The Continuing Saga of Philip J. Berg (Esquire!)

Over at obamacrimes.com, lawyer Philip J. Berg (Esquire!*) continues to beg for the public's attention, this time by announcing that "by and through" he himself, "WE THE PEOPLE"** are sponsoring "OBAMA BIRTH CERTIFICATE / ELIGIBILITY/ OBAMACARE March on Washington." Not just "a" march, but the march. Unfortunately, "We the People," don't seem that interested in actually participating in this thing we're supposedly sponsoring "by and through" Mr. Berg.

Due to scheduling conflicts and the importance of this March, the date of the OBAMA BIRTH CERTIFICATE / ELIGIBILITY/ OBAMACARE March on Washington was postponed from Memorial Day Weekend to sometime in August / September 2010.

Hey, I know this here march against Barry Soetero Obama Hitler Chavez thing is important, but you didn't expect me to give up my Memorial Day cookout and the Co-Cola 600, now, did you?

When "We the People" do get off their couch-potato asses to march on Warshington, Berg has a special request.

All individuals participating are requested to bring a copy of their Birth Certificate.

That would be your original long-form vault copy birth certificate, by god. If this "march" (shuffle, perhaps, is more like it) ever gets off the ground, I'd be tempted to go just so I could go around to individuals demanding to see their birth certificates, then insisting upon seeing their original sealed vault copy.

--------
* This "Esquire" business of lawyers bugs me to no end. My Environmental Law teacher at Cal State Bakersfield was a recent law school graduate who had not passed the bar, so he couldn't cal himself esquire. But he could, and did, get a license plate for his car that read, "esqr2be." Pathetic plumping for praise, it seemed to me. I have a Ph.D., which took twice as long to get as a JD, yet I don't insist upon people calling me "Doctor Hanley," nor do I ever--ever--refer to myself as "James Hanley, Ph.D."

** I'm one of "We the People" by the way, and nobody ever asked for my sponsorship. Perhaps I should sue Mr. Berg for dishonestly listing me as a sponsor of his miniscule-men march?

Alex Tabarrok Critiques Obamonomics

Okay, I probably shouldn't join in with the crowd that attaches President Obama's name to any and every noun/adjective, but his name just lends itself to it so well. Anyway...

Obama has plans to pressure companies with government contracts to increase wages. According to the New York Times article about 25% of Americans work for such companies, and Obama sees this as a means of lifting American incomes.

My first thought was that this was very much like Hoover encouraging companies to keep wages and prices up during the Depression, and Tabarrok's first criticism is right along that point.

At a time of 10% unemployment when real wages need to fall this is bad business cycle policy.*

But he has another, more serious, concern as well.

I am more worried, however, about the long term consequences of creating a dual labor market in which insiders with government or government-connected jobs are highly paid and secure while outsiders face high unemployment rates, low wages and part-time work without a career path...

Moreover, once an economy is in the insider-outsider equilibrium it's very difficult to get out because insiders fear that they will lose their privileges with a deregulated labor market and outsiders focus their political energy not on deregulating the labor market but on becoming insiders... Many European economies found themselves stuck in the insider-outsider equilibrium and as a result unemployment levels in places like France and Italy hovered at 9% or more for decades.

Officially, President Obama has a Council of Economic Advisers, which at this point sounds about as influential as a Council of Ethical Advisers would have been for Uncle Joe Stalin.

*Brad DeLong disagrees with this point, arguing that instead demand needs to rise. Of course cost and demand are pretty closely related, eh?

Unclear on the Concept

I have to share this, from my brother's blog.

On State Street today [in Ann Arbor], I encountered a couple folks holding up one of those Obama-with-the-Hitler-moustache posters. Our 7-second conversation went something like this:

Me: "Aren't you afraid of being arrested?"
Him: [utterly confused look] "Arrested? No, I'm not afraid of being arrested."
Me: "Guess he's not much of a Hitler, then, is he?"
Him: [utterly confused look persists - he still hasn't taken my point]

Coincidentally, I encountered this Mark Twain-attributed quotation not five minutes later:

“You can't depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.”

I don't believe all conservatives are stupid, or that all stupid people are conservatives, but I do believe there's a strong correlation between stupidity and a certain type of conservative.

Obama Isn't a Citizen!

OK, I'm going to try an experiment. I want to see how many wingnuts I can attract by commenting on the claim that Obama is not a natural born citizen, and I'd rather sully my personal blog than the one I share with other (decent) folks. So let me begin by saying, you'd have to be dumber than Paris Hilton's handbag to believe that Barack Obama is not a natural born U.S. citizen.

There are two essential claims:

• Obama is not a natural born citizen because he was born in Kenya, not Hawaii.


• If Obama was born in Hawaii, he lost his citizenship when he lived in Indonesia as a child.

Several lawsuits have been filed, none of them succesful so far, but the legal battle is not yet over. One lawsuit was filed by a lawyer named Phillip Berg, a former Pennsylvania Deputy Attorney General and Hillary supporter who hasn't yet recovered from the shock of having his favorite candidate get her ass handed to her by that uppity nigra.

