Say It Ain't So, "O" (Part Three)

Who cares if he was?

I bet a lot of people would like some socialism right now given that Wall Street has had a taste of socialism to the tune of $700 Billion. The undecideds aren't realy Milton Friedman material. They want to know that they can fire up the gripp and have a steak once a week, live in their current house and pay for heat come winter.

Anyway, where do people come up with this stuff anyway? Is this from the same Larry Johnson who has the whitey tape that Mike Puckett has been touting with glee?

Unless McCain can come up with a real economic plan that average Americans can relate to, he isn't going to win this. The problem is that even the hard core racists seem to be undecided. Not a good sign for the GOP when the base is shaky.

"Is this from the same Larry Johnson who has the whitey tape that Mike Puckett has been touting with glee?"

Larry Johnson does not have the whitey tape and he never did. You wont see it until the end of the month.

Mike,

That seems a rather strange strategy that ignores early voting.

What about all the early voters right now? It wouldn't be fair to deprive them of Michelle's rants at whitey would it?

Plus they might vote for McCain if they saw the tape now. Though it might still be a tough call: racial pride vs. food on the table.

It would be a stranger strategy that ignores the timing and life of these stories. You are grossly exaggerating the effect of early voting but then you grossly exaggerate everthing you post about.

"Though it might still be a tough call: racial pride vs. food on the table."

So Obama hates you but will feed you where McCain loves you but will starve you? Puhlease! If stupid were water, you would be lake Erie.

It takes dollars to buy food, change will starve you like it did in the USSR.

Mike, read this:

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/postpartisan/2008/10/the_town_hall_debate_in_praise.html?hpid=opinionsbox1

It seems to me that many of you want to affix Obama with all of your fearful fantasies of radical liberalism.

Please take a moment and start thinking more rationally. Go read Obama's plans at his website.

Of course, knowing you guys you would say that his policy statements as indicated on his website were also fake - that his real agenda is different since you somehow know it is, and that the website is simply a front for his real agenda. Scary, scary etc.

Yes, he is a liberal. No, he is not a radical. It is important to wrap your head around the differences between those two words and stop the inflammatory rhetoric. Especially when the rhetoric isn't getting you anywhere but the gutter as Ross Douthat, David Frum and Kathleen Parker point out today.

anonsh##head,

Explain to us how someone teaching Alisnky's principles is a liberal and not a radical.

"Go read Obama's plans at his website."

Anyone can create a website and put up all sorts of great sounding BS that they don't necessarily believe or plan to carry out. What matters is ones record, and no matter what you use as your criteria to judge his record, be it his voting record or his associations with all manner of radical leftist people and groups, Barack Obama proves himself to be a radical leftist.

Rand and all, do the links make sense to you?

I clicked on the sure "looks like it" link Rand's post, and my eye was immediately attracted to the "Obama's signature" link, but when I click on that, I don't see Obama's signature - just minutes from a meeting (or something along those lines). I did a text search on the page for the name "Obama", and I just see a reference to Obama inviting people to join a voter registration drive.

I noticed that a few other links were similarly mislabeled (and then I gave up.)

That should have been:
"looks like it" link IN Rand's post..

From the progressive populist online archives

http://www.populist.com/11.96.Edit.html

New Party members and supported candidates won 16 of 23 races, including an at-large race for the Little Rock, Ark., City Council, a seat on the county board for Little Rock and the school board for Prince George's County, Md. Chicago is sending the first New Party member to Congress, as Danny Davis, who ran as a Democrat, won an overwhelming 85% victory. New Party member Barack Obama was uncontested for a State Senate seat from Chicago.

NOT A LIBERAL, A RADICAL

I bet a lot of people would like some socialism right now ...They want to know that they can fire up the gripp and have a steak once a week, live in their current house and pay for heat come winter.

Yes, but, you see, unfortunately it's capitalism that gives you the steak once a week and the house with the heat in the winter, and it's socialism that takes it away. The only thing socialism does is make sure that nobody else has steak and a warm house, too. Just ask those who lived in the Soviet Union. Or those in Zimbabwe, Venezuela, or Cuba today. It seems right and just that it should be possible for a benevolent dictator to redistribute stuff so we all have our daily bread. It also seems right and just that you should be able to lose weight by some other way than eating less and exercising more. Pity that reality doesn't conform to our wishes, huh?

