OBAMA WINS!

Just thought I'd go ahead and get ahead of the MSM curve there, since I'll be out next Tuesday evening.

When a Democratic presidential candidate schedules an event in Springfield, Missouri the weekend before the election and brings his wife in to do it with him instead of keeping her on the trail elsewhere, there's only one reasonable conclusion: He's got this thing nailed down solid, and now he's going for "mandate" numbers in the Electoral College.

I grew up not too far northeast of Springfield, and my understanding is that my uncle (and my second cousin -- we share a border with Arkansas, see?)¹ was the first Democrat to be elected to county commission in our county (Laclede) since before the War Between the States (that was back in the late 70s or early 80s -- he only lasted one term). Occasionally a Democratic candidate for public office will take Springfield itself, but it's just a dot in the red sea of southern Missouri.

If Obama thinks he can pick up Missouri by campaigning in Roy Blunt's back yard, he's either stupid or he knows to a dead certainty that he's got the election in the bag. And Obama's not stupid.

If McCain manages to turn out the Diebold vote or something, maybe a printout of this blog will be in the running for use in the obligatory Harry Truman re-enactment. But I just don't see that happening. Missouri and North Carolina as tossups are hard evidence that the GOP is royally screwed for next Tuesday.

-----
1. It's not as kinky as it sounds. My dad's cousin married my mom's sister, so it's not like I'm my own grandpa or anything.

Some thoughts on the Boston Tea Party

As the founder and 2008 national vice-presidential nominee of the Boston Tea Party, that party is naturally on my mind a lot, especially as it wraps up its second biennial national convention and nears its first presidential election. And, also naturally, I find myself saying various things about it to various people (including, as of a few minutes ago, a reporter for the Associated Press).

Some of the points I'm trying to make keep coming up, so they seem worth writing down in one place ... like maybe here.

When I founded the BTP, I held out hope that it would, sooner or later, merge back into the Libertarian Party as an internal caucus. That's obviously not going to happen. With the nomination of its own presidential slate and the placement of that slate on several state ballots, our split from the LP at the national organizational level is complete. The split also proceeds apace at the state level as we recognize new affiliates which are likely to seek their own ballot access in 2010 and beyond.

Where that split is concerned, I once viewed it with trepidation, but that view has now changed to one of hope. The LP had a 36-year virtual monopoly and head start on cornering the libertarian political niche in America -- yet the BTP appears to be doing better coming into that competitive niche for the first time than the LP did when the niche was effectively uncontested.

We have more members than the LP did as of its first presidential election. We're on the ballot in more states than the LP was as of its first presidential election. I expect that our presidential slate will outpoll the LP's first presidential slate.

The LP appears to be unable to expand the American libertarian political niche against its major party opposition, or to defend its monopoly on that niche versus newcomers.

Enter Darwin. Personally, I expect that the next major stage of the Boston Tea Party's growth will include several state Libertarian Parties disaffiliating from the Libertarian National Committee and re-affiliating under the BTP umbrella.

The obvious cause to point to for the current situation -- up-and-coming BTP, LP teetering on the edge of the dustbin of history -- is the descent of the LP as a national organization into cargo-cultism. The nomination of the 2008 Libertarian Party Barr-Root ticket represented a final triumph of image over substance, and now we're watching that image crumble to dust under the wind of apathy. Image can't survive or thrive on its own. Without substance, it is dead.

Beyond the obvious, however, the BTP has its own reasons for optimism. We are a "principled populist" party, not just in rhetoric but in action. Just as we oppose the rule of "power elites" (in libertarian class theory, the political class) in the world at large, we deny those elites the ability to run our own party.

We are an activist-powered party -- our national committee is constrained by our bylaws from becoming a money sink, and therefore from becoming a central planning board. If something gets done, it's because our members want it to be done and go out and do it. Ernie Hancock, your new party is calling -- your approach failed in the LP because the Politburo/Commissar structure had already taken firm root before you tried so valiantly to shatter it.

