Trick or Treat

The Bride of Frankenstein.

I wish I would have gotten a better picture of her hair. It was cool.

Many compliments on the hairstyle. But no Milk-Duds. What's with people these days?

Making Conservatives

So we're watching the local evening news tonight before trick or treating.

I'm not really paying attention, but my 3 1/2 year old old sees a Lois Murphy (D) ad attacking incumbent Jim Gerlach.

She says "Daddy, Lois Murphy has a dirty little secret."

"What?"

"She has a dirty secret. What is it?"

I have no idea what she's talking about.

But now I do.

I found the NRCC ad on YouTube.

"Veronica, I found out what Lois Murphy's dirty little secret is."

"What is it?"

"She wants to raise daddy's taxes."

"....."

"Raise daddy's taxes."

"What are taxes?"

"If she gets her way, we'll have less money. Less for clothes, less for toys, less for stuff."

*an astonished sigh*

Another conservative cemented.

I'm working on teaching her that "Republicans cut taxes and kill terrorists."

She's not homeschooled (no plans to), but you can see why liberals hate homeschooling.

So not everybody loved 'em

Attila at Pillage Idiot notes all the favorable press that the Ford Taurus has received as production of the popular vehicle ends.

Speaking as a Taurus owner for 13 years, and as someone who actually had an emotional attachment to the car, I can only say: GOOD RIDDANCE! GOOD FREAKIN' RIDDANCE!

Fact is, the car sucked eggs. Major eggs. My 1993 Taurus LX had less than 75,000 miles on it, but I have a thick file with all the repairs I had to have done on it. Just by way of example, I went through 5 or 6 starters and starter relays. The water pump and various other parts of the cooling system failed on me. And my all-time favorite (cue scary music): the head gasket. The head gasket failure, which Tauruses were extremely prone to suffering, cost about $3000 to fix and took a week or more at the dealer. Ford agreed to pay for the repair for some owners, but limited that offer to certain model years, thus stiffing a large number of us whose head gaskets survived a few months too long.

If anyone from Ford happens to stumble on this post, I just want to say that I bought a new car this year. It was a Toyota. Feel free to send me your apology by email: pillageidiot -at- hotmail -dot- com. I still won't buy another Ford, but at least an apology will make me feel the company is not malevolent but simply incompetent. Oh, and enjoy your evening.

Environmental Reactionaries

As Great Britain prostrates itself over the urgency to save the world from Global Warming [all caps because this is a proper name, not an actuality] David Cox writes in The Guardian that we're "back on the road to nowhere."

So off we go. But are we going anywhere? This is not the first time that the peoples of the world have been mobilised to confront a common danger. Success has usually proved elusive. You may remember the "war on drugs", or, if memory fails you on that one, the "war on terror". Ten years ago, a hundred countries, including Britain, pledged to halve global hunger. During the following decade, the number of starving people rose by 54 million, and that was with pop concerts, TV pictures of starving babies and Bob Geldof leading the charge.

Cox's conclusion is encouraging, however:

So all the curbs on free flights, higher motoring taxes and increased fuel bills which Mr Juniper has in mind for us would be unlikely to do the planet much good. In due course, this is likely to become apparent to both our politicians and to voters. Sacrifice that is clearly pointless soon loses its allure. So we need not be too fearful that the harsh measures currently being canvassed by the likes of David Miliband will actually materialise.

Daily Rags Reads

Hugh Hewitt highlights newspaper circulation from around the nation.

In my corner.

At The Philadelphia Inquirer, daily fell 7.5% to 330,622 while Sunday declined 4.5% to 682,214. Daily circulation at its sister pub, The Philadelphia Daily News, dropped 7% to 112,540.

It'd be refreshing the vaunted new "conservative" ownership would crack the whip, but I suspect not.

In the meantime, a Philly paper worth reading, The Evening Bulletin, will continue to truck on.

Update: It's intentional?

Errors-per-column-inch

Jonathan Chait has a piece in TNR Online today that is painful to read. Of course, I don't read TNR for fun, I do it to assess the ideas of political opposition.

Chait's piece is not stupid. It's not even partisan. He admits that even though Bush is the worst leader since Caligula, his disastrous policies could not have possibly made things as awful as they are. Nope, the problem is that it is built on such a collection of faulty premises.

The cornerstone of its catawampus foundation is how bad things really are. Not just now, but the ridiculous Paul Krugman belief that we've made no economic gains since the Stones released "Sticky Fingers."

During the postwar boom, productivity surged at an average rate of 2.5 percent a year. But from 1973 to 1995, by contrast, it grew at a paltry 1.5 percent. The economic pie had stopped growing, and slicing it up more fairly was no longer enough. So a generation of liberals, and especially moderate liberals, began focusing on how to restore rising productivity and get the pie growing again. This was one reason the Clinton administration made it a priority to reduce the budget deficit, which drained savings that could otherwise be tapped by business for investments in new plants and equipment that could raise productivity.

For the next two decades, living standards barely rose at all. Wages would grow during an expansion, but only enough to recapture the ground that had been lost during the previous recession. (This period was neatly captured by the title of Paul Krugman's 1990 book on the subject, The Age of Diminished Expectations.)

I remember the 1970s not fondly but well. Krugman still asserts that middle class living standards have made little gain since then. He takes the CPI which overestimates inflation and subtracts it from the median wage which underestimates wage growth as more workers are added at the lower end. The ex-Princeton prof who used to be a real economist says "numbers don't lie, we're no better off."

A cell phone, laptop computer, more reliable car, medical innovation do not represent wealth? My father owned his own business and was upper middle class compared to my solid middle class. Yet I enjoy a far higher standard of living.

