The Guardian has the exclusive:

The US plans to establish a diplomatic presence in Tehran for the first time in 30 years as part of a remarkable turnaround in policy by President George Bush.

The Guardian has learned that an announcement will be made in the next month to establish a US interests section - a halfway house to setting up a full embassy. The move will see US diplomats stationed in the country.

The news of the shift by Bush who has pursued a hawkish approach to Iran throughout his tenure comes at a critical time in US-Iranian relations. After weeks that have seen tensions rise with Israel conducting war games and Tehran carrying out long-range missile tests, a thaw appears to be under way.

Read the rest here.

H/T - Gamecock

I just got this in the mail from the HuckPAC (Mike Huckabee’s PAC for supporting conservative Republicans) - In case anyone is interested in participating.

So far the following candidates are participating: Bob Clegg, Jim Inhofe, Lamar Alexander, John Cornyn, Steve Daines, Elizabeth Dole, Roy Brown, Gilbert Baker and Brad Lager.

If you have contact with other candidates, have them contact the HuckPAC at 501-324-2008 and they can be participants as well.

Brett

———- Forwarded message ———-
From: Governor Mike Huckabee

Date: Thu, Jul 17, 2008 at 10:30 AM

Subject: Vertical Day July 23
To:

Next week on July 23rd, Huck PAC is hosting a “Vertical Day” for candidates. If you followed my campaign for President than you may remember the first “Vertical Day” we held on September 24 of last year. On a day when many said we should have focused on our fundraising for that “all important” 3rd quarter financial report, we instead focused on the issues. I blogged about the issues, answered questions about specific issues and used video to speak to voters about issues important to our campaign. We also featured guest blog posts from key supporters of the campaign, supportive bloggers and a guest post from Newt Gingrich. We had a great time and received lots of positive feedback from supporters. This time, I am going to step to the sidelines and let the candidates Huck PAC has endorsed take the field. We have offered each candidate the option to blog up to 4 times about the issues that matter most to them. No fundraising appeals, no calls to action, just a simple link to their website will be added to each blog post in case you want further information. These candidates aren’t just blogging to Huck PAC supporters within their home states and congressional districts, they are blogging to our community. They value what we accomplished during our campaign together and they are eager to offer their views for the way forward and their solutions to the problems we face. I hope you will take the time to visit us next Wednesday and participate on Vertical Day. I also hope you will share that day with friends and family. Here is a breakdown of Vertical Day information: 1) Vertical Day is July 23rd 12PM-12AM ET. 2) Each candidate has the option to blog 4 times about issues important to them. 3) We will redesign the homepage of www.huckpac.com to host Vertical Day. 4) One of the things we hope to accomplish is to introduce these candidates to you and your personal networks, facebook friends, etc. We encourage you to forward the blog posts you like to friends and family. We will actually track the “friends contacted” using our send to a friend tool and share the information with you in real time. 5) I will open and close Vertical Day with a blog posts of my own. 6) The following candidates are participating: Bob Clegg, Jim Inhofe, Lamar Alexander, John Cornyn, Steve Daines, Elizabeth Dole, Roy Brown, Gilbert Baker and Brad Lager. We will update this list on our website as Huck PAC endorsed candidates agree to participate. 7) We have asked Huck PAC bloggers to cover the event. For current information on which bloggers are participating follow my feed on Twitter. If you have a blog and are interested in covering the event read more here. I will email you again very soon and I hope you will mark next Wednesday off on your calendars and tell your friends and family to do the same. Thanks for all of your support, Mike Huckabee

The latest from Jib Jab that made me chuckle several times. These guys are pretty good.

SGS, in a comment over here, stated that Mike hasn’t done “anything” since losing to McCain on March the 4th. He apparently overlooked the impact of his speech at the Texas GOP convention. Mike had by far the biggest applause of the event, easily wining over the Newt/ Cornyn/ Perry/ Hutchinson speeches by wide margins.

Texas is the largest conservative state in the union - And he brought the audience to their feet more than any other speaker.

Mike is still campaigning for Republican candidates all across the country, and will possibly be hosting his own Fox News show come this fall.

In case you missed it, here is Mike’s speech from the Texas GOP Convention in June.

Read past the fold to see the videos…

(more…)

By Mike DeVine, Legal Editor for The Minority Report and The HinzSight Report
_______________________________________________________________________________________

[See updates at the bottom that include Gramm's clarification. h/t to my Race42008.com colleague, Aron Goldman]

By Mike DeVine, Legal Editor for The Minority Report and The HinzSight Report

I refer to McCain economics advisor and former Sen. Phil Gramm’s “whiny Americans about a mental recession” flap.

The leftist MSM lives for taking conservatives’ words out of context and fitting it into their template of Republicans’ as racist, bigot, heartless warmongers.

What is so sad is that the Hannitys and Gingrich’s on TV and even Hugh Hewitt on the radio don’t see what is being done, and end up accepting the liberal template and gotcha games.

This is serious business folks, and its all well and good for us to chastise Gramm for not ever and at all times being aware of the different rules of the MSM game and so cannot live and breathe as a normal human being like liberal guests on TV and interviewees by newspapers.

We don’t play the gotcha games to mischaracterize liberals. We have integrity that way, but what we don’t do and ought to, is to point out their dishonorable actions in this way, not to mention their immoral policies that do hurt lower income people and create real recessions.

Phil Gramm is a conservative icon of the Reagan Revolution. He was a boll weevil democrat that resigned his seat and re-won it as Republican. No Jeffords he. He was an architect of supply-side economics that produced the recovery in the 1980’s that we still technically live in. He is an economics professor by trade and so knows that the technical definition of a recession is two consecutive quarters of negative growth, which has not occurred since 2001.

