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We speak in code. Hillary Clinton and John McCain are millionaires many times over, McCain by way of marriage to an heiress. They are aristocrats, and usually our elections are a choice among such people.

Why are we now told that a man from a common background who doesn’t have a lot of money, who made it on smarts and guile, is all the things that are really more like Clinton and McCain? Why are they using words like “arrogant” and “pompous” and “elitist” against Obama now? It’s easy to understand once you break the code. Barack Obama is

uppity

There’s even more going on with the McCain ad above, and thanks to Rachel Maddow for pointing this out last night on Race to the White House on MSNBC. (Her comments elicited exasperated sighs from her colleagues). Why did the McCain people use Britney Spears and Paris Hilton in the ad, juxtaposed with Obama? Why not Ophra Winfrey, with whom he really has a relationship? She’s famous. She’s a really big star.

It’s not hard to see once pointed out – it’s “Harold, Call Me” all over again. It’s a black guy with white chicks. White guys hate that. It’s an archetype, something embedded deep in our minds. Advertising is a science that persuades by subtle manipulation of the senses, and not by reason. There’s latent racism in all of us – McCain needs to nurture it and exploit it. But he’s got to be careful to avoid a backfire. Our outer, or public selves reject racism, but our inner selves, which is where advertising is aimed, harbor it.

It’s starting now. I thought they’d wait until Labor Day, because as Andrew Card reminded us, you don’t introduce a new product in August. It’s going to be a long campaign. And there’s really very little that Obama can do about it. How do you defend yourselves from advertising professionals?

There are two defenses against a professionally done smear campaign: Engage them on their own turf, or stay above the fray. Neither works.

Daniel Ellsburg on Barack Obama and FISA:

I think when people go to the polls in November, and especially in light of the fact that even Barack Obama (whom I certainly support – it’s essential, necessary that he be elected), with his support of this FISA Amendment Act, has indicated very clearly that it is not his intention to roll back this usurpation of presidential powers. He’s accepting the powers that Bush and the Congress are going to bequeath him. So I think the people will be choosing between two… not presidents in the sense of the constitution … but two kings, two people with dictatorial powers.

According to Richard Viguerie,, Chairman of ConservativeHQ.com, the actual Bush deficit for the coming fiscal year is not the $482 billion announced by the White House, but rather $789 billion. The former number does not include $227 billion that will be borrowed from the Social Security Trust Fund (taken from the middle and working classes), and $80 billion to fund the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Estimated expenditures are over $3 trillion, counting the wars, so that we are borrowing about $.26 cents for every dollar we spend at the federal level.

Viguerie is against this sort of spending. We probably don’t agree on where spending should be cut, but it is refreshing to hear from him, to know that there are some fiscal conservatives living and breathing out there. As with everything else he touches, Bush has made a joke of an honorable philosophy.

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I hope Oliver Stone was high as a kite when he made this movie, just like he was when he did Natural Born Killers (and like ‘W’ was for most of his youth). That’s when he’s at his best.

It looks like Obama has found his own Joe Lieberman – potential running mate Tim Kaine. Surprise! He’s more right than left.

I learned the following from an IRS official who is active in volunteer tax assistance programs in our county:

…we are trying to concentrate our efforts on getting the earned income credit taxpayers to stop taking those refund anticipation loans. Out of the 4700 EIC filed returns in Gallatin County in 2004, over 3600 of them had refund anticipation loans! Not good in my opinion.

Refund anticipation loans are, along with payday loans, about as bad a deal as can be had. Interest rates run from 40% to as high as 700%. From a lender’s standpoint, they are gold – a guaranteed source of repayment, and an unsophisticated client in financial need.

I suppose you could say that people are their own worst enemy – that’s true. Most people haven’t a clue how interest is calculated. It isn’t normally taught in school. But the lending industry has to answer for its own behavior without regard to the sophistication of its clientèle. Regulation is in order, not because I think everything need be regulated, but rather because it would do some actual good. We could either ban the loans entirely, or regulate the rate of interest that can be charged. That would be a moral thing to do in am amoral “Gotcha!” marketplace.

