The original Messiah selflessly died for his disciples’ sins, so it’s truly touching to see how eager today’s disciples are to return the favor. The new meme seems to be to ignore whatever outlandish claim the Obamessiah may make, and pretend he said something far more sensible instead. The virtual ink had barely dried on Powerline’s fact-checking of Time’s lame defense of the Gaffemaster when Mark Silva of the Chicago Tribune chimed in with an even more outlandish defense of the same:

After all the grief that Obama has taken from the RNC and from rival John McCain this week over the Democrat’s comment that motorists could save some more oil if only they put some more air in their tires, it turns out a search of the clips — conducted by a motivated party — has found that the administraiton [sic, three layers of editors notwithstanding] of President Bush — George H.W. Bush — was telling Americans the same thing back in 1990.

Note how easily and effortlessly this alleged journalist managed to convert Barack Obama’s howler about proper tire inflation supposedly saving “all the oil that they’re talking about getting off drilling” into a common-sense observation that it could save “some more oil.” No, duh. Of course it can save “some more oil.” If all Obama had said last week was that proper tire inflation could save “some more oil,” or that good maintenance is generally a good idea, there would be no controversy now. Math may not be Mr. Silva’s forte, but here’s a free clue: “some oil” does not equal “all the oil that they’re talking about getting off,” nor does it come close.

This sleight of hand is reminiscent of the Gorons who defended their Messiah’s outlandish claim to have “[taken] the initiative in creating the Internet” by pointing out that he had sponsored some legislation to promote it, decades after others had taken the intiative in creating it. Gore was never the media darling that Obama is, so he took his share of ridicule over that infamous quote, tempered by the fact that it was frequently misquoted and for some, the fact that he was widely misquoted was bigger news than the goofy quote he had actually made. As for Obama, one has to wonder if there is any claim so outlandish that he could not make it and expect his disciples in the media to try. If anyone working for the Obama campaign is reading this, here’s how to test my theory: feed some line into Obama’s teleprompter stating that all experts agree that an apple a day will increase your life expectancy by 230 years. We’ll have our laughs for a few days, buttressed by even more laughs when Barack tries to turn it around by claiming Republicans are opposed to healthy diets. Within a week, some “journalist” from Time, Newsweek or the Chicago Tribune will come back claiming Obama was right after all, because some obscure bureaucrat from the Eisenhower Administration made a vague pronouncement that apples really are good for you.

But did some some obscure bureaucrat from the Bush-41 Administration actually say “the same thing” as Obama is saying now? Per this alleged journalist’s article, the answer would be … mmmmmm … no. We didn’t have YouTube in 1990, so the PSA itself is not on the web, but according to the N.Y. Times article:

The new public service announcements give drivers tips on how they can save gasoline. One television ad, which will be broadcast later this year, shows a gigantic oil gusher that is not coming from a well, but bursting forth from the valve on a tire. The announcer tells viewers that by slightly increasing the air pressure slightly in their tires, they can save 50,000 barrels of oil each day.

Well, hey! There’s your smoking gun right there, as 50,000 barrels of oil a day constitutes “some” oil, and so does “all the oil that they’re talking about getting off.” Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to quantify that “some” by determining how many years it would take us, at a rate of 50,000 barrels a day, to save as much oil through proper tire inflation as we would hope to obtain from the shale and the Outer Continental Shelf combined. [I deliberately left out ANWR since Obama's "they" presumably includes McCain, who is scared to death of that place.]

UPDATE: Dave Price has more.

Jesse Jackson has recently come under fire for off the record comments he made in a FoxNews interview. First we learned that he expressed a desire to castrate Barack Obama, and now we learn that he also said the n-word in that same interview. This is a partial defense of the latter.