Why should we believe anything he says?

Rand, you shouldn't. But you shouldn't believe anything McCain says, either. Or any politician. Electing anyone to a position of massive power based on what they merely say is folly unbound, putting a big premium on being the best bullshitter. It's part of the modern disease that we do put so much emphasis on "the issues" -- what a candidate says -- as opposed to who he is, his character and nature.

Would we choose as our heart surgeon the guy who talks the best and smoothest about it? Or the guy who's actually, you know, done it? Beats me why we don't apply similar hard-headedness about our national leaders. Maybe because the connection between what they do and what happens to us individually is so tenuous and hard to pin down.

Or maybe we're just idiots. People look at Bush and say that damn cowboy, spyin' on people without a warrant, reducin' our 'respect' in the world, none of which has the slightest effect on you personally, and they don't say gee, grandma gets her medicine paid for by Bush's Medicare Part D, and there hasn't been a terrorist attack on Americans in 7 years, and it sure has been nice keeping more of my paycheck the last 7 years, all of which does. Weird.

I also actually clicked on the links in Weaver's article about the DSA. Nowhere do the sources cited say Obama was a member. He "spoke to the membership" which does not mean he was a member. He gave a eulogy at a funeral along with, among others, then US Senator from Illinois Carol Moseley Braun.

Knowing the Hyde Park area of Chicago, the SDA folks probably actually are "people in the neighborhood." Yes, they are liberal. Liberal is not a bad word or a bad thing.

I think Chris nails it.

The problem with being liberal is a problem for those like Rand and most of the posters at this blog. It's not a problem when the alternative has been 8 years of George Bush with a $700 Billion icing on the cake and more icing likely to follow.

It's not really a problem that is going to scare voters away. That is, not unless you make stuff up. Which is really the point of the current pandemonium on the right.

I do love the links to nothing in particular. The links sounds so authoritative until you go there, jump to a few more links and return puzzled and empty-handed, and feeling like you've been on someone's stunt.

Rand, you should visit the Hyde Park neighborhood some time.

Most importantly, Obama's neighborhood contains the Apollo 8 command module at The Museum of Science and Industry, along with a fairly good space section. (Couple that with the excellent (new!) manned space exhibit at the Adler Planetarium which McCain maligned last night a few miles north, and the displays at suburban Triton college, and you have a nice space-related destination.

But back to Obama's Hyde Park: There is a really cool statue dedicated to Fermi's achievement, and there are wild tropical parakeets that got loose and multiplied.

Yes, Hyde Park is so communitarian that that the parakeets have adapted to the brutal Chicago winter by living communally, in big blobs, and each parakeet takes turns moving from the warm center to the cold periphery and then back again. I'm not making this up. There are maps on the web showing how to easily see the parakeets from the street. Seems like parakeets self-organizing into a commune should be excellent fodder for some anti-Obama group out there.

Oh, and the captured German submarine in Obama's neighborhood (at the Museum of Science and Industry) is easily the most interesting thing in the neighborhood.

"It's not a problem when the alternative has been 8 years of George Bush with a $700 Billion icing on the cake and more icing likely to follow."

No matter how hard you throw that at Bush, it's still gonna stick to Clinton and the Dems who ran Freddie and Fannie.

Bill Maron - I'm confused. The Republicans controlled Congress from 1994 to 2006, and the White House from 2000 to the present. Are you saying that the Democrats, using some Jedi mind-trick, managed to block the Republicans for 14 years?

I thought "ownership society" meant that one owned one's failures (if only failure to act) as well as successes.

Are you saying that the Democrats, using some Jedi mind-trick, managed to block the Republicans for 14 years?

I don't recall the Republicans ever having sixty votes in the Senate. If you can't stop a filibuster, you can't pass legislation.

Rand, you should visit the Hyde Park neighborhood some time.

"Visit" is the key word here. You want to visit only, and in the daylight hours. I lived in Hyde Park for a year, while I was post-docking at the University of Chicago, not a block from that cool Museum of Science.

