people running for the bus and then again on 3rd Street people were lined up on the curb peering anxiously into traffic and then at their watches waiting for the next bus. I mentioned how much I hated taking the bus when I was young. I began when I was in the 7th grade. My daughters have never taken the bus regularly. But even when I was too poor and/or young to own a car, I never clipped coupons and my mother rarely did, although we did save trading stamps.

I've always thought of the ability to tough it out because of having less money as a virtue. But isn't it more merely a necessity? It's not that you aren't smart enough to learn how to cook Bernaise sauce, it's that you can't afford the ingredients and the cookware. So Bernaise is not important to you - you eat chicken noodle soup. It's not that you can't appreciate the smooth ride of a Cadillac, but that you must take the bus. It's not that you see the value of wearing cheap clothing, buying cheap groceries, living in a cheap neighborhood, it is that you're smart enough to know that you must.

Questions
So if you are a man of modest means, does living within your means make you more moral than the affluent man who lives within his means? What does that say about one's ambitions to make more money?
Don't deprivations make one stronger? Don't luxuries make one weaker? Does frugality born of necessity make one moral? What about voluntary frugality, is that a virtue? Is the poor man less justified in stealing or more justified? Is charity from a poor man more precious than charity from a rich man?

Should any of this be relative, or must it all be absolute?

Mercenaries 2

The moment I sat down for the first time and played Mercenaries 2, I could swear that I had been on that beach before. The very first level, still in tutorial mode reminded me of a very early pirates game. Even as I was moving forward up the beach into the interior of this island, I'm thinking is this some kind of joke? Have they recycled an old videogame?

The thing that makes Mercenaries 2 feel like that is that it can be pretty clunky. I tend to like very fine control of my drivers and shooters, and of course since I'm an old Virtua Fighter guy, that holds true for my fighting as well. Since I can do all three of these, ok well it's just a melee button, I want it to be better than it is. Furthermore this is a big grainy looking environment. Nothing is anywhere near as crisp and clean as PGR or any Tom Clancy Title. So I'm starting to yawn, but I keep playing. It helps that I've racked up 200 points in achievements without having put in many hours at all.

Soon I realize that I've been playing it a lot longer than Army of Two, something that didn't last long on my box at all, and Army of Two was a lot more precise that M2. Soon, I'm realizing that I kinda like this game because I'm starting to see how big the environment is. It's very, very big. I mean it's about as big as Burnout Paradise and just as seamless. OK I'm starting to get it. It doesn't hurt that I rather dig the black guy avatar.

Then I realize that I can jack cars and motorcycles like in GTA. It's not as smooth but OK. Now I'm starting to actually really dig the game for all its simplicity and grainyness, there's a hell of a lot to do. Then after about three days of playing it, finally I realize something that I hadn't really noticed. Almost every damned thing is destructable. Here I am playing with a kind of tactical and clinical precision, even with this monster jumping car called Cacharro de Muerte, and I've failed to realize... Well I failed to realize until I got my hands on a tank.

So I've got this this tank and I'm in this little fishing village on the island across the channel from the Jamaican pirates.. and I realize what I've just said as I'm swinging the turret around having blown up half a dozen corrugated steel shacks. Then just for the hell of it I aim the big gun at a building. Boom! Wow. I gotta get one of these things in one of the cities!

I haven't yet, but I have gotten myself some bunker busters and a lot of C4. There's nothing quite as cool as sticking a pack of C4 on a small building that contains guys annoying you with RPGs are hanging out in. Well, actually putting together a several semi-wrecked jeeps in the middle of an intersection and dropping a grenade on them and watching the cascading explosions. Then again calling in an artillery barrage against a five story building and watching the whole thing collapse is pretty cool too.

There was another game which was somewhat similar to this one, where you're a commander and you could call in a bunch of supplies to be dropped on your locale. It was a lot more squaddy than this one; in M2 you're pretty incredibly indestructable. A one man wrecking crew. I've walked away from exploded fuel depots and swam a quarter mile in 30 seconds, but there are still some pretty hairy challenges.

