Stones and Glass Houses

The Bounce hasn't happened.

Barack Obama, after finally putting Hillary Clinton away, leads John McCain in the polls by a surprisingly small amount--only six percentage points.

But, as ABC News explains, Obama knows full well what went wrong:

The poll indicates that Obama did not get the traditional "bounce" in the public's opinion by finally defeating Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., and getting her endorsement as the Democratic presidential candidate.

While leading among young voters and other key demographics, ABC News chief Washington correspondent George Stephanopoulos saw what he called "danger signs" for Obama.

In an exclusive network interview with ABC News, Obama said that his long Democratic primary battle with Clinton, which wasn't settled until early June, spared McCain critical scrutiny.

"While we were doing that, John McCain basically was getting a pass, both from the media . . . as well as from other opponents. And so I think that explains it," said Obama of the close race.

It is an ironic accusation from Obama.

Ladies and gentlemen, we have an early front-runner for Understatement of the Year.

--Shack

Bipartisan consensus, of a sort

Whether that's a good thing or a bad thing, I'll leave to the reader to decide.

Charles Krauthammer, in January of '07:

First, tax gas. The president ostentatiously rolled out his 20-in-10 plan: reducing gasoline consumption by 20 percent in 10 years. This with Rube Goldberg regulation — fuel-efficiency standards, artificially mandated levels of "renewable and alternative fuels in 2017'' and various bribes (er, incentives) for government-favored technologies — of the kind we have been trying for three decades.

Good grief. I can give you a 20-in-2: tax gas to $4 a gallon. With oil prices having fallen to $55 a barrel, now is the time. The effect of a gas-tax hike will be seen in less than two years, and you don't even have to go back to the 1970s and the subsequent radical reduction in consumption to see how. Just look at last summer. Gas prices spike to $3 — with the premium going to Vladimir Putin, Hugo Chavez and assorted sheiks, rather than the U.S. treasury — and, presto, SUV sales plunge, the Prius is cool and car ads once again begin featuring miles per gallon ratings.

Thomas Friedman, today:

No, our mythical candidate would say the long-term answer is to go exactly the other way: guarantee people a high price of gasoline — forever.

This candidate would note that $4-a-gallon gasoline is really starting to impact driving behavior and buying behavior in way that $3-a-gallon gas did not. The first time we got such a strong price signal, after the 1973 oil shock, we responded as a country by demanding and producing more fuel-efficient cars. But as soon as oil prices started falling in the late 1980s and early 1990s, we let Detroit get us readdicted to gas guzzlers, and the price steadily crept back up to where it is today.

We must not make that mistake again. Therefore, what our mythical candidate would be proposing, argues the energy economist Philip Verleger Jr., is a “price floor” for gasoline: $4 a gallon for regular unleaded, which is still half the going rate in Europe today. Washington would declare that it would never let the price fall below that level. If it does, it would increase the federal gasoline tax on a monthly basis to make up the difference between the pump price and the market price.

Again, no comment from me.

--Shack

19.5%

In the 1950s, the top individual tax bracket was a whopping 91%.

America's tax revenues were roughly 19.5% of the country's gross domestic product (GDP).

Around 1965, the top individual tax bracket dropped to around 70%.

America's tax revenues were roughly 19.5% of the GDP.

1985--the top bracket was 50%.

America's tax revenues were roughly 19.5% of the GDP.

In the '90s, the top bracket was 40%.

America's tax revenues were roughly 19.5% of the GDP.

To summarize:

In (insert time period here), the top bracket was (insert percentage here).

America's tax revenues were roughly 19.5% of the GDP.

David Ranson, writing in the Wall Street Journal, calls it Hauser's Law, after the economist who first noted the post-WW II pattern 15 years ago. It's jarring, counterintuitive--and the last thing the likes of Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton want to hear:

The data show that the tax yield has been independent of marginal tax rates over this period, but tax revenue is directly proportional to GDP. So if we want to increase tax revenue, we need to increase GDP.

What happens if we instead raise tax rates? Economists of all persuasions accept that a tax rate hike will reduce GDP, in which case Hauser's Law says it will also lower tax revenue.

Gee...imagine that.

