Maetenloch sends this, confessing he's still working his way through it, as I am (just began).

I'm linking before finishing because it seems critical.

Here's the Milken Institute PDF.

Once I'm further along I'll quote from it.

Allow me a moment of defeatism. It remains incomprehensible to me that McCain let this slip past, and with that, his lead in the election.

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Posted by: Ace at 02:10 PM | Comments (21)
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Every election year, we conservatives say the same thing about the media - that their bias has never been this bad before. At the risk of sounding hyperbolic, I do believe this year the media has abandoned all pretense of objectivity.

In the past, media outlets were financed by political partisans and had an undeniable slant, but they were completely forthright about their political ideology - they existed to promote a particular candidate or party. Eventually, the media moved toward a practice of objectivity - reporters were trained to seek both sides of an issue in their stories in an attempt to be fair. Journalists like Edward R. Murrow and (to a lesser extent) Walter Cronkite may have been flaming moonbats, but they - for the most part - subordinated their political beliefs to their professionalism. They weren't perfect, but they didn't go overboard.

Today's journalists do not have the same respect for their profession, and their actions in this election are dishonoring one of the few professions protected in the Constitution. The MSM is no longer made up of reporters - they are now openly cheerleading the candidacy of Barack Obama, and creating anti-McCain stories out of whole cloth.

Even the normally-understated Glenn Reynolds has said the media is "outright campaigning for Obama."

I have a BA in journalism, and over time have kept in touch with a number of people who are still working in that profession. So when one of them emailed me the following about the atmosphere in today's newsrooms, I wasn't surprised at all. This person does offer some hints at the end on how to push for more fairness in your local coverage: more...

Posted by: Slublog at 12:48 PM | Comments (95)
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Allah's bothered by the enforcement of orthodoxy.

Eh, sucks. But in defense of NR, hey, they fired Ann Coulter for damaging their brand. Brand's important. And let's face it: I am unaware of anyone I know quoting Christopher Buckley on virtually anything at all. The last thing I can even remember him maybe writing was a book review about something or other. Pretty sure of that, actually, but what did he say? What books? No idea.

People actually read Ann Coulter. So, she has that over Christopher Buckley.

So I guess I'm kinda-sorta saying that when your usefulness to a company is low, and in fact is frankly primarily a nepotistic courtesy, maybe you ought to refrain from upping your net negatives any further.

The H.L. Mencken quote on the masthead I actually got from a disposable and lame Christopher Buckley "thriller" called Wet Works. It appeared as the book's epigraph, and is the only thing I took away from it. The book, I'm saying, did not demonstrate the rara avis Chris Buckley finds so compelling in Barack Obama's ghostwritten books.

And frankly, I just don't believe that any sort of conservative would actually endorse a radical and socialist. So it seems to me a rather important qualification for an NR gig -- actually being a conservative -- is unmet here.

His father did not declare that the mission of conservatism was to stand athwart history yelling "Go Obama, Go!"

Christopher Buckley is entitled to his personal political journey from soft right to soft (?) left. But he isn't necessarily entitled to have a column in a prestigious conservative magazine.

I don't believe he has any corrupt agenda here. But let's face it -- no one was talking about Christopher Buckley before this endorsement, and we all now know he will become a fixture on television and get a great book deal and syndicated column from... well, every liberal MSM outlet. Conservatives hate that, the sudden elevation of the David Brocks and John Deans to national prominence, always at our expense, and always because it's at our expense.

So I really don't fear the Stalinism angle here. He's about to become a star, baby, a thought I'm quite sure has occurred to him since this imbroglio (if not before). It's not like anyone's denying him his daily bread.

TomV--

Did anyone read his piece? It was ridiculous.

It was basically this: McCain is stupid to know that what he proposes will not happen and Obama is too smart to actually try to do what he says he will.

Seriously. That was his reasoning.

It was a joke.

To answer the question: I for one didn't. But then, again, the last time I read Buckley was just for a book review; I didn't even know he was the writer when I clicked over to it.

JackStraw--

Buckley embodies the cringeworthy combination of inherited wealth, elite prep school indoctrination and lack of any personal accomplishments that infests too much of the Republican party. If you substitute affirmative action school and work freebees for inherited wealth, this generation of Buckley is a lot closer to Obama than to his dad. They both live in a bubble that is rarely intruded upon by the real world and where witty prose is all.

Don't let the door hit you on the way out, Chris.

Ouch, baby. Very ouch.

Posted by: Ace at 12:34 PM | Comments (176)
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Perhaps our last chance. Obama and his antidemocratic thugs believe in the third world maxim -- One man, one vote -- One time.

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Posted by: Ace at 11:46 AM | Comments (81)
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It's illegal.

