Upper Left Coast

Sixty percent of the new Sellwood Bridge won't be for cars?!

2009-10-01T21:51:00.003-07:00

Multnomah County is trying -- trying, I tell you! -- to find ways to save money on the proposed replacement to the Sellwood Bridge.

But try as they might, they can't keep the cost under a third of a billion dollars. The westside intersection is just too complex, I tell you. We've got to make everybody happy -- especially the streetcar enthusiasts who plan a route right down Macadam Avenue.

But somehow, with a straight face, they tell us this:

The two-lane bridge will be replaced with a crossing that has two lanes -- totaling 24 feet wide -- for cars and 37 feet for bicycles and pedestrians.

Did you get that? Twenty-four feet of driving space, and 37 stinkin' feet of space for bikes and walkers. Sixty percent of the new space will not be for cars, even though I'm willing to be 98 percent of the use (and 100 percent of the payments) will come from motor vehicles. According to this graphic, they plan sidewalks for pedestrians and bikes on both sides, plus bike lanes inside that.

Maybe if they eliminated the street-level bike lanes and made the bridge 10 feet narrower, they might find a way to keep the cost under $300 million. But that would mean they were thinking reasonably.

What's wrong with this picture?

2009-09-02T08:47:00.004-07:00

Dear National GOP

2009-08-28T17:14:00.000-07:00

Will you please get a grip?

Selective auditing

2009-08-26T20:58:00.003-07:00

So the audits division of the secretary of state has found that Oregon overspends on its cell phone costs by nearly half a million dollars every year.

State government is wasting money? Ho hum. Tell us something new.

However, there were a few things that caught my eye, things which should tell us that the half-million number is way low:

While the audit included all state cell phone use, it only dug into three departments -- Human Services, Transportation, and Corrections -- and revealed that the overspending was largely due to "insufficient agency oversight." Since those departments accounted for less than 40 percent of the state's cell phone use, what kinds of abuses might have been found with deeper digging into the other 60 percent?
The audit included usage from two carriers, Sprint/Nextel and AT&T; a third carrier, Verizon, did not provide usage info, and state agencies are free to use other carriers (such as T-Mobile). Who knows how much more waste would have been revealed with the info from other carriers?
The audit revealed that the state paid for roughly 8,145 cell phones at a cost of $3.1 million, but again, that was without Verizon's info. How many more cell phones are covered by Verizon, and at what cost?

But the biggest surprise may have come from Audit Director Gary Blackmer, who was quoted by Oregon Public Broadcasting as saying:

We don’t in any way want to question the need for cell phones. It’s more just how we can get the best value out of them.

Say what? Why don't we want to question the need for cell phones? When the audit report includes info like this:

At DHS, one phone had more than $2,300 in charges in one year, with one month’s charges over $1,200. We found that the listed user had left state employment in April 2005. DHS staff could not tell us whether the individual or individuals responsible for these charges were employed by DHS.

why in the world wouldn't we question the need for cell phones? Do we really think that the culture that created these problems will somehow miraculously clean itself up? Never mind, don't answer that.

And remember, this is the culture that thinks the government can make the best, most cost-effective decisions about our health care.

Ted Kennedy, RIP

2009-08-26T20:54:00.002-07:00

Sen. Kennedy and I would have found little ground for agreement, but I find nothing to gain by bashing the man after his death. Especially because he died of the same class of brain tumor that claimed my father, I pray for God's comfort for his family and friends.

Dear Oregon GOP

2009-08-19T09:03:00.003-07:00

I like your new ad, but I have just one problem with it: have you not done anything worth trumpeting for the last 30 years?

Your claims to fame are protecting the state's beaches (done 42 years ago), electing the first African-American congressman (139 years ago), nominating the first female supreme court justice (28 years ago) and creating the first national park (137 years ago), along with the nebulous "keeping taxes low" and "helping make America the land of the free"?

If you're trying to go after a new generation of voters, is this going to give them a valuable history lesson, or just reinforce the notion tossed out by Democrats that the GOP is a party of old guys with no new ideas?

Just asking.

Isn't this closer to the truth?

2009-08-17T14:03:00.003-07:00

The best laugh I've had all week

2009-07-27T21:11:00.003-07:00

came in Jack Bogdanski's wrap-up of his meeting with Howard Dean. It's good reading, as Jack usually us, but this is where I spewed coffee across my computer screen (emphasis mine):

Part of the professed goal of the "public option" is to put the government in competition with the private insurers, to make the latter less wasteful and less predatory.

Government is going to make private insurers less wasteful? Because the government has such a great track record of avoiding waste? What a hoot!

Myopic thoughts on the abortion debate

2009-05-18T20:27:00.003-07:00

More frequently in today’s political climate, abortion supporters follow President Obama’s lead to use moderate terminology in the abortion debate. Abortion should be safe, legal and rare. Unwanted pregnancies (and thus, abortions) can be prevented by ready access to birth control. They infer that somehow by the impact of their verbal moderation, a few less American women will face unplanned pregnancies, and (perhaps) more American women will decide to keep their babies.

But yet, their definition of “common ground” still includes allowing abortion at any time, at any age, for any reason. And in their attempt at moderating their rhetoric, they fail to grasp the double-speak that lets their abortion-minded perspective off the hook.

Essentially, they -- led by the President of the United States -- want everyone to talk nicer. That’s a good goal, especially for the in-your-face nature of the blogosphere, but there’s no true willingness to find common ground, only chummy agreement on the disagreement.

Nowhere was this more apparent than in the president’s address to the Notre Dame graduating class on Sunday. Obama was only eight paragraphs into his speech when he referred to the current economic struggles “where greed and short-term thinking [have been] too often rewarded at the expense of fairness, and diligence, and an honest day’s work.” A few paragraphs later, he noted that “Too many of us view life only through the lens of immediate self-interest and crass materialism; in which the world is necessarily a zero-sum game.”

Short-term thinking? Immediate self-interest? Like the kind where a woman seeks to end her baby’s life because she doesn’t want to be pregnant right now?

Obama went on:

Your generation must decide how to save God's creation from a changing climate that threatens to destroy it.

Does the phrase “God’s creation” not apply to unborn children? How can we simultaneously lionize those who trumpet efforts to save God’s creation from global warming, and yet demonize those who attempt to save God’s creation from abortion, criticizing the use of the phrase in one arena but not in the other?

And yet, despite those myopic examples, I couldn’t help but be moved by this section, when Obama referred to his time working in the Chicago community with people of faith:

And something else happened during the time I spent in these neighborhoods -- perhaps because the church folks I worked with were so welcoming and understanding; perhaps because they invited me to their services and sang with me from their hymnals; perhaps because I was really broke and they fed me. Perhaps because I witnessed all of the good works their faith inspired them to perform, I found myself drawn not just to the work with the church; I was drawn to be in the church. It was through this service that I was brought to Christ.

And at the time, Cardinal Joseph Bernardin was the Archbishop of Chicago. For those of you too young to have known him or known of him, he was a kind and good and wise man. A saintly man. I can still remember him speaking at one of the first organizing meetings I attended on the South Side. He stood as both a lighthouse and a crossroads -- unafraid to speak his mind on moral issues ranging from poverty and AIDS and abortion to the death penalty and nuclear war. And yet, he was congenial and gentle in his persuasion, always trying to bring people together, always trying to find common ground. Just before he died, a reporter asked Cardinal Bernardin about this approach to his ministry. And he said, "You can't really get on with preaching the Gospel until you've touched hearts and minds."

This is the very thing I struggle with as a person of faith: where is that line between defending my faith and the truth, and driving people away from any opportunity to see Christ in me?

What’s the old saying? People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.

I don’t have the answer, but I’d like to think it has elements of Obama’s call for rhetorical moderation, as well as the intellectual honesty necessary to realize that achieving true common ground involves more than just changing the labels. It involves the hard work necessary to find legitimacy in the other person’s arguments, to work toward compromise where possible, and, yes, to respectfully hold firm to your ideals with the expectation that the other side will do the same.

Realistic? Pollyanna-ish? I don't know. I don't deny that I may have a case of myopia as well. But I'm working on it.

For those who want to 'save' the Made in Oregon sign

2009-04-04T11:46:00.004-07:00

How is this:

better or worse than this:

or this:

or this:

Tradition? That was thrown out when the White Stag sign became Made in Oregon.

Appearance? They're virtually identical, minus verbiage.

Conflict with Portland State? Puhleeze. U of O has had a Portland presence for 125 years; PSU has been in Portland for 63 years.

So what is it?

My thoughts on the bailout...exactly

2009-03-29T13:30:00.000-07:00

A typo two-fer

2009-03-23T09:13:00.003-07:00

From the Oregonian's website this morning, back-to-back breaking news stories included a misspelling ("reopens") and apostrophe abuse ("Oregon's"):

Those budget cuts must really be cutting into the paper's staffing levels.

If the Oregonian ran our government

2009-03-10T15:17:00.002-07:00

...we'd be in a world of hurt. Over the last month, the O has editorialized in favor of:

A new baseball stadium at the Rose Quarter (cost: $50 million).
Giving the old McCall’s Restaurant (3,843 sq ft) to the Portland Rose Festival Foundation for $1 a year (at the national average of $18 per square foot, the cost is close to $70,000 a year).
Spending $5 million (hopefully from the federal stimulus package) to rectify horn noise related to the Westside Express Service (WES) trains. (That's on top of the $166 million already paid for construction & the railcar construction company bailout.)
Pursuing federal stimulus money for “green” projects such as solar-powered highway lighting, a prison and a school. (Unknown cost, based on the overall price-tag and the amount covered by federal dollars.)
Raising the beer tax, just not as much as Rep. Ben Cannon wants (cost unknown).
Bailing out failing mortgage holders (cost: $75 billion)
Building the Columbia River Crossing (cost: $4.2 billion)
Revamping the nation’s healthcare system (cost unknown)
Avoiding cuts to state arts funding to prop up other state services (cost: at least $1.8 million)
Using the Kicker money to create a rainy day fund (cost: at least $1.5 billion)

And my personal favorite was on Feb. 22, when they had dueling editorials:

"Full speed ahead on high-speed rail" advocated spending $8 billion in federal stimulus money on a nationwide high-speed rail system (though the overall project will cost “far more” than that); and,
"With a $3 billion hole, first, stop digging" again urged the state to avoid its reserves until the next biennium, because of a projected $3 billion shortfall in 2010-2011, but also said we should expect additional taxes on corporations (i.e. employers), tobacco, gasoline and hospitals, along with an income tax surcharge.

Come to think of it, this list sounds a lot like the Democrats in control of the legislature. Purely a coincidence, I'm sure.

Quote of the Day: shut your pie hole

2009-02-19T08:04:00.002-08:00

From Tony Woodlief, last week:

I can’t abide people who are already salivating at the prospect of Obama’s failure, who are convinced that he is a godless Marxist with a secret plan to steal our guns, open our borders, and make us all work like slaves on wind-energy farms while turning our daughters into lesbians with kindergarten sex-education seminars. The reality is that we need him to exercise good judgment and rein in the lunatic fringe of his own party, just as we need Republicans with some backbone to quietly take Rush Limbaugh by the arm and remind him that he is nothing more than a dancing bear, that if he expects any more of them to come kissing his rear end after they hurt his precious feelings then he is sadly mistaken, and that the best thing for everyone would be for him to have another diet shake and shut his piehole.

Whether he "exercise[s] good judgment and rein[s] in the lunatic fringe of his own party" remains to be seen.

Peer-review? It probably isn't

2009-02-19T07:59:00.003-08:00

You know how global warming proponents like to say the science is settled because all that research has been peer-reviewed?

Maybe not.

(HT: Tony Woodlief)

Quote of the Day: a lack of legislative imagination

2009-01-05T07:29:00.002-08:00

That's the only explanation I can muster from Oregon State Sen. Peter Courtney, who says the Democrats in control of the legislative and executive branches hope to jump-start the state economy by borrowing billions dollars for public works projects. Courtney said:

I don't know how else to deal with the declining job market. I have got to do what I can do to get jobs and get them now.

More than 8 percent of Oregonians are out of work (which is a point and a half above the national rate) and Courtney doesn't know any way to deal with it except for a huge run-up in the state's debtload? And this man is in charge of the state senate?

Surely the Dems can come up with someone with a little more imagination.

Credit where credit is due

2009-01-01T14:43:00.005-08:00

Kudos to the Vancouver, Washington fire department union, which decided this week to approve a pay freeze for its members. More than 90 percent of the members voted in favor of the freeze, which comes as the city (like most cities and businesses in the country) is dealing with an expected budget deficit.

Money quote from Fire Capt. Bill Garlington:

People are losing their jobs. The people losing their jobs are the people who are paying our wages.

Exactly.

I'm might quibble a bit, however, with how the Oregonian described Garlington's vote. Yes, his is a one-income household with college tuition bills looming on the horizon, but there are plenty of people in the same boat making a whole lot less than Garlington's near-$100,000 annual salary.

But nonetheless: it's nice to see a union that has a clue about what's appropriate and who's paying the bills.

If I were a Democrat

2008-12-12T09:15:00.000-08:00

in the United States Congress, why would I negotiate anything with Republicans regarding the Auto ~~Workers'~~ Manufacturers' bailout (or anything else, for that matter)?

Thanks to last month's elections, the Dems expanded their House majority by 21 seats, and will hold a 257-178 advantage when new members are sworn in next month. In the Senate, the GOP is holding on by the skin of its teeth; assuming Norm Coleman squeaks by Al Franken in Minnesota, Democrats will hold a 58-42 advantage. That means the Dems just have to pick off two votes (take your pick: Arlen Specter or George Voinovich or Olympia Snow or Susan Collins or Lisa Murkowski or . . . ) to end a filibuster. If I were Harry Reid and I didn't get my way, I'd go home, too.

