Was Obama on the Grassy Knoll?

Thank God for American conservatives. True, they haven't gotten to the truth about Barack Obama quite yet. But they're well on their way.

In a very insightful column for the National Review Online, the singularly talented conservative journalist Andrew McCarthy reflects on whether former Weatherman Bill Ayres wrote Barack Obama's memoir of growing up as a black man.

I've finally read Jack Cashill's lengthy analysis in The American Thinker. It is thorough, thoughtful, and alarming — particularly his deconstruction of the text in Obama's memoir and comparison to the themes, sophistication and signature phraseology of Bill Ayers' memoir.

Or was Barack Obama the evil mastermind who wrote William Ayres' memoir instead? Intrepid minds like McCarthy want to know.

Journalists from the National Review Online go even farther. Mark Hemingway has an article today on how Barack Obama endorsed loans from his Chicago friends to Myrtle Beach mob interests.

From all indications, Obama's mob associates are "made" Mafia men, maybe even the Sopranos themselves (bias alert--I'm related to the Sopranos of Waverly, NY). Indications are that Obama is consolidating all the world's mafias under his control before he's elected president. That way Obama will be able to use the FBI to protect his organized crime interests.

But none of these authors captures the whole truth about Barack Obama.

For that, we have to return the the Grassy Knoll in Dallas, the grassy knoll from which John F. Kennedy was really assassinated in 1963.

Newly discovered pictures from Fox News indicate beyond any doubt that Barack Obama was present on the grassy knoll when Kennedy was shot.

And that he had a gun.

Forget Lee Harvey Oswald. Barack Obama really killed John F. Kennedy.

Squeamish liberals might object that Barack Obama was only two when Kennedy was assassinated.

And that Obama was living in Hawaii at the time.

What moral cowards! Obama was not only two years old. In fact, he was two years and three months at the time of the assassination.

And that makes all the difference.

Children who are 27 months old are perfectly capable of traveling by themselves and have been known to easily handle handguns and rifles like the Italian carbine that shot Kennedy. In fact, our vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin had all her children proficiently handling moose-guns when they were only eighteen months.

Given Barack Obama's superior intelligence, he would have had no problem bringing his carbine from Hawaii to Dallas and taking aim at one of America's greatest presidents.

Barack Obama--plagiarist, mafia kingpin, and the real killer of our beloved president.

Bank on it.

***Note. My younger sister did indeed marry into the Soprano family. Her son "Vinnie" has moved to Myrtle Beach to further the family's interests there.****

I Never Would Have Guessed This

Sarah Palin got booed, loudly booed, when she dropped the ceremonial first puck for the Flyers opening game against the Rangers tonight.

Who would have thought that?

Philadelphia routinely turns out 250,000 vote margins for Democratic candidates. Philadelphia sports fans are legendary for booing Santa Claus. No one in their right mind would have guessed that Philly fans would boo an unpopular Republican vice-presidential candidate like Palin.

To top it off, Palin had two daughters with her to share the misery--seven-year old daughter Piper and pregnant Bristol.

Something tells me Piper and Bristol Palin won't be writing books about what a great mom Sarah Palin was.

The Nails in John's Coffin

Talk about nails in John McCain's coffin. McCain had to stifle his pent-up crowd before the nastiness of his supporters guaranteed a landslide for Obama. Likewise, Sarah Palin was found to have "abused her power" while pursuing a personal vendetta and the DOW was down another hundred points.

Now there's going to be a few days of discussion about McCain's crowds and Sarah Palin's abuse of power. Then there's the final debate which shapes up as a likely win for Obama. Finally, if anybody thinks the stock market is going to disappear from public attention anytime soon, they're crazy. The middle-class people I saw today were talking about losing $25,000 out of their parents or their own retirement or seeing their inheritance disappear.

Nobody's going to forget that kind of thing very soon.

It's not like I'm ready to say McCain's doomed, but it's getting close to the point where one can say that racism is the only chance he has to win.

Avoiding the Very Worst

If you're feeling suicidal over the current financial meltdown, please do not watch President Bush's Rose Garden talk on the economy today.

It might push you over the edge.

How to Talk to a Weatherman

Now that William Ayres is all over the news, my own experience of socializing with a former member of the Weather Underground might be mildly relevant again.

