i wrote multiple times in my post the other day that I still want Christine O’Donnell to win the Delaware Primary, and I do.

See for example this line:

“I wish Christine O?Donnell the best. I?d rather her than Castle.”

and this line:

“I want Christine O?Donnell to win.”

Nonetheless, many people read my prior post as a decision to support Castle, which I made absolutely clear it was not. In light of recent events, I want to add a few more thoughts.

The Wall Street Journal, my favorite newspaper, wants tea party activists to compromise in Delaware in favor of Mike Castle. The last time this newspaper wanted conservatives to compromise, it was to pass TARP. ‘Nuff said.

I would rather 50 seats without Mike Castle than 51 seats with Mike Castle. The push to support Mike Castle by “conservative” groups, pundits, and others says more about the selling out of the conservative movement to the GOP than anything else. It happened in the Bush years and many conservatives were so thoroughly co-opted by the GOP Establishment they might as well be cut off from the conservative movement permanently.

Conservatism is not Republicanism. For all the people saying conservatives should compromise and support Castle, I dare say the conservatives who take them up on that offer will be more willing to compromise their principles than a Senator Castle.

Good for the Tea Party Express supporting O’Donnell. Good for Sean Hannity having O’Donnell on his show yesterday too.

That said, I stand by my prior post.

Every campaign has three limited elements: time, talent, and treasure.

In the conservative campaign to move the Senate right, I do not see how we wisely spend the resources on Christine O’Donnell’s bid when we could help Ovide LaMontagne in New Hampshire, some of the conservatives still running in the New York primaries, or Sharron Angle, Ken Buck, Rand Paul, etc. and get those people through the general election.

Yes, I do believe that a candidate who is down ten points can win. Heck, Rubio was down thirty points when I went all in with him. But there was time.

There are just over sixty days left in Delaware.

Likewise, were Christine O’Donnell to win the primary, and again, I hope she does, I do not believe she is surrounded with people fully capable of firing on all the necessary cylinders in the general election. This is not, by and large, her fault. The GOP establishment and paid political class abandoned her for pro-abort leftist she’s running against.

But with limited time and limited talent and already limited treasure, I cannot in my mind justify encouraging conservatives to cast their lot in Delaware.

It may be crass to say, but in the battle between midgets and tigers, the midgets can win, but only if a few of them get eaten. In the battle between conservatives and the establishment, conservatives can win, but only if a few of them get eaten.

Thats what Delaware looks like to me. I want O’Donnell to win, but I lack the faith in her campaign’s ability to pull it off that I had in Rand Paul, Mike Lee, Ken Buck, Maro Rubio, Pat Toomey, and others.

Now, it is very possible I’m wrong about all this. I’d love to be wrong. I’d love to see O’Donnell in the Senate. But the probability that I am wrong is ridiculously small.

Your mileage may vary.

RedState Morning Briefing
For September 8, 2010

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Ultra right-winger Glenn Greenwald teed this particular story up with this masterful piece last Friday on MSNBC?s embarrassing and sycophantic coverage of the ?end of combat? farce perpetrated by Obama and his administration. With thanks to the greatest sock puppeteer in history, I excerpt a lengthy portion of it here because Greenwalds make an important point.

Please click here for the rest of the post.

i wrote multiple times in my post the other day that I still want Christine O?Donnell to win the Delaware Primary, and I do.

Nonetheless, many people read my prior post as a decision to support Castle, which I made absolutely clear it was not. In light of recent events, I want to add a few more thoughts.

The Wall Street Journal, my favorite newspaper, wants tea party activists to compromise in Delaware in favor of Mike Castle. The last time this newspaper wanted conservatives to compromise, it was to pass TARP. ?Nuff said.

I would rather 50 seats without Mike Castle than 51 seats with Mike Castle. The push to support Mike Castle by ?conservative? groups, pundits, and others says more about the selling out of the conservative movement to the GOP than anything else. It happened in the Bush years and many conservatives were so thoroughly co-opted by the GOP Establishment they might as well be cut off from the conservative movement permanently.

Conservatism is not Republicanism. For all the people saying conservatives should compromise and support Castle, I dare say the conservatives who take them up on that offer will be more willing to compromise their principles than a Senator Castle.

Good for the Tea Party Express supporting O?Donnell. Good for Sean Hannity having O?Donnell on his show yesterday too.

That said, I stand by my prior post.

Please click here for the rest of the post.

Let?s not abandon Carly Fiorina, but lest you be under some impression that she?ll be solidly and forthrightly with us in the Senate, understand what you are getting.

The moment the great lurch left began came this past Wednesday, September 1st, in the televised debate between Carly Fiorina and Barbara Boxer.

