Quoting Michael Schuman:

Every time there has been a perceived crisis of capitalism in recent decades, the government’s economic role has swelled. But inevitably, this process gets thrown into reverse and the free market stages a rousing comeback. That’s because governments can screw up economies just as effectively -- in fact, more effectively -- than free markets.

He goes on to explain how that’s exactly what happened in the UK, India, and Japan over the past few decades.

Barney Frank, today:

Quoting Barney Frank:

"The House is ready to [bail out automakers]," said Democratic Rep. Barney Frank of Massachusetts, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee.  "There’s no downside to trying."

Barney Frank, 3 months before Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac collapsed:

Quoting Barney Frank:

Fannie and Freddie are fundamentally sound, [they] are not in danger of going under... their prospects going forward are very solid.

With the endorsement of Barney Frank, what could possibly go wrong?

It’s obvious that these anti-prop-8 (pro-homosexual) protesters are not after equal rights, because they already have equal rights:

Quoting CA FAMILY CODE SECTION 297.5:

Registered domestic partners shall have the same rights, protections, and benefits, and shall be subject to the same responsibilities, obligations, and duties under law, whether they derive from statutes, administrative regulations, court rules, government policies, common law, or any other provisions or sources of law, as are granted to and imposed upon spouses.

And they’re certainly not interested in tolerance.

What they want is to rewrite history; they want to take words that have existed for hundreds of years -- marriage, husband, wife -- and change their definitions.

Of course, they don’t really come right out and say that; instead they try to frame the matter as a civil rights issue.

But a few decades ago, when black Americans were fighting for civil rights, they wanted the same rights as white Americans; they didn’t want the "right" to be called white Americans.

And women’s rights activists didn’t want the "right" to be called men -- they just wanted the same rights as men.

So why do so many homosexuals want the "right" to be called "husband and wife" when that’s simply inaccurate?  Why aren’t they satisfied with having the same rights as husbands and wives?

After two years of this, the truth finally comes out -- after their cheerleading has helped get Obama elected.  The timing is so convenient.

Translation: I can haz credibility back nao?  kthxbye

Quoting Jeffrey Scott Shapiro:

Earlier this year, 12,000 people in San Francisco signed a petition in support of a proposition on a local ballot to rename an Oceanside sewage plant after George W. Bush. The proposition is only one example of the classless disrespect many Americans have shown the president. [...]

Our failure to stand by the one person who continued to stand by us has not gone unnoticed by our enemies. It has shown to the world how disloyal we can be when our president needed loyalty -- a shameful display of arrogance and weakness that will haunt this nation long after Mr. Bush has left the White House.

I’ve read a lot of conservative commentary during the past 24 hours, most of it respectful of Obama despite being unhappy with the outcome of the election.  Nonetheless there are some conservatives who are saying some pretty ridiculous things right now.

So to my conservative friends: let us not act with bitterness and immaturity towards Obama, as so many on the left have done towards Bush over the past 8 years.  Those people were wrong in their "not my president" sentiment, and we would be no better than them if we failed to give Obama -- and the office of the president -- the respect that they deserve.

We will disagree with Obama, and we will fight against those policies with which we disagree.  But he will still be our president, and this will still be our country.  The republic will survive.

Just kidding.  But come on, as far as presidential initials go, those are pretty funny.

Congratulations to our next president.  Here’s hoping he’ll preside slightly more to the center than his record thus far.

And it’s still a great story.

When the news broke a few weeks ago that Obama had raised $150 million in a single month, I thought, that’s amazing, he must be really popular.  And maybe he is, but it turns out that a good portion of those donations are likely illegal, because Obama’s website is configured to not perform the basic address-verification that virtually all online payment systems require.  So illegal donations from outside the US, and multiple donations from the same person which exceed legal limits, are perfectly welcome in Obama’s system.

Quoting Pew Research:

Voters overwhelmingly believe that the media wants Barack Obama to win the presidential election.  By a margin of 70%-9%, Americans say most journalists want to see Obama, not John McCain, win on Nov. 4.  Another 8% say journalists don’t favor either candidate, and 13% say they don’t know which candidate most reporters support.

