Philip J. Berg’s federal lawsuit challenging Barack Obama to document his US citizenship was dismissed last month in Philadelphia on the grounds that the plaintiff lacked standing.

Now, Alan Keyes, who does possess standing, having himself appeared on the California ballot this year as candidate for president of the American Independent Party, is suing the Secretary of State of California in Superior Court in Sacramento, asking the court to order that she refrain from certifying the election of the democrat party’s individual presidential electors until Barack Obama provides proof of his eligibility with respect to citizenship for the presidency.

Keyes v. Bowen pdf

In case Senator Obama cannot present proper documentation verifying his citizenship, he cannot be elected President of the United States, and SOS (Secretary of State) has a duty to bar the casting of votes by California Electors in support of his candidacy.

67. To avert a constitutional crisis which would certainly accrue after the election through laborious legal challenges, this writ seeks to resolve such complaints. It was incumbent on the candidates to present the necessary documentation confirming his citizenship, but, to date, Senator Obama has failed to do so.

68. At this point, Senator Obama has not allowed independent or official access to his vault (original hospital) birth records and supporting hospital records. Senator Obama’s citizenship status has been, and is being, challenged in 17 different legal actions in various federal and state courts, which challenges cast doubt on the validity of the electoral process, regardless of outcome, if not resolved prior to the certification of the election by the Electors. SOS is specifically charged with certifying and guaranteeing the validity of official documents and overseeing the elections in California, such that the people’s confidence in the fundamental aspect of democracy is maintained. To date, in this regard, SOS has not carried out that fundamental duty.

69. This writ requests a court order barring the SOS from both certifying to the Governor the names of the California Electors, and from transmitting to each presidential Elector a Certificate of Election, until such documentary proof is produced and verified showing that is a “natural born” citizen of the United States and does not hold citizenship in Indonesia, Kenya or Great Britain. In addition, this writ requests a court order barring the California Electors from signing the Certificate of Vote until such documentary proof is produced and verified showing that Senator Obama is a “natural born” citizen of the United States and does not hold citizenship in Indonesia, Kenya or Great Britain.

70. Should Senator Obama be discovered, after he takes office, to be ineligible for the Office of President of the United States of America and, thereby, his election declared void, Petitioners, as well as other Americans, will suffer irreparable harm in that an usurper will be sitting as the President of the United States, and none of the treaties, laws, or executive orders signed by him will be valid or legal. ...

74. A press release was issued on October 31, 2008, by the Hawaii Department of Health by its Director, Dr. Chiyome Fukino. Dr. Fukino said that she had “personally seen and verified that the Hawaii State Department of Health has Senator Obama’s original birth certificate on record in accordance with state policies and procedures.” That statement failed to resolve any of the questions being raised by litigation and press accounts. Being “on record” could mean either that its contents are in the computer database of the department or there is an actual “vault” original.

75. Further, the report does not say whether the birth certificate in the “record” is a Certificate of Live Birth or a Certificate of Hawaiian Birth. In Hawaii, a Certificate of Live Birth resulting from hospital documentation, including a signature of an attending physician, is different from a Certificate of Hawaiian Birth. For births prior to 1972, a Certificate of Hawaiian Birth was the result of the uncorroborated testimony of one witness and was not generated by a hospital. Such a Certificate could be obtained up to one year from the date of the child’s birth. For that reason, its value as prima facie evidence is limited and could be overcome if any of the allegations of substantial evidence of birth outside Hawaii can be obtained. The vault (long Version) birth certificate, per Hawaiian Statute 883.176 allows the birth in another State or another country to be registered in Hawaii. Box 7C of the vault
Certificate of Live Birth contains a question, whether the birth was in Hawaii or another State or Country. Therefore, the only way to verify the exact location of birth is to review a certified copy or the original vault Certificate of Live Birth and compare the name of the hospital and the name and the signature of the doctor against the birthing records on file at the hospital noted on the Certificate of the Live Birth.

76. An unprecedented and looming constitutional crisis awaits if a President elected by the popular vote and the electoral vote does not constitutionally qualify to serve in that capacity. In addition if Senator Obama is not a “natural born” citizen and not eligible for presidency, Senator Obama will be subject to the criminal Provisions of the California Elections Code, stating, “Any person who files or submit for filing a nomination paper or declaration of candidacy knowing that it, or any part of it, has been made falsely is punishable by a fine not exceeding one thousand dollars ($1,000) or by imprisonment in the state prison for 16 months or two or three years or by both the fine and imprisonment” (California Elections Code § 18203). ...

79 However, there are a number of separate reasons that would make Senator Obama ineligible to serve as President of the United States. On August 21, 2008, Mr. Phillip J. Berg, former Deputy Attorney General of the State of Pennsylvania, filed a legal action against Senator Obama and the Democratic National Committee. With his action, and in the subsequent appeal to the Supreme Court of the United States, Mr. Berg provided documents to the effect that Senator Obama was born in what is now Kenya (the British East African Protectorate of Zanzibar at the time) and that his paternal grandmother was present at his birth. Senator Obama claims that he was born in Hawaii. According to statements made by his half-sister, Maya Soetoro Ng, he was born in Kapiolani Hospital in Hawaii. According to his biography posted on Wikipedia, Senator Obama was born in Queens Hospital in Hawaii. However, he has never provided the original hospital birth certificate from 1961, with the name of the hospital and the name and the signature of the doctor in attendance. All that Senator Obama has posted on his website is a Registry of Live Birth (short version), obtained in 2007, that does not provide the name of the hospital or the doctor. Clearly, one human being cannot be born in three different places. Hawaii Revised Statute 338-178 allows registration of birth in Hawaii for a child that was born outside of Hawaii to parents who, for a year preceding the child’s birth, claimed Hawaii as their place of residence. The only way to know where Senator Obama was actually born is to view Senator Obama’s original birth certificate from 1961 that shows the name of the hospital and the name and signature of the doctor that delivered him. From August 21, 2008, for over two months, Senator Obama has refused to provide his original birth certificate, even though, in his book, Dreams of My Father, page 26, he states, “… I found the article folded between my birth certificate and old immunization records…” which shows that he clearly has his birth certificate, or that he lied in his book. Particularly telling is the fact that not one single person has come forward, not a doctor, not a nurse, not a hospital administrator, nor anyone else, to state that he or she was present during this birth, except for Obama’s paternal grandmother, who affirmed that she “was in the delivery room in Kenya when he was born Aug. 4, 1961.” Additionally, when Mr. Berg served subpoenas on the hospitals mentioned above, Senator Obama refused to sign a consent form that would allow the hospitals to release any of his information. Instead, Senator Obama has hired three law firms to defend himself, and has challenged the action by Mr. Berg on a technicality, claiming that an ordinary citizen does not have standing to bring the suit. This matter is currently being reviewed by the U.S. Supreme Court. The parties in this case have standing to bring this litigation, due to the fact that Dr. Keyes and Dr. Drake, Sr., are candidates on the California ballot for President and Vice President of the United States, and Mr. Robinson is an Elector for the Keyes-Drake ticket, and Vice Chairman of
America’s Independent Party, of Fenton, Michigan, which nominated Dr. Keyes for President. He is also a Chairman of the American Independent Party (California), which nominated Dr. Keyes and Dr. Drake for President and Vice President, respectively. Based on the foregoing, it is imperative for SOS to be provided proof that Senator Obama is a “natural born” citizen.

80. If he was born in Hawaii, there are four (4) other obstacles to Senator Obama’s eligibility. In and about 1967, Senator Obama moved to Indonesia, took the last name of his stepfather, Soetoro, and went by the name Barry Soetoro. In original legal action filed by Mr. Berg, he presented Senator Obama’s school registration, showing him registered as Barry Soetoro, Citizenship-Indonesian, Religion Islam, signed by L. Soetoro. From 1945, Indonesia has not allowed dual citizenship and, therefore, Ms. Dunham-Obama-Soetoro, Senator Obama’s mother, had to relinquish her son’s U.S.citizenship in order to obtain Indonesian citizenship for him, which would make him ineligible to become a United States President. Additionally, the United States could not allow dual citizenship with Indonesia at that time, as Indonesia did not allow dual citizenship, and it was prohibited by the Hague Convention of 1930, as interfering with the internal affairs of another sovereign Country.

81. In addition, upon return to the United States in and around 1971-1972, Senator Obama would have been required to go to the then current immigration procedures to regain his U.S. citizenship. There is no record of him ever doing that. Even if he had done so, he would be considered a naturalized citizen and not a “natural born” citizen.

82. Additionally, assuming Senator Obama was born in what is now Kenya, at the time of Senator Obama’s birth in 1961, (now) Kenya was the British Protectorate of Zanzibar and Senator Obama was automatically accorded a form of British citizenship under Section 32(1) of the British Nationality Act of 1948, effective date January 28, 1949, based on his father’s citizenship.

83. Finally, in 1981, Senator Obama traveled to Pakistan, when there was a ban for U.S. citizens to travel to Pakistan. The only logical possibility for him to do so was by using one of his other passports: Indonesian, Kenyan, or British.

84. Based on all of the above, it is the duty of the SOS to obtain proper documentation of Senator Obama’s citizenship to confirm his eligibility for the office of the President of the United States.

If Keyes, Berg, et. al. are correct in their suspicions, it appears that Americans will have inadvertently elected Joseph Biden president.

The Telegraph describes how Global Warming manages to keep setting new temperature records, even in the face of colder weather.

A surreal scientific blunder last week raised a huge question mark about the temperature records that underpin the worldwide alarm over global warming. On Monday, Nasa’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), which is run by Al Gore’s chief scientific ally, Dr James Hansen, and is one of four bodies responsible for monitoring global temperatures, announced that last month was the hottest October on record.

This was startling. Across the world there were reports of unseasonal snow and plummeting temperatures last month, from the American Great Plains to China, and from the Alps to New Zealand. China’s official news agency reported that Tibet had suffered its “worst snowstorm ever”. In the US, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration registered 63 local snowfall records and 115 lowest-ever temperatures for the month, and ranked it as only the 70th-warmest October in 114 years.

So what explained the anomaly? GISS’s computerised temperature maps seemed to show readings across a large part of Russia had been up to 10 degrees higher than normal. But when expert readers of the two leading warming-sceptic blogs, Watts Up With That and Climate Audit, began detailed analysis of the GISS data they made an astonishing discovery. The reason for the freak figures was that scores of temperature records from Russia and elsewhere were not based on October readings at all. Figures from the previous month had simply been carried over and repeated two months running.

