Did any of you watch the Nevada Senate race debate between Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid and Sharron Angle? It was fascinating. Angle's not known as a professional politician -- she uses a bit of the hyperbole, she occasionally stumbles over her words, and she really is the outsider she claims to be.

And by my lights, she utterly destroyed her opponent tonight.

Reid didn't have much to stand on, going back to the Clinton era (when he was in the minority) to talk up Congressional action. He flat out lied about what he thought about the surge and General Petraeus. He refused to answer clearly about whether taxpayers should fund abortions or whether English should be the official language. And he kept speaking in weird inside-the-beltway ways. If "CBO" had been listed in your debate drinking game, you'd be drunk. He also kept wagging his finger at me (and other viewers, presumably).

Angle, while retaining her trademark awkward speaking style, articulated her vision of what Nevada needs from a Senator and hammered Reid with some zingers. She reminded voters that he lives in the Ritz-Carlton here in D.C. "Man up, Senator Reid" she told him, when discussing the need to fix Social Security. And she actually went on the attack -- asking how he'd become a wealthy man on a government salary. His answer? Particularly lucky investments. It was brutal.

Now if it were two career politicians matched head to head, I'd call it a draw. But we're talking about the Queen Of All Outsiders against the actual Senate Majority Leader and he just floundered.

Even prior to tonight I thought she'd pull out a victory. But I wouldn't be surprised to see her get a healthy bump in the polls after tonight's performance.

Side note: why was this debate only broadcast on C-SPAN when last night's debate between two candidates who aren't even remotely close in the polls (Christine O'Donnell vs. Chris Coons) was broadcast on CNN and moderated by Wolf Blitzer?

The rain getting you down? Need a lift after a hard week defending Free Enterprise from its detractors? Want to see some friendly, sympathetic faces? Then listen up!

After work on Friday, some of us are going to meet at the bar at the Hyatt near Grand Central Station (109 E. 42nd St.). Tommy De Seno, Emily Esfahani Smith, Adam Freedman, Ursula Hennessey, Bill McGurn, and Red & Black Redneck have indicated that they'll be there, and we'd like to see as many of our members and readers there as possible.

Once again:

Date: Friday, October 15

Time: 6:30 to 8:00 (roughly)

Place: The Commodore Lounge, the bar at the Hyatt at Grand Central (109 E. 42nd St.)

See you there!

I have long been intrigued by the issue of so-called church-state separation. There is much irony in the liberal position of near zero-tolerance for the government's -- federal or state -- slightest promotion, even involvement with, the Christian religion. Citing Thomas Jefferson's letter to the Danbury Baptists from whence the phrase "separation of church and state" is supposedly derived, libs say the framers were adamant that the state not show the slightest favoritism toward any religion.

Without discussing the context of that letter or citing earlier constitutional scholars, such as Justice Joseph Story, who wrote that the Constitution had no such separation imperative especially regarding the Christian religion, I think it's instructive to examine the two religion clauses of the First Amendment: the Establishment Clause and the Free Exercise Clause. I believe the thrust of both clauses was/is to promote robust religious liberty. The irony of the liberal position to which I refer is that liberals (on the courts and everywhere else) have expanded the scope of the Establishment Clause to such ridiculous extremes that it often operates as an inhibitor, rather than a guarantor of religious liberties.

So paramount was religious liberty that the drafters of the Bill of Rights made them the very first two clauses of the First Amendment: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion (the Establishment Clause), or prohibiting the free exercise thereof (the Free Exercise Clause).

Based on historical sources and common sense I believe it's clear that the framers intended the Establishment Clause to prohibit the federal government from establishing a national church or a national religion (and arguably forbidding the federal government from interfering with the states that already had established religions at the time -- which many did). The obvious reason they would forbid the establishment of a national church or religion is that citizens of nations with established churches don't enjoy religious liberty to the fullest extent. So the thrust of that clause was to promote religious liberty. And, the clear (express) purpose of the free exercise clause was to promote religious liberty.

But the courts began to expand the Establishment Clause to prohibit not just the establishment of a national church or religion, but the substantial endorsement of a particular religion. They also expanded its application to the states through the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment.

By unduly expanding the Establishment Clause in the name of promoting religious liberty, the courts have often suppressed that very liberty. An example is when a high school valedictory student tries to invoke Jesus Christ in his valedictory speech and the school administration forbids it on the grounds of church state separation. The Establishment Clause is applied not just against the federal government, but the states in this case so that a federally and state funded public school is precluded from permitting a student to exercise his free speech or religion because that would constitute the state and federal government's endorsement of religion and violate the Establishment and Due Process clauses. So not only is the law expanded to reach a mere public school in some county somewhere -- as opposed to the federal government establishing a national church -- but the student's voluntary rights are smothered and his free speech and free exercise rights are strangled.

How can it reasonably be maintained that the federal government (or even the state government) is affirmatively establishing a national church, or even endorsing the Christian religion in the slightest, when it merely permits a student to tell his classmates how Jesus Christ played a central role in his life? I'm assuming here he's not even proselytizing, though I don't think the restriction should apply even if he were. But when the courts forbid a student from such voluntary actions they are effectively negating the Free Exercise clause and free speech guarantees in favor of an absurd distortion of the Establishment Clause. The end result is a suppression of the very liberties both First Amendment religion clauses were crafted to protect.

As usual, though, liberals aren't satisfied even with this extreme expansion of the Establishment Clause. In recent years they have taken the Establishment Clause, at least rhetorically, to further extremes. Now they complain when Christian conservative politicians allow their religious views to guide their policy decisions, as if it is possible, or desirable, to create a Chinese firewall between one's worldview or his moral beliefs and his governance. Every politician's and officeholder's policy views and actions is based to some extent on his moral beliefs.

