Maggie's Farm

59% agree - government is the problem

Now California wants a bailout. Can I get a bailout too?

The rubbish they talk about the credit crunch

Big Bang or Big Bounce? New theories about the origins of the universe

Palin spoke at 10th grade level; Biden at 8th grade level (Newspapers aim for 6th grade level - really.)

Stripper Science and other winners of the Ig Nobel Prizes

What a man! Dick Cavett on Paul Newman

Underemployment. CNN Money

I thought Sarah did an excellent job in presenting herself to America. She is a tough, warm, and cheerful person, and not stupid by any means. She's neither an arrogant member of the DC Mandarin class nor an intellectual: she's a smart, practical American with plenty of life experience who doesn't come across as particularly ideological. A "Grand Slam," says John at Powerline. The liveblog from Jules is entertaining.

Tax payers bail out US auto industry - again.

Anonymity can turn nice people nasty.

ACORN in Michigan under vote fraud investigation.

Kling's summary post on the causes of the banking crisis

The solar minimum and climate change. Tiger

HIV is 100 years old

Dino: Libor is up and the credit markets are shutting down. Not good. More on the subject from Tyler Cowen

Start your office pool today! September madness (click to enlarge it)

How the Dems are planning to win in Ohio

What is it about the Liberal Arts? A Hamilton College prof discusses their campus moonbattery.

Are your friends Bipolar or Borderline? A shrink answers

The jet-setting greens. It's the preachiness and the hypocrisy that let's you know they don't really believe it, and that it's all no more than public display of "virtue"

The genetics of delinquency

Welcome to Moral Hazard. WSJ

Insty on the media's Obama advocacy.

Obama campaign hitting the Mosques hard. Illegally? Huh?

Rumor: Palin is clueless. But Larry Kudlow says she's terrific.

Speaking of clueless, maybe the McCain campaign is clueless.

And speaking of Kudlow, is Sheila Bair the most powerful woman in America?

A play in NYC I do not need to see. Great reviews, natch.

Making a life from scratch, in the USA. Anybody can do it. I did.

Nice political rant from SISU

Obama strongly backs the bank bailout. At least he takes a stand on something.

Just read Insty several times daily, and save me the trouble of linking his stuff. But you do that already, don't you?

Photo: What farmer wouldn't enjoy that kind of assistance with the haying?

What's all this talk about a terrible economy? Is it the Dems and the MSM trying to create a sense of malaise and fear? Surely the banks are in a mess, a number of hedge funds have crashed and burned, and a continued credit crunch could and probably would lead to a recession - but we aren't in one yet. And our employment numbers are the envy of the world. Yes, people have lost assets, but they weren't real - they were a housing bubble. And the stock market? It goes up and down. It's supposed to do that. That's what markets do. If you don't like it, don't be part of it. Buy munis.

Your college assignment: Write an essay trashing Barack Obama Sarah Palin. Why do they hate her so? Look at this! Good grief.

From Palin's interview with Hugh Hewitt:

I know what Americans are going through. Todd and I, heck, we’re going through that right now even as we speak, which may put me again kind of on the outs of those Washington elite who don’t like the idea of just an everyday working class American running for such an office. But yeah, there’s been a lot of times that Todd and I have had to figure out how we were going to pay for health insurance. We’ve gone through periods of our life here with paying out of pocket for health coverage until Todd and I both landed a couple of good union jobs. Early on in our marriage, we didn’t have health insurance, and we had to either make the choice of paying out of pocket for catastrophic coverage or just crossing our fingers, hoping that nobody would get hurt, nobody would get sick. So I know what Americans are going through there. And you know, even today, Todd and I are looking at what’s going on in the stock market - the relatively low number of investments that we have.

Bank failures, not a poor economy, caused the Great Depression. NYT.

Canadians call US Marxist. What? When banks fail - for whatever reasons - there is no credit. And with no credit, there can be no business.

An Argument for Localism. Brussels Journal. I like this notion.

The UK has a Poverty Industry too. Now it's called "relative poverty," kinda like the way "Global Warming" got changed to "Climate Change."

