Romney on China (In The Last Presidential Debate of 2012)

I think Pres. Obama was much more in control of facts than Gov. Romney was in the last 2012 presidential debate Nevertheless, he made an awful impression, I would think, with his childish petulant attacks on Romney. Romney did not say much that was not a generality or a copy of Obama’s own statements. Romney did not have much a voice in that last debate but it was a calm, dignified voice. He seemed to come into his own at the end when he promised us that as soon as he was elected it would do the needful to insure that many ordinary goods become more expensive for Americans. The proposed chain of events looks like this:

Day One: Pres. Romney declares China a currency manipulator;

Soon afterward: By existing law, Congress has to raise tariffs on some or on all Chinese products. Tariffs are simply discriminatory taxes on imports. They make all similar products, imported as well as domestic, more expensive

Romney’s economic nationalism plays well in some electorally key states that are also manufacturing states but it’s based almost entirely on fallacies.

If you are interested, below are links to a series of nine short lectures giving in simple terms the ABC of free trade and why it’s a good thing. I wrote this series of postings for non-specialists with a brain. If you are a specialist, most of the postings will waste your time. If you don’t have a brain, ditto.

Parts one and two
http://factsmatter.wordpress.com/2010/11/10/protectionism-free-trade-step-by-step/

http://factsmatter.wordpress.com/2010/11/12/free-trade-protectionism-part-three/

http://factsmatter.wordpress.com/2010/11/13/free-trade-and-protectionism-the-story-of-pierre-part-four-of-a-series/

http://factsmatter.wordpress.com/2010/11/16/luis-i-the-bananas-of-quebec-hans-and-pierre-protectionism-continued/

http://factsmatter.wordpress.com/2010/11/18/national-specialization-the-virtuous-obverse-of-protectionism/

http://factsmatter.wordpress.com/2010/11/20/economies-of-scale-and-economies-of-scope-bane-of-protectionism-part-seven-of-seven-so-far-more-coming/

http://factsmatter.wordpress.com/2010/11/24/the-escalators-part-eight-of-eight-so-far-on-protectionism/

I confirm that the link below leads to the last installment of this series on protectionism. However, there are other postings on related topics on this blog.

http://factsmatter.wordpress.com/2010/12/03/protectionism-and-job-loss-part-nine-of-a-nine-steps-series-and-last-i-think/

Republican Presidential Candidates

Pres. Obama has already lost the next presidential election as far as thinking people right and left are judging. It does not mean that Republicans will win. The GOP has to run with an electable candidate.

The field of Republican presidential candidates is becoming more readable, I think. Here is my summary.

Herman Cain is very likable and he speaks clearly about his genuinely conservative program. Besides, he looks like a president and women will love his manly manners. That’s not enough to get him elected or to make him electable. Americans will not vote to make president anyone who was not previously elected to something. No amount of good business experience will make up for this. (And Cain, has plenty of that.)

Newt Gingrich is a completely clear conservative. No one explains better than he does the main practical points of a conservative programs for 2012. Unfortunately, no one likes him, I think. There are good reasons to, including his unprincipled flirtations with government support for ethanol.

Gov. Perry lost it all in the last presidential debate. There is no way he can make up for it. He was facing the test of his life with Gov. Romney and he came to the test without having studied. He was not prepared. It’s not a default of knowledge as some pretend, it’s a character fault.

Romney is equal to himself. He is reasonably likable in a sort of metrosexual way. He carries a lot of baggage, including his Mass. health program he has never either really defended nor apologized for. That’s a lot of baggage, especially in 2012 because Obamacare, cousin to the Mass. plan, will be a number one reason to reject Pres. Obama. No one knows for sure whether Gov. Romney is a conservative by today’s standard.

Note: If I turn out to be wrong, it’s going to be about Gov. Romney. He may just be the half-way candidate where the Republican Party voters meet. I sure hope not.

Congresswoman Bachman is another Great Woman’s Hope in the ring. She is clearly a conservative and she is likable in a weird sort of way. (Rearing all those foster children surely was not pretend work.) Politically, though, she is not serious. She said something big-time wrong on the occasion of the second debate, about vaccinations. She will never recover. Here is a the rule of thumb: You may stumble when someone else hands you a question, especially when it’s an enemy handing you a trap question. (I am reminded of Gov. Palin being asked perversely what she thought of the “Bush Doctrine.” I would have flunked too.) You may not, however, tell falsehoods on a topic you, yourself chose. It matters little whether you are lying or merely ignorant. I am not even sure which one I prefer.