We are a genuine mass-participation party. If you want to be involved, you don't have to travel hundreds of miles, shell out hundreds or thousands of dollars, and miss a week of work every time there's a convention. You don't have to send a representative and hope that representative actually represents you. If you're a member of our party, you can take part in its business activities via any Internet connection.

Finally, we're a consistently "smaller-government" party. Our platform isn't going to be cut by 3/4th at one convention and completely re-built at the next like the LP's has. It's perpetual and unmodifiable:

"The Boston Tea Party supports reducing the size, scope and power of government at all levels and on all issues, and opposes increasing the size, scope and power of government at any level, for any purpose."

Until and unless the state is completely eliminated, we will always be the party agitating to make it smaller tomorrow than it is today. That's the standard the national LP is going to have to meet if it wants to recapture its place of primacy in the freedom movement ... and I no longer believe that it can, or will, or even wants to, meet that standard.

I realize that many fellow libertarians whom I know and respect will continue to cling to the LP for some time ... and that's okay. I continue to work in my state LP and plan to do so for at least awhile longer. Breaking up is hard to do. I urge those libertarians remaining in the LP to think of the BTP as an ally, not an enemy. Our existence is an incentive to the LP to become better at what it does, and to think harder about what it wants to do. If it responds negatively to that incentive (as I believe it will continue to do), at least it no longer holds the claim over your head that "you have no place else to go." Because now you do.

[Cross-posted at the Boston Tea Party web site and Last Free Voice]

A note to the Belleville, Illinois city council

Dear Belleville City Council,

Is there anything on this planet -- any aspect of the lives of those who elected you -- that you people recognize as not in dire need of your gunpoint-enforced ministrations?

Never mind. I didn't think so.

Recommendations, short version: Extract crania from recta. Please. That's gotta hurt. It may not hurt you, but it's sure as hell hurting your city.

Recommendations, longer notes:

- Who gets to define "special needs child" for purposes of trick-or-treating? If they're trick-or-treating, they're not at school, so forget IEPs. Will Belleville be setting up a special board to determine whether or not each individual Little Johnny or Jenny is sufficiently cognitively differently abled to qualify?

- What idiot told you that the age of someone who might decide to knock on a neighbor's door and ask for candy on any given night, or the time at which he or she might elect to do so (provided it does not disturb the peace, which I bet you already have laws to address) is any of your business? And why did you believe that idiot?

- I have to surmise, at first glance, that that same idiot is the one who told you that whether or not people suspected of no crime might choose to wear masks is also your -- or "law enforcement's" -- business. I'm tempted to pop over to Belleville for Guy Fawkes Day to contest that proposition.

- There's a reason they're called "ex-convicts." It means they've served their sentences and that at present there's no probable cause to suspect they are involved in criminal acts -- because if there was probable cause, they'd be in jail awaiting arraignment, or out on bail under restrictions imposed on a case by case basis by a judge, right?

- Mayor Eckert: If you feel that you need to go the extra mile to protect the children, knock yourself out. Better yet, try going 6,600 miles -- your approach to governance seems better suited to Pyongyang than to Belleville.

- Since when did "scared" become a legitimate excuse for making up silly rules? If someone's five-year-old reports to the city council that he's scared of monsters under his bed, will you ... whoa, I'm going to stop right there before you have a chance to get all hopped up for a long ordinance-writing session.

I mean ... Jebus ... don't you people have anything better to do?

And the winner was ...

Well, Obama, but not in a knockout or anything. All he had to do was keep his cool. He did. McCain had to get Obama by the throat and strangle him (metaphorically speaking, of course). He didn't.

One of the Fox analysts (I think it was either Bill Kristol or Fred Barnes from The Weekly Standard) pretty much nailed it: It looked like a tennis match with McCain running all over the court to whack at the ball while Obama just kind of stood at the baseline and nailed it every time, no biggie. It's not that McCain had a lot of misses, it's that he had to work so hard to do what came off as easy for Obama. Obama looked and acted more ... presidential.