--Shack

The bottom line on Obama

On July 17, 2007, Barack Obama gave a speech before the Planned Parenthood Action Fund, in which he promised the following:

"[T]he first thing I’d do as president is ... sign the Freedom of Choice Act."

(HT: Christian Newswire)

This is the endgame for the pro-choice movement. FOCA is the abortion equivalent of Dred Scott v. Sandford; it would nullify any and all restrictions on abortion at any level--be it federal, state, or local--thus permanently banishing the pro-life movement from the legislative arena.

And with Obama-selected Justices packing the Supreme Court, there isn't be a snowball's chance in hell of FOCA being overturned.

An Obama victory is the final pro-abortion victory--government-sanctioned homicide, unhindered and irrevocable, on into perpetuity.

--Shack

McCain-Ryan?

Over at Human Events, John Gizzi has been looking at potential running mates for John McCain in a series of columns. To my surprise, one of the candidates thus examined is our own Paul Ryan:

Earlier this year, when I asked Rep. Phil English (R-Penn.) his favorite choice for a runningmate with John McCain. “Paul Ryan,” he replied, naming his Republican colleague from Wisconsin and fellow House Ways and Means Committee Member and, in the process, giving me a jolt.

Paul Ryan? At 38 and after a decade in Congress from Wisconisn’s 1st District (Janesville-Konosha), Ryan is not exactly a “household word.” A graduate of Miami Univeristy (Ohio), Ryan worked as speechwriter for Jack Kemp and William Bennett at their “Empower America” organization, and was then legislative director for Sen. Sam Brownback (R-KA). Anticipating that incumbent Rep. Mark Neumann would run for the Senate in 1998, Ryan moved back to his hometown, mobilized a campaign in which he wouild easily win nomination and electon (57% of the vote) to Congress. As a Member of the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee, he has been a force behind tax cuts and trimming discretionary spending. Ryan (lifetime American Conservative Union rating: 93%) has also been a strong booster of gunowners’ right, pro-life legislation, and tougher measures on illegal immigration.

Impressive, all right, but the first impression is not ready for presidential politics. English disagrees. As he put it, “Paul is Catholic, from the Rustbelt, and has the economic credentials Sen. McCain needs.” Other Republican backbenchers agree, and talk of Ryan-for-Veep mushrooms in the House GOP Conference.

I, for one, agree with the first impression. (I also think Gizzi should have run this column through a spell-checker.) Ryan just doesn't enjoy the national prominence that one might expect out of a VP candidate; moreover, he lacks the executive experience that McCain is going to need in a running mate--given his age, President McCain's VP would have to be someone the country trusts to take over in the White House.

It should also be pointed out that, given the prevailing anti-Republican sentiment in the country, Ryan as McCain's running mate would almost certainly mean forfeiting his House seat to a Democrat, as happened to Mark Green's seat when Green ran for governor in 2006.

(Interestingly, quite a few of the early commenters on the Gizzi column argued for my own first choice for McCain's running mate: JC Watts.)

--Shack

Don't like torture? Blame Carter.

David Rivkin and Lee Casey have a piece in today's Wall Street Journal discussing the ongoing controversy over US interrogation techniques (among other things) and the more recent push to try the Bush administration's legal counsel for "war crimes."

Of particular interest, I thought:

In truth, the critics' fundamental complaint is that the Bush administration's lawyers measured international law against the U.S. Constitution and domestic statutes. They interpreted the Geneva Conventions, the U.N. Convention forbidding torture, and customary international law, in ways that were often at odds with the prevailing view of international law professors and various activist groups. In doing so, however, they did no more than assert the right of this nation – as is the right of any sovereign nation – to interpret its own international obligations.

But that right is exactly what is denied by many international lawyers inside and outside the academy.

To the extent that international law can be made, it is made through actual state practice – whether in the form of custom, or in the manner states implement treaty obligations. In the areas relevant to the war on terror, there is precious little state practice against the U.S. position, but a very great deal of academic orthodoxy.

For more than 40 years, as part of the post World War II decolonization process, a legal orthodoxy has arisen that supports limiting the ability of nations to use robust armed force against irregular or guerilla fighters. It has also attempted to privilege such guerillas with the rights traditionally reserved to sovereign states. The U.S. has always been skeptical of these notions, and at critical points has flatly refused to be bound by these new rules. Most especially, it refused to join the 1977 Protocol I Additional to the Geneva Conventions, involving the treatment of guerillas, from which many of the "norms" the U.S. has supposedly violated, are drawn.