IRS is doing its part – when people file electronically and use bank debits instead of paper checks, refunds are very quick. They are trying to get money to people as fast as possible to keep the refund anticipation people out of the picture. But one problem is that many low-income people don’t have bank accounts. Paper checks take a few weeks longer.

My oh my how we take advantage of one another. This is but one more way. The housing crisis was in large part brought about because of Shylock’s preying on uninformed and unsophisticated consumers. Payday loans may be outrageously expensive, but refund anticipation loans are as bad, if not worse.

I hope liberals don’t make too much of the fact that Jim D. Adkisson, the lunatic that gunned down eight people in a Unitarian church in Knoxville, did so because of the group’s liberal views. What happened was random. That could as easily have been a black church or a white fundamentalist one. There are crazies out there, they can strike anywhere, any time, for any reason.

This time they hit a liberal church. Next time it will be something else – something I can’t even imagine. That’s because it is crazy, and crazy is, by definition, random. These are victims of random violence, but let’s not make a cause of it. It can happen to any one of us at any time, and there is no rational explanation.

Years ago in another life (and another body) I used to play slow-pitch softball. My wife would come to most all the games, and she and the other wives would have the greatest of times though they could not tell you who won or lost the game. But the point is that the men got to do their thing, which was to drink beer after the game, and the women theirs, which was yak with other women. What could be better?

Well, here’s a story about a study that says that cities that have major league baseball teams, on average, have a 28% lower divorce rate than cities that don’t have major league teams, but would like to. As schooled as I am in stats, I can guarantee that that means direct cause and effect, and here’s why: If a husband and wife go to a game, since it is such a slow game, they can have conversation. If two couples go to a game, the women can yak, and the men can cheer for the team and drink beer. Everyone is happy, ergo longer-lasting marriages.

Earlier this year we went to a game at AT&T Park in San Francisco. We were wandering around the stadium before the game, and I determined that I would have a beer for this afternoon affair. I went to the booth, asked for an Anchor Steam, handed the man a $20, and got $10.25 in change.

$9.75 for a beer. Needless to say, there were no seconds. Surely someone somewhere, perhaps Freakonomics, can explain such a high price for a beer. I can think of only one good reason: The San Francisco Giants do not want rowdy fans, and at the same time want to make a lot of money on beer. Therefore they drew a graph and hit on the optimum price that would yield the highest profit from beer sales while putting a damper on rowdies.

AT&T, by the way, is a beautiful facility, and does the city proud. But those prices could well break up a marriage.

Take the autism test – 50 questions, it goes very quickly. Find out if there is a basic and simple explanation for all those quirks you have.

You tell me your score, I’ll tell you mine.

I once had a cartoon over my desk titled “White Guy Problems”, and the picture was of a guy spilling his latte on his suede jacket while driving. I guess I have to look no further than the Wall Street Journal for other white guy problems:

Problem: You packed a bottle of wine for the picnic, but forgot the corkscrew.

Solution: It’s an unthinkable predicament among some instructors at the Sommelier Society of America in New York, but they came up with two options. The first involves driving the cork into the bottle. “Use a narrow, cylindrical thing — a tube of [lip balm] … or the handle of a wooden spoon — and gently, slowly push it down into the bottle,” says Anne Woods, the organization’s assistant to the chairman. “Then you have to be creative when you pour it,” because when you tip the bottle to pour, the cork will block the flow of wine. So you’ll need something long and skinny — the spoon handle again or a skewer — to hold the cork back as you pour. The second method: If you happen to have a screw — preferably one with large threads like the kind used in woodwork — it could work like a corkscrew with the help of a screwdriver, Ms. Woods says. Once you’ve screwed the hardware into the cork, use pliers to slowly wriggle the cork out of the neck. The Sommelier Society instructors admit this is the more difficult of the two methods.

My problem is more basic – what to do in a motel room when you don’t have a beer opener. We had this problem once, and I went down the the lounge to ask for an opener. The bartender had only one – a lethal looking combination knife/corkscrew/opener, and she begged me to return it when we left, and I promised I would. The day we left I put it in my jacket pocket to drop off downstairs, and then promptly forgot. When we arrived at the airport and had to put all our belongings in the basket for the screener, there I was with a nasty looking knife/corkscrew. It was confiscated. I’m sure now I’m on a watch list, this country being paranoid and all.