We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.
What we are witnessing is the full and seamless fusion of media power with government power.
The media used to hide it a bit, in their actions; they would temper their scorn of conservatism, throw them a bone now and again just to prove they were capable of such a thing.
No longer. The media no longer hides it in their actions. They are fully fused with the Obama Administration and DNC. The only way in which they do hide it is by simply lying when confronted about it: They'll issue a snide denial, then go about doing precisely what it is they were accused of doing.
Related to the post we linked this morning from (the Liberal Dem) Mead on one of the assumptions of modern Liberalism (ie the notion that most of the masses will never do much or reach full self-sufficiency in a modern economy), here's A nation of takers.
Naturally, we wonder to what extent that could be a self-fulfilling notion.
I doubt that even Rudy Giuliani, to whom a generation of New Yorkers owe gratitude, could have won NYC in a national election. As Glaeser notes,
The Republicans’ abandonment of the city is good neither for their party nor for urban America. The GOP clearly needs a heftier percentage of the urban vote, but winning it by means of fiscal pandering or redistribution isn’t the way to go—partly because such a strategy would cost rural and suburban votes and partly because it would be wrong. A better approach is to offer the good ideas that cities desperately need. Republicans have plenty.
Why is that, when Republicans have demonstrated effective answers to urban issues in the cities in which they have had influence while most deep blue cities are either dying or drowning in red ink?
However, we know that Leviathan's hunger for money and control is never sated. If you imagine that there is ever "enough," just ask a Leftist where the endpoint should be, the point at which government's task is complete.
There will always be a list, the job will never be done, and, still, utopia will never arrive because dystopia always arrives first.
Related: Gerard found that One Cosmos has reviewed Our Logophobic President, with his sarcasm button turned on. One sample:
"A great nation must protect its people from life's worst hazards and misfortune."
Hmm. Does that include protection from the most devastating hazard and misfortune of them all, the tyrannical and intrusive state?
Because if the 20th century taught us one lesson, it is that there is nothing more destructive than the all-wise and all-powerful state predicated on the fantasy that it will protect its citizens from all of life's unavoidable exigencies. I mean, just protect me from domestic and foreign enemies, okay? And stop violating with the Constitution. Then we'll talk.
What are life's worst hazards, anyway? Probably the same they've always been: war. Famine. Disease. Poverty. So, why don't we cure hunger by imitating the Soviet Union and putting the state in charge of food production and distribution? While we're at it, why doesn't the federal government create millions of pretend jobs and lavish its worthless employees with absurdly generous wages and benefits?
Oh, right. I guess Obama noticed how effectively that model is working here in California
The right of the people to keep and bear arms is an extension of the natural right to self-defense and a hallmark of personal sovereignty.
His focus on natural rights is the main issue. In my big-picture view, American citizens do not have delimited rights, but government does have delimited powers over the citizen. Neither the "common good" nor the "greater good," however construed, are citizens of the US.
In non-American history, the masses and peasants were forbidden ownership of arms (back when the penetrating weapon of choice was the sword). America was, and remains, different, revolutionary.
Governments are always uncomfortable with an armed populace. Canada, which just gave up on its program of national firearm registration, should not have been surprised to discover that a giant and costly registry of honest gun owners was of no use at all.
The only way to finance a big European-style state is to have it paid for by massive taxation of everyone, mostly the middle class. Right now, we are avoiding honest debate on this fact.
There will be large tax increases on the middle class. There is no getting around it, if people want so many government benefits. Those Obamacare taxes are just the beginning. With that will come ever-slowing growth of jobs and income.
The Mrs. recently reported a conversation she had had with a tennis friend who had a rotator cuff repair, and had prematurely discontinued her physical therapy because the insurance coverage cut off after the predetermined number of sessions for that surgery.
This friend of hers drives a new Mercedes every year, owns three houses in various vacation spots, and spends three months/year traveling around the world. However, the notion of actually paying (pocket change) for her own physical well-being eluded her imagination. And her shoulder still hurts.
People have been well-trained to expect to get what they need "for free." And somehow have been trained to imagine that, if insurance doesn't cover it, it must not matter very much. A childlike, entitlement culture.
Who wants a statistician for a doctor?
As I have mentioned before, I have inexpensive major medical insurance with a $10,000 two-year deductible for my family. (Some other Maggie's folks have similar.) After that, it's unlimited. If anybody (God forbid) gets very ill or injured, I will keep my humble abode.