Ron Paul sounds like he whines. It may not be his fault. I could be like Pres. Bush’s alleged smirk, just a physical thing with no intention behind it. Paul will always get some support because there are significant numbers of loyal Libertarians who wish to work within the Republican Party. He will never get much more support because they, the Libertarians, don’t dupe anyone. Their isolationism in foreign policy is perceived as a lack of patriotism. (Full disclosure: I am a libertarian – small “l” – who is a registered Republican. I am struggling with the inherent contradiction between libertarianism and the necessary American armed stance. See my recent essays on the topic: “Libertarian Military Isolationism: Forward All with Eyes Tightly Shut,” “The Libertarian Project and American Military Power. “ )

Congressman Paul declared in the second debate that the armed forces spend 20 billion dollars (US D 20,000,000,000) annually on air conditioning in Iraq and Afghanistan. See the rule of thumb above. Like many ideological purists, he will come to believe just about anything that seems to support his ideology.

Then, there is what’s his name who stated categorically in a debate that, “ 97 % of climate scientists” believe in man-made global warming. You can’t say that. It’s  dogmatically stupid. If it were true, we would not know it and therefore, no one can affirm it. The man sounds a little stupid, perhaps because he answers before he thinks. Bad trait for a president. Forget him.

And then, there is the other what’s his name whose sole contribution thus far is a good wisecrack about dogs and shovel-ready jobs.

Gov. Christie of New Jersey keeps insisting he is not running. He is not the mincing type. I think he is telling the truth.

It all does not ad up to much, so far. Time to get excited.

Osama, Obama: He is not really lying

The fact that the administration ‘s story about the death of Bin Laden keeps changing does not mean that it’s hiding anything. Liberals and progressives can’t think straight. That’s why they don’t get the simplest messages such as : “Don’t spend more than you have,” and “Don’t wait for the guy who keeps shouting he hates you to hit you, hit him first.”

Incidentally, the difference between liberals and progressives is that the former, by and large, would like what they affirm to be the truth. The latter don’t care because their end justifies the means. I asked one of my progressive Facebook “friends” last week whether he thought that 9/11 was an inside job. It’s a straight question. It should allow for a straight answer. He responded with a torrent of sentences, some about things I did not no know anything about. At the end, there was no answer to my question. His name is John Wolfe. Look him up for a sample of dissembling. I don’t mind give him the publicity for educational purposes.

LeftThought is so twisted, left-wingers often cannot espouse the logical consequences of their own assertions. Here is a current one. In World War Two, we killed about 500,00 uniformed Japanese soldiers to destroy the hideous hyena that was militaristic Japan. None of those soldiers received legal counsel, none had a fair trial. Most were conscripts. Many had not killed anyone. Mostly, their mistake is that they did not offer to surrender. Yet, when one man brags on the world media about killing thousands of Americans and thousands of others (many of them fellow-Muslims), when he proclaims loud and clear his intention to kill more, when he explicitly targets civilians and incites others to do the same, when he does all this under cover of darkness, out of uniform, outside the boundaries of a properly constituted army, a part of the American Left wants to extend him constitutional guarantees devised to protect the innocent.

When you point out the mental confusion inherent in such a stance, they never hold their ground. Quickly, they change the subject to the many crimes of America in general and of the Bush administration in particular. (Of course, current events in the broader Middle-East demonstrate with blinding clarity that G. W. Bush was right all along.) My main point here is that the problem we are facing with a big segment of the American Left is not this or that policy they favor but a cultural problem. They prize neither logic nor facts. Their overall understanding of the world is a mental health pathology.

Note that I have not said a thing about Democrats in general. The Democratic Party is comprised of several segments. These include most African-Americans, who would vote Democrat if Democratic Party leaders were lynching them. (Lest you think I am being gratuitously outrageous here, remember that they used to do exactly that.) Then, there are genetic Democrats, people who vote for the party because their grandfathers did. (Let’s be honest, there are genetic Republicans too.) Then, there are the many union rank-and-file who are simply voting their bread and butter. Many of them are normal on every other issue. They just have a blind spot when bread comes up, and another one for butter. Many are patriots nevertheless. Finally, there is the hard, collectivist left-wing that has been trying to capture the Democratic Party for forty years. That’s Obama’s Left. Those are his friends and his entourage. They are the bearers of the perverse culture I alluded to above. Our universities overflow with them (although most college professors are only knee-jerk liberals.)