In the debate, which was dominated ? as I told you repeatedly during the primary that it would be ? by Boxer going on offense over Fiorina?s time as CEO of Hewlett-Packard, Carly Fiorina let loose three bombshells on conservatives.

Please click here for the rest of the post.

I have a confession to make: I think the Right is still bogged down on the technology front in a way the Left is not. I also think the reason is simple. If you look at the major players on the right, they have little interest in working with each other when they could be seeking competitive advantages against each other as well as major contracts with campaigns and businesses.

Please click here for the rest of the post.

When I went along with calling what the Democrats are doing in the House ‘triage.’ Triage implies a situation where an overwhelming number of people have been injured and absolutely must be sorted out by severity of injury, in order to save as many as possible.  What we have here instead is a situation where “sick” individuals are being sorted out not by the severity of their (political) illnesses, but by a combination of the absolute cost of the patient’s treatment, cost-effectiveness of that treatment, and the perceived overall value of the patients themselves.  Those that make the cut get treated; those who don’t, get a palliative.

In other words, House Democrats have set up their own personal death panel.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to MoeLane.

President Obama will reportedly announce tomorrow that he won't accept the extension of Bush-era cuts for top-rate taxpayers. From NYT:

It is not clear that Mr. Obama can prevail given his own diminished popularity, the tepid economic recovery and the divisions within his party. But by proposing to extend the rates for the 98 percent of households with income below $250,000 for couples and $200,000 for individuals — and insisting that federal income tax rates in 2011 go back to their pre-2001 levels for income above those cutoffs — he intends to cast the issue as a choice between supporting the middle class or giving breaks to the wealthy.

In a speech in Cleveland on Wednesday, Mr. Obama will also make a case for the package of roughly $180 billion in expanded business tax cuts and infrastructure spending disclosed by the White House in bits and pieces over the past few days. He would offset the cost by closing other tax breaks for multinational corporations, oil and gas companies and others.

Many e-mails from Chicago conservatives, falling into roughly three camps. 1) Yes, the conservatives you met with in Chicago were right: Daley has been a very good mayor: solid, sensible, reliable. We’ll miss him when he’s gone. 2) The conservatives you met must be on crack: Daley has been a terrible mayor: a massive overspender, a friend of corruption, a patsy for the unions. Good riddance. 3) Daley has been a flawed mayor -- nothing like we conservatives would order, if we could order one. But he’s as good as it gets -- as good as it gets in this town, in that position.

Thank you for your e-mails, spirited and opinionated (and well-informed) Chicagoans! Good luck with Rahm (if it’ll be Rahm). I hope he’ll be as tough on street criminals and bureaucratic crooks as he is on Republicans.

P.S. Would Chicago elect a Jewish mayor? As President Obama helpfully pointed out in the press recently, Emanuel’s middle name is “Israel.”

P.P.S. Hasn’t been a Republican mayor of Chicago since Hoover was president. But Bernie Epton came very close. Remember?

P.P.P.S. His son, Jeff Epton, was a leftist city councilman in my hometown of Ann Arbor, Mich. (Have I been redundant? Are all Ann Arbor councilmen leftist? Don’t think so -- not quite sure.)

P.P.P.P.S. Jimmy Walker said, “I’d rather be a lamppost in New York than mayor of Chicago.” (Note to Chicagoans: It was him, not me! I’m from Michigan, remember -- closer to you. I like towns that toddle.)

According to CNN, two American soldiers apparently fell on some bullets today in Iraq. I say “fell on some bullets” because it’s not possible that the bullets which killed them were shot out of a gun at them on purpose, because that would indicate they died in combat. And as we all know, combat in Iraq is over because Obama said so. As CNN clearly indicates in their story, “More than 4,400 troops died in Iraq during the war[,]” which is clearly now a thing of the past.

I don’t want to really upset anybody, but the Iraq war has never been especially high on my list of issues, pro or con. I know that seems strange, but there it is. Also, I am smart enough to know that I know absolutely nothing about military strategy whatsoever.  Accordingly, I have no firm opinions about whether the war should be over, whether the drawdown is a good idea, whether current troop levels are adequate, or even whether we should have been in Iraq in the first place.

However, I do know bovine fecal matter when I step in it, which apparently places me two steps ahead of CNN when it comes to covering Barack Obama. I respectfully submit that if you believe combat operations are over in Iraq despite the continued presence of 50,000 American combat troops who are still, you know, involved in combat, you lack the discernment necessary to disinfect bowling shoes for a living, much less cover world news.  I have to give them credit; only the Obama administration would be so bold as to peddle such transparent propaganda. And only the American media would be so pliant as to mindlessly parrot it. And if you think CNN looks like a sucker in this article, wait until you see how embarrassed MSNBC should be below the fold.