Gramm is also a very avuncular, upbeat fellow that likes to turn a phrase to translate arcane econ and was being interviewed by friends at The Washington Times, when he said:

In an interview with the Washington Times, Phil Gramm, a former Texas senator who is now vice chairman of UBS, the giant Swiss bank, said he expects Mr. McCain to inherit a sluggish economy if he wins the presidency, weighed down above all by the conviction of many Americans that economic conditions are the worst in two or three decades and that America is in decline.
“You’ve heard of mental depression; this is a mental recession,” he said, noting that growth has held up at about 1 percent despite all the publicity over losing jobs to India, China, illegal immigration, housing and credit problems and record oil prices. “We may have a recession; we haven’t had one yet.”

“We have sort of become a nation of whiners,” he said. “You just hear this constant whining, complaining about a loss of competitiveness, America in decline” despite a major export boom that is the primary reason that growth continues in the economy, he said.

“We’ve never been more dominant; we’ve never had more natural advantages than we have today,” he said. “We have benefited greatly” from the globalization of the economy in the last 30 years.

Mr. Gramm said the constant drubbing of the media on the economy’s problems is one reason people have lost confidence.

Gramm made two errors (maybe three). His most egregious mistake was to conflate We the People with the American press, when he referred to a “nation of whiners.” Lots of people do this, and it is one of my pet peeves (and Rush Limbaugh’s). That the press decides to run a story doesn’t make it so and that they run a poll, doesn’t make it so.

Reality is. The press produces a product they call news. We too often confuse the two, and Phil’s mistake was easily used by the MSM to make it seem like he is callous towards low and middle income families and small and large businesses that are crying out for relief from high gasoline and food prices.

Gramm was speaking of the whiny press that wants people to think that America is in a decline that only an Obamessiah can save us from.

Secondly, he forgot the logic behind Reagan’s great lines: “A recession is when your neighbor loses his job and a depression is when you lose yours” and, “Are you better off than you were four years ago”?

I give him a pass on the latter, with his “mental recession” given that he was having an economics discussion and it was a good line – as applied to the press.

So, I give McCain a pass for going ballistic. He can’t risk alienating the inattentive to politics and economics sufferers at the pumps and the produce aisles.

What is so sad is that Newt Gingrich and Sean Hannity failed to understand that Gramm was NOT referring to Americans complaining about gas and food prices and the lib Dems that have caused same by limiting oil drilling, oil refining and nuclear plant construction as whining. He was not chastising Americans that are suffering from same as imagining a mental recession.

No, Gramm was chastising the press for their false recession stories of the past SIX years!! He was speaking of the whining media and liberals that claim America is and has been in decline for the past 6 years, despite the economic numbers to the contrary that are the envy of the world, lest the GOP and Dubya get any credit.

There is no excuse for this. Sean seemed to get it and tried to challenge Newt, but Hannity lacked the intellect to frame the issue. Newt alternates between kissing lib butt and not. But for Hugh Hewitt not to get it, is unacceptable.

I didn’t know rooster’s could hear and see so much better than TV and Radio stars. Maybe my 18 years as a Lib-Dem co-conspirator frontman for the kooks helps. Now I’m in the stupid party.

[UPDATES: One is my response to Flagstaff re elites and two, re info provided by Aron Goldman at R408 that affirms my interpretation re elitist "leaders" that take their cues from fellow elites in the MSM]

First, gamecock:

I have noticed that elites and regular folks make this mistake in differing ways, i.e. they speak of “the American People” when they are really referring to what they hear on TV from media elites:

Elites like Gramm do it subconsciously as they exaggerate the power of the media elites (key word elites). Reagan never made this mistake and always made the distinction. But yes, regular folks don’t whine about competitiveness.

We “whine’ about high gas and food prices and what policies cause them. Gramm was not speaking of that.

Regular folks too often assume the MSM is reflecting popular opinion. Rush fights this everyday.

Second, Gramm’s clarification:

“When I said we’ve become a nation of whiners, I’m talking about our leaders. I’m not talking about our people. We’ve got every kind of excuse in the world about oil prices — we’ve got speculators, the oil companies to blame — but too many people don’t have a program to get on with a job of producing.”

“If you listen to our leaders, we can’t compete against Mexico, for God’s sake. If they don’t think we can compete against Mexico who can we compete against?”

I think the above updates fit my original interpretation given that the media are elites, as are leaders as per Gramm, all of whom echo the defeatist whining of the MSM/Dem Party lib template.

One thing is certain. Gramm was not referring to Americans that are suffering from high gas and food prices and complaining about the policies of the leaders in Washington that caused them. Those suffering from mental depression that have seen mental recessions are the press and the Kerry and the Democrats, including number one liberal Obama, all of whom declared the American economy in 2004 as the “worst since the Great Depression.” Those “leaders” are who Gramm was referring to.

[A portion of this post originally appeared in my Silly (MSM) Love Songs blog.]

_______________________________________________________________________________

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer columns

The Minority Report and The HinzSight Report
Race 4 2008

“One man with courage makes a majority.” - Andrew Jackson

By Mike DeVine, Legal Editor for The Minority Report and The HinzSight Report

MSM Ball Songs
(Sung to the tune of Paul McCartney’s ‘Silly Love Songs’)

You’d think that people would’ve had enough of Jesse’s love songs
But I look around him and I see MSM sycophants

Some people wanna fill the world with whiny Americans
And what’s wrong with Gramm?

And I’d like to know, there goes McCain again

I love gas, I love my testes
Jesse loves Jesse, Hillary wants testes

(2008 Rooster Crowing Records)

Gamecock lawyer has been to a few formal BALLS like the one Cosmo Kramer (naked back twirl and all – You shoulda’ seen my babe, Carol) attended with George Costanza on Seinfeld, but I so tire of the informal ones the MSM calls NEWS and foists upon the unsuspecting everyday.

I refer of course, to the gotcha silly word games Gramm and Jackson that have dominated the last 48 hours of Balls, that sound like Silly Love Songs in O’Reilly and Couric ears:

Rev. Jackson’s desired castration of Barack the Messiah, Lord Obama, due to said Messiah’s of late public eschewing of blame whitey rhetoric as per darker hued older children having babies.