McCain kept looping back to the already shopworn Joe the Plumber schtick. He might have been better off riffing on his one real zinger: "I'm not George Bush. If you wanted to run against him, you should have run four years ago." But he wasn't able to press that one home, and Obama pinned the Bush tail right back on him with ease.

The Ayers thing was anticlimactic. McCain didn't manage to attach any sense of urgency to it, and Obama easily torpedoed it with cool and calm rather than with my suggested impassioned retort.

A real smaller-government candidate might have been able to land some blows on Obama, but McCain isn't a real smaller-government candidate and he doesn't convincingly play one on TV. His "maverick" streak goes more in the McCain-Feingold, McCain-Lieberman, etc. direction.

On the subject of VPs: Both of them agreed that Biden is a pretty well-qualified candidate. Both of them (Obama presumably to be polite when it cost him nothing to do so, McCain presumably because he didn't want to get laughed off the stage) smoothed right past the same question on Palin.

McCain is just outclassed. It's not that his policy positions or attitudes toward government are particularly better or worse than Obama's. They aren't. It's that McCain has huge handicaps (his age, his running mate, the Bush administration hanging around his neck like an albatross), while Obama is young, self-assured, and in the enviable position of running against eight years of misrule by McCain's party. I can't even imagine how much it must suck to be a Republican this year.

What Obama should say ...

... if McCain plays the Ayers card.

Senator McCain, I was eight years old when the Weather Underground became active. I was never involved in it. I never supported its activities. I later befriended a man who had once been a leader of that organization -- a man who had killed no one, a man who had turned himself in to the police, made amends, and become a peaceful member of his community right about the time I graduated from high school.

You were closer to sixty-eight years old when you began your active support for arming and funding the Kosovo Liberation Army, an al Qaeda connected terrorist organization responsible for hundreds, possibly thousands, of murders and kidnappings in the former Yugoslavia, and implicated in a plot to attack Fort Dix, right here on US soil. Your active support for those terrorists -- and their reciprocal support for you in the form of contributions to your campaigns, routed through their US front organization, the Albanian American Civic League -- continues to this very day.

Senator, I regret to inform you that you lack the moral stature to lecture me, or anyone else, on the subject of palling around with terrorists.

McCain has said he'd rather lose an election than lose a war. Well, he's going to lose an election. Tonight is really more about whether or not he flushes his personal dignity down the same toilet as his presidential prospects.

Might not want to throw out that tinfoil hat just yet ...

MSNBC reports:

The U.S. Army is developing a technology known as synthetic telepathy that would allow someone to create email or voice mail and send it by thought alone. The concept is based on reading electrical activity in the brain using an electroencephalograph, or EEG.

Of course, this has been staple science fiction stuff for a long time, and it would be silly to expect it to never move into actual R&D. I have to admit that I've long looked forward to a brain-implantable, mentally-controllable computer myself (and desperately hoping that Micro$haft won't be the OS leader -- "Blue Visual Field of Death," anyone?).

To get the down side, add "remotely" ahead of "reading" in the quote above. Think Van Eck phreaking, organic style. And once the channel is open, who knows but what it might not run two ways?

When (if?) this pans out, the very least we can expect is a new machine in the airport security line -- TSA will naturally be interested in who's thinking "don't look in my shoes don't look in my shoes oh Jebus did I leave the detonator on the bedside table back at the hotel?"

Depending on the limits of equipment -- reception, sensitivity, etc. -- the possibilities for political and industrial espionage are of obvious concern as well. Will we soon see presidents and CEOs wearing metal-mesh hairnets everywhere they go? Will presidential candidates run ads featuring their opponents' innermost thoughts?

And then of course there's what we don't know: How far along is this, really? If they're showing us this much that they're developing, what aren't they showing us that they already have?