Yet last week’s latest episode is far from the first time Dr Hansen’s methodology has been called in question. In 2007 he was forced by Mr Watts and Mr McIntyre to revise his published figures for US surface temperatures, to show that the hottest decade of the 20th century was not the 1990s, as he had claimed, but the 1930s.

Another of his close allies is Dr Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the IPCC, who recently startled a university audience in Australia by claiming that global temperatures have recently been rising “very much faster” than ever, in front of a graph showing them rising sharply in the past decade. In fact, as many of his audience were aware, they have not been rising in recent years and since 2007 have dropped.

Remember the Obama Campaign denouncing NRA criticisms as falsehoods and claiming Obama had no animus toward private gun ownership?

The Chicago Tribune reports an Obama transition team detail that provides a glimpse of the future administration’s real perspective on private firearms ownership.

A 63-item questionnaire for prospective members of Barack Obama’s White House team has upset the Illinois State Rifle Association because it includes a question on firearms that the organization reads as hostile to gun owners.

“Do you or any members of your immediate family own a gun?” asks Question 59. “If so, provide complete ownership and registration information. Has the registration ever lapsed? Please also describe how and by whom it is used and whether it has been the cause of any personal injuries or property damage.

Philip Terzian, in the Weekly Standard, waxes ironical on the dawning of the Chosen One’s Brave New America.

You may have noticed that some presidential Transitions are more equal than others.

Here is my theory: When a Democrat is succeeded by a Republican in the White House, it is seen as a civic regression, the triumph of dirty politics over clean statesmanship (see Willie Horton, the October Surprise, Lee Atwater, etc.). But when a Democrat replaces a Republican, it’s a national rebirth, a celebration of renewal and the natural order of things.

An expatriate Briton, now deceased, liked to tell the story of dining one evening in early 1969, on the eve of Richard Nixon’s first inaugural, at the Rive Gauche, a fashionable Georgetown restaurant favored by Jackie Kennedy and friends, long since gone. As their meal progressed, he and his companion observed that the place was swiftly filling up with people they didn’t know, or even recognize, total strangers. And then it hit them: The Republicans had arrived!

Of course, this mixture of alarm and condescension—Tip O’Neill to Ronald Reagan: “You’re in the big leagues now” (1981)—is very different from the tone currently surrounding Barack Obama, or the arrival of Bill Clinton—”Bill and Al’s Excellent Adventure,” the Washington Post (1992)—a decade-and-a-half ago. Certainly as far as the media are concerned, a Democrat-to-Republican Transition is an ominous thing, as the black clouds and killer insects descend on the nation’s capital; a Republican-to-Democrat Transition, by contrast, is a tribute to life, an Ode to Joy on the Mighty Wurlitzer of political Washington.

Robert Carter, in Quadrant Magazine, provides an excellent tour d’horizon of the scientific realities and politics of alleged Anthropogenic Climate Change.

Climate change knows three realities: science reality, which is what working scientists deal with every day; virtual reality, which is the wholly imaginary world inside computer climate models; and public reality, which is the socio-political system within which politicians, business people and the general citizenry work.

The science reality is that climate is a complex, dynamic, natural system that no one wholly comprehends, though many scientists understand different small parts. So far, science provides no unambiguous evidence that dangerous or even measurable human-caused global warming is occurring.

The virtual reality is that computer models predict future climate according to the assumptions that are programmed into them. There is no established Theory of Climate, and therefore the potential output of all realistic computer general circulation models (GCMs) encompasses a range of both future warmings and coolings, the outcome depending upon the way in which they are constructed. Different results can be produced at will simply by adjusting such poorly known parameters as the effects of cloud cover.

The public reality in 2008 is that, driven by strong environmental lobby groups and evangelistic scientists and journalists, there is a widespread but erroneous belief in our society that dangerous global warming is occurring and that it has human causation.

Read the whole thing.

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Hat tip to Bird Dog.

Physorg.com:

A hobbyist with a metal detector has found a cache of ancient Celtic and Germanic coins in a cornfield in the southern city of Maastricht. The city says the trove of 39 gold and 70 silver coins are dated to the middle of the first century B.C. The hobbyist, Paul Curfs, 47, found several coins this spring and called attention to the find, which eventually led to an archaeological investigation by Amsterdam’s Free University. ..

Nico Roymans, the archaeologist who led the academic investigation of the find, believes the gold coins in the cache were minted by a tribe called the Eburones that Caesar claimed to have wiped out in 53 B.C. after they conspired with other groups in an attack that killed 6,000 Roman soldiers.

The Eburones “put up strong resistance to Caesar’s journeys of conquest,” Roymans said.

The silver coins were made by tribes further to the north – possible evidence of cooperation against Caesar, he said.

Both coin types have triple spirals on the front, a common Celtic symbol.

James Lewis, at American Thinker, suggests that our European critics won’t be so terribly happy when the newly melted Obama-style socialist and pacifist America stops defending them.

Suppose you’ve been living under the protective wings of a benevolent superpower for sixty years. And suppose you’ve used that big half century to take off on an endless vacation—spending all your tax money to buy votes for the socialist Ruling Class. It’s been one long, grand, drug-infested, sex-drenched, self-indulgent, tabloid party scene. Any time danger threatens you look to Washington for protection. The rest of the time you noisily abuse those Yankee imperialists, merely to boost your fragile ego. Corruption has become pervasive.

That’s Europe today.

What a sweet deal.

But now you see your guardian superpower electing a guy who wants to follow your example. Whooops! Time to sober up. Fast.

Yes, you went hoarse cheering Obama’s ego trip at the Berlin Victory Monument, because you love the idea that O will teach America to love Eurosocialism forever and ever. But shivers are running up and down your spine—- because if he is what you think he is, America won’t be there any more to save you. It will just slide into vegetarian nihilism and leave Europe to the New Soviet Empire.

Europe would crumble like a soggy crouton without America’s commitment to its defense. We saw that happen three times in the 20th century, and the bad news is that it’s starting again. Real danger is at the gates; Europe’s Ruling Class is in denial; and half of it is preparing to surrender to the Russians or the Muslim fascists, whichever gets there first.

Read the whole thing.

Abigail M.’s Level

John Derbyshire made level 18, and his posting about it provoked 200 replies.

link

Personally, I think all the “put things away in the right place” games have their real target in the female audience. My wife plays this sort of thing obsessively. Myself, I prefer games where you shoot things and cause things to blow up.

Jefferson Davis’ .44 (.54 bore) Kerr’s Patent Revolver

A Kerr’s Patent Revolver with provenance indicating that it was one of two presented by Confederate President Jefferson Davis to the commander of his personal escort, Captain Given Campbell, Duke’s Cavalry Brigade, May 4, 1865, shortly before Davis’ capture by Union forces is being offered for sale by Ziern-Hanon Galleries. Not cheap, but quite a piece of history.

More photos.

The Onion’s bipartisan panel of political pundits discuss government’s response to the current financial crisis.

1:56 video

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Hat tip to Scott Drum.

Catherine Vogt

John Kass, at the Chicago Tribune, has a little story of a middle school student’s experiment which tells us a lot about life in America today. Catherine Vogt’s Oak Park, Illinois could just as easily have been any other fashionable upper middle class community from coast to coast.

Just before the election, Catherine consulted with her history teacher, then bravely wore a unique T-shirt to school and recorded the comments of teachers and students in her journal. The T-shirt bore the simple yet quite subversive words drawn with a red marker:

“McCain Girl.”

“I was just really curious how they’d react to something that different, because a lot of people at my school wore Obama shirts and they are big Obama supporters,” Catherine told us. “I just really wanted to see what their reaction would be.”

Immediately, Catherine learned she was stupid for wearing a shirt with Republican John McCain’s name. Not merely stupid. Very stupid.

“People were upset. But they started saying things, calling me very stupid, telling me my shirt was stupid and I shouldn’t be wearing it,” Catherine said.

Then it got worse.

“One person told me to go die. It was a lot of dying. A lot of comments about how I should be killed,” Catherine said, of the tolerance in Oak Park.

“In one class, I had one teacher say she will not judge me for my choice, but that she was surprised that I supported McCain,” Catherine said.

If Catherine was shocked by such passive-aggressive threats from instructors, just wait until she goes to college. ...

One student suggested that she be put up on a cross for her political beliefs.

“He said, ‘You should be crucifixed.’ It was kind of funny because, I was like, don’t you mean ‘crucified?’ ” Catherine said.

Other entries in her notebook involved suggestions by classmates that she be “burned with her shirt on” for “being a filthy-rich Republican.”

Some said that because she supported McCain, by extension she supported a plan by deranged skinheads to kill Obama before the election.

Duck!

If I were to follow the examples of Joseph Smith, L. Ron Hubbard, or Barack Obama, and invent my own religion, could I demand that the nearest municipality boasting a Ten Commandments monument allow me to erect another monument listing my own teachings on the courthouse lawn? Should the city fathers fail to oblige would a federal circuit court of appeals (that isn’t the 9th Circuit) rule in my favor? Is it possible to imagine that the United States Supreme Court could wind up ruling on my petition?

The Wall Street Journal reports that it has all worked out just that way for Corky Ra.

A couple of decades after a visit from “beings Extraterrestrial” inspired him to found the Church of Summum in 1975, Summum Bonum Amen Ra, born Claude Nowell and known as Corky, had another epochal encounter. He saw a monolith depicting the Ten Commandments on the courthouse grounds in Salt Lake City, says Su Menu, the Summum religion’s current leader, and “felt it would be nice to have the Seven Aphorisms next to them.” The monument would be inscribed with the principles that, according to Summum doctrine, Moses initially intended to deliver to the Hebrews before deciding they weren’t ready to understand them.

Several Utah municipalities Mr. Ra approached declined the opportunity to display the Seven Aphorisms, provoking a legal battle that arrived at the Supreme Court Wednesday.

Daniel Henniger editorializes:

In 2007, the federal appeals court for the Tenth Circuit ruled in favor of Summum, giving the religion permission to put up its Seven Aphorisms monument in Pioneer Park. The Supreme Court will decide whether the Summums of America deserve their own patch of the public green.

Laughable though it looks, Pleasant Grove City v. Summum is a textbook example of tensions that have pulled our courts between noble readings of the Constitution—in this case, the First Amendment’s speech protections—and what the average person might call the common-sense requirements of running a civil society.

Henniger is perfectly correct. Modern liberalism’s abject inability to resist any appeal couched in idealistic rhetoric gives it a terminable case of philosophic round heels.

Joe Hyams, novelist, screenwriter, biographer, and Hollywood columist (IMDB entry) and author of the much admired Zen in the Martial Arts passed away in Denver last Saturday at the age of 85.