Ultra right-winger Glenn Greenwald teed this particular story up with this masterful piece last Friday on MSNBC’s embarrassing and sycophantic coverage of the “end of combat” farce perpetrated by Obama and his administration. With thanks to the greatest sock puppeteer in history, I excerpt a lengthy portion of it here because Greenwalds make an important point:

It’s not difficult to understand why NBC and MSNBC hyped the event the way they did.  The reason they had what Olbermann touted as a “worldwide exclusive” is because — in response to NBC embed requests — the Pentagon contacted them and offered exclusivity, knowing that the arrangement would incentivize NBC to treat the event as something of monumental historic importance.  By selecting NBC as the only broadcast network to be told in advance, swearing them to secrecy, but arranging for them to cover it exclusively with video, it became their story, and they thus, predictably, were eager to tout its importance.  That’s the natural inclination when someone is given exclusive access by the Government.

** snip **

By offering it exclusively to both NBC and MSNBC, the Pentagon ensured that this narrative would be given the Seriousness imprimatur from NBC, and would produce base-pleasing, Obama-favorable praise from MSNBC personalities.  Having Engel embedded in a Stryker vehicles as it “rolled out” of Iraq, and Maddow stationed in the Green Zone, added to the historic tone of the evening.  As The New York Times‘ Brian Stelter reported:  ”David Verdi, an NBC News vice president, added, ‘The military had said, ‘You are the ones who are going to broadcast it first’.”  About that, Mediaite’s Steve Kraukauer wrote:  ”That?s a stunning admission, and shows a degree of coziness between both sides here.”  With this cooperative venture, the White House got exactly the coverage it wanted:  the repeatedly hyped claim that under Barack Obama, “American combat forces are leaving Iraq,” as Olbermann intoned at the start.

One of the few sour notes in this coverage came when Olbermann briefly interviewed McClatchy’s Jonathan Landay, and asked him what the 50,000 remaining soldiers would be doing.  Landay explained:

This is the great irony for me, Keith. The fact is that under the delusional plans that former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld had approved for the invasion of Iraq, they had intended to come down to 50,000 troops within three or four months of that invasion. . . . .That, for me, is the ultimate irony, is the fact that more than seven years later, we?ve now gotten down to the 50,000 troops that they thought they could get down to within three months of the invasion. . . . . [T]hose 50,000 men and women include special forces who will be going out on counter-terrorism missions with Iraqi forces. That, to me, is combat.  They’re armed. They’re going into combat.  There will be American, quote/unquote, advisers going out with Iraqi forces on regular patrols. That to me opens the door to combat.

So I don?t think we?re going to see the end of — we are not going to see the end of combat for American forces I don?t think in Iraq.

The 50,000 troops staying in Iraq were noted several times by the various MSNBC commentators, especially Maddow, but, other than the Landay interview, it did not detract from the repetitious claim that — to use Brian Williams’ formulation — “U.S. combat troops have pulled out of Iraq.”  This, of course, was the same message touted in Barack Obama’s Oval Office address to the nation on Wednesday night:  

So tonight, I am announcing that the American combat mission in Iraq has ended. Operation Iraqi Freedom is over, and the Iraqi people now have lead responsibility for the security of their country.

Yea, verily. Obama promised the most sycophantic “news” network in history exclusive access to a facially farcical news event and, as expected, the dupes delivered exactly the story he wanted. Exactly how did it not occur to someone - anyone - at the brain trust over there to ask, “Wait a minute. How is this the end of combat if 50,000 combat troops are still there engaged in combat?”

The question seems to have at least occurred to someone at CNN today when they were forced to cover the fact that American soldiers are still mysteriously dying in Iraq. They voluntarily offered President Obama a fig leaf, pointing out that “SEE? He told us this was coming. No reason to be alarmed.”

President Barack Obama said last week that “violence will not end with our combat mission.”

“Extremists will continue to set off bombs, attack Iraqi civilians and try to spark sectarian strife. But ultimately, these terrorists will fail to achieve their goals,” he said in a speech from the Oval Office on August 31.

Well, there you go. No reason to think Obama was overpromising, right?

Hey, you remember that “Mission Accomplished” speech that Bush gave on the deck of the Abraham Lincoln? The one that was repeatedly and immediately pillioried by the American media as being a staged event built on a false promise? Just for kicks and giggles, let’s see if Bush said anything similar to what Obama said in his speech:

We have difficult work to do in Iraq. We are bringing order to parts of that country that remain dangerous. We are pursuing and finding leaders of the old regime, who will be held to account for their crimes. . . We are helping to rebuild Iraq, where the dictator built palaces for himself, instead of hospitals and schools. And we will stand with the new leaders of Iraq as they establish a government of, by, and for the Iraqi people. The transition from dictatorship to democracy will take time, but it is worth every effort. Our coalition will stay until our work is done. . . Our mission continues. Al-Qaida is wounded, not destroyed. The scattered cells of the terrorist network still operate in many nations, and we know from daily intelligence that they continue to plot against free people. The proliferation of deadly weapons remains a serious danger. The enemies of freedom are not idle, and neither are we.

