Over the weekend MSNBC squeezed a historical re-enactment into their their normal pedophiles and prisoners lineup.  In painstaking detail they recreated one of the famous Lincoln-Douglas debates from the Illinois Senate campaign of 1858.  Not that we would know the difference, but the network claims to have researched not just the words the men said, but as much as could be learned of their style and mannerisms.

Afterward they added a modern touch, by having Tim Russert and Pat Buchanan "analyze" the debate, and Chris Matthew gave viewers a chance to weigh in with their opinion on who won via a text message / email poll – something that has become a staple of this year’s campaign coverage.  The viewer opinion results were somewhat surprising …

Lincoln 20%

Douglas 7%

Ron Paul 73%!

Lincoln coming in well ahead of Douglas shouldn’t be a surprise.  It’s really hard to isolate this particular event without considering each man’s relative place in history.  So another big victory for Paul in a debate where he got to say little or nothing.  The guy is just that good.  I think that for a fair fight he’d probably have to take on Plato or Socrates, or maybe the 2005 USC Trojan Football Team.

(OK, this didn’t really happen.  It’s just a little satire poking fun at those stupid polls.  If text messages were votes, Howard Dean would be our president right now.  Until someone figures out how to capture the part of the internet community that isn’t still living in their parents’ basements, any poll taken by some means other than making people get out in the weather and travel to the nearest fire station or church won’t have any congruence with reality.)

Dave Ramsey fielded a call from a military wife last week.  For the uninitiated, Ramsey is a no-nonsense financial counselor and author, not a political wonk.

The woman was seeking advice on how she and her husband should handle a $100K check they are about to receive from the Dept of Defense.  It seems her husband lost both of his legs in Iraq as the result of an IED explosion.  So far, a story we’ll hear all too often from opportunistic politicians as the campaign season wears on.

Here’s where the story loses its appeal to a Clinton or an Obama.  The husband is in San Diego right now getting used to his prosthetic limbs.  After he completes an extensive regimen of physical therapy he’ll be put back on active duty.  Stateside now.  And obviously some billets will be off limits to him.  But according to the wife, taking this chance to duck out of the military was never a consideration.

This is his career.

He is a hero.

PowerLine highlights a recent Henry Kissinger speech in which the foreign relations guru talks about the conflict with radical Islam in which we currently find ourselves.  As usual, HK has a way of crystalizing the matter:

Therefore, to talk about withdrawal from any battlefield is to describe defeat. There is no way to escape the conflict with Islam by leaving Afghanistan or leaving Iraq. Now that is not only delusion and it is not something that will have long term consequences, it is something that would have almost immediate consequences.

We can’t (that is to say, it is not possible for us to) give up this fight.  It will follow us home.

He goes on to talk about the prospect of nukes in Iran.  The Iranian government compounds but is not the main problem Kissinger argues.  The main problem lies simply in drawing the line with regards to nuclear proliferation.

He remembers his own experience in government where devastating decisions were avoided because two world leaders had a rational counterpart making “comparable calculations” half a world away.  Now …

“When these decisions have to be made by twenty countries who have their own internal problems and their own calculations then you have to say a nuclear war, somewhere, will become inevitable, and almost impossible to contain once its implications begin to spread.  And this is a particular problem when nuclear weapons enter the middle east where the states are themselves in a process of dissolution and where no state can avoid trying to develop its own defense capability and especially so at a period when withdrawal by America is advocated by at least one of our major parties.  So therefore, preventing the spread of nuclear weapons to Iran is absolutely crucial.”

So, we have the Times story, and heated responses from Camp McCain.  The denials are interesting.  The first one I heard was full of rambling and double-talk.  It made me nervous.  But since then all I’ve heard are blunt, wholesale denials that any part of the story are true.  I hope he’s right.

