John McCain: Forward to the Past!

John McCain: Forward to the Past!: "

Sen. John S. McCain (R-AZ, 96%) has painted himself into a deep hole over waterboarding and other enhanced interrogation methods. He has staked everything, everything, on two dubious claims:

1. That waterboarding and the other so-called 'harsh' interrogation techniques (used through 2006 by the CIA against terrorists and other unlawful combatants) is 'torture,' defined by McCain as the equivalent of what his captors visited upon him in the 'Hanoi Hilton.'
2. That such 'torture' cannot conceivably yield valid information, not even in theory.

How so? Because any form of interrogation harsher than politely asking the detainee to spill the beans necessarily, in every instance, elicits false and misleading disinformation (which apparently cannot even be fact checked, for some unfathomable reason).

Alas, in the war against radical Islamism, McCain has become obsessed with proving these two preposterous propositions, to the point that such proof trumps even victory itself. He believes such measures are never necessary, and that their use sears the very souls of the interrogators and of the nation itself. He also appears to maintain a childlike belief that there is always another way to gain the same intelligence; if only we ask detainees sincerely, compassionately, and charmingly enough, even top al-Qaeda leaders will see the light.

Case in point, McCain's bizarre argument with former Attorney General Michael Mukasey and others who had intimate knowledge of what information was extracted from Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Abu Faraj al-Libi under waterboarding and other somewhat harsh (but hardly torturous) questioning. Though he wasn't there, John McCain has a vision of what happened (and didn't happen):

Waterboarding and other harsh interrogation techniques were not a factor in tracking down Osama bin Laden, a leading Republican senator insisted Thursday.

Sen. John McCain, who spent 5 1/2 years as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam, also rejected the argument that any form of torture is critical to U.S. success in the fight against terrorism.

In an impassioned speech on the Senate floor, the Arizona Republican said former Attorney General Michael Mukasey and others who back those tactics were wrong to claim that waterboarding al-Qaida's No. 3 leader, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, provided information that led to bin Laden's compound in Pakistan.

Impassioned! But extreme passion typically comes at the price of reason.

AP makes a feeble attempt to cast McCain as 'in the loop' anent those interrogations, enough to know for dead certain that they were completely unproductive, fraudulent, and useless; writer Donna Cassata tepidly serves up the fact that Sen. McCain is currently (since 2009) the ranking Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, a qualification she concludes gives McCain an 'unrivaled record on the issue.'

But he was neither chairman nor ranking member when the interrogations took place; the Republican who was both is John Warner, now retired, who has not seconded McCain's pronunciamentos. No matter, the point is irrelevant anyway, as it's extremely unlikely that anybody in Congress, including Warner, was fully informed about the nature and extent of intelligence gleaned from those interrogations -- under the principle that 535 can keep a secret if 534 are bound and gagged.

How did McCain become such an authority, particularly on the left, on the morality and effectiveness of enhanced interrogation? Those now prattling about his 'unrivaled record on the issue' utterly villified him during the 2008 campaign; what has since transmogrified him into the senator with absolute moral authority to speak on the issue of interrogations?

The cover story is that John McCain's Communist captors tortured him, so he has a unique understanding of such things. (The real story is that anybody casting calumnies on George W. Bush and other Republicans automatically has absolute moral authority.) But McCain's captors inflicted real, not simulated, torture upon him, for years during and after the Vietnam War. It's hardly comparable, but that's the truncheon they'll use to bash everyone who engaged in or supported the interrogations.

Yet McCain's personal connection is precisely what makes him a uniquely unreliable witness. It's clear that he was so physically traumatized and emotionally devastated by his ordeal that he cannot possibly come to any rational, unbiased conclusion about waterboarding or any other harsh interrogation technique; he's hag-ridden by nightmarish memories and chronic medical problems. You may as well ask a Pearl Harbor survivor what he thinks about the internment of Americans of Japanese descent during WWII.

I happen to like John McCain, and of course I have tremedous respect and admiration for what he went through and how he recovered (mostly) from it. But he has become, for perfectly understandable reasons, phobic on the subject of interrogations.

Phobias do not make a good basis for rational inquiry. An arachnophobe is terrified of a Brazilian wandering spider or a Chilean recluse, two of the most deadly arachnids; but he's equally terrified of a harmless daddy longlegs.

On policy, I very much like McCain's position on spending and taxes; I mostly like his position on immigration (though I still want to know exactly how he proposes to reform the legal immigration system); and he was of course the first major Republican to begin calling for a counterinsurgency strategy in Iraq. On the other hand, his role in the 'Gang of 14' constituted an appalling attack on constitutionalism and judicial restraint; his other phobia about campaign fund raising led directly to an attack on freedom of speech; and his penchant for poking his finger in the GOP's eye at every opportunity may well have contributed not only to the election of Barack H. Obama in 2008 but even the Democrats' recapture of Congress in 2006.