Hyams was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts and attended Harvard. He served in the US Army during WWII, and was awarded the Purple Heart and Bronze Star. After the war, he became a nationally syndicated columnist, writing on Hollywood and the film industry.

He studied the martial arts for 50 years.

Alain Burrese describes Hyams’ MA career.

Joe Hyams took up fencing lessons in the 1950’s and through those classes he met film music composer Bronislau Kaper. In 1958, Kaper introduced him to Ed Parker, who was teaching Kenpo in the weight room in Beverly Hills Health Club. Mr. Hyams became one of Ed Parker’s first private students and also one of Mr. Parker’s first black belts.

Joe Hyams was the first person to introduce Bruce Lee into the Hollywood community. He helped Bruce Lee, with whom he trained privately get a foothold in Hollywood during Bruce’s struggling years. Mr. Hyams trained with Bruce Lee for two years, and when Bruce left for Hong Kong to pursue his film career, he suggested that Joe learn from Jim Lau, who trained him in Wing Chun.

LA Times obituary

MartialArtsInfo.com obituary

Patented by in 2001 by the KBP Instrument Design Bureau, the PP-2000 was first seen at the Interpolytech-2004 exhibition in Moscow.

Modern Firearms description

Jim Dunnigan’s Strategy Page reports the PP-2000’s recent appearance as an actual issue weapon:

Over the last few years, the Russian police and special operations personnel have been getting a new 9mm submachine gun, the PP-2000. The new weapon has proved to be very popular. It’s reliable, light (3.3 pounds empty) and compact (13 inches, or 33cm, long with the stock retracted). When the gunstock is used, it can also hold a spare 44 round magazine. With the gunstock, the weapon is 22 inches (55.5cm) long. Rate of fire is 10-12 rounds a second. It uses a 20 or 44 round magazines.

A very nice design!

Camille Paglia feels a reflexive, not exactly objective, need to bash Republicans every time she criticizes democrats. One must be even-handed, after all. Her observations on the failure of the MSM to investigate the democrat candidate and her defense of Sarah Palin, though, are well worth reading.

In the closing weeks of the election, however, I became increasingly disturbed by the mainstream media’s avoidance of forthright dealing with several controversies that had been dogging Obama—even as every flimsy rumor about Sarah Palin was being trumpeted as if it were engraved in stone on Mount Sinai. For example, I had thought for many months that the flap over Obama’s birth certificate was a tempest in a teapot. But simple questions about the certificate were never resolved to my satisfaction. ...

Obama could have ended the entire matter months ago by publicly requesting Hawaii to issue a fresh, long-form, stamped certificate and inviting a few high-profile reporters in to examine the document and photograph it. (The campaign did make the “short-form” certificate available to Factcheck.org, a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania.) And why has Obama not made his university records or thesis work widely available? The passivity of the press toward Bush administration propaganda about weapons of mass destruction led the nation into the costly blunder of the Iraq war. We don’t need another presidency that finds it all too easy to rely on evasion or stonewalling. I deeply admire Obama, but as a voter I don’t like feeling gamed or played.

Another issue that I initially dismissed was the flap over William Ayers, the Chicago-based former member of the violent Weather Underground. Conservative radio host Sean Hannity began the drumbeat about Ayers’ association with Obama a year ago—a theme that most of the mainstream media refused to investigate or even report until this summer. I had never heard of Ayers and couldn’t have cared less. I was irritated by Hillary Clinton’s aggressive flagging of Ayers in a debate, and I accepted Obama’s curt dismissal of the issue.

Hence my concern about Ayers has been very slow in developing. The mainstream media should have fully explored the subject early this year and not allowed it to simmer and boil until it flared up ferociously in the last month of the campaign. Obama may not in recent years have been “pallin’ around” with Ayers, in Sarah Palin’s memorable line, but his past connections with Ayers do seem to have been more frequent and substantive than he has claimed. ...

Given that Obama had served on a Chicago board with Ayers and approved funding of a leftist educational project sponsored by Ayers, one might think that the unrepentant Ayers-Dohrn couple might be of some interest to the national media. But no, reporters have been too busy playing mini-badminton with every random spitball about Sarah Palin, who has been subjected to an atrocious and at times delusional level of defamation merely because she has the temerity to hold pro-life views.

How dare Palin not embrace abortion as the ultimate civilized ideal of modern culture? How tacky that she speaks in a vivacious regional accent indistinguishable from that of Western Canada! How risible that she graduated from the State University of Idaho and not one of those plush, pampered commodes of received opinion whose graduates, in their rush to believe the worst about her, have demonstrated that, when it comes to sifting evidence, they don’t know their asses from their elbows.

Liberal Democrats are going to wake up from their sadomasochistic, anti-Palin orgy with a very big hangover. The evil genie released during this sorry episode will not so easily go back into its bottle. A shocking level of irrational emotionalism and at times infantile rage was exposed at the heart of current Democratic ideology—contradicting Democratic core principles of compassion, tolerance and independent thought. ...

I like Sarah Palin, and I’ve heartily enjoyed her arrival on the national stage. As a career classroom teacher, I can see how smart she is—and quite frankly, I think the people who don’t see it are the stupid ones, wrapped in the fuzzy mummy-gauze of their own worn-out partisan dogma. So she doesn’t speak the King’s English—big whoop! There is a powerful clarity of consciousness in her eyes. She uses language with the jumps, breaks and rippling momentum of a be-bop saxophonist.

When Barack Obama named the Machiavelli of the democratic left, Rahm Emanuel, as White House Chief of Staff, the move, amounting to the selection of “a wartime consigliere,” was widely interpreted as evidence of the new administration’s intention of pursuing a highly polarized agenda, rather than, as Obama promised throughout his campaign, moving beyond partisanship.

Further signs of President-elect Obama’s intentions will come with ongoing appointments. Transition team chief John Podesta promised major cabinet-level appointments would be announced next month.

US News & World Reports published an unofficial transition flowchart (.pdf), currently circulating within the Beltway, which has some real eye-openers: e.g., Al Gore as “Climate Czar” and druggie-playboy-turned-Conspiracy-Theorist-and-Environmental-Prophet Robert Kennedy, Jr. as head of the EPA.

Robert Kennedy, Jr.

Walter Olson recently sounded the alarm about this possible appointment in Forbes, profiling Kennedy’s recent career promoting scary theories about childhood vaccinations causing Autism (complete with a CDC cover-up shielding the Drug Industry), air pollution causing Down’s Syndrome, and the Republican Party stealing the 2004 election.

The Politico blog describes government in action enforcing honesty and fairness in campaign finance. John McCain should be proud of his own contributions to the present system.

The Federal Election Commission is unlikely to conduct a potentially embarrassing audit of how Barack Obama raised and spent his presidential campaign’s record-shattering windfall, despite allegations of questionable donations and accounting that had the McCain campaign crying foul.

Adding insult to injury for Republicans: The FEC is obligated to complete a rigorous audit of McCain’s campaign coffers, which will take months, if not years, and cost McCain millions of dollars to defend.

Obama is expected to escape that level of scrutiny mostly because he declined an $84 million public grant for his campaign that automatically triggers an audit and because the sheer volume of cash he raised and spent minimizes the significance of his errors. Another factor: The FEC, which would have to vote to launch an audit, is prone to deadlocking on issues that inordinately impact one party or the other – like approving a messy and high-profile probe of a sitting president.

McCain, on the other hand, accepted the $84 million in taxpayer money, which not only barred him from raising or spending more – allowing Obama to fund many times more ads and ground operations – but also will keep his lawyers busy for a couple years explaining how every penny was spent.

Through the end of September, McCain had socked away $9.4 million in a special fund to pay for the audit.

The Obama campaign does not expect to be audited, but spokesman Ben LaBolt said it would be ready in the event it is.

M.C. Escher, Drawing Hands, 1948.

In a now famous 2002 radio interview, Barack Obama regretted the Warren Court’s failure to break free from “the essential constraints placed in the Constitution by the founding fathers.”

In Newsweek, George Will discusses how Obama’s very candidacy represented a fundamental break with constraints intended by the founding fathers. Barack Obama is the first presidential candidate in US history to achieve election, in the manner of an Escher print, on the basis of no personal achievement beyond the competence and well-oiled organization of his actual campaign for the presidency.

James W. Ceaser, professor of politics at the University of Virginia, writing in the Claremont Review of Books, notes that, contrary to conventional understanding, the Constitution created not three but four “national institutions.” They are the Congress, the Supreme Court, the presidency—and the presidential selection system, based on the Electoral College. “The question of presidential selection,” Ceaser writes, “was just that important to the Founders.”

Under their plan, the nomination of candidates and the election of the president were to occur simultaneously. Electors meeting in their respective states, in numbers equal to their states’ senators and representatives, would vote for two people for president. The electors’ winnowing of aspirants was the nomination process. When the votes were opened in the U.S. House of Representatives, the candidate with a majority would become president, the runner-up would become vice president. If no person achieved a majority of electoral votes, the House would pick from among the top five vote getters. Note well: The selection of presidential nominees was to be controlled by the Constitution.

The Founders’ intent, Ceaser writes, was to prevent the selection of a president from being determined by the “popular arts” of campaigning, such as rhetoric. The Founders, Ceaser says, “were deeply fearful of leaders deploying popular oratory as the means of winning distinction.” That deployment would invite demagoguery, which subverts moderation. “Brilliant appearances,” wrote John Jay in The Federalist Papers 64, “… sometimes mislead as well as dazzle.” By telling members of the political class how not to get considered for the presidency, the Founders hoped to (in Ceaser’s words) “make virtue the ally of interest” and shape the behavior of that class.

Barack Obama completed the long march away from the Founders’ intent. Most recent presidential candidacies have been exercises of personal political entrepreneurship; his campaign, powered by the “popular art” of oratory, was the antithesis of the Founders’ system.

The Progressives of 100 years ago wanted to popularize presidential selection by rewarding candidates gifted in the popular art of inflaming excitement through oratory. They opened a door through which, eventually, strode George Wallace, Jesse Jackson, Pat Robertson, Pat Buchanan, Howard Dean and others.

Ceaser notes that the candidate whose path to the presidency most resembled Obama’s was Jimmy Carter. He, too, used an intensely personal and inspirational appeal to compensate for a thin résumé. Having courted the public with flattering rhetoric—promising “a government as good as the American people”—Carter came a cropper as president, partly because he was a one-man political startup. He had been selected by a process that rewarded running as a solitary savior, offering his personal qualities—his supposed moral excellence—as the key to national improvement.

