The Brookings Institution's Gregg Easterbrook, in the Wall Street Journal:

The relentlessly negative impressions of American life presented by the media, including the entertainment media, explain something otherwise puzzling that shows up in psychological data. When asked about the country's economy, schools, health care or community spirit, Americans tell pollsters the situation is dreadful. But when asked about their own jobs, schools, doctors and communities, people tell pollsters the situation is good.

Yes, there are people struggling out there.  But you know, there are ALWAYS people struggling out there.  If it wasn't gas prices, it would be the mortgage.  If it wasn't the mortgage, it would be that unexpected illness.  If it's not that, then it's politics at work.  If it's not that, it's something else.

Life isn't easy.  Life isn't supposed to be easy.  Life isn't supposed to be anything.  Life just is. 

Life is about meeting and overcoming challenges.  Life is about making yourself better--better for yourself, better for those around you.  Life is about losing those ten pounds.  Life is about reading a good book.  Life is about making a friend happy.  Life is about making a loved one feel loved.  Life is the daily struggle to Do The Right Thing.  Some days are better than other days.  Some days are worse. 

Life is about turning off the TV, putting down the magazine, turning off the computer for a while, and stepping away from the doom and gloom, and seeing for yourself what is important in your life.

Yes, it's true!  Marxists/Socialists/Communists for Obama is BACK!

Huzzah!  Off the pigs!  Arise!  Down with the bourgeoise!  Fire up the reeducation camps!  The workers must control the means of production!  All wealth is theft!  From each according to their ability, to each according to their need!

Give us your cash!  Now!  AND your jewelry!  Because we NEEEEED them!

The Obama site has taken down the Marxists/Socialists/Communists for Obama, as well as lots of other groups of questionable (or inconvenient) focus.

So the question remains:  Republican dirty trick?  Democrat astroturfing?  Or worst, real Obama supporters being told to pipe down until the Obamessiah is elected?

This guy did, though:

A suburban Kansas City man says he feels fine, even though a nail gun accidentally fired a 2.5-inch nail into the top of his head. The mishap occurred Friday while George Chandler of Shawnee and a friend were doing a project in a backyard.

The story in the paper this morning quotes Chandler as saying it felt "like a sting."  They pulled the nail out, stapled his head shut (staple guns safer than nail guns?) and he's reportedly doing well.

Iowahawk for President:

Under my administration the Joint Chiefs of Staff will be directed to treat as hostile all private jets flying into Los Angeles airspace, backed up with coordinated pinpoint bombing of mansions and Priuses within the Malibu triangle. Not only will this reduce prices at the pump, it will increase the supply of much needed scrap metal and lumber.

The Environment

As a son of America's rural heartland, the environment is important to me. Like Teddy Roosevelt, America's first "conservation president," I am committed to returning thousands of square miles of ugly American urban development back to its pristine natural state. Much of this will be a direct result of the "Malibu Surge," but other environmental initiatives will help. For example, I will direct the Interior Department to establish wild man-eating cougar preserves in Berkeley CA, Boulder CO, Madison WI, and Park Slope, Brooklyn.

Hmm.  Maybe there IS a candidate who "speaks for me" . . .

I'm going to try to get away from political stuff for a while.  But first, where my current thinking is at:

I've been pretty harsh on Obama the past few days.  I don't really mean to be.  It's just that, as I write this post this morning, I think he's completely unqualified for the job.  I don't think he has the kind of experience that will make a good chief executive of the Federal Government.

He wants to surrender in Iraq.  His supporters will be spinning like tops to say "no, that's not what he's saying" but yes, indeed, that is what "immediate withdrawal" means. 

That's like folding in poker when you're holding a straight flush.  Sure, we had garbage when the hand was originally dealt, but the Surge was like asking the dealer for four cards.

It Worked.

To ignore that is simply stupid.  We can't afford to elect somebody who so willfully ignores the obvious improvement in Iraq.

To be true to the vision of Martin Luther King ("not the color of the skin but the content of character") you have to look past the melanin to what the guy says, who he has (and continues to) associate with, in order to get an idea what the guy is.

His inability to see the huge character flaws in some of his closest associates and advisers in Chicago is a big, huge red flag.  Does Obama have the ability to choose the kind of people we can trust to run the Federal Government?  The evidence we have right now indicates that no, he doesn't.

The fact is that he's as far left as any major-party U.S. Presidential candidate has ever been.  The cold fact of history is that leftist economics and politics simply don't work.  They do not create the greatest good for the greatest number, although they sure sound good.  They sound good for folks at the lower rungs of the economic ladder--"tax the rich" always resonates with those who aren't rich.

Finally, there is the troubling tendency for Obama to get lost and say dumb things when he strays too far from the teleprompter.  This is why McCain can't wait to get Obama into a town hall type setting.  That's McCain's best venue, and apparently Obama's worst.

None of the above, by the way, makes me any happier about McCain.  His policies are somewhat to the right of Obama for the most part, but he's still the guy responsible for the dreadful McCain-Feingold speech limitation law. 

