One thing: I kinda need him to shut up about global warming.

Posted by: Ace at 12:58 PM | Comments (206)
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The claim:

By now you’ve all heard the Fox News report last week that “unnamed” former McCain advisers leaked that Sarah Palin was confused about whether Africa was a continent, and which countries were in NAFTA. I was perfectly happy staying under the radar as an anonymous source for Fox News‘ Carl Cameron, but now that Palin has accused her accusers of being “unprofessional…jerks…cowards… taking things out of context, and then tried to spread something on national news” and begun to cast doubt on the Fox News report, maybe she’s right to a certain extent. For those of us on the McCain campaign who thought that she acted like a rogue diva and lost John the election, maybe we DO have a responsibility to come out in public. But Sarah… careful what you ask for: some of us may have more to reveal.

So yes, to be clear, last week I was the one who leaked those things to a producer at Fox News who works with Cameron. Carl and his producers are good guys, and I donÂ’t want them to have to worry about protecting their sources (and going through the wringer ala Judith Miller or Matt Cooper) on something like this.

As you know, I was one of the foreign policy advisers on the McCain campaign who worked with Randy Scheunemann to help prep Sarah on her debate with Joe Biden. Did we outright give her a geography quiz when we started the prep? No, of course not. But yes, in the context of the prep, it slowly became apparent that her grasp of basic geo-political knowledge had major gaps. Could she have passed a multiple choice test about South Africa or NAFTA. Probably. But it was clear that she simply didnÂ’t have the ease of knowledge that we come to expect from a major party political candidate.

Now that I've linked it, I'm informed by Allah in no uncertain terms the blog is a hoax.

There's apparently no evidence on the internet he exists or works for McCain. Allah's especially troubled by his claim to work for the hitherto unknown "Harding Institute," named after, Allah notes, one of the worst presidents in history.

Sorry, I blew this one.

Hoaxster: "Eisenstadt" has been pretending to be a McCain insider for a while, getting media to take his made-up stories seriously.

No "Canoodling" With Wiig: IreneFingIrene points out that this is the same guy who who made claims about Joe the Plumber and SNL's Kirsten Wiig "canoodling."

He appears to just go to places and make stuff up.

Now that I put a face to the made-up persona, I can see it seems a bit unlikely that a 28 year old NYC hipster-wannabe is a major McCain foreign policy adviser.

Well, he got me.

TNR Retracts... But refuses to credit Allah for alerting them to the hoax.

Note: A dinky site would notice the Hot Air traffic. Not only is Michael Crowley a dupe (as I was), but now he's a dishonest one, pretending that he discovered the hoax on his own.

Posted by: Ace at 12:47 PM | Comments (87)
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This would be a good example to follow.

Posted by: Ace at 11:19 AM | Comments (73)
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Worth a read, but we're not quite done yet.

I was in Washington DC the night of the election. America’s beautiful capital has a sad secret. It is perhaps the most racially divided city in the world, with 15th Street – which runs due north from the White House – the unofficial frontier between black and white. But, like so much of America, it also now has a new division, and one which is in many ways much more important. I had attended an election-night party in a smart and liberal white area, but was staying the night less than a mile away on the edge of a suburb where Spanish is spoken as much as English, plus a smattering of tongues from such places as Ethiopia, Somalia and Afghanistan.

As I walked, I crossed another of WashingtonÂ’s secret frontiers. There had been a few white people blowing car horns and shouting, as the result became clear. But among the Mexicans, Salvadorans and the other Third World nationalities, there was something like ecstasy.

They grasped the real significance of this moment. They knew it meant that America had finally switched sides in a global cultural war. Forget the Cold War, or even the Iraq War. The United States, having for the most part a deeply conservative people, had until now just about stood out against many of the mistakes which have ruined so much of the rest of the world.

Suspicious of welfare addiction, feeble justice and high taxes, totally committed to preserving its own national sovereignty, unabashedly Christian in a world part secular and part Muslim, suspicious of the Great Global Warming panic, it was unique.

These strengths had been fading for some time, mainly due to poorly controlled mass immigration and to the march of political correctness. They had also been weakened by the failure of America’s conservative party – the Republicans – to fight on the cultural and moral fronts.

They preferred to posture on the world stage. Scared of confronting Left-wing teachers and sexual revolutionaries at home, they could order soldiers to be brave on their behalf in far-off deserts. And now the US, like Britain before it, has begun the long slow descent into the Third World. How sad. Where now is our last best hope on Earth?

America, in the end, will turn out to be not terribly different than Iraq. A very strident sectarian minority complained endlessly of the terrible occupation by George W. Bush and his neocon warmongers, promising a fantastical faith-based future if only they could be delivered power.

In large swaths of Iraq, power was in fact delivered to the jihadi utopianists -- and the experience was not a happy one. It turned out that firebrand cultists were much better at spitting venom and making laughable promises than actually governing.

And so it will likely be here as well. History stubbornly refuses to provide us with counterfactuals, allowing us to witness what would have been if other paths have been chosen. Instead, such scenarios are merely described by alt-history science fiction writers as well as their dilettante wannabes, hyperpartisan political agitators and the press (but I repeat myself).

The hard left, Obama cultists, and the media (but I repeat myself twice) has spun fantasies that we've not been living in a difficult world -- only under a difficult president. And they have promised, implicitly as well as sometimes explicitly ("the world will heal and the seas will fall") that Al Qaeda, the economy, and so forth would suddenly show themselves to be rather easily-solved nits if only we had The One in office.

That will not turn out to be the case, of course. And America will soon find that The Fresh Prince of Bill Ayers can no more deliver on his millennialist promises than Moqtada al-Sadr.

