Perhaps the Democratic establishment was too quick to kneel before Obama? Victor Davis Hanson dicsusses:

The primary season ended with a narrow Obama victory — and a wounded, but supposedly wiser, Democratic candidate.

Not quite. Without evidence, he unwisely has claimed his opponents (“they”) will play the race card against poor him. In contrast, on the hot-button issue of racial reparations, he recently played to cheering minority audiences by cryptically suggesting that the government must “not just . . . offer words, but offer deeds.” He later clarified that he didn’t mean cash grants, but his initial words were awfully vague.

Second, many are beginning to notice how a Saint Obama talks down to them. We American yokels can’t speak French or Spanish. We eat too much. Our cars are too big, our houses either overheated or overcooled. And we don’t even put enough air in our car tires. In contrast, a lean, hip Obama promises to still the rising seas and cool down the planet, assuring adoring Germans that he is a citizen of the world.

Third, Obama knows that all doctrinaire liberals must tack rightward in the general election. But due to his inexperience, he’s doing it in far clumsier fashion than any triangulating candidate in memory. Do we know — does Obama even know? — what he really feels about drilling off our coasts, tapping the strategic petroleum reserve, NAFTA, faith-based initiatives, campaign financing, the FISA surveillance laws, town-hall debates with McCain, Iran, the surge, timetables for Iraq pullouts, gun control, or capital punishment?…

…In a tough year like this, Democrats could probably have defeated Republican John McCain with a flawed, but seasoned candidate like Hillary Clinton. But long-suffering liberals convinced their party to go with a messiah rather than a dependable nominee — and thereby they probably will get neither.

The kook left was for Obama because Obama was pure as the wind driven snow on the left’s main 2008 issue: Iraq. But Obama secured the nomination on the strength of party elites (ie, the “superdelegates”) rushing over to his side towards the end of the primary season. Without the superdelegates, Obama is substantially short of a nominating majority and had the superdelegates held off, the Democrats would be looking towards a brokered convention. The powers of the Democratic party decided that it was too risky to not nominate Obama and, at any rate, that they already had the White House in the bag, so no worries (the fundamental reason for Obama? Down ballot. Democratic powers were fearful that failure to nominate Obama would weaken Democratic House candidates among black voters, perhaps even turning the House back over to the GOP for weakness in black Democratic turnout).

But it seems to have turned out otherwise – McCain is running neck and neck with Obama and given that GOPers traditionally poll weaker the further out you get from the election, there is every reason to expect that – at minimum – it will be a long night on November 4th…and, of course, there is in this closeness the strong prospect of McCain winning. The basic theory is still good for the Democrats – Obama ensures a massive African American turnout, but other than that the whole game plan for 2008 is proving wrong for the Democrats. It wasn’t supposed to be like this – Obama was supposed to cruise to victory and bring in 20 more House Democrats and maybe as many as 10 Senators. The Liberal Dawn was supposed to happen…but now we might have a liberal nightmare of President McCain and a revitalised House GOP which, even if not the majority, controls the terms of debate in the House.

It has been, indeed, a long and strange election year – and it may well get stranger. Keep this in mind – while Obama is still the inside favorite to win, there is a better chance of a McCain landslide than an Obama landslide (though, of course, the chances of any landslide are pretty small).

Hard to believe, but there it is:

Sen. Hillary Clinton told a gathering of supporters last week that she’s looking for a “strategy” for her delegates to have their voices heard and “respected” at the Democratic National Convention — and did not rule out the possibility of having her name placed into nomination at the convention alongside Sen. Barack Obama’s.

“I happen to believe that we will come out stronger if people feel that their voices were heard and their views were respected. I think that is a very big part of how we actually come out unified,” Clinton, D-N.Y., said at a California fundraiser last Thursday, in a video clip captured by an attendee and posted on YouTube.

“Because I know from just what I’m hearing, that there’s incredible pent-up desire. And I think that people want to feel like, ‘OK, it’s a catharsis, we’re here, we did it, and then everybody get behind Sen. Obama.’ That is what most people believe is the best way to go,” she said.

“No decisions have been made. And so we are trying to work all this through with the DNC and with the Obama campaign.”

Ummmm…yeah….sure, Hill, whatever you say.