The first night I slept in my new apartment the hub caps on my car were stolen. I knew better than to replace them, of course, not on the South Side. I routinely found jimmy marks on the door frame. I rode my bike to the university, and tried to take it inside when I was going to be late, but once I forgot and the wheels were stolen. Late in the summer, a woman was murdered and her body left in the little lakeside park near my apartment (and that wonderful Museum of Science). After a while you get used to going to sleep to the sound of car alarms and drunken brawls.

Hyde Park is the most unnatural community in the entire universe. You've got comparatively wealthy UC faculty and students living behind buzz-me-up gates, in the most heavily policed sector of the world since East Berlin circa 1960, surrounded by an almost Beirut-like warzone of whores, carjackers, and drug dealers on all four corners of the street. The number of people who make or grow something is approximately zip. The only thriving businesses tend to be boutique eateries and bookshops and such that cater to the UC elite, plus the liquor stores and squalid check-cashing markets that prey on the underclass.

There's very interesting historical stuff there, indeed. But it's kind of like the core of a nuclear reactor. Very interesting to visit, but watch where you step, and be sure you get out before it goes back into full operation.

Carl, how long ago was this? Things have gotten better. And for that matter, the submarine exhbit is way way cooler than it used to be too. I gasped the first time I saw the new exhibit.

Carl, here's some numbers to quantify my "getting better" characterization:
http://chronicle.uchicago.edu/070301/crimestats.shtml The raw numbers are nothing to brag about, but the trends are encouraging. And besides that, there's still the wild parakeets!

I remember the parakeets, Bob. Like I said, it was a fascinating place to visit. I worked in the Fermi building. When I was job-hunting, I recall visiting Oak Ridge to tour the reactor and signing in at the 1944-era security desk as Dr. So-and-so from Chicago, and feeling a weird sense of history, almost as if I was carrying a small satchel locked to my wrist with some "copper" in it.

My point is less that it isn't a fascinating place, but more that it is a strange place, and living there probably puts you way out of touch with what living in Small Town, USA, is like.

This has taken a somewhat amusing turn, which I will gladly further.

The South Side has dramatically improved in the last 30 years; when I was there as a student, one took one's life in one's hands by crossing 61st street to the south or Cottage Grove to the west. Woodlawn et al still aren't the kind of places I'd want to live, but they are economically functioning to a far greater degree than they were in the '70s. Back then, almost all the storefronts were boarded up, and the few that weren't all seemed to be dry cleaners or liquor stores. Now almost every business address has an actual, open business and the odd Caucasian is more an object of curiosity than a likely target.

Hyde Park itself has considerable charms, but it's far too expensive for normal human beings. Great place to visit, though.

The only thing socialism does is make sure that nobody else has steak and a warm house, too.

I work for a Swedish company and spend a lot of time in Sweden.

Not my favourite place but the women do live up to expectations.

They're also pretty socialist but they do have warm houses, often 2 (summer cottage), a new Saab or Volvo, a boat and there's a fair amount of steak to be eaten (more Reindeer than cow but I like it).

I'm not a huge fan of socialism myself, I like money too much, but claiming that all variants of socialism end up like Zim or Cuba is just daft.

That's pretty cool. I bet you visited Argonne and Fermilab too.

>way out of touch with what living in Small Town, USA, is like.

That might be true, especially if you don't go regularly visit people who live in small towns. But have a look at the percentage of Americans who live in small towns. If you live in a small town, you might be out of touch with what living the USA is like. (I'm not serious, but that's where your logic might lead.) Obama, as a US Senator regularly visited more of rural Illinois than the overwhelming majority of Illinois citizens.

Here is David Brooks on Palin and Obama:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/10/08/david-brooks-sarah-palin_n_133001.html

Obama is NOT a radical. Maybe he has no reservations avoiding contact with all and sundry but that is as far as it goes.

I don't believe that his various plans as apparent on his website or the collection of advisers he has assembled are a front for some nefarious plot. If so he is fooling not just the right wingers here but some of his strongest supporters such as Gov. Tim Kaine of Virginia. Kaine is someone who knows him very very well. Look at how Kaine has governed Virginia and tell me what radicalism you see and extrapolate what you expect from Obama.

And yesterday Lilibet Hagel endorsed Obama. Chuck Hagel is a personal friend. How much of a con-artist do you think Obama needs to be to fool all these people?