Huh. Seems Bush was plenty clear that the violence wasn’t over after all. Of course, you’d never know that from listening to the American media, who immediately rushed out to claim that Bush had falsely promised sunshine and roses from this day forward in Iraq.  Obama makes a much larger (and more manifestly false) claim hedged by less clear statements, and the media’s incredulity meter barely registers a tick.

However, in a sign that even the friendliest of audiences have a limit to the amount of offal they are willing to swallow, Greenwald notes that the AP (the AP!!) has flat-out refused to recapitulate the “end of combat” propaganda being sold by the Administration:

Whatever the subject, we should be correct and consistent in our description of what the situation in Iraq is. This guidance summarizes the situation and suggests wording to use and avoid.

To begin with, combat in Iraq is not over, and we should not uncritically repeat suggestions that it is, even if they come from senior officials. The situation on the ground in Iraq is no different today than it has been for some months. Iraqi security forces are still fighting Sunni and al-Qaida insurgents.  . . . .

As for U.S. involvement, it also goes too far to say that the U.S. part in the conflict in Iraq is over. President Obama said Monday night that “the American combat mission in Iraq has ended. Operation Iraqi Freedom is over, and the Iraqi people now have lead responsibility for the security of their country.”

However, 50,000 American troops remain in country. Our own reporting on the ground confirms that some of these troops, especially some 4,500 special operations forces, continue to be directly engaged in military operations. These troops are accompanying Iraqi soldiers into battle with militant groups and may well fire and be fired on.

In addition, although administration spokesmen say we are now at the tail end of American involvement and all troops will be gone by the end of 2011, there is no guarantee that this will be the case.

Our stories about Iraq should make clear that U.S. troops remain involved in combat operations alongside Iraqi forces, although U.S. officials say the American combat mission has formally ended. We can also say the United States has ended its major combat role in Iraq, or that it has transferred military authority to Iraqi forces. We can add that beyond U.S. boots on the ground, Iraq is expected to need U.S. air power and other military support for years to control its own air space and to deter possible attack from abroad.

Fellow travelers, we should not underestimate the significance of this event. A major legacy news organization has issued an internal memorandum that Obama’s lies are not to be treated with more dignity than they deserve. Clearly, MSNBC will be content to play Mouth of Sauron until the day Obama leaves office, but this point - the point at which, less than two years into his presidency, the American media began to turn on a Democrat President - may spell the beginning of the end for Obama, even more than his sagging poll numbers have heretofore indicated.

I waded into the debate a couple of days ago.

The Washington Times lead editorial today is about the Justice Department enabling voter fraud -- just in time for the November elections. This is due to the Department’s refusal to enforce the part of Section 8 of the National Voter Registration Act that requires states to remove ineligible voters from their registration rolls -- people who have died or moved away, and felons who have not yet had their voting rights restored. The longer such names remain on a registration list, the greater the chances that a fraudulent vote will be cast in their names.

I reported in 2009 that the Obama administration had dismissed without explanation a lawsuit filed against Missouri Democratic secretary of state Robin Carnahan during the Bush administration over her failure to comply with this provision of the NVRA. This happened only a month after Carnahan announced she was running for the Senate. Besides the obvious political motivations, I know from sources inside the Civil Rights Division that the Obama political appointees have no intention of enforcing this provision. Former Voting Section lawyer Christian Adams confirmed this when he testified this summer before the U.S. Civil Rights Commission that Deputy Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Julie Fernandes told Voting Section staffers that the administration had “no interest in enforcing this provision of the law.”

Now that he is back in private practice, Adams has sent a series of warning letters to 16 states in obvious violation of the law. Justice should be suing them, but since they will not, Adams is taking advantage of the fact that there is a private right of action under the NVRA.

Adams’s letters are based in part on a report filed with Congress by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission in June 2009 on the impact of the NVRA. It includes voter-registration statistics from the states for 2006–2008. This data shows some amazing results. For example, Adams says, there must be a fountain of youth in states such as Maryland, Arkansas, Massachusetts, Oregon, and Tennessee: None of them removed a single dead voter during that two-year reporting period. Many counties in states such as Alabama and Rhode Island also show a similar miracle -- no voters were removed from their voter rolls for having died. If you have any ailing family members, these are obviously the states they should move to quickly. There are also several states -- South Dakota, Mississippi, Texas, Kentucky, and Indiana among them -- with more registered voters than (according to the Census) people of voting age.