M2 has a very high brainless fun factor but also calls for a bit of thinking. I think I'm going to hang onto this one and play it all the way through. Coop is pretty stupid, rather like coop on Too Human. Hey I've been playing Too Human did I tell you? Another time..

100 Economists for McCain

I never go to the candidates websites for updates on what's going on. Perhaps I should have. I mentioned that The Economist had a survey saying economists like Obama. But here they have actually signed their names to a statement which reads as follows:

We enthusiastically support John McCain's economic plan. It is a comprehensive, pro-growth, reform agenda. The reform focuses on the real economic problems Americans face today and will face in the future. And it builds on the core economic principles that have made America great.

His plan would control government spending by vetoing every bill with earmarks, implementing a constitutionally valid line-item veto, pausing non-military discretionary government spending programs for one year to stop their explosive growth and place accountability on federal government agencies.

His plan would keep taxes from rising, because higher tax rates are exactly the wrong policy to restore economic growth, especially at this time.

His plan would reduce tax rates by cutting the tax that corporations pay to 25 percent in line with other countries, by completely phasing out the alternative minimum tax, by increasing the exemption for dependents, by permitting the first-year expensing of new equipment and technology, and by making permanent a reformed tax credit for R&D.

His plan would also create a new and much simpler tax system and give Americans a free choice of whether to pay taxes under that simple system or the current complex and burdensome income tax.

His plan would open new markets for American goods and services and thereby create additional jobs for Americans by supporting good free trade agreements, such as the one with Colombia, and working with leaders around the world to avoid isolationism and protectionism. His plan would also reform education, retraining, and other assistance programs so they better help those displaced by trade and other changes in the economy. His plan addresses problems in the financial markets and housing markets by calling for increased transparency and accountability, by targeted assistance to deserving homeowners to refinance their mortgages, and by opposing so-called reform plans which would raise the costs of home-ownership in the future.

The above actions, as well as plans to address entitlement programs -- especially Social Security, Medicare and other government health care programs -- and his regulatory reforms -- especially in the area of health care -- constitute a broad and powerful economic agenda. Because of John McCain's experience working with the American people in all walks of life, with members of Congress on both sides of the aisle, and with leaders around the world, we are optimistic that these plans will become a reality and will create jobs and restore confidence and strong economic growth.

I shouldn't be late on stuff like this.

Tytler's Warning

A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been 200 years.

Great nations rise and fall. The people go from bondage to spiritual truth, to great courage, from courage to liberty, from liberty to abundance, from abundance to selfishness, from selfishness to complacency, from complacency to apathy, from apathy to dependence, from dependence back again to bondage.

These are words that come to mind as first principles in consideration of the chaotic times we are now engaged with regarding the financial crisis and the tax plans of the current candidates for President of the US. It turns out that attribution of this wisdom is a matter of some controversy and dispute. The best bit of research I have been able to quickly find is here. And I have made a PDF of that page, just in case it disappears from view at some point.

Download the_truth_about_tytler.pdf

Then again, all of Cobb could disappear from view and then what would we have? We would have a new population of blind leading more naifs blindly without the benefit of historical wisdom. I heard on the radio this morning that there are some people in our country who tried to get voting rights to 15 year olds - they would get half a vote. I don't need to tell you that I am Old School and the idea strikes me as preposterous, but then again, it was only a week ago that I got an email off the Kwaku Network that suggested quite seriously that we use 700B not to rescue the American banking system but to send directly to us. It went a little something like this:

A Sensible Economic Recovery Plan

I'm against the $85,000,000,000.00 bailout of AIG.
Instead, I'm in favor of giving $85,000,000,000 to America in a 'We Deserve it Dividend'.
To make the math simple, let's assume there are 200,000,000 bona fide U.S. Citizens 18+.
Our population is about 301,000,000 +/- counting every man, woman and child. So 200,000,000 might be a fair stab at adults 18 and up..
So divide 200 million adults 18+ into $85 billon that equals $425,000.00.