This case was dismissed by the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania for lack of standing, not a surprising result. For those who know nothing about law, and that includes the tens of thousands of asshats who signed this petition, you actually have to be an injured party to bring a lawsuit, simply being a concerned citizen isn't enough to give you standing (unless Congress has statutorily authorized citizen suits). A funny thing happened before the dismissal, though. On October 21 Berg put out a press release titled Obama & DNC admit all allegations in Berg v. Obama. His claim is that Obama's failure to respond in a timely manner to Berg's allegations means Obama "admitted" their veracity, and therefore "Obama must immediately withdraw his candidacy for President" (emphasis added). The "facts" that Obama allegedly admitted are too many to enumerate here, but include:

• I am a Kenya "natural born" citizen.
• My father, Barrack Hussein Obama, Sr. admitted Paternity of me.
• I am a citizen of Indonesia.
• I am proud of my Kenya heritage.
• I am an attorney who specializes in Constitutional Law.
• I went by the name Barry Soetero in Indonesia,
• I went to a Judge in Hawaii to have my name changed.

But Obama did not admit any of this (although I suppose he would agree that his father admitted paternity, that he's proud of his Kenyan heritage--no bar to being president, Reagan was proud of his Irish heritage--and that as a law prof he specialized in Constitutional law, again, no bar to being president). Instead, on September 24, Obama filed a motion to dismiss this frivolous case--almost a full month before Berg made his claim of Obama's failure to respond. And Obama won his motion to dismiss, meaning he did not have to answer Berg's claims, and consequently--as a legal fact--admitted nothing. (Nevertheless, Berg keeps that fraudulent page up on his website.)

Berg followed up with an emergency appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court in which he asked for an injunction to stay the presidential election. This is a bit hard to believe, but Berg trumpets it himself, right here. At this point it is hard to avoid suspecting Berg is either just an inveterate attention-seeker or someone who truly has developed a mental problem, as surely nobody in their right mind could actually believe the Supreme Court would seriously consider enjoining the presidential election. And indeed Berg's motion was denied. Because this was an emergency appeal, similar in form to the emergency appeal of a convict about to be executed, for whom there is literally no tomorrow, Berg did not appeal to the full Supreme Court, which generally moves very slowly on appeals, but to a single justice, in this case Justice Souter.

Oddly, however, Souter's order also states that "The defendants are required to respond to the Writ of Certiorari by December first." I am unclear if that is simply pro forma--petitioner filed, so defendant automatically gets to do so to, if they so choose (and the "required" merely means, "must do so by December 1, if they bother") or if it means the case is still tentatively alive. It also says Berg may respond after Obama files his response, so the case doesn't quite sound dead to me, but while I've studied Constitutional Law, I've never dealt much with legal procedure. Assuming it is still open, Berg needs 4 justices to agree to hear the case, and so far he has "perhaps 1," a far cry from 4. Given that Obama has already met the basic legal requirement for demonstrating citizenship, presenting a certificate of live birth, it's likely the course will reject Berg's challenge is unlikely to succeed, unless Berg can produce evidence of Obama's birth certificate being faked, rather than just an allegation. In sum, the odds of Berg's case being heard by the Court is exceptionally slim.

If Berg's appeal of the case's dismissal is dealt with by the Court, and he wins, the Court could simply remand the case to the District Court for an expedited hearing, so a ruling in Berg's favor would not mean he won on the merits. However it would mean the Court thought both that he had standing and that the case had enough merit to proceed, neither of which is likely. My prediction is that Berg is dead in the water, and his case goes exactly nowhere from here.

The other case has more promise, because the plaintiff would, it appears, have standing. This is the case filed by perennial Christo-fascist Alan Keyes. Keyes was the candidate of the American Independent Party on the California ballot, and is asking that the California Secretary of State be enjoined from certifying the electoral results from the state until the factual dispute is resolved. Unlike Berg's suit, this one was filed in a state court, so it will be interesting to see how the Court rules on the issue of standing.

But ultimately it doesn't matter, except for determining how long this idiotic debate gets dragged out. The facts are clearly on Obama's side, and the most amazing thing is that those on the other side (a) actually believe the bullshit they're peddling, and (b) continue to believe it after the truth is pointed out to them. But they are true believers, convinced we're all the victims of a massive conspiracy, ernestly demonstrating the accuracy of Richard Hofstadter's claim that there is a distinct Paranoid Style" in American politics.

So if any of those asshats has made it this far, here's the facts. Here's why you're not just wrong, but why you're sad, deluded, imbecilic cretins.

• Obama was not born in Hawaii.

Barack Obama has produced evidence that he was born in Hawaii. you can see a photocopy of his birth certificatehere. Opponents make two claims about this. One is that the document is faked. But FactCheck.org had a representative personally handle and review the document. Their statement is:

...we can attest to the fact that it is real and three-dimensional and resides at the Obama headquarters in Chicago. We can assure readers that the certificate does bear a raised seal, and that it's stamped on the back by the Hawaii state registrar Alvin T. Onakes.

Of course the conspiracy theorists can continue to claim it's faked, but what can't you claim is faked? The point is that they have no evidence of fakery, just allegations, and allegations without evidence don't add up to shit. And when the defense actually does have evidence, then the conspiracy theorists are challening evidence by presenting no evidence--everyone who thinks that's a formula for winning a legal battle, please raise your tinfoil hat.

