The Ron Paul solution

Rep. Ron Paul's solution for dealing with the Somali pirates is employing letters of marque and reprisal. I think it is brilliant -- and has absolutely no chance. There is simply no way our government will let private citizens help fend off this threat, particularly given the culture against guns (and private enterprise) that pervades Congress and the administration.

It's funny, because Congress is great at authorizing lots of powers that are not provided for in the Constitution but will refuse to take an action that it is actually is explicitly given the power to use.

HT: Carpe Diem

Update: And check out the CD post on Joe Biden's charitable contributions, or lack thereof.

Joe Biden

Yesterday Joe Biden referred to a government website's "number." The same day he also claimed that Louisiana is losing 400 jobs a day, which is demonstrably false.

Just another day in the life of the gaffe machine that is Joe Biden. This is the same guy that:

• Told a guy in a wheelchair to stand up to be recognized
• Linked Indians with 7-Elevens
• Said that j-o-b-s is a 3 letter word
• Called Barack Obama the "first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy."

In addition to such silliness he has:

• Lied about his academic record
• Has a history of plagiary

The silly stuff I can forgive. Yeah, it's dumb, but lots of people can say things like that. What I can't get over though is how this would be viewed if a Republican did it. They would instantly be branded a doofus or worse. Instead it's kind of cute, just Joe being Joe. Indeed, his reputation is apparently such that President Obama could say with a straight face during his speech this week:

And that's why I've asked Vice President Biden to lead a tough, unprecedented oversight effort -- because nobody messes with Joe. (Applause.) I -- isn't that right? They don't mess with you.

Can you imagine the guffaws that would have resulted if say for example George HW Bush had said this about Dan Quayle?

I don't mind that Joe struggles to control what comes out his mouth. It's just the obvious difference in treatment he receives, likely because of his party label, that bothers me.

Oh Biden...

It's two days until the election. I read a lot about politics. I just found this out:

When [Biden] was running for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination back in 1987, someone in the audience asked him what law school he attended and how well he did.

Flashing his special phony smile, Biden said, "I think I have a much higher IQ than you do." He added, "I went to law school on a full academic scholarship" and "ended up in the top half" of the class.

But Biden did not have a full academic scholarship. Newsweek reported: "He went on a half scholarship based on need. He didn't finish in the 'top half' of his class. He was 76th out of 85."

You think if there was a similar story about Sarah Palin that we'd have already heard about it? Yeah.

Thought exercise

I noticed that the Washington Post is running a story about a poll they conducted detailing the increasingly dim view many voters are taking of Sarah Palin. Now imagine that Palin were the Democrat and Biden the Republican, do you think that perceptions of each would still be the same? While Palin's missteps and shortcomings have been documented ad nauseum, how many people do you think know the following about Biden:

• He has a history of plagiarizing.
• While purporting to represent the middle and working class he is known in Washington circles as the "Senator from MBNA" both for the campaign contributions he receives as well as his pro-industry votes such as against the proposal to limit credit card interest rates.
• His lobbyist son got paid big bucks for helping to advance a bill sponsored by his father that made it more difficult for people to declare bankruptcy.
• He said that "J-O-B-S is a three letter word."
  
• He is a foreign affairs expert that said that the U.S. kicked Hezbollah out of Lebanon when no such thing ever occurred.
• He is a foreign affairs expert who said that Iraq should be partitioned into three countries, which Iraqi politicians across virtually all sects and political parties condemned.
• He is a foreign affairs expert that opposed the Persian Gulf War.
  
• He referred to his running mate as the "first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy."
• He stated in the vice presidential debate that he spends a lot of time at Katie's Restaurant and Home Depot back in Wilmington, except that Katie's has been closed for nearly 20 years.
• A lawyer by training, he goofed on describing the sections of the Constitution that define the Vice President's role.
  

Mind you, I am not saying that these are all topics worthy of discussion, I merely ask whether the media is applying the same standard to both vice presidential candidates. Why are Palin's kids up for discussion but not Biden's adult child who actually has played a role in the legislative process? I would also reiterate that I am not a big Sarah Palin fan, but the apparent double standard is rather stomach turning.