On top of his bad historical premises, Chait mischaracterizes the present:

Just this week, The New York Times published a story on the front page of the business section marveling at voters' inexplicably downbeat assessment of the economy. "Republican candidates do not seem to be getting any traction from the glowing economic statistics with midterm elections just two weeks away," reported the Times. The author proceeded to puzzle at length about why this could be, without ever considering the possibility that, for most people, the economy was not doing well.

Conservatives, for their part, have grown enraged that the public does not adequately appreciate the economic bounty it is enjoying under Bush. The Wall Street Journal editorial page dubbed the current recovery the "Dangerfield economy" (meaning it gets "no respect") and speculated that people only believe the economy is bad because they have been fed misleading reports by the biased liberal press. Columnist George F. Will has fulminated against the "economic hypochondria" of the ungrateful masses. Conservative commentator Larry Kudlow has endlessly touted the Bush boom as "the greatest story never told."

It is certainly true that the economy is performing well by traditional standards. But it ought to be apparent that, in this case, traditional standards are not the most relevant ones. Fast economic growth, after all, is a means to an end--namely, higher living standards for most people. By any decent moral calculation, an economy that does not produce higher living standards for most people is not a good one.

Chait then crowns that rocky structure with a bad conclusion: the moderate, Rubinite wing of the Democratic party has been proven wrong. Not by supply siders of course, but by the Democratic left wing who have shown that economic redistribution after the fact is not good enough. More intervention is required.

Moderates--that is, policy types associated with the Clinton administration, the Brookings Institution, or most university economics departments--believe that the market is generally the most efficient mechanism for distributing wealth. Government should redress inequality, but it should usually do so only after the fact--let the market work, then tax the rich and use some of the proceeds to help the poor. Moderate liberals have historically been restrained in their enthusiasm for the minimum wage and unions, and they have been downright hostile to any limits on international trade.

Economists from the liberal wing of the Democratic Party (those associated with labor unions, say, or groups like the Economic Policy Institute) have always attacked the moderates' prescriptions as naïve. If the rich control a growing share of the national income, they will turn their financial power into political power to protect their holdings. Untrammeled economic inequality will inevitably lock itself into place as the rich buy political influence and propagate policies that safeguard their wealth. And so, the liberals have always argued, government must foster greater levels of equality before the fact, not merely after.

I have always been disappointed with the deference given to Rubinomics. But it is even more disturbing to see it attacked from the left in a centrist Democratic magazine.

Supporting the Troops

Don't forget, these guys support the troops.

Update: Signs of a meltdown?

Global Warming

Arnold Kling provides a brurtal fisking of Her Majesty’s Treasury's Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change.

The post is funny, but Josh@ The Everyday Economist (inline hat-tip) and I like the close. Responding to the assertion that ignoring the problem will take 5-20% off GDP, and fixing it would only cost 1%, Kling states:

One percent of global GDP is a lot--close to one trillion dollars. My guess is that if you think outside the box, you can eliminate global warming for a lot less money. Suppose you told scientists and engineers to come up with a way to monkey around with chemicals and stuff to reduce global average temperature. My guess is that the total cost of that approach, including research and implementation, would be only a few billion bucks, give or take.

Fighting man-made climate change with more man-made climate change almost has to be more cost-effective than fighting man-made climate change by trying to de-industrialize. But it would not satisfy the religious and political longings that are at the heart of the global warming crusade.

Mama Must Be So Proud

Belgium has named a tax after VP Al Gore!

The WSJ Ed Page has the details

Earlier this month, Mr. Gore spent a day in Brussels to promote his film on global warming. "Our planet has a fever, and the fever has been getting steadily higher," he said in a speech. "It is in fact a full-scale planetary emergency." Within days, Belgian politicians were rewriting their tax laws to do something about this looming calamity.

Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt invoked his American visitor in proposing a new "environmentally friendly" tax on packages that would penalize users of aluminum or plastic and provide incentives to switch to paper or cardboard, whose production releases less CO2 into the atmosphere. The details have yet to be worked out, but the idea is for milk sold in, say, a plastic bottle to cost more than milk sold in a cardboard container.

"We must take Al Gore's message seriously," Mr. Verhofstadt told parliament the other day. The measure, introduced into the draft 2007 budget, was fast dubbed "the Gore tax." Also in the works are tax breaks for car pollution filters and deductions for energy-efficient investors.

While in the Senate, Sen. Al Gore, Jr. decided that government should design toilets. Now he is encouraging the EU (which needs little encouragement to meddle) that the government should make packaging decisions. The Hayekian idea of innovation from multiple sources being sorted out in the market as abandoned.

Let Trent Lott design milk cartons? Ted Kennedy might bring some innovation to Scotch bottles, but I’d still rather trust the market.

Wages up

In case this doesn't get a lot of play. Yup, Wal*Mart's October sales are off but, three stories down:

U.S. September Personal Income Grew 0.5%; Consumption Fell - WSJ.com

Personal income grew in September at a seasonally adjusted rate of 0.5%, after increasing a revised 0.4% in August, the Commerce Department said Monday. August income growth was previously reported at 0.3%. Meanwhile, personal consumption grew 0.1% in September, less than the revised 0.2% increase the month before. August spending growth had previously been reported at 0.1%.

The Power of Cane

Investor's Business Daily

Bill Clinton's back, now touting tax hikes for ethanol to California voters. "If Brazil can do it, so can we," he said, claiming an ethanol switch ended Brazil's need for foreign oil. Once again, he's telling whoppers.

Brazil did achieve independence from foreign oil all right. It happened this past April. But Clinton, true to form, doesn't quite recall the critical point showing how it was done.

Here's a clue for the semi-retired former president and policy wonk: Brazilian President Luiz Inacio "Lula" da Silva didn't celebrate the oil independence milestone out in an Amazon sugar field.

No, he smashed a champagne bottle on the spaceship-like deck of Brazil's vast P-50 oil rig in the Albacora Leste field in the deep blue Atlantic. Why? Brazil's oil independence had virtually nothing to do with its ethanol development. It came from drilling oil.