You get the picture. And so I responded simply.

A party that lasts a year. Who is going to clean up the mess? Or put it another way, why send your kid to college, just give him the cash instead. It's down payment on a house - he could move in with his girlfriend next week.

The guy who sent me the 'plan' understood immediately. I hope more of us do than don't.

Brooks & Conservatism

To me the most important thing about conservatism then and conservatism now was not Ronald Reagan frankly, it was not politicians, it was a body of ideas. And to me the core principle underlying the libertarians and the conservatives is the principle of epistemological modesty. There are limits to what we can know and understand. The world is simply too complex to plan, too complex to think we can understand it. So we have to respect the institutions that have grown up and stood the test of time. We have to respect the truths that have evolved over the centuries and have been learned and passed down to us. And I think that principle which is the principle of Edmund Burke and Michael Oakeshott and others is the essence of everything conservatives do.
-- David Brooks

Break your neck and listen to this piece by David Brooks.

Hilarious. Insightful.

This is one of those moments where I get a bit frustrated and angry because I have had to take a whole hell of a lot of time figuring out how my own thinking has evolved to come to these same conclusions. I might have been introduced to Michael Oakeshott a long time ago and saved a lot of time.

A Stupid Question about Obama's Health Care

I have a stupid question that only occurred to me this morning. I was considering the differences between Obama's health care program and McCain's non-program. I say McCain's is a non-program because he doesn't appear to create any government insurance, whereas Obama would, presumably create one.

Obama says that he offers a choice. That the ordinary insured American pays about 12k annually for health insurance. McCain says we pay 5.8k. Big difference, but leave that aside for a moment. If you like your current health care program, says Obama, you can keep it. Or you can take his program. So what does the Obama program cost and how much do I have to come out of my pocket for it? That's the stupid question: Isn't Obama's health care program free?

The implications are kind of obvious to me. If I can get free health care, why would I want to pay for any at all? How can a free health care program co-exist with one that presumably cost 12k, or even 5.8k? There are a lot of implications here, but I'll leave it to a camel-nose-in-the-tent metaphor for short. It's clear that Obama has it in for the insurance industry, a free government health insurance program seems like an obvious way to put them out of business.

The other stupid question is, of course, how long will it take the free public program to be as good as the private one? If the goal is to say "We insure everybody in America, no matter what.", then it never has to be as good.

Frugal Is The New Black

I'm going to enjoy changing my lifestyle over the next 18 months as the economy goes south. Why? Because I was always one of those people who wondered how the hell anybody could make money with a Jamaba Juice franchise. And of course I resent those people who do, slightly. Now they're going to be out on the street and the buildings they occupy are going to be converted into eBay intermediaries, because everybody is going to have yard sales to raise cash. Maybe.

Yesterday's economic lesson was that we should expect GDP growth to be down to 2% from 4% and nothing opens up until this time next year when the unemployment target for Deutche Bank is about 7.4%. Sounds like 2003. Well 2003 was a horrid year for me when I was the brokest I've been since college - I ended up doing some housepainting to keep things alive. All props to Greg M, thanks for the work brother. I'm still not resentful of the Jamba-preneurs to make the tax code punitively progressive, as Mr. Obama would. I find it highly disrespectful at best. All that said, what goes around comes around and we don't need any assistance in bringing the mighty low, the economy does that in its cycles and unpredictability, and quite frankly you never know when you need somebody with wealth. Seems to me these are just those times. But I digress.

Apparently something around 70% of GDP is consumer spending. It's rather astounding when you think of it. 17% is investment and 19% is government spending according to the Hoover Institute (Net Exports are -6%) In this economy, it's an open question as to how long 70% is going to be consistent going forward. Tom Keene was asking if we dip two or three points on that figure. Yeah I can cut back. In fact I ought to think about how I spend my moola a bit closer. How can I save more, cut my spending and increase my savings?

