Is Obama Trying to Steal the Nomination?

I'm sure no on on the Rules and Bylaws Committee of the Democratic National Convention will read this, but it's been on my mind lately.

I don't see why there is a problem with Florida or Michigan.

Either don't count them, hold another primary, or count them as they are, exactly, without trying to guess what would have happened if Obama's name were on the ballot.

Because once you start asking what the voters would have done if such and such hypothetical event were the case, there is no end to the questions that inexorably arise. If the candidates were on the ballots, there would have been more campaigning in Florida and Michigan. How would that have affected the result? Since even messianic candidates can't be in two places at once, there would then have been less time in the other States. But which other States? Given the amount of strategizing that goes into campaign resource allocation, it's not clear at all that resources would have come from the other States equally.

In fact, the question is wholly dependent on when the primaries would have taken place. With Florida and Michigan coming up, would candidate Obama have spent as much effort on tiny Iowa or New Hampshire?

And with the results of Florida and Michigan in hand, the candidates almost certainly would have approached the rest of the primary season differently, in terms of fundraising, advertising, and campaign emphasis.

And what if the States had not moved their primaries forward to January, but had moved them to February, or simply had left them as they were? When you start retroactively guessing what would have happened, there's no convenient stopping place.

Divvying up the delegates without regard to how the voters in Florida and Michigan actually voted is a grave injustice. Granted, it fits with the Democratic Party's practice of the use of superdelegates to ignore the will of the rank and file, but it's just not right.

Barack Obama didn't put his name on the ballot in Michigan, and took it off the ballot in Florida. He didn't have to do that. It was a political calculation with the intent of allying himself with Howard Dean, and against the people of Michigan and Florida. For him to now demand the support of those people is hypocrisy. He didn't want their votes before, but they're good enough for him now.

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Bumper Sticker

I saw this today:

Welfare should be as hard to get as a builiding permit.

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Barack Obama is a Fake

And he's not even a good liar. A good liar keeps his story the same. It's much simpler that way, Barry, because you only have to keep track of two realities, not two for every version of the story. By the way, when you don't make stuff up at all it's even easier, as there's only need to keep track of the reality the rest of us inhabit.

Despite what the Obama campaign is saying, none of the men in Barack Obama's family tree, not Barack Obama's great uncle (his grandmother's brother), his grandfather, nor his grandfather's brother were in the 89th Infantry, General Patton's Division that liberated Buchenwald.

Stanley A. Dunham, Obama's grandfather, enlisted in the Army on 18 January 1942, but is not listed as being part of the 89th Infantry Division.

Ralph Emerson Dunham was inducted (that is, drafted) into the Army on 11 September 1942, but likewise did not end up in the 89th Infantry Division.

Charles W. Payne is not listed in the WWII Kansas veterans (nor in the 89th).

So not only did Obama micturate all over the memory of a veteran on Memorial Day, revealing (or at least saying) that "he just went up into the attic and he didn't leave the house for six months" after the war, but either Obama was misled about, he invented, or all evidence has disappeared for his family's involvment in liberating the Nazi concentration camps.

Given that Obama didn't know that the Soviet Red Army had liberated Auschwitz and that no one had liberated Treblinka, it seems likely that he made up the whole thing, thinking no one would check. We'll be waiting for the evidence to appear, typed up dutifully in Times New Roman.

(w/t streiff)

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My Take on Today.

AoSHQ comments on Politico's breathless exclusive story that Scott McClellan, the worst Press Secretary in the history of press secretaries, got canned and wrote a book. [Stifles yawn] Scott, you're not going to be on McCain's staff. You might be on Obama's, but then he won't be President. Americans can see through a fraud. But hey, you got it published.

Wonkette is prepared to underwhelmed at the protest this Saturday at the Democratic National Convention's Rules and Bylaws committee meeting. They're going to decide the fate of the Florida and Michigan delegations.