It's gonna be a long two years for conservatives, and there's not much we can do about it.

Obama and Reagan

2008-12-10T08:36:00.003-08:00

During the election, some suggested that Barack Obama had similarities to Ronald Reagan, insofar as both men came to national attention in a time when the country was primed and ready for a cultural shift.

After seeing the president-elect's ability to interact with shady figures -- be it Tony Rezko, Bill Ayers, Jeremiah Wright or Rod Blagojevich -- yet claim ignorance of their character and come out unscathed, I'm starting to see at least one comparison.

Barack Obama is either incredibly lucky that no one is willing or able to spill the beans on him; incredibly capable of ignoring the character of others in order to accomplish his goals; or incredibly ignorant of the people with whom he associates.

Call me crazy

2008-11-25T08:42:00.002-08:00

...but it sounds like Jack Bogdanski is pondering the possibility of riots in America.

He essentially says that the country is in such rough shape, that people are so frightened and downtrodden, that the country is heading in the wrong direction on so many fronts, that there is no way the new president can act quickly enough to satisfy those hurting souls. The result, like the built-up anger over racial discrimination, will be that "many Americans won't be willing to wait quite as long as I am to see some results."

He never comes out and says that riots are inevitable, but by invoking the Civil Rights era rioting and comparing that situation to today, it's not a difficult leap to think that Jack sees the parallels extending to the 1960s destruction of America's inner cities. It's also not difficult to imagine that others in a position to implement such violence also see the parallels, and are already working toward those ends.

The country is, in some ways, in rough shape, and many people are worried. But perhaps this is but one of many examples of the hazards involved in praying for The Obamessiah to wave his magic wand and bring the world together at the communal campfire of humanity. Now that The One has been elected, people are starting to realize (admit?) that Obama is only a man, and that miraculous change is not quite the reality they claimed two months ago.

Of course, I'd make this observation on his blog, but he seems to have decided to delete any comment I make.

Tough love

2008-11-19T09:07:00.001-08:00

Coyote at Northwest Republican gives it to the American automobile industry. And I couldn't agree more.

And now, something completely random

2008-11-17T08:31:00.002-08:00

As Jonah Goldberg described it, Nerdtastic. Between my soft spot for a cappella and my nostalgia for the movies referred to in this video, I call it good, clean fun. OK, a little nerdy, too.

I know that babies are sometimes born in cars...

2008-11-15T10:55:00.003-08:00

...but I didn't know they'd put it on the birth certificate.

Read about it here.

The Oregonian: official PR agency of radical environmentalists

2008-11-14T10:59:00.001-08:00

That's not an unreasonable interpretation of this news story on the O's website, which leads with the assumption that a Bush administration logging plan is a bad idea and finishes with instructions on how to protest against it:

Salem is bracing for an afternoon rally to halt harmful logging in Western Oregon.

The Stop the Western Oregon Plan Revision & Save Our Forests rally, set for noon on the Capitol Building steps, is aimed at encouraging Governor Kulongoski to protest a Bush administration plan to increase logging on land owned by the Bureau of Land Management.

On Tuesday, a University of Oregon student clambered 50 feet up a pine tree at the Capitol and settled into a tent with a banner that read, "Don't Clear Cut Our Future."

Free buses were leaving at 10 a.m. from Portland's Daily Grind coffeehouse at Southeast 42nd Avenue & Belmont Street, according to organizers.

Got it? That logging plan is "harmful." It says so right in the lead. And Salem is "bracing," so it must be such a terrible plan that the Capitol will be overrun with protestors, right?

No value judgment about the loony-toon hanging out in a tent five stories above the Capitol mall. No value judgment about the rally's legitimacy. It's harmful. End of story.

And if you agree, we'll link to one of the area's most left-wing media sources (a self-described "tool for the creation of radical, accurate, and passionate tellings of truth") to let you learn how to join the rally. After all, you probably don't have a job and might be looking for something to do on a beautiful Autumn afternoon.

Ironically, if this story had first appeared in the Oregonian, it might not have made the pages of Portland indymedia. Their website says they reserve the right to hide posts that "are reposted from corporate media outlets."

Red Herring of the Day

2008-11-12T08:08:00.002-08:00

From an AP article about how gun sales have skyrocketed since the election of Barack Obama (emphasis mine):

Faster than a speeding bullet, rifles and handguns have been flying off the shelves here and across the country since Barack Obama won the presidential election.
"Gun sales doubled Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday last week, and we've sold out of a lot of the guns we normally have in stock," said Jim King, sporting goods manager at Thatcher's Ace Hardware in Baker City, which still retains a tinge of its Wild West boomtown origins.
People are afraid of losing their Second Amendment gun rights, King said, although that would involve a lengthy and improbable attempt to amend the U.S. Constitution.

The issue for Second Amendment supporters is not that they think the amendment will be amended or repealed. But there are plenty of limits that can be placed on gun ownership short of erasing the Second Amendment. Obama tacitly admitted in September that his willingness to change gun laws was limited only by sufficient Congressional support; now that he has it, gun owners worry that he will use his Congressional majorities to impose much more stringent limits on them.

Why this election matters

2008-11-04T00:00:00.000-08:00

Because five Supreme Court justices are at least 70 years old, and the two oldest are the two most liberal: John Paul Stevens and Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Obama's surprising admissions

2008-11-03T07:35:00.003-08:00

In an interview earlier this year with the San Francisco Chronicle, Barack Obama made two surprising admissions. First, he acknowledged that consumers should expect enormous rate increases due to his plan to reduce greenhouse gases. In the same breath, he admitted that when government actions negatively impact business, that cost will be passed on to consumers:

You know, when I was asked earlier about the issue of coal, uh, you know — under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket. Even regardless of what I say about whether coal is good or bad. Because I’m capping greenhouse gases, coal power plants, you know, natural gas, you name it — whatever the plants were, whatever the industry was, uh, they would have to retrofit their operations. That will cost money. They will pass that money on to consumers.

They will pass that money on to consumers. It makes one suspect that Obama knows his tax policies against, say, the oil industry will result in higher costs for consumers, but that he either doesn't intend to follow through on his threats, or doesn't care about the impact on you and me.

Bill Clinton admits Obama doesn't have a clue

2008-10-30T08:41:00.002-07:00

Speaking yesterday in Florida, the former president explained the process Obama went through in responding to the country's financial crisis:

First he took a little heat for not saying much. I knew what he was doing. He talked to his advisers – he talked to my economic advisers, he called Hillary. He called me. He called Warren Buffet. He called all those people, you know why? Because he knew it was complicated and before he said anything he wanted to understand.

Obama didn't understand the issues, so he called Bill and Hillary Clinton? Wow. And the Democrats thought they were getting rid of the Clintons...

Choosing between drowning two children or 100

2008-10-30T08:13:00.001-07:00

That's the hypothetical comparison that Randy Alcorn uses to explain why he will vote for John McCain:

Suppose in the town you live in, there’s a lake where, for the last thirty-five years, children have been taken by parents to be drowned. Say that every day 100 children are brought to this lake.

As a town citizen, you are presented with two candidates for mayor. (You can vote for a third party, but clearly one of these two candidates will be elected.) One candidate publicly states that he believes the right thing is that the children not be brought to that lake. They should be allowed to live, except the one or two conceived by rape. By longstanding town law the 100 daily drownings are all legal, and the mayor can’t change the law. However, this mayoral candidate has publicly stated that the law should be changed, and he hopes to appoint judges who help that happen, so that 98 or 99 of the 100 children would live rather than die.

Now, the deaths of those one or two children conceived by rape should rightly disturb you. And if until now zero children had been killed at the lake, it would be evil to vote for a man willing for one or two to be legally drowned. But for thirty-five years, 100 children have been killed there each day. This man is trying to move the town in the right direction, even though he has stopped just short of a 100% reversal. No additional children will be killed if his position were in place, because those one or two children would have been killed anyway under existing law. But 98 or 99 a day would be rescued from the death they will face if his position isn’t put in place.

The other mayoral candidate believes that not one of those 100 children chosen for drowning by their parents should be rescued. He believes that the doctors holding them under the water should be allowed to do this. He is prochoice about the drowning of children. In the last twenty years there have been some limited prolife measures voted in by townspeople that have made it more difficult to drown children, saving some lives. But this candidate has promised to sign a bill that would remove all those restrictions. He would invalidate the requirement that doctors explain to parents what it means to drown a child. He would invalidate the law that requires grandparents to be notified if their children are going to drown their grandchildren.

In fact, this man has said of his own daughters, “If they make a mistake, I don’t want them punished with a baby.” He would support their right to hire a doctor to drown their babies, his grandchildren, in the lake. And he promises the town’s legal drowning organization, which makes considerable money by drowning children, that he will only appoint town judges who are in favor of the legalized-child-drowning laws.

Now here is our moral dilemma. Our next mayor will either be the 98%-don’t-drown-the-children candidate OR the 100%-drown-all-children-whose-parents-don’t-want-them candidate.

We could write in someone who has no chance of winning. It would be a protest vote, showing we don’t totally agree with either candidate. However, if others who believe all babies deserve to live do this same thing, the result will be that the 98% prolife candidate can’t win, and the 0% prolife candidate will be our mayor.

If you vote for the candidate in favor of saving 98 babies, it could be argued that you would be voting for the lesser of evils, since killing one or two children is evil. But after all these years of child-killing, you see the opportunity—if the 98% prolife mayor takes office and makes those prolife court appointments, countless future children’s lives could be saved. It’s not certain, but it’s a real possibility. And what is certain is this: if the candidate in favor of legalized child-killing wins the election, due to his agreement to remove any of the town’s existing child-killing restrictions, more children will die who wouldn’t have if the other candidate takes office.

Just in case it's not obvious: John McCain will work to save 98 children from being drowned (i.e. aborted), his exceptions being when the child is conceived as a result of rape or incest, or when the mother's life is in danger. (Yes, that's right -- rape, incest or life-threatening conditions make up about 2 percent of "drownings.")

Barack Obama will ensure that the parents of those 98 children (as well as those of two neighbors) are allowed to plunge their children beneath the surface of the lake in order to extinguish their short lives. Without exception.

Banned by Bogdanski

2008-10-29T07:54:00.005-07:00

For whatever reason, Portland blogger Jack Bogdanski has decided that he will delete any comment I make on his site.

On a previous post around the time Sarah Palin was introduced, he deleted my comment about abortion and said he did so because he wasn't sure if what I wrote was accurate (it was, but I don't think that's really the issue here). I'd argue that 1) If it's not accurate, it would be better to let his army of lefties show where I'm wrong; and 2) I somehow doubt he holds the same standard for his friends on the left.

But that's fine -- it's his site and he can do what he wants with it.

However, the point I made on yesterday's post was that John McCain is hardly unique among presidential candidates making stump-speech gaffes. Take this video, for instance:

To Jack, if he notices my link to his site: I enjoy your writing, and I'm sorry you're not willing to allow viewpoints that vary from your own.

To my friends on the right -- please don't take this as an opportunity to bash Jack. We don't need to stoop to that level, no matter what the other side may say.

Lord, let me see You as more than a Bic lighter

2008-10-29T07:42:00.005-07:00

I meant to link to this prayer from Tony Woodlief, but got caught up in the day's to-do list. Which is yet more evidence that I need to pray this prayer multiple times a day.

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on us – sinners all.

We confess that you are rarely what we most desire, though your desire for us led you to a cross atop Golgotha. We want cleaner homes, better clothes, spouses more attentive to our needs. We want children who will sit still in church, and hymns that suit our tastes. We want our pastors to speak to our needs, rather than lead us in worshipping you. We want the driver in front of us to go faster, and the one behind us to slow down. We want jobs we enjoy, and family who won’t ask us for money.

Sometimes we want more righteousness, or more personal purity, or a better prayer life. We seek religious virtue, Lord, but we do not seek your Cross. We are afraid of what you will ask of us should we seek that Cross, and so we make you smaller and tamer. We make you an intellectual puzzle, or an emotional experience. You are an all-consuming Fire, and we have turned you into a Bic lighter.

Lord have mercy. Christ have mercy.

Forgive us that we approach your Holy Word like we already understand you.

Forgive us that we pray when it’s convenient, that we talk too much and listen too little.

Forgive us when we seek the company of those who please us, rather than those who need us.

Forgive us that we have sullied your name by attaching it to political ideologies and national pride.

Forgive us when we hold ourselves above our brothers and sisters because they are Baptists, or Catholics, or Orthodox; because they plan to vote for Obama; because their children are in public schools; because they do trick-or-treat or they don’t trick-or-treat or because they only pass out those butterscotch candies that nobody really likes.

Forgive us that we see unrighteousness everywhere but in our own mirrors.

Oh Lord, we are a country founded in rebellion, and we have fallen into grave sin. We have made greed a virtue. We have borrowed until there is no grain left in the storehouse, and now we throw the costs onto our children and grandchildren. We have cultivated a hyper-sexualized culture. We allow our children to reach their teens without knowing how to behave like men and women. We have sanctioned the murder of millions of unborn children.

Amidst all this, we have the gall to proclaim this God’s most favored nation. We boast, oh Lord, when we should tremble.

If you, oh Lord, would count our iniquities against us, who could stand? We are shot through with sin, as a nation, a city, a church, as individuals. But you are faithful where we are faithless, and you have promised that when we confess, and repent, and lay hold of your Cross, that you will cleanse us of all unrighteousness.