When I was in the Civil Rights Division, we actually investigated this problem and filed lawsuits against several states to enforce this provision of the NVRA  For trying to enforce federal law, we were labeled as “vote suppressors.” No, we just wanted to fairly enforce the law that Congress had passed, something the Clinton administration had failed to do. It did not file a single lawsuit in eight years to enforce this provision.

Hopefully, Adams will succeed in forcing these states to comply with federal law. It’s too bad that a private citizen has to carry out the responsibility of the Justice Department because it has failed to do so and, in fact, refuses to do so for ideological and political reasons that have nothing to do with the impartial administration of justice.

The AP reports that Senator Murkowski is still considering her options:

JUNEAU, Alaska -- A week after conceding the GOP primary, U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski says she's not a quitter and is "still in this game."

Murkowski told The Associated Press on Tuesday that she's been inundated with calls and e-mails from supporters, asking her not to leave the race. She says she's been humbled, and is listening - and weighing her options.

She met briefly with the Libertarian candidate Tuesday, after friends of hers - without her direction - approached the Libertarian party, asking if they'd consider a Murkowski candidacy. She says she had an interesting discussion with candidate David Haase but made clear she's not interested in changing her "political stripes."

Murkowski also could seek a write-in candidacy, which she called high risk. Or, she could stay out of the race.

Andy Ferguson has been one of my favorite writers for as long as I've been reading conservative journalism. His latest article, an attack on Peter Beinart, reminds me that I don't ever want to be on his bad side. It's also one of the few articles of his I've ever disagreed with. He calls Beinart "one of the most energetic careerists anyone has ever seen" and describes him as a creature of ideological fashion. I know Beinart a little, and he seems to me to be extremely earnest. I suppose you could figure out some self-interested reason for him to have criticized his fellow liberals for their dovishness several years ago, publicly recanted his former views, and then started to criticize his fellow liberals for their hawkishness. But I think the most reasonable conclusion is that he came by his change of views honestly.

A reader sends me these comments about my chart this morning:

The "stimulus spent" is almost a straight line, which surprises on two levels:

1) The Administration's rhetoric implied that the stimulus spending would be front-loaded, so that the curve would have an initial steep rise and then flatten.  Many commentators at the time predicted that it would be back-loaded so that the big spending would occur in Spring 2010 to prep the economy for the elections.  And yet it seems that the actual spending is so evenly distributed in time that much of it will happen far too late to have any impact on the economy before the elections.  (If only about $300 billion out of $800 billion has been spent to date, how much more scheduled spending is there, factoring out the part of the stimulus that was in the form of "tax cuts"?)

2) The straight line indicates that the stimulus now sort of a constant monthly injection, and its effect on the unemployment rate is either negligible or (if we take the Administration's original projections seriously) actually deleterious -- as you noted, the rate is higher than the Administration projected it would be if they did nothing at all.  For all the jobs "saved or created" by the stimulus, far, far more must have been "lost or destroyed" by it in order for it to worsen the unemployment situation from the do-nothing baseline.  And now the economy is like an addict on methadone maintenance: the monthly injection may not be helping, but the Administration doesn't want to deal with the pain it anticipates if it forces the economy to go "cold turkey" without that shot.

I agree. I should add, however, that this data is from Recovery.gov, meaning that it doesn't take under consideration the tax cuts and entitlement spending (unemployment benefits and food stamps) in the stimulus bill. Think about this data as the "shovel ready" side of the Recovery Act. That being said, the reader is right. In fact, the data shows that there is no correlation between unemployment levels and how the money is spent.

Here is the best analogy I can think of to explain why this money can't create sustainable jobs and, in fact, gets in the way the recovery. Imagine that you break your arm and you don't get it looked at by a doctor. Instead, your friend gives you shots of morphine. Obviously, you may feel better in the short term, but, when the morphine goes away, the pain comes back and your arm still needs to be fixed. More important, while you are not getting the proper treatment for your arm, your body will almost surely begin to try to put itself back together again, but it is unlikely that the bones will end up in the proper position. This will surely mean chronic pain in the long run.

Stimulus spending is like morphine. It might feel good in the short term (there is no doubt that the people who receive the money are happy to get it) but doesn't help repair the economy. It even causes more damages if it gets in the way of a proper recovery.

The Congressional Budget Office's forecasts of nominal government expenditure, revenue, and deficits, as well as its estimate of nominal gross national product, are often used to decide of the future of spending programs (think about the stimulus and Obamacare) or tax cuts. As such, it is it important to ask: How reliable is the CBO?