Well, of course it is the Evil Republicans (TM) who are to blame for this as well, right? Certainly, no self-respecting (Secularly) Holy Democrat (TM) could have committed a Crime Against Humanity (TM) like this.

Now, which Evil Republican (TM) was president in 1977? Let's see here...

...Hmm...

...wait, it'll come to me...

--Shack

Here's an economic incentive for you.

Just ran across this, and thought it was interesting, in light of the article that ran in the Journal Sentinel a couple of weeks ago questioning the economic value of Miller Park.

The Sacramento Bee recently pointed out an economic benefit from professional franchises that you don't see much press about--players on VISITING teams have to pay local and state income taxes.

The Bee article explains:

Professional athletes are required to pay income taxes in every state and city that levies them where they earned a salary during away games. That means Kings and River Cats players must file tax returns in dozens of states and several cities. In some jurisdictions, that includes practices, as well.

Each state determines taxable service performed, also known a "duty day." The nonresident income tax, which is dubbed the "jock tax," surfaced in the 1990s as a way for states to tap into the soaring paychecks of visiting professional athletes, said Ryan Losi, the executive vice president of Piascik & Associates, an accounting and financial services firm in Virginia that works with professional athletes.

Losi said many believe "jock tax" enforcement began when California taxed Michael Jordan when the Chicago Bulls beat the Los Angeles Lakers in the 1991 NBA Finals.

Today, taxes generated in California from visiting athletes bring in an estimated $100 million each year, according to the state tax board.

In other words--by having NBA, MLB and NFL franchises, the state of Wisconsin can collect taxes from a significant number of NBA, NFL and MLB players (particularly in the case of the NBA, where every team has at least a home-and-home series with every other team--the state can thus collect taxes from every virtually player in the league).

The taxes collected are probably not anything close to what California (with its multiple baseball, basketball, and hockey teams) generates, but given that we're still arguing over whether Miller Park was worth it--and are almost certainly going to go through the same debate in the near future about renovating/replacing the Bradley Center, lest we lose the Bucks--this is something to keep in mind.

--Shack

Bush the fiscal hawk?!

Interesting little bit buried at the end of this Weekly Standard piece by Fred Barnes, which argues that President Bush is far from a lame duck:

At one time or another, every president figures out that executive orders are underrated as a tool of White House power. Certainly Bush has. (The media have yet to realize this.) Of course it's true that presidential orders can be revoked by subsequent presidents. But they usually aren't.

Earlier this year, Bush's budget office sent a letter to every federal department barring them from implementing any congressional earmarks not authorized in specific statutory language. These must get explicit White House approval.

The order covered the majority of the thousands of pork-barrel earmarks passed by Congress. Its aim is to stall the implementation of many earmarks, perhaps forever, and to kill many others. Will the next president lift this order, thus prompting more earmarks? Not likely.

Given that fiscal restraint is going to be a major part, if not the core, of John McCain's pitch on the economy this fall--and that McCain himself has long been conspicuously hostile to earmarks--it'll be interesting to see how much attention this gets...and from whom.

Any progress that President Bush makes on this front now is progress that a President McCain wouldn't be able to make in 2009--and hence, one less reason to vote for the GOP nominee. This has the potential to cut McCain off at the knees.

--Shack

x_X

The subject line of this post is an emoticon.

Using any emoticons--let alone Eastern style emoticons--is not my normal practice on this blog, for reasons that should need no elaboration; still, I think in this column from the Boston Herald's Michael Graham, I have reason to make an exception.

Oh, to be a campus activist now that spring is here.

“Campus activist” is what the Boston Globe-Democrat calls the students pushing for coed dorm rooms at colleges across the country. Not just coed dorms, floors or even suites. One room, two beds, a boy and a girl.

As Dr. Frankenstein said just before he threw the switch, “What could possibly go wrong?”

More than 30 colleges and universities, including Dartmouth, Clark, Brown, and Brandeis have coed dorm room policies.

...

This movement is led by the National Student Genderblind Campaign, which insists that colleges without gender-neutral housing are “heterosexist, oppressive, and anti-affirmative.”

x_X

Just...

x_X

--Shack

...