After all of the rancor and high dudgeon over the 2000 election, culminating most recently in HBO's Recount, one would think the Party of Kennedy and Gore would be a touch more sensitive to the appearance of counting people's votes. Not that the votes of individuals in Florida and Michigan matter in the slightest, since it's the Democratic Party superdelegates who will decide the nominee.

But seating the Florida and Michigan superdelegates could alter the balance, allowing Hillary to continue to press her case forward. After all, it's not even June. Anything can happen.

Josh Marshal at Talking Points Memo is simply beside himself with righteous indignation: According to MSNBC, McCain economic advisor Phil Gramm was a registered lobbyist for UBS, a big Swiss bank. He was also a vice president of the bank. Oh, the scandal of getting someone as your economic advisor who actually worked in the economy.

Rachel Lucas (w/t Classical Values) can't count how many

... conservatives are so tired of getting “poked in the eye” and “stabbed in the back” that they’re gonna take their “principles” all the way to nowhere on Election Day...

Oh, and Global Warming is still teh whack.

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Back to Work

Iowahawk hosts another Dear Barry advice column. In this installment, we find Very Barry advice on getting along with the neighbors, how to hide your lifestyle from your sweetheart, and what to do when your spouse has the social grace of a gnu.

Frank J welcomes us back from Memorial Day, and reports success and glory found in punching some hippies. Catching up on the Hillary-Barack race, he compliments Hillary on the excellent restraint she showed in not making a direct death threat against Senator Obama. One has to admire skill where he finds it. Not to dwell on the negative, Frank then rejoices about the wonderful things we get with a McCain campaign.

Ace of Spades notes that Senator Obama claimed his uncle helped liberate Auschwitz. The problem is, of course, that Auschwitz was liberated by the Soviets. And we also know that Obama's mother was an only child. Therefore, the only Obama uncle who could have helped liberate Auschwitz (or anywhere else) was his father's brother. But Kenya didn't fight in WWII. Perhaps Obama meant his grandfather, who apparently served under Patton in the war. Patton liberated Buchenwald. But no one's ever heard of Buchenwald, so let's just say Auschwitz.

[Update 5:50PM: it was his mother's uncle, his great-uncle, who served under Patton, and that's of whom he was speaking. ]

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Global Warming is a Hoax

It's not any warmer than it was 10 years ago.

A year is weather.

Ten years is evidence.

And if reality contradicts the model, then the model is wrong.

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Megagaff

I've been highly entertained by the Democratic primary over the past several months. Not caring a whit about political correctness, I've found the charges of racism and sexism to be great fun. But Hillary crossed a line.

She may not have meant to cross it, but cross it she did. It's a line we all have been aware of, even alluded to by Michelle Obama in her gas station quote. And I've been dreading what would happen if some (especially right-wing) kook crossed the line. I never imagined that the allegedly astute Hillary Clinton would give this as a reason not to drop out:

"My husband did not wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary somewhere in the middle of June, right? We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California. I don't understand it,"

It's OK to talk about the significance of assassination, and assassination attempts, as they relate to American history. As Memorial Day approaches we do well to remember Lincoln, the Kennedys, King, and others.

I know it's a little late to be warned about this, Senator Clinton, but you don't mention assassination in a hypothetical context. Not on a blog. Not in the newspaper. Not being interviewed on television. And certainly not when you're a candidate for office.

As a TPM blogger puts it:

Ted Kennedy is fighting for his life and she has the lack of judgment to invoke RFK's assasination to make a political point-- a point which also injects the idea of killing a presidential nominee. Do not even attempt to spin this for me. It's not gonna work.

This is a melt down. Things are out of control at her campaign. I think with this remark, she's taken herself out of contention for VP. Not just because I'm angry, but because she's too out of control to ever be President.

And having done so, you don't then try to put yourself in a position that would be benefit from an assassination.

I don't know if this dooms Hillary's campaign or her chances to be Obama's running mate, but it certainly doesn't help. It's hard to think of anything she could have said that would have been more divisive.