I am perplexed by some of the commentaries I hear in the media about Bin Laden’s untimely demise. Even some conservative pundits use the word “assassination.”  Makes it sound nasty and it’s false. It was the killing of an enemy during an on-going war. Bin Laden never sued for peace; he had ten thousand opportunities to surrender. He might even have been able to negotiate his surrender. His choice! Wrong choice, or right choice, depending on what you want from life. Remember that the same thing happened to 500,000 Japanese soldiers. What’s the underlying thinking, I wonder. If you are famous, you shouldn’t just get killed?

I also keep hearing left-wing commentators allude darkly to the Geneva Conventions. I haven’t looked. I wonder if they say anything about someone not in a regularly constituted army acting on behalf of a state killing civilians on purpose while out of uniform. I don’t need to look. I am ready to bet that if there is any mention of such scum, the Conventions say: not covered.

Personally, I have only two comments. As I have said before, disposing of the body was a big mistake. They should have frozen it to answer ulterior questions. The White House is so silly, it probably really believed it showed Muslims respect by dumping it into the sea. In fact, Muslims religious authorities with no dog in that fight immediately commented that so-called “burial at sea” was completely disrespectful for Muslims who have died either on land or close to land. Some people manage to have their cake and eat it too. President Obama manages to have his soup of bitter herbs and to eat it to. All the same. He gave the order to pull the trigger. Not many on my side would have bet before-hand that he would do it. Give credit….

My second comment is that the SEALS who conducted the operation are even more disciplined than they are rumored to be. Me, I would not have resisted the temptation to shoot him in both knees and then, to gut-shoot him. It’s not fair how easily and how quickly Osama went.

Now, a sad commentary about the aftermath of the announcement of Bin Laden going on to his reward. I have written several times on this blog and I have said several times on my show that I have known Muslims all my life and that I have hardly ever met one I did not like. (My radio show “Facts Matter” is on KSCO Santa Cruz 1080 AM. It’s on every Sunday from 11 am to 1 pm. You can catch it on-line.) These cordial relations are not enough to make me close my eyes or my ears. As always, I pay attention to what did not happen. All the heads of state and heads of government of Muslim nations made all the right noises after the death notice. However, my attentive monitoring of the media did not show me any popular celebration in the same countries, not one. Remember that Bin Laden and those he inspired have murdered many more Muslims than Americans non-Muslims. His being rub off the surface of the earth should be enough of a cause for celebration among Muslims. That it’s not requires an explanation

It seems to me inescapable that this absence reveals the following moral calculus among many Muslims, I think, perhaps among most Muslims: Killing Americans is a good thing. Killing Muslims is kind of acceptable if the killer killed enough Americans. Nobody is perfect! I hope I am wrong. I hope someone will show me in logical terms the absurdity of this analysis.

There is a good piece relevant to this discussion in the May 7/8 Wall Street Journal (p. c2) by Irshad Manji. Its title speaks for itself:  “Islam Needs Reformers,  Not Moderates.”

I don’t see why American Muslims who hate Islamist terrorism haven’t yet formed something like a league of  “Muslims Against Terrorism.” It would help dissipate the confusion of people like me if I am, in fact, confused.

I also keep hearing ad nauseum that the killing of Bin Laden is not going to stop terrorism. It gets repeated to the point that it sounds almost futile to have accomplished this long-sought goal. That’s stupid. Al Qaida is a classical charismatic movement. Its leader is an essential component even if he had become only a symbolic figure. The fact is that there have been Islamic fundamentalists for one hundred years. They did not get their act together to mass-murder infidels until the regretted Osama showed them the way.

One more thing: The media are irresponsible in their lack of fact- checking. They don’t even look at their own images. Bin Laden was not living in a “mansion.” He was living in a large, ugly concrete house such as there are thousands of in that part of the world, including India. And it wasn’t worth a million dollars. You could buy its neighbor for $100,000. It’s a small thing but it means that powerful news networks are not paying attention.

PS   Yesterday was Cinco de Mayo. It’s official in most California schools, I believe. No one with whom I crossed paths in the two days preceding could tell me what the celebration celebrated. Anglos couldn’t, Mexican-Americans couldn’t, and Mexicans couldn’t. The latter were able to inform me of what it wasn’t, however: not Mexican Independence Day. I am the only one I know who knows, apparently. Read up on it. It’s a strange story.