So we praise you, Lord. Thine, oh Lord, is the greatness, and the power, and the glory, and the victory, and the majesty, for all that is in the heavens and the earth is Thine. Thine, oh Lord, is the kingdom, and Thou art exalted above all.

We praise you and we beg your mercy, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, both now and ever, and unto the ages of ages. Amen.

Obama thought of the day

2008-10-27T08:38:00.002-07:00

Assuming President-elect Obama serves his entire first term, he will have been president of the United States longer than he has held any steady job.

(HT: Mark Steyn, repeating the observation of David Warren)

Bill Ayers' organization wanted to kill 25 million Americans

2008-10-24T09:28:00.003-07:00

You know Bill Ayers? He's the one who has been buddies with Barack Obama for more than a decade. Oh, President-elect Obama has denied it, but there's plenty of evidence to the contrary.

Anyway, Ayers was the leader of an organization called Weather Underground that, it's recently been revealed, wanted to murder 25 million Americans because they were unrepentent capitalists.

Twenty-five million Americans. That's like setting off simultaneous nuclear bombs in New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, Philadelphia, Phoenix, San Antonio, San Diego, Dallas, San Jose, and Portland.

That's the judgment you're getting in your new president.

Bill Sizemore is a liability

2008-10-24T08:40:00.001-07:00

If there's any question about whether Bill Sizemore has a continuing and effective role in the Oregon initiative process, that question should be put to rest by the kerfuffle between the Oregon Education Association and the folks supporting Measure 65 on the November ballot.

According to the Oregonian's Steve Duin, the OEA sent a mailer to its members urging them to vote against eight ballot measures (including Measure 65) on the ballot because they're sponsored by "Bad Penny Bill." Never mind that Sizemore is only the chief sponsor of five measures (58, 59, 60, 63 and 64).

Measure 65 is the Open Primaries bill sponsored by former Oregon secretaries of state Phil Keisling and Norma Paulus, and when they found out that the OEA listed their measure as a Sizemore creation, they went into damage control overdrive.

"Linking us to Sizemore is blatantly false, cynical and offensive," Keisling said. "I can't believe OEA's political bosses are so afraid of losing power that they would knowingly lie and mislead their own members."

He added, "Don't tell me this isn't intentional and designed to denigrate. It's as intentional a deception as anything I've seen in 20 years."

Those comments from Keisling should tell you everything you need to know about Sizemore and his ability to effect change in the state's political process. From the position of the M65 supporters, Sizemore's name is such poison in Oregon politics that they had to nip this in the bud. Immediately.

And we know the position of the OEA -- there's not an ad that comes out from them that doesn't show an unhappy, shady Bill Sizemore and trumpet his name as the malevolent force causing the OEA to spend millions more of its member dues to fight off this assault. If you don't think the OEA has polling data showing that evoking Sizemore's name causes an immediate and significant drop in favorability, think again.

Yes, Sizemore has had a few victories, and he's forced the legislature to deal with issues it would rather have ignored. But really, has the legislature's attempt at appeasement in, say, the Measure 37 re-write resulted in anything positive for center-right Oregonians?

And his attempts at targeting the union crowd have backfired. Badly. Yes, he's forced the unions to spend tens of millions of their dollars to defeat him, but big whoop. That's like taking a cookie from a toddler, but leaving the full cookie jar open nearby -- there's plenty more where that came from. He's also been credited with bringing out enough union voters to elect Bill Bradbury for secretary of state. And we see how well that's worked out, especially in the redistricting process.

When we see how badly Keisling and Paulus want to distance themselves from Bill Sizemore, it's clear that Sizemore is a liability to his own causes. At just 57 years old, Sizemore still has many more productive years ahead of him. They should be in something other than politics.

She shoots, she scores

2008-10-23T08:47:00.000-07:00

I've been following the race in House District 26 with detached interest, as I don't live that far from the district, and the revelations of Matt Wingard's child abuse accusations have kept it in the news.

After those revelations, I fully expected the Democrats to ride the issue to victory. Then I saw their ad, which revealed the depths to which the Dems would dumpster-dive to win a seat.

And finally, today at Northwest Republican, I saw a letter from Wingard's ex-wife responding to the Dems' ad. (The letter is on the home page of Wingard's website. Surprisingly enough, I can't find the Dems' ad on the website of Wingard's opponent, Jessica Adamson; that, combined with Adamson's decision to stand behind the ad, should tell you a lot about the Dems' attack machine and Adamson's role in it.)

I thought the Dems' ad was devastating, if slimy, but this letter is devastating in its own right. Like Coyote, I won't retype the whole thing, but this is the part that made me think, "Ouch, that's gotta hurt Adamson":

Democrat Jessica Adamson cynically claims that "as a mother.." she believes that she can use my son to politically smear his father. By using my son as a political tool Mrs. Adamson proves she has a morally flawed view of motherhood that, I believe, disqualifies her for any public office.

And the conclusion:

This has been a horrible situation for my family caused by political operatives who do not care about our family or yours. Please do not reward Jessica Adamson for what has been the nastiest campaign I have ever seen.

...caused by political operatives who do not care about our family or yours. Including, the letter says, an Oregonian reporter.

The Dems are banking on the idea that Wingard's bad decision six years ago will leave a mark on Wingard's son and on Wingard's political future. This letter from the mother of Wingard's son makes it apparent that the mark may be on Jessica Adamson and her sleazy Democratic colleagues.

We'll find out in 12 days.

I was wrong

2008-10-21T09:10:00.002-07:00

A year and a half ago, Gordon Smith decided that we should pull our troops out of Iraq by the end of the summer.

When he cast that vote, I wrote that I could no longer support him as a United States Senator, and that he would not receive my vote in the 2008 election.

That was stupid, and I was wrong. Call me a squish, or inconsistent, or hypocritical, or whatever label you want, but I'm changing my mind. I will vote for Gordon Smith in the 2008 election. I may disagree with Gordon Smith on some things, but he is more conservative than not, and his opponent will be nothing more than a rubber stamp for Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama.

Actually, I'm not changing my mind so much as I'm reverting to my usual philosophy, which is one of pragmatism.

Politics is never a game in which someone is always right or always wrong (although some are more right than others), and you certainly don't get such black-and-white choices on the ballot. You (or at least I) vote for the person who is closest to my position and has a chance to win.

This is why I voted for Ron Saxton instead of Mary Starrett, because Ron Saxton could get a plurality of the vote and Mary Starrett could not. And it also means I voted for Ron Saxton instead of not voting, because that would give another advantage to Ted Kulongoski, who I definitely did not support.

It means I will vote for John McCain instead of Chuck Baldwin or Bob Barr, because John McCain can get a plurality of the vote. And it also means I will vote for John McCain instead of not voting, because that gives another advantage to Barack Obama, who I definitely do not support.

And it means I will vote for Gordon Smith instead of Dave Brownlow, because Gordon Smith can get a plurality of the vote. And it also means I will vote for Gordon Smith instead of not voting, because that gives another advantage to Jeff Merkley, who I definitely do not support.

Above, I said that I disagree with Gordon Smith on some things, and I will continue to communicate those disagreements with him. On his decision to pull our troops out of Iraq, I told him that if he went through with that vote, I could not support his re-election. Now that I'm changing that decision, I acknowledge the downside -- that any similar future threat will not mean much.

But I also have to ask: how often would Jeff Merkley and I agree, and how likely would he be to change his mind when I disagreed with him? If I agree with Gordon Smith 80 percent of the time and with Jeff Merkley 20 percent of the time, which is better?

As Ronald Reagan is said to have uttered, "The person who agrees with you 80 percent of the time is a friend and an ally — not a 20 percent traitor." That applies to Gordon Smith.

Waiting for Mr. Wu

2008-10-21T08:12:00.004-07:00

Two years ago, U.S. Rep. David Wu came to my front door with the woman who is now my state senator to ask for my vote.

Even though it was in the middle of a Duck football game, I gave them credit for making the effort, even though I had no intention of supporting either. But among the arguments they made in their favor, Mr. Wu advocated in favor of a Democrat-led Congress because it wasn't healthy for the nation to have the legislative and executive branches controlled by the same party.

Fast forward to 2008. The Democrats control Congress, and will likely have bigger majorities in both chambers. Their candidate for president appears likely to win the White House.

In order to avoid a situation where the Democrats control both branches, I look forward to hearing that Mr. Wu is going to vote for John McCain.

Think it will happen?

Me neither.

Local blogger's questions on Obama

2008-10-10T09:30:00.000-07:00

I was perusing my Site Meter this morning and came across a new blog: Man of Depravity. It's a mix of politics and faith, which always attracts my attention.

But what really got my attention was today's post talking about negative campaigning, and asking specifically about Barack Obama's association with Bill Ayers. Tyler wrote:

Here are a couple of my questions on this story:

Why did McCain wait this long to push this story? Why didn’t Clinton push it?
If Ayers is truly a threat and makes Obama a dangerous candidate, how is he still a US citizen not in jail and also working as a professor at a state college?

(These questions aren’t to minimize the importance of the story. They aren’t even to say that I’m not troubled by any connection Obama might have with this man. I know my questions make me sound liberal…I’m just trying to read between the lines of why this is or isn’t a big deal. They are questions not statements.)

It was a good reminder to me that there are plenty of people out there who don't follow politics like I do, and they can be reached with the truth. I hope I was truthful (though I acknowledge relying on others to report truthfully) when I answered with the following:

Why did McCain wait? A great question. I don't fully understand that either, but I think part of it is the press corps' reluctance to dig into the story, so the facts are still coming out.

Why is Ayers not in jail? Because the federal investigation was botched and the case thrown out. In response, what did Ayers say about himself? "Guilty as hell. Free as a bird. America is a great country."

Why is he a professor at a state college? Have you been on the campus of a state college anytime in the last 30 years?

The red flag in this case is that this is one of several Obama associations that are questionable.

Yes, Obama was 8 years old when Ayers bombed the Capitol and planned (but failed) to detonate a nail-filled bomb at an Army base social.

But Obama was 34 years old when Obama launched his political career in a social gathering in Ayers' home. And he was 37 years old when Ayers and his wife said they didn't do enough bombing. And Obama's story keeps changing. I met him in his living room (would you host a political event in your living room with someone you didn't know?). I met him at a lunch meeting about school reform. He was just a guy who lived in my neighborhood.

Obama was 42 years old when Tony Rezko (who was on Obama's campaign finance committee and under federal investigation at the time) held a lavish fund raiser at the Rezko mansion for Obama. That was followed a year later by an agreement between Rezko's wife and the Obamas to purchase their current house at $1.65 million, which was $300,000 below market value. (Rezko has been convicted of extortion, bribery, money laundering and mail fraud; his sentencing has been postponed until -- surprise -- after the election.)

Obama was about 36 years old when he used his position on a charitable foundation to steer money to the Arab American Action Network, a group that holds the establishment of Israel as an illegitimate catastrophe and whose leader supports Palestinian terror attacks on Israeli military targets.

Obama was about 27 years old when (as he acknowledges in his book, Dreams From My Father) he heard controversial statements from the Rev. Jeremiah Wright in Wright's pulpit. He was 43 when he said he went to Wright's church "every Sunday." Twenty years later, he claims not to have heard such statements from Wright until they were brought to his attention by the press. And only then did he distance himself from Wright's church.

How do these associations reflect on Obama as president? There's no way to know that. But it's fair, I think, to ask whether Obama's choice of associates is a hint of the types of people and perspectives that will find their way into a presidential inner circle.

Obama's low bar: appearing plausible

2008-10-08T08:12:00.002-07:00

From Rich Lowry's recap of the debate:

Obama, meanwhile, just has to appear plausible and he did. In fact, he's a kind of genius at appearing plausible. If the Nobel committee had a prize for appearing plausible, he'd win it every time. He carries himself with confidence, he never appears flustered, and he has mastered his material. If he's losing these debates on points (as I think he is), it doesn't matter. Every day the race drifts in the same direction it is now is a day he's closer to becoming president.

Which is essentially what I said last night. Never mind capability. Never mind judgment. Never mind experience. Barack Obama will be the next president because he simply has to appear plausible, and he's done that. The press will take care of the rest.

Liveblogging the second presidential debate: Obama wins

2008-10-07T20:18:00.001-07:00

I was going to do a recap of each question, but this debate wasn't worth it.

John McCain is supposedly the King of the Town Hall Format, and I don't think he did badly, but Barack Obama's personal warmth made him equal to the task. As in the first debate, Obama did what he had to do: make it sound like he knows the issues, obscure the places where McCain tried to paint him into a liberal corner, and come across as a nice man. And he did.

And because of that, he won. Oh, McCain had his moments, and Obama had his slips, but McCain needed more than he showed.

In a few places along the way, McCain tried to use humor, and it mostly failed. For instance, the first words out of McCain's mouth were, "Good to be with you, Sen. Obama, at a town hall meeting." McCain supporters may know Obama ignored McCain's call for multiple town hall meetings during the campaign, so they may see that as a jibe at Obama. The rest of America missed it, or couldn't care less.

McCain tried to tie Obama to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as well as trumpeting his reformer creds (and somewhat effectively, I thought) but it doesn't matter what McCain says -- Obama just denies it, and the average undecided American has no idea who to believe.

McCain's strongest answer came when Tom Brokaw asked which of three issues (health care, energy and entitlement reform) would get the candidates' first attention. Obama said energy would be first, followed by health care and entitlements. McCain said we could do all three, and added, "We can attack health care and energy at the same time. I won't tell a person without health insurance, 'Sorry you have to wait.' "

Obama likes to talk about going through the budget "line by line," but seems to forget that the president doesn't have a line-item veto.