Meanwhile, back in the real world…

For a couple weeks now the old man has been rumbling ’round the house with words like “floor fight” just waiting to burst out. I’ve downplayed this because, well, the old man is 81 and getting on in years and, heck, why would Hillary do something like that? But now I’m not so sure – Obama is weakening by the day against McCain and now the House Democrats are starting to implode…and what was once a sure-thing now looks, at best, like a dicey proposition. The Democrats gather in Denver 18 days from now – and if between now and then there is more evidence that the Democrats nominated the wrong guy, then who knows what might happen?

Hillary certainly hasn’t given up her ambitions and if anyone out there thinks that Hillary believes Obama is the better candidate then I’ve got a bridge in Brooklyn to sell ya. The mind harks back to the 1976 convention when Reagan spoke and the gathered GOPers at that moment realised that in nominating Ford, they had nominated the wrong man…might be that more and more Democrats are realising that placing your bets on a rookie with ultra-leftist and corruption skeletons in the closet could be the wrong way to go. Remember, Obama only has a first-ballot majority courtesy of those superdelegates, who can still switch, if they have a mind to.

Of course – more than likely this will blow over and that Obama will have a smooth running love fest in Denver…but it ain’t over till the fat-thighed lady sings, and she’s not entirely ready to get out on stage, it would seem.

This is what gets serious discussion on the left, as NRO’s The Corner points out:

At the Netroots Nation gathering in Austin, Texas last month — that is the successor to YearlyKos — Dahlia Lithwick, of the Washington-Post-owned website Slate, did an interview with the Talking Points Memo site in which she described a panel discussion she had just taken part in on what is known as the “first 100 days of accountability.” Among Lithwick’s observations:

We’re already falling into this trap of either positing Nuremberg-style war crimes tribunals, or nothing, immunizing everyone from John Yoo up and down…but everybody says there’s a lot of gray area in between that, and that accountability doesn’t necessarily mean Nuremberg, it doesn’t necessarily mean nothing, it means possibly a truth commission, possibly appointing a special prosecutor to look at it…

Lithwick recommended a massive retrospective investigation of the Bush administration, going through every piece of paper, before moving forward:

Certainly long before we make a decision to do what Stuart Taylor suggested this week, which was immunize everybody in advance, or alternatively make a decision to trot them out before a war crimes tribunal before the whole world, we should really find out what happened…

But Lithwick recognized that there are those who argue such an action might be divisive:

We talked a lot about this notion that it’s bad for America, that it will rip America apart if we have hearings or we have criminal trials or if we have war crimes tribunals. And I think it’s really worse for America if we don’t…

The level of insanity here is breathtaking – and while one can attempt to dismiss this as the paranoid ravings of screwball lefties, the problem is that these screwball lefties will have a large say in any potential Obama Administration. These people appear to be quite serious in thinking of President Bush and his Administration (a moderate, center-right, constitutional American government) as akin to Nazi Germany. And do keep in mind that by implication those of us who support President Bush are criminals, too – at least in the minds of the left. These are not people who view me as a fellow American – they view me as a pestilence to be at least thwarted, and destroyed if possible.

It is imposisble for us to reach these people, but we can rest completely assured that we must stop them from gaining power – the plans they have, the lunatic assumptions they hold, are the stuff with which civil wars are made. Essentially, the left wishes to criminalise non-leftist actions and ideas, and as we on the right won’t ever agree to that, push may very well come to shove if the left gains power and seeks to prosecute us for what they consider to be crimes. I wish never to see anyone who is a fellow citizen of the United States as an enemy – but anyone who thinks putting President Bush et al up on war crimes charges – or even attempting to set up a truth commission – is someone who has definitively set themselves up as my enemy. Not a fellow citizen with ideas I think wrong, but an enemy I’ll fight.

President Bush was welcomed in South Korea with a large crowd of well-wishers and a pathetic band of kook lefty protestors, as Amy Proctor notes.

So, the headline? Well from al-Reuters it was:

Bush arrives in Seoul, faces large anti-US protest

But then reality broke in and the large anti-US protests failed to materialise, and large pro-US demonstrations happened. So, what did al-Reuters do? Keep lying as best you can, of course:

Bush arrives in Seoul, anti-U.S. protest fizzles

The headline should have read, “Bush arrives in Seoul to warm welcome”, but that would be to defy the MSM’s meme about President Bush – supposedly the whole world hates us, now, and only Obamessiah can retrieve our national honor from the Bush gutter. The facts, once again, appear to be in defiance of what the MSM wants to report – and my bet is that the entire meme of “Bush hated” is overblown. Sure, there are plenty of anti-Americans out there (and, heck, in America, too) and you’ll not lack for people who can be quoted at length being disgusted with America under Bush and gushing hopeful about how wonderful America will be under Obama…but does this mean the world hates us and that we need to rebuild our reputation?