I've been increasing my savings and staying out of the market all year. That has been my plan, as well as to get the job that I now have. So far everything has worked out very well. Because I've working on the broad strokes, I haven't focused on the details so much, but now it's time to get out ahead of that and deal with the short game. That means more WalMart and less Target. That means more home cooked meals and less Panda Express. And in those home meals, it means a higher percentage of soup and sandwiches. It means fewer first run movies and fewer DVDs. It means more exercise and fewer new clothes. It also may mean that I swap out the Transporter for some more pedestrian transportation, which interestingly might mean a Hummer, because those badboys are selling pretty cheap right now. I've got to make that change soon before people realize that oil is at a 13 month low, around 75 bucks a barrel.

What are you doing to tighten the belt?

People Are Stupid

This was one of the last DiTech commercials ever on TV, and I wouldn't be surprised if you see it erased from YouTube over time. There was a time, not too long ago when you couldn't watch TV or listen to the radio without these annoying Ditech commercials telling you that you could get a loan or refinance your home in 15 minutes. Do you remember this guy? Of course you do. He's the guy that was supposed to represent a boring conservative bank loan officer who couldn't get you the kind of loan that Ditech could get you. Fat chance seeing him on TV any more. Who is making fun of conservative banks now, eh?

Is Ditech a bank? No. Is Ditech a savings and loan? No. Then how did they manage to get into the business of selling mortgages? Hmmm. Maybe because they knew people are stupid.

Fiscal Fact #132

The above chart captures the essence of what I've been talking about without the benefit of numbers. I don't know what took me so long to do the math. Anyway I'm going to excerpt a big chunk of text from the The Tax Foundation:

To put the Obama plan in context, it is important to understand how divided America's tax burden already is between a large group of Americans who pay little or nothing and a shrinking group of upper-income taxpayers who shoulder the lion's share of the burden. For example:

    * In 1999, about 30 million tax filers had no income tax liability after taking advantage of their credits and deductions. By 2006, the number of non-payers had grown to nearly 44 million, one-third of all income tax filers.
    * According to the Congressional Budget Office, in 2005, the top 20 percent of households paid 86.3 percent of income taxes while the bottom 80 percent paid a collective 13.7 percent of the income tax burden. The top 1 percent of households paid 38.8 percent of income taxes.
    * Looking at all federal taxes, in 1990, the bottom 80 percent of households paid 42 percent of the tax burden while the top 1 percent of households paid about 16 percent. By 2005, the share of all federal taxes paid by the bottom 80 percent of households had fallen to 31 percent, while the share paid by the wealthiest households had risen to nearly 28 percent.
    * A recent Tax Foundation study found that in 2004, the nation's tax and spending policies redistributed more than $1 trillion in income from the top 40 percent of American households to the bottom 60 percent of households.

Ouch. I've been looking for some facts to support rhetoric 'soak the rich', but it turns out to be worse than I thought. Not that I'm so rich that I'm going to get soaked, but this is just punitive.

Freakonomic Tax Numbers

Here are some interesting charts. I'm going to show the one I think is most neutral. This is what all the quacking is about.

Kwack, Quack, Cuaq

Obama: Master Debater

You have got to give this debate to Obama on points. What points mean on the whole is basically nothing, but we have to write something don't we?

Basically here's what happened. McCain came out spluttering like a clumsy brawler just trying to make the knockout blow, and Obama just boxed him two inches short of submission. Fifteen minutes in it almost looked like a TKO. And then on the question of negative campaigning McCain just stunned Obama with a neck-snapping reference to the biggest spending in history, the John Lewis statement, the broken promise on public funding and the failure to meet in many town halls. I say it was a knockdown with a standing 8 count, and suddenly it was all evened up.

