Maggie's Farm

The Disappearance of Election Day - With early voting, 85 percent of voters can cast ballots before the last presidential debate.

So you can not only vote if you're dead, you can be stuck with a vote for somebody who died between your vote and election day.

A history of bankruptcy puts a nice ding on a person's credit rating and future employability. Even so, sometimes it's the only way to get a second chance in life if one has been highly irresponsibe and, hopefully, learned from it. Zero Hedge had this last Spring: Student Loan Debt Slaves In Perpetuity - A True Story Of "Bankruptcy Hell".

Naturally, cancelling out loans via bankruptcy will make lenders more cautious about lending to any student. But who is the biggest lender? Us, the government. Who is the biggest beneficiary? College administrations. Do you hear gripes about college administrator salaries? Nope, but college presidents make about the same as greedy CEOs.

It's all crazy.

So much of political debates for the past 150 years have been about whether central control by supposed experts is preferable to private efforts to be good caretakers of their resources.

Regular readers know that we tend to have a deep distrust of government, central planning, and centralized power and believe that we are line with the Founders in that regard.

We have regularly posted about The Tragedy of the Commons here. The moral of the tragedy of the commons extends far beyond cow pastures, vast herds of bison, and marine resources. (In fact, it extends to government itself which tends to view the populace as an inexhaustable resource for its own purposes.)

The usually Totalitarian-Left-tending, once highly-regarded magazine Science is beginning to use some logic: Property Rights Are the Way to Save the World's Depleting Fisheries, Reports Science.

U. of Chicago professor claims America ‘overvalues’ free speech

U.N. Secretary General Argues That “Provok[ing] or Humiliat[ing] … Others’ Values and Beliefs” “Cannot Be Protected’ by the Freedom of Expression

Is this all simply about fear of Muslims, or do they really believe what they're saying? Regardless, their speech is offensive and should be banned. So should offensive Jihadist speech and the speech of all crazed Left-wing moonbats.

They are putting every kid on a diet whether they need it or not. Wasted Food, Hungry Kids: Michelle Obama’s Bill in Action - Reports of predictable nanny state chaos.

When I was in high school, there were no choices. Lunch was lunch, but all you could eat. When you're growing and playing sports, you need lots of food and it does not need to be gourmet. They never had desserts at lunch. They had a giant fruit basket if you wanted to take an apple, banana or an orange.

A bold prediction via Tatler:

It's been a total, shameful failure. Here.

Why would anybody vote for more of the same? Seems insane to me. Government needs to get out of the way of the people.

How can any cogent American citizen possibly even consider voting for Barack Obama now?

Well, that's a complicated question. He could win, though, unless Romney sells better soap hope.

That's what Lucianne said re Romney's fund-raiser talk.

Seems non-controversial to me. When he said "I'm not going to worry about those people" he was referring to getting their votes, with the implication that they are already bought. (I think he is wrong about that, BTW.)

Moral of the story? Never say anything that, when taken out of context, sounds bad. Of course, that is impossible to do. And for the MSM, everything Conservatives say is a gaffe.

Also, The Democrats think Romney just self-destructed by pointing out, um, THEIR ENTIRE STRATEGY

At Drudge, as of now, 1 in 16 Americans are taking Disability. If 1/16th of America is really disabled to work, we're in big trouble. And what % use EBT cards now?

The stories are back in the news on the internet: Claim: Obama hid 'gay life' to become president - Chicago homosexual community shocked he could keep it secret.

It hardly matters, and I suspect that nobody cares much including FLOTUS, but it is interesting if true. (h/t Moonbattery.) It is claimed that Obama and ballet dancer Rahm hung out at "Man's Country."

Male dancers are not always gay - see Baryshnikov. Lots of talented guys dance for the money and the chicks.

I should not be surprised that the shocking, shocking headline news of the past 48 hours has not been lethal Islamist attacks on American embassies, but Mitt Romney's comments about these barbarian atrocities.

Breaking! Yemen: US Embassy Stormed By Protesters

Open Mic Catches MSM Coordinating Questions About Romney’s MidEast Reaction

Also,

Romney: ‘Apology for American values is never the right course’

Where Were the Marines?

VDH: Storming Embassies, Killing Ambassadors, and ‘Smart’ Diplomacy

More:  THEY DON’T CALL IT THE STATE-CONTROLLED MEDIA FOR NOTHING

Average pay for Chicago teachers is $76,000 for 9 months' work with many vacations, not including benefits and defined-benefit pensions. Student performance is terrible, with only 15% of grade school students reading at grade level. In other words, it's not working. If this were a competitive business, it would be out of business but it is a government monopoly, controlled by a wealthy and powerful union.

Via Ricochet:

1. The highest-paid public school teacher in Illinois is a physical education teacher making $191,124 per year (I'm assuming this is a 9-month teaching "year").2. Six of the top 12 highest-paid high school teachers in Illinois teach physical education, each making $170,000 or more. 3. Six state employees teaching driver education make $150,000 or more. 4. Six high school teachers make more than the Illinois Governor's salary of $177,500.5. 14,048 Illinois high school teachers made salaries of $100,000 or more in 2010, which is up 13% over last year.

Megan takes a look: Why are teachers willing to walk out?

David French: Why Is This Election Close? Big Government and Delegated Virtue

I like that term "delegated virtue"

Ira Stoll: Obama Headed for Re-election Despite Failed Presidency

Niall Ferguson: Why Obama Is Winning

Depressed yet?

Same question I've been asking: Why Is This Election Close?