Photo by Liam P. Millay

Bring it on!

Tune in next Friday, October 17th, at 9pm Eastern. As the nominee of the Boston Tea Party, I'll be debating other vice-presidential candidates on Restore the Republic Radio, an Internet broadcast outfit recently created by the merger of Revolution Broadcasting (a Ron Paul R3VOLution phenomenon) and Aaron Russo's Restore the Republic.

Confirmed participants so far include myself, Darrell Castle of the Constitution Party, and Wayne Allyn Root of the Libertarian Party. That list will likely grow, and I'll try to keep it updated.

Thanks to RtRR for creating this opportunity. They sponsored a presidential candidate debate this last Thursday. That debate included Chuck Baldwin of the Constitution Party, Charles Jay of the Boston Tea Party, Brian Moore of the Socialist Party USA, a representative of independent candidate Ralph Nader, Frank McEnulty of the New American Independent Party, and independent candidate Steve Allen. You can grab MP3s of that debate (it's split into three files) here.

Terror, firmer

Wikipedia on terrorism:

Most common definitions of terrorism include only those acts which are intended to create fear (terror), are perpetrated for an ideological goal (as opposed to a lone attack), and deliberately target or disregard the safety of non-combatants.

Wikipedia quoting author Dan Berger on the Weather Underground:

[T]he group purposefully and successfully avoided injuring anyone, not just civilians but armed enforcers of the government.

Wikipedia on the Kosovo Liberation Army:

The exact number of victims of the KLA is not known. According to a Serbian government report, from January 1, 1998 to June 10, 1999 the KLA killed 988 people and kidnapped 287; in the period from June 10, 1999 to November 11, 2001, when NATO took control in Kosovo, 847 were reported to have been killed and 1,154 kidnapped. This comprised both civilians and security force personnel: of those killed in the first period, 335 were civilians, 351 soldiers, 230 police and 72 were unidentified; by nationality, 87 of killed civilians were Serbs, 230 Albanians, and 18 of other nationalities. Following the withdrawal of Serbian and Yugoslav security forces from Kosovo in June 1999, all casualties were civilians, the vast majority being Serbs. According to Human Rights Watch, as "many as one thousand Serbs and Roma have been murdered or have gone missing since June 12, 1999."

Historical timeline document of the Albanian American Civic League:

- February 1998: "The Civic League issues a public declaration, 'In Defense of the Albanian National Cause,' in which it announces its support for the Kosova Liberation Army ..."

- March 1998: "[T]he Civic League holds the first rally on Capitol Hill in support of the Kosova Liberation Army."

Guess who contributed $5,000 to John McCain?

Hint: Try Googling the phrase "he did everything we asked of him, including arming the KLA."

Barack Obama used to hang out with a an old sixties lefty who killed no one. John McCain still pals around with the Balkans chapter of al Qaeda. Glass houses, stones, etc.

In celebration of the new kumari!

Frankly, though, it sounds to me like the girl is getting gypped. Shouldn't living goddesses be able to strike their enemies dead with a thought, command vast armies to invade neighboring countries, get tickets to Les Miz, that kind of thing? And what's up with the losing deity status when puberty hits thing? I'm just sayin' ...

So, I tell them I'm a pro jock, and who do you think they give me? The Dalai Lama, himself. Twelfth son of the Lama. The flowing robes, the grace, bald ... striking. So, I'm on the first tee with him. I give him the driver. He hauls off and whacks one -- big hitter, the Lama -- long, into a ten-thousand foot crevasse, right at the base of this glacier. Do you know what the Lama says? Gunga galunga ... gunga, gunga-galunga. So we finish the eighteenth and he's gonna stiff me. And I say, "Hey, Lama, hey, how about a little something, you know, for the effort, you know." And he says, "Oh, uh, there won't be any money, but when you die, on your deathbed, you will receive total consciousness." So I got that goin' for me, which is nice.