I had no difficulty voting for McCain in the 2008 general election against Senator B.O., and I would have had just as little difficulty voting for him against Hillary 'Fist Lady' Clinton. But on the subject of interrogating unlawful combatants for intelligence purposes, McCain is so blind, so deadly blind, that I believe he should simply recuse himself from that entire subject. He does his country far more harm than good on that issue.

John McCain has become a man behind his time. It happens to most folks, if they live long enough; but people who have been, in their lives, powerful mover-shakers and very important personae cling to relevancy as feverishly as they cling to life itself. In practice, this usually takes the form of railing against all that has changed in the world since their own opinions and understandings hardened into concrete, umpty-ump years ago.

McCain understood very, very well the world of the Cold War and Vietnam, of mechanical and electronic marvels, of an economy rooted in Alvin Toffler's second wave of industrial civilization. But there his personal 'theory of everything' froze; and the lightspeed changes since then -- insurgency/counterinsurgency warfare, the microprocessor and biogenetic-engineering revolutions, and an economy increasingly based upon information and microcurrents rather than plugboards and manufactories -- confuse, enrage, elude, and frighten him.

He is a great politician -- for 1985. Alas, it's always 1985 for John Sidney McCain III.

"

Mukasey responds to McCain’s op-ed

Marc Thiessen is becoming the go-to guy on enhanced interrogation. Here's his piece in the Post Partisan blog at the Washington Post: Mukasey responds to McCain’s op-ed

Former attorney general Michael Mukasey has issued a statement responding to Sen. John McCain’s op-ed in today’s Post, in which McCain effectively calls Mukasey a liar. Here is his statement:

Senator McCain described as “false” my statement that Khalid Sheik Mohammed broke under harsh interrogation that included waterboarding, and disclosed a torrent of information that included the nickname of Osama bin Laden’s courier. He strongly implied in the remainder of his column in the Washington Post that this harsh interrogation was not only useless but also illegal. He is simply incorrect on all three counts.

KSM disclosed the nickname — al Kuwaiti — along with a wealth of other information, some of which was used to stop terror plots then in progress. He did so after refusing to answer questions and, when asked if further plots were afoot, said that his interrogators would eventually find out. Another detainee, captured in Iraq, disclosed that al Kuwaiti was a trusted operative of KSM’s successor, abu Faraj al-Libbi. When al-Libbi went so far as to deny even knowing the man, his importance became obvious.

Both former CIA Director Michael Hayden and former Director of National Intelligence Admiral Michael McConnell have acknowledged repeatedly that up to 2006, many of the valuable leads pursued by the intelligence community came from the three prisoners who were subjected to harsh techniques that included waterboarding in order to secure their cooperation.

So far as the waterboarding technique used by CIA operators, as outlined in the memoranda released by the Department of Justice, it was entirely legal at the time, which is to say before the passage of later statutes in 2005 and 2006, by which time it was no longer in use and under which it has not been evaluated.

In other words, the harsh interrogation techniques were both effective and lawful.

Podhoretz on Jews and voters' remorse

From the Wall Street Journal:

One of the most extraordinary features of Barack Obama's victory over John McCain was his capture of 78% of the Jewish vote. To be sure, there was nothing extraordinary about the number itself. Since 1928, the average Jewish vote for the Democrat in presidential elections has been an amazing 75%—far higher than that of any other ethno-religious group.

Yet there were reasons to think that it would be different in 2008. The main one was Israel. Despite some slippage in concern for Israel among American Jews, most of them were still telling pollsters that their votes would be strongly influenced by the positions of the two candidates on the Jewish state. This being the case, Mr. McCain's long history of sympathy with Israel should have given him a distinct advantage over Mr. Obama, whose own history consisted of associating with outright enemies of the Jewish state like the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and the historian Rashid Khalidi.
....
In 2008, we were faced with a candidate who ran to an unprecedented degree on the premise that the American system was seriously flawed and in desperate need of radical change—not to mention a record powerfully indicating that he would pursue policies dangerous to the security of Israel. Because of all this, I hoped that my fellow Jews would finally break free of the liberalism to which they have remained in thrall long past the point where it has served either their interests or their ideals. That possibility having been resoundingly dashed, I now grasp for some encouragement from the signs that buyer's remorse is beginning to set in among Jews, as it also seems to be doing among independents. Which is why I am hoping against hope that the exposure of Mr. Obama as a false messiah will at last open the eyes of my fellow Jews to the correlative falsity of the political creed he so perfectly personifies and to which they have for so long been so misguidedly loyal.

Obama continues Bush Policies III

This deals with the question of interrogations.

Obama has promised that the US will never waterboard detainees, or subject them to other aggressive interrogation techniques.

Unless he has to.

When McCain was asked what he would do in the "ticking time bomb" situation, where we have in our custody a terrorist with knowledge of plots in progress that may kill Americans, his response was that in that case, he would expect the President to do whatever was necessary. That is exactly the position Obama is now taking: we won't torture detainees. Unless, of course, we need to!