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Where Obama Gets His Ideas

Reading Fareed Zakaria's The Post-American World. Zakaria is a Yale alum with a Harvard PhD. From Zakaria's site for the book:

Zakaria describes with equal prescience a world in which the United States will no longer dominate the global economy, orchestrate geopolitics, or overwhelm cultures. He sees the "rise of the rest"—the growth of countries like China, India, Brazil, Russia, and many others—as the great story of our time, and one that will reshape the world.

Of note is this magazine interview (pdf).


In an upcoming article for Newsweek, Who is the Real Appeaser?, Zakaria slams President Bush for not talking to Hezbollah. I don't like his logic, but a thorough analysis will have to wait.

w/t Instapundit (via an AoSHQ comment)

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In Theaters This Fall

Here is a movie trailer, like many others you'll see. Yet another Harrison Ford movie about the White House.

The problem with movie trailers is that like this one, they seem all nice and uncontroversial. All light and airy, somewhere between a romantic comedy and a Disney "Wacky Kid Detective" flick. Then you watch it, and they hit you over the head with their political message.

Do you think this one would be political? Because I hate that, and you can never tell from the trailer.

w/t Simon at Classical Values

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House Votes Greater Dependence on OPEC

oh no, i am not making this stuff up

According to shortnews.com (which links to a Reuters story at yahoo):

The U.S. House of Representatives passed in a landslide legislation that would allow the Justice Department to sue OPEC for cooperating to set high oil prices and limiting supply, but President Bush said he will veto the bill.

The bill would attempt to subject OPEC to U.S. antitrust laws and would include Saudi Arabia, Iran and Venezuela. The vote margin, 324-84, is large enough to override a presidential veto, which was threatened in fear of retaliation by OPEC.

This attempt by Congress to extend our antitrust laws to cover an organization made up of other sovereign nations is wrong-headed for several reasons, some obvious and some not.

OPEC, as known to everyone not a member of the House of Representatives, stands for the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. These countries, not being part of the United States, are not required to recognize our laws or courts.

However, the bill would leverage regulation of foreign-owned oil refinery and transport properties in the U.S to get cooperation from the individual OPEC nations, such as Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Venezuela.

The entire stated purpose of OPEC is to cooperate to set high oil prices and limit supply. Congress may as well say that the United States has authority over the treaties other nations may make with one another, or over the legal systems of any country doing business in the United States.

And their price-fixing scheme is not totally effective. The price of oil is set by the international oil market: sellers try to find the buyer willing to pay the highest price, and buyers try to find the cheapest source. OPEC is simply one group of sellers in the international oil market. The way to get them to lower their price is to buy from a less expensive source.

Another group of sellers is U.S. domestic oil producers. If Congress wishes to increase supply, it can allow domestic producers to drill for oil in places which are already known to have oil, such as the continental shelf off our own coasts and in Alaska.

But rather than stand up to the environmental lobby, Congressional Democrats would encourage OPEC to increase its supply, thereby increasing our dependence on foreign oil.

There is no rule or law that says an OPEC country must produce a single drop of oil. The only thing keeping them producing oil is the international market price. You can't sue someone into selling you something at your price.

What's next: legislating that pi henceforth will be equal to 3.0? Perhaps instead the Congress would like to ensure that the oil fields in Saudia Arabia meet OSHA requirements, or those in Kenya aren't harming the sensitive East African environment.

And if OPEC decides to retaliate against Congressional arrogance, they can turn off the spigot, or merely lower their output even further. That would be a minor inconvenience for them, and the consequences for us would be disastrous.

But perhaps the Democrats in Congress know that already, and believe they can blame President Bush for the economic depression that would follow their attempt to extend our laws to the whole world.

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Best Wishes for the Senator

When a political opponent suffers a personal crisis, especially one of health, we have a choice to make. When that opponent has been a powerful foe, strident and even demagogic at times, it's tempting to express pleasure. I, of course, am not above such low sentiments. I wish that I were, but it's one area where my humanity makes me appear inhuman.

But now it appears that Senator Edward "Ted" Kennedy has not suffered a stroke, but a seisure brought on by a malignant brain tumor.

