The media and the Obama campaign (but I repeat myself) are comparing the “experience” of’the Democrats’ presidential nominee to that of the GOP’s vice-presidential pick — meaning, one must assume, that the debate over his experience vs. John McCain’s is over, in McCain’s resounding favor.

Let’s look back a couple of months at a post I put up on July 14 (with minor revisions) that gives a, uh, concrete example of one of Barack Obama’s management “experiences” — one that the national media has (of course) totally ignored.

______________________________________________________

Barack Obama’s $100,000 Gazebo

Here’s an interesting story I found in the Chicago Tribune archives (obtained from ProQuest library database; for fair use and discussion purposes):

ENGLEWOOD IS EYED FOR BOTANICAL GARDEN
Chicago Tribune. Chicago, Ill.: Jan 15, 2000. pg. 5

A group of politicians, school administrators and community activists unveiled a plan Friday for a $1.1 million botanical garden in the city’s Englewood neighborhood.

The proposal calls for a walk beneath the “L” tracks on Princeton Avenue, from 59th Place to 62nd Place. Backers said they hope it will help spur redevelopment in the impoverished area, boost neighborhood pride and soften the impact of traffic and pollution from the nearby Dan Ryan Expressway.

State Sen. Barack Obama (D-Chicago) said he planned to seek state funding for the effort and estimated that ground could be broken in early 2001.

The proposed garden also would include a gazebo, a parrot sanctuary and a walk of fame.

Gee, that sounds exciting. Let’s go visit:

(Google Maps image is more than likely from before the Sun-Times visit described below occurred, and before the related report and video were posted.)

Imagine that. No garden. No parrot sanctuary. No walk of fame.

How can that be? What happened? The Chicago Sun-Times tells us the answer, while revealing that “at least” there’s a gazebo — but not much of one (video is at link; HT Jennifer Rubin via the TIB All-Stars July 12 collection at Weapons of Mass Discussion):

Obama’s $100,000 garden grant wasted
He vowed to ‘work tirelessly’ to build an oasis for Englewood. It never happened.

July 11, 2008

As a state senator, Barack Obama gave $100,000 in state money to a campaign volunteer who failed to deliver on a plan to create a botanic garden in one of Chicago’s most blighted neighborhoods.

….. what was supposed to be a six-block stretch of trees and paths is now a field of unfulfilled dreams, strewn with weeds, garbage and broken pavement.

Kenny B. Smith, whose nonprofit group got the money, said it was spent legitimately, mostly on underground site preparation. But he admitted Thursday that the garden is a lost cause because other government money never came through.

….. Smith — an early Obama supporter who gave $550 to his state and congressional campaigns — said he gave his paperwork documenting the work to a state agency and no longer has it.

….. a reporter walked the site last week with a landscape architect from the Illinois Green Industry Association who found no evidence of the work Smith cited. The only major changes since 2000: A gazebo was added, and some trees were cut down.

Obama, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, said through a spokesman he wasn’t responsible for monitoring the work; the staffs of Gov. Blagojevich and former Gov. George Ryan were.

….. In 2001, at Obama’s direction, a $100,000 Illinois FIRST grant went to Smith’s group. The garden site was part of Rosewood Estates, an affordable-housing development being built by the group, whose unpaid board chairman was Brian Washington, a Sun-Times security guard.

Plans called for more than 50 homes, but only a dozen were built, Smith said.

The remaining $1 million for the botanic garden was never raised.

Those legendary $400 hammers for the military have nothing on this $100,000 gazebo.

A trifling matter? I don’t think so. More like a revealing one:

• Obama feels no sense of responsibility for the results of money directed to someone HE chose. This isn’t “the buck stops here” of Harry Truman fame; this is “the buck went somewhere else.”
• Gubernatorial staffs aren’t responsible for monitoring projects like this. State agencies are. If the agency involved didn’t do their job (according to the article, it’s the Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity), that’s one thing, but the blame-shifting to other pols is either hopelessly naive (a legitimate possibility, given the candidate’s seemingly endless well of ignorance) or irresponsible.
• If you look at the full text of the press release that announced the project, you’ll see that Kenny Smith was on hand, and that he made representations about how he was “work(ing) with a variety of governmental agencies and not-for-profit groups to secure funding this project including the Chicago Transit Authority, the United States Department of Agriculture, and the American Society of Landscape Architecture. We have made some progress ….” My bet: Smith had, at most, met with these orgs once or twice, and was blowing smoke about the realistic chances of getting money. For a nominal $550 in campaign contributions, Smith got 100 grand, which “somehow” has mostly gone bye-bye. Bottom line: Obama got hustled. Did he even look into how the rest of the “fund-raising” was going before directing the release of the grant funds?
• Perhaps that’s why Obama seems oddly indifferent to what ultimately happened. The response from his spokesman (and not the candidate) is tired boilerplate about “provid(ing) residents with a livable neighborhood.” Zzzzzz.

The larger point is this: The guy is hopelessly gullible, can’t even get a $100,000 grant right, and now wants to have the final say in matters relating to a $3-plus trillion federal budget and a $14-trillion economy in a town chock full of con artists and tricksters.

Yikes.

It would be cool if some enterprising photo-opster could make up a “Barack Obama $100,000 Gazebo” sign (or something more clever — use your imagination), take some pictures at the site, and post them. Until that happens, this well-done contribution from NewsBusters reader “tnculp” will do very nicely:

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

First, Bill Whittle at National Review Online.

That will be followed by observations of commenter “Tom W” (not yours truly) at Pajamas Media.

