Propaganda From The BBC:  Not just in their news stories, but in their dramas, or perhaps I should say, particularly in their dramas.  Nick Cohen (who is not a conservative) has some examples, horrible examples, and these conclusions:

As a matter of course, BBC writers have blamed crimes against humanity perpetrated by the enemies of the West on the "root cause" of Western provocation.  Occasionally, but more frequently than the casual viewer might appreciate, they have gone a step further and presented the atrocities of totalitarianism as the atrocities of the West.

Maybe they were frightened that they would upset their employers or friends if they wrote honestly.   More probably, contemporary liberal ideology has so enveloped them, they cannot understand the implications of their own work.  For whatever reason, the BBC still had the brass neck to show fanatically racist white Christian sectarians beheading a moderate Muslim, when nowhere in the world are white Christians, fanatically racist or otherwise, beheading Muslims.

Read the whole thing.

Those who follow American TV more closely than I do can probably think of similar propaganda shows, but at least our are not usually supported by tax dollars.

Trouble In Michigan For Obama:  The Democratic governor, Jennifer Granholm, is unpopular, with voters blaming her, fairly or not, for the state of the Michigan economy.  And, far worse, Barack Obama's strongest supporter in Michigan, Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, has just been forced to resign.

Kwame M. Kilpatrick, the charismatic mayor of Detroit who has been embroiled in legal problems stemming from a sex scandal since the beginning of the year, pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice and resigned his office Thursday morning as part of a deal with prosecutors.

He agreed to plead guilty to two felony counts of obstruction of justice and to plead no contest to a felony count of assault on a police officer; to pay restitution to the city of $1 million; to surrender his law license, forfeit his state pension to the city and be barred from elective office for five years; and to serve 120 days in the Wayne County jail, followed by five years' probation.

More than one Michigan voter will note that, just a few years ago, Kilpatrick was heralded as a young, charismatic black leader who could work with whites.  The similarities to Barack Obama will not escape those voters, especially since Kilpatrick has been such a vociferous supporter of Obama.

If McCain can win Michigan, he will almost certainly win Ohio, since the two states are similar, though Michigan leans Democratic and Ohio leans Republican.  (Bush lost Michigan by just 3 percent of the vote in 2004.)  If McCain wins both states, it is hard to see how Obama can construct an electoral college majority.  Not impossible, but hard.

(More here from Newsweek, by way of WLS at Patterico.)

Barack Obama Admits He Was Wrong About The Surge:  Here's the exchange.

O'REILLY:  I think you were desperately wrong on the surge, and I think you should admit it to the nation that now we have defeated the terrorists in Iraq, and the Al Qaeda came there after we invaded, as you know.  We defeated them.

OBAMA:  Right.

O'REILLY:  If we didn't, they would have used it as a staging ground.  We've also inhibited Iran from controlling the southern part of Iraq by the surge, which you did not support.  So why won't you say, "I was right in the beginning.  I was wrong about that"?

OBAMA:  If you listen to what I've said, and I'll repeat it right here on this show, I think that there's no doubt that the violence is down.  I believe that that is a testimony to the troops that were sent and General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker.  I think that the surge has succeeded in ways that nobody anticipated, by the way, including President Bush and the other supporters.  It has gone very well, partly because of the Anbar situation and the Sunni awakening, partly because of the Shia military.  Look...

O'REILLY:  But if it were up to you, there wouldn't have been a surge.

OBAMA:  Look...

O'REILLY:  No, no, no, no.

OBAMA:  No, no, no...

O'REILLY:  If it were up to you, there wouldn't have been a surge.

OBAMA:  No, no, no.

O'REILLY:  You and Joe Biden, no surge.

OBAMA:  Hold on a second, Bill.  If you look at the debate that was taking place, we had gone through five years of mismanagement of this war that I thought was disastrous.  And the president wanted to double down and continue on an open-ended policy that did not create the kinds of pressure on the Iraqis to take responsibility and reconcile.

O'REILLY:  But it worked.  It worked.  Come on.

OBAMA:  Bill, what I've said is — I've already said it succeed beyond our wildest dreams.

