I guess I'm all of the above, then.

(Thanks to Break The Matrix)

The Obamessiah is losing, and is ignoring the advice of fellow Democrats on how to reverse the trend.

From the Daily Telegraph:

Barack Obama and his senior advisers are under fire for ignoring the advice of Democratic senators and goveors who are concerned that they do not know how to beat John McCain.

The Democratic presidential candidate's slump in the polls has sparked pointed private criticism that he is squandering a once-in-a-generation chance to win back the White House.

Party elders also believe the Obama camp is in denial about warnings from Democratic pollsters that his true standing is four to six points lower than that in published polls because of hidden racism from voters - something that would put him a long way behind Mr McCain.

The Sunday Telegraph has learned that senators, governors and union leaders who have experience of winning hard-fought races in swing states have been bombarding Obamas campaign headquarters with telephone calls offering advice. But many of those calls have not been returned.

A senior Democratic strategist, who has played a prominent role in two presidential campaigns, told The Sunday Telegraph: "These guys are on the verge of blowing the greatest gimme in the history of American politics. They're the most arrogant bunch Ive ever seen. They won't accept that they are losing and they won't listen."

After leading throughout the year, Mr Obama now trails Mr McCain by two to three points in national polls.

Party leaders and commentators say that the Democrat candidate spent too much of the summer enjoying his own popularity and not enough defining his positions on the economy - the number one issue for voters - or reaching out to those blue collar workers whose votes he needs if he is to beat Mr McCain.

Others concede that his trip to Europe was a distraction that enhanced his celebrity status rather than his electability on Main Street, USA.

Since Sarah Palin was unveiled as Mr McCain's running mate, the Obama

camp has faced accusations that it has been pushed off message and has been limp in responding to attacks.

More here. (via Reason's Hit & Run)

Ahhhhh......Fall is in the air! And so is circumcision.

From the Meming of Life:

It was originally a religious ceremony, a (quite strange, if you think about it) symbol of faithfulness to God. But interestingly, circumcision was not common outside of Jewish and Muslim practice until the 1890s, when a few religious enthusiasts, including the strange character JH Kellogg, recommended it as a cure for “masturbatory insanity.” Kellogg spent much of his professional effort combating the sexual impulse and helping others to do the same, claiming a plague of masturbation-related deaths in which “a victim literally dies by his own hand” and offering circumcision as a vital defense. “Neither the plague, nor war, nor small-pox, nor similar diseases, have produced results so disastrous to humanity as this pernicious habit,” warned a Dr. Alan Clarke (referring to masturbation, not circumcision).

Given these jeremiads by well-titled professionals, the attitudes of American parents in the 1890s turned overnight from horror at the barbarity of this “un-Christian” practice to immediate conviction that it would save their boys from short and insane lives. It was even reverse-engineered as a symbol of Christian fidelity and membership in the church.

(Isn’t it a relief that we’ve left this kind of mass gullibility so very far behind?)

The supposed health benefits and other red herrings were created after the fact, in the early 20th century, to undergird sexual repression with a firm foundation of pseudoscience.

More here.

From Jacob Sullum @ Reason's Hit & Run blog:

Yesterday the Washington Supreme Court ruled that the state's smoking ban applies to private clubs as well as businesses open to the general public. Washington's Clean Indoor Air Act, passed in 1985, exempts "private facilities which are occasionally open to the public except upon the occasions when [they are] open to the public." An initiative approved by voters in 2005 broadened the ban to cover "places of employment." American Legion Post 149 in Bremerton challenged the Kitsap County Board of Health's attempt to stop its members from smoking at the post home, where all seven employees are relatives of members and all but one smoke, arguing that the exemption for private facilities remained in force. A five-judge majority of the state Supreme Court disagreed. Four judges dissented, with one of them, Richard Sanders, concluding

that if the majority's interpretation of the law is correct, the law is unconstitutional:

I would hold the Act does not apply to the Post Home as a private facility. Alternatively, if the Post Home's status as a private facility does not limit the Act's application, I would hold the Act is void for vagueness; unduly interferes with the Post Home's right of intimate association; violates the Post Home's substantive due process rights absent actual proof of a real and substantial relation between secondhand smoke and workplace dangers; and violates equal protection by distinguishing between two classes of business without reasonable grounds.

Just more government control to keep the sheep in line.
Read more here.

The answer is here.

(Thanks to Cato-at-Liberty)
For more visit the above link.

The really funny, and more to the point, honest answer is here.

That would be the day the Democrats and Republicans turned their backs on the Constitution of the United States.
From Reason Online's article on the subject:

We must, and we shall, set the tide running again in the cause of freedom. And this party, with its every action, every word, every breath, and every heartbeat, has but a single resolve, and that is freedom.
Barry Goldwater, accepting the 1964 Republican presidential nomination

This year's Republican National Convention had a different theme for each day. Monday was "Serving a Cause Greater than Self." Tuesday was "Service," Wednesday was "Reform," and Thursday was "Peace."

So what was missing? Only what used to be held up as the central ideal of the party. The heirs of Goldwater couldn't spare a day for freedom.

Neither could the Democrats. Their daily topics this year were "One Nation," "Renewing America's Promise," and "Securing America's Future." The party proclaimed "an agenda that emphasizes the security of our nation, strong economic growth, affordable health care for all Americans, retirement security, honest government, and civil rights." Expanding and upholding individual liberty? Not so much.

Forty-four years after Goldwater's declaration, it's clear that collectivism, not individualism, is the reigning creed of Republicans as well as Democrats. Individuals are not valuable and precious in their own right but as a means for those in power to achieve their grand ambitions.

You will scour the presidential nominees' acceptance speeches in vain for any hint that your life is rightfully your own, to be lived in accordance with your beliefs and desires and no one else's. The Founding Fathers set out to protect "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness," but Barack Obama has a different idea.

The "essence of America's promise," he declared in Denver, is "individual responsibility and mutual responsibility"—rather than, say, individual freedom and mutual respect for rights. The "promise of America," he said, is "the fundamental belief that I am my brother's keeper; I am my sister's keeper."

In reality, that fundamental belief is what you might call the promise of socialism. What has set this country apart since its inception is not the notion of obligations but the notion of rights.

"All previous systems had regarded man as a sacrificial means to the ends of others, and society as an end in itself," wrote the novelist and philosopher Ayn Rand. "The United States regarded man as an end in himself, and society as a means to the peaceful, orderly, voluntary co-existence of individuals."

Here's an entertaining and insightful commentary on the state of American politics from the larger, louder half of Penn & Teller.

Everyone I talk to seems to think the president of the United States right now is stupid.

The Bush presidency is stupid speeches, stupid high gas prices, stupid bad economy, stupid war on terrorism, stupid war on drugs, stupid hurricane fixing, stupid global warming, stupid war -- stupid, stupid, stupid.

They all seem to think we need to get a smarter guy in the White House fast, and Bush is so stupid, that task shouldn't be too hard.

Not me.

I'd like to say that I believe every president in United States history, including the stupid one we have now, is smarter than me. My alma mater is Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Greatest Show on Earth Clown College, so I'm damning with faint praise, but I'm stupider than this here stupid president.

Maybe I'm less stupider than Bush than I'm stupider than Jefferson. But I'm stupider than all the stupid in both of them put together.

The idea, especially from the Democrats that I know, is, we just get a smarter guy in the White House, and all the problems will go away. We'll have smart speeches, smart high gas prices, smart bad economy, smart war on terrorism, smart war on drugs, smart hurricanes, smart global warming, smart war in Georgia -- smart, smart, smart.

Read the whole thing here.