The numbers were never practical for the United States. There's simply not enough room to grow all of the necessary ethanol.

Turns out there isn't enough in Brazil either.

I wish I knew who to tip the hat to. Damn.

Divine Intercession?

My satellite service is out today and I will be missing the Colts-Broncos game.

I'm not sure I had the courage to watch, it might be better to read about it tomorrow. Go Broncos!

UPDATE: Hmm 14-13 Broncs in the 3rd...I wish I were watching.

UPDATEII: So, I am guessing I missed like the greatest game of all time. We beat the premier team in our Conference by one point and I was writing code. The DishNetwork tech is going to have to answer for this. I am going to grease the roof.

UPDATE III: O. That was a 4th quarter score and I jumped. Indy23 - Den 21. Internet news is swell but it's a crappy way to watch football. I'm glad they took 'em to the wire. Ball bearings on the roof. Ball bearings.

Michael J Fox Ads

Instapundit linked to this ad where Michael Steele fights back.

He is using the victim of a terrible disease to frighten people, all for his own political gain.

Where the hell are these people when a Democratic VP candidate swears "they will fight the drug companies" and where are they when price controls, additional regulation, drug importing, and a non-friendly-to-Pharma FDA are discussed?

As an MS patient, embryonic stem cells might offer some hope (not that the FDA would let me have a cure were it discovered tomorrow) and, like many on this blog, I would not have a huge problem allowing Federal funding of research.

As all the lefties of the world line up to support something just because President Bush has set boundaries for it, all promising research in the world is put at risk by rapacious tort lawyers and a sclerotic FDA bureaucracy. Yet I am not expecting to see Ed Asner and Rob Reiner sing "We are the Pharma" even though that's where the real hope lies.

Count two MS patients for Steele!.

UPDATE: Deja vu all over again. On October 6, 2004 I made Taranto's Best Of The Web with a post that included Michael J Fox, politics, pharmaceutical companies, Sen. Edwards's vow to "fight the drug companies," and even the word hell.

Review Corner

I mentioned this documentary when I ordered it on October 6. John Fund called filmmaker Phelim McAleer the "Anti-Michael Moore." He uses the documentary as polemic format (though I hope not the mendacity) of The Great Scruffy One From Flint to champion -- instead of destroy -- the cause of modernity and freedom.

McAleer becomes involved with the controversy around a new gold mine in Rosia Montana, Romania. A Canadian firm wants to replace the run down, polluting Communist-era mine with a modern one, develop housing and infrastructure, and provide jobs to the blighted, dying community.

Phelim McAleer meets George Lucian, a young Romanian who wants to see the new mine so that he can get employment. Lucian, who has never strayed from his village, agrees to follow McAleer to Madagascar to see another poor village whose inhabitants, like Rosia Montana's, overwhelmingly want a new modern mining project to proceed. McAleer leaves Lucian in the sunshine when he goes to Chile, where a remote village also looks forward to a new mine.

Sadly, McAleer also introduces us to a cadre of pompous gasbag environmentalists who are doing all they can to stop these projects. McAleer juxtaposes the speech of big city, wealthy. modern environmentalists with the exigencies of the places they describe. Francoise Heidebroek describes Rosia Montana as a delicate paradise which should support itself with agriculture and tourism. Lucian gives a different tour. There is some mountain beauty, yes, but the people live in ramshackle huts with no modern conveniences. Most have no indoor plumbing and use outhouses in the -20C winter cold.

Ms. Heidebroek and like minded NGO staff in Madagascar, Argentina, and London feel no compunction denying Lucian, and huge swaths of the world's poor, the opportunity to have jobs, cars, heat and plumbing.

McAleer gets pro modernity views from other journalists and from Professor Deepak Lal (whose excellent book "Reviving the Invisible Hand" recently got a favorable review). They conclude that the environmentalist NGOs are now the enemies of the world's poor. McAleer has a guest editorial in The Rocky Mountain News on that topic. The idea (to which I once subscribed) that environmentalists are earnest and misguided but harmless is laid low.

A DVD is available on his website for $12.99. Buy one for yourself and at least one for a gift. Silence bristles when I discuss the anti-modernity agenda of the environmentalist movement. This is admittedly a small slice of a large movement but it shows a subtext that can be extrapolated to most all of the environmental NGOs and many of their supporters.

Five stars.

HAM Nation

Mary Katherine Ham has a new video up where she confronts accusations of racism in political ads.

In Tennessee, the racist coded messages in Republican ads are clearly so coded that only democratic operatives can see them.

Give Till It Hurts

The Young Conservatives of Pa have a pretty good record of mixing it up in Pennsylvania politics. The body count after the Pa payraise is the most recent example.

The Young Conservatives of Pa 527 group is looking to continue educating voters in the waning days of the Senate race.

You can hear radio-based lesson here. (go look, they're funny)

Donate here!

Finally, a 527 you can trust!

You'd Think He Didn't Like Protectionists

Josh at The Everyday Economist tries but happily fails to keep his emotions in check when "schooling" a protectionist. A commenter asks "Do you think the trade deals are working with soaring trade debt and falling wages?"

Josh opens a can of "Economics 101" on him:

First, a trade deficit is merely a capital surplus. For example, if we export lumber and steel to Brazil for the production of a factory, this is a trade surplus. However, if we import the lumber and steel from Brazil to build a factory in the U.S. and then it is bought by Brazilian investors, we say that we have a trade deficit. What is the difference? A Brazilian-owned factory was built. Does it matter where it was built? Why is it better for the Brazilians to build factories in their own country?
When exports fall, investment in the United States rises. We pay for goods from China with U.S. dollars. These dollars must be used to buy U.S. goods or assets.
A trade deficit does not create debt. If I buy a good that was made in China and the maker of that toy purchases a factory in the United States or shares of a publicly traded company, a trade deficit exists. But where is the debt?
If I purchase a good that was made in the U.S. and the company uses the money to purchase a factory or shares of stock, is debt created? Why is it any different if I buy the good from a foreign company?