Well, we certainly don’t need to in Afghanistan, Iraq, Djibouti, Georgia, Israel, India, Phillipines, Japan, South Korea, Poland, Bulgaria, Romania, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Eithiopia, Tanzania….heck, even our relations with China are pretty good (all things considered) and getting on good with Japan and China should be next to impossible. Who really hates us? Well, the Islamists do…and so do those global leftists who will hate us even if Obama is President because they don’t really hate President Bush so much as hate the United States, period…and not for what we do, but for what we are (free, Judeo-Christian, that sort of thing).

As I’ve said before, we live in the Age of Lies, and the main thing which has caused President Bush trouble has been his inability to join in with the lies…a few lies here and there stroking the egos of the left and President Bush would be in a lot better shape as far as elite opinion is concerned, but President Bush couldn’t do it…and God bless him for it; for being, that is, one of those rare people in politics who really doesn’t give a darn what people think of him and who is thus able to do the right thing no matter what.

Courtesy of Nancy Pelosi, certainly the very worst Speaker in American history:

House Republicans, who insist that Speaker Nancy Pelosi call the House back from its summer recess so votes can be taken on their energy legislation, continued for a third day to make speeches to GOP staff members and Capitol Hill tourists.

They did so in the dimly-lit chamber of the House of Representatives, without the aid of working television cameras or a public address system.

The Republicans became miffed last Friday when Democrats abruptly adjourned the House until September 8 without giving them a chance to speak on the floor about their energy plan, which includes exploring for oil in ANWR and more off-shore drilling.

Even though the House had officially gone out of session, some Republicans stayed on the floor and made speeches anyway.

After taking the weekend off, the guerrilla oratory continued Monday, with organizers of the talk-in estimating that 24 of the 199 House Republicans participated…

…With the House not in session, the chambers’ televisions cameras have been turned off for the three days of speeches. The lights in the chamber have been dimmed, which is normally the case when the House is not session. Also the public address system is off, forcing the Republicans to speak up so they can be heard in the large chamber.

Lucky tourists, many of whom just happened to be touring the Capitol, have been given the rare opportunity of sitting on the House floor. Wearing t-shirt and shorts, they became an impromptu audience for the speechmakers.

Pelosi, D-Calif., issued a statement on Monday saying, “This Republican hoax is unworthy of the serious debate we must have to reduce the price at the pump and promote energy independence.”

House Democratic Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., referred to GOP tactics as “stunts” by a “smattering of House Republicans”.

But Republicans claim their unofficial floor sessions are gaining traction with voters who are wondering why Congress is taking a five week vacation while gasoline prices remain so high.

They vow to continue speaking out on the House floor rest of this week and during the weeks ahead.

Its fine for Nancy to say we need a serious debate, but having such a debate is rather impossible if the Democrats cut and run from DC and head for the hills rather than be forced to vote in favor of energy measures popular with everyone except the money-bags of the kook left. That is the thing, you see? Any floor vote on the GOP energy measures will result in a lopsided vote in favor of the proposals – only those Democrats in absolutely safe Democratic seats would dare defy common sense on energy, and so the vote in favor would probably approach 300.

But, its all good: Nancy and Co have handed we GOPers a fine “kitchen table” issue for the fall. We’re willing to do the hard work of getting things rolling towards American energy independence while the Nancy-boy Democrats hide. Come the election, we’ll be able to point out our willingness to make the hard decisions contrasted with the Democrats stark, yellow-bellied fear of doing the same.

From NRO’s The Corner:

1.If you think Obama’s the most liberal member of the senate you…may be a racist.

2.If you object to Obama raising your payroll, capital gains and estate taxes you…may be a racist.

3.If you’d prefer a president have at least some foreign policy experience you…may be a racist.

4. If you’re in favor of drilling for oil and building nuclear power plants you…may be a racist.

5. If you think “Vero Possemus” is Latin for “Massive Ego” you… may be a racist.

6. If you wonder why Obama was hanging around William Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn you…may be a racist.