"Beyond our wildest dreams."  (I don't think he has already said that, by the way.)

Let's review.  Obama's signature issue, when he began his campaign, was the war.  He, and his supporters, argued that he had been right on the war from the beginning, and that being right on the war showed that he had better judgment than Hillary Clinton.  In 2007, he was arguing for a precipitate withdrawal so strongly that he was even willing to accept a potential genocide.

Obama was wrong, wrong, wrong on the second biggest decision of the war.  And despite what he says, others, including President Bush — and John McCain — were right on the surge.

Obama's immense error on this decision raises doubts about his judgment, and his knowledge of military affairs.  I am only an amateur student of military history, but I understood from the beginning that we could win in Iraq — if we wanted to.  Thanks, as far as I can tell, to General Petraeus, our victory has come sooner than I expected that it would, but it was never in doubt — assuming we wanted to win.  And whatever you think about the original decision to liberate Iraq, it was clear to almost everyone that withdrawing from Iraq, as Obama wanted to do, would be a disaster, with terrible consequences for years and probably decades.

Obama's admission of error should be front page news everywhere.  But it isn't and won't be, partly because most "mainstream" journalists made the same error.

(Obama shifted positions on the war more than he or his supporters like to admit.  His shifts all seemed to fit his political needs of the moment, not a change in the events in Iraq, or a change in his analysis — assuming he ever made one — of the problem.  Even his original opposition to the war was exactly what one would expect from a state senator representing a far left district.)

Should We Withdraw Our Community Organizers From Chicago?   Maybe.

An estimated 125 people were shot and killed over the summer.  That's nearly double the number of soldiers killed in Iraq over the same time period.

All right, that's an unfair jab at some community organizers.  Some.  But I do have a serious point.  The Chicago death toll is highest in some of the neighborhoods once represented by Barack Obama in the Illinois legislature, highest in some of the neighborhoods where he once worked as a community organizer.  Those neighborhoods need, above anything else, to be made safer, but that was never Obama's top priority.

Congressman Rangel Writes The Tax Laws:  But that doesn't mean he understands them.

Representative Charles B. Rangel has earned more than $75,000 in rental income from a villa he has owned in the Dominican Republic since 1988, but never reported it on his federal or state tax returns, according to a lawyer for the congressman and documents from the resort.

Mr. Rangel, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, which writes the federal tax code, bought the beachfront villa at the Punta Cana Yacht Club and has received twice-yearly payments from the resort, which rents the property for $500 or more per night.

I am inclined to think this was inadvertent.  Rangel does not have a history of tax fraud or large scale graft, though he does have a history of cutting ethical corners, as he did in this case.  No ordinary citizen would have been able to get four rent-controlled apartments in New York.

But if it was inadvertent, then this shows, once again, just how complex our tax laws have become.   If the man most responsible for writing them can't get them right, then it is unreasonable to expect other citizens with complex affairs to get them right, either.

And it may show that Congressman Rangel is more careless about these matters than he should be.   If I were chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, I would have my tax returns triple checked, since I would be certain that others would be looking at them — hard.

Finally, credit where due:  As the New York Times admits, it was their tabloid competitor, the New York Post, that dug up this story first.

(Digression:  I have thought for some years that we would have far more complaints about the complexity of our tax code if software companies had not developed programs to make estimating taxes somewhat easier.)

The New York Times May Not Like Sarah Palin:  But the Sun does.

WHY, why, why can't WE have a Sarah Palin?

That was the question churning in my mind as I witnessed this astonishing American presidential race.

A week ago few in Britain had heard of Palin.

Today, the moose-huntin' mom is the most talked-about woman in the world.

And with good reason.

Her sensational performance at the Republican convention may turn out to be the moment the White House slipped from Barack Obama's grasp.

She was an electrifying mix of passion, energy, optimism and plain speaking.  The exact opposite of the slippery, two-faced, depressing bunch of third-raters who parade on our Westminster stage.

And the Sun has about three times as many readers.  Too bad almost all of them live in Britain.