Those saying "It couldn't happen to a nicer guy" or "Serves him right for doing X for Y years" need only know that they, too, will have an end, leaving behind people who love them.

My own father and I disagreed politically. He was a lot more liberal than I am, and an atheist. He contracted cancer and died after a long illness. Our disagreement on politics and religion didn't harm our relationship, as far as I know, and in his later years we would have discussions that we could not have had without our differences.

He was a good man, and Senator Kennedy reminds me of him. Dad was a hearty drinker, and never lost his small-town ways. Arrogant and something of an intellectual snob, he regularly bent over backwards to help those less fortunate than himself.

Though I think his policies are misguided, Senator Kennedy is at least genuine, and believes in what he professes. In a government full of windsocks, that is something to respect.

Now, those rejoicing over the Senator's pain may be convinced that they themselves are better people than he, and so are more deserving of health and life. Then surely their own loved ones will be all the more disappointed when those now rejoicing do themselves begin the universal struggle at the end of life.

For those who love us do not necessarily agree with us. Senator Kennedy may be loved by people who agree with you in every detail except for their affection for him. And you rejoice when they are stung by the news of his illness.

If you cannot think of those affected by his eventual passing, of which this hospitalization is a stark reminder, think of those who will be affected by your own. Who will weep? Who will miss your patronage?

If no one springs to mind, then I wonder who indeed has the better of whom?

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I Wanna Be a 'Raqstar.

Mike the Marine hits the target, capturing both the war-weary homesick irony and determined ass-kicking awesomeness that is the American fighting man. Click the title.
w/t Harvey.

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Obama Campaign Still Claims It Will Beat McCain

According to the front page at the official campaign web site, "Obama will beat McCain". Clicking on that link brings up this (screenshot):

"In the past two weeks, seven different organizations have polled the races and on average Obama beats McCain by 3.2%, while Clinton loses to McCain by 2%. Not a single [poll] has Clinton doing as well as Obama."

Tne New Republic, Feb 9, 2008

Of course, that was before anyone knew who Obama really was. After the Jeremiah Wright debacle, things have Changed. Perhaps they Hoped no one would notice.

Campaign web maintainance leader fired in 3 ... 2 ... 1 ....

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Friday Barry Facts

True Facts about Barack Obama

Barack Obama can light a match with his bare hands.

Barack Obama is so patriotic that he wears an American flag lapel pin.

Barack Obama hates abortion so much that he has never had one.

Barack Obama once smoked ... and that once is now.

Barack Obama can ride an escalator with no hands.

Barack Obama will be the President of all 57 States.

Barack Obama has never had public relations with Jeremiah Wright.

Barack Obama is so fast he can turn off the lights and be in bed before morning.

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Hillary the Independent

With all the radicalization on the left, and moderation on the right, there is plenty of room for a third party.

Hillary would have to swing to the right quite a bit and run as the girl from Winnetka.

She could say, "You know I've always wanted health care for everyone, and now the country wants that, too. But I'm not a moonbat or a troofer. And I voted to go into Iraq, but that job is finished, and we've won! We can bring our troops home and go on fighting terrorists elsewhere in the world."

Hillary would have to choose a man who would be, or appear to be, strong on national defense.

She would have to do some focus group work on the economy, to position herself as being pro-SMALL business. One thing small business people worry about is providing health insurance to themselves and their workers. Hillary could make the argument that the government should do that. On taxes, she could say that she's for what works.

There are a lot of people (not me) who would vote for her. I think a lot of moderately conservative women would like to see a woman president, if she didn't come with all the Demoonibrat baggage.

Veep? Rudy, or Colin Powell.