Power of Productivity

Must read economics post at Chicago Boyz.

Times Do Change

I don't think anybody can be totally sanguine about the political situation in Russia. Arrested journalists and business leaders, renewed nationalism and expansionism. The promise of freedom when the Berlin Wall fell has not been realized.

Yet, in the long term, we can't forget the improvement from Sharansky’s incarceration to this:





I'm still on the British Midlands International email list, though I haven't been back to Blighty in years. BA has one flight per day to Denver; it's much smaller competitor flies twice into Moscow. Interesting.

Welcome To The Blogroll

Extreme Mortman, an excellent blog with one of my favorite blog designs.

Proprietor Howard Mortman is described as a seasoned media veteran and admits "like most Americans, my eyes always get a wee bit moist on those rare occasions when Chuck Schumer or John McCain are on TV."

Enjoy.

Not In Laogai

I was concerned that Ian of Banana Oil! had met a bad fate. He has ThreeSources on his blogroll on the other side of the ChiCom firewall. A month of seeing a WordPress error page had me seriously concerned.

I was going to remove him and gave one last click:

Like Shepherd Book in Firefly, I've been out of the world for a while. In my case, it wasn't by choice, but I'm not going to talk about it. At least, not publicly.

But I am not: incarcerated; deathly ill (or ill at all); sadistically tortured by (or torturing) anyone.

I owe lots of you an email, and some of you a good deal more than that. You will get them, though perhaps not immediately.

Will try to post some interesting quotes for the next week or two, at the very least.

Otherwise, I'm remaining out of the world for just a bit longer. Many apologizings.

The Krugman Bull Market

OpinionJournal Political Diary's Quote of the Day:

"It started out as a gag here on the editorial page of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette and soon became a superstition: Every time the stock market took a little dip, we'd reprint one of Paul Krugman's dour columns from the New York Jaundiced Times about the imminent doom of the American economy. Almost immediately the market would bounce back and then some. It worked every time. But we may have overdone it of late. By now the Dow Jones has started to cross into 12,000 territory. A few more Krugman columns explaining how the economy has cooled off and the thing could overheat... The more Professor Eeyore says the economy is going to hell, the more heavenly it gets" -- Paul Greenberg, editorial page editor of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

Wiretap Dancing

The Washington Times editorial board picks up on Bob Casey's "direct answer" to the Philadelphia Inquirer on wiretapping.

The one thing Sen. Rick Santorum's backers and critics agree upon: Everyone knows where he stands on the issues. Then there's Democratic challenger Bob Casey Jr., who was for warrantless surveillance of terrorists before he was against it. Or something like that.

Mr. Casey's position is not clear -- not at all.

We call on Mr. Casey to tell voters what he really thinks about surveillance. At present he is tiptoeing around the subject because commonsensical Pennsylvania voters want one answer while his liberal campaign funders at Moveon.org insist upon another. Whatever Mr. Casey says is bound to antagonize somebody. The fact that he can't answer at all should give everybody pause. If he can't make a hard decision like that now, imagine what kind of senator he would make.

He has two weeks to keep his mouth shut. What makes anyone think he'd do otherwise? He managed to say very little during four debates. Being a stealth candidate is all about waiting the other guy out.

He's not going to start now (and definately blow it).

Quote of the Day

Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies, The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.

- C.S. Lewis

From Samizdata, who also provide a link to these beauties. See if you can spot which are from Sweden, and which are from the UK.

Madame Speaker

A Republican refrain that I keep hearing goes like this: "Let the Democrats take the House in the 110th, because when all of America sees Rep. Pelosi as we inside-baseball, political junkies see her, they will be repulsed." Mickey Kaus even suggested that it would turn the electorate against those without a Y chromosome, hurting Senator Clinton's Presidential ambitions.

That's not gonna work, kids. Leader Pelosi grew up in a political family (her Father was Mayor of Baltimore) and you don't rise to her level without some political gifts. Last night, Rep, Pelosi came off as cool, smart and charming in an interview with uber-Republican Larry Kudlow. If I can't find it on YouTube by later today, I will post it myself.

I do not agree with the things she said. She called for a higher minimum wage and I believe PayGo exists just to hike taxes. But she was calm and reasonable and presented her ideas as serious fiscal policy. Kudlow not only showed her a lot of deference in the interview, as is his style, but also defended her positions in a follow up panel.

Her one slip of sorts I will post later today. Larry asks her about the windfall profits tax on oil companies and she surprises Kudlow and me by saying "I can't be in favor of that!" Kudlow points out that many people will be surprised and moves on to the next topic. She interrupts the next question to clarify: "It's not the taxes I'm against, it's the profits that I'm against." Yes she'd tax 'em. Glad that was cleared up.

I'd call that a gaffe. But it was the only bad note in a superb performance in a less-than-sympathetic house. Misunderestimate the Gentlewoman from Marin County at your own peril. We're used to seeing her in short shrill sound bites but she has some political chops.

Endorsing Casey

The Philadelphia Inquirer endorsed Bob Casey despite exchanges like this one.