If they indeed reflect what is happening on the ground, you won’t hear about it from the Associated Press, or read it in the New York Times, or see it on the Big Three Networks news or cable shows — which is why it’s so necessary to post items like this here. In fact, it’s fair to say that if you were going to see commentary and commenting such as that which follows, it would have occurred already.

Here’s just a taste (HT NixGuy) of what Whittle, whose columns are always read-the-whole thingers, had to say:

I’ve seen post after post on Hillary forums about how much they love Sarah, how they are energized and lifted out of depression by her (and the sight of an actual Roll Call made some of them weep). They gush about how she reminds them of their hero, how tough and savvy and unafraid she is. And I have seen these women, hard-core, feminist Democrats for 30 years and more, sit in slack-jawed amazement at Palin and at how fiercely Republicans — Republicans! — are defending her, backing her, and cheering her to the rafters. These Clinton supporters say they don’t know what to think any more: The Republicans are behaving like Democrats and the Democrats are behaving like Republicans!

If you think that’s an insult, you’ve got it exactly backwards. That is not only a huge compliment from these abandoned, centrist Democrats who bemoan the loss of their party to the radicals, it is an early rumbling of a tectonic shift in American politics which we are only dimly beginning to grasp. Who are the real feminists? A significant portion of our former hard-core opposition is now rethinking in a fundamental way who it is that actually does what their former allies only talk about.

Expect the PC Police and their media allies to exert maximum effort in the coming eight weeks to put a lid on this. Good luck.

Now, here’s Tom W’s comment (fourth one down at Michael Weiss’s Pajamas Media post):

The PUMAs are starting to love Palin because every single adult woman has stories of being patronized, passed over, etc., by men, and Palin has already shown that she will gut anybody who tries that on her.

Get this: I’ve now heard dozens of times that when Palin was trashing Obama, PUMA members say they were jumping up and down in their homes, screaming at the TV, in absolute flabbergasted wonder at this woman’s power, ease, style, grace, brains, and ability to speak and connect with the audience. Mostly, though, they love her mad assassin’s skillz.

American women will not let this candidate go. They love her deeply, not as a goddess, but as a sister, and they are slowly absorbing the fact that it took the REPUBLICANS to put a woman on the ticket. We may see many radical feminists become Republicans, I kid you not. One PUMA went to McCain’s speech last night, and she started sobbing because McCain was so humble and emotional, and the people around her were so nice, patriotic, and happy. She’s used to ugly, angry, smelly leftists.

And this is a vital point to remember: McCain honored all women by choosing an exceptional woman who outshines him. He is so much of a man, so comfortable and secure with his masculinity, that he is entirely unthreatened by the fact that he has chosen the person who will eventually eclipse him. If he had chosen a nonentity, they’d be enraged at the pandering, but by choosing someone more impressive than he is and making clear that she will be an activist veep, he showed all women that he’s sincere.

From what I hear from the PUMAs, they’re going to fight to the death to elect McCain, in gratitude for him choosing such a formidable, accomplished, skilled predator with a record of leaving sexist men huddled on the floor in tears. Nobody’s ever seen anything like Palin. She makes Hillary and Boxer and all the other Beltway insiders look like bizarre life-sized wind-up toys that say and do the same thing over and over for years, without actually accomplishing anything.

Several feminists are now predicting a McCain-Palin landslide.

Here’s hoping.

Wow. No wonder, as noted yesterday by NewsBusters colleague Noel Sheppard, Obama supporter Oprah Winfrey won’t book Palin.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

This story didn’t get the attention it ordinarily might have because it occurred during the Democratic Party’s convention.

On Monday, August 25, “the largest single-workplace immigration raid in U.S. history” took place in Laurel, Mississippi. 595 workers suspected of being in the country illegally were detained.

Traditional media coverage, including this Associated Press item carried in USA Today, was predictably sympathetic towards those who were detained and their families.

But, as yours truly noted was the case with the Swift Co. raids in the spring of 2007 (posted at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog), there was even less national media interest in what happened after that.

The Clarion, Mississippi’s statewide newspaper, is the only outlet I found that considered the following worthy of publication as a standalone story:

Applicants line up to fill jobs open after plant raid

Howard Industries found itself at the center of activity again Tuesday.

Hundreds of job applicants lined up, eager to take advantage of the sudden job openings at the plant located in Jones County, where the unemployment rate is 6.3 percent.

ICE agents on Monday seized 595 plant workers suspected of being in the country illegally. Several workers, who did not identify themselves, said Tuesday they were working and trying to keep the plant operational in the wake of the sudden loss of co-workers.

They said it was common knowledge many of their co-workers were suspected to be illegal.

It’s an idea that maddens Samantha Stevens, 18, of Heidelberg, who was among those who pulled up to Avenue A across from the plant’s entrance throughout the day. She said she has been unable to find a job since she graduated from Heidelberg High School in the spring and blames, in part, the willingness of companies to hire illegal workers.

“We were here first. It’s not fair for them to have a job,” she explained.

Others welcomed the vacancies left by the detained workers.

Gwendolyn Watkins, 40, of Stonewall said she drove 40 miles to Laurel to fill out an application with the electronics maker.

Imagine that.

You also can’t help but notice that many, if not most, of the new applicants pictured above are African-Americans. How is it that self-appointed African-American leaders are expending more energy these days on “protecting” illegals instead of focusing on African-American citizens’ well-being?

Other downplayed elements relating to what happened in Laurel included the reactions of many workers as the raids were raking place, and what initiated the plant investigation. In the middle of an oh-so-typical follow-up sob story (”Fear grips immigrants after Miss. plant raid”) on August 27, the AP did manage squeeze answers to those items into the eighth paragraph:

One worker caught in Monday’s sweep at the plant said fellow workers applauded as immigrants were taken into custody. Federal officials said a tip from a union member prompted them to start investigating several years ago.