Speaking of which, Make Sure Climate Change is in your grant application

A newsman spills the beans - but we knew it anyway

Mankiw:

Warren Buffett has said, "you should get greedy when others are fearful and fearful when others are greedy." If he is right, then this is the time to get greedy. There is no doubt that most everyone else is fearful.

Rick Moran on Palin etc:

...the left has jumped all over her with their tried and true personal attack, calling Palin ignorant” and “stupid.” If I had a dollar every time a liberal called a Republican candidate “stupid” I would be wealthy beyond the dreams of avarice. Eisenhower (dumb, incoherent), Goldwater (crazy and stupid), Ford (dumb jock and a stumblebum), Reagan (dumb actor), Quayle (can’t spell potato), Jack Kemp (dumb jock), George Bush (dumb playboy). The harsh truth is, the personal attack works when you have the press and other media (think Saturday Night Live riffing off liberal talking points for Ford, Reagan, Quayle, Kemp, and Bush 43), buttressing and playing to that exact same argument. It is a potent combination and only the basic good sense of the American voter has saved the GOP from being shut out entirely over the last 50 years.

Health care's new entrepreneurs. City Journal

Banks and markets: It's about confidence, not capital. And yes, Pelosi showed terrible judgement.You don't sandbag colleagues like that.

Pennies from Heaven and other songs by Johnny Burke. Steyn

For students: Vanderleun's Cornell Note Form. I like it.

The electoral map looking ugly for McCain right now. Related: From which of these guys would you buy a used car? Related: Alien Obama at Confederate Yankee

Remembering Japan's banking crisis

The House Bill was a bust. Forget Pelosi: Go with Bush. I know it's Washington, but this is no time for games. WaPo: The power shift from NYC to DC. NY Sun: It's a wealth transfer.

Related: VDH on McCain running out of time. A quote:

Did the McCain debate victory matter? Yes, it helped, but time is running out and the economy is trumping the campaign battlefield. It matters little that Chris Dodd in disgraceful fashion took $165,000 from the miscreants at Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, or that Barney Frank’s vehement opposition to reform of those institutions empowered their near-criminal leveraging.

Instead, the incumbent administration and its party in general get blamed or credited for the current economy. Moreover Wall Street as right-wing free-market sewer is a far better known talking point than the more complex corruption of hyper-liberal legislators legitimizing their own dishonesty and graft through calls to help the poor and minorities get loans and be relieved of their debts.

Confessions of a Palin Hater. Seen a lot of that. Mostly women. I don't get it.

Chavez and China

Tort reform and W. VA docs

You just don't say things like this:

"We don't want (Hispanics) to become the new African-American community," Lima told The Associated Press. "And that's what the Democratic Party is going to do to them, create more programs and give them handouts, food stamps and checks for this and checks for that. We don't want that."

Kristol: How McCain wins

Via Insty:

NEW YORK POST: DOCS DETAIL BARACK TIES TO RADICAL.

While Barack Obama has long downplayed his connection to Bill Ayers, a co-founder of the violent Weather Underground radical group, new documents show the two worked much more closely together in starting an educational foundation than has been previously known.

The press has been trying to avoid covering this for months. Will they be able to keep it up until November? If not, it won't be for lack of trying . . . .

UPDATE: Much more here. "Radicalism disguised by a claim to be postideological."

From Synthstuff:

One thing community organizers do: Here's a big part of the answer: Community organizers intimidate banks into making high-risk loans to customers with poor credit. More on Acorn here. And below:

Via Anchoress from Okie on the Lam, Barack Obama — The Most Radical Leftist To Ever Get This Close To Occupying The White House? who includes this ACORN network:

When asked what the stock market would do in the future, J.P. Morgan famously replied "It will fluctuate." Indeed. This Theo farm lassie might cheer up some of us:

Why isn't this a bailout too?

How's this for a wedding invitation?

The stench from Missouri

What's a POSSLQ?

National elections build characters. LA Times

Obama in Leftland. Gelernter in Wkly Std

Global warming has paused. Why not say "stopped and has begun to reverse itself"?

How the NYT blames Bush for the banking problems. Amazing. Related: Mankiw on distorting history

Rick Moran answers your questions about the debate. Related: Fact-checking the debate. But what do facts matter? This election is about feelings, not facts.