All of this might make some kind of sense if you assume that the Bush administration had a nasty habit of hauling terrorists (or Democrats, maybe) off the street for no particular reason, and waterboarding them. In fact, though, a total of three top-ranking al Qaeda terrorists were waterboarded, in the period shortly after September 11 when there was good reason to believe that they had knowledge of plots that were still active. This was exactly the "ticking time bomb" scenario where McCain has explicitly admitted, and Obama now implicitly agrees, "torture," or harsh interrogation tactics anyway, may be necessary.

In short, Obama's posturing is meaningless and politically motivated. His policy will not be any different from President Bush's; he is just trying to score cheap political points. Obama is no dummy, and is acutely aware of the Bush administration's extraordinary record of keeping us safe from terrorist attacks over the last seven years. He knows that his approval rating will sink like a stone if he exposes Americans to mass murder because of a foolish consideration for the comfort of terrorists. If and when the time comes, he will act exactly as George Bush did.

(Also noted at Instapundit.)

Left-wing tolerance in action

From the Chicago Tribune:

As the media keeps gushing on about how America has finally adopted tolerance as the great virtue, and that we're all united now, let's consider the Brave Catherine Vogt Experiment.

 

Catherine Vogt, 14, is an Illinois 8th grader, the daughter of a liberal mom and a conservative dad. She wanted to conduct an experiment in political tolerance and diversity of opinion at her school in the liberal suburb of Oak Park.

 

She noticed that fellow students at Gwendolyn Brooks Middle School overwhelmingly supported Barack Obama for president. His campaign kept preaching "inclusion," and she decided to see how included she could be.

 

So just before the election, Catherine consulted with her history teacher, then bravely wore a unique T-shirt to school and recorded the comments of teachers and students in her journal. The T-shirt bore the simple yet quite subversive words drawn with a red marker:

"McCain Girl."

Immediately, Catherine learned she was stupid for wearing a shirt with Republican John McCain's name. Not merely stupid. Very stupid.

 

"People were upset. But they started saying things, calling me very stupid, telling me my shirt was stupid and I shouldn't be wearing it," Catherine said.

 

Then it got worse.

 

"One person told me to go die. It was a lot of dying. A lot of comments about how I should be killed," Catherine said, of the tolerance in Oak Park.

 

But students weren't the only ones surprised that she wore a shirt supporting McCain.

 

"In one class, I had one teacher say she will not judge me for my choice, but that she was surprised that I supported McCain," Catherine said.

 

If Catherine was shocked by such passive-aggressive threats from instructors, just wait until she goes to college.

 

"Later, that teacher found out about the experiment and said she was embarrassed because she knew I was writing down what she said," Catherine said.

 

One student suggested that she be put up on a cross for her political beliefs.

 

"He said, 'You should be crucifixed.' It was kind of funny because, I was like, don't you mean 'crucified?' " Catherine said.

 

Other entries in her notebook involved suggestions by classmates that she be "burned with her shirt on" for "being a filthy-rich Republican."

 

Some said that because she supported McCain, by extension she supported a plan by deranged skinheads to kill Obama before the election. And I thought such politicized logic was confined to American newsrooms. Yet Catherine refused to argue with her peers. She didn't want to jeopardize her experiment.

 

"I couldn't show people really what it was for. I really kind of wanted to laugh because they had no idea what I was doing," she said.

 

Only a few times did anyone say anything remotely positive about her McCain shirt. One girl pulled her aside in a corner, out of earshot of other students, and whispered, "I really like your shirt."

That's when you know America is truly supportive of diversity of opinion, when children must whisper for fear of being ostracized, heckled and crucifixed.

 

The next day, in part 2 of The Brave Catherine Vogt Experiment, she wore another T-shirt, this one with "Obama Girl" written in blue. And an amazing thing happened.

 

Catherine wasn't very stupid anymore. She grew brains.

 

"People liked my shirt. They said things like my brain had come back, and I had put the right shirt on today," Catherine said.

Some students accused her of playing both sides.

 

"A lot of people liked it. But some people told me I was a flip-flopper," she said. "They said, 'You can't make up your mind. You can't wear a McCain shirt one day and an Obama shirt the next day.' "

 

But she sure did, and she turned her journal into a report for her history teacher, earning Catherine extra credit. We asked the teacher, Norma Cassin-Pountney, whether it was ironic that Catherine would be subject to such intolerance from pro-Obama supporters in a community that prides itself on its liberal outlook.

 

"That's what we discussed," Cassin-Pountney said about the debate in the classroom when the experiment was revealed. "I said, here you are, promoting this person [Obama] that believes we are all equal and included, and look what you've done? The students were kind of like, 'Oh, yeah.' I think they got it."