Even CNN has noticed that the Obama Transition web-site has changed its mind about disclosing the specifics of the new administration’s intentions and agenda.

Somebody might start opposing them. Better make them a surprise.

Last week, President-elect Barack Obama launched a Web site with detailed information about his plans for technology, Iraq, and health care policies.

Now they’re gone.

The “agenda” Web pages on Change.gov seem to have mysteriously disappeared on Sunday. By Monday morning, they were replaced with a vague statement saying that Obama and running mate Joe Biden have a “comprehensive and detailed agenda” that will “bring about the kind of change America needs,” with the individual pages deleted entirely.

A version of the now-deleted homeland security agenda recovered from the cache feature of Microsoft’s Live Search is far more detailed, promising to convene a nuclear terrorism summit, declare the Internet “a strategic asset,” and establish a $2 billion fund to “counter al-Qaeda propaganda.” Those happen to be identical to the promises that candidate Obama made earlier this year; they have not been deleted from the campaign Web site. ...

Dan Pfeiffer, Obama’s transition communications director, would not say what was going on or whether the deletion meant that some of the campaign promises would be dropped. He sent CNET News a one-line e-mail message saying: “That section of the Web site is being retooled.”

Under “Domestic Policy,” the transition web-site formerly promised to enact a variety of gun control proposals favored by anti-gun groups. The NRA Institute For Legislative Action still remembers what those were:

Making the expired federal assault weapons ban permanent.

In other words, restoring a ban on firearms which are not actually assault weapons by calling them “assault weapons,” relying on public confusion based upon cosmetic resemblances.

Repeal the Tiahrt Amendment.

The Tiahrt amendment, and appropriations rider introduced in 2003 by Rep Todd Tiahrt (R – 4th District Kansas) prohibits the release of federal firearm tracing information to anyone other than a law enforcement agency conducting a bona fide criminal investigation. Anti-gun activists oppose the restriction, because it prevents them from obtaining tracing information and using it in frivolous lawsuits against law-abiding firearm manufacturers.

“Closing the gun show loophole.”

An attempt to prohibit private sales of firearms by individuals not licensed as Federal Firearms Dealers.

“Making guns in this country childproof.”

“Childproofing” is a codeword for a variety of schemes intended to ban firearms by imposing impossible or highly expensive design requirements, such as biometric shooter-identification systems.

————————————————-

Hat tip to Ben Slotznik.

—this post is repeated annually—

WWI came to an end by an armistice arranged to occur at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918. The date and time, selected at a point in history when mens’ memories ran much longer, represented a compliment to St. Martin, patron saint of soldiers, and thus a tribute to the fighting men of both sides. The feast day of St. Martin, the Martinmas, had been for centuries a major landmark in the European calendar, a date on which leases expired, rents came due; and represented, in Northern Europe, a seasonal turning point after which cold weather and snow might be normally expected.

It fell about the Martinmas-time, when the snow lay on the borders…
—-Old Song.

From Robert Chambers, The Book of Days, 1869:

St. Martin, the son of a Roman military tribune, was born at Sabaria, in Hungary, about 316. From his earliest infancy, he was remarkable for mildness of disposition; yet he was obliged to become a soldier, a profession most uncongenial to his natural character. After several years’ service, he retired into solitude, from whence he was withdrawn, by being elected bishop of Tours, in the year 374. The zeal and piety he displayed in this office were most exemplary. He converted the whole of his diocese to Christianity, overthrowing the ancient pagan temples, and erecting churches in their stead. From the great success of his pious endeavours, Martin has been styled the Apostle of the Gauls; and, being the first confessor to whom the Latin Church offered public prayers, he is distinguished as the father of that church. In remembrance of his original profession, he is also frequently denominated the Soldier Saint. The principal legend, connected with St. Martin, forms the subject of our illustration, which represents the saint, when a soldier, dividing his cloak with a poor naked beggar, whom he found perishing with cold at the gate of Amiens. This cloak, being most miraculously preserved, long formed one of the holiest and most valued relics of France; when war was declared, it was carried before the French monarchs, as a sacred banner, and never failed to assure a certain victory. The oratory in which this cloak or cape—in French, chape—was preserved, acquired, in consequence, the name of chapelle, the person intrusted with its care being termed chapelain: and thus, according to Collin de Plancy, our English words chapel and chaplain are derived. The canons of St. Martin of Tours and St. Gratian had a lawsuit, for sixty years, about a sleeve of this cloak, each claiming it as their property. The Count Larochefoucalt, at last, put an end to the proceedings, by sacrilegiously committing the contested relic to the flames. Another legend of St. Martin is connected with one of those literary curiosities termed a palindrome. Martin, having occasion to visit Rome, set out to perform the journey thither on foot. Satan, meeting him on the way, taunted the holy man for not using a conveyance more suitable to a bishop. In an instant the saint changed the Old Serpent into a mule, and jumping on its back, trotted comfortably along. Whenever the transformed demon slackened pace, Martin, by making the sign of the cross, urged it to full speed. At last, Satan utterly defeated, exclaimed: Signa, te Signa: temere me tangis et angis: Roma tibi subito motibus ibit amor.’ In English— ‘Cross, cross thyself: thou plaguest and vexest me without necessity; for, owing to my exertions, thou wilt soon reach Rome, the object of thy wishes.’ The singularity of this distich, consists in its being palindromical—that is, the same, whether read backwards or forwards. Angis, the last word of the first line, when read backwards, forming signet, and the other words admitting of being reversed, in a similar manner. The festival of St. Martin, happening at that season when the new wines of the year are drawn from the lees and tasted, when cattle are killed for winter food, and fat geese are in their prime, is held as a feast-day over most parts of Christendom. On the ancient clog almanacs, the day is marked by the figure of a goose; our bird of Michaelmas being, on the continent, sacrificed at Martinmas. In Scotland and the north of England, a fat ox is called a mart, clearly from Martinmas, the usual time when beeves are killed for winter use. In ‘Tusser’s Husbandry, we read: When Easter comes, who knows not then, That veal and bacon is the man? And Martilmass beef doth bear good tack, When country folic do dainties lack.’ Barnaby Googe’s translation of Neogeorgus, shews us how Martinmas was kept in Germany, towards the latter part of the fifteenth century ‘To belly chear, yet once again, Doth Martin more incline, Whom all the people worshippeth With roasted geese and wine. Both all the day long, and the night, Now each man open makes His vessels all, and of the must, Oft times, the last he takes, Which holy Martin afterwards Alloweth to be wine, Therefore they him, unto the skies, Extol with praise divine.’ A genial saint, like Martin, might naturally be expected to become popular in England; and there are no less than seven churches in London and Westminster, alone, dedicated to him. There is certainly more than a resemblance between the Vinalia of the Romans, and the Martinalia of the medieval period. Indeed, an old ecclesiastical calendar, quoted by Brand, expressly states under 11th November: ‘The Vinalia, a feast of the ancients, removed to this day. Bacchus in the figure of Martin.’ And thus, probably, it happened, that the beggars were taken from St. Martin, and placed under the protection of St. Giles; while the former became the patron saint of publicans, tavern-keepers, and other ‘dispensers of good eating and drinking. In the hall of the Vintners’ Company of London, paintings and statues of St. Martin and Bacchus reign amicably together side by side. On the inauguration, as lord mayor, of Sir Samuel Dashwood, an honoured vintner, in 1702, the company had a grand processional pageant, the most conspicuous figure in which was their patron saint, Martin, arrayed, cap-Ã -pie, in a magnificent suit of polished armour; wearing a costly scarlet cloak, and mounted on a richly plumed and caparisoned white charger: two esquires, in rich liveries, walking at each side. Twenty satyrs danced before him, beating tambours, and preceded by ten halberdiers, with rural music. Ten Roman lictors, wearing silver helmets, and carrying axes and fasces, gave an air of classical dignity to the procession, and, with the satyrs, sustained the bacchanalian idea of the affair. A multitude of beggars, ‘howling most lamentably,’ followed the warlike saint, till the procession stopped in St. Paul’s Churchyard. Then Martin, or his representative at least, drawing his sword, cut his rich scarlet cloak in many pieces, which he distributed among the beggars. This ceremony being duly and gravely performed, the lamentable howlings ceased, and the procession resumed its course to Guildhall, where Queen Anne graciously condescended to dine with the new lord mayor.

Linn and Ari Armstrong, at the Grand Junction Free Press, issue a rejoinder to Alan Greenspan, John McCain, and Barack Obama on behalf of Ayn Rand and the Free Market.

Ayn Rand recognized a common pattern in the growth of political power: The enemies of liberty blame the free market for economic problems caused by government interference, then use those problems as a pretext for yet more political controls. Much of Rand’s prescient novel “Atlas Shrugged” revolves around that cycle.

Now Rand’s critics sound exactly like the villains of Atlas. They wouldn’t attack her if they didn’t recognize her as a barrier to their grand central plans.

Recently Alan Greenspan fueled the Rand hunt. In an Oct. 23 statement to a Congressional committee, Greenspan said he had “found a flaw” in his ideology of “free, competitive markets.”

There’s just one problem with Greenspan’s statement: He practiced no such ideology. For two decades, Greenspan served as chairman of the Federal Reserve, a central planning agency tasked with manipulating the money supply. Greenspan’s flaw is that he long ago abandoned the ideology of liberty.

Two decades before becoming a central planner, Greenspan, while still in association with Rand, warned of the dangers of the Federal Reserve. In a 1966 article, Greenspan noted that, in the late 20s, the “Federal Reserves pumped excessive reserves into American banks.” This “spilled over into the stock market — triggering a fantastic speculative boom.” Sound familiar? Greenspan became the monster he once warned against.

Today’s crisis centers around risky home loans. But were these loans made on a free market? No. Instead, they were encouraged, and in some cases mandated, by the federal government.

Both major candidates for president followed that stock line. While John McCain also blamed unspecified “corruption in Washington,” he emphasized the “greed and mismanagement of Wall Street.”

Barack Obama blamed greed and deregulation, despite the fact that nobody can point to the repeal of a regulation that could have caused the crisis. By contrast, the mechanisms by which government controls caused the crisis are clear.

Henry Blogett draws a grim pictures of the Times’ unhappy situation.

Specifically, the company must deliver $400 million to lenders in May of 2009, six months from now. The company has only $46 million of cash on hand, and its operations will likely begin consuming this meager balance this quarter or next. The company has been shut out of the commercial paper market, but has a $366 million short-term credit line remaining that it entered into several years ago, when the industry was strong. It has not yet drawn this cash down, and given the current environment and the trends at the company, we would not take for granted that it will be able to do so.