Interviewer: Let me ask you to shift gears to the anti- terrorism initiatives. Last night in the debate, I think you said that you’d support warrant-less wiretapping. How does that square with your suspicion about this white house? Why would you be willing to let them do that without judicial oversight? And on the Military Commissions Act, would that have been something you would have supported? In general, your outlook on anti terrorism initiatives…

Casey: Yeah, I think going backwards the, with regard to the detainees and interrogation, look, we’ve had people like John McCain, and you could give other examples as well, but people who have looked at this for a long time who have been very serious about making sure that we are very tough in our interrogation, that we get as much information as possible from those we detain and interrogate and also John McCain, showing the kind of independence that Rick Santorum never seems to show, took on the administration and I think they, based upon their experience, I think they got it right and I think I would have support that. Secondly, on the question of wiretaps, my position all along has been we’ve got to do everything possible and give every tool that government agencies need, intelligence, law enforcement, give them the tools they need to fight this war on terror. And I think we, in terms of wire tapping, whether its terrorists, known terrorists, or suspected terrorists, we’ve gotta give this government all the tools it can. And I think what we’ve seen in the past is the system that has been setup when its operated according to the law, and when the administration goes and puts a wiretap in place and then comes back later and gets a warrant after the fact, the system that has been setup is a pretty solid system, but they often don’t comply with it. You can support having a lot of tough wiretapping, but also support the kind of tough oversight of the administration, which I think has been lacking. And I think we can have the two in balance at right.

Interviewer: Well, it might have been misreported this morning, but it certainly seemed to me as if you were endorsing the NSA program which is warrant less wiretapping without court oversight.

Casey: Well, I think, look, my position all along has been you’ve got to have the ability to wiretap known or suspected terrorists, and I am going to make sure that everything I do in this area is focused on anti terrorism and making sure that were being as tough as possible to fair it out any kind of plot or and kind of terrorist activity.

Interviewer: Bob, it’s real simple, and it seems to me you are dancing around it. Either you believe that the President or his designees need to go to the FISA court and provide some probable cause for the wiretapping, or you don’t. They say they don’t. They say they can do it on their own say so and there’s no oversight of whether the person they’re wiretapping is actually credibly a terrorist suspect or not. That’s the issue. Do they have to go through the FISA court or not? Nobody’s debating that we need to wiretap suspected terrorists.

Casey: You know very well that Senator Specter has worked very hard on this to try to get this right and I think with bi-partisan cooperation, working with people like Senator Specter, as I know I can, that we can get this right. I don’t, I don’t, I don’t see what the…

Interviewer: It’s a real simple question. Do they need to go through the FISA Court as the FISA law has said since 1973 or don’t they? They say they don’t. We say they do. What do you say?

Casey: I think it’s worked well.

Interviewer: What has worked well?

Casey: I think it’s worked well when you use that system and you use it in the context of making sure that we are doing everything possible to, to…

Interviewer: So, are you saying that the president has been breaking the law since 2002, or whenever the NSA program started?

Casey: I’m saying that people like Senator Specter have a lot of questions about whether or not the law was broken. I don’t think anyone has made a determination about that. I think that’s pretty clear.

In their endorsement piece, the Inquirer writes...

Some in Casey's party find him too tepid on the Iraq war. But surely he'd push harder than Santorum would to hold accountable those who bungled the occupation.

The Inquirer posted audio from all of it's Philly area race interviews here.

Update:

Powerline:

A friend directs our attention to the Philadelphia Inquirer editorial board interview with Bob Casey, candidate for the United States Senate. She asks us to "read this and think about the fact that the newspaper endorsed Casey." She comments: "It would be funny if we weren't actually at war." Putting that disagreeable fact to one side, this is funnier than any Hollywood political satire since "Dr. Strangelove" or perhaps "Being There." Bob Casey apparently can't think, and he can't talk, but he likes to watch television

Kathryn Lopez:

All that's pretty clear here is that it's a deeply depressing state of affairs when this man could be elected to the United States Senate at a time of war.

Bryan @ HotAir calls him unserious.

Casey comes off as a very typical Democrat, on the one hand lobbing criticisms at the Bush administration for aggressively monitoring the communications of suspected terrorists, while on the other hand trying to appear tough on terrorists by agreeing in abstract terms that terrorists should be watched and listened to. He dances and bobs and weaves in and out of the question, which to the credit of the interviewer he had a hard time getting away with. Hopefully enough voters can see through Casey’s stumbling ramba and recognize him for what he is: unserious. It’s hard to imagine that he would get more serious if he actually wins the election.

Windfall Losses Rebate?

When oil prices were rising, oil executives were called in front of preening Senators to explain why -- dammit why -- they were making so much money. These "windfall profits" were deemed to be worthy of special taxation. After all, why should the oil companies get to keep the money they made?

I wonder if Debbie Stabenow will have a hearing to discuss tax rebates for big oil. It seems their profitability is hurt by falling prices as it is helped when they rise.
The Wall Street Journal reports:

Even before the steep drop-off in prices, earnings had been blunted by side effects of the commodities boom. Oil-field costs have skyrocketed for many projects because of higher demand for everything from steel to software among energy companies eager to cash in on the boom. Competition for new prospects has heated up, ratcheting up auction prices for fresh exploration acreage.

If oil prices stabilize or drop further, cost inflation could also subside. But costs generally take time to catch up with swings in commodity prices. That poses a growing challenge to profitability in the short term.

Neil McMahon, a London-based oil analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein, says recent trends of lower commodity prices and higher costs mean quarterly results this time around aren't likely to offer much positive surprises for investors. In a note to clients Friday, he said he expects to see further evidence of cost pressure when companies report this week.

Gene Pool

I don't see this as a problem.

Men who use mobile phones could be risking their fertility, warn researchers.

A new study shows a worrying link between poor sperm and the number of hours a day that a man uses his mobile phone.

Those who made calls on a mobile phone for more than four hours a day had the worst sperm counts and the poorest quality sperm, according to results released yest at the American Society for Reproductive Medicine annual meeting in New Orleans.

Doctors believe the damage could be caused by the electromagnetic radiation emitted by handsets or the heat they generate.

The last thing we need are for them to breed.

Don't get me started on the bluetooth earpieces. "No. You cannot pretend that you're Lt Uhura."