This chart by my colleague Matt Mitchell sheds some light on that question.

The data show the difference between the CBO's June 2009 and August 2010 projections of spending as a share of GDP. As is often the case, last year the CBO projected that spending after 2010 would drop dramatically from its 2008 level. Today, the projections look quite different. Why is that?

Mitchell argues that it is because there is no such thing as temporary spending. According to Christina Romer's speech at the National Press Club last week, some $200 billion of the stimulus spending was extended in the FY2011 budget.

According to a study by the FreedomWorks Foundation, the CBO's track record for estimating the cost of major legislation is terrible.

We find that although the score is important, it should at best be considered the very least that a given bill may cost.  At worst, estimates have been up to 2,600% higher than the actual cost of legislation. 

The bottom line is that CBO projections should be taken with a grain of salt -- to say the least.

Bloomberg:

The Obama administration can’t continue to fund embryonic stem-cell research while appealing a decision banning government support for any activity using cells taken from human embryos, a federal judge decided.

U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth in Washington today upheld his own ruling pending an appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington. The Justice Department argued in seeking to delay the ban that the injunction itself will cause irreparable harm to researchers, taxpayers and scientific progress.

Thought I’d jot a quick comment on Mayor Daley here in the Corner. I’ve written an Impromptus -- long -- for tomorrow: Sort of put it to bed. Will not wake it up, so to speak, to add an item about Daley.

Which is this: Last year, some of us NR types went to Chicago for a day or two, to meet with readers and other important people. (Are there people more important than our readers? No.) I talked to a lot of conservatives, a lot of righties. And I talked to many of them about local politics.

And I heard something from them, almost uniformly: They liked Mayor Daley. They’d voted for him. They thought he was doing a fine job. He kept the streets clean, he kept crime down, he was sensible, non-ideological, competent. Almost to a man, these conservatives -- real, true-blue, NR conservatives -- said, “Fine mayor. I don’t really vote for any other Democrat.”

Now the old urban lion is retiring. (Doesn’t it seem like two seconds ago that he was just a cub, stepping into Dad’s big ol’ shoes, or paws, or whatever?) I hope Chicago will get a mayor as good. But I have my doubts. It seems to me that the foul-mouthed ballet dancer is a little too . . . what? Partisan? Not exactly a uniter?

Will be interesting, to follow the politics of that town. It usually is. I could tell several stories -- many stories -- about Mayor Jane, and then Harold Washington (a very fun politician). But let’s have nostalgia some other time.

The strikes in France today protesting raising the retirement age from 60 to 62 over an eight-year period have created a sort of Glenn Beck controversy: According to Le Monde, there's a dispute over the size of the crowd. The Interior Ministry claims 1.12 million strikers took to the streets, while unions say the numbers were more than double that.

The strikes are a bid by the unions to exert enough muscle to actually pose a threat to the government, which has promised to ignore the strikes. France is broke, so there really are no policy options, and besides, so far, the French Left has proved itself to be annoying but toothless. Regional gains in the last election cycle may have given the Socialists some provincial city halls to run, but they didn't give rise to a plausible presidential candidate who could face Sarko in 2012. Sarkozy may be more unpopular than ever, but he'll look good compared to the Left's same-old menu of potential candidates. There's probably a lesson in there someplace for Republicans.

Like most EU countries, France is what you get after a half-century of stimulus-style spending on things like highways and trains -- some great bridges, some overpriced toll roads, and the government as the biggest employer. Although more private-sector employees than usual joined the strike today, the bulk of the strikers are government employees protesting the same kind of necessary austerity that make Greek strikers toss bombs.

The Germans are very interested in all this. The Germans are the EU's big wallet; the German economy is rebounding following their government's refusal to play the stimulus card, and the retirement age there was just raised to 67, insuring a measure of financial health. The French retirement age, meanwhile, is the lowest in Europe, as the table on this BBC page shows. Asking German workers to help pay the freight for French retirees will be interesting.

There were also transit strikes in London by workers who said they feared changes in policies would mean worse service. The strikes did that job. A ComRes poll, reported by the BBC, says most Brits are sobering up, if only to the realization that there just isn't enough state money around to float an early retirement.

While Vanity Fair writer Michael Joseph Gross has admitted he erred in saying that little Trig Palin was at one event (although VF has yet to correct -- or note -- the error in the online piece), he still hasn’t retracted any of the other inaccuracies in his Sarah Palin piece. And there are plenty.

Earlier today I spoke to long-time Palin friend (they’ve known each other since elementary school) Kristan Cole, who completely denies Gross’s characterization of her and Palin’s relationship in this passage:

People who know Kristan Cole and Kris Perry, her closest local friends and advisers of longest standing, say that the relationships have deteriorated. Her former aides Meg Stapleton and Ivy Frye are said to have parted with Palin on bad terms.