Look At The Chart, Skip The Article:  Or at least look at the chart before reading the article.   For example, take a look at this chart, which accompanied a New York Times article on consumer spending and personal income.


As I read that chart, personal income was close to a record high in July, and would have been at a record high, except for the stimulus checks.  As I read that chart, personal income has been growing steadily, for more than a year, again, allowing for the stimulus checks.

Here's what Catherine Rampell wrote about those numbers.

Consumer spending slowed for the second consecutive month in July and personal income fell as the effect of economic stimulus checks tapered off and inflation lingered, the Commerce Department said Friday.
. . .
Personal income fell 0.7 percent, worse than analysts' expectations.  Disposable personal income, a measure of how much money Americans have to spend after taxes, also shrank 1.7 percent in July when adjusted for rising prices.  It had declined 2.6 percent in June

You'll have to decide for yourself which to believe, Rampell or your lying eyes.  Nothing that she says is false, but she gives an entirely wrong impression by omitting anything positive.

(Notes:  The chart is not adjusted for inflation, but inflation, thanks to dropping oil prices, must have begun to turn down in July.

Ordinarily I would not copy a chart from a newspaper.  I think it is fair use in this case because I am commenting on the chart.

I often find charts that conflict with the articles they are supposed to illustrate, and you can too, especially if you follow my practice, and read the chart first.)

They Just Can't Help Themselves:  Today's New York Times — at least the edition printed in this area — chose an Associated Press photo to illustrate yesterday's Republican convention news.  A photo of Sarah Palin speaking, to illustrate the big story of the day?   No.  Instead, a photo of Senator McCain meeting Bristol Palin's fiancé, Levi Johnston.  (I couldn't find the picture on the New York Times web site, but it probably was taken just after the first picture illustrating this post.)

To hammer the point home, the Styles section has an article on the problems facing teenage marriages, a long article, illustrated with a picture of Levi and Bristol.  This is, if I may say so, not news, because it is not new.  (I am a little disappointed that they did not mention Romeo and Juliet in the article, while they were on the subject.)  By way of contrast, in the same section the Times has an entirely positive article on transsexual adjustments in the work place.  You may think I am cynical, but I suspect the results of these surgeries may pose a few problems, too.  And may not always work out beautifully, though one would never know that from reading the article.

(To be fair, in the last day or two, the Times has given us some substance on Palin's record in Alaska, though they don't show as much enthusiasm for those stories as they do for stories on Levi and Bristol.)

Worth Reading:  James P. Lucier, a former Staff Director of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, tells us what Sarah Palin has done — and what Joe Biden hasn't done.  Two samples:

Palin came into the governor's office and found a mess on her desk.  The oil deal struck by defeated Republican governor Frank Murkowski wasn't working.  Through creative accounting by big oil and ambiguous reporting standards, the Murkowski plan just wasn't giving the State of Alaska the pay-off that was expected.  So the former mayor of Wasilla (population 9,000, as the MSM always points out) demanded that the agreement be renegotiated and the terms be nailed down.  They laughed when she sat down to negotiate, but in the end she had a new deal that delivered 50 percent of the oil revenues to the Alaska Permanent Fund, and enabled Palin to send a check for $1,200 to every qualified Alaskan citizen.
. . .
No Senator on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee has authority under the U.S. Constitution to conduct foreign relations or to negotiate treaties.  That's why Biden has no experience in foreign relations, and Palin does.  He just talks about foreign policy, and talks . . . and talks.

And much of what he has said over the years has been wrong, as Lucier goes on to say.

(From the news reports today, I gather that Palin, like Obama, can read well from a teleprompter.   That matters much less to me than what they have done, and what they are proposing to do.  I'll look at both acceptance speeches some time, but I wouldn't encourage others who have less free time than I do to do the same.)

Small Businessmen Often Don't Like Community Organizers:  Steve Antler explains why.

To owners of small community-based businesses, and to the workers who show up at these businesses every day, "community organizers" are more often than not nothing more than shakedown artists.  Sometimes they can be friendly and professional.  Just as often, however, they present themselves as something between mildly hostile to downright threatening.

