I predicted the totally predictable last night. And so it has come to pass: The left-wing fairweather friends of privacy are all over the leak of Aunti Zeituni’s immigration info — while Joe The Plumber remains persona non grata. Democrat Rep. John Conyers has already called for a federal investigation. The WaPo is already up with an A-section story on the anonymous leak. And the liberal blogs are up in arms.

The MSM abhor anonymous leaks — unless they’re helping to undermine Bush administration anti-terrorism programs or conservative causes and candidates.

Laughably, the Obama cultists suspect that Bush administration officials are in cahoots with the McCain campaign and the Associated Press.

These people have reading comprehension and reality comprehension problems. It’s the Bush administration that has moved to protect Aunti Zeituni. It’s the pro-shamnesty Bush administration that will ensure that nothing happens to her. Pro-shamnesty McCain isn’t going to touch the story. McCain adviser Mark Salter told WaPo that it’s a “family matter.”

Another predictable prediction: McCain will issue an edict forbidding staff from talking about this the same way the staffers are forbidden from mentioning Jeremiah Wright — with disastrous results.

Never mind that the massive, systemic problem of deportation fugitives is a matter of national security and rule of law.

“Family matter,” my foot.

By the way: Where in the world is Aunti Zeituni? Who knows? And if it wasn’t Barack Obama who helped her get here, who did? How did she get a Social Security card? Who advised her to apply for public housing? Who did she know with a saavy enough legal background to help her navigate the paperwork of the welfare state?

Anything but Kevin O'Brien! 

"If We Elect an Admitted Socialist President, We'll Deserve What We Get--Kevin O'Brien"--headline, Plain Dealer (Cleveland), Oct. 30

Obama's election "would front the fourth great wave of liberal annexation - the first being FDR's New Deal, the second LBJ's Great Society, and the third the incremental but remorseless cultural advance when Reagan conservatives began winning victories at the ballot box and liberals turned their attention to the other levers of the society, from grade school up. . . . All three liberal waves have transformed American expectations of the state. The spirit of the age is: Ask not what your country can do for you, demand it."

He's right. After 70-plus years of ascendant socialism, this country today would be recognizable to Thomas Jefferson only as the realization of his worst fears. That Obama wants to make a final and irreversible hard-left turn is apparent not only from his few unguarded utterances this year, but from much of what he said and wrote before his presidential campaign. Witness his 2001 interview with Chicago Public Radio (youtube.com/watch?v=iivL4c_3pck), in which he laments that the Supreme Court "never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth."

If Americans take the monumental risk Obama poses, they will deserve the government they get. More to the point, they will have proved undeserving of the government left to them by far greater, far wiser men.

Erica Jong: Obama defeat will bring civil war

And the #1 quote from Erica Jong?  The troop drawdown in Iraq has a secret purpose:

“If Obama loses it will spark the second American Civil War. Blood will run in the streets, believe me. And it’s not a coincidence that President Bush recalled soldiers from Iraq for Dick Cheney to lead against American citizens in the streets.”

I’d bold the more lunatic portions, but who can make that distinction?  Jong makes Truthers look almost sane.  (Almost.)

While I’m sure most of us fret constantly about the collective psychoses of Jane Fonda and Naomi Wolf, it’s difficult to see who Jong wants to impress with these statements.  If Jong is so obsessed, why isn’t she talking about this in America?  Why talk to the Italian magazine instead of getting involved to stop the Second Civil War?  I guess Jong’s commitment to democracy and her country consists of popping a few happy pills and seeing an acupuncturist.  What a patriot!

It could be worse, I guess.  Fonda could get Jong to travel to Pakistan in order to get photo ops of them operating Taliban anti-aircraft guns.

Speaking of which, by the way:  of whom does Jong’s rhetoric remind readers?  “Blood will run in the streets.”   Sounds like an echo of 1960s radical terrorists like, oh, the Weather Underground.

Malcolm: Expulsion of reporters from O Force One “a cheesy hardball”

A cover-up in Plumbergate?

Government should send “price signals” on energy?

Is that the function of government — to fix prices as a punitive measure to change consumer behavior?  It will be in an Obama administration.  He and a few elites will decide which consumer behaviors are bad, and penalize it with price signals.  That usually means taxes or tariffs that drive the cost upwards.  I’d guess that Obama isn’t celebrating the fact that a gallon of gasoline will likely fall below $2 per gallon sometime this week.

When have we seen government send “price signals to change behavior” before?  Oh, yes — in the lending markets.  When government wanted more loans given to risky borrowers for political purposes, they sent “price signals” to lenders by having Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac buy up tons of subprime paper, and then mandated their conversion to securities to send “price signals” to investors.  How did those “price signals” work out for taxpayers, consumers, and investors?

On the eve of what may be the most important election of our time, the financial catastrophe that many believe will most influence Tuesday's vote remains only partially covered by the major media. IBD has run many articles and editorials on the mortgage meltdown, including a 7,500-word history from Web magazine American Thinker on Thursday. This timeline is condensed from that article, written by M. Jay Wells. (Click here to read the full version.) It lays out the essential facts of the crisis, which at its heart is a tale of misguided government intervention rather than a failure of free-market capitalism, as argued by presidential candidate Barack Obama.

Read Full Article

The narrative is of another failed socialist experiment, this time a massive federal effort imperiling the whole U.S. banking industry.

Top recipients of contributions from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac since 1989:

• Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn.: $165,400.

• Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill.: $126,349.

• Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass.: $42,350.

Synchronized Presidential Debating

Exhibit A in why I didn’t watch any of them, and the best argument you’ll ever see for Newt’s modern-day Lincoln-Douglas proposal. Superb.

Obamamercial: A flop with critics, ratings

Obama kicks dissenting reporters off plane