Mrs. RSI and I have been long-time friends with the sister of Kathy Wilkerson who was a fairly well-known member of the Weather Underground, involved in at least one bombing, etc. Every once in a while, we socialize with Wilkerson when she comes out to Kentucky. Last summer, we saw her when she was visiting for her niece's wedding reception.

I can't say that I know much about Wilkerson's Weatherman days. It's never come up. Like most middle-class people, most of her conversation centers around kids. Wilkerson has a daughter who was in graduate school the last time I saw her. I've got two daughters. We talk daughters.

Wilkerson recently published a somewhat remorseful memoir of the 60's entitled Flying Too Close to the Sun. It's supposed to be a very good book.

But I wouldn't have known she was a "60's radical" from talking with her.

Another Trillion Down the Drain--Maybe Two

The Dow Jones lost 679 points today to close at 8600. But I remember the glory days of the Clinton administration when there were predictions of Dow 36,000 in the air. I feel a nostalgic little tingle just thinking about that number--Dow 36,000.

Speaking of nostalgia, here's some lyrics from Mary Hopkins' "Those were the Days."

Those Were the Days
Those were the days, my friend
We thought they'd never end
We'd sing and dance forever and a day
We'd live the life we'd choose
We'd fight and never lose
For we were young and sure to have our way

La La La La La La
La La La La La La
La La La La La La La La La La

Or something like that.

John McCain and the Jimmy Carter Model

There's been a fair amount of discussion about McCain's proposals on health insurance and social security as if they were serious proposals that could be enacted into law if McCain became president.

In fact, they're not.

The Bush administration could not get a social security privatization bill to the floor in Congress even when the Republicans had majorities in both the House and the Senate.

Why would anyone think McCain is going to get his proposals to tax health care benefits and privatize social security passed by large Democratic majorities?

Any bills like that would be long, long dead before they arrived.

That leads to the larger truth of any McCain presidency. McCain would be a Jimmy Carter-type of impotent, ineffective president.

Of course, McCain himself isn't stupid or incompetent any more than Carter was. But McCain is like Carter in that he has no political constituency. McCain inspires no loyalty among Republican members of the House and Senate who have hated his "maverick" ways for years. In fact, a lot of them think he's a phony and a jerk to boot. The Democrats don't respect him any more either. Whatever affection people on the left used to have for McCain the maverick dried up as soon as he started running his race-baiting "Celeb" ads.

If McCain was elected president, he would have no political capital, no reservoir of personal loyalty among political elites, and no base of popular support. That's right--no base of popular support. If anything has become clear over the last five weeks, it's that the Republican base strongly prefers Sarah Palin to McCain.

That was the formula for Jimmy Carter's failed presidency and John McCain would be no different.

Debate No. 2: John McCain's Own Personal Rock Opera

"Even at My Favorite Table, He Can Beat My Best." That line from the Who rock opera Tommy pretty much sums up the presidential debate tonight. Townhall forums are McCain's favorite venue and Barack Obama still beat him. Obama had more convincing arguments, was more comfortable in the environment, and more in command of himself. That's not to say that McCain was bad. He got out his arguments, repeated his criticisms, and kept his contempt for Obama under control. But Obama still did better a better job and that fact is reflected in the snap polls where the CNN instapoll had Obama winning 54-30 and a CBS poll of uncommitted voters had Obama up 39-27 with 35% seeing it as a tie.

If McCain needed a bump from this debate, he didn't get it.

The Place for "Nice" Aggression. That raises a point. Did McCain need a bump from last night's debate? Given the uncertainties caused by the "Bradley Effect" on polling in relation to African-American candidates, there are plausible scenarios in which John McCain can be seen as either slightly ahead or more or less even. Perhaps McCain himself believes those scenarios because he certainly didn't act like he absolutely needed to score a decisive win. John McCain was not nearly as aggressive in tonight's debate as he was in the first presidential debate. McCain demeaned Obama as naive or uninformed once, used the "L" word once, and worried about government mandates once. My friends (as McCain would say), that doesn't add up to a lot of aggression. In fact, one could say that Obama was just as aggressive as McCain because Obama kept insisting on using more time than he was allotted to explain his positions or respond to McCain. Obama was "nice" about it, but he also clearly showed that he was a leader, exercising a kind of "nice" leadership that "undecided" voters like but many Republicans have a hard time understanding let alone matching.