The oft-repeated line that you can't legislate morality is invoked in favor of muzzling Christians. (Notice that none of these arguments is ever used to hush practitioners of other religions). All laws are based on morality to some degree, from speeding tickets to larceny to taxes to first degree murder. The gradations of murder, from involuntary manslaughter to voluntary manslaughter to second degree to first degree murder are largely based on moral distinctions. Morality informs our civil laws as well, from property rights to contract law. I suspect the original meaning of the phrase "you can't legislate morality" probably meant that you are not going to change hearts and minds merely through legislation. Some of you Goldwater buffs may correct me, but I believe he said something to that effect. But you can't apply his statement too expansively either for we know that criminal law can have an effect on our moral behavior -- but that's another can of worms.

These issues came up in the O'Donnell-Coons debate last night. O'Donnell fell into the PC trap of saying she wouldn't govern according to her "faith," but according to the Constitution. Coons then ranted about which Constitution we were talking about -- the one originally adopted or today's -- revealing his affinity for liberal judicial activism. I try to dissect both candidates' treatment of this subject in my column tonight. I know this post is long -- as usual (I promise to try to shorten some of these) -- but here's the link to the column if you're interested in reading further.

Drudge reports that Michelle Obama appears to have violated Illinois state law by exhorting voters to "keep her husband's agenda going" inside of a polling place. Illinois state law -- Sec. 17-29 (a) states:

No judge of election, pollwatcher, or other person shall, at any primary or election, do any electioneering or soliciting of votes or engage in any political discussion within any polling place, within 100 feet of any polling place.

An Illinois elections official has cited ignorance as the reason the First Lady, a graduate of Harvard Law School, may have broken the law:

"You kind of have to drop the standard for the first lady, right?" the official explained late Thursday. "I mean, she's pretty well liked and probably doesn't know what she's doing."

While pleading ignorance of the law wouldn't exculpate a normal citizen, it seems that in Obama's America, those in the ruling class are above the law.

The scandal at the center of our latest mortgage mess is not the “robo signers” who played fast and loose with the affidavits submitted in foreclosure cases. It is that after years of propping up the banks and the alleged reform of the financial system under the Dodd-Frank bill, we still are teetering on the same precipice upon which we found ourselves in the wake of the Lehman Bros. collapse: Enormous amounts of toxic mortgage-backed securities remain on the banks’ books at imaginary valuations while prices for the $1.3 trillion in mortgage-backed securities are crashing, inspiring “too big to fail” institutions to seek special political favors. Fannie and Freddie are poised to insert themselves into the mix for political purposes, and normal financial processes are grinding to a halt as both regulators and the banks themselves put a hold on foreclosures. Meanwhile, thousands of would-be homebuyers have been cast into limbo because it is no longer clear that they can legally take possession of the foreclosed properties they are buying.

Didn’t we just do financial reform?

The United States has a 21st-century system for trading mortgage-backed securities but a 19th-century system for keeping track of actual house titles. That is the product of the shared interests of local governments that treat titling fees as one more cash cow in the golden herd and parochial business interests, such as title-insurance companies, that profit from the inefficiency of our antiquated system. As the turbocharged securitization process crashes into the crude title-recording system, thousands of foreclosure cases are stalled because it is proving difficult or impossible to prove who actually owns the title to a particular house, and who therefore has standing to sue for foreclosure.

One possible result of this mess is that billions of dollars in securitized mortgages, many of them low-quality subprime loans, could end up back on the balance sheets of the banks that sold them, setting the American financial system up for a replay of 2008. The government-sponsored enterprises, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, either insure or own most of the mortgages in the country, and the two politically connected firms still enjoy the outrageous privilege of unlimited financial backing from the U.S. government. Once again, taxpayers face the prospect of being on the hook.

The Obama administration was warned months ago that theforeclosure system was in trouble and chose to do nothing in response. But anybody who noted the rise in lawyers invoking the “show me the note” defense in foreclosure cases since 2008 could have predicted this scenario. (A very similar situation is likely to play out among credit-card defaulters: The bill-collector law firms that buy defaulted debt at pennies on the dollar from credit-card issuers are no more ready to show their paperwork than the mortgage servicers in the foreclosures cases.)

The Left already is presenting this as a case of the wicked bankers fraudulently throwing families out of their homes and onto the street. That does not seem to have happened: The vast majority of people who have been foreclosed upon are in fact not making their mortgage payments; in the tiny number of cases in which homeowners have been foreclosed on wrongly, it seems to have been from genuine error rather than malfeasance. (It goes without saying that these homeowners should be made whole and their grossly negligent tormentors punished civilly or criminally, as appropriate.) But the Obama administration has a new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau at its disposal, with left-wing scold Elizabeth Warren waiting in the wings to run it, and some Democrats already are arguing that the administration should use this mess to twist the arms of mortgagelenders until they offer the significant writedowns of principal and interest that the Left has been after since 2008. Their implements of torture: Fannie and Freddie, whose enormous clout could be used to bully the banks. This “solution” would do little or nothing to alleviate the threat of a second financial crisis; it would be merely punitive. In any case, the banks risk taking another beating, either from government strong-arming or from the unraveling of mortgage-backed securities, which will dump a load of bad loans back onto their books.

How bad a beating? Nobody knows. It could be mild, or it could be catastrophic. The critical issue of oversight — gathering intelligence about the financial system rather than attempting to micromanage it — has been comprehensively neglected by the Obama administration, which came into power on a slick of Goldman Sachs money and little appetite for intelligent, market-oriented reform. While the Democrats have been frittering away time and energy on non-issues like executive compensation and risible non-performing initiatives like the Home Affordable Mortgage Program, the deeper problems, as usual, have been ignored or misunderstood by the law professors and career politicos who have installed themselves as regents of the nation’s financial system.

(Story originally appeared on National Review Online.)

Today, we here at Ricochet are proud to begin an unprecedented partnership with our friends at National Review Online.

A lot of Ricochet contributors appear on NRO and in the pages of National Review, so it seemed fitting that we figure out a way to do something together. NRO is more than a partner, of course. It's an inspiration to anyone who is trying to bring center/right voices together on the web.
Starting today, some of the posts you see here on Ricochet will also appear over at NRO, on The Corner. And some of the posts or editorials you read at NRO will appear here, for us to talk about.