It seems much more likely that many of you think this tack of painting him as what he is not is worth winning the election. It could; but shame on you if that's what you really think. Palin's comments on Obama will turn every fair and reasonable observer against the modern GOP.

This number is up to 63:

http://sefora.org/2008/10/08/2008-chemistry-nobelist-endorses-obama-bringing-the-number-to-63/

63 radical Nobel prize winners. What the hell are they thinking? They should be reading Andy McCarthy at the Corner. ;-)

I was an undergrad at the U of C during the 70s, and from all that I've heard over the years, the place hasn't changed much. (Well, they did tear down that cinderblock monstrosity called Woodward Court. I even got to see my old dorm room exposed to the elements on the GSB's webcam showing the destruction.)

The strangest part of Hyde Park was how there were no chain stores or eateries of any kind. No groceries except for the Stalist "Co-op". McDonald's was finally let in on (if memory serves) 51st, after paying off "community organizers" who would make sure there wouldn't be Big Mac styrofoam boxes left all over the neighborhood. A where you dare not walk on any patch of grass because of all the dog shit. In the spring, the park next my apartment would have a sudden increases as the layers of snow melted down revealing a winter's worth of deposits, like a melting glacier.

Obama, as a US Senator regularly visited more of rural Illinois than the overwhelming majority of Illinois citizens.

I'm sure he did. At best, he did it the same way the other Hyde Park residents who founded the UofC's Oriental Institute would visit exotic locales to study the dusky natives and their quaint customs. Here;'s another hint: travel does not broaden the mind, and industrial tourism or a campaign bus are not the ways to get to know a location.

Here is David Brooks on Palin and Obama

Am I supposed to be impressed by what David Brooks thinks? If so, why?

I'm pretty sure that I've never cited him here, on any subject.

63 radical Nobel prize winners. What the hell are they thinking?

Just as it's stupid to think that I would be convinced by idiocy written by David Brooks simply because it's by David Brooks, why would I care what winners of Nobel science prizes think about politics?

You don't need to be impressed. Keep reading the Corner for your enlightenment. Things are getting so batty over there, the next thing you know Obama is going to be compared to Hitler, Gandhi, Stalin, Mao, Boy George and Britney Spears at the same time.

Well, at least you did realize that McCain lost the debate, in accordance with three polls afterwards. Fox Viewers by a margin of 84-15 thought McCain won. So, even in your apparent disregard for logical analysis in the matter of who Obama is , or your praise for Palin's fecund truthfulness you still have a ways to go before joining the really mad club run by the great American intellectual Sean Hannity. ;-)

...you still have a ways to go before joining the really mad club run by the great American intellectual Sean Hannity.

Sean Hannity is an idiot. But you make him look like a genius.

Sean Hannity is an idiot. But you make him look like a genius.

Problem is, in this neighborhood you are currently hanging out at, they do think he is a genius. In fact he just got a new $20 million contract.

I also actually clicked on the links in Weaver's article about the DSA. Nowhere do the sources cited say Obama was a member. He "spoke to the membership" which does not mean he was a member.

The above written by a guy who also wrote that Todd Palin is a radical sleeper agent that should be tried for treason, because he once attended a conference.

Problem is, in this neighborhood you are currently hanging out at, they do think he is a genius.

At least they don't blow up soldiers and worship Mao.

Ah, yes, the glacial moraines of canine excrement in the Hyde Park spring. Not one of my fonder memories.

Tending slightly back toward the topic at hand, has anyone asked the numerous UofC Nobelists in economics what they think of Obama? Or, for that matter, what they think of McCain?

claiming that all variants of socialism end up like Zim or Cuba is just daft.

They do if they remain true-blue socialist. You might find this book interesting. The other fate, however, is to remain "socialist" in name but morph into a free market economy with regulation and wealth-transfer bells 'n' whistles, like the way China is still technically "communist" although both Mao and Marx would have apoplexy if they saw the "communism" in Shanghai these days. I daresay the Swedes have chosen this route, too.

I'm not denying that a strong economy can support a certain amount of socialism, Daveon, just like a strong animal can support a few tapeworms.

That's pretty cool. I bet you visited Argonne and Fermilab too.