Jesse would like to deliver Obama’s balls to Hillary’s Testicle Lock Box and thus reclaim his position as Number One Black Man in the Democratic Party and America. Unfortunately, Barack’s testes were long ago removed by the Obama who wears the pants in the South Side of Chicago family from just south of Barack’s belt to just north of Michelle’s reach, a safe place where Hillary can’t go since college. Too bad for Ms. Rodham that she never thought of Michelle’s plan.

But seriously, given Jackson’s love chile (see Jimi Hendrix for spelling), hymietown, and shakedowns, and given Rev. Sharpton’s riot incitings, tax non-payings and tawana brawlings, isn’t the real story the sorry state of journalism? Why do they even waste a mike on these clowns?

I can think of one reason this year, i.e. that they are advisers to the presumptive Democratic nominee for President. The man that wants the nukes who is counting on the MSM to continue to cover for the leftist and black pathologies that are every bit as ridiculous and dangerous as were those of the segregated white south and the KKK.

Now to the Phil Gramm “whiny Americans about a mental recession” flap.

The leftist MSM lives for taking conservatives’ words out of context and fitting it into their template of Republicans’ as racist, bigot, heartless warmongers.

Phil Gramm is a conservative icon of the Reagan Revolution. He was a boll weevil democrat that resigned his seat and re-won it as Republican. No Jeffords he. He was an architect of supply-side economics that produced the recovery in the 1980’s that we still technically live in. He is an economics professor by trade and so knows that the technical definition of a recession is two consecutive quarters of negative growth, which has not occurred since 2001.

Gramm is also a very avuncular, upbeat fellow that likes to turn a phrase to translate arcane econ and was being interviewed by friends at The Washington Times, when he said:

In an interview with the Washington Times, Phil Gramm, a former Texas senator who is now vice chairman of UBS, the giant Swiss bank, said he expects Mr. McCain to inherit a sluggish economy if he wins the presidency, weighed down above all by the conviction of many Americans that economic conditions are the worst in two or three decades and that America is in decline.
“You’ve heard of mental depression; this is a mental recession,” he said, noting that growth has held up at about 1 percent despite all the publicity over losing jobs to India, China, illegal immigration, housing and credit problems and record oil prices. “We may have a recession; we haven’t had one yet.”
“We have sort of become a nation of whiners,” he said. “You just hear this constant whining, complaining about a loss of competitiveness, America in decline” despite a major export boom that is the primary reason that growth continues in the economy, he said.
“We’ve never been more dominant; we’ve never had more natural advantages than we have today,” he said. “We have benefited greatly” from the globalization of the economy in the last 30 years.
Mr. Gramm said the constant drubbing of the media on the economy’s problems is one reason people have lost confidence.

Gramm made two errors (maybe three). His most egregious mistake was to conflate We the People with the American press, when he referred to a “nation of whiners.” Lots of people do this, and it is one of my pet peeves (and Rush Limbaugh’s). That the press decides to run a story doesn’t make it so and that they run a poll, doesn’t make it so.

Reality is. The press produces a product they call news. We too often confuse the two, and Phil’s mistake was easily used by the MSM to make it seem like he is callous towards low and middle income families and small and large businesses that are crying out for relief from high gasoline and food prices.

Gramm was speaking of the whiny press that wants people to think that America is in a decline that only an Obamessiah can save us from.

Secondly, he forgot the logic behind Reagan’s great lines: “A recession is when your neighbor loses his job and a depression is when you lose yours” and, “Are you better off than you were four years ago”?

I give him a pass on the latter, with his “mental recession” given that he was having an economics discussion and it was a good line – as applied to the press.

So, I give McCain a pass for going ballistic. He can’t risk alienating the inattentive to politics and economics sufferers at the pumps and the produce aisles.

Who knows, maybe this helps McCain, and its even possible it helps Barack the new castrati, Lord Obama to get to the left of the good Reverend. In the end however, I suspect that the Din of the 20-year pew-parked butt and his Senator No to anything that would lower gas prices drowns all the Gramm and Obama as tough on black fathers rhetoric.

McCain in a landslide.

And to paraphrase the best Beatle, “What’s wrong with that?”

_______________________________________________________________________________

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer columns
The Minority Report and The HinzSight Report
Race 4 2008
“One man with courage makes a majority.” - Andrew Jackson

Conservative activist and oilman T. Boone Pickens has unveiled his plan to decrease our nation’s dependency on foreign energy sources. Entitled, “The Pickens Plan”, Mr. Pickens proposal relies on the development of Wind technology.

Here’s a video outlining the details:



Mr. Pickens also authored an Op-Ed for today’s Wall Street Journal to further his case. Here’s a snippet:

One of the benefits of being around a long time is that you get to know a lot about certain things. I’m 80 years old and I’ve been an oilman for almost 60 years. I’ve drilled more dry holes and also found more oil than just about anyone in the industry. With all my experience, I’ve never been as worried about our energy security as I am now. Like many of us, I ignored what was happening. Now our country faces what I believe is the most serious situation since World War II.

The problem, of course, is our growing dependence on foreign oil – it’s extreme, it’s dangerous, and it threatens the future of our nation.

Let me share a few facts: Each year we import more and more oil. In 1973, the year of the infamous oil embargo, the United States imported about 24% of our oil. In 1990, at the start of the first Gulf War, this had climbed to 42%. Today, we import almost 70% of our oil.

This is a staggering number, particularly for a country that consumes oil the way we do. The U.S. uses nearly a quarter of the world’s oil, with just 4% of the population and 3% of the world’s reserves. This year, we will spend almost $700 billion on imported oil, which is more than four times the annual cost of our current war in Iraq.

In fact, if we don’t do anything about this problem, over the next 10 years we will spend around $10 trillion importing foreign oil. That is $10 trillion leaving the U.S. and going to foreign nations, making it what I certainly believe will be the single largest transfer of wealth in human history.