Hinderaker suggests that it might be the increase in the dependency culture. I wonder whether it's just because Obama's brand is cool, and Romney's is square. I doubt that the country has suddenly swerved Left.

BTW, I think Obama's DNC speech was entirely on purpose. That speech worked before, so why change anything? If it ain't busted, don't fix it.

Well, it is busted, but don't tell anybody.

Peggy Noonan on the DNC: The Democrats' Soft Extremism - Obama is out of ideas, and Clinton's speech was unworthy of him:

There was the relentless emphasis on Government as Community, as the thing that gives us spirit and makes us whole. But government isn't what you love if you're American, America is what you love. Government is what you have, need and hire. Its most essential duties—especially when it is bankrupt—involve defending rights and safety, not imposing views and values. We already have values. Democrats and Republicans don't see all this the same way, and that's fine—that's what national politics is, the working out of this dispute in one direction or another every few years. But the Democrats convened in Charlotte seemed more extreme on the point, more accepting of the idea of government as the center of national life, than ever, at least to me.

The fight over including a single mention of God in the platform—that was extreme. The original removal of the single mention by the platform committee—extreme. The huge "No!" vote on restoring the mention of God, and including the administration's own stand on Jerusalem—that wasn't liberal, it was extreme. Comparing the Republicans to Nazis—extreme. The almost complete absence of a call to help education by facing down the powers that throw our least defended children under the school bus—this was extreme, not mainstream.

The sheer strangeness of all the talk about abortion, abortion, contraception, contraception...

It is un-American to love government. In America, government is to be viewed as a necessary evil.

This must be what Bill Clinton meant by referring to Obama as "an amateur." Woodward on how Obama's incompetence, lack of relationships, and poor judgements blew up the budget deal.

It's an appalling story.

Related: Decline and Fall: The Tragedy of Barack Obama:

February 2010 was the ripping point of the Obama presidency. The only way the president could be a Hegelian Great Man of History — a doer of world-historical, taxpayer-subsidized deeds — was by sacrificing the ideals of unity and conciliation that had gotten him elected in the first place. For his transformative agenda was curiously unsuited to the times: Instead of confessing himself “childlike to the genius of his age,” he seemed to think he was living in 1933. He was blind to the fact that in 2010 not even a statesman of FDR’s gifts could have forged a consensus in favor of a centrally planned, state-run behemoth like Obamacare.

Win or lose, he is toast until he can get out of the White House and begin to make some serious bucks on the golf lecture circuit.

Deep thinker Alec Baldwin thinks Obama would be 17 points up in the polls if he were white. I think he'd be 17 points down if he were white. His skin tone is a large part of his appeal, I believe.

Dem delegates ecstatic about “belonging to govt.” Key ideological rift pinpointed.

That's one more government-centric meme as foolish as "you didn't build that." The serf-like attitude seems to pervade the Dem party this year.

How do you make a case to keep an executive job when you have failed at it? What to Watch for in Charlotte

Related: Thornton on What to Expect at the Democratic Convention:

...the biggest, most rotten zombie we will see in Charlotte is the class-warfare rhetoric that has already dominated Obama’s campaign. Obama and crew have no new ideas for rescuing the economy from a Greece-like meltdown. Nor do they have an answer for the Republican Convention’s celebrations of self-reliance, self-improvement, hard work, entrepreneurship, and acceptance of risk and responsibility that success requires and that freedom makes possible. These all are part of America’s DNA, the virtues that made this country the richest and most powerful in history. And the alternatives to these virtues––the dependency, stagnation, passivity, indolence, rent-seeking, and buck-passing that for more than a century have attended every species of big-government socialism that ever existed––these alternatives to American virtues have been tried for a century and failed miserably. Indeed, we’re watching their slow-motion dissolution in the Eurozone even as we speak.

George Gilder talks about Romney, Bain, and Me.

Gilder learned more from Romney and Bain than they learned from him.

From The Telegraph: We should tune in to the Romney and Ryan show:

The magic formula in which the wealth produced by the market economy is redistributed by the state – from those who produce it to those whom the government believes deserve it – has gone bust. The crash of 2008 exposed a devastating truth that went much deeper than the discovery of a generation of delinquent bankers, or a transitory property bubble. It has become apparent to anyone with a grip on economic reality that free markets simply cannot produce enough wealth to support the sort of universal entitlement programmes which the populations of democratic countries have been led to expect. The fantasy may be sustained for a while by the relentless production of phoney money to fund benefits and job-creation projects, until the economy is turned into a meaningless internal recycling mechanism in the style of the old Soviet Union.

Why the GOP Can't Win Over the Single Ladies.

Pic below via SDA. Amusing, but I know many Conservative young ladies. There are many women out there who do not wish to marry the federal government. Sandra, who wants me to pay for her birth control pills, happens to be a law student from a wealthy family. Ask Dad to pay for your pills, Sandra. Or your boyfriend.

You have a nation filled with people who are worried about money, and worried about their kids' futures. Thus the frequently-observed temptation for pols and the MSM to distract the voters. Is this election about race and gender?

Race-baiting to the bottom

Chris Matthews Says “Chicago” Is Super-Secret GOP Racist Codeword

MSNBC: References To Golf Are Racist

Golf?

2012: Campus PC Goes National

Dog Whistle Politics?

Slate Accuses Ann Romney of Sexism

Knish gets it:

Their race card is as big as America now. It is America. There is no longer an America for them, just a collection of race cards that they shuffle and deal and shuffle again, playing solitaire with themselves until the economy goes down. In their America it is always 1963 in Birmingham. It will always be Birmingham, 1963, even for those who have never been to Birmingham and who did not even exist on this planet in 1963.