These days, Dick Morris is generally regarded as being on the right, such as it is.

Every so often, though, he'll come out and say something that reminds you that he was once one of Bill Clinton's inner circle, with all that implies--and that in those regards, he hasn't changed one bit.

The latest example comes from Morris' cynical take on the Barack Obama-Jeremiah Wright scandal:

Wright's rantings are not reflective of Obama's views on anything. Why did he stay in the church? Because he's a black Chicago politician who comes from a mixed marriage and went to Columbia and Harvard. Suspected of not being black enough or sufficiently tied to the minority community, he needed the networking opportunities Wright afforded him in his church to get elected. If he had not risen to the top of Chicago black politics, we would never have heard of him. But obviously, he can't say that. So what should he say?

He needs to get out of this mess with subtlety, the kind Bill Clinton should have used to escape the Monica Lewinsky scandal -- but didn't. As the controversy continues, Americans will gradually realize that Obama stuck by Wright as part of a need to get ahead. They will chalk up to pragmatism why he was so close to such a preacher. As they come to realize that Obama doesn't agree with Wright but used him to get started, they will be more forgiving.

Only someone who has the character to be a part of a Clinton campaign--either one of them--could regard a candidate using a preacher for political gain as something that the American people would understand, condone, or forgive.

Disgusting.

--Shack

#4 done in by fear of #2

Well, it's been a couple of days.

The shock is starting to fade, and I'm getting to the point where I can accept that Brett Favre has retired and think clearly again.

(I'm not quite there yet, but I'm getting there.)

In the immediate coverage following the announcement, one thing really jumped out at me--a very telling comment from the voice mail Favre left for ESPN's Chris Mortensen.

Favre talked about what the expectations for next season would have been, and that anything less than making the Super Bowl would be a disappointment. Then, he paused for a moment, and added: "And if we did that--and lost--that would almost be worse than anything."

Those are the words of experience talking.

Chalk up one last casualty from the Packers' historic choke-job to the Broncos in Super Bowl XXXII. Clearly, at some level, Favre never recovered from that debacle; and as the years passed by, and he grew older and older--and Green Bay never made it back to the Super Bowl--the scar from that wound grew more and more painful.

In retrospect, it looks like once Green Bay got to the conference championship, that was it, win or lose. If they had won it all, it would have been the perfect way to go out--on top; when they lost, the pain of falling short when they had been so close reopened that old wound...and that's what pushed Favre over the edge.

Given that, count me among those who do not expect a comeback, either with the Packers or with another team. No one could guarantee a Super Bowl win if he did, and the only team that would be a better bet than the Packers for Favre to make such a run is currently led by the second coming of Joe Montana, and would neither need nor want him.

The future has me worried, certainly. I first followed the NFL, and the Green Bay Packers, in 1989--the season of the Cardiac Kids, the season Don Majkowski became the "Majik Man"--and it likely spoiled me more than a little bit. When the Packers went back to being the Packers in '90 and '91, it hurt. It gave me a keen appreciation for what a fluke that '89 season was--and all the more appreciation for what we had when Favre appeared on the scene and put those days behind us for at least 16 years.

Still, the future looks much brighter than it did two years ago. Favre knew what he was talking about when he called the 2006 Packers the most talented team he'd ever played with; he had his best supporting cast at the very end, and if Ron Wolf had drafted the way Ted Thompson has, there's little doubt in my mind that Favre would have had more than just the one ring.

If Aaron Rodgers can stay healthy--and that's a big If, considering that in the last two seasons, AS A BACKUP, he's suffered two season-ending injuries (one of them in practice, for Pete's sake!)--then the Packers can, I think, compete and win.

Maybe not win it all--not without exceptional seasons on several fronts--but that's the condition of most NFL teams, year in and year out.

And that's one more way Favre spoiled us.

--Shack

Same old, same old?

The Philadelphia Inquirer's Jonathan Last sees something disturbingly familiar in what he's been hearing from the campaign trail these days:

A Democratic line is emerging about Sen. John McCain that is voiced daily by Sen. Obama (and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton) in the presidential campaign.

"Senator McCain said the other day that we might be mired for 100 years in Iraq," Obama says, "which is reason enough not to give him four years in the White House." Or more directly, as Obama told a Houston audience, McCain "says that he is willing to send our troops into another 100 years of war in Iraq."