This is the first step in the continuing evolution of Ricochet. It's one more thing to talk about, chuckle over, and debate. And another reason to Join the Conversation.

When you read the headline “French Workers Strike” you think: this is news? They should run a story when French strikers work.

The government’s desire to raise the retirement age to 62 caused the last spasm of outrage, but I have an idea what will cause mass protests in 2013:

France's strategy to combat illegal music downloads by contributing to the amount young people pay for them won European Union approval and praise for promoting cultural diversity.

Under the scheme, French residents who purchase a card to download music from subscription-based website platforms, will only pay half the cost of a 50-euro credit included in the card, with the French government paying the rest.

Since this discriminates against people who can’t pay anything, it will be raised to 100% next year, and then it will be raised to 120% in 2012 to encourage people to buy music they don’t want in order to support unpopular artists. When the government tries to cut it back to 90% in 2013, it will be described as “cultural genocide,” and strikes will result. Some old Commie who’s been at everyone of these events since 1968 will get a phone call: need you to show up at the Opera House at noon, dressed as an iPod with the word perfidie written on the front. Can do you it? Merci.

...was the topic of an energetic and blunt-spoken speech by Ricochet's own Rupert Murdoch last night, after receiving an award from the Anti-Defamation League. He put it this way:

This is the soft war that seeks to isolate Israel by delegitimizing it. The battleground is everywhere: the media … multinational organizations … NGOs.

In this war, the aim is to make Israel a pariah.

The result is the curious situation we have today: Israel becomes increasingly ostracized, while Iran – a nation that has made no secret of wishing Israel’s destruction – pursues nuclear weapons loudly, proudly, and without apparent fear of rebuke.

For me, this ongoing war is a fairly obvious fact of life.

Every day, the citizens of the Jewish homeland defend themselves against armies of terrorists whose maps spell out the goal they have in mind: a Middle East without Israel.

In Europe, Jewish populations increasingly find themselves targeted by people who share that goal.

And in the United States, I fear that our foreign policy sometimes emboldens these extremists.

It's a pretty direct speech. He even zeroes in on the words of a (maybe typical) European bureaucrat:

...a European Commission trade minister declared that peace in the Middle East is impossible because of the Jewish lobby in America. Here’s how he put it:

“There is indeed a belief—it’s difficult to describe it otherwise—among most Jews that they are right. And it’s not so much whether these are religious Jews or not. Lay Jews also share the same belief that they are right. So it is not easy to have, even with moderate Jews, a rational discussion about what is actually happening in the Middle East.”

This minister did not suggest the problem was any specific Israeli policy. The problem, as he defined it, is the nature of the Jews.

It's hard to deny that there's a serious world-wide upsurge in anti-Semitic thought, speech, and deeds. It's harder, I think, to pinpoint exactly why this is so. Part of me thinks that, in this country, anyway, there's a certain kind of anti-anti-Semitism fatigue -- you know what I mean: you look around and you see a group that's prosperous and successful and hugely participatory in the culture, that contributes enormously to the American Engine, and you may think to yourself, Well, okay, so how much anti-Semitism could there really be?

But the stark fact is, if they had to choose between an alliance with Israel or an alliance with Iran, most of the establishment thinkers and politicians in Europe would instinctively choose Iran. You'd think, after all that's happened, Europe would be able to know the difference, and to make the right choice.

That's what it says on this truck, parked at 66th St, near Broadway, in New York City. I spotted it on my way from a meeting to the subway. At the bottom, in print that's difficult to see, is the website tellthetruth2010.org.

Had the Chilean miners been trapped a half mile beneath the surface of the earth 25 years ago, they wouldn't have made it out alive. The Chilean miners were saved by the innovative technologies that resulted from a flourishing system of capitalism, argues Daniel Henninger in today's WSJ. For example, take the Center Rock drill bit, which in the end meant the difference between life and death for the miners.

This is the miracle bit that drilled down to the trapped miners. Center Rock Inc. is a private company in Berlin, Pa. It has 74 employees. The drill's rig came from Schramm Inc. in West Chester, Pa. Seeing the disaster, Center Rock's president, Brandon Fisher, called the Chileans to offer his drill. Chile accepted. The miners are alive.

[...] The Center Rock drill, heretofore not featured on websites like Engadget or Gizmodo, is in fact a piece of tough technology developed by a small company in it for the money, for profit. That's why they innovated down-the-hole hammer drilling. If they make money, they can do more innovation.

This profit = innovation dynamic was everywhere at that Chilean mine. The high-strength cable winding around the big wheel atop that simple rig is from Germany. Japan supplied the super-flexible, fiber-optic communications cable that linked the miners to the world above...Samsung of South Korea supplied a cellphone that has its own projector. Jeffrey Gabbay, the founder of Cupron Inc. in Richmond, Va., supplied socks made with copper fiber that consumed foot bacteria, and minimized odor and infection.

O'Donnell and Chris Coons went head-to-head in a highly anticipated debate last night. Politics Daily has a comprehensive round up of the debate here.

I think O'Donnell did well. Despite her reputation for being a bomb-thrower, she handled herself in a mostly gracious and dignified, if feisty, manner--especially as she grew more comfortable into the debate. She was shaky at points, and moderator Wolf Blitzer targeted her unfairly many times, which didn't help, but she responded calmly. Coons, by contrast, was on the defense more than he should have been, and he often came across as smarmy and condescending.

I think The Daily Beast's analysis is accurate, but I would give O'Donnell more credit than The Beast does.