No. I wasn't actually touristing, I was there as part of the effort of the University of Tennessee to recruit me for an academic post. It came with a joint appointment to Oak Ridge National Lab, so they were showing off the place. It was a very nifty tour, however, for that reason. I got to get right into the bowels of everything, where you need film badges and must get into the whole-body Geiger counter afterward to see if you picked up too much radiation. The most alarming part of the tour was when a post-doc was showing me around some experiments right next to one of the reactor cores. While walking ahead of me he suddenly stopped before a ragged open alley crossing the piled equipment, thought a bit, and then walked forward across the gap, muttering it's okay, the reactor's not running today. It took a wee bit of nerve to follow him.

But have a look at the percentage of Americans who live in small towns

In 2000, about 58% of Americans lived in cities. However, since "city" usually defines the city core itself plus its (extensive) suburbs, I'd be inclined to think that no more than 30% of Americans live truly urban lives, as in Hyde Park.

Obama, as a US Senator regularly visited more of rural Illinois than the overwhelming majority of Illinois citizens.

Er, I dunno about that. Only 2.8 million (22%) of Illinois' 12.8 million citizens live in Chicago, and downstate is pretty rural. I'm also kind of doubty that a 6-hour campaign stop in Galesburg gives you much of a sense of what it's like to live there. Certainly not going to reshape your urban Chicago homey views.

Obama is a radical. His own words show that. You can point to his website and all the campaign rhetoric you want but that would mean for the last 20 years he was lying. So is he lying now or was he lying then?

So is he lying now or was he lying then?

What do you mean "or"? Why can't it be both?

Tending slightly back toward the topic at hand, has anyone asked the numerous UofC Nobelists in economics what they think of Obama?

I'm not sure about the Nobelists specifically, but Obama's chief economic advisor is Austan Goolsbee, who is an economics professor at the University of Chicago. I agree that the Nobelists themselves make an even nicer endorsement, but it's a little spoiled to always ask for their time. They hired Goolsbee with tenure, so obviously they respect his judgment.

Carl, more than 8 million of the 12 million in Illinois live in the Chicago area, and identify with the idea that live in "chicagoland". And then there are other suburban & urban areas in Illinois. Most Americans live in the suburbs surrounding a large city. 84% live in a metro area. I was about to say I don't have time to look up the statistics, but then I thought I wonder if it would take 10 seconds using google, and it did! Here's an article: http://www.brookings.edu/articles/2008/1008_smalltowns_katz.aspx
The article has political overtones, so it ought to be enjoyable to the Transterrestrial crowd. Gotta run, but thanks for the interesting comments!

Pff, Bob, color me unimpressed. A "metropolitan area" is so huge you've got to be basically out in the complete sticks before you don't qualify. I live in "metropolitan" Los Angeles, and I've got to drive 45 minutes to see the towers in downtown, my kids don't go to LA schools, and LA economics and politics affect me just about as much (or rather as little) as San Francisco politics.

The author wildly overestimates -- for the purpose of her political axe-grinding, of course, and because to her ("Metropolitan Policy Program Research Associate") cities are Where It's At, big time -- the importance of an "economic connection" in the sense that, I suppose, your groceries come from a distribution center downtown, and wildly underestimates the social connections people have to their local schools, local town councils, and neighborhoods, as well as the profound differences in lifestyles you can find within these gigantic 10,000 square mile "metropolitan areas." She also conflates "small town" with "rural" -- i.e. out on the farm -- which is hardly fair.

Heck, anyone who would imagine that folks in Naperville are living just like those inside the Loop (or in Hyde Park), even though they're both in the Chicago "metro area" is nuts.

There's a clear difference between thoroughly urban living, in the highrise apartment building, taking the city bus or el everywhere, with the nightlife taking off at midnight, and living out in the shady burbs, driving 40 minutes to work or the mall, barbecuing in your backyard with the neighbors, and the whole street going to sleep at 9.30 PM. Hyde Park denizens know all about the former, but the latter might as well be the antics of men from Mars for all they know it.

And which is more what America is like? The question answers itself.

Obama is a radical.

What's a 'radical'?