Amy Beeman at All Headline News reported that “with union workers and immigrant workers butting heads, someone tipped off the authorities, causing the investigation that began three years ago.”

Further, a different AP report by Holbrooke Mohr reported that it wasn’t only rank and file union workers who were upset:

Union bosses in this region of rural Mississippi have long grumbled that the largest factories here hire illegal immigrants, and that the immigrants were starting to get more overtime and supervisory positions.

….. In interviews with The Associated Press, both union members and immigrants spoke of a simmering tension. At least one immigrant said scare tactics were used to pressure people to join the union.

Union members said they resented immigrants, who were often allowed to work as much as 40 hours of overtime a week when other workers were discouraged from doing so. All declined to give their names, saying they feared for their jobs.

You get the idea that Mohr might not like reporting this story in the first sentence above. When’s the last time that the national press referred to “union bosses”?

….. Robert Shaffer, head of the Mississippi AFL-CIO, said Wednesday that members have long complained that companies in southern Mississippi hire illegal immigrants.

“Jackson, Hattiesburg, Laurel and all areas along the coast, it’s a little Mexico,” Shaffer said. “I’m not against people trying to make living. I have a compassion for those folks. But at the same time, the taxpayers of Mississippi shouldn’t be subsidizing a plant that won’t even hire their own workers.”

In 2002, Mississippi lawmakers approved a $31.5 million, taxpayer-backed incentive plan for Howard Industries to expand. The company, with 4,000 workers, is the largest employer in Jones County, which includes Laurel.

Mohr finally did get around to telling us that applicants were lining up to fill the newly available job openings in the 20th paragraph. Then, incredibly, he followed it with a quote from an economics professor who said that Mississippi, whose unemployment rate is over 8%, has a “labor shortage.”

More importantly, Mohr didn’t challenge the AFL-CIO’s Shaffer on the fact that he and his fellow Magnolia State union member have a take on immigration that is diametrically opposed to that of the national AFL-CIO — which, if you have somehow missed it, almost exclusively supports Democratic Party candidates and causes.

The national organization, among other things, sponsored an “Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride” in 2003 to highlight the supposed lack of “justice for all.” If you go through the photo montage at the link, you’ll get to one where workers are holding up signs that say, “Legalize, Don’t Criminalize.” If anything, the organization’s virtual-amnesty stance has grown stronger.

Mr. Shaffer and the Laurel plant’s union would clearly beg to differ.

Cross-posted at NewsBuster.org.

From Salem Township, Maine:

A 9-year-old Winslow girl lost overnight Saturday in the dense woods of Mt. Abram was found, alive and unharmed early Sunday afternoon, according to Maine Warden Service officials.

Leah Cuetara, described by her aunt, Ann Doughty, as “a little ballerina,” was found shortly before 2 p.m., more than 24 hours after she was last seen walking along an all-terrain vehicle trail near a family residence on Fish Hatchery Road.

Lt. Pat Dorian, with the Maine Warden Service, said Leah walked down a trail she had been on before with adults to go to a nearby stream. When she tried to return, she became disoriented and was headed south along Quick Brook, he said.

The girl was located by Jim Roberts and a passenger who were riding an all-terrain vehicle near a trail about two miles from the location where the child was last seen.

The couple was talking to her when another ATV rider, Jason Pinkham of Salem, came upon them and brought the child to the command post at Mt. Abram High School, about five road miles from where she was found, he said.

Leah was evaluated by medical personnel at the command post and returned to her family, Dorian said.

“‘Other than her hands being scratched up, she was walking on her own,’” Stephan Mitman of Franklin Search and Rescue, read from team member Shelby Rousseau’s report.

The daughter of Joshua and Christina Cuetara on Garand Street, Winslow, Leah had gone to a family reunion with her grandmother, according to relatives.

The ending was a happy one for the hundreds of family members, volunteers and wardens who turned out in droves at the command center set up at Mt. Abram High School on Saturday night and Sunday.

On Sunday, the school parking lot and nearby Route 142 were packed with cars, trucks and vans loaded with people who wanted to help.

People from all walks of life and from as far away as Portland turned out to volunteer, either to search or assist.

There were volunteers with all-terrain vehicles, horses and search dogs, people weighted down with knapsacks willing to walk on foot and people with a smile and a box full of sandwiches and an armload of water, willing to serve.

They said they would do whatever it took to hunt for the petite blonde, green-eyed girl whose face was posted on the bulletin boards.

Game wardens assembled a calm and methodical search, looking first with quick searches on the roads and then assembling volunteers for shoulder-to-shoulder grid searches of the hilly terrain.

Leah had last been seen at about 9:30 a.m. Saturday, walking away from a family reunion she had attended with her grandmother, according to information from Col. Joel Wilkinson, chief of the Maine Warden Service, and Doughty, the girl’s aunt.

By 1 p.m. Sunday, nerves were getting strained. It was reaching the 24-hour mark and there was no comforting news. Doughty said she had been out to the search scene, but had to return. “It was so wooded; I was emotionally overwhelmed. It was too frightening,” Doughty said. She said was out of character for Leah to go off on her own, that she rarely goes anywhere without adult supervision.

“Leah is a meek, shy ballerina. She does tap and jazz with Miss Heather (dance studio), attends Winslow Elementary. She used to go to Bradley’s (dance school) in Skowhegan. ”

Sue Dibiase, Leah’s maternal grandmother from Canaan, looked frayed, saying family members had been keeping vigil all night, but she had not lost faith.

“They found tracks. I’m confident,” Dibiase said. “Patience is so important.”

Leah’s father, Joshua Cuetara, voice choked with tears, tried to describe his concern.