In Defense of President Obama

I never believed that Barack Obama would eventually walk on water. I don’t believe now that he can dive a thousand feet and plug a hole in a gushing oil well, aquatic Superman-like. There is not much he can do about the environmental problem caused in some small part by the ineptness of an obscure federal bureaucracy hidden inside the Bureau of Land Management, besides firing its head. (He did.) I hope he resists the temptation to try something. Any federal intervention is liable to make things worse. The guilty party, BP is doing what it can. It’s in its interest to do so because there is not question it will pay for all the damage. That’s unless the President, abetted by the unspeakable Congress, decides BP is too big to fail. I hope the President will let the market and Nature take their course.

Speaking of damage, the plight of Gulf fishermen tears at my heart. Yet, any allegation that BP is not facing up to its responsibilities is malicious. Its hapless CEO has declared on national television that his company will do whatever needs to be done with respect to those injured private parties. I don’t see what else he could have done. If BP tried to eschew its responsibility in this area, if would fail. There are thousands of lawyers armed to the teeth with specialized laptops and carts full of dossiers ready to pounce on BP with civil suits. They are salivating at the thought of digging into one of the deepest pockets ever. The lawyers are probably more numerous than all the Gulf fishermen and all their dependents put together. Our tort system works well to the benefit of plaintiffs. The only prospect of the fishermen going poorly compensated arises again if the federal government becomes involved. If compensations of victims and repairs to damage must bankrupt BP, let it be! There are plenty of other oil companies to take up the slack. That’s the way capitalism works if you will let it.

By the way, I know I sound heartless and insensitive but television is still recycling the same dozen oil-soiled pelicans. There are more celebrities involved in the washing, I think, than pelicans. I hope they don’t come to blow, the celebrities, I mean. I mind less and less being called insensitive because it often means that I am being offensively rational. I like rationality more than I like being considered sensitive. Choices, choices!

Now a few words about the brouhaha, the President caused by talking about “kicking ass” in public. First, it was almost certainly scripted. He was accused for so long of being unseemly impassive that his handlers must have decided to do something decisive, like say “ass.” Second, the phony indignation distracted us from the moral inanity of the substance of his utterance: He was asking the fishermen, the victims, about whom to punish?

Here is what I think about the distraction any public discussion of the President’s unusually vigorous speech inflicts upon us:

Don’t fucking waste my time!

Incidentally, don’t you think that the reliably profane Chris Rock would make a better black president than Barack Obama? Now that I have raised the question, you won’t be able to get it out of your mind.

Obama le suicideur.

On a de plus en plus l’impression que le Président et son acolyte Nancy Pelosi, patronne de la majorité à la Chambre des représentants, sont decidés à conduire le parti Démocrate au suicide politique. Ils veulent passer un projet de loi réformant le plan national de santé contre le sentiment populaire clairement exprimé. 60 and 70% des Américains interrogés n’en veulent pas. Les sondages concordent sur ce point. Le President dit que c’est parce que les masses ne comprennent pas. C’est surement vrai puisque le texte du projet n’existe pas (pas). Les représentants sont pressés de voter pour un texte imaginaire.

Pelosi déclare à qui veut l’entendre qu’elle utilisera des chicaneries parlementaires jamais vues si c’est nécessaire. La côte du Président est seulement à 45% environ. C’est rare après seulement 14 mois au pouvoir. C’est rare pour un président élu par une forte majorité. Des élections parlementaires sont prévues pour Novembre. Dans le système americain, la date est fixe. Il semble de plus en plus probable que le Président perdra sa majorité dans les deux chambres. Lui-même est inamovible pour presque trois ans encore. Après moi, le déluge!

SVP. Faites circuler mes commentaires en Francais.

Are Liberals Just Snobs? (Revised and augmented.)

This is worth recycling, I think. Has not aged a day!

I have a question. I don’t know many labor union liberals or hereditary Democrats because of where I live. It’s a small town in central California dominated by leftists and Greens. Over the years, they have pushed out every manufacturing industry. Recently, the county closed a small cement plant, the employer of 80% in the relevant village. The same forces are setting to go after tiny and inventive surfboard makers. As a result of all this saving of the environment, the unionized blue-collar class has vanished from the area.