When I see a doctor, I enjoy the look of surprise on the faces of the office staff when I pull out my checkbook. I like to pay doctors. What better use of money is there (other than buying cigars)?
A word to the wise: If you tell them you are paying out of pocket, most docs will give you a discount because it's no staff time, it's instant payment, and because it just seems right to pay for a service - same as an electrician or plumber or lawyer.
If you are on Medicare or Medicaid, or if some insurance pays your bills, what do you do personallyfor your doctor to let him or her know that you appreciate their care for you?
PS: My Internist tells me that a couple of wines and two or three cigars daily is just about right for a guy like me. Like most Americans of my middle age, I take Lipitor and BP meds, and I always take care to use extra salt. The occasional Viagra? I'm not saying. He is a good, sane, practical doc who individualizes things, and thinks it's narcissistic for people to obsess about their health. "Get the most out of life, while you have it" is his motto. "You can't save life for later because 'later' is just a theory."
Nearly half a century ago, I dropped out of graduate school and enlisted as a foot soldier in America’s War on Poverty. Today, I’m still on the front lines, working to move people out of dependency and into employment. But with an important difference: I’ve become fed up with the useless policies that I once supported, and I’m trying to change the strategy of our bogged-down army...
Income inequality, if it is a problem (I do not see why it is) it is easy to fix. Just tax all income over $40,000 at 100% (except for politicians and bureaucrats).
Then confiscate all private assets over $100,000. (except for politicians and bureaucrats), because assets are really more important in life than income. Let's make it fair. Why focus on income? Some people have huge houses and apartments, and small families. The government can provide the manna. It worked great in China and the Soviet Union, so why not here?
Income and asset inequalities are fine with me. Money provides choices. Many people are highly motivated by such things, and they make good things happen. My job, for example, which pays me enough to afford ski trips to Whistler which, in turn, provides jobs for Canucks.
We frequently point out, here at Maggie's, the similarities between modern Progressivism/Leftism and Feudalism. Of course, Hayek nailed this years ago.
The changes wrought on the American political economy by progressives have taken us in the unmistakable direction of feudalism. The morphological resemblance between the progressive version of America and the historic feudal regimes of Western Europe and Japan is obvious if one takes a few moments to consider the changes in the proper context.
So claims Peggy Noonan, and I think it's darn good and enjoyable too: George Will on Religion in Politics at Washington U on Dec 4. (You have to click the link to video playlist for the speech, on the right)
"Do 'natural rights' presuppose religious faith?"
Will is not a man of faith and he is an old-fashioned Liberal. It's not a political speech; it's a wonderful historical-philosophical survey from the Greeks to Woodrow Wilson and the notion of progress, and it goes a long way towards explaining the historical underpinnings of the Maggie's chronically anti-statist and revolutionary view of the world.
Every 6th-grader to high school kid in America should know this basic stuff, but I bet many do not. "Should the State have a monopoly on social and civil authority?"
The Q&A after is excellent too. Family disintegration. Do not skip it. He speaks slowly and methodically, but it still deserves two listenings. George Will, like us, is a Madison and de Toqueville fan. Those guys were smarter and wiser than all of us. Those who think they know better need to beware of hubris: they were wary of all power.
America has indeed been exceptional in world history, and, we hope, will stick with it. I hate the idea of people voting without knowing their history.
We always say that "freedom is messy" and that "Freedom is not for sissies." From Sultan's A Perfect Prison:
Bloomberg is a living model of the glass half-full theory of human behavior. This is after all a man who banned large sodas, and if you can't trust people to have large sodas, then you can't trust them to have cold medicines, let alone guns. Where does it end? It ends the same place - it ends in a prison. Nowhere. If you believe that people are basically bad, then every problem you identify is met with another control measure until you control absolutely everything.
(Hizzoner, of course, has been surrounded by armed men since he got rich on Wall St, long before becoming Mayor. Must be nice to afford armed bodyguards and armed drivers of your Lincoln Town Car while you sip single malt Scotch in the back with your latest squeeze while denouncing legal gun owners.)