Here’s the thing.  The story was flimsy, no doubt, and absolutely shameless in its depth of unsupported implications.  I came away thinking, “typical, liberal media smear job.”  I came away giving it not the least bit of traction in my mind.  But I did NOT come away thinking that there was absolutely nothing here.  My guess is that there is a little bit of truth in there somewhere, but it has so far been obscured by how over-the-top the Times went with the innuendo.

McCain’s campaign needs to be flawless if he is to catch Obama.  To be caught lying and lying about favors for a lobbyist would chop one of his main pillars of strength right out from under the Republican nominee.

Check this out. Plenty of messages in this one …

I am admittedly growing a little weary with talking/reading about the election. So, it was nice to find some good non-political blog fare this week:

Blog Comment Ethics: You operate a blog and one day receive an e-mail requesting that you remove one or more of the sender’s comments from your site. What do you do? The guys at Wizbang encountered this situation recently and asked their readers for advice. In this case it was a reader whose input was, in the opinion of Jay Tea, “not particularly clever or witty.” The reader is in the middle of a job search and is concerned that prospective employers will Google him and land on some of his political commentary.

Quick advice for the guy: In the future, don’t use your real name and/or don’t use your full name. With the damage done, all he would really need to do is make a bunch of less controversial comments and drive the problem remarks behind the first page of a Google search.

My two cents: No way (actually my exact words were “Screw You!”) And as we’ve just finished up a barrage of candidate interviews I sadly realized that what any prospective employer really needs to know about this guy, even more than any political bent or lack of discretion in the remarks he makes at times, is his basic weakness. He either succombs to “internet bravery” and says things while hiding behind the false veil of web anonymity that he wouldn’t be willing to say in person, or just doesn’t think that far ahead. If you’re not one to stand behind your words, posting things on the internet is not a good idea for you.

More generally, I view blogs as a conversation. Clicking the “publish” button is akin to saying your piece. Once you’ve done it you can’t take it back when speaking, and shouldn’t take it back when blogging. I would think a lot less of a blog if I learned that posts were heavily edited after being published and coming under fire. Same thing for comments. I say again, have some character and stand by your words. Also, grow up and realize that from time to time we say things that we later think better of. That doesn’t make you bad, it makes you human.

You and your germs stay home: – Laura W at Ace of Spades gives those who come to work sick a piece of her mind (language warning), via Insta-Pundit.

This is near and dear to my heart as I was sick most of the week and went through all phases of this scenario, from quiety cursing those “heroes” who have been spraying their crap all over the building for the last two weeks, to soldiering on myself, to giving in and staying home.

I’ve got to admit, I generally come down on the side of those who said that it must be nice to have a job like Laura W’s where you are basically unnecessary. Part of the problem, though, is that we usually aren’t just talking about one day. If I were to strictly adhere to the stay home if you are sick policy, I would have been out four days this week. There is no way that will ever happen. But even if we are talking some 24-hour bug, there will be days where work just can’t accomodate an unplanned absence. Example: My boss was out on Tuesday, which is the day I would probably have gone home early, so I pretty much had to be there. And this was our week to produce financials – I don’t care how sick I am, I won’t ever be the reason that our cabinet and board don’t get their numbers on time. So, my general strategy is to anticipate the day of peak misery associated with the illness, lay out that day and just understand that I am resting and gathering myself to go back in the next day, regardless of how I feel.

Of course, this leads to another discussion. People like me who take care of themselves and are in generally good health kind of get the short end of the stick and wind up, I believe, compensating for people who smoke, and eat like crap and have a bunch of other bad habits that result in their nearly constantly experiencing some kind of illness.

Don’t Screw with the US Navy! The World’s Finest Navy took out that defunct spy satellite this week. I know they had to repeatedly affirm that their purpose in this was simply to get rid of the hydrazine and sensitive intelligence before it came anywhere near the earth’s surface, but the exercise was rife with auxiliary implications. As modern warfare becomes increasingly dependent on a space communications component, this ability is huge. Also, we have demonstrated that we are a lot further along on missile defense than many knew. China wants us to share the details. I say, “bite me!” You know all you need to know. First, a tank full of toxic gas won’t be landing in your back yard, and second and more importantly, don’t screw with us! Video here:

More about the platform and weaponry involved: Navy Tech: Ticonderoga Class CG.