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Obama: Government as Hand of God

Hot Air has the campaign image of Obama the Christianist, his Kentucky campaign thrust with "Faith. Hope. Change." above a picture of a cross composed of spotlights shining on Obama at the pulpit, as if giving a sermon. The caption reads:

My faith teaches me that I can sit in church and pray all I want, but I won't be fulfilling God's will unless I go out and do God's work.
- Barack Obama

But there are disconnects here:

• Where does Senator Obama, now running for President, occupy a pulpit? He is not supposed to campaign from a pulpit, yet that is what the picture shows him doing
  
  
• From a theological point of view, the statement is simply wrong. God does not always wish us to go out and do; sometimes He wants us to wait for Him to do the doing by some other means than us
  
  
• I thank the Senator for the unsubtle accusation that those who do not vote for him are not real Christians, or are not in God's will
  
  
• Senator Obama may want to do God's work, but that doesn't mean he has the divine authority to conscript the rest of us into doing his

I do not deny Senator Obama his right to his faith, nor to give evidence of that faith by his actions.

I deny him the authority to speak for God.

[Oh, and w/t: FrankJ]
-

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The Race Martyr

The strategy is this: vote Obama, or you are a racist. A key element of that strategy is to focus on the voters, and not the candidate. That is why we will hear, for the next six months, that white rural voters are incurably racist and will not vote for Obama because he is black. But that's the wrong lesson to learn.

Obama's support comes primarily from two groups: academics including college students, and blacks. But it must be noted that it is the liberal academics and liberal blacks who are voting for Obama. He is the most liberal Senator, which this year makes him the most liberal presidential candidate. Academics and blacks lean heavily to the left, hence their support for Obama.

So even though there are few blacks and academics in West Virginia, why was Barack Obama campaigning in Cape Girardeau, Missouri, on the day of the West Virginia primary? The Democratic Party uses a proportional delegate system in most of the States including West Virginia, so that one delegate is as good as another. In the overall delegate count, adding a delegate in WV is the same as adding one in Oregon.

Obama may believe he has the nomination all wrapped up, and that no campaigning is necessary in the remaining primary States and territories. He may not think he needs delegates any more, but only electoral votes, of which West Virginia possesses only a few.

But why leave West Virginia entirely? Either his campaign staff messed up again and scheduled the Cape Girardeau meeting on the wrong day, or he wanted to signal that he was giving up in West Virginia. He didn't really try his hardest, so a 72/28 loss is not so bad.

Which leads us to this Washington Post story in which uncorroborated anecdotes of racism are spun as indicating a racially hostile environment for the Obama campaign. Yet anyone who has gone door-to-door for anything knows that people will slam the door in your face, even if you're giving out rose-scented wads of cold cash. As Bill Dupray at The Patriot Room noted in the Redstate comment on the Post story:

When they print this trash, which is racism against white people, they essentially drag race to the forefront and make folks defend themselves against the unfounded scurrilous charge. It takes the focus of the election off Obama's policies and places it on the voters who want to vote against him. It is not about the voters. It is about the candidates.

But by leaving West Virginia, and sacrificing its few delegates (which he was going to have difficulty winning anyway), Obama and his surrogates in the popular press can spend the next six months pointing to racist whites, implicitly or explicitly asking Americans if they want to be racist like that, or be good non-racists and vote for Obama.

So are white rural voters all racists, and is that the reason they don't vote for Obama? Actually, I think the story ought to be that rural voters are less liberal than urban ones, and while it would be nice enough to have a black president, Obama being black is not enough for rural white voters to choose him. They demand sensible, mainsteam policies, which Obama doesn't provide.

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Obama to Drop Out?

An Iowahawk guest columnist has some advice for Senator Obama.

Nice career you've got there, Barack. Wouldn't want anything to 'appen to it, now would we?

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The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe

John McCain's mane has turned white, but he remains the lion who refused premature release from a Viet Cong prisoner of war camp, at unspeakable personal hardship, to prevent a public relations coup for his captors.


Hillary Clinton speaks of supporting the Democratic nominee in the fall, but is doing everything she can to see what negative emotions for Obama she can evince, fostering a hostile environment in the Dem ranks (or at least, the nutroots).

Barack Obama? He's just voting "Present!", a void with a nice wardrobe.

Just saying.