The eternal problem with widespread freedom from state control is that some small minority of people can't or won't handle freedom, personal independence, self-control. For whatever reason, they do not buy into our social contract or are unable to fulfill it. Perhaps they never even heard of it, never were informed that a person makes a deal to be a citizen here and that it is a historically-unique privilege, responsibility, and challenge.How come nobody told them that life in America is supposed to be difficult and risky, but filled with opportunity? It's not about safety and comfort and was never meant to be based on anything but virtue and freedom. Our streets are not paved with gold, but with blood, sweat, and tears.
These failures of a minority of bad apples to get with the program invite the state to step in in an effort to provide controls and supports externally. Thus we all lose a bit of freedom each time some jerk, idiot, sociopath, addict, or lunatic abrogates his American dignity and fails at running his own life in the manner of an honest, free, law-abiding and upstanding citizen. It's a shame - and wrong - that the least moral and worse-behaving of our population should have the power to deprive freedoms from the vast majority of decent citizens who aim to construct honorable, dignified, and independent lives by following their consciences or God's will as best they can.
Go ahead and ask me why I might want a 30-clip magazine, or a Big Gulp Coke. Well, I don't really want those things, but I don't want them forbidden me. I have a handgun carry permit, but I don't walk around armed all the time. Rarely, in fact. I might as well ask why you need a car that goes 110 mph, when car deaths in the US are far higher than gun deaths (32,000, vs 600 deaths by rifle - half of them suicides and others accidents).
(For other stats: Swimming pool drownings in the US: Approx. 3000 per year, mostly young kids. Backyard pools frighten me far more than guns do. I hate pools and I like guns... Also, firearm murders with illegal handguns thus far in the gun-banning village of Chicago, 2012: 470.)
Leftist control freaks often try to find signs of "market failure" to justify government intrusion into the free and voluntary exchange of goods and services. Similarly, they seek signs of "freedom failure" with the same goals. It's about power of the elites over us little people - always for our own good, of course, because we are "the masses." However, there are no "masses" in America and there is no aristocracy of any sort, political or otherwise.
Isn't obesity a "freedom failure"? Of course it is. North Korea has no such problem because they enforce "food control." So my final thought on this topic tonight: Why does the government allow Medicare-aged people to be overweight? 500,000 deaths from cardiovascular disease per year. Surely some controls are called for to address this crisis of excess freedom which results in so much disability and death, and burdens everyone else with their medical bills. Easy for the government to fix that: just offer to pay for medical care based on your BMI. If it's over 27, no free doctors. They are heading that way in the UK already. My view is that if you want to be heavy, do so and enjoy it. Not on my nickel, though. My freedom to life and property should trump all else because it is a gift from God.
This is one of the most depressing Christmases many can remember. Many feel that way this year, and not just Libertarian-Conservatives. It seems gloomy out there.
There are many factors, Mrs. B. theorizes. A world of kids with lousy job opportunities, higher taxes, decreasing incomes, the horrors of Newtown, unemployment, the election, etc.
She is quite shrewd about politics. From a political standpoint, her view is that a tipping point has occurred. Yes, Repubs won some elections, yes, it was fairly close, etc., but her main point was the decline of marriage and the rise of childbirth outside of marriage. The single woman vote. Emily or whoever she was.
She says African-Americans and immigrant Hispanics will trend Progressive for the indefinite future because their political goal is to get stuff from the government, but that is nothing new. Not everybody understands what America is all about. Married white people, and especially married white Christians with self-reliance as a fundamental socio-cultural goal, are descending towards a minority.
Many men are no longer in any hurry to get married despite marriage's provision of the comforts, partnership, social circles, and supports needed in life in general and for child-rearing in particular. Single women emotionally look to government for what they once looked to men for. She believes that American acceptance of dependency has reached a tipping point, predicted for over 200 years, which will forever alter American politics.
Her somewhat defeatist view is to hunker down and just to take care of your family as best your can, and to stay away from the news.
Previous findings suggest that informal, cultural rules underlie constraints on government predation. Following this logic, this study asks how contract enforcement is achieved – through formal or informal mechanisms?
I am not sure I understand their answer to this important question.