Google Shmoogle

Since JK's "gratuitous swipe" last Thursday, GOOG's share price has soared another 54 points, an increase of more than 12 percent in just two trading days. Which means it is finally almost 10 points above its all-time high of $471.66 on 11 January, 2006. I'm sure this comes as a relief to the many casual traders who bought in January since the share price has been largely under water since then prior to last week.

Google's year-to-date appreciation is indeed about 16%, but stodgy old Exxon-Mobil checks in with nearly 25% gain since January 1. And, has dividends to boot!

Add to this that XOM's P/E ratio is 11 while GOOG's is 61 and the same dollar invested in Exxon delivers more than five times the earnings as does that slick tech fad.

When I said in January that paying $400 a share for Google would earn you the moniker "moron" it was because Google is the exact same formula that created (and burst) the 1999-2000 tech bubble: Hype and buzz and very little hard assets. If you want to ride that firecracker again then don't let li'l ol' me stop you!

On Liberty

If you're going to read only one thing today.

Make sure it's this.

Would I lie to you?

Record DJIA High

Larry Kudlow suspects politics is driving the Dow to new highs.

It may not be the Pelosi bull market after all.

The roaring stock market today is trading off yesterday’s Barron’s article that says the GOP’s money advantage will limit Democratic gains and keep the House and Senate in Republican hands.

The mainstream media is not reporting this counter-conventional poll from our friend Jim McTague—but that’s really the big news driving the market.

It’s a tempting thought that this summer and fall’s stock market rally is the most important poll predicting a Republican hold. And frankly, I would love to believe Jim Mctague’s results. But I’m still somewhat skeptical.

Tradesports’ House GOP contract is still trading in the mid 30s—no excitement there off the Barron’s story.

Liberalism in a nutshell

Coals to Newcastle to link to BOTW around here, but Taranto had a piece today that deserves to be read twice.

He links to a Chicago Sun-Times article where Senator Dick Durbin (D- IL) is petitioning the Baseball Hall of Fame on behalf of Ron Santo, a Cubs third baseman who played with diabetes.

We can't know how much better Ron Santo's statistics might have been had he not played his entire career with a life-threatening illness, in an era that suppressed the long ball, for a team that, God bless them, never once saw post-season action," wrote Durbin.

Affirmative action for diabetic baseball players? Hey, how come we can't get into the Hall of Fame? We can't know how much better James Taranto's statistics might have been had he not had the misfortune, through an accident of birth, to lack both strength and ability.

The Race

Senate

Connecticut: Ned Lamont
Maryland: Ben Cardin
Michigan: Debbie Stanbenow
Missouri: Claire McCaskill
Montana: Jon Tester
New Jersey: Bob Menendez
Tennessee: Harold Ford
Virginia: James Webb

Democrat Held Seats

(CO-03): John Salazar
(GA-03): Jim Marshall
(GA-12): John Barrow
(IA-03): Leonard Boswell
(IL-08): Melissa Bean
(IL-17): Phil Hare
(IN-07): Julia Carson
(NC-13): Brad Miller
(PA-12): John Murtha
(WV-01): Alan Mollohan

Republican Held Seats

(AZ-08): Gabrielle Giffords
(CT-04): Diane Farrell
(CT-05): Chris Murphy
(CO-07): Ed Perlmutter
(IA-01): Bruce Braley
(IL-06): Tammy Duckworth
(IN-02): Joe Donnelly
(IN-08): Brad Ellsworth
(IN-09): Baron Hill
(FL-13): Christine Jennings
(FL-16): Tim Mahoney
(FL-22): Ron Klein
(KY-03): John Yarmuth
(NC-01): Heath Shuler
(MN-06): Patty Wetterling
(NM-01): Patricia Madrid
(NY-20): Kirsten Gillibrand
(NY-24): Michael Arcuri
(NY-26): Jack Davis
(OH-15): Mary Jo Kilroy
(OH-18): Zack Space
(PA-06): Lois Murphy
(PA-08): Patrick Murphy
(PA-07): Joe Sestak
(PA-10): Chris Carney
(VA-02): Phil Kellam
(WI-08): Steve Kagen

What's this all about?

See here.

That Libertarian Swing Vote

The Economist magazine hops aboard the libertarians-as-swing-voters meme.

AMERICA may be the land of the free, but Americans who favour both economic and social freedom have no political home. The Republican Party espouses economic freedom—ie, low taxes and minimal regulation—but is less keen on sexual liberation. The Democratic Party champions the right of homosexuals to do their thing without government interference, but not businesspeople. Libertarian voters have an unhappy choice. Assuming they opt for one of the two main parties, they can vote to kick the state out of the bedroom, or the boardroom, but not both.

In a new study from the Cato Institute, a libertarian think-tank, David Boaz and David Kirby argue that libertarians form perhaps the largest block of swing voters. Counting them is hard, since few Americans are familiar with the term “libertarian”.

The problem is the prickly and unreliable nature of the little-l lib vote. All I see across the blogosphere is "I'm not gonna vote for these big-spending Republicans, I'm going to stay home -- see how they like that!"

Like Phil Gramm's proverbial five legged dog, It might work. But you never see a group rise to power and get its way by staying home. Little-l (and some big-L) libs are the only ones who really believe it's going to work for them.

Hat-tip: Everyday Economist. I hate to put words in Josh's mouth, but I think he might fit into the boycotting little ls I describe.

Introspection

Sister Toldjah writes about something I've been saying for a while.

No introspection on the left.

Nothing, absolutely nothing, demonstrates the sheer denial of reality regarding the left more than their reactions to the last three elections they’ve lost: they were “stolen,” “rigged,” etc - can’t possibly be because Democrats have been rejected on the basis of their ideas (or lack thereof), can’t possibly be because a majority of the American people actually embraced Republican ideas, bbbbecause Americans couldn’t possibly be that stupid, could they? What the left can’t or won’t explain though, is that they haven’t just been losing elections since Bush was ELECTED President, they’ve been losing big since 1994 - but during the 1994, 96, and 98 elections we didn’t hear this massive outcry of election rigging - apparently Democrats losing elections in the 90s had nothing to do with Republicans officials acting nefariously throughout the country - and of course had nothing to do with a rejection of Democratic ideas, oh no - but once Bush came along the left finally found someone they could pin their losses on. For the party of “thinkers”, Democrats aren’t big on self-introspection - it’s always someone else’s fault.