On the issue of national sacrifice, Obama outshone his opponent. McCain got distracted by earmarks, while Obama talked about leadership. Noting George Bush's call for Americans to shop after Sept. 11, he said, "That wasn't the call to service people were looking for. Americans are hungry for leadership that will tackle problems in and out of government." Now granted, he then went on to a laundry list, but I thought it was an effective slam at Bush (and by extension, McCain). Obama also did well to talk about setting the right example at the government level, and utilized his class warfare schtick to good effect as he talked about asking a school teacher to sacrifice while CEOs get tax breaks. BS, but effective.

Ooh, a commission to study Medicare. Big whoop.

McCain tried hard to highlight his work across party lines, bringing up the names of liberals like Russ Feingold and Diane Feinstein

McCain got some good shots in regarding Obama's intention to fine people who don't insure their employees or their children (and Obama, miraculously, agreed!), but Obama scored points by playing the sympathy card when his dying mother had to "argue" with insurers over her cancer.

McCain broke down into his campaign speeches for most of the foreign policy section, and lost several opportunities by rambling a bit.

*Obama's big slip: "If we could have intervened effectively in the holocaust, who among us would say that we had a moral obligation not to go in?" Um, Sen. Obama, we did intervene effectively. It was called World War II. Maybe you could ask Tom Brokaw about it. He wrote a book about it.

McCain's strongest foreign policy answer (even though he never really answered the original question) was on Israel. He said flat-out that we wouldn't wait for UN approval to send troops and that "at the end of the day, we can never allow a second holocaust to take place." Obama danced around the issue. No, we couldn't give the UN a veto (over our plans, I assumed he meant), but we'll talk Iran to death. If I was Israel, I know who I'd want in the White House.

The last question was silly, but the candidates' answers sillier. Obama used humor to his advantage, but McCain took advantage of his position as holder of the last word to show more emotion in 60 seconds than he had in the previous 89 minutes.

* Quote updated to reflect the transcript

The media and its selective gotcha moments

2008-10-03T09:27:00.001-07:00

Why do conservatives feel there's a media double-standard regarding John McCain and Sarah Palin compared to anyone on the Democratic ticket? In an interview with CNN's John Roberts, Hugh Hewitt lays it out as well as I've heard:

I especially liked how he turned the tables on Roberts regarding Palin's sources of information, and it was clear to me that Roberts knew he got thumped and wanted to move on as quickly as possible.

Also telling was Hewitt's comparison of Joe Biden's gaffes to any similar statement by Palin. In this case, it was Biden's statement that President Franklin D. Roosevelt spoke to the American people via television at the beginning of the Great Depression, a statement that was factually untrue because (1) FDR wasn't president until 1932; and (2) Television wasn't available for such a format until the mid-1930s.

CNN's Roberts defended his network by saying that CNN mentioned that gaffe, but Hewitt responded:

John, it's not about mention. It's about the emphasis and the repetition. If Sarah Palin had said that FDR spoke on television as president in 1929, do you doubt for a moment, honestly, that it would have led every newspaper in America and would have dominated every media broadcast for three days?

And you know the answer to that rhetorical question.

Media bias? What media bias?

2008-09-30T08:59:00.000-07:00

In 19 months the press has yet to examine the relationship between Bill Ayers (self-admitted American terrorist who bombed the Pentagon) and Barack Obama (the presidential candidate), even though Obama began his political career in Ayers' living room.
In 10 days we discovered that Sarah Palin (the vice presidential candidate) really did not have a baby five months ago. It was her 17-year-old daughter’s (only that was not true, but it still was covered as hard news).

In 19 months we have yet to hear much about how Obama (presidential candidate) got all four of his state senate seat opponents removed from the ballot, nor how that squares with his "change" mantra.
In 10 days, most media have failed to mention that Palin (VP Candidate) defeated the sitting governor in his own primary AND a popular former governor in the general election AND has an 80 percent approval rating from the people of Alaska AND that is the highest approval rating of all 50 governors.

In 19 months there has never been any investigation into the admitted drug use by Obama (presidential candidate) more than two decades ago.
In 10 days we found out that 22 years ago Todd Palin (VP candidate’s husband) got a DUI.

It took 19 months for the Obama (presidential candidate) campaign to be asked about Obama’s “Fourth Trimester Abortion” vote. You know, the one where he refused to recognize a live-born infant as a person if the intent was to abort the baby. (And no one in the mainstream media corrected him when he lied about that vote.)
It took 10 days for the eagle-eyed media to discover that while the Alaska state aircraft was indeed put on E-bay by Palin (VP candidate), it failed to sell there and was in fact sold by a broker.

In 19 months of campaigning we have yet to find out what Obama (presidential candidate) did as a “Community Organizer,” nor why it's relevant to his bid for president.
In 10 days, we have a third-hand report that when Sarah (VP candidate) was a mayor, she went to the library and had a discussion about banned books. No books were banned. No librarian was fired and no titles or subjects were mentioned.

In 19 months of campaigning we have yet to know the true extent of the relationship between Obama (presidential candidate) and Tony Rezko (convicted felon, currently serving time for bribing politicians).
In 10 days we discovered that Palin (VP candidate) went to four different colleges during six different stints AND she got in trouble for pulling the fire alarm as a prank in one of them.

In 19 months the press seems to have forgotten to write about the millions of tax dollars that Obama (presidential candidate) directed to Tony Rezko’s buildings, many of them in Obama’s ward, or to mention that the buildings either remain condemned as uninhabitable or are continually cited for failure to meet the most basic rules.
In 10 days we learned that as a mayor with no influence in the decision, Sarah Palin (VP candidate) was for the Bridge to Nowhere, but when she became governor, and had enormous influence, she was against it AND (this is shocking) she used the funds on other more important Alaska infrastructure just like a governor should!

In 19 months there has been no coverage in the mainstream press about how the teachings of Saul Alinsky (a left-wing radical who wrote “Rules for Radicals”) have shaped the views of Obama (presidential candidate), even though Obama is said to have learned and applied Alinsky's teachings as a community organizer.
In 10 days there have been many articles complaining that Sarah Palin (VP candidate) got her nickname “Barracuda” because she was competitive in high school basketball.

It took 18 months for the Italian press to find Obama's (presidential candidate who is fond of the phrase "I am my brother's keeper") half-brother George, a Kenyan who lives in a tin hut about the size of a modest walk-in closet and lives on $12 a year. The American press has yet to find him.
It took 10 days for the press to put together specials on Palin's (VP candidate) family in Wasilla, Alaska (never pronounced without the "population 7,000" suffix), where they have interviewed about all 7,000 of the inhabitants.

Note: I received this via email and it was listed as authored by someone named Greg Stewart. I couldn't find any indication of who that might be.

The debate over today's presidential debate

2008-09-26T07:35:00.003-07:00

comes down to talk vs. actions.

Barack Obama's strength is his words, and he believes the American people desire to hear the words of their presidential contenders. He intends to proceed with the debate, regardless of progress on the current crisis, in order to demonstrate that he can discuss our country's issues intelligently and masterfully.

John McCain's strength is his actions, and he believes the American people desire to see what their presidential contenders would actually do in crisis. He believes talk is cheap if it's not backed up by actions. And he intends to proceed with the debate only after dealing with this crisis, because his priority is actions before words.

Which would you rather have in the White House? A man who tells you what he believes, or a man who shows you?

If Joe Biden were McCain's VP choice, the election would be over

2008-09-23T15:59:00.005-07:00

In favor of Obama.

That's the (I think correct) summation of Victor Davis Hanson regarding gaffe-a-minute Joe Biden, whose ridiculous comments receive a yawn and a pass from the media:

I think in the space of about the last 24 hours, Joe Biden claimed that the AIG bailout was bad, but then said it wasn't bad;

that we did not need to burn coal;

that his apology about the dirty McCain ad was, as they say, inoperative;

that FDR once went on television to address the nation after the stock market crash of '29 (that's a twofer that trumps Obama's Americans liberating Auschwitz);

and all but said that McCain took a $50,000 bribe.

Not a bad day's work — encompassing terrible energy policy, flip-flopping, historical ignorance, and slander. And this comes on top of Palin the "good looking" "Lt. Governor" of Alaska, Hillary as the better VP pick than himself, the patriotism of paying higher taxes, and so on.

And those in turn come on top of the primary remarks about Indians in donut shops, and "bright and clean" blacks. And those in turn come on top of . . . (Well, go back to the pilfered speeches and made-up bios.)

Something is very wrong here. While most forgive the silly slip like "Barack America" or asking the wheel-chair bound to stand up, I think the Obama staff must have gone from amusement to embarrassment and now to serious concern whether Biden is up to the job.

Had this been Palin, the election would now be over.

Or, as Jonah Goldberg said a couple of weeks ago:

Biden could shout on Meet the Press, “Get these squirrels off of me!” and the collective response would be, “There goes Joe again.” But if Palin flubs the name of the deputy agriculture minister of Kyrgyzstan, the media will blow their whistles saying she’s unprepared for the job.

In other words: if Joe Biden were a conservative Republican and McCain's No. 2 pick and he made these same gaffes, the press would be trumpeting them from the rooftops.

Biden admits Palin is more qualified than Obama

2008-09-18T08:01:00.004-07:00

Here's Joe Biden, speaking yesterday at a rally in Ohio:

I used to be a councilman. I left that for this job -- for the Senate -- you know why? Your job is harder.

And which one of our candidates was a city councilor? Oh yeah, that would be Sarah Palin. Apparently eight years as a councilor and mayor is better preparation than we thought.

A 600-foot tower in Waterfront Park?!

2008-09-17T08:39:00.005-07:00

When I first read this, I had to check the calendar to make sure it wasn't somewhere close to April Fool's Day. How'd you like this added to the Portland skyline (click on the photo to enlarge it)?

Read more about it here.

Cool photo of the day

2008-09-16T21:04:00.002-07:00

From a friend who's a big Nebraska Cornhusker fan, here's a shot of Husker Stadium awash in red on gameday, complete with flyover.

Questions for Obama

2008-09-15T08:22:00.002-07:00

From George Will in the May 5, 2008 issue of Newsweek:

• Senator, concerning the criteria by which you will nominate judges, you said: "We need somebody who's got the heart, the empathy, to recognize what it's like to be a young teenage mom. The empathy to understand what it's like to be poor, or African-American, or gay, or disabled, or old." Such sensitivities might serve an admirable legislator, but what have they to do with judging? Should a judge side with whichever party in a controversy stirs his or her empathy? Is such personalization of the judicial function inimical to the rule of law?

• Voting against the confirmation of Chief Justice John Roberts, you said: Deciding "truly difficult cases" should involve "one's deepest values, one's core concerns, one's broader perspectives on how the world works, and the depth and breadth of one's empathy." Is that not essentially how Chief Justice Roger Taney decided the Dred Scott case? Should other factors—say, the language of the constitutional or statutory provision at issue—matter?

• You say, "The insurance companies, the drug companies, they're not going to give up their profits easily when it comes to health care." Why should they? Who will profit from making those industries unprofitable? When pharmaceutical companies have given up their profits, who will fund pharmaceutical innovations, without which there will be much preventable suffering and death? What other industries should "give up their profits"?

• ExxonMobil's 2007 profit of $40.6 billion annoys you. Do you know that its profit, relative to its revenue, was smaller than Microsoft's and many other corporations'? And that reducing ExxonMobil's profits will injure people who participate in mu-tual funds, index funds and pension funds that own 52 percent of the company?

• You say John McCain is content to "watch [Americans'] home prices decline." So, government should prop up housing prices generally? How? Why? Were prices ideal before the bubble popped? How does a senator know ideal prices? Have you explained to young couples straining to buy their first house that declining prices are a misfortune?

• Telling young people "don't go into corporate America," your wife, Michelle, urged them to become social workers or others in "the helping industry," not "the moneymaking industry." Given that the moneymakers pay for 100 percent of American jobs, in both public and private sectors, is it not helpful?

• Michelle, who was born in 1964, says that most Americans' lives have "gotten progressively worse since I was a little girl." Since 1960, real per capita income has increased 143 percent, life expectancy has increased by seven years, infant mortality has declined 74 percent, deaths from heart disease have been halved, childhood leukemia has stopped being a death sentence, depression has become a treatable disease, air and water pollution have been drastically reduced, the number of women earning a bachelor's degree has more than doubled, the rate of homeownership has increased 10.2 percent, the size of the average American home has doubled, the percentage of homes with air conditioning has risen from 12 to 77, the portion of Americans who own shares of stock has quintupled … Has your wife perhaps missed some pertinent developments in this country that she calls "just downright mean"?

• You favor raising the capital gains tax rate to "20 percent or 25 percent." You say this will not "distort" economic decision making. Your tax returns on your 2007 income of $4.2 million show that you and Michelle own few stocks. Are you sure you understand how investors make decisions?

• During the ABC debate, you acknowledged that when the capital gains rate was dropped first to 20 percent, then to 15 percent, government revenues from the tax increased and they declined in the 1980s when it was increased to 28 percent. Nevertheless, you said you would consider raising the rate "for purposes of fairness." How does decreasing the government's financial resources and punishing investors promote fairness? Are you aware that 20 percent of taxpayers reporting capital gains in 2006 had incomes of less than $50,000?

• This November, electorates in four states will vote on essentially this language: "The state shall not discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment to, any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity or national origin in the operation of public employment, public education or public contracting." Three states—California, Washington and Michigan—have enacted such language. You made a radio ad opposing the Michigan initiative. Why? Are those states' voters racists?

