Standard wisdom says if you want less of something, tax it. There's another part of the tax equation that's standardly overlooked. Real estate is the one class of assets which we're taxed on merely for holding. Keep a closet full of gold bars, no tax (not unless and until you go to sell them at a profit) - not on the gold bars. But there's a yearly tax on the closet, if it's part of a building you own! Government has every incentive to encourage wealth to be put into real estate instead of other asset classes, because government collects a yearly tax just on the part of your total assets which is real estate.

The real estate bubble, thus, was in reality (whether or not planned as such) a way for governments to increase total tax revenue, even while making a big show of "cutting taxes."

This also suggests that what we want more of, we should encourage government to tax. If the tax potential is large enough, government will damn sure figure out a way to see that we get more of whatever the taxes are on. Those who want more religion, for example, should encourage government to tax it.

Every speaker last night slammed "community organizers." The goal: Given Obama's much better ground game, most citizens of contested states will see Obama's campaign workers come to their doors. But these clean-cut, polite, young people should not be let in, because in reality they're "community organizers," not true, hardworking Americans involved in the normal course of a political campaign. Think about it. Why aren't they at their jobs? How do they even have time to show up at your door? And don't they look just a little strange to you?

The modern Republican doesn't care about the state of the world beyond his or her own death. This is clear across the board: No concern about putting the country deep into debt; no concern about ecological collapse; no concern about the peak oil crisis. Okay we know that. But look how well it frames McCain's Palin pick:

Palin is manifestly unqualified and unprepared to be commander in chief. Her penchant for denial of reality (e.g. "intelligent design," suing to keep the polar bear off the endangered species list, lying about her orders to fire her brother-in-law) can only lead to national tragedy if she's ever in that chair. But for McCain, as a Republican, there's no problem. In the event of Palin assuming the presidency, Mr. McCain will be dead.

What could more clearly show that his concern for America's future extends no farther than his concern for himself?

Ignore the imagery and listen to the "Obama Obama Obama" soundtrack in McCain's ads. Do you notice what's missing? The pause for breath between "Obama"s. In this classic use of visceral response in conditioning, you become uncomfortable, both because there is something unnatural about a crowd that doesn't need to breathe to chant, and even more because you empathicly feel you can't breathe yourself - just to the extent you identify with the chanting crowd.

The visual imagery and the narratives are all a distraction to set this up: the feeling that the very name "Obama" is suffocating. Because this conditioning happens below consciousness, it will color future footage in crowds chant for Obama with normal pauses for breath. It's insidious, a move by the McCain camp to win not through conscious message, but by a very crude sort of conditioning.

Are psych ops specialists helping produce this stuff?

When the number of points in the spread are politically important, and the race is between two people, the reporting should not be to the nearest percent, but the nearest percent / 2. So PA is 54.5% for Clinton to 45.5% for Obama - correctly showing the 9 point spread, when rounded to the nearest point. Yes, no one cares about 45.39% compared to 45.5%, the rounding beyond the .5% is not significant to the political discussion. But it would clutter neither or minds nor the page to add those .5's to the figures, and round to them.