As a general rule, “using the n-word” is a serious matter. Some argue that it’s OK for blacks to use it since the word is directed at them rather than anyone else. In theory, I could accept that, if all blacks agreed that they wanted to “own” the word to strip it of its derogatory meaning, much as gays have done with words like “queer,” “homo” and, for that matter, “gay,” or as gun nuts have done with phrases like, well, “gun nut.” But if blacks as a group wanted to go that route, allowing the rest of us to use the word in the same harmless vein would largely follow as a matter of course. Once thousands of gays banded together as “Queer Nation” and five appeared on a TV show called “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy,” they pretty well gave up the right to tell the rest of us not to call them queers. And once I self-identify as a “gun nut,” I give up the right to criticize GFWs for applying the term to others. Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton understand this, which is why they, like many others, call on blacks and whites alike to renounce the word.

That said, a little common sense is in order. As surely as the word dog never bit anyone, there is using the n-word, and then there is really using the n-word. Simply uttering it in any context is not necessarily it. Off the top of my head, I can think of four discrete ways to “use” the n-word, in descending order of offensiveness:

1. Using the N-word as a racial slur. This occurs any time a person of any race utters the n-word in reference to another human being whom he believes to be black. Robert Byrd probably used the word this way countless times when he was in the Klan. Rappers do it all the time today. A few unrepentant, hard-core white racists continue to do so, as well, while the rest of us rightly abhor it.
2. Using the N-word as an all-purpose epithet. There is a school of non-thought in which “nigger means stupid.” No, dumbass, it doesn’t. From the days of the Roman Empire, “niger” has always meant black. It has never meant “stupid” (did you really think that Niger is so named because they consider themselves a nation of dumbasses?!), nor has it always had any negative connotation at all. But whether the original niger or its progeny was used in a good, bad or neutral way, it has always meant black. So when Robert Byrd infamously announced that there were “white niggers,” he may have been about one-tenth less of an asshole than he had been back in his Klan days, but what he lacked in asshole-hood he made up in abject stupidity.
3. Using the N-word to insult someone other than the referent. A big part of the reason why the n-word has such horrible connotations today, while its Latin origin and its existing Latinate cognates do not, is its close connection with slavery. However, not all references to slavery are slights against the proverbial slave. In a culture that rightly abhors slavery, many such references are really intended to insult the proverbial slave-driver, not the putative slave. One of the two times in my adult life in which I recall using the n-word was when I was in my mid-20s, and my parents employed a nanny who could barely speak English. They paid her all right, generally treated her well, and even helped her enroll in community college classes, but my mother absolutely connipted when the nanny had the audacity to quit her job and pursue other opportunities elsewhere. She called me to vent about it, and I responded with something along the lines of “Good God, Mom, you sound like a plantation owner who can’t figure out why his nigger just left him.” She never complained about the departed nanny again, at least, not in my presence. Cf. Sacramento Bee cartoonist Dennis Renault’s brilliant 1994 cartoon, in which one Klansman turned to another and said, in reference to Louis Farrakhan, that “that nigger makes a lot of sense.”
4. Discussing the n-word itself. Example: “Now listen, Johnny. ‘Nigger’ is very a bad word. Don’t use it.” Unless it’s deliberately overdone, this one should not offend at all.

FoxNews has thus far declined to rlease a transcript of the actual exchange, so the best we can do is extrapolate from the reported news stories what was probably said. Per CBS:

In additional comments from that same conversation, first reported by the blog TVNewser, Jackson is reported to have said Obama was “talking down to black people,” and referred to blacks with the N-word when he said Obama was telling them “how to behave.”

Note that they didn’t report that Jackson called Obama himself the n-word; rather, he accused him of talking down to other blacks and effectively treating them as lowly n-words. Big difference. Still offensive, still unfair, but hardly equivalent to using the word in sense #1 above. It’s more like #3; a bit insult to Obama as the proverbial slavedriver, no insult at all to blacks as a race.

