That is, if you can believe such contrived, loaded polling. Alternate explanation? Older whites, rather than being “racist,” aren’t particularly taken in by a guy who promises everything and says nothing. Too, they’re old enough to remember the Weathermen, Alinsky, Community Organizing, BLT, etc. — and they, being the bourgeois Democrats of the sixties and seventies, aren’t particularly drawn to the “new leftists” who have since taken over the Democratic

From the WSJ: “You can’t be a rational person six days of the week and put on a suit and make rational decisions and go to work and, on one day of the week, go to a building and think you’re drinking the blood of a 2,000-year-old space god,” comedian and atheist Bill Maher said earlier this year on “Late Night With Conan O’Brien.” On the “Saturday Night Live” season

A couple years back I talked about a kind of bloodless civil war happening in the US, the idea being that a logistical reshuffling could bring back into the national discussion federalist principles and arguments. It was an offhanded comment made in the course of a longer post, but it was nevertheless carefully extracted and excerpted by, among others, Hilzoy and Mona, to argue that I had called for a

From LAT Top of the Ticket: Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin will meet in New York next week with Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai, among other world leaders scheduled to visit the United Nations annual autumn General Assembly Session. A spokesman for the McCain campaign confirmed the surprise visit tonight as well as hinted at as yet unannounced sessions between the Republican Party’s surprise vice presidential pick and other leaders. [insert: photo

The stopper toe hold. This can break an ankle or bust up a knee fairly quickly. The move is designed to be done quickly, with ample opportunity to chain into other moves depending on the reaction of your opponent. Personally, I like to do this after love making, if my wife gets all uppity and refuses to go downstairs and fetch me a beer and a chicken soft taco.

Ray Robison, National Defense Examiner: A spate of recent news articles demonstrate that the Iraqi Police are finally stepping up to the plate. The rebuilding of law enforcement in Iraq was one of the most important objectives outlined by the Bush Administration in the early days of the war. That step would turn out to be one of the most difficult challenges of the rebuilding and reconciliation efforts in Iraq.

If McCain and that part of the GOP who saw this coming don’t get out in front of this credit mess and start hammering away at the blame game the Dems and their media myrmidons are pushing, we could conceivably end up with the lunatics in charge of the asylum. Or, to put it another way, clear the sidewalk: we need space for bread lines, baby!: It was a room

Others have mentioned this July piece by Paul Gigot — which includes links to other WSJ pieces, as well as to response pieces from Raines, Rep Oxley, and Sen Conrad — so I figured I’d link it here for posterity’s sake. The meat and potatoes: Freddie’s accounting fiasco became public in 2003, while Fannie’s accounting blew up in 2004. Mr. Raines was forced to resign, and a report by regulator

It’s not just an infuriatingly monotonous eighties angst band anymore. Physics question: just how deep can one dig the memory hole before burrowing through the entirety of the earth and resurfacing in China? And once there, how will China’s own memory hole react to the sudden appearance of its western equal — mini black hole? Or the sudden, spontaneous erection of Disneyland Beijing, built from nothing but magma and the

“What people don’t seem to realize, Mr Billy Jack, is that those of us who’ve felt the sting of racism can recognize it by its very timbre. White people seem to think they can hide their fear of the black man in subtle turns of phrase or situational metaphors. But what they don’t realize is that those of us who’ve studied America’s racist history are able to decode such timorous