The Speech

I am hardly the target audience, but can anyone explain this bit to me?

John McCain likes to say that he’ll follow bin Laden to the Gates of Hell – but he won’t even go to the cave where he lives.

What, is Barry taunting him for not going there personally? This is a bit of a weird charge, is this idiot seriously accusing McCain of not being militant enough?

And this bit, emphasis added:

Passions fly on immigration, but I don’t know anyone who benefits when a mother is separated from her infant child or an employer undercuts American wages by hiring illegal workers.

That is just bad economics, I know 3 people who benefit, the illegal workers who get jobs better than their other options, the employers who get to pay lower wages, and the consumer who pays less for his product. This does not make it right, but claiming that nobody benefits is just ignoring basic economics.

Calling Central Casting

Barack Obama today, with his bizarre spin in response to charges of race baiting:

"I was in union, Missouri which is 98 percent white - a rural, conservative. and what I said was what I think everybody knows, which is that I don't look like I came out of central casting when it comes to presidential candidates. "

Well, evidently Barack hasn't been paying much attention to the television or movies since the late 70s.

Dennis Haysbert as President David Palmer in TV's '24'

D.B. Woodside as President Wayne Palmer in TV's '24'

Morgan Freeman as President Tom Beck in Deep Impact

Is Obama Anti-Science?

The Bush administration has been criticized, and often quite legitimately, for being anti-intellectual, not listening to experts or scientists on an issue.  But in fact is Barack Obama, the Chosen One, the same way, especially in regards to economists.

The most famous example was from the debates, where he answered that he would raise the capital gains tax, regardless of whether experts said it would lower tax revenue, that fairness was the important factor.

Well now in an interview with NPR, he repeats the same argument, in regards to a "windfall profit tax" on oil revenues:

You know because of the timing of our program that many of our listeners are in their cars. And so I want to ask you about your proposal to force big oil companies to share their record-breaking windfall profits. It's hard to find an economist who supports the idea of a windfall profits tax. Most argue that this would stifle investment in oil discovery and oil production precisely at the moment when the U.S. should be encouraging more.

Classic economic theory says you don't meddle in the markets. Look, I mean, most economists buy into that approach. Exxon Mobil made $12 billion last quarter. They made $11 billion before that, and $11 billion before that, and not all of this is going into research and development — and families need some relief.

Now, I am the first to admit that what we need is a comprehensive plan, and that's what I've been putting forward for the last 18 months — making sure that we're increasing fuel-efficiency standards on cars drastically, investing in the retooling so that we can have plug-in hybrids. I have set a goal that we reduce our oil consumption by 30 percent over the next 20 years. So that's the long-term answer to rising gas prices.

But in the short term, the notion that oil companies that have been making record profits, hand over fist, can't give a little bit of that back to make sure that not just drivers but senior citizens on fixed income are going to have the ability to pay for heating this winter, which is going to be a huge potential problem — I don't think that's too much to ask.