Rod Dreher thinks that conservatives who think that McCain won the latest debate are all wrong. He trumps polls which show Obama as the victor and he links to John Podhoretz as support. Podhoretz states,

The general feeling on the right side of the blogosphere is that this was McCain’s best debate and he did himself a lot of good. I think people on the Right were so relieved that the debate finally turned to matters of ideological and partisan moment — abortion, ACORN, Ayers, trade, spending — that, perhaps for the first time in his political career, they graded him on a curve. The problem, in my view, is that the shorthand in which McCain spoke about these matters made them comprehensible only to those of us who are already schooled in them. In almost every case, Obama answered McCain’s shorthand with longhand — with detailed, even long-winded answers that gave the distinct impression he was more in command of the details of these charges than the man who was trying to go after him on them.

We’re not the audience for these debates. Undecided voters are, and undecided voters are, or so studies tell us, often astonishingly ill-informed. You can only bring up new issues if you’re able pithily to explain the context and meaning of them. It is not a rap on McCain to say he’s not good at it; he doesn’t want to bother with the introduction. But in a setting like that, the introduction is what matters, far more than the attack.

I think there’s something inherently wrong with Podhoretz’ reasoning, though.

Consider the… undecided voter. I think there are both informed and ill-informed undecided voters. I know of people who have not decided who they will vote for precisely because they are aware (informed) of both McCain’s and Obama’s positions. They’re frustrated with the choices (or lack thereof) before them, and their frustration manifests itself in the form of indecision.

Now, consider the astonishingly ill-informed undecided voters. If such people are so astonishingly ill-informed, then such people have not put forth the effort to follow the candidates, and their positions. Thus, if such people have not taken the effort to become informed, up to this point in the campaign, then why should we expect that they will park themselves in front of a television and watch a 90 minute debate? Furthermore, if such people can only respond to pithily explained positions, then long-winded answers will be lost on them. Hence, such people will only respond to short campaign ads, the likes of which we will undoubtedly see in the next 2 1/2 weeks.

Short take: McCain finally started hitting on the policy issues that he was missing in the first 2 debates.  Mostly, he took on some of Obama’s mischaracterizations of him.  He should have started this 2 debates ago.  I felt better about his performance, but the quick poll of undecideds on Fox showed movement toward Obama.

Random items:

* The "even Fox News" line from Obama shows how much a blind spot Democrats have for rampant liberal bias in the media.  And if this is his only shot at them, it only proves they are indeed balanced.

* "Joe the Plumber", Joe Wurzelbacher, got about 60 minutes of fame, well more than his allotted 15.  Folks that don’t read the blogs may not have known who he is (though the networks have wanted to make sure you know about that 106-year-old nun who’s voting for Obama), but McCain made sure he got the word out.  Hopefully, they’ll find out that this small business owner is going to get taxed more under Obama, and that "infuriates" him.  Maybe they’ll find the video of Obama telling him he wants to "spread the wealth around" (translation: From each according to his ability, to each according to his need).  Hopefully.

* Obama still insists that 95% of people will get a tax cut, ignoring the fact that many people pay no taxes at all.  And as a conservative pundit noted (forget which one), Bill Clinton campaigned on a middle class tax cut.  Amnesia set in as soon as he sat down in the Oval Office.

* Finally, McCain drove the point home that he wants to give you choice over your healthcare, and not introduce a federal bureaucracy into the mix.  Obama’s plan may sound modest enough, but it’s the foot in the door for an even bigger program.  "This worked, so let’s make it bigger and stronger."  That’s what happens to government programs.  McCain’s plan stops at giving you a credit and letting you spend it with no federal mandate whatsoever.  He avoids the slippery slope. 

And now, the home stretch.

Turns out that Barack Obama’s connection to domestic terrorist Bill Ayers is deeper than everyone originally thought:

By 1995, Barack Obama had known Bill Ayers at least eight years since their shared involvement in the Alliance for Better Chicago Schools, if not longer. Bernardine Dohrn, once labeled “the most dangerous woman in America” by none other than J. Edgar Hoover, was also well known as the inspiration for the 1988 movie Running on Empty. Subtle terrorists they were not.

As noted in the New York Times, Obama has tried to minimize his relationship with Ayers, dismissing him as “a guy who lives in my neighborhood” and “somebody who worked on education issues in Chicago that I know.”

Axelrod also tried to excuse the extent of Obama’s involvement with Ayers, stating,
“Bill Ayers lives in his neighborhood. Their kids attend the same school. … They’re certainly friendly, they know each other, as anyone whose kids go to school together.”

