Sing for Change - Obama Youth Sing for "The One"

Yikes! This is creepy!

Must be because I'm not a true believer.

How did the housing crisis begin?

This YouTube video (approximately 10 minutes) has an answer.

See some comments about the video here.

"Affordable housing" has been a Democratic Party mantra. Hmm. The law of unintended consequences?

Obama: "the man who never was"

Tony Blankley slams the press's failed coverage of "The One."

How Obama lost me

John Althouse Cohen counts the ways here, here, and here.

For the record, there are a dozen -- and Cohen still supports Obama and is still going to vote for him in November. Just not with the passion he started with.

Country first?

"What incentive to Dems in Congress have to approve a solution at this point? Why not let the financial system collapse? Obama would ride the wave of destruction into the White House, with coattails. He could then use the resulting depression in the real economy to expand the reach of government, as FDR did." ("Fred" posting on Megan McCardle's blog).

As Glenn Reynolds says, "Hmm."

Housing bailout

Jerry Pournelle opines, "What will be done must be decided by the most unpopular Administration in nearly a century in connection with the most unpopular Congress in history; and everyone involved in finding a remedy was in one way or another a part of creating the mess. . . . One thing is certain: the people who must pay for this debacle will largely be those who took out sensible loans and have kept up their mortgage payments; those who did nothing wrong, but will be handed the bill."

Dissecting the Palin rumor mill

Charlie Martin at Pajamas Media wields the knife. BTW - the list of rumors is up to #91, and counting...

Financial meltdown: whodunnit?

Kevin Hassett pins the tail on prominent Dems (Dodd, Clinton, and Obama) here, and says McCain sponsored legislation to prevent the mess. My take: there's plenty of blame to spread around.

History will judge

Krauthammer discusses Bush's resolve to order the "surge" in Iraq in the face of widespread opposition -- a decision that "then effected the most dramatic change in the fortunes of an American war since the summer of 1864." Read the whole thing.

Microsoft's 'I'm a PC' campaign created with Macs

Life is full of irony. AppleInsider has the story.

Sarah Palin's murderous web of death

Yes, it's gone this far (nice parody).

Obama's Altitude Sickness

Krauthammer opines on Obama's fading fame.

Biden: charity begins at home -- paying higher taxes is patriotic!

Life is full of irony.

Biden exhorts Americans to do their duty: "We want to take money and put it back in the pocket of middle-class people." (Emphasis added).

His own charitable contributions have averaged $369 a year.

As Michael Silence notes "Boy, talk about reinforcing the 'stereotype' of spending someone else's money."

Obama: winning by going negative?

Life is full of irony.

WSJ: "In a revealing slip in an interview with ABC recently, Mr. Obama said, 'If we're going to ask questions about who has been promulgating negative ads that are completely unrelated to the issues at hand, I think I win that contest pretty handily.'"

Bronco Mendenhall on the Jim Rome radio show

Here's a link. Listen to the whole thing (about 13 minutes). As the kids say nowadays, he represented. Bronco makes me proud to be a Cougar.

The BYU football team mission statement: “We will be the flag bearers of Brigham Young University through football excellence, embracing truth, tradition, virtue, and honor as a beacon to the world.”

As Bronco says, football is the "fourth priority" in the players' lives.


See also "The Bronco Way" in BYU Magazine.

UPDATE: Read Gordon Monson's "Riding the Wave" in the SL Trib.

Woops! Obama #2 on Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac take

Jennifer Rubin writes:

"Of the 354 lawmakers who received money from Freddie and Fannie between 1989 and 2008, Sen. Chris Dodd [Chairman of the Senate Banking Committee] received the most. But next was . . . drumroll . . . Barack Obama. Yup. And he was only there for three years. ...
"So it would appear that this is precisely what Obama has been railing against: Washington insiders lining the pockets of other Washington insiders while the taxpayers ultimately have to foot the bill. The Agent of Change, it seems, didn’t exactly walk the walk on this one."

Sarah Palin uncut

Here's some of what ABC left on the cutting room floor.

Clinton strategist says media is big loser in election

Mark Penn:

"I think here the media is on very dangerous ground. I think that when you see them going through every single expense report that Governor Palin ever filed, if they don't do that for all four of the candidates, they're on very dangerous ground. I think the media so far has been the biggest loser in this race. And they continue to have growing credibility problems."

Indeed.

News media types now at the top of the heap (of a news business on decline, as Internet competition is forcing newspapers and networks to let people go) are jealous of bloggers who haven't had to make the same climb, and of a Veep candidate who didn't go Ivy League but came out of "nowhere." And it shows. Read more here.

Gallup: Battle for Congress suddenly looks competitive

The Palin Effect: what had been an eight-month double-digit lead for Dems in a generic Dem v. GOP preference poll is now down to 3.

Maybe McCain-Palin can push a party-wide platform for "change": Congressional approval ratings have been at historic lows (single digits) in a Democratically-controlled Congress. Hmm.

Miles to go

A week is forever in politics. For Obama, the past two weeks must seem an eternity. But as Peggy Noonan points out, it's not over. Yet.

Send in the pigs

A blogger ("jblog") opines:

"The Obama camp erected a set of rules around him where any criticism -- about his experience, about his record, about his gaffes (bitter religious gun-clingers, etc.), about his association with terrorists, racists and felons, about his celebrity status -- is automatically defined as racist. Now the GOP has turned the tables, using the charge of sexism for any slight -- real or perceived -- by him and his campaign. Nothing could be fairer -- they're simply using his own rules against him."

Losing his cool

The London Times "Comment Central" has a post titled "What Sarah Palin Tells Us About Obama."

One of the comments:

Mr. Obama has bought into his own hype, and Mrs. Palin's fame and rise are challenging his Messiah-hood.

"Thou shalt have no other God before me"

See also "Autumn Angst: Dems fret about Obama" at Politico.

The Speech

All in

Patrick Poole at Pajama's Media examines Obama's existential angst after the Palin pick: "The wheels are starting to come off the Messiah Express."

She's real!

Like most people in 49 of our 50 states, I had never heard of Sarah Palin until a week ago. And like many, I do have some concerns about her lack of experience -- although I also note that unlike a certain Democratic presidential candidate, whose sacred name I will not mention here because my arthritis is bothering me at the moment and I can't genuflect properly as I invoke it, Sarah Palin at least has some executive experience, with some impressive achievements to go along with it. Over time, therefore, this will become less and less of an issue.

But that being said, I like this woman, and I have concluded that naming her as Veep may have been a masterstroke on McCain's part. She is what she is, with nothing at all phony about her, and she has the virtue of being both strong and endearing. Glenn Beck once characterized Hillary Clinton as "Stalin in a pantsuit," but I doubt that he will make any similar observations about Sarah Palin. Regardless of how this year's Presidential race turns out, I believe she is someone to watch, and from now on, a force to reckon with. We will be hearing much more from and about this remarkable woman in coming years, during which, as I said, I expect her current lack of experience to take care of itself.

Meanwhile, I have told my daughter to pay attention to Sarah Palin, and I suggested her as a possible role model. I have also been thinking of something written by one columnist a couple of days ago, to the effect that the Alaska governor is very good at two things, namely, hunting and skinning caribou and kicking behinds. But, continued the columnist, she is now out of caribou. And she and Joe Biden will be meeting face-to-face on October 2. I can't wait!