The most affecting part of John McCain’s acceptance speech was also the most surprising: McCain’s admission that he was broken by torture. I had read a little about this before on the internet – suggesting that McCain had illegally collaborated with the enemy. More generally, I had heard that virtually no one is actually able to resist extreme physical torture; eventually everyone breaks down. But McCain admitting it seemed both heartfelt and somewhat shocking.

A lot of prisoners had it worse than I did. I'd been mistreated before, but not as badly as others. I always liked to strut a little after I'd been roughed up to show the other guys I was tough enough to take it. But after I turned down their offer, they worked me over harder than they ever had before. For a long time. And they broke me.

When they brought me back to my cell, I was hurt and ashamed, and I didn't know how I could face my fellow prisoners. The good man in the cell next door, my friend Bob Craner, saved me. Through taps on a wall he told me I had fought as hard as I could. No man can always stand alone. And then he told me to get back up and fight again for our country and for the men I had the honor to serve with. Because every day they fought for me.

I fell in love with my country when I was a prisoner in someone else's. I loved it not just for the many comforts of life here. I loved it for its decency; for its faith in the wisdom, justice and goodness of its people. I loved it because it was not just a place, but an idea, a cause worth fighting for. I was never the same again. I wasn't my own man anymore. I was my country's.

I remembered a line from Orwell about any life "viewed from the inside" as a failure. I hadn't remembered the line immediately preceding it:

Autobiography is only to be trusted when it reveals something disgraceful. A man who gives a good account of himself is probably lying, since any life when viewed from the inside is simply a series of defeats.

Roger Simon also mentioned the same passage from McCain's speech, after noting Obama's grudging recent admission on the Surge:

More interesting is the snippet from O’Reilly of Obama acknowledging that the Surge was a great success while seemingly not being able to admit that he was wrong about it. You would think it wouldn ‘t be that difficult, but he struggled as if admitting an affair. Compare that with McCain who in the midst of his acceptance speech, seen by more even than Obama’s, acknowledged to the world that he was broken under the pressure of North Vietnamese torture. What we have before us is the pretension of honesty (Obama) versus honesty (McCain). In a certain way it relates to the Oprah Show, which has always seemed to me an “as if” production: we are all “open” here, it purports to say. But to paraphrase Orwell, “some people are more open than others.” I suspect the public senses this and, ultimately, knows the difference. We shall see.

Although Obama does seem to be more resistant to admitting error than most (and though he wrote two autobiographies by the age of 45), Obama has sometimes shown a self-deprecating side. Indeed, there are moments of effective modesty in the Audacity of Hope: Obama’s nuanced and winning account of Peggy Noonan’s taking him to task for comparing himself to Lincoln in an essay (he was sort of asked to do so by the editor, but he admits that Noonan wasn’t necessarily unfair), and Obama’s description of his troubles in his 2004 Senatorial debates responding to his opponent’s criticisms of Obama’s positions as un-Christian.

Yet McCain’s confession was of a different order.

My first thought was to be struck by how honest it was; that helped make the rest of McCain's speech seem (and perhaps be) more genuinely felt.

My second thought was more cynical: was McCain trying to make a pre-emptive strike against a forthcoming onslaught that he collaborated with the Communists?

My third thought was whether it’s necessarily a good thing for McCain to believe that he was not “my own man anymore. I was my country's.”

What do you think?

At Tim Blair's blog, some are speculating about why Barack Obama might have mispronounced "Wasilla" as "Wassily."

Most of us would make more slips of the tongue than the candidates do. And it’s only natural that he would use a name he’s probably more familiar with (Wassily) than one he’s less familiar with (Wasilla). I had to struggle not to make the same substitution.

Before last week, I had never heard of Wasilla, but I had heard of Wassily. Indeed, we have two Wassily chairs based on a 1925 design by Marcel Breuer in our Hyde Park apartment, bought 30-35 years ago. These chairs are famous enough to have their own Wikipedia entry. Probably at least one of Obama's friends has such a chair.

Wassily Chair, Marcel Breuer

As you might expect, these chairs are named after an artist even more famous than the chairs, Wassily Kandinski.

On White II, Wassily Kandinski

So I think that Barack Obama, who lives about 10 blocks away from me and knows some of the people I know, probably was thinking of a more familiar word — Wassily — the name of a Bauhaus chair and a Russian painter, not that of a small town in Alaska. I know that when I first read “Wasilla,” I had to think carefully to avoid thinking “Wassily.”

I wonder if Sarah Palin even knows of the Breuer chairs or the Russian painter.

[And if she doesn't, I wonder if that is a good thing or a bad thing.]

Ana Marie Cox (tip to Tim Blair):

Obama told Entertainment Weekly last month that his favorite television show is the wartime sitcom “MASH,” which, while solidly entertaining, was not exactly free of heavy-handed moralizing and liberal pieties. (It’s instructive to note here that McCain’s favorite shows include the decidedly, and admittedly, amoral dramas “The Sopranos” and “The Tudors.”)

Given the indirect (ie, nonsubstantive) nature of some of John McCain's ads, can a YouTube spot on this be only days away?

Indeed, one could imagine a funny — mock outraged — spot from either side: McCain getting his kicks watching brutal Sopranos mob hits OR Obama grooving on some particularly sappy platitudes in an outdated MASH clip. Maybe this idea would be better for one of the nightly talk shows than one of the campaigns.

In 1996, when Sarah Palin was mayor of Wasilla, she asked her town librarian how she would respond to censoring books. According to the librarian at the time, three inquiries had been made by December 1996. Palin also asked for resignation letters from some department heads and high appointments that she inherited from her predecessor (including the librarian), several of which had publicly supported her opponent in the election.

That Palin would ask about censorship suggests, but doesn't prove, that she was very probably actually contemplating asking the library to censor or remove books.

As if the truth weren't bad enough, Palin's opponents are now distributing a long, apparently phony list of books that Palin tried to ban.

On the list are the first four Harry Potter books, all published first from mid-1997 through 2000 [in the UK, and from 1998 through 2000 in the US, AFTER the censorship policy inquiries were made].

UPDATE: I see that Michelle Malkin spotted the fake list before I did, and she notes that it's being spread on the Obama Campaign site. The post is by Mark Brickman, who is described as "a member of Obama San Mateo/California 12th Congressional District, a grassroots organization that is dedicated to the election of Barack Obama."

2d UPDATE: The list has now been determined to be a complete hoax. The list has nothing to do with Palin; it is one that has been circulating for years, with exactly the same books and in exactly the same order. It is a list of important or great books that have been banned from libraries somewhere at some time.

After being up for most of the day, the Obama campaign page spreading the phony list has now been deleted. The reason I listed the background of the official Obama website blogger was because, if I had not listed his position, it would have looked like it was probably coming from the Obama campaign leadership, rather than just a low-level local Obama campaign worker who was nonetheless given a national Obama blog.

What lies will be made up next?

In the New Republic, John Judis has an insightful analysis of Barack Obama's experience as a community organizer and his rejection of organizing (tip to Instapundit).

In truth, however, if you examine carefully how Obama conducted himself as an organizer and how he has conducted himself as a politician, if you consider what he said about organizing to his fellow organizers, and if you look at the reasons he gave friends and colleagues for abandoning organizing, then a very different picture emerges: that of a disillusioned activist who fashioned his political identity not as an extension of community organizing but as a wholesale rejection of it. Indeed, the most important thing to know about Barack Obama's time as a community organizer in Chicago may not be what he gained from the experience--but rather why, in late 1987, he decided to quit. . . .

Obama attempted to put these principles into practice in South Chicago. Kellman and Kruglik's initial objective was to revive the region's manufacturing base--and preserve what remained of its steel industry--by working with unions and church groups to pressure companies and the city; but those hopes were quickly dashed. Indeed, during his three years in South Chicago, Obama was constantly having to scale back his objectives as one project after another faltered. First, he got community members to demand a job center that would provide job referrals, but there were few jobs to distribute. Then, he tried to create what he called a "second-level consumer economy" in Roseland consisting of shops, restaurants, and theaters. This, too, went nowhere. At that point, Kellman advised Obama to move elsewhere. "Stay here, and you are bound to fail," he told him.

But Obama remained. Next, he began to focus on providing social services for Altgeld Gardens. "We didn't yet have the power to change state welfare policy, or create local jobs, or bring substantially more money into the schools," he wrote. "But what we could do was begin to improve basic services at Altgeld--get the toilets fixed, the heaters working, the windows repaired." Obama helped the residents wage a successful campaign to get the Chicago Housing Authority to promise to remove asbestos from the units; but, after an initial burst of activity, the city failed to keep its promise. (As of last year, some residences still had not been cleared of asbestos.) In waging these campaigns, Obama's organization added staff, gained adherents, and won church support, including from the congregation of Reverend Jeremiah Wright. But it failed to stem the area's overall decline. "Ain't nothing gonna change, Mr. Obama," says one resident quoted in Dreams from My Father who grows disillusioned with the Developing Communities Project. "We just gonna concentrate on saving our money so we can move outta here as fast as we can."

Publicly, however, Obama did not appear discouraged. He continued to train other organizers for the Gamaliel Foundation.

He had a litany of criticisms of Alinsky-style organizing that he wanted to put forward. He objected to community organizers' dismissal of charismatic leadership and of movements. Instead of making the point directly, he recalled a friend telling him of an IAF trainer who complained that "movements are rotten with charismatic leaders." Obama said his friend had responded, "That's nonsense. We want a movement. I would love to have Martin Luther King here right now." Obama argued that charismatic leaders and movements bring "long-term vision," and that community organizers cannot be effective without such vision.

Obama also criticized community organizers' "suspicion of politics." "The problem we face now in terms of organizing is that politics is a major arena of power," Obama said. "That's where your major dialogue, discussion, is taking place. To marginalize yourself from that process is a damaging thing, and one that needs to be rethought."

Before he was done, Obama had rejected the guiding principles of community organizing: the elevation of self-interest over moral vision; the disdain for charismatic leaders and their movements; and the suspicion of politics itself.

I've been thinking a lot about some of these issues. After Michelle Obama's speech where she said that, when she met him, Barack was talking about “The world as it should be,” not settling for “The world as it is.” Some have pointed to the source of these phrases: Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals. But Alinsky insisted that people focus on the world as it is. In essence, Barack reversed Alinsky's teaching by focusing on the world as it should be: the vision thing.

Left to his own devices, Barack Obama is an extremely thoughtful guy, who often reworks and synthesizes the influences he absorbs. If one looks at Obama's current education proposals, he has jettisoned most of the left-wing Bill Ayers-style ideas that the Annenberg Challenge pushed in the mid-1990s when Obama was its chair — probably because they didn't work.

The most radical of Obama's current education ideas is his proposal for mandatory universal service by school children. While many in the left-wing democracy education movement favor universal service, Ayers seems to embrace this idea less than most. Ayers is more iconoclastic (and idiosyncratic) than someone like Obama. Ayers does emphasize bringing the community into the schools and vice versa, but (from what I've read) a massive federal community service requirement is not really his style.

And — as radical as mandatory community service issue is — it is favored by many on the political right as well as in the political center. It is both radical and politically mainstream. Even John McCain has in the past at least entertained the idea of mandatory national service. I have been unable to determine so far how much experience Barack Obama has actually had with mandatory service, so I don't know whether his support for mandatory service results from experience or a lack of experience.

One area where Obama has had lots of experience but where his trademark thoughtfulness has failed him is private-public housing projects. His best friends and supporters built and managed public-private projects that failed miserably. One of the projects was one Obama worked on as a lawyer (Rezko was involved). Yet that project and one other run by one of his closest friends and advisors, Valerie Jarrett, deteriorated literally just hundreds of yards from his office on the west wall of the University of Chicago Law School. He could look out his window and see these projects as they declined. Yet he is proposing a lot more of the same.

Yet Obama's support for public-private housing projects is an exception. Usually, Obama learns from the failures of his reform proposals. Generally, he is a pragmatic idealist.

People should not confuse Obama's personality with his political orientation: by personality, Obama is the most reasonable, thoughtful, moderate person on either national ticket. He is definitely NOT an ideologue. Yet by political orientation, Obama is the most liberal or progressive candidate to be a party nominee for president in at least a half century — probably ever. That explains why he is in essence a radical incrementalist.

Last week, while everyone was saying that the Democrats were not getting a bounce from their convention, I was one of the first people to note that there were hints of a big 8-10% bounce toward Obama, based on changes in the last day of one 3-day tracking poll.

Now I’m seeing the same thing for the same reasons in the Republican direction (though because of a CBS poll conducted before Palin’s speech but released yesterday showing a dead heat, I am far from the first to note a probable Republican bounce).

Today, both the Gallup and the Rasmussen tracking polls are showing a 3% move in McCain’s direction from the day before. That means that respondents polled on Thursday were 8-10% more favorable for the Republicans than those polled on Monday. If polling on Friday and Saturday continues in the same direction, that would point to a dead heat or insignificant lead for McCain by the 3-day tracking polls released on Sunday.

As I noted before, this might well not happen. There is a reason that the polling agencies use three-day averages.

In an earlier post, I looked at the relative absence of sarcasm in Sarah Palin’s attacks on Barack Obama and Democrats in her acceptance speech.

At 42 minutes, Obama’s acceptance speech was only about 6 minutes longer than Palin’s. In Obama’s speech, there were only three statements that were probably sarcastic:

In Washington, they call this the Ownership Society, but what it really means is — you're on your own.

Out of work? Tough luck.

No health care? The market will fix it.

Born into poverty? Pull yourself up by your own bootstraps — even if you don't have boots.

Like Palin, Obama generally prefers to attack without using sarcasm. Also like Palin, Obama sometimes uses hyperbole to characterize his opponents’ views.

Here are the other passages in which Obama attacks McCain, Republicans, or Republican administrations:

1. John McCain likes to say that he'll follow bin Laden to the gates of hell — but he won't even go to the cave where he lives.

2. I don't know what kind of lives John McCain thinks that celebrities lead, but this has been mine.

3. Because next week, in Minnesota, the same party that brought you two terms of George Bush and Dick Cheney will ask this country for a third. And we are here because we love this country too much to let the next four years look like the last eight. On November 4, we must stand up and say: "Eight is enough."

4. John McCain has voted with George Bush 90 percent of the time. Sen. McCain likes to talk about judgment, but really, what does it say about your judgment when you think George Bush has been right more than 90 percent of the time? I don't know about you, but I'm not ready to take a 10 percent chance on change.

5. For over two decades, he's subscribed to that old, discredited Republican philosophy — give more and more to those with the most and hope that prosperity trickles down to everyone else.

6. America, we are better than these last eight years. We are a better country than this. . . . We are more compassionate than a government that lets veterans sleep on our streets and families slide into poverty; that sits on its hands while a major American city drowns before our eyes.

7. The truth is, on issue after issue that would make a difference in your lives — on health care and education and the economy — Sen. McCain has been anything but independent.

8. He said that our economy has made "great progress" under this president.

He said that the fundamentals of the economy are strong.

And when one of his chief advisers — the man who wrote his economic plan — was talking about the anxiety Americans are feeling, he said that we were just suffering from a "mental recession," and that we've become, and I quote, "a nation of whiners."

A nation of whiners? Tell that to the proud autoworkers at a Michigan plant who, after they found out it was closing, kept showing up every day and working as hard as ever, because they knew there were people who counted on the brakes that they made. Tell that to the military families who shoulder their burdens silently as they watch their loved ones leave for their third or fourth or fifth tour of duty. These are not whiners.

9. Now, I don't believe that Sen. McCain doesn't care what's going on in the lives of Americans. I just think he doesn't know. Why else would he define middle class as someone making under 5 million dollars a year?

10. How else could he propose hundreds of billions in tax breaks for big corporations and oil companies but not one penny of tax relief to more than 100 million Americans?

How else could he offer a health care plan that would actually tax people's benefits, or an education plan that would do nothing to help families pay for college, or a plan that would privatize Social Security and gamble your retirement?

11. It's not because John McCain doesn't care. It's because John McCain doesn't get it.

12. Well, it's time for them to own their failure. It's time for us to change America.

13. Tonight, more Americans are out of work and more are working harder for less. More of you have lost your homes and even more are watching your home values plummet. More of you have cars you can't afford to drive, credit card bills you can't afford to pay, and tuition that's beyond your reach. These challenges are not all of government's making. But the failure to respond is a direct result of a broken politics in Washington and the failed policies of George W. Bush.

14. Change means a tax code that doesn't reward the lobbyists who wrote it, but the American workers and small businesses who deserve it. Unlike John McCain, I will stop giving tax breaks to corporations that ship jobs overseas, and I will start giving them to companies that create good jobs right here in America.

15. Washington's been talking about our oil addiction for the last 30 years, and John McCain has been there for 26 of them. In that time, he's said no to higher fuel-efficiency standards for cars, no to investments in renewable energy, no to renewable fuels.

16. And just as we keep our keep our promise to the next generation here at home, so must we keep America's promise abroad. If John McCain wants to have a debate about who has the temperament, and judgment, to serve as the next commander in chief, that's a debate I'm ready to have.

17. For while Sen. McCain was turning his sights to Iraq just days after 9/11, I stood up and opposed this war, knowing that it would distract us from the real threats we face. When John McCain said we could just "muddle through" in Afghanistan, I argued for more resources and more troops to finish the fight against the terrorists who actually attacked us on 9/11 and made clear that we must take out Osama bin Laden and his lieutenants if we have them in our sights.

18. And today, as my call for a time frame to remove our troops from Iraq has been echoed by the Iraqi government and even the Bush administration, even after we learned that Iraq has a $79 billion surplus while we're wallowing in deficits, John McCain stands alone in his stubborn refusal to end a misguided war. That's not the judgment we need. That won't keep America safe. We need a president who can face the threats of the future, not keep grasping at the ideas of the past.

19. John McCain wants to follow George Bush with more tough talk and bad strategy, that is his choice — but it is not the change we need.

20. The Bush-McCain foreign policy has squandered the legacy that generations of Americans — Democrats and Republicans — have built, and we are here to restore that legacy.

21. So I've got news for you, John McCain. We all put our country first.

By continuing to spread false memes about the nature of Sarah Palin's speech as if they were true, the press marches forward in the most biased season of political reporting I've seen since at least 1998.

One of the memes being spread by some Democratic reporters and other Obama supporters after Sarah Palin’s speech was that she was very sarcastic.

I don’t know whether these commentators don’t understand what “sarcasm" is or whether this is just another example of the blatant orgy of sexism with which Sarah Palin has been greeted. Already spreading this falsehood are 1,769 stories on Google News and 2,861 blog posts.

In her acceptance speech Sarah Palin was not particularly sarcastic. Mostly, she just said what she means. She made fun of Obama, but sarcasm played an exceedingly minor role in her pointed attacks.

Sarcasm is using words that on the surface would seem to mean the opposite of what the speaker actually means. Examples would include: “Oh, that’s great,” said after something terrible happened, or “You’re such a gentleman” after a man did something rude.

I went through the text of Sarah Palin’s prepared remarks and found one sarcastic aside and one sarcastic word in the context of a very unsarcastic statement, but no other likely examples. Here was the single sarcastic clause in her speech:

But when the cloud of rhetoric has passed ... when the roar of the crowd fades away ... when the stadium lights go out, and those Styrofoam Greek columns are hauled back to some studio lot — what exactly is our opponent's plan? What does he actually seek to accomplish, after he's done turning back the waters and healing the planet? The answer is to make government bigger ... take more of your money ... give you more orders from Washington ... and to reduce the strength of America in a dangerous world. America needs more energy ... our opponent is against producing it.

The line “after he's done turning back the waters and healing the planet” is sarcastic because, though she paraphrasing Obama’s own words, she doesn’t believe he will do this. Though sarcastic, there’s nothing terribly odd, unfair, or inappropriate about paraphrasing his own excessively lofty rhetoric.

The only other probable example of sarcasm is just one word, the use of “accolade” to refer to Harry Reid’s insult. But except for that one word, the overall statement wrapped around that word is not sarcastic: Palin means what she says.

Harry Reid, the majority leader of the current do-nothing Senate, not long ago summed up his feelings about our nominee. He said, quote, "I can't stand John McCain." Ladies and gentlemen, perhaps no accolade we hear this week is better proof that we've chosen the right man. Clearly what the majority leader was driving at is that he can't stand up to John McCain.

Here are the other 11 negative comments about Obama or the Democrats or Democratic administrations from Palin’s speech:

1. And since our opponents in this presidential election seem to look down on that experience, let me explain to them what the job involves. I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a "community organizer," except that you have actual responsibilities.

(Here I think Palin is being playful, but she means what she says.)

2. I might add that in small towns, we don't quite know what to make of a candidate who lavishes praise on working people when they are listening, and then talks about how bitterly they cling to their religion and guns when those people aren't listening. We tend to prefer candidates who don't talk about us one way in Scranton and another way in San Francisco.

(Palin is using understatement here.)

3. Our opponents say, again and again, that drilling will not solve all of America's energy problems — as if we all didn't know that already. But the fact that drilling won't solve every problem is no excuse to do nothing at all.

4. I've noticed a pattern with our opponent. Maybe you have, too. We've all heard his dramatic speeches before devoted followers. And there is much to like and admire about our opponent. But listening to him speak, it's easy to forget that this is a man who has authored two memoirs but not a single major law or reform — not even in the state Senate.

5. This is a man who can give an entire speech about the wars America is fighting and never use the word "victory" except when he's talking about his own campaign.

6. Victory in Iraq is finally in sight ... he wants to forfeit. Terrorist states are seeking nuclear weapons without delay ... he wants to meet them without preconditions. Al-Qaida terrorists still plot to inflict catastrophic harm on America ... he's worried that someone won't read them their rights? Government is too big ... he wants to grow it. Congress spends too much ... he promises more.

7. Taxes are too high ... he wants to raise them. His tax increases are the fine print in his economic plan, and let me be specific. The Democratic nominee for president supports plans to raise income taxes ... raise payroll taxes ... raise investment income taxes ... raise the death tax ... raise business taxes ... and increase the tax burden on the American people by hundreds of billions of dollars. . . . How are you going to be better off if our opponent adds a massive tax burden to the American economy?

8. Here's how I look at the choice Americans face in this election. In politics, there are some candidates who use change to promote their careers. And then there are those, like John McCain, who use their careers to promote change. They're the ones whose names appear on laws and landmark reforms, not just on buttons and banners, or on self-designed presidential seals.

9. Among politicians, there is the idealism of high-flown speechmaking, in which crowds are stirringly summoned to support great things. And then there is the idealism of those leaders, like John McCain, who actually do great things. They're the ones who are good for more than talk ... the ones we have always been able to count on to serve and defend America.

10. My fellow citizens, the American presidency is not supposed to be a journey of "personal discovery." This world of threats and dangers is not just a community, and it doesn't just need an organizer.

11. And though both Sen. Obama and Sen. Biden have been going on lately about how they are always, quote, "fighting for you," let us face the matter squarely. There is only one man in this election who has ever really fought for you ... in places where winning means survival and defeat means death ... and that man is John McCain.

In the next post, I consider whether Obama was as negative in his acceptance speech as Palin was (he actually said more negative things than Palin did, but his lines were less pointed.)

After a middling start of her speech, Sarah Palin hit her stride. Palin's speech so far is MILES better than Biden's — and will probably be better than McCain's.

UPDATE: Wow! What a speech. She lacks Obama's (or Reagan's) eloquence, but she has something that Obama lacks (and Reagan had) — an ability to effectively depict her opponent as a phony without seeming too mean.

2d UPDATE: I flipped quickly from ABC to NBC to CBS and the initial concensus was very positive, though when I switched back to NBC Tom Brokaw was undercutting the "Bridge to Nowhere" point by slightly misstating the facts.

Rudy Giuliani is having too much fun. He is laughing at his own supposed cleverness.

Laughing openly at Barack Obama's having been a community organizer was unseemly. I agree with Giuliani that it's a relatively lightweight job for a future President, but it should have been handled with a much more subtle touch -- not open mockery. Actually, the words of Giuliani's speech on this point were subtle enough, but Giuliani read them much too broadly. (Further, community organizer is not Obama's last position (the Senate is), but it does seem to have been his most formative job.)

Much of the rest of the words of Giuliani's speech are OK -- and there are some good lines -- but the tone of his speech is a bit off, especially in the first 5-10 minutes.

Susan Estrich, former Dukakis campaign manager, just said on Fox that she was appalled by the attacks on Palin as “really unfair” and “really sexist.”

Also at Wizbang, Lorie Byrd says that CBS attributed Lieberman’s speech to cronyism and self-interest:

I tuned to CBS to hear how they would spin the speech by Joe Lieberman, former Democrat Vice Presidential candidate. Grrrr. Unbelievable. Evidently, the reason he endorsed John McCain is only because he is John McCain's close friend and if McCain wins he will get a cabinet post. Grrrrrr. Lieberman couldn't possibly think McCain was the right man for the job. He couldn't possibly think that McCain is best for the country at this time. Nope. Self interest and loyalty to a friend. That's the ticket. I thought the media line would be that Lieberman isn't really a Democrat, that he is an independent now. Lieberman went into detail about all the reasons he is supporting John McCain (war on terror, reform, history of service and delivering on what he says he will do, etc.) but the only reason Bob Schieffer could come up with is self interest. Lieberman must have done even better than I thought. The speech was very low key in contrast to Fred Thompson's, but it was very good and I suspect very effective. Hopefully Americans listened to the speech, rather than to the [Democratic Media] . . . spin.

It really is an unusual thing that the 2000 Democratic VP candidate was a main speaker at the 2008 Republican convention. It's hard to think that Lieberman would do this unless he thought that the War Against Terror (and the War in Iraq) were the most important issues facing the country and that McCain was much better on the war than Obama. This same commitment to the war -- and refusal to accept defeat by withdrawing troops by early 2008 -- is what drove him out of the Democratic Party.

I didn’t see either the speech or CBS’s spin. Did Schieffer really say what Byrd says he did?

I don’t remember the mainstream press dismissing the Democratic keynote speakers right after they spoke by simply repeating the Democratic spin on why we should discount what we heard.

Watching both MSNBC and CNBC today, I have been surprised how quickly the press has moved from “Who is Sarah Palin?" — or even “Is Sarah Palin a good choice?” — to “How exactly did John McCain screw up by picking Sarah Palin?”

To say that the press is doing the Democrats’ work for them would be an understatement.

I have absolutely no personal knowledge of the vetting process, but the McCain campaign’s response has perhaps best been made by Byron York at NRO:

Team McCain Hits Back on Palin, Vetting

Had a long talk this morning with a senior strategist in the McCain campaign. I think it’s fair to say Team McCain is seriously unhappy with a New York Times story, “Palin Disclosures Raise Questions On Vetting,” which came out this morning and is driving much of the coverage of the issue. The story begins:

A series of disclosures about Gov. Sarah Palin, Senator John McCain’s choice as running mate, called into question on Monday how thoroughly Mr. McCain had examined her background before putting her on the Republican presidential ticket.

On Monday morning, Ms. Palin and her husband, Todd, issued a statement saying that their 17-year-old unmarried daughter, Bristol, was five months pregnant and that she intended to marry the father.

Among other less attention-grabbing news of the day: it was learned that Ms. Palin now has a private lawyer in a legislative ethics investigation in Alaska into whether she abused her power in dismissing the state’s public safety commissioner; that she was a member for two years in the 1990s of the Alaska Independence Party, which has at times sought a vote on whether the state should secede; and that Mr. Palin was arrested 22 years ago on a drunken-driving charge.

The story, my campaign source told me, is “materially false.” Gov. Palin, the strategist said, was subjected to a “complete vet.” “That included her filling out a 70-question questionnaire that was highly intrusive and personal. She was then interviewed for more than three hours by A.B. Culvahouse. There were multiple follow-up interviews.” (I asked precisely how many follow-ups there were, but my source stuck with “multiple.”) “There was a thorough interview process,” the strategist continued. “There was a public records search and political vet. There was a private life and financial vet. Everything that has come out was known by the campaign through the vetting process.”

Okay. What about particulars? The strategist started at the bottom and moved up.

“Todd’s DUI — we judged that to be immaterial to the selection process. The ticket for fishing without a license — we judged that to be immaterial to the selection process.” On the charge that Palin was a member of the Alaska Independence Party, the strategist said, flatly, “She was never a member of the independence party, because she has been a registered Republican.” (Later, the McCain camp put out a statement saying it had provided reporters with “ALL voter registration documentation” showing that Palin has been a registered Republican since 1982 and “has never been a member of the AIP.”) And on the issue of Palin’s daughter Bristol being pregnant: “John McCain made a decision that did not affect his decision-making in terms of her qualifications.” (As far as the allegation that Gov. Palin faked a pregnancy to cover up for her daughter is concerned, it appears the McCain campaign knew about it and looked into it, but never very deeply because it had been proven false to the satisfaction of pretty much anyone outside The Atlantic or the DailyKos.)

From our conversation, it was clear that the McCain campaign paid a lot of attention to the so-called “Troopergate” issue. After all, unlike the “fake baby” story that has preoccupied the press, it is a real issue involving allegations that Palin abused her power. Last night, the McCain campaign distributed a "background guidance" memo to reporters on the issue. In our conversation, the strategist recounted much of the substance of that memo.

“Of course this issue came up in the vetting, and this is what we discovered,” the source said. “The man who was fired has said on the record that he was never pressured by the governor or the governor’s husband on the issue of firing Trooper Wooten. The governor had a vision for how she wanted that department to be run. The commissioner had a different vision.”

“The reason that members of the Palin family were having discussions with the head of the state police about this state trooper, who was her ex-brother-in-law, was because he had made threats against the family. He threatened to kill the governor's daughter, her father, and her sister. He tasered her 11-year-old stepson. And that is why the Palin family was concerned about this trooper.”

I brought up accusations that the McCain team has performed a “legal vet” on Palin but did not perform a “political vet.” In addition to the accusation that Palin had been a member of the Alaska Independence Party, there were issues like her change in position on the “bridge to nowhere” and her support for raising sales taxes in Wasilla, Alaska. “Change on the ‘bridge to nowhere?’” my source asked. “Are you saying there’s somebody out there who believes that should disqualify her to be vice president?” Barack Obama has changed his mind on a few things, the strategist added. As for sales taxes in Wasilla, the source said, “Every aspect of her political record is known to us. These people [McCain’s opponents] are desperate.”

As for what materials the campaign examined in the vetting, the source told me they checked out (almost) everything. “The only thing the campaign did not look at was the microfilm of the local newspaper, because it was impossible to look at the microfilm without revealing the search process,” the strategist said. “We made a calculation that we would be able to get all the information from the Anchorage newspaper, that it was unlikely that there would be items in the local papers that were problematic that didn’t make it to the Anchorage paper.”

I don't get it. Are the New York Times reporters just printing what the Obama people are telling them (as Byron York is explicitly doing for the other side)? Or is one side or the other simply lying? Or both?

I guess we should be happy that there are now alternative sources of information, or too often most of us would hear only one side of the story.

UPDATE: Well, we have a likely answer to one question: it appears that Sarah Palin was never a member of the American Independence Party. The Times had a reason for writing what they did, but they went with the story before checking it out or looking at available state records. In essence, they acted more like a blogger than a newspaper. Let's see if they respond as quickly as bloggers usually do in correcting their errors.

Real Clear Politics computes an average of recent opinion polls.

Barack Obama has reached his highest support level ever: a 48.8% average in recent polls, all of which were conducted on Aug. 29-31. He leads McCain by an average of 4.5% (which is far from his biggest lead ever, which was about 7%).

Senator Barack Obama is proposing to remake American society in a way that the American public does not yet understand.

In his July 2, 2008, speech calling Americans to national service, Obama departed from his prepared remarks to announce his support for a mysteriously named “civilian national security force”:

We cannot continue to rely only on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives that we've set. We've got to have a civilian national security force that's just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded.

Many commentators were stumped. What is this “civilian national security force” that must be as well funded as the military? Is it merely our existing civilian national security force, the militia, or perhaps the FBI and the CIA? Or was Obama referring to some thuggish new paramilitary street organization?

The answer to this mystery is not hidden. It is prominently displayed in Obama’s speeches and in the position papers on his website. Obama is referring, neither to the militia nor to a reincarnation of the Brownshirts, but rather to his unprecedented plans for universal community service for young people and for hugely increased funding for a myriad of voluntary service programs for the rest of us.

Earlier posts dealt with mandatory service for middle and high school students, voluntary service for college students, and college “Serve-Study” laid out in Obama’s speeches and his “Plan for Universal Voluntary Citizen Service.” This post covers his other service programs.

Although Obama’s education proposals would effectively reach over 90% of the 47 million middle, high, and college students in the country (perhaps leaving out only private secondary school children), what about the 2 million young people who are out of school and unemployed or in prison? To reach young prisoners and the young unemployed, Obama will add a new Green Job Corps, “an energy-focused youth jobs program,” and expand by six-fold the YouthBuild Program, which teaches housing construction to low-income youth.

What about the middle-aged and older Americans not covered by these programs for the young? Obama plans to enlist retirees in his civilian national security force “on a large scale” and to expand service programs for baby-boomers and the elderly: AmeriCorps VISTA, the Experience Corps, and other Senior Corps programs.

Among other “transformative” community service proposals, Obama will more than triple the number of full-time AmeriCorps members to 250,000 and distribute these new members among five new “Corps”:

1. a Classroom Corps for teachers and students;

2. a Health Corps to improve public health;

3. a Clean Energy Corps to conduct weatherization and renewable energy projects;

4. a Veterans Corps to assist veterans at institutions; and

5. a Homeland Security Corps to deal with emergencies.

Not only will “Barack Obama . . . double the Peace Corps to 16,000 by its 50th anniversary in 2011 and push Congress to fully fund this expansion,” but he will create a "Global Energy Corps to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions overseas and promote low-carbon and affordable energy solutions in developing nations.”

Barack Obama is proposing so many new “Corps” that he runs out of distinctive names for them. Note that his new Global Energy Corps is not to be confused with his new Clean Energy Corps and his new Green Job Corps.

But Obama is far from finished:

Barack Obama will create a Social Investment Fund Network, . . . a government-supported nonprofit corporation, similar to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, that will use federal seed money to leverage private sector funding to improve local innovation, test the impact of new ideas and expand successful programs to scale.

He promises us that this new corporation will not be just a single entity, but it will involve “a network of funds.”

That’s not all; he’s going to create a “Social Entrepreneurship Agency for Nonprofits”:

Barack Obama will a create an agency within the Corporation for National and Community Service dedicated to building the capacity and effectiveness of the nonprofit sector.

All these programs are just the ones listed on the service pages of his campaign website. This list doesn’t include his most expensive program: health care. All these add up to the biggest expansion of the US government since FDR. If Obama gets most of what he wants, he will make libertarians look more fondly on the relatively modest proposals of Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon.

I have already posted about Senator Barack Obama’s proposal that all public middle and high school students perform community service, such as picking up trash, for 50 hours every year [typo corrected]. [In a later post, I will point to most of new service "Corps" that Barack is proposing, many of which would be open to college students.]

100 HOURS OF COLLEGE SERVICE

There has been little discussion so far of his program for college students. The first thing to note about it is that it is voluntary, though the funding is so extensive (and expensive) that almost all college students will be induced to do 100 hours of service each year at an effective salary of $40 an hour tax free.

Obama proposes to achieve almost universal service for the nation’s 17 million college students by offering a refundable annual tax credit of $4,000 toward college tuition. This program should cost about $65-100 billion a year, perhaps more if it substantially increases the number of students attending college. In return for the credit, college students will be required to perform 100 hours of community service every year for four years. By offering college students a hefty $40 an hour, Mr. Obama will ensure that nearly every college student will participate in his program, without actually making their service mandatory.

So, if a student graduates from college, he will have done on average about 11 years of community service, at a minimum of 50-100 hours each year. Almost all college graduates will have spent a total workweek equivalent of at least four to five months of their lives working in Mr. Obama’s “national security force,” starting at the tender age of 11.

"BARACK OBAMA WILL REQUIRE YOU TO WORK."

The school service programs give context to the much talked about comments of Michelle Obama back in February.

Barack Obama will require you to work. He is going to demand that you shed your cynicism. That you put down your divisions. That you come out of your isolation, that you move out of your comfort zones. That you push yourselves to be better. And that you engage. Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual, uninvolved, uninformed.

I had seen these words quoted many times, but I thought them either taken out of context or just Michelle Obama’s own quirky interpretation of what she thought her husband expected of Americans. What I hadn’t realized until a day or two ago is that her speech was delivered to college students at UCLA. That Michelle Obama was talking to students makes her words dovetail nicely with Barack Obama’s service programs for this segment of society.

So Michelle’s vision was one insider’s view of Barack Obama’s mandatory service programs for all public middle school and high school students and the nearly universal voluntary service program for college students.

Essentially all of the factual claims in the quoted passage of Michelle Obama’s speech are true. He will “require you to work.” He will “demand . . . that you move out of your comfort zones. . . . And that you engage.” And it’s fair to say that “Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual, uninvolved . . . .” The rest of her comments (about becoming better, less cynical, and more informed) indicate her aspirations for what service will accomplish, and reflect pretty standard views of people in the service movement and of people in the left-wing educational reform movement to bring communities into the schools and schools into the community.

TOO NARROW A VISION OF SERVICE

Commenters about existing mandatory service programs often claim that public schools have too narrow a view of service, often excluding service by Boy Scouts and churches. Obama hasn't yet said much about what doesn't count as service, but he has said enough to cause me to worry.

Obama proposes to move from college work-study to “Serve-Study.” He plans to mandate that 25% of college work-study jobs be directed away from working on campus, “such as in libraries and dining halls,” to working in the community, eventually hoping to raise that proportion to 50% of all college work-study employment.

Thus, Obama wouldn’t count as “service” my wife’s college work-study job (years ago) as a weekend librarian in the University of Chicago’s School of Social Work, but if my wife had done one of Barack Obama’s preferred tasks, picking up trash in the slum behind the School, Obama would count that as service.

Reasonable people may differ on whether aiding in the education of social work students is more valuable than picking up trash. Yet in my wife’s student days, picking up trash would probably have done little good in the long run because (as the Boston Globe revealed) the government-supported housing projects developed or managed by Obama’s clients, friends, and biggest contributors within 500 yards of the back of Chicago’s School of Social Work were allowed to deteriorate, pretty much destroying most of the improvements made in that neighborhood.

It seems that the levees in towns adjacent to New Orleans are not prepared to handle a big storm surge:

Flood control experts said Hurricane Gustav's surge may deliver the worst-case scenario for the West Bank because the hurricane protection system there remains incomplete and severely vulnerable in some spots, despite accelerated levee work in the past three years.

With predictions of storm surge topping 10 feet when the storm passes Grand Isle, West Bank officials admited privately that they are preparing for widespread flooding and for rescuing people after the storm passes.

Jerry Spohrer, executive director of the West Jefferson Levee District, said there's still a chance that levees may keep storm surge out of the West Bank's most populated areas. But those chances diminish the higher the surge goes as it approaches the West Bank hurricane protection system.

"At 7 feet, we're iffy," Spohrer said Sunday morning. "It's not so much that we don't have the elevation. When you talk about the pressure of that water, the waves of that water pressing against what's there, we're keeping our fingers crossed."

David Bindewald, president of the Southeast Louisiana Flood Protection Authority - West, called Gustav the storm they have always feared. He said he's confident the system can withstand a 7-foot surge with some wave action.

"Beyond that, based on the numbers I'm hearing now, we lose the fight," he said. "We have to wait and see what we get."

The Army Corps of Engineers has not released storm surge predictions, but Jefferson Parish officials who have seen another set of models said a wall of water higher than the levee system could barrel toward the West Bank on Monday. . . .

Weak spots stretch across the system, from earthen levees at the back of Lake Cataouatche to floodwalls near Westwego to the Harvey Canal in the middle of the West Bank and to earthen levees guarding the Intracoastal Canal at the back of Algiers.

On the Harvey Canal, parish officials are questioning whether 8-foot-high sand baskets protecting the southeast bank can withstand any wave action, let alone overtopping.

A Harvey Canal gate at Lapalco Boulevard is designed to stop a storm surge of up to 11 feet above sea level from entering the northern half of the canal. Corps officials were preparing to close the mechanical structure Sunday evening or overnight. They will also start pumping water out of the northern portion of the canal when the tide is at 2 feet above sea level and rising.

If there's any comfort to be had for West Bank residents, it's that the area's levee system has undergone an unprecedented amount of improvements since Hurricane Katrina. That storm gave local leaders the urgency to demand that Congress fund levee work that has been more than 30 years in the making.

UPDATE: At WeatherNerd, they are quoting experts who say that the levees will probably hold (tip to Instapundit).

For those looking to donate money (or time) to organizations that might help victims of Hurricane Gustav, here is a list of charities that dealt with both Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Rita (and don’t spend too much of their receipts on fundraising).

A year ago the American Institute of Philanthropy (AIP) rated the best charities dealing with these two storms:

THE BEST WAY TO HELP VICTIMS OF HURRICANES KATRINA AND RITA

Updated August 27, 2007

The American Institute of Philanthropy (AIP) announces its top-rated charities currently offering services to the victims of the 2005 Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in the Southeast U.S. Hurricane Katrina devastated major cities along the Gulf coast, including New Orleans, Biloxi and Mobile, with strong winds up to 140 mph in some areas and flooding. Not long afterwards, Hurricane Rita severely damaged small coastal communities including Lake Charles and Holly Beach in Louisiana and Port Arthur and Beaumont in southeast Texas.

. . . AIP, a leading charity watchdog that issues letter grade (A+ to F) ratings of nonprofit groups, identifies the following relief charities, which are providing aid to the victims. These charities have received an “A” . . . grade based on the portion of their budget going to program services and their fundraising efficiency. Charities with a “*” have announced plans to provide aid to victims of Hurricane Rita.

*American Red Cross (A-)

1-800-435-7669

*AmeriCares (A)

1-800-486-4357

*America's Second Harvest (A)

1-800-771-2303

*Church World Service (A)

1-800-297-1516

*Direct Relief International (A)

1-805-964-4767

*MAZON: A Jewish Response to Hunger (A)

1-310-442-0020

*Mercy Corps (A)

1-800-292-3355

*Salvation Army (A)

1-800-725-2769

*Save the Children (A)

1-800-728-3843

*World Vision (A-)

1-888-511-6598