 

The Post's election coverage

Jonathan Adler at the Volokh Conspiracy notes:

According to Howell, the Post's coverage was too poll-drive and "horse-race" news stories outnumbered issues-oriented stories over the past year by two-to-one. The balance of positive and negative coverage of the two candidates was equally lopsided in both the news and op-ed pages. Howell offers this explanation:

Post reporters, photographers and editors -- like most of the national news media -- found the candidacy of Obama, the first African American major-party nominee, more newsworthy and historic. Journalists love the new; McCain, 25 years older than Obama, was already well known and had more scars from his longer career in politics.

Because Post reporters "love the new" they offered favorable coverage of Sarah Palin, right? Not exactly. Here's Howell's take on the Post's coverage of the veep candidates:

One gaping hole in coverage involved Joe Biden, Obama's running mate. When Gov. Sarah Palin was nominated for vice president, reporters were booking the next flight to Alaska. Some readers thought The Post went over Palin with a fine-tooth comb and neglected Biden. They are right; it was a serious omission. However, I do not agree with those readers who thought The Post did only hatchet jobs on her. There were several good stories on her, the best on page 1 by Sally Jenkins on how Palin grew up in Alaska.

Samizdata endorses McCain/Palin

OK, not the whole site.  Samizdata is a strongly libertarian site.  One of the contributors, who had supported Hillary Clinton, now endorses McCain/Palin.

 

First: Obama is not Hillary. Not by a long shot. Hillary is a fairly typical opportunist politician who thinks socialist programs have a place in a free society. She is badly mistaken but not a serious threat to America itself.

....

Obama is a cipher. He is like a Russian matryoshka doll. Nobody except perhaps his closest associates know what is at the core. The best estimate is to look at his friends and mentors and what their values are. That topic has been thoroughly discussed and some reasonable people place him solidly in a group of hard core totalitarians. If we ignore his promises shifting like smoke on the wind, his closest core group seems to be fired by hatred and revenge against America in general and the US Constitution in particular. Certainly that is what his confidants and advisers (and wife) say in public.

Second: Palin is not Romney or Giuliani or any of the other candidates that looked likely to be on the ticket with McCain. She is the most recognizably small-government, libertarian leaning candidate on a major party ticket certainly since Reagan, I think since Goldwater. She has proven her credibility with the trail of bodies in her wake. I have no doubt that she was offered any amount of inducements to turn a blind eye toward corrupt associates. .... If she ... leaves as big of an imprint on the Senate ... we're in for a good time; buy popcorn. Don't for a minute underestimate her potential to seriously upset the apple cart pork barrel.

Third: The clincher. The economic turmoil boiling right now is not unprecedented. The last time it happened on this scale, the crash started on a Republican president's watch and resulted in the New Deal, schemes for packing the Supreme Court to better destroy Constitutional restraints and, ultimately, in an invitation to fascist and communist governments to have a go at world dominance. Roosevelt needed an amendment to change the court system. Obama doesn't. Also remember, after four years of the worst of the depression's misery, FDR was reelected by a landslide. Why should it be any different with Obama? This crash, which is an inevitable and substantial correction of regulatory market tampering, is coming right at the most critical phase of an election cycle. It could have come earlier or later, but with the Schumeresque assistance of the MSM it is timed perfectly to trigger an anti free market landslide. It places (Republican) President Bush in the role of (Republican) President Hoover. Under an Obama presidency, it is certain not only that the crash will be far worse than it has to be, but that it will be blamed entirely on 'the free market policies of President Bush'. This is absurd in so many ways, but do any of you doubt it? Electing Obama will be taken as a clear message that Hoover/Bush Republican 'free market' policies are at fault and forever discredited.

....

Another reason that didn't make my top three is that already 43% of American 'tax payers' pay no taxes. We are getting dangerously close to the point where the people who net more off of government outnumber the people who pay more into it. If we cross that threshold of voters taking versus voters paying, it is a point of no return. It appears certain that we will pass that point early in an Obama administration. Probably before mid-terms. Two years could be too long. It may not matter if the RNC learns its lesson.

Vote for McCain

From Clayton Cramer's blog:

I had a former neighbor tell me yesterday that she was unsure whether to vote for McCain because she was "sick of the war." Unfortunately, this isn't a choice, like whether to have pancakes or French toast. We are at a war with Islamofascism, they have not been decisively beaten (nor is it likely to happen in our lifetime), and we do not have the option of resigning from war with them. We can only fight them closer to home.

Political hate

James Kirchik, assistant editor at The New Republic, writes in the New York Daily News:

In his endorsement of Barack Obama last week, former Bush administration Secretary of State Colin Powell said that "I have heard senior members of my own party drop the suggestion, 'He's a Muslim and he might be associated [with] terrorists.' "

This is a serious accusation to level, and Powell ought to have had the courage to name names.

Nonetheless, the notion that the McCain campaign, and conservatives more broadly, have stooped to an unprecedented level of "sleaziness" with negative, nasty and mendacious campaign tactics has become the accepted media narrative over the past several weeks. "Smear" is the word you most often hear nowadays next to "Republican." But while it may be true that some in the conservative fever swamps have resorted to ugly tactics, they don't hold a candle to the left's rhetoric over the past eight years.