Update: Oh, another Biden gem I forgot about: his statement that “When the stock market crashed, Franklin D. Roosevelt got on the television and didn’t just talk about the, you know, the princes of greed.” Of course, when FDR was president television didn't exist. Indeed, FDR was well known for his fireside radio chats.

The Choice: Democrats

Taking an especially jaundiced view of the election, here is a profile of the Democratic ticket:

Barack Obama

Barack Obama has a thin record of accomplishment at virtually every elected office he has ever held. This can be traced back to his days at the Harvard Law Review, where he seems to have written nothing and presided over a volume of work only notable for the infrequency in which it has been cited.

His political career, meanwhile, was launched in 1995 at the house of William Ayers, founding member of the Weather Underground that bombed the Pentagon and US Capitol. Among the very first political contributions ever given to Obama was two $2,000 checks from food companies owned by Tony Rezko, who is now in jail on fraud and bribery charges.

Obama then won his first election the following year by having all of his opponents thrown off the ballot through technicalities. Now a member of the Chicago Democratic party establishment, Obama did not use his position to promote reform or take on the status quo. Indeed, as recently as 2006 Obama refused to wield his influence to support a left-wing reformer in a primary against Cook County Board President John Stroger, a machine boss whose tenure resulted in federal investigations.

In the general election Obama backed Stroger's son, who replaced his deceased father. Only last year Obama backed incumbent mayor Daley for re-election even after, as David Fredosso notes, "several of his top aides and appointees had received prison sentences for their corrupt operation of Chicago's city government."

The politics of hope and change indeed.

While in office as a state senator Obama's most high-profile accompishments were legislation on racial profiling, death penalty reform, and ethics and health care laws. A US Senator for less than 4 years, Obama has sponsored 136 bills, 2 of which have become law -- one that set up a website so that the public can better follow federal expenditures and another that expanded the Nunn-Lugar Act meant to address "loose nukes" and nuclear proliferation. Much of the rest consists of small-bore legislation such as the "Healthy Places Act of 2006" and the "Pigford Claims Remedy Act of 2007."

This, it would seem, is adequate preparation for the White House. Claims of bipartisanship, meanwhile, would seem to be undermined by a voting record that National Journal deemed the most liberal in the Senate last year (outdoing, it would seem, leftist luminaries such as Ted Kennedy).

Lastly is Obama's association with radical preacher Jeremiah Wright. I'll outsource this bit to Tucker Carlson, who scripts a possible attack ad:

The spot opens with the familiar yet still shocking tape of Wright pounding the pulpit and looking crazy:

Wright: “God damn America for treating our citizens as less than human. God damn America for as long as she acts like she is God and she is supreme."

Narrator: This is the man Barack Obama has called his spiritual mentor. In 2006, Obama gave Wright’s church more than $22,000 as a gift. Here's what Obama's mentor had to say about our country in the days after 9/11.

Wright: "We bombed Hiroshima, we bombed Nagasaki, and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon, and we never batted an eye…America's chickens are coming home to roost."

Narrator: For 20 years Barack Obama sat in the pews, even brought his family, as Wright preached hate. Obama never said a word, until he was caught. Then he defended Wright. Barack Obama: Divisive. Dishonest. Dangerous.

An alternate version might contain footage of Wright accusing the U.S. government of manufacturing AIDS in order to kill black people, or of spreading drugs in the ghetto, or it might show Wright dismissing murdered Alabama teen Natalie Halloway as a drunken slut. There's a lot of footage to choose from and it's all on YouTube. A seasoned media consultant could have that ad ready in a couple of hours. It'd be the most famous spot of this political year, and probably the most powerful.

And this is the candidate that will promote racial conciliation?

Joe Biden

Joe Biden was first elected to the US Senate at age 30. He's now 65, which means he has spent more of his life inside the halls of Congress than outside. That has to give someone a rather weird perspective on life. As he so often likes to mention, Joe was born in Scranton but his family left when he was 10 years old. Having driven through Scranton, I can't blame them.