The Problem with Hot Hand Luke. One of McCain's worst moments during the debate was when he said that America needed a "cool hand at the tiller." That's because McCain was playing into Obama's obvious strength and his own weaknesses. Barack Obama projects so much unflappable cool that many Democrats were worried that he was being passive and wanted him if he would project himself more forcefully. But Obama started adding more force and passion to his speeches and that's part of the reason why his acceptance speech was so good--and so reassuring. McCain used to have a self-mocking, cynical, fighter pilot coolness about him as well. But that's pretty much disappeared under the pressure of a difficult campaign. He's stopped talking informally with reporters on the "No Talk Express" and stopped teasing himself about his weaknesses. No longer projecting fighter jock cool, McCain has become the "Hot Hand Luke" who pulls political stunts like suspend his campaign and call for delaying the first debate but then do nothing fruitful in relation to the bailout package and back down from his threat not to show up. If McCain was running against someone other than Obama, this wouldn't have been so much of a problem. But McCain's relative hotheadedness accentuated the obvious fact that Obama would be a very "cool hand at the tiller."

The Bottom Line. Actually, I suspect that John McCain would be losing these debates even if he were as good a debater as Sarah Palin or Joe Biden. That's because McCain is dragging several balls and chains as he debates. There's the connection to the Bush administration that McCain can't shake off because he's a Republican. There's also the highly unpopular Iraq War. McCain was dragging around even more weight on domestic policy. He wants to cut corporate income taxes at a time when everybody wants to punish corporate CEO's. McCain also plans to introduce medical savings accounts in a way that would take people out of health insurance, "reform" social security by reducing benefits, and ramp up on nuclear power. It would take a magician to make these policies sound the least bit palatable in the current climate.

The bottom line is that John McCain is not that magician.

Live Blogging Debate 2

It's only ten minutes since I finished my preview. Do I have what it takes for ninety minutes of live-blogging?

9:03, Here are the candidates. I hope the hell this debate is better than the first one. First question to Obama on global economic conditions.

What's the fastest, most positive solution to the problems of older people in the economy? Please, Obama, please--do not lay out your principles first. Just get to the solutions.

Obama begins with some criticism of the Bush economy, but he is doing pretty good. First, there's the rescue package, then a "middle-class rescue package" before he dribbles on about long-term solutions.

Not that great.

Now, it's McCain's turn. His solution is energy independence, lower taxes, and stopping "the spending spree."

In other words, McCain is totally avoiding the question.

Ah, the first surprise of the evening. McCain proposes to buy up all the bad mortgages as a way to "stabilize home values."

McCain takes his second stab at being funny when he says he's not appointing Tom Brokaw as Secretary of Treasury.

It doesn't work. I'm not sensing much sense of humor out there.

Obama wants a treasury secretary who doesn't believe in the "trickle down" theory of economics. McCain named some names. Obama does not.

Oliver Clark wants to know how the bailout package is going to help. I don't think there's going to be a lot of baiting and denunciations tonight. Everything is really somber.

Ooops. I'm wrong there. McCain segwes to to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as an example of "cronyism," "greed and excess." I don't know. It will be interesting to see if this is going to work. The idea of buying up housing loans doesn't seem like it's going to work.

Obama's turn. At least, he starts dealing with reality. Two points to Obama for realism. Obama is pretty good on deregulation, better than McCain on Fannie Mae. At least I think he's better.

9: 16, Brokaw asks if things are going to get worse before they get better. I think they're going to get worse, but Obama punts like any good politician would punt. McCain punts too and says "it depends."

Once again, this is a pretty dreary, evasive debate. I'm not impressed. Does TPM think they're on they're "A" game again.

9:18, Question of "both parties" getting us into this global economic crisis. Obama accepts that there is a lot of blame to go around. Obama claims that the Bush administration should get most of the blame even though nobody is innocent. Now he goes onto investments and spending cuts.

9:20, What the hell is McCain doing. He's moving around in the most artificial, Penguin-like way? Where's Danny Devito when we need him?

9:22, McCain points to Obama as the "most consistent big-spending liberal" in the Senate. McCain gets into the pork-barrel thing again. It looks like McCain is taking the kind of "medium aggressive" strategy that I thought would be most likely.