Why do I believe that our dependence on foreign oil is such a danger to our country? Put simply, our economic engine is now 70% dependent on the energy resources of other countries, their good judgment, and most importantly, their good will toward us. Foreign oil is at the intersection of America’s three most important issues: the economy, the environment and our national security. We need an energy plan that maps out how we’re going to work our way out of this mess. I think I have such a plan.

…We’ll start with wind power. Wind is 100% domestic, it is 100% renewable and it is 100% clean. Did you know that the midsection of this country, that stretch of land that starts in West Texas and reaches all the way up to the border with Canada, is called the “Saudi Arabia of the Wind”? It gets that name because we have the greatest wind reserves in the world. In 2008, the Department of Energy issued a study that stated that the U.S. has the capacity to generate 20% of its electricity supply from wind by 2030. I think we can do this or even more, but we must do it quicker.

My plan calls for taking the energy generated by wind and using it to replace a significant percentage of the natural gas that is now being used to fuel our power plants. Today, natural gas accounts for about 22% of our electricity generation in the U.S. We can use new wind capacity to free up the natural gas for use as a transportation fuel. That would displace more than one-third of our foreign oil imports. Natural gas is the only domestic energy of size that can be used to replace oil used for transportation, and it is abundant in the U.S. It is cheap and it is clean. With eight million natural-gas-powered vehicles on the road world-wide, the technology already exists to rapidly build out fleets of trucks, buses and even cars using natural gas as a fuel. Of these eight million vehicles, the U.S. has a paltry 150,000 right now. We can and should do so much more to build our fleet of natural-gas-powered vehicles.

I believe this plan will be the perfect bridge to the future, affording us the time to develop new technologies and a new perspective on our energy use. In addition to the plan I have proposed, I also want to see us explore all avenues and every energy alternative, from more R&D into batteries and fuel cells to development of solar, ethanol and biomass to more conservation. Drilling in the outer continental shelf should be considered as well, as we need to look at all options, recognizing that there is no silver bullet.

I believe my plan can be accomplished within 10 years if this country takes decisive and bold steps immediately. This plan dramatically reduces our dependence on foreign oil and lowers the cost of transportation. It invests in the heartland, creating thousands of new jobs. It substantially reduces America’s carbon footprint and uses existing, proven technology. It will be accomplished solely through private investment with no new consumer or corporate taxes or government regulation. It will build a bridge to the future, giving us the time to develop new technologies.

Read the whole thing. Visit Mr. Pickens’s website here.

You can learn more here.

To bring you the following news. Congress now has a 9% approval rating.

Okay, back to it.

(Note, I’m not sure whether there’s a debate going on about Romney, but its usually a safe bet).

It seems like every day, a new post appears somewhere in the blogosphere decrying John McCain’s chances of becoming President. Today it is Stu Rothenberg, yesterday it was our very own DaveG (though an allowance is made for the possibility of a Bush-like EV/PV split in McCain’s favor).

To which I reply, for the umpteenth time, IT IS EARLY. John McCain is in fine shape to win this. In fact, he is probably in better shape than Bush was in 2004, when he was an incumbent polling in the 43%-45% range. Do I think he’s the odds-on favorite, or even the favorite? No. But I think for a variety of reasons it is waaaaay too EARLY to count him out.

For yet another reason, over at Politico they have a nice summary of Gallup mid-year polling. There are hundreds of ways to dissect these data, but the main point is that mid-year polling is not especially predictive of the final results.

But remember that Obama is the fresh young face in politics. He’s the new thing on the national scene. McCain is well-known and well-established. There’s the possibility that the undecideds are people who are curious about Obama, but who are uncertain about departing from the established product.

How do fresh young faces historically fare from their mid-year polling? Let’s look at races that featured an established national figure, running against someone who had never held or run for either Article II office before:

• 1952: Ike/Stevenson was at 56-34. It ended up at 55-44. This race obviously broke for the fresh new face, although it is worth pointing out that neither candidate had substantial ties to the status quo.
• 1960: Nixon/Kennedy was at 41/46. It ended up at 49.5-49.7. The established product overperformed here.
• 1964: Goldwater/Johnson was at 74-19. It ended up 61-39. Obviously the fresh new face performed better, but then again, how could he have done worse.
• 1972: Nixon/McGovern was at 42-31. It ended up 60-37. Chalk one up for the established product. Of course, its hard to draw too much from this, since the initial poll tested Geo. Wallace (who polled at 19 percent, but didn’t end up on the ballot). This probably cancels Goldwater/Johnson out as an outlier.
• 1976: Ford/Carter was at 28-49. It ended up 48-50. Breaks heavily for established product.
• 1988: Bush/Dukakis was at 41-47. It ended up 53-46. Established product.
• 1992: Bush/Clinton/Perot was at 32-31-28. Ended up 43-37-19. It is hard to say how this one went, but counting Clinton/Perot as fresh new faces both, you end up with 32-59 going to 43-56, a win for established product.
• 2000: Bush/Gore was at 45-36. Ended up 48-48. Established product.
• 2004: Bush/Kerry was at 44-46. Ended up 51-48. Established product.

So let’s count this up. Of the seven races that had clear established products versus fresh new faces, the voters broke for the fresh new face in only two of them. Of those two, one was Goldwater-Johnson, where Goldwater hardly could have performed worse than his 1964 polling; the other was a half-century ago in a race where both candidates could arguably be the candidate of change.

In other words, the fresh-faced candidate of change can never be comfortable when he is polling in the high forties six months before the election. Those undecideds (and a chunk of his support) historically have not supported the fresh-faced candidate. Have we ever seen this before with Obama? Hmmm, I wonder.

Add in the fact that Obama has already spent a quarter of a billion dollars on a national, 50-state campaign (in the primaries), and one wonders how much more he can really do to move the dial in his direction . . .