Hope In Tennessee

No, Hope is in Arkansas!

No, I'm talking about the US Senate Race. I don't have the resources for polling and don't know what polls to believe, but Professor Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit disclosed his secret ballot after allowing readers to guess in an online poll. I guessed Harold Ford, Jr. but a slim plurality picked Bob Corker.

That's pretty much how it was in my mind, too. I liked Harold Ford, Jr. when we interviewed him, and I wouldn't shed any tears if he were elected; he'd raise the caliber of the Democrats in the Senate. But when push came to shove, I voted for Corker. I liked him, too, and ultimately the combination of Ford's "F" rating on gun rights and the sleazy "outing" behavior of the Democrats was such that I just felt I had to vote Republican in this race. (In our interview, Corker said he'd look favorably on federal legislation to require states to recognize each others' gun-carry permits.)

As I mentioned before, the Republicans don't really deserve my vote -- though as Bob Corker hasn't been in Washington that's not really his fault -- but nonetheless the Democrats have blown it again. Not long ago I was thinking that a Democratic majority in Congress wouldn't be so bad; but the sexual McCarthyism from the pro-outing crowd, coupled with the Dems' steadfast refusal to offer anything useful on national security, has convinced me that they just don't deserve a victory with those tactics. That's not Ford's fault, either, really. But I just don't think the Democrats are ready for a majority right now. We'll see how many other voters agree.

Glenn pulls it as I would have in the end. I think highly of Ford and would like a potentially serious Democrat in the Senate but with the race this tight, a D vote is a vote to hand gavels to Reid, Dodd, Kennedy, Leahy & company.

GOP holds the Senate, providing containment fort House lunacy. President Bush "finds his Grover Cleveland hat" as Larry Kudlow says and starts vetoing bills like President Ford. Divided government stagnates. The market is happy. Life is pretty good. Just hope they don't force an ignominious withdrawal in the War on Terror.

UPDATE: The second I posted, I got Republican Spam from Patrick Ruffini, who underscored "Glenn Reynolds, a swing voter in this race" voting Corker. He also highlights a video of a campaign stunt that many are making a big deal of. Ford crashes a Corker rally and behaves non-senatorially, but I don't see this as a campaign ender.

1983

Huge.

There’s a new book on Ronald Reagan making the rounds, The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism. Its author, Paul Kengor, unearthed a sensational document from the Soviet archives. That document is a memo regarding an offer made by Sen. Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts via former Senator John Tunney, both Democrats, to the General Secretary of the Communist Party, USSR, Yuri Andropov, in 1983. The offer was to help the Soviet leadership, military and civilian, conduct a PR campaign in the United States as President Ronald Reagan sought re-election. The goal of the PR campaign would be to cast President Reagan as a warmonger, the Soviets as willing to peacefully co-exist, and thereby turn the electorate away from Reagan. It was a plan to enlist Soviet help, and use the American press, in unseating an American president.

Think about that.

They say that if you tell a lie big enough, anyone will believe it.

Charging the elder statesman of the Democrat Party with treason right before an election?

It's true, or it's an unprecidented libel.

Black Gold

Most obvious geological prediction ever.

A University of Washington economic geologist says there is lots of crude oil left for human use.

Eric Cheney said Friday in a news release that changing economics, technological advances and efforts such as recycling and substitution make the world's mineral resources virtually infinite.

For instance, oil deposits unreachable 40 years ago can be tapped using improved technology, and oil once too costly to extract from tar sands, organic matter or coal is now worth manufacturing. Though some resources might be costlier now, they still are needed.

"The most common question I get is, 'When are we going to run out of oil?' The correct response is, 'Never,'" said Cheney. "It might be a heck of a lot more expensive than it is now, but there will always be some oil available at a price, perhaps $10 to $100 a gallon."

We're not going to leave the oil age for lack of oil. It's going to because something new (and cheaper) showed up.

Election Finances

Kos does the research on the various election committee finances and posts the results.

Without any sense of introspection (or perhaps a mirror), here's the "analysis."

Schumer and Rahm may be overbearing asses, but man are they bringing in the dough. Compare that to Liddy Dole's pathetic NRSC. Man, we lucked out on that front. It doesn't look like they could've chosen a worse leader.

As it looks, It's possible to choose a worse leader. It's just that the Democrats did it.

And of course the Republicans are up $11 million on the totals.

Why the Internet Was Invented Reason #1435432655

DIY Carnage

Stunning Exegesis

Friend of ThreeSources, Perry Eidelbus, is now writing a newsletter for Intrade, "the Trading Exchange for Prediction Markets." His Political Market Wrap is posted for Oct 18.

In it, he gives a thorough review of market-based prediction in the political arena.

On August 2nd, it was reported that Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY) said he would retire if Democrats failed to retake the House of Representatives. After the House.GOP.2006 contract's movement in the last three weeks, it would appear Rangel need not worry about keeping that promise. The contract, whose prices (as set purely by traders, so all odds are purely market-driven) reflect the percentage probability that Republicans would keep control of the House, had already fallen to the high 40s by August. It wavered afterward and by September's end had its last peak in the high 50s, but it has since experienced a free-fall to the low 30s.