Citing a history of alcoholism in his family Biden claims that he has never touched a drink, and he has a reputation as something of a drug warrior for both creating the office of the "drug czar" as well as authoring the Reducing Americans' Vulnerability to Ecstasy (RAVE) Act.

Where Biden has made his name, however, is in foreign affairs. Indeed, many observers believe that Biden was brought on board the ticket in large part to shore up perceived vulnerabilities by Obama on foreign affairs. Despite convincing many in Washington that he is an expert, some of his more notable votes include opposition to the Reagan defense buildup and the Gulf War. Becoming perhaps more hawkish in later years to make amends, Biden supported bombing in the former Yugoslavia and voted to authorize the Iraq War. Wielding his foreign policy expertise with all the acumen and subtlety of a blind elephant, Biden proposed dividing Iraq into three separate country -- a solution whose stupidity was about the one thing all Iraqis could agree on.

Biden has been in politics so long that he actually ran for president over 20 years ago -- but had his campaign short-circuited when he was caught plagiarizing in his speeches.

While Sarah Palin has caught considerable flak for gaps in her knowledge, Biden has managed to avoid such criticism through a combination of falsehoods and bluster. For example, Biden, who is chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee mind you, stated during the vice presidential debate that "we kicked Hezbollah out of Lebanon" -- something that occurred only his imagination. Biden, who chaired the Judiciary Committee for 8 years and is a trained lawyer, later did the following:

The constitutional law professor scornfully mocked Dick Cheney because the vice president "doesn't realize that Article I of the Constitution defines the role of the vice president. That's the executive branch." Wrong. Article I defines the Legislature, Article II the executive branch. Both define the role of the VP.

Yeesh. This is how wikipedia describes him:

During his years as a senator, Biden has amassed a reputation for loquaciousness, with his questions and remarks during Senate hearings being especially known for being long-winded. He has been a strong speaker and debater and a frequent and effective guest on the influential Sunday morning talk shows. According to political analyst Mark Halperin, he has also shown "a persistent tendency to say silly, offensive, and off-putting things"; The New York Times writes that Biden's "weak filters make him capable of blurting out pretty much anything."

And those are the two guys that are widely favored to win.

Assessing Palin and Biden

A friend of mine went me a text message on Wednesday asking for my take on Sarah Palin. I told him I would defer until after the VP debate Thursday night, and then sent the following text Friday morning:

Palin doesn't lack intelligence, she lacks knowledge. Biden, meanwhile, thinks that he knows everything.

Allow me to expand on that.

Sarah Palin is a smart woman. While this may be a remarkable discovery for some people -- namely Democratic partisans -- it shouldn't be. You simply can't be a dim bulb and luck your way into the governorship of Alaska. Her forté, however, is certainly not a deep knowledge of domestic and international affairs, but rather concentrating on the issues most relevant to her state such as energy. She has advanced her career not as a policy wonk but as a PTA mom without the Ivy League resume but plenty of common sense.

She has no pretensions about being smarter than the average voter, rather she portrays herself as someone that understands them. Indeed, she is one of them. Knowing full well that she couldn't tangle with Biden purely on the merits of arcane policy details, she has instead sought to highlight her empathy for the middle class, openly stating her desire to represent "Joe Sixpack."

Folksy references and terminology, however, for me are a major turn-off that have no place in a vice presidential debate. Being discussed are issues of profound consequence that deserve serious answers, not facile displays of empathy. The candidates should be evaluated on the quality of their ideas to address the problems facing this country, not the sincerity of their sympathy towards those impacted by these problems.

When pressed on issues Palin too often retreated into rehearsed talking points or an emphasis of her middle class credentials. That, however, is no substitute for knowledge and a firm idea of how to plan to address the problems that are presented.