I am heading out to Montauk for some Striper fishin' this weekend. Tough guy vs. empty suit debate - I am missing it - enjoy. Leaving now. See y'all on Monday.

Turning the First Amendment on its head. Neuhaus

Sowell: It's about political maneuvering, not the good of the nation. Tiger agrees: Disgusting

Celebrity economics. American Thinker

Bill Clinton likes the New Repubs

More on the Obama stories the MSM ignores

Throwing fish away. EU rules. Insane, top to bottom.

Doers vs. intellectuals. neoneo

Code Pink and Ahmadinejad. Perfect together.

Sarah Palin hates blacks and Jews. No doubt, a wicked lady for sure.

Founding Brothers. Who was behind Obama's unusual rise in politics?

More Trapped in the 60s.

Is Bill Clinton undermining Obama?

Ahmadinejad endorses Obama

Stuff men don't need

The true story of Che. It's a film

Woops. China reports rocket launch before it happens

A McCain-Palin march on the Upper West Side. Nice example of "liberal tolerance." h/t, Thompson

Is Greenie-ism a fad of the liberal elite? No doubt.

Mankiw: In defence of Paulson's plan

Photo: That is the Fuji Apple - a darn good apple.

Vanderleun made up this Get Out Of Racism Free Card as a public service for the benefit of the 50% of presumably racist Dems who voted against Obama in the primaries. Also useful for those who prefer MCain or doubt whether Obama is up to the job.

The Paulson plan will make money for the taxpayers

Why Joe Biden is gaffe-proof

McCain's gambit. I agree with Rick. It's more of that old getting inside the other guy's OODA Loop, and messing him up.

From Insty:

IS SAYING "IF YOU DON'T HAVE SEX WITH ME, I'LL LEAVE YOU" tantamount to rape? Only if you're an idiot. Which means, for some people, the answer is "yes."

The Romans brought the leeks to Wales

Vote Here. Jib-Jab

Al Gore: Break the law to prevent coal-burning

Who's getting abortions these days? From a piece in Newsweek:

While the teen abortion rate has declined by nearly 30 percent, the rate for women ages 20-24 is almost 10 points higher than it was in 1974. (In that group, rates hit 30.4 abortions per 1,000 women in 1974, spiking to 53.8 in 1989 and declining to 39.9 in 2004.) Women in the next age group, ages 25-29, follow a similar pattern, with a spike in the '80s and a decline in recent years. So while it's encouraging that abortion rates among 20- to 29-year-olds have been steadily declining since the late 1980s, those decreases have been much smaller than those among teenagers, and they still have not brought the abortion rate down to low levels of the 1970s.

The solar wind is at a low point.

What's going wrong in Aghanistan? Maybe there is no "best" strategy; maybe it's just one of those endless messes where the barbarians will keep coming for years and somebody just have to man the walls and gates to keep them away. This sort of thing has happened many times in history.

 Photo from Michael Yon's Death in the Corn, Part 3. Send him a few bucks.

Charter schools, After Milwaukee

From the NYT, 1999:

In a move that could help increase home ownership rates among minorities and low-income consumers, the Fannie Mae Corporation is easing the credit requirements on loans that it will purchase from banks and other lenders.

The Man Who Never Was. Powerline

The McCain campaign hits the NYT hard. Rightly so.

A must-see ad for the Catholic vote, from McCain

New perfumes. The beach one sounds good. "Library"? It might smell good on the naughty librarian from Theo, pictured.

The British Sociological Association has come out with their list of banned words. You cannot say "Old Masters" anymore. But how about "Old Mistresses"?

Brown may be a tough undergraduate college to get into, but it is widely known that a Brown degree doesn't necessarily mean much of anything. Will they fix it?

A bailout in very pot? Related: Kling on An alternative to bailout

Obama's record on guns.

Case closed on the Rosenbergs

Had this been Palin, the election would be over

We speculated last week that Buffett was shopping for bargains - and we were right

A chemical equator which divides the globe. It's nasty.

Cuba: It might be a good idea to give their people a hand, but they are notorious deadbeats.