7. If your pastor is nothing like Rev. Wright or Father Pfleger you… may be a racist.

8.If you don’t want the majority of justices on the Supreme Court to be like Stephen Breyer you…may be a racist.

9. If you’re not impressed with Obama’s 100% NARAL rating you…may be a racist.

10. If you’re not sure whether Obama opposed or supported FISA reauthorization you…may be a racist.

11. If you don’t think America is a “downright mean” country you…may be a racist.

12. If you think Obama should’ve visited wounded troops at Ramstein and Landstuhl you…may be a racist.

13. If you think the surge is working and that’s a good thing you…may be a racist.

14. If you oppose racial preferences in employment, school admissions and contracting you…may be a racist.

15. If you think “we are the change we’ve been waiting for” is a line from a Monty Python skit you…may be a racist.

16. If you prefer that a president have a smidgen of executive experience you…may be a racist.

17. If you’re appalled that Obama voted against treating infants born after an abortion attempt the same medically as other infants born alive you…may be a racist.

18. If you were proud of your country even before Obama’s candidacy you…may be a racist.

20. If you don’t think American troops are just “air raiding villages” you…may be a racist.

21. If your grandmother isn’t a “typical white person” you…may be a racist.

22. If you don’t think rural, working class people are bitter and “cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them” you…may be a racist.

23. If you’re not sure invading Pakistan is a particularly good idea—what with their nuclear weapons and all— you…may be a racist.

24. If you don’t want the president to meet without precondition with the leaders of state sponsors of terror you…may be a racist.

25. If you don’t care how Hollywood or the European elite think you should vote you…may be a racist.

And from myself:

26. If you think calling Obama’s plane “O Force One” is presumptuous you…may be a racist.

27. If you think that giving speeches to hundreds of thousands of Germans is strange thing for a Presidential candidate to do you…may be a racist.

28. If you mention Tony Rezko you…may be a racist.

29. If you mention that Obama is a multi-millionaire member of America’s elite you…may be a racist.

30. If you point out that Obama supporters place his picture next to Che’s picture you…may be a racist.

Add your own in the comments.

From northjersey.com:

Meet Caren Z. Turner, a Democratic fund-raiser, a devout supporter of Hillary Clinton, and a lobbyist with a 25-year Inside-the-Beltway career.

Now Turner, who shuttles between Washington and her home in Tenafly, may include this entry on her political résumé: defector to Republican John McCain….

Q: What did you think you would accomplish by meeting with a McCain representative?

The people involved in Together4Us have a general discomfort with the way the Democratic process and the Democratic caucus system went down, with the Florida, Michigan representation, with apportionment, generally.

I think we also have a great discomfort with the misogyny that was expressed by the media during the entire election and the deafening silence by the DNC and the Barack campaign in the face of such denigration of women generally.

Q: Can you give me some examples of the misogyny that most angered you and your colleagues?

MSNBC was the worst that got me. The most was the Chris Matthews interview or discussion where he said, ‘Let’s face it. I’m going to be blunt here,’ he says. ‘The only reason she became a U.S. senator is because her husband messed around.’ She is a Yale Law graduate, She is a brilliant woman. She is enormously talented, and that is just horrific.

Q: You mention his lack of protest or his standing up to denounce misogyny in the media. Is that it? Is that the sole reason, at this point, why you are not comfortable with Obama?

This is another example of a less-qualified male getting a promotion over a more qualified female. I have been in Washington and doing federal legislation longer than Senator Obama has. That’s not very comforting. Frankly, from a war perspective and a national security perspective, I don’t feel safe with him…. I’m not comfortable with the people who he has chosen to affiliate with – the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, et cetera.

Q: Why not support Obama if the differences between Hillary and Obama, on most issues, are marginal?

His positions seem to shift…. He has shifted on campaign finance and he has shifted on FISA [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act] … and he has shifted on a whole bunch of things, so I don’t know where he is.

I can tell you where McCain is. I can tell you where Hillary is. And for good, bad or ugly, I know where they are. I can agree or disagree, but I know where they are…. Him? I don’t know where he is. We’ve got a moving target here.

Q: Some Democrats might suggest that by backing McCain, you are backing the continuation of Republican rule that they believe has brought discredit and damage to this country.