Biden, meanwhile, is a character beset by his own set of problems -- mainly that he thinks that his years of service mean that he is an expert on all matters and holds all of the answers. He, of course, does not. Much lauded as a foreign affairs expert, Biden has exercised remarkably poor judgement throughout his career on some signature issues, notably opposing both the defense build-up of the 1980s as well as the Persian Gulf War. He hasn't covered himself in glory in more recent times either, opposing the surge in Iraq and proposing that the country be split into three separate states -- a position that has earned him the enmity of numerous Iraqi politicians and the Iraqi people. The Wall Street Journal also notes that many of his statements in the recent debate were seemingly rooted in fantasy.

Compounding this is his blatant effort to highlight his own humble background and upbringing in Scranton, PA. The only time I actually laughed during the debate was his reference to time spent hanging out at Home Depot. A mental picture immediately emerged of a casually dressed Biden meandering through the aisles of the store in search of the perfect hammer -- it simply doesn't work. Perhaps more significant was his invitation for Americans to join him at "Katie's restaurant in Wilmington. As the WSJ notes, however, Katie's closed in the 1980s.

Palin's middle and working class appeal may be tiresome, but at least it's authentic.

Update: Jonah Goldberg makes some related points in a column today, including one I neglected to bring up:

But here's the difference. Palin is supposed to be everything Biden isn't, according to liberal pundits and mainstream reporters alike. For weeks they've been saying she's ill-prepared, uninformed and lacks the requisite experience. But that criticism is also an excuse of sorts.

Biden has no excuse. He's been in the majors for nearly 40 years, and yet he sounds like a bizarro-world Chauncey Gardner. The famous simpleton from Jerzy Kosinski's "Being There" (played by Peter Sellers in the film) offered terse aphorisms that were utterly devoid of specific content but nonetheless seemed to describe reality accurately. Biden is the reverse: He offers a logorrheic farrago of "specifics" that have no connection to our corner of the space-time continuum.

In short, he just makes stuff up. But he does it with passionate, self-important intensity. He's like a politician in a movie with a perfect grasp of a world that doesn't exist. He's not an expert, he just plays one on TV.

I too noticed this during the debate and commented to someone about it the next day. Biden employs a great technique in which he states things so forcefully that it makes people believe it is true, even though in reality he is simply making things up as he goes. The vast majority of voters lack the knowledge to call him out on it and instead are left impressed by his forcefulness and command of the issues. It's a brilliant ploy.

VP debate: The aftermath

I am writing this without having read or watched any post-debate analysis. After the first presidential debate the conventional wisdom quickly took hold that while McCain may have won on points, that Obama emerged the winner largely by virtue of being able to hold his own on foreign policy -- a realm considered by many to be McCain's expertise. I think that a similar analysis can be applied to last night. While I think Biden probably came off better, Palin probably exceeded expectations (which were ridiculously low, owing both to her own recent interview performances as well as the low esteem in which many people have held her from the beginning) and thus benefited her ticket more.

I will note that I watched the debate with 4 liberals, which is to say Washingtonians since people here are monolithically Democratic, and they stated after the debate that Palin exceeded their expectations (which were likely abysmally low). However, she did not meet mine. Any ideas that Palin is a Western-style libertarian Republican should now be dispelled as a myth. Palin strikes me as a populist/conservative that seems to lack a defined philosophy, who is equally comfortable slamming alleged Wall Street greed and Big Oil as she is government.

Also, for all the pre-debate hubbub about moderator Gwen Ifill I thought she did an acceptable job.

Let's go to the transcript for some highlights:

Bailout Bill

Biden: I think it's neither the best or worst of Washington, but it's evidence of the fact that the economic policies of the last eight years have been the worst economic policies we've ever had. As a consequence, you've seen what's happened on Wall Street.

If you need any more proof positive of how bad the economic theories have been, this excessive deregulation, the failure to oversee what was going on, letting Wall Street run wild, I don't think you needed any more evidence than what you see now.

Complete nonsense. What deregulation is Biden talking about? He is peddling myths here, and it was no wonder he had no desire to get into specifics since he has nothing to back this up. Biden then goes to on rehash Obama's answer on this question from last week.

Palin: Now, John McCain thankfully has been one representing reform. Two years ago, remember, it was John McCain who pushed so hard with the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac reform measures. He sounded that warning bell.