Dems have blocked Fannie/Freddie reform for years

Dino reminds us of Krauthammer's piece on the Obama magic from February

Obama's little gun control problem (h/t Kim, who refers to him as Urkel. That is cruel.) Related: Soros was behind the disinviting of Palin to speak in NYC.

From Havana Note, Cuba is in a big mess after the hurricanes. Let's end the embargo. I agree.

They used to call this "higher education." Jules

Who would Jesus tax? Joe Biden, the extreme Christianist with theocratic impulses. How come we see no toons of Biden with his guns and Bible?

Not dead yet. The Palin effect. Conservatism is still breathing.

What gives with all of this early voting?

Europe backing off on climate regulations

Are we all Communists now? Jim Cramer on the future of Wall St. after the Great Nationalization

Big Labor's billion dollar bet on Obama

More Insty on paying taxes. I agree that every American should pay something. The middle class gets off Scot free. He quotes a reader:

If my federal taxes are any indication then the middle class is almost certainly not paying its "Fair Share" of federal taxes. My tax position is utterly ordinary. Married with three kids, gross annual income of approx $68K. I take only the standard deductions (no Schedule A) and received the Child Tax Credit for all three children. My total tax bite for each of the last three years was approximately $900/year, or barely over 1%.

So Obama and McCain can talk all they want about cutting taxes for the middle class but, in reality, there's just not much left to cut. The really big hits to my pocketbook come from FICA and, now, orthodontia.

Palin's nomination "an insult to all women." No doubt that Sally Quinn finds Sarah Palin offensive. Women sure can be catty. I think they envy Sarah's studly husband and her hot sex life - not to mention her accomplishments and her positive outlook on life.

Paulson should kill the Fannie and Freddie business model. WSJ. Related at NRO: Fannie and Freddie were the real culprits.

Quoted in a Bloomberg piece on the banks, and NY and London real estate prices:

"There is a saying among bankers that a shortage of capital kills you slowly and a shortage of liquidity is like a bullet in the head.''

Luskin on the bailout loans:

The fundamental mistake (in the article he discusses) is that the $700 billion would be used to invest in income-producing assets, not to fund consumption. A dollar spent in Head Start, say, or in socialized health care, is gone forever, even though its expenditure may produce a benefit for whomever receives the service it funds. But a dollar spent on a mortgage earns interest, and can eventually be sold -- perhaps even at a profit. And in the meantime, if the government's temporarily holding these assets helps unlock the US real estate and securities markets, then so much the better. To be clear, I'm not endorsing the federal government investing $700 billion in private assets. But love it or hate it, it is investment -- not consumption.

Attack Machine looks back on the Obama phenomenon. A quote:

This is the nature of Mr. Obama’s particular kind of charisma. People project their best wishes on him, they fill in the blank of a very attractive and plausible outline. His is not, emphatically, a charisma of deeds. For what has he done, save run for president? He is an accommodating vessel - cool, smart, biracial and “unfinished.” This is the Gatsby quality of him that others have noted. Like Gatsby, he is a receptacle of others’ glamorous invention.

AVI is a calm and unenthused McCain voter, and I agree with him that political enthusiasm is a disease. One quote:

I just don't get any positive Obama argument. What's he going to do except not be the other guy? The positive sounding items, like "hope" and "change," are just disguised versions of dissing his opposition. So. Everyone who feels that the world just isn't right, somehow has a possible attraction to Obama. The Arts & Humanities Hive knows the world isn't right because they're not in charge. The African-American voter knows that America is still not right on race; the government worker knows that there's never enough money going into their part of the government anyway. Yes We Can. Can what? Kick Them Out And...And...

Insty writes an essay (OK, a mini-essay) on the looming entitlements crash - and I agree with him.

Joe Biden makes stuff up when he isn't stealing it, but he gets a pass because he is a known goofball, and because he's a Dem. Now he says he was a coal miner. Presidential material?

Roger Simon: An open letter to my fellow Jews

The NY Post is having fun with Charlie Rangel. It's about time. I know that Sean Hannity likes Rangel - not his politics though, but Rangel is a classic lib tax-dodger. I thought this sort of thing was criminal.