Project for Excellence in Journalism study finds that in the media overall, 57% of stories about McCain are negative, compared to 29% for Obama.  In newspapers the split is 69%/28%; for NBC News it’s 54%/21%; MSNBC is 73%/14%; Fox News is 40%/40%.

A Center for Media and Public Affairs study finds basically the same thing: Obama gets twice as much positive coverage as McCain.

Quoting Peter Nicholas, LA Times:

First Clinton, then John McCain made the argument that Obama is someone we don’t really know.  Obama’s supporters counter that we have his record in the U.S. and Illinois senates, two memoirs that reveal his inner thinking and a vast trove of public speaking.  Ironically, those of us who were sent out to take his measure in person can’t offer much help in answering who he is, or if he is ready.  The barriers set in place between us and him were just too great.

Michael Malone:

I watched with disbelief as the nation’s leading newspapers, many of whom I’d written for in the past, slowly let opinion pieces creep into the news section, and from there onto the front page.  Personal opinions and comments that, had they appeared in my stories in 1979, would have gotten my butt kicked by the nearest copy editor, were now standard operating procedure at the New York Times, the Washington Post, and soon after in almost every small town paper in the U.S.

But what really shattered my faith - and I know the day and place where it happened - was the War in Lebanon three summers ago.  The hotel I was staying at in Windhoek, Namibia only carried CNN, a network I’d already learned to approach with skepticism.  But this was CNN International, which is even worse.  I sat there, first with my jaw hanging down, then actually shouting at the TV, as one field reporter after another reported the carnage of the Israeli attacks on Beirut, with almost no corresponding coverage of the Hezbollah missiles raining down on northern Israel.  The reporting was so utterly and shamelessly biased that I sat there for hours watching, assuming that eventually CNNi would get around to telling the rest of the story... but it never happened.

But nothing, nothing I’ve seen has matched the media bias on display in the current Presidential campaign.  Republicans are justifiably foaming at the mouth over the sheer one-sidedness of the press coverage of the two candidates and their running mates.  But in the last few days, even Democrats, who have been gloating over the pass - no, make that shameless support - they’ve gotten from the press, are starting to get uncomfortable as they realize that no one wins in the long run when we don’t have a free and fair press.  I was one of the first people in the traditional media to call for the firing of Dan Rather - not because of his phony story, but because he refused to admit his mistake - but, bless him, even Gunga Dan thinks the media is one-sided in this election.

The Al Smith Dinner the other night was one of the best parts of this race, by far.  McCain and Obama were both hilarious.  I don’t know who wrote their speeches but they were pretty much non-stop laugh-fests.  And it was great to see each of them poking a little fun at himself.  Here’s the full video; the good stuff starts about 5 minutes in:

Some of Obama’s funniest lines:

Contrary to the rumors that you have heard, I was not born in a manger.  I was actually born on Krypton, and sent here by my father Jor-El to save the planet earth.

I got my middle name from somebody who obviously didn’t think I’d ever run for president.

My greatest weakness?  Ah... it’s possible that I’m a little too awesome.

A New York Times writer says that Democratic presidents are better for the stock market:

Quoting The New York Times:

As of Friday, a $10,000 investment in the S.& P. stock market index* would have grown to $11,733 if invested under Republican presidents only (...) Invested under Democratic presidents only, $10,000 would have grown to $300,671 at a compound rate of 8.9 percent over nearly 40 years.

John Gruber picks up on this and quips that "Facts continue to hold a liberal bias."

Then Mathmatica co-founder Theodore Gray points out that the Times’ simplistic analysis conveniently excludes all of those pesky issues that actually apply in the real world, like inflation and dividends.  When you adjust the model to actually reflect reality, it turns out that Republican administrations are actually better for the stock market.  Oops.

Gruber’s response to this?  "This is not a good metric for measuring presidential economic policies."

Hilarious.

In other news, white people are now legally allowed to be black.  Also, dogs to be considered cats for legal purposes.  "The dictionary" has renamed itself to "whatevs".