I’m not going to delude myself into thinking that an Obama victory is impossible in the fall. The senator from Illinois leads McCain in the polls still, and if the Arizonan does make a comeback, it will probably be by winning by narrow margins in Ohio, Michigan, Missouri, and Virginia while Obama obliterates McCain in New Jersey, California, Minnesota, and New York. That is to say, a McCain popular vote victory is looking increasingly less likely, even if McCain does ultimately become President Elect.

The big states in the moderate Midwest and the common-sense centrist ethos of the region is all that stands between Obama and the presidency. The American people have otherwise embraced the idea of a Democratic government. Chances are that Democrats will enter 2009 with more than 240 seats in the House, more than 55 seats in the Senate, and the majority of governorships and legislative seats in the states. A botched war, a flailing economy, and an incompetent Republican government has led to a landscape in which the most moderate Republican nominee since 1976 is being beaten in the polls by the most liberal Democratic presidential nominee possibly ever. Having an “R” next to one’s name is toxic this year.

Make no mistake; if Obama wins, he’ll be president for two terms. Very few incumbent presidents actually lose reelection. When they do, it’s almost always because the economy has gotten worse over the president’s first term, or because of a hostile third-party candidate, or both. But Democrats rarely have their own version of TR ‘12 or Perot ‘92 who can divide their party, and as for the economy, it’s got nowhere to go but up over the next four years.

So what’s the silver lining in a two-term President Obama presiding over a heavily Democratic Congress? Simply this: the Republican Party will be set free from the course set for it by George W. Bush. Instead of continuing as a heavy-on-executive-power, Wilsonian, big-government, big-religion entity with a base comprised of a clearinghouse of interest groups that puts FDR’s New Deal coalition to shame, the GOP will be free to embrace the policies and principles that come most natural to the nation’s right-of-center party in the times that we live in and under an Obama presidency. No more will Republicans try to assemble an internally unfriendly and hostile coalition by grafting policies on the party apparatus without regard to political philosophy. No more will there be a gay marriage amendment here and a tax cut there, not because those are the right policies, but because of who those policies will turn out. No more will this party be run as Karl Rove’s cynical photocopy of the FDR coalition.

Instead, the constitution of the Republican Party in response to an Obama presidency will depend largely on which voting blocs are most offended by the course that Barack charts for the Democratic Party. Now that he’s won the nomination, we’re beginning to see just what that course will look like. His true position on Iraq looks like something out of a Madeline Albright mid-summer night’s dream. If you thought George W. Bush was Wilsonian, just wait until Obama the Liberal Internationalist gets going. And as far as spending goes, trust me, Obama has plenty of plans to grow government, and to grow it some more. And remember, it’s not his fault. His faith requires it. After all, what would Jesus do? Speaking of which, Obama’s faith-based initiatives, which actually have a shot at passing now that a Democrat is proposing them, will further blur the line between religion and politics in this country, endangering both.

The thing is, I suspect that a lot of people who support George W. Bush conservatism may actually like an Obama presidency. Michael Gerson couldn’t ask for much more. But what will be interesting will be the reactions of folks like professional contrarian Bill Maher, who voted for Bob Dole in 1996 but who has foamed at the mouth ever since GWB was elected. Perhaps a Democratic president who is also a big-government internationalist busybody who blames all of his policies on Jesus will be just what it takes to send millions of new voters into the GOP to wrest it away from the ancient, dying Bush Base and to give it new life as the empirical, skeptical, secular, prudent, restrained party that it once was — and that it could be again.

Regardless of who wins in the fall, the Republican Party will only rise again once the sword is passed to a new generation of Republicans. Interestingly, an Obama presidency could be just what the doctor ordered for those who want to see a new Republican majority in the near future. As of now, all it takes to be a Democrat is to oppose the policies of George W. Bush. If Obama is elected, it is Obama who will define what it means to be a Democrat and those who don’t like it will infuse the GOP with new blood and help re-define what it means to be a Republican.

By Mike DeVine, Legal Editor for The Minority Report and The HinzSight Report
______________________________________________________________________________

I view this National Holiday as an opportunity to push back against the Left in the cultural political correctness war.

We don’t depart friends on December 22 with a hearty, “Have a Merry Twenty-Fifth” or on Dec 28th with “Have a Happy First.”

Independence Day connotes that we had to do something to be Independent.

We had to go to war. Brave men and women had to die for this miracle in human history called America to be. Men and women had to pledge their lives and fortunes to produce this aberration from the 5000 years of tyranny and slavery east of Eden.

So as I go about the important religious work of providing BBQ tomorrow, I will correct all that wish him a happy holiday denoted by a digit.

I will declare the impending Independence of man from a King, Five lawyer Oligarchs, or any other despot, and eschew any old divine rights of tyrants in secular affairs even as we give thanks for God’s providence for the Miracles of 1776 crossing the Delaware and the one in the City of Brotherly love the following decade.

Its Independence Day! Government by consent of the governed.

Thank you Lord.

Happy Birthday to

The United States of America!

_________________________________________________________________________________________

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer columns
www.race42008.com
Legal Editor for The HinzSight/Minority Reports @ www.theminorityreportblog.com
“The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.” - The Chief Justice and “One man with courage makes a majority.” - Andrew Jackson

Many Republicans are nervous about John McCain’s great money disadvantage with Obama renegging on his pledge to accept public financing. It has also been a concern that Obama can use this money to put Republican states in play. Among the 18 states Obama included in his first general election ad buy, 8 of them were carried by Bob Dole in 1996. Enough said. There is a concern that McCain could get bogged down trying to defend states like Georgia and Alaska. Colorado, also a Dole state, has consistently shown Obama polling stronger than average for a Democrat. While it contains many libertarian-leaning voters, it also contains a lot of wealthy liberals who have moved away from places like California and New York to more rural areas, only to make the rural areas more like California and New York. New Hampshire is having the same problem.