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Democracy Demands That Hillary Stays In The Race

To hear Obama supporters and the mainstream media (but I repeat myself) talk, Hillary must drop out for the good of the Party, and for the good of the country. If Hillary stays in, John McCain could win and that would be ... bad.

But neither Hillary nor Barack Obama can realistically achieve a majority of pledged delegates unless the other one drops out of the race. The mathematics of that have not changed in several weeks.

Those urging Hillary to concede the nomination to Obama are essentially saying that if one candidate takes a lead, the others should all drop out. They have an understanding of consensus that is different from mine.

The primary system is designed to take into account the wishes of the members of each party, who then go to their respective conventions and hash it all out. There is nothing wrong with not having a nominee going to the convention. Those wanting Hillary to drop out now are afraid that the Party is incapable of doing that hashing without resort to the sort of riots and discord that accompanied the convention of 1968 in Chicago.

No, now they want popular opinion as given by the media and pundits to select the nominee, rather than doing it at the convention. Is the Democratic Party so weak and fractious that it must rely on Tim Russert and Keith Olbermann to make its decisions?

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Still More Facts Emerge on Obama

Barack Obama has never opposed legislation to decriminalize cotton candy.

Barack Obama is not really an Islamic extremist.

Michelle Obama puts on the family pants one leg at a time.

Barack Obama doesn't accept thin dimes from corporate lobbyists.

Barack Obama is so liberal that he has not forced Michelle to wear a burka.

Barack Obama puts on his traditional macaawiis one leg at a time.

Barack Obama can turn hot water into whine.

Barack Obama can tie his own tie.

Barack Obama is so sensitive to racism of all types that he can detect it at a distance of 20 pew-years.

Barack Obama is so centrist he wants infanticide to be safe, legal, and rare.

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No Child Left Below Average

Charles Murray of the American Enterprise Institute takes on the Federal Government's No Child Left Behind law, showing it to be the failure of wishful thinking and faulty dogma of the education establishment that it is.

We are not talking about a political speech or a campaign promise. The United States Congress, acting with large bipartisan majorities, at the urging of the President, enacted as the law of the land that all children are to be above average.

Read the whole thing. You will not be smarter afterward, but you will be more free.

w/t Steve Burton at WWWW

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Hillary Would Retaliate Against Iran [Updated]

[Update, 5 May 08 1541: Apparently, the site to which I linked as a "pacifist dhimmi" objects to the label. Consider it retracted, because I really don't have any investment in the charge. However, it appears that while I was distracted I have become a "pro-Clinton site" and the seminal case of "Clinton Losing Anger Syndrome". Regular readers may find that somewhat humorous. Readers who are irregular should read the caramely goodness that is my written voice more frequently, because they would learn of my disapproval of all of the candidates this year, and as regular readers they wouldn't be so prone to be pacifist dhimmis.][typos fixed, too.]
So the pacifist dhimmis and Iranians are up in arms over Hillary Clinton's assertion that she would unleash the nuclear dogs of war on Iran if they first launched a nuclear strike against Israel.

If Iran's nuclear program is only for peaceful uses, then they will never have a nuclear bomb. If they never have a nuclear bomb, they will never use one against Israel or anyone else.

Nuclear bombs are very difficult to fake.

So is the willingness to defend an ally. Hillary shows it. Obama does not.

Easy solution to Iran's problem: don't launch a nuclear strike against Israel. If you do, you won't be around to regret it.

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The War is Not Worth It Meme

A story by Avram Goldstein of Bloomberg.com says that suicides among Iraq war veterans could "eventually" exceed the death toll by combat. The statistics bear that out, but the comparison is misleading. I don't know if the spin was provided by Goldstein or by his source, Thomas Insel, Director of the National Institutes for Mental Health (NIMH). But that prediction could have been made ahead of time, if we had known how few American troops would die in Iraq.

The spin of the story continues the meme that we should never enter into war, because even if troops aren't killed in battle, serving in war raises their risk of suicide.