The other claim is that this certificate of live birth is not enough to prove Obama's citizenship because it's just the "short form," and the "long form," which includes additional information such as length and weight, is necessary. Again, this is a bullshit claim with no legal validity. As FactCheck.org correclty notes

The certificate has all the elements the State Department requires for proving citizenship to obtain a U.S. passport: "your full name, the full name of your parent(s), date and place of birth, sex, date the birth record was filed, and the seal or other certification of the official custodian of records.

Yes, the short form is satisfactory for convincing the U.S. State Department that you are a citizen. The last time I went to Canada, the U.S. border guard complained that I only had a driver's license, so how could he know I was really a U.S. citizen? He made it clear that I should get a passport so I could prove I was a citizen. Because I traveled to the Middle East this year, I finally got around to renewing my long-lapsed passport. What did the State Department ask me to provide? Just a certificate of live birth--the so-called "short form." I did, and they agreed that I had proved my citizenship by issuing my passport. So the claim that Obama somehow has to do more than is legally required, in order to meet the legal requirement, is a perverse non sequitur.

Of course it doesn't matter where on earth Obama was born. He could have been born in a Tijuana whorehouse or Moscow's Lubyanka prison and still have been a natural born citizen because his mother was a U.S. citizen. The basic rule is that if your parent (just one of them) was a U.S. citizen, you are probably a U.S. citizen. If you were born abroad, your parents could simply register you at the local U.S. embassy or consulate, not to gain you citizenship, but to ensure that the U.S. government is aware of it, so it's easier later on for you to demonstrate it. But even if your parent failed to register you, you can still apply to have your citizenship recognized. Not granted, mind you, but recognized, meaning it technically exists prior to the request for recognition, the government just may not be aware of it yet. (See U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.)

• Obama lost his citizenship when he lived in Indonesia/his step dad adopted him/his step dad registered him in an Indonesian school/his parents divorced/because he changed his name.

These claims are so spurious and confused that they make the prior claim look almost compelling. But this smacks of throwing in the kitchen sink, just to make sure no remotely conceivable allegation has been left out. Of course conceivable is not a synoym for plausible. The fact is, if Obama was born as a citizen--and the preponderance of the evidence (the legal standard he must meet if any of these cases are ever heard on the merits) says he was--he could not lose his citzenship before age 18. Very bluntly,

Parents cannot renounce U.S. citizenship on behalf of their minor children.

Don't believe it? That's what our government says. (See here.) So whether Obama's stepfather adopted him, took him to Indonesia, changed his name to Barry Soetoro, and gained Indonesian citizenship for him does not matter. It is common for children to hold dual citizenship. But obviously, by applying for a U.S. passport, Obama accepted his U.S. citizenship, and whether Indonesia recognizes his citizenship is moot--the U.S. doesn't really give a shit whether another country chooses to grant one of our citizens citizenship, we only care which citizenship that individual chooses.

But what is this business about divorce? Here's a snip from Berg's website.

The Docket shows when Stanley Ann Soetoro filed for divorce against Lolo Soetoro. The marriage is important because bases (sic) on the laws at the time, it affects Obama's citizenship and likely caused him to be an Indonesian citizen and no longer an American citizen. The divorce decree proves that the marriage existed.

Apparently Berg is asking the U.S. courts to rule on a matter of Indonesian law. But even assuming, as Berg seems to claim, that Obama's mother's divorce from Soetoro automatically caused the Indonesian government to grant young Barack Indonesian citizenship, the fact remains that the U.S. does not revoke citizenship of a minor just because another country grants that minor citizenship! Berg seems to claim that Obama's mother's divorce stripped her of parental rights by Indonesian law, and so he apparently wants the U.S. courts to enforce Indonesian law and rule that the birth mother, through divorce, lost parental rights over her son to his stepfather, and that the U.S. courts are bound by that Indonesian law.

As imbecilic as this is, the real problem isn't the legal cases. Obama will win those, because the case against him is utter bullshit, and is believe only by people with nothing but bullshit between their ears. The real problem is those demanding that Obama prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that he's an American citizen. They keep asking why he doesn't release a "real" copy of his birth certificate: OK, where is he supposed to release it to? You can't put a piece of paper on the web, you can only put up a scan, as he has done. And he has let real live people handle the real paper document. The truth, recognized by everyone with more than half a wit, is that not matter what documentatation Obama releases, they will still call it a forgery. Obama cannot win by acceding to their demands, because they will keep moving the goal post, as pathetic losers always do in their desperate attempt to keep the game going.

And Obama should not release any more documentation unless the courts require him to because these are just nuisance lawsuits, designed to intimidate and harass, and by giving his harassers even one bit of evidence without a court order he hands them victory. "We forced him to produce document X," they'll crow. And they'll follow that with endless claims for more documentation. It may seem reasonable to say, "If he has nothing to hide, why doesn't he produce them," but that's not a good response to frivolous claims. What if your neighbors came over and demanded to search your house for child porn? You'd be pissed off and tell them to go find a way to fuck themselves. And then they respond, "Well if you don't have anything to hide, why won't you let us in?" Isn't it clear where that kind of thinking leads? It is the end of liberty and the end of due process. The only proper response to such nuisance suits is to fight them with all one's vigor and to achieve an undisputed victory over the bastards filing them. The only victory is total victory.

