The International House of Bacon

* An interesting report from the Washington Timesabout some minor backlash NPR recieved for its “Conversations With Conservatives” series at the end of February.

* Not shockingly, Obama’s talking point that some CEOs make more in 10 minutes than the average worker does in a year is, with one to three exceptions depending on which metric you use, completely false. This is why populism is dangerous - it makes the mistake of either assuming anecdote as the clear reality (see: every John Edwards speech ever, Michelle Obama) or having to purposefully distort reality to make what may have otherwise been a valid, debatable point about a specific issue.

* Obama on the war. In a way, it does a good job explaining why Obama’s current Iraq strategy is so schizophrenic.

* Someone needs to reeducate the Associated Press regarding fair use principles. I think my favorite part is the probable concurrent contradiction by the organization.

* Kos blogger “on strike” because Daily Kos is apparently in the tank for Obama or something. It’s funny - the Republicans had a more diverse slate of candidates, more concern about the future of their party and ideology, and yet largely avoided this sort of infighting.

* Howie Carr’s yearly check-in with politicians in Massachusetts who call for higher taxes was published this week. One of the quirks in Massachusetts’s tax system is that the standard income tax rate is 5.3%. It should be 5% per a citizen vote, but Massachusetts politicians don’t care about Massachusetts residents. ANYWAY, at some point, an optional 5.8% rate was instituted - if you would like to pay the higher rate, the opportunity is there. Not surprisingly, very few people do pay the higher optional rate, including those who say that the state’s finances are in disarray and that higher taxes are needed. I love it.

* A minor follow-up to the Obama/Wright thing - while this was meant to apply to the Rezko situation (hardly finished, by the way), it applies here, too: Obama says that, “In a dangerous world, it’s judgment that matters.” If his “judgment” is to not only stick with this preacher for as long as he did, but also a) talk about possibly having to distance himself from Wright, only b) waiting until the mainstream press gets ahold of it, what does this say about Obama’s judgment? This is his standard, after all.

* More LiveJournal nonsense: censoring interests. Good times, SUP, really.

* What do we call Barack Obama’s $1 million earmark request for the hospital that his wife works for? All together now - Same Old Washington Politics as Usual. I’ll give Obama some credit where it’s due - he appears to be swearing off earmarks, at least temporarily, and earmarks, while annoying and wasteful, are currently completely legal. With that said, again, you cannot run as a “different” candidate who’s above all the Washington politics and is somehow better than everyone else when you’re not only requesting ridiculous earmarks, but doing so for groups you have an obvious conflict of interest with. It just doesn’t fly.

* By now, you’ve probably seen the ABC News clip of Rev. Jeremiah Wright, who heads up Obama’s church and made enough of an impact on Obama where he took the name of one of his books, The Audacity of Hope, from one of his sermons. The fact of the matter is that, while Wright is especially extreme to most ears, anyone who’s a churchgoing person is probably going to be aware of somewhat uncomfortable things that their preacher says. It’s just a matter of reality when it comes to religion clashing with a diverse country. That the media is examining this is a good thing, if only to atone for the ridiculous “A Mormon!?!?” stories we had to suffer through while Romney was still in the race. With that said, let’s not take too much stock in what Wright has to say, either - unless Obama’s showing signs of wanting to hire him for his staff, I think we’ll be okay on that front. Roger Simon sees it as a bigger problem, to provide an alternative view from the right side of the aisle.

EDIT: I wrote this last night. It’s now the morning, and it turns out that, yes, Rev. Wright has a formal, albeit semi-ceremonial role in the Obama campaign, and is often consulted by Obama “before making any bold political moves.” So yes, this is problematic. Much more so than the Ferraro flap from earlier this week, and makes you wonder who else is on the committee that Wright serves on.

* Happy 100th birthday, Chuck Taylor All-Stars. You’ve kept my feet happy for years.

* I lolled.

* I love when statistics and facts back up my gut feelings. It turns out that John McCain has a great rhetorical record, but when it comes to action, he’s completely unpredictable. Need to pinpoint my discomfort with John McCain? There you have it - if I can’t trust him to be consistent on the issues that matter to me, what benefit will it give me to vote for him?