I don’t get it.  Hillary seems content to generally be in agreement with Obama tonight and fall back on what she is most comfortable with – bashing Bush.  Problem:  Bush won’t be on the ballot this fall … and neither will Hillary.

It’s the final round and Hillary wades in, well behind on every judge’s card.  You would think that she’s got to go for the jugular.  I can only hope.

I’m reading Newt Gingrich’s Real Change right now.  Great read!

“Long-term leadership has to be focused on history, not the next campaign cycle.”

A plagiarized speech?  That’s the best you can do!?  Plagiarism in a speech?  And you call yourselves Clintons …

What’s worse, the “plagiarized” section was half quotes from the famous speeches of others.  If you want to rip on him about the speech you might point out that most of his followers could likely identify the source of, at most, one of the famous quotes.  Or you could point out the irony in invoking JFK’s “Ask NOT what your country can do for you,” when what Obama is trying to pass off as a platform consists entirely of what your country can do for you.

All I can guess is that the Clintons are waiting for Wisconsin to play out before firing the big guns in anger.

– B –

Obama on the other hand is a genius.  His latest salvo – NAFTA.  Many are quick to point out that he’s turning Hillary’s attempts to co-opt her husband’s legacy against her.  Maybe, but the real devastation in this attack is that he’s baiting the former President who, as we know, never met a snack he didn’t like.  When does perception really turn against Hillary?  When Bill loses control and starts promoting and defending his own presidency instead of speaking for his wife.  First Obama called Reagan a man of ideas, unlike Clinton.  BC swallowed that one whole.  Now NAFTA.  Over / under on how long before the former President takes the bait:  how far is he away from the nearest microphone?

– B –

Wow, did Michelle Obama accidentally dive into the wrong end of the pool, or what?  Personally I wasn’t terribly offended by her remarks.  I mean yes, if you take them literally then too much drama.  But I get what she was trying to say, and that she was just being a touch too emphatic.  But that’s not the big thing here.  This part of the game is clearly not for her.  Don’t even try to publicly extract your foot from your mouth, ma’am.  Just step away from the mic, and go back to smiling, waving and schmoozing ditzy, mid-day talk show hosts.

– B –

OK, my prediction for the Wisconsin aftermath.  Clearly Hillary has learned that you can’t just run to another state and pretend the primary didn’t happen.  The next big event is two weeks away, so she’s going to be hearing about this for about that long.  If it is at all close I picture a scene reminiscent of her Iowa, 3rd Place Spin Spectacular!  For a while the expectation has been that Obama would clean up.  Now it does look close.  If she scores a moral victory she will make a HUGE deal out of it.  I’m picturing her using the standard, made-for-TV shrill cadence, with something like “You said that you weren’t ready for this to be over and we heard you loud and clear,” (in the background, tens of has-been political figures fling aside their walkers to sort of applaud and wheeze).

– B –

You know, pols, you set up this system with the “Super” Delegates, and now you are getting what you deserve.  Don’t tell me that the “Super-Delegates would certainly not go against the will of the people.”  If that’s the case then why do you have them?  Now we’re hearing that even the non-Super Delegates, we’ll call them the Mediocre Delegates, are not really BOUND to vote for who the voters in their state or district voted for.  Good job, guys.  Way to motivate your voters.  Way to enfranchise a segment (and in this case “segment” is defined as upwards of 60% of the voting public) of voters.  I’m loving this!

– B –

McCain ambles onto stage for his victory speech to the strains of “Takin’ Care of Business.”  How incongruous is that?  His first statement:  ” … I will be the nominee …”  Hmmm, I wonder who that was directed at.  Perhaps a certain former So Baptist minister who 90% of Amercians think has an “L” in his last name.  As I’ve said before, the charm is wearing off.