So here's the deal, you pus-brained paranoiacs: You are the true enemies of America. This country is founded on democracy and the rule of law. You are undermining both of those right now, and that makes you an enemy of my country. That makes you my sworn enemy as well, because I have in fact taken an oath to defend my country and its Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic. I for one am sick of your bullshit, and especially your pretense at being "real America" while you relentlessly attack our Constitution's guarantees of freedom, equality, democracy, and the rule of law. So please shut the fuck up right now. About 7 years ago I demanded my money back from a benefit concert I went to because the person in charge felt the need to announce that "George Bush is not my president." I hated it when liberals did it, and I hate it just as much when you conservatives do it. Whether that person liked it or not, Bush was her president. And whether you like it or not, Obama is going to be your president. So shut up, grow up, and deal with it like adults, not like the whiny little bitches we all know you conservatives really are.

Republicans Should Take Note

Not that I've been following the news closely, but I don't think this story from the Center for Responsive Politics is getting as much play as it should.

Democrat Barack Obama has received nearly six times as much money from troops deployed overseas at the time of their contributions than has Republican John McCain, and the fiercely anti-war Ron Paul, though he suspended his campaign for the Republican nomination months ago, has received more than four times McCain's haul.

Looks like it's not just liberals who support an early exit from Iraq.

The Democrats’ Worst Nightmare

A great irony may be unfolding before our eyes. In July, Democratic nominee Barack Obama raised $51 million dollars, while Republican nominee John McCain struggled to raise just over half that ($27 million). Obama’s total of $390 million is more than twice McCain’s $153 million. And yet Obama’s lead over McCain has narrowed.

Democrats have long complained about the power of money in campaigns, and bitterly resented that the Republicans could nearly always outspend them by tapping the wealthy business class. So now they face the stunning possibility that they could outspend the Republicans by a wide margin, yet still lose the election.

That would be ironic indeed, and just how devastating would it be to the Democratic Party?

John McCain on the Russia-Georgia Conflict

I used to lean toward voting for McCain because I thought he'd be a better foreign policy president than Obama. I've begun to doubt that, and now there's this:

Russia should immediately and unconditionally cease its military operations, withdraw all forces from the sovereign territory of Georgia," McCain told reporters in Iowa.

Well, yes, we all wish that would happen. But does McCain not realize that Georgia chose to escalate the fighting in South Ossetia? And more importantly, does he not realize that it was Russian citizens in South Ossetia who were being attacked by Georgian forces? Would McCain, as president, unconditionally withdraw if American citizens were being targeted?

Here's Barack Obama's comment on the issue:

Georgia's territorial integrity must be respected. All sides should enter into direct talks on behalf of stability in Georgia, and the United States, the United Nations Security Council, and the international community should fully support a peaceful resolution to this crisis.

I think he misses the point that Georgia's territorial integrity is quite a debatable issue, and like McCain, that it was Georgia that ratcheted up the level of conflict.

The quotes are from Foreign Policy Passport, which argues that the war is Russia's way of keeping Georgia to unstable to join NATO. Given how little enthusiasm Russia has for NATO expanding not just to its doorstep but into former USSR territory-- of which Putin, et. al, probably hope to eventually regain control--I'm inclined to agree. That's why it was particularly stupid move for Georgian president Saakashvili, who seems to have belatedly figured that out.

Bush, fortunately, said he was "firm" with Putin, when they spoke at the Olympics. The crisis hasn't taken up too much of his time, however, and I imagine he was firm in this Olympic encounter as well.Does anyone else get the impression that he's not taking this conflict seriously? Does he not realize the significance, or has he already checked out of the job of America's foreign policy leader?

T-Shirt of the Week

Seen at Splash Universe waterpark, in Dundee, Michigan.

I Hate the President

The next one, that is.

This is the really bad effect of the long campaign season--candidates have to talk too damn much and they keep having to answer questions. Before a candidate becomes president, the media demand that they have a proposal for dealing with every imaginable political issue. Once the person becomes president, however, they deal with a set of issues that is a combination of those personally selected and those that are simply unavoidable, but they don't have to talk about all the others.

And it's inevitable that all that talking is going to cause them to say things that diminish our confidence in them. Nobody is going to agree with them on all issues, nor does any one person have the best answers to all issues. (As a consequence, I am consciously relying on heuristics to determine my vote this time around, as the more I think about the candidates' positions the more confused I get about my preference.)

And of course it's a real pisser for whomever gets elected, because he'll have no honeymoon in office--none at all. We already know him too well to give him the benefit of the doubt for a while.

If we could compress our campaign season, this problem would largely solved. Unfortunately, the front-loading of the primary system is a classic case of individual rationality resulting in collective irrationality. There's a good solution being floated--rotating regional primaries--but no good mechanism for moving the states toward it.

Obama Acts Presidential

Barack Obama has announced that next month he will go to the Middle East, with stops in Israel, Jordan, and....the West Bank, where he'll meet with Palestinian leaders (he'll also go to Germany, France and the UK). This follows his minor miscue in which he expressed his support for an undivided Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, which he later "clarified," saying he suported Israeli-Palestinian negotiations over Israel's future.

It might seem strange to leave the campaign trail at such a crucial time, or perhaps evidence that he thinks he's got the election all wrapped up. But in fact this trip is a campaign event--it's crucial for Obama to appear presidential, as well as to bolster his weak foreign policy credentials. And taking such a trip for the purpose of appearing presidential should not be derided. The public wants their candidates to appear presidential, so effectively you can't become president unless you act like one. I think it's a strong political move on Obama's part.