It’s an obvious fiction pitched by Axelrod, since the Obama children are presently in elementary school, while Ayers’ children are all grown adults, but the Ayers-Obama family connection doesn’t stop at the imaginary connections between the children.

Bernardine Dohrn, Ayers’ wife, has largely escaped recent scrutiny, but that lack of attention doesn’t reduce her role as either a leader — and some may argue, the leader — of the Weathermen. Nor can it mask her ties to both Barack and Michelle Obama. It’s now a family affair.

The whole piece is worth reading as it goes into extensive detail about the Obama-Ayers alliance that has not been previously reported. Media apologists for Senator Obama have tried to downplay the connection but the fact remains that such friendships cast serious doubts on the Senator’s judgement. And Senator Obama is going to have a hard time convincing the public that he didn’t know Bill Ayers wasn’t a terrorist when Ayers has never hidden his past.

No matter who you are, the current credit crunch does affect you, even if you don’t have a penny in the bank or a stock.  Never mind (for now) the domino effect of the credit market seizing up, if you vote, it should affect you.

Item 1:  Rep. Barney Frank has called this current crisis two things that are both flat-out lies; a failure of the free market and the result of Bush administration policies.  Frank should, and likely does, know better, since he’s the chair of the House Committee on Financial Services.  There has been video all over the blogosphere, and linked here as well, that show he and his fellow Democrats denying any problems at all with Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac, and now he’s trying to solely blame Republicans.  There’s plenty of blame to go around in both parties, but he’s in a unique position, as committee chair, to pronounce the truth of the matter to us.  Instead, he’s politicizing this huge issue for partisan gain.  If you’re from Massachusetts and you vote, this should affect your vote.

Item 1a: Senator Joe Biden said the same thing about it being all about Bush administration policies.  This should affect your vote.

Item 2:  At the foundation of this crisis is an abandonment of free market principles, not the failure of them.  Republicans have (more often) been the keepers of the free market flame.  (That’s not been a constant by any means, but a good generality.)  The Community Reinvestment Act is a Carter-era program to basically force lenders to give home loans to those who would otherwise not qualify, and the default rate of these loans is higher than normal.  That, along with the Gramm-Leach-Billey act which allowed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to write or buy up these loans in a bigger way, released other banks from this higher-risk paper and continued us down the primrose path.  Again, videos highlighted here showed, one of Obama economic advisors Franklin Raines, who at the time of the video was CEO of Fannie Mae, insisted that home prices would always go up.  Now, there is no doubt in my mind that Wall St. greed fueled this as well, but with a government mandate to write high-risk loans, and a (for all intents and purposes) government agency ready and willing to buy them up, this was a recipe for disaster.

The point is, as honorable and as high-minded the intentions were to try to get more people into their own homes, it set more people up for failure.  You can say that the number of foreclosures wasn’t enough to be a problem, yet here we are, the engine of commerce about to seize up over securities backed by mortgages.  This started when Democrats decided that the free market wasn’t working and instituted policies to, in their eyes, fix things.  While it did get many into homes that might not have otherwise been able to, does it really help us in the long run when Congress has to eventually bail us out to try to avoid a recession or worse?  (And the jury’s still out on if the bailout will really do it, or if it’s just a short-term band-aid.) 

Those who think that the free market failed us then, and are now ironically blaming the free market again, are running for President in November.  This should affect your vote. 

It does affect you.  Or it should.

In the first Presidential debate, Barack Obama used the line more than once that this credit crisis we’re in stems from policies that “shredded” regulations, and that assumed that regulation is “always bad”.  But that characterization is simply not true, and in the cases of Freddie and Fannie, which are government sponsored enterprises (GSE), government oversight is especially required.

First of all, GSEs are a non-free-market concept, contrary to Rep. Barney Frank’s assertion that this credit crunch is a failure of the free market.  It is a government program to target certain sectors with cheap loans.  Overall, it has been fairly successful, but it is not a free market issue.  This is government stepping in to deal with a situation it wants to see changed.

The second issue is that when Democrats pushed Freddie and Fannie to create what became known as the subprime mortgage market.  That was the subject of the previous video I posted on this subject.  It became the late-20th-century version of “a chicken in every pot” promise.  Everyone gets a home!  Well, not really.  Everyone gets a mortgage, including some who couldn’t afford it.  But Freddie and Fannie took this mandate and went wild.  It was essentially a big-government solution being administered by a big-government program; again, not a failure of the free market. 

During this time, Republicans realized that more regulation of these types of loans and the securities backed by them was required, but Democrats did not believe there was a problem.  Those were their words; not a problem.

Roll the tape, and listen to their words.