Obama's claims are, at best, deliberately misleading. At worst, they are the type of politics-as-usual distortion that the Illinois senator usually decries. No one, in politics or the media, who voices the "100 years" canard is being fair-minded. So let's put it to rest now, once and for all:

On Jan. 3 in Derry, N.H., a voter prefaced a question to McCain by saying, "President Bush has talked about our staying in Iraq for 50 years . . ." Here, McCain cut him off, interjecting, "Make it a hundred."

The voter tried to continue his question, but McCain pressed on: "We've been in . . . Japan for 60 years. We've been in South Korea 50 years or so. That would be fine with me, as long as Americans are not being injured or harmed or wounded or killed. It's fine with me, I hope it would be fine with you if we maintain a presence in a very volatile part of the world where al-Qaeda is training, equipping and recruiting and motivating people every single day."

McCain's analysis is, objectively speaking, exactly correct. Throughout history, U.S. troops have remained in the field long after the conclusion of successful wars.

Note, of course, the key words there: Successful wars. Obama is by far the candidate most closely wed to the idea that Iraq is an irredeemable disaster (though Hillary Clinton has been doing her best to imitate that pose since the war there went bad) and thus, his vehement disagreement with the effect--100 years of troops in Iraq--should hardly be a surprise, since he also vehemently disagrees with the cause--victory in Iraq.

The real question here is whether Obama is:

• so narrow-minded that he cannot even imagine a reasonable person seeking victory in Iraq, with the ensuing effects

...or....

• trying to entrap McCain with a campaign equivalent of the infamous courtroom question: "When did you stop beating your wife?"

In either case, Last comes to the proper conclusion:

McCain's "100 years" is not a commitment to "100 years of war," as Obama claims. It is simply another sign of McCain's seriousness and understanding of the realities of foreign affairs in general and Iraq in particular.

Obama's distortion of this remark, however, is the first sign that he may not be a serious-minded candidate.

Taken a step further--this calls into question Obama's lofty claims of running a higher campaign...which in turn calls into question Obama's lofty claims of "bringing the country together."

And said claims, as we all know, are the hallmark, trump card, and primary (sole?) selling point of his campaign.

--Shack

How NOT to beat Barack Obama

Given the distinct contrast in their biographies, there will undoubtedly be a great temptation for John McCain to challenge Barack Obama on the question of character and experience. It would seem to play to McCain's strengths, and to Obama's weaknesses.

Just one problem: that's what Hillary Clinton tried. Michael Medved explains:

With his unexpectedly decisive landslide victory in Wisconsin, Barack Obama has solidified his status as the Democratic frontrunner. His success owes less to his own political strategy than it does to a fatal mistake by Hillary Clinton. At the beginning of her campaign, Clinton made a decision to avoid an ideological battle with her rival and decided to frame the race as a choice between “experience” and “charisma,” between “work” and “words.” In other words she decided to fight Obama on personality, rather than the issues, and in terms of a compelling, appealing personality, Obama obviously wins. Clinton could have won an issues election – mobilizing the broad middle of the Democratic Party and leaving Obama to run to her left. She could have criticized him for preaching surrender on the war, for minimizing the reality of the terrorist threat, for calling unequivocally for big government and higher taxes, for rejecting the free trade heritage of Clintonism. Instead, she insisted that she and her opponent hardly differed on the issues, and it was only a question of who is better “prepared to take over as commander-in-chief from day one.” By emphasizing my “thirty-five years of work fighting for change” Hillary not only made herself sound older, but high-lighted the meaningless, trivial nature of the change she sought and, allegedly, achieved: most Democrats don’t like the results of the last thirty-five years of government policy.

...

John McCain needs to learn the lessons of Hillary Clinton’s failed campaign. If he tries to emphasize his obviously superior experience and preparation for the job, he’ll lose in a landslide. Obama can easily characterize him as “yesterday’s man” (as he did in his victory speech on Tuesday night) and emphasize his opponent’s advanced age by “graciously” saluting his “fifty years of service.” He thereby makes the point that he himself isn’t even fifty years old, confirming his vacuous declaration that “we are the change that we’ve been waiting for.”