I also think it's a good move because he is likely to win, and he doesn't have enough foreign policy experience. Consequently he needs to get over to the Middle East, get his feet on the ground, and meet the major players. If Obama has paid attention to the presidencies of Clinton and Bush, he'll understand that, like it or not, foreign affairs usually dominates a presidency and distracts the executive from all the domestic issues that are his personal interests. Of course there's a great danger in the trip as well. The wrong comments about the Palestinian-Israel issue could lose the support of important voting blocs or paint him as too naive to be trusted with the job.

In political science, we see a continuum between pure spectacle and pure policy. Truman's Marshall Plan could be called pure policy, while Bush's stunt on the aircraft carrier was pure spectacle. As a campaign event, Obama's trip has a heavy dose of spectacle, but as a potential learning experience for our likely next chief diplomat, the policy aspect is significant and could ultimately trump the spectacle aspect. That can only happen if Obama knows how to ask the right questions and how to listen. I sincerely hope that he does.

Can John McCain Win?

That's the question I've been pondering lately. I've been ignoring the polls, which I don't think will mean a lot until after the post-convention bounces, if any, have diminished, and thinking about historical factors, and for the most part they're not in John McCain's favor.

1. One historical factor is that we rarely elect sitting senators to the White House, and none since 1968, but since Obama's a sitting senator, too, we have to throw this one out the window. Whoever wins the election will make history on this count.

2. A second factor is the difficulty of a member of the same party replacing a very unpopular president. Only about 1/3 of the populace approves of the job Bush is doing, and McCain, being the candidate of that president's party, is inevitably seen by many as a continuation of the same. It's not fair, and I don't even think it's accurate, but it happens nonetheless, and it makes winning the election an uphill climb for McCain regardless of any other advantages he might have.

3. A third factor is McCain's age, which actually affects the race in two distinct ways. First, Johh McCain would be the oldest elected president ever. Of course we've broken that record before, most recently with Reagan, but it's obviously a rare thing, and it does seem the American public doesn't generally want presidents who are too old. All other things being equal, this might not be too big a hurdled, but other things aren't equal, because, second, we would be going back a generation, which is, if not unprecedented, exceedingly rare. We have now had two baby boomer presidents in a row, and the liklihood of stepping back to a pre-baby boom president is highly unlikely. The U.S. is, in many ways, a country that has traditionally looked forward, rather than backward, and this general disinclination to revisit future generations to select our presidents is but one example of that.

4. A fourth factor is that McCain is seen as an inisder, while Obama is seen as an outsider (and we can't plausibly both criticize him for lack of experience and claim he's an insider). Every president from Jimmy Carter on, excluding the first President Bush who won on the coattails of a very popular predecessor, has been an outsider, and has trumpeted that fact. Obama may be less of an outsider than Carter or Clinton, but McCain can't possibly compete on this angle--he is the establishment, at a time when we don't like establishment figures. (As to the wisdom of electing outsiders, I beg to differ with my fellow citizens.)

5. Fifth, incumbent presidents don't win when the economy is weak, nor does the person from the same party who would succeed them. It matters not if Phil Gramm is right that we are not in a recession--a majority of Americans believe we are, and their votes will be determined by their own beliefs, not Phil Gramm's. (And could Gramm possibly have done a better job of reinforcing the public perception of the Republican Party as out of touch on economic matters, with his claim that we're just a nation of whiners--my neighbor is on a six week layoff because of the slump in truck sales, and I don't think his financial concerns are merely hypothetical.)

6. Sixth, fundraising matters. It's not true that the biggest winner always wins, but there is a strong correlation, because the person who can spend the most is generally able to define the issues and candidate attributes most successfully. The fundraising differential is probably a function of the other factors listed, but it has electoral effects of its own. And while it's more than just a little bit legitimate to critique Obama for reneging on his pledge to accept public financing, I just don't think that issue will have legs--Republicans never successfully critique the Democrats for having too much money because they are, far more than the Democrats, the party of the wealthy. And as things stand, Obama has raised around 280 million to McCain's 111 million, a stunning differential.

7. Finally, the religious right has been essential in the victories of Republican presidents since Ronald Reagan (and, actually, beginning with Jimmy Carter before him). Despite McCain's promises to elect "strict constructionist" judges who will overturn Roe v. Wade, and in spite of being the graduation speaker at Jerry Falwell's Liberty University, religious conservatives have not warmed up to McCain. James Dobson, for one, has said he wouldn't vote for McCain, and my religious conservative mother is very unhappy with his candidacy as well. The question is whether religious conservatives' devout belief in voting will overcome their McCain disdain. If not, look for Obama to pick up Virginia or Colorado--states McCain can't win without.

So can McCain overcome all that to win? I wouldn't bet on it. Keep in mind two things, however. First, campaigns do matter. In the equilibirium situation where both candidates run good campaigns, all the other factors determine the outcome, but if one candidate runs a bad campaign (cough, Dukakis!, cough). But so far McCain has shown the tendency to run the weaker campaign, mostly because he can't resist making jokes that are inappropriate in the particular context (but thank God he has a sense of humor). And Obama has seemed to move on relatively unscathed from what would seem devestating blows, particularly the Jeremiah Wright business. Republicans can justifiably wonder why the scandal isn't sticking, but for my part I'm glad it hasn't, as such scandals have never stuck on the Republicans before. (Let's face it, if Wright had suggested nuking the State Department, he would have been crucified by the right wing, unlike Pat Robertson, who actually did say it and suffered almost no fallout--the patriotism stuff has been a one-sided game for far too long.)