So Obama’s sweeping contention that Republican consider regulation “always bad” is demonstrably false.  Less regulation is a hallmark of conservatism, true, but where it’s required, especially in a government program, it should be done.  But Democrats, when faced with tightening the purse strings on a constituency that they claim for themselves, will see no evil.  Being for the little guy does not mean setting them up for failure.  It’s partisan politics, pure and simple.

And by the way, where’s the MSM on this?  Quiet as a mouse.  FactCheck.org’s checking of debate facts is silent on this issue.  The objectivity on this issue is pointing out some glaring blind spots.

Update: Roger Kimball gives the roots of this crisis a closer look, with suitable linkage.  Short and sweet, but informative.

From Glenn Reynolds, a link to a story about Obama threatening the licenses of TV stations that run an NRA ad.

Change… we can believe in.

Here’s the ad:

This is a 10-minute video that sets the Way-Back Machine to 1995 and documents, with quotes, news articles, charts & graphs, how we really got into this mess.  It also notes who contributed to it and who tried to stop it before it happened. 

Keep your mouse on the Pause button.  It packs a lot of information into those 10 minutes.

…or “on empty”, depending on how you look at it.  Last Tuesday this came out about Obama’s latest ad.

Democrat Barack Obama’s campaign hit Republican John McCain today over his family’s ownership of foreign cars, saying it would air a TV ad in Michigan highlighting McCain’s statements on buying American.

But the ad, which accuses McCain of misleading Michigan voters by saying he’s bought American vehicles “literally all my life,” doesn’t say that of the 13 vehicles owned by the McCain family, only one is registered to McCain himself – a 2004 Cadillac CTS built in Lansing.

The 12 other vehicles include a 2005 Volkswagen convertible, a 2001 Honda sedan, a 2007 Ford half-ton pickup and three Gem neighborhood electric vehicles – essentially road-worthy golf carts built by a Chrysler subsidiary.

Cindy McCain is the legal owner of 11 vehicles. The Lexus she drives is registered to Hensley & Co., the Anheuser-Busch beer distributorship she inherited from her late father.

He’s unfit for office because … he owns cars, of all things!  And he married into 11 of them!  Oh, the humanity.

If the Obama campaign is trying to say that being rich means you’re elitist, then it’s just the same old class warfare that Democrats have used for decades.  So much for “change”.  “Elitism” is an attitude, not the result of a balance sheet.  I would say that racism is elitist, thinking your race is better than others, but anyone from Joe Sixpack to Donald Trump could have that attitude.  You can be in an elite group of people, such as the super-rich, but not necessarily have an elitist attitude.

I would say that suggesting that Pennsylvanians cling to guns and religion during bad times (like that’s a bad thing) is elitist.  And especially after you’d just returned from Pennsylvania praising those same people. 

But my main point is that this sort of ad — calling attention to what he owns instead of what he thinks — smacks of desperation.

Counterterrorism Blog: Where We’ve Come since 9/11,

Does the fact there has been no successful attack on the U.S., since 9/11, mean that we haven’t been attacked? Read No Aattack in the US since 9-11?, also at Counterterrorism Blog.

Obama continues to play politics as usual run a campaign of change by attempting to convince the Iraqis to postpone drawing up troop withdrawal agreements until after he’s elected.

China has perfected time travel (HT: Ron’s Bloviating).

Add this to the Chinese successfully time transporting child gymnasts into the future.

Congressman Alcee Hastings (D-Oz), speaking to the National Jewish Democratic Council, used this fine bit of prose to attack Sarah Palin.

Florida Democratic Congressman Alcee Hastings pointed to Sarah Palin on Wednesday to rally Jews to Obama.

“If Sarah Palin isn’t enough of a reason for you to get over whatever your problem is with Barack Obama, then you damn well had better pay attention,” said Hastings. “Anybody toting guns and stripping moose don’t care too much about what they do with Jews and blacks. So, you just think this through.”

Hastings, who is a member of the Congressional Black Caucus, made his comments in Washington, D.C., while participating in a panel discussion sponsored by the National Jewish Democratic Council.

Well, there’s a leap I don’t think I’ve ever heard made.  “Don’t vote for Palin; she clings to her guns and mooses.”  And the connection to caring about Jews and blacks is obvious, right?  Right?

Rusty Shackleford’s Jawa Report blog is reporting that the first link in his suspected chain of command in the Palin smear viral video has admitted to producing the video.  However, it appears that Ethan Winner is falling on his sword, claiming full and sole responsibility for the production of the video.  Shackleford isn’t convinced, and he spells out why.