One of the most frustrating things about politics is how each candidate tells us that the other candidate voted against puppies and sunshine, which is supposed to make us believe that candidate is stupid or evil.  But the truth is that the "puppies and sunshine" bill wasn’t just about puppies and sunshine; it also included poison ivy and toxic waste down in the fine print.

But the attacking candidate doesn’t tell you the whole truth; their goal is to trick you into hating the other candidate.  And I don’t know what’s worse: the fact that our politicians believe we’re that stupid, or the fact that many of us ARE that stupid.

The result is that during debates, like the Biden-Palin debate last week, we don’t get to hear two reasonably smart people debating about the issues facing the country.  Instead we get to listen to them bicker for 2 hours about who voted for what, except it’s even worse than that, because mixed in with the bickering is deception.

Part of the problem is that there’s this notion that candidates are supposed to be perfect.  I don’t think that’s so much because voters expect the candidates to be perfect; I think it’s more because the media demonizes every flaw they can find in the candidates.

I think the media has largely failed us when it comes to politics, and this failure of the media hurts our country in two ways.  First, it makes it that much harder for the candidates to be fully open and honest about themselves, because any admission of a past mistake -- and every candidate has made mistakes -- will be demonized by the media.

Second, each candidate is naturally going to try to paint themselves in the best possible light, and paint their opponents in the worst possible light.  So since what we’re going to get from the candidates themselves is going to contain large amounts of spin, it’s all the more important for the media to paint us complete and accurate pictures of the candidates, and all the more disappointing when they fail to do so.

The media can’t take all the blame, of course, but there’s no doubt that a more competent media would go a long way towards improving the political situation in this country.  I don’t know what the total solution is.  I just know that in every election, no matter how hard I try to learn about the candidates, I always feel like I don’t have the complete picture, and furthermore that no one really made any attempt to provide me with the complete picture.

It’s easy to see why there’s so much voter apathy; who really wants to bother with voting when the situation is such a confusing mess?  And the fact is that every election comes down to a choice between the lesser of two evils; that’s kind of depressing, but in a world where every human is flawed, that’s the best we can do.

In the end, though, we virtually always get two candidates where one can be described as "more liberal" and the other "more conservative."  And since each of us tends to identify with one or the other of those characteristics, we can rest assured that the candidate we vote for will in general support the same kinds of things we support.  So maybe the system isn’t so bad after all.

Soon to be former NOW president.

I don’t like this bailout for several reasons.

First, none of this is my friggin’ fault.  I didn’t get a mortgage that I couldn’t afford, nor did I sucker anyone else into getting a mortgage they couldn’t afford.  I didn’t do any risky or shady trading on the stock market.

Second, this proposed bailout is happening way too fast.  Our government was deliberately designed to be slow-moving in these kinds of issues, with 3 separate branches that keep each other in check, in order to maximize the overall stability of the system.

Third, our economy is cyclical; there must be downturns from time to time.  We can impose artificial measures to prevent downturns, but that doesn’t work indefinitely, and the longer we go without a recession, the more likely it is that we’ll have a depression.

One good analogy that I’ve heard a few times now is that the economy is like a forest.  Forest fires happen naturally, and they are part of the normal cycle of a forest’s life; they’re necessary from time to time to ensure the overall health of the forest.  And the longer we go without a forest fire, the more the underbrush builds up, so that when a fire finally does happen, it’ll be that much worse.  Better to have a few smaller fires every year than to have a few years with no fires followed by a really big, really bad fire.

So, do we really need this bailout?  It seems to me that the bailout will take money out of my pocket and put it into the pockets of irresponsible borrowers, of big financial institutions, and of bureaucrats.  That sounds great and all, but it seems like there’s got to be a better way.  Unfortunately I’m not an economist and I don’t really understand the entire picture here.

If we don’t go through with the bailout, and we have a recession, I’ll consider that a good thing.  On the other hand if it causes a depression, that’ll be a bad thing.  So which will it be?