Second, it still remains to be seen whether there are enough moderates and liberals who won't vote for a black man to keep Obama from winning. I personally believe not (and, of course, an Obama loss would not be conclusive evidence, as there are other reasons to oppose him), and I expect that an Obama victory this fall will prove it.

In summary, McCain's only chance is a huge Obama misstep, or to find a scandal that will stick. It's not impossible, but at this point it sure doesn't seem likely.

Wesley Clark Goes off the Rails

Retired general, and former presidential candidate, Wesley Clark needs to publicly apologize to John McCain, and then stuff his fist in his mouth so he doesn't put his foot in it again.

Clark, a Democrat, said John McCain is "untested and untried."

"But he hasn't held executive responsibility," said Clark, a former NATO commander...He hasn't been there and ordered the bombs to fall. He hasn't seen what it's like when diplomats come in and say, 'I don't know whether we're going to be able to get this point through or not,' "

Admittedly, that's accurate. But it's also a wild red herring. Name one presidential candidate who wasn't a general or a former president who has that experience. Surely Clark isn't arguing that only generals are fit to be president?

And the whole thing smacks of criticizing a person's service record, as a smokescreen for criticizing their patriotism. Perhaps that's not what Clark meant, but following the Republicans' attack on the service record and patriotism of Purple Heart winner John Kerry, and of Representative Max Cleland, a man who lost both legs and part of one arm in in Vietnam (reportedly by a grenade dropped by another soldier), his comments have an unmistakeable odor of political bullshit. I've despised Republicans for most of my adult life for playing that dirty, "they ain't real ammuricans" game, and it sickens me to see a Democrat, and a man I once supported for president, treading on the boundaries of the same vile game.

Clark is a supporter of Obama, a man with far less experience than McCain. If military experience matters, Obama has no experience with the hell that war can be, while McCain knows all too well. If political experience is what matters, then McCain has far more experience in the Senate than Obama. If executive experience is what matters--having listened to the diplomats and ordered the bombs to be dropped--then maybe we should cancel the election and just draft General Clark back into the service of his country.

For Whom Should I Vote?

Recently, the Economist had a cover claiming that the primary process had, for the first time in years, given the U.S. two good candidates for the presidency. I agree. I like both McCain and Obama. I think they're both basically decent people whom I'd probably enjoy knowing (in contrast to Bush, Clinton, Kerry, and Gore, none of whom I'm pining to have dinner with).

But, as usual, I'm still uncertain how to vote because each candidate seems to me to have a fatal flaw.

Barack Obama has never really worked in the private sector. His experience is wholly in social service organizations and government, and I fear that he believes those institutions are the true source of most of what makes us better off. He seems to have no conception that the free market is the source of most of our well-being, including the cars we drive, the houses we live in, the computers on which we blog, the clothes we wear, and the food we eat. I worry that in an Obama presidency, the government will continue to assume more and more responsibility for our individual well-being. In addition, he has no experience in foreign affairs, which means Obama will almost certainly focus predominantly on domestic matters until foreign affairs force his attention--this has been the pattern for presidents who couple a dominant interest in domestic matters with a lack of foreign policy experience, from Lyndon Johnson to Jimmy Carter to Bill Clinton to George W. Bush. Why is it so hard for candidates and the public (and the media, but I never expect anything useful from that source) to recognize that the Constitution makes the President almost solely responsible for foreign affairs, and Congress primarily responsible for domestic affairs? If Obama were to face a Republican Congress I would be less concerned, because the partisan opposition would keep him in check domestically. But givent the pent-up frustration of Democrats (from their failure to accomplish social goals under Clinton to the 8 years of regulatory rollback under Bush) and their likely gains in Congress this year, I worry about a return of Johnson's "Great Society" programs, nearly all of which were costly and dismal failures, and a rollback of the Carter/Reagan economic deregulation which helped lead to the strong economic growth of the past three decades.

John McCain has the foreign policy experience I like, and for the most part I don't care too much where he stands on domestic policy matters. For example, I'm pro-choice and he's not. But even though I know I have unrealistically high standards for presidential candidates, I'm willing to trade off those issues for a candidate with good foreign policy credentials, especially since McCain isn't a fanatic about those issues. (The fact that the religious right despises him is good enough for me.) But what I can't accept is wholesale disdain for the Bill of Rights, and McCain doesn't seem to share my (fanatical) support for the ideals embodied therein. I only on occasion find myself in agreement with Justice Scalia, but I fully agreed with his dissent in McConnell v. FEC, in which the Supreme Court upheld McCain's First Amendment gutting campaign finance law:

Who could have imagined that the same Court which, within the past four years, has sternly disapproved of restrictions upon such inconsequential forms of expression as virtual child pornography,...tobacco advertising, [etc], would smile with favor upon a law that cuts to the heart of what the First Amendment is meant to protect: the right to criticize the government.