• You denounce President Bush for arrogance toward other nations. Yet you vow to use a metaphorical "hammer" to force revisions of trade agreements unless certain weaker nations adjust their labor, environmental and other domestic policies to suit you. Can you define cognitive dissonance?

• You want "to reduce money in politics." In February and March you raised $95 million. See prior question.

The media said it, so it must be true

2008-09-12T14:03:00.002-07:00

From a story on the ABC News website today, entitled First Palin Interviews Get Mixed Reaction:

So, how did she do?

Appearing extremely rehearsed and slightly nervous, Gov. Sarah Palin sat down with ABC's Charles Gibson for interviews that aired Thursday on "World News" and "Nightline."

Just what does "extremely rehearsed" look like? And how does such an interpretation by the reporter belong in the lede of a news story? (Hint: it doesn't, unless you have an agenda.)

Things to remember about 9/11

2008-09-12T07:49:00.004-07:00

Courtesy of Tony Woodlief:

I’m no expert on global politics. I can’t discern whether it’s better to find and kill Islamofascists with all the collateral damage that entails, or play a Clintonesque diplomacy shell game, or something in between. But I do know that right action springs from right thinking, and right thinking is reflected in clear words. So it seems to me that seven years after that awful morning we ought to remember clearly — every citizen and certainly every politician who wants to represent us — a few essential things:

These men, women, and children were murdered.
Their murderers were slaves to a cult that hates truth and peace.
There is no reasoning nor negotiating with people who celebrated in the streets when they heard the news.
If we choose to resist this death cult, some of us will die.

And finally, for the Christian, these truths: that the line between Dark and Light traverses every heart, that it is not by our own merit that we were born outside the death cult, that we are enjoined to pray for our enemies, and that the reason we do so is because, on that blessed day when vengeance pours down from Heaven, no dark thing will escape.

The line between Dark and Light traverses every heart. Including mine.

It is not by my own merit that I was born outside the death cult. It is an unearned blessing from God, and I need to treat it as such, to be thankful, and to find ways to show that thanks.

We are enjoined to pray for our enemies. Not just the people who tick me off in traffic. Because God is not wanting anyone to perish, and that includes those who conspire against Him to kill His innocent children.

Immediate takes on the Palin-Gibson interview

2008-09-11T20:02:00.000-07:00

Charlie Gibson seemed annoyed to have to participate, like it was below his pay grade. He kept plowing through his questions, not interested in much follow-up and not interested in having a conversation. It seemed apparent to me that his questions -- while mostly fair -- were designed to elicit gotcha moments.

Sarah Palin seemed nervous and a little defensive, as if she was expecting more of the same treatment from the press that she's already received. I don't think she hurt herself terribly, nor did she help herself much.

The interview was so tightly (and badly) edited that I think we missed a lot of context. I hope ABC will make the entire interview available.

Palin's worst answer was in the context of national security experience: to paraphrase, I have experience with Russia because on a clear day we can see Russia from Alaska.

Her best answer was about her son's departure for Iraq. That's when she could shine as a human being and a mom, not just a vice president.

Palin handled his questions about her religious statements, but I think Gibson's decision to ask them will backfire on the left, as they discover that those statements resonate with the heartland of America.

She seemed knowledgeable about the Russia-Georgia conflict. I agreed with her take on a potential Israel-Iran showdown, though I wished she would have indicated that our relationship with Israel is such that we would be talking about potential military options before they were implemented.

There seems to be some concern about her answer about the "Bush Doctrine," but I had the same reaction she did: which part, Charlie? If you ask a hundred people (normal people, not hyperactive partisans) about the definition of the "Bush Doctrine," I'll bet you get a hundred different answers.

Remembering where I was -- and so much more

2008-09-11T09:20:00.002-07:00

When recalling a prominent moment in history -- JFK's death, the moon landing, the Challenger explosion, Sept. 11 -- people are prone to use one of my least favorite clichés: I will always remember where I was when it happened.

Of course, it becomes a cliché because it's got a huge nugget of truth embedded in its triteness -- we do remember where we were. But it's so immensely insufficient for me when I look back at that September morning seven years ago.

I still remember the panic in my wife's voice when she woke me, and -- despite my grogginess -- I recall exactly what she said.

I still remember that feeling in my gut as I sat before the television screen and watched hell unfold -- an ache much like I remember feeling when, as a kid, I slipped off the bike pedals and landed stomach-first on the handlebars.

I still remember my disbelief that these monumental structures -- where, as a teenager, I had stood on the observation deck more than a thousand feet above the New York City sidewalks -- could be toppled by the combination of jet fuel and hatred.

I still remember the feeling of unknown for our country -- what would this mean for us? -- and the fear that this was just the beginning.

I still remember Tom Brokaw signing off that evening with the reference to 9-1-1, the first time I'd made the connection between the emergency number and the date.

I still remember the anger I felt toward Palestinians who were dancing in celebration over the attacks.

I still remember concurrently trying to figure out how to explain the circumstances to our 4-year-old while wanting to shield her from the events altogether, even though the television -- which we kept watching for days -- replayed the events ad nauseum.

I still remember the feeling of unease around the fact that we had been trying to get pregnant, and suddenly weren't so confident in the world in which we would bring up our children.

I still remember the eerie silence in the days immediately following the tragedy, silence brought about by the lack of airplanes in the sky. And the unsettling rumble once those planes again took to the air.

I still remember my sister-in-law's fear that my wife -- who worked in a multi-story building downtown -- faced the same vulnerability as those thousands who perished when the twin towers fell.

And I still remember the men and women, fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters, children and grandchildren, friends and neighbors, who never saw their loved ones again.

A funny definition of neighborliness

2008-09-09T18:10:00.000-07:00

When I hear the word "neighborliness," I think of neighbors coming together in a spirit of community and love to voluntarily help those who need it.

Barack Obama has a different definition. On Bill O'Reilly's show Monday night, Obama made it clear that his definition of neighborliness is the forced transfer of money from those who have been successful in America (and who, by the way, employ a huge number of people through their successful businesses) in order to give it to those who have less:

If I am sitting pretty and you’ve got a waitress who is making minimum wage plus tips and I can afford it and she can’t, what’s the big deal for me to say I’m gonna pay a little bit more? That is neighborliness.

Under that definition, if I get held up in an alley and the thief takes my wallet, but I make enough money to absorb the loss of whatever cash is in the wallet, I'm just being neighborly.

O'Reilly consistently hammered Obama on his plan to raise taxes on the wealthy in order to fund tax cuts elsewhere. Obama refused to take O'Reilly's bait when the latter called it "class warfare" and "income redistribution," even though that's exactly what it is -- taking money away from one class of people to give to another class.

Obama even laid out the terms of how the class warfare will work, telling O'Reilly "you can afford that." In other words, anyone who dislikes such a financial redistribution deserves to be demonized because in the eyes of the left, they should be able to afford whatever the government takes from them -- even though a return to the Clinton tax structure would require those folks to write another five-figure check to the IRS.

Obama tried to come across as an everyday man, saying "I don't like paying taxes. You think I like writing a check?" But his definition of neighborliness is anything but typical. It is, as O'Reilly correctly noted, a "socialist tenet."

By the way, the funniest line in that interview came from O'Reilly, when he said, "It's not all about me, believe me."

Which, of course, is as far from the truth as it could be.

Wow. Just Wow.

2008-09-09T08:39:00.002-07:00

From the public opinion polling firm Rasmussen Reports:

Most American voters (60%) . . . [say] the Supreme Court should make decisions based on what is written in the constitution, while 30% say rulings should be guided on the judge’s sense of fairness and justice . . .

While 82% of voters who support McCain believe the justices should rule on what is in the Constitution, just 29% of Barack Obama’s supporters agree. Just 11% of McCain supporters say judges should rule based on the judge’s sense of fairness, while nearly half (49%) of Obama supporters agree.

Did you get that? Seven out of every 10 Obama supporters disagree with the notion that justices should rule based on the contents of the Constitution. Seven out of 10 don't believe in the Constitution!

And what happens when the sense of fairness from Justice A differs from that of Justice B? You've got to have a common basis for ruling, and that basis is the Constitution. If you don't think it's fair, then you get it changed. The fact that 70 percent of Obama supporters don't get this (or worse yet, consciously disagree with it) is frightening.

Fannie & Freddie like Democrats

2008-09-09T07:58:00.003-07:00

Over the last 20 years, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have given more to current or former Democrat candidates for president (to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars) than to any other members of Congress.

Sen. Christopher Dodd of Connecticut, chairman of the Senate banking committee, has pulled in $133,900, followed by Sen. John Kerry ($111,000), Sen. Barack Obama ($105,849) and Sen. Hilary Clinton ($75,550). Like in Dodd's case, many of the millions of dollars from Fannie & Freddie have gone to those on committees that regulate the industry; they have been more likely to help whichever party in control of Congress at any given time.

What's most impressive about this is the fact that Dodd and Kerry have been senators for the duration of that 20 years, so it's not so surprising that they might have pulled in decent amounts. But Obama did it in less than four years, and Clinton in less than eight.

The top Republican, at No. 6 on the list, was Sen. Bob Bennett of Utah ($61,499). And at No. 25 was Oregon Rep. Darlene Hooley, who earned $28,750 during her six terms in the House.

Overall, Democrats made up 16 of the top 25 recipients, and have received nearly a million dollars ($966,778); Republicans (with five members in the top 12) pulled in less than half that amount ($419,648).

Chill out a little

2008-09-08T08:28:00.000-07:00

No one is happier than me to see McCain/Palin climb into the lead in polling numbers. But, we have eight weeks and a day before the election -- including four debates. A lot can happen between now and Nov. 4.

The foreign policy qualifications of governors

2008-09-07T14:55:00.003-07:00

A very interesting post by Michael Ledeen on NRO today:

In discussions of the Palin nomination, one line keeps cropping up, to whit, "Governors don't really have foreign policy experience." Not so. Years and years ago I was the editor of The Washington Quarterly, and we started a series on the foreign policies of American states. I don't remember how many of them we commissioned, but the one that sticks in my mind was on the foreign policy of Nebraska. It was a real eye-opener for me, and for our readers, because it turned out that Nebraska had an amazing (to me, highfallutin intellectual in the nation's capital that I was) range of international activities, billions of dollars of foreign trade, ongoing contacts with foreign governments on matters ranging from "risk assessment" (of precisely the same sort that the State Dept carries on) to educational exchanges, financial operations, and ongoing discussions of all of the above with our own federal agencies. Nowadays that list would expand to cover terrorism, money laundering, illegal immigrants, etc. etc. Most states have directors of "homeland security," in the case of big states like California and New York such bureaus carry on intelligence exchange with foreign governments as well as with our own FBI, CIA, DIA, DEA and the like.

Those generalizations about governors should be revisited, I think. They were misguided back in the early eighties, and they're far more out of date today.

Slamming journalists

2008-09-07T14:44:00.003-07:00

I read a commenter today dismissing any comparison between Sarah Palin and Margaret Thatcher because Lady Thatcher has a degree in chemistry, whereas Palin believes that the world was created in six days.

I have no idea if Palin believes literally in the biblical story of creation, and don't really care. However, I, too, think it's ludicrous to compare the two, mainly because we have the benefit of four decades of retrospective to examine Thatcher's accomplishments without a corresponding history for Palin.

But I had to laugh at the writer's point, because Palin has a degree in journalism, so one could argue that the writer doesn't think much of her education. Which doesn't say much for an overwhelming number of journalists in America.

Including, come to think of it, me.

The funniest political interview I've ever seen

2008-09-07T14:35:00.003-07:00

Courtesy of Gully at Resistance is Futile.

I laughed at this. Hard.

2008-09-07T14:25:00.003-07:00

From the Bizarro Comic Strip.

Balancing demands

2008-09-06T07:36:00.003-07:00

The McCain campaign faces a difficult choice.

Do they continue to keep Sarah Palin in a cocoon, refusing to allow reporters to ask any questions of her and, in the process, feeding the perception that she's not ready for prime time?

Or do they allow her to take press questions with the knowledge that the press will treat her at least as contemptibly (if not more so) as they have for the first week of her national political career?

If she's as sharp as I think she is, I vote for No. 2. The first option will be fine for the "base," but will do nothing for the rest of undecided America. The second option will continue to expose the press for the left-wing hacks they are, while revealing more about the character and skills of the vice presidential nominee.

And if those skills are not as high as I think? Well, then bad on John McCain.

If Obama ever gets the votes, he'll take away your guns

2008-09-05T21:10:00.004-07:00

That's the tacit admission that Barack Obama made today during an appearance in Pennsylvania before a "hand-picked crowd," as reported by the Wall Street Journal:

A woman in the crowd told Obama she had “heard a rumor” that he might be planning some sort of gun ban upon being elected president. Obama trotted out his standard policy stance, that he had a deep respect for the “traditions of gun ownership” but favored measures in big cities to keep guns out of the hands of “gang bangers and drug dealers’’ in big cities “who already have them and are shooting people.”
“If you’ve got a gun in your house, I’m not taking it,’’ Obama said. But the Illinois senator could still see skeptics in the crowd, particularly on the faces of several men at the back of the room.

So he tried again. “Even if I want to take them away, I don’t have the votes in Congress,’’ he said. “This can’t be the reason not to vote for me. Can everyone hear me in the back? I see a couple of sportsmen back there. I’m not going to take away your guns.’’