An interesting strategy for McCain to consider would be to de-emphasize the smaller, traditionally Republican states that are trending liberal such as Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, and New Hampshire and focus on the big four. The big four are Florida, Ohio, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. All four states went heavily for Hillary in the primaries. Two of them were ignored by Obama in fact. They contain the largest number of Democratic-leaning voters who have shown resistance to Obama. Because of McCain’s maverick image, he might get more traction among lunch bucket voters in Ohio than among traditionally Republican voters in Colorado who are angry with Bush. Furthermore, mathematically it is very difficult for McCain to lose if he takes even three of the four big states, and it is next to impossible for him to lose if he takes all four. If you play with the electoral map and paint three of the four biggies red and also give McCain the states he is expected to win such as Texas, Kentucky, Utah, etc., you will see that Obama has to virtually run the table among the small states in order to get to 270.

Howard Dean has talked of a 50-state strategy, but with McCain’s limited resources, a 4-state strategy might make the most sense. I would suggest making an ad buy only in those four states (perhaps spending a little less in Florida) and trying to establish himself as a frontrunner in those states. Temporarily forget, or advertise lightly, in places like Wisconsin, Iowa, Colorado, New Hampshire, New Mexico, etc. If we ever reach the point where John McCain has a 5 point lead in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Ohio, and Florida, Obama will be one nervous candidate.

It’s about time for an update on how the state of the states compares to the results of the 2004 elections. To get this chart, I took the margin of victory or defeat for Bush in 2004 and added or subtracted the current margins in the poll averages for each state (for example, Bush won TN by 14 points in ‘04, McCain is currently leading there by 27, so TN is listed as a +13… or, on the flip side, Kerry won PA by 2 points in ‘04, Obama is currently leading there by 7, so PA is listed as -5).

As you can see, the shift dramatically favors Obama and the Democrats at this stage in the game. Just 8 states are redder than they were at this point than in 2004. Three states have the exact same voting margins, and the rest of the 39 states are trending bluer. Overall, the country is roughly 8 percentage points further left right now than they were in November 2004.

The other day I posted a University of Wisconsin General Election poll showing that Obama was up 13 points (50-37) over McCain here in the Badger State. As I mentioned, the poll was conducted by Prof. Charles Franklin, who also writes for Pollster.com. Well, Prof. Franklin has released a detailed analysis of the poll’s Party ID results. The results: Very bad news for the Republican Party.

A number of people have commented on the party identification balance in the survey: 38% Dem, 24% Rep, 29% Independent (37% Independent when “no preference/other” are allocated to independent. When this group is asked how they “lean”, very few insist on some other party, so this allocation makes sense.) See Alan Reifman’s blog on weighting and party id for a good example and discussion of broader issues of weighting to party id.

I want to point out two things here and put our data in the context of other polls in Wisconsin.

The chart above shows party identification trends since 2000 using data from three sources that have done frequent polling in the state. What we see is a relatively stable Dem/Rep parity from 2000-2004, with Dem ID falling a bit around 2004 while Reps moved up slightly.

Starting in 2005, however, there is an initially slow but then sharper shift in partisanship. Republican ID declines from about 30% to about 24% today, while Dem ID rises from about 30% to nearly 40%. After an initial surge of independents, that group has recently fallen off a bit. (You have to squint a bit to see WPRI and Badger after 2005, but they are close to the trend lines during this period, so the changes are not just a matter of house effects or phone vs ivr methods. WPRI, for example, has Rep ID moving from 33% in 2004 to 28%, 26% and 25% in 2005-2007. Their Dem ID rises from 30%-33%-34% then falls to 29% over the same period. The final 29% is a large discrepancy from the trend, of course.)

We did not weight our survey to party identification, and these trends help explain why we have reservations about doing that. While relatively stable, party id does move over time, and by a fair bit, as you can see here. But that said, our unweighted results turn out to be quite close to the estimated trends in partisan categories in any case.

The second point is to compare these trends with those in exit poll measures of party id. In 2000, the VNS Exit poll put Wisconsin pid at 37% Dem, 32% Rep and 31% Ind. This shifted in 2004 to 35% Dem, 27% Ind and 38% Rep. But in 2006 the exit polls found that the balance was 38% Dem, 34% Rep and 27% Ind. Those values all show a smaller share of independents at the polls on election day compared to the polling trend, but that is to be expected given differences in turnout between partisans and independents. The size of the party ID groups grows as a result, but the balance between them is in line with what we see in the trends in the polls, though certainly not an exact match. The polls, after all, are of either adults or likely voters, while the exits are by definition a measure of who actually showed up on election day.

For 2006, the Dem exit percent and the Dem trend estimate are a close match. Republicans gain in the exits, by about 6 points over the 2006 trend estimate. If that holds for 2008, we might expect an electorate more like 38% Dem and 30% Rep. Of course both parties will have very active “ground games” and GOTV efforts to try to change those numbers.

While I’m certainly happy that our party id balance is so close to the trend in all the other polling, the more important point is that party id in Wisconsin has shifted quite a bit over the past four years. The coming campaign may alter that, possibly bringing disappointed former Republicans back home, for example. Likewise a Republican advantage in turnout could bring the exit polls back to closer balance. But as the data show, today the GOP is at the worst disadvantage the state has seen in over eight years.

It looks like J.C. is definitely leaning that way:

J.C. Watts, a former Oklahoma congressman who once was part of the GOP House leadership, said he’s thinking of voting for Obama. Watts said he’s still a Republican, but he criticizes his party for neglecting the black community. Black Republicans, he said, have to concede that while they might not agree with Democrats on issues, at least that party reaches out to them.

“And Obama highlights that even more,” Watts said, adding that he expects Obama to take on issues such as poverty and urban policy. “Republicans often seem indifferent to those things.”

(Tony Dejak, AP)

Pictured above is Lorain County, Ohio Judge James Burge who recently ruled that Ohio’s method of execution is unconstitutional despite the fact that the US Supreme Court ruled that it was constitutional in Baze v. Rees. As Orin Kerr says, this picture explains everything.