* Let’s be clear - I’m not anti-Federal Reserve. I don’t know if the current situation is optimal, but I don’t think abolishing the Fed is the right answer either. Regardless, EconLog covers a lot of the problems the Fed causes, and I think could use some adjusting.

* I mostly don’t regret my vote for Ron Paul in the primaries. Reason explains the problems inherent in the Paul campaign, and kind of sets a template up for more competent campaigns in the future, perhaps inadvertently. I don’t really disagree with any of this, but it is tonedeaf to the point that Paul likely didn’t resonate with more than 10% of voters in most places because he was ultimately the wrong vessel for the right message. If someone of Mitt Romney’s stature or Barack Obama’s charisma was carrying Paul’s message, it might have worked out better.

* I wasn’t concerned about the inevitable legal challenge to John McCain’s citizenship/Constitutional ability to become President until it got filed in the Ninth Circuit. The Ninth Circuit is so screwed up, you could present evidence that the earth rotates around the Sun, and they’d likely find a way to determine the opposite.

* Bill Gates details another reason why businesses are fleeing the United States.

* Finally, I think I’m going to avoid eating within Boston city limits. I’m sick of nannying ridiculousness.

Excuse me while I take some time to sift through links I’ve had sitting around for a while.

Over at Betsy’s Page, Newmark highlighted a piece about “Care Bear Politics.” The piece, based off of a blog post by Reason’s Julian Sanchez and an article at Real Clear Politics:

And then there’s the Care Bear vision, which takes as given the perfectability of humankind and correspondingly interprets all problems as fixable, given the right conditions. Care Bearism involves, in Thomas Sowell’s words, “a disdainful dismissal of arguments to the contrary as either uninformed, irresponsible or motivated by unworthy purposes.” Should the critics prove, after the fact, to have been right, Care Bearists grant themselves absolution because their hearts were in the right place.

Since at least the 1960s, liberalism has provided an ideological wigwam under whose pastel-colored flaps the Caring-American community has gathered to emote and caucus in its therapeutic and sentimental fashion, always looking forward to a better future (in part, because it means they don’t have to look at the wreckage of their past schemes). Some latter-day conservatives began as liberals, until they understood that The Care Bear Stare was no effective defense against problems originating in human nature, which is not infinitely malleable, and in the intractability of evil.

While the conclusions of the piece leave a bit to be desired, the relative concept therein - from Sowell’s words to the examples at the start of the piece (both of which I’ve encountered numerous times) - are not only apparent, but seem to be manifesting itself in this election cycle to new heights.

I went into this election not so much tired of Bush (although there’s more than a little exhaustion) as tired of the brand of politics that have been ushered in - a “do-something” attitude, if you will, that seemed to reach new heights even as Bush branded himself a conservative regardless of his actual resume. With the failure of the Thompson run to gain traction, and knowing full well that Ron Paul is a non-factor, we’re stuck with more of the same, more of this “Care Bear” mentality:

* Barack Obama with his nondescript “change” manifesto.
* Mike Huckabee’s plans for the Constitution.
* John Edwards’s…everything.
* Mitt Romney’s abysmal record in Massachusetts.
* Hillary Clinton’s Santa Claus view of government.
* Rudy Guiliani’s record in NYC.
* John McCain’s record in Congress.

To use a cliche I hate, it’s the same pig dressed in different lipstick, and, perhaps more interestingly, is proof positive that this sudden lurch rightward that is alleged since Bush entered office is completely nonexistent - that the centrist Bush with his “compassionate conservatism” and government-can-do-it attitude introduced into the Republican Party and is apparently embraced by those with national recognition. Sure, the Jim DeMints, Jeff Flakes, and Jon Kyls of the Repubican Party exist, but most people reading this won’t recognize all three of those names for a while.

So what does this mean? It means that, right now, we have seven Care Bears running for President. Sure, some of them have lesser powers than others - as bad as McCain is, for instance, the damage he could do doesn’t come close to Edwards - but we’re still heading down that same road that so many are allegedly tired of. Especially in the age of large deficits, a slowing economy, and financial uncertainty, can we afford it in any context?

We know the answer to this, of course, but none of the folks who’ll be President in a year are actually going to answer it.