Remember, one of the Democrats' goals this election season (along with Obama in the White House) is a filibuster-proof majority in the Congress. Obama seems to be saying that if he gets elected along with such a majority, he won't hesitate to support Orwellian gun-control legislation.

McCain's understanding of the world

2008-09-04T20:24:00.004-07:00

John McCain is no Barack Obama. He's not photogenic. He's not a spectacular speaker. His war injuries make him look robotic at times.

And from a purely superficial standpoint, I worry a little bit that too many Americans might make their decisions about the presidency as if it's a beauty contest, instead of looking at the lives and listening to the hearts of the men who want to be the 44th president of the United States.

But I hope there was at least one undecided voter out there tonight who heard John McCain's heart. I hope they heard loud and clear that John McCain has a clear understanding of the world, an understanding garnered by years in the military, years in the government and -- most importantly -- years of watching what war can do to a family, a community and a country:

We face many dangerous threats in this dangerous world, but I'm not afraid of them. I'm prepared for them. I know how the military works, what it can do, what it can do better, and what it shouldn't do. I know how the world works. I know the good and the evil in it. I know how to work with leaders who share our dreams of a freer, safer and more prosperous world, and how to stand up to those who don't. I know how to secure the peace.
My friends, when I was 5 years old, a car pulled up in front of our house. A Navy officer rolled down the window and shouted at my father that the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor. I rarely saw my father again for four years. My grandfather came home from that same war exhausted from the burdens he had borne and died the next day. In Vietnam, where I formed the closest friendships of my life, some of those friends never came home with me.
I hate war. It's terrible beyond imagination.
I'm running for president to keep the country I love safe and prevent other families from risking their loved ones in war as my family has. I will draw on all my experience with the world and its leaders, and all the tools at our disposal -- diplomatic, economic, military, and the power of our ideals -- to build the foundations for a stable and enduring peace.

Do you get it? John McCain would keep us out of war if it was at all possible, because he understands the costs of war, but he also understands that war is sometimes necessary to sustain the freedoms that most of us take for granted.

Barack Obama would keep us out of war regardless of the situation, because he doesn't understand the impacts of restraining us from a war we must fight. He believes all war is bad, but has no basis for judging the competing costs of aggression or pacifism.

Thoughts from the Palin speech

2008-09-04T09:29:00.004-07:00

Sarah Palin made effective use of her small-town roots to make a direct appeal to small-town people across the United States. She has to know that the big-town liberals were never going to vote for her ticket to begin with, but there are plenty of small-town folks (and big-town folks with small-town values) who liked what they heard.

She has a mischievous smirk that crosses her face when she's getting ready to deliver a zinger, which made it all that much more fun to watch the speech, rather than just reading it or even hearing it.

Unlike the folks at Blue Oregon, I didn't think it was too sarcastic -- I loved the lines. But then, that's my type of humor, so I'm probably not the right person to ask. I do think the question of whether she connected with independents is a legitimate and important one, but I'm more inclined to think she did because of my first point above.

Years from now, we're still going to be seeing video of little Piper Palin grooming her little brother while sitting in the stands.

Lots of people are praising Rudy Guiliani, but I'm not one of them. He had some good lines, but he went too long and seemed to be making up lines as he went along.

Michael Steele was very good. Mitt Romney made me glad he's not the VP candidate.

If a Republican questioned whether Hilary Clinton could be the president and still be a successful mother and wife, that Republican would be fired, dropped from the ticket, or would announce that he was stepping away to "spend more time with my family" in a heartbeat. And the press would still continue to trumpet that comment weeks or even months after the fact, as some supposed evidence of GOP bias against women. But somehow, the Democrats can make this suggestion about Palin and no one in the media even raises an eyebrow.

Cindy McCain is a stunning 54-year-old woman. There's a reason that one of the more popular Google searches has been "How old is Cindy McCain?"

I'm amazed at the number of times I see people change the subject rather than deal with the question at hand. Example: Bringing the Palin family on the stage is interpreted (by a bojack.org commenter) as "Teenage parents as American heroes. How cute." Even though anyone with half a brain knows there's never been a suggestion that this is intended to glamorize teen pregnancy, and that it's simply a family moment. Simple. Uncomplicated. Not sinister. Not hypocritical. But let's slam the 17-year-old kid who's been dragged through the mud for the last week, instead of dealing with a genuine issue.

And that doesn't even touch the issue that they're comparing Sarah Palin's experience -- which, like it or not, does have several categories that are foreign to Barack Obama -- with that of Mr. Obama, even though Obama is running for president against John McCain, not against Sarah Palin. Is it fair game to examine Palin's resume? Unquestionably. But let's remember who is running against whom, and compare oranges to oranges.

Overall, a very good night.

Breaking news from the O

2008-09-03T12:15:00.002-07:00

McCain hugs Palin upon his arrival in Twin Cities

With the way the media has covered Sarah Palin, I half-expected that headline to be followed by some sexual harassment allegation.

How will the media portray Sarah Palin?

2008-08-31T14:20:00.004-07:00

For the answer, just take a look at the front page of today's Oregonian (at left) -- specifically, the caption under her photo. Not corruption reformer Sarah Palin. Not mother of five Sarah Palin. Not former small-city politician Sarah Palin. Not even one-term Alaska governor Sarah Palin. But socially conservative Alaska governor Sarah Palin.

Because, you know, it's all about abortion.

Didja hear she not only wants to force rape victims to carry their babies to term, but she also thinks the women deserved to be raped and shouldn't have dressed so provocatively? (Disclaimer: No, she never said anything of the kind, but I'm certain that someone in the left-wing fever swamp has already leveled this charge at her.)

And, by the looks of things in the online world, they plan to make issue of her experience. While her experience is a bit thin, I think it's too early to make the call on that (not that the Obama campaign will wait for more clarification), and that Jonah Goldberg hit it on the head:

If she does a good job at the convention and survives about three weeks of serious media scrutiny — no horrible gaffes, no unforgivable I-don't-knows to gotchya questions (fair and unfair), no botched hostile interviews — she will emerge as the single most inspired VP pick in modern memory and she will give the Democrats migraines for a long time to come, assuming there are no terrible skeletons we don't know about. But, if she screws up in the next three weeks, gives the press and the late night comedians sufficient fodder to Quayelize her, she'll be seen as anything from a liability to an outright horrible pick. That's it.

And along those lines, they're constantly harping on the "no foreign policy experience" theme. I think (or at least, I hope) that over the next few weeks, we'll learn that this woman has given foreign policy a fair amount of thoughtful examination. And that should put her in the same league with Barack Obama's foreign policy experience.

One final thought: the venom coming from liberals over this pick tells me they're scared. In Sarah Palin, they see a strong woman who is likeable and comes across as appealing to voters. This combines one of the best qualities of Hilary Clinton (strength) with one of the best qualities of Barack Obama (likability). They're praying that Palin has some serious skeleton in her closet or that she makes some horrible gaffe, because otherwise their messiah may be un-deified.

When you're having a bad day at work...

2008-08-29T09:30:00.002-07:00

Just read this. I have no idea if it's true -- I'm not about to try researching it! -- but it made me laugh:

On your way home from work, stop at your pharmacy and go to the thermometer section and purchase a rectal thermometer made by Johnson & Johnson. Be very sure you get this brand!

Change into very comfortable clothing and sit in your favorite chair. Open the package and remove the thermometer. Now, carefully place it on a table or a surface so that it will not become chipped or broken.

Now the fun part begins.

Take out the literature from the box and read it carefully. You will notice that in small print there is a statement: "Every Rectal Thermometer made by Johnson & Johnson is personally tested and then sanitized."

Now, close your eyes and repeat out loud five times, "I am so glad I do not work in the thermometer quality control department at Johnson & Johnson."

Have a nice day and remember, there is always someone else with a job that is more of a pain in the butt than yours!

It's Palin

2008-08-29T08:33:00.001-07:00

Here's the official McCain press release.

Obama loves the future - it's where his accomplishments are!

2008-08-29T07:16:00.004-07:00

David Brooks has a hilarious take on the typical convention speech heard at the Democratic National Convention this week. My favorite snippets:

We stand at a crossroads at a pivot point, near a fork in the road on the edge of a precipice in the midst of the most consequential election since last year’s “American Idol.”
One path before us leads to the past, and the extinction of the human race. The other path leads to the future, when we will all be dead. We must choose wisely.
We must close the book on the bleeding wounds of the old politics of division and sail our ship up a mountain of hope and plant our flag on the sunrise of a thousand tomorrows with an American promise that will never die! For this election isn’t about the past or the present, or even the pluperfect conditional. It’s about the future, and Barack Obama loves the future because that’s where all his accomplishments are.

and

We heard from Joe Biden, whose 643 years in the Senate make him uniquely qualified to talk to the middle class, whose family has been riding the Acela and before that the Metroliner for generations, who has been given a lifetime ban from the quiet car and who is himself a verbal train wreck waiting to happen.

and this, too:

We were thrilled by his speech in front of the Greek columns, which were conscientiously recycled from the concert, “Yanni, Live at the Acropolis.” We were honored by his pledge, that if elected president, he will serve at least four months before running for higher office. We were moved by his campaign slogan, “Vote Obama: He’s better than you’ll ever be.” We were inspired by dozens of Democratic senators who declared their lifelong love of John McCain before denouncing him as a reactionary opportunist who would destroy the country.
No, this country cannot afford to elect John Bushmccain. Under Republican rule, locusts have stripped the land, adults wear crocs in public and M&M’s have lost their flavor. We must instead ride to the uplands of hope!

God bless America.

Heh. Just Heh.

2008-08-28T09:05:00.004-07:00

Barack Obama, after winning election to the US Senate in November 2004:

I am a believer in knowing what you’re doing when you apply for a job, and I think that if I were to seriously consider running on a national ticket, I would essentially have to start now, before having served a day in the senate. Now, there’s some people who might be comfortable doing that, but I’m not one of those people.

My name is Bill, and I'm a partisan hack

2008-08-28T08:18:00.004-07:00

That might as well be the first sentence of any press release from Bill Bradbury when he officially announces his candidacy for the Oregon governorship. He told the Oregonian on Monday that he will "likely" run for governor in 2010, but in the process he practically admitted he's as left-wing as they come.

Here are the second and third paragraphs of the O's story from Tuesday:

Bradbury, a delegate to the Democratic convention, said he will likely run for governor in 2010, particularly if the state's voters reject an initiative that would create a non-partisan primary system. Gov. Ted Kulongoski will be ending his two terms in office and cannot run again.

"It's really a slam dunk if we keep our current primary system and it's a very strong possibility if we move to a different primary system," said Bradbury, who believes he has particularly deep support among Democratic voters.

Translation:

The Blue Oregon crowd will support me because they know I share their ultra-liberal bonafides. They've seen how I've monkeyed with ballot titles and signatures for the issues we don't like, and they know they'll get more of the same partisanship if I'm the governor. And really, that's all I need to win the primary nomination under the current system. Alas, I'll have a harder time getting past the primary if those pesky independents and wrong-headed conservatives can participate, but I still think I can sneak by because there are lots of people who know my name but not my track record.

I know there are some conservatives who think a Bradbury candidacy clears the way for a reasonable conservative, but I would refer those people to the last sentence of my translation. There are many people who figure Bill Bradbury has been the secretary of state for the last eight years, so he must be OK. And, when Republicans point out his partisan tendencies, those same voters will chalk it up to more partisanship.

I'm not a supporter of the open primary idea, but this is a point in its favor.

Quote of the Day: Pelosi's theology

2008-08-27T08:07:00.003-07:00

Today's quote of the day comes from Oregon blogger Gullyborg, regarding Nancy Pelosi's expertise on the question of when life begins:

By now you may have heard that Nancy Pelosi stuck her foot in it with some ridiculous comments about how the Catholic Church views the question "when does life begin?"
She decided that Saint Augustine pronounced life begins at three months. Even though there is no evidence to suggest he ever said or wrote this . . .
Honestly, though, the simple answer to the question, from a purely Catholic point of view, should be "conception." After all, Catholics celebrate the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, not the "feast of the immaculate second trimester."

Heh.

How sad

2008-08-26T07:51:00.001-07:00

Former Trail Blazer Kevin Duckworth died last night in Lincoln City at the age of 44. RIP.

Palin or Pawlenty

2008-08-25T10:06:00.003-07:00

I agree with this reasoning from Lisa Schiffren on National Review today, particularly her thoughts on Mitt Romney:

Pundits are making the wrong call when they look for the GOP vice-presidential candidate who will be best in policy in debates with Biden, or who will be a more useful attack dog. To be sure, those are important tasks. And it is true that Mitt Romney could do them very well — and that he spots Biden a bunch of I.Q. points, an education and a record of accomplishment. But can Mitt successfully empathize with the middle class for the duration of this campaign and after? He couldn't do it in the primaries. It isn't who he is.
Because Biden is essentially a mediocrity, McCain has more leeway than expected to choose someone who is not entirely prime-time ready. We are back to the two governors who are young, totally real, quintessentially middle class family guys, and, like Joe Biden, up from working class backgrounds: Sarah Palin of Alaska and Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota. She is less sophisticated, but is a walking testament to American middle class pluck and achievement. And she will pull some female Democrat voters in. He is smart, good on policy, and has an excellent, first-generation-to-college, up by the bootstraps story. Because they really are middle-class Americans, middle-class American voters are far more likely to believe it when either of them express empathy and a desire to tackle the nation's economic anxieties. That will be the campaign's central issue, and there is no faking it.

Romney's money and his sometimes-robotic persona are likely to be a stumbling block in this regard and, in my opinion, his economic credentials are not sufficient to overcome those issues.