The key word is "principled"

The Libertarian Party Radical Caucus's Key Point #3:

Principled Populism -- The Libertarian Party should be a mass-participation party operating in the electoral arena and elsewhere, devoted to consistent libertarian principle, and committed to liberty and justice for all. The Libertarian Party should trust in and rely on individuals to welcome a program of liberty and justice and should always aim to convince people of the soundness of libertarian principles. Simply repeating our basic principles and not proposing transition measures is ineffective in the short run because only a small part of the populace is interested in liberty in the abstract, and hiding or abandoning our principled positions is ineffective in the long run because it fails to sustain us as a movement and attract and retain new Libertarians.

As the economic crisis continues to develop in a way that calls for -- nay, demands -- a "principled populist" approach, it's worth pausing for a moment to mourn the monstrous screwups of the last year or so with respect to the premise.

First the Paul campaign got publicly pantsed over Paul's previous Rothbard/Rockwell-inspired attempts to hook into the "populist" racist right.

Then the Libertarian Party nominated Bob Barr, a candidate whose admirers, for the love of Pete, are now tagging him with a "populist" label ... and attaching the other end of that label to George Wallace.

Principled populism pits the productive class against the political class, the awakening masses against the power elites -- not the white middle class against the black underclass or some mythical proud parochialism against some equally mythical indiscrete cosmopolitanism.

To put it a different way, any "principled populism" of a libertarian variety is going to have to weigh on the left, not the right, side of the political dichotomy as traditionally understood if it's going to be successful or if success is even to be a meaningful term with respect to libertarian goals.

The mission of the libertarian movement is not to make the world safe for a return to Jim Crow or the maintenance of marriage apartheid by shilling for "states' rights."

The mission of the libertarian movement is to win freedom for people. In America, that means from sea to shining sea, brother ... and for those of you who want to export it, more power to you once we have it to export. You'll know we're there when you buy the bayonets you're so eager to see the revolution carried abroad on with a voluntary subscription check instead of a mandatory tax return.

Make no mistake about it: The economic defecation is in a state of intersection with the oscillating political blades. We've already seen how "right-wing populism" fares against New Dealism. "Right-wing populism" = fail. The only way -- if there is one -- to beat Franklin Delano OBushma in the upcoming fight will be to hit him, and hard, from the left.

On the political side, key tactics might include things like agitating for repudiation of US government debt to other governments and central banks (as well as banning deficit spending), revoking corporate "personhood" and state-granted liability evasion, etc. On the anti-political side, cultivating the emergence of gray and black markets, barter and alternative currency schemes, etc. can loosen the political class's grip on the economy's throat.

It's time and past time for libertarians to seize the populist hammer -- we're the only ones rightly entitled to wield it in any case -- from the Dixiecrat pretenders and start smashing the state with it.

With all due respect to Woody

I'm certainly not planning to quit my day job. Hey, wait a minute, this is my day job ...

This land is Hank's land, this land is Hank's land
From east to west, son, it belongs to Paulson
To get the market rising, Hank is supervising
This land was bought by you and me.

As I was walking down to my mailbox
Saw foreclosure looming, it's called Paulson's Smallpox
Saw my poor self living in a brown cardboard box
This land was bought by you and me

(chorus)

They took our money, and made it all funny
To Alfalfa and Spanky, add the name Bernanke
From the hole at Ground Zero, out to Fisherman's Pier, oh
This land was bought by you and me

(chorus)

If your name isn't Buffett, be prepared to just tough it
'Cause the gamblers on Wall Street will never have to just rough it
They made contributions to their pet politicians
And this land got bought by you and me

(chorus)

If you see a sign that says "no trespassing"
It's talkin' to you and the evicted who're massing
In the reborn Hoovervilles and up in the country hills
To take back this land for you and me

(chorus)

Just trying out this...