And this week he has attacked the Supreme Court for ruling that the Guantanomo Bay detainees have the right to habeus corpus. The ruling does not mean they get to go free, it simply means that they have the right to demand their day in court--and even then it will be up to the courts to determine if their demand will be fulfilled. The Bush administration has employed the authoritarian tactic of putting people outside the reach of the law, a vicious attack on our Constitution and the ideals embodied in it, and has been repeatedly, and correctly, rebuffed by the Suprme Court. But McCain finds the rule of law distasteful--an odd position for someone who was a prisoner of war--and I have a hard time voting for someone who doesn't stand up for the rule of law as our supreme political ideal.

I would have no problem voting for Obama because he's black. I think breaking the color barrier is a good enough reason to vote, assuming the person is otherwise qualified, and based on the qualifications standard set by some of our recent presidents, it would be wholly disingenous to argue that he's not qualified enough. But our experience with presidents inexperienced in foreign policy makes me shudder at the thought of yet another one. And yet McCain, so qualified in so many other ways, has such a cavalier attitude toward the Bill of Rights--much like our last two presidents--that I'm not sure the country can afford him. Our devotion to the Constitution is hanging by a thread these days, and I'm not sure how many precedents of presidential abuse we can suffer before it simply becomes the accepted norm.

Syrians Love Americans

So far, every Syrian who has asked me where I am from has said, "Welcome," with a big smile. Almost nobody assumes I'm an American, they guess British or Russian most often, sometimes Italian. But when I say, "America," the response is always favorable.

Today a soldier guarding the port, complete with rifle slung over his shoulder, smiled, asked where I was from ("Britannia, Russiya?), then gave me the big welcome smile, shook my hand enthusiastically, and put his hand to his heart (a characteristic Syrian gesture). A Syrian soldier with a gun, shaking hands with an American!

I need to write a letter to Barack Obama, advising him on U.S. Syrian relations. These people really want to be friends with us.

One Million Jobs Lost to NAFTA

From my forthcoming policy brief for the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding.

Barack Obama recently claimed that NAFTA has cost America 1 million jobs[i]. Although the accuracy of this claim has been disputed,[ii] let’s take it at face value, and consider what it means. With more than 146 million jobs in the U.S. economy, 1 million jobs would be approximately 2/3 of 1 percent of all jobs. In April 2008 the unemployment rate was 5%, with roughly 7 million people unemployed out. Another 1 million unemployed would increase the unemployment rate to around 5.7%—still below the last 30 years’ average unemployment rate of 6.1%. But even that is an exaggeration, because that assumes all 1 million jobs were lost in one year. Instead, the 1 million jobs would be spread across the past 14 years, which works out to an average of less than 72,000 jobs per year, or less than 5/100ths of 1% of the U.S. job market. And those 72,000 jobs per year that are alleged to have been destroyed by NAFTA must be set against the net increase of 1.75 million jobs per year since 1994, when NAFTA went into effect. If 1,000,000 jobs have indeed been lost to NAFTA—and again it’s worth pointing out that the claim has been disputed and is, frankly, quite dubious—the negative impact on the U.S. is at best, very small.

The conclusion is, even as the supply of labor has increased by nearly half (since 1980), the percentage of unemployed workers has declined.

[i] Tapper, Jake. 2008. http“Obama Knocks Clinton, But Wouldn’t Ax NAFTA.” ABC News. Feb. 24.
[ii] Robertson, Lori. 2008. “More NAFTA Nonsense.” Annenberg Political Fact Check. March 3.

Barack's Blunder

Why did Barack Obama respond to Bush's speech to the Knesset? He is angry that Bush said,

Some seem to believe we should negotiate with terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along. We have heard this foolish delusion before...We have an obligation to call this what it is – the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history (text of speech is here).

Because Obama is the only candidate who has suggested talking with Iranian president Mahmoud Amadinejad, he has claimed that this was an attack on him, even though Bush didn't mention anyone by name, or even link it to the presidential campaign.

Assuming he's right, it would be very bad form for a president to use a speech to another country's government as a direct campaign speech. But if this was a swipe at Obama, it was a very indirect one--it could just as easily have been directed at all of those who believe the U.S. is responsible for Muslim anger at us. I know a few of those people myself.

So it's strange that Obama jumped up to take credit for being the target of Bush's critique. The speech was barely covered by the U.S. media, and the first most of us heard about it was when Obama cried foul. There's no way this makes Obama look good--he is creating the linkage between him and appeasement in the public's mind by making a big deal of what would have passed almost unnoticed if he'd kept quiet.

If others had tried to make the linkage, Obama should have just agreed with Bush that appeasement is bad, but said he agreed with Winston Churchill that "talk, talk, is better than shoot, shoot." Better to be associated with Churchill than Chamberlain, but Obama blew it.

Obama Appointed CEO of General Motors

OK, not really, but he seems to be convinced he's a better businessman than anyone in Detroit, as he criticizes them for the "mistake" of building SUVs instead of more fuel-efficient compact cars."

"I think it was a mistake for them not to plan earlier, and now we're seeing a huge growth in fuel-efficient cars that is benefiting the Japanese automakers and Detroit is getting pounded some more."

OK, except for two things:

1. The Big Three (GM, Ford, Chrysler) haven't been able to hold onto market share in compact cars. Toyota, Honda and Nissan have consistently built cars that are less expensive and better quality. Although the Big Three's quality has dramatically improved, they haven't been able to price their cars competitively without losing money on each unit sold.
2. Every year for the past three decades, truck models (SUVs, pickups, minivans) have outsold car models in the U.S.