Beyond that, as George Will points out, history provides a particularly devastating comparison of Veteran vs. Novice in the presidency:

The president who came to office with the most glittering array of experiences had served 10 years in the House of Representatives, then became minister to Russia, then served 10 years in the Senate, then four years as secretary of state (during a war that enlarged the nation by 33 percent), then was minister to Britain. Then, in 1856, James Buchanan was elected president and in just one term secured a strong claim to the rank as America's worst president. Abraham Lincoln, the inexperienced former one-term congressman, had an easy act to follow.

Ouch.

--Shack

VP wishlist

Over at The American Spectator, Quin Hillyer is pondering what all-but-certain GOP nominee John McCain should be looking for in a running mate. In short:

McCain needs a solidly "full-spectrum" conservative, reformist, youngish, cool, well-rounded, brainy, all-media-respected, articulate, telegenic, border-state/constituency-challenging, non-party-weakening, executive-experienced, running mate who can handle the presidency at a moment's notice.

Hillyer says he can think of several potential running mates who might fit that description; he puts off naming them until later, though (which makes sense, from a productive standpoint--there's at least one full column right there, and probably more).

In the meantime, though, Patrick McIlheran and James T. Harris have stumbled onto someone who fits pretty much all of the above criteria, and then some.

Works for me.

--Shack

The "Keystone Cops" Campaigns of 2008

Michael Barone, in a very interesting piece, takes a look at the chaos of this 2008 presidential campaign and comes to a startling conclusion: Without exception, the strategies of every major candidate--Republican and Democrat, including both current front-runners--all failed.

Every single one of them was a flop (which is the only reason McCain, for one, is even still in the race, let alone being the putative GOP front-runner).

Given how many other areas of American life this past year have been in a similarly chaotic state, it seems somehow fitting that the presidential campaign would follow suit.

Not confidence-inducing, true--but fitting, nonetheless.

--Shack

Winning by losing?

Dick Morris, who certainly can claim to know a thing or two about how devious the Clinton political machine is, unveils what he claims is Hillary's master plan for securing the Democratic nomination: Losing South Carolina to Barack Obama.

Morris elaborates:

By saying he will go door to door in black neighborhoods in South Carolina matching his civil rights record against Obama's, Bill Clinton emphasizes the pivotal role the black vote will play in the contest. And by openly matching his record on race with that of the black candidate, he invites more and more scrutiny focused on the race issue.

Of course, Clinton is going to lose that battle. Blacks in Nevada overwhelmingly backed Obama and will obviously do so again in South Carolina, no matter how loudly former President Clinton protests. So why is he making such a fuss over a contest he knows he's going to lose?

Precisely because he is going to lose it. If Hillary loses South Carolina and the defeat serves to demonstrate Obama's ability to attract a bloc vote among black Democrats, the message will go out loud and clear to white voters that this is a racial fight. It's one thing for polls to show, as they now do, that Obama beats Hillary among African-Americans by better than 4-to-1 and Hillary carries whites by almost 2-to-1. But most people don't read the fine print on the polls. But if blacks deliver South Carolina to Obama, everybody will know that they are bloc-voting. That will trigger a massive white backlash against Obama and will drive white voters to Hillary Clinton.

Obama has done everything he possibly could to keep race out of this election. And the Clintons attracted national scorn when they tried to bring it back in by attempting to minimize the role Martin Luther King Jr. played in the civil rights movement. But here they have a way of appearing to seek the black vote, losing it, and getting their white backlash, all without any fingerprints showing. The more President Clinton begs black voters to back his wife, and the more they spurn her, the more the election becomes about race -- and Obama ultimately loses.

Playing the race card while not playing the race card? That seems more than a little cynical and convoluted, even in this race.

Still, if there's a pair of politicians capable of pulling this off--and by that, I mean not just having the skill to execute it, but having the lack of conscience to actually go through with it--it's the Clintons.

--Shack

1,251,921

Today marks the 35th anniversary of Roe v. Wade. The 35th anniversary of the Supreme Court's determination that a right to privacy trumps a right to life through the first three months of pregnancy.