Now, I'm not discounting the awful tragedy of suicide, made even more tragic when someone so deserving of honor is involved. But the story makes it seem as though the reason war veteran suicides will top combat deaths is that their suicide rate is so high. The suicide rate among all male veterans is twice as high as for civilians, and we can expect the same for veterans who serve in Iraq.

Even the same number of civilians who have never been to war would have more suicide deaths than the 4000+ who have thus far died in Iraq.

The suicide rate in the United States is about 17 per year per 100,000. Considering that 1.6 million troops have served in Iraq, that means we would expect about 16 * 17 = 272 suicides per year for Iraq veterans, if they were typical of the population. Over the next 40 years, that would easily top the figures for those killed in action. Since casualty rates are expected to continue to be much lower at the tail end of the war, these figures will be even more pronounced.

To make these two statistical measures relate accurately, we should say not that the suicide rate will be higher than the combat death toll, but should note how few who serve in Iraq will actually die there. Of the approximately 1,600,000 who have served in Iraq, 4500 dying is a loss of

(4500 / 1,600,000) * 100 = 0.28125, or 0.28%

Both government and concerned citizens should do whatever we can to help the men and women who have put themselves in harm's way for our safety. But we can do that without twisting the facts to fit our agendas.

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No Flag Pin for Obama Mentor Ayers

Ayers was Obama's Boss

via:
Ace <-
Marathon Pundit <-
Backyard Conservative <-
No Quarter

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Iron Man

I was a comics nerd as a kid, before it was anything like cool. It was so uncool, in fact, that my nerdy next door neighbor friend and I were the only comics nerds in our school, along with 1598 kids who didn't know Iron Man from iron pyrite (whatever that is). As far as I know, anyway, because comics were too uncool to talk about.

Before going to see it this weekend, I pulled out my copy of Marvel's Son of Origins of Marvel Superheroes and flipped through it before giving it to my son to read before the show. I'd forgotten how campy the story was.

So Iron Man the movie gave me deja vu. The cave, Stark's hit-and-run sex life, Pepper's "Sometimes I even take out the trash" line -- almost every scene was like instant replay from somewhere.

But it was better than the comic book. Using terrorists instead of some Viet Nam leftover, or setting it as a period piece, allows much more modern relevance. Not only that, but it fits with the Bin Laden style of leveraging Western technology against its creators; in that, Marvel was prescient.

The best part of the movie was that Tony Stark didn't become a full-on liberal crusader for ending capitalism and saving the spotted owl. He just realizes his errors, and wants to correct them. Given Hollywood's typical stupidity, I was expecting a moonbat lecture on global warming; what I got was a good movie.

I didn't expect all the Audis, either.

I can't wait for the Avengers. If they play Captain America straight, and don't moonbat him up, people will line up around the block.

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Obama Just Sat There

While Reverend Jeremiah Wright was preaching that the US got what it deserved on 9/11
for its "terrorism" around the world, Barack Obama just sat there.

While Jeremiah Wright preached that the government of which Barack Obama was official representative and would be chief executive created AIDS to kill black people, Barack Obama just sat there.

While Jeremiah Wright lauded and praised antisemite Louis Farrakan, Barack Obama just sat there.

While Oprah Winfrey left Trinity United Christian Church because of Jeremiah Wright's incendiary remarks, Barack Obama just sat there.

And he claimed later never to have heard all of this stuff. He affirmed his tolerance for Reverend Wright's preaching as much as for his own grandmother's racial nervousness.

And yet the videos are on the Web, in full context, showing the snippets to be not isolated remarks, but the central point of the sermons.

And still, he just sat there.

He cannot explain this one away. Because Oprah leaving Wright's church should have been a signal to Obama that there was something wrong with the Kool-aide. It shows that leaving the church was not a hypothetical action that only a typical white person would have taken, but a real option that Obama must have weighed and rejected.

While Winfrey was leading, Obama was not even following. The winds of Change were blowing. The evidence was clear, and the course of action outlined, political cover given by one of the most powerful and influential people in media.