“I can’t talk about how I feel, it just can’t. I tried to do a TV interview and couldn’t,” Cuetara said a couple hours before his daughter was found. A reserve Clinton police officer, firefighter since 1990, leader in emergency services for the Maine Wing Civil Air Patrol and a worker in emergency services for 18 years, Cuetara said his training had prepared him. What he left unsaid was what he was prepared for. Luckily he didn’t have to find out. …..

Go here for the rest of the story.

From Toronto (video is also at link):

Sun, August 31, 2008

Postie Alan Conners decided to take a different route to his south Etobicoke home — and for one man, it was a good thing he did.

Conners watched as a minivan in front of him hit a TTC streetcar island on westbound Lake Shore Blvd. W., near Legion Rd., at 1:17 p.m. Friday and became airborne.

The van then flipped, hit a light standard and guardrail before landing on its roof, leaving the 27-year-old driver hanging upside down in his seat, Toronto Police said.

The smouldering van then burst into flames.

Conners parked his vehicle and ran in without thinking about the potential for injury.

“I guess I acted on nerves,” he said yesterday. “I don’t know what it was.

“I looked over and it was on fire,” Conners, 51, said. “I couldn’t get the driver’s door open so I went over to the passenger side.”

That door opened and Conners crawled in, forcing pieces of broken windshield into his left knee.

“As I crawled in, I saw the red seat belt release button, he was still suspended upside-down. I pressed it … and it didn’t release to the full extent, so I just grabbed (the belt) with my hands and I pulled down and all of a sudden, it released and he came down.”

Conners said he panicked when the release didn’t work completely, but that forced him to find some strength he didn’t know he had to yank the belt off the driver.

“It was pretty hot in there, from what I can remember,” he said.

Conners said he then reached around the delirious driver and pulled him out of the burning van.

“I said to myself, ‘It’s either he goes or we both go, so I got to get him out.’ Because I knew there was fire on the outside.

“It’s scary now, but during the time, I just wanted to get him out of there,” he said. “It brings a tear to me now, because when I think of it, I could have ended up in there with him, because I wasn’t coming out without him.”

Conners said the rescue “seemed like hours, but it was, like, two minutes.”

His buddy Pius Pasher, 45, called Conners a hero after hearing the details yesterday.

“There’s no getting over that,” he said.

Conners didn’t quite realize what he did until the investigating officer, firefighters and witnesses expressed their gratitude in saving the man.

“I don’t feel like a hero, I just acted on impulse,” he said.

His wife, Donna, however, has a different take on her husband’s bravery.

“I’m proud of him,” she said. …..

Go here for the rest of the story.

Note: This was posted at Pajamas Media (”‘McCain Didn’t Vet Palin’ Meme Has Serious Holes”) on Tuesday morning.

____________________________________________________

UPDATE: On September 3, I confirmed with Greg Johnson, Managing Editor of the Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman, that the paper’s archives have been online “for years,” and that they have been easily accessible.

That could not be confirmed when the original PJM piece was written in the wee hours of the morning on Sept. 2. The article that follows was written with qualifiers that archive accesibility may have somehow begun between the time of Sam Stein HuffPo column and mine.

But, as expected, that’s not the case.

Sam Stein’s HuffingtonPost column therefore contains clear falsehoods that an organization with integrity would retract.

It has not done so.

Sam Stein “has worked for Newsweek magazine, the New York Daily News and the investigative journalism group Center for Public Integrity.” He supposedly knows better than to let false reporting stand.

Two HuffPo commenters have even rubbed Sam Stein’s error in his face:

Stein, and HuffPo, apparently don’t care. Nor does filthy-rich Arianna “pink-collar sweatshop” Huffington.

Comments are now closed at the post. How convenient.

Rely on Stein’s, and HuffPo’s, “reporting” at your own risk.

The original column follows.

(more…)

I didn’t have time to look at the predictions, which I’ll catch up to eventually.

The seasonally adjusted news is grim:

The unemployment rate rose from 5.7 to 6.1 percent in August, and non-farm payroll employment continued to trend down (-84,000), the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor reported today.  In August, employment fell in manufacturing and employment services, while mining and health care continued to add jobs.  Average hourly earnings rose by 7 cents, or 0.4 percent, over the month.

My reax: The POR (Pelosi-Obama-Reid) Economy, with its energy intransigence and its threat of massive 2009 tax increases, is wreaking its havoc. Party first, country second (if that), and workers (even unionized ones) be damned.

I thought a couple of weeks ago that President Bush’s initiatives to re-open drilling, the likely September 30 expiration of the ban on US offshore drilling, and the fall in worldwide oil prices that largely resulted from those two factors might stave off a report like this, but it appears not (how much worse would it have been if Bush hadn’t acted?). It’s clear that the idea that Obama might win in November is causing business owners and managers to be very cautious in their hiring.

I suspect we’ll also find that the four big basket cases (CA, MI, IL, OH) contributed disproportionately to the rise in the unemployment rate.

Wild card: Is the BLS’s estimate of the size of the workforce propertly taking the out-migration of illegals into account? If the unemployment rate “falls out” as a result of comparing the total workforce to those working, that would cause the calculated rate to be high by as much as 0.5%. This question will, of course, not be considered by the doom-and-gloom machine at the Associated Press and elsewhere.

More info will come later as time allows.

___________________________________________

UPDATE: This is all time allows for, and may be all I do with the post. Here is what actually happened (i.e., not seasonally adjusted) since the beginning of 2006:

This is the 10th straight month where the jobs change trailed the same month of the previous year. My guess is that this situtation probably won’t turn for the better until December, or heaven knows when, if Obama somehow wins.