Liberal pundits are attempting to outdo one another in describing just how unscrupulous conservatives have become. In The New Yorker last week, Hendrik Hertzberg referred to McCain-Palin rallies as "blood-curdling hate-fests." Frank Rich went one step further in The New York Times, decrying the "Weimar-like rage" of the Republican Party base, evidenced by a few attendees at a Sarah Palin rally who shouted "terrorist" and "off with his head" when she mentioned Barack Obama. Rich's fellow Times columnist Paul Krugman remarked that attendees at GOP gatherings have been "gripped by insane rage" at the prospect of an Obama presidency. Ascribing the oafish behavior of a handful to an entire political party, The Nation magazine slams the "GOP's machinery of hate" in an editorial patronizingly entitled, "Waiting for the Barbarians."

If my inbox is to be believed, there are certainly people on the right who believe that Barack Obama is a secret Muslim lying in wait to foist jihad upon the United States. And there are people who oppose him because of his name or his race. But one has to have been asleep during the Bush years to think that nuttery is exclusively a conservative phenomenon.

What about the left's conspiracy theories? A not insignificant portion of liberals in this country believe that a small group of Jews, er, the "neocons," took control of the government following 9/11 to fight wars on behalf of Israel. Is not this slander as odious as the Internet rumors about Barack Obama?

Time columnist Joe Klein fits the profile of the liberal hypocrite beset with disappointment over McCain's alleged degradation. He recently apologized to readers for writing earlier that John McCain was "honorable." This from a man who just a few months ago alleged that "Jewish neoconservatives" were disloyal Americans because their "plump[ing]" for war in Iraq and now Iran "raised the question of divided loyalties: using U.S. military power, U.S. lives and money, to make the world safe for Israel."

Rich's use of the term "Weimar-like rage," ironically in a column decrying Republican scare tactics, is but one example of the left's careless usage of Nazi allegories to describe people and policies they don't like. Since 9/11, major anti-war rallies have included people holding signs and puppets comparing President Bush to Adolf Hitler. Leftist writer Naomi Wolf, who has expressed fears that the feds were monitoring her children's letters from summer camp, recently published a book titled, "The End of America," which likens the Bush administration to a fascist junta.

MSNBC's Keith Olbermann spews over-the-top, hateful rhetoric in his "Special Comments" on a regular basis. He has said that the Bush administration threatens America with a "new type of fascism," referred to the GOP as the "leading terrorist group in this country" on the fifth anniversary of 9/11, and has said that Fox News is "worse than Al Qaeda" and "as dangerous as the Ku Klux Klan ever was."

Have the journalists now bemoaning the low tactics of the McCain campaign and its supporters never set eyes upon the wildly popular Huffington Post? That Web site hosts countless angry rants, many examples of which are too vulgar to document in a family newspaper. In 2004, Nicholson Baker wrote a novel imagining the assassination of President Bush. Last week, Fox's "Family Guy" depicted Nazis donning McCain-Palin buttons.

If these fringe (and most of them are hardly fringe) individuals don't speak for American liberalism writ large - as most "respectable" liberals will tell us when confronted by the examples enumerated above - then the stray hecklers at McCain-Palin rallies cannot represent American conservatism.

By imputing the crazy views of a few right-wing extremists to all conservatives, Obama supporters cut off legitimate concerns about their candidate's positions and qualifications for office. Anyone troubled by the Democratic presidential candidate's years-long association with unrepentant terrorist William Ayers and his dismissal of that individual as "a guy who lives in my neighborhood" becomes a right-wing lunatic. Anyone who raises the Rev. Jeremiah Wright is answered with an eye roll.

To be sure, the McCain campaign has made its fair share of exaggerations and distortions about its opponent's record. But nothing he or his surrogates have done is any more egregious than the lies, hysteria and ad hominem attacks that have poured from the mouths and keyboards of the left. So pardon me for being a little skeptical about the pundit class' selective indignation over gutter-ball campaign tactics. It would have been nice if they paid attention the last eight years.

Health plans and the campaign

Powerline looks at dishonest advertising on health plans:

Yuval Levin, in the Weekly Standard, has exposed the multiple liberties Obama-Biden have taken with the truth on this subject:

....

Unfortunately, Obama's dishonest attacks on McCain's plan are perfect for use by an unscrupulous politician in a negative ad. For although McCain's health care plan isn't terribly complex, it can't be explained effectively in 30 seconds. For that reason and because, in any event, McCain lacks the resources to air the truth about his plan with anything like the frequency that Obama is able to tell falsehoods about it, the Obama attack has gone unanswered.

And looks at the underlying conflict over health plans in general:

There is a basic conflict of interest between young, healthy people and older people with more medical needs. Liberals often describe the uninsured as lacking "health care," but of course this isn't true. Uninsured people get health care all the time. Moreover, a great many young people, knowing that they are in little danger of being seriously ill and knowing, moreover, that if they do get sick or have an accident they will be cared for whether they have insurance or not, make a rational decision not to pay for health insurance. They prefer to take their incomes in cash.