Who won the debate? Neither of them. O'Donnell didn't demonstrate any of the intellectual heft which her campaign sorely needs. Coons appeared annoyed, recalling Al Gore's frustration when he was placed on the dais with Texas Gov. George W. Bush. His attempts at laugh lines fell flat. He kept up a consistent patter about the debate not providing enough time for him to dispel his opponent's attacks. Against O'Donnell's salt-of-the-earth presentation, Coons was aloof. But then the stakes were unfair: the threshold for O'Donnell, thanks to her helter-skelter campaign thus far, were very low and Coons likely didn't do himself any favors by reflecting the nation's disbelief. Sometimes a candidate has to take his opponent seriously, even when most others don't.

What's your read on the debate?

In a new book Proud to Be Right, Jonah Goldberg has collected and edited essays from a group of conservative writers who "rebut the conventional wisdom that the next generation is uniformly liberal." One such writer, Katherine Miller, is the editor of the Student Free Press Association and an excerpt of her excellent essay from the book appears here (h/t John Miller at The Corner).

The essay, "Man Up," is about the feminization of "elite" men. To Miller, these men need to "man up."

“We live in more of a p#$$y generation now,” Clint Eastwood told Esquire magazine last year. “[E]verybody’s become used to saying, ‘Well, how do we handle it psychologically?’”

Eastwood tells truths. America’s elite has a problem. It’s skinny jeans and scarves, it’s Bama bangs and pants with tiny, tiny embroidered lobsters, it’s Michael Cera, it’s guys who compliment a girl’s dress by brand, it’s guys who don’t know who bats fourth for the Yankees. Between the hipsters and the fratstars, American intellectual men under the age of twenty-five have lost track of acting like Men—and these are our future leaders. We have no John Wayne, no Clint Eastwood. And girls? Girls hate it.

This all occurred to me at 1:47 a.m. on November 8, 2008...Out of some cruel, dazzling dark corner of my metal heart, a single thought formulated: Man up....

But perhaps you don’t believe me. Maybe you live in some neo-noir situation where the men smoke on dark corners or in open plains and don’t wear scarves unless it’s cold enough to cut a hole in some ice and pull a fish out, and even then are a little hesitant about the whole thing. I don’t know your life.

Katherine Miller doesn't know my life.

It sounds like Miller went to a school where the men and women have drifted into androgyny as "girls isolate aspects of masculinity" and men "soften" and tell you they "don’t feel respected."

That was not my experience at college. I went to a school where the social ideal was called "The Hard Guy"--The Hard Guy would have laughed in the face of Miller's soft, feeling-obsessed boys.

It's unbecoming of the Hard Guy to talk emotions. He is stoical and impervious to pain. The Hard Guy is loyal and fraternal. He is physically aggressive and exudes sexual confidence. He is the Animal House ideal lived and relived. And he manned up, let me tell you, but that wasn't always a good thing.

In fact, one night, when I was out with some friends, I saw what "manning up" meant to these guys. Right before my freshman eyes, a couple of them filled two very tall glasses to the brim with cheap vodka and whiskey. One raised his glass and, with a maniacal laugh, told the other to "Man Up or Man Out [expletive deleted]." They both started chugging this drink, which was christened on the spot as "The Man Out." The one with the maniacal laugh then wiped his mouth with his sleeve, while the other stood uneasily, and then darted for the nearest trash can in sight. He "Manned Out." The other "Manned Up."

Not too long ago, a couple of alums (men) created a website (now defunct) devoted to selling t-shirts for Hard Guys who "Man Up." The site featured a picture of one of the website's founders pouring Jack Daniels over his cereal.

Here are some of the sayings from those Hard Guy t-shirts: "Your Friday night is my Monday morning." "Hard Guy Dating: Having a girlfriend and not even liking her." “Hard Guy Gambling: Five bullets, six chambers.”

Here is how one of the site's founders described Manning Up and The Hard Guy: “The...philosophy is extremist, primitive, and self-destructive, but it’s still pretty damn funny."

It is funny, except when young men actually take it seriously. Then it's pathetic. (What's even more pathetic is when women, in the name of being "strong" and "empowered," try to ape Hard Guy behavior, which was also a common social phenomenon that I saw--but that's a separate issue I won't get into now.)

I know that men in our culture, in large part thanks to feminism, are becoming increasingly androgynous and feminine--less manly--but let's be precise when we discuss the solution to this problem. Instead of yearning for men who "Man Up," and their idolization of primitive masculinity, why can't we hope for a higher--and dare I say, elite--ideal: The Gentleman, and his embodiment of courage, civility, integrity, and dignity. That's what's missing from the youth culture today.

Hamas has been systematically terrorizing Palestinian journalists in the Gaza Strip -- most of whom are members of Fatah -- for years. They have been subjected to harassment of many varieties, including beatings and arbitrary arrests. On Tuesday, Hamas took the bull by the horns and forcibly shut down the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate offices in the Strip. Armed Hamasniks raided the offices, announced it was closed until further notice, and "summoned" members of the organization for interrogation by the security forces.

One of the heads of the union is pleading with journalists abroad to speak out. “We urge Arab and foreign journalists and human rights activists to intervene with Hamas to stop its repeated crimes against the syndicate and its members in the Gaza Strip,” he said. The International Federation of Journalists has responded to the call. “The action by the Hamas government is a violation of journalists’ rights and a slap in the face of Palestinians who are courageously fighting for their rights and the independence of journalism in appalling conditions,” said IFJ President Jim Boumelha. “We join our affiliate the Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate in their strong protest and we support their demand for an investigation into this action.”

But where is the coverage? Silencing the press is no small matter; surely this is worthy of note abroad? Particularly as it is Palestinian voices who are being silenced -- where are their friends? All those journalists who came out of the woodwork to put in their two cents in support of the flotilla -- surely they are outraged at the subjection of Palestinians to such blatant repression? Speak up!

That's a little awkward, though, if your real affections lie not with the Palestinian people, but with Hamas. This is an instance where the popular allegiance with the underdog reveals itself to be a nasty fascination with the brute. Hamas is a thug nation, and with most of the international press on its side, what semblance there was of journalistic freedom in Gaza even for Palestinians is largely a thing of the past. This is the full extent of the Guardian's coverage of the raid:

Hamas security forces have raided and shut down the headquarters of the Palestinian Journalists Union in Gaza.