Ryan Sager, Call Your Office

Holman Jenkins tells the dutiful subscribers of WSJ OpinionJournal Political Diary (worth a subscription) that what the GOP needs is "A few More Harry Rieds"

This may be shaping up to be the Democrats' year, but it's not Harry Reid's year. During one of many low points in GOP fortunes this summer, Nevada Senate candidate Jack Carter, son of former President Jimmy and a Reid endorsee, seemed to be gaining ground after a successful stump through the rural parts of the state. Then colitis struck and he was laid up for two weeks. Now incumbent GOP Senator John Ensign, a strong supporter of the Iraq war, tax cuts and other Bush iniquities, is leading by 20 points. The bigger suspense now concerns whether the GOP Senate majority will survive -- in which case Mr. Ensign is expected to collect a prized seat on the Finance Committee, his reward for agreeing to become the next chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee.

Other Nevada races that Democrats considered pivotal are looking less and less winnable. Senate Minority Leader Reid took a close interest in former aide Tessa Hafen's campaign to unseat GOP Rep. Jon Porter. Now polls show Mr. Porter up by 10 points and his latest campaign filings send a warning signal to national Democrats who might have hoped to move the needle with a late ad deluge: Mr. Porter drained his bank account and has locked up $1.48 million worth of TV time before Election Day. Somewhat tighter is the rural race for an open House seat between Republican Dean Heller and Democrat Jill Derby, but Mr. Heller leads by several points. Mr. Reid insists his late-breaking ethics controversy, involving unreported proceeds from the sale of an unreported ownership of a Las Vegas land parcel, has had no effect on Ms. Hafen or other Democratic candidates. "Why would it?" he gamely rejoins. The mere fact that Nevada's Mr. Democrat has to answer the question shows how the story has thrown local Democrats off-message.

With the governor's race also going GOPer Jim Gibbons's way, no wonder Nevada Democrats are starting to focus instead on the 2008 sweepstakes now that Nevada's presidential caucus has been moved up to compete with Iowa and New Hampshire. The move was a big victory for Mr. Reid and Las Vegas labor and gambling interests, but the underlying theory -- that Nevada Democrats led by Mr. Reid know how to win in Red America -- is being cast into doubt.

Carrots? Sticks?

North Korea is sorry.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Il expressed regret about his country's nuclear test to a Chinese delegation and said Pyongyang would return to international nuclear talks if Washington backs off a campaign to financially isolate the country, a South Korean newspaper reported Friday.

"If the U.S. makes a concession to some degree, we will also make a concession to some degree, whether it be bilateral talks or six-party talks," Kim was quoted as telling a Chinese envoy, the mass- circulation Chosun Ilbo reported, citing a diplomatic source in China.

Kim told the Chinese delegation that "he is sorry about the nuclear test," the newspaper reported.

(tip to Ace)

Internet Addiction

Saw this at Protein Wisdom.

More than one in eight adults in the US show signs of being addicted to the internet, a study has shown.

"Addicts" showed signs of compulsive internet use, habitually checking e-mail, websites and chat rooms.

More than 8% of the 2,513 respondents to the Stanford University phone survey said they hid their use from partners.

A typical addict is a single, white college-educated male in his 30s, who spends more than 30 hours a week on "non-essential" computer use, it found.

Except when i'm on vacation... and the hotel just happened to have internet.

The Halloween Flasher

An eCard from Blue Mountain

http://www.bluemountain.com/view.pd?i=149549234&m=4772&rr=z&source=bma999

Epistemology vs. Equities

Just a quick, gratuitous swipe at my blog brother, JohnGalt. Be careful predicting in a public forum.

On January 27, I started one of our famous internecine conflicts, defending Google. They had capitulated to Communist censorship in China, but I pointed out that they had a market capitalization to email home about.

Mine is still that this company is justifying a 50 multiple to its shareholders. If you pay $40,000 for 100 shared of GOOG, you are probably not too keen on their missing an in on the fastest growing market in the world.

The Wall Street Journal notes Google's Net Nearly Doubles As Ad Sales Continue to Sizzle - WSJ.com and sends out this email alert:

Oct. 19, 2006

Google's profit nearly doubled and revenue soared 70% to $2.69 billion as the Internet giant continued to gain market share in online advertising. Excluding payments made to advertising partners, Google's revenue rose to $1.86 billion from $1.05 billion a year earlier. Google continued to expand at a frantic pace, hiring 1,436 people in the quarter, leaving it with 9,378 full-time employees.

Google's shares gained 6% to more than $450 after hours.

Just sayin.

Dow 12,000!

You! Over there! Economic hypochondriac!

jk sides with liberal jurists

I disagreed with Justice Scalia on Raich v Gonzales, now I have to side with Justices Souter, Breyer, Ginsburg, and Stevens against my hero, Justice Thomas.

Law.com - Gimme an 'S': The High Court's Grammatical Divide

Justice Clarence Thomas, writing for the Court (and joined by Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. and Justices Samuel Alito Jr., Anthony Kennedy and Antonin Scalia), concluded that the Kansas statute was not unconstitutional. In reaching this conclusion, Thomas repeatedly referred to the relevant law as Kansas' statute.

In response, Justice David Souter wrote a dissent that was joined by Justices Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and John Paul Stevens. The dissent revealed Souter's bitter disagreement with both the substantive conclusion of the majority and the grammatical philosophy of the opinion's author. Whereas Thomas apparently believes that whenever a singular noun ends in "s," an additional "s" should never be placed after the apostrophe, Souter has made equally clear his conviction that an "s" should always be added after the apostrophe when forming a singular possessive, regardless of whether the nonpossessive form already ends in "s."

Hat-tip: Taranto, who adds more complexity from the WSJ style guide.

Colorado: GOP Nightmare

Fred Barnes called Colorado "a Republican Nightmare" at the close of "Beltway Boys" on FOXNews several weeks ago. The normally Red state lost both state houses to Ds in 2004 and is poised to lose at least one house seat and a Governorship in 2006.

Brendan Minter at OpinionJournal Political Diary may have the coffin nail:

Scoop

Trailing far behind in the polls, Colorado Republican Bob Beaup