One of the main (albeit unspoken) objectives of liberal health care plans, including but not limited to socialized medicine, is to force young people to pay into the system to support the medical needs of their elders. So the conflict that Bob describes is not unique to McCain's approach. However, it does need to be considered whenever government intervention in the health care industry is contemplated.

Default assumptions

Charlie Martin at American Thinker asks, "What if McCain knows what he's doing?"

Sometimes, if I'm puzzled by someone's actions, I like to ask myself "if he's really smarter than I am, why would he be doing what he's doing?"

You can learn a lot that way.  Unfortunately, the American Chattering Classes often operate on the opposite assumption: "if I don't see the point of this, that other guy must be an idiot."
....
In the last four weeks of the campaign, McCain is bringing up topics that are weaknesses for Obama, having stood up to the repeated attacks.  We go into the "town hall meeting" debate tonight, a forum that shows McCain to best advantage, with a new and combative McCain, armed with topics that are now on everyone's minds, having conse his resources effectively, and after months of record-breaking Republican National Committee fundraising.  What's more, he's doing so at a time when Obama's resources are strained, and his fundraising is under scrutiny.

It's never good to make predictions about anything in this race, but I think there's one prediction that we can make without fear: the campaign isn't done yet, and we can expect surprises.

Fact checkers

Byron York has a piece about why it may just be impossible to satisfy fact-checkers.

Would the fact-checkers withdraw their complaints if McCain and Palin satisfied the objections they have raised? Not likely.

In fact, McCain has already tried the tactic. Back in July, the McCain campaign released an ad accusing Obama of having "voted to raise taxes on folks earning as little as $32,000." FactCheck declared the claim "false," nothing that "The resolution Obama voted for would not have increased taxes on any single taxpayer making less than $41,500 per year in total income…The $32,000 figure is approximately the taxable income of a single person making $41,500 per year, after all deductions and exclusions."

In response to that and other criticism, the McCain campaign changed its figure from $32,000 to $42,000. In the Palin-Biden debate, Palin said that Obama "even supported increasing taxes as late as last year for those families making only $42,000 a year." FactCheck objected. Under the heading "Palin's False Tax Claims," FactCheck wrote that Obama "did not in fact vote to increase taxes on 'families' making as little as $42,000 per year. What Obama actually voted for was a budget resolution that called for returning the 25 percent tax bracket to its pre-Bush tax cut level of 28 percent. That could have affected an individual with no children making as little as $42,000."

It seems clear that Palin shouldn't have used the word "families." So what if, in the future, she and McCain claim that Obama voted to raise taxes on "folks making as little as $42,000"? That would satisfy FactCheck's objections, right? Maybe not. FactCheck might still say that the vote really didn't mean anything and that Obama has no such plans to raise those taxes today. If McCain tailored his ads to meet the fact-checkers' objections, the factcheckers would probably come up with new objections.

In fact, they promise to. Back in July, FactCheck.org wrote that even if McCain and the Republicans accused Obama of voting to raise taxes 54 times — instead of 94 times — FactCheck would still "have plenty to say about it. As we mentioned, most of those were measures to tax the rich or corporations; many aimed to fund government programs; and most didn't actually raise taxes in and of themselves." Well, is 54 — FactCheck's number, not McCain's — correct or not? Is it, in the end, a fact?

The point of all this is that factchecking reports begin with an analysis of details but end with the factchecker's opinion of what an ad or speech "implies" or what "impression" it leaves. And that takes the fact-checkers away from the realm of fact.

Lieberman on the Bail-out

Dennis Prager managed to interview Senator Lieberman yesterday, on the subject of the proposed bail-out.

Prager: Let’s begin with this: Were you surprised? The public is being told a deal was made and then torpedoed by House Republicans. Is that the fact?

Lieberman: This is not the fact. There was not a deal. There was an agreement, let’s say, among some members of the Senate Banking Committee and the Democrats in the House side of the House Financial Services Committee. They went out and announced it. Frankly, I think they announced it prematurely, because the normal course is to take those agreements back to the four caucuses. So, there never was an agreement. It was clear the House Republicans are very much against the Paulson plan. I was in the Senate Democratic caucus with Paulson the other night—one of my rare appearances these days, Dennis, at Senate Democratic…

Prager: I was thinking that.

Lieberman: And there was a lot of really emotional challenging of Paulson. [It was the same among] Senate Republicans. So no deal, and then Senator McCain came back to try to put one together. I think he’s in a position now as the titular leader of the Republican Party to have a special ability to bring people together. And his goal is to get an agreement that saves the country from an economic disaster—but to make sure the taxpayers’ money is protected in it, and I think that’s the direction in which we’re heading.

....

Prager: So Senator McCain’s coming back to Washington was helpful?