As I’ve said frequently, we really should have had another tax CUT about a year ago, and we should have been taking advantage of our own energy resources many years ago.

Transcript is here; video is here. I’m still looking for video I can save to the hard drive.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen the guy more relaxed, yet determined.

This isn’t the somewhat unsettling guy I saw in South Carolina in 2000.

Unspoken, but I think important: McCain, and everyone else, thought that his presidential aspirations were over in 2001 as a result of health issues that he thought would prevent him from having the strength to campaign. When he was later given the all-clear, I believe he did a top-to-bottom re-examination of himself, and came out stronger.

The 2007-2008 McCain did something I don’t think the 2000 McCain would have done: He risked it all –

And when the pundits said — when the pundits said my campaign was finished, I said I’d rather lose an election than see my country lose a war.

He also doesn’t care what his unprincipled critics think. He’ll kick and scream a bit, but he will, eventually, listen to his principled ones. But those principled critics will have to labor to be heard.

So make no mistake: McCain’s will be a high-maintenance presidency, and he will infuriate from time to time. But there is no doubt that he is committed to doing the right thing, and, unlike 2000, he realizes that he doesn’t have all the answers. He doesn’t necessarily like it, and he’ll resist, but he’ll recognize it when he needs to.

His opponent, perhaps the most unvetted presidential nominee of a major political party in US history, doesn’t “think” he has all the answers. He “knows” it. Yet his ignorance of so many very basic things continues to stun and amaze. He reinforces my months-ago conclusion that he is objectively unfit in so many ways for the most powerful elected office on earth on an almost-daily basis.

He thinks campaigning, and looking good while doing it, is an accomplishment. It’s understandable, though. It’s all he has, all he can cling to.

I like McCain’s approach better:

I’m not running for president because I think I’m blessed with such personal greatness that history has anointed me to save our country in its hour of need.

My country saved me. My country saved me, and I cannot forget it. And I will fight for her for as long as I draw breath, so help me God.

I normally resist putting on-the-horizon tech developments into Positivity, because so many are highly speculative and don’t pan out. I believe this one is far enough along, and it implications far-reaching enough (the e-mail alert for the article says that this “faster way of moving data could end the debate over net neutrality”), that something will surely come of it, even if not in the area described below.

Thus it merits notice now:

08.21.08, 6:00 AM ET

The Internet, it turns out, may have room enough for everyone. Even the most bandwidth-hogging digital pirates.

That, at least, is the hope of two professors from the University of Washington and Yale University. They plan to present research at a conference in Seattle on Thursday describing a new and speedier way to send data across the Internet. Their technique, based on an algorithm they call P4P, could eventually offer a less controversial version of peer-to-peer file sharing, a practice that has flooded the Internet with pirated music and movies and ignited debate over what online content broadband providers should regulate.

Peer-to-peer file-sharing, online pirates’ favorite channel for transferring copyrighted movies and music, now accounts for 40% to 60% of all Internet traffic. That bandwidth overload has meant massive losses for Internet service providers (ISPs) who charge flat rates to users regardless of how much data they send over a network.

….. Now, professors Arvind Krishnamurthy of the University of Washington and Richard Yang of Yale say they have a better way to solve broadband providers’ woes. Their algorithm, which they call P4P or “local file-sharing,” tracks users’ locations to find the shortest path across the Internet. The result, they say, should please both sides of the peer-to-peer debate: Users can download files about 20% faster than conventional file-sharing, while cutting the bandwidth requirements by more than a factor of five.

“We think we’ve come up with a way to end this catfight between Internet service providers and peer-to-peer users,” Krishnamurthy says.

The barrier until now, Krishnamurthy says, has been privacy. Users, often sending files illegally, haven’t been willing to reveal their location to their broadband providers. Broadband providers haven’t wanted to give users access to the geography of their network–a move that could reveal elements of their business to competitors. P4P, Krishnamurthy asserts, takes advantage of data about users’ location and a provider’s network map without revealing details to either side.

If users and broadband providers buy in, the results look promising. Since April, Verizon has been testing a version of the researchers’ P4P system implemented by the New York-based file-sharing start-up, Pando. In a test with around 600,000 users, Krishnamurthy says, data sent using P4P had to travel between an average of just two networks to reach its destination, as opposed to around seven with normal file-sharing, vastly cutting the cost of moving the data.

Go here for the rest of the story.

Business necessity dictates that this will be today’s last post.

Just in today:

• (via e-mail) Mostly good, from the Bureaus of Labor Statistics — “Productivity grew 4.3 percent in the nonfarm business sector in the second quarter of 2008, and unit labor costs declined 0.5 percent.  In manufacturing, productivity fell 2.2 percent in the second quarter of 2008; unit labor costs rose 6.2 percent.  All rates are seasonally adjusted annual rates.”
• Not so good — ADP says private-sector jobs fell 33,000 in August; July’s original 9,000 was revised down to 1,000.
• (via e-mail) Good — “Wal-Mart reports 3% rise in August same-store sales, topping estimates.”
• Good — The Institute for Supply Management’s Non-Manufacturing Index came in at 50.6%, after July’s 49.5%. That’s back to expansion (anything above 50% means expansion), beating the consensus that it would remain in contraction at 49.5% (Forex, Bloomberg, Reuters).

Ms. Underestimated has it in three .wmv segments.

Remind me again — Who’s the great speechmaker?

John McCain has a tough act to follow (/understatement).

TNR blogger Mike Crowley at The Stump reports reax from the left:

Several moderate-Democrat friends of mine have been emailing–few if any would ever vote for McCain–but all agree that Palin was very strong. The more liberal among them are a little panicked.