If people want to save money on gas, they should do what I did: buy an old car. I paid $5500 and my car gets 13 mph (72 buick with a 455). A new Toyota Prius starts at $21,000. Taxes, destination charge, etc. will knock it up to $23,000. I have already saved $17,500. This doesn’t even account for the money lost in interest either through a loan or investing.

Another way to save money is to learn to work on your car. Unless you have a fancy $30,000 Toyota computer you will be able to do very little work yourself on a Prius. So you are stuck paying $90 hour dealer shop rates plus sky high parts. I pay $0 an hour shop fee and 72 Buick basic maintenance parts probably run about 10% the cost of new Toyota parts since GM parts are cheap and readily available. Basic maintenance is super simple, will save you tons of money and requires about $300 investment in tools. Your basic tuneup on your Prius will be double that.

If people want a brake from gas prices, start thinking a little more before you buy your car off a lot.

By the time a Prius caches up money-wise to my Buick through better gas mileage, it will be an old relic sitting in a junkyard. And none of this accounts for the cool factor of Driving a 450 hp, 520 lb of torque street monster.

So before we complain about the high gas prices, let’s just remember it’s all money in money out.

In honor of today’s ludicrous Supreme Court decision, I thought it might be appropriate to repost an essay by singer/songwriter Charlie Daniels, originally published in 2003. Enjoy.

I’ve just returned from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba Naval Air Station base where we did three shows for the troops and toured several locations around the post visiting with some of the finest military personnel on planet earth. The kids seemed to really enjoy the shows and especially liked “This Ain’t No Rag, It’s A Flag” and “In America”. We had a great time with them.

We saw Camp X-Ray, where the Taliban detainees are being held only from a distance, but I picked up a lot of what’s going on there from talking with a lot of different people. The truth of the matter is that this operation is under a microscope. The Red Cross has an on site presence there and watches everything that goes on very closely.

The media is not telling you the whole truth about what’s going on over there. The truth is that these scum bags are not only being treated humanely, but they are probably better off healthwise and medically than they’ve ever been in their lives They are fed well, able to take showers and receive state of the art medical care. And have their own Moslem chaplain. I saw several of them in a field hospital ward where they were being treated in a state of the art medical facility.

Now let’s talk about the way they treat our people. First of all, they have to be watched constantly. These people are committed and wanton murderers who are willing to die just to kill someone else. One of the doctors told me that when they had Taliban in the hospital the staff had to really be careful with needles, pens and anything else which could possibly be used as a weapon. They also throw their excrement and urine on the troops who are guarding them. And our guys and gals have shown great restrain in not retaliating.

We are spending over a million dollars a day maintaining and guarding these nasty killers and anyone who wants to see them brought to the U.S.A. for trial is either out of their heads or a lawyer looking for money and notoriety. Or both. I wish that the media and the Red Cross and all the rest of the people who are so worried about these criminals would realize that this is not a troop of errant Boy Scouts. These are killers of the worst kind. They don’t need protection from us, we need protection from them.

If you don’t get anything else out of this soapbox, please try to realize that when you see news coverage much of the time you’re not getting the whole story, but an account filtered through a liberal mindset with an agenda. We have two fights on our hands, the war against terror and the one against the loudmouthed lawyers and left wing media who would sap the strength from the American public by making us believe that we’re losing the war or doing something wrong in fighting it. Remember these are the same people who told us that Saddam Hussein’s Republican guard was going to be an all but invincible enemy and that our smart bombs and other weapons were not really as good as the military said that they were. They also took up for Bill Clinton while he was cavorting around the Oval office with Monica Lewinsky while the terrorists were gaining strength and bombing our Embassies and dragging the bodies of dead American heroes around the dusty streets of Somalia.

It’s a shame that we can’t have an unbiased media who would just report the truth and let us make up our own minds. Here I must commend Fox News for presenting both sides much better than the other networks. They are leaving the other cable networks in the dust. People like being told the truth.

Our military not only needs but deserves our support. Let’s give it to them. The next time you read a media account about the bad treatment of the Taliban in Cuba, remember what I told you. Been there done that.

Footnote: I got an e-mail from a rather irate first cousin of mine the other day who has a daughter who’s a lawyer and she seemed to think that I was painting all lawyers with the same brush. Please understand that I’m not doing that at all. That would be like saying that all musicians were drug addicts. There are a lot of good and honest attorneys out there. I happen to have one of them. But it seems that they never get any airtime. It’s always the radicals who get their opinions heard. Who fight the idea of the military tribunals and site The Constitution and the integrity of America as their source of justifying their opinions. Well, first of all The Constitution says “We the people of the United States”, it doesn’t mention any other country. And secondly as far as integrity is concerned, I don’t think some of these folks would know integrity if it bit them in the posterior.

Emphasis mine, of course.

Republican Whip Roy Blunt has produced this chart which illustrates the difference between Republican solutions to soaring gas prices vs. the Democrats:



Rep. Blunt adds:

Retail gasoline prices are the result of literally hundreds of factors including crude oil supply, global demand, refinery capacity, regulation, taxes, weather, the value of the dollar, etc. Therefore it is impossible to say with certainty what one individual action will do to the overall price. However, based on what we know about the impact of crude oil supply and prices it is possible to develop some potential ranges of impact on gasoline prices for certain policy changes. For example, using the methodology employed by Speaker Pelosi and House Democrats that suspending shipments into the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (between 40-77,000 barrels of oil a day) would reduce gas prices by at least 5 cents, bringing ANWR online (at least one million barrels of oil a day) could impact gasoline prices by between 70 cents and $1.60.

The road out of the electoral wilderness for the Republican Party is to remind voters just which party is the party of ideas and real solutions.

H/T - Powerline

I enjoyed reading Doug’s commentary on McCain’s weakness among religious voters relative to Bush’s performance in 2004. This is to be expected. As one generation yields to another, the issues that motivate religious voters change. Additionally, McCain, as a less overtly religious candidate than Bush, is naturally going to lose some of the religious to Obama, who is in turn more overtly religious than Kerry. There’s no mystery here.