Actually, McCain scored a couple of points on pork despite his Penguin imitation. Maybe the Penguin made the whol manuever a negative.

9:24, McCain begins a response on the big problems with "entitlement reform" and tells people they won't be able to get the same Social Security benefits that they've been getting. That doesn't sound like good news.

McCain--"Gutting social security, building nuclear power plants, and bad health care."

Obama starts with energy independence and sounds pretty nice. Then, he moves to health care and education. Pretty good. Obama's pretty good on these issues. He's sounding presidential and McCain is sounding pretty cranky.

9:28, McCain wants to eliminate programs and agencies and he mentions defense contracting and Boeing. Well, Boeing is in Seattle and Chicago. McCain wasn't going to win Wash State and Illinois anyway.

9:29, McCain mentions an across the board spending freeze.

9:30, McCain throws a big health care softball to Obama. Obama has an interesting response in that he moves to 9-11. This is Obama at his best because he's convincing when he's talking about personal responsibility. When McCain talks about personal responsibility, I think about him dumping his first wife. Now, Obama's giving a testimony to young people. This is all very nice.

9:33, EVERYBODY GOT REAL STONED--Is everybody drunk like Wall Street. Obama wants to begin ith Washington, talks about "sharing the burden" and uses teachers as an example, and is pretty convincing while doing it. This is the kind of moment where I'm proud to carry Obama's water.

9:35, Now McCain is accusing Obama of ruining small business and he's trying to sell his awful health care proposal.

9:37, Questions about "huge unfunded federal mandates" and Brokaw piles on with social security and medicare.

Obama's stab at humor doesn't work either.

Obama insists on replying to McCain on tax policy. They're going to fight it out here. Obama is pretty strong here and sounds presidential.

9:41, McCain claims that fixing Social Security isn't that tough. Right! McCain then proposes a "Medicare Commission." Now McCain goes back to taxes and claims that he has a better record.

9:42, Question from Ingrid Jackson who wants to know what McCain would do about climate change and green jobs within two years. McCain talks about his efforts on greenhouse emissions. McCain thinks that nuclear power is "safe and clean." I'm sorry. I just don't see "Chernobyl Power" as a green technology.

9:45, The people in the audience look pretty skeptical about Obama. Are they just as suspicious of McCain? Or are they just weirded out by being on camera?

9:46, Obama nails McCain for voting against alternative energy sources.

9:47, Brokaw complains about candidates not obeying the rules of the debate. They don't care.

9:48, McCain looks like he's ready to break out his horrible Joker smile. Don't do it John!!!

9:49, Now there's a question from Lindsey Trulla on health care. Obama's up and is explaining his health care proposal. It looks like this debate is working out for Obama because it's basically a wash. Obama's doing well on health care by explaining both his proposals and McCain's really awful health proposal.

9:52, McCain tries to be personal but he starts moving around Penguin style again. Why is he doing this? Now, McCain moves onto criticizing the mandatory dimensions of Obama's health care proposals. This isn't working. McCain is giving a $5,000 tax credit for what adds up to a $12000 insurance expense.

McCain's leery of government mandates.

Obama defends his mandates.

9:59, Moving onto foreign policy--One guy asks about the ability of the U. S. to be a peacemaker. McCain talks about military strength. McCain doesn't sound very convincing talking about keeping the peace. That's because he believes in military action first.

10:01, McCain stands on his judgment. Obama is going to have a strong comeback on Iraq.

10:02, And Obama has a strong, reasoned response on Iraq. I'm beginning to be impressed with Obama. McCain is doing well, but I think Obama's doing better.

10:03, Brokaw asks about the Obama and McCain doctrines on intervening in humanitarian crises. Obama is against standing idly by in the face of genocide and ethnic cleansing but acknowledges the limitations of our resources. Obama emphasizes alliances in dealing with humanitarian crises.

10:06, McCain bores into Obama on withdrawal deadlines for Iraq. He emphasizes that the situation requires a "cool hand at the tiller." But McCain is not a cool hand and he demonstrates it with his contempt for Obama on Iraq.

10:07, tie on intervention goes to Obama.

10:08, Katie Ann has a question about Pakistani sovereignty and hot pursuit across Pakistani borders. Obama responds with a strong statement on the problem with the threats in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Obama is for intervention if we can kill bin Laden. McCain responds with need for confidentiality on attacking Pakistan. McCain goes to his hole card in the reference to Petraeus. "Talk softly, carry a big stick."