Apparently, “people who know” was code for “strangers who speculate.” “[It’s] absolutely not true. I don’t know where they get this stuff from, honestly,” said Cole about whether her relationship with Palin had deteriorated.  On the contrary, she affectionately described the care the Palins had shown her throughout the summer, after she had broken her hip while running a 12K race. “She [Palin] was really concerned. Both her and Todd kept in contact with me, to check on me and see how everything was going. No matter where they were.”

Ivy Frye has also stepped forward to correct Gross’s piece. From the Conservatives 4 Palin site, here’s the statement Frye issued:

I didn't leave on "bad terms." I've known the Palins for many years and I respect them personally and professionally. Our relationship is not "deteriorated." In fact, I just waved campaign signs with Todd and Sarah last week, and went 4-wheeling with Willow and Piper. Gross' 8 page hit piece is a complete work of fiction from beginning to end. And the media elite wonder why we call them "lame stream."

And over on Big Journalism, political activist Dr. Gina Loudon refutes Gross’s claim that Trig Palin was present at the event. The baby mentioned was Loudon’s son Samuel, who also has Down Syndrome. And while Gross describes the event as dominated by photo-op concerns (“Behind the curtain, Piper plays with other children, oblivious to the speech. She runs in circles, plays hide-and-seek, poses for snapshots, and generally acts as if she were in another world—until she gets the signal to do her job: march to the podium, pick up Palin’s speech, and allow Palin to make a public display of maternal affection.”), Loudon describes a softer atmosphere:

All of the Palin children circle around Samuel the moment they can get close, but Piper, in particular, cannot seem to get enough of him. She literally plays with him (Gross does say she played with “the children” in his story) from the moment she sees him, until the moment she is pressed to let go of him.  It is so sweet, and it speaks to the parenting in her life.  She has obviously been taught a real, tangible love for “special children” by her parents, and it shines when she lights up at the sight of a baby with Down syndrome.  This is not an ordinary reaction in children.  Most children step away, look curious, or frightened, or confused.  Not the Palin children, and especially not little Piper.

Next time liberals accuse conservatives of poisoning the political dialogue, it’s worth recalling this article. Not only does it adopt a hostile, mocking tone, but it is also riddled with factual inaccuracies. Would such a poorly sourced and researched piece, crammed with conjectures and assumptions, ever be published in a similarly influential magazine if it were on say, Nancy Pelosi or Hillary Clinton? Seems highly unlikely.

There are plenty of topics that warrant heated Washington debates. There’s no need to delve into ugly (and untrue!) gossip unless the goal is to ensure a complete lack of civility and respect in political dialogue.

UPDATE: Meghan Stapleton (noted in the quote above as being on “bad terms” with Palin) e-mails me that the assertion is completely false. Her statement:

After years of working for Governor Sarah Palin and living with her for weeks at a time, I don't recognize the person described in this latest VF hit piece. This is just nonsense and despicable. The Palins and I also remain close - not a difficult fact to check.

And Gross’s snarky description of Palin’s moose chili incident may not be exactly on the mark, either:

“This whole hunter thing, for Sarah? That is the biggest fallacy,” says one longtime friend of the family. “That woman has never hunted. The picture of her with the caribou she says she shot? She got out of the R.V. to pose for a picture. She never helps with the fishing either. It’s all a joke.” The friend goes on to recall that when Greta Van Susteren came to the house to interview Palin “[Sarah] cooked moose chili and whatnot. Todd was calling everyone he knew the day before—‘Do you got any moose?’ Desperate.”

A reader e-mailed me a clip from Palin’s interview with Van Susteren. In the interview, Van Susteren directly asks who shot the moose. Palin never even suggests that she did; she immediately responds that probably one of her parents did. “I just grabbed a chunk of their moose meat out of the freezer because we didn't have any moose meat in our freezer the last couple of days,” she explains.

When Palin’s autobiography, Going Rogue, came out, the Associated Press assigned eleven fact checkers to look for errors. Between the eleven of them, they found exactly six “errors” (when it's considered an error that Palin asserts she’s not ambitious, you have to wonder about the criteria here) over the entirety of the 432 page book. By my count, Gross’s magazine piece has at least that many already.

Yes, everything that has happened up to this point has been the overture, prologue, or whatever other metaphor is most suitable for the reader. This is the time when the rest of the people who will be voting in the midterms will start looking around and paying attention to everything that’s going around them. Which is, of course, their privilege; besides, there’s probably less of them this time around. And they’re going to see the following:

It’s not over, but the narrative of the 2010 race is going to be established by the end of next week, and by all accounts the Other Side is going to enjoy the consequences about as much as we did when it happened to us in 2006 and 2008.  I also seem to recall a certain lack of sympathy being passed my way on those occasions.