Lieberman: Yes, I mean the Democrats are trying to put out the message that there was a total agreement and McCain came back and blew it up. That’s just not right, not true. There was no total agreement. The House Republicans particularly were always not part of the proposed agreement and a lot of Republicans and Democrats in both Houses were not part of it. I think McCain went back and forth yesterday afternoon, this morning between Senate and House. He talked to a lot of people, was on the phone with the administration, the White House, Paulson and I think he’s a big part of the reason why it’s down to four strong negotiators that are roomed together. That’s always the best way to get something done. And then they come out to the caucuses. So he felt that there was enough progress made that he could take off for Oxford, Mississippi. He’ll be at the debate tonight, and then he will fly back right afterward to be here tomorrow to see if we can close the deal.

Prager: Did Senator Obama play any analogous role on the Democratic side?

Lieberman: Not that I can see. And that’s an interesting point. I wasn’t in the White House meeting yesterday. Some of the Democrats criticized John McCain for not making a long speech saying that Senator Obama had, but John’s here not to make speeches. It was a very contentious meeting and he basically said for the sake of the country and the people we serve we got to get together and reach a bipartisan agreement. And then he went to work to try to make that happen.

Pain

Bill Whittle has a piece at NRO on pain.

He describes his experience with a kidney stone, and while he's at it, how the evil heartless corporations can't be all bad – they invented and tested stuff like Demerol and Dilaudid.

He ponders the experience of John McCain, tortured for years in Vietnam, with no thought given to sterile procedure or hygeine, and knowing the footsteps outside the door did not signal an attempt to relieve his pain.

The financial crisis is going to cause pain, too. Spending a trillion dollars on a bailout is going to hurt. But it will hurt a lot less than many of the alternatives, and it won't confine the hurt to people who deserve to be hurt.

So how do we inflict some badly-needed pain on people who need to feel it, without hurting the rest of the good and honest folks who pay their bills responsibility? Well, there are three simple rules that we must follow. Unfortunately, no one knows what those three rules are. So here we are. I’m as flummoxed as the rest of you.

I will say this, though: half way through the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln had a plan to buy the slaves. He would give the south a chance to end the war early by compensating them — with Northern cash — for the market value of the slaves that they held. It was a monstrous sum, but he thought it was necessary. So he wrote: “Certainly it is not so easy to pay something as to pay nothing; but it is easier to pay a large sum than it is to pay a larger one. And it is easier to pay any sum when we are able, than it is to pay before we are able.”

My own irresponsibility got me looking at 50 years of age without health insurance. I’m going to owe that hospital about two grand for this adventure. If you think I won’t miss that two grand, then you have over-estimated the financial value of internet punditry. But it’s my obligation; it’s my debt. I owe it and I’ll pay it, and I’ll try to remain focused on the fact that it could have been much, much worse. It was only that pain that got me to change my ways.

Is that too much to ask of this mess? That from whatever pain we have to endure, we can perhaps learn enough from it so that we don’t go through this again?

It's a Wonderful Crisis

In a very long post, Dafydd at Green lizards traces the roots of the current financial crisis to the history of sub-prime lending.  (The Karl he cites is not me.)

His "take-away" bullet points are:

Starting three decades ago, Democrats have used every parliamentary trick in the book to construct exactly the system we have today, where banks are bullied into making bad loans to borrowers who cannot afford them; then they sell those bad loans to Freddie Mac or Fannie Mae; and when a borrower defaults, taxpayers pick up the bill for the defaulter's nice, new house. This amounts to housing welfare for Democrats;

Republicans have tried repeatedly to kill that program, warning that such an anti-capitalist practice can only result in a complete, diastrous collapse;

Democrats "denounced" those warnings as "exaggerated." Because of the arcane rules in the House of Representatives and especially in the Senate, Democrats have repeatedly managed to squash those attempts at real reform -- whether they were in the majority or the minority;

Now that the warnings are proved prescient, and the collapse is underway and impossible to conceal any longer, Democrats point their fingers at President Bush, John McCain, and Republicans in general -- "Look what you made us do!"

Democrats pretend that the collapse was caused by a lack of regulation and government control -- when it was actually caused by overregulation, amounting to quasi-nationalization of mortgage lenders, vigorously pushed by Democrats in 1977, 1999, 2003, and 2005 -- the It's a Wonderful Life provision;

Democrats pretend that John McCain was pushing for complete deregulation of Fannie and Freddie, when in fact he was pushing for greater oversight -- but favored the rescinding of the particular Democratic provision that has now led to the collapse. Barack Obama and Joe Biden have consistently supported this provision -- and now blame McCain when its inevitable, predictable, and predicted consequences come crashing down upon us.

He also has some advice for what McCain should do right now.

Media doing it right

Wizbang reports on this letter to the editor of the Lebanon Daily News:

A letter to the editor of the Lebanon Daily News-

As a Republican and strong McCain supporter in 2000, I was disappointed and saddened in 2004 when McCain permanently traded in his maverick credentials and sold out his principles to support George W. Bush. I now find it equally disturbing to see him gamble our security and future with a reckless choice for a running mate.