Are you saying that Obama is proposing radical solutions to radical problems, or are you saying he is running around blowing up statues? I notice a lot of statues were toppled during the fall of the iron curtain, and a lot of statues were blown up after the fall of the N@zis. Were those people radicals as well? Or just terrorists? Or tourists? No wait, let me guess, commie liberals?

How many students guilty of walking from one class to another has the esteemed radical Mr. Obama gunned down?

How many students guilty of walking from one class to another has the esteemed radical Mr. Obama gunned down?

You're confusing the word "radical" with "stupidhead." Radicals don't gun students down. They just pass laws that encourage their parents (with a fine, say) to see that the wee ones use the state's health plan, so the state can determine their correct medical treatment, and go to the state's schools so they learn to think in the correct way. Students have nothing to fear as long as they think the right thoughts. Parents have nothing to fear as long as they accept the state's primary role in deciding the health and well-being and future of their children.

Radicals don't gun students down.

Of course they don't. Radicals are incompetent, apparently. They can't even manage to blow up some statutes. To properly gun down a couple of unarmed innocent students, tourists, you need a whole bunch of National Guardsman. Tourists. Dead on the sidewalk.

You betcha. Darn tootin. Turrurists.

Do radicals besiege churches (resulting in a death toll 20x higher than Kent State)?

How's Goolsbee working out for the Obama campaign?

Are you saying that Obama is proposing radical solutions to radical problems

I am saying that he proposes radical (and collectivist and old and tired and failed multiple times) solutions to conventional problems.

How's Goolsbee working out for the Obama campaign?

Just fine as far as I know. I don't see that that bit of snark from Greg Sargent and Glenn Reynolds makes any clear point. Moreover, if you look at the complete list of economists who advise or support Obama, it includes at least four Nobel laureates as well as some other interesting names.

http://econ4obama.blogspot.com/2008/06/obama-economic-advisors-and-economic.html

If you expected accomplished economists to close ranks against Obama, that isn't what's going on at all.

conventional problems

You guys still think the American civil war and the great depression were 'conventional problems'. You're right, they make two illegal, immoral and criminal foreign wars in the last forty years look pretty mild in comparison.

But George and Dick have theirs. They're good. George has a country in south America, and Dick has a country in the middle East. They'll be fine. But you'll soon be stuck with a whole lot of hungry, angry and violent citizens, that you yourselves have created through neglect of fiscal responsibility, media and television indoctrination and educational reality, and those people will soon be inviting your wives and daughters to dinner, as main course and desert, respectively.

Are you afraid yet? You should be.

That would George Soros and Dick Durbin?

dick durbin before he dicks you.

But you'll soon be stuck with a whole lot of hungry, angry and violent citizens, that you yourselves have created through neglect of...[insert whiny leftist wish list]

Oh? You mean instead of stuck with a whole lot of power-hungry, angry and non-law-abiding citizens who got that way through bitterness at being unable to succeed in life without a big handout from the rest of us? Which is, you know, nothing new at all? We've had a restive half-criminal loser underclass since the Romans made examples of them along their roads.

those people will soon be inviting your wives and daughters to dinner, as main course and desert, respectively.

Yawn. Come The Revolution, we'll all be up against the wall, yeah yeah. Sounds strangely familiar.

Keep in mind we have the guns, and the brains. (After all, we can figure out how to pay for our homes and health care without Big Brother's help). My advice is to stick to voting yourself more lollipops at public expense, because if it comes to an actual test of will and force, just like in the bad old days on the savannah, you're dead. Because you're self-evidently stupid, and lack any form of productive self-discipline.

Oh dear, was I not sensitive to the "needs" of the "middle class?" So sorry! Run and tell mommy, now.

whiny leftist

Hey, not a problem, you're the 'Texas Rancher' who wanted to bring back the good old days, from your perspective you'll be much better off holed up at the homestead surrounded by your guns and nuts, than you would be if you were working to create a sustainable space based civilization with a happy, healty and well educated populace with a rational system of self governance.

Some of us just have a different perspective on what is scientifically possible and probable with a planetary system and a given amount of people and resources.

I do hope you enjoy the future you have purchased.

Jim, if I thought there were any real chance that Obama, or the 111th Congress, was going to listen to their advice, I'd vote for him in a heartbeat. Hell, I'd probably volunteer to work for his campaign.