Union leader Abdelnasser al-Najar said that one of the Hamas officers informed board members that it would be closed until further notice.

The union is dominated by the secular Fatah movement, which Hamas drove out of the Gaza Strip when it seized power in June 2007.

Najar, who is based in the West Bank town of Ramallah, said the raid was the latest in a series of "violations of the rights of the media" in Gaza. Some 25 media outlets have been shut down since the Hamas takeover.

Too bad it wasn't the Israelis. RIP, Palestinian Journalists Syndicate.

The title is truly a misnomer, because as you'll hear, this group is anything but. Pat Caddell, Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels, and National Review's Jim Geraghty take no prisoners in a very spirited discussion about many of the important races around the country, whether or not folks in other states may get the chance to vote for the Governor, the Republican's overall national strategy, the Tea Party, and a certain candidate in Delaware. In fact, we're laying on extra server capacity for the anticipated reaction to that particular part of the podcast. Have at it!

Grab your clubs, we're hitting the links:

• Valley Of The Dolls is the famously camp film version of Jacqueline Susann's best-selling novel chronicling the rise and fall of three young ladies in show business. Suffice to say, they often slept late. Fun fact: the screenplay was written by Helen Duetsch and Dorothy Kingsley (corrected).
• Do not adjust your earbuds. That clicking noise is Jim Geraghty adjusting his new microphone. Hey, we do this live.
• The Republican Governor's Association (chaired by Ricochet's Haley Barbour) web ads may be found on their YouTube page.
• Michael Barone’s column on "Skinflint" Daniels' chances of winning the presidency.
• However, Commentary's Jennifer Rubin (via Matt Continetti) worries that too much austerity is a trap.
• The most recent Ricochet discussion on Christine O'Donnell featuring the "I Didn't Go To Yale" ad is here. Caddell also mentioned the SNL parody of the first "I'm You" ad.
• Thinking of running for elected office? You may want to consider hiring Fred Davis' Strategic Perception, Inc. to create your media. Davis has created thousands of political ads, including "I'm You" and the "Mourning In America" ad that plays off the classic spot created for Ronald Reagan's 1984 presidential campaign.
• The links to Sal Russo and the Tea Party Express. We report, you decide.
• Dr. Robert Steele appeared on Ricochet Podcast #16, way back in May. If he wins, we'll take most of the credit.
• James Lileks' line "now is the time on Sprockets when we dance," is from the classic SNL sketch featuring Mike Meyers. The Hebrew subtitles were not part of the original broadcast.
• Rob quotes Winston Churchill's "Blood, Toil, Tears and Sweat" speech, his first as Prime Minister. It was delivered to the House of Commons on May 13th, 1940. Via the miracle of the internet, you can listen to it here.
• Jeb Bush was also a podcast guest back in the early days. And by early days, we mean April.
• The much maligned Christine O'Donnelll piece Anne Applebaum wrote for Slate claims that some Americans (not us!) resent upward mobility.
• We considered ending the podcast with Boola Boola, but Yale's fight song is simply too lame for that.

Music from this week's episode:

• Let Yourself Go by James Brown
• Crumblin' Down by John Mellencamp

The direct link to this week's episode is here, but we'd really love it if you'd subscribe. Taking a stand against iTunes? Visit our Feedburner page for a number of other subscription options.

The Ricochet Podcast is sponsored by Encounter Books and their Broadside Series. This week's featured title is President Obama’s Tax Piracy by Peter Ferrara. Available for $5.99 at EncounterBooks.com.

My post about Podesta shouldn't be taken quite as literally as you're all interpreting it. I understood it as--possibly--part of the very complicated backstage diplomatic dance that's going on in these parts. Basically, I read it this way:

Obama to Erdogan, possibly through indirect channels: Congress is seriously going to cancel the F-35 if this keeps up.

Erdogan to Obama: So what. We'll go to China. (Cue Anatolian Eagle.) (Too bad, Uighurs.)

Obama to Erdogan, via a number of messengers, possibly including Podesta: That was really uncalled for. I'm not, actually, a bunny rabbit. I won't say this to your face, because I can't walk back from that, but I swear I'm going to level that place, and you just can't be sure I won't, so think about it, buddy ... if it turns out you've underestimated me, it won't end well for you. Back away from China.

A commitment, it is not. A signal, possibly. To what end, hard to say. But we local tea-leaf readers were snoozing until we heard that. That made us bolt upright. It is definitely a notable phrasing and those who follow these things closely know it.

I hate to get into this again, but I'll do it in (belated) honor of Margaret Thatcher's birthday. An astute reader sent me a link to this post on Conservatives4Palin:

Often times, Governor Palin's rhetoric echos that of President Reagan, and quite often, whether intentionally or coincidentally, her rhetoric echos that of Margaret Thatcher.

Let's examine this claim.

Couric: But can you give me any other concrete examples? Because I know you've said Barack Obama is a lot of talk and no action. Can you give me any other examples in his 26 years of John McCain truly taking a stand on this?

Palin: I can give you examples of things that John McCain has done, that has shown his foresight, his pragmatism, and his leadership abilities. And that is what America needs today.

Couric: I'm just going to ask you one more time - not to belabor the point. Specific examples in his 26 years of pushing for more regulation.

Palin: I'll try to find you some and I'll bring them to you.