It was so good that the New York Times’s home page could only acknowledge what transpired:

Off the cuff, not in the script:

…. the difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull: Lipstick.

Ed Morrissey, following up on what I expressed at the start of this post yesterday:

Perhaps the media and Democrats would have been better advised to set expectations high for Sarah Palin’s acceptance speech tonight at the Republican convention. After ridiculing her as a small-town yokel for the better part of three days, Palin would have looked good if she managed to avoid drooling during her speech. In the event, though, they could have set expectations as high as a Barack Obama acceptance speech, and Palin would still have exceeded them in a tremendous debut on the national stage.

Palin made it clear to the condescending media and her Democratic critics that she is no pushover, no cream puff. Her nickname, “Sarah Barracuda”, seems a lot more fitting after tonight.

A snide commenter at yesterday’s pre-speech post asked, “‘Mr. BOOHOO-OUCH’? Did your five-year-old help you come up with that one?”

Well, first of all, the kids are older. But more important, this pitiful, whiny response I got in an Obama campaign e-mail early this morning from a David Plouffe shows how utterly appropriate the nickname is:

Thomas –

I wasn’t planning on sending you something tonight (uh-huh — Ed.). But if you saw what I saw from the Republican convention, you know that it demands a response.

I saw John McCain’s attack squad of negative, cynical politicians. They lied about Barack Obama and Joe Biden, and they attacked you for being a part of this campaign.

But worst of all — and this deserves to be noted — they insulted the very idea that ordinary people have a role to play in our political process.

You know that despite what John McCain and his attack squad say, everyday people have the power to build something extraordinary when we come together. Make a donation of $5 or more right now to remind them.

Both Rudy Giuliani and Sarah Palin specifically mocked Barack’s experience as a community organizer on the South Side of Chicago more than two decades ago, where he worked with people who had lost jobs and been left behind when the local steel plants closed.

Let’s clarify something for them right now.

Community organizing is how ordinary people respond to out-of-touch politicians and their failed policies.

….. Throughout our history, ordinary people have made good on America’s promise by organizing for change from the bottom up. Community organizing is the foundation of the civil rights movement, the women’s suffrage movement, labor rights, and the 40-hour workweek. And it’s happening today in church basements and community centers and living rooms across America.

Wahhhhhhhh — and bullcrap.

It is long past time to puncture Obama’s “community organizing” mystique.

Memo to “Mr. BOOHOO-OUCH” and Mr. Plouffe:

• In all too many cases, the Saul Alinsky-driven Obama definitely included, a “community organizer” is someone who attempts to accomplish through clever PR, gaming the system, blackmail, and intimidation what they can’t accomplish at the ballot box or by running for office.
• It is more than safe to say that many “community organizers” who want to achieve elective office have to pretend to be something they are not to get there. Obama would be among them. His books, his false recitation of accomplishments, his resume-padding, are all false facade.
• It is more than safe to say that many of those with such a “community organizing” background who subsequently achieve elected office are more interested in serving as a conduit for their “community organized” constituencies than they are in serving the people they are supposed to represent.

Note that the movements Mr. Puff Plouffe cites are ALL from a very distant past of 40 years or more. Who does he think he’s kidding? “Community organizers” have long since co-opted the tactics of authentic social movements to undermine the democratic process (e.g., ACORN), and have long since lost their legitimacy. Their George Soros money gives them the time and resources to subvert representative government that “ordinary people” who try to play defense don’t have.

Exit question: Thanks to Sarah Palin, a $26 billion natural gas pipeline from Alaska to the rest of the US will be built that will tremendously benefit the US economy and the lives of “ordinary people.” What positive things, if any, has Barack Obama ever done to revive the economy and create more jobs in South and Southeast Chicago where those steel plants closed?

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UPDATE: Note that commenting Obama co-whiners haven’t even tried to answer the exit question.

What is so positive about this story is how apparently typical it is (others instances, which have been all too rarely reported, are here and here).

We will miss George Bush’s fundamental decency, no matter how many refuse to acknowledge it, and can only pray that those who follow him will possess it.

From Eielson Air Force Base in Alaska (HT Blackfive via Drew at Ace’s Place):

I learned a big lesson on service Aug. 4, 2008, when Eielson had the rare honor of hosting President Bush on a refueling stop as he traveled to Asia.

It was an event Eielson will never forget — a hangar full of Airmen and Soldiers getting to see the Commander in Chief up close, and perhaps even shaking his hand. An incredible amount of effort goes into presidential travel because of all of the logistics, security, protocol, etc … so it was remarkable to see Air Force One land at Eielson on time at precisely 4:30 p.m.–however, when he left less than two hours later, the President was 15 minutes behind schedule.

That’s a big slip for something so tightly choreographed, but very few people know why it happened. Here’s why.

On Dec. 10, 2006, our son, Shawn, was a paratrooper deployed on the outskirts of Baghdad. He was supposed to spend the night in camp, but when a fellow soldier became ill Shawn volunteered to take his place on a nighttime patrol–in the convoy’s most exposed position as turret gunner in the lead Humvee. He was killed instantly with two other soldiers when an IED ripped through their vehicle.

I was thinking about that as my family and I sat in the audience listening to the President’s speech, looking at the turret on the up-armored Humvee the explosive ordnance disposal flight had put at the edge of the stage as a static display.

When the speech was over and the President was working the crowd line, I felt a tap on my shoulder and turned to see a White House staff member. She asked me and my wife to come with her, because the President wanted to meet us.

Stunned, we grabbed our two sons that were with us and followed her back into a conference room. It was a shock to go from a crowded, noisy hangar, past all of those security people, to find ourselves suddenly alone in a quiet room.