From The Crisis of American Self-Government - Harvey Mansfield, Harvard's 'pet dissenter,' on the 2012 election, the real cost of entitlements, and why he sees reason for hope:
'We have now an American political party and a European one. Not all Americans who vote for the European party want to become Europeans. But it doesn't matter because that's what they're voting for. They're voting for dependency, for lack of ambition, and for insolvency."
and
(The) project began at the turn of the previous century by "an alliance of experts and victims," Mr. Mansfield says. "Social scientists and political scientists were very much involved in the foundation of the progressive movement. What those experts did was find ways to improve the well-being of the poor, the incompetent, all those who have the right to vote but can't quite govern their own lives. And still to this day we see in the Democratic Party the alliance between Ph.D.s and victims."
and
Mr. Mansfield is optimistic. "The material for recovery is there," he says. "Ambition, for one thing. I teach at a university where all the students are ambitious. They all want to do something with their lives." That is in contrast to students he has met in Europe, where "it was depressing to see young people with small ambitions, very cultivated and intelligent people so stunted." He adds with a smile: "Our other main resource is the Constitution."
Is it possible that Harvard University, whose entire existence is dependent on capitalist benefactors, has only one non-Marxist on its faculty? Or is there a psychological issue about feeling dependent on the production of others which drives faculties to Leftism as a way to maintain a bit of pride? After all, it must be a little humbling to have to feel that one's career is built on the charity of others, however interesting or useful that career may be; "on the kindness of strangers" as it used to be said by, or of, high-class hookers like Blanche DuBois?
That's the Liberal project. Liberals take the long view and the long march. As Ace says,
The state is benevolent.
The state is wise.
The state loves you.
The state would never hurt you.
The state only wishes to help you.
Will you help the state to help you?
The State is God? Addiction to government "help" is sold and marketed in the same way that drugs are. It is, in fact, a drug in the sense that dependency sneaks into the brain and distorts who you are, strips you of your dignity, corrupts your soul by tempting you to focus on what you can get for free, and enslaves you if you let it. In the end, it leaves you just hungry for more.
Welfare includes crony capitalism, tax breaks for businesses, mortgage deductions, bailouts, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid right down to disability and the now ubiquitous EBT cards.
Naturally, we Conservatives think it best to eliminate all forms of welfare and charity from government control except for the most desperate or hopeless of individual cases. Remove welfare from the middle classes and provide a safety net for the desperate: Restoring a True Safety Net
With the promise of health care completing the project of the 20th-century welfare state, liberals need to envision how to meet the needs of a new century.
Apparently Americans have many "unmet needs" which can only be provided by government - or by our neighbors at gunpoint. It's a sorry sort of mess and will not end well. Americans can do better than this if the government would get the heck out of the way of effort and creativity.
Everybody's probably sick of reading pontifications about the election, but I think Ponnuru's The Party’s Problem is worth a glance. Here's a quote (my bolds):
The Republican story about how societies prosper — not just the Romney story — dwelt on the heroic entrepreneur stifled by taxes and regulations: an important story with which most people do not identify. The ordinary person does not see himself as a great innovator. He, or she, is trying to make a living and support or maybe start a family. A conservative reform of our health-care system and tax code, among other institutions, might help with these goals. About this person, however, Republicans have had little to say.
In the days since the election, Republicans have received (and given one another) a lot of advice: Step up the ground game. Soften on immigration and abortion. Embrace same-sex marriage. Appeal more to single women, Hispanics, and young people. Run the younger, more charismatic candidates Republicans have waiting in the wings. Some of this advice is good, and some of it bad. But the weakness of the Republican party predates the emergence of same-sex marriage as an issue, the development of Democratic micro-targeting strategies, and the growth of the Hispanic vote. And wasn’t Josh Mandel, the losing Ohio Senate candidate, supposed to be one of those great young conservative hopes? However much charisma and brains the next crop of Republicans brings to their campaigns, they need a stronger party.
The perception that the Republican party serves the interests only of the rich underlies all the demographic weaknesses that get discussed in narrower terms.
President Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society represents the third great Progressive wave. With the liberal label firmly in place, the goal was now qualitative – to rescue liberalism from the materialism of the New Deal and to empower government to add meaning to the lives of the average person. The Great Society would end poverty and assure abundance for all. But, that was no longer enough. As Johnson explained: “’But most of all, the Great Society is not a safe harbor, a resting place, a final objective, a finished work. It is a challenge constantly renewed, beckoning us toward a destination where the meaning of our lives matches the marvelous products of our labor.’”
What followed was a cultural revolution and a fundamental change in the relationship between the people and the federal government...
As I asked ex-Gov. Mario Cuomo some years ago, "What's next on the liberal agenda after government medical care?"
If you adopt the position that government is God - that government can do everything, can fix everything, can and should make everything in life nice for everybody (which is even far beyond what God does), then naturally government failed to provide perfect safety from hurricane/Nor'easter Sandy.