Thatcher, 1981 press conference, in an unscripted, off-the-cuff, no-notes-at-hand response to a Canadian journalist’s rather vague question about rising British unemployment:

Well, one moment. There are a number of things. ... We believe we still have a bigger proportion of – let me take it this way. Between the ages of 16 and 64, broadly speaking, your working age group, we have a bigger proportion of the people in that age group in jobs than any other country on the continent save Denmark. We believe a bigger proportion, it is partly to do with the number of women who seek work, we believe that even with the unemployment figures as they are we still have a bigger proportion of that age group in jobs than anywhere else on the continent save Denmark. In jobs. The last sample figures were done in 1978 but there is quite a high proportion of married women in this country seeking work, so we have a bigger proportion. It is quite interesting. And with all due respect we now have unemployment of 9–10 percent but you know Belgium is higher than we are, Ireland, Italy about the same, France. We have our own figures updated, I am not sure about France, but if you look back a couple of months we and France were about level. But in fact Canada has difficult unemployment figures. You have very difficult unemployment figures, concentrated, like us, in some areas. Now look at the unemployment trends for the period 1951–1980 in Britain. Take the Tory Government, October 1951 to October 1964, over thirteen years. Average inflation 3.2 percent, average unemployment percent. Take October 1964 to June 1970, Labour Government. Average inflation rose to 4.7 percent, average unemployment rose to 1.9 percent; but still low, 447,000. Go to June 1970 to February 1974, our period, average inflation rose 9.5 percent, average unemployment rose to 3 percent, still comparatively low. Now it started to catch up on us then, this inflation/unemployment spiral. February 1974 to May 1979, average inflation rose to 15.5 percent, average unemployment rose to 4.7 percent, average 1,098,000. But towards the end of that period it was as you know suddenly about 1.3 million. I've taken the average. So we in fact were left with a basic underlying rate of about 1.3 million. Now it’s this cycle we have to try to break. Now all right, we're not yet breaking it – 16.7 percent is our average up to December 1980. Now, as you know, we're already down to 13 percent annual inflation, which is below the average of the last Labour Government. Unless we break this terrible cycle we're not going to crack the unemployment figures. And that's why we're going so hard on inflation.

I'm hard-pressed to find the rhetorical echoes. Given my enthusiasm for Thatcher, I'm not really vulnerable to the charge that I'm blinded by elitist, establishment snobbery.

There are some great ideas floating around for constitutional amendments: for example, a line-item veto, a federalism amendment, and a "repeal amendment" (allowing states to repeal federal legislation) that I'm partial to.

The only realistic chance of achieving any of these things is to have two-thirds of the state legislatures call for a convention to amend the Constitution - as Article V of the Constitution allows. The only other method requires getting two-thirds of both houses of Congress to agree -- not likely. Over at the American Spectator, Philip Klein has a thoughtful piece asking, why are so many people afraid of calling a convention. Smart people, both right and left, get very nervous about an amending convention -- the common theme seems to be fear of a "runaway convention" that ends up proposing all sorts of crazy things.

As Klein demonstrates, the "runaway convention" fear is probably fanciful, since anything proposed by a convention would still have to be approved by three-fourths of the state legislatures, and would be subjecty to judicial review. But the best response comes from Professor Randy Barnett:

"We now have a runaway Congress," he said. "What's worse, a convention that can be checked in numerous ways -- not just one way, but many ways -- or the runaway Congress we now have? We have a clear and present danger of the runaway Congress."

So, come on, is anybody really afraid of a runaway convention?

Thanks to our beloved member E.J. Hill. Enjoy.

She's a hunter, rancher, mother of three, and a staunch conservative. She's articulate, attractive, ahead in the polls, and she's raised more money than any other challenger in a House race.

South Dakotan Tea Party starlet Kristi Noem has been compared to Sarah Palin by many, but when asked what she makes of the comparison, Noem responded:

I'm my own person -- I'm Kristi Noem. Sarah Palin is a public servant who stepped forward...to run for office before, and you've got to admire people who are willing to take on that kind of a role. I've had a lot of people try to label me and I think that going forward, as long as we recognize that I've got my own platform, my own beliefs -- they represent the values of South Dakota, and I think that's important.

And asked whether she would welcome Sarah Palin in South Dakota to campaign for her, Noem replied:

Probably not. We're going forward making sure we're focused on the people here at home. I want them to know who I am and what I believe we should be doing and should be accomplishing rather than focusing on somebody else from out of state.

Kristi Noem is certainly one to keep your eye on. And I've got to admit, I'm excited about her.

The New York Times' Peter Baker penned "The Education of President Obama," a marathon piece concerning what Obama has learned in his first two years and what he might change after the upcoming electoral bloodbath. Disclosure: I couldn't force myself to wade through all of it, but please read this little section from the first of eight online pages:

Most of all, he has learned that, for all his anti-Washington rhetoric, he has to play by Washington rules if he wants to win in Washington. It is not enough to be supremely sure that he is right if no one else agrees with him. “Given how much stuff was coming at us,” Obama told me, “we probably spent much more time trying to get the policy right than trying to get the politics right. There is probably a perverse pride in my administration — and I take responsibility for this; this was blowing from the top — that we were going to do the right thing, even if short-term it was unpopular. And I think anybody who’s occupied this office has to remember that success is determined by an intersection in policy and politics and that you can’t be neglecting of marketing and P.R. and public opinion.”

If you have been following Obama closely you will recognize that there is nothing new here. He has made precisely the same point many times. He did it after his shellacking in the Massachusetts Senate race -- a referendum on his agenda. He didn't say he had learned his lesson, or he had now heard the loud voice of the American people and would adjust his policy to accommodate our concerns. He said, "I want the American people to take another look at my plan."

On other occasions he said he just hadn't spoken to the people clearly enough about his policies. He hadn't spoken to our core values. Of course that was absurd on two fronts: 1) he had given some 54 speeches on health care alone, if memory serves, and 2) he doesn't share mainstream America's core values, so how would he propose speaking to those?

It's disingenuous of him to say he spent too much time trying to get the policy right and ignored the politics. Well, what were all those speeches about then? And can you feel the dripping arrogance jumping off the page as he boasts of the perverse pride in "doing the right thing, even if in the short-term it was unpopular?" The right thing? And short term? He is still convinced that everything he's done is right and that someday the unwashed Neanderthals will come to see things his way.