Barack Obama just sat there.

w/t: Robert A. Hahn

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Welcome, Ace Fans

Ace gave me credit for solving the mystery of the phaked Clinton '92 vid. But I just did what any other Galactic Warlord would do, reaching out over time and space with my mouse and vast command of alien technology, but mostly with my mouse, to listen to the original video someone else had found.

So have a look around. I usually post here once a day, in the CDT morning, some life-changing missal on which future historians will doubtless rely for the bulk of their work.

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More Barry Facts

Barack Obama: "America is the greatest country on Earth, except for all the others."

Barry once rode a bicycle ... without training wheels.

Barry can walk and chew gum, all at the same time.

Barack Obama eats breakfast for breakfast.

Barack Obama is such a warrior that he once watched Saving Private Ryan on videotape, not DVD.

Barack Obama was so outraged by Jeremiah Wright that practically took him out of his Five.

Barack Obama climbs stairs without holding the rails.

[See the rest...]

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Bat Whistles and Night Vision Beer Goggles

Setting aside for the briefest moment the Jeremiah Wright media circus, we turn our attention briefly to another entertaining sideshow in the spectacle that is the Democratic Party Primary Race of Anno Domini 2008. That is the pitched battle between the Feminist American and the African American factions in the Party, said battle being over the right to pose with the greatest moral outrage over political incorrectness.

To catch up: back on March 14, Amanda Marcotte posted that her new book was for sale. The book, It’s a Jungle Out There: The Feminist Survival Guide to Politically Inhospitable Environments, features Sheena of the Jungle on the cover and in the book's artwork.

Someone eventually noticed that peppering the drawings in the book were Aftrican warriors, symbolizing the evil male influences that the heroic feminista must battle as she meanders her way through the workaday world. Of course, these depictions were decried as racist.

Ace picks up the story after the epic battle has already produced several double-hulled tankers full of guilt.

Amanda Marcotte's All-White Country Club Publishing House: as silly as I think this is -- I certainly don't think the dumb comic-book pictures are intended to be racist, or can even be viewed as racist without really, really, really wanting to find "unconscious racism" wherever one fixes one's gaze -- it's quite obvious the goofball left takes this nonsense seriously.

So Amanda, and her publisher, and the publisher's pastor, and someone the publisher knew in junior college, all were required to apologize, show fealty to the Dream, say three Hail Gaias. And now once more, with feeling.

Up to speed?

Now Maximos asks us to compare and contrast Marcotte's little pickle over comics with some evangelical anti-Catholic tracts from Jack Chick. And no, I have no double entendre with "little pickle" -- sometimes a pickle is just a pickle. And I really don't think Jack Chick chose his surname to contrast with Amanda Marcotte's use of hot jungle women as feminist icons.

Which brings us, finally, to the point.

The moonbats on the left are highly adapted at picking up the slightest sound and interpreting it as an intentional, malicious, deeply offensive stake pointed directly at the heart of their most holy movement. Any mention of skin color, or even any image of a person of color, will be interpreted as the malevolent prelude to a lynching. Any female figure shown cooking, or cleaning, or cast in some other traditionally female role, will give rise to objectification and gender subjugation.

But by being so hightly attuned, they are forced to focus on just the tiniest of chirps to the exclusion of the rest. Like the sound of birds calling along the shore below the thundering Niagara Falls, to most of us these unintended slights are covered over by what the person speaking or writing actually intended to say. Focusing on the chirps doesn't allow the use of their other senses; feminists are so focused on winning the battle of the sexes that they fail to see themselves belittling others for their skin color.

And in having their ears attenuated so closely to pick up the slightest twirp, the false positives begin to bore the rest of us to tears.

Or as in this case, the tears are of laughter. Because all of this is so ... so ... dramatic. It's group narcissism, the reveling in the belief that one's own opinion and situation is paramount. That it really is all about you.

This election season is, without a doubt, the most fun I've ever had watching politics. I just hope no one gets hurt. Much.

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Dear Barry

Advice for the lovelorn from the Messiah himself, via Iowahawk. Who knew the Big O was so versatile?

w/t Rachel Lucas

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