The New York Times is in discussions with its lenders about the May payment, and management thinks it will be able to work something out (“We expect that we will be able to manage our debt and credit obligations as they mature.” Note the use of the word “manage” as opposed to “meet.”)

So sad. Maybe they can sell the paper to Murdoch.

Read the whole thing.

Members of the Fleet Marine Force, c. 1940

Founded November 10, 1775.

———————————————

Maj. Gen. John A. Lejeune’s Birthday Message

RPS ORDERS
No. 47 (Series 1921)
HEADQUARTERS U.S. MARINE CORPS
Washington, November 1, 1921

759. The following will be read to the command on the 10th of November, 1921, and hereafter on the 10th of November of every year. Should the order not be received by the 10th of November, 1921, it will be read upon receipt.

(1) On November 10, 1775, a Corps of Marines was created by a resolution of Continental Congress. Since that date many thousand men have borne the name “Marine”. In memory of them it is fitting that we who are Marines should commemorate the birthday of our corps by calling to mind the glories of its long and illustrious history.

(2) The record of our corps is one which will bear comparison with that of the most famous military organizations in the world’s history. During 90 of the 146 years of its existence the Marine Corps has been in action against the Nation’s foes. From the Battle of Trenton to the Argonne, Marines have won foremost honors in war, and is the long eras of tranquility at home, generation after generation of Marines have grown gray in war in both hemispheres and in every corner of the seven seas, that our country and its citizens might enjoy peace and security.

(3) In every battle and skirmish since the birth of our corps, Marines have acquitted themselves with the greatest distinction, winning new honors on each occasion until the term “Marine” has come to signify all that is highest in military efficiency and soldierly virtue.

(4) This high name of distinction and soldierly repute we who are Marines today have received from those who preceded us in the corps. With it we have also received from them the eternal spirit which has animated our corps from generation to generation and has been the distinguishing mark of the Marines in every age. So long as that spirit continues to flourish Marines will be found equal to every emergency in the future as they have been in the past, and the men of our Nation will regard us as worthy successors to the long line of illustrious men who have served as “Soldiers of the Sea” since the founding of the Corps.

JOHN A. LEJEUNE,
Major General Commandant
————————————————————
A story: The Old Corps

Tun Tavern, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, November 10th 1775.

Captains Nicholas and Mullens, having been tasked by the 2nd Continental Congress to form 2 battalions of Marines, set up the Corps’ first recruiting station in the tavern. The first likely prospect was, in typical recruiters fashion, promised a “life of high adventure in service to Country and Corps”.

And, as an extra bonus: If he enlisted now he would receive a free tankard of ale….

The recruit gladly accepted the challenge and, receiving the free tankard of ale, was told to wait at the corner table for orders.

The first Marine sat quietly at the table sipping the ale when he was joined by another young man, who had two tankards of ale.

The first Marine looked at the lad and asked where he had gotten the two tankards of ale? The lad replied that he had just joined this new outfit called the Continental Marines, and as an enlistment bonus was given two tankards of ale. The first Marine took a long hard look at the second Marine and said, “It wasn’t like that in the old Corps.”

Navy Times:

The American businessman lay shackled in a mud hut 8,000 feet up a remote mountain in Afghanistan, armed captors posted inside and outside to prevent any escape attempt.

Earlier in his captivity, he had made a run for it, but — barefoot and much older than the insurgents who held him — he was snatched back before he could get far.

After nearly two months in captivity and out of contact with anyone who cared about him, the hostage reviewed what his fate might hold — whether ransom negotiations or rescue efforts or a miracle might bring him freedom. ...

On an airstrip many miles away, however, several twin sets of Chinook helicopter rotor blades were starting to turn as about 60 of America’s most elite troops prepared to prove him wrong. Members of a task force that Military Times agreed not to name, the commandos had been hunting for the businessman since soon after he went missing. Now they were ready to act. ...

Surrounded by “treacherous terrain,” the kidnappers’ location represented the most challenging aspect of the rescue mission, he said.

But the rugged remoteness of their hideaway appears to have led to fatal overconfidence among the American’s kidnappers.

“He had captors who thought we wouldn’t be able to deal with that terrain,” the special operations officer said.

That, the officer added, was a mistake. Seven years of experience in Afghanistan have enabled U.S. special operators to adapt to the unforgiving landscape.

“The terrain is really not a challenge any more,” he said. “It slows you down, but it slows them down, too.” ...

As night fell Oct. 14, three Chinook helicopters flew into the mountains and inserted roughly 24 to 30 special operators — most of them Navy SEALs — about three miles from the kidnappers’ hideout to minimize the chance of being seen or heard.

There they established an objective rally point — typically, the site where a spec ops force stows unnecessary gear and puts security teams out while those making the final approach to the target transform into “pure assault mode,” said a source familiar with such missions.

From the ORP, an assault force of seven operators — all or almost all SEALs, according to the special operations officer — crept toward the objective.

One of the commandos tossed a pebble against the hut’s tin door — a traditional way visitors announce their arrival in rural Afghanistan.

The rattle of the stone against the door failed to rouse the guards. “They were both zipped up inside their sleeping bags, sleeping,” one behind the hostage on the floor of the darkened hut and the other outside, the engineer said. But their prisoner was awake and suddenly alert.

“I heard the latch rattling and somebody came in,” he said. “The first guy came in with a LED light, and I just presumed that somebody was coming to visit. I didn’t think of it anymore until the second guy came in and I saw the silhouette of the first fellow. Then I knew it was U.S. mil that was coming in. I don’t know how many guys actually came into the room, but it was soon filled up, and it was soon obvious that I was being rescued. ...

“They knew who was who,” the engineer said. the SEALs quickly demonstrated that, aiming their silencer-equipped weapons to shoot and kill the kidnapper in the room before he could fire a round. The engineer said he heard the sounds of the operators shooting and killing a guard posted outside.

The SEALs turned to the now former hostage and told him they were there to take him back.

“I was in favor of that, 100 percent,” he said. “I was very surprised, very amazed and very happy.”

It was about 3 a.m. The operators and the newly liberated hostage began walking to the pick-up zone. ...

The rescued hostage soon was safely back at the task force’s main base, where the task force gave him a thorough medical evaluation before turning him over to the U.S. Embassy.

Full story.

Hat tip to Bill Dupray.

P.J. O’Rourke is bitter about GOP’s recent defeat, and contends that we conservatives have only ourselves to blame.

In the manner of sophisticated libertarians, he blames, firstly, conservatism’s reliance on non-elite Southerners and people of faith. I’m afraid I don’t agree with the we’d-be-winning-if we-just-kept-the-conservative-movement-for-the-Yuppies-like-us theory. We really do need a few more votes to win nationally. I was actually beginning to wonder if he would start complaining about Sarah Palin and marvelling at how articulate and really really deep Barack Obama is.

Still, I think he’s quite right about prominent portions of the movement being dead wrong on immigration. “Keep those hard-working Roman Catholics with strong family values out of here!” Obama carried the Hispanics, despite McCain’s record of sympathy toward illegal immigrants. McCain was obviously severely disadvantaged by the general GOP party line favoring border fences, heavy-handed immigration law enforcement, and deportations.

Despite certain tendencies toward effete Northeastern elitism, P.J. O’Rourke is witty as ever, and does make some good points.

Let us bend over and kiss our ass goodbye. Our 28-year conservative opportunity to fix the moral and practical boundaries of government is gone—gone with the bear market and the Bear Stearns and the bear that’s headed off to do you-know-what in the woods on our philosophy.

An entire generation has been born, grown up, and had families of its own since Ronald Reagan was elected. And where is the world we promised these children of the Conservative Age? Where is this land of freedom and responsibility, knowledge, opportunity, accomplishment, honor, truth, trust, and one boring hour each week spent in itchy clothes at church, synagogue, or mosque? It lies in ruins at our feet, as well it might, since we ourselves kicked the shining city upon a hill into dust and rubble. The progeny of the Reagan Revolution will live instead in the universe that revolves around Hyde Park.

Mind you, they won’t live in Hyde Park. Those leafy precincts will be reserved for the micromanagers and macro-apparatchiks of liberalism—for Secretary of the Department of Peace Bill Ayers and Secretary of the Department of Fairness Bernardine Dohrn. The formerly independent citizens of our previously self-governed nation will live, as I said, around Hyde Park. They will make what homes they can in the physical, ethical, and intellectual slums of the South Side of Chicago.

The South Side of Chicago is what everyplace in America will be once the Democratic administration and filibuster-resistant Democratic Congress have tackled global warming, sustainability, green alternatives to coal and oil, subprime mortgage foreclosures, consumer protection, business oversight, financial regulation, health care reform, taxes on the “rich,” and urban sprawl. The Democrats will have plenty of time to do all this because conservatism, if it is ever reborn, will not come again in the lifetime of anyone old enough to be rounded up by ACORN and shipped to the polling booths.

None of this is the fault of the left. After the events of the 20th century—national socialism, international socialism, inter-species socialism from Earth First—anyone who is still on the left is obviously insane and not responsible for his or her actions. No, we on the right did it. ...

Although I must say we’re doing good work on our final task—attaching the garden hose to our car’s exhaust pipe and running it in through a vent window. Barack and Michelle will be by in a moment with some subsidized ethanol to top up our gas tank. And then we can turn the key.

Read the whole thing.

New York Times:

In the end, a contractor who found $182,000 in Depression-era currency hidden in bathroom walls received just a few thousand dollars and, he feels, some vindication.

The discovery amounted to little more than grief for the contractor, Bob Kitts, who could not agree on how to divide the money with the home’s owner, Amanda Reece.

It did not help Ms. Reece’s financial situation either. She testified in a deposition that she was considering bankruptcy, and a bank recently foreclosed on one of her properties.

As for the 21 descendants of Patrick Dunne — a wealthy businessman who stashed money that was minted in a time of bank collapses and joblessness, only to have it divvied up decades later in a somewhat similar economic climate — they will each get a small fraction of the find.

“I called it the greed case,” said Gid Marcinkevicius, a lawyer who represents the Dunne estate.

“If these two individuals had sat down and resolved their disputes and divided the money, the heirs would have had no knowledge of it,” Mr. Marcinkevicius said. “Because they were not able to sit down and divide it in a rational way, they both lost.”

Mr. Kitts, who called his discovery “the ultimate contractor fantasy,” was tearing out the bathroom walls of an 83-year-old home near Lake Erie on a spring day in 2006 when he discovered two green lockboxes suspended by a wire below the medicine chest. Inside were envelopes with the return address for the P. Dunne News Agency.