For the record:  I have seen no evidence that Barack Obama was a "shakedown artist" when he was working as a community organizer.  But I think it almost certain that some of the people he worked with were.

Victor Davis Hanson has some advice for the Democrats.  Stop nominating lawyers.

In fact, every Democratic presidential nominee for president and vice president in the last seven elections -- except Gore who dropped out of law school to run for Congress -- has been a lawyer.

And the Democrats have lost five of those seven contests.  For my Democratic friends, I would just add this point:  Richard Nixon was a lawyer.

(Minor correction:  Though Jimmy Carter often described himself as a farmer, he was really more of a small businessman.  He did farm a few acres, but most of his income came from the family warehouse.)

More:  And, as you probably recall, the top three Democratic candidates this year, Clinton, Edwards, and Obama, not only are lawyers, but are married to lawyers.

And For The Biology Books:  This blooper is too good not to share.

The Bush Record On Research And Development:  Spending on research is hard to sell to voters — with some exceptions.  The payoffs, if any, are usually far in the future, and it is often easy for demagogues to mock proposals, especially proposals that have funny names.  For example, the late Senator William Proxmire was famous for his "Golden Fleece" awards, which often attacked basic science.  Once, I took a few minutes to go over his yearly list and found that most of the projects looked legitimate, but had descriptions that would sound funny to most non-scientists.  And that, I am sure, is why he and his staff attacked those projects.  (Proxmire, who represented Wisconsin, had no trouble voting for milk price supports, so he didn't oppose all forms of waste.)

There are exceptions.  When President Kennedy promised to go to the moon in ten years, he probably had the support of most of the public.  (Though more because we were scared of the Soviets than because we wanted to support an immense research project.)  And President Nixon almost certainly had the support of the public when he declared war on cancer.  But most research proposals do not get the same public support that those two did.  And the support for the space program waned over the years.

The slow payoffs are an especially big problem for presidents, who usually stay in office for eight years, at the most.  That implies that a president concerned only with popularity would do little for research.  Having said that, let's take a look at the federal spending for research in the last three decades.  The American Association for the Advancement of Science studies this every year.  In their 2009 fiscal year report, I found this useful summary chart.


The pattern for the last two presidents is clear.  Allowing for inflation, President Clinton let federal spending for research and development decline during his first term, but increased it a bit during his second term, so that by his last year it was about where it had been when he came into office.   In contrast, President Bush increased spending dramatically in his first term, but has kept it roughly constant since.  Knowing only those two facts, one would have to think that Clinton was concerned with his popularity, and Bush with the nation's future.

But there's more in that simple chart.  Clinton cut back sharply on money for defense research, but increased money for non-defense research.  Bush sharply increased money for defense research.   That difference in emphasis could be explained by their different constituencies, if you are cynical, or by different estimates of threats, or both.

(The two categories are somewhat arbitrary, since defense research often has applications in non-defense areas, and vice versa.)

The increases in non-defense spending in Bush's first term almost all went to biological research, specifically, the National Institute of Health.


In my opinion, those NIH increases were too large and too fast.  One can not train researchers in a year or two.  Nor can one expect that giving much more money to the same researchers will necessarily result in breakthroughs.  The Bush administration appears to agree; they stopped the growth of NIH and have been proposing more money for other agencies, with different research agendas.

They were right to shift more money to biological and medical research, but they were wrong to do it so drastically.

Given this record, it is strange that President Bush, and Republicans generally, have been accused of being hostile to science.  There is even a book by Chris Mooney (which I don't intend to read) titled The Republican War on Science.   Some might think that throwing billions at scientists is an odd way to conduct a "war on science", but Bush's critics do not agree.

It is strange, but understandable.  Bush's critics, in this area, as in so many other areas, have not been constrained by mere facts or much interested in boring budget numbers.  And most of them are offended by his religious beliefs, and the very idea that he might make policy decisions based partly on those beliefs.  (For some evidence on this point, look at the other books bought by readers who read Chris Mooney's book; they are not the choices of evangelicals, or even people inclined to be tolerant of evangelicals.)