McCain's not my guy.  Like almost everyone, I honor and respect his long service to his country.  But apart from national defense, I think he's going to take the country in basically the same direction as Obama wants to--albeit maybe not quite as fast, and not quite as far.  Going more slowly in the wrong direction is, however, still going in the wrong direction.

But, paraphrasing a much-maligned Secretary of Defense, you go into an election with the candidates you have, not the ones you wish you had.

Somebody, somewhere, will ignite a revival of liberty.  It may not be in my lifetime, though.

Oh . . . what I meant to say was:  Marxists/Socialists/Communists for Obama.

On Obama's official web site.

Can you imagine the howls you'd hear if John McCain's official campaign web site had a page for Aryan Fascist Nazi Racists for McCain?

Change you can believe in?

I do accept the possibility that this is some nefarious Republican dirty trick.   But there is also the very real possibility that these people are quite serious.  Workers of the world, unite!

Ain't politics a hoot?

(hat tip:   PowerLine)

Via Hot Air, a Rasmussen Reports poll:

Voters have little doubt as to who is benefitting from the media coverage this year—Barack Obama. Fifty-four percent (54%) say Obama has gotten the best coverage so far. Twenty-two percent (22%) say McCain has received the most favorable coverage while 14% say that Hillary got the best treatment.

At the other extreme, 43% say Clinton received the worst treatment from the media. Twenty-seven percent (27%) say the media was roughest on McCain and only 15% thought the media coverage was most unfair to Obama.

Looking ahead to the fall campaign, 44% believe most reporters will try to help Obama while only 13% believe that most will try to help McCain. Twenty-four percent (24%) are optimistic enough to believe that most reporters will try to offer unbiased coverage.

The problem isn't, of course, so much that the media is biased towards the most leftist possible candidate--everybody knows that.  The problem is that these same biased reporters claim to be objective, when we all know (or, at least 68% of us--according to the Rasmussen--know) that they aren't.  And that impeaches their overall trustworthiness.  When you're in the business of news, you're either an objective reporter, or you're Rush Limbaugh/Keith Olbermann.  This is not a sliding scale, either.  It's either one or the other--truly objective, or in the tank for one side or the other.  In the words of the old analogy, "a little bit biased" is a lot like "a little bit pregnant."

This is not how science is done:

After unveiling the Hadley Center adjustment error that has been used in all temperature compilations for the past 20 years, Phil Jones stated:

Climate scientists should think about data quality more often, says Jones, so that there is no opportunity for incorrect data to sow seeds of doubt in people’s minds about the reality of climate change.

This is the same Phil Jones who said:

We have 25 or so years invested in the work. Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it. There is IPR to consider.

(Emphasis mine)

Dear Phil Jones:  that is the entire POINT of science.  You think you've discovered something interesting, then you release your results and data to the rest of the scientific community, who do their darnedest to prove you wrong.  That's where science gets its authority.  That's what the climate-change zealots have forgotten, and why I can not bring myself to trust the "consensus."  Release your data.  If you've found something true, it will stand up to scrutiny.  If you haven't, it won't.  That's science.

Former KC resident and current KC gadfly Clay Chastain has made a name for himself by doggedly standing on the political table and holding his breath until the residents of Kansas City finally gave in and voted for a light rail system last year.

Then, the Kansas City City Council realized that there was no way to make it work financially, and spiked it.  Hilarity, of course, ensued.

Maybe the parties to this little episode should read this discussion with a real urban transit guru, Wendell Cox, at Townhall.com:

Q: What's the best transit system in the United States -- or is there one?

A: Boy.... Oh, San Diego. I would not call it the best. I'd call it the least worst. San Diego has done some wonderful things. They started contracting out transit service in 1979. Their costs are much lower than other systems as a result. More than 40 percent of their system is contracted out now. They carry a huge increase in ridership compared to what they had in 1980 -- a ridership increase that's far greater than the population increase. Everybody likes to talk about the San Diego Trolley, the light rail line. It is, again, the least worst trolley in the country. It is less unsuccessful as a result of its first line that went to the Mexican border. For example, if those Port Authority tunnels under the Allegheny River in Pittsburgh were ending up at the Mexican border, they might make some sense. But in the early years, this San Diego line covered 90 percent of its operating cost; it never covered any capital. As the system has expanded, it’s been decimated. There’s no other destination like the Mexican border.    When you talk about transit in the United States, you have to be talking about best prisoner awards. These systems are a scourge on taxpayers. There are some that do some wonderful things, but nobody does it all right.

I keep arguing in my own mind, who is more responsible for the abject failure of transit in the United States? And mind you -- transit expenditures have gone up more than 300 percent adjusted for inflation since 1970 and ridership has gone up less than 20 percent. There is no other sector of the economy, including health care, where I can find escalation even close to that. Transit holds the record. It is a damned outrage how bad transit has been.

Generally, when things like new arenas, stadiums, and light rail systems come before city voters and politicians, their collective eyes glaze over and they turn into two-year-olds:  "Oh, Pretty!  We want!!!"