After that they traded blows more or less evenly, got into some stupid clinches over South American free trade, disagreements over the average size of a health care premium and some other piddly stuff on vouchers vs charter schools. All the way out from there, McCain showed that he could throw a few uppercuts but Obama just rolled with the punches. Obama was able to get in a flurry of sweet looking jabs and even a dilly of a counterpunch on Joe the Plumber, but none of them knocked McCain over. Basically no more standing 8 counts, and certainly no knockout.

I think Obama showed a lot of class and did a commendable job of parrying a lot of old baggage that Right talkers have been yelping about. McCain threw the Ayers stuff out there with about as much tact as could be done, and tried to knock over Obama with an acorn. No such luck. McCain had some very clean hooks on the manner of judicial appointments and litmus tests. McCain also defended Palin admirably where Obama started stumbling into a neanderthal swing on her. McCain counterpunched well on Biden vis a vis, I think the word was 'cockamamie' foreign policy on the partition of Iraq. But in every other clash, the edge goes to Obama, just on style points - which count for plenty in a debate.

In the end, Obama had a much more elegant fight, he was able, slightly more than McCain get in words edgewise when he managed to change the subject. He's nowhere near as good at deflection and redirection as Hillary Clinton, but it sounds a lot more refreshingly honest. I got the feeling that Obama could be hurt but that when McCain lands his bombs he's not fast enough to do significant damage and Obama always recovers nicely.

So I wouldn't really expect this to be a split decision, rather a unanimous decision for Obama for getting two points up in a couple of the early rounds on the economy, and then trading rather evenly after the knockdown on dirty campaigning.

Speaking of the economy, I don't think either of them get it. Both of them promising to save mortgage-holders without even commenting on what TARP has actually done, how Bernanke is operating and why stabilization of the biggest financial institutions is most important was just awful. But McCain repeating himself on 'Americans are angry, and rightfully so' was just pathetic. Obama's namedropping of Warren Buffett, now for the second time, when everybody knows Buffett's not going to take any position in government was just silly. Aside from that, Buffett's an investor more than anything and I don't think he's going to do much more than profit from this historic low.

Both of them sounded exactly like Senators when it comes to putting budget cuts in perspective. Speaking of which Obama's antipathy for insurance companies was made pretty plain this evening which is pretty dumb considering the name dropping. But 15Billion of insurance subsidies gone? So what? And McCain talking about 6Billion on something else, whatever. This is not a tens of billions of dollars game gentlemen. Similarly their talking points on alternative energy continue to act as if solar + geothermal + wind + tidal power > .05 * oil. It ain't. But at least McCain did make the distinction on 'foreign oil' vs ME + Venezuelan oil.

Obama would have been a lot more respectable from my perspective if he would have uttered the dread phrase 'CAFE standards'. We all knew what he was talking about when he was talking about the energy efficient cars of the future. But that whole thing sounds goofy because it doesn't seem to me that he can force American manufacturers to built this hot new car and increase American product market share if he doesn't impose tarriffs on the Germans, Japanese and S. Koreans. Not like GM or Ford could afford it anyway.

McCain's spending freeze hatchet sounds nice, but Obama is probably right when he says it'll never happen. It's hard to see how McCain can steamroll Congress into doing that without getting a bunch of weasels under the fence, not with Pelosi in charge. Better to ask Newt Gingrich.

That's about all there is to say. Obama wins the debate on style points. On substance, neither one of them was particularly informative. On the whole, McCain lost because he's not fast enough on his feet to beat Obama down, and couldn't put together an effective combination. The Conservative argument that could have and should have won the fight was something,again, I think only Mitt Romney could have delivered and that was all about the reasonableness of even a 'pay as you go' plan of balanced spending that increases the size of the Federal budget during this recession. If you could go back and remix McCain, and put all of his combos together, he could have won the debate. But you can't, and he lost it.

Obama is tonight's master debator. (Snicker!)