So you're an auto exec, you know high gas prices will be coming--sometime--but right now you can sell far more trucks than cars, and make a profit on each truck, while you lose money on most cars. What do you do?

Obviously Obama didn't say this to Detroit 10 years ago--he's so smart that he can see what's wrong now that it's actually happening.

Granted, a number of people have been saying for years that the Big Three need to get more competitive in fuel-efficient cars. But they're not the ones who have had to try to keep the company in business. Staying in business today takes priority over being in business 10 years from now, because the first is a prerequisite for the second.

And does anyone really think the Detroit automakers haven't looked ahead and known this was coming? Does anyone think they really needed Barack Obama to point it out to them? After all, they have a little more at stake than their critics do, so they just might have spent a little time thinking about it. Yes, once again they're behind their Japanese competition, but they have been investing in alternative fuel vehicles, hybrids, etc.

In a nutshell, they were in a tough spot. They could successfully compete in a market that they probably knew was somewhat limited in its duration, but could not (yet) succesfully compete in the market that will probably dominate in the future. They've made plenty of mistakes along the way, as any industry analyst can point out, but their options were never as simple as Obama seems to think.

Odd, isn't it, how people who've spent their whole life in politics, who've never had to meet the bottom line, who've never had to worry about containing costs, increasing efficiency, keeping up with a changing market, always feel qualified to tell us how things should be run?

How Should Superdelegates Vote?

There's been a lot of talk about how the Democratic Party's "superdelegates" should vote. Superdelegates are party bigwigs, rather than low-level functionaries chosen in primaries and caucuses, as the not-so-super delegates are.

It rarely matters how they vote, because the primaries and caucuses have, since they developed, always selected the candidate. But this time, with the race between Obama and Clinton so tight, it is possible that the superdelegates could make the difference.

Many folks are now saying they should vote for (a) whichever candidate has the most delegates, because that's obviously who the public really wants, or (b) whichever candidate has received the majority of the popular vote, because that's obviously who the public really wants. (Because of (a) the caucuses that some states hold, and (b) the different ways the states dole out the delegates, some in winner-take-all, some proportionally, and some by district, or a mix of these, having the most delegates may not coincide with having a majority of the popular vote. To all that confused mess I can only say, God bless American federalism.)

Both of these claims assume that the public ought to be the determining factor in selecting the party's candidate.

But that's a lot of nonsense. First of all, the superdelegates are individuals, and so they ought to vote their own conscience. Second, they have a better idea of the party's interests, and their conscience ought to lead each of them to vote for the candidate they think is best for the party.

In the bad old days, it actually was party leaders who selected presidential nominees, and while it was very undemocratic, it had two related advantages:

1. It resulted in more cohesive and responsible political parties;
2. It resulted in presidents who were constrained by those parties, rather than our current situation where presidents feel they are solely responsible to the public, and believe that gives them leeway to be nearly autonomous executives--after all, if the public is sovereign, anyone acting in their name is merely exercising sovereign power and ought not be constrained in any way.

The creation of the primary system, which shifted presidents' allegiance from their party to the public (Woodrow Wilson's "small c constitution" approach to the presidency) has been one of the primary causes of our run-away imperial presidency.

I wouldn't be willing to bet it will happen, but the best outcome would be for the superdelegates to determine the Democratic nominee, and for them to act as a group in extracting pledges for restraint as a condition of throwing their support to one or the other.

Censored by Ilana Mercer!

Ilana Mercer, who writes for WorldNetDaily (as if any more need be said, eh?), has censored me!

I criticized her for calling Obama by his middle-name, Hussein, and accused her of fear-mongering. Then I accused the many commentors who agreed with her of being both anti-constitution (they want a religious test for public office, at least implicitly, while the Constitution explicitly states there shall be no religious test (that is, no formal one)), and chickenshits--children who run and hide under the bed when someone yells "Muslim!" My comment was up for less than a day before she took it down. Maybe chickenshit is just too naughty a word.

I posted again (Scroll down to 3.30.08 5:05 p.m). Let's see if she takes it down again.

Hey Ilana! You can say anything you want here! And I won't take it down--because I'm not as much of a chickenshit as you!

Huckabee Defends Obama's Pastor

I've complimented Mike Huckabee on his sense of humor, but I never thought I'd compliment him on his wisdom. Until now. But he recently was on a MSNBC morning show, and said,

And one other thing I think we've got to remember: As easy as it is for those of us who are white to look back and say, "That's a terrible statement," I grew up in a very segregated South, and I think that you have to cut some slack. And I'm going to be probably the only conservative in America who's going to say something like this, but I'm just telling you: We've got to cut some slack to people who grew up being called names, being told, "You have to sit in the balcony when you go to the movie. You have to go to the back door to go into the restaurant. And you can't sit out there with everyone else. There's a separate waiting room in the doctor's office. Here's where you sit on the bus." And you know what? Sometimes people do have a chip on their shoulder and resentment. And you have to just say, I probably would too. I probably would too. In fact, I may have had a more, more of a chip on my shoulder had it been me.

I don't know if that's the populist side of his conservatism showing through, his religious beliefs, or if he's just fundamentally a decent person. But it's about time conservatives--who supposedly believe in small government and Jeffersonian ideals of individual liberty--start saying these things.