Nearly all the liberals I know are trust-fund babies, unemployed, divorced women on alimony, absurdly overpaid public employees, and people who style themselves intellectuals because they finished college. To be fair, I also know a fair number of university professors. Here is my question:

Why are all the liberals I know, without exception, terrific snobs?

I mean that they like to discourse about little-known wines, that they read boring books (or pretend to), and that they profess to like cerebral French movies I don’t even get although I know the language. Many also airily chat about exotic foods, but not so much in my presence because they realize just from my accent that I might know that stuff.

I almost forgot; there is also what liberals never do, wouldn’t be caught dead doing. They never watch trash on television for example. No reality TV, no Lifetime Channel, and certainly no “Monster Quest” on the History Channel. (If the crypto-biologists ever catch a live Sasquatch, Mr and Ms Liberal will be the last ones to know.) They survive on a straight diet of opera and scholarly discussions of long-dead unknown writers  by professors who sound themselves long-dead. That’s all on NPB, of course, the government-approved, I mean the government- subsidized network.

And, of course, their most visible current style leaders, Barack and Michelle, did not take their summer vacation on Lake Michigan, or in Colorado’s beautiful mountains, or in Florida where the sea is always warm, or in Southern California where it’s always sunny. Do you remember where they went? Who else goes there?

So, I am wondering if it’s just me, my sample – which may not be representative – or if others have noticed a link between liberal political postures on the one hand and snobbery, on the other hand.

If you have noticed the same link please tell me of your speculations about why it might exist. Use the “Comment” option on this blog. I don’t censor though I might comment on your comment if you talk like a lying sac. I don’t edit for grammar or spelling unless you ask me to do so explicitly.

The A. A. President

The dreaded, forbidden words are on everyone’s lips but nobody in the media, not even Rush Limbaugh, dare utter them yet. And no, I am not concerned here with alcoholism and I am not initializing crude language. The President reminds me of the university professor with three last names who got tenure although all he can do is read the textbook in class (but in a good voice). He reminds me also of the friendly gentleman of color at the Post Office who can only spell some of the time, and of the 120-pound female firefighter who could not carry me down the ladder if my life depended on it. (It just might.)

Why else would the President’s undergraduate grades still be under lock and key? Who cares what grades anyone got when he was twenty? Full disclosure: I earned a D on the midterm the first time I tried Calculus. A smart adviser then steered me to another instructor, one who wanted to be loved. All ended well. I am not ashamed!

I used to think, to assume rather, and I said it on this blog that at least, he had passed the bar exam. There is no argument that this is difficult. I have known several smart people who failed once, or even twice. However, it seems I was precipitous. None of the Barack Obama entries in Wikipedia mention the bar, a strange omission because the entries list every little thing he did. If he had won a dart throwing contest, it would be there. A cursory web search also shows nothing on the subject. I may have missed something. I would be happy to post a correction on this blog, prominently and immediately.

Just in case I turn out to be right, follow my scenario:

The President was 21 in 1981 when he transferred from Occidental College in Los Angeles to Columbia. That was a time when universities were feverishly competing for students and faculty of the right race and sex who would not embarrass them. Handsome, well-spoken, and reasonably intelligent, young Barack must have been considered a prize. It’s also a public fact that big-time law schools actively lowered their standards of admission for purposes of affirmative action. It became public because of the lawsuits this practice triggered.

I remember those days well. I was a college professor then. There was a time when my Department was about to recruit a new assistant professor. As is the custom in academia, the word came down from on-high: You can offer X to Y as salary. And, by the way, you can go up to Y+Z if the candidate is woman or a member of a minority.

What if we find a minority woman? The answer was: You get back to the Vice-President then. The response implied: This would be such a find, the sky would be the limit.

Earlier, when I was finishing graduate school at Stanford, I inquired innocently about so and so, a member of a federally protected minority. I was curious about why he was slated to receive his doctorate at the same time as I, given that he had entered the program one year after me and received nothing but bad grades in every class we had taken together. My professor’s, laconic response: The less said, the better.

Note: The two universities mentioned are private. I have no strong objections to affirmative action in private schools because I believe that private property is private. The owners can do whatever they want with their property, including give it away. The first university mentioned has an affirmative action program oriented to local Latinos. I think it produced commendable results overall.

The President was editor, then president of his school’s law review journal. That’s an elective position in which political correctness is and was sure to intervene. He did not publish a single article during his tenure. That’s admirable because it’s usually difficult to hold student editors back from publishing everything they write.