I can’t tell if this guy is being nasty or just poking some lighthearted fun, but this is hilarious:

Quoting George Saunders:

In summary: Because my candidate, unlike your winking/blinking Vice-Presidential candidate, who, though, yes, he did run as the running mate when the one asking him to run did ask him to run, which that I admire, one thing he did not do, with his bare hands or otherwise, is, did he ever kill a moose?  No, but ours did.  And I would.  Please bring a moose to me, over by me, and down that moose will go, and, if I had a kid, I would take a picture of me showing my kid that dead moose, going, like, Uh, sweetie, no, he is not resting, he is dead, due to I shot him, and now I am going to eat him, and so are you, oh yes you are, which is responsible, as God put this moose here for us to shoot and eat and take a photo of, although I did not, at that time, know why God did, but in years to come, God’s will was revealed, which is: Hey, that is a cool photo for hunters about to vote to see, plus what an honor for that moose, to be on the Internet.

Roger Ebert has posted this about Sarah Palin:

I think I might be able to explain some of Sarah Palin’s appeal. She’s the "American Idol" candidate. Consider. What defines an "American Idol" finalist? They’re good-looking, work well on television, have a sunny personality, are fierce competitors, and so talented, why, they’re darned near the real thing.

Does Ebert honestly not realize that he’s describing Obama, or is he just in denial?  I don’t know which would be worse.

Meanwhile, the Lightworker himself claims that he’s got more executive experience than Palin because he’s been running for president for 2 years.  That’s right, Obama thinks that running for president is a good qualification for actually being president.  You can’t make this stuff up:

"Well, my understanding is that Governor Palin’s town of Wasilla has, I think, 50 employees. We’ve got 2,500 in this campaign. I think their budget is maybe $12 million a year. You know, we have a budget of about three times that just for the month. So I think that our ability to manage large systems and to execute I think has been made clear over the last couple of years," Obama said.

Someone needs to tell Obama that after Palin was the mayor of Wasilla, she was the governor of Alaska.

But what do I know; I’m from Pennsylvania, so I’m probably just clinging to my guns and religion.

The conventional "wisdom" among many liberals is that Fox News is a right-wing outfit.  Of course, when you confront one of those liberals, it always turns out that they’ve never actually even watched the Fox News Channel.  And any rational person -- liberal, conservative, or independent -- who has watched Fox News knows that the "Fair and Balanced" motto is actually accurate.

Conservatives (and many independents and some liberals) believe that the problem is the opposite: that aside from Fox, TV news consists of mostly left-wing operations.

Today, this from the LA Times:

Although MSNBC may be deliberately courting the liberal extremists with its star Olbermann and his on-air anti-Republican blasts, Fox News has actually been mending fences with Democrats, recently hiring former Hillary Clinton spokesman Howard Wolfson as a commentator. And there is evidence that Fox News’ audience is in fact far less politically skewed than either CNN’s or MSNBC’s. A survey this month from the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press found that 39% of Fox News’ viewers were Republican, 33% Democratic. CNN was 51% Democratic and just 18% Republican, while MSNBC was 45%-18% in favor of Democrats.

The LA Times here is trying to make it sound like Fox had to "mend fences" with the Democrats, when the truth is that Fox has tons of Democratic commentators, probably about as many as they have Republican commentators.  But of course, you’d need to actually watch Fox News to know the truth about it.  For extreme liberals, knowing the truth about Fox News is not important; better to attack Fox without factual basis simply because they don’t toe the liberal line like the other news outlets.

Here is a bit of Scott Adams’ latest:

When it comes to picking our next president, I can’t decide if I prefer the smooth-talking, inspirational candidate who promises to give my money to people who don’t work as hard as I do, or the old, short, ugly, angry guy with one good arm who graduated at the bottom of his class and somehow managed to shag a hot heiress and become a contender for president.  It seems dangerous to underestimate that guy.

Scott Adams, the author of the Dilbert comic, has to be one of the smartest people alive.  He blogs about all kinds of stuff, and lately a lot of it has been about politics.  I think he’s a liberal, but it’s hard to tell for sure, and in any case his writing isn’t biased; it’s an extremely rational and fair look at all sides of the issues.  Not only that, but some of his readers post really good stuff in the comments regularly.  Here’s a quote from a recent piece:

Quoting Scott Adams:

My favorite comment [on a previous post] was from Tigerfan who said, "When McCain says he doesn’t understand economics, people seem to infer he must be an idiot.  In fact economics (real economics, not the nonsense you get on talk shows and business hours) is very, very difficult and involves a great deal of complex math.  They don’t hand out Nobel Prizes for knitting after all."