1. Water isn’t always wet. Ice isn’t, for example, and steam only barely is, once it dissipates.
2. While there are many sharp ideological differences between the Democratic Party and the Republican Party, none have anything to do with the respective merits of democracies vs. republics (or, more precisely, between republican and non-republican democracies).
3. The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea isn’t really a republic, nor is it run by democratic people.
4. More often than not, Best Buy isn’t.
5. Seattle’s Best certainly isn’t.
6. The American Hunters and Shooters Association is not a real group representing American hunters or shooters.
7. The American Civil Liberties Union is not now, nor has it ever been, a union of Americans interested in protecting or advancing the cause of civil liberties.

H/t: Uncly-Wuncly, who is too sick to celebrate the fact that five whole Justices were able to figure out what should have been one of the most obvious Supreme Court decisions in history.

Below the fold is a simple question for Barack Obama and everyone else who insists that “we can’t drill our way out of the problem” of skyrocketing gas prices.
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Rachel Lucas recently threw the principle fetishists a bone with an identically-titled blog entry, conceding that it is sometimes appropriate to cut off one’s nose to spite one’s face stand on principle. She describes some goofy cable TV show she recently saw in which some parents state that if their kids are going to smoke pot anyway, they (the parents, who I’ll dub the Idiot Parents ) should go out and buy it for them, so at least the kids won’t have to deal with drug dealers and the parents will supposedly have more control over the quality and/or quantity of the drug. Rachel writes:

The moment of my epiphany was when one parent said something that was almost verbatim what I’ve said about voting for McCain and the fact that you are getting a new president whether you like it or not so you may as well do what you can to get the less shitty one. It was something like, “Well, Billy IS going to smoke pot. There’s nothing I can do about that, he’s GONNA smoke it no matter what I say. So I may as well at least try to keep him as safe as I can, and if that means I have to buy it for him, I will.”

Quickly I ran it through my brain: what if I had kids and was in this situation? Would I get drugs for them just because that was better than them getting drugs from strangers and scumbags? Especially if I knew for a fact that my kids were just dumb enough to get busted and would almost certainly end up in jail if I didn’t choose the lesser evil by getting the drugs for them?

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Barack Obama’s Fight With Smears site sez:

Lie:
On May 30th, Rush Limbaugh said he had heard a rumor that a tape exists of Michelle Obama using the word “Whitey” from the pulpit of Trinity United Church of Christ.

Truth:
No such tape exists. Michelle Obama has not spoken from the pulpit at Trinity and has not used that word.

So according to Mr. Hope/Change, merely mentioning that you’ve heard a rumor makes you a liar if the rumor itself isn’t true. I’ve heard rumors that the CIA invented crack and 9/11 was an inside job. Does that make me a liar, too?

Worse, the Obama campaign lies outright on the front page:

LIE: Rush Limbaugh says a tape exists of Michelle Obama using the word “whitey” from the pulpit of Trinity United

Yup, that is a lie all right. Limbaugh never said any such thing.

Recently the NRA challenged Philadelphia’s five illegal gun ordinances in court. The court struck down two, while dismissing challenges to the other three for lack of standing. There appear to be three schools of thought on standing:

1. Uncle view: “Standing” is legalese for “I would have gotten away with it if it weren’t for you damn meddling kids.”
2. Xrlq view: Standing is legalese for “Don’t you think we have enough friggin’ lawsuits in this country as it is?! Just imagine what screwy decisions we’d get if courts were open to people who had no stake in the issue being decided, or perhaps even hoped they’d ‘lose!’”
3. Philadelphia Metro view: Standing is legalese for “Court gives city right to enforce some gun laws.”

   H/t: David Hardy.

Captain Ed thinks that incomepoop Al Franken is finally on his way out of politics. One can only hope.

… how much Dan Besse’s campaign had to pay the Whizz Urinal not only to endorse him themselves, but also to run five letters praising him and zero letters opposing him on a single day.

George Will’s piece on the transformation of the Democrat+ic Party from “a celebrator of middle-class American culture” to a party “who would judge ordinary Americans by an abstract standard and find them wanting.” Uncle puts it a little more bluntly: vote for me, you cousin-humping rednecks.