Though I don't share all of Bush's beliefs, I see nothing wrong, in principle, with an elected politician using his moral and religious beliefs to guide policy, even on science.  In fact, I think that's exactly what elected politicians should do.  It is unpleasant fact that there are many interesting scientific questions that most of us would prefer not to fund.  For instance:  Is it possible to cross humans and chimpanzees?  And I can easily think of many more research questions that I would rather not have answered with my tax money.

The most dramatic example of Bush using his religious beliefs to decide policy on scientific research was, of course, the fight over embryonic stem cell research.  The debate on that subject was frequently dishonest, as Michael Fumento has pointed out, again and again, for example, here.  (My own rather cynical conclusion is that some scientists backed embryonic stem cell research with false promises because they believe that they are far more likely to win a Nobel Prize doing embryonic stem cell research than doing adult stem cell research.)

It is unfortunate that Bush has received so little credit (and so much undeserved blame) for his efforts to increase research spending.  Other elected Republicans, seeing that, will be less likely to support research, especially research that does not appear likely to have immediate payoffs.  If that results in less research, as it probably will, our descendants will be worse off than they could be.

(There was another rapid increase in research spending during Reagan's second term, again followed by a flat period.

At one time, the federal government provided most of the nation's research money, but it has been decades since that was true.  Non-federal spending, much of it by business, increased considerably during the Bush years.  Changes in the tax laws may have encouraged that increase.

This is the second post in my "Unknown Bush" series; the first, "Bookworm Bush", is here)

Worth Reading:  Eric Posner collected examples from the New York Times on the surge.  Here's the first:

The only real question about the planned "surge" in Iraq — which is better described as a Vietnam-style escalation — is whether its proponents are cynical or delusional. -- Paul Krugman, NYT, 1/8/07

Posner has thirteen more, much like that one.

Did any of the leftists at the New York Times get the surge right?  Not as far as I know.

All Quiet On The Sun Front:  The sun has temporarily solved its complexion problem.  Depending on how you count them (and perhaps who is counting), the sun had either no sunspots during August, or very few sunspots.

If the sun had no sunspots in August, this would be the first time the sun has been quiet for an entire calendar month since 1913.  (It has been quiet for thirty days or more during that period, but not during a single month.)

This might be important because the sun puts out a little less heat when there are no sunspots.   This may seem paradoxical because the sunspots are darker and cooler, relatively speaking, than the rest of the sun.  But there is a simple explanation:

Since sunspots are darker than the surrounding photosphere it might be expected that more sunspots would lead to less solar radiation and a decreased solar constant.  However, the surrounding margins of sunspots are hotter than the average, and so are brighter; overall, more sunspots increase the sun's solar constant or brightness.

Sunspots don't increase the sun's output much; the Wikipedia article says "on the order of 0.1%", which is a number I have seen elsewhere.

But some scientists suspect that the sun's quiet periods affect our climate here on earth in other ways.  One big reason for this suspicion — I'm not sure it should be called a theory — is the Maunder Minimum.

The Maunder Minimum is the name given to the period roughly from 1645 to 1715, when sunspots became exceedingly rare, as noted by solar observers of the time.
. . .
The Maunder Minimum coincided with the middle — and coldest part — of the Little Ice Age, during which Europe and North America, and perhaps much of the rest of the world, were subjected to bitterly cold winters.  Whether there is a causal connection between low sunspot activity and cold winters is the subject of ongoing debate (e.g., see Global Warming).

(To put it mildly.)

The key word is "coincided".  Some scientists think that the cooler climate during a time of few sunspots was not a coincidence.  (I don't know enough to have an opinion on the question.)


Finally, this may be a coincidence, too.  The recent quiet period on the sun coincides, roughly, with our stable, or even slightly declining, world temperature.  Though it is still higher than it was in most of the 20th century.

As always when I mention global warming, I suggest you read my disclaimer, if you have not already done so.

(You can see daily pictures of the sun at the Space Weather site, if you want to follow this yourself.  I've started checking there regularly, partly out of curiosity, and partly because they also have pictures, often beautiful pictures, of the weather and sky.)

If This Price Drop Continues:  It will be good for the United States and most of the world.