The only hesitation I would have in Schiffren's opinion about potential VP selections is regarding Pawlenty. The times I have heard him speak, my thoughts have been: solid on policy, and a great antidote to insomnia. The man is a bore, and like it or not, John McCain has to think about personality as much as he does about policy.

Why? Because Lisa Schiffren is right: one (perhaps the) central issue of the campaign will be the economy. McCain has already demonstrated with his how-many-houses-do-I-have gaffe that he's vulnerable, and he needs a likable and genuine person in the No. 2 slot to help him reach the middle class that the Democrats so want to persuade.

Gripping info on the Democrats' convention

2008-08-22T15:18:00.004-07:00

The first thing I saw today on the home page of the Democratic National Convention?

"Podium Unveiled. See the first official look."

Oooh, ahhh.

The podium?! Inquiring minds apparently want to know. Makes you wanna go rush out to buy a ticket to Denver, doesn't it?

Quote of the Day 2

2008-08-22T10:15:00.003-07:00

From Jonah Goldberg on Barack Obama, noting that the Democrat should be way ahead of John McCain -- but isn't:

Ask the typical Obama supporter why this should be so and you’ll get a range of answers. Some just stare at the poll numbers the way my late basset hound would look at me when I tried to feed him a grape: with pure unblinking incomprehension. Others act like the guy who sits alone with his shopping bags at the public library, muttering about Fox News conspiracies and how Karl Rove-like aliens are doing terrible things with probes of proctological exactitude. Still others just shake their heads at the racism of anyone who could possibly have a problem with a very left-wing politician with almost no experience, who often sounds like his campaign slogan is: “People of Earth! Stop Your Bickering. I Am From Harvard, And I’m Here To Help.”

I especially liked Goldberg's observation -- via Michael Barone -- that "with the exception of the black vote, Obama’s support within the Democratic party is comprised almost entirely of cultural liberals. [Barone] dubbed this intra-Democratic split a divide between 'academics and Jacksonians.' The Jacksonians are working-class, culturally conservative whites. The academics are the same people who formed the base for Howard Dean, Bill Bradley, Michael Dukakis, Gary Hart, George McGovern, and other successful presidents in the anti-matter universe where Spock has a goatee."

That sound you heard

2008-08-22T08:38:00.001-07:00

after Kerri Walsh and Misty May-Treanor won the beach volleyball gold medal? That was Keith Olbermann's head exploding.

What does birth control do? Park your car?

2008-08-22T07:44:00.003-07:00

Today's quote of the day comes from the unexcelled Peggy Noonan, talking about how the country is starting to pay attention to the presidential race, and specifically about Barack Obama's abortion answer at Rick Warren's church last weekend:

As to the question when human life begins, the answer to which is above Mr. Obama's pay grade, oh, let's go on a little tear. You know why they call it birth control? Because it's meant to stop a birth from happening nine months later. We know when life begins. Everyone who ever bought a pack of condoms knows when life begins.

To put it another way, with conception something begins. What do you think it is? A car? A 1948 Buick?

Or as I said in the comments of a post a few years ago:

You think it will develop into a porcupine? A tadpole, maybe? A grapefruit? If it has the physical attributes of a baby, but it's not human, what in the world is it? And how did it get inside that woman? Quick, someone alert the authorities!

Just don't alert Barack Obama. It's above his pay grade.

Showing kids how work can be meaningful

2008-08-22T07:28:00.005-07:00

I'm slogging through a Tony Woodlief essay this morning -- this one in the Wall Street Journal -- because I like Tony Woodlief -- but taking no joy in it as he drones on about capitalist, Christian and Marxist views on work.

And then I get to the end and Tony slams me with this:

One summer I installed stairs and flooring in our stifling-hot attic. My oldest son, 4 at the time, insisted on donning his little work belt to help. I situated him in a corner with his tiny hammer and watercolor paint, where he spent hours hammering and painting while I nailed floorboards. Months later, out of the blue, he took my hand and asked when we could do that again. Focused on the heat and the weight of those boards, I'd found the work miserable. But to my son it was blissful. We now had a "secret room." And he had worked with his daddy.

Perhaps too many children fail to value work because their parents fail to shepherd them into a world where work can be meaningful. So maybe I should just shut up and get to working with a smile on my own face. As is so often the case when raising children, the qualities we want them to possess must first be cultivated in ourselves.

How many times have I worked on something and heard a small voice from the doorway -- Daddy, can I help? -- and ignored it because it was easier? And yet, as Tony so kindly points out, that's not exactly a helpful example.

Did I say I like Tony Woodlief. I take it all back.

Today's stretch from the Oregonian

2008-08-21T10:36:00.001-07:00

From today's Oregonian editorial on the Washington state top-two primary, which the paper is falling all over itself to bring to Oregon:

Party leaders abhor this idea, but Washington state voters clearly love it. They voted overwhelmingly to adopt the system, and in Tuesday's otherwise ho-hum primary they turned out by the biggest percentage since 1972 when the electorate was enflamed over the Vietnam War.

Washington state voters clearly love it? Well, it did pass by a nearly 60-40 margin (in 2004), but that big percentage of yesterday's vote? About a quarter of voters -- 27.3 percent.

What a ringing endorsement.

A (wee) bit of bad pub for the Newport aquarium

2008-08-20T10:40:00.001-07:00

Courtesy of NRO's Jonah Goldberg, who is vacationing in Yachats, Ore. this week.

What really makes a leader?

2008-08-20T09:50:00.000-07:00

My favorite internet writer, Tony Woodlief, found a book he likes. It's called Gates of Fire by Steven Pressfield, and is a story of the Battle of Thermopylae that Woodlief calls "far more faithful to history than the stunning film, 300."

But what caught my eye was not Woodlief's recommendation, but his snippet of a lecture that the character Xeones gives to the Persian King about the character qualities of a real king:

A king does not command his men’s loyalty through fear nor purchase it with gold; he earns their love by the sweat of his own back and the pains he endures for their sake. That which comprises the harshest burden, a king lifts first and sets down last. A king does not require service of those he leads but provides it to them. He serves them, not they him.

And then, Woodlief ties a great quote to a great thought:

Replace king with pastor, CEO, or — dare one say it — U.S. President, and perhaps this lesson extends beyond royalty. But if we took it to heart, how many self-styled “leaders” would warrant replacement? And with whom would we replace them?

It's a thought-provoking point, so I tried to reshape the quote to apply to presidents in particular. Alas, mine is a bit more wordy than those from Pressfield via Xeones:

A president does not command the loyalty of his country by milking tragedies or exaggerating challenges. He does not purchase that loyalty by trying to create a government program for every boo-boo in society. A president earns the love of his countrymen when they see in him a genuine concern for their challenges, and when he works tirelessly with other decision-makers -- both inside and outside of government -- to find solutions without trying to score political points or make his opponents look smaller. His principles are clear and unwavering, but the solutions that fit within those principles are wide-ranging and sometimes out-of-the-political-box. When a president asks his countrymen to shoulder a burden, he first demonstrates his own sacrifices to meet that burden, and continues to sacrifice until the burden is lifted. He never forgets that he works for his country and its people, that the decisions he makes will have real impacts on his countrymen for many years to come, and that he thus has a responsibility to regularly address the reasons behind those decisions. He does not insist on blind loyalty -- either from the people immediately surrounding him or from the country at large -- but invites push-back to temper his ideas. In short, the president is elected to serve his country, and he should demonstrate service -- to family, staff, Congress, country and God -- in every action he takes.

Is that too high a bar?

Quote of the Day: Obama's certainty on abortion

2008-08-19T14:10:00.002-07:00

From Rich Lowry:

At Saddleback, Obama said determining when a baby gets rights is “above his pay grade.” Leave aside that presidents usually have an opinion about who deserves legal rights. If Obama is willing to permit any abortions in any circumstances, he’d better possess an absolute certainty about the absolute moral nullity of the fetus.

Or as the folks at Stand to Reason like to say: If the unborn is not a human person, no justification for abortion is necessary. However, if the unborn is a human person, no justification for abortion is adequate.

Obama's been throwing people under the bus for years

2008-08-19T13:59:00.000-07:00

In 2000, when Barack Obama was an Illinois State Senator, he ran for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. He lost -- no he was crushed -- by a 2-to-1 margin.

The lesson he apparently learned from that loss was that he should be willing to throw anyone under the bus who stood in the way of his political ambitions. There were no principles or allies, only people to use and positions to take that would get him to the next level.

The evidence of this comes from a news story that appeared on London's Channel 4 news, in which reporter Sarah Smith explains how Obama cleared out his opposition to create a deceptive narrative about transcending race. The portion below starts at the 6:19 mark of the video, and goes for almost a minute:

Rev. Wright, now disowned, was essential to Obama’s early career. Obama needed Wright because the first time he ran for nationwide office, he quickly discovered his unique background that made him so irresistible to white liberals caused distrust in the black community. He was shocked by the hostility from African-American voters when he badly lost a congressional primary eight years ago.

As Obama navigated his way through the power structures in the state senate, he managed to take advantage of boundary changes, and remapped Chicago to suit himself. Obama completely redrew the boundaries of his own state senate seat, and he included in it lots of whiter, wealthier city center areas. Out were the poorer black neighborhoods that he had represented, and into his district came many of the city’s richest and most influential political donors — the very people Obama knew he would need when he ran for the US Senate.

So Barack Obama worked the black community to seem like one of them, only to throw the black community under the bus to gain the favor of rich white folks. Then he threw Rev. Wright under the bus to gain the favor of moderates throughout the country who couldn't stomach the idea that a president would take counsel from a man who called for blacks to sing "God Damn America."

And that's not even counting Obama's entire church, his grandmother, or his positions on gun control or town-hall debates or the Iraq surge or public financing or his nifty presidential seal or state's rights regarding same-sex marriage or...

If I keep saying it wrong, maybe they'll believe it

2008-08-19T08:49:00.006-07:00

That seems to be the Oregonian's thought pattern on the 2004 Washington governor's race. From an editorial in the paper about today's state primary election (emphasis mine):

Christine Gregoire will win a spot on the November ballot with ease, and so will Republican challenger Dino Rossi, whom she beat four years ago by a razor-thin margin that led to a series of controversial recounts.

The only trouble with that statement is that Dino Rossi won the initial ballot count. And the recount. It wasn't until King County somehow found more than 700 uncounted ballots that Christine Gregoire won by 129 votes.

How is Obama any more qualified than Thomas?

2008-08-18T19:25:00.006-07:00

Saturday on the stage of Saddleback Community Church, Barack Obama was asked which Supreme Court justice he would not have nominated if he were president. His answer was Clarence Thomas, about whom he said:

...I don’t think that he was a strong enough jurist or legal thinker at the time for that elevation.

This either questions Thomas' intelligence or his background (or both), so I decided to take a look at the history of Clarence Thomas. And while I was at it, I looked at the history of Barack Obama.

Clarence Thomas was born on June 23, 1948 in a tiny Georgia town. Born into poverty -- his family lived in a one-room shack with dirt floors and without plumbing -- his father left when Clarence was 2. At age 7, Clarence and his brother went to live with their grandfather, who owned a fuel oil business. They made deliveries with their grandfather, learning his ethic of hard work and self-reliance. Clarence's grandfather sent him to Catholic schools, including an all-white boarding school in nearby Savannah, where he overcame racism to play on the football team and achieve excellent grades. He was the only African-American graduate from St. John Vianny Minor Seminary in 1967.

Barack Obama was born on August 4, 1961 in Honolulu, Hawaii. His parents split when Barack was 2, and he only saw his father one additional time before he died in 1982. In 1967, his mother remarried and the family moved to his stepfather's native Indonesia. Barack returned to Hawaii in 1971 and lived with his grandparents, attending Punahou Academy as one of three African-American 1979 graduates.

After high school, Clarence Thomas initially attended a Catholic seminary in Missouri, but decided against the priesthood after hearing a classmate's racist comment about Martin Luther King Jr.'s death. He moved to the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Mass., graduating cum laude in 1971 with an English degree. While at Holy Cross, he helped found the Black Student Union. After Holy Cross, he moved to New Haven, Conn., where he graduated from the Yale University Law School in 1974.

Barack Obama moved to Los Angeles after high school, attending Occidental College for two years before moving to New York. Transferring to Columbia University, he earned a degree in political science, specializing in international relations.

After Columbia, he worked for a year at the Business International Corp. and for a year at the New York Public Interest Research Group. During that time, he was also involved with two faith-based community organizations, the Developing Communities Project and the Gamaliel Foundation.

In 1988, he entered the Harvard Law School, where he was named the first African-American editor of the Harvard Law Review. He graduated magna cum laude in 1991.

So thus far, we have two African-American men whose fathers bailed when the kids were young, who were raised by their mothers and grandparents, who received the opportunity to attend very good high schools, and who earned degrees from very good colleges. Not much difference.

But here's where it gets a little bit more difficult to compare and contrast, because while Clarence Thomas pursued barely a half-dozen opportunities leading up to his Supreme Court appointment, Barack Obama (as we saw prior to his time at Harvard) was much more diversified in his pursuits.

And it's also the point where you see two African-American men go in different directions as it relates to their attitudes toward race. One man disavowed racial preferences, even though he benefited from them in a variety of ways; the other man served in positions (both paid and unpaid) in which his race was a key motivating factor.

After earning his law degree, Clarence Thomas interviewed with various law firms, but as in college, he felt he was treated differently because of his race. (One biography called it "resentment toward the tokenism of affirmative action, [which] combined with his grandfather's lessons on self-sufficiency and independence, had moved Thomas into a circle of African American conservatives who rejected the dependency fostered among blacks by the welfare state.") He instead moved to Missouri to work as an assistant attorney general under John Danforth.