Also, this one: Devastated Rockaways residents lash out at Bloomberg during unannounced visit. Excuse me, but the Rockaways do sometimes rock away. They are barrier islands, like Cape Hatteras. What do people expect? Barrier islands are just temporary sandbars. Like flood plains, one should try to live there at one's own peril. People should know a little geography. Heck, Long Island itself is just a temporary large barrier island, made of glacial sand from the recent ice age.
Without wanting to sound heartless because the suffering of others is painful to all regardless of the cause, there must be a point at which people are responsible for their own welfare. Has government created an illusion of safety from the hazards of life and the hazards of poor choices? If so, government has done a grave disservice to people. Here's what government did do:
- They have long marked out built-up areas labeled as "Flood Zone A." That includes beach areas, filled-in old coastal marshlands, and barrier beaches. That means that, if you want to live there, you will get flooded and have been flooded historically. Maybe governments should make you sign a piece of paper saying "I understand that I elect to live here in some danger and at my own personal and property risk." Not a great idea to live in flood zones, but if you want to be there you should expect it. In fact, if you live there, you likely are required to own federally-subsidized (big mistake there) flood insurance. People should never have been permitted to build in such places on the taxpayer's nickel, but it happened long ago and has a history of multiple wipe-outs over the past 300 years. I am in favor of free-market flood insurance only.
- Days before Sandy hit land in NJ, Mayor Bloomberg ordered mandatory evacutation of Zone A. No, they cannot force you to leave. This is America. It is a legal misdemeanor not to leave, however.
- For days, radio and TV warned about an especially high storm surge in flood zones due to the full moon and reinforced the evacuation order. They had tons of shelters for those with nowhere to go.
- Local police and fire departments went around all Zone A neighborhoods (Zone A pop. 300,000 on Staten Island alone) with loudspeakers sending out warnings on Sunday and Monday before the storm.
This reminds me of the old church story: The Mississippi is rising, the levee has a hole in it, and the guy looks out his first story window and hears police warnings to flee for higher ground. He prays "God, I have no fear because I know you will rescue me from this flood." A little later, he's had to move to the second floor and again asks God for help. Some guys in a canoe paddle by, but he lets them go while waiting for God. Finally, he's on the roof praying, and a helo goes overhead offering to drop a radio so he can call for help. He waves them off, trusting in the Lord. Yes, he drowns.
OK, I'll add the punchline: The man asks God why he let him drown and God answers "I sent the police, a canoe, and a helicopter. What more were you expecting from me?"
Many people believe that the state is responsible for everything. According to Cass Sunstein, a professor of law at Harvard University and administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, “Government is ‘implicated’ in everything people own. . . . If rich people have a great deal of money, it is because the government furnishes a system in which they are entitled to have and keep that money.”
That’s the academic formulation of a concept that was restated recently in a popular form. “If you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own. . . . If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. . . . Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business—you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.” That was Sunstein’s boss, President Obama.
and
The evolution of freedom has involved a long process of bringing power under law. The imposition of force has nonetheless left a powerful imprint on our minds. Alexander Rustow, a prominent sociologist and a father of the post-war revival of liberty in Germany, meditated on the origins of the state in violence and predation and its lingering imprint: “All of us, without exception, carry this inherited poison within us, in the most varied and unexpected places and in the most diverse forms, often defying perception. All of us, collectively and individually, are accessories to this great sin of all time, this real original sin, a hereditary fault that can be excised and erased only with great difficulty and slowly, by an insight into pathology, by a will to recover, by the active remorse of it all.” It takes work to free our minds from our dependence on the state.
The Dems sure do have their number, don't they? Remember all of those Obama ads we thought we so vulgar, retarded, and full of lies? They worked on single women, and other people too. They knew who they were talking to. It should be remarkable that Romney did as well as he did.
It's easy to forget, living as many of us do among people who have an abiding interest in policy, economics, and politics, that most people have only a casual interest in these things except insofar as they might directly affect them or excite them with tingles.
Reagan had the knack of reaching the low- and high-information voter at the same time. He could deliver boob bait for the Bubbas and Bubbettes while offering an inspiring theory of freedom and free markets to the more sophisticated. Perhaps Obama does the same, with a theory of serfdom and government markets for the bubbettes, the poor-but-happy dependents, and urban metrosexuals. Serfdom is hip these days and dependency is cool. The New America.