Oil prices sank to a five-month low of just more than $105 a barrel on Tuesday as traders turned their sights on signs that slower growth was spreading beyond the US into Europe, Japan and even emerging markets.

The fall led some analysts to suggest that oil prices could move back below $100 a barrel, a level not seen since March, after fears that US oil supplies could be severely disrupted by hurricane Gustav proved unfounded.

Naturally, Iran is trying to stop the decline.  (Those centrifuges aren't cheap.)

Troubling:  Putin is starting to rehabilitate Stalin.

Stalin acted 'entirely rationally' in executing and imprisoning millions of people in the Gulags, a controversial new Russian teaching manual claims.

Fifty-five years after the Soviet dictator died, the latest guide for teachers to promote patriotism among the Russian young said he did what he did to ensure the country's modernisation.

The manual, titled A History of Russia, 1900-1945, will form the basis of a new state-approved text book for use in schools next year.

Regardless of the facts.

Prominent Russian historian Roy Medvedev dubbed the manual 'a falsification.  Stalin by no means acted rationally all of the time, and many of his actions damaged the country.'

For example, every military expert agrees that Stalin blundered horribly by murdering most of his top military leaders, just as Hitler was about to attack the Soviet Union.  (Some were sent to camps and then brought back after the war began.  Their performance after their camp experience was uneven, as one would expect.)

(One of the authors of the textbook, Anatoly Utkin, asks this question:

Can you tell me of any other leader, an American president, for example, who read 10,000 books?

He intends the question rhetorically, but I can give him a partial answer:  Thomas Jefferson, Teddy Roosevelt, and probably George W. Bush.  And we don't have to look much further to see Winston Churchill, who was not only an avid reader, but a prolific author.)

Charles Johnson doesn't care for the smears on Palin from leftwing bloggers — and the way the "mainstream" media has amplified those smears.

Neither do I.

Another Reason To Blame President Bush:  Workplaces are getting safer.

The good news: Fewer people are dying on the job in the United States.

Last year work-related fatalities dipped 6%, to 5,488 (or 3.7 per 100,000 workers), according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics' National Census of Fatal Occupation Injuries report.  That's the lowest fatality rate since the government started keeping track of those stats in 1992.

Perhaps you can blame Bush for this change.  A look at the report, which you can find here, shows that these losses were much higher while Clinton was president.  One can argue over how much a president affects those numbers, especially in the short run, but one can also be certain that many would blame Bush if the trend had gone the other way.

(There's an intriguing detail in the report.  Though overall workplace fatalities are down sharply since 1992, falls are up, from 600 to 885.  Between 2006 and 2007, the increase came from falls on the same level.  Perhaps an older work force is more brittle?)

Insightful:  David Brooks' column on McCain's political philosophy.

John McCain is not a normal conservative.  He has instincts, but few abstract convictions about the proper size of government.  He's a traditionalist, but is not energized by the social conservative agenda.  As Rush Limbaugh understands, but the Democrats apparently do not, a McCain administration would not be like a Bush administration.

The main axis in McCain's worldview is not left-right.  It's public service versus narrow self-interest.  Throughout his career, he has been drawn to those crusades that enabled him to launch frontal attacks on the concentrated powers of selfishness — whether it was the big money donors who exploited the loose campaign finance system, the earmark specialists in Congress like Alaska's Don Young and Ted Stevens, the corrupt Pentagon contractors or Jack Abramoff.

And I would say it was insightful even if I had not come to similar views years ago.

Brooks goes on to say, Sarah Palin shares that philosophy.  Brooks also says that McCain's philosophy is rare.  It is unusual among American politicians, but it is common among America's military elite, especially among aviators.

Hard Corps:  Jim Lindgren took a quick look and found that Barack Obama is proposing to create or expand twelve corps:  Green Job Corps, AmeriCorps VISTA, Experience Corps, Senior Corps, Classroom Corps, Health Corps, Clean Energy Corps, Veterans Corps, Homeland Security Corps, Peace Corps, and Global Energy Corps.  At least twelve.  There may be more.  And a whole bunch of agencies.