The deep secrets of the smear campaign. Related: How the Dems are stifling opposition voices. And Jules does a summary of the Astroturfing. This is sick.

Image: As we head into apple season, this cute apple bobber is from Theo, of course.

Insider info from last night: forget the polls - Obama's internal polling data is not encouraging. Evaluate his behavior in that context. They do not know what to do. And watch for the McCain ads this coming week. They are going to stress the truth about Obama, unless I have been wrongly informed. That's why we are seeing this kind of junk.

And a note to McCain, who made a fool of himself last week talking about the banking mess: When you don't know what you're talking about - shut up.

Palin drawing ginormous crowds. Something interesting about the fact that you can put a regular, normal, practical, wholesome American lady up on a podium, and people go nuts. Maybe America is saner than I sometimes think.

Biden and Obama say it's patriotic to want to pay more taxes. Tiger has some ideas for those who don't have the money to display this sort of enthusiastic patriotism.

Fred Barnes: The GOP brand is looking better. Maybe so, but it doesn't deserve it.

How Fannie and Freddie blew it for all of us. Don't forget - they are government agencies, and now they are govt agencies who have confiscated my equity in those businesses and placed it in their own account. Rightly or wrongly, that is what they did, and I got screwed by buying government agency securities. Fool me once...

Paul Krugman discovers the hazard of inviting audience participation. Guess what? Canadians hate their ""health care system," but they are trapped in it, just like so many Americans are trapped in their public schools. Monopolies are bad things - but they usually get there via successful competition. But government monopolies are very bad things, and maintain failure forever on the backs of the taxpayers.

France bans internet wine advertising

The Endless Drumbeat, at American Thinker. A quote:

It's the drumbeat of the left. It is political, philosophical, theological, and social. It pervades every activity. It is post-structural, post-modern, post-everything in the parlance of the day. It is tolerant, diverse, non-judgmental, non-discriminatory, egalitarian, politically correct, multicultural, globalist, and collectivist. It insists that there are no rights and wrongs, no moral absolutes. It turns everything upside down in its looking glass world. It denies the correctness of all that produced what our culture revered before the deconstruction of the world in accordance with the tenets of cultural Marxism.

It denies God, human exceptionalism, and the soul. We are reduced to Darwinian animals floundering in an amoral sea of meaninglessness. It is a product of the nihilistic, existentialist philosophical movement, which went hand in hand with modern art, atonal music, scientific materialism and modern physics, and the generally discordant nature of the twentieth century.

Read the whole thing (link above). Fortunately, conservatives are too busy with work, family, volunteering, going to church, and having fun, to keep their drums beating this way.

A quote from Whittaker Chambers (h/t, Dr Bob):

The New Deal was a genuine revolution, whose deepest purpose was not simply reform within existing traditions, but a basic change in the social, and, above all, the power relationships within the nation. It was not a revolution by violence. It was a revolution by bookkeeping and lawmaking. In so far as it was successful, the power of politics had replaced the power of business. This is the basic power shift of all the revolutions of our time. This shift was the revolution.

Tiger notes that, at times of possible economic collapse, moral hazard moves to the margin. He discusses Hamilton's handling of the Panic of 1792.

How Washington and the politicians handled the Depression.

Amy Shlaes discusses recovery without bailouts.

The debate about halting short-selling. Bad medicine but it's a bad disease. More good stuff on short-selling from Megan.

Put down the sick and elderly. They are just too expensive and unattractive - and they drool. It's called Ethics. Indeed, it is Scientific Ethics, entirely rational and Utilitarian. AKA evil. A similar argument could be made against the blind, the deaf, the crippled and the foolish.

Why Obama is wrong about Al Qaida.

Congress stunned by Bernanke warnings. What a mess those marginal mortgages created. Of course, everybody knew they would be a problem eventually - but not this big. Blame Congress for requiring banks to issue those mortgages, and blame the banks for buying too many of those rotten mortgage derivatives with their enticing yields and their phony triple-A ratings.

Do not expect neutral reporting any more. Q&O. My view: reporters now pick and choose when to be "neutral;" strangely neutral about Jihadists, highly biased about American politics.