I would say that all Democrats are not created equally and all Republicans are not created equally. George Bush and John McCain are not the same. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are not the same. And so to label Bush as the same as McCain is sloganism. John McCain is about as centrist a Republican as one can find. Hillary Clinton was the most centrist contender for the presidency.

Q: What do you say to your harshest critics – I’ve seen this on the blogs – that this is a kind of petulant, lashing out of a sore loser?

This doesn’t have to do with Hillary Clinton. This has to do with fixing the Democratic Party, which is not functioning properly…

The whole key to making the Democratic party mainstream revolves around getting the left out of the loop. For far too long the far left, working with corrupt party hacks who are given a free ride by the left in return for political power, has been forcing the Democrats further and further from the American mainstream. While Democrats can still win (and may win this year) they are forever incapable of building up a long-term majority because too many Democrat positions – prescribed by the left – are out of step with American life. Just as soon as Hillary – or someone – figures out that ditching the kook left is the best move, just that soon will the Democratic party start to be cured.

I mean, come on – lets think about this for a moment: Does Joe Sixpack union worker really want federally funded abortion on demand? Is a single mom trying to get a college education really thinking that what the nation needs is gay marriage? Is the retired veteran on fire to ensure that we bug out of Iraq come what may? Is a struggling son of immigrants convinced that what America needs is yet another grant for a sacriligeous art display? Of course not – and the thing is that each one of these people can hold John McCain and the GOP in utter contempt, and yet be entirely out of tune with that far left which rules the roost in Democratic Presidential politics.

Hillary is a liberal’s liberal but you know what beat her? She wouldn’t denounce her vote in favor of liberating Iraq – she went as far as calling it a failure and saying we had to get out, but she couldn’t bring herself to say that the vote she cast in 2002 was in and of itself a wrong thing to do. Somewhere in Hillary is that bedrock of human decency which prevented her (but not Edwards, for instance) from lying about herself on that basic a level. Ideological purity is paramount in the intellectually incurious kook left – they don’t care about much else; as long as you are pure in your leftism, you can do whatever you wish. Obama was the purest leftist on the most vital issue for the left – opposition to the liberation of Iraq. Back in September of 2007 I took the measure of this and noted that Obama was likely to emerge as the nominee – it wasn’t an act of great insight on my part, just the understanding which comes from two decades study of leftwing thinking.

These Hillary supporters – certainly liberals to a man and woman – are, perhaps, having an awakening. It is just possible that they are re-learning the lesson America’s liberals learned in the 40’s and then forgot in the 60’s: leftists use liberals to provide respectable political cover for the wickedness of leftwing ideology. Once upon a time, hard as it is to believe, the ultra-liberal Americans for Democratic Action was a hard core anti-communist group – in other words, it was liberal and wanted liberalism, but it has no truck with the kook left which is destructive in all things. It’d be better if the liberals would draw the entire conclusion – anything not of conservatism is inherently wrong – but if they can at least understand that the heirs of Marx are not just wrong, but wicked wrong, then much good will be done.

Denigrated in leftwing talking points as a mere McCain front, Party Unity My A** has far more too it than that:

If further evidence was needed, a report by Politico’s Ben Smith confirmed that all is not well within the Democratic Party. It seems that Democratic supporters of Hillary Clinton are attempting to secure her right to a roll call at the Convention by emailing members of the DNC. The hostile and sometimes threatening emails these Democrats have received back from DNC officials have been posted at the blog of Puma PAC.

And they are not alone in feeling the wrath of the Obama contingent. Susan Estrich, life long Democrat and former Michael Dukakis campaign manager, described the vicious hate mail she received when she warned in a recent column of the “hubris” phenomenon in the Obama camp…

…I spoke with the founder of Puma PAC, Darragh Murphy. She’s not, as Obama supporters have claimed, a closet Republican or a John McCain plant. She’s a 39-year-old, mother of three from Massachusetts who was a small Hillary Clinton donor and who knocked on doors for Hillary in Philadelphia with her then 16-year-old daughter. She acknowledges that she did give money to John McCain in the 2000 primary because she “wanted him to beat George Bush.”

She started the blog on June 3, 2008 and got 35,000 hits in eight hours, As of now she has had over 1.2 million hits and 65,500 comments. The PAC raised $23,000 in June and she estimates an equal number in July. The PAC has approximately 5000 members.