This is h/t Black and Right. I think the fat gal just hopes she might need Planned Parenthood someday. Maybe if she gets him drunk enough on Tequila shots she can earn her free abortion.
Damn, those first two hours sure were fun, weren't they? Right up until around 9:30 Eastern when PA was called for Obama. Pretty much all downhill from there.
Better luck next time.
The three scariest headlines I saw this morning were all on ABC News:
Yet again, Florida hangs in the balance. Only this time, it doesn't matter.
President Barack Obama held onto a slim lead in Florida early Wednesday, but he didn't need the largest swing state to win re-election.
At this precise moment, Florida is still undecided. The only one so, no less.
Speaking of which, you know that stereotype you have about us South Floridians lazing around the beach all day long being served fancy drinks by scantily-clad wahines? The reason it's a stereotype is because it's true.
But, like the victims of Hurricane Sandy struggling to get their votes cast, we South Floridians faced our own horrific weather-related challenge yesterday:
Yep, it's tough living down here, but somebody's gotta do it.
Below the fold I'll offer up some notes on why this wasn't as bad as it seems for the Repubs, and why it's not as good as it seems for the Dems. Fair is fair.
We should probably feel lucky if we know the outcome by this time tomorrow.
Legions of lawyers are ready to enter the fray in case Election Day turns on a legal challenge. One nightmare scenario would be for the results in a battleground state like Florida or Ohio to be too close to call, with thousands of absentee or provisional ballots yet to be counted.
One possibility is that an automatic recount will be triggered, says Husted. Ohio law requires a recount if the vote margin between the candidates is a quarter of a percent or less of the total vote — or about a 150,000-vote difference.
But a recount is just one of several things that could delay the final count.
In Ohio, about 200,000 voters are expected to cast provisional ballots because they don't have identification, because they requested an absentee ballot but showed up at the polls instead, or for other reasons.
But those ballots can't even be counted until 10 days after Election Day according to Ohio law.
For those of you sans TVs, a live streamcast will be available here.
Final thought: Remember, regardless of who wins the presidential election, there's a lot more at stake here. Congressional and state legislative races are also vital. It all adds up.
As expected, both sides are already drawing up battle plans in the event of a loss. From what I've seen, most on the Republican side are being fairly pragmatic about it. Basically, "Well, we just didn't get enough votes, dang it — better luck next time." The Dems, however, are already testing out a panorama of excuses. There's a good article on it here.
Observation #2:
The closer the race has gotten, the more we've heard the phrase "too close to call" come out of the media.
Observation #3:
In the 2000 election, Al Gore won the popular vote but George Bush won the electoral vote and the office. Afterward, there was a plethora of articles arguing that the Electoral College should be scrapped. There was also a bunch in 2004 and we saw a small flurry of them this time around.
The irony is that it's the close elections that argue against their case. Only in an election controlled by electoral votes would we see such minor states (no offense) as Pennsylvania, Michigan and Minnesota making headlines:
With November just around the bend, senior adviser to the Obama campaign David Axelrod made a hairy wager on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" Wednesday: he will shave off his four-decade-old mustache on national television if Obama loses Minnesota, Michigan or Pennsylvania on Election Day.
Obama press secretary Jennifer Psaki doubled down on the wager later in the day, telling MSNBC host Andrea Mitchell: "I'll dye my hair black and wear a mustache" if Obama loses those states.
The American Mustache Institute isn't pleased with the wagers, especially the bet by Axe. "It's incredibly irresponsible for Axelrod to be playing games with such an exceptionally powerful mustache," institute chairman Dr. Aaron Perlut tells Whispers.
If the election was based on the popular vote, we'd be hearing nothing but who currently has the lead in California, Texas, Florida and New York. If a member of the media was reminded that people in Michigan also vote, his initial response might be, Why would they bother?
Observation #4:
Despite our best efforts to prevent it, apparently my political posts here have achieved recognition on a national level.
Judge Napolitano 
So claims Peggy Noonan, and I think it's darn good and enjoyable too: 
We always say that "freedom is messy" and that "Freedom is not for sissies." From Sultan's 
That's the Liberal project. Liberals take the long view and the long march. As 
Damn, those first two hours sure were fun, weren't they? Right up until around 9:30 Eastern when PA was called for Obama. Pretty much all downhill from there.
Observation #1: