The most dangerous threat our country faces isn't terrorism,  WMDs or drugs, it's stupid people. They are living in our midst, doing everything possible to make our nation the worst it can be and to destroy our planet with short-sighted. <p>To address this threat, I would like to make a  modest(ly elitist) proposal. In the voting booth, each voter will now be required to answer 5 basic general knowledge questions before casting their ballot. Each vote will be weighted by the number of correct answers. Obviously you don't tell the nation's myriad self-assumed geniuses how many they got right so everyone can assume their vote fully counted. That way the 18% of Americans who think the sun revolves around the earth no longer have any say in the direction of our country.
<p>The founder intended for this country to be elitist, so they made up the electoral college. It's time to update our modern election system to honor our founders intentions by instituting an "elementary-school" college.

I saw this post and realized it demanded further investigation.  This is what I dug up and I think it demands serious analysis. My investigations have confirmed the real reason behind Hillary's supposed "defeat": There is a massive worldwide conspiracy to deny her rightful place as President of the United Swing States of White Americans.

It all started back in 1920 in a smoke filled room full of misogynistic muslims in New Hampshire called the "Future Undermine Hillary Instead Leave Loser in After Race Yes!" or FUHILLARY for short. FUHILLARY pressed to enact legislation requiring the state's primary to be the first held in the nation by law. They realized that by acting so far in advance, they would be able to influence the result of the 2008 Democratic Primary contest between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama without being detected.

After seeing how cute Obama was as a child, FUHILLARY redoubled their efforts, re-emerging 40 years ago in Iowa.  They pushed hard to establish the tradition that Iowa's caucus be the first event in the democratic primary calendar. They were well aware that their actions would ensure the success of their efforts to deny Hillary the Presidency in 2008.

Unfortunately, in the early 1970s the group's anti-american activities were noticed by the authorities and it was forced underground. Bill Clinton fought his way to the presidency and did his best to irradicate FUHILLARY.  However, under cover provided by the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy, FUHILLARY retreated into chaotic instability of the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s.
The group was thought to be responsible for the sniper fire which Hillary came under as she visited the region during this time.

Under a secret agreement made during the Clinton handover to Bush, the new administration used modern techniques of surveillance to continue to minimize the threat of FUHILLARY until the Democrats, funded by illegal FUHILLARY donations, retook control of Congress in 2006. They promptly set about removing impediments to FUHILLARY's activities, ultimately denying Bush his ability to spy on Americans. Their nearly unlimited financial resources allowed FUHILLARY to infiltrate the Democratic party and sanction the establishment of the South Carolina primary and Nevada caucus, while making the decision to strip citizens of Michigan and Florida of their voting rights. 

FUHILLARY successfully placed their agents within the Hillary campaign and some of her top advisors are actually FUHILLARY moles.  These agents advocated this decision and used a technique called "hydroplanking" to force her to sign an agreement denying the right of the most important states in the country to bestow the divine right of the presidency upon her. At this point, the FUHILLARY effort to deny Hillary the presidency became obvious to anyone who cared to look. However Clinton herself interrogated and successfully turned a number of FUHILLARY agents within her own campaign.

These efforts foiled, the group's newest strategy includes the abduction of numerous Hillary superdelegates and their replacement with evil robots called Obamanoids. FUHILLARY has infiltrated numerous national news organizations and is known to be spreading misinformation on blogs. Any information pertaining to Hillary Clinton or the Presidential election campaign that is not provided by Hillary Clinton herself, hillaryclinton.com or any of her approved surrogates should be treated as highly suspect. 

If you become aware of any additional FUHILLARY activities, please go to hillaryclinton.com or just forward this information along with contact details, your bank account number and current balance to donate@hillaryclinton.com. You should also provide contact details for at least 5 friends and relatives who can provide a reference confirming you are not an FUHILLARY agent. Your "tip" will be treated anonymously* and your e-mail address will be added to Hillary's growing list of 17 million donors.

*except for FEC reporting requirements 

Were those attacks on Obama coming from his former minister?  Sounded like it to me.  It made me realize that the best resolution of the Wright situation for Obama could actually be to have a dramatic public falling-out between himself and Rev. Wright.  A falling-out would definitely draw a pretty clear line between the two of them, fighting the soft "guilt-by-association" narrative but might not do much about the hardline "Obama: Enslaving the White Race '08" black supremacist narrative.  Any thoughts?