When Danforth was elected to the United States Senate in 1977, Thomas moved to St. Louis to work as a corporate attorney at the Monsanto Corp. Two years later, he moved to Washington to work as a legislative assistant to Danforth -- but only on the condition that he not work on civil rights issues.

And yet, his lack of desire for facing racial issues still led him to positions that dealt directly and specifically with those issues. In 1981, the Reagan Administration tapped Thomas as the Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights in the U.S. Department of Education, a post he held until he was promoted in 1982 to the chairmanship of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. In those positions, he insisted that minorities should succeed on their merits, not on the backs of programs like affirmative action.

He worked at the EEOC until 1990, when President George H.W. Bush nominated Thomas to a seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Less than 16 months later, Bush nominated him to fill the Supreme Court seat vacated by retiring African-American justice Thurgood Marshall. The irony could not have been lost on Thomas that his nomination was based, at least in part, on his race. As another biography said, "Although President George Bush stated that he chose Thomas for his legal qualifications, it would take conscious effort to ignore the political pressures on Bush to name a black candidate after the retirement of Thurgood Marshall, the Court's first and only black justice."

When Thomas was sworn in to his seat on the Supreme Court, he was 43 years and four month old.

After Harvard, Barack Obama went in a multitude of directions. He was the director of Illinois Project Vote, which registered African-American voters for the 1992 election. He also began a four-year stint as a lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School (followed by an eight-year stint as a senior lecturer). In 1993, he accepted an Associate position with Davis, Miner, Barnhill & Galland, a law firm specializing in civil rights litigation and neighborhood economic development. He served Of Counsel at the firm from 1996 to 2004, although his law license went inactive in 2002.

Between 1992 and 2002, he was also on the boards of directors for several groups that focused on civil rights, minority empowerment and economic justice: Public Allies, the Woods Fund of Chicago, the Joyce Foundation, the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, the Chicago Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, the Center for Neighborhood Technology, and the Lugenia Burns Hope Center.

Obama was elected to the Illinois State Senate in 1996, gaining reelection in both 1998 and 2002. In 2004, he was elected to the United States Senate. Obama announced his candidacy for President of the United States a little more than two years later.

If he is elected president, his age on election day will be 47 years, three months.

So with Clarence Thomas, you have a man who earned degrees from two of the nation's finest universities, Holy Cross and Yale. (Say what you want about how he got in, but affirmative action doesn't earn you the grades you need to qualify, nor does it earn you the grades you need to receive the diploma.) He then worked for two years in state government, two years in the private sector, two years in the U.S. Capitol, 10 years dealing with civil and employment rights from a government perspective, and almost two years in the federal judiciary.

That set of experiences is what he brought to the Supreme Court.

With Barack Obama, you have a man who earned degrees from two of the nation's finest universities, Columbia and Harvard. Then in overlapping fashion, he worked for 11 years in the private sector, 12 years in academia, and 10 years with various community organizations, along with eight years in state government and three in the federal government.

Those are the experiences he brings with him in his quest for the presidency.

So here's my question: According to Obama, Clarence Thomas' education and (almost) two decades of experience -- including a variety of government roles and personal challenges -- failed to make him a "strong enough jurist or legal thinker" to qualify as one of nine Supreme Court justices. So why is Barack Obama -- with the same education and (almost) two decades of experience in various government roles and personal challenges -- a strong enough leader to become the one-and-only president of the greatest nation on the planet?

Never mind the mainstream, he's on the extreme fringe

2008-08-13T15:54:00.002-07:00

Who said this?

When a child is born, they deserve every protection that the country can provide them.

I'll give you a hint: the speaker is talking about abortion.

Here, I'll give you multiple choice. Was it:

a) Barack Obama
b) John McCain
c) Kate Michelman
d) James Dobson
e) None of the above

Give up? The answer is (e). The speaker was actually an executive for NARAL Pro-Choice America, stating that her organization did not oppose keeping a baby alive once it's born, regardless of how or when that birth occurs. (Nice of them, isn't it?)

What she was talking about was the federal Born-Alive Infants Protection Act (BAIPA), which passed in 2002 and says that a child who is born "at any stage of development" and who is still living after that birth (no matter if the birth occurred from labor or induced abortion), has all the rights afforded to any other person. It also made a point to say these rights did not apply to a child prior to his or her birth, lest the pro-abortion folks have a meltdown.

And because it stipulated that those rights did not apply prior to birth, NARAL did not oppose the bill.

But Barack Obama did. Mr. Obama holds the opinion that if a mom wants to abort her child and the child somehow survives the abortion attempt, that child has no right to medical care to keep it alive.

Oh, Mr. Obama will tell you otherwise -- that the Illinois version of the BAIPA he opposed was different than the federal law because it would have outlawed all abortions -- but he's, um, mis-remembering. Mr. Obama was chairman of the Health & Human Services Committee when he voted against an amendment that contained language identical to the federal bill passed a year earlier. So because NARAL Pro-Choice America didn't oppose the bill when Mr. Obama did, that places Mr. Obama on the extreme political fringe -- never mind outside the mainstream -- compared to NARAL, one of the most stringent pro-abortion organizations in the country.

In fact, it seems Barack Obama is in favor of allowing a doctor to pull a living baby out until just the head is outside its mother, stab it in the back of the head with a sharp object and create a hole large enough to suck the brains out. After all, Mr. Obama has promised that one of his top priorities as president would be to sign the Freedom of Choice Act, which would erase every federal and state restriction on abortion. That means re-legalizing partial birth abortion, which I described above; making sure your 13-year-old daughter could abort her baby without having to tell you a thing; and ensuring that no community could say their tax dollars shouldn't pay for it.

Change we can believe in? That apparently doesn't apply if you're a fetus.

Who knew that Barack Obama was an Oregon Duck fan?

2008-08-08T11:34:00.000-07:00

Here's the evidence.

A good reminder on bravery

2008-08-08T11:16:00.002-07:00

From Brian at A Boy Named Sous, regarding the Oregonians who lost their lives in a helicopter while fighting those California wildfires.

Well said, Brian.

But if you stand, it's OK

2008-08-06T08:18:00.003-07:00

Funny typo of the day from the Oregonian's home page this morning:

Prostrate testing downplayed

You can see it at the bottom of this screen capture, circled in red.

Who'da thunk it? I agree with Paris Hilton

2008-08-05T20:16:00.001-07:00

See more Paris Hilton videos at Funny or Die

Tuesday contrarian takes

2008-08-05T10:14:00.003-07:00

Contrarian Take #1: If Gordon Smith has no better issues to tackle in a campaign ad than Jeff Merkley's office furniture, he deserves to lose. That is a lame ad, and a lame issue.

Contrarian Take #2: I have no dog in this fight, knowing nothing about the candidates. That said, those people who are making an issue out of Gresham Police Chief Carla Piluso wearing her police uniform in an ad for the Multnomah County Commission race need to get a hobby -- needlepoint, bocce ball, something. Because this complaint is a sure indication of people with too much time on their hands. She's the chief of police, for goodness sake! Get a life, people.

Even if we had to pay $10 for a gallon of gas...

2008-08-01T13:52:00.000-07:00

...the Democratic Party wouldn't agree to deep-sea oil drilling.

But they're fighting for the little guy.

For parents who have tried a restaurant with their kids

2008-08-01T13:36:00.003-07:00

The reason old couples sit in restaurants and don't say a word? Tony Woodlief says it's because of decades of cacophony from their children:

It's because they are all talked out. Just watch them. They don't even speak to the waitress; they just point to what they want on the menu. I imagine once the last boy is out of the house we may go for a good solid year without saying a word. And it will be blissful. Then we'll spend the rest of our days wondering why they don't come visit more often.
But that's okay, because we'll visit them. Mostly because we love them. But also to watch them eat with their own children. Heh heh heh.

Read the whole thing. It's good for a laugh.

This is the one we have waited for...

2008-08-01T09:46:00.006-07:00

I was listening to a Chris Tomlin song yesterday called "This is our God." The chorus goes like this:

This is the one we have waited for
This is the one we have waited for
This is the one we have waited for
Jesus, Lord and Savior
This is our God

For a moment, I forgot who I was listening to and thought it was a song about Barack Obama.

Another example of Democrats' desire for high gas prices

2008-07-31T09:20:00.002-07:00

Between the opening of Dave Reinhard's column today (emphasis mine):

A few weeks back I spoke with U.S. Rep. John Peterson, and the Pennsylvania Republican told me about one House Democrat he almost persuaded to vote to expand oil and natural gas drilling in the nation's outer continental shelf.

This Democrat would vote for the bill, he told Peterson, if Peterson could assure him that lifting the decades-old ban on offshore drilling would not lower U.S. gasoline prices.

...and an interview that Barack Obama did on CNBC, in which interviewer John Harwood asked if high oil prices could "help us?" (presumably, "us" meant the country, not the Democrats):

I think that I would have preferred a gradual adjustment. The fact that this is such a shock to American pocketbooks is not a good thing. But if we take some steps right now to help people make the adjustment, first of all by putting more money in their pockets, but also by encouraging the market to adapt to these new circumstances more quickly, particularly US auto makers, then I think ultimately, we can come out of this stronger and have a more efficient energy policy than we do right now.

...I fail to see how the Democratic Party can claim to be the party of the "little guy."

Obama seems to be saying that he wants high gas prices, just a little slower, because it will make other energy sources more cost effective. But the key is that he wants high gas prices. He wants to make Americans continue to pay a huge amount of their monthly budget at the pumps in order to pursue alternative energy sources that won't make a bit of difference for many years. (Yes, new drilling won't make a difference for a while either, but as I argued, the only reason not to pursue both domestic supplies and new technologies is because you're trying to play politics with my pocketbook.)

Oh, and I'm not sure how Obama plans to put "more money" in our pockets, unless he wants another economic stimulus mailing or plans to cut taxes. Oh wait, George Bush already did that (which, despite what you hear, reduced taxes on Americans in every tax bracket), and Obama has indicated he won't renew the tax cuts.

The Democrats want high gas prices (and higher taxes) because it furthers their agenda against the oil companies, and if tens of millions of Americans are struggling to make ends meet, that's the way the cookie crumbles.

Double whammy

2008-07-30T12:20:00.003-07:00

Prayers to State Sen. Jason Atkinson, who is in the hospital from an accidental gunshot wound to the knee, and to the family of Oregonian columnist Brian Meehan, who died Tuesday at the age of 57 due to complications from heart surgery.

World ends, women hit hardest

2008-07-30T07:44:00.003-07:00

The new driver's license rules implemented by the Oregon legislature require proof of citizenship, including a Social Security number and documentation of name changes. The latter item, for obvious reasons, impacts women more than men as they typically change their name when they marry.

In today's Oregonian, columnist Andy Parker bemoans the burden placed on women by these rules, using the example of a woman named Mary Tabrum. The thrice-married Tabrum just wanted to renew her driver's license, but in order to do so, she had to get a birth certificate from one state; a marriage certificate from another; and marriage, divorce and death certificates from a third.

The column emphasizes the disparity in fairness to women -- which is true -- but almost completely ignores another fundamental problem. Parker wrote (with my emphasis):

First, let's make it clear that Tabrum supports Oregon's push for proof of identity. In her opinion, illegal immigrants have placed costly burdens on legal residents.

Still, she doesn't think it's fair to place such a financial burden on women. Nor does she understand why Oregon charges so much more for certified copies of documents than other localities she dealt with.

Something should be done, she says, to make the cost to men and women more equitable.

The issue is not just the disparity in documentation requirements, but the fact that she had to pay one-hundred eighty-two dollars for that documentation. Just from the state of Oregon, she had to obtain her first husband's death certificate, and marriage and divorce certificates for her other marriages.

For those keeping track at home, that's five certificates at $32 apiece that she needed from the state of Oregon so she could then pay $39 to renew her Oregon driver's license. It's also roughly three times the amount she paid to other states ($12 for a copy of her Virginia birth certificate, and $10 for her first marriage certificate in the District of Columbia).

God forbid the DMV might call the Oregon State Archives (they're less than two miles apart) to take care of that for Ms. Tabrum. But that would be too much like customer service, and we can't have that.

So the real issue is not the additional cost for many women. The real issue is the fact that the state of Oregon charges an obscene amount of money to provide something that belongs to us.

(Apologies to James Taranto for the headline.)

Quote of the Day: McCain's porky credentials

2008-07-29T21:18:00.002-07:00

From a speech by John McCain today, as quoted on The Corner:

I’ve never asked for a single pork barrel project for my state of Arizona, and as President, I will veto every bill that wastes your money, and make the authors famous. I will order a top to bottom review of every government program before I give them one additional dollar of funding. Those programs that are doing important work for the American people have nothing to fear from me. Those that can be modernized and made more effective will find me a willing partner. And those that have outlived their usefulness to you, and waste your money on things you neither want nor need, are going out of business whether they like it or not.

What if the current occupant of the White House (along with the Republican majorities in Congress earlier in this decade) had made even a tiny effort to reign in government spending? I can't help but think that John McCain might have a shot at independents and liberals who are fiscally conservative and are fed up with government spending, but who instead will vote for Barack Obama because they've heard these claims -- that the Republican will be a strenuous budget watchdog -- before.

A sight for sore eyes (and pocketbooks)

2008-07-28T18:06:00.001-07:00

I never thought the sight of gas under $4 a gallon would be so welcome...

(Seen today on Walker Road in Beaverton, just west of Nike)