Also notice his familiar refrain, "Given how much stuff was coming at us." This is his glib excuse for everything: he inherited the worst mess in history and he just couldn't be bothered to deal with politics while he was busy saving us from ourselves. But that dog won't hunt either. He didn't inherit the worst mess -- Reagan was dealt a far worse hand from the worst president until Obama. And he didn't whine about it; he didn't say it would take ten years "to get out of this mess." He just got busy unleashing America's entrepreneurial engine.

But there's also another subtle deceit in there. "So much stuff was coming at us" implies Obama was the passive recipient of an ongoing avalanche of hell that he was simply trying to rectify. In fact, he was working in warp speed to exacerbate that hell. He wasn't the catcher; he was the pitcher. He wasn't having stuff thrown at him. He was throwing stuff at us -- at America. Screw ball after screw ball. He always portrays himself as a personal victim of bad economic conditions that he has been trying valiantly to ameliorate. In truth, Americans have been his victim and we still are. I know it's very tough for him to accept accountability, but he's the change agent here, not an innocent bystander merely trying, along with Saint Nancy Pelosi, to sweep up the mess that President Bush allegedly left for him.

Finally, I want to paste one other tidbit from the preceding NYT paragraph. Peter Baker said Obama told him he had no regrets about the broad direction of his presidency. Can you believe that? Yes, I'm sure you can.

But, Obama "did identify what he called 'tactical lessons.' He let himself look too much like 'the same old tax-and-spend liberal Democrat."

What? I repeat, "What?" Tactical lessons? He let himself look like a tax-and-spend liberal Democrat? Earth to Obama: You are a tax and spend liberal Democrat -- on steroids. And what can tactical lessons mean other than clever schemes to fool the people into believing his policies aren't as noxious as they are.

I would say that a more realistic assessment of Obama's first two years is that there are limits to Alinskyite, Chicago street thug politics. Much of the American public, partially due to the rise of the alternative media, is highly informed and political savvy and is not falling for his incessant rhetoric designed to disguise his socialist agenda. His vague promises of hope and change might have resonated with many people before he had an executive record against which they could be judged. But that lost its effectiveness pretty quickly.

He went to the rhetorical well dozens of times too many and his trips were yielding increasingly diminishing returns. Prior to his Oval Office ascension he knew little else but talking and receiving idolatrous praise. Governing involved way more than that and his skill set didn't rise to the challenge.

But in fairness, to quote someone famous, "You can put lipstick on a pig -- (but) it's still a pig," and his agenda is just a big porkulus pig. No way to dress that thing up enough to fool the electorate. No amount of clever tactics would have worked. But he still doesn't get it. He's incapable of getting it because he's so sure he's right. A scary kind of narcissistic arrogance.

Looks like some poor Greeks will be limping wherever they go. According to this Daily Caller report, doctors in Greece will now amputate feet instead of prescribing special footwear to diabetes patients because it's cheaper.

Remember when Obama said this sort of thing wouldn't go on?

Hey! Let’s governmentalize health care in the US! What could possibly go wrong?

Bracing news from Cheryl Miller:

only 63 percent of the surveyed teachers (the majority of whom teach U.S. history) think it’s “absolutely essential” to teach students about America’s past. Given this historical apathy, it’s a small miracle that only 40 percent say their students haven’t carefully studied the nation’s keystone documents — the U.S. Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.

America’s public schools were once thought to provide the cornerstone for an informed citizenry. What made “e pluribus unum” a fact was a common understanding of the rights and responsibilities we had as citizens and the role the government played in providing sound and effective self-rule.

The long-running debate about national curricula long ago boiled down to a simple fight: one side wanted to strengthen the ability of states and localities to independently shape what students learned in public school; one side wanted to weaken it. But the battle for national standards is a bit different. Well-meaning math-and-science boosters want us to beat China and India at their own game -- to the exclusion of virtually anything else. The corruption and trivialization of the humanities encourages, and threatens to justify, a headlong rush toward the transformation of education into the competitive, state-subsidized production of quantitative experts -- beating China by joining them in their three thousand year old love affair with the administrative state.

Alas, all the grant money in the world cannot turn every child into an engineer or a hard scientist. The collapse of interest in teaching or learning about America's foundations dramatizes, as it deepens, a crack-up of our political culture itself. In the absence of any higher, more commanding truth, the foremost lesson to be learned in America's public schools is that everyone (everyone like you, anyway) goes to public school. Equal socialization into an everyday life of standardized routine -- is this what our children will learn defines us as a people? No -- there are plenty of other people who have been subjected to that. But coming up with another answer requires a modicum of courage and more than a bit of conviction. These are still more often to be found at the local level than at the top of the bureaucratic pyramid.

Over on NRO this week, a new Uncommon Knowledge interview with Ricochet's own Victor Davis Hanson. From Europe to Asia to Mexico to Russia to Iran, Dr. Hanson discusses the new Old World Order.

Take a look. Then hurry back to Ricochet to let us know what you thought.

First it's the Vice President claiming all of the administration's achievements are "just too hard to explain." Now the President chimes in to suggest why the masses are so puzzled: "The 24-hour news cycle is just so lightning fast and the attention span I think is so short that sometimes it's difficult to keep everybody focused on the long term."

I guess it's up to us to lengthen our attention spans and try to figure out their complex achievements, and we have less than three weeks to do it!

Some extra incentive for the Ricochet career women to make time for the treadmill today:

[A] new study [shows] that employers seem to treat women exactly the way the fashion industry does – by rewarding very thin women with higher pay, while penalizing average-weight women with smaller paychecks.

The study is the first look at the effects of being very thin on men vs. women. Separate studies of 11,253 Germans and 12,686 U.S. residents led by Timothy A. Judge of the University of Florida found very thin women, weighing 25 pounds less than the group norm, earned an average $15,572 a year more than women of normal weight. Women continued to experience a pay penalty as their weight increased above average levels, although a smaller one — presumably because they had already violated social norms for the ideal female appearance. A woman who gained 25 pounds above the average weight earned an average $13,847 less than an average-weight female.