What does her group want? She replies: “We have short term goals and long term goals. Our short, short term goal is to do everything we can to make sure the process is respected for Hillary at the Convention.” Murphy explained that just as Gary Hart and Jesse Jackson had the chance, they are making sure Hillary’s supporters get a chance to show their support. She says, “We are phoning and emailing and lobbying to make sure there is an open roll call and vote and her name is placed in nomination.”

One of Murphy’s members, William Kronert, is a Democrat from California. He tells me, “Never in the entire history have any two candidates come to what amounts to a tie in the primaries yet Senator Clinton has been ask over and over to drop out of the race. Surely others have taken their case to the convention and with far less pledged delegates as Senator Clinton.”

Murphy also believes that Hillary’s delegates need to “get a chance to shape the platform. They are being shut out of the process which is run by an official of the Obama campaign.”…

Do read the whole article over at Pajamas Media – this really is not a surprise to me in the sense that Obama’s arrogance is bound to provoke a bad reaction. If Hillary’s people are really being shut out by Team Obama when, as noted, the primaries really ended in a tie then that is Obama destroying Democratic party unity, not the people of PUMA.

We’ll see in November how all this works out.

The Wall Street Journal wonders:

The “windfall profits” tax is back, with Barack Obama stumping again to apply it to a handful of big oil companies. Which raises a few questions: What is a “windfall” profit anyway? How does it differ from your everyday, run of the mill profit? Is it some absolute number, a matter of return on equity or sales — or does it merely depend on who earns it?

Enquiring entrepreneurs want to know. Unfortunately, Mr. Obama’s “emergency” plan, announced on Friday, doesn’t offer any clarity. To pay for “stimulus” checks of $1,000 for families and $500 for individuals, the Senator says government would take “a reasonable share” of oil company profits.

Mr. Obama didn’t bother to define “reasonable,” and neither did Dick Durbin, the second-ranking Senate Democrat, when he recently declared that “The oil companies need to know that there is a limit on how much profit they can take in this economy.” Really? This extraordinary redefinition of free-market success could use some parsing.

Take Exxon Mobil, which on Thursday reported the highest quarterly profit ever and is the main target of any “windfall” tax surcharge. Yet if its profits are at record highs, its tax bills are already at record highs too. Between 2003 and 2007, Exxon paid $64.7 billion in U.S. taxes, exceeding its after-tax U.S. earnings by more than $19 billion. That sounds like a government windfall to us, but perhaps we’re missing some Obama-Durbin business subtlety.

Why are Obama and his Democrats calling for a windfall profits tax on oil companies?

1. Because they still believe that class warfare works at the voting booth.

2. Because, quite honestly, they don’t know what else they should do.

Suppose Obama and his Democrats get their wish and soak Exxon for $100 billion. So what? By my rough calculation that works out to a figure equal to 3.33% of the annual Federal budget…and as that would be an increase of $35-odd billion, we’re really talking about increasing revenues by 1%…and that, of course, is to ignore the fact that if we tax away most of Exxon’s profits, we swiftly won’t have anymore Exxon profits to tax. As most, we’d realise about, say, $50 billion in additional revenue over a two or three year period. What is that supposed to accomplish? Especially as Exxon lays off workers and oil suppliers start to refuse to sell to America because they can make more profit selling elsewhere? As you stand in line to buy rationed gasoline in order to drive to the unemployment office, are you really going to feel better thinking that at least Obama “got” those greedy SOBs in Big Oil?

Keep in mind that I’m no fan of corporate America – after working for the past 7+ years in corporate America I can say with certainty that there’s nothing quite so contemptible as a large corporation…in fact, so bad are they that the only thing worse than Big Corporation is Big Government. Corporations at least produce some useful product or service – Big Government merely produces more government. Once I figure out a way to break up the large corporations without dislocating the economy, I’m on it for all I’m worth – but, meanwhile, the cretinous corporate behemoths are just part of the landscape (sort of like landfills on the otherwise pristine landscape of free market economics), and if you think they will behave in an irrationally self-destructive manner to please a President Obama, then you’ve got rocks in your head (they will, of course, continue to be irrationally self-destructive on their own hook, but that won’t help Obama and his Democrats).