Hmmm .... here's what got posted, but it got posted to "draft," which means that I can't just livephoneblog at will:

Just trying out this new thing called jott.com utility for blogging my phone. I've already it out with Twitter and it's pretty cool. listen

Powered by Jott

So, I can send it, but then I have to get to a computer to actually publish it. What it should have read like was:

"Just trying out this new thing called jott.com, a utility for blogging by phone. I've already tried it out with Twitter and it's pretty cool."

So, the speech recognition isn't perfect, but it's not bad, either (and I do have a cold and a croaking voice at the moment).

I'm wondering if there's a setting I can change somewhere to get direct-publish instead of draft. That's the main thing. I want to be able to torture my readership from anywhere, at any time, without lugging around a laptop and wireless Internet setup.

Next

Horwitz:

What we want to avoid, I would argue, is a repeat of what is now the conventional narrative of the Great Depression: It was capitalism that caused the crash, it was Hoover's inaction that turned it into a Great Depression, and it was FDR's interventions that saved us. As we now know, that's wrong on all three counts, particularly on the issue of Hoover's inaction. He was quite the interventionist and those programs, picked up later by FDR, made matters much worse. The analogy to the current situation is pretty striking.

That's about the size of it, and I don't think there's anything we can do to stop the "FDR reincarnated" narrative from taking root. Or, rather, I doubt Horwitz on the following:

[I]f one really believes this bailout will make matters worse, especially significantly worse, I think it's a reason to vote/root for Obama. ... With Obama in office, and things going south, it might be more akin to the late 70s under Carter, where the blame is less likely to be laid at the feet of markets.

I'm not that optimistic. If McCain won the election, he and Palin might finally kill off their party for good and leave the field open to a real pro-market, pro-freedom opposition party (assuming one can be put together -- I'm trying, folks, I'm trying).

Obama, on the other hand, may very well be the next FDR with all that that entails ... and his presidency will either destroy the Republican Party as surely as a McCain/Palin presidency would, or else give GOP leisure to refurbish the useful myth that they're something other than the party of big government they are and always have been.

Meanwhile, the Libertarian Party chose this, of all election cycles, to cast itself in the role of "rat swimming toward a sinking ship," wasting its presidential and vice-presidential nominations on two Republicans who are if anything less appealing than McCain/Palin (at least it feels that way ... but I'm not sure that's even possible).

Frankly, this election cycle is beginning to read like a goddamn Hemingway novel, and I'm wondering at what point we'll all have to choose between:

After a while I went out and left the hospital and walked back to the hotel in the rain.

... and ...

He could feel his heart beating against the pine needle floor of the forest.

Hey, Uncle Sugar's got you covered, right?

Our leaders have spoken! Time to stop being part of the problem and start being part of the solution! With that goal in mind, here's some implementation assistance for Hank Paulson and Friends. Print, clip, mail, enjoy.

What I saw "at" the debate

Well, not much, really. Sundries:

This is my third debate protest at Washington University. When the school hosted presidential debates in 2000 and 2004, there were thousands of demonstrators, some real media figures (Nader spoke in 2000, for example), lines of police in riot gear, etc. In 2000, we seized an intersection, stood toe-to-toe with the cops, backed their asses down, and were at least able to say we forced a motorcade re-route.

This year, there were, at any given time, a couple of hundred demonstrators, held at bay by eight or ten cops on bicycles. And not really held at bay, either. The Instead of War group held a lame rally, marched up to the barricade, pled for a minute to have its representatives let in to "raise the real issues," and then marched off whining that they were going to hold their own forum. That left about 50 people in the area, at which point even the Falun Gong stalwarts packed their stuff, exited the fenced-in "Free Speech Zone," and went away.

Then a gaggle of firefighter unionists in Obama shirts, maybe 100 of them, marched in, stood around for a bit, took a group photo, and left too.