The only thing we could hear was a cell phone vibrating, and noticed that it was coming from the jacket Senator Stevens left on a chair. We didn’t answer.

A short time later, the Secret Service opened the door and President Bush walked in. I thought we might get to shake his hand as he went through. But instead, he walked up to my wife with his arms wide, pulled her in for a hug and a kiss, and said, “I wish I could heal the hole in your heart.” He then grabbed me for a hug, as well as each of our sons. Then he turned and said, “Everybody out.”

A few seconds later, the four of us were completely alone behind closed doors with the President of the United States and not a Secret Service agent in sight.

He said, “Come on, let’s sit down and talk.” He pulled up a chair at the side of the room, and we sat down next to him. He looked a little tired from his trip, and he noticed that his shoes were scuffed up from leaning over concrete barriers to shake hands and pose for photos. He slumped down the chair, completely relaxed, smiled, and suddenly was no longer the President - he was just a guy with a job, sitting around talking with us like a family member at a barbeque.

For the next 15 or 20 minutes, he talked with us about our son, Iraq, his family, faith, convictions, and shared his feelings about nearing the end of his presidency. He asked each of our teenaged sons what they wanted to do in life and counseled them to set goals, stick to their convictions, and not worry about being the “cool” guy.

He said that he’d taken a lot of heat during his tenure and was under a lot of pressure to do what’s politically expedient, but was proud to say that he never sold his soul. Sometimes he laughed, and at others he teared up. He said that what he’ll miss most after leaving office will be his role as Commander in Chief.

One of the somber moments was when he thanked us for the opportunity to meet, because he feels a heavy responsibility knowing that our son died because of a decision he made. He was incredibly humble, full of warmth, and completely without pretense. We were seeing the man his family sees. …..

Go here for the rest of the story.

I wanted to call extra attention to an open item at my Pajamas Media column yesterday (BizzyBlog tease is here) that has been confirmed, and for the sake of accuracy should be retracted at this Huffington Post column by Sam Stein:

UPDATE, Sept. 3: I have just confirmed with Greg Johnson, Managing Editor of the Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman, that the paper’s archives have been online “for years,” and that they have been easily accessible.

This is contrary to assertions made by Sam Stein at the Huffington Post on Sunday.

Since the PJM piece was written in the wee hours of the morning on Sept. 2, that could not be confirmed, and the article was written with qualifiers that archive accesibility may have somehow begun between the time of Sam Stein HuffPo column and mine. As expected, that’s not the case.

Sam Stein’s column therefore contains clear falsehoods that an organization with integrity would retract.

Readers can judge the legitimacy of the Huffington Post as a news source based on its reaction to the above.

Didn’t get to this yesterday because the news was, in essence, no news.

August’s Institute for Supply Management’s Manufacturing Index came in at 49.9% yesterday, a reading of contraction by the smallest possible amount. That’s down from a barely expanding 50.0% in July. MarketWatch says expectations were 50.0.

Oh, except for one thing I keep forgetting has been in the report every month for quite some time:

Economic activity in the manufacturing sector failed to grow in August, while the overall economy grew for the 82nd consecutive month ….

The folks at the National Bureau of Economic Research, who “officially” determine the existence and timing of recessions (and IMO did a very weak job on the last one), are going to have to explain away why ISM’s contention that the economy hasn’t actually slowed in even one single month in nearly seven years is wrong. Good luck. It wouldn’t hurt if the folks at Uncle Sam’s Bureau of Economic Analysis and ISM compared notes, either.

Without a teleprompter, of course.

The guy with the most bloated campaign in US history brags about it, and says it qualifies him to be president — while he compares himself to the other party’s vice-presidential nominee:

Obama defends natural disaster experience

….. My understanding is that Gov. Palin’s town, Wassilla, has I think 50 employees. We’ve got 2500 in this campaign. I think their budget is maybe 12 million dollars a year – we have a budget of about three times that just for the month.”

Our ability to manage large systems and to execute I think has been made clear over the past couple of years and certainly in terms of the legislation I’ve passed in the past couple of years, post-Katrina.”

Alaska’s budget is in the billions. Barack Obama has no executive management experience in government.

“Legislation passed” (the existence of which I question, based on what I have been able to review from the current Senate session thus far) is not “management.”

Natural disaster “experience”? Not even John Kerry tried to pass off nonsense like this.

The more he talks, the less he looks qualified to be president, or even the GOP’s vice president.

Keep it up, guy.

It seems that media and Obama surrogates’ (but I repeat myself) trash-talking and demonizing have lowered expectations of Sarah Palin’s speech tonight to the “Can she get out a complete sentence?” level.

My sense is that this will work to her advantage, bigtime.

In fact, based on her performance on Friday (”That was the best political speech I have ever seen delivered by an American woman politician. Palin is as tough as nails.” — liberal gadfly Camille Paglia), I think the only question is whether it will be the best or second-best speech ever given by a female politician at a major party’s national convention.

Here’s the text of the current champion, Elizabeth Dole at the 1996 Republican Convention (yeah, the other side won, but that doesn’t affect how good the speech was). After that speech, even the nets, which were notoriously hostile towards her husband Bob, had to admit to having been blown away, as noted in this Media Research Center CyberAlert:

“Absolutely powerful performance,” gushed Dan Rather after Elizabeth Dole finished her reflections on Bob Dole’s life. “It was masterful,” agreed Tim Russert on NBC where Tom Brokaw explained: “In the language of this summer, ladies and gentlemen, that was a gold medal performance.” ABC’s Peter Jennings pronounced it “an unquestionably brilliant piece of stagecraft by Mrs. Dole.

A link to the actual vid would be welcome if anyone has it (comment below or e-mail me).