That summed it up nicely.  Our real choice is between two candidates who don’t understand economics.  And they both want to govern a country full of people who also don’t understand economics while thinking they do.  That makes the old, senile guy the only person in this scenario that isn’t deluded or lying.  He tells you up front that he doesn’t understand economics. [...]

You also have to factor in the economic stimulus of all the war spending.  As much as you might not like boosting the fortunes of defense-related companies, that’s a big part of the American economy.  Cutting a dollar from the defense budget doesn’t mean you have an extra dollar to reduce the deficit. [...]

The budget impact of the near term clearly favors Obama and his get-out-faster approach.  The economics of the long term are unclear.  McCain’s approach is more of an insurance model; pay now so maybe you don’t get in bigger trouble later.

I know that hardcore liberals hate Bill O’Reilly, because the Hardcore Liberal Handbook tells them that they’re supposed to, but the fact is that O’Reilly, like Adams, is extremely rational and fair regardless of his own beliefs.  (O’Reilly has more of a temper, sure, but that only makes him more entertaining to watch.)  Fox News has other hosts who sub for Bill about once a week, and it seems clear that they’re attempting to find and groom potential replacements for when Bill eventually passes away.  And frankly, they all suck compared to Bill; they’re OK in and of themselves, but they just don’t have what Bill has.  I used to worry about what would happen to The Factor when Bill’s gone, but now I think they should just hire Scott Adams to replace him.

Pennsylvania will soon finally join the rest of the northeast, the majority of the US, and many of the world’s nations by adopting a public smoking ban.  After a committee last week produced a bill and the House passed it, the Senate today also passed it.  It will become law 90 days from the date that Governor Ed Rendell signs it, which he has said that he plans to do quickly.

You can read the ridiculous smoking ban timeline that the PA legislature has traveled over the past year or so.

The public smoking ban will have the following exemptions:

- up to 25 percent of the rooms in hotels

- designated outdoor smoking areas at sports or recreation facilities, theaters, etc

- bars whose annual food sales are 20% or less

- cigar bars

- tobacco shops

- private clubs

- up to 50 percent of casino gaming halls

- long-term care facilities

- private homes, residences and vehicles unless they are used for child-care, rehab, or mental health services

You’d be forgiven for thinking that, with such a list of exemptions, this bill resembles swiss cheese more than a smoking ban.  And in fact, part of the bill is that Philadelphia’s existing, stronger smoking ban will still stand.  But this is still a huge step in the right direction for PA, and in my case for instance, only the hotel and arena/theater exemptions will affect me, and then only rarely.

Today, the House-Senate conference committee finally approved a compromise version of a public smoking ban for Pennsylvania.  In order to become law, it must be approved by the full House and Senate -- which could happen as early as next week -- and by governor Ed Rendell, who has stated that he’ll support this version of the ban.

This is a good step forward and if it becomes law, it’ll be a huge improvement over the current situation.  However, the ban does contain a bunch of exemptions, allowing smoking in certain places, such as bars that make less than 20% of their revenue from food, and up to 25% of rooms in hotels.

This ban allows Philadelphia’s current ban to stand, but does not allow any other local bans to come into effect.  This has some people upset:

"You’re saying to the people of Allegheny County and city of Scranton, go to hell," said [Senate Minority Leader Robert Mellow], who cast the lone dissenting vote.

I agree with Mellow.  However, it’s clear that this legislature has neither the brains nor the guts to enact a real ban, so for now we’ll have to take what we can get.  But this isn’t over, and I suspect that reason and health will prevail in the long run.

About half of the states in the US, as well as many countries around the world, have smoking bans now.  But in some cases, I think it’s going to take a generational turnover to purge those politicians who are in the pockets of the scumbags running the tobacco companies.