“I ripped the corner off of one,” Mr. Kitts said in a deposition in a lawsuit filed by Mr. Dunne’s estate. “I saw a 50 and got a little dizzy.”

Inside the envelopes was $157,000. And a cardboard box in another wall held about $25,000.

Mr. Kitts called Ms. Reece, who had hired him for a remodeling project, at work. She got there within 45 minutes.

They counted the cash, piled it on the dining room table and posed for photographs. Both grinned like lottery jackpot winners holding an oversize check.

But how to share? She offered 10 percent. He wanted 40 percent. From there things went sour.

Read the whole thing.

Pictures of a curious pin-fire six-shot revolver made to be worn as a ring.

There is no written description, but the cartridge looks to be the size of a .22 short, or smaller. The hammer and trigger are easy to recognize. My guess is that the side lever is used to rotate the cylinder, and that the gun is single action, requiring the wearer to cock the hammer before firing.

I would guess that the recoil and close range muzzle blast would be no fun for the user. There is also the unnerving problem that one is wearing it concealed, the muzzles of those six cylinders are pointed inward at one’s own hand. The rounds are most likely pretty marginally potent. Still any gun is better than no good in an emergency, and this ingenious contraption has good concealment potential.

It looks better made than most “suicide specials,” and it is certainly a desirable collector’s item.

With all of President Obama’s accomplishments, is it any wonder that some are now promoting a national holiday in his honor?

Topeka Capital-Journal:

Plans are being made to promote a national holiday for Barack Obama, who will become the nation’s 44th president when he takes the oath of office Jan. 20.

“Yes We Can” planning rallies will be at 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. every Tuesday at the downtown McDonald’s restaurant, 1100 Kansas Ave., until Jan. 13. The goals are to secure a national holiday in Obama’s honor, to organize celebrations around his inauguration and to celebrate the 200th birthday of President Abraham Lincoln, who was born on Feb. 12 1809.
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At 7:30 a.m. on Inauguration Day, Obama Cake will be served at the downtown McDonald’s, and a celebration is scheduled for 8 p.m. to midnight Jan. 20 at the Ramada Hotel and Convention Center, 420 S.E. 6th.

Peter Hitchens vents his spleen on America’s decline in the Daily Mail.

Anyone would think we had just elected a hip, skinny and youthful replacement for God, with a plan to modernise Heaven and Hell – or that at the very least John Lennon had come back from the dead.

The swooning frenzy over the choice of Barack Obama as President of the United States must be one of the most absurd waves of self-deception and swirling fantasy ever to sweep through an advanced civilisation. At least Mandela-worship – its nearest equivalent – is focused on a man who actually did something.

I really don’t see how the Obama devotees can ever in future mock the Moonies, the Scientologists or people who claim to have been abducted in flying saucers. This is a cult like the one which grew up around Princess Diana, bereft of reason and hostile to facts.

Read the whole thing.

James G. Wiles, in the Philadelphia Bulletin, asks “what would Rahm Emanuel do if he had Congressman John Boehner’s job as House Minority Leader?”

That’s easy. Put as many long-range torpedoes into the water aimed at Senator Obama’s ship of state before Republicans lose control of the Executive Branch as possible. Here are a few:

Appoint U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois Patrick Fitzpatrick as a special prosecutor so he can pursue his investigation of Tony Rezko and his corrupt dealings with Illinois’s governor and other creatures and spoilsmen of the Daley Machine. This will make it politically difficult for a President Obama to pardon Mr. Rezko and impossible for him to terminate Mr. Fitzpatrick as a federal officer come January 21 as a way of de-railing this investigation.

Appoint a special prosecutor to investigate ACORN’s voter registration methods and its dealings with the Obama campaign.

Appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the Obama campaign’s on-line fundraising operation, including its disabling of the credit card security software on its on-line donations system. File a complaint with the Federal Election Commission regarding same.

Appoint a bipartisan (love that word!) presidential commission to review the candidates’ fundraising in this election cycle and to recommend changes in federal election laws.

File ethics complaints against Sen. Chris Dodd and Congressman Barney Frank for their relationship with Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Countrywide Mortgage.

Be it noted that, in his day, this is probably what Newt Gingrich would have done, too. It was then-Congressman Gingrich’s persistent filing of ethics complaints against then-House Speaker Jim Wright, D Texas, which eventually brought Speaker Wright down and made possible the Republicans’ re-taking of Congress in 1994 on the platform of the Contract with America.

Who needs a honeymoon anyway? Not Rahm Emanuel.

Too bad George W. Bush is likely to do none of the above.

I wonder how much they contributed to the campaign.

New York Times:

The leader of a jihadi group in Iraq argued Friday that the election of Barack Obama as president represented a victory for radical Islamic groups that had battled American forces since the invasion of Iraq.

The statement, which experts said was part of the psychological duel with the United States, was included in a 25-minute audiotaped speech by Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, leader of the Islamic State of Iraq, an umbrella organization that claims ties to Al Qaeda. Mr. Baghdadi’s statement was posted on a password-protected Web site called Al Hesbah, used to disseminate information to Islamic radicals.

In his address, Mr. Baghdadi also said that the election of Mr. Obama — and the rejection of the Republican candidate, Senator John McCain — was a victory for his movement, a claim that has already begun to resonate among the radical faithful. In so doing Mr. Baghdadi highlighted the challenge the new president would face as he weighed how to remove troops from Iraq without also giving movements like Al Qaeda a powerful propaganda tool to use for recruiting.

“And the other truth that politicians are embarrassed to admit,” Mr. Baghdadi said, “is that their unjust war on the houses of Islam, with its heavy and successive losses and the continuous operations of exhaustion of your power and your economy, were the principal cause of the collapse of the economic giant.”

Just like Iowahawk, Eric Posner, at Volokh, reflects upon America’s newly restored standing in the eyes of hyper-domesticated and garlic-breathed Europeans generally.

Suddenly, the United States has prestige (again) that matches its power and wealth, and this prestige no other country can touch. People around the world beg the United States to “exercise leadership” and solve the world’s problems (but with “humility,” please!) ...

There are two versions of American exceptionalism. American-American exceptionalism is “we’re richer because we’re better.” European-American exceptionalism is “you’re better because you’re richer.” Both sides agree on exceptionalism, and just see different causes and implications. The Europeans expect us, on account of our wealth, to live up to (their) ideals, while we think that our wealth ought to prove to them that our ideals are better than theirs. No one of any importance seems to think that the United States is a normal country. Oh, what confusion lies ahead!

In November or December 2007, this animal was hit by a truck on Highway 64 in northern Arizona. the cat wasn’t weighed at the scene but it took three people to lift it and its mass was estimated at 200-220 lbs (90-100 kg). It was over 2.1 m (6’ 10.7”) long.

Darren Naish, at Tetrapod Zoology, admires big cougars.

The ones you read about being shot for killing California joggers are typically on the small end of the size range, too.

The Puma, Cougar or Mountain lion Puma concolor (other names include panther, painter, catamount, mountain devil, silver lion, brown tiger, red tiger, king cat, Indian devil, purple feather (wtf?), mountain demon, sneak cat, leao and onça vermilha) is a highly variable animal (its historic range extends across much of the length and breadth of the Americas), but an average example from an average population might be anywhere between 1.7-2.7 m (5’ 6.92”- 8’ 10.29”) in total length, and weigh between about 60 and 80 kg (132-176 lbs.) (though the range is from 25 to over 110 kg (55-242 lbs.); Currier (1983) gives the ‘average’ range as between 55 and 65 kg, 121-143 lbs.). Pumas seem to conform to Bergmann’s rule (Gay & Best 1996), though the presence of jaguars and the size of available prey also seem to have an influence on their body size. Animals at the upper end of this range must be impressive beasts: larger than even a very big leopard, and only 10 kg (22 lbs.) or so lighter than an average African lioness. Here are some pictures of big pumas: the specimens might not be record holders, but I find them interesting as they show pumas that are, to me, exceptionally big.

Killed in February 2007, this individual was reportedly 210 lbs (95 kg). It has variously been reported to have been shot in Oregon or Alberta: apparently, Oregon is out as it’s illegal to hunt pumas with dogs there.
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Hat tip to Karen L. Myers.

Iowahawk celebrates the restoration of America’s popularity with socialist European weenies and shares in the joy felt at the election of America’s first black president by the enemies of the United States everywhere.

Although I have not always been the most outspoken advocate of President-Elect Barack Obama, today I would like to congratulate him and add my voice to the millions of fellow citizens who are celebrating his historic and frightening election victory. I don’t care whether you are a conservative or a liberal—when you saw this inspiring young African-American rise to our nation’s highest office I hope you felt the same sense of patriotic pride that I experienced, no matter how hard you were hyperventilating with deep existential dread.

Yes, I know there are probably other African-Americans much better qualified and prepared for the presidency. Much, much better qualified. Hundreds, easily, if not thousands, and without any troubling ties to radical lunatics and Chicago mobsters. Gary Coleman comes to mind. But let’s not let that distract us from the fact that Mr. Obama’s election represents a profound, positive milestone in our country’s struggle to overcome its long legacy of racial divisions and bigotry. It reminds us of how far we’ve come, and it’s something everyone in our nation should celebrate in whatever little time we now have left.

Less than fifty years ago, African-Americans were barred from public universities, restaurants, and even drinking fountains in many parts of the country. On Tuesday we came together and transcended that shameful legacy, electing an African-American to the country’s top job—which, in fact, appears to be his first actual job. Certainly, it doesn’t mean that racism has disappeared in America, but it is an undeniable mark of progress that a majority of voters no longer consider skin color nor a dangerously gullible naivete as a barrier to the presidency. ...

It’s obvious that this newfound pride is not confined to Americans alone. All across the world, Mr. Obama’s election has helped mend America’s tattered image as a racist, violent cowboy, willing to retaliate with bombs at the slightest provocation. The huge outpouring of international support following the election shows that America can still win new friendships while rebuilding its old ones, and provides Mr. Obama with unprecedented diplomatic leverage over our remaining enemies. When Russian tanks start pouring into eastern Europe and Iranian missiles begin raining down on Jerusalem, their leaders will know they will be facing a man who not only conquered America’s racial divide but the hearts of the entire Cannes film community. And those Al Qaeda terrorists plotting a dirty nuke or chemical attack on San Francisco face a stark new reality: while they may no longer need to worry about US Marines, they are looking down the barrel of a strongly worded diplomatic condemnation by a Europe fully united in their deep sympathy for surviving Americans.

