This is difficult territory. But someone I deeply respect, whose background is evangelical, said he saw abortion in about any circumstances as deeply wrong; he’s also voting for Obama. The schism between sides may mean he hasn’t been exposed to audios like those linked above. Or he doesn’t want to know. So, this is difficult because that Illinois hearing and its transcripts define an in-your-face position.
Elections
Newsweek throws Obama under the bus
The Newsweek cover for next week is astonishing.
The lead article is by Niall Ferguson and is devastating. The fact that it is the cover story is an even bigger surprise. It’s interesting to speculate on the reasons.
Welcome to Obama’s America: nearly half the population is not represented on a taxable return—almost exactly the same proportion that lives in a household where at least one member receives some type of government benefit. We are becoming the 5050 nation—half of us paying the taxes, the other half receiving the benefits.
On foreign policy, one of Obama’s few strong points in polls, it is even harsher.
For me the president’s greatest failure has been not to think through the implications of these challenges to American power. Far from developing a coherent strategy, he believed—perhaps encouraged by the premature award of the Nobel Peace Prize—that all he needed to do was to make touchy-feely speeches around the world explaining to foreigners that he was not George W. Bush.
In Tokyo in November 2009, the president gave his boilerplate hug-a-foreigner speech: “In an interconnected world, power does not need to be a zero-sum game, and nations need not fear the success of another … The United States does not seek to contain China … On the contrary, the rise of a strong, prosperous China can be a source of strength for the community of nations.” Yet by fall 2011, this approach had been jettisoned in favor of a “pivot” back to the Pacific, including risible deployments of troops to Australia and Singapore. From the vantage point of Beijing, neither approach had credibility.
His Cairo speech of June 4, 2009, was an especially clumsy bid to ingratiate himself on what proved to be the eve of a regional revolution. “I’m also proud to carry with me,” he told Egyptians, “a greeting of peace from Muslim communities in my country: Assalamu alaikum … I’ve come here … to seek a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world, one based … upon the truth that America and Islam are not exclusive and need not be in competition.”
Read the whole thing, as Instapundit says.
Paul Rahe’s Landslide vs. “Don’t get cocky”
Glenn Reynolds links to Paul Rahe’s prediction that we’re about to see a 1980-type electoral landslide for Romney.
I want Rahe to be right but the bookmakers’ odds give me pause.
Intrade.com has Obama at 60% odds to be reelected. Other bookmakers are in the same ballpark.
It’s possible that these market odds are overly influenced by inaccurate polls. The odds certainly respond to polling data. However, the bookies have a very good record of predicting election results.
On Intrade, before November 2004, Bush’s odds only went as low as 50% a couple of times and always bounced from there. Obama’s odds are behaving like that now. If Obama’s numbers sink below 50% and stay there I’ll feel a lot better. As of now there is much reason to worry.
If the USA today were the USA of 1980 I would agree with Rahe. I remember the run up to the 1980 election and the conventional wisdom that Carter would win. At the time I was afraid that he would. I asked a wise older friend of mine, an immigrant from Eastern Europe, what he thought would happen. “Reagan will win in a landslide”, he said. My friend was reasoning as Rahe is. And of course Reagan did win. But much has changed since then. A larger proportion of the US voting population is poorly educated and a larger proportion is dependent on government. Rush Limbaugh has been arguing that increasing dependence on government insulates an ever larger fraction of the electorate from the consequences of Obama’s poor economic policies. Consequently, the argument goes, Romney cannot afford to run on Obama’s economic failures alone and may have difficulty winning in any case. This seems plausible.
“Don’t get cocky” is good advice. So is, “Be very afraid”. Let’s hope the market odds shift to support Rahe’s prediction.
Survival skills
I notice today that Wretchard at The Belmont Club has a post on refugees. It includes a lot of comments on survival skills. Basic requirements include guns and ammo so someone else doesn’t take your survival stores away from you. Water is important, as is water treatment supplies when you run out of stored water. The Mormons, as in so many other things, are the experts on survival skills. In the late 70s, the last time there was so much interest in survival methods, I had a Mormon office manager. She taught me a number of good facts about the way to survive a disaster. One is to have a supply of hard red wheat.