Lame. But it gets worse:

Men were also penalized for violating stereotypes about ideal male appearance, but in a different way. Thin guys earned $8,437 less than average-weight men. But they were consistently rewarded for getting heavier, a trend that tapered off only when their weight hit the obese level. In one study, the highest pay point, on average, was reached for guys who weighed a strapping 207 pounds.

Just finished recording this week's podcast, where our guests included Gov. Mitch Daniels of Indiana, political analyst Jim Geraghty, and former Jimmy Carter pollster and current Fox News analyst Pat Caddell. You'll be able to hear all this for yourself as soon as the podcast goes up, of course, but in the meantime a couple of notes:

• As recently as a couple of weeks ago, Pat Caddell thought the Republicans may have stalled out. Over the last couple of days, though, GOP candidates haven't faded. They've surged. "Charlie Cook has 92 House seats in play. Stu Rothernberg says 97. This is just extraordinary."

• Jim Geraghty and Pat agreed that the Republicans might still very well take the Senate. The likeliest tenth seat: Dino Rossi, in Washington State. But even the Connecticut Senate seat remains in play. If you were Democratic Richard Blumenthal, Jim said, "how would you like to run against a woman [Republican Linda McMahon] who has already dug up very embarrassing facts about you [McMahon found tape of Blumenthal claiming to have served in Vietnam, which he never did], who flummoxed you during the debate, who has already produced a couple of very smart television ads to use against you, and who is rich enough to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars a day on advertising for the next three weeks?"

• The Democrats, Mitch Daniels said, "'have no argument." The governor explained that he had just returned to Indianapolis from a tour of the state (on his Harley). Even running against Republicans for the state legislature, the Democrats could only spout tired old arguments. "I recruited a friend of mine to run for the state legislature," the governor explained. "She was a wonderful teacher. Now she's a school principal. You know what the Democrats are saying? That she's against education."

The bad news? Pat Caddell thinks the GOP is still the stupid party, and even when James Lileks all but begged him to do so, Mitch Daniels wouldn't promise to run for president. (James: My father is an 83-year old Harley rider, Governor, and he wants a chance to vote for you. He lives in North Dakota. Will you be running for national office soon? Mitch: Tell your dad we'd be happy to move him to Indiana and naturalize him.)

Even if we have to keep working on Gov. Daniels, the good news looks pretty good, don't you think?

This is Chris Christie's moment. The New Jersey governor is touring the country in support of Republican candidates. He's taken on the public sector unions. He's made some hard calls. He speaks in a blunt, confrontational style. Yet he remains popular. Most striking, he's a Republican from the Northeast who has national appeal. Last week Christie won a Tea Party presidential straw poll--in Virginia. In September, he came in second in another straw poll--held in Chicago.

Christie denies any interest in the top job. But he's clearly a born executive. A pro-lifer, he has none of the social-issues baggage that has harmed Northeast Republicans in past primaries. He has a record to be proud of. He's incredibly well spoken. Other than Paul Ryan, I can't think of another Republican officeholder who gets conservatives as excited as Christie does.

Skeptics might say that 2012 is too early for Christie to run for president. After all, he was only elected in 2009. He'll have been in office for only two years when Iowans caucus in 2012. Surely that's not enough time to launch a successful national campaign.

Or is it? The last president from New Jersey, as it happens, won office only two years after becoming governor of the Garden State. I know, Woodrow Wilson isn't a popular name to throw around these days. But Wilson was a progressive Democrat; the current governor of New Jersey is a conservative Republican. And America could do a lot worse than a President Christie. In fact, it already is.

Now it's official: Michelle Rhee today announced her resignation as chancellor of the DC public schools.

It was expected, of course -- after her patron, Mayor Fenty, lost the Democratic primary a few weeks ago. A schools chancellor needs the strong backing of the mayor -- especially if she's a chancellor who wants to make a difference. Ms. Rhee realized the backing for what she was doing -- sacking bad teachers, expanding options for parents, measuring student achievement -- was not going to be forthcoming from the presumptive mayor-to-be, Vincent Gray.

Ironically Rhee's departure comes on the heels of the release of Davis Guggenheim's "Waiting for Superman," an indictment of our failing public schools, in which Rhee is one of the heroes. Mr. Guggenheim, the filmmaker who gave us Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth," told me that a Rhee departure would be like "turning out the lights during heart surgery."

This is a huge blow for DC schoolchildren, who last year watched as Dick Durbin killed off a popular voucher program. But I wonder. Depending what Rhee does next, it could be that being squeezed out of DC may do more for the cause nationally than her staying. At least it has focussed national attention on the problem with big city public education today: The Empire Always Strikes Back. .

Sharron Angle has raised a record-breaking $14 million since July for her race against Harry Reid. This is "a stunning number that far eclipses the cash-collection totals of other prominent candidates seeking Senate seats next month," according to the Washington Post.

Angle's total dwarfs other impressive fundraising hauls by GOP Senate candidates in the third quarter including former Florida state House Speaker Marco Rubio ($5 million raised) and former Washington state Sen. Dino Rossi ($4.5 million)....

"Sharron Angle produced one of the most successful single quarters of fundraising in the nation's history for a U.S. Senate campaign," said Angle communications director Jarrod Agen. "This is a testament to the hatred of Harry Reid, the nation's disapproval of President Obama, and the unprecedented grassroots support for Sharron Angle."

And most of the contributions weren't from big donors, either.

Ninety four percent of the money raised in the third quarter by Angle came in the form of donation of $100 or less. Ninety six percent of the contributions were $200 or less.

That's a lot of tea party loving right there.

According to Rasmussen, Angle and Reid are tied in the polls (49% to 48%).

Christine O’Donnell’s campaign does not look like a winner, and – as Anne Applebaum and others, including Ricochet’s Diane Ellis, have pointed out, her campaign advertisements are frequently more than a little embarrassing. This is not, however, true of each and every one of them. Consider, for example this one:

The Republicans ought to do a version of this advertisement in every Congressional district and in every state in the land.