Obama is pretty much ignoring the rules of engagement.

10:15, Brokaw asks about Afghanistan. I think Obama's showing leadership on Afghanistan. He was strong on Afghanistan during the last debate as well. McCain's waving around "General Petraeus" like a kind of magic wand. Is Petraeus more like holly and Phoenix feather or walnut and unicorn hair. I go with unicorn hair.

10:19, This debate is wearing me down because it's not that good. Now, they're talking about Russia. McCain is criticizing Putin. Does Putin want to "reassemble the old Soviet Union?" McCain talks about international pressure on Russia.

10:22, Students are starting to leave. I don't remember students leaving the Biden/Palin debate. There were 60 students here altogether.

10:23, Obama is doing well in the townhall format. If Obama had done all ten towhalls that McCain wanted, he would have a bigger lead.

10:24. Question from Terry Shirey on Iran attacking Israel--like Iran with its 6 billion defense budget would actually attack Israel with its 10 billion/year in American aid.

Give me a break. Iran isn't a threat at all. McCain responds with his comic book concept of a League of Democracies.

10:27, Obama is against nuclear weapons for Iran and has a long answer on Iranian nukes. Obama's in four-corner mode as he strings out the debate.

10:29, The Last Question from Peggy in New Hampshire about "what don't you know and how will learn it." Obama has a nice response about passing on the American Dream to the next generation.

10:32, McCain moves forward to reply. I don't think McCain understands is that the quesgtion is about whether he's willing to keep learning.

McCain gives one too many testimonies to the wonderfulness of America. As a result, my daughter collapses into an exhausted heap.

I thought Obama won. Hopefully, that won't jinx him

The Second Presidential Debate--Preview

The Lay of the Land. Contrary to most media and pundit opinion, the facts of the political terrain going into the second presidential debate are neither knowable nor simple. What's least known is the issue that most needs to be known--where public opinion stands four weeks from the presidential election. Many of the tracking polls (Rasmussen, Gallup, GW, Research 2000), Obama has a 7-8 point lead. But other polls (Zogby, Hotline, CBS, Democracy Corps) only have Obama up by 2-3. Given a 2-3% margin of error, the latter group of polls could be read as portraying the election as tied. Rassmussen and Gallup are generally the most respected of the polling operations, However, there's a big five to nine point polling discrepancy and there's no principle that would allow one to tell which poll is right and by how much.


That's the known discrepancy. What's unknown is the impact of the "Bradley Effect" where white voters tell pollsters they're going to vote for a black candidate in order to not appear racist and then vote for the white candidate. As a result, African-American candidates like Barack Obama can find that the polls overestimate their vote by as many as 10%. In the 2008 election season, Obama has found that some polls (Iowa, North Carolina, etc) accurately capture his vote, but has seen other states (for example, New Hampshire) where polls have over-estimated his appeal along the lines indicated by the Bradley Effect.


To what extent is the current polling over-estimating Obama's vote as a result of the Bradley Effect?


Nobody knows.


However, the other major unknown--the impact of Barack Obama's voter registration efforts and turnout drives--cuts in favor of Obama's candidacy. States like Pennsylvania and Colorado report huge increases in the number of people registered as Democrats. But the question is what percentage of those newly registered voters (and young voters) are going to show up and vote on election day. The Obama campaign believes that "new voters" are going to make a big difference and believes that it has evidence from their own canvassing to back up their convictions. But the public opinion polls don't have any reliable way to pick up that impact and thus the final impact of Obama's registration efforts has to be considered unknown at this time.

What Does This All Mean for the Debate? The conventional wisdom is that McCain is in a difficult box because of Obama's recent rise in the polls from 3% behind to 7-8% ahead. The idea is that McCain would like to "take the gloves off" but that going on the offensive runs the risk stimulating a backlash among undecided voters who don't like aggressive partisanship. The conundrum is heightened by the fact that conservative commentators and voters are eager to see McCain attack at the same time that the debate is being held as a townhall meeting with an audience of undecided voters who generally don't like partisanship.

But a lot of McCain's strategy would depend on whether he thinks he's ahead because of the Bradley Effect, closer than the polls indicate because of the Bradley Effect, or behind because he isn't considering the Bradley Effect.