People in the Senate with him, his colleagues, didn't want to listen to him and wouldn't go towards that reform that was needed then. I think that the alarm has been heard, though, and there will be that greater oversight, again thanks to John McCain's bipartisan efforts that he was so instrumental in bringing folks together over this past week, even suspending his own campaign to make sure he was putting excessive politics aside and putting the country first.

This is true, McCain did push for reform at Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, but I think that Palin whiffed here a bit by failing to explain how those two entities contributed to the current crisis. However, Palin also threw in this bit:

The barometer there, I think, is going to be resounding that our economy is hurting and the federal government has not provided the sound oversight that we need and that we deserve, and we need reform to that end.

What does that mean? If she is talking about Freddie and Fannie, fair enough, but otherwise this strikes me as just more talk about the need for unspecified regulation.

Who was at fault for the subprime lending meltdown?

Palin: Darn right it was the predator lenders, who tried to talk Americans into thinking that it was smart to buy a $300,000 house if we could only afford a $100,000 house. There was deception there, and there was greed and there is corruption on Wall Street. And we need to stop that.

...One thing that Americans do at this time, also, though, is let's commit ourselves just every day American people, Joe Six Pack, hockey moms across the nation, I think we need to band together and say never again. Never will we be exploited and taken advantage of again by those who are managing our money and loaning us these dollars. We need to make sure that we demand from the federal government strict oversight of those entities in charge of our investments and our savings and we need also to not get ourselves in debt. Let's do what our parents told us before we probably even got that first credit card. Don't live outside of our means. We need to make sure that as individuals we're taking personal responsibility through all of this.

Pathetic. Who needs this kind of drivel when you already have Democrats? You know, yesterday I received a call from my cell phone provider urging me to renew my contract and talking about all o the great stuff they are going to give me. I got the feeling they wanted to take advantage of me and told them I would prefer to do some research first and make my decision about whether to renew in December when my contract expires.

The point is, homebuyers aren't children. No one put a gun to their head and forced them into these ridiculous loans. Adjustable rate mortgages reset after a set period to a new interest rate -- hence the freakin' name, adjustable rate! There is an old saying that you can't cheat an honest man, and I certainly think it applies here. But rather than the American people taking responsiblity for their own foolishness (and really we are just talking about a small minority here that have defaulted) Palin and others want to provide assurances that it wasn't their fault, but rather the big mean companies that forced them into it. While Palin gives a nod towards personal responsibility at the end it comes off as half-hearted given the excoriation of the financial firms she led off with. It struck me as trying to have it both ways.

If this is the kind of stuff that wins elections then we really are an infantile nation.

Biden: Well Gwen, two years ago Barack Obama warned about the sub prime mortgage crisis. John McCain said shortly after that in December he was surprised there was a sub prime mortgage problem. John McCain while Barack Obama was warning about what we had to do was literally giving an interview to The Wall Street Journal saying that I'm always for cutting regulations. We let Wall Street run wild. John McCain and he's a good man, but John McCain thought the answer is that tried and true Republican response, deregulate, deregulate.

So what you had is you had overwhelming "deregulation." You had actually the belief that Wall Street could self-regulate itself. And while Barack Obama was talking about reinstating those regulations, John on 20 different occasions in the previous year and a half called for more deregulation. As a matter of fact, John recently wrote an article in a major magazine saying that he wants to do for the health care industry deregulate it and let the free market move like he did for the banking industry.

I really don't know what the particulars are of Obama's alleged warning about the subprime crisis so I can't speak to that. What is clear, however, is that Biden has a deep disdain for deregulation and is naturally inclined towards greater government intervention. Perhaps he should crack open some history books and note how his fellow Democrats, Jimmy Carter and Ted Kennedy, led the fight for the deregulation of the railroad, oil and airline industries -- which we have all benefited enormously from in the form of expanded choice and lower prices. What deregulation has taken place under the watch of the Bush Administration I am not sure, and I suspect neither is Biden and hence his unwillingness to indulge this line of attack with any specifics.