Read the whole thing.

From the Onion:

2:39 video

Hat tip to Daniel Lowenstein.

Red State Pundits argue whether Elrond Half-Elven started an unnecessary war which precipitated the dwindling away and passage to the West of his own people.

Besides, no One Ring was ever found when the allied armies invaded and occupied Mordor at the cost of millions of gold pieces per month, the loss of thousands of elves, dwarves, and men, which war-of-choice resulted also in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of orcs, trolls, wild men, and Southrons, and the enormous and wide-spread destruction of Mordorian infrastructure.

An anniversary has recently passed. On October 25, 3018 Third Age, Elrond Half-elven, son of Eärendil of the line of Thingol, bearer of Vilya the great Ring of Power, made a critical decision for his people.

Rather than allow the last remaining outposts of the Elves at Imladris and Lothlórien continue without disruption from the outside world, he chose to invest the Elves in a grand global fight to rob Sauron of his power permanently, in the process destroying the Rings of Power of his own and Galadriel’s. At the Council of Elrond, a Fellowship was constructed, representing Elves, Men, Wizards, Dwarves, and Halflings, all united by a supposed common cause.

But where are the Elves now? All gone West. Was this great act of foreign policy by Elrond a self-destructive act? Would Elves not have been better off allowing Sauron to remain, acting as a counterweight to the Men, and preventing Men from being an undisputed hyperpower in Middle-earth?

“David Smithee” is rejoicing over Obama’s election, taking the view that the democrats have overreached and we’ve got them where we want them. They’ve got their leftist president and a Congressional majority. Now they can try governing from the left, and just watch what happens to them.

As ancient Israel whined to have monarchs rule over them to be like their pagan neighbours, so too are American leftists smitten with the illusory sophistication of the crumbling European economic and social models. They salivate for the esteem of tyrants, socialists, and every manner of grandiose failure; the more extravagant, the better so long as the mission statement is sufficiently lofty. It’s said that liberals are like any other people; only moreso. In this case, it’s their turn to perpetuate the ancient cycle of rejecting what works, turning their backs with disdain on America’s incomparable blessings and crying “Give us what they have!”

Well, we’ve gotten it.

In a receding economy and aided by a political monopoly, President Obama is going to prove unable to resist his fetish for increased taxation and eco-regulatory strangulation. In a dangerous time, his vanity will lead him to grant legitimacy to nations that wish America ill. When an Obama presidency with majorities in the House and Senate ends in economic calamity, emboldened international foes, or both—as history wearily tells us it must—then the healing can begin.

This is a true changing of the guard in more ways than one, as it also signals the end of the Moderate. Trashing his own party only served McCain for so long. The Maverick was devoured by his Media base the moment he became inconvenient, and timorous pseudo-conservatives have jumped ship to ensure they remained on the right side of the DC sophistication line. Classical conservatives would be well served to let them flounder.

Yet I admit my own relief, despite the costs we will bear in the short term, that Obama was the victor.

For the Democrats, it was an act of sublime short-term calculation to trot out Obama. A man whose easy, telegenic charm was able to narcotize into irrelevance all the facts that would have rendered him unelectable in anyone else’s skin. The sewage of slum lords, communist sympathizers and domestic terrorists swirl about his ankles. And yet a flash of smile and a few words in his soothing baritone captured the American imagination and soothed a majority of the electorate. But now the work is going to start. Results are going to matter, and if there’s one fact about Barry that the media was unable to obscure, it’s that he is a candidate truly uncluttered by moderation.

He is the proto-Democrat; liberalism’s gleaming new flagship. And that’s going to be a long-term problem for Democrats in ways they can scarcely now imagine. ...

Obama is not just a Democrat, or a liberal. Obama is liberalism. He is liberalism stripped of all of its false fronts of civic mindedness. Shorn of all its bogus declarations of interest in the public good, or lip service to free markets or property rights. He is liberalism as it exists only in the psyche of the petty tyrant, rarely glimpsed emerging in public. Shrieking, demanding as a newborn, nakedly ravenous for power. Worshipping expedience, debasing of life, and viewing everyone else’s wealth as his own, with which he may conduct his vast social experiments on the subdued human landscape.

But as an ideological flagship surrounded by hysterically unrealistic expectations, if he fails, Obama is going to drag the Democrat ship down to truly crushing depths. And when he does, the redemption of the Democrats will not be swift in coming. With Obama, they have bet the ideological farm, and several surrounding properties too. They have damned the torpedoes and abandoned the strategy of advancing themselves in managed increments. By pushing Obama into the spotlight, they’re tipping their entire ideological hand a good twenty years ahead of schedule.

Good piece. Read the whole thing.

Nibras Kazimi predicts Islamic jubilation over Obama’s victory will, in the not very distant future, change into hostility.

For now, Arabs and Muslims in the Middle East see two things in Obama: to them he’s a walking, talking apology, and an infiltrator. He’s an apology for the Bush years; America’s gift basket to the rest of the world for the fault of protecting itself. The hatred that has been whipped up against President George Bush by the Arab media—much of it owned and directed by America’s alleged allies, the Saudis and other Persian Gulf dynasties—has been unprecedented, much like the adulation presently, and temporarily, being given to Obama. However, Arab and Muslim fascination with Obama rests on the idea that he is their Trojan horse into the highest office in America, the gleeful whispers describe him at times to be a secret Muslim, and in another light, an ‘anti-imperialist’ leftist.

Obama will not only apologize for America’s imperial pretension, but shall work to reverse it. So the lofty expectations go.

But there are two powerful opinion makers in the region that cannot afford to do away with the convenience of hating on America and its leaders, and those would be the ruling regimes and their most ferocious enemies, the jihadists. A popular Obama is dangerous since it deprives both camps of a distraction, a focus for white-hot rage; for the regimes, anti-Americanism, like anti-Zionism, is a most useful tool for deflating the wrath of the gathering mob, a mob whose numbers will swell as the world becomes poorer and resources turn scarcer, and oil profits are bled, while the jihadists need the seething anger to enlarge their recruitment pool. The faster that Obama can be turned into a hated figure, the quicker that matters revert to how things were.

Adding to their anxiety is the likelihood that Bush’s policy for spreading democracy will be adopted by the starry-eyed Democrats carried into power, albeit with some important modifications, namely on the question of who is an Arab or Muslim moderate. For these newly minted masters of policy, the reflexive and ultimately mistaken answer lies in the ranks of political Islam, and specifically the trunk and many offshoots of the Muslim Brotherhood movement, a group feared and despised by both the regimes and the jihadists.

So the task at hand for these regimes and jihadists is to turn any association with Obama into an embarrassment, and that would be by transforming his strengths into liabilities.

And that’s pretty easy to do: Obama will be pitched as a proselytizing Christian infiltrator into the land of Islam, rather than a secret Muslim in the White House. Obama the apostate had turned his back on his Islamic birthright and early childhood for the opportunism afforded by Christianity, and that is America’s grand plan for fixing the Middle East: turning it Christian—or so goes the conspiracy theory.

History tells us that nothing riles up the masses of Nejd, Damascus, Cairo, and Istanbul like the fear that Christians are out to convert Muslims. It is only a matter of time before Obama’s biography, once thought to be the harbinger of international goodwill, will be distorted into yet another reason to hate America.

Ben Shapiro thinks the undecideds went for Obama’s empty slogans and fake emotions simply because they were tired of all the partisan bickering.

The Great Election of 2008 is over. Barack Obama is the 44th President of the United States.

Now is the time to ask what this election was about.

Here’s what this election was (set ital) not (end ital) about: Barack Obama. It was not about his record: He didn’t have one. It was not about his views, which are radical in the extreme. It was not about his associations: Americans didn’t care about Wright, Ayers, or Khalidi. The media didn’t want Americans to know about Obama. Obama didn’t want Americans to know about Obama. And Americans didn’t want to know about Obama.

This election was not about John McCain. No one cared about McCain, except the liberal media that nominated him president after one win in New Hampshire.

This election was not about President George W. Bush. Bush was used as a punching bag by both sides—and by election time, he was completely irrelevant.

And this election was certainly not about the issues. In the general election, Barack Obama campaigned as a centrist, titularly abandoning his more extreme positions to do so. He lied about his policies. And no one cared.

This election was about one thing and one thing only: Americans’ puerile need for unity through self-congratulatory, cathartic membership in a broad, transformative political movement.

For eight years, Americans have been engaged in hostile politics. And after eight years, Americans were sick of it.

That isn’t to America’s credit. Hostile politics—hard-fought political conflict over the issues that matter—is not a bad thing. It is precisely the sort of messy republicanism the founders embraced. Early elections were replete with mudslinging, character assassination, brawls and scandals. They were also replete with some of the most substantive debate on policy ever put before mankind.

Apparently, we’re no longer interested in the dirty business of politics. We’d rather feel ourselves part of a high-minded movement. Not the sort of movement that espouses particular policies—not the antiwar movement, or the pro-life movement—those movements are too divisive. We want to be part of a movement that is solely about us.

Barack Obama was the vessel for that movement. He was an utter cipher. But he embodied the need of the American public for unity by hearkening back to the ultimate unifying feature of American life: third-grade slogans. He spouted Hope and Change. He told us, “We’re All Americans.” He told us, “Yes, We Can.”

Procession of a Guy

From Robert Chambers, The Book of Days, 1869:

Till lately, a special service for the 5th of November formed part of the ritual of the English Book of Common Prayer; but by a recent ordinance of the Queen in Council, this service, along with those for the Martyrdom of Charles I, and the Restoration of Charles II, has been abolished. The appointment of this day, as a holiday, dates from an enactment of the British parliament passed in January 1606, shortly after the narrow escape made by the legislature from the machinations of Guy Fawkes and his confederates.

That the gunpowder treason, however, should pass into oblivion is not likely, as long as the well-known festival of Guy Fawkes’s Day is observed by English juveniles, who still regard the 5th of November as one of the most joyous days of the year. The universal mode of observance through all parts of England, is the dressing up of a scarecrow figure, in such cast-habiliments as can be procured (the head-piece, generally a paper-cap, painted and knotted with paper strips in imitation of ribbons), parading it in a chair through the streets, and at nightfall burning it with great solemnity in a huge bonfire. The image is supposed to represent Guy Fawkes, in accordance with which idea, it always carries a dark lantern in one hand, and a bunch of matches in the other. The procession visits the different houses in the neighbourhood in succession, repeating the time-honoured rhyme:

’ Remember, remember!
The fifth of November,
The Gunpowder treason and plot;
There is no reason
Why the Gunpowder treason
Should ever be forgot!’