The fairy tale world of Obama and his Democrats in on display here – they live in a world where Evil Corporations make life miserable for Little Workers and what is needed is Selfless Liberals to save the day. Thing is, you’re just as likely to find a pinhead on the production line as in the corporate boardroom – or in the Executive Branch of the United States government. People are people and a certain percentage of them, at any given time, are being complete boneheads (yes, yours truly, included). To assign to a class of people virtue or vice is as stupid as assigning to various skin colors certain advantages or disadvantages – we have to take things as they are and judge each person’s actions on the merits of their case. If a corporate boss is being a rapacious, greedy SOB, then we should point that out and work to thwart him – but because one creep is a CEO it doesn’t follow that all CEO’s are creeps. Nor should we think that being poor automatically means being virtuous – some poor people are poor because they are shiftless, ya know? Given this reality, the last thing we need is a bunch of liberals coming to save the day – by punishing corporations they will be taking a stripe off the good and the bad, and by pouring out funds on the poor indiscriminately they’ll be benefiting both the hard worker and the layabout.

Leave off schemes to tax corporations – it serves no useful purpose. Heck, any addtional taxation will just be passed on to the consumer, anyways in the form of lower wages, higher prices, lower employment or a combination of all three. Leave aside the nursery-room fairy tales from the Marxist-Leninist view of economics. Deal with things as they are – if you really want to do something to make oil companies less profitible, invest your efforts in finding larger sources of oil and alternatives to same. That will cut into Exxon’s profits more usefully than any windfall profits scheme, as well as doing something good for everyone.

That well-famed claim that the US has a higher infant mortality rate than nations with socialised medicine? Not quite what it seems:

Q: If socialized medicine is so bad, why are infant mortality rates higher in the U.S. than in other developed nations with government or single-payer health care?

A: U.S. infant mortality rates (deaths of infants <1 year of age per 1,000 live births) are sometimes cited as evidence of the failings of the U.S. system of health care delivery. Universal health care, it’s argued, is why babies do better in countries with socialized medicine.

But in fact, the main factors affecting early infant survival are birth weight and prematurity. The way that these factors are reported — and how such babies are treated statistically — tells a different story than what the numbers reveal.

Low birth weight infants are not counted against the “live birth” statistics for many countries reporting low infant mortality rates.

According to the way statistics are calculated in Canada, Germany, and Austria, a premature baby weighing <500g is not considered a living child.

But in the U.S., such very low birth weight babies are considered live births. The mortality rate of such babies — considered “unsalvageable” outside of the U.S. and therefore never alive — is extraordinarily high; up to 869 per 1,000 in the first month of life alone. This skews U.S. infant mortality statistics.

When Canada briefly registered an increased number of low weight babies previously omitted from statistical reporting, the infant mortality rose from 6.1 per 1,000 to 6.4 per thousand in just one year.

According to research done by Canada’s Bureau of Reproductive and Child Health, “Comparisons of infant mortality rates by place and time should be adjusted for the proportion of such live births, especially if the comparisons involve recent years.”

Norway boasts one of the lowest infant mortality rates in the world. But when the main determinant of mortality — weight at birth — is factored in, Norway has no better survival rates than the United States.

This is entirely unsurprising – anyone who is surprised that a government-run health care system would fudge the numbers to make themselves look good is the biggest fool alive. Remember, when a government bureaucrat sits down to work, there are several factors governing the work done:

1. To do as little as possible, because you don’t get paid more for doing more work in government.

2. To have as few mistakes as possible blamed on yourself.

3. To ensure that 100% of the budgeted funds are spent each fiscal year.

4. To ensure that any information coming out from your bureaucracy reflects well upon your efforts.

The perfection of government is an agency which does nothing while spending a lot of money which has as its end product a fabulous report of how great you all did, with a pitch for increased funding because, well, you can see that we spent all the money budgeted. The perfection of government agency is not a lean, mean public service machine boldly telling the unvarnished truth and desperate to do everything it can to serve the public. Given the nature of government, it is no surprise that such things as infant mortality aren’t reported exactly fair and square. What we have here is the problem of how to reduce infant mortality in a government-run program – they could have either worked harder and done more (and where’s the upside in that?), or they could just change what is called an infant to the point where a large percentage of infants who die aren’t counted. Presto! Without any additional work, you’re doing an even better job than before…

This is the sort of incompetance Obama has in store for us if he wins. We’ll get progressively worse services by agencies who continuously tell us that things are getting better all the time. Its not because Obama is a bad man, but because by putting government in charge he’ll only be turning it over to the people who’s incentives are to not work yet spend large sums of money.