For reporters and regular folks too: Learn all the tricks at Camp Obama. Is this creepy, or am I old-fashioned?

How has Alaska been doing?

Does Biden lose the Catholic vote for Obama?

Wife Quiz: Are you sexually confident?

The Tahiri story still avoided by the MSM. Nobody ever heard of the Logan Act?

Palin on Hannity: Partial transcript

"Believe this," you alumni. Powerline

Does Bill Clinton support Obama? Kinda sorta. Real answer: No.

30 years of "climate change" erased. I guess we should be glad, but I'd like it a bit warmer. Only Obama has the power to fix this solar system cooling mess:

HMM: Sounds like the opening of a science-fiction thriller: "NASA will hold a media teleconference Tuesday, Sept. 23, at 12:30 p.m. EDT, to discuss data from the joint NASA and European Space Agency Ulysses mission that reveals the sun's solar wind is at a 50-year low. The sun's current state could result in changing conditions in the solar system." (Via Watts Up With That).

World markets soar. Government has the power to damage - or to support markets. I am in favor of government supporting the operations of markets and ensuring the conditions for their free and honest operation - but minimizing their intrusion into industries.

Obama turns mean. Mocks McCain. Dem team cheers market turmoil. It's sick out there.

Hillary supporter Trump endorses McCain. As does Bert Prelutsky, in an amusing manner.

How the Dems blocked Bush's efforts to heal Fannie and Freddie in 2003. Congress today: We don't know what to do.

Resisting climate orthodoxy. h/t, Englishman

What a market panic looks like. I don't see Warren Buffet panicking. I see him shopping for deals. These rare times are the best for picking things up cheap. It's a good time to have some cash to put to work.

A quote via Powerline:

The Washington and New York elites hate Sarah Palin. They, and especially the feminist “leaders” among them, are like the old factory owners in the pre-union days. They fear that the little people are rising up against them, and they must stop this. They are now the establishment, and like all establishments they protect themselves.

Sarah Palin may or may not be our next vice president. But if she is not, she will be remembered for one great thing – that for a single moment the “flyover people,” those often ignored and sneered at, felt they had a champion, and they felt that one of their own had made it.

Non-citizen voting? Is that Constitutional?

Via Insty:

MEGAN MCARDLE: "I knew that rent controls have frozen a great deal of New York's housing stock, but I had no idea how much."

Related item here.

Darn right. Rent control drives out the middle class.

Why Bernanke decided to lend to AIG - to avoid a world-wide collapse of lending and a possible Depression.

Related: the 8th paragraph gives a good description of credit default swaps, along with other good explanations for the AIG problem.

They spent 5 hours frantically trying to find a strategy to refute Zebari's statement. It doesn't take 5 hrs. to tell the truth.

Amazon to sell wine.

Women don't do logic. That's what the Feminists say.

Dems thrilled by bank failures, ugly markets.

Where does the US stand in terms of economic freedom?

Bush: Drilling Bill is a hoax. Sure sounds like it. They just want to say they did something. Political cover to fool the uninformed.

ACORN is up to its old tricks.

Speaking of tricks, isn't hacking Palin's email a crime? I think it is. The hatred of this fine lady is patently insane, but I think she can take it. I hope the FBI is on this, today.

Got balls? Why the Palins are attractive to the Heartland. It's the testosterone.

Obama is the most Conservative candidate we've seen in years. He wants to go back to the 1930s.

McCain intends to win. It's a scandal! Quote from RCP (h/t, Viking)

The enduring scandal of the McCain campaign is that it wants to win. The press had hoped for a harmless, nostalgic loser like Bob Dole in 1996. In a column excoriating Republicans for historically launching successful attacks against Democratic presidential candidates in August, Time columnist Joe Klein excepted Bob Dole -- not mentioning that Dole had been eviscerated by Clinton negative ads before August ever arrived.

Ace loses it re Andrew Sullivan. Ace, buddy, not to worry. Nobody reads Sullivan anymore unless they are looking for an easy fisking target. His comments were interesting once upon a time, in his youth, but he has been erratic and wacked for years now.