The fact that President Obama worked for a law firm and was hired by a law school does not answer the bar exam question. Law firms employ law school graduates who have not passed the bar exam. Even the fact that he was hired by the University of Chicago law school does not dispose of this matter. See above. I know for a fact that universities hire adjunct personnel with few qualifications, with unknown qualifications and sometimes, with no qualifications. Anyway, not having passed the bar would not necessarily disqualify one from teaching law.

Here is my point: Plenty of intelligent people fail or are afraid to take the bar exam. However, this exam is the only fixed point allowing anyone to argue that Barack  Obama was not the object of grossly preferential treatment throughout his life. Without success at the bar exam, how do we know that the President ever accomplished anything in his life outside of being elected to office?

This scenario would explain why the President voted , “Present” so many times when he served in the Illinois legislature. It’s the right thing to do if you don’t know the issues or if you don’t understand them. It does not prevent you from being a compelling campaigner. Campaigning and governing require different skills.

Now, I am too timid to be he first to utter the forbidden words but I will give you some hints: Wonderfully limpid economist Thomas Sowell, luminous columnist William Raspberry, actor and social philosopher Bill Cosby, comedian Chris Rock, and my thinking master, Carlos Mencia are not A.A. wonders. And, incidentally, my favorite journalists are almost all women who are not either. I won’t even mention my favorite television personality, Megyn Kelly, because there is lust involved (not so much on her part). She is not a product of A.A either.

One might ask how the radical team pushing Barack Obama politically thought they could get away with this. The answer is blindingly clear: Leftist leaders are all elitists, without exception. They think their adversaries are kind of stupid. That’s also why they mostly lose, in the end. The collective wisdom of this country’s electorate is often slow to manifest itself but when it does, it’s impressive. I give credit to our political institutions. Skepticism of people in government is built into our political culture.

One of my friends, also an immigrant, put it best. One day that I was lamenting the turn of events in the Obama administration, my friend said: Obama will never get away with what he is trying to do; American DNA is too strong.

Update 10/10/09: President Obama receives the Nobel Prize. What did I tell you? See above. There is a small side to this story I don’t quite grasp but I can smell it because I know things about Europeans. Of course the Norwegian Nobel Committee is long past the fear of ridicule. Obama follows in the footsteps of the terrorist Arafat, the  anti-Semite Jimmy Carter and  the fool Al Gore. (Gore got only half of the prize. The winner of the other half denounced him as a charlatan within one week.)

The missing part is this: The Norwegian Nobel Committee is composed of old Norwegian men whose photograph is difficult to take because, together, they look like a chicken breast sandwich: white meat on white bread with mayo. I suspect they feel awfully white all the time. They gave Obama the prize in part because he is so refreshingly a Negro!

I wonder what noble Nelson Mandela is thinking today to be in such vapid company.

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CORRECTION: I WROTE PREVIOUSLY THAT I DOUBTED PRESIDENT OBAMA HAD EVER PASSED THE BAR EXAM ANYWHERE ANY TIME. A FRIEND OF MINE, A GOOD LAWYER I HAVE KNOWN FOR A LONG TIME AND WHOSE UTTERANCES I TRUST SAID OTHERWISE. MY ATTORNEY FRIEND TOLD ME THAT THE FACT THAT BARACK OBAMA HAD BEEN ADMITTED TO PRACTICE BEFORE THE ILLINOIS SUPREME COURT PROVED THAT HE HAD PASSED THE BAR. THAT HE WAS SO ADMITTED CAN BE FOUND ON THE SITE OF THE ILLINOIS BAR ASSOCIATION. I ACCEPT MY FRIEND’S JUDGMENT IN THIS RESPECT. I AM STILL PUZZLED ABOUT WHY THE REAL ACHIEVEMENT OF PASSING THE BAR EXAM – WHICH CAN PRESUMABLY NOT BE EASED BY AFFIRMATIVE ACTION CONSIDERATIONS – IS NOT MENTIONED ON THE PRESIDENT’S WIKIPEDIA ENTRY. MR OBAMA ‘S LIST OF ACCOMPLISHMENTS IS SHORT AND THIN; THE BAR EXAM SHOULD BE THERE TO THICKEN IT. PERHAPS ONE OF THE PRESIDENT’S SUPPORTERS WILL DO THE JOB. I AM WATCHING.

EVERYTHING ELSE IN THE ABOVE COLUMN REMAINS THE SAME.