I have seen repeated MSM references to FactCheck.org this election cycle as a non-partisan organization, most recently on a CNN blog attacking Obama's comments on John McCain's 100-years pledge with a bit of extra gusto.  So I thought I better do a little fact checking on FactCheck myself.  They say:

We are a nonpartisan, nonprofit, "consumer advocate" for voters that aims to reduce the level of deception and confusion in

Maybe I was just drunk last night, but it seemed that, as usual, the media commentariat entirely missed the point of what happened in this debate.  <p>Obama, often visibly frustrated with the lines of questioning being thrown his way, tended to respond with some aplomb and a healthy measure of disgust.  There were uncomfortable moments, but overall he played the human to a robotic Hilary with her canned responses. I felt Obama was speaking to me in his intimate, plainly worded opening statement while Hillary was speaking in platitudes to no one in particular.  Obama seems to have Bill's magic touch - he can make you feel like the only one in a crowded room. Some female colleagues recall meetings with the the former president with some particularly interesting and vivid details for this very reason.  <p>As for McCain, his feted status was betrayed by the peels of laughter which followed the video of his comedy-of-errors pronouncement of economic policy.  I can’t wait until McCain's honeymoon is over and he enters the proper glare of the spotlight.  Obama’s response that McCain’s plan is to take out a credit card from

Maybe I was just drunk last night, but it seemed that, as usual, the media commentariat entirely missed the point of what happened in this debate. 

John McCain has been subject to some slightly more intense media scrutiny from some interesting places today.  

The American Banker (subscription) states that his “views on the housing crisis appear to be evolving quickly” before pointing out that McCain previously stated a desire to focus on “deserving home-owners” without providing any details in a speech made two weeks ago in

Morton Kondracke's column in today's Roll Call commends Barack Obama for "his agile performance" in recent congressional hearings on Iraq.  I believe it's subscription only so I provide generous excerpts:

"Of the three presidential candidates displaying their intellectual wares in questioning Gen. David Petraeus and U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker, Obama surely was the most subtle and shrewd....

By contrast, Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) basically delivered dueling campaign speeches over which was more “irresponsible” — too-hasty troop withdrawals or continuing present policy.

But it was Obama who took most advantage of the televised hearings to render a nuanced — even silken — performance.

In a statement rare among Democrats, he declared “we all have the greatest interest seeing a successful resolution to Iraq.” The party line is that Iraq is a “quagmire” or (Clinton’s words) a “failed policy.”

Obama acknowledged that “the surge has reduced violence and created breathing room,” although he did not take the opportunity to admit that he was wrong last year to predict that the surge would fail and to vote to cut off funds for U.S. troops.

Obama didn’t, to his credit, say that no political progress had been achieved using the surge’s “breathing room.” He just said it “has not been taken the way we all would like it.”

Obviously Obama gives away his status as a neo-phyte on these issues by showing actual independent thinking.  This mindset shows that he just does not have enough experience to grasp the nuances of complicated geopolitical issues required to fight the "war" on terror - like which groups are sunni and which are shiite or whether snipers are indeed firing or not. 

The most interesting part of Obama’s performance, though, was his laying down of what constitutes “success” or “a manageable situation” in Iraq.

His standard seems to be “a messy, sloppy status quo but (where) there’s not, you know, huge outbreaks of violence, there’s still corruption, but the country is struggling along, but it’s not a threat to its neighbors and it’s not an al-Qaida base.”

This sets a good foundation for debates with McCain on Iraq - challenge him to define success.  If McCain's definition is little different then Obama's it becomes harder for him to pursue the pavlovian "Retreat and Defeat" line - it's a difference of opinion on the effect of withdrawal.  However, McCain would probably just lose his temper and reveal that he actually prefers the 10,000 year occupation to either the 1,000 or 100 year options and would like to be cryogenically frozen and reawakened every few hundred years to have a check on things and show his experience off by having a relaxing stroll under sniper fire.

...but it was just the debt collection agent again.

From today's Politico:

Hillary Rodham Clinton wants voters to decide the nomination based on who can coolly and competently run the country. She had better hope they don’t study her recent campaign too closely for the answer.

I wanted to highlight three points from Obama's economic speech which marked his approach to the crisis as vastly superior to the alternatives put forth by the other presidential candidates. This speech should put any questions regarding Obama’s policy substance thoroughly to rest. While this speech will not go down in history, it was on many levels, just as important as his speech on race. Rather than seeking to make headlines by offering up gift baskets to voters, Obama synthesized much of the best thinking on possible solutions to the crisis. He set down core principles which should guide the nation’s attempts to reform financial regulation which is still based in an era before banks were allowed to open branches across state lines, much less trade trillions of dollars worth of derivatives with counterparties around the world.