Sometimes the rhetorical question, "Well, how bad could it be?" can only be answered by non-rhetorical experience.

Surprise! Rumblings and rumors that the top tax rate will not be raised to 39.6% -- but to 45%, once an additional 5% surtax is levied.

Posted by: Ace at 11:16 AM | Comments (111)
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And O'Reilly argues with her.

Via Hot Air, with more.

Posted by: Ace at 10:10 AM | Comments (67)
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Does Newsweek know Africa is a continent?

Posted by: Ace at 09:55 AM | Comments (30)
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The sickly condition of US automakers is well known. In fact it looks like GM will be out of money by the 1st quarter of next year.

One would think the last thing the government should do is impose expensive new mandates on failing manufacturers. Except that's exactly what might happen if President Hope and Change has his way. He's promised to reverse a Bush Executive Order and allow California to regulate carbon dioxide emissions for automobiles.

What would that mean? Nothing good.

Since twenty-one percent of new cars are sold in California, this means that the auto makers would need to spend billions of dollars to comply. According to the WSJ, “The auto industry is the nation’s largest manufacturing sector, accounting for almost 4% of U.S. gross domestic product. It employs about 2.5 million people directly or indirectly, and spends tens of billions of dollars a year in research and development.” Yet granting California’s waiver would certainly significantly harm if not sink this industry, since actions to increase the CAFE standard in the past have caused many of the problems Detroit is now having.

It's almost like they don't understand economics or something.

Remember Michigan, which has more than a passing interest in the health of the auto industry, overwhelmingly voted for this. I eagerly await Thomas Frank's next book, "What's the Matter with Michigan?".

Posted by: DrewM at 09:36 AM | Comments (140)
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The Supreme Court declined to accept two death penalty cases in which the juries were shown victim impact videos before sentencing. Under old guidance, the Court allows evidence which provides the jury with "a quick glimpse of the life" of the victim and demonstrates "the loss to the victimÂ’s family and to society." However, such evidence cannot be prejudicial under the Fourteenth Amendment.

The victim impact videos in these cases were emotional photo montages, one of them set to Enya. The Cal Supreme Court held that they were not unduly emotional and did not call for vengeance and were thus permissible under the Fourteenth Amendment.

Justice Stevens used the denial as an opportunity to recycle his opposition to the death penalty (PDF). However, Justice Breyer's dissent from the denial (PDF) presents a more interesting question. Breyer writes:

This Court has made clear that "any decision to impose the death sentence" must "be, and appear to be, based on reason rather than caprice or emotion." A review of the film itself, http://www.supremecourtus.gov/opinions/video/kelly_v_california.html, along with the sources to which JUSTICE STEVENS refers, makes clear that the due process problem of disproportionately powerful emotion is a serious one.

You can download the video from the Court's website at the link provided by Justice Breyer's clerks above or view it on YouTube here (part 1) and here (part 2). It's twenty minutes long, but a brief glimpse will give you the gist.

So here are my questions:

Should the decision to impose the death penalty be based on reason rather than emotion?
If yes, do victim impact statements aid that purpose?
And in this particular case, did the video aid that purpose?

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 08:06 AM | Comments (114)
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Happy Birthday to The Marine Corps!

Did you know that the Marines were formed in a tavern? Strangely appropriate, no?

A committee of the Continental Congress met at Tun Tavern to draft a resolution calling for two battalions of Marines able to fight for independence at sea and on shore.

The resolution was approved on November 10, 1775, officially forming the Continental Marines.

As the first order of business, Samuel Nicholas became Commandant of the newly formed Marines. Tun TavernÂ’s owner and popular patriot, Robert Mullan, became his first captain and recruiter. They began gathering support and were ready for action by early 1776.

”They are Marines, they aren’t going to run" (h/t incognito)

One last additional story: Marines save babies at Pentagon on 9/11.

Posted by: DrewM at 06:49 AM | Comments (68)
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While he was at Congress two months ago begging for a hand-out, Secretary Paulson announced that transparency was needed in Fed rescue efforts and promised that he wanted to provide that transparency. Now the Fed is fighting a FOIA request for disclosure of the identity of emergency loan recipients and their collateral.

Taxpayers deserve to know where their money is going and what is being done to safeguard it. Emergency loans are supposed to be paid back with interest. The Fed isn't supposed to be offering money to banks without adequate collateral. Unfortunately, in September the Fed announced wider standards to accept less-than-top-rated assets as collateral.

The banks accepting emergency loans would like to keep it a secret because disclosure might give investors reason to doubt their financial soundness. Some would argue that's the point.

In an interview Nov. 6, House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank said the Fed's disclosure is sufficient and that the risk the central bank is taking on is appropriate in the current economic climate. Frank said he has discussed the program with Timothy F. Geithner, president and chief executive officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and a possible candidate to succeed Paulson as Treasury Secretary.

"I talk to Geithner and he was pretty sure that they're OK," said Frank, a Massachusetts Democrat. "If the risk is that the Fed takes a little bit of a haircut, well that's regrettable." Such losses would be acceptable, he said, if the program helps revive the economy.

Frank said the Fed shouldn't reveal the assets it holds or how it values them because of "delicacy with respect to pricing." He said such disclosure would "give people clues to what your pricing is and what they might be able to sell us and what your estimates are." He wouldn't say why he thought that information would be problematic.

In fact, investors and taxpayers deserve to know how shaky their investments in banks are so they can take appropriate action to protect themselves. Not knowing which banks are solvent and which are teetering on bankruptcy is a large part of the credit panic. By covertly propping up failing banks, the Fed is prolonging the financial crisis.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 06:46 AM | Comments (45)
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