As someone who is highly sympathetic to Doug’s solution to this problem, I am alarmed by the thinking that many are putting forth in the comments section, most of which is so 2004. I agree with Doug that McCain should basically let voters know that his America is one in which it will be easier to care for a family. I think that this is a message that will resonate with voters regardless of level of religiosity, and which is timely given the period of malaise that America is going through.

What I disagree with is the kneejerk reaction of some folks in the comments section, including reactions from folks who are generally not sympathetic to traditional social conservatism, that the data presented by Doug indicates that McCain should either begin to run a traditional social issues campaign, or that he should starting wearing his faith on his sleeve, or both. I think both of these strategies would be horrid ones.

We’ve talked at length this season about the declining importance of issues such as gay marriage in America’s political psyche. These numbers do not change that. In a recent Pew Poll of national priorities, gay marriage ranked dead last among voters’ priorities. Abortion was penultimate. The economy, the war, education, and the environment dwarfed these concerns.

But what about the notion that McCain should start talking about his religion? Frankly, I can’t think of a more cynical ploy. It’s a gimmick that would not only be transparent to voters, but one that should be offensive to the very people of faith that seem to be proposing it. Up until now, McCain hasn’t mentioned anything about a relationship with any specific deity. He may view himself as part of such a relationship, or he may not. Maybe McCain prays to Jesus of Nazareth every night. Or maybe McCain is like many of the Founders, believing that there’s a God somewhere out there but that the deity can only be discovered through empirical study of the natural world. Whatever the case, McCain has elected to keep his faith private, and to make it public now, particularly if such publication involved embellishment or fabrication of a non-existent faith, is something that would speak very poorly of our straight-talking nominee. Why any religious voter would want a false statement of faith just to win an election is beyond me; this is something that should be anathema to the religious and non-religious alike.

McCain’s lack of strength among the religious does not require turning to religion, and his seeming empiricism may actually assist him among non-religious voters who will be turned off by Barack Obama’s goopy religious leftism. Both religious and non-religious voters want basically the same things — lower gas prices, safe and secure communities, economic security — and neither should want candidates to lie to them about religion just to make them feel all warm and fuzzy for a few minutes. I think Arnie Vinick, the fictional Republican presidential nominee on the final season of The West Wing who became a hero to young Republicans everywhere, said it best when asked to attend church despite being a closet agnostic:

I know I did.

The Minneapolis City Council and Mayor R.T. Rybak approved changes Friday, to the city’s vehicle idling ordinance that aims to reduce air pollution. The ordinance limits most vehicle idling to three minutes, except in traffic.

“Most of the air pollution in Minneapolis comes from vehicles and cutting down in idling is one easy thing we can all do for our environment, our health, and the health of our neighbors,” said Mayor R.T. Rybak.

…Vehicle motors release particulate matter, dirt, nitrous oxides, hydrocarbons, carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide into the air. These chemicals are linked to increased rates of cancer, heart and lung disease and asthma and are the major source of human-caused climate change. Children are especially vulnerable to vehicle air pollution because their lungs are still developing, and they inhale more pounds of pollution per pound of body weight than adults do.Link

I feel bad for all the mechanics in the area. I hope they can go to the local Department of Car Idling Enforcement and get a Car Idling Waiver Certificate to display in proper locations, so the Car Idling Agents don’t haul them into the Car Idling Court and throw the book at them.

I have taken a break from political blogs for the last couple months as I try to get my affairs in order to move across the country with my family. But lately I have been getting sucked into the latest with Mark Steyn. Today on the Corner Steyn links to this blog post about a Evangelical preacher who had his Freedom of speech taken away by the Hate Crimes Courts in Alberta Canada:

It is the most revolting order I have ever seen in Canada. Ever.

I’ll excerpt a few lines from her ruling:

In this case, there is no specific individual who can be compensated as there is no direct victim who has come forward…

That’s insane already. No-one was hurt. The complainant was an officious intermeddler, a busybody, the town scold, an anti-Christian activist named Darren Lund who had an axe to grind, and Andreachuk gave it to him.

Dr. Lund, although not a direct victim, did expend considerable time and energy and suffered ridicule and harassment as a result of his complaint. The Panel finds therefore that he is entitled to some compensation.

So a busybody with no standing spends time filing complaints — and gets a tax-free reward for doing so. Oh — and for his “suffering”. Not suffering at the hands of Rev. Boission, but “as a result of his complaint”. People in the community ridiculed Lund for filing the complaint — as they should. And so Andreachuk will get the pastor to pay for that. Why the hell not? Who’s going to stop her? Her political patron, Ed Stelmach?

Mr. Boissoin and [his organization] The Concerned Christian Coalition Inc. shall cease publishing in newspapers, by email, on the radio, in public speeches, or on the Internet, in future, disparaging remarks about gays and homosexuals.

There’s a lot there, starting with a small but telling point. Darren Lund is a not a medical doctor. He’s a professor. But Andreachuk refers to him as Dr. Lund. Stephen Boissoin is a pastor. But Andreachuk calls him “Mr. Boissoin”. No “Rev. Boissoin” for her.

But look at the staggering order there. Boissoin can never — ever — communicate anything “disparaging” about gays. It’s a lifetime ban — and it applies to every conceivable medium, including his private e-mails.

But nothing “disparaging”? That means nothing critical.

She didn’t order him not to communicate anything “illegal” or even anything “hateful”. She ordered him to say nothing disparaging. Ever. For the rest of his life.

Freedom of thought is no longer an enjoyed right if your thoughts are out of the current PC mainstream in Canada. This is a standard feature of well matured activist courts. We need to be a little more careful here.

I bet that after watching this video from an Obama townhall meeting, Hillary must be wondering just how in the world she lost to this guy: