Author Archive | Jim Lindgren

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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. […]

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 […]

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 […]

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, […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

Bill Stuntz has a fascinating analysis of experience and accomplishments. After discussing experience as time spent in state or federal jobs, he writes: But there is a third definition, and it may be the one the voters care most about: the relevant question is not how much time the candidate has spent in the relevant […]

Whichever candidate is elected President, it will be the first time since Kennedy that someone went straight from the Senate to the White House – and Kennedy came from a very politically experienced family. Senators – like most academics, reporters, and we bloggers – tend to be know-it-alls and second-guessers. When I hear Senators speak, […]