The "we love Sarah Palin" bloc had left long before, after standing around with sour faces for awhile. I think the last straw was the march past them by eight or ten "Sarah Palin Look-Alikes for Obama." Or maybe the couple in Palin and McCain masks walking back and forth in front of them, with "Palin" making crude jokes about "McCain's" age and fending off "his" gropes. It was pretty much the only decent street theatre except for one of our Libertarian guys who made a good show of satirically talking up the "bailout" to the R&D types. Funny, none of them wanted to talk about that.

The antiwar left is obviously dispirited this year -- they're not willing to abandon the Democratic Party, even though that party has clearly abandoned them by nominating a guy who ran against the war in 2004, voted to continue it every time the question came up from 2005 to this very day, and in mid-campaign is sabre-rattling at low volume to avoid associating himself with them. The IOW guys didn't seem to want to talk about that either.

It's kind of embarrassing, really. In the 60s, an anti-war leftist could at least take comfort in the thought that if he was a dupe, he was the dupe of a vast, deceptive Communist conspiracy -- those sly Kremlin puppet masters, he could think, at least looked like they had their world domination shit together at that point, and they were handing out good acid.

Who the hell wants to be a dupe of today's Democratic Party? It's ... well, it's degrading. If you're going to have to admit you got rooked, you want to at least be able to say the guy had an intricate, novel scam. This is like admitting that you lost your life savings to a Nigerian letter scammer. Sure, Obama is going to win and win big, but not on his merits. He's going to win because most Americans hate George W. Bush, don't quite get John McCain, and would gouge their own eyeballs out before they'd allow Caribou Barbie to park herself a heartbeat away from the presidency.

Anyway ... the Libertarian contingent at the protest was decent in size (15 people or so). We were also the loudest, happiest and most cohesive, and we were the last organized group to leave. There were probably ten frazzled stragglers still standing around when we paraded away in search of beer. In 2000, I was the only Libertarian waving a sign, and I only ran into a couple of others. In 2004, we had 30-40 people. So we lost fewer participants pro rata, anyway.

As far as I know, I was the only vice-presidential candidate on-site (or at edge-of-site, anyway) besides Biden and Palin. I got a couple of interviews, one as the BTP's vice-presidential nominee, one as an LP congressional candidate. I also had a short chat with a neat lady from HuffPo who had enjoyed watching the LP's national convention on CSPAN, but I don't think that was interview per se. I'll try to replace the blurry lo-res pic above (taken with an $8 cam) once some film gets developed. The blurry pic is me, standing behind the IOW "rally" and next to a Che-like Obama portrait, waving my BTP sign.

So, we trooped off to Krieger's for a drink or three. The debate was on the tube, but inaudible due to bar noise. Biden looked serious and together. Palin looked like a limping deer in the headlights of an 18-wheeler. I'm reading the debate transcript right now, and in black and white Biden is whipping her ass. I understand that the overall impression was different for many, however. Gotta find a tape.

McCain gets it right

No, no, not that McCain, the other McCain:

Look, I'll be 49 years old next week. I've seen too many Washington "crises" to be frightened by this latest freakout. I'm having a hard time thinking of the last time the Beltway establishment consensus was right about anything. Hell, people in D.C. can't even drive, and we're supposed to trust them to run the economy?

As I mentioned yesterday, the last time I saw such broad-based bipartisan panic in Washington, it was over the "crisis" of Saddam's weapons of mass destruction. How's that working out for you?

This whole bailout business is really bringing out a nasty "we're the guys in suits and ties, the serious people, the ones who create our own reality, and if the public doesn't buy what we're peddling, we'll pout a little and maybe throw a tantrum on the living room floor" reaction from the beltway bobbleheads.

Remember that the next time you're tempted to take a day off and let these whistledicks do your thinking for you. And if you haven't rattled your Senator's ear with some Old Testament rhetoric ("woe unto he who appeases the Paulson!") yet, get on the horn. Now. [Update: If you can get through. Kit Bond's office is giving me an "all circuits are busy" response; Claire McCaskill's number has been forwarding to a "voice mail box is full -- goodbye" message all week - TLK]