I haven't looked at all these proposals, but Lindgren is probably right in this summary:

All these programs are just the ones listed on the service pages of his campaign website.  This list doesn't include his most expensive program: health care.  All these add up to the biggest expansion of the US government since FDR.  If Obama gets most of what he wants, he will make libertarians look more fondly on the relatively modest proposals of Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon.

What's going on here?  Michelle Obama, before she was muzzled, explained the purpose:

Barack Obama will require you to work.  He is going to demand that you shed your cynicism.  That you put down your divisions.  That you come out of your isolation, that you move out of your comfort zones.  That you push yourselves to be better.  And that you engage.  Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual, uninvolved, uninformed.

(And maybe even voting for Republicans.)

Michelle Obama was telling college students that they would be required to do community service.   As Lindgren explains in a separate post, Obama is promising a vast expansion of government-run community service programs, or, perhaps I should say, "community service" programs, since I am not sure that many of them actually serve the community.

What both the corps and the community service proposals have in common is that they give an administration a way to hire activists — who will work to keep Obama and his Democratic allies in office.  The leaders of the old Tammany Hall would understand this, instantly.

That isn't all, of course.  As nearly everyone knows, Obama began his political career as a "community organizer".  It is only human for him to think — regardless of the evidence — that being a community organizer is a fine thing, and to want others to have the same experience.

(It is possible that the "community" was better off for Obama's work, though I doubt it, but I have seen no evidence for that proposition.)

Old Rules And Bristol Palin:  Yesterday, the blogosphere and talk radio were buzzing with the sad fact that a teenager had gotten pregnant without being married.  This would not be news if the teenager were not the oldest daughter of the presumptive Republican vice-presidential nominee, Sarah Palin.   I haven't said anything about this story because it struck me as a family matter, and because it doesn't tell us much about how Governor Palin would perform as vice president or even president.

It may tell us a little, but it is hard to know what it tells us without knowing more details.   Even more extreme cases aren't always clear.  Rudy Giuliani's second marriage ended disastrously, but I don't know whether that was mostly his fault, mostly Donna's Hanover's fault, or what.  I do know that he was a fine mayor for New York, which tells me far more about how he would perform as a elected official than his two failed marriages do.  (His third marriage seems to be quite happy, from what I can tell.)  And it would be easy to add many more examples.  How a candidate acts toward their family does tell us something about the candidate, but we often can't know enough to make more than tentative conclusions.

All that said, there is something interesting, and very old fashioned, about the Bristol Palin story, something that deserves comment.

When I was growing up in the 1950s and early 1960s, it was accepted by the boys I knew that, if we got a girl pregnant, we would have to marry her.  I am not sure how I learned that; I can't recall either of my parents discussing it with me, but it was something we all believed.  And I think most American boys my age had the same belief.  No law would force us into a marriage, but our families would make it very hard on us if we didn't do the right thing.

That all changed with the availability of birth control pills and legal abortion.  Starting late in the 1960s, a young man who got a girl pregnant might be expected to pay for all or part of the cost of an abortion, but would not be expected to marry her.

The Palins, and the Bristol's boyfriend's family, the Johnstons, appear to be following the old rules.   Levi is going to marry Bristol, though he may not have known that even a month ago.

The old rules had one great advantage:  They encouraged boys (and girls) to behave as responsible adults, to grow up whether they wanted to or not.

(Credit where due:  One prominent leftist blogger, Hilzoy, has asked other leftists to leave Bristol Palin alone, and has done so for the right reason, not because the issue might backfire (though it might), but because it is wrong to drag children into these political quarrels.

That's the right thing to do, just as it was right for Republicans to (mostly) leave Al Gore's son alone, in spite of his continuing problems with drugs and driving.)

The New York Times thinks the Bristol Palin story is important.  Today's newspaper has two long articles on it, here and here, and an Adam Nagourney news analysis.   Both articles begin on the front page.  Altogether, the Times gives this story about two full pages, which is a lot for any newspaper.  (I continue to think that the story is not very important.)  As far as I know, the Times has not yet given significant space to the activities of Biden's lobbyist son.