Tracy Howard, Radford's registrar, is paying special attention to voter registration applications that cite a Radford University dorm room as a potential voter's address, but a student organization and the ACLU of Virginia say that's illegal.

Howard says he's following Virginia law the same way he has for 16 years.

"If they give me only a dorm address," he said, "they will be sent something called a pending denial. It says that you need to have a street address, permanent address, in order to register to vote."

Kent Willis, the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Virginia, said, "This can only be construed as an attempt to dissuade students from registering to vote in Radford or a ploy to trick them into providing contradictory information that could stall the registration process past the deadline."

Virginia registrars rarely have problems with students registering to vote, Willis said.

"When they care is when students are geared up to register in large numbers," he said. "Suddenly, that upsets the whole local power structure."

Across the country, new voters, particularly young voters, are registering in record numbers, most of them to cast ballots in the presidential race.

Howard says student registration drives are an issue. Groups conducting these drives "have at best simply misinformed on-campus individuals and at worst lied to them" about registration rules, he wrote in his response to the ACLU. They are also holding applications longer than they're supposed to and flooding Howard's office with them.

In a letter to Howard on Monday, Rebecca Glenberg, the ACLU's legal director, cited a string of court decisions that say students can't be treated differently from other people attempting to register to vote.

"Every individual citizen has the right to vote," Howard responded. "No individual has the right to register to vote in a community based upon convenience, false information or lies."

The RU Fair Voter Registration Alliance formed Sept. 15 after student Nikki Rampino registered using her dorm address and received a pending denial notice. After Rampino went to Howard's office and complained, her application was approved. She got her voter identification card Monday.

The story is worth watching. Is The One just making calls to registrars demanding they allow his cultists to illegally vote in Virginia? The Magic 8-Ball says, "Most likely."

More: ACORN and Claire McCaskill and other voter-fraud apologists claim that no fraudulent registrants actually take the next step and fraudulently vote, as if the first crime is insufficient to raise concerns, and as if that's true, which of course, it's not.

Ohio caught a fraudulent registrant attempting to vote. He was caught. How many weren't?

Also, the story notes that 4,000 fraudulent registrations were found in Cayuhoga County (Cincinnati), not the 8,000 I was earlier tiped.

PS: Of course the PUMAs suspect it's crap like this that got Obama his "win" -- plus intimidation of caucus-goers by beefy-fisted union thugs.

I'm sorta thinking they're largely, or even completely, right.

Posted by: Ace at 11:17 AM | Comments (72)
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The bailout money is starting to flow from the Treasury and all I can say is, congratulations fellow shareholders!

The president said the decision to to buy shares in the nation's leading banks — a kind of federal intervention not seen since the Depression era — was "not intended to take over the free market but to preserve it."

Said Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson: "We regret having to take these actions. Today's actions are not what we ever wanted to do — but today's actions are what we must do to restore confidence to our financial system."

Â…Under the new multifaceted stabilization program described Tuesday, the government will initially buy stocks in nine major U.S. banks. When financial markets stabilize and recover, the banks are expected to buy the stock back from the government, Bush said in brief remarks from the White House Rose Garden.

Â… The administration plans to spend $250 billion this year on the stock purchases and the president certified Tuesday that another $100 billion would be needed in connection with covering bad assets. That would leave $350 billion of the $700 billion program, presumably to be spent by the next president.

The move follows similar actions in the UK.

IÂ’m not going to pretend to know if this is going to work. ItÂ’s definitely a drastic step and one can only hope it works out in the end.

MORE: Were banks reluctant to participate and will they use the money the way the government wants? more...

Posted by: DrewM at 10:31 AM | Comments (59)
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He was executed on schedule and apparently died just fine in spite of being very overweight.

...Cooey's lawyers maintained that at 5-foot-7 and 267 pounds, he was "morbidly obese" and had gained about 70 pounds since he was imprisoned at age 19. Prison food and confinement in his cell for 23 hours a day, limiting his opportunities for exercise, contributed to his weight problem, his legal team argued...

Posted by: Purple Avenger at 10:00 AM | Comments (88)
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I doubt any news will break but it might be worth a listen.

Maybe they'll talk about why Republicans keep portraying Obama as a racist.

Oh sorry, that's a liberal and Obama supporter who is portraying McCain as a Klansman. You stay classy Democrats.

That idiot has confused McCain with Bob Byrd, DEMOCRAT of W. Virgina.

Posted by: DrewM at 09:32 AM | Comments (39)
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McCain: No problem.

I particularly like how Obama softens it with "well, I guess he might at the last debate".

Yep. Sounds like he will.

Posted by: Dave in Texas at 08:49 AM | Comments (70)
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Question: does anybody ever use the stickied link to the comments that I put in the Top Headlines sidebar? Do I need to bother with that every morning or is a daily headlines post sufficient?

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 07:17 AM | Comments (74)
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