I am encouraged, however, by McCain's talk of health care deregulation according to Biden, which I previously was not aware of.

Taxes

Biden: Well Gwen, where I come from, it's called fairness, just simple fairness. The middle class is struggling. The middle class under John McCain's tax proposal, 100 million families, middle class families, households to be precise, they got not a single change, they got not a single break in taxes. No one making less than $250,000 under Barack Obama's plan will see one single penny of their tax raised whether it's their capital gains tax, their income tax, investment tax, any tax. And 95 percent of the people in the United States of America making less than $150,000 will get a tax break.

While the temptation of all conservatives should be an endorsement of tax cuts, I think that this proposal sets us down a dangerous road. By cutting taxes further on lower incomes and expanding them at the top we are moving ever closer to a society in which a small minority shoulders the burden of government while the rest of the country pays little and votes themselves ever bigger government-provided benefits. Indeed, let's keep in mind that currently around fully one-third of Americans have no income tax liability.

Palin: Now you said recently that higher taxes or asking for higher taxes or paying higher taxes is patriotic. In the middle class of America which is where Todd and I have been all of our lives, that's not patriotic. Patriotic is saying, government, you know, you're not always the solution. In fact, too often you're the problem so, government, lessen the tax burden and on our families and get out of the way and let the private sector and our families grow and thrive and prosper. An increased tax formula that Barack Obama is proposing in addition to nearly a trillion dollars in new spending that he's proposing is the backwards way of trying to grow our economy.

Amen.

Energy

Biden: We're not going to support the $300 billion tax cut that they have for corporate America and the very wealthy. We're not going to support another $4 billion tax cut for ExxonMobil.

And what we're not going to also hold up on, Gwen, is we cannot afford to hold up on providing for incentives for new jobs by an energy policy, creating new jobs.

...And, look, I agree with the governor. She imposed a windfall profits tax up there in Alaska. That's what Barack Obama and I want to do.

We want to be able to do for all of you Americans, give you back $1,000 bucks, like she's been able to give back money to her folks back there.

I counted on 4 separate occassions that Biden mentioned a $4 billion tax cut for ExxonMobil. There is, of course, no special tax cut for ExxonMobil being called for by John McCain. Rather, McCain is seeking to reduce the corporate tax rate, currently the second highest in the world, which would benefit all corporations, ExxonMobil among them. Why ExxonMobil has become the liberal bogeyman I am not sure. Indeed, the company already pays $4,000 in tax every second -- I guess that isn't enough for some people.

Then Biden says that he supports taking money from oil companies and transferring it to Americans in the form of $1,000 checks -- from those according to their ability to those according to their need. Absolutely disgusting. He also adds this:

We believe -- Barack Obama believes by investing in clean coal and safe nuclear, we can not only create jobs in wind and solar here in the United States, we can export it.

Biden must have a huge ego if he thinks that him and Obama together can pick the winners in the alternative energy sector better than the marketplace. Why should government be "investing" (read: spending) money here at all? If it makes sense then profit-seeking investors (i.e. greedy people) will support such technology without government help and make some money off of it.

Palin: You know what I had to do in the state of Alaska? I had to take on those oil companies and tell them, "No," you know, any of the greed there that has been kind of instrumental, I guess, in their mode of operation, that wasn't going to happen in my state.

...We're circulating about $700 billion a year into foreign countries, some who do not like America -- they certainly don't have our best interests at heart -- instead of those dollars circulating here, creating tens of thousands of jobs and allowing domestic supplies of energy to be tapped into and start flowing into these very, very hungry markets.

Energy independence is the key to this nation's future, to our economic future, and to our national security. So when we talk about energy plans, it's not just about who got a tax break and who didn't. And we're not giving oil companies tax breaks, but it's about a heck of a lot more than that.

The gratuitious oil company bashing does little to differentiate Palin from Biden, while the talk of energy independence is pure fantasy. We should simply, like all products, buy them where its cheapest. To engage in any other policy is to make ourselves poorer.

Update: Reason: Poor Gordon Gekko.