I can’t even think of a memorable second-best. If it’s Ma Richards in 1992, the bar is indeed very low. Alternative suggestions are welcome.

It would be a real tradition-breaker, but I’m hoping against hope that Palin will use Liddy’s delivery style (those who remember it know what I’m talking about) with Friday’s substance (and beyond).

First, I believe she can pull it off.

Second, if she does — but even if she goes with the traditional delivery route — she could erase the teleprompter-only substance-free speech-making mystique of “The One” I refer to as “Mr. BOOHOO-OUCH” (Barack O-bomba Overseas Hussein “Obambi” Obama - Objectively Unfit Coddler of Haters) in one night.

A related entry is at NewsBusters.org.

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Update: This list would lead one to think that Condi Rice in 2000 is at the top, but I think Liddy Dole in ‘96 wins on style points. The Hillary Clinton and Eleanor Roosevelt speeches listed on the same page, which is listed in alpha order by last name, were not delivered at a political convention.

From Salt Lake City:

Sat, Aug 30, 2008

Rick Gallegos is a hero. He alerted a grandmother and her three grandchildren their house was on fire and proceeded to get them to safety. Gallegos is a member of Saint Patrick Parish.

Gallegos received the 2008 Governor’s Award for Excellence in Heroism, June 3 at the State Capitol Building. Governor Jon Huntsman, Jr., said, “I’m proud of you. Your selfless act of running into a burning house to rescue three small children, without regard for your personal safety, is remarkable. Because of your heroism, a family grieves only a lost structure rather than a lost child.”

The fire happened in a home near 800 West and 200 North in Salt Lake City about 7:30 p.m., in the fall of 2007. The flames destroyed the home. According to the Salt Lake Fire Department, the damage totaled about $90,000. The cause of the fire was not determined.

Gallegos said he and his wife, Mary, a graduate of Judge Memorial Catholic High School, were going home from the Rite Aid on North Temple and 900 West across the street from the burning home, when he noticed the smoke. He told his wife the house was on fire, and she said, no, they were just having a barbeque. She asked why are there people just sitting on the front porch?

“I said it just doesn’t look right, and I have to go in there,” said Gallegos. “I stopped our vehicle and left her right in the middle of the road.

“I walked up to the people sitting on the porch and told them their house was on fire,” said Gallegos. “They gave me a funny look like what are you talking about? I told them to look up, and then they could see the smoke coming out of the attic. I told them to get off the porch.”

There was an older woman, the grandmother of the children still inside the home, who was now in shock and crying.

“I had to ask her who was in the house,” said Gallegos. “She said the kids, and without knowing how many, I took off. I found two of them watching television. They were scared because I was a stranger in their home saying their house was on fire. I asked if there was anybody else in the house, and one said, yes, my little brother is taking a nap.

“I saw one door open and one door closed,” said Gallegos. “So I went to the room with the closed door, and there was the 5-year-old. I picked him up. As we were walking out the door, he woke up. Because I was a stranger, he started hitting me, screaming, and crying. By now the smoke was thick and I could hardly see or breathe. I had to lean forward to get some air, but we made it out the front door.”

Gallegos told the grandmother she had to go across the street because staying in the front yard was too dangerous. The grandmother wanted her chair that was on the porch. Gallegos retrieved the chair and then began to move the family to safety.

Gallegos said the Rite Aide parking lot was full of people, but nobody stopped to see if he needed help with this family, they were too busy taking photos with their cell phone cameras.

“I was thinking, I need help,” said Gallegos. “I looked back at the house just as the roof collapsed and flames shot out the front door like fire out of a dragon’s mouth. This was all in about five or so minutes. Had we not moved, we would have all been burned, or Grandma would have decided she wanted something else from the house.

“Finally a police officer showed up,” said Gallegos. “Then the fire trucks started rolling in. The fire trucks spent the next 90 minutes fighting the flames.

Gallegos told the police officer everything that had happened. He in turn reported it to Salt Lake City Fire Assistant Battalion chief Dennis McKone.

“Before I left I walked over to the grandmother and I told her I was sorry for her loss,” said Gallegos. “By then she was surrounded by her family. She looked at her kids and said, ‘He’s the one who saved my life. If it had not been for him we would have all been burned. He is my angel.’ We all became emotional.”

Gallegos is the father of three children and the grandfather of five. He comes from a family of 15 children, and family is very important to him. …..

Go here for the rest of the story.

The ISM Manufacturing Report comes out at 10 AM, but I won’t be able to react to that or other economic news online until this evening.

In the meantime, here are a couple of nuggets worth noting.

James Pethokoukis at US News, written at the Democratic National Convention BEFORE the surprise upside GDP revision to 3.3% last week:

I keep hearing a lot of this sort of pessimism, both in the speeches and among the delegates: “America is facing its greatest economic challenges since the Great Depression.” Really. That’s a pretty big stretch given that we’ve only had one quarter of negative economic growth in the past year, unemployment is still below 6 percent, incomes were growing briskly from 2003-2007, and productivity has averaged more than 2.5 percent a quarter during the past year and a half. Some perspective, people!

Bloomberg’s first two paragraphs last Thursday relating to the GDP announcement:

The U.S. economy expanded faster than previously estimated in the second quarter, helped by a surge in exports that will probably wane as Europe and Japan head toward recessions.

Gross domestic product increased at a 3.3 percent annual pace, compared with the initial estimate of 1.9 percent, the Commerce Department said today in Washington. Trade contributed the most to U.S. growth in almost three decades.

What? Our economy is still doing better than other major countries? How can that be? Paul Krugman at the New York Times told me just a couple of months ago that Europe was doing sooooooooo much better (sorry, don’t have time to find a link).