It is also the 35th anniversary of Doe v. Bolton, Roe's companion case. The 35th anniversary of the Supreme Court's determination that even after the first three months--indeed, all the way up to the very end of the pregnancy--an unborn child may be slaughtered under the most utterly flimsy of pretenses: the widest possible definition of the mother's "health," as determined by the only doctor who need be involved in the decision...the abortionist.

I am vehemently pro-life. It is, in my eyes, the most important domestic issue--the most important human rights issue--facing this country today. I have long been involved in the fight against abortion on various levels.

I am also a man.

And, as such--as I have been told repeatedly, vehemently, often in terms I would prefer not to use on this blog--I have no right to have any say on this issue. I am not a woman; I cannot get pregnant; I can't even claim the prerogative of a father (even though that prerogative is itself routinely denigrated and denied).

Therefore, I am told, it is none of my business.

I beg to differ.

There's a link to the right of this post. It reads, "My Axe." Clicking on that link will take you to a site called Death Roe Survivors. It is a site by and for the lucky ones.

The ones born after 1973.

The ones who could have been snuffed out in the womb without any legal repercussions--but weren't.

The ones who are here only by the grace of their mothers, who chose to carry them to term.

I am one of the lucky ones.

I was born in 1979.

According to the CDC, there were 1,251,921 abortions in the United States that year.

1,251,921 unlucky ones.

1,251,921 of my immediate peers.

I repeat: 1,251,921 OF MY IMMEDIATE PEERS.

Taken together with live birth statistics, a little over 26% of pregnancies that year (excluding those that ended in miscarriage) ended in abortion.

My generation has been decimated. A little more than one in four of MY OWN PEOPLE were sacrificed in the bloody name of "Choice," their very HUMANITY denied. Had my mother decided differently, I would have been one of them.

None of my business? No right to interfere?

I have EVERY right to interfere. A wrong has been done to me and mine that can never be fully repaid, that continues to be visited on each succeeding generation after us.

All I can do is see that it comes to an end. That it MUST come to an end. I owe it to all those who weren't as fortunate as I was.

On this 35th anniversary of Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton, I have 1,251,921 reminders of why I continue to fight.

--Shack

From one Times to another

With regards to new columnist Bill Kristol, the Comment Editor of the one in London suggests, to my great amusement, that readers (and the ombudsman) of the one in New York get a grip.

He'd have better luck telling the sun to rise in the west.

--Shack

3/5 there

Huckabee took Iowa.

McCain took New Hampshire.

Romney took Michigan.

All we need now is for Thompson to take South Carolina and Giuliani to take Florida, and the GOP will be well on its way to a brokered convention nightmare.

--Shack

GOP disses

National Review's Richard Brookhiser, unlike me, supports Rudy Giuliani, Planned Parenthood's dream candidate for the Republican nomination. I don't think much of the reasons he gives for supporting Giuliani; however, that doesn't stop me from being amused by some of his observations about Giuliani's opposition in the primaries (even when I don't agree with said observations):

• Fred Thompson: "The most damning thing anyone has said about Thompson was said by Thompson himself to Byron York, who asked him what his greatest achievements in the Senate were. Thompson talked about the accomplishments of the GOP majority during his Senate years. It is pretty sad when a veteran of the talk palace of the Senate can only take cover among his colleagues."

• John McCain: "During one of Frederick the Great’s battles, a general told him as their charge faltered, 'Your majesty and I cannot take the enemy’s position all by ourselves.' But that is McCain’s preferred tactic."

• Mitt Romney: "Mitt Romney has been bedeviled throughout the race by the nail-polish glaze of phoniness. It is a glaze, and there is a real Romney underneath it. That man consists of his religion, which he defends eloquently; his ambition to follow in his father’s footsteps, and to succeed where he failed; and his confidence in his own intelligence and talents. Political principles are not part of the mix and have been adopted to suit circumstances."

• Mike Huckabee (aka Bush 3.0, aka Quayle v.2, aka The New Jimmy Carter): "Huckabee’s faux-naïve riff on Romney’s Mormonism and the siblings of Lucifer was slick, vulgar, and depraved — the image of the man who uttered it."

• Ron Paul: "Ron Paul is a 72-year-old 20-year-old."

I am, I think, leaning towards Thompson, with McCain as my second choice.

All the same, though, I'm guiltily relieved that the nomination will probably have been wrapped up before Wisconsin goes to the polls this time around.

--Shack