In discussing the principles upon which any new regulation should be based, Obama said the focus should be on what financial institutions do, rather than what they are. The current crisis has stemmed largely from the fact that new institutions became key players in the creation of mortgage credit with no regulatory oversight. He acknowledged that for the most part, the US banking system is already highly regulated and the vast majority of these institutions have acted responsibly. This is a reassuring tone for most of the nation’s 8500 banks, only a handful of which are the size of BoA’s, Citibanks and JP Morgans. These banks support the real economy of this country and often lack the resources to remain viable when forced to comply with punitive or excessive regulation targeted at the actions of others. A great example is how US banks are so frequently asked to play police force by federal authorities – for instance to bear the costs of trying to enforce a misguided ban on internet gambling passed by the last moralistic republican Congress. Banks file thousands of reports on transactions each day – like those that led to the fall of Elliot Spitzer and comply with many levels of regulation. They do this in return for the system of deposit insurance which provides them with greater stability by guaranteeing the deposits of their customers. These banks, while not perfect and not always concerned with the consumers best interest, are not to blame for this crisis. Obama engaged with the problem at the very center of this current crisis – the intersection of regulated and unregulated financial institutions – rather than proposing feel-good solutions which will only create further problems.

In contrast, Clinton’s proposed 5-year rate-freeze is populist nonsense and would be a total disaster. Forcibly rewriting contracts in such a way is a case where the cure would kill the patient – it may indeed make for a better outcome in the long run, but the pain getting to that point would be catastrophic. Such a policy would lead to an unimaginable contraction of mortgage credit which would cause house prices to collapse completely and bring down the current financial system with them. The good news is that after going through a new great depression, we would get to start again from scratch and think twice about the excessive level of subsidy which has brought the cost of housing to unaffordable levels which are out of alignment with historical norms. This was a primary factor in the proliferation of exotic mortgages which allowed people to buy into the dream of homeownership, a cornerstone of the Bush presidency. Republicans and Democrats alike have shown an inability not to interfere with the functioning of the housing market and have pursued distorting policies providing excessive levels of subsidy for homeownership driven by an expansion of credit. These policies are just as responsible for the crisis as unregulated financial institutions. McCain calls this “not interfering with the functioning of the free market”. Unfortunately for McCain’s ideological tic of a response, the reality is that US real estate is already partially nationalized through Fannie and Freddie so a little bit more won’t hurt at this point. Yes, if you have a mortgage it’s very likely that your house is owned by both that bank and the federal government agencies disguised as independent companies. Finally, Obama’s focus on Rep. Frank, Chairman of the House Financial Services and one of the most respected and intelligent members of congress, as a key player in any solution to the current crisis is worth noting. Barney is perhaps the key player in any reform of financial regulation. He commands respect from those who work with him on both sides of the aisle, is incredibly engaged with the relevant issues and despite sometimes displaying an abrasive personality, he has a track record of working closely with stakeholders to develop good public policy. He works to protect consumers while allowing financial institutions to remain competitive in the domestic markets and internationally. By contrast, Clinton put her faith in former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan, whose legacy is now being rewritten by the current financial crisis and whose policies as Fed Chairman are now widely regarded to have been a major contributing factor to our current problems.

The economic proposals of both Clinton and McCain show that both are completely out of touch with the reality of this crisis. Clinton’s focus on the minutiae of policy shows a tendency to micromanage that may work in a Senate committee, but would be a serious handicap as president. Further, her focus on the concrete details is calculated to hide ill-considered policies, born out of triangulation – keep in mind she already had one disastrous try at reforming health-care where she proved to be something like Barney Frank’s opposite. McCain shows the symptoms of that rare form of tourette’s syndrome contracted by most Republican presidential candidates which allows them to communicate with the unthinking automatons of the “free market” faith. Obama, on the other hand, shows a level of leadership and intelligent engagement that the other candidates simply do not match. To me, the closest parallel to Barack Obama is Tony Blair as New Labour came to power in 1997 – both are modernizing figures, driving his party out of the past and towards its future – with much kicking and screaming. His concerns about inequality allow him to pursue redistributive policies in an attempt to rectify that injustice but he ultimately recognizes the vital importance of business, finance and trade to our country’s standing in the world.