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Spengler, a pseudonymous columnist from the Asia Times wants to know where they put Michelle.
… This alleged Michelle Obama bore a striking physical resemblance to the candidate’s wife observed during the campaign, but the differences in attitude and rhetoric were extreme enough to warrant verification. …
… The lady who has often protested against America’s unfairness protested much too little. Gone was the woman who told a television audience last February 18, “For the first time in my adult lifetime, I am really proud of my country and not just because Barack has done well, but because I think people are hungry for change. And I have been desperate to see our country moving in that direction and just not feeling so alone in my frustration and disappointment.”
Never before has a candidate’s wife delivered a major address to a national convention of either party. The break in precedent stems evidently from the urgent need to remake the image built up by sections of the media of Michelle Obama as a rancorous and resentful woman. But it also may reflect the extraordinary degree of her influence in her husband’s campaign. She is reported to have ruled out Senator Hillary Clinton as a vice presidential candidate, although polls showed that Clinton would strengthen the ticket more than any other choice. …
Maureen Dowd does Hill’s speech.
I’ve been to a lot of conventions, and there’s always something gratifyingly weird that happens.
Dan Quayle acting like a Dancing Hamster. Teresa Heinz Kerry reprising Blanche DuBois. Dick Morris getting nabbed triangulating between a hooker and toes.
But this Democratic convention has a vibe so weird and jittery, so at odds with the early thrilling, fairy dust feel of the Obama revolution, that I had to consult Mike Murphy, the peppery Republican strategist and former McCain guru.
“What is that feeling in the air?” I asked him.
“Submerged hate,” he promptly replied.
There were a lot of bitter Clinton associates, fund-raisers and supporters wandering the halls, spewing vindictiveness, complaining of slights, scheming about Hillary’s roll call and plotting trouble, with some in the Clinton coterie dissing Obama by planning early departures, before the nominee even speaks. …
Michael Barone with interesting stream of convention consciousness.
DENVER—This seems to me the edgiest Democratic National Convention since 1988. Then those running the convention were worried about what Jesse Jackson would do. Now those running the convention are worried, not so much about what Hillary Clinton will do—she will deliver a rousing call for electing Barack Obama—but what some of her followers will do, and about what Bill Clinton will do. The Obama campaign people are adjusting to the fact that Obama enters the convention not well ahead of John McCain, but only barely ahead or even; and that he enters a convention where a sizeable number of Clinton supporters—more than I predicted in early June—are unreconciled to his victory. I’ve already written about how the Obama campaign’s decision to stage the acceptance speech in the Invesco Field outdoor stadium was pushed by the fact that the alternative was to speak in a small hall in which nearly half the delegates were elected to support Clinton.
And they have to deal with the problem of Bill Clinton. The rumor mill is that Clinton was miffed on being assigned to speak on foreign policy; he wanted to speak on his (in his view, very successful) domestic policies which (in his view, I am guessing) he has not seen any Democratic candidate this year, including his wife, pay proper obeisance to. Anyhow, I saw John Podesta, Clinton’s second term chief of staff, out by the fast food stands in the Pepsi Center. He told me that he hadn’t spoken to President Clinton in a week and that he had no doubt Clinton would deliver a ringing endorsement of Obama, as (he said) he had of Al Gore in 2000 and John Kerry in 2004. I asked if he had seen the Bill Clinton speech text. He laughed at my naïveté. “We were still working over the speech text in the car over to the Fleet Center in 2004,” he said, referring to his speech for Kerry in Boston. The point: the Obama campaign, try as it might, cannot completely control Bill Clinton. …
George Will wonders how Obama is going to do all he has promised.
… There never is a shortage of nonsensical political rhetoric, but really: Has there ever been solemn silliness comparable to today’s politicians tarting up their agendas as things designed for, and necessary to, “saving the planet,” and promising edicts to “require” entire industries to reorder themselves?
In 1996, Bob Dole, citing the Clinton campaign’s scabrous fundraising, exclaimed: “Where’s the outrage?” In this year’s campaign, soggy with environmental messianism, deranged self-importance and delusional economics, the question is: Where is the derisive laughter?
WSJ Editors on Big Labor’s success.
Forget for a moment the media fascination with disgruntled Hillary Clinton delegates or Michelle Obama’s makeover. One of the most underreported stories at this week’s Democratic National Convention is that Big Labor is making a big comeback.
Not long ago, the labor movement was in a state of steady, seemingly unstoppable decline. A global economy and the information age made unions less relevant to more workers. The fall of industrial trades cut into existing union ranks, while service workers saw less need to join. Union membership as a share of the American workforce has been falling since the early 1980s, and today stands at 12.1%. In the more dynamic private sector, only 7.5% of workers carry the union label.
The paradox is that even as union numbers have declined, union political clout has increased, especially within the Democratic Party. That’s in evidence in Denver, where no less than 25% of the 4,200 delegates are active or retired union members or belong to households with union members. More significant for the rest of America, labor has won the intellectual battle for control of the Democratic Party and is reasserting its agenda in a way not seen since the 1970s. …
John Stossel continues his thoughts on energy independence.
… To even attempt to achieve energy independence, the government will have to plan the energy sector. Considering how pervasive energy is throughout the economy, this is a recipe for full central planning and a step toward poverty and tyranny. “Why not keep all that $720 billion [we spend to import oil] in the United States of America?” was a sentiment expressed by many. But that reveals a poor understanding of world trade. When we trade dollars to foreigners for oil, they have to do something with those dollars. They don’t stuff them in mattresses. (If they did, it would mean we got free oil.) They buy American products. (U.S. exports are soaring.) Or they invest in businesses here. Or they sell the dollars to someone else who buys American products or invests in the United States.
If we stop buying from abroad, foreigners will have fewer dollars with which to buy American products or to invest. That would hurt us.
Many readers think that energy independence would produce jobs for Americans. But the idea that money spent abroad means fewer jobs here is just plain wrong. If Americans don’t produce energy, they will produce something else. The number of jobs is not fixed. There is always work to do.
If Americans can produce competitive forms of energy — without government subsidies — great! But if others can produce energy more cheaply, we’d be crazy not to buy it and use the savings to make other things to improve our lives.
Charles Murray started it (Pickings – August 13, 2008). Now Walter Williams is asking if college is worth it.
… The U.S. Department of Education statistics show that 76 out of 100 students who graduate in the bottom 40 percent of their high school class do not graduate from college, even if they spend eight and a half years in college. That’s even with colleges having dumbed down classes to accommodate such students. Only 23 percent of the 1.3 million students who took the ACT college entrance examinations in 2007 were prepared to do college-level study in math, English and science. Even though a majority of students are grossly under-prepared to do college-level work, each year colleges admit hundreds of thousands of such students.
While colleges have strong financial motives to admit unsuccessful students, for failing students the experience can be devastating. They often leave with their families, or themselves, having piled up thousands of dollars in debt. There is possibly trauma and poor self-esteem for having failed, and perhaps embarrassment for their families. …