Gov. Sarah Palin clearly has a bright future in politics. She may even have the depth and diversity of experience to be a vice-presidential candidate four years from now.

The McCain ticket, with all of its newfound "freshness" and despite all of the claims, has quickly devolved into the politics-as-usual that we have come to expect in the last eight years. McCain and Palin quickly emerged from the rhetoric of their convention as the uniters of dividers.

I talk politics with a lot of people from all walks of life. I find it compelling that many of the ordinary Republicans I talk to understand that their families cannot afford another four years like the last eight. We all deserve better.

Christopher Tarsa

Lebanon

A republican who don't like McCain. Where have I heard that before?

The Lebanon Daily News gave its readers, by adding a tag to the bottom of the letter, the writer's true identity

Tarsa is chairman of the Lebanon County Democratic Committee.

Fancy that.

The sex-education row

David Friedman has some thoughts on the fight over Obama's position on a particular sex-education bill.

There has been a considerable flap over a McCain ad accusing Obama of supporting comprehensive sex education for kindergarten students. Obama's people say the ad is a lie, and are supported by, so far as I can tell, most of the media other than McCain partisans. As I read the evidence, it reflects poorly on both candidates, but worst on the media.

....

Most of the reporters who repeated Obama's version as gospel do not seem to have actually bothered to read the bill, although it is readily available online. It contains, along with much else, the following language:

"Each class or course in comprehensive sex education offered in any of grades K 6 through 12 shall include instruction on the prevention of sexually transmitted infections, including the prevention, transmission and spread of HIV AIDS."

If Obama thinks that AIDS is transmitted by touching, he has problems more serious than his views on sex education.

It's true that the bill also says all instruction is to be age appropriate. Precisely how one provides age appropriate instruction in the prevention, transmission and spread of HIV to kindergartners has not, so far as I know, been explained by either the Obama campaign or anyone else.

And there, I believe, is the rub.

Obama, McCain and Sex Education

From the Weekly Standard blog

Among other points,

In this argument, it is worth noting which side is actually quoting the bill and how it sought to change existing law and which side is arguing, as one reader put it, " common sense suggests that McCain's ad is b*******. Shouldn't the fact that it was first used by Alan Keyes have given you a hint?" If a broken clock can be right twice a day, it is not unthinkable that Keyes would raise a legitimate objection to the bill.

Obama Proposes Tax Cuts for Child Molesters

From the Campaign Spot at NRO:

Here in Denver, I just saw an Obama television ad, hitting McCain for proposing, "$4 billion in tax cuts for oil companies." When you cut the corporate tax rate, then yes, oil companies get tax cuts, as does every other company - alternative energy companies, car companies, brewers, construction companies, restaurant chains, etc.

By this standard, Obama's tax plan offers tax cuts for child molesters and serial killers.

This is what happens when a candidate makes a silly charge, and the press doesn't make an issue of it. They keep repeating it and repeating it, because it's clear that there's no consequence.

Swift-Boating of McCain?

I was talking to someone last night about the Democrats' commandeering and utter misuse of the word "swiftboating." To "swiftboat" a candidate, in lib parlance, is to call into question some facet of a candidate's character or record that the Left deems unquestionable, and to do it in some dastardly and dishonest fashion. Alternate definitions also include the words "noise machine."

Of course, to those of us who thought the Swiftboat Veterans for Truth brought up some legitimate points-- like the fact that John Kerry lied about being in Cambodia, and ticked off a bunch of honorable veterans by lumping them in with those "reminiscent of Genghis Khan"-- "swiftboating" means raising totally legitimate questions about the centerpiece of a candidate's campaign using his own words, eye-witness accounts, and the testimony of acquaintances to bolster the arguments. The very fact that the Left would rather leave those questions unasked is what makes the process of "swiftboating" dastardly in their eyes.

....

And, we've got another one today from a Democratic surrogate. This is George McGovern being, well, a jerk (emphasis Jim Geraghty's):

Let me tell you what I would say to John McCain: neither of us is an expert on national defense. It's true that you went to one of the service academies but you were in the bottom of the class. It's true that you were a pilot in Vietnam, that you were shot down and spent most of the war in prison and we all sympathize with that and honor you for your courage. But you and I both had these battle experiences, you as a Navy fighter plane, I as an army bomber. I am not going to criticize your war record and your knowledge of national security but I don't want you criticizing mine either.

If I'd be allowed just one little dig at Senator McCain, since he gave me. I would say, 'John, you were shot down early in the war and spent most of the time in prison. I flew 35 combat missions with a 10-man crew and brought them home safely every time.'

Is this really the line of attack they want to try? McCain's war record is certainly not off-limits. It's the centerpiece of his campaign and character much as Kerry's was, though I'd argue McCain is making a much clearer connection between his battle-scarred past and his battle-ready future than Kerry ever did.