Developing…

Wacky ideas have been floating in my noggin.

• It might be an interesting political strategic move for the GOP, if President Bush, in a few weeks announced that on account of mistakes and failure to heed warning signs in the financial sector … that he’s resigning his office. President Cheney then makes a few moves to unbalance the Dems and then fades back into the background (where it might be noted, the President is … and I think that’s largely because the GOP strategists think that gives Mr McCain the best chance to win). How do you all think a surprise resignation might ruffle the waters?
• The Roman Empire divided into East/West in late antiquity because of the size of the Empire. Modern communications have made that unnecessary … however the complexity of the world has increased. Perhaps a “split” Executive office might be better for the Administration of the US in the modern era … perhaps dividing between a Domestic and Foreign Executive seat?
• One might suggest that voters tend to fall into two broad categories. Issues voters and character voters. Some want to dive into policy details, others into character and the psyche of the candidates. It might be interesting if some of the News outlets recognized this and specialized reporting those perspectives instead of a mishmash.

This report from Rusty Shackleford has been all the rage on the right side of the blogosphere today.  It links viral video with false claims about Palin back to a PR firm that Obama and the DNC have used, though it was made to look like a grassroots effort.  Most telling is that shortly after this scam was exposed by Shackleford, the videos came down and accounts were deleted.

The connection to Obama himself may be tenuous, but there is a better link to his chief media strategist.  It helps the the voiceover artist used is the same one used on other Obama ads.  Yeah, it smacks of conspiracy theories, but Rusty lays it all out (with screenshots and video, especially for the stuff that has since disappeared).  He reports, you decide.

Is this something that only political junkies would even notice?  Perhaps, but in the Internet world of MySpace, Facebook, and YouTube, campaigns have to sometimes answer charges that don’t make it into the mainstream media.  Although in this case, the New York Times and a number of liberal pundits did pick up and run with the charge that Sarah Palin had been a member of the Alaskan Independence Party, a secessionist group.  A big enough deal was made out of it that even FactCheck.org had to debunk the rumor.

Is this the “change” and “hope” and new kind of politics that Obama has promised his supporters?  They may have been sold a bill of goods.

If one was to look at the tale of two crises and how our respective candidates reacted to them, the difference between them becomes clear.

In the Georgia/Russia scuffles, McCain immediately reacted speaking out against Russia’s aggression. Obama, in brief, did and said nothing of any note for quite some time, until the dust mostly settled and then … asked for a UN security resolution against the act (somehow overlooking the fact that any resolution would have to pass a Russian Federation veto).

In the current AIG/Merril/Banking crises, Mr McCain has asked for the retirement of the SEC head. He has suggested some regulatory mechanisms which he thinks might be helpful, and pointed out that he was warning about a upcoming crises of this sort for some time. Mr Obama has criticised everyone else, but has not actually suggested anything … yet. Like the above, it would be my bet that when a (liberal) consensus of “what to do” has arisen in his camp, he will put forward a relatively useless and vanilla proposal.

Mr Obama, I suggest, is not a leader. He may someday grow to be one after all he is young an inexperienced and has much learning and growth in the poitical process yet ahead of him. But he has not (ever?) demonstrated any leadership qualities. He may be able divise and find a consensus in within a party which has substantial agreement on the basics. But he has not demonstrated he can take the risks and gambles necessary to lead.

Mr McCain is a more instinctive leader, he may lead you astray sometimes, he may not. But he will lead. And that is an important quality in a leader.

Though “stealing” would be more the verb I’d use.  In Obama’s latest ad running in the southwest, with narration in Spanish, he ties McCain to Limbaugh and then quotes Limbaugh on immigration issues.  It calls McCain two-faced and a liar.  But as Jake Tapper of ABC News discovers, the ad itself is where the deceit is.

The Obama camp draws a very tenuous link between Limbaugh and McCain to start the smear.  Essentially, they say, they both supported the Minutemen.  Well, except McCain didn’t, and Limbaugh has openly and loudly disagreed with McCain on immigration for a long time. 

And then the two quotes from Limbaugh are out of context, one in the extreme.  They took a quote from Rush’s sense of what American immigration law would be if they were like Mexico’s.  He paraphrased protest laws for foreigners in Mexico by saying, “shut your mouth or get out”, and the ad makes it sound like he’s speaking to immigrants. 

Tapper’s article has the full context for the quotes and both sides of the story on the “lies”.  Karl Rove would be proud. 

Oh, and someone please tell Ed O’Keefe of the Washington Post that his entirely uncritical reporting on this new ad does a disservice to his readers (but a rather nice service to Obama).