Moe Lane

PS: “But, Moe!  Tell Republicans this and they’ll stay home and the Democrats will win anyway!”  Sure they will.  Players always quit a game in progress when they’re ahead and the other team can’t catch a break.  Street fights always stop the moment when the other guy’s first laid out on the ground.  And political movements hungry for wins always treat the news that they’re ahead with lessened enthusiasm.

Happens all the time, really.

PPS: So no, I’m not going to tell you to not get cocky.  It ain’t bragging if you can do it.

Crossposted to Moe Lane.

Wendell Cox's post is certainly an interesting one. I agree with him that the balance between transit and roads is misguided.

However, I feel I need to add to his comments something important concerning the role of the federal government in paying for roads and highway expansions. With very few exceptions, most roads, bridges, and even highways are local projects (at best, state projects) by nature. The federal government shouldn't have anything to do with them.

In fact, I would argue that taxpayers and consumers would be better off if these activities were privatized. And if states aren't ready for privatization, they can do what Indiana did a few years back when it leased its main highways to a private company for $4 billion. The state was $4 billion richer, and it was still the owner of the highway. Consumers in Indiana were better off, because the deal saved money. Experiences in other countries have also shown that privatization leads to innovation and reduced congestion. (I really like this paper by Randy O'Toole on these issues.)

Needless to say, I think Obama's $50 billion plan is a bad idea.

In a non-immigration context, Mickey Kaus refers to "an old Ralph Nader trick: If you find out the government is going to do something on Tuesday, call a press conference Monday to demand that it be done." That's what I thought of when I saw this story:

The Vanishing Hispanic Vote. Why lack of immigration reform could hurt Obama in November

One big factor seems to loom over all others when it comes to measuring Latino voter intent: Barack Obama's pledge in 2008 to tackle immigration reform during his first year in office.

This storyline has been developing for a while. The open-borders people know the Democrats are going to get clobbered on the first Tuesday of November, so they're calling a press conference blaming it ahead of time on their failure to pass an amnesty.

Megan McArdle:

Back during health care, I argued that probably borderline Democrats should tell the party to go to hell, and vote in a way that was more likely please their constituents.  No, seasoned political commentators told me, it doesn't work that way; voting against the party means no support in November.

Well, so does voting for the party, it seems; facing massive losses, the Democrats are looking at a triage strategy.  Borderline candidates may end up bogged down with an unpopular vote, and limited party support in the upcoming midterms.

Over at Contentions:

The New Republic’s Jonathan Chait continues his indefatigable political defense of ObmamCare. One of his recent efforts, “Health Care as Political Scapegoat,” can be found here. He writes, as proof of his thesis, that “a recent Gallup poll shows that Democrats fare about evenly (+1) versus Republicans on health care — it’s one of the only issues where they don’t have a disadvantage.”

Now what might be missing from Chait’s analysis? Context.

As I pointed out here, in October 2006, the Democrats held a 64-percent v. 25-percent advantage over Republicans regarding health care. Today the lead is 44 percent v. 43 percent — a 38-point swing in favor of the GOP. That is a substantially larger swing than we’ve seen on combating terrorism (29 points), the economy (27 points), and handling corruption in government (26 points).

There is no other issue, in fact, over which Democrats have lost as much ground as quickly as over health care....

Bruce Josten, executive vice president for government affairs at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, writes in an e-mail to National Review Online:

The U.S. Chamber will support any proposal that spurs job creation, bolsters both short- and long-term economic growth. We will not support an approach where the government picks winners and losers—providing tax credits and incentives to politically favored industries and groups while sticking others with the bill. This is ultimately self defeating and puts politics ahead of sound economic decisions that can create jobs. Bottom line: This president and administration have had nearly two years to help turn around our economic situation. Their agenda of more taxes, regulations, and mandates clearly isn’t working. In fact, it has created tremendous uncertainty and delayed and weakened the recovery.

I basically agree with Jonah on the Koran-burning thing, though there's no question a double standard exists that benefits Islam. But the thing that really creeps me out is the very idea of book burning. Obviously, books are physical objects and many have been and will continue to have to be destroyed and disposed of. But a staged book-burning -- whether Mein Kampf or The Communist Manifesto or the Koran -- is an assault on civilization, whatever the likely reaction of the locals in Berzerkistan.

ABC is cutting itself down to a rump, closing all of its physical bureaus save for D.C.

Update: Correction/Clarification/Woops! This story is very old, but was sent to me as if it was new. I didn't look at the date. My apologies.