McCain could quite plausibly think he's ahead if he takes the polls showing Obama with a 2-3 point lead as the most accurate and estimates that the Bradley Effect would give him another 5-6 points. That gives McCain a 2-3 point lead in which case McCain could very well take a disciplined, moderate approach to tonight's debate in which he lays out his case but avoids things like calling Obama "naive" that raised McCain's own negatives after the first debate. In this scenario, McCain would be patterning himself after Joe Biden's disciplined but forceful performance in his debate with Sarah Palin.

Who knew that Joe Biden would grow into a campaign role model?

Oops. I'm running out of time. If McCain estimates that the Bradley Effect makes the race closer than the polls indicate but still leaves him behind, I think he would hue to the traditional Republican line of attacking Obama as a liberal, claiming that Obama is out of touch with the "real America," and perhaps using Obama's associations with William Ayres and Jeremiah Wright to emphasize Obama's cultural marginality.

Such a strategy could have the effect of making a traditionally effective Republican appeal to swing voters while also reminding undecided voters that Obama is black and reinforcing the Bradley Effect.

That's what seems most likely to me.

If McCain assumes that he's really 7-8 points behind, he's in just as much a box as the media says. In that case, McCain's best approach would be to unveil some sort of big policy surprise, push Obama really hard on liberal vs conservative oppositions, get in a lot of zingers about Obama's "questionable associations," and hope that Obama falls apart.

The Obama campaign believes Obama is well ahead and thinks Obama could win in a landslide. But I wonder if the Obama strategy will be for Obama to push hard against McCain's association with the Bush administration and lobbyists as a way to show how tough, determined,. and presidential Obama is. That would allow them to make their argument to undecided voters in case the Bradley Effect is indeed making the election closer than it appears.

Given the uncertainties over the state of the election, the McCain and Obama campaigns could reasonably adopt any number of strategies. It will be interesting to see what they actually do.

Is America Ready to Be Skunked?

This morning was an extremely bad morning at the Caric household. We got skunked. While following my wife to the car at 5:30am, our blue heeler mix made a quick move and got a skunk in its mouth. Now we're all paying the price. The smell is awful and it permeates the whole yard and house. My wife had to drive to Lexington to take an exam for her master's program. Good luck to the students sitting next to her. I'm not any better. I'll be taking my second shower after I give the poor dog another peroxide bath.

She might be getting three altogether.

But that's okay because it looks like the Caric family is going to be a symbol for the whole country--even Alaska. That's because the whole country is going to be skunked during the last month of the presidential campaign.

The McCain campaign started skunking up the political scene by sending out Sarah Palin to talk about how Barack Obama has been "palling around with terrorists." The terrorist reference is to William Ayres, the ex-Weatherman and current education professor who served as co-chair with Obama on an education project and hosted an Obama event in the nineties. According to the NY Times, Obama was never close to Ayres but Palin made it sound like they were buddies. Assuming her full attack dog demeanor, Palin added this little nugget that the Associated Press called "racially tinged."

"This is not a man who sees America like you and I see America," she said. "We see America as a force of good in this world. We see an America of exceptionalism."

It's a classic Republican race-baiting manuever. Palin is directly but vaguely claiming that Obama sees the world differently from other Americans. But she's indirectly alluding to the idea that Obama is different from other Americans and that he's different because he's black. The beauty of this kind of rhetorical manuever is that Palin can make a reference that's well-known to be racial but also plausibly deny that her remarks have a racial connotation.

Of course, attacking Obama's association with William Ayres is just the warm-up act for all the nastiness about the Rev. Jeremiah Wright that the McCain camp will be delivering sooner or later.

But the Obama camp is going to do some skunking of its own. As soon as Palin made her William Ayres comments, the Obama campaign got to work on an ad linking McCain to the Keating Five scandal of the 1980's. Material on McCain's links to Watergate felon G. Gordon Liddy and radical right, racist organizations is on the horizon as are questions about Sarah Palin's involvement with an Alaska separatist party.

McCain's trying to bounce back in the polls by dishing the dirt and Obama isn't going to take it lying down.

We're all about to be skunked.

And I don't think a peroxide bath is going to get rid of the smell.

Well, time to check on my dog.