Numerous variations and additions are made in different parts of the country. Thus in Islip, Oxfordshire, the following lines, as quoted by Sir Henry Ellis in his edition of Brand’s Popular Antiquities, are chanted.

‘The fifth of November,
Since I can remember,
Gunpowder treason and plot:
This is the day that God did prevent,
To blow up his king and parliament.
A stick and a stake,
For Victoria’s sake;
If you won’t give me one,
I’ll take two:
The better for me,
And the worse for you.’

One invariable custom is always maintained on these occasions—that of soliciting money from the passers-by, in the formula, ‘Pray remember Guy!’ ‘Please to remember Guy!’ or ‘Please to remember the bonfire!’

In former times, in London, the burning of the effigy of Guy Fawkes on the 5th of November was a most important and portentous ceremony. The bonfire in Lincoln’s Inn Fields was conducted on an especially magnificent scale. Two hundred cart-loads of fuel would sometimes be consumed in feeding this single fire, while upwards of thirty ‘Guys’ would be suspended on gibbets and committed to the flames. Another tremendous pile was heaped up by the butchers in Clare Market, who on the same evening paraded through the streets in great force, serenading the citizens with the famed ‘marrow-bone-and-cleaver’ music. The uproar throughout the town from the shouts of the mob, the ringing of the bells in the churches, and the general confusion which prevailed, can but faintly be imagined by an individual of the present day.

The ferment occasioned throughout the country by the ‘Papal Aggression’ in 1850, gave a new direction to the genius of 5th of November revellers. Instead of Guy Fawkes, a figure of Cardinal Wiseman, then recently created ‘Archbishop of Westminster’ by the pope, was solemnly burned in effigy in London, amid demonstrations which certainly gave little evidence of any revolution in the feelings of the English people towards the Romish see. In 1857, a similar honour was accorded to Nana Sahib, whose atrocities at Cawnpore in the previous month of July, had excited such a cry of horror throughout the civilised world.

The opportunity also is frequently seized by many of that numerous class in London, who get their living no one exactly knows how, to earn a few pence by parading through the streets, on the 5th of November, gigantic figures of the leading celebrities of the day. These are sometimes rather ingeniously got up, and the curiosity of the passer-by, who stops to look at them, is generally taxed with the contribution of a copper.

David Bernstein looks at the results and puts them in perspective.

The picture is of a solid Democratic win, but not the tsunami some had expected. Obama won the popular vote by a solid, but not crushing, margin of slightly less than six percent (52.4-46.5). Bill Clinton beat Bob Dole by a significantly greater margin and even greater relative percentage (49.25-40.71), and George Bush by a slightly lower margin, but higher relative percentage (43.01-37.45). Bush, meanwhile, beat Dukakis by a larger margin, 53.4 to 45.6. The Democrats picked up about twenty House seats, on the low end of the expected range. And, as noted above, they seem likely to pick up five or six Senate seats,which would make the Senate races either 18-16 in favor of the Democrats, or tied at 17-17, again on the low end of the expected range.

It would have taken a miracle, or at least a match between a really unattractive democrat who made many mistakes and a dynamic Republican with Reagansque charisma, to produce a GOP win this year with the economy in a mess and poor, clueless George W. Bush hanging around the elephant’s neck like a dead albatross.

Considering all the factors destining this to be the democrat’s year, it could have been much worse.

Neal Boortz identifies yesterday’s election’s predominant theme.

I brought this up several months ago … a slogan for this election. “I want my mommy.” The phrase really says it all. This is not an election where the American voters were looking for someone to protect their freedoms. Instead, it was an election where people were looking for someone to take care of them. Self-sufficiency seems a bit old-fashioned right now. Why work so hard to be self-sufficient when candidates are falling all over themselves to provide the American people with womb-to-tomb or, if you will, cradle-to-grave paternalism. The voters who put Barack Obama into office bear little resemblance to the people who fought for independence 124 years ago. Colonists fighting for our independence actually left their bloody footprints along the icy roads of New York and Pennsylvania while marching to engage the British troops. Today we can’t even drum of a decent plurality of voters who will vote for liberty, let alone fight for it.

This has been a “what’s in it for me” vote. Are you going to give me health care? Are you going to make sure my job is guaranteed? Are you going to cover my child care costs? You aren’t going to make me pay taxes, are you? How about all those evil rich people? Aren’t you going to take some of their money away from them and give it to me? After all … I work for my money, they cheated and stole for theirs. Make them pay their fair share of taxes. Me? I’m tired of paying any share.

The big question for me today is whether or not freedom, economic liberty and self-sufficiency can make a comeback in America. Right now it seems that a dismaying number of Americans think that they are owed a living; that it is the government’s job to guarantee their economic security. Can we ever turn that around and return to a time when people accept the responsibility for their own lives and eschew the idea of using government as a tool of legalized plunder?

Now that it’s over, Bill Ayers condescends to speak to the press.

Ayers said he blames what he called liberal media outlets for failing to dismiss Obama’s acquaintance with him as a case of guilt by association, likening it to the way the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth created a narrative that helped doom Sen. John F. Kerry four years ago.

“The dishonest narrative is that guilt by association has some validity,” Ayers said, saying the performance of the media was “kind of shameful.”

One day last summer, Ayers said, he received two threats on his office computer while he was in his downtown office. One said a posse was coming to shoot him; another said a gang would kidnap and waterboard him.

A university police officer who had known Ayers for years arrived and told him, “Gosh, I hope the guy who’s coming to shoot you gets here first.”

John Derbyshire is in a bad mood this morning.

Just watched Wonder Boy’s speech. Hmph. “Callused hands?” When did he ever have callused hands?

All right, I’m sour. The most liberal member of the U.S. Senate! And that shakedown-artist of a wife, with the permanent frown! And Joe Biden! …

I’m sour about the GOP too. What did it all get us, those 8 years of pandering and spending? If GWB had turned his face against new entitlements, closed the borders, deported the illegals, held the line on calls to loosen mortgage-lending standards, starved the Department of Education, and declined those invitations to mosque functions, would the GOP be in any worse shape now?

What won this election was the packaging skills of David Axelrod, the swooning complicity of the media, the ruthless opportunism of Barack Obama, and the unprincipled thuggishness of his supporters.

What lost this election was the cloth-eared cluelessness of George W. Bush, the timid squeamishness of John McCain, and the deep lack of interest in conservative principles among Republican primary voters.

Sour? You bet I’m sour. Where was conservatism in this election? Where was restraint in government? Where was national sovereignty? Where was liberty? Where was self-support? And where are those things now? Where are they headed this next four years? Down the toilet, that’s where. Pah!

A French genealogy site lists Obama’s descent from the Piast kings of Poland via the Plantagenet Kings of England.
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Hat tip to Kaj Malachowski.
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In addition to sharing ancestry with Dick Cheney and George W. Bush, Barack Obama shares ancestry with Juliette Gordon Low (founder of the Girl Scouts), British Prime Ministers Winston Churchill and Harold Macmillan, Lord George Curzon, US Presidents James Madison, Lyndon B. Johnson, Gerald Ford, and Jimmy Carter, General Robert E. Lee, Governors Howard Dean and Sarah Palin, Senators Birch Bayh and John Glenn, writers Ernest Hemingway, John Steinbeck, and Ken Kesey, artist Georgia O’Keefe, cartoonist Charles Addams, movie stars Katherine Hepburn, Lon Chaney, Robert Duvall, Christopher Reeve, and Brad Pitt, singers Loudoun Wainwright and Justin Timberlake.

CNN’s Brian Todd. in Philadelphia, interviews a local resident in Overbrook Park, who came back and voted “a coupla times.” “I think that’s against the law, but it’s OK.” says Todd.

0:40 video

Mark Steyn extends congratulations.

Just to be clear: I’m not indulging in the same somewhat moist-eyed congratulations as some of our colleagues. I extend my congratulations mainly in the same sense that elderly British veterans of my acquaintance like to express their admiration of the marvelously innovative ways their Japanese captors found to torture them. The President-elect ran rings round our side, and found many novel ways to torture us.

Ross Douthat contemplates the debacle of the 2008 election, and is depressed while being glad that it’s at least over.

I had a succession of meals last week with smart conservative friends, and I found them all relatively sanguine. ... Each of them, in different ways, express a mix of enthusiasm for the “whither conservatism” battles ahead and relief at the prospect of finally closing the books on the Bush years. This has been an exhausting Presidency for conservatives as well as liberals, and for many people on the Right the prospect of being out of power has obvious upsides: No longer will every foul-up and blunder in Washington be treated as an indictment of Conservatism with a capital C; no longer will right-wingers feel obliged to carry water, whether in small or large amounts, for a government that’s widely perceived as a failure; and no longer will the Right have the dead weight of an unpopular president dragging it down and down and down. Defeat will be depressing, of course – none of my friends were Obamacons by any stretch – but it could be liberating as well.

This was how I expected to feel about a McCain defeat, too, and I’ve been trying to figure out why I don’t – why I feel instead so grouchy and embittered (clinging to my guns and my religion, and all that), and more dispirited than liberated…

I think the deeper reason for my political gloom has to do with something that Jonah Goldberg raised in our bloggingheads chat about conservatism – namely, the sense that the era now passing represented a great opportunity to put into practice the sort of center-right politics that I’d like to see from the Republican Party, and that by failing the way it did the Bush Administration may have cut the ground out from under my own ideas before I’d even figured out exactly what they were. ..

I’m not counseling despair here: There were people in 1976 who thought Richard Nixon had irrevocably squandered the chance to build a new right-of-center majority, and looked how that turned out.

from Mark Tapscott:

Today, as another generation of Americans go to the polls possibly to elect a true man of the Left as our 44th president, the liberal Leviathan – ever demanding that we think and act as it decrees – looms constantly larger in American life,

So it is no wonder that the excitement on this day is palpable among my liberal friends. They believe they stand at this moment on the threshold of being handed power they’ve not possessed for many decades. They rejoice at the opportunity for them to remake America in their own image.

They believe that those of us who, against all reason hold our reactionary notions about individual liberty as precious as ever, will, finally and for good, have no other choice but to submit, to be as Leviathan says we must be. To them, I have but one word:

Never.

The traditionally earliest place to vote in America, Dixville Notch, New Hampshire, has been gleefully reported by the MSM to have delivered a resounding 15 to 6 victory for Obama.

But wait a minute, as Mark Steyn observes, Dixville Notch has 19 registered voters…

As goes Dixville Notch, so goes the nation? Thanks a lot, ACORN.